68 
THE DESCENT OF MAN. 
Part I. 
The feeling of religions devotion is a highly com- 
plex one, consisting of love, complete submission to 
an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of 
dependence , 54 fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the 
future, and perhaps other elements. No being could 
experience so complex an emotion until advanced in 
his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a mode- 
rately high level. Nevertheless we see some distant 
approach to this state of mind, in the deep love of a 
dog for his master, associated with complete submission, 
some fear, and perhaps other feelings. The behaviour 
of a dog when returning to his master after an ab- 
sence, and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved 
keeper, is widely different from that towards their 
fellows. In the latter case the transports of joy 
appear to be somewhat less, and the sense of equality 
is shewn in every action. Professor Braubacli 55 goes 
so far as to maintain that a dog looks on his master as 
on a god. 
The same high mental faculties which first led man 
to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetish- 
ism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would 
infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers 
remained poorly developed, to various strange super- 
stitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to 
think of— such as the sacrifice of human beings to a 
blood-loving god ; the trial of innocent persons by the 
ordeal of poison or fire ; witchcraft, &c. — yet it is well 
occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they 
shew us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to 
the improvement of our reason, to science, and our 
54 See an able article on the Psychical Elements of Religion, by 
Mr. L. Owen Pike, in 4 Anthropolog. Review,’ April, 1870, p. lxiii. 
55 4 Keligion, Moral, &c., der Darwin’schen Art-Lehre,’ i 869, s. 53. 
