department of human conduct (which is the most tangible and easily
traced, and therefore the most obtainable specimen of the rest) the
minds of pre-historic men were not so much immoral as UNmoral: they
did not violate a rule of conscience, but they were somehow not
sufficiently developed for them to feel on this point any
conscience, or for it to prescribe to them any rule.

The same argument applies to religion. There are, indeed, many
points of the greatest obscurity, both in the present savage
religions and in the scanty vestiges of pre-historic religion. But
one point is clear. All savage religions are full of superstitions
founded on luck. Savages believe that casual omens are a sign of
coming events; that some trees are lucky, that some animals are
lucky, that some places are lucky, that some indifferent actions--
indifferent apparently and indifferent really--are lucky, and so of
others in each class, that they are unlucky. Nor can a savage well
distinguish between a sign of 'luck' or ill-luck, as we should say,
and a deity which causes the good or the ill; the indicating
precedent and the causing being are to the savage mind much the
same; a steadiness of head far beyond savages is required
consistently to distinguish them. And it is extremely natural that
they should believe so. They are playing a game--the game of life--
with no knowledge of its rules. They have not an idea of the laws of
nature; if they want to cure a man, they have no conception at all
of true scientific remedies. If they try anything they must try it
upon bare chance. The most useful modern remedies were often
discovered in this bare, empirical way. What could be more
improbable--at least, for what could a pre-historic man have less
given a good reason--than that some mineral springs should stop
rheumatic pains, or mineral springs make wounds heal quickly? And