Note 1 — LAFCADIO HEARN (continued 3)

Nominal, because the simple fact is that the real object of missions is impossible. This whole question has been very strongly summed up in a few lines by Herbert Spencer:—

"Everywhere, indeed, the special theological bias, accompanying a special set of doctrines, inevitably prejudges many sociological questions. One who holds a creed to be absolutely true, and who by implication holds the multitudinous other creeds to be absolutely false in so far as they differ from his own, cannot entertain the supposition that the value of a creed is relative. That each religious system is, in its general characters, a natural part of the society in which it is found, is an entirely alien conception, and indeed a repugnant one. His system of dogmatic theology he thinks good for all places and all times. He does not doubt that, when planted among a horde of savages, it will be duly understood by them, duly appreciated by them, and will work upon them results such as those he experiences from it. Thus prepossessed, he passes over the proofs that a people is no more capable of receiving a higher form of religion than it is capable of receiving a higher form of government; and that inevitably along with such religion, as with such government, there will go on a degradation which presently reduces it to one differing but nominally from its predecessor. In other words, his special theological bias blinds him to an important class of sociological truths."