THE EPOCH OF HOPE 81 



perience. So in the same manner were we to place our chil- 

 dren with unformed principles to compete against formed ones, 

 we would be condemned as fools for not fitting them with 

 power to resist temptation before we launched them on the 

 sea of vices that go to make up the unruly turmoil of business 

 strife. So when at school we wisely keep from them the more 

 perfect knowledge of the crimes of manhood which correspond 

 to the knowledge of science, so in like manner religion has 

 hidden its teachings in mysteries and symbols. But to main- 

 tain that the teachings of religion are to forever outweigh 

 those of science is as great a fallacy as it would be to expect a 

 youth to face the world and succeed, subjected to the cramped 

 regime of school restrictions. So in like manner it is a 

 grievous fault on the part of a parent to send a boy or girl 

 into the world ignorant of its crimes and vices, and it is the 

 parent who is to blame for the child's lapse into vice. 



And in the same way it is a grievous evil when religion 

 shuts its eyes with bigoted animosity to the wisdom which 

 the advancing growth of science is about to unfold to it, instead 

 of seeking to enhance its ideals, and reform its teachings by 

 adjusting them to the increased store of knowledge by which 

 science is daily enlarging our means of a truer and a more 

 enlightened comprehension of the hidden mysteries contained 

 in divine revelations. I have inserted these remarks here 

 because I wish them to prepare my reader for the unfortunate 

 necessity of my abstract review of the next three or four days 

 of evolution necessitating that I shall be compelled, if I am to 

 make an unbiassed and possible sequence of the most logical 

 and probable course of events that gave rise to the evolution 

 of Civilisation, Religions and Governments, to uproot many 

 of his dearest beliefs and superstitions of past religion and 

 society, so that I may endeavour to rebuild them upon a new 

 foundation hewn out of the rocks of reason and practical 

 common-sense in place of the sandy foundation of imaginative 

 beauty, of parable, legend, fable, and fairy story. I know 

 he will anathematize me and exclaim with Pericles, Prince 

 of Tyre, " Beloved Truth, how long have I sought thee, and 

 now I have found thee I do not like thee." But if less pleasant 

 I hope they may add to his means of forming a higher ideal 

 more calculated to enhance the practical adaptation of the 

 truths contained in divine revelation to the acts of his every- 



