Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

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There is nothing to lead us to suppose that primitive man had felt the existence of a principle higher than nature. There is much to indicate that what we mean by religious feeling was not known to him; but the aspect of the question undergoes a change if by religious sentiment we understand belief in invisible spirits, for this belief was universal. This is natural; as soon as certain faculties of the imagination awoke in man, such as astonishment, curiosity, he would seek to understand all that passed around him; his first idea would be that all the phenomena in nature would proceed from the presence inherent in them of a power compelling to action in the same way as man feels himself obliged to act. This belief in the course of age would easily tend towards fetishism, then to polytheism and finally to monotheism; it would simultaneously inculcate many strange superstitions, of which some produced terrible effects, such as the sacrifice of human lives to a powerful being eager for human blood, since savages readily attribute to these superior powers the desire for vengeance as well as all the other evil passions they themselves possess.