An introduction to the study of comparative religion

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THE HARTFORD-LAMSON LECTURES ON
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD .

AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE STUDY OF

COMPARATIVE RELIGION

BY

FRANK BYRON JEVONS

PRINCIPAL OF BISHOP HATFIELD'S HALL, DURHAM
UNIVERSITY, DURHAM, ENGLAND

'Nt^ gork

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1908

Ai^ rights reserved

THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

4514

<;>

A6T0R, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOi • '^ATtONS.

R 1908 L

Copyright, 1908,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1908.

Norfaootr ^^reaa

J. 3. Gushing Co. — IJorwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

NOTE

The Hartford-Lamson Lectures on "The Re-
ligions of the World" are delivered at Hartford
Theological Seminary in connection with the Lam-
son Fund, which was established by a group of
friends in honor of the late Charles M. Lamson,
D.D., sometime President of the American Board
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to assist
in preparing students for the foreign missionary
field. The Lectures are designed primarily to
give to such students a good knowledge of the
religious history, beliefs, and customs of the peo-
ples among whom they expect to labor. As they
are delivered by scholars of the first rank, who are
authorities in their respective fields, it is expected
that in pubUshed form they will prove to be of
value to students generally.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction i

Immortality 34

Magic 70

Fetichism 105

Prayer 138

Sacrifice 175

Morality 211

Christianity 239

Appendix . 267

Bibliography 271

Index 275

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF
CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The use of any science lies in its application to practical pur-
poses. For Christianity, the use of the science of religion
consists in applying it to show that Christianity is the
highest manifestation of the religious spirit. To make
this use of the science of religion, we must fully and
frankly accept the facts it furnishes, and must recognise
that others are at liberty to use them for any opposite pur-
pose. But we must also insist that the science of religion
is limited to the establishment of facts and is excluded
from passing judgment on the religious value of those
facts. The science of religion as a historical science is con-
cerned with the chronological order, and not with the reli-
gious value, of its facts; and the order of those facts does
not determine their value any more in the case of religion
than in the case of literature or art. But if their value is a
question on which the science refuses to enter, it does not
follow that the question is one which does not admit of a
truthful answer: science has no monopoly of truth. The
value of anything always implies a reference to the future:
to be of value a thing must be of use for some purpose,
and what is purposed is in the future. Things have
value, or have not, according as they are useful or not
for our purposes. The conviction that we can attain our
purposes and ideals, the conviction without which we
should not even attempt to attain them is faith; and it
is in faith and by faith that the man of religion proposes to

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Pages
conquer the world. It is by faith in Christianity that the
missionary undertakes to convert men to Christianity.
The comparative value of different religions can only be
ascertained by comparison of those religions; and the
missionary, of all men, ought to know what is to be
learnt from such comparison. It is sometimes supposed
(wrongly) that to admit that all religions are comparable
is to admit that all are identical; but, in truth, it is only
because they differ that it is possible to compare them.
For the purpose of comparison both the differences and
the resemblances must be assumed to exist; and even
for the purposes of the science of religion there is noth-
ing to compel us to postulate a period in which either
the differences or the resemblances were non-existent.
But though there is nothing to compel us to assume that
the lowest form in which religion is found was neces-
sarily the earliest to exist, it is convenient for us to start
from the lowest forms. For the practical purposes of
the missionary it is desirable where possible to discover
any points of resemblance or traits of connection between
the lower form with which his hearers are familiar and
the higher form to which he proposes to lead them. It
is therefore proper for him and reasonable in itself to
look upon the long history of religion as man's search
for God, and to regard it as the function of the mis-
sionary to keep others in that search i~33

IMMORTALITY

The belief in immortality is more prominent, though less
intimately bound up with religion, amongst uncivilised
than it is amongst civilised peoples. In early times
the fancy luxuriates, unchecked, on this as on other
matters. It is late in the history of religion that the
immortality of the soul is found to be postulated alike
by morality and religion. The belief that the soul
exists after death doubtless manifested itself first in the

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XI

fact that men dream of those who have died. But, were
there no desire to believe, it may be doubted whether
the belief would survive, or even originate. The belief
originates in desire, in longing for one loved and lost;
and dreams are not the cause of that desire, though they
are one region in which it manifests itself, or rather one
mode of its manifestation. The desire is for continued
communion; and its gratification is found in a spiritual
communion. Such communion also is believed to unite
worshippers both with one another and with their God,
Where death is regarded as a disruption of communion
between the living and the departed, death is regarded
as unnatural, as a violation of the original design of
things, which calls for explanation; and the explanation
is provided in myths which account for it by showing that
the origin of death was due to accident or mistake. At
first, it is felt that the mistake cannot be one without
remedy: the deceased is invited "to come to us again."
If he does not return in his old body, then he is believed
to reappear in some new-born child. Or the doctrine of
rebirth may be satisfied by the belief that the soul is
reincarnated in animal form. This belief is specially
likely to grow up where totem ancestors are believed to
manifest themselves in the shape of some animal. Belief
in such animal reincarnation has, in its origin, how-
ever, no connection with any theory that transmigration
from a human to an animal form is a punishment. Up
to this point in the evolution of the belief in immortality,
the belief in another world than this does not show
itself. Even when ancestor-worship begins to grow up,
the ancestors' field of operations is in this world, rather
than in the next. But the fact that their aid and pro-
tection can be invoked by the community tends to elevate
them to the level of the god or gods of the community.
This tendency, however, may be defeated, as it was in
Judcea, where the religious sentiment will not permit
the difference between God and man to be blurred.

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Pages
Where the fact that the dead do not return establishes
itself as incontrovertible, the belief grows up that as the
dead continue to exist, it is in another world that their
existence must continue. At first they are conceived
to continue to be as they are remembered to have been
in this life. Later the idea grows up that they are pun-
ished or rewarded there, according as they have been
bad or good here; according as they have or have not in
this life sought communion with the true God. This
belief thus dilTers entirely from the earlier belief, e.g. as
it is found amongst the Eskimo, that it is in this world
the spirits of the departed reappear, and that their con-
tinued existence is unaffected by considerations of moral-
ity or religion. It is, however, not merely the belief in
the next world that may come to be sanctified by religion
and moralised. The belief in reincarnation in animal
form may come to be employed in the service of religion
and morality, as it is in Buddhism. There, however,
what was originally the transmigration of souls was trans-
formed by Gotama into the transmigration of character;
and the very existence of the individual soul, whether
before death or after, was held to be an illusion and a
deception. This tenet pushes the doctrine of self-
sacrifice, which is essential both to religion and to
morality, to an extreme which is fatal in logic to morality
and religion alike: communion between man and God —
the indispensable presupposition of both religion and
morals — is impossible, if the very existence of man is
illusory. The message of the missionary will be that by
Christianity self-sacrifice is shown to be the condition of
morality, the essence of communion with God and the
way to life eternal 34-69

MAGIC
A view sometime held was that magic is religion, and religion
magic. With equal reason, or want of reason, it might
be held that magic was science, and science magic.

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XIU

Even if we correct the definition, and say that to us
magic appears, in one aspect, as a spurious system of
science; and, in another, as a spurious system of re-
ligion; we still have to note that, for those who believed
in it, it could not have been a spurious system, whether
of science or religion. Primitive man acts on the assump-
tion that he can produce like by means of like; and about
that assumption there is no "magic" of any kind. It is
only when an effect thus produced is a thing not com-
monly done and not generally approved of, that it is
regarded as magic; and it is magic, because not every
one knows how to do it, or not every one has the power
to do it, or not every one cares to do it. About this
belief, so long as every one entertains it, there is nothing
spurious. When however it begins to be suspected that
the magician has not the power to do what he professes,
his profession tends to become fraudulent and his belief
spurious. On the other hand, a thing commonly done
and generally approved of is not regarded as magical
merely because the effect resembles the cause, and like is
in this instance produced by like. Magic is a term of evil
connotation; and the practice of using like to produce like
is condemned when and because it is employed for anti-
social purposes. Such practices are resented by the
society, amongst whom and on whom they are em-
ployed; and they are offensive to the God who looks
after the interests of the community. In fine, the object
and purpose of the practice determines the attitude of the
community towards the practice: if the object is anti-
social, the practice is nefarious; and the witch, if "smelled
out," is killed. The person who is willing to undertake
such nefarious proceedings comes to be credited with a
nefarious personality, that is to say, with both the power
and the will to do what ordinary, decent members of
the community could not and would not do: personal
power comes to be the most important, because the
most mysterious, characteristic of the man believed to

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Pages
be a magician. If we turn to things, such as rain-making,
which are socially beneficial, wc find a similar growth in
the belief that some men have extraordinary power to
work wonders on behalf of the tribe. A further stage of
development is reached when the man who uses his per-
sonal power for nefarious purposes undertakes by means
of it to control spirits: magic then tends to pass into fetich-
ism. Similarly, when rain and other social benefits come
to be regarded as gifts of the gods, the power of the rain-
maker comes to be regarded as a power to procure from
the gods the gifts that they have to bestow: magic is dis-
placed by religion. The opposition of principle between
magic and religion thus makes itself manifest. It makes
itself manifest in that the one promotes social and the
other anti-social purposes: the spirit worshipped by any
community as its god is a spirit who has the interests of
the community at heart, and who ex officio condemns
and punishes those who by magic or otherwise work
injury to the members of the community. Finally, the
decline of the belief in magic is largely due to the dis-
covery that it does not produce the effects it professes to
bring about. But the missionary will also dwell on the
fact that his hearers feel it to be anti-social and to be con-
demned alike by their moral sentiments and their re-
ligious feeling 70-104

FETICHISM

Fetichism is regarded by some as a stage of religious develop-
ment, or as the form of religion found amongst men at
the lowest stage of development known to us. From this
the conclusion is sometimes drawn that fetichism is the
source of all religion and of all religious values; and,
therefore, that (as fetichism has no value) religion (which
is an evolved form of fetichism) has no value either.
This conclusion is then believed to be proved by the
science of religion. In fact, however, students of the
science of religion disclaim this conclusion and rightly

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XV

assert that the science does not undertake to prove any-
thing as to the truth or the value of religion.

Much confusion prevails as to what fetichism is; and the
confusion is primarily due to Bosman. He confuses,
while the science of religion distinguishes between, animal
gods and fetiches. He asserts what we now know to be
false, viz., that a fetich is an inanimate object and nothing
more; and that the native rejects, or "breaks," one of
these gods, knowing it to be a god.

Any small object which happens to arrest the attention of a
negro, when he has a desire to gratify, may impress him
as being a fetich, i.e. as having power to help him to
gratify his desire. Here, Hoffding says, is the simplest
conceivable construction of religious ideas: here is
presented religion under the guise of desire. Let it be
granted, then, that the object attracts attention and is
involuntarily associated with the possibility of attaining
the desired end. It follows that, as in the period of ani-
mism, all objects are believed to be animated by spirits,
fetich objects are distinguished from other objects by
the fact — not that they are animated by spirits but —
that it is believed they will aid in the accomplishment of
the desired end. The picking up of a fetich object, how-
ever, is not always followed by the desired result; and
the negro then explains "that it has lost its spirit."
The spirit goes out of it, indeed, but may perchance be
induced or even compelled to return into some other
object; and then fetiches may be purposely made as
well as accidentally found, and are liable to coercion as
well as open to conciliation.

But, throughout this process, there is no religion. Religion
is the worship of the gods of a community by the com-
munity for the good of the community. The cult of a
fetich is conducted by an individual for his private ends;
and the most important function of a fetich is to work
evil against those members of the community who have
incurred the fetich owner's resentment. Thus religion

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Pages
and fetich-worship arc directed to ends not merely
different hut antagonistic. PVom the very outset re-
ligion in social fctichism is anti-social. To seek the
origin of religion in fetichism is vain. Condemned,
wherever it exists, by the religious and moral feelings
of the community, fetichism cannot have been the
primitive religion of mankind. The spirits of fetich-
ism, according to Hoffding, become eventually the gods
of polytheism: such a spirit, so long as it is a fetich,
is "the god of a moment," and must come to be per-
manent if it is to attain to the ranks of the polytheistic
gods. But fetiches, even when their function becomes
permanent, remain fetiches and do not become gods.
They do not even become "departmental gods," for
their powers are to further a man's desires generally.
On the other hand, they have personality, even if they
have not personal names. Finally, if, as Hoffding be-
lieves, the word "god" originally meant "he who is
worshipped," and gods are worshipped by the commu-
nity, then fetiches, as they are nowhere worshipped by
the community, are in no case gods.
The function of the fetich is anti-social; of the gods, to pro-
mote the well-being of the community. To maintain that
a god is evolved out of a fetich is to maintain that prac-
tices destructive of society have only to be pushed far
enough and they will prove the salvation of society . 105-137

PRAYER
Prayer is a phenomenon in the history of religion to which
the science of religion has devoted but little attention —
the reason alleged being that it is so simple and familiar
as not to demand detailed study. It may, however, be
that the phenomenon is indeed familiar yet not simple.
Simple or not, it is a matter on which different views
may be held. Thus though it may be agreed that in
the lower forms of religion it is the accomplishment of
desire that is asked for, a divergence of opinion emerges

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XVll

the moment the question is put, Whose desire? that of
the individual or of the community ? And instances may
be cited to show that it is not for his own personal,
selfish advantage alone that the savage always or even
usually prays. It is the desires of the community that
the god of the community is concerned to grant: the
petition of an individual is offered and harkened to only
so far as it is not prejudicial to the interests of the com-
munity. The statement that savage prayer is unethical
may be correct in the sense that pardon for moral sin is
not sought; it is incorrect, if understood to mean that
the savage does not pray to do the things which his
morality makes it incumbent on him to do, e.g. to fight
successfully. The desires which the god is prayed to
grant are ordinarily desires which, being felt by each
and every member of the community, are the desires of
the community, as such, and not of any one member
exclusively.
Charms, it has been suggested, in some cases are prayers that
by vain repetition have lost their religious significance
and become mere spells. And similarly it has been sug-
gested that out of mere spells prayer may have been
evolved. But, on the hypothesis that a spell is something
in which no religion is, it is clear that out of it no re-
ligion can come; while if prayer, i.e. religion, has been
evolved out of spells, then there have never been spells
wholly wanting in every religious element. Whether a
given formula then is prayer or spell may be difficult
to decide, when it has some features which seem to be
magical and others which seem to be religious. The
magical element may have been original and be in
process of disappearing before the dawn of the religious
spirit. Now, the formula uttered is usually accom-
panied by gestures performed. If the words are uttered
to explain the gesture or rite, the explanation is offered
to some one, the words are of the nature of a prayer to
some one to grant the desire which the gesture manifests.

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Pages
On the other hand, if the gestures arc performed to
make the words more intelligible, then the action per-
formed is, again, not magical, but is intended to make
the words — the prayer — more emphatic. In neither
case, then, is the gesture or rite magical in intent. Dr.
Frazcr's suggestion that it required long ages for man to
discover that he could not always succeed — even by the
aid of magic — in getting what he wanted; and that
only when he made this discovery did he take to religion
and prayer, is a suggestion which cannot be maintained
in view of the fact that savage man is much more at
the mercy of accidents than is civilised man. The sug-
gestion, in fact, tells rather against than in favour of
the view that magic preceded religion, and that spells
preceded prayer.

The Australian black fellows might have been expected to
present us with the spectacle of a people unacquainted
with prayer. But in point of fact we find amongst them
both prayers to Byamee and formula; which, though now
unintelligible even to the natives, may originally have been
prayers. And generally speaking the presumption is that
races, who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, pray
to those spirits, even though their prayers be concealed
from the white man's observation. Gods are there for the
purpose of being prayed to. Prayer is the essence of re-
ligion, as is shown by the fact that gods, when they cease
to be prayed to, are ignored rather than worshipped.
Such gods — as in Africa and elsewhere — become little
more than memories, when they no longer have a circle
of worshippers to offer prayer and sacrifice to them.

The highest point reached in the evolution of pre-Christian
prayer is when the gods, as knowing best what is good,
are petitioned simply for things good. Our Lord's prayer
is a revelation which the theory of evolution cannot
account for or explain. Nor does Hoffding's "antinomy
of religious feeling" present itself to the Christian soul as
an antinomy 138-174

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XIX

SACRIFICE

Prayer and sacrifice historically go together, and logically
are indissoluble. Sacrifice, whether realised in an offer-
ing dedicated or in a sacrificial meal, is prompted by the
worshippers' desire to feel that they are at one with the
spirit worshipped. That desire manifests itself specially
on certain regularly occurring occasions (harvest, seed
time, initiation) and also in times of crisis. At harvest
time the sacrifices or offerings are thank-offerings, as is
shown by the fact that a formula of thanksgiving is
employed. Primitive prayer does not consist solely in
petitions for favours to come; it includes thanksgiving
for blessings received. Such thanksgivings cannot by
any possibility be twisted into magic.

Analogous to these thanksgivings at harvest time is the sol-
emn eating of first-fruits amongst the Australian black
fellows. If this solemn eating is not in Australia a
survival of a sacramental meal, in which the god and his
worshippers were partakers, it must be merely a ceremony
whereby the food, which until it is eaten is taboo, is
"desacralised." But, as a matter of fact, such food is not
taboo to the tribe generally; and the object of the solemn
eating cannot be to remove the taboo and desacralise the
food for the tribe.

If the harvest rites or first-fruit ceremonials are sacrificial in
nature, then the presumption is that so, too, are the cere-
monies performed at seed time or the analogous period.

At initiation ceremonies or mysteries, even amongst the
Australian black fellows, there is evidence to show that
prayer is offered; and generally speaking we may say
that the boy initiated is admitted to the worship of the
tribal gods.

The spring and harvest customs are closely allied to one
another and may be arranged in four groups: (i) In Mex-
ico they plainly consist of the worship of a god — by
means of sacrifice and prayer — and of communion.

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(2) In some other cases, though the god has no proper or
personal name, and no image is made of him, "the new
corn," Dr. Frazer says, "is itself eaten sacramentally,
that is, as the body of the corn spirit"; and it is by this
sacramental meal that communion is effected or main-
tained. (3) In the harvest customs of northern Europe,
bread and dumplings are made and eaten sacramentally,
"as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being";
or an animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken
of. (4) Amongst the Australian tribes there is a sacra-
mental eating of the totem animal or plant. Now, these
four groups of customs may be all religious (and Dr.
Frazer speaks of them all as sacramental) or all magical;
or it may be admitted that the first three are religious, and
maintained that the fourth is strictly magical. But such
a separation of the Australian group from the rest does
not commend itself as likely; further, it overlooks the
fact that it is at the period analogous to harvest
time that the headman eats solemnly and sparingly of
the plant or animal, and that at harvest time it is too late
to work magic to cause the plant or animal to grow.
The probability is, then, that both the Australian group
and the others are sacrificial rites and are religious.
Such sacrificial rites, however, though felt to be the means
whereby communion was effected and maintained be-
tween the god and his worshippers, may come to be
interpreted as the making of gifts to the god, as the
means of purchasing his favour, or as a full discharge
of their obligations. When so interpreted they will be
denounced by true religion. But though it be admitted
that the sacrificial rite might be made to bear this aspect,
it does not follow, as is sometimes supposed, that it was
from the outset incapable of bearing any other. On the
contrary, it was, from the beginning, not only the rite
of making offerings to the god but, also, the rite whereby
communion was attained, whereby the society of wor-
shippers was brought into the presence of the god they

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Pages
worshipped, even though the chief benefits which the
worshippers conceived themselves to receive were earthly
blessings. It is because the rite had from the beginning
this potentiality in it that it was possible for it to become
the means whereby, through Christ, all men might be
brought to God 175-210

MORALITY

The question whether morality is based on religion, or re-
ligion on morality, is one which calls for discussion,
inasmuch as it is apt to proceed on a mistaken view
of facts in the history of religion. It is maintained
that as a matter of history morality came first and re-
ligion afterwards; and that as a matter of philosophy
religion presupposes morality. Reality, that is to say, is
in the making; the spirit of man is self-realising; being
is in process of becoming rationalised and moralised;
religion in process of disappearing.

Early religion, it is said, is unethical : it has to do with spirits,
which, as such, are not concerned with morality; with
gods which are not ethical or ideal, and are not objects
of worship in our sense of the term.

Now, the spirits which, in the period of animism, are believed
to animate things, are not, it is true, concerned with
morality; but then, neither are they gods. To be a god
a spirit must have a community of worshippers ; and it is
as the protector of that community that he is worshipped.
He protects the community against any individual mem-
ber who violates the custom of the community. The
custom of the community constitutes the morality of the
society. Offences against that custom are offences
against the god of the community. A god starts as an
ethical power, and as an object of worship.

Still, it may be argued, before gods were, before religion
was evolved, morality was; and this may be shown by
the origin and nature of justice, which throughout is
entirely independent of religion and religious considera-

Xxii ANALYTICAL TABLH OF CONTENTS

tions. On this theory, the origin of justice is to be found
in the resentment of the individual. But, first, the in-
dividual, apart from society, is an abstraction and an
impossibility: the individual never exists apart from
but always as a member of some society. Next, justice
is not the resentment of any individual, but the senti-
ment of the community, expressing itself in the action not
of any individual but of the community as such. The
responsibility both for the wrong done and for righting it
rests with the community. The earliest offences against
which public action is taken are said to be witchcraft and
breaches of the marriage laws. The latter are not in-
juries resented by any individual: they are offences
against the gods and are punished to avert the mis-
fortunes which otherwise would visit the tribe. Witch-
craft is especially offensive to the god of the community.
In almost, if not quite, the lowest stages of human develop-
ment, disease and famine are regarded as punishments
which fall on the community as a whole, because the
community, in the person of one of its members, has
offended some supernatural power. In quite the lowest
stage the guilt of the offending member is also regarded
as capable of infecting the whole community; and he
is, accordingly, avoided by the whole community and
tabooed. Taboo is due to the collective action, and ex-
presses the collective feeling of the community as a
whole. It is from such collective action and feeling that
justice has been evolved and not from individual resent-
ment, which is still and always was something different
from justice. The offences punished by the community
have always been considered, so far as they are offences
against morality, to be offences against the gods of the
community. The fact that in course of time such offences
come to be punished always as militating against the
good of society testifies merely to the general assumption
that the good of man is the will of God: men do not
believe that murder, adultery, etc., are merely offences

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Pages
against man's laws. It is only by ignoring this patent
fact that it becomes possible to maintain that religion
is built upon morality, and that we are discovering
religion to be a superfluous superstructure.
It may be argued that the assumption that murder, adultery,
etc., are offences against God's will is a mere assump-
tion, and that in making the assumption we are fleeing
"to the bosom of faith." The reply is that we are
content not merely to flee but to rest there . . 211-238

CHRISTIANITY

If we are to understand the place of Christianity in the evo-
lution of religion, we must consider the place of reli-
gion in the evolution of humanity ; and I must explain
the point of view from which I propose to approach the
three ideas of (i) evolution, (2) the evolution of humanity,
(3) the evolution of religion.

I wish to approach the idea of evolution from the proposition
that the individual is both a means by which society at-
tains its end, and an end for the sake of which society
exists. Utilitarianism has familiarised us with the view
that society exists for the sake of the individual and for
the purpose of realising the happiness and good of
every individual: no man is to be treated merely as a
chattel, existing solely as a means whereby his owner, or
the governing class, may benefit. But this aspect of the
facts is entirely ignored by the scientific theory of evo-
lution: according to that theory, the individual exists
only as a factor in the process of evolution, as one of the
means by which, and not as in any sense the end for
which, the process is carried on.

Next, this aspect of the facts is ignored not only by the
scientific theory of evolution, but also by the theory which
humanitarianism holds as to the evolution of humanity,
viz. that it is a process moving through the three stages
of custom, religion, and humanitarianism. That process
is still, as it has long been in the past, far from complete:

XXIV ANALYTICAL TABLIO OF CONTENTS

the end is not yet. It is an end in which, whenever and
if ever realised on earth, we who are now living shall not
live to partake: we are — on this theory of the evolu-
tion of humanity — means, and solely means, to an end
which, when realised, we shall not partake in. Being an
end in which we cannot participate, it is not an end
which can be rationally set up for us to strive to attain.
Nor will the generation, which is ultimately to enjoy it,
find much satisfaction in reflecting that their enjoyment
has been purchased at the cost of others. To treat a
minority of individuals as the end for which humanity
is evolved, and the majority as merely means, is a
strange pass for humanitarianism ♦o come to.

Approaching the evolution of religion from the point of view
that the individual must always be regarded both as an
end and as a means, we find that Buddhism denies the
individual to be either the one or the other, for his very
existence is an illusion, and an illusion which must be
dispelled, in order that he may cease from an existence
which it is an illusion to imagine that he possesses. If,
however, we turn to other religions less highly developed
than Buddhism, we find that, in all, the existence of the
individual as well as of the god of the community is
assumed; that the interests of the community are the
will of the community's god; that the interests of the
community are higher than the interests of the individual,
when they appear to differ; and that the man who prefers
the interests of the community to his own is regarded as
the higher type of man. In fine, the individual, from
this point of view, acts voluntarily as the means whereby
the end of society may be realised. And, in so acting, he
testifies to his conviction that he will thereby realise his
own end.

Throughout the history of religion these two facts are im-
plied: first, the existence of the individual as a member
of society seeking communion with God; next, the ex-
istence of society as a means of which the individual is

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS XXV

Pages
the end. Hence two consequences with regard to evolu-
tion: first, evolution may have helped to make us, but we
are helping to make it ; next, the end of evolution is not
wholly outside any one of us, but in part is realised
in us. And it is just because the end is both within
us and without us that we are bound up with our fellow-
man and God.

Whether the process of evolution is moving to any end what-
ever, is a question which science declines — formally re-
fuses — to consider. Whether the end at which religion
aims is possible or not, has in any degree been achieved
or not, is a question which the science of religion formally
declines to consider. If, however, we recognise that the
end of religion, viz. communion with God, is an end at
which we ought to aim, then the process whereby the end
tends to be attained is no longer evolution in the scien-
tific sense. It is a process in which progress may or may
not be made. As a fact, the missionary everywhere sees
arrested development, imperfect communion with God;
for the different forms of religion realise the end of
religion in different degrees. Christianity claims to be
"final," not in the chronological sense, but in that it
alone finds the true basis and the only end of society in
the love of God. The Christian theory of society again
differs from all other theories in that it not only regards
the individuals composing it as continuing to exist after
death, but teaches that the society of which the individual
is truly a member, though it manifests itself in this world,
is realised in the next.

The history of religion is the history of man's search for God.
That search depends for its success, in part, upon man's
will. Christianity cannot be stationary: the extent to
which we push our missionary outposts forward gives
us the measure of our vitality. And in that respect, as
in others, the vitality of the United States is great. 239-265

APPENDIX 266 ad fin.

INTRODUCTION

Or the many things that fill a visitor from the
old country with admiration, on his first visit to
the United States, that which arrests his attention
most frequently, is the extent and success with
which science is applied to practical purposes. And
it is beginning to dawn upon me that in the
United States it is not only pure science which is
thus practically applied, — the pure sciences of
mechanics, physics, mathematics, — but that the
historic sciences also are expected to justify them-
selves by their practical application; and that
amongst the historic sciences not even the science
of religion is exempted from the common lot.
It also may be useful ; and had better be so, —
if any one is to have any use for it. It must make
itself useful to the man who has practical need of
its results and wishes to apply them — the mis-
sionary. He it is who, for the practical purposes
of the work to which he is called, requires an
applied science of religion; and Hartford Theo-

B I

2 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

logical Seminary may, I believe, justly claim to
be the first institution in the world which has
deliberately and consciously set to work to create
by the courses of lectures, of which this series is
the very humble beginning, an applied science of
religion.

How, then, will the applied science differ from
the pure science of religion? In one way it will
not differ: an applied science does not sit in judg-
ment upon the pure science on which it is based;
it accepts the truths which the pure science pre-
sents to all the world, and bases itself upon them.
The business of pure science is to discover facts;
that of the applied science is to use them. The
business of the science of religion is to discover
all the facts necessary if we are to understand the
growth and history of religion. The business of
the applied science is, in our case, to use the dis-
covered facts as a means of showing that Chris-
tianity is the highest manifestation of the religious
spirit.

In dealing with the applied science, then, we
recover a liberty which the pure science does not
enjoy. The science of religion is a historic
science. Its student looks back upon the past;

INTRODUCTION 3

and looks back upon it with a single purpose, that
of discovering what, as a matter of fact, did happen,
what was the order in which the events occurred.
In so looking back he may, and does, see many
things which he could wish had not occurred ; but
he has no power to alter them; he has no choice
but to record them; and his duty, his single duty,
is to ascertain the historic facts and to establish
the historic truth. With the applied science the
case is very different. There the student sets his
face to the future, no longer to the past. The
truths of pure science are the weapons placed in
his hand with which he is to conquer the world.
It is in the faith that the armour provided him by
science is sure and will not fail him that he addresses
himself to his chosen work. The implements are
set in his hands. The liberty is his to employ
them for what end he will. That liberty is a con-
sequence of the fact that the student's object no
longer is to ascertain the past, but to make the
future.

The business of the pure science is to ascertain
the facts and state the truth. To what use the
facts and truth are afterwards put, is a question
with which the pure science has nothing to do.

4 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

The same facts may be put to very dilTercnt uses:
from the same facts very different conclusions may
be drawn. The facts which the science of reli-
gion establishes may be used and are used for
different and for contradictory purposes. The man
who is agnostic or atheist uses them to support his
atheism or agnosticism; or even, if he is so un-
wise, to prove it. The man who has religion is
equally at liberty to use them in his support; and
if he rarely does that, at any rate he still more rarely
commits the mistake of imagining that the science
of religion proves the truth of his particular views
on the subject of religion. Indeed, his tendency is
rather in the opposite direction: he is unreasonably
uneasy and apt to have a disquieting alarm lest
the science of religion may really be a danger to
religion. This alarm may very naturally arise
when he discovers that to the scientific student one
religion is as another, and the question is indiffer-
ent whether there is any truth in any form. It is
very easy to jump from these facts to the erroneous
conclusion that science of religion is wholly in-
compatible with religious belief. And of course it
is quite human and perfectly intelligible that that
conclusion should be proclaimed aloud as correct

INTRODUCTION 5

and inevitable by the man who, being an atheist,
fights for what he feels to be the truth.

We must, therefore, once more insist upon the
simple fact that science of religion abstains neces-
sarily from assuming either that religion is true or
is not true. What it does assume is what no one
will deny, viz. that religion is a fact. Religious
beliefs may be right or they may be wrong: but
they exist. Therefore they can be studied, de-
scribed, classified, placed in order of development,
and treated as a branch of sociology and as one
department of the evolution of the world. And
all this can be done without once asking the ques-
tion whether religious belief is true and right and
good, or not. Whether it is pronounced true or
false by you or me, will not in the least shake the
fact that it has existed for thousands of years, that
it has had a history during that period, and that
that history may be written. We may have
doubts whether the institution of private property
is a good thing, or whether barter and exchange
are desirable proceedings. But we shall not doubt
that private property exists or that it may be ex-
changed. And we shall not imagine that the science
of political economy, which deals, among other

6 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

things with the production and exchange of wealth
which is private property, makes any pronounce-
ment whatever on the question whether private
property is or is not an institution which we ought to
support and beUeve in. The conclusions established
by the science of political economy are set forth be-
fore the whole world ; and men may use them for what
purpose they will. They may and do draw very
different inferences from them, even contradictory
inferences. But if they do, it is because they use
them for different ends or contradictory purposes.
And the fact that the communist or socialist uses
political economy to support his views no more
proves that socialism is the logical consequence of
political economy than the fact that the atheist
uses or misuses, for his own purposes, the conclu-
sions of the science of religion proves his inferences
to be the logical outcome of the science.

The science of religion deals essentially with the
one fact that religion has existed and does exist.
It is from that fact that the missionary will start;
and it is with men who do not question the fact
that he will have to do. The science of religion
seeks to trace the historic growth, the evolution of
religion; to establish what actually was, not to

INTRODUCTION 7

judge what ought to have been, — science knows
no ''ought," in that sense or rather in that tense,
the past tense. Its work is done, its last word has
been said, when it has demonstrated what was.
It is the heart which sighs to think what might have
been, and which puts on it a higher value than it
does on what actually came to pass. There is
then another order in which facts may be ranged
besides the chronological order in which histori-
cally they occurred; and that is the order of their
value. It is an order in which we do range facts, when-
ever we criticise them. It is the order in which we
range them, whenever we pass judgment on them.
Or, rather, passing judgment on them is placing them
in the order of their value. And the chronological
order of their occurrence is quite a different thing
from the order in which we rank them when we
judge them according to their value and importance.
It is, or rather it would be, quite absurd to say, in
the case of literature, or art, for instance, that the
two orders are identical. There it is obvious and
universally admitted that one period may reach a
higher level than another which in point of time is
later. The classical period is followed by a post-
classical period; culmination is followed by decline.

8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Now, this difference in point of the literary or
artistic value of two periods is as real and as funda-
mental as the time order or chronological relation
of the two periods. It would be patently ridiculous
for any ardent maintainer of the importance of dis-
tinguishing between good literature and bad, good
art and bad art, to say that the one period, being
good, must have been chronologically prior to the
other, because, from the point of art, it was better
than that other. Every one can see that. The
chronological order, the historic order, is one thing;
the order of literary value or artistic importance is
another. But if this is granted, and every one will
grant it, then it is also, and thereby, granted that
the historic order of events is not the same thing
as the order of their value, and is no guide to it.
Thus far I have illustrated these remarks by
reference to literary and artistic values. But I
need hardly say that I have been thinking really all
the time of religious values. If the student of
literature or of art surveys the history of art and
literature with the purpose of judging the value of
the works produced, the student of religion may
and must survey the history of religion with the
same purpose. If the one student is entitled, as he

INTRODUCTION 9

justly is entitled, to say that the difference between
the literary or artistic value of two periods is as real
and as fundamental as is their difference in the
order of time, then the student of religion is claim-
ing no exceptional or suspicious privilege for him-
self. He is claiming no privilege at all ; he is but
exercising the common rights of all students like
himself, when he points out that differences in
religious values are just as real and just as funda-
mental as the historic or chronological order itself.

The assignment of values, then, — be it the assign-
ment of the value of works of art, literature, or
religion, — is a proceeding which is not only possible
(as will be somewhat contemptuously admitted by
those who believe that evolution is progress, and that
there is no order of value distinct from the order of
history and chronological succession) ; the assign-
ment of value is not only permissible (as may be
admitted by those who believe, or for want of
thought fancy they believe, that the historic order
of events is the only order which can really exist),
it is absolutely inevitable. It is the concomitant or
rather an integral part of every act of perception.
Everything that we perceive is either dismissed from
attention because it is judged at the moment to have

lO COMPARATIVE RELIGION

no value, or, if it has value, attention is concen-
trated upon it.

From this point of view, then, it should be clear
that there is some deficiency in such a science as the
science of religion, which, by the very conditions
that determine its existence, is precluded from ever
raising the question of the value of any of the
religions with which it deals. Why does it volun-
tarily, deliberately, and of its own accord, rigidly
exclude the question whether religions have any
value — whether religion itself has any value ?
One answer there is to that question which once
would have been accepted as conclusive, viz. that
the object of science is truth. That answer deli-
cately implies that whether religion has any value is
an enquiry to which no truthful answer can be given.
The object of science is truth; therefore science
alone, with all modesty be it said, can attain truth.
Science will not ask the question — or, when it is
merciful, abstains from asking the question —
whether religion is true. So the reasonable and
truthful man must, on that point, necessarily be ag-
nostic : whether religion is true, he does not know.

This train of inferences follows — so far as it is
permitted illogical inferences to follow at all — from

INTRODUCTION II

the premise that the object of science is truth. Or,
rather, it follows from that premise as we should now
understand it, viz. that the object of historic science
is historic truth. That is the object of the science
of religion — to be true to the historic facts, to
discover and to state them accurately. On the
principle of the division of labour, or on the principle
of taking one thing at a time, it is obviously wise
that when we are endeavouring to discover the his-
toric sequence of events, we should confine our-
selves to that task and not suffer ourselves to be
distracted and diverted by other and totally differ-
ent considerations. The science of religion, there-
fore, is justified, in the opinion of all who are en-
titled to express an opinion, in steadfastly declining
to consider any other point than the historic order
of the facts with which it deals. But in so declining
to go beyond its self-appointed task of reconstituting
the historic order of events and tracing the evolu-
tion of religion, it does not, thereby, imply that it is
impossible to place them, or correctly place them,
in their order of value. To say that they have no
value would be just as absurd as to say that works
of literature or art have no literary or artistic value.
To say that it is difficult to assign their value may be

12 COMP-AJIATH-E RELIGION

true, but is no argument against, it is rather a stimu-
lus in favour of, making the attempt. And it is just
the order value, the relative value, of forms of religion
which is of absorbing interest to missionaries. It
is a valuation which is essential to what I have
already designated as the appUed science of religion.
Thus far in speaking of the distinction between
the historic order in which the various forms of art,
literature, and reUgion have occurred, and the order
of value in which the soul of every man who is sen-
sible either to art or to literature or to relioion
instinctively attempts to place them, I have neces-
sarily assumed the position of one who looks back-
ward over the past. It was impossible to compare
and contrast the order value with the historic order,
save by doing so. It was necessary- to point out
that the very same facts which can be arranged chro-
nologically and in the order of their evolution can
also be — and, as a matter of fact, by every man are
— arranged more or less roughly, more or less cor-
rectly, or incorrectly, in the order of their value. It
is now necessar}' for us to set our faces towards the
future. I say "necessar}*" for the simple reason
that the idea of '"value" carries with it a reference
to the future. If a thing has value, it is because we

INTRODUCTION 1 3

judge that it may produce some effect and serve
some purpose which we foresee, or at least surmise.
If, on looking back upon past histor}^, we pronounce
that an event had value, we do so because we see
that it served, or might have served, some end of
which we approve. Its value is relative in our eyes
to some end or purpose which was relatively future
to it. The objects which we aim at, the ends after
which we strive, are in the future. Those things
have value which may subserve our ends and help
us to attain our purposes. And our purposes, our
ends, and objects are in the future. There, there is
hope and freedom, room to work, the chance of
remedying the errors of the past, the opportunity to
make some forward strides and to help others on.

It is the end we aim at, the object we strive for,
the ideal we set before us, that gives value to what
we do, and to what has been done by us and others.
Now our ends, our objects, and our ideals are matters
of the will, on which the will is set, and not merely
matters of which we have intellectual apprehension.
They are not past events but future possibilities.
The con\iction that we can attain them or attain
toward them is not, when stated as a proposition,
a proposition that can be proved, as a statement

14 COMPARATIVE KKLUilON

referring to the past may be proved : but it is a
conviction which wc hold, or a conviction which
holds us, just as strongly as any conviction that we
have about any past event of history. The whole
action of mankind, every action that every man
performs, is based upon that conviction. It is the
basis of all that we do, of everything that is and has
been done by us and others. And it is Faith. In
that sign alone can the world be conquered.

