RELIGION AND SCIENCE 291 



and truer view, I believe, is the one we have adopted. 

 We have seen that in man, evolution has reached a new 

 plane, on which not only have new aims and values 

 appeared, but the possibility of new and better evolu- 

 tionary methods has arisen. These new methods 

 are only possible, however, in so far as life, in man, 

 uses her new gifts. The progress of civilization is a 

 constant conflict between that part of man which he 

 shares with the beasts and that part which is his alone — 

 between man as no more than a new kind of animal 

 and man as a rational and spiritual being. In so far 

 as religion is irrational, it is no more than a dog baying 

 the moon, no higher activity than the nocturnal 

 concerts of Howler monkeys, no more and no less 

 moral than the hostility of birds and beasts to a 

 strangely-marked or unusually-built member of their 

 species, or the sense of being a trespasser so often 

 shown by a bird that has ventured upon the nesting- 

 territory of another. Recall the ' Natural Religion ' 

 of Robert Browning's Caliban ; on which plane did 

 that grow ? 



But when we have discovered its real bases, and 

 subordinated its impulsive promptings to the control 

 of reason and of the new, higher values in which reason 

 must always share — then it becomes an instrument for 

 helping in the conquest of the new regions which lie 

 open to man as individual and as species. And in 

 this it resembles every other human activity without 

 exception. 



