The idea of God is to be found, it will be generally admitted, not only in monotheistic religions, but in polytheistic religions also; and, as polytheisms have developed out of polydaemonism, that is to say, as the personal beings or powers of polydaemonism have, in course of time, come to possess proper names and a personal history, some idea of divine personality must be admitted to be present in polydaemonism as well as in polytheism; and, in the same way, some idea of a personality greater than human may be taken to lie at the back of both polydaemonism and fetishism.
If we wish to understand what ideas are in a man's mind, we may infer them from the words that he speaks and from the way in which he acts. The most natural and the most obvious course is to start from what he says. And that is the course which was followed by students of the history of religion, when they desired to ascertain what idea exactlyman has had of his gods. They had recourse, for the information they wanted, to mythology. Later on, indeed, they proceeded to enquire into what man did, into the ritual which he observed in approaching his gods; and, in the next chapter, we will follow them in that enquiry. But in this chapter we have to ask what light mythology throws upon the idea man has had of his gods.
Before doing so, however, we cannot but notice that mythology and polytheism go together. Fetishism does not produce any mythology. Doubtless, the owner of a fetish which acts knows and can tell of the wonderful things it has done. But those anecdotes do not get taken up into the common stock of knowledge; nor are they handed down by the common consciousness to all succeeding generations of the community. Mythology, like language, is the work, and is a possession, of the common consciousness.
Polydaemonism, like fetishism, does not produce mythology; but, for a different reason. The beings worshipped in the period of polydaemonism are beings who have not yet come to possess personal names, and consequently cannot well have a personal history attached to them. The difficulty is not indeed an absolute impossibility. Tales can be told, and at a certain stage in the history of fiction, especially in the pre-historic stage, tales are told, in which the hero has no proper name: the period is 'once upona time,' and the hero is 'a man'simpliciter. But myths are not told about 'a god'simpliciter. In mythology the hero of the myth is not 'a god,' in the sense of any god you like, but this particular, specified god. And the reason is clear. In fiction the artist creates the hero as well as the tale; and the primitive teller of tales did not find it always necessary to invent a name for the hero he created. The hero could, and did, get along for some time without any proper name. But with mythology the case is different. The personal being, superior to man, of whom the myth is told, is not the creation of the teller of the tale: he is a being known by the community to exist. He cannot therefore, when he is the hero of a myth, be described as 'a god—any god you like.' Nor is the myth a tale which could be told of any god whatever: if a myth is a tale, at any rate it is a tale which can be told of none other god but this. Indeed, a myth is not a tale: it is an incident—or string of incidents—in the personal history of a particular person, or being, superior to man.
It is then as polydaemonism passes into polytheism, as the beings of the one come to acquire personal names and personal history, and so to become the gods of the other, that mythology arises. It is under polytheism that mythology reaches its most luxuriant growth; and when polytheism disappears, mythology tends to disappear with it. Thus, the light whichmythology may be expected to throw on the idea of God is one, which, however it may illumine the polytheistic idea of God, will not be found to shine far beyond the area of polytheism.
Myths then are narratives, in which the doings of some god or gods are related. And those gods existed in the belief of the community, before tales were told, or could be told, about them. Myths therefore are the outcome of reflection—of reflection about the gods and their relations to one another, or to men, or to the world. Mythology is not the source of man's belief of the gods. Man did not begin by telling tales about beings whom he knew to be the creations of his own imagination, and then gradually fall into the error of supposing them to be, after all, not creatures of his own imagination but real beings. Mythology is not even the source of man's belief in a plurality of gods: man found gods everywhere, in every external object or phenomenon, because he was looking for God everywhere, and to every object, in turn, he addressed the question, 'Art thou there?' Mythology was not the source of polytheism. Polytheism was the source of mythology. Myths preserve to us the reflections which men have made about their gods; and reflection, on any subject, cannot take place until the thing is there to be reflected upon. The result of prolonged reflection may be, indeed must be, to modify the ideas from which we started, forthe better—or, it may be, for the worse. But, even so, the result of reflection is not to create the ideas from which it started.
From this point of view, it becomes impossible to accept the theory, put forward by Max Müller, that mythology is due to 'disease of language.' According to his theory, simple statements were made of such ordinary, natural processes as those of the rising, or the setting, of the sun. Then, by disease of language, the meaning of the words or epithets, by which the sun or the dawn were, at the beginning, designated or described, passed out of mind. The epithets then came to be regarded as proper names; and so the people, amongst which these simple statements were originally made, found itself eventually in possession of a number of tales told of persons possessing proper names and doing marvellous things. Thus, Max Müller's theory not only accounted for the origin of tales told about the gods: it also explained the origin of the gods, about whom the tales were told. It is a theory of the origin, not merely of mythology, but also of polytheism.
Thus, even on Max Müller's theory, mythology is the outcome of reflection—of reflection upon the doings and behaviour of the sun, the clouds, wind, fire etc. But, on his theory, the sun, moon etc., were not, at first, regarded as persons, at all: it was merely owing to 'disease of language' that theycame to be so regarded. Only if we make this original assumption, can we accept the conclusions deduced from it; and no student now accepts the assumption: it is one which is forbidden by the well-established facts of animism. Sun, moon, wind and fire, everything that acts, or is supposed to act, is regarded by early man as animated by personal power. If, therefore, the external objects, to which man turned with his question, 'Art thou there?' were regarded by him, from the beginning, as animated by personal power, the theory that they were not so regarded falls to the ground; and, consequently, we cannot accept it as accounting for the origin of polytheism.
Doubtless, during the time of its vogue, Max Müller's theory was accepted precisely because it did profess to account for the origin of polytheism, and because it denied polytheism any religious value or meaning whatever. On the theory, polytheism did not originate from any religious sentiment whatever, but from a disease of language. And this was a view which naturally commended itself to those who were ready to say and believe that polytheism is not religion at all. But the consequences of saying this are such as to make any science of religion, or indeed any history of religion, impossible. Where the idea of God is to be found, there some religion exists; and to say that, in polytheism, no idea of God can befound, is out of the question. If then polytheism is a stage in the history of religious belief, we have to consider it in relation to the other stages of religious belief, which preceded or followed it. We have to relate the idea of God, as it appeared in polytheism, with the idea as it appeared in other stages of belief. In order to do this, we must first discover what the polytheistic idea of God is; and for that purpose we must turn, at any rate at first, to the myths which embody the reflections of polytheists upon the attributes and actions of the Godhead, or of those beings, superior to man, whose existence was accepted by the common consciousness. It may be that the reflections upon the idea of God, which are embodied in mythology, have so tended to degrade the idea of God, that religious advance upon the lines of polytheism became impossible, just as the conception of God as a being who would promote the anti-social wishes of an individual, rendered religious advance upon the lines of fetishism impossible. In that case, religion would forsake the line of polytheism, as it had previously abandoned that of fetishism.
