SCIENCE. 



287 



ever was a time when man with his existing constitution, 

 lived in contact with the forces and in the face of ener- 

 gies of Nature, and yet with no impression or belief that 

 in those energies, or behind them, there were Living 

 Agencies other than his own. And if man, ever since he 

 became Man, had always some such impression or 

 belief, then he always had a Religion, and the question 

 of its origin cannot be separated from the origin of the 

 species. 



It is a part of the Unity of Nature that the clear percep- 

 tion of anyone truth leads almost always to the percep- 

 tion of some other, which follows from or is connected 

 with the first. And so it is in this case. The same 

 analysis which establishes a necessary connection between 

 the self-consciousness of Man and the one fundamental 

 element of all religious emotion and belief, establishes an 

 equally natural connection between another part of the 

 same self-consciousness and certain tendencies in the 

 development of Religion which we know to have been 

 widely prevalent. For although in the operations of our 

 own mind and spirit, with their strong and often violent 

 emotions, we are familiar with a powerful agency which 

 is in itself invisible, yet it is equally true that we are 

 familiar with that agency as always working in and 

 through a body. It is natural, therefore, when we think 

 of Living Agencies in Nature other than our own, to 

 think of them as having some form, or at least as having 

 some abode. Seeing, however, and knowing the work of 

 those Agencies to be work exhibiting power and resources 

 so much greater than our own, there is obviously unlim- 

 ited scope for the imagination in conceiving what that 

 form and where that abode may be. Given, therefore, 

 these two inevitable tendencies of the human mind — the 

 tendency to believe in the existence of Personalities other 

 than our own, and the tendency to think of them as 

 living in some shape and in some place — we have a 

 natural and sufficient explanation, not only of the exis- 

 tence of Religion, but of the thousand forms in which it 

 has found expression in the world. For as Man since he 

 became Man, in respect to the existing powers and appa- 

 ratus of his mind, has never been widiout the conscious- 

 ness of self, nor without some desire of interpreting the 

 things around him in terms of his own thoughts, so neither 

 has he been without the power of imagination. By vir- 

 tue of it he re-combines into countless new forms not 

 only the images of sense but his own instinctive interpre- 

 tations of them. Obviously we have in this faculty the 

 prolific source of an infinite variety of conceptions, which 

 may be pure and simple or foul and unnatural, according 

 to the elements supplied out of the moral and intellectual 

 character of the minds which are imagining. Obviously, 

 too, we have in this process an unlimited field for the de- 

 velopment of good or evil germs. The work which in 

 the last chapter I have shown to be the inevitable work 

 of Reason when it starts from any datum which is false, 

 must be, in religious conceptions above all others, a work 

 of rapid and continuous evolution. The steps of natural 

 consequence, when they are downward here, must be 

 downwards along the steepest gradients. It must be so 

 because the conceptions which men have formed respect- 

 ing the Supreme Agencies in Nature are of necessity 

 conceptions which give energy to all the springs of action. 

 They touch the deepest roots of motive. In thought they 

 open the most copious fountains of suggestion. In con- 

 duct they affect the supreme influence of Authority, and 

 the next most powerful of all influences, the influence of 

 Example. Whatever may have been false or wrong, 

 therefore, troin the first in any religious conception must 

 inevitably tend to become worse and worse with time, 

 and with the temptation under which men have lain 

 to follow up the steps of evil consequence to their most 

 extreme conclusions. 



Armed with the certainties which thus arise out of 

 the very nature of the conceptions we are dealing with 

 when we inquire into the origin of Religion, we can now 



approach that question by consulting the only other 

 sources of authentic information, which are, first, the 

 facts which Religion presents among the existing gener- 

 ations of men, and, secondly, such facts as can be safely 

 gathered from the records of the past. 



On one main point which has been questioned respect- 

 ing existing facts, the progress of inquiry seems to have 

 established beyond any reasonable doubt that no race of 

 men now exists so savage and degraded as to be, or to 

 have been when discovered, wholly destitute of any con- 

 ceptions of a religious nature. It is now well understood 

 that all the cases in which the existence of such savages 

 has been reported, are cases which break down upon 

 more intimate knowledge and more scientific inquiry. 



Such is the conclusion arrived at by a careful modern 

 inquirer, Professor Tiele, who says : " The statement 

 that there are nations or tribes which possess no religion, 

 rests either on inaccurate observations or on a confusion 

 of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met with desti- 

 tute of belief in any higher Beings, and travelers who as- 

 serted their existence have been afterwards refuted by 

 facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call Religion, in its 

 most general sense, an universal phenomenon of hu- 

 manity." 5 



Although this conclusion on a matter of fact is satis- 

 factory, it must be remembered that, even if it had been 

 true that some savages do exist with no conception 

 whatever of Living Beings higher than themselves, it 

 would be no proof whatever that such was the primeval 

 condition of Man. The arguments adduced in a former 

 chapter, that the most degraded savagery of the present 

 day is or may be the result of evolution working upon 

 highly unfavorable conditions, are arguments which de- 

 prive such facts, even if they existed, of all value in sup- 

 port of the assumption that the lowest savagery was the 

 condition of the first progenitors of our race. Degrada- 

 tion being a process which has certainly operated, and is 

 now operating, upon some races, and to some extent, it 

 must always remain a question how far this process may 

 go in paralyzing the activity of our higher powers or in 

 setting them, as it were, to sleep. It is well, however, 

 that we have no such problem to discuss. Whether any 

 savages exist with absolutely no religious conceptions is, 

 after all, a question of subordinate importance ; because 

 it is certain that, if they exist at all, they are a very ex- 

 treme case and a very rare exception. It is notorious that, 

 in the case of most savages and of all barbarians, 

 not only have they some Religion, but their Religion is 

 one of the very worst elements in their savagery or their 

 barbarism. 



Looking now to the facts presented by the existing Re- 

 ligions of the world, there is one of these facts which at 

 once arrests attention, and that is the tendency of all Re- 

 ligions, whether savage or civilized, to connect the Per 

 sonal Agencies who are feared or worshipped with some 

 material object. The nature of that connection may not 

 be always — it may not be even in any case — perfectly 

 clear and definite. The rigorous analysis of our own 

 thoughts upon such subjects is difficult, even to the most 

 enlightened men. To rude and savage men it is impos- 

 sible. There is no mystery, therefore, in the fact that the 

 connection which exists between various material objects 

 and the Beings who are worshipped in them or through 

 them, is a connection which remains generally vague in 

 the mind of the worshipper himself. Sometimes the ma- 

 terial object is an embodiment ; sometimes it is a sym- 

 bol ; often it may be only an abode. Nor is it wonderful 

 that there should be a like variety in the particular objects 

 which have come to be so regarded. Sometimes they are 

 such material objects as the heavenly bodies. Sometimes 

 they are natural productions of our own planet, such as 

 particular trees, or particular animals, or particular things 

 in themselves inanimate, such as springs, or streams, or 



6 " History of Religion," p. 6. 



