456 HISTORY OF RELIGION 



which in Adherbeijan can scarcely have appeared until much later, 

 the place of the earliest part of the Avestan literature may yet be 

 found through considerations drawn from the natural history of 

 ideas. 



There is, no doubt, in the evolution of religion, a general upward 

 trend, caused by the growth of man's experience, the expansion of 

 his knowledge, and the education of his sense of expediency. Advance 

 in civilization invariably brings with it more adequate religious 

 conceptions and more rational and profitable expressions of the 

 religious consciousness. There is an unmistakable tendency away 

 from polydemonism and polytheism to monolatry, monotheism, 

 pantheism, and ethical monism, from myth-making to science, from 

 religious sexualism to mysticism, from human and animal sacrifices 

 to spiritual consecration, from magic and sacramentalism to the 

 spontaneous symbolism of art, from a loose to a more and more 

 intimate connection with morality. But the progress is not uniform. 

 The growth is slower in some races and peoples than in others. There 

 is degeneracy or reversion to earlier types. It is important, however, 

 to observe that all apparent reversions to earlier forms of religion 

 are not indications of real retrogression. Sometimes whole systems 

 of thought and practice, having had their day of usefulness, loosen 

 their hold upon the maturing religious consciousness, and there 

 seems to be a return to the simpler forms prevalent before their 

 development, while in reality there is an advance, the contents of the 

 religious consciousness having been immeasurably enriched by the 

 spiritual experience mediated through the very ideas and ceremonies 

 which must at length pass away. 



A fourth fundamental conception is that all differences in religion 

 are due to peculiarities of the physical environment, the psychical de- 

 velopment, and the social conditions. In spite of great distances in 

 space, the absence of any ascertainable historic contact, and the 

 most far-reaching racial differences, there are very marked similari- 

 ties between peoples living in similar natural surroundings, as on the 

 shores of the sea, on vast plains, or in mountain regions. Climate, 

 vegetation, and animal life affect the character of men. The class of 

 natural objects that chiefly attracts man's attention and arouses his 

 religious feeling exercises substantially the same influence every- 

 where upon his ideas and customs. If the religion of the Polynesians 

 resembles in some aspects that of the Greeks, it is because of the 

 similarity of their physical environment. Peoples roaming in the 

 desert do not worship the same gods as those that go down to the sea 

 in ships, and men living in volcanic regions, terrified by eruptions 

 and earthquakes, have a different religious outlook into the future 

 from that of dwellers in a land rarely exposed to violent disturb- 

 ances. The offerings to the gods are determined by the natural pro- 



