JULIAN S. HUXLEY 109 



ordinary sense, for fear of incomprehensible punish- 

 ment, for propitiatory sacrifice, or for the worship 

 that is regarded as agreeable to its recipient. Provi- 

 dence turns out to be wrongly named, and the Will of 

 God resolves itself into a combination of the driving 

 forces of nature with the spiritual pressure of abstract 

 ideas and certain of the conscious and subconscious 

 desires of man. 



What, then, remains for future religion? In the 

 first place, a recognition of the fact that the religious 

 spirit is a permanent element in human nature, and a 

 potent driving force; that, If it is harnessed In ways 

 which are Intellectually wrong its results will even- 

 tually prove to be practically wrong; and that, at 

 present, for want of intellectually satisfactory outlets, 

 the religious driving-force of a great many intelligent 

 people is going to waste. 



Next, a frank recognition that many of the func- 

 tions of earlier types of religion are now as well or 

 better carried out by other agencies. There was a 

 time when the Church provided the art, music and 

 poetry of the community whose needs in this respect 

 are now in large measure satisfied by books, pictures, 

 concerts, radio activity, and the rest; a time when it 

 provided the glamour, the rich illusion, and the escape 

 from routine now gained in the theater or the cinema; 

 and the Intellectual leadership, now given by philoso- 

 phers, novelists, men of science and other secular 

 writers. 



We can no longer promise salvation in the conven- 

 tional sense. But it Is a simple fact that men and 

 women can come to achieve a sense of harmony and 

 peace, a conviction of the value of existence, a feeling 



