4 Rafael Karstea. [N:o 1 



Chapter I. 



Chtonic deities. 



At the lowest stages of human civilisation religions senti- 

 ment seems to be essentially determined by the feeling which in- 

 spires man confronted by the nnknown phenomena in the world 

 surroundiug him. Although, as a rule, savage man is very little 

 inclined to pay attention to things around him and to explain 

 their nature, still there is a set of phenomena which, being un- 

 familiar to him, affect him in a particular way, strike his ima- 

 gination and inspire him with wonder, awe, and terror. The 

 sense of the unknown and mysterious has, no doubt, been the 

 spark which has kindled the religions sentiment in man. Well- 

 known is the superstitious regard which even in our own days 

 savages all över the world pay to some objects and pheno- 

 mena of nature, which are by them endowed with a life similar 

 to their own and which, when thought to influence the welfare 

 of man, are raised to the rank of deities and worshipped. 



Looking at the matter from the point of an undevelopped 

 mind, we have no difficulty in understanding a view like that 

 which regards the whole universe as animated and which espe- 

 cially in everything that moves sees a living agent. Here 

 as in many other cases man himself is the measure with 

 which he messures the appearances around him. As pri- 

 mitive man probably acquired his first apprehension af 

 causal relations, of force, causation, etc. through the ob- 

 servation of his own actions, as he found himself to be 

 the source of certain changes in the external world, so he 

 naturally was led to assume the existence of life and of 

 conscious will behind every change, every movement, whether 

 the supposed productive agent were internal or external, 

 visible or invisible. So the savage still regards the swaying 

 tree, the heaving sea, the flying clouds, as the abodes of living 

 beings, and phenomena such as the hurricane, thunder and 

 lightning, the natural causes of which he cannot discover, as 

 the immediate actions of powerful divinities. And not grasping 



