346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



while voluntary agency is daily doing a larger share of the work origi- 

 nally undertaken by the State ; but he does not join this with the fact 

 that outside the Establishment the power of Dissent is growing : he 

 resists the inference that these changes are parts of a general change 

 by which the political and religious agencies, which have been differ- 

 entiating from the beginning, are being separated and specialized. He 

 is averse to the conception that just as Protestantism at large was a 

 rebellion against an Ecclesiasticism which dominated over Europe, so 

 Dissent among ourselves is a rebellion against an Ecclesiasticism which 

 dominates over England ; and that the two are but successive stages 

 of the same beneficial development. That is to say, his bias prevents 

 him from contemplating the facts in a way favorable to scientific inter- 

 pretations of them. 



Everywhere, indeed, the special theological bias accompanying a 

 special set of doctrines inevitably prejudges many sociological ques- 

 tions. One who holds a creed as absolutely true, and who by implica- 

 tion holds the multitudinous other creeds to be absolutely false in so 

 far as they differ from his own, cannot entertain the supposition that 

 the value of a creed is relative. That a particular religious system is, 

 in a general sense, a natural part of the particular society in which it 

 is found, is an entirely alien conception; and, indeed, a repugnant one. 

 The dogmatic theology which he holds unquestionably true, he thinks 

 good for all places and all times. He does not doubt that, when trans- 

 planted to a horde of savages, it will be duly understood by them, 

 duly appreciated by them, and work on them results such as those 

 he experiences from it. Thus prepossessed, he passes over the proofs 

 which recur everywhere, that a people is no more capable of suddenly 

 receiving a higher form of religion than it is capable of suddenly re- 

 ceiving a higher form of government ; and that inevitably with such 

 religion, as with such government, there will go on a degradation that 

 presently reduces it to one differing but nominally from that w T hich 

 previously existed. In other words, his special theological bias blinds 

 him to an important class of sociological truths. 



The effects of the theological bias need no further elucidation. "We 

 will turn our attention to the distortions of judgment caused by the 

 anti-theological bias. Not only the actions of religious dogmas, but 

 also the reactions against them, are disturbing influences we have to 

 beware of. Let us glance first at an instance of that indignation 

 against the established creed, which all display more or less when 

 they emancipate themselves from it. 



" A Nepaul king, Bum Bahadur, whose beautiful queen, finding that her 

 lovely face had been disfigured by small-pox, poisoned herself, ' cursed his king- 

 dom, her doctors, and the gods of Nepaul, vowing vengeance on all.' Having 

 ordered the doctors to be flogged, and the right ears and nose of each to be cut 

 off, ' he then wreaked his vengeance on the gods of Nepaul, and, after abusing 



