dentical; that therefore there is nothing more or other
in the highest than in the lowest; and that in the lowest you see how
barbarous is religion and how unworthy of civilised man. Now, that
course of argument is open to one obvious objection which would be
fatal to it, even if it were the only objection, which it is not. That
objection is that whether we are using the method of comparison for the
purpose of estimating the relative values of different forms of
religion; or whether we are using the comparative method of science,
with the object of discovering and establishing facts, quite apart from
the value they may have for any purpose they may be put to when they
have been established; in either case, comparison is only applied, and
can only be applied to things which, {20} though they resemble one
another, also differ from one another. It is because they differ, at
first sight, that the discovery of their resemblance is important. And
it is on that aspect of the truth that the comparative method of
science dwells. Comparative philology, for instance, devotes itself to
establishing resemblances between, say, the Indo-European languages,
which for long were not suspected to bear any likeness to one another
or to have any connection with each other. Those resemblances are
examined more and more closely, are stated with more and more
precision, until they are stated as laws of comparative philology, and
recognised as laws of science to which there are no exceptions. Yet
when the resemblances have been worked out to the furthest detail, no
one imagines that Greek and Sanskrit are the same language, or that the
differences between them are negligible. It is then surprising that
any student of comparative religion should imagine that the discovery
or the recognition of points of likeness between the religions compared
will ever result in proving that the differences between them are
negligible or non-existent. Such an inference is unscientific, and it
has only to be stated to show that the student {21} of comparative
religion is but exercising a right common to all students of all
sciences, when he claims that points of difference cannot be overlooked
or thrust aside.

If, then, the student of the science of religion directs his attention
primarily to the discovery of resemblances between religions which at
first sight bear no more resemblance to one another than Greek did to
the Celtic tongues; if the comparati