Or, if to some all this appears but wire-drawn metaphysical subtlety, they are welcome to the definition of the realist, that the idea of God is the sum of those intelligent activities which the individual, reasoning from the analogy of his own actions, imagines to be behind and to bring about natural phenomena.[44-1] If either of these be correct, it were hard to conceive how any tribe or even any sane man could be without some notion of divinity.
Certainly in America no instance of its absence has been discovered.
Obscure, grotesque, unworthy it often was, but everywhere man was oppressed with a _sensus numinis_, a feeling that invisible, powerful agencies were at work around him, who, as they willed, could help or hurt him.

In every heart was an altar to the Unknown God.

Not that it was customary to attach any idea of unity to these unseen powers.

The supposition that in ancient times and in very unenlightened conditions, before mythology had grown, a monotheism prevailed, which afterwards at various times was revived by reformers, is a belief that should have passed away when the delights of savage life and the praises of a state of nature ceased to be the themes of philosophers.

We are speaking of a people little capable of abstraction.