Contents:—Pagan Religions not wholly Bad—Their Lines of Development as Connected with: 1. The Primitive Social Bond—The Totem, the Priesthood, and the Law; 2. The Family and the Position of Woman; 3. The Growth of Jurisprudence—The Ordeal, Trial by Battle, Oaths, and the Right of Sanctuary—Religion is Anarchic; 4. The Development of Ethics—Dualism of Primitive Ethics—Opposition of Religion to Ethics; 5. The Advance in Positive Knowledge—ReligionversusScience; 6. The Fostering of the Arts—The Aim for Beauty and Perfection—Colour-Symbolism, Sculpture, Metre, Music, Oratory, Graphic Methods—Useful Arts, Architecture; 7. The Independent Life of the Individual—His Freedom and Happiness—Inner Stadia of Progress: 1. From the Object to the Symbol; 2. From the Ceremonial Law to the Personal Ideal; 3. From the Tribal to the National Conception of Religion—Conclusion.
Contents:—Pagan Religions not wholly Bad—Their Lines of Development as Connected with: 1. The Primitive Social Bond—The Totem, the Priesthood, and the Law; 2. The Family and the Position of Woman; 3. The Growth of Jurisprudence—The Ordeal, Trial by Battle, Oaths, and the Right of Sanctuary—Religion is Anarchic; 4. The Development of Ethics—Dualism of Primitive Ethics—Opposition of Religion to Ethics; 5. The Advance in Positive Knowledge—ReligionversusScience; 6. The Fostering of the Arts—The Aim for Beauty and Perfection—Colour-Symbolism, Sculpture, Metre, Music, Oratory, Graphic Methods—Useful Arts, Architecture; 7. The Independent Life of the Individual—His Freedom and Happiness—Inner Stadia of Progress: 1. From the Object to the Symbol; 2. From the Ceremonial Law to the Personal Ideal; 3. From the Tribal to the National Conception of Religion—Conclusion.
It has always been, and is now, the prevailing belief in Christendom that pagan or heathen religions cannot exert and never have exerted any good influence on their votaries.
This opinion has also been defended by some modern and eminent authorities in the science of ethnology, as, for example, the late Professor Waitz.[264]It is a favourite teaching in missionary societies and in works of travellers who are keen observers of the shortcomings of others’ faiths.
I have never been able to share such a view. The lowest religions seem to have in them the elements which exist in the ripest and the noblest; and these elements work for good wherever they exist. However rude the form of belief in agencies above those of the material world, in a higher law than that confessedly of solely human enactment, and in a standard of duty prescribed by something loftier than immediate advantage,—such a belief must prompt the individual, anywhere, to a salutary self-discipline which will steadily raise him above his merely animal instincts, and imbue him with nobler conceptions of the aims of life.
When he feels himself under the protection of some unseen, but ever near, beneficent power, his emotions of gratitude and love will be stimulated; and when he recognises in the ceremonial law a divine prescription for his own welfare and that of his tribe, he will cheerfully submit to the rigours of its discipline.
The various lines of development which were thus marked out and pursued through the influence of early religious thought, and which reacted to develop it, deserve to be pointed out in detail, sincethey have so generally been overlooked or misunderstood.
For convenience of presentation they may be examined under seven headings, as they were connected with: 1. The primitive social bond; 2. The family and the position of woman; 3. The growth of jurisprudence; 4. The development of ethics; 5. The advance in positive knowledge; 6. The fostering of the arts; and 7. The independent life of the individual.
These are the main elements of ethnology; and as they progressed to higher forms and finer specialisations, partly through the influence of religion, they in turn reflected back to it their brighter lustre, and the symmetrical growth of a richer culture was thus secured.
1. The first to be named should be the construction of the primitive society. This was essentially religious. I have already emphasised how completely the savage is bound up in his faith, how it enters into nigh every act and thought of his daily life. This may be illustrated by its part in four very early and widely existing forms of social ties—the totem, the sacred society, the priesthood, and the ceremonial law.
The totemic bond I have previously explained. It existed in many American and Australian tribesand relics of it can be discerned in the early peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its constitution was avowedly religious. The supposed or “eponymous†ancestor of the totem was a mythical existence, a sort of deity. He was known only through a revelation, either in visions, or, through the assertions of the elders of the clan, in which latter case the myth was the origin of the relationship. Theoretically, all members of the totem were kinfolk, “of one blood,†and the numerous rites connected with the letting of blood were generally to symbolise this teaching.[265]
In various tribes, as among the Sioux and in Polynesia, the totem did not prevail. Its place was taken by societies, sacred in character, the members of which were bound closely together by some supernatural tie. As our Indians say, all the members “had the same medicine.†The relation these societies bear to the tribe is not dissimilar to that elsewhere held by totems.
