on-natural, as accidental and
violent, the surviving spirit, however uncertain-tempered and
incalculable in its movements, however much to be feared and
propitiated, does not command reverence as a being of a superior order.
At best it is: "Alas! poor ghost!" Better a live dog than a dead lion;
better the meanest slave that draws breath, than the monarch of Orcus.
Surely it is not in the region of shadows that the savage will look for
the great "all-father;" but in the world of solid, tangible realities.

Again, it is assumed that progress in one point is progress in all; that
because we surpass all other races and generations in physical science
and useful arts, we surpass them in every other way; and that they must
be far behind us in ethical and religious conceptions, as they are in
inventions and the production of comforts. To find our own theism and
morality among savages is therefore impossible; for as the crooked stick
is unto the steam-plough, so is the god of the savage unto the God of
Great Britain. Yet when we consider how closely religious and ethical
principles are intertwined, and how glaringly untrue it is to say that
industrial civilization makes for morality,--for purity or self-denial,
or justice, or truth, or honour: how manifestly it is accompanied with a
deterioration of the higher perceptions and tastes, we must surely pause
before taking it for granted that the course of true religion has been
running smoothly parallel to that of commerce.

In a thoughtful essay, entitled _The Disenchantment of France_, Mr. F.W.
Myers points out the goal towards which "progress" is leading us,
through the destruction of those four "illusions" which formerly gave
life all its value and dignity,--namely, belief in religion; devotion to
the State--whether to the prince or to the people; belief in the
eternity and spirituality of human love; belief in man's freedom and
imperishable personal unity. "I cannot avoid the conclusion," he says,
"that we are bound to be prepared for the worst. Yet by the worst I do
not mean any catastrophe of despair, any cosmic suicide, any world-wide
unchaining of the brute that lies pent in man. I mean merely the
peaceful, progressive, orderly triumph of _l'homme sensuel moyen_; the
gradual adaptation of hopes and occupations to a purely terrestrial
standard; the calculated pleasures of the cynic who is resolved to be a
dupe no more."

In other words, if we accept this very temperate an