STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF
RELIGION
BY
EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND, F.S.A.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1914
{v}
Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty yearsnone has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study ofthe evolution of human civilization. The reason is apparent: it hasrevolutionized our conception of human history, and has shaken totheir very centre the religious traditions of Europe and civilizedAmerica. The general doctrine of evolution as applied to the universeat large was established shortly after the middle of the nineteenthcentury by Darwin and Spencer. Geology had already revealed theenormous age of the earth, and the long procession of periods throughwhich the flora and fauna had advanced to ever higher organization.Archæology had begun its enquiries into the antiquity of man; but theevidence was not yet fully understood, and its weight or even itsexistence was denied. While theology, after first indignantlyrepudiating the new teachers, was trying with many grimaces toaccommodate itself to their teaching, new lines of investigation wereentered upon in this country and America by Lubbock, Tylor, M‘Lennan,and Morgan. The mental and social development of mankind, the historyof ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpectedillumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very differentoutline of human origins and early history from that which hadhitherto remained almost unquestioned. In a country like ours, wherean established Church {vi} arrogated to itself all social and almostall intellectual influences, and where it was very generally supportedby those who dissented from it on other points in its dogmaticopposition to the results of scientific enquiry, it was natural thatattention should be directed to the bearing of those results ontheology. Anthropology, as the new Science of Man came to be called,was materially assisted in the quarrel by Biblical criticism begun inGermany and popularized in England by Colenso and others. Theauthenticity of the books so long attributed to Moses was questionedand overthrown; they themselves were emptied of all historicalauthority, and put on a level in this respect with the books ofheathen nations. Professor Robertson Smith’s fight for liberty ofcriticism in the Free Church of Scotland roused the enthusiasm even ofmen who did not agree with all his opinions; and when he was finallyejected from his chair at Aberdeen, he was provided with a home firstat Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, and the editorship of theEncyclopædia Britannica. Thus unmuzzled, he devoted himself to thestudy of Semitic religion and customs on the largest scale and in themost unbiassed spirit. Unfortunately, his health gave way; and twoprecious volumes are well-nigh all that has reached us of his labours.But his influence at Cambridge, and particularly over a youngerfellow-countryman to whom we owe The Golden Bough, was of a mostfruitful character. To the impulse he gave is to be tracedmuch—perhaps more than we suspect—of what anthropology hasaccomplished in various directions during the last five-and-twentyyears.
Meanwhile revolt against false interpretation of known facts andinadequate methods of enquiry had spread elsewhere. Professor MaxMüller, by his unsurpassed {vii} powers of exposition, his eloquenceand his wide knowledge of the Arya