presumption that the savage beliefs, however erroneous, however darkened
by fraud and fancy, repose on a basis of real observation of actual
phenomena.

Anthropology is concerned with man and what is in man--_humani nihil
a se alienum putat_. These researches, therefore, are within the
anthropological province, especially as they bear on the prevalent
anthropological theory of the Origin of Religion. By 'religion' we mean,
for the purpose of this argument, the belief in the existence of an
Intelligence, or Intelligences not human, and not dependent on a material
mechanism of brain and nerves, which may, or may not, powerfully control
men's fortunes and the nature of things. We also mean the additional
belief that there is, in man, an element so far kindred to these
Intelligences that it can transcend the knowledge obtained through the
known bodily senses, and may possibly survive the death of the body. These
two beliefs at present (though not necessarily in their origin) appear
chiefly as the faith in God and in the Immortality of the Soul.

It is important, then, to trace, if possible, the origin of these two
beliefs. If they arose in actual communion with Deity (as the first at
least did, in the theory of the Hebrew Scriptures), or if they could be
proved to arise in an unanalysable _sensus numinis_, or even in 'a
perception of the Infinite' (Max Müller), religion would have a divine, or
at least a necessary source. To the Theist, what is inevitable cannot but
be divinely ordained, therefore religion is divinely preordained,
therefore, in essentials, though not in accidental details, religion is
true. The atheist, or non-theist, of course draws no such inferences.

But if religion, as now understood among men, be the latest evolutionary
form of a series of mistakes, fallacies, and illusions, if its germ be a