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Leila's Books
The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion
The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion
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Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure.It is also searchable and contains hyper-links to chapters.
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In the first part — the origin of the ideas of ghosts, nature-beings and creators — the ideas of unseen personal beings are traced to four independent sources. (1) States of temporary loss of consciousness, trances, swoons, sleep. (2) Apparitions in sleep, in the hallucinations of fever, of insanity, or otherwise.
Sources one and two constitute the double origin of the belief in ghosts or doubles. (3) The personification of striking natural phenomena, tornadoes, thunder, sudden spring-vegetation, gives rise to the belief in nature-beings. (4) The necessity of a creator is borne in upon the savage at a very early time, not upon every member of a tribe but upon some peculiarly gifted individuals.
The question to be settled by the student of the origin of religion is concerning the lineage of the first gods. Are they descended from ghosts, or are they nature-beings, or creators? The idea of a creator is the one more likely to lead to the establishment of relations definite and influential enough to deserve the name religion. But the descendance of gods need not have been the same in every instance.
In the second part — the original emotion of primitive religious life — a discussion of contending theories leads to the suggestion that the phrases negative religion should be used to designate man's dealings with radically bad spirits and positive religion his relations with fundamentally benevolent ones.
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In the first part — the origin of the ideas of ghosts, nature-beings and creators — the ideas of unseen personal beings are traced to four independent sources. (1) States of temporary loss of consciousness, trances, swoons, sleep. (2) Apparitions in sleep, in the hallucinations of fever, of insanity, or otherwise.
Sources one and two constitute the double origin of the belief in ghosts or doubles. (3) The personification of striking natural phenomena, tornadoes, thunder, sudden spring-vegetation, gives rise to the belief in nature-beings. (4) The necessity of a creator is borne in upon the savage at a very early time, not upon every member of a tribe but upon some peculiarly gifted individuals.
The question to be settled by the student of the origin of religion is concerning the lineage of the first gods. Are they descended from ghosts, or are they nature-beings, or creators? The idea of a creator is the one more likely to lead to the establishment of relations definite and influential enough to deserve the name religion. But the descendance of gods need not have been the same in every instance.
In the second part — the original emotion of primitive religious life — a discussion of contending theories leads to the suggestion that the phrases negative religion should be used to designate man's dealings with radically bad spirits and positive religion his relations with fundamentally benevolent ones.
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