200 DISCOVERY CH. vn 



natural selection ; as the fittest to survive under certain 

 conditions is often not the best ethically but the worst. 

 " In one aspect," said a leading naturalist, Sir William 

 Thiselton-Dyer, " the religious sentiment is a response 

 to a craving for a supernatural sanction to rules of con- 

 duct. Its varied but practically universal manifestation 

 amongst mankind has to be accounted for by evolution 

 just as much as the possession of a vertebral column. 

 It is not practically helpful to dismiss it as irrational." 



No philosophic biologist would now insist that the 

 principle of natural selection, or any other plan of organic 

 evolution which leads up to man, is a complete expression 

 of the origin and expansion of human consciousness ; 

 but most naturalists are satisfied that the principle 

 truly represents perceptual operations of Nature. Be- 

 yond this concept there may be a new and transcendental 

 philosophy, but it belongs to the realm of metaphysics 

 rather than to that of observational science. 



