ars, carried on by tribal medicine-men for
purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied some of the material of
Science; and humanity emerged by faltering and hesitating steps on the
borderland of those finer perceptions and reasonings which are supposed
to be characteristic of Civilization.

The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies has in
its main outlines been the same all over the world, as the reader will
presently see--and this whether in connection with the numerous creeds
of Paganism or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now the
continuity and close intermixture of these great streams can no longer
be denied--nor IS it indeed denied by those who have really studied the
subject. It is seen that religious evolution through the ages has been
practically One thing--that there has been in fact a World-religion,
though with various phases and branches.

And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account
for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases
of evolution, and its own spontaneous (1) growths in all corners of the
globe--this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts
of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn
out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled them in
sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history with such
horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has been the
instigating cause of it?

(1) For the question of spontaneity see chap. x and elsewhere.

The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to
some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is
that the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of,
the growth of human Consciousness itself--its growth, namely, through
the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of
the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and
(3) that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been
effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here
and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the
early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of
the later civilizations. Though I do not expect or wish to catch Nature
and History in the careful net of a phrase, yet I think that in the
sequence from the above-mentioned first stage to the se