Herbert Spencer has pointed out that all religions have their origin
in reverence paid to ancestors. Each religion must have a true
foundation, and the deification of our forefathers has this true and
natural foundation inasmuch as they belong to the same series of
reproductive cells as their descendants. Of course our barbaric
ancestors who initiated the ancestor worship had no idea of this
motive for their religion, but that in no way disproves that this and
this alone was the _causa efficiens_ of the origin of such religions.
It is indeed typical of a religion that it depends upon facts which
are not discerned and which are not fully recognized.
With the origin and development of every religion the origin and
development of the conception of the soul progresses step by step.
We find the justification of ancestor worship in the immortality of
the reproductive cells, and in the continuity of their series. This
should also take a part in the origin of the conception of the soul.
Spencer derives the conception of the existence of the soul from
dreams, and from the imagination of the mentally afflicted. The savage
dreams he is hunting, and wakes up to find himself at home. In his
dream he talks with friends who are not present where he sleeps; he
may even in the course of his dream encounter the dead.
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