e 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 Muller 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. Muller 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. Muller, 'infinite' is used in our modern sense. The
question is, How did men ever come to believe in powers infinite,
invisible, divine? If Mr. Muller'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. Muller'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. Muller 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