38 ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE T 



of ancient forms of existence peopling the world 

 for ages, which, in relation to human experience, 

 are infinite. 



Furthermore, the physiologist finds life to be as 

 dependent for its manifestation on particular mole- 

 rular arrangements as any physical or chemical phe- 

 nomenon ; and wherever he extends his researches, 

 fixed order and unchanging causation reveal 

 themselves, as plainly as in the rest of Nature. 



Nor can I find that any other fate has awaited 

 the germ of Religion. Arising, like all other 

 kinds of knowledge, out of the action and inter- 

 action of man's mind, with that which is not man's 

 mind, it has taken the intellectual coverings of 

 Fetishism or Polytheism ; of Theism or Atheism ; 

 of Superstition or Rationalism. With these, and 

 their relative merits and demerits, I have nothing 

 to do ; but this it is needful for my purpose to 

 say, that if the religion of the present differs from 

 that of the past, it is because the theology of the 

 present has become more scientific than tli 

 the past ; because it has not only renounced idols 

 of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the 

 necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up 

 of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical 

 cobwebs : and of cherishing the noblest and most 

 human of man's emotions, by worship "for the 

 most part of the silent sort " at the altar of the 

 Unknown. 



Such arc a few of the new conceptions implanted 



