108 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



discover that the Euegians believed in what we should call a 

 God or practiced any religious rites; and Jemmy Button, 

 with justifiable pride, stoutly maintained that there was no 

 devil in his land. This latter assertion is the more remark- 

 able, as with savages the belief in bad spirits is far more 

 common than that in good ones. 



The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex 

 one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted 

 and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence,* 

 fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and per- 

 haps other elements. No being could experience so com- 

 plex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and 

 moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Never- 

 theless, 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 behavior of a dog when returning to his master after 

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

 keeper, is widely different from that toward their fellows. 

 In the latter case the transports of joy appear to be some- 

 what less, and the sense of equality is shown in every 

 action. Prof. Braubach goes so far as to maintain that a 

 dog looks on his master as on a god.f 



The same high mental faculties which first led man to 

 believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetichism, 

 polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly 

 lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly 

 developed, to various strange superstitions 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 inno- 

 cent persons by the ordeal of poison or fire, witchcraft, 

 etc. yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these supersti- 

 tions, for they show us what an infinite debt of gratitude 

 we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and 

 to our accumulated knowledge. As Sir J. LubbockJ; has 



* See an able article on the * ' Physical Elements of Religion, " by 

 Mr. L. Owen Pike, in " Anthropolog. Review," April, 1870, p. 63. 



f " Religion, Moral, etc., der Darwin'schen Art-Lehre," 1869, s. 

 53. It is said (Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay, "Journal of Mental 

 Science," 1871, p. 43), that Bacon long ago, and the poet Burns, held 

 the same notion. 



:t " Prehistoric Times," 2d edit., p. 571. In this work (p. 571) 

 there will be found an excellent account of the many strange and 

 capricious customs of savages. 



