VII. THE FINAL CONTRAST
A survey of religious history has disclosed that the coming of rational religion is the consequence of the growth of a world-consciousness. The later phases of the antecedent communal type of religion are dominated by the conscious reaction of human nature to the social organization in which it finds itself. Such reaction is partly emotion clothing itself in belief and ritual, and partly reason justifying practice by the test of social preservation. Rational religion is the wider conscious reaction of men to the universe in which they find themselves.
Communal religion broadened itself to the verge of rationalism. In its last stages in the Western World we find the religion of the Roman Empire, in which the widest possible view of the social structure is adopted. The cult of the Empire was the sort of religion which might be constructed to-day by the Law School of a University, laudably impressed by
