Preface.

...received their primary impetus from historical conditions, although the natural element is not without influence even in these. "Man is a historical being," remarks Lazarus, "everything in us, about us, is a result of history; we speak no word, we think no idea, indeed, no feeling or sensation animates us without it being dependent on infinitely manifold derived historical conditions." original: Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, II, 437. (Journal of Folk Psychology, edited by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal). The same likely holds true for entire nations. No people creates a culture entirely from within itself; every culture is the sum of the preceding results of global development, which it absorbs and, processed through its own spirit, leaves to posterity as an inheritance. This is the tradition of culture.

In a study of the conception of the Christian Devil, who occupied the ecclesiastical sphere of belief in the Middle Ages, the impartial researcher must first look back to the early Christian centuries. In tracing the origin of this conception, the path leads through the New Testament to the Hebrews and those peoples with whom they came into contact. The dualism of good and evil beings—which is striking among the Parsis|Followers of Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion known for its dualistic battle between the forces of light (Ahura Mazda) and darkness (Ahriman) and their relatives, as well as among the Egyptians—the dualistic view that appears more or less decisively in the mythologies of all civilized nations, must attract attention and necessitate a further step back down the ladder of various religions. Having reached the nature-peoples|A 19th-century term for indigenous societies or those viewed as living in a state of nature, often studied by early anthropologists to find the "roots" of human belief, the fact will emerge that dualism is expressed in all natural religions as well. This observation leads to the challenge of seeking the reason for this phenomenon within the field of anthropology, and to examine the human consciousness that is stimulated to form such a conception.

"In all times," says the naturalist, "thinking man has tried to account for the origin of things, in order to gain information about the reason for their peculiarities." original: Liebig, Chemische Briefe, p. 79. (Justus von Liebig's Chemical Letters, a famous 19th-century work on science and philosophy). Should this quest then remain limited only to things outside of man? Has not man, awakened to thought, his own...