A certain presumption that myths tend to the degradation of religion is created by the mere use of the term 'mythology.' It has come to be a dyslogistic term, partly because all myths are lies, but still more because some of them are ignoble lies. It becomes necessary, therefore, to remind ourselvesthat, though we see them to be untrue, they were not regarded as untrue by those who believed in them; and that many of them were not ignoble. Aeschylus and Sophocles are witnesses, not to be disbelieved, on these points. In their writings we have the reflections of polytheists upon the actions and attributes of the gods. But the reflections made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, and their treatment of the myths, must be distinguished from the myths, which they found to hand, just as the very different treatment and reflection, which the myths received from Euripides, must be distinguished from them. In both cases, the treatment, which the myths met with from the tragedians, is to be distinguished from the myths, as they were current among the community before and after the plays were performed. The writings of the tragedians show what might be made of the myths by great poets. They do not show what the myths were in the common consciousness that made them. And the history of mythology after the time of the three great tragedians makes it clear enough that even so noble a writer as Aeschylus could not impart to mythology any direction other than that determined for it by the conditions under which it originated, developed and ran its course.
Mythology is the work and the product of the common consciousness. The generation existing at any time receives it from preceding generations;civilised generations from barbarous, and barbarous generations from their savage predecessors. If it grows in the process of transmission, and so reflects to some extent the changes which take place in the common consciousness, it changes but little in character. The common consciousness itself changes with exceeding slowness; it retains what it has received with a conservatism like that of children's minds; and, what it adds must, from the nature of the case, be modelled on that which it has received, and be of a piece with it. But, though the common consciousness changes but slowly, it does change: with the change from savagery to civilisation there goes moral development. Some of the myths, which are re-told from one generation to another, may be capable of becoming civilised and moralised in proportion as do those who tell them; but some are not. These latter are incidents in the personal history of the gods, which, if told at all, can only be told, as they had been told from the beginning, in all their repulsiveness. They survive, in virtue of the tenacity and conservatism of the common consciousness; and, as survivals, they testify to the moral development which has taken place in the very community which conserves them. By them the eye of modern science measures the development and the difference between the stage of society which originally produced them and the stage which begins to be troubled by them.They are valuable for the purposes of modern science because they are evidence of the continuity with which the later stages have developed from the earlier; and, also, because they are the first outward indications of the discovery which was eventually to be made, of the difference between mythology and religion—a difference which existed from the beginning of mythology, and all through its growth, though it existed in the sphere of feeling long before it found expression for itself in words.
The course of history has shown, as a matter of fact, that these repulsive and disgusting myths could not be rooted out without uprooting the whole system of mythology. But the course of history has also shown that religion could continue to exist after the destruction of mythology, as it had done before its birth. But, of this the generations to whom myths had been transmitted and for whom mythology was the accepted belief, could not be aware. In their eyes the attempt to discredit some myths appeared to involve—as it did really involve—the overthrow of the whole system of mythology. If they thought—as they undoubtedly did think—that the destruction of mythology was the same thing as the destruction of religion, their error was one of a class of errors into which the human mind is at no time exempt from falling. And they had this further excuse, that the destruction of mythology did logically andnecessarily imply the destruction of polytheism. Polytheism and mythology were complementary parts of their idea of the Godhead. Demonstrations therefore of the inconsistency and immorality involved in their idea were purely negative and destructive; and they were, accordingly, unavailing until a higher idea of the unity of the Godhead was forthcoming.
Until that time, polytheism and mythology struggled on. They were burdened, and, as time went on, they were overburdened, with the weight of the repulsive myths which could not be denied and disowned, but could only be thrust out of sight as far, and as long, as possible. These myths, however offensive they became in the long run to the conscience of the community, were, in their origin, narratives which were not offensive to the common consciousness, for the simple reason that they were the work of the common consciousness, approved by it and transmitted for ages under the seal of its approval. If they were not offensive to the common consciousness at the time when they originated, and only became so later, the reason is that the morality of the community was less developed at the time of their origin than it came to be subsequently. If they became offensive, it was because the morality of the community tended to advance, while they remained what they had always been.
It may, perhaps, be asked, why the morality of the community should tend to change, and the myths of the community should not? The reason seems to be that myths are learned by the child in the nursery, and morality is learned by the man in the world. The family is a smaller community than the village community, the city, or the state; and the smaller the community, the more tenacious it is of its customs and traditions. The toys of Athenian children, which have been discovered, are, all, the toys which children continue to use to this day. In the Iliad children built sand-castles on the sea-shore as they do now; and the little child tugged at its mother's dress then as now. Children then as now would insist that the tales told to them should always be told exactly as they were first told. Of the discrepancy between the morality exhibited by the heroes of nursery-tales and that practised by the grown-up world the child has no knowledge, for the sufficient reason that he is not as yet one of the grown-up world. When he enters the grown-up world, he may learn the difference; but he can only enter the grown-up world, if there is one for him to enter; and, in the childhood of man, there is none which he can enter, for the adults themselves, though of larger growth, are children still in mind. Custom and tradition rule the adult community then as absolutely as they rule the child community. In course of time, the adult community may break thebonds of custom and tradition; but the community which consists of children treasures them and hands them on. Within the tribe, thenceforth, there are two communities, that of the adults and that of the children. The one community is as continuous with itself as the other; but the children's community is highly conservative of what it has received and of what it hands on—and that for the simple reason that children will be children still. It is this homogeneity of the children's community which enables it to preserve its customs, traditions and beliefs. And as long as the community of adults is homogeneous, it also departs but little from the customs, traditions and beliefs, which it has inherited from the same source as the children's community has inherited them. The two communities, the children's and the adults', originate and develop within the larger community of the tribe. They differentiate, at first, with exceeding slowness; the children's community changes more slowly even than the adults'—its weapons continue to be the bow and arrow, long after adults have discarded them; and the bull-roarer continues sacred in its eyes to a period when the adult community has not only discarded its use but forgotten its meaning. In its tales and myths it may preserve the memory of a stage of morality which the adult community has outgrown, and has left behind as far it has left behind the bull-roarer or the bowand arrow. And the stage of morality, of which it preserves the memory, is one from which the adult community in past time emerged. Having emerged, indeed, it found itself, eventually, when made to look back, compelled to condemn that which it looked back upon.
