264 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



It is not easy to say where this element of conscious- 

 ness, conscious striving for an as yet unrealised end, 

 has begun to enter into the animal kingdom; but we 

 see signs of it in the higher animals, at any rate in 

 those that have become domesticated; and we are well 

 aware of these faculties in ourselves. At some stage 

 or other, conscious planning, or what Aristotle called 

 "entelechy," enters into the scheme; and this element 

 we may well call the germ of the soul. As a working 

 hypothesis we may conjecture that where a soul exists 

 it means the emergent evolution of something higher 

 than ordinary life, of something which has a personal 

 aspect, and of something which, if real, is likely to 

 persist. If it is a very minute fragment of personality, 

 then its survival will also be minute and fragmentary. 

 Only when it becomes considerable and dominant will 

 it have a considerable and dominant survival. In so 

 far as a thing is real, it will not go out of existence; 

 it will survive for whatever it may be worth. 



Clearly there are grades of existence or grades of 

 value; so in a sense there may be grades of survival. 

 Surely not, it may be objected, there is either survival 

 or there is not; there cannot be partial survival. No, 

 but a small and trivial thing may survive in a small 

 and trivial way. A great love endures; but a little bit 

 of affection may still survive. The problem is one of 

 reality. Only reality persists. But, on the other hand, 

 all reality persists. A cloud or a crowd is dispersed 

 and scattered and ceases to be. But that was not a 

 reality, it was a mere aggregate of atoms or of peo- 

 ple : when it was dispersed the individual components 

 continue. The reality belonged, not to the assemblage, 

 but to that which gathered them together. The emo- 



