It is true that the lower animals are not deemed capable of anything approaching religious feeling, unless there is a feeling approaching it in the attitude of the dog and horse and other domestic animals toward their masters. But man, as soon as he is able to attribute natural phenomena to a supernatural cause and power, manifests a crude religious feeling and emotion. He begins by believing in, fearing, and worshiping natural forces and objects, such as the sun, the moon, the wind, thunder and lightning, the ocean, rivers, mountains, etc. It is claimed that there is no natural object that has not been deified and worshiped by some people at some time in the history of the race. Later, man acquired the anthropomorphic conception of deities and created many gods in his own image, endowing them with his own attributes, qualities, and characteristics. The mental characteristics and morals of a people can always be ascertained by a knowledge of the average conception of deity held by them. Polytheism, or the belief in many gods, was succeeded by monotheism, or belief in one god. Monotheism ranges from the crudest conception of a manlike god to the highest conception of a spiritual Being transcending all human qualities, attributes, or characteristics. Man began by believing in many god _things_, then in many god _persons_, then in a one god-person, then in one God who is a spirit, then in One Universal Spirit which is God. It is a far cry from the savage, manlike god of old to the conception of the Universal Spirit of the "God-drunken philosopher," Spinoza. The extreme of religious belief is that which holds that "there is nothing but God--all else is illusion," of pantheistic idealism. Buddhism (at least in its original form) discarded the idea of a Supreme Being, and held that Ultimate Reality is but Universal _Law_; hence the accusation that Buddhism is an "atheistic religion," although it is one of the world's greatest religions, having over 400,000,000 followers.