266 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



relation with our minds, and there, owing to the way 

 it and our minds are organized, generates an idea 

 which exerts an influence upon us. 



The external basis of the idea of God is thus con- 

 stituted by the forces operating in the universe. The 

 universe is a unitary whole, greater and more power- 

 ful than ourselves, and its operations have resultants 

 in certain main directions — these are phenomena 

 which we constatate like any other phenomena. 

 They, and that other phenomenon of our contact 

 with the Universe and our exposure to the play of its 

 forces, give us our objective knowledge of God. The 

 rest of our idea of God, the inner component, depends 

 upon the mode of action of our minds. 



So far, then, we have shown that recent advance 

 in science, particularly in our understanding of evo- 

 lution, has enabled us to give a more objective ac- 

 count than ever before of what is involved in the 

 concept God, and so to pave the way for a consen- 

 sus of thought on the question. 



It will be observed that there is no idea of person- 

 ality implicit in this conception of God — God may 

 or may not possess personality. It will be for us 

 later to investigate that particular aspect of the prob- 

 lem. 



It now remains to deal with the inner reality. Man 

 has a wholly new type of mind. He is social and 

 capable of speech. He generalizes, and he has a 

 very highly developed power of association. This 

 combination gives him a great many possibilities 



