is God essentially involved. They are in reality independent of the idea of God, since that is called "luck" in some cases which in others is called the favor or wrath of God. And again in some cases, one may be damned by a human curse, although in others this curse of damnation is reserved for divine
- Theistic religion. In essence this consists of the satisfaction derived from doing that which pleases God, or "getting into harmony with the underlying plan of the universe," as some put it. It is idealistic and somewhat mystic. It should be distinguished from the idea of doing or believing certain things to insure salvation, which is not essentially theistic but belongs under (2). The true theist desires to conform to the will of God, wholly apart from whether he will be rewarded or punished for so doing.
- Humanistic religion. This is a willingness to make the end of ethics the totality of happiness of all men, or some large group of men, rather than to judge conduct solely by its effects on some one individual. At its highest, it is a sort of loyalty to the species.
It must be noted that most cults include more than one of these elements—usually all of them at various stages. As a race rises in intelligence, it tends to progress from the first two toward the last two, but usually keeping parts of the earlier attitude, more or less clearly expressed. And individual adherents of a religion usually have different ideas of its scope; thus the religious ideas of many Christians embrace all four of the above elements; others who equally consider themselves Christians may be influenced by little more than (4) alone, or (3) alone, or even (2) alone.
There is no reason to believe that any one