39^ 



SCIENCE. 



history and condition of Mankind. We do not know even 

 approximately the time during which he has existed. 

 We do not know the place or the surroundings of his 

 birth. We cio not know the steps by which his 'know- 

 ledge "grew from more to more/' All we can see with 

 certainty is that the earliest inventions of Mankind are 

 the most wonderful that the race has ever made. The 

 first beginnings of human speech must have had their 

 origin in powers of the highest order. The first use of 

 fire and the^discovery of the methods by which it can be 

 kindled; the domestication of Wild animals; and above 

 all the processes, by which the various cereals were first 

 developed out of some wild grasses — these are all dis- 

 coveries with which in ingenuity and in importance no 

 subsequent discoveries may compare. They are all un- 

 known] to history--all lost in the light of an effulgent 

 dawn, fn speculating, therefore, on the origin of these 

 things, we must make one or other of two assumptions — 

 either that Man always had the same mental faculties 

 and the same fundamental intellectual constitution that 

 he has now, or that there was a time when these faculties 

 had not yet risen to the level of Humanity, and when his 

 mental constitution was essentially inferior. 



On the first of these assumptions we proceed on the 

 safe ground of inquiry from the known to the unknown. 

 We handle a familiar thing ; we dissect a known struc- 

 ture ; we think of a known agency. We speculate only 

 on the matter of its first behavior. Even in this pro- 

 cess we must take a good deal for granted — we must 

 imagine a good deal that is not easily conceivable. I 

 we try to present to our own minds any distinct image 

 of the first Man, whether we supposed him to havef 

 been specially created or gradually developed, we shall 

 soon find that we are talking about a Being and about a 

 condition of things of which science tells us nothing, and of 

 which the imagination even cannot form any definite con- 

 ception. The temptation to think of that Being as a 

 mere savage is very great, and this theory underlies nine- 

 tenths of all speculations on the subject. But, to say 

 the very least, this may not be true, and valid reasons 

 have been adduced to show that it is in the h : ghest de- 

 gree improbable. That the first Man should have been 

 born with all the developments of savagery is as impos- 

 sible as that he should have been born with all the de- 

 velopments of civilization. The next most natural re- 

 source we have is to think of the first Man as something 

 like a child. But no man has ever seen a child which 

 never had a parent, or some one to represent a parent. 

 We can form no picture in our mind's eye of the mental 

 condition of the first Man, if we suppose him to have 

 had no communication with, and no instruction from, 

 some Intelligence other than his own. A child that 

 has never known anything, and has never seen exam- 

 ple, is a creature of which we have no knowledge, and 

 of which therefore we can form no definite conception. 

 Our power of conceiving things is, of course, no measure 

 of their possibility. But it may be well to observe where 

 the impossibilities of conception are, or may be, of our 

 own making. It is at least possible that the first Man 

 may not have been born or created in the condition which 

 we find to be so inconceivable. He may have been a 

 child, but having, what all other children have, some in- 

 timations of Authority and some acquaintance with its 

 Source. At all events, let it be clearly seen that the de- 

 nial of this possibility is an assumption ; and an assump- 

 tion too which establishes an absolute and radical dis- 

 tinction between childhood as we know it, and the 

 inconceivable conditions of a childhood which was 

 either without Parents, or with Parents who were com- 

 paratively beasts. Professor Max Mtiller has 'fancied our 

 earliest forefathers as creatures who at first had to be 

 "roused and awakened from mere staring and stolid 

 wonderment," by certain objects " which set them for 

 the first time musing, pondering, and thinking on the 

 visions floating before their eyes." This is a picture 



evidently framed on the assumption of a Fatherless 

 childhood — of a Being born into the world with all the 

 innate powers of Man, but absolutely deprived of all 

 direct communication with any Mind or Will analogous 

 to his own. No such assumption is admissible as repre- 

 senting any reasonable probability. But at least such 

 imaginings as these about our first parents have refer- 

 ence to their external conditions only, and do not raise 

 the additional difficulties involved in the supp;sition that 

 the first Man was half a beast. 



Very different is the case upon the other of the two 

 assumptions which have been indicated above. On the 

 assumption that there was a time when Man was differ- 

 ent in his own proper nature from that nature as we 

 know it now— when he was merely an animal not yet de- 

 veloped into a Man — on this assumption another element 

 of the unknown is introduced, which is an element of 

 absolute confusion. It is impossible to found any rea- 

 soning upon da'a which are not only unknown, but are 

 in themselves unintelligible and inconceivable. Now it 

 seems as if many of those who speculate on the origin 

 of Religion have not clearly made up their minds whether 

 they are proceeding on the first of these assumptions or 

 on the second; that is to say, on the assumption that 

 Man has always been, in respect to faculty, what he now 

 is, or on the assumption that he was once a beast. Per- 

 haps, indeed, it would be strictly true to sav that many 

 of those who speculate on the origin of Religion proceed 

 upon the last of these assumptions without avowing it, 

 or even without distinctly recognizing it themselves. It 

 may be well, therefore, to point out here that on this as- 

 sumption the question cannot be discussed at all. We 

 must begin with Man as Man, when his development or 

 his creation had made him what he is ; not indeed as re- 

 gards the acquisitions of experience or the treasures of 

 knowledge, but what he is in faculty and in power, in the 

 structure and habit of his mind, in the instincts of his 

 intellectual and moral nature. 



But, as we have also seen at the beginning of this 

 chapter, there are two other assumptions between which 

 we must choose. Besides assuming something as to the 

 condition and the powers of the first Man, we must also 

 make one or other of two assumptions as to the existence 

 or non-existence of a Being to whom his mind stands in 

 close relation. One is the assumption that there is no 

 God ; and then the problem is, how Man came to invent 

 one. The other is that there is a God ; and then the 

 question is, whether He first formed, and how long He 

 left, His creature without any intuition or revelation of 

 Himself ? 



It is really curious to observe in many speculations on 

 the oiigin of Religion how unconscious the writers are 

 that they are making any assumption at all on this sub- 

 ject. And yet in many cases the assumption distinctly 

 is that, as an objective reality, God does not exist, and 

 that the conception of such a Being is built up grad- 

 ually out of wonderings and guessings about " the Infi- 

 nite" and "the Invisible." 



On this assumption I confess that it does not appear 

 to me to be possible to give any satisfactory explanation 

 of the origin of Religion. As a matter of fact, we see 

 that the tendency to believe in divine or superhuman 

 Beings is a universal tendency in the human mind. As 

 a matter of fact, also, we see that the conceptions which 

 gather round this belief — the ideas which grow up and 

 are developed from one consequence to another respect- 

 ing the character of these superhuman Personalities and 

 the relations to mankind — are beyond all comparison the 

 most powerful agencies in molding human nature for 

 evil or for good. There is no question whatever about 

 the fact that the most terrible and destructive customs 

 of barbarian and of savage life are customs more or less 

 directly connected with the growth of religious super- 

 stitions. It was the perception of this fact which in- 

 spired the intense hatred of Religion, as it was known to 



