ROBERT A. MILLIKAN 27 



conformity with them. Third, that a very large frac- 

 tion of the altruistic and humanitarian and forward- 

 looking work of the world, in all its forms, has to-day 

 its mainspring in the Christian churches. My own 

 judgment is that about ninety-five per cent of it has 

 come, and is coming, directly or indirectly, from the 

 influence of organized religion in the United States. 

 My own judgment is that, if the influence of American 

 churches in the furtherance of socially wholesome and 

 forward-looking movements, in the spread of con- 

 scientious and unselfish living of all sorts, were to be 

 eliminated, our democracy would in a few years be- 

 come so corrupt that it could not endure. These last 

 two are, however, merely individual judgments, the 

 correctness of which I cannot prove. 



Now looking to the influence of religion in the fu- 

 ture, I have in the preceding found the essence of the 

 gospel of Jesus in the Golden Rule, which, broadly 

 interpreted, means the development in the individual 

 of a sense of social responsibility. Civilization itself 

 is dependent in the last analysis primarily upon just 

 this thing. The change from the individual life of the 

 animal to the group life of civilized man, especially 

 in the world of science, a life of ever-expanding com- 

 plexity as our scientific civilization advances, is obvi- 

 ously impossible unless, in general, the individual learns 

 in ever-increasing measure, to subordinate his impulses 

 and interests to the furtherance of the group life. 

 The reason that the western world, which has led, as 

 we westerners think, in the development of civiliza- 

 tion, adopted Christianity as its religion is to be found 

 in the last analysis, in the fact that western civiliza- 



