general tone and coloring of
worship arise from economic and cultural differences, and are as
numerous as the tribes of men; the unity of cults is a result of the
psychological unity of the human race--the religious needs of men in all
stages of culture are the same; there is nothing in the highest
religious systems that is not found in germ in the lowest.

+944+. The earliest expression of religious feeling, as is pointed out
above,[1729] is in the form of ceremonies. But ceremonies tend to group
themselves round the persons of divine beings. Gods, as the controllers
of human fortunes here and hereafter, naturally become the centers of
religious thought. Their characters and functions reflect the ideals of
their worshipers, and all ritualistic and other usages and all doctrines
concerning the relations between gods and men and, in general, all ideas
concerning the physical and moral constitution of the world attach
themselves perforce to the divine embodiments of these ideals. Thus, in
one sense, the history of the gods is the history of religion. From the
earliest times up to the present the efforts of men have been directed
toward defining the divine Powers that have been supposed to stand
behind all phenomena. The problem of harmonizing diverse divine
activities has always been a serious one, and its solution has been
sought in various ways. Gods have been locally limited, every one to his
own human tribe, district, or nation; or, when they dwell together and
their spheres of influence are larger, they have been given free scope
of action, and the resulting contradictions in human affairs have been
accepted as a part of the mysterious nature of things; or order has been
sought in simplification--headship has been ascribed to some one deity,
and the relation between him and the subordinate divinities has been
somehow explained or has been left unexplained. The process of
simplification has gone steadily on with the result that the great
religious systems of the world fall into groups distinguished from one
another by their conceptions of the divine government of the world,
whether as pluralistic or as unitary. The development of these different
conceptions may be traced here in outline, though the absence of exact
data and the variety and complexity of the formative influences
(economic, philosophical, political, and other) necessarily make it
difficult or impossible to account satisfactorily for all details. The
gro