An analysis of religious belief

by viscount John Russell Amberley

First, that of a hyperphysical power in the universe.

Secondly, that of a hyperphysical entity in man.

Thirdly, that of a relation between the two.

The power assumed in the first postulate we may term the objective element in religion; the entity assumed in the second postulate we may term the subjective element. In the following chapter we shall deal with the objective element in the religious idea.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE OBJECTIVE ELEMENT.

The general result which has thus been reached by the decomposition of religion into its ultimate constituents must now be rendered somewhat more specific by illustrative examples tending to explain the character of the power the idea of whose existence forms the foundation of the religious sentiment, and such examples will tend to throw light upon the question whether the admission of such a power is or is not a necessity of thought. For the proof of necessity is twofold; a posteriori and a priori. We may show by the first mode that certain assumptions are always made under certain conditions as a matter of fact; not that they are always made by every human being, but that given the appropriate grade of culture, the beliefs in question arise. And we may show by the second that no effort of ours is able to separate certain ideas which have become associated in our minds; that the association persists under every strain we can put upon it, and that the resulting belief is therefore a necessary part of the constitution of the mind. Both modes of proof must be attempted here.

Now, in the first place, it must be remarked that few, if any, of the nations of the world are wholly destitute of some religious creed; and that those which have been supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be without it, have generally been savage tribes of the lowest grade of culture. So slender is the evidence of the presence of a people without some theological conception that it may be doubted whether the travelers who have reported such facts have not been misled, either by inability to comprehend the language, or unfamiliarity with the order of thought, of those with whom they conversed.

Sometimes the absence of religion seems to be predicated of a people which does not present an example of the kind of belief which the European observer has been accustomed to consider as religious. An instance of this is afforded in Angas' account of "Savage Life in Australia." Of the Australians he states that "they appear to have no religious observances whatever. They acknowledge no Supreme Being, worship no idols, and believe only in the existence of a spirit whom they consider as the author of ill, and regard with superstitious dread." So that in the very act of denying a religion to these people he practically ascribes one to them. They, like Christians, appear to acknowledge a powerful spirit; and if they dwell upon the evil side of his works more than upon the good side, it is to be remembered that Christians too consider their deity "as the author of ill" by his action in cursing Adam with all his posterity; and that they too regard him "with superstitious dread" as a being who will send them to eternal torture if they fail to worship, to think, and to act as he enjoins them. Immediately after this, the author informs us that the Australians constantly carry firesticks at night, to repel malignant spirits, and that they place great faith in sorcerers who profess to "counteract the influence of the spirits" (S. L. A., vol. i. p. 88). So that their destitution of "religious observances" is in like manner merely comparative.

Very little, if any, belief in deity appears to exist in Kamtschatka. Steller, who has described the creed of its inhabitants, states that they believe in no providence, and hold that they have nothing to do with God, nor he with them (Kamtschatka, p. 269). Whether this amounts to a denial of his existence I cannot say. They have, however, another element of religion, belief in a future state, as will afterwards appear.

In primitive religions the abstract form of Deity is often filled up with the concrete figures of departed relatives. Indeed this is one of the modes in which that form acquires definiteness, becoming comprehensible to the savage mind from this limitation of its generality. Thus in Fiji, although a supreme God and various other gods exist, the ancestors appear to be the most popular objects of worship. Deceased relations of the Fijians (according to Seemann) take their place at once among the family gods (Viti, p. 389-391). Another author confirms this testimony. In Sandwich Island, in the Fijian group, he states that there are no idols. "The people worship the spirits of their ancestors" (N. Y., p. 394). In Savage Island again they pay their forefathers similar homage, and remark that they once had an image which they worshiped, but that they broke it in pieces during an epidemic which they ascribed to its influence (Ib., p. 470). Among the Kafirs the spirits of the dead are believed to possess considerable power for good and evil; "they are elevated in fact to the rank of deities, and (except where the Great-Great is worshiped concurrently with them) they are the only objects of a Kafir's adoration" (K. N., p. 161).