The Doctrine of Evolution Part 11

I need hardly say that we now enter upon the most difficult stage of our progress. The regions we have traversed were more readily explored because they were remote from the matters now before us; even in the case of man's mental and social evolution it was possible to take a partially impersonal view of certain of the essential elements in human life, which we cannot do now. For ethics and religion and philosophy are groups of ideas that are familiar to us as the property of mankind alone. Countless obstacles are in the way. Much mental inertia must be overcome, for it is far easier to accept the average and traditional judgments of other men--to let well enough alone--than it is to win our own way to the heights from which we may survey knowledge more fully. Human prejudices confront us as a veritable jungle, hemming us in and obstructing our vision on all sides; and perhaps much underbrush must be cut away if we are to see widely and wisely. Nevertheless, to those imbued with a desire to learn truth, anything and everything gained must surely repay a thousand times all efforts to obtain clearness of vision and breadth of view. With our perspective thus rectified by our backward glance, we turn to the three divisions of human thought now to be examined. The conceptions of ethics come first for reasons that must be apparent from the cla.s.sification of the facts of social evolution; just as mental attributes and communal organization are inseparable, so rules of conduct arise _pari pa.s.su_ with the origin of a biological a.s.sociation. Religion and theology form the second division, which takes its origin in part from the first, for these two groups of ideas are largely concerned with the authority for right conduct and with human responsibility for taking the right att.i.tude toward the entire visible and unseen universe. Finally, science and philosophy are briefly treated as evolved products which include within their scope all that there is in human knowledge; for this reason they take the highest place, instead of the position below religion usually a.s.signed to them. At the last, having reached our final standing ground, we must look back in order that we may clearly define the lessons and ultimate values of the whole doctrine of evolution.

Ethics is the science of duty. It is usually restricted to an examination of purely human obligations, and to a search for the reasons why men should do certain things and refrain from committing other acts. Like psychology and sociology, ethics began as a strictly formal and _a priori_ system of dogmas which related to the life of cultured human beings alone.

Again, like the sciences specified, it gradually broadened its scope so as to include the conventions of races lower in the scale than the civilized peoples who only were sufficiently advanced intellectually to conceive it.

Thus the comparative method came to be employed, and in direct proportion to its use, more liberal views have developed regarding the diverse methods of thought and standards of social life and of conduct among differently conditioned peoples. Still more important is the demonstration that human ethics as a whole, like human faculty and civilization, takes its place at the end of a scale whose beginnings can be found in lower organic nature.

Those who have followed the account of social evolution given in the preceding chapter must realize that the basic general principles of natural ethics, as contrasted with "formal" ethics, have already been discovered and formulated. A biological a.s.sociation of whatever grade and degree of complexity is impossible unless biological duties are discharged. Human ethical conduct differs from insect and protozoon ethical conduct only in the element of a partic.i.p.ation in the process by the explicit consciousness of man that he has definite obligations to others; and this distinguishing characteristic is the direct outcome of an evolution which adds reflection and conceptual thought to a mental framework derived from prehuman ancestors. The insect hurries about in its daily life as an animated machine, whose activities are defined by heredity; its special mode of conduct is just what nature has produced by selection from among countless other forms of living which have not had the same degree of biological utility. But man alone recognizes vaguely or clearly the "why and wherefore" of his acts that are far more instinctive than he supposes; he only is consciously aware of the bonds of kinship and economic interdependence. He looks about for the authority which imposes his duties and fashions his bonds, and conceives this authority as something superhuman, until the comparative studies of evolutionary phenomena reveal the true causes in uniform nature itself.

According to biological ethics, the fundamental obligations of all living things are the same, even though the modes of discharging them may be various. Every individual must lead an efficient personal life by procuring food, but animals differ very much in their alimentary apparatus; among other things they must respire, but some are so simply organized that they do not need elaborate organs like the tufted gills of a crustacean or the lungs of higher vertebrates. Every individual of whatever grade must also provide in some way for the maintenance of the species, but some, like a conger eel, produce enormous numbers of eggs which are left uncared for, while others, like birds, bring forth only a few young, which receive constant attention and protection until they are able to shift for themselves. Nature has no place for even a human community unless individual and racial interests are conserved, so that the greatest duties are definitely formulated--all else is secondary and less essential. Selfish action on the part of every unit is obligatory, but it must always be antecedent to endeavor in the wider interests of the race if the unit is a solitary individual; if it is a member of an a.s.sociation of any grade, then it must serve its fellows in some way.

Egoism and altruism are natural essential guides to conduct; neither can safely exclude the other, and their ant.i.thesis sets a problem for every organism, which is to work out the proper compromise that will be most satisfactory to nature. The Golden Rule is taught by biology because it is demonstrated empirically, and not because it has any _a priori_ value as an ideal ethical principle.

