SECT. III.] RELIGIOUS NOTIONS. 375 



Just as the establishment of a well organized community is 

 not the work of the multitude but of gifted individuals who, 

 either with or without the consent of the people, place them- 

 selves at their head, so can religions be only created by in- 

 dividuals, and imposed upon the masses. As such religions 

 are frequently opposed to old prevailing religious notions, their 

 introduction among peoples in a low state of culture are the 

 more successful if they supply a want, or if their representative 

 is in the possession of sufficient personal authority. If the 

 new doctrines are of native growth, they will, however much 

 they may be opposed to the ancient faith, find their points of 

 attachment in the psychical life of the people, and take root, 

 which can be scarcely expected if they are imported by a 

 people whose history, civilization, and social conditions, differ 

 widely. Islamism and Christianity offer instructive examples 

 in this respect. The first spread in Africa imperceptibly, as it 

 was more intelligible to the Negro, and is more compatible 

 with his culture, so that even in Abyssinia it gains on Chris- 

 tianity; whilst large sums have been spent, and great and 

 noble efforts made, to promote the latter, with but little 

 success. 



Next to the historical condition, civilization will depend on 

 the comparative purity of the new religion. A religion may 

 be said to be the purer the less it prevents the development of 

 knowledge, and the more its principles coincide with those of 

 morality. Where faith extends to subjects accessible to know- 

 ledge, it becomes superstition, and prevents the progress of 

 knowledge, not merely by establishing false principles as fixed 

 doctrines, but by investing these doctrines with a sacred cha- 

 racter so as to render them unassailable. If the religion con- 

 tains immoral elements, it corrupts the motives of man, con- 

 firms him in his errors by placing before him bad ideals, and 

 directs him into paths which estrange him more or less from a 

 higher cultivation. 



It is difficult to exactly determine the influence of certain 

 religions on civilization, inasmuch as all peoples at different 

 periods fuse their religious doctrines with other elements of 

 their psychical life, and either abandon or modify the old doc- 



