The truth is that the transformation of the personal god into a superpersonal deity is probably the most important mark of world religion. National religion displaced the subpersonal demon in favour of the personal god; in world religion, the personal god is exalted into a superpersonal deity. At this point there is a very close connection between world religion and world culture. As the idea that the universe is bounded by a sphere of fixed stars must give way to the conception of the infinitude of the universe, so also does world culture transcend the limits imposed upon it by the preparatory world empire, whose own origin was the State. World Culture, as we have seen, comes to signify a cultural unity of mankind, such as includes the national States. Similarly, world religion strives toward the idea of a deity who is superpersonal, and who, though only in so far as he is superpersonal, transcends the world of experience. The foundations of this concluding stage in the development of religion had long been laid by philosophy. In religion itself, the culmination was actually attained with the recedence of the deity in cult; in theology, it came with the ascription to the deity of attributes of absoluteness and infinitude, even though the deity-conception did not clearly emerge from a mystic incomprehensibility rendered inevitable by the combination of contradictory ideas.
Though the transition from a personal god to a superpersonal deity is the decisive characteristic that marks a world religion, there is closely connected with it a second distinctive feature. In Christianity, indeed, it was the latter that prepared the way for the idea of the non-personal character of God. The fact to which I refer is that, in addition to the non-personal deity, there is believed to be a personal god in the form of an exalted human individual. Cult continues to require a personal being to whom man may come with his needs and desires. And by whom could his trouble be better understood than by a deity who himself lived and suffered as a man? In Buddhism, therefore, as well as in Christianity, the god-man became the personal representative of the non-personal deity, not as the result of any external transference, but in consequence of the same inner need. The god-man is a representative in more than one respect. Cult honours him as the deity who dwelt upon earth in human form, and who represents the godhead; it turns to him also as the human individual who represents mankind before God. Back of these two ideas of representativeness that dominate belief and cult, there is still a further, though an unrecognized, need for a representative. The religious nature requires that there shall be a personal god as the representative of him who has been exalted into a non-personal deity and has become inaccessible. The infinite god posited by the religious intellect is unable to satisfy the religious nature that is pressed by the cares and sufferings of finitude. Herewith the way is opened for a development whose course is determined by the changing relations into which the two aspects of the concept 'god-man' enter with one another. On the first stage, the divine aspect of the god-man overshadows the human character. At this period, it might appear as though world religion merely substituted a new god for the older gods. Though the superpersonal deity receives recognition in dogma, and the development, therefore, marks an important religious advance over the age of gods, the cult is directed to the person of the god-man. Then comes a second stage, in which the human aspect of the concept 'god-man' occupies the foreground. The god-man becomes an ideal human being who succours man in the afflictions of his soul, but who does so not so much by his divine power as by the example of human perfection which he represents. At the third stage, the god-man finally comes to be regarded as in every respect a man. It is recognized that, through the religious movement which bears his name, he indeed prepared the way for the idea that the deity is a non-personal source of being, exalted above all that is transitory. Nevertheless, the god-man is conceived as an ideal man only in the sense in which one may speak of any ideal as actual. Hence, the world religion derives its name from him not so much because of what he himself was as because of that which he created. From this point of view, it is eventually immaterial even whether or not Jesus or Buddha ever lived. The question becomes one of historical fact, not one of religious necessity. Jesus and Buddha live on in their religious creations. That these creations, to say nothing of any other proofs, point back to powerful religious personalities, the unbiased will regard as certain, though from this third point of view the question is of subordinate importance.
A world religion may lay claim to being such not merely on account of its wide acceptance, but also because of its ability to incorporate the elements of other religions. In a similar manner, and more particularly, a world religion is one that includes within itself elements representing past stages of its own development. Historically considered, religious elements are juxtaposed in such a manner that the religious life of the past is mirrored in the present. Hence the religion can at no time emancipate itself from its historical development. It is just as impossible to return to the religious notions of earlier times as it is to transform ourselves into the contemporaries of Charlemagne or even of Frederick the Great. The past never returns. Nevertheless, it is universally characteristic of mental development, particularly within the sphere of religion, that the new not only continues to be affected by the old, but that the more advanced stages of culture actually embody many elements of the past. That these be permitted to exist side by side with higher conceptions, and that there be no limiting external barriers in either direction, is all the more demanded by world religion inasmuch as the independence of State and society, which its very nature implies, presupposes, first of all, the freedom of personal belief.
Inasmuch as it possesses a universal human significance, religion cannot escape the change to which everything human is subject. This appears most strikingly in the undeniable fact that the fundamental idea of the two great world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, has in both cases changed. I refer to the idea of salvation. We do not, of course, mean to deny that an individual may either permanently or temporarily return to the religious ideas of the past with a fervour which again reinstates in him impulses that have long since disappeared. Nevertheless, the present-day idea of salvation is no longer identical with that which animated the primitive Christian Church when it looked forward to the return of its Saviour. Christianity is a religion of humanity. Precisely for this reason, it, in every age, took up into itself the feelings and aspirations representing the ideal spiritual forces of that age. All that was permanent in the midst of this change was really the religious impulse as such, the feeling that the world of sense belongs to an ideal supersensuous order—a feeling for which world religion seeks external corroboration in the development of religion itself. In distinction from national religions, which sprang from an infinitely large number of sources, a world religion requires a personal founder. To this personality is due also the direction of the further development of the religion. Thus, the final and most important characteristic of world religion is the fact that it is pre-eminently an historical religion. It is historical both in that it has an historical origin, and in that it is constantly subject to the flux of historical development.
