BL 430 ,H66 1923 Hopkins, Edward Washburn, 1857-1932. Origin and evolution of religion Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/originevolutionoOOhopk I ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Religions of India India Old and New The Great Epic of India Epic Mythology The History of Religions ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 1/ BY E. WASHBURN HOPKINS, PH.D, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY YALE UNIVERSITY NEW HAVEN YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXXIII COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Theories of Religious Origins . • • PAGE 1 II. The Worship of Stones, Hills, Trees, and Plants . . . . 13 III. The Worship of Animals 32 IV. The Worship of Elements and Heavenly Phenomena 47 V. The Worship of the Sun . 58 VI. The Worship of Man 67 VII. The Worship of Ancestors 73 VIII. Religious Stimuli . 88 IX. The Soul . 109 X. The Self as Soul 136 XI. Sacrifice . 151 XII. The Ritual . 180 XIII. The Priest and the Church 204 XIV. Religion and Mythology . 226 XV. Religion and Ethics 245 XVI. Religion and Philosophy 274 XVII. The Triad . . . . 291 XVIII. The Hindu Trinity 302 XIX. The Buddhistic Trinity . 318 XX. The Christian Trinity 335 XXI. The Reality of Religion . 350 Index . • 361 CHAPTER I THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS ORIGINS Every religion is a product of human evolution and has been conditioned by social environment. Since man has developed from a state even lower than savagery and was once intellectually a mere animal, it is reasonable to attribute to him in that state no more religious conscious¬ ness than is possessed by an animal. What then, the his¬ torian must ask, are the factors and what the means whereby humanity has encased itself in this shell of reli¬ gion, which almost everywhere has been raised as a pro¬ tective growth about the social body? The simplest answer to this question has been that man is not a mere animal but differs from the beast in having an immortal soul and a religious instinct. The argument is as follows: Assuming that there are no races which can be shown to be utterly devoid of religion, this element of human thought, because it is universal, we must consider as essential; hence, being essential, belief in a soul and in spiritual life is part of human nature; based on this natural conviction religion is the product of man’s religious instinct. But the historian may assume neither the universality of religion (for there are human groups which make this an assumption of doubtful validity) nor the existence of a soul, because even the “religious instinct” does not require this assumption. Therefore the instinct itself cannot be assumed. Nor is such an instinct probable. Children have no religious ideas or impressions. Per¬ sonally, the investigator may or may not believe in God, ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 2 soul, and a future life; but bis task is merely to show how belief in these and other components of religion arose and he can do this only by arranging in orderly progression all available data. It is inevitable, however, that this study embrace man in the past as well as in the present and the psychological processes of prehistorical man cannot be known. Thus, heavily handicapped, the historian is liable to fall into one of two errors, either assuming that primordial man was the counterpart of what is now called primitive or arguing that, as man was at first pre-logical, he was then quite outside of our present comprehension. Moreover, even what is usually called primitive is often clearly un- primitive. For example, the Redskin (Amerind) as com¬ pared with the Negro or Australian is far from being a primitive savage. Then there is sometimes the question whether an apparently primitive group has not relapsed from a higher state. Nevertheless, a modicum of safety lies in the recogni¬ tion of danger and the historian is generally justified in treating low forms of religion like low forms of art as comparatively primitive and in arguing that the lowest forms of religion as found among savages today prob- • ably reflect the forms of religion known to such savages as existed in remote antiquity. Theories to account for the origin and explain the growth of religion are numerous. Orthodoxy maintained in ancient India that there was one inspired religion and all other religions were decadent forms of it, while in the sixth century B. C. heterodox Hindus said that all religions were invented by the priests for their own profit. The same theories sprang up independently cen¬ turies later in Europe. It is sufficient to say of these and similar theories that they were crude but probably honest guesses based on inadequate information. In the imme- THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS ORIGINS 3 diate past sundry theories have arisen based on a wider survey and deeper knowledge. They alone demand atten¬ tion at present, since they are founded on an immense number of careful observations and are upheld by dif¬ ferent schools of capable investigators. Thnjirst, which is still held by many sociologists, is that connected with the names of Sir Edward Tylor and Herbert Spencer. It is usually called animism and is based on these facts and inductions. The savage believes that what is active is alive and that, being alive, an object, animal or material, has within it the same sort of spirit which man recognizes in himself. Hence he peoples the world with spirit-inhabited objects. He thinks also that, when he dreams, his spirit is abroad performing the acts which he imagines himself as doing in his dreams. Hence he acquires the notion of a spirit independent of the body and attributes to other men, animals, and ob¬ jects a spirit and spiritual powers similar to his own. Again, as he sees in dreams a dead man apparently still active, he infers that the spirit of the dead still lives and that he himself when dead will still live, as will his ani¬ mals and weapons. Because still living spirits may be malicious, the savage placates these potential foes; hence offerings to ghosts. Ghostly spirits are gradually en¬ dowed with more superhuman power and are then revered as gods. The chief objections to this theory are, first, that the most primitive savage does not possess so clear an idea of spirit in distinction from body as is here implied; sec¬ ond, that the argument does not account in a satisfactory manner for undoubted cases of direct worship of natural phenomena; third, that if the theory were true, one would expect to find a universal cult of ghosts, which is by no means the case. The second theory, called naturalism, with which is - 4 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION generally connected the name of Max Muller, but which is widely held by other German scholars—it might almost be called the German theory as contrasted with English animism—is based on the tendency of savages to fear and revere objects of nature that seem to them powerful, such as a waterfall or thunderstorm or majestic tree, to all of which they attribute life and anthropopathic na¬ ture. In like manner they revere venerable human phe¬ nomena, kings and wizards, and they people the sky with imagined kings and wizards as gods of natural phenom¬ ena, with underlings, as on earth. Man instinctively re¬ gards the sun as a great personage and the moon and stars as mother and children, or as shepherd and sheep. Man personifies all objects of nature and reveres what is awesome. The chief objections to this theory are that it assumes in the savage a too pronounced tendency toward per¬ sonification and that it ignores animism altogether or holds that a belief in spirits is secondary and negligible; man’s attitude toward natural phenomena is made the base of all religion. Owing to instances cited by Muller of misunderstanding of myths by later generations, lead¬ ing to perverted religious views, this has been described as the theory holding that religion arises from a disease of language; but this is incorrect, since the question of language is not vital to the theory. A theory that “religion is the child of magic” has been developed by Sir J. G. Frazer, whose formula is ex¬ plained on the supposition that man first tries to control nature by magical means and finding this impossible re¬ sorts to entreaty, which is the hall-mark of religion as distinguished from magic. But this is no explanation of the principles of religion, since magic itself is largely re¬ ligious. In fact, there is a good deal to be said for the objection urged by Durkheim, to the effect that magic is THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS ORIGINS 5 the child of religion rather than that religion is the child of magic. Durkheim’s own theory, which is in general the French theory, has no formal designation but may be called col¬ lectivism, though illnsionism would be a fitting name for it. It assumes totemism as the earliest form of religion, holds incidentally that the totem-name comes from some convenient animal living near by, and builds up all reli¬ gions data on the distinction between the tabooed, or sacra, and the common. The collective representation of a human group in regard to taboo things is religions be¬ lief, and this belief as to the sacred power or totemic force acts as a moral power. The totem is the symbol of the group as well as of the totemic force, a power which becomes the god of the community. Since it is at once the symbol of the society and of the god, the god and the society must be one and the same. The god is in fact the clan personified. As all religions, having a totemic origin, pass through the same phases, it follows that God and society are identical. All religions rites are social in origin and exhibit rules of conduct as to sacred things. Collective representation in regard to a mass of sacred things leads to the supposed existence of a world of sacred things and of extraordinary powers. Since col¬ lective representation is produced in the main by social excitement it follows that religion is born of mental effer¬ vescence. It is, accordingly, merely an idea or illu¬ sion, but as its effects are real it may be said to have reality. This theory has been set forth with such a wealth of detail and such enthusiasm that it has already won many converts, and even upon those not converted it has made a profound impression. One weighty objection to it is that it assumes totemism as the historical base of all forms of religion; without the totemic power and symbol there 6 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION would be no starting-point for the collective representa¬ tion of society as a spiritual power. But the fundamental objection which will eventually overthrow this theory is that it ignores or minimizes beyond reason the individual in favor of the group. What is true of ritual and even of ethics as being in general a group-product is here transferred to primitive thought and emotion. Now it is perfectly true that environment in great measure determines religious values that affect the group as a whole and, inclusively, the individual. The cow is holy in India and the Todas have a cult of the buffalo; both animals are of prime importance as a source of food. The food-supply of the Australians comes in large part from animals which the natives hunt and whose prototypes they imagine to be their own ancestors. Most of the religious or magical activities of an Australian clan are connected with the conservation and propaga¬ tion of these animals. But, as has been remarked by Pro¬ fessor King, in Africa, where food is at hand without effort, hunting has no religious significance. Environ¬ ment thus conditions the concerted social activity of a clan and any magical or religious system is primarily the product of its economic and social life. In so far, it is quite correct to say that society (the human group) conditions religion and it is a facile task to point out, for example, that the great religious functions of the He¬ brews, state feasts and celebrations, still express an an¬ cient economic status. Without the first-fruits and har¬ vests there would have been no such expression; a reli¬ gious feast still celebrates the ancient vintage. Yet between religion as a system, conditioned by social economics, and a subjective religious state of mind there is a distinction, which this theory does not ignore but com¬ bats by assuming that a man’s mind is wholly the product of his social environment. But while it can be shown that ‘THEORIES of RELIGIOUS ORIGINS 7 a state-religion is bnt one aspect of economic life, it by no means follows that the individual’s religions thought and feeling are merely the reflex of gronp-mentality. It is of course true that any one in dividual’s state of mind is more or less the product of his whole being as condi¬ tioned by intercourse with others. What the group seeks the individual seeks; its aim is his; its likes and dislikes are his. Otherwise he soon drops out of the group, per¬ force. 1 Uniformity is the bond of the group and the in¬ dividual mind reflects the mind of the group. Yet no group-coercion can utterly stifle the individual, nor is religions emotion on the part of the individual wholly dependent on the group, any more than the savage’s fear of a power suddenly apprehended is a product of group- influence. Neither social nor economic conditions deter¬ mine the savage’s attitude, and the proof of this lies in the fact that his attitude, expressing fear or hope, is uni¬ versally found in savage life, whatever be the economic or social surroundings. Deprecation, a rudimentary reli¬ gious attitude, is common to most savages in the pres¬ ence of an awesome object or event. Hence, while it must be admitted that religious ideas in general reflect a man’s habitat and group, it is a serious error to imagine that the habitat or group in which he is born produces his religious state of mind. The French theory does not hesitate to insist that man does not think at all as an individual; there is no such thing as an.in-^ dividual mentality and consequently all religious thought is social. But it is pure assumption that the mind of the group is so overwhelmingly coercive that the individual mind is entirely subservient to it. All that can be affirmed is that the social atmosphere affects the religious con- 1 This is true of animals as "well as of men; any disparity or dissimilarity../ in the individual causes it to be rejected by the group, through a^. in¬ stinctive objection to whatever is opposed to its solidarity. 8 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION sciousness. French scholars working more or less with Durkheim and largely inspired by him maintain that “all religious consciousness is a product of social atmos¬ phere.” They regard the individual as a single cell inca¬ pable of thought except as part of the collective con¬ sciousness. The group thinks only as a whole, as the mob wills as a whole. Mob-mentality is as powerful as mob- emotion. The individual not only has no ideas of his own, he is incapable of originating any ideas. 2 A different line of approach to the conclusion that 11 re¬ ligion is a product of social intercourse” is found by some writers who underestimate religious data as not really religious. Thus it is argued that, when a savage makes obeisance to a dangerous object, this is not in re¬ ality a religious act but only ‘ ‘ a first step, as a mediating principle, to religion,” the step we make “when we treat a live wire with caution.” Not a happy illustration, be¬ cause we do not think of placating the wire. Similarly, although it is admitted that the Hurons sacrificed tobacco or fat “as a mark of respect to some deity or deities,” these acts are said to be not religious and “hardly above the level of mere practical expedients.’ ,3 But if the act of sacrificing to a deity be not a religious act, what is it? To make such a sacrifice is to assume that the object or power to whom sacrifice is made has volition to help or to harm and may be placated. Surely this is the same atti¬ tude as is taken by most worshippers in bodies usually called religious. Yet, although the influence of collective suggestion has been exaggerated in Durkheim’s theory and the distinc¬ tion between religion and the “first step” toward reli¬ gion is imperceptible, it remains a pregnant fact that 2 For a criticism of this theory, see Clement C. J. Webb, Group Theories of Religion and the Individual , London, 1916. 3 Irving King, The Development of Religion, N. Y., 1910, pp. 65, 81, 82. THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS ORIGINS 9 religion is an organic part of social activity. The idea that the religions consciousness is born of social excite¬ ment and intoxication, in which for the first time man conceives of himself as unhuman and of a world different from the normal (for this is the gist of Durkheim’s the¬ ory) is not substantiated by the facts, nor is it altogether novel, for it was preceded by the extraordinary theory of Gruppe that religion began when some Syrian first got drunk and being intoxicated imagined himself divine; and, too, the influence of the group has long been recog¬ nized ; but it is still well to remember that a great part of what is called religion is strictly social. How do laws ac¬ quire religious value and validity, as for example in In¬ dia, where the code is regarded as inspired! Because all law is originally custom, the modus vivendi adopted by the group, and this again harks back to greater antiquity, which receives religious color from the authority of precedent in that it is imagined a sin to transgress the customs of the fathers, who remain in memory as mem¬ bers of the group still having authority. In matters lack¬ ing that authority, sin is what at the present time offends the tribal consciousness of unity. The earliest law-givers in India proclaimed that such and such acts w3re sinful because they violated ancient custom. Thus they distin¬ guished as “sinful in the north” certain acts which were “not sinful in the south” and promised eternal felicity to those who did not commit the (local) sins enumerated. Not content with this, however, whenever possible they drew upon the example of the gods, as known by report, to enforce their decrees, yet always in the form “so did the gods of old,” laying quite as much stress upon the authority of antiquity as upon divine precedent, as may be seen from the circumstance that it was a matter of in¬ difference whether the formula ran “for so did the gods of old” or “for so did the sages of old.” The religious 10 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION motive was in both cases identical; sin was contravention Sof well established custom. So religious and govern¬ mental functions were at first undifferentiated, and even in the civilized nations of antiquity as well as among savages today kingship and religious leadership tend to coincide. It is for this reason that in primitive societies morality and law make one whole and that this whole is religious. Thus one can speak only of religious mo¬ rality and religious law or of the complex, religious moral law. So rites and ceremonies, originally social or eco¬ nomic or both, become religious, and the individual shar¬ ing therein may be described as socially religious. Such a pastime as dancing, such an economic ceremony as the theatrical propagation of crops by masked dancers, are originally social functions which acquire religious value. This common custom of masking oneself as an animal leads to the consideration of the question whether such primitive mysticism implies in the actor a different sort of mentality from that of civilized man. It has been ar¬ gued by the French scholars already referred to that primitive man was actually so different from us that he is today incomprehensible. He had a “pre-logical” mind, which appears to mean that he was a mystic. He believed, for example, that he was both a man and an animal, and that he could injure an enemy by injuring an image or knowing and misusing the enemy’s name. But the argu¬ ment as to being at the same time a man and a wolf pre¬ supposes that the savage has a clear conception of man as distinct from wolf; otherwise it would not be illogical to believe that a man might be a wolf. So the Hindu priest at the sacrifice becomes unhuman and then formally “be¬ comes a man again” at its conclusion. So, too, piercing an image to make the enemy suffer or operating with a name as if it affected the owner of the name are not illogical acts when one believes that image and name are THEORIES OF RELIGIOUS ORIGINS 11 parts of personality. These and many other instances cited to prove pre-logical mentality in savages are fonnd also among peoples to whom it would he impossible to deny logical mentality. All that one can say is that the savage takes for granted what has not been proved. But he seeks neither to prove nor disprove; his act logically follows on what he believes. Savages as we know them are by no means illogical. There is therefore no force to the conclusion drawn in this theory that pre-logical col¬ lective representation must be irrational and hence all religion, being based thereon, is illusory. All mysticism today is regarded in this theory as inherited from the pre- logical state. Yet Durkheim grants religion a certain re¬ ality on the ground that no human institution based on error could endure, though what endures is actually noth¬ ing more than the expression of social activities. That is to say, collective representations are not fundamentally false, though based on pre-logical mentality, because they express something that existed, namely, the activity and reality of the group, which reality we call religions. 4 What is really fonnd in the lowest mental states is not lack of logic bnt inability to distinguish between mind and matter. To early man all substance is the same, neither material nor immaterial. The most primitive savages do not regard the two as separate. All matter is sentient and has mentality; all spirits are analogous to the minds of men, that is, encased in body, or rather indissolubly one with the material in which they appear. It is not a distinct spirit in a thing which such savages recognize but, so to speak, a spiritized thing, an object imbued with power. 4 Incidentally, Durkheim derives ideas of cause, substance, time, and space also from collective representation originally social and religious and hence illusory. But classification, here represented as beginning by reason of the group, already exists in the very recognition of the group. See Webb, op. cit., pp. 71 f. 12 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION The object does not possess a power as something dis¬ tinct from the body but is itself powerful. Each object has a different power, but there is to the savage no one universal power of which the single object expresses a part. Of this false interpretation of mana as a world- power it will be necessary to speak later. At present it is important to understand that the belief in an undif¬ ferentiated whole precedes the belief in spirit as some¬ thing distinct from body. A study of the objects of wor¬ ship will help to make this clear. CHAPTER II THE WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, TREES, AND PLANTS Man lias worshipped everything on earth, including himself, stones, hills, flowers, trees, streams, wells, ocean, and animals. He has worshipped everything he could think of beneath the earth, metals, caves, serpents, and under-world ghosts. Finally, he has worshipped every¬ thing between earth and heaven and everything in the heavens above, mist, wind, cloud, rainbow, stars, moon, sun, the sky itself, though only in part has he worshipped the spirits of all these objects. Yet with all this bewilder¬ ing jumble to his discredit, man to his credit has never really worshipped anything save what he imagined be¬ hind these phenomena, the thing he sought and feared, power. Categories, such as those of Saussaye, who divides re¬ ligious objects of worship into heavenly and earthly, or those of Max Muller, whose divisions are objects “seiz- able, half-seizable, and non-seizable,” as illustrated by a stone, a hill, and a star, are not useful and may be worse than useless in suggesting a false chronological series, for some of the lowest savages worship stars and half-civilized men today worship stones. There is no as¬ cending scale followed by all men. But for convenience we shall have to examine these objects in order and we may as well begin with the worship of stones and hills, things apparently most lifeless. Erudite titles for the divisions here following would be litholatry, orolatry, dendrolatry, astrolatry, theriolatry, pyrolatry, nephelol- 14 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION atry, opliilolatry, etc., but -latry is not always synony¬ mous with, worship; there may be an observance, a serv¬ ice, without actual worship. The worship of stones and hills: Stone-worsliip may be addressed to a mere stone, a fetish, a totem, an idol, or a symbol. The stone may be a pebble, a rock, lonely or other¬ wise remarkable, or a flint weapon or aerolite. In all these forms, as far as known to each community, stones have been worshipped by Finns, Lapps, South Sea Islanders, Africans, Redskins, Peruvians, Greeks, Romans and other Aryans, Syrians, Dravidians, Egyptians, and Chi¬ nese. At the present day the inhabitants of Kateri in South India worship a stone, which if neglected will turn into a wild ox, and in Northern India not only the wild tribes but recognized castes of civilized society worship stones which they believe to be alive and possessed of volition . 1 Food and drink are presented to stones today in Nigeria to effect cures. There is in these cases no idea of a spirit in the stone; it is the stone itself as being power¬ ful and wilful which is propitiated. If one ask a Yankee farmer why his fields every year have a fresh crop of stones (they do indeed annually come to the surface), he will say that they climb up from below and he almost believes that they work up of their own volition. In the Middle Ages the peasants believed this and more, for they thought the stones had power to move about as living beings. Vows were made to them by our own ancestors. The Lapps, some African tribes, and the Peruvians shared with the Amerinds and the Greeks the belief that stones could propagate themselves, and even that the human race had sprung from stones. Among the i The 11 divinity ’ ’ of Bhuvaneshvar is a shaped block of granite about eight feet long sunk in the ground. At Kamakhya on the Brahmaputra a rude cleft rock represents the goddess. Most of the stones worshipped are unshaped rocks. WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 15 Semites, the Canaanites especially, and, among the Ar¬ yans, the Kelts worshipped and anointed stones. Simi¬ larly, Jacob after using a stone as a pillow anointed it and Rachel concealed stones in the tent, probably “ wit¬ ness stones” (Gen. 28:11-22; 31:34). The notion that stones are the children of earth inter¬ changes with the belief that they are the bones of earth, both views presupposing the assumption that earth is an organic whole and stones are part of the earth-mother. But a lone rock or curious stone is revered for itself and becomes one of the earliest forms of gods. A suggestive stone often from its very shape serves as a phallus, not at first of a god but in itself worshipful. So a rock re¬ motely suggesting a human shape becomes a god per se before it is recognized as an image or idol of a higher divinity. Thus, in Greece, the stone image of Cybele or Athena (a square stone at Mantinea) or the Argive Hera was an object of worship afterwards called by one of these names. Different in origin are the betyls or heavenly stones, whose divinity derived from their origin. A blazing stone striking the earth would always inspire fear and subse¬ quent religious regard or worship, as in the case of many known betyls (probably the Kaaba stone at Mecca is of tills sort). Transferred from Syria to Greece by the way of Crete the name Baityloi or Betels (perhaps bethels?) was generally applied to these heavenly visitors, wor¬ shipped under various names by the Romans, Finns, and other Europeans, and probably several of the more re¬ vered objects of this class came West with the name, like the Black Mother and the Cretan betyl, afterwards the stone at Delphi that was regarded as the god given to Kronos by Rhea. Along with these, however, other stones called cerauniae or lapides fulminis, which were in reality not aerolites but relics of the stone age, were worn as 16 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION amulets, etc., though supposed to have fallen from the sky. In Central America, the sacred stones of the Mayas were certainly betyls; but they were recognized as iden¬ tical with the earth-goddess and deified as such. The Zeus Kasios of the Greeks was an aerolite, as the name, of Semitic origin, indicates. One of the forms of Shiva in India is a rock, but this is probably, like his hill-form, from an adaptation of an earlier cult of these objects not (in the case of the rock) as of heavenly origin but as in itself worshipful. Red paint, representing blood, is smeared on such stones in India and America as a sign of worship. In India, as in Syria and Greece, the aerolite is apt to become the phallic emblem. 2 Stone-worship is not racial nor is it merely primitive in time. At this hour is worshipped in Bengal a stone which fell in 1880; it is at present “the miraculous god.” 3 About the same time an aerolite fell in Greenland; it has been an object of religious regard ever since. The atti¬ tude toward non-aerolite stones may today be illustrated in the case of Hindu peasants. They do not think a spirit is in the stone but they regard the stone itself as having personality, life, activity, volition. A group of five stones in India (thirty in Greece) is sometimes found as a re¬ ligious unit similar to the stone circles of Europe and to the groups of stones set by the Amerinds, though not al¬ ways numbered or placed precisely in a circle. The se¬ cret of these stones is not always the same. In some cases they may represent astronomical wisdom, but we must guard ourselves against accepting this as a general ex¬ planation. In Burma, for example, the stones appear like a miniature Stonehenge, yet the circle is not fixed but grows, for each stone is a monument to a great man 2 This was not noticed by Lenormant in his article on “Les Betyles” (Hevue cle I’histoire des religions, iii, p. 31). s Crooke, The Foimlar Feligion and Folk-lore of Northern India, I, p. 82. WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 17 added to the circle at his death, a sort of Westminster, combining pious and religious feeling. The dead are little divinities and this rude circle of Burma is, in reality, essentially like a Jain temple, where the divinities are images of saints. The spot is holy ground; the peasant bows to the stone. European trilith erections may often be tombs, and menhirs may be memorials of this sort. Such a stone may even be a totem and the first altar was probably itself a divinity before it served as a sacrificial table. The ceremony of throwing a stone among the Romans involved the invocation of Jupiter and it has thence been supposed that Jupiter himself was originally a stone, as for other reasons scholars have interpreted Jupiter as an oak. But nothing is more fallacious than to identify a deity with an object of ceremony. Nevertheless, although Jupiter was not a stone, there was a stone identified with Jupiter in Rome, as with Zeus in Greece, and on this stone as a god the Romans took the oath. Here may be mentioned the common practice in India of taking up a stone as a witness. If one wishes to hale an offender to court one seizes a stone and calls it an officer. The stone mounted in the Hindu marriage ceremony was originally a millstone and seems to be merely a symbol of constancy or endurance, though modern practice iden¬ tifies the stone with the wife of Shiva or with the divine protector of the field and family. A stone may be half human and yet divine enough to excite religious awe and veneration. Of this sort are first the stones like those of the Profile Rock in the "White Mountains. No Indian could see this apparent face of rock without imagining it the face of a more than human yet manlike being. A face so grave, so stern, so lifelike was necessarily revered. A similar face juts out near Castine; this also was worshipped by the Amerinds, but IS ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION it never became a god. It was something uncannily dan¬ gerous and thought of as a sachem’s head, revered to the point of worship but still as something only half divine. In other localities a similar superstition clings to “Lot’s wife” and to the rock that in India was once the wife of a saint, who was cursed to live as a rock because she de¬ ceived her husband. In Peru there are stones which were formerly human beings, but “they became impious and were petrified.” These are still human. But there is also a rock in India, which is the remains of the nymph Rambha, who tried to seduce a saint and was turned into a rock, although she was the fairest nymph born of Ocean. In Greece we have the parallel figure, and Nioba fingitur lapidea . When we hear of a stone being put into water to pro¬ duce rain it is not always because the stone has magical power; sometimes the stone represents a divine power. On the other hand, it must not be concluded that a stone is a holy power because it works wonders. A millstone is magically efficacious not because of the stone but because of the hole in it. In the Rig-Veda we read that a god cured a girl by drawing her through the hole in the middle of his chariot-wheel. Any perforated jewel is thus doubly valu¬ able. Noses and ears were not perforated at first to carry rings, but the rings were carried to keep open the hole. Coins with a hole in them are prophylactic like jewels. The Shalagrama stone now represents Vishnu; it was originally a stone holy in itself and twice as holy when perforated. The holy stones revered by the inhabitants of the Pyre¬ nees are half fetish and half divinity and the same is true of the similar stones of the Hebrides and those generally revered by the Dravidians. The African fetish-stone also in its original form is not a material thing containing a spirit but an animate being and is treated as such, being WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 19 cajoled or beaten to be helpful, just as the stone fetish called Hermes was treated in Greece. Whether we term such objects gods or not is a matter of indifference. They are supernatural powers, potent and volitive. In conclu¬ sion it may be noticed that the aerolite, destined to be- come a god or fetish when it alights, is in transit regarded as a falling soul, as in India, or, as in South America, it is the still flaming butt of a god’s cigar. The lone stone to the villager is a guardian god. And what the rock is to the villager the hill is to the larger community. It is a being, alive and capable of aiding or injuring. It was not at first to the spirits of the hills that the Chinese offered sacrifice but to the hills themselves as powers. There is, so to speak, only a quantitative dif¬ ference between stone and hill. Only the higher intelli¬ gence regards the holy hill as holy because a spirit lives in it or gives oracles there. To the less developed mind the hill itself is divine. The rude peasants under the Ural Mountains regard them thus even now; the hill is a living divinity, not the abode of divinity. The oath-mountain to them is itself the witness and punisher of perjury. In In¬ dia, only two thousand years ago, it was believed that mountains lived and married and had children by rivers. Anthropomorphism by no means necessarily precedes an- thropopathism. The hill has no human form but it has human passion and divine, that is, more than human power. Hills as abodes of heavenly gods are of course doubly holy and when, as in the case of the Himalayas, they merge with the sky, they are regarded not as parts of earth but of heaven. When a pilgrim comes down the mountain he is said in the great Hindu epic to “return to earth.” Hills, like chasms, are often revered as spirit- homes. Earth itself receives a nominal homage as mother paired with father sky in many savage cosmogonies, but 20 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION earth to a savage is only what he knows of it; he is not apt to pay devotion to earth as a divine power. He re¬ veres rather the hills and chasms (leading to the under¬ world) as homes of ghosts and spirits. Sundry savages (Australian and early German) believe that children come out of earth by way of streams, 4 and early German religion had a cult of a mother goddess presumed to be Earth. The advent of agriculture increases the observance and regard for both earth and sun. A sort of rude hoe-agri¬ culture is as old as cattle-raising, but till a people has fixed habitations and gardens it does not develop much religious interest in earth. Then arise the boundary-gods and field-protectors found in India and elsewhere. A general primitive Mother-goddess is often a personifica¬ tion of earth. But, although the cult of such a Mother- goddess is found in the earliest Asiatic and European civilizations it is not certain that the female deity repre¬ sents Mother Earth. In India, however, as late as 1901 the census enrolls “ worshippers of earth, of sun, of divine female rivers, of snakes, and of disease god¬ desses’’ in one district of Bengal. When the cult of spirits has superseded that of spirit¬ ual objects, matter as alive and volitive, the stone be¬ comes the home of a spirit, as in Iceland and in later fetisli-forms. A third stage is represented by the change from a divine thing to an accessory of a more divine spirit, stone pillars, originally divine, standing by a shrine, massebas, for ghosts or gods, and altars, as well as stones used to bring rain. Many stone monuments, however, have become sacred simply through association with the dead or with divinity. Not every obelisk was it- 4 For the primitive cult of earth, see Albrecht Dietrich, Mutter Erde (1905). WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 21 self divine; so dolmens and tombstones become sacred through association with the dead, though tombs were really worshipped, as in the case of Norwegian cairns. Carved images, idols, are later than natural idols but are worshipped as readily; in fact, in some cases artificial images are so primitive that they appear as the first monuments. The only religious symbols of some very primitive South American tribes are figures made to frighten away demons and the Neolithic age already had carved figures of presumably religious or magical import. In Africa a rude pillar portrays a spirit and sometimes is anointed in order to attract spirits. The worship of images is almost universal but is finally tabooed by the highest religions, Mohammedan, Roman Catholic, etc., or is permitted only as an indulgence to a weak mind. Thus, Du Bois, one of the early Roman Catholic mission¬ aries in India, reports that the common people indubi¬ tably worship the image itself, but that the better edu¬ cated repudiate such worship. The same holds for this missionary’s own religion. The uneducated peasant who bows to the image in Southern Europe, especially when that image moves its eyes or otherwise seems to be alive, is certainly worshipping the thing he sees. The matter was put succinctly to the writer by a Hindu gentleman who was kind enough to answer a blunt question as to whether he really worshipped the image to which he bowed. “This,” he replied, “is mere matter of intelli¬ gence. I being completely devil-upped (developed) wor¬ ship only myself 5 but conform out of liberality to popular s The then 11 Saint of Benares ’ ’ also explained that he ‘ ‘ worshipped only himself, ” as divine soul. Worship of images is a later trait of Bud¬ dhism, which inevitably followed from the early regard for relics combined with images of Buddha. These relics and images paved the way to the shrine, which, adopted by the Brahmans, became a temple, unknown to early India. ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 22 superstition. My wife, lacking intelligence and not being devil-upped, worships bare image.” 6 The Worship of Trees and Plants: The cult of trees is one of the oldest, as it is one of the most widely extended forms of worship. It is also one of the latest to yield to a higher type of religion. It appeals to the savage who fears the forest; to the barbarian who sees in the tree the spirit of productivity; and to civilized man, to whom the tree is emblematic of divinity. The deification of plants and grains is later than that of trees. Probably the tree- world as a whole was an earlier object of cult than any individual tree, as the savage dreads the power of the jungle and placates it rather than that of any one tree known to him. The forest as a whole is dangerous also to the more advanced animist who fears the spirits of the wild, though they may be offset by the gentle fairies and elves likewise living in the wood. These are the first ar¬ boreal spirits in distinction from the trees themselves. But the tree per se. is also beneficent or maleficent and is treated as such. It gives a welcome shade or fruit or it is poisonous or lacerates. On the whole, however, it is prob¬ ably the forest rather than the single tree which received first religious regard as a terrifying object. As soon as man began to think in terms of spirit he imagined demons misleading him and making noises in the jungle, spirits comparable to the Jinns of desert or mountain. There is an Amazon tribe which recognizes no spiritual power save Caypor, a demon who ‘ Meads people around in a circle when they are lost in the wood,” not a ghost, be it ob¬ served, but a spirit of nature comparable to a mermaid as a product of the sea. Man easily personifies or human¬ izes natural causes when he observes an effect. A Vedic 6 The image of stone is sometimes the earlier idol, but often this is not the case, the trunk or root of a tree serving as an image before stone is hewed into shape. WORSHIP OP STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 23 hymn of some three thousand years ago (Rig-Veda, 10, 146) expresses this artlessly by saying that if one hears a noise in the forest like a wagon creaking or a tree crash¬ ing down it is because the Girl of the Wood is playing there; she will not hurt one unless one tries to track her, but it is well to set out an offering for her, who is the Mother of the wild animals. In the main this Indian god¬ dess is a kindly being, slaying only when aggrieved. She is really made of the noises in the wood, a prototype of all sylvan deities, fauns, sylvani, and other mates of hamadryads, who die with the wood, like the Tyrolese Wildfanger. Some, like the Hindu Rakshasas, are fierce. Many of the beliefs of this early stage linger late into modern times. The shrieking plant and bleeding tree are analogous creations, showing that the idea of a spirit in¬ habiting the plant is more modern than the idea of the plant as a spiritized whole. The bush-soul is another mat¬ ter. In this conception a human being unites his soul with something in the Hush’ (forest), a shrub or branch, be¬ lieving himself secure so long as the sacred repository is preserved intact. This is a very common notion and has no connection with totemism, though the soul may be united with either animal or plant. In India, tree-marriages are common. The wife who otherwise would get the evil result of a third marriage on the part of her husband thus casts the evil on the tree substitute, she herself becoming the fourth wife. This is a modern survival of a more general custom, according to which a tree 7 was actually wedded to a human being, as being a similar anthropopathic creature. Thus, in the Hindu epic, a woman who wants children embraces a tree. The same epic treats the trees as sentient beings having 7 The wedding of the tulsi plant to the stone shalagrama is a religions mystery, in which the plant represents a human bride and the stone a divine bridegroom. 24 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION volition, though elsewhere they are regarded not as them¬ selves holy beings but as abodes of spirits. This latter was the rationalized Buddhistic belief, namely, that trees were not, as the Brahmans taught, living beings, but homes of spirits called dryads, described as “goddesses born in trees and to be worshipped by those wishing to have chil¬ dren.” Here, as in Northern Europe, the tree inverted (its roots above in heaven) is the divine Tree of Life and whoso worships it worships God. A tree alone in a vil¬ lage is an object of veneration everywhere, but some are especially to be worshipped either because of their useful¬ ness or because the rustling of their leaves is believed to be a divine, oracular voice, or the sound shows that spirits whisper there. Every leaf of the pipal (which is wor¬ shipped as the abode of Vishnu) houses a god, though it is. possible that a belief in it as a totem may have strengthened its divinity, as is the case with the nim tree. Probably the veneration of many trees and plants arises from their medicinal (magical) power, as is the case with the tulsi plant sacred to Vishnu. Shiva is incorporate in the sandal-wood tree as well as identified with the world-tree of life. 8 The most important element in all the Indian data is the belief in the vital power of the tree itself (not the s The Yggdrasil, or tree of Odin and of life, had one root in the sky, one in giant-land, and one in the under-world. The Hindu tree of life roots in heaven and its head is this life below. When the Vedic poet asks from what tree (wood) the world was fashioned, he may mean material, vXtj. In Japan, the world tree, the tree of heaven, and the tree of im¬ mortality are united into one. In the Genesis story, the tree of life is identical with the tree of knowledge, in that the divine fruit imparts divine attributes of either kind. It may be remarked that the so-called “tree of knowledge’’ of the Buddhists, the Bo-tree, is not a tree imparting knowl¬ edge but merely the tree under which Gotama (Buddha) chanced to sit when he acquired perfect knowledge or wisdom. Also the famous aJcshaya- vata of Gaya was not primarily an “indestructible banyan,” as understood nowadays, but a tree which makes indestructible the offerings to the Manes. WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 25 tree-spirit) as revealed in the tree-marriage, which shows that the woman marrying a tree draws to herself its very life. The tree is thus in itself the productive power and fertilizing strength emanates from it. It is for this rea¬ son that the spiritual or vital power of rebirth and re¬ production is connected with the May-tree and for the same reason women and goddesses in childbirth cling to trees, as depicted in Greece and India. 9 Incidentally, the persistent belief in metempsychosis of a sort in such folk¬ lore as “out of her breast there grew a rose,” etc., im¬ plies that the victim grows up again as a plant; the rose is the girl herself. Whether wood-spirits are kind or not depends on cir¬ cumstances. The Finns regard them as gentle; they call the forest-spirit “gentle god of the wood” and give him the “honey goddess” as wife. The Amerinds’ spirit was ferocious, like themselves, a cruel demon, and the Rus¬ sian forest deity was brutal and misleading, though this type appears also in Sweden and Japan, while in Switzer¬ land the wood-spirits are tricky rather than cruel, steal¬ ing milk and children, yet recovering for man the cow he has lost. So far as is possible we may attempt a progressive se¬ ries by following the social advance as conditioned by economic facts. We have seen that as Brahmanism pre¬ cedes Buddhism, so the older Brahman cult of the tree as a spirit-entity precedes the Buddhist belief in hamadryad and dryad. Later than tree-cult in general is plant-cult, as the fear of the jungle-power precedes the worship of plants and grains. The Patagonian, who has no notion of a spirit of vegetation, worships the tree alone. The more 9 For the same reason a pregnant woman worships a Sharni tree, in which lives the Shakti or essential power of the Fire-god, a common rite today, the worship consisting in offerings and a light, with quadruple circumam- bulation, which ensures to the embryo protection and heat. 26 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION advanced Mexican recognizes the same spirit which was worshipped by the Egyptians and Semites, the vegeta¬ tion-spirit, as a great power of nature, probably the Mother. In India so marked was the cult of trees that the Greeks said: “These Indians worship especially trees”; withal long after the deities of garden and grain had a rival cult. Probably the peeled rods before Japanese tem¬ ples revert to a similar cult of trees, as in Europe a similar use of stalks and peeled rods symbolized just this, a fact we are apt to forget, as we forget how recent is the observance. Our forefathers in Europe only a few centu¬ ries ago were worshipping stones, tombs, plants, trees, springs, rivers, and mountains, not to speak of cows and birds, as objects of their reverence. Traces of this still remain in popular rites. In particular, it was not till long after the advent of Christianity that the reverence paid to trees diminished. The Norsemen derived the first men from trees, 10 and, later, worshipped tree-born gods. In India, the Creator was born of a lotus and the tulsi is only one of a host of plants originally divine and then associated with higher divinity, as an asliera stands be¬ side a shrine, the old god becoming a symbol of the new. “He who dwelt in the bush” mav have been, like Zeus in the oak, a later god inhabiting an older, as the sycamore- gods of Egypt preserved the still more ancient divinity of the tree. The “talking (oracular) tree” of Grecian and Persian myth is reflected in the tree of soothsayers (Judges 9:37; see the revised version); we may compare the divining rod, virgula divina. The cult of trees, however, is not universal. China is without it even in the attenuated form of cultivating deities living beside trees. It has only the borrowed myth of the tree of life. Nor is tree-cult, even in tree-worship- This myth is found among the Sioux Indians as ■well as among the Greeks and Persians. WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 27 ping countries, as widespread and fundamental as some scholars would have us believe. Not all the great gods of antiquity originate from plants and trees, neither Mars nor Apollo, for example, though the first has been called a vegetal god and the second has been explained as a deified apple. Even among the Semites, who worshipped trees very generally, a god’s tree was the tree where the god chanced to live, so that the cypress, for example, was holy to different gods. The great gods of Babylon, of Greece, of Germany, of India, are not of vegetal origin, nor were Osiris and Adonis trees but spirits of vegeta¬ tion, which is another matter. Half a dozen references occur in the Old Testament showing a belief in prophetic and sacred trees j 11 but data indicating that the origin of the Hebrew Yahweh is to be found in a female date-palm, even with the analogies drawn from other Semitic sources, are not sufficient to corroborate this striking suggestion. In Siam there is a pretty superstition con¬ nected with the tree-spirit. The house-spirit is an inde¬ pendent entity living in the peak of the house and pro¬ tecting its inmates. But also the spirit of the tree is kindly and when the tree is cut down to make a house, this spirit still lives in the planks shaped from the tree and thence watches over the family. Many plants shaped like parts of a body or looking like a body are used as drugs simply because they oppose disease-demons, being themselves spiritual powers (suggested by the shape), one devil thus offsetting another. Plants or grains yielding an intoxicant have generally been deified, as in India, Persia, and Mexico. The Soma, or Horn, plant, which produces intoxication, is thus re¬ garded as a divine power. Both in India and Persia the worship of this plant was enhanced by accepting it as 11 Compare 1 Sam. 14: 2, and 22: 6; 2 Sam. 5: 24; Ex. 3: 4. 28 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION identical with the moon, to which it bore a resemblance in color, in swelling, and as an exliilarant. It thus really passed into another sphere and became a god of light, power, and truth, a warrior spirit of the sky, with ac¬ credited battles and amours. A religious drinking-bout honored the Hindu god, much as the Amazon Indians had a religious beer-festival celebrated with music and less pleasing effects similar to those of the Hindus. A de¬ graded form of the same tendency leads today in India to the solemn cult of a bottle of whiskey. 12 In the later cult of Zoroaster, the Horn became the plant of life, which be¬ stows immortality and gives all highest earthly goods, such as wealth, strength, and wisdom to men, and hus¬ bands to girls. In India eventually only the priests may partake of this mystical divine juice, which is at the same time a plant-product and a god, and only those who par¬ take may be reckoned “gods on earth. ” To drink the dei¬ fied liquor is to become divine; one absorbs divinity much in the same way as a totem-worsliipper renews power. But other plants, such as millet or maize, in that they give sustenance, are also revered and as among the Semites receive due worship. Plant-totems were thus originally quasi parents in that they gave life. But it does not fol¬ low that corn-mothers and rites of reproduction prove totemism. In the Eiresione festival of the Greeks there is the same propitiation of the spirit of vegetation and ensuing benediction as is found in the harvest-festivals of Northern Europe. Survivals of the religious importance of trees are mainly confined in Europe to petty or pretty supersti¬ tions in regard to the use of amulets, the May-tree, etc. Rapping on wood three times implies taking protection in the Cross with invocation of the Trinity. The Christ- 12 Oman, The Brahmans, Theists, and Muslirns of India, p. 173. WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 29 mas tree first symbolized the second blossoming of trees in mild winters between the days of St. Martin (our In¬ dian summer) and St. Andrew, November 11 to 30. The celebration, first current in Germany in the seventeenth century, marked a saint’s miracle in making a summer day in winter; the tree then had no lights. Later the cele¬ bration was connected with St. Nicholas’s day as Christ’s day. An earlier tree-celebration belonged to the Attis-cult (March 25); this tree was decorated. 13 In mediaeval plays, the Christmas tree was associated rather with the tree of Paradise, of which it was regarded as a part. The use of incense came from the Orient to Greece and so to Europe a thousand years before Christ. In India, every god has his own preferred and detested incense, so that perfume to one god is stench to another and the many woods from which incense comes are therefore carefully enumerated in Hindu ritualistic works. The primary use of incense may have been apotropaic, to keep off evil spirits; this use becoming ritualized would then have been maintained with altered interpretation, as a service, like the dance; the gods being pleased with the odor, like the savor of sacrifice, a kind of sublimated food, as is the case with tobacco-offerings. In the Chinese wedding-cere¬ mony incense is still used to drive away evil spirits. The temple-idea comes to the fore first in the sacred grove, as a home of spirits, and this in turn reverts to the jungle as habitat of mysterious powers. Such formal groves set apart for deities were known, for example, to the Assyrians, Romans, Greeks, and Hindus, whose “divine woods” and “groves of the gods” are celebrated 13 The decorated pine-tree of the Attis-cult, however, represented the god himself as lord of vernal vegetation. Although Christmas Day was transferred from March 25 to December 25, the Christmas tree itself does not appear to have been borrowed from this cult. A decorated “tree of victory’ ’ formed part also of a popular Hindu celebration. 30 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION in the epic. But the grove as temple is even more primi¬ tive than is illustrated by Druidic and classical instances. In Fais, one of the Caroline Islands, the Polynesian god Bongola had no temple, but at certain times he occupied a special grove, where during his visit there was taboo of talking. Tintir, the original name of Babylon, where many tree-spirits were worshipped, is said to mean the “grove of the gods.” Even the Australians kept their re¬ ligious implements in a sacred (taboo) place hidden among rocks or trees, and this form of temple may have preceded god-houses (bethels) and the genuine (Roman) templum idea of an earthly place “cut off ” to correspond to a heavenly region selected by diviners, as it would also have been older than the tomb-temple or edifice raised over a grave. To our religious sense the idea of resurrection is asso¬ ciated with St. Paul’s appeal to the analogous resurrec¬ tion of grain. All around the Mediterranean and far north in Central Europe this resurrection of plant life had been made the centre of religious ritual long before Paul’s day. The analogy too had been emphasized in the Greek ritual mystery of the resurrection and its divine participants, the Mother-goddess and her daughter, grain, as early as the eighth century B. C., and man had been taught by Orphic wisdom that by participating in these rites he himself might 4 ‘ rise again. ’ ’ The dying god who should rise again was well known to the South, and in the North there were ritual observances to ensure the future life of the corn-mother. Sometimes this is spoken of as the death and resurrection of the year or year- demon ; but it was at bottom not so much the year as the grain and vegetation whose death and resurrection in¬ terested the people. All this is too well known on the European side to treat here in detail; but it is worth men¬ tioning that we find the same idea of the grain-mother WORSHIP OF STONES, HILLS, AND PLANTS 31 and her daughter (both divine) in South America. Wher¬ ever agriculture obtains and winter is a deadly influence, these ideas become prominent and have more than once been incorporated in myth, as in the tales of Adonis, Demeter, etc. CHAPTER III THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS Between man and beast there is, to a savage, only a linguistic difference; in other respects the beast is man’s “younger brother,” as the Hindu calls him, not as he also calls the gods the younger brothers of the demons, but because he recognizes in the animal a being akin to himself, having the same feelings, desires, and needs, but gifted with other speech and other occult powers, which, as in the case of some men, also gifted with superior in¬ telligence, lead a common man to approach the beast with religious respect. The first nature-fakir too is the savage, who publishes accounts of animal intelligence, of beasts consorting with men, of animals as progenitors and creators, of sapient serpents, and of frog-maidens marrying humans. The soul of a man when he is alive and when he is dead is liable to pass into the body of an ani¬ mal, and a god in the same way may inhabit a beast. Finally, a beast may be the ancestor of a clan of men or may, like a plant, as in Australia, develop into man. Such in brief is the philosophy of animal-worship. Ani¬ mals are worshipped as great living powers and as ghosts, just as men are worshipped, while in addition there is something more mysterious in an animal, powers of strength and cunning to which men cannot attain. The very strong or savage beasts are universally revered for their prowess, the lion in Africa, the tiger in India, the eagle and bear in America, the bear in Yezo. For strength and virility the bull was worshipped in Greece and Egypt; for their wisdom the Amerind bent in reverence THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 33 before the beavers, who once were men, and all over the world those animals which have provided men with food have been worshipped as givers of life and sustenance, the cow in India, Africa, and Scandinavia, the buffalo in South India, the kangaroo in Australia, etc. Accident is also contributory to the worship of many individual ani¬ mals. Cortez left a sick horse behind him and the beast was deified, offered meat-sacrifice, consequently starved to death, then received a cult and was worshipped as the 4 4 god of thunder. ’ ’ A donkey imported to Africa was re¬ garded by certain tribesmen, who had never seen such a beast, as a wise divinity and consulted as an oracle. Horses were oracular to the early Germans and the Hindu Kunbhis offer them bloody sacrifice. In ancient times horses were themselves sacrificed in India as they are now by the Shamans, who hold that they carry up the soul. The cat and dog are worshipped in India, but for different reasons. The cat is the vehicle of a birth-demon, and the dog is the vehicle of a god, but the latter animal is revered also because it is connected with the spirits (which in turn are connected with the moon at which the dog bays) and because it is a house-protector, not only from thieves but from spirits. As connected with spirits it has become the Slavic guardian of the departing soul, for which reason in Tibet the bodies of the dead are given to dogs to eat. Further, as an animal 4 4 useful when alive and not very good to eat when dead” the dog was quite recently chosen as the 44 totem” of the Bengal Bauris. 1 The dog has in individual instances frequently 1 Crooke, op cit., II, p. 222, explains the divinity of the dog on the para¬ doxical grounds advanced by Campbell, who thinks that dogs are wor¬ shipped because they kill men. For the dog as a psychopomp, compare the “bitch of heaven,” Sarama (Hermes?) and, perhaps of cognate import, Kerberos, the dog of hell or of death, in Greece and India. This points to an early exposure of corpses, eaten by dogs. Hekate had originally a bitch’s head. See Paton, Spiritism and the Cult of the Dead in Antiquity, p. 123. 34 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION been deified in India. For example, in Bangalore there is the tomb and shrine of a Raja’s pet dog, which served him so well that after death the Raja established a cult for it, with priests paid to keep up the service in its honor. Ordinarily, however, the Hindu regards the dog as impure owing to its intercourse with spirits. 2 A good deal has been made of the Hindu epic story of the hero who refused to enter heaven without his dog, but this is a late feature (he has no dog till the moment of his ascent to heaven) and the dog is only an apparitional form of a god. Some of the Amerinds derived from a dog and a woman, but they sacrificed dogs, as their dearest posses¬ sions, to honor a guest. A savage does not take sides in animal feuds. An Afri¬ can worships impartially the goat and its enemy, as the Amerind worshipped the good spirit and the evil spirit, the goat’s foe, because he deprecates its rage; the goat, because it gives him food and because also it shivers un¬ cannily (so a shivering tree is worshipped). Among birds, the goose was taboo to the Briton and worshipped by the Romans; the dove was holy to Mexi¬ cans and Semites; the eagle was revered by some Arabs and Amerinds (sometimes as creator); the owl, holy to the Germans, was worshipped by Africans and Amerinds, who offered tobacco to it. The goose or swan received in India a double honor. It was the totem of extra-Indic tribes and by Hindu philosophers was taken as a type of soul and god. The philosophers did not take the totem of a wild Hansa clan as the emblem of the divine, as some ethnologists say, but invented it independently, not be¬ lieving that the bird was an ancestor of theirs but that its lone and lofty flight typified an elevated spirit. Of beast and bird form are the human-faced gods of 2 Unclean animals are usually those possessed by or representing spirit¬ ual powers, more particularly ghosts, such as the unclean animals of Greek THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 35 beastly shape and human-shaped gods of beastly face, centaurs, Assyrian lions, the pantheon of Egypt, Baby¬ lonian demons of similar character, the Holy Turtle and Grandfather Snake of the Amerinds, etc. Not sirens, for they are winged souls. In India, crows are real sirens, that is, reincorporated souls of men. Perhaps in classical antiquity they owed their quasi divinity as associates of Apollo in divination to the same belief, that they were re¬ born human souls. The great departed Fathers used to help Hindu warriors in this form, coming as birds to the battle-field and fanning their hot faces with cooling wings. Among fishes, holy to the Syrians, the shark is most widely revered in the Pacific, obviously because it is most feared. Some savages derive from fish, as others come from frogs, turtles, crocodiles, snakes, and insects; but the resultant totemic worship is confined to the descend¬ ants and is independent of peculiar attributes in the an¬ cestors. Some of the fish-stories connecting men and fishes may be totemic but this is not to be assumed off¬ hand. The Hindu Noah called Father Manu was saved from the deluge by a fish and the modern totem-scholar says, “probably a fish-totem.” But the historian will point out that in the original story a grateful fish, not alluded to as ancestor but explained as a fish that had once been saved from death by Manu, in turn saved Manu from death. Then when Brahman had become a great god the story was fastened on him; he was the savior “in fish-form,” until Vishnu superseded Brahman, when in turn Vishnu became the god in fish-form. So the story re¬ mains to the glory of Vishnu till the totem-hunter refers it to a totem-god, though the Aryan Hindus had no totems and there is no hint in the original story that the and Hebrew; in the latter case the implication is that the cult inimical to the Yahweh cult is represented by the animal. 36 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION fish was connected with Mann in any way except by ties of gratitude. Other fish-stories have a quasi religious in¬ terest. Thus there is the Hindu fish that swallows a man or swallows a woman or swallows a man and his boat. One of these Hindu fishes swallows a merchant, who is found alive in his belly. 