The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ple tire of truths grown old, as they tired of the old errors. They now sink back into new errors like the old. This takes place in the declining period, and in the débris room is made for the theological (or personal) trend of human thought to spring up again. | (6) Religion is a conception of the universe that affects emotion and incites action. It is mostly based on a personal metaphysics, and tries to base itself on revelation from a su- pernal person or persons. Employing the supernatural, being receptive from it, and consequently convinced that all that is good for us has been revealed,!® it is the antithesis of science, which employs only the natural, wins its own way, and never has enough. Accordingly it is at its zenith of influence only when science is at its nadir. Yet it employs also the natural as a window for the supernatural to shine through, and makes use of as much science at its disposal as serves its purpose. It can begin, therefore, at least in its higher forms, only in an old civilisation prepared for or already entered upon its decline; and it helps on the decline by substituting satisfied belief and emotion for eager inquiry and the employment of reason. It degenerates into superstition, when its leaders become priests, who, continuing to possess a modicum of the previous knowledge of nature, in the midst of an ignorant populace, impose upon them by showing wondrous prescience and per- forming marvellous deeds. This is the condition at the be- ginning of a cycle, except that at the beginning of the prim- itive cycle priests, or medicine men and meteorologists, were perhaps themselves the discoverers of a few natural laws, the secret of which they kept to themselves. These men appear to have control of natural forces by their communication, as they believe or at all events pretend, with supernatural beings; for ignorance does not distinguish, and extra-ordinary exhibi- tions of power it takes for super-natural. Imagination now has full swing; and fear is rampant of the unknown. Hence there is unity of belief, at least in a general scheme, through- out the whole race, although every locality may have its own special god or saint. The priests work miracles, as it seems to the people, and receive pay from the beneficiaries; and they also prescribe to those who consult them that they must take 19 Cf. Ecclesiasticus, III. 21-4.