The Philosophy of Religion among the Lower Races of Mankind

Author(s): Edward B. Tylor

Source: The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870) , 1870, Vol. 2, No.
4 (1870), pp. 369-381
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3014366

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 THE JOURNAL

OF THE

ETHINOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

ORDINARY MEETING, April 26th, 1870.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY, LL.D., F.R.S., President, in the Chair.

The following paper was read by the author:

XXX. On the BRAIN in the STUDY of ETHNOLOGY.

By Dr. C. DONOVAN.
(Abstract.)
AFTER stating that one of the main objects of ethnological in-
quiry is to ascertain the mental condition of the various races of
meii, the author sought to show that the comparatively low state
of intellectual and moral development exhibited by most un-
civilized races might be attributed to a corresponding inferiority
in "the quality, quantity, and form of the brain." He believed
that much might be inferred concerning the characters of the
brain from the condition of the skull-especially from its shape,
size, and weight, and from the appearance of its sutures. The
auLthor urged upon travellers who wish to advance ethnological
science, the importance of analyzing the mental constitution of
each race, and of determining the relation which it bears to that
of the normal European.

The following paper was then read by the author:-

XXXI. The PHILOSOPHY of RELIGION among the LowER RACES
of MANKIND. By EDWARD B. TYLOR, Esq.*
THE belief in spiritual beings, and the spiritualistic philosophy of
Nature connected with this belief, may be called "Spiritualism,)"
* As the subject of this paper will be treated with detailed evidence by
the author in a forthcoming work on ' Primitive Culture,' an abstract only is
here reproduced.
VOL. II. 2 B

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370 E. B. TYLOR-The Philosophy of Religion

and is often so called. But the word has this obvious defect to
us-that it has become the designation of a peculiar modern sect,
who, indeed, hold extreme spiritualistic doctrines, but who cannot
be taken as typical of the theory of spiritualism among mankiind
at large. It may therefore be found convenient to use for the
belief in spiritual beings the not unknown term of Animism.
This animism is, in fact, the groundwork of the philosophy of
religion at large, from the religion of savagery to that of civilized
life. It -may be taken as the minimum definition of religion, in an-
swering the often repeated question, "Have such and such a tribe
a religion ? " If they are animists, we may say "Yes." And
though this definition of minimum religion may seem bare and
meagre, it will be found practically to carry more than at first
appears. For, first, he who believes in spiritual beings will
generally be found to believe them active as to his own life
here and hereafter; and secolndly, he who believes in such active
spirits will generally put himself into intercourse with them,
seeking to propitiate them, and thus will arise some form of
prayer and worship.
Here arises a profoundly interesting question, " Are there, or
have there been human tribes so low in culture as to have no
religious conceptions whatever?" This is an old question, and
has been affirmed and denied for thousands of years with a con-
fidence that may seem surprising to us, who see on what imper-
fect evidence both affirmationi and denial were based.
Ethlnographers, if looking to a theory of development to ex-
plain civilization, regarding its successive stages as rising from
low grades upwards, would receive with great interest accounts
of tribes devoid of all religion. Here, they will naturally say,
are tribes of men who have no religion because their forefathers
never had any. They represent a prereligious stage of the
human race, above which, in the course of ages, religious stages
have risen; but, though in general advocating a development-
theory of culture, I am unable to start a theory of animism
from this prereligious condition. The niche is ready, but there
is a difficulty about the statue to place in it. I fail to find the
existence of tribes in this state proved by sufficient evidence.
Assertions of tribes said to have no religion, but who prove, on
closer examination, to bave a good deal, and of others whose reli-
gious condition is obscure, may be had in abundance, but will not
serve our purpose. What is wanted is a declaration by observers
intimately acquainted with the language of the tribe, and also
intimate enough to gain confidence on a subject on which savages
are less apt to be confidential than any other. The savage's poor
shy gods hide in holes and corners before the white man's
mightier Deity. Now it is not denied in the abstract that

