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tribal gods, or many gods within a tribe, with the loosest coordination of cults and myths.

Though religion can be a source of progress, it need not be so, especially when its dominant feature is this stage of uncriticized belief. It is easy for a tribe to stabilize its ritual and its myths, and there need be no external spur to progress. In fact, this is the stage of religious evolution in which the masses of semi-civilized humanity have halted — the stage of satisfactory ritual and of satisfied belief without impulse towards higher things. Such . religion satisfies the pragmatic test: It works, and thereby claims that it be awarded the prize for truth.


V. RATIONALISM

The age of martyrs dawns with the coming of rationalism. The antecedent phases of religion had been essentially sociable. Many were called, and all were chosen. The final phase introduces the note of solitariness: “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, . . .