450 Life and Immortality. 
different nations of the same race. If we are to judge from 
the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired 
by most savages, it might be urged that their esthetic faculty 
was less highly developed than it is in some species of birds. 
No animal, it is obvious, would be capable of admiring the 
nocturnal heaven, a beautiful landscape, or refined music. 
And this should not be wondered at, for such high tastes, 
dependent as they are upon culture and complex associa- 
tions, are not even enjoyed by barbarous or by uneducated 
persons. 
Seeing that man in a state of nature has no preeminence 
above the lower animals so far as his mental and moral 
qualities are concerned, and in many instances ranks far 
below the so-called brute, let us examine for a short time his 
religious nature. No evidence exists to show that man was 
aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the exist- 
ence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary, ample evi- 
dence, not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long 
resided with savages, can be adduced to show 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. If under the term religion is included 
the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is entirely 
different, for this belief seems to be almost universal with 
the less civilized races. Nor is it difficult to understand 
how it originated. With the development of the imagina- 
tion, wonder and curiosity, and of a moderate power of rea- 
soning, man would naturally have craved to understand what 
was going on around him, and even have vaguely speculated 
on his own existence. According to McLennan man must, 
in his efforts to arrive at some explanation of the phenomena 
of life, feign for himself. Judging from the universality of 
this life, the same author remarks that “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 
