8 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



force within the mind of man, especially when it 

 seems to transcend individuality and to overflow into 

 what we designate as the mystical, is called the Holy 

 Ghost, and the activity, personal or vicarious, which 

 mediates between the individual and the rest of the 

 universe, reconciling his incompleteness and his fail- 

 ures with its apparent sternness and inexorableness, 

 is called the Son. 



Some men lay more weight on one of these aspects 

 than on the others. I know a clergyman of the 

 Church of England who, on being reproached during 

 a theological argument with failure to pay sufficient 

 respect to the doctrine of God the Father, replied: 

 "I am not interested in God the Father"; and I know 

 intellectually-minded men who wish to reject the va- 

 lidity of all religious experience because their minds 

 are so made that they pay more attention to external 

 fact and because their reason refuses to let them agree 

 with the interpretations of fact propounded by most 

 religious bodies. But, for a properly balanced con- 

 struction, for the finding of something which shall 

 serve not as the basis of a creed for this or that sect, 

 but of a creed for humanity, of something which in- 

 stead of dividing shall unite, we need all aspects. 



The idea of Progress constitutes, as I hope to show, 

 the most important element in the first part of our 

 construction — that which attempts to synthesize the 

 facts of Nature; and besides, no inconsiderable por- 

 tion of the third, the interrelation of inner and outer. 



Readers of Bury's interesting book on the Idea of 



