various inner manifestations of our human nature. Man, so this conception holds, is essentially a religious being. He has religion because his own inmost nature craves it. If you wish, then, to justify religion, or even to comprehend it, you must view it, not as a theory to be proved or disproved by an appeal to external reality, but rather as a faith to be estimated through reference to the inner consciousness of those who need, who create, and who enjoy religion. From this point of view the study of Natural Religion concerns itself less with proof than with confession, with a taxing of interior values, and with a description of the religious experience of mankind. A somewhat extended interpretation of this point of view treats the purely historical study of the various religions of mankind as a contribution to our comprehension of Natural Religion.
But a third conception of the study of Natural Religion remains. This third view identifies the doctrine in question with the fundamental Philosophy of Religion. It is the Nature of Things, viewed in the light of the most critical examination of our reason, that is now the object of an inquiry into Natural Religion. The problems at issue are, for this view, those of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, of Hegel’s Logik, — of all the undertakings that, in the history of thought, have most directly attempted the contemplation of Being as Being. For our first conception the student of Natural Religion, having accepted the natural knowledge of his time as valid, and not having attempted to delve beneath the foundations of that knowledge, seeks to interpret external nature in
