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RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN

THE

PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN

AND THE NATURE OF

RELIGION



RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN.

ANIMISM.

By EDWARD LODD, uthor of The Story of Creation.PANTHEISM.

By JAMESALLANSON ICTON,Author of The Religion of theUniverse*

THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.

By Professor ILES,LL.D., Professor f Chinesen theUniversityof Cambridge.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.

By JANEHARRISON,ecturerat NewnhamCollege,Cambridge,Author of Prolegomena o Study of GreekReligion.

ISLAM.

By SYEDAMEERALI, M.A., C.I.E., late of H.M.'s High Courtof Judicature in Bengal, Author of The Spirit of Islam and TktEthicsof Islam.

MAGIC AND FETISHISM.

By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cam-bridge University.

THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S.THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

By THEOPHILUSG. PINCHES, ate of the British Museum.BUDDHISM. 2 vols.

By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The RoyalAsiatic Society.

HINDUISM.

By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental PrintedBooks and MSS., British Museum.

SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.

By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the Oxford EnglishDictionary.

CELTIC RELIGION.

By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University College,Aberystwyth.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

By CHARLESSQUIRE, Author of The Mythology of the BritishIslands.

JUDAISM.By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature inCambridgeUniversity,Author of JewishLife in theMiddle Ages.

SHINTO. By W. G. ASTON,C.M.G.THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU.

By LEWIS SPENCE,M.A.THE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS.

By ProfessorMORRISASTROw,rofessor f SemiticLanguages

at the Universityof Pennsylvania, .S.A.



THE

PSYCHOLOGICALORIGINAND THE NATURE OF

RELIGIQN

By

JAMES H. LEUBABRYN MAWR COLLEGE, U.S.A.

LONDON

ARCHIBALDCONSTABLE&r CO LTD

10 ORANGETREET,EICESTERQUARE

1909



PREFACE

THIS little book, the last of a series of similar

volumes eachcontaining an expositionby a recog-

nised authority of one of the many Religions theworld has known, might have been put with as

much propriety at the head of the series, here toshowhow Religion originated n the mind of man,

what mental powers t presupposes,what is itsnature and what its relation to the non-religiouslife. But one s, no doubt, better able to take upprofitably these problemsafter having familiarised

oneself with the several aspects of religious life.

Therefore The Psychological Origin and the

Nature of Religion was placedat the end, whereit fulfils the additional purpose of linking theconcluded series of Histories of Religions with

a cognateone,now being prepared by the samepublishers,on Ancient and Modern Systems of

Philosophy.



CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

i. THE FUNDAMENTALNATURE OF RELIGION, . . 1

ii. THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOURDIFFERENTIATED, 11

in. ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-

BEINGS, AND GrODS, 39

iv. MAGIC AND RELIGION, 48

Magic classified, . . . . . .49

Two Thesesmaintained : (1) the probable priority

of Magic ; (2) the independence f Religionfrom Magic, 53

Magic and Religion combine, but never fuse, . 65

What did Magic contribute to the making of

Religion? 68

Magic and he Origin of Science, ... 74

v. THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS

LIFE, . 80

vi. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND

THE FUNCTIONOF RELIGION, .... 87



THE PSYCHOLOGICAL OKIGH

THE NATURE OF RELIGION

CHAPTER I

THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OP KELIGION

THE opinions advanced in this essay and thearguments with which they are supported will

be more readily appreciated f the fundamentalnature of Religion is set forth in a few intro-ductory pages.

The students of Religion have usually beencontent to describe it either in intellectual or in

affective terms. 'This particular idea or belief/

or 'this particular feeling or emotion/ is, theyhave said,' the essence' or the ' vital element' of

Religion. So that most of the hundreds ofdefinitions which have been proposed fall intotwo classes. "We have, on the one hand, the

definitions of Spencer, Max Muller, Romanes,

Goblet d'Alviella, and others, or whom ReligionA i



PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF RELIGION

is 'the recognition of a mystery pressing for

interpretation/ or'

a department of thought/ or'a belief in superhuman beings'; and, on theother, the formulas of Schleiermacher, the Ritsch-

lian theologians, Tiele, etc., who hold thatReligion is fa feeling of absolute dependence

upon God/ or 'that pure and reverential dis-position or frame of mind we call piety/ Accord-

ing to Tiele, * the essence f piety, and, therefore,the essenceof Religion, is adoration/

The recent advance of psychologicalscience

and the increasingly careful and minute workof ethnographists ave tended to discredit these

one-sidedconceptions. To-day it has becomecustomary o admit that cin Religion all sides

of the personalityparticipate. Will, feeling,and

intelligence are necessaryand inseparablecon-stituents of Religion/ But statements such as

this one do not necessarily mply a correctunderstanding of the functional relation of the

three aspectsof psychic life. One may be ac-

quaintedwith the three branchesof government-legislative, executive,and judicial-and never-theless grossly misunderstand heir respectivefunctions. Pfleiderer, for instance, hastens to

add to the sentencesast quoted, Of coursewe

must recognise hat knowing and willing are



FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION

here [in religion] not ends in themselves,as in

scienceand in morality, but rather subordinate

to feeling as the real centre of religious con-sciousness/ Thus feeling reappears as the realcentre of religious consciousness. What theauthor may -well have meant here by ccentre/ /

do not know. A similar criticism is applicableto Max Mliller and to Guyau. The latter begins

promisingly with a criticism of the one-sidedformulas of Schleiermacher and of Feuerbach,

and declares that they should be combined.

' The religious sentiment,' says he, is ' primarilyno doubt a feeling of dependence. But thisfeeling of dependence eally to give birth to

Religion must provoke in one a reaction - a

desire or deliverance/ Very good, ndeed! But,

on proceeding, the reader discovers that theopinion the book defends is that ' Religion isthe outcome of an effort to explain all things-

physical, metaphysical,and moral-by analogiesdrawn from human society, imaginatively and

symbolically considered. In short, it is a uni-versal,sociological ypothesis,mythical in form/xWhat is this but once more the intellectualistic

position? Religion arising from an effort toexplain:, Religion an hypothesis! It is Herbert

1 The Non-Religion of the Future, p. 2.

3




Spencerover againwith an additional statement

concerning he way in which man attempts toexplain l the mystery pressing or interpretation/

It must be admitted, however, that several of

the more recent definitions have completely

broken with this bad psychology. Among theseare those of J. G. Frazer, of A. Sabatier, and of

William James. The first understands y Religion1propitiation, or conciliation of powers uperior oman, which are believed to direct and control

the course of nature and of human life.31 For

A. Sabatier, Religion ' is a commerce, a consciousand willed relation into which the soul in distress

enters with the mysterious power on which it

feels that it and its destiny depend/2 WilliamJames expresses is mind thus: 'In broadestand most general terms possible, ne might saythat religious life consists in the belief thatthere Is an unseenorder, and that our supreme

good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselvesthereto. This belief and this adjustment are

the religious attitude of the soul. In theordinarysenseof the word, however,no attitude

Is accounted religious unless it be graveand serious; the trifling, sneeringattitude of a

1 The Golden Bough, 2nd edition, i. p. 63.2 Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, p. 27.

4



FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION '

Voltaire must be thrown out if we would not

strain the ordinary use of language. Moreover,there must be something solemn, serious, and

tender about any attitude which we denominateReligion. If glad, it must not grin or snigger;

if sad, it must not scream or curse. The salliesof a Schopenhauerand a Nietzsche lack thepurgatorial note which religious sadness givesforth. And finally we must exclude also the

chilling reflections of Marcus Aurelius on the

eternal reason, as well as the passionate out-cry of Job/l

But the battle against intellectualistic andaffectivistic conceptions of Religion is not yetwon. The recent definitions of Tiele and of

Kaftan show only too clearly how strong thetendency emains to identify Religion with somefeeling or emotion.

As the amazing discrepanciesand contradic-

tionsoffered y authorised efinitionsof Religionarise, in my opinion, primarily from a faulty

psychology, moment may profitably be devotedto an untechnical statement of the present teach-

ing of that science pon the relation existing

1 The Varietiesof ReligiousExperience, p. 53, 38, abbrevi-ated and rearranged.

5




between he three acknowledgedmodes of con-sciousness-willing, eeling,and thinking.Aristotle characterised man as thinking-desire.

In swinging back from Intellectualism to Volun-tarism, modern psychology has accepted the

fundamental truth excellently expressed y theGreek philosopher. eWill is not merely afunction which sometimes accrues to conscious-

ness,and is sometimes acking: it is an integralproperty of consciousness.'1Will without in-telligencemay be possible; but intelligencewith-out will Is not, not even in the case of so-called

disinterested, heoretical thinking. There is,there can be, no thinking without desire, in-tention,or purpose. *The one thing that stands

out,' says, or instance,ProfessorDewey, is thatthinking is inquiry, and that knowledge assciences the outcomeof systematicallydirectedinquiry/ Thought absolutely undirected would

be not evena dream-mere meaningless, haoticatoms of thought. It Is the intention, the pur-pose,which makes thought what it is; that isto say, significant. We think becausewe will.

Thought does not exist for itself; it is the in-strument of desire. To discoverwaysand meansof gratifying proximate or distant desires,needs,

1 Wiindt's Ethics, English tr., iii. p. 6.

6



FUNDAMENTAL NATUKE OF RELIGION

cravings,s the function of intelligence. Thepsychologistspeaks,herefore,of the instru-mental character of thought, and considerscog-

nition to be a function of conduct. The masteryof desire over thought is abundantly illustrated

in the history of belief, and nowhereso strikinglyas n Eeligion.

With regard to the relation of feeling to thewill and to the intellect, it is to be observed that

where here is desire or an object, there liking is

present; and, conversely,where there is liking,there actual or potential desire is felt. As tosentimentsand emotions, hey involve ideas andconative elements in addition to sensations and

feelings. An emotion is a reaction, he response

of an organism to a situation. It is a form ofaction. Aristotle's characterisation of man is thus

seen o be adequate;t doesnot leaveout the feel-

ings, as it might seem at first. Thinking-desireincludes the affection since it is included in

desire. Every pulse of consciousnesss psychi-cally compoundedof will, feeling, and thought.Successive moments can differ one from the

other neither in the absence of one or two of

these three constituents, nor in the essential

relation they bear to one another-that is fixedand unchangeable-but nly in the intensityand

7




vividnessof their respectivecomponents. This,then, s the double eachingof psychology n thismatter:-(1) Will, feeling, and thought enter in

somedegree nto every moment of consciousnesswhich can be lookedupon as an actuality,and not

merely as an abstraction; they are necessary on-stituents of consciousness. The unit of conscious

life is neither thought, nor feeling,nor will, butall three in movement towards an object. (2)

The will is primal; or, in other words, conscious

life is always oriented towards something o besecuredor avoided mmediately or ultimately.

If3 with this conception n mind, we turn toReligion, we shall understand it to be com-pounded of will, thought, and feeling,bearing to

each other the relation which belongs to themin every department of life. And it will, more-over, be clear that a purpose or an ideal, i.e.something o be attained or maintained, must

always be at the root of it. The outcome of

the application of current psychological each-ing to religious life is, then, to lead us to

regard Religion as a particular kind of activity,as a mode or type of behaviour, and to makeit as impossible or us to identify it with a par-

ticular emotion or with a particular belief,as itwould be to identify, let us say, amily life with

8



FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION

affection, or to define trade as f belief in the pro-

ductivity of exchange';or commerce s greedtouched with a feeling of dependence upon

society/ And yet this last definition s no lessinforming and adequate than the far-famedformula of Matthew Arnold, which I forbear to

repeat We shall, however, have to rememberthat Religion s multiform, and that certain ideas,

emotions,and purposesappear n it prominentlyat certain moments, and other ideas, emotions,

and purposes at other times. But neitherprominence nor predominance s synonymouswith ' essence' or with c vital element/

I do not intend, at this stage of our inquiry,to offer a complete definition of Religion. But

I must guard against a possible misinterpreta-tion. In speaking of Religion as an activity,or as a type of behaviour, I would not be under-stood to exclude from it whatever does not

express tself in overt acts, in rites of propitia-

tion, submission, r adoration. For, just as man'srelations with his fellow-men are not all directlyexpressed, r expressible,n actions, so his rela-

tionswith gods, r their mpersonalubstitutes, aynot haveanyvisible orm; theymay emainpurelysubjective and none the less exercise a definite

guidingand nspiring nfluence verhis ife.9




The adjectives assiveand activemight be usedto separateamorphous rom organisedReligion,i.e. the feeling-attitude from the behaviour.* Passive/ used in this connection, would mean

simply that the person does not actively seekthose advantages he gods might procure, but

is content to be acted upon by them.Unorganised religiosity must be, it seems, he

necessary recursorof organisedReligion; it isits larval stage. But it does not by any means

disappearrom societywhen a systemof definite

relations with gods, or with impersonal sourcesof religious inspiration, has been developed. Inall societies there is always a large number of

people who live in the limbo of organisedReligion. They are open to the influence of

religious agents, n which they believe more orless cold-heartedly,without ever entering intodefinite and fixed relations with them.

