6 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



mind, to test the conceptions of a supreme being or 

 supereminent power against ever more and more 

 touchstones of reality, until the most sceptical shall 

 acknowledge that the final construction represents, 

 with whatever degree of incompleteness, yet not a 

 mere fragment educed to fill a void, however inevi- 

 table, to satisfy a longing, however natural, but the 

 summary and essence of a body of verifiable fact, 

 having an existence independent of the wishes or 

 ideals of mankind. 



It was the striving after some such certainty that 

 led Matthew Arnold to his famous definition of God 

 as "something, not ourselves, which makes for right- 

 eousness." Dissatisfaction with the assertion that 

 belief in a very special and undemonstrable form of 

 Divinity was necessary as an act of faith has, in a 

 large measure, helped the widespread revulsion 

 against orthodox Christianity. It was the need for 

 some external, ascertainable basis for belief which 

 led such different minds as William James and H. G. 

 Wells to approach religion, and in such diverse ways 

 as in the "Varieties of Religious Experience" and in 

 "God the Invisible King." It is this same need which 

 is leading the representatives of Christianity to lay 

 ever greater stress upon the reality and pragmatic 

 value of the religious experience, less and less upon 

 dogmas and creeds. 



It will be my attempt in this brief paper to show 

 how the facts of evolutionary biology provide us, 

 in the shape of a verifiable doctrine of progress, with 



