We can scarcely escape a painful shock to discover that we are bound by such adamantine chains. As the primitive man could not conceive that inflexible mechanical laws control the processes of nature, so are we slow to acknowledge that others, not less rigid, rule our thoughts and fancies. Nowhere, however, is the truth of it more clearly demonstrated than in primitive religions. Without a full appreciation of this fact, it is impossible to comprehend them; and for the lack of it, much that has been written upon them is worthless. The astonishing similarity, the absolute identities, which constantly present themselves in myths and cults separated by oceans and continents, have been construed as evidence of common descent or of distant transmission; whereas they are the proofs of a fundamental unity of the human mind and of its processes, “before which,” as a German writer says, “the differences in individual, national, or even racial divisions sink into insignificance.”[7] Wherever we turn, in time or in space, to the earliest and simplest religions of the world, we find them dealing with nearly the same objective facts in nearly the same subjective fashion, the differences being due to local and temporal causes. This cardinal and basic truth of the unity of action of man’s intelligence, which is established just as much for the arts, the laws, and the institutions of men as for their religions, enables me to present to you broadly the faiths of primitive peoples as one coherent whole, the product of a common humanity, a mirror reflecting the deepest thoughts of the whole species on the mighty questions of religious life and hope, not the isolated or borrowed opinions of one or another tribe or people. Of course, the recognition of this principle does not diminish the attention to be paid to the ethnic or local developments of culture and to the borrowing or transference of myths and rites. Wherever this can be shown to have occurred, it is an adequate explanation of identities; but in tribes geographically remote, the presumption is that such identities are due to the common element of humanity in the species. Such similarities are by no means confined to the primitive forms of religion; but in them they are more obvious, and their causes are more apparent; so for that reason, a study of such primitive forms is peculiarly remunerative to one who would acquaint himself with the elements of religion in general. No one, in fact, can pretend to a thorough knowledge of the great historic religions of the world who has not traced their outlines back to the humble faiths of early tribes from which they emerged. He must have recourse to them for like reasons that the biologist, who would learn the morphology of a mammal, betakes himself to the study of the cells and fibres of the simplest living organisms; for in their uncomplicated forms he can discover the basic activities which animate the highest structures.