290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



STEPS IN THE EVOLUTION OF EELIGION 



By Pbofessob FRANK SARGENT HOFFMAN 



UNION COLLEGE 



THE most remarkable thing yet discovered about this planet is the 

 fact that human beings exist upon it in large numbers, scattered 

 almost everywhere over its surface, that pay homage to superterres- 

 trial powers. But this fact, remarkable as it is, is only a portion of 

 the truth. For the most searcliing and unprejudiced investigation has 

 failed to reveal any time in human history when it was otherwise. 

 However ignorant and forlorn man may have been in the past, we have 

 no evidence that he has ever been so low down in the scale of being 

 that he did not look upward with some degree of reverence and awe to 

 higher powers. 



Not many years ago this fact of the universal prevalence of religion 

 among men was seriously called in question by no less weighty writers 

 than Sir John Lubbock and Herbert Spencer. They quoted at length 

 from the reports of certain travelers and missionaries among the Eski- 

 mos of North Greenland, the Hottentots of South Africa and the 

 Indians of Lower California in support of their position; and they 

 stoutly contended that in these documents we have proof positive that 

 there are communities now in existence that have no religion at all. 

 This challenge led to a careful and thorough study of the status of 

 these tribes by competent anthropologists, and in every case an exten- 

 sive mythology was discovered among them, together with elaborate 

 religious rites. A false idea of the meaning and scope of religion, a 

 short stay in the country, or a lack of knowledge of the native language, 

 had been the cause of the mistaken judgment. Probably no scholar 

 of repute to-day would hesitate to accept the statement of Professor 

 Brinton in his recent work on " The Religions of Primitive Peoples " 

 that: 



There lias not been a single tribe, no matter how rude, known in history 

 or visited by travelers, which has been shown to be destitute of religion under 

 some form. 



The reason for this historical fact is a psychological one, and has 

 never been more clearly or forcibly expressed than by Dr. Edward 

 Caird. He asserts : 



Man, by the very constitution of his mind, has three ways of thinking open 

 to him: he can look outwards upon the world around him; he can look inwards 

 upon the self within him; and he can look upwards to the God above him. 



