THE NEW SCPIAFF-HERZOG
tons les cuJtcft, Paris, 1795) anticipated Herbert Spencer and ^Ir. Tylor in attempting to derive all religion from some one root, in his case the worship of the great powers of nature. (1. W. von Hegel {Philosophie dcr Religion, Berlin, 1S82) anticipated still another line of modern research, investigation of savage or primitive belief and practise.
But undue emphasis has often been laid upon the work of these and other forerunners, such as the Deists in England. They were prophets rather than achievers, their methods speculative rather than historical. The real start was made by Max Miiller. Despite the criticism by Mr. Jordan iComparative Religion, pp. 150 sqq., 521 sqq., New York, 1905), no one did so much as Professor Miiller to establish the new science. No series of works, hardly any collection of other vol- 4. Max umes which could be made, has so Miiller and stimulated the study as the Sacred Recent De- Books of the East. Since Max MuUer's velopments. first approach to the study in the Rig Veda Sanhita (6 vols., London, 1849- 1874) the development has been rapid. To mention only the great names, C. P. Tiele and C. de la Saussaye in Holland, Ri'viUe, father and son, in France, Herbert Spencer, E. B. Tylor, J. G. Frazer, S. Hartland, and Andrew Lang in England, D. G. Brinton and James Freeman Clarke in America, have uncovered a wealth of material long buried and have shown how it is to be intelligently employed. In this development two schools have grown up. The first, of which the Oxford professor was the leader, was the linguistic school, which sought by in^'estigating purely linguistic material, the roots and changes of words and the structure of language, to determine the development of religious ideas. The result was often a forced method of explanation which was obviously inadequate. A school developed in the second half of the nineteenth century to which the name of the anthropological school has been given, the fundamental method of which is historical, which examines data gathered from all regions and times, and upon the basis of comparative psychology and anthropology explains the resemblances and differences in religious beliefs and practises and their origins. In the hands of this second class, which of course does not discard linguistic data, the science has rapidly taken form, materials fall easily into their appropriate setting, and the law of evolution is revealed as operating in the field of religion with a distinctness which is almost beauty.
III. Aim and Scope: The aim of the study includes the collection, collation, and explanation of religious phenomena in order to discover the nature, genesis, development, and laws of religion. From what has already been said of the preconceptions with which early investigations were conducted, it is evident that so comprehensive a purpose was not originally in view. Early studies wore polemic as against ethnic faith and pract ise, apologetic as concerned Christian faith and practise. But the progress of the study has already compelled a modification of earlier estimates of other religions and
an increasing gentleness in discussing them. The statement can no longer be made without challenge even from Christians that the world outside Christendom is an " immense welter of errors " (Calvin). In living non-Christian religions (Mohammedanism Buddhism, Confucianism, Parseeism), as in those that have fallen (the religions of Egypt and Babylonia), are recognized mighty truths, and the claim to the exclusive possession of these by Christian dogmatists is no longer made, or if made is disallowed. There results (1) an increasing appreciation of the discovery that religion is one, in different stages of growth, and (2) a growing willingness to grant to all religious faiths impartial examination and candid recognition of whatever excellencies they may possess. The endeavor is made to discover whether there be a common basis for all forms of religion, and if so, what it is, and to set forth the nature, origin, growth, and laws of religion in general.
The scope of the science is involved in the foregoing. No place, time, or people from which evidence or testimony can be gathered is exempted from its examination. Evidence from neolithic graves in the shape of vessels or implements (which bespeak belief in the continued existence of the defunct), or from modern savage life, involving belief in obligations to powers superhuman, is no less pertinent than are the injunctions of Zoroaster, Confucius, the Buddha, or the Christ. Neither the religion of Jesus nor the mysteries of the Australian Bushman may be excluded from the inquiry. Moreover, facts and practises once thought purely social or merely utilitarian are now seen to be informed with the religious spirit. The area of religion has been immensely widened during the progress of the investigation. It has been no uncommon thing for a book to assert of some tribe that it had no religion, though the volume contained accounts of whole series of acts which were only and all religious. Such mistakes arose in the author's too narrow conception of what religion is. A further discovery is that the very comprehensiveness of the influence of the supernatural in the life of the savage makes it necessary to ask of his every act whether or not it be religious or at least have religion as an element. Hence the examination covers not only the " great " religions, but also primitive faith and all the gradations which lie between.
IV. The Methods Employed: Comparative Religion is an inductive science. Its operation is threefold; (1) collection and verification of facts (the historical method); (2) collocation of these verified data to ascertain their relations and interrelations (the comparative method); (3) explanation of the results readied by the other two methods upon a psychological basis, referring local features to ascertained mental habits of the tribes, groups, or peoples where those features are manifested, and universal features to general characteristics of the human mind (the psychological method). A fair illustration of the combined operation of these methods, uniting the extreme past with the present and with world-wide belief, is presented in the following case, which is but one