NATURE 
(Oct, 9; 1893 
there was sufficient evidence to enable him to do so, The Lower 
Arenig series it was stated occur as black slates and flags about 
1,000 ft. in thickness, and are characterised by many species of 
graptolites as well as by numerous trilobites entirely restricted to 
the series. The Upper Arenig series occur as fine-grained, soft 
black shales, not much cleaved, also about 1,000 ft. in thickness, 
resting conformably on the Lower Arenig series. Their grapto- 
lites are distinct from those found in the lower beds, as are also 
all the other fossils. The Lower Llandeilo series, the lowest 
rocks recognised by Sir R. I. Murchison in the typical Llandeilo 
district, occur at St. David’s as black slates and hard grey flaggy 
sandstones, and are about 1,500 ft. in thickness, The most cha- 
racteristic fossils are Didymograptus Murchisoni, Diplograptus 
pristis, Asaphus tyrannus, Calymene Cambrensis, and /llenus 
perovalis. The Upper Llandeilo series occur as black slates 
and flags, several thousand feet in thickness, forming several folds 
of strata, and resting conformably on the Lower Llandeilo series. 
The typical fossils are Ogysia Buchii, Barrandea Cordayi, Caly- 
mene duplicata, Cheirurus Sedgwickit, Trinucleus fimbriatus, 
Ampyx nudus, and Lingula Ramsayt. 
The author doubted whether any other spot hitherto examined 
in Britain could show so continuous a section of these rocks ; 
still he believed that there was ample evidence to prove, from 
researches made in other parts of Wales and in Shropshire, that 
the succession here made out was, in most of its important 
details, capable of being applied to many other districts. 
SECTION D.—BIoLocy 
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY 
On the Relation of Morality to Religion in the Early Stages of 
Civilisation, by Edward B. Tylor, F.R.S. 
Investigations of the culture of the lower races of mankind 
show morality and religion subsisting under conditions differing 
remarkably from those of the higher barbaric and civilised nations. 
Among the rudest tribes a well-marked standard of morality 
exists, regulating the relations of family and tribal life. There 
also exists among these tribes some more or less definite religion, 
always consisting of some animistic doctrine of souls and other 
spiritual beings, and usually taking in some rudimentary form of 
worship. But, unlike the higher nations, the lowest races in no 
way unite their ethics and their theology. As examples, the 
Australians and Basutos of South Africa were adduced. The 
Australians believe spiritual beings to swarm throughout the 
universe ; the Basutos are manes-worshippers, considering the 
spirits of deceased ancestors to influence all the events of hu- 
man life, wherefore they sacrifice to the spirits of near rela- 
tives, that they may use their influence with the older and 
more powerful spirits higher in the line of ancestry. Yet these 
races and many others have not reached the theological stage 
at which man’s good or evil moral actions are held to please 
or displease his divinities, and to be rewarded or punished 
accordingly. The object of the present paper is to trace the 
precise steps through which the important change was made 
which converted the earlier unethical systems of religion into 
ethical ones. This change appears to have been a gradual 
coalescence between the originally independent schemes of 
morality and religion. 
In order to show the nature of such coalescence between 
religion and other branches of culture, not originally or not 
permanently connected with it, the author traced out on an 
ethnological line the relations between religion, and on the one 
hand the rite of marriage, on the other hand the profession of 
medicine. 
First as to marriage :—The evidence of the lower races tends 
to show that at early stages of civilisation, martiage was a purely 
civil contract. -Its earliest forms are shown among savage tribes 
in Brazil and elsewhere. The peaceable form appears well in 
the customs of the marriageable youth leaving a present of fruit, 
game, &c., at the door of the girl’s parents; this is a clear 
symbolic promise that he will maintain heras a wife. Another 
plan common in Brazil is for the expectant bridegroom to serve 
for a time in the family of the bride, till he is considered to have 
earned her. 
The custom of buying the wife comes in at a later period of 
civilisation, when property suited for trade exists. The hostile 
form of marriage, that by capture, has also existed among low 
tribes in Brazil up to modern times, the man simply carrying off 
by force a damsel of a distant tribe ; the antiquity of this ‘‘ Sabine 
mattiage” in the general history of mankind being shown by its 
survival in countries such as Irela‘:1 and Wales, where within 
modern times the ceremony of capturing the bride in a mock 
fight was kept up. i 
Now in none of these primitive forms of marriage, as retained 
in savage cultures, did any religious rite or idea whatever enter. 
