History of Religious Evolution - 729 



foresight; in a word a supposed supernahiralism in the midst 

 of continuous and evolving natural events. These they have 

 often created from their owti imagination. And on the prin- 

 ciple of "the three black crows," what was a bold assertion 

 or a slight suggestion on the part of the authors of such has 

 become — specially during the monotheistic and later centuries 

 up to two centuries ago — an accepted statement of fact. 



So the true reverential or religious attitude, that strives 

 through the medium of each true religionist to link together 

 all knowledge of the phenomena of the universe in a loving 

 endeavor thereby to benefit mankind, and raise him to ever 

 higher platforms of thought and word and action, is the high- 

 est expression of that law of cooperation or synthetic action, 

 that alone can successfully overcome keen analytic competi- 

 tion. It needs no miracle working, no inflated and erroneous 

 teaching, no "consecrated priesthood" to commend it to human- 

 ity. It ever calls for new seers, new and earnest proenvironers, 

 who can link all the best principles of the past into higher and 

 greater principles for the future. When such are found, man- 

 kind honors and follows them. 



In such religious progress intuition has often carried the 

 religionist far in advance of full demonstration. But intui- 

 tionism in its ultimate analysis represents a rapid mental 

 synthesis of many rather superficial observations, combined 

 into a resultant response that future experiment and pro- 

 longed observation alone accept as correct or erroneous. So 

 a recognition of one great ultimate governing Power or Energy 

 in the universe, that to its first proenvironers could only be 

 appreciated in a distantly anthropomorphic sense, has become 

 the wide basis of belief for most scientists of the present day. 



The scientist of recent day who has laboriously reached 

 this position after centuries of detailed effort may attem])t 

 to flout the earlier religious conclusions of his ancestors. But 

 such an attitude can well be pardoned when one realizes how 

 much mankind owes of unity in thought, in action, and in 

 international life to religious aspiration. 



It is not possible in the present work to trace the many 

 causes that have operated, to ensure that professedly mono- 



