726 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



commendable principles must have characterized it, and those 

 must have been combined into one great proenvironal response 

 that constituted a satisfied spiritic response, the monotheistic 

 religion. Such was clearly the case. 



In looking to the Sun as a magnificent central and personi- 

 fied power and deity, in observing the wide influence it had 

 on nature, and not least on man; in rearing altars and still 

 later gorgeous temples for sun worship; man still felt that 

 many mental and moral processes of his own and of his neigh- 

 bor's being, that many natural events of an arresting kind, 

 that many movements even of the stars seemed outside the 

 power and influence of the sun-deity. Particularly in this 

 connection one should note, as appealing very nearly and 

 sympathetically to man, the apparently opposite and even 

 conflicting relations of good and evil, of love and of hatred, 

 of chaste and of sensual behavior, of cherishing life and of 

 destroying it, of aspirations after highest living and of grovel- 

 lings amid ways that were felt to be degrading. 



These are the principles which, alike in the Zend Avesta 

 of Zarathushtra, in Plato's writings, and in the Old Testament 

 scriptures, are constantly emphasized. So, putting all of these 

 and many other mental impressions or stimuli together, man 

 evolved a proenvironal resultant that led him to set before 

 himself one great and infinite Power and Majesty who ruled 

 the universe. But he was often opposed and thwarted by 

 the '* Wicked One" who, however, had early been vanquished, 

 but who still often wrought evil in the world, and not least in 

 the hearts of men. 



How far such evil influences gradually came to be personi- 

 fied by the Moon, and the associated "powers of darkness" 

 in the monotheism of Zarathushtra, and how far therefore 

 the moon — formerly worshij^ed as a revered celestial spirit 

 — became "cast down from heaven," and personified as Ahri- 

 man in his theology, we do not propose to consider now. But, 

 with our increasing knowledge of Iranian and Aryan theology, 

 such a view has much in its favor. To this we may return 

 in another work. 



