METHODS OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING 313 



already indicated, the changes in mental characters were too 

 rapid to be innate. 1 



493. Clearly, then, racial mental characteristics are deter- 

 mined much more largely by training than by inheritance. 

 Races are merely aggregates of individuals. It follows that 

 individual characteristics are as largely determined by train- 

 ing. Religion plays a very important part in training, but 

 not, of course, an exclusive part. The educational influences 

 operating on the youth of every race are multitudinous in 

 number, and differ with every country, even with every dis- 

 trict and class. But, for reasons already given, we are able to 

 judge the effects of religion more easily than that of other 

 educational influences. From the fact that this one educa- 

 tional factor exercises an influence so far-reaching on the 

 mental characters of the race and of the individual, we may 

 judge how profound must be the influence of the sum-total 

 of educational influences. In the human being education 

 counts for very much ; race counts for comparatively little. 

 But this does not imply that individuals and races do not 

 differ in innate peculiarities. It implies only that innate 

 peculiarities are so dominated and concealed by acquirements 

 that their detection, with any degree of certainty, is almost 

 impossible. 



1 It is a misfortune of all religions that their authoritative exponents 

 are, with few exceptions, old men, comparatively incapable of mental 

 acquisition, and, therefore, of change. Consequently during times of 

 intellectual advance all religions tend to succumb to a disease of senility. 

 The methods of exclusive intellectual training adopted by orthodox 

 sects help in this, and are intended to keep their adherents within the 

 fold. Amongst barbarous and illiterate peoples such methods may be 

 very effective. They are disastrous to the sect when applied to more 

 civilized communities. "Infidelity" is comparatively rare amongst 

 heretics, as in Great Britain and America. It is now almost the normal 

 condition of educated men in the majority of orthodox communities. 

 Where heretics and orthodox Christians are mingled together the rate 

 of increase of the former is usually the greater. The quite fatal weak- 

 ness of extreme orthodoxy in these stirring days is the low grade of 

 intelligence it develops or permits. Intelligent men tend to desert it, 

 not necessarily because its doctrines are demonstrably untrue, but 

 because they cannot breathe the mental atmosphere which its authori- 

 ties with characteristic crassness insist on creating. 



