DR. JEVONS ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGION.* THE work which

Dr. Jevons has entitled An Introduction to the History of Religion introduces us, unless we altogether miscalculate the effect of his book, to a new chapter in the history of religion itself,—the concord between anthropology and the beat theological beliefs. For we see that science, not as an opponent, but as an exponent of religion. In his preface the author describes his purpose as an attempt "to summarise the results of recent anthropology, to estimate their bearing upon religious problems, and to weave the whole into a connected history of early religion." And, he adds, "Thus far, then, this book is original, namely, so far as regards the use to which the materials are put; "—a claim which is fully justified by the contents of the volume. The author, as his abundant references to authorities show, is widely and well read in the liters,- ture of his subject. As joint-author of Greek Antiquities (Gardner and Jevons) he has given evidence of rich and accurate classical scholarship. But Dr. Jevons brings to this undertaking other and, for such work, essentially necessary qualifications,—a keenness of metaphysical insight, and a strong logical mind trained and enriched by his philo- sophical studies. The masterly manner in which he utilises the doctrine of attention in his chapter on "The Evolution of Belief," is an instance of the helpfulness of the above endow-

An Introduction to the History of Religion. By F. B. Jevons. M.A.., Litt.D.. Fellow of the University of Durham. London : Methuen and Co. meats. Oar author is an evolutionist ; but with a certain qualification. He is careful, in more places than one, to make it clear that all evolution is not progress :— "It is true that the advance, in religion as in other things, from lower to higher is a process of evolution. It is not true that every process of evolution is an advance : decay is a form of evolution as much as growth. In art that form survives which is best adapted to the taste of the age, and the age may have no taste; or it may have worse taste than the previous age or better, and there will then be a decline or improvement, as the case may be. But decline and improvement are equally part of the evolu- tion in art, for in each case that form survives which is best fitted to survive under the given conditions, though it is not necessarily or always or commonly the highest form of art. In morals and in religion evolution thus may follow a wavering course : first advance, then retrogression ; then perhaps a fresh start is made by those who deviated, and they move in the right direction indeed, but not so accurately for the goal as those who never strayed ; and everywhere it is the many who lapse, the few who bold right on—the progressive peoples of the earth are in the minority."

This position, that the evolution of morals and religion is

only sometimes and not uniformly progressive, finds ample illustration in the developments of taboo, totemism, "fetishism," monotheism, polytheism, and the worship and sacrifice of animals, which are but a few of the subjects dealt with. Taboo, which is regarded as possessing the fundamental ethical sentiment arises from "the fact that among savages universally there are some things which categorically and unconditionally must not be done For, once more, the

essence of taboo is et priori, that without consulting experi- ence it pronounces certain things to be dangerous. Those

things, as a matter of fact, were in a sense not dangerous, and the belief in their danger was irrational. Yet had not that belief existed, there would be now no morality, and, con- sequently, no civilisation." The whole chapter on "Taboo, Morality, and Religion," from which the above is taken, has important bearings on ethical science, taboo being shown to be the expression in " primitive " man of the innate, or necessary, sense that some things ought not to be done,—the "thou shalt

not" of the conscience in an early and unenlightened stage. In fetishism, however, the writer finds a form of evolution which is not progressive, but is a degeneration from religion. In his chapter on this subject he disposes of the supposition that

religion is a development of fetishism, and shows conclusively from the facts of anthropology that fetishism presupposes religion, and is a degraded form of religious ideas of a higher order. The intermediate stage through which this degenera- tion is reached is that of functional deities, which holds so large a place in Egyptian theologies :—

"Polytheism worked with disintegrating effect, and produced functional deities. We meet with them in every quarter of the globe. In Africa, the negro has 'tutelary deities, each of which is for a special purpose. These also are inanimate objects, possessing indwelling spirits. One perhaps watches that no quarrel or division take place,' like the Latin Concordia, 'another may watch over them when dancing or holding a festival, a third may take care of the drums. Each of these minor guardian gods has, as it were, a special duty."

