Dec. 1, 1885.] 



♦ KNOVs^LEDGE ♦ 



39 



ou d priori grounds and eousisteut with all the evidence, 

 that the religious sentiment in the savage had its begin- 

 ning in the ascription of a soul or spirit to all things 

 which soeme<l to possess force or energy, and that it 

 was only later, when the ghost-theory h:!d f.lready nt- 

 tsiined some degree of development, that human ghosts or 

 spirits were conceived to reside in natural objects revered 

 or feared, worshipped or propitiated. It was however 

 always something akin to the human soul or spirit which 

 men recognised in ni^ttiral objects, even as the child 

 attributes .something akin to its own newly-recognised 

 eonsciotisness to such objects. This is no " mere meta- 

 . physical assumption," as Mr. Harrison asserts, "of men 

 trying to read the ideiis of later epochs into the facts of 

 an earlier epoch." It is the only state of religious senti- 

 ment which can be regarded as possibly antecedent to 

 the stage of g-ho.st -worship which Mr. Spencer has shown 

 conclusively to bj the very earliest of which actual 

 evidence his been (or perhaps can be) ginned. The 

 .simple worship of nattiral objects which has been 

 imagined as the actual first stage of religion was almost 

 a simple impossibility, certainly most improbable, — and 

 all the evidence is opposed to the theory. But the bfflief 

 in spirits animating naturr.l objects, derived from the 

 recognition of his own spirit and the inferred belief that 

 each of his fellows had a spirit, was as uxttiral in the 

 savage, as the r.ttributiug of consciousness to the toy 

 which he caresses or punishes is to the young child. 



In this stnge of the religious sentiment there is no idea 

 of cr.^ation, still less of a Sui)rt'me Being as Creator and 

 Ruler. Tpili the Zulu in answer to Mr. Gardner, who 

 asked him if he knew who made and governs the sun as 

 it rises and sets, or the trees as they grow, jiresented the 

 natural thought of the child-man, " we see them, but can- 

 not tell how they come ; we suppose they come of them- 

 selves." Nor is there any thought of a life after death. 

 There is in fact only the sense that " that which wells up 

 in the man himself as consciousness" is present in natural 

 objects having apparently innate force and energy. In 

 this sense this beginning of the religious sentiment 

 justifies what I said at the outset, — that in all ages men 

 have viewed religion from the same direction, from the 

 standpoint of the known towards the domain of the 

 unknown. They were impressed then, even as the man 

 of science is impressed now, hj the unknowable ; for 

 though what was unknown to them is known to us, it 

 was as surely unknowable for them, as the mystery of 

 infinite power is incomjjreheusible by us. In each case 

 there has been the consciousness of mystery, in neither 

 hns there been the power of conceiving the real nature 

 of the mystery ; the finite mystery for the child-man and 

 the infinite mysteiy for the most advanced scientific 

 sttident of our day, have in like sort, though by no means 

 in like degree, moved man to religious emotion. 



It was, however, with the growth of the idea of the 

 soul or spirit in man, co-existing with the body in life, 

 continuing to exist after the body is dead, that formal 

 religion had its origin. Such religious impressions as 

 existed before ancestor- wor.ship began, were but vague 

 fancies. In them we recognise but the embryo of real 

 religious conceptions. No mythology, no system of 

 theology, can be rightly understood, until we have 

 recognised how the systems of nature-worship from which 

 ill! modern religions sprang (as their ceremonial obser- 

 v.;nces clearly show), had in titru their origin in the 

 worship of the spirits of departed rulers and the pro- 

 pitiation of the spirits of departed enemies. 



Just here a thought akiu to that on which those had 

 to dwell who explained at first oiir kinship to the lower 



animals, our origin from the savage scarce better than 

 the beast of the field and his origin from lowlier ancestors 

 still, should be considered. Whatever opinion the un. 

 scientific may form about that particular detail of the 

 Darwinian theory which they suppose to be the Dar- 

 winian theory itself, whatever view they may form or 

 imagine they have formed about the descent of civilised 

 from savage" races,* they must admit that they were once 

 children, and that the' child is father to the man. If 

 they reject with scorn the idea that their forefather the 

 child-man held ideas about religion which seem to us 

 now preposterous, they can hardly have quite forgotten 

 that their original self, their child-father, entertained 

 very strange fancies about religion. They may seem to 

 have forgotten these fancies, but generally some faint 

 recollection of them can be recalled ; and if not, their 

 own children will recall their own former fancies. The 

 consideration of these wild fancies of their childhood 

 should prepare them to admit the possibility, if not, as 

 inquiry assures the student of science, the absohite ^ cer- 

 t.",inty, that our savage forefathers held ideas about religion 

 which we should regard as utterly absurd. As Mr. 

 Spencer says, " from the consciousness of cultured 

 humanity there have so disappeared certain notions 

 natural to the consciousness of uncultured humanity, 

 that it has become almost incredible they .should 

 ever have becTi entertained. But just as it is 

 cevtain that the absurd belief-s at which parents laugh 

 when displayed in their children were once their own ; 

 so it is certain that peoples to whom primitive concep- 

 tions seem ridiculous, had forefathers who held these 

 primitive conceptions.'' 



This will appear more particularly when we consider 

 the development of men's earliest and comparatively 

 simple religious impressions. 



{To be continued.) 



II. 



COAL. 



Bt W. Mattieu Williams. 



-THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF COAL. 



HOSE who are devoted to the study of 

 words may like to know that the original 

 sio'nificati(m of the word coal was dif- 

 ferent from that which is now accepted. 

 In the third edition of the " Encyclopasdia 

 Britannica" (1797) the article on coal 

 commences by telling us that " Coal, 

 among.-t chemists, signifies any substance contain- 

 ing oil which has been exposed to the fire in closed 

 vessels, so that all its volatile principles are expelled, and 

 that it can sustain a red heat without further decompo- 

 sition. Coal is commonly solid, bh^ck. very drj', and 

 considerably hard. The specific character of jjerfect coal 

 is its capacity of btirning with access of air, while it 

 becomes red hot and sparkles, sometimes with a sensible 

 flame which gives little light, with no smoke or soot 

 capable of blackening whit^ bodies." We are further 

 told that " Coal c?,n never be formed but by the phlo- 

 giston of a body which hr,s been in an oily state : hence 



*lii the kinship of civilised and lower races of men. I have 

 found that wherever the inferior races of men are well known ana 

 understood—as some Indian races in North America, some savage 

 races in Australia, and the negro in the Southern States— the most, 

 devout believers in the verbal and literal inspiration of the Bible, 

 reject as utterly (when pressed) the idea that they are akm to 

 these despised races, though if they accept the Bible account they 

 must accept that idea, as the belief that they are akm to apes, 

 which thev think the Bible allows them to escape. 



