Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/284 (page 25)
    if all human behaviour be at root animal, it is worked up into different patterns according to the presence, in the human beings concerned, of religious emotion, humanistic theory, or the capacity for applied science, or any combination of these. Social Institutions arising from Religious Emotion The second class of social institutions includes those arising from religious emotion. Early in the evolution of human society man began to reflect on the nature of things, whether seen in daylight or in his dreams. He recognised in everything something resembling that of which he was conscious in himself -—an aliveness, an active principle, a spirit or what was eventually called a soul. He felt the emotion of fear, not only of aggressive animals or fellow-men, but even more of the unseen spirits of which the world was full. Perhaps the feeling of awe is as primitive as that of fear. This fear or this awe led to all sorts of magic, and to the medicine man, eventually to the king by divine right. There arose also the emotion of wonder and adoration, leading to worship; of love, leading to prayer and to the merging of self in the spirit of love; of tradition and holy writ, interpreted by prophets and priests, and declared to be the will of God. All this culminated in the great religions of historic time, Judaism and Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, with ecclesi¬ astical institutions and codes of conduct curbing,