e fond de
l'idolatrie; presque tous les hommes sacrificient aux manes,
c'est-a-dire aux ames des morts. De si anciennes erreurs nous
font voir a la verite combien etoit ancienne la croyance de
l'immortalite de l'ame, et nous montrent qu'elle doit etre
rangee parmi les premieres traditions du genre humain.
Mais l'homme, qui gatoit tout, en avoit etrangement abuse,
puisqu'elle le portoit a sacrificer aux morts. On alloit meme
jusqu'a cet exces, de leur sacrifier des hommes vivans; ou tuoit
leurs esclaves, et meme leurs femmes, pour les aller servir dans
l'autre monde.

Among more modern writers J. G. Muller, in his excellent "Geschichte
der amerikanischen Urreligionen" (1855), clearly recognises
"gespensterhafter Geisterglaube" as the foundation of all savage
and semi-civilised theology, and I need do no more than mention the
important developments of the same view which are to be found in Mr.
Tylor's "Primitive Culture," and in the writings of Mr. Herbert Spencer,
especially his recently-published "Ecclesiastical Institutions." [16]

It is a matter of fact that, whether we direct our attention to
the older conditions of civilised societies, in Japan, in China, in
Hindostan, in Greece, or in Rome, [17] we find, underlying all
other theological notions, the belief in ghosts, with its inevitable
concomitant sorcery; and a primitive cult, in the shape of a worship of
ancestors, which is essentially an attempt to please, or appease their
ghosts. The same thing is true of old Mexico and Peru, and of all the
semi-civilised or savage peoples who have developed a definite cult; and
in those who, like the natives of Australia, have not even a cult, the
belief in, and fear of, ghosts is as strong as anywhere else. The most
clearly demonstrable article of the theology of the Israelites in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries B.C. is therefore simply the article
which is to be found in all primitive theologies, namely, the belief
that a man has a soul which continues to exist after death for a longer
or shorter time, and may return, as a ghost, with a divine, or at least
demonic, character, to influence for good or evil (and usually for
evil) the affairs of the living. But the correspondence between the old
Israelitic and other archaic forms of theology extends to details. If,
in order to avoid all chance of direct communication, we direct
our attention to the theology of semi-civilised people, such as t