RELIGION AND SCIENCE 261 



absolute and unbridgeable chasm, at once one with 

 it and in deadly combat with it and all its ways. 



Our mode of envisaging the problem illuminates it, 

 and shows it as inevitable and intelligible instead of 

 insoluble and tormenting ; and illuminates too many 

 other minor problems of good and evil. But all this 

 is a side-issue : revenons a nos moutons. 



Unknown, or neutral, or hostile power : a move- 

 ment similar in direction to the direction in which 

 history on the whole shows we are moving, and to that 

 which we desire with our highest aspirations, but 

 operating blindly ; an acceleration of that movement 

 by the coming of mind to biological predominance, 

 with certain consequent minor changes in direction 

 but major changes in speed and in methods. Three 

 tendencies, but all founded in one unity, and each 

 arising out of the other — that is the picture drawn 

 for us by the present state of science. In this sense, 

 and in this only, can it be said that ' all things work 

 together for righteousness.' 



One word on an important side-issue — the problem 

 of evil in man, of stagnancy and degeneration in 

 organic evolution. Degeneration often does occur 

 — a reversal, in other words, of the main tendency. 

 But the positive fact remains that the maximum level 

 is progressively raised, and that we find that stagnation 

 of development or even sometimes degeneration have 

 been factors indirectly helping on the main direction. 



We must accept the positive main direction for 