When, then, the man of religion proposes by faith
to conquer the world, he is simply doing, wittingly
and in full consciousness of what he is doing, that
which every man does in his every action, even though
he may not know it. To make it a sneer or a re-
proach that religion is a mere matter of faith; to
imagine that there is any better, or indeed that there
is any other, ground of action, — is demonstrably
unreasonable. The basis of such notions is, of
course, the false idea that the man of sense acts upon
knowledge, and that the man who acts on faith is
not a sensible man. The error of such notions may
be exposed in a sentence. What knowledge have
we of the future? We have none. Absolutely
none. We expect that nature will prove uniform,
that causes will produce their effects. We believe

INTRODUCTION 1 5

the future will resemble, to some extent, the past.
But we have no knowledge of the future ; and such
belief as we have about it, like all other behef, —
whether it be belief in religion or in science, — is
simply faith. When, then, the man of science con-
sults the records of the past or the experiments of
the present for guidance as to what will or may be,
he is exhibiting his faith not in science, but in some
reality, in some real being, in which is no shadow of
turning. When the practical man uses the results
of pure science for some practical end, he is taking
them on faith and uses them in the further faith
that the end he aims at can be realised, and shall
by him be realised, if not in one way, then in another.
The missionary, then, who uses the results of the
science of religion, who seeks to benefit by an
applied science of religion, is but following in the
footsteps of the practical man, and using business
methods toward the end he is going to realise.

The end he is going to realise is to convert men to
Christianity. The faith in which he acts is that
Christianity is the highest form which religion can
take, the final form it shall take. As works of art
or literature may be classed either according to order
of history or order of value, so the works of the

l6 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

religious spirit may be classed, not only in chrono-
logical order, but also in order of religious value. I
am not aware that any proof can be given to show
that any given period of art or literature is better
than any other. The merits of Shakespeare or of
Homer may be pointed out ; and they may, or they
may not, when pointed out, be felt. If they are felt,
no proof is needed ; if they are not, no proof is pos-
sible. But they can be pointed out — by one who
feels them. And they can, be contrasted with the
work of other poets in which they are less conspicu-
ous. And the contrast may reveal the truth in a
way in which otherwise it could never have been
made plain.

I know no other way in which the relative values
of different forms of religion can become known or
be made known. You may have been tempted to
reflect, whilst I have been speaking, that, on the
principle I have laid down, there is no reason why
there should not be five hundred applied sciences,
or applications of the science, of religion, instead
of one ; for every one of the many forms of religion
may claim to apply the science of religion to its
own ends. To that I may reply first, that a priori
you would expect that every nation would set up

INTRODUCTION 1 7

its own literature as the highest ; but, as a matter of
fact, you find Shakespeare generally placed highest
amongst dramatists, Homer amongst epic poets.
You do not find the conception of literary merit
varying from nation to nation in such a way that
there are as many standards of value as there are
persons to apply them. You find that there tends
to be one standard. Next, since the different forms
of religion must be compared if their relative values
are to be ascertained, the method of the applied
science of religion must be the method of com-
parison. Whatever the outcome that is anticipated
from the employment of the applied science, it is
by the method of comparison that it must act. And
one indication of genuine faith is readiness to em-
ploy that method, and assured confidence in the
result of its employment. The missionary's life is
the best, because the most concrete example of the
practical working of the method of comparison;
and the outcome of the comparison which is made
by those amongst whom and for whom he works
makes itself felt in their hearts, their lives, and some-
times in their conversion. It is the best example,
because the value of a religion to be known must be
felt. But though it is the best because it is the

l8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

simplest, the most direct, and the most convincin*^,
it is not that which addresses itself primarily to the
reason, and it is not one which is produced by the
applied science of religion. It is not one which
can be produced by any science, pure or applied.
The object of the applied science of religion is to
enable the missionary himself to compare forms of
religion, incidentally in order that he may know
what by faith he feels, and without faith he could
not feel, viz. that Christianity is the highest form;
but still more in order that he may teach others, and
may have at his command the facts afforded by the
science of religion, wherewith to appeal, when
necessary, to the reason and intelligence as well as
to the hearts and feelings of those for whose salva-
tion he is labouring.

The time has happily gone by when the mere
idea of comparing Christianity with any other
religion would have been rejected with horror as
treasonous and treacherous. The fact that that
time has now gone by is in itself evidence of a
stronger faith in Christianity. What, if it was not
fear, at any rate presented the appearance of fear,
has been banished ; and we can and do, in the greater
faith that has been vouchsafed to us, look with con-

INTRODUCTION 1 9

fidence on the proposal to compare Christianity
with other rehgions. The truth cannot but gain
thereby, and we rest on Him who is the way and
the truth. We recognise fully and freely that com-
parison implies similarity, points of resemblance,
ay ! and even features of identity. And of that
admission much has been made — and more than
can be maintained. It has been pressed to mean
that all forms of religion, from the lowest to the
highest, are identical; that therefore there is noth-
ing more or other in the highest than in the lowest ;
and that in the lowest you see how barbarous is
religion and how unworthy of civilised man. Now,
that course of argument is open to one obvious ob-
jection which would be fatal to it, even if it were the
only objection, which it is not. That objection is
that whether we are using the method of compari-
son for the purpose of estimating the relative values
of different forms of religion; or whether we are
using the comparative method of science, with the
object of discovering and establishing facts, quite
apart from the value they may have for any pur-
pose they may be put to when they have been
established; in either case, comparison is only
applied, and can only be applied to things which,

20 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

though they rcscml)lc one another, also differ from
one another. It is because they differ, at first sight,
that the discovery of their resemblance is impor-
tant. And it is on that aspect of the truth that the
comparative method of science dwells. Com-
parative philology, for instance, devotes itself to
establishing resemblances between, say, the Indo-
European languages, which for long were not sus-
pected to bear any likeness to one another or to have
any connection with each other. Those resem-
blances are examined more and more closely, are
stated with more and more precision, until they are
stated as laws of comparative philology, and recog-
nised as laws of science to which there are no excep-
tions. Yet when the resemblances have been
worked out to the furthest detail, no one imagines
that Greek and Sanskrit are the same language, or
that the differences between them are negligible. It
is then surprising that any student of comparative
religion should imagine that the discovery or the
recognition of points of likeness between the reli-
gions compared will ever result in proving that the
differences between them are negligible or non-
existent. Such an inference is unscientific, and
it has only to be stated to show that the student

INTRODUCTION 21

of comparative religion is but exercising a right
common to all students of all sciences, when he
claims that points of difference cannot be over-
looked or thrust aside.

If, then, the student of the science of religion
directs his attention primarily to the discovery of
resemblances between religions which at first sight
bear no more resemblance to one another than
Greek did to the Celtic tongues; if the compara-
tive method of science dwells upon the fact that
things which differ from one another may also re-
semble one another, and that their resemblances may
be stated in the form of scientific laws, — there is
still another aspect of the truth, and it is that between
things which resemble one another there are also
differences. And the jury of the world will ulti-
mately demand to know the truth and the whole
truth.

Now, to get not only at the truth, but at the whole
of the truth, is precisely the business of the applied
science of religion, and is the very object of that
which, in order to distinguish it from the compara-
tive method of science, I have called the method
of comparison. For the purposes of fair compari-
son not only must the resemblances, which the

22 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

comparative method of science dwells on, be
taken into account, but the dilTerences, also, must be
weighed. And it is the business of the method of
comparison, the object of the applied science of
religion, to do both things. Neither of the two can
be dispensed with; neither is more important than
the other; but for the practical purposes of the
missionary it is important to begin with the resem-
blances ; and on grounds of logic and of theory, the
resemblances must be first established, if the im-
portance, nay ! the decisive value, of the differences
is to go home to the hearts and minds of the mis-
sionary's hearers. The resemblances are there and
are to be studied ultimately in order to bring out
the differences and make them stand forth so plainly
as to make choice between the higher form of reli-
gion and the lower easy, simply because the differ-
ence is so manifest. Now, the missionary's hearer
could not know, much less appreciate, the difference,
the superiority of Christianity, as long as Chris-
tianity was unknown to him. And it is equally
manifest, though it has never been officially recog-
nised until now and by the Hartford Theological
Seminary, that neither can the missionary ade-
quately set forth the superiority of Christianity to

INTRODUCTION 23

the lower forms of religion, unless he knows some-
thing about them and about the points in which their
inferiority consists. Hitherto he has had to learn
that for himself, as he went on, and, as it were, by
rule of thumb. But, on business principles, economy
of labour and efficiency in work will be better se-
cured if he is taught before he goes out, and is
taught on scientific methods. What he has to
learn is the resemblances between the various forms
of religion, the differences between them, and the
relative values of those differences.

It may perhaps be asked. Why should those dif-
ferences exist ? And if the question should be put,
I am inclined to say that to give the answer is beyond
the scope of the applied science of religion. The
method of comparison assumes that the differences
do exist, and it cannot begin to be employed unless
and until they exist. They are and must be taken
for granted, at any rate by the applied science of
religion, and if the method of comparison is to be
set to work. Indeed, if we may take the principle
of evolution to be the differentiation of the homo-
geneous, we may go further and say that the whole
theory of evolution, and not merely a particular
historic science, such as the science of reliojion,

24 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

postulates differentiation and the principle of differ-
ence, and does not explain it, — evolution cannot
start, the homogeneous cannot be other than homo-
geneous, until the principle of difference and the
power of differentiation is assumed.

That the science of religion at the end leaves
untouched those differences between religions which
it recognised at the beginning, is a point on which I
insisted, as against those who unwarrantably pro-
claim the science to have demonstrated that all
religions alike are barbarisms or survivals of bar-
barism. It is well, therefore, to bear that fact in mind
when attempts are made to explain the existence of
the differences by postulating a period when they
were non-existent. That postulate may take form
in the supposition that originally the true religion
alone existed, and that the differences arose later.
That is a supposition which has been made by more
than one people, and in more ages than one. It
carries with it the consequence that the history —
it would be difficult to call it the evolution and
impossible to call it the progress — of religion has
been one of degradation generally. Owing, however,
to the far-reaching and deep-penetrating influence
of the theory of evolution, it has of late grown cus-

INTRODUCTION 25

tomary to assume that the movement, the course of
religious history, has been in the opposite direction ;
and that it has moved upwards from the lowest forms
of religion known to us, or from some form analogous
to the lowest known forms, through the higher to
the highest. This second theory, however different
in its arrangement of the facts from the Golden Age
theory first alluded to, is still fundamentally in
agreement with it, inasmuch as it also assumes that
the differences exhibited later in the history of
religion at first were non-existent. Both theories
assume the existence of the originally homogeneous,
but they disagree as to the nature of the differences
which supervened, and also as to the nature of the
originally homogeneous.

I wish therefore to call attention to the simple
truth that the facts at the disposal of the science of
religion neither enable nor warrant us to decide
between these two views. If we were to come to a
decision on the point, we should have to travel far
beyond the confines of the science of religion, or
the widest bounds of the theory of evolution, and
enquire why there should be error as well as truth —
or, to put the matter very differently, why there
should be truth at all. But if we started travelling

26 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

on that enquiry, we should not get back in time for
this course of lectures. Fortunately it is not neces-
sary to take a ticket for that journey — perhaps not
possible to secure a return ticket. We have only
to recognise that the science of religion confines
itself to constating and tracing the differences, and
does not attempt to explain why they should exist ;
while the applied science of religion is concerned
with the practical business of bringing home the
difference between Christianity and other forms of
religion to the hearts of those whose salvation may
turn on whether the missionary has been properly
equipped for his task.

If, now, I announce that for the student of the
applied science it is advisable that he should turn
his attention in the first place to the lowest forms of
religion, the announcement need not be taken to
mean that a man cannot become a student of the
science of religion, whether pure or applied, unless
he assumes that the lowest is the most primitive
form. The science of religion, as it pushes its
enquiries, may possibly come across — may even
already have come across — the lowest form to
which it is possible for man to descend. But
whether that form is the most primitive as well as

INTRODLXTION 27

the lowest, — still more, whether it is the most
primitive because it is the lowest, — will be ques-
tions which will not admit of being settled offhand.
And in the meantime we are not called upon to
answer them in the affirmative as a sine qua non of
being admitted students of the science.

The reason for beginning with the lowest forms is
— as is proper in a practical science — a practical
one. As I have already said, if the missionary is to
succeed in his work, he must know and teach the
difference and the value of the dift'erence between
Christianity and other religions. But difference
implies similarity : we cannot specify the points of
difference between two things without presupposing
some similarity between them, — at any rate suffi-
cient similarity to make a comparison of them profit-
able. Now, the similarity between the higher forms
of religion is such that there is no need to demon-
strate it, in order to justify our proceeding to dwell
upon the differences. But the similarity between the
higher and the lower forms is far from being thus
ob\ious. Indeed, in some cases, for example in the
case of some Australian tribes, there is alleged, by
some students of the science of religion, to be such
a total absence of similarity that we are entitled or

28 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

compelled to recognise that however liberally, or
loosely, we relax our definition of religion, we must
pronounce those tribes to be without religion. The
allegation thus made, the question thus raised,
evidently is of practical importance for the practical
purposes of the missionary. Where some resem-
blances exist between the higher and the lower
forms of religion, those resemblances may be made,
and should be made, the ground from which the mis-
sionary should proceed to point out by contrast the
differences, and so to set forth the higher value of
Christianity. But if no such resemblances should
exist, they cannot be made a basis for the mission-
ary's work. Without proceeding in this introduc-
tory lecture to discuss the question whether there are
any tribes whatever that are without religion, I may
point out that religion, in all its forms, is, in one of
its aspects, a yearning and aspiration after God, a
search after Him, peradventure we may find Him.
And if it be alleged that in some cases there is no
search after Him, — tha^ amongst civilised men,
amongst our own ac^^aaintances, there is in some
cases no search ar I no aspiration, and that therefore
among the r jre backward peoples of the earth
there may uso be tribes to whom the very idea of

INTRODUCTION 29

such a search is unknown, — then we must bear in
mind that a search, after any object whatever, may
be dropped, may even be totally abandoned; and
yet the heart may yearn after that which it is per-
suaded — or, it may be, is deluded into thinking —
it can never find. Perhaps, however, that way of
putting it may be objected to, on the ground that it
is a petitio principii and assumes the very fact it
is necessary to prove, viz. that the lowest tribes that
are or can be known to us have made the search
and given it up, whereas the contention is that they
have never made the search. That contention, I
will remark in passing, is one which never can be
proved. But to those who consider that it is prob-
able in itself, and that it is a necessary stage in the
evolution of belief, I would point out that every
search is made in hope — or, it may be, in fear —
that search presupposes hope and fear. Vague, of
course, the hope may be; scarce conscious, if con-
scious at all, of what is hoped. But without hope,
until there are some dim stirrings, however vague,
search is unconceivable, and it is in and by the pro-
cess of search that the hope becomes stronger and
the object sought more definite to view. Now,
inasmuch as it is doubtful whether any tribe of

30 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

people is without religion, it may reasonably be
held that the vast majority, at any rate, of the peoples
of the earth have proceeded from hope to aspiration
and to search ; and if there should be found a tribe
which had not yet entered consciously on the search,
the reasonable conclusion would be not that it is
exempted from the laws which we see exemplified
in all other peoples, but that it is tending to obey
the same laws and is starting from the same point
as they, — that hope which is the desire of all na-
tions and has been made manifest in the Son of
Man.

Whatever be the earliest history of that hope,
whatever was its nature and course in prehistoric
times, it has been worked out in history in many
directions, under the influence of many errors, into
many forms of religion. But in them all we feel
that there is the same striving, the same yearning;
and we see it with the same pity and distress as we
may observe the distorted motions of the man who,
though partially paralysed, yet strives to walk, and
move to the place where he would be. It is with
these attempts to walk, in the hope of giving help to
them who need it, that we who are here to-day are
concerned. We must study them, if we are to

INTRODUCTION 3 1

understand them and to remedy them. And there
is no understanding them, unless we recognise that
in them all there is the striving and yearning after
God, which may be cruelly distorted, but is always
there.

It so happens that there has been great readiness
on the part of students of the science of religion to
recognise that belief in the continued existence of
the soul after the death of the body has compara-
tive universality amongst the lower races of man-
kind. Their yearning after continued existence
developes into hope of a future life ; and the hope,
or fear, takes many forms : the continued existence
may or may not be on this earth; it may or may
not take the shape of a belief in the transmigration
of souls ; it sometimes does, and sometimes does not,
lead to belief in the judgment of the dead and
future punishments and rewards; it may or may
not postulate the immortality of the soul; it may
shrink to comparative, if not absolute, unimpor-
tance; or it may be dreaded and denounced by
philosophy and even by religion. But whether
dreaded or delighted in, whether developed by re-
ligion or denounced, the tendency to the belief is
there — universal among mankind and ineradicable.

32 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

The parallel, then, between this belief and the
belief or tendency to believe in God is close and in-
structive; and I shall devote my next lecture there-
fore to the belief in a future life among the primi-
tive races of mankind. That belief manifests
itself, as I shall hope to shov;^, from the beginning, in
a yearning hope for the continued existence of the
beloved ones who have been taken from us by death,
as well as in dread of the ghosts of those who during
their life were feared. But in either case what it
postulates and points to is man living in community
with man. It implies society; and there again is
parallel to religion. It is with the hopes and fears
of the community as such that religion has to do:
and it is from that point of view that I shall start
when I come to deal with the subject of magic,
and its resemblance to and difference from religion.
Its resemblance is not accidental and the difference
is not arbitrary: the difference is that between
social and anti-social purposes. That difference,
if borne in mind, may give us the clue to the real
nature of fetichism, — a subject which will re-
quire a lecture to itself. I shall then proceed to a
topic which has been ignored to a surprising extent
by the science of religion; that is, the subject of

INTRODUCTION 33

prayer : and the light which is to be derived thence
will, I trust, give fresh illumination to the meaning
of sacrifice. The relation of religion to morality
will then fall to be considered ; and my final lecture
will deal with the place of Christianity in the evo-
lution of religion.

IMMORTALITY

The missionary, like any other practical man,
requires to know what science can teach him about
the material on which he has to work. So far as is
possible, he should know what materials are sound
and can be used with safety in his constructive work,
and what must be thrown aside, what must be
destroyed, if his work is to escape dry-rot and to
stand as a permanent edifice. He should be able to
feel confidence, for instance, not merely that magic
and fetichism are the negation of religion, but that
in teaching that fact he has to support him the
evidence collected by the science of religion; and
he should have that evidence placed at his disposal
for effective use, if need be.

It may be also that amongst much unsound ma-
terial he will find some that is sound, that may be
used, and that he cannot afford to cast away. He
has to work upon our common humanity, upon the
humanity common to him and his hearers. He
has to remember that no man and no community of

34

IMMORTALITY 35

men ever is or has been or ever can be excluded
from the search after God. And his duty, his
chosen duty, is to help them in that search, and as
far as may be to make the way clear for them, and
to guide their feet in the right path. He will find
that they have attempted to make paths for them-
selves ; and it is not impossible that he will find that
some of those paths for some distance do go in the
right direction; that some of their beliefs have in
them an element of truth, or a groping after truth
which, rightly understood, may be made to lead to
Christianity. It is with one of those beliefs — the
belief in immortahty — that I shall deal in this
lecture.

It is a fact worthy of notice that the belief in im-
mortality fills, I will not say a more important, but
a more prominent, place in the hearts and hopes of
uncivilised than of civilised man; and it is also a
fact worthy of notice that among primitive men the
belief in immortality is much less intimately bound
up with religion than it comes to be at a later period
of evolution. The two facts are probably not wholly
without relation to one another. So long as the
belief in immortality luxuriates and grows wild, so
to speak, untrained and unrestrained by religion, it

36 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

developcs as the fancy wills, and lives by flattering the
fancy. When, however, the relations of a future life
to morality and religion come to be realised, when
the conception of the next world comes to be moral-
ised, then it becomes the subject of fear as well as
of hope; and the fancy loses much of the freedom
with which it tricked out the pictures that once it
drew, purely according to its own sweet liking, of a
future state. On the one hand, the guilty mind
prefers not to dwell upon the day of reckoning, so
long as it can stave off the idea; and it may suc-
ceed more or less in putting it on one side until
the proximity of death makes the idea insistent.
Thus the mind more or less deliberately dismisses
the future life from attention. On the other hand,
religion itself insists persistently on the fact that you
have your duty here and now in this world to per-
form, and that the rest, the future consequences,
you must leave to God. Thus, once more, and this
time not from unworthy motives, attention is di-
rected to this life rather than to the next ; and it is
this point that is critical for the fate both of the
belief in immortality and of religion itself. At this
point, religion may, as in the case of Buddhism it
actually has done, formally give up and disavow

IMMORTALITY 37

belief in immortality. And in that case it sows the
seed of its own destruction. Or it may recognise
that the immortality of the soul is postulated by and
essential to morality and religion alike. And in that
case, even in that case alone, is religion in a position
to provide a logical basis for morality and to place
the natural desire for a future life on a firmer basis
than the untutored fancy of primitive man could
find for it.

It is then with primitive man or with the lower
races that we will begin, and with "the comparative
universality of their belief in the continued existence
of the soul after the death of the body" (Tylor,
Primitive Culture, II, i). Now, the classical theory
of this belief is that set forth by Professor Tylor
in his Primitive Culture. Whence does primitive
man get his idea that the soul continues to exist
after the death of the body ? the answer given is, in
the first place, from the fact that man dreams. He
dreams of distant scenes that he visits in his sleep ;
it is clear, from the evidence of those who saw his
sleeping body, that his body certainly did not travel ;
therefore he or his soul must be separable from the
body and must have travelled whilst his body lay
unmoving and unmoved. But he also dreams of

38 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

those who arc now dead, and whose bodies he knows,
it may be, to have been incinerated. The explana-
tion then is obvious that they, too, or their souls, are
separable from their bodies; and the fact that they
survive death and the destruction of the body is
demonstrated by their appearance in his dreams.
About the reality of their appearance in his dreams
he has no more doubt than he has about the reality of
what he himself does and suffers in his dreams. If,
however, the dead appeared only in his dreams, their
existence after death might seem to be limited to
the dream-time. But as a matter of fact they ap-
pear to him in his waking moments also : ghosts are
at least as famihar to the savage as to the civilised
man ; and thus the evidence of his dreams, which
first suggested his belief, is confirmed by the evidence
of his senses.

Thus the belief in the continued existence of the
soul after the death of the body is traced back to
the action of dreams and waking hallucinations.
Now, it is inevitable that the inference should be
drawn that the belief in immortality has thus been
tracked to its basis. And it is inevitable that those
who start with an inclination to regard the belief as
palpably absurd should welcome this exhibition of

IMMORTALITY 39

its evolution as proof conclusive that the belief
could only have originated in and can only impose
upon immature minds. To that doubtless it is a
perfectly sound reply to say that the origin of a belief
is one thing and its validity quite another. The
way in which we came to hold the belief is a matter
of historical investigation, and undoubtedly may
form a very fascinating enquiry. But the question
whether the belief is true is a question which has to
be considered, no matter how I got it, just as the
question whether I am committing a trespass or not
in being on a piece of ground cannot be setded by
any amount of explaining how I got there. Or,
to put it in another way, the very risky path by which
I have scrambled up a cliff does not make the top
any the less safe when I have got there.

But though it is perfectly logical to insist on the
distinction between the origin and the validity of any
belief, and to refuse to question or doubt the validity
of the belief in immortality merely because of the
origin ascribed to it by authorities on primitive cul-
ture,— -that is no reason why we should not examine
the origin suggested for it, to see whether it is a satis-
factory origin. And that is what I propose now to do.
I wish to suggest first that belief in the appearance of

40 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

the dead, whether to the dreamer or the ghost-seer,
is an intellectual belief as to what occurs as a mat-
ter of fact ; and next that thereby it is distinguished
from the desire for immortality which manifests it-
self with comparative universality amongst the lower
races.

Now, that the appearance of the dead, whether to
the waking or the sleeping eye, is suflficient to start
the intellectual belief will be admitted alike by those
who do and those who do not hold that it is suffi-
cient logically to warrant the belief. But to say that
it starts the desire to see him or her whom we have
lost, would be ridiculous. On the contrary, it would
be much nearer the truth to say that it is the longing
and the desire to see, once again, the loved one, that
sets the mind a-dreaming, and first gives to the heart
hope. The fact that, were there no desire for the
continuance of life after the death of the body, the
belief would never have caught on — that it either
would never have arisen or w^ould have soon ceased
to exist — is shown by the simple consideration that
only where the desire for the continuance of life
after death dies down does the belief in immortality
tend to wane. If any further evidence of that is
required it may be found in the teaching of those

IMMORTALITY 4I

forms of philosophy and religion which endeavour
to dispense with the belief in immortality, for they
all recognise and indeed proclaim that they are based
on the denial of the desire and the will to live. If,
and only if — as, and only as — the desire to live,
here and hereafter, can be suppressed, can the be-
lief in immortality be eradicated. The basis of the
belief is the desire for continued existence; and
that is why the attempt to trace the origin of the be-
lief in immortality back to the belief in dreams and
apparitions is one which is not perfectly satisfactory ;
it leaves out of account the desire without which the
belief would not be and is not operative.

But though it leaves out an element which is at
least as important as any element it includes, it
would be an error to take no account of what it does
contribute. It would be an error of this kind if we
closed our eyes to the fact that what first arrests
the attention of man, in the lower stages of his evolu-
tion, is the survival of others than himself. That
is the belief which first manifests itself in his heart
and mind ; and what first reveals it to him is the ap-
pearance of the dead to his sleeping or his waking
eye. He does not first hope or believe that he him-
self will survive the death of the body and then go

42 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

on lo infer lliat therefore others also will similarly sur-
vive. On the contrary, it is the appearance of others
in his sleeping or waking moments that first gives
him the idea; and it is only later and on reflection
that it occurs to him that he also will have, or be, a
ghost.

But though we must recognise the intellectual ele-
ment in the belief and the intellectual processes
which are involved in the belief, we must also take
into account the emotional element, the element of
desire. And first we should notice that the desire is
not a selfish or self-regarding desire; it is the longing
for one loved and lost, of the mother for her child,
or of the child for its mother. It is desire of that
kind which gives to dreams and apparitions their
emotional value, without which they would have little
significance and no spiritual importance. That is
the direction in which we must look for the reason
why, on the one hand, belief in the continuation of
existence after death seems at first to have no con-
nection with religion, while, on the other hand, the
connection is ultimately shown by the evolution of
belief to be so intimate that neither can attain its
proper development without the other.

Dreams are occasions on which the longing for

IMMORTALITY

43

one loved and lost manifests itself , but they are not the
cause or the origin of the affection and the longing.
But dreams are not exclusively, specially, or even
usually the domain in which religion plays a part.
Hence the visions of the night, in which the memory
of the departed and the craving for reunion with them
are manifested, bear no necessary reference to reli-
gion ; and it is therefore possible, and prima facie
plausible, to maintain that the belief in the immor-
tality of the soul has its origin in a centre quite dis-
tinct from the sphere of religion, and that it is only
very slowly, if at all, that the belief in immortality
comes to be incorporated with religion. On the other
hand, the very craving for reunion or continued com-
munion with those who are felt not to be lost but gone
before, is itself the feeling which is, not the base,
but at the base, of religion. In the lowest forms
to which religion can be reduced, or in which it
manifests itself, religion is a bond of community;
it manifests itself externally in joint acts of worship,
internally in the feeling that the worshippers are
bound together by it and united with the object of
their worship. This feeling of communion is not a
mere article of intellectual belief, nor is it imposed
upon the members ; it is what they themselves desire.

44 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Hoffding slates the trulli when he says that in its
most rudimentary form we encounter "rehgion under
the guise of desire"; but in saying so he omits the
essence of the truth, that essence without which
the truth that he partially enunciates may become
wholly misleading, — he omits to say, and I think he
fails to see, that the desire which alone can claim to
be considered as religious is the desire of the com-
munity, not of the individual as such, and the desire
of the community as united in common worship. The
idea of religion as a bond of spiritual communion is
implicit from the first, even though a long process
of evolution be necessary to disentangle it and set it
forth self-consciously. Now, it is precisely this spir-
itual communion of which man becomes conscious
in his craving after reunion or continued communion
with those who have departed this life. And it is
with the history of his attempts to harmonise this
desire with what he knows and demands of the
universe otherwise, that we are here and now con-
cerned.

So strong is that desire, so inconceivable is the
idea that death ends all, and divorces from us forever
those we have loved and lost awhile, that the lower
races of mankind have been pretty generally driven

IMMORTALITY

45

to the conclusion that death is a mistake or due to a
mistake. It is widely held that there is no such
thing as a natural death. Men do of course die, they
may be killed ; but it is not an ordinance of nature that
a man must be killed ; and, if he is killed, his death
is not natural. So strong is this feeling that when a
man dies and his death is not obviously a case of
murder, the inference which the savage prefers to
draw is that the death is really a case of murder,
but that the murder has been worked by witchcraft
or magic. Amongst the Australian black fellows, as
we are told by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "no
such thing as natural death is realised by the native ;
a man who dies has of necessity been killed by some
other man or perhaps even by a woman, and sooner
or later that man or woman will be attacked; " con-
sequently, ''in very many cases there takes place
what the white man, not seeing beneath the surface,
not unnaturally describes as secret murder; but in
reality . . . every case of such secret murder, when
one or more men stealthily stalk their prey with the
object of killing him, is in reality the exacting of a
life for a life, the accused person being indicated by
the so-called medicine man as one who has brought
about the death of another man by magic, and whose

46 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

life must therefore be forfeited" {Native Tribes of
Central Australia, p. 48).

What underHcs this idea that by man alone is
death brought into the world is that death is un-
natural and is no part of the original design of things.
When the fact comes to be recognised undeniably
that deaths not caused by human agency do take
place, then the fact requires explanation; and the
explanation on which primitive races, quite indepen-
dently of each other, hit is that as death was no part of
the original design of things, its introduction was due
to accident or mistake. Either men were originally
exempt from death, or they were intended to be
exempt. If they were intended to be exempt, then
the inference drawn is that the intention was frus-
trated by the carelessness of the agent intrusted with
the duty of making men deathless. If they were
originally exempt from death, then the loss of the
exemption has to be accounted for. And in either
case the explanation takes the form of a narrative
which relates how the mistake took place or what
event it was that caused the loss of the exemption.
I need not quote examples of either class of narrative.
What I wish to do is to emphasise the fact that by
primitive man death is felt to be inconsistent with the

IMMORTALITY 47

scheme of things. First, therefore, he denies that
it can come in the course of nature, though he admits
that it may be procured by the wicked man in the
way of murder or magic. And it is at this stage that
his hope of reunion with those loved and lost scarcely
stretches beyond the prospect of their return to this
world. Evidence of this stage is found partly in tales
such as those told of the mother who returns to revisit
her child, or of persons restored to Hfe. Stories of
this latter kind come from Tasmania, Australia, and
Samoa, amongst other places, and are found amongst
the Eskimo and American Indians, as well as
amongst the Fjorts (J. A. MacCuUough, The Child-
hood of Fiction, ch. IV). Even more direct evi-
dence of the emotion which prompts these stories is
afforded by the Ho dirge, quoted by Professor Tylor

(P. c, II, 32, 33):-

"We never scolded you; never wronged you;
Come to us back !
We ever loved and cherished you ; and have lived long together
Under the same roof;
Desert it not now !
The rainy nights and the cold blowing days are coming on;

Do not wander here !
Do not stand by the burnt ashes; come to us again !
You cannot find shelter under the peepul, when the rain comes
down,

48 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

The saul will not shield you from the cold bitter wind.

Come to your home !
It is swept for you and clean; and we are there who loved you

ever ;
And there is rice put for you and water;

Come home, come home, come to us again ! "

In these verses it is evident that the death of the
body is recognised as a fact. It is even more mani-
fest that the death of the body is put aside as weigh-
ing for naught against the absolute conviction that
the loved one still exists. But reunion is sought in
this world; another world is not yet thought of.
The next world has not yet been called into existence
to redress the sorrows and the sufferings of this life.
Where the discovery of that solution has not been
made, the human mind seeks such consolation as
may be found elsewhere. If the aspiration, "come
to us, come to us again," can fmd no other realisation,
it welcomes the reappearance of the lost one in an-
other form. In Australia, amongst the Euahlayi tribe,
the mother who has lost her baby or her young child
may yet believe that it is restored to her and born
again in the form of another child. In West Africa,
according to Miss Kingsley, "the new babies as they
arrived in the family were shown a selection of small
articles belonging to deceased members whose souls

IMMORTALITY 49

were still absent, — the thing the child caught hold
of identified him. ' Why, he's Uncle John ; see !
he knows his own pipe ; ' or ' That's Cousin Emma ;
see! she knows her market calabash;' and so on.'*
But it is not only amongst Australian black fellows
or West African negroes that the attempt is made
to extract consolation for death from the speculation
that we die only to be reborn in this world. The
theory of rebirth is put forward by a distinguished
student of Hegel — Dr. McTaggart — in a work
entitled Some Dogmas of Religion. It is admitted
by Dr. McTaggart to be true that we have no memory
whatever of our previous stages of existence ; but he
declares, "we may say that, in spite of the loss of
memory, it is the same person who lives in the suc-
cessive lives" (p. 130); and he appears to find the
same consolation as his remote forefathers did in
looking forward to a future stage of existence in
which he will have no more memory of his present
existence, and no more reason to believe in it, than
he now has memory of, or reason to believe in, his
preexistence. "It is certain," he says, "that in
this life we remember no previous lives," and he
accepts the position that it is equally certain we shall
have in our next life absolutely no memory of our

E

50 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

present existence. That, of course, distinguishes
Dr. McTaggart from the West African Uncle John
who, when he is reborn, at any rate "knows his own
pipe."

The human mind, as I have said, seeks such con-
solation as it may find in the doctrine of rebirth.
It fmds evidence of rebirth either in the behaviour
of the new-born child or in its resemblance to de-
ceased relations. But it also comes to the conclu-
sion that the reincarnation may be in animal form.
Whether that conclusion is suggested by the strangely
human expression in the eyes of some animals, or
whether it is based upon the belief in the power of
transformation, need not be discussed. It is be-
yond doubt that transformation is believed in : the
Cherokee Indian sings a verse to the effect that he be-
comes a real wolf; and "after stating that he has
become a real wolf, the songster utters a prolonged
howl, and paws the ground like a wolf with his feet"
(Frazer, Kingship, p. 71). Indeed, identity may be
attained or manifested without any process of trans-
formation; in Australia, amongst the Dieri tribe,
the head man of a totem consisting of a particular
sort of a seed is spoken of by his people as being the
plant itself which yields the seed {ib., p. 109).

IMMORTALITY 5 1

Where such beliefs are prevalent, the doctrine of the
reincarnation of the soul in animal form will obvi-
ously arise at the stage of evolution which we are
now discussing, that is to say when the soul is not
yet supposed to depart to another world, and must
therefore manifest itself in this world in one way
or another, if not in human shape, then in animal
form. In the form of what animal the deceased will
be reincarnated is a question which will be an-
swered in different ways. Purely fortuitous circum-
stances may lead to particular animals being con-
sidered to be the reincarnation of the deceased.
Or the fact that the deceased has a particular ani-
mal for totem may lead the survivors to expect his
reappearance in the form of that particular animal.
The one fact of importance for our present purpose
is that at its origin the belief in animal reincarnation
had no necessary connection with the theory of
future punishments and rewards. At the stage of
evolution in which the belief in transmigration arose
many animals were the object of genuine respect
because of the virtues of courage, etc., which were
manifested by them ; or because of the position they
occupied as totems. Consequently no loss of status
was involved when the soul transmigrated from a

52 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

human lo an animal form. No notion of punish-
ment was involved in the belief.

The doctrines of reincarnation and transmigration
belong to a stage in the evolution of belief, or to a
system of thought, in which the conviction that the
death of the body docs not entail the destruction of
the soul is undoubted, but from which the concep-
tion, indeed the very idea, of another world than this
is excluded. That conception begins to manifest
itself where ancestor worship establishes itself ; but
the manifestation is incomplete. Deceased chief-
tains and heroes, who have been benefactors to the
tribe, are remembered; and the good they did is
remembered also. They are themselves remembered
as the doers of good ; and their spirits are naturally
conceived as continuing to be benevolent, or ready
to confer benefits when properly approached. But
thus envisaged, they are seen rather in their rela-
tion to the living than in their relation to each other.
It is their assistance in this world that is sought;
their condition in the next world is of less practical
importance and therefore provokes less of speculation,
in the first instance. But when speculation is
provoked, it proves ultimately fatal to ancestor wor-
ship.

IMMORTALITY 53

First, it may lead to the question of the relation
of the spirits of the deceased benefactors to the god
or gods of the community. There will be a tendency
to blur the distinction between the god and his
worshippers, if any of the worshippers come to be
regarded as being after death spirits from whom
aid may be invoked and to whom offerings must
be made. And if the distinction ceases after death,
it is difficult and sometimes impossible to maintain
it during life; an emperor who is to be deified after
death may find his deification beginning before his
death. Belief in such deification may be accepted
by some members of the community. Others
will regard it as proof that religion is naught; and
yet others will be driven to seek for a form of religion
which affords no place for such deifications, but main-
tains explicitly that distinction between a god and
his worshippers which is present in the most rudi-
mentary forms of religion.

But though the tendency of ancestor worship
is to run this course and to pass in this way out of
the evolution of religion, it may be arrested at the
very outset, if the religious spirit is, as it has been
in one case at least, strong enough to stand against
it at the beginning. Thus, amongst the Jews there

54 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

was a tendency to ancestor worship, as is shown
by the fact of its prohibition. But it was stamped
out ; and it was stamped out so effectually that belief
in the continued existence of the soul after death
ceased for long to have any practical influence.
"Generally speaking, the Hebrews regarded the
grave as the final end of all sentient and intelligent
existence, 'the land where all things are forgotten'"
(Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Sheol). "In
death," the Psalmist says to the Lord, "there is no
remembrance of thee : in Sheol who shall give thee
thanks?" "Shall they that are deceased arise and
praise thee? Shall thy loving-kindness be declared
in the grave?" or "thy righteousness in the land of
forgetfulness?" Thus the Sheol of the Old Testa-
ment remains to testify to the view taken of the state
of the dead by a people amongst whom the worship
of ancestors was arrested at the outset. Amongst
such a people the dead are supposed simply to con-
tinue in the next world as they left this: "in Sheol
the kings of the nations have their thrones, and the
mighty their weapons of war," just as in Virgil
the ghost of Deiphobus still shows the ghastly
wounds by which he perished (Jevons, History of
Religion, p. 301).

