PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER 61 



process with process, the working of the whole, some- 

 how led to good. 



This feeling is what I believe is clarified and put 

 on a firm intellectual footing by biology. The prob- 

 lems of evil, of pain, of strife, of death, of insuffi- 

 ciency and imperfection — all these and a host of 

 others remain to perplex and burden us. But the 

 fact of progress emerging from pain and battle and 

 imperfection — this is an intellectual prop which can 

 support the distressed and questioning mind, and 

 be incorporated into the common theology of the 

 future. 



Dean Inge, in his Romanes Lectures, ^^ quotes 

 Disraeli's caustic words, "The European talks of 

 progress because by the aid of a few scientific dis- 

 coveries he has established a society which has mis- 

 taken comfort for civilization," and quotes them with 

 approval. He bitterly criticizes what we may sum 

 up as Millenarianism (although this after all is but 

 a crude and popular aspiration after what the Chris- 

 tian would call the Kingdom of God on earth). 

 And, after exalting Hope as a virtue, closes with the 

 somewhat satirical statement, "It is safe to predict 

 that we shall go on hoping." 



He has been so concerned to attack the dogma of 

 inherent and inevitable progress in human affairs 

 that he has denied the fact of progress — whether in- 

 evitable we know not, but indubitable and actual 

 — in biological evolution: and in so doing he has 



17 Inge, '20. 



