8 SOCIAL CULTURE 



aspect of things and events, the second pole of experience, that has 

 reached the religious dogmas of the greater and greatest religions of 

 human history - - a process of social units in which whole peoples 

 have merged. 



This process has been a study of the question how the perfect One 

 can be conceived as making a world of imperfect beings. For im- 

 perfect or derivative beings demand another order of being, an or- 

 iginating source, as a logical condition of existence. But this source 

 must explain not only the efficient cause of the imperfect, but also 

 the motive of purpose, the final cause or end of the creation of the 

 imperfect being. 



There are two great steps which religion takes after it leaves an- 

 cestor-worship and other forms of animism, in which disembodied 

 individuals as good or evil demons reign as personal causes in an 

 order above the natural order of things and events which are im- 

 mediately present to our senses. 



As the intellect of man became developed, socially and individually, 

 the great step was taken above all secondary causes to a First Cause 

 transcending nature and also transcending time and space, the logical 

 conditions of finitude and multiplicity. 



The transcendent unity, in which all things and events lost their 

 individual being and mingled in one chaotic confusion, is conceived 

 as a great void into which all things and events are resolved when 

 traced to their first principle. 



Transcendence was in the first stage of religious contemplation 

 the important attribute to be kept in mind when thinking of the 

 First Cause. 



To halt in this thought of mere transcendence of the world meant 

 pantheism in the sense that the One is conceived to possess all being 

 and to be devoid of finitude. It exists apart in an order above all 

 finitude as found in our experience. To deny all relation to finitude 

 comes as a result from this abstract thought of the infinite. It is 

 the nothing of the world of experience and is to be thought of as its 

 dissolution. The philosophy of Kapila in the Sankhya Karika, the 

 religion of both the Yoga doctrines, the Yoga of complete asceticism 

 (of Patanjali) as well as the Karma Yoga expounded in the Bhagavad 

 Gita, reach a One not only above things and events and above a 

 world-order, but also elevated even above creatorship, and above 

 intellect and will, a pure being that is as empty as it is pure, having 

 no distinctions within itself nor for others light and darkness, the 

 widest distinction in nature, are all the same to Brahma, and so also 

 are good and evil, sin and virtue, " shame and fame," as Emerson 

 names these ethical distinctions in his poem of Brahma, they are 

 all one to Brahma. 



