Pagan Christs : studies in comparative hierology

Part I, THE RATIONALE OF RELIGION — WATURALNESS OF ALL BELIEF

oy at Gods from fear—from love—Beloved Gods the Christs ef Ge world’s pantheon—~Arbitrary Classifications -

» BE Sees results of reasoning—Taboo—Formulas of Mr. aha geet De. Jerons—Primary and secondary taboo—Moral correla-

Thesis of = scperstition mo > . Seems: view of the “religious consciousness re of ie the Supersssoral *—Fear rersus sateen tae: of yeep te at

She. Prasee’s defnition—its ‘nadeciaey -Linadiel be ceeuaine< Sesepesy of magic—Analogies of religion, magic, and science—

Magee bomogencous with religion—Inconsistencies of magic— Mage & the Old Testament—Inconsistencies of later religion -

‘Wie stewie iInduction—Magic and religion interfluent—The Sheory of prayer—Dr. Jeyons’s reasoning here reduces the @eligioms type to the Atheists and Agnostics -

De. Jeroms’s series of self-contradictions—His soknciense with De. Praser in excluding belief from the concept of religion = - Eis eomtradictory doctrine of the conditions of survival in weition — Value of his work—Causes of its fallacies -

‘Tae comtinaity of religious phenomena—Homogeneity of all ‘Wiese aod religious ritual—Elijah as magician—Comparative Skermfcines: of priesthoods and sorcerers—The dilemma of saiam ethics—Philosophy in religion—Dr. Jevons’s psycho- "Impressions ” versus “projections”—Results of his n “rational” even if not “reasonable” - Peaser’s someon vindication of the sorcerer—Its d priori : antinomianism—lIts confusion of the problem of pres of culture with that of the spread of civilisation hecked by induction—Sketch of the actual evolution—The ‘Se gaard agsinst deduction from presuppositions ~- -

pitas -

PAGE

XX1 ue

20 22 vi CONTENTS PA § 11. The beginning of the end of religion—EHarly interweaving of cosmology and ethics—Fear and gratitude alike operative in time—Ancestor-worship—Dr. Jevons’s thesis of its lateness— His argument finally a petitio principii—Evidence against him from his own pages— Ghosts” versus “ spirits ” - - § 12. Historic view of ancestor-worship—Conflict of formulas of Mr. Lang and Dr. Frazer—The anthropological solution— Fluctuations in the status of ancestor-Gods—Taboo of names not necessarily oblivion—Gods’ names tabooed—Gods relatively raised and ancestors depressed—Primary deification of ancestors implied in the facts—Verbalist definitions of “ ancestor ”— Ancestors one of the types of friendly God—Gods originating from abstractions—Arguments of Von Thering and Fustel de Coulanges on ancestor-worship—Propitiation from fear and from love—Horde-ancestor Gods and family Gods—Evolution of law-giving God - - - - - - - § 13. Interactions of norms of conduct—Religion and monarchy— Religious cast given to law and ethics—The authoritarian element a mark of religion - - - - - § 14. Definition of religion - - - . - -

Chap. Ii.—comparison And Appraisement Of Religions

§ 1. Early Forces of Reform. Christian partisanship—Difficulty of being impartial—The authoritarian ideal—Genius and religious reform—Rarity of reform through priesthoods—Reality of priestcraft - - - ~ - - - -

§ 2. Reform as a Religious Process. Fictitious literature—Reform by strategy—Conditions of moral betterment for the Hebrews— Conditions of religious survival - . - - -

§ 3. Polytheism and Monotheism. Religious evolution conditioned politically and socially—Monotheism and polytheism alike thus conditioned—No unique bias in the case of Israel—Pressures towards monotheism and towards polytheism—The former usually an external bias, without psychological sincerity— Hebrew and Roman theology compared—Monotheism does grow out of polytheism—Hebrew monotheism not a monarchie but a sacerdotal creation—Monotheistic and polytheistic ethic compared—The conventional view—Ethic associated with “Supreme” Gods— Rational tests—Ethic of post - exilic Judaism—Economie forces in cult-making—Chastening effects of national disaster - - - - : -

§ 4. Hebrews and Babylonians. Babylonian influences on Judaic thought—Higher developments of polytheism—International

i monotheists. i :

§ 5. Forces of Religious Evolution. The. socio-political factors— Social decadence _in Mesopotamia, with religious. activity—_ Fatality of imperialism - - - - - -

