The Psychological Origin and the Nature of ReligionLeuba, James H. (James Henry)
Religion
The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion
Leuba, James H. (James Henry)
Magic; Psychology, Religious
(4) Many persons have observed with surprise the apparition in young
children of the problem of creation. A child notices a curiously-shaped
stone, and asks who made it. He is told that it was formed in the stream
by the water. Then, suddenly, he throws out, in quick succession,
questions that are as much exclamations of astonishment as queries, 'Who
made the stream, who the mountain, who the earth?' _The necessity of a
Maker is, no doubt, borne in upon the savage at a very early time_, not
upon every member of a tribe, but upon some peculiarly gifted individual,
who imparts to his fellows the awe-striking idea of a mysterious,
all-powerful Creator. The form under which the Creator is imagined is, of
course, derived from the beings with which his senses have made the savage
familiar.
In what chronological order did the three kinds of unseen beings appear?
Which was first: ghosts, nature-beings, or creator? Our present knowledge
does not provide an answer to this query. But this one may venture to
affirm: they need not have appeared in the same order everywhere. It is
conceivable that among certain groups of men the idea of a creator first
attained clearness and influence, while elsewhere the idea of ghosts
implanted itself before the others.
A question of greater importance to the student of the origin of Religion
is that of the lineage of the first god or gods, _i.e._ of the first
unseen, personal agents with whom men entered into relations definite and
influential enough to deserve the name Religion. Are they descended from
ghosts, or are they nature-beings, or creators? I say, 'descended' from
ghosts, for ghosts have not, originally, all the qualities required of a
divinity. They are at first hardly greater than men, though somewhat
different. They must be magnified and differentiated from human beings if
they are to generate the religious attitude. A comparison of the
double-source of the ghost-belief with the source of the belief in
nature-beings suggests the following remarks. Phenomena belonging to
classes one and two necessarily lead to a belief in unseen _man-like_
beings. The familiar relation of ghosts with the tribe, and also the great
number of them, offer a definite resistance to the process of deification.
It is otherwise with the personified nature-powers, for they are not
necessarily, like ghosts, mere dead men in another life. In conceiving of
an agent animating nature, the imagination is not limited to the thought
of a particular human being, not even of a human being at all. The thunder
might be the voice of some monstrous animal. The surpassing variety, the
magnitude and magnificence of nature, stimulate the imagination into more
original activity than the apparitions of men and women in dreams or in
trances. For these reasons, if the choice was between ghosts and
nature-beings, it would be advisable to favour the hypothesis that the
first gods were derived from the spontaneous personification of striking
natural events.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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