the _perfected individual_; the second the
idea of the _perfected commonwealth_; the third, that of _personal
survival_. These have been the formative ideas (_Ideen der Gestaltung_)
in the prayers, myths, rites and religious institutions of many nations
at widely separated times.

Of the two first mentioned it may be said that every extended faith has
accepted them to some degree. They are the secret of the alliances of
religion with art, with government, with ethics, with science, education
and sentiment.

These alliances have often been taken by historians to contain the vital
elements of religion itself, and many explanations based on one or
another assumption of the kind have been proffered. Religion, while it
may embrace any of them, is independent of them all. Its relations to
them have been transitory, and the more so as their aims have been
local and material. The brief duration of the subjection of religion to
such incongenial ties was well compared by Lord Herbert of Cherbury to
the early maturity of brutes, who attain their full growth in a year or
two, while man needs a quarter of a century.[239-1] The inferior aims of
the religious sentiment were discarded one after another to make way for
higher ones, which were slowly dawning upon it. In this progress it was
guided largely by the three ideas I have mentioned, which have been in
many forms leading stimuli of the religious thought of the race.

First, of the _idea of the perfected individual_.

Many writers have supposed that the contemplation of Power in nature
first stirred religious thought in man. Though this is not the view
taken in this book, no one will question that the leading trait in the
gods of barbarism is physical strength. The naive anthropomorphism of
the savage makes his a god of a mighty arm, a giant in stature, puissant
and terrible. He hurls the thunderbolt, and piles up the mountains in
sport. His name is often The Strong One, as in the Allah, Eloah of the
Semitic tongues. Hercules, Chon, Melkarth, Dorsanes, Thor and others
were of the most ancient divinities in Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia,
India, and Scandinavia, and were all embodiments of physical force.
Such, too, was largely the character of the Algonkin Messou, who
scooped out the great lakes with his hands and tore up the largest trees
by the roots. The huge boulders from the glacial epoch which are
scattered over their country are the pebbles he tossed in play or in
anger. The