Recent researches into primitive beliefs have shown in a surprising manner the psychological unity of man. In all parts of the world, in all periods of history, and under all conditions, the minds of men, in their natural reactions against the basic factors of existence, operate in similar ways. There is a remarkable resemblance in the mental processes of men. The laws of thought appear to work automatically in all men. The minds of prehistoric people worked like those of men to-day. The impressions of the senses appear to be interpreted in similar ways by all peoples. Here is the explanation of the numerous resemblances we find in national histories, national folk lore, and national religions. They differ much in innumerable details, but possess many resemblances in their great fundamental conceptions. Normal man has always been religious. Mankind has always assumed definite attitudes toward the universe and this has resulted in the universality of religion. Early men the world over appear to have been as eager to learn the keys to the riddles of the universe as was the boy Longfellow sang about in the following stanzas: Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Saying: "Here is a story-book Thy Father has written for thee." "Come wander with me," she said, "Into regions yet untrod; And read what is still unread In the manuscripts of God." And he wandered away and away With Nature, the dear old nurse, Who sang to him night and day The rhymes of the universe. And whenever the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvelous tale. Modern science has developed from this instinctive human desire to read Nature's story-book and understand her marvelous tales. Early struggles of mankind taught that human behavior must be regulated in accordance with rigid moral laws. This promoted the primitive social processes which were early concerned with religious beliefs as well as with magic and medicine. Two of the earliest beliefs universally accepted were that we possess souls and that our personality persists after death. These basic principles of faith have caused extremely beneficial results to follow in the development of knowledge. Some of the American Indians and other primitive peoples of to-day still live in the belief that the heavenly bodies, the sky, sea, and earth, as well as plants, animals, and men, all belong to a vast system of all-conscious and interrelated life, in which the degrees of relationship are distinguished by the degrees of resemblance.