§ 6. The Hebrew Evolution. Rise of the cult of Yahweh—Literary beginnings—Practical polytheism—The attempted reforms of Josiah—Probable negative results—Developments of Yahwism

CONTENTS vii

PAGE

3 ..Selection—The process of literary fabrication— “Eiger terary fruition - : : - - = 60 Bes Exilic Phases. Cramping effects of racial sectarianism— _ Geange nevertheless inevitable—Modifications of belie-—Hebrew Shoueht monctheistic only on the surface—Polytheistic super- ‘@iitien never climinated—Early Christian and Moslem thought @® t= same plane—Social failure in Jewry as elsewhere— Expansion of Jewry in Gentile lands—Hellenistic reactions— ‘Tike Maccabean renascence . - - é - 85 "® Zeus! and Disintegration, The renascence a_second process wt Geerceratic selection—Parallel case of Parsism—Special Secundity of Jews—Renewed process of doctrinal modification— Development of a Secondary God—The Jesuist movement—Its @ependent relation to Judaism up till the destruction of the Temple—Fusion of the secondary God-ideas in Jesus—The ‘@comemiic situation—Separate Christism a result of the fall of Ske Temple—Later Judaism—Persistence of sacrifice up to the pelstecal catastrophe—Conventional comparisons of Hebrew and Greek ethic and character - - 89 ie St smile—Efects of Persian contact—The Retum a process ks = ——

% Comeiasion. All religions processes of evolutionary change— | General law of the substitution of Son-Gods for the older— 4Smalogous cases in Greece, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, and Jewry —Tae psychological process—Modification of Indra—His _ Supersession by Krishna—Adaptations of Osiris—Advent of _ Serapis—Jesus—Apollo, Dionysos, and Zeus—Recession of the Supreme God—Heresy and dissent phases of the total evolu- Siomary process—Conditions of sect-survival—Conditions of | Servival for deities—The Holy Spirit—The Virgin Mother— _ Yabweh and Jesus—Mary and Anna—Joseph and Mary— | Christ-making thus a form of Secondary-God-making—All Secondary Gods evolved from prior materials—The moral metamorphosis of Bacchus—‘Culture-religion” thus an evolution

from “nature-religion” - - - - - - 94

Part Ii, SECONDARY GOD-MAKING

1—THE SACRIFICED SAVIOUR-GOD.

Totemism and Sacraments ~~ - = é a : 99 Theory and Ritual of Human Sacrifice - - - = | 105

The Christian Crucifixion - = : 2 : 118 & Vogue of Human Sacrifice - - - - - 199 ‘&. The Divinity of the Victim —- , a : - 480

The Cannibal Sacrament - - - . - 140

The Semitic Antecedents - - - - - 144 aes: eJudaic Evolution - = : = ~ : 148 . Specific Survivals in Judaism - - - - - 158 viii CONTENTS

_§ 10, The pre-Christian Jesus-God om otc” § 11. Private Jewish Hucharists - - - § 12. The Eucharist in Orthodox Judaism - -

§ 18. Special Features of the Crucifixion Myth - § 14. Possible Historical Elements - : - § 15. The Gospel Mystery-Play - - - § 16. The Mystery-Play and the Cultus - -

§ 17. Further Pagan Adaptations - - -

§ 18. Synopsis and Conclusion: Genealogy of Human Bacrifice sae

Sacrament - - : a 2 Diagram - - = ~ x =

CHAP. Il.—THE TEACHING GOD.

1, Primary and Secondary Ideas - - - 3. The Logos - - - - - 8. Derivations of the Christian Logos - - 4, The Search for a Historical Jesus - - 5. The Critical Problem - - - - 6. Collapse of the Constructive Case - - 7. Parallel Problems - - - 8 9

. Buddhism and Buddhas - = b s 10. The Cruces - = « = ns

12. Buddhism and Asoka - - - . 13. The Buddha Myth - - - - 14. The Problem of Manicheus - - . 15. The Manichean Solution - - - 16. The Case of Apollonius of Tyana . -

603 6D? CO? CO? 02 COD C02 CO? CO? CH? CR SM COD CO COD COD

Part III

MITHRAISM . Introductory = - - - . . Zoroastrianism - = ‘ .

. Evolution of Mithra - : =

. The Cultus « - : és . The Creed . ss 2 F

(O> 60> CO? CO2 CR COD CO? CM CO oOomantoanrr wn eRe

§ 18, The Point of Junction - - 2

. The Problem of Buddhist Origins - -

11. Sociological Clues - : : 2

. Beginnings of Cult - : : .

