the most philosophical concept of all, Brahma.

The second fundamental belief, namely, in immortality, owes its origin in
greatest measure to the psychological processes described above. Another
potent factor, however, has been the natural desire to continue existence
hereafter, usually in order to reap rewards not bestowed here. This desire
is implanted by nature through the operation of purely biological factors,
and it has the value of an organic instinct. To specify more particularly,
nature has placed every organic individual under the necessity of doing
its utmost to prolong its own life in the interests of itself, of others
of its tribe, and of its species. Extinction is not faced willingly by a
human being endowed with full consciousness any more than it is passively
tolerated by a lower animal which instinctively struggles with its foes
until death. So the desire to continue alive--the "will to live"--is a
natural instinct, which combines with the belief in persistent disembodied
spirits and, no doubt, with many other elements, to develop the basic
conception of some kind of an immortal existence.

The third element, human responsibility to the infinite personality, is
variously recorded in lower and higher religions. Its conception grows
partly out of the feelings of awe and terror inspired by great works of
nature such as the thunder-storm, the cyclone, and the volcano, while the
orderly and regular workings of even everyday nature seem to demonstrate
the direct control of the powers who rule man as well. The savage sees his
crops destroyed by a tempest or drought; he attributes the disaster to the
particular powers concerned with such things whom he must have angered
unwittingly, and whom he must propitiate by sacrifice or penitence. His
individual and tribal acts do not always accomplish the desired ends, and
again the laws of infinite and ultimate powers must have been contravened,
as he interprets the situation. Therefore his whole religious
consciousness was exerted in the direction of finding out what was the
ultimate constitution of nature, with which human activities must
harmonize if they are to be successful. Bound by custom and convention and
biological law, he looks about wonderingly to find the external authority
for his bonds. To his mind this authority must be the host of spirits and
gods who had made him and the things of his world. It is in this way that
so many ethical elements have found pl