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SCIENCE. 



even deeper than this in the scientific theory of Evolu- 

 tion. When we ourselves select, we may very often 

 choose only among things ready made to our hands. 

 But in the theory of Evolution, Nature is not merely 

 represented as choosing among things ready made, but 

 as at first making the things which are to be afterwards 

 fitted for selection. Organs are represented as growing 

 in certain forms and shapes " in order that " they may 

 serve certain uses, and then as being " selected " by that 

 use in order that they may be established and prevail. 

 The same idea runs throughout all the detailed descrip- 

 tions of growth and of development by which these pro- 

 cesses are directed to useful and serviceable results. So 

 long as in the mere descrip'ion of phenomena men find 

 themselves compelled to have recourse to language of 

 this sort, they have not emancipated themselves from the 

 natural tendency of all human thought to see the ele- 

 ments of our own personality in the energies and in the 

 works of Nature. But whether the attempt at such 

 emancipation be successful or not. the very effort which 

 it requires is a proof of the natural servitude under 

 which we lie. And if it be indeed a natural servitude, 

 the difficulty of getting rid of it is explained. It is hard 

 to kick against the pricks. There is no successful rebel- 

 lion against the servitudes of Nature. The suggestions 

 which come to us from the external world, and which 

 are of such necessity that we cannot choose but hear 

 them, have their origin in the whole constitution and 

 course of things. To seek for any origin of them apart 

 from the origin of our whole intellectual nature, and 

 apart from the relations between that nature and the 

 facts of the universe around us, is to seek for something 

 which does not exist. We may choose to assume that 

 there are no Intelligences in Nature superior to our own ; 

 but the fact remains that it is a part of our mental con- 

 stitution to imagine otherwise. If, on the other hand, we 

 assume that such Intelligences do exist, then the recog- 

 nition of that existence, or the impression of it, is 

 involved in no other difficulty than is involved in the origin 

 of any other part of the furniture of our minds. What 

 is the origin of Reason? The perception of logical nec- 

 essity is the perception of a real relation between things; 

 and this relation between things is represented bv a cor- 

 responding relation between our conceptions of them. 

 We can give no account of the origin of that perception 

 unless we can give an account of the origin of Man, and 

 of the whole system to which he stands related. What, 

 again, is the origin of Imagination ? It is the mental 

 power by which we handle the elementary conceptions 

 derived from our mental constitution in contact and in 

 harmony with external things, and by which we combine 

 these conceptions in an endless variety of forms. We 

 can give no account of the origin of such a power or of 

 such a habit. What is the origin of Wonder? In the 

 lower animals a lower form of it exists in the shape of 

 Curiosity, being little more than an impulse to seek for 

 that which may be food, or to avoid that which may be 

 danger. But in Man it is one of the most powerful and 

 the most fruitful of all h ; s mental characteristics. Of its 

 origin we can give no other account than that there ex- 

 ists in Man an indefinite power of knowing, in contact 

 with an equally indefinite number of things which are to 

 him unknown. Between these two facts the connecting 

 link is the wish to know. And, indeed, if the system of 

 Nature were not a reasonable system, the power of know- 

 ing might exist in Man without any wish to use it. But 

 the system of Nature, being what it is — a system which 

 is the very embodiment of wisdom and knowledge — such 

 a departure from unity is impossible. That unity con- 

 sists in the universal and rational correspondence of all 

 its essential facts. There would be no such correspond- 

 ence between the powers of the human mind and the 

 ideas which they are fitted to entertain, if these powers 

 were not incited by an appetite of inquiry. Accordingly, 

 the desire of knowledge is as much born with Man as the 



desire of focd. The impression that there are things 

 around him which he does not know or understand, but 

 which he can know and understand by effort and inquiry, 

 is so much part of Man's nature that Man would not be 

 Man without it. Religion is but a part of this impress ; on 

 — or rather it is the sum and consummation of all the 

 intimations from which this impression is derived. 

 Among the things of which he has an impression as exist- 

 ing, and respecting which he desires to know more, are 

 above all other things, Personalities or Agencies, or Beings 

 having powers like, but superior to his own. This is 

 Religion. In this impression is to be found the origin of 

 all Theologies. But of its own origin we can give no 

 account until we know the origin of Man. 



I have dwelt upon this point of definition because 

 those who discuss the origin of Religion seem very often 

 to be wholly unconscious of various assumptions which 

 are necessarily involved in the very question they pro- 

 pound. One of these assumptions clearly is that there 

 was a time when Man existed without any feeling or im- 

 pression that any Being or Beings superior to himself ex- 

 isted in Nature or behind it. The assumption is that the 

 idea of the existence of such Beings is a matter of high 

 and difficult attainmen', to be reached only after some 

 long process of evolution and development. Whereas 

 the truth may very well be, and probably is, that there 

 never was a time since Man became possessed of the 

 mental constitution which separates him from the brutes, 

 when he was destitute of some conception of the exist- 

 ence of living Agencies other than his own. Instead of 

 being a difficult conception, it may very well turn out to 

 be, on investigation, the very simplest of all conceptions. 

 The real difficulty may lie not in entertaining it, but in 

 getting rid of it, or in restraining its undue immanence 

 and power. The reason of this difficulty is obvious. Of 

 all the intuitive faculties which are peculiar to Man, that 

 of self-consciousness is the most prominent. In virtue 

 of that faculty or power, without any deliberate reason- 

 ing or logical process of any formal kind, Man must have 

 been always familiar with the idea of energies which are 

 themselves invisible, and only to be seen in their effects. 

 His own loves and hates, his own gratitude and revenge, 

 his own schemes and resolves, must have been familiar 

 to him from the first as things in themselves invisible, 

 and yet having power to determine the most opposite 

 and the most decisive changes for good or evil in things 

 in themselves invisible, and yet having power to deter- 

 mine the most opposite and the most decisive changes 

 for good or evil in things which are visible and material. 

 The idea of Personality, therefore, or of the efficiency of 

 Mind and Will, never could have been to him inseparable 

 from the attributes of visibility. It never could have been 

 any difficulty with him to think of living Agencies other 

 than his own, and yet without any form, or with forms 

 concealed from sight. There is no need therefore to hunt 

 farther afield for the origin of this conception than 

 Man's own consciousness of himself. There is no need 

 of going to the winds which are invisible, or to the 

 heavenly bodies which are intaDgible, or to the sky, which 

 is immeasurable. None of these, in virtue either of mere 

 invisibility, or of mere intangibility, or of mere immeas- 

 urableness, could have suggested the idea which is funda- 

 mental in Religion. That idea was indeed supplied to 

 Man from Nature; but it was from his own nature in 

 communion with the nature of all things around him. To 

 conceive of the energies that are outside of him as like 

 the energies that he feels' within him, is simply to think 

 of the unknown in terms of the familiar and the known. 

 To think thus can never have been to him any matter of 

 difficult attainment. It must have been, in the very 

 nature of things, the earliest, the simplest, and the most 

 necessary of all conceptions. 



The conclusion, then, to which we come from this 

 analysis of Religion is that there is no reason to believe, 

 but on the contrary many reasons to disbelieve, that there 



