THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 43 



the cause of the tremendous influence that the priestly class has 

 ever exercised over humanity. The fulcrum is in man's nature ; 

 and, given confiding ignorance on the one hand, and designing 

 unscrupulousness on the other, we have the explanation for much 

 that is deplorable in human history. Now we are in a position to 

 estimate the influence of education. . Children born into any set of 

 customs and observances follow them as a matter of course, con- 

 fiding in the wisdom of their fathers for their being right. Their 

 religious observances come to them in the same way ; so as a rule, 

 they are accepted without question, and the longer they have been 

 established the stronger do they become, and the less likelihood 

 there is of their being changed. Of what vast importance then it is 

 to man that his education should be correct ; for no amount of 

 religious observance will lead him to the pertormance of truth, 

 justice and mercy. He will at times violate these in following out 

 what he considers to be duty, or will even commit what he knows 

 to be a crime and think by a scrupulous observance of religious 

 rites to make amends for it, and often feel quite satisfied that he 

 has done so ; all the result of a false education and his native 

 ignorance of moral rectitude ; morals being in a man almost wholly 

 a matter of education and quite separable from religion. 



Science has found no evidence of such a principle in the lower 

 animals. This is a distinguishing characteristic of man, which 

 places him clearly and unmistakably beyond them. 



The question instantly arises, what is its import and significance? 

 The principle is imbedded in his nature, and he can no more escape 

 from it than he can from his shadow ; and no theory of man that 

 does not take it into account, and provide scope for its exercise, 

 can ever be wholly satisfactory to him. We have seen that there is 

 an ever present consciousness in the race of an unseen power in the 

 universe that holds him in its grasp, and of which he is more or less 

 in constant dread, and which; through all his history, has urged him 

 ^on to the performance of deeds, the object of which was to 

 propitiate it if possible ; that it is in fact natural for man to believe in 

 the existence of the supernatural. Now in the very pronouncing of 

 that term we have parted company with natural science. For this 

 is a region into which science can neither lead nor follow, for it is 

 not subject to any of its methods of investigation. And yet my 

 subject is far from being completed, and the huiwan mind refuses 



