THE HIBBEET LECTURES, 
 
 1891. 
 
THE HIBBER T LECTURES, i8 9 i. 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ORIGIN AND GROWTH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CONCEPTION OF GOD 
 
 AS ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND HISTORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRUSSELS. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; 
 AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1892. 
 [All Rights reserved.} 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. GREEN AND SON, 
 178, STRAND. 
 
TO 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF BRUSSELS, 
 
 FOUNDED BY PRIVATE INITIATIVE 
 ON THE PRINCIPLE OF FREE INQUIRY. 
 
 109279 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 MANY attempts have been made to trace the develop- 
 ment of the conception of God; and, apart from the 
 work of the theologians, the anthropologists and his- 
 torians have often been led by their respective methods 
 to widely different solutions of the problem. It has 
 appeared to me, however, that these methods do not 
 exclude each other ; nay, that each finds in the other its 
 necessary supplement. 
 
 I may be reproached for associating such different 
 methods together, and I have already been told that as 
 soon as we apply what is known as the comparative 
 method to the investigation of the origins of Religion, 
 or endeavour to trace its pre-historic development, or 
 even to elucidate the evolution of Eeligion in general, 
 by reference to the fortunes of the several creeds, we 
 have already left the domain of history, and entered 
 upon that of pure philosophy. 
 
 I should myself prefer to give a wider signification to 
 the word history, and make it include all attempts to 
 recover the past of mankind ; but if we are to restrict its 
 application to facts of the " historic age" of civilized 
 communities, then history must assuredly be supple- 
 mented by other studies which can throw light upon a 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 remoter horizon. It is true that these studies cannot give 
 us certainty nor, indeed, can history itself always do 
 that ; but at least they can give us information concern- 
 ,ing the origin and early stages of human culture, the 
 details of which may lend each other mutual support, 
 and may find confirmation in historical facts. And what, 
 after all, do the names we give our methods signify, 
 provided they bring us nearer to the truth ? 
 
 "While my premises wake the suspicion of those who 
 shrink from applying the ordinary canons of investiga- 
 tion to religious phenomena, my conclusions, in their turn, 
 may prove unacceptable to those who see in the spirit of 
 free inquiry the standing foe and the destined destroyer of 
 the religious sentiment itself. Yet I cannot tax myself 
 with want of logic or with partiality, if my attempt to 
 deduce the laws of religious evolution from the admitted 
 facts has brought me to the conclusion that the scientific 
 treatment of Eeligion does not affect the religious senti- 
 ment in the revolutionary manner feared by some and 
 hoped for by others. Eather does the study of comparative 
 theology seem to reveal a growing tendency towards the 
 admission of the principle laid down by Herbert Spencer, 
 as a bond of union between religion and science, that 
 " the power manifested throughout the universe distin- 
 \ guished as material, is the same power which in ourselves 
 wells up under the form of consciousness," both modes 
 of force being regarded as phenomenal manifestations of 
 one absolute Eeality by which they are immediately 
 produced. 
 
 I trust that in this treatment of my subject I have 
 remained faithful to the spirit which inspired the founder 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 of the Hibbert Trust and the promoters of the Hibbert 
 Lectures. 
 
 I have only to add that I regard this work as a con- 
 tinuation, of my previous studies on "The Contemporary 
 Evolution of Eeligious Thought in England, America, 
 and India." 1 Having described the most advanced forms 
 of Keligion amongst the enlightened minds of our age, 
 I felt a special interest in investigating the gradual 
 development of these forms and the relation in which 
 they stand to the lowest manifestations of religious cul- 
 ture. Enormous as the distance appears, it does not 
 prove impossible to trace the road that leads from the 
 one extreme to the other; and here again we find an 
 illustration of that adage which is now coming to domi- 
 nate every branch of knowledge, Natura nonfacit saltus. 
 
 I ought to express my gratitude to the Hibbert 
 Trustees for having offered me this unique opportunity 
 of developing my views before an English public whose 
 hospitable welcome I shall always remember. But what 
 adequate terms can I find, when M. Ernest Eenan him- 
 self described a similar invitation as " one of the rewards 
 of his life"? 
 
 I have also to offer my special thanks to Mr. "Wick- 
 steed for the patience and accuracy with which he has 
 executed the translation of these Lectures. 
 
 GOBLET D'ALVIELLA. 
 COURT ST. ETIENNE, Dec. 1891. 
 
 1 English Translation by the Kev. J. Moden. London : Williams 
 
 and Norgate, 1885. 
 
ERRATUM. 
 P. 5, line 10, for " Boechoven" read " Bachofen." 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 The references to Tyler's " Primitive Culture" have, through inadvert- 
 ence, been made to the first edition (1871), except in a few cases. 
 
 The following table will enable possessors of any edition to find the 
 passages referred to. 
 
 On p. 56 the passage referred to is ii. 285 of the editions of 1873 and 1891. 
 
 83 ii. 3CO 
 
 112 ii. 178 sq. 
 
 114 ii. 177 sq. 
 
 115 ii. 174 
 
 117 ii. 216 
 
 140 ii. 349 
 
 189 ii. 69 of the edition of 1871. 
 
 190 ii. 73 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREPACK vii 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 ON METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE PRE-HISTORIC 
 MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 
 
 Religious beliefs and institutions discovered at the dawn of 
 history. Inability of the historic method to reconstruct 
 their origins. Recourse to the comparative method neces- 
 sary 1 5 
 
 Reasons for believing that the general evolution of humanity 
 has been progressive; and inferences as to our humble 
 origins. Refutation of the theory that man began at a 
 high level of culture. Point of departure of the religious 
 development. Estimate of the value of the ancient tradi- 
 tions and Sacred Books of the several peoples ... ... 5 12 
 
 Conclusions drawn from philology. Essence and form of the 
 conceptions formulated at the dawn of languages. Ina- 
 bility of their framers to formulate abstract ideas ... 12 14 
 
 Data of pre-historic archaeology. Funeral rites in the mam- 
 moth age; in the reindeer age; in the neolithic period. 
 The megaliths. Scull- trepanning. Traces of idolatry ; 
 the worship of the axe. The method of pre-historic archaeo- 
 logy 1530 
 
 Folk-lore. Religious survivals in popular customs; in social 
 
 usages; in ecclesiastical liturgies ... ... 30 38 
 
Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Comparative ethnography : its legitimacy and its importance. 
 How far is the contemporary savage the counterpart of 
 primitive man ? 38 41 
 
 Applicability of the general law of continuity and progress 
 to the religious sentiment. Present position of the pro- 
 blem 4146 
 
 .ECTURE 
 
 - 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 (i.) THE WORSHIP OF NATURE, AND THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Definition of religion. Did religion spring from the emotions 
 
 or from the reason ? Have animals religion ? ... 47 51 
 
 Unwarranted extension of the idea of personality. Attribu- 
 tion of all movement to personal agents. Metaphorical 
 language fosters but does not create the illusion. To what 
 extent do children and savages confound the personal and 
 the impersonal? .". 51 63 
 
 Deity implies superiority and mystery. Original distinction 
 between the natural and the abnormal. Deification of 
 phenomena which man cannot understand or control. 
 Nature-worship. The emotion of fear and the sense of 
 the Infinite as -religious motives. Worship addressed to 
 an active power with which it is possible to enter into 
 relations ... ... ... .;. ... ... 63 71 
 
 Confusion of concomitance and causality ... .... 71 73 
 
 Assimilation of dreams to reality. Eifect of dreams in multi- 
 plying the superhuman beings and extending their attri- 
 butes ... 7376 
 
 The idea of the " double." Future life. Sources of the worship 
 
 of the dead 7782 
 
 (ii.) PRIMITIVE KITES. 
 
 Prayer. -Primitive theory of sacrifice. Intimidation of the 
 gods. Sorcery. Sources of symbolism. Did conjuration 
 precede propitiation ? 8296 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 POLYDEMONISM AXD POLYTHEISM. 
 
 (i.) SPIRITISM, FETISHISM AND IDOLATRY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 When natural objects are adored, it is the personality with which 
 they are supposed to be endowed to which the worship is 
 addressed. This personality is conceived, by analogy with 
 that of man, in the form of a " double" that can be sepa- 
 rated from its envelope. The distinction between body 
 and soul extended to all personified objects. What 
 becomes of the crowd of souls released by the disappear- 
 ance of their visible envelopes. Spiritism. The belief in 
 spirits not necessarily the result of necrolatry ... 97 106 
 
 Religious phenomena connected with spiritism. Obsession, 
 possession, talismans, fetishes. Belief that the appropria- 
 tion of an object secures the services of the spirit lodged 
 within it. Sources of fetishism. The idol an elaborated 
 fetish. Sundry springs of idolatry. Criticism of the 
 theory that idols were at first symbolic representations. 
 Is idolatry a step in advance 1 106 122 
 
 (ii.) THE DIVINE HIERARCHY. 
 
 Arrested development and indications of degeneration in the i 
 beliefs of certain peoples. The progressive evolution of 
 the conception of God starts from the differentiation of the 
 superhuman powers. Preponderance granted to the regents 
 of the great phenomena of nature, to the souls of the illus- 
 trious dead, to the genii of species, of social groups and of 
 moral abstractions ... ... ... ... 122 138 
 
 Subordination of spirits to gods. The divine societies modelled 
 upon those of earth. The divine societies of the Indo- 
 Europeans ; of the Egyptians ; of the Mesopotamians ; of 
 the Western Semites ; of the aboriginal Americans \ of 
 the Chinese 138152 
 
XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 DUALISM. 
 
 (i.) THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 
 
 PAGE 
 Selfishness of the first gods. Alliance between the gods and 
 
 man. Relations of mythology and religion. How the 
 
 gods became interested in securing order in the universe 153 -158 
 
 Dualism of the superhuman personalities representing the hostile 
 and the beneficent forces of nature respectively. Accen- 
 tuation of dualism as religion advances. Confidence in 
 the final triumph of the beneficent deities. The idea of 
 the cosmic order generated by the spectacle of the regular 
 recurrence of phenomena ... ... ... 158 167 
 
 Gradual restriction of the field abandoned to divine caprice. 
 Personifications of the natural order exalted above the 
 ancient gods. The supreme god the author and sustainer 
 of the cosmic order ... ... ... ... 168 174 
 
 (ii.) THE STRUGGLE FOR GOOD. 
 
 The absurd and immoral actions attributed to the gods some- 
 times to be explained as metaphorical descriptions of 
 natural phenomena, sometimes as survivals from the bar- 
 barism of earlier generations. Original independence of 
 morals and religion. Influence of the religious sentiment 
 in consolidating the social relations ... ... 175 179 
 
 The divine sanction of the oath. Intervention of the gods in 
 the ordeal. The gods punish attacks on the community. 
 Conception of a moral order on the model of the cosmic 
 order 179186 
 
 Unpunished violations of the moral order argue either the feeble- 
 ness or the injustice of the gods. Solution offered by a 
 future life. Conception of the future life as similar to the 
 present, as better, or as worse. Assignment of the souls 
 to different abodes according to their conduct in this 
 world. The theory of continuation and the theory of 
 retribution. Recompense after death and recompense on 
 earth 186 200 
 
TA.BLE OF CONTEXTS. XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Purification of the character of the gods by the assimilation 
 of the moral order to the divine order. The attributes of 
 Deity reduced solely to justice and love ... ... 200 203 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 MONOTHEISM. 
 
 Monolatry. National pantheons. Gods attached to the land 
 or the people. Monolatry founded on the belief in the 
 superiority of the national god. Conception of a supreme 
 god, sovereign of gods and men. Formation of divine 
 genealogies in the national pantheons. The supreme god 
 conceived as the universal father ......... 204 2 1 1 
 
 The place of metaphysical speculation in the development of 
 monotheisn. Monotheism implies superiority not only in 
 power, but in nature, on the part of the Supreme Deity as 
 conceived by his worshippers. Simplification of the pan- 
 theons by the assimilation of the gods representing analo- 
 gous phenomena. Conception of a single god of whom all 
 other deities are the several members, forms or names. The 
 triune God of Egypt. The Semitic monotheism. God as 
 distinct from matter. Indo-European pantheism. God 
 evolving the universe out of his own substance. God as 
 the soul of the universe. The One without a second 211 226 
 
 The ancient gods before the face of the Only God. Their 
 transformation into hypostases, demiurges and mediators. 
 The religious syncretism of the declining Greco-Roman 
 paganism. The Christian theodicy. God reduced to the 
 absolute unity by modern philosophy. Opposition of 
 science, not to the belief in God, but to the supposition of 
 interventions by secondary deities. The divine interme- 
 diaries transformed into abstractions or ideal types. The 
 eternal and infinite energy whence all things proceed. 
 The eternal power that makes for righteousness. Corol- 
 laries .................. 226244 
 
 OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE FUTUKE OF WORSHIP AS DEDUCED FROM ITS 
 
 PAST. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Transformation of the motives of worship. What fear and 
 admiration tend to become. Love takes its bearings 
 afresh. Disappearance of the lower elements of worship. 
 Divination and sorcery in our day ... ... 245 250 
 
 Transformation of the expressions of worship. What prayer 
 tends to become. Evolution of sacrifice ; its spiritualiza- 
 tion and attenuation ; offerings pass into acts of homage ; 
 the moral transformation of sacrifice. Evolution of sym- 
 bolism. Applications of imitative symbolism. Services 
 rendered by symbolism to free inquiry and religious pro- 
 gress. Evolution of the priesthood. Growth and dis- 
 solution of theocracies. Place of the ministry in modern 
 society .. 250277 
 
 Is worship destined to disappear? Societies for ethical cul- 
 ture. Satisfaction demanded by our aesthetic and spiritual 
 faculties. Religious progress in the churches and mutual 
 relations of the religions. Religion and the masses. 
 Religion and contemporary Socialism. Need of a stronger 
 altruistic motive than is supplied by the teachings of 
 science or even the love of humanity. Causes of pessi- 
 mism. Danger of a religious reaction ... ... 277 288 
 
 Brighter prospects for religion. Importance of the question, 
 Has life a goal ? Conclusion : the conception of God in 
 the future . 288256 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 ON THE METHODS OF EESEAEOH INTO 
 
 THE PEE-HISTOEIC MANIFESTATIONS 
 
 OF EELIGION. 
 
 WHEN the first volume of the Hiblert Lectures 
 appeared, in 1878, the general history of religions was 
 but just beginning to take its place in the courses of 
 advanced study on the Continent; and I can well 
 remember the delight and admiration with which 
 devoted as I had long been to this branch of historical 
 study I devoured the pages on which Prof. Max Miiller 
 had lavished the wealth of his knowledge and the charm 
 of his style in drawing out the lessons to be derived from 
 the study of the Eeligions of India, 
 
 I little imagined that in thirteen years I was myself 
 to have the honour of succeeding that illustrious master 
 in this Chair. And may be I owe so flattering a distinc- 
 tion in no small degree to the efforts I have made, from 
 the very beginnings of my work as a writer, to dissipate 
 a prejudice concerning England, and the Anglo-Saxon 
 race in general, that still lurks amongst us west of the 
 Channel. It is the idea, based on very one-sided obser- 
 vations, that in matters of religion you are at once the 
 most formal and the most superficial of all the nations 
 upon the earth ; or, in other words, that you divide your 
 
 B 
 
2 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 lives into two sharply- defined sections, in the first of 
 which (embracing one day out of the seven) you passively 
 accept all the ceremony, discipline, and even doctrine, to 
 which tradition has attached the label of respectability, 
 whereas in the other (including all the rest of the week) 
 you are completely absorbed by your material interests, 
 and never give a thought to the great Beyond. This 
 view can only be held by those who do not know or do 
 not appreciate the strength of the movement which has 
 never been lacking amongst you towards gaining a rational 
 satisfaction for the religious needs of the mind and heart 
 of man. 
 
 The institution of the Hibbert Lectures in particular 
 has helped to show how this progressive spirit may find 
 support in the comparative history of religions ; and 
 perhaps still more to point out how the impartial study 
 of the very subject that has so long divided men into 
 hostile camps may now serve to bring them together. 
 I would add that these Lectures, after bearing fruit in 
 England itself, where it would not be difficult to trace 
 their influence upon the temper and the method of reli- 
 gious discussion, have re-acted most happily upon Con- 
 tinental thought itself, in helping to enlarge its horizon ; 
 and this even apart from the specific services they have 
 rendered to purely historical research. Indeed, all this is 
 so true, that in coming here to expound my views on the 
 evolution of the religious idea, I am in danger, on more 
 points than one, of simply returning to you the echo of 
 your own thoughts, in place of the original, not to say 
 revolutionary, ideas which, for anything I know, may in 
 some quarters be expected of me. For this you have only 
 
FEE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 3 
 
 to blame your own ethnographers, your own sociologists, 
 and your own historians, upon whom it is impossible for 
 any one to help drawing, in whatever part of the world he 
 may undertake to treat of the history of religions, and 
 still more of the history of Eeligion. 
 
 The scholars who have devoted themselves 
 
 Pre-historic 
 
 development to the study of ancient religions, and spe- 
 
 of Religions. . .,, . . ., . 
 
 cmcally my illustrious precursors in this 
 Chair, have laid before you the methods by which 
 the developments of the religious systems underlying 
 the worship of the most important civilizations have 
 been respectively traced. We are in a position to say 
 that, in spite of some divergences in detail, the main 
 lines of this work of reconstruction are now definitively 
 laid down. This result is chiefly due to the applica- 
 tion of the historical method ; that is to say, the collec- 
 tion, classification, and interpretation of written evidence, 
 together with the monumental inscriptions which have 
 been discovered in such vast numbers during the last 
 half-century. 
 
 Nevertheless, the historical method can give us no 
 information at all concerning the origins of the most 
 important ancient worships. A glance at the genealogical 
 tree of the higher religions will at once convince us that 
 they all depend upon each other in an unbroken line of 
 filiation, or are derived from a small number of systems 
 that rose up independently in the bosoms of sundry 
 groups of distinct and unrelated peoples. But we cannot 
 trace them beyond this point by direct observation. 
 
 B2 
 
4 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 In every instance we find that, as we go back through, 
 the ages, written documents become ever scarcer, till they 
 cease altogether, and the ground seems to fall away 
 beneath the investigator's feet. And yet at this remotest 
 point we already find beliefs and institutions fully recog- 
 nizable, which have maintained themselves right on, across 
 the whole series of intermediate systems, into the heart 
 df the religions of the present day. 
 
 These elements, common to all organized religions, 
 may be classed as follows : 
 
 1. The belief in the existence of superhuman beings 
 who intervene in a mysterious manner in the destinies of 
 man and the course of nature. 
 
 2. Attempts to draw near to these beings or to escape 
 them, to forecast the object of their intervention and 
 the form it will take, or to modify their action by con- 
 ciliation or compulsion. 
 
 3. Eecourse to the mediation of certain individuals 
 supposed to have special qualifications for success in 
 such attempts. 
 
 4. The placing of certain customs under the sanction 
 of the superhuman powers. 
 
 Unless we are to suppose that these factors of the early 
 religions were suddenly formed at a given moment, we 
 are compelled to admit that they must have had a rudi- 
 mentary development before their first appearance in 
 history. To re- discover this development, we must appeal 
 to psychology, philology, pre-historic archaeology, folk- 
 lore, and ethnography. Every one of these sciences has 
 some contribution to make, and nothing short of the com- 
 bination of them all will suffice to solve the problem. But 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 5 
 
 amongst these, it is comparative or descriptive ethno- 
 graphy which supplies us with the richest material to 
 make good the deficiencies of historical data. 
 
 And, after all, this is but an application of the com- 
 parative method so justly glorified by Freeman as one of 
 the most precious acquisitions of our century an appli- 
 cation already accepted without question in researches 
 into the origins of language, of art, of the family, of 
 property, of law, and even of morals, as is obvious 
 from the classical works of such authors as Boechoven, 
 Freeman, De Laveleye, Giraud-Teulon, Sumner Maine, 
 McLennan, Max Miiller, Lubbock and Starcke ; not to 
 mention the numerous sociological works which, espe- 
 cially in England and France, have employed the com- 
 parative method in attempting to retrace the general 
 course of human evolution. Eeligious phenomena, in 
 their turn, have been subjected to the same treatment 
 by enlightened theologians such as Professors Tiele and 
 KeVille, who can join hands on this field of research with 
 ethnographers like Mr. E. E. Tylor, sociologists like 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, and students of folk-lore like Mi- 
 Andrew Lang. I shall endeavour to tread in the foot- 
 steps of these eminent writers in my attempts to recon- 
 struct, so far as possible, the first manifestations of the 
 belief in the Divine ; with a view to tracing subsequently, 
 in the facts recorded by history, the sequel of a develop- 
 ment which, if we may judge of the future by the past, 
 has not yet reached its goal. 
 
 Th f -By separately examining the chief factors 
 
 progress and of of contemporary civilization, or the chief 
 
 races who now share the dominion of the 
 
6 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 globe, we may establish historically that the inarch of 
 civilization has been progressive; that is to say, that 
 there is a constant and growing tendency to secure the 
 same results at the expense of smaller efforts, and to utilize 
 the surplus of forces thus left disposable for the satisfac- 
 tion of more and more exalted wants. It must, indeed, 
 be admitted that this movement is not continuous ; it is 
 sometimes arrested, sometimes even reversed ; but taken 
 as a whole, its direction cannot be mistaken. From the 
 other side, palaeontology shows us that before the appear- 
 ance of man upon the earth, life had always been pro- 
 gressive; that is to say, that studied in its great successive 
 periods, it reveals a tendency to produce a succession of 
 creatures of growing complexity, the crown of all being 
 found in man, whether we consider the range of his 
 intellect and moral faculties, or his power of re-acting 
 upon the forces of external nature. This in itself raises 
 a strong presumption that humanity in its pre-historic 
 period was not exempt from the general law of develop- 
 ment of living beings, and therefore that its origins 
 must be sought in a state inferior to anything that the 
 oldest evidence of primitive civilization reveals to us. 
 
 Pre-historic archaeology turns this presumption almost 
 into a certainty. "We now know beyond the possibility 
 of doubt that wherever the super -position of several 
 industrial strata has been established, the age of iron 
 was preceded by an age of bronze or copper, the age 
 of metals by an age of stone, and the age of polishedx 
 stone by one of cut or chipped stone. We discover a 
 period at which man, though he had not yet arrived at 
 the relative civilization of which the earliest inscriptions 
 
FEE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 7 
 
 preserve the memory, already practised agriculture, 
 possessed domestic animals, raised rough monuments of 
 stone, and gathered into little groups on fortified heights 
 or in lake cities. Another period reveals itself in a yet 
 remoter antiquity (for it corresponds to the deposits of 
 the quaternary rocks), in which men lived exclusively 
 by hunting, clothed themselves in the skins of beasts, 
 and dwelt in narrow caves or were scattered in nomadic 
 hordes on steppes desolated by the rigour of the glacial 
 epoch. Finally, we can trace a period yet further with- 
 drawn into the twilight, in which, under a gentle and 
 moist climate, man, the contemporary of the elephas 
 antiquus, perhaps still ignorant of the use of fire, clothing, 
 and earthenware, but already in possession of a cut flint 
 mallet or hatchet, realized the state of nature vaguely 
 conceived by certain poets of antiquity : 
 
 " Vita ferse similis, nullos agitata per usus : 
 
 Artis adhuc expers et rude vulgus erant. 
 Pro domilms frondes norant, pro frugibus lierbas : 
 Nectar erat palmis hausta duabus aqua." 1 
 
 It is true that because the wielder of flint imple- 
 ments preceded us on the soil of Europe, it does not 
 absolutely follow that he was our ancestor. At the time 
 when the hunters of the reindeer and the mammoth, and 
 perhaps the erectors of the megaliths, occupied this part 
 of the world, is it not possible that the ancestors of the 
 Aryans, the Semites, the Egyptians, the Chinese, not to 
 mention the Aztecs and the Incas, may already have been 
 in possession elsewhere of a semi- civilization far more 
 advanced in type? Yes ; but we are justified in asking for 
 1 Ovid, Fasti, ii. 291294. 
 
8 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 the traces of this supposed civilization. It is true that 
 we have not yet explored and ransacked the whole planet, 
 but it must be admitted that the chances of any such 
 discovery are diminishing day by day. More than twenty 
 years ago, Mr. E. B. Tylor could already write, " There 
 is scarcely a known province of the world of which we 
 cannot say certainly, savages once dwelt here;" and I 
 would add, there is hardly one of which we cannot say 
 with equal right, " Man has been progressive here." 
 Pre-historic archeology thus unites with palaeontology 
 to assure us that, if the golden age exists in the possible 
 nature of things at all, it is not in the past that we must 
 look for it. 
 
 It has been asserted that savages have never been able 
 to rise into civilization except through the instrumentality 
 of a people already civilized. It is very true that the 
 transition from savagery to civilization, or even to the 
 demi- civilization from which we ourselves are admitted 
 gradually to have risen to our present level, has never 
 been actually observed ; but there are excellent reasons 
 why this link should be missing. In the first place, until 
 they have reached a certain level of culture, nations have 
 no history, and therefore cannot themselves enlighten us 
 as to their own past ; and as for external observation, as 
 soon as savages come into contact with a superior civili- 
 zation, the latter deflects and absorbs their spontaneous 
 development, unless indeed it paralyzes it. This much, 
 of course, is obvious that there are some peoples worse 
 equipped than others for the struggle for life and pro- 
 gress ; nay, perhaps there may be some permanently 
 incapable of rising above a low level of civilization. But 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OP RELIGION. \) 
 
 because, in running a race, the most agile are the only 
 ones that reach the goal, it does not follow that all the 
 competitors did not start from the same post, or that the 
 victor has not had to pass the very points at which his 
 less fortunate competitors have stopped. 
 
 In the second place, we may well ask where savagery 
 ends and civilization begins. We can of course lay down 
 a more or less complicated criterion depending on evi- 
 dence collected from industrial processes, ways of living, 
 religious and social institutions, and all the current mani- 
 festations of the moral and intellectual life. But we 
 shall not be able to force all the populations of mankind 
 into one or the other of the two categories, unless we 
 are prepared to ignore transitional cases. In truth, the 
 different groups of mankind may be arranged on a scale 
 the bottom of which is lost in the extreme savagery of 
 the Bushmen, the Tierra-del-Fuegians, the Samoyeds, the 
 Akkas and the Australians, while the most advanced 
 peoples of the Indo-European race stand at the summit; 
 and between these extreme limits the gulf seems impos- 
 sible to cross. And yet the space between the succes- 
 sive populations which occupy neighbouring positions on 
 the scale is almost insensible, and the slightest progress 
 in a given tribe would suffice to raise it to the level of 
 those immediately above it. There is, therefore, no 
 reason why we should not believe that the same nation 
 may have gradually scaled all the steps which separated 
 it from the culminating-point ; and perhaps, even so, the 
 steps it has already passed may be as nothing compared 
 with those which will yet permit the most favoured 
 nations of the future to continue their ascent; for civi- 
 
10 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 lization too is a Jacob's ladder, the top of which we 
 cannot see because it reaches to the heavens. 
 
 Point of One ft en mee ^ s with men, free enough 
 departure in f r0 m prejudices in other matters, who readily 
 
 the develop- r J J 
 
 mentof admit the extreme barbarism of primitive 
 society, but are nevertheless disposed to make 
 an exception in the case of religion. They would have 
 us believe that the ancestors of the Semites, the Aryans, 
 the Egyptians, and the Chinese, or at any rate the ances- 
 tors of some one or other of these races, started with a 
 very simple and elementary industrial and social life, 
 but with pure morals and exalted beliefs, and even in 
 full possession of a monotheistic belief. 
 
 In support of this hypothesis, they allege, in the first 
 place, that these peoples retain reminiscences of far more 
 elevated beliefs than those they afterwards held. But 
 to begin with, the assertion in this form is far too sweep- 
 ing. For the fact is that there are other traditions, quite 
 as worthy of attention, which relegate the past to a state 
 of religious ignorance from which the teachings of some 
 heroic or even superhuman founder of civilization first 
 drew mankind. And, in the second place, little reliance 
 can be placed on these legends, either in the one sense 
 or the other. Peoples have asked themselves in every 
 age whence their knowledge of the gods came ; and since 
 they were unable to trace it back to any other origin, 
 they naturally concluded that it had been instilled into 
 them by the gods themselves at an epoch, as Alfred de 
 Musset puts it, 
 
 " oil le ciel sur la terre 
 Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux." 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 11 
 
 Moreover, parallel questions have in every age presented 
 themselves with reference to arts, letters, sciences, cus- 
 toms, and what-not; and the answer has always been 
 found in similar mythical attempts to explain the secrets 
 of the past. 
 
 The theory of primitive purity has sought to entrench 
 itself behind a second line of defence constructed from 
 the pictures of certain primitive peoples, such as the 
 Germans and the Pelasgians, given by the classical 
 authors. But now that we are better acquainted with 
 uncivilized races, we can see that the state of moral 
 innocence attributed to the infant populations of ancient 
 Europe, reduces itself to simplicity of manners and such 
 virtues as commonly prevail amongst the savages of our 
 own day where they have not been corrupted by pre- 
 mature contact with civilization. As for the absence of 
 idols, or even of any more definite deities than the vague 
 numina of the Italiots, it simply means that the peoples 
 in question had not yet reached the stage of polytheism 
 and idolatry, and were still dominated by the savage 
 conceptions of nature- worship and fetishism. 
 
 Finally, our theorists have not forgotten to appeal to 
 the lofty sentiments and even the theological reasonings 
 which occur in the sacred books of the Persians, Hindus, 
 Jews, and Chinese, to say nothing of some of the Egyp- 
 tian and Chaldsean hymns. But recent researches tend 
 more and more to dissipate the illusions that were natural 
 enough in the first enthusiasm awakened by the discovery 
 of these marvellous literatures. The aureole that sur- 
 rounded them is gone, and we have come to a more sober 
 appreciation alike of their significance and of their anti- 
 
12 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 quity, though they have not lost their value or even their 
 charm in becoming less anomalous and more human 
 that is to say, in taking their place in the general history 
 of human evolution. 
 
 However this may be, we are forced to recognize the 
 fact that not one of these venerable documents carries us 
 back to the first period of religion in general, or even oi 
 the special systems into which they respectively enter. 
 "What they represent is, not the naive aspiration of primi- 
 tive humanity, but the result of a sacerdotal elaboration 
 that has already made its selections and rejections 
 amongst the beliefs of the past. The further we ascend 
 towards the origins of the various races, the more com- 
 pletely do we see the beliefs of the Semites assuming 
 the appearance of a veritable polydemonism ; those of 
 the Egyptians, of a systematized sorcery; and those of 
 the Indo-Europeans, of a kind of universal physiolatry 
 in the course of a polytheistic transformation. All this 
 amounts to saying that, as we ascend towards the origins 
 of these peoples, we trace, in every instance, a growing 
 predominance of the forms of thought and the expressions 
 of feeling which characterize the religions of savages in 
 every age and in all parts of the world. 
 Evidence of Philology enables us to mount a little 
 
 Language. kigh er towards the sources of all civilization. 
 But its conclusions are still less calculated than those 
 of history to encourage the belief in an early religion 
 high above the level now observed amongst savages ; for 
 they tend to show that, in all cases, the abstract signi- 
 fications of the words employed to render general ideas 
 have been preceded by concrete and even material senses. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 13 
 
 Language is now a marvellous mechanism which not 
 only enables us to register the mutual relations of things 
 down to the subtlest shades, but even guides our minds, 
 from abstraction to abstraction, up to the very threshold 
 of that inaccessible region, beyond the world of forms 
 and of ideas, where we verge upon the mysterious Eeality 
 that is above all definition. Yet modern philological 
 analysis takes us back to a time at which language reduces 
 itself with the exception possibly of a few onomatopoetic 
 words to a closely restricted number of sounds and 
 cries, each expressive of a physical action, and that 
 action performed by man. I need not here explain how 
 the monosyllabic accompaniments of human actions came 
 at last to convey the idea of those actions to others, nor 
 the part played by the progress of language in leading 
 thought into conscious possession of itself. It is enough 
 to note that the phenomena in question fully justify the 
 conclusions, first, that the primitive creators of our lan- 
 guages freely ascribed faculties like their own to all the 
 things they saw around them, if their manifestations 
 could in any way be likened to human actions; and 
 secondly, that their equipment of conscious ideas was 
 confined to a small number of essentially concrete notions 
 embracing actions and physical events of daily occurrence. 
 
 This being so, not only must these men have been 
 incapable of rising spontaneously to such abstract ideas 
 as are suggested to our minds by the words, God, soul, 
 infinite, absolute, self-existence, and the like, but they 
 could not even have been in a position to comprehend 
 them had they been suddenly communicated to them from 
 
14 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 without. 1 Such is still the case with modem savages, 
 whom the preponderating evidence of travellers repre- 
 sents as absolutely inaccessible to abstract ideas. 2 Every 
 missionary knows at the cost of what effort, and, I may 
 add, of what distortion, he succeeds in introducing some 
 gleams of the Christian metaphysic into the minds of the 
 really inferior races. Professor Max Miiller has told 
 you of the Benedictine who attempted in vain, during 
 a three -years' stay amongst the natives of Australia, 
 to discover the deity to whom they rendered homage. 
 But at last, one day, he discovered that they believed 
 in a god who used to be omnipotent, and had created 
 the world by his breath, but was now so old and decrepit 
 that folk took but little count of him. 3 No doubt this 
 was really an echo of his own teaching coming back to 
 him in the form of a belief in an omnipotent deity 
 who had created the earth with his breath. Only the 
 natives could not help thinking of him as reduced to 
 complete decrepitude, since he was old enough to have 
 helped in the formation of the world and been present 
 at the birth of their ancestors. 
 
 1 Pfleiderer points out that if we require whole years to develope 
 abstract ideas in the minds of our children, though they have the 
 benefit of all their inheritance from the past "which thought for 
 them," it must have needed centuries, and even millenniums, for primi- 
 tive man to arrive at the same results. The Philosophy of Religion, 
 London, 1888, vol. iii. pp. 4, 5. 
 
 2 See Sir John Lubbock, The Origin of Civilization, London, 1870: 
 chap. viii. " On Language." 
 
 3 Hibbert Lectures, 1878, p. 17. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 15 
 
 Pre-historic Pre-historic archaeology, in its turn, takes 
 archaeology. ug y e t another step, inasmuch as the material 
 remains with which it deals indicate the existence of. 
 certain beliefs prior to all civilization. It is true that no 
 such traces have yet been found amongst the deposits 
 of the very earliest period in which the existence of man 
 has been established ; that is to say, in what is known as 
 the Drift period, which seems to have preceded the great 
 glacial age in Europe. But we must be on our guard 
 against basing any definitive conclusion on this fact. 
 Kem ember what happened, in this respect, with regard 
 to the rest of the paleolithic age. There, too, scholars 
 whose names carried authority maintained that man in 
 the quaternary period had no religious beliefs, and did 
 not even pay attention to the dead ; but the discoveries 
 of the last five - and - twenty years, especially in the 
 caves of France and Belgium, have established con- 
 clusively that as early as the mammoth age man practised 
 funeral rites, believed in a future life, and possessed 
 fetishes and perhaps even idols. A glance at the dis- 
 coveries that authorize these conclusions will perhaps 
 not be out of place. 
 
 Man in the In the cave of Spy we can trace through 
 a^e?ndMs thousands upon thousands of years savage 
 funeral rites, inhabitants whose bones exhibit such an ape- 
 like character that they have supplied a new link in the 
 descending scale from man to the animals. Armed only 
 with flints to defend themselves against the terrible beasts 
 that wandered round their retreat, exposed to the rigours 
 of such a climate as the present inhabitants of the 
 Polar regions can scarcely endure, though supported by 
 
16 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 resources which in comparison with those of the primitive 
 inhabitants of Moustiers almost represent civilization, 
 these contemporaries of the mammoth and the cave-bear, 
 whose energies one would have thought would have been 
 wholly absorbed in the struggle for existence, still found 
 time to attend to their dead, to prepare them for their 
 future life, and to offer them objects which they might 
 have used for themselves, but which they preferred to 
 bestow on the dead for their use in another life. 1 The 
 custom of placing arms, implements, and ornaments in 
 the tombs, may be regarded as general amongst the 
 ancient cave-dwellers, as it still is amongst all savages 
 who bury their dead. It implies the belief in the sur- 
 vival of the personality after death, and the idea that the 
 future life will be a repetition of the present, or at any 
 rate that the same wants will be experienced, the same 
 dangers incurred, and the same enjoyments tasted there 
 as here. All this was well explained by the ancient 
 Peruvians when, in answer to the question why they 
 sacrificed animate and inanimate objects, and even human 
 beings, to the dead, they answered that in dreams they 
 had seen men who had long been dead walking about with 
 the creatures and the objects that had been buried in 
 their tombs. Certain natives of Borneo go so far as to 
 say, that if they throw objects that have belonged to 
 the deceased upon the waves, he will at once come and 
 reclaim them. Amongst the Patagonians, the Comanches, 
 and the Bagos of Africa, the custom of sacrificing all his 
 belongings to the deceased is actually pushed so far, that 
 
 1 De Puydt et Lohest, L'homme contemporain du mammouth a Spy : 
 Namur, 1887. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 17 
 
 travellers have declared it interferes with the maintenance 
 of the family and the accumulation of even the smallest 
 capital. 1 
 
 Traces of funeral feasts have also been found in the 
 caves of the mammoth age. "We must remember that 
 amongst all uncivilized peoples these feasts redound, not 
 only to the honour, but to the welfare of the dead, just 
 as the feasts in honour of the gods are supposed to be of 
 actual service to them. The natives of the Eed Eiver 
 expressly declare " that while they partake of the visible 
 material, the departed spirit partakes at the same time of 
 the spirit that dwells in the food." 2 The observance of 
 this custom by pre-historic man carries with it, therefore, 
 the fact that he had already drawn a distinction between 
 the material object and the spirit to which it served as a 
 body ; and farther, that he believed in the possibility of 
 that spirit quitting its case and surviving it. But still 
 more incontestable proof of this belief occurs a little 
 later, when the objects deposited in the tombs are broken 
 or burned, with the idea that they must be destroyed or 
 killed in order to enable their souls to follow the soul of 
 the deceased. 
 
 In certain caves, the earliest of which go back to the 
 reindeer age (those of Mentone, for example), the bones 
 of the dead are painted red with oligist or cinnabar; and 
 
 1 De Lucy-Fossarieu, Ethnographie de VAmerique antartique, Paris, 
 1884, p. 151. Capt. Grossman, Report of the Bureau of Ethnography, 
 1879-80: "Smithsonian Institute," Washington, 1881, p. 99. Rene 
 Caillie, Voyage a Temboctou, Paris, 1830, vol. i. pp. 245, 246. 
 
 2 Dr. S. G. Wright, cited by H. C. Yarrow in Mortuary Customs of 
 the North-American Indians, in the Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
 1879-80: " Smithsonian Institute," Washington, 1881, p. 191, 
 
 C 
 
18 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 in our own day some of the North- American tribes, who 
 expose their dead on trees, collect the naked bones and 
 paint them red before finally burying them. An analo- 
 gous custom has been observed amongst the Mincopies 
 of the Andaman Islands, and the Mams of Central 
 Africa. 1 The explanation of this custom has sometimes 
 been sought in the fact that red is the colour of spirits. 
 Thus in Polynesia, painting an object red suffices to make 
 it tabu, that is to say, the property of the superhuman 
 powers, and as such inviolable and unapproachable. But 
 it may well be asked whether, in the funeral rites I have 
 just described, the red paint was not rather intended to 
 imitate the infusion of blood that is to say, the restitu- 
 tion of life in conformity with the idea so widespread 
 amongst uncivilized peoples that blood and life are 
 equivalent essences. To paint the bones of the deceased 
 red would in this case be to assure, or at least to facilitate, 
 the renewal of his existence. 2 
 
 Another custom to be traced in the caves of Central 
 France from the age of the reindeer downwards, and 
 
 1 Cartailhac, La France prehistorique, Paris, 1889, p. 292. Du 
 Pouget de Nadaillac, Les decouvertes prehistoriques et les croyances 
 cliretiennes, Paris, 1889, p. 13. Letourneau, Sociologie, Paris, 1880, pp. 
 211, 220; Eng. trans, by H. M. Trollope, London, 1881, pp. 224, 233. 
 
 2 Thus the ancient Peruvians smeared the doors and the idols with 
 blood while sacrifice was being performed in the temples. A. R^ville, 
 Hibbert Lectures, 1884, p. 220. The Arabs of pre-historic times used 
 to sprinkle the walls of the Kaabah with the blood of victims ; and 
 the Bedouins of the Sinaitic district still throw blood, drawn from 
 their camels' ears, upon the door of the tomb of one of their most 
 famous saints. Ignace Goldziher, Le culte des saints cliez les Musulmans 
 in the Revue de Vhistoire des religions, 1880, vol. ii. p. 311. Cf. Exodus 
 xii. 7. 
 
f UNWERS 1 ) 
 
 PEE -HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 19 
 
 gradually spreading as the age of polished stone advances, 
 consists in burying the body, folded up upon itself, so 
 that the knees touch the chin. It has been maintained 
 that the idea was to give the corpse the position taken 
 by the living man as he slept by the fire at night after a 
 day's hunting or war. 1 But no peoples really sleep in 
 this posture : and I incline to the belief that they meant 
 to put the deceased in the position of the infant in his 
 mother's womb. Many peoples believe that life is a 
 re-birth, from the Algonkins, who by a touching atten- 
 tion bury little children on the paths most frequented by 
 the women of the tribe, down to the peoples on both 
 continents who explain family likenesses or cases of 
 atavism on this principle. For the rest, this custom 
 re -discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the tombs of 
 Mycense still exists in the Andaman Islands, in New 
 Zealand, in Melanesia, in South America, amongst the 
 African Bongos, and amongst the Hottentots. Almost 
 all travellers explain the custom as I have done above. 2 
 Mr. T. L. Hutchinson, in describing the mummies of 
 ancient Peru, says that "the bodies were generally 
 placed in the same position as they are known to exist 
 [in] during the progress of uterine life." 3 The idea that 
 the earth is the common mother of mankind reappears 
 in all the mythologies that have made any considerable 
 
 1 Letourneau, Sociologie, pp. 207, 208; Eng. trans, pp. 220, 221. 
 
 2 On the Hottentots, see Peschel, Volkerkunde, Leipzig, 1874, p. 494, 
 Eng. trans.; The Races of Man, &c., second edition, London, 1876, 
 p. 460. On the Andamans, E. H. Man, Journal of the Anthropo- 
 logical Institute, 1883, vol. xii. p. 144. On the Araucans, d' Orbigny, 
 L'homme americain, Paris, 1839, vol. i. p. 92. 
 
 3 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. iv. p. 447. 
 
 c2 
 
20 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 progress. The Aryans of the Yedic epoch, when they 
 buried their dead without reducing them to ashes, im- 
 plored the earth to receive the body as a mother her son. 1 
 Did man, in this remote age. worship the 
 
 Idolatry in 
 
 the palaeo- dead alone ? I would remark that this is 
 almost the only form of worship capable of 
 leaving material traces. "We may easily find the articles 
 deposited in a tomb ; but where are we to look for traces 
 of sacrifices offered to the celestial bodies, or of symbolic 
 dances performed in their honour ? As for written records, 
 we might as well expect the phonograph to transmit us 
 the text of the prayers or the charms which bore to heaven 
 the first manifestations of the religious ideas of man ! "We 
 do possess a certain number of carved or scratched repre- 
 sentations, however, which ascend to the reindeer age ; 
 and it is difficult not to admit that this primitive art had a 
 religious bearing. The objects represented are generally 
 animals, such as mammoths, reindeer, horses, serpents, 
 and fish, often drawn upon fragments of bone or ivory, 
 with a fidelity of expression, and even a feeling of life, 
 which are equally surprising and noteworthy. Amongst 
 the Negroes similar representations are always fetishes, 
 or at any rate are used as charms, and I confess that I 
 have not much faith in any purely aesthetic impulses of 
 savages. With them, everything has a practical purpose, 
 even art and religion. Moreover, it is a common idea 
 amongst uncivilized peoples that a likeness provides the 
 means by which we can act upon the original. Finally, 
 as Mr. Andrew Lang very appositely remarks, 2 "If one 
 
 1 Rig Veda, x. 18, 11. 
 
 2 Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, London, 1884, p. 294. 
 
 
PRE-HISTOBIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 21 
 
 adores a lizard or a bear, one is likely to think that 
 prayer and acts of worship addressed to an image of the 
 animal will please the animal himself, and make him 
 propitious." 
 
 The human figure appears to have been less frequently 
 and less successfully attempted. Several examples of it 
 are known, however ; and M. Edouard Dupont found a 
 rude attempt at a human figure cut in reindeer-horn in 
 the cave of Pont-k-Lesse. This figure was perhaps an 
 idol. The same discoverer also found the tibia of a 
 mammoth on a slab of sandstone near a hearth belonging 
 to the reindeer age, in a cave of Chaleux. It is impos- 
 sible to deny the character of a fetish to this tibia, for the 
 mammoth was already extinct in that locality at the period 
 in question, and M. Dupont points out that the bones of 
 gigantic extinct species still play an important part in 
 the popular beliefs everywhere. 1 The Dacotahs and other 
 Eedskins, for instance, carefully collect the bones of the 
 mastodon and place them in their huts for the sake of 
 the magic virtues which they attribute to them. 2 We 
 should also note the perforated snail-shells, fossils, crys- 
 tals, quartz-stones, and reindeer-horns, deposited in the 
 tombs, and sometimes even in the hand of the deceased. 
 These objects, none of which are of any practical use, 
 may sometimes have served as ornaments, but must surely 
 in some cases have been talismans or amulets. 
 
 ~No doubt all these remains indicate infantile and 
 
 1 E. Dupont, L'homme pendant les ages de la pierre aux environs de 
 Dinant sur Meuse, second edition, Brussels, 1872, pp. 92 and 205 sqq, 
 
 2 Ed. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind \ 
 third edition, London, 1878, p. 322. 
 
22 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 gross conceptions ; but nevertheless they show that man 
 was already aware of something mysterious and mighty 
 beyond his limited horizon ; that he attempted to con- 
 tract relations with the superhuman beings by which he 
 believed himself to be surrounded, on the basis of an 
 exchange of services; and finally, that he was already 
 capable of the idea of abstinence, that is to say, of relin- 
 quishing a tangible and immediate advantage in view of 
 a more considerable but more distant and uncertain one. 
 Passing to the age of polished stone, we see the 
 religious manifestations which I have just defined taking 
 a more developed and general form ; nor are there wanting 
 such new elements as the worship of megaliths, trepanning 
 the skull, and special veneration of the mallet. 
 
 I shall not enter upon the question, still 
 
 Megaliths of 
 
 the neolithic hotly disputed, of the use of the stones, 
 erected in lines, found almost all over the 
 two worlds. It has been maintained that they were 
 simply commemorative monuments, like the twelve stones 
 from the bed of Jordan which Joshua erected at the 
 first camp of the Israelites after their passage of the 
 river, to serve, as the Bible supposes, "as a memorial 
 for ever." l I will not deny that some of these monu- 
 ments played the part of mementos, or even of inter- 
 national boundary-marks; but when I see how widespread 
 the worship of stones still is amongst uncivilized peoples, 
 
 1 Josh. iv. 5 8. It appears that within recent times it was cus- 
 tomary amongst the Kabyls for the representatives of confederated 
 tribes each to set up a great stone when they had arrived at an impor- 
 tant decision. If one of the tribes subsequently broke the engagement, 
 its stone was cast down. Cartailhac, France prehistorique, pp. 314, 
 315. 
 
FEE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 23 
 
 especially the worship of stones set up on one end, I 
 n far more disposed to conclude that megaliths in 
 general are the legacy and the evidence of a veritable 
 litholatry, whether they were worshipped in and for 
 themselves, as amongst the natives of India, Malaysia, 
 Polynesia, North Africa, and the two Americas, 1 or 
 whether they were regarded as the abode or the image 
 of some superhuman power, like the Bethels of the 
 whole Semitic race, or the shapeless masses which, as 
 Pausanias testifies, the earlier Greeks worshipped instead 
 of images. 2 We shall presently see that worship of 
 stones set up on end was the first step towards idolatry 
 everywhere. 
 
 Man in the age of polished stone, like his paleolithic 
 predecessor, disposed of his dead in caves ; but when 
 natural caves were wanting, he made artificial ones, 
 either by hollowing an excavation in the rock, or by 
 arranging four stones, in a sort of rectangle surmounted 
 by a large slab, and covered with a mound of earth. 
 This is the origin of the dolmens, which are now 
 universally admitted to be connected with funeral rites. 
 The only question is, whether they were tombs of the 
 first or the second instance ; that is to say, whether the 
 dead were placed in them at once, or whether decom- 
 position was first allowed to do its work. On the latter 
 hypothesis, which is the more probable, the dolmens 
 
 1 Mytliologie du monde mineral ; 199011 professed a 1'ecole d'anthro- 
 pologie, par Andre Lefevre : in the Revue des traditions populaires for 
 November, 1889. Paris. 
 
 2 Pausanias, vii. 22, 4 ; cf. infra. 
 
24 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 were only ossuaries, like those still met with in some 
 cemeteries in European countries. But the very desire 
 to secure a kind of perpetual abode to the incorruptible 
 elements of the body, is itself only another proof of the 
 importance attached to funeral rites. 
 
 There is a certain detail, frequently observed in these 
 dolmens, which has not failed to exercise the minds of 
 the archaeologists, especially when the dolmens were 
 supposed to be the work of one particular people. It is 
 the presence in one of the walls generally the one that 
 closes the entrance of a hole not more than large enough 
 for the passage of a human head. In the Caucasus and 
 on the coast of Malabar, these holes have given the 
 dolmens the popular name of " dwarf-houses." 
 
 The hole is too small to serve as a passage for living 
 men, or for the introduction of the skeleton ; or even for 
 inserting the sacrifices, which moreover would be found 
 piled up against the interior wall. The most probable 
 explanation seems to be that it was intended for the soul 
 to pass through. Numbers of savage peoples suppose 
 that the soul continues to inhabit the body after death, 
 though from time to time it makes excursions into the 
 world of the living. Now we shall see presently that 
 amongst these peoples the soul is generally regarded as 
 a reduced and semi-material copy of the body. It there- 
 fore requires a hole if it is to escape from the enclosure. 
 It is for this reason that, at the death of a relative, the 
 Hottentots, the Samoyeds, the Siamese, the Fijians, and 
 the Eedskins, make a hole in the hut to allow the pas- 
 sage of the deceased, but close it again immediately 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 25 
 
 afterwards to prevent its coming back. 1 The Iroquois 
 make a small hole in every tomb, and expressly declare 
 that it is to enable the soul to go out or come in at its 
 pleasure. 2 At Koulfa, in North Africa, the same idea 
 was combined with a desire to clear a passage for sacri- 
 fices. They buried the body, in a sitting posture, in a 
 round, well-like shaft, into which they left an open hole, 
 and then put cloths and other things close to the mouth, 
 so that the dead man himself could come and fetch them, 
 and take them to others who had died before him. 3 
 Trepanned ^ 1S the same desire to secure a way 
 for the spirit to pass, which best explains 
 the curious phenomenon of trepanning the skull, first 
 observed, in 1872, by Dr. Prunieres, in the neolithic 
 caves of Central France ; and subsequently in tombs of 
 the same period, in Denmark, Bohemia, Italy, Portugal, 
 North Africa, and the two Americas. 4 Some of these 
 skulls have been trepanned after death ; others during 
 life, as appeared from the reparative efforts of nature 
 which had followed. As for the circles of bone extracted, 
 
 1 Compare Frazer, On certain Burial Customs : in the Journal of 
 the Anthropological Institute, vol. xv. p. 70; see also Herbert Spencer, 
 Principles of Sociology, vol. i. 94. 
 
 2 A. Eeville, Religions des peuples non-civilises, Paris, 1883, vol. i. 
 p. 252. 
 
 3 Clapperton, Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, London, 
 1829, pp. 141, 142. Note that the Greeks, too, pierced the soil near 
 the tomb to pour libations into it, under the impression that this 
 would enable them to reach the dead more easily. J. Girard, Le 
 sentiment religieuse en Grece d'Homere a, Eschyle, 1879, p. 182. 
 
 4 Broca, Sur la trepanation da crane et les amulettes crdniennes a 
 Vepoque neolithique : Paris, 1877. 
 
26 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 they had sometimes been pierced and hung upon a 
 necklace, a custom which survived down to the Gaulish 
 period. 
 
 It would appear that trepanning is still practised by 
 the Kabyls. M. de Nadaillac believes that the object is 
 religious, but M. Broca takes it to be therapeutic. If 
 we follow the former, we may suppose it intended to 
 allow the soul free communication with the superhuman 
 powers ; or it might be an offering to the gods of a sub- 
 stitute or representative in place of the whole person, on 
 the principle which rules religious mutilations, from the 
 sacrifice of a finger- joint to the offering of the hair or a 
 nail-paring. If we follow M. Broca, it must have been 
 intended to facilitate the expulsion of the spirit that 
 had gained entrance into the body, and was causing 
 disorders in it ; conformably to the theory of uncivilized 
 peoples that every malady is caused by diabolic or divine 
 possession. It is evidently with this view that savages 
 in the Old and the New Worlds apply the processes of 
 massage and suction to their sick, give them purgatives 
 and emetics, and even bleed and cauterize them. The 
 efficacity of such treatment is often real though always 
 empirical, and it is invariably attributed to the departure 
 of the disturbing spirit. 
 
 The trepanning of the dead is perhaps more difficult 
 to explain, especially as we can find no similar practice 
 amongst known peoples. M. Cartailhac, on the strength 
 of a species of embalming still practised by the Dyaks, 
 thinks its object was to allow of the extraction of the 
 brain. 1 But one would suppose that such a procedure 
 1 France prehistoriyuc, p. 286. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 27 
 
 must have left some further traces ; and, in any case, it 
 would not explain the value attached to the severed 
 fragments of the cranium, as amulets. Perhaps the very 
 object of the operation was no other than to procure 
 these precious talismans ; or it may have been to provide 
 the soul with a special passage through which to leave 
 the body. It deserves notice that the trepanning has 
 not been applied indiscriminately to all the bodies in 
 the same tomb ; that on some of the skulls it must have 
 been performed both during life and after death; and, 
 finally, that in some cases the holes thus formed have 
 been closed by means of disks evidently borrowed from 
 other skulls. All these facts are in full harmony with 
 the hypothesis that trepanning was reserved as certain 
 funeral rites and even certain privileged methods of 
 burial certainly were to particular individuals, who, in 
 virtue of their rank, their knowledge, or their character, 
 were regarded as superior in nature to their fellows, or 
 even as holding direct communication with the super- 
 human world. 
 
 Worship of We have incontestable proof that idolatry 
 the mallet. was p rac ti s ed in the age of the lake dwellings 
 and artificial crypts. In the caves of Marne, Oise, Eure, 
 and Du Gard, an attempt at a female figure has been found, 
 always on the left wall of the ante-cave, which implies a 
 deliberate arrangement. The eyes, nose, mouth, breasts, 
 and even the representation of a necklace, are distinctly 
 recognizable. 1 This rough representation, which is always 
 the same, is generally accompanied by the picture of a 
 flint hatchet, or double-headed mallet, sometimes with 
 1 Baron de Baye, Memoir es sur lesgrottes de la Marne : Paris, 1872. 
 
28 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 the handle. It is not surprising that the man of the 
 stone age venerated the instrument which characterized 
 his civilization, the arm which assured him his rule 
 over nature, and which represented the foundation of 
 his power. Do not we still find the Eedskins, the 
 Polynesians, and even the Hindus, offering homage 
 to their arms and their tools ? This worship of dressed 
 flints and a fortiori of the stone hatchet, has been 
 almost universal to the human race. And even after 
 the discovery of the metals, these primitive implements 
 have been connected with the lightning and supposed 
 to be stones fallen from heaven. But the representa- 
 tions we are now speaking of force us to ask whether 
 we ought not to attach the hatchet to the worship of 
 some feminine divinity, whose arm or symbol it was, 
 just as in the tombs of a later age it becomes that of 
 Thor and Taran, the Germanic and Gaulish divinities 
 of thunder. 1 This, however, does not at all imply that 
 it was likewise the thunder which the men of the age 
 of polished stone worshipped under the features of a 
 woman ; and perhaps the wisest course in the present 
 state of our knowledge would be to renounce all attempts 
 to penetrate the mystery further. And yet if, without 
 transgressing my limits, I might suggest an hypothesis, 
 I should ask whether we might not recognize in this 
 naive and fragmentary idol the personification of nature, 
 or rather of the earth. As a matter of fact, we find 
 the earth worshipped in feminine form by all peoples 
 
 1 It is interesting to note that the axe reappears in the hand of the 
 thunder-god amongst the Chaldseans, the Greeks (Zeus Labrandeus), 
 and the Hindus iva. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 29 
 
 who have attained a sufficient faculty of generaliza- 
 tion to be able to conceive the idea of such a power. 
 Going a step further, I would even suggest that the 
 association of the hatchet with the goddess may well 
 have been drawn from some myth of the union of heaven 
 and earth, in which the fructifying powers of the storm 
 were symbolized by the flint axe. The presence of such 
 conceptions amongst almost all the peoples who have 
 attained a certain level of mythological development, is 
 my only excuse for hazarding this explanation, which is 
 in perfect agreement with all that we know of the reli- 
 gious ideas of the occupants of France, at the moment 
 when they come into contact with more advanced civi- 
 lizations. 
 
 "We frequently find on the Gallo-Eoman altars a god 
 grasping a long mallet, associated with a goddess bearing 
 a cornucopia. Archaeologists agree in taking the former 
 to be Taran, or Taranis, the Celtic thunder-god (cor- 
 responding to the Germanic Thor), who is sometimes 
 Latinized into Dis Pater or Sylvanus. In the latter 
 they recognize a goddess of the earth or of nature. 1 
 The mallet is the emblem of the storm, with its life- 
 giving streams, and was also the symbol of fertility, 
 amongst the Germanic populations. In Scandinavia, 
 when the bride entered the conjugal abode it was cus- 
 tomary to throw a mallet into her lap ; 2 and the German 
 minnesinger Frauenlob naively makes the Virgin Mary 
 explain the conception of the infant Jesus by saying 
 
 1 Le dieu gaulois au mailUt, by Ed. Flouest and H. Gaidoz, in the 
 Rcveu arclieoloyigm for March April, 1890. 
 
 2 Rvveu des traditions populaires, Jan. 1889, vol. iv. p. 23. 
 
30 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 that " the smith from the upper land threw his hammer 
 into her lap." 1 
 
 Most of the rites which I have just explained have 
 also left their stamp on the age of bronze or copper, 
 and we can even follow them into the first iron age, in 
 which we enter almost everywhere upon the field of 
 history. 
 
