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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
to set up a theory of their own concerning their various religions;, but they comprise mostly only perversions of the real doctrines of the Science of Salvation. The days of superstition being over, men now dare to look into the teaching of their own and others' churches, and, finding them absurd, discard them. The number of those who style themselves 'freethinkers,' rationalists' and the like is daily increasing, and shall continue to do so, inasmuch as the rational mind wants something which must not riolate any of the fundamentals of reason, at least.
Science, or rather the modern sciences, mostly deny the soul's existence itself; some are aguostics, and merely claim not to kuow thether it esist or not. The psychologists are mostly agnostics; but they generally decline to study the subject, and imagine that they can get along, all right enough, without the assumption of a soul. Some who hare studied the nature of knorrledge itself have been forced to admit the soul. It is inconceirable how psychology can erer rank as a science unless it embarks on a comprehensive study of the phenomena of consciousness. If a man said that he was not concerned with anything escept the fittings and wires of electricity and that for his purposes it tas not necessary to assume the existence of a force that worked, through them he could certainly remain an agnostic; but then he would have no right to say that he had studied his subject as a science ought to be studied.
The abore is briefly the outline of the scheme which ' is intended to be presented in this book. At present . it is only like a set of allegations; nothing more. But it is hoped that at least a major portion of what has