3 Nearly all the fish-totemism in India is connected with eels as totems, not of Aryans but of the Wild Tribes, but pretended totemism abounds. Thus there is a delightful tale about Kliwaja Khizr, who is called “a sort of totem’’ of the Shiah Mohammedans. He was a Mohammedan saint who had charge of the wa¬ ter of immortality and so in Bengal he became a water- god and has recently been adopted as the “totem” of a sect, a good illustration of the loose way the unliistorical ethnologist cites evidence of totemism. In ancient days the Aryans had no divine fishes. At present certain fishes are holy because connected with divinities revered at the bathing-places where the fishes live beside the god, just as in Greece the sacred fishes got their sacredness from their sacred habitat, not because they were totems. The only really divine water-animal in India is the crocodile, which shows no trace of totemism and is now revered because he is connected with a god, originally because he was feared. As water repels evil spirits, so fishes, because of their water-nature, when painted on the wall, guard in India against demons. Serpents are among the earliest and most widely wor¬ shipped creatures. No one who has seen a boa constrictor, a cobra, a python, or a rattlesnake can question that such a being would be the object of devout regard on the part of any man who worshipped any animal. But any snake’s beauty, sinuous motion, mysterious habits, power of fas¬ cination, its association with tombs and trees, at the roots of which it is apt to live, its suggestive shape, are enough 3 Crooke, op. cit., II, pp. 253 f. THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 37 to make it respected as a being having occult and obscene powers. Its abode and cunning give it a reputation for wisdom; its wisdom helps its reputation for evil; its hole makes it a guardian of treasure; and when it is honored with a temple, where treasure is stored, this reputation is increased. Because it lives about the altar and the house, where it gets food, and perhaps especially because it lives in tombs, it is regarded as the reembodied spirit of the dead, coming up out of the under-world for its meals. Aeneas regarded the serpent at the altar as the local genius of the place or the spirit of his father. The old Germans thought that snakes and mice, also coming out of the ground, were peculiarly apt to be re¬ incarnated spirits. The Pied Piper and the Bishop of Hatto had to deal with such spirits. The Hindu today gives his house-snake its daily meal of milk, believing it may be his ancestor in new form. The Lithuanians wor¬ shipped and sacrificed to the house-snakes as relatives and guardians. Mythologically, the lightning appears as the snake of the sky and dragon serpents oppose the gods of right and order in Babylon and India. The Scandina¬ vian Midgard-snake was of similar nature, as were the Semitic snakes, which represented, like the Egyptian Apep, unfriendly powers of nature. The sapient serpent of Eden, which had legs (the Hindu says that only a snake can see a snake’s legs), combines wisdom and enmity to man. The Hebrews worshipped serpents down to the days of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:4). A totemic origin may ex¬ plain the Indian dragon-serpent Nagas, probably of Dra- vidian or Mongolian extraction. They have a friendly human nature. Chinese dragon-worship is a survival of serpent-worship. The wisdom of the snake makes it the protecting genius of the physician in Greece and the pre- Apollo oracle, as it is a prophetic genius elsewhere. The Africans worship snakes; the Amerinds, particularly 38 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Mexicans, both worshipped the snake itself and exalted it into a deity. Tobacco was offered to the rattler, which (says Henry in his Travels) “really received it with pleasure”; the snake was called “grandfather” by the Amerinds, who besought it to take care of their families. The snake’s supposed power of healing, one side of its. wisdom, led to its becoming emblematic of life and re¬ production, more especially as it was connected with other phases of life in its association with trees as spirits of productivity and with the sun, an aspect prominent in Hindu sun-worship and Naga-cult. All this led to tree- and-serpent worship, which, though overemphasized by early observers, is really connected with the sun-cult and phallic worship. Fergusson, in his work on this subject, imagines that Hindu snake-worship is Turanian and Buddhistic as opposed to Brahmanism and Shivaism, but there are no cogent reasons to support this view. Sun-worship and serpent-worship may have been united as early as ‘heliolithic’ culture . 4 There is an extravagance in India called 4 i snake-love, ’ ’ which has been given a mystic religious interpretation still more extravagant. But the matter is perfectly sim¬ ple. A snake-charmer must endure the bite of a poisonous snake. He does not extract the poison but accustoms him¬ self to it by taking larger doses from time to time till the bite ceases to affect him. He even learns to depend on his daily “dope” like an opium or hashish victim and his love for the poison explains “snake-love.” Among Mexicans and our northern Indians a religious observ¬ ance seems to be connected with the “mound snake,” probably a parallel to the “furrow-snake” of Dravidian 4 Serpent-worship is one of the elements ascribed by Elliot Smith to the first worship of the sun and the erection of megaliths, which elements, he thinks, were carried from Asia to America, along with the svastika, tattoo¬ ing, couvade, and mummification. THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 39 villages, which are thus protected. The flying serpent was a form of storm or wind god among the Aztecs, obviously due to the shape of the storm. Myths connected with snakes are not illuminating as to the character of ser¬ pent-worship. They are of great variety, some the result of quite modern interpretation, as when the beach-marks on the Adirondack coast made by trilobites are explained by the present inhabitants as tracks of the serpent of Eden. Although insects as well as reptiles are worshipped, the attitude toward them is as of one but half believing in the power of the divinity. But ants in India are really worshipped and offerings are made to them to induce them to answer prayer and send blessings, such as chil¬ dren. Locusts, too, are taken seriously. A peasant will catch one and tell it to go in safety and inform its com¬ panions how well it has been treated, so that other locusts may spare his field, as he has spared their representative. The grasshopper has no mantic reputation in India as he had among the Greeks. Insects and vermin derive at times a respect rather than worship from being imagined as reembodied souls of human beings. But in Buddhistic and Jain circles, what prevents a man from killing ver¬ min is only his interpretation of the rule “do as you would be done by,” not the fear of killing his relatives. The worship of animals is embodied in totemism. Early records show that animals used as a food supply were regarded as sacred; the life-giver of a clan was the clan’s parent. The clan, after eating its parent, regularly reaches a point where it eats the life-giver only on special occasions, when the clan-tie is renewed by this physical communion, and finally the totem becomes so sacred that it is not eaten at all, the clan nourishing itself on other sustenance. In all these stages the totem-animal is only a revered brother or ancestor, not exactly a divinity. An- 40 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tliropomorphism (a figure on the totem-pole) and the feeling that the totem has the same needs and feelings as man, go far to intensify the belief in kinship between the growing “divinity” and mere man. The totem differs from the fetish in being the object of a clan-cult, not the god of an individual. Decadent forms of totemism are where the term is applied to the relation existing between an individual and the imagined protective animal seen in a dream and accepted as a tutelary animal. Numerous other distortions of simple totemism pass under the same name and some scholars have even thought that totemism was once the aboriginal universal form of religion. But in fact totemism in its real form, where a human clan is akin to an animal-clan regarded as quasi divine, is far from universal. It belongs to a hunting stage of life and, as taboo is most pronounced in an agricultural stage, it is not apt to prevail where taboo is most pronounced, as in Polynesia. Plants as food-givers have also been regarded as totems. Exogamy had originally no direct or neces- sarv connection with totemism. Sacred crests are found without totemism and do not necessarily imply it, any more than do other observances implying respect for animals. The true totem as an object of special re¬ gard or worship is a being part human and part divine. Although the grotesque creatures thus represented are more beastly than godlike, yet the totem-beast has a peculiar religious interest in that it is a primitive at¬ tempt to embody the conception of a power somewhat more than man spiritually (powerfully), yet not alien to man, a rude prototype of the god-man; as his wor¬ shippers, through communion with him, were raised to kinship with the divine or superhuman. Probably a direct reverence for the animal led in Egypt to the strange animal-god depicted as cat or hippopota¬ mus with human attributes and it may have been some THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 41 sort of totemic relationship with man which gave such an animal its human aspect. But it is also possible, as the cat and hippopotamus are not represented as ancestors of clans, that the human shape was no more than the embodi¬ ment of an attempt to make the animal human, much as the old gods representing sky and storm in India and Ger¬ many were better realized under the aspect of giants and finally of quite antliropopathic beings. Indra in India and Zeus and Thor were superhuman, but they were quite human in their feelings and lives, exalted but subject to anger, love, etc., and living a life of battle and feasting, having wives, children, and retainers. A certain gro¬ tesqueness often indicates merely the human admirer’s wish to exhibit superhuman power. Thus the many¬ breasted Artemis and the many-armed Shiva are the re¬ sult of trying to express superhuman powers. The Louvre has a picture by Rubens in which the same idea of spe¬ cial fecundity is presented by a many-breasted female. These distorted types were early Greek but late Hindu forms, though in India the literary imagination, earlier than the plastic arts, had already invested the gods with many members, such as the sun-god with his thousand arms, drawn, so to speak, from nature. There is also another kind of symbolism which is a real factor in religion. As in Arabia clouds are “camels,” so in India they are the “red cows” of dawn; the sun is a red horse, also an eagle, the “swift bird” of the sky, as the Zulus call the lightning, which in India is a snake; while in India and America wind is a bird or caused by a bird’s wings. The Mexican pantheon is one third a divine menagerie of animal forms, such as the winged snake. Eclipse to the ancient Germans was a wolf de¬ vouring sun and moon; in India, the original “seizer” (eclipse-demon) has today become the evil soul of a dead man whose chariot is drawn by eight steeds. The sun 42 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION had seven steeds, horses or deer; the fruitful god of in¬ crease in Germany and India had a car drawn by goats. In all these cases a fancied resemblance associates god and symbol. Speed and coursers, productivity and goats, zigzag lightning and snake-movement, wind and flapping of wings, these are mental parallels. Almost every god in India has an animal representative which typifies him more or less clearly. Even the death-god Yama’s steed, the buffalo, is explicable as a late (not early) associa¬ tion of the god of the South with the beast revered in the South as a quasi divinity. Thus, as there is a close imag¬ ined connection between wisdom and water, as if wisdom were a purified knowledge, the emblem of the god of wa¬ ter and wisdom is a fish, both in Babylon and India. Is it then necessary to suppose that Ea and Varuna were originally fish-gods ? If Varuna has a fish as his symbol, does not the scaly form of Ea point to the fact that the fish (by implication) is rather symbolic than a sign of the god’s original fish-nature? So the god of love in India was born of water, as in Greece, and for this reason has a fish-svmbol, as some fish were sacred to Aphrodite. It is unlikely that both love-divinities were at first fishes. So when Brahman rides a swan it is unnecessary to imag¬ ine that Brahman was originally a bird-totem, or that, because Vishnu has a horse’s head, he was at first a horse, rather than that his liorse-form reflects his sun-horse character; or that Shiva, who rides a bull, was originally a bull, and his consort, who rides a lion and tiger, was a beast. In Dahomey, the elephant is a god and a beast not to be eaten because he is so wise; in India, the god of cleverness in later times is given an elephant’s head, ap¬ parently because both the god and the elephant, origi¬ nally worshipped for himself, are useful chiefly in clearing away difficulties. With the god of wisdom goes the rat as symbol and the rat in India plays the role of the clever THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 43 animal; lie is as naturally associated with personified divine cleverness as a red horse is with red fire and a fleet antelope with the wind-god. The wisdom of the rat as a worshipped animal may have associated him with a clever god in India, as in Greece he is associated with Apollo without implying a rat-totem or a rat-soul in either case. In the end the old object of worship becomes a mere symbol of the new god. Some symbols are not at this late day quite clear. The demon-goddess of smallpox is associated with a donkey because (they say) she withdraws so slowly; but she may have ridden an ass because she comes so quickly (the ass typifies greater speed than the horse). The moon-god has ten horses, perhaps because there were originally ten months. Janus has two faces because he faces both ways, but in India the creator has four, because he sees on every side and represents the four quarters; so four elephant- gods represent space. In Africa likewise there is a hill- god with four faces representing “air” (space), to whom four times a year a baby is sacrificed, its flesh being buried in the earth, for the African god is earthly and hence is also represented as a snake (so our Indians had an earth-snake) and as such, a reproductive power, it ap¬ pears with the legs of a goat. Yet at bottom it is only four¬ faced space, air and earth as a whole, to which, as four winds, the Amerinds offered their first whiffs of tobacco. Symbolism lies on the surface in a four-faced god; but just as obvious is the symbolism of many legs and arms to indicate more than usual power and in the same way the association of god and animal reverts to an obvious connection between them. It is not because an owl is a totem that to eat an owl’s eye imparts superhuman eye¬ sight in India, but because the owl (an evil night-bird in Babylonia) sees in the dark. To the Amerinds that same owl, because it sees in the dark and is of preternatural 44 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION solemnity, was a bird of wisdom even “wiser than the bea¬ ver,” Parkman says. Why, then, when the owl is associ¬ ated with Athene, must we believe that it is the original Athene? The owl was wise, hence divine, and as such associated with the wise goddess. Savage and barbarian, working out their conception of divinity, give what they can to indicate power and cleverness more than mortal. They succeed pretty well. Extra arms and feet; bull- form and goat-form for virility; wings for flight; a thou¬ sand eyes for sight, etc. To represent gods as mere men would be profane, as mere animals would be meaningless. As divine animals (and there are many such) are repre¬ sented as having human attributes, so divinities not of animal origin are represented as having that which indi¬ cates their powers. There are, however, many doubtful cases. The goddess of love could have no more fitting symbol (as pure sym¬ bol) than a pair of turtle doves; but Syrian doves were worshipped in their own right and may therefore have been associated with her, as owls were probably wor¬ shipped before they represented Athene. Yet in the light of comparative religious tendencies it is just possible that the owl itself was a mere symbol, as we find svmbols among savages. Thus the African garden-god, Orislia Oko, representing fertility with a phallic emblem, has honey-bees as messengers, a crude but natural symbol, and Aroni, a one-legged forest-god, has a dog’s head, because he is half inclined to run after those who meet him and devour them, but (as in India) if one is brave one escapes. In the same environment, the Yoruba Af¬ rican country, the sea-goddess has a scaly form and long hair (mermaid style). The lowest savages thus express ideas symbolically. There was a time when sym¬ bolism ran mad and much nonsense was said in defense thereof. Now the tide has turned and scholars hesitate to THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS 45 see symbolism anywhere. Every symbol is the relic of a lost cult or god. But really there is such a thing as reli¬ gious symbolism and we do not have to wait for the sick fancy of civilization to find it. The jackal that haunts a cemetery becomes a jackal-human god; the bull, wor¬ shipped for itself, becomes associated with a Zeus who was never a bull; but the “swift steed of the sun” was never anything but a symbol and the Lamb of God and sacred Fish do not represent animals but ideas . 5 The lamb was the sacrificial animal, but as applied to Christ it merely symbolized him as the sacrifice. So the dove of peace became a mere symbol of peace and love, though originally a goddess of maternity. Some artistic attributes remain to us as a heritage of old belief. The horns of Moses represent magical power; the halo of the saint represents the cloud surrounding divinity (rather than the protective plate over Greek statues), etc. The application of symbolism is as common outside of reli¬ gion as within; a knife beneath the pillow is for bravery; the white feather, for cowardice; honey, for sweet speech, etc. In religion, symbolism is a help and a hindrance. It provides a sign for an idea and is useful in recalling the idea. But when, instead of recalling, it replaces the idea, it becomes a menace. The witless Yogin who gazes for¬ ever at the sky, or holds the nails against the palm till the hand is pierced, is only the empty-headed conserver of noble symbols whose meaning he has lost . 6 5 The fish-symbol has been explained by Pischel as a relic of Hindu fish-worship, which is highly improbable; it is more likely to hare come from Egypt. The fish symbolizes immortality as a power oyerriding death (watery chaos). The connection with ichthys as representing Iesos Christos Theou (h)T7ios Soter (son of God, Sayior) was an ingenious utilization of the Greek word. 6 A word here as to the symbol of the cross. It represents an historical incident only. The fact that the syastika was an ancient symbol of good luck and that it sometimes appeared as a cross is a mere accident. As a 46 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION symbol the svastika was known in Egypt, common in Buddhism, and found in the Far East and in America. It is apparently not known to early India; but it is earlier than the triskelion sign and the interpretation of its two forms as right and left (or male and female) symbols seems also to be late. Elliot Smith’s idea that it was peculiarly Egyptian (thence conveyed to South America) is opposed to the fact that the svastika is found in Germany, Scandinavia, and the Swiss Lake Dwellings, as well as in Great Britain and North America. Compare R. C. Temple in the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, listed with other articles on the gvastika in the exhaustive essay of Thomas Wilson in the United States National Museum Report, 1894. The Om, sacred syllable of India, has been interpreted as a svastika by Mr. II. N. Deb (1921), on the basis of the early form of the letter O. CHAPTER IV THE WORSHIP OF ELEMENTS AND HEAVENLY PHENOMENA Long before the four or five 1 elements were recognized as snch they were worshipped as natural powers. Water is worshipped in springs and streams by the savages of Africa and a river-cult is known to the Mongolians. Water washes away evil, disease, and old age; whence arose the idea that there was somewhere a fountain of youth or of immortality, the antithesis of which later was known as the (Hindu) “river of death. ” Magically, water is like fire in that evil spirits will not cross it. Water cleanses mentally. The Mimir spring (of wisdom) in Germany; Ea, god of water and wisdom in Babylon; Varuna, the “wise” god of water in India, are illustrations. Water cleanses morally. Baptism was practiced in Babylon. Re¬ ligious use of water is prominent in the cult of the Amer¬ inds. The Creeks bathed annually, after purging and fasting, to “wash out the sins of the year.” The Califor¬ nia sweat-bath removed ill and evil (in India this is merely a physical remedy). Strength returns after the bath; power is renewed by means of the water, whose divine power is absorbed through immersion. Hence, sprinkling with water kept off evil, thought of as demon, even in the rites of Polynesians, Hindus, etc., of which general belief our Christian baptism is a final expres¬ sion, derived from Judaism. Compare the baptism of the proselyte and “bathing in Jordan.” As a divine sen¬ tient power water, like fire, will not harm the innocent. 1 In India space (aether) was a fifth element. 48 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION In early Vedic lore tlie Beas River cast out (saved) the saint Vasishtha, because he was innocent, but usually the notion is that pure water will regurgitate and, so to speak, spit out the impure man, which leads to the deadly ordeal preserved to our own day in the trial of witches. Survivals of the belief in water-purity may be found in present-day symbolism. In India, the hands are washed before a present is accepted, to show that the recipient is not taking a bribe (“to take with oiled hands” is to ac¬ cept a bribe). Mourners often avoid washing lest the death-power infecting them infect the stream. One swears by water (stream or well) and at the same time sips it or takes it into the hand. Curse-water is potent to injure; as a divine power it even dries up grain and clouds . 2 Water as the source of life and strength is the birthplace of eager desire (love is born of water) and Kama, Love, as “water-born” reflects in late Hindu mythology the Rig-Vedic declaration that desire, the seed of mind, was the first offspring of the primeval waters. Now, although advanced savage types, like the Mon¬ golians, imagine that the stream has a spirit in it, and this interpretation is of course common in the modern fancy of maids in springs, nymphs, mermaids, and the sea-god, yet the more primitive savage, like the Ainu, thinks of the stream itself as being angry and revengeful, just as hail (not a spirit of hail) is averted by a Hindu peasant’s knife, with the idea that hail itself will be afraid . 3 So the Pacific Islander’s “hymn to rain” is clearly not to any rain-demon in the downpour but to the 2 Later the curse- and ordeal-water becomes (as does fire) a mere in¬ strument in the hands of a higher divinity, as in India, the Old Testament, New England witch-trials, etc. 3 Crooke points out that the blood-sacrifice to hail is made in Kumaon today, as of old in Argolis. A rain-god may not be a god born of rain but a god who sees to it that rain comes as part of his general beneficence. THE WORSHIP OF ELEMENTS 49 physical drops; ocean is itself a fearful entity before an ocean-spirit exists. Greek Arethousa means merely the “flowing” stream till it becomes a river-goddess. A simi¬ lar form in India becomes the goddess of fluency. The Kaffirs sacrifice grain and animals to rivers as to poten¬ cies. The nymph, like the dryad, is a later phase. Water and air (wind) go together in the worship of storm-winds. Saussaye denies that wind per se was ever divine, but this is an error. Homer’s Winds are godlings. Not only as wind-spirit, but as the blowing wind itself, wind has been worshipped by Hindus and Eskimos, to give only two examples. “Hurricane” was a personified storm-wind and Yata in India was not the spirit in the wind but the wind itself personified, anthropomorphized, as was inevitable. Thunder is always taken as the voice of a god who is the storm (“"Who doubtetli Indra when he hears him thunder?”). The sweeping storm-winds called Maruts in the Veda are worshipped with Indra as raging powers, now eagles, now warriors, in poetic metaphor, but always as gods identical with the natural phenomena they really are, and also-as protecting tutelary deities to the devout, like cherubim. In this, as in similar cases, man treats phenomena as he would treat intelligent men, humors or coerces, placates or fears. If a man is drown¬ ing, to help him would be to affront the river; wise men let him drown to avoid a similar fate. This attitude is found both in cases where the river is an intelligent be¬ ing and where there is a river-spirit. The four winds rep¬ resenting space as a whole, as has already been shown, are divine powers. Fire-worship, which reached its highest point in an- / cient Persia, is part of sun-worship in Mexico and sun and fire are recognized as one even by savages, while lightning soon becomes, as in ancient India, a third in this early triad. But probably fire-worship precedes sun-wor- 50 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION ship everywhere, as it does in Rome. Magic has much to do with tire, but like water, tire is purificatory and re¬ mains in religion as well as in magic. Man must have looked on fire first as a wild animal full of dangers to man. Long before he paid any attention to sun and moon, he feared and cultivated fire, a house-friend as well as a destructive force. All over the world he built special receptacles for it and gave care to its preservation. In at least three ancient communities were instituted vestal virgins whose primary care was to tend the fire. Formal vestals were known to Romans, Peruvians, and Kelts; but also among the Damaras, a tribe so low as to be un¬ able to count above three, the chief’s daughters are set to watch the sacred fire, to which, as to rain, they offer sacrifice. The extinction of a public fire is a public ca¬ lamity and those responsible for it are slain. But if pol¬ luted or formally extinguished, as at certain seasons is the case among the Muskhogean Indians, it is solemnly relighted at a feast of first-fruits. In America, the wor¬ ship of fire and sun go together and it is sometimes im¬ possible to distinguish the two cults. The Potawotamis, “fire-makers,” for example, were devotees of both fire and sun, and kept up an undying fire worshipped as sun- fire. Fire is an excellent example of a phenomenon wor¬ shipped per se without implication of a spirit in it. Even the civilized Yedic Aryans regard the actual leaping fire as a living thing swallowing oblations, while acting also as messenger to the heavenly gods. They do not pray to a spirit of fire but to fire itself conceived in priestly fashion but still phenomenal, a divine creature instinct with life and power. Centuries afterwards, this Fire as divinity is human enough to fight battles as a warrior, dally amorously with kings’ daughters, play tricks, etc., like a Greek god, till finally he becomes a goat, a produc¬ tive, faunlike creature; for heat and love are then for- THE WORSHIP OF ELEMENTS 51 rnally recognized as liis forms, the fire of fever and of digestion being also phases of the Fire-god. Like water in that it purifies, fire becomes a moral power and finds out sinners in ordeals (walking through fire, over hot plates, etc.); it is in India the type of purity. Perhaps as coming from heaven it is especially divine, for in most mythologies, such as those of India and Greece and of the Amerinds, it is brought to man from heaven, but it does not need a heavenly origin to make it worshipful. It is not merely as “a symbol of the Supreme God” that fire speaks and is worshipped in the Avesta, but as phe¬ nomenon conceived as a divine being . 4 The worship of atmospheric and heavenly phenomena is more primitive than is often admitted. Among the Hill Tribes of India are found the personification and worship of Rainbow, who to Homer is a divine messenger but to classical Hindu mythology is Indra’s how (it is a god’s bow to the Polynesians also) or a swing. Even in the Rig-Veda a poet sings about his having mounted upon the heavenly swing. But in modern India and in Africa (Dahomey), the rainbow is a celestial snake, which has led to the suggestion that treasure found at the foot of the rainbow may be a serpent’s hoard. In the Pacific, Morileu Islands, the Rainbow is a powerful god, a fact which makes it unnecessary to imagine Iris as originally a plant. By the same token, the deification of Dawn by savages makes somewhat strained Herbert Spencer’s ex¬ planation of the Yedic Dawn-goddess as the ghost of a former Miss Dawn. In this category, the weakness of animism and ghostism (if, for clearness, the word may be pardoned) as universal solvents of religion becomes pain¬ fully apparent. No one who reads the Rig-Veda impar- 4 In the Eig-Veda, Fire is father of man, but from beginning to end of Hindu mythology he is both element and god. On his role as mediator and member of a triad (trinity), see below, chapter XVTI. ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 52 tiallv can question for a moment that Fire and Dawn and Wind were phenomenal gods from the beginning, and a wider outlook only confirms this fact. Atmospheric phe¬ nomena are worshipped all over the world in and for themselves, just as earthly objects are worshipped. Clouds and storm and rainbow and dawn are real beings to savages and as such they have life and power and volition and are deprecated, cajoled, worshipped, just as sun and stars and moon are divine powers to such savages as have anything to do with beings so remote. Not all savages, for though all are buffeted by storm it takes a certain amount of self-interest to call a savage’s atten¬ tion to the sun or moon as of any practical value to him¬ self, and all religious phenomena are fundamentally practical. Man did not sentimentalize over phenomenal powers, did not worship them as beautiful, did not care much for them one wav or another till they forced them- selves upon his attention by becoming pertinent to his life and needs; but when this happened he took steps at once to bring himself into satisfactory relationship with them. We have already seen how savages treat rain and hail, which have been discussed too logically as forms of wa¬ ter. As a matter of fact their water-nature has nothing to do with their divinity; they are worshipped as sepa¬ rate powers, fruit-giving, fruit-destroying, worshipped practically. So the Melanesians of New Guinea, who be¬ long to about the lowest stratum of savagery, venerate heavenly bodies, and in 1857 the very savage savages of Danger Island were discovered greeting the Pleiades with religious joy and feasting. The Sabaism of astrolatry has its primitive expression in the occasional worship of stars by savages because these stars are connected with their welfare, bring a harvest, or something of that sort. The Hottentots worship Dawn as bringer of day, and THE WORSHIP OF ELEMENTS 53 Night, supposed by some scholars to be merely a poetical goddess, is really revered in Bengal by natives who have not inherited the cult from the Vedas. When a savage begins to imagine his past history he is usually logical enough to derive his tribe from some substance or crea¬ ture that by evolution or propagation eventually pro¬ duced the thinker and speculator. Sometimes he specu¬ lates even on the origin of the world and gets far enough to imagine a sky and earth pair, later refined into Sky Father and Earth Mother, bnt such beings in so far as they do not affect him are negligible. This is the reason that creator-gods are not worshipped unless they keep on and do something more important to the savage of to¬ day. So, although Dyaus-Zeus-Jupiter, Father Sky, is about the only certain equation of proto-Aryan myth¬ ology, he was of no special moment in Vedic religion and became important to Greek and Homan only as he became much more than an ancestor. The reason why the Poly¬ nesian sun-god Tane became important is that from be¬ ing a mere “lord of the year,” that is, the sun as creator and timepiece of the year, he took a prominent part in regulating crops, so that he is now a god of vegetation and forests. The gods that get a certain preeminence always tend to expand thus. Unto him who has, shall be given. Tongaloa was the Polynesian god of the ocean; then, because of the affinity between the waters on the earth and those above, in rain and clouds, he became god of the sky; and then again as lord of sea and sky he be¬ came gradually not only the greatest but the highest god, “having the sun as his eye,” exactly as Varuna, god of water, became god of the sky and also had the sun as his eye. As the worship of stars may on occasion arise among savages because they are useful to him (or he thinks so, which religiously amounts to the same thing), so among 54 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION higher minds a star-cult is established on the basis of utility from two other points of view. The prior is prob¬ ably (not demonstrably) the view that stars are the souls of ancestors and as such are still actively interested in family affairs on earth. Groups of stars thus at a very early period represent fathers or seers of old; sometimes constellations are also holv animals. The more erudite •/ view is that which comes when man begins to notice the regular order of the starry host and to connect the site and movement of stars with earth and himself, born in the templum of earth under the influence of such or such a star. This attitude toward stars is not so early as popu¬ lar histories of civilization represent it. The “ Chaldeans ” and their star-cult are not important historically till the eighth century, B. C., and in Babylon divination by the liver came before that by the stars. Carried to Greece, star-cult received a fresh interpretation which swept the older pantheon into a world of strange light-bodies. Mysticism had its way among the later thinkers of the second century, B. C., till all astrolatrv became more or less a system of magic, profitable but probably not exercised wholly for profit, as the influence of the stars was (as it is still) really believed in by both the enquirer and the dispenser of astral lore. In India, the peasants generally believe that stars are the souls of people, though in ancient times they serve also as soul-worlds, that is, each soul receives a star as its home; but the prevailing belief even then was that stars are souls, and groups of stars are beasts. In the TVest, however, where worship of earthly animals had been given up, their sidereal shapes, lion, bull, fishes, formed a collection of heavenly powers, and were mythologically united with old tales, till out of this museum of natural historv twelve be- came the signs of the zodiac and even the aether in which THE WORSHIP OF ELEMENTS 55 they moved was worshipped with hymns and sacrifice. Most potent of heavenly bodies were the planets, which revived by their names the cult of Mars, Venus, etc. These planets, in turn, had each its metal, plant, and stone, potent through them, and they too were worshipped as were, at this time, the elements qua elements, which had already been deified in the East. All the lower spheres were, however, controlled by the upper; and over all reigned the power of fixed order as a determin¬ ing Fate or Necessity; through whose power cycle suc¬ ceeds cycle as a duplication of previous events (deter¬ mined by the stars). Among all these stars and planets Venus was most exalted and formed a triad with sun and moon (copied from the Babylonian cult of Ishtar with Shamash and Sin). Moon-worship is a trait of African religion and is well known in the oldest religious literature of Egypt, Baby¬ lon, and India. In some cases it is probably older than sun-worship for it belongs more to the hunting stage than to the agricultural, though the moon’s influence on plant- life is also recognized. In India, the moon is “lord of plants” because it is identified with the holy Soma-plant, but the literature of primitive agriculture teems with references to the effect of the moon on the growth of vegetables. In Deuteronomy, the moon is said to bring forth plants like the sun, but, on the other hand, the moon’s evil influence on men appears to be recognized by the Psalmist (121: 6). It is common wisdom to our farm¬ ers that one should “plant by the moon.” 5 In magic, the moon is all-important, particularly with women, who naturally pay special respect to the moon. s Compare the directions given in F. L. Pattee’s House of the Blade Bing. One must plant by the moon; everything that strikes down must be planted when the moon is going down; but ‘ 1 beans and peas and such truck must be put in when the moon is in the up. ’ ’ 56 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Women desiring children prayed to the moon and took vows on the day of the full moon in ancient India and to- day they worship the moon that their children may escape diseases, offering an oblation, and fast on new moon day. The climate has something to do with the relative value of the sun and moon. The sun is more needed in the colder Punjab than in Bengal, where the moon is more wor¬ shipped. The Dravidians worship both sun and moon, while the Khonds regard the sun as the supreme god, though the Sonthals, their relations, worship neither sun nor moon. In Central India, the Kurs set up to both gods columns carved with figures of sun and moon and treat these columns as gods. In India also, as in Southern Australia, moon-phases possess a separate divinity. In Terra del Fuego, the inhabitants desire warmth and so revere the sun, disregarding the moon; in Brazil, both are worshipped. Astrology made the “measurer” (moon) particularly revered. It divides time and in India its twenty-eight days are divided and then sub-divided, mak¬ ing holy moon-days at the “joint-days,” with intervals corresponding to our weekly divisions. Besides other rea¬ sons for revering the moon, it is, in Hindu belief, the place where the spirits of the dead go for a time; at the new and full moon they are more active. 6 But worship of the moon in India took place rather on the new moon day than on the full moon day. The magic connected with the cult of the moon as a deity of the dead may have hindered its popularity as an object of religious regard, but probably the growth in civilization had a more powerful effect. Except in astrola- try, as a product of astrology, moon-cults are of sec- 6 Our week probably represents a lunar division, though some dispute this; but see Roscher, Die Hcbdomadenlehren, pp. 31 f. On the moon-phases of Osiris, see Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, pp. 319 f. Sinai may have been named from the moon-god Sin. THE WORSHIP OF ELEMENTS r t 01 ondary importance 7 and seem to have been left in the hands of women and magicians. Soma-cult gave the moon a purely fictitious religious value in India and in Persia. In civilized communities, worship of the moon wanes rapidly and survives as a dummy for witch-practices and the silly superstitions practiced in India (drinking moon¬ beams, rubbing warts at the time of a waning moon, etc.) and elsewhere. Domestic ceremonies belong to the new moon (national celebrations at the full moon are more for light than for worship), as many of them have to do with sacrifice to the ancestors and the new moon is fateful; in India to look at the August moon brings danger of false accusations, but its fourth day is especially sacred. Even the Buddhists worshipped the new moon. 8 7 Sin, moon-god of I T r and Harran, became popular as an old Sumerian ‘ 1 lord of knowledge, ’ ’ but his powers were augmented by astrolatry, apart from which he was, like the Egyptian moon, a sailor, or boat-god, of little importance as compared with the sun; moon-cult is not prominent in the actual worship. Compare Jastrow, Aspects of Religious Belief in Baby¬ lonia ancl Assyria, p. 114. So Japan had originally an important sun-goddess and a minor male moon-deity. In China the (new) moon-goddess receives a perfunctory worship in autumn as the western deity ( i.e the new moon), antithetic to the sun-god of the east. 8 The moon is goddess in China, Greece, and Rome; god in Egypt, India, and Babylonia. Grammatical gender often determines the sex of the deity. CHAPTER V THE WORSHIP OF THE SUN Several savage tribes that worship the sun have been mentioned in connection with the cult of the moon. The worship of the sun in particular belongs to the Persians, Egyptians, Amerinds, and Dravidians, who regard the sun as a beneficent god. The ancient belief in the efficacy of going with the sun still remains with us in various un¬ considered ways, such as waiting at table and dealing cards, which really reflect a primitive usage preserved in religious rites in India and China and known among the Kelts as “walking the deazil,” that is going about a sacred object with the right hand toward it. Classical antiquity gives us little idea of the impor¬ tance of sun-worship, since neither Greek nor Roman laid any stress on it. Even in Homer a very secondary position is occupied by Helios; Apollo gets all the glory. As the Greeks imported Selene and moon-worship from the Semites (the native Greek mind regarded the moon only as of magical value), so the Romans imported the state worship of both moon and sun from the Sabines. Helios received no part of earth till Rhodos was made for him, says Pindar, and this poetical statement is not far wrong for the Aryans of Greece. In India, on the other hand, the sun was worshipped from the earliest period under one form or another and as late as the tenth century of our era there were six flourishing sects of sun-worship¬ pers, though the native cult had been developed partly under Persian influence. In Persia itself, the cult of the sun eventually gave rise to that mystic religion known as THE WORSHIP OF THE SUN 59 Mithraism, which at one time threatened the success of Christianity. In this, however, as in the Apollo-cult of Greece, there is little or no real sun-worship; a later growth obscured whatever original sun-cult existed. The sun has often been thus elevated to a new position. Even in the seventeenth century, the Mohammedan Akbar at¬ tempted to revive sun-worship, but of course to him the sun was acceptable only as a symbol. What Akbar really tried to do was to make a new religion, taking the old sun-cult as an expression of the belief in one pure god. This is not important for the history of real sun-worship. The same thing was attempted by Amen-hotep IV in Egypt, who violently introduced among his people the worship of the “disc-sun” (Aten-Ra), as a monotheistic or pantheistic improvement on polytheism, perhaps a re¬ finement of the older Southern sun-cult. Curiously enough, these attempts, which represent a personal predilection and possibly owed their inception to outside influence, are not without a parallel in America, where also the sun attained such divinity that it was taken as type of the Supreme God, though the rational¬ istic theologian who argued out such a divinity was first led to imagine a “god even higher than the sun,” be¬ cause he observed that the sun itself went to its daily task like a menial or like an inanimate arrow shot from a bow; hence there must be a lord of the menial or shooter of the arrow. This too, however, was a momentary and individual expansion of what was otherwise a com¬ plete surrender to the sun-deity, a god exalted by Mexi¬ cans and Peruvians to the highest place, as even the northern Indians almost universally worshipped the same deity. As in Babylon, so in Mexico and Peru, the worship of the sun absorbed other cults. To the Mexican god were offered the most monstrous sacrifices of human beings. The sun here was distinctly the genius of productivity, 60 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION although in Peru the cult was heightened by the political pretensions of the rulers, all of whom were of the solar race. The sun is distinctly a royal god and besides his power as fertilizer and sustainer he receives added glory as patron or ancestor of the king. So in Egypt the king is identified with Ba, in Babylon the king represents Sha- masli, and in Borne the emperor becomes an incorpora¬ tion of Sol invictus. In the Chaldean system the sun oc- cupied the central position among the seven circles of the universe; the other planets revolved about it; it was the King Sun, the heart of the world, the ruler of elements and seasons, the regulator of the stars, the chief divinity in nature, hence intelligent, not as a spirit in the sun but as being itself the mens mundi. 1 Philosophy finally sepa¬ rated the sun from reason and Christianity in the fourth century turned the day of the new sun into the birthday of Christ, while Sunday, as first day, still represents the importance given to the sun in the astrological week. Instead of becoming the recipient of bloody sacrifices, as god of productivity, the sun is sometimes regarded as a gentle creator, whose work is recognized as that of a preserver and whose cult consists in harmless offerings of vegetables, as is the case with Vishnu, whose disc and three strides betray his solar origin, but who hates bloodshed and violence; or again the sun remains, as a creator whose work is done, a god to whom it is useless to offer any sacrifice. Thus the Khonds of India sav: “In the beginning sun, the great god of light, created a wife, the earth-goddess. He is our chief god; she was the origi- nator of evil. Hence we sacrifice to her and not to him, for it is necessary to placate her alone; he is good, he need not be placated; hence he receives from us no sacrifice, i Cuinont, Astrology end Religion among the Greeks and Romans, pp. 127 f. THE WORSHIP OF THE SUN 61 but we recognize him with a spring festival in his honor.” In like manner the Oraons regard the sun as supreme god, but they do not pray to him, “because he does no harm,” while to evil spirits they make sacrifice, “to placate them.” It is for the same reason, though not generally acknowledged, that there are only one or two temples to Brahman the Creator. His work is done and man wor¬ ships the gods who are active, Vishnu as preserver, Shiva as destroyer. The fact that such savages as the Khonds worship the sun as good as well as highest god brings up the question of savage ethics. It is doubtful whether any more primi¬ tive ideas exist than those of the Bechuanas of Africa, who worship rain as a beneficent power, or those of the Abipones of Paraguay, who recognize Ananga, a power that might be called either god or devil. He is worshipped and causes sickness, but he also sends wealth. Since even the fetish is a moral power, punishing theft and adul¬ tery, it is unnecessary to argue that the power (called spirit) of the Guana Indians is not native, because he “rewards the good and punishes the wicked.” 2 The sun in particular is apt to be esteemed a moral guardian from the fact that he sees all things; nothing can be hidden from him (or he is the eye of heaven); he is watcher as well as purifier and renovator. In Egypt, the sun-god is the first moral guardian of the world. The progress in sun-worship may be illustrated by two sun-hymns found in the literature of India. The first dates back to the earliest period (though that was already civilized) and represents the sun as a material but divine body instinct with power, a measurer of time, an observer of man’s acts, also as eye of the Heaven-god: “Up now bis beams are bearing him, that everyone may see the 2 Compare d’Orbigny in his criticism of Felix de Azara, L’liomme americain (1839) and Tylor’s comments ad hoc. 62 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION sun, yon god who knows all beings well. Afar like thieves the stars withdraw before the sun, who seetli all. Wide through the world his beams are seen, like fires in all their brilliancy. Swift art thou, visible to all, maker of light art thou, 0 Sun; thou shinest through a lightsome world. Before the people of the gods thou risest up, be¬ fore all men, that everyone may see the sun, with whom, 0 pure bright Heaven, as eye, thou lookest down on busy man. Across the sky and spaces wide thou goest, meas¬ uring the days and watching generations pass. Seven yellow steeds thy chariot drag, bright-haired one, 0 far- seeing Sun. The sun has yoked his seven 3 pure steeds, the daughters of his wheeled car, and with them as his steeds he fares.” A later poet added these words: “Out of darkness we have come, looking for the highest light, the god among gods. 0 Sun, as thou risest, helper of thy friends, to the highest sky, do thou bring to naught this sickness of my heart, this jaundice.” That is, he has utilized the hymn to make a charm connecting yellow sun and yellow jaun¬ dice, but in doing so he has inserted the significant words “highest light, god among gods.” Still later, by a thou¬ sand years or so, an epic poet composed another hymn to the sun, a hymn which shows how the god has now become supreme, the light of lights physically and morally. 4 “Thou art, 0 Sun, the eye of the world, the source of all that is, the origin of all things, the refuge of the wise, the door, the resort of them that seek salvation. Thou upholdest the world in pity. The priests adore thee; the 3 Seven is an indeterminate ‘several’ but was taken literally in the seven steeds of the sun, seven fathers, seven saints, seven rivers, seven worlds, etc. See below on the triad (ch. XVII). 4 The earlier hymn is Rig-Veda 1, 50; the later is found in the Ma* habharata, III, 3. With the epithet “the door” compare the Bab. This hymn is to be repeated in conjunction with the repetition of the hundred and eight “names of the sun.” The translation omits a few verses. THE WORSHIP OF THE SUN 63 saints adore thee. Purified ones and angels and singers of heaven follow thy course. All the gods have worshipped thee, and the Seven Fathers, through worshipping thee and offering to thee the flowers of heaven , 5 obtain all their desires; as by adoring thee they [originally] obtained heaven. In all the seven worlds naught is higher than thou; no being of heaven equals thee in glory; for in thee is all light; lord of light art thou; and in thee are all the elements, in thee all knowledge and wisdom and religious ardor [heat]. Through thy energy the artizan of the gods [called all-maker] made the discus wherewith Vishnu slew the demon of darkness. Thou art thyself all-maker, as thou art the Creator. For it is thou who givest life, in summer drawing up with thy rays the moisture of earth and pouring it down again in the rainy season, giving rain, giving grain, giving life. When the thunderbolts bellow in the clouds and the clouds pour forth lights, these are thy rays, gleaming in the clouds as lightning flashes. But kind art thou. Not fire nor house nor woolen clothes warm us and comfort us as dost thou. All the earth with its thirteen continents is illuminated by thee as one [one god thou shinest on all the different lands]; one and the same art thou wherever shining; thou art the only god ever busy to do men good, and not men only but all the three worlds [earth, atmosphere, and sky]. If so be thou risest not, blind is the world forthwith; through thy grace alone can men perform their tasks. The day of Brahman the Creator lasts for a thousand ages; of that day thou art the beginning and the end; thou art lord of the lords of all the ages and aeons [lord of all time] and when at last shall come the end of that great day [time], then sprung from thee shall likewise be that fire which shall consume the world. Universal dis- 5 That is, they offer the only imaginable offering one can find in heaven. 64 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION solution will ensue and, born of thy anger against a sin¬ ful world, tire shall leap forth and there shall be naught left save that tire itself. Yet this as lightning making clouds and Hoods and storms and death more universal still shall then become twelve suns, to dry again that Hood in Hoods of Hre; but all of them art thou, all the twelve suns, as thou art all the gods, Indra, Yislmu, Brahman the Creator, Agni [fire-god] ; and not alone art thou that fire visible [Agni], but thou art the fire invisible which is thought; aye, intellectual fire, subtle intelligence, that too art thou and thou art the eternal [world-power] Brahma. 6 Pure soul, the swan, art thou, yet thou art also he-that-quickens, light, crowned god. Thou art all the names of the sun [sun under every aspect, as pure, strong, ruler, dark-killer, infinite, ineffable, eternal, etc.] ; god of light and god of right and god who makes the day; god of the seven steeds, lord of the yellow steeds, swift runner, slayer of darkness [all these are but the names of the same god], the god of gods. On the sixth day of the moon or on the seventh day, whoso worships thee shall obtain thy grace, and thy grace shall give him good fortune. Blessed are thy worshippers, for they shall be free from danger, free from pain, free from all afflic¬ tion ; long shall they live and abide in good health who be¬ lieve in thee as the soul of the world. 0 Lord of suste¬ nance, give us today our food. I bow to thee and to the red runner, the god Aruna, who redly runs before thee, thy servant, my lord; I bow to thy rod [the rod of punish¬ ment] ; I bow to thy bolt, the lightning; to all the saints who follow thee and take refuge in thee, unto these also I bow. Oh, deliver me, who am thy suppliant. ” When this sun-god desires to have human progeny he mystically touches the pure daughter of royal race chosen for this honor and she conceives in purity unblemished, e Xeuter Brahma, the Absolute, not the masculine Brahman, Creator. THE WORSHIP OF THE SUN 65 so that she still remains a virgin, 7 and bears a son. But the babe is put into a box and floats away upon the river till in good time he is rescued by a deserving man and grows up a demi-god yet earthly hero. In such wise men trace their descent from the gods. From the time of the Rig-Veda the sun was emblematic of supreme godhead; in the Upanishads, God is the “sun that all shines after”; in philosophy, the sun is typical of God. It is not then foreign to Hindu thought when the beings “of endless light” appear in Buddhism, though some scholars seek to derive them from Persia. As the sun marks the seasons and the years, lie be¬ comes typical of the regular succession of events. This leads to the conception of an established order in the uni¬ verse and the sun may then become the leading Power, the planet around which (whom) and through the power of which the world revolves and is. Such was the King Sun in the Chaldean system and such was the conception un¬ derlying the heresy of Amen-liotep IV. But the idea of an Order governing the universe is elsewhere connected rather with the Sky as a whole than with the sun-god. Sky as personified Heaven and Supreme Lord thus be¬ comes the exemplar of the divine Order called the Way in China and is regarded as the physical and moral sup¬ port of the universe. In India, Varuna, “the wise god,” is Heaven thus personified as king of unswerving rule, beside whom and dimly looming in the background lies Right Order, which, not at first but before the end of the Rig-Veda, was also personified. Thus Right Order, Rita, was originally a priestly conception and connoted the sacrificial order of the seasons but was then extended to embrace the whole order of the world as a moral order, not merely an orderly succession of events. Probablv the 7 Virgin birth is attributed also to Zoroaster, whose mother conceived him immaculately (in the strict sense), and in later tradition to Buddha. 66 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION very first notion of seasonal regularity came with the establishment of rites to mark seed-time and harvest, from which eventually grew up the conception of a world ordered morally as well as physically, and it was as “eye” of this moral power that the all-seeing Sun en¬ hanced this conception on the moral side. A similar Power of Order appears in the person of the Egyptian goddess Maat. In all these early but already civilized communities the idea of right is fundamentally based on the concep¬ tion of conformity to the underlying harmony of life, agreement with the great motiv of existence, and religion is thus an attempt to bring man into concord with eter¬ nal divine law. It is on a grander scale the same motive as that which in his narrow intellectual environment makes the savage obey the law of the little world he knows; he feels intuitively that he must be in harmony with the conditions of his outer life and that, as he must conform to the law of the tribe in order to live well, so he must conform to the laws of the spiritual forces en¬ circling him. CHAPTER VI THE WORSHIP OF MAN Our line between man and beast is drawn with a view to certain suppositions, such as that man has language, reason, or soul, and the beast lacks these human attri¬ butes ; but a savage is not troubled with such modern ideas and to him a beast has language, reason, and soul just as a man has. Again, we make a distinction between men and gods; gods have immortality and more than human powers and attributes. But a savage thinks that a man who has more than human powers is a sort of god and he judges human powers by his own norm, while attributes such as immortality do not appear to him to be especially divine. In short, he makes no very clear categories of beast, man, and god and in consequence his worship of one is that of the others; it is not worship in the sense of implied recognition of unliuman divinity, but rather the profound respect suitable in the presence of a spiritual power vastly superior to that of the wmrshipper, yet equally appropriate to beast, man, and god. Hence even today in India the word worship, puja, is applied to all three, sometimes to the horror of the missionary, who thinks puja is worship in his own limited sense. All ex¬ traordinary creatures are mysterious, and what is mys¬ terious is to be feared, and what is feared is either shunned or honored, worshipped. This rule applied to man works out very simply among savages and semi-civilized peoples. In some savage tribes, twins, extraordinary and mysterious, are regarded as unlucky, in some as lucky, and they are either exposed ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION (is to die or receive unusual honor in consequence, an ob¬ servance approaching worship, but not identical. But albinos and poets and crazy people, being still more re¬ markable, are apt to be revered as quite unliuman, quasi divine beings, spiritually as physically superhuman. Especially priests, being in touch with the spiritual world, and kings, having superhuman power, are objects of a respectful regard that is not differentiated from that paid to gods; they are really worshipped. The Roman emperor, called divine, was only the successor of a series of kings and priests who were gods to their Eastern sub¬ jects, as after his day lived the king-gods of Mexico and Peru and even today the masses of India recognize the emperor of India as a divinity. The peasants of Poly¬ nesia, of Russia, of the Orient generally and the em¬ perors of Europe have still believed till lately that there’s a divinity doth hedge a king, perhaps because it is a di¬ vinity of a more striking sort, so to speak, than is usually found on earth. According to all Hindu scriptures a king is “compounded of gods” and a priest is “a god on earth.” In Egypt the king was identified with the sun-god or was the son of the sun. In Babylonia the king was divine per se till in later times, with the increase in Semitic power, he lost divinity but became representative of the divine, the Semites as a race never having admitted the divinity of man except as totemism may have implied a divine brotherhood between man and a superhuman ani¬ mal god. In rare cases a priest becomes a king, as when the high-priest of Tibet becomes the temporal ruler, but the theory that kings were originally priests, in Baby¬ lonia and elsewhere, is as a general statement a per¬ version of history and of existing facts. The chief of a tribe in most combative communities becomes its head not as priest but as warrior, and the medicine man or priest has his separate part, as with our Indians, the THE WORSHIP OF MAN 69 Hindus, the Greeks, Romans, etc. Power over the lives of his people gives the king his divine superhumanity; power over spiritual powers gives the priest his influ¬ ence and exalts him into a superior being. The living chiefs of African tribes, like American sachems, are not worshipped as priests, but they maintain their power by strength and violence, and in Africa, as in Polynesia, they are invested with a sacred character, which in the latter case leads to taboos similar to but stricter than those sur¬ rounding the priests of Greece and Rome. Probably the earliest superhuman humans were those who were “possessed” 1 by a spirit; they through com¬ munion with the spirit themselves possessed extraor¬ dinary spirituality, which, as in the case of the Micro- nesian Ululia (“entered” and so “possessed”), makes one feared as having supernatural power. But creatures of this sort, whose more familiar form is that of the re¬ ligious lunatic, the howling dervish, the mantic madman, the dancing ecstatic prophet, are only the first phase of development. The priest who is god on earth must have more than this temporary conjunction with divinity; he must become the permanent representative of the divine and not only his wild utterances but his sober and con- sidered speech and action must be those of the divinity with which he is imbued. Such is the Guru or religious chief of the Hindu sects; such service is given to him as to the gods; he is in reality to his own sect what the Brahman priesthood claimed to be as a whole, divinity on earth. Then come those kings whose acts of beneficence or power made them, in story, more than human. We may doubt whether they were men receiving divine honors, 1 Possession is where a spirit rules a mind, as distinct from obsession, where, as in the case of an incubus or succubus, a malicious spirit rules or enslaves a human body. 70 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION but the after age regarded them as men who were gods while still alive, Rama and Krishna and gods of this ilk. The divinity of the Chinese emperor is not of this sort, but rather he is divine because he is chosen as the highest incorporation of the Way, the representative of the Su¬ preme Lord of Heaven. But in a god-fearing and god-seeking country any ac¬ cident may make a man a god or godling, as it may make him one of the semi-divine heroes of the land. Only lately an American was thus canonized in Japan. In India, Nicholas, the hero of Delhi, was a god to his followers, who would have worshipped him had he not forbidden them to do so. Not a century ago a tramp came to a Hindu village and fell asleep at a deserted shrine. When the vil¬ lagers awoke they found him there asleep. Nothing could persuade them that he was not the god returned. He in turn awoke to find himself the object of worship; food, drink, attendance, reverence, all were his. Alarmed at first he protested that he was only a poor villager like them¬ selves. But they would not believe him; rather they be¬ lieved in him and he, finding the post an easy one, re¬ mained there ever afterwards and lived and died a god. Moreover every true Hindu wife is like Eve and “she for God in him” represents her attitude toward her hus¬ band, to whom she makes offerings, and whom she wor¬ ships as her divinity. This is no phrase, and though this attitude is enjoined upon her by divine (inspired) law it is not as a merely legal injunction that she regards it. It is her delight thus to deify her husband. When she rises in the morning she worships first of all the sun and afterwards the tulsi plant and a pipal tree; then she does obeisance to her husband and in particular worships his big toe, bathing and anointing it and offering to her hus¬ band incense, as she would to any other god. In circumstances where gods are produced so easily THE WORSHIP OF MAN 71 and the gods of the sky are also intimate with men, there spring np the demi-gods, half divine, half human. Such demi-gods are not all mythological; they are at times the offspring of human mothers or fathers and their clever¬ ness or power leads their contemporaries or descendants to ascribe to them one parent who is more than human. Sons of gods by human mothers are of course more com¬ mon than sons of goddesses by human fathers. The father¬ hood of a child was uncertain. But the divine man does not even now require a divine parent. Extraordinary powers, especially spiritual, prove divinity to the credulous East. Chunder Sen, only a few decades ago, was merely a popu¬ lar excitable Hindu preacher; but his congregation adored him literally and he ended by believing himself adorable, not only inspired but divine. In Persia also, in the last century, the Bab was taken as incarnate God; though Zoroaster and Mohammed through their own teachings repressed this tendency and became not divine but merely more than human, men filled with divine inspiration and power. Apotheosis depends largely on the definition of the word god; sometimes it connotes only a superman. A “sacrifice to gods having human nature” is formally recognized by orthodox Hindus, and the Puranas tell the history of men who became gods, though such cases al¬ ways refer to the past and today it is doubtful whether the gods mentioned were ever men at all. The phase of temporary divinity must also be noticed. In savage cults, the wolf-man as wolf-worshipper not only represents the god, he is the god, the very wolf-god he portrays with his mask; but when he removes the mask he becomes mere man again. So in the Tantric rites, the divine essence converts for a night an ordinary woman into a goddess, as in less degree a common man becomes a temporary prophet, filled with divine power, a sort of god. A fetish is a temporary divinity and the plant substi- ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 72 tuted for Soma (when this is impossible to get) is, for the occasion, mystically converted by the priest into the divinity (Soma), so that the worshippers believe that in partaking thereof they have become partakers of the real substance of divinity. %/ But it makes a difference whether a man is alive or dead. When the poor African said, “My chieftain is my god, for I fear him more than all,” he worshipped a liv¬ ing man-god. But the worship of Buddha is not quite wor¬ ship of man, but of a figure originally not a god but only superhuman, a figure imagined of fictitious value, not representing divinity till long after Buddha the man had ceased to live. Again, as the Absolute, Buddha is a philo¬ sophical abstraction, not a case of man-worship. So the worship of ancestors is not precisely the same as the wor¬ ship of living men. The dead ancestor is no longer a man. CHAPTER VII THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS Historically, man worshipped first and enquired later what he was worshipping; so we may leave the enquiry as to what is implied by the phenomena of ancestor-worship till we have examined the phenomena themselves. The worship of ancestors is the worship not of ghosts in gen¬ eral but of a restricted band of ghosts, which in turn is only one band among other bands of spirits. Dead men who have become gods are not deified qua ancestors but as heroes, kings, sages, ancestral by repute to the clan or tribe, Romulus, Confucius, nowadays Shivaji, and the like, not actual ancestors worshipped by one family. As gods become men (in the Kalevala and Persian epic; cf. Gen. 6:4), so men may become spirits as a class apart from disease-spirits and nature-spirits. In Africa we find communities where ghosts are in general feared, but less than gods, and within the band of ghosts the ancestral ghosts have a special cult. In Micronesia, popular con¬ sciousness discriminates between other spirits and ghosts and between general and family ghosts. Here Li Raba is Famine, Uota is a conical rock-spirit in the sea, revered, as were stones in Arabia; but neither of these is a ghost. So Saritou is a spirit that cooks the dead ghosts but is not himself a ghost. The only real ancestral ghost is the one fed for a time by a special family, but he is never wor¬ shipped till he becomes so vague that he merely makes one of a group of Fathers, worshipped with other family ghosts in the same way, a general host of tribal powers remembered only en masse as protective genii, different 71 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION from gods and other spirits, who may be diseases per¬ sonified or ghosts of discontented and malicious nature that torment men. But when, as in Babylonia, all spirits are malicious, disease-bringing devils, it is not certain whether they are in any one case ghosts or personified diseases, as both groups have the same character, in op¬ position to the friendly gods. Thus a specified disease or pain is clearly not a ghost, but ghosts are clearly intended to be included in exorcisms against devils bringing distress and disease. On the other hand, ghosts as good, protecting spiritual powers are not gods. In Polynesia, ghosts have one cult; gods, another. The Australians have common ghosts and ancestral ghosts, who are not gods, but besides these they fear other spiritual powers not of the ghost-class and in particular recognize a non-ghostly creator-god. The lowest Philippine savage in the same way puts the ghost into one category and the creator-god into another. But human memory is frail and fallible and what may happen is that a vague remote tribal ancestor becomes so great in tribal esteem that he is to later gen¬ erations a general spiritual power, perhaps in the guise of a culture-hero who is no longer thought of as a former man but as an omnipotent power; yet such a development is problematical in most concrete instances and the usual rule is that the ancestor in some form, perhaps not hu¬ man, is thought of as having created the world or the gods and as such is respectfully spoken of rather than worshipped, as was the case with Unkulunkula, whose “divinity” was an invention of the missionaries, as Bishop Callaway said. 1 The family feeds its dead, but other people pay no at¬ tention to them unless they become malignant. The excep¬ tions are the rare ghosts that have been great kings or heroes, such as Tammuz and Gilgamesh (now known to i Callawav, UnkulunTcula, p. 124 (1868). THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 75 have been kings). The only ghost of a common sort that is treated with kindly consideration is the relative, in par¬ ticular the defunct father of a family. For such a ghost most races, so long as they think he is near, do something, feed him, entreat him to be kind, or at least pay him the courtesy of asking him to be content and go away. This last is the earlier attention paid to ghosts in general, a rit¬ ual on stated occasions. Yet the family ghost in many hun¬ dred tribes is not asked to depart, but to remain; he is regarded as being still a kind father interested in his off¬ spring and desirous of aiding their welfare. That there is a ghost, that something survives, is implied as primi¬ tive belief by the practice of burying implements, toys, horses, wives, etc., with the dead and sending the soul down a stream or over water in a boat (as do the Afri¬ cans and as did the Scandinavians). Just how the ghost is treated depends on the dead (probably) and on the tribal disposition. The apotropaic method of treatment is found, it is true, in many tribes, but in about as many more the relatives seek to keep the dead with them as a tutelary genius. If elsewhere dread prompts the noise and beating which drives away the ghost, the picture can be offset by that of the mother giving her dead babe a few drops from her breast and by the first rites of Amerinds, Africans, and Dravidians when they feed the dead. Thus the (Dra- vidian) Gasiyas of Mirzapur invite the deceased with the words: “Accept this offering of fowl; sit in the corner and bless your offspring.” An ancestral ghost “is often the best friend of the cultivator and of the peasant pro¬ prietor too, if he treats him with proper respect.” 