MAN. 111 
Says he, “I have been counselled to recognize that 
the idea of evolution at present ruling the scientific world 
must also rule in the investigation of religion. JI am not 
unacquainted with the literature of the subject, I have 
described animistic heathenism as concretely as I could; 
I confined myself strictly to that. I began with the facts 
of experience; then I drew inferences from them. If 
these do not agree with the dominant hypothesis of evo- 
lution, that is due to the brutal facts, and not to the pre- 
possessions of the observer. 
“I do not deny that something can be said for the 
idea of evolution in the religions of mankind, but the 
study of Animism, with which I have long been familiar 
as an eyewitness, did not lead me to that idea. Rather 
the conviction which I arrived at is, that animistic 
heathenism is not a transition stage to a higher religion. 
There are no facts to prove that animistic heathenism 
somewhere and somehow evolved upwards towards a pur- 
er knowledge of God. I have worked as a missionary for 
many years in contact with thousands of the adherents 
of animistic heathenism and I have been convinced that 
the force of that heathenism is hostile to God.” 
In the same work Dr. Warneck says that among the 
Battaks of Sumatra there are “remains of a pure idea of 
God.” but there is also a host of spirits, born of fear, 
which thrust themselves between God and man. “The 
idea of God which is found in the religions of the Indian 
Archipelago, and probably also of Africa, cannot have 
been distilled from the motley jumble of gods and of na- 
ture, for it exists in direct opposition to the latter. The 
idea of God is preserved, but His worship is lost.’ In 
reviewing this book the late Dr. Schmauk said in 1910: 
“A dispassionate study of heathen religions confirms the 
view of Paul that heathenism is a fall from a better 
knowledge of God. The idols come between God and 
bP 
man, 
