Even as a mere question of probabilities it cannot rationally be concludedthat in every society, savage and civilized, certain men have combined todelude the rest in ways so analogous. Moreover, the hypothesis of artificialorigin fails to account for the facts. It does not explain why under allchanges of form, certain elements of religious belief remain constant. Itdoes not show how it happens that while adverse criticism has from age toage gone on destroying particular theological dogmas, it has not destroyedthe fundamental conception underlying those dogmas. Thus the universalityof religious ideas, their independent evolution among different primitiveraces, and their great vitality unite in showing that their source must bedeep-seated. In other words, we are obliged to admit that if not supernaturallyderived as the majority contend, they must be derived out of human experiences,slowly accumulated and organized.
Should it be asserted that religious ideas are products of the religioussentiment which, to satisfy itself, prompts imaginations that it afterwardsprojects into the external world, and by-and-by mistakes for realities, theproblem is not solved, but only removed farther back. Whence comes the sentiment?
That it is a constituent in man's nature is implied by the hypothesis, andcannot indeed be denied by those who prefer other hypotheses. And if thereligious sentiment, displayed constantly by the majority of mankind, andoccasionally aroused even in those seemingly devoid of it, must be classedamong human emotions, we cannot rationally ignore it. Here is an attributewhich has played a conspicuous part throughout the entire past as far backas history records, and is at present the life of numerous institutions,the stimulus to perpetual controversies, and the prompter of countless dailyactions. Evidently as a question in philosophy we are called on to say whatthis attribute means; and we cannot decline the task without confessing ourphilosophy to be incompetent.
Two suppositions only are open to us; the one that the feeling which respondsto religious ideas resulted, along with all other human faculties, from anact of special creation; the other that it, in common with the rest, aroseby a process of evolution. If we adopt the first of these alternatives, universallyaccepted by our ancestors and by the immense majority of our contemporaries,the matter is at once settled: man is directly endowed with the religiousfeeling by a creator; and to that creator it designedly responds. If we adoptthe second alternative, then we are met by the questions -- What are thecircumstances to which the genesis of the religious feeling is due? and --What is its office? Considering, as we must on this supposition, all facultiesto be results of accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of theorganism with its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist inthe environment certain phenomena or conditions which have determined thegrowth of the religious feeling, and so are obliged to admit that it is asnormal as any other faculty. Add to which that as, on the hypothesis of adevelopment of lower forms into higher the end towards which the progressivechanges tend, must be adaptation to the requirements of life, we are alsoforced to infer that this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare.
Thus both alternatives contain the same ultimate implication. We must concludethat the religious sentiment is either directly created or is developed bythe slow action of natural causes, and whichever conclusion we adopt requiresus to treat the religious sentiment with respect.
One other consideration should not be overlooked -- a consideration whichstudents of Science more especially need to have pointed out. Occupied assuch are with established truths, and accustomed to regard things not alreadyknown as things to be hereafter discovered, they are liable to forget thatinformation, however extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry.
Positive knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possiblethought. At the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must everarise, the question -- What lies beyond? As it is impossible to think ofa limit to space so as to exclude the idea of space lying outside that limit. so we cannot conceive of any explanation profound enough to exclude the question-- What is the explanation of that explanation? Regarding Science as a graduallyincreasing sphere, we may say that every addition to its surface does notbring it into wider contact with surrounding nescience. There must ever remaintherefore two antithetical modes of mental action. Throughout all futuretime, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertainedphenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained somethingwhich phenomena and their relations imply. Hence if knowledge cannot monopolizeconsciousness -- if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwellupon that which transcends knowledge, then there can never cease to be aplace for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all itsforms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject matterpasses the sphere of the intellect.
Thus, however untenable may be the existing religious creeds, howevergross the absurdities associated with them, however irrational the argumentsset forth in their defence, we must not ignore the verity which in all likelihoodlies hidden within them. the general probability that widely-spread beliefsare not absolutely baseless, is in this case enforced by a further probabilitydue to the omnipresence of the beliefs. In the existence of a religious sentiment,whatever be its origin, we have a second evidence of great significance.