It is not till we reach the high savage and barbaric conditions 
that the coalescence between marriage and religion takes place ; 
as where among the Mongols the priest presides at the marriage 
feast, consecrates the bridal tent with incense, and places the 
couple kneeling with their faces to the east to adore the sun, fire, 
and earth; or, as where among the Aztecs the priest ties 
together the garments of the bridegroom and bride in sign of 
union, and the wedded pair pass the time of the marriage festival 
in religious ceremories and austerities. So complete in later 
stages of culture did this coalescence become, that many have 
come to consider a marriage hardly valid unless celebrated as a 
religious rite and by a priest. 
Second, as to the relation of the profession of medicine to re- 
ligion. In early animistic philosophy, one principal function of 
spiritual beings was to account for the phenomena of disease, 
As normal life was accounted for by the presence of a soul 
operating through the body, in which it located itself, so abnor- 
mal life, including the phenomena of disease, was accounted for 
in savage and barbaric culture as caused by some intruding spirit. 
Thus spiritual obsession and possession becomes the recognised 
theory of disease, and the professional exorciser is the doctor 
curing disease by religious acts intended to expel or propitiate 
the demon. Since the middle period of culture, however, this 
early coalescence has been gradually breaking away, till now in 
the most civilised nations the craft of healing has become the 
function of the scientific surgeon or physician, and the belief 
and ceremonies of the exorcist survive in form rather than in 
reality. 
By these cases it is evident that coales~-nce between religion 
and other matters not necessarily connected with it may take 
place at different periods of culture, and also that this coalescence 
may terminate after many ages of adhesion. Having shown this, 
the author proceeded to ascertain exactly when and how in the 
history of civilisation the coalescence of morality and religion 
took place. 
First, where manes-worship is the main principle of a religion, 
as among some North American tribes and the Kafirs of South 
Africa, the keeping up of family relations strongly affects the 
morality. It is, for instance, a practice among the ruder races to 
disinter the remains of the dead or to visit the burial place, in 
order to keep the deceased kinsman informed as to what takes 
place in his family, in which he is often held to take the liveliest 
interest. Thus it is evident that any moral act of an individual 
damaging to his family would be offensive to the ancestral manes, 
whose influence must therefore strengthen kindly relations among 
the living members of the tribe. Higher in the social scale this 
ethical influence of manes-worship takes more definite form, as 
when in China the divine ancestor of an emperor will reproach 
him for selfish neglect or cruelty to his nation, and even threaten 
to induce their own highest divine ancestor to punish him for 
misdeeds. Thus amongst the ancient Romans, the Lares were - 
powerful deities enforcing the moral conduct of the family, and 
punishing household crime. 
Second, the doctrine of the Future Life begins at the higher 
levels of savagery to affect morals. In its first stage the doctrine 
of metempsychosis is seen devoid of moral meaning, men being 
re-born as men or animals, but when the distinction appears in 
the higher savagery between migration into vile or noble animals, 
it is not Jong before this distinction takes the form of reward or 
punishment of the good and wicked by their high or low re- 
incarnation, an idea which is the basis of the Buddhist schemé 
of retributive moral transmigration through successive bodies. 
In its earlier stages this doctrine was of mere continuance, as 
where South-American tribes expected the spirits of the dead to 
pass to another region where they would live as on earth. Here 
the distinctions of earthly rank are carried on, the chief’s 
soul remaining a chief, and the plebeian’s soul a plebeian, 
but no sign of moral retribution appears. The first stage of this 
seems to be where warriors slain in battle are admitted to the 
paradise of chiefs in the land of the Great Spirit. This idea, 
which comes into view in several districts, leads to the fuller 
moral scheme in which goodness of any kind—valour, skill, &e; 
—are more and more held to determine the difference between 
the next life of the good man in happy hunting-grounds, or of the 
bad man in some dismal wilderness or subterranean Hades, In 
