clare that some of the lowest races have no more religion than "the beasts that perish;" that the darkness of their minds is not " enlightened by even a ray of superstition."1 Sir John Lubbock, both in his "Origin of Civilisation and his "Pre-historic Times," quotes more than a score of "witnesses to the existence of tribes without religion." His own researches have led him to conclude that men start from Atheism, the meaning of which he limits in this case to " an absence of any definite ideas on the subject." Then follow Fetichism, Nature worship, or Totemism, and Shamanism, "in which the superior deities are far more powerful than man, and of a different nature;" then idolatry or anthropomorphism. "In the next stage, the Deity is regarded as the author, not merely a part, of nature. He becomes for the first time a really supernatural being;" and lastly we have religion associated with morality.

Much stress is laid on the fact that, many barbaric languages have no words for "God" and "soul." It is also cited as a proof of moral debasement that in the Algonquin tongues the verb to "love" is unknown, and that the Hos of Central India have no "endearing epithets." Now, no people can be without sexual love, and it is incredible that this should find no distinct vocal expression. Equally incredible is it that the simple affections, arising out of the gregarious instinct in all herding animals, should be totally absent in any race of the human species. It is but a truism to say, the more imperfect a language, the more likely would a stranger be to misapprehend it and it is well known that savages often purposely, from pride or from superstition, take the greatest care to conceal their religious opinions from strangers. What with this concealment and ignorance of the language together, it has often happened that a missionary has been two or three years amongst a people before he discovered they had any religion at all. To a certain extent it is true that language is the measure of 1 Sir Samuel Baker..

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ideas. But the maxim-no word no idea-cannot be adopted without reserve. It could not be applied to a dog or to a tamed elephant: and there are plenty of deafmutes who must have thousands of ideas they cannot express. So, crowds of feelings and thoughts must be as familiar to savages as they are to us; although, in the case of the latter, poverty of language prevents these from assuming a "definite" shape.

Sir John Lubbock refuses to admit Fetichism as a form even of religious worship. "It is nothing more or less than witchcraft," and inasmuch as the Fetich-maker believes he can control his Deity, Fetichism must be regarded as an anti-religion. "The negro of Guinea beats his Fetich if his wishes are not complied with, and hides him in his waist-cloth if about to do anything of which he is ashamed, so that the Fetich may not be able to see what is going on." 1 The Chinaman likewise treats his idol as a Fetich. "How now, dog of a spirit!" he says; "we give you a lodging in a magnificent temple, we gild you handsomely, feed you well, and offer incense to you; yet after all this care, you are so ungrateful as to refuse us what we ask of you." Hereupon they tie this image with cords, pluck him down, and drag him along the streets through all the mud and dunghills, to punish him for the expense of perfume which they have thrown away upon him.2 Upon the authority of Captain Burton, we have it that the savage makes a distinction between a ghost and a spirit, i.e., between "a present immaterial and a future." And in further proof of the lowness of spiritual belief, Sir John Lubbock says: "Inanimate objects have spirits as well as men; hence, when the wives and slaves are sacrificed, the weapons also are broken in the grave, so that the spirits of the latter, as well as of the former, may accompany their master to the other world." 3

