Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning | Page 6

to rudimentary observation, and so to belief in Magic;
thence to Animism and personification of nature-powers in more or less
human form, as earth-divinities or sky-gods or embodiments of the
tribe; and to placation of these powers by rites like Sacrifice and the
Eucharist, which in their turn became the foundation of Morality.
Graphic representations made for the encouragement of fertility--as on
the walls of Bushmen's rock-dwellings or the ceilings of the caverns of
Altamira-- became the nurse of pictorial Art; observations of plants or
of the weather or the stars, carried on by tribal medicine-men for
purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied some of the material of
Science; and humanity emerged by faltering and hesitating steps on the
borderland of those finer perceptions and reasonings which are
supposed to be characteristic of Civilization.
The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies has in its
main outlines been the same all over the world, as the reader will
presently see--and this whether in connection with the numerous creeds
of Paganism or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now the
continuity and close intermixture of these great streams can no longer
be denied--nor IS it indeed denied by those who have really studied the
subject. It is seen that religious evolution through the ages has been
practically One thing--that there has been in fact a World- religion,

though with various phases and branches.
And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account
for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases of
evolution, and its own spontaneous[1] growths in all corners of the
globe--this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the
hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which
has drawn out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled
them in sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history
with such horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has
been the instigating cause of it?
[1] For the question of spontaneity see chap. x and elsewhere.
The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to
some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is that
the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of,
the growth of human Consciousness itself--its growth, namely, through
the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of the
simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and (3)
that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been
effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here
and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the early
religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of the later
civilizations. Though I do not expect or wish to catch Nature and
History in the careful net of a phrase, yet I think that in the sequence
from the above-mentioned first stage to the second, and then again in
the sequence from the second to the third, there will be found a helpful
explanation of the rites and aspirations of human religion. It is this idea,
illustrated by details of ceremonial and so forth, which forms the main
thesis of the present book. In this sequence of growth, Christianity
enters as an episode, but no more than an episode. It does not amount to
a disruption or dislocation of evolution. If it did, or if it stood as an
unique or unclassifiable phenomenon (as some of its votaries contend),
this would seem to be a misfortune--as it would obviously rob us of at
any rate one promise of progress in the future. And the promise of
something better than Paganism and better than Christianity is very
precious. It is surely time that it should be fulfilled.
The tracing, therefore, of the part that human self- consciousness has
played, psychologically, in the evolution of religion, runs like a thread

through the following chapters, and seeks illustration in a variety of
details. The idea has been repeated under different aspects; sometimes,
possibly, it has been repeated too often; but different aspects in such a
case do help, as in a stereoscope, to give solidity to the thing seen.
Though the worship of Sun-gods and divine figures in the sky came
comparatively late in religious evolution, 1 have put this subject early
in the book (chapters ii and iii), partly because (as I have already
explained) it was the phase first studied in modern times, and therefore
is the one most familiar to present- day readers, and partly because its
astronomical data give great definiteness and "proveability" to it, in
rebuttal to the common accusation that the whole study of religious
origins is too vague and uncertain to have much value.