. The Process of Syncretism - - = . Symbols of Mithra - . 4 :

. Mithraism and Christianity = - : : § 10. Further Christian Parallels . . - § 11. The Vogue of Mithraism . : : § 12. Absorption in Christianity - - -

a Whnse Christ < : ss = 2 370 of tee Priesthood - * : - - 378 poiPeu - o “ é . EAG6 io : - : : - 380

Human Sacrifice - - - 389

Survivals - - : - 391

: : - . - - 439

| ss ! : 7 GY ; : 7 i + ~ > | a a s ; j 7 fr s ™~ * ~, 7 « ‘ft 4 as Mt ¥ es tah " : - , ' j are a) ) Fe i _

.

I. Part I. The Rationale of Religion CHAPTER I.

THE NATURALNESS OF ALL BELIEF

§ 1.

Ir seems probable, despite theological cavils, that Petronius was right in his signal saying, Fear first made the Gods. In the words of a recent hierologist, "we may be sure that primitive man took to himself the credit of his successful attempts to work the mechanism of nature for his own advantage, but when the machinery did not work he ascribed the fault to some over-ruling supernatural power.....It was the violation of [previously exploited] sequences, and the frustration of his expectations, by which the belief in supernatural power was, not created, but first called forth."

The fact that this writer proceeds to repudiate his own doctrine is no reason why we should, save to the extent of noting the temerity of his use of the term "supernatural." There are some very strong reasons, apart from the a priori one cited above, for thinking that the earliest human notions of superhuman beings were framed in terms of fear. Perhaps the strongest of all is the fact that savages and barbarians in nearly all parts of the world appear to regard disease and death as invariably due to purposive hostile action, whether normal, magical, or "spiritual." Not even old age is for many of these primitive thinkers a probable natural cause of death. If then the life of early man was not much less troublous than that of contemporary primitives, he is likely to have been moved as much as they to conceive of the unseen powers as malevolent. "On the Gold Coast," says a close student, "the majority of these spirits are malignant......1 believe that originally all were conceived as malignant."

And how, indeed, could it be otherwise? Those who will not assent have forgotten, as indeed most anthropologists strangely forget when they are discussing the beginnings of religion, that man as we know him is descended from something less human, more brute, something nearer the predatory beast life of fear and foray. When in the period of upward movement which we term civilisation, as distinct from animal savagery, there could arise thrills of yearning or gratitude towards unknown powers, we are eons off from the stage of subterhuman growth in which the germs of conceptual religion must have stirred. If the argument is to be that there is no religion until man loves his Gods, let it be plainly put, and let not a verbal definition become a petitio principii. If, again, no numina are to be termed Gods but those who are loved, let that proposition too be put as a simple definition of term. But if we are to look for the beginnings of the human notion of numina, of unseen spirits who operate in Nature and interfere with man, let it be as plainly put that they presumably occurred when fear of the unknown was normal, and gratitude to an Unknown impossible.

But in saying that fear first made the Gods, or made the first Gods, we imply that other God-making forces came into play later; and no dispute arises when this is affirmed of the process of making the Gods of the higher religions, in their later forms. Even here, at the outset, the play of gratitude is no such ennobling exercise as to involve much lifting of the moral standpoint; and even in the higher religions gratitude to the God is often correlative with fear of the evil spirits whom he wards off. This factor is constantly present in the gospels and in the polemic of the early Fathers; and has never disappeared from religious life. The pietist who in our own day pours out thanks to "Providence" for saving him in the earthquake in which myriads have perished is no more ethically attractive than philosophically persuasive; and the gratitude of savages and barbarians for favours received and expected can hardly have been more refined. It might even be said that a cruder egoism presides over the making of Good Gods than over the birth of the Gods of Fear; the former having their probable origin in an individualistic as against a tribal instinct. But it may be granted that the God who ostensibly begins as a private guardian angel or family spirit may become the germ of a more ethical cultus than that of the God generically feared. And the process chronically recurs. There is, indeed, no generic severance between the Gods of fear and the Gods of love, most deities of the more advanced races having both aspects: nevertheless, certain specified deities are so largely shaped by men's affections that they might recognisably be termed the Beloved Gods.

