At the same time, being men, we all find it hard, nay impossible, to study mankind impartially.  When we say that we are going to play the historian, or the anthropologist, and to put aside for the time being all consideration of the moral of the story we seek to unfold, we are merely undertaking to be as fair all round as we can.  Willy nilly, however, we are sure to colour our history, to the extent, at any rate, of taking a hopeful or a gloomy view of man’s past achievements, as bearing on his present condition and his future prospects.

In the same way, then, I do not believe that we can help thinking to ourselves all the time, when we are tracing out the history of world-religion, either that there is “nothing in it” at all, or that there is “something in it,” whatever form it assume, and whether it hold itself to be revealed (as it almost always does) or not.  On the latter estimate of religion, however, it is still quite possible to judge that one form of religion is infinitely higher and better than another.  Religion, regarded historically, is in evolution.  The best form of religion that we can attain to is inevitably the best for us; but, as a worse form preceded it, so a better form, we must allow and even desire, may follow.  Now, frankly, I am one of those who take the more sympathetic view of historical religion; an I say so at once, in case my interpretation of the facts turn out to be coloured by this sanguine assumption.

Moreover, I think that we may easily exaggerate the differences in culture and, more especially, in religious insight and understanding that exist between the ruder peoples and ourselves.  In view of our common hope, and our common want of knowledge, I would rather identify religion with a general striving of humanity than with the exclusive pretension of any one people or sect.  Who knows, for instance, the final truth about what happens to the soul at death?  I am quite ready to admit, indeed, that some of us can see a little farther into a brick wall than, say, Neanderthal man.  Yet when I find facts that appear to prove that Neanderthal man buried his dead with ceremony, and to the best of his means equipped them for a future life, I openly confess that I would rather stretch out a hand across the ages and greet him as my brother and fellow-pilgrim than throw in my lot with the self-righteous folk who seem to imagine this world and the next to have been created for their exclusive benefit.

Now the trouble with anthropologists is to find a working definition of religion on which they can agree.  Christianity is religion, all would have to admit.  Again, Mahomedanism is religion, for all anthropological purposes.  But, when a naked savage “dances” his god—­when the spoken part of the rite simply consists, as amongst the south-eastern Australians, in shouting “Daramulun!  Daramulun!” (the god’s name), so that we cannot be sure whether the dancers are indulging in a prayer or in