This popular view seems weak; for not only is the relation of cause to effect a mere assumption, and, indeed, rejected by exact science; but it dodges the very question at issue, which is to explain why spiritual agencies are imagined as causes of material effects. Similar objections lie to deriving primitive religions from a vague “perception of the Infinite,” or a _sensus numinis_, some _deus in nobis_, “warning us,” as Virgil says, “by his quick motion.” These are unclear, unsatisfying expressions, offering no rational explanation, and full of equivocations. A favourite theory in all times is that religions arose from the emotion of fear. It was taught by the Latin poet Petronius in a famous line, where he says “Fear first made the gods”; and it has been strenuously advocated by many modern philosophers and ethnologists. Now if this emotion is alone sufficient to evoke religious feeling, why, I ask, is that feeling absent in the craven and timid lower animals? Why is it so feeble in many a coward? Why has it been so strong in many a hero? Moreover, the spirit of many early religions is the reverse of that of fear. They are, as Dr. Robertson Smith correctly said, “predominantly joyous.” These are proofs enough that this ancient and popular notion rests on a misconception of facts. The “fear of God” enters, indeed, into every religion; but religion itself did not arise from it. We must already have a notion of God, before we can fear Him. If we are going to apply the scientific method to the study of religions we must offer an explanation for their existence which is intelligible, which is verifiable, and which holds good for all of them, primitive or developed, those of the remotest ages and those of to-day. Only thus can the ethnologist treat them as one element of the history of Humanity, a property of the species. This has not been done, so far as I know, up to the present time. In fact, much of the teaching of modern anthropology has been calculated to deter it. The outspoken advocacy of atheism and materialism by the French School has led its disciples to consider the effort unprofitable;[34] and the acceptance of the doctrine of “Animism” as a sufficient explanation of early cults has led to the neglect, in English-speaking lands, of their profounder analysis. Such a writer, for instance, as Andrew Lang does not hesitate to teach that, “The origin of a belief in God is beyond the ken of history and speculation.”[35] The real explanation of the origin of religion is simple and universal. Let any man ask himself on what his own religious belief is founded, and the answer, if true, will hold good for every member of the race, past and present. It makes no difference whether we analyse the superstitions of the rudest savages, or the lofty utterances of John the Evangelist, or of Spinoza the “god-intoxicated philosopher”; we shall find one and the same postulate to the faith of all.