Note 93 — Chapter II · LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION I.—Animism

We thus leave aside here those theories which, in whole or in part, make use of super-experimental data. This is the case with the theory which Andrew Lang exposed in his book, The Making of Religion, and which Father Schmidt has taken up again, with variations of detail, in a series of articles on The Origin of the Idea of God (Anthropos, 1908, 1909). Lang does not set animism definitely aside, but in the last analysis, he admits a sense or intuition of the divine directly. Also, if we do not consider it necessary to expose and discuss this conception in the present chapter, we do not intend to pass it over in silence; we shall come to it again below, when we shall ourselves explain the facts upon which it is founded (Bk. II, ch. ix, § 4).