environment, and peculiarities that seem to be racial. The subject 

 presents to the student of social psychology some of his most interest- 

 ing problems. 



Between the religions of the lowest peoples and those which have 

 reached the highest level in intelligence and spirituality there is 

 an unbroken connection; not only do survivals and superstitions 

 persist in the most advanced religions, but the germs of their loftiest 

 conceptions may sometimes be recognized in barbarous surroundings. 

 The field, wide as it is, is one; the history of religions points onward 

 to a history of religion. 



The immediate task of the scholars of the nineteenth century in 

 their several fields was the mastering of these vast acquisitions of 

 material the establishment of trustworthy texts, the creation 

 of philological apparatus, the interpretation and criticism of the 

 literature; the restoration and decipherment of inscriptions; the 

 verifying and sifting of the reports of travelers and discoverers; 

 the comparison, classification, and interpretation of phenomena. 

 Great things have been accomplished in all these directions by 

 philologists, archaeologists, and ethnologists; upon the foundations 

 thus laid future generations will securely build. If the division of 

 labor sometimes narrowed the horizon, it at least conduced to 

 thoroughness in a limited field. The relations of some languages 

 and literatures to one another were, however, such as not only to 

 invite but to demand comparative treatment. The older Avestan 

 scriptures, for example, could be rightly understood only when the 

 light of comparative philology was added to the native tradition; 

 and the common background of the Indian and Iranian religions 

 seemed to require the application of the same method. Names and 

 myths appeared, again, to connect the gods of the Vedic hymns 

 with those of Greece, and more remotely with other branches of 

 the Indo-Germanic family. The philologists who attempted by com- 

 parison of the common stock of words or roots to construct a picture 

 of primitive Indo-Germanic culture could not exclude from their 

 consideration the language of religion. 



It was, in fact, from Vedic studies that the initiative came, which 

 in the second half of the nineteenth century gave a new impulse to 

 the study of the history of religions; and Professor F. Max Miiller, 

 if not the originator of the "Comparative Science of Religion,"- 

 will always have the merit, not only of contributing largely to its 

 progress, but of having created an interest in the subject, and secured 

 a support for it without which some of its most notable achievements 

 would not have been possible. 1 It is easy now to see the fundamental 



1 See Kuhn, A., Hermes-Sarameyas, Zeitschrift f. das Alterthum, vi, 1848, 117- 

 134; Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks, 1859; Schwartz, W., 

 Ur sprung der Mythologie, 1860; Sonne, Mond und Sterne, 1864; Miiller, Fr. 

 Max, Comparative Mythology (Oxford Essays), 1856; Chips from a German 