It will on the whole be helpful to an understanding of the subject if we name such Gods, in terms of current conceptions, the Christs of the world's pantheon. That title, indeed, no less fitly includes figures which do not strictly rank as Gods; but in thus widely relating it we shall be rather elucidating than obscuring religious history. Only by some such collocation of ideas can the inquirer surmount his presuppositions and take the decisive step towards seeing the religions of mankind as alike man-made. On the other hand, he is not thereby committed to any one view in the field of history proper; he is left free to argue for a historical Christ as for a historical Buddha.

Even on the ground of the concept of evolution, however, scientific agreement is still hindered by persistence in the old classifications. The trouble meets us on one line in arbitrary fundamental separations between mythology and religion, early religion and early ethics, religion and magic, genuine myths and non-genuine myths. On another line it meets us in the shape of a sudden and local reopening of the problem of theistic intervention in a quasi-philosophical form, or a wilful repudiation of naturalistic method when the inquiry reaches current beliefs. Thus results which were reached by disinterested scholarship a generation ago are sought to be subverted, not by a more thorough scholarship, but by keeping away from the scholarly problem and suggesting a new standard of values, open to no rational tests. It may be well, therefore, to clear the ground so far as may be of such dispute at the outset by stating and vindicating the naturalistic position in regard to it.

$2)

In the midst of much dispute, moral science approaches agreement on the proposition that all primitive beliefs and usages, however strange or absurd, are to be understood as primarily products of judgment, representing theories of causation or guesses at the order of things. To such agreement, however, hindrance is set up by the reversion of some inquirers to the old view that certain savage notions are "irrational" in the strict sense. Thus Dr. F. B. Jevons decides that "there is no rational principle of action in taboo: it is mechanical; arbitrary, because its sole basis is the arbitrary association of ideas; irrational, because its principle is [in the words of Mr. Lang] ‘that causal connection in thought is equivalent to causative connection in fact." Again, Dr. Jevons lays it down that "Taboo......is the conviction that there are certain things which must—absolutely must, and not on grounds of experience of ‘unconscious utility'—be avoided."

It is significant that in both of these passages the proposition runs into verbal insignificance or counter-sense. In the first cited we are told (1) that a certain association of ideas is arbitrary because its basis is an arbitrary association of ideas, and (2) that it is all the while a "causal" (i.e., a non-arbitrary) connection in thought. In the last we are in effect told that the tabooer is conscious that he is not proceeding on an ancestral experience when he is merely not conscious of doing so. When instructed men thus repeatedly lapse into mere nullities of formula, there is presumably something wrong with their theory. Now, the whole subject of taboo is put outside science by the assumption that the practice is in origin "irrational" and "absolute" and "arbitrary" and independent of all experience of utility. As Dr. Jevons himself declares in another connection, the savage's thought is subject to mental laws’as much as is civilised man's. How, then, is this dictum to be reconciled with that? What is the "law" of the savage's "arbitrariness"?

Conceivably part of it lies before us in Dr. Jevons’s page of denial. The very illustration first given by him for the proposition last cited from him is that "the mourner is as dangerous as the corpse he has touched," "the mourner is as dangerous to those he loves as to those he hates." Here, one would suppose, was a pretty obvious clue to an intelligible causation. Is it to be "arbitrarily" decided that primitive men never observed the phenomena of contagion from corpse to mourners, and from mourners to their families; or, observing it, never sought to act on the experience? Is it not notorious that among contemporary primitives there is often an intense and vigilant fear of contagious disease?

The only fair objection to accepting such a basis for one species of taboo is that for other species no such explanation is available. But what science looks for in such a matter is not a direct explanation for every instance: it suffices that we find an explanation or explanations for such a principle or conception as taboo, and then recognise that, once set up, it may be turned to really "arbitrary" account by chiefs, priests, and adventurers.

"Arbitrary" has two significations, in two references: it means "illogical" in reference to reason, or "representative of one will as against the general will." In the first sense, it is here irrelevant, for no one pretends that taboo is right; but it may apply in the other in a way not intended by Dr. Jevons. For nothing can be more obvious than the adaptability of the idea of taboo, once crystallised or conventionalised in a code, to purposes of individual malice, and to all such procedure as men « indicate by the term "priestcraft." Dr. Jevons, in his concern to prove, what no one ever seriously disputed, that priests did not and could not create the religious or superstitious instinct, leaves entirely out of his exposition, and even by implication denies, the vitally relevant truth that they exploit it. And in overlooking this he sadly burdens, if he does not wreck, his own unduly biassed theory of the religious instinct as something relatively "deep," and as proceeding in terms of an abnormal consciousness of contact with "the divine." For if those relatively "arbitrary" and "irrational" forms of taboo do not come from the priest—that is, from the religion-maker or -monger, whether official or not—they must, on Dr. Jevons’s own showing, come from "religion."

