syllables and sounds.

If then it is on the wings of adoration that the soul has at all times
striven to rise to heaven to find its God, even though it flutters but
a little height and soon falls again to the ground, then we must admit
that from the beginning there has been a mystical element, or a
tendency to mysticism, in religion. In the lowest, and probably in the
earliest, stages of the evolution of religion, this tendency is most
manifest in individual members of the community, who are subject to
'possession,' ecstasy, trance and visions, and are believed, both by
themselves and others, to be in especial communion with their god.
This is the earliest manifestation of the fact that religion, besides
being a social act and a matter in which the community is concerned,
is also one which may profoundly affect the individual soul. But in
these cases it is the exceptional soul which is alone affected--the
seer of visions, the prophet. And it is not necessarily in connection
with the ordinary worship, or customary sacrifice, that such instances
of mystic communion with the gods are manifested. For the development
of the mystical tendency of worship and sacrifice, we must look, not
to the lowest, or to the earliest, stages of religious evolution, but
to a later stage in the evolution of the sacrificial meal. It is
where, as in ancient Mexico, the plant, or animal, which furnishes
forth the sacrificial meal, is in some way regarded as, or identified
with, the body of the deity worshipped, that the rite of sacrifice is
tinged with mysticism and that all partakers of the meal, and not some
exceptional individuals, are felt to be brought into some mystic
communion with the god whom they adore.

In these cases, adoration is worship; and worship is adoration--and
little more. Judging them by their fruits, we cannot say that the
Mexican rites, or even the Greek mysteries, encourage us to believe
that adoration is all that is required to make worship what the heart
of man divines that it should be. Doubtless, this is due in part to
the fact that the idea of God was so imperfectly disclosed to the
polytheists of Mexico and Greece. Let us not therefore use Greece and
Mexico as examples for the disparagement of mysticism or for the
depreciation of man's tendency to seek communion with the Highest. Let
us rather appeal at once to the reason which makes mysticism, of
itself, inadequate to satisfy all the needs of man. The reason sim