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osophy is concerned. to be a matter of no practical moment that there has been a time in humanity's development when religion has seemed to be a quantité négligeable. A time there was when science and philosophy were in a like state of crudeness. Such things but prove that the glory of their later states has outshone that of their earlier. The great power and hold of primal religion on man are not in all this called in question. This religion is just the wonder to himself in the case of primitive man. Of no slight importance is this wider acknowledgment that the universality of the religious instinct, called in question by Gruppe and others, is no whit impaired or curtailed in its essentialness to man in his normal development-essential as an original element of his being, and not merely as a fruit of his development-by any possible occurrence of tribes without traces of religious sentiment. For, it is surely of significance for the philosophy of natural theology that it has come, as we believe, to be more clearly realised that, even if such religionless people had been found as Azara, Crantz, and the instances cited by Sir John Lubbock—on such really baseless grounds as Flint and Roskoff have shown-would represent, this fact of its abeyance or non-manifestation in such peoples would no more invalidate the truth that man has really a universal destination for religion than does the fact that there are secularistic unbelievers at home who

It is, as we suppose, seen

reduce religion from its place among the primary instincts and powers of the soul. And, in sum, it is to be said that, if the Naturvölker cause us the greatest trouble and difficulty to reach their notions or beliefs, the obstacles are, it seems, next to insurmountable when we try to pierce to the origins of their theories or traditions, in hope of anything like sober certainty. We confess ourselves haunted by a wholesome distrust of attempts at interpreting the world based upon theories as to origin which have not the semblance of right to be treated as assured truths, and on which far too much has been rested. From all that has now been advanced, it will be seen how, in the wider and truer recognition of the universality of religion and in the firmer place found for the spiritual faculty in man, the subjective side or factor in the genesis of religion has been more adequately recognised. We may surely affirm that spiritual perception has, in recent philosophy of religion, been more clearly seen to be not less natural to man than either self-perception or sense - perception. We may surely say, further, that, hardly less congenial and proper than is the notion of self to the individual, is the propriety which humankind in its race-aspect has in the idea of God, a result inconceivable to us without original aptitudes in the soul for Theism.

It has been well said that "there is more than an analogy there is a real kinship between the psychological and objective development in the

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individual and the race. So we may trace a common outline for both. Indeed its development in the individual is only rendered possible through connection with a communal life." Need we say that the personal element is not suppressed in this interaction of the universal and the individual? We certainly deem ourselves justified in claiming, on behalf of our late philosophy of religion, a more decided utterance in favour of the universality, in a true and real sense, of spiritual perception or the religious sense. Can anything hinder that the Divine, the supernal, should make approach unto man and be revealed in him? In our view it has grown more evident that nothing advanced either by Pyrrhonism or by Agnosticism. can so hinder. That to which the whole philosophy of religion is seen to witness is just this revelation of the Eternal and Divine in the finite spirit or consciousness. And it may not be amiss to recall the remark of Tait that "direct revelation of a spirit can never rise above self- assertion in the conscience." We may here call to remembrance -what Tiele has properly emphasised — that the gods are, even in the oldest religions, really spirits or lords that rule the phenomena of nature, and are not the "natural phenomena themselves." Deepening reflection, succeeding the personification of objects in nature, separated spirit from object and gave rise to fetichism. Such advances naturally followed as are implied in worship of the

spirits of ancestors, and of mythological divinities or great nature-spirits. The dependence on nature grew less, and on the moral and social institutions of civilisation grew greater. These things, with the fact that Waitz has affirmed "the religious element" which races "in the lowest grade of civilisation" in their beliefs "undoubtedly undoubtedly" possess, constitute aspects which might be taken as converging towards, if not yet confirmatory of, what we take to be the necessary theistic conception of the phenomena of religion. We may perhaps be suffered to say that it has been shown how little that is unlikely resides in the suggestion that "the palæontological races either had no religion, or apprehended only in dim fugitive outline the elements out of which religion was afterwards to spring." Further, we may be permitted to say it has been shown how good the reason to suppose that, stable consciousness of the gods being attained, "these gods were personifications of natural objects, conceived as superior to men, and, to some extent at least, as arbiters of their destiny." Dr J. G. Fraser, in his 'Golden Bough,' avers that to savage or primitive peoples "the world is mostly worked by supernatural agents." We believe it is being more clearly realised how, in all such attempts to explain the genesis of religion— which last is not to be taken as constituted by such prehistoric belief in spirits the attributes of the superhuman must be kept in view, no less.

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than the notion of spirits, if any adequate origin is to be adduced. How could anything less be able to inspire even germinal religion? Such superhuman power stood not far from primitive man, as he looked on Nature, the visible garment of Deity the heavens declared it most of all for his awakened self-consciousness-for awakened it first must be. The fact is, that men, in the childhood of the race, personified the things of nature just becaue they in some dim fashion realised that Nature meant for them a certain contact with Will, with Personality, of transcendent sort.

But why should man so perceive and interpret the facts of nature, and his nature-contact, but for what is to us here the important fact that he has a sense of the Divine, a certain power of religious perception, in virtue of which nature brings to him some revelation of the Divine? Yes, it is this informing influence of our own religious being that makes Nature appear to us in the religious aspect she wears. That inward susceptibility to which as a primary element (ein ursprüng-liches Gottesbewusstsein) C. I. Nitzsch so well directed attention, is now, we believe, far more intelligently perceived as operative, in a deep and basal way, in religion. With the growth of reflection co-operated the growth of social order in fashioning the beginnings of religious belief. Still, passing up to modern aspects of the matter, recent philosophy of natural theology has, it must be said, only