2 The Yedic Aryans “put a stone between themselves and death” in the burial ritual; but this was only to keep the infection of death from spreading back to the village. 2 Crooke, op. cit., I, pp. 176, 182. 76 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION For the dead and buried man they had only a kindly feel- ing, a conviction that though “gone before” (the San¬ skrit designation of the ghost) he would return to dine with them once a month at the feast in honor of the still living dead. Many Amerinds showed for ghosts affection rather than fear. 3 The Veddas deemed the family ghost a friendly spirit eager to help. To sacrifice human beings at a funeral is to serve the dead with attendants, etc. Even to eat the dead is a mark of esteem and sometimes of love. Thus the African mother eats her babe to keep its ghost with her; it is a mark of real affection. Even as late as the time of Zoroastrian mythology the same idea appears. The first man and woman devoured their first children because they loved them to excess. 4 The dread of the ghost comes largely from the belief that whether well disposed or not, it needs a body and may occupy the mourner’s as a new habitation. Hence the danger of eating and yawning before the ghost is settled. Fasting here is an act of self-preservation not of puri¬ fication. Sneezing is lucky because it shows that one has evicted an undesirable would-be tenant. But in Africa it indicates that the owner’s soul is suffering and hence he is greeted with a local prosit. The Hindus thought sneez¬ ing lucky. 6 To protect openings through which a ghost may slip, ears and noses are be-ringed. Bells too are rung to keep off the dead, which may have been the first use of s The food for the dead does not necessarily imply desire to content and so dismiss the ghost, since it is often bidden to remain in its old home. Sometimes an image or a sort of cage of hair is hung up for it to enter, thinking it has a new body; for ghosts are easily tricked. This is not due to affection, however, but to fear lest the ghost enter a human body; yet it shows that the ghost is still a kindly neighbor. 4 On the Veddas of Ceylon and the Africans, see C. G. Seligman, Notes on the Veddas (1908) and The Veddas (1911); J. V 7 . V f ilson, Western Africa; Nassau, Fetichism; and Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 159. 5 Ellis, op. cit. p. 203; Warren, Proc. Am. Or. Soc., 1885, May, p. xvii. THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 77 temple bells and gongs. The bell, because it frightens ghosts, has itself become a godling to the Gonds, as iron has become a godling among the Agarias, partly because iron scares ghosts and partly because the Agarias, smelting iron, look on it as a divinity in that it gives them their livelihood. Many practices survive showing the desire to ward oft spirits and ghosts. So the circular motion of the ring is imitated in waving hands and fire¬ brands (the Hindu epic says especially that these must be “waved in a circle”); then comes the waving motion for itself, in banners on temples; the curve of the iron horseshoe, which is twice potent to “bring luck” (i.e., avert ill) in India and England; and the waving of salt and mustard (in India used especially to avert the evil eye). Ghosts and all spirits are frightened by red (blood) in many countries; in India also by black, white, and yel¬ low; hence the wide use of tumeric and white as mourn¬ ing (suggested first by death pallor), as in China and Australia. The victim’s color is white at the sacrifices of human beings, in Ashanti, where the mourner’s color is red. In India, grain is offered to ghosts (at funerals) as well as to other spirits, as a means of satisfying both spirits and ghosts and so indirectly as a means of keeping them away. In Africa, the same sort of offering is made but before the spirit declares its own attitude as benefi¬ cent or malignant ; it is an attempt to ingratiate one¬ self with a doubtful power. If the spirit be naturally kind, the offering will keep it contented; if naturally malig¬ nant, it will appease. In general, rice or other grain is used not as a “symbol of fruitfulness,” as it has been in¬ terpreted in the wedding-ceremony in India and else¬ where, but as a spirit-offering of this sort. This is proved by the fact that in India it is used not only at weddings but also at funerals; and when a man returns from a journey he passes a stone seven times around his child’s 78 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Read and throws rice around the child, which can be only to keep off infection (evil influence or spirit) liable to be carried by the traveller. Moreover, the grain at the wed¬ ding is parched, which it would not be if it were a symbol of fruitfulness. But it is true that there has arisen a gen¬ eral feeling that grain is a blessing-bringer (like salt, a preservative and hence lucky), and when in India one decorates a pole with seven kinds of grain and elevates it in the barnyard, it is probably with a very remote no¬ tion of ghosts; a sense that it is lucky is all that remains. The religious proceeding with the ghost is logically like that in the case of savage gods. When the god Pambi sends a drought upon the Manganjas, the priestess of this god offers him a handful of grain, crying out, “ En¬ joy this grain and then hear our prayer/’ at the same time offering the god a libation of beer and flinging wa¬ ter into the air, with the usual naive combination of reli¬ gious petition and magical science which appears in the ritual of the Australian, who seeks magically to control, while he religiously entreats the grain-power. Ghosts that are not wanted about a house at all are in¬ differently ancestral or not. These comprise such com¬ mon ghosts as the Hindu Dund or Headless Horseman, a torso lacking funeral rites, the Australian Ulthana, the Airi or Wild Huntsman (ghost of a slain hunter); grave¬ yard ghosts of the unappeased, called in India Smasans or Masans and by false etymology regarded as “devour- ers” (really ‘‘graveyarders”), like Lemures. The Tolas are Hindu will-of-the-wisps, though not always ghosts. They may serve as types of those spirits of which only a dogmatist would assert that they were certainly ghosts or certainly nature-spirits. Any one such phenomenon might be either, according to circumstances. If a mur¬ derer has recently been executed, it is probably his ghost. Ordinarily it is a marsh-spirit. THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 79 The apotropaic rites are thus, in general, rites to keep off malignant influences, whether ghostly or animistic. From the ritual it is usually impossible to decide the genesis of the evil influence. But that is no argument against the fact that ghosts are not in primitive thought identical with nature-spirits. The usual attitude of the savage is that there are numberless influences, some ghostly, some not of human origin, all of which may he offensive; and that ghosts are mainly a nuisance in try¬ ing to get hack into human bodies; but that, again, among the ghosts one’s own family ghosts are not naturally malevolent. So in a wider sense, the hero-ghost belongs not to one family but to a tribe and he lives a life of beneficence, helping the tribe by oracular advice and otherwise, sometimes appearing visibly in battle to aid them, etc. Such an exalted ghost receives worship; but the ordinary feeding of a family ghost is not worship at all. Both family affection and tribal reverence, as has been shown, make welcome guests of ghosts who are kin. There is no general rule, but fear is obviously not always the motive shown. Our Indian widows used to make regular pilgrimages to the skulls 6 of their dead and weep over them as sincerely as a formal custom permitted, yet the custom itself was evidence of a kindly affection rather than of fear. On the other hand, any ghost of a man mur¬ dered or cut off untimely might well be conceived as un¬ friendly. Sometimes the cult of ancestors in general, good or bad, rises to the dignity of a state religion, as in Ashanti and Dahomey. A feast for the dead implies only that the dead re¬ ceive food from the living; as with the family ghost, it is not an act of worship. The idea of feeding the dead still s The Romans also kept the skull, afterwards in effigy, as the most vital part of the corpse, perhaps as the seat of the mind or soul, a Semitic view. 80 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION lingers in drinking to the memory of the dead, originally a libation for the dead to consume. Real worship of ghosts among savages is not particularly primitive nor is the custom by any means universal. The Amerinds rarely worshipped the dead at all, never generally; the Austra¬ lians have only a rudimentary cult of the dead, scarcely more than a care for the dead body, a few simple acts to show that the ghost is not forgotten and exhortations to it to go away. The more advanced peoples in the same race show the more honor to the dead. Thus the Melane¬ sians and Micronesians have more cult of ghosts than the less advanced Polynesians; but even among the Microne¬ sians it was only chieftains whose ghosts were really worshipped. But most civilized peoples have gone through and sur¬ passed this cult by idealizing the ghosts as heroes or giving up gliost-worship altogether. Yet ghost-cult has left little if any trace among the Babylonians, where spirits are malicious rather than kind. One hero is deified without dying, so that he is really not a ghost, and kings are called divine as well before as after death. In gen¬ eral, there was no Semitic cult of ancestors, only avoid¬ ance of ghosts. Babylonian ghosts live in a soul-prison whence there is no escape. Marduk only revivifies those who are deathly sick, and only a goddess, Ishtar, is actu¬ ally raised from the under-world, when sprinkled with the water of life. There is no real ghost-worship in Babylon, only a libation-cult, which is no more than a sort of all¬ souls remembrance of the dead. Biblical passages as to offering food to the dead reveal that the practice is con¬ sidered wrong (Dent. 26:14, food; Num. 6:18, Nazarite; hair may have been an offering of strength). Like the Babylonian hero, Enoch is translated and Elijah is car¬ ried to heaven without going to Slieol, but ordinarily no such divine fate is for the ghost, and the whole trend of THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 81 Hebrew worship opposed such a cult. Heroes had no cult, though the dead were consulted. Between Hebrew and Babylonian stood the Persian worshipper of Fravasliis, good ghosts changed into protective spirits, who, like the Hindu Fathers, appear in bird-form and later are iden¬ tified with star-spirits. Enough of this Persian view has survived among the Armenians to make them believe that the dead dwell for three days by the tomb and they keep up the observance of the dead by feasting at the tomb once a week and on certain yearly occasions. 7 Among other Aryans the Kelts may have held a vague belief in metempsychosis and possibly had ancestor-worship. The Romans worshipped no ghosts, not even heroes, except in rare cases, and had no belief in the continued individ¬ ual existence of souls. They believed in an angry ghost, active till appeased, but thought that a dead man joined the indiscriminate group of Di Manes and thus, as a corporation, all souls after a fashion became a sort of divine throng, a family group of inferior godlings, whose “worship” consisted in seeing to it that they remained underground where they belonged, a ceremony called Lemuria, to drive them away. There was also a later ceremony to propitiate them, which treats the Fathers in a more kindly spirit. But in neither case was there the intimate relation which existed between living and dead in Greece, where the evil ghost came back to haunt and the good to give advice and was honored as hero, just as in India today, where the Vir (Latin vir) is such a hero, when indeed he is not confused with the Mohammedan Pir (saint), which often happens. Such a Vir is an an¬ cestor so honored that he receives worship even from those not of his own family. In some regards the Roman belief resembled that of the Semite and Egyptian, who also did not worship or 7 Abeghian, Armenischer YoOcsglauVe (1899). 82 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION think of the dead as important to his own life; but ex¬ pended care on the dead man to keep him safely away, with that fear of the ghost which must be distinguished from ghost-worship. Probably in early Egyptian belief only kings were fortunate enough to live hereafter. Such a distinction is common among savages; it excludes the possibility of general ghost-worship. The condition of the ghost in the next life requires the family’s care, first to provide it with its usual para¬ phernalia, weapons, implements, food, drink, wife, slaves, and other objects and persons, whose remains are found in the earliest graves, and second, to provide it with a proper body. The Kelts thought it went on living just the same as in life, with the same body and the same interests and financial obligations, but the Hindus and Egyptians by magical formulas “made a body” for it, the Hindus taking nine plus one days to “restore the eyes” and other parts. In modern usage something remains of this care of the dead in Purim and All-Souls’ Hay and in fu¬ neral flowers; something also of the desire to avoid or get rid of the dead, in the “wake” and in opening the windows after a death; among some half-civilized peo¬ ple ghosts are still attracted by honey, probably used like hair and pitch as a sort of flypaper to catch and keep the ghost. Calling up ghosts as oracles, necromancy, still obtains among the deluded and ignorant. 8 Aristocratic ghosts usually had a special home, a Valhalla or Elysium, but the common mass went underground to a pit, the grave, and then slept, or followed the sun to darkness in the "West (as in Babylon, Greece, and India). Probably the earliest idea was that the soul lingered in its own home, where it was buried (the Lares are home-keeping ghosts), then, when burial was in the outside ground, s Necromancy may have been introduced among the Aryans (Homer, etc.) from the Semites. See L. B. Paton, Spiritism, p. ]50. THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 83 that it lived alone in the earth; then with others in an assembly underground; finally as a shade it sought the West as the place of vanished light; but, when the body was cremated, the distinguished soul went up with the fire and smoke to a higher region. In their tombs the ghosts of Rome still guarded the roads leading to the city, as they still cry in epitaphs to the passer-by for consideration and flowers. Our masses for the dead still echo the benedictions and offerings of antiquity, as our winter wreaths outside the window (sometimes negli¬ gently hung inside) offer the ghosts a refuge from cold and our Yule log still burns to warm them, as fires in Ireland were lighted in the fields for that purpose. While ghosts are physically weak they are also, as shad¬ owy, tenuous, windy substances, very swift and able to pass through matter, but their intellectual power seems to be confined to foresight and oracular wisdom. In Egypt they mediate between man and gods, recommending to the latter such men as give the ghosts food and prayers. In Hebrew belief the ghosts (ancestors) were originally conscious and potent powers, though not divine; but the prophets “cut the root of ancestor-worship by denying the conscious existence of the dead.” 9 Ghost-worship has been preserved as ancestor-worship by the Mongolians and reaches its height in the elabo¬ rate ritual of the Chinese cult, in which the chief fea¬ ture is worship of the fathers of the family. The nature- cult of the Sky-god or Heaven was amalgamated with it by assuming that the emperor’s ancestor was the Su¬ preme God Heaven, and when ancestor-worship was car¬ ried into Japan it there also throve at the expense of Shintoism, which, contrary to common opinion, is not a cult of ancestors. The stages leading up to this racial exaltation of ghosts are to be found in the Mongolian 9 Paton, op. cit., p. 270. 84 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION savages who practice Shamanism in its crudest form. These inhabitants of the wild regions of Eastern Europe and Siberia regard ancestors as great powers apart from the gods. They both minister to the needs of these great powers and utilize them as the really active agen¬ cies in the spiritual world. The Tunguse, for example, are first and foremost ancestor-worshippers. As a form only they ask the great god for rain, but the petition is really directed to the ancestors: often the formality of asking the god is ignored altogether. The lowest gods alone can be directly approached by men and they only through the Somo or dead ancestors, who in turn can be influenced only through the Shaman priest, an individual whose priestly power is not inherited but inborn. A family may be Shamanistic but not necessarilv so, for each son in turn must prove by ecstatic performances that he can control the ghosts. When approved, the Shaman visits, on the soul of a sacrificed horse, either heaven or hell and procures what is sought from the ancestral ghosts, who in turn control the gods and devils, living- above and below, as do the ghosts. But merely to drive ghosts away no great formality (such as the horse-sacri¬ fice) is needed. In the preceding pages gods have been derived from various sources and it has been shown that they begin generally with spirits of a neutral character and disposi¬ tion, who develop into gods of more marked personality and nature. No very great or supreme god, however, has risen from an ancestral ghost. Objective natural phe¬ nomena (sun, storm, etc.) or natural processes personi¬ fied (seasonal change, order) have been thus exalted, sometimes as good, sometimes as evil. Little devils are sometimes ghosts and sometimes natural objects or pro¬ cesses (diseases). Moreover, a great god is never a de- THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 85 partmental god solely. He may begin as sun or storm or agricultural spirit, but as lie becomes greater lie assimi¬ lates other functions and ends by becoming master of all and general ruler, adapting himself to an expanding so¬ cial or tribal expansion. Now in many cases when a god is first discovered it is after he has passed through such an experience and consequently it is difficult to analyze his character with sufficient certitude; he may have begun as a god of storm or sun-god or tree-god, and from being the commanding figure, as tree-god or sun-god, gone on to embrace other provinces, as the sun-god in India and the moon-god in Ur, or as the water-god in both India and Babylonia became more than they were originally. On the other hand, and this is more important because it has been more disregarded, a small community may have a protecting spirit of a general character (compare Mars, for war and agriculture), like the village-gods in India, who are not apparently ghosts and yet are not markedly identified with any special natural phenomenon, as in Champa the “Lady of the City” is the local goddess, like Athena. 10 They are the local godlings to whom the villagers pray and sacrifice and who exercise a general superintendence of the community, helping it, punishing it, of no account outside the community, bound up with it, expressing it. As such a community expands, it carries its communitv-god with it as a war-fetisli, as a harvest- god, as a general spiritual sustainer, till in time it be¬ comes a great god of a great people. If a god of this sort is the protector of a littoral community, it is apt to be re¬ garded as a water-god, because the people are more con- 10 The “Lady of the City’* is formally identified with “Shiva’s wife/’ but she is originally a sort of Belit, representing a place, a local Champa (Annam) mother-goddess, of no origin except that she personifies the local (people’s) spiritual life objective in their home, something like “America” in a semi-civilized form, a spiritualized ‘ 1 My Country, ’tis of Thee. ’ ’ 86 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION cerned with water than with tillage; if inland, a liunter- god or farmer-god; but this is only the most obvious side. All the time it is the god, the god of the tribe, and turns as the tribe turns, grows with it. In the end it becomes the Father of the people; not as an ancestral ghost but as protector and guardian and giver of sustenance and aid. It is, however, at all times identified with the people’s in¬ terest. Such a spirit may of course be a Mother, and many of the Hindu godlings come under this head; but no Hindu Mother becomes a war-god and in general most of the mother-gods remain local unless expanded as earth-mothers or goddesses of love. Different communi¬ ties differ in regard to the strictness with which gods of an expanding nature are held to their first concern. Con¬ sequently, some races develop gods more departmental than others. Other races tend to let the departmental side lapse and keep the god as general guardian. So the Sem¬ ites credited their gods with local concern but attributed to them a general power and oversight out of all relation to the conception of them as water-god, sun-god, or moon- god. On the other hand, Aryan communities generally confined their clan-gods to special departments par ex¬ cellence but granted them over and above their special concern a wide general supervision, so that while Indra is chiefly a storm-god like Hadad he gradually becomes a god-of-all-work and even acts as a sun-god; and Varuna (like Ea) becomes a heaven-god (of sky-waters) and gen¬ eral guardian of ethics. So the pre-Aztec Tlaloc, god of fertility, became a sun-god. In Mexico, as in Greece, the previous local goddesses of fertility were made to marry the conquerors’ (Aztec) gods. In Peru, the great god of the seacoast was a .sea-god, that is, the sea-god becomes the great god of the littoral, as inland the sun and lake be¬ come the great gods; but in all these cases the gods rose far above their original limitations and natural func- THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS 87 tions. In India, Rama and Krishna may have been deified heroes, hut they were certainly not revered as ancestors, nor was Ishtar worshipped as a family ghost even if she was originally a human queen. To sum up, a dead person may become a god, but a great god is not worshipped as ancestor, and the ancestor qua ancestor is less likely to become a clan-god than is the hero or culture-spirit, who belongs to the clan or people not as an ancestor but as an adopted child. A god, finally, is often called grandfather, for respect, without intent to ascribe fatherhood. Thus the Amerinds whose totem is the fox have a cult of the owl, which, according to their own legend, conceived af¬ fection for them, and taught them to revere him, call him Grandfather, and dance and sing in his honor. We have now passed in review most of the material of which gods have been made. Yet stones, trees, mountains, rivers, stars, sun, animals, and men, living and dead, do not exhaust the interminable list. In one small community of India are worshipped the “mother-goddess of the threshing-floor,” Sodal Mata; the goddess of roads and steeps, Telia, to whom are offered libations of oil; a dei¬ fied tree, Anjan Dea; the goddess of smallpox, Sitala (re¬ vered with heaps of stones, to resemble pustules); Bhulat, a cowherd, probably an historical person, and Singaja, a man who lived three hundred years ago and is now a god remembered with an annual fair at his tomb in September; and besides all these and the usual gods of a fairly large pantheon, reverence is paid to a god called “Fifty-Six,” Chappan Deo, who represents “the largest number of places to which a lost wife or child may have strayed” and is worshipped as a real divinity. 11 11 Nimar District Gazetteer, p. 59. The little settlement was once a Jain community. CHAPTER VIII RELIGIOUS STIMULI That the outer form of religion is more or less shaped by outer factors is easily shown and has already been il¬ lustrated. Thus, to give a few obvious examples, the rea¬ son why there is no cult of agricultural spirits in Kam¬ chatka is that there is no agriculture there; the reason why East-Wind was a god in South America and is today a devil in India is that this wind regularly brought long- desired rain to the American coast and as regularly in Central India brings a parching dust, which shows demo¬ niac maliciousness. In the same way the outer form of the cult, in monkey-worship, mountain-worship, lake-worship, is adventitious, varying according to circumstances of food, temple material, accessibility, etc. Now, in line with this, anthropologists have been prone to say that natural environment conditions man himself as well as his gods and worship, so that his religious mentality represents the result of home and heritage, that is, his environment individually and racially; man, it is said, is the product of “nature and nurture.” This is true, but only to a limited extent. For were it altogether true, men from a religious point of view would be much more diverse than they are now. As it is, no matter what the environment and heritage, men are different rather by grade than by capacity. At about the same cultural stage the religious expression is rather uniform than diverse, with the same primitive re¬ actions in the low grades and almost identical results in the highest grades, ethical and philosophical. The great RELIGIOUS STIMULI 89 diversity in great religions does not come from nature and nurture, but from sporadic and extraordinary per¬ sonalities which do not seem to be the result of environ¬ ment except to a small extent, and it is these great personalities which have made all great religions. A per¬ sonality of this sort not only sums up the best that nature and nurture have bestowed, but springs beyond and stands out apart from the mass, as a sport blossoms out without logical connection with its nature or nurture. Every great thinker adds to home and heritage some¬ thing not to be interpreted in terms of either; what he hands on to posterity is the old religion plus himself, which may be the most important factor of all. But these different great thinkers in their turn think so much alike that the same phenomenon repeats itself in the highest as in the lowest grade, and just as the lowest religious activities are similar, whether occurring in India or America or Africa, so the higher reaches of religion, as of philosophy, are the same; the supreme believers wor¬ ship the same Supreme God everywhere. But if this be so, the cause must lie in human nature it¬ self. This is so much alike all the world over that it more than counterbalances accidents of home and heritage, which do not really make man what he is in any one place, but only modify him. It is then in the nature of man as man that the most primitive stimuli to religious birth and growth are to be sought. And as man is a com¬ plex, so there is no one stimulus to which religion can be referred; but the combined factors of his being work to¬ gether to a religious outcome. Nor is it correct to say that of these factors, which can be grouped roughly as emo¬ tional and intellectual, the emotional have complete prece¬ dence. For prior to anything which can be called religion there are only fear and hope without consciousness of a spiritual power to which fear or hope is directed; but 90 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION from the very beginning of religious experience there is present with these a modicum of intellectual activity. ”Let us take, for example, the attitude of the junglemen already cited. There is an indefinite something which they fear and try to propitiate, not a person hut a power or group of powers which they imagine in the rushing river, the spreading tree, the advance of fever, and propitiate as some sort of power, they know not what, in which they believe because of its effect and generally malign activ¬ ity. Now this is almost the lowest form of religion. There is no recognized spirit which these savages propitiate, only a vague power which they logically imagine from the effect produced. This logical imagination is really at the base of the attempt to propitiate, and it is the same logical imagination which “ bodies forth the forms of things unknown.” Those “who in the night imagining some fear suppose the bush a bear,” or the disease a de¬ mon, connect effect and cause, as at a later stage the cob¬ web on the grass argues a fairy maker of the web, or in the case of a child, the chair that hurts is regarded as malevolent. This it is which makes the Ainu believe that the river which drowns his brother has done so on pur¬ pose. All effects are so judged. Especially is it easy to imagine life in motion, difficult to imagine that activity does not imply life, and that active life does not imply will. Thus to the savage the river, in that it moves and acts, is a power possessed of will, as, to the semi-civilized, the sun is still a similar volitive power. Moreover, even far down in the scale of savagery, the world as under¬ stood by the savage is either a creation arguing a crea¬ tor, as among the lowest savages of Australia, or an evolution from primordial matter, as among the Polyne¬ sians and Californians. It is as much logic with the savage as with the philosopher when the former argues a “cut¬ ter-out of the world” or other creator-gods. From imagi- RELIGIOUS STIMULI 91 nation logically working comes also the idea of the self persisting after death. The sleeper sees his dead alive and active again and argues that his own personality will live after death as he imagines others so living. As a race advances, imagination invents more ad¬ vanced gods, corresponding to the cultural advance of the community in other regards and among these will he found many abstract divinities. But it is an error to think that divine abstractions are necessarily of civilized origin. Masses of them are invented by communities scarcely to be called civilized and the same process pro¬ duces virtually the same divinity in different localities. Thus abstractions of physical objects are found among the Romans and Slavs, and the tendency to invest attri¬ butes with personality leads to such parallel forms as Thor’s daughter Thunder and Mars’ wife Bravery (Ne- rio) and Indra’s wife Power (Sachi). Or the abstraction stands alone and the same thought produces the same result, as in the three sister Norms and three sister Moi- rai. The more advanced the people the more advanced will be the abstraction. In India, the god Dharma (Jus¬ tice, Right) is a late divinity and still later comes the Scribe of Dharma, who, like Gabriel, keeps the account of man’s sins in his ledger. On the other hand, Kindness, Piety, and other abstractions are deities at a pre-Vedic period. “Come to us with Abundance,” prays a Vedic poet to the god of increase, and even the oldest com¬ mentator is not sure whether Abundance is a female deity or a common noun. But probably in all such cases, though there was no cult, the abstraction was vaguely felt as connoting some sort of personality, a usage still reflected in our poetic speech, but a personality having volition, the will to come or not. It was thus the doorpost, threshing-floor, threshold, harvest, etc., were regarded by the Slavs, Teutons, and Romans, whose Numina were 92 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION animate volitive powers, as were the plough, furrow, grindstone, and drum of the Yedic Aryans, although we can scarcely avoid speaking of them as spirits of the plough, etc. But abstractions as such are not much cared for or in¬ voked. Often they have no cult or receive a cult only be¬ cause they cease to be pure abstractions and are identi¬ fied with something more real, the sun, the dead chief, etc. Thus in Greece and India, Piety and Justice are sel¬ dom invoked as divinities and the creator Vishnu is much more real than the abstract Maker. Nor can imagination conceive of gods as too unhuman. Especially must the head-god be like the head of the state. Ruled by a king a people will not recognize a “matriarchal” divinity, which is one of the reasons whv Hera becomes subordinate to Zeus, though, if the state changes, the goddess of a ma¬ triarchal state is apt to become androgynous or male, as in Babylon. The gods too will be placed in septs and clans, corresponding to social orders, and as the moral order changes so the gods change, or, as with many lesser gods, disappear, as Zeus in Homer becomes quite another Zeus in Aeschylus and Plato. We ourselves no longer ascribe to the Divinity “sinful acts,” and it was the sinful acts of the Lord of Beings in India that led to this Father-god being superseded by gods to whom no such acts could be attributed. It is only when imagination and logic have worked for ages in conjunction with an ever developing moral sense that man arrives at the supreme imagination of a moral creator and governor of the universe usurping the functions of previous deities. Imagination also oper¬ ates in the making of myths, associating natural processes with a group of ideas, and in the making of symbols, where a thought is associated with a sign. Examples of both are the seasonal myth, the death of the year, and RELIGIOUS STIMULI 93 water as a symbol of purity or of wisdom, as in Baby¬ lonia, Germany, and India. Bnt as all horses are more or less alike yet some breeds are more nervous than others, so though all men are much alike some are more imaginative than others, as some are more passionate, and this predisposition affects reli¬ gion as it does art and literature. Hence the religious ex¬ perience of different races has not been identical. No one ladder has led to the higher stages of religion. To turn now to the emotional factors of religion, a very crude dictum of ignorant antiquity asserted that Fear first fashions gods. Tribes whose gods are the dear spirits of the family, who guide and protect them, have more love than fear for divine powers and in a dog’s religion probably love and fear are inextricably united, but just as we are commanded first to fear God and then to love him, and are instructed that perfect love casteth out fear, so we may assume that fear of divinity generally pre¬ cedes love, as malicious demons precede beneficent gods. But what sort of fear? Obviously an automatic expression of fear, such as dodging a blow or closing eyes before dust or shrinking from a suddenly revealed precipice, has no religious meaning. But when one fears the eventual effect of an approaching thunderstorm, reason and imagination come into play before one deprecates the power that may slay. Again, the religious expression differs as danger is actual or potential. When the danger is merely possible and remote, as in danger of drought which may lead to hunger, the expression is not merely deprecatory but hopeful, and the prayer for good sounds with the cry not to harm. Fear from a religious point of view is thus first of all intelligent and then hopeful. So in the earliest Aryan expression of religious feeling the god is besought not to kill with lightning-stroke but to bring good, and the same union here expressed poetically in our oldest 94 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION literature is really present in the most primitive expres¬ sion of savage religious feeling, as when the Australian savage begs the favor of the powers he is trying to co¬ erce ; he fears, yet at the same moment he hopes; he seeks to compel, yet at the same moment unconsciously voices the feeling of subjection and dependence. In no case is religious fear automatic or instinctive. In every case it is a reasoned fear. It is a common error to assert that fear of the dark shows innate or instinctive fear of the supernatural. Both observation and induction here are faulty. Savages are not afraid of the darkness but of de¬ mons and other foes in the darkness, and children prop¬ erly brought up are not afraid of the darkness; they fear only to be alone and if they woke in daylight and thought themselves deserted they would be fearful too. Even ani¬ mals as nervous as horses do not fear the dark if it hides no harm, as in a New England pasture. When, as in In¬ dia, cattle fear the darkness, it is because they know what danger darkness hides. Fear of solitude or of falling and of other such dangers is instinctive as a racial inherit¬ ance, not a sign of instinctive belief in the supernatural. As for animals, when a dog bristles in the dark, it is be¬ cause he becomes aware of something material not yet explained; he fears the unknown as the first stage of de¬ fence . 1 The dictum of Petronius cited above has been accepted in a modified sense by Tiele, who makes fearsome de¬ pendence the root of all religion. Yet what truth might lie in this is vitiated by the connotation of dependence in the scheme of Tiele’s philosophy, according to which it is the beginning of loving trust and confidence. Even the low- i Mr. Josiah Morsein in his Pathological Aspects of Beligxcn makes the common mistake of grouping instinctive fears with mental reasoned fears. Dr. Brinton, too, taught that man has a subconscious apperception of spirituality shown by fear of darkness. RELIGIOUS STIMULI 95 est savage, according to Tiele, feels a religious fear which interprets itself to the savage’s own consciousness as a need of communion with the divine power and the need of a redeemer. But this interpretation of savage thought is almost grotesque. To a savage, as to a beast, whatever is unknown is uncanny, and whatever is uncanny is feared. There is no beginning of a feeling of need of com¬ munion with a divine power in the savage’s fear of a dis¬ ease-devil . 2 It is to be noticed further that though fear is promi¬ nent in savage religions, it is not always undiluted fear. Even among the most primitive peoples may be found the same mixture of fear and attachment toward ghosts that conditions human intercourse, while in the higher reli¬ gions hope, admiration, and sympathy unite with fear to make a complex far removed from abjection. The Yedic seer who fears and hopes also admires and is in full sym¬ pathy with the terrible power of the god of storms, whose glorious exhibition fills him with exultation as well as dread. Yet the Yedic religion is of an advanced type, and the usual primitive attitude toward dangerous powers is one rather of antagonism than sympathy. Late among religious emotions is that of thankfulness. When the fear is stilled and the hope gratified the savage rejoices, but to offer thanks to the spiritual powers for their favor is as rare as to thank a man for service. Some savages seem utterly without any sense of gratitude toward their human neighbors and it is not strange that toward the spirits their attitude is the same. Even literary religions 2 Not less extravagant is Tiele’s argument that man has an innate hope of immortality because he invents tales of immortal gods. The statements on rvhich Tiele’s theory is built are also, to say the least, of doubtful validity. Thus he asserts that the idea of redemption is 11 absolutely gen¬ eral’ 1 (universal) and that a belief in immortality is found among all peoples. See Tiele, Science of Religion, Ontology, pp. 74, 113, 124. 96 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION are often devoid of the expression of thankfulness, and most of the so-called thanksgiving festivals of savages are merely joyous feasts, though occasional observers, interpreting advanced savagery, speak, for example, of some Amerinds as 4 4 eating thanksgiving to the Great Spirit” for meat, snow, etc . 3 Derived from fear, through regret that one has of¬ fended against a spirit’s desires, repentance is another emotion which belongs only to higher religions and yet can be traced back to primitive apprehension, though without understanding the sinner’s position it is difficult to distinguish mere regret from repentance. In the early religious hymns of the Yeda the consciousness of sin comes first in the recognition of its punishment and re¬ pentance is vague because the sinner really does not know why he is punished. He suffers and recognizes that suf¬ fering is divine punishment, but, as he is not aware of any faults he lias committed, he asks: “How have I of- fended my god? Was the fault due to drunkenness, gam¬ bling, anger? Whatever I have done I have done unwit¬ tingly. May I again be friends with my god!” Much the same attitude appears in the early Babylonian hymns. In other words, the first literary expression in this re¬ gard reproduces exactly the attitude of the savage who argues from his hurt that he has been attacked by an evil power and is anxious to do what he can to frighten away or satisfy the evil influence. If he can frighten it off, he does so; but he is apt also to try persuasive measures in the form of offering or sacrifice, according as he conceives of the power more personally. Thus after a defeat in battle, more victims are offered to the presumably of¬ fended gods. When the volcano almost destroys a village which has been led away from worship of the fiery god, it is pacified by offerings placed in the path of the lava 3 Catlin, North American Indians, I,ipp. 145, 213, and II, p. 159. RELIGIOUS STIMULI 97 by the savages, whose fear makes them repent of their apostasy . 4 From this crnde beginning, repentance as a religions factor can be traced np to its highest expression as grief at grieving divine love and a retnrn to conformity with the demands made by that love, in which, to the more exalted and sensitive human spirit, fear is entirely sub¬ merged in affection. Repentance through fear of conse¬ quences hereafter is a middle position between the two. The measure of the emotional side of religion is seen in praise, gifts, performance of what pleases the divinity, music, dance, etc. But it is not always clear why a par¬ ticular act occurs, since all religious rituals are a jumble and the same act is performed for opposite reasons. Thus dancing is employed both to attract demons and frighten them away, and gifts to spirits are given as often to keep them off as to allure them. So in higher religions, as has been remarked by Durkheim, the service becomes stereo¬ typed, a form applicable to various situations, as when mass is said for a wedding or a funeral. The existence of fear as a recognized aspect of ad¬ vanced religions need not be insisted upon. The word “terror” expresses the attitude of the early Teutons to¬ ward their gods. The Hindu says, “It is fear alone that makes men virtuous,” and also, “God is a great fear.” Modern life has retained as mere form many usages originally inspired by the fear of spirits, such as placing candles about the dead, spitting for good luck (really to avert evil), together with many other good-luck prac¬ tices. Our April FooPs Day has an exact counterpart in India, where the original idea of expelling demons is more obvious. Fear becomes systematized in taboo when, 4 This happened in one of the Pacific islands. When the Christianized savages found that prayer to the new God was in vain, they reverted to the old worship of the volcano, whereupon the lava stopped flowing! 98 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION as in Polynesia, this becomes so pervasive as to underlie most religions activities. But all religions are necessarily expressed more or less in taboo-form, and it must be rec¬ ognized that ethical advance has been made through taboo, in that it opposes theft and adultery on the part of others; that is, taboo at least defines certain acts as sins. But it is a common exaggeration to insist that theft, adul¬ tery, and murder have become ethically wrong through taboo. From the religious point of view, taboo is impor¬ tant as registering a neutral zone between what is evil and what is holy. The object or act to be avoided is simply fearsome, the stage represented being antecedent to a for¬ mal distinction between accursed and holy, devilish and divine. The undefined mana or power, not conceived as a spirit, gives its power to personal spirits, who are thought of as beings possessed of great mana. The mana itself, however, may infect in non-personal form objects, places, times, and acts, so that they inspire fear. The priest who possesses mana is a magician but without the magician’s power of controlling spirits, and has therefore been said to exercise ‘ 4 negative magic.” In the establishment of custom taboo has both aided and injured spiritual de¬ velopment, in insisting on the one hand on ethical ob¬ servances and on the other on ritual. It survives today in many superstitions. Antithetic to fear is hope, and this too as a religious factor has been systematized in fetishism in contrast to the religion of fear in taboo. The fetish in its most primi¬ tive form is a mascot, that is, not an object inhabited by a spirit, as is generally asserted, but a luck-bringing volitive object in which spirit and will are one with mat¬ ter, differing from our mascots only in that the mascot involuntarily brings success. A later form of fetish is an object regarded as inhabited by a spirit. Both kinds, however, are treated in the same way, cajoled and pun- RELIGIOUS STIMULI 99 ished as luck-bringers that are respectively expected to give success or have failed to do so. No religions attitude is older than this, for in different form the same thought inspired the cave-men of France, who gave themselves luck by the magic of the painted form of the beasts they would slay. These pictures acted as fetishes in that they brought good luck, but they probably differed from the fetish in being magical compelling powers, not objects of prayer and entreaty, for the fetish is besought as a god and is sometimes preserved in a god-house even when dis¬ carded. When an object manifests itself as inclining to be beneficial, as when a stone picked up brings hunting- luck, it is treasured as something potentially capable of the wish to confer benefits. When it fails to do so, it is first implored, then threatened and beaten, and then dis¬ carded, exactly as a human being might be treated. The fetish is not primarily a clan-object (like a totem), but is an individual tutelary power devoted to one man. It may, however, become a clan-object and even develop into a god, but these are secondary forms. The outstanding feature of the fetish is that it objectifies hope and faith in some quasi spiritual power, signifying that man feels himself dependent on some more than human power . 5 But hope and fear work together and it would be absurd to say that any primitive race had a religion based wholly on either, as it is no less absurd to suppose that both or either can exist religiously without intelligent imagina¬ tion. All religions, even the most primitive, combine strands of thought and emotion. If self-preservation is a law of nature, fear and hope, which are exercised in pre¬ serving that law, may be called instinctive elements of religion, though, as already shown, there is no instinctive belief in spiritual powers. \ 5 See on this point and especially on the wrong assumption that a fetish is originally a spirit, the writer’s History of Religions, pp. 35 f. 100 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Like fear and hope of the mind, hunger and thirst of the body have played a great part in establishing primi¬ tive religions, since these appetites have moulded reli¬ gious systems. The root of totemism is hunger and the root of the cult of divine intoxicants is thirst, but in the latter case, though simple thirst leads to the concoction of pleasant drinks and this further to the cult of the in¬ toxicating beverage, as in India, Persia, and Peru, the actual deification of liquor comes from its supernatural effect. A hymn of the Pig-Veda represents the god Indra as drunken and boastful of what marvels he can perform under the influence of the divine moon-plant. The feeling that a man has uncanny powers when drunk, that he is spiritually enlarged, has more mana, becomes as it were a god, is common to all savages. With hunger the divinity is the food-giver, as countless instances show, and the totemic clan eventually becomes the worshipper of that which provides it with sustenance, regarding it as a be¬ ing which is at once father and mother, worthy of the same regard as is given to the ghosts which still care for the clan . 6 Much more complicated than the simple effect of fear, hope, and hunger as religious factors is that of love. It is at the same time emotion, appetite, and divinity; fur¬ ther, it inspires not only the worshipper but the god. Fear may be systematized in taboo, hope in fetishism, but they are not themselves personalities of religious im¬ portance. As there is no god of gratitude or repentance, 6 See the writer’s article, The Background of Totemism, reprinted from the Journal of the American Oriental Society in the Report of the Smith¬ sonian Institute, 1918, p. 573, in which it is shown that totemism is at bottom an economic institution. The idea that whatever provides a live¬ lihood is worshipful and of a quasi divine nature lingers in civilized lands today. It is for this reason that in India the bookkeeper worships his pen, the ploughman his plow, and the fisherman his nets, a graceful reminder of a beautiful decadent faith, implying hope and gratitude. RELIGIOUS STIMULI 101 so there is no god of fear except as a poetical figure like Fame or as one of the little spirits surrounding a great god. In Homer, Fear is son of the war-god and in Greek comedy he is a caricatured ugliest god. Occasional serv¬ ice was given to him and, like Death, he seems at times to have received sacrifice, but the few cases of sacrifice rest upon association and Homeric influence rather than on any real worship. In India, Fear is personified, like Punishment, but he has no cult and appears only as an attendant of Shiva. Love, however, is a powerful divinity / even among savages and in certain religions appears as all-powerful. As a religious factor, love, in exciting reli¬ gious feeling, must be distinguished from love for a deity; the former is primitive, the latter is not. It is here that a fundamental error vitiates that theory of Max Muller and Tiele already referred to, according to which the “love of God” is a primitive religious stimulus of all races and peoples. Since God himself is a late discovery of the human intellect, how can primitive man be stimulated by love of him? The anachronism re¬ sembles that in the “love of a god of light” ascribed by Brinton to the Andamanese savages. Of course, savages enjoy warmth and light, but one might as well talk of a lizard loving the sun-god as to use such an expression of the savages of the Andaman Islands. Love of deity is comparatively a late product. In early Babylonian litera¬ ture, the god Shamash is called “god, king and shep¬ herd,” but one is not to read into this the connotation given by Christian thought and imagine that the Baby¬ lonian felt a personal affection such as that of the Chris¬ tian for his divinity. Babylonian scholars have long since pointed out that no especial endearment is conveyed by this expression. But in the later Yedic hymns, when a god is called “dear,” though the word does not express so much as does our translation, as may be seen from ' 102 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the fact that it is used of clothes, food, and atmosphere, there is a real affection for the gods, especially for Indra and Agni. The Vedic god is a dear friend and member of the family, though of the yearning love for a god such as is felt for the popular divinities in the Hindu period the Rig-Veda shows as yet no trace. It is in the next following literary stratum that one finds the worshipper speaking of gaining the love of the Father-god and com¬ ing to his very heart . 7 In part the matter is geographical. The more Southern and Oriental peoples first attain to the idea of loving their gods. The Teuton and Roman fear rather than love, even to the end of their religious development, and Aris¬ totle says that to love God is indecent. He means prob¬ ably the passionate love which appears first in the East and may be traced back there to passion itself. What is true, however, is that there is often among primitive savages an affectionate regard for the familiar spirits of the family and not always fear and desire to drive away the good ghosts; also that there is sometimes so great joy in the presence of divine beings as to suggest love of the object. Stars regarded as divine beings which announce by their rising a season of joy are, as we have seen, greeted with joyful worship and the power of spring is celebrated with joyful (erotic) ritual. Yet the love of man for divinity cannot reach a personal stage till the deity is sufficiently anthropomorphized to be in sympathy with humanity. What is found prior to this is the deification of human desire, love in its crudest form, and of the creative or 7 Literally, “reaching his armpits ,” i.e., coming into the god’s arms, as to his heart. Those who think that India knew no love for a god till Christian influence introduced the idea of loving faith would do well to notice that the word for love used in the Brahmanic period is the same preman which later expresses the worshipper’s passionate love for Krishna. RELIGIOUS STIMULI 103 recreative principle which gives life. In Dahomey there is a love-god called Legba, to whom animals are sacri¬ ficed, and circumcision is a rite in his honor, while his ritual is an obscene mystery. On the other hand, among the Bushmen there is a creator-god whose ritual is also a licentious blood-dance. There is not much difference between the two. In both, religious expression is based on the recognition of “love” as a creative power. Like¬ wise in India, lust is recognized as ancillary to the re¬ productive power of spring, and the ritual of this reli¬ gious phase becomes a sensual debauch. Honor paid to a love-god is originally inseparable from that paid to the creative deity of nature. It is only in later developments that deities of productivity are consciously separated from those of passion and lust. At this stage appear the rites of a bloody nature to further increase, such as the sacrifice to Moloch and to the May-pole, in order that vitality drawn from the victim may help the deity of growth. Imitative magic, such as is seen in pouring out water or blood to induce rain to fall, is exercised in sex¬ ual excesses as well, and the principle of lust is itself re¬ garded as one with that of the annual renewal of crops. Passion then becomes the object of a special cult and Aphrodite as Love and Demeter as Mother are formally separated until merged again in “mysteries.” Mexicans, Redskins, Greeks, Hindus, and Egyptians all had mys¬ teries in which the power of life, interpreted also as one of death, was erotically celebrated, passion being here a power of fear rather than of affection, as is shown by the taboo-dread of sex-power. Even Aphrodite and her Eastern prototype are more feared than loved. But the god who is really loved is he who as most hu¬ man is most in sympathy with man. Buddha, Krishna, Christ, are loved because they first loved man, and man 104 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION feels himself dear to them. The nearer the dearer, in life, in sympathy, in aspirations. The love for a creator- god can never he so intense as for a god whose experi¬ ence has been one with man’s. Krishna, believed to be the human incarnate form of Vishnu the Preserver, excites a love much warmer and more human than does Vishnu himself. In the unrestrained exercise of this love for divinity as a sympathetic loving power lies the danger that emo¬ tional excess may revert to more primitive expression and become more human than divine. This tendency has made itself felt less in Buddhism than in Krishnaism and Christianity. It dissolves in Buddhism into a chaste mys¬ ticism, such as that found also in Christianity, for though Buddha sacrificed himself for man and lived as a man on earth, he lived rather as a sage than as a lover of man. With other worshippers of divine yet human beings there is the danger lest religious exaltation revert to ani¬ mality. This has been the case both in India and in the Occident. It is not due to conscious antinomianism but to the release, caused by sur-excitation, from ordinary in¬ hibition. Naturally the lower and coarser the nature the more pronounced is the danger. In the great Hindu Song of Love of the twelfth century, written in praise of Krishna, one finds divine love expressed in realistic hu¬ man terms so skilfully that it is hard to say whether the author was a saint or a debauche. The same emotional¬ ism produces dire effects in the practical worship of Krishna and of Christ. Mystic eroticism becomes offen¬ sive brutality. What the saint feels as rapt emotion the vulgar worshipper practices under the guise of religion. Both saint and shouter are emotionally rather than intel¬ lectually strong; in both, judgment is subordinated to feeling. The sensuality of the saint is mental, but he has RELIGIOUS STIMULI 105 opened the door to the religions orgy of the love-feast, the “holy kiss,” and other indecencies . 8 The effect thus becomes the same whether the object be a beloved deity or a deity of love and reproduction. In India, even the sober Sikhs profane their temples with debauchery practiced as a religious exercise, and the Hindu spring-festival consists in equal parts of devotion and voluptuousness. Such facts lead to the question whether religion is based altogether on erotic excitement. This enquiry, however, is directed toward present condi¬ tions rather than toward primitive reaction to such a stimulus. It is not asserted by any competent observer that all religious impulse is primarily erotic, only that religion as expressed by conversion is a result of physio¬ logical excitement at the age of adolescence. Strictly speaking one should say that conversion is generally co¬ incident with adolescence rather than that it is induced by it. Sexual life, says Starbuck in The Psychology of Religion, has not “furnished the raw material out of which religion was constituted”; but it gave the psychic impulse which called out the latent possibilities of devel¬ opment. The matter might be left here were it not that Dr. Coe has drawn the inference that adolescence is a state divinely appointed for the express purpose of in¬ ducing restlessness, in order that the young person may be led to seek rest and peace in religion. But human be- 8 “Emotionalism ,’’ says a writer in The Negro Church, p. 58, “is the predominating element.” Another writer, describing the “roper dance,” a religious rite, says that it consists in an excited embrace of the sexes at the conclusion of a religious meeting which “results in gross immorality.” Primitive Traits in Beligious Bevivals, by F. M. Davenport, N. Y., 1905. See also The Negro in Africa and America (1902), by J. A. Tillinghast. The whites are not much better, according to The History of the Pres¬ byterian Church in Kentucky (N. Y., 1847), by Robert Davidson, who delicately describes the “most indelicate attitudes” (of white women during a revival), the object of their attentions being “especially the preachers. ’ ’ 106 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION mgs are not the only animals affected and all that re¬ sults from this investigation is the obvious fact that youth is more impressionable than age; it responds more readily to any emotional appeal, literary, oratorical, the¬ atrical, or religious. Revolutions are largely the result of boyish impatience, yet one does not ascribe the origin of patriotism to adolescence. So religious emotion is more apt to occur in youth than in old age, yet it does not fol¬ low that religion is caused by youthful excitement. Sex has played an important role in religion, as it has in philosophy, but it does not originate philosophy or reli¬ gion . 9 It is indisputable that no one factor can account for religion. To derive religion from any sole stimulus is as unscientific as to refer it to priestly craft, a divine man¬ date, or to illumination. Religion is the expression of the shifting attitude of man as he reacts to various stimuli, which cause him to incline toward or shrink from certain things and courses. Physically, man shrinks from dark¬ ness and prefers light. Morally, he shelters his mind, as he does his body, from discomfort and storm. Shrinking and inclining are instinctive. There is no li religious in¬ stinct,” but all a man’s instincts combine to make him re¬ ligious, as they combine to make him physically happy. His mind abets instincts and seeks the same goal. It is not fear or hope or love or any effect induced by drinking or by hearing a command that makes man believe material things to be alive and capable of doing good or evil, nor is it any one of these things that gives him the notion of a self persisting after death. But in believing as he 9 See Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion (London, 1899); G. A. Coe, The Spiritual Life, and William James, Varieties of Religious Experience. Parkman, in his Jesuit Relations, long ago remarked on “the tendency of the erotic principle to ally itself with high religious excitement,’’ as il¬ lustrated by the life of Marie de 1’Incarnation, the “holy widow.” RELIGIOUS STIMULI 107 does lie is inevitably affected by the imagined powers in wdiich he believes, exactly as he is affected by the real power of animals and men. The emotion religiously ex¬ cited is identical with the emotion excited without reli¬ gious implication. Man does not at first make a separa¬ tion between religious and non-religious, supernatural and natural. He welcomes his dead father as he welcomes him alive or hates him in the same way; he fears the malignant river as he fears a malignant animal or man. As, in his most savage state, he knows toward men no gratitude, so he knows none toward spirits or the ani¬ mated matter which precedes his conception of spirit. With some exceptions, the order of religious develop¬ ment thus corresponds to man’s general mental and moral development. Fear usually precedes love; sym¬ pathy with a god results from higher conceptions, draw¬ ing man to divinity instead of making him shrink from demoniac powers; and not until such sympathetic under¬ standing of divinity exists can there be any real reli¬ gious remorse. The religious progression of the race is thus one with its intellectual progression . 10 The biological series supports the same view as to the normal development of emotional factors. The only emo¬ tions of low organisms appear to be fear and dislike. Social instincts, love and sympathy, appear first in the higher animals (sympathy is exhibited first in birds) and not till the highest mammals are reached is there ap¬ parent any consciousness of wrong or of remorse, such remorse at least as that felt by the savage who recognizes sin only through sorrow. In short, religious development follows the general laws of evolution and it is especially clear that no theory of religious origins based on love, 10 The general history of mankind, epitomized in the individual, shows that men have first been influenced by fear, then by love, then by sympathy, and lastly by remorse. See Drummond, The Ascent of Man, p. 129. 108 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION sympathy, or other later traits can be maintained, de¬ spite the high authority of Max Muller, Tiele, and other scholars who have postulated sympathetic love as the foundation of all religion. It is asserted by Saussaye that the history of Teu¬ tonic religion exhibits successive stages, namely, fear, hope, gratitude, and repentance, through which it has passed consecutively, each in turn becoming more promi¬ nent, gratitude appearing first in the Middle Ages, with hope still extant and gratitude more pronounced than re¬ pentance. Such a series, however, in so late a religious ex¬ pression merely means that repentance, for example, is most common in the most advanced writings. It cannot imply that hope was less real or active than fear when the Teutons first make their appearance. In fact, the first half of the series is based largely on the fact that Taci¬ tus describes terror as the mark of Teutonic religion, which may mean nothing as to hope and gratitude. Saus¬ saye’s series is one which must at least be accepted with reservations. CHAPTER IX THE SOUL The accepted distinction between sonl and spirit is that sonl is confined and spirit is free; the hamadryad’s sonl is confined to its tree, the dryad is a spirit in a tree. The physically bound surviving ghost is a soul; when freer or quite free it becomes a spirit. Obviously such a distinction is one of degree only. At one extreme, soul is nothing more than life; at the other, it is a separate quiddity which is endowed with life and is designated ‘spirit.’ Between the two extremes are the churchyard ghost and the soul lo¬ cated in a certain part of the body. Another common dis¬ tinction is that spirit designates the soul of a non-human object, while soul designates the immortal part of a human being and is conceived as a “man within.” But, as has been said, the idea that a human being has a soul and other beings have none is comparatively mod¬ ern and even now is far from universal. A very common belief is that only special human beings have souls. Some savages ascribe souls to men and not to women; this was the view advocated by Weininger. Still another view is that of the Samoans, who hold that women have souls and men have none. In Greenland the belief is current that only some women, who have died in childbirth, live here¬ after. In March, 1908, the German Reichstag was thrown into confusion because of jeers “at a statement used by a member to the effect that negroes also had immortal souls. ’ n i Press dispatches of March 21, 1908. 