‘The idea of a universal evolution lends itself to a doctrine of general meliorism and progress which fits the religious needs of the healthy-minded so well that it seems almost as if it might have been created for their use’. – William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, being The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1920 [1902]), 91.