people had used religion to explain things that occurred in the world. He saw that it was important for religions to have the ability to explain why and for what reason things occurred in the world. For example, God (or the divine) gave us sun to keep us warm and give us light. Tylor argued that animism is the true natural religion that is the essence of religion; it answers the questions of which religion came first and which religion is essentially the most basic and foundation of all religions. For him, animism was the best answer to these questions, so it must be the true foundation of all religions. Animism is described as the belief in spirits inhabiting and animating beings, or souls existing in things. To Tylor, the fact that modern religious practitioners continued to believe in spirits showed that these people were no more advanced than primitive societies. For him, this implied that modern religious practitioners do not understand the ways of the universe and how life truly works because they have excluded science from their understanding of the world. By excluding scientific explanation in their understanding of why and how things occur, he asserts modern religious practitioners are rudimentary. Tylor perceived the modern religious belief in God as a "survival" of primitive ignorance. However, Tylor did not believe that atheism was the logical end of cultural and religious development, but instead a highly minimalist form of monotheist deism. Tylor thus posited an anthropological description of "the gradual elimination of paganism" and disenchantment, but not secularization. Works 1861 1865 1867 1871 1871 1877 1877 1880 1881 1881 1882 1884 1884 1889 1890 1896 1896 1898 1898 1905 Awards and achievements 1871: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 1875: Honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of Oxford. 1907: Huxley Memorial Medal 1912: Knighted for his contributions. See also List of important publications in anthropology Urmonotheismus Wilhelm Schmidt Andrew Lang Notes References Further reading Joan Leopold, Culture in Comparative and Evolutionary Perspective: E. B. Tylor and the Making of Primitive Culture (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1980). Efram Sera-Shriar, The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013, pp. 147–176. Robert Graber, "Edward B. Tylor: The Science of Culture", Truman State University Giulio Angioni, Tre saggi sull'antropologia dell'età coloniale (Palermo, Flaccovio, 1973); Fare, dire, sentire: l'identico e il diverso nelle culture (Nuoro, Il