110 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION To reach the earliest thought in regard to this matter is not difficult if one considers the general assumptions of savage belief. From the earliest period down to the pres¬ ent time it has been customary for men to break up arms and toys and bury them in graves, the reason being that these objects were to accompany their owners into dead- land and in order to do so must be as dead as their owners. The warrior’s bow was broken, i.e., killed, just as his horse and women were killed. They all had a life beyond the grave, man, woman, animal, and material object. The first conception of soul is that it is a power, not a spirit in a body but a power inherent in body and mani¬ fested in life and action. This vital power is conditioned by the body and is at first indistinguishable from it, that is, there is no distinction between body and soul, but there is a body endued with power, the whole object being per¬ meated with power as life. All objects have as much soul as they have life, force, activity. Stream, rock, tree, have each an active personality diffused through the object and expressed in power. The soul-power may not be ac¬ tive, but either active or potential life resides in every object. The savage thus passes indifferently a thousand quiet rocks, but as soon as one of them begins to roll he considers it as, so to speak, awakened and menacing. For it is also inconceivable to him that anything possessed of power and activity is not likewise possessed of the ability to direct that power. In other words, the object’s power, or, to speak exactly, the object itself, is endowed also with will. The spiritual is what manifests life and the proof of life is activity. Life is power and power is soul. Hence, though a body is potent all over, the part most alive is most full of soul- power. Just as a tiger has more soul than a rock, as is manifest in its greater activity and power, so the more vital organs are more alive and become seats of the soul. THE SOUL 111 The power, again, may be physical or mental or emotional. Thus there is a sonl-power of the arm distinct from that of the stomach, which to savages is often the seat of the thought-power, and another power or soul of the heart or bowels, obviously because these are most affected by emo¬ tion. A tiger’s claw retains independent power after the beast is dead, not precisely as a dead saint’s finger works cures, but because the power of the whole is retained in the fragment with the added special power of the frag¬ ment itself. Thus a cannibal warrior eats by preference .another warrior’s strong arm; 2 he avoids the flesh of a child or woman, unless, as in America and Dahomey, his religious sense has become debauched by gluttony. So the Polynesian mother eats her dead child as a religious rite and both man and wife eat their parents for the same reason, to guard in themselves the physical soul-powers belonging by affection to the family. These powers have been called physical souls and the places where they show themselves may be called soul- places. For example, blood is the life as well as a seat of life and life is Jsoul. ’ Such physical souls have in com¬ mon the bond of the body; but the larger organs are natu¬ rally more important than the smaller parts or those which show less life. Some scholars think that man has risen from a conception of soul in the smaller soul-places to that of a larger soul of a larger place, for example, from the toenail-soul to the heart-soul. But this is a the¬ ory made specious through a phrase. The idea that man has risen to a higher conception commends itself to the scientific mind, but in what is the conception of a heart- soul higher than that of a nail-soul? The conception is not grander because the organ is bigger and it has yet to 2 The savage queen who, visiting Queen Victoria, said, ‘‘I too am partly English, for my ancestor ate Captain Cook, ” expressed the general Poly¬ nesian attitude. 112 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION be shown that any savage believed in a nail-soul first and a heart-soul later. When it is said that some Africans recognize thirty souls, what is meant is that they ascribe a life-principle to thirty parts of the body as vital places. These “physical souls ” must therefore be distinguished as mere place- souls from the souls also physical but not identified with places or organs, such as the shadow-soul and bush-soul and ghost. The chief soul-places are the eye, blood, hair, and the organs showing great vital power. The fact to be kept in mind is that a part or organ of the body is rec¬ ognized as a sort of soul or vital element; the details have to do with the survivals of this belief in the various in¬ stances and it will be sufficient here to speak of the more important of these. 3 The Eye: In the mystic philosophy of India it is said that the soul is composed of the divine male being, which is in the right eye, and the divine consort of that being, which is in the left eye. This is a refinement of the very primitive belief in the soul-ship of the pupil, the little figure seen in the eyeball being, as it were, the epitome of the person. Moreover, as the eye flashes in hate and speaks in love more eloquently than the tongue, it seems more than any other organ to express personality. Both savages and barbarians have thus reckoned the eye as a powerful soul-place. The savage eats his foe’s eye as he drinks his blood, believing that he will thus absorb eye- 3 In the following paragraphs the more elaborate treatment of hair is not because this is more important than the other bodily parts, but because it has been less carefully considered in previous discussions and therefore calls for fuller explanation. Instead of “soul” (as used by Wundt) the word “power’ , is in some regards preferable, but in respect of the higher forms of the ‘ 1 physical soul ’ ’ the retention of the word soul has the ad¬ vantage of showing that the physical part is really soul. For example, breath is conceived not only as a soul-place or power but as the soul itself, psyche amma. THE SOUL 113 power, as differentiated from fleetness and dexterity, and in so far lie believes in a localized soul of the eye-power. The Macusi Indians take the pupil to be the spirit, which is a more advanced belief. The belief in the power of the eye, still surviving among Europeans as well as among Orientals, is a remnant of the belief common to all sav¬ ages in the peculiar eye-power possessed by certain individuals who have what is called the Evil Eye. In an¬ tiquity the interpretation of the eye-power was that some¬ thing streamed out from the eye, as light streams from the sun, and this was baleful or not, as the case might be. It was conveyed to the object in a glance of hate or love; but in the case of the evil eye the influence is not neces¬ sarily inspired by hate. This makes it extremely danger¬ ous, for one without intending it may harm the object of one’s glance, which in itself works mischief. The idea of invidia, or envy, as a baleful looking conveys in addition a voluntary infliction of injury. Since anything which is very perfect of its kind, for example, a beautiful rug, naturally excites envy in the observer, it is customary in India to mutilate one corner to obviate the envious look. For the same reason, to avoid the envious eye, a boy’s parents will give him the name of a girl or of an insect or dress him in girl’s clothes, as is done also to deceive dis¬ ease-demons, who are spiteful. 4 The Blood: That the blood streaming from the body takes with it the life of a slaughtered man or animal is as apparent as that his soul passes with his breath. Both ideas result in soul-places, blood and breath as life- powers. 4 ‘The blood is the life” (Deut. 12:23). When the 4 Both reasons have been given. See S. Seligman, Der Bose BlicTc und Vericandtes (1910); also Jahn in the Ber. d. Sachs. Gesell. d. TViss. (Phil, hist. Klasse, 7), 1853, pp. 28 f.; Bartel, Die Aledizin der Naturvolker, pp. 43 f.; and Wnndt, Mythus und Beligicn, II, p. 395. The tenth Commandment may have originally implied the voluntary use of a malignant and harmful look, a physical injury, not merely a moral sin. 114 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION African drinks the blood of a foe he does it to roll his foe and strengthen himself with this escaping life-power. In the heroic tales of civilized antiquity this is done to ex¬ press hate and glut rage, but in savage life it had less passion and more reason. Probably both motives unite from the beginning and gradually one alone is left, as when a well-educated Hindu drinks his foe’s blood. The Amerinds drank blood to show hate rather than to imbibe strength or take it from the foe, since they were far past the point where they imagined blood to be soul. More¬ over, the Amerinds drank blood when extremely exas¬ perated and then with the avowed purpose to insult. But who knows what vague shadow of older thought may have lain beside the thought of insult? 5 The squaws were allowed to drink the blood of the English, but this could not have been done to make them brave. Cutting the flesh and other forms of sacrifice of blood consist in giving strength, for example, to heroes, or to shades in Hades, or to the dead who are going away. The blood-soul of the victim is offered to friend or god, as in blood-brotherhood two souls are joined in one, and, in the case of totemism, the blended blood is a communion of souls. The offering of the finger with the blood, on the part of the Amerinds, shows that the gift-notion was quite as common as that of the totemic union and strength- increase. 6 Many mediaeval superstitions have to do with blood as soul. When a dead man is confronted with his murderer, the blood, being conscious of his approach, flows. It is alive; Vox sanguinis fratris tui claniat ad me de terra, s Such descriptions as that of the eyewitness Henry do not prove either view: “From the bodies of some, ripped open, their butchers were drink¬ ing the blood, scooped up in the hollow of joined hands and quaffed amid shouts of rage and victory’’ (cited by Parkman, Pontiac, p. 301). 6 Compare, for these customs, Catlin, The North American Indians, I, p. 194; Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, pp. 18, 207; Trumbull, The Blood THE SOUL 115 says the Lord. Cicero says that Empedocles believed the soul to be the blood suffused about the heart. Socrates wondered whether he thought with the blood: “Often I agitated myself [he says] with the question whether it is the blood with which we think, or the air, or the tire, or none of these perhaps, but the brain which originates per¬ ceptions. . . . Memory and opinion might arise from these (perceptions).” He is not certain; nevertheless, he admits the possibility that one may think with the blood, or, as Empedocles puts it, “the soul is in the systasis of the blood,’’ in its very composition. 7 The Hair: In the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus it is said (vss. 27-28): “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you. ’’ In Deuteronomy 14:1, “Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness be¬ tween your eyes for the dead”; and in Leviticus 21:5, “They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh.” Priests have their hair cut (polled), and it is wrong either to shave their heads or let their locks grow long (Ezek. 44: 20). We have here a survival of the belief that the hair is one of the physical life-seats (or souls) of savage psy¬ chology, as that belief is found over various parts of the earth. Among the Abipones, for example, as soon as a child is born the parents call in the priest, who cuts off the hair from the forehead, leaving a bald spot, and this bald¬ ness is regarded as “a sign of honor paid to the god.” 8 Covenant; Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites; Wellhausen, Reste Arabischen Heidenthums. r Plato, Phaedo, 96 B; Cicero, Tusc. Disp ., 1, 9, 18. The Greek original is ev rrj rod a'i/xaros avcrraaei. Compare Windisch, Sitz der denhenden Seele, Per. d. Sachs. Gesell. d. Wiss., 1891 (vol. 43, pp. 155 ff.). s Dobrizhoffer, Gesch. d. Abiponer, II, p. 31. 116 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION In tlie opinion of other natives, it is said, this baldness is a sign of nationality, but the latter view, if it really re¬ flects native belief, must be due to the national character of the custom, which is religious in origin. Hair is offered in sacrifice, according to the usual ex¬ planation, as a representative or substitute of oneself, but why? How can hair represent a man? No answer is given in the current explanations; we are merely told that it is a substitute, as in New Zealand; or as in India, where a man possessed of a devil has a lock of his hair nailed to a tree, ostensibly as a propitiation. In Slavic countries, a similar practice of cutting off the hair of children 9 may be compared with the custom of the Bhils, a wild tribe of India, who shave their children between the ages of two and five, 10 and this again with the ancient Brahmanic rite of cutting off the hair of a child in the first and third year, for in this case the cutting is expressly said to be “for long life.” That is, the hair is an offering of the hair-strength or hair-soul as a substitute for the whole strength or soul, just as a finger is offered as a substitute for the life. The question now arises, Can the principle be applied elsewhere ? What, if any, is the explanation of the various religious phenomena in connection with hair? Herbert Spencer long ago derived the religious use of hair from mutilation, a result of trophy-winning, 11 but few today will do him reverence in that explanation. Nevertheless, Spencer showed, what is often ignored, that hair is offered to human dignitaries and its loss sym¬ bolizes loss of power, or, as he says, subordination. The sheared hair marks the person bereft of influence, the slave, often the woman. Frazer has collected a large number of cases showing 9 Tylor, Primitive Culture, IT, p. 401. 10 Crooke, Folk-lore, II, p. 66. 11 Principles of Sociology, Pt. 4, eh. III. THE SOUL 117 the sanctity of hair; 12 but his own examples fail to make his explanation plausible in all instances. For he recog¬ nizes, apart from the general sanctity of the head, only the principle of hostile possession, that is, the possibility of a foe or witch operating with one’s hair to the detri¬ ment or death of the owner, and infection through taboo, mourning, etc. For this reason only priests and chiefs are apt to let the hair remain uncut; travellers and warriors keep the hair long till they return; mourners shave off hair and infection together; hair when cut is kept from birds to prevent headache, and is buried, drowned, or burned to prevent adverse possession; unless there inter¬ vene the principle of resurrection, which makes a man keep his hair for future use. Thus the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:5) of separation requires uncut hair; the Bechuanas cut their hair after a battle to get rid of pol¬ lution, as do the Dyaks, etc. But, in British Columbia, the reason given by the na¬ tives for not cutting their hair at all is that strength wanes with the hair’s weakness and loss; they will grow weak (old) if they cut it. In Ceram, on the other side of the world, the reason given is the same, that men whose hair is cut will grow enervated. Although these examples are ranged by Frazer with the others referred to, they do not seem to illustrate or substantiate his theory. And with these cases may be grouped those which show that one will be a coward if his hair is cut. For example, the Ger¬ man idea that a boy’s hair must not be cut till he is seven, or he will lose courage, 13 and the older parallel from Taci¬ tus, who says that the Chatti never cut their hair till they had proved their courage. Nor does Frazer’s theory show how hair causes rain and thunderstorms, as in New Zea¬ land, etc. 12 Golden Bongh, 1, pp. 362 f. 1 3 In the Greek Church, children must be baptized before their hair is cut. 118 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION There is then lacking in this theory the fundamental unifying principle which explains why hair is treated as it is. Not that infection and adverse possession are to be questioned as producing the effects named. They do pro¬ duce the effects, but why? Why is the hair an instrument of sympathetic magic, etc. ? The hair as part of the head can explain only a part of the phenomena. The underlying principle is that the hair in itself is a seat of power, a power-place, one of the physical souls known to savages, who, unable to discriminate between the physical and the purely spiritual, regard the various places of power as soul-places or as souls. This must be the starting-point of the investigation, although Frazer does not even suggest that the hair itself is a power. 14 But if we start with the right clue, it is not so difficult to adjust the cases of hair-lioliness. We may begin with an aspect of the subject which is ignored by both Tylor and Frazer. It is important, because we are all familiar with sacrifices of hair. These Tylor refers to substitution, without explaining the grounds on which hair can be sub¬ stituted. Such sacrifices are made in mourning, in honor of the dead or for other reasons, such as that of Achilles * sacrifice of hair, and the question why hair is shaved off at funerals is generally confused with that of these other sacrifices, on the one hand, and with that of hair plucked out at death, on the other. But this confusion makes all explanation impossible. Especially since hair is not neces¬ sarily an offering of grief but may be one of joy, we ought to begin by clearing up and separating the uses to which hair may be put. To ensure the validity of an oath on the Gold Coast of West Africa, a man may either “eat fetish” or, instead, deposit in the abode of the god by whom he has sworn the equivalent of his life, that is, a lock of hair. The reason 14 To E. B. Tylor, the hair is only a substitute sacrifice. THE SOUL 119 can be only that in this way the god has possession of the man’s life, and can pnnish him through his hair. All sym¬ pathetic injury is based on the same principle, though it is seldom that a god is the one in charge. Usually it is a mischief-maker, a witch, etc. Hair-cutting, however, is a serious matter, not only because someone may get pos¬ session of the hair, but because of direct loss of vitality through the loss of hair. Again, the practice of marking with red the parting of the bride’s hair is based on the same principle as that which causes other things to be marked in the same way. Bed is a demon-scaring color and the hair, or soul, is exposed to demoniac attacks which shorten life. For this reason those scholars appear to be wrong who see in this practice ‘ ‘ a survival of the original blood-covenant, bv which she was introduced into the sept of her husband, ’ ’ as Crooke says of the bride’s mark¬ ing among the low castes in India. 15 The practice was com¬ mon among the high castes as well, though there it was regarded as merely ornamental. Curiously enough, it does not seem to have been noticed bv Sanskrit scholars that «/ exactly the same custom was current in North America. Gatlin (I, p. 58) says that the squaw of the Crow Indian, for example, ‘ ‘ divides the hair on the forehead and paints the separation or crease with vermilion or red earth.” He adds that neither the Indian nor himself can tell whv it is done. All those parts of the body which seem to have a life of their own are, as Wundt has shown, regarded as seats of life, or soul-places, and among these the nails and hair, which continue to grow after death, are particularly apt to be taken as possessing soul-power. The best-known in¬ stances are given in the stories of Nisus and Samson, whose locks held their power. 16 But the hair is more than 15 The Popular Religion and Follc-lore of Northern India, II, p. 173. 16 The interpretation of Samson as (Shamash) the sun does not mate- 120 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION strength, it is life, like the blood, and so in Virgil’s story Dido did not die till her hair was cut. As it holds, so hair retains and imparts power. That is the reason why scalps are worn, as well as taken, and why some Amerinds even believed that the loss of the scalp implicated the loss of ability to find one’s way to the Happy Hunting Grounds. 17 Why then is hair removed from the head in mourning! To answer this, we must consider the double nature of the removal. There are, in fact, two occasions when hair is re¬ moved in mourning. On the first, the hair is plucked out violently; on the second, it is removed formally and with precision. Wundt 18 explains all hair-removal at the time of a death as being due to a desire to show that the mourner has lost strength; but we must distinguish be¬ tween the sudden and the studied expression of grief. There is really no reason why the expression of genuine grief by mutilation should be explained religiously. It is a pathological process. 19 The formal amputation or shaving of hair at a funeral is a different matter. That this is not, as Frazer thinks, a head-ceremony but a hair-ceremony, is shown by the fact that Negro mourners shave off all the hair of the body. Secondly, it must be remembered that the shaving of the rially affect the fact that the hero’s hair is the seat of his strength. Com¬ pare Steinthal in Goldziher’s Mythology , p. 414: ‘ 1 There must have been a time in Israel when hair and fulness of physical energy formed one identi¬ cal idea,” and “the hair itself is the strength.” The inhabitants of the Greek island Zante still believe that the strength of a man is conserved in the hair of the chest (“three hairs on the breast,” op. cit.), and this may be the reason why the Hindus reckon the strength and ability of a horse to be measurable by the whorls or tufts of hair which mark his body. The weight of Absalom’s hair (two hundred shekels after a year’s growth, 2 Sam. 14: 26) seems to be regarded as one of the perfections of that very perfect young man. i7 See Foster, Sequoyah, pp. 28 f. For Dido’s death, see Aeneid, 4, 704. is Wundt, Mythus und JReligion, II, p. 38. i9 See below on Sacrifice (chapter XI). THE SOUL 121 hair does not take place at the moment of death, but when the corpse has been buried. Usually the ghost of the dead lingers about for some days and then leaves to seek a new habitation. At this critical moment the hair of the imme¬ diate relatives is removed. One reason for this is that the ghost will seek a new human habitation and, as all stu¬ dents know, is very apt, when leaving the corpse for good, to retreat into the hair of the mourners. But there is an¬ other reason as well. When the Osage Indian is buried, the hair of an enemy is hung over his grave, that the life of the enemy may thus be transmitted by the hair to the service of the dead. 20 The hair of friends in the same way is an offering of strength or life-power to the dead. For we must remember that the formal offering of hair is not necessarily a sign of grief. It may be an offering on a festive occasion. Thus the Gold Coast Negro celebrates the joyful occasion of his own birthday by cutting off his hair and offering it to his own Kra, or genius, and on such a festive occasion as the feast of the gods the hair makes part of the sacrifice, just as other things are sacrificed. This shows that the offering is not one which must be taken as a sign of mourning. On the contrary, it is an of¬ fering, both in joy and in sorrow, of strength or part of the life, like a blood-offering. When it is offered to the man’s own Kra or to the gods, it is like an offering of fowl or fruit to help and please these demonia, and when it is offered to the dead it is still in the same way an offering of part of one’s own life-power, to help and please this particular demon. 21 In the formal cutting of hair after death, usually at the time of the funeral or gathering of the remains, there are then two distinct principles at work, one based on the idea 20 Tylor, Primitive Culture, I, p. 460. 2 1 On the funeral and festive cutting of hair among the Negroes, see Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast , pp. 156, 237, 241. 122 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION that the hair is a strength-offering to the spirit of the de¬ parted, just as one offers hair when alive to one’s own genius, the other based on the idea that hair is a spirit- entry and the pollution or dangerous element associated with death and infecting the hair must he removed. In the former case the hair is piled upon the corpse, as Achilles and his friends heaped the corpse of Patroklos with locks of their hair. In the other case, the hair is burned or buried, as in India, Persia, etc. The practice of savages shows that both of these ideas are equally primitive. The offering to Patroklos is expressly to 4 4 speed the soul to Hades,” that is, to give it strength of life, as the Amer¬ ind’s scalp over the grave gives life. 22 To escape from the ghost of the dead, the Negro mourner cuts off the hair of the dead man himself and hangs it up in a hut built especially for the ghost, to whom, in the same place, are offered tempting Hands. The ghost, seeing the hair, enters it and thus remains content with its home. In some cases, one of the two principles seems to prevail; in others, there appears to be a confu¬ sion of two ideas, the offering to the dead uniting with the escape from the danger of spirit-entry. But there seems to be no reason to take one as older than the other, 22 There is another funeral practice which may be touched on here, that of putting dirt upon the head. This also is to be compared with the prac¬ tice of paroxysmal grief, as when a child rolls in the dirt in rage or grief, rather than as a sacrifice, a disguise, or a symbolic burial, as it has been explained by W. R. Smith, Frazer, and Jastrow, respectively. Achilles humiliates himself literally, putting dirt and ashes on his head, just as he roars with grief and lies full-length on the ground. The first impulse is to hurt oneself, the second is to show that one feels hurt, and to do this one shows that he is cast down in the most obvious way. That heaping dirt on the head is nothing but a sign of being cast down (“low in the mind”) is proved by the fact that the attendants of African chiefs perpetually ex¬ press their humility by covering the head with dirt even on festive occa¬ sions. Among the Ashantis this was the recognized sign of inferiority on the part of attendants, quite apart from occasions of grief. THE SOUL 123 or to assume that the offering-idea is derived from the other. On the contrary, the idea of hair representing life seems to be extremely primitive. What of course is late is the conventional hair-offering, as customary among the Greeks, for example, after the meaning was lost and the form remained. The offering of life in hair is simply one form of that idea which led to head-offerings and slave- offerings and suttee. Life, strength, attendants, slaves, wives, are sent with the dead, to help and serve the de¬ parted. In some cases, they remain objective aiders, as in the case of slave or wife. In others, the offering is ab¬ sorbed by the dead, as when blood (which also is life) strengthens the shades in Hades. The American Indian could not afford to lose all his hair, but he obliged his squaws to cut all their hair as a sign of mourning, and in some cases even sacrificed his own cherished scalp-lock. That the Indian regarded hair as a seat of power may be seen from the fact that certain tribes elected their chiefs according to the length of their hair, for example, the Crows and Blackfeet. Thus “Long¬ hair,” chief of the Crows, was made chief because his hair was ten feet and seven inches long, and no one could surpass that, although rival claimants had hair which swept the ground as they walked. 23 Other tribes, how¬ ever, shaved all except the topknot, practical considera¬ tions, among which figured probably the fear of spirit- entry, making them conserve the hair-strength in one long queue, as did the Chinese and the Brahman ascetics. The reason why hair is wound in a circle around the head is not merely because that is a convenient way of doing it up. The circle is a protection against spirits, and for the same reason in India the crown of hair is replaced by a crown of flowers, in the case of a bridegroom, or, in 23 Catlin, North American Indians, I, p. 57. 124 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the case of a king, by a circlet of other material, preserv¬ ing the circle-guard as does also the circular tonsure. The persistence of the belief in the hair being a spiritual power in itself, a power able to injure, is seen in modern India, where it is as heinous an offense to “ grow the hair” against a man as it is to cast the evil eye at him. 24 It is taboo to touch the hair of Polynesian priests and kings because of the danger of their power as well as the danger to them, and when cut there must he ceremonies to obviate the danger. It is only as power that hair can produce thunder and lightning. As a sign of spiritual power the Negro priest wears his hair long (except when being admitted into the order), but this sign has its origin in the fact, as understood bv him and his countrvmen, that hair worn long is power. In the coiffure of all savages these two notions are constantly expressed, first, that hair is power, and second, that spirits are always trying to enter that abode of power. Hence, on the one hand, the wearing of long hair and, on the other, the shaving of all except one lock. Secondary is the enforced shortening of hair on the part of slaves, women, etc. Here it is a symbol, but a symbol looking back to the same notion that short hair is the result of weakness. Fear of spirits in hair may often be found. Ashanti executioners alwavs had their hair done up in twists (Ellis, op. cit ., p. 256). This can be explained as a parallel to their dancing and shouting, that is, as a precaution against the souls or ghosts of their vic¬ tims entering the hair. The twist or braid keeps off spirits generally, as do knots, and for this reason the Hindus are very particular to wear their hair in braids, some on the right side, some in three braids, etc., while some shave the hair and others wear only one lock on the top of the head. The Brahman student is permitted to conform to family custom, but the latitude is not great, since along 24 See Crooke, op. cit., I. p. 239. THE SOUL 125 with this permission it is enjoined that he shall either shave the head entirely or wear one knot at the top of his % head and leave the rest shaved, or wear the one knot with the rest of his hair loose; that is, he must always be shaved entirely or wear a knot. No reason is given, but it must be because these are the two chief guards against spirit-entry, as baldness itself is a guard against the evil eye. That people should habitually have their heads shaved is not unknown. The Hindus themselves say that the outward difference between Scythians, Kambojans, and Persians is that Scythians shave half the head, Kam¬ bojans and Yavanas shave all the head, and Persians do not even cut off the beard. The ordinary Hindu house¬ holder wore his hair as he or his ancestors pleased, pro¬ vided he did not neglect the knot at the crown of the head (though he did not expect to be pulled up to heaven by it, like a Mohammedan); but the hermits had to wear braided hair, and Hindu ascetics, like Hacotah Indians, shaved all the head except the topknot. But the Hindu mysteries of sacrifice show that much more power is ascribed to hair even than that thus dis¬ closed. Not only are the stars hair-pits of the Lord of Creation, but the avatar-gods are made of hairs of Vishnu, and in the horse-sacrifice there are woven into the mane and tail of the sacrificed animal one hundred and one pearls, because these represent the years a man should live and thus vital power or soul is made the foun¬ dation of the years. This is very mystical, but it suffices to show the identity of vital power and soul and hair: “In vital power, in soul, he thus [by establishing life in hair] establishes himself. ” 25 Another passage speaks plainly of the well known superstition that possession of the hair gives power over the original owner of the hair. Hairs of wild beasts are placed in the libation-cups of Rudra to se- 25 Shat. Brah., 13, 2, 6, 8. 126 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION cure to the worshipper the power of the wild beasts and to secure power over them; also, according to another passage, that the God Rudra may shoot at the wild beasts and not shoot at the cattle. 26 Before the inauguration of a king he must not have his hair cut for a year and no one in his kingdom except a priest may have his hair cut; even the animals may not have their hair clipped. 27 In fact, however, the religion of Brahmanism is too sophisticated to retain many of these hair-strength ideas, and even in the Samhitas there is little more than allusion to dishevelled hair, hair cut when one dies, and the cut¬ ting of hair of the dead. Yet the Atliarva-Veda seems to hark hack to older thought in containing the magical for¬ mula, ‘ ‘ May the eyes and the hair of thee dry up as thou longest for me.” 28 Where the whole head is involved, and we know that some savages believe in a special spirit of the head, it is not easy to say whether the superstition has to do with head or hair primarily. One of these superstitions is that the soul goes out through the head, for which reason the practice of trepanning the skull is still in vogue in India, as it may have been in Europe in prehistoric times. But the fact that the skull was sometimes broken by our In¬ dians merely to suck out the brains should make us cau¬ tious in asserting that all trepanned skulls in prehistoric times indicate a belief in the soul. The soul is collected in the crown of the head when a modern Yogi buries himself alive for forty days. Richard Schmidt assures us that the crown is, by actual experiment, the spot that retains the 26 Shat. Brah., 12, 7, 2, 8. 2 ~ Ibid., 5, 5, 3, 2; cf. Professor Eggeling’s notes on this passage. 28 AV., 6, 9, 1. In AV., 19, 32, 2, are described women beating their breasts for the dead whose hair they cut off. The few charms for growth of hair show only that thick black hair is desired. Red hair is taboo, ac¬ cording to Manu; perhaps, as in Scotland, it is associated with the evil eye. THE SOUL 127 vital heat longest, and when the Yogi he describes was brought to life again after forty days the crown alone retained the heat; in fact, it was 6 ‘burning hot.” 29 So it is difficult to determine whether the pleasing Gond wedding custom of knocking the heads of bride and groom together, as practiced in India, is a hair-rite or a head-rite (to drive away spirits). It may be a union of souls. In conclusion it must be said that the same belief often results in different practices. For example, the belief that demons enter the hair makes the braid and tangled hair in India a sign of spiritual possession as well as a sign of protection, as in Europe matted hair shows the work of spirits. It is also believed that hair may be helpful and may be injurious; sympathetic magic may destroy the owner of the hair and yet the same hair may be burned by the owner without any corresponding harm to himself, a point noticed by Frazer. Despite these illogical results of the belief, the belief itself is well established that the hair is a strength or soul-power, or, as explained above, is life. The various practices spring from various ways of meeting this belief. If one set of men let their hair grow long till they are adult, it is not because they fear ad¬ verse possession but because they wish to grow strong with the hair-strength undiminished. On the other hand, cutting the hair is usually inevitable at some time and then precautions must be taken to keep off loss of strength, as when a Fiji chief eats a man every time he has his hair cut, to make up for loss of vitality. Another evidence that hair is strength or soul is the prevalence of the belief that a hair will cure the bite of snake, dog, etc. In India, a snake-bite is cured by three hairs, which are 29 Richard Schmidt, Fakire und Fakirtum in altem und modernen In- dien. The TJpanishads make the suture of the skull the exit of the soul, the brahmarandhra. 128 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION of course trebly efficacious, and tlie hair of an elephant is an amulet of power against disease, as a hair is some¬ times used for medicine against light diseases by the peasants of Europe. But the belief in hair and blood as soul-powers, though not extinct, fades before the growing concentration of the soul in other parts of the body. The heart and midriff of the Greeks were their especial soul-places because they paid more attention to the emotions as expressed by these organs. So the Psalmist speaks of his heart and kidneys as seats of emotion (compare “bowels of compassion”). The thinking soul as well as the emotional soul was also located in the larger organs, thought and emotion not being sundered till late. The Liver: If we pass the larger organ-souls in review historically we must begin with the liver, but only because it is the Babylonian soul-place, not because it is in itself an older soul-place than the heart. 30 The liver was the organ of divination to the Babylonians, Etruscans, and Greeks. But the Greeks, at least in Homer’s day, did not regard the liver as a seat of thought or emotion, only as a vital spot when one wounds it or tears it. The tale of the liver of Prometheus being devoured is scarcely an indica¬ tion that the liver has sinned, but that it will bear eating longer than the heart in a still living sufferer. Homer no¬ where uses liver as he does heart and midriff, of thought and emotion. 31 In Babylon, the soul (liver) of the sacrificed victim (either as god or as representing a god) showed approval, dislike, warning, etc., in regard to the worshippers. Like¬ wise in Hebrew poetry, the halted, liver, is synonymous 30 Otherwise Professor Jastrow, op. cit., below. Professor Jastrow be¬ lieved that the liver has everywhere preceded the heart as the soul-place. 31 Seymour, Homeric Age, p. 489. THE SOUL 129 with soul, nephesh, and this belief remained as late as the Mohammedan era. 32 „ The Heart: The heart as a seat of emotion, affection, mentality, morality, is as old as the Rig-Veda and as mod¬ ern as the latest novel. It is the seat of blood and the air- soul in blood (see below). Nor is there in Greece or India any indication that there was an anterior liver-soul: in India not even the possibility, as in the later Tityos tale, that the liver was recognized as a seat of thought enough to he sinful. It may be that anatomy, and divination by organs, first centred the Babylonian’s attention on the liver. In India there is no divination by inspection of en¬ trails in the early religion and one of the few indications of a soul other than the heart-soul among the large organs points to the kidneys rather than the liver being the soul- seat. As with other peoples, the heart is the thinking-or¬ gan to the Hindu. In Greece the her is the heart as soul, a winged ghost, which may bring disease. In Hindu phi¬ losophy the soul is not the heart but, being “the size of a thumb” (at death), it lives in the heart. The brain is the last place anyone ever thought of as the seat of the mind or soul. The passage from Cicero already referred to contains an epitome of ancient beliefs on the locality of the soul, from which it appears that while Empedocles held the blood to be the soul, Zeno contended that the soul is fire; while others regarded the “heart itself,” cor ip- sum, as the soul, others denied that the soul is the heart but claimed that it is in the heart, and, similarly, some ( cf . Plato, above) held the soul to be part of the brain 32 Compare the essay of Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., The Liver in Antiquity and the Beginnings of Anatomy (Univ. of Penna. Medical Bul¬ letin, Jan., 1908). To the examples of liver-souls there given may be added two from Micronesia and Eussia, respectively. The Malay Oti (Micronesian ate) is “liver, mind, heart,” that is, it is the thinking and emotional soul. In Eussian Shamanism, when a man dies it is said that Father Erlik 11 takes his liver . 1 ’ See also on the soul of the messenger-pig, chapter XI. 130 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION (this idea may have been derived from Egypt), and some held it to be in the brain: alii in corde alii in cerebro dix- erunt animi esse sedem et locum. Moreover, some identi¬ fied soul and breath: animum autem alii animam , 33 These advanced views need not detain us. But it may be remarked that the soul as a light in the heart is recognized in the Rig-Veda, ‘ 4 this light in my heart” (RV., 6, 9, 6), and the later Hindu philosophy recognizes 4 ‘soul consist¬ ing of light,” as it has “soul consisting of thought.” We may compare, not “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord” (Prov. 20:27), but the Gnostic “spark of life” the soul “fire-like” and “light-like” of (Greek) philosophy, and the “life was light” of John 1: 4. The poet of the Rig- Veda says “my mind speaks to my heart” (8, 100, 5), but this does not imply that they are different organs, rather that the mind is the mentalitv of the heart and in it, as in 1, 73, 10, “May these songs be agreeable to thy mind and heart.” It is the man’s mind as a power, which in contemplation “goes afar.” 34 33 The opposition to the view that the soul is in the brain is tersely justified by Zeno and shows how opposed to reason seemed the brain as a seat of soul even in comparatively late times: “Reason (the thinking soul) cannot be in the brain, because speech derives from reason, while at the same time speech issues with the voice from the throat ’ ’ (hence the road through the throat must be the one leading to the soul). Descartes, it may be remembered, says that the soul has its principal seat in the brain, where alone it understands and imagines and perceives, but it is diffused over the body in a less rational state, for “the human soul is united to the whole body. ” Of the views referred to above, that which identifies soul with fire is as old as Heraclitus; the soul as air was taught by Anaximander and Diogenes of Apollonia; but it is really a popular belief. 34 Here mind is ‘power’ as soul, Sk. manas (mind), Grk. ^vos (Minerva). Noticeable is the Vedic use of heart in the sense of stomach as well as seat of understanding. Thus in RV. 8, 2, 12, “the Soma-draughts when quaffed contend with each other in the heart” (stomach); ibid., 1, 179, 5, “the Soma quaffed, within, in the heart, I address.” The Soma is regarded as a “cordial.” The understanding is “in the heart” (Rig- Veda, 5, 85, 2). THE SOUL 131 In the second century after Christ, according to Galen (cited by Windisch), there was a popular psychic distinc¬ tion to the effect that the thinking part of the soul is cere¬ bral, the courageous part cardiac, 35 and the passionate and sensual part hepatic. Not that there are three souls, but the soul has three parts thus distributed. An important distinction in this regard is to be observed between Greek and Hindu thought. To the Greek, the spirits highest at¬ tribute is thought and the divine animating principle or cosmic spirit is. Nous. That soul is mental was also a Vedic conception; but the Hindu rejected the idea of a physical spirit; and mind to him, like sight or hearing, was only an organ, a superior controlling organ, but nevertheless material, whereas spirit when pure was de¬ void of sense and the thinking process. The Breath: Among the various seats of the physical soul the breath is generally regarded as primitive, and perhaps it is so, in the meaning “life” or “life-power.” At any rate, it has a respectable antiquity in the Hebrew ruah (the reflection of the nephesh ), the Greek psyche, the Latin animus, -ima, and perhaps the Sanskrit atman. Nevertheless, the Indo-European diversity makes it doubtful whether there was any original breath-soul of the Indo-Hellenico-Germanic group. 36 Our words “soul” and “ghost” point rather to what is expressed by the Greek Ovpos, passion, ebullition, excitement. Plato cor¬ rectly refers Ovpo^ (Crat. 419 E) to the “thysis and ze- sis ’ ’ of the soul, that is, to the unrest or agitation which, 35 This is also savage belief, for which reason the heart is so often eaten by warriors, though to our Eedskins it was merely a gastronomic dainty. In 1667, the savages described by Greenholgh in his Journal feasted on the hearts of boys and women. 36 That is, there was no one word for breath in the sense of soul, but different Indo-European peoples expressed soul by breath and even the idea of god as spiritus is so expressed in 9eos, Slavic dusa, Keltic dusii, spirits; compare Norse Asen and Asura (in Ormuzd) as (breath) spirit. 132 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION in the parallel Sanskrit word dhuma, makes the meaning to be “smoke” ( fumus ), a connection brought out in Lithuanian, where the same word, dumci and dumai, “thought” and “smoke,” depends only on the accent for the differentiated meaning. The word soul is probably re¬ lated to “sea” (the restless) and ghost to “geyser,” also agitation on the physical side. So too Latin saevus may be etymologically connected with the word “soul,” and “gust” to ghost. 37 In Sanskrit, the words cognate with animus have usually the physical meaning, breath of life; but “breath,” ana or pra-ana, is the intelligential soul in philosophical works. Sanskrit diman is merely life-power when, for example, it is said that “Soma is Indra’s dtman ,y and “the sun is the dtman of the world”; dyus, life, is a synonym of prana. In Greece, Chrysippus says that “the soul is breath”; he adds that it is “born in us and extends continuously through the whole body, ’* that is to say, the soul is not the lung-breatli but a more ethereal substance diffused all over the body. Hindu phi¬ losophy also takes this view of the soul and regards it as diffused by means of tiny veins or canals (as if by the nervous system) from its original location at the base of the spinal column, which is called the seat of the soul. The seat of the soul in general is, then, the vertebral col¬ umn or spinal cord. The mystics have a system of urging the soul up from the foot of the column to the brain (which is said to be a painful process); of this soul in 37 Words for soul revert to the meaning “ breath’ ’ in several Indo- European languages; other words in the same group of languages give to soul the etymological sense of “thinker’’ (measurer, estimater), “vivi- fier, ’ 1 “ power, ’ ’ as well as the physical notions conveyed in ‘ ‘ follower ’ r and “shadow .” Every one of these notions is duplicated in languages not Indo-European, as has recently been shown for the languages of the Eastern Archipelago by R. Brandstetter, Die Indonesische v. d. Indog. Volkseele (Luzern, 1921). Soul as breath is known also in China, America, etc. The equivalents given above (sea, soul; gust, ghost) are probable but not certain. THE SOUL 133 the spine the “breath-soul” and the mind are organs. Since in this view the mind is an organ of soul, the gen¬ eral theory is that mentality begins in the spinal cord, not in the brain of the skull, and “soul” is diffused, not lo¬ cally fixed. A savage parallel to the diffused soul may be found in the Tonga statement that “soul is to the body as perfume to a flower.” But most savages take breath not only as the vehicle of soul but as the soul itself. Thus Australian wang is breath and spirit and Mohawk aton- ritz , soul, derives from atonrion, to breathe. The soul in each case is, however, the life-power, not a separate quid¬ dity. It was this life-power which the Greek and Roman caught from the mouth of the dying as his “last breath,” though perhaps neither of them distinguished very care¬ fully between breath and soul. The Aztecs regarded the vital power or soul as the divine breath breathed into man by Tezcatlipoca, the Wind-god. 38 But a savage differentiates these various souls; he does not regard the breath-soul as the shadow- soul; sometimes he omits the breath as soul. Thus the Calabar Negroes have four souls, self, shadow, dream- soul, and bush-soul (the beast-representative). 39 The shadow is distinguished from the dream-soul, which some writers carelessly call the “shadow-soul.” The Shadow: The real shadow as soul is a common as¬ pect of soul-belief. The New England Amerinds called the soul chemung, shadow, and th enatub (soul) of the Quiches in the South had the same meaning. In India, Shadow her- 38 For other examples of the spiritus idea, see Tylor, Primitive Cul¬ ture, I, p. 432. The Wind-god is not a soul but Harpies and Valkyries as forms of souls are spirits of the wind. ‘‘Evil winds” and “good winds” are known in Vedic literature, but not as souls, only as breezes bringing great heat, disease, or refreshment. 39 Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 459. Bush in the expression bush-soul means the jungle or forest and the bush-soul is the animal-soul; the savage deposits his soul in an animal as an ark of safety. 134 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION self is a divinity. To step on the shadow is to injure the soul. Gods and ghosts cast no shadows, ghosts being them¬ selves shades and gods not having mortal qualities (they do not sweat; their garlands do not wither). Most savages regard a picture as a sort of shadowy double of them¬ selves and hence fear loss of identity, if they are painted or photographed. Catlin and Curtis were both held re¬ sponsible for the sickness and death of Mandan and Zuhi Indians whom they had thus weakened by portraiture. The savage sees himself in a pool of water and regards it as a natural double; but in a picture he regards his image as unnatural, stolen from him. Something of the sitter was put into the picture and would by so much cur¬ tail his life, the Mandans told Catlin. Thev added that the person so robbed would also sleep uneasily in his grave, so that death was not the worst of the robberv. Harm to the portrait, they also believed, injured the sitter, so that it put a dangerous weapon into the hands of the owner of the picture. 40 It might be supposed that an echo would also be re¬ garded as a double self or soul; but, though this has been said to be the case, authority seems to be lacking. The savage, like the civilized man, regards the echo as the voice of a mocking spirit (in Greece and India, it is a per¬ sonified spirit). The Remaining Souls: These 4 ‘ souls’’ are small parts of the body, including nails and excrementa, to which it seems absurd to give the name soul but from which it is difficult to distinguish the souls of higher type. Here at least organs of vitality rather than souls would appear more appropriate than Wundt’s designation. 41 The best- known of these powers is saliva, which all over the world 40 Catlin, North American Indians, I, pp. 122, 255. The picture is thus exactly like a shadow, injury to which injures the owner of the shadow. 4 1 Wundt, op. cit., II, p. 21. THE SOUL 135 is regarded as curative and mystically powerful; but some savages, and even people calling themselves civi¬ lized, like the Hindus, operate with sweat and urine also as psychical powers. To sweat is not only to cast oft evil but to eject a power, which another man may receive. A chief or spiritual leader is so powerful that his sweat and urine are regarded as soul-powers in the same way that hair is regarded. Urine was used as medicine and guarded property. More general is the ritual implying saliva- power. To spit thrice is to avert evil or a spirit; one wards it oft with a sacrifice of a small power instead of suffering the loss of greater power by not warding it oft. Curative power in saliva is instinctively used by animals licking hot sores. “Marduk’s saliva’’ is an element in the Babylonian physician-ritual; it is the “spittle of life.” In preparing sacrificial food or even ordinary food, the South American Indians used spittle as an ingredient of safety and power. Tacitus says that Vespasian restored a man’s eyesight by anointing the sufferer’s eyes with earth mixed with spittle. 42 In Egypt, spittle cured, puri¬ fied, and prevented old age and disease; in India, it cures sores, wounds, sore eyes, and wards oft the evil eye. In Ireland, it keeps oft evil spirits and fairies. To spit on a new possession is to make it one’s own. To spit on a per¬ son is ordinarily to exercise soul-power against him. One keeps an abhorred person away just as one keeps evil per¬ sons oft one’s property. But in some African tribes the host spits on his departing guest as a compliment, as who should say “I bestow on you some power.” Sin is spat out just as it is sweated out, and disease, as evil, is also spat out. A noxious person is sometimes spat upon with the understanding that, like a scapegoat, he may carry oft sin. In a Jataka tale (522) it is expressly said that an evil woman spits on a man to cast her sin upon him. 42 Hist., 4, 81; cf. Suet. Vesp., 7. CHAPTER X THE SELF AS SOUL But when a dead man returns to friends in a dream lie does not come as breath or heart or any of these soul- forms, but as himself, individual and personal, as his friends know him, his wound still bleeding, his very clothes the same. Dead souls that are sacrificed at the grave to accompany a man beyond, as when a man’s wife is burned in India, buried alive in Polynesia, or decapi¬ tated and buried in Africa, go as complete personalities. The African’s chief priest dies with the king that he may still give his lord ghostly council. The dead things, arms, implements, toys, manikins, buried to rise again with their owner—all these rise as wholes not as place-souls. The thing dead is regarded, like the thing alive, as a com¬ plete whole. The Malay prox>itiates a piece of tin and begs its pardon for mining it on the same principle as that by which savages apologize to trees and animals for killing them. The Tibetan leaves the nugget and takes out the gold-dust because the nugget is the productive mother; he treats it as a person. Every person is remem¬ bered as a whole and remains a complete person after death. Hence the rule of the Fiji Islanders that leads them to kill their relatives and even themselves before the weakness of age shall make them permanently decrepit in the next life. Hence the Babvlonians and other Semites must be buried properly or they suffer for it hereafter. In a word, the conception of personal totality as the en¬ during part of man is far more cogent than that of soul of this or that soul-place. THE SELF AS SOUL 137 It is the more necessary to emphasize this point be¬ cause, in his Volherpsychologies Wundt has disregarded it. According to Wundt, the savage identifies breath with what Wundt calls the shadow-soul, which is a psyche op¬ posed to the physical soul, and these are the only aspects of soul. But in fact the savage does not identify himself with either of these souls. Savages generally have several souls, but two stand out most prominently, the self and the double. There is a physical self and a spiritual self, as the Algonquins believed; this, too, is the belief of the Hidatsas and of the Gold Coast Negroes and of the an¬ cient Egyptians. Both the Negro and the Egyptian be¬ lieve that there is a soul called Ka by the Egyptians and Kra by the Negroes (of the Tshi- and Ewe-speaking tribes). The Ka is the body-soul, yet not in such parts as we have been considering, which are, rather, vital or¬ gans, but a double, acting like a genius as a guarding spirit, distinct from heart and shadow, though possibly at first confused with it, as a luminous glory, perhaps at one time imagined also under the names strength and form, but the Ka is especially distinguished from the spirit or breath-soul called Ba, a winged shape that flies to the gods like the Greek flying psyche in bird-form. This soul eventually is reunited with all other soul-forms when the man after death is reconstructed, but the outstanding feature of the man’s personality is that of physical self and an ethereal self. The double of the man is material but his ethereal self (represented by the scarabaeus) is distinct from the body on which it rests. So the African savage worships his Kra while he lives, with birthday offerings; it is his genius. At death the Kra, leaving the body but still remaining near it for a time, is at last reincarnated, since it cannot be happy without a body, and until it finds a body it is hungry and evilly disposed; liable in the form of a Sisa to produce 138 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION illness or enter a wild beast. If a man falls ill it is be¬ cause some Kra lias stolen into bis body, while his own Kra is away, for in sleep a Kra may slip off and do some wearisome'work, which explains why one is liable to wake up with a tired feeling. But when the Kra becomes a Sisa the real self becomes a ghost or shadow-man . 1 In civilized life also we recognize the physical soul. The corpse is conscious of the murderer; it is not safe to pass through a graveyard because, though the soul may be in heaven, the ghost is by the grave; there are two per¬ sonalities, but one is shadowy and clammy and has a weak gibbering voice . 2 The Roman Genius is a similar physical soul; it is indulged when one eats. Like the physical soul of the Greenlander and Amerind, the rein¬ carnated soul of the Australian is physical, but at the same time the Australian has an immortal double, a non- incarnate soul. So the African, too, has a self distinct from the Kra, namely, the Srahman, which lingers a short time by the body and then goes to ghost-land, a place un¬ derground, where there are towns and occupations which are a counterpart of life on earth. This also is like the Egyptian life hereafter, only the African says sadly that “a corner of the world of the living is better than the whole of Srahmanadzi” (ghost-land), which is what the Greeks thought. But the Srahman is a guardian of the living, for whom it still cares, and prayers are addressed to it as a person. Now, in this case, although a shadow among shades, the departed ghost is the self that lived on earth, while the Kra is what wanders and may be stolen, so that one loses strength. But what is this other 1 Ellis, op. cit., pp. 153 f. 2 Compare the dead as the ‘‘weak” in Babylonia and their twittering voices. When the Great Turtle speaks through a wizard it is with a “puppy voice’’ (Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, p. 452), or in Micronesia with a bird-voice or twitter called mitcfutefu, which describes both the wizard’s voice and that of birds ( cf. 1 Kings 19: 12). THE SELF AS SOUL 139 than when we say, “the spirit has gone ont of him,” “he has lost his spirit” (he is a coward)? This is not the psyche, bnt power, vitality. The later belief confnses the two sonls. The psyche is confused with the shadow; the window is opened to let ont the “soul.” Ghosts, Wundt asserts, are from a com¬ bination of breath and shadow as sonls. “His psyche be¬ wailing its fate, leaving manhood and youth, went from his limbs to Hades,” says Homer (II. 16, 856). This is not the “last breath” (as Wundt interprets it) but the image which represents the man in Hades. The soul of one undergoing transmigration is only the physical soul in savage belief. “The jaw-bone comes from the ancestor,” says the Negro, meaning from the reincarnated physical soul. The soul that flies out in breath as a winged crea¬ ture is as primitive as the worm-soul which is supposed by Wundt to have suggested the physical soul. The Af¬ rican savage determines by a dying utterance that he will become a butterfly; just as an Egyptian decides by magi¬ cal means to become incorporate in an animal. The soul may also enter plants and trees; a body buried at the foot of a tree enters it; a plant from a grave is the very person buried. The form changes but the soul abides. African demonology shows that many of the spirits afflicting men are souls, while others are independent phenomenal spirits, personified diseases and such, of a malicious character. This is the case also with the mali¬ cious and disease-bringing devils of Babylonia, where ghosts and phenomenal spirits mingle together, as they do in the Hebrew Sheol. It is impossible, in a sophisti¬ cated community, always to say which is the original form. Hardaur, a disease-god of India, was apparently once a man; but whether Bhairava, “the horrible,” who is now a form of Shiva, was also once a man (as some suppose) no one really knows. 140 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION In most of the superstitions concerning the safeguard¬ ing of oneself in respect of other-world beings there is rather a belief in the physical soul than in animistic spirits. AVliat is not physical does not trouble the sur¬ vivors. But for this reason the other aspect is apt to be neglected in discussions of the soul, and it is an error to lay the whole stress on “body-soul” and “breath-soul” and then, confusing breatli-soul with the dream- and sliadow-soul (as does Wundt), to interpret all soul as merely physical. For in this interpretation not only is the confounding of breath and shadow inadmissible, but, what is far more important, the self itself is lost sight of altogether; and yet this self after all is the chief thing to the savage, as it is to every man in all stages of de¬ velopment. To the survivors liable to be plagued with trouble-bringing ghosts the physical is the chief thing that matters, for it is the only thing they fear. But the dead man belongs to another sphere in his self-soul. This is what goes to the Happy Land, however called, of sav¬ age and Hindu and Egyptian belief; a man’s spirit is his self as remembered on earth. Thus memory leads to the conviction that man continues to live hereafter not only in physical hair and blood and breath, but in his complete personality. The soul of the dead is always individual, though the soul of the living is composite. The sad shades of Babylonian and Hebrew undergrounds are woeful beings but they are whole in¬ dividuals. The spiritual side, even in civilized thought, must have some sort of a body and with the body is con¬ nected the personality. In China an attempt was made to divide the Yang and Yin elements in man into two souls, one heavenly, one earthly, but this was no general belief and even as speculation it lacked the foundation of popular distinction between these elements. The usual Chinese ghost is one that “comes back” to the body, but THE SELF AS SOUL 141 a later word for spirit in general is also made to do dnty for the sonl as ethereal, represented by “breath” and “light.” So the soul lives in the grave, but in the case of noble beings is also represented as being in the sky. Simi¬ larly, the Amerind’s skull is the abode of his ghost while he is in the Happy Hunting Grounds as a complete spirit¬ ual being, but with a body, albeit the body differs from that of earth. Yet in every one of these cases the savage or the civilized man imagines himself, not only his breath or liver or other ‘ ‘ soul, ’’ as living in the next life. He be¬ lieves that his own individuality will live as a complete personality even though it may lack strength and blood, even though a spirit of strength, like the Hebrew soul, has left it; his immediate mortality is not conceived as possible. Later he may die again and gradually fade out altogether; he does not worry about what will happen in the remote future, but for the immediate future he is convinced that he, his ego, will be alive. Now what to a savage is his ego except his person as he knows it? Ob¬ viously the whole theory of a double soul elsewhere, as it certainly is in China, is a later philosophic or religious refinement of a more simple ego and the dual soul is either a superimposed belief, in which the grave-ego is left to one side and a new spiritual ego is made to take its place, or, as among savages, one part of the dual nature is con¬ ceived as adventitious, not vital to the ego, such as the shadow or genius. To each in his own generation he will himself live hereafter, or in other words his soul, the real soul, is just himself. So the Micronesian, who is more ad¬ vanced than the Australian and may in some regards be compared with the Amerind, holds that he has a shadowy person, his likeness, image, called Unu or Ata-na. As an Ata-mauri, “living man,” one’s spirit may wander at night and be visible; it may remain on earth, maliciously inclined, but is now only a Natamate, “dead man,” 142 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION whereas the man himself or self-soul goes a long way to find life or a second death in the next world. Here we have shadow, ghost, and self, and obviously it is the self that counts; the other parts or souls are important only to the living men who see spirits or are tormented by these by¬ products of individuality. Civilized peoples explain that the self remains in the next life in a shattered condition; a certain weakness must be conceded; the breath of Yahweh is withdrawn; but apart from that element of vigor the man himself lives in Slieol. At an earlier date he lived in the grave or still earlier at the hearth of his own house. It is indis¬ putable that the soul has changed thus its habitation, home, grave, underground world, being the progressive series among the Babylonians and Egyptians, and heaven being added as a fourth advance by the Chinese, Hindus, and others, e.g., the Amerinds. It is in this advance and connected with it that the soul is dislocated, so to speak. As soon as heaven is regarded as its home all the old habi¬ tations become insupportable. But they survive in a per¬ sistent tradition. Moreover, it is quite possible that the great honor paid to nobility, chieftain, king, sometimes priest, led to their being sublimated as superior beings and associated with celestials, sons of the Sun, etc., so that the first heavenly home and consequently heavenly soul was theirs, later universalized and assumed bv com- moners. Thus in Egypt the king himself is practically identified with the Sun-god and later belief merely gave all men the same destination, as Osiris was the first to go West and then later all men went West after him as sub¬ sidiary Osirides. The double soul would thus be first a part of a man like a shadow or follower, which did not really count after death, and in nowise diminished the thought of the self as the real soul, and then it would be utilized as a means of explaining the double home, when THE SELF AS SOUL 143 the idea of the home afar from the grave had come to perplex those who could not renounce the idea that the soul lingered there. All over the world, however difficult men find it to de¬ scribe or imagine to themselves a personality devoid of breath and blood and strength, they yet believe that their self, as distinct from breath, blood, and strength, does continue to exist. The liver of the sacrificed pig in Borneo remains behind and returns the answer (by divination), but its self, as its soul, goes as messenger to the gods. A “breath of divinity’’ is breathed into a Polynesian baby when it is baptized, as the “breath of the Manitou” becomes the soul of the Fox Indian, incorporated into it at birth, but just as the shade in Sheol, who has also lost the breath of Yahweh, still retains its personality, so these savage breath-souls, although divine, are not the real self of the savage but only that which invigorates and makes live on earth. All a man’s acts are expressions of his personality and as such are psychic; his acts are his souls; the acting organ is a soul-place. In Vedic belief the eye of the dying goes to the sun, his breath to the wind, his thinking power is likewise dissipated, yet the man’s self is not destroyed. He himself goes to the Fathers, sits beneath the tree of heaven, enjoys sensuous delights. As the hero in Valhalla, the Amerind in the Happy Hunting Ground, the Egyptian and Greek in Elysium, so he lives in complete enjoyment as a perfect individual. The spirits of good kings in China lived in heaven surrounded by their good ministers, still taking an interest in earthly affairs. The Egyptian, who had reduced his earlier origi¬ nal souls to the Ka and Ba, still retained his traditional belief and his “heart” was also regarded as a sensible entity which could stand forth and accuse him (if not magically suborned) on the day of judgment. But, as in India, it was also in Egypt the first care to make the 144 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION man’s self whole again by various formulas which united his death-parted individuality. It seemed as if a shock had sprung them apart; he could be nothing without his self, that self which represented his totality, his individ¬ ual personality. So, in both countries, these parts were formally restored to him; until then he waited in an im¬ perfect condition for the fulfilment of life and self. 3 This ritual holds in solution all the earlier savage beliefs of different powers making a man, as so many “souls,” which nevertheless must be united after death in order to have the self-soul perfect. One may say that a savage has (or says he has) any number of souls, three, four, or thirty, but at bottom the savage knows that when he is dead any one of these is only an item in his self and that self is his real soul, his self-conscious ego in bodily form. So the African Bantu says: “My body and soul are one; my soul is mvself. ’ ’ Zoroastrian belief also contains a replica of savage ideas in modernized form. The soul is a spirit choosing good or ill, fighting during life on the side of Ormuzd or Ahriman and after death crossing the Bridge of Judg¬ ment to its fate, as if it were one and indivisible. But it consists of several spiritual parts. First is the breath, anhu, then the self as embodiment of activities, claena, or conscious intelligence, baodhanli, with which the daenci is sometimes exchanged, then the will-soul, nr van, and lastly the genius or f rauashi, the preexistent superior soul (the idea-soul in the mind of Ormuzd). The urvan is re¬ sponsible for acts done in life. The fravashi accompanies it after death and speaks for it as an advocate. The con- 3 An earlier conception may be suspected in the Vedic rite of the son *s assumption of his father’s powers. When the father lies at death’s door the son is directed to lie on him or face to face with him and then the father says, “I give thee my breath, my eyes, my hearing, etc.,” and the son repeats, ”1 take thy breath,” etc., till the list of bodily powers, in¬ cluding virility, is ended. THE SELF AS SOUL 145 scious intelligence also accompanies the urvan. The body remains on earth, but these five: life, conscience, intellect, will, and the guardian genius, go to the spiritual world and the dead is met by his daena on the third day after death before the judge. The urvan is like the Egyptian Ba, though the winged soul is the fravashi and corre¬ sponding to the anhu or breath of life and strength ( tevishi, strength, sometimes replaces it) is the Egyptian sekhem, or ‘‘power,” of the individual, also personified as an entity. 