History of Religious Evolution 727 



Now this position, essentially anthropomorphic on first 

 view, represents nevertheless a great scientific truth clothed 

 in a spiritic guise, and one also that has stimulated man for 

 millennia to highest effort. For, scientifically, man had thus 

 reached the view, after long struggle and much observation 

 of himself, his neighbor, the world, and the universe, that 

 there is one great Power or Energy ever working throughout 

 the universe and producing beneficent results that appear 

 on every side. These beneficent results are ever conducing 

 to high and still higher effort, in other words, to evolutionary 

 advance and synthesis, that become in time results of greater 

 beneficence. 



But, wherever this beneficent Energy or Spiritic Power was 

 not fostered, advanced, and added to, there disintegrating 

 and degrading results followed, which in their action puzzled 

 the early monotheists, and so caused them to place all such 

 under the infiuence of "a power for evil," vaguely proenvironed 

 by man as a semi-anthropomorphic being. 



So Ormazd of Zoroastrian worship and Yahweh of the He- 

 brew scriptures. Re as the semi-heliotheistic, semi-monotheistic 

 deity of Amenophis IV in Egypt, and Prajapati of brahmanical 

 literature, are all great national embodiments of the mono- 

 theistic position and attitude reached by man, namely, that 

 one great pervading Power, Energy, and Principle reaches 

 forth through space, and is recorded and exhibited in every 

 object there. With the lapse of centuries and millennia the 

 evil principle or energy, Ahriman, Satan, or by whatever name 

 called, gradually assumed a minor importance, though it still 

 lingers in current theology. 



Ormazd, Yahweh, God, the Lord, represent then the long- 

 drawn effort made by man to unravel the multitude of ques- 

 tions presented by his own existence, as well as his relation 

 to his neighbor, to his immediate environment, to the world, 

 and to the universe. This effort was put forth as a result of 

 his constantly combining the various stimuli or sensory im- 

 pressions, received from every side, into greater or compounded 

 stimuli that were cumulated again into one resultant mental 



