Note 267 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

4. Two lines of scientific study, it would appear, must be thoroughly followed up before the ground can be pronounced clear for authoritative conclusions—those of anthropological archæology (including comparative mythology and comparative hierology) and economic analysis. On both lines, however, great progress has been made; and on the former in particular the result is profoundly disintegrating to traditional belief. The lessons of anthropology had been long available to the modern world before they began to be scientifically applied to the “science of religion.” The issues raised by Fontenelle and De Brosses in the eighteenth century were in practice put aside in favour of direct debate over Christian history, dogma, and ethic; though many of the deists dwelt on the analogies of “heathen” and “revealed” religion. As early as 1824 Benjamin Constant made a vigorous attempt to bring the whole phenomena under a general evolutionary conception in his work De la Religion.267 But it was not till the treasure of modern anthropology had been scientifically massed by such students as Theodor Waitz (Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 6 Bde. 1859–71) and Adolf Bastian (Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 3 Bde. 1860), and above all by Sir Edward Tylor, who first lucidly elaborated the science of it all, that the arbitrary religious conception of the psychic evolution of humanity began to be decisively superseded.