But utilitarian or natural ethics need not stop with the statement of vague generalities like the foregoing. In human society, as in the life of low animals, the worth and value of any form of conduct and of every single act can be estimated by definite biological criteria. The inst.i.tution of marriage and the conventions of common morality have their biological value in their provision for the care of children; the safeguards of property rights enable the industrious--the biologically efficient--to keep the fruits of their labors; the establishment of formal civil and criminal laws is biologically valuable in a social way, in so far as such laws diminish the unsettling effects of personal animosity and the desire to wreak personal vengeance; the establishment and differentiation of legislative, executive, and judicial organs of government lead to greater social solidarity and higher biological efficiency. Thus unchecked individualism is just as wrong ethically and biologically among men as it would be in the case of insect communities, as pointed out in the preceding chapter; no one has a right to expect service or deference to personal interest from others if he fails to work for them and for the good of all. It is true that the social structure will stand a great amount of tension, but if this becomes too great, either a readjustment is effected, as when King John was forced by the barons to concede their rights, or else the whole nation suffers, owing to the selfishness of a few. In the war between Russia and j.a.pan, the latter won because the individual soldier merged his individuality in the larger mechanism of the regiment and brigade and army corps, gladly sacrificing his life for the nation represented by the person of its Emperor. The single Russian soldier may have been far superior to a j.a.panese in muscular strength, and perhaps in arms also, but selfishness and greed on the part of many who were responsible for the organization and equipment of the Russian armies rendered the whole fighting machine less coherent and therefore less efficient than that of the j.a.panese.

In the evolution of ethics the recognition of ideals of conduct has followed long after the inst.i.tution of a particular precept by nature, which is obeyed instinctively and mechanically by force of inheritance. In the case of the communities of insects, the results are the same as though the individual animal fully recognized the value of concerted endeavor. So among primitive savages of to-day there is only a vague conception of abstract duty as such, or it may be practically lacking, as in the case of the Fuegians. So also a growing child is substantially egoistic, and it must be taught by precept and example that the rights of others can be safeguarded only by the altruistic correction of personal action, long before the child can grasp the higher conceptions of ethics. If a human being never learns to do so, and becomes a criminal through force of heredity or circ.u.mstances, the machinery of the law automatically comes into operation to conserve the welfare of the community. Such a criminal may be unable to control his destiny, and may not be responsible for being what he is, but nevertheless he must pay the penalty for his unsocial heritage by suffering elimination.

Ethical systems are built around man's vague recognition of certain natural obligations, and they have thus become more or less complex, and more or less varied as worked out by different peoples. They must necessarily be much concerned with social questions, with morals in the usual sense and the more rigid principles enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have also become closely connected with religion and theological elements. Especially is this true in the ethics of barbarous and savage peoples, who accredit the "categorical imperative" to some supernatural power, as we are to see in a later section. The one point that comes out clearly is that the systems of conduct and duties have evolved so as to be very different among various races, and that in the history of any one people, ethics has pa.s.sed through many varied conditions. What may be deemed right at one period becomes wrong at another when conditions may be changed; in medieval England the penalty of death was prescribed for one who killed a king's deer, as well as for a highway murderer. The Fijian of a quarter century ago killed his parents when they became too old to be effective members of their tribe. And so deeply ingrained was this principle of duty that elderly people would voluntarily go to a living grave surrounded by their friends; while in other authentic cases, parents have first killed their sons who failed to obey the tribal law, and have then committed suicide. We can see how nature and necessity would inst.i.tute a law requiring such conduct where a tribe must carry on almost incessant warfare and where the available food supplies would be enough for only the most efficient individuals.

Infanticide also has been practised for reasons of biological utility, as among the Romans, who at first maintained their racial vigor by deliberately ordering the death of weak babes. But times have changed, and ethics has become very different with pa.s.sing decades. Our civilization has resulted in a development of human sympathy as an emotional outgrowth of necessary altruism; this motive directs us through charitable inst.i.tutions and hospitals to prolong countless lives which are more or less inefficient, but which do not render the whole body politic incompetent in its struggle for existence.

Nature then has itself attended to the development and inst.i.tution of ethics. As we look back over the long series of stages leading to our own system of conduct the most striking feature of the history is the increasing power of self-control or inhibition. As a natural instinct this tends to prevent the committing of acts which for one reason or another are naturally harmful to society as a whole. What we call conscience is an instinct implanted by purely natural factors, and it unconsciously turns the course of human action in the directions of selfish and altruistic interests. Conscience, then, without ceasing to have validity and efficiency, appears on the same plane with all of the other products of evolution which owe their existence to individual or social utility.

Theology and religion involve intimately related conceptions of the world, its make-up, and its causes. Strictly speaking, religion is a system of piety and worship, while theology deals more particularly with the ultimate and supernatural powers conceived in one way or another as the G.o.d and the G.o.ds who have constructed the universe and have subsequently ordered its happenings. A religion is a group of ideas having the effect of motives; it is dynamic and directs human conduct. Theology, on the other hand, is more theoretical and descriptive, and its conceptions, together with those of other departments of human thought, give the materials for the formulation of the religious beliefs which determine the att.i.tudes of men toward all of the great universe in which they play their part and whose mysteries they attempt to solve.

