298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY / 



through the universe, but a being of righteousness that deals with men 

 and nations according to their moral character. It was this view that 

 caused the worship of Jehovah to supplant that of all ihe other gods 

 among the Hebrews themselves, and to survive the crash of faiths that 

 early befell the entire ancient world. 



In this brief outline of the main steps that have been taken in the 

 development of religion, it is not claimed that any hard and fast dis- 

 tinction can be made between them. Indeed, it is the opinion of com- 

 petent authorities that all the different forms of religion described 

 above coexisted among the Hindus, the Greeks, the old Norsemen, and 

 to some extent still coexist among modern Africans, as well as the ne- 

 groes and Indians of our own land. Nor is it held that any sudden or 

 complete transition from a lower to a higher stage has actually taken 

 place at any time in history. On the contrary, the changes have been 

 gradual, and many evidences of the survival of the old amid the new 

 exists in the notions and customs of even the most highly civilized and 

 intelligent nations of our own day. 



Amulets, charms, lucky stones and coins, the veneration of sacred 

 relics, everything that goes under the name of " mascot," are all legiti- 

 mately descended from fetishism; just as belief in ghosts and haunted 

 houses, fear of the dark, and the like, come from a more primary form 

 of religion. Current ideas concerning lucky and unlucky days and 

 numbers, spilling salt, throwing rice at a wedding, charming away 

 warts, are survivals of a similar sort. So, too, are the present notions 

 of man as to sacred days and places, sacred utensils, holy water. And 

 we should not hesitate to class in the list of primitive and outgroAvn 

 religious ideas the worship of saints, and the common belief that a 

 person acquires peculiar supernatural authority in religious matters by 

 the laying on of hands, or by any other form of ordination. For they 

 are notions on a par with the old Greek tradition that one gets a super- 

 natural inspiration by the very act of paying a visit to the fountain of 

 Parnassus, or taking a draft at the Pierian spring. But the most 

 striking of all is the present popular belief that between man and the 

 Supreme Being there exists an ascending gradation of angels and arch- 

 angels on the one hand, and evil spirits on the other, reaching up to a 

 supreme evil demon, who, under the title of Devil or Satan, is sup- 

 posed to be the author of the sin and misery of mankind. 



In the light of this view of the evolution of religion, we can see 

 how irrational it is to divide religions into true and false, instead of 

 classifying them as primitive and developed. It was maintained by 

 Empedocles among the ancient Greeks that all religions are false be- 

 cause they are the product of a diseased mind, and Feuerbach in the 

 last century strongly advocated the same view among the Germans. 



While few, if any, maintain that opinion at present, there are many 



