XXV 



THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON THE 

 STUDY OF RELIGIONS 



By JANE ELLEN HARRISON 



Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), Hon. LL.D. (Aberdeen), Staff Lecturer and sometime 

 Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Corresponding member of the 

 German Archaeological Institute. 



THE title of my paper might well have been "the creation by 

 Darwinism of the scientific study of Religions," but that I feared 

 to mar my tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration. 

 Before the publication of The Origin of Species and The Descent 

 of Man, even in the eighteenth century, isolated thinkers, notably 

 Hume and Herder, had conjectured that the orthodox beliefs of their 

 own day were developments from the cruder superstitions of the 

 past. These were however only particular speculations of individual 

 sceptics. Religion was not yet generally regarded as a proper subject 

 for scientific study, with facts to be collected and theories to be 

 deduced. A Congress of Religions such as that recently held at 

 Oxford would have savoured of impiety. 



In the brief space allotted me I can attempt only two things; 

 first, and very briefly, I shall try to indicate the normal attitude 

 towards religion in the early part of the last century ; second, and in 

 more detail, I shall try to make clear what is the outlook of advanced 

 thinkers to-day 1 . From this second inquiry it will, I hope, be abund- 

 antly manifest that it is the doctrine of evolution that has made this 

 outlook possible and even necessary. 



The ultimate and unchallenged presupposition of the old view was 

 that religion was a doctrine, a body of supposed truths. It was in 

 fact what we should now call Theology, and what the ancients called 

 Mythology. Ritual was scarcely considered at all, and, when con- 

 sidered, it was held to be a form in which beliefs, already defined 

 and fixed as dogma, found a natural mode of expression. This, it 



1 To be accurate I ought to add " in Europe." I advisedly omit from consideration the 

 whole immense field of Oriental mysticism, because it has remained practically untouched 

 by the influence of Darwinism. 



