Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/205

Rh habitants became Christians, or, to speak more precisely, Catholics, producing vast numbers of ascetics and such celebrated saints as Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo, and their civilization became typically Catholic—that is to say, mediæval. Lastly, they were converted to Mahomedanism, and since then their civilization has been as typically Mahomedan. We have here an example of many races being forced into a uniformity of mental characteristics, and therefore of civilization, wealth, and enlightenment, by a religion held in common. The negroes at the present day furnish an example of a single race professing several religions, and possessing as many different civilizations. Allowing for other educational influences, the black Methodists and Baptists of America differ little in knowledge (or what they conceive to be knowledge), and in modes of thoughts and motives for action, from their white coreligionists, but markedly from the Catholic negroes of Haiti, who resemble in many of their characteristics the whites of South America, while the Mahomedan negroes of Africa are typical Mahomedans—fierce, fanatical, predatory, non-progressive,—differing greatly in their turn from their neighbours, the Fetish-worshipping negroes.

The form, therefore, which the civilization of any race assumes, is due in great measure to the character of the associated religion, which largely moulds the character of the race; and though the pressure of other civilizations may introduce modifications (more apparent than real, as I have shown), yet in the main a civilization invariably remains "true" to the religion with which it is associated, and if modified at all, tends to resume its original form when the external pressure is removed; as in the case already cited of the Christians of the Balkan Peninsula. But if, while the external pressure is in operation, we wish to observe, in its