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thing difficult to grasp ; and the fact, that the fetish-worshipper can hardly 
rise beyond his fetish, is only the result of his degraded nature, and not of 
anything remarkable in his religion. The fetish God of the fetish- 
worshipper is just’as much, and just as little, a representation of something 
beyond as the Greek statue of Jupiter was the representation of the Zeus, 
who, after all, was the Dyaus of the old Aryans, whose name, curiously 
enough, is still to be found in out-of-the-way country parts of England, 
where the people swear “by Jove,” without any reference to classical 
knowledge, but simply as another word for the sky, the old word having 
survived without those who use it being able to grasp its real meaning. I 
think that the more we study this subject the more convinced shall we be 
that Mr. Collins is right and the modern theories wrong. I say boldly, 
let us appeal to facts. _ (Hear, hear.) In these days of inductive science it 
is hardly fair to have what is generally regarded as theoretical treated as 
actual proof, and to be told, “‘If the facts are against us, so much the worse 
for the facts.” (Applause.) 
Mr. G. Wisz.—I wish to point out that on the third page of the paper 
Herbert Spencer is quoted as saying, ‘‘In the primitive human mind 
there exists neither religious idea nor religious sentiment ;” but it is some- 
what remarkable that Professor Tyndall, in his Belfast Address, should have 
said :-— 
““There is also that deep-set feeling which since the earliest dawn of 
history, and probably for ages prior to all history, incorporated itself in the 
Religions of the world. . . the immovable basis of the sentiment in the 
the Nature of Man. ”__ Belfast Address, p. 60. 
A statement such as this from a man like Professor Tyndall, who, has been 
regarded as a Materialist, ought to carry some weight. Professor Tyndall 
also says, “ Physical science cannot satisfy all the demands of man’s nature ;” 
while Professor Max Miiller says, “ Wherever we find man we also and 
worship and religion ; ” and in a very able book in the library of the Institute, 
written by a Berek anthropologist and entitled The Human Species, the 
author criticises very severely the conclusions of Sir John Lubbock concerning 
the non-universality of religion. ‘The truth is, that in every part of the world, 
in some form or other, a knowledge of God is found, and I believe Mr. 
Collins’s paper will be of great use to all the religious societies and 
lecturers who came in contact with those sceptics who were constantly 
endeavouring to influence the minds of young men by trying to prove that 
the religious sentiment is not universal, and that the grand propitiation 
of God was not the original conception of religion. I am pleased to see 
that a very able work has been written by Canon Rawlinson, entitled The 
Religions of the Ancient World, which in every way substantiates the 
concluding remarks of Mr. Collins’s paper. It goes to show that the one 
~ great God was the conception of the early religions, just as the author of 
this paper has shown how marvellously the monotheistic idea has prevailed 
throughout the world. I think that with Mr, Collins’s paper ought 
