1424 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



told it, fitted him for this leadership, has been the subject of sermons 

 and commentaries beyond number: so enough here to note that in 

 this high experience, and after a long fatherless childhood, youth, 

 and early manhood, and now outcast from Egypt as well, his need 

 of fatherhood at highest was realised, and his own mission, as soon 

 thereafter father and leader of his people also. So much then for 

 Emotion, mystic, yet social too, and also for its Doctrine, not only 

 intellectualised emotion and vision, but with roots in long experi- 

 enced folk-feeling as well. Of religion there is one other main and 

 enduring element besides emotion and doctrine, that of symbol: 

 hence the burning bush has ever since been glowing in Talmudist 

 and kindred literature and teaching, flaming in medieval cathedral 

 windows. It is the heraldic blazon and seal of each of the two Calvin- 

 istic Churches of Scotland which, after generations of rivalry, are 

 reuniting on this very day when this page is being written. So may 

 we not safely turn to our sceptical naturalistic coUeague, and ask 

 if we have not, with the above few examples, at least made reason- 

 ably clear the nature of our general claim — that the higher faculties, 

 emotional, intellectual and imaginative, can be reasonably inter- 

 preted in terms of evolution, from the simpler ones of feeling, 

 experience and sense, which we share with the higher animals. So is 

 not this an outline explanation of how it is we have evolved to 

 powers beyond theirs ? 



Yet have we not here also a viewpoint for better appreciation of 

 animals, too, at their highest ? Their mutual feeling, their "conscious- 

 ness of kind", often rises to collective emotion and grouping, and this 

 to more than to mere temporary crowd, but associated herd and 

 flock, as when in danger, and guarded for defence. They, too, form 

 social groupings, and at various levels, and with co-operation and 

 division of labour, long and often anticipating our own. They too 

 have shown something of constructive adaptivity, as well as what 

 we call instinct : and if a sheepdog be not intelligent, and careful as 

 well, as to the difficult instructions his shepherd master gives him, 

 and even self-restrained in his wrath with silly sheep, what better 

 understanding of his character can be given? Again birds — often 

 with sociability, courtships and tournaments and admiration of 

 beauty, with lyric song and its appreciation, with co-operation and 

 division of labour in parental care — have they not already some of 

 the finest qualities of human civilisation? With their psychic and 

 organic life and ways, even esthetically productive and constructive 

 waj^s, even to what we in ourselves call moral — of what else can 

 civilisation be ? Is the bower-bird not something of an artist ? — the 

 skylark much of poet ? — the full-antlered stag a leader ? Our domestic 

 animals are not simply man's captives and servants, his slaves and 

 victims; they are also and increasingly his helpers and even friends; 

 and they have largely domesticated him, as from childhood to 



