Ritual and Belief: Studies in the History of Religion
9781465680402
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years none has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study of the evolution of human civilization. The reason is apparent: it has revolutionized our conception of human history, and has shaken to their very centre the religious traditions of Europe and civilized America. The general doctrine of evolution as applied to the universe at large was established shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century by Darwin and Spencer. Geology had already revealed the enormous age of the earth, and the long procession of periods through which the flora and fauna had advanced to ever higher organization. Archæology had begun its enquiries into the antiquity of man; but the evidence was not yet fully understood, and its weight or even its existence was denied. While theology, after first indignantly repudiating the new teachers, was trying with many grimaces to accommodate itself to their teaching, new lines of investigation were entered upon in this country and America by Lubbock, Tylor, M‘Lennan, and Morgan. The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned. In a country like ours, where an established Church arrogated to itself all social and almost all intellectual influences, and where it was very generally supported by those who dissented from it on other points in its dogmatic opposition to the results of scientific enquiry, it was natural that attention should be directed to the bearing of those results on theology. Anthropology, as the new Science of Man came to be called, was materially assisted in the quarrel by Biblical criticism begun in Germany and popularized in England by Colenso and others. The authenticity of the books so long attributed to Moses was questioned and overthrown; they themselves were emptied of all historical authority, and put on a level in this respect with the books of heathen nations. Professor Robertson Smith’s fight for liberty of criticism in the Free Church of Scotland roused the enthusiasm even of men who did not agree with all his opinions; and when he was finally ejected from his chair at Aberdeen, he was provided with a home first at Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, and the editorship of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Thus unmuzzled, he devoted himself to the study of Semitic religion and customs on the largest scale and in the most unbiassed spirit. Unfortunately, his health gave way; and two precious volumes are well-nigh all that has reached us of his labours. But his influence at Cambridge, and particularly over a younger fellow-countryman to whom we owe The Golden Bough, was of a most fruitful character. To the impulse he gave is to be traced much—perhaps more than we suspect—of what anthropology has accomplished in various directions during the last five-and-twenty years.