IMMORTALITY 55

This continuation theory, the view that the dead
continue in the next world as they left this, means
that, to the people who entertain it, the dead are
merely a memory. It is forbidden to think of them
as doing anything, as affecting the living in any way.
They are conceived as powerless to gratify the wishes
of the living, or to thwart them. Where the Lord
God is a jealous God, religion cannot tolerate the
idea that any other spirit should be conceived as
usurping His functions, still less that such spirits
should receive the offerings and the prayers which
are the due of Him alone. But though the dead are
thus reduced to a mere memory, the memory itself
does not and cannot die. Accordingly the dead,
or rather those whose bodies are dead, continue to
live. But, as they exercise no action in, or control
over, the world of the living, their place of abode
comes to be regarded as another world, to which
they are confined. Speculation, therefore, where
speculation is made, as to the case of the inhabitants
of this other world, must take the direction of en-
quiring as to their fate. Where speculation is not
made, the dead are conceived merely to continue to
be as they are remembered to have been in this
life. But, if there is to be room for any speculation

56 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

at all, there must be assumed to be some diversity
in their fate, and therefore some reason, intelligible
to man, for that diversity. That is a conclusion to
which tribes attain who have apparently gone through
no period of ancestor worship, — indeed, ancestor
worship only impedes or defers the attainment of
that conclusion. The diversity of fate could only
consist in the difference between being where you
would be and being where you would not. But
the reasons for that diversity may be very different
amongst different peoples. First, where religion
is at its lowest or is in its least developed form, the
gods are not the cause of the diversity nor do they
seem concerned in it. Such diversity as there is
seems in its simplest form merely to be a continuance
of the social distinctions which prevail among the
living : the high chieftains rest in a calm, plenteous,
sunny land in the sky; while ''all Indians of low
degree go deep down under the earth to the land of
Chay-her, with its poor houses and no salmon and
no deer, and blankets so small and thin, that when
the dead are buried the friends often bury blankets
with them" (Tylor, P. C, II, 85). Elsewhere, it
is not social distinctions, but moral, that make the
difference: ''the rude Tupinambas of Brazil think

IMMORTALITY 57

the souls of such as had lived virtuously, that is to
say who have well avenged themselves and eaten
many of their enemies," (ib.) rejoin the souls of their
fathers in the happy land, while the cowards go
to the other place. Thus, though the distinctions
in the next world do not seem originally to have
sprung from or to have been connected with morality,
and still less with religion, they are, or may be at
a very early period, seized upon by the moral con-
sciousness as containing truth or implying it, when
rightly understood. Truth indeed of the highest
import for morality is implied in the distinctions
thus essayed to be drawn. But before the truth
implicit could be made explicit, it was necessary
that the distinctions should be recognised to have
their basis in religion. And that was impossible
where religion was at its lowest or in its least de-
veloped form.

From the fact that on the one hand the conception
of a future life in another world, when it arose
amongst people in a low stage of religious develop-
ment, bore but little moral and no religious fruit;
and on the other, where it did yield fruit, there had
been a previous period when religion closed its
eyes as far as possible to the condition of the dead

58 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

in Hades or in Shcol, — wc may draw the inference
that the conception of the future state formed by such
people, as "the rude Tupinambas of Brazil" had
to be sterilised, so to speak, — to be purified from
associations dangerous both to morality and reli-
gion. Wc may fairly say that as a matter of fact
that was the consequence which actually happened,
and that both in Greece and Judaea the prospect of a
future life at one time became practically a tabula
rasa on which might be written a fairer message of
hope than had ever been given before. In Greece
the message was written, indeed, and was received
with hope by the thousands who joined in the cele-
bration of the mysteries. But the characters in
which it was written faded soon. The message
was found to reveal nothing. It revealed nothing
because it demanded nothing. It demanded neither
a higher life nor a higher conception of the deity.
It did not set forth a new and nobler morality ; and
it accommodated itself to the existing polytheism.
What it did do was to familiarise the Hellenic world
with the conviction that there was a life hereafter,
better than this life; and that the condition of its
attainment was communion with the true God,
peradventure He could be found. It was by this

IMMORTALITY 59

conviction and this expectation that the ground was
prepared, wherever Hellenism existed, for the mes-
sage that was to come from Israel.

From the beginning, or let us say in the lowest
forms in which religion manifests itself, religion is
the bond in which the worshippers are united with
one another and with their God. The community
which is thus united is at first the earliest form of
society, whatever that form may have been, in which
men dwell together for their common purposes.
It is the fact that its members have common pur-
poses and common interests which constitute them
a community; and amongst the common interests
without which there could be no community is
that of common worship : knowledge of the sacra,
being confined to the members of the community,
is the test by which members are known, outsiders
excluded, and the existence of the community as
a community secured. At this stage, in a large
number of societies — negro, Malayo- Polynesian,
North American Indians, Eskimo, Australians —
the belief in reincarnation takes a form in which the
presence of souls of the departed is recognised as
necessary to the very conception of the community.
Thus in Alaska, among the Unalits of St. Michael's

6o COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Bay, a festival of the dead is observed, the equiva-
lent of which appears to be found amongst all
the Eskimo. M. Mauss {LAnnee Sociologique, IX,
99) thus describes it: "It comprises two essential
parts. It begins with praying the souls of the dead
graciously to consent to reincarnate themselves
for the moment in the namesake which each de-
ceased person has; for the custom is that in each
station the child last born always takes the name
of the last person who has died. Then these living
representatives of the deceased receive presents,
and having received them the souls are dismissed
from the abodes of the living to return to the land
of the dead. Thus at this festival not only does
the group regain its unity, but the rite reconstitutes
the ideal group which consists of all the generations
which have succeeded one another from the earliest
times. Mythical and historic ancestors as well as
later ones thus mingle with the living, and com-
munion between them is conducted by means of
the exchange of presents." Amongst people other
than the Eskimo, a new-born child not only takes
the name of the last member of the family or clan
who has died, but is regarded as the reincarnation of
the deceased. "Thus the number of individuals.

IMMORTALITY 6 1

of names, of souls, of social functions in the clan is
limited ; and the life of the clan consists in the death
and rebirth of individuals who are always identically
the same" {I.e. 267).

The line of evolution thus followed by the belief
in reincarnation results in the total separation of the
belief from morality and from religion, and results
in rendering it infertile alike for morality, religion,
and progress in civilisation generally. Where the
belief in reincarnation takes the form of belief in
the transmigration of the soul into some animal
form, it may be utilised for moral purposes, provided
that the people amongst whom the belief obtains
have otherwise advanced so far as to see that the
punishments and rewards which are essential to the
development of morality are by no means always
realised in this life. When that conviction has
established itself, the reincarnation theory will
provide machinery by which the belief in future
punishments and rewards can be conceived as
operative: rebirth in animal form, if the belief in
it already exists, may be held out as a deterrent to
wrongdoing. That is, as a matter of fact, the use
to which the belief has been put by Buddhism. The
form and station in which the deceased will be re-

62 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

born is no longer, as amongst the peoples just men-
tioned, conceived to be determined automatically,
so to speak, but is supposed to depend on the moral
qualities exhibited during life. If this view of the
future life has struck deeper root and has spread
over a greater surface than the doctrine taught in
the Greek mysteries ever did, the reason may prob-
ably be found in the fact that the Greek mysteries
had no higher morality to teach than was already
recognised, whilst the moral teaching of the Buddha
was far more exalted and far more profoundly true
than anything that had been preached in India
before. If a moral system by itself, on its own
merits, were capable of affording a sure foundation
for religion. Buddhism would be built upon a rock.
To the spiritual community by which man may be
united to his fellow-man and to his God, morality
is essential and indispensable. But the moral life
derives its value solely from the fact that on it
depends, and by means of it is realised, that com-
munion of man with God after which man has from
the beginning striven. If then that communion and
the very possibility of that communion is denied,
the denial must prove fatal alike to religion and to
morality. Now, that is the denial which Buddhism

IMMORTALITY 63

makes. But the fact of the denial is obscured to
those who beheve, and to those who would like to
beheve, in Buddhism, by the way in which it is made.
It is made in such a way that it appears and is
believed to be an affirmation instead of a denial.
Communion with God is declared to be the final end
to which the transmigration of souls conducts. But
the communion to which it leads is so intimate that
the human soul, the individual, ceases to be. Ob-
viously, therefore, if it ceases to be, the communion
also must cease; there is no real communion sub-
sisting between two spirits, the human and the divine,
for two spirits do not exist, but only one. If this
way of stating the case be looked upon with sus-
picion as possibly not doing justice to the teaching
of Buddhism, or as pressing unduly far the union
between the human and the divine which is the
ultimate goal of the transmigration of souls, the
reply is that in truth the case against Buddhism
is stronger than appears from this mode of stating
it. To say that from the Buddhist point of view
the human soul, the individual, eventually ceases to
be, is indeed an incorrect way of putting the matter.
It implies that the human soul, the individual, now
is; and hereafter ceases to be. But so far from

64 COMrARATIVE RELIGION

admitting that the individual now is, the Buddhist
doctrine is that the existence of the soul, now, is
mere illusion, judyd. It is therefore logical enough,
and at any rate self-consistent, to say that hereafter,
when the series of transmigrations is complete, the
individual will not indeed cease to be, for he never
was, but the illusion that he existed will be dissipated.
Logically again, it follows from this that if the exist-
ence of the individual soul is an illusion from the
beginning, then there can strictly speaking be no
transmigration of souls, for there is no soul to trans-
migrate. But with perfect self-consistency Buddh-
ism accepts this position : what is transmitted from
one being to the next in the chain of existences is
not the individuality or the soul, but the character.
Professor Rhys Davids says (Hibberi Lectures, pp.
91, 92): *'I have no hesitation in maintaining
that Gotama did not teach the transmigration of
souls. What he did teach would be better sum-
marized, if we wish to retain the word transmigra-
tion, as the transmigration of character. But
it would be more accurate to drop the word trans-
migration altogether when speaking of Buddhism,
and to call its doctrine the doctrine of karma.
Gotama held that after the death of any being.

IMMORTALITY 65

whether human or not, there survived nothing at
all but that being's 'karma/ the result, that is, of
its mental and bodily actions." "He discarded the
theory of the presence, within each human body,
of a soul which could have a separate and eternal
existence. He therefore established a new identity
between the individuals in the chain of existence,
^hich he, like his forerunners, acknowledged, by

ew assertion that that which made two beings

to be the same being was — not soul, but — karma"
{ib., pp. 93, 94). Thus once more it appears that
there can be no eventual communion between
the human soul, at the end of its chain of existence,
and the divine, for the reason, not that the human
soul ultimately ceases to be, but that it never is or
was, and therefore neither transmigrates from one
body to another, nor is eventually absorbed in the
dtmdn.

Logically consistent though this train of argu-
ment be, it leaves unanswered the simple question,
How can the result of my actions have any interest
for me — not hereafter, but at the present moment —
if I not only shall not exist hereafter but do not exist
at the present moment ? It is not impossible for a
man who believes that his existence will absolutely

66 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

cease at death to take some interest in and labour
for the good of others who will come after him;
but it is impossible for a man who does not exist
now to believe in anything whatever. And it is
on that fundamental absurdity that Buddhism is
built : it is directed to the conversion of those who
do not exist to be converted, and it is directed to the
object of relieving from existence those who have
no existence from which to be relieved.

Where then lies the strength of Buddhism, if as
a logical structure it is rent from top to bottom by
glaring inconsistency? It lies in its appeal to the
spirit of self-sacrifice. What it denounces, from
beginning to end, is the will to live. The reason
why it denounces the will to live is that that will
manifests itself exclusively in the desires of the indi-
vidual; and it is to the desires of man that all the
misery in the world are directly due. Destroy those
desires by annihilating the will to Uve — and in no
other way can they be destroyed — and the misery
of the world will cease. The only termination to
the misery of the world which Buddhism can imagine
is the voluntary cessation of Hfe which will ultimately
ensue on the cessation of the will to live. And
the means by which that is to be brought about is

IMMORTALITY 67

the uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding
desires by means of the higher morality of self-sac-
rifice. What the Buddhist overlooks is that the
uprooting and destruction of the self-regarding
desires results, not in the annihilation, but in the
purification and enhanced vitality, of the self that
uproots them. The outcome of the unselfish and
self-sacrificing life is not the destruction of individ-
uality, but its highest realisation. Now, it is only in
society and by living for others that this unselfishness
and self-sacrifice can be carried out ; man can only
exist and unselfishness can only operate in society,
and society means the communion of man with his
fellows. It is true that only in society can self-
ishness exist; but it is recognized from the begin-
ning as that which is destructive of society, and it
is therefore condemned alike by the morality and the
religion of the society. The communion of man with
his fellows and his God is hindered, impeded, and
blocked wholly and solely by his self-regarding de-
sires ; it is furthered and realised solely by his unselfish
desires. But his unselfish desires involve and imply
his existence — I was going to say, just as much, I
mean — far more than his selfish desires, for they
imply, and are only possible on, the assumption of

68 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

the existence of his fcllow-man, and of his com-
munion with him. Nay! more, by the testimony
of Buddhism itself as well as of the religious ex-
perience of mankind at large, the unselfish desires,
the spirit of self-sacrifice, require both for their
logical and their emotional justification, still more
for their practical operation, the faith that by means
of them the will of God is carried out, and that in
them man shows likest God. It is in them and by
them that the communion of man with his fellow-
man and with his God is realised. It is the faith
that such communion, though it may be interrupted,
can never be entirely broken which manifests itself
in the belief in immortality. That belief may take
shape in the idea that the souls of the departed
revisit this earth temporarily in ghostly form, or
more permanently as reincarnated in the new-born
members of the tribe; it may body forth another
world of bliss or woe, and if it is to subserve the
purposes of morality, it must so do ; nay ! more, if
it is to subserve the purposes of morality, it is into
the presence of the Lord that the soul must go. But
in any and whatever shape the belief takes, the soul
is conceived or implied to be in communion with
other spirits. There is no other way in which it is

IMMORTALITY 69

possible to conceive the existence of a soul; just
as any particle of matter, to be comprehended in its
full reality, implies not only every other particle of
matter but the universe which comprehends them,
so the existence of any spirit logically implies not
only the existence of every other but also of Him
without whom no one of them could be.

It is in this belief in the communion of spirits
wherever he may find it — and where will he not ?
— that the missionary may obtain a leverage for
his work. It is a sure basis for his operations be-
cause the desire for communion is universal ; and
Christianity alone, of the religions of the world,
teaches that self-sacrifice is the way to life eternal.

MAGIC

»

Of all the topics which present themselves to
the student of the science of rehgion for investiga-
tion and explanation there is none which has caused
more diversity of opinion, none which has produced
more confusion of thought, than magic. The fact
is that the belief in magic is condemned alike by
science and religion, — by the one as essentially ir-
rational, and by the other as essentially irreligious.
But though it is thus condemned, it flourishes,
where it does flourish, as being science, though
of a more secret kind than that usually recognised,
or as being a more potent application of the rites
and ceremonies of religion. It is indeed neither
science nor religion; it lives by mimicking one
or other or both. In the natural history of belief
it owes its survival, so long as it does survive, to
its ''protective colouring" and its power of mim-
icry. It is, always and everywhere, an error, —
whether tried by the canons of science or religion ;

70

MAGIC 71

but it lives, as error can only live, by posing and
passing itself off as truth.

If now the only persons deceived by it were the
persons who believed in it, students of the science
of religion would have been saved from much
fruitless controversy. But so subtly protective is
its colouring that some scientific enquirers have
confidently and unhesitatingly identified it with
religion, and have declared that magic is religion,
and religion is magic. The tyranny of that error,
however, is now well-nigh overpast. It is erroneous,
and we may suppose is seen to be erroneous, in
exactly the same way as it would be to say that
science is magic, and magic science. The truth
is that magic in one aspect is a colourable imitation
of science: ''in short," as Dr. Frazer says {Early
History of the Kingship, p. 38), "magic is a spuri-
ous system of natural law." That is, we must note,
it is a system which is spurious in our eyes, but
which, to those who believed in it, was ''a statement
of the rules which determine the sequence of events
throughout the world — a set of precepts which
human beings observe in order to compare their
ends" {ih., p. 39).

The point, then, from which I wish to start is that

72 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

magic, as it is now viewed by students of the science
of religion, on the one hand is a spurious system
of natural law or science, and on the other a spurious
system of religion.

Our next point is that magic could not be spurious
for those who believed in it : they held that they knew
some things and could do things which ordinary
people did not know and could not do ; and, whether
their knowledge was of the secrets of nature or of
the spirit world, it was not in their eyes spurious.

Our third point is more difficult to explain, though
it will appear not merely obvious, but self-evident,
if I succeed in explaining it. It will facilitate the
work of explanation, if you will for the moment
suppose — without considering whether the sup-
position is true or not — that there was a time
when no one had heard that there was such a thing
as magic. Let us further suppose that at that time
man had observed such facts as that heat produces
warmth, that the young of animals and man resemble
their parents : in a word, that he had attained more
or less consciously to the idea, as a matter of ob-
servation, that like produces like, and as a matter
of practice that like may be produced by like.
Having attained to that practical idea, he will of

MAGIC 73

course work it not only for all that it is worth, but
for more. That is indeed the only way he has of
finding out how much it is good for ; and it is only
repeated failure which will convince him that here
at length he has reached the limit, that in this par-
ticular point things do not realise his expectations,
that in this instance his anticipation of nature
has been ''too previous.'* Until that fact has been
hammered into him, he will go on expecting and
believing that in this instance also like will produce
like, when he sets it to work ; and he will be per-
fectly convinced that he is employing the natural
and reasonable means for attaining his end. As
a matter of fact, however, as we with our superior
knowledge can see, in the first place those means
never can produce the desired effect; and next,
the idea that they can, as it withers and before it
finally falls to the ground, will change its colour
and assume the hue of magic. Thus the idea
that by whistling you can produce a wind is
at first as natural and as purely rational as the
idea that you can produce warmth by means of
fire. There is nothing magical in either. Both
are matter-of-fact applications of the practical maxim
that like produces like.

74 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

That, then, is ihc point which I have been wishing
to make, the third of the three points from which
I wish to start. There are three ways of looking
at identically the same thing, e.g. whistling to pro-
duce a wind. First, we may regard it, and I suggest
that it was in the beginning regarded, as an ap-
plication, having nothing to distinguish it from
any other application, of the general maxim that
like produces like. The idea that eating the flesh
of deer makes a man timid, or that if you wish to
be strong and bold you should eat tiger, is, in this
stage of thought, no more magical than is the idea
of drinking water because you are dry.

Next, the idea of whistling to produce a wind,
or of sticking splinters of bone into a man's foot-
prints in order to injure his feet, may be an idea
not generally known, a thing not commonly done,
a proceeding not generally approved of. It is thus
marked off from the commonplace actions of
drinking water to moisten your parched throat or
sitting by a fire to get warm. When it is thus
marked off, it is regarded as magic : not every one
knows how to do it, or not every one has the power
to do it, or not every one cares to do it. That is
the second stage, the heyday of magic.

MAGIC 75

The third and final stage is that in which no
educated person believes in it, when, if a man thinks
to get a wind by whistling he may whistle for it.
These three ways of looking at identically the same
thing may and do coexist. The idea of whistling
for a wind is for you and me simply a mistaken idea ;
but possibly at this moment there are sailors act-
ing upon the idea and to some of them it appears a
perfectly natural thing to do, while to others there
is a flavour of the magical about it. But though
the three ways may and do coexist, it is obvious
that our way of looking at it is and must be the
the latest of the three, for the simple reason that
an error must exist before it can be exploded. I
say that our way of looking at it must be the latest,
but in saying so I do not mean to imply that this
way of looking at it originates only at a late stage
in the history of mankind. On the contrary, it is
present in a rudimentary form from very early
times ; and the proof is the fact generally recognised
that magicians amongst the lowest races, though
they may believe to a certain extent in their own
magical powers, do practise a good deal of magic
which they themselves know to be fraudulent.
Progress takes place when other people also, and a

76 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Steadily increasing number of people, come to see
that it is fraudulent.

In the next place, just as amongst very primitive
peoples we see that some magic is known by some
people, viz. the magicians themselves, to be fraudu-
lent, though other people believe in it ; so, amongst
very primitive peoples, we fmd beliefs and practices
existing which have not yet come to be regarded
as magical, though they are such as might come, and
do elsewhere come, to be considered pure magic.
Thus, for instance, when Cherokee Indians who
suffer from rheumatism abstain from eating the
flesh of the common grey squirrel "because the
squirrel eats in a cramped position, which would
clearly aggravate the pangs of the rheumatic patient "
(Frazer, History of the Kingship, p. 70), or when
''they will not wear the feathers of the bald-headed
buzzard for fear of themselves becoming bald" {ih.),
they are simply following the best medical advice
of their day, — they certainly do not imagine they
are practising magic, any more than you or I do
when we are following the prescriptions of our
medical adviser. On the contrary, it is quite as
obvious, then, that the feathers of the bald-headed
buzzard are infectious as it is now that the clothes

MAGIC 77

of a fever patient are infectious. Neither proposi-
tion, to be accepted as true, requires us to believe
in magic : either might spring up where magic
had never been heard of. And, if that is the case,
it simply complicates things unnecessarily to talk
of magic in such cases. The tendency to believe
that like produces like is not a consequence of or
a deduction from a belief in magic : on the contrary,
magic has its root or one of its roots in that tendency
of the human mind. But though that tendency
helps to produce magic amongst other things,
magic is not the only thing which it produces : it
produces beliefs such as those of the Cherokees
just quoted, which are no more magical than the
belief that fire produces warmth, or that causa
aequat effeclum, that an effect is, when analysed,
indistinguishable from the conditions which con-
stitute it.

To attempt to define magic is a risky thing;
and, instead of doing so at once, I will try to mark
off proceedings which are not magical ; and I would
venture to say that things which it is believed any
one can do, and felt that any one may do, are not
magical in the eyes of those who have that belief
and that feeling. You may abstain from eating

78 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

squirrel or wearing fine feathers because of the
consequences; and every one will think you arc
showing your common sense. You may hang up
the bones of animals you have killed, in order to
attract more animals of the like kind ; and you
are simply practising a dodge which you think
will be useful. Wives whose husbands are absent
on hunting or fighting expeditions may do or abstain
from doing things which, on the principle that like
produces like, will affect their husbands' success ;
and this application of the principle may be as
irrational — and as perfectly natural — as the be-
haviour of the beginner at billiards whose body
writhes, when he has made his stroke, in excess of
sympathy with the ball which just won't make the
cannon. In both cases the principle acted on, —
deliberately in the one case, less voluntarily in the
other, — the instinctive feeling is that like produces
like, not as a matter of magic but as a matter of
fact. If the behaviour of the billiard player is due
to an impulse which is in itself natural and in his
case is not magical, we may fairly take the same
view of the hunter's wife who abstains from spin-
ning for fear the game should turn and wind like the
spindle and the hunter be unable to hit it (Frazer,

MAGIC 79

p. 55). The principle in both cases is that like
produces like. Some applications of that principle
are correct; some are not. The incorrectness of
the latter is not at once discovered: the belief in
their case is erroneous, but is not known to be erro-
neous. And unless we are prepared to take up the
position that magic is the only form of erroneous
belief which is to be found amongst primitive men,
we must endeavour to draw a line between those
erroneous beliefs which are magical and those
erroneous beliefs which are not. The line will
not be a hard and fast line, because a belief which
originally had nothing magical about it may come
to be regarded as magical. Indeed, on the assump-
tion that belief in magic is an error, we have to
enquire how men come to fall into the error. If
there is no such thing as magic, how did man come
to believe that there was? My suggestion is that
the rise of the belief is not due to the introduction
of a novel practice, but to a new way of looking at
an existing practice. It is due in the first instance
to the fact that the practice is regarded with dis-
approval as far as its consequences are concerned
and without regard to the means employed to pro-
duce them. Injury to a member of the community,

8o COMPARATIVE RELIGION

especially injury which causes death, is viewed
by the community with indignant disapproval.
Whether the death is produced by actual blows or
"by drawing the figure of a person and then stabbing
it or doing it any other injury" (Frazer, p. 41),
it is visited with the condemnation of the com-
munity. And consequently all such attempts "to
injure or destroy an enemy by injuring or destroy-
ing an effigy of him" (ib.), whenever they are made,
whether they come off or not, are resented and
disapproved by society. On the other hand,
sympathetic or homoeopathic magic of this kind,
when used by the hunter or the fisherman to secure
food, meets with no condemnation. Both assassin
and hunter use substantially the same means to
effect their object; but the disapproval with which
the community views the object of the assassin is
extended also to the means which he employs.
In fine, the practice of using like to produce like
comes to be looked on with loathing and with dread
when it is employed for antisocial purposes. Any
one can injure or destroy his private enemy by
injuring an effigy of him, just as any one can injure
or destroy his enemy by assaulting and wounding
him. But though any one may do this, it is felt

MAGIC 8l

that no one ought to do it. Such practices are
condemned by public opinion. Further, as they
are condemned by the community, they are ipso
facto offensive to the god of the community. To
him only those prayers can be offered, and by him
only those practices can be approved, which are
not injurious to the community or are not felt by
the community to be injurious. That is the reason
why such practices are condemned by the religious
as well as by the moral feeling of the community.
And they are condemned by religion and morality
long before their futility is exposed by science or
recognised by common sense. When they are
felt to be futile, there is no caU upon religion or
morality especially to condemn the practices —
though the intention and the will to injure our
fellow-man remains offensive both to morality
and religion. With the means adopted for realising
the will and carrying out the intention, morality
and religion have no concern. If the same or
similar means can be used for purposes consistent
with the common weal, they do not, so far as they
are used for such purposes, come under the ban
of either morality or religion. Therein we have, I
suggest, the reason of a certain confusion of thought

G

82 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

in the minds of students of the science of religion.
\Vc of the present day look at the means employed.
We see the same means employed for ends that are,
and for ends that are not, antisocial ; and, inasmuch
as the means are the same and are alike irrational,
we group them all together under the head of magic.
The grouping is perfectly correct, inasmuch as the
proceedings grouped together have the common at-
tribute of being proceedings which cannot possibly
produce the effects which those who employ them
believe that they will and do produce. But this
grouping becomes perfectly misleading, if we go
on to infer, as is sometimes inferred, that primitive
man adopted it. First, it is based on the fact that
the proceedings are uniformly irrational — a fact
of which man is at first wholly unaware ; and which,
when it begins to dawn upon him, presents itself
in the form of the further error that while some of
these proceedings are absurd, others are not. In
neither case does he adopt the modern, scientific
position that all are irrational, impossible, absurd.
Next, the modern position deals only with the pro-
ceedings as means, — declaring them all absurd, —
and overlooks entirely what is to primitive man the
point of fundamental importance, viz. the object

MAGIC 8^

and purpose with which they are used. Yet it is
the object and purpose which determine the social
value of these proceedings. For him, or in his
eyes, to class together the things which he approves
of and the things of which he disapproves would
be monstrous: the means employed in the two
cases may be the same, but that is of no importance
in face of the fact that the ends aimed at in the
two cases are not merely different but contradictory.
In the one case the object promotes the common
weal, or is supposed by him to promote it. In the
other it is destructive of the common weal.

If, therefore, we wish to avoid confusion of thought,
we must in discussing magic constantly bear in
mind that we group together — and therefore are
in danger of confusing — things which to the savage
differ tolo caelo from one another. A step towards
avoiding this confusion is taken by Dr. Frazer,
when he distinguishes {History of the Kingship,
p. 89) between private magic and public magic.
The distinction is made still more emphatic by
Dr. Haddon {Magic and Fetichism, p. 20) when
he speaks of "nefarious magic." The very same
means when employed against the good of the
community are regarded, by morality and religion

84 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

alike, as nefarious, which when employed for the
good of the community are regarded with approval.
The very same illegitimate application, — I mean
logically illegitimate in our eyes, — the very same
application of the principle that like produces like
will be condemned by the public opinion of the
community when it is employed for purposes of
murder and ptaised by public opinion when it is
employed to produce the rain which the community
desires. The distinction drawn by primitive man
between the two cases is that, though any one can
use the means to do either, no one ought to do the
one which the community condemns. That is con-
demned as nefarious ; and because it is nefarious,
the ''witch" may be "smelled out" by the "witch-
doctor" and destroyed by, or with the approval of,
the community.

But though that is, I suggest, the first stage in the
process by which the belief in magic is evolved, it is
by no means the whole of the process. Indeed,
it may fairly be urged that practices which any one
can perform, though no one ought to perform, may
be nefarious (as simple, straightforward murder
is), but so far there is nothing magical about them.
And I am prepared to accept that view. Indeed,

MAGIC 85

it is an essential part of my argument, for I seek to
show that the belief in magic had a beginning and
was evolved out of something that was not a belief
in magic, though it gave rise to it. The belief that
like produces like can be entertained where magic
has not so much as been heard of. And, though
it may ultimately be worked out into the scientific
position that the sum of conditions necessary to
produce an effect is indistinguishable from the
effect, it may also be worked out on other lines
into a belief in magic; and the first step in that
evolution is taken when the belief that like pro-
duces like is used for purposes pronounced by
public opinion to be nefarious.

The next step is taken when it comes to be be-
lieved not only that the thing is nefarious but that
not every one can do it. The reason why only
a certain person can do it may be that he alone
knows how to do it — or he and the person from
whom he learnt it. The lore of such persons when
examined by folk-lore students is found generally to
come under one or other of the two classes known
as sympathetic and mimetic magic, or homoeo-
pathic and contagious magic. In these cases it is
obvious that the modus operandi is the same as it

S6 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

was in what I have called the first stage in the
evolution of magic and have already described
at great length. What differentiates this second
stage from the first is that whereas in the first stage
these applications of the principle that like produces
like are known to every one, though not practised
by every one, in the second stage these applications
are not known to every one, but only to the dealers
in magic. Some of those applications of the prin-
ciple may be applications which have descended
to the dealer and have passed out of the general
memory; and others may simply be extensions
of the principle which have been invented by the
dealer or his teacher. Again, the public disap-
proval of nefarious arts will tend first to segregate
the followers of such arts from the rest of the com-
munity; and next to foster the notion that the arts
thus segregated, and thereby made more or less
mysterious, include not only things which the or-
dinary decent member of society would not do if he
could, but also things which he could not do if he
would. The mere belief in the possibility of such
arts creates an atmosphere of suspicion in which
things are believed because they are impossible.
When this stage has been reached, when he who

MAGIC 87

practises nefarious arts is reported and believed to
do things which ordinary decent people could not
do if they would, his personality inevitably comes
to be considered as a factor in the results that he
produces; he is credited with a power to produce
them which other people, that is to say ordinary
people, do not possess. And it is that personal
power which eventually comes to be the most im-
portant, because the most mysterious, article in
his equipment. It is in virtue of that personal
power that he is commonly believed to be able to
do things which are impossible for the ordinary
member of the tribe.

Thus far I have been tracing the steps of the
process by which the worker of nefarious arts starts
by employing for nefarious purposes means which
any one could use if he would, and ends by being
credited with a power peculiar to himself of work-
ing impossibilities. I now wish to point out that a
process exactly parallel is simultaneously carried
on by which arts beneficent to society are supposed
to be evolved. Rain-making may be taken as an
art socially beneficial. The modus operandi of
rain-making appears in all cases to be based on the
principle that like produces like; and to be in its

88 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

nature a process which any one can carry out and
which requires no mysterious art to effect and no
mysterious personal power to j)roduce. At the
same time, as it is a proceeding which is beneficial
to the tribe as a whole, it is one in which the whole
tribe, and no one tribesman in particular, is inter-
ested. It must be carried out in the interest of the
tribe and by some one who in carrying it out acts
for the tribe. The natural representative of the
tribe is the head-man of the tribe; and, though
any one might perform the simple actions necessary,
and could perform them just as well as the head-
man, they tend to fall into the hands of the head-
man ; and in any case the person who performs
them performs them as the representative of the
tribe. The natural inference comes in course of
time to be drawn that he who alone performs them
is the man who alone can perform them ; and when
that inference is drawn it becomes obvious that his
personality, or the power peculiar to him personally,
is necessary if rain is to be made, and that the acts
and ceremonies through which he goes and through
which any one could go would not be efficacious,
or not as efficacious, without his personal agency
and mysterious power. Hence the man who works

MAGIC 89

wonders for his tribe or in the interests of his tribe,
in virtue of his personal power, does things which
are impossible for the ordinary member of the tribe.
Up to this point, in tracing the evolution of magic,
we have not found it once necessary to bring in or
even to refer to any belief in the existence of spiritual
beings of any kind. So far as the necessities of the
argument are concerned, the belief in magic might
have originated in the way I have described and
might have developed on the lines suggested, in a
tribe which had never so much as heard of spirits.
Of course, as a matter of fact, every tribe in which
the belief in magic is found does also believe in the
existence of spirits; animism is a stage of belief
lower than which or back of which science does
not profess to go. But it is only in an advanced
stage of its evolution that the belief in magic be-
comes involved with the belief in spirits. Originally,
eating tiger to make you bold, or eating saffron to
cure jaundice, was just as matter of fact a proceeding
as drinking water to moisten your throat or sitting
by a fire to get warm; like produces like, and be-
yond that obvious fact it was not necessary to go —
there was no more need to imagine that the action
of the saffron was due to a spirit than to imagine

90 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

that it was a water spirit which slakes your thirst.
The fact seems to be that animism is a savage
philosophy which is competent to explain every-
thing when called upon, but that the savage does
not spend every moment of his waking life in in-
voking it : until there is some need to fall back upon
it, he goes on treating inanimate things as things
which he can utilise for his own purposes without
reference to spirits. That is the attitude also of
the man who in virtue of his lore or his personal
power can produce effects which the ordinary man
cannot or will not : he performs his ceremony and
the e£fect follows — or will follow — because he
knows how to do it or has mysterious personal
power to produce the effect. But he consults no
spirits — at any rate in the first instance. Eventu-
ally he may do so; and then magic enters on a
further stage in its evolution. (See Appendix.)

If the man who has the lore or the personal
power, and who uses it for nefarious purposes, pro-
poses to employ it on obtaining the same control
over spirits as he has over things, his magic reaches
a stage of evolution in which it is difficult and
practically unnecessary to distinguish it from the
stage of fetichism in which the owner of a fetich

MAGIC 91

applies coercion to make the fetich spirit do what
he wishes. With fetichism I deal in another lecture.
If, on the other hand, the man who has the lore
or the personal power and uses it for social or "com-
munal" purposes (Haddon, p. 41) comes to believe
that, for the effects which he has hitherto sought
to produce by means of his superior knowledge or
superior power, it is necessary to invoke the aid
of spirits, he will naturally address himself to the
spirit or god who is worshipped by the community
because he has at heart the general interests of the
community; or it may be that the spirit who pro-
duces such a benefit for the community at large, as
rain for example, will take his place among the
gods of the community as the rain-god, in virtue
of the benefit which he confers upon the community
generally. In either case, the attitude of the priest
or person who approaches him on behalf of the
community will be that which befits a supplicant
invoking a favour from a power that has shown
favour in the past to the community. And it will
not surprise us if we find that the ceremonies which
were used for the purpose of rain-making, before
rain was recognised as the gift of the gods, continue
for a time to be practised as the proper rites with

92

COMPARATIVE RELIGION

which to approach the god of the community or
the rain-god in particular. Such survivals are
then in danger of being misinterpreted by students
of the science of rehgion, for they may be regarded
as evidence that rehgion v^as evolved out of magic,
when in truth they show that religion tends to drive
out magic. Thus Dr. Frazer, in his Lectures on
the Early History of the Kingship (pp. 73-75),
describes the practice of the New Caledonians who,
to promote the growth of taro, ''bury in the field
certain stones resembling taros, praying to their
ancestors at the same time," and he goes on to
say: "In these practices of the New Caledonians
the magical efficacy of the stones appears to be
deemed insufficient of itself to accomplish the end
in view ; it has to be reinforced by the spirits of the
dead, whose help is sought by prayer and sacrifice.
Thus in New Caledonia sorcery is blent with the
worship of the dead ; in other words, magic is com-
bined with religion. If the stones ceased to be em-
ployed, and the prayers and sacrifices to the ancestors
remained, the transition from magic to religion
would be complete." Thus it seems to be suggested
in these words of Dr. Frazer's that religion may
be evolved out of magic. If that is what is suggested,

MAGIC 93

then there is little doubt that the suggestion is not
borne out by the instance given. Let us concede
for the moment what some of us would be inclined
to doubt, viz. that prayers and sacrifice offered to
a human being, alive or dead, is religion; and let
us enquire whether this form of religion is evolved
out of magic. The magic here is quite clear : stones
resembling taros are buried in the taro field to pro-
mote the growth of taros. That is an application
of the principle that like produces like which might
be employed by men who had never heard of an-
cestor worship or of any kind of religion, and who
had never uttered prayers or offered sacrifices
of any kind. Next, the religious element, accord-
ing to Dr. Frazer, is also quite clear: it consists
in offering sacrifices to the dead with the prayer
or the words, ''Here are your offerings, in order
that the crop of yams may be good." Now, it is
not suggested, even by Dr. Frazer, that this religious
element is a form of magic or is in any way developed
out of or evolved from magic. On the contrary, if
this element is religious — indeed, whether it be
really religious or not — it is obviously entirely
distinct and different from sympathetic or homoeo-
pathic magic. The mere fact that the magical

94 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

rite of burying in the taro fields stones which re-
semble tares has to be supplemented by rites which
arc, on Dr. Frazer's own showing, non-magical,
shows that the primitive belief in this application
of the principle that like produces like was already
dying out, and was in process of becoming a mere
survival. Suppose that it died out entirely and
the rite of burying stones became an unintelligible
survival, or was dropped altogether, and suppose
that the prayers and sacrifices remained in possession
of the field, which would be the more correct way
of stating the facts, to say that the magic had died
out and its place had been taken by something
totally different, viz. religion; or that what was
magic had become religion, that magic and religion
are but two manifestations, two stages, in the evolu-
tion of the same principle? The latter statement
was formally rejected by Dr. Frazer in the second
edition of his Golden Bough, when he declared that
he had come to recognise "a fundamental distinc-
tion and even opposition of principle between magic
and religion" (Preface, xvi). His words, therefore,
justify us in assuming that when he speaks, in his
Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship, of
the ''transition from magic to religion," he cannot

MAGIC 95

mean that magic becomes religion, or that religion
is evolved out of magic, for the ''distinction and
even opposition of principle" between the two is
"fundamental." He can, therefore, only mean that
magic is followed and may be driven out by some-
thing which is fundamentally opposed to it, viz.
religion.

