imitated from the ideas of people in the savage condition of
thought, the existence--even among savages--of comparatively pure,
if inarticulate, religious beliefs is insisted on throughout". To
that opinion I adhere, and I trust that it is now expressed with
more consistency than in the first edition. I have seen reason,
more and more, to doubt the validity of the "ghost theory," or
animistic hypothesis, as explanatory of the whole fabric of
religion; and I present arguments against Mr. Tylor's contention
that the higher conceptions of savage faith are borrowed from
missionaries.[1] It is very possible, however, that Mr. Tylor has
arguments more powerful than those contained in his paper of 1892.
For our information is not yet adequate to a scientific theory of
the Origin of Religion, and probably never will be. Behind the
races whom we must regard as "nearest the beginning" are their
unknown ancestors from a dateless past, men as human as ourselves,
but men concerning whose psychical, mental and moral condition we
can only form conjectures. Among them religion arose, in
circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant. Thus I only
venture on a surmise as to the germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am
not to say "Creator") and Judge of men. But, as to whether the
higher religious belief, or the lower mythical stories came first,
we are at least certain that the Christian conception of God, given
pure, was presently entangled, by the popular fancy of Europe, in
new Marchen about the Deity, the Madonna, her Son, and the
Apostles. Here, beyond possibility of denial, pure belief came
first, fanciful legend was attached after. I am inclined to
surmise that this has always been the case, and, in the pages on
the legend of Zeus, I show the processes of degeneration, of
mythical accretions on a faith in a Heaven-God, in action. That
"the feeling of religious devotion" attests "high faculties" in