RELIGION AND SCIENCE 247 



with the rise of evolutionary biology and psychology, 

 there seems to be no place any more for a God in the 

 universe. 



Stated thus, the opposition is complete. But let us 

 return on our footsteps, and trace for one thing some 

 of the history of religious beliefs, for another re- 

 investigate, from a slightly unusual standpoint, the 

 actual knowledge of the Universe which science has 

 given us. 



Man has developed : in early stages, his physical 

 and mental capacities developed ; in later stages 

 development has been mainly restricted to his tradi- 

 tions, ideas, and achievements. As part of his 

 development, his religious ideas have altered too. 



At the beginning he appears to have no ideas of 

 a God of Gods at all — merely of influences and 

 powers, obviously (he would say) inherent in the forces 

 of Nature, magically inherent in certain objects and 

 actions — fetishes and incantations. He seems scarcely 

 to have been conscious of himself as an individual, 

 or of the full distinction between self and the external 

 world 



Later, perhaps as the idea of his own personality 

 grew, he began to ascribe a more personal existence 

 to the forces with which he came into contact, and 

 so to turn them more and more into beings that 

 can properly be called Gods : polydaemonism arose 

 and in its turn gave place to polytheism. 



But while rigid custom was at first the only morality, 