What then is the fundamental opposition between
magic and religion? and is it such as to require us
to believe with Dr. Frazer that magic preceded
religion, and that of two opposite ideas the mind
can conceive the one without conceiving — and
rejecting — the other ?

The fundamental opposition between magic and

1 religion I take to be that religion is supposed to

I promote the interests of the community, and that

I magic, so far forth as it is nefarious, is condemned

I by the moral and by the religious feeling of the

' community. It is the ends for which nefarious

magic is used that are condemned, and not the

means. The means may be and, as we see, are

silly and futile; and, for intellectual progress, their

silliness and futility must be recognised by the

intellect. But, it is only when they are used for

purposes inimical to the public good that they are

96 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

condemned by religion and morality as nefarious.
If therefore we talk of a fundamental opposition
between magic and religion, we must understand
that the fundamental opposition is that between
nefarious magic and religion; neither religion nor
morality condemns the desire to increase the food
supply or to promote any other interest of the com-
munity. Whether a man uses skill that he has
acquired, or personal power, or force of will, matters
not, provided he uses it for the general good. The
question whether, as a cold matter of fact, the means
he uses are efficacious is not one which moral fervour
or religious ardour is competent by itself to settle:
the cool atmosphere and dry light of reason have
rather that function to perform; and they have to
perform it in the case both of means that are used
for the general good and of those used against it.

I take it therefore that what religion is funda-
mentally opposed to is magic — or anything else —
that is used for nefarious purposes.

The question then arises whether we have any
reason to believe that magic used for nefarious
purposes must have existed before religion. Now
by nefarious purposes I mean purposes incon-
sistent with or destructive of the common good.

MAGIC 97

There can be no such purposes, however, unless and
until there is a community, however small, having
common interests and a common good. As soon as
there exists such a community, there will be a dis-
tinction between actions which promote and actions
which are destructive of the common good. The
one class will be approved, the other disapproved,
of by public opinion. Magic will be approved
and disapproved of according as it is or is not used
in a way inconsistent with the public good. If
there is a spirit or a god who is worshipped by the
community because he is believed to be concerned
with the good of the community, then he will dis-
approve of nefarious proceedings whether magical
or not. But Dr. Frazer's position I take to be
that no such spirit or god can come to be believed
in, unless there has been previously a belief in magic.
Now, that argument either is or is not based on the
assumption that magic and religion are but two
manifestations, two stages, in the evolution of the
same principle. If that is the basis, then what
manifested itself at first as magic subsequently
manifests itself as rehgion; and "the transition
/from magic to religion" implies the priority of
magic to religion. But, as we have seen, Dr. Frazer

qS comparative religion

formally postulates, not an identity, but an "op-
position of principle " between the two. We must
therefore reject the assumption of an identity of
principle; and accept the ''opposition of principle."
But if so, then there must be two principles which
are opposed to one another, religion and magic;
and we might urge that line of argument consistently
enough to show that there can be no magic save
where there is religion to be opposed to it.

Now, there is an opposition of principle between
magic used for nefarious purposes and religion;
and the opposition is that the one promotes social
and the other anti-social purposes. Nefarious
purposes, whether worked by magic or by other
means, are condemned by religion and are nefarious
especially because offensive to the god who has the
interests of the community at heart. That from
the moment society existed anti-social tendencies
also manifested themselves will not be doubted;
and neither need we doubt that the principle that
like produces like was employed from the beginning
for social as well as for anti-social purposes. The
question is whether, in the stage of animism, the
earliest and the lowest stage which science recognises
in the evolution of man, there is ever found a society

MAGIC 99

of human beings which has not appropriated some
one or more of the spirits by which all things, on
the animistic principle, are worked, to the purposes
of the community. No such society has yet been
proved to exist; still less has any a priori proof
been produced to show that such a society must
have existed. The presumption indeed is rather
the other way. Children go through a period of
helpless infancy longer than the young of any other
creatures ; and could not reach the age of self-help,
if the family did not hold together for some years
at least. But where there is a family there is a
society, even if it be confined to members of the
family. There also, therefore, there are social and
anti-social tendencies and purposes; and, in the
animistic stage, the spirits, by which man conceives
himself to be surrounded, are either hostile or not
hostile to the society, and are accordingly either
worshipped or not worshipped by it. Doubtless,
even in those early times, the father and the hus-
band conceived himself to be the whole family ; and
if that view had its unamiable side — and it still
has — it also on occasion had the inestimable
advantage of sinking self, of self-sacrifice, in defence
of the family.

lOO COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Thus far I have been concerned to show how,
starting,' from a principle such as that Hke produces
like, about which there is nothing magical in the
eyes either of those who believe in magic or of those
who have left the belief behind, man might evolve
the conception of magic as being the lore or the
personal power which enables a man to do what
ordinary people cannot do. A few words are neces-
sary as to the decline of the belief. The first is that
the belief is rotten before it is ripe. Those applica-
tions of the principle that like produces like which
are magical are generally precisely those which are
false. The fact that they are false has not prevented
them from surviving in countless numbers to the
present day. But some suspicion of their falsity
in some cases does arise; and the person who has
the most frequent opportunities of discovering their
falsity, the person on whose notice the discovery of
their falsity is thrust most pointedly, is the person
who deals habitually and professionally in magic.
Hence, though it is his profession to work wonders,
he takes care as far as may be not to attempt im-
possibilities. Thus Dr. Haddon (/.c, p. 62) found
that the men of Murray Island, Torres Straits, who
made a "big wind" by magic, only made it in the

MAGIC 10 1

season of the southeast trade wind. "On my ask-
ing," he says, "whether the ceremony was done in
the north monsoon, my informant said emphatically,
* Can't do it in northwest.' That is, the charm is
performed only at that season of the year when the
required result is possible — indeed when it is of
normal occurrence. In this, as in other cases, I
found that the impossible was never attempted. A
rain charm would not be made when there was no
expectation of rain coming, or a southeast wind be
raised during the wrong season." The instance
thus given to us by Dr. Haddon shows how the
belief in magic begins to give way before the scien-
tific observation of fact. The collapse of magic
becomes complete when every one sees that the
southeast trade wind blows at its appointed time,
whether the magic rites are performed or not. In
fine, what Idlls magic regarded as a means for pro-
ducing effects is the discovery that it is superfluous,
when for instance the desired wind or rain is coming,
and futile when it is not. And whereas morality and
religion only condemn the end aimed at by magic,
and only condemn it when it is anti-social, science
slowly shows that magic as a means to any end is
superfluous and silly.

102 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Science, however, shows this but slowly; and if
we wish to understand how it is that the belief in
the magician's power has survived for thousands of
years down to the present moment amongst nu-
merous peoples, we must remember that his equip-
ment and apparatus are not limited to purely non-
sensical notions. On the contrary, in his stock of
knowledge, carefully handed down, are many truths
and facts not generally known; and they are the
most efficacious articles of his stock in trade. Dr.
Frazer may not go farther than his argument requires,
but he certainly goes farther than the facts will
support him, when he says (/.<:., p. St,) "for it must
always be remembered that every single profession
and claim put forward by the magician as such is
false; not one of them can be maintained without
deception, conscious or unconscious."

If now, in conclusion, we look once more at the
subject of magic and look at it from the practical
point of view of the missionary, we shall see that
there are several conclusions which may be of use
to him. In the first place, his attitude to magic will
be hostile, and in his hostility to it he will find the
best starting-point for his campaign against it to be
in the fact that everywhere magic is felt, to a greater

MAGIC 103

or less extent, to be anti-social, and is condemned
both by the moral sentiments and the religious
feehng of the community. It is felt to be essentially
wicked; and in warring against it the missionary
will be championing the cause of those who know it
to be wrong but who simply dare not defy it. The
fact that defiance is not ventured on is essential to
the continuance of the tyranny; and what is neces-
sary, if it is to be defied, is an actual concrete example
of the fact that when defied it is futile.

Next, where magic is practised for social purposes,
where it mimics science or rehgion and survives in
virtue of its power of ''protective colouring," it is in
fact superfluous and silly; and where the natives
themselves are beginning to recognise that the magic
which is supposed, for instance, to raise the southeast
trade wind won't act at the wrong season, it should
not be difficult to get them to see that it is unneces-
sary at the right season. The natural process which
tends thus to get rid of magic may be accelerated
by the sensible missionary; and some knowledge of
science will be found in this, as in other matters, an
indispensable part of his training.

Finally, the missionary may rest assured in the
conviction that his flank will not be turned by the

I04 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

science of religion. The idea that religion was
preceded by and evolved out of magic may have been
entertained by some students of the science of reli-
gion in the past, and may not yet have been thrown
off by all. But it holds no place now in the science
of religion. To derive either science or religion
from the magic which exists only by mimicking one
or the other is just as absurd as to imagine that the
insect which imitates the colour of the leaf whereon
it lives precedes and creates the tree which is to
support it.

FETICHISM

The line of action taken by the missionary at
work will, like that of any other practical man, be
conditioned, not only by the object which he wishes
to attain, but also by the nature of the material on
which and with which he has to work. He requires
therefore all the information which the science of
religion can place at his disposal about the beliefs
and practices of those amongst whom his work is
cast; and, if he is to make practical use of that
information, he must know not only that certain
beliefs and practices do as a matter of fact obtain,
he must know also what is their value for his special
purpose — what, if any, are the points about them
which have religious value, and can be utilized by
him; and what are those points about them which
are obstructive to his purpose, and how best they
may be removed and counteracted. To supply him
with this information, to give him this estimate of
values, to guide him as to the attitude he should
assume and the way in which he may utilise or must
105

I06 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

attack native practices and beliefs, is the object
with which the appHed science of religion, when it
has been constituted by the action of Hartford
Theological Seminary, will address itself.

Now, it may seem from the practical point of view
of the missionary that with regard to fetichism
there can be no question as to what its value is or
as to what his attitude should be towards it. But,
even if we should ultimately find that fetichism is
obstructive to religion, we shall still want to know
what hints we can extract from the science of
religion as to the best way of cutting at the roots of
fetichism; and therefore it wuU be necessary to con-
sider what exactly fetichism is. And, as a matter of
fact, there is a tendency manifesting itself amongst
students of the science of religion to say, as Dr.
Haddon says (Magic and Fetichism, p. 91), that
"fetichism is a stage of religious development";
and amongst writers on the philosophy of religion
to take fetichism and treat it, provisionally at any
rate, if not as the primitive religion of mankind, then
as that form of religion which "we find amongst
men at the lowest stage of development known to
us" (Hoffding, Philosophy of Religion, E. T., §§ 45,
46). If, then, fetichism is the primitive religion of

FETICHISM 107

mankind or a stage of religious development, '*a
basis from which many other modes of rehgious
thought have been developed" (Haddon, p. 91), it will
have a value which the missionary must recognise.
And in any case he must know what value, if any, it
has.

Now, if we are, I will not say to do justice to the
view that fetichism is the primitive religion of man-
kind or a stage from which other modes of religious
thought have been developed, but if we are simply
to understand it, we must clearly distinguish it from
the view — somewhat paradoxical to say the least
— that fetichism has no religious value, and yet is
the source of all religious values. The inference
which may legitimately be drawn from this second
view is that all forms of religious thought, having
been evolved from this primitive religion of man-
kind, have precisely the same value as it has ; they
do but make expHcit what it really was ; the history
of religion does but write large and set out at length
what was contained in it from the first ; in fetichism
we see what from the first religion was, and what at
the last religion is. On this view, the source from
which all religious values spring is fetichism ; fetich-
ism has no value of any kind, and therefore the

Io8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

evolved forms of feliehism whieh we call forms of
religion have no value either of any kind. Thus,
science — the science of religion — is supposed to
demonstrate by scientific methods the real nature
and the essential character of all religion.

Now, the error in this reasoning proceeds partly
on a false conception of the object and method of
science — a false conception which is slowly but
surely disappearing. The object of all science,
whether it be physical science or other, whether it
be historic science or other, is to establish facts.
The object of the historic science of religion is to
record the facts of the history of religion in such a
way that the accuracy of the record as a record will
be disputed by no one quahfied to judge the fact.
For that purpose, it abstains deliberately and con-
sistently from asking or considering the religious
value of any of the facts with which it deals. It has
not to consider, and does not consider, what would
have been, still less what ought to have been, the
course of history, but simply what it was. In this
it is following merely the dictates of common sense ;
before we can profitably express an opinion on any
occurrence, we must know what exactly it was that
occurred; and to learn what occurred we must

FETICHISM 109

divest our minds of preconceptions. It is the busi-
ness of the science of religion to set aside precon-
ceptions as to whether reHgion has or has not any
value; and if it does set them aside, that is to say
so far as it is scientific, it will end as it began without
touching on the question of the value of religion. In
fine, it is, and would I think now be generally ad-
mitted to be, a misconception of the function of the
science of religion to imagine that it does, or can,
prove anything as to the truth of religion, one way
or the other.

There is, however, another error in the reasoning
which is directed to show that in fetichism we see
what religion was and essentially is. That error
consists not only in a false conception of what reli-
gion is, — the man who has himself no religion may
be excused if he fails to understand fully what it is, —
it is based on a misunderstanding of what fetichism
is. And so confusion is doubly confounded. The
source of that misunderstanding is to be found in
Bosman (Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, London,
1814, XVI, 493), who says: "I once asked a negro
with whom I could talk very freely . . . how they
celebrated their divine worship, and what number
of gods they had; he, laughing, answered that I had

no COMPARATIVE RELIGION

puzzled him; and assured me that nobody in the
whole country could give me an exact account of it.
*For, as for my own part, I have a very large num-
ber of gods, and doubt not but that others have as
many. For any of us being resolved to undertake
anything of importance, we first of all search out
a god to prosper our designed undertaking; and
going out of doors with the design, take the first
creature that presents itself to our eyes, whether
dog, cat, or the most contemptible creature in the
world for our god ; or, perhaps, instead of that, any
inanimate that falls in our way, whether a stone, a
piece of wood, or anything else of the same nature.
This new-chosen god is immediately presented with
an offering, which is accompanied by a solemn vow,
that if it pleaseth him to prosper our undertakings,
for the future we will always worship and esteem
him as a god. If our design prove successful, we
have discovered a new and assisting god, which is
daily presented with a fresh offering ; but if the con-
trary happen, the new god is rejected as a useless
tool, and consequently returns to his primitive
estate. We make and break our gods daily, and
consequently are the masters and inventors of what
we sacrifice to.'" Now, all this was said by the

FETICHISM III

negro, as Bosman himself observed, to ''ridicule his
own country gods." And it is not surprising that it
should have been, or should be, accepted as a trust-
worthy description of the earliest form of religion by
those who in the highest form can find no more than
this negro found in fetichism when he wished to
ridicule it.

Let us hold over for the moment the question
whether fetichism is or is not a form of religion;
and let us enquire how far the account given by Bos-
man's negro accords with the facts. First, though
there is no doubt that animals are worshipped as
gods, and though there is no doubt that the guardian
spirits of individuals are chosen, or are supposed to
manifest themselves, for example, amongst the North
American Indians, in animal form, and that *'the
first creature that presents itself" to the man seek-
ing the manifestation of his guardian spirit may be
taken to be his god, even though it be "the most
contemptible creature in the world " ; still students of
the science of religion are fairly satisfied that such
gods or guardian spirits are not to be confused with
fetiches. A fetich is an inanimate or lifeless object,
even if it is the feather, claw, bone, eyeball, or any
other part of an animal or even of a man. It is as

112 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Bosnian's negro said, "any inanimate that falls in
our way." When he goes on to say that it "is im-
mediately presented with an oflcring," and, so long
as its owner believes in it, "is daily presented with
a fresh offering," he is stating a fact that is beyond
dispute, and which is fully recognised by all stu-
dents. A typical instance is given by Professor
Tylor {Primitive Culture, II, 158) of the owner of
a stone which had been taken as a fetich: "He was
once going out on important business, but crossing
the threshold he trod on this stone and hurt himself.
Ha ! ha ! thought he, art thou there ? So he took
the stone, and it helped him through his undertaking
for days." When Bosman's negro further goes on
to state that if the fetich is discovered by its owner
not to prosper his undertakings, as he expected it to
do, "it is rejected as a useless tool," he makes a
statement which is admitted to be true and which,
in its truth, may be understood to mean that when
the owner finds that the object is not a fetich, he casts
it aside as being nothing but the "inanimate" which
it is. Bosman's negro, however, says not that the
inanimate but that "the new god is rejected as a
useless tool." That we must take as being but a
carelessness of expression; the evidence of Colonel

FETICHISM 113

Ellis, an observer whose competence is undoubted,
is: "Every native with whom I have conversed on
the subject has laughed at the possibility of it being
supposed that he could worship or offer sacrifice
to some such object as a stone, which of itself would
be perfectly obvious to his senses was a stone only
and nothing more" {The T skis peaking Peoples,
p. 192). From these words it follows that the object
worshipped as a fetich is a stone (or whatever it is)
and something more, and that the object "rejected
as a useless tool" is a stone (or whatever it is) and
nothing more. When, then, Bosman's negro goes
on to say, "we make and break our gods daily,"
he is not describing accurately the processes as they
are conceived by those who perform them. The
fetich worshipper believes that the object which
arrests his attention has already the powers which
he ascribes to it; and it is in consequence of that
belief that he takes it as his fetich. And it is only
when he is convinced that it is not a fetich that he
rejects it as a useless tool. But what Bosman's
negro suggests, and apparently intended to suggest,
is that the fetich worshipper makes, say, a stone
his god, knowing that it is a stone and nothing more;
and that he breaks his fetich believing it to be a god.

114 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Thus the worshipper knows thai the object is no god
when he is worshipping it; but beheves it to be a
god when he rejects it as a useless tool. Now that is,
consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or not, a
misrepresentation of fetichism; and it is precisely
on that misconception of what fetichism is that they
base themselves who identify religion with fetichism,
and then argue that, as fetichism has no value, reli-
gious or reasonable, neither has religion itself.

Returning now to the question what fetichism is
— a question which must be answered before we
can enquire what religious value it possesses, and
whether it can be of any use for the practical pur-
poses of the missionary in his work — we have now
seen that a fetich is not merely an ''inanimate,"
but something more; and that an object to become
regarded as a fetich must attract the attention of
the man who is to adopt it, and must attract the
attention of the man when he has business on hand,
that is to say when he has some end in view which
he desires to attain, or generally when he is in a
state of expectancy. The process of choice is one
of "natural selection." Professor Hoffding sees
in it "the simplest conceivable construction of
religious ideas. The choice is entirely elementary

FETICHISM 115

and involuntary, as elementary and involuntary as
the exclamation which is the simplest form of a
judgment of worth. The object chosen must be
something or other which is closely bound up
with whatever engrosses the mind. It perhaps
awakens memories of earlier events in which
it was present or cooperative, or else it pre-
sents a certain — perhaps a very distant — similarity
to objects which helped in previous times of need.
Or it may be merely the first object which presents
itself in a moment of strained expectation. It
attracts attention, and is therefore involuntarily
associated with what is about to happen, with the
possibility of attaining the desired end" {Philosophy
of Religion J E. T., p. 139). And then Professor
Hoffding goes on to say, "In such phenomena as
these we encounter religion under the guise of de-
sire." Now, without denying that there are such
things as rehgious desires — and holding as we do
that religion is the search after God and the yearn-
ing of the human heart after Him, "the desire
'of all nations," we shall have no temptation to
deny that there are such things as religious desires
— yet we must for the moment reserve our decision
on the question whether it is in such phenomena

Il6 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

as these that we encounter religious desires, and
we must bear in mind that there are desires which
are not reHgious, and that we want to know whether
it is in the phenomena of felichism that we encounter
religious desires.

That in the phenomena of fetichism we encounter
desires other than religious is beyond dispute: the
use of a fetich is, as Dr. Nassau says, "to aid the
possessor in the accompHshment of some specific
wish" {Fetichism in West Africa , p. 82) ; that is, of
any specific wish. Now, a fetich is, as we have seen,
an inanimate object and something more. What
more? In actual truth, nothing more than the fact
that it is "involuntarily associated with what is
about to happen, with the possibility of attaining
the desired end." But to the possessor the some-
thing more, it may be said, is the fact that it is not
merely an "inanimate" but also a spirit, or the habi-
tation of a spiritual being. When, however, we
reflect that fetichism goes back to the animistic
stage of human thought, in which all the things that
we term inanimate are believed to be animated by
spirits, it is obvious that we require some differentia
to mark off those things (animated by spirits) which
are fetiches from those things (animated by spirits)

FETICHISM 117

which are not. And the differentia is, of course,
that fetiches are spirits, or objects animated by
spirits, which will aid the possessor in the accom-
plishment of some specific wish, and are thought
to be wilhng so to aid, owing to the fact that by an
involuntary association of ideas they become con-
nected in the worshipper's mind with the possibility
of attaining the end he has in view at the moment.
To recognise fetichism, then, in its simplest if not
in its most primitive form, all we need postulate is
animism — the belief that all things are animated
by spirits — and the process of very natural selection
which has already been described. At this stage
in the history of fetichism it is especially difficult
to judge whether the fetich is the spirit or the object
animated by the spirit. As Dr. Haddon says (p. 83),
"Just as the human body and soul form one in-
dividual, so the material object and its occupying
spirit or power form one individual, more vague,
perhaps, but still with many attributes distinctively
human. It possesses personality and will ... it
possesses most of the human passions, — anger, re-
venge, also generosity and gratitude; it is within
reach of influence and may be benevolent, hence to
be deprecated and placated, and its aid enlisted."

Il8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

A more advanced stage in the history of fetichism
is that which is reached by reflection on the fact
that a fetich not unfrcquently ceases to prosper the
undertakings of its possessor in the way he expected
it to do. On the principles of animism, everything
that is — whether animate, or inanimate according
to our notions — is made up of spirit, or soul, and
body. In the case of man, when he dies, the spirit
leaves the body. When, therefore, a fetich ceases to
act, the explanation by analogy is that the spirit
has left the body, the inanimate, with which it was
originally associated; and when that is the case,
then, as we learn from Miss Kingsley {Travels in
West Africa, pp. 304-305), "the Httle thing you kept
the spirit in is no more use now, and only fit to sell
to a white man as 'a big curio.'" The fact that,
in native belief, what we call an inanimate thing may
lose its soul and become really dead is shown by
Miss Kingsley in a passage quoted by Dr. Haddon :
"Everything that he," the native, "knows by means
of his senses he regards as a twofold entity — part
spirit, part not spirit, or, as we should say, matter;
the connection of a certain spirit with a certain mass
of matter, he holds, is not permanent. He will
point out to you a lightning-struck tree, and tell

FETICHISM 119

you its spirit has been broken ; he will tell you when
the cooking-pot has been broken, that it has lost
its spirit" {Folk-Lore^ VIII, 141). We might safely
infer then that as any object may lose its spirit, so too
may an object which has been chosen as a fetich;
even if we had not, as we have, direct testimony
to the belief.

Next, when it is believed that an object may lose
its spirit and become dead indeed, there is room and
opportunity for the belief to grow that its spirit may
pass into some other object: that there may be
a transmigration of spirits. And when this belief
arises, a fresh stage in the history of fetichism is
evolved. And the fresh stage is evolved in accord-
ance with the law that governs the whole evolution
of fetichism. That law is that a fetich is an object
believed to aid its possessor in attaining the end he
desires. In the earliest stage of its history anything
which happens to arrest a man's attention when he
is in a state of expectancy "is involuntarily associated
with what is about to happen," and so becomes a
fetich. In the most developed stage of fetichism,
men are not content to wait until they stumble across
a fetich, and when they do so to say, "Ha! ha! art
thou there?" Their mental attitude becomes in-

120 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

tcrrogativc: "Ha! ha! where art thou?" They
no longer wait to stumble across a fetich, they pro-
ceed to make one; and for that procedure a belief
in the transmigration of spirits is essential. An
object, a habitation for the spirit, is prepared; and
he is invited, conjured, or c6njured, into it. If he
is conjured into it, the attitude of the man who
invites him is submissive; if cdnjured, the mental
attitude of the performer is one of superiority.
Colonel Ellis throughout all his careful enquiries
found that ''so great is the fear of giving possible
offence to any superhuman agent " that (in the region
of his observation) we may well believe that even the
makers of fetiches did not assume to command the
spirits. But elsewhere, in other regions, it is im-
possible to doubt but that the owners of fetiches
not only conjure the spirits into the objects, but also
apply coercion to them when they fail to aid their
possessor in the accomplishment of his wishes.
That, I take it, is the ultimate stage in the evolution,
the fine flower, of fetichism. And it is not religion,
it has no value as religion, or rather its value is anti-
religious. Even if we were to accept as a definition
of religion that it is the conciliation of beings con-
ceived to be superior, we should be compelled by

FETICHISM 121

the definition to say that fetichism in its eventual
outcome is not rehgion, for the attitude of the owner
towards his fetich is then one of superiority, and his
method is, when concihation fails, to apply coer-
cion.

But it may perhaps be argued that fetichism, ex-
cept in what I have termed its ultimate evolution, is
religion and has religious value; or, to put it other-
wise, that what I have represented as the eventual
outcome is really a perversion or the dechne of
fetichism. Then, in the fetichism which is or rep-
resents the primitive religion of mankind we meet,
according to Professor Hoffding, "religion under
the guise of desire." Now, not all desires are
religious; and the question, which is purely a ques-
tion of fact, arises whether the desires which fetich-
ism subserves are religious. And in using the word
"religious" I will not here place any extravagant
meaning on the word ; I will take it in the meaning
which would be understood by the community in
which the owner of a fetich dwells himself. In
the tribes described by Colonel Ellis, for instance,
there are worshipped personal gods having proper
names ; and the worship is served by duly appointed
priests; and the worshippers consist of a body of

122 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

persons whose welfare the god has at heart. Such
are some of the sahent features of what all students
of the science of religion would include under the
head of the religion of those tribes. Now amongst
those same tribes the fetich, or suhmayi^ as it is termed
by them, is found; and there are several features
which make a fetich quite distinguishable from any
of the gods which are worshipped there. Thus, the
fetich has no body of worshippers: it is the pri-
vate property of its owner, who alone makes offer-
ings to it. Its raison d'etre^ its special and only
function, is to subserve the private wishes of its
owner. In so far as he makes offerings to it he may
be called its priest; but he is not, as in the case of
the priests of the gods who are worshipped there,
the representative of the community or congregation,
for a fetich has no plurality of worshippers; and
none of the priests of the gods will have anything to
do with it. Next," though offerings are made to the
suhman by its owner, they are made in private"
(Jevons, History of Religion, p. 165) — there is no
public worship — and '^ public opinion does not ap-
prove of them." The interests and the desires which
the fetich exists to promote are not those of the com-
munity: they are antisocial, for, as Colonel Ellis

FETICHISM 123

tells us, "one of the special attributes of a suhman
is to procure the death of any person whom its
worshipper may wish to have removed" — indeed
"the most important function of the suhman appears
to be to work evil against those who have injured or
offended its worshipper."

Thus, a very clear distinction exists between the
worship of a fetich and the worship of the gods.
It is not merely that the fetich is invoked occasionally
in aid of antisocial desires: nothing can prevent
the worshipper of a god, if the worshipper be bad
enough, from praying for that which he ought not
to pray for. It is that the gods of the community
are there to sanction and further all desires which
are for the good of the community, and that the
fetich is there to further desires which are not for
the good of the community, — hence it is that
"public opinion does not approve of them." At
another stage of religious evolution, it becomes
apparent and is openly pronounced that neither does
the god of the community approve of them; and
then fetichism, like the sin of witchcraft, is stamped
out more or less. But amongst the tribes who have
only reached the point of religious progress attained
by the natives of West Africa, public opinion has

124 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

only gone so far as to express disapproval, not to
declare war.

If, then, we are to hold to the view of Professor
Hoffding and of Dr. Haddon, that fetichism is in
its essence, or was at the beginning, religious in its
nature, though it may be perverted into something
non-religious or anti-religious, we must at any rate
admit that it has become non-religious not only in
the case of those fetichists who assume an attitude
of superiority and command to their fetiches, but
also in the earher stage of evolution when the
fetichist preserves an attitude of submission and
conciliation towards his fetich, but assumes the atti-
tude only for the purpose of realising desires which
are anti-social and recognised to be anti-religious.

But, if we take — as I think we must take —
that line of argument, the conclusion to which it
will bring us is fairly clear and is not far oJGf. The
differentia or rather that differentia which character-
istically marks off the fetich from the god is the
nature of the desires which each exists to promote;
the function which each exists to fulfil, the end
which is there for each to subserve. But the ends
are different. Not only are they different, they are
antagonistic. And the process of evolution does

FETICHISM 125

but bring out the antagonism, it does not create it.
It was there from the beginning. From the moment
there was society, there were desires which could
only be realised at the cost and to the loss of society,
as well as desires in the realisation of which the good
of society was realised. The assistance of powers
other than human might be sought ; and the nature
of the power which was sought was determined by
the end or purpose for which its aid was employed
or invoked — if for the good of society, it was ap-
proved by society; if not, not. Its function, the
end it subserved, determined its value for society —
determined whether public opinion should approve
or disapprove of it, whether it was a god of the com-
munity or the fetich of an individual. Society can
only exist where there is a certain community of
purpose among its members ; and can only continue
to exist where anti-social tendencies are to some
extent suppressed or checked by force of public
opinion.

Fetichism, then, in its tendency and in its purpose,
in the function which it performs and the end at
which it aims is not only distinguishable from reli-
gion, it is antagonistic to it, from the earliest period
of its history to the latest. Religion is social, an

126 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

affair of the community; fetichism is anti-social,
condemned by the community. PubHc opinion,
expressing the moral sentiments of the community
as well as its religious feeling, pronounces both
moral and religious disapproval of the man who
uses a siihman for its special purpose of causing
death — committing murder. Fetichism is offen-
sive to the morality as well as to the religion even
of the native. To seek the origin of religion in
fetichism is as vain as to seek the origin of morality
in the selfish and self-seeking tendencies of man.
There is no need to enquire whether fetichism is
historically prior to religion, or whether religion is
historically prior to fetichism. Man, as long as he
has Hved in societies, must have had desires which
were incompatible with the welfare of the com-
munity as well as desires which promoted its wel-
fare. The powers which are supposed to care
whether the community fares well are the gods of
the community; and their worship is the religion
of the community. The powers which have no
such care are not gods, nor is their worship — if
coercion or cajolery can be called worship — reli-
gion. The essence of fetichism on its external
side is that the owner of the fetich alone has access

FETICHISM 127

to it, alone can pray to it, alone can offer sacrifices
to it. It is therefore in its inward essence directly
destructive of the unity of interests and purposes
that society demands and religion promotes. Per-
haps it would be going too far to say that the prac-
tice of making prayers and offerings to a fetich is
borrowed from religious worship: they are the
natural and instinctive method of approaching any
power which is capable of granting or refusing what
we desire. It is the quarter to which they are
addressed, and the end for which they are employed,
that makes the difference between them. It is the
fact that in the one case they are, and in the other
are not, addressed to the quarter to which they ought
to be addressed, and employed for the end for which
they ought to be employed, that makes the difference
in religious value between them.

If we bear in mind the simple fact that fetichism
is condemned by the religious and moral feelings
of the communities in which it exists, we shall not
fall into the mistake of regarding fetichism either
as the primitive religion of mankind or as a stage
of religious development or as "a basis from which
many other modes of religious thought have been
developed,"

128 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Professor HofTding, holding that fctichism is the
primitive rehgion, out of which polytheism was
developed, adopts Usener's theory as to the mode
of its evolution. "The fetich," Professor HofTding
says (p. 140), " is only the provisional and momen-
tary dwelling-place of a spirit. As Hermann
Usener has strikingly called it, it is 'the god of a
moment.'" But though Professor HofTding adopts
this definition of a fetich, it is obvious that the
course of his argument requires us to understand it
as subject to a certain limitation. His argument in
efTect is that fetichism is not polytheism, but some-
thing different, something out of which polytheism
was evolved. And the difference is that polytheism
means a plurality of gods, whereas fetichism knows
no gods, but only spirits. Inasmuch then as, on the
theory — whether it is held by HofTding or by any-
body else — that the spirits of fetichism become the
gods of polytheism, there must be differences between
the spirits of the one and the gods of the other, let
us enquire what the differences are supposed to
be.

First, there is the statement that a fetich is the
"god of a moment," by which must be meant that
the spirits which, so long as they are momentary and

FETICHISM 129

temporary, are fetiches, must come to be permanent
if they are to attain to the rank of gods.

But on this point Dr. Haddon differs. He is
quite clear that a fetich may be worshipped per-
manently without ceasing to be a fetich. And it is
indeed abundantly clear that an object only ceases
to be worshipped when its owner is convinced that it
is not really a fetich; as long as he is satisfied that
it is a fetich, he continues its cult — and he continues
it because it is his personal property, because he,
and not the rest of the community, has access
to it.

Next, Hoffding argues that it is from these mo-
mentary fetiches that special or speciahsed deities
— ''departmental gods," as Mr. Andrew Lang has
termed them — arise. And these ''speciahsed divini-
ties constitute an advance on gods of the moment"
(p. 142). Now, what is implied in this argument,
what is postulated but not expressed, is that a
fetich has only one particular thing which it can do.
A departmental god can only do one particular
sort of thing, has one speciahsed function. A de-
partmental god is but a fetich advanced one stage in
the hierarchy of divine beings. Therefore the func-
tion of the fetich in the first instance was speciahsed

130 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

and limited. But there it is that the a priori argu-
ment comes into coUision with the actual facts.
A fetich, when it jjrcsents itself to a man, assists
him in the particular business on which he is at the
moment engaged. But it only continues to act as
a fetich, provided that it assists him afterwards and
in other matters also. The desires of the owner
are not limited, and consequently neither are his
expectations; the business of the fetich is to procure
him general prosperity (Haddon, p. %t^). As far
as fetiches are concerned, it is simply reversing the
facts to suppose that it is because one fetich can only
do one thing, that many fetiches are picked up.
Many objects are picked up on the chance of their
proving fetiches, because if the object turns out
really to be a fetich it will bring its owner good luck
and prosperity generally — there is no knowing what
it may do. But it is only to its owner that it brings
prosperity — not to other people, not to the com-
munity, for the community is debarred access to it.

The next difference between fetichism and poly-
theism, according to Hoffding, is that the gods of
polytheism have developed that personality which
is not indeed absolutely wanting in the spirits of
fetichism but can hardly be said to be properly

FETICHISM 131

there. ''The transition," he says, "from momen-
tary and special gods to gods which can properly be
called personal is one of the most important transi-
tions in the history of religion. It denotes the
transition from animism to polytheism" (p. 145).
And one of the outward signs that the transition
has been effected is, as Usener points out with
special emphasis, "that only at a certain stage of
evolution, i.e., on the appearance of polytheism, do
the gods acquire proper names" {ih. 147).

Now, this argument, I suggest, seeks to make, or
to make much of, a difference between fetichism
and polytheism which scarcely exists, and so far as
it does exist is not the real difference between them.
It seeks to minimise, if not to deny, the personality
of the fetich, in order to exalt that of the gods of
polytheism. And then this difference in degree of
personality, this transition from the one degree to
the other, is exhibited as "one of the most important
transitions in the history of religion." The question
therefore is first whether the difference is so great,
and next whether it is the real difference between
fetichism and religion in the polytheistic stage.

The difference in point of personality between the
spirits of fetichism and the gods of polytheism is not

132 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

al)solulc. The fetich, according to Dr. Haddon,
^^ possesses personality and will, it has also many
human characters. It |X)sscsses most of the human
passions, anger, revenge, also generosity and grati-
tude; it is within reach of influence and may be
benevolent, is hence to be deprecated and placated,
and its aid to be enlisted" (p. S^); ''the fetich is
worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, and talked
with" (p. 89).

But, perhaps it may be said that, though the
fetich does "possess personality," it is only when it
has acquired sufficient personality to enjoy a proper
name that it becomes a god, or fetichism passes
into polytheism. To this the reply is that poly-
theism does not wait thus deferentially on the evo-
lution of proper names. There was a period in the
evolution of the human race when men neither had
proper names of their own nor knew their fellows by
proper names ; and yet they doubted not their per-
sonality. The simple fact is that he who is to
receive a name — whether he be a human being or a
spiritual being — must be there in order to be named.
When he is there he may receive a name which has
lost all meaning, as proper names at the present day
have generally done; or one which has a meaning.

FETICHISM 133

A mother may address her child as "John" or as
"boy," but, whichever form of address she uses, she
has no doubt that the child has a personality. The
fact that a fetich has not acquired a proper name is
not a proof that it has acquired no personality ; if it
can, as Dr. Haddon says it can, be "petted or
ill-treated with regard to its past or future be-
haviour" (p. 90), its personality is undeniable. If it
can be "worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, talked
with," it is as personal as any deity in a pantheon.
If it has no proper name, neither at one time had
men themselves. And Hoffding himself seems dis-
inclined to follow Usener on this point: "no im-
portant period," he says (p. 147), "in the history of
religion can begin with an empty word. The word can
neither be the beginning nor exist at the beginning."
Finally Hoffding, to enforce the conclusion that
polytheism is evolved from fetichism, says: "The
influence exerted by worship on the life of religious
ideas can find no more striking exemphfication than
in the word 'god' itself: when we study those ety-
mologies of this word which, from the philological
point of view, appear most likely to be correct, we
find the word really means 'he to whom sacrifice
is made,' or 'he who is worshipped'" (p. 148).

134 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Professor Wilhclm Thomscn considers the first ex-
planation the more probable : ''In that case there
would be a relationship between the root of the word
* gott^ and ^ giessen^ (to pour), as also between the
Greek ;\;eeii^, whose root x^ = the Sanskrit hu, from
which comes hula, which means 'sacrificed,' as well
as 'he to whom sacrifices are made'" (p. 396).
Now, if "god" means either "he to whom sacrifice
is made" or "he who is worshipped," we have only
to enquire by whom the sacrifice is made or the wor-
ship paid, according to Professor Hoffding, in order
to see the value of this philological argument. A
leading difference between a fetich and a god is that
sacrifice is made and worship paid to the fetich by
its owner, to the god by the community. Now
this philological derivation of "god" throws no light
whatever on the question by whom the "god" is
worshipped; but the content of the passage which
I have quoted shows that Professor Hoffding him-
self here understands the worship of a god to be
the worship paid by the community. If that is so,
and if the function or a function of the being wor-
shipped is to grant the desires of his worshippers,
then the function of the being worshipped by the
community is to grant the desires of the community.

FETICHISM 135

And if that is the distinguishing mark or a distinguish-
ing mark of a god, then the worship of a god differs
toto caelo from the worship paid to a fetich, whose
distinguishing mark is that it is subservient to the
anti-social wishes of its owner, and is not worshipped
by the community. And it is just as impossible to
maintain that a god is evolved out of a fetich as it
would be to argue — indeed it is arguing — that
practices destructive of society or social welfare
have only to be pushed far enough and they will
prove the salvation of society.

