To the anthropological philosopher 'a plain man' would naturally put the question: 'Having got your idea of spirit or soul—your theory of Animism—out of the idea of ghosts, and having got your idea of ghosts out of dreams and visions, how do you get at the Idea of God?' Now by 'God' the proverbial 'plain man' of controversy means a primal eternal Being, author of all things, the father and friend of man, the invisible, omniscient guardian of morality.
The usual though not invariable reply of the anthropologist might be given in the words of Mr. Im Thurn, author of a most interesting work on the Indians of British Guiana:
'From the notion of ghosts,' says Mr. Im Thurn, 'a belief has arisen, but very gradually, in higher spirits, and eventually in a Highest Spirit, and, keeping pace with the growth of these beliefs, a habit of reverence for, and worship of spirits…. The Indians of Guiana know no God.'[1]
As another example of Mr. Im Thurn's hypothesis that God is a late development from the idea of spirit may be cited Mr. Payne's learned 'History of the New World,' a work of much research:[2]
'The lowest savages not only have no gods, but do not even recognise those lower beings usually called spirits, the conception of which has invariably preceded that of gods in the human mind.'
Mr. Payne here differs,toto caelo, from Mr. Tylor, who finds no sufficient proof for wholly non-religious savages, and from Roskoff, who has disposed of the arguments of Sir John Lubbock. Mr. Payne, then, for ethnological purposes, defines a god as 'a benevolent spirit, permanently embodied in some tangible object, usually an image, and to whom food, drink,' and so on, 'are regularly offered for the purpose of securing assistance in the affairs of life.'
On this theory 'the lowest savages' are devoid of the idea of god or of spirit. Later they develop the idea of spirit, and when they have secured the spirit, as it were, in a tangible object, and kept it on board wages, then the spirit has attained to the dignity and the savage to the conception of a god. But while a god of this kind is, in Mr. Payne's opinion, relatively a late flower of culture, for the hunting races generally (with some exceptions) have no gods, yet 'the conception of a creator or maker of all things … obviously a great spirit' is 'one of the earliest efforts of primitive logic.'[3]
Mr. Payne's own logic is not very clear. The 'primitive logic' of the savage leads him to seek for a cause or maker of things, which he finds in a great creative spirit. Yet the lowest savages have no idea even of spirit, and the hunting races, as a rule, have no god. Does Mr. Payne mean that a great creative spirit isnota god, while a spirit kept on board wages in a tangible object is a god? We are unable, by reason of evidence later to be given, to agree with Mr. Payne's view of the facts, while his reasoning appears somewhat inconsistent, the lowest savages having, in his opinion, no idea of spirit, though the idea of a creative spirit is, for all that, one of the earliest efforts of primitive logic.
On any such theories as these the belief in a moral Supreme Being is a very late (or a very early?) result of evolution, due to the action of advancing thought upon the original conception of ghosts. This opinion of Mr. Im Thurn's is, roughly stated, the usual theory of anthropologists. We wish, on the other hand, to show that the idea of God, as he is conceived of by our inquiring plain man, is shadowed forth (among contradictory fables) in the lowest-known grades of savagery, and therefore cannot arise from the later speculation of men, comparatively civilised and advanced, on the original datum of ghosts. We shall demonstrate, contrary to the opinion of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and even Mr. Tylor, that the Supreme Being, and, in one case at least, the casual sprites of savage faith, are active moral influences. What is even more important, we shall make it undeniable that Anthropology has simplified her problem by neglecting or ignoring her facts. While the real problem is to account for the evolution out of ghosts of the eternal, creative moral god of the 'plain man,' the germ of such a god or being in the creeds of the lowest savages is by anthropologists denied, or left out of sight, or accounted for by theories contradicted by facts, or, at best, is explained away as a result of European or Islamite influences. Now, as the problem is to account for the evolution of the highest conception of God, as far as that conception exists among the most backward races, the problem can never be solved while that highest conception of God is practically ignored.
Thus, anthropologists, as a rule, in place of facing and solving their problem, have merely evaded it—doubtless unwittingly. This, of course, is not the practice of Mr. Tylor, though even his great work is professedly much more concerned with the development of the idea of spirit and with the lower forms of animism than with the real crux—the evolution of the idea (always obscured by mythology) of a moral, uncreated, undying God among the lowest savages. This negligence of anthropologists has arisen from a single circumstance. They take it for granted that God is always (except where the word for God is applied to a living human being) regarded as Spirit. Thus, having accounted for the development of the idea of spirit, they regard God as that idea carried to its highest power, and as the final step in its evolution. But, if we can show that the early idea of an undying, moral, creative being does not necessarily or logically imply the doctrine of spirit (or ghost), then this idea of an eternal, moral, creative being may have existed even before the doctrine of spirit was evolved.
We may admit that Mr. Tylor's account of the process by which Gods were evolved out of ghosts is a littletouffu—rather buried in facts. We 'can scarcely see the wood for the trees.' We want to know how Gods, makers of things (or of most things), fathers in heaven, and friends, guardians of morality, seeing what is good or bad in the hearts of men, were evolved, as is supposed, out of ghosts or surviving souls of the dead. That such moral, practically omniscient Gods are known to the very lowest savages—Bushmen, Fuegians, Australians—we shall demonstrate.
Here the inquirer must be careful not to adopt the common opinion that Gods improve, morally and otherwise, in direct ratio to the rising grades in the evolution of culture and civilisation. That is not necessarily the case; usually the reverse occurs. Still less must we take it for granted, following Mr. Tylor and Mr. Huxley, that the 'alliance [of religion and morality] belongs almost, or wholly, to religions above the savage level—not to the earlier and lower creeds;' or that 'among the Australian savages,' and 'in its simplest condition,' 'theology is wholly independent of ethics.'[4] These statements can be proved (by such evidence as anthropology is obliged to rely upon) to be erroneous. And, just because these statements are put forward, Anthropology has an easier task in explaining the origin of religion; while, just because these statements are incorrect, her conclusion, being deduced from premises so far false, is invalidated.
