296 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



scendence in religion differs from transcendence in 

 art or love only in its objects. In love the discrepancy 

 between the object and the ideal values hung round 

 it is often so glaring as to provoke laughter from 

 cynics, compassion from the rest. In art, the 

 operations by which an artist turns a collection of 

 mean and commonplace objects into a beautiful and 

 single whole, a poet invests failure and death with 

 authentic tragedy, or drags every-day to a seat in 

 eternity, are just as transcendent as that by which 

 the mystic converts the relation between the warring 

 passions of his soul and the infinite catalogue of 

 differences which he finds around him into what 

 he can only speak of as a divine communion, all- 

 satisfying in itself, all-important for the conduct of 

 his life. Science can here help religion by analysing 

 and interpreting phenomena such as transcendence, 

 paring the false from the true, cutting down false 

 claims, substituting the hopefulness of natural causa- 

 tion for the illogical vagaries of supernaturalism and 

 incommunicability. 



****** 



I may perhaps be allowed to close with a few more 

 practical aspects of the problem. 



Many religious ideas and practices, as man's thought 

 clarified itself, have proved to be unserviceable, and 

 have been thrown on the lumber-heap, or left only 

 with the losers in the race. It is impossible for any 

 educated man nowadays to believe in the efficacy 



