Early Evolution of Religion

86:4.1The con­cept of a super­ma­te­rial phase of mor­tal per­son­al­ity was born of the un­con­scious and purely ac­ci­den­tal as­so­ci­a­tion of the oc­cur­rences of ev­ery­day life plus the ghost dream. The si­mul­ta­ne­ous dream­ing about a de­parted chief by sev­eral mem­bers of his tribe seemed to con­sti­tute con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence that the old chief had re­ally re­turned in some form. It was all very real to the sav­age who would awaken from such dreams reek­ing with sweat, trem­bling, and scream­ing.

86:4.2The dream ori­gin of the be­lief in a fu­ture ex­is­tence ex­plains the ten­dency al­ways to imag­ine un­seen things in the terms of things seen. And pres­ently this new dream-ghost-fu­ture-life con­cept be­gan ef­fec­tively to an­ti­dote the death fear as­so­ci­ated with the bi­o­logic in­stinct of self-preser­va­tion.

86:4.3Early man was also much con­cerned about his breath, es­pe­cially in cold cli­mates, where it ap­peared as a cloud when ex­haled. The breath of life was re­garded as the one phe­nom­e­non which dif­fer­en­ti­ated the liv­ing and the dead. He knew the breath could leave the body, and his dreams of do­ing all sorts of queer things while asleep con­vinced him that there was some­thing im­ma­te­rial about a hu­man be­ing. The most prim­i­tive idea of the hu­man soul, the ghost, was de­rived from the breath-dream idea-sys­tem.

86:4.4Even­tu­ally the sav­age con­ceived of him­self as a dou­ble—body and breath. The breath mi­nus the body equaled a spirit, a ghost. While hav­ing a very def­i­nite hu­man ori­gin, ghosts, or spir­its, were re­garded as super­hu­man. And this be­lief in the ex­is­tence of dis­em­bod­ied spir­its seemed to ex­plain the oc­cur­rence of the un­usual, the ex­traor­di­nary, the in­fre­quent, and the in­ex­pli­ca­ble.

86:4.5The prim­i­tive doc­trine of sur­vival af­ter death was not nec­es­sar­ily a be­lief in im­mor­tal­ity. Be­ings who could not count over twenty could hardly con­ceive of in­fin­ity and eter­nity; they rather thought of re­cur­ring in­car­na­tions.

86:4.6The or­ange race was es­pe­cially given to be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion and rein­car­na­tion. This idea of rein­car­na­tion orig­i­nated in the ob­ser­vance of hered­i­tary and trait re­sem­blance of off­spring to an­ces­tors. The cus­tom of nam­ing chil­dren af­ter grand­par­ents and other an­ces­tors was due to be­lief in rein­car­na­tion. Some later-day races be­lieved that man died from three to seven times. This be­lief (resid­ual from the teach­ings of Adam about the man­sion worlds), and many other rem­nants of re­vealed re­li­gion, can be found among the oth­er­wise ab­surd doc­trines of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury bar­bar­ians.

86:4.7Early man en­ter­tained no ideas of hell or fu­ture pun­ish­ment. The sav­age looked upon the fu­ture life as just like this one, mi­nus all ill luck. Later on, a sep­a­rate des­tiny for good ghosts and bad ghosts—heaven and hell—was con­ceived. But since many prim­i­tive races be­lieved that man en­tered the next life just as he left this one, they did not rel­ish the idea of be­com­ing old and de­crepit. The aged much pre­ferred to be killed be­fore be­com­ing too in­firm.

86:4.8Al­most ev­ery group had a dif­fer­ent idea re­gard­ing the des­tiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks be­lieved that weak men must have weak souls; so they in­vented Hades as a fit place for the re­cep­tion of such ane­mic souls; these un­ro­bust spec­i­mens were also sup­posed to have shorter shad­ows. The early And­ites thought their ghosts re­turned to the an­ces­tral home­lands. The Chi­nese and Egyp­tians once be­lieved that soul and body re­mained to­gether. Among the Egyp­tians this led to care­ful tomb con­struc­tion and ef­forts at body preser­va­tion. Even mod­ern peo­ples seek to ar­rest the de­cay of the dead. The He­brews con­ceived that a phan­tom replica of the in­di­vid­ual went down to Sheol; it could not re­turn to the land of the liv­ing. They did make that im­por­tant ad­vance in the doc­trine of the evo­lu­tion of the soul.