Not only this, but religion unillumined by reason degenerates into an evil thing. Religion seems to be a natural activity and need of the average human mind. But when its more primitive components are allowed to dominate, when the instinctive and emotional in it are unchecked by reflection and rational thought, then, as history too clearly shows us, it becomes a cruel and obstructive power. To the fine mind of Lucretius, the religion that he knew was the greatest enemy:-- “Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat Horribili super aspecta mortalibus instans.” And he replies to the charge of impiety by pointing to the foul deeds perpetrated by religion: “--Quod contra saepius illa Religio peparit scelerosa atque impia facta.” Many another thinker and reformer has felt the same. There are those who, like Jung, believe that religion is an illusion but also a necessity to the bulk of mankind, and therefore should be encouraged. But the broader and truer view, I believe, is the one we have adopted. We have seen that, in man, evolution has reached a new plane, on which not only have new aims and values appeared, but the possibility of new and better evolutionary methods has arisen. These new methods are only possible, however, in so far as life, in man, uses her new gifts. The progress of civilization is a constant conflict between that part of man which he shares with the beasts and that part which is his alone--between man as no more than a new kind of animal and man as a rational and spiritual being. In so far as religion is irrational, it is no more than a dog baying the moon, no higher activity than the nocturnal concerts of Howler monkeys, no more and no less moral than the nobility of birds or beasts to a strangely-marked or unusually-built member of their species, or the sense of being a trespasser so often shown by a bird that has ventured upon the nesting-territory of another. Recall the “Natural Religion” of Robert Browning’s _Caliban_; on which plane did that grow? But when we have discovered its real bases, and subordinated its impulsive promptings to the control of reason and of the new, higher values in which reason must always share--then it becomes an instrument for helping in the conquest of the new regions which lie open to man as individual and as species. And in this it resembles every other human activity without exception. In religion the danger has always been that analogy and symbolism be taken for more than they are--for scientific knowledge, or even for an absolute certainty of some still higher order--and conclusions then drawn from it. The conclusions follow with full syllogistic majesty: but their feet are of clay--their premisses are false.