"It is admitted on all hands that a survey of the great religions of the world shows that they hold in common many religious, ethical and philosophical ideas. But while the fact is universally granted, the explanation of the fact is a matter of dispute. Some allege that religions have grown up on the soil of human ignorance tilled by imagination, and have been gradually elaborated from crude forms of animism and fetichism; their likenesses are referred to universal natural phenomena imperfectly observed and fancifully explained, solar and star worship being the universal key for one school, phallic worship the equally universal key for another; fear, desire, ignorance and wonder led the savage to personify the powers of nature, and priests played upon his terrors and his hopes, his misty fancies and his bewildered questionings; myths became scriptures and symbols facts, and as their basis was universal the likeness of the products was inevitable."