Explain the intellectualist theories of religion.

Intellectualist Theories of Religion: In the beginning, ideas about the origin and development of Religion were based on the reports of missionaries and adventures about the nature of Religion among the primitives. De Brosses (1760), advanced a theory that Religion originated from fetishism i.e. belief in Magical fetishes or objects. The Portugese sailors had reported that the coastal Negro tribes of West Africa worshipped inanimate things and animals. Comte on the basis of this theory held that in due courses Fetishism was replaced by Polytheism. This theory was superseded by the Ghost theory and the Soul theory. These latter theories are given the name Intellectualist theories of Religion. The reason is both assume that the primitives are rational being, although their efforts to explain natural phenomena are crude.

 (1) The Nature-Myth School: Nature-Myth school was a German School, dealing with Indo-European Religions. According to it, ancient Gods were universally personifications of natural phenomena. Max Muller, a German linguist, propounded this theory. In his opinion grand natural objects gave people a feeling of the infinite as well as acted as symbols of the infinite. The people thought of celestial bodies, such as, moon, stars, dawn and their attributes in terms of metaphor and symbol.  

With the passage of time, the symbolic representations came to have an independent identity and became separated from that which they represented. The attributes or the symbols became personified as deities. The human beings and nature stand in a relationship of awe, wonder and terror etc. Early human beings were unable to understand or explain the world of nature. They ended up worshipping it out of fear and awe. According to Muller, the Religion of early man can be studied by looking into linguistic Etymological meaning of the name of Gods and legends associated with them. Max Muller’s contemporaries, Herbert Spencer, Edward Tylor and Andrew Lang were the main critics of nature-myth theories. They criticised the Philological and Etymological approach to Religion.

(2) The Ghost Theory: Unlike Max Muller, Herbert Spencer and Edward Tylor focused their attention on Religious behaviour of the primitives. In their opinion, primitive societies offered an evidence of the earliest forms of Religion. Spencer published his views in 1882, eleven years after Tylor had published his book Primitive Culture in 1871. 

In his book, The Principles of Sociology, Spencer (1876-96) discusses primitive beliefs. He shows that the primitives were rational though with a limited quantum of knowledge. They made reasonable, though weak, inferences with regard to natural phenomena. They observed sun, moon, clouds and stars come and go, and got the notion of visible and invisible conditions. Likewise, they get the idea of a person’s duality from dreams. The dreams are real life-experiences by the primitives. The dream-self moves about at night while the shadow-self acts by the day. Sleep is temporary loss of sensibilities. The death is a longer period of insensibility. This idea of duality is extended by them to animals, plants and material object.

The appearance of dead persons in dreams is the evidence of temporary after life. This leads to the conception of a supernatural being in the form of a Ghost. The idea of Ghosts grows into the idea Gods and the Ghosts of ancestors become divine beings. The ‘ancestor worship is the root of every Religion’. 

The prevalence of the idea of Ghosts of ancestors or other superior beings becoming divinities among the primitives in many parts of the world, shows that Spencer’s theory has some plausibility.

(3) The Soul Theory or Animism: The word anima, a Latin word means Soul. Sir Edward Tylor’s theory of Animism considers both the origin and “development of Religion”. The Ghost theory explains the origin of Religion in the idea of Ghosts. The Animism or the Soul theory says the same thing in terms of the idea of Soul. According to Tylor, experiences of death, disease, visions and dreams lead the primitives to think about the existence of immaterial power, i.e., the Soul. Thereafter, this idea of Soul is projected on to creatures other than human and even to inanimate objects. The Soul exists independent of its physical home, the body. Tylor’s definition of Religion is that Religion originated from a belief in spiritual beings. 

The Soul theory of Tylor has elements of the sacred and the supernatural. Tylor’s definition being general labels all faiths and beliefs as Religion. 

According to Tylor these spiritual beings later develop into Gods. They possess superior powers and control destiny of human beings. This is in brief Tylor’s theory of Animism. Critics hold that Tylor’s own thought was projected on to the primitives’ thought processes. We have no means to know if this or something else is what was actually thought by the primitives. According to Swanton (1924:358-68) Tylor has advanced unprovable causal theories. Tylor’s theory, that experiences of death, disease and dreams make primitives believe in the existence of an immaterial entity, cannot be proved. 

Secondly, the logical process given by Tylor by which the idea of Soul leads primitives to the idea of spirits is not understandable. As a matter of fact, the concept of Soul and the concept of spirit are quite different. Tylor could not see the difference between the two concepts. 

Tylor on Magic: Tylor thinks primitive Religion to be rational and based on observations. He argues that Magic among primitives is based on observation and classification of similar elements. Failure of Magic is due to Magician’s wrong inferences about a mystical link between various objects. A subjective supposition of some connection in terms of ideas is mistaken for an objective link. The primitives do not, for good reasons, see the futility of Magic. Hence when ever Magic fails, its failure is rationally explained as under:

(i) The practitioner forgetting to perform some prescribed act, or

(ii) His ignoring to observe some prohibition, or

(iii) Some hostile Magic checking it in the way.    

Criticism of the Theory:

(i) Andrew Lang (1844–1912): Andrew Lang (1844–1912) a pupil of Tylor, criticised Tylor’s theory of Religion. Lang did not accept that the idea of Gods could have arisen as a late development from a belief in Ghosts or spirits. In his opinion many primitive peoples believed in what he called high Gods. Lang (1989:2) argued that the idea of God cannot have evolved out of reflections on dreams and “Ghosts”, because the two have entirely different origins. The belief in a God was first which later became degraded as Animism.

(ii) R.R. Marett (1866–1943): R.R. Marett (1866-1943), another disciples of Tylor, criticised the animistic theory. He claimed that the primitive belief in an impersonal force preceded beliefs in spiritual beings. He called this impersonal force mana. He argued that belief in mana had both historical and theoretical priority. Marett (1915) held that a belief in man and tabu (or taboo) provided a definition of the Magico-Religious thinking.  

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