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It will be my attempt in this brief paper to show how the facts of evolutionary biology provide us, in the shape of a verifiable doctrine of progress, with one of the elements most essential to any such externally-grounded conception of God, to any construction which shall be able to serve as permanent satisfaction of that deepest need whereof we have spoken.

Any such construction must take account of many separate parts of reality. In the first place, it must consider those realities inherent in the mind of man: his desire for goodness; the sense of value which all agree is attached to certain experiences of mystics and to certain religious emotions; his ideals and their importance for the conduct of life. But in the second place it must consider those realities which are independent of man and of his mind—the ascertainable body of hard fact, those things which existed before ever he existed, which would exist were he to disappear, with which he must struggle as best he may. Lastly, there is the need for intermediation between the one and the other reality, between the inner felt and the outer known.