Subjective worship has grown out of, and been a refinement upon, the external cult, which in the beginning was in the eyes of mankind much the more important of the two. To the incantation, to the material offering, to the sacrifices of the victims succeeded subjective prayer and the subjective offering of love, and the subjective sacrifice of egoistic passion. To external homage, to evidences of fear and respect by which one was supposed to recognize the superior power of the gods, as one bows down in recognition of the superior power of kings, succeeded a mental adoration, in which a god is recognized as all-powerful but also as all-beneficent. The mental bowing down of the entire soul before God is the last refinement of ritual; and ritual itself in the higher religions comes to be the simple sign and symbol of this adoration.[49] Thus the primitive sociomorphic character of the cult becomes progressively more subtle: the semi-material society, consisting of gods and men, becomes a wholly moral society, composed of men and the principle of goodness, which still continues to be represented as a person, as a master, as a father, as a king. [49] Among the Hindus, _Tapas_, that is to say fire, the ardour of devotion, and of voluntary renouncement, signified in the beginning simply the incantation intended to constrain the Devas to obedience, and to deprive them of a part of their power. Out of a crude conception has grown an extremely refined one. See _Manuel de l’Histoire des religions_, par C. P. Tiele, p. 19 (translated by Maurice Vernes). [Sidenote: The love of God an outlet for the surplus of human love.] The highest form of subjective worship is love of God, in which all the duties of religious morality may be regarded as summed up. Adoration contains in it a vitiating element of respect for power; love is a more intimate union. The love of God is a partial manifestation of the need to love which exists in every human being. This need is so great that it cannot always find satisfaction in real life; it tends therefore to stretch beyond, and not finding upon earth an object which completely suffices for it, it seeks one in heaven. The love of God appears thus to be an expression of the superabundance of the love of man. Our heart sometimes feels too big for the world and seeks to overpass its limits. Let us not forget, for the rest, that the world has been strangely contracted by religious ignorance, intolerance, and prejudice; the sphere left open to the need of loving was formerly a very narrow one: it is not astonishing that the latter should have stretched out its arms toward a celestial and supernatural being. [Sidenote: Nourished by isolation, feebleness, and misfortune.]