In nearly all primitive peoples the priesthood exerts a powerful influence in preserving the unity of the tribe, in presenting an immovable opposition to external control. This is well known to the Christianmissionaries and bitterly resented by them. These shamans and “medicine-men†are the most persistent opponents of civilisation and Christianity; but it must be remembered that the same conservatism on their part has for centuries been the chief preventive of tribal dissolution and decay. While we regret that they should resist what is good, we must recognise the value of their services to their people in the past.[266]
The ceremonial law belongs, as I have elsewhere said, to the primary forms of religion. It is in full force, as among the Mincopies and Yahgans, where it is difficult to perceive any other form of religious expression. It is deemed by all to be divine in origin, imparted in dreams or visions by supernatural visitors, transcending therefore all human enactments. It defines the proper conduct of the individual, and prescribes what is allowed and what is forbidden to him. Obedience to it is constantly inculcated under the threat of the severest penalties.
These are the main forces which moulded the earliest human societies known to us, and may be said to have first created society itself. They are alldistinctly religious, and their consideration obliges us to acknowledge the correctness of the statement of a distinguished Italian, Professor Tito Vignoli,—“There is no society, however rude and primitive, in which all the relations, both of the individual and of the society itself, are not visibly based on superstitions and mythical beliefs.â€[267]
2. Earlier, perhaps, than any definite social organisation was the family bond which united together those of one kinship. This rested upon marriage, the religious character of which in even the rudest tribes I dwelt upon in the last lecture. I then explained the matriarchal system prevalent in so many savage peoples. Necessarily, this exalted the position of woman, by conferring upon her the titular position of head of the house, and often the actual ownership of the family property.
It is a general truth in sociology that we may gauge the tendencies of a given society towards progressive growth by the position it assigns to woman, by the amount of freedom it gives her, and by the respect it pays to her peculiar faculties. Religions which, like Mohammedanism, reduce her to a very subordinate place in life, wholly secondary to that of the male, have worked detrimentally to the advancement of the peoples who have adopted them.
In some savage tribes, the woman is a mere chattel or slave, denied actual participation in religious rites. But that is by no means the case with all. Among the Hottentots, for example,—who were, when first discovered, a people of respectable culture,—a man can take no higher oath than to swear by his eldest sister; and such is the respect inculcated through his religion, that he never speaks to her unless she addresses him first.[268]
The more delicate nervous organisation of women adapts them peculiarly to the perception of those sub-conscious states which are the psychic sources of inspiration and revelation. Very widely, therefore, in primitive religions they occupied the position of seeresses and priestesses, and were reverenced in accordance therewith. Among the Dyaks of Borneo, in former days, all the recognised priestly class were women. Their bodies were supposed to be the chosen residence of the Sangsangs, beautiful beings, friendly to men. These inspired women, called Bilians or Borich, were subject to theoleptic fits, in which they gave advice, foretold the future, recited rhythmic songs, etc. They were under no restraint of conduct, as what they did, it was held, was the prompting of the god. So firm was their influence that, when, in modern days, the men also becamepriests, they were obliged to wear the garb of women.[269]
The Siamese also entertain this opinion. Their gods speak through the mouth of some chosen woman. When she feels the visit of the spirit to be near, she arrays herself in a handsome red silk garment, and as the deity enters her, she discourses of the other world, tells where lost objects are to be found, and the like. The assembled company worship her, or rather the god in her. On recovering from her theopneustic trance, she professes entire unconsciousness of what has taken place.[270]
The American Indians very generally concede to their women an exalted rank in their religious mysteries. The Algonquins had quite as famous “medicine-women†as medicine-men, and the same was true generally. Mr. Cushing tells me that there is only one person among the Zuñis who is a member of all the sacred societies and thus knows the secrets of all, and that person is a woman.
When Votan, the legendary hero of the Tzentals of Chiapas, left them for his long journey, he placed his sacred apparatus and his magical scrolls in a cave under the charge of a high priestess, who was to appoint her successor of the same sex until hisreturn. The secret was faithfully kept and the successors appointed for more than a hundred and fifty years after their conversion to Christianity; until, in 1692, on the occasion of the visit of the Bishop to the hamlet where the priestess lived, she disclosed the story, and the holy relics were burned.[271]
Twenty years later, as if to avenge this, the Tzentals revolted in a body, their leader being an inspired prophetess of their tribe, a girl of twenty, fired with enthusiasm to drive the Spaniards from the land and restore the worship of the ancient gods.[272]
It is quite usual to find in early religions many rites, such as dances and sacrifices, which women alone carry out, and to which it istabufor any man to be admitted. This naturally arises in those cults where the deities are divided sexually into male and female. Such in their origin were the Bacchanals of ancient Greece, participated in at first by women and girls only, celebrated in devotion to the productive powers of nature, which were held to belong more especially to the female sex.[273]The “wise womenâ€of many primitive faiths formed a close caste by themselves, no male being admitted, in imitation of their mythological prototypes in the heavens. The “witches†of the Middle Ages were lineal successors of the Teutonic priestesses, who took as their model the “swan-maidens†or “wish-women†of Odin.[274]
Another form of early institutions was that of the societies of virgins, such as that which from primitive Italic times kept alive the holy fire of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Extensive associations of a similar nature were found by the European explorers in Mexico, Yucatan, Peru, and elsewhere.
