beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races--The Mythical and
the Religious--These may be coeval, or either may be older than the
other--Difficulty of study--The current anthropological theory--
Stated objections to the theory--Gods and spirits--Suggestion that
savage religion is borrowed from Europeans--Reply to Mr. Tylor's
arguments on this head--The morality of savages.



PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.


When this book first appeared (1886), the philological school of
interpretation of religion and myth, being then still powerful in
England, was criticised and opposed by the author. In Science, as
on the Turkish throne of old, "Amurath to Amurath succeeds"; the
philological theories of religion and myth have now yielded to
anthropological methods. The centre of the anthropological
position was the "ghost theory" of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the
"Animistic" theory of Mr. E. R. Tylor, according to whom the
propitiation of ancestral and other spirits leads to polytheism,
and thence to monotheism. In the second edition (1901) of this
work the author argued that the belief in a "relatively supreme
being," anthropomorphic was as old as, and might be even older,
than animistic religion. This theory he exhibited at greater
length, and with a larger collection of evidence, in his Making of
Religion.

Since 1901, a great deal of fresh testimony as to what Mr. Howitt
styles the "All Father" in savage and barbaric religions has