Religion always implies some kind of want. The young husband wants male children, the hunter game, the warrior victory, the diviner the knowledge of secrets, the saint holiness. The wants may be crude or refined, the satisfaction of a physical appetite, protection against some anticipated danger, the realisation of an exalted spiritual fellowship. But religion suggests that there is some Power capable of satisfying these wants, and undertakes to provide the means for setting man in proper relations with it. All round him are the objects and forces of the visible world. He learns by degrees that some help him to gratify his desires, and others hinder them. There are many things that he cannot understand, and some of which he dimly feels that he must not presume to try: he is only conscious towards them of a strange wonder and awe; they are uncanny; he cannot bring them into his experience; he must not meddle with them, he must keep away. But other things are more kindly, and fulfil his hopes. Out of such vague consciousness he gradually frames a working method. Some sort {74} of theory is at length established after many trials, concerning what must be done to obtain what he seeks. The line of his action is determined in part by the ideas and expectations which have slowly emerged out of his endeavours to get into fruitful connection with the powers by which he is encompassed. This is the element of belief, which lies behind religion proper, and supplies the soil in which religious feeling and action germinate and grow. What, then, is the kind of belief which, in the sphere of the lower culture, makes religion possible?