Given souls, acquired by thinking on the lines already described, Mr. Tylor develops Gods out of them. But he is not one of the writers who is certain about every detail. He 'scarcely attempts to clear away the haze that covers great parts of the subject.'[5]
The human soul, he says, has been the model on which man 'framed his ideas of spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports in the grass up to the heavenly creator and ruler of the world, the Great Spirit.' Here it is taken for granted that the Heavenly Ruler was from the first envisaged as a 'spiritualbeing'—which is just the difficulty. Was He?[6]
The process of framing these ideas is rather obscure. The savage 'lives in terror of the souls of the dead as harmful spirits.' This might yield a Devil; it would not yield a God who 'makes for righteousness.' Happily, 'deified ancestors are regarded, on the whole, as kindly spirits.' The dead ancestor is 'now passed into a deity.'[7] Examples of ancestor-worship follow. But we are no nearer home. For among the Zulus many Amatongo (ancestral spirits) are sacred. 'Yet their father [i.e. the father of each actual family] is far before all others when they worship the Amatongo…. They do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names.'[8] Thus, each new generation of Zulus must have a new first worshipful object—its own father's Itongo. This father, and his very name, are, in a generation or two, forgotten. The name of such a man, therefore, cannot survive as that of the God or Supreme Being from age to age; and, obviously, such a real dead man, while known at all, is much too well known to be taken for the creator and ruler of the world, despite some African flattering titles and superstitions about kings who control the weather. The Zulus, about as 'godless' a people as possible, have a mythical first ancestor, Unkulunkulu, but he is 'beyond the reach of rites,' and is a centre of myths rather than of worship or of moral ideas.[9]
After other examples of ancestor-worship, Mr. Tylor branches off into a long discussion of the theory of 'possession' or inspiration,[10] which does not assist the argument at the present point. Thence he passes to fetishism (already discussed by us), and the transitions from the fetish—(1) to the idol; (2) to the guardian angel ('subliminal self'); (3) to tree and river spirits, and local spirits which cause volcanoes; and (4) to polytheism. A fetish may inhabit a tree; trees being generalised, the fetish of one oak becomes the god of the forest. Or, again, fetishes rise into 'species gods;' the gods ofallbees, owls, or rabbits are thus evolved.
Next,[11]
'As chiefs and kings are among men, so are the great gods among the lesser spirits…. With little exception, wherever a savage or barbaric system of religion is thoroughly described, great gods make their appearance in the spiritual world as distinctly as chiefs in the human tribe.'
Very good; but whence comes the great God among tribes which have neither chief nor king and probably never had, as among the Fuegians, Bushmen, and Australians? The maker and ruler of the world known totheseraces cannot be the shadow of king or chief, reflected and magnified on the mist of thought; for chief or king these peoples have none. This theory (Hume's) will not work where people have a great God but no king or chief; nor where they have a king but no Zeus or other supreme King-god, as (I conceive) among the Aztecs.
We now reach, in Mr. Tylor's theory, great fetish deities, such as Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and 'departmental deities,' gods of Agriculture, War, and so forth, unknown to low savages.
Next Mr. Tylor introduces an important personage. 'The theory of family Manes, carried back to tribal Gods, leads to the recognition of superior deities of the nature of Divine Ancestor, or First Man,' who sometimes ranks as Lord of the Dead. As an instance, Mr. Tylor gives the Maori Maui, who, like the Indian Yama, trod first of men the path of death. But whether Maui and Yama are the Sun, or not, both Maori and Sanskrit religion regard these heroes as much later than the Original Gods. In Kamschatka the First Man is the 'son' of the Creator, and it is about the origin of the idea of the Creator, not of the First Man, that we are inquiring. Adam is called 'the son of God' in a Biblical genealogy, but, of course, Adam was made, not begotten. The case of the Zulu belief will be analysed later. On the whole, we cannot explain away the conception of the Creator as a form of the conception of an idealised divine First Ancestor, because the conception of a Creator occurs where ancestor-worship does not occur; and again, because, supposing that the idea of a Creator came first, and that ancestor-worship later grew more popular, the popular idea of Ancestor might be transferred to the waning idea of Creator. The Creator might be recognised as the First Ancestor,après coup.
Mr. Tylor next approaches Dualism, the idea of hostile Good and Bad Beings. We must, as he says, be careful to discount European teaching, still, he admits, the savage has this dualistic belief in a 'primitive' form. But the savage conception is not merely that of 'good = friendly to me,' 'bad = hostile to me.' Ethics, as we shall show, already come into play in his theology.
Mr. Tylor arrives, at last, at the Supreme Being of savage creeds. His words, well weighed, must be cited textually—
'To mark off the doctrines of monotheism, closer definition is required [than the bare idea of a Supreme Creator], assigning the distinctive attributes of Deity to none save the Almighty Creator. It may be declared that, in this strict sense, no savage tribe of monotheists has been ever known.[12] Nor are any fair representatives of the lower culture in a strict sense pantheists. The doctrine which they do widely hold, and which opens to them a course tending in one or other of these directions, is polytheism culminating in the rule of one supreme divinity. High above the doctrine of souls, of divine Manes, of local nature gods, of the great gods of class and element, there are to be discerned in barbaric theology, shadowings, quaint or majestic, of the conception of a Supreme Deity, henceforth to be traced onward in expanding power and brightening glory along the history of Religion. It is no unimportant task, partial as it is, to select and group the typical data which show the nature and position of the doctrine of supremacy, as it comes into view within the lower culture.[13]
We shall show that certain low savages are as monotheistic as someChristians. They have a Supreme Being, and the 'distinctive attributes ofDeity' are not by them assigned to other beings, further than asChristianity assigns them to Angels, Saints, the Devil, and, strange asit appears, among savages, to mediating 'Sons.'
It is not known that, among the Andamanese and other tribes, this last notion is due to missionary influence. But, in regard to the whole chapter of savage Supreme Beings, we must, as Mr. Tylor advises, keep watching for Christian and Islamite contamination. The savage notions, as Mr. Tylor says, even when thus contaminated, may have 'to some extent, a native substratum.' We shall select such savage examples of the idea of a Supreme Being as are attested by ancient native hymns, or are inculcated in the most sacred and secret savage institutions, the religious Mysteries (manifestly the last things to be touched by missionary influence), or are found among low insular races defended from European contact by the jealous ferocity and poisonous jungles of people and soil. We also note cases in which missionaries found such native names as 'Father,' 'Ancient of Heaven,' 'Maker of All,' ready-made to their hands.
It is to be remarked that, while this branch of the inquiry is practically omitted by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Tylor can spare for it but some twenty pages out of his large work. He arranges the probable germs of the savage idea of a Supreme Being thus: A god of the polytheistic crowd is simply raised to the primacy, which, of course, cannot occur where there is no polytheism. Or the principle of Manes worship may make a Supreme Deity out of 'a primeval ancestor' say Unkulunkulu, who is so far from being supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in Nature-worship, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may accumulate all powers of all polytheistic gods, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and calm … too benevolent to need human worship … too merely existent to concern himself with the petty race of men.'[14] But he is always animistic.
Now, in addition to the objections already noted in passing, how can we tell that the Supreme Being of low savages was, in original conception,animisticat all? How can we know that he was envisaged, originally, asSpirit? We shall show that he probably was not, that the question 'spirit or not spirit' was not raised at all, that the Maker and Father in Heaven, prior to Death, was merely regarded as a deathlessBeing, no question of 'spirit' being raised. If so, Animism was not needed for the earliest idea of a moral Eternal. This hypothesis will be found to lead to some very singular conclusions.