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 among the Lower Races of Mankind. 371

prereligious tribes may have existed or may still exist; but I am

bound to say that, if they exist, they must be found among
extinct ancient tribes or imperfectly described modern ones.
Where low tribes have been fully examined, they have been
found to be animists; and their animism, or spiritualistic philo-
sophy, is the subject of the present remarks. I may hint at the
connexion of savage animism with its development among higher
races; but my especial object is to describe it particularly so far
as it constitutes a philosophic system of nature. This I shall do
in a very rough and simple way, seeking only to delineate as
clearly as I am able its main outlines.
Animism divides roughly into two great divisions: (1) souls;
(2) other spirits.
It is proper to place souls first; for the conception by the
lower races of the human soul seems to be that on which they
formed and modelled their general idea of spirits.
The savage mind appears to have been especially struck by
two groups of phenomena, which they endeavoured to account
for on a scientific theory.
(A.) That which constitutes the difference between a living
and a dead body:-the fading of light from the glazed eyes, the
cessation of breath, the stoppage of pulsation, the loss of con-
sciousness and voluntary movement-in a word, of the pheno-
mena classed together under the heading " Life." These they
especially associated with the breath, how naturally we may
judge from the story of the deaf, dumb, and blind Laura Bridg-
man's dream, which she described by the gesture of taking
something from her lips, explaining in words, "'I dreamed God
took up my breath to heaven." The languages of the world will
express this deep-lying connexion in the many cases where the
word breath has come to denote life or soul; from the Austra-
lian waug and the Malay fiawa, to the Semitic nephesh and the
Indo-European pneuma, aninma, ghost, &c.
(B.) The phantom copy of man seen in dreams and visions,
apparently thin enough to flit through space and permeate solid
nature, and to evade the dreamer's waking grasp. This is espe-
cially and naturally associated with the shadow, an association
also well expressed in languages, from the Ojibwa otahchuk to
the Indo-European skia, umbra, shade.
Now the savage to a remarkable extent connects these two
conceptions into what may be called an apparitional soul, a
ghost-soul. He considers that what causes death and what causes
visions and dreams are one and the same. There are some who
try to separate them, as the Greenlanders and Fijians; but the
generally received connexion of the life with the phantom into
a soul-ghost is the very key to savage psychology.
2 B 2

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372 E. B. TYLOR-The Philosophy of Religion

Thus the Nicaraguans held that when a man dies, there comes
out of his mouth something resembling a person, which is the
life, and which departs to where the man is; but the body re-
mains here. Parallel to this is the African conception of the
man's shadow seized by a monster, whereupon the man after-
wards dies-a story which appears to give the fundamental idea
of the well-known European folk-lore tales of shadowless men.
The soul-ghost appears in dreams and visions. Live men's
souls may do this, as when a Fijian's soul goes out in sleep, and
troubles other people. But especially the souls of the dead are
supposed to do this. Thus Wilson says of the negroes that their
dreams are visits from souls of deceased friends, and that the
habit of talking dreams over makes them dream the more, till
they have almost as much intercourse with the dead in sleep as
with the living in waking, and can hardly distinguish dream
from fact. A familiar classic instance is when the soul of Pa-
troklos stands by Achilles, like in stature and the beauteous eyes,
and the voice and garments; Achilles tries to grasp it with
loving hands, but cannot catch it, and like a smoke the soul is
borne away. The shade-soul appears as a ghost in the philoso-
phy alike of the North-American Indian, the African negro,
and the European peasant.
For obvious reasons, the idea appears in savage psychology
that the soul is sometimes visible and sometimes invisible. This
explains the fact of only one seeing it at once, though we
account for this in a different way by the theory of the subjec-
tivity of visions. This is unknown to the savage, who (these
Africans may serve as a type) is a man who scarcely distin-
guishes his subjectivity from objectivity, hardly knows his inside
from his outside.
The animistic theory, as it explains death, so among many
races explains sleep, and with this dreaming works in, as when
the Greenlander lies insensible while his soul goes out hunting
and visiting. The Karens cleverly account for the fact of our
seeing known places in dreams, by saying that the leip-pya can
only find the way where it has been before in life. It explainis
coma, where the body lies senseless while the mind wakes with
new experiences, as when Australian or Khond sorcerers go out
of their bodies for spirit-knowledge, or where in the Vatns-doela
Saga, the Finns sent to visit Iceland lie rigid while their souls
go out on the errand and return with information. Of classic
tales appropriate to these things, is the story of Hermotimos,
whose body his wife burnt while his soul was gone out in search
of spiritual knowledge. It explains sick-ness, as when the
Karens call back the kelah of a sick man, and the sick Fijian
may be heard bawling for his own soul to come back.

