66 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



Mr. M'Lennan 52 has remarked, " Some explanation of 

 " the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself ; 

 " and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest 

 " hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have 

 " been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the pre- 

 " sence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces 

 " of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men 

 " are conscious they themselves possess." It is probable, 

 as Mr. Tylor has clearly shewn, that dreams may have 

 first given rise to the notion of spirits ; for savages do 

 not readily distinguish between subjective and objective 

 impressions. When a savage dreams, the figures which 

 appear before him are believed to have come from a 

 distance and to stand over him; or "the soul of the 

 " dreamer goes out on its travels, and comes home with 

 " a remembrance of what it has seen." 53 But until the 

 above-named faculties of imagination, curiosity, reason, 

 &c, had been fairly well developed in the mind of man, 

 his dreams would not have led him to believe in spirits, 

 any more than in the case of a dog. 



32 The Worship of Animals and Plants, in the ' Fortnightly Keview,' 

 Oct. 1, 1869, p. 422. 



53 Tylor, 'Early History of Mankind,' 1865, p. 6. See also the three 

 striking chapters on the Development of Eeligion, in Lubbock's ' Origin 

 of Civilisation,' 1870. In a like manner Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his 

 ingenious essay in the ' Fortnightly Review' (May 1st, 1870, p. 535), 

 accounts for the earliest forms of religious belief throughout the world, 

 by man being led through dreams, shadows, and other causes, to look 

 at himself as a double essence, corporeal and spiritual. As the spiritual 

 being is supposed to exist after death and to be powerful, it is propi- 

 tiated by various gifts and ceremonies, and its aid invoked. He then 

 further shews that names or nicknames given from some animal or 

 other object to the early progenitors or founders of a tribe, are sup- 

 posed after a long interval to represent the real progenitor of the tribe ; 

 and such animal or object is then naturally believed still to exi^t as 

 a spirit, is held sacred, and worshipped as a god. Nevertheless I cannot 

 but suspect that there is a still earlier and ruder stage, when anything 

 which manifests power or movement is thought to be endowed with 

 some form of life, and with mental faculties analogous to our own. 



