ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 45 



able. Instead of disclosing a fundamental verity existing 

 in each, onr investigation seems rather to have shown that 

 there is no fundamental verity contained in any. To carry 

 away this conclusion, however, would be a fatal error; as 

 we shall shortly see. 



Leaving out the accompanying moral code, which is in 

 all cases a supplementary growth, a religious creed is defin- 

 able as a theory of original causation. By the lowest sav- 

 ages the genesis of things is not inquired about : anomalous 

 appearances alone raise the question of agency. But be it 

 in the primitive Ghost-theory which assumes a human 

 personality behind each unusual phenomenon ; be it in Poly- 

 theism, in which these personalities are partially general- 

 ized ; be it in Monotheism, in which they are wholly gener- 

 alized ; or be it in Pantheism, in which the generalized per- 

 sonality becomes one with the phenomena ; we equally find 

 an hypothesis which is supposed to render the Universe 

 comprehensible. Nay, even that which is commonly re- 

 garded as the negation of all Religion — even positive Athe- 

 ism, comes within the definition ; for it, too, in asserting the 

 self-existence of Space, Matter, and Motion, which it re- 

 gards as adequate causes of every appearance, propounds an 

 a priori theory from which it holds the facts to be deducible. 

 Now every theory tacitly asserts two things: firstly, that 

 there is something to be explained; secondly, that such 

 and such is the explanation. Hence, however widely dif- 

 ferent speculators may disagree in the solutions they give of 

 the same problem ; yet by implication they agree that there 

 is a problem to be solved. Here then is an element which 

 all creeds have in common. Religions diametrically op- 

 posed in their overt dogmas, are yet perfectly at one in the 

 tacit conviction that the existence of the world with all it 

 contains and all which surrounds it, is a mystery ever press- 

 ing for interpretation. On this point, if on no other, there 

 is entire unanimity. 



Thus we come within sight of that which we seek. In 



