nd power of the
Divinity is earlier or later than the germ of the Homeric stories of
gods disguised as animals, or imprisoned by mortals, or kicked out of
Olympus. The rational and irrational aspects of mythology and religion
may be of coeval antiquity for all that is certainly known, or either of
them, in the dark backward of mortal experience, may have preceded the
other. There is probably no religion nor mythology which does not
offer both aspects to the student. But it is the part of advancing
civilisation to adorn and purify the rational element, and to
subordinate and supersede the irrational element, as far as religious
conservatism, ritual and priestly dogma will permit."

Such were the general remarks with which this chapter opened in the
original edition of the present work. But reading, reflection and
certain additions to the author's knowledge of facts, have made it seem
advisable to state, more fully and forcibly than before, that, in his
opinion, not only the puzzling element of myth, but the purer element of
a religious belief sanctioning morality is derived by civilised people
from a remote past of savagery. It is also necessary to draw attention
to a singular religious phenomena, a break, or "fault," as geologists
call it, in the religious strata. While the most backward savages, in
certain cases, present the conception of a Being who sanctions ethics,
and while that conception recurs at a given stage of civilisation, it
appears to fade, or even to disappear in some conditions of barbarism.
Among some barbaric peoples, such as the Zulus, and the Red Indians of
French Canada when first observed, as among some Polynesians and some
tribes of Western and Central Africa little trace of a supreme being
is found, except a name, and that name is even occasionally a matter
of ridicule. The highest religious conception has been reached, and
is generally known, yet the Being conceived of as creative is utterly
neglected, while ghosts, or minor gods, are served and adored. To this
religious phenomenon (if correctly observed) we must attempt to assign
a cause. For this purpose it is necessary to state again what may be
called the current or popular anthropological theory of the evolution of
Gods.

That theory takes varying shapes. In the philosophy of Mr. Herbert
Spencer we find a pure Euhemerism. Gods are but ghosts of dead men,
raised to a higher and finally to the highest power. In the somewhat
analogous but no