Essays of a Biologist

by Julian Huxley

But there can be no reasonable doubt that living matter, in due process of time, originated from non-living; and if that be so, we must push our conclusion farther, and believe that not only living matter, but all matter, is associated with something of the same general description as mind in higher animals. We come, that is, to a monistic conclusion, in that we believe that there is only one fundamental substance, and that this possesses not only material properties, but also properties for which the word mental is the nearest approach. We want a new word to denote this X, this world-stuff; matter will not do, for that is a word which the physicists and chemists have moulded to suit themselves, and since they have not yet learned to detect or measure mental phenomena, they restrict the word “material” to mean “non-mental,” and “matter” to mean that which has such “material” properties.

You will remember William of Occam’s razor; “Entia non multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”; when we are monists in the sense I have just outlined, we are using that weapon to shave away a very unrestrained growth of hair which has long obscured the features of reality.

Holding to these principles, we must, until evidence to the contrary is produced, reject any explanation which proceeds by cataclysms, or by miracles; a miracle becomes (when not an illusion) simply an event which is on the one hand uncommon, and for which, on the other, there has been found no explanation. Revelation too goes by the board—save a revelation which is simply a name for the progressive increase of knowledge and insight.

Last, but not least, we do not pretend to know the Absolute. We know phenomena, and our systems, in so far as scientific, are interpretations of phenomena.

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Religion has been defined in a hundred different ways. It has been defined intellectually—as a creed; as myth; as a view of the universe; it has been defined emotionally as consisting in awe; in fear; in love; in mystical exaltation or communion. It has been defined from the standpoint of action—as worship; as ritual; as sacrifice; as morality. Matthew Arnold called it “morality tinged with emotion”; Salomon Reinach “a sum of scruples impeding the free use of human faculties.” Jevons makes the experiencing of God the central feature; and so on and so forth. Is it possible to find any common measure for all these statements? Would it not be better to unite with those who cut the Gordian knot by writing down all religion simply as illusion? No. For their point of view is meaningless. Even illusions are, in themselves, facts to be investigated; and even illusions have a basis.

But it is not necessary to believe that it is an illusion; the knot may be untied. Ritual, Creed, Morality, Mystical Experience—all these are manifestations of religion, but not religion itself. Religion itself is the reaction between man as a personality on the one side, and, on the other, all of the universe with which he comes in contact. It is not only ritual, for you may have obviously non-religious ritual, as in a court ceremonial or a legal function: it is not merely morality, for men may practise morality, the most austere or the most terre à terre, uninspired by anything that could remotely be called religious: it is not belief, for we may have beliefs of all kinds, even to the most complex scientific beliefs concerning the universe, which have yet no connection with religion: it is neither communion in itself, nor ecstasy in itself, as many lovers and poets could tell you.

But because it is a reaction of the whole personality, it must involve intellectual and practical and emotional processes: and because man has the powers of abstraction and association, or rather because his mind in most cases cannot help making associations and abstractions, it follows that it will inevitably concern itself, consciously or subconsciously, with all the phenomena that it encounters, will try to bring them all into its scheme, and will try to unify them and frame concepts to deal with them as a whole.

Some men will be more concerned on the emotional, others on the intellectual, others again on the moral side: but it is impossible to separate any one of the three aspects entirely from the others.