History of Religious Evolution 705 



of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, and equally 

 of higher monotheistic ones, ancestralism survived in many 

 customs and observances, as a heritage from a greatly more 

 remote period. 



Further the once widespread custom of killing attendants 

 and cattle, also of placing foods and drinks by distinguished 

 departed ones at their death, is another phase of ancestralism, 

 amid many that might be cited; though it also represents the 

 beginning of a crude wish for immortality for the departed ones. 



Therefore we would trace the first real but still crude awak- 

 ening of the religious spirit to loving and reverential regard 

 by one individual for deceased members of the same family 

 or tribe. Therefore also this spirit was limited in aim and 

 influence to small groups of individuals. But, contrary to 

 the opinion that some have expressed, such crude religion, 

 like all religions, was not and could not be confined to one 

 individual, for it invariably is an elevated social attitude. 



Neither would we consider with Lang {215; 219) and others 

 that belief in one supreme being, or even in a number of these, 

 was the first religious state. Religion begins with ancestral- 

 ism, or reverential love of one individual for another or for 

 a group around, or for some previous ancestor, as viewed from 

 the standpoint of highest life energy. 



In other words even the most primitive ancestralism differs 

 from, and advances beyond, morality or the mento-moral 

 stage, in that each human being collects and summates men- 

 tally all of the noblest qualities of a living or deceased indi- 

 vidual that he respected or loved or revered while alive, and then 

 makes such exhibitions of noblest life-energy the pattern or ideal, 

 by which as a human being future conduct should be molded. 



We would, therefore, define ancestralism as "a reverential 

 and reciprocal religious affection sho\vn by the individuals 

 of mankind for all of the phenomena of kinship that united 

 them into families and tribes, and that gave to them a common 

 unified outlook on their past history and future destinies." 



But, as mankind more and more peopled the trees, the dark 

 forests, the caves, the deep pools of rivers and lakes, the ra- 



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