288 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



other is even more important : it is this. Humanity 

 at large is not content with emotional experience alone, 

 however complete and apparently satisfying : it has 

 always demanded an intellectual formulation of the 

 reality with which it is in contact, as well as emotional 

 experience of it, and so far as we can judge it will 

 always continue to do so. 



But it is further found, as matter again of general 

 experience, that such formulations do not remain 

 innocuous in the vacuum of pure intellect, but re- 

 verberate upon action and influence conduct. When 

 men believe that they are surrounded with magical 

 powers, they spend half their lives in ritual designed 

 to affect the operations of these (wholly hypothetical) 

 influences. When they worship a God whom they 

 rationalize as man-like, they sacrifice a large pro- 

 portion of their produce on his altars, and may even 

 kill their fellow-creatures to placate his (again im- 

 aginary) passions. When they believe in a Divine 

 Revelation, they think that they possess complete 

 enlightenment on the great problems of life and 

 death ; and they will then cheerfully burn those 

 who differ from them, or embark upon the bloodiest 

 wars in defence of this imaginary certainty. When 

 they worship God as absolute and as a person, they 

 cannot help making deductions that lead them into 

 absurdities of thought and of conduct : they deny 

 or oppose ideas derived from a study of nature, the 

 only actual source of knowledge, because they con- 



