ABSTRACT
Whether monotheism spread from one source or sprang up independently in several areas, its rapid extension proves that the soil must have been ready. It has been seen that here prevailed about the opening of the third period a degree of differentiation in thought and behavior which invited a compensating development of methods of integration. A conflict develops between the deliberate and the spontaneous life, and the tendency of the organizing processes to develop universal integrating ideas. There is also the possibility of the conversion of conflict into wholehearted harmony, but that is not a religious process and this chapter is concerned only with the influence of the European tradition which did not facilitate any such complete integration. The main tendencies of this period are consistent with the assumption of a progressive transformation of the European tradition into a reorganized unitary form.