A curious teaching of several wide-spread cults was that women alone were endowed with immortality. Such was the opinion of the natives of the Marquesas Islands, and in Samoa the myth related that the god Supa (paralysis) ordained in the council of creation that the life of a man should be like a torch, which, when blown out, cannot be again lighted by blowing; but that a woman’s soul should live always.[275]
No one can doubt that in thus assigning a high and often the highest place in the religious mysteriesto woman, many primitive religions surrounded her with a sacredness which was constantly recognised, and thus aided in the improvement of her social relations. The value of virtue and purity was increased, mere animal desires were subjected to religious restraint, and the relations of sex came increasingly to be regarded as instituted by divine wisdom for special purposes.
3. Although the specifications of the ceremonial law were often capricious and absurd, and sometimes positively hurtful, yet it developed the habit of obedience and the respect for authority. In this manner it potently aided the evolution of jurisprudence—that is, of those rules of conduct which grow out of the habit of men living together and which are necessary to preserve amicable relations. These had their origin in other than religious considerations, but when once consciously recognised as beneficial, the religion of the tribe generally adopted them, claimed their creation, and threw around them the garb of its own protective power. Religion then actively aided in the fulfilment of purely social duties, as these were understood by the tribe.
In primitive conditions, all laws are God’s laws. As we would say, there is no separation of the civil and criminal from the canon law. To the Mohammedan,the Koran is the source of all jurisprudence. This is a survival from early thought.
From this it followed that the punishment of crime and the decisions between litigants were, properly, judgments of God. This universal opinion is reflected in a number of traits in jurisprudence, some of which are still in vogue in civilised lands. The most noteworthy are the ordeal, trial by battle, oaths, and the privilege of sanctuary.
Ordeals were universal. They all rested on the belief that the gods would rescue the innocent man from danger. He might be required to hold red-hot iron in his hands; he might be plunged long under water; swallow poison; or in any other way expose himself to pain or death; if he were unjustly accused, the invisible powers would protect him.[276]
The trial by battle involved the same opinion. “If the Lord is on my side, why should I fear?†is the confident belief at the basis of every such test of skill and strength.[277]
These forms of decision have disappeared, but the oath remains as vigorous as ever in our law courts. It is, however, as has been pointed out by the able ethnologist and lawyer, Dr. Post, originally and in spirit nothing else than an ordeal. The false witness, the perjurer, is believed to expose himself to the wrath of God and to suffer the consequences in this or another life.[278]
The rite of sanctuary was distinctly religious. The criminal among the Hebrews, who could escape to the temple and cling to the horns of the altar, must not be seized by the officers of justice. The Cherokee Indians, like the Israelites, had “cities of refuge,†which they called “white towns.†With the Acagchemem, a Californian tribe, the temples were so purifying that the evil-doer, were he guilty even of murder, who could reach them before he was caught, was cleansed of his sin and absolved ever after from any punishment for it.[279]
In these vital relations we see how religion entered deeply into civil life, and became a guide and director of its most essential procedures. Its development grew with its responsibilities and with the intimacy it cultivated with practical affairs.
The codes of statutes instituted by ancient legislators,usually personified under some one famous name, as Moses, Manu, Menes, or the like, obtained general adoption through the belief that they emanated directly from divinity, and were part of the ceremonial law. Under favour of this disguise, they worked for the good of those who followed them, and gained a credence which would not have been conceded to them, had it been thought that they were of human manufacture.
Toward merely human law the religious sentiment is in its nature and derivation in frequent opposition. It claims a nobler lineage and a higher title. In theory, the Church must always be above the State, as God is superior to man. Religion, when vital and active, is ever revolutionary and anarchic. It ever aims at substituting divine for human ordinances.
This has been from earliest times its constant tendency. It has been a potent dissolvent of states and governments and of such older religious expressions as have become humanised by usage and formality.
In this manner it has been the most powerful of all levers in stimulating the human mind to active enterprise and the use of all its faculties. Man owes less to his conscious than to his sub-conscious intelligence, and of this religion has been the chief interpreter.
4. The severest blows have been dealt at primitiveor pagan religions on account of the inferiority of their ethics. It has often been asserted that they do not cultivate the moral faculties and benevolent emotions, but stifle and pervert them. They are, therefore, considered to be distinctly evil in tendency.
This important criticism cannot be disposed of by a mere denial. There is no doubt that the ethics of barbarism is not that of a high civilisation. But if we understand the necessary conditions of tribal life in the unending conflicts of the savage state, we can see that the highest moral code would find no place there.
