Essays of a Biologist

by Julian Huxley

To this we answer that it is here that real faith enters. We cannot know the absolute, nor have we discovered a goal for our efforts. But we have discovered a unity embracing all that we know, and a direction starting at the first moment to which our reconstructive thought can penetrate, continuing till to-day, and showing an acceleration of speed on which we may raise our hopes for the future.

We do not know all. For instance, I have studiously avoided ever mentioning the word immortality, since I believe that Science cannot yet profitably discuss that question. But the discovery of unity in all that has so far been studied gives us reasonable faith that its wings will reach out to cover all that we shall still be enabled to learn, while the unbroken continuity of evolutionary direction gives us the same sort of right to believe that it will continue to-morrow and on into time as we have to believe that apples will continue to fall to the earth.

The study of evolution may give us a further help. We have seen how the final steps of the highest forms of animals have been in the direction of plasticity of organization: we see it in the rise of man from mammals, in higher as against more primitive levels of human culture, in great men as against ordinary men. There can be no doubt that its acquisition constitutes a step in evolutionary progress. Plasticity is needed in any new religion. And plasticity means tolerance, means the reduction of fixity of ritual, of convention, of dogma, of clericalism.

It is clear that, as complexity increases, need will be felt for a finer adjustment of satisfaction to mood, a more delicate adaptation of religion to the individual. A few types of ceremony satisfied primitive races: an elaborate system, fixed in essence, fluctuating in detail, has grown up in modern Christianity. But the more complex the mind, the less does it like to have to “wait till Sunday”—the less is it satisfied with the solely biblical point of view, or the literary and musical level of Hymns A. and M.

The less also is it satisfied with the mediation of a priest. Priest (or Priest-King) is sole mediator in most savage tribes: his mediation is enormously important in the Roman Catholic Church: less so in Protestant Churches: until with the progressive raising of the spiritual and cultural level, it is perhaps possible that he may become an obstacle instead of a help. Mediators there must always be. They are the great ones—prophets and poets, heroes, philosophers, musicians, artists, and all who discover or interpret or display what for the ordinary man is hidden or difficult or rare. They mediate between the utmost attainable by man and man in the lump. As Hegel says of one group of these mediators, the artists, it is the function of their art to deliver to the domain of feeling and delight of vision all that the mind may possess of essential and transcendent Being. But, with the spread of invention and the change of civilization, their mediations are becoming more and more readily accessible to all. I can get, on the whole, more satisfactory mediation from three or four feet of properly filled bookshelf than from a dozen priests. Milton will give me doctrine if I want it, but stupendously: Wordsworth will reveal nature: Shakespeare the hearts of men: Blake can put men into a mystical, Shelley into an intellectual ecstasy, while Keats and a dozen others can open universal doors of beauty. What is more, if I have had the mediation of wise parents and good teachers, or to be so fortunate as to be enthusiastic, I find that in many things I can be my own mediator, in the same way as the Protestant found that he could read his Bible and eat the holy bread and wine for himself as well or better than the priest could do it for him.

Whatever we may say or like, it is an obvious fact that much of what is essential in religious experience, which in a simpler society was only attainable in prayer and sacrifice, communal ceremony or ritual worship, is now attainable to an increasing degree through literature, music, drama, art, and is, again, as a matter of fact, so attained by an increasing number of people who do not profess a creed or belong to a church. So that, as regards the personal, individual side of religion, many of the functions of Churches will inevitably be better performed through direct contact between the individual and the mediator—philosopher, poet, artist, or whatever he be—who provides the experience.

There remains public worship and community-religion. It is clear that whereas a Church in the Middle Ages was not only Church but also Museum of curiosities, Art-gallery and Theatre, and in large measure also took the place of our press and public libraries, now it is none of these things. There is now less reason for public worship, fewer functions for it to perform. On the other hand a religion is essentially in one aspect social, and not only does the unity of nature demand a unity of religion, but such unity of religion would be of the highest importance as a bond of civilization and a guarantee of the federalist as against the solely nationalist ideal. Moreover, to many types of mind, and to almost all men in certain circumstances, the partaking in a public religious ceremony in common with others is of real importance. It is safe to say, therefore, that these ceremonies will continue, however much modified, and that for them a mediator or priest, even if but temporarily acting as such, will be needed. The problem is largely that of combining in public worship the religious effectiveness of the simple, the hallowed, and the universally familiar—such as inheres in many of the prayers, psalms, and hymns of the Church to-day—with the spontaneity and immediacy which, for instance, are to be found at a devotional meeting of the Society of Friends.

In any case, the new intellectual premisses once granted, the limitations imposed on human mind once understood, the important thing is to give a greater vigour and reality to religious experience itself, whether personal and private or social and public. It is just here that Science may help, where knowledge may be power. Atonement, conversion, sense of grace, ecstasy, prayer, sacrifice—the meaning and value of these and of other religious acts and experiences can be put on a proper psychological basis, they can be shorn of excrescences, and their practice take its place in normal spiritual development. That is of the essence of any religion rooted in scientific ideas—that comprehension should make practice easier and better worth while.

I am only too painfully aware of the omissions which such a cursory treatment of the subject inevitably involves. I have given you, I know, little but dry bones; but bones are the framework necessary before impatient life can animate a new form. If Science can construct that form, the emotions and hopes and energies of humanity will vivify and clothe it. It is with the aid of such intellectual scaffolding that the common mind of humanity in the future, inevitably rooted in scientific conceptions as it will be, must try to raise that much-desired building, a religion common to all.

In any case, I shall be more than content if I have been able to persuade you first that the term God, just as much as the terms Energy, say, or Justice, has a real meaning and scientifically-based sense. Second, that the idea of God has and will continue to have an important biological function in man as denoting an idea, organized in a particular way, of the whole of the reality with which he is in contact. Thirdly, that the physical and biological sciences, in discovering the unity of matter and energy, and the direction operating in cosmic evolution, have provided a real basis for what up till now have been only theological speculations. Fourthly, that psychological science, in revealing some of the mechanism of mind, is helping us to appreciate the value of so-called mystical experience, is laying a foundation for the proper spiritual training and development of human mind, and shows us how the idea of God may be efficacious as a dominant idea in the all-important process of sublimation. And finally that, since the scientific mode of thought is of general and not merely local or temporary validity, to build a religion on its basis is to make it possible for that religion to acquire a stability, a universality, and a practical value hitherto unattained.