To which the whole creation moves.'

Coming at last to Mr. Tylor, we find that he begins by dismissing the idea
that any known race of men is devoid of religious conceptions. He
disproves, out of their own mouths, the allegations of several writers who
have made this exploded assertion about 'godless tribes.' He says:
'The thoughts and principles of modern Christianity are attached to
intellectual clues which run back through far pre-Christian ages to the
very origin of human civilisation, _perhaps even of human existence_.'[9]
So far we abound in Mr. Tylor's sense. 'As a minimum definition of
religion' he gives 'the belief in spiritual beings,' which appears
'among all low races with whom we have attained to thoroughly intimate
relations.' The existence of this belief at present does not prove that no
races were ever, at any time, destitute of all belief. But it prevents us
from positing the existence of such creedless races, in any age, as a
demonstrated fact. We have thus, in short, no opportunity of observing,
_historically_, man's development from blank unbelief into even the
minimum or most rudimentary form of belief. We can only theorise and make
more or less plausible conjectures as to the first rudiments of human
faith in God and in spiritual beings. We find no race whose mind, as to
faith, is a _tabula rasa_.

To the earliest faith Mr. Tylor gives the name of _Animism_, a term not
wholly free from objection, though 'Spiritualism' is still less desirable,
having been usurped by a form of modern superstitiousness. This Animism,
'in its full development, includes the belief in souls and in a future
state, in controlling deities and subordinate spirits.' In Mr. Tylor's
opinion, as in Mr. Huxley's, Animism, in its lower (and earlier) forms,
has scarcely any connection with ethics. Its 'spirits' do not 'make for
righteousness.' This is a side issue to be examined later, but we may