no essential from man
save that of possessing greater power and in being invisible. From
dreams and other subjective experiences he derives the idea of a double,
from death that of a ghost. Hence the ceremonies round the grave, and
the attention paid to the double of the dead man, which subsequently
developes into ancestor worship. The same train of thought gives a
double to objects other than human beings. Hence Animism, Totemism, and
their numerous subsidiary developments. Spencer insists, not only that
"all religions have a natural genesis," but also that "behind
supernatural beings of all orders" there has been in every case a human
personality--in other words, every god is developed from a ghost,
"ancestor worship is the root of every religion." To this he will admit
no exception, and referring to the Jewish religion, he asks
contemptuously:--

Must we recognise a single exception to the general truth thus far
verified everywhere? While among all races in all regions, from the
earliest times down to the present, the conceptions of deities have
been naturally evolved in the way shown, must we conclude that a
small clan of the Semitic race had given to it supernaturally a
conception which, though superficially like the rest, was in
substance absolutely unlike them.

And in about half a dozen pages he shows conclusively that the Biblical
God had exactly a similar origin to other gods.

Now if this account of religious origins means anything at all (and in
spite of differences between anthropologists it is in substance the
account of the origin of religion given by all) it means that instead of
religion and science moving along parallel lines, religion is simply
primitive science. Religion and science, as a very able theistic writer
says, "touch and oppose each other as rival methods of explaining, not
solely or mainly the life and nature of man, but the universe taken as a
whole, man forming a part of it." (W. H. Mallock, _Religion as a
Credible Doctrine_, p. ii.) Both are concerned with the same facts, and
their respective claims to consideration depend entirely on their
ability to explain the facts. For the reasons given by Spencer, man's
earliest interpretation of things is inevitably vitalistic. Ghosts--the
primitive protoplasm from which the gods are made--are assumed, and once
assumed dominate the savage intelligence. Fear combines with ignorance
to resist any conception