It will be more fully stated and illustrated, presently, but I find that it had already occurred to Dr. Brinton.[15] He is talking specially of a heaven-god; he says 'it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to the heavenslong ere man asked himself, Are the heavens material and God spiritual?' Dr. Brinton, however, does not develop his idea, nor am I aware that it has been developed previously.
The notion of a God about whose spirituality nobody has inquired is new to us. To ourselves, and doubtless or probably to barbarians on a certain level of culture, such a Divine Beingmustbe animistic,mustbe a 'spirit.' To take only one case, to which we shall return, the Banks Islanders (Melanesia) believe in ghosts, 'and in the existence of Beings who were not, and never had been, human. All alike might be called spirits,' says Dr. Codrington, but,ex hypothesi, the Beings 'who never were human' are only called 'spirits,' by us, because our habits of thought do not enable us to envisage themexceptas 'spirits.' They never were men, 'the natives will always maintain that he (theVui) wassomething different, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man,' while resolute that he was not a ghost.[16]
This point will be amply illustrated later, as we study that strangely neglected chapter, that essential chapter, the Higher beliefs of the Lowest savages. Of the existence of a belief in a Supreme Being, not as merely 'alleged,' there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in the ethnographic region.
It is certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers, and missionaries, have again and again recognised our God in theirs.
The mythical details and fables about the savage God are, indeed, different; the ethical, benevolent, admonishing, rewarding, and creative aspects of the Gods are apt to be the same.[17]
'There is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of God, or of a future state, 'the facts being universally admitted.'[18]
'Intelligent men among the Bakwains have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception of good and evil, God and the future state; Nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared to them as otherwise,' except polygamy, says Livingstone.
Now we may agree with Mr. Tylor that modern theologians, familiar with savage creeds, will scarcely argue that 'they are direct or nearly direct products of revelation' (vol. ii. p. 356). But we may argue that, considering their nascent ethics (denied or minimised by many anthropologists) and the distance which separates the high gods of savagery from the ghosts out of which they are said to have sprung; considering too, that the relatively pure and lofty element which,ex hypothesi, is most recent in evolution, is also,notthe most honoured, but often just the reverse; remembering, above all, that we know nothing historically of the mental condition of the founders of religion, we may hesitate to accept the anthropological hypothesisen masse. At best it is conjectural, and the facts are such that opponents have more justification than is commonly admitted for regarding the bulk of savage religion as degenerate, or corrupted, from its own highest elements. I am by no means, as yet, arguing positively in favour of that hypothesis, but I see what its advocates mean, or ought to mean, and the strength of their position. Mr. Tylor, with his unique fairness, says 'the degeneration theory, no doubt in some instances with justice, may claim such beliefs as mutilated and perverted remains of higher religion' (vol. ii. p. 336).
I do not pretend to know how the lowest savages evolved the theory of a God who reads the heart and 'makes for righteousness,' It is as easy, almost, for me to believe that they 'were not left without a witness,' as to believe that this God of theirs was evolved out of the maleficent ghost of a dirty mischievous medicine-man.
Here one may repeat that while the 'quaint or majestic foreshadowings' of a Supreme Being, among very low savages, are only sketched lightly by Mr. Tylor; in Mr. Herbert Spencer's system they seem to be almost omitted. In his 'Principles of Sociology' and 'Ecclesiastical Institutions' one looks in vain for an adequate notice; in vain for almost any notice, of this part of his topic. The watcher of conduct, the friendly, creative being of low savage faith, whence was he evolved? The circumstance of his existence, as far as I can see; the chastity, the unselfishness, the pitifulness, the loyalty to plighted word, the prohibition of even extra-tribal homicide, enjoined in various places on his worshippers, are problems that appear somehow to have escaped Mr. Spencer's notice. We are puzzled by endless difficulties in his system: for example as to how savages can forget their great-grandfathers' very names, and yet remember 'traditional persons from generation to generation,' so that 'in time any amount of expansion and idealisation can be reached,'[19]
Again, Mr. Spencer will argue that it is a strange thing if 'primitive men had, as some think, the consciousness of a Universal Power whence they and all other things proceeded,' and yet 'spontaneously performed to that Power an act like that performed by them to the dead body of a fellow savage'—by offerings of food.[20]
Now, first, there would be nothing strange in the matter if the crude idea of 'Universal Power' cameearliest, and was superseded, in part, by a later propitiation of the dead and ghosts. The new religious idea would soon refract back on, and influence by its ritual, the older conception. And, secondly, it is precisely this 'Universal Power' that isnotpropitiated by offerings of food, in Tonga, (despite Mr. Huxley) Australia, and Africa, for example. We cannot escape the difficulty by saying that there the old ghost of Universal Power is regarded as dead, decrepit, or as aroi-fainéantnot worth propitiating, for that is not true of the punisher of sin, the teacher of generosity, and the solitary sanction of faith between men and peoples.
It would appear then, on the whole, that the question of the plain man to the anthropologist, 'Having got your idea of spirit into the savage's mind, how does he develop out of it what I call God?' has not been answered. God cannot be a reflection from human kings where there have been no kings; nor a president elected out of a polytheistic society of gods where there is as yet no polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor where men do not worship their ancestors; while, again, the spirit of a man who died, real or ideal, does not answer to a common savage conception of the Creator. All this will become much more obvious as we study in detail the highest gods of the lowest races.
Our study, of course, does not pretend to embrace the religion of all the savages in the world. We are content with typical, and, as a rule, well-observed examples. We range from the creeds of the most backward and worst-equipped nomad races, to those of peoples with an aristocracy, hereditary kings, houses and agriculture, ending with the Supreme Being of the highly civilised Incas, and with the Jehovah of the Hebrews.
[Footnote 1:Journal Anthrop. Inst.xi. 874. We shall return to this passage.]
[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 389, 1892.]
[Footnote 3: Payne, i. 458.]
[Footnote 4:Prim. Cult.vol. ii. p. 381;Science and HebrewTradition, pp. 346, 372.]
[Footnote 5:Prim. Cult. vol. ii. p. 109.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 110.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 113.]
[Footnote 8:Prim. Cult. vol. ii. pp. 115, 116, citing Callaway and others.]
[Footnote 9: The Zulu religion will be analysed later.]
[Footnote 10:Prim. Cult. vol. ii. pp. 130-144.]
[Footnote 11: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 248.]
[Footnote 12: And very few civilised populations, if any, are monotheistic in this sense.]
[Footnote 13:Prim. Cult. vol. ii. pp. 332, 333.]
[Footnote 14:Prim. Cult. vol. ii. pp. 335, 336.]
[Footnote 15:Myths of the New World, 1868, p. 47.]
