s lectures
on the Origin of Religion, 1882, Mr. Mueller adhered to it as being in
the main sound (p. 23).]

[Footnote 4: _Natural Religion_, 1888, pp. 188, 193.]

Other scholars have explained religion as the action of the curiosity
of the human mind, of that impulse which prompts man to investigate
the causes of things, and specially to seek for the first cause of
all things. Here we touch what is certainly to be recognised as an
invariable feature of religion; it always professes to explain the
world, and to bring unity to man's mind by clearing up the problems
which perplex him, and affording him a commanding point of view, from
which he may see all the parts of the world and of life fall into
their places. This, however, does not tell us what religion itself
is. This curiosity, this impulse to know, are not specifically
religious; they belong rather to philosophy. Other motives than those
connected with knowledge entered from the first into man's worship.
Curiosity impelled him to seek the first cause of things; in religion
he saw something that promised to explain the world to him, and to
explain him to himself. But it was something more than curiosity that
made him regard that cause, when found, as a god, and pay it
reverence and sacrifice. What is the motive of worship? Wonder, no
doubt, is always present in it, but what is there in it beyond
wonder? No definition of religion can be regarded as complete in
which the motive of worship is left undetermined. That is of the
essence of the matter. There must be a moral as well as an
intellectual quality which is characteristic of religion. What is
religion morally? Acts of worship may be specified in which every
conceivable moral quality seeks to express itself. The most
contradictory motives, pride and anger and revenge, as well as fear
or hunger or contrition, enter into such acts. But if religion is a
matter of sentiment as well as of outward posture, these acts of
worship cannot all be equally entitled to the name, and something is
wanted to complete our definition.

Fuller Definition.--Let us add what seems to be wanting; and say that
religion is the "worship of higher powers from a sense of need"! This
will remind the reader of Schleiermacher's definition--"a sense of
infinite dependence." It was always objected to that definition, that
it made religion no more than a sentiment, a mood, but that besides
this, it is both belief and action. But the truth Schle