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SECOND EDITION1900
I hope you will permit me to lay at the feet of the University of St.Andrews, in acknowledgment of her life-long kindnesses to her old pupil,these chapters on the early History of Religion. They may be taken asrepresenting the Gifford Lectures delivered by me, though in fact theycontain very little that was spoken from Lord Gifford's chair. I wish theywere more worthy of an Alma Mater which fostered in the past the leadersof forlorn hopes that were destined to triumph; and the friends of lostcauses who fought bravely against Fate—Patrick Hamilton, Cargill, andArgyll, Beaton and Montrose, and Dundee.
Believe me
Very sincerely yours,
* * * * *
By the nature of things this book falls under two divisions. The firsteight chapters criticise the current anthropological theory of the originsof the belief in spirits. Chapters ix.-xvii., again, criticise thecurrent anthropological theory as to how, the notion of spirit onceattained, man arrived at the idea of a Supreme Being. These two branchesof the topic are treated in most modern works concerned with the Originsof Religion, such as Mr. Tyler's "Primitive Culture," Mr. HerbertSpencer's "Principles of Sociology," Mr. Jevons's "Introduction to theHistory of Religion," the late Mr. Grant Allen's "Evolution of the Idea ofGod," and many others. Yet I have been censured for combining, in thiswork, the two branches of my subject; and the second part has beenregarded as but faintly connected with the first.
The reason for this criticism seems to be, that while one small set ofstudents is interested in, and familiar with the themes examined in thefirst part (namely the psychological characteristics of certain mentalstates from which, in part, the doctrine of spirits is said to havearisen), that set of students neither knows nor cares anything about thematter handled in the second part. This group of students is busied with"Psychical Research," and the obscure human faculties implied in allegedcases of hallucination, telepathy, "double personality," human automatism,clairvoyance, and so on. Meanwhile anthropological readers are equallyindifferent as to that branch of psychology which examines the conditionsof hysteria, hypnotic trance, "double personality," and the like.Anthropologists have not hitherto applied to the savage mental conditions,out of which, in part, the doctrine of "spirits" arose, the recentresearches of French, German, and English psychologists of the new school.As to whether these researches into abnormal psychological conditions do,or do not, indicate the existence of a transcendental region of humanfaculty, anthropologists appear to be unconcerned. The only Englishexception known to me is Mr. Tylor, and his great work, "PrimitiveCulture," was written thirty years ago, before the modern psychologicalstudies of Professor William James, Dr. Romaine Newbold, M.