 It will be thought, perhaps, that this harvest of 
 information is meagre enough, and that hypotheses form 
 a great part even of what there is. But the facts we 
 have been able to establish suffice, if not to re-constitute 
 the whole religion of pre-historic man, at any rate to 
 show that he stood on a religious plane hardly superior 
 to that of the peoples of our own day, who stand midway 
 between absolute savagery and the beginnings of civiliza- 
 tion. You will observe that, to recover the beliefs implied 
 in our data, we have had recourse to the similar usages 
 we can trace amongst uncivilized peoples in the present 
 day, and to the recognized explanations they receive. 
 In like manner, to recover the use of certain pre-historic 
 implements, we turn to populations amongst whom their 
 like may still be found; and indeed the scholars who 
 have attempted to re-construct the industry, the occu- 
 pations, and the manners of pre-historic savages, have 
 not hesitated to generalize the conclusions drawn from 
 such analogies with considerable freedom. All I ask is 
 to be allowed to do the same with respect to religious 
 beliefs and institutions. 
 
 Folk-lore. There is yet another branch of study 
 1 Karl Blind, in The Antiquary for 1884, vol. ix. p. 200. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 31 
 
 which leads us to the same results. It is Folk-lore, that 
 is to say, the study of the traditions which previous 
 civilizations, as they disappeared, left like so many 
 sedimentary deposits in the lower classes. It cannot be 
 denied that these classes, specially in the country dis- 
 tricts, have been much less sensitive than the rest of 
 the nation to the modifying influence of progress, and 
 have therefore preserved much more of the intellec- 
 tual and social habits once common to all strata of the 
 population. Hence beliefs and customs prevail amongst 
 them which appear absolutely inexplicable if judged 
 by the scientific or even the religious ideas generally 
 accepted in our day. To understand the significance and 
 the genesis of these survivals, we must replace them 
 among the surroundings from which they respectively 
 issued. Some of them may be explained by the beliefs 
 and rites of the historic religions immediately anterior 
 to Christianity. Others point back to a more rudimentary 
 and gross religious state. If these last were incorporated 
 in the ancient religions, they were veritable survivals 
 even here, and were recognized as such by more than one 
 writer of the period. Now if we search for their equiva- 
 lents amongst the materials supplied by modern ethno- 
 graphy, not only is it nine chances to one that we shall 
 find them amongst one or another of the uncivilized 
 groups, perhaps amongst almost all, but further, when we 
 study them amid their actual present surroundings, they 
 will acquire a rational meaning, that is to say, a mean- 
 ing in conformity with the general ways of thought 
 current amongst savages. 
 
 In certain departments of France, when the peasants 
 
32 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 enter upon a newly -built house, they cut a chicken's 
 neck and sprinkle the blood in all the rooms. In Poitou, 
 the explanation given is, that if the living are to dwell 
 in the house, the dead must first pass through it. 1 Thus 
 presented, the custom is without meaning ; but it is no 
 longer so if we bring it into connection with the belief, 
 almost universal amongst peoples who possess the art 
 of masonry, that the soul of a victim buried under 
 the foundations protects the solidity or guards the ap- 
 proaches of the edifice. And if we combine this belief 
 with the principle, no less widely spread, that in the 
 matter of sacrifice (as we shall presently see) the inferior 
 may be substituted for the superior, an animal for a 
 man, the whole meaning of the ceremony becomes 
 clear. In Germany, it is often an empty coffin that is 
 built into the foundations; whilst the Bulgarians con- 
 fine themselves to the pantomime of throwing in the 
 shadow of some passer-by. To find the explanation of 
 this last trait, we have only to transport ourselves into 
 the ideas of the numerous peoples who regard a man's 
 shadow as the spiritual part of him that is to say, as his 
 soul. Our own languages bear witness that our ancestors 
 were of the same opinion. The belief that the dead 
 have no shadows is found amongst the Negroes of Central 
 Africa, as well as in Dante's Purgatory. And the Zulus 
 imagine that there is a crocodile or some other beast in 
 the water that can draw in a passer-by if it can get hold 
 of his shadow. 2 
 
 1 Cf. Les rites de la construction : in " Melusine" for Jan. 5th, 1888. 
 
 2 See Arbousset et Daumas, Voyage (V exploration au nord-est de la 
 colonie du Cap, Paris, 1842. p. 12. Compare Journal of the Anthro- 
 pological Institute, vol. x. p. 313; vol. xvi. p. 344. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. S3 
 
 Two years ago, I was present at the Crematorium in 
 Milan, at the cremation of the remains of a young 
 teacher. When the cremation was over and they were 
 about to seal the urn, the mother and sisters of the 
 deceased asked leave to put their photographs in, with 
 the still warm ashes of the deceased. Surely we can all 
 feel a touching appropriateness in placing the likeness of 
 the beings he most loved during life on the tomb or 
 even at the side of the dead; but is it not strangely 
 significant to see a family, sufficiently emancipated to 
 break with the traditional routine of interment, still 
 subject to the traditions of the most distant past, and 
 offering a form of homage to the deceased which, in 
 spite of the intervention of the photographic art, carries 
 us to the funeral sacrifices of the Negroes and the New 
 Zealanders ? To this very day, throughout the whole of 
 pagan Africa, they surround the dead, especially if he is 
 a distinguished personage, with his wives and attendants 
 and even his favourite animals. But here the process 
 of attenuation has not yet set in, and they actually 
 slaughter the miserable victims whom they send to follow 
 their husband and master in his life beyond the tomb. 
 In China, in Marco Polo's time, they had already begun 
 to replace the sacrifice of actual victims by parchment 
 figures, which they burnt with the body. 1 The Chinese 
 of our own day, with a still keener eye to economy, con- 
 fine themselves to writing out the schedule of their 
 sacrifices, on a piece of paper, which they then burn 
 upon the tomb. 
 
 1 Marco Polo, bk. i. chap, xl., in Yule's Book of Ser Marco Polo, 
 London, 1875, vol. i. pp, 207, 208. 
 
 D 
 
34 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 The populace, however, has not a monopoly of sur- 
 vivals. Try the experiment, as I myself have done, of 
 asking the mourners at a military funeral why they 
 make the deceased officer's horse follow the coffin ; and 
 especially why they make the poor beast limp during 
 the funeral procession. Some of them will tell you 
 they cannot say, and they suppose it has always been so. 
 Others will tell you that it is a tribute to the deceased, 
 and perhaps a way of compelling the horse to take part 
 in the mourning. Only one here and there, who has 
 read a little ethnography, will remember that the sacri- 
 fice of the horse at the funeral is almost universal 
 amongst uncivilized peoples who practise riding. And 
 indeed we know, from the direct evidence of historians, 
 that it was once practised on a large scale by the Celts, 
 the Germans, the Slavs, and the Mongols. Amongst the 
 Caucasian Ossets it appears in a transition stage, analo- 
 gous to that with which we are acquainted ourselves. 
 They content themselves with making the horse and the 
 widow circle the tomb three times; only the woman 
 may not marry again, nor may the horse serve another 
 member of the tribe. In Europe, we confine ourselves 
 to imitating the effect of hamstringing the horse; and 
 at the funeral of Prince Baudouin at Brussels, I noticed 
 that even this piece of useless cruelty was suppressed. 
 Thus the old customs disappear ; but now and then the 
 original feeling which still survives in the popular con- 
 sciousness rises to the surface again, and throws an 
 unexpected light upon the past, like a flame leaping up 
 from the embers of a dying fire. Mr. Andrew Lang 
 reports the case of a peasant woman some years ago in 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 35 
 
 Kerry, who killed her husband's horse when he died, 
 and when reproached with her folly, exclaimed, " Would 
 ye have my man go about on foot in the next world?" 1 
 Liturgical Eeligions at any rate such as. are orga- 
 survivals. n i zec [ ^Q orthodoxies generally declare 
 war on the superstitions of preceding ages ; but they 
 are themselves compelled to take under their patronage 
 the survivals which they cannot uproot. This is the 
 explanation of traditions and practices, imbedded in rela- 
 tively high religions, entirely foreign to the intellectual 
 and moral atmosphere of their professors. You know with 
 what zeal and, I must add, with what success Mr. Andrew 
 Lang has applied this principle in explaining the shock- 
 ing and grotesque stories of the Greek mythology. He 
 has shown how these myths were formed at a period 
 when the ancestors of the classical Greeks had the 
 manners and ideas of savages. The same observation 
 may be applied to more than one rite in the worships of 
 the present and the past. 
 
 The saying has often been repeated, that dogma, inas- 
 much as it represents the fixation of beliefs dominant at 
 a given moment, soon comes to represent the religion, or 
 rather the theology, of yesterday rather than to-day; and 
 in the same sense one might say that the cultus generally 
 represents the theology of the day before yesterday, for 
 nowhere does the conservative spirit maintain itself so 
 toughly as in religious rites. Here the dominion of 
 custom is fortified by the fear of displeasing the Deity 
 by altering the practices which he is himself supposed 
 to have inspired, or the efficacity of which has been 
 
 1 Custom and MytJi, pp. 11, 12. 
 D2 
 
36 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 established by long and repeated experience ; and thus 
 there is no religion which does not embrace in its cultus 
 ceremonies and symbols borrowed from the whole series 
 of previous religions. 
 
 The lamented Edwin Hatch, in his Hibbert Lectures 
 of 1888 one of the most lucid, conscientious, and com- 
 plete treatises ever published on the part played by 
 Greece in the development of Christian dogmas and 
 rites has shown how the pagan mysteries gained admis- 
 sion, with a new significance, into the bosom of nascent 
 Christianity. Now amongst those ceremonies there were 
 certainly some which classical antiquity itself had bor- 
 rowed from more ancient forms of worship; and it follows 
 that we may still see certain Christian churches perform- 
 ing ceremonies that we may safely say have traversed at 
 least three religions, and the equivalent of which per- 
 haps even down to the explanation officially given may 
 still be found on all hands amongst barbarous peoples. 
 I must content myself with citing, as one of the most 
 characteristic examples, the renovation of fire in the 
 office of Holy Saturday. The priest, after extinguishing 
 all the lights, re-kindles the Paschal taper by means of a 
 spark struck by the old method of the flint and steel. 
 Does not this ceremony carry us straight back to the 
 solar or fire rites, which were already more or less touched 
 with metaphysical conceptions in almost all the ancient 
 polytheisms, but which reveal their purely naturalistic 
 origin in the customs of certain savage peoples, and, for 
 the matter of that, in the traditions of our folk-lore also ? 
 Formerly the renovation of the fire took place in the 
 church on the dawn of Easter Sunday (the day of the 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 37 
 
 Resurrection), and the fire which the clergy had struck 
 from the flint and steel served to re-kindle the fires of 
 private individuals which had all been previously extin- 
 guished. This is the very ceremony which took place 
 annually at Lemnos in the temple of Hephaistos, at Eome 
 in that of Vesta, at Cuzco in that of the Sun, in Mexico 
 in honour of Xiuhtecutli, " the Lord of the year." It is 
 the same which is still observed in kindling the sacrificial 
 fire amongst the Brahmans ; 1 in conducting one of the 
 principal religious ceremonies of the Chippeways; 2 in 
 celebrating the renewal of the year on the Zanzibar coast ; 3 
 in securing rain amongst the Kaffirs ; 4 on every solemn 
 occasion amongst the Australians; 5 in putting a stop to 
 epidemics in certain remote districts of Europe ; or simply 
 in celebrating the summer solstice. On the banks of the 
 Moselle, and in other localities of Western Europe, it was 
 the custom, on St. Jean d'Ete* (Midsummer-day), to kindle 
 a wheel and then roll it across the fields or the vineyards 
 to secure a good harvest. 6 It was the custom in certain 
 provinces of the Slavonic and Germanic countries to 
 extinguish all the fires at this same season of the year ; 
 then to fix a wheel upon a pivot and whirl it round till 
 
 1 J. C. Nesfield, Primitive Philosophy of Fire, in the Calcutta Review 
 of April, 1884, p. 335. 
 
 2 A. Keville, Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. i. p. 222. 
 
 3 J. Becker, La vie en Afrique, Bruxelles, 1887, vol. i. p. 36. 
 
 4 Capt. Conder, On the Bechuanas, in the Journal of the Anthropo- 
 logical Institute, vol. xvi. p. 84. 
 
 5 E. Tregegar, The Maoris, in the Journal of the Anthropological 
 Institute of Nov. 1889, vol. xix. p. 107. 
 
 6 H. Gaidoz, Le dieu Gaulois du soleil el le symbolisme de la roue, 
 Paris, 1886, pp. 1721. 
 
38 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 the wood caught fire, whereupon every one present took 
 a light to re-kindle his own fire. 
 
 I have selected this rite as an excellent example of the 
 parallel development of one and the same usage on the 
 three-fold track of organized religions, popular traditions, 
 and savage rites ; and, further, because we can trace it 
 back to its original source without wounding any one's 
 feelings, or creating too harsh a sense of discord between 
 the meaning now put into a religious ceremony and the 
 ideas that first gave it birth. But the same process might 
 be followed with reference to far other rites, performed 
 every day before our eyes. And if such loans are found 
 even in the Christian Church, one may imagine how they 
 must abound in rituals which can have no reason for 
 disguising their naturalistic origin. We soon come to 
 accept M. James Darmesteter's assertion, that one need 
 not search very long amongst the historical religions to 
 find, often under forms of striking identity, most of the 
 essential elements of the non-historical religions. 1 
 
 R . rht of Here, perhaps, I shall be arrested by the 
 comparative question: u What right have you thus to 
 
 ethnography . . . 
 
 to be taken credit savage populations with the preserva- 
 
 in evidence. ,. . , ,-, -. ., . ... ,. 
 
 tion intact of the heritage of primitive reli- 
 gion ? Is not the savage, whom we wrongly call primi- 
 tive, as old as the civilized man ? Has he not as long 
 an ancestral line behind him? Has he not traversed, 
 in the course of ages, an endless series of fluctuations, 
 alternating between progress and decadence, which must 
 have very greatly modified his original conceptions? 
 
 1 James Darmesteter, Revue critique d'histoire et de litterature, 
 Paris, 1884, l er trimestre, p. 42. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 39 
 
 And, moreover, the superstitions and the rites of savages 
 differ to some extent from one people to another. To 
 which special group, then, shall we address ourselves by 
 preference in order to re-discover the primitive beliefs ? 
 Amongst some peoples the dominating system is Shaman- 
 ism that is to say, belief in the power of sorcerers. 
 Amongst others it is Totemism, the worship of animals; 
 or Fetishism, the belief in the supernatural influences 
 emanating from certain concrete objects. There are 
 populations which assign a single soul to man ; others 
 which give him two, three, or even four. Sometimes it 
 is the sun that occupies the first place in the worship ; 
 sometimes it is the moon, the heavens, the mythical 
 ancestor, or some casually selected spirit." 
 
 All very true. But I do not for a moment maintain 
 that the savages of to-day reproduce, trait by trait, the 
 beliefs of our pre-historic ancestors. No doubt we may 
 reasonably suppose that between races so far separated 
 in time, there must be differences analogous to those 
 which part the chief sections of savages now existing 
 one from another in matters of religion. But these latter 
 divergences are themselves largely counterbalanced by 
 the far more numerous and significant resemblances which 
 fill the narratives of travellers and the treatises of eth- 
 nographers. Moreover, a really attentive examination 
 soon shows us that if the detail of the beliefs, and even 
 of the rites, varies from people to people, the mental arid 
 religious state of which these ideas and customs are the 
 manifestation is identical throughout. What does it 
 matter, for example, whether the fire lighted on the 
 tomb is intended to warm the dead man in the other 
 
40 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 world, as with the Bedskins, or to hinder him from return- 
 ing to this world, as with the Kaffirs ? The two ideas 
 bear impartial witness to the belief that the soul is a 
 semi-material being capable of feeling heat and cold. 
 Or, again, what does it matter that the magic operations 
 for healing maladies or securing rain now and then vary 
 on the two continents, since they all alike imply that the 
 malady is attributed to the presence of a spirit in the body, 
 and that certain individuals are recognized as having 
 power over the genii of the elements ? Of what conse- 
 quence is the nature of the superhuman beings placed in 
 the first rank, or even the infinite diversity of the stories 
 told about them, if they are everywhere represented after 
 the guise of chiefs or sorcerers, with faculties more or less 
 magnified, but subject to all the limitations and weak- 
 nesses of human nature at its lowest level of culture ? 
 
 The real interest for us is found in the underlying 
 analogy of reasoning and of motive ; and under this 
 aspect I affirm that the savage of every age represents 
 primitive man not because he is his authentic likeness, 
 that has defied the ravages of time, but because he has 
 remained in, or has re-entered, the same stage of civili- 
 zation ; and at that lower level, the same conditions 
 beget the same ideas, and even the same applications of 
 those ideas. It is only at a higher stage of development 
 that man can even begin to free himself from a close 
 dependence upon external nature. Liberty is not the 
 point of departure, but the goal of human evolution. 
 This explains at once the diversity of historical religions 
 and the uniformity of savage beliefs. The latter repre- 
 sent the common foundation, hardly yet organic, out of 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 41 
 
 which all the great religious systems have respectively 
 issued by a process of differentiation and organization. 
 
 Thus history, pre-historic archaeology, folk-lore, and 
 comparative ethnography, combine with philology and 
 psychology to tell us, that if we would re-construct the 
 early forms and primitive developments of religion, we 
 must of necessity address ourselves to the beliefs of the 
 uncivilized peoples, while collecting for comparison the 
 corresponding elements still to be detected in the historic 
 forms of worship and in the popular survivals. Where I 
 these three sources of information yield identical results, 
 especially when gathered from divers regions and races, 
 we may presume that we have before us no accidental or 
 transient facts, special to this or that people or climate, 
 but general facts of humanity, characterizing all peoples 
 placed under similar conditions of social development, 
 and therefore common to our own ancestors at a certain 
 period of their evolution. 
 
 Continuity To complete the demonstration, however, 
 in a "&gSus we must see whether it is really true that 
 
 evolution. even foe most exalted religious ideas and 
 institutions of our own times can be connected, without 
 breach of continuity and without recourse to the hypo- 
 thesis of an intervention from without, with the natural 
 development of beliefs still observed amongst populations 
 at the lowest stage of human culture. This is the question 
 with which I propose to deal in the present course of 
 Lectures, at least as far as concerns the idea of Deity 
 and of its nature and function in the universe. 
 
 I do not disguise from myself the difficult and delicate 
 nature of the task, in spite of the positions made good 
 
42 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 by those who have preceded me in the attempt. I shall 
 have to contend against the repugnance not only of 
 orthodox minds, which find the origin of religious ideas 
 in a supernatural revelation, but also of all who, while 
 regarding the different religions as the spontaneous pro- 
 duct of a sentiment inherent in human nature, neverthe- 
 less shrink from admitting the lowly character of their 
 origins and antecedents. Yet those independent minds 
 who love to insist on the perfectible and progressive 
 character of religion, and who have formed too lofty a 
 conception of it to be content to confine it within the 
 limits of a particular revelation, ought to perceive clearly 
 enough the confirmation and support which their views 
 must find in the thesis which I am defending. If, so 
 far, religion has always been exalting and purifying 
 itself and this implies its humble origin then there 
 is all the more certain prospect that it will continue to 
 do so in the future. The important thing is, not what 
 our ancestors believed concerning the Deity, but what 
 our own ideas on the subject are. And will our concep- 
 tion of God be less sublime when we have found a 
 place for its development in the divine plan of creation ? 
 Do what we may, we can no longer escape the neces- 
 sity of submitting the religious sentiment to the general 
 law of evolution, which affirms the concurrent principles 
 of continuity and progress, whether in the cosmography 
 of the sidereal world, the geology of the terrestrial sphere, 
 the palseontology of living beings, or the archeology and 
 history of the human race. The only position which 
 will thereby suffer will be the old metaphysical argument 
 which made the reality of God rest upon the impossi- 
 
FEE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 43 
 
 bility of our ever having conceived of Him, had He not 
 in some fashion written His signature on the conscious- 
 ness of the first man. But this is simply a more refined 
 form of the argument which undertakes to found upon 
 miracles that is to say, on the reversal of natural laws 
 the existence of the Author of nature. 
 
 How much more satisfying, both to the reason and 
 the conscience, is the hypothesis of gradual development, 
 explaining, with Lessing, that the succession of reli- 
 gions represents the religious education of the human 
 race. If man has long suffered from ignorance or mis- 
 conception of the Deity, it is simply because his educa- 
 tion has long been incomplete. "Who shall dare to say 
 that it is yet completed ? 
 
 I have not the least intention of discussing 
 
 Present . *~ 
 
 position of the dogmas of the positive religions. I shall 
 remain on the field of what may be called 
 Natural Eeligion; though not using the term in the 
 old sense of a system of doctrine embracing the beliefs 
 common to every worship, but rather as including all 
 manifestations due to the spontaneous development of 
 the religious sentiment. I cannot, however, abstain 
 from expressing my regret that the belief in the progres- 
 sive evolution of religions should find its chief opponents 
 amongst the exponents of a theology founded, like the 
 Chistian creed, on an application of that very principle. 
 Special interest attaches, in this connection, to the fol- 
 lowing declaration by a Catholic writer, who represents, 
 par excellence, Eoman Catholic orthodoxy on the subject 
 of the history of religions, to wit, M. FAbbe* de Broglie, 
 Professor of Apologetics at the University of Paris : 
 
 ^ 
 
 ( UNIVERSITY) 
 
44 I. METHODS OF RESEARCH INTO THE 
 
 " The Judaism of the later period shows progress from 
 the religion of Moses, and the latter from that of the 
 Patriarchs. Christianity .... is an immense step 
 in advance ; and in the Church itself, as the great Doctors 
 maintain, there is progress in the knowledge of truth." 
 
 Since the learned Professor admits that Christianity 
 is a progressive outcome of Judaism, Judaism of the 
 religion of Moses, and the latter in its turn of the reli- 
 gion of the Patriarchs, he has only to make one step 
 more, and admit that the religion of the Patriarchs is a 
 progressive outcome of the beliefs common to a lower 
 level of humanity, and we shall then be completely at 
 one with him in method, if not in results. 
 
 There are orthodox scholars who seem to have taken 
 this last step, at any rate as far as the pagan religions 
 are concerned. One of the most eminent Professors 
 of the Catholic University of Louvain wrote not long 
 ago : " The belief in a primitive monotheism only con- 
 cerns a period too remote for historical researches ever to 
 
 reach This original monotheism does not affect 
 
 any of the religious transformations and vicissitudes 
 which history can trace, and which may become the 
 subject of our studies. The worship of material objects 
 and the corresponding state of intelligence may perfectly 
 well be admitted by us all, as existing in an age which 
 is lost in the night of time, and from which man succes- 
 sively raised himself, at several centres, to loftier con- 
 ceptions." 2 
 
 1 Problemes et conclusions de Vhistoire des religions, p. 319. 
 
 2 De la methode dans I' etude historique des religions: in the Museon 
 of Jan. 1887, p, 58. 
 
PRE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 45 
 
 And one of the most enlightened and sympathetic 
 defenders of Protestant orthodoxy, M. de Pressense*, 
 admits, on his side, that in consequence of a moral fall, 
 humanity must have lapsed from its primitive culture 
 into a state of absolute savagery, and that from that 
 point onwards the study of savages is the best means 
 " of re-constructing, with some degree of precision, the 
 social and religious condition of the rude infancy of 
 humanity, of which they are themselves survivals." 1 
 Hierographic science can ask no more. 
 
 These declarations are a significant sign of what is 
 going on even in the minds most attached to orthodox 
 beliefs. Consider, moreover, what has come to pass 
 within the last third of a century as to other once 
 burning questions, in which the future of Christianity 
 and even of Eeligion was said to be involved. What 
 has become of the polemics which lashed the last gene- 
 ration into fury over the explanation of the days in 
 Genesis? What has become of the pleadings and the 
 anathemas which a few years ago filled the Ee views, 
 and the Professorial Chairs, apropos of historical re- 
 searches into the age and authenticity of the sacred 
 books ? These controversies, it seems, have sunk into 
 deep peace because men have come to see that their 
 solution is not a question of religion, but one of scholar- 
 ship which is a way of saying that the scholars were 
 quite right, but that religion has taken no harm ! It is 
 true that from time to time some brilliant essay still 
 appears which gives itself the airs of a challenge to 
 battle ; but in truth these efforts may more properly be 
 
 1 Pressens^ L'ancien monde et le christianisme, Paris, 1887, pp. 5, 6. 
 
46 FEE-HISTORIC MANIFESTATIONS OF RELIGION. 
 
 compared to the last cartridges fired by a retiring rear- 
 guard, or to charges of cavalry protecting a retreat. 
 The actual seat of war seems to be transferred to pro- 
 blems concerning the origin of man and of religion itself. 
 It is easy to foresee the result. Here, too, Eeligion will 
 benefit by the victory of Science, not only because that 
 victory will eliminate a source of conflict between two 
 necessary factors of human culture, but also because it 
 will give us a sublimer and more harmonious conception 
 of the ways of God's revelation of Himself to man, or, to 
 employ HegePs expression, " of the way in which the 
 finite spirit has come to a consciousness of its essence as 
 absolute Being." 
 
LECTURE II. 
 THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 (i.) THE WORSHIP or NATURE, AND THE WORSHIP OF 
 THE DEAD. 
 
 Definition BEFORE formulating a theory on the origin 
 of Religion. O f R e iigj Qn? we must seek an adequate defini- 
 tion of the word. 
 
 The definitions of religion are innumerable, and I have 
 no intention of discussing them here. To do so would 
 be to pass the whole history of the philosophy of religions 
 in review. I shall confine myself to explaining the 
 sense in which I mean to use the word in these Lectures. 
 By religion, then, I mean the conception man forms of his 
 relations with the superhuman and mysterious powers on 
 which he believes himself to depend. 
 
 This definition does not touch the question whether 
 the end pursued by religion is based on a reality or not. 
 On the other hand, I think it sharply defines the sphere 
 of religious phenomena, and at the same time indicates 
 the common and essential character of all religious mani- 
 festations. 
 
 . , ^ ,. . Most writers on religion, as distinct from 
 
 Did Religion ' . 
 
 spring from its particular forms, recognize that it em- 
 
 the emotions . . . , 
 
 or from the braces two factors pertaining respectively 
 to the reason and the feelings, but they 
 
48 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 differ as to which of these two came first; in other 
 words, whether the conception of the divinity engen- 
 dered the religious sentiment, or whether the presence 
 of that sentiment brought man to believe in the existence 
 of the gods and to reason as to their nature. 
 
 According to the one view, man instinctively attempted 
 to put himself into relations with the superhuman influ- 
 ences by which he felt himself surrounded, and it was 
 only subsequently that he thought of defining them. 
 No one in our day has formulated this thesis with more 
 eloquence than M. Renan, who compares man's religious 
 impulses to the instinct that makes the hen-bird " sit," 
 which instinct spontaneously declares itself as soon as 
 the appropriate stage is reached. 1 
 
 ^ Others, on the contrary, maintain that before worship- 
 ping his gods, man must have had some conception of 
 their nature, and that the sentiments he entertains 
 towards them must of necessity flow from the ideas he 
 has formed of their character and workings. 
 
 At first sight, this latter theory seems to have logic on 
 its side. Clearly, one can neither love nor fear a being 
 before having conceived the idea of its existence. Never- 
 theless, inevitable as it seems to place a purely intellectual 
 operation at the source of religion, we must recollect that 
 the sentiments that sprang from it must have long preceded 
 even the most ancient formulae of primitive theology. 
 
 The infant in the cradle, when he stretches his arms 
 towards his mother or his nurse, is conscious of an agree- 
 able sensation which he instinctively associates with the 
 approach of certain persons, and he will manifest this 
 1 Dialogues philosoplriqyes, Paris, 1876, pp. 38, 39. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 49 
 
 sentiment, or in the opposite case sentiments of repul- 
 sion and fear, long before he has taken to reasoning on 
 his relations with the beings around him. In like 
 manner, primitive man must from the first have experi- 
 enced more or less vague and unreflecting feelings of 
 sympathy or repulsion, of joy or terror, not only with 
 regard to his fellow-men, but with respect to the other 
 beings and even phenomena which he supposed to influ- 
 ence his destiny favourably or the reverse ; and the day 
 on which he deified these beings and phenomena that is 
 to say, attributed to them a personality analogous to his 
 own, but more mysterious and exalted was the day 
 on which the sentiments he experienced towards them 
 became religious. 
 
 v !leiigion~hi 1 It has been asked, in this connection, 
 __ animals. l wne ther animals can experience the reli- 
 gious sentiment. A century ago such a question would 
 only have provoked a smile ; but now that we have 
 accustomed ourselves to search in the lowest strata of 
 animal life for the antecedents of physiological and 
 intellectual characteristics which only receive their full 
 expression in the best-endowed representatives of human 
 culture, it is no longer possible to dismiss the ques- 
 tion of the religion of animals in this summary style. 
 Animals share the philosophic fate of savages. They 
 are alternately exalted and humbled, according to the 
 exigencies of the current theory as to the position of 
 man in nature. Under the influence of Descartes, they 
 were regarded simply as machines, and their absolute 
 automatism served to throw the liberty of the lord of 
 creation into relief. Under the influence of Darwinism, 
 
 E 
 
50 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 we tend to regard them not only as the precursors 
 and the elder brothers of man, but even as his equals, 
 not to say his superiors ; and to represent the ant-hill 
 or the bee-hive as the ideal of a well- organized society. 
 
 Not so long ago the opponents of religious ideas used 
 to reply to those who would make religion a natural 
 characteristic of the human mind, " Eeligion is nothing 
 but an accident, a parasitical excrescence. It is so far from 
 being natural to humanity that most savages are without 
 it." Now that this position can no longer be maintained, 
 they have reversed their batteries, and it is not uncom- 
 mon to hear them maintain with equal fervour, " Eeligion, 
 so far from being a distinctive sign of humanity, is found 
 in the animals themselves." 
 
 We need take no notice of these partizan attacks, for 
 the position we have taken up is entirely unaffected by 
 them ; but we must not forget that serious and impartial 
 authors have maintained that religion exists among the 
 animals. Four years ago, a talented writer, M. Yan 
 Ende, published a thick volume of 320 pages filled 
 with ingenious and suggestive observations to show that 
 animals attribute the grand phenomena of nature to the 
 action of powers superior to all the beings they know, 
 and that those powers inspire them with most of the 
 characteristic sentiments of religion. 1 I think the author 
 has sometimes let his imagination run away with him, 
 and has taken advantage of the fact that we cannot check 
 him by getting into the animal's hide and learning 
 what it thinks and how it thinks it. I am quite 
 
 1 Histoire naturelle de la croyance : premiere partie, L'animal : 
 Paris, 1887. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 51 
 
 willing to admit that animals apparently experience 
 more or less spontaneous feelings of joy or terror in the 
 presence of certain natural phenomena ; but I very much 
 doubt whether their powers of analysis can take them 
 the length of reasoning upon the character and disposi- 
 tions of the beings they imagine they find behind the 
 manifestations of nature. Still less can I believe that they 
 endeavour to enter into relations with those mysterious 
 beings, based on their conception of their nature. Un- 
 doubtedly, if the word religion be made to imply a simple 
 feeling of dependence, as Schleiermacher has it, we may 
 answer with Fichte that the dog must be the most reli- 
 gious of beings. But (with M. de Pressense*) we shall 
 decline to believe that it is so until the dog has combined 
 with his fellows to found a religion implying the desire 
 to establish ideal relations with the mysterious higher 
 powers. 1 This would require a capacity for abstraction 
 and generalization and a perception of analogies which 
 we could hardly expect from an animal, even were it 
 HaekePs Anthropopithecus. 
 
 Unwarranted But a day came for nascent humanity 
 
 ^foHdoTof when ur ancestors were no longer content, 
 
 personality. j^ e an i ma i s? to look for the sun to warm 
 
 them; to greet the return of the dark-dispelling moon 
 
 with cries of joy ; to howl in terror at the rumbling of 
 
 the thunder ; to demand of the rock a shelter from the 
 
 wind and rain ; and to spy out the beasts of the forest 
 
 so as to capture or escape them. The savage began 
 
 to ask what were his own relations to the beings who 
 
 1 E. de Pressense, Les Origines, Paris, 1883, p. 471 [omitted in the 
 English Translation, p. 458], 
 
 E2 
 
52 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 thus affected his destiny ; and the mental process which 
 gave him his answer differed in nothing save in com- 
 plexity from that which contemporary thought accepts 
 to explain the course of phenomena in the last analysis. 
 
 The philosophy which, resting on the most recent 
 discoveries, has established the constancy of the same 
 energy under all the varied manifestations of nature, can 
 only conceive of that ultimate force by relating it to our 
 own sense of effort springing from the consciousness of 
 the resistance of our surroundings to the action of our 
 will. The savage, on his side, wherever he finds life 
 and movement, refers them to the only source of activity 
 of which he has any direct knowledge, namely the will. 
 He therefore sees in all phenomena the action of wills 
 analogous to his own, wills which he locates sometimes 
 in the moving beings themselves, the celestial bodies, 
 clouds, fire, running waters, plants, and animals; some- 
 times in invisible beings of which he can only perceive 
 the manifestations, such as thunder and wind. 
 Personification ETot only the beliefs of uncivilized peoples, 
 of phenomena. but the tra <ij t i olis O f our own folk-lore, abun- 
 dantly establish the fact that uncultivated minds ascribe 
 the attributes of life to stones and waters ; the faculties 
 of animals to plants; and the feelings and even the argu- 
 ments of man to animals. 1 The savage believes that 
 animals understand his language. If the dog does not 
 answer, it is because he is proud, says the Karachadal. 
 
 1 See especially E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 2 vols. : London ? 
 1871. Albert Reville, Les religions des peuples non-civilises, 2 vols. : 
 Paris, 1883. Th. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker: Leipzig, 1876. 
 Sir John Lubbock, Origin of Civilization: London, 1870. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 53 
 
 If the ape remains dumb, it is because he is lazy, accord- 
 ing to the Negroes, and knows that if he spoke they 
 would make him work. The Kedskin talks to his horse 
 as to one of his companions ; and the Arab believes that 
 certain horses can read the Koran. The natives of the 
 Philippine Islands, when they meet an alligator, beg it 
 to do them no harm ; and when the Malagassy catch a 
 whale-calf, they beg its mother to go away. 
 
 They also believe that animal a have the same relations 
 with each other that men have. The inhabitants of 
 Borneo maintain that the tigers have a Sultan and a 
 court. According to the traveller Crevaux, the Bed- 
 skins believe that animals have sorcerers of their own. 
 Perrault's fairy-tales, La Fontaine's fables, and the 
 popular traditions of our country districts, are no more 
 than the echo, in this respect, of the actual beliefs of 
 our ancestors of yore, and of the Polynesians, the Bed- 
 skins, and Negroes of our own day. 
 
 Even trees are put upon the footing of equality with 
 man amongst comparatively advanced peoples. There 
 are numerous legends attributing to certain men the 
 power of understanding the language of plants, and 
 vice versa. Ibn-al-Awam's agricultural treatise recom- 
 mends the intimidation of trees that refuse to produce 
 fruit. You are to flog them mildly, and threaten to cut 
 them down if they go on bearing no fruit. 1 So, too, 
 the Bohemian Slavs used to cry to the garden trees at 
 even, "Bud, ye trees ! bud ! or I will strip you of your 
 
 1 E. Chevreul on J. J. Clement-Mullet's translation of Le livre d& 
 V Agriculture d'Ibn-al-Awam in Journal des Savants, Paris, 1870, pp. 
 633, 634. 
 
54 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 bark." 1 "Water, again, suggests the idea of movement 
 and so of life to the primitive imagination, and is there- 
 fore invested with conscious faculties everywhere. When 
 the brothers Lander were descending the Niger by boat 
 and a thick cloud rose on the horizon, their boatmen 
 begged them to hide themselves at once in the bottom 
 of the boat, because the river had never seen whites 
 before, and that was why it was raising a cloud. Cameron 
 tells us of a spring in Unyamuesi which the natives 
 declare stops flowing if, instead of calling it marwa 
 (palm- wine), they call it maji (the ordinary word for 
 water), or if they fire guns in its neighbourhood, or, 
 finally, if they go near it with their boots on. 2 At 
 Whydah they offer presents to the sea to induce it to 
 allow the merchandize of the whites to be discharged. 
 Natives of Sumatra from the inland, on first seeing the 
 ocean, are said to sacrifice cakes and sweetmeats to it in 
 deprecation of its power of injuring them. 3 
 
 The savage has no difficulty in ascribing, not only the 
 powers of movement, but life and personality, even to 
 stones. CaiHe* saw a big stone in an African village 
 which they said circled the place three times whenever 
 it was threatened by danger. This recalls the stones of 
 the Celtic countries which dance and turn on certain 
 occasions, and the Breton rock which, according to a 
 legend cited by M. Cartailhac, goes down every year 
 on Christmas-eve to drink at the neighbouring river. 4 
 
 1 Girard de Eialle, Mythologie comparee, Paris, 1878, p. 57. 
 
 2 Cameron, Across Africa, London, 1877, vol. i. p. 144. 
 8 W. Marsden, Sumatra, London, 1783, p. 256. 
 
 A La France prehistorique, pp. 164, 165. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 55 
 
 The Lapps, the ancient Peruvians, the Fijians, and the 
 dwellers on the shores of Tanganyika, believe that 
 rocks marry and have children. The myth of Deukalion, 
 which attributes the origin of our race to stones, trans- 
 formed into men, has its counterpart amongst the ancient 
 inhabitants of Central America, who say that the ances- 
 tors of man were stones. 
 
 The same delusion recurs with respect to the atmo- 
 spheric phenomena and the celestial bodies. Not so 
 long ago the celestial bodies were universally personi- 
 fied, and almost all the mythologies contain stories 
 of people who have talked with the sun and moon. 
 The Karens of Burmah, the Zulus, and the Eedskins of 
 the Washington district, make the rainbow a monster 
 which drinks the water out of rivers and ponds. The 
 same belief is found in the folk-lore of the Slavs, the 
 Greeks, the Germans, and Central France. The Karens, 
 according to Mason, cry to their children, " The rainbow 
 has come down to drink. Play no more, lest some acci- 
 dent should happen to you." 1 By a strange coincidence, 
 the rainbow is called "the Sucker" inYolhynia; and 
 when the little Ukranian children see him, they run away 
 and shout, " Eun ! run ! or he'll eat you up." 2 
 
 The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, believed that 
 fire was a living creature; and Cicero himself calls it 
 " ignis animal." The Aryans of India personified it 
 under the name of Agni, the Agile; "the blessed one," 
 as a Yedic hymn has it, " who is born white and becomes 
 
 1 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1865 (vol. xxxiv.), part ii. 
 p. 217. 
 
 2 Mehisine, deuxieme annee, 1884-5, p. 42. 
 
56 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 red as he grows." And to this very day, in Dahomej^ 
 they offer sacrifices to the hearth to prevent the fire 
 eating up the house. In Europe itself, the Bohemians 
 keep the crumbs of their repast for the fire ; if any food 
 falls into the fire-place while they are cooking it, it is 
 because the fire has demanded the offering; and old 
 people still exist who attribute the frequency of destruc- 
 tive fires to the neglect of these usages. 1 
 
 Our own languages, especially those which have no 
 neuter gender or which make but little use of it, take 
 us back to a period which knew no scruple in indefi- 
 nitely extending the categories of life, of personality, 
 and even of sex. Sometimes it is the sun, some- 
 times the moon, which is of the masculine gender ; but 
 in almost every known language these two heavenly 
 bodies differ in gender, and can therefore be regarded as 
 husband and wife. The same observation applies to the 
 ancient cosmogonic couple of heaven and earth. When 
 the Frenchman says, u II pleut ; il vente ; il tonne," is 
 it not as much as to declare " Some one is sprinkling, 
 blowing, growling"? This " some one" may mean a 
 hidden being who only reveals himself through his mani- 
 festations, or may indicate a visible being, the Sky or 
 the Cloud, invested with the chief meteorological powers, 
 and at the same time with faculties modelled on those of 
 man. 
 
 Such examples might be multiplied indefinitely. I 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 259. Compare, for what may 
 be called the "theology of fire" in the ancient beliefs, Prof. Max 
 Miiller's beautiful studies in his Gifford Lectures for 1890, delivered 
 at Glasgow, on Physical Religion : London, 1891. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 57 
 
 have been content with drawing upon the standard trea- 
 tises of ethnography for a few characteristic facts which 
 establish the tendency of man, at a certain stage of his 
 mental development, to anthropomorphize everything. 
 The difficulty is not to say what kind of beings and 
 phenomena he personifies, but rather to say in what cate- 
 gory of objects he does not seek arbitrary personifications. 
 Nomina Scholars, who have carried linguistic pre- 
 nuimna. conceptions into the study of mythology, 
 have maintained that it was the forms of language, at 
 an epoch when every verb implied a concrete act, so that 
 every subject must necessarily be an animated being, 
 which led to the attribution of life and personality to 
 inanimate and material objects, nomina numina. M. Michel 
 Bre*al, one of the greatest linguists of the French school, 
 declares: " However vivid and poetical may have been 
 the first flights of imagination in the infancy of the 
 human race, they could never have risen to representing 
 the rain which waters the earth as coming from heavenly 
 cows, or the cloud which conceals the lightning in its 
 flanks as a monster vomiting flame, or the sun with his 
 darting rays as a divine warrior discharging his arrows 
 
 upon his foes Whence, then, come these 
 
 images ? . . . From language, which spontaneously 
 created them without man himself being aware of it." 1 
 
 To refute this thesis, it is enough to recall the naive 
 dialogue, apropos of an eclipse, between the Algonkin 
 and a missionary of the sixteenth century, Pere Lejeune, 
 who certainly will not be suspected of being under the 
 influence of our present theories on the subject of mytho- 
 1 M. Breal, Melanges de littcrature d de linyuistique t Paris, 1878, p. 8. 
 
58 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 logy. " I asked them what caused eclipses of the moon 
 and the sun. They answered that the moon was eclipsed 
 and appeared dark because she held her son in her arms, 
 and that concealed her brightness. ' If the moon has a 
 son,' I replied, 'she is married or was married once.' 
 1 Yes, certainly,' said they. l The sun is her husband. He 
 is out all day and she all night ; and if he is eclipsed or 
 darkened, it is because he, too, sometimes takes the son 
 that he has had by the moon in his arms.' ' Yes ; but 
 neither the moon nor the sun has any arms at all,' I 
 said. ' You've no sense ; they always have their bows 
 strung in front of them. That's why you can't see their 
 arms.' 'And what do they want to shoot at?' 'Oh! 
 how should we know?'" 1 
 
 Do you say that the Algonkins had already been led 
 to personify the celestial bodies by the metaphors of lan- 
 guage ? "Well, then, here is a page of mythological auto- 
 biography in which we catch these personifications in the 
 act of birth. De Gubernatis relates in his "Zoological 
 Mythology" that when he was four years old, as he was 
 walking one evening with a brother, the latter pointed 
 to a fantastical cloud on the horizon and cried, " Look 
 down there; that is a hungry wolf running after the 
 sheep." "I well recollect," continues the author, "that 
 he convinced me so entirely of that cloud being really a 
 hungry wolf running upon the mountains, that fearing 
 it might, in default of sheep, overtake me, I instantly took 
 to my heels, and escaped precipitately into the house." 2 
 
 1 Relation de ce qui sest passe dans la nouvelle France en Vannee 
 1634, Paris, 1635, pp. 96, 97. 
 
 2 Zoological Mythology, London, 1872, vol. i. p. xxiv. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 59 
 
 You will perhaps maintain that this is simply another 
 proof of the influence of words on the imagination. But 
 in such a case the words are but the vehicle of a thought ; 
 and that thought, though suggested to the mind of our 
 young mythologist from outside, might just as well have 
 sprung up spontaneously in his own imagination as in 
 that of another. In any case, we see that it is not 
 necessary, as a certain school of philologists maintains, 
 that before a conscious personality can be ascribed to 
 inanimate things, the primitive sense of the concrete 
 terms applied to them must have been lost. The unwar- 
 ranted extension of personality which forms the basis of 
 mythology is due, not to a " disease of language," but to 
 a " disease of thought," if, indeed, one may apply such 
 a term to an illusion which enters into the normal deve- 
 lopment of man. 
 
 The testimony of De Gubernatis in this anecdote is 
 the less open to suspicion, inasmuch as it seems to con- 
 tradict his favourite thesis on the formation of meteoro- 
 logical mythology ; for he maintains that the myths in 
 which animals appear as personal and conscious agents 
 were originally histories attributed to clouds to which the 
 names of animals were given, and were afterwards trans- 
 ferred to the terrestrial animals which bore the same 
 name; 1 whereas in this case we have the story of a 
 ferocious beast of earth transferred to the cloud. 
 
 Distinction According to another hypothesis very 
 
 between the commonly received, which I myself long 
 
 personal and _ . . x , ,, -, -, 
 
 theimper- advocated, but which I can hardly aeiena 
 now in the same unqualified fashion, man 
 1 Op. tit. pp. xvi sqq. 
 
60 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 used to regard everything as living that appealed to 
 his senses with a sufficiently pronounced character of 
 individuality to wake a distinct image in his mind ; and 
 it was only after a long series of accumulated experiences 
 that he came to conceive the notion of inanimate things ; 
 from which moment his progress consisted in restricting 
 more and more the category of living and personal 
 beings, and increasing that of lifeless things. 
 
 In confirmation of this thesis it is urged, first, that 
 the savage personifies everything around him ; second, 
 that children look upon the articles of furniture and their 
 playthings as living and reasonable beings; third, that 
 civilized men under the impulse of passion are capable 
 of treating material objects as if they were sensible and 
 responsible agents. 
 
 In answer to this last argument, it has been urged that 
 even in our explosions of anger and grief, we never so 
 far lose sight of the distinction between animate and 
 inanimate things, as really to suppose that the reproaches 
 or blows we lavish upon material objects fall upon 
 beings capable of receiving any moral impression. As 
 regards children, it has been observed and personal 
 observations have inclined me more and more to believe 
 it that if they talk to their dolls, or strike the table or 
 chair that they have knocked against, it is generally 
 under the influence of ideas first suggested to them by 
 some one else; unless, indeed, it is simply a conscious 
 piece of acting in which their youthful imagination 
 indulges for its own entertainment. 
 
 There remains the argument that savages have no 
 conception of the inanimate or the impersonal. The 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 61 
 
 Jesuit missionaries to Canada, in their accounts published 
 in 1635, note that to the Eedskin "not only men and 
 animals, but everything else is alive." 1 The facts that 
 we have already dwelt upon seem at first sight to con- 
 firm this generalization. But does it really follow that 
 because savages extend the idea of personality in so wild 
 a fashion, that they have no sense at all of the distinction 
 between animate and inanimate ? Or does it only follow 
 that they make the distinction in the wrong place ? 
 
 If we look more closely into the travellers' stories, we 
 shall soon perceive that the savages do not really personify 
 everything without distinction, but only such objects 
 as they select in virtue of their form, their origin, their 
 behaviour, or their association with particular events. 
 To the savage, as to the animal, it is movement which 
 is the sign of life. "The zi (supernatural power)," 
 observes Professor Sayce, in his Lectures on the beliefs 
 of the ancient Babylonians, "was simply that which 
 manifested life, and the test of the manifestation of life 
 was movement." 2 Only we must note, in the first place, 
 that objects may be credited with movement in virtue 
 of highly complex and indirect deductions, as we see 
 from the phenomena of rock and stone worship; and, 
 in the second place, that if any object is supposed to be 
 capable of acting at a distance, even* though no spon- 
 taneous movement takes place, this is quite enough to 
 carry with it all that is essentially implied in the power 
 
 1 Pre Lejeune, Relation de ce qiti s'est passe dans la nouvelle 
 France en Vannee 1634, p. 58. 
 
 2 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures. Religion of Ancient Assyria and Babylonia, 
 London, 1888, p. 328. 
 
62 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 of locomotion. 1 Thus man comes to personify not only 
 everything that he supposes to move, but everything 
 which seems to exercise an influence upon him implying 
 the existence of an active will. " The Indian [in British 
 Guiana]/' says Mr. E. F. im Thurn, "is occasionally 
 hurt either by falling on a rock or by the rock falling on 
 him ; and in either case he attributes the blame to the 
 rock." 2 Even so advanced a people as the Athenians 
 present us with the spectacle of the tribunal of the 
 Prytanies condemning to death inanimate objects which 
 had accidentally caused the death of a man. 3 An analo- 
 gous custom is still found amongst certain tribes of Indo- 
 China, where a tree which has caused any one's death 
 must be completely hacked to pieces. 4 
 
 We must not suppose that the savage's investigations 
 into the nature of the creatures about him is inspired 
 by simple curiosity. However exuberant his imagi- 
 nation may be, nothing is less in his line than specu- 
 lation. With him, everything has a practical end; 
 and in the present instance the end is to form connec- 
 tions, advantageous to himself, with the extra-human 
 beings by which he believes himself to be surrounded. 
 And since he has assigned to these beings motives and 
 
 1 " The king of the Konssa Kaffirs having broken off a piece of a 
 stranded anchor, died soon afterwards, upon which all the Kaffirs 
 looked upon the anchor as alive, and saluted it respectfully whenever 
 they passed near it." Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, p. 188. 
 
 2 E. F. im Thurn, Indians of British Guiana, in Journal of the 
 Anthropological Institute, vol. xi. 1882, p. 370. 
 
 3 Pausanias, i. 28, 10. 
 
 4 Ch. Ploix, La nature des dieux, etude de mythologie compares, 
 Paris, 1888 ; p. 4. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 63 
 
 reasonings analogous to his own, he naturally thinks 
 that he can act upon them by just such measures (here- 
 after to be enumerated) as would be effective with him- 
 self. And, from the other side, he cannot but feel 
 gratitude for their benefits, terror in the face of then- 
 wrath, even a certain confidence in their protection, 
 and depression or indignation when deserted by them. 
 
 Deity implies ^ OW > ai6 a11 theSe elements > eyen ^hen 
 
 superiority united and combined, enough to constitute 
 religion? The idea that certain beings, 
 whatever their nature, may be of service to us, and that 
 we can secure their help by the same means as are 
 current in human society, even when we add the feelings 
 of hope, fear, gratitude, and anger, provoked by such 
 relations, is no more than what springs out of the mutual 
 relations of men themselves, without its constituting a 
 religion. 
 
 Eeligion, at any rate as I have defined it, implies, 
 in addition to this, something exalted and mysterious in 
 the character of the being adored. Note that the supe- 
 riority and mystery may be only partial. The being 
 deified may have the advantage over his worshipper only 
 in some one important faculty, or may escape his com- 
 prehension under some one aspect only. It has often 
 been said that the savage can have no idea of the super- 
 natural, for the excellent reason that in his eyes every- 
 thing is natural, even the impossible. The assertion is 
 justified if it means that, having no idea whatever of a 
 regular course of things, he cannot distinguish between 
 what contradicts and what does not contradict such a 
 course; but although he has no notion of the supernatural, 
 
64 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 he cannot be without an idea of the extraordinary and 
 the unforeseen, or without the power of distinguishing 
 between the facts he understands, or thinks he under- 
 stands, and those which he considers incomprehensible. 
 Experience has taught him that he increases his power 
 by arming himself with a knotted branch or a chipped 
 flint; that he increases his chances of success in securing 
 game by setting certain traps for animals ; that he can 
 cross the river by getting upon the trunk of a tree; 
 and can provide against thirst by keeping water in a 
 clay vessel, baked in the sun. But neither the way in 
 which he gets his implements, nor the result upon 
 which he can rely, has anything extraordinary or 
 mysterious about it. He is dealing with foreseen and 
 forseeable effects, which are dependent on his own will, 
 which he can reproduce indefinitely by means of simple 
 methods of which he knows the secret and feels himself 
 to be the master. 
 
 But side by side with all this, which may be considered 
 normal, he comes across phenomena produced by methods 
 which he cannot explain, and by beings which he can 
 neither control nor even understand. Jarvis tells us 
 that when the North American Indian cannot understand 
 a thing, he says it is a spirit. 1 Garcilasso de la Yega 
 informs us that the ancient Peruvians applied the name 
 of huacas to " all those things which, from their beauty 
 and excellence, were superior to other things of a like 
 kind;" further, " things that were ugly and monstrous, or 
 that caused horror and fright; 7 ' and lastly, " things which 
 
 1 Appendix to J. Buchanan's History, Manners, and Customs, of the 
 North American Indians, London, 1824, p. 228. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 65 
 
 were out of the usual course of nature." 1 Amongst the 
 Chinese, according to the Yuen-Hen lui-han^ as cited by 
 M. Ldon de Kosny, the name of Chin is given generally 
 to the producers of clouds and the provokers of wind and 
 rain, and everything that seems extraordinary in the moun- 
 tains, the forests, the rivers, the lakes, the rocks, and the 
 hills. 2 The Todas of central India call their deities Der, 
 and Colonel Marshall tells us that amongst them there is 
 a tendency for everything mysterious or unseen to ripen 
 into Der. In the Fiji Islands the word kalu, which is 
 used to signify the gods, is also applied to everything 
 great or marvellous. 3 " The Negroes," says a traveller, 
 " worship everything extraordinary and rare." When 
 . first the Negroes of the Guinea coast saw a pump on 
 board a European vessel, they thought it a very marvel- 
 lous creature, " since it could make water rise up whose 
 natural property is to descend." 4 
 
 For the most part, however, the sphere of the extra- 
 ordinary extends, for the savage, far beyond what we 
 should consider its due limits. It includes, for instance, 
 all the wild animals which excel man in strength, agility, 
 or cunning, and whose proceedings always have some- 
 thing mysterious in them. It includes the plants, 
 
 1 Royal Commentaries, bk. ii. chap. iv. ; C. R. Mark ham's transla- 
 tion (Hakluyt Society), London, 1869, 1871, vol. i. p. 116. 
 
 2 Leon de Rosny, Les origines du Taoisme, in the Revue de Vhistoire 
 des relit/ions for Sept. Oct. 1890, vol. xxii. pp. 171, 172. 
 
 3 T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, London: Hodder and Stoughton. 
 1870, p. 183. 
 
 4 Sir John Lubbock, History of Civilization, London, 1870, p. 202. 
 
66 IT. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 whose slow growth and periodical blossoming depend 
 upon forces alien to the intervention of man. It includes 
 the sun who, defying all interference, pursues his course, 
 dealing out alternate life and death ; the moon, that 
 strange and changing being, which the popular imagina- 
 tion is still unable to disentangle from the affairs of our 
 planet ; the atmospheric phenomena, beginning with the 
 thunder-storm, whose sinister rumblings throw all ani- 
 mated nature into terror; running waters, that sometimes 
 fertilize and sometimes lay waste, and whose continuous 
 and spontaneous movement nothing can arrest. 
 
 There is nothing, even down to the rocks, which may 
 not become an enemy or an ally according to the associa- 
 tions which chance events have thrown round it; nothing 
 which may not acquire a character all the more active and 
 mysterious in proportion to the barriers the imagination 
 has had to pierce in order to draw it into the category of 
 conscious and animated beings. "The A-shi-wi, or 
 Zunis," says Mr. Frank Gushing, "suppose the sun, moon, 
 and stars, the sky, earth, and sea, in all their phenomena 
 and elements, and all inanimate objects, as well as plants, 
 animals and men, to belong to one great system of all- 
 conscious and inter-related life, in which the degrees of 
 relationship seem to be determined largely, if not wholly, 
 by the degrees of resemblance. In this system of life the 
 starting-point is man, the most finished, yet the lowest 
 organism; at least, the lowest because most dependent 
 and least mysterious The animals .... are con- 
 sidered .... more nearly related to the gods than is man, 
 because more mysterious Again, the elements and 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 67 
 
 phenomena of nature, because more mysterious, powerful, 
 and immortal, seem more closely related to the higher 
 gods than are the animals." 1 
 
 It seems clear that the reason why living; man is splrlnm 
 worshipped is precisely because he is too well known. 
 The only exception is in the case of certain persons 
 withdrawn by the prestige of their authority or their 
 wisdom from the ordinary conditions of humanity that 
 is to say of savage or primitive humanity. Sir John 
 Lubbock points out that the adoration of the king is 
 only found in cases where he is powerful enough to 
 withdraw himself from the common life. 2 The French 
 say that no one is a hero to his valet - de - chambre ; 
 and in the same way we may assert that no one is a 
 god to his familiar companion. The traveller Battel, 
 speaking of a king of Loan go who is worshipped as the 
 equal of a god, adds that no one is allowed to see him 
 eat or drink. This is a wise precaution for a royal deity 
 to take. 
 
 On the other hand, certain men may be worshipped, 
 even when alive, on account of some extraordinary cha- 
 racteristic which exhibits them in a mysterious light. 
 Thus whites have often been regarded as superhuman 
 beings by the red, yellow, or black savages who see 
 them for the first time. But just the same thing may 
 happen in the case of a hitherto unknown animal, as in 
 Mexico with the horse ridden by Cortez, or on the west 
 coast of Africa with Monteiro's ass. However ondoyant 
 
 1 Zuni Fetiches, in the Publications of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
 "Smithsonian Institute," 1883, vol. ii. p. 9. 
 
 2 Origin of Civilization, p. 234. 
 
 F2 
 
68 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOP. 
 
 ei divers man may be, lie is far less mysterious to the 
 savage than the celestial bodies, trees, or even stones 
 are. 
 
 The lace ^' sa ^ m J s ^ Qr J * s to say fear. Man, like 
 
 of fear in the animals, fears the unknown, even though 
 
 a kind of fascination draw him towards the 
 
 object of his terror, that he may learn to give himself 
 
 some account of it. This two-fold feeling unquestionably 
 
 lies at the root of religion ; and, in this connection, the 
 
 Latin poet might well say that fear was the first creator 
 
 of the gods : 
 
 "Primus in orbe decs fecit timor." 
 
 But it was not fear alone that created them. It is not 
 only evil that man expects from his deities, nor does he 
 confine his adoration to the maleficent powers of nature. 
 Nature herself has always a two -fold aspect, the one 
 fruitful and propitious, the other cruel and destructive, 
 both reflected in one of her most complete and transparent 
 personifications, the great goddess of the Phoenicians : 
 
 " Diva Astarte hominum deoruraque vita salus 
 Rursus eadem quae es pernicies mors interitus." 
 
 If man dreads the beings who may injure him, why 
 should he not be equally capable of hope, trust, love, 
 and gratitude, towards those from whom he hopes to 
 receive benefits or has already received them. Whether 
 we turn to the most rudimentary or the most elaborate 
 religions, we always find the superhuman powers, taken 
 collectively, arousing sentiments at once of dread and of 
 attraction in the worshipper. The former may sink to 
 the most abject terror, the latter may rise to the most 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOB. 69 
 
 exalted love ; but, in whatever proportions, they always 
 combine to produce what we mean by veneration. 
 
 No doubt man may disentangle this mingled character 
 of his deities. But whenever he conceives of certain 
 superhuman beings as absolutely evil, you may be cer- 
 tain that he will counterbalance them with others that 
 are absolutely good, even if, for obvious reasons, he 
 devotes his chief attention to the former. One can 
 conceive Ormuzd without Ahriman, and the Persian 
 theology looks forward to the time when the latter shall 
 be destroyed; but no one ever conceived Ahriman without 
 Ormuzd, even amongst the sects who reserve their homage 
 for Ahriman on the ground that Ormuzd does not need it. 
 
