Vivekananda Mailing List-9/10/02

[Guest guest]

Two theories have gained some acceptance amongst modern scholars One

is the spirit theory of religion, the other the evolution of the idea

of the Infinite. One party maintains that ancestor worship is the

beginning of religious ideas; the other, that religion originates in

the personification of the powers of nature. Man wants to keep up the

memory of his dead relatives and thinks they are living even when the

body is dissolved, and he wants to place food for them and, in a

certain sense, to worship them. Out of that came the growth we call

religion.