Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/203

Rh associated. The amount of civilization achieved is in fact the amount of progress permitted by the associated religion, -which, in most cases, sets such limits to further progress as cannot be passed unless the religion be first abandoned. Thus Fetishism, by teaching that which is false and wrong, and thereby preventing an apprehension of that which is true and right, sets such limits to the progress of its adherents, that it is quite impossible for them to attain to a higher civilization without first abandoning their faith. But as the action of a natural law may be modified by external causes, as, for instance, the action of the law of the expansion of gases is modified by pressure, so the action of the law that connects a civilization with a religion may be modified by the pressure of other civilizations: as, for example, the Mahomedan civilization has been modified in the case of the Turks; and as, far more profoundly, owing to more intimate admixture, the Roman Catholic civilization has been modified by the Protestant; and as, in a lesser degree, the Greek Church civilization has been modified.

This modification, however, is, in a great measure, more apparent than real, and consists rather in an acceptance of the things of the modifying civilization,