Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

We are assured by Max Müller, that religion is a word that has changed from century to century, and that "the word rose to the surface thousands of years ago." Taking religion to imply an inward feeling of reverence toward the unseen, and a desire to act in obedience to the inward law of right, religion has existed as long as humanity itself. What is commonly assumed by the word religion, by writers in general, is dogma or belief.

The importance of this subject was well put forth by the great Sanscrit scholar in the phrase, "The real history of man is the history of religion." This conviction lends interest and weight to any investigations into the ancient religion of Ireland; though Plowden held that" few histories are so charged with fables as the annals of Ireland."

It was Herder who finely said, "Our earth owes the seeds of all higher culture to a religious tradition, whether literary or oral." In proportion as the so-called supernatural gained an ascendancy, so was man really advancing from the materialism and brutishness of savagedom. Lecky notes "the disposition of man in certain stages of society towards the miraculous." But was Buckle quite correct in maintaining that "all nature conspired to increase the authority of the imaginative faculties, and weaken the authority of the reasoning ones"?

It is not to be forgotten in our inquiry that, as faiths rose in the East, science has exerted its force in the West.

Fetishism can hardly be regarded as the origin of religion. As to those writers who see in the former the deification of natural objects, Max Müller remarks, "They might as well speak of primitive men mummifying their dead bodies Before they had wax to embalm them with."

Myth has been styled the basis of religion not less than of history; but how was it begotten?

Butler, in English, Irish, and Scottish Churches, writes--

p. 78