RELIGIONS AND CIVILIZATION. 153 



as untenable as the first and second, make it the conclusion. This final 

 hypothesis may be stated as follows : 



4. Or all nations, by virtue of similarity in the physical condition 

 and mental constitution of the individuals (not necessarily of the same 

 species) who composed them, developed independently certain similar 

 forms of religious belief. 



This is the conclusion at which a large proportion of the scientific 

 men of the present day have arrived; a conclusion which is largely 

 due to the prominence that physical science has acquired at the expense 

 of historical study. Physiology and psychology, which, in the hands 

 of the materialist, is nothing more than a higher kind of physiology, 

 are prepared to depose the Historic Muse from her once proud eminence? 

 to degrade her to the position of a mere annalist of indisputable facts, 

 and themselves to set forth the origin and the destiny of man and 

 nations. The element of truth in this fourth hypothesis has been much 

 exaggerated in importance by the shallow thinkers who save labour by 

 adopting it. It cannot be denied that all men act and think in confor- 

 mity with the same laws of physical and mental action; but experience 

 teaches us that the law of freedom so modifies the law of nature in 

 man, that the details of his thought and action present an almost 

 infinite variety. Man is a religious being, prone to worship; so that 

 hardly a tribe of the human race is found without a divinity. Allow 

 that mental constitution appears in this universality of worship ; but 

 what mental constitution or physical condition can account for that 

 which is almost as universal — the bloody sacrifice ? Nature may cause 

 nations far removed from each other in time and place to frame similar 

 laws, and even to appoint law-givers with similar functions; but by 

 what law of mind or matter can we dispose of the Egyptian Menes, the 

 Greek Minos, the Indian Menu, the Phrygian Manis, the Lydian 

 Maeon or Manes, the German Mannus, and the Welsh Menw ? The 

 Pyramids of Egypt and India,^ and the Stonehenges of Arabia, 

 Phoenicia and England,^ cannot be accounted for in the same way ag 

 we account for the temple-building instinct. Now, Faber utterly 

 demolishes this fourth hypothesis by stating that " the singular, minute 

 and regular accordance among heathen systems appears not only in what 

 is obvious and natural, but also in what is arbitrary and circumstantial, 



1 Wheeler, Geography of Herodotus. London, 1854 ; p. 421. 



* Geographical Works of Sadik Isfahan!. London, 1832 ; p. 9. Palgrave's Travels in Centra 

 Arabia, vol. i., p. 251. Finn, Byeways in Palestine. London, 1868; p. 283. 



