{v}
Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years
none has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study of
the evolution of human civilization. The reason is apparent: it has
revolutionized our conception of human history, and has shaken to
their very centre the religious traditions of Europe and civilized
America. The general doctrine of evolution as applied to the universe
at large was established shortly after the middle of the nineteenth
century by Darwin and Spencer. Geology had already revealed the
enormous age of the earth, and the long procession of periods through
which the flora and fauna had advanced to ever higher organization.
Archæology had begun its enquiries into the antiquity of man; but the
evidence was not yet fully understood, and its weight or even its
existence was denied. While theology, after first indignantly
repudiating the new teachers, was trying with many grimaces to
accommodate itself to their teaching, new lines of investigation were
entered upon in this country and America by Lubbock, Tylor, M‘Lennan,
and Morgan. The mental and social development of mankind, the history
of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected
illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different
outline of human origins and early history from that which had
hitherto remained almost unquestioned. In a country like ours, where
an established Church {vi} arrogated to itself all social and almost
all intellectual influences, and where it was very generally supported
by those who dissented from it on other points in its dogmatic
opposition to the results of scientific enquiry, it was natural that
attention should be directed to the bearing of those results on
theology. Anthropology, as the new Science of Man came to be called,
was materially assisted in the quarrel by Biblical criticism begun in
Germany and popularized in England by Colenso and others. The
authenticity of the books so long attributed to Moses was questioned
and overthrown; they themselves were emptied of all historical
authority, and put on a level in this respect with the books of
heathen nations. Professor Robertson Smith’s fight for liberty of
criticism in the Free Church of Scotland roused the enthusiasm even of
men who did not agree with all his opinions; and when he was finally
ejected from his chair at Aberdeen, he was provided with a home first
at Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, and the editorship of the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_. Thus unmuzzled, he devoted himself to the
study of Semitic religion and customs on the largest scale and in the
most unbiassed spirit. Unfortunately, his health gave way; and two
precious volumes are well-nigh all that has reached us of his labours.
But his influence at Cambridge, and particularly over a younger
fellow-countryman to whom we owe _The Golden Bough_, was of a most
fruitful character. To the impulse he gave is to be traced
much--perhaps more than we suspect--of what anthropology has
accomplished in various directions during the last five-and-twenty
years.
Meanwhile revolt against false interpretation of known facts and
inadequate methods of enquiry had spread elsewhere. Professor Max
Müller, by his unsurpassed {vii} powers of exposition, his eloquence
and his wide knowledge of the Aryan tongues, had become the champion
in this country of the German explanation of myths as a disease of
language, a teacher on whose lips learned and simple hung. Great as
was his learning, however, it was circumscribed by the Indo-European
languages and literature. He took little account of savage myths which
could not be interpreted on his principles, and still less of the
equally important rites and beliefs of European peasants and primitive
peoples beyond the seas. In Germany, Mannhardt, originally a disciple
of the same school, had turned to more reasonable and penetrating
modes of interpretation. It is his glory to have been the first to
combat the fancies of the philologists in a series of works steeped as
deeply in classical learning as theirs, but with a much wider outlook
and a keener sense of actuality. Yet he died without having made many
converts; and in Germany still the sun-myth lingers, though hastening
fast to its inevitable setting. In England his works were hardly
known, when, in 1887, Andrew Lang, after a powerful article on
“Mythology” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and other preliminary
essays, published _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, in which he attacked
with overwhelming acumen and wit the philological position. It is not
too much to say that as far as English-speaking countries were
concerned the blow was decisive, the philological position was
carried, and the enemy’s flag planted triumphantly on the battlements.
The way was thus cleared for a really scientific enquiry into the
beginnings of religion. No longer were we hampered with the story of
Genesis and the primitive revelation. Our vision was not to be bounded
by the Aryan and Semitic peoples. The guesswork of the philological
school was at an end, and ritual was admitted {viii} to be at least as
indispensable to the enquiry as story and belief. Professor Tylor had
already done something more than pioneer work in the chapters on
Mythology and Animism in _Primitive Culture_. In the chapters on
Animism in particular he had exhibited the universal belief in the
souls, not merely of human beings, but of other animate, and even of
inanimate, creatures. He had boldly discussed the relation of this
belief to the doctrine of spirits generally, and considered the
transitional series of ideas through the cult of the dead, possession,
fetishism, idol-worship, and the beliefs of the Christian Fathers. It
became evident that a doctrine so complex and subtle, even in its
simpler manifestations, could not bean original and innate belief of
the human mind, but that it must have been evolved from something
simpler, perhaps vaguer, certainly more comprehensive. “A theoretical
conception of primitive philosophy, designed to account for phenomena
now classed under Biology, especially Life and Death, Health and
Disease, Sleep and Dreams, Trance and Visions” pre-supposes a long
period of observation, comparison and discussion, during which the
ideas slowly took shape and ranged themselves round a central theory.
