PROGRESS 6i 



to and struggles with other organisms are in part 

 but the continuation of the old struggle, in part the 

 expression of the fact that we have acquired new 

 methods for dealing with the problems of existence. 



The origin of life itself, and its movement in time 

 — both these are found to face in the same direction 

 as ourselves. St. Paul wrote that all things work 

 together for good. That is an exaggeration : but 

 they work together so that the average level of the 

 good is raised, the potentialities of life are bettered. 

 In every time and every country, men have obscurely 

 felt that, although so much of the world, taken 

 singly, was evil, yet the clash of thing with thing, 

 process with process, the working of the whole, 

 somehow led to good. 



This feeling is what I believe is clarified and 

 put on a firm intellectual footing by biology. The 

 problems of evil, of pain, of strife, of death, of in- 

 sufficiency 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 in- 

 corporated 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 discoveries he has estab- 

 lished a society which has mistaken comfort for 



^ Inge, '20. 



