whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the universe; and this has
been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that
have ever existed.
If, however, we include under the term religion the belief in unseen
or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief
seems to be universal with the less civilised races. Nor is it
difficult to comprehend how it arose. As soon as the important
faculties of the imagination, wonder, and curiosity, together with some
power of reasoning, had become partially developed, man would naturally
crave to understand what was passing around him, and would have vaguely
speculated on his own existence. As Mr. M Lennan (75. The Worship of
Animals and Plants, in the Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1, 1869, p.
422.) has remarked, Some explanation of the phenomena of life, a man
must feign for himself, and to judge from the universality of it, the
simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been
that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals,
plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits
prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess. It
is also probable, as Mr. Tylor has shewn, that dreams may have first
given rise to the notion of spirits; for savages do not readily
distinguish between subjective and objective impressions. When a savage
dreams, the figures which appear before him are believed to have come
from a distance, and to stand over him; or the soul of the dreamer
goes out on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of what it
has seen. (76. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, 1865, p. 6. See also
the three striking chapters on the Development of Religion, in
Lubbock s Origin of Civilisation, 1870. In a like manner Mr. Herbert
Spencer, in his ingenious essay in the Fortnightly Review (May 1st,
1870, p. 535), accounts for the earliest forms of religious belief
throughout the world, by man being led through dreams, shadows, and
other causes, to look at himself as a double essence, corporeal and
spiritual. As the spiritual being is supposed to exist after death and
to be powerful, it is propitiated by various gifts and ceremonies, and
its aid invoked. He then further shews that names or nicknames given
from some animal or other object, to the early progenitors or founders
of a tribe, are supposed after a long interval to represent the real
progenitor of the tribe; and such animal or object is then naturally
believed still to exist as a spirit, is held sacred, and worshipped as
a god. Nevertheless I cannot but suspect that there is a still earlier
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