eve in a being who created the world, a being
whom they do not worship, and to whom they pay no regard (for, indeed,
he has become 'decrepit'), their theory is scientific, not religious.
They have looked for the causes of things, and are no more religious
(in so doing) than Newton was when he worked out his theory of
gravitation. The term 'infinite' is wrongly applied, because it is a
term of advanced thought used in explanation of the ideas of men who,
Mr. Max Mueller says, were incapable of conceiving the meaning of such
a concept. Again, it is wrongly applied, because it has some modern
religious associations, which are covertly and fallaciously introduced
to explain the supposed emotions of early men. Thus, Mr. Mueller says
(p. 177)--he is giving his account of the material things that awoke
the religious faculty--'the mere sight of the torrent or the stream
would have been enough to call forth in the hearts of the early
dwellers on the earth ... a feeling that they were surrounded on all
sides by powers invisible, infinite, or divine.' Here, if I understand
Mr. Mueller, 'infinite' is used in our modern sense. The question is,
How did men ever come to believe in powers infinite, invisible,
divine? If Mr. Mueller's words mean anything, they mean that a dormant
feeling that there were such existences lay in the breast of man, and
was wakened into active and conscious life, by the sight of a torrent
or a stream. How, to use Mr. Mueller's own manner, did these people,
when they saw a stream, have mentally, at the same time, 'a feeling of
_infinite_ powers'? If this is not the expression of a theory of
'innate religion' (a theory which Mr. Mueller disclaims), it is capable
of being mistaken for that doctrine by even a careful reader. The
feeling of 'powers infinite, invisible, divine,' _must_ be in the
heart, or the mere sight of a river could not call it forth. How did
the feeling get into the heart? That is the question.

The ordinary anthropologist distinguishes a multitude of causes, a
variety of processes, which shade into each other and gradually
produce the belief in powers invisible, infinite, and divine. What
tribe is unacquainted with dreams, visions, magic, the apparitions of
the dead? Add to these the slow action of thought, the conjectural
inferences, the guesses of crude metaphysics, the theories of isolated
men of religious and speculative genius. By all these and other forces
manifold, that emotion of awe