display themselves in common with unwonted vigor;
if we consider that Christianity and Buddhism were
developed at periods of grand systematizations and
in the midst of sufferings like the oppression which
stirred up the fanatics of Cevennes; if, on the other
hand, it is recognized that primitive religions are
born at the dawn of human reason, during the richest
expansion of human imagination, at times of the greatest
naivete and of the greatest credulity; if we consider,
again, that Mohammedanism appeared along with the advent
of poetic prose and of the conception of material
unity, amongst a people destitute of science and at
the moment of a sudden development of the intellect—we
might conclude that religion is born and declines,
is reformed and transformed, according as circumstances
fortify and bring together, with more or less precision
and energy, its three generative instincts; and we
would then comprehend why religion is endemic in India
among specially exalted imaginative and philosophic
intellects; why it blooms out so wonderfully and so
grandly in the Middle Ages, in an oppressive society,
amongst new languages and literature; why it develops
again in the sixteenth century with a new character
and an heroic enthusiasm, at the time of an universal
renaissance and at the awakening of the Germanic races;
why it swarms out in so many bizarre sects in the
rude democracy of America and under the bureaucratic
despotism of Russia; why, in fine, it is seen spreading
out in the Europe of to-day in such different proportions
and with such special traits, according to such differences
of race and of civilizations. And so for every
kind of human production, for letters, music, the
arts of design, philosophy, the sciences, state industries,
and the rest. Each has some moral tendency for
its direct cause, or a concurrence of moral tendencies;
given the cause, it appears; the cause withdrawn,
it disappears; the weakness or intensity of the cause
is the measure of its own weakness or intensity.
It is bound to that like any physical phenomenon to
its condition, like dew to the chilliness of a surrounding
atmosphere, like dilatation to heat. Couples
exist in the moral world as they exist in the physical
world, as rigorously linked together and as universally
diffused. Whatever in one case produces, alters,
or suppresses the first term, produces, alters, and
suppresses the second term as a necessary consequence.
Whatever cools the surrounding atmosphere causes the
fall of dew. Whatever develops credulity, along
with poetic conceptions of the universe, engenders
religion. Thus have things come about, and thus
will they continue to come about. As soon as the
adequate and necessary condition of one of these vast
apparitions becomes known to us our mind has a hold
on the future as well as on the past. We can
confidently state under what circumstances it will
reappear, foretell without rashness many portions
of its future history, and sketch with precaution
some of the traits of its ulterior development.