242 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



religions points to these conclusions without any 

 doubt. 



Aside from the facts of the Sacred Scripture, 

 there is the most explicit reason from history for 

 saying this. History shows the growth of poly- 

 theism and the departure from the simplicity of 

 the primal religion, open to direct and authentic 

 verification, in the early and later cults of Egypt, 

 Rome and Greece. Monotheism preceded poly- 

 theism, and the latter has even been scientifically 

 attributed to a deification of the various attri- 

 butes of the one God. However this may be, 

 the notion of Godhead became more confused as 

 time went on, and superstition gradually spread 

 both in extent and grossness. Until the coming 

 of Christianity men looked back to primal Revela- 

 tion, while Christianity itself was "the new and 

 full exposition of the first Revelation," the fulfil- 

 ment of all type and prophecy. 



Going back to the very earliest center of Euro- 

 pean civilization, we are now able to study the 

 authentic facts as pick and shovel have disclosed 

 them in our day. What follows is not the fancy 

 picture of a novelist, but the calmly weighed state- 

 ment of the President of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, made in his ad- 

 dress delivered in 1916, at Newcastle-on-Tyne : 



"It is difficult, indeed, in a few words to do 

 adequate justice to this earliest of European 

 civilizations. Its achievements are too manifold. 



