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existing generations of men, and, secondly, such facts as can be safely gathered from the records of the past.

On one main point which has been questioned respecting existing facts, the progress of inquiry seems to have established beyond any reasonable doubt that no race of men now exists so savage and degraded as to be, or to have been when discovered, wholly destitute of any conceptions of a religious nature. It is now well understood that all the cases in which the existence of such savages has been reported are cases which break down upon more intimate knowledge and more scientific inquiry.

Such is the conclusion arrived at by a careful modern inquirer, Professor Tiele, who says: "The statement that there are nations or tribes which possess no religion, rests either on inaccurate observations or on a confusion of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met with destitute of belief in any higher beings, and travelers who asserted their existence have been afterward refuted by facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call religion, in its most general sense, a universal phenomenon of humanity."

Although this conclusion on a matter of fact is satisfactory, it must be remembered that, even if it had been true that some savages do exist with no conception whatever of living beings higher than themselves, it would be no proof whatever that such was the primeval condition of man. The arguments adduced in a former chapter, that the most degraded savagery of the present day is or may be the result of evolution working upon highly unfavorable conditions, are arguments which deprive such facts, even if they existed, of all value in support of the assumption that the lowest savagery was the condition of the first progenitors of our race. Degradation being a process which has certainly operated, and is now operating, upon some races, and to some extent, it must always remain a question how far this process may go in paralyzing the activity of our higher powers or in setting them, as it were, to sleep. It is well, however, that we have no such problem to discuss. Whether any savages exist with absolutely no religious conceptions is, after all, a question of subordinate importance; because it is certain that, if they exist at all, they are a very extreme case and a very rare exception. It is notorious that, in the case of most savages and of all barbarians, not only have they some religion, but their religion is one of the very worst elements in their savagery or their barbarism.

Looking now to the facts presented by the existing religions of the world, there is one of these facts which at once arrests attention, and that is the tendency of all religions, whether savage or civilized, to connect the personal agencies who are feared or worshiped with some material object. The nature of that connection may not be always-it may not be even in any case - perfectly clear and definite. The rigorous analysis of our own thoughts upon such subjects is difficult, even to the most enlightened men. To rude and savage men it is impossible. There is no mystery, therefore, in the fact that the connection which exists. between various material objects and the beings who are worshiped in them or through them is a connection which remains generally vague in the mind of the worshiper himself. Sometimes the material object is an embodiment; sometimes it is a symbol; often it may be only an abode. Nor is it wonderful that there should be a like variety in the particular objects which have come to be so regarded. Sometimes they are such material objects as the heavenly bodies. Sometimes they are natural productions of our own planet, such as particular trees, or particular animals, or particular things in themselves inanimate, such as springs, or streams, or mountains. Sometimes they are manufactured articles, stones, or blocks of wood cut into some shape which has a meaning either obvious or traditional.

The universality of this tendency to connect some material objects with religious worship, and the immense variety of modes in which this tendency has been manifested, is a fact which receives a full and adequate explanation in our natural disposition to conceive of all personal agencies as living in some form and in some place, or as having some other special connection with particular things in nature. Nor is it difficult to understand how the embodiments, or the symbols, or the abodes, which may be imagined and devised by men, will vary according as their mental condition has been developed in a good or in a wrong direction. And as these imaginings and devices are never, as we see them now among savages, the work of any one generation of men, but are the accumulated inheritance of many generations, all existing systems of worship among them must be regarded as presumably very wide departures from the conceptions which were primeval. And this presumption gains additional force when we observe the distinction which exists between the fundamental conceptions of religious belief and the forms of worship

which have come to be the expression and embodiment of these. In the religion of the highest and best races, in Christianity itself, we know the wide difference which obtains between the theology of the church and the popular superstitions which have been developed under it. These superstitions may be, and often are, of the grossest kind. They may be, indeed, and in many cases are known to be, vestiges of pagan worship which have survived all religious revolutions and reforms; but in other cases they are the natural and legitimate development of some erroneous belief accepted as part of the Christian creed. Here, as elsewhere, reason working on false data has been, as under such conditions it must always be, the great agent in degradation and decay.

From essays on "Nature and Religion.»

ARISTOTLE

(384-322 B. C.)

F A vote of the learned of the last five centuries could be taken to decide what essay has had the greatest effect on literature, it is probable that at least nine voices in every ten would be for the "Poetics" of Aristotle, a treatise, which, though written more than two thousand years ago, is still accepted as the best expression of the principles of literary art ever put into words. "The 'Poetics' of Aristotle," writes Professor Morley in his preface to the translation here given complete, "is a book which has been honored by all critics, idolized by some, and has throughout Europe influenced the higher literary criticism since the Revival of Learning. It is intellectually one of the great books of the world; substantially it is so small a book that it can be contained in one-half of this volume, and still leave room enough for the whole of another book of highest mark, Longinus's 'On the Sublime. >»*

If it were safe to make comparisons or generalizations, it would be allowable in the case of Aristotle to pronounce his intellect the greatest of the Greek world, and among moderns, surpassed, if surpassed at all, only by that of Lord Bacon. When we remember that this puts him above Homer and Plato among the Greeks and above the great thinkers and scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we may prefer not to generalize, but it is impossible to go far in the study of history without being forced to recognize the extent and strength of the influence he exerted over the development of rational intellect. His influence over classical and post-classical thought was great; but as the mind of civilization began to quicken the Dark Ages, it became evident that the progress of the world towards modern times was destined to express his thought, to follow his guidance, to borrow his methods. Even when the possibilities of modern times and the science of universal empiricism were condensed into the "Novum Organum" of Bacon, it was the thought of Aristotle which, by its contraries, inspired him.

Born at Stagira in Macedonia 384 B. C., Aristotle was for twenty years a pupil in Plato's school at Athens where, during much of the

*Longinus's "On the Sublime» appears in proper alphabetical order in the World's Best Essays.

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