The Making of Religion

conception of ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ from his reflections on the phenomena of sleep, dreams, death, shadow, and from the experiences of trance and hallucination. Worshipping first the departed so

eanwhile man retained his belief in the existence of his own soul, surviving after the death of the body, and so reached the concepti

points of view from which the evidence as to religion in its early stages has not been steadily contemplated. Therefore we intend to ask, first, what, if anything, can be ascertained as to the nature of the ‘visions’ and hallucinations which, according to Mr. Tylor in his celebrated work ‘Primitive Culture,’ lent their aid to the formation of the idea of ‘spirit.’ Se

ely materialistic system of the universe. We shall also bring evidence tending to prove that the idea of God, in its earliest known shape, need not logically be derived fro

lucinations, ‘clairvoyance,’ and the acquisition of knowledge apparently not attainable through the normal channels of sense. We may then compare these savage beliefs with attested records of similar experiences among living and educated civilised men. Even if we attain to no conclusion, or a negative conclusion, as to the actuality and supernormal character of the alleged experiences, still to compare data of savage and civilised psychology, or even of savage and civilised illusions and fables, is decidedly part, though a neglected part, of the function of anthropological science. The results, whether they do or do not strengthen our first position, must be curious and instructive, if only as a chapter in the history of human error. That chapter, too, is concerned w

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are founded on a principle one would not imagine. Experience has shown them that when a hairy deer-

s ‘Journey,’ publish

rect conclusion, long unknown to civilised science. They connected the Aurora Borealis with electricity, supposing that multitudes of deer in the sky rubbed the sparks out of each other! Meanwhile, even in the last

om one end of the heavens to the other, strangely illumining the darkness of our destiny. Such phenomena science has ignored, as it so long ignored the sparks from the stroked deer-skin, and the attractive power of rubbed amber. These trivial things were not known to be allied to the li

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facie, correspond coincidentally with unknown events at a distance, all that is called ‘second sight,’ or ‘clairvoyance,’ and other things even more obscure. Reasoning on these real or alleged phenomena, and on other quite normal and accepted facts of dream, shadow, sleep, trance, and death, savages have inferred the existence of spirit or soul, exactly as the Indians arrived at the notion of electricity (not so called by them, o

demonstrably erroneous. As the sparks of the deer-skin indicated electricity, so the strange lights in the night of human nature

bly entangled with fraud, bad logic, and the blindest credulity. Some of the phenomena alluded to have, how

atar necromancer, the Highland ghost-seer, and the Boston medium, share the possession of belief and knowledge of the highest trut

d seer, and the Boston medium (the least reputable of the menagerie) observed, and reasoned wildly from, and counterfeited, a

onger denied, of ‘alternating personalities.’ For the truth of this statement we may appeal to one of the greatest of Continental anthropologists, Adolf Bastian.2 The missionaries, like Livingstone, usually supposed that the savage seer’s declared ignorance — after his so-called fit of inspiration — of what occ

nd the essential points might have been put more shortly. They illustrate the fact that only certain persons can hypnotise others, and throw light on some peculiarities of rapport.3 In brief, savages anticipated us in the modern science of experimental psychology, as is frankly ack

nce, which is all-important. We proceed to defend it. The savage accounts are on the level of much anthropological evidence; they may, that is, be dismissed by adversaries as ‘travellers’ tales.’ But the best testimony for the truth of the reports as to actual belief in the facts is the undesigned coincidence of evidence from all ages and quarters.5 When the stories brought by travellers, ancient and modern, learned and unlearned, pious or sceptical, agr

lynesian case, ‘resembling the Hawaiian wai harru.’ When anyone has been robbed, the priest, after praying, has a hole dug in the floor of the house, and filled with water. Then he gazes into the water, ‘over which the god is supposed to place the spirit of the thief. . . . The image of the thief was, according to their account, reflected in the water, and being perceived by the priest, he named the individual, or the parties.’6 Here the statement about the ‘spirit’ is a mere savage philosophical explanation. But the fact that hallucinatory pictures can really be seen by a fair percentage of educated Eu

ollowing dilemma: To the anthropologist we say, ‘The evidence we adduce is your own evidence, that of books of travel in all lands and countries. If you may argue from it, so may we. Some of it is evidence to unusual facts, more of it is evidence to singular beliefs, which we think not necessarily without foundati

, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said by him to have been observed “in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival at G?ttingen. . . . Many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the

early men by their experiences in dreams. They seemed, in sleep, to visit remote places; ther

to acquire, in dreams, knowledge of places which they had never visited, and of facts as to which, in their waking state, they

discovered. I am not at liberty to publish the details, for good reasons, but the essence of the matter was this: A. and B. (the dreamer) had common interests. A. had taken certain steps about which B. had only a surmise, and a vague one, that steps had probably been taken. A. then died, and B. in an extremely vivid dream (a thing unfamilia

d in virtue of knowledge of the veracity of B. and C.), but I invite his attention to the psychological explanation. My friend suggested that A. had told B. all about the affair, that B. had not l

Then B.‘s subconscious memory of what he did not consciously know might break upon him in his dream. Instances of similar mental phenomena are not uncommon. But the general result of the combined details was one which could not possibly be known to A. before his death; nor to B. could it be known at all. Yet B.‘s dream represented this general result wit

s the evidence for the truth of Coleridge’s legend?’ Of course, there is none, or none known to all the psychologists who quote it from Coleridge. Neither, if true, was the legend to the p

ychologists from this dilemma. Their marvellous tales are possible, though unvouched for, because they have always heard them and repeated them in lectures, and read and repeated them in books. Our marvellous tales are impossible, because the psychologists know that they are impossible, which m

can anecdotes by Dr. Flint and Mr. Rush; and such is Sir William Hamilton’s equipment of odd facts for discussing the unconscious or subconscious. The least credible and worst attested of these narratives still appears in popular works on psychology. Moreover, all psycholo

th that which satisfies the anthropologist. Where it consists of modern statements of personal experience, our evidence is often infinitely better than much which is accepted by the nonexperimental psychologist. As for the agnostic writer on the Non–Religion of the Future, M. Guyau actually illustrates the Resurrection of our Lord

evidence as to ‘possible’ facts. They thus constitute themselves judges of what is possible, and practically regard themselves as omniscient. Science

not inconceivably, be of considerable importance. But, stating the case at the lowest, if we are only concerned wi

in asking any attention for such matters, we now offer an historical sketch of the r