Moreover, I also believe, and shall attempt to show, that the two have to a large extent distinct origins and roots: that the union between them is in great part adventitious: and that, therefore, to account for or explain the one is by no means equivalent to accounting for and explaining the other.
Frank recognition of this difference of origin between religion and mythology would, I imagine, largely reconcile the two conflicting schools of thought which at present divide opinion between them on this interesting problem in the evolution of human ideas. On the one side, we have the mythological school of interpreters, whether narrowly linguistic, like Professor Max Müller, or broadly anthropological, like Mr. Andrew Lang, attacking the problem from the point of view of myth or theory alone. On the other side, we have the truly religious school of interpreters, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, and to some extent Mr. Tylor, attacking the problem from the point of view of practice or real religion. The former school, it seems to me, has failed to perceive that what it is accounting for is not the origin of religion at all—of worship, which is the central-root idea of all religious observance, or of the temple, the altar, the priest, and the offering, which are its outer expression—but merely the origin of myth or fable, the mass of story and legend about various beings, real or imaginary, human or divine, which naturally grows up in every primitive community. The latter school, on the other hand, while correctly interpreting the origin of all that is essential and central in religion, have perhaps underestimated the value of their opponents’ work through regarding it as really opposed to their own, instead of accepting what part of it may be true in the light of a contribution to an independent but allied branch of the same enquiry.
In short, if the view here suggested be correct, Spencer and Tylor have paved the way to a true theory of the Origin of Religion; Max Müller, Lang, and the other mythologists have thrown out hints of varying value towards a true theory of the Origin of Mythology, or of its more modern equivalent and successor, Theology.
A brief outline of facts will serve to bring into clearer relief this view of religion as essentially practical—a set of observances, rendered inevitable by the primitive data of human psychology. It will then be seen that what is fundamental and essential in religion is the body of practices, remaining throughout all stages of human development the same, or nearly the same, in spite of changes of mythological or theological theory; and that what is accidental and variable is the particular verbal explanation or philosophical reason assigned for the diverse rites and ceremonies.
In its simplest surviving savage type, religion consists wholly and solely in certain acts of deference paid by the living to the persons of the dead. I shall try to show in the sequel that down to its most highly evolved modern type in the most cultivated societies, precisely similar acts of deference, either directly to corpses or ghosts as such, or indirectly to gods who were once ghosts, or were developed from ghosts, form its essence still. But to begin with I will try to bring a few simple instances of the precise nature of religion in its lowest existing savage mode.
I might if I chose take my little collection of illustrative facts from some theoretical writer, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has collected enough instances in all conscience to prove this point; but I prefer to go straight to an original observer of savage life and habit, a Presbyterian missionary in Central Africa—the Rev. Duff Macdonald, author of Africana—who had abundant opportunities at the Blantyre Mission for learning the ideas and practice of the Soudanese natives, and who certainly had no theoretic predisposition towards resolving all religious notions into the primitive respect and reverence for the dead or the worship of ancestors.
Here, in outline, but in Mr. Macdonald’s own words, are the ideas and observances which this careful and accurate investigator found current among the tribes of the heart of Africa. “I do not think,” he says, “I have admitted any point of importance without having heard at least four natives on the subject. The statements are translations, as far as possible, from the ipsissima verba of the negroes.”
The tribes he lived among “are unanimous in saying that there is something beyond the body which they call spirit. Every human body at death is forsaken by this spirit.” That is the almost universal though not quite primitive belief, whose necessary genesis has been well traced out by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and more recently in America with great vigour and clearness by Mr. Lester Ward.
“Do these spirits ever die?” Mr. Macdonald asks. “Some,” he answers, “I have heard affirm that it is possible for a troublesome spirit to be killed. Others give this a direct denial. Many, like Kumpama, or Cherasulo, say, ‘You ask me whether a man’s spirit ever dies. I cannot tell. I have never been in the spirit-world, but this I am certain of, that spirits live for a very long time.’”
On the question, “Who the gods are?” Mr. Macdonald says: “In all our translations of Scripture where we found the word God we used Mulungu; but this word is chiefly used by the natives as a general name for spirit. The spirit of a deceased man is called his Mulungu, and all the prayers and offerings of the living are presented to such spirits of the dead. It is here that we find the great centre of the native religion. The spirits of the dead are the gods of the living.