[Footnote 16: I observed this point inMyth, Ritual, and Religion, whileI did not see the implication, that the idea of 'spirit' was notnecessarily present in the savage conception of the primal Beings,Creators, or Makers.]
[Footnote 17: See one or two cases inPrim. Cult. vol. ii. p. 340.]
[Footnote 18: Livingstone, speaking of the Bakwain,Missionary Travels, p. 168.]
[Footnote 19:Principles of Sociology, vol. i. p. 450.]
[Footnote 20: Op. cit. vol. i. p. 302.]
To avoid misconception we must repeat the necessary cautions about accepting evidence as to high gods of low races. The missionary who does not see in every alien god a devil is apt to welcome traces of an original supernatural revelation, darkened by all peoples but the Jews. We shall not, however, rely much on missionary evidence, and, when we do, we must now be equally on our guard against the anthropological bias in the missionary himself. Having read Mr. Spencer and Mr. Tylor, and finding himself among ancestor-worshippers (as he sometimes does), he is apt to think that ancestor-worship explains any traces of a belief in the Supreme Being. Against each and every bias of observers we must be watchful.
It may be needful, too, to point out once again another weak point in all reasoning about savage religion, namely that we cannot always tell what may have been borrowed from Europeans. Thus, the Fuegians, in 1830-1840, were far out of the way, but one tribe, near Magellan's Straits, worshipped an image called Cristo. Fitzroy attributes this obvious trace of Catholicism to a Captain Pelippa, who visited the district some time before his own expedition. It is less probable that Spaniards established a belief in a moral Deity in regions where they left no material traces of their faith. The Fuegians are not easily proselytised. 'When discovered by strangers, the instant impulse of a Fuegian family is to run off into the woods.' Occasionally they will emerge to barter, but 'sometimes nothing will induce a single individual of the family to appear.' Fitzroy thought they had no idea of a future state, because, among other reasons not given, 'the evil spirit torments them inthisworld, if they do wrong, by storms, hail, snow, &c.' Why the evil spirit should punish evil deeds is not evident. 'A great black man is supposed to be always wandering about the woods and mountains, who is certain of knowing every word and every action, who cannot be escaped and who influences the weather according to men's conduct.'[1]
There are no traces of propitiation by food, or sacrifice, or anything but conduct. To regard the Deity as 'a magnified non-natural man' is not peculiar to Fuegian theologians, and does not imply Animism, but the reverse. But the point is that this ethical judge of perhaps the lowest savages 'makes for righteousness' and searches the heart. His morality is so much above the ordinary savage standard that he regards the slaying of a stranger and an enemy, caught redhanded in robbery, as a sin. York's brother (York was a Fuegian brought to England by Fitzroy) killed a 'wild man' who was stealing his birds. 'Rain come down, snow come down, hail come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow. Very bad to kill man. Big man in woods no like it, he very angry.' Here be ethics in savage religion. The Sixth Commandment is in force. The Being also prohibits the slaying of flappers before they can fly. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come wind, come rain, blow, very much blow.'[2]
Now this big man is not a deified chief, for the Fuegians 'have no superiority of one over another … but the doctor-wizard of each party has much influence.' Mr. Spencer disposes of this moral 'big man' of the Fuegians as 'evidently a deceased weather-doctor.'[3] But, first, there is no evidence that the being is regarded as ever having died. Again, it is not shown that Fuegians are ancestor-worshippers. Next, Fitzroy did not think that the Fuegians believed in a future life. Lastly, when were medicine-men such notable moralists? The worst spirits among the neighbouring Patagonians are those of dead medicine-men. As a rule everywhere the ghost of a 'doctor-wizard,' shaman, or whatever he may be called, is the worst and wickedest of all ghosts. How, then, the Fuegians, who are not proved to be ancestor-worshippers, evolved out of the malignant ghost of an ancestor a being whose strong point is morality, one does not easily conceive. The adjacent Chonos 'have great faith in a good spirit, whom they call Yerri Yuppon, and consider to be the author of all good; him they invoke in distress or danger.' However starved they do not touch food till a short prayer has been muttered over each portion, 'the praying man looking upward.'[4] They have magicians, but no details are given as to spirits or ghosts. If Fuegian and Chono religion is on this level, and if this be the earliest, then the theology of many other higher savages (as of the Zulus) is decidedly degenerate. 'The Bantu gives one accustomed to the negro the impression that he once had the same set of ideas,but has forgotten half of them,' says Miss Kingsley.[5]
Of all races now extant, the Australians are probably lowest in culture, and, like the fauna of the continent, are nearest to the primitive model. They have neither metals, bows, pottery, agriculture, nor fixed habitations; and no traces of higher culture have anywhere been found above or in the soil of the continent. This is important, for in some respects their religious conceptions are so lofty that it would be natural to explain them as the result either of European influence, or as relics of a higher civilisation in the past. The former notion is discredited by the fact that their best religious ideas are imparted in connection with their ancient and secret mysteries, while for the second idea, that they are degenerate from a loftier civilisation, there is absolutely no evidence.
It has been suggested, indeed, by Mr. Spencer that the singularly complex marriage customs of the Australian blacks point to a more polite condition in their past history. Of this stage, as we said, no material traces have ever been discovered, nor can degeneration be recent. Our earliest account of the Australians is that of Dampier, who visited New Holland in the unhappy year 1688. He found the natives 'the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods, of Mononamatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these: who have no houses, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth…. They have no houses, but lie in the open air.' Curiously enough, Dampier attests theirunselfishness: the main ethical feature in their religious teaching. 'Be it little or be it much they get, every one has his part, as well the young and tender as the old and feeble, who are not able to go abroad, as the strong and lusty.' Dampier saw no metals used, nor any bows, merely boomerangs ('wooden cutlasses'), and lances with points hardened in the fire. 'Their place of dwelling was only a fire with a few boughs before it' (thegunyeh).
This description remains accurate for most of the unsophisticated Australian tribes, but Dampier appears only to have seen ichthyophagous coast blacks.
There is one more important point. In theBora, or Australian mysteries, at which knowledge of 'The Maker' and of his commandments is imparted, the front teeth of the initiated are still knocked out. Now, Dampier observed 'the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young.' If this is to be taken quite literally, the Bora rite, in 1688, must have included the women, at least locally. Dampier was on the north-west coast in latitude 16 degrees, longitude 122-1/4 degrees east (Dampier Land, West Australia). The natives had neither boats, canoes, nor bark logs; but it seems that they had their religious mysteries and their unselfishness, two hundred years ago.[6]
The Australians have been very carefully studied by many observers, and the results entirely overthrow Mr. Huxley's bold statement that 'in its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages, theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and dispositions (usually malignant) of ghost-like entities who may be propitiated or scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage theology is wholly independent of ethics.'
