2o8 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



attributes are given — man can but take it or leave it ; 

 and, what is more, it is difficult for him to leave it. 

 It is given as the raw material and elemental attributes 

 of life are given, and the evolutionary process can but 

 take them. Man moulds and forms ; but evolution 

 has no more created living matter than he Divinity. 



I propose, then, to lay down as my main point that 

 the idea of God is an inevitable product of biological 

 evolution, arising when the human type of mind first 

 came into being, and taking shape and form as a 

 definite God or Gods. That the Gods who thus 

 arise, although of course they play a role in the affairs 

 of the human species only, have a definite biological 

 function. That the term God can still be properly 

 and profitably employed to denote a certain complex 

 of phenomena, with a certain function in human 

 evolution. 



What, then, do we mean by saying that the idea ot 

 God arises inevitably with the appearance of man 

 upon the evolutionary scene ? How can the appear- 

 ance of man account for such a curious phenomenon ? 



With man, for the first time in the history of life 

 upon the earth, an organism appeared capable of gener- 

 alizing, of framing concepts, and of communicating 

 them to his fellows. Through sense-organs and 

 brain, an organism reflects in its mind some of the 

 events of the world outside, creates some sort of a 

 microcosm over against the macrocosm. But the 



