We next turned from the subject of supernormal experiences to the admitted
facts about early religion. Granting the belief in souls and ghosts and
spirits, however attained, how was the idea of a Supreme Being to be
evolved out of that belief? We showed that, taking the creed as found in
the lowest races, the processes put forward by anthropologists could
not account for its evolution. The facts would not fit into, but
contradicted, the anthropological theory. The necessary social conditions
postulated were not found in places where the belief is found. Nay, the
necessary social conditions for the evolution even of ancestor-worship
were confessedly not found where the supposed ultimate result of
ancestor-worship, the belief in a Supreme Being, flourished abundantly.
Again, the belief in a Supreme Being, _ex hypothesi_ the latest in
evolution, therefore the most potent, was often shelved and half
forgotten, or neglected, or ridiculed, where the belief in Animism (_ex
hypothesi_ the earlier) was in full vigour. We demonstrated by facts that
Anthropology had simplified her task by ignoring that essential feature,
_the prevalent alliance of ethics with religion_, in the creed of the
lowest and least developed races. Here, happily, we have not only the
evidence of an earnest animist, Mr. Im Thurn, on our side, but that of a
distinguished Semitic scholar, the late Mr. Robertson Smith. 'We see that
even in its rudest forms Religion was a moral force, the powers that man
reveres were on the side of social order and moral law; and the fear of
the gods was a motive to enforce the laws of society, which were also the
laws of morality.'[9] Wellhausen has already been cited to the same
effect.
However, the facts proving that truth, and unselfishness, surely a large
element of Christian ethics, are divinely sanctioned in savage religion
are more potent than the most learned opinion on that side.
Our next step was to examine in detail several religions of the most
remote and backward races, of races least contaminated with Christian or
Islamite teaching. Our evidence, when possible, was derived from ancient
and secret tribal mysteries, and sacred native hymns. We found a
relatively Supreme Being, a Maker, sanctioning morality, and unpropitiated
by sacrifice, among peoples who go in dread of ghosts and wizards, but do
not always worship ancestors. We showed that the anthropological theory of
the evolution of God out of ghosts in no way explains the facts in the
savage conception of a Supreme Being. We then argued that the notion of
'spirit,' derived from ghost-belief, was not logically needed for the
conception of a Supreme Being in its earliest form, was detrimental to
the conception, and, by much evidence, was denied to be part of the
conception. The Supreme Being, thus regarded, may be (though he cannot
historically be shown to be) prior to the first notion of ghost and
separable souls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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