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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1102 



have as their fundamental assumption the 

 belief that religious phenomena are suscep- 

 tible to statement in psychological terms 

 and that their ultimate explanation is to be 

 sought in conventional psychological prin- 

 ciples. By analysis, they seem to seek for 

 a psychological mechanism, or a fixed asso- 

 ciation of activities, that is responsible for 

 the appearance of religion on the earth and 

 its subsequent development. One of their 

 initial assumptions is that by this mechan- 

 ism, or whatsoever they prefer to call it, 

 man has gradually built up the religion of 

 the world to-day. They take for granted 

 that the religions of the less civilized peo- 

 ples of our time are examples of the earlier 

 forms of this development, and seek in them 

 the fundamentals of religious evolution. 

 The chief aim is to show how the religious 

 activities of our people can be explained as 

 normally evolved from the functioning of 

 this assumed mechanism. It foUows that 

 one of these psychological authors would 

 consider his task brought to a glorious end 

 if he could formulate a statement of the 

 gradual building up of religion that was en- 

 tirely consistent with the data at hand; 

 and would consider that he had revealed 

 the cause of its appearance to lie in a defi- 

 nite mode of action in man's nervous 

 system. 



Though we have so far spoken in terms 

 of religion, the general assumptions in the 

 treatment of art, sex, etc., appear to be 

 the same. All these psychological investi- 

 gators are striving to bring the phenomena 

 of culture entirely within the conventional 

 limits of psychology and to explain it by 

 psychological principles. 



In order to bring out clearly the differ- 

 ences between this attitude and that now 

 assumed by our representative anthropol- 

 ogists, we may try to apply the same mode 

 of characterization to their works. I do not 

 recall any serious recent attempt on the 



part of an anthropologist to discuss the 

 anthropology of religion as a whole or to 

 examine our own religion by anthropolog- 

 ical tools, but if the attempt were to be 

 made, the preconceptions would be about 

 as follows. In a treatise on our religion, 

 the phenomenon would be considered ade- 

 quately explained by identifying it with 

 culture. Culture origins would be sought 

 in a comparative analysis of our religion 

 and in tracing out the sources from which 

 the various elements in the complex came. 

 The ideal would be to state where, among 

 whom and under what conditions, these 

 several elements arose and were associated 

 in the present complex, the whole consti- 

 tuting what may be considered as a his- 

 torical explanation. It is not conceived 

 that the carrying of this analysis to its ulti- 

 mate extreme would give us a statement of 

 religion as a world phenomenon, for the 

 religions of other peoples have different his- 

 tories, and though we see on every hand 

 indisputable evidences of mutual borrowing 

 and interaction, the fundamental elements 

 of the world's religions have decided indi- 

 viduality. Hence, if we confined our efforts 

 to tracing out the historical development 

 of only such elements as are found in our 

 own religion, we should ignore a consider- 

 able part of the phenomenon at large. 

 Therefore, a general treatise on the anthro- 

 pology of religion would begin with the ex- 

 haustive study of a number of religions and 

 finally seek by a comparative view, a gen- 

 eralized statement of the historical rela- 

 tions between the religions of the world. 

 Thus could be constructed a theoretical out- 

 line of the development of religion as we 

 now find it among the several peoples of the 

 earth. On practically the same lines we 

 should expect to develop the anthropology 

 of art, literature, music, marriage, social 

 organization, etc. 



Now if these are true characterizations 