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 among the Lower Races of Mankind. 373

Thus we see what a whole theory of savage biology is here,

which explains life and death, sleep and waking, swoons and
illness, dreams and visions.
It is partly retained in modern psychology; but we should
find among modern peasants that a much more nearly savage
state is retained.
When the body dies, the soul departs to its place. Not con-
tent with this, the lower races assist nature, and, when a warrior
or chief dies, despatch wives and slaves, whose souls are to con-
tinue their earthly relations. Thus the Fijian and African are
buried with wives, slaves, &c., the custom extending upward
into the Hindu sati, &c.
That animals, "our younger brothers," as the North-Ame-
rican Indian calls them, have souls like men is an obvious in-
ference to the lower races, and has continued to some extent
into modern speculative philosophy. Therefore animals also
are sacrificed for the dead; the horse for the Red Indian, the
dog for the Aztec and Greenlander, the camel for the Beduin.
Lastly, not only men and animals have souls, but in savage
philosophy things also, which at any rate are seen in dream and
vision. This doctrine is distinctly believed among the Algon-
quinas, Fijians, and Karens. All these send objects for the. use
of the dead on his journey; and though among most savage and
higher races no such theory is stated, yet we find it considered
that the objects are for use, and will pass into the possession of
the deceased. Thus in Madagascar, Radama was seen riding
the horse and dressed in the uniform buried with him; the
Caribs destroy slaves, dogs, and weapons; the Guinea negroes
offer wives, slaves, property, gold fetishes, &c. for use in the
other world. In Modern Asia, the Kirghis kill horses, gold is
offered and implements of craft-much as the old Scythian in
funerals sacrificed wife and servants, gold vessels, &c.
The importance of this point consists in its being a test whether
savage philosophy dwindles into survival, or whether, on the
other theory, we are to suppose that nonsense is degraded into
sense.
As regards the details of the doctrine of a future life among
the lower races, no immortality is recognized; the soul is ethereal
and surviving, not immaterial and immortal. It carries on a
mere continued existence, as shown by dreams and visions.
The descriptions of future existence current among the lower
races are not limited to a single theory, but include every idea
likely to occur to them. The conception may be roughly divided
as follows:
1st. The doctrine of the ghost hovering or wandering on
earth, or coming back occasionally to visit its former home, is

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374 E. B. TYLOR-On the Philosophy of Religion

displayed among mankind from savagery upwards, especially

causing the prevalent fear of graves and the practice of offering
food for the dead usual amongst most savage races, lasting on
among such nations as the ancient Romans and modern Chinese,
and even now surviving in form in the Eastern Church.
2nd. The doctrine of Metempsychosis. The transmigration
of souls of the dead into other human beings is well marked
among the Greenlanders, where widows will make it a plea for
the adoption of an orphan child by some rich man, declaring it
to have received the soul of some one of his family-or among
tribes of Nutka Sound, who account for the existence of a dis-
tant tribe speaking the same language by supposing them ani-
mated by the souls of their own dead. In Africa the dead are
buried near the living, that their souls may enter new-born
children. The indigenes of Africa, America, and Asia account
in this way for likeness to deceased relatives, and look for
personal likeness and marks of ancestors on new-born infants.
The belief in transmigration into animals is well marked among
the lower races, as in Greenland, where a man will avoid a
particular animal as food on the score of a deceased kinsman
having passed into such-among the Icannas of Brazil, who ima-
gine that brave warriors become beautiful birds, and cowards
reptiles-or the Zulus, who believe that certain harmless com-
mon house-snakes are animated by the souls of deceased kindred.
The general transmigration-theory takes especially its moral
bearing in India, where Brahmins and Buddhists, " bound in
chains of deeds," and " eating fruit of past actions," migrate
into " gods, ascetics, brahmins, nymphs, kings, counsellors,
birds, dancers, cheats, elephants, horses, sudras, barbarians,
wild beasts, snakes, worms, insects, and inert things."
The classical instances, especially Pythagorean and Platonic,
are well known; and the doctrine survived into modern Europe,
though now fallen into contempt.
3rd. The doctrine of the residence of departed souls in another
world. The conceptions of this spirit-world among the lower
and higher races are various, and we have not a key for their
full understanding; but it may be observed that the next world
has been located in every place which was likely to occur to the
minds of savage tribes. One thought is very prevalent in these
conceptions-that of taking the sun-myth as a type of the destiny
of man, and placing the land of the dead in the region of the
sunset. Examples of the localization of the land of the dead
may be given. (1) The happy Western Islands, as to which
the mythology of the modern Australians and Fijians agrees
with that of the ancient Greeks: we ourselves dwell in these
islands of the blessed; for such Britain seemed to the continental

