ecognition of attitude. Religions manage somehow to survive any
amount of transformation of creed and ritual. It is not what is done, or
what is thought, that identifies the faith of the first Christians with
that of the last, but a certain reckoning with the disposition of God.
The successive generations of Christians are introduced into the
spiritual world of their fathers, with its furnishing of hopes and fears
remaining substantially the same; and their Christianity consists in
their continuing to live in it with only a slight and gradual
renovation. To any given individual God is more or less completely
represented by his elders in the faith in their exhortations and
ministerings; and through them he fixes as the centre of his system an
image of God his accuser or redeemer.

[Sidenote: Historical Types of Religion. Primitive Religions.]

Sect. 25. The complete verification of this interpretation of the
religious experience would require the application of it to the
different historical cults. In general the examination of such instances
is entirely beyond the scope of this chapter; but a brief consideration
may be given to those which seem to afford reasonable grounds for
objection.

First, it may be said that in _primitive religions_, notably in
fetichism, tabooism, and totemism, there is no recognition of a cosmical
unity. It is quite evident that there is no conception of a universe.
But it is equally evident that the natural and historical environment in
its generality has a very specific practical significance for the
primitive believer. It is often said with truth that these earliest
religions are more profoundly pantheistic than polytheistic. Man
recognizes an all-pervading interest that is capable of being directed
to himself. The selection of a deity is not due to any special
qualification for deification possessed by the individual object itself,
but to the tacit presumption that, as Thales said, "all things are full
of gods." The disposition of residual reality manifests to the believer
no consistency or unity, but it is nevertheless the most constant object
of his will. He lives in the midst of a capriciousness which he must
appease if he is to establish himself at all.

[Sidenote: Buddhism.]

Sect. 26. Secondly, in the case of _Buddhism_ we are said to meet with a
religion that is essentially atheistic.

"Whether Buddhas arise, O priests, or whether Buddhas do not
arise, it remains a f