48 RELIGION AND CULTURE

Contemporary “‘savages” have lived as long as civilized races,

and are nothing like primitive man. (1885:111).
Indeed, although Miller is an evolutionist, he does not equate
contemporary nonliterates with prehistoric man. His theory was
rooted in linguistic reconstructions, and if these were often
spurious and wrongly applied, the method itself was not to
blame. The errors he made were those inherent in the nineteenth-
century intellectual climate, with its interest in absolute origins,
its confidence in the historical method and in the possibility of
reconstructing the past, and its lack of experience in applying
scientific methods to the humanities.
The great American anthropologist-linguist Edward Sapir
(1884-1939) continued to use linguistics as a tool for the analysis
of religion, but his aim was more modest and therefore more
realistic than Miiller’s: namely, to show patterns of diffusion.
One example he cited was that of the Nootka Indians, who per-
formed a ritual in which the wolf plays a central role. The
ritual is called tlokwana, a word foreign to the Nootka language.
The neighboring Kwakiutl Indians, Sapir found, also have a wolf
ritual, called dlogwala, a term indigenous in Kwakiutl language.
Because of similarities between the two terms, Sapir concluded
that at least certain elements of the Kwakiutl ritual, together
with its name, had been taken over by the Nootka (Sapir, 1949:
446-48).

RATIONALISTIC THEORIES

Rationalism is the acceptance of human reason as the ultimate

source of knowledge. Applied to the nineteenth-century study of
religion, it meant the conviction that prehistoric man reasoned
out his beliefs in an almost scientific manner, but arrived at the
wrong conclusions because he lacked knowledge and experience
and the opportunity for scientific observation.
It is quite unwarranted to attribute to early man the same kind
of scientific curiosity as modern man. Human cultures differ
not in terms of mental capacity but in the type of questions that
are culturally important. Rationalistic explanations of the origin
of religion are, moreover, necessarily speculative. Most nineteenth-
 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 49

century writers attempted to describe how they themselves would

have reasoned if they were “‘primitive’’ and did not yet know
anything about religion or science. Their arguments are not
only a priori, but they fail to account for the fact that the
beliefs and practices based upon such “fallacious” reasoning
are still held by many literate people of our own day and age.

Edward Burnett Tylor

Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) was a rationalist in the
sense just described. His minimum definition of religion was
“the belief in Spiritual Beings,” and he called this early belief
animism. Like Max Miiller, he felt that the belief in spiritual
beings derived from the concept of the soul. His theories and
doctrines were backed up by illustrations from contemporary
cultures, both nonliterate and literate. He explained the beliefs
and practices in literate cultures as survivals from earlier times.
“Survivals,” in Tylor’s terminology, were cultural habits which
had lost their original meaning and purpose, but were retained
from the force of habit.
Tylor’s scheme of the origin and development of religion is a
logical construction, but it is a creation of his own mind and
without proof. He begins by stating that animism consists of two
great dogmas, one concerning the souls of individual creatures
capable of continued existence after death, and the other con-
cerning other spirits, including powerful deities (1958:II, 10).
Early men were deeply impressed by the difference between a
living body and a dead one, and the causes of waking, sleep,
trance, disease, and death. They concluded that man had not
only a material body but also life and a phantom. Life enabled
the body to feel and think and act; the phantom was its image or
second self. Both were separable from the body: life went away
at death, the phantom could appear to people at a distance. Since
life and phantom appeared connected, prehistoric man combined
the two, and together they became the “apparitional soul.”’ This
soul sometimes left the body during sleep, wandering to distant
places and appearing to other people in their dreams. After
death, the soul left the body permanently. But since the dead
also appeared in dreams, acting as if they were alive, the belief
grew up that the ghost-soul continued to live after the death of
the body. This belief in souls was easily extended to include
50 RELIGION AND CULTURE

animals, plants, and inanimate objects since they, too, pagel

in dreams.
Tylor realized, however, that a mere belief in souls does not
constitute religion. Religion becomes a social institution only if
the beliefs give rise to communal ritual. The transition from
belief to action took place, according to Tylor, because early man
recognized that the ghost-soul is superior to the body. The soul,
the principle of life, survives the body, has physical power, can
flash swiftly from place to place. After death, the ghost-souls
became manes, and the living first admired their powers and
then began to worship them. According to Tylor, the principles
of manes worship are not difficult to understand:
The dead ancestor, now passed into a deity, simply goes on
protecting his own family and receiving suit and service from
them as of old; the dead chief still watches over his own
tribe, still holds the authority by helping friends and harm-
ing enemies, still rewards the right and sharply punishes
the wrong (zbzd.:199).
Once having established the origin of religion, Tylor continues
to outline its development by a number of successive theories
which he calls “doctrines.” According to the “doctrine of Con-
tinuance,” the idea that departed souls and spirits must reside
somewhere gave rise to the belief in an after life. The “doctrine
of Embodiment” accounts for the fact that souls and spirits, free
to flit around in the world, can also enter other bodies and
objects at will. This in turn leads to the “doctrine of Possession”’:
when an evil or foreign spirit enters a person, it will make him
ill, and from this it logically follows that man will resort to
exorcism (ibid.:209-28).
The beliefs in embodiment and possession give rise to the
“doctrine of Fetishism.” Since spirits are believed capable of
entering material objects, such objects acquire a special power
and are treated as having personal consciousness. They are
carried around to fend off enemies and disease, manipulated to
man’s advantage, and worshipped. Fetishism becomes idolatry
when a fetish object is altered in a material way to indicate its
special function as the residence for a spirit. It then becomes an
idol, combining the properties of a portrait or image with those
of a fetish, and it takes on a human personality (¢bzd.:255). The
 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 51

