We are all naturally apt to insist on and be pre-possessed in favour of an idea which has come to ourselves unexpectedly, and has appeared to be corroborated by wider research, and, perhaps, above all, which runs contrary to the current of scientific opinion. We make a pet of the relatively new idea; let it be the origin of mythology in 'a disease of language;' or the vast religious importance of totems; or our theory of the origin of totemism; or the tremendous part played in religion by gods of plants. We insist on the idea too exclusively; we find it where it is not--in fact, we are very human, very unscientific, very apt to become one-idea'd. It is even more natural that we should be regarded in this light by our brethren (_est-il embêtant avec son Etre Suprême_!), whose own systems will be imperilled if our favourite idea can be established. I risk this interpretation when I keep maintaining--what--that the chapter of otiose or unworshipped superior beings in the 'Early History of Religion' deserves perusal. Not to cut its pages, to go on making systems as if it did not exist, is, I venture to think, less than scientific, and borders on the superstitious. For to build and defend a theory, without looking closely to whatever may imperil it, is precisely the fault of the superstitious Khond, who used to manure his field with a thumb, or a collop from the flank of a human victim, and did not try sowing a field without a collop of man's flesh, to see what the comparative crops would be. Or science of this kind is like Don Quixote, who, having cleft his helmet with one experimental sword-stroke, repaired it, but did not test it again. Like other martyrs of science, I must expect to be thought importunate, tedious, a fellow of one idea, and that idea wrong. To resent this would show great want of humour, and a plentiful lack of knowledge of human nature. Meanwhile, I am about to permit myself to criticise some recent hypotheses in the field of religious origins, in the interests of anthropology, not of orthodoxy. [1] _Golden Bough_, i. xxi., 1900. [2] _G. B_. i. 77. [3] Tylor, _Prim. Cult_. ii. 309, citing Thevet, _Singularitez de la France Antarctique_, Paris, 1558, ch. 77. [4] _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, Oct.-Dec. 1900 and N.S. II., Nos. 1, 2, p. 85. [5] Max Müller, _Hibbert Lectures,_ p. 16. II. _THE THEORY OF LOAN-GODS; OR BORROWED RELIGION_