All tribal religions preach a dualism of ethics, one for the members of the tribe, who are bound together by ties of kinship and by union to preserve existence; and the other, for the rest of the world. To the former are due aid, kindness, justice, truth and fair dealing; to the latter, enmity, hatred, injury, falsehood, and deceit. The latter is just as much a duty as the former, and is just as positively enjoined by both religion and tribal law.[280]
The state of barbarism is one of perpetual war, in which each petty tribe is striving to conquer, rob, anddestroy its neighbours. The Patagonians and Australians wander about their sterile lands in small bands, naked and shelterless, owning nothing but the barest necessities. But whenever two of these bands approach each other, it is the signal for a murderous struggle, in order to obtain possession of the wretched rags and trumperies of the opponent.
For this reason, the development of ethics must be studied on inclusive lines, as to what extent they were cultivated between members of the same social unit, the totem or the tribe. The duty of kindness to others extended to a very limited distance, but, within that area, may have been, and generally was, punctually observed. The devotion of members of the same gens to each other, even to the sacrifice of life, has been often noted among savages. The duties involved by this connection were frequently onerous and dangerous, as in the common custom of blood revenge, where a man, at the imminent peril and often at the loss of his own life, felt constrained to slay the murderer of a fellow-clansman.
The character of the early gods was, as a rule, non-ethical. They were generally neither wholly good nor wholly bad. They were more or less friendly toward men, but rarely constantly either beneficent or malignant. They were too human for that.[281]
Hence the religions which were founded upon such conceptions were not in their prescriptions of conduct chiefly ethical, but rather ceremonial. Moral conduct was of less importance than the performance of the rites, the recitation of the formulas, and the respect for thetabu.[282]
I may go farther, and say that in all religions, in the essence of religion itself, there lies concealed a certain contempt for the merely ethical, as compared with the mystical, in life. That which is wholly religious in thought and emotion is conscious of another, and, it claims, a loftier origin than that which is moral only, based as the latter is, on solely social considerations. I have heard from the pulpits of our own land very gloomy predictions of the fate of the “merely moral man.â€[283]
5. That which we call “modern progress†is dueto the increase of positive knowledge, the enlargement of the domain of objective truth. To this, religion in its early stages made important contributions. The motions of the celestial bodies were studied at first for ceremonial reasons only. They fixed the sacred year and the periods for festivals and sacrifices. Out of this grew astronomy, the civil calendar, and other departments of infantile science.
The rudiments of mathematics were discovered and developed chiefly by the priestly class, and at first for hieratic purposes; and the same is true of the elements of botanical and zoölogical knowledge. The practice of medicine owes some of its most useful resources to the observations of the “medicine-men†or shamans of savage tribes.
While this much and more may justly be stated concerning the contributions of Religion to Science, there can be no question of the irreconcilable conflict between the two. They arise in totally different tracts of the human mind, Science from the conscious, Religion from the sub- or unconscious intelligence. Therefore, there is no common measure between them.
Science proclaims that man is born to know, not to believe, and that truth, to be such, must be verifiable. Religion proclaims that faith is superiorto knowledge, and that the truth which is intuitive is and must be higher than that which depends on observation. Science acknowledges that it can reach no certain conclusions; its final decisions are always followed by a mark of interrogation. Religion despises such hesitancy, and proceeds in perfect confidence of possessing the central and eternal verity. Science looks upon the ultimate knowable laws of the universe as mechanical, religion as spiritual or demonologic.
These differences have always existed, and have, in the main, resulted in placing religions at all times in antagonism to universal ethics, to general rules of conduct, and to objective knowledge. Everywhere, the religious portion of the community have entertained a secret or open contempt for “worldly learningâ€; everywhere they have proclaimed that the knowledge of God is superior to the knowledge of his works; and that obedience to his law is of more import than the love of humanity.
We may turn to the American Indians, the tribes of Siberia or the Dyaks of Borneo, and we shall find that the ordinary “doctor†who cured by a knowledge of herbs, of nursing, and of simple mechanical means, was far less esteemed than the shaman who depended not on special knowledge but on the possession of mysterious powers which gave him controlover demons[284]; or we may take that Protestant sect of the Reformation, who opposed anyone learning the alphabet, lest he should waste his time on vain human knowledge[285]; or a thousand other examples; and the contrast is always the same.
The conclusion, therefore, is that early religion did assist the development of the race along these lines, but only incidentally and, as it were, unwittingly; while it was, at heart, unfriendly to them.
