matters is always due to the minority, to individual thinkers, discoverers, reformers. And there is no known law of the distribution of genius: in literature and art, for instance, the great names are as frequent B.C. as A.D. Progress does not multiply them or produce them: they initiate it. That in historic times progress in religion is due to individual teachers, prophets, and reformers, may be taken to be undoubted; and we may venture to infer that whatever progress was made in prehistoric times was made in the same way. The growth of civilisation seems to have no power to increase the number of geniuses born in a century; and it would be difficult to prove that it is impossible for a mind of the highest powers to be born of a race in a rude. and semi-civilised or even uncivilised state. But it may

perhaps be argued that a mind so born would fail to develop because of its unfavourable environment. Here, however, we must distinguish between the two kinds of knowledge, first the intuitive or immediate, and second that which is gained by means of inference, inductive or deductive. As regards the latter, a Newton might be born out of due season, in a race which knew no processes of mathematical inference, and so might fail, because he found no mental instruments, no mathematical methods, in existence, to do what otherwise he might have done. But this is not the case, or not so much so, with the knowledge which is intuitive: the artist of to-day has better means-materials and methods elaborated by his predecessors for expressing himself, but he has not a more direct perception of the truth than had the prehistoric artist who has bequeathed to us his sketches of the reindeer and the mammoth. Now, the artist's source of truth is his direct perception of things external; but of spiritual things the knowledge comes by inward intuition, by direct perception of things not apprehended by the outward senses. In the degree of this knowledge men vary; and of old as at the present day "the million rose to learn, the one to teach." We may explain this as due to revelation or to greater powers of spiritual insight or in some other way, but the fact remains that men do thus vary, and that it is the minority who teach, who reform religion and impart to it its progress.

Religious progress moves wholly on one line, that of personality, and is the unveiling, revealing disclosure of what is implied therein. But the divine personality impresses itself unequally on different minds, and it is to those most impressed by it that religious progress is due : to them monotheism was disclosed, the divine personality was in their own belief revealed; and we cannot maintain it to be impossible or even improbable that such revelation may have been made even to primitive man.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE EVOLUTION OF BELIEF

BELIEFS are about facts-facts of external consciousness and internal consciousness and are statements that facts are thus and thus. The ultimate test of a belief is whether the facts actually are as stated and believed to be-ie. is the appeal to consciousness.

Differences of belief (which may be compared to the variations of organisms), so far as they are not due to erroneous logical processes, may be explained in one of two ways: (1) the powers of vision (spiritual, moral, aesthetic) may be supposed to vary from individual to individual, as do those of physical vision, and for the same (unexplained but not therefore supernatural) causes. This assumes that the facts are themselves always the same, but that one man, having better sight, sees them and their relations to each other better than other people, and therefore differently from other people. This accounts for the origin of different varieties of belief. The perpetuation of any variety depends solely on the conditions under which it occurs: whatever varieties of belief are not favoured by the conditions, by their environment, will perish—the rest will survive (the surviving belief will not necessarily be that of the keenest-sighted man, but that which accords with what the average sight can see of the facts). The survival of a new variety of belief implies harmony between the reformer's vision and the average man's view of the facts, on this theory; and therefore the theory fails to explain any advance-unless, indeed, we postulate that the new variety or "sport" at once alters the conditions and makes them favourable to itself and its own growth. Now this is what really takes place in the case of belief (bad

ones propagate themselves thus as well as good), and it seems to be equally true of organisms, e.g. man has modified his environment to favour his own growth.

There is, of course, the possibility that the same causes which raise (or lower) the powers of vision in the individual at the same time raise them in different degrees in all the other members of the race; and in the same way it is conceivable that the same causes which produced an atmosphere such as the earth possesses also favoured the occurrence of forms of life such as would survive in that atmosphere. But here we are supplementing the negative method of exclusions, which is the essence of the "survival" theory, by a positive cause which does away with chance-the survival of one variety will not be due to the fact that it happened by chance to be the one which survived, whilst the ninety-nine perished (on the ground that of that of a hundred different varieties one must be more in harmony with the conditions than the ninety-nine), but to the fact that both the occurrence of the variety and the change in conditions necessary for its survival are the joint effects of one common cause (or collocation of causes or causa causarum).

That the change in conditions should synchronise with the first occurrence of the new variety, and should take place just in time to favour its development, rather fits in with. the theory of design than with that of the accidental survival of the variety which happened to be best adapted to preexisting conditions. In this connection note we have no evidence that forms of life incapable of surviving under conditions found on this planet ever did occur upon the earth: all we can say is that if they occurred, they would, ex hypothesi, perish. Note, too, there is nothing to compel us to believe that such radically unfit forms ever did occur. The position of the argument simply is that if we assume the existence of fit and unfit forms side by side, we need not call in the theory of design to account for the existence of forms specially adapted to the conditions under which they r-we can explain their survival as due to the selective agency of the conditions (assumed to be constant).

occur

It is only for the purpose of dispensing with the design theory that the occurrence of radically unfit forms is

necessary. No argument can be drawn from the fact that of the numerous forms capable of existing for a longer or shorter time, some eventually perish-for they are, ex hypothesi, not radically unfit, but simply less fit than others.

If, then, we confine ourselves to the facts, the only forms we have experience of are forms fit in some measure or other: radically unfit forms are unproven-a mere hypothesis.

The one thing certain is that forms of life capable of surviving must have existed in the beginning. And granted that unfit forms also existed (or rather failed to exist), their existence (or failure to exist) throws no light either on the survival or on the origin of the forms which were capable of surviving. The fit survived because they were fit, not because others were fundamentally unfit.

But the absence of fundamentally unfit forms seems to indicate that the forms of life which first occurred on this planet were the outcome of the same causes as the conditions which favoured their development. And it seems fairly obvious that what favoured their growth might favour their origin (which is only the earliest period of growth).

And so generally throughout the course of development, the causes which bring about a change in the conditions would also produce a variation fit to survive in the new conditions and to take the place of the antiquated species.

(2) The other theory of the origin of varieties in belief, ie. of the fact that one man sees (spiritually or morally) what another cannot see, is not that he has greater powers of vision, but that he has more revealed to him. On this theory the survival of a new variety must be due to the fact that a similar revelation is simultaneously or subsequently made to those who accept the new belief, so that to them also more is revealed than was known before. This would be in accordance with the view already set forth, that the same cause (not necessarily a personal cause) which produces a new variety also produces the conditions favourable to the survival of that variety.

On the other hand, this theory (1) would make teaching quite unnecessary, whereas, as a matter of fact, teaching seems to be an essential condition (perhaps not the only one) of any extension in the disciples' range of vision, and (2)