ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 191 



associated. The amount of civilization achieved is in 

 fact the amount of progress permitted by the associated 

 religion, which, in most cases, sets such limits to further 

 progress as cannot be passed unless the religion be first 

 abandoned. Thus Fetishism, by teaching that which 

 is false and wrong, and thereby preventing an appre- 

 hension of that which is true and right, sets such limits 

 to the progress of its adherents, that it is quite im- 

 possible for them to attain to a higher civilization 

 without first abandoning their faith. But as the 

 action of a natural law may be modified by external 

 causes, as, for instance, the action of the law of the expan- 

 sion of gases is modified by pressure, so the action of the 

 law that connects a civilization Avith a religion may be 

 modified by the pressure of other civilizations: as, for 

 example, the Mahomcdan civilization has been modified 

 in the case of the Turks ; and as, far more profoundly, 

 owincj to more intimate admixture, the Roman Catholic 

 civilization has been modified by the Protestant ; ^ and 

 as, in a lesser degree, the Greek Church civilization has 

 been modified. 



This modification, however, is, in a great measure, 

 more apparent than real, and consists rather in an 

 acceptance of the things of the modifying civilization, 



^ I speak of the Protestant civilization, but the term is not 

 strictly correct. Our raorlern civilization should properly be 

 described as one that is disassociated from religion. Thus our 

 literature and notably our various sciences — Biology, Geology, 

 Geography, Astronomj', Ethnology, Etymology, Sanitation, 

 Political Economy, &c. — on which the character of the civiliza- 

 tion so largely depends, are quite divorced from the religion, and 

 are even more or less in conflict with it; a result due in great 

 measure to the conflict of opinion among the numerous Protest- 

 ant sects, which, combined with free intercourse among their 

 members, has caused siich a degree of intellectual freedom an el 

 activity that the civilization has been changeful and progressive 

 to an extent unknown in lands and ages in which this conflict of 

 opinion, with its resulting freedom of thought, has been unknown 

 — i.e. in which the weight of religious opinion has been solidly 

 against the recognition of any newly-discovered truth. 



