CHAPTER VII 



THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 



As man developed in his earlier stages he was, as we have 

 seen, the most savage animal in creation, ferocious and hunt- 

 ing for the love of killing and fighting (which is animal 

 murder), and, being a cannibal, devoured even his own off- 

 spring. Do not call me a brute for making such a 

 beast of man; please remember that I have to review 

 facts from the stern standpoint of probability, and logic com- 

 mands that I should have neither beliefs nor sense of feeling, 

 or that, if I have any such paltry sentiments, I should at 

 once dismiss them. And logic commands me to remember that 

 if man is to end by being the most perfect being in creation, 

 he must, to excel in virtue, first excel in all the opposite vices, 

 or else Evolution would be contradictory ; and I have already 

 pointed out that but for the three exceptions, one in each 

 epoch, which God has ordained to prove his prerogative to 

 rule all his creations, it never has been contradictory. 



One of its fundamental laws is that true wisdom is the 

 result of experience overcoming folly ; that all virtues are so 

 many forms and degrees of wisdom, and all evils are but so 

 many forms and varieties of folly. Hence it follows that 

 mankind's excellence in future virtue can only be attained by 

 his first excelling in its opposite vice, and so gain wisdom as 

 the reward of the conquest of folly. Heaven and 

 Immortality are not to be considered as man's rights, 

 but only as the reward of those, who through the whole course 

 of evolution have the energy, perseverance and courage, to fight 

 on to the end, and so gain perfection. And as I have pre- 

 viously stated, it is only by overcoming the inclinations to do 

 wrong, that it is possible to merit reward. It therefore follows 

 that whatever acts the plan of creation is at any age devoted 

 to evolving excellence in, that act must be the highest virtue 

 of the age. Hence before man could rise above the beast crea- 

 tion, he had to become the most perfect beast imaginable. 



II 



