23 2 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



between them as are referable to the higher or the 

 lower culture. For the history of superstitions is 

 included in the history of beliefs ; the superstitions 

 being the germ-plasm of which all beliefs above the 

 lowest are the modified products. Belief incarnates 

 itself in word or act. In the one we have the 

 charm, the invocation, and the dogma ; in the other 

 the ritual and ceremony, r ' A ritual system/ Pro- 

 fessor Robertson Smith remarks, ' must always re- 

 main materialistic, even if its materialism is disguised 

 under the cloak of mysticism.' And it is with the 

 incarnated ideas, uninfluenced by the particular 

 creed in connection with which it finds them, that 

 Anthropology deals. Its method is that of biology. 

 Without bias, without assumptions of relative truth 

 or falsity, the anthropologist searches into origins, 

 traces variations, compares and classifies, and relates 

 the several families to one ordinal group. He 

 must be what was said of Dante, ' a theologian to 

 whom no dogma is foreign. 1 Unfortunately, this 

 method, whose application to the physical sciences 

 is unchallenged, is, when applied to beliefs, regarded 

 as one of attack, instead of being one of explanation. 

 But this should not deter ; and if in analysing a 

 belief we kill a superstition, this does but show what 

 mortality lay at its core. For error cannot survive 

 dissection. Moreover, as John Morley puts it, ' to 

 tamper with veracity is to tamper with the vital 

 force of human progress.' Therefore, delivering im- 

 partial judgment, the verdict of Anthropology upon 

 the whole matter is that the claims of Christian 

 theologians to a special and divine origin of their 

 religion are refuted by the accordant evidence of the 



