Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/206

194 purity, the civilization which is associated with any religion, we must turn to a time and place at which the civilization was not modified by the pressure of other civilizations—a condition which, as regards the civilization associated with the Roman Church, was fulfilled in the Middle Ages.

This subject might be pursued much further with very interesting results, but it is somewhat foreign to the general purposes of this work, and besides, I have no desire to incur at present the odium theologicum. Suffice it therefore to point out, that even the adherents of the three great Churches into which Christendom is divided, differ profoundly as regards their mental traits, especially in districts in which the sects intermix but little. Almost all the intellectual and material progress of the last century or more is due to the adherents of one of the Churches alone, or at least to them and to actual if not declared seceders from the other two; and if we compare the respect shown for law and order as measured by the statistics of crimes of violence—brigandage, murder, conspiracies against the Government, rebellions, civil wars, &c.—we find here also a marked difference. If, notwithstanding all the foregoing, it be maintained that this is due to racial—i.e. inborn—not to educational—i.e. acquired—traits, let the reader lay down this work, and for a little while endeavour to call to mind as many as possible of the distinguished men, good or bad, of the first rank, who have made the last one hundred and twenty years the most remarkable in human history—naval and military heroes, statesmen, scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, novelists, inventors, travellers, accumulators of wealth, thinkers, and men of action of all sorts; he will find that all, or nearly all, whose names occur to him have belonged to one only of the three Churches, or else have been seceders (actual if not declared) from the other two.