visible, from the bright beings that could
be touched, like the river that could be seen, like the thunder that
could be heard, like the sun, to the devas that could no longer be
touched or heard or seen.... The way was traced out by nature
herself."

[Footnote 5: _Lectures on the Origin of Religion_, 1882.]

This famous theory is, when we come to examine it, rather puzzling.
It does not account for the first beginnings of religion except by
inference, and it does so in two contradictory ways; for, on the one
hand, Mr. Max Mueller enumerates tangible objects first as those from
which men rose to higher objects, and on the other he denies that
fetishism is a primitive formation. He suggests that there were
earlier gods than the devas, but he tells us nothing about them,
except that they were not fully deities; they were only semi-deities,
or not deities at all. The worship of spirits he leaves entirely out
of consideration; religion did not, in his view, begin with Animism.
When he does tell us of the beginnings of religion, what is his view?
The religion of the Aryans began, and it is a type--the other
religions presumably began in the same way, _e.g._ those of China and
of Egypt--by the impression made on man from without by great natural
objects co-operating with his inner presentiment of the infinite,
which they met to a greater degree than any objects he had tried
before. Religion was due accordingly to aesthetic impressions from
without, answering an aesthetic and intellectual inner need. Those
needs, then, which led men to make gods of the great powers of earth
and heaven were not of an animal or material nature, but belonged to
the intellectual part of his constitution. Those who framed such a
religion for themselves must have been raised above the pressing
necessities and cares of savage life; they were not absorbed in the
task of making their living, but had leisure to stand and admire the
heavenly bodies, and to analyse the impressions made on them by the
waters and the thunder. Nay, they had sufficient power of abstraction
to form a class of such great beings, to bestow on them a common
title, not only one but several progressive common titles, each
expressing a deeper reflection than the last. Thus did they reflect
on the nature of the cosmic powers, taken as a class. This,
evidently, is not the beginning of religion. It is the religion of a
comparatively lofty civilisation; lower stages of civilisation, a