Social Evolution 333 



it "the central feature of human history." A very 

 startling feature of his treatment is that in religious 

 matters he seemingly sets no value on the difference 

 between truth and falsehood, for he groups all re- 

 ligions together. In a would-be teacher of ethics 

 such an attitude warrants severe rebuke; for it is 

 essentially dishonest and immoral. Throughout 

 his book he treats all religious beliefs from the 

 same standpoint, as if they were all substantially 

 similar and substantially of the same value; where- 

 as it is, of course, a mere truism to say that most 

 of them are mutually destructive. Not only has he 

 no idea of differentiating the true from the false, 

 but he seems not to understand that the truth of 

 a particular belief is of any moment. Thus he says, 

 in speaking of the future survival of religious be- 

 liefs in general, that the most notable result of the 

 scientific revolution begun by Darwin must be "to 

 establish them on a foundation as broad, deep, and 

 lasting as any the theologians ever dreamed of." 

 If this sentence means anything it means that all 

 these religious beliefs will be established on the same 

 foundation. It hardly seems necessary to point out 

 that this can not be the fact. If the God of the 

 Christians be in very truth the one God, and if the 

 belief in Him be established, as Christians believe 

 it will, then the foundation for the religious belief 

 in Mumbo Jumbo can be neither broad, deep, nor 

 lasting. In the same way the beliefs in Mohammed 

 and Buddha are mutually exclusive, and the various 

 forms of ancestor worship and fetichism can not all 



