RELIGION AND MORALITY 135
for man^s earthly welfare^ and for deliverance from calamities — come from this conception of life.
The second form of the pagan relation of man to the world, the social, which he adopts at the next stage of de- velopment — a relation natural chiefly to adults — consists in seeing the meaning of life, not in the welfare of one separate individual, hut in the welfare of a group of indi- viduals : a family, clan, nation, empire, or even of all humanity (as in' the Positivist's attempt to found a religion).
In this relation of man to the world, the moaning of life is transferred from the individual to a family, clan, nation, or empire — to a certain association of individuals,, whose welfare is considered to be the aim of existence. From this view come all religions of a certain type — the patriarchal and social : the Chinese and Japanese religions ; the religions of a ' chosen people ' — the Jewish, the Roman State-religion, our Church and State religion (improperly called Christian, but degraded to this level by Augustine), and the proposed Positivist religion of Humanity.
All the ceremonies of ancestor-worship in China and Japan ; the worship of Emperors in Rome ; the mul- titudinous Jewish ceremonials aiming at the preservation of an agreement between the chosen people and God ; all family, social, and Church-Christian prayers for the welfare of the State, or for success in war — rest on that understanding of man's relation to the universe.
Tlie third conception of this relation, the Christian — of which all old men are involuntarily conscious, and into which, in my opinion, humanity is now entering — consists in the meaning of life no longer appearing to lie in the attainment of personal aims, or the aims of any association of individuals, but solely in serving that AViU which has produced man and the entire universe, not for man^s aims but for its own.
From this relation to the world comes the highest religious teaching known to us, germs of which existed already among the Pythagoreans, Therapeut«, Essenes, and among the Egyptians, Persians, the Brahmins,