Defined and distinguished in these ways, these two departments of higher human life present themselves for comparative study and historic explanation. They differ much among the varied races of mankind, so much, indeed, that an investigator who approaches their study with a knowledge only of Christian religion and theology finds it difficult at first to recognize that the same fundamental ideas, although of far cruder nature, enter into the conceptions of an idol-worshiping fanatic living in the heart of Africa. But, nevertheless, beliefs that fall within the scope of the definitions adopted above are to be found among all men, and they must be examined so that their agreements and differences may be demonstrated, and their common elements may be explained as the natural products of a process of evolution.

Such a broad comparative study, like that of physical, mental, and social phenomena discussed heretofore, must be conducted objectively; that is, each and every particular belief of a religious or theological nature which can be discovered in any race is ent.i.tled to a place in the array of materials which demand scientific treatment. They must be verified, cla.s.sified, and summarized, in order that their total meaning and value can be discovered. It must be strongly emphasized that for such purposes the inherent validity and truth or falsity of diverse religions are not called into question when they are so considered as objects of study; many still entertain the view that the mere task of conducting an a.n.a.lysis of a group of religious beliefs of whatever nature must tend to destroy or alter that system of religion in some way and degree. But whatever the comparative student may himself believe, the conception of Jehovah in the Hebrew religion is quite as legitimate an object of study as the Buddhistic concept of Brahma as the Ultimate Being, or the Polynesian idea of Tangaroa as the G.o.d of the waves. We would naturally be inclined to exclude the last from our own personal system of piety and worship as the childish concept of an imaginative, adolescent race; but whatever the truth may be, the fact of a belief in Tangaroa is as real as the fact of Christian belief in G.o.d. We can no more destroy any one of these ideas by investigating its nature and origin than we destroy the efficacy of the human arm when we study its muscles and bones and sinews. The former, like the latter, take their places among natural phenomena whose history must be inquired into if there are any reasons for supposing that they fall within the scope of evolution. I would be the last to lead or to take part in an attack upon any system of religion, but as a student who is interested in the universality of organic evolution, I am forced to scrutinize each and every authentic account of a religion to see if such systems present objective evidence of the fact of their evolution through the operation of purely natural causes.

But before pa.s.sing to a detailed treatment of the a.n.a.lysis, synthesis, and genesis of religious systems, let us employ our common-sense for a brief backward glance over the known history of familiar facts. Every one is aware that the Christian religions of our time and community have not existed forever; this, indeed, is indicated by the way the pa.s.sing years are denominated. We call the present year 1907 Anno Domini, and this whole expression explicitly refers to the fact that less than two thousand years ago the Christian systems of piety and worship collectively took their origin from their Hebrew ancestor. The same parent has produced the relatively unchanged Judaism of the present day. Judaism itself evolved under the influence of the Prophets, of Moses, and of Abraham. Turning to Asia, we learn how Buddhism evolved from Brahmanism. The teachings of Mohammed at a later time developed into the formulated precepts of the Koran. Would any one venture to a.s.sert that all or any of these systems of thought have stood firm and immutable from the finite or infinite beginnings of time? Would any one contend that the creeds of Protestantism have remained unchanged even during the past twenty years? Like all departments of human belief and knowledge, religious concepts have obviously altered in natural adjustment to changing times and to advancing conditions of human intellect; and the question turns to the mode by which they have been modified, to see whether natural causes of evolution have changed them, and have originated their earliest beginnings at the very outset of human history. It has been stated above that every race of mankind, however primitive or advanced it may be, holds some form of religious belief based upon some conception of the supernatural powers back of the world; and what the universe is conceived to be must largely determine the particular characteristics of a theology, and through this the special form of its attendant religion. We have before us a wide array of types to study and to compare, which vary so greatly, partly for the reason specified, that an inclusive definition of religion must be couched in very general terms. If we define it as the att.i.tude and reaction of a human being conditioned by his knowledge of the immediate materials and his conception of the ultimate powers of the universe, its scope is so extended as to include the ideas of the atheists and agnostics as well as the crude conceptions of lower races and those systems of piety and worship conventionally regarded as religions by civilized peoples. More than this: we cannot regard the total reaction of a thinking being as essentially different in ultimate value from the att.i.tudes toward their worlds of animals lower than man. The situation of a well-trained sheep dog is one of pastures and fences and gates, of rain and sunshine, of sheep, and of a master whose voice is to be obeyed. What the dog may do is partly determined by what it finds in its world of animate and inanimate things. Although the animal's "conception" of such things must be far simpler than a human being's, nevertheless its life is lived in reaction to all of its surroundings as they are presented to its cerebral apparatus by the proper organs. So in the human case, conduct is directly affected by the living and lifeless objects of a total human situation, the only difference being that reflective consciousness and reasoned interpretation have their share in determining the a.s.sumed att.i.tude in ways that seem to have no counterparts as such in the mental lives of lower animals. But whether or not the similarity between human religion and lower organic reaction be admitted,--and the admission is one that greatly facilitates an understanding of evolution in this field,--the general resemblance of all religions in fundamental character at least must be accepted.

