ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 193 



habitants became Christians, or, to speak more precisely, 

 Catholics, producing vast numbers of ascetics and 

 such celebrated saints as Athanasius and Augustine of 

 Hippo, and their civilization became typically Catholic 

 — that is to say, mediaeval. Lastly, they were converted 

 to Mahomedanism, and since then their civilization has 

 been as typically Mahomedan. We have here an 

 example of many races being forced into a uniformity 

 of mental characteristics, and therefore of civilization, 

 wealth, and enlightenment, by a religion held in 

 common. The negroes at the present day furnish an 

 example of a single race professing several religions, 

 and possessing as many different civilizations. Allow- 

 ing for other educational influences, the black Methodists 

 and Baptists of America differ little in knowledge (or 

 what they conceive to be knowledge), and in modes of 

 thoughts and motives for action, from their white co- 

 religionists, but markedly from the Catholic negroes 

 of Haiti, who resemble in many of their characteristics 

 the .whites of South America, while the Mahomedan 

 negroes of Africa are typical Mahomedans — fierce, 

 fanatical, predatory, non-progressive, — differing greatly 

 in their turn from their neighbours, the Fetish-worship- 

 ping negroes. 



The form, therefore, which the civilization of any race 

 assumes, is due in great measure to the character of 

 the associated religion, which largely ' moulds the 

 character of the race ; and though the pressure of other 

 civilizations may introduce modifications (more apparent 

 than real, as I have shown), yet in the main a civiliza- 

 tion invariably remains "true" to the religion with 

 which it is associated, and if modified at all, tends to 

 resume its original form when the external pressure is 

 removed ; as in the* case already cited of the Christians 

 of the Balkan Peninsula. But if, while the external 

 pressure is in operation, we wish to observe, in its 







