Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/365

Rh hence one kind of fetichism. Passing over all intermediate stages, the truth to be noted is, that as fast as explanation of the anomalies dissipates the wonder they excited, there grows up a wonder at the uniformities—there arises the question how come they to be uniformities? As fast as Science transfers more and more things from the category of irregularities to the category of regularities, the mystery that once attached to the superstitious explanations of them becomes a mystery that attaches to the scientific explanations of them: there is a merging of many special mysteries in one general mystery. The astronomer, having shown that the motions of the Solar System imply a uniform and invariably-acting force he calls gravitation, finds himself absolutely incapable of conceiving the force. Though he helps himself to think of the Sun's action on the Earth by assuming an intervening medium, and finds he must do this if he thinks about it at all; yet the mystery reappears when he asks what is the constitution of this medium. Though compelled to use units of ether as symbols, he sees that they can be but symbols. Similarly with the physicist and the chemist. Though the hypothesis of atoms and molecules enables them to work out multitudinous interpretations that are verified by experiment, yet the ultimate unit of matter admits of no consistent conception. Instead of the particular mysteries presented by those actions of matter they have explained, there rises into prominence the mystery which matter universally presents, and which proves to be absolute. So that, beginning with the germinal idea of mystery which the savage gets from a display of power in another transcending his own, and the germinal sentiment of awe accompanying it, the progress is toward an ultimate recognition of a mystery behind every act and appearance, and a transfer of the awe from something special and occasional to something universal and unceasing.

No one need expect, then, that the religious consciousness will die away, or will change the lines of its evolution. Its specialties of form, once strongly marked and becoming less distinct during past mental progress, will continue to fade; but the substance of the consciousness, will persist. That the object-matter can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who think the "Religion of Humanity" will be the religion of the future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of Humanity, it can never exclude the sentiment, alone properly called religious, awakened by that which is behind Humanity and behind all other things. The child, by wrapping its head in the bedclothes, may for a moment get rid of the distinct consciousness of surrounding darkness; but the consciousness, though rendered less vivid, survives, and imagination persists in occupying itself with that which lies beyond perception. No such thing as a "Religion of Humanity" can ever do more than temporarily shut out the thought of a Power of which Humanity is but a small and