354 SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF 



differences; individuals — as I sliall endeavor to show you is also the 

 case with nations — acquiring continually grander, and therefore more 

 con-ect ideas, as they rise in the scale of civilization. 



Still, as new religious ideas arise, they do not destroy, but are only 

 superinduced upon the old ones ; thus the religion of the ancestors be- 

 (M)ine the nursery tales of their descendants, and the old Teutonic deities 

 of our tbrefathers are the giants and demons of our children. 



It has hitherto been usual to classify religions either according to 

 the name of the founder or the objects worshipped. Thus one division 

 of the lower religions has been into Fetichism, defined as the worship of 

 material substances; Sabajism, that of the heavenly bodies, the sun, 

 moon, and stars ; and Heroism, or the deiiication of men after death. 

 This and other similar systems are simple, and have certainly some ad- 

 vantages, especially as regards the lower races of men and the lower 

 forms of religion. They are not, howe^'er, really natural systems; there 

 is no real difference between the worship of the sun and that of a rock 

 or lake. No doubt to us the sun seems a grander deity, but of the main 

 facts on which that opinion rests the savage is eutirely ignorant. 



Moreover, Heroism is fouiul among races as low in the scale of civili- 

 zation as either Fetichism (in the above definition, which, however, I do 

 not adopt) or Sabansm, and indeed the three forms of religion indicated 

 above may coexist in one jieople, and even in the same individual. The 

 true classification of religions should, as it seems to me, rest, not on the 

 mere object worshipped, but on the nature and character ascribed to 

 the deity. 



It is a nuich disputed questiou, into which I will not now enter, 

 whether the lowest races have any religion or not. 



However this nmy be, it is at least clear that the religion of the lower 

 savages is very unlike that of most advanced races. Indeed, in nmny 

 respects it is the very opposite. Their deities are evil, not good; they 

 may be forced into "compliance with the wishes of man ; they require 

 bloody, and rejoice even in human, sacrifices; they are mortal, not im- 

 mortal; part of nature, not the creators of the world; they are to be 

 approached by dances rather than by prayers; and often approve of 

 vice rather than of what Ave esteem as virtue. 



The ideas of religion among the lower races of man are intimately 

 associated with, if indeed they have not originated from, the condition 

 of man during sleep, and especially from dreams. 



Sleep and death liave always been regarded as nearly related to one 

 another. Thus, in classical mythology, Somnus, the god of sleep, and 

 Mors, the god of death, were both fabled to have been the children of 

 Nox, the goddess of night. 



So, also, the savage would naturally look on death as a kind of sleep, 

 and would expect and hope — hoping on even against hope — to see his 

 friend awake from the one as he had often done from the other. 



Hence, probably, one reason for the great importance ascribed to tlie 

 treatment of the body after death. 



But what happens to the spirit during sleep? The body lies lifeless, 

 and the savage not unnaturally concludes that the spirit has left it. In 

 this he is confirmed by the phenomena of dreams, which consequently 

 to the savage have a reality and an importance which we can scarcely 

 appreciate. During sleep the spirit appears to desert the body, and, 

 as in our dreams, we seem to visit other countries and distant regions, 

 while the body remains as it were lifeless; the two phenomena were 

 naturally placed side by side, and regarded as the complements one of 

 the other. 