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 among the Lower Races of Mankind. 375

nations of Europe. (2) The under-world of the Kamchadal,

whither the sun descends at night, and where souls of men
and animals descend; the subterranean caverns, where the
Patagonian looks forward to a new life of perpetual drunken-
ness; and so on, to the Sheol of the Jews and the Hades of the
Greeks. (3) The abode of Heaven, whither the Winnebagos
travel by the MilkyWay; the Path of the Dead, or where Tamoi,
the Ancient of Heaven, awaits the Guarayos of Brazil; and
so onward to the familiar conceptions of a Paradise in the
skies.
With regard to the admission of the dead to these regions of
new life, two theories especially prevail in the world-one which
may be called the continuance-theory, the other the retribution-
theory. The first, which regards the new life as but a renewal
of the old, perhaps dull and shadowy, perhaps bright and happy,
is habitual among the lower races, and extends on to the level
of Greeks and Israelites. The influence on morals of the belief
in a future existence mainly depends on the retribution-theory,
which expects in the -next world reward and punishment for
works done in this.
With regard to the grounds on which the lower races accept
the doctrine of the future life, it has to be borne in mind that
any views which have become current are supported by the evi-
dence of dreams and visions. The North-American Indian, who
in a trance visits the happy plains of the dead and sees the souls
carrying the phantoms of guns and kettles -sacrificed to their
manes, and the Zulu, who has followed a porcupine into a hole in
the ground and gone down to the under-world, where Zulu souls
have their huts and cattle as on earth, are among the scores of
types which among the lower races show the habit of visions of
a future life-which extend, with properly varied details, to the
Greek and Hindu visits to the judgment-halls of Minos and
Yama, and the visits to the abode of the dead from the entrance
to St. Patrick's purgatory.
In completing the classification of orders of the spiritual
world as recognized by the lower culture, an important group
has to be noticed as intermediate between mere souls in their
ordinary function and superhuman demons or deities. This
class is that of manes, souls in origin, but demons or deities in
quality. They thus form an instructive transitional series,
favouring the opinion that spirits in general are modelled on
human souls.
Manes-worship is strong among savage races. The Polynesian
and South African propitiate them as the great causes of good
and evil to man. West-African negroes and indigenes of Bri-
tish India alike keep up their ancient cultus, which reaches its

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376 E. B. TYLOR-On the Philosophy of Religion

height in the ancestor-worship which is the essential religion

of China, and survives in fragmentary relics among cultured
nations.
Next, as to the functions which spirits are considered to per-
form, and the phenomena which make a belief in them a neces-
sary part of barbaric philosophy.
As soul enters into body and agitates and works it, so spirit,
which may be soul, enters and causes a wonderful group of
phenomena when man, with changed face and voice under
violent excitement, bursts out into floods of eloquence unknown
in his ordinary state, into expressions of wisdom and mystery
beyond his daily powers. Patagonian epileptics selected as
conjurors druim themselves into fits; so Veddahs and Bodo
work themselves into fits to give information for the cure of
patients. The Fijian gazes at a whale's tooth, twitches and is
convulsed; his veins swell, his eyes roll, sweat pours down his
limbs, his face is pale with livid lips, his breathing stertorous:
now he is possessed, and no longer a voluntary agent; he gives
answers, flings himself down, and says, "I depart," then has
his dinner and comforts himself with a pipe. Such a Polynesian
could have looked on at Delphi, and watched and listened to the
Pythoness with no surprise at proceedings so congruous with his
ordinary notions.
As a human soul goes into its body, so other vital phenomena
are accounted for by the entrance of spirits; and thus we have
the great theory of disease,possession, Even the Tasmanians and
Polynesians can feel demons knotting and twisting in their in-
side; and the Mintira have a hantu for each disease. Especially
certain peculiar diseases are so explained -,epilepsy, delirium,
hysteria, mania, &c. The East Africans simply explain madness
and idiocy by saying, " He has fiends." In South Africa deli-
rium or fits are supposed to be caused by possession by a ghost;
for here still the analogy is kept up, and the disease..spirit is not
only like a human soul, but may be one, So in British India
&c. the phenomena of demoniacal possession, raving, convulsions,
breaking cords, speaking strange things in the namue of the
demon they suppose inside themr, may still be seen as of old,
and the exorcist's profession thrives. We find comparatively
little of it except in heathen countries; for the influence of
Christianity has for centuries been turned to superseding it by
civilized medicine.
The disease-spirit has to be got out or away from the patient
by the savage exorciser; and sometimes he only drives it away as
people hunt away a haunting ghost, But here, again, some-
times the typical analogy of the human soul comes into play.
To get rid of this spirit they seem to say, let us get it a new

