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With the advent of collective worship, religious feasts endear themselves as occasions of intense social pleasure. Moreover, the common worship of the gods for public ends makes them. agents of social discipline, props of order, bulwarks of family, property, and state. As ethical thought develops, the gods are conceived as deliverers from temptation rather than from misfortune. Philosophy blends with the theory of the gods and religion provides answers for the Why? Whence? and Whither? of the restless intellect. In the priestly cults religion becomes a stepping stone to power and so enlists ambition. The Hebrew prophets incorporate into religion their passion for social justice. Thus a great variety of human passions, instincts, impulses, and yearnings have at one time or another joined to magnify religion to the dimensions of a history-making force. No wonder that men have suffered themselves to be hewed in pieces. rather than give up their gods, that at times one has looked upon all co-worshippers as friends and all deniers of one's god as

enemies.

UPS AND DOWNS OF RELIGION

The

Is Ex

Fluctu

The religious interest cannot but wax and wane with the rela- Religious tion of religion to men's necessities. The gods are remembered Interest m danger, forgotten in security, valued when the state rests on tremely authority, ignored when government is founded on consent, ating a fored as guardians of the right, but neglected after Justice gains. her sword. Every forward stride in man's mastery of Nature ard control over men lessens his dependence on the Unseen. A sense of security from violence, plague, calamity, and future terment weakens the fears behind religion. As people come to bok to the policeman for protection, to the physician for healing, to the inventor for victory and to themselves for worldly success, their anxious zeal in worship abates. Religion abides, purer and nobler to be sure, but less potent as a maker of history.

ROOTS OF THE POLITICAL INTEREST

of the

for Gov

Partly ally, partly rival of the religious interest is the political Origins interest. At certain epochs of social history, people worry as Demand much about keeping a whole skin as about getting the next meal. Hence, for the creators and organs of security, they feel emotions scarcely weaker than their feelings for wealth or for the

CHAP. V gods. In fear of having their throats cut by the enemy they cheerfully submit to the will of the war leader. In dread of evildoers they rally round a power that can make law respected. They come to feel intense love and loyalty toward the statebuilding kings and dynasties who have allayed their terrors, and hate the recalcitrant and disloyal.

Origin
of the
Supply
of Govern-

ment
Bringing

Government under

Control

Fundamental

Social

Evolution

Changes the Value

ment and Therewith

the

Strength of the Political Interest

The appetite for power, however, impels the masterful to supply more than enough government. In time the absolute state reveals its true inwardness and men start back in affright before a Frankenstein. Then ensues a struggle to wrest from government guarantees of individual liberties and rights. The next step is to dispense with governing families and classes and organize a state whose master is the people. Finally the people's state is used for a multitude of services which never occurred to government in an earlier day.

FLUCTUATIONS IN THE POLITICAL INTEREST

The intensity of feeling about the state varies with its apparent importance in the general scheme. Political loyalty is strongest when enemy blows rain harmless on the shield the of Govern state holds over its people. The flame of patriotism rises or sinks with the approach or retreat of violence. To the degree that peace and order, individual liberty and democratic control are attained, the old fears and passions die. Free associations take over the promotion of culture. Public opinion comes to be the chief regulator of conduct and law but reflects public opinion. The non-political side of society comes forward and politics ceases to be an arch joiner and sunderer of men. If, however, social evolution should cause the state to absorb so much of the industrial organization as to play the rôle of a supreme earthly Providence, no doubt men's interest in it would grow again.

The Intellectual

Interest

Springs

osity at First, but

ROOTS OF THE INTELLECTUAL INTEREST

The intellectual interest has far outgrown the craving for knowledge inspired by the instinct of curiosity. For one thing from Curi intellectual subtlety, always a coveted species of prowess, gratifies the instinct for self-assertion. Even in the early stages of culture a reputation for extraordinary wisdom brings the sage fame, favor and wealth. Later, learning confers distinction and has a value in bread-winning and mate-winning. As for real

Has Grown

Far Be

yond This

Instinct

knowledge, it has been means as well as end. Its branches were CHAP. V first cultivated as badges of leisure-class superiority. Later the sciences were promoted because they relieved pain, prolonged life, brought military victory and vastly augmented the production of wealth.

