EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



ancestors and his contemporaries. The historians and 

 sociologists have not proved to us that the course of 

 society is not principally the result of the ability and 

 effort of individuals. 



The attempt to find a path of progress from a prim- 

 itive to an advanced civilization or to find the causes 

 of change has not been successful. It must be true that 

 knowledge, from the accumulation of experience, 

 must grow with time in an organism such as man. He 

 has the faculty of adding to, as well as of remember- 

 ing, the accomplishments of the past, and he has de- 

 veloped speech and writing in which past records are 

 transmitted and preserved ; he has thus escaped from 

 the bondage of the merely repetitive acts of plants 

 and other animals. But we still find that the most 

 pronounced characteristic of the generality of people 

 is to hold obstinately to past customs and past ideals. 

 Just as in palaeontology, where the striking fact is 

 the persistence of types rather than a tendency to- 

 wards variation, so the striking fact in mental devel- 

 opment is the obstinate persistence of the common 

 people of all races. 



In all parts of the world today, except where the 

 civilization of the few dominant races has intruded 

 and compelled the natives to adopt new customs and 

 new ideas, the mental ability of the people has shown 

 no change for thousands of years. Even in Europe 

 and North America, the common people have pro- 

 gressed but little, if at all, in the essentials of 



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