History of Religious Evolution 715 



each race or tribe yearned for some meaning to the phenomena 

 that crowded in on them, and that seemed often to help, to 

 bless, and to make happy, but at times also seemed to wither 

 and to destroy. A widespread polytheism, that was an ad- 

 vance on animism or naturalism, was their only refuge and 

 explanation, in their upward pathway. The very intellectu- 

 ality, or increasing mental alertness of the higher individuals, 

 forced them to this. 



Very slowly therefore, through thousand of years of rever- 

 ential and often loving outlook, over ever widening fields of 

 inquiry as to his destiny, man constantly received abundant 

 spiritic stimuli that were combined by him into new proen- 

 vironal responses which were associated with ever wider rec- 

 ognitions of the activity of cosmic energy. These carried 

 him from ancestralism to naturalism, from the latter to ani- 

 mism, and from it to polytheism. Now the latter step in- 

 volved great issues. For, while his outlook from the first 

 three platforms was limited to mundane conditions, poly- 

 theism in practically every known age, and amongst every 

 people, has reached out to the celestial bodies. Furthermore, 

 in investing each of the more evident heavenly bodies, and 

 also the great phenomena of the earth, with separate deistic 

 names and attributes, man was almost unconsciously esti- 

 mating, cataloging, and realizing the separate great centers 

 or exhibitions of the energy of the universe. 



The gradual elevation of the "spirits" of animism or poly- 

 dsemonism to the more personified and elevated rank of gods 

 seems often to have taken place separately amongst distinct 

 nationalities and to varying degree. So far as written or 

 carved records carry us, the prehomeric Iranians and Aryans 

 had strong animistic hereditary beliefs, but already by 4000 

 B. C. had proenvironed a series of earthly and of celestial 

 gods. Similarly the Egyptians and Babylonians of 4000 to 

 3000 B. C. had their natural pantheons. The passage of 

 merchants, of sacred men, of armies, and of adventurous navies 

 westward and eastward would spread such worships or re- 

 ligious faiths to considerable degree. It is by no means im- 