6. It is otherwise when we turn to Art, especially esthetic Art. Its aim is the realisation, the expression in the object, of the idea of the Beautiful. This idea does not belong to the conscious intelligence. It cannot be expressed in the formulas of positive knowledge. The esthetic, like the religious, emotions, send their roots far down into the opaque structure of the sub-conscious intelligence, and hence the two are natural associates. What Professor Bain says of Art may be extended to Religion: “Nature is not its standard, nor is [objective] truth its chief end.â€[286]
It has been seriously questioned whether the ideaof the beautiful existed among primitive peoples, apart from a desire for mere gaudy colouring or striking display. No one would doubt its universal presence could he but free his judgment from his own canons of the beautiful, and accept those which prevail in the savage tribe he is studying. Darwin, in his work on theDescent of Man, collected evidence from the rudest hordes of all continents to prove that all were passionate admirers of beauty, as measured by their own criteria; and he reached also the important conclusion that their completest expression of it was to be found in their religious art. “In every nation,†he says, “sufficiently advanced to have made effigies of their gods, or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have endeavoured to express their highest idea of beauty.â€[287]
We should also remember that the same great teacher says: “It is certainly not true that there is in the human mind any universal standard of beauty;†and this is so, both of the human form and of those expressions of the beautiful which appeal to the ear and the touch. The music and the metre of one race generally displease another; and there is no one norm by which the superiority of either can be absolutely ascertained.
In their own way, however, Art and Religion havethis in common, that they make a study of Perfection, and aim to embody it in actuality; whereas Science or positive knowledge confines itself to reality, which is ever imperfect.
Perfection is, however, an unconditioned mode of existence, not measurable by our senses, and hence outside the domain of inductive research. The tendency of organic forms and cosmic motions is always toward it, but they always fall short of it.[288]We are aware of it only through the longings of our sub-conscious minds, not through the laws of our reasoning intelligence. Yet so intense is our conviction, not only that it is true, but that final truth lies in it alone, that it has ever been and will ever be the highest and strongest motive of human action.
Beginning with those arts which are avowedly the expression of beauty in line, colour, or form, it is easy to show how they were fostered by the religious sense. The inscribed shells and tablets from the mounds of the Mississippi Valley present complex and symmetrical drawings, clearly intended for some mythical being or supernatural personage.
Among the Salishan Indians of British Columbia, when a girl reaches maturity she must go alone tothe hills and undergo a long period of retirement. At its close, she records her experiences by drawing a number of rude figures in red paint on a boulder, indicating the rites she has performed and the visions she has had.[289]Such rock-writing, or petroglyphs, nearly always of religious import, are found in every continent, and offer the beginnings of the art of drawing.
It is possible that the oldest known examples, scratched with a flint on the bones of reindeers dug up in the caves of southern France, may represent the totems or deified heroes of the clan. Certain it is that a class of symbolic figures, which recur the world over, often dating from remote ages, such as the crescent, the cross, the svastika, the triskeles, the circle, and the square, were of religious intention, and conveyed mystic knowledge or supernatural protection in the opinion of those who drew them.
The early cultivation of painting in religious art arose chiefly from the symbolism of colours, to which I previously made a passing allusion. Its origin was in the effect which certain hues have upon the mind, either specifically or from association. Colour-symbolism, indeed, forms a prominent feature in nearly every primitive religion. The import of the different colours varies, but not to the degree which excludessome general tendencies. The white and the blue are usually of cheerful and peaceful signification, the black and the red are ominous of strife and darkness. In many tribes the yellow bore the deepest religious meaning. The Mayas of Yucatan assigned it to the dawn and the east; and when the Aztecs gathered around the dying bed of one they loved, and raised their voices in the paean which was to waft the soul to its higher life beyond the grave, they sang: “Already does the dawn appear, the light advances. Already do the birds of yellow plumage tune their songs to greet thee.â€
These symbolic colours are those with which the early temples were tinted and the rude images of the gods stained. They were rarely harmonious, but they were effective, and appealed to the people for whom they were intended. Their preparation and their technical employment were improved, and, as the art advanced, it reacted on the religion, directing its conceptions of divinity into higher walks and toward nobler ideals.
Art in line and colour is of vast antiquity, probably preceding that in shape or form, carving or sculpture. But this, too, we find was fairly understood by the cave-dwellers of France and Switzerland at a time when the great glacier still covered a good part of the European continent, and there is scarcelya savage tribe to-day that does not make some rude attempts at carving the images of its deities.
A natural object which has a chance resemblance to a man or beast is chosen as a fetish, and the worshipper by chipping or rubbing increases slightly the likeness. This is the infancy of the sculptor’s art, and it is usually for a religious purpose that it is exercised. Soon it is developed, and in stone, or bone, or wood, in baked clay, or rags, or leaves, we find thousands of effigies in use to represent the tutelary deities and the other denizens of the supernatural world.
So prominent was the early progress of religious art in this direction that it gave the name to early religion itself. It was distinctly “idolatry,†or “image worship,†the objective expression overwhelming the inward sentiment.
Its excess in this direction led to reactions and protests as long ago as the dawn of history. “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything,†was a command taken so literally that it has swept away ever since in some of the Semitic peoples all interest in plastic or pictorial art, whether sacred or secular. It was believed that the contemplation of a divinity not represented by any visible object would maintain and develop a higher conception than if portrayedunder tangible form, no matter how beautiful or how symbolic.