 You perceive that the sense of dependence is not 
 enough to produce religion; otherwise man would have 
 to adore everything that he is dependent on, from 
 his own limbs down to the force of gravitation which 
 prevents his forthwith knocking his head against the 
 stars of heaven. As M. KeVille observes, the sense of 
 dependence furnishes no issue from opposition and anti- 
 thesis, whereas the very purpose of religion is so to 
 harmonize opposition as to solve the antithesis. 1 The 
 religious sentiment is not fully satisfied until man feels 
 himself one with his deities. 
 The sense of On the other hand, neither is the sense of 
 
 w e a^cto? mystery, of the great Beyond, the Infinite, 
 m Religion, ^he Supra- sensible, enough in itself to pro- 
 duce religion, unless man assigns some positive content 
 to this purely negative conception. The savage standing 
 
 1 A. Reville, Proleyomenes de Vhistoire des religions, Paris, 1881, 
 pp. 25, 26. 
 
7'0 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 on his coral island, to take Professor Max Miiller's 
 example, might have speculated to his heart's content 
 on what there lay beyond the horizon, but he could 
 hardly have worshipped that invisible continuation of 
 the tossing ocean or the azure firmament, had he not 
 attributed to it the power of interposing in his own 
 affairs. I am ready to admit that the perception of the 
 finite really implies the conception of the infinite ; but it 
 is only a relatively advanced philosophy which succeeds 
 in making the implicit idea explicit ; and if the savage 
 speculates on what lies beyond whether that " Beyond," 
 the boundaries of which he cannot apprehend, stretch 
 behind the sights of nature or retreat within the inner 
 consciousness of beings it is only because he suspects 
 the existence in it of a power with which he is, or can 
 be, in some actual relation. 
 
 I ought to add, however, that the eminent Indian 
 scholar whose views I am discussing has done much in 
 his recent Gifford Lectures to meet the objections which 
 have been urged, in this connection, against the defini- 
 tion of religion which he gave from the Chair which I 
 have the honour of occupying at this moment. " The 
 infinite per se, as a mere negative, would have had no 
 interest for primitive man; but as the background, as 
 the support, as the subject or the cause of the finite in 
 its many manifestations, it came in from the earliest 
 period of human thought." 1 To put this explanation 
 above the reach of criticism, it is only necessary to insist 
 on the part played by the practical element in the 
 
 1 F. Max Miiller, Natural Religion : the Gifford Lectures for 1888 : 
 London, 1889, p. 149. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 71 
 
 genesis of religion that is to say, the influences which 
 the mysterious agents thus deified were supposed to 
 exercise upon human affairs, and man's desire to enter 
 into such relations with them as might turn to his own 
 advantage. 1 
 
 Amongst the factors which contributed 
 
 Confusion of 
 
 concomitance most actively towards increasing the num- 
 
 and causality. , ...... 
 
 ber 01 the primitive deities we must give 
 the first rank to the confusion of concomitance, or rather 
 succession, with causality, together with the assimilation 
 of dreams to reality. 
 
 Post hoc, ergo propter hoCj is man's first argument as 
 he endeavours to get at the reason of things. Do we 
 not, in our own day, hear causation defined by the most 
 advanced psychologists as " a constant and uniform rela- 
 tion of succession"? The savage omits the qualifications 
 of uniformity and constancy, or at best accepts a few 
 accidental repetitions as enough. That is all the differ- 
 ence, but it is vital. 
 
 Roemer tells us of a Negro who once showed him a 
 stone, amongst his domestic fetishes, to which he attached 
 great value, because he once stumbled against it at the 
 threshold of his hut as he was setting out on an impor- 
 tant expedition. Mr. E. F. im Thurn says of the Indian 
 of British Guiana : "If his eye falls on a rock in any 
 way abnormal or curious and none such escapes his 
 notice and if, shortly after, any evil happens to him, 
 he regards rock and evil as cause and effect : and here 
 
 1 The succeeding volume of Gifford Lectures, viz. Physical Religion, 
 London, 1891, has contributed still further towards dispelling the mis- 
 conception. 
 
72 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 again he perceives a spirit in the rock." 1 This explains 
 how peoples so far distant from each other as the Finns 
 and the Eedskins, can unite in attributing the fertilizing 
 showers of spring to the cuckoo * for the former accom- 
 pany or closely follow the latter. Perhaps this same coin- 
 cidence explains the origin of the Cretan myth in which 
 Jupiter transforms himself into a cuckoo to impregnate 
 Juno. 
 
 This tendency to attribute events to some pheno- 
 menon with which they are associated, but with which 
 they have really nothing to do, recurs amongst all uncivi- 
 lized peoples civilized peoples, too, for that matter, as 
 is testified by the " fetishes" of gamesters in our own 
 days, and other similar superstitions. But this idea of 
 the good or ill luck attached to some talisman is not in 
 itself in any way religious, and it is a mistake to place 
 the origin of religion in fetishism so understood. It is 
 all very well to declare that the deity grew out of the 
 amulet, but we have to be shown how men passed from 
 one idea to the other; and here our teachers, in their 
 turn, point to a concomitance in lieu of a cause. The 
 idea that a material object can exercise a certain influ- 
 ence or produce certain events in virtue of some myste- 
 rious connection it has with them, can only be called a 
 religious belief when this connection is ascribed to the 
 intervention of a superhuman being incorporated in the 
 object or using it as its tool. The Negroes themselves 
 distinguish between their fetishes (gris-gris, jou-jou, 
 mokissos), which they regard as superhuman beings, or 
 rather as possessed by such, and their amulets, or talismans 
 1 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xi. p. 370. 
 
II. THE GEXESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 73 
 
 proper (mondas), which they do not regard as living and 
 conscious. 1 But who does not see that this already pre- 
 supposes a belief that such superhuman beings exist ? 
 
 It is easy to understand how, when once the idea of 
 mysterious superhuman personalities has been formu- 
 lated in the imagination, this unwarranted extension of 
 causality may indefinitely increase the number of the 
 gods. Any conceivable object may happen to be asso- 
 ciated with any conceivable event, and so may come to 
 be regarded as its cause. Then follows, by a process 
 already familiar to the human mind, the personification 
 of that cause ; and the primitive pantheon is enriched by 
 a new god. 
 
 The fantastic associations which occur in 
 
 Ihe assimila- 
 tion of dreams dreams contribute to the result as much as 
 
 the real associations which casually occur in 
 the waking life. Animals dream, but do not remember 
 their dreams ; the savage not only remembers them, but 
 believes they are actual experiences. Travellers are all 
 agreed on this point, and it would be wearisome to repeat 
 the proofs of the fact, since it is not contested. The 
 places which he has visited, the things which he has seen, 
 the people he has talked to in a word, all the details 
 of his dreams, appear to the savage as real after he has 
 awaked as they did while he was dreaming. If some of 
 these people or things have played the part he is accus- 
 tomed to assign to his gods, why should he hesitate to 
 rank them henceforth amongst the superhuman powers 
 which he must conciliate or serve ? 
 
 1 Compare du Chaillu, Transactions of the Ethnological Society, 
 London, 1861, vol. i. p. 307. 
 
74 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 In brief, under the action of this two-fold influence, 
 the savage ends by deifying everything in nature. This 
 is the stage at which, as Bossuet puts it, " everything 
 was a god except God himself." In truth, whether we 
 take the savage of our own time or his pre- historic 
 counterpart, the difficulty is not to say what he worships, 
 but to find anything that escapes his adoration. 
 The function ^ e same associations, real or imaginary, 
 of the first which have thus indefinitely multiplied the 
 number of the gods, have also served con- 
 siderably to extend the sphere of action originally 
 attributed to each of them. Men probably began by 
 demanding of each being or each object which they 
 had deified only those services which it was really 
 suited to render in virtue of its actual nature. Thus 
 they invoked the sun for warmth or fertilization; the 
 moon, to dissipate the darkness ; the spring, to slake or 
 inflict thirst; the cloud, to drop its waters or to drift away; 
 the wind, not to throw down the hut ; the tree, to bear 
 abundant fruit; ferocious beasts, to spare the life and 
 property of the suppliant. But one day it was observed 
 that the clouds before breaking gathered round a certain 
 peak. It was this mountain then that made the rain. 
 At the moment of the full moon the savage would fall 
 ill ; it was the full moon then which had sent his disease, 
 and which could therefore take it away. As he started 
 out on a successful hunting expedition he met a serpent ; 
 serpents then had the power of securing game; and if 
 they could bring success in the chase, why not in war 
 and other enterprizes as well ? Or the savage had 
 dreamed that the sun made him promises or presents; 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 75 
 
 this must have happened, and therefore might happen 
 again. Another night he had seen a neighbouring rock 
 change itself into a roaring lion, and hurl itself upon the 
 enemies of the tribe ; henceforth he will know where to 
 turn in order to secure victory. 
 
 Here is an example in which the dream combines with 
 a purely accidental coincidence as a factor in the result. 
 M. E. de Backer, in his work on the Indian Archipelago, 
 tells us of a native who had found a stone covered with 
 small fishes, and next night saw a genius in his sleep. 
 This genius told him that he was the stone itself, and that 
 if he received due homage he would send him abundance 
 of fish. The author adds that the fetishes or idols of 
 the Dyaks scraps of wood or stone, hollow crocodiles' 
 teeth, little figures painted on sticks, human statuettes 
 cut in bark were almost always made in consequence 
 of some dream in which the native had seen a gigantic 
 "Kambi" or a hairy and terrible "Antung" appear. 1 
 In the same way, Mr. Powell tells us that amongst the 
 Redskins every Indian " is provided with his charm or 
 fetish, revealed to him in some awful hour of ecstacy, 
 produced by fasting, or feasting, or drunkenness." 2 
 
 Thus men not only come to deify all manner of dif- 
 ferent beings, but to invest them with powers so varied 
 and so extensive that they no longer know what super- 
 human being they may not require under any given 
 
 1 Valentyn, cited by De Backer, UArchipel Indien, Paris, 1874, 
 p. 222. 
 
 2 Powell, Myths of the North-American Indians, in the Publications 
 of the Bureau of Ethnology, "Smithsonian Institute," 1881, vol. i. 
 p. 41. 
 
76 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 circumstances; and in doubtful cases nine gods out of 
 ten are ready to aid the worshipper, as the Californian 
 savage gave to understand when he was asked what it 
 was he muttered in order to secure the recovery of a 
 sick man, and answered: "I talk to the trees, and to 
 the springs, and birds, and sky, and rocks, to the wind, 
 and rain, and leaves ; I beg them all to help me." l 
 " The cold has spoken to me," cries the author of the 
 song which serves as a prelude to the Finnish Kalevala, 
 "and the rain has told me her runes; the winds of 
 heaven, the waves of the sea, have spoken and sung to 
 me ; the wild birds have taught me, the music of many 
 waters has been my master.' 72 
 
 Might one not fancy one was listening to the prema- 
 ture echo of a great contemporary poet who calls every 
 detail of nature to bear witness to his vanished joy? 
 lac, rochers muets, grottes, foret obscure, 
 
 Que tout ce qu'on entend, Ton voit ou Ton respire 
 Tout dise : Us ont aim4 ! 3 
 
 But what is mere play of imagination or figure of 
 speech in the modern poet, is to his savage contemporary 
 of to-day, and was to the primitive savage of ancient 
 times, the expression of a general belief in the animation 
 of all nature and the possibility of entering into relations 
 with its personified manifestations. 
 
 1 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, 1875, vol. i. pp. 358, 
 359. 
 
 2 Kalevala, chant i. As quoted in A. Lang's Custom and Myth, 
 London, 1884, p. 165. 
 
 3 Lamartine, Lc Lac. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 77 
 
 The belief in the reality of dreams acts on the develop- 
 ment of religious ideas in yet another direction, as we 
 see from the conception of the " double" and the idea of 
 survival. 
 
 The idea of The man who in his dreams has just 
 the "double." enc0 untered the most extraordinary adven- 
 tures, wakes again in the very spot and in the very 
 position which he occupied when he fell asleep. He 
 remembers having traversed immense spaces, accom- 
 plished difficult enterprizes, perhaps received blows or 
 wounds, and yet his limbs, far from being fatigued, 
 have found fresh strength and subtlety. He has just 
 been conversing with individuals who will deny the 
 existence of the interview, and in case of need will 
 support their denial by an incontestable alibi, and per- 
 haps he himself will pay them back in their own coin of 
 denial the next day. Hence the only possible explana- 
 tion an explanation which must present itself spontane- 
 ously to the mind of the savage as soon as he endeavours 
 to remember his dreams and to give himself some account 
 of them is that man is composed of two parts, one in 
 some way enclosed in the other one external, formed of 
 the body which remains stationary during sleep; the 
 other internal, which could cast the body like a garment 
 and go its way, as the Greenlander expressed it, "to 
 hunt, dance, and pay calls." 
 
 The Australian Kurnai who was asked whether he 
 really believed that his yambo could "go out" while he 
 was asleep, immediately answered : "It must be so, for 
 when I sleep I go to distant places, I see distant people ; 
 
78 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 I even see and speak with those that are dead." 1 We 
 have but to open the first treatise on ethnography that 
 comes to hand, and we shall see that the same reasoning 
 prevails amongst the Negroes, Kaffirs, Polynesians, Bed- 
 skins, Greenlanders, and natives of South America. 
 At the outside, some of them, such as the Karens of 
 Burmah, have observed that in dreams one can only visit 
 the places and people one has already known. Some 
 peoples, such as the Tagals of Lucon, refuse to wake a 
 sleeping man suddenly, because, they say, you must 
 give his soul time to get into its abode again. 
 
 Here we see an opposition beginning to shape itself 
 between the body and what we have come to call the soul. 
 The savage is doubtless far from regarding his interior 
 personality as an immaterial entity, conceived by force 
 of abstraction, and reduced to a pure psychic force. He 
 can conceive neither a being nor a force except under a 
 material, or at any rate a sensible, form ; he will there- 
 fore endow his ego with the traits under which his own 
 personality and that of his companions appear in his 
 dreams. It will thus be a reduction, or rather a re- 
 flexion of the body, vaguer, paler, half -effaced. This 
 is what has been called the double, identified by many 
 peoples with the shadow produced by the body, with its 
 reflexion in water, with its image seen in the pupil of 
 the eye, and so forth. 
 
 The sorcerers of Greenland describe the soul as a 
 pale soft thing, without nerves, without bones, with- 
 
 1 W. Howitt, On some Australian Beliefs : in the Journal of the 
 Anthropological Institute, 1884, voL xiii. p. 189. 
 
II THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 79 
 
 out flesh. When one would seize it, one feels nothing. 
 Is not this exactly the animula vagula blandula^ hospes, 
 comesque corporis, under the traits of which Hadrian con- 
 ceived his own spiritual principle? 1 And in our own 
 day, too, does not the description precisely correspond 
 to the physiognomy of the spirits which our mediums 
 profess to bring before us ? 
 
 Worship of This " double" of the personality has no 
 the dead. re ligi ous significance in itself; but the deduc- 
 tions drawn from it go much beyond its mere existence. 
 Amongst the beings with whom the savage enters into 
 communication in his dreams, some have passed from life. 
 Perhaps he himself has slain, not to say eaten, them ! 
 What conclusion can he arrive at but that man does not 
 altogether die, and that the disappearance of the body 
 does not involve that of the " double"? Thus when 
 Achilles has clasped the shade of Patroclus and has seen 
 it dissolve under his embrace like smoke, he does not fail 
 to cry, " Yerily, there is a certain soul and semblance 
 even in the abode of Hades, though substance there be 
 none." 2 
 
 Animals do not appear to have arrived at the abstract 
 idea of death. Primitive man, too, must have begun by 
 confounding death with sleep, fainting and catalepsy. 
 Hence the efforts to revive the corpse and ensure its 
 preservation which we find even amongst the animals, 
 
 Spartianus, adrianus, cap. 25. In the Scriptures Historian 
 Augustas. 
 
 2 Iliad, xxiii. 103, 104. i/^x>) *<" efSwAov* drap <pei/S OVK evi 
 Traprav. The word </Deves must be taken in its physical sense, midriff, 
 vitals, substance or body. 
 
80 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 and which survive in the customs of many peoples long 
 after the idea of death has established itself in their 
 minds. Even in the times of Marco Polo the Mongols 
 sometimes kept their corpses as long as six months, and 
 offered them food every day. 1 Obviously it was the 
 dissolution of the body which finally revealed the differ- 
 ence between the apparent suspension and the definitive 
 cessation of the vital functions. 
 
 The double, however, continued in the neighbourhood 
 of the living, and maintained relations with them during 
 sleep. According to some, such as the Yorubas of 
 Western Africa and the Yeddahs of Ceylon it is the 
 dead who come to visit the living ; according to others, 
 like the Maoris of New Zealand, it is the living who 
 go to visit the dead. Again, the double has myste- 
 rious powers in dreams which it does not possess, or 
 possesses in a less degree, when united to the body. It 
 can assume the most diverse and terrible forms, can 
 transport itself, or can act at a distance, with the rapidity 
 of lightning in a word, can produce results absolutely 
 disproportioned to its previous powers, and that too by 
 the most extraordinary means. Polynesians sometimes 
 kill themselves in order that, when in the spiritual state, 
 they may be able to take a fuller vengeance on a power- 
 ful enemy. 2 The same thing has been observed amongst 
 the Hindus, who have likewise been known to kill some 
 
 1 The Book of Ser Marco Polo, by H. Yule, second edition : London, 
 1875, vol. i. p. 208. 
 
 2 Gerland, quoted by Be*ville, Religions des peitples non-civilises, 
 vol. ii. p. 92. May we not trace a survival of the same practice in 
 i\\Q point d'honneur of the Japanese who kill themselves when insulted? 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE ID 
 
 chance-met victim in order to get the assistance of his 
 spirit. The case is reported of a Brahman who slew his 
 mother so that her spirit could catch and punish a thief. 
 M. Letourneau says that on the Congo likewise the son 
 often kills his mother to secure the assistance of her 
 soul, now a formidable spirit. 1 The Alfurus of Molacca 
 bury children up to their waists, and expose them to all 
 the tortures of thirst, until they wrench from them the 
 promise to hurl themselves upon the enemies of the 
 village. Then they take them out, but only to kill them 
 on the spot, imagining that the spirits of the victims 
 will respect their last promise. 2 On the other hand, 
 Philander Prescott says that amongst the Eedskins fear 
 of the departed spirits often prevents murder more effec- 
 tually than the fear of hanging does amongst white 
 peoples. 3 
 
 _, . . In any case, the double thus conceived 
 
 Relations t J t 
 
 of nature- unites in itself all the characteristics of those 
 the worship superhuman beings whom the savage believes 
 
 aa ' to exist in nature, whom he endeavours to 
 conciliate by the methods in vogue in his relations with 
 the great ones of the earth, and whom he surrounds 
 with testimonies of his affection and dread. 
 
 Did the worship of the dead precede or follow the 
 worship of natural objects and personified phenomena? 
 It is possible that in certain localities the worship of 
 the dead manifested itself the first, or that the two 
 
 1 Sociologie^ pp. 240, 241; Eng. trans, p. 253. 
 
 2 Rosenberg, Der Malayisclie ArcJtipel, Leipzig, 1878, pp. 59, 60. 
 
 8 In H. R Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Philadel- 
 phia, 18511860, part ii. pp. 195, 196. 
 
 G 
 
82 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 conceptions formed themselves pari passu, with a pre- 
 ponderance of th& one or the other. It seems that in China 
 the worship of ancestors grafted itself upon a previous 
 nature-worship. Amongst the Polynesians it has been 
 successfully established that the worship of the dead, 
 native to the eastern archipelagos, sporadically overlaid 
 the ancient mythological nature-worship, while it hardly 
 penetrated into the most western islands of Micronesia. 1 
 All I maintain is that neither of these two forms of 
 worship necessarily presupposes the other; but that man, 
 having been led by different routes to personify the souls 
 of the dead on the one hand, and natural objects and 
 phenomena on the other, subsequently attributed to both 
 alike the character of mysterious superhuman beings. 
 Let us add that this must have taken place everywhere, 
 for there is not a people on earth in which we do not 
 come upon these two forms of belief side by side and 
 intermingled. 
 
 (ii.) PRIMITIVE BITES. 
 
 "We have now to supplement the picture of primitive 
 beliefs by that of primitive rites ; that is to say, the acts 
 which man's primitive conception of the superhuman 
 beings and his relations with them led him to perform. 
 
 Probably the cultus was originally extremely simple. 
 When the chief objects of nature are looked upon as 
 quasi-human personalities, the man who desires their sup- 
 port will evidently approach them as experience has taught 
 him to approach the mundane powers. Obviously, then, 
 
 1 A. E^ville, in the Revue de Vhistoire des Religions, 1882 (vol. iv.), 
 p, 16. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 83 
 
 the request must be couched in the terms mo$t calcu- 
 lated to persuade ; and usually a present, op at any rate 
 definite promises, must be added. And such are the 
 motives actually revealed in prayer and sacrifice, or 
 rather to escape the misleading associations of the 
 mystic sense often given to these terms let us say, of 
 petition and offering. 
 
 Prayer at first is and can j>e nothing more 7 
 than the demand for wealth and favours, 
 beginning with the things most indispensable to existence, 
 such as our " daily bread." I do not suppose there is a 
 single tribe in which prayer of this nature is unknown, 
 for all have something to gain from the superhuman 
 powers. "Be greeted 1" say the Hottentots to the new 
 moon. "Let us get much honey!" "May our cattle 
 get much to eat, and give much milk ! " l Soon, how- 
 ever, the circle of requirements expands. Supplications 
 are offered to the superhuman beings often in identical 
 terms by the most widely separated peoples to make 
 the rain fall, to put diseases to flight, to appease the 
 storm, or to secure victory over enemies. " Great Qua- 
 hootze!" cries the Nootka Indian, "let me live, not be 
 sick, find the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and 
 kill a great many of him." 2 You perceive that anything 
 like a moral idea, or even a feeling of chivalry, is absolutely 
 wanting at this stage of religious education. The sup- 
 pliants do not even take the trouble, as they would do 
 later on, to transform the national enemy into an enemy 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 272. 
 
 2 Brinton, Myths of the New World, second edition, p. 316: New 
 York, 1876. 
 
84 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 of the gods, in order to justify the demand for their 
 intervention. Their help is secured by the best offer. 
 
 The primitive theory of sacrifice answers 
 to the same ideas. The Karens of Burmah 
 go so far as to say that it is useless to demand anything 
 of the gods without at the same time giving a proof of 
 generosity; and in the interior of Africa, where the 
 custom of hongo prevails (a toll more or less forcibly 
 levied by the petty local chieftains on travellers), the 
 Negro declares that you must never pass before the abode 
 of a spirit without leaving a sacrifice, if it is but a little 
 spittle. 1 The Negroes of Sierra Leone offer cattle in 
 order " to make god glad yery much, and do Kroomen 
 good." 2 
 
 Munera, crede mihi, capiunt hominesque, deosque 
 Placatur donis Jupiter ipse datis. 3 
 
 How many people, civilized though they be, are still 
 at this point in their conception of worship ! Worship 
 indeed is to them but a contract entered into on the prin- 
 ciple " do ut des," in which man serves the gods in 
 consideration of a reciprocity formally or tacitly accepted 
 by them. We read in an Indian hymn addressed to 
 the sacrificial spoon: "Well filled, Spoon, descend 
 below; well filled, ascend towards us, as at a price agreed. 
 Let us exchange strength and vigour : give me, I give 
 to thee; bring me, I bring to thee." 4 All this is naive 
 
 1 J. L. Wilson, Western Africa, p. 218. 
 
 2 E. Clarke, Sierra Leone, p. 43 ; cited by Tylor, Primitive Culture, 
 vol. ii. p. 394. 
 
 3 Ovid, Ars Amatoria, iii. 653, 654. 
 
 4 Taittiriya Samhita, i. 8, 4, 1. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 85 
 
 enough ; but as an example of the length to which men 
 may go on this path, we note the following passage from 
 the Taittiriya Samhita of the Yajur Yeda : "If you wish 
 to injure any one, say to Surya, < Smite such a one, and I 
 will give you an offering ; ' and Surya, to get the offer- 
 ing, will smite him." 1 Here the god descends to the 
 level of a vulgar bravo, and lets himself out to a man 
 whom the ideas of our own time would stigmatize as a 
 contemptible craven. Yet this is the very Surya, "god 
 amongst gods," who, according to the Rig Yeda, "departs 
 not from the right path." For the rest, there is not a 
 religion in the whole of antiquity in which the deity 
 allows negligence or parsimony in the matter of offerings 
 to go unpunished. Did not the Brahmans go the length 
 of proclaiming that the huge universe was created for 
 the sake of sacrifice ? 
 
 "We can trace back, in the same fashion, the motives 
 which underlie the other forms of sacrifice. When sub- 
 jects have obtained a favour of their chief, they reward 
 him by making him a present. This is the thank-offer- 
 ing. When they think he is enraged, they offer a gift to 
 appease him. This is the sacrifice of propitiation. If 
 they have really injured him, they attempt to disarm his 
 wrath by paying a fine, or inflicting a penalty on them- 
 selves. This is the sacrifice of expiation. 
 
 Man naturally offers his deities what he believes is 
 most necessary to them, or what he imagines will please 
 them most. First comes food. Gods, however, like men, 
 when once their appetite is satisfied, have more refined 
 tastes to gratify. The Negro offers strong drinks to hia 
 1 Taittiriya Samhita, vi. 4, 5, 6. 
 
86 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 deities ; the Siberian, furs ; the Redskin and the Ostiak, 
 tobacco. The idea that in the other world the same 
 wants are experienced as in this, is evinced by the cha- 
 racter of the sacrifices offered to their dead by all the 
 peoples of the earth; and the gods, whatever the origin 
 attributed to them, form a community, the conditions of 
 whose existence are hardly conceived, at a certain stage 
 of religion, to differ materially from those of the souls of 
 the defunct. 
 
 Human sacrifices appear to us the most absurd and 
 abominable of all; yet there is not a people that has 
 not practised this custom at some period or other of its 
 history. Hindus, Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, 
 even Tsraelites^ differ, in this matter, from the Negroes 
 of our own times in nothing save the object they assign 
 to this kind of sacrifice. 
 
 The aim is sometimes to assure to the distinguished 
 dead the continuance of the services which had been 
 rendered them in this world by the slaves and women 
 slaughtered at their tombs; sometimes as with the 
 Polynesians, whose gods are particularly greedy of human 
 flesh it is to offer the present most worthy of the 
 divine majesty, if not most agreeable to the celestial 
 palate. 
 
 intimidation Good-will, however, is not the only senti- 
 of the gods. ment on w ki c h one can re i v j n see ki n g to 
 
 extort benefits from one's equals or one's superiors. Even 
 the most powerful n-P fvn ^ r ^ fiOTn^timf^ mipfrptiblf* to 
 fear. Attempts will therefore be made_io intimidate the 
 superhuman beings by threatening words or gestures, 
 with the view of extracting a favour from them or avert- 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 87 
 
 ing their wrath. When the storm rages, the peasant of 
 the Palatinate offers the wind a handful of meal to 
 appease it; but it is not every race that is so good- 
 natured. The Payaguas of Brazil rush to meet the 
 tempest, brandishing lighted torches. The Botocudos of 
 Brazil and the Namaquas of Kaffirland shoot arrows at 
 it. The Negroes of the Gold Coast and the Papuans of 
 Malaynesia throw offerings into the sea to calm it ; but 
 the Guanches lash it with cords, just as Xerxes beat the 
 Hellespont with rods for dispersing his fleet. To this 
 very day, our peasants employ the same two-fold method 
 with their saints. "No doubt at a more advanced stage 
 of civilization such attempts at intimidation are confined 
 to the inferior spirits, the souls of the dead, the saints, 
 and the demons; but at first the distinctions of the 
 superhuman hierarchy are too fluctuating and undeter- 
 mined to offer any obstacle to the general application of 
 such methods. Does not Herodotus tell us that the 
 Getse shoot arrows at the Heaven itself? 1 Yet surely 
 this deity, if any, must be above all violence. 
 
 Side by side with these attempts to influ- 
 
 Sorcery. 
 
 ence the will of the superhuman beings 
 indirectly, we observe others intended to act directly 
 upon them. There is no potentate on earth so great 
 that he cannot be brought to reason by a stronger 
 than himself, and forced to surrender his power to his 
 conqueror. Now the gods are generally exempt from 
 physical coercion except in the case of fetishism, where 
 the spirit lodged in the object is henceforth the slave 
 of him who possesses it ; but since the gods have inys- 
 
 1 iv. 94. 
 
88 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 terious means of making their power felt, man asks 
 whether he, in his turn, cannot act upon them by ana- 
 logous methods. The only difficulty is to find them 
 out. Hence the practices of sorcery which, as one 
 would expect, are as numerous as they are bizarre 
 from the < cat's concert,' to which all uncivilized peoples, 
 without exception, have recourse, to put to flight the 
 assailant of the sun and moon in an eclipse, down to the 
 sorceries of vulgar magic and the evocations of fashion- 
 able spiritualism in our midst. 
 
 "We need not enter upon a course of comparative sor- 
 cery ; but it is not beside the mark to point out a few 
 examples of the reappearance in all ages and in every 
 part of the world of certain rudimentary conceptions as 
 to the means of forcing certain courses upon the super- 
 human powers. There is not a nation that has not 
 believed in the efficacy of incantations; there is none 
 that has not made use of lustrations, or that has not 
 kindled fires to put the demons to flight, or to hinder 
 the dead from tormenting the living. 
 
 It is especially on its pseudo-medical side that sorcery 
 has had free scope. According as diseases are attributed 
 by savage peoples to the departure of the soul or to the 
 entry into the body of a spirit that does not belong to 
 it, the treatment will aim, now at bringing back the 
 soul into its envelope, now at expelling the spirit to 
 which the evil is due. And this is effected by processes 
 which present a strange resemblance amongst the Negroes, 
 the Siberians, the Australians, the Japanese, the Chinese, 
 the natives of India, and those of the two Americas. 
 
 Sometimes it is deemed essential to make the spirit 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 89 
 
 thus expelled pass into the body of a living being, a 
 pebble, a scrap of wood, or some object which can be 
 thrown away, or perhaps into a rag suspended to a 
 branch or a nail fixed into the trunk of a tree. 
 
 It is a corollary of these beliefs that a malady may 
 be inflicted on a man by compelling a spirit to enter 
 into his body. In this connection we note, in the first 
 place, the practice of wounding or destroying a figure 
 made in the likeness of the intended victim. This cus- 
 tom, very common in our Middle Ages, was previously 
 known to the Chaldseans and Greeks, and is still employed 
 by the Hindus, the Negroes of the Congo, and the 
 Chippeways of North America. Next comes the bewitch- 
 ing of some object which has previously belonged in 
 an intimate manner to the enemy whose destruction 
 is sought a lock of his hair, the parings of his nails, 
 his footprints, sometimes even his proper name. This 
 superstition, which we meet with amongst the Negroes, 
 the Kaffirs, the Patagonians, the Eedskins, the Poly- 
 nesians, and various branches of the Indo-European race, 
 implies, besides the belief that death, like disease, is the 
 result of enchantment, the idea that the part is equivalent 
 to the whole, and that we may reach the person by means 
 of his representation or his possessions. 
 
 Side by side with the magic processes affecting human 
 health may be placed, as of equal importance, those 
 intended to influence atmospheric phenomena, and par- 
 ticularly the production of rain. Amongst the Eedskins 
 the sorcerer is known as the medicine-man, but amongst 
 the Kaffirs he is called the rain-doctor. I have already 
 had occasion to point out the identity of certain pro- 
 
90 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 cesses employed to secure rain amongst the most widely 
 separated peoples. The Bushman strives to obtain rain 
 by driving the hippopotamus the amphibious animal 
 par excellence over the fields ; and in doing so he acts 
 from the same motives which lead the Negro to throw 
 pitchers into the river, the Aryan to pour the sacred juice 
 of the soma upon the altar, the Samoans, the Apaches, 
 the Keramins of New South Wales, the Britons and the 
 Welsh to besprinkle certain magic stones, or the peoples 
 in Southern Europe to plunge their saints into the river. 
 In Eussia, the sorcerer, or occasionally the priest, has to 
 undergo this compulsory bath in person if he fails to 
 secure the rain. 1 
 
 All these analogies are explained by the fact that the 
 processes of sorcery are generally the result, not of a 
 simple caprice, but of some association between two 
 facts or two objects. Such is the power of logic, that 
 even at the bottom of unreason itself there is ever found 
 a spice of reason, or at any rate of reasoning. 
 
 The same remark applies to the methods of divination 
 by which man seeks to penetrate the secrets of the super- 
 human beings. The belief that all events of any con- 
 siderable consequence result from the will of the deities, 
 carries with it the idea that that will must be deter- 
 mined and formulated more or less in advance of the 
 event. Hence the desire to penetrate to it beforehand, 
 and to take advantage of the knowledge so gained. And 
 here the confusion between concomitance and causality 
 has free scope. For the rest, divination at the outset is 
 no more than a branch of sorcery. 
 
 1 An. Leroy Beaulieu, V Empire des Tsars: torn iii. La Religion, 
 Paris, 1889, p. 284. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 91 
 
 Finally, we must bear in mind that man. 
 
 Symbolism. . J \ ' 
 
 experiencing, as 1 nave shown above, a mixed 
 feeling of fear and trust towards his deities, ever dreads 
 them, as one dreads the unknown, but at the same time 
 seeks to draw near to them and realize a closer union 
 with them. Hence a series of attempts to seal an 
 alliance with the gods by some external act, to live 
 their life or become assimilated to their nature, from 
 the sacrificial banquets in which the savage is supposed 
 to partake of the food offered to the spirits, up to his 
 elaborate attempts to imitate their deeds and exploits. 
 When these attempts are supposed to have a direct and 
 forceful action on the superhuman beings, they come 
 under the category of conjurations ; but when they are 
 simply intended to simulate the presence of some deity, 
 to reproduce his movements, or to represent the relations 
 the worshipper desires to enter into with him, then 
 they are symbols and come under the category of 
 homage rendered to the divinity. Symbolism that is 
 to say, the representation of an idea by an action or 
 by an object which recalls it, in virtue of a natural 
 or conventional association is found even at the lowest 
 stages of religious evolution. I would classify symbols 
 as subjective, when their object is to express any shade 
 of sentiment; figurative, when they directly represent 
 a being or an abstract quality itself; and imitative, 
 when they aim at reproducing the supposed acts of 
 the real or imaginary being. 
 
 Figurative symbols, aiming at representing the^ deity 
 or one of his attributes, can hardl^_be^expected : before a 
 people has reached the conception of the deity as distinct 
 
92 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 from material beings or things. Subjective symbols, on 
 
 the contrary-Tare^ found even amongst the most backward 
 - 
 
 peoples. They may be divided into symbols of submis- 
 sion, of distress, of repentance, of joy, of love, and so 
 forth if, indeed, any enumeration can exhaust material 
 as diverse as the religious sentiment itself in all its most 
 delicate shades. Sometimes these symbols consist in a 
 conscious reproduction of the attitude which man spon- 
 taneously assumes under the domination of the senti- 
 ments he wishes to simulate or to express groaning, 
 leaping for joy, throwing kisses with the hand, falling 
 flat upon the belly before the object of adoration, cover- 
 ing the head with cinders, and so on. And here, as in 
 hypnotism, it often happens that the very fact of impres- 
 ing on the members and the features the characteristic 
 pose of a given emotion tends to produce it in the con- 
 sciousness. Sometimes men attempt to express their 
 spiritual state by the use of certain colours or the dis- 
 play of certain objects. In general, black is a colour of 
 ill augury; white, the emblem of joy; but there are 
 exceptions, notably in the case of the Negroes, who 
 paint the images of their dead white because the spirits 
 appear to them in a palish form. Finally, an elaborated 
 symbolism, such as the language of plants and flowers, 
 is sometimes found even amongst quite primitive peoples. 
 The Tahitians plant leafless shave-grass on the tombs as 
 the symbol of death ; and other peoples equally backward 
 symbolize their faith in the continuation of life by ever- 
 green plants. 
 
 Amongst the races who worship personified natural 
 phenomena, imitative symbolism chiefly consists in reprc- 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 93 
 
 ducing the course of such phenomena as the phases of 
 the moon, the movements of the planets and constella- 
 tions, the death and resurrection of the sun, the contests 
 of the luminous sky with the storm-cloud, the mysteries 
 of germination and of generation, or the production of 
 fire on earth and in heaven. Hence the considerable 
 place occupied by dancing in savage rites. Elsewhere, 
 death and resurrection are reproduced in pantomime as 
 an affirmation of belief in survival after death. Thus 
 certain Australian tribes celebrate initiatory rites in 
 which one of the neophytes lies on the ground whilst 
 the rest cover him with dust, after which he rises again 
 amidst general rejoicings. 1 
 
 The question has been much discussed 
 
 Did conjura- 
 tion precede whether worship sprang from sorcery, or 
 
 propitiation? 
 
 sorcery from worship. You will now under- 
 stand that this controversy is absolutely otiose. Con- 
 jurations and propitiations have probably been practised, 
 though at first with ill-defined and vaguely marked 
 distinctions, from the day when man first felt the 
 need of putting himself in communication with the 
 personified forces of nature. Even amongst the most 
 backward peoples we find this two-fold category of 
 actions, intended on the one hand to conciliate and 
 on the other to compel the superhuman powers. This 
 explains the complex nature of worship, which some- 
 times tempts us to despair of the possibility of re- 
 tracing its psychological origins. This also explains 
 the difficulty of determining in what category to place 
 
 1 J. Bonwick, The Australian Natives, in the Journal of the 
 Anthropological Institute, vol. xv. 1886, p. 206. 
 
94 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OP GOD. 
 
 certain acts which partake, or may partake, at once of 
 the character of homage, of symbolism, and of conjuration. 
 For instance, when we see the Abipones of South America 
 and the Negroes of Central Africa performing dances in 
 imitation of the movements of the celestial bodies, how 
 are we to know whether the rite rests on the belief that 
 they can compel the stars to pursue their periodic course, 1 
 or on the desire to drink in their life and so share 
 their destiny and power, or on the belief that they are 
 helping them in the accomplishment of their task, or on 
 the simple wish to pay them homage and give them 
 satisfaction by the "sincerest flattery" of imitation? 
 Not one of these notions is above or beyond the range 
 of ideas which permeate the lower levels of civilization, 
 as we may see by studying the complicated ceremonial 
 observed by savages towards their gods and their chiefs, 
 or even in their intercourse one with another. It is well 
 to note that all these ideas reappear amongst peoples 
 as advanced as the Aztecs, the ancient Egyptians, the 
 Hindus, and even the Greeks. 
 
 A closely connected question is that of priority as 
 between the priest and the sorcerer. The probability is 
 that at first every man was his own priest and his own 
 sorcerer; that is to say, he alternately invoked or conjured 
 the superhuman beings, varying his methods according to 
 the degree of power which he attributed to them or the 
 nature of the service he expected of them. 
 
 1 It is a common idea amongst savages that to prefigure an event 
 assures its occurrence ; hence the veritable pantomimes in which the 
 Redskins represent the capture of game or the defeat of the enemy 
 before starting on the chase or the war-path. 
 
II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OP GOD. 95 
 
 Little by little, a first line of demarcation was esta- 
 blished between the religious operations which can be 
 performed by any one, and those which require special 
 preparation or even a special temperament. Every one 
 continued freely to put himself into relations with the 
 superhuman beings by whom he supposed himself to be 
 surrounded, as is still the case with savages; but the 
 paterfamilias began to sacrifice on behalf of his family 
 and in honour of the most formidable or the most respected 
 powers. Finally, the still undistinguished functions of 
 the diviner, sorcerer and doctor, were assigned to indivi- 
 duals singled out for their performance by the command 
 of more or less real information, or by a predisposition 
 to hysteria, which is easily taken for inspiration. 
 
 In this sense it is quite correct to say that the priest- 
 hood, properly so called, issued from the domestic cultus, 
 not from sorcery. But cultus and sorcery alike pro- 
 ceeded from a religious state in which their respective 
 practices were indifferently conducted by any one, with- 
 out need of special qualification. For that matter, 
 the differentiation was never absolute. There are cases 
 in which sorcery remains the appanage of the chief, 
 and others in which the sorcerer takes advantage of 
 his prestige to make himself the priest par excellence. 
 We shall see that even in the bosom of the most highly 
 developed religions the priest never completely renounces 
 the practices of sorcery ; but it is with the assistance of 
 the higher divinities, and no longer in virtue of his per- 
 sonal power, that he now practises his exorcisms; and 
 they are directed exclusively against evil spirits. Be 
 that as it may, whatever solution we adopt as to the 
 
96 II. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 priority of these two institutions, it will affect neither 
 our point of departure nor our conclusion, nor even, 
 as we shall presently see, our view of the intermediate 
 development of the religious sentiment. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 (i.) SPIRITISM, FETISHISM, AND IDOLATRY. 
 
 WE have seen that the worship of natural objects 
 springs from the arbitrary extension of human personality 
 to every apparent source of life or even of movement. 
 If this explanation is correct, it follows that, from the 
 very first, worship must have been addressed, not to the 
 material object conceived as such, but to the personality 
 supposed to be embodied in it ; although this vague and 
 instinctive appeal to beings psychologically modelled 
 after man did not necessarily imply a conscious distinc- 
 tion between the internal personality and its envelope or 
 body. 
 
 Worshi ^ ^ rs ^ s ^o^ indeed, it might often seem 
 
 addressed that savages worship the objects themselves, 
 personality without reference to any spiritual attribute. 
 Prescott reports that the Dacotah will choose 
 a round stone at hazard, place it on the turf, then offer 
 it tobacco or feathers, and pray to it to avert some real or 
 imaginary danger. 1 In the Hawaian islands, Mr. Andrew 
 Lang informs us, the native enters upon athletic com- 
 petitions, provided with a stone that he has chosen on 
 a certain beach of the Archipelago. If he is victorious, 
 1 Cited by Lubbock, Origin of Civilizatio?i, p. 212. 
 II 
 
98 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 he will treat it as a god ; if not, lie will throw it away or 
 make an axe-head of it. 1 The same custom is found in 
 Africa. "If," said an intelligent Negro to the traveller 
 Bosnian, "any of us is resolved to undertake anything 
 of importance, we first of all search Qut a god to prosper 
 our designed undertaking ; and going out of doors with 
 this design, take the first creature that presents itself to 
 our eyes, whether dog, cat, or the most contemptible 
 animal in the world, for our god ; or perhaps, instead 
 of that, any inanimate object that falls in our way, 
 whether a stone, or a piece of wood, or anything else of 
 the same nature. This new-chosen god is immediately 
 presented with an offering, which is accompanied with a 
 solemn vow, that if he pleaseth to prosper our under- 
 takings, for the future we will always worship and 
 esteem him as a god. If our design prove successful, 
 we have discovered a new and assisting god, which is 
 daily presented with fresh offerings ; but if the contrary 
 happen, the new god is rejected as a useless tool, and 
 consequently returns to his primitive state." 2 In India, 
 to this very day, the workman worships his tools, the 
 housekeeper her marketing-basket, the fisherman his net, 
 the scribe his pen, and a form of worship which re- 
 appears elsewhere the banker his account-book. 3 These 
 customs appear to have been in existence as early as in 
 
 1 A. Lang, Was Jehovah a fetish-stone ? in the Contemporary 
 Review, March, 1890, p. 358. 
 
 2 Bosnian, cited by Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, p. 166. 
 
 8 "Of this custom, the most sensational example was to be found 
 among the Thugs, who used to worship the pick-axe which they carried 
 for speedy burial of their victims on the spot of the murder." Sir 
 Alfred Lyall, Asiatic Studies, London, 1882, p. 15. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 99 
 
 the Yedic epoch. 1 One is certainly tempted to say, 
 in such cases, that a spirit can hardly be assigned 
 to these things; yet whenever we succeed in piercing 
 below the surface of the savage's thought, it appears 
 that the object worshipped derives its whole religious 
 significance from the internal personality attributed to 
 it. A Negro who was asked how he could offer food to 
 a tree, explained to Halleur that this food was not offered 
 to the tree but to the spirit it contained, and that the 
 latter would only eat the spirit of the sacrifice. 2 We 
 shall have occasion to note the complete conformity of 
 this interpretation with the religious ideas of savages in 
 the old and the new worlds. 
 
 I do not maintain that man began by erecting this 
 soul of a thing into a separate or independent entity. 
 In our own day, as "Waitz well says, " the Negroes make 
 a distinction between the spirit and the material object 
 in which it resides, although they combine the two and 
 make a single whole of them." Mr. Im Thurn, again, 
 tells us that the natives of Guiana regard men, animals, 
 celestial bodies, atmospheric phenomena, and inanimate 
 objects, as beings of the same nature, alike composed of 
 a spirit and a body, and differing only in the extent of 
 their powers. 3 This combining of the body and the soul, 
 or rather this absence of any clear distinction between 
 
 1 A. Earth, The Religions of India-, translated by J. Wood : London, 
 1882, p. 8. Compare Habakkuk i. 16, for the like practices amongst 
 the Israelites. 
 
 2 Halleur, cited by Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, vol. ii. 
 p. 188. 
 
 3 Ira Thurn, Indians of British Guiana : in the Journal of the 
 Anthropological Institute, vol. xi. p. 377. 
 
 H2 
 
100 TIT. POLYDEMONISM AXD POLYTHEISM. 
 
 them, was probably the rule amongst pre-historic peoples, 
 who were far behind even the savages above referred to in 
 the matter of psychological speculation. But it results 
 from what I have said in my last Lecture that man 
 would never have come to invoke or adore any object, 
 had he not believed that in so doing he was dealing with 
 personalities modelled after his own. 
 
 Extension Little by little, whether from analogy 
 a sharper with the double nature he had discovered in 
 hetweTn^od himself, or i n consequence of dreams in 
 and soul, which he saw distant or -destroyed objects, 
 he must have extended to things a more or less sharp 
 distinction of soul and body; and, moreover, he must 
 have accepted for these souk of things the same power of 
 quitting their envelopes, or even surviving them, which 
 he allowed in the case of his own soul. Before the Incas 
 established sun-worship in the -valleys of Peru, the natives 
 adored stones, blocks of rock, or huacas. A Peruvian 
 legend tells us that, as one of these stones was being 
 broken, at the order of the Inca Eoca, a parrot flew 
 out of it and disappeared into a neighbouring stone, 
 which latter inherited the veneration accorded to its 
 predecessor. 1 Now if the new fetish had been treated 
 in the same way, no doubt the parrot, or some other 
 living creature, would have been seen to escape from it 
 too, as representing the veritable object of the popular 
 worship. Here we come upon the attitude of mind 
 described by Prof. Tylor as animism, and by Prof. C. P. 
 Tiele as polydemonism. 
 
 It is probable enough that, like human souls, the 
 1 Girard de Rialle, Mythologie comparee, Paris, 1878, vol. i. p. 14. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 101 
 
 spirits of things had the character of doubles in the first 
 instance. The Tahitians believe that not only plants 
 and animals, but natural and artificial objects also, have 
 souls, like man. If they are broken or destroyed, their 
 spirit survives and goes to the country of the dead. In 
 one of the Fiji islands the natives even point out a 
 certain stream running across the bottom of a hole, " in 
 which you may clearly perceive the souls of men, women, 
 beasts, plants, stocks, stones, canoes, houses, and all the 
 broken utensils of this frail world, tumbling along one 
 over the other, into the regions of immortality." 1 The 
 Redskins, as we are told by the early missionaries, admit 
 the existence of a personal spirit in the most common- 
 place objects. That spirit, when once the object itself 
 is broken, goes, like the soul of man, to the land of the 
 setting sun. 2 These peoples would have had no difficulty 
 in accepting literally the humorous description in Scarron'fc. 
 
 burlesque : 
 
 " J'ape^us 1'ombre d'un cochev 
 Qui, tenant 1'ombre d'une brosse 
 Nettoyait 1'ombre d'un carrosse." 
 
 Perhaps it is the same belief that gives rise to the- 
 custom, still widely spread among savages, and formerly 
 prevalent, as we have seen, amongst pre-historic peoples, 
 of breaking or burning the objects deposited near the 
 deceased. Some writers have maintained that the purpose 
 of this practice was to protect the offerings against 
 thieves; but the interpretation of it given by all the 
 
 1 Mariner, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, Edin- 
 burgh, 1827, vol. ii. p. 123. 
 
 2 Pere Lejeune, Relation de ce qui s^est passe en la nouvelle France 
 en Vannee 1634, pp. 5860. 
 
102 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 peoples who still observe it, shows that the real intention 
 is to assure the transmission of the object in question 
 to the spirit of the deceased. The superstitious fear 
 inspired by the deceased would generally suffice to protect 
 the offering against thieves, so that its destruction would 
 be unnecessary on that ground; but since the animals 
 destined to follow the deceased into the other world 
 were unquestionably sacrificed, it would seem only natural 
 and consistent to treat his arms, garments, and utensils 
 of every kind in like manner. 
 
 Here we come to a distinction which exercises a com- 
 manding influence on the ultimate direction of the reli- 
 gious evolution. 
 
 Belief in ^ ^ e ^j ec ^ s personified possess a de- 
 
 spirits, and terminate individuality and are practically 
 unlimited in their duration, like the heaven, 
 the sun, the moon, rivers and mountains, then their soul, 
 when thought of as capable of quitting its envelope, 
 will, in its turn, receive a strongly marked and distinc- 
 tive character. It will long perhaps indefinitely 
 retain, in the consciousness, its relations to the particular 
 object from which it is supposed to have issued, and 
 which it continues to guide from outside. But the souls 
 attributed to objects not distinguished by any salient 
 characteristic, easily confounded with a whole series of 
 similar objects, and destined ultimately to disappear, such 
 as men and animals, may indeed survive, in accordance 
 with the general theory of survival, but the recollection 
 of their connection with the objects from which they 
 first issued will soon be lost. Nothing will then be left 
 them but the vague character of semi -material beings, 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 103 
 
 anonymous and independent, invested with extraordinary 
 faculties and capable of arbitrary intervention in the 
 course of nature and in the destiny of man. 
 
 It is the action of these " spirits" which now explains 
 everything that cannot be attributed to the human will 
 or to the intervention of some specific deity; and this 
 ready explanation dispenses with all efforts to discover the 
 connection of cause and effect. This spiritism or, to adopt 
 M. Albert BeVille's excellent definition, this belief in spirits 
 detached from their natural basis and without necessary 
 connection with specific objects 1 is the dominating factor 
 in the lower stages of civilization generally, though it 
 remains undeveloped, indeed, amongst the peoples at the 
 very bottom of the scale, such as the Bushmen, the 
 Tierra del Fuegans, and the Samoyeds. In Siberia, Cas- 
 tren found many individuals who worshipped natural 
 objects, but who had never heard tell of spirits. 2 Such 
 evidence confirms the presumption that spiritism cannot 
 be a primitive phenomenon. 
 
 The souls of man and of animals, when not despatched 
 to a special world of their own, easily pass into the 
 general mass of spirits, whether because the memory of 
 the individuals to whom they belonged is lost, or because 
 they are regarded as themselves forming a specific class of 
 the spirits. Thus on the Congo the term Zombi signifies 
 at once the spirits, and the souls of the dead. It is the 
 same in the Marianne Islands, where both alike bear the 
 name of Anti. In like manner the spirits appear to be 
 
 1 Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. i. p. 79. 
 
 2 Castren, Nordische Reisen und Forschutigen, vol. iii. ; Vorlesungen 
 \iber die Finnische Mythologie, St. Petersburg, 1853, pp. 196, 197. 
 
104 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 recruited from the dead amongst the Polynesians and 
 the natives of the Indian Archipelago. In the Solomon 
 Islands, a traveller tells us that the only worship is that 
 of the dead. They become spirits u who do whatever 
 they like with the living." l 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer relies on these facts, 
 anc ^ others like them, to support his thesis 
 thd H that spiritism issued from necrolatry, or, in 
 other words, that the spirits are in every 
 case dead men whose individuality has in process of time 
 been effaced. But in many cases we can still recover 
 the links which distinctly attach the spirits to an ante- 
 rior personification of natural objects and phenomena. 
 There are tribes who have but one word to signify these 
 objects and the spirits themselves, though they perfectly 
 understand the distinction between the two. On the 
 Gold Coast there are the Wongs who live at liberty in 
 the fields, forests, rocks, hollow trees, mountains, caverns 
 and water-courses ; and, on the other hand, the sea, the 
 rivers, plants, ant-eaters, birds, and serpents, are also called 
 Wongs, and are treated accordingly. 2 In "Western Africa, 
 the Wanikas, when asked by the Eev. J. L. Krapf what 
 they meant by the word Mulungu, answered variously 
 that it meant the thunder, or the celestial vault, or the 
 author of diseases, or some kind of Supreme Being ; or 
 that the dead become Mulungm? It is well to note that 
 
 1 Lieut. F. Elton, Notes on Natives of the Solomon Islands : in 
 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1888, vol. xvii. p. 97. 
 
 2 Waitz, Anthropologie, &c., vol. ii. p. 183. 
 
 3 J. L. Krapf, Travels, Researches and Missionary Labours in 
 Eastern Africa, London, 1860, p. 168. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 105 
 
 we are now speaking of populations who are sometimes 
 represented as exclusively worshipping the dead. 
 
 Amongst the beliefs of the Eedskins we may detect 
 the different stages of the transition by which the per- 
 sonification of a thing passes to the status of a detached 
 spirit. The missionary Marquette, when navigating a 
 river of North America, was warned by his boatmen 
 that they would have to pass the cave of a terrible 
 demon. This demon, who devoured travellers, was 
 simply and solely a rock which divided the current at a 
 bend of the river. Here the spirit is still inherent in its 
 material envelope, as with Scylla and Charybdis in the 
 ancient tradition. The cataract of the Eiver Peihono 
 passed, in the same region, for the residence of terrible 
 spirits whose roarings sounded afar. They, too, devoured 
 passing travellers who ventured on the river, but they 
 could also surprise any one rash enough to fall asleep in 
 their neighbourhood. Here the spirits have already 
 acquired a certain independence, since, like the German 
 Lorelei, they can quit their retreat for a moment. Accord- 
 ing to Schoolcraft, the Eedskins tell mocking tales during 
 winter, because the spirits are frozen up under the ground 
 and cannot hear. 1 "We can hardly doubt that these must 
 be spirits of nature, though in this case it is not so easy to 
 attach them specifically to the various classes of pheno- 
 mena. Finally, all trace of connection disappears. School- 
 craft says that the Algonkins believe the whole world to be 
 animated by good and bad spirits, who rule the affairs of 
 man and his future destinies. This is full-fledged spiritism. 
 
 1 H .R Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Philadelphia, 
 1853-60, part iii. p. 492. 
 
106 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM:. 
 
 Indeed, it is not difficult to explain the process by 
 which the doubles of men and of things enter into the 
 mass of anonymous spirits. Ancestors are generally 
 regarded as the protectors of their descendants. On the 
 other hand, the spirits of inanimate things have their 
 respective spheres of action sharply determined by the 
 character of the objects to which they are attached. Now 
 let these attributes mingle, in a sort of cross-chasse*, or 
 rather by reciprocal extension of the powers reserved to 
 the two categories of superhuman beings, let the manes 
 of the sorcerer or the chief be invoked for the produc- 
 tion of rain, the stoppage of an inundation, the averting 
 of a storm, the fertilization of the harvest, and so forth 
 (as with the New Zealanders, Siberians, and Negroes); 
 and, further, let the spirits of nature be invoked to assure 
 bodily health or to protect the house (as amongst the 
 Finns); and you have only to remove from these two 
 varieties of spirits the traces of their respective origins, 
 for them to appear henceforth invested with analogous 
 attributes, identical in natural functions, and even alike 
 in aspect. 
 
 In losing the record of their connection 
 
 Form and .... 
 
 functions of with individuals or with specific objects, 
 the spirits naturally lose the character and 
 form of doubles, and yet they are far from being regarded 
 as immaterial in the sense which we attach to the word. 
 On the contrary, the most varied features and appearance 
 are attributed to them, and, in particular, forms borrowed 
 from all kinds of animals. We must not forget that, 
 to the savage, animals are not only man's equals, but 
 his superiors. They possess, in his eyes, a prestige 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 107 
 
 proportionate to their more mysterious habits and less 
 intelligible motives. Hence in particular the representa- 
 tion of spirits under the form of serpents and birds, so 
 widely spread amongst the peoples of the old and new 
 worlds. Elsewhere spirits assume fantastic and mon- 
 strous forms suggested by visions of the night or even 
 by the caprice of imagination. The essential point is, 
 that the form chosen must imply life and activity. If 
 the spirits of plants are never, or but very rarely, con- 
 ceived under the form of doubles, it is not because those 
 spirits are ancient human personages who bore the names 
 of plants, but simply because the vegetable has not a 
 sufficiently active and spontaneous physiognomy to repre- 
 sent a personality conceived after the model of our own. 
 
 We must note that the spirits become visible under 
 certain circumstances and to certain persons; or that they 
 reveal themselves to other senses than that of sight, by 
 a whistle, a murmur or friction. 
 
 Our folk-lore is full of traditions crediting the spirits 
 with every sound in the least degree unwonted, from the 
 cry of the night-bird to the whistling of the wind in 
 the forest ; but it is chiefly by their direct action on the 
 human body that the spirits manifest their existence. 
 
