Then I shall roughly synthesise them, summing up my personal philosophy or natural religion; then I shall describe my startling discovery that the whole thing had been discovered before.

It had been discovered by Christianity.

But of these profound persuasions which I have to recount in order, the earliest was concerned with this element of popular tradition.

And without the foregoing explanation touching tradition and democracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear.

As it is, I do not know whether I can make it clear, but I now propose to try.
My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery.