74 



♦ KNOAVLEDGE ♦ 



[Jan. 1, 1886. 



in imy race of men is not to be solved by supposing that 

 such and such religious ideas were successively formed, and 

 successively displaced their predecessors. Probably there 

 •was never a race of men, however limited in mental 

 activity, or wanting in originality, which held even for a 

 single generation kindred ideas about religion. As cer- 

 tainly as among the savage inhabitants of a small island 

 of PoljTiesia we find diversities of size, figure, com- 

 plexion, strength, activity, intelligence, and the like, so, 

 could the ideas of the tribe about matters religious be 

 ascertained, it would be found that no two have 

 thought precisely or even nearly alike. It is easy to 

 imagine that they all have similar ideas, because only a 

 few among them can be got to speak about their religious 

 notions and even these few in answering the questions of 

 a stranger can give but vague ideas of what they them- 

 selves believe and suppose to be the ideas of their fellows. 

 If a member of some strange new race came among a 

 community of Christians as found in some small European 

 or American town, and speaking their language imper- 

 fectly were to ask the first nine or ten of them to define 

 their religious belief, it is very likely that, even among 

 a community with creeds and catechisms to define re- 

 ligion, he would obtain answers indicating a considerable 

 diversity of opinion, — whether the persons questioned 

 tried carefully to exju-ess their real thoughts, or as care- 

 fully tried to avoid any exact expression of opinion. It 

 would be curious to inquire -^vhat such a stranger woiild 

 be apt to infer respecting the Christian religion if he 

 pursued his inquiry very carefully and earnestly. Pro- 

 bably if the experiment could be tried it would dispose 

 us to adopt with considerable caution the accounts which 

 have been collected of the various forms of belief enter- 

 tained by savage races. Assuredly it would show that 

 if among the members of a small community of Christians 

 there is a marked diversity of views, there must be 

 more marked diversity still among savage communities ; 

 and that therefore there can have been no such uniform 

 development of religious ideas even in a single human 

 race as some students of religious evolution appear to 

 imagine. Still less can we imagine that in every race of 

 men, there was the same succession of religious strata, 

 — so to describe general ideas about matters religious as 

 distinguished from definite religious dogmas. 



I imagine then that while we must regard the general 

 impression produced by natural objects, forces, and 

 processes, as the embryonic form of the religious senti- 

 ment, individuality being ascribed to everything which 

 influenced the life of the savage man, this impression was 

 experienced in very difl'erent degrees by different races 

 and by different members of the same race. How far 

 back we may trace the beginning of this idea it were 

 difficult to say ; but it must have been present long before 

 pastoral or agricultural pursuits began : it must have 

 belonged to the time when our altogether wild ancestors, 

 forest-haunting or cave-inhabiting, first became conscious 

 of their constant contest with the forces of nature, with 

 other animals, with their fellow men. We may even 

 when we see our remote kinsmen the Gibbons welcoming 

 the rising of the sun with noisy gesticulations, conceive 

 that even in those mere animals the germ of the thought 



' is present that the sun is a warm personal friend— a 

 thought certainly adopted by many of the lowest races of 

 savages, though it required many thousands of years of 

 culture to develope it into a definite solar religion. 



And if the vague idea of personality in natural objects 

 or forces was diversely distinct in diilerent minds even 

 among small communities of child-men, how still more 



"(livevsQ must have beeu tlie way in which the idea 



eventually became developed that this personality was 

 human and that the j'ower and volition conceived to be 

 present in sun moon and stars, in cloud and storm, in 

 mountain and river, in trees and animals, were derived 

 from men who had once lived upon the earth. Mr. 

 Spencer's ghost theory is comparatively simple so far as 

 it relates to the development of ancestor-worship as such; 

 but manifestly we can only accept it in a very complex 

 form as related to the development of nature-worship. 

 Not only would different races of men, it may be pre- 

 sumed, form very different ideas of the way in which the 

 spirits of the dead animated objects of different orders, 

 from some small animal to the sun in his glory and the 

 moon walking in light, but among the members of one 

 and the same tribe there must originally have been great 

 diversity of views on a subject such as this. We must 

 remember that whatever ideas we may now find prevalent 

 in a tribe of savages must have been initiated by indi- 

 viduals, and were probably only known to such individual 

 thinkers for many generations. The hunter who was led 

 by the varying fortunes of the chase to attribute good or 

 evil influences to particular natural objects or pheno- 

 mena, and so to conceive the idea that they possessed a 

 personal individuality akin to his own, would probably 

 keep the idea to himself — either because it would not be 

 worth his while to do otherwise, or because it might seem 

 well worth his while to keep such special knowledge of 

 his to himself. And so with men who lived otherwise than 

 by hunting. In many generations such ideas would 

 be entertained, in very diverse forms, by individuals, 

 before they began to be common property. But if this 

 were so with that early and comparatively general notion, 

 much more would it be apt to be the case when some 

 among the members of a race began to attribute human 

 l)ersonality to natural objects or phenomena. 



The recognition of a second self, a soul or spirit, sug- 

 gested by the phenomena of dreams, trances, catalepsy, 

 and so forth, probably began earlier, and was more gene- 

 rally and uniformly diffused. For here specific 'phe- 

 nomena,, alike among all races of men, and n«:)t very 

 different even among different individuals, were in ques- 

 tion, — while the same phenomena were witnessed by 

 many, were talked over by those who had witnessed 

 them, and became in fact after a fashion matters of 

 scientific inquiry. I imagine that among ninety-nine races 

 out of a hundred and among nine men out of ten in any 

 race,* the idea would be adopted that every man has a 

 second self, which may leave him when he sleeps or 

 becomes insensible, returning and reanimating his body 

 when he comes to himself : (the very words now so fami- 

 liarlj' used imply the old doctrine in its old form). One 

 can see also that in the great majority of cases (that is 

 among nearly all races, and among most of the individuals 



* We find, however, that even these natural thoughts, not neces- 

 sarily connected with religion at all, and likely, it would seem, to 

 occur to nearly every one, are not entertained by all even smong 

 fairly developed races. I do not mean that they are rejected as the 

 man of science of to-day rejects them, because of the scientific 

 interpretation which shows the idea of a second self to be unneces- 

 sary and inexact, but that they have not presented tliemselves at all 

 or ha\e seemed inconceivable if suggested. Thus, Sir S. Baker asked 

 Commoro a Latooki cliief whether he did not know tliat he had " a 

 spirit in liim more than fiesh. Do you not dream and wander in 

 thouglit to distant places in your sleep ? Nevertheless your body 

 rests in one spot. How do you account for this '! '' to which Com- 

 moro who here and in the whole conversation showed much more 

 acumen than his questioner, replied, laughing, that it was a thing 

 he could not understand. " It occurs to me every night. How do 

 l/ou account for it ? " (Observe that Baker had tried to account for 

 it by an explanation which Commoro's better sense rejected — viz., 

 by the idea that a spirit in him wandered to distant places during 

 sleep.) 



