RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 15 



denial, there has always by and by arisen a re-assertion of 

 them: if not the same in form, still the same in essence. 

 Thus the universality of religious ideas, their independent 

 evolution among different primitive races, and their great 

 vitality, unite in showing that their source must be deep- 

 seated instead of superficial. In other words, we are obliged 

 to admit that if not supernaturally derived as the majority 

 contend, they must be derived out of human experiences, 

 slowly accumulated and organized. 



Should it be asserted that religious ideas are products of 

 the religious sentiment, which, to satisfy itself, prompts 

 imaginations that it afterwards projects into the external 

 world, and by and by mistakes for realities; the problem is 

 not solved, but only removed further back. Whether the 

 wish is father to the thought, or whether sentiment and idea 

 have a common genesis, there equally arises the question — 

 Whence comes the sentiment? That it is a constituent in 

 man's nature is implied by the hypothesis; and cannot in- 

 deed be denied by those who prefer other hypotheses. And 

 if the religious sentiment, displayed habitually by the ma- 

 jority of mankind, and occasionally aroused even in those 

 seemingly devoid of it, must be classed among human emo- 

 tions, we cannot rationally ignore it. We are bound to ask 

 its origin and its function. H3re is an attribute which, to 

 say the least, has had an enormous influence — which has 

 played a conspicuous part throughout the entire past as far 

 back as history records, and is at present the life of numer- 

 ous institutions, the stimulus to perpetual controversies, and 

 the prompter of countless daily actions. Any Theory of 

 Things which takes no account of this attribute, must, then, 

 be extremely defective. If with no other view, still as a 

 question in philosophy, we are called on to say what this 

 attribute means; and we cannot decline the task without 

 confessing our philosophy to be incompetent. 



Two suppositions only are open to us: the one that the 

 feeling which responds to religious ideas resulted, along 



