called irreligious, as it would have to be called in Mr. Tylor's
"minimum definition". Almost certainly, no race in this stage of
belief in nothing but unconditioned but not expressly spiritual
beings is extant. Yet such a belief may conceivably have existed
before men had developed the theory of spirits at all, and such a
belief, in creative and moral unconditioned beings, not alleged to
be spiritual, could not be excluded from a definition of religion.[2]


[1] See The Making of Religion, pp. 201-210.

[2] "The history of the Jews, nay, the history of our own mind,
proves to demonstration that the thought of God is a far easier
thought, and a far earlier, than that of a spirit." Father
Tyrrell, S. J., The Month, October, 1898. As to the Jews, the
question is debated. As to our own infancy, we are certainly
taught about God before we are likely to be capable of the
metaphysical notion of spirit. But we can scarcely reason from
children in Christian houses to the infancy of the race.


For these reasons we propose (merely for the purpose of the present
work) to define religion as the belief in a primal being, a Maker,
undying, usually moral, without denying that the belief in
spiritual beings, even if immoral, may be styled religious. Our
definition is expressly framed for the purpose of the argument,
because that argument endeavours to bring into view the essential
conflict between religion and myth. We intend to show that this
conflict between the religious and the mythical conception is
present, not only (where it has been universally recognised) in the