Early Evolutionary Theories of Religion – Lubbock and Tylor
There is little doubt that the publication of Darwin’s Origin in 1859 established an
evolutionary framework for ideas (or conjectures) about developmental history. It is, however,
an underappreciated fact that those would come to be recognized as the founders of anthropology
had been thinking deeply about human prehistory well before the Origin was published. The
impetus for this thinking came from the new geology espoused by Charles Lyell, whose three
volume Principles of Geology (1830-33) worked a revolution in the understanding of time.
Before Lyell nearly everyone accepted a biblical chronology for earth history and by extension,
human history. After Lyell some began considering the possibility that the earth was ancient and
by extension, that humans had a prehistory. Tylor and Lubbock rejected the cramped creationist
timeline (measured in thousands of years) and were contemplating what this meant for humans.
Lyell’s geology had given rise to the various lines of thought that coalesced into the new
discipline of anthropology:
The decisive event for the formation of anthropology in the 1860s was not Darwinism but
the “revolution in ethnological time,” by which is meant the sudden collapse of the short
biblical chronology for human history, and the opening out of an earlier prehistory of
indefinite length. The principal effects of the time revolution were to facilitate the
formation of macrohistories that were naturalistic, gradualist, and developmental [and]
remove the claim of the Bible and the classics to be documents on “man’s primitive
state” (Trautmann 1992:379).
None of this is to say that the Origin was not influential because it was. It is to say that
the Origin said nothing about humans and it was not clear how species change applied to social
change. To describe the latter process, Tylor ingeniously devised the concept of “culture” and
provided his famous definition: “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society.” This complex whole is an inherited body of knowledge to which ideas are continuously
added and subtracted over long periods of time. It is a continuous, cumulative, and gradual
process or causal sequence. In a metaphorical sense, cultures were like organisms: from some
embryonic form in the distant past they had grown and developed into the various cultures seen
in the present. This growth and development was, like an organism temporally proceeding
through a life cycle, progressive. Also like organisms, cultures developed at different rates. For
reasons not entirely clear, some lagged behind others. This lag accounted for the presence, in
some parts of the world, of so-called “primitive” cultures.
At this point it is appropriate to say a few things about the progressivism of those lumped
together as “cultural evolutionists.” It is true that they evaluated the progress of other cultures by
comparing them to the standards of Victorian England, Europe, and America. They were
undoubtedly ethnocentric in this respect. Yet progress for them had several connotations. At its
most basic, progress simply tracked time: it was an historical unfolding that could be applied to
any culture. By this reckoning Victorian England was rooted in a primitive past, evidence of
which could still be found in anachronistic ideas and strange practices (the original purpose and
justification for which had long been forgotten) that Tylor called “survivals.” The persistence of
survivals was valuable because studying them could reveal things about the past. In another
sense, progress meant growth and development: all living things originate as something simple,
small, and undifferentiated. Over the course of a life cycle, they become larger and more
complex. Progress in this sense was simply a measure of this growth.
These measures had an important corollary: by using progress, early anthropologists
could show that humans had not, as creationists contended, degenerated from a state of
unblemished being and perfect society. It is sometimes forgotten that Lubbock and Tylor were
important figures in the titanic intellectual and institutional struggle over Darwin’s ideas.
Evolution in general and Darwin in particular were fiercely opposed by powerful church-state
interests and two thousand years of tradition. Without a robust concept of progress, creationism
and degeneracy remained viable ideas. Creationists, of course, championed the opposite of
progress: variable regress following the Fall from Eden. Lubbock and Tylor knew that temporal
and developmental process – which they conflated with progress – was essential to evolutionary
theory. This explains, at least in part, their zeal for progress and insistence that cultures evolved
from simpler “primitive” forms to complex “civilized” forms.
No one was more active in pressing these ideas than Lubbock. It is a curious fact that he
is so little remembered today and is rarely mentioned as a founder of evolutionary anthropology.
