EVOLUTION AND THE HIGHER HUMAN LIFE 291 



beginnings of time ? Would any one contend that the 

 creeds of Protestantism have remained unchanged even 

 during the past twenty years ? Like all departments of 

 human belief and knowledge, religious concepts have 

 obviously altered in natural adjustment to changing 

 times and to advancing conditions of human intellect ; 

 and the question turns to the mode by which they have 

 been modified, to see whether natural causes of evolu- 

 tion have changed them, and have originated their 

 earliest beginnings at the very outset of human history. 

 It has been stated above that every race of mankind, 

 however primitive or advanced it may be, holds some 

 form of religious belief based upon some conception of 

 the supernatural powers back of the world ; and what 

 the universe is conceived to be must largely determine 

 the particular characteristics of a theology, and through 

 this the special form of its attendant religion. We 

 have before us a wide array of types to study and to 

 compare, which vary so greatly, partly for the reason 

 specified, that an inclusive definition of religion must be 

 couched in very general terms. If we define it as the 

 attitude and reaction of a human being conditioned by 

 his knowledge of the immediate materials and his con- 

 ception of the ultimate powers of the universe, its scope 

 is so extended as to include the ideas of the atheists and 

 agnostics as well as the crude conceptions of lower races 

 and those systems of piety and worship conventionally 

 regarded as religions by civilized peoples. More than 

 this : we cannot regard the total reaction of a thinking 

 being as essentially different in ultimate value from the 

 attitudes toward their worlds of animals lower than man. 

 The situation of a well-trained sheep dog is one of pas- 



