It is on this great idea that the whole study of the history of religion is now firmly established. At the foundation of all endeavours to classify the multitudinous facts which it embraces, lies the conviction that whatever may be the occasional instances of degeneration or decline, the general movement of human things advances from the cruder and less complex to the more refined and developed. In the range of knowledge, in the sphere of the arts, in the command over nature, in the stability and expansion of the social order, there are everywhere signs of growth, even if isolated groups, such as the Australians, the Todas of India, or the Veddas of Ceylon, seem to be in the last stages of stagnation or decay. Religion is one phase of human culture, it expresses man's attitude to the powers around him and the events of life. Its various forms repose upon the unity of the race. The anthropologist is convinced that if a new tribe is discovered in some forest in central Africa, whether its stature be large or small, its {34} persons will contain the same limbs as other men, and will live by the same physical processes. The sociologist expects that their social groups will approximate to other known types of human relations. The philologist anticipates that behind the obscurities of their speech he will find modes of thought which he can match elsewhere. The student of religions will in the same way be on the look-out for customs and usages akin to those which he already knows; he will assume that under similar conditions experience will be moulded on similar lines, and the streams of thought and feeling--though small causes may easily deflect their course--will tend to flow in parallel channels as they issue from minds of the same order, and traverse corresponding scenes.