Note 115.1 — The Evolution of Religion

Of this development of the idea of spiritual from that of ritualistic purity, the language of certain of the higher races affords the same indication as we find in the Basuto phrase: the Latin “purus” and the Greek καθαρός and φοῖβος themselves have an original material or physical significance; the blood that is shed and the unburied corpse emit a “miasma,” a defiling atmosphere charged with dangerous spirits, and the same word μίασμα comes to denote a spiritual corruption of the soul: touching a corpse is called “sin” in the Zend-Avesta;115.1 and it is significant that the same word which is used to express the material idea of impurity in the Old Testament in the earlier books of the Law is employed in the later and more advanced ethical vocabulary of the Bible for a real sin against God as understood in the modern sense.