rs, and of a finely simple system of ethical
rules for man's ordinary social intercourse. That Nature-worship closely
resembles what the Deuteronomic reform fought so fiercely in Israel; and
the immemorial antiquity and still vigorous life of such a worship in
China indicates impressively how little such Nature-worship tends, of
itself, to its own supersession by a definite Theism. And the Ethical
Rules, and their very large observance, illustrate well how real can be
the existence, and the goodness in its own kind, of Natural, This-World
morality, even where it stands all but entirely unpenetrated or
supplemented by any clear and strong supernatural attraction or
conviction.

Buddhism, in its original form, consisted neither in the Wheel of
Reincarnation alone, nor in _Nirvana_ alone, but precisely in the
combination of the two; for that ceaseless flux of reincarnation was
there felt with such horror, that the _Nirvana_--the condition in which
that flux is abolished--was hailed as a blessed release. The judgement
as to the facts--that all human experience is of sheer, boundless
change--was doubtless excessive; but the value-judgement--that if life
be such pure shiftingness, then the cessation of life is the one end for
man to work and pray for--was assuredly the authentic cry of the human
soul when fully normal and awake. This position thus strikingly confirms
the whole Jewish and Christian persistent search for permanence in
change--for a Simultaneity, the support of our succession.

And Mohammedanism, both in its striking achievements and in its marked
limitations, indeed also in the presentations of it by its own
spokesmen, appears as a religion primarily not of a special pervasive
spirit and of large, variously applicable maxims, but as one of precise,
entirely immutable rules. Thus we find here something not all unlike,
but mostly still more rigid than, the post-Exilic Jewish
religion--something doubtless useful for certain times and races, but
which could not expand and adapt itself to indefinite varieties of
growths and peoples without losing that interior unity and self-identity
so essential to all living and powerful religion.

III

Let us now attempt, in a somewhat loose and elastic order, a short
allocation and estimate of the facts in past and present religion which
mainly concern the question of Religion and Progress.

We West Europeans have apparently again reached the fruitful stage when
man is n