It may be that he would not at once reject such a conclusion; for the apparent motive of much of his treatment of taboo is the sanctification of it as an element in the ancestry of the Christian religion. For this purpose he is ready to go to notable lengths, as when he allows cannibalism to be sometimes "religious in intention." But while insisting at one point on the absolute unreasonedness and immediate certitude of the notion of taboo, apparently in order to place it on all fours with the "direct consciousness" which for him is the mark of a religious belief, he admits in so many words, as we have seen, that it is "arbitrary" and "irrational," which is scarcely a way of accrediting it as a religious phenomenon. Rather the purpose of that aspersion seems to be to open the way for another agerandisement of religion as having suppressed irrational taboo. On the one hand we are told that the savage's fallacious belief in the transmissibility of taboo was "the sheath which enclosed and protected a conception that was to blossom and bear a priceless fruit—the conception of Social Obligation." This is an arguable thesis, not framed by Dr. Jevons for the purposes of his theorem, but spontaneously set forth by several missionaries. Here we need but note the implication of the old fallacy that when any good is seen to follow upon an evil we must assume the evil to have been a conditio sine qua non of the good. The missionaries and Dr. Jevons have assumed that but for the device of taboo there could have been no social code—a thesis not to be substantiated either deductively or inductively. But with this problem we need not now coficern ourselves, since Dr. Jevons himself turns the tables on it. After the claim has been made for the salvatory action of taboo, we read that "it was only among the minority of mankind, and there only under exceptional circumstances, that the institution bore its best fruit......Indeed, in many respects the evolution of taboo has been fatal to the progress of humanity." And again:—

In religion the institution also had a baneful effect: the irrational restrictions, touch not, taste not, handle not, which constitute formalism, are essentially taboos—essential to the education of man at one period of his development, but a bar to his progress later.

But now is introduced the theorem of the process by which taboo has been converted into an element of civilisation: it is this:—

From the fallacy of magic man was delivered by religion; and there are reasons.....for believing that it was by the same aid he escaped from the irrational restrictions of taboo.

In the higher forms of religion.....the trivial and absurd restrictions are cast off, and those alone retained which are essential to morality and religion.

We shall have to deal later with the direct propositions here put; but for the moment it specially concerns us to note that thedénotiment does not hold scientifically or logically good. The fact remains that irrational taboo as such was, in the terms of the argument, strictly religious; that religion in this aspect had "no sense in it," inasmuch as taboo had passed from a primitive precaution to a priest-made convention; and that what religion is alleged to deliver man from is just religion. Thus alternately does religion figure for the apologist as a rational tendency correcting an irrational, and as an irrational tendency doing, good which a rational one cannot. And the further we follow his teaching the more frequently does such a contradiction emerge.

§ 3.

At the close of his work, apparently forgetting the propositions of his first chapter as to the priority of the sense of obstacle in the primitive man's notion of supernatural forces, Dr. Jevons affirms that the "earliest attempt" towards harmonising the facts of the "external and inner consciousness"—by which is meant observation and reflection took the form of ascribing the external prosperity which befell a man to the action of the divine love of which he was conscious within himself; and the misfortunes which befell him to the wrath of the justly offended divine will.

Here we have either a contradiction of the thesis before cited, or a resort to the extremely arbitrary assumption that in taking credit to himself for successful management of things, and imputing his miscarriages to a superior power, the primitive man is not trying to "harmonise the facts of his experience." Such an argument would be on every ground untenable; but it appears to be all that can stand between Dr. Jevons and selfcontradiction. The way to a sound position is by settling impartially the definition of the term "religion." How Dr. Jevons misses this may be gathered from the continuation of the passage under notice:—

