Principles of western civilisation

284 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

mind the writings on both sides, sinful to resolve to follow the light of evidence wherever it might lead, sinful to remain poised in doubt between conflicting opinions, sinful to give only a qualified assent to indecisive arguments, sinful even to recognise the moral or intellectual excellence of opponents. . . . The theologians, by destroying every book that could generate discussion, by diffusing to every held of knowledge a spirit of boundless credulity, and, above all, by persecuting with atrocious cruelty those who differed from their opinions, succeeded . . in almost arresting the action of the European mind.”

The conditions of the problem are complete. It is an altogether remarkable spectacle. Yet the evolutionist, who has succeeded in preserving his stand-point of detachment, feels that he must never for a moment lose sight of the central position upon which attention must continue to be concentrated. It remains to him, under all its features; still a spectacle remarkable in one particular over and above every other. It is the potentiality of the cosmic drama which is unfolding itself that holds the intellect as the supreme fact to which every detail is subordinate. In an age when the human mind has come to discuss in a scientific spirit the import, on the distant verge of social consciousness, of institutions like Totemism and Ancestor Worship, it is absolutely impossible for the evolutionist, who has emancipated himself from the prepossessions and prejudices of the unscientific spirit bred in the disputes of the past, to doubt for a moment the overwhelming evolutionary signifi-

1 The Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii. pp. 87, 88.

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