If in the animistic stage, when everything that is
is worked by spirits, it is possible and desirable for
the individual to gain his individual ends by the
cooperation of some spirit, it is equally possible and
more desirable for the community to gain the aid
of a spirit which will further the ends for the sake
of which the community exists. But those ends are
not transient or momentary, neither therefore can
the spirit who promotes them be a "momentary"
god. And if we accept Holding's description of
the simplest and earliest manifestation of the reli-
gious spirit as being behef ''in a power which cares
whether he [man] has or has not experiences which he
values," we must be careful to make it clear that the

136 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

power worsliipped by a community is worshipped
because he is bcHeved to care that the community
should have the experiences which the community
values. Having made that stipulation, we may
accept Hoffding's further statement (p. 147) that
''even the momentary and special gods imphed the
existence of a personifying tendency and faculty";
for, although from our point of view a momentary
god is a self-contradictory notion, we are quite
wiUing to agree that this, tendency to personification
may be taken as primary and primitive: rehgion
from the beginning has been the search after a power
essentially personal. But that w^ay of conceiving
spiritual powers is not in itself distinctive of or con-
fined to religion: it is an intellectual conception;
it is the essence of animism, and animism is not
rehgion. To say that an emotional element also
must be present is true; but neither will that serve
to mark off fetichism from religion. Fetichism
also is emotional in tone: it is in hope that the
savage picks up the thing that may prove to have
the fetich power; and it is with fear that he recog-
nises his neighbour's suhman. A god is not merely
a power conceived of intellectually and felt emotion-
ally to be a personal power from whom things may

FETICHISM

137

be hoped or feared; he must indeed be a personal
power and be regarded with hope and fear, but it is
by a community that he must be so regarded. And
the community, in turning to such a power, worships
him with sacrifice: a god is indeed he to whom
sacrifice is made and worship paid by the com-
munity, with whose interests and whose morahty
— with whose good, in a word, he is from the be-
ginning identified. "In the absence of experience
of good as one of the reahties of Hfe, no one," Hol-
ding says, ''would ever have beheved in the goodness
of the gods"; and, we may add, it is as interested
in and caring for the good of the community that
the god of the community is worshipped. It is in
the conviction that he does so care, that religious
feeling is rooted; or, as Hoffding puts it (p. 162),
it is rooted in "the need to collect and concentrate
ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves sup-
ported and carried by a power raised above all
struggle and opposition and beyond all change."
There we have, implicit from the beginning, that
communion with god, or striving thereafter, which
is essential to worship. It is faith. It is rest.
It is the heart's desire. And it is not fetichism,
nor is fetichism it.

PRAYER

The physician, if he is to do his work, must know
both a heahhy and a diseased body, or organ, when he
sees it. He must know the difference between the
two and the symptoms both of health and disease.
Otherwise he is in danger of trying to cure an organ
which is heahhy aheady — in which case his reme-
dies will simply aggravate the disease. That is
obviously true of the physician who seeks to heal the
body, and it is equally, if not so obviously, true of
the physician who seeks to minister to a mind, or a
soul, diseased. Now, the missionary will find that
the heathen, to whom he is to minister, have the
habit of prayer; and the question arises. What is
to be his attitude towards it ? He cannot take up
the position that prayer is in itself a habit to be
condemned; he is not there to eradicate the habit,
or to uproot the tendency. Neither is he there
to create the habit ; it already exists, and the wise
missionary will acknowledge its existence with thank-
fulness. His business is not to teach his flock to

13S

PRAYER 139

pray, but how to pray, that is to say, for what and
to whora. But even if he thus wisely recognises
that prayer is a habit not to be created, but to be
trained by him, it is still possible for him to assume
rashly that it is simply impossible for a heathen ever
to pray for anything that is right, and therefore,
that it is a missionary's duty first to insist that
everything for which a savage or barbarian prays
must be condemned as essentially irrehgious and
wicked. In that case, what will such a mission-
ary, if sent to the Khonds of Orissa, say, when he
finds them praying thus : ''We are ignorant of what
it is good to ask for. You know what is good for
us. Give it to us!"? Can he possibly say to his
flock, ''AH your prayers, all the things that you pray
for now, are wicked ; and your only hope of salvation
lies in ceasing to pray for them"? If not, then he
must recognise the fact that it is possible for the
heathen to pray, and to pray for some things that
it is right to pray for. And he must not only recog-
nise the fact, but he must utilise it. Nay ! more, he
must not only recognise the fact if it chances to
force itself upon him, he must go out of his way
with the dehberate purpose of finding out what
things are prayed for. He will then find himself in

I40 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

more intimate contact with the soul of the man than
he can ever attain to in any other way; and he may
then fmd that there are other things for which peti-
tions are put up which could not be prayed for save
by a man who had a defective or erroneous concep-
tion of Him who alone can answer prayer.

But it is a blundering, unbusinesslike way of
managing things if the missionary has to go out to
his work unprepared in this essential matter, and
has to fmd out these things for himself — and per-
haps not find them out at all. The applied science
of religion should equip him in this respect; it
should be able to take the facts and truths estab-
lished by the science of rehgion and apply them to
the purposes of the missionary. But it is a striking
example of the youth and immaturity of the science
of religion that no attempt has yet been made by it
to collect the facts, much less to coordinate and state
them scientifically. If a thing is clear, when we
come to think of it, in the history of religion, it is
that the gods are there to be prayed to : man worships
them because it is on their knees that all things lie.
It is from them that man hopes all things; it is in
prayer that man expresses his hopes and desires. It
is from his prayers that we should be able to fmd out

PRAYER 141

what the gods really are to whom man prays. What
is said about them in mythology — or even in theol-
ogy — is the product of reflection, and is in many
cases demonstrably different from what is given in
consciousness at the moment when man is striving
after communion with the Highest. Yet it is from
mythology, or from the still more reflective and de-
liberative expression of ritual, of rites and ceremonies,
that the science of religion has sought to infer the
nature of the gods man worships. The whole appa-
ratus of religion, rites and ceremonies, sacrifice and
altars, nature-worship and polytheism, has been in-
vestigated; the one thing overlooked has been the
one thing for the sake of which all the others exist,
the prayer in which man's soul rises, or seeks to rise,
to God.

The reason given by Professor Tylor {Primitive
Culture, II, 364) for this is not that the subject is
unimportant, but that it is so simple; "so simple
and famihar," he says, ''is the nature of prayer
that its study does not demand that detail of fact and
argument which must be given to rites in compari-
son practically insignificant." Now, it is indeed the
case that things which are familiar may appear to be
simple ; but it is also the case that sometimes things

142 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

arc considered simple merely because they are
familiar, and not because they are simple. The
fact that they are not so simple as every one has
assumed comes to be suspected when it is discovered
that people take slightly different views of them.
Such slightly different views may be detected in this
case.

Professor Hoffding holds that, in the lowest
form in which religion manifests itself, ''religion
appears under the guise of desire," thus rang-
ing himself on the side of an opinion mentioned
by Professor Tylor {op. cit., II, 464) that, as regards
the rehgion of the lower culture, in prayer ''the
accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is
as yet limited to personal advantage." Now, start-
ing from this position that prayer is the expression
of desire, we have only to ask, whose desire? that
of the individual or that of the community? and
we shall see that under the simple and familiar
phrase of "the accomplishment of desire" there
lurks a difference of view which may possibly widen
out into a very wide difference of opinion. If we
appeal to the facts, we may take as an instance a
prayer uttered "in loud uncouth voice of plaintive,
piteous tone" by one of the Osages to Wohkonda,

PRAYER

143

the Master of Life: "Wohkonda, pity me, I am
very poor; give me what I need; give me success
against mine enemies, that I may avenge the death
of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take
horses!" etc. (Tylor, II, 365). So on the Gold
Coast a negro in the morning will pray, "Heaven!
grant that I may have something to eat this day"
(ib.j 368), not "give us this day our daily bread";
or, raising his eyes to heaven, he will thus address
the god of heaven: "God, give me to-day rice
and yams, gold and agries, give me slaves, riches
and health, and that I may be brisk and swift !" (ib.).
On the other hand, John Tanner (Narrative, p. 46)
relates that when Algonquin Indians were setting
out in a fleet of frail bark canoes across Lake Su-
perior, the chief addressed a prayer to the Great
Spirit: "You have made this lake; and you have
made us, your children ; you can now cause that the
water shall remain smooth while we pass over in
safety." The chief, it will be observed, did not
expressly call the Great Spirit "our Father," but
he did speak of himself and his men as "^Dur
children." If we cross over to Africa, again, \we
find the Masai women praying thus; and be it
observed that though the first person singular is used,

144 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

it is used by the chorus of women, and is plural in
effect : —

' My God, to thee alone I pray
That offspring may to me be given.
Thee only I invoke each day,
O morning star in highest heaven.
God of the thunder and the rain,
Give ear unto my suppliant strain.
Lord of the powers of the air,
To thee I raise my daily prayer.

" My God, to thee alone I pray,
Whose savour is as passing sweet
As only choicest herbs display,
Thy blessing daily I entreat.
Thou hearest when I pray to thee,
And listenest in thy clemency.
Lord of the powers of the air.
To thee I raise my daily prayer."

— HoLLis, The Masai, p. 346.

When Professor Tylor says that by the savage
"the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but
desire is as yet limited to personal advantage," we
must be careful not to infer that the only advantage
a savage is capable of praying for is his own selfish
advantage. Professor Tylor himself quotes (II,

PRAYER 145

366) the following prayer from the war-song of a

Delaware : —

" O Great Spirit there above,
Have pity on my children
And my wife !

Prevent that they shall mourn for me !
Let me succeed in this undertaking,
That I may slay my enemy
And bring home the tokens of victory
To my dear family and my friends
That we may rejoice together. . . .
Have pity on me and protect my life,
And I will bring thee an offering."

Nor is it exclusively for their own personal advan-
tage that the Masai women are concerned when they
pray for the safe return of their sons from the wars : —

" O thou who gavest, thou to whom we pray
For offspring, take not now thy gift away.
O morning star, that shinest from afar.
Bring back our sons in safety from the war."

— HoLLis, p. 351.

Nor is it in a purely selfish spirit that the Masai
women pray that their warriors may have the ad-
vantage over all their enemies : —

I

' O God of battles, break
The power of the foe.

146 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Their cattle may we take,
Their mightiest lay low.

" Sing, O ye maidens fair,
For triumph o'er the foe.
This is the time for prayer
Success our arms may know.

Ill

" Morning and evening stars
That in the heavens glow.
Break, as in other wars.
The power of the foe.

IV

" O dweller, where on high
Flushes at dawn the snow,
O Cloud God, break, we cry,
The power of the foe."

— 76., p. 352.

r

I Again, the rain that is prayed for by the Manganja
C of Lake Nyassa is an advantage indeed, but one

I enjoyed by the community and prayed for by the
community. They made offerings to the Supreme
Deity that he might give them rain, and "the
priestess dropped the meal handful by handful on
the ground, each time calling in a high-pitched voice,

PRAYER 147

'Hear thou, O God, and send rain!' and the
assembled people responded, clapping their hands
softly and intoning (they always intone their prayers),
^Hear thou, O God'" (Tylor, p. 368).

The appeal then to facts shows that it is with*
the desires of the community that the god of the
community is concerned, and that it is by a repre-
sentative of the community that those desires are
offered up in prayer, and that the community may
join in. The appeal to facts shows, also, that an
individual may put up individual petitions, as when
a Yebu will pray: **God in heaven protect me from
sickness and death. God give me happiness and
wisdom." But we may safely infer that the only
prayers that the god of the community is expected
to harken to are prayers that are consistent with the
interests and welfare of the community.

From that point of view we must refuse to give
more than a guarded assent to the "opinion that
prayer appeared in the religion of the lower culture,
but that in this its earlier stage it was unethical"
(Tylor, 364). Prayer obviously does appear in the
religion of the lower culture, but to say that it
there is unethical is to make a statement which re-
quires defining. The statement means what Pro-

148 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

fcssor IVlor cxj)rcs.scs later on in the words: "It
scarcely appears as though any savage prayer,
authentically native in its origin, were ever directed
to obtain moral goodness or to ask pardon for
moral sin" (p. 373). But it might be misunderstood
to mean that among savages it was customary or
possible to pray for things recognised by the savage
himself as wrong, and condemned by the com-
munity at large. In the first place, however, the
god of the community simply as being the god of the
community would not tolerate such prayers. Next,
the range and extent of savage morality is less exten-
sive than it is — or at any rate than it ought to be
— in our day ; and though we must recognise and
at the right time insist upon the difference, that ought
not to make us close our eyes to the fact that the
savage does pray to do the things which savage
morality holds it incumbent on him to do, for in-
stance to fight bravely for the good of his wife, his
children, and his tribe, to carry out the duty of
avenging murder. And if he prays for wealth he
also prays for wisdom; if he prays that his god may
deliver him from sickness, that shows he is human
rather than that he is a low type of humanity.

It would seem, then, that though in religions of low

PRAYER 149

culture we meet religion under the guise of desire,
we also find that religion makes a distinction be-
tween desires; there are desires which may be
expressed to the god of the community, and desires
which may not. Further, though it is in the heart
of a person and an individual that desire must origi-
nate, it does not follow that prayer originates in
individual desire. To say so, we must assume that
the same desire cannot possibly originate simul-
taneously in different persons. But that is a patently
erroneous assumption: in time of war, the desire
for victory will spring up simultaneously in the
hearts of all the tribe; in time of drought, the
prayer for rain will ascend from the hearts of all
the people ; at the time of the sowing of seed a prayer
for "the kindly fruits of the earth" may be uttered
by every member of the community. Now it is
precisely these desires, which being desires must
originate in individual souls, yet being desires of
every individual in the community are the desires
of the community, that are the desires which take
the form of prayer offered by the community or its
representative to the god of the community. Anti-
social desires cannot be expressed by the community
or sanctioned by religion. Prayer is the essential

150

COXIPARATIVE RELIGION

expression of true socialism; and the spirit which
prompts it is and has always been the moving spirit
of social progress.

Professor Tylor, noticing the ''extreme develop-
ment of mechanical religion, the prayer-mill of the
Tibetan Buddhists," suggests that it " may perhaps
lead us to form an opinion of large application in
the study of religion and superstition; namely, that
the theory of prayers may explain the origin of
charms. Charm-formulae," he says, "are in very
many cases actual prayers, and as such are intelli-
gible. Where they are mere verbal forms, producing
their effect on nature and man by some unexplained
process, may not they or the types they have been
modelled on have been originally prayers, since
dwindled into mystic sentences?" (P. C. II,
372-373). Now, if this suggestion of Professor
Tylor's be correct, it will follow that as charms and
spells are degraded survivals of prayer, so magic
generally — of which charms and spells are but one
department — is a degradation of religion. That
in many cases charms and spells are survivals of
prayer — formulas from which all spirit of religion
has entirely evaporated — all students of the science
of religion would now admit. That prayers may

PRAYER 151

stiffen into traditional formulae, and then become
vain repetitions which may actually be unintelligible
to those who utter them, and so be conceived to
have a force which is purely magical and a '^nature
practically assimilated more or less to that of
charms" (I.e.), is a fact which cannot be denied.
But when once the truth has been admitted that
prayers may pass into spells, the possibility is sug-
gested that it is out of spells that prayer has
originated. Mercury raised to a high temperature
becomes red precipitate ; and red precipitate exposed
to a still greater heat becomes mercury again. Spells
may be the origin of prayers, if prayers show a
tendency to relapse into spells. That possibility fits
in either with the theory that magic preceded re-
ligion or still more exactly with the theory that
religion simply is magic raised, so to speak, to a
higher moral temperature. We have therefore to
consider the possibility that the process of evolution
has been from spell to prayer (R. R. Marett, Folk-
Lore XV, 2, pp. 132-166); and let us begin the
consideration by observing that the reverse passage —
from prayer to spell — is only possible on the con-
dition that religion evaporates entirely in the process.
The prayer does not become a charm until the

152 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

religion has disappeared entirely from it: a eharm
therefore is that in wliich no religion is, and out of
which consequently no religion can be extracted.
If then, per impossibile, it could be demonstrated
that there was a period in the history of mankind,
when charms and magic existed, and religion was
utterly unknown ; if it be argued that the spirit of
religion, when at length it breathed upon mankind,
transformed spells into prayers — still all that would
then be maintained is that spoken formulae which
were spells were followed by other formulae which
are the very opposite of spells. Must we not, how-
ever, go one step further and admit that one and
the same form of words may be prayer and religion
when breathed in one spirit, and vain repetition and
mere magic when uttered in another ? Let us admit
that the difference between prayer and spell lies in
the difference of the spirit inspiring them; and then
we shall see that the difference is essential, funda-
mental, as little to be ignored as it is impossible
to bridge.

The formula used by the person employing it to
express his desire may or may not in itself suffice to
show whether it is religious in intent and value.
Thus in West Africa the women of Framin dance

PRAYER 153

and sing, "Our husbands have gone to Ashantee
land; may they sweep their enemies off the face
of the earth" (Frazer, Golden Bough, "^ I, 34). We
may compare the song sung in time of war by the
Masai women : " O God, to whom I pray for off-
spring, may our children return hither " (HoUis,
p. 351); and there seems no reason why, since the
Masai song is religious, the Framin song may not be
regarded as religious also. But we have to remember
that both prayers and spells have a setting of their
own : the desires which they express manifest them-
selves not only in what is said but in what is done;
and, when we enquire what the Framin women
do whilst they sing the words quoted above, we find
that they dance with brushes in their hands. The
brushes are quite as essential as the words. It
is therefore suggested that the whole ceremony is
magical, that the sweeping is sympathetic magic
and the song is a spell. The words explain what the
action is intended to effect, just as in New Caledonia
when a man has kindled a smoky fire and has
performed certain acts, he "invokes his ancestors
and says, ' Sun ! I do this that you may be burning
hot, and eat up all the clouds in the sky'" (Frazer,
ib., 116). Again, amongst the Masai in time of

154 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

drought a charm called ol-kora is thrown into a fire;
the old men encircle the fire and sing: —

" God of the rain-cloud, slake our thirst,
We know thy far-extending powers,
As herdsmen lead their kine to drink,
Refresh us with thy cooling showers."

HOLLIS, p. 348.

If the ol-kora which is thrown into the fire makes
it rise in clouds of smoke, resembling the rain-
clouds which are desired, then here too the cere-
mony taken as a whole presents the appearance
of a magical rite accompanied by a spoken spell.
It is true that in this case the ceremony is reenforced
by an appeal to a god, just as in the New Caledonian
case it is reenforced by an appeal to ancestor worship.
But this may be explained as showing that here we
have magic and charms being gradually superseded
by religion and prayer ; the old formula and the old
rite are in process of being suffused by a new spirit,
the spirit of religion, which is the very negation and
ultimately the destruction of the old spirit of magic.
Before accepting this interpretation, however,
which is intended to show the priority of magic to
religion, we may notice that it is not the only inter-
pretation of which the facts are susceptible. It is

PRAYER 155

based on the assumption that the words uttered are
intended as an explanation of the meaning of the
acts performed. If that assumption is correct, then
the performer of the ceremony is explaining its mean-
ing and intention to somebody. To whom ? In the
case of the New Caledonian ceremony, to the an-
cestral spirits; in the case of the Masai old men,
to the god. Thus, the religious aspect of the cere-
mony appears after all to be an essential part of the
ceremony, and not a new element in an old rite.
And, then, we may consistently argue that the Fra-
min women who sing, "Our husbands have gone
to Ashantee land; may they sweep their enemies
off the face of the earth," are either still conscious
that they are addressing a prayer to their native
god; or that, if they are no longer conscious of the
fact, they once were, and what was originally
prayer has become by vain repetition a mere spell.
All this is on the assumption that in these cere-
monies, the words are intended to explain the mean-
ing of the acts performed, and therefore to explain
it to somebody, peradventure he will understand
and grant the performer of the ceremony his heart's
desire. But, as the consequences of the assumption
do not favour the theory that prayer must be pre-

156 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

ceded by sj)ell, let us discard tlie assumption that the
words explain the meaning of the acts performed.
Let us consider the possibility that perhaps the
actions which are gone through are meant to explain
the words and make them more forcible. It is unde-
niable that in moments of emotion we express our-
selves by gesture and the play of our features as
well as by our words; indeed, in reading a play we
are apt to miss the full meaning of the words simply
because they are not assisted and interpreted by the
actor's gestures and features. If we take up this
position, that the things done are explanatory of the
words uttered and reenforce them, then the sweeping
which is acted by the Framin women again is not
magical; it simply emphasises the words, ''may
they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth,"
and shows to the power appealed to what it is that is
desired. The smoke sent up by the New Caledonian
ancestor worshipper or the Masai old men is a way
of indicating the clouds which they wish to attract
or avert respectively. An equally clear case comes
from the Kei Islands: "When the warriors have
departed, the women return indoors and bring out
certain baskets containing fruits and stones. These
fruits and stones they anoint and place on a board,

PRAYER 157

murmuring as they do so, ' O lord sun, moon, let
the bullets rebound from our husbands, brothers,
betrothed, and other relations, just as raindrops re-
bound from these objects which are smeared with
oil'" (Frazer, op. cit., p. 2)2))- It is, I think, perfectly
reasonable to regard the act performed as explana-
tory of the words uttered and of the thing desired;
the women themselves explain to their lords, the sun
and moon, — with the precision natural to women
when explaining what they want, — exactly how they
want the bullets to bounce off, just Hke raindrops.
Dr. Frazer, however, from whom I have quoted this
illustration, not having perhaps considered the pos-
sibihty that the acts performed may be explanatory
of the words, is compelled to explain the action as
magical: ''in this custom the ceremony of anointing
stones in order that the bullets may recoil from the
men like raindrops from the stones is a piece of pure
sympathetic or imitative magic." He is therefore
compelled to suggest that the prayer to the sun is a
prayer that he will give effect to the charm, and is
perhaps a later addition. But independently of the
possibility that the actions performed are explana-
tory of the words, or rather that words and actions
both are intended to make clear to the sun precisely

158 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

what the petition is, what tells against Dr. Frazer'ssug-
gestion is that the women want the bullets to bounce ofT,
and it is the power of the god to which they appeal
and on which they rely for the fulfilment of their prayer.
There is, however, a further consideration which
we should perhaps take into account. Man, when
he has a desire which he wishes to realise, — and
the whole of our life is spent in trying to realise
what we wish, — takes all the steps which experience
shows to be necessary or reason suggests; and, when
he has done everything that he can do, he may still
feel that nothing is certain in this life, and the thing
may not come off. Under those circumstances he
may, and often does, pray that success may attend
his efforts. Now Dr. Frazer, in the second edition
of his Golden Bough, wishing to show that the period
of religion was preceded by a non-religious period in
the history of mankind, suggests that at first man
had no idea that his attempts to realise his desires
could fail, and that it was his "tardy recognition"
of the fact that led him to religion. This tardy
recognition, he says, probably ''proceeded very
slowly, and required long ages for its more or less
perfect accomplishment. For the recognition of
man's powerlessness to influence the course of

PRAYER 159

nature on a grand scale must have been gradual"
(I, 78). I would suggest, however, that it cannot
have taken '^long ages" for savage man to discover
that his wishes and his plans did not always come
off. It is, I think, going too far to imagine that
for long ages man had no idea that his attempts to
realise his desires could fail. If religion arises, as
Dr. Frazer suggests, when man recognises his own
weakness and his own powerlessness, often, to effect
what he most desires, then man in his most primi-
tive and most helpless condition must have been
most ready to recognise that there were powers
other than himself, and to desire, that is to pray
for, their assistance. Doubtless it would be at the
greater crises, times of pestilence, drought, famine
and war, that his prayers would be most insistent;
but it is in the period of savagery that famine is most
frequent and drought most to be feared. Against
them he takes all the measures known to him, all
the practical steps which natural science, as under-
stood by him, can suggest. Now his theory and
practice include many things which, though they are
in later days regarded as uncanny and magical, are
to him the ordinary natural means of producing the
effects which he desires. But when he has taken all

t6o comparative religion

the steps which practical reason suggests, and ex-
perience of the past approves, savage man, harassed
by the dread of approaching drought or famine, may
still breathe out the Manganja prayer, "Hear thou,

0 God, and send rain." When, however, he does
so, it is, I suggest, doubly erroneous to infer that
this prayer takes the place of a spell or that apart
from the prayer the acts performed are, and origi-
nally were, magical. These acts may be based on the
principle that like produces like and maybe performed
as the ordinary, natural means for producing the effect,
which have nothing magical about them. And they are
accompanied by a prayer which is not a mere explana-
tion or statement of the purpose with which the acts are
performed, but is the expression of the heart's desire.

No a priori proofs of any cogency, therefore, have
been adduced by Dr. Frazer, and none therefore are
likely to be produced by any one else, to show that
there was ever a period in the history of man when
prayers and religion were unknown to him. The
question remains whether any actual instances are
known to the science of religion. Unfortunately, as

1 pointed out at the beginning of this lecture, so
neglected by the science of religion has been the
subject of prayer that even now we are scarcely

PRAYER l6l

able to go beyond the statement made more than a
quarter of a century ago by Professor Tylor that,
"at low levels of civilisation there are many races
vi^ho distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are
not certainly knov^^n to pray to them even in thought"
(P. C. II, 364). Professor Tylor's statement is pro-
perly guarded : there are races not certainly known
to pray. The possibility that they may yet be dis-
covered to make prayers is not excluded.

Now, if we turn to one of the lowest levels of
culture, that of the Austrahan black fellows, we
shall find that there is much doubt amongst students
whether the "aborigines have consciously any
form of religion whatever" (Howitt, Native Tribes
of S. E. Australia), and in southeast AustraUa
Mr. Howitt thinks it cannot be alleged that they
have, though their beliefs are such that they
might easily have developed into an actual religion
(P- 507)- Now one of the tribes of southeast Aus-
traha is that of the Dieri. With them rain is very
important, for periods of drought are frequent;
and "rain-making ceremonies are considered of
much consequence" (p. 394). The ceremonies
are symboHc: there is "blood to symboHse the
rain" and two large stones "representing gathering

1 62 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

clouds presaginf,' rain," just as the New Caledonian
sends up clouds of smoke to symbolise rain-clouds,
and the Masai, we have conjectured, throw ol-kora
into the fire for the same purpose. But the New
Caledonian not only performs the actions prescribed
for the rite, he also invokes the spirits of his an-
cestors; and the Masai not only go through the
proper dance, but call upon the god of the rain-cloud.
The Dieri, however, ought to be content with their
symbolic or sympathetic magic and not offer up
any prayer. But, being unaware of this fact, they
do pray: they call "upon the rain-making Mura-
muras to give them power to make a heavy rain-
fall, crying out in loud voices the impoverished
state of the country, and the half-starved condition
of the tribe, in consequence of the difficulty in pro-
curing food in sufficient quantity to preserve life"
(p. 394). The Mura-muras seem to be ancestral
spirits, like those invoked by the New Caledonian.
If we turn to the Euahlayi tribe of northwestern
New South Wales, we find that at the Boorah rites
a prayer is ofifered to Byamee, "asking him to let
the blacks live long, for they have been faithful
to his charge as show^n by the observance of the
Boorah ceremony" (L. Parker, The Euahlayi

PRAYER 163

Trihe, p. 79). That is the prayer of the community
to Byamee, and is in conformity with what we have
noted before, viz. that it is with the desires of the
community that the god of the community is con-
cerned. Another prayer, the nature of which is not
stated by Mrs. Parker, by whom the information is
given us, is put up at funerals, presumably to
Byamee by the community or its representative.
Mrs. Parker adds: ''Though we say that actually
these people have but two attempts at prayers,
one at the grave and one at the inner Boorah ring,
I think perhaps we are wrong. When a man in-
vokes aid on the eve of battle, or in his hour of
danger and need; when a woman croons over her
baby an incantation to keep him honest and true,
and that he shall be spared in danger, — surely these
croonings are of the nature of prayers born of the
same elementary frame of mind as our more elabo-
rate Htanies." As an instance of the croonings
Mrs. Parker gives the mother's song over her baby,
as soon as it begins to crawl : —

"Kind be,
Do not steal,

Do not touch what to another belongs,
Leave all such alone,
Kind be."

164 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

These instances may sufTice to show thai it would
not have been safe to infer, a year or two ago, from
the fact that the Austrahans were not known to pray,
that therefore prayer was unknown to them. Indeed,
we may safely go farther and surmise that other
instances besides those noted really exist, though
they have not been observed or if observed have
not been understood. Among the northern tribes
of central Australia rites are performed to secure
food, just as they are performed by the Dieri to
avert drought. The Dieri rites are accompanied
by a prayer, as we have seen. The Kaitish rites
to promote the growth of grass are accompanied
by the singing of words, which "have no meaning
known to the natives of the present day" (Spencer
and Gillen, Northern Tribes^ p. 292). Amongst
the Mara tribe the rain-making rite consists simply
in "singing" the water, drinking it and spitting it
out in all directions. In the Anula tribe "dugongs
are a favourite article of food," and if the natives
desire to bring them out from the rocks, they "can
do so by 'singing' and throwing sticks at the rocks"
{ih., pp. 313, 314). It is reasonable to suppose that
in all these cases the "singing" is now merely a
charm. But if we remember that prayers, when

PRAYER 165

their meaning is forgotten, pass by vain repetitions
into mere charms, we may also reasonably suppose
that these Austrahan charms are degraded prayers;
and we shall be confirmed in this supposition to
some extent by the fact that in the Kaitish tribes
the words sung ''have no meaning known to the
natives of the present day." If the meaning has
evaporated, the religion may have evaporated with
it. That the rites, of which the ''singing" is an
essential part, have now become magical and are
used and understood to be practised purely to pro-
mote the supply of dugongs and other articles of
food, may be freely admitted; but it is unsafe to
infer that the purpose with which the rites continue
to be practised is the whole of the purpose with
which they were originally performed. If the
meaning of the "singing" has passed entirely away,
the meaning of the rites may have suffered a change.
At the present day the rite is understood to increase
the supply of dugongs or other articles of food.
But it may have been used originally for other
purposes. Presumably rites of a similar kind,
certainly of some kind, are practised by the Aus-
tralians who have for their totem the blow-fly, the
water-beetle, or the evening star. But they do not

1 66 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

cat llics or beetles. Their original purpose in choos-
ing the evening star cannot have been to increase
its number. Nor can that have been the object of
choosing the mosquito for a totem. But if the
object of the rites is not to increase the number of
mosquitoes, flies, and beetles, it need not in the first
instance have been the object with which the rites
were celebrated in the case of other totems.

Let us now return to Professor Tylor's statement
that "at low levels of civilisation there are many
races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits,
but are not certainly known to pray to them even
in thought." The number of those races who are
not known to pray is being reduced, as we have seen.
And I think we may go even farther than that and
say that where the existence of spirits is not merely
believed in, but is utilised for the purpose of estab-
lishing permanent relations between a community
and a spirit, we may safely infer that the community
offers prayer to the spirit, even though the fact
may have escaped the notice of travellers. The
reason why we may infer it is that at the lower levels
of civilisation we meet with religion, in Hoffding's
words, "in the guise of desire." We may put the
same truth in other words and say that religion is

PRAYER 167

from the beginning practical. Such prayers as are
known to us to be put up by the lowest races are
always practical: they may be definite petitions
for definite goods such as harvest or rain or victory
in time of war; or they may be general petitions
such as that of the Khonds: "We are ignorant of
what it is good for us to ask for. You know what
is good for us. Give it us." But in any case what
the god of a community is there for is to promote
the good of the community. It is because the savage
has petitions to put up that he believes there are
powers who can grant his petitions. Prayer is the
very root of religion. When the savage has taken
every measure he knows of to produce the result he
desires, he then goes on to pray for the rainfall he
desires, crying out in a loud voice "the impoverished
state of the country and the half-starved condition
of the tribe." It is true that it is in moments of
stress particularly, if not solely, that the savage turns
to his god — and the same may be said of many
of us — but it is with confidence and hope that he
turns to him. If he had no confidence and no hope,
he would offer no prayers. But he has hope, he has
faith; and every time he prays his heart says, if his
words do not, "in Thee, Lord, do we put our trust."

l68 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

That .prayer is the essence, the very breath, of
religion, without which it dies, is shown by the
fact that amongst the very lowest races of mankind
we find frequent traditions of the existence of a
high god or supreme being, the creator of the world
and the father of mankind. The numerous traces
of this dying tradition have been collected by the
untiring energy and the unrivalled knowledge of
Mr. Andrew Lang in his book, The Making of
Religion. In West Africa Dr. Nassau {Fetichism
in West Africa, pp. 36 ff.) "hundreds of times"
(p. 37) has found that "they loiow of a Being
superior to themselves, of whom they themselves,"
he says, "inform me that he is the Maker and the
Father." What is characteristic of the belief of
the savages in this god is that, in Dr. Nassau's
words, "it is an accepted belief, but it does not often
influence their life. ' God is not in all their thought.'
In practice they give Him no worship." The belief
is in fact a dying tradition ; and it is dying because
prayer is not offered to this remote and traditional
god. I say that the belief is a dying tradition, and
I say so because its elements, which are all found
present and active where a community believes
in, prays to, and w^orships the god of the community,

PRAYER 169

are found partially, but only partially, present where
the belief survives but as a tradition. Thus, for
instance, where the belief is fully operative, the god
of the community sanctions the morality of the
community; but sometimes where the behef has
become merely traditional, this traditional god is
supposed to take no interest in the community and
exercises no ethical influence over the community.
Thus, in West Africa, Nyankupon is "ignored
rather than worshipped." In the Andaman Islands,
on the other hand, where the god Puluga is still
angered by sin or wrong-doing, he is pitiful to those
in pain or distress and "sometimes deigns to afford
relief" (Lang p, 212 quoting Man, J. A. I., XII,
158). Again, where the behef in the god of the
community is fully operative, the occasions on
which the prayers of the community are offered are
also the occasions on which sacrifice is made.
Where sacrifice and prayers are not offered, the
belief may still for a time survive, at is does among
the Fuegians. They make no sacrifice and, as
far as is known, offer no prayers ; but to kill a man
brings down the wrath of their god, the big man in
the woods: "Rain come down, snow come down,
hail come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow.

1 70 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

\''cry bad to kill man. Big man in woods no like
it, he very angry" (Lang, p. i88, quoting Fitzroy,
II, I So). But when sacrifice and prayer cease,
the ultimate outcome is that which is found amongst
the West African natives, who, as Dr. Nassau tells
us (p. 38), say with regard to Anzam, whom they
admit to be their Creator and Father, "Why should
we care for him? He does not help nor harm us.
It is the spirits who can harm us whom we fear
and w^orship, and for whom we care." Who the
spirits are Dr. Nassau docs not say, but they must
be either the other gods of the place or the fetich
spirits. And the reason why Anzam is no longer
believed to help or harm the natives is obviously
that, from some cause or other, there is now no
longer any established form of worship of him.
The community of which he was originally the god
may have broken up, or more probably may have
been broken up, with the result that the congrega-
tion which met to offer prayer and sacrifice to Anzam
was scattered; and the memory of him alone
survives. Nothing would be more natural, then,
than that the natives, when asked by Dr. Nassau,
"Why do you not worship him?" (p. 7,S), should
invent a reason, viz. that it is no use worshipping

PRAYER 171

him now — the truth being that the form of wor-
ship has perished for reasons now no longer present
to the natives' mind. In any case, when prayers
cease to be offered — whether because the com-
munity is broken up or because some new quarter
is discovered to which prayers can be offered with
greater hope of success — when prayers, for any
reason, do cease to be offered to a god, the worship
of him begins to cease also, for the breath of life
has departed from it.

In this lecture, as my subject is primitive religion,
I have made no attempt to trace the history of
prayer farther than the highest point which it reaches
in the lower levels of rehgion. That is the point
reached by the Khond prayer: ''We are ignorant
of what it is good to ask for. You know what is
good for us. Give it us." That is also the highest
point reached by the most religious mind amongst
the ancient Greeks : Socrates prayed the gods simply
for things good, because the gods knew best what
is good (Xen., Mem., I, iii, 2). The general impres-
sion left on one's mind by the prayers offered in
this stage of religious development is that man is
here and the gods are — there. But "there" is
such a long way off. And yet, far off as it is, man

172 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

never came to think it was so far off that the gods
could not hear. The possibility of man's entering
into some sort of communication with them was
always present. Nay! more, a community of
interests between him and them was postulated:
the gods were to promote the interests of the com-
munity, and man was to serve the gods. On oc-
casions when sacrifice was made and prayer was
offered, the worshippers entered into the presence
of God, and communion with Him was sought ; but
stress was laid rather on the sacrifice offered than
on the prayers sent up. The communion at which
animal sacrifice aimed may have been gross at times,
and at others mystic; but it was the sacrifice rather
than the prayer which accompanied it that was
regarded as essential to the communion desired, as
the means of bridging the gap between man here
and the gods there. If, however, the gap was to be
bridged, a new revelation was necessary, one re-
vealing the real nature of the sacrifice required by
God, and of the communion desired by man. And
that revelation is made in Our Lord's Prayer.
With the most earnest and unfeigned desire to use
the theory of evolution as a means of ordering the
facts of the history of rehgion and of enabling us —

PRAYER 173

SO far as it can enable us — to understand them,
one is bound to notice as a fact that the theory of
evolution is unable to account for or explain the
revelation, made in Our Lord's Prayer, of the spirit
which is both human and divine. It is the beam
of light which, when turned on the darkness of the
past, enables us to see whither man with his prayers
and his sacrifices had been blindly striving, the place
where he fain would be. It is the surest beacon
the missionary can hold out to those who are still
in darkness and who show by the fact that they
pray — if only for rain, for harvest, and victory
over all their enemies — that they are battling with
the darkness and that they have not turned entirely
away from the light of His countenance who is
never at any time far from any one of us. Their
heart within them is ready to bear witness. Re-
ligion is present in them, if only under "the guise of
desire"; but it is ''the desire of all nations" for
which they yearn.