4 Thus even in the rarified religious atmosphere of Zo¬ roastrianism there remains the primitive analysis of man as consisting of body on the one hand and self on the other, that self being the vital power conjoined with will and intelligence to make a whole man. But the intrusion of conscience (or, in more Buddhistic form, the deeds of a man as personified entity) and the idealization of the at¬ tendant genius or forefather as genius, in place of the bodily self, shows that the Zoroastrian view has advanced far beyond those of savage and Egyptian, as the judg¬ ment gives an ethical tinge that removes it from the Baby¬ lonian conception; for in Babylonian belief the only rea¬ son for one ghost differing from another in comfort or misery was because the body was or was not properly cared for; there was no ethical judgment. While the conception of daena is practically “self as the conscience,” the more literal interpretation (and one in accordance with native tradition) is that daena is a man’s self as expressed in his thoughts, words, and deeds. When the daena appears before the dead man in the judg¬ ment it says “I am thy (good or evil) thoughts, words, 4 The fravashi is described as “like a well-winged bird.” So in India the Fathers appear in bird-form. For ‘ 1 winged soul ’ ’ even in life, com¬ pare Apollonius, Argon., 4, 23, -wrepbeLS ol tv cppeal dvp.os iavd-q. Babylonian ghosts fly over the sea to the ‘ 1 distant land, ’ ’ Aralu, and so assume bird- forms. 146 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION deeds.” A Buddhistic heresy of the third century B. C. also taught that there was a surviving 4 4 heart, or mind, or consciousness” after death. The resurrection of the dead implies in Egyptian belief the revivification of the body, with the heart, intestines, lungs, and liver. The Zoroastrian believed that the Sav¬ iour, the 44 Raiser of those having bones,” would eventu¬ ally cause the body to be united with the soul, or, in the later view, that God would raise the dead from the mate¬ rial parts, the bones coming from the dust, the blood from water, the hair from trees, the vital life from fire. This was the basis of the belief in resurrection and judgment at the last day, which entered Hebraic and Christian be¬ lief along with the conception of a demoniac power op¬ posed to God and other angelic powers who acted as God’s messengers and deputies. The idea of a new spirit¬ ual body is absent from Egyptian belief; one goes to sleep at death and is aroused by magical formulas. The mummy preserves the spirit. In the Osiris-cult a man is revived by the formulas used when Osiris was resurrected. The ear¬ lier Ra-cult (of the Sun-god) seems to have held that a king was transported directly to the sky as a complete in¬ dividual ; but as the Sun is a moral overseer the king must have had some ethical support for his exaltation. The body spiritual is so firmly entrenched in Hindu belief that the soul between transmigrations has to have a special 44 subtle body” while waiting to be reborn. In the early belief of Buddhism, before the time of the heresy alluded to above, a desperate attempt was made to get rid of the idea of soul altogether. Buddha was per¬ petually ridiculing the Brahmanic belief in the 4 4 little man within.” There was, he said, no such other self in¬ side of a man, no separate being 44 the size of a thumb” sitting in the heart and surviving hereafter. What alone survived was the confection of character made of thought THE SELF AS SOUL 147 and feeling and act in a previous existence; especially the desire of a man, which would continue to burn till all fuel was gone. But it was impossible for long to keep up this dogmatic distinction between soul and “confection.” In the course of a few centuries some Buddhists were ad¬ herents of the belief in the pug gala as a real soul, while eventually the later Buddhist Church made no practical distinction at all. The believing Buddhist went as a soul to Paradise, very much as a good Brahman goes to heaven. The Lord Buddha welcomes this persistent self exactly as if it were a soul. Even Buddha himself recog¬ nized a memory of the past as part of the confection and the “confection” suffered in hell for its sins, so that only a metaphysician could see why a confection was not a soul. Buddha’s real animus in getting rid of soul was directed against its immortality. As a divine immortal part of man it could not be destroyed, while the confection was sup¬ posed to pass out like a flame when desire died. Man could not get rid of an immortal entity, but he could annihilate by starvation the temporary product of desire, a con¬ summation devoutly to be wished. Buddha’s “confec¬ tion” was thus a substitute for soul; it was the self sur¬ viving but with no immortal essence to preserve it from extinction; the ghost of a soul, the shadow of an old be¬ lief, which could not be done away with but was desiccated and remained as a memorial of the fact that the last thing a man will renounce is the belief in his own self as an entity surviving death. By a curious irony of fate it was Buddhism which, by instituting the reverent care of relics (this was not a Hindu custom), first introduced the wor¬ ship of the relics and of the curative powers supposed to reside in them as well as the shrine to keep them, which eventually developed into the temple, so that Buddha him¬ self as well as his bones became the object of worship, though his propaganda was especially directed against all 148 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION soul-powers anti spiritual beings as objects of any regard. 5 In religious philosophy, spirits are freed from mate¬ rial limitations. Thus, though weak, they may transcend space and time, etc. The aim of the Yogi is to acquire such spiritual powers even before death. But these vain imaginations need not detain us here. The habitat of the surviving soul will be discussed un¬ der the subject of myths. Here a few words as to belief in the soul as implied by disposal of the dead. The ear¬ liest method was by exposure, the body being left to be devoured. 6 Even in late Buddhistic tales the cemetery is not a place of graves so much as a place where dead bodies are exposed. In Tibet, bodies are given to dogs and the Parsis still expose the dead to birds; in ancient Persia as in Greece they were left for birds or beasts. A dog’s muz¬ zle put to a dying man must imply in Parsi belief what is implied by the Hindu custom mentioned above, the dog takes the soul as psychopomp. Exposure in trees was practiced by the Hindu Gonds and some Amerinds. In¬ humation seems here and there to have been earlier than cremation, which may sometimes have been confined to superior people, but among Fuegians it is customary and 5 The soul against which Buddha inveighed was always the individual soul. He does not seem to have known of the All-Soul nor of any theory of individual soul except the crude “thumbkin” soul of the Brahman priest. 6 Possibly cannibalism preceded exposure; it is sometimes practiced as a religious rite (the power of the dead passes into the eater), or as a mark of affection. A Samoan chief’s objection to Christianity was that if he adopted it he might not be eaten by his family but by worms. Some Afri¬ cans hold that natural deformity persists after death but accidental mu¬ tilations are not inherited by the dead body. The body, as some savages say, does not age after death but (like the Hindu gods, who “are all about thirty years old” in appearance) is not subject to change; yet, as one Afri¬ can said, “it probably grows old and dies again, but we know nothing about it and only when white people plague us with questions do we think about such things.” THE SELF AS SOUL 149 probably nowhere indicates greater “refinement,” as used to be taught. Cave-burial is common and in some cases leads to cave temples, but seposition has no other significance. Embalming was practiced in India and Siam as a temporary expedient before cremation, but mummi¬ fication, practiced in Egypt and more crudely in Peru, im¬ plies a desire to keep the departed body as essential to the soul. Articles buried in prehistoric graves show a Neo¬ lithic belief in future life; but Zoroastrianism shows that even exposure may be united with such a belief. Hindus believe that the body and soul after death will be refined replicas of the present body and soul but recognizable to the living, as were the shades to Greek and Hebrew. The idea of a bodily resurrection seems to be implied by the care with which the Vedic people collected bones of the dead, but cremation did away with this belief and con¬ verted it into that of the “subtle body.” 7 All of these peo¬ ples believed in a conscious existence after death, but the Greeks did not believe in a bodily resurrection. The Hebrews, when influenced by Zoroastrianism, believed finally in a national resurrection of the righteous, eventu¬ ally of all people, though at first they had no notion of any resurrection, being in this regard on the same plane as the Babylonians, whose idea was that a god might re¬ vivify those who were almost dead but not bring back the soul to a body from which it had really departed. In later Hebraic thought, conscious life after death and bodily resurrection were both denied by the Sadducees, but the Pharisees believed in a bodily resurrection on earth, 7 The sacrificial mysticism of the Brahmanas makes a man’s future body to consist of the sacrifices he has made in life. The inconsistency in be¬ lieving that the dead can both function as ghosts and simultaneously be in heaven, or in another body, disturbs the living only as it affects his own prayers and offerings to the dead. The Brahman priest, however, says: “Do not be disturbed by doubt; the food given to the Manes reaches them, whether they are in the moon or sky or reborn on earth. ’ ’ 150 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION which was not taught by Christ or Paul, who interpreted resurrection in the sense of a higher spiritual body. Christ’s resurrection not only proved to Paul a life after death but gave the cause of others’ resurrection (Rom. 8:11). The early Christians, however, generally reverted to the Zoroastrian belief in a “last day” judgment. These Christians had different views as to the soul. Origen re¬ garded it platonically as a pure preexistent spirit (a view condemned by orthodoxy) ; but to most Christians it was expressly created for each individual. Tertullian thought it was propagated and so inherited sin. The view that the individual human soul is part of the divine soul is clearly formulated by the Hindus and is implied by some Chris¬ tian mystics; but the Christian Church holds in general that the soul is individual, not a part of the cosmic con¬ sciousness or God, and it ignores or denies altogether what might be regarded as the logical corollary of the soul’s immortality, namely, its preexistence, which is elsewhere assumed and regarded as the strongest argu¬ ment for its immortality. %> CHAPTER XI SACRIFICE We have thus far considered the various objects of worship, the possible causes of worship in man’s nature, and the views man holds in regard to himself. Inciden¬ tally it has been necessary also to touch upon another subject which we must now consider more circumstan¬ tially, that of sacrifice, the objective link between man and the spiritual world. There have been various theories as to the origin of sacrifice but none is satisfactory, be¬ cause, though all are correct in their interpretation of certain phenomena, all are deficient in that they are in¬ tended to make one interpretation cover all phenomena. But one might as well argue one origin of poetry as in¬ vent one origin of sacrifice. Poetry originates in lyrical feeling, passion, imagination, historical essay, the desire to say a thing worthily or lastingly. So sacrifice origi¬ nates in various fears and desires, to get, to get rid of, to propitiate, to commune, to atone. It is in general the expression of a desire to square oneself with the (spirit¬ ual) powers that be, but as that is too general a notion to be of practical use, and all theories are too one-sided, it will be best to consider the data first and see as we peruse them what reasonable application thereof can be made. Before man has a clear conception of a spirit inhabit¬ ing a body, when he fears rather the power of the jungle than any demon in it, when he has no thought of a lump of metal being the home of a spirit but yet entreats it as a living whole, he makes, in this attitude of mind, first of all a gesture indicating his appreciation of the power. 152 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION If he is accustomed to prostrate himself before his chief, that is the gesture he employs; if merely to bow the head or stretch forth the arms, that is his gesture here. This first indication of religious dread or awe remains with him always even when he is highly civilized. In the Rig- Veda, the worshipper formally calls his god’s attention to the fact that in sacrificing he is also “stretching out the hands,” not to receive but to supplicate, and is “kneeling” to the god. At a later date the Hindu pros¬ trates himself before his god. In one form or another such a gesture is almost universal; it is not the result of social agreement as to the way of approaching divinity; it is not a mob-motion. It is a reflex in the individual of in¬ stinct (as a dog fawns) or social usage as applied to an extraneous object of respect; its intent is to show the man’s humility in the presence of a recognized power. So the Australian savage bows and kneels to the material object which he invokes to aid him. Further, the act which in social relations is apt to accompany such a gesture ac¬ companies it here in many instances of savage proce¬ dure; that is, the savage offers something to the power, just as he offers a little something when he bows to his chief, or greets an awesome strange power in human shape. This offering is, so to speak, one with the gesture of prostration. In whatever shape it is made, as fruit or water or meat or rum, it reflects and carries out the idea of the prostration; it, too, is an embodied confession of humility, of dependence, of homage, of attempted con¬ ciliation. Thus, at the same time that the Australian, that lowest savage, who has been exploited as the prototype of communion-sacrificers while he is also said, oddly enough, to be “without religion,” is busy on the one hand with magical acts of fruitfulness and gingerly eats his totem, on the other hand he is begging on bended knee some power of dust or finger or his knife (conceived as an ani- SACRIFICE 153 mate volitive being) to grow or injure or even to kill bis foe; so that the fundamental attitude of the simplest gift- sacrifice is exemplified in this pre-religious man, whose homage, coming before sacrifice, shows that there must be an error in that theory which explains all “ honorific ” sacrifice as secondary. One of the many theories of sacrifice, that of Tylor and Lyall, who explain it as a gift, was unnecessarily compli¬ cated by the sub-theory that animal sacrifices came later than cereal offerings and by the belief that the manner of making a sacrifice, whether offered on or in the earth, is of real importance. As regards the latter point, the of¬ fering in earth, a pit, is generally made to lower pit- spirits, earth-spirits, heroes, ghosts, divinities of the un¬ der-world; but even in Greece this rule does not always hold and in any case it merely adjusts the gift to the re¬ cipient’s domicile, as one naturally offers anything to water-spirits in water rather than on land. In the case of the lower spirits, however, the Greeks made a difference in the disposal of the food. Edible animals were offered to the upper gods and, except in a holocaust, the people would eat what the gods left; but to the earthy lower spirits were offered their special animals, pigs and dogs, 1 whose blood flowed into the earth, and their carcasses were burned. So blood (renewing life) was poured into a trench for ghostly heroes. As to the question of priority of animal and cereal sacrifice, savages offer both kinds at the same time and the earliest records speak of both. One form is probably as old as the other, circumstances of human diet probably being the decisive factor; for all gods eat what their worshippers eat. Cereals are con¬ trasted by some scholars with bloody sacrifices as being 1 Pigs to Demeter, dogs to Hekate; rooters in earth and bayers of the moon (Hekate is an earth-goddess as well as an uncanny night-spirit and moon-goddess), fertile and ghostly, respectively. 154 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION non-piacular; but the antithesis will not hold because milk and honey are piacular in the Yedic sacrifice and fiesh also is often non-piacular, though it may be admitted that the piacular sacrifice is usually carried out with flesh-offerings. In general, however, Cain and Abel were contemporaries! Fruit or grain and flesh belong to the most primitive known types of savage sacrifice. A good method of approach to the idea of sacrifice is by way of the Manes. The ghost, of course, is fed with what he likes and has ordinarily eaten. Then the Manes, who are exalted ghosts, are also fed with their accustomed food. Such a custom retains its hold and it is not probable that the offerings to the Manes changed at all for cen¬ turies in India, but rather that the present food of the Manes, which we know by the records is the same today as it was three thousand years ago, was even then, in character, what it had been for as many years before. The actual provision may have changed but not the kind of provision. Now this has always been a combination of cakes and flesh; each family ghost was given the kind of flesh he especially liked, as long as one could remember what it was, and all the Manes were fed with sweet cakes because all Hindus like that kind of food. When flesh was given up as a daily diet it was still retained as acceptable to the Manes, because they had always been used to it. This union of cereal and flesh is one of the oldest forms of Hindu sacrifice and it is well to study it a little closer because it illuminates one of the theories of sacrifice al¬ ready mentioned. To the observer, as to the participant of this meal, the dinner to the Manes is a common meal shared by all the family, dead and alive, with invited guests consisting of human neighbors and their Manes. Now in a sense anv communal meal is a ceremony of communion and this meal has been urged in evidence of the theory that all sacrifice is a communion service, as SACRIFICE 155 when the totemist, by a blood-offering and by eating the totem, communes with the spirit of the totem. But in re¬ ality there is no communion in this sense, no effort to unite oneself with a spiritual power from which the wor¬ shipper through the very act of communion draws spirit¬ ual strength. No more communion than there is in a din¬ ner party; communication, yes, and very likely a shrewd idea that the people invited to the party may subsequently remember the giver kindly. For the Shraddha feast as it is called ( i.e ., love-feast) is really the daily meal of the ghost. The day of the Manes is measured by the moon, that is, the whole half of the moon dark to us is light to them; it is their ‘ ‘ day, ’ * so that, as the Hindus take only one meal daily, the monthly Shraddha in human reckon¬ ing is to them only their daily dinner. Now the descend¬ ants see to it that the Manes get this dinner and espe¬ cially that each new ghost “gets the meat he likes’’ as well as the cakes. The giver of the meal usually invites his friends and their ghosts and they all sit down to this quite ordinary meal and share it together, inviter, and human and ghostly invitees. This is virtually the case in China also, where the feast to the Manes is really a family dinner and sacrifices to the gods are made to feast them, but without ‘communion,’ though commensal. Let us now take up the African sacrifice. The West Coast Negro offers to his local gods yams, fruits, oil, and wine on ordinary occasions, such as in cases of preg¬ nancy and marriage, and bloody sacrifice (human pre¬ ferred) on state occasions. To the ghost, at the time a man dies, are given the same viands the ghost used to prefer when alive, such as fowls, mutton, rum, as well as tobacco; but slaves are sacrificed to it as well. Bum is scattered on the ground to the local spirit when one stops on a journey before the traveller himself drinks. Can this be anything save a propitiatory gesture made by 156 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the individual, without reference to clan or totem? To propitiate water-spirits, that is, “to make them send fish,” the women of the village dance through it, scat¬ tering meal and oil and rum, as rum is cast upon the waves when a man is drowned, but not, in this instance, to the (spirit of) water but to the drowned man’s ghost. So Greek heroes’ ghosts were similarly appeased. To the tutelary power of the African village is annually offered a deer, killed at the local “sacred tree,” to which are affixed the legs, the flesh being eaten by the chiefs and chief men. Another annual event is a feast for the dead, in which are laid upon the graves fowls, rum, eggs, and palm-wine, the feast being followed by a general village festival lasting seven days. Where there are greater gods, tribal and national deities, rich people sacrifice to them human victims; the poor, sheep and fowls. The harvest festival also is celebrated with sacrifices of sheep and human beings. We may compare the daily sacrifice to household gods, in Greece and India, of fruit, honey, milk, and cakes, together with wine or the householder’s usual drink, as compared with great sacrifices of cattle and horses. The Hindu householder regularly offers a few drops of his own drink to the little but important gods affecting his daily life. The distinction between pri¬ vate and public sacrifice is in Rome also a merely formal one of value and expense, a pig being the common sacrifi¬ cial object, but pig, sheep, and bull forming the state sacrifice. While, as has been explained, no sacrifice can be called primitive in the sense that it reflects the psychosis of pre- historical man, it may yet be urged that the simple con¬ tent of Negro sacrifice lies very much upon the surface of his thought and does not reflect any great mental wrestling with mysticism, as some scholars would have us believe. And by that token, it is not naive but simply SACRIFICE 157 historical and logical when one links np with the savage ’s thought in its sacrificial expression the same expression in civilized life. The Negro has his mysteries, those of nature and “love” and medicine, for example, but his cult of mysteries is one thing and his matter-of-fact atti¬ tude toward ghosts and spirits is another. There is noth¬ ing more simple or primitive than the offering to the po¬ tentially malicious ghost or spirit or to the presumably amiable tutelary deity. We may call the gifts the Negro makes “gifts” or “sacrifices of deprivation” (every gift is a deprivation) or “attempts at communion” (mean¬ ing, however, merely communication), hut we may he sure that the savage no more speculates or questions the underlying motive than he does when he offers his chief a present. The “sacrifice of deprivation” is carried out in another way when the African savage in the ‘ ‘ Orunda taboo” avoids all his life certain food and certain acts because his priest has imposed them upon him at his birth or in childhood; just as he “sacrifices” a finger. This is another matter altogether; it is not a real sacri¬ fice at all. Nevertheless, because it goes by the same name in some modern treatises but because above all it is a first step to a great historical religious motive, asceti¬ cism, it must be examined a little more closelv. Abnegation, in the sense of denying oneself something or depriving oneself of something, may of course take the form of a gift, but there is a more primitive sense in the savage’s usual abnegatory attitude. He makes no gift at all; he performs his act of abnegation because he believes that the exercise of restraint strengthens his own power in what we are forced to think of as a spiritual way; his mana is strengthened, is the way he himself thinks of the matter; or, one may say, he thinks of it in terms of in¬ creased vitality. It is for this reason that teeth are pulled out and hair is plucked deliberately (this word is impor- 158 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION taut) and other pain-producing acts are undergone, to stimulate power. We also recognize such acts, but as tests of courage rather than as promoters of spirit. But, like us, the savage utilizes this motive and makes it serve in the process of initiating a novice into the life of adult men. The savage notion is that a man has his mystic power enhanced; he becomes more full of mana (we should say more manly), more spiritual, in that he raises himself above material considerations, the claims of the body; he contemns the body to the end that his power (soul) may be strengthened, an ascetic ideal. It is not to test power (courage) but to strengthen it that the savage deliberately mutilates himself or deprives himself of certain things and renounces certain acts. To be sure, when the clan, very much concerned with seeing that the youngster is duly strengthened in power, sit down and watch the process of mutilation in the rite of initiation and help therein by suggesting extra torture, it may be suspected that there is a certain enjoyment on the part of the spectators and helpers. Diverse motives prompt the ingenuity; it is not all desire to strengthen the vic¬ tim’s mana, any more than the Sophomore is wholly al¬ truistic in desiring to make the Freshman worthy of his new state ; 2 but with this concession to human frailty it is true in the main that the whole initiation of the savage is to make him a changed, more spiritual (powerful) being and he is actually said to “be born anew” as a re- suit of this initiation (compare the expression “twice- born” applied to those who have been initiated into the Aryan order in India). The principle that pain strengthens is at the root of the matter; the bodv as well as the power is strengthened (the body because of the power’s increase) and the man born anew is thus bet¬ ter aide to cope with other powers, magical, mysterious, 2 Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p. 313. SACRIFICE 159 which he has to meet in life. It is not so much the Aeschy¬ lean doctrine of TraOelv fiaOelv (wisdom comes from suf¬ fering) as it is the Christian sanctification through sor¬ row which is adumbrated in these savage examples of abnegation and initiation. One might thus almost venture to call them sacrifices made to a spiritual power; yet to the savage they are at most made to his own spirit-power until, at a later period, when he no longer understands his own ritual, he too thinks of mutilations as sacrifices to spirits, which is often the case with more advanced sav¬ ages, for example, the Amerinds. But the sacrifice of mutilation or deprivation has an¬ other side, for which reason it was necessary above to emphasize the fact that in the mutilations described the act was done with deliberate purpose. The other side is represented by what is at first not deliberate but invol¬ untary mutilation, such as occurs when one is sur-excited. If a sudden death occurs in a family, if a miser discovers that his gold has been stolen, if a girl is upset about a love-affair, even the modern novel rightly pictures a dis¬ tress not controlled by reason; the family shriek; the miser tears his hair; the girl rends her handkerchief. Few who have seen the grief of a serpent or dove de¬ prived of its mate or of a cow robbed of its calf will doubt that even savages may feel genuine grief and that the acts of the mourner may be real expressions of sor¬ row. Now before sacrifice is thought of, the savage mourner indulges in mutilations resulting in laceration, blood-letting, plucking of hair, cutting off of fingers, knocking out of teeth, which, beginning as expressions of real emotion, become ritualized and as expressions of grief are no longer genuine but yet simulate sorrow with so much abandon that the actors actually injure them¬ selves severely and sometimes kill themselves merely through sur-excitation. This is an excellent example of 160 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the effect of mob-emotion, in consequence of which men pass out of control of themselves and become slaves of feeling, not of the grief which is simulated but slaves of the intoxication produced by the united hysterical con¬ dition of the mob, no one member of which may really care at all whether the man all are mourning with such self-destructive violence is dead or not. But again it is obvious that such injuries and lacerations as are inflicted on such an occasion can by no means be called sacrifices, until, what eventually happens, the ritual has become so stereotyped that it is performed without excitement, merely pro forma , when the savage naturally asks him¬ self why he is plucking out hair and cutting himself. Then he finds an answer by assimilating these offerings to really sacrificial offerings and calls them sacrifices made to this or that spirit. Hair, for example, is offered to spirits and when a great chief dies, and all the people mourn with frenzy, they make offerings to his spirit, and the hair they pluck out and the blood they shed are reck¬ oned also as offerings to him. But clearly this is a differ¬ ent thing from the hair offered in the Hindu ritual with the words said in behalf of a child from whose head it has been cut: “0 spirit, take this hair and do not take his life.” In such a case, as has been explained, the hair is an offering of a vital power as substitute for the whole. The attitude toward ghosts and Manes is after all the most probable attitude that is taken toward other spirits and gods in a great number of savage and civilized sacri¬ fices. The meal pleases the god and strengthens man, and when the food itself is holy, man assimilates divine power. But in many cases there is no suggestion that the food is sacred and the whole intent of the sacrifice is simply to gratify spirits. So the early Chinese Classics say that gifts of grain and animals called sacrifices are given “to give pleasure to the gods,” and this is the case SACRIFICE 161 even when the result aimed at is to keep away the spirits thus pleased. The evil spirit Famine, for example, is driven away in India by a gift of grain, which pleases it while it automatically destroys it. The Slav gives milk to his tutelary snake-spirit to keep it pleased and so ren¬ der it benevolent, as does the Hindu to snake and god both, and the Greek propitiated gods and averted mali¬ cious demons by the same means. While feeding a dead man’s ghost is not a sacrifice but rather a meal offered to a member of the family, yet the ghost when exalted to a diviner state receives it, offered with greater formality and respect, as a god receives a sacrifice and in both cases the do ut des motive is acknowledged. Moreover, gods, as in India, are not only family friends but actual relatives of the worshipper, not so much as the result of descent as because the clan-gods were felt to be of the same blood and nature as the men of the clan: “Thou art our friend, our owm, our relation,’’ says the Vedic poet to his god. But if a god becomes angry, he may injure or de¬ stroy; in that case a gift to atone for sin is made. In its simplest form this is the attitude toward malicious spirits, proved to be malicious by the effect they pro¬ duce. If our fathers had rheumatism they believed that a spirit vexed them; if a savage bumps his head against a tree, he apologizes to the tree; it is a blow the tree has given for cause; he concludes that the cause is anger. “Surely,” he says, “I have offended, or the spirit would not play me this trick”; or, if he has tried to propitiate and again receives a hurt he says: “Here is that mali¬ cious one again; I have not given him enough to quiet him.” The savage is not overcome with fear in the pres¬ ence of such powers. He says: “0 you horrid one, here is more for you, and please don’t do it again.” He prays 162 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION and gives; the attitude is not magical 3 but religious. So he says of the ghost: “Let us give it food and not be haunted by it; take this food, ghost, and be content.” There is some fear but no great awe, more a feeling of annoyance and dread. Again, on entering an unknown district a Caucasian mountaineer, to propitiate in advance, piles up stones as an offering for the sin of possible intrusion, just as a millionaire builds a church to make up for sins which in the innocence of his heart he may have com¬ mitted : “ I hope you will not be angry if I have done any¬ thing wrong; I have made my pile for you,” so thinks the Caucasian mountaineer. So, too, an African chief intend¬ ing to invade a new country (i.e., intending to intrude and thereby to sin) offers hundreds of victims in advance to soothe the demons of the region he will invade. A man who builds a house offers the momiai sacrifice on the same principle. There may be unknown gods whose anger is to be averted; hence propitiatory sacrifices to “all- gods’ ? in India, that is, to gods not mentioned already by name; also homage to the Unknown god. Further, sons must suffer for a father’s sin, the individual for the tribe. The son is constructively guilty in having such a father; the individual, as member of the offending body. Hence in the Rig-Veda the son who is afflicted appeases a god for “sins my father may have committed,” on the principle that, if a man suffers, it is proof that a god is angry and if angry, then the reason must be that the man owes the god something, a debt unpaid, either an offering or a return to the god’s way, to keep in which is an obli¬ gation which the man owes. So the ordinary Brahmanic idea of sin implies a debt ( rina, cf. Lat. reus, in- 3 The religious attitude is adopted in the Australian’s prayer to manna, which he sings to as a sentient thing, charming it with his song, but at the same time praying to it to spread and multiply. Spencer and Gillen, Tribes of Central Australia, p. 186. SACRIFICE 163 debted). The sacrifice which pays the debt redeems the man. This sacrifice may be made through another. So a sacrifice of the first-born is redeemed by an animal sac¬ rifice (Exod. 12:13). Now such redemptive sacrifices are not really gifts, though they have the form of gifts. In ancient times a man who killed another forfeited his life to the injured clan, but he might buy back (redeem) him¬ self by a “gift” of cows, 4 and so a man who has sinned against a god may make it up to the god and escape with his life on payment of another satisfactory victim. In the higher religions the god may supply the victim, or even become the victim, through which the debt is paid in or¬ der to satisfy the juridical sense. In the case of Bud¬ dhism, sin is automatically laid up against a man by Karma and redemption consists in the divine being tak¬ ing upon himself the suffering of the world which is the payment for sin. In Christianity, a divine power pays to satisfy another, the devil, as early Christians believed, or to satisfy God’s justice. The notion that payment for sin can thus be transferred is correlative to the notion that sin is an objective form of disease or evil of some sort and can be washed out or tied upon a scape-goat and transferred elsewhere. Disease is the substance of sin; thus the Yedic poet cries, “Oh, free me from my sin, my disease!” All disease is thought to be a transferable sub¬ stance and when transferred it leaves the prior possessor free. Every peasant woman in India who is afflicted leaves a rag infected with her trouble on the road, hoping someone else will pick it up, for she has laid her sickness on it and when another takes it she herself becomes free of the sickness. The old Vedic Hindus “sent their evil,” 4 This was European custom and probably existed in India, as legal prescriptions seem to indicate. The earliest redemptive sacrifice in India was made by the god called Lord of Beings, who “bought himself back” by a sacrifice instead of being slain as a sacrifice himself. Shat. Brah., 11, 1 , 8 , 4 . 164 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION woes and sins, away to Trita, a remote god, who had the double advantage of living far off and being of a water- nature, a purificatory power which might per se dispose of the evil. When Indra sinned, the first divine beings who offered to take his sin upon themselves were the waters; they “consented to bear his shame.” That the victim is innocent, makes no difference. 5 The debt of conformation to the divine way reaches its highest in the idea of the sacrifice of a pure heart. A man gives up certain parts of himself as an offering to please a deity whose way demands such an offering; the man owes it to the divine power in return for what the power has done for him. The worshipper seeks to conform to a certain standard found in the deity’s own character. Hence various forms of abnegation and asceticism. But though, as already shown, abnegation and asceticism be¬ long to savage cults, it would be unhistorical to derive Christian doctrine and procedure of this sort from the savage parallels, for they arise independently and natu¬ rally in various religions. Thus fasting is a savage prac¬ tice preparatory to sacred rites (as in funerals) or inti¬ mate communication with spiritual powers; it purifies and spiritualizes in that it brings visions and hallucina¬ tions naturally judged of spiritual origin. Before dream¬ ing of his totem-animal the young Indian must fast for days; before initiation almost all savages fast, to rid the bodv of evil, so that it is' almost a medicinal act like purging, with which it is frequently conjoined. Likeness to divinity is sought also by imitative methods, masks, leaping, etc., and the sacrifice of a pure heart is at bottom just this imitation of the divine through ridding oneself s A substitute is always as acceptable as the original victim. So Death is satisfied if he desires one victim and gets another, as sundry tales of India show. Substitute sacrifices can even be made of figures or cakes, or a bull is replaced by a goat. So our modern ritual substitutes a man of straw, or gives a ducking for a drowning. SACRIFICE 165 of evil. Aspiration after parity may then be a gift or it may not be. When one feels that one is suppressing evil desires as an ottering to God, then it is really a sacrifice, just as a finger may be cut off and sacrificed; but when one suppresses evil desires because one thinks that one thereby will become more powerful or more spiritual or will thus overcome the evil Karma which would otherwise cause him to be reborn as a beast, it is unsacrificial. And this is the judgment of an ancient Brahman, who centu¬ ries before the Christian era said, contrasting rites and ceremonies of sacrifice with a pure heart: “If one keep all the law and perform all the forty ceremonies and be not virtuous, he is less than he who observes no sacrifice or ceremonv but is virtuous/’ To the Brahman, as to the Buddhist of the old school, to be virtuous, to have a pure heart, was the sign of a well-regulated mind rather than a sacrifice or an imitation of a divine model, most of the gods having anything but pure minds. Man’s imitation of the divine was not of gods but of the All-soul, and purity as virtue meant freedom from material taint, a freedom won by sacrifice but only in the sense of renouncement of lesser good in order to the attainment of the greatest; not a sacrifice made as such to a divine power to whom it would be an acceptable offering. On the other hand, in China, “the incense of good conduct” is a well known phrase, signifying that ethical conduct is an offering to the Lord or to the Honorable Paternal Spirits. Under the head of a “gift-sacrifice” is sometimes, brought by straining a point, such a “gift” as was made by Agamemnon when he sacrificed Iphigeneia. In reality, this was a form of placation made under duress to over¬ come divine anger, piacular rather than “a special form of gift-sacrifice”; at bottom it was the payment of a debt, making up for an injury. According to one view of sacrifice as explained by the Brahmans, every sacrifice 166 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION is the paying of a debt, or rather, in giving a sacrifice everyone “buys himself off,” atmanam nishkrinite, re¬ deems himself, pays his debt by proxy (Ait. Brah., 2, 3, ll)* 6 In marked contrast to the gift-sacrifice stands that of approach and communion. 7 In the theory of Robertson Smith all sacrifices are derived from the communal meal, and an oblation or offering is a late religious product, while the piaculum (without communion) is a perversion of it. This theory was based on Semitic totemism or what was understood to be such. The totem is a divinity, the blood-sacrifice (of a member of the totem-clan) expiates the offense of totem-killing and eating the victim renews power. In Australia, however, a more primitive form of totemism recognizes no divinity in the totem, only a clan- spirit or power, and the ceremony of sacrifice (so-called) consists in scattering blood and dust and grain to in¬ crease the growth of the totem-species, while a little of the totem is eaten, which implies communion with the spirit, as “eating the god” in Africa and Mexico is a similar communion-rite. But it is difficult to see how such a rite has become anywhere (and it has not become so in Australia) a gift-sacrifice. That the meal is placatory is pure assumption. Of the Australian totem-meal Durk- heini declares, “this is the foundation of sacrifice” in general, and to prove it argues that the blood and dust 6 The blood of this sacrifice is for the evil spirits, who are thus appeased for the slight of having been omitted from the great sacrifice, an interest¬ ing survival of the belief that the devils must be placated. It is a moot point with the author of this Vedic treatise whether it is advisable for the sacrificer also to pray to the evil spirits (ibid., 2, 7, 1). 7 See Eobertson Smith, Religion of the Semites (1894), and Tiele, Gifford Lectures (N. Y., 1897). Tiele’s view that religion expresses man’s “yearning for the infinite” (already discussed, p. 95) includes the theory that sacrifice is founded on the yearning of man for communion with a kindred supernatural power, a view too vague to be useful and in¬ applicable to sacrifices of riddance. SACRIFICE 167 scattered about are “as it were” an offering, because one might think of it as a means of aiding the clan-spirit and so it would be an offering and even “a veritable oblation” to the species-spirit, later imagined as such (outside of Australia!) and so construed as originally a gift. One might, from the same material, argue that it is from the beginning a gift-sacrifice and so undermine the whole priority of the communion-idea. But no one can read the complete account of the Australian Intichiuma ceremony with an unprejudiced mind and find in it any notion of gift to a spirit. It is simply a religious or magi¬ cal bond of union expressed by eating the totem and a means of getting more totem to eat later on. If one says that when a Hindu farmer scatters grain in his farmyard to insure his cow’s having a calf he is making a gift to the cow (which does not eat the “offering”), then one might say that the Australian’s magic scattering of grain and dust and blood to ensure increased fertility is a gift, but not otherwise. Rather might one see therein a foreshad¬ owing of Zoroaster’s great thought that God needs man’s assistance in the fight against evil and look on this savage of Australia as consciously helping the god; but this, too, would be an exaggeration. There is no god; there is hardly a spirit; it is the grain and the animal as animate species the savage wishes to have propagated. He makes no gift and helps no divine spirit in the ordinary accept¬ ance of that term. The cult is, as Durkheim himself ad¬ mits, “all for men.” Further, it is to be observed that the same Australian does actually, on other occasions, make gifts, of water and implements, to ghosts, so that in this case the idea of a gift to a spirit is as early as that of communing with the totem. No satisfactory explana¬ tion has yet been given to show how expiatory sacrifice arises from communion. In the theory of certain French scholars (MM. Hu- 16 S ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION bert and Mauss), a victim in the earliest sacrifice is con¬ secrated (i.e.y is not per se sacred) and so becomes a medium of communication with the spiritual powers as a placatory offering, but it is at the same time, as inter¬ mediary, a means of communion. The victim’s flesh is eaten by the worshipper and offered to the gods, and the victim becomes redemptive through the notion that the victim takes the place of the sinner. This theory of sacri¬ fice attempts to combine the theories of gift and com¬ munion, but it is clearly insufficient to serve as a general explanation of all sacrifice. The communal meal is not necessarily made of the body of a victim. One ought fur¬ ther to be careful to avoid a confusion between the idea of communion and that of communication. As has been said, the giver of a funeral feast in India does not desire to identify himself with the recipients of the meal, only to get together with the family dead in social intercourse. A meal as such does not necessarilv connote communion though it may be commensal; still less does every sac¬ rifice of communication imply a piaculum or need of re¬ demption. There is, as already explained, a (not uncom¬ mon) form of sacrifice,—for example, in Borneo,—where one slaughters a pig or some such animal and by it sends a message or inquiry to the Manes or gods; its spirit takes the message and its liver shows the answer. In In¬ dia, before the great liorse-sacrifice a goat is sacrificed, just to go up and tell the gods what a great sacrifice is coming. In Africa, a man or a number of men are slaugh¬ tered for the same purpose and, acting as messengers, carry up the king’s message. Often he thinks of a post¬ script and hurriedly kills another man to carry it. Such killing is simply a means of communication; it would be absurd to call the rite a sacrifice of communion. The vic¬ tim is a postman, like the locust the farmer of India lets SACRIFICE 169 go to take a message to the locust-people, or, more exactly, like the bear the Ainu kills and sends to the bear- people with a message. At the same time, when this mes¬ sage implies a question, the sacrifice becomes, through divination, an oracular rite. So the Maoris of the Hau- hau sect used to cut off the head of a fowl and interpret the answer sent back, by gods or ancestors, from the ap¬ pearance of the dead body. In 1905, it was reported that they had substituted a European as the victim (as he was supposed to be more intimate with the gods) and “the gods speak to them [the Maoris] through the head. ” 8 Traces of this practice are to be found in classical litera¬ ture. Aeneid, 2, 547, says that a man is killed by an¬ other to give a message to a third (dead) man: Referes ergo haec et nuntius ibis, Peliadae genitori. The message may do more than express good will and ask questions. It may attempt to conciliate; but it is not a form of com¬ munion. In India, the messenger to the gods is himself a god (the Fire-god) and even the sacrificial animal may be in¬ terpreted as acting as a friend above and conveying a message. But in this form of intermediary the worship¬ pers do not require such a voice; they proclaim in their own words what they would say directly to the gods who are supposed to hear (“give ear to me,” says the sac- rificer) and understand. The sacrifice is, as it professes to be, a gift, until the whole sacrificial performance be¬ comes a merely magical compulsive power, as it does in the second period of India’s religious development, in which only the form of petition is retained but the words have become a binding spell, forcing the gods to comply. Gods sometimes dismember themselves and so become 8 See the Journal of the Polynesian Society, Dec., 1905, p. 172; and the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 26, p. 137, with the writer’s note, ibid., p. 416. 170 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the universe, but this in primitive thought is not a sac¬ rifice. 9 The sacrificial victim, if not already holy, is always sanctified. In cases collected bv Sir J. G. Frazer in his Golden Bough, a king is sometimes slain because he has grown weak. If now, argues this author, the clan-power rests in the chief, and if the chief is slain that his power may pass to another or to the clan, and if the myth of Osiris represents a king who is also a vegetation-spirit, and if the vegetation-spirit is eaten to absorb his power, and “if it occurred to people to combine these two cus¬ toms^ then we get an explanation of the origin of sac¬ rifice, including the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There are too many ifs in this theory. Killing the weak head of a clan is a practice known to wolves and advised by the Hindus for the same practical reason: “If a king cannot protect his people, he should be slain like a mad dog. ” It does not imply a transfer of power. A variation of the gift-theory of sacrifice is found in the rather labored view of E. Westermarck that gods are fed to keep them from starving, in order that, in turn, men may escape the evil which a dearth of gods would entail; ergo, in the end, sacrifice is apotropaic though ap¬ parently a gift-offering. Ingenious but unconvincing; savages who give gifts betray no such arriere pensee. More worthy of regard is Lagrange’s suggestion that sacrifice desecrates rather than sanctifies food. The idea here is that the sacrificial animal, like first-fruits, is dan¬ gerous eating, since all animals are originally sacred, and the blood is given to the god to get rid of the animal’s potentially evil mana, since blood is its spiritual power. 9 The scattering of a dismembered god over the earth is another matter. This is a magical means of causing growth (life, as blood is life). The Khonds thus dismember a victim and scatter its remains over the ground for increase. This is why Attis, Osiris, etc., are dismembered; they are gods of productivity. SACRIFICE 171 Its dangerous quality is thus aVoided, as when a priest first tastes a sacrifice for the same purpose, the priest being best able to cope with strange mana. 10 The motive here suggested is, however, not one certainly found, though it is in line with other savage thought. Of the chief theories of sacrifice, that of gift leading to homage and renunciation appears insufficient to ex¬ plain the sacrifice of union and communion, while that of communion leading to honorific and piacular sacrifice cannot explain the piaculum as a product and ignores the equal antiquity of the gift. 11 Historically then we must combine the results of both theories and admit that in different centres there were evolved here one and there another form of sacrifice and even that both might rea¬ sonably have sprung up together, as we actually have gift and communion together on the very low plane of Austra¬ lian thought. So long as man regarded animals as super¬ human or divine relatives they would kill them as a dan¬ gerous act under any circumstances and yet would imag¬ ine that eating them was partaking of the clan-life. At the same time they would make placatory offerings to any power, ghostly or spiritual, both to ingratiate themselves and to atone for offenses. As blood again is an offering of life, it may be shed as a substitute for a sinner’s life, for example, when one intrudes on a spirit by building, and 10 M. J. Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions semitiques (Paris, 1905). Semitic totemism and the commensal meal are thus disposed of by M. Lagrange as first elements in sacrifice. 11 The human victim offered by savages is usually not a member of the clan. The Khasis in sacrificing to the snake-dragon Thlen kill and eat a hu¬ man being, but it is always a stranger. The Nagas avert divine wrath by killing strangers, enemies captured in battle. In Assam, victims offered to the gods are never natives of the clan. The communion-theory of all sacri¬ fices implies a totemic victim, whereas most savages are not totemic and show no intent of communing, only of enjoying flesh-eating and feasting the spirits; their intent being to please the natural taste or deprecate the wrath of spirits. 172 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION so a substituted victim redeems a sinner (the builder) when such a spirit is angrily seeking revenge. As between victims offered as food and burnt entire it is natural that evil underground demons should not be asked to dine with one, as it is natural to invite agreeable acquaint¬ ances, like the kindly upper gods, to take part or all of the meal. Piacular sacrifices are burnt because one does not eat willingly of what represents evil. All people, savages and civilized, have opined that spirits live on spirit-food, not the gross flesh but the soul of the flesh, and have made the material part their own share while leaving the essence or some part not desirable as human food for the gods. In some cases all the food is given to the gods as an offering rather than a shared meal. The Africans explain evaporation of liquid offering on the theory that the spirits have drunk it. It must not be forgotten that some of the most terrible sacrifices the world has seen are meant simply to exert “sympathetic” action on the part of the gods. As one pours out water that rain may come, without thought of gods, so, after gods are thought of, one pours out water or blood that rain may come; but here the sympathetic imitation becomes a model for gods to act upon, though it is hard to say whether the priests and people of these ferocious rites think they compel (by magic) the gods, or whether they act on the supposition that the gods will fol¬ low the lead given them. Thus in the sacrifice for rain in Mexico, which is not primitive but arose in the eleventh century, troops of little children were offered to Tlaloc and made to weep on their way to be sacrificed, “that more rain might fall.” To the fertility-goddess, victims representing maize were decapitated and their hearts cast into hot springs, to produce rain clouds, yet osten¬ sibly as offerings. The Aztecs probably did not think to compel their gods but only to persuade them; magic had SACRIFICE 173 become religious. The end result is thus a placatory sac¬ rifice, quite distinct from the eating of the god or com¬ munion-sacrifice practiced by the same people. Yet the Dravidians had exactly the same sacrifice as had the Az¬ tecs, that is, they shed blood and simultaneously caused tears to be shed in order to force (no other word can be used, since the god is naturally malignant) the earth- deity to imitate man and pour floods of rain, while the Mishmis, who also revere a malignant spirit, simply try to propitiate him. In higher forms of religion sundry modifications ap¬ pear. Homage becomes a leading motive. The mirror and s sword of early Japanese cult become divine forms. Thanksgiving sacrifices, perhaps not unknown to sav¬ ages, become more pronounced. The Teutonic sacramen¬ tal sacrifice, for example, was for expiation, for benefits to come, and for thanks. 12 A general expiatory sacrifice occurred at Upsala every nine years. To placate the gods in time of famine, human sacrifices were offered, includ¬ ing even the king as a victim. Human sacrifices (not pi- acular) to the spirit of vegetation were offered only a few 12 The eucharistic or thanksgiving sacrifice expressed itself in civilized communities in offering first-fruits, etc., but originally the 11 offering ’ ’ was a special eating on the part of those capable of running the danger of eating when the taboo was taken off. In savage life the pure thanksgiving offering is always suspicious, but it seems actually to have been made on occasion of victory by some African tribes. Our Amerinds are credited with thanksgiving feasts, but, as already said, the examples are not always convincing. The Cherokees, for example, according to Catlin, had a ‘ 1 Green Corn Feast’’ prepared by seven families and a conjurer; none might eat the corn till national purification was made and the feast was given; it is described as a feast of thanksgiving; but the same account speaks of these savages “asking assistance of God” and of the conjurer making a magic brew of seven deer slain by seven men and dancing around it seven times, while seven men watered a post for seven days; of a youth dedicated to the Good Spirit, when initiated into the tribe, and plunging into a stream for purification (baptism) and then avoiding women for seven days. There are too many sevens, replacing the normal Amerind holy four; one doubts whether the “ thanksgiving ” was primitive. 174 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION centuries ago in Europe. Refined human nature has re¬ fined religion. Zoroaster permitted no sacrifice at all to the Good Spirit and his personified qualities, the Pure Spirits, but lesser spirits still received offerings. Sacri¬ fices to evil spirits may also have been made (they are mentioned by Plutarch but not admitted in the orthodox cult). Late Hindu religions sometimes denied the efficacy of all sacrifice (Vishnuism discarded animal sacrifice but retained cereal offerings). 13 In Greece, primitive sac¬ rifice as a propitiatory gift is mentioned by Homer, who describes a rite consisting in drowning horses to placate a river (just as Xerxes propitiated the Hellespont with gold cups). The Homeric meal with the gods, though com¬ mensal, was in part a gift, to please and to propitiate, not to renew divine strength. 14 Greek bloodless oblations were pure gifts. A sacrifice of riddance of ghosts and evil spirits was taken over from the lower un-Aryan com¬ munity (conquered by the Aryans) and perhaps from the same source came the seeds of mysticism in the com¬ munion cemented by the Bouphonia, which were strength¬ ened by foreign ideas of union with the god. These later were transferred with Greek gods to Rome and in an idealized form presented as a system of philosophy, which did away with objective forms of religion. A strain of parallelism approaching mysticism may be seen in the Greek and Hindu desire to approximate the victim to the god, as when a male and female, respectively, are offered to god and goddess, a teeming sow to the teeming earth- 13 Popular Buddhism retained sacrifice to lesser gods and in its decadence (eighth century A. D.) reverted to animal sacrifice and burnt offerings. 11 Pace Farnell, who describes it as one in which, though Homer does not know it, the Homeric heroes “enter into mystic fellowship with their deity”! ( Encyc . Pelig., xi.). The Homeric victim is not divine or even sacred, till sanctified on the altar, but according to Farnell “the holy spirit (of the altar) passes into it.” In the later Greek mysteries, communion (by eating) implies a real mystic fellowship. SACRIFICE 175 mother, swift asses to the swift winds, etc. It is not a sufficient objection to the gift-theory to ask why, if a gift was the object, the Greeks made such distinctions. So a chariot may well seem a fit gift to the sun-god, a fight¬ ing cock to the god of war, black animals to dark powers of the storm and under-world. Nowhere has the idea that a sacrifice is a feast for the gods been more plainly expressed than in the early litera¬ ture of India. Sacrifices in general are intended, it is said, either to do good to the sacrificer or to do harm to his enemy (placative or denunciatory). The sacrificial feast is thus described: “All the gods come to the sacri¬ ficer ’s house the day before he sacrifices; and as it would be improper for him to eat before human (guests) have eaten, so it would be more improper for him to eat before the gods have eaten. For this reason one ought to fast be¬ fore making a sacrifice. ... If one must eat, let him eat of food that is not used in sacrifice, beans or fruit.” Here the gods are dinner-guests of the sacrificer, as are the Manes (see p. 155). This, however, does not impugn the sanctity of the food, which, being consecrate, is deeply imbued with mystic power. Thus the reason why a man washes his hands after sacrificing is given as follows: Men wash their hands after sacrificing to remove the polluting stains, thereby washing away the sin of sacri¬ fice, ‘ ‘ for of old those who touched the bloody altar became sinful” (Shat. Brah., 1, 2,5,23). Here pollution was inter¬ preted as sinful; but it is evidently the pollution of spirit¬ ual power, the same idea as that which rules in mana and taboo and survives in the Jewish defilement of holiness. In the (human) sacrifices offered to Shiva it is said that “the sacrifice is Shiva,” that is, the consecrated victim actually becomes the god and is of course a “polluting” substance, divinely dangerous. But all interpretation of sacrifice in India must distin- 176 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION guish between the “god-offering” and the “self-offer¬ ing. ’ ’ The former is the simple offering to the gods as in the early texts, openly based on the principle delii me daddmi te, “give to me, I give to thee”; the latter is the mystic sacrifice of the god and of the sacrificer in the sac¬ rifice, a secondary stage belonging to pre-Upanishad mysticism. Even the Hindu Brahmans made this (histori¬ cal) distinction. The Brahmana of the Hundred Paths says that a god-offering is where one gives something to a god, “as a middle-caste man offers tribute to a king,” but the self-offering is the mystic sacrifice of self in the deified offering; “and the self-offerer alone gets great heavenly reward; the god-offerer gets only a small re¬ ward” (11, 2, 6, 13). Here the sacrificer’s sacrifice be¬ comes his heavenly body. Gifts, of course, are not confined to food. The Japanese give their gods honorific gifts and beads to play with. Dance and music eventually become forms of gift, as do dramatic entertainments in honor of spirits. A temple built for a god, a shrine endowed, flowers, works of art, the living sacrifice of temple-slaves, hierodoulai, and finally the living sacrifice of the heart, all may be con¬ strued as gifts. Morality and right living were substi¬ tuted in higher religions for the sacrifice of flesh as more pleasing to the spiritual power. The series almost in full may be traced in our own religious antecedents. The Semites sacrificed a goat or lamb or bird to carry off sin; the Babylonian sacrificial slaughter was for divination; oblations were made for driving away evil spirits of sick¬ ness; repentance was expressed for unknown sin (proved by sickness). The Arabs made libations of water, oil, blood, etc., and sacrificed for the dead; vegetables, milk, animals, were common offerings; on the altar the blood fed the god. Later both Arab and Hebrew regarded the victim as tribute. The Hebrew prophets repudiated sac- SACRIFICE 177 rifices as a substitute for ethical behavior and religious values, but few opposed sacrifice otherwise, and later Jewish religion accepted as valid the sacrifices regularly performed, the daily burnt offering, the Sabbath, the new-moon, full-moon, and annual sacrifices on the full moon of the first and seventh months and for first-fruits, though some regular but occasional sacrifices were al¬ lowed to lapse (for example, the lustration sacrifice of a red cow, the inauguration sacrifice). Mohammedanism has rejected all sacrifice except as part of a popular festi¬ val and made atonement a matter of faith and repentance on man’s part and mercy on the part of Allah. In the Christian religion have been united various forms of sac¬ rifice, that of gift, communion, atonement; candles to Maria, a church to God, oneself as “living sacrifice.” In abnegation and asceticism one both gives and through giving seeks closer union with God. In the eating of the 4 ‘real body” of the Lord, one renews the old theory of union through absorbing the divine nature, as when the savage eats the sacred yam and the Mexican devoured the divine bread which represented grain’s divinity. Fi¬ nally, in the belief that Christ’s death redeems from sin, man accepts the theory of vicarious atonement through blood shed for another. 15 1 ° Contributions in churches are called gifts to God; a church is dedicated to or given to God or “to the glory of God” (in Sandusky, Ohio, a tablet is inscribed “to the glory of God and Jay Cook,” an unusual combination). Prayers for the dead are gifts to ghosts countenanced by the early Church, as toasts to the dead are survivals of offerings. When the eucharist is a “sacrament of commemoration” merely, not the actual “Christ sacrificed,” the theory of physical union becomes refined into that of spiritual like¬ ness. In Buddhism, which has no formal sacrifice, dance, song, music, and garlands were offered to honor the dead Buddha as a form of homage. The theory of patti-ddna also permitted the belief that Buddha sacrificed himself for man and took on himself the burden of their sin. Outside of India, Buddhism permitted even burnt offerings and flesh-sacrifice to Buddha and the'gift of “merit” from the living to the dead was common. 