ow that in civilised times religious beliefs are in the nature of an
inheritance. A member of any civilised society finds them here when he
is born, he grows up with them, generally accepting them without
question, or effecting certain modifications in the form in which he
continues to hold them. If we treat religion as a hypothesis, advanced
as other hypotheses are advanced, to account for a certain class of
facts, then we can safely say that religion is one of the earliest in
the history of human thought. And its antiquity and universality
preclude us from seeking an explanation of its origin in the mental life
of civilised humanity. Whether the religious hypothesis can or cannot be
justified by an appeal to civilised intelligence, it is plain it did not
begin there. Its beginnings are earlier than any existing civilisation;
and in its most general form may be said to be as old as mankind itself.
Consequently, if any satisfactory explanation of the origin of the
religious idea is to be found, it must be sought amid the very earliest
conditions of human society.

Now whatever the differences of opinion concerning matters of detail,
there is substantial agreement amongst European anthropologists upon one
important point. They all agree that the conception of supernatural, or
'spiritual,' beings owes its beginning to the ignorance of primitive man
concerning both his own nature and the nature of the world around him.
The beginnings of human experience suggest questions that can only be
satisfactorily answered by the accumulated experience of many
generations. These questions do not materially differ from those that
face men to-day. The why and wherefore of things are always with us;
life propounds the same problem to all; it is the replies alone that
vary, and the nature of these replies is determined by the knowledge at
our disposal. The difference is not in nature but in man. The answers
given by primitive man to these eternal questions are a complete
inversion of those of his better informed descendants. The conception of
natural force, of mechanical necessity, is as yet unborn, and the
primitive thinker everywhere assumes the operation of personal beings as
responsible for all that occurs. This is not so much the product of
careful and elaborate philosophising, it is closer akin to the _naive_
thinking of a child concerning a thunderstorm. Primitive thought accepts
the universal operation of living and intelligent for