?8 



*- KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Dec. 1, 1885. 



and sucli peculiarities. Again in the laws of embryonic 

 development -sve find evidence, reqnirincr indeed to be 

 carefully cross-examined, but full of meaning, as to the 

 past of ouv race. As regards mental development we 

 have, apart from cerebral evidence, the evidence of 

 material records indicating (very clearly sometimes) the 

 intellectual capacity of our savage progenitors of various 

 times and in various places. All these we have in 

 .addition to v.'^rious forms of evidence common to all three 

 lines of inquiry — physical, mental, and religious. But 

 we have no material records of religious evolution akin 

 to the bodily records of physical evolution. We find 

 occasional indications of religious ideas in the peculiarities 

 of the remains of structures regarded as religious, and 

 also in the manner of burial ; but such evidence is far 

 from, satisfactory. 



We can learn much from such researches as have 

 been made by Messrs. Tylor and Lubbock, and from the 

 researches which Mr. Spencer has superintended. But 

 what woTild most conduce to correct views, — evidence of 

 the actual infancy of the religious sentiment among the 

 ancestors of the most advanced races of our time, we 

 want. For aught thftt is certainly known, the begiu- 

 uinc of relio'ious evolution in the leadins: leliyious races 

 of to-day, though it may have had the same general 

 character as that of races still in their infancy, miy 

 have diifered as chari^jcteristically as the physical r,nd 

 mental qualities of some savage races difPer frnm those 

 of others, and — in all jjrobability — from such qualities in 

 our own human family r,t the beginning of its career. 



Again, we may follow a method akin to that of com- 

 parative embryology. We may ask how the religions 

 sentiment begins and how it grows in the child, r.nd so 

 form vague ideas as to the possible past beginning and 

 growth of religion in the childhood of ea.ch race. But 

 this is a method which requires to be very cautiously 

 employed. For the child among civilised races is sur- 

 rounded by inflviences tending to check the development 

 of innate ideas and to replace these by imparted ideas; 

 and it becomes very difficult to distinguish ideas of one 

 class from those of the other. Besides, certain influ- 

 ences which must hr^ve been very potent in their action 

 on the mind of our savage ancestors, have commonly no 

 counterjJart in the experience of the child. For instance, 

 the idea of the ghosts of the dead, and of the power they 

 might possess, would occur to a savage race, but would 

 not present itself naturally to the mind of a child whose 

 first nine or ten years were passed without his knowing 

 of death. The thought of death and of its meaning, 

 comes to the child nsuilly when he has already received 

 from grown persons teachings about religion. 



Still, I am disposed to gather from xaj own recollection 

 of my childish ideas about things outside myself and from 

 what I have been able to learn about the recollections of 

 others n.nd about the ideas of those who are still children, 

 that the ghost idea, though undoubtedly belonging to a 

 very early form of religion, does not belong to its actual 

 beginning, as Mr. Spencer thinks. That neither child 

 nor sivage ever actually worshijss natural objects or 

 forces, is as nearly certain as any such matter can well 

 be. Fetishism is never a first form of religious worship, 

 and often belongs to a far advanced stage of religious 

 development. But I believe that a form of animism not 

 at all associated with the idea of the spirits of the dead, 

 long precedes ghost-wor.ship and the idea that natural 

 objects are tenanted by the ghosts of dead jiersons. The 

 child is moved by the thought that " what wells up 

 in him in the form of consciousness " is present also in all 

 that he can see or hear or feel wherever he instinctively 



recognises force — whether in the statical or in the dy- 

 namical sense, whether shown by fixity and stability, or 

 by movement and energy. Of coiu'se, with the growth of 

 knowledge, by which the origin of these forms of force 

 becomes known, the chikl loses the idea of life and con- 

 sciousness in things unconscious. But as the farther 

 back we go in our recollection the greater the number of 

 objects which to our child-mind seemed alive and con- 

 sciously exerting force, I imagine that could we but recall 

 our baby-mind, and read such vague fancies as take the 

 place of thought with the babe, we should find nearly 

 everything he sees suggestive of consciousness to the baby 

 as he first passes the stage when 



new to earth and sky 



What time his tender palm is prest 



Against the circle of the breast, 

 [He does not think] that " this is I 'W 



But as he grows he gathers mnch, 

 And learns tlie use of " I " and " me," 

 And finds " I am not what I see, 



And other than the things I touch." 



In this stage of mental growth, as thus he rounds him 

 " to a separate mind," the child assigns to all he sees that 

 individuality which is his recent discovery in regard to 

 himself. He does not worship natural objects or forces, 

 but he instinctively endows them with life — he loves 

 them, or hates them, dreads, admires, or despises them, 

 as if they were living things. 



In this there is evidence if not proof of the vast anti- 

 quity of animism, seeing that it is innate. On the con- 

 trary we have evidence of the recent origin of the idea 

 of creation, in the circumstance that this thought is never 

 found in the child-mind except as a communicated idea. 

 Even as communicated the child resists the admission of 

 the idea, and often, by questions very difficult to answer, 

 troubles the careful parent, anxious to teach him while 

 still yottng an idea which the most advanced philosopher 

 recognises as full of difficulties. 



One may even say that the idea of consciousness, of 

 innate force, which the child, so soon as he has recognised 

 it as true of himself extends instinctively to all he sees or 

 hears or touches, is inconsistent with the idea of creative 

 power to which such consciousness and force are duo. 

 The child-mind thinks with Topsy, " 'Specks I grow'd," 

 " 'specks it grow'd," and so forth. It is only later, when 

 so many objects supposed to be conscious are found to 

 have been made, that the child begins unconsciously to 

 generalise, entertaining the thought that many if not 

 most things have been made. Yet even then as we know 

 from the evideuce of deaf-mutes, the idea of creation 

 does not suggest itself. In no single case has even the 

 most intelligent deaf-mitto conceived the idea of a power 

 by which all things were made, — an idea which the 

 theologian I'egards as really innate in the human mind 

 but lost through the fall of man into sin. 



There is evideuce to show that as it has been with each 

 one of us when we were passing through the childish stage 

 of our lives, so it has been with the child-man. It seems 

 to me that while Mr. Spencer rightly rejects the thought 

 that nature-worship was the first form of the religious 

 idea, while he rightly says that iiersonalisation exists at 

 the very outset, he is not justified by the evidence (over- 

 whelminglj' thotigh it avails against the theories of primi- 

 tive fetishism on tlie one hand and primitive theism on 

 the other) ^in assuming that nature- worship was in all 

 cases in the beginning the worship of an indwelling 

 ghost-derived being. Regarding the child's idea of its 

 own consciousness, as corresponding to the idea of the 

 child-man about a human soul, it appears to me probable 