 They may either act at a distance or incorporate them- 
 selves in the body. Amongst the Dyaks, diseases are 
 attributed either to the spirits inflicting internal wounds 
 with invisible lances, or to their introducing themselves 
 into the body of their victim and so causing the disease. 
 The first case we shall call obsession ; the second, posses- 
 sion. This two -fold process is applicable to things as 
 well as to beings that is to say, the spirits can act on 
 
108 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 inanimate things from without, using them as imple- 
 ments (in which case these objects are talismans or 
 amulets), or they may embody themselves in a concrete 
 object (which then becomes a, fetish). This distinction is 
 already recognized by the greater number of savage races. 1 
 In the second case, the object, having become the body of 
 the spirit, will dispense the benefits of the latter, and 
 whoever possesses it (if it be capable of private appro- 
 priation) will become the possessor of the power attached 
 to it. This is the whole meaning of fetishism, which 
 may be defined as the belief that the appropriation of a 
 thing may secure the services of the spirit lodged within it. 
 Moreover, it is easy to imagine that there are means 
 of attracting spirits into bodies by the aid of special 
 methods and receipts. In old Calabar they manufacture 
 fetishes out of straw, rags, or wood. Then they expose 
 them in the open air to enable the spirits to come into 
 them. Amongst other tribes of Negroes, fetish-shops 
 are kept by certain sorcerers. The shopman, after inviting 
 the customer to take his choice, makes the spirit enter 
 the selected object by dint of the regulation hocus-pocus. 2 
 In like manner, the Finns manufacture a kind of dolls 
 or paras out of a child's cap filled with tow and stuck at 
 the end of a rod. The fetish thus made is carried nine 
 times round the church, with the cry, " Synny para!" 
 (Para, be born !) repeated every time, to induce a haltia 
 that is to say, a spirit to enter into it. 3 
 
 1 See above, pp. 72, 73. 
 
 2 J. Becker, Vie en Afrique, vol. ii. p. 306. 
 
 3 Castren, Vorlesungen u.s.w., p. 166. 
 
III. POLYDEMOXISM A1S T D POLYTHEISM. 109 
 
 Amongst ourselves, haunted houses and possessed 
 objects, the witches known to our rustics, and the table- 
 turning familiar in our drawing-rooms, clearly show that 
 these superstitions are not yet extinct, though they have 
 ceased, so to speak, to rank as religious phenomena. 
 Source of Fetishism, as I have just analyzed it, 
 fetishism, implies the conception of spirits capable of 
 existing unattached to material objects. No doubt, 
 if we choose to apply the term fetish to every object 
 capable of being appropriated, which is regarded as 
 the body of a superhuman power, it becomes inaccurate 
 to say that fetishism necessarily presupposes spiritism ; 
 for whenever man is led by some association to attribute 
 a propitious or disastrous influence on his fate to any 
 given object, he will pay his homage to the personality 
 with which he invests it, whether or not he regards that 
 personality as capable of separating itself from its mate- 
 rial envelope. In the latter case, the spirit is bound 
 up with the fate of its body. Castre'n tells us that 
 the Ostiaks worshipped a larch-tree, to the branches of 
 which they hung the skins of animals as offerings ; but 
 in consequence of these skins often being stolen by 
 travellers, they cut a block of wood out of the tree, 
 deposited it in a safe place, and transferred their homage 
 to it. In such a case, fetishism is absorbed into natur- 
 ism or physiolatry, as I have defined it in the course of 
 the preceding Lecture. 1 So, too, there are cases in which 
 
 1 I have elsewhere proposed to distinguish between primary 
 fetishism, in which man, personifying natural objects, chooses one as 
 an auxiliary or protector ; and secondary, or derived fetishism, which 
 implies the incorporation of an independent spirit in a material object. 
 
110 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 fetishism is absorbed in necrolatry; namely, when the 
 fetish consists in the remains of the deceased, or even in 
 one of his bones in which his personality is supposed to 
 have taken refuge. 
 
 I think it is better, however, to reserve the name of 
 fetish for objects which owe their supernatural powers 
 to the fact that a spirit from outside has taken possession 
 of them. Thus we may put an end to that veritable 
 quarrel of words which has risen between Positivists 
 of the school of Comte, and naturists like M. Albert 
 BeVille and even Prof. Max M tiller. We may declare 
 the naturists right when they say that fetishism (the 
 worship of material objects, frankly regarded as such) 
 does not constitute the whole religion of the Negro; and 
 we may say that Comte's disciples are also right when, 
 like M. Girard de Eialle, they lay at the basis of all 
 religions the tendency to consider natural objects, beings, 
 and phenomena, as possessing feelings and wills simi- 
 lar to those of man, and differing only in degree or 
 activity. 1 
 
 The transition from fetishism to idolatry 
 
 The idol an 
 
 elaborated is easily established. The idol may be 
 
 regarded as an elaborated fetish. The fetish 
 
 is an object supposed to be inhabited by a spirit to 
 
 which superhuman power is attributed, and the idol is 
 
 the fetish so fashioned or re-touched as to reproduce 
 
 The first form obviously does not involve an anterior conception of the 
 spirit as a distinct entity separable from its material envelope. Ori- 
 gines de Vidolatrie: in the Revue de VHistoire des Religions, vol. xii. 
 pp. 4, 5, note. 
 
 1 Girard de Kialle, Mythologie comparee, Paris, 1878, vol. i. p. 2. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. Ill 
 
 the appearance of the spirit supposed to reside in it. 
 It is now no longer the spirit that is conceived in 
 the likeness of the body, but the body to which, by a 
 sort of reflex action, the supposed traits of the spirit are 
 given. I must not be understood to class as idols all 
 images which represent superhuman beings, and are 
 therefore worshipped ; but only those which are regarded 
 as conscious and animated. Even so there is no great 
 religion, ancient or modern, without its idolaters. Doubt- 
 less enlightened Eoman Catholics, Brahmanists, and Bud- 
 dhists, are justified in repudiating the charge of idolatry 
 as far as they themselves or even their official doctrines 
 are concerned, in spite of the worship, to some extent 
 symbolic, which they accord to their representations of 
 superhuman beings. But the great herd does not always 
 observe these distinctions, and a Saint or Madonna that 
 rolls its eyes, drops tears, sheds blood, speaks, inflicts 
 diseases or wards them off, and sends rain or fine 
 weather to the fields, is as much an idol that is to say, 
 a fetish in human form as the veriest fetish of fetishes 
 amongst the Negroes, whether in human form or not, is 
 a fetish. 
 
 In China, when an idol is tardy in rendering the ser- 
 vices expected of it, it is torn from its temple and flung 
 into the mud ; but if the desired effect subsequently fol- 
 lows, it is cleaned up again, replaced, and perhaps pro- 
 mised a fresh gilding. Though pagan antiquity never 
 went so far as this in the treatment of the idols, it could 
 never completely free itself from the idea that its deities 
 resided in the images. Need I record the case of Eamses 
 sending to his father-in-law in Syria the statue of the 
 
112 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 god Khonsou to cure his sister-in-law ? Of the Tyrians 
 throwing chains on the statue of Baal Melkarth to pre- 
 vent his going over to the enemy ? Of the Eomans 
 bringing over the statue of the Magna Mater of Mount 
 Ida, at great expense, from Pessinus, in order to secure 
 them the victory over the Carthaginians? Of Stilpo, 
 banished from Athens for maintaining that the Minerva 
 of Pheidias was not the goddess herself ? Even in the 
 last days of paganism, its most intelligent apologists, 
 according to Arnobius, made it consist in worshipping, 
 not the gold and silver of the idols, but the deities 
 which their consecration had brought down into them. 1 
 St. Augustine reports Hermes Trismegistus as holding 
 that " attaching invisible spirits to visible and corporeal 
 things by means of certain processes, in order that the 
 latter may become, as it were, the animated bodies of 
 the spirits to which they are consecrated, is making 
 gods ; a great and marvellous power with which men are 
 endowed." 2 This is a definition which the Negro sor- 
 cerer, in his fetish-shop, and his Finn confrere animating 
 a para, would readily accept. 
 
 In Polynesia, they make figures of carved wood into 
 which the priests inject the souls of the dead or those of 
 the gods according to taste ; and when the spirit is in, 
 it can be ejected again by drawing it out into certain 
 feathers, which in their turn can pass it on to other 
 figures. We may add that when these figures are with- 
 out occupants, they retain a sacred character, but no 
 
 1 Advcrsus Gentes, vi. 17, cited by Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. 
 p. 163. 
 
 2 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, viii. 23; apud Tylor, vol. ii. p. 164. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 113 
 
 kind of worship is rendered them. This is a typical 
 example of the difference between an image and an idol, 
 and also of the assimilation of the idol to the fetish. 
 
 This assimilation is often pushed so far that, but for 
 the form, it would be impossible to distinguish between 
 idol and fetish. It is true that idols are often the objects 
 of public worship and would seem to escape individual 
 appropriation ; but the same may be said of fetishes 
 also, if they belong to a tribe rather than to a family or an 
 individual. Such, for example, were the Bethels, those 
 " living stones," as Sanchoniathon calls them, which 
 figured as palladiums in more than one ancient city. 
 We may see in Western Africa how the transition from 
 the private to the public worship of the idol-fetish takes 
 place, without any modification in its nature in the pro- 
 cess. It is often the domestic fetish of the chief which 
 accomplishes on a large scale for the whole community, and 
 under the direction of the official sorcerer, what private 
 fetishes do on a small scale for individuals; presiding 
 over atmospheric changes, healing epidemics, denouncing 
 criminals, and foretelling the future. What more did 
 the first idols of Greece, Egypt, India, or Assyria, do ? 
 
 Springs The simplest origin of idolatry is as fol- 
 
 of idolatry. j ows . Qiy en the presence of a spirit in a 
 certain object, the worshipper would feel himself in 
 closer communication with it if the form of this object 
 reproduced the likeness of the spirit. 
 
 But other origins may also be found. In the first 
 place, any resemblance between a natural object and the 
 supposed form of a spirit would raise a presumption that 
 the latter was present in the former, just as the appearance 
 
 i 
 
114 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 of a human body is evidence of the presence of the soul 
 or internal personality. The Zunis of North America 
 and the natives of the West Indies, when choosing 
 fetishes, prefer stones and scraps of wood that present 
 some resemblance to birds or animals. 1 Many peoples 
 worship rocks or trees, the outlines of which recall the 
 human features. From this to accentuating the resem- 
 blance by a few strokes of the axe or hammer is but a step. 
 
 In the second place, men would imagine that the spirit 
 would come by preference to dwell in a body made after 
 its own image. In Chaldea and in Assyria, where 
 maladies were attributed to spirits that bore the form of 
 fantastic animals, it was customary to carve these mon- 
 sters round the palaces in order to offer the spirits an 
 exact representation of their own bodies, and therefore 
 an abode preferable to the body of the invalid. 2 It is 
 the same with the Siamese, who represent the demons of 
 disease in human or quasi-human shape, and make them 
 pass into clay figures, which they hang on trees or 
 expose in streams. 3 
 
 Perhaps it is this superstition which reappears on the 
 Congo in the custom of making images of the crocodile 
 or the hippopotamus as a protection against the attacks of 
 these animals while crossing rivers. So, too, we read in 
 the book of Numbers (xxi. 6 9) that Moses had a brass 
 serpent, the Nehustan (2 Kings xviii. 4), raised on a pole, 
 
 1 Im Thurn, On the Races of the West Indies : in the Journal of the 
 Anthropological Institute, 1887, vol. xvi. p. 195. 
 
 2 C. P. Tiele, Religions de VEgypte et des peuples semitiques, Paris, 
 1882, p. 175. 
 
 3 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 162. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 115 
 
 for the Israelites to gaze at as a cure for serpent-bites. 1 
 In virtue of the same principle, many peoples believe that 
 the souls of the deceased pass by preference into statues 
 or portraits made in their own likeness. 2 Long before 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer, the author of the Wisdom of 
 Solomon connected idolatry with the worship of the dead. 
 " For a father afflicted with untimely mourning, when he 
 hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now 
 honoured him as a god, which was then a dead man, 
 and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies 
 and sacrifices." 3 
 
 The New Zealanders make images of carved wood in 
 honour of the deceased, and place them in his house or 
 by his tomb. They give these little statues clothes, and 
 talk to them, under the conviction that the spirit of the 
 departed dwells in them. 4 Amongst the Papuans, when 
 
 1 It is interesting to re-discover the same belief in the depths of 
 India. At Cowtha, near Koram, there is a temple dedicated to a 
 serpent-god Sufi-Nath, whom the worshippers pray to guard them 
 against the bites of reptiles. The legend declares that if any one is 
 bitten, he has only to get himself carried to the temple to be cured 
 (Indian Messenger, Dec. 16, 1888). Amongst the ancients, ^Esculapius 
 was the serpent-god, or at any rate his worship, which was of Phoeni- 
 cian origin, was connected with that of the serpent, regarded as the 
 image of Eshmun. This belief in the curative virtues of the serpent 
 reappears in the centre of Africa. According to Livingstone, " the 
 serpent is an object of worship, and hideous little images are hung in 
 the huts of the sick and dying." David and Charles Livingstone, 
 Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, London, 
 1865, p. 46. 
 
 2 Cf. Herbert Spencer, Sociology, 154158. 
 
 3 Wisdom of Solomon, xiv. 15. 
 
 4 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 159. 
 
 i2 
 
116 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 any one dies, the survivors go to the neighbouring forest 
 and cut a statuette or Korwar out of a bit of wood, 
 and then they invite the spirit to come and live in it. 
 The Ostiaks and the Samoyeds make rough statues in 
 the likeness of their relatives, and offer them food. In 
 the same way the ancient Egyptians multiplied statues 
 in their tombs, as receptacles for the double. " These 
 statues," says M. Maspero, "were more solid than the 
 mummy, and there was no limit to the number of them 
 that could be made. A single body offered the double 
 one chance of survival ; twenty statues gave him twenty 
 chances." 1 
 
 Sometimes this belief is combined with the idea that 
 the double survives in the bodily remains. The ancient 
 Mexicans made a paste of the ashes of their dead and 
 human blood, and then made an image in the likeness 
 of the deceased out of it. Amongst the inhabitants of 
 Yucatan, the distinguished dead were burnt, and their 
 cinders placed in statues, hollowed inside. 2 This is not 
 unlike the proceedings of the Egyptians in covering the 
 lid of the sarcophagus that contained a mummy, with 
 the sculptured likeness of the deceased. 
 
 But we must not conclude that idolatry always had 
 its origin in the worship of the dead. We have already 
 seen that the idol often issued from the fetish. In other 
 cases we may attach it still more directly to some natural 
 object previously personified. Pausanias speaks of a 
 sacred tree that the Corinthians worshipped in honour of 
 
 1 Maspero, Histoire dcs dmes dans VEgypte ancienne : in the Bulletin 
 de r Association scientifique de France, 1873, vol. xxiii. p. 381. 
 
 2 Herbert Spencer, Sociology, vol. i. p. 327. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 117 
 
 Bacchus at the command of an oracle. They made two 
 statues to this deity out of the wood of the tree, and in 
 the time of the writer these statues were still the object 
 of special veneration in the agora at Corinth. 1 In the 
 Antilles, where the sorcerers profess to understand the 
 language of plants, they make idols out of the wood of 
 trees supposed to have nominated themselves for the 
 distinction. 2 
 
 Moreover, we have already had occasion to point out 
 that the form of the idols is not always human. Indeed, 
 it may vary infinitely, provided it always represents 
 something living, as we may see from the frequent 
 occurrence of idols of animal or fantastic shape. 
 
 In the long run, however, the human form gained the 
 preponderance in the representation of the most powerful 
 spirits, whether because man had now come to regard 
 himself as the most exalted being in nature, and knew 
 not what better to do than to attribute his own features 
 to the higher powers ; or whether, by dint of attributing 
 to the deities human sentiments and motives, he was 
 instinctively drawn to lend them the human figure like- 
 wise. Perhaps the transition between the two forms is 
 marked by those idols with a human head and an animal 
 body, or an animal head and a human body, which we 
 find in the temples of the Egyptians, Hindus, ancient 
 Americans, and others. 
 
 Some authors have attempted to discover 
 
 Relation of . r 
 
 idolatry to marvels of symbolism in these monstrous 
 combinations. They maintain, for example, 
 
 1 Pausanias, ii. 2. 7. 
 
 2 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 197. 
 
118 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 that the artist started with the human form in his repre- 
 sentation of the gods, but introduced wings to indicate 
 their power of transporting themselves through space, 
 fins to show that they could live in the water, a lion's 
 body to denote their courage, or a bulPs head to repre- 
 sent their strength, just as he sometimes gave them a 
 number of arms or heads with the same intent. 
 
 Unquestionably, the most enlightened exponents of 
 the ancient worships thus interpreted the monstrous 
 forms of their gods at a period when they began to cause 
 scandal; but it is none the less evident that at first 
 the reality of these representations was believed in. 
 " Animal forms in which the gods were clothed," 
 M. Maspero well remarks, apropos of the Egyptian 
 deities, " have not an allegorical character. They indi- 
 cate an animal- worship which reappears in more than one 
 ancient and modern religion. The ambiguous forms them- 
 selves, half-man, half -beast, simply prove the ignorance 
 and credulity of the ancients in the matter of natural 
 history." 1 Since the presence of such creatures on earth 
 was supposed to be possible, a fortiori the superhuman 
 world might be peopled by them; for their very gro- 
 tesqueness gave an extra assurance of the reality of 
 their existence. At the outside, if we are to allow 
 anything at all to the invention of the artist or the 
 mythologist, we can only admit that the grotesque combi- 
 nation was due to a naive desire to give a more adequate 
 representation of superhuman beings, by combining with 
 the traits derived from man, the forms of beasts conse- 
 crated by tradition, and, for that matter, necessary to 
 1 Revue de VHistoire des Religions, vol. i. p. 121. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 119 
 
 indicate the individuality of the various deities. It 
 appears that in the hieroglyphics of the first dynasties, 
 the great deities of Egypt are invariably represented in 
 the shape of animals. 
 
 But many writers have gone far beyond this. Indeed, 
 the theory is still widespread that idols are symbols, the 
 original significance of which has been lost by degenera- 
 tion. According to this theory, which is outlined as 
 early as in the Wisdom of Solomon, idolatry in general 
 would represent, not an advance, but a degradation. 
 Man, after having conceived the deity as pure spirit, 
 figured it forth symbolically under material traits, and 
 then came to regard these supposed portraits as divine 
 individualities, the temporary or permanent abodes of 
 the gods. 
 
 I am far from denying that in certain cases an image 
 may have become an idol by its primitive meaning and 
 purpose being forgotten. History shows us indubitable 
 examples of religious decline in which idolatry, always 
 latent in the popular superstitions, re -ascends, as it were, 
 to the surface of worship. 1 In the bosom of the same 
 system the image, which in the mind of its author or of 
 its reproducer has a merely symbolic significance, may 
 become a veritable fetish to others. But these facts, 
 which are explained by survivals or local infiltrations, 
 
 1 The example of Buddhism is familiar. Surely nothing can be 
 more contrary to the teaching of Buddha than the idolatrous worship 
 with which the masses now surround his images ; and in like manner 
 the emperor Si-tzong, in the 16th century, was obliged to combat a 
 similar abuse by forbidding the erection of images of Confucius in the 
 temples raised to his memory. De Harlez, La religion nationale des 
 Tartares orientaux, &c., Brussels, 1887. 
 
120 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 cannot weigh against the combined observations of eth- 
 nography and history, which everywhere show us idols 
 issuing from fetishes by a series of easily-traced steps. 
 
 The widespread worship of stones erected 
 
 Idolatry t r 
 
 a step in endwise is itself absolutely fetishistic; but no 
 
 progress. . n -i ; 
 
 sooner is a spot 01 red painted on the stone, 
 as in Southern India, than we stand on the threshold of 
 idolatry. The same distinction may be drawn between 
 the wooden stake to which sacrifices are offered by the 
 Baguirmis of Africa, and the staff of the Brazilian 
 sorcerers, surmounted by a gourd, pierced with a hole 
 to represent the mouth. Sometimes they clothe the 
 stick or stone, covering it with stuffs and ornaments, 
 as in the Society Islands, where they worship a frag- 
 mentary column clothed in native costume. Then sculp- 
 ture comes in. On the top of the pillar a rude head is 
 carved ; this brings us to the hermes and the doll, which 
 already mark striking progress in the development of 
 religious art. Next, the limbs are traced on the stem 
 of the column, and then carved out and thrown into 
 attitudes of life and motion. 
 
 All these steps may be traced amongst the Negroes of 
 tropical Africa, where idolatry is no less clearly developed 
 than pure and simple fetishism. So, too, amongst the 
 Samoyeds, where we find, side by side with complete 
 statues of a rude description, pillars surmounted by a 
 human head, and mere stones dressed in coloured stuffs. 
 
 Perhaps you will ask me how I know that these 
 parallel forms succeeded each other in this definite order. 
 Apart from the logical necessity of supposing that in art 
 aiid religion alike man advanced from more elementary 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 121 
 
 to more highly developed forms, we have in this case the 
 evidence of history, especially amongst that people in 
 which idolatry received its fullest development. 
 
 The Greeks began, like the rest, by worshipping blocks 
 of stone and scraps of wood, regarded as the bodies 
 of their deities. Pausanias tells us, apropos of thirty 
 shapeless stones worshipped as gods at Pharee, in Achaia, 
 that amongst the Greeks unhewn stones had in very 
 ancient times received divine honours. 1 "The natural 
 advance," says M. Maxime Collignon, "consisted in giving 
 shapeless stones a regular form, however rudimentary. 
 .... Zeus and Hera are thus presented on the coins 
 of the island of Ceos. ... At Sicyone, the most ancient 
 image of Zeus-Meilikhios was a pyramid, that of Artemis 
 Patroa a column. Such, too, was the form of the ancient 
 Hera of Argos ; and perhaps we may discover a reference 
 to these old representations of the deity in a painting in 
 Pompeii, which represents a group of Erqses and a Psyche 
 sacrificing before a column, attached to which are a tiara 
 and a sceptre. ... As art advances, characteristic fea- 
 tures are added to these pillars a head, arms, or phallic 
 emblems. This is the origin of the Hermes column 
 surmounted by one or many heads." 2 The same deve- 
 lopment takes place in wood as in stone : witness the 
 transition from the square blocks which represent the 
 first deities of certain Greek cities, to the xoana which 
 even in the best days of art were the most popular images 
 amongst the worshippers. 
 
 It must not be supposed, for that matter, that even in 
 
 1 Pausanias, vii. 22. 4. 
 
 2 Max Collignon, Mytholugie figuree de la Grece, pp. 11 13. 
 
122 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 the most advanced religions the credit of an image is 
 proportionate to its artistic merit. A roughly coloured 
 virgin, or an old saint who has almost lost the human 
 shape, will often excite a deeper veneration in simple 
 souls than a Madonna of EaphaePs or a statue by 
 Michael Angelo. 
 
 (ii.) THE DIVINE HIERARCHY. 
 
 The great ^> ^ s amongst the populations of incoherent 
 nature-gods, imagination, without stable social organiza- 
 tion, and with little connection in their ideas, that 
 fetishism and polydemonism reach their maximum of 
 intensity, and smother all other forms of worship. 
 The genii of nature that is to say, the superhuman 
 beings associated with the production of certain spe- 
 cific phenomena, and deriving some degree of fixity 
 of sphere and function from the consciousness of this 
 connection are, amongst such races, relegated more 
 and more to the background by the pullulation of the 
 little anonymous and detached powers, which the Negro, 
 the Eedskin, or the Australian feels far nearer to him, 
 which he understands how to manage, and which he pos- 
 sesses, or supposes he possesses, more direct and efficacious 
 means of controlling. Not that the divinities of nature, 
 as representatives of natural phenomena, entirely dis- 
 appear. Their survival in the background is attested in 
 the case of many peoples wholly given over to spiritism, 
 by the belief in a supreme god generally the heaven or 
 the sun who is sometimes made the creator, but from 
 whom they withhold the attentions granted to the lowest 
 of the spirits. The Odshis hold the heaven to be the 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 123 
 
 mightiest of deities, but they think he has delegated 
 the government of the world to the inferior spirits. 1 In 
 Dahomey, it is the sun who occupies the supreme place ; 
 but there, too, his supremacy is purely theoretical. 2 The 
 natives of Timor in the Indian Archipelago also regard 
 the sun as their chief deity ; but they expect neither good 
 nor ill from him, and explain that he is too high to trouble 
 about them, and too good to injure them. 3 Finally, the 
 Californians concentrate their homage upon the inferior 
 spirits, adding that the sun and moon used to love them, 
 but that now these deities no longer concern themselves 
 with man. 
 
 In this vague notion of a superior god who has lost 
 his power or is inaccessible to emotion, the vanishing 
 traces of a previous monotheism have sometimes been 
 found; but I believe what it really implies is simply 
 the existence of a phase of religion in which the regents 
 of the heavenly bodies or the chief natural phenomena 
 retained an importance proportioned to their real place 
 in nature, while care for the destinies of man was 
 left to other superhuman beings. It is not monotheism, 
 then, but nature-worship, that is presupposed. 
 
 Amongst other peoples of better mental endowments, 
 however, or more favoured by circumstances, the parasi- 
 tical growth of spiritism has failed to stifle the worship 
 
 1 Waitz, Anthropologie^ vol. ii. p. 171. 
 
 2 A. Keville, Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. i. p. 56. 
 
 3 De Backer, UArchipel Indien, p. 227. According to Du Tertre, 
 cited by Lubbock (Origin of Civilization, p. 254), a similar notion 
 prevails among the Caribs. 
 
124 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 of the great natural deities, which directly springs out of 
 the physiolatry explained in my last Lecture. 
 
 Prof. Pfleiderer justly remarks : " Though this belief 
 in spirits had great vogue among the Latins, no less than 
 among the old Iranians, Slavs, Germans, and Pelasgians, 
 yet there never was a time in any of these peoples when 
 the spirits took the place of gods, and were the highest 
 or even the sole objects of worship." 1 In my opinion, 
 not only the Greeks and Hindus, but the Egyptians, the 
 Chinese, and even the Mesopotamians, might have been 
 added to the list. 
 
 From the Let us take, for example, the words which 
 thlfodof nave served the Hindus and the Greeks 
 the sky. respectively to designate the celestial vault 
 and the ruler of the heavens : in the one case, Ouranos 
 and Zeus; in the other, Yaruna and Dyaus. It is 
 probable that before their separation the Indo-Europeans 
 already possessed the equivalents of these two terms to 
 designate the heaven, under some such forms as dyu and 
 varana ; and whereas the Greeks apply the first of these 
 names to the celestial lord, Zeus, and the second to the 
 firmament properly so called, Ouranos, the Hindus dif- 
 ferentiated the other way, making Varuna figure as the 
 
 1 Philosophy of Religion, London, 1888, vol. iii. p. 111. Professor 
 Pfleiderer has long contended that the religious sentiment must, in 
 the first instance, have addressed itself to natural objects and pheno- 
 mena, or rather to the quasi-human personality with which man 
 invested them by analogy, though the distinction between this per- 
 sonality and its envelope or body was not very clearly drawn in the 
 consciousness, Der Religion, HIT Wesen und Hire Geschichte, Leipzig, 
 1869, vol. ii. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 125 
 
 god of heaven, and Dyaus as the visible sky itself. This 
 is enough to raise a strong presumption that the distinc- 
 tion between the personified heaven and the god of the 
 sky is subsequent to the separate development of the two 
 languages ; and this presumption is decisively confirmed 
 by the fact that Ouranos still continued to be a mytho- 
 logical personality amongst the Greeks ; whereas amongst 
 the Hindus, as Prof. Max Miiller has luminously ex- 
 plained, traces are found in the Yedas of a period when 
 Dyaus was not only personified but even received the 
 epithet of Pitar, and was thus the full equivalent of the 
 Hellenic Zeus pater and the Latin Ju-piter. 1 
 
 The very epithets assigned to him, the Most High 
 (ityforTo?), the Thunderer (/ce^aJwo?), the Eainer (VGTLO<S\ 
 the Cloud-gatherer (i/e^eA^-ye^er*??), and so forth, show 
 that the Greeks never lost the reminiscence of the time 
 when Zeus was identical with the sky and its brilliant 
 or stormy manifestations. The same may be said of the 
 Latins, amongst whom such expressions as "sub Jove 
 vivere " for " to live in the open air," enlighten us as to 
 the primitive nature of the divine being, to whom an old 
 poet thus alludes : 
 
 "Adspice hoc sublime candens quern invocant omnes Jovem." 
 
 Here, again, the parallel with Yaruna is complete. In 
 the Yedas, he is sometimes said to have created the sun, 
 and sometimes it is called his eye. Some of the hymns 
 would depict him as a king and a judge, the universal 
 creator ; others say that he clothes himself alternately in 
 white and black garments, that the celestial waters flow 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Hibbert Lectures for 1878, p. 143. 
 
126 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 from his mouth, as from the hollow of a reed, and that 
 the celestial fire springs from his belly in the clouds. 1 
 Amongst the Persians, Ahura Mazda, the omniscient 
 lord, is a deity so completely disentangled from nature 
 that it has often been doubted to what phenomenon he 
 could be attached. Yet the hymns describe him as clad 
 with a luminous, shining body, visible from afar; they 
 call him the firmest of the gods because he is clad in 
 the firm stone of the heaven. 2 And, for that matter, 
 Herodotus calls attention to the fact that the Persians 
 worship Zeus that is to say, their supreme god on the 
 summits of mountains, " giving the name of Zeus to the 
 whole sphere of heaven." 3 Amongst the Egyptians, side 
 by side with the solar disc, Aten, we find the lord of the 
 Disc, and even "the hidden soul of the lord of the Disc." 
 Horus, too, according to Maspero, before typifying the 
 rising sun, was previously the part of the universe situ- 
 ated on high (hori), the actual substance of the firma- 
 ment, the heaven-father of the gods, who was insensibly 
 transformed into a separate god, living in the heaven. 4 
 
 In Mesopotamia, Anu, " the hidden," represents the 
 god of heaven, side by side with Ana, " the exalted 
 one," who personifies the heaven itself. 5 
 
 So, too, amongst the Chinese we find Tien, the per- 
 
 1 Rig Veda, viii. 41, 10. v. 85, 3, 
 
 2 James Darmesteter, Essais Orientaux, pp. 120, 121. 
 
 * Herodotus, i 131. 
 
 * La MytJiologie Izgyptienne, in the Revue de VHistoire des Religions 
 for Jan.-Feb. 1889, vol. xix. p. 5. 
 
 5 Tiele, Histoire des religions de VJ^gypte et des peuples semitiques, 
 p, 187. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 127 
 
 sonified heaven, and Shang Ti, the celestial emperor. 
 Amongst the Finns, Ukkho, the grandfather, and Yu- 
 mala, the god of Thunder, who provided the generic 
 name for deity when supplanted by Ukkho in his specific 
 relations with the firmament. 
 
 This seemingly contradictory duality of conception, 
 which applies to many other divine personifications, may 
 be explained either as a juxtaposition of the beliefs of 
 several communities who mingled their traditions at some 
 period or another, or, more probably, as the mingling 
 of the beliefs of different epochs superposed one upon 
 another without any mutual exclusiveness. But in either 
 case it bears witness to a direct connection between the 
 god of the object and the deified object itself. Admitting, 
 then, an early period in which nature-worship prevailed, 
 is it not obvious that the worship rendered to the rulers 
 of nature springs direct out of the worship offered to the 
 personified phenomena themselves? What need is there, 
 then, to postulate an intermediate period in which the 
 gods of these phenomena, having become simple spirits, 
 were absorbed into the general rank, only to regain their 
 primitive importance once more at a later period ? 
 
 Not only is evidence of any such interregnum totally 
 wanting, but it even appears that the very doubling of 
 heaven, of earth, of the sun, of the moon, of the dawn, 
 of the storm, &c., into a visible or sensible phenomenon 
 on the one hand, and the spirit presiding over that phe- 
 nomenon on the other, has served to increase the religious 
 preponderance of the deities in question, by leaving the 
 god thenceforth free from the limitations of his body, 
 and so enabling him to fulfil more general functions, and 
 
128 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 to exercise his activity in a more extended sphere. Thus 
 the Zeus, father of men and gods, ruler of all things, 
 guardian of the family and of the city, inspirer of wisdom, 
 and avenger of perjury, is a far more august personage 
 than even the Zeus who scatters the rain over the fields 
 of the Athenians, or makes Olympus tremble with the 
 nodding of his brow. 
 
 On the other hand, it is probable that even 
 
 Spirits 
 
 promoted to amongst the peoples most predisposed to the 
 worship of nature, when certain spirits (from 
 whatever cause) had acquired marked pre-eminence, they 
 frequently took their place at the head of the super- 
 human world side by side with the great deities of nature. 
 This must have been the case with the spirits to whom 
 the production of the abstract phenomena most closely 
 concerned in the destiny of man had been ascribed. It 
 is probable that the gods of disease, of war, of death, of 
 plenty, and of certain moral qualities, were in many 
 cases not nature gods, but spirits directly created on 
 the analogy of the superhuman powers whose action was 
 supposed to be manifested in natural phenomena and the 
 ordinary events of life. Even the most backward peoples 
 are not without their abstract deities, or rather their 
 deities who produce abstract phenomena. The Mintiras 
 of Malacca attribute every disease to its own hantu. It 
 was the same with the early Chaldeans. In Polynesia, 
 as formerly in Mesopotamia, every part of the body has 
 its special spirit. The Iroquois, the Arancans, the Mu- 
 seronghis of the Lower Congo, the Khonds, and the Maoris, 
 all have gods of war. The Iroquois have a spirit of 
 sleep, and the jib ways a god of death represented as a 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 129 
 
 walking skeleton. In Shintoism, which affirms the exist- 
 ence of eight million deities recruited from the souls of 
 heroes, the rivers, the mountains, the waterfalls, and the 
 great trees, the only gods particularly adored throughout 
 the empire, apart from the great solar deities, are the 
 genii of Pity, of Wealth, and of Medicine. 1 It is no great 
 step from these abstract personifications to the Pantheon 
 of the Eomans, where, as M. Preller points out, we find 
 deities of all the events alike of nature and of humanity, 
 all the vicissitudes of human life and activity, all the 
 relations and all the enterprizes of civil life. 2 It was the 
 same with the Greeks, though there the tendency was 
 restrained by their anthropomorphism. Plutarch tells us 
 that Themistocles, having levied a contribution on the 
 island of Andros in the name of two deities, Persuasion 
 and Force (HeiOco KOI B/ai/), the inhabitants refused, invok- 
 ing the commands of two quite equally potent deities, 
 Poverty and Incapacity (Hevlav KCU Awopiav). 3 We must 
 note, however, that where such personifications mount 
 to the first rank, as amongst the Parsees and the Brah- 
 mans, it is generally by dint of a very advanced system 
 of metaphysical speculation. 
 
 Apotheoses Under the category of spirits promoted to 
 
 of men. a higher grade, may likewise figure the souls 
 
 of illustrious personages who have actually lived chiefs, 
 
 sorcerers, warriors, and others. Generally speaking, 
 
 savages accord the dead a worship proportionate to the 
 
 1 Isabella Bird, Shintoism, in Religious Systems of the World, 
 London, 1890, pp. 98, 99. 
 
 2 Preller, Romische Mythologie, Berlin, 1858, pp. 45, 596631. 
 
 3 Themistocles, xxi. 
 
 K 
 
130 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 vividness of the recollection they have left behind them. 
 They mostly confine themselves to invoking the rela- 
 tives whom they have personally known. " Ask the 
 Negro," says M. du Chaillu, " where is the spirit of his 
 great-grandfather, he says he does not know, it is done. 
 Ask him about the spirits of his father or brother who 
 died yesterday, then he is full of fear and terror." 1 But 
 on the shores of the Tanganyika and the neighbouring 
 country, Lieutenant Becker tells us that the shades of 
 certain illustrious dead escape this oblivion. u They 
 make public sacrifices to them, and the tribe considers 
 them its permanent protectors." 2 Amongst the Ama 
 Zulu, Bishop Callaway tells us, the worship of ancestors 
 does not extend beyond the father. They do not so 
 much as know the names of more distant ancestors. 
 Nevertheless the whole nation places at the head of its 
 innumerable spirits a superhuman being named 'Mkulu- 
 kulu, the great -great -father, who is regarded as the 
 creator, the legislator, and the first ancestor. No doubt 
 it would be hard to say whether in this case it is a real 
 progenitor who has been raised to the dignity of uni- 
 versal creator, or a nature-spirit that has been promoted 
 to the rank of ancestor; but the same difficulty exists 
 with regard to almost all the gods who have been 
 regarded as founders of the race, or even of the state, 
 such as the Hindoo Yama or the Peruvian Manco Capac. 
 Certain natives of Siberia pay honours to the figures 
 of the dead for three years ; after which they are buried 
 and heard of no more ; but if the deceased is a celebrated 
 
 1 Du Chaillu, Transactions of the Ethnological Society, vol. i. p. 308. 
 s J. Becker, La Vie en Afrique, vol. ii. p. 298. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 131 
 
 shaman, his statue becomes the object of permanent 
 worship. 1 We may cite for comparison the history of 
 -^sculapius amongst the Greeks. Homer simply speaks 
 of ^Esculapius as a faultless physician (irjr^p a/xJyuwi/). 2 
 Subsequently, as Herbert Spencer has pointed out, he 
 has altars and temples dedicated to him; his worship 
 extends from Asia Minor over the whole Greek world, 
 and at last he is hailed as " The guider and governor 
 of the Universe, preserver of the World, and guardian 
 of the Immortal Gods." 3 The question always remains 
 whether we have to do with a historical personage, or 
 whether we are to see in this god of medicine an ancient 
 serpent-god, or a representative of some natural pheno- 
 menon, or even, as M. Maury supposes, an ancient per- 
 sonification of fire, an analogue of Agni, the succourer. 4 
 In any case, when we think of the important place 
 occupied by the worship of heroes in Greece, we need 
 not be surprised to find the dead establishing them- 
 selves even amongst the great gods of Olympus by 
 securing the attributes of more or less effaced nature- 
 gods. We may say that in the classical mythology there 
 is a continual cross-stream of influence between the gods 
 and the heroes. When gods are represented as magnified 
 men, it is no wonder that magnified men should come to 
 be regarded as gods. 
 
 1 Ad. Erman, Travels in Siberia, Cooley's translation, London, 1848, 
 vol. ii. p. 51. 
 
 2 Iliad, iv. 194, and elsewhere. 
 
 3 ^Elius Aristides, Opera, Oxford, 1722, vol. i. p. 37: 6 TO TTCCI/ aywv 
 KCU vefjuav ariarrjp TWV oAooj', KCU <uAa TOJI/ a^avarcov. 
 
 4 A. Maury, Religions de la Grece antique, Paris, 1857, vol. i. pp. 
 448 sqq. 
 
132 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 At this very day, India shows us the process of 
 apotheosis in the very act, at least in the case of the 
 secondary deities, whose ranks are constantly opened to 
 the manes of di tinguished men, and, above all, such as 
 have made themselves objects of terror during their life- 
 time. 1 It is true that their deification only rises to the 
 secondary rank ; but at the time when Hindu mythology 
 and Hindu society alike were in course of formation, the 
 secondary divinities in their turn may have had facilities 
 for reaching the higher places in the Pantheon. 
 
 Genii of There is yet another category of divinities 
 Species, which has exercised a certain influence on 
 the development of polytheism, though it does not suffice 
 to furnish all its elements, and still less, as Auguste 
 Comte would have it, to explain the conception of spirits 
 detached from bodies. 2 I refer to the genii of species. 
 
 The conception of a species implies an effort of gene- 
 ralization too great for many of the peoples who have 
 reached the phase of spiritism. The Kamtskadals seem 
 to have no general name for " fish " or " bird," and they 
 distinguish between the different kinds of living things 
 by the name of the month in which they most abound. 3 
 The Damara of South Africa "has no one name for a river, 
 but a different name for nearly every reach of it." 
 The Australians have a name for every species of vege- 
 table and animal, but no general term for "tree," " bird," 
 
 1 Sir Ch. Lyall, The Religion of an Indian Province, in the Fort- 
 nightly Review for 1872, p. 133. 
 
 2 Philosophic Positive, second edition, vol. v. pp. 74 sqq. 
 
 3 S. S. Hill, Travels in Siberia, London, 1854, vol. ii. p. 402. 
 
 4 F. Galton, Tropical South Africa, London, 1853, p. 176. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 133 
 
 or "fish." 1 It is probable that primitive humanity was 
 equally incapable of forming such conceptions. In time, 
 however, by dint of noting the identical characteristics 
 of certain objects, man came to classify them under ideal 
 categories respectively determined by the traits common 
 to all their members, and thereupon the observation of 
 certain properties shared by a whole group of species 
 led to the formation of collective ideas still wider in 
 their scope. 
 
 Thus from the existence of traits common to all the 
 trees massed on certain spaces, the existence of the col- 
 lective individuality we designate by the name of wood 
 or forest was inferred, and hence the existence of a 
 genius of the forests to govern the whole mass of trees. 
 In the same way the similarity of the ears of corn gave 
 birth to the idea of wheat, just as their common destina- 
 tion produced the conception of harvest ; hence the belief 
 in a genius of wheat or harvest. The universal attributes 
 of water inspired the conception of a liquid element, and 
 thence of a god of water; the general attributes of flames, 
 the conception of an igneous element, and thence of a 
 god of fire. The " Earth" herself only seems to have 
 been conceived, and therefore only deified, by peoples 
 who had already reached a certain stage of mental 
 development. On the lower levels of evolution, islands, 
 mountains, and special portions of land are deified ; but 
 the spirit of generalization could not reach beyond some 
 clearly determined portion of the soil. 
 
 Each member of these collective totals may preserve 
 its individuality, and therefore its special spirit ; but the 
 1 Encyclopedia Britanica> vol. iii. p. 112. Sub. ''Australia." 
 
134 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 genius of the species, from the very fact of its governing 
 the whole, acquires a superior authority. Sometimes, 
 indeed, even though the idea of species or element has 
 been distinctly realized, the individual spirits nevertheless 
 retain their independence, and are not subordinated, but 
 are merely divided into certain great categories corre- 
 sponding to the objects or to the phenomena, the direc- 
 tive principle of which they represent. Thus among the 
 Botocudos of Brazil, the Esquimaux, the Chinese, the 
 Proto-Chaldeans, and others, the spirits are divided into 
 spirits of the woods, waters, earth, air, &c., as in the 
 Indo-European traditions. The Finns recognize these 
 divisions, but also believe in the existence of general 
 spirits, the haltias, who preside over the destinies of 
 species. There are haltias of rye, oats, grass, &c., and 
 they occupy an intermediate position between the ordi- 
 nary spirits and the great deities of nature. 
 
 An analogous conception has been pointed out amongst 
 the ancient Peruvians. They believed that every kind 
 of animal had a representative in heaven, charged with 
 watching over the species and providing for its repro- 
 duction. This belief reappears in North America. The 
 Iroquois hold that every species of animal and every 
 variety of vegetable, has its special genius; and they 
 declare that the Manito adored under the form of an ox 
 is not the ox itself, but the Manito ox which is under 
 the ground and animates all oxen. 1 
 
 Professor Sayce, in his profound and subtle analysis 
 of the Mesopottimian religion, has shown that Merodach, 
 Eii, Mul-lil, and other great gods of the Chaldean Pan- 
 1 De Brosses, Du culte des dieux fetiches, Paris, 1760, p. 58. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 135 
 
 theon, may well have been in their origin the ox or 
 bull, the fish, the antelope, and so forth, venerated for 
 the services they rendered to the local populations, sub- 
 sequently regarded as the tutelary deities of the indivi- 
 dual and the city, and finally confounded with the spirits 
 of the planets and the great natural phenomena. 1 In 
 that case we are evidently dealing, not with an ox or a 
 serpent, but with the representatives of the respective 
 species. 
 
 What the Yedic Eishis adored on their hearths was 
 not the flame itself, but fire personified under the name 
 of Agni, who, " scattered in all places, remains one sole 
 and only king," as the hymn expresses it. 2 Amongst 
 the Greeks, Hestia was present in every flame ; and 
 amongst the Eomans, Ovid hints that when the ancients 
 gathered round the hearth for their repasts, they believed 
 themselves to be in the presence of the deity itself. 3 
 
 The gods of human groups, from the family up to the 
 state, came into existence in virtue of the same principle 
 that gave birth to the genii of species. Every group, 
 however arbitrary, as soon as it had a distinct indivi- 
 duality, had a claim to a personality which could repre- 
 sent and direct it. Here, however, it seems to have been 
 the exception for that personality to be created de novo, 
 like the Dea Eoma. Sometimes the part was taken by 
 the patron spirit of the principal member or family, as 
 we have seen in the case of the tribal fetishes of the 
 
 1 Hibbert Lectures for 1887, pp. 280300. 
 
 2 Rig Veda, iii. 55, 4. 
 
 3 Fasti, vi. 305, 306. 
 
13G III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 Negroes. Or it was the soul of some illustrious chief, 
 the tribal hero or the founder of the city, that was 
 raised to this position. We are justified in asking 
 whether amongst all those Baalim which divided amongst 
 them the cities and petty states of the Semitic world, 
 there might not have been some who had actually 
 lived upon the earth, had afterwards assumed the 
 posthumous government of their cities, and had finally 
 acquired the ordinary attributes of the nature-gods. Or, 
 again, the function of national or tribal patron may have 
 been deliberately assigned to one or another of the gods 
 representing the heaven, the sun, or the moon, in for- 
 getfulness of the fact that these divine beings shine over 
 all the world alike ; or to some other superhuman power 
 connected with natural phenomena of a character more 
 susceptible of national appropriation, such as the genius 
 of some species, or an archetypal animal. This is what 
 we actually find to be the case amongst the peoples 
 addicted to totemism. 
 
 Totemism. I must not expatiate on the strange cus- 
 tom of totemism, the study of which has been popularized 
 by several eminent writers in England. From the reli- 
 1 gious point of view, it may be defined as the worship 
 rendered to the genius of some species of animal by a 
 tribe which regards it as its progenitor and its patron. 
 "We should note that even amongst the Eedskins the 
 totem or dodaim is not just an animal amongst the rest, 
 but an ideal individual which rules all the representa- 
 tives of its species, " a Manito ox under the earth which 
 animates all the oxen." 
 
 The inspiring motive of totemism, I take it, is found 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 137 
 
 in the desire to give the tribe a representative of its 
 collective personality to serve as its protector. This 
 representative at the same time (by the usual vo-repov 
 TrpoTepov) explains the separate existence of the tribe 
 itself. It is obvious that in the choice of a totem, as in 
 the choice of fetishes, chance and even caprice take a 
 large share. We may, however, form an approximate 
 judgment of the probable genesis of tribal totemism by 
 observing what takes place in the case of individuals. 
 Sometimes at the moment of birth the women of the 
 family repeat the names of a number of animals one 
 after another, and the child's totem for all his life will 
 be the animal whose name is being uttered as he gives 
 his first cry. Sometimes the child himself, when he has 
 reached the age of puberty, goes to a solitary place, and 
 after offering a sacrifice chooses as his totem the first 
 animal he sees, dreaming or waking ; and he then seals 
 his contract by drawing a few drops of blood from his 
 person. 1 
 
 On the other hand, it may well be that families or 
 tribes designated by the name of some animal may 
 have finally reached the conclusion that this animal 
 must have been their progenitor and is still their pro- 
 tector. There is nothing foreign to the mental and 
 religious habits of the inferior peoples in such reasoning. 
 Totemism, then, is met with amongst almost all the 
 races of the two worlds that live in isolated tribes ; but 
 that is no reason for making it the primitive and neces- 
 
 1 Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States of America, vol. i. 
 pp. 740, 741. Cf. De Brosses, Du culte des dieux fetiches, pp. 46, 47. 
 
138 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 sary phase of all religious development, as some writers 
 have done. 
 
 In a word, four categories of superhuman beings must 
 have taken precedence of the common herd of spirits at 
 an early stage, especially amongst the peoples predisposed 
 to a polytheistic conception of the universe ; to wit, the 
 great deities of nature, the spirits that preside over the 
 most important factors of human destiny, the genii of 
 species and of the chief groups, and the souls of the 
 illustrious dead. 
 
 In order, however, that this first differen- 
 
 Subordmation 7 
 
 of spirits to tiation should result in polytheism, we need 
 
 another factor, the necessity of which has 
 
 often been overlooked, namely, the subordination of the 
 
 spirits to the gods; in a word, the establishment of a 
 
 hierarchy amongst the superhuman beings. 
 
 Practically, no doubt, the gods of polytheism are often 
 distinguished from the spirits simply by their greater 
 power, but that power is exercised on the mass of super- 
 human beings as well as upon the mass of men. The 
 ordinary spirits become their servants, their vassals nay, 
 even a kind of serfs attached to the soil or invested with 
 subordinate functions; unless, indeed, having failed to find 
 a place in the ranks of the divine army, they are treated 
 as enemies and rebels and laid under the imperial ban. 
 
 At the same time that this subordination is being 
 developed, the gods themselves undergo a parallel 
 movement of co-ordination. A certain number, some- 
 times determined by special circumstances, is singled 
 out for distinction: three (the family triad), seven (the 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 139 
 
 seven planets known to the ancients), nine (the enneads 
 of the Egyptians), twelve or thirteen (the months of 
 the year), thirty-three (perhaps, amongst the Hindus, 
 the year, the four seasons, and the twenty-eight days of 
 the month). These special deities, whatever may be the 
 beings or the phenomena which they properly represent, 
 are not only put at the head of the Pantheon, but have 
 a certain authority over the lower ranks of the divine 
 hierarchy, and may consequently come to be regarded as 
 ruling over the whole superhuman society. 
 
 This organization is demanded by the human mind, 
 which cannot be content to leave the government of 
 the universe a prey to anarchy ; but it is not so much 
 the result of philosophical speculation as a deduction 
 from the examples furnished by the organization of ter- 
 restrial communities. We may note, in fact, that the 
 different peoples conceived and developed this divine 
 hierarchy pari passu with their own approximation to 
 political unity. 
 
 , The idea of shaping the society of the gods 
 
 societies on the model of their own little communities 
 
 modelled ., , , 
 
 upon those on earth, appears to have occurred at an 
 of earth. ear jy stage to peoples still in quite a back- 
 ward state of civilization. The Jesuit Molina tells us 
 that amongst the Arancans the god Pillan is the grand 
 Togui (regent) of the invisible world. As such, he is 
 surrounded by hi^ Apo-TJlmenes and his Ulmenes, to 
 whom he confides the less important affairs. "These 
 ideas," adds the sagacious observer, "are certainly very 
 rude ; but it must be acknowledged that the Arancanians 
 are not the only people who have regulated the things of 
 
140 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 heaven by those of the earth." 1 The Yorubas of West- 
 ern Africa, says the missionary Bowen, have only one 
 god of heaven, just as they have only one king of the 
 nation; and as petitioners have to approach the king 
 through the intervention of his servants, so men in 
 approaching the supreme deity have recourse to the 
 mediation of the ores as or spirits. 2 The Kimbundas of 
 the Congo say that Suku-Vanange, probably a personi- 
 fication of the celestial vault, hands men over to the 
 Elulu; and as there are more bad than good amongst 
 these spirits, life would be intolerable to the poor Negro, 
 were it not that from time to time Suku- Yanange, driven 
 to desperation, issues from his constitutional neutrality 
 and strikes the worst of the Kilulu with lightning." 3 
 
 Whether these first attempts to construct a super- 
 human hierarchy are really due to the influence of 
 Christian doctrines concerning the role of the deity and 
 his agents, or whether they are to be attributed to the 
 spontaneous development of local spiritism, in any case 
 they retain traces of a certain casual and precarious 
 character, like the Negro empires which, in every dis- 
 trict of Africa, rise and fall with equal facility, without 
 resulting in the smallest progress towards a permanent 
 national unity or political centralization even within a 
 limited area. These divine hierarchies are seldom found 
 amongst peoples in the pastoral or nomadic stage of civi- 
 lization, or even amongst those agricultural populations 
 
 1 Ignatius Molina, History of Chili, English translation, vol. ii. 
 p. 84: London, 1809. 
 
 2 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 316. 
 
 3 E. Hartmann, Les peuples de VAfrique y Paris, 1880, p. 184. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 141 
 
 in which the village group is the nucleus of social orga- 
 nization. Even in such cases, however, a kind of Platonic 
 belief in a supreme deity is not rarely professed. But 
 polytheism of a really organized character is only found 
 amongst races who have attained a sentiment of national 
 unity superior to the village and clan divisions, possessing 
 a sufficient degree of culture to co-ordinate their religious 
 traditions, and above all enjoying a centralized adminis- 
 tration, without which no permanent sovereign power 
 can be secured. 
 
 The Polynesians, when first discovered, were at a 
 relatively advanced stage of civilization, and had an 
 exceptionally rich Pantheon, in which the gods of the 
 elements were the heroes of adventures comparable to 
 those of the Greek mythology of pre-Homeric times. 
 They even distinguished the tikis, or spirits, from the 
 atuas, or gods. The former comprise certain animals, the 
 souls of the dead, the guardian-spirits of families and 
 individuals, the genii of diseases, and finally innumerable 
 fetishes. The latter include the gods of the celestial 
 bodies and natural phenomena, to whom the forms of 
 animals were sometimes attributed, at any rate when 
 they visited the earth. 1 In New Zealand, the first place 
 was occupied by the cosmogonic couple Eangi (Heaven) 
 and Pepe (Earth), with their children, the' gods of the 
 winds, of the plants, of the fishes, of the forests, of men, 
 and so on; together with Tangaroa, the god of the 
 
 1 This is the explanation of zoolatry given by the Manguians. On 
 animal gods, cf. W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, 
 London, 1876, p. 35. 
 
142 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 sea, Maui, the god of the sun, a kind of Polynesian 
 Heracles, and his grandmother, perhaps a personification 
 of the night. In the Hervey Islands, other cosmic deities 
 appear : Yatea, half man and half shark, god of the sea 
 and of vegetation, or of heaven. In the Sandwich Islands 
 there is a goddess of the moon, Hina, " the woman of the 
 white locks ; " in Hawai, Pele, the goddess of the great 
 local volcano. And, finally, there are gods of war, of the 
 harvest, of fish, and what not. The relative power of these 
 deities, however, varies in the different archipelagos, and 
 in no case do we find that the tikis have been subordi- 
 nated to the atuas, or even that any attempt has been 
 made to co-ordinate these latter, any more than the host 
 of little insular states into which the Polynesian archi- 
 pelagos are divided. 1 
 
 The mythology of the Polynesians has sometimes been 
 compared with that of the Finns, in regard to its stage 
 of religious development. Amongst the latter, however, 
 the subordination of the spirits begins to appear, inas- 
 much as the inferior spirits of forests, waters, and the 
 soil, are respectively grouped, as children or servants, 
 round the presiding couples of the element to which 
 they belong. The water spirits depend on Ahti and 
 Wellamo, god and goddess of the waters; the forest 
 spirits on Tapio and Mielliki, who preside over plants ; 
 and the spirits of the soil on Tuoni and Tuona Akka, 
 
 1 On the religion of the Polynesians, consult Albert Re"ville, Religions 
 des peuples non-ciiilises, vol. ii. chaps, ii. vi. Sir George Grey, Poly- 
 nesian Mythology: London, 1855. W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs 
 from the South Pacific: London, 1876. Williams and Calvert, Fiji 
 and the Fijians : London, 1870. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 143 
 
 who rule over the subterranean world. 1 But inasmuch 
 as the Finns were still in the pastoral age at the intro- 
 duction of Christianity, this organization of the divine 
 society never passed the patriarchal type. Their Olympus 
 was formed after the model of the house, their Pantheon 
 after that of the family; Ukko himself, the supreme 
 god, was no more than a majestic shepherd who led the 
 clouds, his sheep, to their pasture. 
 
 The divine Even the Indo-Europeans do not seem to 
 "Ind(Kl^ro^ e nave possessed a regularly organized poly- 
 peans. theism before their dispersion. Indeed, 
 amongst the Slavs, who were perhaps the most back- 
 ward of all the branches of the race, we see that even 
 the great gods drawn from the common fatherland Perun 
 (perhaps the Yedic Parjanya, god of thunder), Svarog 
 and Ogon (the respective equivalents of Svar the heaven, 
 and Agni the fire), and even Bogu, the god of heaven 
 hardly rose above the crowd of spirits in the popular 
 worship. And, on the other side, the very history of the 
 terms (already recounted) that respectively served the 
 Aryans of India and those of Persia to designate their 
 great gods, Devas and Ahuras, shows us that amongst 
 the Eastern Aryans the same terms were originally 
 applied more or less indifferently to every category 
 of superhuman beings. 
 
 Amongst the Aryans of India, in the Yedic period, 
 social organization does not appear to have advanced much 
 beyond the patriarchal rule of clans ; at any rate we can 
 discover nothing like the rigorous divisions of caste or 
 
 1 A. Re"ville, Religions des peuples non-civilities, vol. ii. chaps, ii. 
 
 and iii. 
 
144 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 the organization of great unified monarchies which pre- 
 vailed subsequently. The society of superhuman beings, 
 still closely attached to the phenomena of nature, mani- 
 fests a correspondingly unstable character, almost amount- 
 ing to anarchy, corrected and perhaps to a certain point 
 maintained by what Prof. Max Miiller has called heno- 
 theism that is to say, the religious disposition to ascribe 
 to each god at the moment of invocation all the attri- 
 butes of supreme power. This division, or rather this 
 alternation, of sovereignly only extends to six or seven 
 great natural deities. The hymn of the legendary Manu 
 Yaivasvata says that amongst the gods " there are 
 neither great nor small, neither old nor young, all 
 are equally great;" but practically, Yaruna and Indra, 
 gods of the heaven ; Surya, the sun ; Ushas, the dawn ; 
 Agni, the fire ; Soma, fermented drink ; and Aditi, 
 space, are, turn by turn, raised above all other gods, 
 and are still more clearly distinguished from the innu- 
 merable spirits to be found in the popular cultus. 
 
 Amongst the Germans we find the mythological sys- 
 tematization carried out much further. At the bottom 
 of the scale are the giants and elf s, then the Yanir, and 
 finally the Ases or ^3Esir, ranked on a system which cor- 
 responds well enough with that of German society. Odin, 
 who presides in the council of the -ZEsir, like the German 
 chief in the assembly of free men, is no more than the 
 president of a republic. His power is almost equalled 
 by that of Thor, and even of Loki, until the latter 
 becomes a rebel spirit. 
 
