Ritual and Belief Studies in the History of Religion

Sidney Hartland

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Excerpt: Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years none has awakened a more widespread interest than that...

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Excerpt: Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years none has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study of the evolution of human civilization. The reason is apparent: it has revolutionized our conception of human history, and has shaken to their very centre the religious traditions of Europe and civilized America. The general doctrine of evolution as applied to the universe at large was established shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century by Darwin and Spencer. Geology had already revealed the enormous age of the earth, and the long procession of periods through which the flora and fauna had advanced to ever higher organization. Archæology had begun its enquiries into the antiquity of man; but the evidence was not yet fully understood, and its weight or even its existence was denied. While theology, after first indignantly repudiating the new teachers, was trying with many grimaces to accommodate itself to their teaching, new lines of investigation were entered upon in this country and America by Lubbock, Tylor, M?Lennan, and Morgan. The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned.