456 Life and Immortality. 



different nations of the same race. ' If we are to judge from 

 the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired 

 by most savages, it might be urged that their aesthetic faculty 

 was less highly developed than it is in some species of birds. 

 No animal, it is obvious, would be capable of admiring the 

 nocturnal heaven, a beautiful landscape, or refined music. 

 And this should not be wondered at, for such high tastes, 

 dependent as they are upon culture and complex associa- 

 tions, are not even enjoyed by barbarous or by uneducated 

 persons. 



Seeing that man in a state of nature has no preeminence 

 above the lower animals so far as his mental and moral 

 qualities are concerned, and in many instances ranks far 

 below the so-called brute, let us examine for a short time his 

 religious nature. No evidence exists to show that man was 

 aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the exist- 

 ence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary, ample evi- 

 dence, not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long 

 resided with savages, can be adduced to show that numerous 

 races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one 

 or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to 

 express such an idea. If under the term religion is included 

 the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is entirely 

 different, for this belief seems to be almost universal with 

 the less civilized races. Nor is it difficult to understand 

 how it originated. With the development of the imagina- 

 tion, wonder and curiosity, and of a moderate power of rea- 

 soning, man would naturally have craved to understand what 

 was going on around him, and even have vaguely speculated 

 on his own existence. According to McLennan man must, 

 in his efforts to arrive at some explanation of the phenomena 

 of life, feign for himself. Judging from the universality of 

 this life, the same author remarks that " the simplest 

 * hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have 

 been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence 

 in animals, plants and things, and in the forces of nature, of 



