68 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



The feeling of religious devotion is a highly com- 

 plex one, consisting of love, complete submission to 

 an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of 

 dependence, 54 fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the 

 future, and perhaps other elements. No being could 

 experience so complex an emotion until advanced in 

 his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a mode- 

 rately high level. Nevertheless we see some distant 

 approach to this state of mind, in the deep love of a 

 dog for his master, associated with complete submission, 

 some fear, and perhaps other feelings. The behaviour 

 of a dog when returning to his master after an ab- 

 sence, and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved 

 keeper, is widely different from that towards their 

 fellows. In the latter case the transports of joy 

 appear to be somewhat less, and the sense of equality 

 is shewn in every action. Professor Braubach 55 goes 

 so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as 

 on a god. 



The same high mental faculties which first led man 

 to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetish- 

 ism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would 

 infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers 

 remained poorly developed, to various strange super- 

 stitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to 

 think of — such as the sacrifice of human beings to a 

 blood-loving god ; the trial of innocent persons by the 

 ordeal of poison or fire ; witchcraft, &c. — yet it is well 

 occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they 

 shew us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to 

 the improvement of our reason, to science, and our 



54 See an able article on the Psychical Elements of Keligion, by 

 Mr. L. Owen Pike, in ' Anthropolog. Keview/ April, 1870, p. lxiii. 

 " ' Keligion, Moral, &c, der Darwin'schen Art-Lehre.' 1869, s. 53. 



