liturgical, and afterwards collected for hymnological purposes. This idea, however, that, because some hymns were meant from the first to accompany the sacrifices, all Vedic hymns were the production of Vedic priests; that, in fact, the Hindus first elaborated a most complete and complicated ceremonial, and then only set to work to invent the gods to whom their sacrifices should be offered and to compose hymns of praise to celebrate the greatness of these gods,—this idea, I say, has so completely taken possession of certain philosophers, that they now appeal to the Veda as the best proof that sacrifice must everywhere have come first, and hymns to the gods, nay, according to some, even belief in the gods, afterwards. Gods, we are told, are not gods till they are worshipped (Gruppe, l. c., p. 81). If such theories can be proved by facts in any part of the globe, let it be so; but to quote the Veda in support of them, is impossible.

And what applies to sacrifices offered to the gods of nature, applies with equal force to the offerings presented to ancestral spirits. We have been told of late that sacrifices arose really from carousals, and I do not deny that there is some truth in this, only that, as usual, it is spoiled by exaggeration. Nothing is more natural than that, after the death of a father, his place at dinner should be kept vacant, or that his share of food should actually be placed on the exact spot where he used to sit. That may seem childish, but it is perfectly human. Again, that a few drops of whatever served for drink at a meal should be poured on the ground in memory of the departed, is perfectly intelligible. But in that case, a belief in ancestral spirits was as necessary a

condition of such pious acts as a belief in gods is presupposed by sacrificial offerings.

What, however, quite staggers me, is the idea lately broached, that not only did all religion take its origin in these carousals1, but that the first idea of sacrifice arose from some person persuading the people that by lighting in the morning the fire on the altar, they could assist the sun in his daily or yearly fight against his enemies. Where could they have got a belief in the sun as a fighter and as having enemies? And how would it have been possible to convince them, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that the small rush-light on their hearth could invigorate the power of the sun? It is perfectly true that such ideas appear in the Veda, but they appear there preceded by many antecedent ideas, which make them not only less grotesque, but render them almost intelligible. But to imagine that such thoughts could be primitive, and that they could help us to account psychologically for the evolution of religious and sacrificial ideas in the world at large, is certainly to my mind passing strange. Well may the author of such a theory say that so absurd a thing could have happened once only in the history of the world, and that therefore all religions of the civilised races of mankind came from the country in which this strange hallucination took possession of one weak-minded individual (p. 277).

Although, therefore, a definition of religion which should exclude sacrifices and priesthood would certainly be deficient, I hold that both the sacrificial and

1 'Der Cultusact war nicht etwa nur mit einem Gelage verbunden, sondern er war recht eigentlich ein Gelage.' Gruppe, p. 277.

priestly character of religion is sufficiently secured by our restricting the perception of the infinite to such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man. It is the moral character of man that shows itself in those acts of fear, reverence, gratitude, love, and contrition which we comprehend under the general name of sacrifice, and the delegation of these sacrificial acts to agents, better qualified or more worthy to perform them than the rest, may likewise be traced back to a sense of humility on the part of the people at large, or what we now call the laity.

If now we gather up the threads of our argument, and endeavour to give our own definition of religion, it would be this:

Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man.'

I look upon this as a definition of religion in its origin, but if we once admit a continuity in the historical growth of religion, the same definition ought to remain applicable to all the later developments through which religion has passed. In order to remain applicable to all these later developments, our definition of religion must necessarily leave out whatever is peculiar to one or other of these later developments only; and it may happen therefore that what seem to some of us the most valuable characteristics of religion, are missing in our definition of it.

To those who maintain that religion is chiefly a modus cognoscendi Deum, a mode of knowing God, we should reply that there is no conceptual knowledge which is not based first of all on perceptual knowledge, and that Deus or God is not the only object of reli

gion, that in fact so narrow a definition would exclude all dualistic and polytheistic religions as well as all those forms of faith which shrink from comprehending the Divine under the limits of mere human personality.

To those who cling to the idea of religion as chiefly a mode of worshipping God, modus colendi Deum, our answer would be that so long as worship is a genuine expression of moral sentiments, it is included in our definition; while when it has ceased to be so, it is no longer religion, but superstition only.

Kant's definition that 'religion consists in our recognising all our duties as divine commandments' is comprehended in our own, for that definition represents only a later and higher stage of that original perception of something unseen and infinite which determines our moral acts. Nay, if we go a step higher still, and recognise religion as the surrender of the finite will to the infinite, we have here again the fullest realisation of that primeval perception of the infinite as a power, not entirely different from ourselves, that makes for righteousness.

And while thus the highest conceptions of religion can be traced back as natural developments to that broad conception of religion on which our definition is based, we shall find that the lowest forms of religion likewise are easily comprehended under it. Roskoff, in his learned work Das Religionswesen der rohesten Naturvölker, 1880, (The religion of the rudest races,) which contains a most elaborate and exhaustive reply to Sir John Lubbock's theories, defines the religion of these uncivilised tribes in the most general terms as 'what lifts them above the real world.' Much the

same definition of religion is given by Hegel also. Here we have only to replace real by finite, and we shall see that what he means is exactly what we mean by a 'perception of something infinite beyond the finite world,' only that we qualify that perception of the infinite and restrict it to that class of perceptions which can influence the moral character of man.

I know in fact of no definition of religion-and I have dwelt in my lectures on the most important only-which cannot be accommodated within the wide boundaries of our own, and, what is even more important, I know of no religion, whether ancient or modern, that cannot be caught in that wide net. Even Buddhism-I mean Southern Buddhism, which refused to be caught by any other definition-cannot escape. Though Buddha declined to dogmatise on the Beyond, and though from his unwillingness to predicate anything about it, it dwindled down in the minds of some of his followers to a mere Nothing, yet even that Nothing was not the finite or material world, but lay beyond it, undefined, if not infinite. Buddha was lifted beyond the real world; and the practical side of Buddhism also, its belief in transmigration and the never-resting wheel of the world, presupposed a look that had pierced beyond the finite, nay, had raised the perception of the endless continuance of works or Karma into the most potent faith that could influence the moral character of man. 'We are what we are,' as Buddha says in the very first verse of his Dhammapada, by what we have thought and done. As the cart follows on the heels of the ox that draws it, so do our thoughts and deeds follow us.' The experience of this finite world could