What, then, were these myths, with which the moralised community might find itself confronted? They were tales which originated in the mind of the community when it was yet immature. They preserve to us the reflections of the immature mind about the gods and what they did. And it is because the minds, which made these reflections, were immature, that the myths which embodied or expressed these reflections, were such as might be accepted by immature minds, but were eventually found intolerable by more mature minds. It may, perhaps, be said—and it may be said with justice—that the reflections even of the immature mind are not all, of necessity, erroneous, for it is from them that the whole of modern knowledge has been evolved or developed, just as the steam-plough may be traced back to the primitive digging-stick: reflection upon anything may lead to better knowledge of the thing, as well as to false notions about it. But the nations, which have outgrown mythology, have cast it aside because in the long run they became convinced that the notions it embodied were false notions. And they reached that conclusionon this point in the same way and for the same reason as they reached the same conclusion in other matters; for there is only one way. There is only one way and one test by which it is possible to determine whether the inferences we have drawn about a thing are true or false, and that is the test of experience. That alone can settle the question whether the thing actually does or does not act in the way, or display the qualities alleged. If it proves in our experience to act in the way, or to display the qualities, which our reflection led us to surmise, then our conception of the thing is both corrected and enlarged, that is to say, the thing proves to be both more and other than it was at first supposed to be. If experience shows that it is not what we surmised, does not act in the way or display the qualities our reflection led us to expect, then, as the conclusions we reached are wrong, our reflections were on a wrong line, and must have started from a false conception or an imperfect idea of the thing.
It is collision of this kind between the conclusions of mythology and the idea of the gods, as the guardians of morality, that rouses suspicion in a community, still polytheistic, first that the conclusions embodied in mythology are on a wrong line, and next that they must have started from a false conception or imperfect idea of the Godhead. By its fruits is the error found to be error—by theimmorality which it ascribes to the very gods whose function it is to guard morality. Mythology is the process of reflection which leads to conclusions eventually discarded as false, demonstrably false to anyone who compared them with the idea of the Godhead which he had in his own soul. Mythology worked out the consequences of the assumption that it is to the external world we must look for the divine personality of whose presence in the common consciousness, the community has at all times, been, even though dimly, aware. Doubts as to the truth of myths were first aroused by the inconsistency between the myths told and the justice and morality which had been from the beginning the very essence of divine personality. The doubts arose in the minds and hearts of individual thinkers; and, if those individuals had been the only members of the community who conceived justice and morality to be essential qualities of the divine personality, then it would have been necessary for such thinkers first to convert the community to that view. Now, one of the consequences of the prevalence of mythology is that the community, amongst whom it flourishes, comes to be, if not doubtful, then at times forgetful, of the fact that the gods of the community are moral beings and the guardians of morality. That fact had to be dismissed from attention, for the time being,whenever certain myths were related. And, the more frequently a fact is dismissed from attention, the less likely it is to reappear on the surface of consciousness. Thus, the larger the part played by mythology in the field of the common consciousness, the greater its tendency to drive out from attention those moral qualities which were of the essence of divine personality. But, however large the part played by mythology, and however great its tendency to obliterate the moral qualities of the gods, it rarely, if indeed ever, entirely obliterates them from the field of the common consciousness. Consequently, the individual thinkers, who become painfully aware of the contrast and opposition between the morality, which is essential to a divine personality, and the immorality ascribed to the gods in some myths, have not to deal with a community which denies that the gods have any morality whatever, but with a community which is ready to admit the morality of the gods, whenever its attention is called thereto. Thus, though it may be that it is in this or that individual that the inconsistency between the moral qualities, which belong to the gods, and the immoral actions which mythology ascribes to the gods, first manifests itself, to his distress and disturbance, still what has happened in his case happens in the case of some, and may happen in the case of all, other membersof the community. The inconsistency then comes to exist not merely for the individual but for the common consciousness.
It was the immorality of mythology which first drew the attention of believers in polytheism to the inconsistency between the goodness, which was felt to be of the essence of the divine nature, and the vileness, which was imputed to them in some myths; but it is the irrationality and absurdity of mythology that seems, to the modern mind, to be its most uniform characteristic. So long as the only mythology that was studied was the mythology of Indo-European peoples, it was assumed, without question, that the myths could not really be, or originally have been, irrational and absurd: they must conceal, under their seeming absurdity and outwardly irrational appearance, some truth. They must have had, originally, some esoteric meaning. They must have conveyed—allegorically, indeed—some profound truths, known or revealed to sages of old, which it was the business of modern students to re-discover in mythology. And accordingly profound truths—scientific, cosmographic, astronomical, geographical, philosophic or religious—were discovered. There was no knowledge which the early ancestors of the human race were not supposed to have possessed, and their descendants to have forgotten.
But, when it came to be discovered, and accepted,that the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples had once been savages, and that savages, all the world over, possessed myths, it became impossible to maintain that such savages possessed in their mythologies treasures of truth either scientific or religious. Myths have no esoteric meaning. Obviously we must take them to be what we find them to be amongst present-day savages, that is, absurd and irrational stories, with no secret meaning behind them. Yet it is difficult, indeed impossible, to accept this as the last word on the subject. The stories are rejected by us, because they are patently absurd and irrational. But the savage does not reject them: he accepts them. And he could not accept and believe them, if he, as well as we, found them irrational and absurd. In a word, it is the same with the irrationality as it is with the immorality of mythology: myths are the work and the product of the common consciousness. As such, myths cannot be viewed as irrational by the common consciousness in which they originated, and by which they were accepted and transmitted, any more than they were regarded as immoral.
Obviously, the common consciousness which produces mythology cannot pronounce the myths, when it produces them, and accepts them, absurd. On the contrary, they are rational, in its eyes, and according to its level of understanding, however absurd thegrowth of knowledge may eventually show them to be. Myths, then, in their origin, are told and heard, narrated and accepted, as rational and intelligible. As narrated, they are narratives: can we say that they are anything more? or are they tales told simply for the pleasure of telling? Tales of this latter kind, pure fiction, are to be found wherever man is. But, we have already seen some points in which myths differ from tales of this kind: in fiction the artist creates his hero, but in myths the being superior to man, of whom the story is told is not the creation of the teller of the tale; he is a being known to the community to exist. Another point of difference is that a myth belongs to the god of whom it is told and cannot properly be told of any other god. These are two respects in which the imagination is limited, two points on which, in the case of myths, the creative imagination is, so to speak, nailed down. Is it subject to any further restriction in the case of myths? Granted that an adventure, when once it has been set down to one god, may not be set down to another, is the creative imagination free, in the case of mythology, as it is in the case of pure fiction, to invent the incidents and adventures, which eventually—in a lexicon of mythology—go to make up the biography of the god? The freedom, it appears, is of a strictly limited character.