 Amongst the Greeks of the Homeric epoch, the celes- 
 tial state is still more directly modelled on that of 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 145 
 
 earth. The great gods correspond to the local kings, 
 whose assembly is presided over by the King of men, just 
 as the Olympians gather under the presidency of Zeus ; 
 and the power of the latter over his divine colleagues 
 though clearly enough established in the sense of his 
 boast that he is the mightiest of the gods 1 is no more 
 absolute than that of Agamemnon over his allies. On 
 the other side, the popular assembly of the Agora 
 has its counterpart in the gathering of all the divine 
 beings to learn the will of Zeus. We may even add 
 that just as Greece was never able to attain a national 
 unity, so all the efforts of the philosophers failed to give 
 currency in the popular theology to a more advanced 
 conception of the divine unity. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to reconstruct the worship of 
 the Latins before the historical development of Eome, 
 but it is probable that their numina were hardly superior 
 to the mass of spirits, in spite of the presence amongst 
 them of certain great deities of nature, drawn in some 
 cases from the common fund of Indo-European traditions. 
 The organizing faculty which characterizes the Eoman 
 genius found scope in the cultus earlier than in theology, 
 and, with the exception of Jupiter, Mars, Neptune, the 
 old Janus, Juno and Yesta, the greater part of the deities 
 who took the first place in the worship of the Romans 
 were foreign importations, in some instances relatively 
 late. It is especially as the president of this divine 
 oligarchy that the old Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the 
 Capitol became the special patron of Eome and assumed 
 the supreme government of the universe. 
 1 Iliad, viii. 17. 
 L 
 
146 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 Amongst the Persians, monarchy was firmly established 
 at an early date, perhaps under the pressure of a terrible 
 struggle with the Turanian populations. Ahura Mazda, 
 "the omniscient lord," naturally assumed the absolute 
 sovereignty over the propitious powers since his imme- 
 diate function was that of generalissimo of the armies 
 of light in their contest with the powers of darkness. 
 Here the hierarchy is complete. The old deities of 
 nature, and certain great abstractions, personified by 
 stress of circumstances, are the generals and captains 
 of the celestial army. They include, firstly, the six 
 Amesha Qpentas, the "Beneficent Immortals;" then, 
 the Yazatas or "Worshipped ones," and amongst them 
 Mithra, god of light ; Na'iryo Sanha, god of fire ; Apam 
 Napat, god of fire concealed in the waters ; Haoma, god 
 of the drink of immortality ; Yayu, god of the wind, he 
 who throws the storm against the wind ; Tistrya, genius 
 of the dog-star; and Anahita, goddess of fertility. Lastly 
 come the mass of Fravashis, including the divine proto- 
 plasms of the just, and the genii of pure things. 1 
 Thediv'n Quitting the Indo-European peoples to 
 society in study the polytheism of other races, we 
 find the same correspondence between the 
 forms of political institutions and the organization of the 
 divine society. Egypt before Menes appears to have 
 been divided into independent nomes, in each of which 
 a certain number of gods, properly so called, appear 
 beside and above the spirits. It seems that before the 
 
 1 Tiele, Outlines of the History of Religion, &c., translated by Car- 
 penter, London, 1877, 102 104, pp. 168 172. J. Darmesteter, 
 Ormazd et Ahriman, Paris, 1877, chap. vi. Eug. Burnouf, Commentaire 
 sur le Yagna. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 147 
 
 beginnings of history these little local Pantheons had 
 undergone a certain concentration by the establishment 
 of triads and enneads, the principal member of which 
 often received the title of supreme god. But, as M. Mas- 
 pero well observes, " the supremacy of these highest and 
 even unique gods was confined to the limits of their 
 respective nomes. Divine feudalism," continues this 
 acute historian, " is the primordial fact of the religion 
 of Egypt, as human feudalism is the primordial fact of 
 its history." 1 
 
 The divine ^ n Mesopotamia, the first inhabitants of 
 societies of Chaldea appear to have placed a certain 
 
 the Semites. 
 
 number 01 superhuman powers (an or dingir) 
 above the spirits, before the epoch at which their history 
 begins. These beings were the rulers of the principal 
 natural phenomena, but were supposed to have made 
 the world and to be man's protectors against the attacks 
 of evil spirits. Above all stood Ana, the personification 
 of heaven ; Ea, the spirit of the earth ; Mul-lil, ruler of 
 the subterranean world ; the Sun ; the Moon ; Istar, the 
 evening star ; perhaps the gods of the other planets then 
 known ; and finally, the gods of fire and the storm. The 
 mere uttering of their names was enough to put the 
 demons to flight ; and the power of the name rose with 
 the rank of the deity. " The most irresistible of all the 
 powers resides in the mysterious name which Ea alone 
 knows. Before that name, everything in heaven, on 
 earth, and below, must yield. The gods themselves are 
 chained by that name and obey it." 2 
 
 1 Revue de rUistoire des Religions, vol. xix. p. 11. 
 
 2 Fr. Lenormant, La Magie chez les Chaldeens, Paris, 1874, p. 40. 
 
 L2 
 
148 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 This, however, is only a magical exaggeration, and at 
 the outside amounts to nothing more than henotheism. 
 "Thou alone art exalted," says the hymn to the Sun; 
 " amongst the gods thou hast no equal." 1 The Prefect 
 of Kalakh, in an inscription bearing the date of King 
 Kaman-ninari III., does not hesitate to say: "Put your 
 trust in Nabu [the god of the scribes], and trust in no 
 other god." 2 Elsewhere Bel is called the lord and 
 the creator of the gods. Gradually some kind of order 
 is introduced amongst the host of deities (there are pas- 
 sages which speak of sixty-five thousand 3 ) by grouping 
 them into triads, the members of which vary according 
 to the city, the province, or the state. Sometimes it 
 is Anu (the ancient Ana, god of heaven), Eel, and 
 Ea transformed into a god of the ocean. Sometimes 
 Sin, god of the moon, the god of gods; Shamas, god 
 of the sun ; and Eimmon, god of the wind. Eut even 
 these triads appear to be rather a juxtaposition of deities 
 than a combination tending to unity. It was otherwise 
 with the Assyrians, whose bent was to form a military 
 monarchy, the type of which is reflected in the organiza- 
 tion of their divine world. At the bottom of the scale 
 is the innumerable host of spirits ; then come the gods, 
 who may be likened to officers and imperial functionaries ; 
 above them are the chief deities, varying in number on 
 the different inscriptions, sometimes thirty -six, some- 
 times thirteen or twelve, sometimes seven. These are 
 
 1 Schrader, cited by De Pr.essens^, Uancien monde et le christian- 
 isme, p. 63. 
 
 2 Tiele, Outlines, &c., 47, Eng. tr. p. 78. 
 * Sayce, Hiblert Lectures for 1887, p. 216. 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 149 
 
 what we might call the ministers and generals of Assur, 
 who himself is the celestial prototype of the all-powerful 
 despot who presides over the destinies of Assyria. 
 
 The religion of the Assyrians, however, had been 
 modified by contact with Proto-chaldean beliefs, and for 
 a pure type of Semitic religion we must turn to the popu- 
 lations of Syria. Here we find, not, indeed, the mono- 
 theism so long supposed to be proper to the genius of 
 the Semitic race, but something very like monolatry, 
 inasmuch as it often reveals the adoration of a local 
 god regarded as supreme, and so far exalted above all 
 other gods as to sink the latter even lower than the 
 spirits. But here we have occasion to distinguish between 
 the populations of the shore, where the easy conditions 
 of life early developed a rich mythology, and those of the 
 inlands, amongst whom the rugged aspects of nature pro- 
 duced a severer conception of the divine order. Amongst 
 these latter, the imagination was more impressed by the 
 imposing unity of the forces of nature than by the inces- 
 sant variety of their manifestation. The idea of force 
 dominates that of matter, and thus the superhuman beings 
 are much less varied if not less numerous. Nothing is 
 more like one Eloh, says M. Eenan, than another Eloh ; 
 whence all that is required is to give these elohim a chief 
 to direct them, and we have a god whose pre-eminence 
 no rival will dispute. 
 
 For the rest, amongst all the western Semites the very 
 names of the gods express a general and abstract idea of 
 force and power rather than a determinate individuality. 
 It was long supposed that the names of Baal, Adon, 
 Moloch or Melek, El, Qedeq, Rabba, Asherah, &c., 
 
150 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 denoted so many divine personalities, worshipped by 
 the whole race. 'Now we know that they were simply 
 generic names, titles in a word master, lord, king, 
 the mighty, the just, the lady, &c. under which each 
 group of populations designated its chief deity. 1 It 
 is probable that in every state the divine king adopted 
 as supreme patron was surrounded by a court of secon- 
 dary deities or subordinate spirits fulfilling all the 
 offices of the government and the household. Yahveh 
 himself, the Yahveh Qebaoth, god of the celestial armies, 
 was surrounded by a veritable divan, in which the first 
 place was held by a kind of " seraskier" or generalissimo, 
 as M. Eenan has it, the archangel Michael, and a grand 
 vizier, the MaPak, the angel charged with communica- 
 tions to man. Then came the other angels, the cherubim 
 and seraphim and the bene-elohim. 
 
 The conception of the superhuman world probably 
 differed very little from this type amongst the Philis- 
 tines, the Moabites, and the other more or less indepen- 
 dent peoples that covered the Syrian region bordering on 
 the desert, and even some of the cities of Phoenicia. At 
 Beyrout, they specially worshipped the seven Kabires, 
 probably planetary deities ; but there came a time at 
 which they placed the eighth (Eshmun) above them, 
 and he became the chief deity, whether his name con- 
 ceals a god of nature, or whether we should see in him a 
 pure creation of theological speculation. 2 
 
 1 Tiele, Religions de Vlzgypte et des peuples semitiques, Paris, 1882, 
 pp. 281 sqq. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 307, 
 
III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 151 
 
 The divine The new world, at the period of the first 
 the 1 Aztecs European invasion, presented every degree 
 and incas. and type alike of religious and social organi- 
 zation. Side by side with rudimentary forms which 
 have survived to our own day in the customs and beliefs 
 of the aboriginal peoples, the Spaniards found civilized 
 communities at various levels of polytheism. This poly- 
 theism was still in an early stage, though the peoples 
 of Central America and Mexico had a highly developed 
 mythology. They worshipped the teotl that is to say, 
 the chief personifications of the elements, conceived under 
 names and in forms which varied from centre to centre 
 of civilization; but while raising some of these deities 
 to the rank of official protectors and mythical legislators, 
 they never seem to have enrolled them in any regularly 
 classified hierarchy. This is because, as M. Albert 
 BeVille has shown, these peoples never had a unified 
 and centralized empire, but only great federations, and 
 states exerting a temporary preponderance. 1 
 
 Further south, on the other hand, the Peru of the 
 Incas presents the type of the most centralized state / 
 which our planet has ever known; and this centraliza- 
 tion has its counterpart in the organization of the divine 
 world. The Inca was supposed, not only to be descended 
 from the sun, but to be commissioned to apply the 
 government of the solar deity on earth; and just as 
 everything in the empire was subordinated to the Inca, 
 everything in the heavens was subordinated to the Sun. 
 The latter had a court in which the moon, the great 
 
 1 Reville, Les Religions du Mexique, &c., p. 23 : Paris, 1885. Cf. 
 the same author's Hibbert Lectures for 1884, pp. 28, 29. 
 
152 III. POLYDEMONISM AND POLYTHEISM. 
 
 planets and principal constellations appeared. Others, 
 gods who must once have been almost as important as 
 himself Yiracocha, Pachacamac, and Catequil had 
 become his children or his ministers. 
 
 In the official religion of China, the paral- 
 
 The divine 
 
 society in lelism of which I have given so many exam- 
 ples, is carried still further. From an early 
 date we find a divine state closely modelled upon that 
 of earth, and the different stages of the respective orga- 
 nizations are closely connected one with the other. At 
 the head stands Shang-ti, the celestial emperor who 
 watches over the general interests of the world ; the 
 terrestrial emperor, the " son of heaven," is his deputy 
 for the government of men, and, moreover, has exclusive 
 charge of the worship demanded by his superior. In 
 like manner the chief functionaries preside over the 
 worship of the great spirits of nature ; the governors of 
 provinces and cities, over that of chief local deities of 
 their respective areas; and finally, the father of the 
 family over the worship of the manes of his ancestors 
 and the rank and file of spirits. Confucius declares 
 that the functionaries of the State are the servants of 
 heaven, just as the Li-ki says that the spirits are the 
 functionaries of Shang-ti. 
 
 It is interesting to note that men have, in every case, 
 been conscious of this parallelism spontaneously esta- 
 blished between the celestial kingdom and the states on 
 earth ; but, by a common illusion of perspective, it is 
 always the human society which has been supposed to 
 be modelled on that of the gods. 
 
LECTURE IY. 
 DUALISM. 
 
 (i.) THE STRUGGLE FOR ORDER. 
 
 So now we have the gods arranged in a society like 
 that of man. What will be the object of the organiza- 
 tion ? What will be the goal it proposes to itself ? I was 
 going to say, what will be its platform ? 
 Contracts of I n the first place, it will be the interest of 
 ^thTsu Tr- h * ts own mem ^ ers - The gods pursue their own 
 human beings, good, and have no scruple in naively avowing 
 an egoism copied from that of their worshippers. The 
 important point to notice, however, is, that the interest 
 of the gods may in various ways coincide with that of 
 their worshippers. 
 
 On the one hand, the latter might enter into a treaty 
 with their gods founded on reciprocity of service ; whence 
 the two-fold consequence, that the gods would be inte- 
 rested in the prosperity and aggrandizement of the nation 
 that had adopted them, and that they would be opposed 
 to the gods of the neighbouring nations whenever their 
 respective subjects fell into conflict. Even savages show 
 a tendency to put themselves under the protection of 
 their own ancestors and fetishes, as a defence against 
 those of neighbouring peoples. And if they rank the 
 spirits in general amongst these hostile powers, it is 
 
154 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 because, being more or less detached and anonymous, 
 they represent the stranger, and to that extent the enemy. 
 In polytheism we have no longer to deal with isolated 
 powers, but with pantheons organized by nations or 
 groups of nations ; and the relations between these super- 
 human communities are again modelled on those of earth. 
 
 The odsas Mythology favours yet another order of 
 
 regulating conceptions which directly tends to turn the 
 efforts of the gods towards the good of man, 
 or at least towards one of the most necessary conditions 
 of his existence, namely, an established order in nature. 
 
 I mean by mythology the transformation of natural 
 phenomena or abstract events into personal adventures 
 ascribed to superhuman beings. It does not enter into 
 the scope of my plan to expound the rules by which we 
 must interpret mythology ; and still less to fathom the 
 principles of the rival schools which trace the mytho- 
 logical stories respectively to oblivion of the primitive 
 meaning of words, to distortion of history, or to the 
 purely fantastic action of the savage imagination. But, 
 whatever its origin, we discover at the base of all the 
 myths a tendency to personify the details as well as 
 the forces of nature, and to attribute to these imaginary 
 personalities conduct like that of human beings, but 
 powers far transcending those of man. 
 
 In nature- worship that is to say, as long as personified 
 objects are looked on as the bodies of spirits which 
 act through them we perhaps get no further than 
 dramatizing the most characteristic of the actual rela- 
 tions between the objects concerned. The storm will be 
 regarded as a fight between heaven, or the sun, and the 
 
IV. DUALISM. 155 
 
 Storm-cloud. The occupation of the heavenly bodies will 
 be represented as their consumption by a monster. The 
 creation will be attributed to a union, or perhaps to an 
 original separation, of the heaven and the earth. 
 
 May be the formation of these first myths was pre- 
 ceded by a period in which man simply depicted the 
 phenomena of nature by isolated analogies drawn from 
 his own experience. Thus, before representing the 
 storm as the marriage of the heaven and the earth, 
 or as the battle of the sun with the storm-cloud, with 
 the wealth of detail that constitutes the charm of 
 Indo-European mythology, he must have conceived of 
 the rain as seed, the production of crops as birth, the 
 clouds as an army of monsters or giants, the sun as a 
 dart-hurler, the lightning as a celestial weapon, and the 
 thunder as the voice of an invisible warrior or the shock 
 of arms in the sky. Mythical elements remain at this 
 undeveloped stage amongst peoples whose imagination 
 is too poor (like that of the Chinese), or too random (like 
 that of the Negroes), to group these rudimentary con- 
 ceptions into a general whole ; but elsewhere they early 
 combine into complete dramas of nature, like those which 
 we trace in the earliest religious texts of the Chaldeans, 
 the Egyptians, and the Indo-European peoples. 
 
 When, as human thought advances, men reach a juster 
 conception of the impersonality of things, they find a 
 growing difficulty in making celestial or earthly objects 
 take the part of quasi-human persons. But we must not 
 forget that the personality of these objects has not 
 disappeared ; it has simply escaped from its envelope to 
 rule from outside. Thus it preserves its former attri- 
 
156 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 butes and its old relations on the one hand, and on the 
 other hand, as its new personality approximates to the 
 human form, it lends itself more readily to combinations 
 modelled on the life of man. Was it not in Greece 
 that the deities of nature approached the human type 
 most closely both physically and morally ? And was it 
 not there too that mythology acquired its widest exten- 
 sion and exercised its deepest influence ? 
 
 In the long run, however, when the bonds connecting 
 the spirits of things with the things themselves were 
 once broken, these superhuman beings would inevitably 
 be credited more and more with actions that had nothing 
 in common with the mutual relations of the phenomena. 
 The gods would tend to transform themselves into histo- 
 rical personages, and to annex the exploits of real heroes 
 and even of the creatures of the popular fancy. The 
 myth would be lost in the tale or legend, or might even 
 tend to attach itself to any casually determined person- 
 ality, till it became impossible to distinguish between 
 a god transformed into a hero, and a hero transformed 
 into a god. 
 
 These adulterations have given rise to a 
 
 Relations of . 
 
 mythology and distinction between mythology and religion ; 
 
 the latter including the sentiments that man 
 
 cherishes with respect to his gods ; the former, the stories 
 
 which he accepts concerning them, or rather the deeds 
 
 and exploits which he attributes to them. But do not 
 
 the sentiments we experience towards any one largely 
 
 depend on the idea we have formed of his nature, dispo- 
 
 f sition, and doings? that is to say, precisely on what 
 
 mythology has to tell concerning the gods ? 
 
IV. DUALISM. 157 
 
 If we make a distinction at all and, seeing how small 
 an influence many myths exercise on the religious feel- 
 ings and on the worship, I am inclined to think we 
 should it should be based on the fact that a whole class 
 of myths simply minister to human curiosity, without 
 affecting man's relations to the gods. Such notably are 
 the myths professing to explain the first origin of pheno- 
 mena, without concerning themselves with their main- 
 tenance or their reproduction. For in truth it is the 
 future, and not the past, that awakes the hopes and fears 
 on which the religious sentiment feeds; so that, from 
 this point of view, the traditions connected with the 
 present and future course of phenomena have vastly 
 greater importance than those that refer to the forma- 
 tion of the universe, though the latter no less than the 
 former present themselves in mythological guise, as 
 recording the definite events of a given moment in the 
 past. Again, to feel this importance, men must believe 
 the traditions to be something more than stories in- 
 vented for their pleasure more even than a faithful 
 record of historical facts which are now past and done 
 with. Then, but then only, will mythology become 
 religion, when it represents the most important deities 
 as strengthening the action of the beneficent phenomena, 
 over which they preside, against the efforts of the beings 
 who regulate or produce the maleficent phenomena 
 opposed to them. 
 
 Hence grows a dualism which finds its first applica- 
 tion on the field of the conflicting forces that affect 
 the two great primary necessaries of life, light and food. 
 But, with the aid of mythology, it soon comes to embrace 
 
158 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 the whole mass of superhuman beings. These latter 
 are divided into two camps, according to their nature 
 or affinities. Man himself soon falls into line, and not 
 only offers his divine defenders sympathy, but actively 
 co-operates with them, encouraging them by his prayers 
 and praises, strengthening them by his sacrifices and 
 incantations, and abstaining from all that might hamper 
 or enfeeble their action. Hence another bond of union 
 is contracted between man and the gods, whom he now 
 feels to be fighting in the same army and espousing the 
 same cause with himself. 
 
 Progress and This dualism based on natural phenomena 
 Sy8 of^atural n appears but little developed amongst peoples 
 dualism. a ^ ^ ne fi rs ^ s t a ge of polytheism, such as the 
 ancient Mexicans, Polynesians, or Finns. Amongst the 
 Proto-chaldeans dualism manifests itself not so much in 
 the sphere of natural phenomena as on the field of man's 
 daily struggle against evil spirits, especially the spirits 
 of disease; but the death of Tammuz, the descent of 
 Istar into hell in search of her lost lover, the incidents of 
 her quarrel with her sister Allat, queen of the subter- 
 ranean world, and, on the other side, the legend of the 
 Deluge, of the fight of the moon-god with the seven 
 evil spirits, to say nothing of the story of the creation 
 itself, prove clearly enough that natural dualism was not 
 entirely absent from the Assyrio-chaldean mythology. 
 "We may remark that the seven evil spirits at the head 
 of the infernal armies represent the seven principal winds, 
 and that the great gods, invoked to keep them in check, 
 are unquestionably planetary deities, or at any rate 
 personifications of natural phenomena of some kind. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 159 
 
 According to Prof. Sayce, the texts show traces of a 
 period when all the superhuman beings were at once 
 good and evil. It must have been by gradual steps 
 that the Chaldeans came to separate the two phases of 
 this mixed character, and to make the superior gods 
 the dispensers of all benefits, while the lower spirits 
 assumed the exclusive role of the agents of evil. 1 
 
 Amongst the Egyptians there were originally three 
 kinds of deities the gods of the elements, the gods of 
 the dead, and the solar gods. The first, such as Sib and 
 Nut, appear half-effaced in the worship ; the second, with 
 Osiris at their head, were gradually assimilated to the 
 sun below the earth, that is to say, the sun after sunset; 
 and thus the whole religion of Egypt became, as M. 
 Pierret expresses it, a " solar drama ; " 2 that is to say, it 
 was entirely concentrated in the struggle of light against 
 darkness, and, by extension, of life against death. The 
 luminous gods embark in full strength in the solar boat, 
 " the good boat of thousands of years." They are joined 
 there by the souls of the just, thus assimilated to Osiris. 
 One Horus places himself at the helm, another at the 
 prow, with couched spear ; the oars are grasped by the 
 Akhimu Urdu, " who cease not to exist,' 7 and the 
 Akhimu Soku, " who are never destroyed." The crew, 
 however, quit the luminous fields of heaven to pene- 
 trate the darksome region of the world below. At 
 the sixth hour of the night begins the daily fight in 
 which the serpent Apap, with all his army of monsters, 
 strives to arrest the course of the boat. But the gods 
 
 1 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures for 1887. p. 205. 
 
 2 Paul Pierret, Le Pantheon Agyptien, Paris, 1881, p. xv. 
 
160 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 of light overcome all obstacles. Ea triumphs. "Apap is 
 slain." And therefore the sun rises again, with renewed 
 lustre, on the horizon of grateful Egypt. 1 The same 
 dualism re-appears, in a quasi-historical form, in the 
 myth of Osiris as told by Herodotus, and as read, with 
 its anthropomorphic traits still further emphasized, on 
 the inscriptions of the temple of Edfu. 2 
 
 You are aware of the importance assumed in the wor- 
 ship of the Syro-phcenicians, by the scenic representa- 
 tions which reproduced the passion of a deity alternately 
 
 * slain and resuscitated. In Phrygia, it was Attis, muti- 
 lated by the jealousy of Cybele, and then transformed 
 into the pine with evergreen foliage, who wakes from 
 his winter slumber at the beginning of the spring. At 
 
 k Byblos, it was Adonis, slain by a wild boar and recalled 
 to life by the enamoured Astarte. If we may judge 
 by the dates at which the feast of his death and resur- 
 rection were respectively celebrated, Adonis (amongst 
 those Syrian populations who suffer most from the 
 parching sun) represents the spring sky, slain by the 
 sun when the heaven grows scorching, and born again 
 at the approach of autumn, when pregnant nature re -finds 
 her lost lover. 3 
 
 1 G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des peuples de I' 'Orient, Paris, 
 1886, pp. 280 sqq. 
 
 2 H. Brugsch, Die Sage von der gefliigelten Sonnenscheibe, in the 
 Abhandlungen der Koniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu 
 Gottingen (vol. xiv.). Historisch Philologische Classe, Gbttingen, 
 1869, pp. 173236. 
 
 3 C. P. Tiele, Histoire comparee des anciennes religions de VEgypte et 
 de* peuples Semitiques y book iii. chap, iv. La religion de Gebal ou Byblos, 
 pp. 291298. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 161 
 
 Amongst the Greeks, the " mysteries " clearly betray 
 the influence of Oriental religions ; but under the smiling 
 climate of Hellas the Aryan genius had conceived a 
 view of the universe too serene and harmonious to fall in 
 with the tragic emotions of nature-worship. It chose 
 rather to relegate the fight with the chaotic forces of 
 nature to the origin of things. The Titans were enchained 
 once for all in their dark dungeons, and, but for the 
 menacing predictions of a Prometheus, there would be 
 nothing left to trouble the Olympian quiet of Zeus. But 
 when the Greek religion had overstepped its frontiers, it 
 finally took a more sombre tone, and under the influence 
 of theories of emanation the Sdt/jLwv, which had once simply 
 meant spirit sometimes even the good genius of man, as 
 in the case of Socrates gradually became a synonym for 
 an evil power, the demon, whose name Christianity took, 
 in this new signification, and applied it to the whole body 
 of pagan divinities. 
 
 Amongst the Germans, also, it is easy to see how 
 dualism became accentuated as religion developed. The 
 giants of the frost, the wolf Fenris, the serpent Nidhugr 
 gnawing the roots of the cosmic tree, were always evil 
 spirits ; but the organization of the army of darkness and 
 the frimas is not complete until Hel and Loki have placed 
 themselves at its head to lead it to the attack of the 
 JSsir. Now Hel and Loki were originally conceived 
 with less antipathetic traits. Prof. Tiele points out that 
 as we ascend towards a remoter antiquity, Hel, the 
 personification of twilight, occupies an ever loftier posi- 
 tion, though she sank at last into the goddess that 
 enchains the dead and terrifies the living. As to Loki, 
 
 M 
 
162 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 the god of fire, he was at first the brother and com- 
 panion of Odin ; nay, he rendered signal services to the 
 gods in their fight with the giants; but subsequently 
 he was looked upon as the father of the evil powers, 
 and it is he who strips the goddess of earth of her 
 adornments, who robs Thor of his fertilizing hammer, 
 and causes the death of Balder, the beneficent sun. 1 
 
 With the Hindus, dualism takes a yet more important 
 place both in worship and in mythology. They are never 
 weary of telling how the Maruts, Indra, Agni, and Yishnu, 
 waged war with the serpent Ahi alternately named 
 Yritra (the enveloper), Cushna (the parcher), and Dasa 
 (the slayer) to deliver the celestial cows or spouses, 
 that is to say, the waters held captive in the caverns 
 of the clouds. Elsewhere it is the fire, the dawn, or the 
 sun, whose fate is the stake of the battle. The history 
 of the asuras, or rather of the word which serves to 
 designate these personified evil influences, bears striking 
 evidence to the progress, or, if you will, the systematiza- 
 tion of Hindu dualism, as mythology developed. At first 
 the term asura (being or spirit) is applied indifferently 
 to good and evil beings. In fact, Yaruna himself is the 
 Asura par excellence in the Yedas. On the other hand, 
 the devas of the Yedic songs sometimes play the part of 
 demons in retaining the light or the water for them- 
 selves. 2 It is in the brahmanas and the puranas, com- 
 positions of a later date, that the dualism attains its 
 
 1 C. P. Tiele, Outlines of the History of Religions, 118, pp. 194, 195. 
 
 2 Abel Bergaigne, Religion Vedique d'apres les hymnes du Rig- 
 Veda, three vols., Paris, 18781883, vol. iii. pp. 78, 79. Vol. xxxvi. 
 of the Bibliotheque de I'ecole des hautes etudes, Paris. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 163 
 
 height, and the devas are represented on the one side, 
 and the asuras on the other, as fighting for the possession 
 of the amrita, the heavenly water which assures fertility 
 to the earth and immortality to living beings. 1 
 
 Whether Zoroastrianism be attributed to a natural 
 evolution of the old Indo-Iranian religion, or to a violent 
 reaction against the nature-worship of which we find the 
 earliest traces in the Vedas, it is certain in any case that 
 there too we find a dualism which must have strengthened 
 greatly after the separation of the two peoples. Indeed, 
 we may safely say that it has not been carried out more 
 completely in any known religion. Opposed to Ormuzd, 
 and the superhuman beings grouped around him to main- 
 tain, all that is good in the world, we find Ahriman and 
 his daevas, whose object is absolutely to thwart the work 
 of the Omniscient Lord, whether by destroying what he 
 makes, or by producing, in their turn, counter creations. 
 Here the opposition is complete. Not only have we two 
 hierarchies, exactly corresponding to each other, but the 
 correspondence extends to all their respective acts ; and 
 all the details of nature are divided between the two 
 powers. Nothing has a mixed, neutral, or equivocal 
 character. Everything that does not come from Ormuzd 
 proceeds from Ahriman. If a being or a phenomenon has 
 no actual counterpart in the antagonistic forces of nature, 
 the blank is filled up by a process of abstraction. This 
 
 1 Moor, in his Hindu Pantheon, reproduces a picture of an episode 
 introduced into the Maliabharata, representing the churning of the 
 ocean, for the recovery of the beverage of immortality, by means of the 
 mountain Mandara. The serpent Vasuki girds the mountain as a cord, 
 and one end is pulled by the devas and the other by the asuras. 
 Edward Moor, The Hindu Pantheon, London, 1810, p. 182 and plate 49. 
 
 M2 
 
164 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 explains the singular conglomeration of abstract genii 
 and deities of nature which characterizes the religious 
 system of the Persians. 1 
 
 Even the Jewish religion attests, in the course of its 
 development, the growing accentuation of dualism. In 
 early times, no superhuman being was recognized in 
 opposition to Yahveh. Beyond the national deity and 
 the gods of foreign peoples, we find little more than 
 spirits subordinate to the supreme God, such as angels, 
 seraphim, cherubim, and those bene-elohim, or sons of 
 God, whom the book of Job represents as coming from 
 time to time to pay their court to the Eternal. Even 
 Satan was but a kind of public minister, an inspector, or 
 rather agent provocateur, who had no power to torment or 
 tempt save by permission of his master. It is only quite 
 at a late period that we find the revolted angels organizing 
 themselves into an army of darkness under the guidance 
 of Satan, to struggle against the soldiery of heaven under 
 the direction of Yahveh ; and we may even ask whether 
 this phenomenon, when it does appear, is not due to the 
 influence of 'Iranian demonology. We see Yahveh sur- 
 rounded by six archangels, like Ahura Mazda with his 
 Amesha Qpentas ; and, as in Iranian mythology, the intro- 
 duction of evil and death into the world becomes the work 
 of the rebel spirits. 
 
 You will observe that though dualism becomes more 
 pronounced as its organization is perfected, yet it never 
 goes the length of setting the powers of good and the 
 
 1 Compare James Darmesteter, Ormazd et Aliriman, Paris, 1877, 
 part ii. chap. vi. pp. 242 314. Vol. xxix. of the Bibliotheque de 
 des hautes etudes, Paris. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 165 
 
 powers of evil on a footing of absolute equality, still 
 less of admitting the possibility of the final triumph 
 of evil. Even in the religion of the Persians, Ahura 
 Mazda is anterior to Ahriman and will survive him. 
 Three thousand years after Zoroaster, the evil spirits 
 will be destroyed, while the just will behold the defini- 
 tive kingdom of the Omniscient Lord, in which disease 
 and evil will be banished for ever from nature. 
 Conception of This confidence in the permanence, the 
 
 orLTam? return > or tlie triumph of the forces that 
 
 idea of law. have assured the actual development of the 
 world, finally took the shape of the conception of law, 
 that is to say, of a natural order sustained by the super- 
 human powers. 
 
 Conceive, if you can, the mental state of infantine 
 peoples beginning to reflect on the great phenomena of 
 nature. For them, everything is chance, caprice, or, at 
 the outside, mere habit. They are never sure that the 
 day once gone will re-appear on the morrow, or that 
 the summer will return after the winter. If the sun 
 returns in the spring from his retreat, if the moon re- 
 assumes her lost form, month by month, if the rain 
 puts an end to the drought, if the wind is appeased, 
 it is these phenomena themselves who will it so ; but 
 who shall say whether they will always be of the same 
 mind? 
 
 The Abipones, who believe that their race sprang 
 from the constellation of the Pleiades, suppose that when 
 it descends below the horizon, at the approach of summer, 
 their grandfather is sick ; and they celebrate his re-ap- 
 
166 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 pearance in autumn with great demonstrations of joy. 1 
 Here we find the explanation of the festivals cele- 
 brated by all the ancient peoples in connection with 
 the re -birth of the sun at the winter solstice, still 
 perpetuated in the popular traditions of Christmas in 
 Europe. 
 
 But are we sure that the being who re-appears at 
 intervals is always the same ? The Bechuanas of Southern 
 Africa do not say that the sun sets, but that he dies. 2 
 The French term of Noel takes us back to the dies natalis 
 solis invicti of Pagan antiquity to an epoch, that is, in 
 which men must have believed that the sun was re-born 
 each year. And to this day we speak of "new moons" 
 in witness of the times when it was supposed that moons 
 grew old and died. 3 Certain tribes of Australia declare 
 that the sun kills the moon every month. The Bassutos 
 have got beyond this stage, for they say that the sun 
 chases the moon every month and eats her, little by little ; 
 but she is clever enough to escape him when she is 
 reduced to a mere thread, and so gradually recovers her 
 former shape. 4 Certain favoured peoples however, by 
 comparing repeated observations, gradually discovered 
 
 1 Martinus Dobrizhoffer, Historia de Abiponibm, Vienna, 1784, 
 vol. ii. p. 77. 
 
 2 Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii. p. 83. 
 
 3 In the Walloon provinces of Belgium they still tell the children 
 that the stars are made out of bits of the old moons. Questionnaire 
 de Folklore wallon, Liege, 1890, p. 87. 
 
 4 Albert Reville, Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. i. p. 143, 
 and vol ii. p. 151. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 167 
 
 that the days and the seasons succeed each other at regu- 
 lar intervals; that the sun, moon, and stars re-appear 
 periodically at the same points of the horizon, and inva- 
 riably traverse the same course ; that the storm always 
 comes to put an end to the drought, and the blue sky 
 replaces the clouds. This constancy at last re-assured 
 mankind. They said that the phenomena which acted 
 thus must have their own superior reasons for doing so, 
 drawn either from an unalterable affection for earthly 
 creatures, or from the necessities of their own existence. 
 Thus men were led by an act of faith, in which religion 
 anticipated science, to regard the course of celestial 
 phenomena as a path traced out once for all. Then 
 was born in the human spirit the first idea of a natural 
 order, in which the past is a guarantee of the future. It 
 is this " immutable way " which the Aryans of Indi? 
 called Eita ; l the Persians, Asha ; 2 the Chinese, Tao or 
 Tien ; 3 the Egyptians, the Ma or Maat. 4 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Hibbert Lectures for 1878, p. 237. 
 
 2 James Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, parti, chap. i. 11 17, 
 pp. 13 is. M. Darmesteter points out that the Persian Asha, like 
 the Hindu Eita, bears the two-fold signification of the cosmic order 
 and the liturgical order, whence he concludes that the idea is anterior 
 to the separation of the Indo-Iranians. Prof. Max Miiller, mounting 
 still higher, attempts to prove that it had its origin before the forma- 
 tion of the Indo-European languages. 
 
 3 Albert Seville, La Religion chinoise, Paris, 1889, pp. 102, 120, 
 137, 138. Ch. de Harlez, Les Religions de la Chine, Leipzig, 1891, 
 p. 47. 
 
 4 Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures for 1879, pp. 1 1 9 sqq. P. Pierret, 
 Pantheon egyptien, p. 20. Eugene Grebaut, Hymne a Ammon-Ra, 
 Paris, 1873, p. xix., in the Bibliotlieque de Vecole des liautes etudes. 
 
168 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 Besultsofthe ima S ine wliat 
 
 belief in a this idea concrete and quasi-material as it 
 
 natural order. 1,1 ^ 
 
 was must at once nave thrown upon the 
 spectacle of the universe. Certainly it alone made the 
 development of science possible. The explanation of 
 phenomena by the capricious intervention of superhuman 
 beings gives so easy a solution, that it discourages all 
 attempts to inquire into the natural causes of events, 
 as we see clearly enough from the uncivilized peoples 
 of our own time. But when, instead of having to deal 
 with fantastic and arbitrary beings, man believes in 
 superhuman agencies who govern the world according 
 to laws, he will no longer hesitate to search for these 
 laws by a rational study of the facts, and he will even 
 be stimulated in such a course by the thought that 
 he will thus gain a new means of bringing the divine 
 wisdom and power into relief. The pursuit of science 
 will become a conscious act of religion. 
 
 Doubtless the natural order, as conceived at that epoch, 
 only applies to the most regular phenomena, and, on the 
 other hand, includes a number of supposed facts which 
 we regard as absurd and impossible. Moreover, it is 
 still admitted that this order may be violated, within 
 certain limits, by the caprice or passion from which the 
 gods are not yet entirely free. But this arbitrary ele- 
 ment is more and more regarded as exceptional and 
 anomalous ; and the very fact of its being set in opposi- 
 tion to the normal course of aifairs shows the existence 
 of a well-established belief in that order itself, and at 
 the same time marks the beginning of a struggle in the 
 human mind, which will not end until the supernatural, 
 
IV. DUALISM. 169 
 
 or rather the anti-natural (which must not be confounded 
 with the supra-sensible), has been banished from the 
 reason and the conscience. 
 
 Nevertheless we must not conclude that 
 
 Widening 01 
 
 the religious the elasticity of the religious sentiment has 
 
 horizon. 
 
 been weakened by this gradual suppression 
 of the arbitrary element. It is, indeed, evident at a 
 glance that the conception of a natural order must result 
 in restraining within ever narrower limits the indepen- 
 dence of the personified phenomena, and even of the 
 gods which rule them. "Surya," says a Yedic hymn, 
 " does not transgress the places indicated;" 1 and Hera- 
 clitus f ormulates a the same thought with respect to Helios. 
 But we must note that this very order itself is regarded 
 as the work of personal agents, to whom a veneration 
 intensified by the increased grandeur of their functions 
 is straightway directed. In a word, the problem of the 
 Author of things does but shift its ground. 
 Who has esta- We have seen [that .the Incas worshipped 
 
 b order of 6 tlie sun > whom the y re g arded as their father 
 nature ? an d fogt legislator ; yet we are told that the 
 Inca Yupanqui, who lived shortly before the Spanish 
 conquest, once said : "If [the sun] was a living thing, 
 he would become tired as we do ; and if he was free, he 
 would visit other parts of the heaven which he never 
 reaches. He is like a tethered beast that always makes 
 the same round, or like the dart which goes where it is 
 sent, and not where it wishes." And a little later, the 
 Inca Huyana Capac is said to have remarked to the 
 high-priest at a great festival of the sun at Cuzco: "Our 
 1 Rig-Veda, iii. 30. 12. 
 
170 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 father the Sun must have another Lord more powerful 
 than himself, who orders him to make this journey day 
 by day, without resting." l 
 
 One may well doubt whether these words have not 
 been put into the mouths of the Incas in order to make 
 them precursors of Christianity, but the naive reasoning 
 attributed to them re-appears amongst many other peoples. 
 " Who," asks the Zend-Avesta, " was from the beginning 
 the father of the pure world ? Who has made a path 
 for the sun and for the stars ? Who makes the moon to 
 increase and to decrease ?" 2 
 
 This question has been answered in divers ways. The 
 simplest is to say that each celestial body is directed by 
 its own deity. The Polynesians declare that the sun 
 used to follow a capricious course, but the sun-god Maui 
 caught him in a kind of lassoo which compelled him 
 thenceforth, in spite of his struggles and cries, to remain 
 above the horizon long enough to allow man to pursue 
 his occupations. 3 Not so many centuries ago, in Europe 
 itself, a genius was placed within each planet to direct it 
 through space as a kind of pilot. As soon, however, as 
 the regular phenomena which in their entirety constitute 
 the cosmic order have been brought into relations one 
 with another, that cosmic order itself will come to be 
 regarded either as the movement proper to the personi- 
 
 1 Garcilasso do la Vega, Commentarios Reales (first part), Lisbon, 
 1609, book viii. chap, viii., and book ix. chap. x. Translated by 
 Clements R. Markham, London, 1839 : "Hakluyt Society," pp. 354, 
 446. 
 
 2 See Max Miiller, Science of Religion, London, 1873, p. 240. 
 
 3 Melusine, vol. i. (1878), p. 13. 
 
UNlVEKbll 
 
 OF 
 
 IV. DUALISM. 171 
 
 fied firmament, which serves as their theatre, or as the 
 result of an impulse due to the god who governs the sum 
 of the celestial phenomena. The first of these two notions 
 prevailed in the ancient religion of the Chinese, in which 
 the majestic succession of the cosmic phenomena is re- 
 garded as the immediate manifestation of the celestial 
 activity. The second prevailed in the Semitic religions, 
 particularly in that of the Israelites, in which the book 
 of Genesis makes the Eternal say, " Let there be lights 
 in the expanse of heaven to part the day from the night, 
 and to serve as signs of days, seasons and years." 
 Amongst the Chaldeans, it is Bel who fixes the stars, 
 and establishes the places of the planets and the sun, 
 "that they might know their bonds, that they might 
 not err, that they might not go astray in any way." 1 
 Among the Egyptians, it is Ptah-Ptanen who prescribes 
 to heaven and earth the path which they transgress not. 2 
 With the Persians, it is of course Ahura Mazda who 
 takes this part. 
 
 The two conceptions are in a certain way united in 
 the Yedas, where we are sometimes told that the un- 
 shaken laws rest on Yaruna as upon a rock ; and some- 
 times this same god is represented as the author, the 
 guardian, and the guide of the Eita : " Yaruna has laid 
 down the course of the sun, he has thrown out the im- 
 petuous torrents of the rivers, and he has hollowed the 
 
 1 Fifth tablet of the creation story. Apud Sayce, Hibbert Lectures 
 for 1887, p. 389. 
 
 2 Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures for 1879, p. 223. 
 
172 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 great courses in which flow in seemly order the loosened 
 flood of the days." 1 
 
 Finally, the natural order may be personified under the 
 features of an abstract deity the Gathu, the " Broad 
 Way," which figures amongst the Hindus as one of the 
 deities of the morning; the Eita itself ; the Asha Yahista, 
 the genius of purity, or rather of regularity, amongst the 
 Persians ; the goddess Ma, the Egyptian personification 
 of truth, that is to say, conformity to the reality ; per- 
 haps the Moira of the Greeks, to say nothing of Nomos, 
 their personification of law, and the Erynnyes, those 
 daughters of Zeus and of justice, who not only forbid 
 the sun to exceed his orbit, but likewise refuse to allow 
 the horse of Achilles to speak the language of men. 2 
 
 These abstract personalities may maintain themselves 
 against the gods in cases where the latter retain, from 
 their mythological past, a capricious or arbitrary cha- 
 racter. In such cases, the ancient deities will either be 
 gradually relegated to the background by this new con- 
 ception of the superhuman power, or else their wills will 
 be gradually assimilated to the irrevocable decrees of the 
 new power, which is summoned to rule the destinies of 
 the universe. In China, Taoism, degraded as it now is 
 by vulgar superstitions, originally defined the Tao as 
 having existed even before the deity, 3 whereas the official 
 religion of the empire sees in the order of nature the will 
 of heaven itself. In Egypt, we learn from the texts that 
 
 1 Rig-Veda, vii. 87. 1. 2 Iliad, xix. 418. 
 
 3 Ch. de Harlez, Les Religions de la Chine, Leipzig, pp. 174 sq. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 173 
 
 Ma is sometimes called Lady of the Heaven and Euler of 
 the "World, who "knows no lord or master;" 1 whilst 
 other passages, perhaps more faithful to the prevailing 
 conception, declare of Osiris : " He maintains order in 
 the universe and makes the son succeed the father." 
 Whilst the Brahmans, as we have just . seen, attribute 
 the creation of the Eita to Yaruna, Buddhism recognizes 
 nothing in the universe but the action of the Karma, the 
 residue of acts, that is to say, the action of effects and 
 causes. In the Buddhist writings, Qakra, the chief of 
 the thirty-three gods who inhabited the Yedic Olympus, 
 declares his inability to act in opposition to the conse- 
 quences of the Karma. 2 So, too, with the Greeks, Moira 
 is superior even to Zeus; but the opposition pales in 
 proportion as the will of the lord of Olympus comes into 
 more constant harmony with the requirements of uni- 
 versal order, until the time is reached when Cleanthes 
 can exclaim : " Oh Zeus ! in conformity to law dost thou 
 conduct all things." 3 
 
 1 Le Page Eenouf, Hibbert Lectures for 1879, p. 122. M. Eugene 
 Grebaut notes, rightly enough, that this conception of the Truth as a 
 supreme law of the universe is anterior and superior to monotheism in 
 Egypt. Indeed, when once it becomes the foundation of the whole 
 theodicy and of religion itself, it places the relations of the faithful to 
 the superhuman world on bases independent of the questions of pan- 
 theism, dualism, and creation properly so called. Hymne a Ammon 
 fia, Paris, 1875, p. xix. 
 
 2 S. Beal, in Religious Systems of the World, 1890, p. 84. 
 
 3 Stobaeus, Physica, bk. i. c. ii. 12. From Homeric times down- 
 wards, M. Jules Girard points out a tendency to make the gods, in 
 virtue of their very being, the representatives of stability, endurance, 
 fixed principles, obvious or hidden laws of the universe.- Jules 
 Girard, Le sentiment religieux en Grecc d'Homere a Escliyle, second 
 
174 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 "We are now in a position to judge whether this assimi- 
 lation of the cosmic to the divine order the reign of law 
 in the whole series of observable facts implies, as certain 
 superficial thinkers declare, the first step towards atheism. 
 On the contrary, it surely leads to the recognition of the 
 rational principle in the universe. The Vedic poet well 
 understood this when he cried: " The sun and the moon 
 move in regular succession in order that we may believe, 
 O Indra ! " l Is it not in the same sense that we must 
 take the words of the Psalmist, "The heavens declare the 
 glory of God"? "It is because of law that we believe 
 in the gods," says Euripides; 2 and the Egyptians went 
 further still in declaring that " the gods live by Maat." 3 
 
 What lessons have we here for those who still continue 
 to require some violation of the natural laws as a proof 
 of the omnipotence and even the existence of God ! How 
 much more truly was Kant on the line of religious pro- 
 gress nay, in the stream of our ancient Indo-European 
 tradition when he urged us to seek that proof in the 
 spectacle of the heavens and in the voice of conscience, 
 rather than in the miracles of Joshua stopping the sun, 
 or Jesus raising the dead ! 
 
 The conception of universal order thus formulated, 
 however, implies yet another step of progress, viz. the 
 assimilation of the divine order not only to the cosmic 
 but also to the moral order. 
 
 edition, Paris, 1879, p. 52. Pindar had already sung, No/xos 6 TTO.VTUV 
 /foo-iAeus OVCLTUV re KOU a^avarwv, cited by Plato, Gorgias, 87. 
 
 1 Rig-Veda, i. 102, 2. 
 
 2 vo/xw yap TOV? #covs f)yovfM<0a. Hecuba, 800. 
 
 3 Le Page Renouf, Op. cit. p. 120. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 175 
 
 (ii.) THE STRUGGLE FOR GOOD. 
 
 immorality of How can peoples professing relatively ad- 
 the myths. V anced views as to the nature and functions 
 of the deity the Hindoos and Greeks, for example 
 accept accounts of their gods as absurd and gross as 
 the stories of their respective mythologies are ? And, 
 moreover, how could peoples whose morals were so rela- 
 tively pure as those of the Germans attribute vices and 
 even crimes to their gods at which they would have 
 blushed themselves? The views developed in the pre- 
 ceding Lectures have already put us in a position to 
 give a partial answer to the question. Such facts as the 
 destruction of the twilight by the sun, the removal of 
 the clouds by the wind, the apparent union of the heaven 
 with the atmosphere, the earth, the clouds, or the dawn 
 have no immoral character in themselves, even when 
 respectively called parricide, theft, or adultery ; but 
 they quite change their character when the beings to 
 whom they are attributed are no longer looked upon as 
 heavenly bodies and as natural objects (whether per- 
 sonified or not), but are regarded as heroes, of a human 
 or a quasi-human physiognomy, living in a society similar 
 to that of man. 
 
 This explanation presented itself to the minds of the 
 ancients. Thus in the sixth century before our era, 
 Theagenes of Ehegium taught that the wars of the gods 
 signified the conflict of the elements. Socrates explained 
 that if Orithyia was carried away by Boreas, it simply 
 meant that she had been hurled from the rocks by the 
 north wind. And, in like manner, a Hindu commen- 
 
176 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 tator, ICumarila, explains the scandalous chronicle of the 
 Vedic gods as follows : "It is fabled that Prajapati, the 
 Lord of Creation, did violence to his daughter. But what 
 does it mean ? Prajapati, the Lord of Creation, is a name 
 
 of the sun His daughter Ushas is the dawn. And 
 
 when it is said that he was in love with her, this only 
 means that, at sunrise, the sun runs after the dawn, the 
 dawn being at the same time called the daughter of the 
 sun, because she rises when he approaches. In the same 
 manner, if it is said that Indra was the seducer of Ahalya, 
 this does not imply that the god Indra committed such a 
 crime ; but Indra means the sun, and Ahalya .... the 
 night ; and, as the night is seduced and ruined by the 
 sun of the morning, therefore is Indra called the para- 
 mour of Ahalya." 1 
 
 Numbers of myths, however, and especially mythic 
 episodes, do not lend themselves so easily to this treat- 
 ment as simple metaphors. When interpretations from 
 nature have done what they can towards explaining 
 mythology, we still have a residuum which represents 
 the free play of popular fancy. Why has imagination 
 here, too, allowed itself so free a course in directions 
 which reason and morals, as we understand them, would 
 have prohibited? The anthropological school explains 
 this anomaly by throwing back the formation of the myths 
 to an epoch at which their authors were still at the 
 intellectual and moral level of the savages of to-day. 
 Mr. Andrew Lang has contributed much to the illustra- 
 tion of this theory by comparing the classical mythologies 
 
 1 See Max Mliller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, London, 
 1859, pp. 529 sq. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 177 
 
 with the traditions of uncivilized peoples in both hemi- 
 spheres. 1 We cannot insist too often on the point that 
 the god of the savage is simply an idealized chief or 
 sorcerer. Why should he not comport himself as the 
 worshipper supposes a chief or sorcerer endowed with 
 increased faculties would do ? But if this theory 
 accounts for the absurdity and the crudity which make 
 the more cultivated nations blush for their mythology, 
 it does not explain why the authors of the myths have 
 ascribed acts to their deities which they themselves would 
 regard as blameworthy or degrading. The only possible 
 explanation is, that at first morals had no influence 
 whatever on the conception formed of the gods. Ethics 
 and religion were absolutely independent of each other. 
 Original inde- I am n t now to discuss ethical origins. 
 mora e iTand f Whatever theory we profess in this matter, 
 
 religion. one f ac j s certain, namely, that even amongst 
 the most primitive peoples the right of the strongest is 
 limited by certain obligations that custom has conse- 
 crated, and the violation of which at any rate involves 
 public disfavour, and arouses in the mind of the victim 
 a sense of injustice. Indeed, were this not so, no society 
 at all could exist beyond the limits of the family, in 
 which possibly parental authority might suffice to main- 
 tain the social ties. No doubt peoples differ much in 
 their definitions of good and evil, but they all admit the 
 distinction itself, and declare that we must do good and 
 shun evil. 
 
 You will observe that this has nothing to do with the 
 
 belief in superhuman beings, whose support, if not the 
 
 1 See, especially, his Myth, Ritual and Religion, London, 1887, 2 vols. 
 
 H 
 
178 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 result of pure caprice, is proportioned to the generosity 
 with which they are treated or the skill with which they 
 are served. 
 
 Even groups which have already reached the first stage 
 of polytheism, such as the ancient Mexicans, the Poly- 
 nesians, or the Shintoists of Japan, show no trace as yet 
 of a connection between religion and morals. We must 
 not be misled by the prayers in which the worshipper im- 
 plores pardon for his sins, and prays, often in very exalted 
 terms, that the stain may be taken from him. " From a 
 distance," says a Japanese prayer, " I reverently worship 
 with awe before Ameno Mi-hashira and Kunino Mi- 
 hashira (the god and goddess of wind), .... I say with 
 awe, Deign to bless me by correcting the unwilling 
 faults which, heard and seen by you, I have committed." 1 
 Yet the very author who translates this prayer adds that 
 Shintoism does not bear so much as a trace of an ethical 
 code. 
 
 In the ancient Chaldean civilization it hardly seems 
 that men's moral conduct influenced their relations with 
 the gods in any way, and yet their religious literature 
 contains hymns which M. Lenormant rightly describes as 
 penitential psalms. " Oh Lord," cries the worshipper of 
 Bel or Istar, " my sins are many, my transgressions are 
 great ! . . . The sin that I sinned I knew not. The 
 transgression I committed I knew not. ... The 
 Lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me ; God in 
 the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me. 
 . . . Lord, destroy not thy servant ! When cast 
 
 1 Isabella Bird, Shinloism, in Religious Systems of the World, 
 London, 1890, pp. 93, 98. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 179 
 
 into the water of the ocean, take his hand. The sins I 
 have sinned, turn to a blessing. The transgressions I 
 have committed, may the wind carry away. Strip off my 
 manifold wickednesses as a garment." 1 But as soon as 
 we look below the surface, we see that these despairing 
 cries of a conscience a prey to the agonies of remorse, 
 refer to faults committed, not against men, but against I 
 the gods, by ritual omissions or legal impurities some- 
 times contracted by the worshipper even without his 
 
 knowledge. 
 
 First entry of Nevertheless, religion must have exercised 
 
 Tocfal^ela- a favourable influence on the consolidation 
 
 tions. O f social relations from the first. To begin 
 
 with, it developed the spirit of subordination, prevented 
 
 the scattering of the tribe, and formed a link between 
 
 successive generations ; and in the next place, it favoured 
 
 the sacrifice of a direct and immediate satisfaction to a 
 
 greater but more distant and indirect good. 
 
 The oath. The transition from the purely interested 
 intervention of the superhuman beings in the affairs of 
 men to the exercise of their moral or judicial functions, 
 may perhaps be found in their anxiety to make the oath i 
 respected. In general, the spirits are indifferent enough 
 to the lies which their worshippers tell one another ; but 
 the latter, in order to inspire confidence in their pro- 
 mises, often have occasion to close the possibility of 
 breaking their word with impunity against themselves. 
 This object may be secured by giving a pledge, or more 
 simply by calling upon the gods, and especially the most 
 powerful or the most dreaded of them, as witnesses to 
 
 1 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures for 1887, pp. 350, 351. 
 
 N2 
 
180 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 the promise ; so that if either of the parties breaks his 
 engagement, the divinity in question may feel himself 
 personally affected, 'and may therefore take vengeance. 1 
 
 Amongst the Greeks, the importance of the oath varied 
 with that of the deities invoked. 2 The most solemn 
 were those made in the name of the Eumenides or of 
 Zeus Horkios. Every oath implies a promise made to the 
 deity, and we know with what rigour Yahveh himself 
 exacted the accomplishment of vows, however imprudent, 
 as, for instance, that of Jephtha. Now, when the gods 
 have thus been made the champions of truth on solemn 
 occasions, an easy transition leads to their being supposed 
 to love the truth for its own sake, and to desire its pre- 
 valence on all occasions. 
 
 The ordeal. Another institution in which the deity 
 began to assume the character of a justiciary power is 
 found in the " Judgments of God" in which the super- 
 human beings sometimes punished the culprit and some- 
 times simply helped in his detection. 
 
 Every one knows of the ordeals of the Middle Ages in 
 which the accused had to submit to the test of fire or 
 water. Some of these customs apparently go back to the 
 common era of the Indo-European races, since traces 
 of them are found in the code of Manu, whereas it 
 is amongst the Germans that we probably find the 
 
 1 The bare fact of lieing in the presence of a deity in itself shows 
 want of respect. Mrs. Murray Ainsley tells us that in certain parts of 
 India the merchants refuse to take up their positions under a pipal 
 tree, because, if they did, they could not ask more than the right price 
 for their wares. Revue des traditions populaires, Jan. 1889, p. 19. 
 
 2 A. Maury, Religion de la Grece antique, 3 vols, Paris, 1857, 
 vol. ii. p. 167. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 181 
 
 earliest explanation of them. For in ancient Germany 
 their efficacy is attributed, not to the intervention of 
 a god from outside, but to the inherent sentiments of 
 the personified element. Thus, if the culprit could not 
 sink in the water, it was because it rejected him ; and the 
 fire, of its own accord, spared the innocent victim who 
 trusted it, and threw himself into the flames or walked 
 upon burning torches. It is very significant that analo- 
 gous customs are found wherever some kind of social 
 justice is beginning to germinate for instance, amongst 
 the Negroes, the Malagassy, the Polynesians, the Bed- 
 skins, and others. Under the kinglets of pagan Africa, the 
 ordeal generally consists in drinking a poisonous draught ; 
 and here, with the complicity of the sorcerer charged 
 with the preparation of the drink, it often constitutes the 
 whole machinery of government. 
 
 M. Albert E^ville represents the ordeal as a proof 
 that the savage thinks the spirits of justice and truth 
 superior to those of evil and error ; 1 but I cannot help 
 asking whether this is not forcing moral dualism pre- 
 maturely to the front ere the corresponding stage of 
 religious development has been reached, and I am 
 tempted to regard it as simply a tribute to the keener 
 sight and intellect of the superhuman beings, who are 
 supposed to be more capable than man of discovering 
 the authors of certain crimes. To whom, indeed, can the 
 savage turn for help in such investigations better than 
 to the powers supposed to be acquainted with the past 
 and the future ? Lieutenant Becker once saw an idol at 
 Boma, in East Africa, with several heads. When he 
 1 Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. i. p. 103. 
 
182 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 asked the meaning of this polycephaly, he was told 
 that it enabled the god the better to discover criminals. 1 
 At any rate, it is certain that the gods thus employed 
 as informers or detectives naturally become the terror 
 of criminals, and finally get the reputation of hating 
 crime itself. 
 
 Crimes against Again, when a man believes in the gods 
 the gods of O f t k e comnmn ity he cannot but allow that 
 
 the commu- * 7 
 
 nity. their protection extends to all the members 
 of the tribe, and consequently that they will insist on 
 the rights of his neighbour being respected as much as 
 his own. Yet more : there are certain crimes which 
 directly affect the interests, if not the very existence, of 
 the tribe itself, such as treason, breach of customs, and 
 so on. The repression of such attempts naturally con- 
 cerns the gods of the community, and all the more so 
 because they are regarded as the authors of the violated 
 custom, and the organizers of the threatened society; 
 and this is actually the case even amongst populations 
 as backward as the Araucans, the Andamans, and the 
 Australians. 
 
 Conception of Finally, the time comes wlien the idea of 
 a moral order i aw alreadv applied to those phenomena 
 
 on the model ... . ... 
 
 of the cosmic which in virtue of their periodicity or per- 
 manence ought to recur, is extended to all 
 acts imposed by the voice of conscience which ought to 
 be accomplished by men. Hence the assimilation of the 
 course which man is bound to follow in his conduct, to 
 the course which the celestial bodies ought to follow in 
 their movements. " Malefactors," says the Rig- Veda, 
 
 1 La vie en Afrique, vol. ii. p. 304. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 183 
 
 "do not follow the path of the Kita." 1 Even in our 
 own language, such terms as " regularity," " rectitude," 
 " right," and " righteousness," imply that the moral 
 idea which they express was at first accepted in a phy- 
 sical sense. Amongst ourselves, as in ancient Egypt, to 
 respect the prescriptions of custom or of morals is still 
 translated into conforming with the rule. To abide by the 
 principles of justice is for us, as for the poets of the Big- 
 Yeda, to follow the right path. 
 
