The author also felt that to such a circle it would not be necessary for him to make an apology analogous to that with which Pellegrini sought to defend the noble profession of medicine in the early days of printing.[1] But it was with no inconsiderable amount of pride that he saw his pamphlet honored by the earnest attention of men eminent in the world of thought, who by suggestion and criticism, given in kindness and received with gratitude, have contributed to the amplification of the original “Notes and Memoranda” into the present treatise. That these disgusting rites are distinctively religious in origin, no one, after a careful perusal of all that is to be presented upon that head, will care to deny; and that their examination will be productive of important results will be equally incontrovertible when that examination shall be conducted on the broad principle that the benefit or detriment mankind may have received from religion in general or from any particular form of religion, can be ascertained only by a comparison between man’s actions and principles of conduct in the earliest stages of culture, and those observable while actuated by the religious sentiment of the present day. Hebrews and Christians will discover a common ground of congratulation in the fact that believers in their systems are now absolutely free from any suggestion of this filth taint, every example to the contrary being in direct opposition to the spirit and practice of those two great bodies to which the world’s civilization is so deeply indebted. But under another point of view, the study of primitive man is an impossibility and an absurdity unless prosecuted as an investigation into his mode of religious thought, since religion guided every thought and deed of his daily life. Rink, after saying that the “whole study of prehistoric man ... which has hitherto almost exclusively been founded upon the study of the ornaments, weapons, and other remains of primitive peoples,” must in future be based upon an inquiry into their spiritual thought, remarks that “The time will surely come when any relic of spiritual life brought down to us from prehistoric mankind, which may still be found in the folk-lore of the more isolated and primitive nations, will be valued as highly as those primitive remains.”—(“Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Rink, Edinburgh, 1875, page 6 of Preface.)