Then having given examples of worship paid to various kinds of useful artieles,—maize, banners, buckles, the sword, razors, scissors, chisel, saw, books, pens, pincers, blow-pipe, plough, &c., because of the functional spirit in them, he adds :— " This kind of worship, therefore, sometimes called fetishism, so far from being the origin of religion, is later than and a degeneration from the original state of things."

The origin of religion is found to be neither in magic, to which it has always been hostile, nor in ancestor-worship, nor is it the invention of priests,—religion "makes the priest, is not made by him ;" nor does it spring from man's fear of the supernatural;—" a god is a friendly power from whom he expects aid and protection, and with whom he seeks com- munion." Dr. Jevons's position, which is strongly fortified by the facts which he adduces, may be gathered from the following statements, but can only be fully appreciated after an examination of his treatment of totemism and sacrifice :—

" We may therefore safely infer that from the beginning Man not only recognised his dependence on a personal and super- natural will, but that he found a peculiar happiness in the recognition. To put it in another way : as the laws of nature were in existence and in operation long before they were formu- lated by man, so before the truth was formulated that God is Love, His love was towards all His creatures ; and as even primitive man acted on the conviction that nature is uniform, so his heart responded with love to the divine love, though he may have reasoned little or not at all on either point. Indeed, the reason of primitive man was ea hypothesi undeveloped ; and, in any case, religious belief is not an inference reached by reason, but is the immediate consciousness of certain facts."

In connection with this it should be stated that Dr Jevons holds that, as primitive man had presented to his "external

consciousness" all the facts of the physical universe, although he did not realise all which science realises to-day, so "there is an ci priori reason why the historian of religion should assume that man, being man, began with a spiritual con- sciousness of the same content as now. There is no reason why he should assume that man began by realising all that was contained in that consciousness." The realisation, or imperfect realisation, of the content of consciousness is accounted for by the measure of attention voluntarily accorded to the facts presented to man's mind.

For an explanation of totemism we must refer the reader to the book itself. Bat in it we find the origin of sacrifice, which was practised, in the first instance, that the worshippers might, by participation in the blood or flesh of the animal in which their god was believed to dwell, enter into communion with him by a sacramental meal. Thus animal sacrifice, while implying a mistaken conception of God, expressed in this its earliest form man's conviction of a need and a possi- bility of a sacramental partaking of his deity. The following passage gives us the author's conclusion :—

"Sacrifice and the sacramental meal which followed on it are institutions which are or have been universal. The sacramental meal wherever it exists testifies to man's desire for the closest union with his god, and to his consciousness of the fact that it is upon such union alone that right social relations with his fellow-man can be set. But before there can be a sacramental meal there must be a sacrifice. That is to say, the whole human race for thousands of years has been educated to the conception that it was only through a divine sacrifice that perfect union with God was possible for man. At times the sacramental conception of sacrifice appeared to be about to degenerate entirely into the gift theory ; but then in the sixth century B.C. the sacramental con- ception woke into new life, this time in the form of a search for a perfect sacrifice—a search which led Clement and Cyprian to try all the mysteries of Greece in vain. But of all the great religions of the world it is the Christian Church alone which is so far heir of all the ages as to fulfil the dumb, dim expectation of mankind : in it alone the sacramental meal commemorates by ordinance of its founder the divine sacrifice which is a propitiation for the sins of all mankind."

What Dr. Jevons has to say on the relation of monotheism to polytheism will be read with peculiar interest. It has been so

generally understood that the theory of evolution as applied to religion necessarily involves the idea that the higher, mono- theism, must have been developed from the lower, polytheism, and so much in the science of anthropology lends countenance to this idea, that it comes to us as somewhat of a surprise to find the opposite opinion so stoutly maintained from the facts of history. Many qualifying and explanatory considerations must necessarily be omitted here; but it may be said generally that the evolution of the belief on the above points began, according to Dr. Jevons, in every instance in a "simple and amorphous monotheism ; " that almost universally, from causes which are noted, it degenerated into animal-worship,

tree-worship, polytheism, fetishism, or pantheism; but that there was also a progressive evolution in one people, at least,

which in return for its direction of attention to the spiritual content of consciousness received that growing revelation, or clearer consciousness, of the one true God which we have in Semitic monotheism. The writer admits, and accounts for, the presence of polytheistic marks in Judaism, and harmonises these facts with his position. There is no case of polytheism developing into monotheism known to the historian; every- thing points the other way :—