Another general feature of religious systems is their complexity. The essential elements of all of them are few indeed, as we shall see at a later point; they are beliefs regarding ultimate powers, human responsibility to such powers, and future existence. These have taken one specific form or another in various lines of racial evolution, but aside from their own changes they have gathered about them many other articles of creed relating to other departments of thought and life. Ethical rules of conduct are so added, as in the Hebrew religion where the idea of Jehovah involves G.o.d the Ruler and Judge who imposes and administers the laws of right living. Social customs are almost invariably intertwined with religious views, among savages as well as among the more advanced Mohammedans whose rules relating to family organization form an integral part of the whole cult. The emotional elements play a large part in some cases, in the fanatical creeds of the Dervish and Mahdist and in the "revivals" under nearer observation. In Greek cosmology and worship, aesthetics figured to a large degree. Temperamental and other psychological characteristics have profound effects upon religions, which we may ill.u.s.trate by such extreme examples as the austerities of New England and Scotch Presbyterianism and the contrasted liberties of the natural religions of tropical races. But all of these accessory elements belong to other well-defined departments, some of which have already been considered, and among the materials of their proper divisions they find their interpretation and historical explanation in evolution. It is with the basic elements themselves that we are now concerned.

Only within recent years have systematic attempts been made to cla.s.sify religions on the basis of impersonal objective study. Throughout all times men have instinctively set up their own religion as the only true one, besides which all others are designated simply as false--a very natural distinction, but one which is too nave for science, as well as one that takes into account subjective or personal values which are not to be considered in an objective comparison and a.n.a.lysis. The linguistic basis was first employed by Muller, with the result that religions were placed in the category of evolutionary accompaniments of the other mental possessions and of the physical qualities of genetically connected peoples. Thus the nations of Europe that branched out in all directions from very nearly the same sources possessed common linguistic characters and somewhat similar creeds. The Sanskrit-speaking races were the original Brahmins and Buddhists. Ancestor worship is an accompaniment of the peculiar languages spoken by eastern Mongolian peoples. And although the correlation specified is by no means invariable, because a race of one stock can readily accept the religion of a neighbor or of a conqueror, yet much is gained through the introduction of the idea of evolutionary relationships.

A more logical cla.s.sification frankly adopts the genetic method and clearly recognizes the direct effects of cultural and intellectual attainments upon the way a religious system becomes formulated. In such an arrangement, similar to that of Jastrow, religions can be cla.s.sed as those of savagery, of barbarism, of advanced culture, and of civilization. Among the first named, notably those of Polynesian and African tribes, beliefs in diversified ghosts and spirits bulk largely, and every moving thing, be it a river or a cloud or a tree or animal, is held to be animated by an invisible conscious genius; the spirits reside in everything, as well as in the great unknown beyond. Above these in the scale are the religions of so-called primitive cults, more elaborate and formalized in the ancient beliefs of Egypt and a.s.syria, but still below those of advanced culture, which make up a third group. The fourth cla.s.s includes the religions which tend to be coextensive with life, and which enjoin the higher harmony of practical and theoretical conceptions. Taking Christianity as an example, the contrast with the beliefs of savagery brings out clearly the nature of progressive development. Here religious thought is no longer esoteric, confined to a chosen sect like the Levites among the Hebrews or the shaman and medicine-man among the American Indians; nor is religious observance restricted to the innermost shrine of the tabernacle or sacred dwelling, accessible to few or only one. It comes to be regarded as something in which each and every individual can partic.i.p.ate, and a personal possession that has a direct part in determining all forms of human life and action.

This is another way of saying that the more highly evolved religions owe their character to the greatly varied and abundant intellectual elements which are built into them. And this is why religion in the highest form, more clearly than in the lowest forms, is to be spoken of as an outlook upon the world which is determined by the total intellectual equipment of the individual man who thinks about the universe and directs his course of action by what he finds.

We come now to a closer concrete study of the basic elements of religion; that is, of those beliefs that are invariably present, in one form or another, in every system of piety and worship, and that const.i.tute the innermost framework beneath the secondary creeds added to them. Following Mallock and others, we may distinguish three such elemental conceptions.

These are, first, the belief in the existence of a supernatural being or beings, endowed with intelligence like, but superior to, our own; second, the idea of human responsibility to this or these powers; and, third, the belief in immortality as an attribute of the supreme powers and of human individuals also. Let us see how these beliefs appear in characteristic systems of religion.

