That the words of St. Paul are literally true, as to the feeling after a God who needs not anything at man's hands, the study of anthropology seems to us to demonstrate. That in this God 'we have our being,' in so far as somewhat of ours may escape, at moments, from the bonds of Time and the manacles of Space, the earlier part of this treatise is intended to suggest, as a thing by no means necessarily beyond a reasonable man's power to conceive. That these two beliefs, however attained (a point on which we possess no positive evidence), have commonly been subject to degeneration in the religions of the world, is only too obvious. So far, then, the nature of things and of the reasoning faculty does not seem to give the lie to the old Degeneration theory. To these conclusions, as far as they are matters of scientific opinion, we have been led by nothing but the study of anthropology. [Footnote 1: _Myths of the New World_, p. 44.] [Footnote 2: _Prim. Cult_. i. 35.] [Footnote 3: _Introduction_, p. 199; also p. 161.] [Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360,361.] [Footnote 5: Prof. Menzies, _History of Religion_, p. 23.] [Footnote 6: [Greek: legomenai theion anagchai.] Porphyry.] [Footnote 7: Ixtlilochitl. Balboa, _Hist. du Pérou_, p. 62.] [Footnote 8: Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 104, 105.] [Footnote 9: Op. cit. p. 106.] [Footnote 10: On the Glenelg some caves and mountain tops are haunted or holy. Waitz, vi. 804, No authority cited.] [Footnote 11: _Religion of Semites_, p. 110.] [Footnote 12: _Rel. Sem_. p. 71.] [Footnote 13: Howitt, _J.A.T_. 1884, p. 187.] [Footnote 14: Op. cit. p. 188.] [Footnote 15: _Rel. Sem_. p. 207.] [Footnote 16: _Rel. Sem_. p. 225.] [Footnote 17: Op. cit. p. 247.] [Footnote 18: Op. cit. p. 269.] [Footnote 19: Op. cit. p. 277.] [Footnote 20: Op. cit. p. 343. Citing Gen. xxii 2 Kings xxi. 6, Micah vi. 7, 2 Kings iii. 27.] [Footnote 21: I mean, does not occur to my knowledge. New evidence is always upsetting anthropological theories.] XVI THEORIES OF JEHOVAH All speculation on the curly history of religion is apt to end in the endeavour to see how far the conclusions can be made to illustrate the faith of Israel. Thus, the theorist who believes in ancestor-worship as the key of all the creeds will see in Jehovah a developed ancestral ghost, or a kind of fetish-god, attached to a stone--perhaps an ancient sepulchral stele of some desert sheikh.