This opinion would not and did not exclude the cultivation of the beautiful under non-sensuous forms, such as appeal to the ear rather than to the eye. I refer to metre and music, to oratory and literary composition.
From some cause which it might be difficult to explain satisfactorily the natural expression of religious emotion in language is universally metrical. The rites of every barbarous tribe are conducted in or accompanied by rude chants or songs, which both stimulate the religious feelings and give appropriate vent to them. Many of these chants are mere repetitions of phrases, or refrains, destitute of meaning, but they answer the purpose, and are the germs from which, in appropriate surroundings, have been developed the great poems of the race, the inspirations of its immortal bards.
Hundreds of examples of these primitive religious chants have been collected of recent years, when, for the first time, their ethnologic importance has been understood. They present a striking similarity, whether from the Polynesian Islands, the desert-dwellers of Australia, or the Navahoes and Sioux of our own reservations. Many of them are scarcely more than inarticulate cries, but even these have acertain likeness, containing the same class of vowels, and often leading, through this physiological correlation of sound to emotion, to similar words in the religious language of far-distant peoples.
Everywhere we find these metrical outbursts controlled by the sense of rhythmical repetition; and it was to accentuate this that instruments of music were first invented. Their rudest forms may be seen in the two flat sticks which the Australians use to beat time for their singing in theircorroborees, or festal ceremonies; or in the hollow log, pounded by a club, which some Central American tribes still employ. All the native American musical instruments appear to have been first invented for aiding the ritual; and tradition assigns with probability the same origin for most of those in the Old World.
Uniform rhythmic motion is a powerful means of intensifying collective suggestion; and its action is the more potent the more we yield our minds to the control of their unconscious activities,—the realm in which the religious sentiment is supreme.
In the initiation ceremonies of the Australians—called theBora—the youth are obliged to listen to long speeches from the old men, containing instructions in conduct and the ancestral religious beliefs. Such customs as this,—and in one or another form they are universal in primitive religions—led to thedevelopment of the art of Oratory. It was cultivated assiduously in primitive conditions. We have several volumes largely filled with the prolix addresses of the Aztec priests and priestesses on various solemn occasions, as birth, entering adult life, marriage, etc.[290]To learn these long formulas by heart was one of the duties, and not an easy one, of the neophytes.
In most tribes they are couched in forms apart from those of daily use, the words being unusual, with full vowels and sonorous terminations. Some of these peculiarities survive in the “pulpit eloquence†of our own day, testifying to the influence of religious thought on the development of the modes of dignified expression.
It was in this connection and under this inspiration that man invented the greatest boon which humanity has ever enjoyed,—a system of writing, a means of recording and preserving facts and ideas. Our present alphabet is traced lineally back to the sacred picture-writing of ancient Egypt; and the less efficient method employed by the natives of Mexico and Central America originated in devices to preserve the liturgic songs and religious formulas. For generations, in both areas, its chief cultivation and extension lay with the priestly class: althoughits final application to the uses of daily life was due to merchants rather than to scholars.
This discovery made possible such a treasure as a literature; and that we find its beginnings and oldest memorials chiefly of religious contents is ample testimony to this incalculable debt we owe to the religious sentiment. The papyri of Egypt, the codices of Central America, the Sanscrit Rig Veda, and the Persian Vendidad testify to the diligence with which the ancient worshippers sought to preserve the sacred chants and formulas.
We discern the same anxiety among rude savages to pass down in their integrity the liturgies of their worship; and in the “meday sticks†of the Chipeways and the curiously incised wooden tablets of Easter Island, we have the beginnings of written literature,—always the purpose being religious in character.
It is unnecessary to dwell in detail upon the fostering influence of early religion on the useful arts. In their numerous applications to the ritual and the objective expression of the religious sentiment, they were constantly stimulated by it and by the reward it was ever prepared to offer, both in this world and that to come.
But one art of utility was so pre-eminently religious in its source that it merits especial comment, thatis, building or architecture. Nearly all the great monuments of the ancient world, most of the important structures of primitive tribes everywhere, have in them something religious in aim, or are avowedly so. We know little or nothing of the builders of the mysterious “megalithic monuments,†the dolmens and cromlechs which to the number of thousands rise on the soil of France and England; but their arrangement and character leave no doubt that they were for some religious purpose. So the mighty piles which excite our astonishment in the valley of the Nile or the Euphrates, or on the highlands of Mexico, or in the tropical forests of Yucatan, reveal the same inspiration.
In his altars and temples, in his shrines and funerary monuments, his fanes and cathedrals, man has at all times expended his efforts and his means with a prodigality lavished on no other edifices. The orders of architecture arose from his desire to erect dwellings worthy of the god who should inhabit them. No beauty of line, no majesty of proportion, no abundance of decoration, was too great to secure this purpose. Such surroundings in time imparted dignity and permanence to the cult, and embellished the religious sentiment through noble artistic associations.
