290 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



as a rational and spiritual being. In so far as reli- 

 gion is irrational, it is no more than a dog baying the 

 moon, no higher activity than the nocturnal concerts 

 of Howler monkeys, no more and no less moral than 

 the nobility of birds or beasts to a strangely-marked 

 or unusually-built member of their species, or the 

 sense of being a trespasser so often shown by a bird 

 that has ventured upon the nesting-territory of an- 

 other. Recall the ''Natural Religion" of Robert 

 Browning's Caliban; on which plane did that grow? 

 But when we have discovered its real bases, and sub- 

 ordinated its impulsive promptings to the control of 

 reason and of the new, higher values in which reason 

 must always share — then it becomes an instrument 

 for helping in the conquest of the new regions which 

 lie open to man as individual and as species. And 

 in this it resembles every other human activity with- 

 out exception. 



In religion the danger has always been that an- 

 alogy and symbolism be taken for more than they 

 are — for scientific knowledge, or even for an absolute 

 certainty of some still higher order — and conclusions 

 then drawn from it. The conclusions follow with 

 full syllogistic majesty: but their feet are of clay — 

 their premisses are false. 



If we find that this is the case to-day, we not 

 only may but we must endeavour to make our for- 

 mulation correspond more closely with reality, must 

 not be content to take one thing in place of another, 

 the familiar for the unfamiliar, must set about de- 



