: "A man is sent to ride on a bicycle as fast as he can
through the different streets. This invariably attracts
attention. Boys and men follow him to the church, where it
is easy to persuade them to enter." But this is an admission
of our position in regard to the classes affected. The
rabble may be Christianized by this means, but the
intelligent will not be attracted.]

[Footnote 44: After the greater part of our work had passed
the final revision, and several months after the whole was
gone to press, appeared Oldenberg's _Die Religion des Veda_,
which, as the last new book on the subject, deserves a
special note. The author here takes a liberal view, and does
not hesitate to illustrate Vedic religion with the light
cast by other forms of superstition. But this method has its
dangers, and there is perhaps a little too much straining
after original types, giant-gods as prototypes and totemism
in proper names, where Vedic data should be separated from
what may have preceded Vedic belief. Oldenberg, as a
ritualist, finds in Varuna, Dawn, and the Burial Service the
inevitable stumbling-blocks of such scholars as confuse
Brahmanism with early Vedism. To remove these obstacles he
suggests that Varuna, as the moon, was borrowed from the
Semites or Akkadians (though be frankly admits that not even
the shadow of this moon lingers in Vedic belief); explains
Dawn's non-participation in _soma_ by stating that she never
participates in it (which explains nothing); and jumps over
the Burial Hymn with the inquiry whether, after all, it
could not be interpreted as a cremation-hymn (the obvious
answer being that the service does imply burial, and does
not even hint at cremation). On the other hand, when
theoretical barbarism and ritualism are foregone, Oldenberg
has a true eye for the estimation of facts, and hence takes
an unimpeachable position in several important particulars,
notably in rejecting Jacobi's date of the Rig Veda; in
rejecting also Hillebrandt's moon-_soma_; in denying an
originally supreme Dy[=a]us; in his explanation of
henotheism (substantially one with the explanation we gave a
year ago); and in his account of the relation of the Rig
Veda to the (later) Atharvan. Despite an occasional
brilliant suggestion, which makes t