7. Let us now turn from these considerations of a general nature to the more pointed one, whetherprimitive religions exerted an improving influence on the independent life of the individual; for that is the test to which all institutions should finally be brought.
The savage is not the type of a free man, although in popular estimation he is generally so considered. He is, in fact, tyrannically fettered by traditional laws and tribal customs. He is merged in his clan or gens, against whose rules, often most painful and arbitrary, he dares take no step. As an individual, he cannot escape from their invisible chains.[291]
His only avenue to permitted freedom is through the higher law of his personal religion. If he pleads that his own tutelary spirit has ordered him to an act contrary to custom, or that his own magical powers enable him to defy established usage, his disregard of it will be condoned.
In savage life, the inspired and the insane are always ranked in the same category as above the law. Among the Kamschatkans, if a man declares that his personal divinity has in a dream commanded him to unite with some woman of the tribe, it is her duty to obey, no matter what her position or relationship.[292]
Although at times this freedom was doubtless abused, it secured for the individual a degree of personal liberty which he could have attained in no other manner. By recognising a law for the single conscience above that of either ancestral usage or popular religion, it paved the way to the development of the individual, free from all restraints other than his clear judgment would lay upon himself.
He who possessed the hidden knowledge, the esotericgnosis, was by that knowledge released from bondage to his fellow-men. As the poet Chapman so well says:
“There is no danger to a man who knowsWhat life and death is; there’s not any lawExceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawfulThat he should stoop to any other law.â€
“There is no danger to a man who knowsWhat life and death is; there’s not any lawExceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawfulThat he should stoop to any other law.â€
“There is no danger to a man who knows
What life and death is; there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.â€
This sense of superiority to all surroundings is disclosed everywhere in mystic religions. A Hindu prophetess was a few years ago imprisoned by the English civic judge for violation of the local laws and disturbing the peace. Her only statement in defence was: “Years ago, when a girl, I met in the jungle, face to face, the god Siva. He entered into my bosom. He abides in me now. My blessing is his blessing; my curse his curse.â€[293]The Malay,when he “runs amuck,†regards himself exonerated from all restraint, moral or social; and that custom and belief are not confined to his race.[294]
It was held among the ancients that those who are “born of God,†that is, inspired by the divine afflatus, are not only above human law, but “are not subject even to the decrees of Fate.â€[295]
The ceremonial law, so powerful in primitive condition, must have exerted a beneficial influence on the training of the individual. Its severe restrictions, its minute and ceaseless regulations of his life, taught him self-control and self-sacrifice. His first duty was not to himself but to the other members of his clan or totem. Obedience and systematic restraint were useful lessons inculcated on him from earliest childhood. The Congo Negro, the Andaman Islander, the American Indian, for whom his sponsors had taken vows at his birth, grew up to consider the fulfilment of these the chief end of his life. Their violation would entail disaster and disgrace not merely on himself but on his people. His religious education, therefore, cultivated in him someof the finest qualities of perfected manhood,—self-abnegation and altruism; for, as Professor Granger well says, “The primitive idea of holiness implies as its chief element, relation to thecommunallife.â€[296]
If, therefore, with some writers, we must concede that in primitive conditions the individual was ever conceived with reference to the gens or community, on the other hand, we must recognise the potency of the religious element occasionally to separate him from others as one of “the electâ€; to train him in self-realisation and self-government; and to cherish in his mind the germs of a free personality.[297]
More difficult is the decision of the question whether primitive religions increased the happiness of the individual.
I have mentioned more than once the generally joyous character of many of them, as seen in their rituals. But it would be a grave error not to dwell also upon the dread of evil spirits which is so conspicuous a part of most, and which keeps their votaries in a state of perpetual anxiety. Nor can the self-sacrifice I have referred to increase the cheerfulnessof life, associated as it often is with painful mutilations, with prolonged fasting, and exposure to cold and heat. The cruelty of the ceremonies is often shocking, the edicts of the religious code merciless.
To compensate this, “the fearful looking forward to the wrath to come,†the fertile source of mental misery in advanced faiths, scarcely exists in those of primitive conditions. Death itself is thus deprived of its greatest terror, and the indifference with which it is met by most savages is matter of common note among travellers.
Nor does there exist in primitive conditions that fertile source of human misery, religious bigotry or intolerance, with its fatal train of persecutions, torture, and suspicion. The bloodiest sacrifices of heathendom have never entailed such personal unhappiness as the gloomy fanaticism of some forms of Christianity.
All these several lines of development are, it will be noted, external to religion itself. They modify it, and are modified by it. But there are other changes, wrought within the religious sense itself, which we must now consider.
Religions, like all other institutions, are subject to growth and decay, evolution and retrogression, development and death.
The vast majority of primitive faiths have disappeared totally, leaving no trace behind except the nameless images of their gods, or not even these. They were obliterated by conquest, or merged and lost in other forms of belief, or degenerated and petrified until they died a natural death.
