These mental peculiarities of the savage explain to us in a great measure how such forms of religious worship could have been formed in primitive man, which seem to be so far from the ideal essence of religion. At all stages of his development, man seeks in religion a higher and ideal being, but not being able to find it outside of the surrounding nature, he idealizes nature itself at the lowest stages of his development, which he begins to worship.
§8. The most important theories about the origin of religion. Naturalistic theory
On the question of the origin of religion, so many theories have been suggested that a detailed review of them might be the subject of a particularly extensive course. There is no special need to present them in a course on the history of religions, especially since most of these theories are not of serious scientific significance. The two most trusted theories among scientists are now the naturalistic and the animistic. The first of them, which recognizes naturalism or the deification of natural phenomena as the primary form of religion, 3 is defended mainly by German scientists, while the animistic theory is supported mainly by English scientists.
Naturalistic theory in its simplest form was expressed by the Greek and Roman writers (Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, stoic Cleanthus, etc.), who considered the source of religion a sense of fear before the terrible phenomena of nature (timor primos deos fecit). Suppressed by the power of the forces of this nature, man began to assume in these forces the action of special divine beings, in dependence on which he placed all his destiny. The desire to ingratiate himself with these formidable creatures led man to religious veneration.
At present, the naturalistic theory has been substantially changed. Instead of the feeling of fear, the consciousness of the dependence of human destiny on certain natural phenomena is brought to the fore. Little as the primitive savage was capable of intelligent observation of nature, he must have noticed at every step that his whole life was dependent on the natural forces of nature. He saw that rain brings forth crops, that the sun not only produces heat and drought, but also contributes to the life of plants, that the wind, the moon, and the storm most obviously affect the conditions of his existence, because of his tendency to spiritualize the external nature of the savage sees in all these phenomena the action of not dead forces, but personal beings
Strike Religion 3 