RELIGION AND SCIENCE 299 



we shall still be enabled to learn, while the unbroken 

 continuity of evolutionary direction gives us the same 

 sort of right to believe that it will continue to-morrow 

 and on into time as we have to believe that apples 

 will continue to fall to the earth. 



The study of evolution may give us a further 

 help. We have seen how the final steps of the 

 highest forms of animals have been in the direction 

 of plasticity of organization : we see it in the rise 

 of man from mammals, in higher as against more 

 primitive levels of human culture, in great men as 

 against ordinary men. There can be no doubt that 

 its acquisition constitutes a step in evolutionary 

 progress. Plasticity is needed in any new religion. 

 And plasticity means tolerance, means the reduction 

 of fixity of ritual, of convention, of dogma, of cleric- 

 alism. 



It is clear that, as complexity increases, need will 

 be felt for a finer adjustment of satisfaction to mood, 

 a more delicate adaptation of religion to the individual. 

 A few types of ceremony satisfied primitive races : 

 an elaborate system, fixed in essence, fluctuating in 

 detail, has grown up in modern Christianity. But 

 the more complex the mind, the less does it like to 

 have to ' wait till Sunday ' — the less is it satisfied 

 with the solely biblical point of view, or the literary 

 and musical level of Hymns A. and M. 



The less also is it satisfied with the mediation of 

 a priest. Priest (or Priest-King) is sole mediator 