The late Mr Andrew Lang was the first seriously to consider the
questions involved. His answer, given in _The Making of Religion_
(1898), was twofold. On the one hand, he suggested that “the savage
theory of the soul may be based, at least in part, on
experiences”--hypnotism, clairvoyance, hallucination, and so
forth--“which cannot at present be made to fit into any purely
materialistic system of the universe.” On the other hand, he contended
that “the idea of God, in its earliest known shape, need not logically
be derived from the idea of spirit, however that idea itself may have
been attained or {ix} evolved.” In this he was aiming partly at Sir
Edward Tylor’s theory of Animism, as developed in the last of his
famous chapters on that subject, partly at the theory of the ancient
sceptic Euhemerus, revived and championed within recent years by
Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen, that gods had been developed out of
the ghosts of dead men. He sought to draw a broad distinction between
the two concepts, that of a god and that of a spirit of any sort. He
claimed that the idea of God was earlier than that of a spirit, and
that “a relatively Supreme God,” often expressly described as Creator,
existing before death came into the world, and practically eternal,
had everywhere preceded the propitiation of the dead. He did not
commit himself to any definite opinion as to how this idea of a
Supreme God was reached by the rude forefathers of the race. But when
he oracularly observed, “The hypothesis of St Paul seems not the most
unsatisfactory,” it is no wonder that orthodox readers understood by
that expression a primitive revelation, whereas what he meant was the
argument from Design as stated in Rom. i. 19, 20. Though Lang’s book,
therefore, was hailed as a sign that anthropological science was after
all coming round to the support of the old orthodoxy, he himself was
too true a sceptic to fall satisfactorily into line. In fact, he
solved nothing. The “High Gods” of the lowest savages must have had
some origin, must have been evolved out of conceptions lower or more
indefinite.
Professor Frazer has approached the problem from another side. In the
first edition of _The Golden Bough_ he attempted no definition of
Religion; and the relation of Magic to Religion, therefore, was hardly
clear. Critics did not fail to call his attention to this. In the
second edition (1900) he accordingly proceeded to define {x} his
position. There, with Sir Alfred Lyall and Professor Jevons, he
recognizes “a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle
between magic and religion”; and in _The Magic Art_, he has more
recently somewhat expanded his exposition of their relations. Magic,
it appears, is a false science based on the assumption “that in nature
one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the
intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.” Religion is “a
propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are
believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human
life.” Man began with magic. He knew of no beings superior to himself,
and he believed that by certain ceremonies he could cause the results
he desired. “Yet his power, great as he believes it to be, is by no
means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he
strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called
the laws of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules, to
break these laws in the smallest particular is to incur failure, and
may even expose the unskilful practitioner himself to the utmost
peril. If he claims a sovereignty over nature, it is a constitutional
sovereignty, rigorously limited in its scope, and exercised in exact
conformity with ancient usage.” After a while man found out his
blunder. “The shrewder intelligences must in time have come to
perceive that magical ceremonies and incantations did not really
effect the results they were designed to produce, and which the
majority of their simpler fellows still believed that they did
actually produce.… The discovery amounted to this, that men for the
first time recognized their inability to manipulate at pleasure
certain natural forces which hitherto they had believed to be
completely within their control. It was a confession of human {xi}
ignorance and weakness. Man saw that he had taken for causes what were
no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of these
imaginary causes had been vain.… Not that the effects which he had
striven so hard to produce did not continue to manifest themselves.
They were still produced, but not by him.” In this emergency he turned
to “a new system of faith and practice, which seemed to offer a
solution of his harassing doubts and a substitute, however precarious,
for that sovereignty over nature which he had abdicated. If the great
world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows, it must
surely be because there were other beings, like himself, but far
stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its course and brought
about all the varied series of events which he had hitherto believed
to be dependent on his own magic.… To these mighty beings, whose
handiwork he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of
nature, man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his dependence on
their invisible power, and beseeching them of their mercy to furnish
him with all good things.” Here, to be sure, was a revolution. The Age
of Religion succeeded to the Age of Magic, though gradually,
reluctantly, and, as regards at least the majority of mankind,
incompletely even to the present day.
