Hence the religions which were founded upon such conceptions were not in their prescriptions of conduct chiefly ethical, but rather ceremonial. Moral conduct was of less importance than the performance of the rites, the recitation of the formulas, and the respect for the tabu.[282]
I may go farther, and say that in all religions, in the essence of religion itself, there lies concealed a certain contempt for the merely ethical, as compared with the mystical, in life. That which is wholly religious in thought and emotion is conscious of another, and, it claims, a loftier origin than that which is moral only, based as the latter is, on solely social considerations. I have heard from the pulpits of our own land very gloomy predictions of the fate of the “merely moral man.”[283]
5. That which we call “modern progress” is due to the increase of positive knowledge, the enlargement of the domain of objective truth. To this, religion in its early stages made important contributions. The motions of the celestial bodies were studied at first for ceremonial reasons only. They fixed the sacred year and the periods for festivals and sacrifices. Out of this grew astronomy, the civil calendar, and other departments of infantile science.
The rudiments of mathematics were discovered and developed chiefly by the priestly class, and at first for hieratic purposes; and the same is true of the elements of botanical and zoölogical knowledge. The practice of medicine owes some of its most useful resources to the observations of the “medicine-men” or shamans of savage tribes.
While this much and more may justly be stated concerning the contributions of Religion to Science, there can be no question of the irreconcilable conflict between the two. They arise in totally different tracts of the human mind, Science from the conscious, Religion from the sub- or unconscious intelligence. Therefore, there is no common measure between them.
Science proclaims that man is born to know, not to believe, and that truth, to be such, must be verifiable. Religion proclaims that faith is superior to knowledge, and that the truth which is intuitive is and must be higher than that which depends on observation. Science acknowledges that it can reach no certain conclusions; its final decisions are always followed by a mark of interrogation. Religion despises such hesitancy, and proceeds in perfect confidence of possessing the central and eternal verity. Science looks upon the ultimate knowable laws of the universe as mechanical, religion as spiritual or demonologic.
These differences have always existed, and have, in the main, resulted in placing religions at all times in antagonism to universal ethics, to general rules of conduct, and to objective knowledge. Everywhere, the religious portion of the community have entertained a secret or open contempt for “worldly learning”; everywhere they have proclaimed that the knowledge of God is superior to the knowledge of his works; and that obedience to his law is of more import than the love of humanity.
We may turn to the American Indians, the tribes of Siberia or the Dyaks of Borneo, and we shall find that the ordinary “doctor” who cured by a knowledge of herbs, of nursing, and of simple mechanical means, was far less esteemed than the shaman who depended not on special knowledge but on the possession of mysterious powers which gave him control over demons[284]; or we may take that Protestant sect of the Reformation, who opposed anyone learning the alphabet, lest he should waste his time on vain human knowledge[285]; or a thousand other examples; and the contrast is always the same.
The conclusion, therefore, is that early religion did assist the development of the race along these lines, but only incidentally and, as it were, unwittingly; while it was, at heart, unfriendly to them.