THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
found. Similarly, paleontology has no little to say as to the relative height of man in the scale of being in the age to which the trepanned is referred. Many other facts, all significant in settling the question of the age of man on the earth — an important factor for the evolution of religion — might be adduced to show the dependence of Comparative Religion on the one side, and the helpfulness of geology and paleontology on the other in the quest for the origin and authority of religious ideas.
VI. The Results: What are the accomplishments of a branch of study thus defined, thus born and developed, with such an aim and scope, using such materials, antl with such auxiliaries? It has discovered and oriented the whole realm of primitive religion, has discovered the conditions under which were originated what may be called the organized religions and has established their part and value in the uplift of the race, and has discovered a genetic relationship between the two varieties; it shows that all religion is one in various stages of development, that religion is a development, and that man is one in acknowledging by action in all times and places of which there is record an impulse to worship a being or beings whom he deems greater than himself.
1. In Primitive Religion: The distinction between " primitive " and " organized " religions is difficult to make. Mr. Frazer {Golden Bough, i. 34'^, ed. of 1890) gives as the marks of primitive religion the following: (1) no special class is set apart to perform rites; (2) no special place is designated for this purpose — there are no temples; (3) spirits, not gods, are recognized; (4) the rites are magical, rather than propitiatory. But no one of these marks can be held everywhere to delimit the two spheres. The shaman shades into the priest. A temple is not necessarily a structure, and in primitive religion localities are the residence of spirits where they are worshiped. Moreover, gods have been found among some of the tribes lowest in the scale of being, and magic versus prayer is an insecure test. It is proved in some cases that primitive religion passed by degrees from this stage to that of organized religion, notably so in the cases of Greece and India. While then Mr. IVazer's tests individually break down, it may yet be held that the total effect of his distinctions make a practical line of demarcation.
a. Primitive Religion in the Psychological Sphere: Animism is usually but loosely defined as " the doctrine of souls and spirits." A more lucid statement is that animism means that stage in human development in which man be- I. Animism lieves in the parity of all existences Defined, so far as their possession of sentient life is concerned. Men in that stage may hold that a stone, a tree, a mountain, a stream, a wild animal, a heavenly body, a wind, indeed any object within the realm of real or fancied experience, possesses just such a " soul " as he conceives himself to have, and that it is animated by desires and moved by emotions parallel to those he perceives in himself.
The question how man came to possess the idea
of soul has been answered in two ways, both of which reproduce reasons given under primitive conditions for asserting the existence of a non-corporeal yet intracorporeal entity. The phenomena leading to such a conception are (1) those of dream life, (2) the difference between the waking and the sleeping state, or between life and death. If in a company of primitive hunters one 2. Idea of sleeps in his companions' presence and Soul, how in that sleep has a dream which upon Obtained, waking he relates, stating that he has been upon the chase, he and his companions make and accept the explanation that some part of him not his body has been away, and no reasoning could convince him that the dream experience was unreal. In this way in part the conception that man is a duality manifested itself. But the fact that nothing had been seen to go and return invested the fugitive part with a character expressed in many languages by the equivalent of " spirit " (Lat. spiritus, " breath "), and this spirit was regarded as an intangible but very real entity. The second line of experience corroborated and strengthened this impression. The superficial difference between a living and a dead body is the absence from the latter of the breathing function. The last act observable in the dying is the expulsion of the final breath. It is no wonder then that man in his primitive philosophy began the habit of speaking of his second part as the " spirit " or breath. And that the phenomenon of sleep is also explained by absence of the spirit from the body, is proved by the fact that existent tribes do not permit a sleeper to be waked suddenly lest his spirit have not time to return and he die. To these two lines of what had the force of convincing evidence to early man a third must be added, viz. : the appearance in dreams of those who had died. Such visions were accepted as realities in advanced stages of civilization (cf. Augustine, De civitate dei, xviii. 18), confirmed the belief already accepted of a dual existence of man, and had other momentous results. They opened up the entire region of a future existence, as well as other beliefs which still survive as " superstitions."
A fact which had great influence on man's early conceptions was that many of the events which he witnessed were traceable to visible causes. In the infancy of the race death was probably in a large proportion of cases due to external causes. Death was not always " the inevitable." * And since man himself caused death and knew himself the agent of that change, when death resulted from visible causes he attributed to the material agent conscious and determined action. Even when death came from what are now termed natural causes, he would seek and find causes of the same sort. So that both disease and death were regarded as consciously brought about, if not by visible means,
* For CUSPS where death is even yet regarded as an abnormal event, consult: E. Crawlev, Mystic Rose, pp. 26- 27, 60, 67, 68, 69, S,^, 95, New York, 1902; L, Decle, Three Years in Alrica, pp. 75, 512, London, 189S; C. B. Kloss. In the Andamans, p. 123, London, 1903; H. Spencer and F. J. (iillcn. Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 476, London, 1899; J. Macdonald, in Folklore, lii. 344.