There are, Hoffding says, ''two tendencies in
the nature of religious feeling: on the one hand
there is the need to collect and concentrate our-
selves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves sup-
ported and carried by a power raised above all

174 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Struggle and opposition and beyond all change.
But within the reUgious consciousness another need
makes itself felt, the need of feeling that in the
midst of the struggle we have a fellow-struggler at
our side, a fellow-struggler who knows from his own
experience what it is to suiTer and meet resistance"
(The Philosophy of Religion, § 54). Between these
two tendencies Hoffding discovers an opposition
or contradiction, an ''antinomy of religious feeling."
But it is precisely because Christianity alone of all
religions recognises both needs that it transcends
the antinomy. The antinomy is indeed purely
intellectual. Hofifding himself says, "only when
recollection, collation, and comparison are possible
do we discover the opposition or the contradiction
between the two tendencies." And in saying that,
inasmuch as recollection, collation, and comparison
are intellectual processes, he admits that the an-
tinomy is intellectual. That it is not an antinomy
of religious feeling is shown by the fact that the
two needs exist, that is to say, are both felt. To
say a priori that both cannot be satisfied is useless
in face of the fact that those who feel them find
that Christianity satisfies them.

SACRIFICE

In my last lecture I called attention to the fact
that the subject of prayer has been strangely neglected
by the science of religion. Religion, in whatever
form it manifests itself, is essentially practical ; man
desires to enter into communication or into commu-
nion with his god, and in so doing he has a practical
purpose in view. That purpose may be to secure a
material blessing of a particular kind, such as vic-
tory in war or the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth
in their due season, or the purpose may be to offer
thanks for a harvest and to pray for a continuance
of prosperity generally. Or the purpose of prayer
may be to ask for deliverance from material evils,
such as famine or plague. Or it may be to ask for
deliverance from moral evils and for power to do
God's will. In a word, if man had no prayer to
make, the most powerful, if not the only, motive
inciting him to seek communion would be wanting.
Now, to some of us it may seem a priori that there
is no reason why the communion thus sought in

176 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

prayer should require any external rite to sanction
or condition it. If that is our a priori view, we
shall be the more surprised to find that in actual fact
an external rite has always been felt to be essential ;
and that rite has always been and still is sacrifice, in
one or other of its forms. Or, to put the same fact
in another way, public worship has been from the
beginning the condition without which private wor-
ship could not begin and without which private
worship cannot continue. To any form of religion,
whatever it be, it is essential, if it is to be religion,
that there shall be a community of worshippers and
a god worshipped. The bond which unites the
worshippers with one another and with their god is
religion. From the beginning the pubhc worship
in which the worshippers have united has expressed
itself in rites — rites of sacrifice — and in the prayers
of the community. To the end, the prayers offered
are prayers to " Our Father" ; and if the worshipper
is spatially separated from, he is spiritually united
to, his fellow-worshippers even in private prayer.

We may then recognise that prayer logically and
ultimately implies sacrifice in one or other of its
senses; and that sacrifice as a rite is meaningless
and impossible without prayer. But if we recognise

SACRIFICE 177

that sacrifice wherever it occurs implies prayer, then
the fact that the observers of savage or barbarous
rites have described the ritual acts of sacrifice, but
have not observed or have neglected to report the
prayers implied, will not lead us into the error of
imagining that sacrifice is a rite which can exist —
that it can have a religious existence — without
prayer. We may attend to either, the sacrifice or to
the prayer, as we may attend either to the concav-
ity or the convexity of a curve, but we may not deny
the existence and presence of the one because our
attention happens to be concentrated on the other.
The relation in primitive religion of the one to the
other we may express by saying that prayer states the
motive with which the sacrifice is made, and that
sacrifice is essential to the prayer, which would not
be efficacious without the sacrifice. The reason why
a community can address the god which it worships
is that the god is felt to be identified in some way
with the community and to have its interests in his
charge and care. And the rite of sacrifice is felt
to make the identification more real. Prayer, again,
is possible only to the god to whom the community
is known; with whom it is identified, more or less;
and with whom, when his help is required, the com-

178 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

munity seeks to identify itself more effectually.
The means of that identification without which the
prayers of the community would be ineffectual is
sacrifice. The earliest form of sacrifice may prob-
ably be taken to be the sacrifice of an animal, fol-
lowed by a sacrificial meal. Later, when the god
has a stated place in which he is believed to manifest
himself, — tree or temple, — then the identification
may be effected by attaching offerings to the tree
or temple. But in either case what is sought by the
offering dedicated or the meal of sacrifice is in a
word "incorporation." The worshippers desire to
feel that they are at one with the spirit whom they
worship. And the desire to experience this sense of
union is particularly strong when plague or famine
makes it evident that some estrangement has taken
place between the god and the community which is
normally in his care and under his protection. The
sacrifices and prayers that are offered in such a case
obviously do not open up communication for the first
time between the god and his tribe : they revive and
reenforce a communion which is felt to exist already,
even though temporal misfortunes, such as drought
or famine, testify that it has been allowed by the
tribe to become less close than it ought to be, or that

SACRIFICE 179

it has been strained by transgressions on the part of
individual members of the community. But it is
not only in times of public distress that the com-
munity approaches its god with sacrifice and
prayer. It so happens that the prayers offered for
victory in war or for rain or for deliverance from
famine are instances of prayer of so marked a char-
acter that they have forced themselves on the notice
of travellers in all parts of the world, from the
Eskimo to the Australian black fellows or the negroes
of Africa. And it was to this class of prayers that
I called your attention principally in the last lec-
ture. But they are, when we come to think of it,
essentially occasional prayers, prayers that are
offered at the great crises of tribal life, when the
very existence of the tribe is at stake. Such crises,
however, by their very nature are not regular or
normal; and it would be an error to suppose that
it is only on these occasions that prayers are made
by savage or barbarous peoples. If we wish to dis-
cover the earliest form of regularly recurring public
worship, we must look for some regularly recurring
occasion for it. One such regularly recurring oc-
casion is harvest time, another is seed time, another
is the annual ceremonial at which the boys who at-

l80 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

tain in the course of the year to the age of manhood
are initiated into the secrets or "mysteries" of the
tribe. These are the chief and perhaps the only
regularly recurring occasions of public worship as
distinguished from the irregular crises of war, pesti-
lence, drought, and famine which affect the com-
munity as a whole, and from the irregular occasions
when the individual member of the community prays
for offspring or for delivery from sickness or for suc-
cess in the private undertaking in which he happens
to be engaged.

Of the regularly recurring occasions of public
worship I will select, to begin with, the rites which
are associated with harvest time. And I will do so
partly because the science of religion provides us
with very definite particulars both as to the sacrifices
and as to the prayers which are usually made on
these occasions; and partly because the prayers
that are made are of a special kind and throw a
fresh Hght on the nature of the communion that
the tribe seeks to effect by means of the sacrificial
offering.

At Saa, in the Solomon Islands, yams are offered,
and the person offering them cries in a loud voice,
''This is yours to eat" (Frazer, G. B.\ II, 465). In

SACRIFICE l8l

the Society Islands the formula is, ''Here, Tari, I have
brought you something to eat" (ib., 469). In Indo-
China, the invitation is the same: "Taste, O god-
dess, these first-fruits which have just been reaped"
(ib., 325). There are no actually expressed words
of thanks in these instances; but we may safely
conjecture that the offerings are thank-offerings and
that the feehng with which the offerings are made is
one of gratitude and thankfulness. Thus in Ceram
we are told that first-fruits are offered ''as a token of
gratitude" {ib., 463). On the Niger the Onitsha
formula is expUcit: "I thank God for being per-
mitted to eat the new yam" (ib., 325). At Tjumba
in the East Indies, "vessels filled with rice are pre-
sented as a thank-offering to the gods" (ib., 462).
The people of Nias on these occasions offer thanks
for the blessings bestowed on them (ib., 463). By a
very natural transition of thought and feeling, thank-
fulness for past favours leads to prayer for the con-
tinuance of favour in the future. Thus in Tana, in
the New Hebrides, the formula is: "Compassion-
ate father! here is some food for you; eat it; be
kind to us on account of it" (ib., 464); while the
Basutos say: "Thank you, gods; give us bread
to-morrow also" (ib., 459) ; and in Tonga the prayers

l82 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

made at the offering of first-fruits implore the pro-
tection of the gods, and beseech them for welfare
generally, though in especial for the fruits of the
earth (ib., 466).

The prayers of primitive man which I quoted in
my last lecture were in the nature of petitions or
requests, as was natural and indeed inevitable in
view of the fact that they were preferred on occasions
when the tribe was in exceptional distress and re-
quired the aid of the gods on whose protection the
community relied. But the prayers which I have
just quoted are not in their essence petitions or
requests, even though in some cases they tend to
become so. They are essentially prayers of thanks-
giving and the offerings made are thank-offerings.
Thus our conception of primitive prayer must be
extended to include both mental attitudes — that
of thankfulness for past or present blessings as well
as the hope of blessings yet to come. And inasmuch
as sacrifice is the concomitant of prayer, we must
recognise that sacrificial offerings also serve as the
expression of both mental attitudes. And we must
note that in the regularly recurring form of public
or tribal worship with which we are now deahng
the dominant feeling to which expression is given is

SACRIFICE 183

that of thankfulness. The tribe seeks for communion
with its god for the purpose of expressing its thanks.
Even the savage who simply says, "Here, Tari, I
have brought you something to eat," or, still more
curtly, "This is yours to eat," is expressing thanks,
albeit in savage fashion. And the means which the
savage adopts for securing that communion which
he seeks to renew regularly with the tribal god is a
sacrificial meal, of which the god and his worshippers
partake. Throughout the whole ceremony, whether
we regard the spoken words or the acts performed,
there is no suggestion of magic and no possibility of
twisting the ceremony into a piece of magic intended
to produce some desired result or to exercise any
constraint over the powers to which the ceremony is
addressed. The mental attitude is that of thankful-
ness.

Now, it is, I venture to suggest, impossible to dis-
sociate from the first-fruits ceremonials which I
have described the ceremonies observed by Austra-
Han black fellows on similar occasions. And it is
also impossible to overlook the differences between
the ceremony in Australia and the ceremony else-
where. In Australia, as elsewhere, when the time of
year arrives at which the food becomes fit for eating,

184 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

a ceremony has to be performed before custom per-
mits the food to be eaten freely. In Australia, as
elsewhere, a ceremonial eating, a sacramental meal,
has to take place. But whereas elsewhere the god
of the community is expressly invited to partake of
the sacramental meal, even though he be not men-
tioned by name and though the invitation take the
curt form of "This is yours to eat," in Australia no
words whatever are spoken; the person who per-
forms the ceremony performs it indeed with every
indication of reverential feeling, he eats solemnly
and sparingly, that is to say formally and because
the eating is a matter of ritual, but no reference is
made by him so far as we know, to any god. How
then are we to explain the absence of any such
reference? There seems to me to be only one ex-
planation which is reasonably possible. It is that
in the Australian ceremony, which would be perfectly
intelligible and perfectly in line with the ceremony
as it occurs everywhere else, the reference to the god
who is or was invited to partake of the first-fruits has
in the process of time and, we must add, in the course
of religious decay, gradually dropped out. The
invitation may never have been more ample than
the curt form, ''This is yours to eat." Even in the

SACRIFICE 185

absence of any verbal invitation whatever, a gesture
may long have sufficed to indicate what was in the
mind and was impUed by the act of the savage per-
forming the ceremony. Words may not have been
felt necessary to explain what every person present
at the ceremony knew to be the purpose of the rite.
But in the absence of any verbal formula whatever
the purpose and meaning of the rite would be apt to
pass out of mind, to evaporate, even though custom
maintained, as it does in Australia to this day main-
tain, the punctual and punctilious performance of
the outward ceremony. I suggest, therefore, that in
Austraha, as elsewhere, the solemn eating of the first-
fruits has been a sacramental meal of which both the
god and his worshippers were partakers. The alter-
native is to my mind much less probable : it is to use
the Australian ceremony as it now exists to explain
the origin of the ceremony as we find it elsewhere.
In Austraha it is not now apparently associated with
the worship of any god ; therefore it may be argued
in other countries also it was not originally part of
the worship of any god either. If, then, it was not
an act of pubhc worship originally, how are we to
understand it ? The suggestion is that the fruits of
the earth or the animals which become the food of

1 86 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

man arc, until they become fit for eating, regarded
as sacred or taboo, and therefore may not be eaten.
That suggestion derives some support from the fact
that in AustraUa anything that is eaten may be a
totem and being a totem is taboo. But if it is thus
sacred, then in order to be eaten it must be ''desacral-
ised," the taboo must be taken off. And it is sug-
gested that that precisely is what is effected by the
ceremonial eating of the totem by the headman of the
totem clan: the totem is desacraHsed by the mere
fact that it is formally and ceremonially eaten by the
headman, after which it may be consumed by others
as an ordinary article of food. But this explanation
of the first-fruits ceremony is based upon an assump-
tion which is contrary to the facts of the case as it
occurs in Australia. It assumes that the plant or
the animal until desacraHsed is taboo to all members
of the tribe, and that none of them can eat it until it
has been desacraHsed by the ceremonial eating. But
the assumption is false ; the plant or animal is sacred
and taboo only to members of the clan whose totem
it is. It is not sacred to the vast majority of the
tribe, for they have totems of their own ; to them it is
not sacred or taboo, they may kill it — and they do
— without breaking any taboo. The ceremonial

SACRIFICE 187

eating of the first-fruits raises no taboo as far as the
tribe generally is concerned, for the plant or animal
is not taboo to them. As far as the tribe generally is
concerned, no process of desacralisation takes place
and none is effected by the ceremonial eating. It is
the particular totem group alone which is affected
by the ceremony; and the inference which it seems
to me preferable to draw is that the ceremonial eating
of the first-fruits is, or rather has been, in Australia
what it is elsewhere, viz. an instance of prayer and
sacrifice in which the worshippers of a god are
brought into periodic — in this case annual — com-
munion with their god. The difference between
the Australian case and others seems to be that in
the other cases the god who partakes of the first-
fruits is the god of the whole community, while in
AustraUa he is the god of the particular totem group
and is analogous to the family gods who are wor-
shipped elsewhere, even where there is a tribal or
national god to be worshipped as well.

We are then inclined, for these and other reasons,
to explain the ceremonial eating of the totem plant
or animal in Austraha by the analogy of the cere-
monial eating of first-fruits elsewhere, and to regard
the ceremony as being in all cases an act of worship,

1 88 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

in which at harvest time the worshippers of a god
seek communion with him by means of sacrifice
and prayers of thanksgiving. But if we take this
view of the sacrifice and prayers offered at harvest
time, we shall be inclined to regard the rites which
are performed at seed time, or the period analogous
to it, as being also possibly, in part, of a religious
character. In the case of agricultural peoples it is
beyond doubt that some of the ceremonies are reli-
gious in character: where the food plant is itself
regarded as a deity or the mode in which a deity is
manifested, not only may there be at harvest time a
sacramental meal in which, as amongst the Aztecs,
the deity is formally ''communicated" to his wor-
shippers, but at seed time sacrifice and prayer may
be made to the deity. Such a religious ceremony,
whatever be the degree of civilisation or semicivili-
sation w^hich has been reached by those who observe
the ceremony, does not of course take the place
of the agricultural operations which are necessary if
the fruits are to be produced in due season. And
the combination of the religious rites and the agri-
cultural operations does not convert the agricul-
tural operations into magical operations, or prove
,that the religious rites are merely pieces of magic

SACRIFICE 189

intended to constrain the superior power of the deity
concerned. Indeed, if among the operations per-
formed at seed time we find some that from the
point of view of modern science are perfectly inef-
fectual, as vain as eating tiger to make you bold, we
shall be justified in regarding them as pieces of primi-
tive science, eventually discarded indeed in the
progress of advancing knowledge, but originally
practised (on the principle that Hke produces like)
as the natural means of producing the effect desired.
If we so regard them, we shall escape the error of
considering them to be magical; and we shall have
no difficulty in distinguishing them from the reli-
gious rites which may be combined with them.
Further, where harvest time is marked by the offer-
ing of sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving, we may
not unreasonably take it that the religious rites ob-
served at seed time or the period analogous to it are
in the nature of sacrifice and prayers addressed to
the appropriate deity to beseech him to favour the
growth of the plant or animal in question. In a
word, the practice of giving thanks to a god at harvest
time for the harvest creates a reasonable presump-
tion that prayer is offered to him at seed time; and
if thanks are given at a period analogous to har-

IQO COMPARATIVE RELIGION

vest time by a people like the Australian black
fellows, who have no domesticated plants or animals,
prayers of the nature of petitions may be offered by
them at the period analogous to seed time.

The deity to whom prayers are offered at the one
period and thanksgiving is made at the other may
be, as in the case of the Aztec Xilonen, or the Hindoo
Maize-mother, the spirit of the plant envisaged as a
deity; or may be, not a *' departmental" deity of
this kind, but a supreme deity having power over all
things. But when we turn from the regularly recur-
ring acts of public worship connected with seed time
and harvest to the regularly recurring ceremonies at
which the boys of a tribe are initiated into the duties
and rights of manhood, it is obvious that the deity
concerned in them, even if we assume (as is by no
means necessary) that he was originally "depart-
mental" and at first connected merely with the
growth of a plant or animal, must be regarded at the
initiation ceremonies as a god having in his care all
the interests of that tribe of which the boys to be
initiated are about to become full members. Un-
mistakable traces of such a deity are found amongst
the Australian black fellows in the "father of all,"
"the all-father" described by Mr. Howitt. The

SACRIFICE 191

worship of the "all-father" is indeed now of a frag
mentary kind; but it fortunately happens that in
the case of one tribe, the Euahlayi, we have evidence,
rescued by Mrs. Langloh Parker, to show that prayer
is offered to Byamee ; the Euahlayi pray to him for
long Hfe, because they have kept his law. The
nature of Byamee 's law may safely be inferred from
the fact that at this festival, both amongst the Euah-
layi and other Australians, the boys who are
being initiated are taught the moral laws or the
customary morality of the tribe. But though pray-
ers are still offered by the Euahlayi and may have
at one time been offered by all the AustraUan tribes,
there is no evidence at present to show that the prayer
is accompanied by a sacrifice, as is customary amongst
tribes whose worship has not disintegrated so much
as is the case amongst the Australians.

The ceremonies by which boys are admitted to
the status of manhood are, probably amongst all
the peoples of the earth who observe them, of a
religious character, for the simple reason that the
community to which the boy is admitted when he
attains the age of manhood is a community, united
together by religious bonds as a community wor-
shipping the same god or gods ; and it is to the wor-

192 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

ship and the service of these gods that he is admitted.
But the ceremonies themselves vary too much to
allow of our drawing from them any valuable or
important conclusion as to the nature and import
of sacrifice as a religious institution. On the other
hand, the ceremonies observed at harvest time, or
the analogous period, have, wherever they occur,
such marked similarity among themselves, and the
institution of prayer and sacrifice is such a promi-
nent feature in them, that the evidence they afford
must be decisive for us in attempting to form a
theory of sacrifice. Nor can we dissociate the cere-
monies observed in spring from the harvest cere-
monies; as Dr. Frazer remarks (G. B.^ II, 190),
** Plainly these spring and harvest customs are based
on the same ancient modes of thought and form
parts of the same primitive heathendom." What,
then, are these "ancient modes of thought" and
what the primitive customs based upon them?
We may, I think, classify them in four groups.
If we are to take first those instances in which the
"ancient mode of thought" is most clearly expressed
— whether because they are the most fully developed
or because they retain the ancient mode most faith-
fully and with the least disintegration — we must

SACRIFICE 193

turn to ancient Mexico and Peru. In Mexico
a paste idol or dough image of the god was made;
the priest hurled a dart into its breast ; and this was
called the kiUing of the god, "so that his body might
be eaten." The dough image was broken and the
pieces were given in the manner of a communion to
the people, *'who received it with such tears, fear,
and reverence, as it was an admirable thing," says
Father Acosta, "saying that they did eat the flesh
and bones of God." Or, again, an image of the
goddess Chicomecoatl was made of dough and exhi-
bited by the priest, saying, "This is your god."
All kinds of maize, beans, etc., were offered to it and
then were eaten in the temple "in a general scram-
ble, take who could." In Peru ears of maize were
dressed in rich garments and worshipped as the
Mother of the Maize ; or little loaves of maize mingled
with the blood of sheep were made ; the priest gave
to each of the people a morsel of these loaves, " and
all did receive and eat these pieces," and prayed that
the god " would show them favour, granting them
children and happy years and abundance and all
that they required." In this, the first group of
instances, it is plain beyond all possibihty of gain-
saying that the spring and harvest customs consist

194 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

of the worship of a god, of sacrifice and prayers to
him, and of a communion which bound the wor-
shippers to one another and to him.

Our second group of instances consists of cases
in which the corn or dough or paste is not indeed
made into the form or image of a god, but, as Dr.
Frazer says (G. B. II, 318), ''the new corn is itself
eaten sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn
spirit." The spirit thus worshipped may not yet
have acquired a proper name ; the only designation
used may have been such a one as the Hindoo
Bhogaldai, meaning simply Cotton-mother. In-
deed, even amongst the Peruvians, the goddess had
not yet acquired a proper name, but was known
only as the Mother of the Maize. But precisely
because the stage illustrated in our second group
of instances is not so highly developed as in Mexico
or Peru it is much more widely spread. It is found
in the East Indian island of Euro, amongst the
Alfoors of Minahassa, in the Celebes, in the Neil-
gherry Hills of South India, in the Hindoo Koosh,
in Indo-China, on the Niger, amongst the Zulus
and the Pondos, and amongst the Creek, Seminole,
and Natchez Indians {ih. 321-342). In this, the
second group of instances, then, though the god

SACRIFICE 195

may have no special, proper, name, and though no
image of him is made out of the dough or paste,
still "the new corn is itself eaten sacrament ally,
that is as the body of the corn spirit"; by means of
the sacramental eating, of sacrifice and prayer,
communion between the god and his worshippers
is renewed and maintained.

The third group of instances consists of the
harvest customs of northern Europe — the harvest
supper and the rites of the Corn-mother or the Corn-
maiden or the Kern Baby. It can scarcely be con-
tended that these rites and customs, so far as they
survive at the present day, retain, if they ever had,
any religious value; they are performed as a matter
of tradition and custom and not because any one
knows why they are performed. But that they
originally had a meaning — even though now it has
evaporated — cannot be doubted. Nor can it be
doubted that the meaning, if it is to be recovered,
must be recovered by means of the comparative
method. And, if the comparative method is to
be applied, the Corn-mother of northern Europe
cannot be dissociated from the Maize-mother of
ancient Peru. But if we go thus far, then we must,
with Dr. Frazer (ib. 288), recognise "clearly the

196 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

sacramental character of the harvest-supper," in
which, ''as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine
being, bread and dumpUngs are made and eaten
sacramentally." Thus, once more, harvest cus-
toms testify in northern Europe, as elsewhere, to
the fact that there was once a stated, annual, period
at which communion between the god and his wor-
shipper was sought by prayer and sacrifice.

The North-European harvest customs are further
interesting and important because, if they are clearly
connected on the one hand with the groups of in-
stances already given, they are also connected on
the other with the group to which we have yet to call
attention. Thus far the wheat or maize, if not eaten
in the form of little loaves or cakes, has been made
into a dough image, or else the ears of maize have
been dressed in rich garments to indicate that they
represent the Mother of the Maize; and in Europe
also both forms of symbolism are found. But in
northern Europe, the corn spirit is also believed
to be manifested, Dr. Frazer says, in ''the animal
which is present in the corn and is caught or killed
in the last sheaf." The animal may be a wolf, dog,
cock, hare, cat, goat, bull, cow, horse, or pig. "The
animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken

SACRIFICE 197

of by the harvesters," and, Dr. Frazer says, ''these
customs bring out clearly the sacramental character
of the harvest supper." Now, this manifestation
of the corn spirit in animal form is not confined to
Europe; it occurs for instance in Guinea and in
all the provinces and districts of China. And it is
important as forming a hnk between the agricul-
tural and the pre-agricultural periods; in Dr.
Frazer's words, "hunting and pastoral tribes, as
well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit
of killing their gods" {ib. 366). In the pastoral
period, as well as in agricultural times, the god who
is worshipped by the tribe and with whom the tribe
seeks communion by means of prayer and sacrifice,
may manifest himself in animal form, and "the
animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken
of."

We now come to the fourth and the last of our
groups of instances. It consists of the rites observed
by Australian tribes. Amongst these tribes too
there is what Dr. Frazer terms "a sacramental
eating" of the totem plant or animal. Thus Central
AustraHan black men of the kangaroo totem eat
a little kangaroo flesh, as a sacrament (Spencer and
Gillen, p. 204 ff.). Now, it is impossible, I think, to

198 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

dissociate the Australian rite, to separate this fourth
group, from the three groups already described.
In Australia, as in the other cases, the customs are
observed in spring and harvest time, and in harvest
time, in AustraHa as well as elsewhere, there is a
solemn and sparing eating of the plant or animal ;
and, in Dr. Frazer's words, ''plainly these spring
and harvest customs are based on the same ancient
modes of thought, and form part of the same primi-
tive heathendom." What, then, is this ancient and
primitive mode of thought ? In all the cases except
the Australian, the thought manifestly implied and
expressed is that by the solemn eating of the plant
or the animal, or the dough image or paste idol, or
the little loaves, the community enters into com-
munion with its god, or renews communion with him.
On this occasion the Peruvians prayed for children,
happy years and abundance. On this occasion, even
among the Australians, the Euahlayi tribe pray for
long Hfe, because they have kept Byamee's law.
It would not, therefore, be unreasonable to interpret
the Austrahan custom by the same ancient mode of
thought which explains the custom wherever else
— and that is all over the world — it is found. But
perhaps, if we can find some other interpretation

SACRIFICE 199

of the Australian custom, we should do better to
reverse the process and explain the spring and har-
vest customs which are found elsewhere by means of,
and in accordance with, the Austrahan custom.
Now another interpretation of the Australian custom
has been put forward by Dr. Frazer. He treats the
Austrahan ceremony as being a piece of pure magic,
the purpose of which is to promote the growth and
increase of the plants and animals which provide
the black fellows with food. But if we start from
this point of view, we must go further and say that
amongst other peoples than the Australian the kill-
ing of the representative animal of the spirit of
vegetation is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite
intended to assure the revival of nature in spring."
And if that is the nature of the rite which appears
in northern Europe as the harvest supper, it will
also be the nature of the rite as it appears both in
our second group of instances, where the corn is
eaten "as the body of the corn-spirit," and in the
first group, where the dough image or paste idol was
eaten in Mexico as the flesh and bones of the god.
That this hne of thought runs through Dr. Frazer's
Golden Bough, in its second edition, is indicated by
the fact that the rite is spoken of throughout as a

200 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

sacrament. That the Mexican rite as described
in our first group is sacramental, is clear. Of the
rites which form our second group of instances, Dr.
Frazer says that the corn-spirit, or god, ''is killed
in the person of his representative and eaten sacra-
mentally," and that ''the new corn is itself eaten
sacramentally ; that is, as the body of the corn-spirit"
(p. 318). Of the North European rites, again, he
says, "the animal is slain and its flesh and blood are
partaken of by the harvesters" — "these customs
bring out clearly the sacramental character of the
harvest supper" — "as a substitute for the real
flesh of the divine being, bread or dumphngs are
made in his image and eaten sacramentally."
Finally, even when speaking of the Australians as
men who have no gods to worship, and with whom
the rite is pure and unadulterated magic, he yet
describes the rite as a sacrament.

Now if, on the one hand, from its beginning amongst
the Australians to the form which it finally took
amongst the Mexicans the rite is, as Dr. Frazer
systematically calls it, a sacrament; and if, on the
other, it is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite
intended to assure the revival of nature in spring,"
then the conclusion which the reader cannot help

SACRIFICE 20 1

drawing is that a sacrament, or this sacrament at
least, is in its origin, and in its nature throughout,
a piece of magic. Religion is but magic written
in different characters ; and for those who can inter-
pret them it spells the same thing. But though this
is the conclusion to which Dr. Frazer's argument
leads, and to which in the first edition of his Golden
Bough it clearly seemed to point; in the preface to
the second edition he formally disavows it. He
recognises that religion does not spring from magic,
but is fundamentally opposed to it. A sacrament,
therefore, we may infer, cannot be a piece of magic.
The Australian sacrament, therefore, as Dr. Frazer
calls it, cannot, we should be inclined to say, be a
piece of magic. But Dr. Frazer still holds that the
Australian rite or sacrament is pure magic — reh-
gious it cannot be, for in Dr. Frazer's view the Aus-
tralians know no religion and have no gods.

Now if the rite as it occurs in Australia is pure
magic, and if religion is not a variety of magic but
fundamentally different from it, then the rite which,
as it occurs everywhere else, is religious, cannot be
derived from, or a variety of, the Australian piece of
magic; and the spring and harvest customs which
are found in AustraHa cannot be "based on the

202 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

same ancient modes of thought or form part of the
same primitive heathendom" as the sacramental
rites which are found everywhere else in the world.
The solemn annual eating of the totem plant or
animal in Australia must have a totally different
basis from that on which the sacrament and com-
munion stands in every other part of the globe:
in Australia it is based on magic, elsewhere on that
which is, according to Dr. Frazer, fundamentally
different and opposed to magic, viz. religion. Before,
however, we commit ourselves to this conclusion,
we may be allowed to ask, What is it that compels
us thus to sever the AustraUan from the other forms
of the rite? The reply would seem to be that,
whereas the other forms are admittedly religious,
the Australian is "a magical rite intended to assure
the revival of nature in spring." Now, if that were
really the nature of the Australian rite, we might
have to accept the conclusion to which we hesitate
to commit ourselves. But, as a matter of fact, the
Australian rite is not intended to assure the revival
of nature in spring, and has nothing magical about
it. It is perfectly true that in spring in Australia
certain proceedings are performed which are based
upon the principle that Hke produces like; and

SACRIFICE 203

that these proceedings are, by students of the science
of religion, termed — perhaps incorrectly — mag-
ical. But these spring customs are quite different
from the harvest customs; and it is the harvest
customs which constitute the link between the rite
in Australia and the rite in the rest of the world.
The crucial question, therefore, is whether the Aus-
trahan harvest rite is magical, or is even based on
the principle that like produces like. And the
answer is that it is plainly not. The harvest rite
in Australia consists, as we know it now, simply in
the fact that at the appointed time a little of the
totem plant or animal is solenmly and sparingly
eaten by the headman of the totem. The solemnity
with which the rite is performed is unmistakable,
and may well be termed religious. And no attempt
even, so far as I am aware, has been made to show
that this solemn eating is regarded as magic by the
performers of the rite, or how it can be so regarded
by students of the science of religion. Until the
attempt is made and made successfully, we are more
than justified in refusing to regard the rite as magical ;
we are bound to refuse to regard it as such. But if
the rite is not magical — and a fortiori if it is, as
Dr. Frazer terms it, sacramental — then it is reli-

204 comparativp: religion

gious; and the ancient mode of thought, forming
part of primitive heathendom, which is at the base
of the rite, is the conviction that manifests itself
wherever the rite continues to Hve, viz. that by prayer
and sacrifice the worshippers in any community are
brought into communion with the god they worship.
The rite is, in truth, what Dr. Frazer terms it as it
occurs in Austraha — a sacrament. But not even
in Austraha is a sacrament a piece of magic.

In the animistic stage of the evolution of humanity,
the only causes man can conceive of are animated
things; and, in the presence of any occurrence
sufficiently striking to arrest his attention, the ques-
tions which present themselves to his mind are. Who
did this thing, and why? Occurrences which arrest
the attention of the community are occurrences
which affect the community; and in a low stage of
evolution, when the most pressing of all practical
questions is how to live, the occurrences which
most effectually arrest attention are those which
affect the food supply of the community. If, then,
the food supply fails, the occurrence is due to some
of the personal, or quasi-personal, powers by whom
the community is surrounded; and the reason why
such power so acted is found in the wrath which

SACRIFICE 205

must have actuated him. The situation is abnormal,
for famine is abnormal; and it indicates anger and
wrath on the part of the power who brought it
about. But it also implies that when things go on
in the normal way, — when the relations between
the spirit and the community are normal, — the
attitude of the spirit to the community is peaceable
and friendly. Not only, however, does the com-
munity desire to renew peaceable and friendly rela-
tions, where pestilence or famine show that they
have been disturbed: the community also desires
to benefit by them when they are in their normal
condition. The spirits that can disturb the normal
conditions by sending pestilence or famine can also
assist the community in undertakings, the success
of which is indispensable if the community is to
maintain its existence; for instance, those under-
takings on which the food supply of the community
depends. Hence the petitions which are put up
at seed time, or, in the pre-agricultural period, at
seasons analogous to seed time. Hence, also, the
rites at harvest time or the analogous season, rites
which are instituted and developed for the purpose
of maintaining friendly relation and communion
between the community, and the spirit whose favour

206 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

is sought and whose anger is dreaded by the com-
munity. Such sacrificial rites may indeed be inter-
preted as the making of gifts to the gods; and they
do, as a matter of fact, often come so to be regarded
by those who perform them. From this undeniable
fact the inference may then be drawn, and by many
students of the science of religion it is inferred,
that from the beginning there was in such sacrificial
rites no other intention than to bribe the god or to
purchase his favour and the good things he had to
give. But the inference, which, when properly
limited, has some truth in it, becomes misleading
when put forward as being the whole truth. Unless
there were some truth in it, the rite of sacrifice could
never have developed into the form which was
denounced by the Hebrew prophets and mercilessly
exposed by Plato. But had that been the whole
truth, the rite would have been incapable of discharg-
ing the really religious function which it has in its
history fulfilled. That function has been to place
and maintain the society which practises it in com-
munion with its god. Doubtless in the earliest
stages of the history of the rite, the communion thus
felt to be established was prized and was mainly
sought for the external blessings which were believed

SACRIFICE 207

to follow from it, or, as a means to avert the public
disasters which a breach of communion entailed.
Doubtless it was only by degrees, and by slow
degrees, that the communion thus established came
to be regarded as being in itself the end which the
rite of sacrifice was truly intended to attain. But
the communion of the worshippers with their god
was not a purpose originally foreign to the rite, and
which, when introduced, transformed the rite from
what it at first was into something radically different.
On the contrary, it was present, even though not
prominent or predominant, from the beginning;
and the rite, as a rehgious institution, followed
different lines of evolution, according as the one
aspect or the other was developed. Where the as-
pect under which the sacrificial rite was regarded
was that the offering was a gift made to the deity
in order to secure some specified temporal advantage,
the religious value of the rite diminished to the
vanishing point in the eyes both of those who, like
Plato, could see the intrinsic absurdity of pretending
to make gifts to Him from whom alone all good
things come, and of those who felt that the sacrificial
rite so conceived did not afford the spiritual com-
munion for which they yearned. Where even the

2o8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

sacrificial rite was regarded as a means whereby
communion between the worshipper and his god was
attained or maintained, the emphasis might be
thrown on the rite and its due performance rather
than on the spiritual communion of which it was
the condition. That is to say, with the growth of
formalism attention was concentrated on the ritual
and correspondingly withdrawn from the prayer
which, from the beginning, had been of the essence
of the rite. By the rite of sacrifice the community
had always been brought into the presence of the
god it worshipped; and, in the prayers then offered
on behalf of the society, the society had been brought
into communion with its god. From that com-
munion it was possible to fall away, even though
the performance of the rite was maintained. The
very object of that communion might be misin-
terpreted and mistaken to be a means merely to
temporal blessings for the community, or even to
personal advantages for the individual. Or the
punctilious performance of each and every detail
of the rite might tend to become an end in itself
and displace the spiritual communion, the attain-
ment of which had been from the beginning the
highest, even if not the only or the most prominent,

SACRIFICE 209

end which the rite might subserve. The difference
between the possibihties which the rite might have
reahsed and the actual purposes for which it had
come to be used before the birth of Christ is a dif-
ference patent to the most casual observer of the
facts. The dissatisfaction felt alike by Plato and
the Hebrew prophets with the rite as it had come
to be practised may be regarded, if we choose so
to regard it, as the necessary consequence of pre-
existing facts, and as necessarily entailing the re-
jection or the reconstitution of the rite. As a
matter of history, the rite was reconstituted and not
rejected; and as reconstituted it became the central
fact of the Christian religion. It became the means
whereby, through Christ, all men might be brought
to God. We may say, if we will, that a new meaning
was put into the rite, or that its true meaning was
now made manifest. The facts themselves clearly
indicate that from the beginning the rite was the
means whereby a society sought or might seek com-
munion with its god. They also indicate that the
rite of animal sacrifice came to be found insufficient
as a means. It was through our Lord that manki
learned what sacrifice was needed — learned to
"offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our

210 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively
sacrifice unto thee." That is the sacrifice Christ
showed us the example of; that is the example
which the missionary devotes himself to follow and
to teach.

/MORALITY

In this lecture I propose to consider the question
whether morality is based on religion or religion
on morality. It is a question which may be ap-
proached from the point of view either of philosophy
or of history. Quite recently it has been treated
from the former point of view by Professor Hoffding
in The Philosophy of Religion (translated into Eng-
lish, 1906) ; and from the point of view of the his-
tory of morality by Mr. Hobhouse in his Morals
in Evolution (1906). It may, of course, also be quite
properly approached from the point of view of the
history of religion; and from whatever standpoint
it is treated, the question is one of importance for the
missionary, both because of its intrinsic interest for
the philosophy of religion, and because its discussion
is apt to proceed on a mistaken view of facts in the
history of religion. About those facts and their mean-
ing, the missionary, who is to be properly equipped for
his work, should be in no doubt : a right view and
a proper estimate of the facts are essential both for

212 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

his practical work and for ihc theoretical justifica-
tion of his position.