spirits now become the personal forces of the world and of nature
(tbid.:270). All nature becomes possessed, pervaded, crowded
with spiritual beings, both good and evil. Spirits are then
elevated to the rank of gods—of the forests, the earth, the water,
the sky, and later also of agriculture, of war and peace, of
childbirth, and life and death. This is the great stage of polythe-
ism.
When there are so many different gods, they cannot possibly
all be of the same rank and importance. A hierarchy soon
emerges, with one god becoming the supreme deity. All minor
gods and spirits recede in the background and finally disappear
altogether in the last stage of development, monotheism.
The rationalistic concepts of Tylor are implicit in this scheme.
Religion is explained as an intellectual effort which has no
other purposes than to understand biological events and natural
phenomena. Early man is a logician, analyzing the universe, but
coming to wrong conclusions.
Tylor’s approach is also individualistic, which means that he
attempts to explain religion as individual action rather than as
a social phenomenon. Such treatment leaves many questions
unanswered. Individual experience differs according to sex, age,
status and personality. How do these variant experiences become
unified, and so strong a social force? Also, if religious activities
are individual experiences, why do other members of the group
accept them? W. Goode neatly summed up Tylor’s shortcomings:
The rationalistic approach, then, fails to take into account
the emotional, obligatory character of these beliefs and
practices. The individualistic approach fails in its attempts
to explain the integrative character of religion, as well as the
integrated character of the social structure. This means,
concretely, failing to see the close connection between
religious activities and the moral aspects of behavior. In
addition, this means that Tylor does not see religion as
analytically necessary. There is merely evidence that religion
is a universal social phenomenon, an entirely different mat-
ter (Goode, 1951:244).
Herbert Spencer
The same criticisms hold true for the theories of Herbert
Spencer (1820-1903). His approach was similar to Tylor’s even
52 RELIGION AND CULTURE

if his conclusions were apparently independently reached. The

principal difference was that Spencer stressed the belief in ghosts,
and felt that the concept of a personal soul was a much later
development. According to Spencer, the changes that occur in
nature—from night into day, from sunshine to storm, from
winter to summer—must have suggested to early man a basic
duality in nature. By extension, man posits a duality in his own
nature, a notion reinforced by dreams and swoons. Death is first
seen as a temporary absence of the ghost from the body, and
reanimation, the belief in the return of the ghost to the de-
ceased body, is one of the earliest forms of religion. Reanimation
explains the concern of nonliterate peoples with the protection
of the body after death, and gives rise to such burial practices
as embalming and the provision of food, implements, and clothing
for the deceased. When it became clear that the dead never come
back to life, man concluded that the ghosts must inhabit another
world, and only then did the concept of a soul come into being.
The ancestral spirits were believed to live in a world separate
from, but similar to, that of the living. When man became more
sophisticated about natural events, and asked for their causes,
the ancestral spirit world became the logical choice for a
reasonable explanation. In this manner, spirits become important
to man, since they can control life and death as well as bring
sickness and health, abundance or poverty. The ghosts become
gods, and they are feared. Since they retain their human
character, and their human needs and vanities, they can be
influenced by offerings, sacrifices, flattery, and propitiation. Thus
the demand arises for specialists in the art of ritual: medicine
men and priests, who themselves often assume supernatural
properties (1885:I, 411).

Andrew Lang and R. R. Marett

The evolutionary schemes of Tylor and Spencer attracted a
great deal of attention, and inevitably invited criticism. Among
those who accepted parts of Tylor’s theories and attacked others
were two of his own pupils, Andrew Lang and R. R. Marett.
Andrew Lang (1844-1912) agreed with Tylor that a belief in
souls may well have arisen from dreams and visions, but he
refused to accept the idea that gods developed from notions of
ghosts and spirits. Lang pointed out that a number of extremely
 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 53

simple tribes had a conception of a moral and all-powerful

creator-god, a supreme deity. Moreover, in many cases the su-
preme being is not thought of as a spirit, but as a person. He
considered it unlikely that the conception of God had evolved
from that of ghosts (1898:2). Rather, Lang believed that available
evidence pointed to monotheism as preceding animism, the latter
representing a corruption and degeneration of the original con-
cept.
R. R. Marett (1866-1943), Tylor’s successor at Oxford, argued
along different lines. He, too, denied that animism was the
earliest stage of religion. Following Tylor’s own reasoning that
whatever was simplest was also likely to be earliest in develop-
ment, Marett posited a pre-animistic stage where belief in mana
prevailed. Mana, a Polynesian word, refers to an impersonal,
nonanthropomorphized power. Marett felt that a belief in mana
is much simpler than the ideas of phantom, soul, and spirit, and
it must thus have preceded animism. Earliest man simply recog-
nized the powers present in nature or in certain objects, and
reacted with emotions of awe, fear, wonder, respect, and admira-
tion. These feelings were not so much thought out as danced out
(1909:xxxi). Marett calls the belief in mana animatism.