In all forms of Christianity the central idea is the conception of a triple unity personified as G.o.d. He is regarded as the Creator who has made all things and who demands reverence from his subjects. He is the Author and Finisher of the faith as well as the sole Cause of the universe itself. Much of this element is directly derived from Judaism, the progenitor of Christianity; but a difference consists in the triple nature of the supreme being according to the newer creed. As the original and supreme being, G.o.d is not only the Creator, but the watchful Judge as well, demanding reverent obedience to the laws of the world in which he has placed man, and imposing sacrifices and penitential observances when his mandates have been disobeyed. As the G.o.d of Mercy he is incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and offered as a vicarious sacrifice for sinners who are thus enabled to escape the penalties they would otherwise have suffered. As the Holy Ghost, G.o.d is the vaguely personified ultimate source of the higher and n.o.bler elements of human thought, aspiration, and life in general. The second basic tenet of Christianity is that of human responsibility to G.o.d, to whom man is related as the created to a creator, as a subject to a ruler, and as one saved to his redeemer. The inst.i.tutions of sacrifice and ritual are outward signs of human subjection to G.o.d himself and to his laws, according to which the universe is conceived to operate. Finally, Christianity teaches that just as G.o.d in his single and triune form is eternal, so the soul of man is immortal, with or without its earthly temple of flesh and blood. The essential thinking individual is believed to pa.s.s to heaven, where rewards for right living are bestowed, or to h.e.l.l, in order to suffer punishment for sin during all eternity, or some part of it, according to different views regarding the efficacy of Christ's vicarious atonement.

It is true that the manifold sects of Christianity differ somewhat in the detailed forms of these three essential beliefs, but not to the same degree as in the case of the secondary additions. G.o.d's laws, Christ's teachings, and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost are the recognized guides to conduct; but human frailty has been such that the history of Europe presents a panorama of warring sects in almost unceasing strife about details of ritual and interpretation, while the great fundamental truths have been too frequently ignored. The conflicts of Catholics and Protestants, Puritan and Cavalier, and Northern and Southern Presbyterianism, have not been waged on account of basic beliefs like the three outlined above, or about the Golden Rule, but on account of comparatively trivial details which to the impersonal student have scarcely more than the value of individual preference.

Judaism, the next great religion, has already been mentioned as the parent of Christianity, to which it gave the concept of a Supreme Being, as well as that of a Messiah. It is a purer monotheism than its outgrowth, whose trinity is more like certain elements of Greek theology. Jehovah is the one supernatural power, the creator and lawgiver and immediate cause of all the workings of nature. It is he who shapes the world out of nothingness and who separates the waters from the dry land; he parts the waters of the Red Sea to save the Israelites, and brings them together again to overwhelm the pursuing hosts of Pharaoh. It is his voice that thunders from Mt. Sinai, and his finger that traces the commandments to rule the lives of his chosen people upon the tablets of stone intrusted to Moses the Seer. At the behest of Joshua he holds the sun and the moon in their courses above the vale of Ajalon so that there will be more time for the destruction of the Philistines. In brief, Jehovah is the eternal G.o.d of law and power, demanding sacrifice and priestly atonement, and promising happiness eternal upon the bosom of Abraham to those who recognize their responsibility to him and obey his precepts. Again, there are three fundamental beliefs, that differ from those of Christianity as the Talmud diverges from the New Testament scriptures.

Mohammedanism is another outgrowth from this group of religions. The teachings of the Koran give the inst.i.tutional and ritual forms to the same three elements distinguished above. G.o.d is the identical single G.o.d; and Mohammed is His Prophet, as Jesus is the New Prophet of Christendom. The true believer's responsibility entails active warfare upon the heretics, that is, those who do not accept the Koran. The immortal state of Mohammedanism is a very different thing from the heavenly bliss of Christianity, for the promised rewards are such as would appeal to the warm-blooded Southern temperament.

Turning now to Asia, we find in Brahmanism and Buddhism two systems of religion that are related to one another exactly as are Judaism and Christianity. The a.n.a.logue of the Old Testament is a group of priestly hymnal writings known as the Vedas, which date back to about the fourteenth century before Christ lived. Their objects of worship at first are numerous invisible beings that actuate the things of the world, as in Greek theology, but later one of them a.s.sumes preeminence as the all-pervading essence of things,--Brahma. The precepts of Brahmanism enjoined adoration of the unseen powers and of their works, as well as practical rules of human conduct, such as those which divided a man's life into the four periods when he should be successively a student, the head of a family, a counselor, and a religious mendicant who should renounce the world of social activities and human desires. In earlier writings, the immortal state is a kind of heaven, but later it meant simply an absorption into Brahma, the eternal impersonal being.

Buddha was an orthodox Brahman reformer of the sixth century before our present era, just as Jesus was an orthodox Hebrew reformer. The essential creed of Buddha made his religion far more ethical than earlier forms, and placed it on a plane even above Christianity of later centuries. This creed relates to the element of human responsibility particularly, the other two remaining much as they were found by Buddha. According to his teachings, a man rested under an obligation to live n.o.bly in the truest sense, and he acquired merit--_karma_--or lost it, in proportion to his deserts. At death a human soul is reincarnated, in a lower form of animal or even in a being residing in one of a series of unseen h.e.l.ls, if punishment is due; if a higher state is merited, progress is made through thousands of existences until perfection is rewarded by an eternal fusion with the essence of Brahma. It is because there is no escape from just punishment that Buddhism in its original form is properly denoted more ethical than a religion which teaches that sacrifice of any kind will exempt the sinner from deserved penalties and bring about the bestowal of unearned rewards.

