It would be contrary to the fact that these three avenues to truth evolve from man himself, who is a child and therefore a part of nature, and who, therefore, expresses all nature's laws and operations in himself, be they in germ or be they more or less developed. Religion, philosophy, and science are the three offsprings of the spirit of man. As said, they are not three things in themselves, existing so to say in physical or mental space, nor do they represent three intrinsically separate laws of the cosmos. But unless the complete nature of man is brought to bear on these, unless these three facets of the human consciousness cooperate in him completely, there is something wrong, and the mental precipitate will be dogmatism. There is a tremendous responsibility involved in the giving out of truth, or what purports to be truth.
Few people have any realization of the enormous power of ideas over the understanding.
The spread of religions, the ready acceptance of philosophical principles, the luxuriant growth of political fads, are all examples of the manner in which men may be torn from their intellectual and moral moorings of principle by the ideas sweeping over their minds and overwhelming both willpower and sense of moral responsibility. Further, the science of only yesterday has built up barriers of materialistic thinking which have crippled the intuitions, warped the mental faculties, and have left to the men of our time a heritage of soulless dogmas. I have often wondered how many human minds have been ruined, and how many human souls have been emotionally degraded, by the old materialistic teaching of our fathers and grandfathers, that man is nothing but a fortuitous congeries of materials and of something somewhat more subtle, springing from this material, and called force. The idea that there is nothing within or above man intimately connected with him but dead matter, and blind force arising out of dead matter in some perfectly incomprehensible manner, is in itself degrading and unproductive of good. What is needed is a radical change in the consciousness of men.