 Nowhere was this assimilation of the moral and the 
 cosmic order pushed so far as in the ancient religion of 
 China. The entire ritual, and even the whole system of 
 ethics, rests upon the idea that, since the heaven moves 
 by fixed rules, man must do the same ; and on the other 
 side it is admitted that the crimes of man re-act almost 
 fatally upon the course of nature, by releasing irregular 
 phenomena or evil spirits, who in their turn intervene 
 to punish man. In the Kia-iii, Confucius lays it down 
 that if the people cease to follow Tao, the heaven in its 
 turn will disturb the cosmic order; 2 and twenty-seven 
 centuries afterwards, in 1731, we find the same theory 
 embodied in a proclamation addressed by the emperor 
 Yong-Tcheng to his people after a long drought. " Jus- 
 tice," it says, " originally aroused by heaven and man, 
 answers more swiftly than the echo. The floods and 
 droughts or disasters which trouble all the earth come 
 from the acts of man." 3 
 
 1 Rig-Veda, ix. 73, 6. 
 
 2 J. Happel, La Religion de Vancien empire chinois, in the Revue 
 de Vhistoire des religions, vol. iv. 1881, p. 264. 
 
 3 De Harlez, Les croyances des premiers Chinois, Bruxelles, 1888, 
 p. 55 ; vol. xli. of the octavo series of Memoir es of the " Royal 
 Academy" of Belgium, 
 
184 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 Superhuman Naturally, it is the gods charged with 
 champions maintaining physical order who are likewise 
 
 and opponents 
 
 of the moral entrusted with the maintenance of moral 
 order ; and their importance increases in pro- 
 portion to their task. They are, however, often aided by 
 special deities, particularly amongst the peoples who deify 
 abstract qualities and moral virtues. These virtues some- 
 times act as inspirers of man, and sometimes as avengers 
 of the offences that particularly concern them respec- 
 tively. 
 
 " Justice," says Hesiod, "is the virgin daughter of 
 Zeus, honoured and revered by the gods who hold 
 Olympus. Should any outrage her, slighting her by 
 crooked doings, straightway she takes her seat by Zeus, 
 the son of Kronos, and chants of the evil mind of men, 
 that the people may be punished." 1 Such, too, was the 
 part taken by Ma amongst the Egyptians ; for it is she 
 whom we see introducing the departed to the tribunal of 
 Osiris and acting as assessor at their judgment. Her 
 image is even represented as a weight in one scale of the 
 balance, the other being occupied by the heart of the 
 deceased. 2 The Persians were impelled to deify the moral 
 qualities of man, and to place them in the ranks of Ahura- 
 Mazda's army. "We need only mention the Good Mind, 
 the Best Purity, the Desired Kingdom, and the like. 3 
 Amongst the Romans, the virtues constituted a special 
 class of deities, but they were merely hypostases of more 
 ancient deities ; that is to say, divine attributes detached 
 
 1 Works and Days, 256261 (254259). 
 
 2 P. Pierret, Pantheon egyptien, Paris, 1881, p. 64. 
 
 3 Tiele, Outlines of the History of Ancient Religions, p. 168. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 185 
 
 for separate personification. Thus, according to Preller, 
 Fides was attached to Jupiter, Concordia to Yenus, 
 Pudicitia to Juno, &C. 1 
 
 By an analogous evolution, it is the spirits in revolt 
 against the cosmic order which come to be represented 
 as striving to overturn the moral order. Amongst the 
 Persians, with whom the conflicts of the Indo-Iranian 
 nature -worship were transformed into an ethical strug- 
 gle, we may still recognize in the two conflicting armies 
 the ancient champions of light and of darkness, or of 
 the storm, which the Vedas have preserved as personifi- 
 cations of natural forces. 2 Amongst the Jews, in like 
 manner, the angels of darkness became essentially the V 
 angels of evil. In Egypt, the struggle of Osiris and 
 Set was originally the myth of death combined with 
 a solar myth. "Set," says M. Maspero, "represented 
 material evil; .... but material dualism everywhere 
 brings moral dualism in its train. Just as Osiris 
 becomes the Good Being (Unnofir), Set becomes the 
 Evil Being." 3 Finally, amongst the Teutons, dualism, 
 at first purely physical, likewise tends to take a moral 
 turn when Loki, rejected from the ranks of the gods, 
 has become the head of the armies of evil. 4 Thus a kind 
 of assimilation is established everywhere between the 
 forces representing light, life, order, truth, justice, on 
 the one hand, and darkness, death, disorder, falsehood, 
 
 1 ~PvQ\\ex,RdmischeMytliologie 9 second edition, Berlin, 1865, pp. 622, 
 623. 
 
 2 J. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, passim. 
 
 3 Revue de Vhistoire des religions, vol. xix. (1889), p. 24. 
 
 4 Tiele, Outlines, &c., 118, 119, pp. 194198. 
 
186 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 and iniquity, on the other. The drama which has hitherto 
 been confined to nature now embraces the conscience, 
 and man feels more than ever bound to bring his aid to 
 the gods who are fighting for the good of the world. 
 
 He who fails in this duty takes sides with the evil 
 powers, and condemns himself henceforth to share their 
 fate. The gods withdraw from him the protection 
 which alone assures the enjoyment of the universal 
 order, or they even inflict direct punishment on him, 
 proportioned to his fault. Sometimes they themselves 
 hurl the thunderbolt at conspicuous criminals, as amongst 
 the Jews, Greeks, and Hindus; more often they act 
 through the medium of special agents who personify 
 punishment. " For the (king's) sake," we read in the 
 code of Manu, " the Lord formerly created his own son, 
 Punishment, the protector of all creatures, (an incarnation 
 of) the law, formed of Brahman's glory." l The Greeks 
 had a whole series of beings representing the celestial 
 punishments; Nemesis sprung from the union of Zeus 
 with Themis ; the Poinai, represented by the poets as the 
 attendants of justice; Ate, dark remorse; the Erinnyes, 
 who pursued the culprit, and executed the decrees of 
 Minos. Amongst the Persians and Jews, it was the 
 spirits , of evil who were charged with tormenting the 
 criminal until the day of the final chastisement. 
 
 roblem Meanwhile it was impossible not to note 
 of unpunished that vice sometimes escaped unpunished and 
 virtue went unrewarded. The poignant ques- 
 tion addressed by Job to the Eternal, " Wherefore do 
 
 1 Manu, vii. 14, p. 218, in Biililer's translation, Oxford, 1886. 
 Vol. xxv. of The Sacred Books of tlie East, edited by Max Miiller. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 187 
 
 the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?" 
 (Job xxi. 7), appears again on the lips of Theognis 
 addressed to Zeus: "How canst thou, son of Saturn, 
 put the sinner and the just man on the same footing?" 1 
 It is the ever -recurring and terrible problem which 
 reduces the thinker to the alternative of denying the 
 omnipotence or the absolute justice of the divinity, and 
 which has always been the citadel of atheism. "May 
 neither I nor my son now be just amongst men," cried 
 Hesiod, " since it is an evil for a man to be just, inas- 
 much as the unjust shall secure the larger rights. Yet 
 I do not hold that Zeus, who exults in the thunderbolt, 
 is closing the account as yet." 2 
 
 Attempts have been made to explain this anomaly by 
 saying, with the Chorus in JEschylus, that suffering is a 
 lesson; or with Solon, that the children pay the debts of 
 their father; or with Confucius and the Prophets, that 
 the good pay for the evil; or, finally, with Job, that the 
 decrees of Providence are inscrutable; but these answers 
 have never fully satisfied either the reason which seeks 
 the wherefore of things, or the conscience which revolts 
 against the idea of throwing upon the innocent the con- 
 sequences of the sins of others. Thus most peoples have 
 sought in doctrines of a future life the means of repairing 
 the evils and the injustices of the present. 
 
 The theory At the threshold of our investigations we 
 
 *$*!* found man admitting, on the strength of his 
 
 death. dream s, not only the continuance of the 
 
 human personality after death, but even its posthumous 
 
 intervention in the affairs of the survivors. This per- 
 
 1 Vi). 377 sq. 2 Works and Days, 270273 (268271). 
 
188 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 sonality, henceforth conceived as a double, sometimes 
 pictured under traits of an animal, wanders around its 
 last home and walks among its descendants, joining in 
 their life and even sharing their repasts. Or perhaps it 
 re-encases itself in another body. And, on this point, 
 while allowing due influence to dreams, as suggesting 
 such transformations, I am not disinclined to believe that 
 the theory of human re-incarnation often has its origin in 
 anthropophagy, and that the belief in metempsychosis 
 may be due to the custom of leaving human bodies to be 
 consumed by animals. 1 
 
 Or sometimes the soul was relegated to the tomb in 
 company with the body, which it still frequented till 
 it was reduced to dust; and, by a natural extension, 
 the peoples who bury their dead conceive them as wan- 
 dering with their fellows in the deep caverns of the 
 subterranean world. In like manner, those who commit 
 their dead to the waves suppose them to have gone, like 
 the sun, to a distant land beyond the sea. Finally, 
 those who practise cremation suppose that the dead 
 ascend to the heights of heaven with the smoke of the 
 funeral pyre. Hence insensibly arises the conception of 
 another world situated under the earth, on a distant 
 island, on the summit of a mountain, beyond the firma- 
 ment, or even in the stars, the mysterious abodes to which 
 almost all peoples despatch their dead to continue the life 
 of this world. 
 
 The word " continue" is strictly in its place, for the 
 1 future life is at first represented as a continuation, or 
 
 1 On all these points Mr. Herbert Spencer's exposition in chaps, xii. 
 to xv. of his Sociology, vol. i, is as lucid as it is exhaustive. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 189 
 
 rather a copy, of the present existence. Eating and 
 drinking, hunting and fishing, harvesting and other 
 work, go on just as in this world, and so do war and 
 love; although, says the Araucan, "they have no more 
 children, for they are but souls." 1 In the other world, 
 every one retains his ancient rank. The Polynesians 
 believe that the departed are divided into the social 
 classes to which they respectively belonged in their own 
 country. The same belief prevails amongst the Kaffirs, 
 in Dahomey, and amongst the Indian aborigines. When 
 he has descended into Hades, Achilles still, apparently, 
 plays the part of a powerful prince amongst the dead. 2 
 When Eabani goes down to hell, he discovers the great 
 kings of old still wearing their crowns, 3 just as Isaiah 
 (xiv. 9) represents the kings of the earth sitting on their 
 thrones in Sheol above the crowd of shades. You are 
 aware that the Egyptians reproduced all the scenes of 
 public and private life in the interior paintings of the 
 tombs, supposing that this would secure their recurrence 
 for the defunct in the other world. 
 The future ^ ^ en happens that, while still modelled 
 
 life conceived on the terrestrial life, the future life is con- 
 as better or . 
 
 worse than ceived ot as notably worse or better. Some- 
 times, doubtless by an inference drawn from 
 dreams, it bears the character of a vague, pale, half- 
 effaced and miserable copy. Nothing can be more dismal 
 than the fate of souls in the Hebrew Sheol, the Assyrian 
 Arali, or the Greek Hades. "A corner in this world 
 is better than a corner in the world of spirits," say the 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 76. 
 
 2 Odyssey, xi. 490. 3 Sayce, Op. tit. p. 62. 
 
190 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 Yorubas of Western Africa. 1 This was also the opinion 
 of Achilles, who would have preferred to be a slave on 
 earth rather than king amongst the dead. The Einns 
 believed in the subterranean region of Tuonela, where 
 there was a sun, fish, and bears, as on the earth ; but 
 the luminary was paler, the soil more ungrateful, and 
 the water colder. 2 
 
 Elsewhere, on the other hand, the future life is sup- 
 posed to satisfy the aspirations which have never been 
 realized here below. Man and this is an indication of 
 his superiority over all other known beings frames for 
 himself an ideal of happiness duly related to his mode 
 of life and his stage of education. Whether that ideal 
 is purely material or prevailingly moral, in either case 
 every one admits his inability to realize it on earth ; or if 
 by chance the modesty of his aspirations or the unlooked- 
 for kindness of fortune should enable a man to do so, he 
 immediately feels the boundaries of his desires expand, 
 and is more keenly conscious than ever of the inadequacy 
 of things as they are. Hence the restless feeling, which 
 must early have impelled man to look beyond this life, 
 for a little more happiness, while the day was coming in 
 which he should look there for a little more justice. He 
 represented the future life, then, as destined to provide 
 him with enjoyments and compensations for which he 
 longed in vain below. "For the men who pronounce 
 these prayers," says a poet of the court of Assurbanipal, 
 "may the land of the silver sky, oil unceasing, and the 
 wine of blessedness, be their food, and a good moon- 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 80. 
 
 2 R&ville, Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. ii. p. 204. 
 
IV. DUALISM. . 191 
 
 tide their light." l " Place me, Soma," said the 
 Vedic poet, " where celestial light reigns eternal, where 
 the mighty waters abound, where life is free, where the 
 worlds are radiant, where the desires of my desires are 
 accomplished." 2 The Greenlanders imagine that in the 
 other world there will be no night, good drinking water 
 everywhere, and plenty of fish. The Redskins conceive 
 of the better world as a vast hunting-ground, where the 
 game comes of its own accord to meet the blow of the 
 hunter. In the Tonga islands, they suppose the dead to 
 dwell in a spacious and shady abode, where they amuse 
 themselves with dancing when they are not sucking 
 sugar-cane. 3 The Patagonian sorcerers say that they 
 sometimes see, in the very depths of the earth, the cave 
 where the souls are glutted with cattle and strong drink. 
 In the depths of Amenti, the Egyptians describe the 
 kingdom of Osiris, the fields of Talu, where wheat grows 
 seven feet high. You know by reputation Mahomet's 
 Paradise, and the Elysian Fields of the Greeks. How 
 many Christians of the present day have conceived an 
 idea in no way more elevated of the Paradise where 
 they believe they will pass their time in doing nothing 
 unless it be taking pleasant walks and joining in reli- 
 gious music ! 
 
 The superiority and the inferiority of the fate which 
 awaits the dead in the future life, though apparently con- 
 tradictory conceptions, are nevertheless simultaneously 
 held by many peoples ; for the popular imagination is not 
 
 1 Sayce, Hiblert Lectures, 1887, p. 357. 
 
 2 In Belgium, the Walloon populace still sing that in Paradise 
 " they eat sugar with a ladle" (on rnagne d& souc al losse). 
 
 3 Condensed from Rig-Veda, ix. 113, 711. 
 
192 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 daunted by trifles. Sometimes the souls are divided be- 
 tween the two posthumous realms, according to the rank, 
 profession, or mode of life of the deceased. And where a 
 better world alone is believed in, as in the Tonga islands 
 and Samoa, the future life sometimes exists for the chiefs 
 and the priests alone. It was observed, however, that 
 in the present life success is not always the privilege of 
 birth and of rank, but often falls to the most insinuating 
 or the most courageous. Thus the better world would be 
 assigned to the heroes who fell on the field of battle, as is 
 notably the case with the Tupinambas of Brazil, the 
 Comanches, the ancient Mexicans, perhaps the Assyrians, 
 and the Germans, whose Walhalla was open to warriors 
 who fell with their weapons in their hands. The 
 natives of Nicaragua despatched all who died in their 
 beds to the under- world ; violent death alone gave access 
 to the country of the sun. It is curious enough to find 
 the same superstition actually appearing in the Eussia 
 of to-day, where the sect of the "Smotherers" take the 
 words of St. Matthew (xi. 12) literally, " The kingdom 
 of heaven is taken by violence,' 7 and save their members 
 from a natural death by anticipating their end when 
 they are seriously ill. 1 
 
 The Esquimaux, for their part, being a pacific and 
 industrious people, promise heaven to those who have 
 caught the greatest number of seals and whales ; to those 
 who have been drowned in the sea ; to those, generally, 
 who have worked hard ; and finally, like the Mexicans, 
 to women who have died in childbirth. 
 
 You will observe that the deceased thus privileged 
 
 1 Leroy Beaulieu, L' 'Empire des Tsars et les Russes, 3 vols., Paris, 
 18811889, vol. iii. La Religion, p. 367. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 193 
 
 especially those whom the superhuman powers have 
 snatched away in the flower of their age have suc- 
 cumbed while rendering services to their community. 
 It is but natural therefore that the gods of the com- 
 munity should reward or rather compensate them. How- 
 ever this may be, we can already note the germs of what 
 is presently to become the theory of retribution thrusting 
 themselves up through the mere theory of continuation. 
 At the stage of belief which I have called 
 
 The theory of 5 
 
 posthumous spiritism, or polydemonism, the dead form a 
 
 retribution. , . . , . ., . , 
 
 class ot spirits not subject to any higher 
 authority; but when the existence of the gods is once 
 admitted, they cannot be excluded from intervening in 
 the fate of souls. Being generally installed in a kind of 
 Paradise themselves, the gods admit thereto, by pre- 
 ference, such as have gained their good graces by praise 
 and sacrifices, while those who have failed to render them 
 their, dues must go to the tortures of hell. A fortiori, 
 when the gods have become the protectors of the moral 
 order, they will reserve Paradise to those who have 
 fought the good fight, done right, observed the truth, 
 and followed justice. The idea of a judgment of the 
 dead, to which the theory of rewards and punish- 
 ments naturally leads as its culmination, appears to 
 have found its way into the minds even of very back- 
 ward peoples. Bosman declares that certain Negroes 
 of Guinea imagine that when they cross the river of 
 death they are questioned by a superhuman being, who 
 asks them if they have observed the sacred days and 
 if they have abstained from prohibited kinds of food. 
 Doubtless the Egyptians, like all known peoples, had 
 
 o 
 
194 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 their own ritual prescriptions, the violation of which 
 would involve chastisement in this world and in the 
 next. But what a moral chasm between the Guinea 
 .Negro's catechism and the following apology which, 
 thousands of years before our era, the believer must 
 render to Osiris before the tribunal of the gods : 
 "Verily, I know you, ye lords of truth and of justice. 
 I have brought you the truth. I have destroyed lieing 
 for you. I have not committed any fraud against 
 man. I have not persecuted the widow. I have not 
 lied before the tribunal. I have not broken faith. I 
 have done no forbidden thing. I have not made the 
 foreman carry out day by day more work than was 
 due. ... I have not been anywise neglectful. I have 
 not been idle. ... I have not done that which was 
 abominable to the gods. I have not injured the slave 
 with his master. I have not starved. I have not made 
 to weep. I have not slain. I have not planned treache- 
 rous murder. I have not committed fraud against any- 
 one. ... I am pure, I am pure, I am pure I" 1 
 
 The theories of continuation and of retribution are 
 sometimes found side by side in the beliefs of the same 
 people. This co-existence is, for that matter, rendered 
 all the easier by the belief in several abodes of the dead 
 and several factors of the personality. If a little order 
 must be brought into this parallelism, or rather super- 
 position, of ideas which seem mutually to exclude each 
 other, there is nothing to prevent the double being 
 told off to continue the life of this world in one of the 
 
 1 G. Maspero, Histoire andenne des peuples de V Orient, fourth 
 edition, Paris, 1886, pp. 38, 39. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 195 
 
 abodes assigned by popular tradition to the dead, and the 
 soul or the spirit being allowed to go to Paradise or Hell 
 according to the balance of its merits or demerits. This 
 is notoriously what took place with the Egyptians, who 
 appear to have believed at the same time that the double 
 went on with the old existence in the tomb, and that the 
 soul descended to Amenti, there to be judged. The 
 Greek Hades, which originally received all the shades 
 indiscriminately, afterwards had a special department, 
 Tartarus, reserved for the punishment of great sinners ; 
 whereas the heroes and even virtuous men went, after 
 death, to the Elysian Fields in the islands of the blest. 
 With the Hindus, the distribution of the 
 
 Belief in 
 
 remuneration souls between the various sojourns of the 
 dead seems to have been rendered needless 
 by the belief in metempsychosis. It was specifically 
 upon earth that the theory of retribution sought to 
 realize itself, in a graduated scale of animal re-incarna- 
 tions ; whereas the absorbtion of the personality into the 
 bosom of the great whole became more and more the 
 supreme recompence of the Brahman theology. 
 
 The Buddhists went still further in this direction. 
 They suppressed the whole conception of a posthumous 
 tribunal and judgment, or even judge, since they dis- 
 pensed with gods in their moral system ; but they retained 
 from Brahmanism the theory of re-births, while holding 
 that each re-incarnation was determined, in some sort 
 mechanically, by the anterior conduct of the deceased. 
 Indeed, strictly speaking, it is not the same soul which 
 is re-incarnated, but the karma that is to say, the 
 resultant of all the acts of the individual, good and bad. 
 
 o2 
 
196 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 It is perhaps to their conception of the future life that 
 the northern Buddhists owe the astonishing success of 
 their propaganda amongst the Chinese populations, at the 
 expense of the old official religion, or rather of Confu- 
 cianism. The latter, indeed, admits the survival of 
 souls, passed into the state of spirits, and so justifies the 
 domestic worship ; but it has nothing to say as to the 
 conditions of their future state, or any posthumous retri- 
 bution. " You do not yet understand life," said Confu- 
 cius to one of his disciples, more than 2000 years before 
 modern Positivism ; " how then can you profess to under- 
 stand death?" 1 The only punishment of the wicked 
 which the great Chinese reformer appears to admit is, 
 that their descendants, corrupted by their bad example, 
 will shirk the duties of filial piety. 2 But the masses 
 could not rest content with this philosophical solution ; 
 and as soon as they found themselves in contact with 
 a religion as rich in revelations of future states as 
 Buddhism, especially the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism already 
 corrupted by the reaction of local superstitions, a great 
 part of the nation superposed the amplified and degene- 
 rated doctrine of Buddha upon the traditional worship of 
 ancestors, as well as on the official ceremonies of Confu- 
 cian rationalism. 
 
 Jewish The religion of ancient Israel appears to 
 
 eschatology. ;h ave k een equally inaccessible to ideas of 
 
 remuneration in another world. The conception of a 
 
 future life does not advance beyond that Sheol in which 
 
 " there are neither arts, nor work, nor knowledge, nor 
 
 1 J. Happel, Revue de Vhistoire des religions, vol. iv. p. 275, note. 
 
 2 A. Eeville, Religion des Chinois, p. 345. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 197 
 
 wisdom;" and where the criminal and the righteous, 
 the infidel and the saint, Assur and his assembly, Elam 
 and his people, no less than Israel and his descendants, 
 all lie confused. 1 To complete the analogy with the 
 beliefs already traced amongst the Assyrio-Babylonians, 
 there are certain chosen ones, such as Enoch and Elijah, 
 who have been carried to heaven by the special favour 
 of Yahveh, just as Eabani and Xisuthros, the Chaldean 
 ]N"oah, were snatched from the gloom of Arali and placed 
 in the region of the silver sky by the grace of the gods. 2 
 But in Judea, where the moral sentiments finally became 
 an essential factor of religion, these exceptions were 
 not enough to satisfy the demands of justice, as it sought 
 compensation for the persecuted righteousness and trium- 
 phant iniquity of this world. 
 
 The solutions of the Aryan and Egyptian religions 
 were, however, closed against the Jews. The over- 
 shadowing greatness of Yahveh already precluded the 
 existence of immortal beings at his side. While the 
 Greek philosophy developed the idea of the soul as a 
 spiritual entity, constituting the veritable man and 
 using the body as an instrument, Jewish speculation 
 refused to regard the body otherwise than as living flesh. 
 The rua/ch, the equivalent of our vital breath, was an 
 emanation, or rather a free gift, of Yahveh, or even 
 a fragment of his own divine ruakh, which alone existed 
 in and for itself. " All living things," says the Psalm 
 (civ. 29, 30), "wait upon thee; thou withdrawest thy 
 
 1 Ezekiel xxxii. 2232. 
 
 2 F. Lenormant, La divination et la science des presages chez les 
 Chaldcens, Paris, 1875, p. 153. 
 
198 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 breath, and they die ; thou sendest out thy breath, and 
 they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth." 
 
 Since, then, they could not put their hopes in the 
 future life, the Prophets were compelled to seek their 
 realization in this world, and accordingly it was on earth 
 that they expected the coming of the kingdom of Yahveh, 
 at first for the exclusive benefit of their own nation, but 
 afterwards for the salvation of humanity at large. This, 
 as M. Eenan says, was the only way of vindicating the 
 honour of Yahveh. 1 Hence rose the Messianic ideas, 
 which from the Captivity onwards seem to have taken 
 a two-fold direction. In some minds it was simply a 
 question of a national restoration which would culminate 
 in the assumption by Israel of the hegemony over all the 
 peoples of the earth. This restoration would be the 
 work of the Messiah, regarded sometimes as the descend- 
 ant of the lawful dynasty, sometimes as a kind of angel 
 sent by the Lord. Others conceived a complete social 
 renovation, in which peace and justice should reign over 
 the nations converted to the worship of the true God, 
 the part of Messiah falling to the chosen people itself. 
 " In that day Israel shall be a third with the Egyptian 
 and the Assyrian. There shall be a blessing upon the 
 earth. Yahveh Qebaoth shall bless it, and shall say, 
 ' Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
 my hands, and Israel mine inheritance'" (Isaiah xix. 
 24, 25). 
 
 Blessed they who should see the dawn of that great day ! 
 But the others ? They who had died in the past or who 
 should succumb during the waiting-tide ? Is it right that 
 1 Histoire du peuple d'Israel, vol. ii. pp. 437, 438. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 199 
 
 just men persecuted in Yahveh's cause during their lives 
 should be deprived of all share in the final triumph ? Is 
 it right that the wicked who died in wealth and impu- 
 nity should escape all future punishment ? The belief in 
 the solidarity of the generations, and even the idea of 
 expiation, whereby the sufferings of the just weigh against 
 the offences of the sinner, could but imperfectly satisfy 
 the demands of the Israelite's conscience. Then was 
 conceived, or at least brought into prominence, a doctrine 
 which we likewise meet in Mazdeism, viz. the resurrec- 
 tion of the body. The Persians believed that at the end 
 of time the actual world would be destroyed, that Ormuzd 
 would proceed to a new creation from which evil would 
 be excluded, and all the just who had died from the 
 beginning would receive a new body, whereas the souls 
 of the wicked would be finally destroyed, together with 
 Ahriman. The Jews could not accept this theory in its 
 completeness, since they did not believe in the survival 
 of the soul, but they adapted it to their own aspirations 
 by picturing a resurrection of the dead on the day of 
 the final judgment, or rather a re- construction of the dis- 
 sipated bodies and their re-animation by the breath of 
 Yahveh. 1 
 
 You are aware how this dogma found its way into 
 Christianity, in the moral conceptions of which it main- 
 tains itself side by side with the idea of a judgment 
 immediately after death ; but the religious spirit, as you 
 have already seen from innumerable instances, does 
 not shrink from placing the most divergent or even 
 contradictory theories side by side. Indeed, it derives 
 1 Ezekiel xxxvii. 710; Isaiah xxvi. 19; Daniel xii. 2. 
 
200 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 certain advantages from this inexhaustible wealth of 
 explanations ; inasmuch as it is thereby enabled, without 
 breaking the continuity of the religious development, 
 quietly to drop theories which are superseded by the 
 discoveries of science or the advance of the moral con- 
 sciousness, and bring to the front such others as better 
 answer to the needs of the age. 
 
 The union of morals and religion, or rather 
 
 Moralization 
 
 of the divine 3 the belief that the moral order enters into 
 the divine order, influences not only the con- 
 ception of the future life, but also the idea of the deity 
 itself. If we look how the diverse attributes were 
 successively ascribed to the gods at the most advanced 
 stage of polytheism, we shall see that man first recog- 
 nized his deities as possessing the attributes of power, 
 and then assigned to them, one after another, the 
 qualities characteristic of intelligence, of love, and finally 
 of morality. Many of the gods who are described as 
 punishing the sins of men are still represented in the 
 mythologies as debauchees and brigands; yet as soon 
 as they are regarded as protectors of the moral order 
 amongst men, they are like so many judges who abandon 
 themselves in private life to the very abominations which 
 they punish from their exalted tribunal. Hence a gradual 
 tendency to moralize their character and their mutual 
 relations, as well as their intervention in the affairs of 
 man. 
 
 How can a scoundrel inculcate straightforwardness, or 
 a perjurer veracity? How can an adulterer or thief 
 enforce respect for the marriage-tie or property ? How 
 can a creature as grasping as a miser cultivate the spirit 
 
IV. DUALISM. 201 
 
 of self-devotion and self-sacrifice ? First of all, the tradi- 
 tions which attribute criminal or simply gross actions to 
 the gods are thrown into the shade, or allegorically 
 explained, and only those passions which are regarded as 
 noble are left to them. These, however, include not only 
 courage, but resentment of injuries, jealousy, passion, love 
 of praise, and partiality towards friends. Yahveh reserves 
 his favours for the children of Israel, and their unfaith- 
 fulness throws him into paroxysms of rage. He deter- 
 mines to destroy all the human race, and then repents ; 
 he hardens Pharaoh's heart that he may have the oppor- 
 tunity of inflicting the plagues upon Egypt. Moreover, 
 he deceives the Israelites themselves. When he seeks 
 to punish them for their profanations, he gives them 
 " statutes that are not good and ordinances by which 
 they cannot live" (Ezek. xx. 25). 
 
 In this process of moralizing the deities, one or another 
 of the traditional qualities which figure in the character 
 of each god is selected and thrown into relief. Indra, 
 Thor, Ares-Mars, in virtue of their mythological prowess, 
 will come to be regarded especially as types of valour. 
 Yaruna and Osiris, as the heaven which sees all the 
 acts of men, and the sun which throws light upon them, 
 will become judges par excellence. Pallas Athene, who 
 sprang all armed from the head of Zeus, whether origin- 
 ally the personification of lightning or of the dawn, will 
 become the goddess of wisdom. Hestia, the pure flame 
 of the hearth, will represent chastity and the domestic 
 virtues. It was long before Zeus could venture to take 
 upon himself personally the judgment of the souls of the 
 dead. He wisely left this function to the incorruptible 
 
202 IV. DUALISM. 
 
 judges of Hades. But in the end he became the avenger 
 of outraged right, and at the same time the moral regu- 
 lator of the universe. " If the gods do aught that is base, 
 they are not gods," 1 says Euripides; and his vigorous 
 utterance finds a practical illustration in the German 
 mythology, for when the trespasses and treasons of Loki 
 began to wound the moral sense of his worshippers, they 
 debased him from the ranks of the JEsir. 
 
 Finally, as the human ideal becomes more exalted, the 
 passions still assigned to the gods are further purified by 
 the exclusion of all movements of the soul that seem 
 inconsistent with the majesty, the holiness and the kind- 
 ness, the justice and the love, from which they can no 
 longer be conceived as departing. " I will not exe- 
 cute the decree of my wrath ; I will not turn to destroy 
 Ephraim, for I am God and not man ; I am the Holy One 
 in the midst of thee, and I will not come in wrath" 
 (Hosea xi. 9). In a word, man comes at last to ascribe 
 to his deity only the two loftiest sentiments of the human 
 soul, justice and love. "God," says Plutarch, "being 
 perfectly good, lacks not any virtue ; and least of all in 
 what concerns justice and love." 2 Going still further, 
 we notice that the former of these sentiments is subordi- 
 nated to the latter, inasmuch as the divine punishments 
 are conceived as having for their object the improve- 
 ment of the sinner, as when a father chastens his son ; 
 until at last chosen religious spirits learn to proclaim 
 that " God is love," not excluding from this term the 
 idea of justice, but realizing it therein under its sublimest 
 aspect. 
 
 1 Bellerophon Frag. xix. v. 4. 2 De defectu oraculorum, xxiv. 
 
IV. DUALISM. 203 
 
 identit of Henceforth the bond between men and 
 human and gods no longer depends on the analogy of 
 
 divine good. ... . , 
 
 their enjoyments or their passions, but on 
 identity of aspiration and reciprocity of sympathies, 
 which make the gods feel for what is endured by men. 
 It is no longer through the duration of a single human 
 life only that Osiris, Yishnu, Krishna, Buddha, or the 
 Messiah, personally submits to the miseries of a life upon 
 earth, in order to bring man happiness, justice and sal- 
 vation ; but everywhere and always, from the bosom of 
 celestial glory, he feels the reaction of every injustice, 
 of every fall, of every undisturbed misfortune. " Since 
 I received the great wound," says Osiris, " I am wounded 
 by every wound." 1 It is almost the very expression 
 employed by Isaiah to describe the sympathy of Yahveh 
 with the Israelites. "In all their affliction he was 
 afflicted" (Is. Ixiii. 9). The idea that all injustice, 
 all cruelty to the poor, is inflicted on Yahveh himself, 
 penetrates the whole Hebrew literature ; and amongst 
 the Hindus, the Yishnu Purana, extending the limits of 
 the divine sympathy yet further, proclaims that whoso- 
 ever injures a living creature injures God. 
 
 And reciprocally the qualities and virtues thus ascribed 
 to the superhuman beings do not fail to exert a truly 
 moral attraction upon the faithful. "Is it possible," 
 asks Plato, " admiringly to investigate an object without 
 striving to resemble it ?" 2 Thus Eeligion and Morals re- 
 act one upon the other, the idea of duty purifying the con- 
 ception of deity; and the latter, in its turn, fortifying 
 the feeling of obligation, while fructifying it with love. 
 
 1 De Pressens^, Vancun monde et 1e Chritfianisme, p. 124. 
 
 2 Republic, bk. vi. 13. 
 
LECTTJRE V. 
 MONOTHEISM. 
 
 Gods attached WE have seen that every nation begins 
 t0 or e the ncl by admitting the real existence of the gods 
 people. adored by its neighbours. The Israelites in 
 the period of the Judges believed in the sovereignty of 
 Chemosh over the people of Moab, just as much as in that 
 of Yahveh over the people of Israel; 1 and when the 
 armies of Borne besieged a city, they began by offering 
 sacrifices to the local deities, perhaps hoping to gain them 
 over to their side, or perhaps on the principle that leads 
 savages to appease the spirit of the tree which they are 
 about to fell, by offering it a sacrifice. 
 
 It naturally follows that the sphere of action of the 
 gods is always limited either to the territory regarded 
 as their patrimony or to the people which has accepted 
 their suzerainty. If the country of Israel belonged to the 
 twelve tribes, it was because the god of Bethel had pro- 
 mised it to Abraham and Jacob (Gen. xiii. xxviii. xxxv). 
 In another passage of the Bible we find the Syrians 
 believing themselves safe against the Israelite invasion 
 
 1 Jephthah's envoys said to the king of Ammon, " Wilt not thou 
 possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess ? So 
 whomsoever Yahveh our God hath dispossessed from before us, them 
 will we possess" (Judges xi. 24). 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 205 
 
 because, as they said, Yahveh is a mountain god and 
 his power does not extend to the plain (1 Kings xx. 23). 
 Yet more, a change of country implies a change of gods. 
 When David is reproaching Saul with his exile, he com- 
 plains that his enemies have compelled -him to quit " the 
 heritage of Yahveh," and have said to him, "Go, serve 
 other gods" (1 Sam. xxvi. 19); and reciprocally when 
 Euth, the Moabitess, follows her mother-in-law to Beth- 
 lehem, she cries, " Where thou goest, I will go, and 
 where thou dwellest, I will dwell ; thy people shall be 
 my people, and thy God my God" (Euth i. 16). The 
 God of Israel is so closely connected with the soil, that 
 when the Syrian general Naaman, healed of his leprosy 
 in the waters of Jordan, gratefully desires to raise an 
 altar to Yahveh in his own country, he must carry away 
 a certain portion of the Israeli tish soil, " as much as the 
 load of two mules" (2 Kings v. 17). 
 
 On the other hand, in his own domain, Yahveh is the 
 lord of strangers as well as the lord of the Israelite. 
 When the Assyrians have captured Samaria, carried off 
 the Israelites into captivity, and replaced them by 
 populations from beyond the Euphrates, the latter com- 
 plain that they are exposed to the wrath of Yahveh 
 because they know not how to render him the homage he 
 desires, and they beg the king of Assyria to send them 
 some of the former sacrificers to teach them " the way 
 to serve the god- of the land" (2 Kings xvii. 27). But 
 the Bible tells us that these same peoples also retained 
 the worship of the gods they had venerated in the land 
 whence they had come. In fact, however closely the 
 gods of the peoples may be bound to their own territories. 
 
206 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 in the end they must come to identify themselves so 
 closely with the nations as to accompany them wherever 
 they take up their abode. Yahveh himself was the God 
 of the Jews in Babylonia, even when the Captivity had 
 come to an end, and the exile of the colonists had become 
 a voluntary residence. In the same way, Assur was at 
 first simply the god of the city that bore his name. But 
 when the Assyrians transferred the seat of their empire 
 to Nineveh, the god of their ancient capital still remained 
 the supreme god of the nation. 
 
 Another consequence of this close con- 
 Deities snare 
 
 the lot of nection between each people and its special 
 gods is, that the latter share the fates of the 
 people and even of the tribe or the province which 
 originally fell to their lot. In pre - Assyrian times, 
 Mesopotamia was divided into little states, each of which 
 had its principal god drawn either from amongst the 
 members of the local pantheon or from the common 
 divinities of Chaldea, and the fortune of the god invari- 
 ably followed that of the state or dynasty which had 
 adopted him as its protector. Thus we see a temporary 
 hegemony successively achieved by the lunar god Sin 
 with the city of Ur, by the sea-god Ea with Eridu, the 
 solar god Samash with Larsa, Anu with Urukh, Mul-lil 
 with Agade, Merodach with Babylon, and (as we have 
 just called to mind) Assur with Assyria. It was the 
 same in Egypt, where, as soon as the nomes were 
 united into a state, attempts were made to identify the 
 respective gods of the little local pantheons one with 
 another, while choosing for the supreme deity the chief 
 god of the dynasty in power or of the city which served as 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 207 
 
 its capital Osiris at Abydos, Ea at Heliopolis, Ptah 
 at Memphis, Ammon at Thebes, Neith at Sais, and so 
 forth. 
 
 "When a nation lost its independence, its gods did not 
 cease to exist, but passed into the service of the con- 
 querors and became subordinate to their deities. Thus 
 the deities of the countries annexed by the Eoman 
 armies successively swelled the ranks of the imperial 
 pantheon, more or less disguised in Eoman livery. The 
 same thing took place in Peru, where the Incas collected 
 in their great temple of the sun at Cuzco the images of 
 the gods worshipped by all the various nations that they 
 had absorbed into their empire. 
 
 Under such a system, if a nation rose 
 
 The supreme J ' 
 
 god of the towards supremacy over the known world, 
 
 universe. . . . , . . _ . .... . 
 
 its chiei deities, and especially its supreme 
 god, must necessarily approach to universal monarchy. 
 Thus Jupiter came to extend his empire from the Irish 
 Sea to the basin of the Ganges in the train of the 
 Greek and Eoman armies. Or, again, it might equally 
 well come to pass that, simply through the develop- 
 ment of their own theology, peoples were led to regard 
 their supreme god as the master of all the gods. In 
 fact, by dint of constantly repeating that their own 
 deity was the mightiest of the gods, they would come 
 at last to believe that the latter were not only inferior 
 to him in power and rank, but were his mere vassals 
 or subjects. This was the point of view at which 
 the Judean people had arrived at the end of the period 
 of the Monarchy. Finally, there is a third path which 
 may lead to the political unity of the superhuman world. 
 
208 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 It is that of the reciprocal assimilation of the deities 
 who form the several national pantheons. Indeed, 
 we may wonder that this assimilation did not more 
 easily and more often occur amongst peoples who adored 
 the same manifestations of nature ; but we must remem- 
 ber that the nature-gods, when once conceived as ruling 
 from outside the phenomena from which they originally 
 sprang, always acquired sufficiently distinctive features 
 to give them separate individualities as well as different 
 names. Thus it is only in syncretistic periods that any 
 attempt is made to establish their identity, and even 
 then it is its own gods that each nation takes as the 
 standards to which to refer the gods of the stranger. 
 
 It is the Phoenician deities that Philo of Byblos 
 re-discovers in the gods of Greece; and reciprocally, it 
 is now to Apollo and now to Kronos that the Greeks 
 liken Melkarth, the divine king of Tyre. You are 
 acquainted with the process of assimilation by which 
 Herodotus attempted to draw the gods of Egypt into 
 the classical pantheon. Megasthenes applied the same 
 method to the gods of India, and Ceesar and Tacitus to 
 those of Gaul and Germany. Zeus absorbed not only a 
 certain number of Thracian and Thessalian deities, but 
 the rulers of far more important pantheons, such as 
 the Lybian Ammon, the Egyptian Serapis, and the 
 Babylonian Bel Merodach ; while Herodotus even gives 
 his name to the great god of the Persians, that same 
 Ahura Mazda who was destined to survive the Lord of 
 Olympus by so many centuries. 
 
 Di v i ne Imagination did not confine itself to the 
 
 families, conception of divine monarchies correspond- 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 209 
 
 ing to all the independent states or diverse races on the 
 earth. "Within the limits of each of these smaller super- 
 human societies, it erected groups on the type of the 
 family. We have already seen how man was brought 
 by the necessities of language to attribute sex to every 
 manifestation of nature. And therefore when these 
 manifestations were personified, they naturally became 
 male and female. After that, what could be more 
 simple or more consistent, when two phenomena united 
 to produce a third, whether by fusion or by reaction, 
 than to consider the personification of this last as the 
 offspring of its two factors, themselves regarded as 
 husband and wife ? By a similar deduction, phenomena 
 which sprang from the same source, or were supposed 
 to do so, or even had certain traits or properties in 
 common, were regarded as brothers and sisters; as, for 
 example, the sun and the moon, the two twilights, sleep 
 and death, and so on. 
 
 The divine Presently these family relations of the 
 fatherhood. gods were extended till they embraced the 
 whole creation, and especially mankind. The confusion 
 between the terms for creating and begetting, which 
 still maintained itself in half-developed languages, must 
 have led to a spontaneous fusion of the ideas of creator 
 and father. Sometimes, as in Egypt and with the Incas, 
 it was the reigning dynasty alone that laid claim to this 
 exalted affiliation. " I call upon thee, my father 
 Am on ! " exclaimed Eameses II. at the battle of Kadshu. 
 "My many soldiers have abandoned me; none of my 
 horsemen hath looked towards me; and when I called 
 them, none hath listened to my voice. But I believe 
 
 p 
 
210 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 that Amon is worth more to me than a million of soldiers, 
 than a hundred thousand horsemen." 1 
 
 The analysis of the identical name which the Hindus, 
 Greeks, and Latins gave to their heavenly deity, Dyaush 
 pita Zev$ Trarrif) = Jupiter, implies not only that the 
 ancestors of the Indo-Europeans spoke the same language 
 . and worshipped the same god, but further that they 
 addressed that god as a celestial father. "Be unto us 
 easy of access," said the Yedic poet to Agni, "as a 
 father to his son." 2 Side by side with Dyaush, "our 
 father," another hymn invokes, Prithivi, "the good 
 mother," and Agni, "our brother." 3 It is the same 
 thought that the Greek poet expresses when he main- 
 tains that " gods and men are sons of the same mother."' 
 In the West, this idea, no longer held in check by the 
 regime of caste, could not fail to stimulate more generous 
 feelings and to provoke democratic inferences. The 
 divine paternity must culminate in the brotherhood 
 of man. "Wilt thou not rememher over whom thou 
 rulest?" says Epictetus, addressing a master on behalf 
 of his slaves, "that they are thy relations, thy brethren 
 by nature, the offspring of Zeus?" 5 
 
 Amongst the Semites, the idea of the divine paternity 
 was at first kept in the background, hampered in its 
 
 1 Le Page Kenouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 228. 
 
 2 Rig-Veda, i. 1, 9. 
 
 3 Rig-Veda, vi. 51, 5. Prof. Max Miiller has shown that this idea 
 presents itself at every step in the Rig- Veda. See Hilbert Lectures, 1878, 
 pp. 222, 223. 
 
 4 Pindar, Nemea, vi. 1, 2. 
 
 5 Arrian, Epicteti Diatribes, i. 13. 
 
.V. MONOTHEISM. 211 
 
 development by the very majesty of the deity, which 
 could not brook the establishment of any such relation 
 with the gods. But it is not altogether absent, as we 
 may see from the invocation of a Mesopotamian hymn 
 to Istar: "May thy heart be appeased as the heart of 
 a mother who has borne children ; ?n and you are aware 
 how it appeared amongst the Jews at the beginning 
 and end of the Captivity, in the prophecies of Jeremiah 
 and of the second Isaiah, to become, with its corollary 
 of the brotherhood of man, the cardinal doctrine of the 
 religion taught by Jesus. 
 
 The place of The highest point of development that 
 Speculation polytheism could reach is found in the con- 
 torousnTof ce pti on f a monarchy or divine family, 
 monotheism, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even 
 the whole universe. The divine monarch or father, how- 
 ever, might still be no more than the first amongst 
 his peers. For the supreme god to become the Only 
 God, he must rise above all beings, superhuman as well 
 as human, not only in his power, but in his very nature. 
 The conception of this new and higher nature is the 
 fruit of metaphysical speculation. Monotheism is hardly 
 complete until man, having conceived the idea of a first 
 cause, of eternity, of infinity, and of the absolute, makes 
 them the attributes of one only being, the Being par 
 excellence. And these conceptions are not formed all 
 at once in the human mind ; they are the products of a 
 slow mental evolution which acts upon materials already 
 in existence, furnished by previous conceptions of the 
 deity. 
 
 1 Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 352. 
 
 p2 
 
212 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 Thus we see how the monotheistic evolution may 
 have advanced along very different lines to the same 
 end, and may have proceeded, in the majority of cases, 
 without any rupture with religious tradition. 
 
 Metaphysical speculation early concerned 
 of the national itself with the theology of the civilized peoples. 
 The way to the recognition of the divine unity 
 had been paved almost everywhere by the identifica- 
 tion of the chief gods representing the same phenomenon, 
 or its diverse aspects. Thus the Egyptians found means 
 of gradually drawing all their deities into the circle of the 
 divine families already established in triads on the model 
 of the human family represented by father, mother, and 
 son. "We have seen how they gradually assimilated the 
 gods of the dead and those of the elements to the type 
 of the solar divinities ; and the latter were in their turn 
 identified with the sun, or rather with the soul of the 
 sun, which remains one in all its manifestations, and 
 which thus becomes the universal soul of all the gods. In 
 the Turin papyrus, this mysterious deity is made to say, 
 " I am the maker of heaven and of the earth. ... It is I 
 who have given to all the gods the soul which is within 
 them. ... I am Chepera in the morning, Ea at noon, 
 Tmu in the evening." 1 
 
 In fact, this is really a new being appearing behind 
 the ancient gods; but since this "-hidden soul of the 
 
 1 Le Page Kenouf, Hiblert Lectures, 1879, pp. 221, 222. Compare 
 the Atharva Veda, xiii. 3, 13 : "In the evening Agni becomes Varuna, 
 who becomes Mitra when he rises in the morning ; when he has 
 become Savitar, he traverses the firmament j when he has become 
 Indra, he bums the heavens at the zenith." 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 213 
 
 Lord of the Disc" equally manifests himself in all the 
 chief deities, the name of any one of them may be given 
 to him indifferently. Hence comes the Egyptian heno- 
 theism, which alternately assimilates Ea, Osiris, Ptah, 
 Ammon, and the rest, to the supreme God. To accen- 
 tuate this equivalence still more, the chief deity of the 
 place receives the names of all the other gods. On the 
 royal tombs of Biban-el-moluk, Ea is invoked under 
 seventy-five different names, and the Book of the Dead 
 has a whole chapter made up of nothing but the names 
 of Osiris. 1 Or, again, the supreme soul receives a name 
 formed by the union of all the appellations given respec- 
 tively to the supreme gods of the different cycles : Sokar- 
 Osiris, Ptah -Sokar- Osiris, are complex names which 
 appear as early as in the ancient empire ; and later on 
 we meet with Horus-Chem, Chnum-Ea, Sebak-Ea, Amun- 
 Ea, Amun-Ea-Tum-Harmachis. 2 And this was no mere 
 juxtaposition of words or verbal syncretism. The Egyp- 
 tians were really conscious that the gods thus drawn 
 together were in truth identical one with another. It 
 is, so to speak, the mythic formula of this fusion which 
 is given us in the following words : " Osiris came to 
 Mendes; there he met the soul of Ea; they embraced 
 and became as one soul in two souls." 3 
 
 We must note that in these identifications we are 
 directly concerned with solar gods alone that is to say, 
 with the first persons of the triads; but just as the 
 
 1 Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 87. 
 
 2 Of. C. P. Tiele, Anciennes religions de Vtigypte, &c., Paris, 1882, 
 p. 137 (History of the Egyptian Religion, London, 1882, p. 223). 
 
 8 Book of the Dead, chap. xvii. lines 42, 43. 
 
214 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 unity thus obtained especially represented the active 
 principle of nature, symbolized by the solar rays, so, in 
 like manner, the goddesses, reduced in their turn by an 
 analogous process to a single type, easily passed into per- 
 sonifications of space, or of the matter upon which the 
 divine activity worked to produce the world. 1 At Den- 
 dera, Hathor is assimilated not only to Isis, but to Neith 
 of Sais, to Saosis of Heliopolis, to Bast of Bubastis, to 
 Sothis of Elephantine, and others. 2 As to the gods 
 whose nature or attributes or special local circumstances 
 prevented them from melting into the great solar deity, 
 they readily united with the third person of the triad, 
 the son of the divine couple, the personification and the 
 synthesis of the phenomenal world begotten in con- 
 tinuous generation. 
 
 The triune All that was now needed was one more 
 god of Egypt. effort O f abstraction, to put above and behind 
 this triad the being in which it was resumed and into 
 which, so to speak, it melted. That higher unity was 
 sometimes found in the first person of the triad, regarded 
 as reproducing itself by eternal generation ; sometimes 
 in a " spirit more spiritual than the gods the holy 
 soul which clothes itself with forms, but itself remains 
 unknown." 3 
 
 It is this triune god, who, to employ an expression 
 of the Egyptian theologians, perpetually " creates his 
 own members, which are the gods." 4 The latter are 
 
 1 Paul Pierret, Pantheon JSgyptien, p. 27. 
 
 2 Le Page Eenouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, pp. 87, 88. 
 
 3 Cf. Book of the Dead, xv. 46. 
 
 4 Maspero, Histoire des peuples de I' Orient, 4 me ed., Paris, 1 886, p. 279. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 215 
 
 the universal aliment, "an immense loaf in the middle 
 of which dwells the Only One," or "a divine society 
 completing itself in a single heart." 1 Yet further, each 
 one of these apparently secondary gods may become 
 in its turn a centre of emanation, giving birth to other 
 gods by the genesis of triads. Eut when all is said 
 and done, they are never more than the names and 
 aspects of the one only being. " Amon is an image," 
 says a hymn copied by Erugsch from the walls of El 
 Khargeh, " Atmu is an image, Chepera is an image, Ea 
 is an image; he alone maketh himself in millions of 
 ways." 2 
 
 Semitic An analogous movement of theological 
 monotheism. concen t ra tion took place amongst the western 
 Semites. It was immensely facilitated by the habit, 
 already formed, of designating the most important deities 
 solely by their titles ; for whatever difficulty might be 
 found in welding together divine representatives or gover- 
 nors of the heaven, the sun, the thunderbolt, the wind, 
 and such like phenomena, or even the illustrious dead, or 
 mere abstractions of one kind or another, there could be 
 little objection to identifying all the superhuman beings 
 known as the Mighty, the Strong, the King, the Creator, 
 the Eternal, to say nothing of those Eedoubtables, or 
 Elohim, who, as M. Eenan observes, act in harmony 
 as a single being and even take a singular verb. The 
 Ehoenician states, or rather the principal Ehcenician cities, 
 formed their triads, not by uniting three of the most 
 powerful deities of the local pantheon, as in Mesopotamia, 
 
 \ P^ijl Pierret, Pantheon Egyptien^ p. x. 
 
 2 Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 233. 
 
216 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 but by combining with the worship of the divine king, 
 that of his consort and of their child. As in Egypt, 
 the first person of this triad was probably borrowed 
 from the luminous personifications of the air or the 
 sun and represented the creative power, the ruler par 
 excellence ; the second, perhaps originally a personifica- 
 tion of the earth or moon, represented nature properly 
 so called, under her two-fold fruitful and murderous 
 aspect ; the third seems to have been very much effaced, 
 except where mythology interposed to give it distinctive 
 features. For the rest, the great goddess herself, the 
 " Mistress" (Baalith) or " Queen "(Milkath), was regarded 
 less as the spouse than as the visible manifestation, " the 
 face," and therefore the reflection of the supreme god. 
 Sometimes, indeed, like Tanith of Carthage or Astarte 
 of Cyprus, she succeeded in throwing her spouse into 
 the background, but it was more often she herself who 
 fell into the second rank, or even disappeared in the rays 
 of her lord and master. 
 
 One cannot dispute the anthropomorphic character of 
 the deity as represented in the oldest traditions of the 
 Bible. Yahveh moulds man like a potter ; he plants the 
 garden of Eden and walks through it in the cool of the 
 evening like a rich Mesopotamian. Adam hears his 
 footsteps. He comes down from heaven to see the build- 
 ing of the Tower of Babel. He eats and drinks with 
 Abraham, and the latter washes his feet. He struggles 
 with Jacob and allows himself to be overcome. At the 
 time of the Prophets he is no longer seen in person. 
 Whoso looks on him must die. But he reveals himself in 
 the manifestations of light and of the storm. Finally, he 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 217 
 
 rises above these natural phenomena, and becomes a 
 voice speaking to the conscience of the righteous. 
 
 Nowhere have I found this development of the Hebrew 
 idea of divinity, or, to speak more accurately, this spiri- 
 tualization of Yahveh, better followed out and expounded 
 than in a memoir by M. A. Sabatier, Professor of the 
 Faculty of Protestant Theology of Paris, on the " Hebrew 
 Conception of the Spirit." 1 Here we see how the breath, 
 the "ruakh" of the Eternal, at first simply identified 
 with the wind which "makes the heaven serene" (Job 
 xxvi. 13) and "parches the grass" (Is. xl. 7), becomes 
 the synonym of force in the moral as well as in the 
 metaphysical sense, and finally comes to represent the 
 abstract idea of absolute force, "He who is." 
 
 Here we have a first form of monotheism, 
 
 God as ! 
 
 distinct from in which the god is regarded as external 
 to the universe, or at least as distinct from 
 matter. "We observe that this system, generally spoken 
 of as Deism, has especially prevailed amongst peoples 
 who, like the Semites, regard force as the essential attri- ' 
 bute of the superhuman beings, and have risen to the 
 conception of unity by developing their ideas of causality. 
 On the contrary, peoples who, like the Indo-Europeans, 
 seem to have been more struck by the identity of nature 
 running through their divine personifications, have found 
 the corner-stone of their monotheism in the idea of self- ' 
 existence ; and then, by a further extension, have trans- 
 formed it into a pantheism in which the Creator and the 
 creation melt into a higher unity. It is interesting to 
 
 1 In the volume entitled La faculte de tlieologie protestante de Paris 
 a M. Edouard Reuss, Paris, 1879, pp. 5 sqq. 
 
218 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 follow this development wherever it has passed through 
 all its successive phases, if only to establish the uni- 
 formity of the process in every case. 
 God creating The conception of a unique being resolving 
 out^niiTown himself into fragments to create the universe 
 substance. j g f oun( j j n rudimentary form amongst peoples 
 still in a state of barbarism. The Chinese traditions 
 speak of a certain Panku who produced the wind by 
 his breath, made day by opening his eyes, and thunder 
 by lifting up his voice. His right eye became the 
 sun, his left eye the moon, his blood gave birth to 
 the rivers, his flesh to the soil, his locks to the stars, 
 the hairs of his body to the trees, his bones to the 
 metals, his marrow to the pearls and diamonds, and 
 finally by an analogy scarcely flattering to our race 
 the parasites upon him became men. 1 The study of 
 the Edda reveals an analogous conception, that of the 
 giant Ymir, whose body and blood respectively produced 
 the earth and the ocean, whilst his head formed the 
 vault of heaven and his brain the clouds. 2 The Yedas 
 likewise tell us of a primordial being, Purusha, whose 
 body, according to some stories, served the gods for the 
 creation of the universe, but who, according to others, 
 doubled himself into male and female to engender the 
 cosmic egg. 3 Thus, again, the Chaldean traditions speak 
 
 1 A. Seville, La Religion Chinoise, Paris, 1889, pp. 38, 39. 
 
 2 Tfie Journey of Gyl/e, viii. In Snorre Sturleson's Edda. 
 
 3 Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 24. In the Marianne 
 Islands they believe in a primordial being, Pontan, who charged his 
 sisters, when he died, to form the heaven and the earth out of his chest 
 and shoulders, the sun and the moon out of his eyes, and the rainbow 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 219 
 
 of the monstrous Tiamat, the personification of Chaos, 
 whom Bel cut into -halves to make heaven and earth ; 
 though, according to another version, it was Bel who cut 
 off his own head to create gods and men with his blood. 1 
 Finally, the idea rose that the being who had thus 
 severed himself into fragments still survived, or rather 
 that his disintegration was but apparent and did not 
 affect his substantial unity. This thought is found, alike 
 in the Yedic song chanted in honour of Yaruna, and in 
 the Egyptian hymn graven on the walls of El Khargeh, 
 in terms identical with those of the Orphic poet of Greece, 
 who cries, "Zeus was the first. Zeus is the last. . . . 
 Zeus is the centre. It is by Zeus that all things were 
 made. Zeus is the male. Zeus is the eternal female. 
 Zeus is the sun and the moon. For all these things lie 
 in the great body of Zeus." 2 "Thou art youth and 
 age," said the scribe of El Khargeh in his turn. " Thou 
 art heaven, thou art earth ; thou art fire, thou art water, 
 thou art air, and whatever is in the midst of them." 3 
 " Purusha," the Vedic poet exclaims, "is in truth the 
 universe. He is what is, what has been, and what 
 shall be;" 4 and a hymn of the Atharva Yeda keeps 
 equally close to the same idea in this description of 
 Yaruna : " The two seas are the belly of Yaruna, and 
 even in this little pool of water he reposes." 5 
 
 out of his eyebrows. De Freycinet, Voyage autour du inonde, vol. ii. 
 Paris, 1829, p. 381. 
 
 1 Lenormant, Origines de Vhistoire, Paris, 1880, vol. i. p. 507 
 (Beginnings of History, London, p. 500). 
 
 2 J. Darmesteter, Essais orientaux, p. 125. 
 
 3 Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 232. 
 
 4 Rig-Veda, x. 90. 2. 5 Atharva Veda, iv. 16. 3. 
 
220 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 Are we to conclude that the religions whose theologies 
 these old documents reveal, developed on purely mate- 
 rialistic lines, as has been affirmed? To do so would 
 be to forget, at the very outset, that, at the period of 
 which we are speaking, no one dreamt, as yet, of a body, 
 even the body of the universe, without a soul to move 
 and to guide it. 
 
 It is this soul of the world, "more spiritual 
 
 God as the ' ^ * 
 
 soul of the than the gods," as the Egyptians had it, that 
 becomes the true God. It remains to see 
 under what form it is conceived. It would be difficult 
 to -give it the character of the double, although Plato, 
 consistently enough, represents it as an archetype of the 
 universe, pre-existing in the divine spirit. In general 
 it would be regarded rather as a subtle element pene- 
 trating all things, like heat or ether. 
 
 " Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
 Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet." 1 
 
 Thus the Stoics pictured it sometimes as a subtle 
 fire animating all portions of the world, sometimes as 
 ether, sometimes as life par excellence, even deriving the 
 name of Zeus from the verb gjv. The school of Ionia 
 sought the same principle sometimes in water with 
 Thales, sometimes in air with Anaximander ; while the 
 Pythagoreans found a supreme intelligence (vow) at the 
 origin of things. 
 