10



CHAPTER II

THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR DIFFERENTIATED

IN his dealingswith the differentkinds of objectsor forces with which he is, or thinks himself, in

relation, man has developed hree distinct typesof behaviour. A concrete llustration will bring

them before us more forcibly than an abstractcharacterisation. A stoker in the hold of a ship,

throwing coal nto the furnace, representsone of

them. His purpose is to produce propellingenergy. The amount of coal he shovels in,

together with the air-draught, the condition ofthe boiler and other factors of the same sort,

determine, as he understands the matter, the

velocity of the ship. The same man, playingcards of an evening, and having lost uninter-

ruptedly for a long time, might get up and walkround the table backwards n order to changehis luck. He would then illustrate a second

mode of behaviour. If a storm threatens to

sink the ship,our stoker might be seen allingii




on his knees, ifting Ms hands to heaven,andaddressingn passionatewords an nvisible being.These are the three differentiated kinds of

responses he has learned to make, the three

ways by which he endeavours to make use of

the forces about him in his struggle for thepreservation and the enrichment of life. We

may designatehem as-1. The mechanical behaviour.

2. The coercitivebehaviour,or Magic,

3. The anthropopathic behaviour, whichincludes Religion.The mechanical behaviour differs from the

anthropopathicby the absence f any referenceto personal beings. In the sphere in which it

obtains, threats and presents are equally in-effective. It implies instead the practical-notthe theoretical-recognition of a fairly definiteand constant quantitative relation between cause

and effect. If science s to be providedwith an

ancestor, and only with one, it should be thisfirst type of behaviourrather than Magic. For,the moment the existence of the fixed quanti-

tative relations, mplicitly acknowledged n thefirst type of behaviour, s explicitly recognised,science s born. Magic separatestself, on theone hand, from the mechanical behaviour by the

12



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

absence f implied quantitative relations, and, on

the other hand, from anthropopathic behaviourby the failure o usemeans f personalnfluence;punishmentand reward are just as foreign toMagicas to mechanical ehaviour. As to theanthropopathicype of activity, it includes heordinary relations of men with men as well asthose with gods. One's frame of mind and be-haviour when dealing with a human person,

especially if exalted far above us, resemblesReligion so closely that it is proper to placethem in the same class.

Mechanical behaviour and Religion are, ob-viously, by far the most common and important

modesof activity amongcivilised peoples,where-as in primitive culture the coercitive behaviour

(Magic) is everywhere n evidence and Religionmay be practically unknown. As one ascends

from the lowest stages of culture, Magic gradu-ally losesofficial recognition. Among us, thoughit leads only a surreptitious existence, t has by

no means ost all influence. The list of magical

superstitionshat have retained a hold amongus would be found tediously long. A numerousclassof them includes the gambler'smethods of

securing uck So-called religious' practicesmay really be magical. The cross, he rosary,

13



PSYCHOLOGICAL OKIGIN OF RELIGION

relics, and other accessories of Religion, acquirein the mind of many Christians a power of the

coercitive type: that is, for instance, he casewhen the sign of the cross,of itself, without themediation of God or Saint, s felt to have power;

or when*saying one's beads' is held to possess curative virtue of the land ascribed to sacred

relics by the superstitious. Even when thesymbolism of the sign of the cross, and the

meaning of the Ave Maria are realised, t hap-

pens not infrequently that signing oneself andsaying one'sbeads are regarded as acting uponthe Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or God, in the

mannerof an incantation; .e. magically.

It has been the habit of most students of the ;

origin of Religion to concern themselves ex-clusively with the origin of the god-idea,as if:belief in the existenceof godswas dentical withReligion, They have ignored its other essential

components: the motives or desires and the feel-ings, as well as the meansby which, in Religion,the gratification of desire is sought. But the

limitation of the problem of origin to that ofthe god-idea is not entirely amiss. For there

are neither specifically religious motives, norspecifically religious feelings. Any and every14



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

human need and longing may, at some stage

or other, becomea spring of Religion, and con-

versely the feelings and emotions met with in

any orm of Religion ppearalso n non-religiousexperience. As to the practical means of secur-ing the favour of the gods, t is agreed hat theywere at the beginning essentially the same as

those men were already n the habit of using intheir relations with their fellow-men. It is the

Agent or the Powerwith which man thinks him-

self n relation,and through whom he endeavoursto secure he gratification of his desires,whichalone s distinctive of religious life. And so the

origin of the idea of gods, though not identicalwith the origin of Religion, is at any rate itscentral problem.

In the preceding remarks, as also in practi-cally all writings on the origin of Religion, t isassumed hat the god-concept precedes, n the

mind of man, the establishment of Religion.This opinion is, as we shall see, he correct one.But it cannot be taken as a matter of course.

Actions may becomeestablished n other ways.Our first problem s to discoverhow Religionarose,and what psychological apacitiesand con-ceptions t implies.

A comparativestudy of the three modes of15




behaviour s, after all, the shortest way of gain-ing a satisfactoryunderstandingof the origin ofReligion.

What are the abstract conceptions necessary

to the establishment of the three modes of be-haviour?-There is usually little difficulty indetermining what end any particular action isintended to secure. It is quite otherwise f one

wishes o ascertain he nature of the power rom

which the desiredeffect is supposed o proceed.The philosopher, suffering from the illusion towhich his class is subject, is in danger of

imagining the presence f highly abstractnotionswhere much simpler mental processes ctually

take place. A comparativelyeasyway of gettingoneself disentangledrom thesehigh-flown inter-

pretations and of ascertainingwhat is the in-tellectual minimum really involved n these ypesof behaviour, is to examine them in the least

developedmen known to us, or, better still-ifthey are to be found there- among animals.Let us accordingly turn for a moment to animal

behaviour with the intention of determiningwhat ideasof power,or of agency,are involved

in their modes of action, and thus take a pre-liminary step owards he solution of our problem.16



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUK

Apes, dogs,beavers,n fact all the higheranimals, show by their behaviour a 'working

understanding' of the more common physicalforces. They estimate weight, resistance,heat,distance,etc., and adapt their actions more or

less exactly to these factors when climbing,swinging at the end of boughs, breaking, carry-ing, etc. I remember observing a chimpanzee

trying to recovera stick which had fallen throughthe bars of his cageand rolled beyond the reachof his arm. He looked around, walked deliber-

ately to the cornerof the cage,picked up a pieceof burlap, and threw the end of it over the stick.Then,pulling gently, he made the stick roll untilnear enough for him to get hold of it with his

hand. This ape dealt successfullywith physicalforces. Towards animals and men, animal be-

haviour is quite different. A dog will beg from

a man; he will not beg from a ham suspendedout of his reach. Towards animals and men,animal behaviour is similar to that of men

when dealing with invisible anthropopathicbeings.

One may well believe that the inner ex-periences of animals differ in these modes ofbehaviour as much as their external movements.

The feelingsand emotionswhich appear n aB 17




dog's ntercoursewith his master are of the same

species,f not of the samevariety, as those feltby man when he dealswith his fellow-men and

with superhumanbeings. Certain highly giftedanimals feel blame and approbation, ndepend-

ently of physical punishment or reward, andattach themselves to their masters with a de-

voted affection possessingll the marks of altru-ism. The higher animals do, then, without any

doubt, practise both the mechanical and theanthropopathic types of behaviour, but they

exercise he latter only towardsactually presentpersonsor animals. We shall have to consider

subsequentlyhe significant psychologicaldiffer-ence to which this fact points.

But, is there no trace in animal life of the

coercitive behaviour? I know of none, thoughsome perplexity might be caused by certainreactions animals learn under the tuition of

man. What shall be said, for instance,of a dogwho has learned to raise its forepawswhen hewishes to be liberated from confinement under

circumstancesmaking the person causing the

door to open nvisible to him ? Is this magicalbehaviour? There is certainly no quantitativenor any qualitative relation between lifting up

the forepawsand the opening of a door,neither18



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

is thereanyvisiblecontinuitybetween auseandeffect. That the dog'saction is not determined,in this instance, n the same way as that of a

magician,appearswhen it is observed hatwhereas the latter would perform the same

magical ite in a great variety of external cir-cumstances,he dog will seek liberation by lift-

ing its paws only when in the particular cagein which he has learned the trick, or in one very

much like it.1 But more about this presently.It is not to be overlooked that without the

interferenceof man, the dog would never have

learned o perform his quasi-magical rick. Thisillustration serves, f no other purpose, at leastto indicate how apparently slight is the impedi-

ment which prevents the higher animals fromsetting up a magical art.It may be a matter for astonishment that two

complicatedand effective modes of reaction are

1 H. B. Davishas this to say on the power of generalisation

of the raccoon, a very intelligent animal: * When an animal[raccoon] s forced to approacha new fastening from a newdirection, it is often as much bothered by it as by a new fasten-ing. Nevertheless, in course of time the animals seem to

reach a sort of generalised manner of procedure which enables

them to deal more promptly with any new fastening not toodifferent from othersof their experience).' ' The Raccoon A

Study in Animal Intelligence,3Amer. Jr. of Psy., Oct. 1907,p. 486.

19




arrived at by animals in the absence f abstract

ideas about forces. Yet so it is; before anyspeculation on power, before any induction ordeduction, before any abstract notion of the

nature of spirit and matter, animals have learned

to deal quite well with what we call physical and

personal forces. How did they do it? Thestudy under experimental conditions of theestablishment of new reactions in animals reveals

the process ery clearly. Imagine a cat shut upin a cage, he door of which can be openedby

pressingdown a latch. When weary of confine-ment the cat begins to claw,pull, and bite, here,there,and everywhere. After half an hour, or an

hour of this purposive,but unreasoned, ctivity,he chances o put his paw upon the latch and

escapes. f again put into the cage, e does notseem to know any better than before how to

proceed. Yet something has been gained bythe first experience. For now he directs his

clawing, pulling, and biting more frequently to-

wards he part of the cage occupiedby the latch.Because of this improvement he finds himself

released ooner han the first time. The repeti-tion of the experiment shows the cat learningto bring his movements o bear more and more

exclusively upon the door or its immediate20



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

surroundings. Ultimately he will have earned

to make ust the necessarymovementand noother. In this gradual exclusionof uselessmove-

ments, the cat is guided entirely by results.The psycho-physiologicalendowment required

for acquisitionsof this kind involves no abstract

ideasbut only (1) the desire o escape; 2) the im-pulse and ability to perform the various move-ments we have named; (3) an indefinite

remembrance of the position occupied whensuccesswas achieved, ombined with a tendency

to repeat he same movementswhen n the samesituation.

The method llustrated aboveby which animalslearn to deal with forces in the midst of which

they live has a much wider range of application

in human existence than is generally supposed.Man's fundamental mode of learning is also heunreflective,experimental,one in which frequent

blind attempts and chance successes lowly leadto the elimination of ineffective movements.

