JULIAN S. HUXLEY 113 



Lastly, we must not forget to remind ourselves that 

 we are relative beings. As products of evolution, our 

 bodies and minds are what they are because they have 

 been moulded in relation to the world in which we 

 live. The very senses we possess are relative — for in- 

 stance, we have no electric sense and no X-ray sense, 

 because electrical and X-ray stimuli of any magnitude 

 are very rare in nature. The working of our minds, 

 too, is very far from absolute. Our reason often 

 serves only as a means of finding reasons to justify 

 our desires. Our mental being, as modern psychology 

 has shown, is a compromise — here antagonistic forces 

 in conflict, there an undesirable element forcibly ex- 

 pressed, there again a disreputable motive emerging 

 disguised. Our minds, in fact, like our bodies, are 

 devices for helping us to get along somehow in the 

 struggle for existence. We are entrapped in our own 

 natures. Only by deliberate effort, and not always 

 then, shall we be able to use our minds as instru- 

 ments for attaining unvarnished truth, for practising 

 disinterested virtue, for achieving true sincerity and 

 purity of heart. 



I do not know how religion will assimilate these 

 facts and these ideas; but I am sure that In the long 

 run It will assimilate them as it has assimilated Kepler 

 and Galileo and Newton, and Is beginning to assimilate 

 Darwin. And I am sure that the sooner the assimila- 

 tion is effected, the better It will be for everybody con- 

 cerned. 



So far I have spoken almost entirely of the effect 

 of science upon the religious outlook — of the effect of 

 scientific method upon the study of religion Itself, lead- 



