686 Calses and Course of Organic Evolution 



worshiped — and will ever reverence that eternal, illimitable, 

 and almighty Power of the Universe, whose all-pervading 

 presence within and around us we ignorantly call energy. By 

 that Power alone *'we live and move and have our being." 

 Could we comprehend that Power even approximately then 

 truly would we know the Infinite God. 



For the present then, guided by the law of proenvironment, 

 we may confine attention to the advance made, during the 

 past 5000 years, by the most civilized nations of man up to 

 our own day. About the commencement of this period a 

 widespread polytheism prevailed that succeeded to cruder and 

 less evolved religious attitudes, considered in the two succeed- 

 ing chapters. But the gods of the different nationalities varied 

 considerably in value, in character, and in reflex capacity 

 to elevate the peoples in whose midst they were. If it be 

 here asked how such gods originated, we would reply that 

 they represented the most satisfying desires or aspirations of 

 each people, which were directly represented by as many 

 gods as the different aspirations seemed to call forth. Thus 

 the earlier animistic gods of Egypt, the animistic or anthro- 

 pomorphic gods of Babylonia, of Greece, of Phoenicia, and 

 of Crete, were all associated with definite outreachings or 

 aspirations on the part of their originators that in some cases 

 elevated, in other cases degraded, in rare cases continued on 

 an even plane of existence, the lives of their worshipers. Thus 

 the sun-god Re of the Egyptians was the summated expression 

 of brightness, power, majesty, warmth, and growth, and so 

 these qualities, worshiped daily in a deity that was a unified 

 expression of these qualities, acted as a constant proenvironal 

 stimulus to the worshippers. 



Similarly the primitive tender family ties and affection 

 associated with the worship of Osiris and Isis — no matter 

 whether these ideas were wholly mythical or in large part 

 true and legendary — formed a proenvironal connection be- 

 tween earth, with its frequent cruelties, and a future state 

 of human happiness, that had an elevating effect on the wor- 

 shipers at their shrines. Again worshij) of the moon-god Thoth 



