Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/149

 Rh those things which distinctively mark him off from the animal world. It could be easily shown that this is precisely the role that reason plays everywhere, and it is the failure to perceive this that has led many political economists and others into the gravest of errors in philosophizing about man.

Religion has its very origin in reason. No animal has developed even the rudiments of a religion. It is an exclusively human institution, much more so than society. It is the product of thought; an attempt to explain the universe. In this, its primary quality, it does not differ in the least from science, and no true philosopher can doubt that these two great human movements, starting out from the same base, will eventually arrive at the same goal.

Now, of the two great religions of the world, using the term in its broadest sense and ignoring entirely the subdivision into sects, that of the East and that of the West, in the modern use of those terms, the former is pessimistic; the latter optimistic. This is because, while both were perhaps equally ignorant of the laws of nature, the inhabitants of India exercised their intellectual powers far more than did the peoples of western Asia and southern Europe. It is also probably true that the conditions of existence for the masses of India under a system of castes were much less favorable than those of western peoples. For these and other reasons religion in the East resulted in pessimism while in the West it took the form of optimism. The Orientals sought to escape the evils of life in Nirvana, which, however much scholars may dispute about its exact meaning, is certainly a wholly negative state. Christians and Mohammedans, on the other hand, espoused the doctrine of immortality, which is a doctrine of hope and promises a state which is intensely positive. With their belief in an ultimate righteous retribution they were able to bear their temporal ills with fortitude and to enjoy whatever good this world had in store for them. Yet because it is in the West that the great civilization of the world at last came forth it will not do to argue that this was the result of an optimistic religion. Scarcely a sign of this was perceptible