Remarks more crudely in defiance of known facts could not be made. The Australians, assuredly, believe in 'spirits,' often malicious, and probably in most cases regarded as ghosts of men. These aid the wizard, and occasionally inspire him. That these ghosts areworshippeddoes not appear, and is denied by Waitz. Again, in the matter of cult, 'there is none' in the way ofsacrificeto higher gods, as there should be if these gods were hungry ghosts. The cult among the Australians is the keeping of certain 'laws,' expressed in moral teaching, supposed to be in conformity with the institutes of their God. Worship takes the form, as at Eleusis, of tribal mysteries, originally instituted, as at Eleusis, by the God. The young men are initiated with many ceremonies, some of which are cruel and farcical, but the initiation includes ethical instruction, in conformity with the supposed commands of a God who watches over conduct. As among ourselves, the ethical ideal, with its theological sanction, is probably rather above the moral standard of ordinary practice. What conclusion we should draw from these facts is uncertain, but the facts, at least, cannot be disputed, and precisely contradict the statement of Mr. Huxley. He was wholly in the wrong when he said: 'The moral code, such as is implied by public opinion, derives no sanction from theological dogmas,'[7] It reposes, for its origin and sanction, on such dogmas.
The evidence as to Australian religion is abundant, and is being added to yearly. I shall here content myself with Mr. Howitt's accounts.[8]
As regards the possible evolution of the Australian God from ancestor-worship, it must be noted that Mr. Howitt credits the groups with possessing 'headmen,' a kind of chiefs, whereas some inquirers, in Brough Smyth's collection, disbelieve in regular chiefs. Mr. Howitt writes:—
'The Supreme Spirit, who is believed in by all the tribes I refer to here [in South-Eastern Australia], either as a benevolent, or more frequently as a malevolent being, it seems to me represents the defunct headman.'
Now, the traces of 'headmanship' among the tribes are extremely faint; no such headman rules large areas of country, none is known to be worshipped after death, and the malevolence of the Supreme Spirit is not illustrated by the details of Mr. Howitt's own statement, but the reverse. Indeed, he goes on at once to remark that 'Darumulunwas not, it seems to me, everywhere thought a malevolent being, but he was dreaded as one who could severely punish the trespasses committed against these tribal ordinances and customs whose first institution is ascribed to him.'
To punish transgressions of his law is not the essence of a malevolent being. Darumulun 'watched the youths from the sky, prompt to punish, by disease or death, the breach of his ordinances,' moral or ritual. His name is too sacred to be spoken except in whispers, and the anthropologist will observe that the names of the human dead are also often tabooed. But the divine name is not thus tabooed and sacred when the mere folklore about him is narrated. The informants of Mr. Howitt instinctively distinguished between the mythology and the religion of Darumulun.[9] This distinction— the secrecy about the religion, the candour about the mythology—is essential, and accounts for our ignorance about the inner religious beliefs of early races. Mr. Howitt himself knew little till he was initiated. The grandfather of Mr. Howitt's friend,before the white men came to Melbourne, took him out at night, and, pointing to a star, said: 'You will soon be a man; you seeBunjil[Supreme Being of certain tribes] up there, and he can see you, and all you do down here.' Mr. Palmer, speaking of the Mysteries of Northern Australians (mysteries under divine sanction), mentions the nature of the moral instruction. Each lad is given, 'by one of the elders, advice so kindly, fatherly, and impressive, as often to soften the heart, and draw tears from the youth.' He is to avoid adultery, not to take advantage of a woman if he finds her alone, he is not to be quarrelsome.[10]
At the Mysteries Darumulun's real name may be uttered, at other times he is 'Master' (Biamban) or 'Father' (Papang), exactly as we say 'Lord' and 'Father.'
It is known that all these things are not due to missionaries, whose instructions would certainly not be conveyed in theBora, or tribal mysteries, which, again, are partly described by Collins as early as 1798, and must have been practised in 1688. Mr. Howitt mentions, among moral lessons divinely sanctioned, respect for old age, abstinence from lawless love, and avoidance of the sins so popular, poetic, and sanctioned by the example of Gods, in classical Greece.[11] A representation is made of the Master, Biamban; and to make such idols, except at the Mysteries, is forbidden 'under pain of death.' Those which are made are destroyed as soon as the rites are ended.[12] The future life (apparently) is then illustrated by the burial of a living elder, who rises from a grave. This may, however, symbolise the 'new life' of the Mystae, 'Worse have I fled; better have I found,' as was sung in an Athenian rite. The whole result is, by what Mr. Howitt calls 'a quasi-religious element,' to 'impress upon the mind of the youth, in an indelible manner, those rules of conduct which form the moral law of the tribe.'[13]
Many other authorities could be adduced for the religious sanction of morals in Australia. A watchful being observes and rewards the conduct or men; he is named with reverence, if named at all; his abode is the heavens; he is the Master and Lord of things; his lessons 'soften the heart,'[14]
'What wants this KnaveThat aGodshould have?'
I shall now demonstrate that the religion patronised by the AustralianSupreme Being, and inculcated in his Mysteries, is actually used tocounteract the immoral character which natives acquire by associating withAnglo-Saxon Christians.[15]
Mr. Howitt[16] gives an account of the Jeraeil, or Mysteries of the Kurnai. The old men deemed that through intercourse with whites 'the lads had become selfish and no longer inclined to share that which they obtained by their own exertions, or had given them, with their friends.' One need not say that selflessness is the very essence of goodness, and the central moral doctrine of Christianity. So it is in the religious Mysteries of the African Yao; a selfish man, we shall see, is spoken of as 'uninitiated.' So it is with the Australian Kurnai, whose mysteries and ethical teaching are under the sanction of their Supreme Being. So much for the anthropological dogma that early theology has no ethics.
The Kurnai began by kneading the stomachs of the lads about to be initiated (that is, if they have been associating with Christians), to expel selfishness and greed. The chief rite, later, is to blindfold every lad, with a blanket closely drawn over his head, to make whirring sounds with thetundun, or Greekrhombos, then to pluck off the blankets, and bid the initiate raise their faces to the sky. The initiator points to it, calling out, 'Look there, look there, look there!' They have seen in this solemn way the home of the Supreme Being, 'Our Father,' Mungan-ngaur (Mungan = 'Father,' ngaur = 'our'), whose doctrine is then unfolded by the old initiator ('headman') 'in an impressive manner.'[17] 'Long ago there was a great Being, Mungan-ngaur, who lived on the earth.' His son Tundun isdirect ancestorof the Kurnai. Mungan initiated the rites, and destroyed earth by water when they were impiously revealed. 'Mungan left the earth, and ascended to the sky, where he still remains.'
