Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol 1 | Page 5

who offer an elaborate
animistic theory, and are said to show no traces of the All Father belief.
The books of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen also present much evidence
as to a previously unknown form of totemism, in which the totem is not
hereditary, and does not regulate marriage. This prevails among the
Arunta "nation," and the Kaitish tribe. In the opinion of Mr. Spencer
(Report Australian Association for Advancement of Science, 1904) and

of Mr. J. G. Frazer (Fortnightly Review, September, 1905), this is the
earliest surviving form of totemism, and Mr. Frazer suggests an
animistic origin for the institution. I have criticised these views in The
Secret of the Totem (1905), and proposed a different solution of the
problem. (See also "Primitive and Advanced Totemism" in Journal of
the Anthropological Institute, July, 1906.) In the works mentioned will
be found references to other sources of information as to these
questions, which are still sub judice. Mrs. Bates, who has been studying
the hitherto almost unknown tribes of Western Australia, promises a
book on their beliefs and institutions, and Mr. N. W. Thomas is
engaged on a volume on Australian institutions. In this place the author
can only direct attention to these novel sources, and to the promised
third edition of Mr. Frazer's The Golden Bough.
A. L.

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.
The original edition of Myth, Ritual and Religion, published in 1887,
has long been out of print. In revising the book I have brought it into
line with the ideas expressed in the second part of my Making of
Religion (1898) and have excised certain passages which, as the book
first appeared, were inconsistent with its main thesis. In some cases the
original passages are retained in notes, to show the nature of the
development of the author's opinions. A fragment or two of controversy
has been deleted, and chapters xi. and xii., on the religion of the lowest
races, have been entirely rewritten, on the strength of more recent or
earlier information lately acquired. The gist of the book as it stands
now and as it originally stood is contained in the following lines from
the preface of 1887: "While the attempt is made to show that the wilder
features of myth survive from, or were borrowed from, or were imitated
from the ideas of people in the savage condition of thought, the
existence--even among savages--of comparatively pure, if inarticulate,
religious beliefs is insisted on throughout". To that opinion I adhere,
and I trust that it is now expressed with more consistency than in the
first edition. I have seen reason, more and more, to doubt the validity of

the "ghost theory," or animistic hypothesis, as explanatory of the whole
fabric of religion; and I present arguments against Mr. Tylor's
contention that the higher conceptions of savage faith are borrowed
from missionaries.[1] It is very possible, however, that Mr. Tylor has
arguments more powerful than those contained in his paper of 1892.
For our information is not yet adequate to a scientific theory of the
Origin of Religion, and probably never will be. Behind the races whom
we must regard as "nearest the beginning" are their unknown ancestors
from a dateless past, men as human as ourselves, but men concerning
whose psychical, mental and moral condition we can only form
conjectures. Among them religion arose, in circumstances of which we
are necessarily ignorant. Thus I only venture on a surmise as to the
germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am not to say "Creator") and Judge of
men. But, as to whether the higher religious belief, or the lower
mythical stories came first, we are at least certain that the Christian
conception of God, given pure, was presently entangled, by the popular
fancy of Europe, in new Marchen about the Deity, the Madonna, her
Son, and the Apostles. Here, beyond possibility of denial, pure belief
came first, fanciful legend was attached after. I am inclined to surmise
that this has always been the case, and, in the pages on the legend of
Zeus, I show the processes of degeneration, of mythical accretions on a
faith in a Heaven-God, in action. That "the feeling of religious
devotion" attests "high faculties" in early man (such as are often denied
to men who "cannot count up to seven"), and that "the same high
mental faculties . . . would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning
powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and
customs," was the belief of Mr. Darwin.[2] That is also my view, and I
note that the lowest savages are not yet guilty of the very worst
practices, "sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving God," and
ordeals by poison and fire, to which Mr. Darwin alludes. "The
improvement of our