This is, essentially, the maxim of modern ethnology. The religiosity of man is a part of his psychical being. In the nature and laws of the human mind, in its intellect, sympathies, emotions, and passions, lie the well-springs of all religions, modern or ancient, Christian or heathen. To these we must refer, by these we must explain, whatever errors, falsehoods, bigotry, or cruelty have stained man’s creeds and cults: to them we must credit whatever truth, beauty, piety, and love have hallowed and glorified his long search for the perfect and the eternal.
If this opinion of the place of religion in ethnology is correct, we should not expect to find any considerable number of men, in the present epoch of the race’s development, devoid of some form of worship and belief.
The fact is that there has not been a single tribe, no matter how rude, known in history or visited by travellers, which has been shown to be destitute of religion, under some form.
The contrary of this has been asserted by various modern writers of weight, for example by Herbert Spencer and Sir John Lubbock, not from their own observation, for neither ever saw a savage tribe, but from the reports of travellers and missionaries.
I speak advisedly when I say that every assertion to this effect when tested by careful examination has proved erroneous.[22]
What led to such a mistaken opinion is easily seen. The missionaries would not recognise as religion the beliefs which were so different from and inferior to their own. The god of the heathens was to them no god whatever. When they heard stories of ghosts, magic, and charms, they spurned these as old wives’ fables, and confidently proclaimed that the tribe had no religion. Thus it was with those who first worked in South Africa. They returned and proclaimed that atheism was “endemic” among the tribes of that region. Later observers, acquainting themselves with the languages of the Blacks, found an ample mythology and an extensive ritual of worship.[23]
Another example may be quoted from a recent description of the Motu tribe of New Guinea. The writer, a missionary, denies that they have any religion whatever; but immediately proceeds to describe their numerous “superstitious” rites, their belief in spirits, their ceremonial law, etc.![24]