Here Mungan-ngaur, a Being not defined as spirit, but immortal, and dwelling in heaven, is Father, or rather grandfather, not maker, of the Kurnai. Thismaybe interpreted as ancestor-worship, but the opposite myth, of making or creating, is of frequent occurrence in many widely-severed Australian districts, and co-exists with evolutionary myths. Mungan-ngaur's precepts are:
1.To listen to and obey the old men. 2.To share everything they have with their friends. 3.To live peaceably with their friends.
4.Not to interfere with girls or married women.
5.To obey the food restrictions until they are released from them by the old men.
Mr. Howitt concludes: 'I venture to assert that it can no longer be maintained that the Australians have no belief which can be called religious, that is, in the sense of beliefs which govern tribal and individual morality under a supernatural sanction.' On this topic Mr. Hewitt's opinion became more affirmative the more deeply he was initiated.[18]
The Australians are the lowest, most primitive savages, yet no propitiation by food is made to their moral Ruler, in heaven, as if he were a ghost.
The laws of these Australian divine beings apply to ritual as well as to ethics, as might naturally be expected. But the moral element is conspicuous, the reverence is conspicuous: we have here no mere ghost, propitiated by food or sacrifice, or by purely magical rites. His very image (modelled on a large scale in earth) is no vulgar idol: to make such a thing, except on the rare sacred occasions, is a capital offence. Meanwhile the mythology of the God has often, in or out of the rites, nothing rational about it.
On the whole it is evident that Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, underrates the nature of Australian religion. He cites a case of addressing the ghost of a man recently dead, which is asked not to bring sickness, 'or make loud noises in the night,' and says: 'Here we may recognise the essential elements of a cult.' But Mr. Spencer does not allude to the much more essentially religious elements which he might have found in the very authority whom he cites, Mr. Brough Smyth.[19] This appears, as far as my scrutiny goes, to be Mr. Spencer's solitary reference to Australia in the work on 'Ecclesiastical Institutions.' Yet the facts which he and Mr. Huxley ignore throw a light very different from theirs on what they consider 'the simplest condition of theology.'
Among the causes of confusion in thought upon religion, Mr. Tylor mentions 'the partial and one-sided application of the historical method of inquiry into theological doctrines.'[20] Here, perhaps, we have examples. In its highest aspect that 'simplest theology' of Australia is free from the faults of popular theology in Greece. The God discourages sin, though, in myth, he is far from impeccable. He is almost too revered to be named (except in mythology) and is not to be represented by idols. He is not moved by sacrifice; he has not the chance; like Death in Greece, 'he only, of all Gods, loves not gifts.' Thus the status of theology does not correspond to what we look for in very low culture. It would scarcely be a paradox to say that the popular Zeus, or Ares, is degenerate from Mungan-ngaur, or the Fuegian being who forbids the slaying of an enemy, and almost literally 'marks the sparrow's fall.'
If we knew all the mythology of Darumulun, we should probably find it (like much of the myth of Pundjel or Bunjil) on a very different level from the theology. There are two currents, the religious and the mythical, flowing together through religion. The former current, religious, even among very low savages, is pure from the magical ghost-propitiating habit. The latter current, mythological, is full of magic, mummery, and scandalous legend. Sometimes the latter stream quite pollutes the former, sometimes they flow side by side, perfectly distinguishable, as in Aztec ethical piety, compared with the bloody Aztec ritualism. Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on the impure stream, the lusts, mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively, or altogether, neglecting (as we have shown) what is honest and of good report.
The worse side of religion is the less sacred, and therefore the more conspicuous. Both elements are found co-existing, in almost all races, and nobody, in our total lack of historical information about the beginnings, can say which, if either, element is the earlier, or which, if either, is derived from the other. To suppose that propitiation of corpses and then of ghosts came first is agreeable, and seems logical, to some writers who are not without a bias against all religion as an unscientific superstition. But we know so little! The first missionaries in Greenland supposed that there was not, there, a trace of belief in a Divine Being. 'But when they came to understand their language better, they found quite the reverse to be true … and not only so, but they could plainly gather from a free dialogue they had with some perfectly wild Greenlanders (at that time avoiding any direct application to their hearts) that their ancestors must have believed in a Supreme Being, and did render him some service, which their posterity neglected little by little…'[21] Mr. Tylor does not refer to this as a trace of Christian Scandinavian influence on the Eskimo.[22]
That line, of course, may be taken. But an Eskimo said to a missionary, 'Thou must not imagine that no Greenlander thinks about these things' (theology). He then stated the argument from design. 'Certainly there must be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too… Ah, did I but know him, how I would love and honour him.' As St. Paul writes: 'That which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them … being understood by the things which are made … but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.'[23] In fact, mythology submerged religion. St. Paul's theory of the origin of religion is not that of an 'innate idea,' nor of a direct revelation. People, he says, reached the belief in a God from the Argument for Design. Science conceives herself to have annihilated teleological ideas. But they are among the probable origins of religion, and would lead to the belief in a Creator, whom the Greenlander thought beneficent, and after whom he yearned. This is a very different initial step in religious development, if initial it was, from the feeding of a corpse, or a ghost.
From all this evidence it does not appear how non-polytheistic, non-monarchical, non-Manes-worshipping savages evolved the idea of a relatively supreme, moral, and benevolent Creator, unborn, undying, watching men's lives. 'He can go everywhere, and do everything.'[24]
[Footnote 1: Fitzroy, ii. 180. Darwin.Descent of Man, p. 67.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. We seem to have little information about Fuegian religion either before or after the cruise of theBeagle.]
[Footnote 3:Principles of Sociology, i. 422.]
[Footnote 4: Fitzroy, ii. 190, 191]
[Footnote 5:Travels in West Africa, p. 442.]
[Footnote 6:Early Voyages to Australia, 102-111 (Hakluyt Society).]
[Footnote 7:Science and Hebrew Tradition, p. 846.]
[Footnote 8:Journal of the Anthrop. Institute, 1884. See, for less dignified accounts, op. cit. xxiv. xxv.]
[Footnote 9:Journal, xiii. 193.]
[Footnote 10:Journal, xiii. 296.]
[Footnote 11: Op. cit. p. 450.]
[Footnote 12: P. 453.]
[Footnote 13: P. 457.]
[Footnote 14: See Brough Smyth,Aborigines, i. 426; Taplin,Native Races of Australia. According to Taplin, Nurrumdere was a deified black fellow, who died on earth. This is not the case of Baiame, but is said, rather vaguely, to be true of Daramulun.J.A.I., xiii. 194, xxv. 297.]