 Thus conceived, the soul of the world may remain 
 impersonal. But most of these systems had a religious 
 as well as a philosophical side; and there their "first 
 principle," confounding itself with Zeus, recovered the 
 
 -. vi. 726,727. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 221 
 
 attributes of personality, reason, consciousness, pity, 
 love. " 0, Thou, whosoever thou art, difficult to know, 
 Zeus, or necessity of nature, or spirit of man, Thee I 
 invoke, who treading the secret path disposest mortal 
 affairs in accordance with justice I" 1 Pythagoras, in his 
 philosophical teaching, might indeed represent the uni- 
 verse as developing out of the linked progression of num- 
 bers, starting from unity ; but this unity, the primordial 
 monad, was no other than Zeus Soter, placed at the centre 
 of the sphere; and the first derived numbers were the 
 equivalents of the great gods of the Hellenic pantheon. 
 The Stoics, on their side, though likening their " reason 
 of things" to the ether pervading nature, none the less 
 erected it into a real and living god, endowed with all 
 moral qualities, whether they called it by the name of 
 Zeus or not. 
 
 In India, even before the Yedic epoch, light was 
 regarded as the essential and general attribute of the chief 
 deities, as their very name devas indicates. It was but 
 a step to make light the common soul of the divine 
 beings and therefore the deity par excellence, of which 
 the other gods merely represented the diverse names and 
 aspects. "Oh,- Agni," says a hymn, "thou art born 
 Yaruna, thou becomest Mitra when kindled; all the 
 gods are in thee." 2 "They have styled him," says 
 another hymn, " Indra, Mitra, Yaruna, Agni, for the 
 poets give many names to the one." 3 
 
 Presently this identification was carried still further. 
 Seeing that fire is met, under some form or another, 
 
 1 Euripides, Troades, 885888. 
 
 2 Rig-Veda, v. 3. 1. 3 Rig-Veda, i. 164. 46. 
 
222 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 throughout nature, it was regarded as the element common 
 to gods and men, to beings and to things, the principle 
 that reveals itself in light, heat, movement, conscience ; 
 and consequently the universal material, or rather the 
 universal soul. The idea of fire or of light itself finally 
 appeared too concrete, too material, to give form to the 
 idea of this subtle principle. " I am incomprehensible 
 in form," says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, "more 
 subtle than the subtlest atoms ;....! am the light in 
 sun and moon, far, far beyond the darkness; I am the 
 brilliancy in flame, the radiance in all that's radiant ; . . . . 
 the sound in ether, fragrance in the earth ; the seed eter- 
 nal of existing things, the life in all ; .... I dwell as 
 Wisdom in the heart of all ; I am the Goodness of the 
 good ; T am the Beginning, Middle, End ; eternal Time, 
 the Birth, the Death of all." l 
 
 Something less concrete, or at least less material, than 
 the fire or the light must be sought to serve as the form, 
 or rather the symbol, of this spiritual principle ; and it is 
 found in the breath, the prana or atman, which also came 
 to symbolize the human soul. The atman, that is to say, 
 the being that each one felt within himself, thus became 
 an emanation of the Paratman, the supreme Soul, the 
 Unique without a second, who alone exists in himself. 
 Agni yields the first place in religion to Prajapati, the 
 Lord of creation ; to Brahmanaspati, the Lord of prayer ; 
 to Yicvakarman, the universal artificer, and other abstract 
 denominations which better lend themselves to a more 
 spiritual conception of the deity. 2 
 
 1 Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, pp. 144, 145. 
 
 2 A. Earth, Religions de VInde, p. 21; Eng. trans., pp. 29, 30. 
 
Y. MONOTHEISM. 223 
 
 ^ owever ? we have not got beyond 
 
 The irri ue ~ 
 
 Being, with- .the anima mundi which directs the universe, 
 
 out a second. .,<* i 
 
 as life and intelligence animate and inspire 
 individual beings; and this point of view still implies 
 a certain opposition between God and the world. 1 But 
 neither India nor Greece could stop half-way in the 
 pantheistic reconstruction. Eeligious India, or, to speak 
 more accurately, the Brahmanism which gave ever freer 
 admission to the Yedantic idealism, ended by inferring 
 the non-existence of the sensible world, which it regarded 
 as a pure illusion, the work of the deceiving Maya ; an 
 internal thought of the absolute Being, dreaming in and 
 through his successive creations. As to the nature of 
 this Being it can only be denned, say the Upanishads, 
 by means of negatives. Of anything which comes under 
 the range of our senses and can be defined, we may 
 say that God is not that. We cannot even affirm that 
 he exists, because that is to limit him by ascribing to 
 him the attribute of existence ; at the very most we can 
 
 1 The Egyptian hymns might declare that the supreme god was 
 the unique being without second, " the immanent and abiding in all 
 things" (Hymn of El Khargeh); but all the same he appears to have 
 been limited by matter, and in that respect Gnosticism may be briefly 
 described as the heir of the old Egyptian religion no less than of neo- 
 Platonism. "Admitting the eternity of an essentially inert matter," 
 says M. Grebaut (Hymn to Arnmon Ra, p. vi), " this religion inferred, 
 from the organization of this matter, the existence of a hidden being, 
 the prop of universal order ; the eternal principle of the truth, which 
 was that order realized; intelligent, good, almighty; adored in the 
 sun, the visible instrument which he uses in creating and maintaining 
 life, and so imparting truth in spite of all evil principles or Typhonic 
 powers." 
 
224 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 only say that in Him existence and non-existence are 
 combined. 
 
 In the same way amongst the Greeks, the neo -Pytha- 
 goreans and neo-Platonists, by dint of logically develop- 
 ing their respective principles, finally met in a pure 
 Pantheism. Plato had taught that God created the 
 world after an ideal type, which existed in his reason 
 from all eternity, a the plan of a city exists, before its 
 foundation, in the mind of an architect. The world was 
 formed after an invisible model conceived by reason and 
 intelligence. Seeing that all visible things were tossed 
 about in a confused and disordered movement, the 
 Creator drew them from the bosom of disorder and 
 subjected them to order, " thinking the latter far pre- 
 ferable." 1 
 
 This ideal plan, to which Plato ascribed an objective 
 existence, included the archetypes of all things ; and 
 these archetypes realized themselves, so to speak, by 
 penetrating and fashioning matter, into which they 
 introduced a spark of real being. " Ideas are as it were 
 the models of nature. Things become like them, and 
 are their copies. The participation of things in ideas 
 consists in their resembling them." 2 The God thus con- 
 ceived is still an active being, who thinks, wills, and 
 lives, although he does not directly intervene in the 
 work of creation. 
 
 But the neo-Platonists of Alexandria relegated the 
 deity more and more completely into a sphere wholly 
 beyond conception, and, under pretext of removing his 
 1 Timceus, 10, 11. 2 Parmenidcs, 13. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 225 
 
 limitations, deprived him of the last attributes which 
 would justify worship. 1 Proclus, like Plotinus, declared 
 that it was still possible to unite oneself to the deity, 
 withdrawing oneself from the restrictions of the pheno- 
 menal world, by dint of renunciation and ecstasy. But 
 their latest successors declared that their God was as 
 inaccessible as he was unknowable. It seems as though 
 agnosticism were to be the logical conclusion and inevi- 
 table consequence of the whole ancient philosophy. 
 
 We may note that in China, too, where the official 
 religion re-organized by Confucius hardly rose above 
 the conception of a divine monarchy, imitated from the 
 Chinese empire, the philosophical sect of Taoists seems 
 to have risen at a single bound to the height of meta- 
 physical Pantheism. The Tao, that is to say the prin- 
 ciple or source of all things, is represented by Lao-tsze 
 as evading all definition, and even all comprehension. 
 " You look upon the Tao and you see it not, it has no 
 colour ; you listen and you hear it not, it has no voice ; 
 you would handle it and you touch it not, it has no 
 body." 2 u The Tao which can be expressed is not 
 the eternal Tao." 3 Might one not suppose one was lis- 
 
 1 Philo says : " He is incomprehensible : not even the whole uni- 
 verse, much less the human mind, can contain the conception of him : 
 we know that he is, we cannot know what he is : we may see the 
 manifestations of him in his works, but it were monstrous folly to go 
 behind his works and inquire into his essence. He is hence unnamed ; 
 for names are the symbols of created things, whereas his only attribute 
 is to be." See Edwin Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 245. 
 
 2 Tao-te-King, chap. xiv. (translated by Stanislas Julien, Le livre de 
 la voie et de la vertu, Paris, 1842). 
 
 3 Ibid. chap. i. The "Tao that can be named," which Lao-tsze 
 calls " the mother which produces all beings," is, according to 
 
226 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 tening to the TJpanishads, as they declare God " unknown 
 to those who profess to know him, known only to those 
 who profess not to know him"? 1 
 
 Amongst the Persians, Ahura-Mazda, exalted as his 
 position is, remains more or less limited by the temporary 
 existence of Ahriman, and this opposition is too marked 
 to allow of his absorbing his opponent into himself. 
 In the end, however, the two came to be regarded 
 as offspring or hypostases of " Time without limit," 
 Zervanem Akaranem. The germ of this conception is 
 already found in the Avesta, where " time without limit" 
 is distinguished from the "time of long rule." In the 
 Minokhired) time without limit is assimilated to destiny, by 
 which all things take place. Finally, under the Sassanides, 
 Zervanem Akaranem becomes the Supreme Unity. 2 
 
 The ancient But, in the monotheistic evolution which 
 the S faceof we ^ ave J us ^ witnessed, what becomes of 
 
 the Only God. the ancient gods of polytheism ? Were 
 they not destined to vanish with the conception of the 
 only God, into which all the individual forces of nature 
 had in some sense melted ? 
 
 I would point out, in the first place, that if the idea 
 of an only God can be reconciled with the real existence 
 
 M. Ch. de Harlez, the indeterminate Tao made active by the appear- 
 ance of desire. 
 
 1 " He is truly known to him who conceives him not; he is unknown 
 to him who conceives him : he is incomprehensible to those who com- 
 prehend ; he is comprehended by those who comprehend him not." 
 KGJICL Upqnishad, i, 2. 3, after de Harlez ; cf. Max Miiller, Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. i. Tlie Vpanisliads, p. 149. 
 
 2 J. Darmesteter, Ormazd and Ahriman, Paris, 1877, pt. iii. chap. i. 
 pp. 316 sqq. 
 
v. MONOTHEISM:. 227 
 
 of terrestrial beings, there is no reason why it should 
 not harmonize equally well with the belief in inter- 
 mediate beings, superior to human nature, but taking 
 part in the affairs of this world. The monotheistic 
 transformation of almost all the historical religions seems, 
 in this matter, merely to have brought upon the ancient 
 deities a fate analogous to that which the polytheistic 
 transformation of nature - worship brought upon the 
 secondary spirits, when it threw them into a subordinate 
 rank as agents, servants, messengers, and ministers of 
 the chief gods. Thus the establishment of monotheism 
 has not generally constituted so sharp and radical a 
 revolution as one might have supposed, especially where 
 it has remained the privilege of the enlightened few. 
 Even Buddhism, though it could dispense with any 
 deity at all, did not attack the existence of the ancient 
 Yedic gods ; it was content to represent them as beings 
 who had raised themselves by their merits above the 
 level of humanity in the scale of transmigration some- 
 thing like those " planetary brothers of man" whom a 
 contemporary of our own (who certainly cannot be sus- 
 pected of any tenderness for religious dreamings), the 
 author of The Irreligion of the Future, M. Guyau, ima- 
 gines may, somewhere in the universe, represent a higher 
 product of the universal evolution. 1 Islam preserves 
 the angels and the djinns of previous beliefs, to say 
 nothing of the almost superhuman position which it 
 assigns to its founder. Post-exilian Judaism is, no 
 doubt, reputed the monotheistic religion par excellence. 
 Nevertheless, it surrounds Yahveh with angels and 
 1 L'irreligion de Vavenir, Paris, 1887, p. 446. 
 
228 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 archangels, powers, dominations, and thrones, which 
 replace, at a higher degree of abstraction, the Bene 
 Elohim of a former time, and play a part analogous to 
 that of the demons in the Greek philosophy of the latest 
 period. 
 
 H ostases ^ n ^ e worsn ^P S which I have just men- 
 
 demiurges, tioned, it may be maintained that the reten- 
 
 mediators. . . . . . . 
 
 tion of the ancient divinities was a concession 
 to popular traditions ; and that these divinities, though 
 retained in the religious system, were only there as 
 survivals. 1 But, at any rate, this will not apply to 
 the monotheism that takes a pantheistic turn. Here, 
 in fact, the existence of superhuman beings, inter- 
 mediate between the absolute God and the visible 
 world, becomes necessary to explain the passage from 
 the infinite to the finite, from the noumenal to the 
 phenomenal world. Not only was this passage incom- 
 prehensible in itself, but the erection of the deity into 
 the Absolute must have had the effect of breaking all 
 his direct ties with man, and thus putting an end to the 
 very possibility of the relations which constitute worship. 
 To re-establish them, there was nothing for it but to 
 throw across the abyss a chain of superhuman powers 
 bordering on the one side upon supreme perfection, and 
 on the other upon the sensible world. Now the ancient 
 gods, already arranged by polytheism in a hierarchy, 
 were naturally marked out for this office of hypostases 
 and of demiurges. 
 
 1 According to strict Islamite doctrine Allah alone should be 
 addressed in prayer or invocation, for except him nothing and no 
 one " can help or hurt." Ignace Goldziher, Le culte des saints cliez 
 les Musulmans, in the Revue de VHistoire des Religions, vol. ii. p. 262. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 229 
 
 Thus in latest period of the classical paganism the 
 neo-Platonist doctrine of emanation established a whole 
 chain of intermediary beings between God and man, 
 growing in perfection as they approached the Supreme 
 Being and as they freed themselves from every mate- 
 rial bond; and again the demonology of Plutarch and 
 Porphyry filled the world with demons arranged in a 
 hierarchy, with the ancient gods of paganism at their 
 head; and the combination of these two conceptions 
 inspired a last effort to bring paganism into harmony 
 with the philosophical and universalistic tendencies of 
 the time. 
 
 It should be remarked that, almost everywhere, as the 
 supreme God became more powerful and majestic, the 
 popular conscience had spontaneously fixed upon some 
 other divine personage nearer to its own sentiments, 
 aspirations, or even passions, to fulfil the function of 
 interceder, or rather mediator, between man and the 
 Sovereign of the skies. This mission had already been 
 exercised in a subordinate degree by all the super- 
 human beings, from the genii of the hearth to the souls 
 of the deceased; and now it generally, but not necessarily, 
 fell to a personification of the sun ; perhaps because 
 mythology had almost universally made him the mythical 
 hero of quasi-human adventures, the ideal type of man 
 exposed to the extreme vicissitudes of fortune, more 
 accessible than the other deities to sentiments of sym- 
 pathy and pity. Passing alternately between death and 
 life, he had necessarily become the pledge, and to a 
 certain extent the dispenser, of immortality. Finally, 
 he was a divinity essentially visible deus certus, as 
 
230 y. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 Aurelian calls him more regular in his ways than fire 
 or the wind, more personal than the heaven, more active 
 than the moon, more beneficent than the thunderbolt. 
 Did he not fulfil his function of mediator by tracing the 
 road that leads between heaven and earth ? We need 
 not be surprised, then, that as the chief gods of the 
 great pantheons withdrew behind the veil of metaphysical 
 speculation, we note a remarkable revival by which gods 
 hitherto regarded as secondary mount to the first place 
 in adoration and worship. It was so with Merodach in 
 Mesopotamia, Yishnu in India, Helios and Mithra in 
 the Eoman empire. And if we have not a parallel 
 phenomenon to note in Egypt, it is because there the 
 absolute God was in some sense drawn directly from the 
 solar personality. Osiris or Ammon became the Unique 
 Being " more mysterious than the gods," without ceasing 
 to be the deity who dies each day to be born again, who 
 fights with the darkness, and who judges the dead. 
 
 Even in the religion of Israel we find that, in pro- 
 portion as Yahveh actually becomes "he who is," he 
 deputes to his angels all the interventions that appear 
 incompatible with his growing majesty. It is the angel 
 of Yahveh who reveals himself in the form of flame, 
 who consumes the flesh of the sacrifice, who struggles 
 with Jacob, who reveals himself to Moses, and so on. 
 Later on, this role is taken by abstractions, such as the 
 Word, the Yoice, the Name, the Glory, the Wisdom, the 
 Breath of Yahveh, considered objectively, and, in a way, 
 detached from God himself. In the 8th chapter of 
 Proverbs, Wisdom, that is to say the intelligence of 
 God, who conceives the world, is already almost per- 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 231 
 
 sonified. She is represented as existing side by side 
 with God, she is called his " foster-child," and she 
 "rejoiced before him at all times." 1 "I alone," says 
 the same Wisdom, as represented in a later work, " have 
 fixed the limits of the heaven and hollowed the depths 
 of the sea ; I have established my dominion over every 
 portion of the earth and over all the nations." 2 In 
 the same way the Word perhaps the only human power 
 which can apparently create and not only fashion, since it 
 can make the image of a thing arise solely by naming it 
 appears as early as in Isaiah in the character of messenger, 
 or agent, despatched by the Eternal to execute his orders, 
 a veritable angel, like Ossa (Fame), the messenger of 
 Zeus. 3 When Yahveh was so far exalted above the 
 universe as to be incomprehensible in his essence an 
 idea already formulated by the author of Ecclesiasticus 
 (xliii. 27 33) or, indeed, as soon as he was conceived 
 as too pure to come into direct contact with matter, all 
 active and creative power is lodged in his abstract inter- 
 mediaries. Thus the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, 
 such as Aristobulus, and above all Philo, had no diffi- 
 culty in concentrating these intermediaries into a kind 
 of hypostasis, which, under the Greek name of Logos, 
 bore a singular resemblance to the anima mundi of the 
 Stoics, and the intelligible world of Platonism. 
 
 Amongst the Hindus, the Brahmans took care to 
 retain the principal popular deities in their religious 
 system, while placing at their head the three great 
 gods of the post-Yedic epoch, Brahma, Vishnu, and 
 
 1 Proverbs viii. 30. 2 Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 5, 6. 
 
 3 Iliad, ii. 93, 94. 
 
232 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 Qiva, themselves regarded as hypostases of a neuter and 
 impersonal Brahma. Thus inspired doubtless by the 
 necessities of worship side by side with the metaphysical 
 idealism which regarded the universe as a product of 
 universal illusion, they taught a kind of exoteric theology 
 which allowed some objective reality to the world of 
 men and of gods. The impersonal Brahma was thought 
 to evolve the universe from his own substance, like a 
 spider spinning its web out of its own entrails, and to 
 re-absorb it in an endless series of evolutions and dis- 
 solutions. 1 
 
 Religious We must not forget that the first corollary 
 syncretism. Q a fo^y p an theistic religion is not so much 
 toleration of all forms of worship, as a tendency to 
 embrace them all in a single syncretistic system. The 
 one God is the same for all. What, then, does the name 
 they give him matter? As for the secondary deities, 
 are they not all alike equivalent and interchangeable 
 hypostases of the Deity ? He who adores them all still 
 fails, in the sum of the phases they represent, to grasp the 
 divine unity reflected in the infinity of beings and things. 
 We have already seen how, in Egypt, the gods were 
 regarded sometimes as the members, sometimes as the 
 varying names, of the one Being ; and how the concep- 
 tion of the one Being still left the existence of the 
 gods unchallenged alike in popular worship and in theo- 
 logical speculation. Amongst the Hindus, the system 
 of incarnations or avatars (literally, descents) provided a 
 means of absorbing into Brahmanism the local deities 
 that might otherwise have checked the worship of the 
 1 Earth, Religions of India, p. 47. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 233 
 
 Devas. Buddha himself thus became an incarnation of 
 Vishnu. 1 
 
 The classical paganism owed its last period of vigour 
 to the growing conviction that the gods of all the peoples 
 were equivalent, or rather that they were connected with 
 the same deified forces and were a part of the same divine 
 order. Every one has heard of the chapel in which 
 Alexander Severus placed Jesus, Abraham, Orpheus, and 
 Alexander the Great, side by side with Apollonius of 
 Tyana. The same emperor, whose reign marks the 
 culmination of religious toleration in Eome, took part 
 indifferently in the worship of Jupiter, Mithra, Serapis, 
 and Baal. He is even said to have contemplated the 
 erection of a temple to Christ. And he certainly con- 
 firmed the Christians in the possession of a church in 
 the Transtiberine district which had once been public 
 property, and which was claimed by the public autho- 
 rities. 
 
 M. Jean EeVille, in his Histoire de la Religion d Home 
 sous les Severes which might equally well be entitled, 
 "How Paganism met its End" has shown with great 
 clearness and judgment that this syncretistic tendency 
 resulted at once in prolonging the existence and in 
 facilitating the fall of the ancient beliefs ; for it united 
 all the worships of the time in a kind of vague, solar 
 monotheism. 2 The gods of the old national pantheons 
 
 1 Conversely, the Japanese Buddhists taught that the gods of Shin- 
 toism were manifestations of the Buddha. Religious Systems of the 
 World, p. 90. 
 
 2 La Religion a Rome sous les Severes, Paris, 1886, chap. x. 
 
234 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 were too deeply compromised by particularism and by 
 their own mythological past to lend themselves to the 
 new part they were now called upon to play. On the 
 other hand, the abstractions of the theosophical schools 
 Reason, Wisdom, even the Word lacked the vivid and 
 anthropomorphic characteristics needed to secure them 
 the homage and sympathy of the masses. But when, in 
 the bosom of Alexandrine theology, the hypostasis of 
 the Logos became flesh in the person of Jesus, who was 
 already the centre of a moral doctrine answering to the 
 aspirations of the age, then, indeed, a religion was born 
 destined to conquer all its rivals, and to preside for more 
 than fifteen centuries over the destinies of Western civi- 
 lization. 
 
 ffhe Christian The question has often been discussed, 
 theodicy. w h e ther the rise of Christianity hastened 
 the fall of the ancient world, and whether it must be 
 held responsible for the long intellectual night of the 
 Middle Ages. The truth is, that the ancient civilization 
 was irrevocably doomed, and that Christianity itself 
 was involved in the decline which' followed the fall 
 of ancient paganism. It is not my present purpose 
 to trace the history of Christian theology during the 
 centuries which followed. You know how it oscil- 
 lated between a monotheism, in which the persons of 
 the Trinity approximated to simple hypostases of the 
 Deity, and a veritable Tritheism, which accentuated the 
 distinction of the three persons to the prejudice of the 
 divine unity. The reconciliation of these two extreme 
 terms remained impossible : it was a mystery which the 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 235 
 
 believer must admit without professing to explain it; 
 such was the decree of the Church, raised in its capacity 
 of living interpreter of the Deity above the very Scrip- 
 tures themselves. 
 
 "No doubt the conception of God, or rather Theology, 
 gave rise to innumerable speculations in the Middle 
 Ages. But these speculations were bound down to the 
 bed of Procrustes provided by an orthodoxy that was 
 often itself a mere mechanical compromise between con- 
 tradictory opinions. Nominalists and realists, rational- 
 ists and mystics, were successively condemned as soon 
 as they attempted to draw out the logical consequences 
 of their respective principles. "We have nothing but 
 respect for the labours of such thinkers as Scotus Erigena, 
 Abelard, St. Bernard, Eoger Bacon, David of Dinant, 
 Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, who kept the 
 light of philosophic culture burning during those dark 
 days. But whatever services some of these scholars 
 may have rendered in elaborating logical and philo- 
 sophical method, and whatever influence some may still 
 retain in orthodox circles, the labours of Scholasticism 
 can hardly be regarded as having made any more sub- 
 stantial contributions to the advancement of the religious 
 problem than are due to the intermittent and often 
 irregular explosions of the heresies which were one 
 after another drowned in blood. 
 
 The Eeformation re-opened a gate to the spirit of free 
 inquiry, and thereupon philosophical criticism, to which 
 the Eenaissance had given a new life and vigour, straight- 
 way applied to the dogmas of Christianity the methods 
 it has long ago directed against the theodicy of Greek 
 paganism. 
 
236 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 God identi- 
 
 fied with the conception of Unity, freed from mythical 
 
 absolute unity 
 
 by modern functions, released from the limitations of 
 p ^' anthropomorphism, stripped of every attri- 
 bute common to human nature, till German idealism, 
 treading in the steps of Spinoza, reduced it once more to 
 the conception of sole and absolute Being. Even intel- 
 ligence, justice, and love, have once more been challenged 
 as attributes of the Deity, because they imply the notion 
 of a personal and therefore a limited being. The pessi- 
 mist philosophers allow at most a kind of unconscious 
 will to the Deity; the Evolutionists reduce, or, if you 
 will, expand it into "an Infinite and Eternal Energy, 
 from which all things proceed." 1 In a word, we find 
 ourselves returning from every side to the Inaccessible 
 of the latest neo-Platonists. 
 
 In truth, it is not the existence of God that modern 
 philosophy and science challenge. Or, if criticism has 
 attempted any such task, it has only been as a philo- 
 sophic exercise. Systems may, if they choose, forbid 
 us to think about such questions, but whenever we do 
 think about them and will not that be always? we 
 shall find this idea of God embedded in our consciousness 
 as the very foundation of all relative existence. What 
 science really has proscribed is a belief in aeons, avatars, 
 mediators in a word, "secondary gods;" and this it is 
 which complicates with a new difficulty every attempt 
 at religious reconstruction. 
 
 We have just seen how the ancient philosophy, by the 
 expedient of hypostases and divine emanations, found 
 1 Herbert Spencer, Ecclesiastical Institutions, p. 843. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 237 
 
 means, not only of giving the deities formerly worshipped 
 a place in a rational system, but even creating fresh 
 deities when it suppressed the old ones. But now, if 
 there is one axiom which has sunk deeper than another 
 into our minds, it is that all phenomena are ruled by 
 laws, and that outside the contingent world thus orga- 
 nized there is room for naught save the One Absolute 
 Being from whom all things proceed. 
 
 Gods and demons have disappeared, to return no 
 more. Or, if their equivalents exist anywhere in the 
 universe, here on our planet at least we must perforce 
 admit that they have no power of making themselves 
 felt or known ; and we are more and more tempted to 
 make Cicero's words our own: " Think not that any 
 such thing can happen as we often see in plays, that 
 some god, coming down from heaven, should join the 
 assemblies of men, hold intercourse on the earth, and 
 converse with mortals." 1 
 
 If any intermediaries between man and God, as now 
 conceived, exist, they can only be our own faculties, 
 such as Eeason, or Conscience, or such abstractions as 
 Moral Order, the Law of Progress, Humanity, and so 
 forth. But these are entities with no personal and 
 discrete existence ; they can only take shape by becom- 
 ing attributes of something or of some one. This is 
 why Unitarians, and the Eationalistic communities of 
 modern Christendom, in general, have come to reverence 
 the Ideal in that man who seems in their eyes most 
 nearly to approach it, even if not to realize it in all 
 its plenitude. And so, too, the Positivists, in pro- 
 1 Oratio de haruspicum responses, cap. xxviii. 
 
238 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 claiming the Eeligion of Humanity, have but organ- 
 ized the worship of those types which have contributed 
 most to the development of human society. But here 
 we must admit that the saints of the Comtist calendar, 
 and the Jesus of Liberal Protestantism himself, are no 
 longer in any sense hypostases of the Deity ; for they are 
 no longer superhuman beings, freed from the normal con- 
 ditions of humanity, nor are they the necessary and per- 
 manent media of the Deity in his relations with the world. 
 We are perpetually thrown back, then, on the unknown, 
 unknowable Eeing of the latest Alexandrines as the 
 object of religion. Yet neither religion nor philosophy, 
 nor even science, compels us to be content with this 
 purely negative solution. 
 
 We are aware what the Unknowable has 
 
 The eternal 
 
 and infinite become in the hands of Herbert Spencer. The 
 
 all things conclusion to which his brilliant and daring 
 
 scientific generalizations lead him is not only 
 
 a belief in the positive existence of the Absolute, but a 
 
 vindication of our right to attribute to that supreme 
 
 reality the characters of unity, activity, immanence, 
 
 omnipresence, and eternity, which make it "the infinite 
 
 and eternal energy whence all things proceed." 1 
 
 1 Mr. Spencer has been reproached with this as a contradiction and 
 an inconsistency. Perhaps the great representative of Evolutionism 
 would have done better had he used the term Incomprehensible 
 rather than Unknowable, to mark our inability to express, or even 
 adequately to conceive, either the essence or the attributes of that 
 almighty energy. But we may remark that he himself is careful to 
 distinguish between two kinds of knowledge ; the definite knowledge, 
 the laws of which are formulated by logic, and the indefinite knowledge, 
 which can only be formulated by the aid of symbols. If I understand 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 239 
 
 It is true that he refuses to assign to this energy the 
 attributes of conscience, of goodness, and of personality, 
 as we conceive them in the system of our relations with 
 the finite world ; but he explains that this is simply 
 because of our inability to seize the true modes of the 
 Infinite. "Is it not just possible," he asks of those 
 who accuse him of want of religion, "that there is 
 a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence 
 and Will as these transcend mechanical motion ? It is 
 true that we are totally unable to conceive any such 
 higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for 
 questioning its existence ; it is rather the reverse. Have 
 we not seen how utterly incompetent our minds are to 
 form even an approach to a conception of that which 
 underlies all phenomena? Is it not proved that this 
 incompetency is the incompetency of the conditioned to 
 grasp the unconditioned ? Does it not follow that the 
 ultimate Cause cannot in any respect be conceived by 
 us because it is in every respect greater than can be 
 conceived?" 1 
 The power, Some of Spencer's disciples, the right 
 
 thatmaklT; Win aS WG ma y Cal1 them f Evolutionism, 
 
 righteousness. nav e gone still further, sometimes with the 
 more or less formal sanction of the master. 2 From the 
 
 him rightly, it is because it is an object of this imperfect knowledge 
 only that he qualifies the supreme reality as unknowable. First 
 Principles, chap. iv. 26, p. 88. 
 
 1 First Principles, chap. v. 31, p. 109. 
 
 2 See his letter to the Rev. Minot Savage, author of Tlie Religion 
 of Evolution (Boston, 1876), in which he congratulates him on having 
 " exposed the religious and ethical bearings of the evolution doctrines." 
 " I rejoice very much," adds Mr. Spencer, " to see that those doctrines 
 
240 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 fact that all observable phenomena, that is to say the con- 
 tingent manifestations of Energy, realize themselves in 
 accordance with law, they have concluded that the reign 
 of law is one of the modes in which the Unknowable 
 operates, and they have taken occasion herefrom to attri- 
 bute to the supreme Power, if not a conscious and deter- 
 mined goal like the objects pursued by man, at any rate 
 a tendency to secure the utterance of universal order in 
 the moral as in the physical world. " While such a 
 tendency," says Mr. John Fiske, " cannot be regarded 
 as indicative of purpose in the limited anthropomorphic 
 sense, it is still .... the objective aspect of that which, 
 when regarded on its subjective side, we call Purpose." 1 
 In fact, not only does order exist in the universe, but this 
 order is progressive, as we are taught successively by 
 astronomy, geology, paleontology, and the history of civi- 
 lization. This progress manifests itself first in the physical 
 domain, where it takes the form of growing complexity and 
 adaptation of organisms ; next, in the spiritual domain, 
 where it reveals itself in the rise and development of 
 morality. Thus "the infinite and eternal energy whence 
 
 are coming to the front. It is high time that something should be 
 done towards making the people see that there remains for them, not 
 a mere negation of their previous ethical and religious beliefs, which, 
 
 as you say, have a definite scientific and unshakable foundation 
 
 I have been long looking forward to the time when something of this 
 kind might be done, and it seems to me you are the man to do it." 
 This letter, published with Mr. Spencer's sanction, in The Christian 
 Register of Boston, March 29, 1883, is all the more significant, inas- 
 much as Mr. Savage attributes to evolution a goal in some sort pre- 
 determined. 
 
 1 John Fiske, The Idea of God as affected by Modern Knowledge, 
 Boston, 1885, p. xxiv. 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 241 
 
 all things proceed" becomes a regulating power of which, 
 we have the right to say that it tends to good, even 
 though its ultimate goal should for ever escape our vision. 
 
 Not that I am called upon to take sides as between 
 the various explanations of the world current in our day, 
 or even to enumerate the systems which a history of 
 philosophy would have to deal with. If I have dwelt 
 on the theology of Evolutionism, it is because that 
 philosophy is so much in vogue that it forces us to pay 
 special attention to it, and further because it is the one 
 amongst all the great syntheses of our day which breaks 
 most completely with the traditions and the methods of 
 the past. But I should be the first to admit that it 
 has no right to claim the monopoly of conformity 
 with the demands of science. Side by side with those 
 who attempt to complete Spencer's doctrine on the 
 lines indicated by the spiritual and moral demands of 
 our nature, it is but right to refer, however rapidly, to 
 the attempts of those thinkers who remain faithful in. 
 their philosophic constructions to the method of internal 
 observation. It would be mere dogmatic narrowness to 
 deny the legitimacy of this method, provided always that 
 its advocates, while themselves laying greater stress on 
 ideas of immanence, side by side with those of develop- 
 ment, are careful not to put themselves into opposition 
 with any facts established by impartial observation of 
 nature. Indeed, for that matter, we may go as far as to 
 assert that German Idealism long anticipated the gene- 
 ralizations of the science of to-day. 
 
 The attitude just indicated is notably that of Eobert 
 Flint, Thomas Hill Green, F. W. Newman, James Mar- 
 
 R 
 
242 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 tineau, and Matthew Arnold, in England ; of Pfleiderer, 
 Wundt, andthelSTeo-Hegelians, in Germany; of Paul Janet, 
 Yacherot, Secr^tan, and Fouille'e, in France ; of E. Waldo 
 Emerson and Francis E. Abbott, in the United States, 
 whether they have chosen Will rather than Force to 
 express, in terms of our own experience, the action of the 
 power at the source of things ; or whether they have re- 
 garded spirit and matter as two phases of one mysterious 
 reality rising into self-consciousness in man ; or whether 
 they have sought in our moral aspirations the reflexion of 
 a higher ideal, which reveals at once the objective exist- 
 ence and the essential nature of the Deity. It is impos- 
 sible to predict the measure in which these speculations 
 are destined respectively to influence the theology of the 
 future, though the present tide of philosophy seems to flow 
 more strongly than ever through the channels opened out 
 by Kant and Hegel ; but the essential point is, that the 
 systems whose best-known representatives I have just 
 enumerated, while differing widely on many questions as 
 to which metaphysicians have always differed, neverthe- 
 less agree in representing the history of the world as an 
 evolution the progressive development of which bears 
 witness to the universal presence and unceasing action 
 of an eternal Power "not ourselves that makes for 
 righteousness." 
 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer's formula, thus completed by 
 Matthew Arnold's, perhaps furnishes the point of recon- 
 ciliation between the philosophy of evolution and the 
 religious school of positivism, by allowing these two 
 systems to supplement each other without bating a jot 
 of their respective principles. In the words of the 
 
V. MONOTHEISM. 243 
 
 American Positivist, W. Frey, "The intense feeling of 
 gratitude and admiration which [the Positivists] feel 
 towards humanity will become only deeper and stronger 
 if humanity be regarded as mediator between man and 
 the infinite, because then will come into play the strongest 
 chord of religious sentiment, i.e. man's yearning for the 
 Infinite." 1 
 
 And, again, this conclusion enables us to combine the 
 fact of human freedom with the demands of scientific 
 determinism, if we can but admit the theory of idea- 
 forces, so brilliantly expounded in France by M. A. 
 Fouille'e. According to his teaching, the idea of liberty, 
 when once developed in the conscience, leads human 
 activity to take its bearings afresh. "It is realized 
 by being desired." Its very birth is itself the natural 
 and logical result of evolution, the development of a 
 germ present in all nature as the manifestation of the 
 primordial "Will. " First comes a war of forces, brute 
 fatality, infinite confusion of beings striking one against 
 another without recognition, in a sort of blind miscon- 
 ception ; then progressive organization, which allows 
 consciousness to emerge, and, with consciousness, will ; 
 then progressive union of beings gradually recognizing 
 one another as brethren. The evil will will be tran- 
 sient, the offspring of mechanic necessity or intellectual 
 ignorance. The good will, on the contrary, will be per- 
 manent, fundamental, normal, and will spring from the 
 very roots of the being itself. To bring it into distinct 
 existence in oneself will be to pass out of the transient 
 
 1 Boston, Index for Aug. 8th, 1882. 
 R2 
 
244 V. MONOTHEISM. 
 
 and the individual for the benefit of the permanent and 
 the universal, to become truly free, and therefore to 
 love." 1 
 
 It cannot be denied, then, that there exist in our times 
 all the elements of a monotheistic faith reconcilable with 
 the demands of the most exacting reason. All that 
 modern science postulates is the unity of the productive 
 power and the unchangeableness of the laws in accord- 
 ance with which it manifests itself. And, as Dr. James 
 Martineau has well observed, modern science, so con- 
 ceived, " does not even disturb us with a new idea ; for 
 Evolution is only growth; it merely raises the question 
 how far into the field of Nature that idea can properly 
 be carried, a question surely of no religious signifi- 
 cance The Unity of the Causal Power which 
 
 is all that the spreading network of analogies can esta- 
 blish cannot possibly be unwelcome to those who regard 
 it all as the working of One Mind," 2 or even, I would 
 add, as the utterance of a mysterious force seeking an 
 end. 
 
 1 A. Fouillee, La Liberte et le Determinisms, second edition, Paris, 
 1884, pp. 355, 356. 
 
 2 Preface to John James Tayler's Retrospect of the Religious Life of 
 England, second edition, London, 1876, p. 32. 
 
LECTUKE VI. 
 
 THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP AS DEDUCED 
 FROM ITS PAST. 
 
 HITHERTO we have been concerned with 
 the incentives the development of the idea of God in the 
 ' lp * consciousness of man as he slowly ascended 
 towards the higher regions of intellectual and moral 
 culture. It remains to examine the corresponding modi- 
 fications which this development of doctrine has produced 
 in the inward springs and outward manifestations of 
 worship. Theology, interesting as its problems may 
 be in themselves, derives its general significance from 
 the measure in which it forms the character and influ- 
 ences the life of man. Of the three motives which have 
 been the main factors of religion from the very first, 
 to wit, fear, admiration, and sympathy, the first hardly 
 survives except as that emotion of awe called forth by 
 the thought of the Absolute, by the contrast between 
 human weakness and the irresistible might of the uni- 
 versal evolution, and by the certain punishment which 
 sooner or later overtakes the least attempt to violate the 
 order of the universe, in the moral as in the physical 
 domain. Fear, then, is transformed into respect for the 
 moral law and reverence for its mysterious Author. And, 
 by the same evolution, the second factor passes from the 
 irreflective to the reasoning stage, as admiration for the 
 
246 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 divine work is deepened by the science that enables us 
 to form a loftier and broader conception of the universal 
 harmony. And, finally, both these elements tend to lose 
 themselves in the third, which alone can leap the barriers 
 between man and the Deity. 
 
 Transforma- The old adage, Si vis amari, ama, may here 
 
 B^ntimen^of ^ e a PP^ e ^- As soon as men believed them- 
 
 love of God. selves loved by the gods, the gods were 
 
 straightway loved by them; and this feeling, that had 
 
 hardly existed at the outset, became ever more generous 
 
 and powerful as respect for the moral superiority of the 
 
 deity reinforced it. Henceforth sin was shunned and 
 
 virtue practised, not with a view to reward in this world 
 
 or the next, but simply to please the object of love. 
 
 The belief in the rewards of a future life, whether it 
 take the form of metempsychosis, of personal survival, 
 or of resurrection, may fade and disappear ; but love of 
 God, if strong enough, may adequately replace it as a 
 chief incentive to virtue and love ; and I would even add 
 that it is a nobler because a more disinterested motive. 1 
 The religion of the categorical imperative no doubt 
 touches an equally certain and equally exalted spring of 
 action; but in enjoining duty because it is duty, it 
 remains a severe and abstract philosophy, like the Stoic- 
 ism of former times, and can never be more than the 
 privilege of a select few. Love is accessible to all, 
 whether its object be the God of the Christians dying on 
 the Cross to redeem humanity, or the sage of Kapila- 
 
 1 Abelard notes that fear of hell has no moral value, and that the 
 only true penitence is inspired, not by fear of punishment, but by love 
 of God. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, vol. iv. p. 259. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 247 
 
 vastu renouncing the Nirvana to teach men the way of 
 salvation ; whether it concentrate itself on the unlimited 
 power of which the whole universe is the harmonious 
 manifestation, or whether it address itself to the grand- 
 etre Humanity of which Comte aspired to be the revealer 
 and the apostle. 
 
 This has been understood by all the higher religions, 
 including not only Christianity, but the mystic sects of 
 Brahmanism and even of Islam. For all alike have striven 
 to place love or rather the desire to realize the com- 
 pletest possible unity with the Deity above knowledge, 
 above even obedience, as the highest principle of life. 
 
 Love of God, it is true, is in danger of culminating in 
 a mysticism which engulfs man in sterile contempla- 
 tions and selfish ecstasies. Thus amongst the Hindus 
 the outpourings of love for God have always culminated 
 in ascetic negation of action and even of thought. But 
 as the love of God may vary in degree, so likewise it 
 may show itself in more or less worthy forms. "When 
 the good of the universe is regarded as the essential 
 purpose of the Deity, and when it is just this very con- 
 ception that strikes the chords of sympathy in the human 
 heart, then the desire to please the supremely loved being 
 does not assert itself as an exclusive and jealous senti- 
 ment, but as an irresistible impulse to love what the loved 
 one loves. Thus it becomes the love of man in God; 
 and yet more, transcending the limits of humanity, it em- 
 braces all creatures in a common sympathy which may 
 even pierce the unknown spaces with the torch of imagi- 
 nation, and seek in other worlds beings to love and one 
 day to aid. 
 
248 yi. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 After declaring that the first commandment is to love 
 God with all the heart, and all the soul, and all the mind, 
 and all the strength^ did not Jesus add that the second, 
 which bids us love our neighbour as ourself, was like 
 unto the first ? (Matt. xxii. 36 40). " Love is practical 
 in its nature," says a modern Indian writer; "if genuine, 
 it must come out in action ; love that is not active, is no 
 love at all." 1 I need not insist on the splendid develop- 
 ment of charitable and philanthropic works which sprang 
 and still springs from the Wesleyan movement. It proves, 
 better than any argument, that mysticism, when it falls 
 on good ground, may assume an essentially fruitful and 
 practical character, by conceiving the love of God as the 
 source of all moral activity, and grafting the love of man 
 upon it. The life of a Channing, a Theodore Parker, a 
 Eammohun Eoy, or a Keshub Chunder Sen, and the 
 institutions founded and developed in England and 
 America and on the European continent by the liberal 
 Protestants of every shade, prove that the religious source 
 of this devotion to humanity is not to be found in the 
 belief in the supernatural, but in a sense of fraternity 
 begotten by communion with God, and in a disinterested 
 desire to share in the divine work of human regeneration. 
 
 This development of the religious sentiment has not 
 taken place at a single stroke. We can trace its gradual 
 growth in the history of the several religious institutions 
 which combine in worship. 
 
 Disappearance I pointed out at the close of my second 
 elementiTof Lecture that the external or practical mani- 
 
 worship. festations of religion may be classed, even 
 1 Bralimo Public Opinion, Jan. 23rd, 1879. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OP WORSHIP. 249 
 
 amongst the most backward peoples, under the five fol- 
 lowing heads : prayer, sacrifice, magic, divination, and 
 symbolism. Some of these are recalcitrant to all pro- 
 gress or even transformation. Such appear to be the 
 processes of sorcery, which remain, amongst ourselves, 
 exactly what they were in antiquity and still are amongst 
 the savages. The whole religious development has gone 
 on outside them. Everywhere rejected or despised by 
 the modern churches, they have taken refuge amongst 
 the lower classes ; or if they have kept their place here 
 and there in official liturgies, it is only on condition of 
 ascribing the whole merit of their traditional efficacy to 
 the free intervention of the Deity ; and even these sur- 
 viving concessions to weak souls are falling more and 
 more into discredit, and their final extinction is easy to 
 foresee. 
 
 Divination has completely disappeared from the bosom 
 of the great contemporary religions. It is true enough 
 that faith in the inflexibility of the divine decrees, or, 
 in other words, in the immutability of the order esta- 
 blished by the gods, gave a fresh impulse to divination 
 in the ancient polytheisms, but it was also the begin- 
 ning of the end ; for when the art of predicting breaks 
 away from the arbitrary intervention of the superhuman 
 powers and attaches itself to the connected order of 
 cause and effect, it escapes from the domain of religion 
 and enters into that of science. No sooner had astrology 
 given birth to astronomy, than its own progress was 
 decisively arrested. The almanac of Nostradamus shows 
 no advance on the processes of the astrological tablets of 
 ancient Chaldea. Here, too, progress is impossible be- 
 
250 
 
 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 yond a certain point, and astrological divination is defi- 
 nitely relegated to its place among popular superstitions. 
 The Pythian and the Sybil henceforth are dumb, or 
 rather their awful voices find no echo save in the dege- 
 nerate tongue of the wizard and the fortune-teller. 
 
 But other institutions which date from the origins of 
 
 religion maintain their place in our worship, because 
 
 their nature was susceptible of modification in accordance 
 
 with the changed aspect of the deity itself. 
 
 The evolution We have seen that originally prayer was 
 
 of prayer, essentially petition. When religion is pene- 
 trated by the moral idea, no doubt material blessings are 
 still sought, but at the same time the superhuman powers 
 are implored for pardon of sins or even for power to resist 
 temptation. The Bible itself has no more exalted utter- 
 ances of repentance than some of the Chaldeo- Assyrian 
 hymns which Francois Lenormant has well called " Peni- 
 tential Psalms,' 7 or the staves of some of the Vedic chants 
 addressed to the gods of justice or pity, Yaruna, Agni, 
 Aditi, and others. 
 
 Another stage of advance is marked when men ask 
 for no specified favours from the gods, but throw them- 
 selves upon their insight and their goodness, in the belief 
 that they know best what is good for their worshippers. 
 Thus the cry of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane 
 implied absolute self-abandonment to an almighty and 
 all-loving Providence : " Father, not my will, but thine, 
 be done " (Luke xxii. 42). 
 
 But can prayer survive the rejection, not only of belief 
 in miracles, but of all belief in the intermittent and arbi- 
 trary intervention of the Deity ? Surely it may remain as 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 251 
 
 a subjective expression of the loftiest religious aspirations 
 of man, transformed into the spontaneous utterance of 
 that gratitude, admiration and love, which the normal 
 unfolding of the divine works inspires.. As petition, 
 prayer may disappear; but as invocation, as homage, 
 and, above all, as self-dedication to the task of moral 
 co-operation with the Deity, it will remain as long as 
 the religious sentiment itself abides. 
 
 The poetry which personifies everything has surely 
 the right to ascribe the most elevated attributes of 
 human nature to the supreme Keality. Profoundly reli- 
 gious minds have admitted that prayer can have no 
 effect on the Deity, yet have not renounced it. Even 
 should we become convinced that invocations are no 
 more than monologues, and wake no echo outside our 
 own consciousness, like the Comtist prayers addressed to 
 the grand-eire. Humanity, we might yet draw from 
 this communion with our Ideal such strength as comes 
 from any effusion that raises us above the relative and 
 the transitory, and places our feet in the region of the 
 Eternal and the Absolute. Nevertheless, it is only if we 
 believe in the real existence of an omnipresent Power, 
 even though we refuse to define its attributes, that 
 prayer, or, if you prefer it, invocation, gives to the 
 spiritual, moral, and even aesthetic faculties of the human 
 soul their highest satisfaction. This truth is amply illus- 
 trated by some of the liturgies in use in Theistic or Eree 
 Christian Churches. 
 The evolution Man begins by supposing the superhuman 
 
 of sacrifice, beings to eat and drink like men. The Cari- 
 bees think they hear their cemis cracking their jaws 
 
252 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 when they are eating the provisions placed in special 
 huts for them. So, too, the Negroes of Labode pro- 
 fessed to hear the gurgling and smack as their fetish 
 drank the bottle of rum they had put within his reach. 
 
 Such illusions may be maintained by the fact that 
 sooner or later the food is decomposed or carried off by 
 animals, and the drink evaporates or sinks into the ground. 
 A Eussian traveller amongst the Ostyaks now and 
 again empties a horn of snuff which has been set before 
 an idol, and in the morning the people say the god must 
 have been hunting, he has snuffed so much. 1 This ex- 
 plains the prevalence of certain forms of sacrifice which 
 facilitate the disappearance of the offerings, e.g. burying 
 or immersing them for subterranean or aquatic deities, 
 and burning them for celestial or atmospheric ones. 
 
 Fire is more especially charged with this mission, not 
 only because it so soon reduces combustible objects to 
 volatile forms, but further because it seems to bear 
 them to heaven in the smoke. " Agni," says the Big- 
 Veda, " the offering which thou encirclest on all sides, 
 unhurt, that alone goes to the gods." 2 Thus fire, per- 
 sonified as the agent of sacrifice, assumes an ever more 
 important place as the mightiest and most formidable 
 deities are located in the sky. The Vedas call it the 
 " Divine Priest appointed for sacrifice." 3 The Proto- 
 Chaldeans named it the " Supreme Pontiff on the face of 
 the Earth." 4 The Chinuks implore it to intercede with 
 
 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 345 (3rd edition, p. 381). 
 
 2 Rig-Veda, 1. 1. 4. 3 Ibid. 1. 1. 1. 
 
 4 Tiele, Anciennes religions de VEgypte et des penples semitiques, 
 p. 176. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 253 
 
 the Great Spirit to obtain abundant game, swift horses, 
 and plenty of male children for them. Amongst the 
 Egyptians, Ptah, the god of the Cosmic Fire, has a son 
 Imhoteb, whose name means, "I come in the sacrifice" 
 or "in peace," and who personified, as Tiele assures us, 
 the fire of sacrifices regulated according to the sacred 
 book. 1 
 
 Spiritualizing ^^ e cus tom of committing sacrifice to the 
 of sacrifice. re gave rise, in its turn, to the belief that 
 the gods only consumed the essence, transmitted to 
 them in the form of smoke or odour. This is the idea 
 of the Eedskin who smokes his calumet in honour of 
 the Great Spirit. "Fire and Earth," cry the Osages, 
 " smoke with me and help me to overthrow my foes." 2 
 
 The brothers Lander tell us of a village on the Niger 
 where they had slaughtered an ox, and the natives asked 
 them to roast it under a certain fetish, that the latter 
 might have the benefit of the smell. 3 The same order 
 of ideas re-appears in the offerings of burnt fat amongst 
 so many peoples, from the Jews and Greeks down to the 
 Zulus, and the burning of incense or perfumes which 
 still prevails in most parts of the world. " The .smell 
 of burning fat," says Homer, "rose to heaven on the 
 billows of smoke;" 4 and we know that holocausts long 
 continued to be a "sweet savour to Yahveh." 5 And 
 
 1 Tiele, Anciennes Religions de rJSgypte et des peuples semitiques, 
 p, 64 (History of the Egyptian Religion, p. 94). 
 
 2 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 347 (3rd edition, p. 383). 
 
 3 Richard and John Lander, Journal of an Expedition to explore 
 the Course and Termination of the Niger, London, 1832, vol. iii. 
 pp. 104 sq., under date Oct. 29. 
 
 4 Wad, i. 317. 5 Cf. Genesis viii. 21. 
 
254 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 again, in proportion as the distinction between body 
 and soul is carried down to inanimate things, the belief 
 tends to arise that the superhuman beings confine them- 
 selves to consuming the spiritual part, or double, of the 
 sacrifice. I have already cited the Negro's explanation 
 that it was not the tree that ate the sacrifice, but the 
 spirit of the tree that ate the spirit of the sacrifice. 
 Some critics have thought that this is almost too subtle 
 to be true, but we find the same thing more or less 
 explicitly formulated in the most diverse parts of the 
 world. 
 
 And now note these consequences. It matters little 
 what may become of the sacrifice itself ; it may be thrown 
 away, left there to decay, or abandoned to animals, just as 
 well as buried or burned. Nay, the worshippers may eat 
 it themselves ; and this latter alternative tends to pre- 
 vail, in the first place because it saves waste, and in the 
 next place as a means of entering into communion with 
 the gods by sharing their repast, and as giving the 
 sacrifice a higher character of solemnity as a social and 
 religious festival. Unquestionably these are the ideas 
 which lie at the root of those sacrificial banquets which 
 are common to all organized religions. 1 Sometimes the 
 
 1 It is interesting to note that an analogous superstition has survived 
 in European countries, where the belief prevails that the repast of the 
 survivors helps to redeem the soul of the departed. Indeed, in some 
 parts of Flanders pannekoeken (fritters) are still made on All-Souls- 
 day, to be eaten for the benefit of the departed. Every pannekoeke 
 swallowed redeems a soul. MM. Henry Havard and Ginisty respec- 
 tively report that at Bruges and at Dixmude men are hired to consume 
 as many of these dainties as possible, since they are found to injure 
 the digestions of the living as much as they benefit the souls of the 
 dead. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 255 
 
 material portion of the sacrifices is handed over to the 
 priests, who are thus directly interested in their multi- 
 plication : " That which remains of the meal offering 
 shall be for Aaron and his sons " (Lev. ii. 3) ; or, finally, 
 it is given to the poor, as in certain temples in the India 
 of to-day. 1 
 
 Transforma- The belief that the gods only eat the soul 
 offerkKrsfnto ^ ^ e vlc ^ m ? combined with the growing 
 
 homage, conviction that their existence and felicity 
 are independent of human generosity, diminishes the 
 objective importance of sacrifice, and tends to make the 
 idea of homage preponderate over that of actual gifts or 
 services. 
 
 Hence flow two results, contradictory enough in ap- 
 pearance, the one manifesting itself as an aggravation, 
 and the other as an attenuation, of sacrifice. 
 
 On the one hand, since the intention alone constitutes 
 the virtue of sacrifice, its value will be proportioned to 
 the privation the worshipper inflicts upon himself, and 
 the worth of the thing sacrificed in his own eyes. The 
 Greeks, with whom hospitality was a sacred institution 
 under the special protection of Zeus, at one period 
 sacrificed strangers to the Lycian Zeus, perhaps because 
 a curious perversion of the argument just indicated led 
 them to regard this as an eminently precious offering. 2 
 
 We know what efficacity the Semites attached to the 
 sacrifice of the first-born son. When the king of Moab 
 was besieged in his capital by the united forces of Israel, 
 
 1 A. Chevrillon, Dans Vlnde, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for 
 March 1st, 1891, p. 100. 
 
 2 Cf. F. A. Maury, Religions de la Grece antique, vol. i. p. 184. 
 
256 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 tTudah and Edom, he sacrificed his eldest son on the 
 ramparts, and this was enough to make the investing 
 army raise the siege. In like manner, when Carthage 
 was reduced to the last extremities, the best families 
 were compelled to give up their first-born sons to be 
 burnt in a huge hollow statue of Baal-Hamman. But 
 the hideous sacrifice did not prevent the triumph of 
 Borne. Hence, too, the idea, always favoured by certain 
 religions, that the absolute surrender of person and pro- 
 perty constitutes the sacrifice of highest worth in the 
 eyes of the Deity, because it is the most complete. 
 Hence, too, that form of asceticism which consists in 
 self-imposed fasting and abstinence, regarded as an 
 expiation, and carried to the point of systematic renun- 
 ciation, solely to please the Deity, of everything not 
 absolutely necessary for the bare maintenance of a life 
 reduced to its simplest elements. 
 
 Attenuation But, on ^ ne other hand, since homage is 
 of sacrifice. ^ e essence O f sacrifice, the intention ought 
 to be enough ; and no hesitation need be felt in offering 
 a part for the whole, the inferior as a substitute for the 
 superior, or the image instead of the reality. This three- 
 fold method of attenuation has had a specially beneficent 
 effect in eliminating human sacrifice. 
 
 (a.) The Part for the Whole. 
 
 The idea of substituting the part for the whole gave 
 rise to those religious mutilations by which the wor- 
 shipper (and especially the priest, who was supposed to 
 give himself entirely to the Deity) sacrificed a part of 
 his body as a substitute for his whole being. Sometimes 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 257 
 
 it is a finger, a tooth, a piece of flesh, or a lock of hair, 
 sometimes a few drops of blood. 
 
 In the time of Claudius, the Druids, who had for- 
 merly practised human sacrifice on a large scale, con- 
 tented themselves with pouring a little blood upon the 
 altar. 1 The same thing takes place in India, where 
 the Brahmans retain the sacrifice of human blood 
 in certain solemnities, but only "a quarter as much 
 as a lotus -leaf will hold." 2 In Greece, Pausanias 
 tells us that the altar of Artemis at Sparta had to 
 be sprinkled with the blood of human victims chosen 
 by lot. Lycurgus substituted the practice of flogging 
 boys before the altar till the blood came. 3 In Central 
 America, where human sacrifice reached such monstrous 
 proportions, Quetzalcoatl, the least sanguinary of the 
 Mexican deities, was supposed to have substituted simple 
 bleeding. 4 Finally, it is by no means certain that the 
 Jewish circumcision was not a similar attenuation. In 
 fact, we read in Exodus that when Moses on his way to 
 Egypt had stopped at a hostelry, Yahveh met him and 
 sought to slay him, but Zipporah hastened to circumcise 
 her child, and thus saved her husband. 5 
 
 1 Pomponius Mela, Clwrographia, iii. 2 (18). 
 
 2 A. de Gubernatis, Mytlwlogie des plantes, vol. ii. p. 209. 
 
 3 Pausanias, iii. 16. 10. 
 
 4 A. Reville, Hibbert Lectures, 1884, P- 64. 
 
 5 Ex. iv. 24 26. That this was the original significance of circum- 
 cision seems to follow very clearly from the passage of Sanchuniathon 
 which says that after a famine and a pestilence, Cronos first sacrificed 
 his only son, and then circumcised himself and compelled his com- 
 panions to do the like. See M. Lenormant, Origines de Vhistoire, 1880, 
 vol. i. p. 546 (Beginnings of History, p. 531). When some important 
 
 S 
 
258 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 In many cases only the hides or the head, the horns 
 or the entrails, of the slaughtered animal are sacrificed. 
 The extreme of attenuation in this matter is realized by 
 the Parsees, who, instead of sacrificing an ox, confine 
 themselves to burning a few of his hairs. In like 
 manner, the Peruvians were satisfied with pulling a hair 
 out of their eyebrows and blowing it towards the idol. 1 
 
 The Inferior for the Superior. 
 
 Elsewhere the burden or cruelty of human sacrifice is 
 lightened by committing criminals, captives, slaves, or 
 animals, to the knife, as a substitute for the more pre- 
 cious victims. Thus Yahveh allowed Abraham to offer 
 him a ram as a substitute for Isaac. In Greece, likewise, 
 the slaughter of an animal was substituted in certain 
 sacrifices for that of a human victim ; but, in fidelity to 
 the ancient usage of the ritual tradition, a man was first 
 led up to the altar, and then suffered to escape. 2 
 
 (c.) The Image for the Reality. 
 
