ghost-doctrine

Updated: May 16, 2025

Finally, as has been said before, granting my opinion that there are two streams of religious thought, one rising in the conception of an undifferentiated Being, eternal, moral, and creative, the other rising in the ghost-doctrine, it stands to reason that the latter, as best adapted to everyday needs and experiences, normal and supernormal, may contaminate the former, and introduce sacrifice and food-propitiation into the ritual of Beings who, by the original conception, 'need nothing of ours. At the same time, the conception of 'spirit, once attained, would inevitably come to be attached to the idea of the Supreme Being, even though he was not at first conceived of as a spirit.

Andrew Lang - The Making of Religion