I 



Primitive Man and His Religion 



There are no peoples however primitive without religion and 

 magic. Nor are there, it must be added at once, any savage 

 races lacking either in the scientific attitude or in science, though 

 this lack has been frequently attributed to them. In every 

 primitive community, studied by trustworthy and competent 

 observers, there have been found two clearly distinguishable 

 domains, the Sacred and the Profane ; in other words, the domain 

 of Magic and Religion and that of Science. 



On the one hand there are the traditional acts and observances, 

 regarded by the natives as sacred, carried out with reverence and 

 awe, hedged round with prohibitions and special rules of behaviour. 

 Such acts and observances are always associated with beliefs in 

 supernatural forces, especially those of magic, or with ideas about 

 beings, spirits, ghosts, dead ancestors, or gods. On the other 

 hand, a moment's reflection is sufficient to show that no art or 

 craft however primitive could have been invented or maintained, 

 no organised form of hunting, fishing, tilling, or search for food 

 could be carried out without the careful observation of natural 

 process and a firm belief in its regularity, without the power of 

 reasoning and without confidence in the power of reason ; that is, 

 without the rudiments of science. 



The credit of having laid the foundations of an anthropo- 

 logical study of religion belongs to Edward B. Tylor. In his 

 well-known theory he maintains that the essence of primitive 

 religion is animism, the belief in spiritual beings, and he shows 

 how this belief has originated in a mistaken but consistent inter- 

 pretation of dreams, visions, hallucinations, cataleptic states, and 

 similar phenomena. Reflecting on these, the savage philosopher 

 or theologian was led to distinguish the human soul from the 

 body. Now the soul obviously continues to lead an existence 

 after death, for it appears in dreams, haunts the survivors in 

 memories and in visions and apparently influences human destinies. 



