. 94 TJie Descent of Man. Paht I. 



words in their lanpruages 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 civilised 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 explan- 

 " ation 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 asoribable to the presence in animals, plants, 

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

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

 is also probable, as Mr. Tylor has shewn, 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 arc 

 believed 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 



^* See an excellent article on this forms of religious belief throughout 

 subject by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, the world, by man being led through 

 in the * Anthropological Review,* dreams, shadows, and other causes, 

 Aug. 1864, p. ccxvii. For further to look at himself as a double 

 facts see Sir J. Lubbock, * Pre- essence, corporeal and spiritual. As 

 historic Times,' 2nd edit. 1869, p. the spiritual being is su]>posed to 

 5H4; and especially the chapters on exist after death and to be power- 

 Religion in his * Origin of Civilisa- ful, it is propitiated by various gifts 

 tion,' 1870. and ceremonies, and its aid invoked. 



^^ ' The Worship of Animals and He then further shews that names 



Plants,' in the * Fortnightly Review,' or nicknames given from some 



Oct. 1, 1869, p. 422. animal or other object, to the early 



'•* Tylor, ' Early History of Man- progenitors or founders of a tribe, 



kind,' 1865, p. 6. See also the are supposed after a' long interval 



three striking chapters on the De- to represent the real progenitor of 



vijjopment of Religion, in Lubbock's the tribe; and such animal or object 



' Origin of Civilisation,' 1870. In a is then naturally believed still to 



ike manner Mr. Herbert Spencer, exist as a spirit, is held sacred, and 



in his ingenious essay in the 'Fort- worshipped as a god. Nevertheless 



nightlv Review' (May 1st, 1870, I cannot but suspect that there in 



p. 53.")), accounts lor the eai'liest a still earlier and ruder stage, when 



