Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the...

1 That is, phenomena regarded as special acts of a superhuman Power; in the larger conception of religion all phenomena are at once natural and divine acts.

2 In early religion they are usually ghosts, beasts, plants, or inanimate objects; rarely living men. Cf. Marett's remarks on pre-animistic religion in his Threshold of Religion.

3 Appeal to the Powers carries with it a certain sense of oneness with them, in which we may reasonably recognise the germ of the idea of union with God, which is the highest form of religion. This idea is not consciously held by the savage—it takes shape only in highly developed thought (Plato, the New Testament, Christian and other mysticism). If the impulse to religion be thought to be love of life (so Leuba, in the Monist, July, 1901), this is substantially desire for safety and happiness.

4 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 170.

5 Gen. xxviii, 20-22; Hos. ii; Ezek. xxxvi; and the Psalter passim.

6 The classic expression of this view is given by Statius (Th. 3, 661): primus in orbe deos fecit timor. Cf. L. Marillier, in International Monthly, ii (1900), 362 ff.

7 For numerous examples of the belief in supernatural birth see E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity.

8 Modern civilised nations, after victories in war, commonly assume that God has thus pronounced in favor of the justice and right of their side, and sing Te Deums.

9 This vagueness reappears in some systems of late philosophic speculation. On the question whether a sense of the divine exists anterior to conscious experience cf. Marett, Threshold of Religion.

10 This is only a particular application of the general assumption that all human powers exist in germ in the lowest human forms. Discussions of the sense of the infinite are found in the Gifford Lectures of F. Max Müller and Tiele, and in Jastrow's Study of Religion. But early man thinks only of the particular objects with which he comes into contact; the later belief in an Infinite is a product of experience and reflection.

11 Cf. Année sociologique, iii (1898-1899), 205 ff.

12 On the Fuegians cf. R. Fitzroy, in Voyages of the Adventure and the Beagle, ii (1831-1836), 179 ff.; on the African Pygmies, A. de Quatrefages, The Pygmies (Eng. tr., 1895), p. 124 ff.; W. Schmidt, Pygmäenvölker, p. 231 ff.; on Ceylon, T. H. Parker, Ancient Ceylon, iv; and on the Guaranis and Tapuyas (Botocudos) of Brazil, Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie, iii, 418, and the references in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ii, 837 f. The Fuegians are said to stand in awe of a "black man" who, they believe, lives in the forest and punishes bad actions. On the people of New Guinea see C. G. Seligmann, The Melanesians of British New Guinea, chaps. 16, 25, 48, 55.

13 Such relations exist between men and the vague force variously called mana, manitu, wakonda; but the conception of this force is scientific rather than religious, though it is brought into connection with religious ideas and usages.

14 The evidence is summed up in G. d'Alviella's Hibbert Lectures. Cf. Brinton, Religion of Primitive Peoples, p. 30 ff.

15 The question whether the religious sense exists in the lower animals is discussed by Darwin, Descent of Man (1871), p. 65 ff., 101 f., and others. The question is similar to that respecting conscience; in both cases there is in beasts a germ that appears never to grow beyond a certain point. On the genesis of the moral sense see (besides the works of Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, and their successors) G. H. Palmer, The Field of Ethics; L. T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution; E. Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. In regard to religious feeling we observe in certain animals, especially in the domesticated dog, an attitude of dependence and devotion toward the master as a superior Power that is similar to the attitude of man toward a deity, only with more affection and self-surrender. But in the animal, so far as we can judge, the intellectual and ethical conceptions do not come to their full rights—there is no idea of a Power possessing moral qualities and controlling all phenomena. The beast, therefore, is not religious in the proper sense of the term. But between the beast and the first man the difference may have been not great.

16 The Central Australians, however, have an elaborate marriage law with the simplest political organization and the minimum of religion.

17 Cf. L. M. Keasbey, in International Monthly, i (1900), 355 ff.; I. King, The Development of Religion, Introduction.

18Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, chap. xi f.

19 Beasts, plants, and what we call inanimate objects, also are held, in early stages of civilization, to have souls—a natural inference from the belief that these last are alive and that all things have a nature like that of man.

20 So Semitic nafs 'soul,' ruh 'spirit'; Sanskrit diman 'soul,' 'self'; Greek psyche, pneuma; Latin anima, spiritus; possibly English ghost (properly gost 'spirit'); and so in many low tribes. See Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 432 f.; O. Schrader, in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, ii, 15.

21 The expression 'to receive the last breath' (Æneid, iv, 684 f.), used by us to represent the last pious duty paid to a dying man, was thus originally understood in a strictly literal sense.

22 So the Delaware Indians (Brinton, The Lenâpé, p. 67).

23 Cf. the name 'shade' (Greeks, Redmen, and others) for the denizens of the Underworld.

24 Photographs are now looked on by some half-civilized peoples with suspicion and fear as separate personalities that may be operated on by magical methods. A similar feeling exists in regard to the name of a man or a god—it is held to be somehow identical with the person, and for this reason is often concealed from outsiders.

25 Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, 402; Fraser, Golden Bough, 1st ed., i, 178 f.; article "Blood" in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.

26 So in the Old Testament, in the later ritual codes: Deut. xii, 23; Lev. xvii, 14; Gen. ix, 4; and so Ps. lxxii, 14; cf. Koran, xcvi, 2 (man created of blood).

27Iliad, xiv, 518; xvii, 86; cf. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., p. 40 n. (Arabic expression: "Life flows on the spear-point").

28 R. B. Dixon, The Northern Maidu, p. 259.

29 So friendly (fraternal) compacts between individuals are sealed by exchange of blood, whereby the parties to the covenant become one; many examples are given in H. C. Trumbull's Blood-Covenant, 2d ed.

30 In many languages (Semitic, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, English, German, etc.) the word for 'soul' is used in the sense of 'person' or 'self.' But the conception of "life" was in early times broader than that of "person" or that of "soul."

31 An incorporeal or immaterial soul has never been conceivable.

32 For old-German examples see Saussaye, Religion of the Teutons, p. 297; for Guiana, E. F. im Thurn, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xi, 368; compare the belief in the hidden soul, spoken of below, and article "Animals" in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.

33 So the bush-soul or beast-soul among the Eẃe-speaking peoples of West Africa (A. B. Ellis, The Eẃe-speaking Peoples, p. 103) and in Calabar (Kingsley, West African Studies). Spirits (Castrén, Finnische Mythologie, p. 186) and demons (as in witchcraft trials) sometimes take the form of beasts. For American Indian examples see Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 294.

34 See the Egyptian representations of the soul as bird (Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, the Bible and Homer, pl. cvi, 2; cix, 4, etc.); Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 183, compare p. 109. Other examples are given by H. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i, 355 ff.; N. W. Thomas, in Hastings, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, i, 488. On siren and ker as forms of the soul see Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 139, 197-217. Cf. Hadrian's address to the soul:

Animula vagula blandulaHospes comesque corporisQuae nunc abibis in locaPallidula rigida nudulaNec ut soles dabis jocos?

35 The body is spoken of as the person, for example, in Iliad, i. 4; Ps. xvi, 9.

36 Hence various means of preserving the body by mummification, and the fear of mutilation.

37 On the cult of skulls in the Torres Straits and Borneo see Haddon, Head-hunters, chap. xxiv.

38 J. H. Bernan, British Guiana, p. 134.

39 See Old Testament passim, and lexicons of the various Semitic languages.