MODERN EVOLUTION. 351 



" must always remain materialistic, even if its mate- 

 rialism is disguised under the cloak of mysticism." 

 And it is with the incarnated ideas, uninfluenced by 

 the particular creed in connection with which it finds 

 them, that anthropology deals. Its method is that of 

 biology. Without bias, without assumptions of rela- 

 tive truth or falsity, the anthropologist searches into 

 origins, traces variations, compares and classifies, 

 and relates the several families to one ordinal group. 

 He must be what was said of Dante, " a theologian 

 to whom no dogma is foreign." Unfortunately, this 

 method, whose application to the physical sciences 

 is unchallenged, is, when applied to beliefs, regarded 

 as one of attack, instead of being one of explanation. 

 But this should not deter; and if in analyzing a be- 

 lief we kill a superstition, this does but show what 

 mortality lay at its core. For error cannot survive 

 dissection. Moreover, as John Morley puts it, " to 

 tamper with veracity is to tamper with the vital 

 force of human progress." Therefore, delivering im- 

 partial judgment, the verdict of anthropology upon 

 the whole matter is that the claims of Christian 

 theologians to a special and divine origin of their 

 religion are refuted by the accordant evidence of the 

 latest utterances of a science whose main concern is 

 with the origin, nature, and destiny of man. 



The extension of the comparative method to the 

 various products of man's intellectual and spiritual 

 nature is the logical sequence to the adoption of that 

 method throughout every department of the uni- 



