| The purpose of this dissertation is to illuminate the connections between the Victorian crisis of faith and the comparative and historical study of religions, or what was often called the "Science of Religion," which flourished in Britain from about 1860 to 1915. The notion that religion was an appropriate subject for disinterested scholarly investigation was not, of course, original to the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the period after 1860 witnessed an unprecedented burst of activity in this area as the first attempts were made to create a coherent field of study which would treat religion purely as a human institution. The five men whose lives and work form the basis of this dissertation--Friedrich Max Muller, Edward B. Taylor, Andrew Lang, William Robertson Smith, and James G. Frazer--were all major contributors to this emerging field. This study argues that their work is best seen not as a cause, but as a response to the sense of crisis which was engendered by religious turmoil; their scholarly interest reflected the questions and anxieties of a society undergoing the process of secularization. Furthermore, even though their investigations centered on non-Christian religions, especially those of so-called primitive peoples, each of these scholars sought to convey to his audience a message, often a compound of reassurance and warning, about their culture's own religious dilemmas.; The method chosen is intellectual biography. Each of the main chapters is devoted to a single figure and contains a brief biographical sketch, an exposition and analysis of each man's major contributions to the field and an assessment of the public reaction to his work.; The history of the science of religion can be divided into two phases. In the years before 1880, the field was dominated by the figures of Max Muller and Edward Tylor. The two men differed fundamentally on questions of methodology and they arrived at strikingly different conclusions, but both sought to convey affirming or reassuring messages to their audiences. During the second phase of inquiry, beginning around 1875, scholars such as Lang, Smith and Frazer began to probe the weaknesses and to expose the contradictions in their predecessor's theories. As a result of their criticisms, the expectation that "scientific" inquiry could lead the way to a solution of contemporary religious dilemmas began to fade. |
