EVOLUTION AND THE HIGHER HUM.VN LIFE 295 



trast with the behefs of savagery brings out clearly the 

 nature of progressive development. Here religious 

 thought is no longer esoteric, confined to a chosen sect 

 like the Levites among the Hebrews or the shaman and 

 medicine-man among the American Indians ; nor is 

 religious observance restricted to the innermost shrine 

 of the tabernacle or sacred dwelling, accessible to few or 

 only one. It comes to be regarded as something in 

 which each and every individual can participate, and 

 a personal possession that has a direct part in determin- 

 ing all forms of hiunan life and action. This is another 

 way of saying that the more highly evolved religions 

 owe their character to the greatly varied and abundant 

 intellectual elements which are built into them. And 

 this is why religion in the highest form, more clearly than 

 in the lowest forms, is to be spoken of as an outlook upon 

 the world which is determined by the total intellectual 

 equipment of the individual man who thinks about the 

 universe and directs his course of action by what he finds. 



We come now to a closer concrete study of the basic 

 elements of religion ; that is, of those beliefs that are in- 

 variably present, in one form or another, in every system 

 of piety and worship, and that constitute the innermost 

 framework beneath the secondary creeds added to 

 them. Following Mallock and others, we may dis- 

 tinguish three such elemental conceptions. These are, 

 first, the belief in the existence of a supernatural being 

 or beings, endowed with intelligence like. l)Ut superior to, 

 our own; second, the idea of human responsibility to 

 this or these powers ; and, third, the belief in immortahty 



