ion that lives and does its work, and such play as is
allowed it, in and by an exactingly articulate mechanical system of this
kind will necessarily be an "intelligent" people, in the colloquial
sense of the word; that is to say it will necessarily be a people that
uses printed matter freely and that has some familiarity with the
elements of those material sciences that underlie this mechanically
organised system of appliances and processes. Such a population lives by
and within the framework of the mechanistic logic, and is in a fair way
to lose faith in any proposition that can not be stated convincingly in
terms of this mechanistic logic. Superstitions are liable to lapse by
neglect or disuse in such a community; that is to say propositions of a
non-mechanistic complexion are liable to insensible disestablishment in
such a case; "superstition" in these premises coming to signify whatever
is not of this mechanistic, or "materialistic" character. An exception
to this broad characterisation of non-mechanistic propositions as
"superstition" would be matters that are of the nature of an immediate
deliverance of the senses or of the aesthetic sensibilities.

By a simile it might be said that what so falls under the caption of
"superstition" in such a case is subject to decay by inanition. It
should not be difficult to conceive the general course of such a decay
of superstitions under this unremitting discipline of mechanistic habits
of life. The recent past offers an illustration, in the unemotional
progress of decay that has overtaken religious beliefs in the more
civilised countries, and more particularly among the intellectually
trained workmen of the mechanical industries. The elimination of such
non-mechanistic propositions of the faith has been visibly going on, but
it has not worked out on any uniform plan, nor has it overtaken any
large or compact body of people consistently or abruptly, being of the
nature of obsolescence rather than of set repudiation. But in a slack
and unreflecting fashion the divestment has gone on until the aggregate
effect is unmistakable.

A similar divestment of superstitions is reasonably to be looked for
also in that domain of preconceptions that lies between the supernatural
and the mechanistic. Chief among these time-warped preconceptions--or
superstitions--that so stand over out of the alien past among these
democratic peoples is the institution of property. As is true of
preconcepti