"The tendencies which have been supposed in polytheism to make for monotheism have always been purely pantheistic—

speculative rather than practical Pantheism is the philosophical compliment of a pantheon ; but the spirit which produced the monotheism of the Jews must have been something very different."

The evolution of a "simple and amorphous monotheism " into the more perfect form is attributed to the development of the

consciousness of the divine personality, due, as has been said, to the greater attention of some few to the content of con- sciousness. On those who thus attain a faller sense of God it devolves to teach the many,—" of old as at the present day 'the million rose to learn, the one to teach" :—

"It is the minority who teach, who reform religion and impart to it its progress. Religious progress moves wholly on one line, that of personality, and is the unveiling, revealing, disclosure of

what is implied therein. But the divine personality impresses itself unequally on different minds, and it is to those most im- pressed by it that religious progress is due; to them monotheism was disclosed, the divine personality was in their own belief revealed ; and we cannot maintain it to be impossible or even improbable that such revelation may have been made even to primitive man."

These are certainly remarkable conclusions to be deduced from anthropology, and in all this Dr. Jevons writes simply as an historian and philosopher, who has facts and reasons for the foundation of aN he advances. Were he writing as a theologian and with a theological position to defend, we might have supposed be was reading into the state of primitive man his own beliefs ; but this is clearly not the case. We doubt not there are those who will attack his position

with the courage of desperation; but those to whom the earlier chapters of Genesis represent a true tradition of a far-off age, when man walked with God in a sinleseness of soul, will be in no mood to quarrel with the fact that the furthest research into primitive history, if it finds no certain

sign of an Eden life, at least leaves room for this; and, more- over, seems to point to an earlier type of man than history tells of who was, without exaggeration of language, in the image of God.

And here it may be interesting to learn what Dr. Jevons has to say on the Jewish and Chaldasen account of the Creation, &c. In explaining the origin and nature of

mythology he concludes that it is not religion, and that it is not the source of religion. But he regards it as "the source of science, philosophy, poetry, and history." He then proceeds later on to say :— " Mythology is one of the spheres of human activity in which religion may manifest itself, one of the departments of human reason which religion may penetrate, suffuse, and inspire. Hence we may expect that the early narratives, in which the science and poetry, the history and philosophy of early peoples are embodied, will in different peoples differ in religions spirit. For instance, if we grant for a moment that the cosmogonies which appear with such similarity in early Hebrew and Chaldrean records, were a piece of primitive science attempting to account for the consti- tution of the universe, then we have in them a striking example of the vast difference between primitive narratives which are in by the religious spirit and primitive narratives which are not so penetrated. The same considerations will apply to the various narratives of the Flood, or to a comparison of the Paradise of the Book of Genesis with the Babylonians' Garden of Eden or the Persians' Eran Vej. It is the differences in these early nar- ratives, not their resemblances which are important on this view. The resemblances are due to the human reason, which in different places working on the same material comes to similar inferences. The difference which distinguishes the Hebrew from all other primitive narratives testifies that the religious spirit was dealt in larger measure to the Hebrews than to other peoples."

Oar quotations furnish examples only of the kind of con-

clusions at which Dr. Jevons arrives. To have given anything like an adequate idea by quotations of the materials fur- nished as the basis of these would be impossible in the com- pass of a short article. The work will prove of deep interest to the general reader and to the student; and perhaps it may lead some who have asked, Can any good thing come out of anthropology ? to come and see. The work is a very complete and suggestive "Introduction to the History of Religion," and in style is compressed, clear, convincing. A full and minute index adds very materially to its usefulness as a book of reference.