Would you convince yourself of the vastlyexaggerated dle ascribed to abstract ideas and

to logical processesn ordinary human behaviour,inquire how power' is conceivedof by those whouse it. What is in the mind of the stoker when

he thinks of the power of coal? What in the21




mind of the gambler when he tries to coercefate? What in the raind of the necromancer

"when he summons the shades of spirits? No-

thing definite beyond a knowledge of what isto be done in* order to secure the desired re-

sults and the anticipation of these results them-selves. The stoker thinks of what he sees and

feels: the coal, n burning, gives heat; the heatmakes the water boil; the steam pushes the

piston-rod, and so forth. Each one of the suc-cessive inks in the chain is vaguely hought of

by him as striving to bring about the following

one. That is how he understands he coal-power.And what does the ordinary person know, forinstance,about electricity? Simply what is to

be done n order to start the dynamo, ight the

lamp, switch the current, and what the effectwill be in each case, othing more. The super-stitious person,whether belonging o a primitivetribe or to the Anglo-Saxon civilisation of the

twentieth century, understands in no other than

this practical way the forces he deals with. Iremember he delight shown by an elderly lady

when a brood of swallows ell down our sitting-room chimney. * t will bring luck to the house-hold/ said she. I did my best,patiently and in

several ways, to ascertain the sort of notion the22



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

lady had regarding the nature of the power that

was to bring about the fortunate eventspredicted,and also to discover her idea of the connection

existing between he fall of the swallowsand the

exertion of the {power' in our behalf. I had tocome to the conclusion that there was no idea

whatsoevern her mind beyond those expressedby 'swallows-down-the-chimney' and 'happy-events-coming.' These two ideas were in hermind directly associated. When I declared my

inability to see the causal connection between

the two,she complainedof my abnormal criticalsense! Nothing more han the mmediate associa-

tion of an antecedentwith its consequent eed be

looked for in the mind of most civilised, super-stitious persons, nd, of course,nothing more in

the mind of a savage. That is sufficient forpractical purposes.

The words f matter' and cspirit' wield a veryconsiderablenfluence among us; what do theymean o most of those who use them ? Physical

science ascribes either extension alone, or exten-

sion and weight, to physical substances. Non-material forces are, then, according to science,

both spaceless nd weightless. I will venture

to affirm that not one educatedpersor^ u athousand is acquainted with this distinction.

23




Most of the few who have known it have for-

gotten It. So hat the words matter' and 'spirit'mean different things to the philosopher andto the layman. In the popular inind, if spirits

are not perceptible it is because the sensesare not sufficiently acute. Spirits are here orthere, diffused over wide areas or concentrated

in narrow spaces. The averageChristian, what-

ever he may say to the contrary, is, theoreti-cally speaking,a materialist, and, I might add,a polytheist. Whatever matter and spirit meanto him, and they certainly have a substantial

meaning, he distinction made by the philosopheris for him non-existent. The following factsmay be of some interest in this connection.

A few years ago, n a conversationwith a shop-

clerk, I happened to mention a lead coffinmade hermetic "with solder. He was shocked,

and objected to a dead body being shut up ina coffin of that description becauset preventedthe escape of the soul. This man had had an

ordinary grammar-school education. Here are

two quotations taken from answersof AmericanCollege tudents o questions equestinga descrip-tion of their idea of God. It should be added

that the questions were given only to classes

which had not yet taken up, or were ust begin-24



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUK

ning the studyof philosophy. cGod, o me, s abeing of fleshand blood, or without this formhe would seein unnatural and unsympathetic

as our leader/ (Female, twenty years old.)-CIthink of God as real, actual flesh and blood and

bones, omething we shall all see with our eyessome day.3 (Male, twenty-one years old.) To-gether with these,and from the same classesofstudents,came a great number of very differentanswers; or instance his,' God is an impersonal

being. ... I think of him as the embodimentofnatural laws.' Descartes' onception may serveas a point of comparison: What the soul itselfwas, either did not stay to consider,or, if I did,I imagined that it was something extremely rare

and subtle, ike wind or flame, or ether, spreadthrough my grosserparts/1

If the philosophicaldistinction betweenmatter

and spirit is not ordinarily made, these terms

express none the less a very definite practical

meaning of prime importance: they mark thedifferenceetweenorces hat are not responsiveto psychic influences (desire and emotion, ethical

and aesthetic onsiderations) nd those hat are.

The trial-and-error method which serves to

1 Meditationes,i. p. 10, Amsterdam,1678.

25




establish the efficient modes of behaviour observed

in animals is so far reaching n its possibilitiesthat onemight be empted to regard t asaccount-ing for the existenceof Magic and of Religion.Were this theory tenable, he origin of the threemodes of human behaviour would have been

brought back to one method of learning, theunreasoning, rial-and-error method. But evena superficial considerationdiscovers nsuperable

obstacles n the way of this enticingly simpleexplanation, and compels the admission that

magicalart and Religion nvolve the operationofmental powersnot required for the establishmentof the mechanical, nd of the non-religious nthro-popathic behaviours.

The first of the two differences I intend to bring

out, is that if a particular action s to be learnedby an animal, the gratification of the actuatingdesiremust follow mmediately,or nearly so,upon

the performanceof the successful ct, and be fre-quently repeatedat short intervals; whereas n

man, as ar as Magic and Religion are concerned,the results may follow quite irregularly upon theperformance,often only long after, and, not in-

frequently,not at all. Had not the door openedevery time the cat pressed he latch, but, let us

say,only once every en times, or, if every time,26



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUE

one week after the movement, he would never

have learned to make his escape. No morewould he have acquired the trick, had he not

been placed n the cage repeatedly and at shortintervals. An interesting nstanceof the gradualundoing of a habit in consequencef the absence

of the sensory esults for the sakeand under theguidance of which the action had been learned,

is reported by Lloyd Morgan.1 He had broughtup in his study a brood of ducks. They had hada bath every morning in a tin tray. After a

while, he tray wasplaced empty in its accustomedplace. The ducks got into it and went through

all their ordinary ablutions. The next day, theyagainenjoyed he missing water, but not as longas on the first clay. On the third day they gave

up the uselesspractice of bathing in an emptytray.

In three daysducklings eliminate a habit which

has become useless,whereas generations aftergenerationsf menhavegone hrough innumerable,

time-wasting,often costly and painful ceremoniesfor results rarely secured, and, as we think, never

directly securedby the magical or the religiousceremonies themselves. There is here a curious

1 C. Lloyd Morgan, ntroduction o ComparativePsychology(The Contemporary cienceSeries,1894), . 89.

27




point of psychology: animals establish habits

under the guidance of immediate results whileman develops he magical art and Religion despite

the usual absence f the results soughtafter. Thevery possibility of deceiving himself reveals thesuperiority of man over animals, or self-deception

requires a degree of independence rom sense-observation, capacity of constructive magina-

tion, a susceptibility to auto-suggestion, ot tobe found in animals. That the first glimmer ofthese capacitiesshould have plungedman in thedarknessof primitive Magic and Religion, and

made him the ridiculous fool he appears to be by

the side of the matter-of-fact, ntelligent animalis, however,a very striking and singular fact.

If the constant and immediate appearance f

the desired results does not seem necessary to

the establishment of Magic and Religion, itshould not be thought, however, that these arts

are altogetheruseless. On the contrary, hey are,even independentlyof the results at which theyaim, of a most substantial value to the cause of

individual and social development. Let it be

said first, concerning the expected results, thatthey happen more frequently, perhaps, han Imay have seemedo imply. When, or instance,

the rain ceremonies re performed during a spell28



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUK

of dry weather, uccess,more or less distant,

always rowns he effortsof the magicians: herain doescomeand the earth does bring forth itsfruits. The ceremoniesor the healing of disease

are often followed by the recoveryof the patient,however absurd the treatment may have been.

One should not forget, in this connection, theconsiderable ffect of suggestionupon the credu-

lous savage. Many cures are, no doubt, performedin this mannerby the medicine-man. Davenport,speakingof tribes of Puget Sound, says: ' Their

cure for disease consists in the members of thecult shaking in a circle about a sick person,dressed n ceremonial costume. The religious

practitionerwavesa cloth in front of the patient,with a gentle anning motion, and, blowing at the

same ime, proceedso drive the disease ut of thebody, beginningat the feet and working upward.The assistant stands ready to seize the diseasewithhis cloth when it is driven out of the head I And

they are able o boastof many real cures/1 A psy-

chologist s not nclined to doubt the report of Curr,that among he aboriginesof Victoria personswhoknew themselves to have been devoted to destruc-

1 F. M. Davenport,Primitive Traits in ReligiousRevivals,Macmillan (1905), p. 36 ; quoted from the Fourteenth Annual

Report of the [Amer.] Bureau of Ethnology, p. 761.29




tion with magical ceremonies ave pined awayand died,1 or that of Howitt, who,alluding to thehabit of the medicine-men of certain tribes to

knock a man insensible in order to remove the

kidney fat for magical purposes,writes, In theKurnai tribe men have died believing hemselves

to have beendeprivedof their fat/2But the intendedresults form only a part, and

that perhapsnot the most mportant, of the gainsto be credited to the practice of Magic and of

Religion. The most noteworthy of these un-sought by-products are:-(1) The gratificationof the lust for power. The Magician and the

Priest are mediators betweensuperior, mysteri-ous powersand their fellow-men. The senseofmastery over, or communion with, thesepowers,

and the respectand fear with which Magiciansand Priests are regarded, are, of themselves,almost sufficient to keep up thesepractices. (2)Both these modes of behaviour,but especially

Magic,appeal o the gambling nstinct. All mencraveexcitement; the savages no exception. Inthe daring game in which the rain-makeror the

1 E. M. Curr, The Australian Race, iii p, 547, as quoted byFrazer, The,GoldenBough, 2nd ed., i. p, 13.

2 A. W. Howitt, The Native Races of South-East Australia



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

disease-healerngages,he high tensionof thegambling-table s, to a certain extent, present.(3) Less obvious, perhaps, than the preceding

advantages, ut not lessvaluable, s the generalmentalstimulation nducedby Magic and Religion.

Magic is the great social play of the savage. If

animal plays serve a highly valuable purpose inaffording practice n sense-observationnd motor-co-ordination,Magic makes ts chief call upon the

imagination; in this consists one of its most far-reaching values. It becomesa training for theachievement of those higher mental syntheses

requiring the momentarydisregard of the actualsense-impressions,rom which it is so difficult toliberate oneself, in behalf of the accumulated

experience f a whole ife.The secondobjection to the assumption that

the trial-and-error method could have led to the

establishment of magical and religious habitsarises rom the inability of animals to act towards

unperceived bjects as if they were actuallypresent A dog never welcomes by gambolsor licks the hand of an absent friend, while

Religion,and at times Magic, show primitiveman in more or less systematic relations withpowers he has never sensed. When the Shaman

draws lines upon the sand, describesvarious




curves with his arms, utters sundry incanta-tions, he does not addressa power he perceives,nor even one he has really seen, although hemay believe that he, or some one else, hasseen t. That animals are moved to action by

memories of past perceptions, s, of course,notopen to doubt. Their whole life is a long testi-

mony to that ability. Any one will recallinstancesof chainsof concertedactions ndicatingclearly, on the part of some one of the higher

animals, domesticated or wild, the anticipation ofa particular person,object,or event.^ What theynever do, s to behave s f the remembered bjectwas eallypresent, hough not sensed. H. Spencer,

discussing adversely A. Cornte's opinion that

fetichistic conceptionsare formed by the higheranimals, elates he following observation oncern-

ing a retriever who had learned for herself toperform ' an act of propitiation/ She had asso-ciated the fetching of game with the pleasureof

the person o whom she brought it, and so,' afterwagging er tail andgrinning,shewouldperformthis act of propitiation as nearly as practicable nthe absenceof a dead bird. Seeking about, she

would pick up a dead leaf, a bit of paper, a

twig, or other small object,and would bring itwith renewed manifestations of friendliness. Some

32



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

kindred state of mind it is which, I believe, promptsthe savageo certain fetichistic observances/l Sofar the dog could go, but she could not have

imagined he presence f an unseenbeing andbehaved towards him in the same manner.

Another significant point is that the absentobjects owards which animals may direct theiractions are always, so far as one may judge,identical with those actually sensedby them atsome time, i.e. their behaviour never shows that

they have transformed,maginatively,objectswithwhich their senses have made them familiar.

Whereasman can not only believe n the presence

of unseenobjects, ut he can also magine beingsnever actuallysensedby him, and behave owards

them according o the traits and capacitieswithwhich he has endowed them.