178 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Wliat is demanded in all religions is faith. “0 Divine Faith, give us faith,’’ says the Vedic poet. Faith and atonement go together in the Christian religion inasmuch as one must believe that Christ’s sacrifice atoned for others’ sins; the acceptance of this doctrine is necessary to salvation in the Western Church, where salvation from the beginning was from sin. In the Eastern Church, sal¬ vation is not so much release from sin as from death; it was the bestowal of immortality which was granted by the resurrection. So the saving faith of the non-Chris¬ tian Eastern churches, both Hindu and Buddhistic, is in¬ tellectually a belief that by throwing oneself upon the merc 3 r of the savior God one can come to him after death. The idea of forgiveness of sins is quite absent; rather, the loving devotion of the human adorer brings him into oneness with the deity, whose own infinite love for man has already atoned for the worshipper’s sin in that it has wiped out the balance against him, as in Buddhism; or the soul’s own repentance is sufficient, when united with loving devotion, to obliterate all a man’s sins. For he purifies himself through love of his God; in becoming one with God, the infinitely pure, the soul itself becomes pure. With the Yogis, ascetic and mystic preparation for isolat¬ ing oneself from the contamination of the world is ipso facto a cleansing process leading to ethical and spiritual purity. The sacrifice here, though on a higher plane, is that of the savage who imposes ascetic practices upon himself for the attainment of spiritual power, a form of abnegation for one’s own sake, not a sacrificial offering to another. The idea of a savior is prominent in several religions, notably Zoroastrianism, but this savior saves through his teaching, not through sacrificing himself. This was the original idea in Buddhism, but the Maha- yana, High Church, introduced Buddha as a divine Sav¬ ior, who as Bodliisat sacrifices himself for mankind. SACBIFICE 179 The scientific attitude of Buddha and Plato, who both say the same thing, namely, that “desire of the corpo¬ real” leads to rebirth and that “there is no means of re¬ lease from evil except the attainment of the highest wis¬ dom and virtue,” 16 seems to rule out all idea of sacrifice; yet in both religions the fundamental idea is that the struggle toward perfection is a sacrifice of the lower self for the sake of an ideal attainable only by the highest self. Brahmanism itself in exalted moments does not hesi¬ tate to interpret its whole sacrificial mythology allegori¬ cally: “0 Indra, thou hast fought no battles” (the god is only an idea). In the Puranas, even heaven and hell are declared to be “only names for virtue and vice.” There were always some to whom sacrifice was a material sym¬ bol rather than a religious need. Quite a modern touch is perceptible in the Yedic injunction to the student: “Thy study should be to thee as a sacrifice. See how sun, moon, stars, and waters are ever moving. They are the divine toilers; do thou also, in imitation of these divine powers, work; thy toil shall be thy sacrifice.” Those who think that the old Hindus were devoted to idle contemplation should also remember what the Blessed One said: “I toil ever, who have no need to toil; let every man who follows me love and imitate me and so on earth toil manfully and do his appointed work.” That is the sacrifice demanded of those who follow the religion of Krishna. Though sacrifice is a form it embodies a profound his¬ torical truth, for without sacrifice nothing of value has been attained by man; but men today owe their greatest gain to the vicarious sacrifice of others in the past. is Phaedo, 81 and 107; Buddha, passim. CHAPTER XII THE RITUAL Ritual is a stereotyped expression of emotion or belief or of both combined. A stated time as well as a set man¬ ner marks the ritual of seasonal sacrifices, but there are rituals, such as that of war, not determined by the season. Ritual is the frame which preserves religion as well as exhibits it, but it often lasts longer than that which it is intended to keep. Its great primitive importance is more than religious, for it established an intimate relation be¬ tween religion and non-religious acts; it sanctified custom and to a large extent gave man the first clear conception of ordered times in the observance of fixed dates, which it tended to make exact in the form of calendars, as well as in impressing upon his mind chronological data in the ritual of historical exhibitions. But it is an error to assume, with Wundt, that all tem¬ poral observance has its origin in religion. Particularly in commemorative rites, the ritual preserves a mass of observances, the origin of which is popular and to be sought in non-religious custom. Economic ceremonies based on seedtime and harvest are not at first religious. It is not correct to say with Durkheim that every feast is religious. His argument is that any feast excites the masses, so that they are carried outside of themselves and feel themselves in another world, exactlv as they are deliriously excited by religion, and the consciousness of being “in another world ’ 9 makes the feast religious. Proof of this assertion would be gratefully received, fail¬ ing which it may be safely regarded as pure assumption. Popular feasts survive, however, often without religious THE RITUAL 181 bearing even when they have been taken up as religions. Gratification at harvest expresses itself in free jollity, is then interpreted religiously (compare the Feast of Tabernacles), and finally remains as a gay celebration, modified into seemliness, as compared with its original form, through advancing ethical feeling and prior asso¬ ciation with religion, though scarcely a trace of religion remains in the popular estimate of the day (compare the Saturnalia and the modern Thanksgiving Day). Seedtime and joy of life express themselves in non-religious forms and then the non-religious celebration of spring becomes Easter or Passover, with a host of extraneous religious associations, and finally Easter becomes merely a display of bonnets. Dress itself has thus become religious; head¬ dresses, paint, oil, decorative marks, assumed by savages for economic and social purposes, are taken up as marks of medicine-men and priests or are employed for ritual¬ istic ends, oil for anointing religiously, decorative tattoo as apotropaic remedy, and paint and scars becoming part of the ritual of totemism. 1 The agricultural stage shows more religious incorpora¬ tion of savage ideas in ritualistic form than does the usually precedent nomadic stage, partly because the dei¬ ties become more anthropomorphized. A grain field is fertilized with blood rather magically than religiously, because blood, representing life, makes the field live, so to speak, as it also drives away demons. But in the agri¬ cultural stage man finds himself more dependent on weather and sun than in the hunting stage and the re¬ current season becomes vitally important, so that he is apt to pay tribute to the spirit (as to a chief) whose aid he needs on stated occasions, render blood as tribute, dedicate first-fruits and first-born to gods conceived as of human sort, though he may at the same time (as shown 1 See below on the use of oil, decoration, etc. 182 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION above, p. 172) produce rain by pouring out water or blood, as saints’ images were whipped for wind long after the sailor had learned to pray to them. For magic dies bard and its ritual remains closely interwoven with that of re¬ ligion. Closer attention to seasons has come out of the agricultural stage; but in emphasizing this reiterated truism it must not be exaggerated, for the moons of the hunter also divided time. Most savages have lunar time and feasts and it is perhaps safest to confine oneself to the obvious fact that the solar calendar and its religious ritual is a product of the agricultural stage. AVe are still under the influence of the religious importance of the New Year’s day, which in the form of day or week gives the prognostication or oracle of the coming year. Sun- dances and celebrations of solstice and equinox are not quite in the same category, however, as in one case it is the sun and in the other the season which occasions the celebration. The winter mourning is because of the dying of the season rather than of the sun and the summer re¬ joicing (compare the harvest feast, Pentecost) was not so much a recognition of the sun as a spiritual power as it was a celebration of the changing year. What marks the shift from custom to religion is the attribution of custom as religious to a semi-divine or an¬ cestral authority. Ritual makes a myth. “Because the gods gave themselves as food to the Sun, so do we.” 2 A rule which says “because Father Manu did so and so, therefore we do it as a religious duty,” marks the shift to religion. So, because Abraham circumcised , 11 therefore we circumcise”; because the Japanese goddess held a mirror, a mirror is employed in her ritual, etc. A ritual, too, mav be fathered by a myth. The means of fighting the seven devils that cause an eclipse becomes a ritual. 2 The Aztecs explained thus the human victims offered as food to the Sun-god, ignoring the involuntary sacrifice of the human victim. THE RITUAL 183 Ritual generally expresses quite closely the conditions of life. The African cow-herders have developed a strict milking-ritual; the Todas have a religious buffalo-cere¬ mony ; the Australian ritual has to do with the propaga¬ tion of grubs and other local food-supplies; the ritual of historv renders dramaticallv the tribal events of the past; the war-dances (of Greeks and Amerinds alike) prepare for battle by stimulating courage and simulating what is to come; in general the ritual is not markedly re¬ ligious but rather social and economic. Religion is rather an alien here; but, by dint of dragging in the Fathers of old as admiring helpers and turning rather perfunctorily to the spirits for aid, the ceremony acquires a religious tinge and in time may become almost wholly religious. For example, the Amerind dances are often rather his¬ torical and simulative^ than religious, but at the end of the sun-dance, for example, there is a pretense of prayer to the spirits. 3 Sometimes, however, a dance is said to have been practiced (not invented) merely to please a certain manitou, as certain songs are sung to honor him. All these rituals are of the mob and it is here that Durkheim gets his strongest support for the theory that all religion is mob-illusion. But it must not be overlooked that private rituals exist. The antithesis between private and public is not very real, though often formulated when applied to magic and religion. Religion, too, is private and ritual is both private and public. There is no mob in the ritual of Shamanism nor in that of the candidate for priesthood among Africans. A ritual of refined Shaman¬ ism is that of Chinese ancestor-worship, in which no mob- spirit creates illusion or makes the ceremony. The distinction between rites of joy and rites of sor- 3 In the historical dance itself there may, however, be a religious ele¬ ment, since the ancestors are honored as spiritual powers. So in China and Australia the dance imitates the deeds of the dead as a religious rite. 184 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION row brings out this matter of private ritual very clearly. Feasts of thanksgiving or of public rejoicing or victory or harvest are common outlets for general feeling. Rites of joy are thus for the most part rites of the group. But woe is not only public, it is suffered and expressed in pri¬ vate by individuals, animal and human. We have already discussed public mourning and its ritual, but not directly Durkheim’s theory that mourning is not individual at all. No primitive individual, according to this view, mourns for his dead; only the group as a whole gets excited be¬ cause it feels its group-unity afflicted or impaired and hence hacks itself and howls, making for itself a mourn¬ ing ritual which precedes the wish to mourn: “It is the rite which establishes the wish to mourn, not the wish to mourn which establishes the mourning ritual. ” 4 As op¬ posed to this whole argument, let us consider that the ghost leaves a family or an individual often destitute, often loved; in any case, the death affects first of all the individual, and the wish to mourn or rather the expres¬ sion of mourning is even with animals an individual mat¬ ter. As remarked in the first chapter, the submergence of the individual in the group has been exaggerated. It is true that the group determines ethics and ritual to a great extent, yet it is an absurd distortion of this truth to maintain that in primitive groups there is no individuality. But this is the consequence of the gen¬ eral theory that “evil powers are the product of rites and symbolize them” (as spirits and ghosts), that is, there would be no ghosts or evil spirits were not mob-excite¬ ment productive of such illusions. 5 4 Durkheim, op. cit., p. 398. s Ibid., p. 411. The thesis that evil powers are the product of rites seems peculiarly inept in the face of the fact that whole groups, like the Baby¬ lonians, regard ghosts as maliciously active, while other groups, like the Veddas and Amerinds, regard them as friendly, and neither group has any mob-rite to further such beliefs. THE RITUAL 185 The customary distinction between private and public ritual is that private ritual is for the individual, public for the public. Such festival-rituals as we have been con¬ sidering are for the public good, or pleasure, and are carried out by the public to a marked extent, though cer¬ tain warriors and priests are apt to be the actors to the exclusion of the general public. Yet all share in the feast or general sacrifice. But a private ritual is for the benefit of a few or for one, such as a birth-rite, circumcision, name-giving, wedding. Nevertheless, the participants really make the rite in large measure, and in the case of a wedding or funeral the rite is private only in the sense that one or two individuals or families are especially con¬ cerned ; the whole clan take a hand in the celebration, as they do in a mourning-rite. The intervening rite between public and private is where, as in a commensal meal, a sub-division of a clan or caste or body of workers (as in Rome) celebrates a commemoration or has a reunion. In other words, there is no genetic distinction between cele¬ brations of public and private rites. But what is impor¬ tant is that savages have these private rites, such, for example, as a rite among Africans when a woman has conceived, to insure the protection of the tutelary spirit, just as they have private religious impulses. The main difference between private and public performances is that in a family matter a priest is often unnecessary; every father acts as his own priest here as he does, in India, for example, in wish-rites and other matters of private concern. But this means merely that the father is the priest sufficient for the need, and this family ritual, with the head of the family as its natural priest, is prob¬ ably just as primitive as is the clan-congress for religious purposes. So the familiar family taboos concerning women are not originally clan affairs. No priest was re- 186 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION quired of old in a Hindu wedding or in many domestic rites insuring life and health. Prominent in public rituals of increase of grain are dancing and masked actors. If we go back to a period be¬ fore grain-gods are known, we find the grain itself or the animal regarded as an intelligent power which is ex¬ horted to grow and increase. At this stage dancing is dis¬ tinctly a reproductive stimulus, as it is in the animal kingdom, and the object of dancing would be perfectly clear even if it were not accompanied, as is the case in Australian and other savage rituals, by sexual panto¬ mime and orgies. At the same stage masked actors rep¬ resenting the powers are a common feature of the ritual, and music stimulates growth as dancing stimulates power. There is no symbolism, but the spirit of the mask is affected by the erotic growth-producing act, of which dancing and music are the expression. That is to say, dancing as a part of religious ritual is at first neither apotropaic, to frighten off demons, nor to please the gods. As an autointoxicant it empowers and helps growth. The next stage is when spiritual powers are imagined as affecting crops unfavorably. Evil demons retard and in¬ jure the crop and the ceremony which helps the crop ac¬ cording to tradition is employed to help it in the present view, so that dancing is interpreted as a means of dispel¬ ling evil spirits. This belongs to a stage represented by Amerinds and Negroes and still survives in the notion, now generalized, that dancing drives away devils. It is only a few years ago that our Southern Negroes at camp meeting took dancing to be a general prophylactic against evil and sang as they danced (religiously): “Here we dance around the stump And kick the devil at every jump. ” The circle of the dance, by the way, is also primitive; it THE RITUAL 187 is still preserved in the ring-round-the-rosy dance, a harmless survival of a terrible old religions rite. The third stage in religious dancing is the one represented by David dancing before the Lord 0 and the dancing of the recessional in the Spanish church today. The war-dance is a clan-application of the private dance to excite valor, beginning with the animal male dance at the mating sea¬ son, in which the peacock or grouse dances as part of his autointoxication preparatory to fighting any other claim¬ ant of his mate, perhaps also to charm her with the ex¬ hibition of his valor. The Australians, who show us the probable beginnings of so many ritual features, have also a masked drama and historical plays, as well as a comedy- play, as part of their magical-religious ritual, elements of religion leading to the drama of today and found also among Pacific Islanders and Amerinds. The beginning of a parallel to Mexican and Greek vege¬ tation-mysteries with an ethical bearing had already be¬ gun among the Cherokees. The Syrian and Greek cult of Tammuz and Adonis is approached by the Dravidian wild tribes. There is an interesting parallel between the Dra¬ vidian and Amerind sun-rites illustrative of how a ritual of this sort may lose its primitive meaning. The Amer¬ inds did not know why their rite was performed. The rite began with a fast of four days, in which the victims were deprived not only of food and drink but also of sleep. In this weakened condition skewers of wood were inserted under the muscles of the back and the victims were then hauled up by ropes, fastened to the hooks of wood, and swung round and round till they could no longer endure the agony. The Dravidian Bhumka rite also consists in stringing a man up by a hook inserted in his back and 6 The indecency of David’s dance was objected to by his wife, but chiefly because it offended her conservative instincts, which were shocked by his making a spectacle of himself. 188 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION swinging him around in exactly the same way as was done in America; but in India the rite is explained as one pro¬ ducing a good effect on the crops . 7 To the Amerinds the torture was only a test of valor. In both cases, however, we have to do with the primitive rite of swinging with the sun as a means of helping the sun to aid the crops, just as in the same district of India rain is produced by hav¬ ing a naked woman plough at night and (or) burying a frog at night (allied in thought to water and dark powers ). 8 This kind of ritual, which, to ensure a good harvest, causes torture or death of animals or man, lasted (as has been explained) through the Middle Ages, and still survives in a generally unrecognized form in the Maypole cult. Though ritual is based on usage it is subject to change. Several individuals are mentioned in the ancient Brah¬ man literature as objecting to such and such a ritual and either modifying or rejecting it. The clash of clan on clan, the welding of different traditions, may account for such cases, but also the advancing ethical sense or a more in¬ telligent mind. One of these old ritualists is reported to have said that part of the ritual was nonsense. The dif¬ ferent schools are constantly citing diverse “family tra¬ ditions” as to ritual. Social expansion then amalgamates rituals or brings in new ritual, as in Borne. Change of climate, life under new conditions, all these elements op¬ pose the stereotyped ritual with more or less success. The LTnited States left out the prayer for the king in the 7 Betul District Gazetteer , vol. A, pp. 57, 61 (]907). 8 The nakedness of the female performer represents bare Mother Earth to the native mind; but probably nakedness in such cases is, as Durklieim suggests, merely a removal of clothing (like removing one’s hat in church) as an act of respect or as being in a religious (not profane) condition, in which circumstances ordinary (profane) acts and clothes are taboo. Def¬ erence is expressed by difference. So mourning and other religious acts lead to nakedness. THE RITUAL 189 Church service. The famine of 1897 caused the priests of Ahmedabad to circumambulate the city chanting old Vedic hymns, a new ritual in its entirety. The Hindu ritual anent eclipse has been radically changed, being converted into a great bathing ceremony. So the inner force of a ritual changes. The Amerind snake-dance be¬ gan as a magical ceremony to get rain, but has become religious and precative. Just as the ritual begins as an expression of social usage, so it is maintained by con¬ forming thereto, in thought as in act, in so far as it can. But it is apt, as a conservative force, to lag far behind. Hence it embodies outworn thought; the cult as compared with the creed is often anachronistic. Any ritual may thus, instead of becoming vague, be diverted into the expression of a new idea. Thus in Japan, besides the ritual of gifts to the gods there was a general rite of purification, to rid the land of all evil, “foul¬ ness,” by depositing it on a horse and having it washed off in the sea. The ritual remains but is now “propitia¬ tory.” So another Japanese ritual, to ask for favors, is now a “laudation.” In these cases, a later ethos has in¬ terpreted the old rite in modern terms. That a rite begins with a specific object is rather in line with similar phenomena in the ritual. Thus there is a large class of words which originally are ejaculatory and have the definite purpose of emphasizing statements made in the ritual with an added so-be-it or so-it-is, like Amen, Selah, Om (yes, truly). Then the connotation be¬ comes vague; they are no longer felt as part of a Sha- manistic ejaculatory service but as mysterious and rather awful words which may be applied anywhere on solemn occasions, just as definite swear-words become vague expressions of wonder or wrath, like jove, hell, damn. In the Brahman liturgy one of these exclamations became a veritable word of magical power used in bene- 190 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION diction and as a divine “weapon.” So, again, sacrificial water is for a certain purpose; but in the Hindu drama a frightened priest, who wants to cure a case of sun¬ stroke, suggests fetching the “sacrificial water, which is curative,” that is, it is good for any trouble. Again, the use of Biblical texts and words of the Koran on scraps of paper are treated as general amulets. The tendency in all these cases is to convert a religious act or object of definite character into a vague general magical act or talisman. The sacred word becomes in itself a divine power. This is actually reduced to a system in Tantric Buddhism, where spells and words have magical effect and act as a compelling power (like the old Vedic ritual). It is somewhat in this way that we must explain the extraordinary fact already alluded to, that the same rit¬ ual is used for the most diverse purposes, a mass for a wedding or a funeral, for example, and fasting for ex¬ piation and for communion. In the Hindu ritual, expia¬ tion, communion, a vow, and a contract are all alike in¬ differently introduced by the same sacrificial machinery slightly modified. The thought has become vague and only a general sense of religious purification attaches to the ceremony, so that it can be applied to almost any spe¬ cific purpose. This seems to the writer a more probable explanation than that urged by Durkheim, who thinks that the rite is in its inception not a particular function, having any specific aim, but a general vague means of establishing a group-force and confidence, whereby the group reaffirms itself periodically, the various effects of the rite arising from a secondary determination of a special object. 9 A late form of rite is the pilgrimage to a certain shrine, where miracles always occur, Mecca, Benares, Lourdes, etc. Such a pilgrimage multiplies the god, thus having a 9 Durkheim, op. cit., p. 387. THE RITUAL 191 distinct religions value. The Jupiter of such and such a place is a different Jupiter in each and so Our Lady of this or that shrine is not the same power. Otherwise there would be no object in going to a special shrine. Of course it is said that it is the same Jupiter, the same saint, the same Lady, but the weary pilgrim knows well that his special helper is to be found only in one shrine. Inci¬ dentally, pilgrimages create new buildings of gods and en¬ large temple services, making places where relics are stored, but these are not new features. In erecting pre¬ servative shrines and temples, naturally the architectural sense is developed, as in painting and sculpture, and reli¬ gion gives back more than it has received. In the view of many scholars, art in all its forms originates in religious activities. Far be it from an Indologist to minimize the actual benefit derived from religion by art and science; for in India, geometry, music as a science, astrology, medicine, sculpture, and painting, not to speak of law and philosophy, are all outgrowths of religion. Religion, such as it is, even in Australia led to dramatic beginnings, lyric and epic poetry of a rudimentary sort, and to the shrine idea. Nevertheless, it is an exaggeration to at¬ tribute to religion the primary use of dress, decoration, oil, etc. -Even animals love adornment and the more sav¬ age a man is the more he likes to make a display. Fish¬ bone necklaces are found in European caves as old as European elephants and probably for adornment only; as savages use oil for greasing themselves before they use it for religious purposes. Umbrellas were first carried not, as Dr. Jevons says, to protect the sun from the mana of a man, but man from the sun. In our own Church, the ritual of which preserves in some measure that of ancient Rome (compare the pro¬ cessions, use of incense, statues, etc.), changes tending to modify the older cult are clearly marked. Augustine 192 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tells us that the liturgy for the dead was like that of un¬ believers and discusses the advisability of having a serv¬ ice sung or recited. Curative shrines to heathen gods were not radically altered by being ascribed to Christian saints. Songs to Venus were kept but addressed to Saint Venus. Demeter was still invoked under the name of Holy Mother; Artemis, as the Holy Virgin. The cave of As- klepios is even today decorated with the same votive of¬ ferings as of yore, but Asklepios has the name of a Chris¬ tian. Even Buddha became canonized as a Christian saint. In these regards our religion did not so much dis¬ place another as absorb it, giving a new interpretation to the old cult and ritual, just as in India the gods of the wild tribes have been absorbed with their cults into Brah¬ manism. All great religions have thus absorbed the less in spirit and cult, and such a ritual as that of Lamaism or Mithraism or Christianity is always more or less a com¬ pound of original and foreign elements. Thus arises the question of borrowing. The cult of Aphrodite borrowed part of its ritual from the East as that of Dionysos from the North. Christianity probably borrowed from Mithra¬ ism and from other sources. Lamaism perhaps bor¬ rowed some elements from Christianity. But the question of borrowing is one not always to be answered with cer¬ tainty. The Lamaistic church, with its tintinnabulations, prostrations, holy pictures and banners, its pope, its vicars, its priests with their gorgeous vestments, its ab¬ bots, monasteries, monks and nuns, struck the first Chris¬ tian missionaries as a devilish caricature of their own church. But item for item, what proof is there of borrow¬ ing? Banners and pictures of saints were known in both churches before they came in contact; genuflections, bells, processions, and incense were common to every religion of the East and West. The Buddhists had monks and nuns from the beginning. It needed only that all these THE RITUAL 193 elements should combine; and they did so, withal the more easily because the climate rendered the enclosed church building necessary. This put together more strikingly these diverse items; for example, the hanging of pictures, the circumscribed procession. Incense, too, was inherited by the Christian Church from Mediter¬ ranean usage (all the Semites except the Arabs used it) and the Buddhistic Church inherited it from the Brah¬ mans. The ritualistic halo was borrowed from Greece and this apparently was carried to India, as the rosary was carried from India to the Christian Church . 10 More important is the matter of our own ritual as ex¬ pressing primitive ideas. Baptism, as already explained, purifies by washing off evil power. The ritual of atone¬ ment is expressed by savages in the ritual of sacrifice preceded by purification, from ill rather than from moral evil , 11 but the two, as we have seen, are combined in sav¬ age thought. Incantation, bathing, purging, steam baths, fasting, all these were practiced by the original Ameri¬ cans as purificatory. With these means they removed evil influences, ill, and sin. They washed themselves free of evil, as baptism drives oft the devil. In his curative sul¬ phur bath the savage believed that his ensuing better health was the result of a triumph over evil, hence sinful, powers. The fast made him avoid defiled food, was hy¬ gienic, and at the same time gave him visions, obviously (to him) bringing him into closer touch with spiritual forces. Purification by fire is not rare, though less com- 10 The rosary was originally a mnemonic device of the Buddhists, bor¬ rowed by them from Shivaism (the god’s own original necklace was of skulls); it was a direct transfer from Buddhism to Christianity. The halo appears late on Buddhist saints and may have come direct from the Greeks, like the Gandhara Buddhas of Greek provenance. 11 On water and fire for purification, see above, p. 51. Water is the more primitive means of cleansing, as even animals, e.g., a cat or a cow, wash off dirt. 194 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION moil than by water and fast; it is usually an ordeal, to test one’s purity of word or act (involving perjury or adultery). But it is a common means of making atone¬ ment by proxy sacrifice; the victim being burned as a substitute for the sinner or as a placatory offering, and in many religions fire is purificatory; it burns away evil, the stain of mortality (Greek), cleanses the field (need- fire). Florence still retains the cult of the Easter fire. The ritual of purification is thus in great measure an outgrowth from the apotropaic ceremony, riddance from ill leading to a ritual whereby evil spirits are driven away. From this general idea arises the thought that, when one has sinned, the evil infecting a man through his sin may be driven out of him by a similar ceremony; he can by fasting and bathing and sacrifice bring himself again into a normal relation with the good power. The purificatory act makes him clean and in that condition he can attempt reconciliation by a sacrifice, which pays his debt to the power he imagines he has offended. Some¬ times atonement was made in advance by self-inflicted torture. In all religions there is usually a preparatory cleanliness before the atoning sacrifice is made or can be accepted. This was the keynote of Buddha’s remon¬ strance against the sacrifice as a mere ritual. Sacrifice without the clean heart, he said, leads only to vain belief in relief; the foundation of religion is moral cleanliness. In savage religion, however, the ethical and religious sides are generally separate. Sins, that is, are not neces¬ sarily ethical and may be accidental as well as volun¬ tary . 12 Apotropaic remedies have now become with us merely rustic superstitions. In classical time there lingered still 12 In Babylon, atonement was effected by magical means, fire, the use of water, the “curse of Erkin/’ etc., which removed the sinful cause of dis¬ ease or disability. THE RITUAL 195 a formal ritual for driving off ghosts and winter and famine and other evils conceived spiritually. For ordi¬ nary evil spirits, noise and iron and smells and fire and water were regarded as apotropaic; above all, blood. In the Passover the blood may have been used to keep off evil spirits and the shedding of the Lamb’s blood is his¬ torically connected with this ceremony; but it has been interpreted as a sacrifice, not as an apotropaic means, as the whole theory of atonement has become sacrificial in the Christian Church . 13 But in general this has been ac¬ cepted only with the reservation that the individual must have made the preliminary step and purified himself, in token of which repentance is accepted by the priest. A further step is taken when it is recognized that by con¬ fession of faith one implicitly repents; and the last step is taken when a mere dying utterance of the Savior’s name is taken as implying the confession of faith. This leads to the practice, if not the doctrine, that a sinner who utters the name of Jesus on his death-bed is secure of salvation. It is the same with the devotees of Rama and Buddha and in this regard all three religions have made it possible for a murderer to die in peaceful certainty of salvation, however sinful his disposition really remains to the end. Fortunately for ethics, this religious fanati¬ cism is not prevalent and only in certain sects is the “repetition of the Holy Name” regarded as a passport to Heaven. As baptism and atonement-rites belong to savage usage, so the rite of confirmation is a modern form of primitive 13 Compare Heb. 9: 11-28. It has been interpreted as a covenant-sacrifice and as a ransom-sacrifice, either as redemption from punishment or from corruption and death. Some think the original use of the blood of the Paschal lamb was not apotropaic but for communion with the tribal spirit. In Hindu religions, salvation is release from individual bonds, for the at¬ tainment of the fullest life, but this implies also release from sinful propen¬ sities. 196 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION initiation. The Church represents the secret society which is found in many savage tribes of Africa, Polynesia, and America. When a boy becomes an adult he is admitted into the tribe with a ritual which, as we have seen, forti¬ fies him and endows him with spiritual power. When suc¬ cessfully tested he is robed in the equivalent of the later toga virilis and is accepted as a member of the body poli¬ tic. In India, so enduring is this rite that a boy who has not been initiated is to this day no member of society; he is, as it were, un-caste, has no place, is regarded as a Pariah. In savage life, when the clan becomes less impor¬ tant as an entity, the secret society takes its place, as the caste takes the place of the clan. Into the secret society, as into the clan, the youth is admitted only after a certain ritual, usually interpreted as tests of manhood , 14 and is then entrusted with the secrets of his new order, entrance into which purifies him from various evils and causes him to become a new being, so that, as already explained, he is even said to have been “born again.” In all these so¬ cieties the novice becomes a member of a mystic congre¬ gation. There are in these secret societies the same elements, of a spiritual brotherhood, as those that led to the secret (Orphic) society and eventually found expression in the form of the Church as a mystic spiritual body, into which one is admitted as a regenerate being. The vigil of the sav¬ age who is to be initiated is kept with fasting and prayer and rewarded with visions. Such a religious society tends to do away with the clan as authority, substituting what we should call church authority. But probably in all cases i* Circumcision in some cases forms part of the ritual on entering one of these savage secret societies; in some cases it is part of the clan-initia¬ tion. Circumcision is found among African and Australian savages as well as among Egyptians and Hebrews. It had no religious significance originally and is rarely associated with the cult of the phallus. THE RITUAL 197 (as notably in Greece) the mystic society anyway follows a decadence of clan-spirit. It is composed of members who belong to various clans and thus introduce a new prin¬ ciple of unity. So in India members of various clans called families made one caste and in Africa a mystic society ignores tribal relations and creates a spiritual brotherhood, as one may imagine that totemism united men by spiritual affinity, so that if a Bear-brother of one tribe came to a tribe not his own but also brothers of the bear he would have been received as a brother though from a different political organization. It is* on record that members of the savage secret society sometimes ex¬ pect a special sort of future happiness, as the Greek mystic brotherhoods expected a peculiar reward here¬ after. In this life, too, the members, once recognized, en¬ joy special respect and are often feared. Such souls in our religion, as saints, have power; they are prayed to as intercessors. On the other hand, prayers are said for the dead, one is “baptized for the dead,” as if man could still help the ordinary spirit. Historically these savage ideas, which, for example, in¬ vented baptism, absolution after confession, and com¬ munion among the Aztecs (who also revered the cross as a religious symbol); a special paradise for the chosen or elect in Polynesia; and peculiar bliss hereafter for members of the African societies; as well as the common savage rituals of fasting, prayer, and hymns; and estab¬ lished mystic brotherhoods, whereby men were drawn closer together by a spiritual bond which also united them with the spirit itself—these savage ideas are not the direct antecedents of similar Christian expressions, which have been modified and clarified by intermediate expression of a more advanced type, as the Christian mystic brotherhood had behind it the spirituality of the Orphic mystics, who first gave voice to the hope of a 198 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION blissful resurrection for tlieir converts. The different elements which make up the whole church ritual are in¬ deed eventually of a savage type, but each has gone through similar intermediate modifications and been more and more spiritualized . 15 Also, of course, all these different rites have here coalesced into one body distinct from any other body of rites. The Church has in this shown itself not abnormal or unhuman, but it expresses in its united ritual common hopes and common needs such as men have expressed in many times and places but hitherto with less completeness and far less spirituality. Some try to ignore the origin of these rites; some mock at them as a body of antiquated savage superstitions; but it is wiser to recognize their origin and at the same time to realize that they have become finer and nobler than the savage originals; just as the Greeks and He¬ brews refined their inherited myths and made inspired poetry out of commonplace tales. The advantages derived from ritual have already been animadverted upon. It linked the social to the religious side of life; it was instrumental in conserving religious forms; it held the social body together in the service of spiritual powers. Its disadvantages are that it tends to replace spontaneity with form as it becomes more or less meaningless owing to repetition and it is apt to turn into a machine of power operated by a few men to their own advantage (see the next chapter). At present, the ques¬ tion of church ritual service, of what sort it should be, is more an aesthetic than a religious matter, for a stately dignified procedure is to some more pleasing than 15 An excellent illustration may be found in the legend of the Holy Grail. The eucharistic nature of the Grail ritual, eating and drinking of natural products as containing qualities of the god, points to the origin of the legend in the Syrian Adonis-myth or the Eleusinian mysteries. See J. L. Weston, The Grail , 1907; and W. A. Nitze in Modern Language Ass. Pub¬ lications for 1909, pp. 365 f. THE RITUAL 199 spontaneous utterances. Ritualized prayer # is thus to many more satisfying than individual expression. Others find in the ritual a poor substitute for emotion and prefer plain talk and plain exercises to elaborate if more beau¬ tiful expression and activities. Incense and candles and genuflections soothe some and irritate others. But such things are not essential, or even important. The need of something more vital than the stereotyped ritual is admirably illustrated in the procedure in India at the death of a loved member of the family. The law¬ books inform us that “minor rites’’ for the dead may be performed “according as old men and women” recom¬ mend. Such people are, together with priests, the natural conservators of old local custom. So, after the formal priestly rites have been performed, the mourners are ad¬ vised to listen to comforting old tales. Some old person, it is suggested (but not required), should gather the mourners together and recite verses of a consolatory character. Then a specimen is given by the law-maker (Yaj., Dli.) of what it would be advisable to say: “Naught in life is fixed or sure; water-bubbles ne’er endure; Element to element back returns when life is spent. Earth itself will pass away, ocean too; e’en gods decay; And shall mortals, foam and bubble on the sea of life and trouble, Outlive earth and sea and sky? Weep not if a mortal die. * Weep not, ye who mourn, but think, 4 He ye love must loathing drink All the tears the mourners shed, when they vainly weep their dead.’ Therefore tales of noble worth, what good men have done on earth, 200 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION What the«great have dying left, tell each other. Though bereft, Think that he who dies still lives watchful of the heart that grieves! Will your tears his joy increase, where he lives the life of peace? His be bliss without alloy; let no mourning mar his joy.” Ritualized religious songs are both laudatory and peni¬ tential. In India, these songs are chiefly laudatory; in Babylon, chiefly penitential; but the two sorts are often united even in the same hymn. In both environments the hymns lost their original freshness and by dint of repeti¬ tion tended to become formulaic and magical. The for¬ mality of worship and sacrifice is also strengthened by ritualistic processions and pilgrimages at set times of the year, usually under the guise of commemoration serv¬ ices, such as that of some episode or exploit of the god, his birthday or triumph over enemies. Often an old pro¬ cessional ritual is utilized for this purpose . 16 New shrines and new forms of worship are thus introduced. The or¬ dinary ritual had to do in the East generally with at¬ tendance on the idol-body of the god, who in India was at home and received on certain days, prior to which he had to be waked, washed, and waited on, like a raja at court. But idols and temples are not part of India’s early service. In later times, each temple has a multitude of priests, who, like the Greek priests of only one shrine, serve one divinity and receive money from private and public contributions. In Egypt and elsewhere, the temples 16 Vedic rites thus incorporated magical sun- and rain-rites into the or¬ thodox ritual, and when Buddhism entered Camboja and Siam it caught up and sanctified old country-feasts by embalming them in its own ritual. The people did not care; they laughed and danced and celebrated spring in the old way, but it was now part of a new religious celebration. THE RITUAL 201 acquired immense wealth in this way and the Egyptian priests, partly by virtue of this wealth, attained great political influence. The temple-idea, when not that of a grove (above, p. 29), is a developed ghost-house or god-hut, beth-el, and in any form is, or contains, taboo-stuff, either religious im¬ plements or divine bodies (fetishes, etc.). Sometimes skeletons of ancestors, carried by Amerinds in bundles in war, serve as contents of such a primitive ark, like the one in which the Hebrews carried their sacra. The de¬ veloped temple combines the idea of a sacred place for a spirit’s home and a sacred place for sacrifice to the spirit, who is either still tangible in idol or altar (origi¬ nally divine) or intangible, as when the altar becomes a mere stone of sacrifice. The temple of the Jews did away with the free open sacrifices, which previously might be made anywhere, as they were made at first in India, where no temples were built till the modern gods had overshadowed the open-air deities of the Vedic religion. It may be questioned whether the early Aryans had temples at all. The Homeric Greeks appear to have sac¬ rificed without regard to place and a simple altar built for the occasion was all that was necessary. Both Vedic and Homeric deities were unconfined powers and the Aryan Greeks may have borrowed the temple-idea from their neighbors, as did the Jews. 17 Neither Greek nor He- 17 Protests against assigning ethnical value to the word Aryan have * exaggerated the case. It is true that Aryan speech covers many races, but there must have been some Aryan type not wholly linguistic to have left such a distinctive mark on civilization. The Vedic Aryans were markedly different from the Indi,e aborigines, as were the Achaeans from the abo¬ rigines whom they conquered and who in turn conquered them; that is, by absorption, as the Aryans of India were absorbed and their religion was affiliated to that of the natives. The difference was the same. A freer, ruder spirit ruled the Aryans, who fraternized with gods and cared little for ghosts and other mysterious things of the earth, which they exploited in¬ stead of being subjugated by it. Only the Kelts, whose Aryan blood was 202 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION brew temple was intended as a meeting-house is the mod¬ ern sense; the Jewish synagogue filled this need. Altars are not at all necessary in primitive or even modern sac¬ rifices. The usual sacrifice to the elephant-god in India (Ganesha) is an ottering of flowers, fruits, fish, milk, cakes, and intoxicants, which are placed in a basket and left at a crossing in a place marked only by strewn grass (like the Vedic barhis). The stone god of a Hindu village is both god and altar. In the Patiala district of the Pun¬ jab there is still worshipped on occasion (when small¬ pox is feared) the Bibrian stone, which is at once altar, temple, and god. As the principles of religion have little concern with the later development of art and architecture and the elaboration of ritual, it will be unnecessarv here to trace the growth of national temples and the details of service. But attention mav be called to the less known forms of temples, such as the roofed and domed Toltec temple of the serpent-god, with a simulated serpent’s mouth as its door and to the ziggurats, called teocalli, of the Aztecs, pyramidal edifices five to nine stories in height, “high places” which make doubtful the inference that Baby¬ lonian ziggurats reflect a previous mountain-altar. 18 The real pyramids of Egypt were tombs rather than temples, perhaps thinned out through more combative distance as well as time, show but faint traces of the Aryan attitude and for the most part reflect the earth-religion of the primitive inhabitants. is As it has been argued that Egyptian religion was carried to Peru be¬ cause Peruvian temples resemble Egyptian, it is well to remember that the most surprising likeness of this sort is to be found between the Mexican temples and those of Suku (Java), which belong to the fifteenth century of our era. The latter are coarse in execution and are used by a debased sect of Vishnuites, but “their interest lies in the extraordinary resemblance which they bear to the temples of Mexico and Yucatan,” a resemblance for which no one yet has been able to account. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, approvingly cited (1921) by Sir Charles Eliot in Hinduism and Buddhism, III, p. 168. THE RITUAL 203 and temples in China are often evolved from ghost- honses. The Greek temple became a Christian church and on occasion a Mohammedan mosqne without much diffi¬ culty. Remarkable is the resemblance of the Buddhist shrine with altar-place, aisles marked by columns, etc., to the Gothic cathedral, which has been imagined to be copied from the grove-idea, reproduced in stone. All elaborate ritual tends to introduce the same elements, such as choirs, incense, rich robes, intoned service, bells, lights, etc. They serve to stimulate the religious sensibili¬ ties, making a difference between profane and sacred, elevating and awing the spirit, while leading it to “wor¬ ship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” objectively pre¬ sented. Images and pictures of ancestors, as in Rome and China, serve at first as veritable abodes (resting-places) for the departed members of the family; but images are also used to distract ghosts from human bodies. They enter the image as a residence. CHAPTER XIII THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH The Priest: The original priest or spiritual authority was, according to circumstances, an oracle, a diviner, a singer (of incantations, carmen means a charm), or a leech, sometimes combining these functions. In many savage religions he was first of all a dancer and as such was recognized as a diviner or oracle. Another coimnon function was that of making fine weather; a priest who could not do this was discredited; a good priest was supposed to be influential with the powers that give rain. In all these cases, the priest was recognized as an intermediary between human and spiritual powers, sometimes to tell what spirits know, sometimes to in¬ fluence the spirits. Again, the keeper of a holy place or guardian of religious relics might become director of ritual and so take upon himself a priestly office. But usually among primitive peoples the priest is ac¬ cepted as such only in consequence of some special in¬ dividual faculty or inherited power or as recipient of spiritual blessings. A savage priest must prove by ec¬ static and hysterical speech and action that he is in¬ spired; 1 he dances himself into a frenzy, ejaculates mean¬ ingless syllables; or he effects cures or foretells events or sees what is unknown to other people (discovers crimes, etc.). Among American and African tribes a dream may reveal a chosen man as priest; he becomes one of the elect. In both countries also the practice was 1 In the Hebrew religion, disease, insanity, inspiration, and all unusual powers come from Yahweh, but this is merely because he absorbed the earlier spirit-possession, etc. THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 205 known of forming priests from boyhood; they were regu¬ larly trained for the priesthood. Often in the higher religions, and occasionally in the lower, the office of priest was hereditary and the priest¬ hood was kept in a caste, 2 which controlled religious mat¬ ters. Yet this control, even in India where the priestly caste had charge of all public religious services, was still retained in domestic rites by the family head. Such a fam¬ ily head might become head of a clan and yet officiate in religious matters, so that in many races we find a sort of rivalry between chief and priest, each of whom is guar¬ dian of religion. A more common antithesis, however, is that of the family head and tribal priest. Thus among the Ugro-Finnish tribes, the father of the family remains the family sacrificer, but the tribal sacrifices are con¬ ducted by hereditary priests in the “great hut” or temple of the whole tribe which is erected in a sacred grove. But the soothsaying and oracular priests also may make a group apart from the state-priests and form a kind of illegitimate priesthood, which maintains itself long after the state-priesthood is established; sometimes, indeed, it enters the state-priesthood and absorbs functions with which it had at first nothing to do. In China, there were professional exorcists of hereditary character, who in¬ voked the dead, prophesied, and banned all evil, though as a class they had nothing to do with the state religion, till the later boards included them under the head of state board of rites. These exorcists of quite Shamanistic appearance were probably the original Chinese priests, very likely temporary, not permanent, priests, after¬ wards displaced by the priestless religion of the State. 2 Thus hereditary priests were known to India, Egypt, and the Hebrews, but the Hebrew priests did not form a caste, only a class. There was an hereditary priesthood among, e.g., the Nez Perce and the Tarascans (Mexico). 206 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION More markedly nnpriestly than the state religion of China, which eventually countenanced Confucian priests (teachers) and Taoist magicians, is Islam, which recog¬ nizes neither the priest nor the temple. Buddhism also did away with the priest as spiritual controller and with the priestly caste as ministrants of religion (not, how¬ ever, as a social order); but it really replaced the priests with superior “brethren,” who controlled the religious organization; they could not confine but could expel re¬ calcitrant members. Practically also the monks became to the laity a special priestlike order and in some Buddhistic sects there was formed a spiritual hierarchy of Patri¬ archs, which acted as intermediary between man and the spiritual powers of earth and air. The relation between king and priest has already been noticed. There is no valid reason to suppose that kings were originally priests; only that they assumed priestly functions as being heads and representatives of the com¬ munity and hence also intermediaries with the gods. In Peru, the king’s brother was high priest of the sun, of which (whom) the reigning family were supposed to be descendants. Chibcha priests formed a caste distinct from the castes of warriors and agriculturists (including, as in India, traders) and the rulers were deified on occa¬ sion as divine or rather as divine priests; but they were not priests acting as kings. In Babylon, too, the kings were not originally priests, as has often been asserted. In India, the priests in their own opinion, not contra¬ dicted, were not even part of the political State. In pre¬ senting a new king to the people, the formal proclama¬ tion made by the priests was: “Here, 0 people, is your king; not ours, for our king is the (god) Soma”; and the king might exercise no power over the priest, who at first might not be slain or corporally punished, though he might be banished from the realm. Later, he was fined THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 207 for heavy offenses and in the legal period arose the strange doctrine that‘ 6 the higher the caste the higher the fine; for the more the sinner knows the more he sins; ’ ’ bnt it is doubtful whether any religious king ever dared to act in accordance with this rule. In Greece, the Homeric priest or “prayer” was offi¬ ciant of a local altar and “honored like a god,” though by no means a recluse; he was sometimes married and at no time was the Greek priest regarded as especially holy. Different shrines were served by priests and priestesses who were required to conform to local conditions im¬ posed upon all aspirants to priesthood, such as sex and age, as well as to the usual demand of physical fitness and beauty. 3 There was no general rule, though priestesses usually served goddesses; but Herakles, for example, was served at Thespiae by a young woman. Special families might hold the office or the State appoint the priest or the office was sold to the highest bidder or it was be¬ stowed by lot. The priest lived on emoluments (tithes, etc.) coming from gifts, care of temple property, etc., and received public honors; he acted as agent of the family or State and was supported by his employers, who in turn benefited through his ministrations. He was director of the ritual of prayer and sacrifice, guardian of the shrine, and overseer of a number of hired assistants; but there were also state officials, king or archon, who supervised all the shrines, tried cases of sacrilege, recognized new cults, etc. The Greeks as a whole were on intimate terms with their gods and without having recourse to priests prayed to them for success in every undertaking; 3 So the hereditary Aaronic priest had to fulfil certain bodily qualifica¬ tions. All religions hare some sine qua non of this sort, though this tends to become spiritual, either the spirit received by initiation or through laying on of hands, or the gift of the spirit as recognized by the Church in charac¬ ter, devotion, or even eloquence. 208 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION “all men need the gods”; thanksgiving sacrifices were made by the State for release from danger, votive of¬ ferings by the individual. In the hymns, dances, and processions of worship, as in the sacrifice, the priest or his agent, the herald, was occupied rather as director than as an essential element; he received the votive offering at the shrine. The priest’s shrine also provided the vic¬ tor’s wreath at the athletic contests, which had become re¬ ligious festivals. 4 But even in sacrifice the priest was not always necessary, or rather the chief, head of the family or clan, was himself priest. Purification needed a priest only when it concerned the people at large and even then a seer, like Epimenides, might direct the ritual. On the other hand, the priestess of Demeter in Boeotia formally blessed the bride in the name of the goddess, who pre¬ sided over marriage. Priests of shrines of Asklepios were also physicians and surgeons who wrought many cures, for which the god got credit. But the Greek priests, although they never formed a caste, were like the priests of India in acting without co¬ herence ; they formed no body that rose into an imperium in imperio. Even in India the caste members were too isolated and too jealous of each other to unite into a political power. Certain priests might defy a king but no united priesthood ever opposed royalty or state power in India or Greece. In less highly civilized countries, such as Mexico and Babylon, the chief office of the priest was to be a conjurer and diviner and he never rose politically above the position of servant of the State, though he acted as judge. Elsewhere, too, as in India and Egypt, the priest was endowed with judicial power, but only in con¬ nection with the king, who in Egypt was himself the high priest. Such union of priest and chief of state appears 4 In the same vray, races and games were incorporated into the religious ritual of the South American Bogotas. THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 209 when the Homeric chieftain offers a sacrifice. Egyptians, Babvlonians, and Hebrews all had distinctive dress and ranks and degrees in their priesthoods, which date from the earliest period, though the Hebrew priest was not at first required for sacrifice; but the Aaronic priest’s chief duty was to offer the sacrifice for atonement as well as to care for the temple. Our own priesthood comes from the reestablishment of the old Hebrew priesthood idea according to a new order (Heb. 5:10), in which Christ is high priest of the new sacrifice. So the temple gave way to the synagogue and on this was modeled the church as a meeting-house, but for spiritual food rather than for sacrifice (its ritual copied that of the synagogue), consisting in prayer and exhortation. Deacons and overseers, episcopi, bishops, were a natural product of the new congregation and rec¬ ognized as authoritative soon after the Church was founded, the head of whose Western branch in a few cen¬ turies became supreme spiritual head of the Western sub-branches. To him the other churches paid at first rather 4 Hove and respect” than obedience. Political con¬ ditions, however, established the Bishop of Home in a position where he could and did enforce obedience as ruler of Church and State. The Christian priesthood in the Mass, according to the established belief, carries on the sacrifice (of the Eucharist) instituted by Christ as high priest. 5 The priest must be confirmed by the bishop. In all priesthoods arises the need of specialists, one priest being an expert in slaughtering the sacrificial ani¬ mal, another in ceremonial, etc. Thus sixteen priests were required to conduct the complicated Vedic sacrifice in 5 The priest must be of a certain age (twenty-four years or more). By the ministration of the priest the worshippers partake of the fruits of the sacrifice in communion, baptism, and the other sacraments. He is also the only recognized religious instructor. 210 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION India, one to build the altar, another to sing, another to oversee the work, etc., no one of whom might do any but his own allotted work. There were praying priests and singing priests and others distinguished by their peculiar occupations. All elaborated rituals naturally develop in this way (as among the Mexicans, Peruvians, Egyptians, and Hebrews), so that a priesthood is subdivided into groups not marking different faiths but only carrying on certain branches of work. This is apt to end in a lasting distinction which stresses socially the kind of work. The slaughterer of the victim is regarded and regards him¬ self as less important than the reciter of Holy Writ, etc. A caste within a caste is thus evolved, as the “big talk¬ ing’’ priest among savages is regarded as higher than the shrine-attendant. In a complicated social system the elements of ordinary worldly success are usually opera¬ tive with the priest also and it is not always the best man who has the best place, but he who has influence and patronage. The cutthroat prelates of the Middle Ages, the sensual leaders of the Church, thus prepared the world for Reformation, as the selfish and sensual Brahmans prepared India to receive with enthusiasm the ethical remonstrance of Buddhism. In all priesthoods, too, the priest intermediates be¬ tween man and the spiritual powers; in our speech he “holds the key of heaven.” He is either divine or filled with a peculiar spiritual power akin to divinity, which he represents. Thus, even today, the Guru, or spiritual director, of the Hindu is a little human divinity, whose sect treats him like a god; he is dangerous to touch and deadly to offend, a reversion to the taboo-attitude, which is found in respect of priests and sect-leaders. In the West, the adoration of divine representatives is less pro¬ nounced but there has been the same intellectual submis¬ sion to God’s representative on earth. The ritual is THE PRIEST AND TITE CHURCH 211 largely responsible for this, since it has enshrined the priest in an impenetrable armor, as it exalts him into a superior being whose office is beyond the layman. He comes into closest touch with divinity and through the fact that no one understands what his speech means in the ritual (Sanskrit in India, Latin in the West) he be¬ comes, as has been observed, the sole controller of a tre¬ mendous spiritual machine whose movement is essential to salvation, but no one save the priest knows how to make it go, as no one save the priest or pope can impose penances by which sins are cleared off or grant indul¬ gences through which they may be safely practiced. 6 A double danger lies then in the inevitable combination of ritual and priest. First, the ritual may become a sub¬ stitute for religion. Out of piety excessive weight is laid upon the exact reproduction of inherited acts and words, so that, as in the Hindu ritual, a meticulous observance of received usage in the measurement of the altar, the pronunciation and accent of each word and phrase re¬ peated without understanding, the movement at fixed in¬ tervals of eyes and fingers, all this becomes the sum total of priestly religion to the loss of meaning and detriment of spirit. The priest no longer knows why he does this or that or what the words mean which he repeats; he speaks and acts as if performing a magical operation and the service is supposed to act automatically to the benefit of the hearers. Second, the mere mass of the ritual, as well as its imposing mystery and bewildering complexity, makes the worshipper realize that his individual part in 6 The grant of indulgences, regularly practiced, for example, by the lama of Tibet, had on one occasion a merited reward. The lama promised his hillsmen pardon for all past and immediate future sins if they would sweep off a mission-settlement. After they had done so, these savages re¬ flected that they still had pardon for all sins (the time-limit of pardon not having expired), so they turned on the lama’s own temples and looted them all, although these temples were also their own sanctuaries. 212 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION worship is reduced to nothing. The priest performs; the people watch the priest move and mumble. They that should worship get out of touch with divinity save through the mechanical mediation of hirelings, who yet, although mere hirelings, by virtue of their possession of this power of mediation, make themselves, as religious specialists, the feared masters of their depressed em¬ ployers. And as it has been in India so it must be in every church where the people abrogate their spiritual powers in favor of those who employ religion as a means of co¬ ercion, pretended coercion of spirits and real coercion of men. Thus the ritual of Home, long before the Republic fell, became a tool in the hands of unscrupulous politi¬ cians and dishonest servants of the gods and the ritual of later Rome was used to coerce kings as well as private individuals. The fault of course is not in the ritual; ritual in itself is not dangerous. The fault is the priest’s when he employs his ritual senselessly or unscrupulously. The first confessional in India was established for women: “confession is truth; thus sin becomes a virtue.” The ritual of confession may be innocuous, as when the Bud¬ dhists confess themselves in open congregation once a month, or it may become a weapon, when it is given in secret and used for political ends, as in Peru. 7 Further, the priest without ritual can also become the master of the king, as the royal chaplain in India, though the most despised and ignorant of priests, had often the greatest influence. 8 On the other hand, it is obvious that priests, despite their ritual, have always sustained and kept alive the re¬ ligious spark in the form of faith to which they were com- 7 Confession in the Roman Catholic Church is private and has (it is believed) never been violated. Ritual today is obnoxious only to the danger of substituting form for spirit. s His only functions were “to be skilled in prognostication and learned in law and magic” (Yaj., Dli. 1, 312). THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 213 mitted. In the past it was the priests who were the intellectual leaders of their people in Egypt, Babylon, In¬ dia, and even in Mexico and Pern. In general, a priest¬ hood is conservative and preserves much that would otherwise be lost, both in literature and in the upholding of old standards and laws. Priests were the teachers of secular sciences as well as of religion in the ancient world, especially in the East. As ministrant shepherds of the religious flock they are still indispensable to the Church, which without priests would become as weak as a body politic without officers. They must, as specialists in divine law, instruct the ignorant many and as such they hold up traditional wisdom and learning. It would have fared ill for India and Egypt if there had been no priests and the same is true for Europe, though, on the other hand, they have often opposed intellectual advance, con¬ served evil as well as good, been tyrants as well as bene¬ factors, and become dangerous opponents of the State. But it is generally among the priests themselves that the revolt against priestly mishandling and ineptitude has arisen. On the whole, religion has been better understood and better practiced by priests than by laymen, and as their word has greater weight among the devout so their influence in general is more profound for good as well as for evil. Ethically, too, the priest in many religions was a man apart, obliged to be pure not only in a ritual¬ istic sense but in conduct. He was often (not always) a celibate and from the sorcery of savages to the morality of civilization he has been, at least nominally, the sus- tainer of virtue, detecting and punishing sin, as under¬ stood by him, advocating moral excellence, and serving in his own person as an example of human frailty exalted by spiritual life . 