It was Lubbock who pioneered the comparative method, arguing that living people and cultures
could be arranged in an evolutionary sequence that resembled the prehistoric past. Lubbock’s
emphatically progressive scheme sorted people much like fossils in a stratified sequence. He
never missed an opportunity to argue that a cultural idea or formation demonstrated progress
rather than regress or degradation. An important aspect of Lubbock’s scheme was his insistence
that cultural strata were the result of different levels of intellectual development. Those placed in
the lower strata, so-called primitives or savages, were therefore much like children. These
sequences, argued Lubbock, could be identified and traced most readily using religion. Various
levels of religious development provided a measure by which people and culture could be slotted
into the evolutionary sequence. At any given level, people would teleologically trending or
progressing upward toward the next level. Lubbock was never clear about how or why this
occurred – it was as if some mysterious force was impelling people toward the apex of religious
development: Lubbock’s own cherished version of Anglican Christianity. Using this as the
standard by which to measure religious development, Lubbock (1871:207-08) proposed the
following scheme:
Atheism; understanding by this term not a denial of the existence of a Deity, but an
absence of any definite ideas on the subject.
Nature-Worship or Totemism; in which natural objects, trees, lakes, stones, animals, etc.,
are worshipped.
Shamanism; in which the superior deities are far more powerful than man, and of a
different nature. Their place of abode also is far away, and accessible only to Shamans.
Idolatry or Anthropomorphism; in which the gods take still more completely the nature of
men, being, however, more powerful. They are still amenable to persuasion; they are a
part of nature, and not creators. They are represented by images or idols.
In the next stage the Deity is regarded as the author, not merely a part of nature. He
becomes for the first time a really supernatural being.
The last stage to which I will refer is that in which morality is associated with religion.
At the lowest or simplest level, people believed in ghost and spirits (as a result of
dreaming) and also feared them. For Lubbock, these ideas were not dignified or coherent enough
to be called “religion.” They were mere precursors leading to the last stage, which was of course
Christianity. The vast array of other beliefs, all sorted according to sequence, were fitted onto
Lubbock’s procrustean scheme in a manner that can only be called bewildering. Using sparse
and unreliable evidence, Lubbock wildly speculated about the course of cultural and religious
development. While Lubbock’s scheme can be credited as the first evolutionary sequence for
religion, this is the most that can be said for it. The entire treatment was ethnocentric,
condescending, and progressive in the worst sort of way. It was, as Marvin Harris aptly
observed, a “dreary performance” and precisely the sort of thing that eventually gave early
evolutionist anthropology such a dim reputation. It is unfortunate that these justifiable criticisms
have been carried over to caricature the work of Lubbock’s contemporary, Edward Tylor.
Tylor is of course today remembered, if not celebrated, as a founder of anthropology. As
is true of most founders, there is a standard origins story surrounding his work. Tylor’s story is a
familiar one: he thought that currently existing societies could – on the basis of their respective
cultural repertoires – be slotted into one of three stages: savage, barbaric, or civilized. These
were phases of evolutionary development along which all societies progressed according to
uniform processes, although they did so at different rates. These differential rates of development
accounted for the continued existence of simple or “savage” hunter-gatherers at one end of the
spectrum, and complex or “civilized” Europeans at the other end. Tylor thus thought that by
studying existing cultures, we could roughly plot the prehistoric past. This past, for Tylor, was a
long causal sequence that unfolded according to natural scientific laws. There were no breaks,
creations, miracles, or supernatural interventions. Progress through these sequences was gradual
and uniform because humans were a single species with shared biology and equal abilities.
Societies developed at different rates and progressed through stages because material and
scientific knowledge accumulated at different rates. It was not due to any inherent difference in
people or ability. Human history was thus seen as having a trajectory that trended toward a
naturalist, materialist, and scientific worldview.
There is nothing unfamiliar about this rendering of Tylor. His developmental scheme was
undoubtedly ethnocentric and normative. He assumed that the scientific worldview was superior
to all other worldviews, and that science would benefit all humans and lead to a better world.
Tylor’s evolutionism was not merely descriptive – tracing the course of human history cultural
and development – it was also prescriptive. At the close of Primitive Culture (II, 453), Tylor
frankly acknowledged his aims and hopes:
It is a harsher, and at times even painful, office of ethnography to expose the remains of
crude old culture which have passed into harmful superstition, and to mark them out for
destruction. Yet this work, if less genial, is not less urgently needful for the good of
mankind. Thus, active at once in aiding progress and in removing hindrance, the science
of culture is essentially a reformer’s science.
