Broad

Finally, religion replaces art for the uncultured and uncultured majority, and in one way or another satisfies its aesthetic sense by developing it in a certain direction. Among many peoples of antiquity, at the beginning of their existence, art was almost exclusively religious in nature; and even in our time the vast majority of the highest expression of art is found mainly in religion-the architecture of temples, Church painting and sculpture, liturgical music and singing.

The broad and versatile influence of religion was to be reflected in the entire structure of human society. The foundations of law, family and social relations, the monuments of literary writing, even the whole way of daily everyday life-all this, both among ancient and modern peoples, bears the stamp of religious influence. Among our people, for example, “the arrangement of dwellings with their Holy corners, days of rest and fun, the time of family celebrations, the properties of food, in a word-everything that makes up life, was determined by Christianity”(Prof. In spite of the fact that at present there is a considerable cooling towards religion, and even an outright negative attitude towards it, in society, especially in intellectual circles, “the modern European and American world and culture remain connected with religion in a thousand and thousand ways” (prof. D. W. Bousset). Some of the representatives of science and literature, who can not be called partial apologists of religion, even Express the idea that with the fall of religion stops and original movement forward on the path of progress. “Men,” says Goethe, ” are hitherto productive in poetry and art, so long as they remain religious; and then they only begin to repeat and imitate.”

On the other hand, the progress of civilization is entirely reflected in the character of religious beliefs and in General the religious life of a certain people. As the General development of a people is, so is its religion. It would be absurd, therefore, to suppose that cultured European peoples could have professed any Aztec religion with their belief in witchcraft, with terrible human sacrifice and cannibalism. “As the nature of human needs changes, so does religion. The gradual elevation and complication of human needs as civilization progresses is also the driving force for the development of religion. The deities themselves, their past history and present character, the sacrifices they offer and the benefits they ask of them, all grow as man himself grows and passes from the gross to the refined, from arbitrariness to order.