The Making of Religion

I now give Miss Angus's version of this case, as originally received from her (December 1897). I had previously received an oral version, from a person present at the scrying. I...

'About ten minutes past [to?] twelve on Friday night, I was met in Bridge Street by Buck Ford, and Joe's brother, Tom White and Dr. Lloyd. Tom said to me, "Will you go with us t...

'The session clerk at Dull, a small village in Perthshire, was ill, and my grandfather, clergyman there at the time, had to do duty for him. One fine summer evening, about 7 o'c...

Thus, on looking at relatively advanced races, we find them worshipping polytheistic deities and ghosts of the kings just dead, who are often propitiated by terrible massacres o...

As to crystal-gazing, when the gazer is talking, laughing, chatting, making experiments in turning the ball, changing the light, using prisms and magnifying-glasses, dropping ma...

Probably Mr. Strachey's narrative justifies, by analogy, our suspicion of Major Ellis's theory that the African Supreme Being is of European origin. The purpose in the Ahone-Oke...

Any one who can accept the assurance of my personal belief in the good faith of all concerned will see how very useful this faculty of crystal-gazing must be to the Apache or Au...

All speculation on the curly history of religion is apt to end in the endeavour to see how far the conclusions can be made to illustrate the faith of Israel. Thus, the theorist...

The question thus arises, Is there any truth whatever in these world-wide and world-old stories of inanimate objects acting like animated things? Has fetishism one of its origin...

[Footnote 24: In Mr. Carr's work, _The Australian Race_, reports of 'godless' natives are given, for instance, in the Mary River country and in Gippsland. These reports are usua...

On this examination of the evidence, it certainly seems as logical to conjecture that the Zulus had once such an idea of a Supreme Being as lower races entertain, and then nearl...

We, at least, are not slaves to the idea that 'the laws of exact science' must be the only laws at work in the world. Science, however exact, does not pretend to have discovered...

It may be needful, too, to point out once again another weak point in all reasoning about savage religion, namely that we cannot always tell what may have been borrowed from Eur...

I hope you will permit me to lay at the feet of the University of St. Andrews, in acknowledgment of her life-long kindnesses to her old pupil, these chapters on the early Histor...

This distinction, ghost on one side--original being, not a man, not a ghost of a man, on the other--is radical and nearly universal in savage religion. Anthropology, neglecting...

What I had to say, by way of withdrawal, qualification, explanation, or otherwise, I inserted (in order to seize the earliest opportunity) in the Introduction to the recent edit...

Garcilasso corrects Christoval. Uiracocha saw the apparition, as Père Acosta rightly says, and Yupanqui was _not_ the son but the grandson of this Inca Uiracocha.[28] Uiracocha'...

On any such theories as these the belief in a moral Supreme Being is a very late (or a very early?) result of evolution, due to the action of advancing thought upon the original...

Polytheism everywhere--in Greece especially--held of the animistic conception, with its freakish, corruptible deities. Greek philosophy could hardly restore that Eternal for who...

'Two sawyers, Frank Philps and Jack Mulholland, were engaged cutting timber for the Rev. R. Maunsell at the mouth of the Awaroa creek--a very lonely place, a vast swamp, no peop...

'The most convincing things said about my own immediate household were either very intimate or very trivial. Unfortunately the former things cannot well be published. Of the tri...

In all that he says on this point, the point of psychical condition, Mr. Tylor is writing about known savages as they differ from ourselves. But the savages who _ex hypothesi_ e...

If Dr. Charcot had believed in what the French call _suggestion mentale_-- suggestion by thought-transference (which I think he did not)--he could have explained the healing of...

That origin anthropology explains as the result of early and fallacious reasonings on a number of biological and psychological phenomena, both normal and (as is alleged by savag...

Every theorist will force facts into harmony with his system, but I do not see that the Chinese facts are contrary to mine. On the highest plane is either a personal Supreme Bei...

To the psychologist who objects that our modern instances are mere anecdotes, we reply by asking, 'Dear sir, what are _your_ modern instances? What do you know of "Mrs. A.," who...

Our primitive state, before the enormous competition of other memories and new sensations set in, would thus be a state of hallucination. Our normal present condition, in which...

As regards the sacrifices to Jehovah, the sweet savour which he was supposed to enjoy (contrary to the opinion of the Prophets), these sacrifices afford the best presumption tha...

The celebrated traveller, Mungo Park, who visited Africa in 1805, had good opportunities of understanding the natives. He did not hurry through the land with a large armed force...

Since the chapter on crystal-gazing was in type, a work by Dr. Pierre Janet has appeared, styled 'Les Névroses et les Idées Fixes.'[1] It contains a chapter on crystal-gazing. T...

The Master's reasonings are such as, in hearing similar anecdotes, must have occurred to Scott. They no longer represent our views. The death and apparition were coincidental al...

Jehovah, theories of, 258, 260, 268 as a Moral Supreme Being, 268 anthropological theory of the origin of Jehovah-worship, 270 absence of ancestor-worship from the Hebrew tradit...