[5. WORLD HISTORY.]
The meaning attached to the term 'world history' clearly shows how firmly rooted is the anthropocentric view of the world in connection with those matters that are of deepest concern to man. World history is regarded as the history of mankind—indeed, in a still narrower sense, as, in the last analysis, the mental history of mankind. If facts of any other sort are taken into account, this is not because they are an essential part of the subject-matter, but because they represent external conditions of historical events. The justifiability of this point of view may scarcely be disputed. If the purpose of all historical knowledge is to understand the present condition of mankind in the light of its past, and, in so far as we also attribute to this knowledge a practical value, to indicate the probable course of the future, then the history of mind is the immediate source of historical knowledge. If this be true, it follows that the essential content of history consists in those events which spring from the psychical motives of human conduct. Moreover, it is the nexus and change of motives underlying such conduct that lends to events the inner continuity which is universally demanded of history.
But the very meaning which is universally associated with the term 'world history' itself includes two very different conceptions. For, even when the field of history is limited to the events connected with mankind, as those which are of greatest importance to us, there remains a further question. Is history to deal with the whole of mankind, or is it to be restricted merely to those peoples that have in any way affected the course of the mental history of humanity? As is well known, most of the works on world history have been confined to the more restricted field. For them, world history is an account of cultural peoples, whose activities are shown by a continuous tradition and by existing monuments to form a relatively connected whole. But there have also been more comprehensive works, which have felt it necessary to include at least those cultural and semi-cultural peoples who attained to some independent mental development, as did the peoples of the New World prior to the time of Columbus. Back of this uncertainty arising from the ambiguity of the concept 'mankind' lies a deeper-going confusion due to the no less ambiguous meaning of the concept 'history.' However much we may associate the word 'history' primarily with the traditional limits of historical science, we may not entirely put aside the broader meaning, according to which it includes everything which may at all be brought into a connected order of events. For we also speak of a history of the earth, of the solar system, of an animal or a plant species, etc. Now, with this wider connotation of the idea in mind, we cannot fail to recognize that the conditions that still prevail among certain races, and that doubtless at one time prevailed among all, are such that, while they would not concern historical science in its more restricted and familiar sense, they would demand consideration if the term were taken in its broader meaning. From the latter point of view, the condition of a primitive people of nature is no less a product of history than is the political and cultural condition of present-day Europe. But there is nevertheless a radical difference between the two cases. The historically trained European understands, to a fairly great extent, the external circumstances that have led to present conditions. He is conscious not merely of the present but also of its preceding history, and he therefore looks forward to the future with the expectation of further historical changes. The man of nature knows only the present. Of the past he possesses merely fragmentary elements, legendary in character, and much altered by the embellishments of a myth-creating imagination; his provision for the future scarcely extends beyond the coming day. Hence, we should scarcely be justified in unqualifiedly calling peoples of nature 'peoples without a history.' In the broader sense of the term, they have a history, as well as have the solar system, the earth, the animal, and the plant. But they lack a history in the narrower sense, according to which historical science includes among 'historical' peoples only such as have had some special significance in the development of mental culture. That even this limitation is variable and uncertain need scarcely be mentioned. The past shows us many instances in which hordes that were previously unknown, and were thus, in the ordinary meaning of the term, peoples without a history, suddenly stepped into the arena of the cultured world and its history. The colonial history of the present, moreover, shows that the characteristics and the past development of races occupying regions of the earth newly opened to cultural peoples, have not been, and are not, without influence upon the course of history. It should also be remembered that between an historical tradition comprehending the entire cultural world and recollection limited to the immediate past, there are a great number of intermediate stages. These stages are dependent primarily upon the forms of social organization, though also upon other cultural factors. Peoples that have failed to advance beyond a tribal organization may frequently have traversed wide regions of the earth and yet have preserved at most certain legendary elements of the history of these migrations, although retaining myths, cults, and customs indefinitely. On the other hand, wherever a national State has arisen, there has developed also a national tradition, intermingled with which, of course, there have long continued to be mythological and legendary elements. But the tradition, even in this case, relates exclusively to the particular people who entertain it. Strange races are as yet touched upon only in so far as they have directly affected the interests of those who preserve the tradition. Indeed, such races continue to have but an inconspicuous place in tradition until the establishment of world empires and of the partly anticipatory colonial and trade interrelation of peoples. Hence it is not until the rise of world empires that we find the transition to world history in the sense in which the term is most commonly employed to-day. In so far as world history involves a transcendence of the history of a single people but nevertheless a limitation to the circle of cultural peoples who are more or less generally interrelated, it is a direct product of world culture. Such a history includes all peoples who participate in world culture and excludes all those who have no share in it.