“As we look at the continuous course of Evolution, we ought not to say: ‘ After all, it all comes from a nebula with no life or meaning, so it , too, is without life or meaning’. Rather we should say: ‘ See what has come from that dead nebula; how full of potentiality it really was”.

We cannot interpret the higher and more complex in terms of the lower and simpler; rather we must interpret the lower in terms of the higher, seeing in it the potentiality of the latter. Origin is not to be confused with either essence or validity. If people tell us that religion is the survival of natural magic, we reply: ‘ And so is the science that told you so; but that does not affect the validity either of the science or the religion’ “.

William Temple, The Nature of Personality (1915)