The Making of Religion by Andrew Lang
page 19 of 453 (04%)
page 19 of 453 (04%)
|
APPENDICES.
A. OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE B. THE POLTERGEIST AND HIS EXPLAINERS C. CRYSTAL-GAZING D. CHIEFS IN AUSTRALIA INDEX * * * * * THE MAKING OF RELIGION I _INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER_ The modern Science of the History of Religion has attained conclusions which already possess an air of being firmly established. These conclusions may be briefly stated thus: Man derived the conception of 'spirit' or 'soul' from his reflections on the phenomena of sleep, dreams, death, shadow, and from the experiences of trance and hallucination. Worshipping first the departed souls of his kindred, man later extended the doctrine of spiritual beings in many directions. Ghosts, or other spiritual existences fashioned on the same lines, prospered till they became gods. Finally, as the result of a variety of processes, one of these gods became supreme, and, at last, was regarded as the one only God. Meanwhile man retained his belief in the existence of his own soul, surviving after the death of the body, and so reached the conception of immortality. Thus the ideas of God and of the soul are the result of early |
|