THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
Chapter 1.
We had at the time of early Roman society a political life of a highly developed type, which had run through a long course of evolution and which subsequently degenerated. At the same time we also had an established literature based upon that of Ancient Greece and implying a good deal of philosophy and of intellectual freedom. Side by side with all this, there also existed in the Western world, a religious atmosphere in which the grossest and most primitive of savage conceptions and usages thrived in a neighbourhood of a cool and detached scepticism.
Looked back on today it is hard to realize that a people's experience can be so uneven, and that development and retardation can exist at once to so remarkable a degree in the mind of a nation.
Perhaps the explanation is that we judge peoples and ages too much by their literature, and by their literature only after it has survived the test of centuries.
In all immortal literature there is a common note; it deals with the deathless and the vital; and superstition, though long enough and tenacious enough of life, is outlived and outgrown by the power of mans creative instincts. And yet despite this impetus: there is a tendency in certain sections of each generation of men to be less wishful to think and less capable of thought.
Invariably, what might be termed "religion" in the broadest sense begins in magic, with rites and symbols that belong to the crudest of Nature-worship; e.g to agriculture, for instance, and this gradually develops or absorbs higher ideas, till it may reach the unity of the concept of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul.
The critical point is reached though where the ultimate question is, will it cut itself clear of its past? Thus we see that the early religions based upon the beliefs of Cybele and Isis that this was never achieved. It sprung up, flourished for a time, and when its course had been run, it withered, leaving a void of unanswered spiritual needs.