III
BELIEF AND CREDULITY
I
The vital history of human development is to be sought in the history of beliefs. The inscriptions of Egypt or of Babylon, tho rendered in modern tongues, speak an imperfect message until illuminated by some insight into the beliefs which these cultures cherished. The amazing ruins of Copan, the serpent mound of Ohio, remain mute and inglorious until we can solve the riddle of the beliefs of their builders. Dead Pompeii becomes a living city when we people its streets with the hopes and fears, the beliefs and opinions of its last inhabitants. The history of the arts and the sciences, of society and of religion, specifically involves an account of the succession of beliefs and of the growth of belief-habits. The story of men’s doings is likewise, in large measure, a reflection of their beliefs; conduct, whether of individuals or of masses of men, remains an undeciphered record until interpreted as the concrete expression of definite beliefs. The spring of action is motive, and the intellectual impetus to motive is again, belief.
Of the outward and of the inward marks of the stages of learning none are more notable than the beliefs which as the result of such learning come to be accepted and promulgated, and the attitude of inclination or disinclination which such beliefs foster in regard to the various and ever-enlarging problems which engage the interests of men. The possession of certain beliefs and a definite belief-attitude differentiates the educated from the uneducated, the scholar from the dilettante, the expert from the layman, the modern spirit from the mediaeval, the traits of this generation from those of its immediate predecessors. For those who would search out the motives and the justifications of their beliefs, it is of constant importance to realize the more potent and the more patent tendencies and influences by which are shaped the opinions alike
