The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c11.s2.37

v1.c11.s2.37

Moreover one serious charge must be brought against many of the theorists, and a charge which applies equally to Mannhardt, Sir J. Fraser, Ridgeway, Durkheim, and S. Reinach. These scholars assume that in the religious views of primitive savages are to be found the beginnings of religious belief, and that from their views must be reconstructed a scheme for the development of every form of religion. The fundamental absurdity of this view is the belief that savages of the nineteenth century are primitive man: it is logically wholly impossible to deny that the defects of the religions of these races may be precisely the cause why they have failed to develop and have remained in a savage state. Doubtless to prove this view is impossible, though many of the practices of savages are obviously open to serious disadvantages economic and social; but to disprove it is still more difficult, and, in view of this fact, to set up schemes of the development of religion based on the practices of the Australian aborigines is logically inexcusable, apart altogether from the fact that our knowledge of these customs is derived from students of ethnology, who observe peoples with whom they have no tie of blood or language and whose confidence they find as hard to win as their beliefs to understand. The mere controversy which has raged over the fact whether the Australian tribes or the Zulus have the conception of a supreme benevolent deity ¹ is a striking proof of the almost hopeless difficulties attending the path of those who seek to attain real understanding of the aboriginal mind.