Thereare observations n record which compelthe qualification of the assertion, I may have

seemed o make in the preceding paragraph,

of a clean break between man and animals.Certain dogsare thrown into paroxysms of fear

by pealsof thunder,and run into hiding. Darwinrelateshow his dog, c ull grown and very sensible,'

growled iercelyand barked wheneveran open

1 Principlesof Sociology3rd edition,1885), . Appendix A,p. 788.

c 33




parasolstandingat some distancewas moved bya slight breeze. He s of the opinion that the dogcmust have reasoned to himself, in a rapid and

unconscious manner, that movement without any

apparent cause ndicated the presenceof somestrange living agent, and that no stranger had

a right to be on his territory.'1 Romanes, n ashort and nterestingpaper entitled 'Fetichism in

Animals,'2after reporting the preceding llustra-tion, relates this observation touching a remark-

ably ' intelligent/ ' pugnacious/and ' courageous7dog. ' The terrier [Skye] in question,ike manyother dogs, sed o play with dry bones, y tossingthem in the air, throwing them to a distance, and

generallygiving them the appearance f anima-tion, in order to give himself the ideal pleasureofworrying them. On one occasion,herefore, tied

a long and fine thread to a dry bone,and gavehim the latter to play with. After he had tossed

it about for a short time, I took an opportunity,when it had fallen at a distance from him, and

while he was ollowing t up, of gently drawing t

away rom him by meansof the long and nvisiblethread. Instantly his whole demeanour hanged.

1 The Descentof Man, 2nd ed., i. p. 145.

2 Nature, xvii. (1877-78),pp. 168-169. Comp. Lloyd Morgan,Introd. to Comparative Psychology, p. 92 ff.

. 34



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

The bonewhich he had previously pretended to

be alive, now began to look as if it really werealive, and his astonishment new no bounds. He

first approachedt with nervouscautionas Mr.Spencer escribes,ut as the slowrecedingmotioncontinued,and he becamequite certain that the

movement could not be accounted for by anyresiduum of the force which he had himself com-

municated, is astonishmentdevelopednto dread,and he ran to conceal himself under some articles

of furniture, there to behold at a distance the

uncannyspectacle f a dry bone coming to life/Certain instances of instinctive fear of harmless

things may help to interpret the preceding ob-

servations. G. Stanley Hall mentions a little girlwho would screamwhen she saw feathers floating

through the air. To keep anotherchild in a room,it wassufficient to placea feather n the keyhole.1

Shall we hold that these animals interpretedthe unusual experiences eported above as theworkof hidden beingsof the kind known to them,

or shall we agree rather with Lloyd Morgan,Romanes, pencer, nd others, n thinking thattheir behaviour ndicatedmerelysurprise,astonish-ment, and fear at the unexpected movementsot

familiar objects That explanations probably1 A Study in Fears,Am. Jour, of Psy. (1897),viii. p. 166.

35




sufficient. The failure of an object to fit in with

the psycho-physiological ttitude of expectationwhich past experiencehas taught us to assume

brings about the suddendisturbance called sur-prise, astonishment,or fear. It is in substance

what would happen to any person f, on opening

his bed in the dark, his hands came in contact

with some object concealed n it. Personalisa-tion of the unexpected object is not necessary

to cause right. And yet, who shall say hat innone of these nstances s there anything corre-

sponding to the anthropomorphic nterpretationof natural event so common among men of lowculture? Does not the growling of Darwin's dogindicate as much ? It would seem to me an un-

justifiably dogmatic assertion to affirm that no

animal can hink of thunder as causedby a beinglike those with which his senses have made him

familiar. Were he to do so, he would do as the

savagewhoprojectshis ordinarynotion of animatedbeings behind inanimate phenomena. Creative

imagination s not any morerequired for such aninterpretation han for the belief in survival afterdeath when it is suggested by apparitions in

dreamsor trances. It is quite in point, at anyrate, to affirm that man and beasts are much

nearer to each other,regarding the possibility of36



TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR

interpretinganimistically ertainstriking natural

events, han most peopleare willing to admit.Themostsignificant ifferenceetween enand

animals is not found in the fact that animals may

be unable to interpret animistically certain strik-ing natural phenomena-an opinion open to

question-but in their inability to fix by meansof communicable signs any fleeting animistic

interpretation which might chance to cross heirmind. Without the advantage conferred by

speech,upon even the lowest savages,o hold,

clarify, keep alive, and bring to fruition impres-sions of this evanescent nature, I do not see how

a stable belief in animism could have been estab-

lished. The decisive role played by language

appears orcibly when one considers the part it

takes n introducingdreamexperiencesnto wakinglife. The baffling evanescencef dreams caughtsight of on awakening s familiar to every one.Unlessone succeedsn putting them in linguistic

form heyaresoon ompletelyost; verbalexpres-

sion makes them part and parcel of our mentalpossessions.

The mental differences between man and the

higher animals o which the presence f Magicand Religion is to be referred, are not in them-

selvesstartling, however considerable heir con-37




sequences ay have been. Psychological nalysisleavesabsolutelyno standing ground to thosewho

insist upon nterpreting the adventof Religion asthe manifestation of essentially new kinds ofpowers, f the birth of a *spiritual life/ for instance.

We hope to have madeclear that the use of thisterm in this connection constitutes a misrepre-sentation of the facts.



CHAPTER III

ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS

AND GODS

EVERYsavage tribe known to us has already

passedbeyond the naturistic stage of develop-ment. The living savagesbelieve in ghosts, n

spirits, and all of them, perhaps,also n particularspirits elevated to the dignity of gods. Whencethese ideas of unseen personal beings? They

may be traced to four independent sources.

(1) States of temporary loss of consciousness-

trances, swoons, sleep, etc.-seem in themselves

sufficient to suggest to ignorant observers theexistence of ' doubles/ i.e. of beings dwelling

within the body, animating it, and able to absentthemselves rom it for a time or permanently.These alleged beings have been called 'ghosts'or ' souls/ The belief in a second life of

the dead would also spring easily enough fromthese observations.

(2) Apparitions in sleep,n thehallucinations39



PSYCHOLOGICAL OEIGIN OF RELIGION

of fever, of insanity, etc.,of personsstill living ordead, seern also sufficient to lead to a belief in

ghostsand n survival after death.These two distinct classes of facts have no

doubt co-operatedn the production of the belief

in ghosts,so that I shall refer to them in thesequel as the double origin of the ghost-belief.Echos, and reflections n water and in polished

surfaces may have played a subsidiary role inestablishing,or confirming, the belief in ghosts

and in spirits.(3) When discussinganimal behaviour,we sawreasons to admit that a fleeting personification

of objects moving in an unusual way might bewithin the mental possibilities of the higher

animals. The third independentsourceof beliefin unseen personal agents is the spontaneous

personification of striking natural phenomena,,

storms, tornadoes, thunder, sudden spring-

vegetation, etc. The report of Tanner1 that

one night Picheto (a North American Chief),becoming much alarmed at the violence of astorm, got up, offered some tobacco to the

thunder and entreated t to stop, should notexcite surprise even though it should refer to

1 Lord Avebury, On. the Origin of Civilisation (3rd edition,1875), p. 212.

40



GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS, AND GODS

the lowestsavage.There s, of course,a longwaybetweenhe sudden,emporary, nd solatedpersonificationf a naturalphenomenonnd hestableand generalisedelief n the existence fpersonal gentsbehindvisiblenature. What we

mean to assert here is merely that the systema-tised belief can have arisen out of the impulsiveand occasional ersonificationof awe-striking and

frightening spectacles.(4) Many personshave observedwith surprise

the apparition in young children of the problemof creation. A child notices a curiously-shapedstone, and asks who made it. He is told that it

was formed in the stream by the water. Then,

suddenly, he throws out, in quick succession,

questions that are as much exclamations ofastonishment s queries,' Who made the stream,who the mountain, who the earth ?' The neces-

sity of a Maker is, no doubt, borne in upon the

savageat a very early time, not upon every

memberof a tribe, but upon somepeculiarlygifted individual, who imparts to his fellows the

awe-striking idea of a mysterious, all-powerfulCreator. The form under which the Creator is

imagined s, of course, erived rom the beings

with which his senseshave made the savagefamiliar.




In what chronological order did the three

kinds of unseen beings appear? Which wasfirst: ghosts, nature-beings, or creator? Ourpresent knowledge does not provide an answerto this query. But this one may venture to

affirm: they neednot have appearedn the same

order everywhere. It is conceivable hat amongcertain groupsof men the idea of a creator firstattained clearness and influence, while elsewhere

the idea of ghosts implanted itself before theothers.

A questionof greater mportance to the studentof the origin of Religion s that of the lineage of

the first god or gods, i.e. of the first unseen,personal agents with whom men entered intorelations definite and influential enough to de-

serve the name Religion. Are they descendedfrom ghosts, or are they nature-beings, orcreators ? I say, ' descended' from ghosts, for

ghosts have not, originally, all the qualitiesrequired of a divinity. They are at first hardly

greater than men, though somewhatdifferent.They must be magnified and differentiated fromhuman beings f they are to generate he religiousattitude. A comparisonof the double-source f

the ghost-belief with the sourceof the belief in

nature-beings suggests the following remarks.42




Phenomenabelonging to classes one and two

necessarilyead to a belief in unseenman-likebeings. The familiar relation of ghosts withthe tribe, and also the great number of them,

offer a definite resistance o the process of dei-fication. It is otherwise with the personified

nature-powers,or they are not necessarily, ikeghosts, mere dead men in another life. Inconceiving of an agent animating nature, the

imagination is not limited to the thought of aparticular human being, not even of a human

being at all. The thunder might be the voice ofsomemonstrousanimal. The surpassing ariety,

the magnitudeand magnificence f nature, stimu-late the imagination into more original activitythan the apparitions of men and women in

dreams or in trances. For these reasons, if thechoice was betweenghosts and nature-beings, twould be advisableo favour the hypothesis that

the first godswere derived from the spontaneouspersonificationof striking natural events. But

the idea of a creator must take precedenceof ghosts and nature-beings n the making ofReligion, for a world-creator possessesrom the

first the greatness ecessaryo the objectof acult, and the creature who recognisesa creator

can hardly fail to feel his relationship to him.43




A Maker cannot,moreover, e an enemy o thosewho ssue rom him, but must, it seems, ppearasthe Great Ancestor,benevolently nclined towardshis offspring. Incomparable greatness, reativepower,benevolence,re as many attributes avour-

able to the appearance f a Religion in the highsense which, as we shall see, W. Robertson Smith

gives to the word.

The order n which appeared he three kinds ofunseenagents is of considerable mportance, or

if, for instance, he ghost-beliefwas irst, it seemsunavoidable that ghosts should have been pro-jected into natural objects and used to explainnatural phenomena. It is a task for the historian

of Religion to trace the rise of the idea of God in

its several possible sources,and to indicate ineach particular case the contribution of eachsource o the making of the earliestgods.

Belief in the existence of unseen, anthropo-

pathic beings s not Religion. It is only whenman enters nto relation with them that Religion

comes nto existence. The passagerom the ani-mistic interpretation of nature, or from the merebelief in ghosts,or in a creator, o Active Religion

is not to be taken as a matter of course, for itmay require on the one hand, as we have said,

44




a transformation of the man-like or animal-like

unseen eings, uch as will make entering ntorelation with them possible and worth while,and, on the other, the invention of ways and

means o that end,or, at least, he adaptation ofold habits of behaviour to the requirements of

the new relation. The slowness with which ourmodern ritual has been envolved should be

sufficient to undeceive ny one nclined to think

that the establishment f the initial religious ritespresented o difficulty.

That a belief in ghosts may coincidewith onlya pre-religious tage of culture is not a mere sup-position. Thereare tribes in South-EastAustralia

amongwhich t is customary o make fires in thegraves,and to place in them water, food, and

weapons. Yet we are told that these peoplehaveno systemof propitiationor of worship. Itappearsprobable hat in certain instancesof thissort, the only motive of action is benevolence.They wish the ghost to be able to warm himself,

eat, drink, and defend himself against enemies.At times, however, the promptings of fear are

discernible,s, or instance, hen he legs of thecorpseare broken n order that he may not roam

at night. It seemshat originally ghostsare not

endowed with sufficient mischievous or benevolent45




power to cause he appearancend the organisa-tion of propitiatory reactions. But even when

some particular ghost or spirit has been fabledinto awe-striking magnitude, systematicworshipis not necessarilypresent. How far the deifica-

tion process can go without bringing with itactive relations, is well shown in the case of the

'Father* of the tribes of South-East Australia.

Different tribes call him by different names,Daramulun, Baiame, etc. Howitt tells us that

Daramulun is an anthropomorphic, upernatural

being who used to dwell upon the earth, butnow lives in a land beyond the sky. He can

make himself visible, and then appears n theform of an old man of the Australian race.

