How it might have come about, not how it did come about, is all that the professed explanation amounts to.

And when it comes to choosing amongst mere possibilities, the anthropologist, instead of consulting the savage, may just as well endeavour to do it for himself.
Now anthropological theories of the origin of religion seem to me to go wrong mainly because they seek to simplify too much.

Having got down to what they take to be a root-idea, they straightway proclaim it _the_ root-idea.

I believe that religion has just as few, or as many, roots as human life and mind.
The theory of the origin of religion that may be said to hold the field, because it is the view of the greatest of living anthropologists, is Dr.Tylor's theory of animism.

The term animism is derived from the Latin _anima_, which--like the corresponding word _spiritus_, whence our "spirit"-- signifies the breath, and hence the soul, which primitive folk tend to identify with the breath.