Of course, the daily history of the appearance and disappearance of light is intimately connected with the apparent motion of the sun.  Hence, in the myths there is often a seeming identification of the two, which I have been at no pains to avoid.  But the identity is superficial only; it entirely disappears in other parts of the myth, and the conceptions, as fundamentally distinct, must be studied separately, to reach accurate results.  It is an easy, but by no means a profound method of treating these religions, to dismiss them all by the facile explanations of “animism,” and “sun and moon worship.”

I have said, and quoted strong authority to confirm the opinion, that the native tribes of America have lost ground in morals and have retrograded in their religious life since the introduction of Christianity.  Their own faiths, though lower in form, had in them the germs of a religious and moral evolution, more likely, with proper regulation, to lead these people to a higher plane of thought than the Aryan doctrines which were forced upon them.

This may seem a daring, even a heterodox assertion, but I think that most modern ethnologists will agree that it is no more possible for races in all stages of culture and of widely different faculties to receive with benefit any one religion, than it is for them to thrive under one form of government, or to adopt with advantage one uniform plan of building houses.  The moral and religious life is a growth, and the brash wood of ancient date cannot be grafted on the green stem.  It is well to remember that the heathendoms of America were very far from wanting living seeds of sound morality and healthy mental education.  I shall endeavor to point this out in a few brief paragraphs.

In their origin in the human mind, religion and morality have nothing in common.  They are even antagonistic.  At the root of all religions is the passionate desire for the widest possible life, for the most unlimited exercise of all the powers.  The basis of all morality is self-sacrifice, the willingness to give up our wishes to the will of another.  The criterion of the power of a religion is its ability to command this sacrifice; the criterion of the excellence of a religion is the extent to which its commands coincide with the good of the race, with the lofty standard of the “categorical imperative.”

With these axioms well in mind, we can advance with confidence to examine the claims of a religion.  It will rise in the scale just in proportion as its behests, were they universally adopted, would permanently increase the happiness of the human race.

In their origin, as I have said, morality and religion are opposites; but they are opposites which inevitably attract and unite.  The first lesson of all religions is that we gain by giving, that to secure any end we must sacrifice something.  This, too, is taught by all social intercourse, and, therefore, an acute German psychologist has set up the formula,” All manners are moral,"[1] because they all imply a subjection of the personal will of the individual to the general will of those who surround him, as expressed in usage and custom.