722 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



a people, and that the doctrines of his rehgion were the pro- 

 environal responses made by Rome's leading spirits in their 

 effort to reach highest and most enduring life. The numerous 

 temples dedicated to his service, and not least that at Baalbek, 

 testify to the power and opulence of his worshipers. 



The prominence of, and precedence given to, the sun-god 

 in all Celtic, Germanic, Saxon, and Norse religious advance 

 are well known, while his worship, as indicated in our term 

 Sunday, took precedence over that of all other gods, even 

 though these were regarded as greatly to be venerated. 



It is highly suggestive to find that sun-worship had evi- 

 dently succeeded a more primitive polytheistic worship amongst 

 the Incas of Peru, and that this even did not center round an 

 anthropomorphic conception, but was, so to speak, of an im- 

 material spiritic and supramundane character, at the same 

 time that the spirit-god exercised constant supervision over 

 mundane affairs. 



Finally, in early Chinese history the supreme ruler Yien 

 was recognized centuries before the Christian era, and before 

 the introduction of Buddhism. He was the ruling and yet 

 largely immaterial sky-god or sun-god, in whom highest vir- 

 tues dwelt, and who also animated man to good deeds when 

 prayer or petition was made to him. 



The above evidences strongly favor the view therefore that, 

 when man has advanced to a certain stage of mental or indi- 

 vidual cogitic and of spiritic or social religious development, 

 he reaches a platform of aspiration in which one great Force 

 or Agency is recognized. The sun most nearly personified 

 this Force or Agency to his intellect, even though, as amongst 

 most of the above nationalities, the sun is often regarded more 

 as the token of his presence rather than as the immaterial 

 existence himself. 



Such represents a really sublime and wide-reaching proen- 

 vironal response by man, that was slowly attained by com- 

 bining such cogitic and spiritic stimuli as were presented by 

 the feelings and desires that family, tribe, and nation suc- 

 cessively called forth; by the phenomena and motions of the 



