LECTURE VI. DIRECTIONS OF DEVELOPMENT. WE have hitherto studied religion in the various stages of its development. In other words, we have directed attention to the gradations of difference between the various religions, and endeavoured to classify them in accordance with these gradations. This, however, is only a part of our task. There is also a specific difference in development, a difference in kind, which requires to be noted. Such specific differences are observed, not only in the domain of religion, but in that of general human development, in persons, peoples, and families of peoples. As examples of this in the case of persons, men of rare talent, pioneers in science or philosophy, art or letters, equals in rank, yet in widely different walks of life, I need only name Darwin and Pasteur, Plato and Aristotle, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Raphael and Rembrandt, Shakespeare and Goethe, while many other examples will readily occur to every one. Similarly the peoples of Western Europe stand on the same plane of civilisation, but have undergone very different processes of development. So, too, those great families of peoples, or races, as they are usually but not very happily termed, which we call the Aryan and the Semitic, present a striking contrast, yet rank as equals, in virtue of their respective contributions to the general development of mankind, except that the development of one of them took place earlier than that of the other. This will suffice to explain why I distinguish the differences from the stages of religious development. By the term direction I understand a spiritual current which sweeps along a single principle of religion, or some fundamental religious idea, more or less regardless of others, to its extreme consequences. Two religions may stand equally high, though their process of development has been very different. And, conversely, two may occupy very different levels of development and yet agree in character. This is a matter which also requires to be specially studied by the votaries of our science. The causes of this phenomenon are obvious. The differences in question are determined, as, in the case of individuals, by disposition, temperament, and circumstances of life, so in religions, as well as in communities, by nationality, history, vicissitudes, and above all by their origin. All human development is one-sided, and more or less so in accordance with its lower or higher condition, everything human being defective and limited. Thence arise various different conceptions, each perhaps containing a portion of the truth, yet necessarily all incomplete. Now the character of a religion, and therefore also the direction of its development, depend chiefly upon the conception which people form of their god or gods, their conception of what the deity is towards man, and conversely of man's relation to the deity, and of the relation of God, and therefore of godserving man also, towards the world of phenomena. It is not an abstract philosophical conception of God, born of the speculations of a single thinker, but a conception for which one cannot always account, emanating from a state of mind, from an emotional condition, and at length put into shape by thought and by poetical imagination. It is an utterance of feeling through the medium of images and doctrines, and above all of religious observances, by means of which men seek communion with their deity. Such a conception, when once it has become the fundamental and predominating idea of a religion, though not always distinctly expressed, stamps its impress on the whole of the subsequent development. Other religious thoughts, as legitimate, and received into the conception of other religions, now fall into the shade, though not perhaps wholly neglected, and even run the risk of being thrust entirely into the background. And the more this is the case, the earlier the demarcation has been made, so much the more one-sided will be the religious life in such a religion or family of religions, and so much the wider will be the gulf which separates it from others. To these general causes of the differences in religions must be added the particular tendencies or directions. These are mainly of two kinds, corresponding with the folk-religions and the ethical religions respectively. Comparative philology, which had the misfortune to be in fashion for a time and to be practised, not only by qualified men of science but also by superficial amateurs, has of late fallen into disrepute. This was perhaps partly due to its youthful presumption, to the rashness of its supposed results, and its mania for trying to explain everything by itself. But those who have overwhelmed it with unmerited reproach, and would repudiate it altogether, simply incur ridicule, and in their ignorance deprive themselves of an invaluable means of throwing light on the history of human development. And one of the incontestable results of that science, confirmed by ethnography, is that peoples may be classified in groups in accordance with the languages they speak. The study of religions has also led to a similar result. While philology has established the existence of at least two great families of languages, the Aryan or Indo-Germanic and the Semitic, the study of religions has demonstrated that two distinct groups of religions also correspond with these two families. Between the languages, as well as between the religions, of the peoples who belong to these families, there is an unmistakable difference, and yet at the same time so undeniable a resemblance that we are obliged to regard them as descendants of one prehistoric language or religion. We have not, however, simply applied the doctrines of philology to the study of religion, as if affinity of languages necessarily implied affinity of religions. No doubt the science of language has paved the way for that of religion, and has laid it under great obligations, but not so far as to relieve it of the necessity of independent research. In every religion, too, we have found a twofold tendency of development, the one peculiar to it alone, the other common to it along with others; and a twofold character, the one its individual, the other its family character. Now in the case of the nature-religions, both lower and higher, this agreement can only be explained on the ground that they are related, or, in other words, that they have sprung from an ancient religion long since extinct; while their differences are accounted for by the fact that, owing to the breaking up of the mother-folk into a number of others, these have developed independently and assumed their own peculiar character under the influence of a variety of surroundings. Nor even in the case of the ethical religions, although born of individual preaching, of a willed reformation, do they entirely disown their family character even where the reform has not sprung from |