Pre-Darwinian Attitude towards Religion 495 
will be later shown, is a profound error or rather a most misleading 
half-truth. Creeds, doctrines, theology and the like are only a part, 
and at first the least important part, of religion. 
Further, and the fact is important, this dogma, thus supposed to 
be the essential content of the “true” religion, was a teleological 
scheme complete and unalterable, which had been revealed to man 
once and for all by a highly anthropomorphic God, whose existence 
was assumed. The duty of man towards this revelation was to accept 
its doctrines and obey its precepts. The notion that this revelation 
had grown bit by bit out of man’s consciousness and that his busi- 
ness was to better it would have seemed rank blasphemy. Religion, 
so conceived, left no place for development. “The Truth” might be 
learnt, but never critically examined; being thus avowedly complete 
and final, it was doomed to stagnation. 
The details of this supposed revelation seem almost too naive for 
enumeration. As Hume observed, “popular theology has a positive 
appetite for absurdity.” It is sufficient to recall that “revelation” 
included such items as the Creation’ of the world out of nothing in 
six days; the making of Eve from one of Adam’s ribs; the Temptation 
by a talking snake; the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel; 
the doctrine of Original Sin; a scheme of salvation which demanded 
the Virgin Birth, Vicarious Atonement, and the Resurrection of the 
material body. The scheme was unfolded in an infallible Book, or, 
for one section of Christians, guarded by the tradition of an infallible 
Church, and on the acceptance or refusal of this scheme depended 
an eternity of weal or woe. There is not one of these doctrines that 
has not now been recast, softened down, mysticised, allegorised into 
something more conformable with modern thinking. It is hard for 
the present generation, unless their breeding has been singularly 
archaic, to realise that these amazing doctrines were literally held 
and believed to constitute the very essence of religion; to doubt them 
was a moral delinquency. 
It had not, however, escaped the notice of travellers and mission- 
aries that savages carried on some sort of practices that seemed to be 
religious, and believed in some sort of spirits or demons. Hence, 
beyond the confines illuminated by revealed truth, a vague region 
was assigned to Natural Religion. The original revelation had been 
kept intact only by one chosen people, the Jews, by them to be handed 
on to Christianity. Outside the borders of this Goshen the world had 
sunk into the darkness of Egypt. Where analogies between savage 
cults and the Christian religions were observed, they were explained 
as degradations; the heathen had somehow wilfully “lost the light.” 
1 It is interesting to note that the very word “Creator” has nowadays almost passed 
into the region of mythology. Instead we have L’ Evolution Créatrice. 