One answer to the question before us is that
morality is the basal fact — the bottom fact : if we
regard the question historically, we shall find that
morality came first and religion afterwards; and,
even if that were not so, we should fmd that as a
matter of logic and philosophy religion presupposes
morality — religion may, for a time, be the lever
that moves the world, but it would be powerless if
it had not a fulcrum, and that fulcrum is morality.
So long and so far as religion operates beneficially
on the world, it does so simply because it supports
and reenforces morality. But the time is not far
distant, and may even now be come, when morality
no longer requires any support from religion — and
then religion becomes useless, nay ! an encum-
brance which must either fall off or be lopped off.
If, therefore, morahty can stand by itself, and all\
along has not merely stood by itself, but has really
upheld religion, in what is morality rooted? The
answer is that morality has its roots, not in the com-
mand that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart and all thy soul, but in human solidar-
ity, in humanity regarded as a spiritual whole. Tof

MORALITY 213

this conclusion, it is said, the history of recent phi-
' losophy has steadily been moving. If the move-
ment had taken place in only one school of philo-
sophic thought, it might have been a movement
running into a side-track. But it is the direction
taken by schools so different in their presuppositions
and their methods as that of Hegel and that of Comte ;
and it is the undesigned coincidence of their ten-
dency, v^hich at first could never have been surmised,
that carries with it a conviction of its correctness.
Human solidarity, humanity regarded as a spiritual
whole, may be called, as Hegel calls it, self-conscious
spirit; or you may call it, as Comte calls it, the
. Mind of Humanity — it is but the collective wisdom
"of a common humanity with a common aim" ; and,
that being so, morality is rooted, not in the will and
the love of a beneficent and omnipotent Providence,
but in the self-realising spirit in man setting up its
"common aim" at morality. The very conception
of a beneficent and omnipotent God — having now
done its work as an aid to morality — must now be
put aside, because it stands in the way of our recog-
nising what is the real spiritual whole, besides which
there is none other spirit, viz. the self-realising spirit
in man. That spirit is only realising; it is not yet

214 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

realised. It is in process of realisation; and the con-
ception of it, as in process of realisation, enables it to
be brought into harmony, or rather reveals its inner
harmony, with the notion of evolution. There is
nothing outside evolution, no being to whom evo-
lution is presented as a spectacle or by whom, as a
process, it is directed. " Being itself," as Hoflfding
says {Problems of Philosophy, p. 136), ''is to be con-
ceived as in process of becoming, of evolution.".
The spirit in man, as we have just said, is the real
spiritual whole, and it is self-realising ; it is evolving
and progressing both morally and rationally. In
Hoffding's words "Being itself becomes more ra-
tional than before" {ih., p. 137). "Being itself is
not ready-made but still incomplete, and rather to
be conceived as a continual becoming, like the indi-
vidual personality and like knowledge" {ih., p. 120)..
We may say, then, that being is becoming rationalised
and moralised as and because the spirit in man
realises itself. For a time the process of moralisa-
tion and self-realisation was worked by and through
the conception of a beneficent and omnipotent god.
That conception was, it would seem, a hypothesis,
valuable as long it was a working hypothesis, but
to be cast aside now that humanitarianism is found

MORALITY 215

more adequate to the facts and more in harmony
with the consistent appUcation of the theory of evo-
lution. We have, then, to consider whether it is
adequate to the facts, whether, when we regard the
facts of the history of rehgion, we do find that morality
comes first and rehgion later.

"What," Mr. Hobhouse enquires in his Morals
in Evolution (II, 74), "What is the ethical character
of early religion?" and his reply is that "in the first
stage we find that spirits, as such, are not concerned

Avith morality." That was also the answer which
had previously been given by Professor Hoffding,
who says in his Philosophy of Religion: "in the
lowest forms of it . . . religion cannot be said to

• have any ethical significance" (p. 323). Originally,
the gods were "purely natural forces which could be
defied or evaded," though eventually they "became
ethical powers whom men neither could nor wished
to defy" (p. 324). This first stage of early religion
seems on the terms of the hypothesis to be supposed
to be found in the period of animism and fetichism;
and "the primitive conception of spirit" is, Mr.
Hobhouse says (II, 16), of something "feeling and
thinking like a rather stupid man, and open like him
to supplication, exhortation, or intimidation." If

2l6 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

that is so, then Professor HolTding may be justified
in saying that in the lowest forms of rchgion "the
gods appear as powers on which man is dependent,
but not as patterns of conduct or administrators of
an ethical world order" (p. 324). Now, in the period
termed animistic because inanimate things are
supposed to be animated and actuated by spirits,
it may be that many or most of such spirits are sup-
posed to feel and think like a rather stupid man, and
therefore to be capable of being cajoled, deluded, in-
timidated, and castigated by the human being w-ho
desires to make use of them. But it is not all
such spirits that are worshipped then. Indeed,
it is impossible, 'Mr. Hobhouse says (II, 15),
that any such spirit could be ''an object of wor-
ship in our sense of the term." Worship implies
the superiority of the object worshipped to the
person worshipping. But, though not an object
of worship in our sense of the term, the spirit that
could be deluded, intimidated, and castigated w^as,
according to ]\Ir. Hobhouse, "the object of a religious
cult" on the part of the man who believed that he
could and did intimidate and castigate the spirit.
Probably, however, most students of the science of
relidon would agree that a cult which included or

MORALITY 217

allowed intimidation and castigation of the object
of the cult was as little entitled to be termed religious
as it is to be called worship. In the period of ani-
mism, then, either there was no religious cult, no
worship in our sense of the term; or, if there was
religion, then the spirit worshipped was worshipped
as a being higher than man. Whether man has
at any time been without religion is a question on
which there is here no need to enter. The allega-
tion we arc now considering is that whenever reli-
gion docs appear, then in its first and earliest stage
it is not concerned with morality; and the ground
for that allegation is that the spirits of the animistic
, period have nothing to do with morality or conduct.
Now, it may be that these spirits which animate
inanimate things are not concerned with morality;
but then neither are they worshipped, nor is the
relation between them and man religious. Religion
implies a god; and a spirit to be a god must have
worshippers, a community of worshippers — whether
that community be a nation, a tribe, or a family.
Further, it is as the protector of the interests of that
community — however small — that the god is wor-
ishipped by the community. The indispensable
condition of rehgion is the existence of a community ;

2l8 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

and from the beginning man must have lived in some
sort of community, — whether a family or a horde, —
for the period of helpless infancy is so long in the case
of human beings that without some sort of perman-
ent community the race could not be perpetuated. ,
The indispensable condition of religion, therefore,
has always existed from the time when man was
man. Further, whatever the form of community -'
in which man originally dwelt, it was only in the
community and by means of the community that
the individual could exist — that is to say, if the
interest of any one individual conflicted or was sup-
posed to conflict with the interests of the commu-
nity, then the interests of the community must pre-
vail, if the community was to exist. Here, then,
from the beginning we have the second condition
indispensable for the existence of religion, viz. the
possibility that the conduct of some member of the
community might not be the conduct required by
the interests or supposed interests of the community,
and prescribed by the custom of the community.
In the case of such divergence of interests and con-
duct, the being worshipped by the community was
necessarily, as being the god of the community, and
receiving the worship of the community, on the side/"

MORALITY 219

of the community and against the member who
violated the custom of the community. But, at this
period in the history of humanity, the morahty of
the community was the custom of the community;
and the god of the community from the first neces-
sarily upheld the custom, that is, the morality of the
community. Spirits "as such," that is to say, spirits
which animated inanimate things but which were not
the protectors of any human community, were, for
the very reason that they were not the gods of any
community, "not concerned with morality." Spirits,
however, which were the protectors of a community
necessarily upheld the customs and therefore the
morahty of the community; they were not "without
ethical significance." It was an essential part of
the very conception of such spirits — of spirits stand-
ing in this relation to the community — that they
were "ethical powers." Hoffding's dictum that
"the gods appear as powers on which man is de-
pendent, but not as patterns of conduct or adminis-
trators of an ethical world order" (p. 323), overlooks
the fact that in the earliest times not only are gods
powers on which man is dependent, but powers
which enforce the conduct required by the custom
of the community and sanction the ethical order as

220 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

far as it has then been revealed. The fact that
"the worship of the family, of the clan, or of the
nation is shared in by all," not merely ''helps to
nourish a feeling of solidarity which may acquire
ethical significance," as Hoffding says (p. 325), it
creates a solidarity which otherwise would not exist.*
If there were no worship shared in by all, there
would be no religious solidarity; and, judging from
the very general, if not universal, occurrence of reli-
gion in the lowest races as well as the highest, we
may conjecture that without religious solidarity
a tribe found it hard or impossible to survive in the
struggle for existence. That religious solidarity
however is not, as Hoffding suggests, something
which may eventually "acquire ethical significance";
it is in its essence and from the beginning the wor-
ship of a god who punishes the community for the
ethical transgression of its members, because they
are not merely violations of the custom of the
community, but offences against him. When Hoff-
ding says (p. 328) "religious faith . . . assumes
an independent human ethic, which has, as a matter
of fact, developed historically under the practical
influence of the ethical feeling of man," he seems to,
overlook the fact that as a matter of history human

MORALITY 221

ethics have always been based — rightly or wrongly
— on religious faith, that moral transgressions have
always been regarded as not merely wrongs done
to a man's neighbour, but also as offences against
the god or gods of the community, that the person
suffering from foul wrong for which he can get no
human redress has always appealed from man to
God, and that the remorse of the wrong-doer who
has evaded human punishment has always taken

^shape in the fear of what God may yet do.

Those who desire to prove that at the present day
morality can exist apart from religion, and that in
the future it will do so, finding its basis in humani-
tarianism and not in religion, are moved to show

, that as a matter of historic fact religion and morality
have been things apart. We have examined the asser-
tion that religion in its lowest forms is not concerned
with morality; and we have attempted to show
that the god of a community, or the spirit worshipped
by a community, is necessarily a being conceived as
concerned with the interests of the community and
as hostile to those who violate the customs — which
is to transgress the morality — of the community.

, But even if this be admitted, it may still be said that
it does not in the least disprove the assertion that

222 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

morality existed before religion did. The theory
we arc examining freely admits that religion is
supposed, in certain stages of the history of humanity,
to reenforce morality and to be necessary in the inter-
est of morals, though eventually it is found that
morality needs no such support ; and not only needs
now no such support but never did need it ; and the
fact that it did not need it is shown by demonstrating
the existence of morality before religion existed.
If, then, it be admitted that religion from the mo-
ment it first appeared reenforced morality, and did
not pass through a non-moral period first, still mo-
rality may have existed before religion was evolved,
and must have so existed if morality and religion
are things essentially apart. What evidence then is
there on the point ? We find Mr. Hobhouse saying
(I, 80) that " at almost, if not quite, the lowest stages"
of human development there are "certain actions
which are resented as involving the community as
a whole in misfortune and danger. These include,
besides actual treason, conduct which brings upon
the people the wrath of God, or of certain spirits, or
which violates some mighty and mysterious taboo."*
The actions most frequently regarded in this light are
certain breaches of the marriage law and witchcraft."'

MORALITY 223

These offences, we are told {ih.^ 82), endanger the
community itself, and the punishment is "prompted
by the sense of a danger to the whole community."
Here, then, from the beginning we find that offences
against the common good are punished, not simply
as such, but as misconduct bringing on the commu-
nity, and not merely on the offender, the wrath of gods
or spirits. In other words — Mr. Hobhouse's words,
p. 119 — "in the evolution of pubHc justice, we find
that at the outset the community interferes mainly
on what we may call supernatural grounds only with
actions which are regarded as endangering its own
existence." We may then fairly say that if the com-
munity inflicts punishments mainly on supernatural
grounds from the time when the evolution of public
justice first begins, then morality from its very be-
ginning was reenforced — indeed prompted — by
rehgion. The morality was indeed only the custom
of the community; but violation of the custom was
from the beginning regarded as a religious offence
and was punished on supernatural grounds.

The view that morality and religion are essen-
tially distinct, that morality not only can stand alone,
without support from religion, but has in reality
^ always stood without such support — however much

2 24 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

the fact has been obscured by rcHgious preposses-
sions — this view receives striking confirmation
from the current and generally accepted theory of the
origin and nature of justice. That theory traces .
the origin of justice back to the feehng of resentment
experienced by the individual against the particular,
cause of his pain (Westermarck, Origin and Develop- y
7nent of the Moral Ideas, I, 22). Resentment leads
to retaliation and takes the form of revenge. Ven-
geance, at first executed by the person injured (or
by his kin, if he be killed), comes eventually, if
slowly, to be taken out of the hands of the person
injured or his avengers, and to be exercised by the
State in the interests of the community and in fur-
therance, not of revenge, but of justice and the good
of society. Thus not only the origin of justice,
but the v^hole course of its growth and develop-
ment, is entirely independent of religion and reli-
gious considerations. Throughout, the individual
and society are the only parties involved; the gods
do not appear — or, if they do appear, they are intru-
sive and superfluous. If this be the true view of
the history and nature of justice, it may — and
probably must — be the truth about the whole of
morality and not only about justice. We have but

MORALITY 225

to follow Dr. Westermarck (ib., p. 21) in grouping
the moral emotions under the two heads of emo-
tions of approval and emotions of disapproval, we
,have but to note with him that both groups belong
to the class of retributive emotions, and we see
that the origin and history of justice are typical
of the origin and history of morals: morality in
general, just as much as justice in particular, both
originates independently of religion and developes
— where moral progress is made — independently
of religion.

Let us now proceed to examine this view of the
relation of religion and moraUty and to consider
whether their absolute independence of each other
is historic fact. It traces back justice to the feeling
of resentment experienced by the individual; but
if the individual ever existed by himself and apart
from society, there could neither then be justice nor
anything analogous to justice, for justice implies,
not merely a plurality of individuals, but a society ;
it is a social virtue. The individual existing by
himself and apart from society is not a historic fact
but an impossible abstraction — a conception essen-
tially false because it expresses something which
neither exists nor has existed nor could possibly
Q

2 26 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

exist. The ori<;in of justice — or of any virtue — •
cannot be found in the impossible and self-contra-
dictory conception of tlie individual existing apart
from society; it cannot be found in a mere plurality/
of such individuals: it can only be found in a
society — whether that society have the organisation
of a family, a tribe, or a nation. Justice in particu-
lar and morality in general, like religion, imply
the existence of a society; neither is a merely indi-
vidual affair. Justice is, as Mr. Hobhouse states,
"pubHc action taken for the sake of public safety'*
(I, 83) : it is, from the outset of its history, public
action ; and back of that we cannot go, for the indi-
vidual did not, as a matter of history, exist before
society, and could not so have existed. /

In the next place, justice is not the resentment of
any individual, it is the sentiment of the community
expressing itself in public action, taken not for the
sake of any individual, but for the sake of public
safety. Its object from the beginning is not the grati-.
fication of individual resentment, but the safety and
welfare of the community which takes common
action. Proof of this, if proof were needed, would
be found in the fact that the existence of the indi-
vidual, as such, is not recognised. Not only does

MORALITY 227

the community which has suffered in the wrong done
to any of its members take action as a community;
' it proceeds, not against the individual who has in-
flicted the wrong, but against the community to
which he belongs. "The wrong done," is, as Mr.
Hobhouse says (I, 91), "the act of the family or clan
and may be avenged on any member of that family
or clan." There is collective responsibihty for the
wrong done, just as there is collective responsibility
for righting it.

If, now, we enquire. What are the earliest offences
against which pubhc action is taken? and why?
we may remember that Mr. Hobhouse has stated
them to be witchcraft and breaches of the marriage
law; and that the punishment of those offences
corresponds, as he has said, "roughly to our own
administration of justice" (I, 81). Now, in the case
of breaches of the marriage laws — mating with a
cousin on the mother's side instead of with a cousin
on the father's side, marrying into a forbidden
class — it is obvious that there is no individual who
has suffered injury and that there is no individual
to experience resentment. It is the community
that suffers or is expected to suffer; and it expects
to suffer, because it, in the person of one wf its mem-

228 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

bcrs, has ofTcndcd. Collectively it is responsible
for the misdeeds of its members. Whom, then, has n
it offended ? To whom is it responsible ? Who will
visit it with punishment, unless it makes haste to set
itself right ? The answer given by a certain tribe of
the Sea Dyaks makes the matter clear: they, Mr.
St. John tells us in his Life in the Forests of the Far
East (I, 63, quoted by Westermarck, I, 49), ''are of
opinion that an unmarried girl proving with child
must be offensive to the superior powers, who, in-
stead of always chastising the individual, punish the
tribe by misfortunes happening to its members.-
They therefore on the discovery of the pregnancy
fine the lovers, and sacrifice a pig to propitiate
offended heaven, and to avert that sickness or those
misfortunes that might otherwise follow." That is,
of course, only one instance. But we may safely
say that the marriage law is generally ascribed to
the ordinance of the gods, even in the lowest tribes,
and that breaches of it are offences against heaven.
It is unnecessary to prove, it need only be men-
tioned, that witchcraft is conspicuously offensive
to the religious sentiment, and is punished as an,
offence agaiist the god or gods. When, then, we
consider t\e origin and nature of justice, not from ,

MORALITY 229

an abstract and a priori point of view, but in the light
'of historic fact, so far from finding that it originates
and operates in complete independence of religion,
we discover that from the beginning the offences
with which the justice of the primitive community
deals are offences, not against the community, but
against heaven. "In the evolution of pubKc jus-
tice," as Mr. Hobhouse says, "at the outset the com-
munity interferes mainly on what we may call
supernatural grounds." From the beginning mis-
deeds are punished, not merely as wrongs done to
society, but as wrong done to the gods and as wrong-
doing for which the community collectively is re-
sponsible to the gods. Justice from the beginning is
not individual resentment, but "public action taken
for the pubHc safety." It is not, as Mr. Hobhouse
calls it, "revenge guided and limited by custom."
It is the customary action of the community taken
to avert divine vengeance. The action taken assumes
in extreme cases the form of the death penalty ; but
its usual form of action is that of taboo.

If the origin of justice is to be sought in something
that is not justice, if justice in particular and mo-
rality in general are to be treated as having been
evolved out of something which was in a way different

230 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

from I hem and yd in a way must liavc contained
them, inasmuch as they came forth from it, wc shall
do well to look for that something, not in the unhis-
torical, unreal abstraction of an imaginary individual,
apart from society, but in society itself when it is as
yet not clearly conscious of the justice and morality
at work within it. Such a stage in the development
of society is, I think, to be discerned.

We have seen that, "at almost, if not quite, the
lowest stages" of human development, there is
something which, according to Mr. Hobhouse, cor-
responds "roughly to our own administration of
justice" (I, 81). But this rough justice implies
conscious, deliberate action on the part of the com-
munity. It imphes that the community as such
makes some sort of enquiry into what can be the
cause of the misfortunes which are befalling it;
and that, having found out the person responsible,
it deliberately takes the steps it deems necessary
for putting itself right with the supernatural power
that has sent the sickness or famine. Now, such
conscious, purposive, deliberate action may and
probably does take place at almost the lowest stage
of development of society; but not, w^e may surmise,
at quite the lowest. What eventually is done con-

MORALITY 231

sciously and deliberately is probably done in the
first place much more summarily and automatically.
And — in quite the lowest stage of social develop-
ment — it is by means of the action of taboo that
summary and automatic punishment for breaches of
the custom of the community is inflicted. Its action
is automatic and immediate: merely to come in
contact with the forbidden thing is to become ta-
booed yourself ; and so great is the horror and dread
of such contact, even if made unwittingly, that it is
capable of causing, when discovered, death. Like
the justice, however, of which it is the forerunner,
it does not result always in death, nor does it produce
that effect in most cases. But what it does do is
to make the offender himself taboo and as infectious
as the thing that rendered him taboo. Here, too,
the action of taboo, in excommunicating the offender,
anticipates, or rather foreshadows, the action of
justice when it excludes the guilty person from the
community and makes of him an outlaw. Again, in
the rough justice found at almost, though not quite,
the lowest stages, the earliest offences of which
official notice, so to speak, is taken, are offences for
which the punishment — disease or famine, etc. —
falls on the community as a whole, because the com-

232 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

munity, in the person of one of its members, has
ofTended as a whole against heaven. In the earher
stage of feehng, also, which survives where taboo
prevails, it is the community as a whole which may
be infected, and which must suffer if the ofTender is
allowed to spread the infection; it is the community,
as a whole, wdiich is concerned to thrust out the
guilty person — every one shuns him because he is
taboo. Thus, in this the earliest stage, the offender
against the custom of the community is outlawed
just as effectively as in later stages of social develop-
ment. But no formal sentence is pronounced ; no
meeting of the men or the elders of the community
is held to try the offender; no reason is given or
sought why the offence should thus be punished. The
operation of taboo is like that of the laws of nature:
the man who eats poisonous food dies with no reason
given. A reason may eventually be found by science,
and is eventually discovered, though the process of
discovery is slow, and many mistakes are made,
and many false reasons are given before the true
reason is found. So, too, the true reason for the pro-
hibition of many of the things, which the community
feels to be forbidden and pronounced to be taboo, is
found, with the progress of society — when it does

MORALITY 233

progress, which is not always — to be that they are
immoral and irreligious, though here, too, many
mistakes are made before true morality and true
religion are found. But at the outset no reason is
given: the things are simply offensive to the com-
munity and are tabooed as such. We, looking back
at that stage in the evolution of society, can see that
amongst the things thus offensive and tabooed are
some which, in later stages, are equally offensive,
but are now forbidden for a reason that can be
formulated and given, viz. that they are offences
against the law of morality and the law of God.
That reason, at the outset of society, may scarcely
have been consciously present to the mind of man:
progress, in part at least, has consisted in the discov-
ery of the reasons of things. But that man did from
the beginning avoid some of the things which are
forbidden by morality and religion, and that those
things were taboo to him, is beyond the possibility
of doubt. Nor can it be doubted that in the prohi-
bition and punishment of them there was inchoate
justice and inchoate religion. Such prohibition
was due to the collective action and expressed the
collective feeling of the community as a whole.
And it is from such social action and feeling that

234 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

justice, I suggest, has been evolved — not from the
feeling of resentment experienced by the individual
as an individual. Personal resentment and personal
revenge may have stimulated justice to action.
But, by the hypothesis we have been examining,
they were not justice. Neither have they been
transformed into justice: they still exist as some-
thing distinct from justice and capable of pervert-
ing it.

The form which justice takes in the period which
is almost, but not quite, the lowest stage of human
evolution is the sense of the collective responsibility
of the community for all its actions, that is to say,
for the acts of all its members. And that responsi-
bihty in its earliest shape is felt to be a responsibihty
to heaven, to the supernatural powers that send dis-
ease and famine upon the community. In those
days no man sins to himself alone, just as, in still
earlier days, no man could break a taboo without
becoming a source of danger to the whole community.
The wrong-doer has offended against the super-
natural powers and has brought down calamity
upon the community. He is therefore punished,
directly as an offender against the god of the com-
munity, and indirectly for having involved the com-

MORALITY 235

munity in suffering. In Dr. Westermarck's words
(I, 194), there is "genuine indignation against the
offender, both because he rebels against God, and
because he thereby exposes the whole community
to supernatural dangers." But though society for
many long centuries continues to punish rebellion
against God, still in the long run it ceases, or tends
to cease, doing so. Its reason for so ceasing is inter-
preted differently by different schools of thought.
On the one hand, it is said in derision, let the gods
punish offences against the gods — the implication
being that there are no such offences to punish,
because there is no god. On the other hand, it is
said, "I will repay, saith the Lord" — the implica-
tion being that man may not assume to be the min-
ister of divine vengeance. If, then, we bear in mind
that the fact may be interpreted in either of these
different ways, we shall not fall into the fallacy
of imagining that the mere existence of the fact
suffices to prove either interpretation to be true.
Yet this fallacy plays its part in lending fictitious
support to the doctrine that morality is in no wise
dependent upon religion. The offences now pun-
ished by law, it is argued, are no longer punished
as offences against religion, but solely as offences

236 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

against the good of the community. To this argu-
ment the reply is that men Ix'Heve the good of the
community to be the will of God, and do not
believe murder, theft, adultery, etc., to be merely
olTences against man's laws. Overlooking this
fact, which is fatal to the doctrine that morality is
in no wise dependent on religion, the argument we
are discussing proceeds to maintain that the basis
for the enforcement of morality by the law is recog-
nised by every one who knows anything of the phi-
losophy of law to be what is good for the community
and its members: fraud and violence are punished
as such, and not because they are offences against
this or that rehgion. The fact that the lavv^ no
longer punishes them as offences against God suffices
to show that it is only as offences against humanity
that there is any sense, or ever was any sense, in
punishing them. Religion may have reenforcec^v.
morality very usefully at one time, by making out
that moral misdeeds were offences against God,
but such arguments are not now required. The
good and the well-being of humanity is in itself
sufficient argument. Humanitarianism is taking
the place of religion, and by so doing is demonstrat-
ing that morahty is, as it always has been, indepen- ,

MORALITY 237

dent of religion; and that in truth rehgion has built
upon it, not it upon religion. As Hoffding puts it
(p. 328): "Religious faith . . . assumes an inde-
pendent human ethic developed historically under
the practical influence of the ethical feeling of man."
That is to say, morality is in Hoffding's view inde-
pendent of religion, and prior to religion, both as a
matter of logic and of history. As a matter of his-
tory — of the history of religion — this seems to
me, for the reasons already given, to be contrary
to the facts as they are known. The real reason
for maintaining that morality is and must be — and
must have been — independent of religion, seems
to me to be a philosophical reason. I may give it
in Hoffding's own words: "What other aims and
quahties," he asks (p. 324), "could man attribute
to his gods or conceive as divine, but those which he
has learnt from his own experience to recognise
as the highest?" The answer expected to the ques-
tion plainly is not merely that it is from experience
that man learns, but that man has no experience of
God from which he could learn. The answer given
by Mr. Hobhouse, in the concluding words of his
Morals in Evolution is that "the collective wisdom"
of man "is all that we directly know of the Divine."

238 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Here, too, no direct access to God is allowed to be/
possible to man. It is from his experience of other
men — perhaps even of himself and his own doings
— that man learns all he knows of God: but he has
himself no experience of God. Obviously, then, from
this humanitarian i)oint of view, what a man goes
through in his religious moments is not experience,
and we are mistaken if we imagine that it was ex-
perience ; it is only a misinterpretation of experience, l
It is on the supposition that we are mistaken, on the
assumption that we make a misinterpretation, that
the argument is built to prove that morality is and
must be independent of religion. Argument to
show, or proof to demonstrate, that we had not the
experience, or, that we mistook something else for
it, is, of course, not forthcoming. But if we hold
fast to our conviction, we are told that we are fleeing
''to the bosom of faith."

Until some better argument is produced, we may
be well content not merely to flee but to rest there.

/ CHRISTIANITY

The subject dealt with in this lecture will be
the place of Christianity in the evolution of religion;
and I shall approach it by considering the place
of religion in the evolution of humanity. It will
be therefore advisable, indeed necessary, for me
to consider what is meant by evolution; and I wish
to begin by explaining the point of view from which
I propose to approach the three ideas of evolution,
of the evolution of humanity and the evolution of
religion.

The individual exists, and can only exist, in society.
Society cannot exist without individuals as mem-
bers thereof; and the individual cannot exist save
in society. From this it follows that from one
point of view the individual may be regarded as
a means — a means by which society attains its
end or purpose: every one of us has his place or
function in society; and society thrives according
as each member performs his function and dis-
charges his duty. From another point of view

239

240 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

the individual may be regarded as an end. If
man is a social animal, if men live in society, it
is because so alone can a man do what is best for
himself: it is by means of society that he realises
his end. It is then from this proposition, viz. that
the individual is both a means and an end, that
I wish to approach the idea of evolution.

I will begin by calling attention to the fact that
that proposition is true both statically, that is to
say, is true of the individual's position in a com-
munity, and is also true dynamically, that is to say,
is true of his place in the process of evolution. On
the former point, that the proposition is true stati-
cally, of the position of the individual in the com-
munity, I need say but little. In moral philosophy
it is the utilitarian school which has particularly
insisted upon this truth. That school has steadily
argued that, in the distribution of happiness or of
the good, every man is to count as one, and nobody
to count as more than one — that is to say, in the
community the individual is to be regarded as the
end. The object to be aimed at is not happiness
in general and no one's happiness in particular,
but the happiness of each and every individual.
It is the individual and his happiness which is the

CHRISTIANITY 24I

end, for the sake of which society exists and to which
it is the means; otherwise the individual might
derive no benefit from society. But if the truth
that the individual is an end as well as a means
is recognised by moral philosophy, that truth has
also played at least an equally important part in
political philosophy. It is the very breath of the
cry for liberty, equality, and fraternity, — a cry
wrung out from the heart of man by the system of
oppression which denied that the ordinary citizen
had a right to be anything but a means for pro-
curing enjoyment to the members of the ruling class.
The truth that any one man — whatever his place
in society, whatever the colour of his skin — has as
much right as any other to be treated as an end
and that no man was merely a means to the en-
joyment or happiness or well-being of another, was
the charter for the emancipation of slaves. It is
still the magna charta for the freedom of every
member of the human race. No man is or can be
a chattel — a thing existing for no other purpose
than to subserve the interests of its owner and to
be a means to his ends. But though from the
truth that the individual is in himself an end as well
as a means, it follows that all men have the right to

242 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

freedom, it docs not follow as a logical inference
that all men are equal as means — as means to the
material happiness or to the moral improvement
of society.

I need not further dwell upon the fact that stati-
cally as regards the relations of men to one another
in society at any moment, the truth is fully recognised
that the individual is not merely a means to the
happiness or well-being of others, but is also in him-
self an end. But when we consider the proposition
dynamically, when we wish to find out the part it
has played as one of the forces at work in evolu-
tion, we find that its truth has been far from fully
recognised — partly perhaps because utilitarianism
dates from a time when evolution, or the bearing
of it, was not understood. But the truth is at least
of as great importance dynamically as it is statically.
And on one side, its truth and the importance of
its truth has been fully developed: that the indi-
vidual is a means to an end beyond him; and that,
dynamically, he has been and is a factor in evolu-
tion, and as a factor merely a means and nothing
else — all this has been worked out fully, if not
to excess. The other side of the truth, the fact
that the individual is always an end, has, however, i

CHRISTIANITY 243

been as much neglected by the scientific evolutionist
as it was by the slave-driver: he has been liable
to regard men as chattels, as instruments by which
the work of evolution is carried on. The work has
got to be done (by men amongst other animals and
things), things have to be evolved, evolution must go
on. But, why? and for whom? with what purpose
and for whose benefit? with what end? are ques-
tions which science leaves to be answered by those
people who are fooHsh enough to ask them. Science
is concerned simply with the individual as a means,
as one of the means, whereby evolution is carried
on ; and doubtless science is justified — if only
on the principle of the division of labour — in con-
fining itself to the department of enquiry which
it takes in hand and in refusing to travel beyond it.
Any theory of man, therefore, or of the evolution
of humanity, which professes to base itself strictly
on scientific fact and to exclude other considera-
tions as unscientific and therefore as unsafe material
to build on, will naturally, and perhaps necessarily,
be dominated by the notion that the individual
exists as a factor in evolution, as one of the means
by which, and not as in any sense the end for which,
evolution is carried on.

244 COMPARATWE RELIGION

Such seems to be the case with the theory of
humanitarianism. It bases itself upon science,
upon experience, and rules out communion with
God as not being a scientific fact or a fact of ex-
perience at all. Based upon science, it is a theory
which seeks amongst other things to assign to
religion its place in the evolution of humanity.
According to the theory, the day of religion is over,
its part played out, its function in the evolution of
humanity discharged. According to this theory,
three stages may be discerned in the evolution of
humanity v^^hen we regard man as a moral being,
as an ethical consciousness. Those three stages
may be characterised first as custom, next religion,
and finally humanitarianism.

By the theory, in the first stage — that of custom

— the spirits to whom cult is paid are vindictive. ,
In the second stage — that of religion — man,
having attained to a higher morality, credits his
gods with that higher morality. In the third stage

— that of humanitarianism — he finds that the '
gods are but lay figures on which the robes of
righteousness have been displayed that man alone
can wear — when he is perfect. He is not yet.
perfect. If he were, the evolution of humanity

CHRISTIANITY 245

would be attained — whereas at present it is as
yet in process. The end of evolution is not yet
attained: it is to establish, in some future genera-
tion, a perfect humanity. For that end we must
work ; to it we may know that, as a matter of scien-
tific evolution, we are working. On it, we may be

^satisfied, man will not enter in our generation.
Now this theory of the evolution of humanity,
and of the place religion takes in that evolution, is
in essential harmony with the scientific treatment of
the evolution theory, inasmuch as it treats of the
individual solely as an instrument to something
other than himself, as a means of producing a state
of humanity to which he will not belong. But if
the assumption that the individual is always a means

, and never an end in himself be false, then a theory
of the evolution of man (as an ethical consciousness)
which is based on that wrong assumption will
itself be wrong. If each individual is an end, as
valuable and as important as any other individual ;
if each counts for one and not less than any one
other, — then his end and his good cannot he in the

'perfection of some future generation. In that case,
his end would be one that ex hypothesi he could
never enjoy, a rest into which he could never enter;

246 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

and consequently it would be an irrational end, and
could not serve as a basis for a rationalist theory
of ethics. Man's object (to be a rational object) .
must have reference to a society of vi^hich he may
be a member. The realisation of his object, there-
fore, cannot be referred to a stage of society yet to
come, on earth, after he is dead, — a society of
which he, whether dead or annihilated, could not
be a member. If, then, the individual's object isN
to be a rational object, as the humanitarian or
rationalist assumes, then that end must be one in
which he can share; and therefore cannot be in
this world. Nor can that end be attained by doing
man's will — for man's will may be evil, and re-
gress as well as progress is a fact in the evolution ^
of humanity; its attainment, therefore, must be
effected by doing God's will.

The truth that the individual is an end as well as
a means is, I suggest, valuable in considering the "
dynamics as well as the statics of society. At least,
it saves one from the self-complacency of imagining
that one's ancestors existed with no other end and
for no higher purpose than to produce — me ; and if
the golden days anticipated by the theory of humani- ,
tarianism ever arrive, it is to be supposed that the ,

CHRISTIANITY 247

men of that time will find it just as intolerable and
revolting as we do now, to believe that past genera-
tions toiled and suffered for no other reason, for no
other end, and to no other purpose than that their
successors should enter into the fruits of their labour.
In a word, the theory that in the evolution of man as
jan ethical consciousness, as a moral being, religion
I is to be superseded by humanitarianism, is only
possible so long as we deny or ignore the fact that
the individual is an end and not merely a means.
We will therefore now go on to consider the evolu-
tion of religion from the point of view that the in-
dividual is in himself an end as well as a means.
If, of the world religions, we take that which is the
greatest, as measured by the number of its adherents,
viz. Buddhism, we shall see that, tried by this test,
it is at once found wanting. The object at which
Buddhism proclaims that man should aim is not
the development, the perfection, and the realisation
of the individual to the fullest extent : it is, on the
contrary, the utter and complete effacement of the
individual, so that he is not merely absorbed, but
absolutely wiped out, in nirvana. In the atman,
with which it is the duty of man to seek to identify
himself, the individuality of man does not survive:

248 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

it simply ceases to be. Now this obliteration of
his existence may seem to a man in a certain mood
desirable; and that mood may be cultivated, as
indeed Buddhism seeks to cultivate it, systematically. ,
But here it is that the inner inconsistency, the self-
contradictoriness of Buddhism, becomes patent.
The individual, to do anything, must exist. If he
is to desire nothing save to cease to exist, he must
exist to do that. But the teaching of Buddhism
is that this world and this life is illusion — and "
further, that the existence of the individual self
is precisely the most mischievous illusion, that
illusion above all others from which it is incumbent
on us to free ourselves. We are here for no other
end than to free ourselves from that illusion. Thus,
then, by the teaching of Buddhism there is an end,
it may be said, for the individual to aim at. Yes!
but by the same teaching there is no individual
to aim at it — individual existence is the most
pernicious of all illusions. And further, by the
teaching, the final end and object of religion is to
get rid of an individual existence, which does not
exist to be got rid of, and which it is an illusion to
believe in. In fine, Buddhism denies that the
individual is either an end or a means, for it denies

CHRISTIANITY 249

the existence of the individual, and contradicts
itself in that denial. The individual is not an end
— the happiness or immortality, the continued
existence, of the individual is not to be aimed at.
Neither is he a means, for his very existence is an
illusion, and as such is an obstacle or impediment
which has to be removed, in order that he v^^ho is
not may cease to do what he has never begun to do,
viz. to exist.

In Buddhism we have a developed religion —
a religion which has been developed by a system
of philosophy, . but scarcely, as religion, improved
by it. If, now, we turn to other religions less highly
developed, even if we turn to religions the develop-
ment of which has been early arrested, which have
never got beyond the stage of infantile development,
we shall find that all proceed on the assumption
that communion between man and God is possible
and does occur. In all, the existence of the in-
dividual as well as of the god is assumed, even
though time and development may be required to
realise, even inadequately, what is contained in the
assumption. In all, and from the beginning,
religion has been a social fact : the god has been the
god of the community; and, as such, has repre-

250 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

sented the interests of the community. Those
interests have been regarded not merely as other,
but as higher, than the interests of the individual,
when the two have been at variance, for the simple
reason (when the time came for a reason to be
sought and given) that the interests of the com-
munity were the will of the community's god.
Hence at all times the man who has postponed his
own interests to those under the sanction of the god
and the community — the man who has respected
and upheld the custom of the community — has
been regarded as the higher type of man, as the better
man from the religious as well as from the moral
point of view; while the man who has sacrificed
the higher interests to the lower, has been punished
— whether by the automatic action of taboo, or
the deliberate sentence of outlawry — as one who,
by breaking custom, has offended against the god
and so brought suffering on the community.

Now, if the interests, whether of the individual
or the community, are regarded as purely earthly,
the divergence between them must be utter and
irreconcileable ; and to expect the individual to
forego his own interests must be eventually dis-
covered to be, as it fundamentally is, unreasonable.

CHRISTIANITY 251

If, on the other hand, for the individual to forego
them is (as, in a cool moment, we all recognise it
to be) reasonable, then the interests under the sanc-
tion of the god and the community — the higher
interests — cannot be other than, they must be
identical with, the real interests of the individual.
It is only in and through society that the individual
can attain his highest interests, and only by doing
the will of the god that he can so attain them.
Doubtless — despite of logic and feeling — in all
communities all individuals in a greater or less
degree have deliberately preferred the lower to the
higher, and in so doing have been actuated neither
by love of God nor by love of their fellow-man.
But, in so doing, they have at all times, in the latest
as well as the earhest stages of society, been felt to
be breaching the very basis of social solidarity, the
maintenance of which is the will of the God wor-
shipped by society.

From that point of view the individual is regarded
as a means. But he is also in himself an end, in-
trinsically as valuable as any other member of
the community, and therefore an end which society
exists to further and promote. It is impossible,
therefore, that the end, viewed as that which society

252 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

as well as the individual aims at, and which society
must realise, as far as it can realise it, through the
individual, should be one which can only be attained
by some future state of society in which he does not
exist. **The kingdom of Heaven is within you'*
and not something to which you cannot attain.
God is not far from us at any time. That truth was
implicit at all stages in the evolution of religion —
consciously recognised, perhaps more, perhaps less,
but whether more or less consciously recognised, it
was there. That is the conviction implied in the
fact that man everywhere seeks God. If he seeks
Him in plants, in animals, in stocks or stones, that
only shows that man has tried in many wrong
directions — not that there is not a right direction.
It is the general law of evolution: of a thousand
seeds thrown out, perhaps one alone falls into good
soil. But the failure of the 999 avails nothing
against the fact that the one bears fruit abundantly.
What sanctifies the failures is that they were attempts.
We indeed may, if we are so selfish and blind,
regard the attempts as made in order that we might
succeed. Certainly we profit by the work of our
ancestors, — or rather we may profit, if we will.
But our savage ancestors were themselves ends, and

CHRISTIANITY 253

not merely means to our benefit. It is monstrous
to imagine that our salvation is bought at the cost
of their condemnation. No man can do more
than turn to such light as there may be to guide
him. "To him that hath, shall be given," it is
true — but every man at every time had something ;
never was there one to whom nothing was given.
To us at this day, in this dispensation, much has
been given. But ten talents as well as one may
be wrapped up: one as well as ten may be put to
profit. It is monstrous to say that one could not
be, cannot have been, used properly. It was for
not using the one talent he had that the unfaithful
servant was condemned — not for not having ten
to use.

