238 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



tion and a thorough revision of ideas is needed, 

 the term God has an important scientific connotation, 

 and further that the present stagnation of rehgion 

 can be remedied if, as has happened again and again 

 in biological evolution, the old forms become extinct 

 or subordinate, and a nev7 dominant type is developed 

 along quite fresh lines. 



In any case, the man of science must obviously, 

 if he face the problem at all, take up a scientific 

 attitude of mind towards it. He cannot say that 

 there is no such thing as religion ; or try to whittle 

 it away by explaining that it is something else — a 

 complicated fear, or a sublimated sex-instinct, or a 

 combination of credulity and duplicity. A thing, 

 if it is a thing at all, is never merely something else. 

 Nor can he submit to the pretensions of those who 

 assert that it is too sacred to be touched, or that its 

 certainties are greater than those of science. No — 

 he must treat it for what it is — a fact, and a very 

 important fact at that, in human history : and he 

 must see whether the application of scientific method 

 to its study — in other words, its illumination by 

 the faculty of pure intellect — will help not only 

 our comprehension of religion in the past, but its 

 actual development in the future. 



He can study it in various ways. He can use 

 the method of observation and comparison, collect- 

 ing and collating facts until he is able to give a con- 

 nected account of the manifestations of religion and 

 of their past history ; he can study it physiologically, 



