He has to recognize that there is a "soul of truth" in other religions besides his own.
It will be replied--and I fully realize the force of the objection--that history, and therefore anthropology, has nothing to do with truth or falsehood--in a word, with value.

In strict theory, this is so.

Its business is to describe and generalize fact; and religion from first to last might be pure illusion or even delusion, and it would be fact none the less on that account.
At the same time, being men, we all find it hard, nay impossible, to study mankind impartially.

When we say that we are going to play the historian, or the anthropologist, and to put aside for the time being all consideration of the moral of the story we seek to unfold, we are merely undertaking to be as fair all round as we can.

Willy nilly, however, we are sure to colour our history, to the extent, at any rate, of taking a hopeful or a gloomy view of man's past achievements, as bearing on his present condition and his future prospects.
In the same way, then, I do not believe that we can help thinking to ourselves all the time, when we are tracing out the history of world-religion, either that there is "nothing in it" at all, or that there is "something in it," whatever form it assume, and whether it hold itself to be revealed (as it almost always does) or not.