Polytheism is the name given to a religion such as that of the Greeks or Romans, who believed in many G.o.ds and spirits of greater and lesser power.

These supernatural beings, each in its own sphere, immediately directed the processes of nature and controlled the lives of men. One of them, Zeus, was regarded as the supreme "father of G.o.ds and men," who delegated specific duties to others; Ares was the G.o.d of battles, Hermes was the messenger, Athena implanted wisdom in the minds of men, and Poseidon ruled the sea. The G.o.ds were very human to the Greek mind, living in Olympus as men do upon earth, and even visiting the mortals. Their worship involved propitiatory sacrifices and rites as well as thanksgiving offerings when favors were bestowed. But although they were immortal, they did not allow the immortal souls of human beings to join them in their elysium, but compelled the disembodied shades to wander unhappily among the tombs and about their earthly abodes.

Roman theology and religion comprise almost identical forms of the three fundamental elements. The names are changed, and Zeus becomes Jove, his wife Hera is Juno, Ares is Mars, and Hermes is called Mercury. In all other respects, however, the two systems are as much alike as the Greek and Roman languages and Greek and Roman physique.

The religions of savagery are far less a.n.a.lytical, and much more nave in their reference of natural happenings to the direct interposition of malevolent and benevolent spirits. Their G.o.ds are numerous as in Greek religion, and likewise one of them is usually set up as the superior deity, to be the Tirawa of the Indian, the greater Atua of Polynesia, and the Mumbo Jumbo of a West African negro. There is no centralization of the supernatural powers, as in the Jehovah of Judaism and the still subtler Brahma of the Asian. Then, too, the G.o.ds must be concretely materialized for purposes of worship and sacrifice; consequently idols are made, to be regarded as the actual spirits themselves permanently or for the time being, and not viewed as representations of an ideal, like the statues of more advanced peoples. The immortal state is described in low religions in various ways that seem to be determined by what the believer himself most desires. The spirit of an American Indian goes to the happy hunting-grounds, where it mounts a spirit pony and forever pursues the ghosts of bison which it kills with spirit bow and arrows; to provide these necessaries his earthly possessions are laid beside his dead body. The Norseman was conducted to Valhalla and, attended by the Valkyrie as handmaidens, he eternally drank mead from the skull of an enemy and gloried over his mundane prowess in battle. It is unnecessary to expand the foregoing list, because the examples sufficiently represent the various grades of human religions. Regarding them as typical, we can see how universal are the three fundamental ideas with which we are concerned.

Every race has its own conception of future bliss, as well as its conception of responsibility to the immortal and supernatural powers of the universe. Whatever may be the actual reality, and however closely the conceptions of one or another religion may approximate to the truth, such reality and approximation are not the subjects of the present discussion.

Nor is it our purpose to bring out more explicitly the genetic relationship of one religion to another; the evolution of Buddhism from Brahmanism, the origin of Christianity from Judaism, and the divergent development of the several creeds of Christendom amply ill.u.s.trate the nature of religious history. It is evolution here as elsewhere and everywhere.

Having distinguished the three general elements of all religions, beyond which everything else is of minor importance, we now turn to the question as to the _natural_ origin of these elements. Clearly they cannot arise independently, for the belief in supernatural and eternal spirits is closely connected with the conception of an immortal soul.

The first is the conception of infinite personalities that later become more or less merged into one supreme being. This begins with the idea of the soul as the human ego, conventionally regarded as something independent of the material body during life and immortal after death. The savage goes to sleep, and in his dreams he goes upon journeys and battles strenuously with other men and with beasts, only to find when he awakes that his body is not fatigued, and that it has not really taken part in the activities of his dream life. His companions about the fire also tell him that this is so, while he is equally sure that his essential self has been doing many things during the interval of sleep. In his dream life he finds himself joined by others whom he knows are dead. He sees again even those whose bodies he may have a.s.sisted in eating. His total world very soon comes to have an unseen region which is the abode of ordinarily invisible beings having the forms of men, with whom his own dream person can a.s.sociate; this unseen sphere is furnished also with ghostly counterparts of the trees and rocks and waters with which he is familiar when he is awake. Before long his soul or ghost or spirit is conceived as something which possesses two qualities: it can be disa.s.sociated from his body and enter the spirit-world where it seems to defy all the laws of waking life, for with the quickness of thought it visits neighboring islands as readily as it pa.s.ses to the next hut; and it possesses immortality, for it is exactly like the persistent spirit-individualities of those who have died before him. The other cause for the development of the conception of G.o.ds and G.o.d in the mind of the savage is the fact that things have been made which neither he nor any other man can make. He can dig a ditch, and make a house, and fashion a canoe, and build ramparts of earth; but human power has obviously been insufficient to construct rivers and mountains and forests and their denizens. Mankind itself has certainly been made in some way, for it exists. Because the savage cannot conceive of things being made excepting as they are made by the human hand, and because so much confronts him that is beyond the power of human construction, he comes to postulate the existence of man-like, but greater than human, personalities, and as he cannot see them in the light of day, they belong to the spirit-world to which souls go. Imagination sometimes gives human outlines to shadows among the moon-lit trees, so that elves and pixies, nymphs and fairies, become established in the world as the primitive man conceives it. Larger tasks are discharged by more important spirits, and everything natural thus becomes animated by supernatural beings. Thor was the G.o.d of thunder; Freia the G.o.ddess of spring and vernal awakening; Athena inspired the minds of men. Venus and Aphrodite played their special parts, also. But such powers as these, established by the untutored mind, needed to be accounted for, and so in the more advanced religions Jove and Jupiter were created as the more ultimate causes, in response to intellectual demands. By combining all powers into one, G.o.d and Brahma are the results.

