RELIGION AND SCIENCE 301 



they can be shorn of excrescences, and their practice 

 take its place in normal spiritual development. That 

 is of the essence of any religion rooted in scientific 

 ideas — that comprehension should make practice 

 easier and better worth while. 



I am only too painfully aware of the omissions 

 which such a cursory treatment of the subject in- 

 evitably involves. I have given you, I know, little 

 but dry bones; but bones are the framework neces- 

 sary before impatient life can animate a new form. 

 If Science can construct that form, the emotions and 

 hopes and energies of humanity will vivify and clothe 

 it. It is with the aid of such intellectual scaffolding 

 that the common mind of humanity in the future, 

 inevitably rooted in scientific conceptions as it will 

 be, must try to raise that much-desired building, a 

 religion common to all. 



In any case, I shall be more than content if I have 

 been able to persuade you first that the term God, 

 just as much as the terms Energy, say, or Justice, 

 has a real meaning and scientifically-based sense. 

 Second, that the idea of God has and will continue 

 to have an important biological function in man as 

 denoting an idea, organized in a particular way, of 

 the whole of the reality with which he is in contact. 

 Thirdly, that the physical and biological sciences, in 

 discovering the unity of matter and energy, and the 

 direction operating in cosmic evolution, have pro- 

 vided a real basis for what up till now have been only 

 theological speculations. Fourthly, that psycholog- 