' He is imagined as the ideal of those qualitieswhich are, according to their standard, virtues

worthy of being imitated. Such would be aman who is skilful in the use of weaponsofoffence and defence,all-powerful in magic, but

generous nd liberal to his people: who does no

injury nor violence to any one, yet treats withseverity any breachesof custom or of morality.Such is, according to my knowledge of theAustralian tribes, their ideal of the Head-man,

and naturally it is that of the Biamban, the

master of the sky-country/ Now, despite their46



GHOSTS,NATURE-BEINGS, AND GODS

belief in this definite, powerful, and benevolent

Father, ' there is not any worship of himJ; but'the dances round the figure of clay and the

invocating of his name by the medicine-men,

certainlymight have led up to it.'1 For mypart, I see here an instance of what I havecalled Passive Religion. The point of special

interest to us is that nothing more than thesesimplest of rites co-exists with the belief in abeing so definite and elevated so high above

ordinary spirits and above man as is this All-Father of the Australians.

It seemshighly probable that for generationsthe relations maintained with ghosts, nature-

beings,and creators,by primitive man were toooccasionaland unofficial to permit of our regard-ing them as anything more than steps prelimi-nary to the formation of Positive Religion.

Rites and ceremonies serve, n addition to their

ostensiblepurpose, o complete he work of fixa-tion begun by language. It is only when a beliefhas become mbodied n a system of actions hat

it has attained he full measure f reality anddurability of which it is capable.

1 TheNative Tribesof South-East ustralia, pp. 500,506-508.

47



CHAPTER IV

MAGIC AND RELIGION

IN the precedingsection, have compared nimal

with human behaviour n an attempt to singleout the psychological raits whose presence n

man accounts or his possession f Religion andof Magic. I must now complete he characterisa-tion and the accountof the origin of these two

higher typesof behaviour.The relation obtaining between Magic and

Religion has been variously understood. Most

authorities hold that Magic precededReligion,and that they are in some way genetically related.

In the following pageswe shall argue in support

of two opinions: (1) the primary forms of Magicprobablyantedated Religion; (2) whether MagicantedatedReligionor not, Religion arose ndepen-dently of Magic; they are different in principle

and ndependentn origin.But the word Magic ncludesan almost endless

number of practices so far quite inadequately



MAGIC AND RELIGION

classified. We cannotgo on without first markingout at least its more prominent groups. Andsince the common bond of these practices isneither a common purpose (Magic serves to

gratify every kind of desire), nor a common

method (the magician's methods are literallynumberless), ut the non-personalnature of the

power pressed nto service, we shall make useof this last element as a means of classification.

Three groupsare thus obtained.

Magic classified-Glass 1 is characterised bythe absence f any idea of a power belonging tothe operatoror his instrument and passing from

either one of them to the object of the magicalart. To this class belong many instances of so-

called sympathetic Magic; * a good many of thetaboocustoms; most charms; the casting of lots,when a spirit or god is not supposedo guidethe cast; most modern superstitions, hose, forinstance, egarding Friday, the number thirteen,

horse-shoes,lanting when the tide is comingin. In these nstances the effect is thought of

1 Hang a root of vervain around the neck in order to cause

the disappearancef a tumour as he plant dries up. so willthe tumour. If the fish do not appear in due season, makeone of wood and put it into the water. Keep the arrow that

haswounded friend in a cool place that the woundmay notbecome inflamed.

D 49




as following upon the allegedcause,without themediationof a force conceivedas passing,et ussay, from the warm arrow to the wound and

irritating it. The idea of power is reduced hereto Its leastpossiblecomplexity.

Clciss2. A power,not itself personal, s sup-posed o belong to the magician, to his instru-ment, or to particular substances,and to passinto, or act upon, the object. Howitt relates

how some native Australians begged him not

to carry in a bag containing quartz crystalsa tooth, extracted at an initiation ceremony.

They thought that if he did so, he evil power ofthe crystals would enter the tooth and so njurethe body o which it had belonged.1 The potency

of many charms is of this nature, while othershave a fetichistic significance, .e. they involvethe action of spirits, and so do not belong o this

class. Rubbing oneselfwith, or eating the fat, oranotherportion,of a braveand strong man n order

to make oneself ourageous nd powerful,belongsalso to this secondclass, ogether with most in-

stances f contagion-magic. So does,usually, thepower defined in the following passageand thesimilar powersbelieved n and used in other than

1 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xiii. (1884),p. 456,quoted by Frazer.

So




bear its peculiar coercitivevirtue upon anthropo-patMc beings. It aims then at compelling souls,spirits or gods, nto doing the operator'swill, or in

preventing hem from doing their own. In necro-mancy,spirits are summonedby meansof spells

and ncantations. In old Egypt the art of dealingcoercitivelywith spirits and gods eacheda highdevelopment. Maspero, speaking of a strange

belief regarding names,says,' when the god in amoment of forgetfulness or of kindness had

taught them what they wanted [the sacrednames], here was nothing left for him but to

obey them/1 At Eleusis, t was not the namebut the intonation of the voice of the magician

which produced the mysterious results.2 But

whether Magic acts upon personal or im-personal objects, Its effective power is ever

impersonal.I would not give the impression n this attempt

at classification, that the conceptions of the

savageare clear and definite. I hold them tobe, on the contrary, hazy and fluid. "Whatappears o him impersonal one moment may

1 cEtudes de my thologie et d'arch^ologie egyptiennes' (Paris,1903),BiUiolheque gyptologique,i. p. 298.

2 Foucart, *Recherches ur la Nature des My stores d'Eleusis/M£moires de FInstitut, xxxv. 2nd part, pp. 31-32. Comp.Maspero, bid., p. 303.

52



MAGIC AND RELIGION

suddenly assume he characteristics of a spirit.

Mana} for instance, although usually an imper-sonal force stored into plants, stones, animalsor men, assumesat times truly personal traits;it becomes he god himself. One should not be

surprised to meet with cases hat fall between

rather than in the classes,or the sharp lines ofdemarcation it suits us to draw are not often

found in nature.

And now we return to our two theses.

1. The Probable Priority of Magic.-Certain

historical factsmight be held to support the pre-religious origin of Magic. As one descends rom

the higher to the lower social levels, Religiondwindles and Magic grows. In the lowestsocieties of which we have extensive and accu-

rate knowledge, the Central Australian tribes,Religion is represented by mere rudiments,

whereas Magic is everywhere and always inevidence. I have had occasion n a precedingsection to quote Howitt with regard to the

slight r6le played by Religion among the South-East Australians. The presenceof Religion inthe lives of the tribes inhabiting the centralportions of Australia is still lessobvious. Frazer

reflects the views of Spencer and Gillen, of

Howitt, and probably of every recent first-handS3




student of that country, when he writes: ' Among

the aborigines of Australia, the rudest savagesas to whom we possessaccurate information,

Magic s universally practised, whereasReligion,in the senseof a propitiation or conciliation of

the higherpowers, eemso be nearly unknown.

Roughly speaking, all men in Australia aremagicians, but not one is a priest; everybodyfancies he can influence his fellows or the course

of nature by sympathetic magic, but nobodydreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacri-

fice.' If we may trust our knowledge of othersavages, he general fact thus affirmed of thenative Australians holds good with regard to

every other uncivilised ribe.But as the leastcivilised of existing tribes are

far from being primitive' in the true senseof theword, t could be argued that Magic is, after all,the outcome of the corruption of a primitive

Religion,of which almost nothing remains n thesavage tribes of the present day. And so we

shall have to rest our case not upon historicalevidences, ut upon considerationsegarding thepsychological ature of Magic and Religion,andupon analogieswe may discover between them

1 'The Begianings of Religion,' Fortn. Rev., Ixxxiv. (1905),

p. 162. Comp.The Golden ough,2nded., i. pp. 71-73.54



MAGIC AND RELIGION

and certain facts observed in children and in

adults of uncivilised races.

In his attempt to support the belief in thepriority of Magic, Frazer, who has put every

student of Religion in his debt by his monu-mental work, affirms its greater simplicity when

compared with Religion. The opinion itself istenable, but the defence of it, made as it is from

the standpoint of the old English associationisna,is unfortunately worthless. 'Magic/ he tells us,

'is nothing but a mistaken application of the

very simplestand most elementaryprocessof themind, namely, the associationof ideas by virtue

of resemblanceor contiguity/ while cReligionassumes he operation of consciousor personal

agents, uperior o man, behind the visible screen

of nature. Obviously the concept of personalagent s more complex than a simple recognitionof the similarity or contiguity of ideas. , . . The

very beastsassociate he ideasof things that arelike eachother or that have been ound together

in their experience But who attributes tothe animals a belief that the phenomenaareworked by a multitude of invisible animals orby one enormous nd prodigiously strong animalbehind the scenes?'1 It is undoubtedly true

1 The Golden Sough, 2nd ed., i. p. 70. Oldenburg (Die

55




that the mind of man tends to pass from an

object to others like it, or experiencedat thesame ime, but this psychologicalact doesnot in

itself account for Magic. The mind of animalsis regulated n a similar manner. In spring-time

the sight of a feather makes the bird think of

nest-building, and the smell and sight of hismaster's oatbrings the master to the dog'smind.Yet animals do not practise the magical art.This fact should be sufficient to make one realise

the insufficiency of 'a simple [mistaken] recog-

nition of the similarity and contiguity of ideas'as an explanation of the origin of Magic. Ananimal might observehe colour-likeness etweencarrotsand aundice not, however, nlesspracticaldealings with them had attracted his attention

to the colour), and 'coat' and 'master' mightfollow eachother in a dog's mind. But in orderto treat the coat as he would the master, and in

order to eat carrotsor give them to be eaten orthe cure of aundice, here is required, n addition

to the association, the belief that whatever is

done to the coat will be suffered by the master,and that the eating of carrots will cure theReligiondesVeda,Berlin, 1894)was first, I believe, n holdingto a pre-religious magical stage of culture. But it is Frazer who

first; madea clear separation,not only between Magic andReligion, but also between Magic and belief in spirit-agents.

56



MAGIC AND RELIGION

disease. It is the existence of these ideas with

their motor and affective values and of their

dynamic connectionwhich makes Magic possiblein beingssubject o the laws of association. This

fundamental difference between mere associationof ideas and the essential mental processesn-volved in Magic, Frazer has completely over-looked. The difference may be further illustrated

by the instanceof a dog biting in a rage the stick

with which he is being beaten. He is indeeddoing to the stick what he would like to do to

the man. But in attacking the stick he doesnot conceive that, although the stick is not the

man, the injury done to it will hurt the man.

His action is blindly impulsive, while the formof Magic n question nvolves generalisations ndother mental processesot expressedby the lawsof association.1

If magical actions cannot be deduced from

the principle of association, they can at least beclassified according to the kind of association

they illustrate. For, although the various ideas

brought together n Magic, n a" elation of cause

and effect, are frequently said to have come

together by ' chance/ some of the conditions1 Comp. R. R. Marett, 'From Spell to Prayer,3 Folk-Lore,

xv. (1904), pp. 136-141.

57




under which they have n fact becomeconnected

are expressedn the universal aws of association,namely, associationby similarity or contrast,by

contiguity or spatial opposition,and by emotionalcongruity or disparity. Whenever magical actshave been classified, it has been according to

the principle,of association.1But every kind of

activity involving mental operations alls in some

of its relations under the laws of association,hencethe relative unfruitfulness of these classifications,

hence also our attempt at grouping magical

practicesaccording o a factor of greater signifi-cance,namely, the nature of the power they

involve.

2. The Independence of Eeligion from Magic.

--The following psychologicalargumentsappear

to me to go a long way towards proving thatmagical behaviour has had an origin independent

of the animistic* belief, and that some of its forms,

at east,antedatedt, and hereforealsoReligion:-

1 The latest classification is probably that of Frazer inLectures on the Early History of the Kingship (Macmillan,

1905), p. 54. A. van G-ennep, n a review of that book in theJ?evwee VHistoire desReligions, liii. pp. 396-401,offers a some-what different classification.

