TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 149 



trace the precise steps through which the important change was made which con- 

 verted the earlier unethical systems of religion into ethical ones. Thia 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 civilization marriage was a purely civil contract. Its earliest 

 forms are shown amongst savage tribes in Brazil and elsewhere. The peaceable 

 form appears well in the custom 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 her as 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 con- 

 sidered to have earned her. 



The custom of buying the wife comes in at a later period of civilization, 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 

 marriage " in the general history of mankind being shown by its survival in coun- 

 tries such as Ireland and Wales, where within modern times the ceremony of 

 capturing the bride in a mock fight was kept up. 



Now in none of these primitive forms of marriage, as retained in savage culture, 

 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 ceremonies 

 and austerities. So complete in later stages of culture did this coalescence become, 

 that many have come to consider a man-iage hardly valid unless celebrated as a 

 religious rite and by a priest. 



Second, as to the relation of the profession of medicine to religion. 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 abnormal life, including 

 the phenomena of disease, was accounted for in savage and barbaric culture as 

 caused by some intruding spirit. Thus the belief in spiritual obsession and possession 

 becomes the recognized theory of disease, and the professional exerciser is the 

 doctor curing disease by religious acts intended to expel or propitiate the demon. 

 Since the middle period of culture, however, this eai-ly coalescence has been gi-a- 

 dually breaking away, till now in the most civilized 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 coalescence between religion and other matters 

 not necessarily connected with it may take place at difterent 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 civilization 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 tlie 

 rude 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 lie 

 is often held to take the liveliest interest. Thus it is evident any moral act of an in- 

 dividual 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 



