Again, the progress of the species is towards social unity, which is the differentiation of functions which in an unsocial state were exercised by the same individual. The unsocial barbarian is his own smith, tailor, builder, &c. As the body politic advances, one man exercises the trade of smith, another of tailor, and a third of builder.

A further advance is made when there is a whitesmith, a blacksmith, and a goldsmith; a draper, a tailor, and a clothier; and in like manner trades become more and more minutely divided up. In a generation or two it will be one man's trade to hold a nail and another man's to strike it. Whether such a subdivision of labour is really indicative of progress of the species is open to question.

Men's interests are too self-centred to make them find solid consolation amidst present trouble in the reflection that a thousand years hence the race will have worked itself clear of such things. And on the whole it will be found that the amount of happiness in a race not highly civilized is far more general, and its sum total far higher, than that of an over-civilized race. The rude and simple Swiss peasantry are thoroughly happy, whilst in a large city like London, the upper stratum of society is engaged in nervous quest of pleasure which ever eludes them, whilst the lower is plunged in misery. Besides, what is really meant by the progress of the species? "The only tangible superiority of a generation over that which has preceded it, appears to consist in its having within its reach a larger accumulation of scientific or literary materials for thought, or a greater mastery over the forces of inanimate nature; advantages not without their drawbacks, and at any rate of a somewhat superficial kind. Genius is not progressive from age to age; nor yet the practice, however it may be with the science, of moral excellence. And, as this pro

gress of the species is only supposed, after all, to be an improvement of its condition during men's first lifetime, the belief-call it, if you will, but a dream—of a prolonged existence after death reduces the whole progress to insignificance. There is more, even as regards quantity of sensation, in the spiritual well-being of one single soul, with an existence thus continuous, than in the increased physical or intellectual prosperity, during one lifetime, of the entire human race.'

"1

The development of social life can moreover be accounted for without having recourse to all those instincts directive of what we call the spiritual consciousness of man.

The bees exhibit a marvellous example of a society in which each individual works for the common weal. The workers devote themselves to the labours of constructing cells and storing them with honey, the nurses to the education of the larvae. But nature has not provided the bees with a special instinct for the elaboration of their social economy. The workers labour to accumulate food for their own eating, and the preservation and enjoyment, of life is their sole motive of action. How, then, does nature produce this commonwealth? By an arrest in the development of the workers. They are sexless. Every carnivorous animal is provided with physical means of satisfying its appetite; it is given weapons forged on nature's anvil. The lion has power to leap on his prey, claws wherewith to rend it, and jaws of prodigious strength wherewith to crush its bones. Man comes into the world

wholly unprovided with natural weapons. Their development has been arrested, and this arrest throws him into corporate life, to ensure his preservation. The arrest in the

1 Lowndes: Philosophy of Primary Beliefs, p. 235; 1865.

development of fur or horny hide is another mode adopted by nature for stimulating man's contrivance.

In China, where political economy has been the religion for two thousand four hundred years, it has failed in its task; for, instead of being progressive, it has proved stationary invention, art, speculation, are at a standstill.

The Religious Sentiment is the feeling of man after an individual aim other than that of his animal nature; and as that which is individual must necessarily interest and excite him to activity more readily than that which affects the general good, it is more likely in its nature to prove a developing stimulus. That such a feeling should exist is a fairly presumable proof that it is not illusive. The idea of altruism is evidence that the subordination of the personal will to the general welfare will lead to progress in social and political economy; and the idea of egoism is evidence that the pursuit of individual aims will lead to individual progress. It is against the analogy of nature that all those instincts and faculties the possession of which distinguishes man from the brute should have no positive aim. The beast conceives no idea, nor makes that idea an object of desire, unless it conduce to its development. The rabbit never imagines the possibility of its eating flesh, because animal food is not necessary for its development. Those objects for which man's animal nature crave have real being, and so probably have those objects for which his mental and emotional nature cries out. What we call instinct is a desire to follow out a law of our being, and the object of all law is the perfection and happiness of the

creature.

In tracing the religious instincts of humanity, we are tracing the working out of the law of its well-being.

Wherever a religious instinct appears it must be noted, for it is the voice of the spiritual nature clamouring for food necessary for its life and perfection. Wherever a religious instinct leads awrong, it is not that the instinct is wrong, but that it runs counter to or overrides correlative instincts. When man has pursued one instinct across and athwart other instincts, which it tramples down in its fanaticism, he fails through exaggeration.

Religious instincts resemble political instincts. Every form of government is based on a right principle, but where other and equally right principles have been overlooked, misery ensues. Political mistakes have their origin in a lack of knowledge. There were ten famines in France in one century; the country had bred soldiers, not farmers.

When a religious instinct produces error-that is, when religion becomes superstition, there is something wrong in its organization. There is an undue preponderance given to this truth, and there is a forgetfulness of that truth. Every phase of religion the world has yet seen has broken down through exaggeration of one truth at the expense of another.

The history of religious experiments is exceedingly instructive, for it shows us, first, what are the religious instincts of humanity; and, secondly, failure, through imperfect co-ordination of these instincts. A review of the religions of the world will show us of what nature that religion must be which alone will satisfy humanity—a religion in which those inherent tendencies of the mind and soul which produced Fetishism, Anthropomorphism, Polytheism, Monotheism, Spiritualism, Idealism, Positivism will find their co-ordinate expression; a religion in which all the sacred systems of humanity may meet, as in a Field

of the Cloth of Gold, to adorn it with their piety, their mysticism, their mythology, their subtlety of thought, their splendour of ceremonial, their adaptability to progress, their elasticity of organization—and, meeting, may exhaust their own resources

"By this to sicken their estates, that never
They shall abound as formerly."

1 Henry VIII., Act i. s. 1.