SCIENCE. 



283 



specting the origin of Religion must be entirely different, 

 according as we start from one or other of these assump- 

 tions, or as we reject them both. If we assume that there 

 is no God, then the question how Mankind have come so 

 widely to invent one or more of such imaginary Beings, 

 is indeed a question well worthy of our utmost curiosity 

 and research. But, on the other hand, if we start with 

 the assumption that there is a God, or indeed if we assume 

 no more than that there are Intelligences in the Universe 

 superior to Man, and possessing some power greater than 

 his own over the natural system in which he lives, then 

 the method of inquiry into the origin of Religion is im- 

 mensely simplified. Obviously the question how Man 

 first came to recognize the existence of his Creator, if we 

 suppose such a Being to exist, becomes in virtue of that 

 supposition relegated to the same class as the question 

 how he first came to recognize any other of the facts or 

 truths which it concerns him most to know. Indeed from 

 its very nature this truth is evidently one which might be 

 more easily and more directly made known to him than 

 many others. The existence of a Being from whom our 

 own being has been derived involves, at least, the pos- 

 sibility of some communication direct or indirect. Yet 

 the impossibility or the improbability of any such com- 

 munication is another of the assumptions continually in- 

 volved in current theories about the origin of Religion. 

 But no such assumption can be reasonably made. The 

 perceptions of the Human Mind are accessible to the in- 

 timations of external truth through many avenues of 

 approach. In its very structure it is made to be respon- 

 sive to some of these intimations by immediate apprehen- 

 sion. Man has that within him by which the Invisible 

 can be seen, and the Inaudible can be heard, and the In- 

 tangible can be felt. Not as the result of any reasoning, 

 but by the same power by which it sees and feels the 

 postulates on which all reasoning rests, the Human Mind 

 may from the very first have felt that it was in contact 

 with a Mind which was the fountain of its own. 



No argument can be conducted without some assump- 

 tions. But neither ought any argument to be conducted 

 without a clear understanding what these assumptions 

 are. Having now cleared up the assumptions which are 

 usually made, we can proceed with greater confidence in 

 the discussion of the great problem before us. The origin 

 of particular systems of religious belief is, of course, a 

 mere question of fact. A few of these systems belong to 

 our own time ; others have arisen late in the historic ages 

 and in the full light of contemporary evidence. Some, 

 again, are first recognized in the dawn of those ages, and 

 their distinctive features can only be dimly traced through 

 evidence which is scanty and obscure. Religion is the 

 origin of all these systems of Belief, but no one of them 

 represents the origin of Religion. None of them throw 

 any other light on the origin of Religion than as all ex- 

 hibiting the one essential element in which all Religion 

 consists. And it would be well if men, before philoso- 

 phizing on the origin of Religion, had a more accurate 

 conception of what they mean by it. The definitions of 

 Religion have been even worse than the definitions of 

 Morality. Just as the attempt is made to account for 

 morals apart from the sense of duty or of obligation in 

 conduct, so is the attempt made to account for Religion 

 apart from the sense of Mind or Will in Nature. The 

 great effort seems to have been to try how the essential 

 idea of Religion could be either most completely eliminated 

 or else most effectually concealed. For example, a feeling 

 of absolute dependence has been specified by Schleiermac- 

 her as the essence of Religion. Yet it is evident that a 

 sense of absolute dependence may be urgent and oppressive 

 without the slightest tincture of religious feeling. A man 

 carried off in a flood, and clinging to a log of wood, may 

 have, and must have, a painful sense of absolute depen- 

 dence on the log. But no one would think of describing 

 this sense as a feeling of Religion. A savage may have 

 a feeling of absolute dependence on his bows and arrows, 



or on the implements of his chase ; or disease may bring 

 home to him a sense of his absolute dependence on the 

 organs of his own body, which alone enable him to use 

 his weapons with success. But it does not follow that 

 the savage has any feeling of Religion towards his bow, 

 or his arrow, or his net, or his fishspear, or even to 

 his own legs and arms. Any plansbility, therefore, 

 which may attach to the proposition which indentifies 

 Religion with the mere sense of dependence, is due en- 

 tirely to the fact that when men speak of the sense of 

 dependence they suggest the idea of a particular kind of 

 dependence — namely, dependence upon a Being or a Per- 

 sonality, and not dependence upon a thing. That is to 

 say, that the plausibility of the definition is entirely due 

 to an element of thought which it is specially framed to 

 keep out of sight. A sense of absolute dependence on 

 purely physical things does not necessarily contain any 

 religious element whatever. But, on the other hand, a. 

 sense of dependence on Personal or Living Agencies, 

 whether they are supposed to be supreme or only superior 

 religions to our own, is a feeling which is essentially rtlig- 

 ious. But the element in that teeling which makes it relig- 

 ious is the element of belief in a Being or in Beings who 

 havePower and Will. When we say of any man, or of any 

 tribe of men, that they have no Religion, we mean that 

 they have no belief in the existence of any such Being or 

 Beings, or at least no such belief as to require any ac- 

 knowledgment or any worsh'p 1 . 



The practice of worship of some kind or another is so 

 generally associated with Religion, that we do not usually 

 think of it otherwise than £S a necessary accompaniment. 

 It is a natural accompaniment, for the simple reason that 

 in the very act of thinking of Superhuman Beings the 

 mind has an inevitable tendency to think of them as pos- 

 sessing not only an intellectual but a moral nature which 

 has analogies with our own. It conceives of them as 

 having dispositions and feelings as well as mere Intellect 

 and Will. Complete indifference towards other creatures 

 is not natural or usual in ourselves, nor can it be natural 

 to attribute it to other Beings. In proportion therefore 

 as we ascribe to the Superhuman Personalities, in whose 

 existence we believe, the authorship or the rule over, or 

 even a mere partnership in, the activities round us, in the 

 same proportion is it natural to regard those Beings as 

 capable of exercising some influence upon us, whether 

 for evil or for good. This conception of them must lead 

 to worship — that is to say, to the cherishing of some 

 feeling and sentiment in regard to them, and to some 

 methods of giving it expression. There is, therefore, no 

 mystery whatever in the usual and all but universal 

 association of worship of some kind with all conceptions 

 of a religious nature. 



It is to be remembered, however, that, as a matter of 

 fact, the belief in tr e existence of a God, or more Gods than 

 one, has come, though rarely, to be separated from the wor- 

 ship of them. Among speculative philosophers this sepa- 

 ration may arise from theories about the Divine nature, 

 which represent it as inaccessible to supplication, or as 

 indifferent to the sentiments of men. Among savages it 

 may arise from the evolution of decay. It may be noth- 

 ing but " a sleep and a forgetting " — the result of the 

 breaking up of ancient homes, and the consequent im- 

 possibility of continuing the practice of rites which had 

 become inseparably associated with local usages. Among 

 philosophers this divorce between the one essential ele- 

 ment of Religion and the natural accompaniments of 

 worship, is well exhibited in the Lucretian conception of 

 the Olympian gods, as well as in the condition of mind of 

 many men in our own day, who have not rejected the idea 

 of a God, but who do not feel the need of addressing Him 

 in the language either of prayer or praise. Of this same 



1 Professor Tide's definition of Religion corresponds with that here 

 given : — " The relation between Man and the Superhuman Powers in 

 which he believes." (" Outlines of the History of the Ancient Re- 

 ligions," p. 2.) 



