Primitive religions : being an introduction to the study of religions, with an account of the religious beliefs of uncivilised peoples, Confucianism, Taoism (China), and Shintoism (Japan) / by G.T. Bettany.

  • Bettany, G. T. (George Thomas), 1850-1891.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Primitive religions : being an introduction to the study of religions, with an account of the religious beliefs of uncivilised peoples, Confucianism, Taoism (China), and Shintoism (Japan) / by G.T. Bettany. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    divination, exorcism, etc. Many of these spirits are,—for what reason it is difficult to say,—held to be those of human beings, living or deceased ; and thus the appeasing of their anger or securing of their propitious action has been combined with rites for or in connection with death. And here we have one of the springs, though probably not the only one, of the widely-extended ancestor-worship, Ancestor- especially that of powerful men or leaders of worship, tribes. These men were conspicuous for their qualities while alive; and their souls are judged to possess the same great or powerful qualities (sometimes malignant) after death. Thus they must be revered and propitiated, or- appeased, in the manner judged most desii’able or suc- cessful. Nature worship in its infinite variety of forms arises from the belief in spirits animating everything, or from Nature a reverence for the inexplicable powers at work worship. in the woi’ld. A flood bearing away with irre- sistible force the works of man, the fire which in torrid climates burns up vegetation and devours man and beast, the lightning which kills in the twinkling of an eye, the sun which prostrates at noonday, all these were mysteries which we cannot be surprised that man in a low state of civilisation should worship. Nor is it astonishing to find that these spirits are classified into good and evil, favourable and malignant, or that the phenomena of the universe are attributed to great antagonistic powers of good and evil deities. By whatever influence it arises, we shall see how, in communities worshipping many gods, some one has gained pre-eminence, while in others, it may be, one of the tribal gods or the single god worshipped by the tribe has later been conceived as the universal God. Anthropomorphism (Greek, anthropos, man, morphe, form) is in religion the representation of the Deity as Anthropo- having the form and performing the actions morphism, of a man, or in a similar way to a man. And. it may be extended to every case where a spirit, more than human or other than human, is represented as like a man or as acting like a man in any way. The term