RELIGION AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 23 



God-fearing armies, as Carlyle tells us, are the best armies. So, 

 as Bagehot has pointed out, those kinds of morals and that kind of 

 religion which tend to make the firmest and most effectual character 

 are sure to prevail, all else being the same ; and creeds or systems that 

 conduce to a soft, limp mind tend to perish. Strong beliefs win strong 

 men, and then make them stronger. Such is, no doubt, another cause 

 why monotheism tends to prevail over polytheism. It at once attracts 

 and produces steadier character. It is not confused by competing 

 rites nor distracted by miscellaneous duties. 



As in man, at the outset, the moral and spiritual faculties lie mostly 

 latent, overshadowed by his animal wants and passions, so the gods, 

 in whose image he fashions at first the dimly discerned divine, are be- 

 ings of physical power and sensuous nature, personifications of giant 

 strength, imperative will, terrible passions, dangerous to arouse — a 

 wanton Mylitta, a thievish Hermes, an implacable Pluto, the Moloch 

 only to be propitiated by giving him the best-beloved child to de- 

 vour in his sacred flame ; or a burly Thor, whose hammer-blows rive 

 huge valleys in the ground, to whom any deceit by which he may over- 

 come his foes is entirely allowable. 



From this low nature range, where morality is not yet known, the 

 conceptions of the gods move up to the philosophic level, and from 

 that to the ethical range. The Hindoo Rita, at first simply the fixed 

 path of the sun or other heavenly bodies, became, as the next step, 

 generalized in law or order in the abstract ; and then was exalted 

 into the celestial path of rectitude and peace, the eternal power mak- 

 ing for righteousness. Osiris, at first the setting sun, becomes next 

 the mysterious principle of life and harmony ; then, the great judge 

 of men's conduct, the source of good. 



All nature-religions, derived as they are from the physical world 

 and its processes, and originating in the infancy of civilization, are 

 ethically imperfect. They are not immoral^ so much as innocent of 

 those distinctions, modesties, and virtues, to which so much regard is 

 later given. But, just because of this, many incidents of their sacred 

 histories come in time to seem impure and revolting. While Zeus 

 was clearly recognized as the sky that fertilizes the earth and quickens 

 nature, the myths of his manifold amours — how, in swan-garb of 

 feathery cirrhus, he approaches and overshadows Leda ; how in a 

 shower of golden, sunlight rain he impregnates Danae, the imprisoned 

 earth of frosty spring — all these would be intelligible and inoffensive. 

 But when Zeus became the supreme ruler of earth and heaven, the all- 

 holy law-giver, then men could not but soon find these narratives 

 shocking to their moral sense. We do not easily bear the thought 

 that the objects of our worship should be inferior in any respect to 

 ourselves. When this is felt, then the worship must be radically re- 

 formed, or it falls before some faith of purer type. 



All the great universal religions — Buddhism, Christianity, and 



