732 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



viron a single first Cause, a directive Force, an Energy which 

 he beUeved was steadily working toward the accomplishment 

 of a definite end, in which the perfection of man formed an 

 important and inevitable part of the plan. Law, truth, and 

 justice, often coupled with human sympathy or love, were the 

 leading tenets of all three systems. 



A tendency to recognize an evil or disrupting force or even 

 such an immaterial personality is strongly seen in the Zara- 

 thushtrian belief, is less marked but crops out often in the 

 Hebrew writings, ha\ang probably been derived from an Iranian 

 source, and in Plato's philosophy is attributed rather to in- 

 ferior deistic powers. 



In summing up the monotheistic position it may now be 

 said that in the thousand years between 500 B. C. and 500 

 iV. D. the crucial time had come when the older polytheism — 

 widespread, powerful, encased in armor of rite, ritual, endow- 

 ment, and priestly advocacy — was rapidly going to decay 

 like one of the mailed eurypterids, ganoid fishes, placoid am- 

 phibians, or encased reptiles of earlier times; and when the 

 apparently weak mental or cogitic and the spiritic forces of 

 monotheism were to expand and prevail. 



It becomes then a matter of highest moment to try to follow 

 the fortunes of the decaying religions, and of those which have 

 prevailed, to learn also, if possible, the causes which have weak- 

 ened or blotted out the former, and those which have favored 

 the latter. 



In Greek, Roman, Syrian, Eg^^ptian, and to a degree in 

 Assyrian history of the above period, rules of moral conduct 

 and the submission or conformity of these to higher governing 

 deities or proenvironal ideals of pure character, were wavering 

 and uncertain. Sensuous life became the desired goal of suc- 

 cess amongst these nationalities. To eat, to drink, to bathe 

 in sensuous fashion, to picture and to indulge in sexual ex- 

 cesses were at times permitted, at times even openly prac- 

 tised. 



The foreign victories that each country achieved by the 

 renowned valor of its warriors, were often turned later into 