2 I use ' animism' in the sense which Tylor gave it, i. e. a

belief in the animation of all things by beings similar to the* souls' or *ghosts' revealed to the savageby dreams and other



MAGIC AND RELIGION

(a) The absorbing interest found by youngchildren in the use of things, and their complete

indifferenceat first to the modus operandi, point,it would seem, o a stage in human develop-ment at which the explanation of things is not

yet desired. It is well known that long beforea child asks f how ?' he wearies his guardianswith the question, ' what for ?'l He wants to

know what things are good for, and, n particular,what he can do with them before he cares for

an understanding of their origin, and of theirmechanism. This keen nterest in the productionof results, his curiosity about the practical mean-ing of things, is apparently quite independentof

any abstract dea of power. Since he child passes

through a pre-interpretative stage, may we notadmit a correspondingperiod in racial develop-

ment during which no explanatory soul-theory,no animistic philosophy, is entertained? Amental attitude such as this would make Religion

impossible,while it would provide the essentialcondition for a Magic of our first class.(6) Children-and adult savages resemble

children in many respects-like to amuse hern-1 The interested reader will find a summary of observations

on this topic in Alex. F. Chamberlain's The Child (The Con-

temporary ScienceSeries, 1900), pp. 147-148. See also Sully,Studies of Childhood, p. 82.

59




selves by setting up prohibitions and backingthem up with threats of punishment. clf youdo this/ they will say,' that will happen to you.'

The c his' and the ' that' have usually no logicalconnection with each other, neither is there in

the mind of the child any thought of a particularkind of power,or agent,meting out the punish-

ment. This kind of play is strikingly similar toa large number of magical practices. Can it notbe regarded as the prototype of most taboo

customs? In taboo there is usually no logicaland no qualitative relation between he prohibi-tion and the punishment. Neither is there,ordinarily, any notion of a particular agent

carrying out the threat. It involves, t seems,

nothing more than the assumptionof a causalconnection between two facts brought togetherby 'chance' association nder the pressureof adesire for food or success at war, or for the en-

forcementof a rule of conduct.1 The punishment

announced s anything on the efficacyof whichonemay chooseo rely. In Madagascar onjugalfidelity is enforced y the threat that the betrayedhusband will be killed or wounded in the war;

1 See, or instance, many of the prohibitions included in the

initiation ceremoniesof the Australians in Spencer and Gillen,loc. cit., chapters vii-ix.

60



MAGIC AND RELIGION

among the indigenous tribes of Sarawak, he

belief is that the camphor obtained by the menin the jungle will evaporate f the women are

unfaithful during the absenceof their husbands,while in East Africa, the husband would, in the

sameeventuality,be killed or hurt by the elephant

he is hunting.1 The high sanction which therequirementsof social ife give to beliefs of thissort is readily understood.

(c) It is a fact of common observation that

in passionatemoments,men of every degreeof

culture act, n the absenceof the object of theirpassion,more or less as f it waspresent. A mangrinds his teeth, shakes his fist, growls at theabsent enemy; a mother presses o her breast

and talks fondly to the departed babe. The

pent-up motor tendenciesmust find an outlet.To restrain every external sign of one's desiresor intentions when under great emotional excite-ment s unendurable ain. By the sick-bedof onebeloved, one must do something, however useless

to him. Who shall say that we do not have in

this natural tendency he origin of the large classof magical actsrepresented y sticking pins into,

or burning, an effigy? The less a person s underthe control of reason, he more likely is he, not

1 Frazer, The Golden Sough, 2nd ed., I. pp. 29-31.

6l




only to yield to promptings of this order, but

also to be seducedby his wish into a belief intheir efficacy.

If any one finds it difficult to admit that the

savagecan so easily be deceived, would directhis attention to the well-known instances of

children'sself-deceptions.Most of them behave,at a certain age,as f their dolls were alive and,to all appearances,here are somemomentswhen

they think so. What they think at othermoments is another matter. We need not

suppose that the savage cannot take, at times,

a critical attitude and perhaps undeceivehim-self. It is sufficient that at other moments,

when under the pressure of needs or in the

excitement accompanying ceremonies of con-

siderablesocial significanceor of much personalImportance,he should be able to assume heattitude of the believer. The behaviour of

certain mentally derangedpersons hrows somelight on this point. Such a personmay believe

that his hands are alwaysdirty and be constantlywashing hem, If reasoned ith, he may perhapsbe convinced that they cannot be dirty. Yeta few seconds ater he will exclaim, cBut I feel

they are dirty/ and return to the wash-basin.

The savages under the control of his impulses62



MAGIC AND RELIGION

and feelings o a degreeapproaching hat of the

person nstanced. In this connection, he effectof repetition, and of the tribal sanction obtainedby magical customs, should not be overlooked.They tend to make doubt and criticism next to

impossible.What need is there in cases of this kind to

introduce a middle term between the actions of

the magician and their expected effect? Nonewhatsoever. The thought of an efficient agent

or power passing out of the magician or of hisinstrument to work upon the victim is no neces-

sary part of this type of Magic.(d) The belief at the root of a great variety

of magical practices, hat 'like' produces like/may have arisen in still other ways than the one

just indicated. Nothing is more common thanthe invisible passage f things, be they heat, cold,light, thunderbolt,odours,diseases, tc., rom one

person or object to another,either by contact orthrough space. The frequent nstancesof diseasesspreadingby infection among men, animals, and

vegetables, eem n themselvessufficient to sug-gest the belief that 'like' produces like/ Theidea of contagion must have appeared ery early

indeed. Now, as the savage is quite unableto distinguish between the different agencies

63




involved in the variety of experiences of thissort, he cannot draw the line between the 'likes'

that really produce likes' and those hat do not;hencehis very strange expectations. This classof Magicalso s independentof the conceptionof

an agent effecting the connection between theobjects elated as causeand effect.

Since Tylor wrote his memorable work, thedoctrine of animism has become classical. This

passage rom Primitive Culture?- What men's

eyesbehold is but the instrument to be used,orthe material to be shaped,while behind it therestandssomeprodigious but half-human creature,

who grasps t with his hands or blows it with hisbreath/ expresses, o doubt, fairly correctly, a

very early philosophyof life. I would not objecteven o its being termed the earliest philosophy,provided it be granted that the progressof the

human race was alreadywell under way when itappeared. But when it is assumed,as it is by

many, that the animistic conception of natureis necessary o, and antedates, the establishment

of Magic, must dissent and affirm that a very

large number of magical practices neither pre-suppose,nor in any way involve, a belief in

animism, and that there are good reasons or1 Fourth ed. (1903), . p. 285.

64



MAGIC AND EELIGION

considering hem original, i.e. not corruptions ofpractices primitively implying that belief. So

much I trust to have shown in the precedingpages.1

I do not in the least deny that some of the

magical practices in existenceare derived fromactions of a different character. Many of the' superstitions' of civilised countries have had a

long history. Several of the marriage customs;for instance, he cutting of the cake by the bride,

and the lifting of the bride over the threshold,are vestigesof actions once necessary r useful.2But it would be absurd to conclude from the

existenceof derived magical practices hat Magic,

as a whole, s to be accounted or on a theory of

' apsed ntelligence.'Magic and Religion combine but never fuse.-

When ghosts and nature-beings have becomemental possessionsf the savage, ne may expect

the sphere of Magic to extend so as to include

theseunseen,mysteriousbeings. Why shouldnot1 The word naturism. sliould be adopted as a name for the

pre-animistic and pre-religious stage of culture, a stage cor-responding to the one through which a child passesbefore he

inquires into hidden causes and mechanisms. See on this anexcellent little book published in this series, Animism, byEdward Clodd, pp. 22-25.

2 Lord Avebury, On the Origin of Civilisation (3rd ed., 1875),pp. 113 114.

E 65




the magical power take effect upon ghosts and

gods as well as upon men? The savage, ikeeverybody else, is anxious to use every avail-able means to secure his preservation and his

advancement. Why then should he not use

both Magic and the offering of food? From

the moment Religion appears, ntil the efficiencyof Magic s totally discredited,we may expect tofind these two modes of behaviour associated in

men's dealingswith gods,except,however,where

the god is clearly thought of as a world-creator.

For the savagecould hardly have the presump-tion of attempting to control a power he recog-nises as the maker of the human race and of the

world. Here are two instances of the combina-

tion of Magicwith Religion. ' In the BabarArchi-

pelago,whena womandesires o have a child, sheinvites a man,who s himself the father of a largefamily, to pray on her behalf to Upulero, he spiritof the sun. A doll is made of red cotton, which

the woman clasps in her arms, as if she would

suckle t. Then he father of many children takesa fowl and holds it by the legs to the woman'shead,saying, 0 Upulero, make use of the fowl;

let fall, let descend a child, I beseechyou, Ientreat you, let a child fall into my hands and

on my lap." Then he asks he woman," Has the66



MAGIC AND RELIGION

child come ?" and she answers, " Yes, it is sucking

already." . . . Lastly, the bird is killed, and laid,

together with some betel, on the domestic plateof sacrifice. . .?1 n this ceremonyprayer andsacrifice to a god are associatedwith magical

practicesof a mimetic and sympathetic character.In a large number of ceremonies,he god Is dealtwith religiously in order to secure from him

'power,3and then Magic is added to make the

powereffective. In old Egypt one of the formulasaccording o which the help of godswas securedbeganwith an appeal o them under their popularnames. It was a prayer which they were free to

heed or to neglect. Then followed, n order to

compel them to act, an adjuration introducingthe mystical names, those written at birth intheir heart by their father and mother.'2 The

magician not only claimed the power to force the

gods to do his bidding, but also, n caseof dis-obedience, to punish them, even by destruction.

Remnants of magical dealings with gods are

found even in the Christian Religion, if we are

to believe he authors quoted by Frazer.3 Magic

1 The Golden Bough, i. p. 19.

2 Maspero, loc. cit., pp. 298-299.3 Amelie Bosquet, La Normandie romanesqueet merveitteuse

(Paris et Rouen, 1845), p. 308.




and Religion are so closely nterwoven n the life

of peoplesof low culture that someauthors haveaffirmed the impossibility of separating them.Their affirmation need not be contradicted unless

it be intended to mean that originally they wereone and the same thing. However closely

interwoven they may be, Magic and Religionremain distinct, as in the above instances. One

might say, borrowing the language of thechemist, that they do not form compounds, utonly mixtures.

What did Magic contribute to the making of

Eeligion? Frazer's Theory.-Our conclusions

are, so far, that Magic has had an independent

origin, that it very probablyantedated Religion,and that they associate or common purposeswithout ever fusing, for they are referable to

different principles. Are we, then, driven tothe opinion that even hough Magic should haveantedatedReligionand beenoften combinedwithit in commonundertakings, t has, nevertheless,contributed in no way to the establishment of

Religion? That conclusion s not unavoidable.Frazer'sconception resentsan alternative which,

however,we cannot accept. As he recognisesnot only a fundamental distinction, but even an

68



MAGIC AND RELIGION

opposition f principle betweenMagicandReligion,

he cannot think of allowing the former a positiveinfluence in the establishmentof Religion. Yethe admits a genetic elation between hem: it is,

according to him, the recognition of the failureof Magic that is the causeof the worship of gods.

'I would suggest,'writes Frazer, 'that a tardyrecognition of the inherent falsehood and barren-

ness of Magic set the more thoughtful part ofmankind to cast about for a truer theory of

nature and a more fruitful method of turning

her resources to account.' When man saw that

his magical actions were not the real cause of

the activity of nature, it occurred to him that,

' if the great world went on its way without thehelp of him or his fellows, it must surely be

because here were other beings, like himself,but far stronger,who, unseen hemselves, irected

its course and brought about all the variousseries of events which he had hitherto believed

to be dependent n his own Magic. ... To these

mighty beings,whosehandiwork he traced in allthe gorgeous nd varied pageantryof nature, man

now addressedhimself, humbly confessingMsdependence n their invisible power,and beseech-ing them of their mercy to furnish him with all

good hings. ... In this, or somesuchway as this,69




the deeperminds may be conceived o have madethe transition from Magic to Religion.'l Several

obvious objections may be raised against thisview. I would remark first of all that Frazer

does not discredit the sources of the belief in

ghosts and in nature-beingsmentioned in thepreceding ection: sleepand trances; apparitions;

the impulse to personify great and startlingnatural phenomena; he idea of creation. Hishypothesisof the origin of Religion is, therefore,

superfluous, unless he could show that the transi-tion from Magic to Religion took place in themanner he suggestsbefore the experiencesand

reflections we have named had given rise to the

idea of god.

The assumptionon which Frazer's hypothesisrests, namely, that sagacious men of wild races

persuaded themselves and their fellows of the

inefficiency of Magic, seemsclearly contradictedby the history of the relation of Magic to Religion,

and also by the psychologyof belief. On thelatter ground,he may ustly be accusedof attri-

buting neither enough influence to the will tobelieve nor to the support it receives rom the

many apparentor real successesf Magic. These

successes, ith the help of the several ways of\ Loc. cit. i.} pp. 75-78.

