It was this intensity that gave the Druids at some time or other in the history of the Western Celts the power which Caesar and others assign to them.

The whole people of the Gauls, even with their military aristocracy, were extremely devoted to religious ideas, though these led to the inhumanity of human sacrifices.
At one time their sense of the reality of the other-world was so great, that they believed that loans contracted in this world would be repaid there, and practical belief could not go much further than that.

All these considerations tend to show how important it is, in the comparative study of religions, to investigate each religion in its whole sociological and geographical environment as well as in the etymological meaning of its terms.
In conclusion, the writer hopes that this brief sketch, which is based on an independent study of the main evidence for the religious ideas and practices of the Celtic peoples, will help to interest students of religion in the dominant modes of thought which from time immemorial held sway in these lands of the West of Europe, and which in folk-lore and custom occasionally show themselves even in the midst of our highly developed and complex civilisation of to-day.

The thought of early man on the problems of his being--for after all his superstitions reveal thought--deserve respect, for in his efforts to think he was trying to grope towards the light.
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY RHYS, _Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom_.
RHYS, _Celtic Folk-lore_, _Welsh and Manx_.
REINACH, S., _Cultes_, _Mythes et Religion_.
NUTT, ALFRED, _The Voyage of Bran_.
SQUIRE, _Mythology of the British Islands_.
GAIDOZ, _Esqiusse de Mythologie gauloise_.
BERTRAND, _La Religion des Gaulois_, _les Druides et le Druidisme_.
FRAZER, _The Golden Bough_.
JOYCE, _The Social History of Ireland_.
D'ARBOIS DE JUBAINVILLE, _Les Druides et les dieux celtiques a forme d'animaux_.
WINDISCH, _Irische Texte mit Worterbuch_.
CYNDDELW, _Cymru Fu_.
FOULKES, _Enwogion Cymru_.
CAMPBELL, _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_.
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