It was necessary to my argument to enter on this somewhat lengthy examination of the spiritual nature of man, because, while we acknowledge the unity of man, we are compelled to recognize in his religious sense and aspirations and capacities something quite disparate—­something that we could not get by a natural process of growth from such beginnings of reason as are observed in the lower animals.

I am aware that Dr. Darwin conceived that the religious feeling of man might have grown out of the natural emotions of fear,[1] love, gratitude, &c., when once men began to question as to the explanation of the phenomena of life, and to ascribe the forces of nature to the possession of a spirit such as he himself was conscious of:  and with much more positive intent, Mr. H. Spencer has also, after most painstaking inquiries, formulated what he conceives to be the origin of religious belief in man.  He refers us to the early belief in a “double” of self, which double could be projected out of self, and remained in some way after death, so as to become the object of fear, and ultimately of worship.  When this ancestor-worship resulted in the worship of a multitude of “genii” (whose individuality, as regards their former earthly connection, is more or less forgotten), then the idea of attaching the numerous divinities or ancestor-souls to the ocean, the sky, the sun, the mountains, and the powers of nature, arises; whence the poetic systems of ancient polytheistic mythology.  Gradually men began to reason and to think, and they refined the polytheism into the “higher” idea of one great, central, immaterial all-pervading power, which they called God.

[Footnote:  1 See the “Descent of Man,” vol. i. p. 68 (original edition).  But it is right to state that the subject is not treated in any way whatever so as to argue that the religious belief is a fancy, or development of fancy, with no God and no facts about God behind it.]

Mr. Spencer, in effect, concludes that this “God” is only man’s own idea of filling up a blank, of explaining the fact that there must be an ultimate first cause of whatever exists, and there is also a great source of power of some kind external to ourselves.[1]

I am not going here to enter on any special argument as to the validity of these theories in their relation to the direct question of the nature and existence of God.  What we are here concerned with is, whether they enable us to exclude the idea of a gift and a giver of spiritual or mental (we will not quarrel about terms) nature to man, and whether, by any fair reasoning from analogy, we can suppose man’s reason and his “sensus numinis” to arise by the mere stages of natural growth and development.  Dr. Darwin’s supposition takes no notice of the moral law and its influence; indeed he adopts[2] the view that conscience is no sense of right and wrong, but only the stored up and inherited social instinct, a sense of convenience and inconvenience