36 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



make its history as clear as it is profoundly instruc- 

 tive ; while, to demand for it an origin and character 

 different in kind from other religions, is to import 

 confusion into the story of mankind, and to raise a 

 swarm of artificial difficulties. ' If/ as John Morley 

 observes in his criticism of Turgot's dissertation 

 upon " The Advantages that the Establishment of 

 Christianity has conferred upon the Human Race " 

 (Miscell. ii. 90), * there had been in the Christian 

 idea the mysterious self-sowing quality so constantly 

 claimed for it, how came it that in the Eastern part 

 of the Empire it was as powerless for spiritual or 

 moral regeneration as it was for political health and 

 vitality ; while in the Western part it became the 

 organ of the most important of all the past 

 transformations of the civilised world ? Is not the 

 difference to be explained by the difference in the 

 surrounding medium, and what is the effect of such 

 an explanation upon the supernatural claims of the 

 Christian idea?' Its inclusion as one of other 

 modes, varying only in degree, by which man has 

 progressed from the ' ape and tiger ' stage to the 

 highest ideals of the race, makes clear what concerns 

 us here, namely, its attitude towards secular know- 

 ledge, and the consequent serious arrest of that 

 knowledge. ' That a religion which its followers claim 

 to be of supernatural origin, and secured from error 

 by the perpetual guidance of a Holy Spirit, should 

 have opposed enquiry into matters the faculty for 

 investigating which lay within human power and 

 province ; that it should actually have put to death 

 those who dared thus to enquire, and to make known 

 what they had discovered ; is a problem which its 



