THE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN 131 



tte 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 imag- 

 ination, 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 exist- 

 ence. As Mr. M'Lennan" has remarked, "Some explana- 

 tion of the phenomena of life, a man must feign for him- 

 self; 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 meji 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 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 



■75 "The Worship of Animals and Plants," in the "Fortnightly Review," 

 Oct. 1, 1869, p. 422. 



'6 Tylor, "Early History of Mankind," 1865, p. 6. See also the three strik- 

 ing chapters on the Development of Religion, in Lubbock's "Origin of Civiliza- 

 tion," 1870. In a like manner, Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his ingenious essay in 

 the "Fortnightly Review" (May 1, ISTO, p. 535), accounts for the earliest forms 

 of religious belief throughout the world, by man being led, through dreams, 

 shadows, and other causes, to look at himself as a double essence, corporeal 

 and spiritual. As the spiritual being is supposed to exist after death and to be 

 powerful, it is propitiated by various gifts and ceremonies, and its aid invoked. 

 He then further shows that^ names or nicknames given from some animal or 

 other objefit to the early progenitors or founders of a tribe are supposed after 

 a long interval to represent the real progenitor of the tribe ; and such animal or 

 object is then naturally believed still to exist as a spirit, is held sacred, and 

 worshipped as a god. Nevertheless, I cannot but suspect that there is a still 



