Recent years have brought rich additions to the materials for thestudy of early religion, ritual, magic, and myth. In proportion to theabundance of information has been the growth of theory and hypothesis.The first essay in this collection, 'Science and Superstition,' pointsout the danger of allowing too ingenious and imaginative hypotheses tolead captive our science.
As, like others, I have not long since advanced a provisional theoryof my own, the second and third essays are designed to strengthen myposition. The theory is that perhaps the earliest traceable form ofreligion was relatively high, and that it was inevitably lowered intone during the process of social evolution. Obviously this opinion maybe attacked from two sides. It may be said that the loftier religiousideas of the lowest savages are borrowed from Christianity or Islam.This I understand to be the theory of Mr. E. B. Tylor. It is with muchdiffidence that I venture, at present, to disagree with so eminent andsagacious an authority, while awaiting the publication of Mr. Tylor'sAberdeen Gifford Lectures. My reply to his hypothesis, so far as it hasbeen published by him, will be found in the second essay, 'The Theoryof Loan-Gods.' Secondly, my position may be attacked by disabling theevidence for the existence of the higher elements in the religion oflow savages. Mr. Frazer,[Pg vi] in the second edition of his 'Golden Bough,'has advanced an hypothesis of the origin of religion, wherein theevidence for the higher factors is not taken into account. Probablyhe may consider the subject in a later work, to which he alludes inhis Preface. 'Should I live to complete the works for which I havecollected and am collecting materials, I dare to think that they willclear me of any suspicion of treating the early history of religionfrom a single narrow point of view.'[1]
Meanwhile, however, Mr. Frazer has advanced a theory of the origin ofreligion wherein evidence which I think deserving of attention receivesno recognition. I hope, therefore, that it is not premature to statethe evidence, or some of it, which I do in the third essay, 'Magic andReligion.'
Fourth comes a long criticism of Mr. Frazer's many hypotheses, whichare combined into his theory of the origin, or partial origin, of thebelief in the divine character of Christ. This argument demands veryminute, and, I fear, tedious examination. I fear still more that mylabour has not, after all, been sufficiently minute and accurate. Itseems to be almost impossible to understand clearly and representfairly ideas with which one does not agree. If I have failed in theserespects it is unconsciously, and I shall gratefully accept criticismenabling me to recognise and correct errors.
Fifthly, I examine, in 'The Ghastly Priest,' Mr. Frazer's theory ofthe Golden Bough of Virgil as connected with the fugitive slave whowas 'King of the Wood' near Aricia. I offer a conjecture as to theorigin of his curious position, which seems to me simpler, and not lessprobable, than Mr. Frazer's hypothesis that this outcast 'lived anddied as an incarnation of the supreme[Pg vii] Aryan god, whose life was inthe mistletoe or golden bough.' But my conjecture is only a guess at aproblem which, I think, we have not the means of solving.
There follow an essay,