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The following points highlight the two important theories regarding the evolution of religion. The theories are: 1. Animism 2. Naturism.
Theory # 1. Animism:
According to animism, the idea of the soul (anima) is central to religion. Hence the name animism. According to E.B. Tylor, primitive man hit upon the idea of soul because of an error. In his dreams, he walked about various places, engaged in various types of activities and met his dead ancestors even while his body remained in one place.
He deuced from this experience that each individual has a double, another self, which has the power of leaving the body and travelling to distant place. This double is distinguished from the person in several respects.
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“It is more malleable and plastic; for, to leave the body, it must pass out by its apertures, especially the mouth and nose. It is represented as made of matter, but of a matter much more subtitle and ethereal than any which we know empirically. This double is the soul”.
Conceived thus, how did the soul attain the status of a disembodied spirit?
An answer to this question is provided by another error supposed to have been made by primitive men. They thought of death as a prolonged sleep as a result of which the body disintegrated and ceased walking. The soul consequently became disembodied and free and roamed around those who were living. Gradually, the population of spirit souls grew.
It was thought that these spirits had the needs, passions, and interests of living men and were inclined either to aid or to injure their erstwhile living companions. Being ethereal and fluid, these spirits could enter into the bodies of living beings and cause either all sorts of disorders or increase the strength and vitality of the bodies.
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It was assumed that an evil spirit caused the disorders while benign spirit increased the strength and vitality of the body and brought about other wholesome changes.
Primitive men thus found an explanation for all kinds of happenings that varied from the ordinary in terms of the activities of spirits. Illness or some such misfortune was ascribed to the work of evil spirits while good things of life were attributed to the work of benign spirits.
The next step was, therefore, an attempt to conciliate and appease the spirits in order to ensure that they did not harm the living beings. The modus of appeasement took the form of prayers, offerings, sacrifices and other practices. Thus was deity created from a simple conception of a ‘double’ in a human body.
Since death brought about this apotheosis, “it was to the dead, to the souls of the ancestors, that the first cult known to humanity was addressed. Thus the first rites were funeral rights; the first sacrifices were food offerings destined to satisfy the needs of the departed; the first altars were tombs”.
Tylor explained animism by formulating the theory that early men could not distinguish animate from inanimate objects. He endowed all things, even inanimate objects, with human characteristics and hence with souls. It was held that the souls of men governed the affairs of men.
Likewise, it was also held that the soul of other things, including those of tree? and animals, governed the external world—”the flow of rivers, the movement of stars, the germination of plants, the reproduction of animals, etc.”.
Early men were more attracted by these cosmic spirits than by those of his ancestors, because the external things inhabited by spirits were more real to them than the ancestors who existed only in their imagination.
They, therefore, implored the assistance of these spirits with offerings and prayers. Thus came into being a completely animistic view of the world. The ancestor cult was supplemented by a nature-worshipping cult.
Theory # 2. Naturism:
The theory of naturism is associated with the name of Max Muller. He accepted Tylor’s theory of the origin of the conception of soul with the exception that he placed greater emphasis on death as the source rather than on dreams.
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This development was, however, considered by Max Muller as secondary in importance. The source of religious inspiration was to be sought, according to him, in the deep influence exercised by nature in all its varied aspects upon the mind of early man. He actually deified nature.
In the words of Max Muller:
“At first sight, nothing seemed less natural than nature. Nature was the greatest surprise, a terror, a marvel, a standing miracle, and was only on account of their permanence, constancy, and regular recurrence that certain features of that standing miracle were called natural, in the sense of foreseen, common, intelligible. It was that vast domain of surprise, of terror, of marvel, of miracle, the unknown, as distinguished from the known, or as I like to express it, the infinite, as distinct from the finite, which supplied from the earliest times the impulse to religious thought and language”.
Max Muller maintained that an attitude of awe or love and reverence towards objects of nature was born as a result of a ‘diseased’ mind which invested lifeless things with life and all the power that is associated with life. This was brought about by early man’s stupidity again—this time his linguistic confusion.
Such linguistic errors as the sun rises and sets, or thunder sends rain, or that trees bear flowers and fruit, gave rise to belief in some power inherent in the sun, thunder, trees, etc.
“Hence a spirit had to be attributed to the objects in order to account for the acts which were confounded with them in their names. Language thus superimposed upon the material world as revealed to the senses, a new world composed of spiritual beings created out of nothing and felt to be the causes of physical events. Once invented, the vocabulary representing this spirit world was capable of indefinite expansion, so that a pantheon, a hierarchy of deities could be created. The idea of man’s own soul was a secondary growth, and the religion of ancestor worship was a reflection of the more important nature worship”.