RELIGIONS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 439 



but efforts to account for the existence of strange rites and customs 

 or to explain their meaning. 



It is the task of the modern student, not merely to collect from 

 the writings of travelers, missionaries, and political agents the facts 

 concerning the religious practices and beliefs of rude peoples, and to 

 record and classify them, but to account for their origin and per- 

 sistence, and for the transformations they undergo in the develop- 

 ment of civilization. This was the problem to which Tylor addressed 

 himself, particularly in his Primitive Culture. 1 Man's earliest known 

 explanation of the phenomena and forces of nature is "animation"; 

 not only what we call living things, but what are for us inanimate 

 objects, are by primitive man endowed with a life like his own, a 

 soul with passions and will. There are also spirits that are not con- 

 fined in particular objects, but roam freely, manifesting themselves 

 sometimes in one way or place, sometimes in another. These spirits 

 are in part the souls of dead men, neglected or hostile, which it is 

 necessary to placate or to avert. This primitive "animism" is the 

 earliest science and philosophy; though not itself religion, it shapes 

 the religious conceptions of savages everywhere, and maintains it- 

 self with extraordinary tenacity in advancing culture. Fetishism, 

 stock- and stone-worship, idolatry, as well as ancestor- worship, 

 Shamanism, and magic, have their roots in it. With a one-sidedness 

 which Tylor carefully avoids, Herbert Spencer, Lippert, and others 

 derive all religion from offerings to friendly ghosts or rites designed 

 to thwart the malice of unfriendly ones; 2 Spencer's theory being in 

 effect, as he himself recognizes, a revival, in an apparently scientific 

 form, of ancient Euhemerism. 



Anthropological studies have not only thrown light upon the 

 operation of the savage mind and on the influence of its theory of 

 man and nature upon religious conceptions, but have shown how the 

 development of religious ideas has been affected by the social organ- 

 ization. The phenomena to which the name " totemism " has been 

 given, for example, are generally associated with a peculiar clan 

 constitution, in which descent is regularly reckoned in the female 

 line. Traces of this form of social organization have been discovered 

 among peoples which have long since got beyond it; and it has been 

 inferred, on insufficient grounds, that all races have passed through 

 it. But while this generalization ma}'- not stand, the studies of 

 McLennan, W. Robertson Smith, Frazer, and Jevons 3 have unques- 



1 Tylor, E. B., Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Develop- 

 ment of Civilization, 1865; Primitive Culture, 1871, 2 vols. 3d ed. 1891; Lubbock, 

 J., The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man, 1870. 6th ed. 

 1902; Prehistoric Times, 1865, 6th ed. 1900. 



2 Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Sociology, ch. 8-16; Lippert, Julius, Kultur- 

 geschichte der Menschheit, 1866-67, 2 vols. 



3 McLennan, J. F., Fortnightly Review, Oct. and Nov. 1869, Feb. 1870; Frazer, 

 J. G.. Totemism, 1887; The Golden Bough, 2 vols. 2d ed. 1900; Smith, W. R., 



