Conclusion 3 49 



the social history of civilised man. In this section, the relations 

 between religion and science are brought down to recent times, 

 and thus a transition is made to the second part, which may be 

 called, in the broadest sense of the word, philosophical. The im- 

 portance thus given to history will be generally approved, though 

 it has its dangers. It is right that we should remember that we 

 stand in the middle — or perhaps nearer the beginning than the end 

 — of a long evolutionary process, and that our thoughts and beliefs 

 are determined by the period at which we live. Our civilisation 

 has its distinguishing characteristics, like the civilisation of classical 

 antiquity, or of the Middle Ages. We are what the past has made 

 us ; and if we can trace certain changes slowly at work in the 

 period preceding our own we may be able to predict with some 

 probability that these changes will continue, for some time at least, 

 to operate in the same direction. The study of early history is 

 certainly far more instructive ia religion than in science. The 

 rudimentary science which may be discovered even among savages 

 is not interesting or important to modern research, which discards 

 obsolete hypotheses without scruple or sentiment. The case is 

 very different with religion, if we allow the word to include myth, 

 ritual, and magic, through which religion has maintained its position 

 as a social force. Religion is a powerful antiseptic, which preserves 

 mummified customs that have long outlasted their usefulness, 

 and otiose dogmas that have long lost their vitality. The history 

 of customs and beliefs which have been put under the protection 

 of religion is very instructive. It explains, as nothing else can, 

 the vast quantity of mere survivals which encumber modern life. 

 Even outside religious sanctions the race has contracted habits 

 which seem to be hard to eradicate in proportion to the length of 

 time during which they have existed. These habits have 

 become, as the proverb says, second nature. Rapid changes are 

 impossible ; even slow changes are exceedingly difficult. Nature, 

 or habit, reasserts itself, though it has been expelled with a 

 pitchfork. Religions, in the same way, tend strongly to revert 

 to type. Stolid resistance to innovations is a policy which often 

 justifies itself. 



These are only some of the lessons which we may learn from 

 history. But historicism, as we may call it, has been responsible 

 for many errors and fallacies, especially in the most recent times. 

 The tendency to judge movements of the human spirit by their 



