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Through the long ages of evolution the human mechanism has been slowly developed by the constant changes and growth of its parts which have resulted from its continual adaptation to its environment.
All religions are made up of the fables and the imaginations of tribes long since extinct. Religion is an evolution, not a revelation. It has been invented, altered, and built up, and pulled down, and reconstructed time after time. It is a conglomeration and an adaptation, as language is. And the Christian religion is no more an original religion than English is an original tongue.
The addition, to the sacred formulas, of prayers directly addressed to certain gods may be put down as due to the adaptation of ancient texts to the needs of a later age; and, on the other hand, the addition of incantations to what appear to have been originally prayers, pure and simple, is a concession made to the persistent belief in the efficacy of certain formulas when properly uttered.
In other words, the glands of internal secretion, as intermediaries between the environment and body, and between the body and the reproductive sex cells or germplasm, tender the clue to a phase of the puzzle of heredity, adaptation and evolution. It is only a dotted outline of an explanation to be sure, but one certainly capable of being filled in.
There seemed a freshness, a force, a glorious personal adaptation in them which he had never seen before. He turned over the leaves of the book, and the chapter on "Self Dedication" caught his eye. He read it; and when he came to the prayer with which that chapter closes, he kneeled down, with the book open before him, and solemnly, and with his whole heart, repeated that fervent prayer.
So she knew hardly any flower's name, nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed everything in fancy. 'That yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies before dawn came. It is tousled ... so she thought to herself.
Every one must have heard or have read of the supposed perfect adaptation of the human frame to bipedal locomotion and to an upright attitude, as well as the advantages which we gain by this erect position.
When the luncheon was disposed of, with the usual adaptation to nomadic conditions, and the usual merriment and freedom of personal comment, and the wit that seems so brilliant in the open air and so flat in print, Mrs. Mavick declared that she was tired by the long climb and the unusual excitement.
But if we look closely, we shall see that the explanation is merely verbal, that we are again the dupes of words, and that the trick of the solution consists in taking the term "adaptation" in two entirely different senses at the same time.
This is all less imaginative than the development of Ianus, but the underlying feeling is intensely Roman and there could be no clearer idea of the natural adaptation of the household-cult to the religion of the state. =Penates, Lares, and Genius.= The other household deities too have their counterpart, though not so prominently marked, in the worship of the state.
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