rst place, it marks a
step in intellectual and moral progress; for it recognises that effects
which before had been ascribed to human agency spring from superhuman
causes; and this recognition of powers in the universe superior to man
is not only an intellectual gain but a moral discipline: it teaches the
important lesson of humility. In the second place it marks a step in
social progress because when the blame of a death is laid upon a ghost
or a spirit instead of on a sorcerer, the death has not to be avenged by
killing a human being, the supposed author of the calamity. Thus the
recognition of ghosts or spirits as the sources of sickness and death
has as its immediate effect the sparing of an immense number of lives of
men and women, who on the theory of death by sorcery would have perished
by violence to expiate their imaginary crime. That this is a great gain
to society is obvious: it adds immensely to the security of human life
by removing one of the most fruitful causes of its destruction.

It must be admitted, however, that the gain is not always as great as
might be expected; the social advantages of a belief in ghosts and
spirits are attended by many serious drawbacks. For while ghosts or
spirits are commonly, though not always, supposed to be beyond the reach
of human vengeance, they are generally thought to be well within the
reach of human persuasion, flattery, and bribery; in other words, men
think that they can appease and propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice;
and while prayer is always cheap, sacrifice may be very dear, since it
can, and often does, involve the destruction of an immense deal of
valuable property and of a vast number of human lives. Yet if we could
reckon up the myriads who have been slain in sacrifice to ghosts and
gods, it seems probable that they would fall far short of the untold
multitudes who have perished as sorcerers and witches. For while human
sacrifices in honour of deities or of the dead have been for the most
part exceptional rather than regular, only the great gods and the
illustrious dead being deemed worthy of such costly offerings, the
slaughter of witches and wizards, theoretically at least, followed
inevitably on every natural death among people who attributed all such
deaths to sorcery. Hence if natural religion be defined roughly as a
belief in superhuman spiritual beings and an attempt to propitiate them,
we may perhaps say that, while natural religion has slain it