The Making of Religion

never be any real harm in studying masses of evidence from fresh points of view. At worst, the failure of a critique original: "adverse criticism" will only help to establish the doctrines being challenged. Now, as we shall show, there are two points of view from which the evidence regarding religion in its early stages has not been consistently examined. Therefore, we intend to ask, first: what, if anything, can be discovered about the nature of the "visions" and hallucinations which—according to Mr. Tylor in his celebrated work "Primitive Culture"—helped form the idea of "spirit"? Second, we shall collect and compare the accounts we have of the High Gods and creative beings worshipped or believed in by the most primitive societies original: "backward races". We shall then ask whether these relatively Supreme Beings, conceived of by people in very basic social conditions, can truly be—as anthropology declares—mere developments from a belief in the ghosts of the dead.

We shall conclude by venturing to suggest that the early human original: "savage" theory of the soul may be based, at least in part, on experiences which cannot, at present, be made to fit into any purely materialistic system of the universe. We shall also bring evidence tending to prove that the idea of God, in its earliest known form, does not logically have to be derived from the idea of "spirit," regardless of how that idea of spirit itself may have been reached or evolved. The conception of God, then, does not need to be evolved out of reflections on dreams and "ghosts."

If these two positions can be defended with any success, it is obvious that the entire theory of the Science of Religion Now commonly called Religious Studies or Comparative Religion. will need to be reconsidered. But it is no less evident that our two positions do not depend on each other. The first may be regarded as far-fetched original: "fantastic" or improbable, and may be set aside original: "masked" and ignored. However, the strength of the second position, which is derived from evidence of a different character, will not be weakened because of that.