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conceived of by primitive man as something necessarily material and concrete. He sought for every circumstance which disturbed him, some cause near at hand. His incapability of carrying on abstract thought confined him to concrete conceptions which appeared to his imagination ​in the form of accustomed figures. He thus became an anthropomorphite, that is, he imagined all forces, everything capable of producing a phenomenon, in the form of a human being, with consciousness, will and organs to perform the bidding of the latter, his mind being unable to comprehend a force independent of an organic body. Causality thus led him to the acceptation of a necessary cause for all phenomena, his incapability of abstract reasoning, to anthropomorphism—to his peopling nature with a personal God, or with personal gods and goddesses, and his fear of these, who appeared to him as enemies, to propitiatory sacrifices and prayers, that is to an external worship. This is one of the roots of Religion in primitive man and it is still imbedded in the heart of the man of our civilization. Even intellects of high culture, sufficiently advanced in reasoning, to be beyond considering time and space as material existences, are yet in the habit of looking upon causality as something essential; they have not yet climbed to the height of abstract reasoning, from whence causality appears no longer as a concomitant to the phenomenon, but as a certain form of thought. And as to anthropomorphism, it is still carried on today; not only by the child who enjoys fairy-tales, in which the wind and the trees converse together and the stars fall in love with each other, but also by the grown up man, in the secret intimacy of his inner life, which is never entirely freed from the results of his childhood's habits. Is it not remarkable that the fashionable philosopher of our own day, with a curious return to primitive ideas, has built up his system upon the same hypothesis from which were evolved the rudimentary conceptions of the cave-dwellers of prehistoric ages, as well as those of the natives of Australia of today, viz. upon the acceptation of a will as not only the necessary condition ​preceding every phase of activity, but also of the very existence, of every object. This ascribing certain faculties, which we know by experience to belong to us, to surrounding inanimate objects, this effort to attribute their material form to the pre-existence of some will-power in them, because it is impossible to separate the actuality of a human being from the necessarily accompanying will, with its arbitrary and constantly exercised power—is certainly a return to the very first stage of the intellectual activity of the human race. Schopenhauer has succeeded in sublimating and super-refining his system and clothing it in technical, scientific terms, which give it a fine and dignified appearance, so that he can present it with a good grace to people of culture, but its kernel is, notwithstanding, the most astonishing case of atavism which is to be found in the whole history of philosophy—a history which is. pre-eminently a record of remarkable returns of the human intellect to ancient follies and dreams long since out-grown and supposed to have been consigned to oblivion. When we find that a profound thinker like Schopenhauer, standing upon the height of modern culture, can attribute to inorganic things a will-power like that of man, in order to comprehend them, although even in man, many things are constantly taking place, beyond the influence of the will, such as change of matter, growth, etc., when we see that this system receives a cordial welcome from large numbers of the most cultured and intelligent members of modern society, we are enabled to comprehend in all their details, the ideas of the mammoth-hunter of the quaternary period, who in generalizing the petty experiences of his own limited personality, could only conceive of nature by imagining behind every phenomenon some compelling power like himself, made after his image, only more powerful and awe-inspiring, with a larger stone hatchet ​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 Lares among the ​Romans, the drinking the blood of slaughtered enemies among the ancient Celtic and Germanic tribes, and the cannibalism of certain tribes in Central Africa and the South Sea Islands. The savage does not drink blood nor eat human flesh, merely to appease his hunger, as a superficial observer might imagine, but from a superstitious hope that the virtues of the slaughtered enemy may descend upon him who eats or drinks a part of his body. It is however, a question of secondary importance whether the belief in God or the soul is the most ancient. One thing is certain and acknowledged, that the two beliefs were conceived and accepted by the mind of man at a very early period. He became convinced of the fact that there was something within him, distinct from the body, which caused life, and which would survive the destruction of the visible frame. An incorrect observation and a mistaken comprehension of the laws of nature by prehistoric man, led to the belief in a personal God, and the belief in the soul was caused by observation of the difference between a living and a dead being. In the former he could feel the heart beat, and the pulse throb, mysterious actions of which the will was not the controlling force. In the dead man all was silent and still. The important role attributed to the heart as the seat of the affections and sentiments in the usage of language to this day, is a silent testimony of the intense interest aroused in the mind of primitive man by the astonishing movements of the heart. Nothing is easier to an untrained mind than to accept any two succeeding phenomena as cause and effect.

      In the dead human being nothing is stirring; therefore that which was beating and hopping in the living man, must have been the cause of life. When the man was alive, it was there; when he died, it vanished, it ​forsook the body. But what can it be? To this question the fanciful imagination of primitive man produced several answers, giving to this principle of life, this soul, the form of some creature. Some called the soul a dove, others, a butterfly, and those capable of more abstract conceptions, imagining it to be a shadow, or a breath of wind. The disquieting and inexplicable phenomena of sleep and dreams, were capable of an explanation by the acceptation of such ideas, which was perfectly satisfactory to a primitive mind. The soul, that material and organic inhabitant of the body, that kind of parasite on the living organism, experienced at times a desire to forsake its cage. When this happened, the body was left in a condition very similar to that which followed its final abandonment by the soul: it knew and felt nothing, it did not move: it slept. The soul went somewhere; it did and experienced many things, of which an indistinct recollection was retained after its return, and these were the dreams. Grimm tells a story, taken from Paulus Diaconus, that describes how a certain King Gun tram lay down to sleep when out hunting one day, and the servant who accompanied him saw a little animal resembling a snake, crawl out from his mouth and hasten to the brook near by, which it was unable to cross. The servant noticing this, drew his sword from its scabbard and laid it across the brook. The little animal crossed over upon the sword, and after an absence of several hours, returned in the same way, and crawled back into the king's mouth. The king then awoke and told his companion how he had dreamed of coming to an immense river, which he had crossed upon an iron bridge, etc. Grimm relates another legend of the same kind, about a maid out of whose mouth crept a little red mouse after she had fallen asleep; some one then turned her over upon her face, so that when the ​little mouse returned, it was unable to enter her mouth, and as a consequence she awoke no more. But where was this mysterious

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