Later, perhaps as the idea of his own personality grew, he began to ascribe a more personal existence to the forces with which he came into contact, and so to turn them more and more into beings that can properly be called Gods: polydaemonism arose and in its turn gave place to polytheism. But while rigid custom was at first the only morality, and each external power and each human activity was regarded separately, later the rise of civilization led to a modification of custom, to a reference of action and belief to the standards of pure reason, and to an attempt at unification. Once this occurred, and equally so whether the attempt at unification had an intellectual or a moral basis, polytheism was doomed. Its downfall has been often described; the reasons for it are suggestively put by Jevons in his little book, “The Idea of God.” It passes through a stage where one among the gods is pre-eminent: but finally even that does not suffice, and in its place arises a monotheistic creed. Monotheism may start as a purely local or tribal affair--my one God against yours. It may not only start, but long continue so. Readers of Mr. Bang’s collection of startling German war-sayings will remember the superbly national prayer of the Prussian pastor who addressed his God (I quote from memory) as “Du, der hoch über Cherubinen, Seraphinen, und Zeppelinen ewig trönst.” (J. P. Bang, _Hurrah and Hallelujah_. London, 1916.) But this idea, too, is self-contradictory, and merges into that of one God for all men. The primitive anthropomorphism which had invested the first vague and mysterious spirits with human parts and passions, human speech and thought, also fell into gradual desuetude. It was kept up as a symbol, or because of the difficulty of describing a God except in terms human individuality, but its literal truth was deliberately denied. God became different from and more than man--omnipotent, omniscient, with no parts, with no limitations: but he retained personality--in other words, a mental or spiritual organization of the same general kind as man’s, however superior in degree. With time, the divine personality became compounded more and more of man’s ideals instead of his everyday thoughts and attributes. And thus and that God remains. He has created everything; he is in some sense immanent in the world, in some sense apart from it as its ruler--you take your choice according to your philosophic preferences. Beyond that, organized religious thought has not gone; and now it finds itself fronting science in an impasse. That, very briefly and roughly, is how man’s idea of God has developed. But how have man’s knowledge and ideas of the natural universe developed? What has Science to say to the impasse?