Pre-Darwinian Attitude towards Religion 495 



will be later shown, is a profound error or rather a most misleading 

 half-truth. Creeds, doctrines, theology and the like are only a part, 

 and at first the least important part, of religion. 



Further, and the fact is important, this dogma, thus supposed to 

 be the essential content of the "true" religion, was a teleological 

 scheme complete and unalterable, which had been revealed to man 

 once and for all by a highly anthropomorphic God, whose existence 

 was assumed. The duty of man towards this revelation was to accept 

 its doctrines and obey its precepts. The notion that this revelation 

 had grown bit by bit out of man's consciousness and that his busi- 

 ness was to better it would have seemed rank blasphemy. Religion, 

 so conceived, left no place for development. "The Truth" might be 

 learnt, but never critically examined ; being thus avowedly complete 

 and final, it was doomed to stagnation. 



The details of this supposed revelation seem almost too naive for 

 enumeration. As Hume observed, "popular theology has a positive 

 appetite for absurdity." It is sufficient to recall that "revelation" 

 included such items as the Creation 1 of the world out of nothing in 

 six days ; the making of Eve from one of Adam's ribs ; the Temptation 

 by a talking snake ; the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel ; 

 the doctrine of Original Sin ; a scheme of salvation which demanded 

 the Virgin Birth, Vicarious Atonement, and the Resurrection of the 

 material body. The scheme was unfolded in an infallible Book, or, 

 for one section of Christians, guarded by the tradition of an infallible 

 Church, and on the acceptance or refusal of this scheme depended 

 an eternity of weal or woe. There is not one of these doctrines that 

 has not now been recast, softened down, mysticised, allegorised into 

 something more conformable with modern thinking. It is hard for 

 the present generation, unless their breeding has been singularly 

 archaic, to realise that these amazing doctrines were literally held 

 and believed to constitute the very essence of religion ; to doubt them 

 was a moral delinquency. 



It had not, however, escaped the notice of travellers and mission- 

 aries that savages carried on some sort of practices that seemed to be 

 religious, and believed in some sort of spirits or demons. Hence, 

 beyond the confines illuminated by revealed truth, a vague region 

 was assigned to Natural Religion. The original revelation had been 

 kept intact only by one chosen people, the Jews, by them to be handed 

 on to Christianity. Outside the borders of this Goshen the world had 

 sunk into the darkness of Egypt. Where analogies between savage 

 cults and the Christian religions were observed, they were explained 

 as degradations; the heathen had somehow wilfully "lost the light." 



1 It is interesting to note that the very word "Creator" has nowadays almost passed 

 into the region of mythology. Instead we have L'Evolution Creatrice. 



