352 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



giving force to certain principles of action, in part absolutely good 

 and in part good relatively to the needs of the time, and again when 

 it prompts the notion that now these principles might be so established 

 on rational bases as to rule men effectually through their enlightened 

 intellects. 



These errors, however, which the anti-theological bias produces, are 

 superficial compared with the error that remains. The antagonism to 

 superstitious beliefs habitually leads to entire rejection of them. They 

 are thrown aside with the assumption that, along with so much that is 

 wrong, there is nothing right. Whereas the truth, recognizable only 

 after antagonism has spent itself, is, that the wrong beliefs rejected are 

 superficial, and that a right belief hidden by them remains when they 

 have been rejected. Those who defend, equally with those who assail, 

 religious creeds, suppose that every thing turns on the maintenance of 

 the particular dogmas at issue ; whereas the dogmas are but temporary 

 forms of that which is permanent. 



The process of Evolution which has progressively modified and 

 advanced men's conceptions of the Universe, will continue to modify 

 and advance them during the future. The ideas of Cause and Origin, 

 which have been gradually changing, will change still further. But 

 no changes in them, even when pushed to the extreme, will expel them 

 from consciousness ; and there can, therefore, never be an extinction 

 of the correlative sentiments. No more in this than in other things 

 will Evolution alter its general direction : it will continue along the 

 same lines as hitherto. And, if we wish to see whither it tends, we 

 have but to observe how there has been thus far a decreasing concrete- 

 ness of the consciousness to which the religious sentiment is related, 

 to infer that hereafter this concreteness will further diminish : leaving 

 behind a substance of consciousness for which there is no adequate 

 form, but which is none the less persistent and powerful. 



Without seeming so, the development of religious sentiment has 

 been continuous from the beginning ; and its nature when a germ was 

 the same as is its nature when fully developed. The savage first shows 

 it in the feeling excited by some display of power in another exceeding 

 his own power some skill, some sagacity, in his chief, leading to a re- 

 sult he does not understand something which has the element of mys- 

 tery and ai - ouses his wonder. To his unspeculative intellect there is 

 nothing wonderful in the ordinary course of things around. The regu- 

 lar sequences, the constant relations, do not present themselves to him 

 as problems needing interpretation. Only anomalies in that course of 

 causation which he knows most intimately, namely, human will and 

 power, excite his surprise and raise questions. And only when ex- 

 periences of other classes of phenomena become multiplied enough for 

 generalization, does the occurrence of anomalies among these also, 

 arouse the same idea of mystery and the same sentiment of wonder : 



