Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/43

 still elements in the preservation of the social structure, they ceased to be engines of progress. Their work was done.

They were salving the old virtues which had made the race the great society that it had been, and were not straining forward towards the new virtues to make the common life the City of God that it should be. They were religions of the average, and the average is at war with the ideal.

Human thought had broken through the limited horizon of the one social structure. The world as a whole entered into the explicit consciousness. The facility for individual wandering in comparative safety produced this enlargement of thought. A tribe which is wandering as a unit amid dangers may pick up new ideas, but it will strengthen its sense of tribal unity in the face of a hostile environment,

But an individual who travels meets strangers on terms of kindliness. He returns home, and in his person and by his example pro-