496 Darwinism and the Study of Religions 



Our business was not to study but, exclusively, to convert them, to 

 root out superstition and carry the torch of revelation to "Souls in 

 heathen darkness lying." To us nowadays it is a commonplace of 

 anthropological research that we must seek for the beginnings of 

 religion in the religions of primitive peoples, but in the last century 

 the orthodox mind was convinced that it possessed a complete and 

 luminous ready-made revelation; the study of what was held to be 

 a mere degradation seemed idle and superfluous. 



But, it may be asked, if, to the orthodox, revealed religion was 

 sacrosanct and savage religion a thing beneath consideration, why 

 did not the sceptics show a more liberal spirit, and pursue to their 

 logical issue the conjectures they had individually hazarded? The 

 reason is simple and significant. The sceptics too had not Avorked 

 free from the presupposition that the essence of religion is dogma. 

 Their intellectualism, expressive of the whole eighteenth century, 

 was probably in England strengthened by the Protestant doctrine of 

 an infallible Book. Hume undoubtedly confused religion with dog- 

 matic theology. The attention of orthodox and sceptics alike was 

 focussed on the truth or falsity of certain propositions. Only a few 

 minds of rare quality were able dimly to conceive that religion might 

 be a necessary step in the evolution of human thought. 



It is not a little interesting to note that Darwin, who was leader 

 and intellectual king of his generation, was also in this matter to 

 some extent its child. His attitude towards religion is stated clearly, 

 in Chap. viii. of the Life and Letters 1 . On board the Beagle he 

 was simply orthodox and was laughed at by several of the officers 

 for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point 

 of morality. By 1839 he had come to see that the Old Testament was 

 no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. Next 

 went the belief in miracles, and next Paley's "argument from design" 

 broke down before the law of natural selection ; the suffering so 

 manifest in nature is seen to be compatible rather with Natural 

 Selection than with the goodness and omnipotence of God. Darwin 

 felt to the full all the ignorance that lay hidden under specious 

 phrases like "the plan of creation" and "Unity of design." Finally, 

 he tells us "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by 

 us ; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." 



The word Agnostic is significant not only of the humility of the 

 man himself but also of the attitude of his age. Religion, it is clear, 

 is still conceived as something to be known, a matter of true or false 

 opinion. Orthodox religion was to Darwin a series of erroneous 

 hypotheses to be bit by bit discarded when shown to be untenable. 



1 Vol. i. p. 304. For Darwin's religious views see also Descent of Man, 1871, Vol. I. 

 p. 65 ; 2nd edit. Vol. i. p. 142. 



