Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/56

42 and a more violent appetite, and this was the germ from which Religion was developed later.

The conception of a will-power as the cause of the phenomena of the universe, that is, the faith in a personal God or gods, is however, but a small part of Religion. Religion did not confine its transcendental investigations to nature alone, but carried them on to man, and to his position in the universe. To the number of religious conceptions must be added the faith in a soul and its immortality after death. This belief in the immortality of the soul, first rounded the preconceived ideas in regard to God, into a comprehensive system, capable of forming the foundation for a structure of society and morality as it supplied an exact definition of good and bad, and a distinction between vice and virtue. In its promises of future reward or punishment, which presuppose the immortality of the individual, with his most essential attributes, sensibility and conception, it found means to bring man into agreement with its views and acceptation of its theories. This belief in the soul and its immortality, was not evolved from causality and anthropomorphism, but from other psychological sources, for which we will proceed to search.

Specialist enquirers have discussed extensively the question whether the belief in an immortal soul preceded or followed the belief in a God, and whether all ideas of Religion were not evolved from the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, after passing through the intermediate stages of demon-worship. That many ancient races and modern savage tribes consider the belief in the immortality of the soul a more important factor of their religion than the belief in the existence of a God, is shown forcibly by the worship paid to the dead by the ancient Egyptians, the honors offered to the among the