ienne is great on what he calls the "root" fallacy. Wishing
to keep the "irreligious instinct" in mystery, or at least obscurity, he
objects to anthropological "explanations." He cannot tolerate talk about
ancestor-worship, and other such "rude beginnings of religion," although
it comes from the lips of his intellectual superiors, such as Tylor,
Lubbock, and Spencer. Even if they are right, he falls back upon his old
exclamation, "What does it matter?" If the flower began as a root, he
says, that is no argument against "the reality of the flower." But this
is a shifting of ground. The reality of the flower, the reality of the
"religious instinct," is not in dispute. The question is, What is its
explanation? No one denies that man idealises and reveres. The question
is, How did he come to let these faculties play upon ghosts and gods?
And the explanation is to be found in his past. It cannot possibly be
found in his present, unless we take him as a savage, in which case he
is an embodiment of the past of our own ancestors, from whom we derive
every vestige of what we call our "religion."

Man's nature, like his destiny, is involved in his origin. However he
may be developed, he will never be more than "the paragon of animals."
And it is the recognition of this unchangeable truth which makes all the
difference between the evolutionist, who labors for rational progress,
and the sentimentalist, who fritters away his energies in cherishing the
delusions of faith.

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