carefully studied, many traces of lofty
ideas can be found, ideas which are obviously above the productive
capacity of the savages themselves.

This last idea has been worked out by Mr. Andrew Lang, who--judging by
his book on _The Making of Religion_--should be classed as a Comparative
Religionist rather than as a Comparative Mythologist. He points to the
existence of a common tradition, which, he alleges, cannot have been
evolved by the savages for themselves, being men whose ordinary beliefs
are of the crudest kind and whose minds are little developed. He shows,
under crude beliefs and degraded views, lofty traditions of a sublime
character, touching the nature of the Divine Being and His relations
with men. The deities who are worshipped are, for the most part, the
veriest devils, but behind, beyond all these, there is a dim but
glorious over-arching Presence, seldom or never named, but whispered of
as source of all, as power and love and goodness, too tender to awaken
terror, too good to require supplication. Such ideas manifestly cannot
have been conceived by the savages among whom they are found, and they
remain as eloquent witnesses of the revelations made by some great
Teacher--dim tradition of whom is generally also discoverable--who was
a Son of the Wisdom, and imparted some of its teachings in a long
bye-gone age.

The reason, and, indeed, the justification, of the view taken by the
Comparative Mythologists is patent. They found in every direction low
forms of religious belief, existing among savage tribes. These were seen
to accompany general lack of civilisation. Regarding civilised men as
evolving from uncivilised, what more natural than to regard civilised
religion as evolving from uncivilised? It is the first obvious idea.
Only later and deeper study can show that the savages of to-day are not
our ancestral types, but are the degenerated offsprings of great
civilised stocks of the past, and that man in his infancy was not left
to grow up untrained, but was nursed and educated by his elders, from
whom he received his first guidance alike in religion and civilisation.
This view is being substantiated by such facts as those dwelt on by
Lang, and will presently raise the question, "Who were these elders, of
whom traditions are everywhere found?"

Still pursuing our enquiry, we come next to the question: To what people
were religions given? And here we come at once to the difficulty with
which every Found