me
time, a disposition to concentrate worship on a single god (probably a
sky-god), who became the chief tribal deity and was naturally regarded
as the source of all things good, the Good Spirit; the phenomena of life
led them (as it led some other early peoples) to conceive of a rival
spirit, the author of things hostile to life. With economic conditions
and intellectual characteristics very different from those of their
Hindu brethren, they developed no capacity for organizing an elaborate
pantheon--they were practically monolatrous, were content with an
all-sufficient Good Spirit (the Bad Spirit being tolerated as an
intellectual necessity), gradually subordinated to him such gods as the
popular feeling retained, and relegated to the sphere of evil the host
of inferior hurtful spirits or gods (_daevas_) whose existence they
could not deny.[1292] The religious leaders, representing and enforcing
the tribal tendency of thought, in the course of time gave more and more
definite shape to the cult; perhaps Zoroaster was a preeminent agent in
this movement. Ethical purification, as a matter of course, went hand in
hand with cultic organization. The old gods or spirits, associates of
the supreme god, became embodiments of moral conceptions, and a ritual
of physical and moral purity was worked out. Such may have been the
general history of the official system; data for a detailed
chronological history are lacking.[1293]

+746+. _China._ Chinese religion is characterized by a remarkable
restraint in ecclesiastical development: simple religious customs, no
native priestly order, few gods, almost no myths. The basis of the
popular religion is the usual material, comprising ancestors, spirits
(including tutelary spirits), a few departmental gods (of war, of the
kitchen, etc.), some of which are said to be deified men. The system is
thus nearly the same as that of the central Asiatic Mongolians.[1294]

+747+. The reflective movement (which must have begun long before the
sixth century B.C., the period of Confucius and Lao-tsze) is marked by
the attempt to perfect the social organization, regard being paid mainly
to visible, practical relations. Stress is laid on the principle of
order in family and state, which is held to reflect the order of the
universe;[1295] speculation is avoided, there is a minimum of religion.
In the more developed religious system the two prominent features are,
first, the dominant conception of the unit