"Comparative Mythologists contend that the common origin is the common ignorance, and that the loftiest religious doctrines are simply refined expressions of the crude and barbarous guesses of savages, of primitive men, regarding themselves and their surroundings.... A Kṛiṣhṇa, a Buddha, a Lao-tze, a Jesus, are the highly civilised but lineal descendants of the whirling medicine-man of the savage... And so forth. It is all summed up in the phrase: Religions are branches from a common trunk—human ignorance. p. 8"