Those who, like Professor Tylor, reject the theory that certain savage tribes have no religious belief would probably accept the evidence which Lord Avebury2119 adduces in its favour: only they attach to the word Religion a meaning different from his. Indeed he himself, in one passage,2120 uses the word in Professor Tylor’s sense; for he remarks that ‘one of the lowest forms of religion is that presented by the Australians, which consists of a mere unreasoning belief in the existence of mysterious beings’; and he admits that religion, in this sense, ‘is general to the human race.’2121 Dr. Frazer, however, would apparently refuse to make even this concession. He is, or was, inclined to believe that ‘faith in magic is probably older than a belief in spirits’;2122 for ‘magic is nothing but a mistaken application of the very simplest ... processes of the mind, namely, the association of ideas by virtue of resemblance or contiguity’, while ‘religion assumes the operation of conscious or personal agents, superior to man, behind the visible screen of nature. Obviously,’ he continues, ‘the conception of personal agents is more complex than a simple recognition of the similarity or contiguity of ideas.’2123 I can only say that to me this is not obvious; the fancy of a primitive savage that fire, running water—everything that moves—is alive, is doubtless a less rudimentary mental act than the fear of a horse that a traction-engine is a formidable monster, but the difference is only one of degree.2124 And Dr. Frazer’s definition of magic is singularly narrow: magic and religion were rooted in the same soil; and their branches intertwined.2125

To M. Salomon Reinach also ‘it appears evident that the true primitive savage ... does not believe himself to be surrounded by spirits; he is in the state which Herbert Spencer calls passive atheism ... The most backward primitive savages whom we know are in the neolithic age.... The superstition (de?s?da????a, dread of demons) which dominates their whole existence ... is ... the outcome of a long evolution.’2126 But did not the process begin when the primitive savage, conscious of life, fancied that sun and stars, flood and fire were also alive? And how can M. Reinach make it ‘evident’ that there ever was a savage so primitive that he had no such fancy? It is not true that the most backward savages whom we know, or at least have known, are in the Neolithic Age. The Tasmanians, a hundred years ago, were in their Palaeolithic Age, but they believed themselves to be surrounded by spirits.2127 Lord Avebury indeed affirms that ‘some races entirely disbelieve in the survival of the soul after the death of the body’;2128 nevertheless, if they believe in spiritual beings, they have the germ of religion.

For M. Reinach2129 religion was born at the moment when man, finding himself constrained to do what he feared might offend malignant spirits, began to devise means of conciliating them. But may it not be said with equal truth that the birthday of religion was when man began to form the conception, on which religion, in the ordinary sense, is based, that spiritual beings exist?

M. Reinach has recently pronounced that ‘fire-worship preceded the use of fire, just as the worship of cereals preceded and prepared the way for their cultivation’.2130 One must infer that the ‘true primitive savage’, who, according to M. Reinach, was in a state of ‘passive atheism’, and therefore had not begun to worship fire, had not found out how to produce it. If M. Reinach is right, the ‘passive atheist’ must have been primitive indeed.

Professor Robertson Smith held that ‘religion in the only true sense of the word’ began ‘not with a vague fear of unknown powers, but with a loving reverence for known gods who are knit to their worshippers by strong bonds of kinship’.2131 But it was in the ‘vague fear’ that the ‘loving reverence’ had its germ.

Dr. J. G. Frazer, in a recent article2132, argues that the Australian aborigines have no religion: but by religion he means ‘a propitiation or conciliation of the higher powers’;2133 and he admits that some Australian tribes ‘have a notion of spiritual beings who can help or injure them’.2134 In other words, their belief fulfils Professor Tylor’s ‘minimum definition of religion’; and Professor A. C. Haddon justly remarks that ‘it is doubtful whether more than a few anthropologists of repute would deny the term religion to the beliefs and practices of the Arunta’ of Central Australia.2135