That conception alone could neither supply the moral motive of 'a soul to be saved,' nor satisfy the metaphysical instinct of advancing mankind. To meet these wants, to supply 'soul,' with its moral stimulus, and to provide a phrase or idea under which the Deity could be envisaged (i.e. as a _spirit_) by advancing thought, Animism was necessary. The blending of the theistic and the animistic beliefs was indispensable to religion. But, in the process of animistic development under advancing social conditions, degeneration was necessarily implied. Degeneration of the theistic conception for a while, therefore, occurred. The facts are the proofs; and only contradictory facts, in sufficient quantity, can annihilate the old theory of Degeneration when it is presented in this form. It mast be repeated that on this theory an explanation is given of what the old Degeneration hypothesis does not explain. Granting a primal religion relatively pure in its beginnings, why did it degenerate? Mr. Max Mullet, looking on religion as the development of the sentiment of the Infinite, regards fetishism as a secondary and comparatively late form of belief. We find it, he observes, in various forms of Christianity; Christianity, therefore, is primary there, relic worship is secondary. Religion beginning, according to him, in the sense of the infinite, as awakened in man by tall trees, high hills, and so on, it advances to the infinite of space and sky, and so to the infinitely divine. This is primary: fetishism is secondary. Arguing elsewhere against this idea, I have asked: What was the _modus_ of degeneration which produced similar results in Christianity, and in African and other religions? How did it work? I am not aware that Mr. Max Müller has answered this question. But how degeneration worked--namely, by Animism supplanting Theism--is conspicuously plain on our theory.