[Footnote 15: From a brief account of the Fire Ceremony, orEngwurraof certain tribes in Central Australia, it seems that religious ceremonies connected with Totems are the most notable performances. Also 'certain mythical ancestors,' of the 'alcheringa, or dream-times,' were celebrated; these real or ideal human beings appear to 'sink their identity in that of the object with which they are associated, and from which they are supposed to have originated.' There appear also to be places haunted by 'spirit individuals,' in some way mixed up with Totems, but nothing is said of sacrifice to these Manes. The brief account is by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. F.J. Gillen,Proc. Royal Soc. Victoria, July 1897. This Fire Ceremony is not for lads—not a kind of confirmation in the savage church—but is intended for adults.]
[Footnote 16:J. Anthrop. Inst. 1886, p. 310.]
[Footnote 17:J. Anthrop. Inst. 1885, p. 313.]
[Footnote 18:J. Anthrop. Inst. xiii. p. 459.]
[Footnote 19:Ecclesiastical Institutions, p. 674.]
[Footnote 20:Prim. Cult. ii. 450.]
[Footnote 21: Cranz, pp. 198, 199.]
[Footnote 22:Journal Anthrop. Inst. xiii. 348-356.]
[Footnote 23: Rom. i. 19. Cranz, i. 199.]
[Footnote 24: In Mr. Carr's work,The Australian Race, reports of 'godless' natives are given, for instance, in the Mary River country and in Gippsland. These reports are usually the result of the ignorance or contempt of white observers, cf. Tylor, i. 419. The reader is referred to the Introduction for additional information about Australian beliefs, and for replies to objections.]
Before going on to examine the high gods of other low savages, I must here again insist on and develop the theory, not easily conceived by us, that the Supreme Being of savages belongs to another branch of faith than ghosts, or ghost-gods, or fetishes, or Totems, and need not be—probably is not—essentially derived from these. We must try to get rid of our theory that a powerful, moral, eternal Being was, from the first,ex officio, conceived as 'spirit;' and so was necessarily derived from a ghost.
First, what was the process of development?
We have examined Mr. Tylor's theory. But, to take a practical case: Here are the Australians, roaming in small bands, without more formal rulers than 'headmen' at most; not ancestor worshippers; not polytheists; with no departmental deities to select and aggrandise; not apt to speculate on theAnima Mundi. How, then, did they bridge the gulf between the ghost of a soon-forgotten fighting man, and that conception of a Father above, 'all-seeing,' moral, which, under various names, is found all over a huge continent? I cannot see that this problem has been solved or frankly faced.
The distinction between the Australian deity, at his highest power, unpropitiated by sacrifice, and the ordinary, waning, easily forgotten, cheaply propitiated ghost of a tribesman, is essential. It is not easy to show how, in 'the dark backward' of Australian life, the notion of Mungan-ngaur grew from the idea of the ghost of a warrior. But there is no logical necessity for the belief in the evolution of this god out of that ghost. These two factors in religion—ghost and god—seem to have perfectly different sources, and it appears extraordinary that anthropologists have not (as far as I am aware) observed this circumstance before.
Mr. Spencer, indeed, speaks frequently of living human beings adored as gods. I do not know that these are found on the lowest levels of savagery, and Mr. Jevons has pointed out that, before you can hail a man as a god, you must have the idea of God. The murder of Captain Cook notoriously resulted from a scientific experiment in theology. 'If he is a god, he cannot be killed.' So they tried with a dagger, and found that the honest captain was but a mortal British mariner—no god at all. 'There are degrees.' Mr. Spencer's men-gods become real gods—after death.[1]
Now the Supreme Being of savage faith, as a rule, never died at all. He belonged to a world that knew not Death.
One cause of our blindness to the point appears to be this: We have from childhood been taught that 'God is a Spirit.' We, now, can only conceive of an eternal being as a 'spirit.' We know that legions of savage gods are now regarded as spirits. And therefore we have never remarked that there is no reason why we should take it for granted that the earliest deities of the earliest men were supposed by them to be 'spirits' at all. These gods might most judiciously be spoken of, not as 'spirits,' but as 'undefined eternal beings.' To us, such a being is necessarily a spirit, but he was by no means necessarily so to an early thinker, who may not yet have reached the conception of a ghost.
A ghost is said, by anthropologists, to have developed into a god. Now, the very idea of a ghost (apart from a wraith or fetch) implies the previousdeathof his proprietor. A ghost is the phantasm of adeadman. But anthropologists continually tell us, with truth, that the idea of death as a universal ordinance is unknown to the savage. Diseases and death are things that once did not exist, and that, normally, ought not to occur, the savage thinks. They are, in his opinion, supernormally caused by magicians and spirits. Death came into the world by a blunder, an accident, an error in ritual, a decision of a god who was before Death was. Scores of myths are told everywhere on this subject.[2]
The savage Supreme Being, with added power, omniscience, and morality, is the idealisation of the savage, as conceived of by himself,minusfleshly body (as a rule), andminusDeath. He is not necessarily a 'spirit,' though that term may now be applied to him. He was not originally differentiated as 'spirit' or 'not spirit.' He is a Being, conceived of without the question of 'spirit,' or 'no spirit' being raised; perhaps he was originally conceived of before that question could be raised by men. When we call the Supreme Being of savages a 'spirit' we introduce our own animistic ideas into a conception where it may not have originally existed. If the God is 'the savage himself raised to the n^th power' so much the less of a spirit is he. Mr. Matthew Arnold might as well have said: 'The British Philistine has no knowledge of God. He believes that the Creator is a magnified non-natural man, living in the sky.' The Gippsland or Fuegian or Blackfoot Supreme Being is just aBeing, anthropomorphic, not amrart, or 'spirit.' The Supreme Being is awesen, Being,Vui; we have hardly a term for an immortal existence so undefined. If the being is an idealised first ancestor (as among the Kurnai), he is not, on that account, either man or ghost of man. In the original conception he is a powerful intelligence who was from the first: who was already active long before, by a breach of his laws, an error in the delivery of a message, a breach of ritual, or what not, death entered the world. He was not affected by the entry of death, he still exists.
Modern minds need to become familiar with this indeterminate idea of the savage Supreme Being, which, logically, may be prior to the evolution of the notion of ghost or spirit.
But how does it apply when, as by the Kurnai, the Supreme Being is reckoned an ancestor?
It can very readily be shown that, when the Supreme Being of a savage people is thus the idealised First Ancestor, he can never have been envisaged by his worshippers as at any time aghost; or, at least, cannot logically have been so envisaged where the nearly universal belief occurs that death came into the world by accident, or needlessly.
