all care and tenderness of feeling, we find that we cannot give it here as our own, for a double rea- son: First, we must remember that this reply, both in form and content, is designed for the power of comprehension of a simple uneducated girl, and is therefore not meant to impress, the intellect as well as the emotions and the imagina- tion, But then—and this consideration is of a more decisive importance—we must bear in mind that these words are spoken by a Faust ruled by sensual desire, a confederate of Mephistopheles, Tam sure that the redeemed Faust, whom we meet at the end of the second part, would give a somewhat different answer to Marguerite’s ques: tion, But I do not presume to conjecture on the secrets which the poet chose to keep permanently as his own. I prefer to attempt to cast some light, from the perspective of one trained in the spirit of exact scientific research, on the question of whether and to what extent a truly religious atti tude is compatible with the facts of knowledge gained through natural science—or to express it more concisely: Whether a person trained in nat- ural science can be truly religions at the same time.