This exclusiveness was broken down by the inter-communication of tribes, their confederations and conquests, which forced the religious conceptions to take broader views. The priests and philosophers began to recognise in the deities of other nations types of their own, as we see in Greek and Roman writers. This gradually led to the comprehensive speculations of the world-religions, in which all men are considered to stand equally before God, and all entitled to the same share of His grace. The early stages of these transitions are easily recognised in primitive faiths. The adoption of foreign gods appears early. When a tribe met with frequent reverses, it began to distrust the power of its own deities, and apply to those of its conquerors for aid. The custom of exogamy introduced divinities of other gentes. Personal and communal wants led to pilgrimages to the famous oracles and fanes of distant religions, and the votaries in returning brought with them the memory and the cult of alien gods. In many such ways the barriers of the tribal faith were gradually broken down. * * * * * We may expect to find faint traits or none of the purely abstract stage of religion in the cults of savage tribes. Yet they are not absolutely lacking. This abstract stage is when the Idea, no longer merged in the Ideal, stands by itself as the recognised guide of conscious effort. The conception of infinity or perfection is not then conceived in relation to a being or personality. It will still act as the loftiest motive of action, the deepest source of spiritual joy. Thus understood and recognised, it will not be a cold product of the reason, but the warm and potent efflux of the heart, of the impulses, and the emotions. In him who rises to this height, the sympathy for and the active love of the good and the true will be all the stronger, because he will see that man must hope only from man, from diligent self-perfecting; but may thus hope confidently from the best there is in man. Toward this end, though unseen and unacknowledged, were all religions of primitive peoples unconsciously directing and impelling the human mind. Long has been the path, many the false routes followed, far away is still the goal; but ever firmer in faith, and clearer in purpose, man will in due time and fit season be established in this, the last and innermost mystery of his religious nature. FOOTNOTES [1] “Religion,” observes Professor Toy, “must be treated as a product of human thought, as a branch of Sociology, subject to all the laws that control general human progress.”—_Judaism and Christianity_, p. 1. [2] Rev. John M. Neale, _History of the Holy Eastern Church_, vol. i., p. 37. [3] Granger, _The Worship of the Romans_, p. vii. [4] A. H. Post, _Grundriss der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz_, Bd. i., s. 4. [5] _The Science of Fairy Tales_, p. 2. [6] _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, Bd. xi., s. 124.