Freida (@fredfredsonaire)

The Question Box. Is not religion an invention of priests or statesmen? There is no record whatever in history of the invention of religion. This objection puts the cart before the horse, for priests could not have existed before religion began. “It was religion, realized and felt, which called for their service” (Hettinger, Natural Religion, 68). “When the rationalist,” says Lotze, “attributed the rise of religion to man’s natural tendency to superstition, a tendency artfully played upon by priestcraft, he thereby assumed as his primary cause an organized combination, which was itself only possible in an already advanced stage of civilization” (Microcosmos, iii., 54). Bibliography: C. B. April, 1899. Is not religion to be traced to fear, which was aroused in man by witnessing the wonders of nature? No, the earthquake, the tidal wave and the storm may have aroused in primitive man a purely natural fear, as they do to-day among the most highly civilized, but if the human soul were not already conscious of the existence of God, how could the idea of God be evolved by the mere contemplation of the phenomena of nature? De Maistre writes: “By calling God Lord, Master, Father, man shows that his idea of God is not the result of fear. It is also noticeable that music, dancing and the other arts have always been employed in divine worship, and so inseparable is the idea of rejoicing from that of a festival, that the word ‘feast’ is everywhere synonymous with a religious solemnity” (Soirées de S. Petersburg).