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 among the Lower Races of Mllankind. 377

body to enter or pervade. Burton describes the Central African

habit of transferring diseases into bits of stick or rag, &c., which
form what is called the keti or stool on which the noxious influ-
ence sits; and it is got rid of by hanging it to a sacred tree-a
practice which, apparently in part for the same reason, prevails
in Europe, and is not forgotten in Ireland. Modern folk-lore
keeps up the idea of transferring disease into objects such as
flowers, coins, &c., which are given to others or left for them to
find.
As the soul may be in or out of the human body, so other
spirits are held to exist free or to become embodied. Thus the
South-American Indians' rattles, possessed by spirits, can receive
offerings and utter oracles. Mr. Darwin saw a dressed-up
wooden spoon become lunatically possessed, and dance in the
hands of the women holding it.
Objects thus possessed or inhabited by a spirit maybe conve-
niently defined as fetishes; and the word fetishism, brought
into use by De Brosses and adopted by Comte, may be better
limited to this more special meaning than allowed to cover the
whole range of animistic belief and worship.
To fetishism idolatry belongs in great measure in principle.
Stocks and stones set up by savage races, and identified with
ancestors or deities, form the lowest variqty of idols. Polyne-
sian rude images, held to be receptacles inhabited at times by
the spiritual beings which go in and out of them, display the
principle of the fetish and idol most perfectly. Onward in
culture, the idol is either thus a receptacle for the deity, a habita-
tion for him as the human body is for the soul, or it passes into a
purely symbolic connexion with the god it represents.
Among the lower races, the possession of spirits enables the
medium or priest to give oracles, speaking by his voice or guiding
his diviniDg instrument, and their power enables him to perform
what are considered superhuman feats. This kind of spiritual
action, which may be traced from the lowest savagery onwards
throughthe whole course of civilization, is in our own timerenewed
with extreme vigour in the ascription to spiritual influence of
the sounds of table-rapping, the action of the hand using the
spirit-pen, &c.
Spiritual beings hold in the lower philosophy a position im-
mensely more important than this. The philosophy of the
savage recognizes a countless host of spirits pervading all nature.
To the Australian all his world swarms with spirits; and it is a
dismal symptom of the unhappiness of his condition that he
regards them as generally ill-disposed to the poor black fellow.
To the Khond of Orissa every rock and hill is inhabited and every
action of nature presided over by appropriate spiritual beings.

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378 E. B. TYLOR-0U the Philosophy of Religion

It has been well said of the Polynesians by Ellis, that they hold
the doctrine expressed in Milton's lines-
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."
And from this level the doctrine of nature-pervading spirits
extends fully into mediaeval European culture, and thence holds
on to no small extent in survival.
What are these spirits for? If it be true, as the poet sings,
"Felix qui potuit rerutn cognoscere causas,"
then the savage should be happy, for here he at least thinks he
has grasped the causes of things. To hiim all is the immediate
work of personal spirits. We have seen that life and death and
dreams and disease have spirits for causes, and so, to the savage
mind, nature throughout is animated nature. As theAbbe Raynal
says, where there is motion, there the savage supposes a soul.
What gives some men knowledge and power sometimes, or takes
it away? What makes strange noises in the hut? What pushes
the North-American Indian into the fire? What pulls him
under water? What drives the fat deer some days into his
path, and some days gives none? Do not go under that tree,
the fever demon is sitting upon the branches ready to pounce
upon you. Will you cross the lake? Pray, and offer to its
Manitu.
From the tiniest elf in the long grass to the Gitchi Manitu, all
spirits are causes. The hamadryad of the tree grows with it, and
dies when it falls, " Non sine hamadryadis fato." Every group
of trees, every grove has its presidi-ng genius. Wells, waterfalls,
rocks have their superintending spirits; and over these reigns
the higher Spirit of the Forest, the Water, &c. Species and tribes,
animal and human, have presiding genii. Whatever we may
judge of the savage belief in spirits, we are not to call it a pur-
poseless fancy; for these beings have full office to perform in
being, as it were, the souls of natural objects in carrying on
their operations. Phenomena which the savage referred to the
action of personal spirits, civilized peoples explain by theories of
another sort; but we are not to misunderstand the reasonable,
purposeful inference by which men in the lower culture used the
theory of animism to serve them as a philosophy of nature.
In conclusion, as to the higher deities of Polytheism. Above
the inferior divinities of nature there reign the great nature-
gods, whose sway extends not over this or that district, but over
the world at large-Sun and Moon, Heaven and Earth and Sea,
the Thunder-god, the Storm-god. Evil deities are often more
propitiated than good, as the savage seeks rather to appease his
enemy than please his friend; and early in savage culture ap-