Sir James George Frazer

Within the latter part of what Lowie calls the “Tylorian
period” fall the theories of Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941).
While Tylor, Spencer, and Lang conceived of early man as a
kind of philosopher, and Marett saw him as a creature swayed
by his emotions, Frazer wrote:
Primitive man looks at the world from such a different point
of view from us, that what seems simple and obvious to us
almost certainly did not seem so to him; and vice versa what
seems simple and obvious to him is almost always so entirely
remote from our ways of thought that we should never have
dreamt of it. Accordingly, any explanations of the origin of
religion or society which commend themselves to us as en-
tirely argeeable to reason ought always, in my opinion, to be
regarded with the greatest distrust. (Quoted by Kardiner and
Preble, 1963:81.)
54 RELIGION AND CULTURE

Frazer was indeed a rationalist of a different order. According

to him, man passes through three stages of intellectual develop-
ment: from magic to religion to science.
During the magical period man was not yet reasonable, but
merely superstitious. Reason gave rise to religion, and later also
to science. Magic was a kind of pseudoscience by which early
man attempted to manipulate nature. His attempts were based
upon erroneous correlations betweeri cause and effect. The two
fallacious “laws’’ underlying magic were the “law of similarity”
and the “law of contact or contagion.” The law of similarity
presupposes that “like produces like” or “effect resembles cause,”
and the application of this principle is what Frazer calls homeo-
pathic magic. His best-known example is the injury or destruc-
tion of an image resembling an enemy in the belief that the
person it is modeled upon will suffer the same effects. The law
of contact or contagion implies that things which have once
been in contact continue to act upon each other, and the type
of magic associated with this principle is known as contagious
magic. When a person takes possession of the hair- or nail-cut-
tings of an enemy, or anything else that has been part of his
body, he believes he has acquired the power to harm their former
owner.
Both “laws” derive from a false conception of natural law
(1959:7), and are the basis of all magical ceremonies and spells.
The magician does not supplicate any higher supernatural
power; he feels that he himself can control nature. Such beliefs
and actions, Frazer believes, cannot possibly be equated with
religion.
Religion is not a continuation of magic, but a departure
from it. When man began to realize that he was not quite so
powerful, that magic did not always have the desired results, it
occurred to him that there must be higher powers: demons,
ancestor spirits, or gods. Religion was born when man appealed
to these higher beings with offerings and sacrifices. It could emerge
only after man had reached a state of higher intelligence—when
he could reason correctly and recognize the errors of his past.
Frazer’s evolutionary scheme is more contrary to fact than any
other theory discussed so far. Tylor and others used ethnographic
materials to support their theories, although they erred in their
 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION 55

chronologies and time perspectives. Frazer, however, misin-

terpreted the data themselves. Ethnological evidence shows
clearly that religion and magic do not exist as separate categories.
Even in the religions of literate civilizations magical elements
appear side by side with worship and supplication. In non-
literate societies, magical rites are commonly carried out in a
spirit of reverence and respect and involve a belief in gods and
deities.
Nevertheless, Frazer’s treatment of magic and religion con-
tributed to the understanding of these topics and inspired much
later research. He brought religion into relation with political
organization by attempting to prove that early kings were often
magicians and priests. There must have been, according to Frazer,
early specialists in the art of magic, one of whose significant
functions was weather control—especially the insurance of an
adequate rainfall. These rainmakers became important in early
nonliterate societies, and some of them attained the positions of
chiefs or kings, or even were regarded as gods (ibid.:54, 61).
Assessments of Frazer’s contributions must account for the fact
that he was never very interested in theories. He was an evolu-
tionist and a firm believer in comparative method, but he did
not explicitly state his own position. He was most fascinated by
facts, which he collected from field reports of ethnologists and
travelers. He also sent out questionnaires, but never did field-
work. In the preface to the third edition of The Golden Bough
he says:
.. it is the fate of theories to be washed away . . . and I
am not so presumptuous as to expect or desire for mine an
exemption from the common lot. I hold them all very
lightly, and have used them chiefly as convenient pegs on
which to hang my collection of facts.

Frazer is best known for his thirteen-volume The Golden

Bough (1890-1915), but he also wrote on a variety of topics of
interest to anthropology, including burial customs, totemism,
exogamy, taboo, folklore, and the fear of death. The amount of
ethnographic material he amassed and used is truly awe-inspir-
ing, but much of it is unreliable, and not placed within its proper
cultural framework.