If our knowledge of Tylor was limited to the standard story and derived only from
reading about him (rather than actually reading Primitive Culture and his other works), we might
interpret this as yet another example of Tylor’s smug Victorian certitude and condemnation of
savage societies or barbaric cultures. While this may be partially correct, I read Tylor differently
and see Primitive Culture as an extended critique of his own culture, which he deemed to be rife
with superstition and bedeviled by (Christian) religion. The entire thrust of Primitive Culture is
not to condemn savage societies or barbaric peoples – it is to stamp out the primitive superstition
and barbaric beliefs that are present in his own society. In fact, Tylor has far greater admiration
and sympathy for the sensible and explicable spiritualism of savages and barbarians than he does
for “civilized” people who reject science while clinging to religion. He can explain (or thinks he
can) why savages and barbarians have such beliefs. He cannot explain, except as a primitive
survival, why civilized people continue to believe in religions which have directly descended
from earlier forms of belief. The greatest of all divides, he asserts, is not between the various
forms of savage, barbaric, and civilized spiritualism. It is between modern belief and non-belief:
“The divisions which have separated the great religions of the world into intolerant and hostile
sects are for the most part superficial, in comparison with the deepest of all religious schisms,
that which divides Animism from Materialism” (I, 453).
When seen in this light, Tylor’s enormous (and enormously erudite) project takes on an
entirely different complexion. Given his reformer’s goal, we can better appreciate his intense
interest in religion and focus on that which may have caused and preceded it. Nearly every
aspect of Primitive Culture is directed toward this goal. Clearly inspired by the proofs,
evidences, and methods that Darwin used with such devastating and convincing effect in the
Origin, Tylor meticulously builds his case bit by bit, ineluctably leading toward a single
conclusion: religion is an outmoded relic of our primitive past. Also like Darwin, who in the
Origin built a case for human evolution without ever mentioning humans, Tylor builds his case
against religion without ever mentioning Christianity. In several remarkable passages, Tylor
clearly indicates that his goal is not simply to trace the prehistory of religion – it is to use that
history to shed light on, and hopefully eradicate, modern religion:
The ethnographer’s course, again, should be like that of an anatomist who carries on his
studies if possible rather on dead than living subjects; vivisection is nervous work, and
the human investigator hates inflicting needless pain. Thus when the student of culture
occupies himself in viewing the bearings of exploded controversies, or in unravelling the
history of long superseded inventions, he is gladly seeking his evidence rather in such old
dead history, than in discussions where he and those he lives among are alive with intense
[religious] feeling, and where his judgment is biassed by the pressure of personal
sympathy….
[W]e are to study savages and old nations to learn the laws that under new circumstances
are working for good or ill in our own development. If it is needful to give an instance of
the directness with which antiquity and savagery bear upon our modern life, let it be
taken in the facts just brought forward on the relation of ancient sorcery to the belief in
witchcraft which was not long since one of the gravest facts of European history, and of
savage spiritualism to beliefs which so deeply affect our civilization now [and which
show] how direct and close the connexion may be between modern culture and the
condition of the rudest savage (158-59).
In these passages and many others, Tylor reveals his project for what it is: a destabilizing and
destructive genealogy of religion. When Primitive Culture is read in light of this goal, seemingly
disparate data and discussion takes on a coherence that might otherwise appear lacking. Perhaps
more importantly, it shifts focus away from savages and barbarians, while shining a spotlight on
the primitive (religious) features of modern culture.
Consider, for example, the concept of “survivals” which Tylor defines as the “processes,
customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of
society different from that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs
and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved” (16). In
isolation and out of larger context, this relatively dry statement may be construed as nothing
more than the method Tylor proposes to use in reconstructing culture history. While it is this, it
is also something more. Survivals, Tylor later asserts, are synonymous with “superstitions” that
even now, in supposedly civilized societies, “sets up in our midst primævel monuments of
barbaric thought and life (21). Here again, Tylor clearly indicates that Primitive Culture is
something more than the founding text of a new science or discipline. It is nothing less than one
long argument against the primitive monument of modern religion:
The examination of Mythology contained in the first volume is, for the most part made
from a special point of view, on evidence collected for a special purpose, that of tracing
the relation between the myths of the savage tribes and their analogues among more
civilized nations….
Nowhere, perhaps, are broad views of historical development more needed than in the
study of religion….It is with a sense of attempting an investigation which bears very
closely on the current theology of our own day, that I have set myself to examine
systematically, among the lower races, the development of Animism; that is to say, the
doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general.
More than half of the present work is occupied with a mass of evidence from all regions
of the world, displaying the nature and meaning of this great element of the Philosophy of
Religion, and tracing its transmission, expansion, restriction, modification, along the
course of history into the midst of our own modern thought….