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 among the Lower Races of Mankind. 379

pears that Dualism which divides spiritual beings into good and
evil, i. e. friendly and hostile, each company led by a great deity.
And sometimes a deity is erected into supremacy. Thus over
the polytheistic system of nature-gods reigns the Peruvian Sun-
god; the Heaven-god is the Chinese Tien or the Greek Zeus.
Even the system of the manes-worshippers admits of a primeval
ancestor obtaining the divine supremacy, like the Unkulunkulu,
the Old-old-one of the Zulus.
It has thus been attempted to set forth very briefly the out-
lines of the lower animism. The theory of its development may
be thus recapitulated: Man's earliest and primitive conception
of a spiritual being may well have been that of his own human
soul, the idea of which served to explain many of the great phe-
nomena of his own existence-life, death, sleep, dreams, visions,
ecstasy, disease. Then he may have extended this conception
to souls of animals, trees, even lifeless objects. Then looking
to the analogy of his own human life to explain the action of
Nature at large, he attributed to other spiritual beings, bearing
strong likeness in form and character to the souls, the existence
and growth of a nature which to him was indeed " animated
nature" in a sense far beyond ours. These spiritual beings are
of many orders, from low elves up to great fetish deities like
Heaven or Sun; and the Polytheism of low races even shows traces
of approach to the supremacy of one great deity, and thus
faintly foreshadows the coming Monotheism. But throughout
his hierarchy the human conception served as his model of the
divine.
This may be called the natural theology of the lower races.
It is true that it differs a good deal from the natural theology
of which we read in books. But then we must remember that
men like Paley and Butler drew their main ideas from races at
a condition as high at least as the ancient Greeks. Ethnology
was scarcely known to them, or appreciated by them.
The great question for ethnographers is, Do these savage
views represent remnant or rudiment? If they represent a rem-
nant of broken down high culture, they are of comparatively
little consequence. But if-and, it seems to me, the more we
work at ethnography the more we shall admit this-if they
represent human thought at a comparatively rudimentary stage,
they become of immense practical interest. To understand the
rude animism of the lower races, and to trace it onward as modi-
fied from century to century to fit with more advanced intelli-
gence, is indispensable to the full comprehension of not only the
historical but the actual position of philosophy and theology.

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380 On Religion among the Lower Races of Mankind.

DISCTSsION.

