different churches in the past and present; and finding that these
tenets have lost all the significance of Christianity, they accept
it as a religion which has outlived its age.

To see clearly how impossible it is to understand the Christian
teaching from such a point of view, one must form for oneself an
idea of the place actually held by religions in general, by the
Christian religion in particular, in the life of mankind, and of
the significance attributed to them by science.

Just as the individual man cannot live without having some theory
of the meaning of his life, and is always, though often
unconsciously, framing his conduct in accordance with the meaning
he attributes to his life, so too associations of men living in
similar conditions--nations--cannot but have theories of the
meaning of their associated life and conduct ensuing from those
theories. And as the individual man, when he attains a fresh
stage of growth, inevitably changes his philosophy of life, and
the grown-up man sees a different meaning in it from the child, so
too associations of men--nations--are bound to change their
philosophy of life and the conduct ensuing from their philosophy,
to correspond with their development.

The difference, as regards this, between the individual man and
humanity as a whole, lies in the fact that the individual, in
forming the view of life proper to the new period of life on which
he is entering and the conduct resulting from it, benefits by the
experience of men who have lived before him, who have already
passed through the stage of growth upon which he is entering. But
humanity cannot have this aid, because it is always moving along a