40 SATIIKDAY I.KCTURKS, 



IX . — Coniparafive Mi/tJi ologi/. 



It is very difficult to tiud a word to cover exactly the 

 ground which the anthropologist includes in the word re- 

 ligion. Among Christian people, the term is applied to 

 certain beliefs, forms, and conduct ; and the adjective, re- 

 ligious, would not be understood if applied to discussions 

 merely ; but let it pass. 



There never was a people so rude as not to observe nature 

 and to assign causes for everything that passed through the 

 avenues of their senses. Into those causes life is projected 

 and human or animal attributes added until a pliilosophy 

 or theology is built up. 



Secondl}^, in some form or other men early begin to 

 believe in a future life, to people an unseen world with in- 

 numerable beings, good or bad, and to separate these beings 

 into classes with functions. This forms a creed. 



Further, certain actions on our part are due to these beings 

 — will please, displease, or appease them. Men fast, chant, 

 pray, dance, and sacrifice ; thty deny, Aveary, and mutilate 

 themselves, for this purpose. They set apart a class to wait 

 upon the gods, build costly edifices in their honor, in which 

 the continual sacrifice and savory incense ever attest the fear, 

 or the devotion of the worshippers. Among any people 

 this constitutes their cult. 



By the testimony of missionaries and others, who, like Mr. 

 Gushing, have lived among a lowly people long enough to 

 win their confidence, we are in possession of the facts which 

 will enable us roughly to outline the world's theologies, 

 creeds, and cults. The anthropologist, far from being 

 shocked by the seeming absurdities of these lower forms of 

 religion, beholds in them the germs of all our beliefs. I have 

 frequently thought, while reading of the bloody and cruel 

 fetish worship of the dark-skinned African, that a kind 

 providence had effected the whitening of the human skin co- 

 ordinately with the purifying of religious conceptions. At 



