EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 

 wards the end of his life, that religion is not known 

 or proved by the reason. And having no other guide 

 for truth, he turns to crass emotionalism as its source. 

 He degrades the austere sense of human righteous- 

 ness, which compels us to obey our conscience in spite 

 of human and natural obstacles, to the mere state of 

 physical and mental well-being which soothes those 

 who contemplate nature in her smiling and benign 

 moods. Religion lies in the sensuous delight of great 

 music which appeals to him like voices from an un- 

 seen world, and in the solace from care which the in- 

 nocent playing of children and the singing of birds 

 afford. He looks for sermons in brooks and stones and 

 butter-cups rather than in the experience of wise men 

 who have suffered and sinned, but who have attained 

 that inner serenity of the soul which passes under- 

 standing. All Fiske's sources of religion are but a 

 childish hedonism; at best they are merely refined 

 sensual pleasures and a shrinking from physical and 

 mental pain. 



We must give to Fiske the credit that, when he 

 traces the evolution of religion from the customs of 

 our early ancestors, he logically derives his religion 

 as an evolution of pain and pleasure. He begins with 

 the idea of pleasure and pain which are the nervous 

 reactions to physical causes. With this false idea of a 

 physical or natural cause for religion planted in our 

 minds, he first subtilizes the sensual effects of pain 

 and pleasure into intellectual attributes and finally 



C 379 3 