70



MAGIC AND RELIGION

accounting for failures without giving up thebelief/ were in my opinion sufficient to supporta belief in the efficiency of Magic until long

after the birth of Religion. Is not that theconclusionwe must draw from the recent spread

of the spiritualistic movement,not only amongthe untutored, but even among representativesof our higher culture ? The late gains ofspiritism have been made despite numberless

failures, the repeated discovery of deception,

and the satisfactory scientific explanation of alarge proportion of the alleged spiritistic facts,and thanks merely to a desire to believe, and

to a few questionable acts not readily explainedby accepted ypotheses. To suppose hat before

ghosts and nature-beings had been thought ofand made great enough to exercise a practicalinfluenceupon men's conduct, there had existed,in the barbarous circumstances mplied in the

supposition, persons so keenly observant, so

capable of scientific generalisation,and so freefrom the obscuring influences of passion as

to be able to reject the many instances of

1 A widespread opinion ascribes the failures of the magicianto a rival or to the counter-influence of some evil spirit.

* If a man died in spite of the medicine-man, they [theChepara f South-EastAfrica] said t wasWulle, an evil being,that killed him.'-Howitt, loc. cit., p. 385.

7*




apparent success f Magic, s to posit a miraclewhere a satisfactorynatural explanation alreadyexists.

In Magic and Religion, Andrew Lang directs

a vigorous and successfulattack upon Frazer's

hypothesis.1 A part of his argument,based ongenerallyacceptedhistorical data, is summarised

in this passage: If we find that the most back-ward race known to us believes in a power, yet

propitiates him neither by prayer nor sacrifice,

and if we find, as we do, that in many moreadvanced races in Africa and America, it is

precisely he highest power which is left unpro-

pitiated, then we realty cannot argue that godswere first invented as power who could give

good things, on receipt of other good things,sacrificeand prayer/2 He remarks, n addition,that although one would not expect peoplewhohad recognised he uselessness f Magic and

turned to gods, to continue the development

of the magical art, yet, in order to find thehighest Magic one has to go to no less a civil-isation than that of Japan, where gods areplentiful.

Although the hypothesis hat godsand Religion

are the consequence f the recognition of thei'Chap. ii. 2 Ibid.9p. 59.

72



MAGIC AND RELIGION

failure of Magic, must be rejected, t does notfollow that two modesof activity in the serviceof common purposes,as are Magic and early

Religion, do not act upon each other in manyways. If Magic was first in the field, we may

believe that the satisfaction it gave to man byits results, apparent and real, and in providinghim with a means of expressinghis desires,tended to retard the establishment of any other

method of securing the same ends. The habit

of doing a thing in a particular manner alwaysstands more or less in the way of the discoveryof other ways of doing the same thing. So that

Magic was, n these respects,a hindrance to themaking of Religion. There is, however, a grain

of truth in Frazer'shypothesis. Had Magic com-pletely satisfied man's multifarious desires, hewould, in all probability, have paid but scant

attention to the gods, or it is in times of trialthat man turns to them. It was thus greatly

advantageouso the making of Religion thatthe inadequacyof Magic should have been felt.Moreover, Magic exercised, n ways mentioned

before, a very considerable influence on thegeneral mentalgrowth of savagepopulations; in

this sensealso it may be said to have helpedReligion.

73




In a penetrating comparison of Magic withReligion,Marett1 points out how easilyour third

classof Magic-Spell-Magic-assumes 'the garbof an affair betweenpersons/and thus approaches

very close to Religion. But even when Magic

involves the 'projection of an imperative will/the fundamental difference between the two

modes of behaviour remains quite distinct. Inancient Peru, when a war expedition was con-

templated, they were wont to starve certain

black sheep or some days and then slay them,uttering the incantation,' As the hearts of thesebeasts are weakened, so let our enemies be

weakened.5 f this utterance is to be regarded

as expressing n attempt to project the operator's

cwill' upon the enemies, e are clearly n the realmof pure Magic. But if it is to be understoodas

addressedo a personalbeing, t is a prayer,andthen we deal with an instance of the combination

of Magicwith Religion.

Magic and the Origin of Science.-A common

opinion has t that Magic and not the mechanical

type of behaviour is the precursor of science.Before bringing this chapter to a close,we shall

1 R. R. Marett, 'From Spell to Prayer,3Folk-Lore, xv. (1904),pp. 132465.

74



MAGIC AND RELIGION

try and determine in what sense this statement

is to be understood.The reader will remember that after discrimin-

ating roughly, in the introduction, the threemodes of behaviour observable in man, I added

that the anthropopathic behaviour becomes

Religion when it is directed to gods, and themechanical becomes ciencewhen the principle

of quantitative proportion it implies s definitivelyrecognised. Frazer, who sets forth in his great

book the magical origin of science,may stand

as the representativeof that theory. ' Magic,3 etells us, 'is next of kin to science/ for science£

assumes that in nature one event follows

another necessarilyand invariably without theintervention of any special spiritual or personal

agency. Thus its fundamental conception isidentical with that of modern science; under-

lying the whole system is a faith, implicit, butreal and firm, in the order and uniformity of

nature ... his power [the magician's],great as

he believest to be, s by no meansarbitrary andunlimited. He can wield it only so long as he

strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or towhat may be called the laws of nature as con-

ceived by him. . . . Thus the analogy between

the magical and the scientific conceptionof the75




"world is close. In both of them the succession

of events s perfectly regular and certain, beingdeterminedby immutable laws, he operation ofwhich can be foreseenand calculatedprecisely/1

Upon this I observe,irst, that the acknowledg-ment of a fixed relation between actions or

beliefsand their results s not peculiar to Magic;it is implied also n Religion and, more perfectly,in mechanical behaviour. Salvation is by the

right practice, or by the right faith, or both.The gods cannot be approachedand conciliated

in any way; worshipper,no less than magician,has to conform to a definite ritual. In certain

not entirely barbarouscommunities salvation or

damnation s held to follow, respectively,beliefor disbelief n no less than thirty-nine articles!So that' definite and certain successionof events/

their determination eby immutable laws' to theelimination of caprice, chance,or accident, are

expressionswhich apply, on the whole,as well toReligion as to Magic. These phrasesdo notdenotea kinship of Magic to Science, hich could

not be claimed also by Religion.Turning to another side of the matter, we

1 Loc.cit., pp. 61-62. In the third volume(pp. 458-461), change seems to have taken place in the author's opinion.What it amounts to, I cannot exactly make out.



MAGIC AND RELIGION

observe that Frazer finds it convenient to mini-

mise, in this connection, the considerable share

of the personal, .e. of the capricious, he incalcul-able, n Magic. The personality of the magicianintroduces an indeterminate and undeterminable

factor about which enough has been said in

preceding sections. Nothing could be in more

direct antagonism o the scientific attitude thanthese two factors: the influence accorded to the

personality of the magician and the belief in

occult powersbelonging o particular objects and

events. So that it is truer to the facts to saythat the fundamental conception of science,so

far from being identical with that of Magic, isabsent from it. For the essentialpresuppositionof science-the one that differentiates it alike

from Magic and from Religion-is the acknow-ledgmentof definite and constant quantitative re-lations between causes and effects, relations which

completelyexclude he personalelement and theoccult. If that scientific presuppositions absent

from Magic and from Religion, it is implicitlypresent in mechanicalbehaviour. The savagesnearer the scientific spirit and its method when

he constructs a weapon to fit a particular pur-

pose, r when he adjustshis bowand his arrow

to the direction and the strength of the wind,77




than when he burns an enemy n effigy,abstains

from sexual intercourse to promote success nthe hunt, or exorcises diseases.

What magic shares with science s not thebelief in the fundamental principle we havenamed,but the desire to gain the masteryover

the powers of nature and the practice of theexperimental method. The experimentation ofMagic s, however,so imited and so unconscious

that it can hardly be assimilated o the modernscientific method. If any one were to turn to

history for an argument in support of the thesisdefended by Frazer, and point out that thealchemist is the lineal ancestor of the scientist,

the sufficient answer would be-(1) Historical

successionoesnot imply continuity of principle.

Although Magic, Alchemy, and Science orm anhistorical sequence,he fundamental principle ofthe last is not to be found in the others. (2) The

clear recognitionof the principle of fixed quanti-tative relations is, whenever and wherever it

appears, he birth of Scienceand the death ofboth Magic and Alchemy. This last fact demon-

strates clearly the fundamental enmity of thesearts to the scientificprinciple.

The discovery f the scientificprinciple waspro-

bablyalmostasmuch hinderedby the falsenotions78



MAGIC AND RELIGION

and the pernicious habits of mind encouragedby Magic, as furthered by the gain in generalmental activity and knowledgewhich it brought

about. Magic, no more than Religion, encour-ages the exact observation of external facts,

but rather self-deception with regard to them.

79



CHAPTER V

THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE

RELIGIOUS LIFE

THE ailure to recognisen Religion hree unction-

ally related constituents-conation, feeling, and.

thought-is responsible for a confusing use ofthe term l origin/ Somehave said that Religion

beganwith the belief in superhuman,mysteriousbeings; others that it had its origin in theemotional life, and these usually specify fear;

while a third group have declared that itsgenesiss to be found in the will-to-live. At thisstage of our inquiry the reader realisesno doubt

that these three utterancesare incomplete, nas-much as each one of them expresses ither the

origin, or the original form, of only one of theconstituentsof Religion.

I have n the precedingsectionsdealt with theestablishment f the religiousattitude or behaviour

and,afterwards,more specifically,with the origin

of the god-idea. The spaceat my disposaldoesnot allow me to say anything regarding the riseof the methodsby which man entered n relation

80



PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS EMOTION

with the divine beings n whom he believes. For

the same eason, shall have to be very brief indealing with the original emotional form ofReligion.

Two opposedopinions divide the field. Themorewidely held is that fear is the beginning ofReligion; the other, accepted by a small butweighty minority, that it has its origin in a

'loving reverence or known gods.' We shall

have little difficulty in arriving at an under-standingof the matter in which these two views,instead of opposing, upplementeachother. The

origin of the two emotions mentioned, fear andlove, fall, of course, outside the limits of this

essay, ince they both existedbeforeReligion.cFear begetsgods/ said Lucretius. Hume con-

cluded thatc the first ideas of religion arose . .

from a concern with regard to the events of lifeand fears which actuate the human mind3 A

similar opinion is maintained by most of our

contemporaries. Among psychologists,Ribot, orinstance, affirms that ' the religious sentiment is

composedirst of all of the emotion of fear in its

different degrees, rom profound terror to vagueuneasiness,ue o faith in an unknown,mysterious,impalpable Power.'1 The fear-theory is well

1 The Psychologyof the Emotions, p. 309.

F Si




supported by two classesof interdependent acts

observed,we are told, in every uncivilised people (1) Evil spirits are the first to attain a certaindegree of definiteness; (2) man enters into

definite relations first with these evil spirits. Ifthe reader will refer to The Origin of Civilisa-

tion by Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), 3rded., pp. 212-215,he will see there how widely

true is the opinion expressedby Scheinfurth:-eAmong the Bongosof central Africa good spiritsare quite unrecognised,and, according to thegeneralnegro dea, no benefit can ever come roma spirit/ In many other tribes the good spirits

are known, but the savagealways 'pays moreattention to deprecating the wrath of the evil

than securing the favour of the good beings.'The tendency s to let alone the good spirits,because,being good, they will do us good of

themselves,ust as evil spirits do us harm un-solicited.

Shall we, hen,admit the fear-originof Religion ?

