XxXV 
THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON THE 
STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
By Jane ELLEN HARRISON 
Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), Hon. LL.D. (Aberdeen), Staff Lecturer and sometime 
Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Corresponding member of the 
German Archaeological Institute. 
THE title of my paper might well have been “the creation by 
Darwinism of the scientific study of Religions,” but that I feared 
to mar my tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration. 
Before the publication of The Origin of Species and The Descent 
of Man, even in the eighteenth century, isolated thinkers, notably 
Hume and Herder, had conjectured that the orthodox beliefs of their 
own day were developments from the cruder superstitions of the 
past. These were however only particular speculations of individual 
sceptics. Religion was not yet generally regarded as a proper subject 
for scientific study, with facts to be collected and theories to be 
deduced. A Congress of Religions such as that recently held at 
Oxford would have savoured of impiety. 
In the brief space allotted me I can attempt only two things; 
first, and very briefly, I shall try to indicate the normal attitude 
towards religion in the early part of the last century; second, and in 
more detail, I shall try to make clear what is the outlook of advanced 
thinkers to-day’. From this second inquiry it will, I hope, be abund- 
antly manifest that it is the doctrine of evolution that has made this 
outlook possible and even necessary. 
The ultimate and unchallenged presupposition of the old view was 
that religion was a doctrine, a body of supposed truths. It was in 
fact what we should now call Theology, and what the ancients called 
Mythology. Ritual was scarcely considered at all, and, when con- 
sidered, it was held to be a form in which beliefs, already defined 
and fixed as dogma, found a natural mode of expression. This, it 
1 To be accurate I ought to add ‘‘in Europe.” I advisedly omit from consideration the 
whole immense field of Oriental mysticism, because it has remained practically untouched 
by the influence of Darwinism. 