At most, then, the testimony amounts to this:—the

1 Origin, &c., p. 154.

2 Loc. cit., quoted from Astley's Collection of Voyages.

3 P. 397.

belief of the savage is a barbarous one; he has no conception of a Supreme Being. Belief in the other world is so common and so well marked, that nice distinctions in spiritual modes of existence affect rather the accident than the essence of the species. "Such narrow definition," says Dr. Tylor, "has the fault of identifying religion rather with particular developments than with the deeper motive which underlies them. It seems best to fall back at once on this essential source, and simply to claim as a minimum definition of religion the belief in spiritual beings." Certainly if Atheism signifies no more than the absence of "definite " ideas about God, it cannot be denied that many races are utterly devoid of religion. But Sir John Lubbock himself freely allows that, "the question as to the general existence of religion among men is, indeed, to a great extent a matter of definition. If the mere sensation of fear, and the recognition that there are probably other beings more powerful than ourself, are sufficient alone to constitute a religion, then we must admit, I think, that religion is general to the human race." At any rate we must admit this to be the rudimentary stage of religious consciousness. The old theory of the Latin poet, Primus in orbe deos fecit timor, is not far from correct. It is not altogether true that fear first made gods. For, as Comte says, and as Hume had said before him, there is a primary tendency in man "to transfer the sense of his own nature in the radical explanation of all phenomena whatever." The joint action of these two principles would sufficiently explain that phase of intellectual evolution which may fairly be called the dawn of religious feeling. Thus limited, this view is also sanctioned by the high authority of Dr. Tylor. "So far as I can judge from the immense mass of accessible evidence," says he, "we have to admit that the belief in spiritual beings appears among all low races with whom we have attained to thorough intimate acquaintance," &c.

The one objection (and many people may deem it in1 Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 424.

superable) to so low an estimate of the origin of religious belief, is stated clearly by Sir John Lubbock-" If this definition be adopted we cannot longer regard religion as peculiar to man. We must admit that the feeling of a dog or a horse towards its master is of the same character, and the baying of a dog to the moon is as much an act of worship as some ceremonies which have been so described by travellers." This cannot be gainsaid. But who shall tell us in what depths of animal nature we are to seek the rootlets of religious consciousness; or at what point we are to break, with our artificial methods, the continuity of a seemingly perfect sequence?

If to the belief we are now discussing, the general name of Animism be assigned, it is not easy to determine to which element in its evolution we are to give precedence. Unquestionably one source of the belief in ghosts, phantoms, spirits, or souls, is dreaming. The sleeper has visions of places where his body is not. He is visited by people he has known, who are either absent or not alive. His immaterial being is active, while his body is apparently dead. And this resemblance between death and sleep leads naturally to similar conclusions concerning both. Further, the axiom: every change must have a cause, would necessarily be a product of his experience; and would, though of course unformulated, exercise its influence in his judgments upon all phenomena. Wind, rain, heat, cold, day, night, growth, decay, the running streams, the motion of the heavenly bodies, could only be accounted for by reference to life-analogous, if not similar, to his own. His impotency to control the forces, and their terrible ability to injure him, would inspire a sense of terror, which in turn would give birth to the two-fold notion of superiority and malignity. The early struggle for existence caused by increasing numbers, the convulsions of nature, and the vicissitudes of climate, all tending to produce disease and ultimately death, would inevitably result in a predominating belief in evil. Consistently with this view, we find the superstitions of the

savage, ever of the gloomiest and most terrible description. The dread of pending evil is eternally present to his mind; and he seeks to appease the unknown demons by hideous. sacrifices and fiendish tortures. If cannibalism be coeval with the lowest form of religion, I do not hesitate to affirm that, to primitive man, cannibalism has been immeasurably the lesser curse of the two. It is a shock to one's belief in a benevolent Ruler of all things to reflect that, the progress of development has crept so sluggishly onward, that, for thousands of generations, religion has been an unmitigated affliction to a large portion of our race.

From this original phase of Pantheism,-this belief that all matter was alive, the transition to Polytheism was, as Comte remarks, the necessary consequence of widening generalisation. When broad resemblances came to be recognised, and phenomena were unconsciously classed according to their likeness, the fetich which resided in a single object only, was deposed by a being of a higher order, who animated the whole group. "Thus when the entire oaks of a forest in their likeness to one another, suggested certain general phenomena, the abstract being in whom so many fetiches coalesced was no fetich, but the god of the forest." Still, the philosophy of the savage (if we may so speak of his crude interpretation of nature) would remain the same. Human action would still be his only type of change. And terms appropriate to his own acts would be applied to all the phenomena of inert matter. Amidst such conditions, mythology would make its start.

Here, however, we must turn from these prefatory remarks to the guidance of accepted leaders. Where knowledge is unattainable and reasoning rests mainly on conjecture, we must not look for unanimity. Concerning both the rise and flow of religious belief, there are many shades of opinion. It will be my business, as a précis writer, to select such passages from representative thinkers, as will, in the narrowest compass, put you in possession of their views.