WHY SCIENCE HAS BEEN TOLERATED

Despite
Her Dis-

and

Will Be
Because

Tolerated

of Her

Great

Practical

Services

Down to about the middle of the eighteenth century it was a question whether supernaturalism might not crush or enslave turbing science; but since then science has so won the favor and confi- Upsetting Habits, dence of the people by her triumphs over disease and her con- Science quest of the forces of Nature, that it does not seem possible for the conservatives to bind her again in chains. Although to the great majority of men their religious traditions are infinitely dearer than the quest of Truth, they have been made to see that they cannot have from science the immense practical services she is rendering them unless they tolerate free inquiry. So, although the craving to find out is a very weak thing in human nature in comparison with the passions and interests which fear and hate. it, it enjoys immunity because the world has learned that knowledge is power. Science labors ever with the noose about her neck; but it will not be drawn while science grants the health vainly besought by the worshipper; turns aside the pestilence; insures the husbandman his increase; and overcomes one's enemies.

THEORIES OF SOCIAL DETERMINISM

At

The dominance of now this interest and now that, creates the Clusion that some one force is the shaper of social destiny. "he moment when the state attains its broadest significance the itary-political interest seems to be the swaying force in history. At the moment when religion reaches its broadest significance the religious interest appears as the chief uniter and divider of Now it happens that in modern times certain well-understood influences have weakened the political and religious interests and thereby thrown into bolder relief other interests, chief among which is the economic. Economism, so helpful a key to the eviation of modern society, is now. offered as the "Open sesame!" to the locked chambers of the past, the one magic formula for the interpretation of history. Its one rival is intel

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Theory of the Worries

as Prime

ers of History

CHAP. V lectualism which pivots the whole social life of an age on its knowledge and beliefs. But these are one-sided theories and cannot explain the past as successfully as they explain the present. It is reasonable to suppose that men's attitudes and actions depend most on what most worries them. When they worry chiefly about what the Unseen will do to them, the course of society will be most affected by developments in the field of religion. When they lie awake for fear their property or their lives will be taken, their attitude toward everything will depend on how it is related to the security-furnishing organization, i.e., the State. When their supreme anxiety is where the next meal is coming from, they will be for everything that promises to promote economic success and against everything which appears to hinder it. As soon as one worry is soothed it ceases to shape the course of history and some other supreme worry takes charge.

IF.

CHAPTER VI

THE RACE FACTOR

F races differ in their original tendencies and in their response to the ideas by which original tendencies are moulded into desires, they will not develop the same type of society. The question comes up, then, whether each race of men is marked out for a distinct social destiny and whether the contrasts we find among contemporary peoples in respect to character, manner and institutions are to be explained in terms of race.

RACE OR SOCIAL HISTORY?

The ignorant always invoke race to account for any peculiarity common to a certain stock. Why is the Chinese a conservative? Race. Why is the Turk a fatalist? Race. Why is the Semite a monotheist? Race. Why is the Nordic a Protestant? Race. The vulgar wonder why the Chinese toil so hard, the Jews trade, the English follow sport, and the Germans engage in philosophical speculation, until some one tells them, "It 's in the blood." Then they go away satisfied.

CHAP. VI Does Each a Social

Race Have

Destiny of Its Own?

Traits

Have Their

Origin in

Social

History

As soon, however, as we explore the social history of a people National we come upon good grounds for many of its puzzling traits. Which The Jew's distaste for farming is seen to be a traditional attitude caused by confinement in the Ghetto for several centuries and debarment from owning farm land. The proverbial thriftlessness of the Irish peasant is traceable to centuries of alien landlordism and rack-renting. Were it a race trait it would show also in his cousins, the Welshman, the Cornishman and the Breton. The passion of the Dutch for cleanliness seems to be product. of a social standard made possible by easy access to water. In parts of China threaded by canals the standards of cleanliness are much higher than where water is not close at hand. On the other hand, the small use of water by the masses in Italy is said to be connected with the fact that many of the towns are ated on a hill so that water has to be brought from a distance.

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