Adam is the mythical first ancestor of the Hebrews, but he died, [Greek: uper moron], and was not worshipped. Yama, the first of Aryan men who died, was worshipped by Vedic Aryans, butconfessedlyas a ghost-god. Mr. Tylor gives a list of first ancestors deified. The Ancestor of the Maudans did not die, consequently is no ghost;emigravit, he 'moved west.' Where the First Ancestor is also the Creator (Dog-rib Indians), he can hardly be, and is not, regarded as a mortal. Tamoi, of the Guaranis, was 'the ancient of heaven,' clearly no mortal man. The Maori Maui was the first who died, but he is not one of the original Maori gods. Haetsh, among the Kamchadals, precisely answers to Yama. Unkulunkulu will be described later.[3]
This is the list: Where the First Ancestor is equivalent to the Creator, and is supreme, he is—from the first—deathless and immortal. When he dies he is a confessed ghost-god.
Now, ghost-worship and dead ancestor-worship are impossible before the ancestor is dead and is a ghost. But the essential idea of Mungan-ngaur, and Baiame, and most of the high gods of Australia, and of other low races, is thatthey never died at all. They belong to the period before death came into the world, like Qat among the Melanesians. They arise in an age that knew not death, and had not reflected on phantasms nor evolved ghosts. They could have been conceived of, in the nature of the case, by a race of immortals who never dreamed of such a thing as a ghost. For these gods, the ghost-theory is not required, and is superfluous, even contradictory. The early thinkers who developed these beings did not need to know that men die (though, of course, they did know it in practice), still less did they need to have conceived by abstract speculation the hypothesis of ghosts. Baiame, Cagn, Bunjil, in their adorers' belief, werethere; death later intruded among men, but did not affect these divine beings in any way.
The ghost-theory, therefore, by the evidence of anthropology itself, is not needed for the evolution of the high gods of savages. It is only needed for the evolution of ghost-propitiation and genuine dead-ancestor worship. Therefore, the high gods described were not necessarily once ghosts—were not idealisedmortalancestors. They were, naturally, from the beginning, from before the coming in of death, immortal Fathers, now dwelling on high. Between them and apotheosised mortal ancestors there is a great gulf fixed—the river of death.
The explicitly stated distinction that the high creative gods never were mortal men, while other gods are spirits of mortal men, is made in every quarter. 'Ancestorsknownto be human werenotworshipped as [original] gods, and ancestors worshipped as [original] gods were not believed to have been human.'[4]
Both kinds may have a generic name, such askalou, orwakan, but the specific distinction is universally made by low savages. On one hand, original gods; on the other, non-original gods that were once ghosts. Now, this distinction is often calmly ignored; whereas, when any race has developed (like late Scandinavians) the Euhemeristic hypothesis ('all gods were once men'), that hypothesis is accepted as an historical statement of fact by some writers.
It is part of my theory that the more popular ghost-worship of souls of people whom men have loved, invaded the possibly older religion of the Supreme Father. Mighty beings, whether originally conceived of as 'spirits' or not, came, later, under the Animistic theory, to be reckoned as spirits. They even (but not among the lowest savages) came to be propitiated by food and sacrifice. The alternative, for a Supreme Being, when once Animism prevailed, was sacrifice (as to more popular ghost deities) or neglect. We shall find examples of both alternatives. But sacrifice does not prove that a God was, in original conception, a ghost, or even a spirit. 'The common doctrine of the Old Testament is not that God is spirit, but that the spirit [rúah= 'wind,' 'living breath'] of Jehovah, going forth from him, works in the world and among men.'[5]
To resume. The high Gods of savagery—moral, all-seeing directors of things and of men—are not explicitly envisaged as spirits at all by their adorers. The notion of soul or spirit is here out of place. We can best describe Pirnmeheal, and Nápi and Baiame as 'magnified non-natural men,' or undefined beings who were from the beginning and are undying. They are, like the easy Epicurean Gods,nihil indiga nostri. Not being ghosts, they crave no food from men, and receive no sacrifice, as do ghosts, or gods developed out of ghosts, or gods to whom the ghost-ritual has been transferred. For this very reason, apparently, they seem to be spoken of by Mr. Grant Allen as 'gods to talk about, not gods to adore; mythological conceptions rather than religious beings.'[6] All this is rather hard on the lowest savages. If they sacrifice to a god, then the god is a hungry ghost; if they don't, then the god is 'a god to talk about, not to adore,' Luckily, the facts of the Bora ritual and the instruction given there prove that Mungan-nganr and other namesaregods to adore, by ethical conformity to their will and by solemn ceremony, not merely gods to talk about.
Thus, the highest element in the religion of the lowest savages does not appear to be derived from their theory of ghosts. As far as we can say, in the inevitable absence of historical evidence, the highest gods of savages may have been believed in, as Makers and Fathers and Lords of an indeterminate nature, before the savage had developed the idea of souls out of dreams and phantasms. It is logically conceivable that savages may have worshipped deities like Baiame and Darumulun before they had evolved the notion that Tom, Dick, or Harry has a separable soul, capable of surviving his bodily decease. Deities of the higher sort, by the very nature of savage reflections on death and on its non-original casual character, are prior, or may be prior, or cannot be shown not to be prior, to the ghost theory—the alleged origin of religion. For their evolution the ghost theory is not logically demanded; they can do without it. Yetthey, and not the spirits, bogles, Mrarts,Brewin, and so forth, are the high gods, the gods who have most analogy—as makers, moral guides, rewarders, and punishers of conduct (though that duty is also occasionally assumed by ancestral spirits)—with our civilised conception of the divine. Our conception of God descends not from ghosts, but from the Supreme Beings of non-ancestor-worshipping peoples.
As it seems impossible to point out any method by which low, chiefless, non-polytheistic, non-metaphysical savages (if any such there be) evolved out of ghosts the eternal beings who made the world, and watch over morality: as the people themselves unanimously distinguish such beings from ghost-gods, I take it that such beings never were ghosts. In this case the Animistic theory seems to me to break down completely. Yet these high gods of low savages preserve from dimmest ages of the meanest culture the sketch of a God which our highest religious thought can but fill up to its ideal. Come from what germ he may, Jehovah or Allah does not come from a ghost.
It may be retorted that this makes no real difference. If savages did not invent gods in consequence of a fallacious belief in spirit and soul, still, in some other equally illogical way they came to indulge the hypothesis that they had a Judge and Father in heaven. But, if the ghost theory of the high Gods is wrong, as it is conspicuously superfluous, thatdoesmake some difference. It proves that a widely preached scientific conclusion may be as spectral as Bathybius. On other more important points, therefore, we may differ from the newest scientific opinion without too much diffident apprehensiveness.
[Footnote 1:Principles of Sociology, i. 417, 421. 'The medicine men are treated as gods…. The medicine man becomes a god after death.']
[Footnote 2: I have published a chapter on Myths on the Origin of Death inModern Mythology.]
[Footnote 3:Prim. Cult. ii. 311-316.]
[Footnote 4: Jevons,Introduction, p. 197.]
[Footnote 5: Robertson Smith.The Prophets of Israel, p. 61.]
[Footnote 6:Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 170.]