THE NATURALNESS OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 



towards the higher levels of social solidarity which we have not as 

 yet attained ? Can we not consider love as the essential social cement, 

 the counterpart at high levels of organisation of the valencies, van 

 der Waals forces and other bonds the operation of which we see 

 among the molecules and colloidal aggregates? Hear Auden again: 



O beggar, bigwig, mugrv^ump, none but have 

 Some vision of that holy Centre where 

 All time's occasions are refreshed; the lost 

 Are met by all the other places there; 

 The rival errors recognise their loves 

 Fall weeping on each other's necks at last; 

 The rich need not confound the Persons, nor 

 The Substance be divided by the poor. 



Our way remains, our world, our day, our sin; 

 We may, as always, by our own consent 

 Be cast away: but neither depth nor height 

 Nor any other creature can prevent 

 Our reasonable and lively motions in • 

 This modem void where only Love has weight, 

 And Fate by Faith is clearly understood. 

 And he who works shall find our Fatherhood." 



As for the hate and hunger of the struggle for existence in the 

 animal world, the Victorians tormented themselves like so many 

 fakirs with anxiety-neuroses about the tortures of the lower organisms. 

 Into every fish and insect they projected an image of their own 

 highly-organised human minds, endowing the humblest creatures 

 with capacities for fear and pain which a dispassionate consideration 

 of their nervous systems would have shown that they were entirely 

 incapable of. The biologist G. J. Romanes, who, like Henry Drum- 

 mond, had religious affiliations, though in Romanes' case these were 

 Anglo-Catholic, excelled in perplexities on this score.^ 



There is a real and interesting difference, however, between our 

 attitude to the evolutionary process and that adopted by thinkers 

 such as T. H. Huxley. "Let us understand, once and for all," he wrote,^ 

 "that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the 



^ G. J. Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, ed, by Charles Gore (London, 1895), and 

 Life and Letters (London, 1896). 



^ Evolution and Ethics (7th edn., London, 191 1, p. 83). 



35 



