216 
ORDINARY MEETING, Aprit 20, 1885. 
D. Howarp, Hsq., F.1.C., in tHe CuHatr. 
The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and the fol- 
lowing Elections were announced :— 
Associates :—The Rev. the Hon. C. Fielding, M.A., Shrewsbury ; 
_W. G. P. Gilbert, Esq., Portsmouth. 
Also the presentation to the Library of a work entitled — 
“The Autobiography of a Orystal.” By Rey. C. D. Dunn. 
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF PRIMITIVE 
RELIGIONS. By the Rev. R. Contins, M.A. 
HE materialist’s view of the growth of religion and 
ultimate belief, as now, in a God, perfect in holiness, 
knowledge, and power, has been concisely expressed by Mr. 
Herbert Spencer.* After stating his hypothesis, the ‘‘ ghost- 
theory, that man first conceived the idea of the supernatural. 
in his dreams” about the “double of the dead;”? and after 
imagining that ‘in course of time are formed the conceptions 
of the great ghosts, or gods,”’ which are, in the first imstance, 
the “ doubles of the more powerful men,” he says :—‘ With 
advancing civilisation the divergence of the supernatural being 
from the natural being becomes more decided. ‘There is 
nothing to check the gradual de-materialisation of the ghost 
and of the god; and this de-materialisation is insensibly fur- 
thered in the effort to reach consistent ideas of supernatural 
* Nineteenth Century, No. 83, pp. 3 et seq. 
