... A further stretch of imagination enables the lower races to associate the souls of the dead with mere objects.[70]
... The spirits which enter or otherwise attach themselves to objects may be human souls. Indeed, one of the most natural cases of the fetish-theory is when a soul inhabits or haunts the relics of its former body.[71]
Here I may add an opinion to like effect which Dr. Tylor quotes from the late Prof. Waitz, also an erudite anthropologist. He says:—
“According to his [the negro’s] view, a spirit dwells or can dwell in every sensible object, and often a very great and mighty one in an insignificant thing. This spirit he does not consider as bound fast and unchangeably to the corporeal thing it dwells in, but it has only its usual or principal abode in it.”[72]
Space permitting I might add evidence furnished by Sir Alfred Lyall, who, in his valuable papers published in the Fortnightly Review years ago on religion in India, has given the results of observations made there. Writing to me from the North-West provinces under date August 1, in reference to the controversy between Mr. Harrison and myself, he incloses copies of a letter and accompanying memorandum from the magistrate of Gorakhpur, in verification of the doctrine that ghost-worship is the “chief source and origin” of religion. Not, indeed, that I should hope by additional evidences to convince Mr. Harrison. When I point to the high authority of Dr. Tylor as on the side of the ghost-theory, Mr. Harrison says—“If Dr. Tylor has finally adopted it, I am sorry.” And now I suppose that when I cite these further high authorities on the same side, he will simply say again “I am sorry,” and continue to believe as before.
In respect of the fetichism distinguishable as nature-worship, Mr. Harrison relies much on the Chinese. He says:—
The case of China is decisive. There we have a religion of vast antiquity and extent, perfectly clear and well ascertained. It rests entirely on worship of Heaven, and Earth, and objects of Nature, regarded as organized beings, and not as the abode of human spirits.
Had I sought for a case of “a religion of vast antiquity and extent, perfectly clear and well ascertained,” which illustrates origin from the ghost-theory, I should have chosen that of China; where the State-religion continues down to the present day to be an elaborate ancestor-worship, where each man’s chief thought in life is to secure the due making of sacrifices to his ghost after death, and where the failure of a first wife to bear a son who shall make these sacrifices, is held a legitimate reason for taking a second. But Mr. Harrison would, I suppose, say that I had selected facts to fit my hypothesis. I therefore give him, instead, the testimony of a bystander. Count D’Alviella has published a brochure concerning these questions on which Mr. Harrison and I disagree.[73] In it he says on page 15:—
La thèse de M. Harrison, au contraire,—que l’homme aurait commencé par l’adoration d’objets matériels “franchement regardés comme tels,”—nous paraît absolument contraire au raisonnement et à l’observation. Il cite, à titre d’exemple, l’antique religion de la Chine, “entièrement basée sur la vénération de la Terre, du Ciel et des Ancêtres, considérés objectivement et non comme la residence d’êtres immatériels.” [This sentence is from Mr, Harrison’s first article, not from his second.] C’est là jouer de malheur, car, sans même insister sur ce que peuvent être des Ancêtres “considérés objectivement,” il se trouve précisément que la religion de l’ancien empire Chinois est le type le plus parfait de l’animisme organise et qu’elle regarde même les objets matériels, dont elle fait ses dieux, comme la manifestation inséparable, l’enveloppe ou même le corps d’esprits invisibles. [Here in a note Count D’Alviella refers to authorities, notamment Tiele, Manuel de l’Histoire des Religions, traduit par M. Maurice Vernes, Liv. II, et dans la Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, la Religion de l’ancien empire Chinois par M. Julius Happel (t. IV. no. 6).]
Whether Mr. Harrison’s opinion is or is not changed by this array of counter-opinion, he may at any rate be led somewhat to qualify his original statement that “Nothing is more certain than that man everywhere started with a simple lead worship of natural objects.”