302 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



slippery barkless pine-log, stretching from hill to hill, bridges 

 over the deep and dreadful river ; the good pass safely to a 

 beauteous Indian paradise, the wicked fall into the abyss of 

 waters and go to the dark hungry wretched land where they 

 are henceforth to dwell." 1 Of all the higher religions the 

 doctrine of retribution forms an essential part. 



What influence has it had upon life ? 



George Eliot thought, very little. Let us leave the most 

 modern type of man out of the question and consider the bar- 

 barian or the half-civilised human being. To him the doctrine 

 of retribution was the natural corollary of the proposition that 

 wickedness was wicked, and had he given up the corollary he 

 would have been denying the truth of the proposition. For 

 he had come to believe that a man's position in the future life 

 was in accordance with his real worth in this. If, therefore, 

 he thought of bad things as bad, he must inevitably think of 

 them as being punished in the next world, and thus we cannot 

 dissociate his reprobation of wickedness from his doctrine of 

 its punishment. 



Enough has now been said to make it clear that morality has 

 always rested on a religious basis. 



IV 



HISTORY AND RELIGION 



The moral Not all readers of history find the same moral in it. Some 

 of history maintain that its teaching is that victory is ever to the strong, 

 others that right triumphs in the end. I think we may at any 

 rate say that injustice reduces the strength of the strong. Those 

 who see in history nothing but the oppression of the weak by 

 the mighty quote such examples as the repeated partition of 

 Poland, the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands, the harsh 

 government of Ireland by England. But in every case where 

 the oppressed are of a vigorous race they are a thorn in the 



1 Loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 94. 



