Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/91

Rh we find, deep down in the stratum, the arts of augery, of divination, of fortune telling. In these, I suspect, we discover the earliest religious ideas and practises, as distinguished from religious feeling or faith. Before man thought of fooling, or tricking, or bribing, or importuning the powers that control his fate, he tried simply to find out what they were likely to do to him. He tried to learn whether and how far he was safe, to foresee his fate.

It has been in view of such considerations as these, and especially because of the strong probability that religion was impersonal before it became animistic, that I have thought it legitimate to identify religion in its ultimate essence or principle, with that elementary and primordial faith in the possibilities of life which springs from success in the struggle for existence.

Collective economic effort takes at first the form of a group exploitation of various natural sources of subsistence. Each horde becomes identified with a particular region or hunting-ground, and sometimes with a particular kind of food. The notion arises that the human group and its food, plant or animal, had a common origin and are now kindred. Magic is developed as the means relied on to preserve and to increase the food supply. This idea and resulting practise constitute totemism, which differentiates primitive communities into economic groups and into kinship divisions.

Within each group, the adaptation of individuals to prevailing life conditions is furthered by the folkways, imposing upon every person a common morality, and, through initiation ceremonies, or other formidable disciplines, developing in him some power of self-control. Prom experiences of discipline received and imparted, and of self-mastery, springs a crude theory of personal power or agency. Here, probably, is the true origin of animism as a theory of causation, and from this point religion tends to become animistic.

The ever-recurring conflicts between group and group call forth leadership, establish the simpler forms of personal government and mark out the elementary social distinctions. It is now that ideas of spirits separable from material bodies, and, as ghosts surviving bodily death, begin to take shape. Religion becomes spiritistic. The habit of making obeisance to the powerful or the clever, and of propitiating them, which has grown up step by step with leadership and personal government, is transferred to the realm of shades. Ghosts must be looked after and prayed to, or they might do mischief. Remembered, fed and honored, the kindred ghosts of a community are friendly, protecting powers. Religion becomes the bond of the living with the dead.

Through all these struggles, adaptations and adjustments, the fit that survive become in a degree socialized, and in the degree that they become social they become better assured of further survival. By the integration of small hordes of kindred into tribes, and the combination of