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TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF HISTORY OF

RELIGIONS

A. EUSTACE HAYDON
University of Chicago

After a preliminary sketch of the heritage from the previous century the development of the last twenty-five years is outlined. The article falls into three divisions: 1, a notation of the outstanding gains in the history of the various religions; 2, a survey of the changes in method; 3, the clarification of the meaning of religion.

The closing decades of the nineteenth century forecast a new era in the study of religions. Scholars talked easily of the "science of religion," of the "religious sciences." It was the sign of a new spirit, a thrust toward objectivity, an effort to escape the hampering hand of apologetics. There had been encyclopedias and histories of religions for centuries; now there was to be scientific history. The new science found an eager welcome and a swift embodiment. University chairs and departments were given over to it. At the opening of the first decade there were chairs in the History of Religions in Holland, Switzerland, France, England, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, and America. It soon acquired special lectureship foundations,' its own journals' and textbooks. While the World's Parliament of Religions at Chicago, in 1893, was for the most part an international gesture of good will, there followed the international congresses of History of Religions, quadrennial

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The Hibbert Lectures (1878); The Gifford Lectures (1888); The American Lectures on History of Religions (1892); The Haskell Lectures (1894).

'Revue de l'histoire des religions (1880); Muséon (1882), combined with Le Revue des Religions in 1899, taking final form as Muséon Études philologiques, historiques et religieuses (1900); Année sociologique (1896); Archiv für Religionswissenschaft (1898).

Chantepie de la Saussaye: Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte (1887-89); Tiele: Geschiedenis van der Godsdienst (1876, Eng. Trans. 1877); Menzies: History of Religion (1895); Orelli: Allgemeine Religionsgeschichte (1899); Lamers: Wetenschap van der Godsdienst (1896-98).

gatherings of scholars in the religious sciences.* The new discipline had won an assured place in the important universities and in public esteem. Specialists in all the sciences dealing with human culture contributed to its development.

No new science is altogether new. It builds on and out of the past. The science of religion found itself immersed in a vast heritage of religious philosophies, materials, and methods. To remain immune in the presence of dominant philosophies is especially difficult for the student of religions. Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Comte represented three different ways of understanding religion and of organizing the religions of the world; Kant, Ritschl, and Spencer, three ways of harmonizing religion with science. A new and challenging philosophy was also in the field, evolutionary empiricism, grounded on the scientific theories of Darwin. Many a historian of the last quarter-century has escaped the revelation dogmas of the theologian only to yield to the more subtle influence of these philosophies with the resultant warping of method and coloring of interpretation.

The heritage of materials and instruments of research was immense and invaluable. It is impossible and fortunately unnecessary to record here a dry catalogue of names and achievements in pre-twentieth-century research. All the fields of human culture and religion had been worked and significant gains won. Prehistory began to reveal its secrets in the middle of the nineteenth century. Archaeology had opened to view the past of Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, and the key to the ancient writings had been found, for Egypt by Champollion, for the cuneiform by Grotefend, Hincks, Rawlinson, and Oppert. The scholarship of all lands turned to this fascinating and fertile field. The romance of research records great names -Jastrow, Sayce, Maspero, de Morgan, Naville, Renouf, Petrie, Erman, Capart, Breasted, Schiaparelli-these out of

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*Paris, 1900; Basel, 1904; Oxford, 1908; Leiden, 1912; Paris, 1923.

Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands during the Nineteenth Century (1903).