It is needless to dwell on the contrast between this hypothesis and
Lang’s. The one traces religion back to the belief in a Supreme God,
the other to a reaction against the belief in magic. They are alike in
one respect: they both derive it from an exercise of man’s reasoning
faculties. It seems a just criticism to say that neither of them takes
sufficient account of man’s emotional nature. Yet it must have played
an important part in the evolution of religion. It is, if I may say
so, the merit of another {xii} enquirer, Dr R. R. Marett, that he was
the first to point this out. In an article published in _Folk-lore_ in
the year 1900, he analyzed, with psychological knowledge and skill,
the experiences that underlay Animism, and came to the conclusion that
behind the logic was emotion, the recoil from the uncanny and the
mysterious, “that basic feeling of awe, which drives a man, ere he can
think or theorize upon it, into personal relations with the
Supernatural.” Dr Marett’s views have been subsequently developed in a
series of papers printed in different periodicals and collections, and
republished in 1909 in a volume entitled _The Threshold of Religion_.
This has been supplemented more recently by his inaugural lecture as
Reader in Social Anthropology at Oxford, on _The Birth of Humility_
(1910), in which he takes the opportunity of criticizing with vivacity
and effect Professor Frazer’s exposition of the relations of magic and
religion. His opinions have been reinforced by the independent
enquiries of two learned Frenchmen, MM. Hubert and Mauss, who in 1904
published in _L’Année Sociologique_ a remarkable “Esquisse d’une
théorie générale de la Magie,” reissued five years later among
their collected essays entitled _Mélanges d’Histoire des Religions_.
They approach the subject from the social side, insisting that
religion is before everything a social matter, its judgements are
social judgements, its rites social rites. They point out its intimate
connection with magic, and by skilful analysis exhibit the parallelism
between them.
More recently the psychological aspect of the problem has been
considered by a group of American writers, notably by Professor James
Leuba (_A Psychological Study of Religion_) and Dr Irving King (_The
Development of Religion_, New York, 1910). The latter work is a most
suggestive and judicious survey of the evidence afforded {xiii} by
savage rites and belief. The writer insists on the priority of rites
to belief, and finds their origin in social activities, largely in
what he calls play-activities, and in spontaneous reactions to the
environment. The religious attitude may be coeval with these
activities, but organized beliefs were developed gradually. The
particular forms they took were the result of different social
situations, these in turn depending on the physical and cultural
environment. “In and so far as they have elements which are similar
functionally, religion and magic,” he holds, “originally formed a part
of a primitive, undifferentiated attitude, and separated from each
other as experience became more complex and the requirements of action
more varied.” Magic became the individualist and antisocial
application of the impulses and organized methods of which religion
was the social expression and application.
Lastly, Professor Durkheim, taking Totemism as the most primitive
religion known to us, has in _Les Formes Elémentaires de la vie
Religieuse_ analyzed elementary conceptions, with the result that he
derives religious ideas and practices entirely from a social origin.
As I have considered his theory more fully on another page, it needs
no further reference here.
Thus at the present moment the controversy stands--if it be legitimate
to call it a controversy. Criticism, according to a pregnant saying of
Andrew Lang’s, is a form of co-operation--of co-operation in the
pursuit of truth. The following essays are intended in that spirit as
a humble contribution to the discussion. Their primary intention is
not controversial. They rather seek to express some of the results of
a study of the phenomena, from the point of view of one who has been
convinced that the emotions and the imagination--and {xiv} not merely
the individual, but the collective emotions and imagination--have had
at least as much to do with the generation of religious practices and
beliefs as the reason, and that for the form they may have assumed,
physical, social, and cultural influences must be held accountable.
The essay on “The Relations of Religion and Magic” is an expansion of
two presidential addresses, one delivered to the Anthropological
Section of the British Association at York in 1906, the other to the
section on the Religions of the Lower Culture at the International
Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford in 1908. The essay on
“The Rite at the Temple of Mylitta” was contributed to the volume of
_Anthropological Essays_ presented to Sir Edward Tylor, in honour of
his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1907. That on “The Voice of the Stone
of Destiny” was published in _Folk-lore_, 1903. Both of these have
undergone revision. The remaining essays are new. One of them deals as
a preliminary with some of the difficulties that beset the enquirer
into the religious ideas of the lower races, with wandering fires that
mislead him, with barriers that seem impassable. The others seek to
concentrate attention on particular instances of ritual or belief, to
elucidate the ideas and emotions that underlie them, or further to
illustrate their evolution. I am indebted to the publishers of such as
have been already published for their courtesy in facilitating
reproduction here.