THE STRUGGLE FOR REALITIES. 373 
ings have given rise to institutions. An institution im- 
plies a division of labour; so in every age and in every 
race men have been chosen and set apart 
Fearand worship a5 representatives of these hidden forces 
of the unseen : eager 
poinie: and devoted to their propitiation. In 
every nation there are men who are com- 
missioned to speak in the name of each god that is wor- 
shipped or each demon that the people dread. 
The existence of each cult of priests is bound up in 
the perpetuation of the mysteries and traditions they 
visibly represent. It is the nature of men to magnify 
their own calling. These traditions are associated with 
other traditions of other powers, with other conventional 
explanations of uncomprehended phenomena. While 
human theories of the earth, the stars, and the clouds, 
of earthquakes, storms, comets, and disease, have no 
direct relation to the feeling of worship, yet of necessity 
they become entangled with it. The uncomprehended, 
the unfamiliar, and the supernatural are one and the 
same thing in the mindof man. History shows that the 
human mind can not separate one set of traditional 
prejudices from another. 
We come to attach sacredness to the ideas acquired 
in our youth, whether derived from our own experience 
or from the teachings of our fathers. 
To those courses of action approved by 
us as right we attach a mystic sanction 
as our best reason for following them. And not only to 
the acts of virtue approved by the ethical wisdom of all 
ages, but to the most unimportant rites and ceremonies 
we attribute the same divine sanction. New ideas, with- 
out the sanction of tradition, whatever the nature of 
their source, must struggle for acceptance. To the sci- 
entific notions of our childhood we cling with special 
persistence, because they are associated with our con- 
The science of 
our childhood. 