Thus in merest outline the conception of the infinite personality works out its evolution. At all times, among primitive and higher religions, the powers are clothed with human forms, and G.o.ds are pictured as men endowed with intellects and pa.s.sions, and motives of vengeance and benignity. Man cannot shape his postulated deities save in such forms, with the possible exception of the most philosophical concept of all, Brahma.

The second fundamental belief, namely, in immortality, owes its origin in greatest measure to the psychological processes described above. Another potent factor, however, has been the natural desire to continue existence hereafter, usually in order to reap rewards not bestowed here. This desire is implanted by nature through the operation of purely biological factors, and it has the value of an organic instinct. To specify more particularly, nature has placed every organic individual under the necessity of doing its utmost to prolong its own life in the interests of itself, of others of its tribe, and of its species. Extinction is not faced willingly by a human being endowed with full consciousness any more than it is pa.s.sively tolerated by a lower animal which instinctively struggles with its foes until death. So the desire to continue alive--the "will to live"--is a natural instinct, which combines with the belief in persistent disembodied spirits and, no doubt, with many other elements, to develop the basic conception of some kind of an immortal existence.

The third element, human responsibility to the infinite personality, is variously recorded in lower and higher religions. Its conception grows partly out of the feelings of awe and terror inspired by great works of nature such as the thunder-storm, the cyclone, and the volcano, while the orderly and regular workings of even everyday nature seem to demonstrate the direct control of the powers who rule man as well. The savage sees his crops destroyed by a tempest or drought; he attributes the disaster to the particular powers concerned with such things whom he must have angered unwittingly, and whom he must propitiate by sacrifice or penitence. His individual and tribal acts do not always accomplish the desired ends, and again the laws of infinite and ultimate powers must have been contravened, as he interprets the situation. Therefore his whole religious consciousness was exerted in the direction of finding out what was the ultimate const.i.tution of nature, with which human activities must harmonize if they are to be successful. Bound by custom and convention and biological law, he looks about wonderingly to find the external authority for his bonds. To his mind this authority must be the host of spirits and G.o.ds who had made him and the things of his world. It is in this way that so many ethical elements have found places in religious doctrines, to be viewed as absolute rules of conduct coming from outside of nature, and not from nature itself, in the way the earlier sections of this chapter have shown.

Let us now summarize the results of the foregoing brief survey, conducted by the identical methods employed for the a.n.a.lysis of other bodies of fact. We have sought for those characteristics which are common to all religions of whatever time and place and race. Combined with many secondary and advent.i.tious elements of other fields of thought and action, such as social, political, ethical, and psychological factors, they have proved to be the three essential beliefs in G.o.d or G.o.ds, human responsibility, and immortality. As a veritable backbone, they underlie and support the whole body of religious doctrine and organs of thought formed about them. We have seen, furthermore, that a natural explanation of the way these elements have originated can be discovered by the comparative student of religion, who describes also how they have variously evolved among different peoples. In all of this we have not questioned at any time the validity or reality of any one of these concepts; to ask whether or not they correspond actually to the truth is beyond our purpose, which is simply and solely to inquire whether even these mental conceptions furnish evidence of their evolution in the course of time. I believe that such evidence is found, and I believe also that this discovery must be of the greatest importance to everyone in formulating a system of religious belief, but the construction of this is not the task of science as such. Every individual must work out his own relation to the world on the basis of knowledge as complete as he can make it, but every individual must accomplish this end for himself. Because no two men can be exactly alike in temperament, intellect, and social situation, it is impossible for entire agreement in religious faith to exist. One's outlook upon the whole universe is and must be an individual matter; science and evolution are of overwhelming value, not by directing the mind to adopt this or that att.i.tude toward the unseen, but by providing the seeker after the truth with definite knowledge about the things of the world, so that his position may be taken on the sound basis of reasonable and common-sensible principles.

When we take up science and philosophy, or knowledge as a whole, after religion, it may seem that we have reversed the proper sequence. There are many reasons for following this course, inasmuch as "knowledge" is the all-inclusive category of thought; our world is after all a world of individual consciousness and ideas. In dealing with religion, ethics, social organization, and human culture, we have been concerned with the evolution of so many departments of thought and action; and now we are to develop a final conception of evolution as a universal process in the progress of all knowledge.

