Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, January 1885Various
General
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, January 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Space permitting I might add evidence furnished by Sir Alfred Lyall,
who, in his valuable papers published in the _Fortnightly Review_
years ago on religion in India, has given the results of observations
made there. Writing to me from the North-West provinces under date
August 1, in reference to the controversy between Mr. Harrison and
myself, he incloses copies of a letter and accompanying memorandum
from the magistrate of Gorakhpur, in verification of the doctrine
that ghost-worship is the “chief source and origin” of religion. Not,
indeed, that I should hope by additional evidences to convince Mr.
Harrison. When I point to the high authority of Dr. Tylor as on the
side of the ghost-theory, Mr. Harrison says—“If Dr. Tylor has finally
adopted it, I am sorry.” And now I suppose that when I cite these
further high authorities on the same side, he will simply say
again “I am sorry,” and continue to believe as before.
In respect of the fetichism distinguishable as nature-worship,
Mr. Harrison relies much on the Chinese. He says:—
The case of China is decisive. There we have a religion
of vast antiquity and extent, perfectly clear and well
ascertained. It rests entirely on worship of Heaven,
and Earth, and objects of Nature, regarded as organized
beings, and not as the abode of human spirits.
Had I sought for a case of “a religion of vast antiquity and extent,
perfectly clear and well ascertained,” which illustrates origin from
the ghost-theory, I should have chosen that of China; where the
State-religion continues down to the present day to be an elaborate
ancestor-worship, where each man’s chief thought in life is to secure
the due making of sacrifices to his ghost after death, and where the
failure of a first wife to bear a son who shall make these sacrifices,
is held a legitimate reason for taking a second. But Mr. Harrison
would, I suppose, say that I had selected facts to fit my hypothesis.
I therefore give him, instead, the testimony of a bystander. Count
D’Alviella has published a _brochure_ concerning these questions on
which Mr. Harrison and I disagree.[73] In it he says on page 15:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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