Principles of western civilisation

160 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

Through all the systems of religious belief included in this lower category there runs also a feature which is characteristic. It is that the great object of the religion is held by its adherents to be that of obtaining material advantage in the present time for those observing its rites and ceremonies. It is around the material interests of the existing individuals in the present time that the whole cultus of the religion tends to centre. The characteristic and consistent feature of all the systems included in this category is, in short, that the controlling aims of the religious consciousness are in the present time.

The profound significance of the transition which is indicated in the development from the lower to the higher of these two categories of religious belief, is evidently closely related to that of the law of the two great eras of social evolution, referred to in the last chapter; in the first of which we see the individual being subordinated simply to the existing social organisation, and in the second of which we see society itself being subordinated to a meaning which transcends the content of all its existing interests.

Now when we look closely at the religious systems of the Greek and Roman worlds two facts are apparent. In the first place, it is immediately perceived that these systems belong to the category in which the religious consciousness is related to ends which express themselves, for the most part, in the present time. In the second place, it may be perceived on examination that the governing idea of the systems—to which all other ideas stand in subordinate relationship—is that of an exclusive religious fellowship, in which all the members of the