When it comes to the question of the origin of religion I find Dr. Downey displaying the same controversial ingenuity and missing my plain intention in much the same way. He makes me out to be a follower of Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen, which is rather hard on me: Herbert Spencer is my philosophical _bête noire_; I have rarely mentioned him in my writings without some indication of my antipathy, and in _The Outline of History_ I have never mentioned him at all. In a list of the opinions of various writers taken haphazard, to show what divergent views exist about the origin of religion, I mention Grant Allen’s _Evolution of the Idea of God_—Dr. Downey, I don’t know why, says “with evident respect.” Then he goes on for some pages confuting Grant Allen and pretending that he is confuting me. No doubt he thought he was confuting me, but if he had turned back to _The Outline of History_ instead of going off at this tangent, he would have seen that I do not write of the fear and worship of the Old Man—which, as Dr. Downey will learn some day, is not quite the same thing as ancestor worship—as anything more than one factor in the complex synthesis of religion. And the case for considering obsession by the thought of the Old Man, an important factor in that synthesis, rests on very much stronger foundations than Grant Allen’s not very substantial book. I wish I could think of Dr. Downey reading any scientific book for instruction rather than to find little bits for controversial use. I would send him to Lang and Atkinson’s _Social Origins_ and to the psycho-analytical work of Jung. He would learn then something of the real quality of the double stream of evidence, in human institutions and in childish psychology, for the importance of Old Man fear in the religious and social development of mankind.