ssary to expand
the foregoing list, because the examples sufficiently represent the
various grades of human religions. Regarding them as typical, we can see
how universal are the three fundamental ideas with which we are concerned.
Every race has its own conception of future bliss, as well as its
conception of responsibility to the immortal and supernatural powers of
the universe. Whatever may be the actual reality, and however closely the
conceptions of one or another religion may approximate to the truth, such
reality and approximation are not the subjects of the present discussion.
Nor is it our purpose to bring out more explicitly the genetic
relationship of one religion to another; the evolution of Buddhism from
Brahmanism, the origin of Christianity from Judaism, and the divergent
development of the several creeds of Christendom amply illustrate the
nature of religious history. It is evolution here as elsewhere and
everywhere.

* * * * *

Having distinguished the three general elements of all religions, beyond
which everything else is of minor importance, we now turn to the question
as to the _natural_ origin of these elements. Clearly they cannot arise
independently, for the belief in supernatural and eternal spirits is
closely connected with the conception of an immortal soul.

The first is the conception of infinite personalities that later become
more or less merged into one supreme being. This begins with the idea of
the soul as the human ego, conventionally regarded as something
independent of the material body during life and immortal after death. The
savage goes to sleep, and in his dreams he goes upon journeys and battles
strenuously with other men and with beasts, only to find when he awakes
that his body is not fatigued, and that it has not really taken part in
the activities of his dream life. His companions about the fire also tell
him that this is so, while he is equally sure that his essential self has
been doing many things during the interval of sleep. In his dream life he
finds himself joined by others whom he knows are dead. He sees again even
those whose bodies he may have assisted in eating. His total world very
soon comes to have an unseen region which is the abode of ordinarily
invisible beings having the forms of men, with whom his own dream person
can associate; this unseen sphere is furnished also with ghostly
counterparts of the trees and rocks and waters