Throughout the history of religion, then, two facts
have been implied, which, if implicit at the beginning,
have been rendered explicit in the course of its
history or evolution. They are, first, the existence
of the individual as a member of society, in com-
munion or seeking communion with God; and,
next, that while the individual is a means to social
ends, society is also a means of which the individual
is the end. Neither end — neither that of society
nor that of the individual — can be forwarded at

2 54 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

the cost of the other; the reahsation of each is to
be attained only by the reahsation of the other.
Two consequences then follow with regard to evo-
lution: first, it depends on us; evolution may have
helped to make us, but we are helping to make it.
Next, the end of evolution is not wholly outside
any one of us, but in part is realised in us, or may
be, if we so will. That is to say, the true end may
be reahsed by every one of us; for each of us, as
being himself an end, is an object of care to God —
and not merely those who are to live on earth at
the final stage of evolution. If the end is outside
us, it is in love of neighbour; if beyond us, it is in
God's love. It is just because the end is (or may
be) both within us and without us that we are bound
up with our fellow-man and God. It is precisely
because we are individuals that we are not the be-all
and the end-all — that the end is without us. And
it is because we are members of a community, that
I the end is not wholly outside us.

In his Problems of Philosophy (p. 163) Hoffding-v
says: "The test of the perfection of a human society /
is: to what degree is every person so placed and "^
treated that he is not only a mere means, but also
always at the same time an end?" and he points ^

CHRISTIANITY 255

out that ''this is Kant's famous dictum, with another
motive than that given to it by him." But if it
is reasonable to apply this test to society, regarded
from the point of view of statics, it is also reasonable
to apply it to society regarded dynamically. If it is
the proper test for ascertaining what degree of per-
fection society at any given moment has attained,
it is also the proper test for ascertaining what ad-
vance, if any, towards perfection has been made
by society between any two periods of its growth,
any two stages in its evolution. But the moment
we admit the possibility of applying a test to the
process of evolution and of discovering to what end
the process is moving, we are abandoning science
and the scientific theory of evolution. Science
formally refuses to consider whether there be any
end to which the process of evolution is working:
"end" is a category which science declines to apply
to its subject-matter. In the interests of knowledge
it dechnes to be influenced by any consideration of
what the end aimed at by evolution may be, or
whether there be any end aimed at at all. It simply
notes what does take place, what is, what has been,
and to some extent what may be, the sequence of
events — not their object or purpose. And the

256 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

science of religion, being a science, restricts itself
in the same way. As therefore science declines to
use the category, "end," progress is an idea impos-
sible for science — for progress is movement towards
an end, the realisation of a purpose and object.
And science declines to consider whether progress
is so much as possible. But, so far as the subject-
matter of the science of religion is concerned, it is
positive (that is to say, it is mere fact of observa-
tion) that in religion an end is aimed at, for man
everywhere seeks God and communion with Him.
What the science of religion declines to do is to
pronounce or even to consider whether that end is
possible or not, whether it is in any degree achieved
or not, whether progress is made or not.

But if we do not, as science does, merely constate
the fact that in religion an end is aimed at, viz. that
communion with God which issues in doing His will
from love of Him and therefore of our fellow-man;
if we recognise that end as the end that ought to
be aimed at, — then our attitude towards the whole
process of evolution is changed : it is now a process
with an end — and that end the same for the indi-
vidual and for society. But at the same time it is
no longer a process determined by mechanical

CHRISTIANITY 257

causes worked by the iron hand of necessity — and
therefore it is no longer evolution in the scientific
sense; it is no longer evolution as understood by
science. It is now a process in which there may
or may not be progress made ; and in which, there-
fore, it is necessary to have a test of progress — a
test which is to be found in the fact that the indi-
vidual is not merely a means, but an end. Whether
progress is made depends in part on whether there
is the will in man to move towards the end proposed ;
and that will is not uniformly exercised, as is shown
by the fact that deterioration as well as advance
takes place — regress occurs as well as progress ;
whole nations, and those not small ones, may be
arrested in their religious development. If we look
with the eye of the missionary over the globe, every-
where we see arrested development, imperfect
communion with God. It may be that in such cases
of imperfect communion there is an unconscious
or hardly conscious recognition that the form of
religion there and then prevalent does not suffice
to afford the communion desired. Or, worse still,
and much more general, there is the belief that such
communion as does exist is all that can exist — that
advance and improvement are impossible. From

258 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

this stale it has been the work of the religious spirit
to wake us, to reveal to us God's will, to make us
understand that it is within us, and that it may,
if we will, work within us. It is as such a revela-
tion of the will of God and the love of God, and as
the manifestation of the personality of God, that
our Lord appeared on earth.

That appearance as a historic fact must take its
place in the order of historic events, and must stand
in relation to what preceded and to what followed
and is yet to follow. In relation to what preceded,
Christianity claims ''to be the fulfilment of all that
is true in previous religion" (lUingworth, Person-
ality: Human and Divine ^ p. 75). The making
of that claim assumes that there was some truth in
previous religion, that so far as previous forms were
religious, they were true — a fact that must con-
stantly be borne in mind by the missionary. The
truth and the good inherent in all forms of religion
is that, in all, man seeks after God. The finality
of Christianity Hes in the fact that it reveals the
God for whom man seeks. What was true in other
religions was the belief in the possibility of com-
munion with God, and the belief that only as a
member of a society could the individual man attain

CHRISTIANITY 259

to that communion. What is offered by Christianity
is a means of grace whereby that communion may
be attained and a society in which the individual
may attain it. Christianity offers a means whereby
the end aimed at by all religions may be realised.
Its finality, therefore, does not consist in its chrono-
logical relation to other religions. It is not final
because, or in the sense that, it supervened in the
order of time upon previous religions, or that it
fulfilled only their truth. Other religions have, as
a matter of chronology, followed it, and yet others
may follow it hereafter. But their chronological
order is irrelevant to the question : Which of them
best realises the end at which religion, in all its
forms, aims? And it is the answer to that question
which must determine the finality of any form of
religion. No one would consider the fact that
Mahommedanism dates some centuries after Christ
any proof of its superiority to Christianity. And
the lapse of time, however much greater, would
constitute no greater proof.

That different forms of religion do reaHse the
end of religion in different degrees is a point on
which there is general agreement. Monotheism is
pronounced higher than polytheism, ethical religions

26o COMPARATIVE RELIGION

higher than non-elhical. What dilTercntiatcs Chris-
tianity from other ethical reht^ions and from other
forms of monotheism, is that in them rcUgion appears
as ancillary to morality, and imposes penalties and
rewards with a view to enforce or encourage moral-
ity. In them, at their highest, the love of man is for
his fellow-man, and usually for himself. Chris-
tianity alone makes love of God to be the true basis
and the only end of society, both that whereby per-
sonaHty exists and the end in which it seeks its
realisation. Therein the Christian theory of society
differs from all others. Not merely does it hold that
man cannot make himself better without making
society better, that development of personality
cannot be effected without a corresponding develop-
ment of society. But it holds that such moral
development and improvement of the individual and
of society can find no rational basis and has no
rational end, save in the love of God.

In another way the Christian theory of society
differs from all others. Like all others it holds
that the unifying bond of every society is found in
worship. Unhke others it recognises that the indi-
vidual is restricted by existing society, even where
that society is based upon a common worship. The

CHRISTIANITY 26 1

adequate realisation of the potentialities of the indi-
vidual postulates the realisation of a perfect society,
just as a perfect society is possible only provided
that the potentialities of the individual are realised
to the full. Such perfection, to which both society
and the individual are means, is neither attained
nor possible on earth, even where communion with
God is recognised to be both the true end of society
and the individual, and the only means by which
that end can be attained. Still less is such per-
fection a possible end, if morality is set above religion,
and the love of man be substituted for the love of
God. In that case the life of the individual upon
earth is pronounced to be the only life of which he
is, or can be, conscious ; and the end to which he is
a means is the good of humanity as a whole. Now
human society, from the beginning of its evolution
to its end, may be regarded as a whole, just as the
society existing at any given moment of its evolution
may be regarded as a whole. But if we are to
consider human society from the former point of
view and to see in it, so regarded, the end to which
the individual is a means, then it is clear that, until
perfection is attained in some remote and very
improbable future, the individual members of the

262 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

human race will have Laboured and not earned their
reward, will have worked for an end which they
have not attained, and for an end which when, if
ever, it is attained, society as a whole will not enjoy.
Such an end is an irrational and impossible object
of pursuit. Perfection, if it is to be attained by the
individual or by society, is not to be attained on
earth, nor in man's communion with man. Religion
from its outset has been the quest of man for God.
It has been the quest of man, whether regarded as
an individual or as a member of society. But if
that quest is to be realised, it is not to be realised
either by society or the individual, regarded as having
a mere earthly existence. A new conception of the
real nature of both is requisite. Not only must the
individual be regarded as continuing to exist after
death, but the society of which he is truly a member
must be regarded as one which, if it manifests or
begins to manifest itself on this earth, requires for
its reaHsation — that is, for perfect communion
with God — the postulate that though it manifests
itself in this world, it is realised in the next. This
new conception of the real nature of society and the
individual, involving belief in the communion of
the saints, and in the kingdom of Heaven as that

CHRISTIANITY 263

which may be in each individual, and therefore must
extend beyond each and include all whether in this
world or the next — this conception is one which
Christianity alone, of all religions, offers to the
world.

Rehgion is the quest of man for God. Man
everywhere has been in search of God, peradventure
he might find Him; and the history of religion is
the history of his search. But the moment we regard
the history — the evolution — of religion as a search,
we abandon the mechanical idea of evolution: the
cause at work is not material or mechanical, but
final. The cause is no longer a necessary cause
which can only have one result and which, when
it operates, must produce that result. Progress is
no longer something which must take place, which
is the inevitable result of antecedent causes. It
is something which may or may not take place and
which cannot take place unless effort is made. In
a word, it is dependent in part upon man's will —
without the action of which neither search can be
made nor progress in the search. But though in
part dependent upon man's will, progress can only
be made so far as man's will is to do God's will.
And that is not always, and has not been always.

264 COMPARATIVE RELIGION

man's will. Hence evolution has not always been
progress. Nor is it so now. There have been
lapses in civilisation, dark ages, periods when man's
love for man has waned pari passu with the waning
of his love for God. Such lapses there may be yet
again. The fall of man may be greater, in the spirit-
ual sense, than it ever yet has been, for man's will
is free. But God's love is great, and our faith is in
it. If Christianity should cease to grow where it
now grows, and cease to spread where it as yet is
not, there would be the greater fall. And on ]is
would rest some, at least, of the responsibility. Chris- I
tianity cannot be stationary: if it stands, let it I
beware ; it is in danger of falling. Between religions, i
as well as other organisations, there is a struggle
, for existence. In that struggle we have to fight
j — for a religion to decline to fight is for that religion
|_^die. The missionary is not engaged in a woik.
of supererogation, something with which we at home
have no concern. We speak of him as in the fore-
front of the battle. We do not usually or constantly
realise that it is our battle he is fighting — that his
defeat, if he were defeated, would be the beginning
of the end for us; that on his success our fate de-
pends. The metaphor of the missionary as an out-

CHRISTIANITY 265

post sounds rather picturesque when heard in a ser-
mon, — or did so sound the first time it was used, I
suppose, — but it is not a mere picture; it is the
barest truth. The extent to which we push our out-
posts forward is the measure of our vitaHty, of how
much we have in us to do for the world. Six out of
seven of Christendom's missionaries come from the
United States of America. Until I heard that from
the pulpit of Durham Cathedral, I had rather a
horror of big things and a certain apprehension
about going to a land where bigness, rather than the
golden mean, seemed to be taken as the standard of
merit. But from that sermon I learnt something,
viz. not only that there are big things to be done in
the world, but that America does them, and that
America does more of them than she talks about.

APPENDIX

Since the chapter on Magic was written, the
publication of Wilhelm Wundt's Volkerpsychologie,
Vol. II, Part II, has led me to believe that I ought to
have laid more stress on the power of the magician,
which I mention on pages 74, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, and
less on the savage's recognition of the principle that
like produces like. In the stage of human evolution
known as Animism, every event which calls for ex-
planation is explained as the doing of some person
or conscious agent. When a savage falls ill, his
sickness is regarded as the work of some ill-disposed
person, whose power cannot be doubted — for it is
manifest in the sickness it has caused — and whose
power is as mysterious as it is indubitable. That
power is what a savage means by magic; and the
persons believed to possess it are magicians. It
is the business of the sick savage's friends to find
out who is causing his sickness. Their suspicion
may fall on any one whose appearance or behaviour
is suspicious or mysterious; and the person sus-
267

268 APPENDIX

pcctcd comes to be regarded as a witch or magician,
from the very fact that he is suspected. Such per-
sons have the i)o\ver of witchcraft or magic, because
they are believed to have the power: possunt quia
posse videntur. Not only are they believed to possess
the power; they come to believe, themselves, that
they possess it. They believe that, possessing it,
they have but to exercise it. The Australian ma-
gician has but to "point" his stick, and, in the belief
both of himself and of every one concerned, the
victim will fall. All over the world the witch has
but to stab the image she has drawn or made, and
the person portrayed will feel the wound. In this
proceeding, the image is like the person, and the
blow delivered is like the blow which the victim is to
feel. It is open to us, therefore, to say that, in this
typical case of "imitative" or "mimetic" magic,
like is believed to produce like. And on pages 75-77,
and elsewhere, above, I have taken that position.
But I would now add two qualifications. The first is,
as already intimated, that, though stabbing an
effigy is like stabbing the victim, it is only a magician
or witch that has the power thus to inflict wounds,
sickness, or death: the services of the magician or
witch are employed for no other reason than that

APPENDIX 269

the ordinary person has not the power, even by the
aid of the rite, to cause the effect. The second
qualification is that, whereas we distinguish between
the categories of likeness and identity, the savage
makes but little distinction. To us it is evident
that stabbing the image is only like stabbing the
victim; but to the believer in magic, stabbing the
image is the same thing as stabbing the victim;
and in his belief, as the waxen image melts, so the
victim withers away.

It would, therefore, be more precise and more
correct to say (page 74, above) that eating tiger to
make you bold points rather to a confusion, in the
savage's mind, of the categories of likeness and
identity, than to a conscious recognition of the
principle that like produces like: as you eat tiger's
flesh, so you become bold with the tiger's boldness.
The spirit of the tiger enters you. But no magic is
necessary to enable you to make the meal : any one
can eat tiger. The belief that so the tiger's spirit
will enter you is a piece of Animism; but it is not
therefore a piece of magic.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Bastian, a. Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde.
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BoussET, W. What is Religion ? (E. T.). London. 1907.

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Ellis, A. B. The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave
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Fahz, L, De poetarum Romanorum doctrina magica.
Giessen. 1904.

Farnell, L. R. The Place of the Sonder-Gotter in Greek
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272 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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HuvELiN, P. Magie et droit individuel. L'Annde Socio-
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Lang, A. Custom and Myth. London. 1893. Magic and
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Parker, K. L. The Euahlayi Tribe. London. 1905.

Payne, E. J. History of the New World called America.
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Spencer & Gillen. The Native Tribes of Central Aus-
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Tylor, E. B. Primitive Culture. London. 1873.

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Westermarck, E. The Origin and Development of the
Moral Ideas. London. 1906.

Wundt, W. Volkerpsychologie. Leipzig. 1904-190 7.

INDEX

Acosta, Father, 193.
Agnostic, 4, 6.
Agries, 143-
Alfoors, 194.
Algonquins, 143.
All-father, 190.
Ancestors, 162.

Ancestor worship, 52, 53; may
be arrested by religion, 53, 54,

55-

Andaman Islands, 169.

Animal sacrifice, 209; animal
meal, 178.

Animals, worshipped, in.

Animism, 204, 215, 216, 217; and
magic, 89, 90, 98; and fe-
tichism, 116, 117, 118; poly-
theism, 131; not religion, 136.

Anticipation, of nature, 73.

Antinomy, the, of religious feel-
ing, 174.

Anzam, 170.

Applied science of religion, 2 ff . ;
looks to the future, 3; is used
by the missionary as a prac-
tical man, 15, 16; its object,
18, 21.

Ashantee Land, 153, 155.

Atheist, 4, 6.

Atman, 247.

At-one-ment, 178.

Attention, 9, 10.

Australia, 183 ff.

Australian tribes, religion of, 27,
28.

Aztecs, 188, 190.

Basutos, 181.
Becoming, 214.

Being, is in process of evolution,
214; still incomplete, 214.

Belief, and desire, 39, 40; in im-
mortality and God, 31, 32;
erroneous, and magic, 79; in
magic, 85; religious, 137.

Bhogaldai, 194.

BiUiards, 78.

Blood, and rain, 161.

Bones, of animals, hung up, 78.

Boorah, 162 ff.

Bosman, 109 ff., 112, 113,

Bread, prayer for daily, 181.

Buddhism, 247 ff. ; and immor-
tality, 36, 37, 61, 62, 63; its
fundamental illogicality, 66; its
strength, 66.

Buro, 194.

Buzzard, 76.

Byamee, 162 ff., 191, 198.

Cause, and conditions, 77, 85.

Celebes, 194.

Ceram, 181.

Ceremonies, for rain, 161.

Chain of existence, 65.

Charms, and prayers, 150, 115, 152.

Chattels, 241, 243.

Cherokee Indian, 50, 76, 77.

Chicomecoatl, 193.

Childhood, 98.

China, 194, 197.

Christianity, 239 ff., 258, 259, 260;
the highest form of religion, 15,
18, 22, 23; and other forms of
religion, 26, 27, 28, 35; alone
teaches self-sacrifice as the way
to life eternal, 69 ; and sacrifice,
209.

275

76

INDEX

Clouds, 153; of smoke and rain,
161, 162.

Communal purposes, and maj^ic,
91.

Communion, 175; not so much
an intclk'ctual belief as an ob-
ject of desire, 43, 44; of man
with God the basis of morality,
62; logically incompatible with
Buddhism, 63; involves per-
sonal existence, 67; with God,
137; sought in prayer, 172;
and sacrifice, 172; in Mexico,
193; maintained by sacra-
mental eating, 195; annually,
196; renewed, 198; the true
end of sacrifice, 207, 208; be-
tween man and God, 249; im-
perfect, 257.

Community, 254; and magic, 81,
97; and its God, 91.

Community, the, and fetiches,
122; and its gods, 135; and
prayer, 146, 147, 148, 166;
and the individual, 218, 239.

Comparative method, 20, 21.

Comparative Philology, 20.

Comparison, method of, 17; im-
plies similarity in the religions
compared, 19; and implies dif-
ference also, 20; contrasted
with comparative method, 21;
deals with differences, 22.

Comtc, 213.

Conciliation, and coercion, of
spirits, 121.

Congregations, 170.

Contagious magic, 85.

Continuation theory, 55, 56.

Corn, eaten sacramentally, 194,

195-
Corn-maiden, 195.
Corn-mother, 195.
Corn-spirit, 196, 199, 200.
Cotton-mother, 194.
Creator, 170.

Creek Indians, 194.
Custom, 244; protected by the
god of the community, 219.

Dances, 162; and prayer, 153.

Dead, the, 38; return, 47; spirits
of the, 92.

Death, a mistake according to the
primitive view, 44, 45 ; or else
due to magic, 45, 46, 80.

Deer, 74.

Degradation of religion, 24.

Deification, 53.

Deiphobus, 54.

Delaware prayer, 145.

Departmental deities, 190.

Desacralisation, 186.

Desire for immortality, is the
origin of the belief in immor-
tality, 40, 41 ; is not a selfish
desire, 42; the root of all evils,
66; religious, 115, 116, 121;
and prayer, 142, 149; and the
worship of the gods, 135; and
religion, 158, 166; of the com-
munity, 163.

Desire of all nations, 115, 173.

Dieri, 50, 161, 164.

Difference, implies similarity, 27.

Differences, to be taken into ac-
count by method of comparison,
22; their value, 23, 24; postu-
lated by science, 24.

Differentiation of the homogene-
ous, 23, 24, 25.

Domesticated plants and animals,
190.

Dreams, and the soul, 37; their
emotional value, 42.

Drought, 164.

Dugongs, 164, 165.

Dynamics, of society, 246, 255.

East Indies, 181.
Eating of the god, 193.
Eating tiger, 74, 89.

INDEX

277

Ellis, Colonel, 113, 120, 121, 122.

Emotional element, in fetichism
and religion, 136.

End, the, gives value to what we
do, 1 3 ; and is a matter of will,
13; of society, 251, 253; a
category unknown to science,

255-

Ends, anti-social, 81.

Error, 25,

Euahlayi, 48, 162, 191, 198.

Evolution, 214; of religion, 6,
239. 247. 253; and progress,
9, 12, 24, 264; theory of, 23;
and the history of religion, 172,
173; of humanity, 239, 244,
246; law of, 252; end of, 254,
256.

Faith, 137, 238; the conviction
that we can attain our ends, 14;
shared by the religious man
with all practical men, 14, 15;
exhibited in adopting method
of comparison in religion, 17;
in Christianity, 18; banishes
fear of comparisons, 18, 19;
in the communion of man with
God manifests itself in the
desire for immortality, 68.

Family, and society, 98.

Famine, 205.

Father, 98.

Feeling, religious, 137; moral and
religious, 81.

Fetich, defined, in, 112; offer-
ings made to it, 112 ; not merely
an "inanimate," 113, 116; but
a spirit, 116, 117; possesses
personality and will, 117; aids
in the accomplishment of desire,
117, 119; may be made, 120;
is feared, 120; has no religious
value, 120, 121; distinct from
a god, 122; subservient to its
owner, 122; has no plurality of

worshippers, 122; its principal
object to work evil, 123; serves
its owner only, 127; perma-
nence of its worship, 129; has
no specialised function, 129,
130; is prayed to and talked
with, 132; worshipped by an
individual, 1 34 ; and not by the
community, 135, 170.

Fetichism, 105 £f., 215; as the
lowest form of religion, 106,
107; as the source of religious
values, 107, 108; and magic,
90; and religion, 114, 120, 136;
the law of its evolution, 119,
120; condemned by public
opinion, 122, 123; offensive to
the morality of the native, 126;
and at variance with his re-
ligion, 126, 127; not the basis
of religion, 127; and polythe-
ism, 128, 131, 132, 133,- and
fear, 136.

Finality of Christianity, 258, 259.

First-fruit ceremonials, 183, 184;
and the gods, 185, 187; an act
of worship, 187, 188.

First-fruits, 181.

Flesh of the divine being, 196.

Fly-totem, 165, 166.

Folk-lore, 85.

Food supply, 205.

Footprints, 74.

Forms of religion, 19.

Framin women, 152, 153, 155, 156.

Frazer, J. G., 50, 76, 78, 79, 83,
92, 94, 102, 153, 157, 158, 160,
180, 192, 194-200, 202, 205.

Fuegians, 169.

Funerals, and prayer, 163.

Future, knowledge of the, 14, 15.

Future life, its relation to morality
and religion, 36, 37, 57.

Future punishments, and rewards,
51, 61.

Future world, 52 ff.

INDEX

Ghosts, 3S, 42.

Gift-thi"ory of sacrifice, 206.

God, worshipped by community,
91, 98; a supreme being, 168;
etymology of the word, 133,
134; a personal power, 136,
137; correlative to a com-
munity, 137.

Gods and worshippers, 53; and
fetichism, no; made and
broken, no; personal, 121;
"departmental," 129; their
personality, 130, 131; and the
good of the community, 123;
and fetiches, 124; are the
powers that care for the welfare
of the community, 126, 172;
and spirits, 128; "of a mo-
ment," 128, 136; their proper
names, 131; worshipped by a
community, 134; and the de-
sires of their worshippers, 134;
not evolved from fetiches, 135;
promote the community's good,
135, 137, 167; and prayer, 140,
147, 148; and morality, 169;
of a community identified with
the community, 177; as ethical
powers, 215; punish trans-
gression, 220.

Gold Coast, prayer, 143.

Golden Age, 25.

Good, the, 140; and the gods,

137-
Gotama, 64.
GoU, and giessen, 134.
Grace, 259.
Gratitude, 181.
Great Spirit, the, 143.
Guardian spirits, in.
Guinea, 197.

Haddon, Dr., 83, 91, 100, loi,
106, 107, 117, 118, 124, 129,
130. 132, 133-

Hades, 58.

Hallucinalions, 38.

Hapj)incss, 240.

Hartford Theological Seminary,
I, 22, 106.

Harvest, prayers and sacrifice,
180 ff.

Harvest communion, 188, 189.

Harvest customs, 192, 198, 203.

Harvest supper, 195 fl., 200; its
sacramental character, 197.

Health, and disease, 138.

Heaven, kingdom of, 252, 262.

Hebrew prophets, 207, 209.

Hebrews, 54.

Hegel, 213.

Hindoo Koosh, 194.

Historic science, has the historic
order for its object, n; but
does not therefore deny that its
facts may have value other than
truth value, 11.

History, of art and literature, 8;
of religion, 253, 263.

Ho dirge, 47.

Hobhouse, L. T., 211, 214-216,
222, 223, 226-229, 230, 237.

Hoffding, H., 44, 166, 173, 254;
on fetichism, 106, 114, 115, 121,
124,128-130,133-137; on anti-
nomy of religious feeling, 174;
and morality, 211, 214-216, 219,
220, 237.

Hollis, Mr., 143 ff.

Homer, 16, 17.

Homoeopathic magic, 80, 85, 93.

Homogeneous, the, 23, 24.

Howitt, Mr., 190.

Hu, hiita, 134.

Humanitarianism, 214, 215, 236,
244, 246, 247; and morality,
221.

Humanity, 213; its evolution, 244.

Husband, 98.

Ideals, a matter of the will, 13.
Idols, 193.

INDEX

279

lUingworth, J. R., 258.

Illusion, 64, 248.

Images, of dough, 193, 196.

Imitative magic, 157.

Immortality, 34 flf.

Incorporation, 178.

Individual, and the community,
218, 239; cannot exist save in
society, 225 ; both a means and
an end for society, 240 ff., 246,
247; existence of, 248; inter-
ests of, 250, 251 ; end of, 253.

Individuality, not destroyed but
strengthened by uprooting self-
ish desires, 67.

Indo-China, 181, 194.

Indo-European languages, 20.

Infancy, helpless, 98.

Initiation ceremonies, 190, 191;
admit to the worship of the
gods, 192; important for theory
of sacrifice, 192.

Interests, of the community, 250;
and the individual, 250.

Intoning, of prayer, 147.

Israel, 59.

Jaundice, 89.
Jews, S3, 54.
Judgments, of value, 115,
Justice, public, 223, 224 S.

Kaitish rites, 164, 165.

Kangaroo totem, 197.

Kant, 255.

Karma, 64, 65.

Kei Islands, 156.

Kern Baby, 195.

Khonds of Orissa, and prayer,

139, 167, 171.
Killing of the god, 197.
Kingsley, Miss, 48, 49, 116.

Lake Nyassa, 146.

Lake Superior, 143.

Lang, Andrew, 129, 168, 169, 170.

UAnnee Sociologique, 60.

Like produces like, 72, 73, 74, 76,

79, 80, 84, 85, 86, 89, 98, 100,

160, 189.
Litanies, 163.
Love of neighbours, 254.

MacCuUough, J. A., 47.

McTaggart, Dr., 49, 50.

Magic, 32, 70 ff. ; and murder, 45,
47 ; a colourable imitation of
science, 71; a spurious sys-
tem, 71, 72; fraudulent, 75, 76;
origin of belief in, 79; regarded
with disapproval, 79; sympa-
thetic or homoeopathic, 80;
offensive to the god of the
community, 81 ; not prior to
religion, 97; condemned when
inconsistent with the public
good, 97; and anti-social pur-
poses, 98; decline of, 100; and
the impossible, loi ; private
and public, 83; nefarious, 83;
beneficent, 87, 88; does not
imply spirits, 89; and religion,
92 ff. ; fundamentally different,
95, 158, 160; mimics science
and religion, 103; and the
degradation of religion, 150,
151, 152; and prayer, 153, 154;
priority of, to religion, 154, 157 ;
and sacramental eating, 199-
204. See Appendix.

Magician, his personality, 87.

Mahommedanism, 259.

Maize-mother, 190, 193, 194, 195,
196.

Maker, the, 168.

Manganja, 146, 160.

Mara tribe, 164.

Marett, R. R., 151.

Marriage law, 222, 227.

Masai, and prayer, 143, 144, 145,
153-156, 162.

Master of Life, 143.

28o

INDEX

Mauss, M., 60.

M4ya, 64.

Medical advice, 76.

Mexico, 193, 194, 199, 200.

Mimetic magic, 85.

Minahassa, 194.

Mind of Humanity, 213.

Missionary, 6, 140, 210, 211, 257,
265; interested in the value
rather than the chronological
order of religions, 1 2 ; being
practical, uses applied science,
15; and method of comparison,
17; and notes resemblances, 22;
requires scientific knowledge of
the material he has to work on,
34; may use as a lever the
belief in man's communion with
spirits, 69; and magic, 102, 103,
104; and fetichism, 105; and
heathen prayer, 138, 173.

Momentary gods, 128, 136.

Morality, 81, 83, 84, 95, 211 ff.,
260, 261 ; and communion with
God, 62; and the mysteries,
191; and prayer, 148.

Moral transgression, and sin, 221.

Mosquito-totem, 166.

Mura-muras, 162.

Mysteries, the Greek, 58, 62; and
prayer, 180,

Names, and gods, 121.

Names, of gods, 121, 131, 132; of

men, 132; and personality, 133.
Nassau, Dr., 116, 168, 170.
Natchez Indians, 194.
Natural law, 72.
Nature, uniformity of, 14, 15.
Nefarious magic, 83-87, 95.
Neilgherry Hills, 194.
New Caledonia, 92, 153, 154, 155,

156, 162.
New Hebrides, 181.
New South Wales, 162.
Nias, 181.

Niger, 181,

Nirvana, 247.

North American Indians, iii.

Nyankupon, 169.

Offerings, 178; and their object,
180; made to fetiches, 112, 122.

Old Testament, 54.

Ol-kora, 154, 162.

Onitsha, 181.

Order of value, 7; distinct from
chronological order, 7, 9, 15,
16; historic, 8.

Origin, and validity, 38, 39.

Osages, 143.

Parker, Mrs. L., 162 ff., 191.

Perception, 9.

Personality, of magician, 87; of

gods and fetiches, 130, 131, 132;

of God, 258 ; and proper names,

Personification, 136.
Peru, 193, 194, 198.
Pestilence, 205.
Pinkerton, 109.
Plato, 206, 207, 209.
Political economy, 5, 6.
Political philosophy, 241.
Polytheism and fetichism, 128,

130, 131. 132, 133-

Pondos, 194.

Power, personal, 87, 88, 100.

Prayer, 92, 93, 94, 138 ff. ; among
the heathen, 138; to fetiches,
127; and desire, 142; and
personal advantage, 144; and
the community, 146; of indi-
viduals, 147; unethical, 148,
149; and magic, 154; and
spells, 155, 157, 160; and
famine, 158; for rain, 160; the
expression of the heart's desire,
160; never unknown to man,
160, 161; in exceptional dis-
tress, 182; of thanksgiving,

INDEX

281

182; occasional and recurring,
179 ff. ; and communion, 180;
its purpose, 175; and external
rites, 176; implies sacrifice,
176; not always reported by
observers, 177; and sacrifice
go together, 169; no worship
without, 170; of Socrates, 171;
and sacrifice, 172; Our Lord's,
172, 173; practical, 167; the
root of religion, 167, 168; and
its objects, 163; a mother's
prayer, 163; "singing," 164;
and charms, 150, 165; at seed
time, 205.

Prayer-mill, 150.

Priests, 91, 193; and gods, 121;
and fetiches, 122.

Primitive man, beheves in immor-
tality, 37.

Private property, 5, 6.

Progress, 9, 246, 256, 257, 263;
and evolution, 24.

Protective colouring, 70, 103.

Psalmist, 54.

Puluga, 169.

Pure science of religion, is a his-
toric science, 2 ; its facts may
be used for different and con-
tradictory purposes, 4.

Rain, prayed for, 146, 160, 161.

Rain-clouds, 154, 156, 161, 162.

Rain-god, 91, 92.

Rain-making, 84, 87, 88, 91, 161,
164.

Rebirth, 48, 49, 50.

Regress, 246, 257.

Reincarnation, 59; in animal
form, 50, 51, 52; in new-born
children, 48-50 ; in namesakes,
50; its relation to morality and
religion, 61.

Religion, is a fact, 5; never un-
known to man, 160, 161 ; essen-
tially practical, 160, 175; its

evolution, 239; as a survival of
barbarism, 24; lowest forms to
be studied first, 26, 27; is a
yearning after and search for
God, 28, 115, 136; a bond of
community from the first, 43,
59, 176; implies gods and their
worship, 121, 122, 177, 217;
implies rites and prayers, 176;
"under the guise of desire," 44,
115, 149, 158, 166, 173; but it
is the desire of the community,
44; and morality, 37, 81, 83,
84,211,215; and animism, 136;
and fetichism, 106-109, i^S*
131, 132, 136; and magic, 70,
71, 72, 92-95, 96, 97, 98, lOI,
150, 151, 152, 154; mechanical,
150; applied science of, 105;
and its value, 109.

Religious values, 9, 16.

Resemblances, not more impor-
tant than differences, for the
method of comparison, 22 ; their
value, 23, 24.

Resentment and justice, 224.

Responsibility, collective, 227,
228, 234.

Revelation, 172, 255; and evolu-
tion, 173. ^

Revenge and justice, 229.

Rheumatism, 76.

Rhys Davids, 64.

Saa, 180.

Sacrament, in Central Australia,
197, 200.

Sacramental meals, 183 ff., 197,
199, 200, 201, 203.

Sacrifice, 92, 93, 94, 175 ff. ; to
fetiches, 113; and worship, 137,
177; and prayer, 172, 177; and
the gift theory, 206; and com-
munion, 207, 208; its ultimate
form, 209, 210; and the ety-
mology of "god," 133 ff., 137.

282

INDEX

Saffron, Sq.

Science, has truth, not assignment
of value, for its object, 10, 11,
108; and history, 108; does
not deal with ends, 255; and
evolution, 257; and magic, 70,
71, 72, loi ; of the savage, 159,
189.

Science of religion, 256; pure and
applied, 2 ff.; supposed to be
incompatible with religious be-
lief, 4; really has nothing to do
with the truth or value of re-
ligion, 5, 10; and prayer,
140, 141; and the missionary,
105.

Sea Dyaks, 228,

Search for God, the, 28, 29, 30, 34,
35. 252, 258, 262.

Seed time, 188, 205.

Self-realising spirit, 213, 214.

Seminole Indians, 194.

Shakespeare, 16, 17.

Sheol, 54, 58.

Similarity, between higher and
lower forms of religion, 27 ; the
basis for the missionary's work,
28.

"Singing," 164, 165.

Slavery, 241, 243.

"Smelling out," 84.

Social purpose, and magic, 91.

Society, a means, 253; as an end,
261 ; perfection of, 254, 261 ;
and the family, 98.

Society Islands, 181.

Solidarity, 212, 213, 251 ; religious,
220.

Solomon Islands, 180.

Soul, the, 37; separable from the
body, 37; its continued exist-
ence, 38.

Spells, and prayers, 150, 151, 152,
153. 155. 157, 160, 164.

Spencer and Gillen, 45, 46, 164,
197.

Spinning, 78, 79,

Spirits, 162, 170; not essential to
magic, 89, 90, 91 ; and fetiches,
118,119; of fetichism and gods
of polytheism, 128; guardian,
III; "momentary," and gods,
135; and prayer, 166; and
morality, 215, 217, 219; not
worshipped, 216.

Spring customs, 192, 198, 203.

Squirrel, 76, 78.

State, the, and justice, 224.

St. John, Mr., 228.

Stones, 92, 93, 94.

Struggle for existence, 264.

Suhman, 122, 123, 126, 136.

Sun, 153, 157.

Superstition, 150.

Sympathetic magic, 80, 85, 93,
153, 157, 162.

Taboo, 186 ff., 222, 229, 231-234,

250.
Talents, 253.
Tana, 181.
Tanner, John, 143.
Tari, 181, 183.
Taro, 92, 93, 94.
Temples, 178.
Test, of perfection in society,

255-
Thanks, do not need words, 181,

185.
Thank-offerings, 181.
Thomsen, Professor, 134.
Tibetan Buddhists, 150.
Tiger, 74, 89.
Tjumba, 181.
Tonga, 181.
Totems, 51, 165, 166, 197, 203;

eating of, 186.
Trade wind, loi.
Transmigration, 51, 61, 119, 120;

of character, 64.
Truth, 25; and value, 10.
Tupinambas, 56, 58.

INDEX

283

Tylor, Professor, 37, 47, 56, 112,
141-144, 147, 148, 150, 161, 166.

Unalits, 59, 60.

Uncle John, knows his own pipe,

49. SO-
Uniformity of nature, 14; matter

of faith, not of knowledge, 15.
Unselfishness, developes and does

not weaken individuality, 67.
Usener, Professor, 128, 131, 133.
Utilitarianism, 240, 242.

Value, 7; literary and artistic, '8,
9; religious, 8, 9, 10, 107, 108,
109; carries a reference to the
future, 12; relative to a pur-
pose or end, 13, 15; of litera-
ture and art, felt, not proved, 1 6,
17; of fetichism, 114, 115, 120;
of fetichism and religion for
society, 125; religious, and
fetichism, 127.

Virgil, 54.

West Africa, 152, 153.
Westermarck, E., 224, 225, 228,
^35-

Whistling, to produce a wind, 73,
74, 75-

Will, the, 13.

Will to injure, 81.

Will to live, the, 41 ; involves the
desire for immortality, 41 ; de-
nounced by Buddhism, 66.

Wind, 100, 1 01.

Wisdom, collective, of man, 237.

Witch, and witch-doctor, 84.

Witchcraft, 222, 227.

Wives, oj hunters and warriors, 78.

Wohkonda, 143.

Worship, 121, 122, 177, 180, 260;
and the etymology of "god,"
^133 ff., 137; of gods and of
fetiches, 123, 134, 135; of the
community, given to the pow-
ers that protect it, 126; may
break up, 170.

Xenophon, 171.
Xilonen, 190.

Yams, 93, 143, 180, 181.
Yebu, 147.

Zulus, 194.

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