NATURE 



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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1902. 



RELIGION AS A SCIENTIFIC STUDY. 

 The Study of Religion. By Morris Jastrow, jun., Ph.D. 



Contemporary Science Series. Pp. xiv+451. (London: 



Walter Scott, 1901.) Price bs. 

 P ROF. JASTROW is chiefly known on this side of 

 -L the Atlantic as an exponent of the ancient 

 religion of the Euphrates valley. The work now before 

 us exhibits its author not merely as an Oriental scholar, 

 but as a scholar of wide and original thought, of keen 

 and sympathetic insight. It is a notable book in a 

 series which has included many notable books. 



Beginning with an excellent sketch of the history of 

 the study, Prof. Jastrow proceeds to discuss the classi- 

 fication of religions, the various definitions proposed for 

 religion, and, finally, the origin of religion. These form 

 a preliminary division, which is followed by a considera- 

 tion of special aspects of the study, namely, the relation 

 of religion to ethics, philosophy, mythology, history and 

 culture. Four chapters devoted to certain practical aspects 

 of the study then bring the work to a conclusion. 



Anthropological students will naturally turn with the 

 greatest interest to the chapter in which the author dis- 

 cusses the question of origin. They will agree with 

 much of his criticism on the various theories put forward 

 to account for the phenomena which we class together 

 under the name of religion. An original revelation is 

 now everywhere discredited. Modern science and a 

 larger and more sympathetic view of human nature 

 equally reject the crude theories of the philosophers of 

 the eighteenth century. When, however, Prof Jastrow 

 leaves these behind and reaches Dr. Tylor and Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer, he seems to be confounding in his 

 criticisms two distinct things — the earliest form of religion 

 and the origin of religion. Little consideration is 

 required to show that the earliest form and the origin 

 are not identical conceptions. Either the animistic 

 theory of the former thinker or the ghost-theory of the 

 latter may correctly present the earliest form assumed 

 by religion, and yet the origin of religion itself may 

 remain undiscovered. In other words, there must be 

 behind the earliest form the possibility of life, the in- 

 choate material ready to take shape. Religion is not a 

 simple phenomenon, as the author rightly points out ; it 

 is a complex of thought and emotion. What we want to 

 ascertain is what are, reduced to their lowest terms, the 

 components of this complex, and how did they come 

 together to make the germ of that universal character- 

 istic of mankind — religion. 



To these questions Prof Jastrow adopts the answer of 

 Max Miiller which ascribes the origin of religion to "the 

 perception of the infinite." Now Max Miiller is a very 

 dangerous guide to follow. He knew little of savage 

 belief and savage custom. He derided the efforts of 

 anthropologists to account for myth and custom, whether 

 of the Greeks or of the Hottentots. , He himself built 

 up an elaborate system based on a study of the Vedas 

 and philological comparisons. After it had been riddled 

 with shell and rendered completely untenable he was 

 still dwelling m a fool's paradise, despising his antagonists 

 NO. 1684, VOL. 65] 



because they were not Sanskrit scholars. And so he 

 continued to the end. One of the last things he did 

 was to publish a reply which exhibited his utter un- 

 consciousness of many of the real problems about religion 

 considered as a human phenomenon. In his solution of 

 the origin of religion as "the perception of the infinite " 

 he was acting like his fellow-countryman in the camel- 

 story. He was evolving the idea of the origin of religion 

 from the depths of his inner consciousness. He had not 

 gone to the nearest representatives accessible to our 

 inquiry of the primitive human being. He had not 

 questioned them. He had not examined their modes of 

 thought, their customs, their beliefs, with the hope of 

 obtaining a clue to those of their hypothetical ancestor. 

 He would no more have thought of doing so than Hobbes 

 or Rousseau. Hence his answer to the question of the 

 origin of religion is not the result of induction, it is "a 

 shot." It is a shot by a very acute and accomplished 

 man, and so perhaps in the right direction. It may miss 

 its mark by excess, rather than by falling short, or by 

 misdirection. But it misses its mark all the same. 



The general course of human evolution is upward, not 

 downward. We may therefore assume that the hyjjo- 

 thetical ancestor with whom religion originated was a 

 less developed being as to mental and moral character- 

 istics than his descendant, the modern savage. Has any 

 traveller or missionary ever found a modern savage with 

 a perception of the infinite.' Perception of the vague, 

 the indefinite, the mysterious, the awful is common to 

 the race ; but perception of the infinite is beyond the 

 power of any but the cultivated intellect of a philosopher, 

 if even he can attain to it. Prof Tiele, whom Prof. 

 Jastrow quotes, tries to avoid the difficulty, while giving 

 the weight of his distinguished authority to the general 

 theory, by speaking of "man's original, unconscious, 

 innate sense of infinity." And Prof Jastrow himself 

 admits that " such a concept as infinity is a self-contra- 

 diction on the part of a finite intellect." Yet he thinks 

 this " need not deter us from according to it a strong 

 influence over primitive man, and all the stronger because 

 of his failure to grasp it clearly." Does the phrase, then, 

 mean anything more from the pen of Prof Jastrow 

 (whatever Max Miiller may have meant by it) than the 

 sense of the mysterious, the awful? If it be simply a 

 pompous way of saying this, it harmonises with what we 

 know of the savage mind and is sufficient to satisfy Prof. 

 Jastrow's own requirements when he says that in seeking 

 for the origin of religion 



"we must look for something which could stir [primi- 

 tive man's] emotions deeply and permanently, which 

 could arouse thoughts that would henceforth never 

 desert him and would prompt him to certain expressions 

 of his emotions and thoughts, so definite and striking 

 as to become part and parcel of family or tribal 

 tradition." 



If it mean more than this it goes beyond those require- 

 ments and imputes to primitive man powers of thought 

 and ideas incomparably beyond any yet discovered 

 among savage races, while it ignores the practical con- 

 siderations which must have immediately and profoundly 

 influenced him. 



I have dwelt upon this point because it is obviously 

 cardinal in a work on the scientific study of religion. 



P 



