devil a definite form they make him a snake. A race of super-chickens
would have pictured their devil a hawk.



XVII


What are the handicaps this race will have in building religions?
The greatest is this: they have such small psychic powers. The
over-activity of their minds will choke the birth of such powers,
or dull them. The race will be less in touch with Nature, some
day, than its dogs. It will substitute the compass for its once
innate sense of direction. It will lose its gifts of natural
intuition, premonition, and rest, by encouraging its use of the
mind to be cheaply incessant.

This lack of psychic power will cheat them of insight and poise;
for minds that are wandering and active, not receptive and still,
can seldom or never be hushed to a warm inner peace.

One service these restless minds however will do: they eventually will
uncritically through the religions they themselves have invented.

But ages will be thrown away in repeating this process.


A simian creed will not be very hard thus to pierce. When forming
a religion, they will be in far too much haste, to wait to apply a
strict test to their holy men's visions. Furthermore they will