According to Max Müller some notion of divinity, in especial in the form of a notion of the infinite, must have preceded the conception of God. Gods are simply subsequent personifications of this great innate idea; our ancestors kneeled in worship long before they possessed a name for Him before whom they were kneeling. Even at the present day we recognize in the last resort the vanity of all the titles of the unknown God whom we must adore really in silence. Religion, which is responsible for the origin of the gods of history, may therefore well survive them. We say religion; for in effect, according to Max Müller, all religions amount in the end to one, since they may all be traced back through the long course of their development to a single original conception, that namely of the infinite, which from the very beginning was present in the mind of man. This universal conception, however, Max Müller does not regard as in any sense mystical or innate, in the old acceptation of that word. He willingly adopts the axiom: _Nihil in fide quod non antea fuerit in sensu._[12] But in his opinion some perception of the infinite is logically involved in a perception of the finite, and this conception of infinity, with its basis at once in sense and reason, is the true foundation of religion. Given the five senses of a savage, Max Müller undertakes to make him sensible of or at least experience some presentiment of the infinite, make him desire it, feel some aspiration toward it. Take the sense of sight for example: “Man sees, he sees to a certain point; and then his eyesight breaks down. But exactly where his eyesight breaks down there presses upon him, whether he likes it or not, the perception of the unlimited or the infinite.” “It may be said,” he adds, “that this is not perception in the ordinary sense of the word. No more it is, but still less is it mere reasoning.” “If it seems too bold to say that man actually sees the invisible, let us say that he _suffers_ from the invisible, and the invisible is only a special name for the infinite.” Man not only necessarily divines the infinite as existing beyond the limits of the finite, and as it were enveloping it; he perceives it within the limits of the finite, and as it were penetrating it; the infinite divisibility of matter is manifest to the senses, the fact that science seems to demand the existence of an irreducible atom as a necessary postulate to the contrary notwithstanding. And what is true of space is equally true of time, applies equally to quality and quantity. “Beyond, behind, beneath, and within the finite, the infinite is always present to our senses. It presses upon us, it grows upon us from every side. What we call finite in space and time, in form and word, is nothing but a veil or net which we ourselves have thrown over the infinite.” And let it not be objected that primitive languages supply no means of expressing the idea of infinity, of the beyond, which is given in every finite