When civilizations and societies are organized so that their prime purpose is the pursuit of spiritual values, then life will have passed another critical point in its evolution; as always, what has gone before is necessary as foundation for what is coming, and the biological conditions must be fulfilled before the new and higher edifice can be built; but, as when the mammals superseded the reptiles, so this change of aim will mean the rise of a new type to be the dominant and highest form of life.

This can only come about so far as man consciously attempts to make it come about. His evolution up to the present can be summed up in one sentence—that through his coming to possess reason, life in his person has become self-conscious, and evolution is handed over to him as trustee and director. “Nature” will no longer do the work unaided. Nature—if by that we mean blind and non-conscious forces—has, marvellously, produced man and consciousness; they must carry on the task to new results which she alone can never reach.

Mr. Trotter, in his delightful book on the Herd-instinct, draws a distinction between the stable-minded or resistive and the unstable-minded or adaptive, and points out how the destinies of society have usually been entrusted to the former—whence spring our persecutions of prophets and our neglect of innovating genius. This will continue so long as the accepted belief of the majority is that there exists a Providence who has assigned every one his proper place, or even (oddest whim!) ordained the present type of society; so long as they rely more on authority than experience, look to the past more than to the future, to revelation instead of reason, to an arbitrary Governor instead of to a discoverable order.

The general conceptions of the universe which a man or a civilization entertains come in large part to determine his or its actions. There are only two general and embracing conceptions of the sort (though any number which are not general, and fail because they leave out whole tracts of reality): in the fewest possible words, one is scientific, the other unscientific; one tries to use to its fullest extent the intellect with which we have been evolved, the other does not. The thread running through most of these essays is the attempt to discover and apply in certain fields as much as possible of this scientific conception to several different fields of reality.

Of these essays, “Progress” has already appeared in the Hibbert Journal, “Biology and Sociology” in the Monist, “Ils n’ont que de l’âme” and “Philosophic Ants” in the Cornbill Magazine, “Rationalism and the Idea of God” in the Rationalist Press Annual, and “Religion and Science” in Science and Civilization, this year’s representative of the annual “Unity” series edited by Mr. F. S. Marvin and published by the Oxford University Press. They have all, however, been considerably revised and enlarged before appearing in the present volume. I have to thank the proprietors and publishers for kindly permitting me to reprint these.

Oxford,
April 1923.

CONTENTS

I PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER[3]
II BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY[69]
III ILS N’ONT QUE DE L’ÂME: AN ESSAY ON BIRD-MIND[107]
IV SEX BIOLOGY AND SEX PSYCHOLOGY[133]
V PHILOSOPHIC ANTS: A BIOLOGIC FANTASY[177]
VI RATIONALISM AND THE IDEA OF GOD[207]
VII RELIGION AND SCIENCE: OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES [235]