THE RECONCILIATION. 119 



them in these shapes. If during this phase, the concrete 

 conceptions were taken from them, and the attempt made to 

 give them comparatively abstract conceptions, the result 

 would be to leave their minds with none at all; since the 

 substituted ones could not be mentally represented. Simi- 

 larly with every successive stage of religious belief, down to 

 the last. Though, as accumulating experiences slowly mo- 

 dify the earliest ideas of causal personalities, there grow up 

 more general and vague ideas of them; yet these cannot be 

 at once replaced by others still more general and vague. 

 Further experiences must supply the needful further ab- 

 stractions, before the mental void left by the destruction of 

 such inferior ideas can be filled by ideas of a superior order. 

 And at the present time, the refusal to abandon a relatively 

 concrete notion for a relatively abstract one, implies the ina- 

 bility to frame the relatively abstract one; and so proves 

 that the change would be premature and injurious. Still 



more clearly shall we see the injuriousness of any such 

 premature change, on observing that the effects of a belief 

 upon conduct must be diminished in proportion as the vivid- 

 ness with which it is realized becomes less. Evils and bene- 

 fits akin to those which the savage has personally felt, or 

 learned from those who have felt them, are the only evils 

 and benefits he can understand; and these must be looked 

 for as coming in ways like those of which he has had ex- 

 perience. His deities must be imagined to have like motives 

 and passions and methods with the beings around him; for 

 motives and passions and methods of a higher character, 

 being unknown to him, and in great measure unthinkable by 

 him, cannot be so realized in thought as to influence his 

 deeds. During every phase of civilization, the actions of 

 the Unseen Keality, as well as the resulting rewards and 

 punishments, being conceivable only in such forms as ex- 

 perience furnishes, to supplant them by higher ones before 

 wider experiences have made higher ones conceivable, is to 

 set up vague and uninfluential motives for definite and in- 



