e evil spirit and
gain the favor of the good. But finally it sought to worship on
account of the sublimity and power possessed by the object of worship.
With the advancement of religious practice, religious beliefs and
religious ceremonies became more complex. Great systems of mythology
sprang up among nations about to enter the precincts of civilization,
and polytheism predominated. Purely ethical religions were of a later
development, for the notion of the will of the gods concerning the
treatment of man by his fellows belongs to an advanced stage of
religious belief. The ethical importance of religion reaches its
culmination in the religion of Jesus Christ.

_Moral Conditions_.--The slow development of altruistic notions
presages a deficiency of moral action in the early stages of human
progress. True it is that moral conditions seem never to be entirely
wanting in this early period. There are many conflicting accounts of
the moral practice of different savage and barbarous tribes when first
discovered by civilized man. Tribes differ much in this respect, and
travellers have seen them from different standpoints. Wherever a
definite moral practice cannot be observed, it may be assumed that the
standard is very low. Moral progress seems to consist in the
constantly shifting standards of right and wrong, of justice and
injustice. Perhaps the moral action of the savage should be viewed
from two standpoints--namely, the position of the average savage of the
tribe, and from the vantage of modern ethical standards. It is only by
considering it from these two views that we have the true estimation of
his moral status. There must be a difference between conventionality
and morality, and many who have judged the moral status of {118} the
savage have done so more from a conventional than from a moral
standard. True that morality must be judged from the individual motive
and from social effects of individual action. Hence it is that the
observance of conventional rules must be a phase of morality; yet it is
not all of morality. Where conventionality does not exist, the motive
of action must be the true moral test.

The actions of some savages and of barbarous people are revolting in
the extreme, and so devoid of sympathy for the sufferings of their
fellow-beings as to lead us to assume that they are entirely without
moral sentiment. The repulsive spectacle of human sacrifice is
frequently brought about by relig