Note 3.1 — The Evolution of Religion

The reasonable and sympathetic study of the various religions of mankind, which are perhaps the clearest mirror we possess of human feeling, aspiration, and thought in its highest and lowest forms, is only possible for the individual or for the age that feels no constraining call to suppress and obliterate all save one cherished creed. Such study began, as we should expect, in the earlier Hellenic period, the Hellenic religion throwing few or no obstacles in the way of undogmatic investigation; and the first anthropologist of religion is Herodotus. Then among Hellenistic scholars and those of pre-Christian Rome there were some who devoted themselves to the collection and exposition of the religious institutions of foreign races. But save a few short treatises, such as Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride, Sallustius’ De Diis et Mundo, Lucian’s De Dea Syria, nothing has survived beyond the titles and the fragments of their works; and by an irony of fortune we owe much of our knowledge of Hellenic and other religions of the Mediterranean area to the Christian controversialists, who reveal many of the essential features of the various pagan creeds in order to expose them to obloquy: they could not anticipate that we should gather as the fruit of their labours a better appreciation than we could otherwise have gained of the religions which they strove to destroy, and possibly of Christianity itself. If I were attempting, as I do not propose to attempt, to give a complete survey of the growth and development of the study which we are considering, I should probably be able to cull but little material for the narrative from Byzantine and mediæval sources. We may note that the spirit of these ages was, on the whole, alien to our present interest; and that it is not till after the Renaissance and the discovery of America that systematic work in this field begins again. To two Spaniards of Peruvian and Mexican descent,3.1 we owe our knowledge of the religions of the Incas and the Aztecs, that of the latter at least being of prime importance for the student of the higher religions of mankind. A Polish nobleman of the 16th century has left us a fairly detailed account of the religious practices and beliefs of the then semi-pagan Lithuania.3.2 But it may be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of the latter part of the 19th century to have raised the comparative study of religion to a high position in the whole domain of inductive speculation and inquiry. And its development has been mainly due to two independent lines of investigation. The first stimulus came with the discovery and the interpretation of the sacred books of the East, a momentous epoch in the history of European thought, and certain important theories concerning religious origins were put forth by Vedic scholars, and based on the evidence of Vedic literature: at the same time the decipherment of the Assyrian-Babylonian and Egyptian texts has contributed a wealth of new material, and has started new problems of religious inquiry, which specially concern the students of Hellenic as well as those of Semitic antiquity. But an equally or, as some may think, more powerful factor in the recent advance towards the organised knowledge of religions has been the growth, in the last half-century, of the study that has appropriated the name of anthropology, which is generally understood to mean the study of primitive or savage man, both in the past and the present, in respect of his physical and mental conditions. It is quite unnecessary for me to dilate on the high and manifold utility, both practical and speculative, of this new branch of human inquiry; the theme has become almost a popular commonplace in the leading journalism of the day. And anthropology, defined as above, has a definite value and object apart from its contributions to our knowledge of the religions of the world. It is nevertheless true that the religious interest in England is so strong and penetrating, that many of our leading anthropologists, in their investigations of savage society, have directed their attention mainly to religious or quasi-religious phenomena. Even if their labours were confined to the discovery and the exposition of savage ritual and belief, we should still be greatly indebted to them; for to many of us at least the savage man is interesting in his own right, whether it is true or not that the study of his mental phenomena helps to explain the mental phenomena of our higher selves or of the higher races in the past. But these writers claim, and I think with right, to have done more than this, and by comparison, induction, and hypothesis to have thrown some light on the evolution of religion from lower to higher forms, and therefore to have laid the foundation for the science with which we are concerned. Also attempts have been recently made by an accomplished scholar of the new doctrine, Dr Frazer, to trace what may be called the anthropological genesis of the central idea of Christianity itself.6.1 It is not then surprising that in England at least such claims and such ambitions should excite mistrust, even hostility, and the prestige of anthropology may have also suffered at times from the indiscretion of its friends. Still, its work is of wide vogue, its energy exuberant, and its influence in the future assured. In considering, therefore, the aims and methods of the comparative science of religion, it has appeared to me that its relations to anthropology are now one of the main points in the inquiry. And we may seem to have reached a stage where it is desirable to test our position, to take stock as it were, to examine our methods, and to consider whether they are capable of improvement. The task is difficult, and in facing it one must face the imputation of presumption, especially as in a short course of lectures one must be brief, and may therefore appear over-dogmatic.