【英文读物】The Evolution of the Idea of God.docx
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1、【英文读物】The Evolution of the Idea of GodPREFACETWO main schools of religious thinking exist in our midst at the present day: the school of humanists and the school of animists. This work is to some extent an attempt to reconcile them. It contains, I believe, the first extended effort that has yet been
2、 made to trace the genesis of the belief in a God from its earliest origin in the mind of primitive man up to its fullest development in advanced and etherealised Christian theology. My method is therefore constructive, not destructive. Instead of setting out to argue away or demolish a deep-seated
3、and ancestral element in our complex nature, this book merely posits for itself the psychological question, “By what successive steps did men come to frame for themselves the conception of a deity?”or, if the reader so prefers it, “How did we arrive at our knowledge of God?” It seeks provisionally t
4、o answer these profound and important questions by reference to the earliest beliefs of savages, past or present, and to the testimony of historical documents and ancient monuments. It does not concern itself at all with the validity or invalidity of the ideas in themselves; it does but endeavour to
5、 show how inevitable they were, and how mans relation with the external universe was certain a priori to beget them as of necessity.In so vast a synthesis, it would be absurd to pretend at the present day that one approached ones subject entirely de novo. Every enquirer must needs depend much upon t
6、he various researches of his predecessors in various parts of his field of enquiry. The problem before us divides itself into three main portions: first, how did men come to believe in many godsthe origin of polytheism; second, how, by elimination of most of these gods, did certain races of men come
7、 to believe in one single supreme and omnipotent Godthe origin of monotheism; third how, having arrived at that concept, did the most advanced races and civilisations come to conceive of that God as Triune, and to identify one of his Persons with a particular divine and human incarnationthe origin o
8、f Christianity. In considering each of these three main problems I have been greatly guided and assisted by three previous enquirers or sets of enquirers.As to the origin of polytheism, I have adopted in the main Mr. Herbert Spencers remarkable ghost theory, though with certain important modificatio
9、ns and additions. In this part of my work I have also been largely aided by materials derived from Mr. Duff Macdonald, the able author of Africana, from Mr. Turner, the well-known Samoan missionary, and from several other writers, supplemented as they are by my own researches among the works of expl
10、orers and ethnologists in general. On the whole, I have here accepted the theory which traces the origin of the belief in gods to primeval ancestor-worship, or rather corpse-worship, as against the rival theory which traces its origin to a supposed primitive animism.As to the rise of monotheism, I h
11、ave been influenced in no small degree by Kuenen and the Teutonic school of Old Testament criticism, whose ideas have been supplemented by later concepts derived from Professor Robertson Smiths admirable work, The Religion of the Semites. But here, on the whole, the central explanation I have to off
12、er is, I venture to think, new and original: the theory, good or bad, of the circumstances which led to the elevation of the ethnical Hebrew God, Jahweh, above all his rivals, and his final recognition as the only true and living god, is my own and no one elses.As to the origin of Christianity, and
13、its relations to the preceding cults of corn and wine gods, I have been guided to a great extent by Mr. J. G. Frazer and Mannhardt, though I do not suppose that either the living or the dead anthropologist would wholly acquiesce in the use I have made of their splendid materials. Mr. Frazer, the aut
14、hor of that learned work, The Golden Bough, has profoundly influenced the opinions of all serious workers at anthropology and the science of religion, and I cannot too often acknowledge the deep obligations under which I lie to his profound and able treatises. At the same time, I have so transformed
15、 the material derived from him and from Dr. Robertson Smith as to have made it in many ways practically my own; and I have supplemented it by several new examples and ideas, suggested in the course of my own tolerably wide reading.Throughout the book as a whole, I also owe a considerable debt to Dr.
16、 E. B. Tylor, from whom I have borrowed much valuable matter; to Mr. Sidney Hartlands Legend of Perseus; to Mr. Lawrence Gomme, who has come nearer at times than anyone else to the special views and theories here promulgated; and to Mr. William Simpson of the Illustrated London News, an unobtrusive
17、scholar whose excellent monographs on The Worship of Death and kindred subjects have never yet received the attention They deserve, at the hands of unprejudiced students of religion. My other obligations, to Dr. Mommsen, to my friends Mr. Edward Clodd, Professor John Rhys, and Professor York Powell,
18、 as well as to numerous travellers, missionaries, historians, and classicists, are too frequent to specify.Looking at the subject broadly, I would presume to say once more that my general conclusions may be regarded as representing to some extent a reconciliation between the conflicting schools of h
19、umanists and animists, headed respectively by Mr. Spencer and Mr. Frazer, though with a leaning rather to the former than the latter.At the same time it would be a great mistake to look upon my book as in any sense a mere eirenicon or compromise. On the contrary, it is in every part a new and person
20、al work, containing, whatever its value, a fresh and original synthesis of the subject. I would venture to point out as especially novel the two following points: the complete demarcation of religion from mythology, as practice from mere explanatory gloss or guesswork; and the important share assign
21、ed in the genesis of most existing religious systems to the deliberate manufacture of gods by killing. This doctrine of the manufactured god, to which nearly half my book is devoted, seems to me to be a notion of cardinal value. Among other new ideas of secondary rank, I would be bold enough to enum
22、erate the following: the establishment of three successive stages in the conception of the Life of the Dead, which might be summed up as Corpse-worship, Ghost-worship, and Shade-worship, and which answer to the three stages of preservation or mummification, burial, and cremation; the recognition of
23、the high place to be assigned to the safe-keeping of the oracular head in the growth of idol-worship; the importance attached to the sacred stone, the sacred stake, and the sacred tree, and the provisional proof of their close connection with the graves of the dead; the entirely new conception of th
24、e development of monotheism among the Jews from the exclusive cult of the jealous god; the hypothesis of the origin of cultivation from tumulus-offerings, and its connection with the growth of gods of cultivation; the wide expansion given to the ancient notion of the divine-human victim; the recogni
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