It is an induction, as wide as the world—being based on mythologies from all parts of the world—that myths are aetiological, that their purpose is to give the reason of things, to explain the origin of fire, agriculture, civilisation, the world—of anything, in fact, that to the savage seems to require explanation. In the animistic period, man found gods everywhere because everywhere he was looking for gods. To every object that arrested his attention, in the external world, he put, or might put, the question, 'Art thou there?' Every happening that arrested the attention of a whole community, and provoked from the common consciousness the affirmation, 'Thou art there,' was, by that affirmation, accepted as the doing of a god. But neither at this stage, nor for long after, is there any myth. The being, whose presence is thus affirmed, has at first no name: his personality is of the faintest, his individuality, the vaguest. Mythology does not begin until the question is put, 'Why has the god done this thing?' A myth consists, or originally consisted, of the reason which was found and adopted by the common consciousness as the reason why the god did what he did do. It is in this sense that myths are aetiological. The imagination which produces them is, in a sense, a 'scientific imagination.' It works within limits. The data on which it works are that this thing was done, or is done, by this god; and the problem set tothe mythological imagination is, 'Why did he, or does he, do it?' The stories which were invented to answer this question constituted mythology; and the fact that myths were invented for the purpose of answering this question distinguishes them from stories in the invention of which the imagination was not subject to restriction, was not tied down to this god and to this action of his, and was not limited to the sole task of imagining an answer to the question, 'Why did he do it?' All myths are narratives, but not all narratives are myths. Some narratives have men alone for their heroes. They are imaginative but not mythological. Some narratives are about gods and what they did. Their purpose is to explain why the gods did what they did do, and those narratives are mythological.
It may, perhaps, seem that the imagination of early man would from the first be set to work to invent myths in answer to the question, 'Why did the god do this thing?' But, as a matter of fact, man can get on for a long time without mythology. A striking instance of this is afforded by thedi indigitesof Italy. Over everything man did, or suffered, from his birth to his death, one of these gods or goddesses presided. The Deus Vagitanus opened the lips of the new-born infant when it uttered its first cry; the Dea Ossipago made the growing child's bones stout and strong; the DeusLocutius made it speak clearly; the goddess Viriplaca restored harmony between husband and wife who had quarrelled; the Dea Orbona closed a man's eyes at death. Thesedi indigiteshad shrines and received sacrifices. They were distinguished into gods and goddesses. Their names were proper names, though they are but words descriptive of the function which the deity performed or presided over. Yet though thesedi indigitesare gods, personal gods, to whom prayer and sacrifice are offered, they have no mythology attached to them; no myths are told about them.
The fact thus forced on our notice by thedi indigitesof Rome should be enough to warn us that mythology does not of necessity spring up, as an immediate consequence of the worship of the gods. It may even suggest a reason why mythology must be a secondary, rather than a primary consequence of worship. The Romans were practical, and so are savages: if they asked the question, 'Why did this god do this thing?' they asked it in no spirit of speculation but for a practical, common-sense reason: because they did not want this thing done again. And they offered sacrifices to the god or goddess, with that end in view. The things with regard to which the savage community first asks the question, 'Why did the god do it?' are things disastrous to the community—plague or famine. The answer to the question isreally implied by the terms in which the question is stated: the community, or some member of the community has transgressed; he must be discovered and punished. So long and so far as the question is thus put and thus answered, there is little room for mythology to grow in. And it did not grow round thedi indigitesin Italy, or round corresponding deities in other countries.
But the question, 'Why did the god do it?' is susceptible, on reflection, of another kind of answer. And from minds of a more reflective cast than the Roman, it received answer in the form of mythology, of aetiological myths. Mythology is the work of reflection: it is when the community has time and inclination to reflect upon its gods and their doings that mythology arises in the common consciousness. For everything which happens to him, early man has one explanation, if the thing is such as seems to him to require explanation, and the explanation is that this thing is the doing of some god. If the thing that arrests attention is some disaster, which calls for remedy, the community approaches the god with prayer and sacrifice; its object is practical, not speculative; and no myth arises. But if the thing that arrests attention is not one which calls for action, on the part of the community, but one which stimulates curiosity and provokes reflection, then the reflective answer to thequestion, why has this thing been done by whatever god that did it, is a myth.
Thus the mood, or state of mind, in which mythology originates is clearly different from that in which the community approaches its offended gods for the purpose of appeasing them. The purpose in the latter case is atonement and reconciliation. The state of mind in the former case is one of enquiry. The emotion, of mingled fear and hope, which constitutes the one state of mind, is clearly different from the spirit of enquiry which characterises and constitutes the other state of mind. The one mood is undeniably religious; the other, not so. In the one mood, the community feels itself to be in the presence of its gods; in the other it is reflecting and enquiring about them. In the one case the community appears before its god; in the other it is reflectively using its idea of god, for the purpose of explaining things that call for explanation. But the idea of God, when used in this way, for the purpose of explaining things by means of myths, is modified by the use it is put to. It is not merely that everything which happens is explained, if it requires explanation, as the doing of some god; but the motives which early man ascribed, in his mythological moments, to the gods—motives which only undeveloped man could have ascribed to them—became part of the idea of God on which mythology workedand with which myths had to do. The idea of god thus gradually developed in polytheistic myths, the accumulated reflections of savage, barbarous and semi-barbarous ancestors, tends eventually to provoke reaction. But why? Not merely because the myths are immoral and irrational. But because of the essential impiety of imputing immoral and irrational acts to the divine personality. Plainly, then, those thinkers and writers who were painfully impressed by such impiety, who were acutely conscious that divine personality was irreconcilable with immorality and irrationality, had some other idea of God than the mythological. We may go further: we may safely say that the average man would not have been perturbed, as he was, by Socrates, for instance, had he, also, not found within him some other idea of God than the mythological. And we can understand, to some extent, how this should be, if we call to mind that, though mythology grows and luxuriates, still the worship of the gods goes on. That is to say, the community, through it all, continues to approach its gods, for the purpose, and with the emotion of mingled fear and hope, with which it had always come into the presence of its gods. It is the irreconcilability of the mood of emotion, which is essentially religious, with the mythological mode of reflective thought, which is not, that tends to bring about the religious reaction against mythology. It is not however untilthe divergence between religion and mythology has become considerable that the irreconcilability becomes manifest. And it is in the experience of some individual, and not in the common consciousness, that this irreconcilability is first discovered. That discovery it is which makes the discoverer realise that it is not merely when he comes before the presence of his gods in their temples, but that, whenever his heart rises on the tide of mingled fear, hope and thanksgiving, he comes into the presence of his God. Having sought for the divine personality in all the external objects of the world around him in the end he learns, what was the truth from the beginning,—that it is in his heart he has access to his God.
