318 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



In Persia, in India, and on the shores of the Medi- 

 terranean, we may see these preeminent agencies 

 slowly emerging from the mists of ancient thought, 

 each taking a form and sovereignty somewhat apart, 

 and each reigning over all the minor agencies of a sim- 

 ilar kind under a broadly significant term, or title. 



Thus in Persia, in the religion of Zoroaster, the 

 dominant thought is the universal conflict of construc- 

 tive and destructive forces, of good and evil, of Ahri- 

 met and Ormazd. In Hinduism, the great mother re- 

 ligion of the East, there is Brahma the creator, 

 Vishnu the Preserver, and Siva the destroyer. And in 

 the Christian religion, the thought is focussed more 

 and more clearly on Jehovah, the one God, who is the 

 creator of all things and the source of all that is good; 

 on one supreme devil, or Satan, the destroyer and the 

 source of all that is evil; and on Christ, the saviour 

 of the world. 



This reducing and embracing tendency in the 

 cleavage of religious thought is the same phenomenon 

 we see so clearly in the development of science and 

 philosophy, where, under the increasing compulsion 

 of larger experience and broader intelligence, man 

 sees more and more clearly the fundamental unity of 

 the universe, and absolutely refuses to subdivide his 

 concepts of nature, where no division in nature exists. 



But religion could reach this more advanced stage 

 more quickly than science, because she was primarily 

 concerned with the larger, more comprehensive neces- 

 sities of life. She was temperamentally incapable of 

 seeing the multitudes of confusing details in the physi- 

 cal and organic world immediately about her; with 

 them she was not concerned, and by them the course 



