ARMED WITH THIS DEFINITION, we are now able to set out in
search of this elementary religion which we propose to study.

Even the crudest religions with which history and ethnology
make us acquainted are already of a complexity which corre-
sponds badly with the idea sometimes held of primitive men-
tality. One finds there not only a confused system of beliefs
and rites, but also such a plurality of different principles, and
such a richness of essential notions, that it seems impossible to
see in them anything but the late product of a rather long evo-
lution. Hence it has been concluded that to discover the truly
original form of the religious life, it is necessary to descend by
analysis beyond these observable religions, to resolve them into
their common and fundamental elements, and then to seek
among these latter some one from which the others were de-
rived.

To the problem thus stated, two contrary solutions have
been given.

There is no religious system, ancient or recent, where one
does not meet, under different forms, two religions, as it were,
side by side, which, though being united closely and mutually
penetrating each other, do not cease, nevertheless, to be dis-
tinct. The one addresses itself to the phenomena of nature,
either the great cosmic forces, such as winds, rivers, stars or

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