Mr. IJoWORTH thanked the author for the new and suggestive
manner in which he had treated a much-written about and apparently
trite subject. In illustration of his remark, that the immolation of
the widow on the pyre of her deceased husband is a very widespread
custom, the speaker observed that he had met with a curious illustra-
tion a short time ago in an essay by D'Ohsson, giving, from an
Arabic traveller, an account of the funeral of a Nbrse chief, which he
witnessed at Bolghara. The body was laid out in a ditch for ten
days. Meanwhile the bark of the deceased was dragged ashore, a
splendid tent of Roman cloth of gold erected on it, in which was put
a couch, and on the couch the dead warrior in most sumptuous dress.
His wives and slaves were now asked which of them would volunteer
to die on the pyre. An old hag, called the Angel of Death, was
mistress of the ceremonies. The volunteer, after drinking plenty of
spirits and wailing a weird good-bye to her friends, was then
strangled and placed alongside her dead husband. Two horses were
then chased round till they were fagged and covered with sweat
(apparently to make them easier to catch in the Happy Land); they
were then killed, as were also two hounds and a cock and hen. The
whole having been thrown on the pyre, fire was applied, and in the
quaint language of the Arab, the deceased went straight to Heaven
instead of passing through ignoble worms. This account has been
confirmed to the letter by the Cossack explorations of graves at
Novgorod.
With Mr. Tylor's conclusions the speaker could not possibly
agree. Comparative mythology, like comparative philology and
even anatomy, cannot be safely treated empirically. The only scien-
tific-method is the historic. We must trace up the history of known
religions to their sources if we are to generalize on the source of
all religions. If we approach our subject from this point, we shall
find that MIr. Tylor's theory is untenable. He argues that polytheism
is the earliest type of religion, and that polytheism is only a deve-
lopment of manes or ancestral worship, and was in its origin invari-
ably anthropomorphic. Now among the Norsemen and the Greeks
we can actually trace the first introduction of manes-worship at a
very secondary state of religious development. The demigods of the
Greeks, like Odin and his Asirs among the Norsemen, formed no
part of their original mythology, which was in both cases that of
superhuman deities. If we examine religions nearer home, in Italy
and Portugal for instance, we shall find that an immature form of
polytheism has developed itself from a monotheistic religion, The
army of saints, whose cultus is more popular than and even hides
that of the Deity himself, is but an everyday type of the growth of
polytheism. If we examine the earliest records we possess, the in-
scriptions of Mesopotamia, we shall find a more reasonable theory
for the growth of polytheism. Each town and little community has
its separate god, and only one god, the God of the Hebrews, of the
Hittites, &c. When several of these communities were joined into

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 Discussion. 381

one state, the latter adopted these national gods (originally the
same god), and thus formed a Pantheon.
Fetishism is the natural growth of pantheism. The universally
present god is easily translated by the savage mind into a substan-
tive god in each material object. This growth we may also trace in
better known mythologies; spirits of woods and brooks and hills are
only disintegrated portions of the one underlying spirit.
Mr. Howorth held that the historic testimony proved that the
simplest and earliest form of religion is monotheism, from which
the various faiths of savages have grown-luxuriantly grown very
often; and where we see the introduction of a monotheistic creed
among a polytheistic race, it is only another instance of the philo-
sophy of the more cultured human mind reverting to its original and
most ancient creed.
Mr. HYDE CLARKE called attention to the phenomena connected
with the comparative psychology of the subject-the animistic ten-
dencies of animals. Those who have experience of the domestic
animals know that they have superstitions like ourselves. The dog
or the horse is affected by the same strange appearances as is the
man, and has the like dread of ghosts arnd spirits. It might be asked
how a,nimals obtained these ideas; but Mr. Tylor had afforded a clue
by his reference to the experience of man in dreams as to phantoms
and creatures of a disturbed imagination. The mind of a dog being
constituted like that of a man, he has, there can be no reasonable
doubt, the same p?henomena of dreaming, and in the disordered
condition of the senses at the moment of waking would see distorted
images, which are treated as actual experiences. In this way he
accounted for the growth of superstition in animals, although they
have no means of intercommunication, except by the propagation of
fear at the sight of some object of alarm.
With regard to the doctrine of the transmigration of the souls of
ancestors to children, he would suggest that it may be partly due to
the natural phenomena of atavism. Where it has been observed
that a child inherits the likeness or qualities of a grandparent
(those of the grandsire), it was easy to suppose that he has inherited
the soul. Mr. Tylor's doctrine of the influence of the dual idea of
good and evil in animistic developments should be extended to the
influence of the dual sexual idea, as more notably in its application
to the sun and moon and the nature-gods.
Mr. TYLOR, in a brief reply, called attention to the citation by
Jacob Grimm (in his ' Verbrennen der Leichen ') of the remarkable
Slavonic wife-sacrifice noticed by Mr. Howorth. With regard to
the argument for monotheism as the original doctrine of mankind,
Mr. Tylor pointed out that the course theology has taken in the
world is indicated by the fact that the religions of savage races afford
explanations of otherwise obscure beliefs and rites of the civilized
world, and not vice versd; so that it is rather in the doctrines of low
tribes than among high nations that original theological conditions
are to be sought.

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