t an earlier or cruder phase may continue to exist
alongside of a later and higher one. There is first the time when
science based on a recognition of natural laws does not exist. The
existing science is then one of imagination, the fanciful application of
crude observations to the explanation of all phenomena. The _verae
causae_ are supernatural agencies--science and religion are one.
Explanations of phenomena take the form of what we call myths, what the
people of the time regard as true histories. There is no place for the
conception of miracle; the supernatural agents are all-powerful, one
thing is no harder than another, nothing is strange or inexplicable.
There is a crude conception of the unity of God and the world.

+1157+. The period of the rise and decline of the great national
religions and the rise of monotheistic cults (along with which may be
included Confucianism and Buddhism) is characterized by a great
development of philosophy (in China, India, and Greece) and a beginning
of scientific research properly so called (especially in astronomy,
physics, medicine, and chemistry, in Greece and by the Moslems of
Persia). There is a revolt against the older conception of unity.
Deities are highly personalized, stand outside of the world, and
intervene in human affairs at crises. It is the age of
miracles--supernatural Powers, by reason of their intimate social
relations with their respective communities, are expected to come to
their aid in all important matters, and, for most persons, there is no
difficulty in holding that they are able to change the course of nature,
which is not regarded as being absolutely fixed. In certain
philosophical circles, however, this view is rejected, and nature, with
its laws, is conceived of as a separate and independent existence,
accompanied or not by gods. Science begins to define the nature of
deities, and to limit the sphere of their practical activities--this is
a precursor of the fall of the old divinities. The old myths are
retained, but they are purified, humanized, and allegorized, and in some
cases applied, to new persons and events, according to changes in
religious construction.

+1158+. The next phase is the recognition by science of the absolute
domination of natural law in the world of phenomena. Religion, when it
accepts this view, holds fast to the belief in the ultimate personal
moral Force, and conceives of this Force as working and expressing and
manifestin