Probably a stronger nervous system, or
a peculiarity of environment, or both combined, served to excite
impatience with their surroundings among the more favored races, from
whence came a desire for innovation. And the mental flexibility thus
slowly developed has passed by inheritance, and has been strengthened by
use, until the tendency to vary, or think independently, has become an
irrepressible instinct among some modern nations. Conservatism is the
converse of variation, and as it springs from mental inertia it is always
a progressively salient characteristic of each group in the descending
scale. The Spaniard is less mutable than the Englishman, the Hindoo than
the Spaniard, the Hottentot than the Hindoo, and the ape than the
Hottentot. Therefore, a power whose existence depends upon the fixity of
custom must be inimical to progress, but the authority of a sacred caste
is altogether based upon an unreasoning reverence for tradition,--in
short, on superstition; and as free inquiry is fatal to a belief in those
fables which awed the childhood of the race, it has followed that
established priesthoods have been almost uniformly the most conservative
of social forces, and that clergymen have seldom failed to slay their
variable brethren when opportunity has offered. History teems with such
slaughters, some of the most instructive of which are related in the Old
Testament, whose code of morals is purely theological.
Pages:
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318