INTRODUCTION.

...more precise; each and all of its parts are seen arranging themselves in their several places as elements of one vast and harmonious whole, ruled by eternal and unchanging laws—the ordinances of the Almighty and all-comprehending God who is their Author. Should not the religious elements of our nature fit together with the rest of our wonderful makeup original: "economy"; here meaning the organized system of the human mind and body? Should not our sensory experiences be worthy of our scientific concepts of God and the universe?

The time has long passed for assuming that humanity can only be religious according to the Hebrew Scriptures. Religion is something separate from parchment, ink, and paper. The Hebrew Scriptures—which are themselves merely evidence of the existence of certain basic mental faculties in the human mind—are neither the only nor even the oldest records of a religious system still in existence. The Hindus Hindoos preceded the Hebrews in civilization by hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years. In their Vedas Vedas, which existed in writing centuries before the Jews became enslaved to Egyptian taskmasters, they have not only given us a clear insight into their religious world but have also preserved this record in the language that is the root of all the dialects spoken in Europe today.

It could have happened that the Sanskrit Sanscrit Vedas Vedas were passed down to us as our own specific religious inheritance; in that case, we would have had Brahma Brahm, Vishnu Vichnou, and Shiva Siva as our holy trinity original: "triune divinity". Similarly, the Zend-Avesta Zends—the religious books of the ancient Persians—are of great antiquity. Since the Persians were closer neighbors to the Jews than the Hindus were, we find that they influenced Jewish ideas much more significantly. We now clearly see the Zoroastrian Zoroastrian concepts that form the foundation of the Book of Job Book of Job. But we must not be tempted to follow this line of thought any further; the field opening up before us is almost limitless.*

• The existence of the ancient sacred books mentioned above could not have been known to Spinoza Spinoza, though the learned Thomas Hyde Thomas Hyde must have been working on his great book, The History of the Religion of the Ancient Persians and Medes original Latin title: "Veterum Persarum et Medorum Religionis Historia", during Spinoza's lifetime. The religious literature of India was only discovered by the West during the latter half of the 18th century—a field in which Sir William Jones Sir Wm. Jones and H. T. Colebrooke H. T. Colebrooke...