Others grew and extended, vitalised by new thoughts, appropriate to the new environment, or were carried far and wide by victorious rulers or enthusiastic votaries. It is generally true, as Professor Toy has observed, that, in early conditions, the life of a religion depends on the life of the tribe or state which has adopted it, and that “the larger the community, the more persistent and vigorous its religion will be.â€[298]
But the secret of success lay within rather than without; the particular faith must pass through certain internal transformations in order to fit it for the wider field opened to it. The chief of these stadia of progress may be described as a transference of religious thought: 1. From the object to the symbol; 2. From the ceremonial law to the personal ideal; and 3. From the tribal to the national conception of religion.
1. The rudest phases of religion connect the ideas of the Divine with particular external objects, a tree,a rock, a special place, around which grow up a series of local myths and usages. Such ideas, to develop, must break away from these connections with concrete and localised relations. They must become generalised, and the symbol be substituted for the object.
Instead of a particular tree, for instance, the sign of the tree, the cross or the pole (asherim), will be adopted. This represents not the original object but the personified activity, the spirit or god which was supposed earlier to inhabit the given object or spot.
Thus the mind is freed from its bondage to a purely material, geographically single, perception, and the first step is taken toward universal or world-ideas of divinity. In metaphysical terms, it is a passage from the concrete to the abstract, from the particular to the general, from the real to the ideal; a line of progress which must necessarily be followed by man’s intelligence in order to develop his especially human attributes.
2. The second important step was that which substituted for the bare and cold prescriptions of the ceremonial law the ideal of personal perfection. The beginnings of this are visible even in the lowest faiths, as we see in their veneration of those who, they considered, had fulfilled most completely theirnotions of duty. Such persons were held to have descended from the gods, or were inspired by them.
It is true these early ideals are of little more than physical strength and mental cunning; but their attributes gradually expanded to include corporeal beauty, intellectual power, and ethical grandeur.
We thus arrive, still in primitive conditions, to such personal ideals as Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs, of whom it was said in their legends that he was of majestic presence, chaste in life, averse to war, wise and generous in actions, and delighting in the cultivation of the arts of peace; or as we see among the Peruvians, in their culture hero Tonapa, of whose teachings a Catholic writer of the sixteenth century says: “So closely did they resemble the precepts of Jesus, that nothing was lacking in them but His name and that of His Father.â€[299]
When these ideals were not distinctly men, but were partially or wholly divine, nevertheless the contemplation of an existence whose chief aim was to do good to those who complied with his instructions, to protect those who fled to him, and to grant the petitions of those who prayed to him, was both a comforting and ennobling conception.
3. Professor Thiele in his work on the ancientEgyptian religion makes the wise observation: “The revolution brought about by religious universalism is the greatest and most complete which the history of the world can show.â€[300]
It is true that no primitive religion aimed at universalism or even deemed it desirable or possible. The gods of the gens or tribe belonged to that community, were its own exclusively, and stood in antagonism to all other gods. There was no notion of proselytising or missionary work, no desire to extend the worship of the tribal god beyond the limits of the tribe.
This exclusiveness was broken down by the inter-communication of tribes, their confederations and conquests, which forced the religious conceptions to take broader views. The priests and philosophers began to recognise in the deities of other nations types of their own, as we see in Greek and Roman writers. This gradually led to the comprehensive speculations of the world-religions, in which all men are considered to stand equally before God, and all entitled to the same share of His grace.
The early stages of these transitions are easily recognised in primitive faiths. The adoption of foreign gods appears early. When a tribe met with frequent reverses, it began to distrust the power ofits own deities, and apply to those of its conquerors for aid. The custom of exogamy introduced divinities of other gentes. Personal and communal wants led to pilgrimages to the famous oracles and fanes of distant religions, and the votaries in returning brought with them the memory and the cult of alien gods. In many such ways the barriers of the tribal faith were gradually broken down.
We may expect to find faint traits or none of the purely abstract stage of religion in the cults of savage tribes. Yet they are not absolutely lacking.
This abstract stage is when the Idea, no longer merged in the Ideal, stands by itself as the recognised guide of conscious effort. The conception of infinity or perfection is not then conceived in relation to a being or personality. It will still act as the loftiest motive of action, the deepest source of spiritual joy.
Thus understood and recognised, it will not be a cold product of the reason, but the warm and potent efflux of the heart, of the impulses, and the emotions. In him who rises to this height, the sympathy for and the active love of the good and the true will be all the stronger, because he will see that man must hope only from man, from diligent self-perfecting;but may thus hope confidently from the best there is in man.
Toward this end, though unseen and unacknowledged, were all religions of primitive peoples unconsciously directing and impelling the human mind. Long has been the path, many the false routes followed, far away is still the goal; but ever firmer in faith, and clearer in purpose, man will in due time and fit season be established in this, the last and innermost mystery of his religious nature.