many who worked before and into the twenty-five years of our survey. The Graeco-Roman world had for a century been the source of materials for the interpretation of religion. The mythologies were common property. It was on this basis that Creuzer had built his symbolic interpretation. On this Wolf founded his new criticism. In this field K. O. Mueller' began the building of the historical method. Archaeology here opened new vistas of pre-hellenic cultures and challenged the old interpretations. Parallel achievements had been won in the Orient. Anquetil-Duperron, 1771, Eugene Burnouf, 1835, found the key to the sacred books of Iran. Bopp, Burnouf, and Christian Lassen, following preliminary work by others, made Sanskrit and Pali available. The scriptures and literatures of the Indo-iranians were opened. The religions of Persia and India began to appear in historic perspective. Translations came in a flood. Remusat, Julien, and Legge opened the archives of China's literature. Buddhism had been studied in the various lands by Remusat, Hodgson, Czoma, Turnour, Mouhat, Schmidt, and interpretation of Buddhist history was in full flower before the opening of the century. Islam, known and feared for almost a millenium, had fared badly at the hands of interpreters until the last quarter of the century. Then Doughty, Wellhausen, Noeldeke, Goldziher, Caetani opened the way for scientific history. Work had already been done on the religions of pre-Christian Europe, the Teutons, Celts, and Slavs but with conflicting results. Materials from Japan were available in the translations of Satow, Aston, Florenz, and Chamberlain. Commerce, adventure, science, and missions had for centuries collaborated in collecting materials relative to the backward peoples of the earth. What seemed to scholars of that time the most important religious materials of culture peoples, their sacred scriptures, were from 1879 on* Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker besonders der Griechen (4v., 1819-21).

'Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (1825).

ward under the editorship of Max Müller translated in th Sacred Books of the East. From pre-Columbian America t prehistoric Egypt the whole world offered endless material for the religious scientists. Religion appeared to be a normal universal, and integral phase of every human culture. Com parative science had achieved inspiring results in biology and linguistics. Votaries of the new science turned to the world wide wealth of data in high hope of being able to discover the laws of religious evolution and to write the religious history of mankind.

There was, however, the problem of method. The exploitation of the materials of religion had been undertaken by no less than five distinct schools, each with its own method. The chief of the philological group was Max Müller, who had made a brilliant application of comparative philology in the study of mythology and then turned to the interpretation of religion in the opening lectures of the Hibberts and Gifford' foundations. The anthropological school was interested chiefly in primitive religions. Its outstanding figures before the opening of the century were Tylor,10 Frazer," and Lang.12 The method of both of these groups was comparative and psychological. Not to be classified in any school but of great influence was Herbert Spencer, who began with religious origins in his Principles of Sociology (1876–96). In the closing decades of the century Durkheim13 announced a new sociological method. Earlier, in Germany, Lazarus and Steinthal, later joined by Wundt, had established the Völkerpsychologie. In addition to these there were the scholars who continued the tradition of the historical school-Albert and Jean Réville, von Orelli, The Origin and Growth of Religion As Illustrated by the Religions of India (1878).

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Natural Religion (1888), Physical Religion (1890), Anthropological Religion (1891), Psychological Religion (1892).

10 Primitive Culture (1871).

12 The Making of Religion (1898).

11 The Golden Bough (1890).

13 Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (1895).

the Chantepie de la Saussaye, Maurice Vernes, Tiele, and many specialists in the realm of a single religion. The new history

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and the new ethnology had not yet appeared. The conflict of methods, the experience of futility and failure were needed to make clear the nature of scientific method in the study of religions.

The sketch of the progress of twenty-five years falls easily into three divisions—a survey of notable achievements in the various departments of history of religions, an account of the change in methods, and a study of the gradual clarification of the definition of religion.

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Of general reference works the period has produced two— Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (5v., 1909-13) and The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (12V., 190821). This latter work deals with all phases of religions from primitivity to modern times and in addition treats those elements of religious activity and thought which can be gathered under rubrics such as "magic," "demons and spirits," etc. in symposiums where specialists present the materials of their own field. For source material on the world's scriptures the Sacred Books of the East has been the standard work. Now the Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften of Göttingen has undertaken the publication in twelve groups of the literature of all peoples under the title, Quellen der Religionsgeschichte (1913———). The groups include Europe, the early Semites and Egypt, Judaism, Gnosticism, Iran, Islam, India, Buddhism, China-Japan-Mongolia, Africa, America, the primitives of the south seas and south Asia. Volumes in several groups have already appeared.

In view of the great increase of materials and the demands of the more modern method it is becoming more difficult for any single scholar to write a general history of religions. American scholars still attempt such surveys, however, with

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