Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/171

 Rh 1. Gods grew out of several different ideas of superhuman beings.

2. These beings had independent origins.

3. The attributes of the gods differ according to their origin.

4. The historical gods are usually mongrel gods, the outcome of the combination of characteristics belonging to superhuman beings of different origins.

The need of accounting for observed phenomena gives rise to one class of sources of the belief in unseen, superhuman beings; the affective and moral needs give rise to another class.

I. This class contains several independent groups of external and internal phenomena. They are by far the most prolific sources of ideas of superhuman beings.

(a) Apparitions of animals and persons yet living, seen in sleep and in the hallucinations of fever or insanity, lead to the belief in "doubles" and "ghosts." When these apparitions come after the death of the person they represent, they produce the belief in "souls" or "spirits."

(b) States of seeming death followed by apparent return to life,—sleep, trances, and other states of temporary loss of consciousness,—suggest a belief similar to the preceding.

(c) The spontaneous though fleeting personification of striking natural phenomena such as thunder, lightning, fire, flood, and tempest, or the sudden appearance of animal or vegetable life, may well lead to the belief in personal agents behind visible nature.

(d) The problem of creation no doubt forces upon the primitive mind very early the necessity of a Maker. It may be that a crude conception of a Creator is attained even earlier than that of a soul or double.

(e) The facts of conscience: the feeling of duty, the categorical imperative; transformations of personality, conversion, etc.