The belief in gods does not of necessity result in a mythology. The instance of thedi indigitesof Italy is there to show that it is no inevitable result. But mythology, wherever it is found, is of itself sufficient proof that gods are, or have been, believed in; it is the outcome of reflection and enquiry about the gods, whom the community approaches, with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and worships with sacrifice and prayer. Now, a mythology, or perhaps we should rather say fragments of a mythology, may continue to exist as survivals, long after belief in the gods, of whom the myths were originally told, has changed, or even passed away entirely. Such traces ofgods dethroned are to be found in the folk-lore of most Christian peoples. Indeed, not only are traces of bygone mythology to be found in Christendom; but rites and customs, which once formed part of the worship of now forgotten gods; or it may be that only the names of the gods survive unrecognised, as in the names of the days of the week. The existence of such survivals in Europe is known; their history has been traced; their origin is undoubted. When, then, in other quarters of the globe than Europe, amongst peoples which are as old as any European people, though they have no recorded history, we find fragments of mythology, or of ritual, or mere names of gods, without the myths and the ritual which attach elsewhere to gods, the presumption is that here too we have to deal with survivals of a system of worship and mythology, which once existed, and has now gone to pieces, leaving but these pieces of wreckage behind. Thus, amongst the Australian black-fellows we find myths about gods who now receive no worship. But they never could have become gods unless they had been worshipped at some time; they could not have acquired the proper, personal names by which they are designated in these surviving myths, if they had not been worshipped long enough for the words which designate them to become proper names, i.e. names denoting no other person than the one designated by them.Amongst other backward peoples of the earth we find the names of gods surviving, not only with no worship but no myths attached to them; and the inference plainly is that, as they are still remembered to be gods, they once were objects of worship certainly, and probably once were subjects of mythology. And if, of a bygone religious system all that remains is in one place some fragments of mythology, and in another nothing but the mere names of the gods, then it is nothing astonishing if elsewhere all that we find is some fragment of worship, some rite, which continues to be practised, for its own sake, even though all memory of the gods in whose worship it originated has disappeared from the common consciousness—a disappearance which would be the easier if the gods worshipped had acquired no names, or names as little personal as those of thedi indigites. Ritual of this kind, not associated with the names of any gods, is found amongst the Australian tribes, and may be the wreckage of a system gone to pieces.
Here, too, there is opportunity again, for the same error as that into which students of mythology once fell before, when they found, or thought they found, in mythology, profound truths, known or revealed to sages of old. The survivals mentioned in the last paragraph may be interpreted as survivals of a prior monotheism or a primitive revelation. Butif they are survivals, at all, then they are survivals from a period when the ancestors of the present-day Africans or Australian black-fellows were in an earlier stage of social development—in an earlier stage even of linguistic development and of the thought which develops with language—than their descendants are now. Even in that earlier stage of development, however, man sought for God. If he thought, mistakenly, to find Him in this or that external object, he was not wrong in the conviction that underlay his search—the conviction that God is at no time afar off from any one of us.
We have found mythology of but little use in our search after the idea of God; and the reason, as we have suggested, is that myth-making is a reflective process, a process in which the mind reflects upon the idea, and therefore a process which cannot be set up unless the idea is already present, or, rather we should say, has already been presented. When it has been presented, it can become food for reflection, but not until then. If then we wish to discover where and when it is thus immediately presented, let us look for it in worship. If it is given primarily in the moment of worship, it may be reproduced in a secondary stage as a matter for reflection. Now, in worship—provided that it be experienced as a reality, and not performed as a conventionality—the community's purpose is to approach its God: let us come before the Lord and enter His courts with praise, are words which represent fairly the thought and feeling which, onordinary occasions, the man who goes to worship—really—experiences, whether he be polytheist or monotheist. I have spoken of 'the moment of worship,' but worship is, of course, a habit: if it is not a habit, it ceases to be at all, in any effective sense. And it is a habit of the community, of the common consciousness, which is continuous through the ages, even though it slowly changes; and which, as continuous, is conservative and tenacious. Even when it has become monotheistic, it may continue to speak of the one God as 'a great god above all other gods,' in terms which are survivals of an earlier stage of belief. Such expressions are like the clouds which, though they are lifting, still linger round the mountain top: they are part of the vapour which had previously obscured from view the reality which was there, and cannot be shaken at any time.
Worship may include words spoken, hymns of praise and prayer; but it includes also things done, acts performed, ritual. It is these acts that are the facts from which we have now to start, in order to infer what we can from them as to the idea of God which prompted them. There is an infinite diversity in these facts of ritual, just as the gods of polytheism are infinite in number and kind. But if there is diversity, there is also unity. Greatly as the gods of polytheism differ from one another, they are atleast beings worshipped—and worshipped by the community. Greatly as rituals vary in their detail, they are all ritual: all are worship, and, all, the worship rendered by the community to its gods. And there can be no doubt as to their object or the purpose with which the community practises them: that purpose is, at least, to bring the community into the presence of its Lord. We may safely say that there can be no worship unless there is a community worshipping and a being which is worshipped. Nor can there be any doubt as to the relation existing between the two. The community bow down and worship: that is the attitude of the congregation. Nor can there be any doubt as to the relation which the god bears, in the common consciousness, to his worshippers: he is bound to them by special ties—from him they expect the help which they have received in ages past. They have faith in him—else they would not worship him—faith that he will be what he has been in the past, a very help in time of trouble. The mere fact that they seek to come before him is a confession of the faith that is in them, the faith that they are in the presence of their God and have access to Him. However primitive, that is rudimentary, the worship may be; however low in the scale of development the worshippers may be; however dim their idea of God and however confused and contradictory thereflections they may make about Him, it is in that faith that they worship. So much is implied by worship—by the mere fact that the worshippers are gathered together for worship. If we are to find any clue which may give us uniform guidance through the infinite variety in the details of the innumerable rituals that are, or have been, followed in the world, we must look to find it in the purpose for which the worshippers gather together. But, if we wish to be guided by objective facts rather than by hasty,a prioriassumptions, we must begin by consulting the facts: we must enquire whether the details of the different rituals present nothing but diversity, or whether there is any respect in which they show likeness or uniformity. There is one point in which they resemble one another; and, what is more, that point is the leading feature in all of them; they all centre round sacrifice. It is with sacrifice, or by means of sacrifice, that their gods are approached by all men, beginning even with the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur, who sacrifice fowls and offer victims, for the purpose of conciliating the powers that send jungle-fever and murrain. The sacrificial rite is the occasion on which, and a means by which, the worshipper is brought into that closer relation with his god, which he would not seek, if he did not—for whatever reason—desire it. As bearing on the idea ofGod, the spiritual import, and the practical importance, of the sacrificial rite is that he who partakes in it can only partake of it so far as he recognises that God is no private idea of his own, existing only in his notion, but is objectively real. The jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur may have no name for the being to whom, at the appointed season and in the appointed place, he sacrifices fowls; but, as we have seen, the gods only come to have proper, personal names in slow course of time. He may be incapable of giving any account, comprehensible to the civilised enquirer, of the idea which he has of the being to whom he offers sacrifice: more accomplished theologians than he have failed to define God. But of the reality of the being whom he seeks to approach he has no doubt. It is not the case that the reality of that being, by whomsoever worshipped, is an assumption which must be made, or a hypothesis that must be postulated, for the sake of providing a logical justification of worship. The simple fact is that the religious consciousness is the consciousness of God as real, just as the common consciousness is the consciousness of things as real. To represent the reality of either as something that is not experienced but inferred is to say that we have no experience of reality, and therefore have no real grounds for inference. We find it preferable to hold that we have immediate consciousness of thereal, to some extent, and that by inference we may be brought, to a larger extent, into immediate consciousness of the real.
