130 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



terialists and Idealists. A new meaning has been given 

 to the whole world movement, since we have discov- 

 ered that evolution is creative. It is now believed that 

 it is not at all an unwrapping process. Its meaning 

 is not expressed by the word development, nor indeed 

 by the word evolution itself. Evolution is rather a 

 creative up-building process. It is epigenetic, to use 

 a more technical term. 



We are not obliged therefore to choose between a 

 materialistic or mechanistic universe on the one hand 

 and a dualistic or a spiritualistic world on the other 

 hand. There is quite another way to look at the whole 

 subject. We are to take the theory of evolution very 

 seriously, but we find that it does not lead in the di- 

 rection of a mechanistic universe. Nor, on the other 

 hand, are we compelled to suppose that there is some- 

 thing called mind which runs parallel with the body, 

 or resides in the body. Nor, again, are we forced to 

 accept any of the older forms of idealism, which 

 taught that the whole universe is composed of mind- 

 stuff, or that it is merely the externalization of some- 

 thing wholly spiritual. 



The world is not a rearrangement of a throng of 

 lifeless atoms, but the awakening of them into a world 

 of living, feeling, and thinking forms. It is not 

 necessary to read back the ideal values into the phys- 

 ical units out of which our world is made. The ideal 

 values are new creations, "special creations," to use 

 a religious phrase. They are values which are 

 "realized" through a process of evolution. 



Aristotle was the first to teach that the world is a 

 process of realization. Formless matter is ever tak- 

 ing on form — that is, becoming real; for to Aristotle 

 form Is a term covering the qualities or powers which 



