SAVAGISM AND CIVILIZATION. 339 



to the present time a state of bondage appears to be the normal state 

 of humanity bondage, at first severe and irrational, then ever loosen- 

 ing, and expanding into a broader freedom. As mankind progresses, 

 moral anarchy no more follows freedom of thought than does political 

 anarchy follow freedom of action. In Germany, in England, and in 

 America, wherever secular power has in any measure cut loose from 

 ecclesiastical power and tlirown religion back upon public sentiment 

 for support, a moral as well as an intellectual advance has always 

 followed. What the mild and persuasive teachings and lax discipline 

 of the present epoch would have been to the Christians of the four- 

 teenth century, the free and lax government of republican America 

 would have been to republican Rome. Therefore, let us learn to look 

 charitably upon the past, and not forget how much we owe to evils 

 which w^e now so justly hate ; while we rejoice at our release from 

 the bigotry and fanaticism of mediaeval times, let us not forget the 

 debt which civilization owes to the tyrannies of Church and state. 



Christianity, by its exalted unutilitarian morality and philan- 

 thropy, has greatly aided civilization. Indeed, so marked has been 

 the elFeet in Europe, so great the contrast between Christianity and 

 Islamisra and the polytheistic creeds in general, that Chui'chmen claim 

 civilization as the oflspring of their religion. But religion and 

 morality must not be confounded with civilization. All these and 

 many other activities act and react on each other as proximate prin- 

 ciples in the social organism, but they do not, any or all of them, con- 

 stitute the life of the organism. Long before morality is religion, and 

 long after morality, religion sends the pious debauchee to his knees. 

 Religious culture is a gi*eat assistant to moral culture, as intellectual 

 training promotes the industrial arts, but morality is no more religion 

 than is industry intellect. When Christianity, as in Spain during the 

 fourteenth century, joins itself to blind bigotry and stands up in 

 deadly antagonism to liberty, then Christianity is a drag upon civili- 

 zation : and therefore we may conclude that in so far as Christianity 

 grafts on its code of pure morality the principle of intellectual free- 

 dom, in so far is civilization promoted by Christianity ; but, when 

 Ciiristianity engenders superstition and persecution, civilization is 

 retarded thereby. 



Then Protestantism sets up a claim to the authoi'ship of civilization, 

 points to Spain and then to England, compares Italy and Switzerland, 

 Catholic America and Puritan America, declares that the intellect 

 can never attain superiority while under the dominion of the Church 

 of Rome ; in other words, that civilization is Protestantism. It is 

 true that protestation against irrational dogmas, or any other action 

 that tends toward the emancipation of the intellect, is a great step in 

 advance ; but religious belief has nothing whatever to do with intel- 

 lectual culture. Religion, from its very nature, is beyond the limits 

 of reason ; it is emotional rather than intellectual, an instinct and not 