 Wherever we find human figures offered to the deities 
 for instance, the statuettes thrown into the Tiber at a 
 certain period of the year we may be sure the practice 
 is a survival from ancient human sacrifices. The same 
 kind of attenuation has affected the sacrifice of animals, 
 and in general every kind of offering which involved the 
 
 personage in Fiji is smitten with disease, they circumcise, not the 
 invalid, but his son or some young man who volunteers to submit to 
 the operation, 
 
 1 A. Keville, Hibbert Lectures, 1884, p. 219. 
 
 2 A. Maury, Religions de la Grece antique, vol. ii. p. 105. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 259 
 
 worshipper in considerable loss. Thus, amongst the 
 Greeks, worshippers too poor to sacrifice animals confined 
 themselves to offering paste or wooden effigies of them. 1 
 The same idea re-appears in the wax or metal "ex-votos," 
 representing diseased members, suspended round the 
 chapels of saints or madonnas who have a reputation for 
 working miracles. Tavernier noted the same usage in 
 India. 2 
 
 This form of substitution is fostered by the popular 
 belief that a portrait is equivalent to the original. The 
 Egyptians went so far as to believe that the double of 
 the food painted for the benefit of the deceased on the 
 walls of the tombs, would reproduce itself indefinitely 
 in the other world, as long as its representation con- 
 tinued here. It was this same confusion between the 
 copy and the original, manifested in connection with 
 another order of ideas, that gave birth to the practice of 
 destroying or burying the image of a man as a means of 
 compassing his death. 
 
 By another step forward, it may come to be supposed 
 that the sacrifice itself can be replaced by a simple pan- 
 tomime. The Semites were often satisfied with passing 
 their victims through or between the flames, and the 
 same usage is found amongst the Malagassy, the ancient 
 Mexicans, the Malays, and the Burmese. We must be 
 careful, however, to inquire whether this may not some- 
 times be a form of purification, like that of baptism by 
 water, and nothing more ; for amongst savages and in 
 
 1 A. Maury, Religions de la Gr&ce antique, vol. ii. pp. 95, 96, 100, 
 101. 
 
 2 See Revue des traditions populaires, 1889, vol. iv. p. 20. 
 
 s2 
 
260 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 the lower strata of civilized peoples the same practice 
 often expresses widely different ideas. In the sixteenth 
 century, for instance, there were certain parts of Scot- 
 land in which, as soon as a child was brought home from 
 baptism, it was swung three or four times over a flame, 
 with the words, " Let the flame consume thee now or 
 never. 771 
 
 If the intention is all that signifies, it is not unnatural 
 for the deity to be satisfied with the bare beginning of the 
 sacrifice. "We all remember how Yahveh held Abraham's 
 arm at the moment when the knife was already raised 
 to strike Isaac, saying, "Lay not thy hand upon the 
 child, . . . now I know that thou fearest God 77 (Gen. 
 xxii. 12). It is interesting to observe that analogous 
 traditions arose amongst the Greeks and Chinese. It 
 was said that at Lacedemon the oracle had required 
 the sacrifice of Helen to put an end to a plague, but 
 at the moment when the sacrificer raised the steel, an 
 Eagle suddenly snatched it from his hand. 2 In China 
 the Emperor Tang offered himself as a voluntary victim 
 to put an end to a drought ; but as he was preparing for 
 the consummation of the sacrifice, heaven sent abundant 
 rain. 3 In all these cases, the consummation of the 
 ceremony is averted only by an event independent of 
 the human will ; but such precedents would be inter- 
 preted as manifest signs that the deity no longer required 
 human sacrifices. 
 
 1 J. Brand, Observations on Popular Antiquities, London, 1841, vol. 
 ii. p. 48. 
 
 2 Maury, Religions de la Grece antique, vol. ii. pp. 104 sq. 
 8 A. Reville, La Religion chinoise, vol. i. p. 207. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 261 
 
 Even the representation, or the performance of the 
 preliminaries, might thus become superfluous formalities. 
 The mental sacrifices of the Brahman who leads a solitary 
 life in the heart of the forest, are more efficacious than 
 the most sacred sacrificial rites of external worship. 
 Moral tr ^ e P ene ^ ra tion of religion by morals 
 
 formation of tends to modify the idea of sacrifice pro- 
 foundly, if not completely to suppress all 
 offerings to the Deity. " I desire mercy and not sacri- 
 fice," the prophet Hosea makes the Eternal say: "and 
 the knowledge of God, more than burnt offerings." 1 In 
 that ancient country, China, where sacrifice is the basis 
 of the whole cultus and is offered everywhere, where 
 the very professors never open their courses without 
 offering fruits and lentils to the deceased philosophers 
 Confucius wrote, twenty-three centuries ago, " The per- 
 fume comes not from the grain [of the sacrifice]. It is 
 purity and virtue that make it." 2 In India, where the 
 priestly schools teach that sacrifice makes man the equal, 
 if not the superior, of the Gods, the sacred poem of the 
 Mahabharata includes such maxims as this : " The obla- 
 tion to Agni, the life in the forest, emaciation of the 
 body, all these may be but in vain unless the mind be 
 unspotted." 3 
 
 It is not surprising, then, that the sacrifice of pro- 
 pitiation has all but disappeared from the universalist 
 religions. Judaism, in its synagogues, realizing the 
 ecclesiastical ideal of the ancient prophets, has dispensed 
 
 1 Hosea vi. 6. Cf. Isaiah i. 1017, and Matthew v. 23, 24. 
 
 2 Girard de Bialle, Mythologie comparee, p. 214. 
 
 3 Mahabharata, iii. ( Vana-parva), 13446. 
 
262 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 with it, at least in theory, ever since the destruction 
 of the Temple. Buddhism, Christianity and Islam 
 have officially rejected it. But popular usages have 
 hitherto been too strong for the reforming spirit. The 
 infiltration of Hindu superstition has opened Buddhism 
 to oblations in honour of the Master who preached the 
 uselessness of sacrifices. Islam has been forced to tolerate 
 the continuance of bloody funeral sacrifices. Thus about 
 forty years ago, at the funeral of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy 
 of Egypt, eighty buffaloes were slain at the tomb. 1 
 It is to be noted that the Mussulmans interpret these 
 sacrifices as expiatory, and believe that they blot out the 
 venial sins of the dead; and it is in this same special 
 acceptation that sacrifice has been maintained, or if you 
 will re-introduced, into Christianity; for we find the 
 Eoman Church encouraging the custom of giving alms, 
 creating pious foundations, and celebrating masses, as 
 '' a set-off against sins. On the other hand, we note 
 how the longing for purification, so widely spread in 
 the last days of Paganism, the belief that sacrifice alone 
 could blot out transgressions, and the conviction that 
 the efficacity of the sacrifice must be proportional to 
 the importance of the victim, in combination with the 
 character impressed on the Messianic hopes by the post- 
 exilian prophets, begot the belief that nothing short of 
 the voluntary sacrifice of a God could affect the salvation 
 of fallen humanity. Thus was formed the Christian 
 dogma of the vicarious expiation on the Cross. And 
 
 1 Ignace Goldziher, Revue de Vlilstoire des religions, vol. x. p. 351. 
 The same thing took place more recently at the funeral of Ismail Pasha. 
 See the Journal des debats for Jan. 20th, 1892. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 203 
 
 when the celebration of the Lord's Supper a symbol 
 instituted by Jesus in reminiscence of the Jewish Pass- 
 over received a mystic interpretation, which may per- 
 haps be traced back to the rites of the Greek Mysteries, 
 the ancient institution of sacrifice was re-incorporated in 
 the Catholic worship under the form of a sacrament. 1 
 
 We know how the Eeformation proscribed offerings 
 for the redemption of sins together with the trade in 
 indulgences; and how, in due course, liberal Protes- 
 tantism has rejected the dogma of expiation through the 
 blood of Christ, and retained the Lord's Supper only as 
 a commemorative celebration. An analogous movement 
 .has arisen in progressive Judaism and in reformed 
 Brahmanism, where repentance is declared to be the 
 only means of redeeming trespasses, and good works in 
 the largest sense the only way of pleasing the deity. 2 
 If amongst such communities incense still smokes here 
 and there on the altar, or flowers decorate the temple on 
 certain anniversaries, it is no longer in the vain hope of 
 gratifying the senses of the Deity, but to find vent for 
 that aesthetic feeling which is never more in place than 
 when associated with the most exalted and inspiring 
 emotions of the human heart. Within as without the 
 religious communions, if sacrifice has disappeared, the 
 spirit of sacrifice, henceforth anchored in human nature, 
 has become identified with obedience to duty and devo- 
 tion to every just cause. Abnegation has ceased to be 
 asceticism, and has become emancipation from the tyranny 
 
 1 Edwin Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, pp. 300 sq. 
 
 2 Compare Goblet d'Alviella, Contemporary Evolution of Religious 
 Thought in England^ America and India t London, 1885, passim. 
 
264 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 of the passions. Finally, the generosity which enlarges 
 the resources of education and beneficence, is still a pious 
 work, for it co-operates with that Power which makes 
 us toil for progress in the spirit of enlightenment and 
 love. 
 
 The evolution Subjective symbols, that is to say acts or 
 of symbolism. i3J ec t s which serve to embody our inward 
 sentiments, still find daily application in our religious as 
 in our social life. Those only have disappeared which 
 were inconsistent with the dignity of man or with a 
 serious view of life ; and therefore those which now 
 survive bid fair to endure as long as religion seeks to 
 find external, and, above all, collective expression. 
 Indeed, man avails himself of them, not only to make his 
 inmost feelings palpable as it were to the Deity, but also 
 to realize them to himself, and above all to communicate 
 them to his fellows. 
 
 And so too with those figurative symbols which 
 aim at representing a divinity or his attributes. A 
 process of slowly developed selection has more and more 
 thrown into the background such images as wound 
 morality, humanity, or even good taste. And as for those 
 which are open to no such objection, their maintenance 
 depends less upon the nature of the symbols than upon 
 the permanence of the sentiments to which they give 
 expression. The divine omniscience may be represented 
 by an eye surrounded by a glory, and Providence by a 
 hand issuing from a cloud, as long as men continue to 
 attribute to the Deity the knowledge and providential 
 guidance of the affairs of this world. And even a 
 theriomorphic symbol, like that of the serpent biting its 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 265 
 
 own tail, need not be banished as long as we feel any 
 need of giving a sensible form to our conception of the 
 Infinite and of Eternity. So too with the symbols, or 
 rather the idiograms drawn from the Scriptures, that 
 serve to represent the name of the Deity, such as the 
 sacred Tetragram of the Hebrews, the Alpha and Omega 
 of Primitive Christianity, the AUM of the Hindus. 
 And all this applies still more to the emblems which 
 have come to typify the various forms of worship, such 
 as the Cross of the Christians, the Crescent of Islam, the 
 "Wheel of the Buddhist, to say nothing of that combination 
 of the Cross and the Crescent with the AUM of the Brah- 
 mans and the trident of the Qivaites, which some Indian 
 Brahmoists have inscribed on the frontage of their temples 
 to signify their syncretistic attitude towards the chief 
 cults of their country. 1 
 
 imitative Imitative symbols have perhaps filled a 
 symbols. more important place than any others, for 
 while transforming worship into a veritable dramatic 
 representation of the life of the Deity, they also satisfy 
 that longing for union with the Deity by assimilation 
 (o/WcocTf? TO) 0ew) which is an essential factor in worship. 
 I have given examples of these practices, which ori- 
 ginally implied a naturalistic conception of the uni- 
 verse, surviving in the popular traditions and even in 
 the religious rites of our own times. The scope of imita- 
 tive symbols was still further enlarged when anthropo- 
 morphism reached the point of ascribing not only the 
 sentiments, but the features of man to the deities. These 
 
 1 Cf. P. C. Mozoomdar, The Life and Teachings of Keshub Ohunder 
 Sen, Calcutta, 1887, p. 501. 
 
266 VI. THE FITTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 imitative symbols then developed into a mythology in 
 action, a true scenic presentation, especially where 
 art had risen high enough to be capable of combining 
 aesthetic enjoyment with the satisfaction of religious 
 sentiment. On the other hand, when the anthropo- 
 morphic character under which the gods were represented 
 began to raise a blush, their adventures came to be 
 regarded more and more as having an allegorical signifi- 
 cance. Here again, however, the imitative symbolism 
 was modified in two parallel directions, the one esoteric 
 or mystic, and the other exoteric or popular. 
 
 The first of these movements gave rise to the mysteries 
 of Greece, in which the neophytes were put into com- 
 munication with the superhuman powers by means of 
 ancient rites more or less discordant with the progress 
 of thought and conscience, but exalted, and, so to speak, 
 transfigured, by being made the vehicles of some lofty 
 form of metaphysical or moral teaching. 
 
 The second movement secularized the legends of the 
 gods more and more, until it culminated in the profane 
 theatre. This took place not only in Greece, but in 
 Persia, India, and even Polynesia, where the corporation 
 of the Areoi put the mystic adventures of the gods 
 upon the stage. 1 You know how our own theatre rose 
 out of religious representations which bore the name of 
 Mysteries in the Middle Ages, and which are still cele- 
 brated in certain parts of Germany, notably at Ober- 
 Ammergau. 
 
 Finally, the imitative symbols, or rather the longing 
 for communion by means of imitation which lies at 
 1 Eeville, Religions des peuples non-civilises, vol. ii. p. 85. 
 
f UNV 
 
 , 
 
 ' 
 
 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 267 
 
 the bottom of all forms of worship, shows a tendency to 
 change its character under pressure of moral ideas, and 
 to turn to another object than the material reproduction 
 of divine acts. 
 
 "We have seen that even such backward peoples as 
 the Hottentots perform dances in honour of the moon, 
 in which they imitate her movements. When the earth 
 trembles, the Caribees begin dancing because, as they 
 say, when our mother dances, surely we ought to dance 
 too. Many peoples perform ceremonies at the Winter 
 solstice, in which they symbolize the death and resurrec- 
 tion of the sun ; others, again, such as the Tartars and 
 the Andaman islanders, abstain from work between sun- 
 set and sunrise. In former times, there were places in 
 Germany, Denmark, and Belgium, where no one might 
 drive a carriage for twelve days after the winter solstice. 
 The sun rests, as M. Gaidoz puts it ; so his symbol, the 
 wheel, must rest too. In some localities, as Schwartz 
 and Kuhn tell us, the prohibition extended to other 
 kinds of work, such as spinning or carrying dung to the 
 fields. It was like a Sabbath of twelve days. 1 
 
 Nowhere, perhaps, has the sentiment which leads men 
 to imitate the celestial bodies been more naively ex- 
 pressed than in the prayer of an old Samoyed to the sun, 
 mentioned by Castre'n : " Oh Jilibeambaertje, I get up 
 when you get up; I go to bed when you go to bed." 2 But 
 it is the same thought, at a further stage of abstraction 
 and generalization, which re-appears in the Chinese theory 
 
 1 H. Gaidoz, Le dieu gaulois du soleil et le symbolisme de la roue, 
 Paris, 1886, p. 32. 
 
 2 Vorlesungen uber die Finnische Mytlwlvgie, St. Petersburg, 1853, 
 p. 16. 
 
268 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 that man ought to conduct himself methodically, accord- 
 ing to fixed rules, in order to imitate the ways whereby 
 heaven determines the movement of the stars and the 
 phenomena of the earth. " I believe," says Cicero in 
 his turn, "that the gods have put immortal souls into 
 human bodies that beings may exist .... who shall 
 contemplate the order of the heavenly things, and imitate 
 it in the regulated constancy of their lives." 1 Truly it 
 is a far cry from the astronomical dances of the Hotten- 
 tots to the sublime precept of Leviticus: "Be ye holy, 
 for I the Eternal, your God, am holy ; " or to the pro- 
 found saying of Plato : " God is supremely just, and 
 nothing resembles him more than whosoever of us 
 becomes just to the uttermost degree." 2 But I am not 
 debasing Greek philosophy or Israelitish faith, if I show 
 that in this matter both alike are attached, by an unin- 
 terrupted chain of intellectual and religious links, to the 
 first naive stammerings of the human conscience as it 
 seeks communion with its ideal. 
 
 It sometimes happens that symbols pass 
 
 Symbolism as * 
 
 an ally of into fetishes or into formulae of conjuration. 
 
 gress and free This is when the analogies which they 
 
 express are taken for real relations. Thus 
 
 ablution, which began by being a ceremony of cleanliness 
 
 and decency, a suitable prelude to entering into relations 
 
 with the great, or with the gods, subsequently became 
 
 an easily comprehensible symbol of purification, and 
 
 often ended by drawing to itself a supernatural virtue. 
 
 And in like manner certain forms of sacrifice easily 
 
 explained on the notion that the gods feed upon the 
 
 1 De Senectute, cap, xxi. 77. 2 Thecetetus, 85. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. . 269 
 
 offerings became pure symbols when these gods were 
 supposed to be satisfied with the mere intention, and 
 finally passed into veritable sacraments, with power to 
 regenerate the faithful and even to assure them im- 
 mortality. An example is furnished by the sacrifice of 
 the bull in the mysteries of Mithra. But more often the 
 opposite phenomenon is witnessed ; that is to say, objects 
 once regarded as the actual body of the Deity, or acts 
 regarded as expressing a real relation with the gods, gra- 
 dually acquire a purely symbolic character. Thus, fire, 
 which was regarded as a divine being by the ancient Per- 
 sians, and, for that matter, by all the Indo-Europeans, is 
 now in the eyes of modern Parsees no more than a symbol 
 of the supreme being, Ahura Mazda. The Chaldeans 
 long deified the planets themselves ; but afterwards they 
 simply regarded them as symbols of the great gods, and 
 indeed a star became the generic sign of divinity in 
 the cuneiform writing. It is probable that, with the 
 Greeks as with the Egyptians, many of the gods were at 
 first represented under the forms of certain animals. 
 The Egyptians were content with modifying their phy- 
 siognomy by adding traits borrowed from man ; but 
 the Greeks completely anthropomorphized their ancient 
 animal deities, while retaining the animal which origi- 
 nally represented them in the several religious centres, 
 as the companion or the symbol of the god. 
 
 This aptitude of symbols for modifying their meaning 
 without changing their shape, combined with the affec- 
 tion always felt for traditional forms, is one of the chief 
 causes of their longevity athwart all religious revolu- 
 tions. It would not be hard to establish a direct line 
 
270 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 of filiation between emblems still current in Eastern 
 and Western religions and the most ancient motives of 
 Assyrian iconography; for example, the aureole as a 
 symbol of celestial glory. The thunderbolt of the 
 Greeks, which is also employed to this very day in the 
 ritual all over the Buddhistic East, under the well-known 
 form of the dordj, may be traced in both forms alike to 
 the double trident which appears in the hands of the 
 storm-god in the sculptures of the Mesopotamian palaces. 
 The Phoenix, before representing the resurrection on 
 Christian sarcophagi, was a symbol of apotheosis on the 
 imperial medals of pagan Eome ; and in yet more ancient 
 times, it had served the Egyptians as an emblem of the 
 annual re-birth of the sun. 
 
 The spectacle is not unfamiliar of religions borrowing 
 almost all their symbolic images from the forms of 
 worship which they profess to combat or replace. When 
 the Persians had established themselves in Mesopotamia, 
 they adapted the Chaldean iconography to the figurative 
 representation of their own beliefs, and it was from pagan 
 art that the Christianity of the Catacombs drew the 
 greater part of its allegorical subjects. In Buddhism, 
 the rites successively engrafted upon the doctrine of the 
 Buddha borrowed their material from the previous forms 
 of worship in India, particularly those of the sun, though 
 of course a new signification was given to them. 1 
 
 We may note, in this connection, that symbolism that 
 is to say, the power of attaching a new meaning to any 
 given image on the one hand aids the transition from 
 
 1 Cf. Goblet D'Alviella, La Migration des symloles, Paris, 1891, 
 pp. 332 sqq, 
 
VI. THE FUTTJKE OF WORSHIP. 271 
 
 the traditional conception to a higher one, and on the 
 other hand facilitates the co-existence, under a common 
 form of worship, of the widest diversity of beliefs. This 
 advantage of symbolism is especially perceptible in such 
 religions as Brahmanism, Buddhism, and even Judaism, 
 and a certain number of Christian communities which 
 have no central authority to define their dogmas and 
 interpret their liturgies. In such cases, respect for 
 external forms may actually aid the emancipation of 
 men's minds ; as M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu has shown 
 in the instance of the Old Believers, in his striking study 
 of religion in the empire of the Czars. 1 Indeed, when 
 unity simply consists in respecting an external form, 
 there is nothing to prevent one section of the faithful 
 preserving the full sacramental value of a rite, whilst 
 others accept it in a purely symbolic sense, and attribute 
 any meaning that suits them to the symbol. Symbolism 
 is the natural ally alike of mysticism and of free inquiry 
 that is to say, of the two great foes which the orthodox 
 spirit has always had to fear within the Churches them- 
 selves. 
 
 We have seen that when the distinction 
 
 The evolu- 
 tion of the between the priest and the sorcerer had been 
 
 established, the latter, in his capacity of 
 exorcist, still exercised his functions, first at the side of 
 the priest, and then below him, since the latter had the 
 monopoly of the relations with the higher deities. 
 Finally, the priest expelled the sorcerer from the official 
 cultus altogether, while himself assuming one of his 
 rival's chief functions, namely, exorcism. 
 
 1 L? Empire des Tzars, vol. iii. p. 336, 
 
272 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 It is easy to understand that in primitive societies, 
 where the family is the property of its head, the latter 
 prays and sacrifices to assure the prosperity of his 
 belongings. Such, at least, is the religious condition 
 in which we first find the patriarchal communities of the 
 Indo-Europeans, the Hebrews, and the Chinese. The 
 same system prevails to this day amongst the Malagassy, 
 the Khonds, the Ostyaks, and even the Samoans. By a 
 natural extension of this principle, it is the chief of the 
 tribe, and subsequently of the nation, who acts for the 
 community in approaching the gods, whether he invokes 
 his own special deities, as with certain Negroes, or ad- 
 dresses the general gods of his people, as in Polynesia. 
 This is the origin of the sacrificing kings, regarded as 
 religious as well as civil and military chiefs, whom we 
 find amongst the ancient Chinese, Chaldeans, Egyptians, 
 Assyrians, Persians, and on a smaller scale among the 
 Manga'ians, the New Zealanders, the Chinuks, and others. 
 It was probably the same with the Greeks down to 
 Homeric times; and we know that when the Eomans 
 abolished royalty, they still maintained a special func- 
 tionary, bearing the name of rex sacrorum, with a view 
 to the celebration of certain sacrifices. 
 
 Such an organization may result in a complete theo- 
 cracy, if the religious interest secures the first place. This 
 seems to have happened in ancient Peru, and to a certain 
 extent in Assyria and Egypt ; but the multiplication of 
 the duties of government on the one hand, and the grow- 
 ing complexity of rites on the other, often induced the 
 chief to delegate his sacerdotal functions. This delega- 
 tion was at first temporary, as when Numa appointed the 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 273 
 
 flamens as his substitutes during his absence. Amongst 
 the Blantyres of Western Africa, "if the chief is from 
 home, his wife will act; and if both are absent, his 
 younger brother." l 
 
 This temporary delegation tends to become permanent, 
 in virtue of the prestige which surrounds its recipients. 
 The chiefs relieve themselves altogether of their religious 
 functions, in favour of chaplains retained about their 
 persons, or priests set over the chief sanctuaries. Thus 
 the sacerdotal office, like that of the sorcerer, tends to 
 become a special profession. Among the Hindus, the 
 Brahmanic families seem to have been constituted, in 
 the first instance, under petty local rajahs, who entrusted 
 them with the conduct of divine service. 2 Amongst the 
 Israelites, every head of a family was originally a cohen ; 
 but influential men gradually took private chaplains into 
 their service to preside over their domestic sanctuaries, 
 as we learn from the history of Micah (Judges xvii.). 
 
 Establish- At first, these priests were no more than 
 oTOrtl fc row d of delegates or functionaries, as we see clearly 
 
 theocracies, enough in China, where the functions of 
 public worship are assigned to the various administrative 
 officers of the empire ; and in classical antiquity, where 
 the principal priests were sometimes directly elected by 
 the people, just like other magistrates. Meanwhile, as 
 the sacerdotal class grew in power and importance, it 
 tended to close itself as an independent order, either by 
 drawing in recruits from outside, as in the case of the 
 Druidical colleges, or by making itself hereditary, like 
 
 1 See H. Spencer, Ecclesiastical Institutions, p. 729. 
 
 2 Cf. Manu, xii. 46. 
 
 T 
 
274 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 the Brahmans and Levites. In Bussia, we have seen the 
 actual establishment of a sacerdotal tribe in the heart of 
 Christianity within modern times, I refer to the white 
 clergy, or parish priesthood, on whom marriage is obliga- 
 tory, whom the force of circumstances has erected into a 
 genuine hereditary caste, supplying the whole personnel 
 of the Eussian Church, from father to son. 1 
 
 Naturally enough, when once the clergy have become 
 independent, they tend to become supreme in the State. 
 "With this view, they centralize themselves and group 
 themselves in a hierarchy, at the head of which stands 
 the high-priest ; as at Jerusalem after the restoration of 
 the Temple, or at Thebes under the degenerate descend- 
 ants of Eameses. And, again, the members of the priest- 
 
 1 hood propagate the belief that the faithful require their 
 mediation in addressing the gods, that they alone are com- 
 missioned to distribute the divine favours, with authority 
 to bind and to loose in the name of the Supreme Power, 
 and therefore that they form a class of beings superior to 
 the rest of humanity, and clothed with a portion of the 
 
 y divine authority. Finally, the whole direction of private 
 and public affairs passes into their hands, and so a second 
 form of theocracy is developed. Under this regime, God 
 is supposed to govern through the agency of his min- 
 isters, whether the latter assume direct power, as in 
 ancient Ethiopia, and quite recently in the States of the 
 Church, or exercise it through the medium of lay dele- 
 gates, as in the Japan of the Mikado, the Thibet of 
 the Grand Lama, or the Paraguay of the Jesuits. And 
 note that the clergy may exercise this universal rule 
 1 Leroy Beaulieu, U Empire des Tzars, vol. iii. pp. 260 sqq. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 275 
 
 without even organizing themselves in a rigorous hier- 
 archy; witness the Brahmans, who have no ecclesiastical 
 centralization, but none the less have exercised, on the 
 bare prestige of their hereditary functions, an authority 
 without example in the ecclesiastical history of the world. 
 
 When once the theocracy has succeeded in acquiring 
 the civil power, it only remains for it to take in hand the 
 education of the successive generations, and it would 
 then seem to be raised above all risk of overthrow save 
 by a shock from outside. And yet it is evident that 
 such a regime cannot be prolonged indefinitely. There 
 will always be independent spirits who challenge some 
 dogma, or at any rate canvass some point of disci- 
 pline; and they will wake a more or less emphatic 
 response in the nation, in proportion to the correspond- 
 ence of their views with the intellectual and moral wants 
 of the time. Little by little, this opposition to the pre- 
 tensions of the spiritual authority on the field of dogma 
 will grow into a vindication of the right of free inquiry, 
 and this vindication in its turn will end perhaps after 
 long and bloody struggles in bringing about the rupture 
 of the union of Church and State. 
 
 Doubtless dogmatic intolerance survives civil intole- 
 rance. But one consequence of the separation of Church 
 and State will be, that the faithful will tend to group 
 themselves in ever more numerous and ever less stable 
 ecclesiastical associations. And this again will lead, on 
 the one hand, to a stronger affirmation of the rights of 
 free inquiry, and, on the other hand, to a still further 
 reduction of the authority of the priest. In principle he 
 is now no more than a chosen officer of the community ; 
 
 T2 
 
276 VI. THE FTiTUJRE OF WORSHIP* 
 
 he loses his supernatural authority, and henceforth he 
 confines himself to the functions of the religious and 
 moral educator. 
 
 The astorate Thus restricted, there is no reason why the 
 under the pastoral office should not continue to exist 
 
 conditions ' . 
 
 of modern indefinitely. As long as religious societies 
 remain, they will need presidents, secretaries, 
 lecturers, and administrators of every kind. Nay, it seems 
 likely that the functions of the minister will increase in 
 real importance, in proportion as he concentrates himself 
 on his mission of moral educator, and as that mission 
 assumes a more and more important place amongst the 
 practical objects of religious association. We must note, 
 however, that the minister has more in common with the 
 prophet than with the priest ; and the prophet may be 
 genealogically traced to the diviner or seer, who in his 
 turn descends from the primitive sorcerer. Thus the sor- 
 cerer avenges himself, in his descendant, upon the priest 
 who once expelled him ; but the really important point in 
 this reversal of the tables is, that it heralds the triumph 
 of private inspiration fructified by the moral sentiment, 
 over the theory of sacerdotal mediation between the 
 faithful and the Deity. 
 
 To sum up. The whole development of worship that is 
 to say, of acts of propitiation may be characterized as 
 follows: at first, the deities demand the worship of the 
 faithful with a selfish object, and the faithful render it 
 with a similar purpose ; gradually, duties towards our 
 neighbours introduce themselves amongst the obligations 
 of religion, side by side with duties towards the gods 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 277 
 
 and finally, these two orders of ideas melt into one 
 another, under the influence of the conception that " the 
 service of humanity " is the best, if not the only, way of 
 serving the Deity. 
 
 Does it follow that all worship, as a special 
 
 Is worship m * , 
 
 destined to utterance of the relations of man to God, is 
 destined to disappear ? There are not want- 
 ing, even amongst Theists, generous spirits who allow a 
 natural reaction against the abuses of religious formalism 
 to hurry them into the belief in the inevitable, if not 
 speedy, extinction of all religious practices. The founders 
 of the Ethical movement have already made a practical 
 attempt to establish their bond of communion solely on 
 the identity of their humanitarian and progressive aspira- 
 tions. One of the most authoritative exponents of this 
 system in England, Dr. Stanton Coit, writes as follows : 
 " We believe that by declaring devotion to the good of the 
 world to be the bond, and the whole bond, of religious 
 union, we shall ultimately induce men to remove all other 
 qualifications for membership in the Churches ; and that, 
 immediately, men who are now outside of all religious 
 fellowship, or who chafe under the dogmatic restraint of 
 the Church, will form themselves into societies for the 
 spread of goodness." 1 And he adds these enthusiastic 
 words : " This idea of forming societies in devotion to 
 good character and right conduct, we believe stands equal 
 in dignity and power with Christ's conception of a King- 
 dom of God on earth, and that it comes to-day with all 
 the freshness and vigour of a new social revelation, for 
 
 1 The Ethical Movement defined, in Religious Systems of the World t 
 pp. 538, 539. 
 
278 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 which, however, the ages of Christian development have 
 been preparing men's hearts and intellects." 
 
 Surely such associations can render signal service to 
 the ideas of practical toleration and devotion to man. 
 But considerable as their action on our feelings and our 
 manners may become, I cannot believe that they will 
 succeed in satisfying all the wants of which worship is 
 the organ. It is not only as has been maintained in 
 a fit of aristocratic and masculine arrogance women, 
 children and the lower classes, who will feel the need of 
 being elevated by religion beyond the narrow limits of a 
 frivolous or material existence, nor is it only minds too 
 much busied with the affairs of daily life to be able to 
 attain to any higher culture, that experience this same 
 demand. "Without an appeal to the resources of poetry, 
 music, painting, and of all the combinations of art which 
 unite in worship to symbolize the aesthetic aspects of the 
 ideal, even the most cultured of men must be sensible of 
 a void, and must feel himself paralyzed in his attempt 
 to express his aspirations towards the infinite and the 
 absolute. 
 
 I doubt whether religious progress will take the form 
 of a collective entry into newly created religious asso- 
 ciations with a theology in harmony with the require- 
 ments of science, and a cultus reduced to its purely 
 rational manifestations. When we think of the attrac- 
 tion of the old forms, we are more inclined to believe 
 that religious progress will be achieved by the gradual 
 emancipation of thought within the bosom of existing 
 communions, or at least in such of them as lend them- 
 selves to a gradual modification of their beliefs. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 279 
 
 There exist in most of the Churches three classes : 
 those who accept the dogmas and the ceremonies in the 
 spirit in which they have been handed down to them ; 
 those who accept them through force of habit, through 
 a feeling of respect, through a vague desire to call down 
 the Divine sanction on the most solemn acts of life, or 
 simply through an idea of setting a good example to 
 others; and, finally, those who have seen into the real 
 meaning of religious questions, and who are pursued, 
 even in ecclesiastical matters, by the longing for improve- 
 ment. This last class has long been liberalizing religion, 
 though it has too often been weeded out as fast as it 
 grew, by trials for heresy, by the choking atmosphere 
 of intolerance, or simply by the compulsory subscription 
 to dogmatic articles. In many communions, liberty of 
 thought now enjoys a tacit toleration ; only let it become 
 a formally recognized right, and there will be nothing to 
 prevent the union of respect for ancient forms with the 
 development of new ideas. Nay, more : the respect felt 
 for these ancient symbols will be all the more sincere 
 and unanimous when they have ceased to fetter free 
 inquiry and have become historical monuments, venerable 
 by their very antiquity, and worthy of all preservation for 
 the sake of the link which they have established between 
 the aspirations of the present, and the beliefs, the senti- 
 ments, the enthusiasms, perhaps the dangers and the 
 sufferings, of the generations that are past. Here sym- 
 bolism culminates in syncretism. 
 
 The future of Why should we not look forward to a state 
 
 the churches. of things in which the principal religions of 
 
 the actual world Christianity, Buddhism, Brahmanism, 
 
280 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 Judaism, Confucianism, and Islam shall regard each 
 other simply as different forms of worship in the bosom 
 of a single Church, and shall apply to their religious dif- 
 ferences the fine expression of a Eussian bishop : " Our 
 confessional partitions do not mount as high as heaven" ? l 
 Doubtless such an ideal of religious peace and union still 
 seems far distant ; but amongst enlightened minds of 
 varied communions we trace the growing thought that 
 all religions are good if they help us to live worthily, 
 and even that they are all true in so far as they help us 
 to realize the presence of a higher Power working, in 
 accordance with law, for the good of the universe. The 
 belief in the continuity of religious progress implies that 
 no Church possesses the absolute truth, and that all have 
 the right to seek it by the light of conscience and of 
 reason. Graft this idea upon the conviction of our inca- 
 pacity to represent the supreme Eeality otherwise than 
 by symbols, and you will be driven to the conclusion 
 that all rites have a purely relative value, the only 
 measure of which is the service they render to the pro- 
 gress of human culture. 
 
 In this connection, a remarkable sign of the times has 
 recently appeared in London. I refer to the lectures 
 organized by the South Place Ethical Society, in which 
 men belonging to the most divergent sects were invited 
 successively to expound the chief points of their respec- 
 tive religions. I am aware that their language must 
 have been influenced by the surrounding medium ; but 
 making all allowances for that, is it not curious and sug- 
 gestive that all of them Jews, Parsees, and Positivists, 
 
 1 Leroy Beaulieu, U Empire des Tzars, vol. iii. p. 583. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 281 
 
 as well as Baptists, Methodists, Independents, Anglicans, 
 and Unitarians agreed in proclaiming the existence of a 
 great Church above all denominations, a communion of 
 all who do their duty and work for the advancement of 
 the human race. " The life and work of Baptists," said 
 the Rev. John Clifford, President of the Baptist Union, 
 "is a valuable part of British Christianity, only so far as 
 it has become one of the successive steps in which the 
 human spirit has been forced onward by the immanent 
 logic of the religious life in its organic development. 
 Service to humanity, in its higher ranges of life and 
 work, is the supreme test of the worth of Churches." 1 
 
 I am convinced that this point of view will gain more 
 and more adherents, especially in the bosom of the Pro- 
 testant Churches. 2 As for the sects that are determined 
 
 1 Religious Systems of the World, p. 428. 
 
 2 As these sheets are passing through the press, I have received a 
 circular from a Committee formed to organize a Central Congress of 
 Religions at Chicago in 1893 during the Exhibition, side by side with 
 the sectarian gatherings which are sure to be arranged. " Now that 
 the nations are being brought into closer and friendlier relations," it 
 runs, " the time is apparently ripe for new manifestations and develop- 
 ments of religious fraternity Convinced that of a truth God is 
 
 no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth Him 
 and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him, we affectionately invite 
 the representatives of all faiths to aid us in presenting to the world, at 
 the Exhibition of 1893, the religious harmonies and unities of humanity, 
 and also in showing forth the moral and spiritual agencies which are 
 at the root of human progress." The remarkable thing about this 
 circular is, that it is signed by sixteen ministers representing all the 
 confessions of the United States, from a Catholic Archbishop (Mgr. 
 P. A. Feehan) and an Episcopalian Bishop (the Rt. Rev. W. E. McLaren) 
 to a Unitarian of the advanced Western School (the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd 
 Jones) and a Jewish Rabbi (the Rev. E. S. Hirsch), the President 
 being a Presbyterian (the Rev. J. H. Barrows). 
 
282 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 to cling to the letter of their traditional formulae, they 
 will see their ranks thinned more and more by the defec- 
 tion of all who wish to advance with the age. And will 
 these latter, in their turn, end by uniting on the basis of 
 their larger conception of the Deity and his action on the 
 universe, or will they simply go to swell the ranks of 
 the indifferent, who have lost all interest in religious 
 questions, and in many cases failed to replace them by any 
 other interests of an exalted or wide-reaching type ? This 
 question is all the more worth investigation, because it 
 presents itself once more in connection with the masses of 
 the people, who are every day more completely estranged 
 from the religious movement in the great cities and the 
 industrial centres of Europe. This is a factor which we 
 cannot neglect when investigating the prospects of reli- 
 gion itself not merely this or that form of worship in 
 the society of the near future. 
 
 Keligion and ^ ur working classes are not indifferent to 
 the people. re ligi OI10 They are positively hostile to it. 
 For they reproach it with having done nothing to better 
 their condition, with having entered into an alliance 
 with the rich and strong, and finally with having drawn 
 off to the problematic solutions of a future life the 
 attention which ought to be directed to the reform of 
 the life that now is. This hostility has been specially 
 accentuated since Socialism rose to offer the masses a 
 new ideal in which material amelioration of their lot 
 is combined with the satisfaction of the sentiments of 
 harmony and justice. Verily, the Churches have enough 
 to do to clear themselves of the reproach thus levelled 
 against them. The boast that Eeligion is the synonym 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 283 
 
 of Socialism, if Socialism means replacing the interest of 
 the individual by the interest of society as the goal of all 
 our action, stands in dire need of such illustration as it 
 may receive from the part which all Christian com- 
 munities are now rousing themselves to take in social 
 movements. 
 
 And, on the other side, I do not hesitate to add that 
 Socialism will become religious or will cease to be. I 
 mean, that to achieve enduring results it will have to 
 borrow from Eeligion its best elements of altruism and 
 abnegation, together with the idea of a superhuman 
 Power making for the material and moral progress of 
 humanity. 
 
 Pure science can but establish the presence of a force 
 tending to develop life upon the earth. It is dumb when 
 we ask if this progressive life is destined to culminate in 
 an increase of the welfare of individuals. Nay, its great 
 law of the struggle for existence seems rather to dis- 
 courage the hope of general well-beiDg and universal 
 harmony which is the key-stone of the Socialist ideal. 
 
 Doubtless one may conceive a society of the higher 
 peoples in the bosom of the human race withdrawing 
 themselves from the general conflict, or rather uniting to 
 wage that conflict with the rest of nature, and by 
 means of a wise direction of social forces, combined with 
 the systematic limitation of the number of births 
 banishing from their midst the scourges of war and 
 penury. But, in the first place, to realize this Utopia, 
 which is not without its grandeur, what lever have the 
 State-Socialists to reckon on ? Surely not the harmony 
 of individual interests, for they proclaim the impotence 
 
284 VT. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 of individualism and call on us to renounce it. Is it the 
 
 sense of duty ? But, to say nothing of their depriving 
 
 that sentiment of its religious basis, they have generally 
 
 adopted materialistic explanations of the universe, which 
 
 logically tend to undermine the foundations of moral 
 
 obligation and therefore the very conception of duty, by 
 
 destroying the idea of human liberty and responsibility. 
 
 The need of I do not deny that it is reason which 
 
 a prehensive" reveals, and which alone can reveal, the dif- 
 
 'indMdual 1 ferent kinds f dut y resultin g froni men>s 
 
 interest, necessary relations with each other ; but even 
 should science succeed in showing that the true good of 
 the individual invariably coincides with the requirements 
 of the general good, it will still have to find the means 
 of enforcing respect for this principle upon those who 
 continue to think otherwise, or who deliberately prefer 
 immediate satisfaction, or who are seduced by the over- 
 mastering force of human passions. 
 
 The need of appealing to some stronger control than 
 that of mere instincts or longings is so evident, that 
 the founder of the Positivist school had recourse to 
 the love of humanity to suppress the revolt of individual 
 interest; but this amounts to an indirect return to the 
 religious idea, which in Comte's system takes Humanity 
 instead of Deity for its object. And, as Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer has well remarked, "to suppose that this rela- 
 tively evanescent form of existence ought to occupy 
 our minds so exclusively as to leave no space for a 
 consciousness of that Ultimate Existence of which it 
 is but one form out of multitudes an Ultimate Exist- 
 ence which was manifested in infinitely varied ways 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 285 
 
 before humanity arose, and will be manifested in infi- 
 nitely varied other ways when humanity has ceased to 
 be, seems very strange to me, indeed, amazing." 1 
 
 The love of humanity can doubtless inspire noble and 
 fruitful devotion ; but does it not lose its rational basis 
 when it rests solely upon certain specific resemblances 
 of human beings one to another ? And does it not 
 wantonly fling away its most powerful means of action, 
 when it assigns the reign of justice and of general hap- 
 piness as the goal of human effort, but at the same time 
 refuses to enwrap this noble purpose in the larger desire 
 to co-operate with the Power that rules the universe? 
 Thus Comtism has succeeded in gathering a few select 
 groups, and earning the sympathy of all generous 
 minds ; but its religious influence, in the sense which it 
 attaches to the term, does not exist as far as the masses 
 are concerned. 
 
 Growth of Again, it is a mere illusion to suppose that 
 pessimism. ^ g enera i S p rea d of a certain degree of 
 comfort, or even the suppression of all social inequali- 
 ties would be enough to satisfy the legitimate aspirations 
 of humanity. However fully you secure to man the 
 necessaries and even the enjoyments of life, his cup 
 will always be embittered, if only by the disease that 
 lies in wait for him at every turn, by the death that 
 prematurely snatches from him those he loves, by the 
 old age which throws an ever- darkening shadow over 
 his path, not to speak of the eternal longing which 
 
 1 In the controversy with Mr. F. Harrison, re-published as Tlie Nature 
 and Reality of Religion, New York, 1885, p. 95 ; cf." Study of Sociology, 
 p. 312. 
 
286 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 ever develops his wants in advance of his means of 
 satisfying them, and constitutes at once the grandeur 
 and the misery of human nature. And suppose we 
 treated this infinite susceptibility to further desires as 
 a disease, and succeeded in killing the germs of it in 
 our hearts, would not this contracting of our per- 
 sonality result in diminished powers of reaction against 
 the fatalities of nature, in loss of the chief joys of life, 
 and ultimately in a full career of pessimistic reaction ? 
 
 If pessimism dominates Eastern society, it is not 
 because the lot of man is intolerable there -for it is only 
 in comparison with our own that it appears to be so; 
 it is because centuries of political despotism and moral 
 relaxation have robbed the Orientals of elasticity of will. 
 If the same disease has begun to attack our Western 
 society in the full swing of wealth and knowledge, it is 
 in large measure because the significance of the individual 
 has been disputed and belittled by the prevalence of a 
 philosophy that denies to man the very possibility of 
 aiming at freedom. 
 
 What are we to expect, then, if this purely mechanical 
 conception of the universe should serve as a type for 
 the whole organization of social life after the communist 
 or collectivist ideals ? In that case, pessimism will no 
 longer confine its attacks to the delicate and super-refined 
 spirits whom want of any higher interest has disgusted 
 with life; but it will invade the masses. The spirit of com- 
 petition and personal initiative, that scapegoat on whose 
 head all our social and economic sins are laid, will be 
 found to have carried with it into the desert all the stimu- 
 lating motives which give variety and worth to existence. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP.- 287 
 
 And remember that we are not speaking of an exalted 
 and generous pessimism like that of the Stoics, which 
 could at least take refuge in the impenetrable fortress of 
 the human soul, nor yet of a tender and expansive pessi- 
 mism like that of the Buddha, which after leading through 
 enlightenment to renunciation leads back through love 
 to action, but of a selfish and apathetic pessimism, on 
 which no light of hope will break and which no rays 
 of self-abnegation will warm. And this will continue 
 until some Boddhisattva shall come again to teach men 
 that nought save all-embracing love can enable us to 
 escape the fetters of personality, and that the true 
 path of self-annihilation is the path of self-devotion ; or 
 perhaps until a Jesus shall come, once more to reveal to 
 suffering humanity the forgotten truth that there is a 
 Father in heaven who cares for the moral amelioration 
 of the world, and that the best way of serving Him is 
 the way of brotherly love. Then will the new dawn be 
 followed by a new day. 
 
 Danger of a Turning our attention to another quarter, 
 Lon * we may ask whether we are so sure of the 
 future as to be free of all apprehension of a return of 
 supernaturalism, perhaps under the forms most opposed 
 to the present drift of men's minds. It is impossible to 
 deny that a mystic reaction has already set in throughout 
 the West. Who knows where it will stop, should it 
 find sustenance in a desperate rally of conservative inte- 
 rests, or in the decisive bankruptcy of revolutionary 
 theories ? It is easy to foresee that the classes in posses- 
 sion, taken as a whole, will always prefer superstition to 
 spoliation ; and as for the masses, who reckon on their 
 
288 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 full access to power for removing all inequalities from 
 the earth, is there not room to fear that on the inevitable 
 day which brings home to them the impotence of the 
 State to realize their ideals, they will fling themselves 
 into the arms of the first religion that can offer them 
 the mirage of some new millennium ? Such a moyement 
 might well become irresistible should it happen to coin- 
 cide with one of those periods of stagnation or even of 
 retarded progress which occur from time to time in the 
 development or co-ordination of scientific discovery. 
 
 Yet more. There is solidarity between all the branches 
 of freedom. Every attempt to enslave man on the eco- 
 nomic field must sooner or later re-act upon the realms 
 of thought. In this connection we cannot too gravely 
 consider the warning addressed to the evolutionary spirit 
 by the great formulator of evolutionism himself, when, 
 in spite of his optimistic tendencies, he thus concludes 
 his synthesis of the religious development : "If, instead 
 of further progress under that system of voluntary 
 co-operation which constitutes industrialism properly so 
 called, there should be carried far the system of pro- 
 duction and distribution under State-control, constituting 
 a new form of compulsory co-operation, and ending in 
 a new type of coercive government, the changes above 
 indicated, determined as they are by individuality of 
 character, will probably be arrested and opposite changes 
 initiated.' 71 
 
 Brighter Doubtless you will think I have painted a 
 P tiKta r dark Future; but when one tries to fathom 
 of religion. ^ ne f u ture, one must take account of the 
 1 Herbert Spencer, Ecclesiastical Institutions, 654 (p. 824). 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 289 
 
 extremest possibilities ; and, even in the face of all that 
 can be urged, those who believe with me that the freedom 
 of man is destined to pass unscathed through the present 
 crisis, will still have a right to expect that the religious 
 evolution will, after all, pursue its way on the great lines 
 that I have sketched in these Lectures, gradually puri- 
 fying the main factors of religion, and making for the 
 establishment of a universal cultus at once rational and 
 fruitful. 
 
 It has been asked whether the " eternal and infinite 
 Energy" of evolutionism can succeed any better than 
 the inaccessible God of Neo-platonism or the impersonal 
 Brahma of the Yedantic schools, in inspiring man with 
 emotions and aspirations that can crystallize round the 
 religious sentiment and express themselves in worship. 1 
 Note that this Energy so called for want of a better 
 name, and not to be confounded with Force, as revealed 
 to us in our own conception of physical effort 2 presents 
 itself to our minds, not only as the supreme Eeality 
 but also as a Power superior to all known forces, and at 
 the same time essentially mysterious in its being. Now 
 the idea of power, combined with that of mystery, is the 
 essential basis and invariable characteristic of the Object 
 of the religious sentiment. But I have also shown that 
 another factor must enter into worship, namely, the 
 possibility of coming into relations with this mysterious 
 
 1 Compare the trenchant but often unfair criticism which Mr. 
 Frederick Harrison has brought to bear upon the religion of the 
 Unknowable in his controversy with Mr. Herbert Spencer in The 
 Nature and Reality of Religion: a Controversy between Frederick 
 Harrison and Herbert Spencer, New York, 1885, p. 49. 
 
 2 Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 18 and 50. 
 
 U 
 
290 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 Power. Now in the face of an Energy, anonymous, 
 deaf, blind, dumb, inexorable as the ancient Fate, man 
 may well experience a kind of sacred horror nay, a 
 fascination under which his brain whirls without such 
 feelings in any degree influencing his conduct in the 
 face of the unknown Power which inspires it. At the 
 most, one could but exclaim with Littre' : " Infinity, 
 alike material and intellectual .... is revealed to us 
 under its two-fold aspect of reality and inaccessibility. 
 It is an ocean which beats upon our shores, for which 
 we have neither barque nor sail, but the clear vision of 
 which is as salutary as it is awe-inspiring." 1 
 
 Even Mr. Spencer's remark that the supreme Reality 
 may be endowed with modes of existence as superior 
 to intelligence and will as the latter are to mechanical 
 movement, cannot save the divine manifestations from 
 sterility, as far as the actions of man are concerned, if 
 he, man, feels incapable of representing them under any 
 form drawn from his own concepts. 
 
 But it is no longer so when, without attempting 
 further to define this incomprehensible Power, we assign 
 to it the function of securing the order of the universe. 
 The great problem on the solution of which the direction 
 of the religious movement of the future depends, is not 
 why the Absolute realizes itself under the limitations of 
 time and space. This question appeals to our metaphysical 
 curiosity alone, and its insolubility presents no obstacle 
 to the development of the religious sentiment. What 
 in truth affects, and even rends, our labouring thought, 
 
 1 Auguste Comte et la pliilosophie positive, third edition, Paris, 1877, 
 p. 505. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 291 
 
 is the question, perfectly formulated by Mr. Graham, 
 " whether Chance or Purpose governs the world." 1 On 
 the answer to this question it depends whether there is 
 such a thing as duty, and even whether life is worth 
 living. 
 
 Conclusion ^ ne ^ our rea ^ es ^ na tural philosophers 
 The concep- declared, speaking, on a memorable occasion, 
 
 tionofGod i ,1 ^-ri L- i i 
 
 in the of material atheism : " I have noticed during 
 years of self-observation that it is not in 
 hours of clearness and vigour that this doctrine com- 
 mends itself to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger 
 and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, 
 as offering no solution of the mystery in which we dwell, 
 and of which we form a part." 2 
 
 Atheism, properly so called, has always been to me 
 what you, in England, call unthinkable ; for my mind is 
 incapable of conceiving of the transient and the finite 
 without an underlying Absolute, the direct source of all 
 phenomena and their laws. In moments of philosophical 
 depression which I have not escaped any more than the 
 majority of my generation what I have asked myself 
 has not been whether there is a God in whom we live 
 and move and have our being ; it has been whether that 
 mysterious Power has any purpose, and specifically any 
 beneficent purpose, in the universe. But I too have felt 
 these doubts disappear as my thought became " stronger 
 and healthier," and as I have contemplated the whole 
 
 1 The Greed of Science, Religious, Moral, and Social, second edition, 
 London, 1884, p. 49. 
 
 2 J. Tyndall, Address delivered before the British Association assem- 
 bled at Belfast, with Additions, London, 1874, p. viii. 
 
292 VI. THE FUTUKE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 moral and religious evolution of humanity, continuing 
 and crowning the organic evolution of the universe, or 
 at least that part of it which comes within the field of 
 our observation. At bottom, pessimism can only esta- 
 blish itself in the minds of those who think that pleasure 
 is the goal of life, or which comes to the same that 
 life has no goal at all. It disappears when one thinks 
 that the highest aim of man consists in taking a share 
 in the work by which God himself is perfecting the 
 universe. 
 
 This brings us back to the religious theory which 
 we have seen to reach its fullest utterance amongst the 
 Jews and the Persians, but which has really never been 
 absent from any religion which identified the moral with 
 the divine order. God is, but his work is being done. 
 And here on earth it is done above all by humanity, 
 which alone is conscious of it, and conscious therefore of 
 an alliance with the divine Power in the struggle for 
 good. Who shall deny that this community of aspiration 
 and effort may give birth in man even though he have 
 no assurance of literal reciprocity to the feelings of grati- 
 tude and affection which the Comtists even claim for their 
 collective humanity ? Who shall deny that it may give 
 rise to that unalterable faith in the final result of the 
 alliance between man and the Divinity which inspired 
 the ancient prophets when, in the midst of perils and 
 disasters, they preached, and in preaching prepared for, 
 the great day of Yahveh, the triumph of justice and 
 brotherhood in the world ? 
 
 Such an eschatology, however, necessarily involves 
 freedom of the imagination to expatiate in the future, in 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 293 
 
 this world or another. If, as Mr. Spencer says, every 
 evolution after culminating in a perfect equilibrium, must 
 be followed by a corresponding dissolution ; or, in other 
 terms, if the ameliorations progressively and laboriously 
 acquired by humanity must on some fatal day melt in a 
 cataclysm in which humanity itself will perish together 
 with all known beings ; if, in a word, the history of the 
 universe is, as the Eleatic and Stoic philosophers and 
 the Brahmans have alike believed, no more than a per- 
 petual re-beginning, then man will ask himself whether, 
 in truth, it is worth while to devote oneself to mere 
 ephemeral conquests, and whether the Power that makes 
 for righteousness is not working like a squirrel in a 
 cage-wheel, capable of amusing an idle spectator, but 
 incapable of rousing those feelings on which religion 
 lives. For a man to believe in the ideal and devote 
 himself to it, the future must be assured, either in the 
 expectation of another world in which the injustice of 
 the terrestrial life may be righted, or in the indefinite 
 progress of humanity towards a perfection which, if never 
 absolutely realized, may be indefinitely approached. Hap- 
 pily, astronomers and physicists agree in declaring that 
 the destruction of our planetary system is a hypothesis 
 based on premature assertions ; that our risks of dissolu- 
 tion, even supposing them to be established, may always 
 be indefinitely adjourned by forces acting in a contrary 
 sense ; and, finally, that there is nothing to exclude the 
 future possibility of communication between the worlds. 1 
 
 1 M. Guyau, Uirrcliglon de Vavenir, pp. 441 sq. "Perhaps some 
 day, when full self-consciousness has been reached, it will produce a 
 corresponding power adequate to arrest the march of dissolution at 
 
294 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 It is true that science can neither answer our ques- 
 tions as to personal immortality, 1 nor demonstrate mathe- 
 matically that the world advances towards a goal. At the 
 very most, it can but raise a presumption, and conclude, 
 with John Stuart Mill, that " there is a large balance of 
 probability in favour of creation by intelligence." 2 To 
 transform that probability into certainty will perhaps 
 always need an act of faith, but at any rate it will be an 
 act of rational faith, that is to say, of faith which cannot 
 be contradicted by reason and which is postulated by the 
 demands of moral obligation graven on our consciences, 
 just as the belief in the universality of law and even in 
 the conservation of energy are acts of faith postulated by 
 the demands of the logical consistency graven on our 
 minds. For us, as for the rishis of India, the scribes 
 of Thebes, and the philosophers of Greece, this is the 
 supreme conclusion by which religion completes science, 
 and in this sense we may repeat with that great American 
 
 the point it may then have reached. Beings capable of distinguishing, 
 in the infinite complication of cosmic movements, those which favour 
 their evolution fr.om those which tend to destroy it, would perhaps be 
 capable of resisting the latter, and thus securing the definitive triumph 
 of the more desired combinations." 
 
 1 "At first sight it might appear that the doctrine [of evolution], 
 as applied to the subjective world, by removing the broad distinction 
 between the human and the animal mind, would discourage the hope 
 of a future life for man's soul. Yet it may be found, after all, that it 
 leaves the question very much where it was. It may perhaps be said 
 that it favours the old disposition to attribute immortality to those 
 lower forms of mind with which the human mind is found to be con- 
 tinuous." James Sully, in his article on "Evolution," prepared, with 
 Prof. Huxley's assistance, for fas Encydopcbdia Brit annica^ ninth edition, 
 vol. viii. p. 772 b. 
 
 2 Three Essays on Religion, London, 1834, p. 174. 
 
VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 295 
 
 thinker, rationalist and mystic in one, Balph Waldo 
 Emerson, " The whole course of things goes to teach us 
 faith ! "We need only obey." 1 
 
 Doubtless the world may still witness many philosophi- 
 cal revolutions and reactions. If we may read the future 
 in the past, religions may yet follow and replace each 
 other ; forms of worship may rise as different from ours 
 as the synagogue was from the temple, or the churches 
 of the early Christians from the pagan sanctuaries. Attri- 
 butes which many of us regard as essential to the Deity 
 may be cancelled by the theological system which shall 
 gain the ascendant. We or our children may have to 
 relinquish many a cherished conception of the action of 
 God and the destiny of man. Nay, " God" may die, as 
 his known and unknown predecessors the Baalim and 
 the Teotl, Assur and Ammon, Odin and Jupiter, have 
 died; as his contemporaries of to-day, the Brahm of 
 Hindustan, the Allah of Islam, Ormuzd " the Lord 
 Omniscient," Thian " the Celestial Emperor," and even 
 Yahveh " the Holy One of Israel," shall one day die ; 
 but what cannot die is the conception, enshrined in these 
 names, of a mysterious and superhuman Power, realizing 
 himself in all the laws of the known universe, revealing 
 himself to man in the voice of conscience and the spec- 
 tacle of the world. 
 
 Here we have the truth implicitly contained in that 
 three-fold illusion out of which, as we have seen, reli- 
 gion sprang the erroneous extension of the idea of 
 personality, the confusion between concomitance and 
 
 1 Spiritual Laws, in his Works, two vols., London, 1882, vol. i. 
 p. 59. 
 
296 VI. THE FUTURE OF WORSHIP. 
 
 causality, and the failure to distinguish between dreams 
 and reality. Here we have the truth which will remain 
 when it has freed the conception of the Deity from 
 all the confusions which originally covered it, and 
 the parasitical accretions which have since laid hold 
 of it, when it has stripped off, as so many borrowed 
 plumes, anthropomorphic attributes and moral limita- 
 tions, and has set forth the existence of deity as Unity 
 and the action of deity as Harmony. Here, then, we 
 stand at last before the impenetrable veil which will 
 ever separate the Deity, in its grandeur and its majesty, 
 from our eyes, but which does not cut off either the 
 manifestations of its power or the revelations of its law, 
 or, may be, even the mysterious radiation of an attractive 
 force answering to our terms of sympathy and love. 
 
 Printed by C. Green & Son, 178, Strand. 
 
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