Let us look back over the history of mathematics. The primitive human individual did not need to count. He dealt with things as he met them, and he disposed of them singly and individually. A squirrel does not count the nuts it gathers; it simply acc.u.mulates a store, and it perishes or survives according to its instinctive ability to do this. Just so was primitive man. The savage, when he organized the first formed tribes, learned to count the days of a journey and the numbers engaged on opposite sides in battle. He employed the "score" of his fingers and toes, and our use of this very word is a survival of such a primitive method of counting. The abacus of the Roman and Chinese extended the scope of simple mathematical operations as it employed more symbolic elements. With the development of Arabic notation capable of indefinite expansion, the science progressed rapidly, and in the course of long time it has become the higher calculus of to-day. The conceptions of geometry have likewise evolved until to-day mathematicians speak of configurated bodies in fourth and higher dimensions of s.p.a.ce, which are beyond the powers of perception, even though in a sense they exist conceptually. The behavior of geometrical examples in one dimension leads to the characteristics of bodies in two dimensions. Upon these facts are constructed the laws of three-dimensional s.p.a.ce which serve to carry mathematical thought to the remoter conceptual s.p.a.ces of which we have spoken. It may seem that we are recording only one phase of mental evolution, but in fact we are dealing with a larger matter, namely, with the progressive evolution of knowledge in the Kantian category of number.

Natural science began with the savage's rough cla.s.sification of the things with which he dealt in everyday life. As facts acc.u.mulated, lifeless objects were grouped apart from living organisms, and in time two great divisions of natural science took form. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and the like describe the concrete world of matter and energy, while the biological sciences deal with the structure, development, interrelationships, and vital activities of animals and plants. Surely knowledge has evolved with the advance in all of these subjects from decade to decade and from year to year. And just as surely must evolution continue, for the world has not stopped developing, and therefore the great principles of science must undergo further changes, even though they are the best summaries that can be formulated at the present time.

Philosophy deals with general conceptions of the universe. When we look back through the ages we find men picturing the world as an aggregate of diverse and uncorrelated elements--earth, air, fire, and water. The synthesis of facts and the construction of general principles down through Bacon, Newton, and Schopenhauer to modern world conceptions results in the unification of all--"the choir of heaven and furniture of earth." The lineal descendant of the long line of ancestral philosophies is the monism which sees no difference between the living and lifeless worlds save that of varying combinations of ultimate elements which are conceived as uniform "mind-stuff" everywhere. Whether or not this universal conception of totality is true, remains for the future to show. For us the important truth is that here, as in all other departments of knowledge, evolution proves to be real.

In closing the present description of the basis, nature, and scope of the doctrine of evolution, I find great difficulty in choosing the right words for a concise statement of the larger values and results of this department of science. So much might be said, and yet it is not fitting for the investigator to preach unduly. The lessons of the doctrine must be brought home to each individual through personal conviction. But because I firmly believe in the truth of the statement made in the opening pages, namely, that science and its results are of practical human value, it is in a sense my duty as an advocate of evolution to make this plain.

The method of science is justified of its fruits. At the very beginning we learned how, and how only, sure knowledge can be obtained and how it differs from a belief which may or may not correspond with the truth.

Based upon facts of smaller or larger groups, scientific laws are so many summaries of past experience, and they describe in concise conceptual shorthand the manifold happenings of nature. Their difference from belief inheres in their ability to serve as guides for everyday and future experience. This entire volume is a plea for the employment of common-sense as we look upon and interpret the world in which we have our places and in which we must play our roles. Our search for truth will be rewarded in so far as we organize our common-sense observations into clear conceptions of the laws of nature's order.

The doctrine of evolution enjoins us to learn the rules of the great game of life which we must play, as science reveals them to us. It is well to remember that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but because evolution is true always and everywhere, an understanding of its workings in any department of thought and life clears the vision of other realms of knowledge and action. Perhaps the greatest lesson is at the same time the most practical one. It is that, however much we may concern ourselves with ultimate matters, our immediate duties are here and now, and we cannot escape them without giving up our right to a place in nature. We are taught by science that we live under the control of certain fundamental biological, social, and ethical laws; we might well wish that they were otherwise, but having recognized them we have no recourse save to obey them. Evolution as a complete doctrine commands every one to live a life of service as full as hereditary endowments and surrounding circ.u.mstances will permit. Thus we are taught that the immediate problems of life ought to concern us more than questions as to the ultimate nature of the universe and of existence.

Every one can find something worth while in the lessons of evolution, summarized in the foregoing statements. The atheist, who declines to personify the ultimate powers of the universe, may, nevertheless, find direction for his life in the principles brought to light by science. The agnostic, who doubts the validity of many conventional dicta that may not seem well grounded, can also find something to believe and to obey.

Finally, the orthodox theist of whatever creed may discover cogent reasons for many of his beliefs like the Golden Rule previously accepted through convention; and he must surely welcome the fuller knowledge of their sound basis in the materials and results of comparative a.n.a.lytical study. To every one, then, science and evolution offer valuable principles of life, but great as their service has been, their tasks are not yet completed, and cannot be completed until the end of all knowledge and of time.