James Henry Leuba

“ When I said that fear need not have been the original religious emotion, I had in mind the possibility of groups of primitive men having lived in circumstances so favourable to peace and safety that fear was not very often present with them. This is not a preposterous supposition. Wild men need not, any more than wild animals, have found themselves so situated as to be kept in a constant state of fright. ”

“ The place of fear in primitive Religion is, then, due not to its intrinsic qualities, but simply to circumstances which made it appear first as a well-organised emotion vitally connected with the maintenance of life. It is for exactly the same reason that the dominant emotion in the relations of uncivilised men with each other, and still more evidently so, of wild animals with each other, is usually that of fear. ”

“ Positive Religion is at first not at all free from fear. The benevolent gods are prompt to wrath, and cruelly avenge their broken laws. The more striking development of religious life is the gradual substitution of love for fear in worship. ”

“ It cannot be doubted that the inner experience as well as the outer attitude and behaviour of a person are substantially different when he seeks to conciliate a radically evil being and when he communes with a fundamentally benevolent one. Yet in both cases an anthropopathic relation with a personal being is established. In this respect, both stand opposed to magical behaviour. This common element is so fundamental that it seems to us advisable to make the name Religion include both types of relation. ”

“ If aggressive emotions are not conspicuous at the dawn of Religion, it is only because it so happens that the circumstances in which the least cultured peoples known to us live are such as to keep fear in the foreground of consciousness. ”

“ Religion would have appeared later, and from the first in a nobler form. In such peoples a feeling of dependence upon benevolent gods, regarded probably as Creators and All-Fathers, eliciting admiration rather than fear or selfish desire, would have characterised its beginnings. ”

“ Among psychologists, Ribot, for instance, affirms that ‘the religious sentiment is composed first of all of the emotion of fear in its different degrees, from profound terror to vague uneasiness, due to faith in an unknown, mysterious, impalpable Power.’ [1] The fear-theory is well supported by two classes of interdependent facts observed, we are told, in every uncivilised people: (1) Evil spirits are the first to attain a certain degree of definiteness; (2) man enters into definite relations first with these evil spirits. ”

“ He denies that the attempt to appease evil beings is the foundation of Religion. I quote: ‘From the earliest times religion, as distinct from magic or sorcery, addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be angry with their people for a time, but are always placable except to the enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the community. ”

“ If the African antelope runs for its life on an average twice a day, as Francis Galton supposes, the wild horse on the South American plains, before the hunter appeared on his pastures, ran chiefly for his pleasure. ”

“ And since they differ, nevertheless, in important respects, the phrases Negative Religion may be used to designate man’s dealings with radically bad spirits, and Positive Religion his relations with fundamentally benevolent ones. ”