in his mind, and he refrains from blasphemy in almost the instinctive way that he refrains from putting his hand on a hot stove.
This chapter proposes primarily to consider how eugenics can be linked with religion, and specifically the Christian religion; but the problem is not a simple one, because Christianity is made of diverse elements. Not only has it undergone some change during the last 1900 years, but it was founded upon Judaism, which itself involved diverse elements. We shall undertake to show that eugenics fits in well with Christianity; but it must fit in with different elements in different ways.
We can distinguish four phases of religion:
- Charm and taboo, or reward and punishment in the present life. The believer in these processes thinks that certain acts possess particular efficacies beyond those evident to his observation and reason; and that peculiar malignities are to be expected as the consequence of certain other acts. Perhaps no one in the memory of the tribe has ever tested one of these acts to find whether the expected result would appear; it is held as a matter of religious belief that the result would appear, and the act is therefore avoided.
- Reward and punishment in a future life after death. Whereas the first system was supposed to bring immediate reward and punishment as the result of certain acts, this second system postpones the result to an after-life. There is in nature a system of reward and punishment which everyone must have observed because it is part of the universal sequence of cause and effect; but these two phases of religion carry the idea still farther; they postulate rewards and punishments of a supernatural character, over and above those which naturally occur. It is important to note that in neither of these systems