Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/173

 Rh would-be synoptic version of the subject, based on some narrow and fragmentary view of the data as provided by current science. Nay, so essential is it to detach "workable" portions of the evidence for separate and detailed consideration, that it is comparatively unimportant whether the divisions at any moment recognised and adopted be capable of exact co-ordination in respect to one another, so long as each taken by itself is clearly marked and leads immediately to business. Thus in the present case I have ventured to call attention to a phase of early Religion which, I believe, only needs clearly marking off by the aid of a few technical designations, to serve as a rallying point for a quantity of facts that have hitherto largely "gone about loose." I have therefore improvised some technical terms. I have likewise roughly surveyed the ground covered by the special topic in question, with a view to showing how the facts may there be disposed and regimented. Choicer technical terms no doubt may easily be found. Moreover my illustrations are certainly anything but choice, having been culled hastily from the few books nearest to hand. May I hope, however, at least to be credited with the good intention of calling the attention of anthropologists to the possibilities of a more or less disregarded theme in Comparative Religion; and may I, conversely, be acquitted of any design to dogmatise prematurely about Religious Origins because I have put forward a few experimental formulæ, on the chance of their proving useful to this or that researcher who may be in need of an odd piece of twine wherewith to tie his scopæ dissolutæ into a handy, if temporary, besom?

Definitions of words are always troublesome; and Religion is the most troublesome of all words to define. Now for the purposes of Anthropology at its present stage it matters less to assign exact limits to the concept to which the word in question corresponds, than to make sure that these limits are cast on such wide and generous lines, as to exclude no feature that has characterised Religion at any moment in the