The Genesis of Superstitions

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist.

Herbert Spencer’s short essay The Genesis of Superstitions - an essay in which Natural Science meets Philosophy -, which we present to modern readers today, was published in March 1875 in the Popular Science Monthly magazine.

«Comprehension of the thoughts generated in the primitive man by his converse with the surrounding world can be had only by looking at the surrounding world from his stand-point. The accumulated knowledge and the mental habits slowly acquired during education must be suppressed, and we must divest ourselves of conceptions which, partly by inheritance and partly by individual culture, have been rendered necessary. None can do this completely, and few can do it even partially. (…) To the primitive mind, making first steps in the interpretation of the surrounding world, here is revealed a class of facts confirming the notion that existences have their visible and invisible states, and strengthening the implication of a duality in each existence».