Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/358

346 while voluntary agency is daily doing a larger share of the work originally undertaken by the State; but he does not join this with the fact that outside the Establishment the power of Dissent is growing: he resists the inference that these changes are parts of a general change by which the political and religious agencies, which have been differentiating from the beginning, are being separated and specialized. He is averse to the conception that just as Protestantism at large was a rebellion against an Ecclesiasticism which dominated over Europe, so Dissent among ourselves is a rebellion against an Ecclesiasticism which dominates over England; and that the two are but successive stages of the same beneficial development. That is to say, his bias prevents him from contemplating the facts in a way favorable to scientific interpretations of them.

Everywhere, indeed, the special theological bias accompanying a special set of doctrines inevitably prejudges many sociological questions. One who holds a creed as absolutely true, and who by implication holds the multitudinous other creeds to be absolutely false in so far as they differ from his own, cannot entertain the supposition that the value of a creed is relative. That a particular religious system is, in a general sense, a natural part of the particular society in which it is found, is an entirely alien conception; and, indeed, a repugnant one. The dogmatic theology which he holds unquestionably true, he thinks good for all places and all times. He does not doubt that, when transplanted to a horde of savages, it will be duly understood by them, duly appreciated by them, and work on them results such as those he experiences from it. Thus prepossessed, he passes over the proofs which recur everywhere, that a people is no more capable of suddenly receiving a higher form of religion than it is capable of suddenly receiving a higher form of government; and that inevitably with such religion, as with such government, there will go on a degradation that presently reduces it to one differing but nominally from that which previously existed. In other words, his special theological bias blinds him to an important class of sociological truths.

The effects of the theological bias need no further elucidation. "We will turn our attention to the distortions of judgment caused by the anti-theological bias. Not only the actions of religious dogmas, but also the reactions against them, are disturbing influences we have to beware of. Let us glance first at an instance of that indignation against the established creed, which all display more or less when they emancipate themselves from it.