EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



few individuals instead of the onward sweep of varia- 

 tions of a social organism, there is not much hope that 

 we can find general laws for a science of history or of 

 sociology. 



We have had at least three attempts to construct 

 elaborate cosmogonies which have fascinated the ima- 

 gination; Plato conceived a universe of the ideal, 

 Descartes pictured it as a machine obedient only to 

 mechanical law, and Spencer as an evolution from ho- 

 mogeneity to heterogeneity in which matter, motion, 

 and life are woven together in an incomprehensible 

 verbal scheme. These structures have no correspon- 

 dence with reality; they are illusion without sub- 

 stance and give neither shelter nor security to the 

 spirit. Is it still not the truth that our real course of 

 life should be to adapt ourselves as best we can to the 

 Philosophy of the Unexpected, guided so far as pos- 

 sible by the few facts in the objective and in the sub- 

 jective world which we have been able to discover 

 and use^ We continue to pass our lives in a world of 

 mystery and of the miraculous in which the Unex- 

 pected constantly intrudes. 



How can we speak of a science of history or of so- 

 ciology when a Moses unexpectedly appears in a na- 

 tion of bondsmen and leads them to independence or 

 when Jesus is born in an obscure carpenter's family 

 and institutes a new ideal and a new life in the world '? 

 In Greece, during a state of society hardly to be dis- 

 tinguished from barbarism, the poems of Homer 



n 373 3 