Of the reality of Him, whom even the jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur seeks to approach, it is only possible to doubt on grounds which seek to deny the ultimate validity of the common consciousness on any point. With the inferences which men have drawn about that reality, and the ideas those inferences have led to, the case is different. What exactly those ideas are, or have been, we have, more or less, to guess at, from such facts as the science of religion furnishes. One such set of facts is comprised under the term, worship; and of that set the leading fact everywhere is the rite of sacrifice. By means of it we may reasonably expect to penetrate to some of the ideas which the worshippers had of the gods whom they worshipped. Unfortunately, however, there is considerable difference of opinion, between students of the science of religion, as to the idea which underlies sacrifice.
One fact from which we may start is that it is with sacrifice that the community draws near to the god it wishes to approach. The outward, physical fact, the visible set of actions, is that the body of worshippers proceed, with their oblation, to the place in which the god manifests himself and is to be found. The inference which follows is that, corresponding tothis series of outward actions, there is an internal conviction in the hearts and minds of the worshippers: they would not go to the place, unless they felt that, in so doing, they were drawing near to their god.
In thus drawing near, both physically and spiritually, they take with them something material. And this they would not do, unless taking the material thing expressed, in some way, their mental attitude, or rather their religious attitude. The attitude thus expressed must be part of, or implied by, the desire to approach the god both physically and spiritually. The fact that they carry with them some material thing, expresses in gesture-language—such as is used by explorers towards natives whose speech is unknown to them—the desire that actuates them. And thus much may be safely inferred, viz. that the desire is, at any rate, to prepossess favourably the person approached.
Thus man approaches, bearing with him something intended to please the god that he draws near. But though that is part of his intention, it is not the whole. His desire is that the god shall be pleased not merely with the offering but with him. What he brings—his oblation—is but a means to that end. Why he wishes the god to be pleased with him, we shall have to enquire hereafter. Thus far, however, we see that that is the wish and is the purposeintimated by the fact that he brings something material with him.
It seems clear also that the something material, with which the community draws near to its god, need only be something which is conceived to be pleasing to the god. All that is necessary is that it should express, or symbolise, the feeling with which the community draws near. So long as it does this, its function is discharged. What it is of importance to notice, and what is apt to be forgotten, is the feeling which underlies the outward act, and without which the action, the rite, would not be performed. The feeling is the desire of the worshipper to commend himself. If we take this point of view, then the distinction, which is sometimes drawn between offerings and sacrifice, need not mislead us. The distinction is that the term 'sacrifice' is to be used only of that which is consumed, or destroyed, in the service; while the term 'offering' is to be used only of what is not destroyed. And the reason for drawing, or seeking to draw, the distinction, seems to be that the destruction, or consumption, of the material thing, in the service, is required to prove that the offering is accepted. But, though this proof may have come, in some cases, to be expected, as showing that the community was right in believing that the offering would be acceptable; the fact remains that theworshippers would not start out with the offering in their hands, unless they thought, to begin with, that it was acceptable. They would not draw near to the god, with an offering about the acceptability of which they were in doubt. Anything therefore which they conceived to be acceptable would suffice to indicate their desire to please, and would serve to commend them. And the desire to do that which is pleasing to their god is there from the beginning, as the condition on which alone they can enter his presence. Neglect of this fact may lead us to limit unduly the potentialities contained in the rite of sacrifice, from the beginning.
The rite did, undoubtedly, in the long course of time, come in some communities to be regarded and practised in a spirit little better than commercial. Sacrifices came to be regarded as gifts, or presents, made to the god, on the understanding thatdo ut des. Commerce itself, when analysed, is nothing but the application of the principle of giving to get. All that is necessary, in order to reduce religion to commercial principles, is that the payment of vows made should be contingent on the delivery of the goods stipulated for; that the thing offered should be regarded as payment; that the god's favour should be considered capable of being bought. It is however in communities which have some aptitude for commerce and have developed it, that religionis thus interpreted and practised. If we go back to the period in the history of a race when commerce is as yet unknown, we reach a state of things when the possibility of thus commercialising worship was, as yet, undeveloped. At that early period, as in all periods, of the history of religion, the desire of the worshippers was to be pleasing, and to do that which was pleasing, to him whom they worshipped; and the offerings they took with them when they approached his presence were intended to be the outward and visible sign of their desire. But in some, or even in many, cases, they came eventually to rely on the sign or symbol rather than on the desire which it signified; and that is a danger which constantly dogs all ritual. Attention is concentrated rather on the rite than on the spiritual process, which underlies it, and of which the rite is but the expression; and then it becomes possible to give a false interpretation to the meaning of the rite.
In the case of the offerings, which are made in the earliest stages of the history of religion, the false interpretation, which comes in some cases to be put upon them by those who make the offerings, has been adopted by some students of the history of religion, as the true explanation, the real meaning and the original purpose of offerings and sacrifice. This theory—the Gift-theory of sacrifice—requires us to believe that religion could be commercialised beforecommerce was known; that religion consists, or originally consisted, not in doing that which is pleasing in the sight of God, but in bribing the gods; that the relatively late misinterpretation is the original and true meaning of the rite; in a word, that there was no religion in the earliest manifestation of religion. But it is precisely this last contention which is fatal to the Gift-theory. Not only is it a self-contradiction in terms, but it denies the very possibility of religious evolution. Evolution is a process and a continuous process: there is an unbroken continuity between the earliest and the latest of its stages. If there was no religion whatever in the earliest stages, neither can there be any in the latest. And that is why those who hold religion to be an absurdity are apt to adopt the Gift-theory: the Gift-theory implies a degrading absurdity from the beginning to the end of the evolutionary process—an unbroken continuity of absurdity. On the other hand, we may hold by the plain truth that there must have been religion in the earliest manifestations of religion, and that bribing a god is not, in our sense of the word, religious. In that case, we shall also hold that the offerings which have always been part of the earliest religious ritual were intended as the outward and visible sign or symbol of the community's desire to do that which was pleasing to their god; and that it is only in the course of time, and as theconsequence of misinterpretation, that the offerings come to be regarded as gifts made for the purpose of bribing the gods or of purchasing what they have to bestow. Thus, just as, in the evolution of religion, fetishism was differentiated from polytheism, and was cast aside—where it was cast aside—as incompatible with the demands of the religious sentiment, so too the making of gifts to the gods, for the purpose of purchasing their favour, came to be differentiated from the service which God requires.
