t identical system of Mr. Tylor, man first attains to
the idea of spirit by reflection on various physical, psychological
and psychical experiences, such as sleep, dreams, trances, shadows,
hallucinations, breath and death, and he gradually extends the
conception of soul or ghost till all nature is peopled with spirits. Of
these spirits one is finally promoted to supremacy, where the conception
of a supreme being occurs. In the lowest faiths there is said, on this
theory, to be no connection, or very little connection, between religion
and morality. To supply a religious sanction of morals is the work of
advancing thought.(1)

(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 381. Huxley's Science and Hebrew Tradition, pp.
346,372.

This current hypothesis is, confessedly, "animistic," in Mr. Tylor's
phrase, or, in Mr. Spencer's terminology, it is "the ghost theory". The
human soul, says Mr. Tylor, has been the model on which all man's ideas
of spiritual beings, from "the tiniest elf" to "the heavenly Creator and
ruler of the world, the Great Spirit," have been framed.(1) Thus it has
been necessary for Mr. Tylor and for Mr. Spencer to discover first
an origin of man's idea of his own soul, and that supposed origin in
psychological, physical and psychical experiences is no doubt adequate.
By reflection on these facts, probably, the idea of spirit was reached,
though the psychical experiences enumerated by Mr. Tylor may contain
points as yet unexplained by Materialism. From these sources are derived
all really "animistic" gods, all that from the first partake of the
nature of hungry ghosts, placated by sacrifices of food, though in
certain cases that hunger may have been transferred, we surmise, by
worshippers to gods not ORIGINALLY animistic.

(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 109

In answer to this theory of an animistic or ghostly origin of all gods,
it must first be observed that all gods are not necessarily, it would
seem, of animistic origin. Among certain of the lowest savages, although
they believe in ghosts, the animistic conception, the spiritual idea,
is not attached to the relatively supreme being of their faith. He is
merely a powerful BEING, unborn, and not subject to death. The purely
metaphysical question "was he a ghost?" does not seem always to have
been asked. Consequently there is no logical reason why man's idea of
a Maker should not be prior to man's idea that there are such things
as souls, ghosts and spirits. Therefore the anim