9 How often he has failed, both as an in- 9 In Africa, as among the Aleuts, the initiation of priests often includes fasting and purification and their life implies the observance of celibacy 214 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION dividual and as a class, the history of India and of Eu¬ rope shows sufficiently, but it shows also that priests have been as useful as thev have been inevitable. Nor is %> their use negligible now; for there are many who are the better for their services. Advancing enlightenment has is various religious circles sheared off their pretensions. They appear not as monuments of ancient mysticism but as guides to present spiritual betterment; but even as mere ministers, as those who set the pace for others to rim the race uphill to a higher life, they are still invalu¬ able, not valueless, as many pretend. It means much for any communitv to have a bodv of men dedicated to spiritual and ethical improvement. In America, though the word priest is usually avoided in evangelical circles, the parson or minister is virtually a priest in that he spiritually represents the congregation and is consecrated to his office by a recognized ceremony regarded by his religious group as sufficient, though it may want the traditional channel through which au¬ thority comes. The question of apostolic succession or its parallel has twice been raised in the Buddhistic Church, once in Ceylon and once in Burma. In both cases it was necessary to send abroad to obtain due authority for or¬ dination. In Ceylon, as the nuns have no power of au¬ thority, the sisters of the Church had to send to Burma to obtain it. In sundry Asiatic religions, the temple-gods were served by priestesses as well as by priests. In some cases these women were virtually slaves of the temple and their conduct was unethical, as it is today in some Hindu temples, where the dancing-girls are little better than prostitutes. But priestesses beyond reproach have been and chastity, with many restrictions as to food and clothes and hair, taboos retained by many advanced priesthoods. Such taboos were primarily for the purpose of gaining spiritual power. THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 215 known in several religions, not only independent of priests but as participants of the otherwise priest-served ritual. In Greece, the priestess might be the only servitor of a divinity; in Egypt, the god’s wife might be the chief priestess; in Babylon, the daughter of a king or high dignitary was sometimes the chaste priestess of a shrine. The duties of priestesses working with priests were gen¬ erally, when not immoral, subordinate; they did not offer sacrifice but attended to the service of dance and song. Since savage priestesses are not unusual (some African tribes have a woman as chief religious head) it may be that the Oriental “wives of the gods” were originally such independent priestesses, though it has been sug¬ gested that they reflect an age of sexual promiscuity; but the existence of such an age is questionable. Neither explanation seems to the writer so plausible as that the institution of women-servitors goes back to a double origin. One is represented by the vestal virgins of Peru, whose analogue in Keltic and Roman religion is well known and whose savage prototype may be found in Af¬ rica, where the care of fire is entrusted to certain women, whose behavior is unexceptionable. In other words, one origin of priestesses is to be sought in special service, like the Iroquois cult of spirits of the earth, which was given over to women, or the Roman and Peruvian care of fire. The other comes perhaps from subordinating to the temple-service the use of dancing-girls in processions. Thus India’s prostitute dancing-girls (a comparatively modern feature) may best be explained by the religious festivals and processions which are still marked by danc¬ ing and music and banners, in short, a spring celebration, which in outlying countries clearly bear the marks of original unreligious festivals only recently brought under the hand of churchly authority and fitted out with per¬ functory ritual, such as those already mentioned as cele- 21G ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION brated in Camboja and Siam. Thus of the four thousand servitors of the temple of Angkor in Camboja, six hun¬ dred were dancing-girls (twelfth century), but they were for processional and festive occasions. The religious dance to the pious Hindu expresses the divine rhythm of the universe presented in the figure of the dancing gods, whose creative act is thus symbolically expressed in rhythmic joy (God is Joy). It was easy to bring into the ritual of Hindu and Buddhist the popular dance and to make the dancing-girls part of the regular service. Such dancing is different from the dance of the Ceylon Kapu- ralas, who in dancing intoxicate themselves with the belief that they are becoming inspired (devil-dancers). The Canaanite prostitutes adopted into the Hebrew serv¬ ice were probably dancers, but they belonged to religions which frankly stimulated eroticism, even to the extent of obliging girls generally to sacrifice their virginity. The sacrifice of virility on the part of priests of the Mother is probably due to a desire to approximate priest to goddess and hangs together with the female attire donned by the same priests. So the mediaeval priests of the Radha Vallabha sect, which adores the female po¬ tency as spouse of Krishna, were dressed as women, ob¬ viously in imitation of the goddess. The Church: By slow degrees the ecclesiastical body is built up into an army of priests of various degrees, officers of the king-priest, Dalai lama or pope, who rep¬ resents or incorporates divinity . 10 Such an army may con¬ tend successfully, as in Japan and Tibet and Europe, with the secular army. In Europe the monastic bodies, io The apotheosis of the king in Camboja identifies him by name with the god; he is the “god who is in the kingdom”; the “subtle self of the king” is Shiva in linga form. This royal god-cult is not very different from that of the lama, who is at once pope, king, and incarnate god. See Sir Charles Eliot, op. cit., Ill, pp. 115 f. THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 217 which derived originally from Egyptian models, kept in general their original character, bnt in the East these bodies, instead of bribing soldiers, became themselves soldiers of the Lord and fought valiantly against those of the sovereign civil power, while in the West inter¬ necine conflict was waged by sect against sect, usually on questions which resolved themselves into the problem of form against spirit, whence reformation and re-reforma¬ tions, till larger issues eventually effected a political sev¬ erance of a military character, when Church and State were represented by embattled devotees. Nothing of this sort ever happened in India. There the State took no in¬ terest in religious questions except to say that all sects should live in harmony and the sects themselves admitted the mutual right of disagreement. Not till modern times was there really a state religion (in the case of Sikhs and Mahrattas), for Ashoka countenanced Buddhism, but, as a Buddhist himself, was tolerant of all religions. Most religions have gradually settled down into a compromise position with the civil power, dividing between them the spoils of prestige, as lords of the spiritual world and lords of the temporal power, a combined aristocracy, the king upholding the priest and the priest upholding the king, to their mutual advantage. In India, c. 1000 B. C., these two bodies or classes were forming castes which soon rose far above the common people, already (c. 800 B. C.) derisively called by the priests “the food of the king”; but the priests themselves fattened on the same food. In Europe, no king was too base to be blessed by the Church, no ecclesiastic too corrupt to be made car¬ dinal or pope. The holy rogue, who served the king with twice the zeal with which he served the Church, was well known. But Church and State are comparatively modern bodies] The horde is not a state. A loose amalgamation of 218 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION people, easily split up and subdividing into groups which pass into other fields, a horde has no religious or political unity. Any one man of a temporary group will turn and fight against his friends, like Maoris. Their women, too, come largely from other groups; there is no binding fam¬ ily tie; no religious starting-point in the family; no father of the family as priest, nor chief as chief priest. The family religion begins with the established family, and this is a product of development, caused by circum¬ stances which keep the horde in a settled place, as a clan, after it has passed from a nomadic stage. In other words, clan- and family-religion are matters of culture, and higher culture really begins with agriculture, which ties down the group to one locality and stabilizes the family or consolidates the clan. 11 It was the agricultural de¬ pendence of the Amerind which kept him within bounds despite his life as a hunter, and his best civilization or approach to it was the result of this home-staying. But even with the clan established, the religious activity of the war-chief is mainly confined to war-religion, which may be important even in an agricultural community, so that its chief god, like Mars, may be at once a war-god and a grain-god. Yet ordinary religious matters are not in the hands of the chief or king but remain in those of the wizard, medicine-man, etc., except for family matters, where again the chief of the family is also the religious head, as, for example, he remains for centuries in India, where no priest is required for many domestic rites, or rather the father acts as priest. But a family may become a clan and its head be still the clan-priest, or the rites performed by the king may be extended till he becomes 11 Clan and family influence, one might almost say, create different reli¬ gious types. The Arabian is a clan-religion with totem, clan-god, rites of hospitality strongly marked; the Aryan is a family-religion, with cult of family ghosts (no totem or clan-god), late “guest-law,” etc. THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 219 the general religions chief. He is thus naturally the judge and the whole religious-judicial procedure may be in his hands. “The king shall take a club and kill a thief” is one of the earliest Hindu laws. Here the chief of state is judge and executioner of justice, which, be it remem¬ bered, is religious. The priest, representing the king, acted thus as judge in Mexico, in Babylon, and in Rome (compare the Druidic priest-judges). The whole court procedure, with its oath and ordeal, was a religious act in which the king and culprit were the chief actors. The growth of the State was largely fostered by the law of hospitality (whereby the hostis became the hospes and made commerce possible) and the law of asylum, both of which w^ere closely connected with religion. Local gods are left behind when one travels, and in early days a traveller was a man without a god. He got religious pro¬ tection in becoming a guest (or being adopted) and when he sought asylum he found it also only as a religious support, either at the altar, in the temple or church, or in cities of refuge. The Hawaiian temple and palace are both asylums, and the idea is common to Semites and Aryans, and savages such as those of New Guinea. The asylum is not, as Wilutzky says, 12 an appeal to gods against human judgment but an appeal to the fear of gods; the appeal to the god of the tribe comes later. Modifications of the asylum are standards, flags, statues of the emperor (among the Romans), groves (of Mo¬ hammedans), and the inclusion of any space within thirty paces of a church edifice (Roman Catholic) or “the church door-ring” among the Germans (the earliest German asylum was the Irmen-pillar). Even the house- asylum was originally religious, for it implied the hearth and that was a sacred taboo-spot; but with a brave race the religious idea probably was mingled with the de- 12 Paul Wilutzky, Vorgeschichte des Eechts, III, pp. 101 f. 220 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION fiance expressed by the Hindu (epic) statement that ‘ 4 every man is king in his own house,” sve dame. The Maori chief gave absolute asylum by covering the refu¬ gee with his cloak and any woman could act as inviolate asylum to a German outlaw. As a temporary relief the asylum gave opportunity to arrange for blood-money to satisfy the vendetta-feeling (which was also largely re¬ ligious), thus introducing the whole system of compensa¬ tion for wrongdoing instead of exacting the logical quid pro quo. This “compensation” is a widespread institu¬ tion, found, for example, among the Five Nations and Polynesians (slavery is there a form of compensation), as well as Aryans and Semites. But it must be noticed also that the asylum leads to a conflict between Church and State when unworthy people are thus protected. One of the first complaints against the Buddhist Congrega¬ tion (church) was that as their Brethren, friars, were in¬ violate, any robber or murderer could take refuge within a Congregation and so defeat justice. Buddha was obliged to rule that no one might be admitted into the Congregation without first satisfying the Church Elders that he was not a scoundrel subject to punishment by the law. The Greeks misused “altars of safety” in the same way. 13 To turn to wider relations of Church and State, the expanse of the State has a broadening effect upon reli¬ gion in giving a broader view of the deity of the tribe. If the Hebrews had not been dispersed over a wider area their god would have remained local, and monotheism probably owes its fullest expression to tribal misfortune. In Egypt the growth of the State amalgamated gods and 13 For the asylum among savages, see A. Hellwig, Das Asylumrecht der Naturvolker, Berlin, 1903. As the Church was exempt from state taxation, some Chinese Buddhists nominally made their property over to the Church and thus came in conflict with the State. THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 221 suggested the idea of a god greater than the Sun and even the early Egyptian priest inherited a composite re¬ ligion formed of various local cultural ideas. On the other hand, imported ideas may ignore the State so completely as to divorce it from religion. Thus the Greek mysteries undermined what was left of local religious feeling and established a religious instead of political brotherhood. Religion became denationalized; the slave gained weight as a ‘‘brother’’ man. So even in India during a religious love-orgy the lowest caste loses its base estate (for a night) and the idea is introduced that all are equal before the deity, which is not a state-view and may lead to se¬ rious political consequences. Conversely, in this upheaval the priest qua priest sinks as the slave rises, another blow at the religious-political confederacy. For the priest of the Hindu religious debauch is never the accredited priest of the State. The priest is apt to break this confederacy himself when he is strong enough to do so and ride roughshod over the king, as king and priest together override the commons when they can. Thus in Fernando Po the priests obtained such power that they kept the king in a hole in the ground, a helpless tool; and in Japan the ruler was often debased to a mere ceremonial puppet. The domi¬ nance of either spiritual power over temporal or tem¬ poral over spiritual is equally injurious; but, before coming to such an extreme, the lack of interference with each other, when the two remain in equilibrium, is also harmful. Thus the laissez faire policy of Hindu kings never interfered with religious abominations, such as widow-burning, girl-murder, thuggery, erotic debauches, and human sacrifice, all of which have been practiced till late years and supported by native religions. China, on the other hand, has taken all religion under its state in¬ stitutions and put down whatever it considers injurious, 222 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION even rejecting gods that had a bad reputation. It is the most perfect example of religion subordinated to the State, but it also exemplifies the shortcomings of such a system, in which religious initiative is at a standstill. Where the State rules religion, the status in quo ante re¬ mains the ideal. Where the Church has been the supreme arbiter in matters intellectual, science and philosophy have suffered. Where religion and the State have been in¬ different to each other, both parties have suffered. The paternal character of the State is gradually shifted over, as the Church emancipates itself from supervision, to the religious Congregation as a body. This body then acts as a board of control in regard to ethics and when ethics is regarded as including opinion it acts also as an inquisition. No ancient religion of itself tried by force to suppress free thought. This was left to politicians. Only Plato desired that the unorthodox should be punished by the State. But when religion became its own arbiter and was itself the voice of the State it began to be dangerous for the one who disagreed with it. When in turn the State passed its control over to the Congregation, that body assumed all the repressive rights of the State and, in so far as it could, it disfranchised all heretical teachers. Thus, although political rights cannot be touched by the present Congregations (such Christian bodies as form the various sects may be so called), yet each in its own field acts as judge of opinion and it is merely a question of how indifferent or liberal the Congregation has be¬ come when a member thereof ventures to differ from re¬ ceived opinion; the Congregation, if prone to interfere with private judgment, may ostracize at will. In this re¬ gard there has been a notable difference between our Christian communities and the religious bodies of the an¬ cient world and the Eastern world today, where a man’s belief as to God is his own concern and considerable free- THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 223 dom of thought is permitted. 14 This is largely because re¬ ligion with us is interpreted in terms of theology; which in other religions was (and is) not a matter of religion but of philosophy. Religion consists, says the worshipper of Rama, in worshipping Rama, not in defining him; in loving God, not in explaining his inexplicable nature. Let the scientist and philosopher discuss and explain; reli¬ gion expresses itself in devout feeling and right living, not in mental exercises. The relation between religion and State is like that between any other form of culture and the State. When toleration is unknown, the State itself becomes atrophied, as in Sparta; when encouraged, the State grows, as in Athens. Too great concordance leads to stagnation; va¬ riety leads to growth. Consciousness of this fact leads slowly to the adoption of toleration as moral; it becomes unethical to be intolerant. How slowlv, mav be seen in the attitude of those who say that a man is good but bigoted. On the other hand, as solidarity is necessary to the main¬ tenance of any corporate body, it is inevitable that too great tolerance will disrupt the body. Religious belief which inculcates treason endangers the State. As heir of the State, the Congregation also has to ask itself whether its better (more conservative) views can safely be at¬ tacked, perhaps overthrown, by too liberal opinion. Ob¬ viously there is only one answer; nothing can safely be permitted which is sure to destroy. But out of this impasse there may be an escape. Let the Congregation as a body shift its whole attitude, regard a matter of dispute not as vital but as secondary, con¬ centrating on unity from another point of view, and the desperate situation between the Scylla of toleration 1 4 This is not to imply that either Brahman or Buddhist did not require of the religious member acquiescence in fundamental dogmas; but neither body coerced unbelievers or when in power imposed dogma on them. 224 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION and the Charybdis of self-destruction may be saved. This is actually what has happened and is now happening in our own Church. A rapidly growing dissentient body within the Church has adopted the attitude that dogma, which in the past has been vital, is to be treated like ritual, as something secondary in religious importance. Neither the formal creed nor the ritual of the Church is part of original Christianity, the so-called Nicene creed having as little connection with the teaching of Jesus as the church ritual of lights and incense has with the primitive cult. Spirit is gradually becoming more impor¬ tant than form or theory; the mediaeval controversies of opinion have long been dead and those of later date are already dying. It is too much to expect that the Church will formally repudiate anything; that has never been her way. But there is good ground for believing that the Church will tacitly acquiesce in the present tendency to substitute the religion of its Divine Founder for the hu¬ man dogmas of the fourth century. Such acquiescence will have two advantages. It will make it possible for in¬ telligent Westerners to remain in the Church and for missionaries to get a respectful hearing from intelligent Orientals. The scientist says that life’s first great development came about through the unification into one organism of many cells. But the many-celled organism was not pro¬ duced by the superiority of special forms maintained by warfare with lower forms, but by the union of relatively undifferentiated cells into an aggregate of cells less com¬ petitive, more social, that is, more subordinated to social unity. 4 4 The law of development is both strife and con¬ cordance.” But only what is quite irreconcilable with de¬ velopment is eliminated; other elements are fused into a new and higher whole. So Christianity grew not only by absorption of unchristian elements but by the consolida- THE PRIEST AND THE CHURCH 225 tion of antagonistic elements within the Christian fold. This represents also the course followed by Moham¬ medan and Zoroastrian religions. What was thought to be essential was rigidly retained; to other beliefs and forces was given an opportunity to act within their own sphere. Every great religion must thus survive by cling¬ ing fast to the spirit of its teaching and permitting free¬ dom in unessentials. The play of diverse forces must be allowed. This is the advantage of sects, that it gives scope to the lover of form as well as to the lover of ideas; the aesthetic sense, the ascetic sense, and mental require¬ ments are all satisfied. But the sect is only a section; the part cannot be greater than the whole; there must be room for all. CHAPTER XIV RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY Myths are stories; they may be true or false. Whether the myth or the ritual illustrating the myth be older, de¬ pends on circumstances. The ritual may make a story; the story may lead to the ritual. Some mythical origina¬ tor is apt to be assumed for the great rituals of a people or, as in Australia and India, they are referred to a group of Fathers regarded as more or less divine. There are myths independent of ritual, living only as stories, and others of which the whole ritual is a presentation in dramatic form. Myths of the gods may be said to be re¬ ligious from the outset, while those concerning men ac¬ quire gradually a religious tone as the heroes become more and more the object of devout regard. Myths are also modified by ethical and religious interpretation. The dramatic presentation of an Amerind myth becomes in¬ creasingly religious; 1 Japanese cosmogonic myths, in so far as they treat of gods, are religious from the begin¬ ning; the story of Paradise again shows how theology and ethics give a myth a new meaning. Myths are religious in so far as they affect belief in spiritual powers and the conduct based upon that belief. The spiritual powers concerned are usually gods or greater demons. Smaller demonia are seldom thus hon¬ ored, for a demon imagined as the origin of a noise or i Those who have adopted Durkheim’s theory (above, p. 5) without reservations say, on the other hand, that every festival of any tribe is re¬ ligious from the beginning; no savages can feast or dance except as a religious rite; a statement tolerable only when one defines as religious all social activities, which deprives the word of meaning. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 227 the tutelary little spirit of a small place, a garden, for example, is not vested with personality enough to make a myth. When a great spirit, on the other hand, becomes the guardian of a people, his image becomes subject to the mythopoetic tendency; he is more and more human¬ ized and around such a character grows up the tale of his deeds. He is described as a hero, is given divine relations. Indra, the storm-god, converses with other gods, treats his mother badly, tells a lie, etc.; the sun-god tends flocks or falls in love with a girl; at winter’s coming he grows weak; then he or the vegetation-spirit (not always to be distinguished) dies, is buried, and is resurrected. Or, again, a god brings in new ideas and is a culture-hero, half god, half man, around whom gathers a host of myths. Then there is the creation-myth of how a god created the world and, sometimes united with it, the historical myth, such as that of the origin of the race, from which direc¬ tion the fathers came, etc., which easily blends with that of the culture-hero, whose myth explains customs, reli¬ gious or secular. Students of religion have insisted for decades that the logical, scientific (explanatory), or historical myth is not religious. The creation of the world, they say, is ex¬ plained by primitive logic or science, or the story of an earthly paradise is a reflex of history. What have they to do with religion? The emphasis with which this thesis has been maintained is not without historical reason. There used to be people who thought that mythology was an essential part of religion, that to question the accuracy of a myth was to undermine religion itself. Either you be¬ lieved the “Bible story” or you were no Christian. That is what the writer was taught in youth, when he labored under the delusion that he was not a Christian because he could not swallow Jonah’s whale. But today, taking It for granted that no educated person believes in my- 228 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tliology as an essential part of religion, we may ask whether religion can be entirely separated from mythol¬ ogy. As regards our own belief, indeed, the two have no such connection as was assumed half a century ago, for we no longer think that a man is “irreligious” because he does not believe in this or that absurd myth. But when we treat religion not as it is, or should be, but as it has been, we are obliged to take a different view. It is no longer a question of that which constitutes or ought to constitute religion today, but of that which constituted it in the past. Now to assert that, for the past genera¬ tions, mythology, whether scientific or historical, was not an essential part of religion, is unscientific and unliistori- cal. Without Adam where would have been the doctrine of original sin and without original sin what would have become of religion? ‘ 4 Take away my original sin and my eternal damnation and what religion have I left?” asked the old Scots woman, not without reason. Or let us con¬ sider the logical myth of the Hindu hell. It begins with a vague belief in an underground place of darkness and ends with the tortures, fiends, god of hell, and little devils, with the divine Judge and his private secretary taking notes, with the fire of the pit and the gradual purging of sin; in short, it has all the paraphernalia of other more orthodox hells. But it ends also with the deeply embedded national conviction that men are moral solelv because %> they wish to escape the horrors of hell. An oft-repeated Sanskrit verse says, “ Through fear of liell-punisliment alone are men virtuous,” and shall we say that the con¬ ception of an avenging god and the tortures inflicted by his agents have nothing to do with religion? Yet hell be¬ gan simply as a logical antithesis to heaven and its re¬ wards for the good, which were firmly established before hell was thought of. The sinner at first merely disap¬ peared in the black gulf of extinction. But then came the RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 229 thought of revenge. If he killed me in this life, I ought to he able to torture him in the next life. So the first vision of hell in India is that of murderers being punished none too gently by their former victims. 2 Then the punish¬ ment was handed over to the divine Judge and his under¬ lings. In Polynesia and South America, powerful spirits devour the souls of the wicked and weak. Again, a scien¬ tific myth of the Amerinds relates how one tribe escaped disaster and fled to a new country, under what we should call divine guidance, and how this divine being built up a habitable earth for the chosen people. Is not that reli¬ gious? Every religion which has a mythology is more or less bound up with it and affected by it. It makes men ethically better or worse on religious grounds. The Thug who strangles his victim does so as a religious act, be¬ cause he believes in the myth of the goddess who demands the sacrifice. The Greeks knew that their current my¬ thology had an immoral effect and tried to alter their gods accordingly, recognizing the intimate relation be¬ tween myth and religion. Conduct is affected by imitation of mythical divine conduct. Bacchus, mythically intoxi¬ cated, makes a religious drunkard. Cosmogonic myths usually have little effect on religion but they are the commonest myths and in themselves sometimes adumbrate later religious beliefs. They are of two or three types. An ancestor or a god makes the world or the world is evolved out of primeval matter. It is rather remarkable that the latter idea is by no means un¬ common among savages; it does away with creative in¬ telligence. When a god or ancestor makes the world, he forms it out of matter which is not identical with himself, the usual creation-myth of savages, or he dismembers himself and his parts become the world (the sun is his 2 So in Greece the Erinys, a wronged soul, embodies the first idea of punishment hereafter. 230 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION eye, the trees his hair), as in Chinese, Hindu, and Teu¬ tonic mythology, a primitive pantheism. The god creates man out of dust or clay and blood (life) in African and Babylonian belief, or takes matter and breathes a soul into it to make a human being, as the Polynesians, Amer¬ inds, and Hebrews say, or generates gods and men as his children, as an old Hindu myth relates; though men, as we have seen, are more often derived from stones, trees, or animals, or crawl up out of the depths of earth. An¬ other common form of world-creation is where chaotic matter splits apart, usually through divine agency, and becomes the primeval pair (male sky and female earth), whose children are the inhabitants of earth. The cosmic egg is another form of the pair-myth, the two halves splitting up through indwelling divine power (creative or amorous) and making sky and earth, a Greek and Hindu myth, or perhaps only a philosopher’s explanation, as both myths are secondary products. The world or earth once created usually rests on something, an elephant or tortoise or giant. Very early is the conception of order opposed to disorder. Chaos is bad, disorderly; in Baby¬ lon it is personified as a seven-headed serpent or she- dragon, overcome for the good of the world by divine spirits of order, the halves of her becoming sky and earth. So the Hindus say, “Demons (lovers of disorder) are older brothers of the gods.” This recognition of chaos as evil implies the recognition of order as right, an im¬ personal morality (not that of meum and teum) in the universe. Less widely spread than cosmogonic myths are those of the deluge, of paradise, the happy isles, or other places of past and future felicity, the tree or water of life, and the myths of giants storming heaven. The myth of para¬ dise as the home of the first men is connected with that of creation. This home is clearlv the older habitation of %/ RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 231 the tribe in the myth of the Pacific Islanders and it may not be a mere accident that such a traditional paradise is found in the North in the Greek and Hindu myth of Hy¬ perboreans and Northern Kurus. The ancestors living in paradise are represented as larger and more able than men of today, also of greater longevity; they are more like gods. This earliest earthly paradise is then, in the Zoroastrian myth of Yuma, transferred to the future and becomes a heaven of joys to be hereafter. 3 That man was at first immortal and then lost his immortality, is a myth of the Pacific Islands, Africa, and India. The Semitic tree of life assumes that men, like gods, could eat thereof and live forever. Races arose from intercourse between gods and men or are quaintly derived from an assumed an¬ cestor who personifies the tribe; but Romulus is really derived from Roma, not Roma from Romulus. The early inhabitants often become culture-heroes, a role some¬ times taken by creators. The Mexican Quetzalcoatl, the Algonkin Michabo, the Babylonian Ea, the Hebraic Tubal Cain, the Greek Kadmos, belong to this class. Arts, laws, and rites are instituted by these beings. The Ten Com¬ mandments of the Hebrews, the ten ethical rules of the Hindus, sacrifice and ritual also, are ascribed to divine authority communicated through human, but specially in¬ spired, intermediaries called patriarchs or sages. So the ritual of the Australians and Amerinds is a copy of what was taught by the divine ancestors; religious dances in India are copied from the dances of the gods. Legal pro¬ cedure is referred to that of the ancestors. Manu, the Adam of the Hindus, “divided his property among his sons”; hence men today must do likewise. The material source of endless life is the tree of para¬ dise, which in Babylon may be a tree of knowledge. In 3 V hen it is said ‘ 1 this day shalt thou be with me in paradise ’ ’ (Luke 23: 43) the same word is used as that designating Eden. 232 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Zoroastrian tradition, the holy Horn is a tree of life be¬ cause it quickens vitality, as it also imparts knowledge and gives all kinds of blessings. In Genesis, the two ideas are united, but perhaps they were always so, for knowl¬ edge may have been thought to be the means of securing immortal life. According to the late Professor W. Max Muller, Egyptian records have the story of the crea¬ tion, paradise, the serpent-demon (Babylonian Tiamat, Chaos), and the tree of knowledge and life; but only by implication, not by express relation, are they to be guessed at. 4 As we have seen that the myth of Yima’s earthly para¬ dise was transferred to the future, so it may have been in the case of descriptions of other future homes of hap¬ piness. For example, the Happy Land sects of Buddhism have transferred to the future the bliss imagined to have been enjoyed in an ancient Western home. It is the de¬ scription that makes the myth, because, however certain we be that we shall go to something better in the next life, no man can say just what sort of happiness is to be found there. Imagination idealizes the past or the present and that is heaven. To the Hindu of the Vedic age it was a place under Yama’s tree where the Fathers sat in bliss, or a place where 4 ‘all desires are granted”; to the Aztec it was an abode in the North (whence they came) or West, approached by a bridge, but a world of “shadow”; to the American Indian it was a place in the Western sky of ease and good hunting; to the author of Gates Ajar it was a place where there will be gingerbread and pianos; to Marie Corelli there will be astral bodies and spheres to be passed through. That some part of man continues to exist after death, is (we may cite Lessing for it) the 4 This statement was made in a public lecture, December 3, 1903. Pro¬ fessor Muller set the date of these presumed tales as “ about 3000 B. C. ” The trees appear “as two trees or in one form.” RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 233 foundation of religion today, and a belief in future life in¬ stigates inquiry as to the nature of that life, yet it can¬ not be said that man is naturally curious or even much concerned about his future. An American Indian once said: 5 “We know that the Milky Way leads to the Happy Hunting Grounds, for so much our fathers have told us, but we do not talk about such things. ’ ’ The savage is gen¬ erally not much inclined to talk or think about his here¬ after. Catlin and Bishop Colenso give, as regards this point, about the same accout of the Amerind and the African, respectively. The spare time of the savage is devoted to tales of what his ancestors did rather than to what he may expect in the next life. This deprecatory attitude is not confined to savages. The modern Arab is also disinclined to talk about a life hereafter, apparently because of indifference rather than fear. On the other hand, the imaginative Polynesian en¬ joys discussing the subject of future life and has an ex¬ tended system of eschatology; the truly good (brave) “go West,” as they phrase it, and enjoy a future felicity enhanced by watching the discomforts of the damned (cowards) in hell below and by increasing their misery. Ordinarily, however, the paradise-myth of savages is even vaguer than this and consists chiefly in the state¬ ment that the best (or bravest) people will live well here¬ after. A not uncommon form of the passage to heaven is embodied in the myth which appears in Zoroastrianism as the razor-like Cinvat Bridge (of judgment); in savage belief this is a log across a bog, over which only the good get safely, the log automatically turning down the craven and other sinner. The Amerinds only after acquaintance with the missionaries interpreted the bog as hell; the Filipinos say merely that the wicked fail to cross the log. The Peruvian bridge was a single hair. 4 5 G. E. Foster, Sequoyah, p. 33. 234 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Immortality is by no means a necessary factor of the belief in a future state, nor do all the good and brave attain future bliss. A diseased Aztec of great bravery might thus fail of his desired heaven (the gods devoured him). A scalped or hanged Indian does not get to the Happy Hunting Grounds, no matter how worthy he may be; he is like an unburied Greek, suffering for no fault of his own. Death, moreover, is not necessarily the end of life on earth. A man may be reborn again as a man or an animal. Some African tribes believe in repeated deaths of a still human creature, who passes a temporary life here and there, but after the third death he comes back no more; others believe in indefinite metempsycho¬ sis, which the Egyptians regarded as a magical possi¬ bility. The myths of the future life thus fall into three classes, according to which, first, souls exist hereafter in a tomb or a shadow-wo rid ; 6 second, there is a place of bliss, a world of the blest; third, there is a world of mis¬ ery. Ordinarily, too, this is the sequence of belief. Later a limbo is added to hell, a sort of reversion to shadow- land for certain souls. What determines entrv into heaven may be ethical behavior or accident. In some cases there may be an earlier belief in metempsychosis; this view is not, as used to be taught, too “refined” to be primitive; on the contrary it is found among the Amer¬ inds, and is a commonplace, for example, in Australia and Africa. The African chief selects the creature he will become and makes it, a butterfly, taboo to his tribe: “When I die I am going to become a butterfly; do not kill butterflies hereafter,” is one reported deathbed statement. So the Egyptian that prefers to become an animal makes his selection and by use of proper magic, which expresses his wish in a forcible manner (being con- o The shadow-world is sometimes reserved for inferior and unfortunate ghosts after the bliss-world is invented for the better and luckier. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 235 trolled by the priest lie can do nothing withont magic), dies happy in the belief that he will be reborn as the animal he has selected. In the Rig-Veda the sonl, if the man will (he has an option), goes into plants. Yet even in the belief in metempsychosis there is no implied belief in immortality, though the notion that a soul having lived in previous bodies will keep on transmigrating comes nearer to such a belief than the notion that a man dies and lives as a shadowy being; the latter being often fades out entirely. 7 The savage does not wonder why anyone should live hereafter; he wonders only that one should die. The natural continuance of individuality is taken for granted, but savages, regarding the next life as a sort of replica of this, are also quite ready to believe that the once dead but now living soul should die again. Especially in the tropics, where there is continual decay and renewal of life out of that decay, the mind believes most naturally in continued existence; the incessant re¬ newal of life makes death seem like a temporary change. But even without such stimulus to the imagination the notion that the ego has lived before and will keep on living is as natural as to think about it at all. The Irish lass who said she knew she must have lived forever be¬ cause she could not remember any time when she wasn’t alive, is a comic reflection of Wordsworth’s “Ode to Im¬ mortality”; the idea that the soul remembers its past is common to philosopher and poet. Even the Buddhists, who repudiated soul, believed that whatever survived might remember its past. Between the simple thought of transmigration and the system of metempsychosis is intruded the idea that the form of rebirth is conditioned by the moral character of 7 Hell’s punishment is thought of at first as of indefinite duration, probably fitted to the crime. It is only in later Hindu works that there is talk of eternal punishment in logical antithesis to eternal bliss. 236 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the soul. In the fate of Polynesian flies and cocoanuts, their immortal souls are without morality and their des¬ tiny is without system; but in the curse on Brynhild, “may she never be born again,” a belief in transmigra¬ tion is coupled with the idea that she will fail of rebirth because of sin. But to the Norseman metempsychosis was “old women’s talk,” which shows that it was at least ancient if not moral. In Greece and India, the fate of the transmigrating soul implies reward or punishment; but the Hindu has not the Greek notion of a fallen soul (the Hindu “fall of the soul” refers to its entering the evil envelope of matter) or of a completed cycle, which brings the soul to its starting-point; still less is the cessation of the birth-series dependent on divine will. Semitic belief held the soul first to its home, then to the grave, then to the underground assembly-room of con¬ gregated souls outside the control of Ishtar or, at first, of Yahweh; it was a Western land under earth and be¬ yond watery wastes, a seven-fold realm ruled by Death, King of Terrors, Belial, devouring monsters, etc. It was inhabited by ghosts and demons of disease (in the Bible called “pains of hell”), and resurrection was impossible. The nearest approach to resurrection was when a soul was not yet quite dissociated from the body, as it might be still associated though apparently dead. In that case Marduk could revivify and a spiritual man (priest, prophet) might make the body live again; but this could not happen when the body’s dissolution had taken place. 8 Reward and retribution in early Hebraic thought were all for this life but might be extended beyond the present generation, the children’s teeth being set on edge or the children killed for the father’s sin; though, in that case, the paternal shade, lacking his meals, would really suffer after all. The only distinction between shades was based s Paton, op. cit., p. 247. See also above, p. 149. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 237 on whether they had been properly bnried; neglected bodies made more miserable ghosts. The same idea is fonnd in India and Greece, but the ethical element is united with it. 9 In Egyptian belief, the ethical character of the soul was important, since it was judged hereafter; but magical formulas might apparently offset any delin¬ quency. The dead Egyptian lived much as in life, wealthy and happy or a toiling slave; somewhat similar was the Keltic life hereafter. There are thus all possible myths as to the next life, any one of which is as improbable as any other. 10 The next myth to be considered is the historical myth of the deluge. After man has lived in paradise on earth he deteriorates and sins. Then his sins are washed out by a deluge, according to the Hindu story. But here again religion has utilized an old historic myth. For there are more than two hundred deluge-stories on earth and they reflect in a perfectly natural manner some historical oc¬ currence in which the world (of the savage narrator) was wiped out by an overflowing river or tidal wave and the memory of which is embalmed in tribal tradition, just as the common myths of giants, dwarfs, and monsters reflect tradition, the actual contact of one race with an¬ other or the finding of the bones of some antediluvian monster. When a race of different capacity overthrows another, the original inhabitants, if they were builders, become giants, as the makers of the great bricks of pre¬ historic India are regarded, or they hide in the moun¬ tains and if skilled in metal-work become the dwarfs of Germany. The tales told are of course exaggerated. So 9 In late Vedic belief, if a man does not have a tumulus for his bones, his “good deeds’’ are destroyed. 10 India and Persia both have classic apocalypses revealing the condition of life hereafter. The torments of hell are imitations of judicial punish¬ ments in life, somewhat idealized. They are often mentioned in detail in Hindu and Buddhistic works, as are the delights of heaven. 238 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the flood is exaggerated. Few of the two hundred flood- stories, however, have any religious significance; they are merely historical facts rhetorically embellished. But a higher civilization refers the flood to a divine author and finally, as water is lustrative, an ethical significance is given to the myth. In India, the first story of the flood says that a fish announced its coming and when it came (for a cause not mentioned) the fish saved the ship, which it had advised Father Manu to build and into which he had retired, by swimming about with the ship in tow till the waters subsided. Then Manu came out and fathered a new race of men by a union with a divine female born of the sacrifice which he offered. There is no suggestion that the flood was sent by a spiritual power to punish or to wash out sin. The only point in the story is that the ritual of a certain sacrifice was authoritativelv established by Manu. But the later version makes the flood a “purification,” sampraksalana, of the world, sent by the Supreme Deity. In the ark with Manu were also (in this version) the Seven Sages and all the seeds of living things. The fish here is a form of Brahman, “through whose grace Manu recreated the world.” In the Babylonian deluge-mytli, the gods themselves are frightened at the world-flood, which was sent by Bel in demoniac fury and cruelty, evidently the older form of the legend; but in a later version the deluge is repre¬ sented as a purificatory washing out of a sinful but small population, whom all the gods agreed to punish, though Bel secretly tried to destroy them all so that not one should escape. The wise and kind Ea, however, says to Bel: “Punish the sinner for his sins; but be merci¬ ful; do not destroy everything.” In the Hebrew version, the ethical and religious side is foremost . 11 11 In the (South American) Bogota deluge-myth, the mischievous god who caused the deluge was turned into the giant, an Atlas, who bears the world upon his shoulders. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 239 Presumption is the sin upon the punishment of which another myth is buildecl. The Aloidae pile Pelion on Ossa and Olympus to storm heaven and are punished by Apollo for their presumption (Od., 11, 305 f.). In India, the god Indra saw the demons building a tower out of a sacrificial mound and, being a god who loves tricks, he assumed the form of a helper, put in a foundation brick and, returning just as “the demons were creeping up and trying to scale the sky,” he withdrew his brick and down fell the tower; so Indra “slew them with the bricks of their own altar. ’ * Here again the only sin was that of presumption, although Indra has a lurking fear lest “if the devils build this ascent-altar they may overcome the gods, ’ ’ a motive which may have influenced the expulsion from Eden, lest man become even as the gods. The great sin in Greece is presumption, one that the gods always punish and man must guard against. In the story of the tower of Babel, there may have been a new element in¬ troduced through a play on the word babel, “confusion,” and babili, “gate of god.” These rather common myths will serve as illustrations of the link between the tale and religion. Some tales are historical, some are logical; they become religious as they are interwoven with gods on the one hand and with religious experience on the other. The history of a tribe starts with the creation of earth and its own origin; it becomes religious as the god of the tribe is made the creator and originator. The evil of life must be accounted for; it is ascribed to malicious spirits. Sometimes they are spirits whose nature may become malicious; some¬ times they are naturally, inevitably, evil. As such they become a group apart and in rare cases are logically given a head-spirit to correspond to the head-spirit of the group of good spirits. Such a chief devil is not neces¬ sarily a late product of logical imagination. The female 240 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Source-of-all-our-woes, as one Hindu Wild Tribe calls the Earth-goddess, is a natural primitive antithesis to the male Source-of-blessings seen in the Sun-god, a double dualism. The Shaman pits Erlik, the chief devil, against the highest god, and says that the evil one is Our Father. Zoroaster imagines all evil spirits as a group pitted against all the good spirits and gives each group its head, Ahriman and Ormuzd. The myth of age-long contest be¬ tween the two great spirits then begins; plots and coun¬ terplots are describe^ as religious history. Generally, however,.evil spirits are not so well organized; they lack a ruler. There is no Satan in India, 12 though there are plenty of great fiends, many of them on a par with the gods or even superior to the gods, as Ahriman was scarcely in¬ ferior to Ormuzd. Savages (including the Amerinds) never had such a complete dualism as to organize hosts of good and evil spirits with a head-spirit of each group, until the missionaries gave them the idea. The Semites have a myth of conflict between Tiamat and Bel Marduk, but they are not inclined to make stories about the gods, who have no adventures to speak of (as compared with those of other peoples) and do not combine against an organized army of demons. The theory that (astral) myths arose in Babylonia and propagated myths all over the world has selected a barren soil for such fruit. Ancient civilization attempted to explain myths as 12 The Hindu god who punishes sinners and is lord of hell is himself a good (ethical) god and neither he nor his fiends are wicked. This is reallv more logical than to make the Prince of Evil the personal punisher of evil-minded souls. In the Middle Ages Satan himself enjoyed spitting over eternal flames those who were his most faithful followers. It was not till the beginning of the Christian era that the serpent of Eden was identified with Satan. It may be remarked that in older Hebrew belief punishment for sin was in part automatic, of the taboo sort. If one touched even involun¬ tarily the ark, he sinned and suffered. Primitive Semitic belief also took the tribal view, that the tribe should suffer for the sin of individuals. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 241 allegories, but to rationalize primitive myths by this pro¬ cedure is a vain attempt. Myths were first stories, told to be believed literally; they were not intended to incul¬ cate hidden truths. It is evident also that myths cannot be referred to one motif, any more than to one locality. There are vegetation-myths, but not all myths have their origin in the decline and fall of the spirit of vegetation; myths of ghosts, but not all myths are ghost-stories; real sun-myths, but few of the many myths extant have to do with the sun; astral myths, but their scope and propagation are very limited. 13 A common form of myth is the miracle-story. Some miracles are true, some are told in majorem gloriam of some great teacher or leader. Myths of cures effected are often exaggerations of real cures. 14 A miracle is a “won¬ der” occurring through supernatural power; it is won¬ derful to see a blind man use his eves, to see a lame man walk freely. But such wonders happen daily and can often be performed when the body is made subject to proper stimulus. Especially are great religious leaders credited with miracles; yet such persons not only cure weakness but control nature; tradition says that nature itself, as in the case of Buddha, is convulsed at their 13 For a sufficient criticism of these errors, see Professor Toy’s Intro¬ duction to the History of Religions, pp. 384 f. On astral myths, see above, p. 54. The debt of Greece to Babylon is slight; that of Zoroastrianism is doubtful except in the case of Anahita. It is possible that India’s deluge- story may be an echo of the Babylonian story, but it comes too early and agrees too little with the latter to make borrowing probable. On the rela¬ tion between Greek and Babylonian myths, see L. B. Farnell, Greece and Babylon (1911). One of the writer’s colleagues at work in Asia Minor cured a work¬ man of blindness by washing the dirt out of his eyes. The next day his camp was overrun with the halt and blind, who believed that he could “work miracles.” In the East, one who claims divine power usually proves his claim by performing a few miracles and one who works cures is ipso facto more than human. • 242 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION birth and death, in sympathy with the portentous event. As storms and earthquakes may occur when anyone dies or any momentous event happens, such stories (myths and marvels) are not necessarily untrue; but the history of religions, especially Eastern religions, shows that men are apt to invent tales for the purpose of glorifying some revered character and rather believe them than weigh the evidence. Faith itself can perform miracles (“the prayer of faith shall save the sick”), irrespective of the object of faith; the same cures are performed at shrines to different objects of worship, saints and gods. Some miracles of one faith are loans from another, but also, arising from the same cause, identical miracles ap¬ pear independently in different religions. The historical evidence in each case must be sifted separately. In gen¬ eral, although the witnesses for the miracles performed by Jesus include unlearned and ignorant men, like Peter and John (Acts 4:13), yet their testimony, such as it is, is offered nearer the time of the event than in the case of other reputedly divine miracle-workers, 15 though the fact that St. Paul does not speak of Jesus as having per¬ formed miracles might be regarded as a still earlier argumentum ex silentio. The gods can of course perform any number of mira¬ cles. Shiva has sixty-four kinds to his credit. There is a persistent tradition in India that the twin gods (the Greek Dioscuroi) performed many cures, among them is There is no early testimony in support of miracles on the part of either Buddha or Krishna; those attributed to Buddha are recounted long after his death, and Krishna’s birth, if he was a real man, must be set several centuries before he is celebrated as a divine wonder-worker. Some of the modern saints of India have the best right to claim that their miraculous powers have been proved by eye-witnesses; unfortunately it is suspected that these contemporary witnesses were hypnotized. Hypnosis of others, as w T ell as auto-hypnosis, has been studied as a science in India for more than two thousand years. The Mahabharata describes a case in which the subject was made to say what he did not wish to say, etc. RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY 243 that of replacing with an artificial leg the leg of a war- rior-qneen injured in battle. One wonders why they did not replace whole the original leg. Obviously it was a famous case of surgery actually performed, credit for which was given to the “healer” gods, just as Greek priests acted as physicians and credited Asklepios with the cure. Primitive minds do not seek for evidence when a miracle is proclaimed; the miracle itself is the evidence or sign of divine power. “John did no sign,” (Jn. 10:41.). One of the earliest miracle-workers is the king who, as a divine person, cures by his “royal touch.” A few years ago Dastur Maherji Raja went even further and “made a second sun in the sky.” So poets work miracles. The great magician of the Middle Ages was Vergil. Often the “miracle” is actually performed; it merely requires a correct interpretation. An Oriental traveller tells us of a great magician: “And let no man doubt of his miraculous power, for I myself saw that he can control nature.” He goes on to illustrate this by tell¬ ing how the magician set up a mill in which “a mill-stone moved without water by the miraculous power with which he endowed it; he called it a wind-mill. ’ ’ In India, every superior saint performs such miracles as walking on water, and flying through air, if he will; but he will not, if he is a real saint. That is the theory, for it is only the common fakir who pretends to perform miracles for the admiration he gains; the true spiritual expert scorns such an exhibition. There is probably some truth in the subjective impression of the higher Yogi that he can do these things, for he is an ascetic who not only fasts and drugs himself till he is subject to hallucina¬ tions, but cultivates by scientific approach that narrowing of the field of consciousness (by fixedly gazing at a bright disc and similar means) which results in a mystic trance, wherein he really to himself seems to penetrate matter, 244 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION fly, and float about in upper spheres. The process is psy¬ chological. Finally, one must remember that miracles of old were, so to speak, less miraculous, more probable than now. Wesley believed he had performed miracles and in the second century of our era the resurrection of the dead was not considered an uncommon event. CHAPTER XV RELIGION AND ETHICS Right and wrong are said to be relative terms; there is no absolute right, no absolute wrong. It is not so wicked to steal when one is starving as when one does not re¬ quire food. What is wrong in peace is right in war, to deceive, rob, slaughter other men. In the view of the Hindus, everyone is relatively good and bad; composed of so much goodness, so much badness, and so much stupidity. According as a man has more of one or the other he is better than bad, or worse than good, or more stupid than good or bad; when perfected, he loses all badness and stupidity and remains all good. But the theory of relativity, whether applied to man or to his act, fails to indicate that right and wrong are di¬ vergent branches of the same root. To kill in war is not wrong suddenly metamorphosed into right (the pacifist is quite logical in saying, “if wrong, then wrong in war”); to kill in war is right for the same reason that it is wrong in peace, because the act subserves the fundamental law of self-protection, a law which fashions ethics, as it exists before ethics, and is recognized even by animals. Every animal has the sense of possession, of owner¬ ship; it does not willingly permit another to take away its prey or to hunt over its ground. Gregarious animals do not attack each other without cause, but the individual defends his own and the pack as a whole destroys its weak members, even its chief. Individual self-preservation and group unity are thus instinctively preserved. Even an odd-looking individual, because it militates against 246 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION unity, is killed or driven off. The lone beast of prey may devour its own young, but it will not allow another to do so; it resents and avenges theft and slaughter. The monogamous animal also resents the presence of a rival; it refuses to permit adultery committed against its own interest. 1 An animal inherits this instinct; it develops a sense of duty; it knows what it ought to do and is ashamed of failure to do its duty. The writer’s dog Dash was one day lying at ease after a full meal, when a wretched starving pup stole up with his tail between his legs and begged for a left-over bone. Dash growled, but amiably, and did not protest. He felt lazily generous and pretended to look the other way, permitting the theft, when his master suddenly appeared in view. Instantly Dash was on his feet, barking ferociously, working him¬ self into a rage for his owner’s benefit. The coming of his owner roused instantly his dormant sense of what was right for him to do. It was his canine duty to guard his bone; his momentary lapse was, he felt, undoglike, improper, culpable. The voice of all his ancestors spoke to him. In the case of man, duty is expressed by following an¬ cestral usage. The story told by an old headhunter of Borneo shows how the ancestors control a descendant. “I was,” he says, “very much attached to my old nurse. The time came when my father told me I must begin to be a man and kill somebodv. It was the law that old %/ women no longer useful should be slain. My father showed me my old nurse; she sat alone. He said I was too young to kill a man, but I should practice on her; he handed me my bow and arrows and told me to shoot her. I did not want to kill her, but he told me I must. I shot one i Union with one mate, which answers to monogamy, is usual among the higher animals (elephant, lion, tiger, for example). Promiscuity is the dog’s rule, but his nobler original, the wolf, is monogamous. RELIGION AND ETHICS 247 arrow; it did not hit her, but she knew what it meant. She began to weep. I too began to cry. My father was angry; he told me to stop crying and aim straight; he said it was wicked not to kill her. Then I shot and shot and though she screamed I no longer cared; I shot till I had killed her. She had been like a mother to me, but I did not care. My father said, ‘Now you are good; you have acted like a man; you have done right/ ” This horrid little tragedy shows how the clan forbids the in¬ dividual to resist usage. Clan-law must prevail. Hence, when the clan is in question, the individual has no voice. The clan-law is self-defensive; it is a compact body; what aids or injures it, is its only care. To injure others is not in itself wrong and may be necessary, therefore right. So savages like our Indians recognize no wrong committed against an enemy. But within the pack or the clan the in¬ dividual still has his own sense of what is right and wrong, according to his own individual advantage. When Foster interrogated the Cherokee as to the difference be¬ tween right and wrong, he replied, “ Right is to steal horses from another tribe or from a white man; wrong is to steal from my own tribe/’ 2 Ethics thus begins without any religious sanction what¬ ever. The clansman must do as the clan does, kill with them, to retain the integrity of the group. The first ethi¬ cal law in respect of taking life is not Thou shalt not kill, but Thou shalt kill, when killing aids the group. That is the reason why it was right to kill an Englishman in 1776 and a German in 1918 till November 11. But synchronous with this group-law of ethics is that of the individual. It is usual to say nowadays that primitive man has no sense of individuality, the group is all. How is it with ani¬ mals ? A wolf that is robbed by his fellow wolf in the same pack acts instantly in defense and retaliation; the 2 G. W. Foster, Sequoyah, p. 32. 248 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION man who is attacked by his fellow clansman kills him and is justified of the clan. In the first stirring of religious apperception, when ethics is expressed in taboo, the dimly felt religious awe preventing crime is only a rati¬ fication of nature’s own law. Theft, murder, and adultery are prevented by taboo; but the red rag which protects property through fear of breaking taboo is only the visi¬ ble sign of man’s own antagonism against unwarranted intrusion on his property. With morality and sin in the first instance the gods have nothing to do. But the fathers have, although their influence is as yet unsuspected. In¬ stinct is the heritage from them and gives authority. But presently, as in the headhunter’s case, men come to recognize this authority, consciously act upon it. They say, “Our fathers did so; it is custom.” This custom, which derives from usage, thus gets an acknowledged basis; it is semireligious, for the fathers are looked upon as spirits, who may be displeased with violation of their procedure. Their usage has become a moral law. So with another matter not yet included in our mention of primi¬ tive ethical rules. Words are to express thoughts, not, as the diplomats say, to conceal them. The natural use chil¬ dren make of words is analogous to the natural use they make of their legs. They walk straight and talk straight; they do not naturally (uninfluenced) walk crooked or say yes when they mean no; nor do savages. Imaginative chil¬ dren tell stories that are not true, but they are not con¬ sciously lying. But, on the other hand, every weak crea¬ ture is taught by nature to double and twist and deceive, and as a hare doubles, so naturally does a frightened child lie. All frightened children are natural liars; all savages deceive when liable to be caught. Only the civi¬ lized or Christianized child is trained to overcome its natural defense at so early an age that by the time it is presentable it is already denaturized. But for the common RELIGION AND ETHICS 249 good it is advantageous that men should be reliable, so that primitive communities often reach the point where truth within the clan is regarded as a formal virtue and is added to the stock of approved usage, while lying to a stranger or foe is also a virtue. Virtuous Ulysses was the more virtuous because of his greater ability in deceiving enemies. All these ethical results impart in turn a sense of mutual obligation. One feels obliged to conform; failure to do so constitutes a sin. Even the dog that snatches a bone expects retribution. So strong is this feeling that when one receives a blow, one imagines a cause for it in that retribution. As a blow received from a man implies that one has wronged him, so the African savage, when struck accidentally by a bough, does not regard it as an accident; he imagines that the bough resents his intrusion and as a rule he apologizes to the bough, thinking that he has done wrong and the tree is angry. Thus when even a civilized man falls ill, he imagines he is being punished for offending a spiritual power. How long this conception lasts it is needless to point out. In 1897 the plague in In¬ dia was ascribed to the offended deity Queen Victoria; she was revenging herself on the people because some badmcishas had insulted her statue. On the same occasion, Mrs. Besant, with a wider but similar outlook, stopped long enough in Bombay to assure her followers that the plague had been sent to punish sin, but the righteous need have no fear, and fled the country. A scourge may even be sent upon the potential enemies of the good. The Pil¬ grim Fathers found few to oppose their settling because, as they said, God in his mercy had sent a plagme upon the Redskins and killed off most of them, so that the chosen people might take possession. Retribution for an offense, however, is usually pun¬ ishment for neglect and sacrilege in the case of spirits; 250 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION until they have become civilized, one cannot commit grosser crimes against them. Murder and theft (except as sacrilege), and lying and adultery are crimes against men, and it is not till the gods become imbued with human morals that such sins irritate them. But neglect and in¬ trusion anger them, as they are not angered by violation of the human code. The West Coast Africans have in¬ deed a god whom the missionaries cite as an example not only of a savage moral god but even of savage mono¬ theism. But this god was unknown till fifty years ago or so, and was really taught the savages by the first mis¬ sionaries. 