Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/29

Rh my chief objects. The hypothesis which we both discard has, however, become almost a commonplace of anthropological science. I am especially anxious to prove that we have not yet the materials for a scientific theory of the evolution of religion. As Mr. Hartland says, I distrust my own theory, or rather my own surmise, which by the way I have never yet fully stated. I suspect all theories which deal with man’s psychology and reasoning powers when he was in a condition more primitive than any of which we have historical knowledge. Thus, as Mr. Hartland says, before man evolved the notion of “a disembodied spirit,” he may, as “conscious himself of will, sensation, and reason, have endowed everything round him with these qualities.” He may have done so; in myth he certainly does so; how far playfully, or imaginatively, is a moot point. Again, whether man really did so before he had an idea of a disembodied spirit we certainly cannot, historically, know; and Mr. Herbert Spencer opposes this theory, not without success. I therefore prefer to take up man as historically known to us. I, at least, have only guesses, not, like Mr. Hartland, “glimpses,” at man “when he had not attained to the conception of a disembodied spirit.” As historically known to us, man, I think, has the germ of the conception of “a moral, relatively Supreme Being, a Creator,” even while man is “in very rudimentary social conditions” (Mr. Hartland, Folk-Lore, p. 292).

It is here that Mr. Hartland differs from me. Now I would beg Mr. Hartland to observe that, while I think early man has this lofty conception, I have never denied, I think, that of the same “moral, relatively Supreme Being, a Creator,” man has also simultaneously quite contradictory conceptions. This is constantly dwelt on in my Myth, Ritual, and Religion. The contradictions are of the very essence of mythology, and occur in every ancient religion which includes a belief in gods. As an American critic, Professor Starr, states my case: “That primitive creature (man) may early