adapted to a condition of profound ignorance of the laws of nature, or of complete subjugation of the masses to the power of the few. Now, it is a historical fact that these two habits of thought have, in the elite of mankind, only prevailed under one or the other or both of these conditions. Optimism is preëminently the child of ignorance. By ignorance I mean solely the absence of knowledge relative to natural things, processes, and laws, and not lack of capacity to know these things and profit by such knowledge. Pessimism is more especially a product of social oppression. It results from an abandonment of all hope of relief from the power of a superior caste of men to keep the mass in physical subjection. In a word, pessimism is the product of a hostile social state.
It is impossible to separate this aspect of the question from the great fact that the world has always been swayed by religion. The foregoing considerations furnish an excellent basis tor comparing the great religions that have embraced the greater part of the human race. Religion is reason applied to life. Those who flippantly contend that a religious condition argues feeble intellectual powers make an immense mistake. But this view is by no means confined to the opponents of religion. It is clearly implied or openly expressed by many who strongly defend it. The latest of this class of philosophers is perhaps Mr. Benjamin Kidd. In his Social Evolution he makes religion the mainspring of human progress and charges the reason with anti-social and anti-progressive tendencies. Whatever there may be true in his book, and its tone is generally healthy, it is not true, as he maintains, that religion and reason are opposed, or that religion proceeds from an unreasoning, or, as he expresses it, an "ultra-rational" sanction. Religion is rational through and through. It is not to be compared to an instinct, such as both animals and men possess, adapted to produce such automatic activities as result in the safety and healthy development of races. On the contrary, it often and usually impels man to do just those things which his instincts and his natural propensities would never dictate. It counteracts the animal nature of man, and is one of
