and restores errant individuals through the Sacrifice of the
hero and the Forgiveness of their sins; and we have the belief in a
bodily Resurrection and continued life of the members within the fold of
the Church (or Tribe), itself regarded as eternal.

One has only, instead of the word 'Jesus,' to read Dionysus or Krishna
or Hercules or Osiris or Attis, and instead of 'Mary' to insert Semele
or Devaki or Alcmene or Neith or Nana, and for Pontius Pilate to use the
name of any terrestrial tyrant who comes into the corresponding story,
and lo! the creed fits in all particulars into the rites and worship of
a pagan god. I need not enlarge upon a thesis which is self-evident
from all that has gone before. I do not say, of course, that ALL
the religious beliefs of Paganism are included and summarized in our
Apostles' Creed, for--as I shall have occasion to note in the next
chapter--I think some very important religious elements are there
OMITTED; but I do think that all the beliefs which ARE summarized in the
said creed had already been fully represented and elaborately expressed
in the non-Christian religions and rituals of Paganism.

Further (2) I think we may safely say that there is no certain proof
that the body of beliefs just mentioned sprang from any one particular
centre far back and radiated thence by dissemination and mental
contagion over the rest of the world; but the evidence rather shows that
these beliefs were, for the most part, the SPONTANEOUS outgrowths
(in various localities) of the human mind at certain stages of its
evolution; that they appeared, in the different races and peoples, at
different periods according to the degree of evolution, and were largely
independent of intercourse and contagion, though of course, in cases,
considerably influenced by it; and that one great and all-important
occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the RISE OF
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS--that is, the coming of the mind to a more or
less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and
the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of the
Self-centred attitude in human thought and action.

In the third place (3) I think we may see--and this is the special
subject of the present chapter--that at a very early period, when
humanity was hardly capable of systematic expression in what we call
Philosophy or Science, it could not well rise to an ordered and literary
expression of its beliefs, such