History of Religious Evolution 731 



as in moral and mental evolution, the primitive Irano-Aryan 

 race has been the proenvironing and progressive one in history. 



The doctrines of Zarathushtra unquestionably influenced 

 and molded Hebrew thought and action to an extent that 

 has only in recent years been recognized, while to its tenets 

 Greek thought and aspirations were alike indebted. But when 

 it became a state or national religion, and when the royal pro- 

 fessors of it often made it a cloak for superfluous and aggres- 

 sive wars, rather than for the benefit and blessing of humanity, 

 its followers became decimated and are now few and unin- 

 fluential for religious advance. 



But Judaism and Platonism deserve special note also, for 

 these, after absorbing all that was best' from Zoroastrianism 

 and from older religious beliefs, gradually combined the whole 

 into a system of moral and spiritual thought, that became the 

 seed-bed for the next great advance to Patritheism. 



If we inquire then as to the fundamental beliefs common 

 to Zoroastrianism, to Judaism, and to Platonic teaching as 

 revealed in the A vesta, the Old Testament, and in '*The Re- 

 public," we discover that there is constantly proclaimed a 

 unity between man, God, and the laws of the universe, that 

 gave a hallowed, consecrated, and mighty impulse to human 

 life. So, in spite of frequent human weaknesses and errors 

 practised by even its leading followers, all three systems lifted 

 man to newer and more noble conceptions of life than had 

 hitherto obtained. Above all they united in placing the mater- 

 ial or biotic and the sensuous or cognitic phases of man's 

 history in the background, and correspondingly elevated the 

 cogitic and the spiritic. 



If next one ask what the conception was of a Supreme Being 

 in the three systems, no better answer could be given than to 

 cite the simple, direct, but sublime first chapter of Genesis. 

 Even if we place the final composition of it much later than 

 was once claimed, and accept that it had possibly more an 

 Iranian than Judaic strain and origin, the entire picture of 

 cosmological evolution there presented is proof that man had 

 now reached the stage where he could recognize and proen- 



