There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts. And the Fetishism, Ancestor-worship, Hero-worship, and Demonology of primitive savages are all, I believe, different manners of expression of their belief in ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-way events which is its concomitant. Witchcraft and sorcery are the practical expressions of these beliefs; and they stand in the same relation to religious worship as the simple anthropomorphism of children or savages does to theology.
I do not quote myself with any intention of making a claim to originality in putting forth this view; for I have since discovered that the same conception is virtually contained in the great _Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle_ of Bossuet, now more than two centuries old:--
Le culte des hommes morts faisoit presque tout le fond de l'idolâtrie: presque tous les hommes sacrifioient aux mânes, { 160} c'est-à-dire aux âmes des morts. De si anciennes erreurs nous font voir à la vérité combien étoit ancienne la croyance de l'immortalité de l'âme, et nous montrent qu'elle doit être rangée parmi les premières traditions du genre humain. Mais l'homme, qui gâtoit tout, en avoit étrangement abusé, puisqu'elle le portoit à sacrifier aux morts. On alloit même jusqu'à cet excès, de leur sacrifier des hommes vivans: on tuoit leurs esclaves, et même leurs femmes, pour les aller servir dans l'autre monde.[39]
Among more modern writers J. G. Müller, in his excellent _Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen_ (1855), clearly recognises "gespensterhafter Geisterglaube" as the foundation of all savage and semi-civilised theology, and I need do no more than mention the important developments of the same view which are to be found in Mr. Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, and in the writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer, especially his recently-published _Ecclesiastical Institutions_.[40]
It is a matter of fact that, whether we direct our attention to the older conditions of civilised societies, in Japan, in China, in Hindostan, in Greece, or in Rome,[41] we find underlying all other theological notions the belief in ghosts, with its inevitable concomitant sorcery; and a primitive cult in the shape of a worship of ancestors, which is essentially an attempt to please, or appease, their ghosts. The { 161} same thing is true of old Mexico and Peru, and of every semi-civilised or savage people who have developed a definite cult; and in those who, like the natives of Australia, have not even a cult, the belief in, and fear of, ghosts is as strong as anywhere else. The most clearly demonstrable article of the theology of the Israelites in the eleventh and twelfth centuries B.C. is therefore simply the article which is to be found in all primitive theologies, namely, the belief that a man has a soul which continues to exist after death for a longer or shorter time, and may return, as a ghost, with a divine, or at least demonic, character, to influence for good or evil (and usually for evil) the affairs of the living. But the correspondence between the old Israelitic and other archaic forms of theology extends to details. If, in order to avoid all chance of direct communication, we direct our attention to the theology of semi-civilised people, such as the Polynesian Islanders, separated by the greatest possible distance, and by every conceivable barrier, from the inhabitants of Palestine, we shall find not merely that all the features of old-Israelitic theology, which are revealed in the records cited, are found among them; but that extant information as to the inner mind of these people tends to remove many of the difficulties which those who have not studied anthropology find in the Hebrew narrative.