I cannot expand the subject, but in the same way the better religions have had a great physical advantage, if I may say so, over the worse. They have given what I may call a CONFIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. The savage subjected to a mean superstition, is afraid to walk simply about the world--he cannot do THIS because it is ominous, or he must do THAT because it is lucky, or he cannot do anything at all till the gods have spoken and given him leave to begin. But under the higher religions there is no similar slavery and no similar terror. The belief of the Greek _eis oianos aristos amunesthai peri patres;_ the belief of the Roman that he was to trust in the gods of Borne, for those gods are stronger than all others; the belief of Cromwell's soldiery that they were 'to trust in God and keep their powder dry,' are great steps in upward progress, using progress in its narrowest sense. They all enabled those who believed them 'to take the world as it comes,' to be guided by no unreal reason, and to be limited by no mystic scruple; whenever they found anything to do, to do it with their might. And more directly what I may call the fortifying religions, that is to say, those which lay the plainest stress on the manly parts of morality--upon valour, on truth and industry--have had plainly the most obvious effect in strengthening the races which believed them, and in making those races the winning races. No doubt many sorts of primitive improvement are pernicious to war; an exquisite sense of beauty, a love of meditation, a tendency to cultivate the force of the mind at the expense of the force of the body, for example, help in their respective degrees to make men less warlike than they would otherwise be. But these are the virtues of other ages. The first work of the first ages is to bind men together in the strong bond of a rough, coarse, harsh custom; and the incessant conflict of nations effects this in the best way. Every nation, is an 'hereditary co-operative group,' bound by a fixed custom; and out of those groups those conquer which have the most binding and most invigorating customs, and these are, as a rough rule, the best customs. The majority of the 'groups' which win and conquer are better than the majority of those which fail and perish, and thus the first world grow better and was improved.