Religion

506 LETTERS IN CANADA And so to.... At this point the manuscript dramatically ended. In fact where the reviewer went was to hospital; in thought where the reviewer intended to go was to Robert Thomas Allen's A Treasury of Canadian Humour. Both produced a stitch in his side. (]. M. ROBSON) RELIGION The rather curious title of F. W. Waters' book, The Way In and the Way Out: Science and Religion Reconciled (Oxford, xii, 269, $4.45, pa. $2.95), alludes to a remark that someone is once said to have made about Bishop Berkeley's philosophy: first one must "think himself into" it, and then "think himself out of" it. The particular problem into which Waters offers to guide his readers and out of which he then shows how they may gingerly pick their way is indicated by the subtitle. This confident claim may, by its very assurance, arouse suspicions in the wary about the sobriety and balance of argument that may be expected here. But one does not need to read far before being convinced that Waters is a fair, well-read, and lucid guide. The principal merit of the book is its historical approach. The first part-The Way In- traces Swiftly but surefootedly the development of Western philosophy and modem science from the neo-platonism that provided the matrix of Augustinian theology through to that nineteenth-century view of the universe as ultimately meaningless that led Bertrand Russell to remark that "only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." The conclusion is familiar enough: what is not so familiar, at least in books concerned with the philosophy of religion, is a description of the steps in Western thinking that seemed to lead inescapably to that conclusion, and the book is to be warmly commended for this feature. The second part-The Way Out-carefully examines the view that the model of the universe as an automatic and purposeless machine is applicable to all aspects of reality, and finds it wanting. Positively, the author urges the significance of man's persistent "feeling of dependence on some Reality, the conviction that there is meaning behind and within what appears, and acknowledgement of the highest good, even though what it is, and where, may not be known." He is prepared to admit that HUMANITIES 507 the ascription of personality to this object of ultimate concern is not part of primary religious experience, although it does not falSify it and may be felt to be necessary to do justice to the religious man's sense of being the found rather than the finder; but On the objective reality of that which awakens ultimate concern he will not yield. In matters of "revealed theology," the nub of the author's view is found in his insistence that a "distinction be made between Christian faith as belief in doctrines and as commitment to the person to whom the doctrines point"; theology is not to be mistaken for religion. Dr. Waters has written his book for thoughtful laymen "whose thinking is plagued by the notion that there is some kind of intrinsic opposition between the scientific and religious phases of life"; hardly a better book could be conceived of to place in their hands. The Unexplained (New York: New American Library [Toronto: General Publishing], xiii, 233, $5.95), by Allen Spraggett, consists for the most part of scores of ancedotes about people who have received, or claim to have received, telepathic messages, experienced clairvoyance, had precognition of what were usually tragic events in the near future, seen ghosts, received messages purporting to come from the dead, benefited from paranormal healings, or experienced similar unusual happenings which fall within the general province of psychical research. To the inevitable question, "Is there anything in it?" Mr. Spraggett would reply with an emphatic yes, and he writes to persuade others of his conviction. Not only does he believe that there is evidence for the now generally accepted fact of ESP, but for human survival after death and for communication by the dead with the living. He disarms the most obvious criticisms by freely admitting the possibility of...