usible when
he declares that the nature of man is insufficiently gregarious. The
parallel with the dog is not a valid one.

Does not the truth lie rather in the supposition that it is not the
Friend that is the instinctive delusion but the isolation? Is not the
real deception, our belief that we are completely individualised, and
is it not possible that this that Professor Murray calls "instinct"
is really not a vestige but a new thing arising out of our increasing
understanding, an intellectual penetration to that greater being of the
species, that vine, of which we are the branches? Why should not the
soul of the species, many faceted indeed, be nevertheless a soul like
our own?

Here, as in the case of Professor Metchnikoff, and in many other cases
of atheism, it seems to me that nothing but an inadequate understanding
of individuation bars the way to at least the intellectual recognition
of the true God.

6. RELIGION AS ETHICS

And while I am dealing with rationalists, let me note certain recent
interesting utterances of Sir Harry Johnston's. You will note that while
in this book we use the word "God" to indicate the God of the Heart,
Sir Harry uses "God" for that idea of God-of-the-Universe, which we have
spoken of as the Infinite Being. This use of the word "God" is of late
theological origin; the original identity of the words "good" and "god"
and all the stories of the gods are against him. But Sir Harry takes up
God only to define him away into incomprehensible necessity. Thus:

"We know absolutely nothing concerning the Force we call God; and,
assuming such an intelligent ruling force to be in existence, permeating
this universe of millions of stars and (no doubt) tens of millions of
planets, we do not know under what conditions and limitations It works.
We are quite entitled to assume that the end of such an influence is
intended to be order out of chaos, happiness and perfection out
of incompleteness and misery; and we are entitled to identify the
reactionary forces of brute Nature with the anthropomorphic Devil of
primitive religions, the power of darkness resisting the power of light.
But in these conjectures we must surely come to the conclusion that
the theoretical potency we call 'God' makes endless experiments, and
scrap-heaps the failures. Think of the Dinosaurs and the expenditure of
creative energy that went to their differentiation and their well-nigh
incredible physical development.