Thus the mind is freed from its bondage to a purely material, geographically single, perception, and the first step is taken toward universal or world-ideas of divinity. In metaphysical terms, it is a passage from the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the general, from the real to the ideal; a line of progress which must necessarily be followed by man’s intelligence in order to develop his especially human attributes. 2. The second important step was that which substituted for the bare and cold prescriptions of the ceremonial law the ideal of personal perfection. The beginnings of this are visible even in the lowest faiths, as we see in their veneration of those who, they considered, had fulfilled most completely their notions of duty. Such persons were held to have descended from the gods, or were inspired by them. It is true these early ideals are of little more than physical strength and mental cunning; but their attributes gradually expanded to include corporeal beauty, intellectual power, and ethical grandeur. We thus arrive, still in primitive conditions, to such personal ideals as Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs, of whom it was said in their legends that he was of majestic presence, chaste in life, averse to war, wise and generous in actions, and delighting in the cultivation of the arts of peace; or as we see among the Peruvians, in their culture hero Tonapa, of whose teachings a Catholic writer of the sixteenth century says: “So closely did they resemble the precepts of Jesus, that nothing was lacking in them but His name and that of His Father.”[299] When these ideals were not distinctly men, but were partially or wholly divine, nevertheless the contemplation of an existence whose chief aim was to do good to those who complied with his instructions, to protect those who fled to him, and to grant the petitions of those who prayed to him, was both a comforting and ennobling conception. 3. Professor Thiele in his work on the ancient Egyptian religion makes the wise observation: “The revolution brought about by religious universalism is the greatest and most complete which the history of the world can show.”[300] It is true that no primitive religion aimed at universalism or even deemed it desirable or possible. The gods of the gens or tribe belonged to that community, were its own exclusively, and stood in antagonism to all other gods. There was no notion of proselytising or missionary work, no desire to extend the worship of the tribal god beyond the limits of the tribe.