Conclusion 373 



and the difficulties seem to be extremely formidable. It is, how- 

 ever, obvious that any theory which finds room for mind and spirit 

 as essentially parts of the field of inquiry must be far nearer to the 

 religious view of reality than the Naturalism of the last century. 

 To the religious view of the world we must now turn. 



Perhaps the first caution which we shall do well to bear in 

 mind is that religion is not always true or good. As Dr. Oman 

 has said, we are dealing with human nature when our subject is 

 religion, just as much as when we are discussing art or politics or 

 social life. There is much bad and false religion, which we shall 

 discard, just as we should discard bad and false science. We wish 

 to take both religion and science at their best, and to consider how 

 they stand towards each other. 



We have said enough about the religion of the backward races. 

 Let us consider religion as we know it in civilised modern Europe. 

 We shall find it full of distortions and corruptions which explain, 

 if they do not justify, the hostile attitude which some reformers 

 take to religion, at least in its institutional forms. 



Alienists tell us that the highest of our mental faculties are the 

 first to yield to morbid conditions of the brain. Decadent races 

 or individuals will have a decadent religion. The close connec- 

 tion between religion and morals is loosened ; the religious con- 

 science, except in relation to some tradition of the elders which 

 has no real ethical sanction, becomes blunter than that of the 

 respectable man of the world. The happy and joyous temper, 

 which characterises a fresh and confident faith, degenerates into 

 moroseness, or into the vapid hilarity of the seminary. Religion 

 relapses into mere cultus, which is the husk of religion ; its genial 

 symbolism petrifies, and offers a stolid opposition to the best-estab- 

 lished secular knowledge. In order to retain the allegiance of 

 the masses, it stoops to fraud and deception, and endeavours either 

 to impede education or to control it. A decadent religion does 

 far more harm than good in the national life. If we blame the 

 pioneers of modern science <for the acerbity of their language about 

 the religion of their day, we must in justice remember that the 

 religion of their day contained much rotten material. 



Next, we must remember that religion, like some chemical 

 substance, is never found pure, and it is not at all easy to isolate it 

 in order to learn its properties. We have seen in the earliest part 

 of this book how difficult it is to separate religion from magic in 



