The threshold of religion / by R.R. Marett.

  • Robert Ranulph Marett
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The threshold of religion / by R.R. Marett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/296 page 3
    THE object of the present paper is simply to try to give relatively definite shape to the conception of a certain very primitive phase of religion, as religion may for anthropo- logical purposes be understood. The conception in question will strike many, I daresay, as familiar, nay possibly as commonplace to a degree. Even so, however, I venture to think that it is one amongst several of those almost tacitly-accepted commonplaces of Comparative Religion which serve at present but to “ crib, cabin and confine ” the field of active and critical research. Com- parative Religion is still at the classificatory stage. Its genuine votaries are almost exclusively occupied in endeavouring to find “ pigeon-holes ” wherein to store with some approach to orderly and distinct arrangement the vast and chaotic piles of “ slips ” which their observation or reading has accumulated. Now in sueh a case the tendency is always to start with quite a few pigeon-holes, and but gradually, and, as it were, grudgingly, to add to their number. On the other hand considerable division and subdivision of topics is desirable, both in the interest of special- ized study, and in order to baffle and neutralize the efforts of popularizers to enlist prejudice on the side of one or another would-be synoptic version of the subject, based on some narrow and fragmentary view of the data as provided by current science. Nay, so essential is it to detach “ workable ” portions of the evidence for separate and detailed consideration, that it is comparatively unimportant whether the divisions at any moment recognized and adopted be
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