Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- ‘Anthropology and Ancient Literature’, The Academy (10 March 1883)
- ‘Fetichism and the Infinite’, Custom and Myth (1884)
- ‘Anthropology and Religion’ I, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘On Religion’, from The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘Science and Superstition’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘First-Fruits and Taboos’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘Australian Problems’, Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of his 75th Birthday (1907)
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
‘Anthropology and Religion’ I, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
from 4 - ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME
- CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS OF ANDREW LANG
- A NOTE ON THE TEXT
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 1 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE
- 2 ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLKLORE
- 3 FAIRY TALES
- 4 ANTHROPOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINS OF RELIGION
- ‘Anthropology and Ancient Literature’, The Academy (10 March 1883)
- ‘Fetichism and the Infinite’, Custom and Myth (1884)
- ‘Anthropology and Religion’ I, The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘On Religion’, from The Making of Religion, 2nd edition (1900)
- ‘Science and Superstition’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘First-Fruits and Taboos’, Magic and Religion (1901)
- ‘Australian Problems’, Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor in Honour of his 75th Birthday (1907)
- 5 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- 6 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
- APPENDIX I: NAMES FREQUENTLY CITED BY LANG
- APPENDIX II: ETHINIC GROUPS CITED BY LANG
- EXPLANATORY NOTES
- Index
Summary
Anthropology is concerned with man and what is in man – humani nihil a se alienum putat. These researches, therefore, are within the anthropological province, especially as they bear on the prevalent anthropological theory of the Origin of Religion. By ‘religion’ we mean, for the purpose of this argument, the belief in the existence of an Intelligence, or Intelligences not human, and not dependent on a material mechanism of brain and nerves, which may, or may not, powerfully control men's fortunes and the nature of things. We also mean the additional belief that there is, in man, an element so far kindred to these Intelligences that it can transcend the knowledge obtained through the known bodily senses, and may possibly survive the death of the body. These two beliefs at present (though not necessarily in their origin) appear chiefly as the faith in God and in the Immortality of the Soul.
It is important, then, to trace, if possible, the origin of these two beliefs. If they arose in actual communion with Deity [sic] (as the first at least did, in the theory of the Hebrew Scriptures), or if they could be proved to arise in an unanalysable sensus numinis, or even in ‘a perception of the Infinite’ (Max Müller), religion would have a divine, or at least a necessary source. To the Theist, what is inevitable cannot but be divinely ordained, therefore religion is divinely preordained, therefore, in essentials, though not in accidental details, religion is true. The atheist, or non-theist, of course draws no such inferences.
But if religion, as now understood among men, be the latest evolutionary form of a series of mistakes, fallacies, and illusions, if its germ be a blunder, and its present form only the result of progressive but unessential refinements on that blunder, the inference that religion is untrue – that noth ing actual corresponds to its hypothesis – is very easily drawn. The inference is not, perhaps, logical, for all our science itself is the result of progressive refinements upon hypotheses originally erroneous, fashioned to explain facts misconceived. Yet our science is true, within its limits, though very far from being exhaustive of the truth. In the same way, it might be argued, our religion, even granting that it arose out of primitive fallacies and false hypotheses, may yet have been refined, as scie
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- The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew LangAnthropology, Fairy Tale, Folklore, The Origins of Religion, Psychical Research, pp. 177 - 188Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015