pposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that
all religion begins.

It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance
rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine
began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine
the foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there
were none. Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man;
for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors
choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once
innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is
no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence
is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have,
such as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice
is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new;
as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods.
History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder
in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole
human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed,
the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity.
Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot
be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep
pace with these paradoxes.

And if we took the third chance instance, it would be the same;
the view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the
world and simply discover that they don't. Those countries in Europe
which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries
where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art
in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls;
but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only
frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy
some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island
in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge
they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the
place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down,
leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over;
but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in
terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.

Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make
an agnostic, are, in this vi