Forlong - Rivers of Life

xxxiv
Preface.
millions, and too often given us only ephemeral theologies in exchange, yet even Vedas
proclaim to us that architecture sprang at their command, and science came forth to
do their bidding. Geodosy and geometry arose from the pious necessities of temples
and altar decorations; and rites and sacrifices—disdaining the twistings and turn-
ings of “medicine men” and astrologers—called forth astronomers, and mapped the
heavens. If Religion strangled a too aggressive Hypatia, and hindered or corrupted
all literature and science for a time, burning and scattering its treasure, she was
still the great nursing mother of much that was holy, pure and good; if she hid
away in turbulent times the white tooth of a Budha, a black stone emblem of a
god or crude records of her deities, a bit of “the true Cross” or other relics of her
saints or nobler sons, she also preserved Bibles, Vedas and Tripitakas, epiks and
histories, and all that she justly esteemed precious ro her own life in mythologies and
theologies. Like Kronos and Agni she doubtless sought to devour the children sbe
had cherished, but only when in their might they threatened to drive her from the
throne to which they had exalted her. Let us however gratefully remember her as
the energetic nurse of a beneficent offspring.
It is not for us then to seek to blot out the past, nor yet to rashly destroy
any of the faiths of earth. These are mostly the emotionaI expressions of the heart,
and not very amenable to reason nor indeed to any direct attack. They can never
be rudely or abruptly disturbed with real and durable advantage. The change must
be gentle and educational, as by the opening up of new channels of thought suitable
to the age and eivilization of each people, group or person, for knowledge is that
whieh is built up slowly and severely on facts, not on dreams or a priori assumptions
of what was or should be here or hereafter. True knowledgr can only be attained by
the painstaking process of education, and until this is well advanced among men, and
on a scientific basis, the poet, emotionalist, ritualist or salvationist, must still control
the multitude.
In this work the facts or events of faiths have been inductively massed together,
digested and classified so as to arrive at what the Platonist called his Universals, and
with a certain result best seen in the Chart by the flow of the streams of ideas or faith
lines which, though diverging, are rarely lost in the historic advance of civilizations
noted in the side columns. But there may also be observed from this synchronizing
of the histories of faiths, a remarkable tidal wave of intensity, which seems to acutely
affect the race physically and mentally, with considerahle regularity every six
hundred or six hundred and fifty years, reminding us of the Sothik and other cycles