"Practically," he said, "men's religious demonstrations are a thing apart from their theory, and are governed by the character of individual mental development, rather than (what they are assumed to be) a power governing development."
"I think that proposition illogical. If religion acts at all, it must act according to its character as a power. Granting that with many it is a dead letter, without any action, yet with those it does influence, its action must be the legitimate result of its doctrine; and if the civilization resulting from Catholicity is superior, is not that the superior agency?"
"You forget how the guardians of the Catholic faith have ever persecuted science; that proves them intolerant."
"Not necessarily. The guardians of a faith, amid a crude, undeveloped people, may well be jealous of novel notions, dispersed out of their connexion amid an unthinking, unreflecting populace. If the object is to raise people from the phase of their present existence to a higher phase, our late experiments have shown that it needs caution in disturbing present moral influences. The mass are not philosophers; they will not travel the whole round of a series to trace the whole chain of what you call the necessary connection. Were I to begin my experiment again I should take the highest motive then active on the mind, and try to build higher on that. The first results of science are usually destructive, and therefore not fit for the masses; something must be built up again ere we present it to them. As it is, these masses seem only to amuse themselves by hurling the stones of the ruined theory at the world and at each other, destroying much, but advancing nothing good."
"But philosophy must not be controlled. Science must not be impeded in its onward march; the hopes of ultimate civilization lie in free investigation. The evil is transient—the good permanent."
"Yet you admit that a system may be in advance of a people?"
"Yes, and forerunners are martyrs, sacrificed to the ignorance, to the inaptitude of the age in which they live; yet there is a sort of necessity for their existence, the law for which is not as yet discovered. Future ages will probably be more enlightened on this head. All that we know is, that there is a law for all evolutions, a practical principle—if we could only trace it—to which every action, every development may be referred. Statistical tables show us that even crime follows method. In a given number of people in a given state of civilization there will be a certain percentage of murders, a certain percentage of thefts, robberies, and the like; nay, a certain average number of suicides. You may verify these facts by comparing the statistical tables of large cities such as London and Paris, [Footnote 207] for a definite series of years.
[Footnote 207: See Buckle's Civilization in England. Vol. i. page 17 et seq. ]
"And through what agency is this effected?" asked Hester, in amazement.