Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/39

 with a superior race, either personally or by a survival of their literature, a process which requires scores or even hundreds of generations might have been antedated, so as to have been effected almost at once. Such, in fact, was the later history of the development of the races of Northern Europe. Again, a social system which encourages developments of thought can procure the advent. This is the way in which the result was first obtained. Society and language grew together.

The influence of the antecedent type of religion, ceremonial, mythical, and sociable, has been great; and the estimates as to its value diverse. During the thousand years preceding the Christian era, there was a peculiarly intense struggle on the part of rationalism to transform the more primitive type. The issue was a new synthesis which, in the forms of the various great religions, has lasted to the present day. A rational generality was introduced into the religious ideas; and the myth, when retained, was reorganized with