y accumulate facts for the use of science, the descriptive method
is undoubtedly the better adapted for the arrangement of our materials:
it may not stimulate enquiry so powerfully, but it lays a more solid
foundation on which future enquirers may build. It is as a collection of
facts illustrative of the belief in immortality and of all the momentous
consequences which have flowed from that belief, that I desire the
following lectures to be regarded. They are intended to serve simply as
a document of religious history; they make no pretence to discuss
philosophically the truth of the beliefs and the morality of the
practices which will be passed under review. If any inferences can
indeed be drawn from the facts to the truth or falsehood of the beliefs
and to the moral worth or worthlessness of the practices, I prefer to
leave it to others more competent than myself to draw them. My sight is
not keen enough, my hand is not steady enough to load the scales and
hold the balance in so difficult and delicate an enquiry.

[Footnote 1: Matthew Arnold, _Literature and Dogma_, ch. i., p. 31
(Popular Edition, London, 1893).]

[Footnote 2: For a single instance see L. Sternberg, "Die Religion der
Giljaken," _Archiv fuer Religionswissenschaft_, viii. (1905) pp. 462
_sqq._, where the writer tells us that the Gilyaks have boundless faith
in the supernatural power of their shamans, and that the shamans are
nearly always persons who suffer from hysteria in one form or another.]

[Footnote 3: As to the widespread belief that flint weapons are
thunderbolts see Sir E. B. Tylor, _Researches into the Early History of
Mankind_, Third Edition (London, 1878), pp. 223-227; Chr. Blinkenberg,
_The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore_ (Cambridge, 1911); W. W.
Skeat "Snakestones and Thunderbolts," _Folk-lore_, xxiii. (1912) pp. 60
_sqq._; and the references in _The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings_, ii. 374.]

[Footnote 4: Wordsworth, who argues strongly, almost passionately, for
"the consciousness of a principle of Immortality in the human soul,"
admits that "the sense of Immortality, if not a coexistent and twin
birth with Reason, is among the earliest of her offspring." See his
_Essay upon Epitaphs_, appended to _The Excursion_ (_Poetical Works_,
London, 1832, vol. iv. pp. 336, 338). This somewhat hesitating admission
of the inferential nature of the belief in immortality carries all the
more weight because it is made by so warm an adv