the predatory, and will do so quite effectively on the basis of an evolutionary past, the tendencies of which were established before ever theological definitions came to give them impulse and strength.
Is it not almost ludicrous to suggest that that communal instinct will cease to play, if the hope of individual reward after death is withdrawn from the human race? Will man—because he is nobler than the beast, because at his best he does things more altruistic, more self-sacrificing, more self-forgetting, more self-transcending than any of these—do less nobly because he envisages destiny, which (if he see it as destiny) he will see as the logical outcome of evolutionary law?
It is possible, it is even probable, that all phases of theological thought have had their use in giving direction and stimulus to the human brain; if they have done nothing but stimulate rebellion against obscurantist authority they have had value of a positive kind. But we may go even further than this, for "everything possible to be believed," says Blake, "is an image of truth." And under many a concept, distorted by ignorance or guile, has lain a germ of the true life which draws man on to communal ends. In time that germ puts off the husk that seemed once (perhaps in some cases actually was) the protective armoury through which alone it could survive for the use of a later day. But though old reasons have been shed, the essential value
