Animals

Animals, rivers, trees and so on. they played too prominent a part in human life for the savage not to stop at the idea of finding out their relationship to himself; he saw his dependence on animals, in which he most often saw his rivals and enemies, and from trees that supplied him with their fruits, and from rivers and lakes, where he obtained fish, and from mountains, where he found caves for housing, and so on.

The process of formation of religious veneration of various natural phenomena in the presented theory turns out to be quite plausible. But the question of the very origin of religious feeling here remains unclear, and precisely because here the fundamental need of man is omitted, forcing him to seek in the visible nature of the divine being. Why the savage saw in the sun not only a powerful force of nature, but also a deity, why he looked at an animal, often insignificant in its power, like, for example, a cat or a rat, as a Supreme being, why he, having spiritualized it, put it not alongside at least a man, but raised it above itself, why a tree, which he can always break, cut down and burn, seems to him worthy of divine But it is mostly incomprehensible here how this religion, which appeared as if only on the basis of a false understanding of the phenomena of nature, on the basis of the consciousness of its complete dependence on them, could retain its significance at the highest levels of human culture. “The naturalistic explanation of religion might have its place and significance in science if religion were a dead product of past times, and we could really explain it as an obsolete way of mythological interpretation of nature. Meanwhile, religion not only existed, but now exists, and all the conditions that, according to the hypothesis, created it, have long since lost all power over man, and themselves, on the contrary, found themselves almost completely under the power of the cultural Lord of the earth. Long ago man has outgrown both his helplessness and his savage ignorance, has outlived the feeling of animal fear before the terrible power of nature, has survived the darkness of superstitious tales about various metaphysical figures of the physical world, but religion still remains with him and imperiously invades his entire life, and blesses or punishes him with the world of sacred contemplation, then the torment of bitter doubts. And long ago the proud titans of omniscience piled mountains on mountains to climb them up to the sky and throw their proud challenge to God, but religion still lives with people and makes the violent thought of man, if not directly offer their sacrifices to its eternal altar, then at least makes him bow his proud head before the veil of the incomprehensible and say This persistent persistence of religious consciousness in man, obviously, has a deeper Foundation for itself than the temporary state of external insignificance and mental ignorance of man” (prof. Nesmelov).