The Star in the West

150 THE STAR IN THE WEST fear of primitive man to the veneration of his present day offspring . Fear , the basal foundation of all gods , found a subtle soil in Ignorance ; Ignorance reacted on God , producing Superstition ; Superstition , Cruelty ; Cruelty , all the tigerish longings of the day and the hoggish gratifications of the night . Pessimism is necessarily the foundation of all re ligion ; for if man were normally optimistic he would not have conceived such a hierarchy of tyrants as that of his gods . The man who formerly cut himself with flints before a lump of stone or clay , is in no way more foolish than he who prays to an omnipotent con ception ; the former was jealous and exacting , and so is the latter , the former a thing , the latter an idea , and both an ideal . This evolution is very vividly de scribed in the poem entitled “ The Growth of God ”: Fear grows , and torment ; and distracted pain Must from sheer agony some respite find ; When some half - maddened miserable brain Projects a god in his detesting mind . A who made him -- to the core all evil , In his own image - and a God of Terror ; A vast foul nightmare , an impending devil ; Compact of darkness , infamy , and error . Some bestial woman , beaten by her mates , In utter fear broke down the bar of reason ; Shrieked , crawled to die ; delirium abates By some good chance her terror in its season , Her ravings picture the cessation of Such life as she had known : her mind conceives A God of Mercy , Happiness and Love ; Reverses life and fact : and so believes .' This last line practically contains the fundamental basis of all religion . Man finding that Nature was but 1 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p . 179 .