Yes,provided t be understood hat fear representsonly one of the three constituents of Religion,that it is not in virtue of a particular quality or

property that fear is the primitive emotionalform of Religion,and that this admission s not

intended to imply the impossibility of Religion82



PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS EMOTION

having ever anywherebegun with aggressiveortenderemotions. Regarding he second eserva-

tion, it should be understood that the makingof Religion requires nothing found in fear thatis not also present n other emotions. If aggres-

sive emotions are not conspicuousat the dawnof Religion, t is only becauset so happens hatthe circumstances in which the least cultured

peoplesknown to us live are such as to keep earin the foregroundof consciousness.Fear was he

first of the well-organised motional reactions. Itantedated he human species, nd appears o thisday first in the young animal, as well as in the

infant. No doubt, before the protective fear-reaction could have been established, the lust of

life had worked tself out into aggressive abits,

those for the securingof food, or instance. Butthese desiresdid not, as early as in the case offear, give rise to any emotional reactionpossess-

ing the constancy,definiteness, nd poignancyoffear. The place of fear in primitive Religionis, then, due not to its intrinsic qualities, but

simply to circumstanceswhich made it appearfirst as a well-organised motion vitally connectedwith the maintenance f life. It is for exactly hesame reason that the dominant emotion in the

relations of uncivilised inen with each other, and

83




stillfmore evidently so, of wild animals with each

other, s usually that of fear.When I said that fear need not have been the

original religious emotion, I had in mind thepossibility of groupsof primitive men having ivedin circumstanceso favourable o peaceand safety

that fear was not very often present with them.This is not a preposterous supposition. Wild men

neednot, any more than wild animals,have found

themselves o situated as to be kept in a constantstate of fright. If the African antelope uns for its

life on an average wice a day, as Francis Galtonsupposes,he wild horseon the South Americanplains,before he hunter appeared n his pastures,ran chiefly or his pleasure. Travellershave borne

testimony to the absenceof fear in birds inhabit-

ing certainregions. But, it may be asked,wouldReligion have come into existence under thesepeacefulcircumstances A life of relative ease,comfort, and security s not precisely conducive

to the establishmentof practical relations with

gods. Why shouldhappyandself-sufficient enlook to unseen,mysteriousbeings or an assistancenot really required? Under these circumstances

the unmixed type of fear-Religionwould never

have come into existence. Religion would have

appearedater, and from the first in a nobler form.84



PKIMITIVE RELIGIOUS EMOTION.

In such peoples a feeling of dependence ponbenevolent gods, regarded probably as Creators

and All-Fathers,eliciting admiration rather thanfear or selfish desire, would have characterised

its beginnings. This possibility should not be

rejecteda priori.The other theory is well representedby W.

RobertsonSmith. He denies hat the attempt toappease vil beings s the foundation of Religion.I quote: *B>om he earliest times religion, as dis-

tinct from magic or sorcery,addressestself tokindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be

angry with their people or a time, but are alwaysplacableexcept to the enemiesof their worship-pers or to renegademembers of the community.

It is not with a vague fear of unknown powersbut with a loving reverence for known gods who

are knit to their worshippersby strong bonds ofkinship, that religion, in the only senseof theword, begins.'l One may agree with Robertson

Smith without denying that certain practicesintended to avert impending evils preceded heestablishment of affectionate relations with bene-

volent powers. As a matter of fact, our authoradmits this fully. What he denies is that the

attempt to propitiate, in dread, evil spirits, is1 The Religion of the Semites p̂. 55.

85




Religion. It cannot be doubted that the innerexperience as well as the outer attitude andbehaviour of a person are substantially different

when he seeks o conciliate a radically evil beingand when he communeswith a fundamentally

benevolentone. Yet in both casesan anthropo-pathic relation with a personal being is estab-lished. In this respect,both stand opposed o

magical behaviour. This commonelement s sofundamental that it seems to us advisable to

make the name Religion include both types ofrelation. And since they differ, nevertheless, in

Important respects, he phrasesNegativeReligionmay be used to designate man's dealings with

radically bad spirits, and Positive Religion his

relationswith fundamentally benevolentones.Positive Religion is at first not at all free

from fear. The benevolent gods are prompt towrath, and cruelly avenge their broken laws.

The more striking development of religious life

is the gradual substitution of love for fear inworship.1 This is one more reason for not

completely dissociating the propitiation of evilspirits from the worship of kindly gods.

1 See, on this development, my article, l Fear, Awe, and the

Sublime in Religion,5 American Jr. of Religious P&y. andEduc*,ii p. 1.

86



CHAPTER VI

CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND

THE FUNCTION OF RELIGION

THEorganised, istorical Religionsare sufficientlydescribed,n their objective aspect,as systemsof

practical relations with unseen, yperhuman,andpersonal Beings. The experiencesn which thistype of Religion consists,when subjectively con-sidered, are the states of consciousness correlated

with the aforesaidrelations. Judged accordingto this definition, severalsavage ribes and a very

large number of personsamong civilised peopleswould have o be accountednon-religious. Mostof them may, however, ay claim to what we have

called PassiveReligiosity. In these concludingpageswe propose o give increasedprecisionandcoherenceo the conceptionof Religion presentedin this essay. We shall do so under two heads,(1) Passive nd (2) GodlessReligions.

1. Andrew Lang's polemic against Frazer'sdefinition of Religion will serve as a convenient

87




text for the introduction of what we wish to say

under the first head. According to the habit ofanthropologists,Frazer has put forward as themark of Religion the propitiation or the con-

dilation of personalbeings superior o man andbelieved to direct and control the course of

nature and of human life. Lang objects, andvery properly, hat this definition is too narrow.' I mean by Religion/ says he, ' what Mr. Frazermeans and more. The conciliation of higher

powers by prayer and sacrifice is Religion, but it

need not be the whole of Religion. The beliefin a higher powerwho sanctionsconduct and isa father and a loving one to mankind is also

Religion/1 although it should not beaccompaniedby request for benefits. The presence n the

higher societies nd even at the dawn of civilisa-tion of personsstrangers to any religious rite,yet influenced by a belief in divine beings cannotbe denied. With regard to the most barbarousof the Australian savages Howitt writes: 'If

Religion is defined as being the formulatedworship of a divinity, then these savageshave no Religion; but I venture to assert

that it can be no longer maintained that theyhave no belief which can be called Religion, hat

1 Magic and Religion, pp. 48-49, 69.



NATUKE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION

is, in the sense f beliefs which govern tribal and

individual morality under a supernatural anc-tion/ l The reader will remember that we in-

cluded under the term Religion the amorphous

relations to which Howitt alludes. But thedifference,objective and subjective,between he

organised Religions, let us say that of Saint

Ignatius, and the guiding and restraining in-fluence exercised upon an African savage or

a Parisian deist by the apprehensionof a GreatRuler, justifies the use of the differentiatingappellations,Passiveand Active Religion.

We take this opportunity of remarking howdifficult it is even for particularly clear-headed

persons o keep Religion distinct from philo-sophy. Lang was ill-advised enough to write inthe same place, ' If men believe in a potentbeing who originally made or manufactured . . .

things, that is an idea so far religious that it

satisfies, y the figment of a supernatural agent,the speculative aculty.' What has 'the specu-lative faculty1 to do with Religion? As little

as the gratification of the aestheticor of anyother ' faculty/ i.e. nothing at all. The outcome

of speculative hinking is philosophy, of which1 f On some Australian Customs of Initiation,' Jr. of the

Anthrop. Inst., xiii. (1883-1884),p. 459.

89




Religion may make use, but that is not a reason

for confusing t with philosophy. The religiousexperience onsistsnot in seeking o understandGod,but in fearing Him, in feedingupon Him, in

finding strength and joy in Him. If believers nRuling Powers may be called religious, it is not

becausehey possess n idea of these powers,butin virtue of the guiding and inspiring influence

thesepowersexert upon them.2. The GodlessReligions.-We have found it

convenient up to this point to speak as if Power

had to be personal in order to become the centre

of a Religion. That view would exclude originalBuddhism, he Religion of Humanity, and several

other varieties of mental attitudes generally re-garded as religious. The significant fact that

until recently every existing historical Religionwas a worship of a personal Divinity, is not asufficient reason for refusing to recognise other

types. The affinity between the worship of aGod and certain relations maintained with non-

personalsourcesof power is substantial enoughto be recognised by the use of a name commonto both.

What are the Religions that dispensewith aGod? Original Buddhism, and the Religion of

Humanity formulated by A. Comte, are the only90



NATUEE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION

ones possessing somewhat definite form andorganisation. The Buddha Gautama discovered

and offered to man a way of salvation n which

the efficient power was not an external,personalpower,but an indwelling, psychic principle. But

the disciplesspeedilydeified he Master who hadenjoined them to adore no one, and substituted

for his teaching he worship of the God Gautama.So that, almost as soon as born, Buddhism ceased

to exist as a GodlessReligion.

'Humanity' is qualified to become he centreof a Religion becausets serviceaccomplishesorman in essenceand by similar methods pre-cisely what the acknowledgedReligions do for

their disciples.1 quote rom A. Comte: 'Around

this Real, Great Being, immediate instigator ofeach individual and collective existence, our feel-

ings and desires entre as spontaneously s do our

ideas and actions. . . . More readily accessible to

our feelings as well as to our thinking [than

the chimerical beings of the existing Religions],because f an identity of nature which does not

preclude ts superiority over all its servants,aSupreme Being such as this excites deeply anactivity destined to preserve and to improve it

1 F. Harrison, Moral and Religious Socialism, New Year'sAddress, 1891.

91




[tlie Supreme Being].* The claim of originalBuddhism and of Comtism to be called Religions

is, in our opinion, legitimate, because hey each

provide an inclusive, non-material source ofpowerand a method of drawing upon t.

But the term Religion is used by some n a still

wider sense. ProfessorJ. R. Seeley, or instance,bestows hat valued name upon

'any habitual

and permanentadmiration/2 Should we concurin this extension, t would be difficult to stopanywhere. We should have to admit almost

anything which any one may have a fancy fordesignating by that much - abused word, evento'the sense of eternity in connection with our

higher experiences/and 'the feeling of realityand permanence f all we most value.' But sincethe function of words is to delimitate, one defeats

the purposeof language y stretching the meaningof a word until it has lost all precisionand unityof meaning. We would therefore throw out of

our definition anything which did not include:-

(1) A belief n a great and superiorpsychic power-whether personalor not. (2) A dynamic relation-formal and organised or otherwise-between

1 A. Gomte, Cattchisme Positiviste, ed. Apostolique (1891),pp. 53, 55.

2 Natural Religion, Macmillan (1882), p. 74.

92



NATURE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION

man and that Higher Power ending to the pre-

servation, he increase, nd the ennobling of life.This conception s broad enough o include even

the uncrystallised form of Religion conditioned,in the words of Professor James, by ' an assurance

that this natural order is not ultimate, but a mere

sign or vision, the external staging of a inany-storied universe, in which spiritual forces havethe last word and are eternal.'

Active Religion may properly be looked upon

as that portion of the struggle or life, in whichuse is made of the Power we have roughlycharacterisedas psychic and superhuman,andfor which other adjectives, spiritual/ * divine,'for instance, are commonly used. In this bio-

logical view of Religion, ts necessary nd naturalspring is the same as that of non-religious ife,i.e. the ' will to live * n its multiform appearances,while the ground of differentiation between thereligious and the secular s neither specific feel-

ings nor emotions,nor yet distinctive impulses,desires,or purposes, ut the nature of the forcewhich it is attempted o press nto service. The

current terms,' religious eeling/ ' religiousdesire/'religious purpose/ are deceptive if they are

supposed to designate affective experiences,93




desiresand purposesmet with only in religious

life.

The conception f the Source f PsychicEnergy,without the belief in which no Religion can exist,

has undergonevery interesting transformationsin the course of historical development. The

human or animal form ascribed o the gods inthe earlier Religionsbecameess and ess definite.At the same ime the number of gods decreased.The culmination of this doubleprocesswas Mono-theism, in which the One, Eternal, Creator and

Sustainerof life was no longer necessarily ramedin the shape of man or beast: though still an-thropopathic,he might be formless. Sympathy,love, and ustice were amonghis attributes. In a

second phase, his formless,but personal, God

wasgradually shorn of all the qualities and de-fects which make individuality. He became he

passionlessAbsolute in which all things moveand have their being. Thus, the personifyingwork of centuries s undone,and humanity, after

having, as it were, lived throughout its infancyand youth under the controlling eye and withthe active assistanceof personal divinities, on

reaching maturity, finds itself bereft of thesesources of life. The present religious crisis

marks the difficulty in the way of an adaptation94



NATURE AND FUNCTION OF RELIGION

*to the new situation. As belief in a God seemsno longer possible, man seeks an impersonal,efficient substitute, belief in which will not mean

disloyalty to science. For man will have ife, andhave it abundantly,and he knows from experi-

ence that its sourcesare not only in meat anddrink, but also in ' spiritual faith.' It is thisproblem which the Comtists, the Immanentists,

the Ethical Culturists, the Mental Scientists are

all trying to solve. Any solution will have the

right to the name Religion that provides or thepreservation and the perfectioning of life bymeansof faith in a superhuman sychic Power.

psychological origin emotion

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