ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 189 



religion, and therefore to traits which are acquired, not 

 inborn. 



Now there is probably nothing in the environment of 

 man that has more mightily affected his knowledge, and 

 ways of thinking and acting, than his religious systems. 

 They have been the greatest of his educational influ- 

 ences, and therefore there is nothing that so certainly 

 gives a nation its status in the scale of civilization, pro- 

 gress, and prosperity as the faith it professes ; for every 

 religion, by teaching beliefs and ideas peculiar to itself, 

 imposes- on its adherents a state of society resulting 

 from those acquired beliefs, and ideas quite distinct 

 and different from that which is imposed by any other 

 religion, and thus j)roduces a mental uniformity which 

 is much greater than the mental uniformity produced 

 by racial, climatic, or any other influences. We may 

 expect to find, therefore, that all communities that 

 have any given religion in common, have also mental 

 characteristics so much in common that the resulting 

 state of society in any one of the communities is such 

 as is more or less common to all the other communities 

 — that they all have a nearly similar civilization, attain 

 to a nearly similar degree of prosperity and enlighten- 

 ment, and exhibit a nearly similar degree of respect 

 for law and order, &c. That this is true there is un- 

 limited evidence ; for throughout the world, whatever 

 community of whatever race, in whatever climate, pro- 

 fesses a given religion, it invariably has a civilization 

 nearly similar to that of all the other communities 

 professing the same religion. Other educational in- 

 fluences may of course modify the civilization which is 

 associated with any religion, but so great and so 

 dominant is the influence of the latter, that the modi- 

 fication is in all cases surprisingly slight. * 



The example of the Mahomedans, since they include 

 in their ranks a great number of races, dwelling in a 