The endeavour to explain the history and purpose of sacrifice by means of the Gift-theory alone has the further disadvantage that it requires us to close our eyes to other features of the sacrificial rite, for, if we turn to them, we shall find it impossible to regard the Gift-theory as affording a complete and exhaustive account of all that there was in the rite from the beginning. Indeed, so important are these other features, that, as we have seen, some students would maintain that the only rite which can be properly termed sacrificial is one which presents these features. From this point of view, the term sacrifice can only be used of something that is consumed or destroyed in the service; while the term offering is restricted to things which are not destroyed. But, from this point of view, we must hold that sacrifices, to be sacrifices in the specific must not merely be destroyed or consumed, forthen anything that could be destroyed by fire would be capable of becoming a burnt-offering; and the burning would simply prove that the offering was acceptable—a proof which may in some cases have been required to make assurance doubly sure, but which was really superfluous, inasmuch as no one who desires his offering to be accepted will make an offering which he thinks to be unacceptable. Sacrifices, to be sacrifices in the specific sense thus put upon the word, we must hold to be things which by their very nature are marked out to be consumed: they must be articles of food. But even with this qualification, sacrifices are not satisfactorily distinguished from offerings, for a food-offering is an offering, and discharges the function of a sacrifice, provided that it is offered. That it should actually be consumed is neither universally nor necessarily required. That it is often consumed in the service is a fact which brings us to a new and different feature of the sacrificial rite. Let us then consider it.
Thus far, looking at the rite on its outward side, from the point of view of the spectator, we have seen that the worshippers, carrying with them something material, draw near to the place where the god manifests himself. From this series of actions and gestures, we have inferred the belief of the worshippers to be that they are drawing near to their god both physically and spiritually. We haveinferred that the material oblation is intended by the worshippers as the outward and visible sign of their wish to commend themselves to the god. We have now to notice what has been implied throughout, that the worshippers do not draw near to the god without a reason, or seek to commend themselves to him without a purpose. And if we consult the facts once more, we shall find that the occasions, on which the god is thus approached, are generally occasions of distress, experienced or apprehended. The feelings with which the community draws near are compounded of the fear, occasioned by the distress or danger, and the hope and confidence that it will be removed or averted by the step which they are taking. Part of their idea of the god is that he can and will remove the present, or avert the coming, calamity; otherwise they would not seek to approach him. But part also of their idea is that they have done something to provoke him, otherwise calamity would not have come upon them. Thus, when the worshippers seek to come into the presence of their god, they are seeking him with the feeling that he is estranged from them, and they approach him with something in their hands to symbolise their desire to please him, and to restore the relation which ordinarily subsists between a god and his worshippers. Having deposited the offering they bring, and having proffered the petition they came to make, theyretire satisfied that all now is well. The rite is now in all its essential features complete. But though complete, as an organism in the early stages of its history may be complete, it has, like the organism, the power of growth; and it grows.
The conviction with which the community ends the rite is the joyful conviction that the trouble is over-past. The joy which the community feels often expresses itself in feast and song; and where the offerings are, as they most commonly are, food-offerings or animal-sacrifice, the feast may come to be regarded as one at which the god himself is present and of which he partakes along with his worshippers. The joy, which expresses itself in feast and song, may, however, not make itself felt until the prayer of the community has been fulfilled and the calamity has passed away; and then the feast comes to be of the nature of a joyful thank-offering. But it is probably only in one or other of these two cases that the offering comes to be consumed in the service of feast and song. And although the rite may and does grow in this way, still this development of it—'eating with the god'—is rather potentially than actually present in the earliest form of the rite.
From this point of view, sacrificial meals or feasts are not part of the ritual of approach: they belong to the termination of the ceremony. They mark thefact of reconciliation; they are an expression of the conviction that friendly relations are restored. The sacrificial meal then is accordingly not a means by which reconciliation is effected, but the outward expression of the conviction that the end has been attained; and, as expressing, it has the force of confirming, the conviction. Where the sacrificial rite grows to comprehend a sacrificial feast or meal, there the food-offering or sacrifice is consumed in the service. But the rite does not always develop thus; and even without this development it discharges its proper function. Before this development, it is on occasions of distress that the god is approached by the community, in the conviction that the community has offended, and with the object of purging the community and removing the distress, of appeasing the god and restoring good relations. Yet even at this stage the object of the community is to be at one with its god—at-one-ment and communion so far are sought. There is implied the faith that he, the community's god, cannot possibly be for ever alienated and will not utterly forsake them, even though he be estranged for the time. Doubtless the feast, which in some cases came to crown the sacrificial rite, may, where it was practised amongst peoples who believed that persons partaking of common food became united by a common bond, have come to be regarded as constituting a fresh bond and a more intimatecommunion between the god and his worshippers who alike partook of the sacrificial meal. But this belief is probably far from being, or having been, universal; and it is unnecessary to assume that this belief must have existed, wherever we find the accomplishment of the sacrificial rite accompanied by rejoicing. The performance of the sacrificial rite is prompted by the desire to restore the normal relation between the community and its god. It is carried out in the conviction that the god is willing to return to the normal relation; when it has been performed, the community is relieved and rejoices, whether the rejoicing does or does not take form in a feast; and the essence of the rejoicing is the conviction that all now is well, a conviction which arises from the performance of the sacrificial rite and not from the meal which may or may not follow it.
Where the institution of the sacrificial feast did grow up, the natural tendency would be for it to become the most important feature in the whole rite. The original and the fundamental purpose of the rite was to reconcile the god and his worshippers and to make them at one: the feast, therefore, which marked the accomplishment of the very purpose of the rite, would come to be regarded as the object of the rite. In that, however, there is nothing more than the shifting forward of the centre of religious interest from the sacrifice to the feast: there isnothing in it to change the character or conception of the feast. Yet, in the case of some peoples, its character and conception did change in a remarkable way. In the case of some peoples, we find that the feast is not an occasion of 'eating with the god' but what has been crudely called 'eating the god.' This conception existed, as is generally agreed, beyond the possibility of doubt, in Mexico amongst the Aztecs, and perhaps—though not beyond the possibility of doubt—elsewhere.
