HEBER D. CURTIS 65 



partly by other forces. The first of these is the argu- 

 ment adduced from the universaHty of religious belief 

 among practically all people and all races. It is not 

 a scientific argument. For it is quite possible to im- 

 agine a world in which all intelligent people hold 

 unanimously to an incorrect faith. Majorities are 

 always only probably right. Convictions, otherwise 

 called faiths, have led, it is true, to astonishing and 

 inexplicable results among all peoples. The Tibetan 

 monk who joyfully allows himself to be walled up in 

 a small cell to spend the rest of his life in darkness in 

 a cruel climate, the tortured Hindoo fakir, the Aus- 

 tralian aborigine with his terrible and race-destroying 

 self-mutilation, the Christian martyr, the Moham- 

 medan saint, all are remarkable and to some degree 

 inexplicable phenomena. They are, however, not con- 

 vincing as scientific arguments. 



With all our admiration for the beauty and the in- 

 spiration — I use that term designedly — of the various 

 scriptures of the world, and assigning to them all pos- 

 sible weight as manifestations of the universality of 

 religious belief, these can not be classed as evidence in 

 the scientific sense. The Puranas, the precepts of 

 Confucius, the Bible, the Avesta, the Koran, are re- 

 markable and wonderful documents, but not scientific 

 proofs. 



After all is said and done, the only scientific argu- 

 ment that has any weight to-day is one which has ap- 

 peared in various forms for at least three thousand 

 years, and Is based upon the universe itself. At best, 

 it Is an argument from analogy or probability, yet not 

 unlike certain physical assumptions or theories in its 