Man, being by nature religious, began by a religious explanation of nature. To assume, as is often done, that man had no religious consciousness 1, begin with, and that the misfortunes which befell him inspired him with fear, and fear led him to propitiate the malignant beings whom he imagined to be the causes of his suffering, fails to account for the very thing it intended to explain—namely, the existence of religion. It might account for superstitious dread of malignant beings: it does not account for the grateful worship of benignant beings, nor for the universal satisfaction which man finds in that worship. As we have seen, Dr. Jevons himself had at the outset plainly posited what he now describes as a fallacious assumption. On his prior showing, man's experience of apparent hostility in Nature "first called forth" his belief in supernatural power. The interposed phrase, "was not created but," looks like an after attempt to reconcile the earlier proposition with the later. But there is no real reconciliation, for Dr. Jevons thus sets up only the vain suggestion that the primitive man was from the first conscious of the existence of good supernatural powers but did not think they did him any good—another collapse in countersense—or else the equally unmanageable notion that primitive man recognised helpful supernatural being-, but was not grateful to them for their help.

That the argument has not been scientifically conducted is further clear from the use now of the expression "superstitious dread" as the equivalent of "fear," while "grateful worship" stands for "satisfaction." Why "superstitious dread" and not "superstitious gratitude"? A scientific inquiry will treat the phenomena on a moral par, and will at this stage simply put aside the term "superstition." It is relevant only as imputing a superior degree of gratuitousness of belief (whether by way of fear or of satisfaction) at a comparatively advanced state of culture. To call a savage superstitious when he fears a God, and religious when he thanks one, is not only to warp the "science of religion" at the start, but to block even the purpose in view, for, as we have seen, Dr. Jevons is constrained by his own motive of edification to assume that the benignant God ought by rights to be sometimes feared.

§ 4.

Putting aside as unscientific all such prejudgments, and leaving the professed religionist his personal remedy of discriminating finally between "true" and "false" religion, let us % begin at the beginning by noting that "religious consciousness"

can intelligibly mean only a givendirection of consciousness. And if we are to make any consistent specification of the point at which consciousness begins to be religious, we shall put it impartially in simple animism—the spontaneous surmise, seen to be dimly made or makable even by animals, "that not only animals and plants, but inanimate things, may possess life." Dr. Jevons rightly points out that this primary notion "neither proceeds from nor implies nor accounts for belief in the supernatural"; and he goes on to show (developing here the doctrine which he ultimately repudiates) how the latter notion would arise through man's connecting with certain agencies or "spirits" the frustrative or molestive power "which he had already found to exercise an unexpected and irresistible control over his destiny." "In this way," continues Dr. Jevons, suddenly granting much more than he need or ought, "the notion of supernatural power, which originally was purely negative and manifested itself merely in suspending or counteracting the uniformity of nature, came to have a positive content." From this point, as might have been divined, the argument becomes confused to the last degree. We have been brought to the supernatural as a primitive product of (a) the recognition of irregular and frustrative forces in nature, and (5) the identification of them as personalities or spirits like man. But immediately, in the interests of another preconception, the theorist proceeds in effect to cancel this by arguing that, when men resort to magic, the idea of the supernatural has disappeared. His proposition is that "the belief in the supernatural was prior to the belief in magic, and that the latter, whenever it sprang up, was a degradation or relapse in the evolution of religion," inasmuch as it assumed man's power to control the forces of Nature by certain stratagems. And as he argues at the same time that "religion and magic had different origins, and were always essentially distinct from one another," it is implied that religion began in that belief in a (frustrative) supernatural which is asserted to have preceded magic. That is to say, religion began in the recognition of hostile or dangerous powers.

Now, a logically vigilant investigator would either not have said that belief in a supernatural was constituted by the recognition of hostile personal forces in Nature, or, having said it, would have granted that magic was an effort to circumvent supernatural as well as other forces. Dr. Jevons first credits the early savage with, among other things, a conception of supernatural power which excluded the idea of man's opposition, and then with the power so to transform his first notion as to see in the so-called supernatural merely forms of Nature. An intellectual process achieved in the civilised world only as a long and arduous upward evolution on scientific lines is thus supposed to have been more or less sudden": effected as a mere matter either of ignorant downward drift or of perverse experiment by primeval man, or at least by savage man. It is not easy to be more arbitrary in the way of hypothesis.

Combating the contrary view, which makes magic prior to religion, Dr. Jevons writes:—

To read some writers, who derive the powers of priests (and even of the gods) from those of the magician, and who consider apparently that magic requires no explanation, one would imagine that the savage, surrounded by supernatural powers and a prey to supernatural terrors, one day conceived the happy idea that he too would himself exercise supernatural power—and the thing was done: sorcery was invented, and the rest of the evolution of religion follows without difficulty.