Every one knows how the snow lies in the valleys of the Alps, forming a plain which slopes gradually downward towards the outlet Imagine such a valley ten miles across, with just such a sloping plain, not of snow but of earth.

To Tylor the fact that modern religious practitioners continued to believe in spirits showed that these people were no more advanced than primitive societies. American Anthropologist Vol. By excluding scientific explanation in their understanding of why and how things occur he asserts modern religious practitioners are rudimentary.

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917) was an English anthropologist. He considered animism as the first phase of development of religions.