718 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



So when the Romans, like the Greeks and many other na- 

 tions, erected temples round their altars, and personified in 

 material — usually human — form the deity for which that altar 

 stood, they dragged down the high proenvironal ideal that 

 their ancestors had built up, to a material and individualized 

 human basis. This it is which explains the steady decline 

 and often extinction of polytheistic religions, and even of their 

 worshipers, alike in the past and present. When the high 

 and noble ideal has gone, the individual and the nation decay. 



This explains why the followers of Zarathushtra and of 

 Moses constantly prohibited the making of images, and as 

 constantly directed their coreligionists to an immaterial and 

 spiritic outlook, rather than to "temples made with hands." 



The climax of polytheism in the world's history then was 

 reached 4000 to 1700 years ago, when the numerous and mag- 

 nificent altars, temples, costly figures, and priestly service 

 of Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Cretan, Greek, and Roman 

 religious life were devoted to a pantheon that often was so 

 numerous, interwoven, and confused in personality and in 

 attributes as to have originated the Athenian dedication "to 

 the unknown god." 



Polytheism then might be defined as "a reverential and 

 reciprocal religious outlook and regard, founded on animistic 

 and other more primitive religious feelings, that led mankind 

 to a realization of the magnitude and variety of mundane and 

 supramundane forces or agencies; and to investing these witli 

 spiritic personalities. He in time often tried to localize and 

 materialize his reverence and regard for these personalities 

 by such substitute representations as fetishes, altars, temples, 

 or images." 



We reach now a phase in religious evolution the beauty, 

 magnificence, and unity of which has been fully realized by 

 some writers. But its supreme importance in leading upward 

 to a still later monotheism, as well as its cultural religious 

 value for man, has been little emphasized. We refer to that 

 stage in religious progress that may be distinguished by the 

 term Heliotheism. 



