both good and evil. But there is then another difficulty. I am immediately faced with, what Schweitzer in an essay on Goethe called “the great religious problem which confronts Christianity”, how to combine the concept of God which originates in the contemplation, study, and measurement of nature with the Biblical concept of a God who acts through history, without ruining the latter? My answer is to claim that an indwelling between people is also possible, and indeed is the greatest creativity of which nature is capable. So I keep my feet on the ground, and avoid being drawn into speculative theology, with its thrones, angels, crystal seas and all the rest. I simply admit there are mysteries of which I understand nothing.
If the heart and soul of the concept of God in History is an indwelling with the Most High, and the heart and soul of one's concept of Nature is that she is fulfilled in the creation of an indwelling between people, then neither concept ruins the other. But it does mean that the mystery of Nature far exceeds the ability of science to measure and to understand. It means, as I explain in the epilogue, that scientific methods, wonderful though they are, are valid only in limited conditions.
Furthermore, I am more in agreement with Kant than Goethe about the moral nature of man. I cannot accept a priori realities in man, such as moral sense, but my experience of man is that he is almost irredeemably wicked, and that apart from grace there are no depths to which he will not gladly sink for a fee; and this experience is entirely consistent with Church teaching. In contrast, Goethe was persuaded of the essential goodness of man. One must have realities; and I believe the supreme reality is a sense of communion between two persons or two souls. Nine tenths of it may be fantasy and imagination, but the remaining tenth hidden under all the chaff is adamantine spirit. It is more real even than either of the people involved, in the sense that it makes each of them…