The Aztecs were a barbarous or semi-civilised people, with a long history behind them. The circumstances under which the belief and practice in question existed and had grown up amongst them are clear enough. The Aztecs worshipped deities, and amongst those deities were plants and vegetables, such as maize. It was, of course, not any one individual specimen that they worshipped: it was the spirit, the maize-mother, who manifested herself in every maize-plant, but was not identical with any one. At the same time, though they worshipped the spirit, or species, they grew and cultivated the individual plants, as furnishing them with food. Thus they were in the position of eating as food the plant, the body, in which was manifested the spirit whom they worshipped. In this there was an outward resemblance to the Christian rite of communion, which could not fail to attract the attention of theSpanish priests at the time of the conquest of Mexico, but which has probably been unconsciously magnified by them. They naturally interpreted the Aztec ceremony in terms of Christianity, and the spirit of the translation probably differs accordingly from the spirit of the original.
We have now to consider the new phase of the sacrificial—indeed, in this connection, we may say the sacramental—rite which was found in Mexico, and to indicate the manner in which it probably originated. The offerings earliest made to the gods were not necessarily, but were probably, food-offerings, animal or vegetable; and as we are not in a position to affirm that there was any restriction upon the kind of food offered, it seems advisable to assume that any kind of food might be offered to any kind of god. The intention of offerings seems to be to indicate merely that the worshippers desire to be pleasing in the sight of the god whom they wish to approach. At this, the simplest and earliest stage of the rite, the sacrificial feast has not yet come into existence: it is enough if the food is offered to the god; it is not necessary that it should be eaten, or that any portion of it should be eaten, by the community. There is evidence enough to warrant us in believing that generally there was an aversion to eating the god's portion. If the worshippers ate any portion, they certainly would not eat and did not eat,until after the god had done so. At this stage in the development of the rite, the offerings are occasional, and are not made at stated, recurring, seasons. The reason for believing this is that it is on occasions of alarm and distress that the community seeks to draw near its god. But though it is in alarm that the community draws nigh, it draws nigh in confidence that the god can be appeased and is willing to be appeased. It is part of the community's idea of its god that he has the power to punish; that he does not exercise his power without reason; and that, as he is powerful, so also he is just to his worshippers, and merciful.
But though occasional offerings, and sacrifices made in trouble to gods who are conceived to be a very help in time of trouble, continue to be made, until a relatively late period in the history of religion, we also find that there are recurring sacrifices, annually made. At these annual ceremonies, the offerings are food-offerings. Where the food-offerings are offerings of vegetable food, they are made at harvest time. They are made on the occasion of harvest; and that they should be so made is probably no accident or fortuitous coincidence. At the regularly recurring season of harvest, the community adheres to the custom, already formed, of not partaking of the food which it offers to its god, until a portion has been offered to the god. The custom,like other customs, tends to become obligatory: the worshippers, that is to say the community, may not eat, until the offering has been made and accepted. Then, indeed, the worshippers may eat, solemnly, in the presence of their god. The eating becomes a solemn feast of thanksgiving. The god, after whom they eat, and to whom they render thanks, becomes the god who gives them to eat. What is thus true of edible plants—whether wild or domesticated—may also hold true to some extent of animal life, where anything like a 'close time' comes to be observed.
As sacrificial ceremonies come to be, thus, annually recurring rites, a corresponding development takes place in the community's idea of its god. So long as the sacrificial ceremony was an irregularly recurring rite, the performance of which was prompted by the occurrence, or the threat, of disaster, so long it was the wrath of the god which filled the fore-ground, so to speak, of the religious consciousness; though behind it lay the conviction of his justice and his mercy. But when the ceremony becomes one of annual worship, a regularly recurring occasion on which the worshippers recognise that it is the god, to whom the first-fruits belong, who gives the worshippers the harvest, then the community's idea of its god is correspondingly developed. The occasion of the sacrificial rite is no longer one of alarm anddistress; it is no longer the wrath of the god, but his goodness as the giver of good gifts, that tends to emerge in the fore-ground of the religious consciousness. Harvest rites tend to become feasts of thanksgiving and thank-offerings; and so, by contrast with these joyous festivals, the occasional sacrifices, which continue to be offered in times of distress, tend to assume, more and more, the character of sin-offerings or guilt-offerings.
We have, however, now to notice a consequence which ensues upon the community's custom of not eating until after the first-fruits have been offered to the god. Not only is a habit or custom hard to break, simply because it is a habit; but, when the habit is the habit of a whole community, the individual who presumes to violate it is visited by the disapproval and the condemnation of the whole community. When then the custom has established itself of abstaining from eating, until the first-fruits have been offered to the god, any violation of the custom is condemned by the community as a whole. The consequence of this is that the fruit or the animal tends to be regarded by the community as sacred to the god, and not to be meddled with until after the first-fruits have been offered to him. The plant or animal becomes sacred to the god because the community has offered it to him, and intends to offer it to him, and does offer it to him annually. Now itis not a necessary and inevitable consequence that an animal or plant, which has come to be sacred, should become divine. But where we find divine animals or animal gods—divine corn or corn-goddesses—we are entitled to consider this as one way in which they may have come to be regarded as divine, because sacred, and as deities, because divine. When we find the divine plant or animal constituting the sacrifice, and furnishing forth the sacrificial meal, there is a possibility that it was in this way and by this process that the plant or animal came to be, first, sacred, then divine, and finally the deity, to whom it was offered. In many cases, certainly, this last stage was never reached. And we may conjecture a reason why it was not reached. Whether it could be reached would depend largely on the degree of individuality, which the god, to whom the offering was made, had reached. A god who possesses a proper, personal name, must have a long history behind him, for a personal name is an epithet the meaning of which comes in course of time to be forgotten. If its meaning has come to be entirely forgotten, the god is thereby shown not only to have a long history behind him but to have acquired a high degree of individuality and personality, which will not be altered or modified by the offerings which are made to him. Where, however, the being or power worshipped is, as with the jungle-dwellers ofChota Nagpur, still nameless, his personality and individuality must be of the vaguest; and, in that case, there is the probability that the plant or animal offered to him may become sacred to him; and, having become sacred, may become divine. The animal or plant may become that in which the nameless being manifests himself. The corn or maize is offered to the nameless deity; the deity is the being to whom the corn or maize is habitually offered; and then becomes the corn-deity or maize-deity, the mother of the maize or the corn-goddess.