irm the opinion, that the
native tribes of America have lost ground in morals and have retrograded
in their religious life since the introduction of Christianity. Their own
faiths, though lower in form, had in them the germs of a religious and
moral evolution, more likely, with proper regulation, to lead these people
to a higher plane of thought than the Aryan doctrines which were forced
upon them.

This may seem a daring, even a heterodox assertion, but I think that most
modern ethnologists will agree that it is no more possible for races in
all stages of culture and of widely different faculties to receive with
benefit any one religion, than it is for them to thrive under one form of
government, or to adopt with advantage one uniform plan of building
houses. The moral and religious life is a growth, and the brash wood of
ancient date cannot be grafted on the green stem. It is well to remember
that the heathendoms of America were very far from wanting living seeds of
sound morality and healthy mental education. I shall endeavor to point
this out in a few brief paragraphs.

In their origin in the human mind, religion and morality have nothing in
common. They are even antagonistic. At the root of all religions is the
passionate desire for the widest possible life, for the most unlimited
exercise of all the powers. The basis of all morality is self-sacrifice,
the willingness to give up our wishes to the will of another. The
criterion of the power of a religion is its ability to command this
sacrifice; the criterion of the excellence of a religion is the extent to
which its commands coincide with the good of the race, with the lofty
standard of the "categorical imperative."

With these axioms well in mind, we can advance with confidence to examine
the claims of a religion. It will rise in the scale just in proportion as
its behests, were they universally adopted, would permanently increase the
happiness of the human race.

In their origin, as I have said, morality and religion are opposites; but
they are opposites which inevitably attract and unite. The first lesson of
all religions is that we gain by giving, that to secure any end we must
sacrifice something. This, too, is taught by all social intercourse, and,
therefore, an acute German psychologist has set up the formula," All
manners are moral,"[1] because they all imply a subjection of the personal
will of the individual to the general will of those who surround hi