MENTAL, POWERS. 91 



can we partially understand how it is that man is from various 

 conflicting influences rendered capricious, but that the lower 

 animals are, as we shall hereafter see, likewise capricious In their 

 affections, aversions, and sense of beauty. There is also reason 

 to suspect that they love novelty, for its own sake. 



Belief in Ood — Religion. — There is no evidence that man was 

 aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence 

 of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, 

 derived not from hasty travelers, but from men who have long 

 resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still 

 exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no 

 words in their languages to express such an idea." The question 

 is of course wholly distinct from that higher one, whether there 

 exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has been 

 answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that 

 have ever existed. 



If, however, we include under the term "religion" the belief 

 in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for 

 this belief seems to be universal with the less civilized races. 

 Nor is it difficult to comprehend how it arose. As soon as the 

 important faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, 

 together with some power of reasoning, had become partially 

 developed, man would naturally crave to understand what was 

 passing around him, and would have vaguely speculated on his 

 own existence. As Mr. M'Lennan™ has remarked, "Some explana- 

 "tion of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for himself; 

 "and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, 

 "and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural 

 "phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, 

 "and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting 

 "to action as men are conscious they themselves possess." It 

 is also probable, as Mr. Tylor has shown, that dreams may have 

 first given rise to the notion of spirits; for savages do not readily 

 distinguish between subjective and objective impressions. When 

 a savage dreams, the figures which appear before him are be- 

 lieved to have come from a distance, and to stand over him; or 

 "the soul of the dreamer goes out on its travels, and comes home 

 "with a remembrance of what it has seen."'" But until the facul- 



'4 See an excellent article on this subject by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, 

 in the 'Anthropological Review,' Aug., 1864, p. ccxvii. For further 

 facts see Sir J. Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' 2nd edit. 1869, p. 564; and 

 especially the chapters on Religion in his 'Origin of Civilization,' 1870. 



'= 'The Worship of Animals and Plants,' in the 'Fortnightly Review,' 

 Oct. 1, 1869, p. 422. 



™ Tylor, 'Early History of Mankind,' 1865, p. 6. See also the three 

 striking chapters on the Development of Religion, in Lubbock's 'Origin 