In these investigations, however, made rather from an ethnographic than a theological
point of view, there has seemed little need of entering into direct controversial argument,
which indeed I have taken pains to avoid as far as possible. The connexion which runs
through religion, from its rudest forms up to the status of enlightened Christianity, may
be conveniently treated of with little recourse to dogmatic theology (22-23).
It may be the case that Tylor has significantly understated how much of Primitive Culture
is devoted to the dissection of religion. Nearly everything in the two volumes bears on the issue.
Religion is the thread running throughout Primitive Culture, connecting a vast array of disparate
and seemingly disconnected cultural phenomena into a coherent whole. After laying out his
method and agenda in the initial chapters, Tylor examines survivals in modern culture, all of
which are manifestations of pre-scientific ways of thinking. He follows with several chapters on
the origins, evolution, and structure of language and numeracy. Standing alone, these chapters
establish Tylor as a brilliant linguist and scholar. But as always, they do more and Tylor uses
them to show how language in general and metaphor in particular lends itself to animist thinking,
mythological speculation, and metaphysics or religion. In the next three chapters of volume one,
Tylor does something similar with myth. He begins by examining how myths might have
originated (either as matters of factual observation or speculative theory), and then traces their
transformations over time. As was true of his language chapters, these may appear to stand alone
but they do not. Tylor’s goal is always lurking beneath the surface. In the final chapter of volume
one, Tylor introduces the subject of animism. This subject – which Tylor considered to be his
most important theoretical contribution to anthropology – occupies Tylor for the next six
chapters and nearly all of volume two. For better or worse, Tylor’s theory of animism has seeped
into the conceptual consciousness of nearly all later theorists of religion.
Animism, for Tylor, begins with the concept of souls. Tylor observes that all known
societies have soul concepts, which means they must be fundamental or foundational. His
concern, therefore, is to explain how such ideas arise. The explanation is remarkably
straightforward: everyone dreams and many people have visions (induced either by privation or
intoxicants). In dreams and visions, people see themselves and others. Soul concepts are
developed to explain the fleeting appearance of these agents. But this is not the only cause.
People have observed that there is a fundamental difference between the living and the dead.
Soul concepts are also developed to explain the difference between a living person and a dead
person. The agents seen in dreams and visions are connected, naturally enough, to the life force
which animates living people, with the result being a universal and robust conception of souls.
Through entirely rational processes of generalizing and inference, soul concepts eventually give
rise to spirit concepts. With a robust conception of souls and spirits, people use them to explain
the workings of the world. The whole is, in Tylor’s estimation, an entirely rational and
reasonable process that arises from ordinary cognitive functioning.
There is of course a great deal more to Tylor’s theory of animism (which I will address
in the later section on neo-animism), but this brief rendering provides us a glimpse into his
“intellectualist” or cognitive approach. Tylor assumes (correctly as it turns out) that humans
everywhere have the same mental abilities. These universal abilities do not differ from culture to
culture – the distinctions and differences between savage-barbaric-civilized people are due to
differences in knowledge or education, and nothing else. Because people all reason in the same
way, Tylor thinks he is able to understand how soul-spirits concepts arise. Because these
concepts are foundational to both animism (initially) and religion (subsequently), Tylor thinks he
can explain the origin of the former and its transformation into the latter. As Tylor sees things,
the arc or progress of human history is intellectual and educational. The original phase is
unknown and cannot be known because there are no living humans who represent or
approximate it. But having passed through this original (pre- or proto-human evolutionary)
phase, fully modern and capable minds appeared and they developed animism. Over time, some
animist societies developed into religious ones. Tylor considers this to be a regression. Whereas
animism is fully rational, plausible, and theoretical, religion is irrational, implausible, and
ossified. Progress occurs only when and where people reject animist, spiritualist, and religious
ideas and begin thinking in natural, material, and scientific terms.
This clearly disrupts the standard view of Tylor as someone who champions the
progressive “civilized” over primitive “savages” and “barbarians.” While Tylor can understand
and empathize with animist savages or barbarians, this understanding and empathy does not
extend to the civilized religious. Religion should not, Tylor suggests, play any role in civilized
society. While some of the criticisms leveled against Tylor by later theorists are substantively
justified or well-taken, many of them may have been prompted by his subtle yet strident
campaign against religion. The irony here is that in the same year Primitive Culture was
published, another evolutionary theory appeared which may have more subtly undermined
religion, yet did so without any stridency or subsequent condemnation.