Throughout the centuries pantheistic and animistic forms of mysticism have found many adherents among the Mohammedans; but the infallible Agreement has persisted in calling that heresy.

On our hypothesis this indifference of high gods suggests the crowding out of the great disinterested God by venal animistic competition.

This is precisely what we should expect to find, if Ahone, the Creator, were earlier in evolution, while Okeus and the rest were of the usual greedy class of animistic corruptible deities, useful to priests.

One must reply that this pedigree cannot, indeed, be historically traced, but that it presents none of the logical difficulties inherent in the animistic pedigreenamely, that the savage Supreme Being is the last and highest result of evolution on animistic lines out of ghosts.

One must reply that this pedigree cannot, indeed, be historically traced, but that it presents none of the logical difficulties inherent in the animistic pedigreenamely, that the savage Supreme Being is the last and highest result of evolution on animistic lines out of ghosts.

It is consistent, whereas the animistic hypothesis is, in this case, inconsistent, with the universal savage theory of Death.

But as we are now among polytheists it may be argued that, given a crowd of gods on the animistic model, an origin had to be found for them, and that origin was Taa-roa.

But, at this stage of culture, the luck of the state, and the interests of a rich and powerful clergy, were involved in the maintenance of the old, animistic, relatively non-moral system, as in Cuzco, Greece, and Rome.

The animistic superstitions wildly based on the belief in the soul have not soiled him, and the social conditions of aristocracy, agriculture, architecture, have not made him one in a polytheistic crowd of rapacious gods, nor fettered him as a Baal to his estate, nor localised him in a temple built with hands.

A god made on the animistic model can be assigned to any department of human activity, down to sports, or lusts, or the province of Cloacina.

The blending of the theistic and the animistic beliefs was indispensable to religion.

But, in the process of animistic development under advancing social conditions, degeneration was necessarily implied.

They, as far as our knowledge extends, were strangely indifferent to the animistic element in religion, to the doctrine of surviving human souls, and so, of course, to that element of Animism which is pricelessthe purification of the soul in the light of the hope of eternal life.

We therefore examine certain forms of the animistic hypothesis as applied to account for the religion of Israel.

The ghost comes from, and depends on, the animistic theory; the Supreme Being, as originally thought of, does not.

To the lower, non-ghostly Tongan gods the animistic habit of sacrifice had been extended, but not yet to the Supreme Being.

If then (as in the case of Taa-roa), a Supreme Being does receive sacrifice, we may argue that a piece of animistic ritual, not connected with the Supreme Being in Australia or Andaman, not connected with his creed in Virginia or Africa (where ghost-gods do receive sacrifice), may in other regions be transferred from ghost-gods to the Supreme Being, who never was a ghost.

The care for the departed, the ritual of the Ka, the intense pre-occupation with the future life, which, far more than its morality, are the essential characteristics of the Book of the DeadIsrael cared for none of these animistic things, brought none of these, or very little of these, out of the land of Egypt.

Then there is the political reflection of the Emperor on Religion (which cannot exist where there is no Emperor, King, or Chief, and therefore must be late), there is the animistic rabble of spirits ancestral or not, and there is departmental polytheism.

We then collected from his work a series of alleged supernormal phenomena in savage belief, all making for the foundation of animistic religion.

These rites and the animistic conception behind them were next, in rare cases, reflected or refracted back on the Supreme Eternal.

To him who reaches this point the whole animistic doctrine of ghosts as the one germ of religion will appear to be imperilled.

Other civilised peoples, say the Greeks, extended the second, or animistic theory, into forms of beautiful fantasy, the material of art.

Polytheism everywherein Greece especiallyheld of the animistic conception, with its freakish, corruptible deities.

Greek philosophy could hardly restore that Eternal for whom the Prophets battled in Israel; whom some of the lowest savages know and fear; whom the animistic theory or cult everywhere obscures with its crowd of hungry, cruel, interested, food-propitiated ghost-gods.