3 The most primitive “moral gods” are gen¬ erally of this sort, though advanced savages sometimes ascribe their ethics to spiritual authority. Neglect is a sin of omission; sacrilege (intrusion, etc.) is a sin of commission. Intrusion upon the place or pre¬ rogatives of spirits is itself an act indicative of pre¬ sumption, a violation of private privilege, a sort of theft. So, as a man punishes theft, the gods punish the builders of towers intended to reach heaven and afflict men who try to be too wise or too happy, in other words, to be too godlike, to take to themselves divine prerogatives. There¬ fore the readier after immortality, the seeker of forbid¬ den fruit, and in India even the one who tries to be too spiritual, is severely punished. A store of spirituality greater than befits humanity makes a man too godlike and is provocative of divine anger. Hence the Hindu gods fear a saint who is unduly saintly and send him tempta¬ tions, in the shape of beautiful girls, not to test him, like a St. Anthony, but to debase him, in order that they may sit unliarassed upon their thrones. “ Through fear of (losing) their own power the gods do not approve of excessive holiness,” says the Maliabharata; it is a special case of the more general rule enunciated in the same epic: s Ellis, op. cit., and Miss Kingsley, Travels in West Africa. RELIGION AND ETHICS 251 “Mortals suffer death through doing that which is dis¬ pleasing to the gods.” The fate of the soul after death or of the body in life is religiously or ethically determined in most religions, even in those of savages. 4 But these gods have to look out for human advance or they become displaced and may end by being regarded as mere devils. They must grow ethical with man. The conceptions of divinity thus become a series of moving pictures reflecting the moral ideas of men, from Elohim to the tricky Yahweh of the Jews, to Calvin’s awful Je¬ hovah, to God; from the lower Vedic spirits, who steal and commit other sins, to Varuna on high, who “sees and punishes sin,” to the All-god, who is the all-pure. But back of these conceptions lie how many others more primitive! A tribe in Central India has a moral code con¬ sisting of these commandments, “Be brave and kill, and follow the fathers’ usage in marriage.” It is clear, however, that the first ethical code makes no distinction between intentional and unintentional sin. If one breaks taboo, one suffers, as does one who touches an infected corpse, willynilly. Manslaughter and murder are not separated in the early codes. The wagon that kills is destroyed, even in the Middle Ages. Uzzah meant well, but that could not save him. A sin is a sin, inten¬ tional or not. So if a savage causes the death of a clans¬ man unwittingly, he is nevertheless responsible. A cause celebre in Polynesia illustrates this. A man loved a girl who did not love him. When she refused him he became despondent and eventually died of disappointment. The tribe held the girl guilty. She herself admitted her crime, although she protested that he had not informed her that he would die. “I know,” she declared bravely, “that I 4 The negroes of Guinea believe that a spirit will meet the soul after death and ask whether it has duly observed the 11 rules for food and days. ’ ’ So liturgical sin in taboo is apt to precede moral sin. 252 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION am guilty, but I did not know I was going to be a mur¬ derer. ” The tribe deliberated and came to this conclu¬ sion: 4 ‘Ignorance of the act does not undo the act. If a man kills his brother accidentally the killed remains dead just the same and the murderer is punished just the same. She must die. ’ ’ Most duties are the outgrowth of social life. Truth, fidelity, generosity, humanity, patriotism, etc., imply so¬ cial duties; they arise through contact with others. They become religious first through the sanctity of usage as law imposed by spiritual ancestors and then through divine sanction. It is first of all the clan of the past and present, the body of universal opinion, which constitutes itself a religious body and rules conduct. The incorporeal spiritual power becomes a real spiritual power and is sometimes incorporate in a chief or head, as in Japan, where the Mikado is the incorporate State as divinity. But usually, as we have seen, the other spiritual powers, not ancestral, are assimilated to humanity and endowed with its ethical qualities. In order to produce civilization man has been obliged to pass through the stage where the clan could hold together. But to hold together it was absolutely necessary that war and its entailed slaughter should be obligatory on the individual as a moral neces¬ sity and that in lesser matters also there should be con¬ certed action. The savage code was in effect a means to a higher end and from this point of view it is wrong to say with the supercilious air of civilization, “The igno¬ rant savage acted right as he saw the right; he knew no better.” We should say, “He was absolutely right in kill¬ ing and in doing whatever he did to preserve his clan. ” We cannot say that he did wrong but did not know it, without the admission that evolution is wicked to begin with, which is absurd. The later ethics can be born only of the advanced civilization which owes its existence to RELIGION AND ETHICS 253 precedent semicivilization, which in turn arises from the homogeneous group that would have disintegrated without strict adherence to its own savage morality. The integrity of the tribe, it may be added, is not affected by an influx of captives, because politically they are of no account and morally or religiously they are approximated to the norm of the tribe. The ethical code, being the logical outcome of social in¬ tercourse, varies very little in the same social and intel¬ lectual strata and tends always toward the same standard as the intelligence rises and the circle of society expands. Family affection, respect for seniors, loyalty, bravery, leading to the moral compulsion of accepting any chal¬ lenge, to fight or gamble, truth and troth, these are vir¬ tues embodied in whatever early codes there be, as men approach civilization. Stealing and lying are clan-trans¬ gressions. Within the family, fidelity is expected of wives because they belong to men in their entirety; fidelity of husbands is a later virtue based on sentiment, whereas woman’s virtue is older, being based on ownership. But sex morality is not so uniform as other primitive ethical traits, because it depends largely on varying economic conditions, rape, exogamy, infanticide, matriarchy, etc. In some tribes, women are “common” till married, then taboo (privately owned by husbands); in others, chastity is demanded of girls; in some, women gain a priestly ascendency, as in Patagonia; in others, they have no reli¬ gious power. A tolerant attitude toward women is not indicative of a generally higher morality. The Chibchas were no better than some other South Americans, yet the Chibcha women had the right to beat their husbands. To kill an Iroquois squaw was more expensive than to kill a man of the tribe, but that was because the man had no in¬ dividual owner, only the tribe had to be satisfied, whereas in the case of a woman both tribe and owner had to 254 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION get compensation. In sexual matters, many savages en¬ force restraint on both sexes and as in other cases so in this, usage becomes moral, both in practice and restraint, further, in restraint’s suggestion, signs of modesty, which are largely conventional. To be noticed, how¬ ever, is the tendency to relax sexual restraint, on occa¬ sions of magical and religious excitement, as a duty (pri¬ marily for the purpose of fertility), then as a privilege. The indecency of the Australian trencli-rite, a magical ceremony, is in marked contrast with habitual daily prac¬ tice; the Saturnalia shows how a duty has become a privilege under religious cover. Savages have innumer¬ able erotic explosions of this sort out of tenor with their daily life and it may be that such excesses revert to a time when they were usage, but most savages have a moral feeling in regard to family integrity. Some rather star¬ tling (survivals?) exceptions occur. The Egyptian and Peruvian royal rule was that brother should wed sister, to keep the line pure; Zoroastrianism inculcates incest. The usage approved by the tribe becomes, as we have seen, religious. Polynesian gods reward bravery and eat cowards. Valor and truth were equally moral to the savages of North America and in the latter regard they even went farther than the Spartans; their word was as good as their bond when dealing with non-tribal friends. Perhaps the first extra-tribal virtue to be accepted as such was hospitality. The Amerinds as a whole had about the same code as Tacitus’s Germans, even to the point of gambling away their wives and other possessions, for as the Hindu hero says: “As a virtuous warrior I cannot refuse any challenge, either to fight or to gamble. ” Both were tests of courage. A comparison of Hindu, Confucian, Hebrew, and Egyptian ethics shows that while one nation stresses one point more than another, the general content of all is RELIGION AND ETHICS 255 about the same. The Ten Commandments of the Hebrews do not forbid lying (only false testimony contra proxi- mum ), but forbid covetousness. The Hindu code ignores filial affection (as a duty) and includes an injunction against jealousy. Yet further discussion in the law books (ethical as well as legal manuals) and admonitions out¬ side of the formal codes reveal clearly that all these rules imply the same sort of ethics. For example, the foundation of Chinese morality is filial affection, but reverence and obedience to parents are as much insisted upon in India as in China. The insistence on this or that point expresses the national character in its most obvious characteristic. Thus justice to the Roman is supremely a moral attribute because the national character was rather hard and judi¬ cial, just rather than amiable (melius est virtute ius ), while pity and kindness, even to animals, was supremely moral to the Hindu because he was naturally sensitive and affectionate rather than rigorous. The advancing code as a reflection of social progress is easily traced where literary strata are preserved. Valor in the Rig- Veda is a virtue reflecting a valorous age; it is not men¬ tioned as a virtue in any subsequent period, only pre¬ served as a characteristic trait of warriors. The employ¬ ment of magic was at first a sin only when directed against a member of the clan; later, all magical practices are condemned. Shows and pantomimes were an early Indie form of religious activity, but the puritanism of Buddha forbade them as sinful. To sell a daughter was early Hindu custom; later it was forbidden as immoral unless it was “familv usage,” which again (so power¬ ful is this authority) made it blameless. The modern moral code forbids many practices which of old were religiously moral, such as drunkenness and eating flesh. Social advance by mitigating savage ethics as a whole has improved religion, but religion in turn has improved 256 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION morality through giving superior sanction to law. We have seen (chapter XIV) how religion has built up an ar¬ tificial prophylactic for ethics through extensive embel¬ lishment of the idea of jural retribution united with the well-nigh universal conviction (some savages want this) that man lives hereafter. But the judgment of spiritual powers is not reserved for the next world. One may ap¬ peal to it at once, generally in cases of perjury and adultery (in a more advanced cultural stage in cases of suspected witchcraft or other devilry), by demanding an ordeal. This usually implies at first that the water, fire, or poison of the ordeal acts as a sentient power, a power, however, that upholds morality. But later the implica¬ tion is that these powers, once thought sentient, are pas¬ sive instruments in the hands of spiritual powers, gods or their inclusive substratum. There are thus three stages in the ordeal; fire, for example, or the ordeal water, acts of its own volition; then the god of fire or the god of water controls flame or flood; then God indicates his will by the sign of fire or water. Such ordeals prove or disprove both statements and states, that is, they con¬ firm a human statement or a human state, whether sworn to or not, as when a witch may admit witchcraft but must be tested by the ordeal before condemnation, or a man may think he has power but can prove his status, as a su¬ perior controller of elements, only by walking over a fire-patli. The oath taken by one’s head or some other formula is itself an ordeal, inasmuch as the perjurer is injured in the point by which he swears and it is admitted that the injury is a divine reply to his implied appeal. The higher religions, including those that have sub¬ stituted vicarious atonement for individual retribution, have had to face the problem whether God could 'be per¬ fectly just and at the same time merciful. The problem is usually presented under the form, Is He more just or RELIGION AND ETHICS 257 more merciful! Some argue that God must be as merciful as man and then question the necessity for a vicarious atonement. The Buddhist argues that in the case of Bud¬ dha or the Bodhisat, who, having infinite merit, gives therefrom to the repentant sinner and thus increases that sinner’s store of merit so that retribution no longer threatens him, the sacrifice was voluntary, whereas the Christian sacrifice was that of a victim not offering him¬ self voluntarily; “Thy will (not mine) be done.” These problems are today historically interesting as showing to what a degree ethics has impinged upon religion and controlled the idea of God. An unethical God is con¬ demned by ethical humanity. It is only in the specula¬ tions of metaphysicians that one finds the thesis that God, as in later Zoroastrianism, is a synthesis of the Good Mind and the Evil Mind. Hindu theologians, who are all philosophers, assume that good and evil are two eternal principles, appearing in the form of eternal matter 5 and eternal spirit, or that matter is an illusive projection of spirit, which is the only true reality, the All-God, whose essence is (trinitarian) Being, Intelli¬ gence, and Joy; but Being is Pure Being in this definition and as such implies absence of all material taint, thus implying again ethical purity. A third view holds that God is All, but that matter is not an illusion; it is the very body of the supreme spirit, as man consists in soul and body. In this explanation, man’s soul is not identical with God, but when purified it will go to God and live with him. In the Zoroastrian view, man and all evil be¬ ings will eventually become ethically purified and live in bliss, assuming their original bodies. Christian belief holds that matter was created by God and is not evil but the soul is sinful; in eschatology, as has been said above, 5 In this system, mind is an evolved form of matter and is opposed to spirit. 258 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION it varies between immediate and future resurrection and between the resurrection of the original and of a more spiritual body. In China, one of the philosophical questions debated with great earnestness was whether man was naturally good or bad. That man of himself is incapable of doing right is suggested by Mohammed, but he does not really maintain the immoral doctrine of total depravity. In the light of history and ethnology, it is apparent that evil began as something harmful, good as something benefi¬ cial, either actual or potential. Theft to dog and savage is not bad in itself, only when it harms the robbed individ¬ ual is it evil to him. Slaughter is a divine law to savages and is evil only when it unfavorably affects them; when they themselves kill a man it is 4 4 good and pleasant,’ ’ as the savage said of the theft of another man’s wife. The evil of 44 sin” lies in all cases in its bearings, not in itself. There is no problem of evil as of something sent into the world or permitted by a good God; there is only the problem how man came to conceive of evil as an ob¬ jective reality. If it seems to be a mystery why a good God should permit sinners to flourish or a ruthless folk to oppress the virtuous weak, the answer is given by the school of Plotinus: 4 4 The weak have no business to be weak and let the strong oppress them; it is their duty to strengthen themselves and not permit sinners to flourish or the ruthless to oppress; it is primarily the weak not the strong who sin.” All sin has been established as sin because it is harmful, first to the individual, then to the clan, then to the nation, then to humanity. It is a duty to the human race to combat what is harmful to it, a duty be¬ cause due to the preservation and progress of the race; what harms it is sinful. It comes of course to the same thing in the end. Sin re¬ mains the same and sinners are to be condemned, not RELIGION AND ETHICS 259 because they oppose any abstract good or virtue but be¬ cause they oppose and injure what is essential to us. It is not likely that the consensus of human opinion is mis¬ taken in regarding as really most beneficial what is con¬ ventionally called good. Good and evil remain as anti¬ thetic as before. And it has the same divine authority, inasmuch as the progress of the human race may be re¬ garded as an expression of the will of the divine power governing the world. This transcends mere utilitarianism and imbues the notion of right and wrong with a supreme sanction, which tends to create the image of an abstract right opposed to an antithetical abstract wrong, the path followed mentally by those who created the personifica¬ tion of this latter abstraction under the form of the Evil Mind, though this mind was thought to be destined finally to be overcome by the Good Mind. But we have seen that this is merely a later survival of the savage belief in evil spirits and that some savages even adumbrated the idea of a principle of evil in creating an original Source-of- evil opposed to another original Source-of-good, though in savage theology there is no intimation that the Good Spirit will eventually overcome the Evil Spirit. But, given a good supreme spirit, the difficulty is to find out what it wishes ethically and to bring the wish authoritatively before men. In this regard China was perforce content to say that its Supreme Lord, the ruler of order, objected in general to violation of orderly con¬ duct and that correct conduct had been handed down from inspired ancestors close in touch with divine authority. A disorderly king was dethroned or lost his life because the ancestors or the Supreme Ruler disapproved of him. But this was vague. The Hindus also began by citing an¬ cestors and gods as models (“the gods speak the truth, hence man should speak the truth”); but they perceived that personal authority was better understood when 260 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION voiced in a code. So they began that series of ipse dixit's which gave to ethics the tremendous weight of voiced authority, “Brahman said,” “thus spoke Zoroaster,” the logia of Buddha and of Christ, with the precedent tablets of Moses inscribed with the words of Yahweh, down to the personal utterances of Mohammed and other revealers of divine will. It is here that Christianity had so great an advantage over the Mediterranean religions, which could appeal to no such juridical utterances, ex¬ cept, indeed, when special cases were submitted to formal oracles. But there was no divine code, in these religions, such as Manu’s and Moses’s codes in India and Judaea. There could be no such code, because the divinities of the Mediterranean had lagged behind man in ethical progress and were in no position to act as spiritual guides. The philosophic moral code of Greek and Roman rested largely on man himself ; 6 a mental obligation to be good was assumed by the wise because men would thereby gain happiness, while the morals of the mass were supported by a decaying belief that the gods would punish sinners. Sin itself became rather lack of self-re¬ straint than a violation of divine command, a lack leading to trespass upon the natural rights of others. The concep- 6 But it is necessary to enter here a caveat against the common assump¬ tion that Greek morality was devoid of religious basis. There was no revealed ethical code, but from Homer downward morality was more or less linked to religion. Truth, piety (to parents), hospitality, respect for the suppliant, these were Homeric virtues watched over by divine powers. The Fates in Hesiod punish the transgressions of men; idleness is hateful to the gods. Insolence opposes Justice, the daughter of Zeus, who has thirty thousand watchers of men ’s morality. 11 Piety consists in holy thoughts, ’ * was an epigram inscribed over the shrine of Asklepios. Truth and mercy were to Pindar and the dramatists attributes of Zeus. Asceticism was to Pythago¬ rean and Orphic a means of mortifying evil (flesh) to purify the soul for union with the divine. But, as faith decayed, the basis of ethics shifted from the divine to the human; there was no traditional moral law expressed by statute or implied by divine example. RELIGION AND ETHICS 261 tion of morality in jural form was practically a great ad¬ vance because it established the fundamental principles of simple ethics in a clear and cogent manner. Its Thou shalt and Thou shalt not ousted every other standard in India and in Judaea, as the words of Confucius became ethical law in China. But in the latter case, although Con¬ fucius eventually became authoritative, he became so by virtue of hoary tradition and both he and Laotse made their appeal rather to nature than to divine inspiration: “Be humble, because rivers run downward; they do not exalt themselves. Be generous; the tree shades even him who cuts it down. Nature teaches a man to mourn an¬ other’s misfortune; no man can see a child killed without sorrow; hence nature is kind; therefore kindness is part of goodness.” That sort of thing. It does not go so far or so deep as “Thus spoke the Lord God.” In the West, then, there appeared thus a new ethical power, the Church. It became so authoritative as to produce a state within the state, a community vowed to live under higher laws than those of the civil power. This State in turn engendered another code embodying new conceptions of sin. Offenses and the proper penances for venial sins were tabulated by ecclesiastical law, which at the same time regulated the ceremonial, festivals and fasts (for sin) coming equally under its purview, its utterances, through a figment of divine succession, still having su¬ preme authority. Ethical conduct and even daily custom, regulated by law in the monasteries, were no longer based on knowledge or wisdom, the classical guide, but on faith. Even conduct opposed to the dictates of reason had to be accepted as religiously obligatory. Through human speech the will of God expressed itself and this expres¬ sion was decisive. The only question was whether the human authority expounding law was competent to speak for God (a difficult problem when two rival popes anathe- 262 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION matized each other), not whether, when the man was ac¬ cepted as authority, his ruling was valid. Faith in this law was only part of that saving faith which by God’s grace attains a more than human goodness. In establish¬ ing this ethics, the belief and conduct of the Founder himself were of course of inestimable value, but its foun¬ dation, as an ethics of faith, was already laid on the indisputable basis of the earlier Jewish code. In distinc¬ tion, however, from its predecessor, the Christian reli¬ gion renounced ritualistic purity in favor of moral purity exclusively. This, united with spiritual religion, occa¬ sionally took a stand sharply antithetical to ecclesiastical law, and thus a new code arose, the more as certain in¬ dividuals stressed the spiritual life on a mystic note. The same development took place in India. First Brahman¬ ism, with its inspired 7 and strict ethical code, was im¬ posed upon a religion whose ritual was become stereo¬ typed. Thus the idea of sacrificial and ritualistic purity passed into the idea that all sacrifice was vain save that of the self, the religion of the pure heart. Finally, in both communities, by way of fervid mysticism and communion with the divine, this spiritualistic trend sometimes landed its devotees in a morass of antinomianism, such as, de¬ spite ethical creeds, has arisen elsewhere, in Persia, for example, as well as in Europe and India. Since, however, the mystics have proved themselves profound thinkers, it is obvious that the rotten bog of erotic mysticism comes from the contamination produced by the senses, which have no business in matters spiritual. Further, it is in¬ teresting to note that ethical mysticism, arising as it does from various creeds and philosophies, is not dependent on this or that belief in details (Plotinus was as great a "Inspiration in the Vedic age was by autopsy; the seer “saw” the words he said. Later, the codes were communicated by word of mouth, a supreme spiritual power, or a saint delegated by him, uttered the code. RELIGION AND ETHICS 263 mystic as Eckhard). It is built up wherever man con¬ ceives that man may commune with the divine, physi¬ cally or spiritually; but all advanced mystical systems conceive of union in terms of spirit. Even erotic mys¬ ticism theoretically holds that the physical is but a symbol of the spiritual. The new ethics of the Christian religion was based (as had been the Jewish religion) on God’s will, but as mani¬ fested not in the Decalogue alone but in the example of Jesus Christ and in his addition to and modification of precedent morality. First it emphasized and enlarged the idea (also Jewish) of the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. The world became a commonwealth of those spiritually akin. This idea also was not unique. “ There are no castes in the presence of Shiva, for we are all his children,” said the Hindu; he said also, “All the world is my country.” And the Greek said, “He is our Father; we are all his children. ’’ In fact, however, only the Buddhist and the Christian acted upon this broader outlook. Proceeding from a recognition of spiritual fel¬ lowship, both maintained that kindness or love was an essential element in ethics. Neither Greek nor Hindu philosophy reckoned with this. At most the Hindu phi¬ losopher recommended a benevolence which was in reality little more than was implied by the shibboleth “non-in- jurv,” though it occasionally voiced itself in the com¬ mand to do to others as one would be done by and not to strike back when one is struck. As between Buddhism and Christianity, a more active, energetic love was preached in the West. Buddha’s “love” for the human race, as taught by him, was a kind of tolerant pity or good will, which the higher-minded should cultivate in order to reach serenity; it was inculcated formally that such good will should in the higher stages of spiritual progress be laid aside for indifference, absolute uncon- 264 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION cern. The close bond of church-fellowship, however, tended both East and West to increase the importance of love, especially since, in both religions, love to the Lord (Buddha or Christ) was interpreted as expressed by love to man, and Buddha himself became an exemplar of divine self-sacrifice for love of man. The sentiment thus extolled surpassed that given by the philosopher in that the claims of nature as interpreted by the Stoic “were here resolved into the mutual claims which benefi¬ cence granted as a form of divine service; love to man became a religious duty; pity was a form of piety.” Greater regard for the sick and helpless, greater com¬ miseration for the poor, disfavor toward cruelty (objec¬ tion, for example, to gladiatorial games), the suppression of certain vices previously tolerated or not regarded as vices (such as exposure of infants), and the exaltation of humility, not on Taoist grounds but in imitation of Christ, were some of the ethical fruits of the new religion in the West . 8 In the East, a greater gentleness and kind¬ ness, the suppression of sacrificial cruelty, an ethical code urging restraint of the senses, family purity and personal abnegation were added to the everyday moral code that, inherited from Brahmanism, had long insisted upon the sinfulness of murder, theft, adultery, covetousness, envy, and such obvious faults. The simple ethics of the Big- Veda, which was of this type, had been divorced from re¬ ligion during the ritualistic period of the Brahmanas, when the priests were as cynically and brutally immoral as can be imagined. Buddha’s greatest practical service was in making religion ethical. His simple rules for the common member of the order were contained in the prom¬ ise not to take life, drink intoxicants, lie, steal, or be un¬ chaste ; but, as his commands, these prohibitions were rigidlv enforced and led on the Brahmanic side also to the 8 Henry Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics (London, 1886). RELIGION AND ETHICS 265 necessity of establishing an ethical code. Thus we find that the Ten Commandments of the Brahmans and Ten Com¬ mandments of the Bnddhists are an amplification of these earliest statutes. Those of the Brahmans are embodied in the Tenfold Law, which enjoins: Contentment, patience, self-control, honesty, purity, restraint of passions, devo¬ tion, knowledge (of religion), truthfulness, freedom from anger (implying abstinence from overt acts of wrong¬ doing, as in the Shorter Rule, viz., Non-injury, truth, hon¬ esty, purity, restraint of passions, Manu, 6, 92; 10, 63). The Buddhist Ten Commandments are: Not to kill, nor steal, nor be sensual, nor lie, nor speak harshly, 9 nor speak maliciously, nor speak idly, nor be covetous, nor hate, nor be heretical. The general Brahmanic law was “Do not to others what is unpleasant to thyself’’ (Yaj., Dh., 3, 65). In most manuals of ethics, the Oriental side has been so consistently neglected that the contrast between Chris¬ tian ethics and pagan ethics has been over-stressed. Thus obedience, patience, humility, purity, benevolence, aliena¬ tion from the world, and duty to God (including ortho¬ doxy), are contrasted as “novel or striking features of Christian ideal conduct” with the “pagan virtues” of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice.” 10 Here the contrast with the Greek and Roman ideal is perhaps partly justified (but temperance is not wholly pagan), yet most of these features are found in pre-Christian religions. It may be remarked also that the eight (even¬ tually seven) “deadly sins” of the church law, namely, pride, avarice, anger, gluttony, unchastity, envy, vain- 9 In China the Fang Wang Ching substitutes (for “speak harshly”), “nor trade in alcoholic liquors” and has “boast” for “speak idly” (fool¬ ish talk) and “blaspheme” for “be heretical.” “Self-control” as distin¬ guished from 11 restraint of passions ’ ’ is expressed by humility, mental rather than physical restraint. 10 Sidgwiek, op. cit., pp. 123, 141. 266 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION glory (or gloominess) and languid indifference (or state of moral lassitude), are all mentioned in Buddhistic man¬ uals as sins demanding penance. Finally, even the American Indians have evolved a divinely sent code of morals which shows that paganism in the broad sense is not far behind civilization or Chris¬ tianity in ethical content. The Buies revealed by the Sun- god of the Natchez Indians are: “Do not kill except in self-defense; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not get intoxicated; do not lie; do not be avaricious; be generous and hospitable. ” Modern explanations of ethical origins began with Thomas Aquinas, in the assumption that law expresses the eternal reason of God, whether law be natural or human. God implants in man general principles and a conscience 11 disposed to obey them; he supplements this with revelation. The question of will versus reason then arose; the divine will, it was said, is arbitrary, not de¬ pendent on reason. Again, some subordinated the legal view of morality to an intensive vision of God; sin is nothing but contempt of God shown by conscious assent to vicious behavior; intention to do right is really right though it may seem wrong; outward acts are indifferent (Abelard). Moral behavior to the mystic became with 11 Conscience is treated as if it were an entity with a voice of its own, like the Hindu ‘ ‘ man-within , 1 ’ who disapproves of wrong. No hint of this conception appears in early Greek or Biblical literature (the word is not in O. T. or the Gospels), though it is to be seen in the Zoroastrian analysis of the soul. It comes from a quasi personification of the consciousness of right; it is not prophetic, nor is it practical, like Socrates’s demon. “All men have a divine consciousness” (conscience, avveid-rjais ), says Menander. The same word in Bom. 2:15; for John 8: 0, see the Bevised Version. The early Buddhists, who reject God, still cling to the friendly gods, whom they convert into a body of very religious spirits like angels. These gods serve as a sort of conscience; they are “the gods who know our human hearts” and are informally appealed to as authoritative in matters of practical conduct. RELIGION AND ETHICS 267 Bonaventura the natural result of the union of the soul with God. With these theological views 12 that of the his¬ torian is not necessarily in conflict. Admitting the pos¬ sible existence of God and soul, one may say that all the historical growth is but the unfolding of a seed divinely planted or that the moral advance of man is itself a divine unfolding and growth. But the historian really has noth¬ ing to do with the existence of soul and God, only with the idea man has had of them. Philosophy began to dispense with the supernatural explanation of ethics when Grotius applied to interna¬ tional duties the principle that natural law is the dic¬ tate of right reason, which prohibits mutual injury and gives parental and marital authority. Why one should obey this law was the next question, which Hobbes an¬ swered by saying that man is moral to preserve himself and his own pleasure; a government determines all ob¬ ligations; morality depends on government, not on the will of God (as Duns Scotus had held); there is no objec¬ tive reality in the distinction between good and evil. In opposition it was asserted that knowledge of the distinc¬ tion comes from divine reason, which gives validity to ethical standards. In 1672 was formulated (in Cumber¬ land’s Be legibus naturae ) the dictum that “the common good of all is the supreme standard,” 13 in subordination to which good all virtues are to be determined; the com¬ mon good is the supreme law. This fits in with Locke’s 12 These views are a Christian adaptation of Greek thought, that of Aquinas (thirteenth century) being based on the Nicomachean Ethics and Eoman law, and the mysticism of Bonaventura (1221-1274), whose six stages of the adept remind one also of Yoga-disciple, reflecting Neopla¬ tonic ideas. So (below) Locke’s basis of ethics, in his appeal to reason, was virtually Stoic. See Sidgwick, op. cit. 13 The Hindu epic says of a special case, without generalizing, that con¬ duct should be determined by the 11 greater happiness of the many. ’ ’ The Hindu jurist supports his metaphorical “bull of right” on four legs, revelation, tradition, consensus of worthies, and conscience (“satisfaction 268 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION view that ethical rules are obligatory on man as a ra¬ tional being. Not to traverse the later interpretation of ethics as utilitarian, it may be pointed out that Professor Green 14 gives today as the foundation of rights and of right the capacity of the individual to conceive a good as the same for himself and others; rights are determined by that conception. Ethics thus becomes altogether divorced from religion. The ordinary view of Karma, which in India is a more cogent instigator of morality than is the code, is that it is a natural law operating through the universe whereby every act has its effect in the next birth; one suffers in the next life or becomes happier in the next life exactly in accordance with one’s mental and bodily activities in this life; but one suffers logically and inevitably. There is no punishment inflicted by the gods (the hell doctrine was amalgamated with the Karma doctrine and is not part of it essentially). It has been called a blind mechani¬ cal law of cause and effect. But it is noteworthy that this law of Ivanna is not blind to ethics; it acts mechanically, but it is, in effect, a moral law controlling existence, fa¬ voring morality, discouraging immorality. Karma is, in short, an all-pervading ethical power governing the uni¬ verse ; the more remarkable in that it is always conceived as an impersonal force. All its operations are in support of ethical advance. It is a “power not ourselves which makes for righteousness”; it upholds moral good at the cost of natural good; it brings out for the first time without appealing to divine authority the distinction be¬ tween dutv and self-love. of the man-within’*). The first is supreme, but incomplete; its lacunae are filled by tradition (the conduct of those traditionally approved), and by the "worthies and conscience, since these also imply divine law more par¬ ticularly revealed. 14 T. IT. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, 1917. RELIGION AND ETHICS 269 The tendency of Karma is to improve the world and bring its spiritual elements to perfection. In penaliz¬ ing wrong and rewarding right it treats virtue as coin¬ cident with happiness. Bishop Butler’s phrase, “the happy tendency of virtue in this world,” might be used to illustrate the underlying conception of Karma. On the other hand, one drawback to the ethical effect of the Karma doctrine is that it lessens man’s compassionate interest in his fellows. Practically, the thought that a cripple or any unfortunate human being is wretched merely because through his misfortune he is expiating some crime or fault in a previous existence tends to a feeling of indifference and unwillingness to help or com¬ fort the supposititious sinner. Karma is apt to become a form of fatalism, but the Hindu mind, though admitting fate in theory, has rejected its logical corollary. “What is to be will be, says the lazy coward. Reject this wisdom of the incompetent. Thy fate is in thine own power. A brave man makes his own fate.” Karma, however, though in Buddhism it is the expres¬ sion of a pessimistic system, which declares that all worldly activity leads to more unhappiness, inculcates the same ethics as does optimism. This is true also in re¬ spect of modern pessimistic systems of philosophy. Inas¬ much as denial of the ego sums up morality, one should practice love and sympathy, because these are in them¬ selves such a denial, says Schopenhauer; who also re¬ commends celibacy for the same reason, as well as for its effect in lessening human life. To thwart Unconscious Will one must practice the virtues enjoined by religious ethics and even conform to the standard set by religion for its more austere followers. The fact that ethics re¬ mains theoretically the same, irrespective of religious belief, shows that the formal attachment between them is rather adventitious. Ethics ends as it begins, more a mat- 270 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION ter of culture and civilization than of religion, though religion has often been its strongest support (as it may be its greatest foe) and when rightly understood is es¬ sentially ethical. Under the head of ritual it has already been pointed out that form and ritual may be injurious to the religious spirit. But this is equivalent to injuring ethics, which depends largely on religious support. The writer once saw an old woman telling her beads in a Duomo when a wealthy foreigner kneeled beside her. Without ceasing to pray the old woman abstracted the lady’s handkerchief. Apparently the woman was not there to steal; she seemed quite devout and after her trick she renewed her devo¬ tions with greater zeal, perhaps feeling especially thank¬ ful. It was by chance the handkerchief appeared and she yielded to the opportunity. But obviously her devotion was mere ritual. They say a Sicilian will stab with one hand while clutching a holy relic with the other; his re¬ ligion is a form. The Thugs throttle, however, as a reli¬ gious duty. Religion has often thus opposed morality. Millions have died in sacrifice. Debauchery has been, and unhappily still is, upheld by religious belief in India. In subtler ways also religion has injured ethics. Its self- appointed allies or ministers have insisted upon out¬ grown ethical rules; they have roasted men in an auto-da- fe (act of faith) in order to conform to the religious law (against shedding blood) and suppressed free thought (an ethical retardation) by burning ethical and philo¬ sophical books detrimental to religious and political dogmas. At the present moment, free love, the ethical effect of which is not that of free thought, is openly ad¬ vocated in the name of religion; it “has a deep and spiritual significance; [it symbolizes] the mystic union of finite and infinite.” 15 is The Dance of Siva, N. Y., 1918. RELIGION AND ETHICS 271 More might be said on this point, but to wliat good? In the first place, most of the ethical drawbacks of reli¬ gion in general are no longer operative in any religion; human sacrifices and crimes seldom find shelter under its aegis. 16 Mysticism has in most advanced cults become spiritual. It is historically necessary to remember that, for example, the Council of Constance tacitly approved of assassination by refusing to condemn it; but such ac¬ commodation of ecclesiastical law to worldly needs is now a mere record of the past, explicable in part as the expression of an age more indifferent than ours to the in¬ dividual. At present it is of more importance to note the immense service that religion has rendered in the prov¬ ince of ethics. If it is still a conservative force and as such tends to retard the intellectual (and hence ethical) advance of orthodox believers, it must be remembered that religious morality is the only morality that has authority with backward minds. They are representative of the mass, which intellectually is usually a generation behindhand. Religion still is an ethical power and with many it is the only authoritative ethical power. Nor does the Church stand against the ethical demands of the age; it does not interfere with political rightness. It was rather wonderful that with a constituency so largely drawn from political opponents of England and with an ecclesiastical head in sympathy with Germany (this is quite natural when one considers the large flock in the German fold) there should have been no church opposi¬ tion in this country against America ’s entry into the war as an ally of those from whom the Church had least to expect. And if again that same Church has acted in the is The Russian Christian Smotherers, however, share the belief of the Nicaraguan that only a bloody death ensures reward hereafter. In accord¬ ance with Mt. 11: 12, ‘ ‘ men of violence take it [heaven] by force, ’ 1 they smother their dying relatives. See Beaulieu, L’empire des Tsars, III, p. 367. 272 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION interest of Irish freedom, it has only anticipated what the political opponents of that freedom have themselves admitted to be a righteous cause. In both of these striking recent instances the Church has championed the higher ethical cause, whether against or in favor of her own im¬ mediate advantage. And in a general view of the rela¬ tions between ethics and religion it is clear that they co¬ operate much more than they antagonize each other; the union is still, as it has always been, of great benefit. Even in the past, which must be judged as the past and not as if it were the enlightened present, religion has been of inestimable good, ethically considered; it has spiritualized humanity, furnished a broader conception of duty, helped profoundly to enlarge man’s sympathies; and on the whole given an invaluable support to morality. In conclusion, it is of interest to notice that as pessi¬ mism has the same ethical expression as optimism, so the common sense or business view of mankind has come to realize that the religious ideal of a wise altruism is still to be commended even apart from religion. The ethical code of the Boy Scouts is without overt religious basis but is in accord with religious teaching, and the business community as represented by the Rotarians has pledged itself to oppose the egoists, whose cry was “everyone for himself,” with what they are pleased to call their slogan of “service, not self,” thus reverting to the ad¬ vice of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius: “As thou art thyself a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life.” This means that ethics, in establishing the good of the in¬ dividual upon the good of the community, recognizes that principle of God or Nature which sacrificed the in¬ dividual to the tribe, because without this sacrifice the fate of the individual in general would have been worse. To damage the community is to lower the individual. In o %J RELIGION AND ETHICS 273 the words of one recently speaking for this business or¬ ganization: “ Inadequate treatment of employees, ren¬ dering inferior service to customers, or failure to pay bills with due promptness, are anti-social acts of aggres¬ sion detrimental to the community’’; and again: “Those who substitute self-seeking for fair and conscious co¬ operation are themselves likely to suffer, probably from the point of view of their material gain and with in¬ dubitable certainty from deriving less satisfaction than they might from the work which they do. ’’ 17 The speaker urged as most useful and agreeable a combination of self- interest and community-interest, since altruism carried to excess would defeat its own object, and self-interest as a sole goal is a form of business myopia. The recognition on the part of the business world that solidarity is essen¬ tial and that one cannot injure others without injuring oneself is an indication that the theory of the brother¬ hood of man is not merely a religious chimera. 17 From an address by Sir William Schooling in June, 1921. CHAPTER XVI RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY A primitive community is wont to believe in innu¬ merable powers belonging to innumerable objects and places. It fears some of them; it recognizes some of them as friends. They all have mysterious powers. The individ¬ ual is surrounded by them; the world is full of them. One must not molest them, because one cannot do so safely. The clan gets together and feasts and dances and invites its ancestors to unite with it; there is a general exhilaration and exaltation in being present at such a celebration; something mysterious in the presence of the dead. The clan goes beyond the point of wishing not to molest; it wishes to propitiate. Its members do so by identifying themselves with the ancestors, imitating them in action, wearing their skins, if the ancestors were half animals, acting as tradition says they acted of old. The clan needs food. Getting more food is a mysterious opera¬ tion; food is an animate volitive thing; it may not want to come. But it can be urged; the vital power of the food is half commanded, half entreated to reproduce itself, to become more. The mental horizon widens; instead of one spirit-power in eacli grain to be urged, it is observed that all the grains stop growing and die at the same time; so there must be a grain-power in general, which dies when winter comes. Will it revive again? The clan with one accord do what they can to ensure this. The spirit of vegetation must live again. A great one power has arisen where before were many little powers. The year-spirit or vegetation-spirit becomes lord of yearly productivity, RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 275 Lord of Progeny (Prajapati). But in the meantime, out of a thousand powers, others have become prominent, local powers of hill and storm, the distant sun-power (identified with Prajapati), 1 the fire-power, the water¬ power, some generally, others locally important. A pan¬ theon is already in process of formation; it is accepted; there are many gods. But they all have, each in his own domain, the mysterious more-than-human power. What if all these powers were really the same power, appearing in different manifestations? Some sage of the Rig-Veda (c. 1000 B. C.) first speaks of “the one spirituality of the gods.” It follows (in India) that “all the gods are one,” forms of one power. Elsewhere all the other gods, who are still to be worshipped, are relegated to a place under one greater god and higher power, a Bel Marduk. Or, again, all other gods and spirits are regarded as foes of one supreme god; hence they must be banished and he alone must be worshipped, Yahweh. Through these three paths, of inclusion, of subordina¬ tion, of exclusion, men ascend from their first vague idea of objects as power-possessing and special powerful phe¬ nomena to the idea of one great power, who either em¬ braces other powers or rules over them or drives them out. 2 The first beginnings are not, as Durkheim imagines, 3 to be found in the “power exercised by humanity over its members,” that is, in society itself as the first object 1 Prajapati (the name contains the elements of progenies and despot, house-lord) is an abstraction but identified with sun and with year as pro¬ ductive power. 2 The Hebrew Yahweh ousted other gods and spirits by defeating local tribal deities (the gods subdued are not as in India phenomenal gods of the same tribe), but at the same time he adopted their ritual and shrines and functions, so that it was a process of conquering but at the same time of absorption, especially in the case . of demoniac possession, etc., where Yahweh acted as the earlier spirits had done, sending disease, inspiring men, etc. See L. B. Paton, Spiritism, p. 260. s Durkheim, op. cit., pp. 347, 363, 411. 276 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION of religious regard. Man does not begin by revering liis own “collective force objectified,” nor does lie, to notice here a more popular error, imagine that each manifesta¬ tion of power is part of one universal world-potency. The power of waterfall, of priest, of serpent, and of beaver are alike in being awesome, but the power of the beaver is not one with that of the waterfall. The “one spiritu¬ ality’ J is predicated of gods; it was never said of the ob¬ jects of primitive taboo. Mana is power and sundry crea¬ tures have power, but no savage ever thought the power of the priest identical with that of the shark. There was no one underlying object of taboo-fear as there was no one divinity, least of all deified humanity. Of the three paths to supreme godhead the Greeks fol¬ lowed in general that of subordination, but they came to their goal by a more devious route than did the Semites and Hindus, whose gods, subdued in their respective en¬ vironments, were not very alien to the conquering di¬ vinity. For the Aryan Greek invaders did not find as foes “noseless niggers,” as the Aryan invaders of India called the natives, but a people of old traditions of cul¬ ture, who, however, differed from their conquerors in sundry important respects. They represented an older but lower religious stratum. They were matrilinear, did not object to polygamy, worshipped female divinities, lived in fear of ghosts, and their religious interpreters were largely women. As we have seen in America that there was a subtle connection between women, earth-cult, and serpents, so in pre-civilized (Aryanized.) Greece, women and earth-divinities and snakes, which rise as earth-spirits and ghosts of the underground, made a re¬ ligious unit. It was essentially an earth-cult, with snakes, spirits of fertility, phallic males, reproductive mother- deities, many-breasted Artemis, Hera the cow-goddess, Demeter, mother earth, prolific as her rooting sow, a re- RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 277 ligion of dark secrets, of ghost and sex and fear and purifications, probably akin to the religion of the early Hebrews in many regards. This is what the Aryan in¬ vaders found as they swept down from the North upon these women-ridden natives of the Mediterranean. They set their man-god Zeus of the bright sky over the cower¬ ing female divinities and made him the object of worship in all the ghost and grain mysteries, which had hitherto had no god at all or had been under some shadowy spirit. Already head of his own pantheon, Zens now became head of all the spiritual world, preeminent in power, embody¬ ing a higher manly spirit, ethically more advanced than the dark spirits of witchcraft, as sky-father despising earth-spirits and ghosts, as Aryan upholding bravery, fidelity, and truth, guardian genius of domestic and tribal virtue, but related by marriage 4 and diplomacy to the sinister powers of the natives, so that there was noth¬ ing spiritual wfith which he was not concerned; uni¬ versal because he represented no local shrine, and finally becoming the typically supreme power, ‘ 4 Zeus however called,” or simply The God (“one Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysos, One God in all”) or the divine power, “first, middle, last, male and female, the soul of all.” And as in India the abstract power called Enlivener or Energizer became an epithet of the sun- god representing what the worshipper desired, so the Greeks made Zeus take the place of some of these per¬ sonified desires, that appeared at first as the shadowy forms above mentioned, such as the appeaser, Meilichios, who presided over the ghost-appeasing ritual in the form of a serpent (just as Zeus also replaced the old animal- god, the Bull). These gods of personified desires serve too to strengthen the unification of gods. Nay, they may even become of themselves supreme, as in the case of the 4 Hera, his 1 spouse, ’ was one of the chief female divinities of the natives. 278 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Nahuan king who sorrowed and cried, “ There must be some god to comfort me,” and thus conceived of one su¬ preme god as the Comforter, whom he called the Un¬ known God. But philosophy is less emotional than logical and here we have to remember that other American trend to monotheism made by the Inca who reasoned out God from the fact that his native supreme god, the sun, acted as a servant on a daily task, like an arrow shot from a bow; hence (he said) there must be a still more supreme god, who sends forth the servant, shoots the arrow. In all these approaches to unity in the godhead the ethical goes hand in hand with the philosophic or ideal. A god, to be supreme, must be the head of an organized system, not only of spirits but of ethics; he cannot rule an unorganized mob of disorderly spirits. Such creatures are the Rakshasas (demons) with whom he is at strife till they are subdued. His own court must follow recog¬ nized rules of conduct; he must, in a word, represent moral order. Hence we see on occasion Order itself, physical and moral, personified as Supreme Power, as in Rita (ritus and Right) or, as in China, Heaven personifies both the right order of seasons and the right order of conduct of men. In this reconstruction the head-god of the Greeks had the advantage of being already a general god (of the invaders) not a local outgrowth of any one city or clan, so that the social advance which he repre¬ sented was spread all over Greece. Yet even so the Greek idea of Fate tended to reduce the idea of God. But in fact, as Greek religion never succeeded entirely in free¬ ing itself from the under-world or in freeing its gods from their passions, the monotheistic idea did not descend be¬ low the poets and philosophers. For the general public, the ethical result may be summed up by saying that reli¬ gion here was raised higher, became more noble, made RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 279 for a wider fellow feeling, and introduced the idea of one supreme moral power as governing the world. 5 In India, the first monotheistic trend did not pursue the process of elevating the sun or any other natural phe¬ nomenon to supreme place; that course led to pantheism. Rather it argued out first a creative power, then took that power as head of the pantheon, and finally recognized it as the Supreme God, to whom other gods were mere un¬ derling spirits. Probably, in all these cases, the idea of a dominant god went together with a more developed so¬ cial state, as is the case even among African savages. So, as the Hindus raised a great empire, the rule of the head-god became more imperialistic. The gods even ear¬ lier were arranged in castes, but the notion of a Father- god, whose children were all other gods and all beings besides, took the firmest hold. Despite the advancing growdh of the pantheistic conception, despite the athe¬ istic attitude of Buddhism, this faith was never de¬ stroyed, though it had its inception in philosophy and has drawn its strength from philosophic theologians. But a monotheistic trend is still not monotheism. A host of lesser gods still survives even when their powers have been curtailed. The gods that endure must fill a lasting want and the lowest gods remain only for a time or only in the lowest intellectual strata. Stones and trees and animals and disease-devils do not satisfy the growing needs of man. It is not necessary for a supreme god to destroy them; they are discarded for their insufficiency or linger only among the ungrowing part of the popula¬ tion. Gods of the higher phenomena are capable of more expansion and they remain longer, though always sub¬ ject to the higher thought of which they are the reflection. Consequently in the end they are greatly modified. The 5 Compare Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Eeligion (1912), and Clifford H. Moore, The Eeligious Thought of the Greeks (1916). 2S0 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION gods thus elevated arrange themselves gradually into groups reflecting the mental and social state of their wor¬ shippers. To the restricted outlook of the savage, local gods, rivers, forests, mountains, and ghosts are vastly more important than the heavenly gods, sky, sun, or moon. Each village has its own tutelary divinity, who may, as ghost, become a general god; but despite this, as compared with ghosts, the phenomena of nature make the chief gods, as in America, both North and South, and in Africa. With a broader interpretation, such natural phe¬ nomena were also worshipped by the Aryans; even Zo¬ roaster fought a vain fight against them. On the Semitic side, in Babylon and Assyria, sun, moon, storm, water, earth, hold the most conspicuous position and the same thing may be said of the Western Semites, to whom the spirits of storm and fertility, of sun and moon, especially appealed. In China, given over though it was to the wor¬ ship of ancestral spirits, sky, sun, moon, hills, and streams were all objects of devout worship. All this was intimately connected with the fact that men select their gods according to their needs. Tillers and hunters have different ends in view; rain and sun be¬ come of prime importance to the agriculturist; they may be ignored by the hunter but not by the farmer. Even ghosts become spirits of vegetation. Thus the nature-gods become an aristocracy; others remain what they were, low-caste demons. But as these demons are revered only by the lowly, so too with even the higher gods; their turn to fall comes as surely as that of the lower spirits. For man, as he rises, lets fall the gods he cannot raise with him. The twin Dioscuroi live a long time, but at last the Gemini exist only in “ Jimminy”; as great Jove him¬ self exists today only in a meaningless exclamation. Such gods may disappear before or, as names, may survive the natural expiration of their lives. The god RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 281 of a month will vanish with a changing chronology. In India, special gods lived only as month-gods. But, on the other hand, each month and each day was ascribed to a god in Egypt. The Zoroastrians named each month and day after saintly Yazatas, just as our Church has its days of favored saints. This process conserves many spirits and saints who would otherwise have been for¬ gotten. The favored ones make a band of the elite. Simi¬ larly, the great natural phenomena, as gods, tend to fall into special groups of elite spirits, who act as court-at¬ tendants of the greatest god. Monotheism: The trend toward monotheism is always found in some such environment as this, where’ a num¬ ber of superior powers has already established itself as a select circle of high gods and it is not to be expected that any one god can easily down other gods who have become exalted because of their efficient aid to man. The approach to monotheism is long and gradual; primitive monotheism is a modern dream. Even in present Chris¬ tian and Mohammedan and Zoroastrian monotheism, popular belief has remained impregnated with a very vital polytheism. Christian Greeks still believe in the Fates and the Nereids; the Kelts have not quite re¬ nounced the old mythology of those now called fairies, brownies, dwarfs, and banshees; magic rites, implying belief in spiritual powers, the evil eye, and other rem¬ nants of an older general faith, still survive in a so- called monotheistic religion. 6 Even monolatry, which must be carefully distinguished from monotheism, was not reached without long divaga- • 6 Compare J. C. Campbell, Highland Superstitions , Witchcraft, and Sec¬ ond Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Even the Buddhists had a cult of the dead. The early Hebrews worshipped the dead as ‘ gods’ of a sort; tombs were shrines and refuges, where prayer and sacrifice were offered till Yahweh appropriated these still sacred places and made them holy to himself. 282 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tions. The Hebrews as a people were reluctant to wor¬ ship one god exclusively and it never even occurred to them that there were no other gods than their own. They perpetually reverted to the polytheistic attitude. Che- mosli of the Moabites was to the Israelites as real as Yaliweh (Judges 11: 23-24), though they did not worship Chemosh; but they gladly worshipped Tammuz and other gods, despite the prophets. The Syrians believed in Yah- weh also (“their god is a god of the hills,” I Kings 20: 23). A god was local; “thy god shall be my god; whither thou goest I will go.” One advance made, perhaps per¬ force, by the Israelites was in thinking that their god went with them through the desert; he was not after all a god of the hills solely; Sinai could not contain him. But, just as the gods that were worshipped before Buddha became ministering angels to him, just as Ormuzd re¬ tained earlier gods as spirits and angels under him, so the cherubim and seraphim, the dragon, the leviathan and the terapliim remained as final forms of ancient powers. The women who wept for Tammuz and the men who wor¬ shipped the sun were following strange gods, but the cherubim and terapliim (ghosts) were spiritual powers of the Israelites ’ own past. The Exile freed Yaliweh as much as it enslaved the people; he became a god without bounds and hence with¬ out bonds. A wider horizon opened before his worship¬ pers, whose intense if rather narrow patriotism of reli¬ gion had refused to see in him a spiritual power greater than their country. Before this it had been a startling new thought that Yahweh was not necessarily bound to Israel (Amos 9:7) and it was the more startling because it was based on ethical considerations. Yahweh had al¬ ways fostered ethical religion, even when he was himself a god of dubious morality according to the later norm, and he represented a great ethical advance over the gods KELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 283 with whom he would have no dealings. He even preferred a pure heart to sacrifice. As he had shown mercy to his people, so he desired from them mercy and not sacrifice. The individual if righteous was now supported by Yah- weh even against the State. Patriotism and religion were no longer coterminous. Thus arose gradually the figure of a god supreme over other gods, greater than any country, whose ethical demands were as cogent as his spiritual power. From then on there was hut one god for the Israelites, one ethical, spiritual, supreme power in the world, one moral governor of the universe. Yahweh becomes first of all the national god of Israel by a covenant, on account of which he helps his chosen people. It is not important whether he was introduced by Moses, whether he was a Kenite god of storm or hill or moon or plant; he was his people’s shield, their war-god, their savior; a person, dear to, but distinct from, his worshippers. Such a god cannot be conceived otherwise than as a person; he appeals to the people as an individu¬ ality. The worshipper feels that in fighting for him, he is fighting for a living god as well as for his country, for his home, for its sanctities; and, conversely, in fighting for all that he holds dear, he is fighting for God, a per¬ sonal objective reality. The Semites were not an imaginative race. They did not even deify the abstract powers so common in Greece and India; they had no such goddesses as the Hindus’ Goodness, Justice, Modesty, Strength, Concord, Beauty; they did not create a god called Power; they did not deify the Word or Speech. 7 Instead of creating thus a band of subordinate spirits, they spoke of Yahweh’s own spirits and ascribed abstract virtues to Yahweh; he was 7 Sanskrit Vac (Latin vox), deified in the Rig-Veda as a mighty spirit¬ ual power, was regarded by Weber as having influenced the Logos concep¬ tion, but this view is now discarded. 284 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Goodness and Justice; Wisdom was liis spirit. Accord¬ ing to later standards Yaliweh is deficient. In the pre- prophetic period be is cruel, capricious; delights in blood and slaughter; sides with Jacob in deceiving Jacobi father-in-law; himself deceives Aliab; inculcates a be¬ lief in witches, ordeals, etc. From the standard of today he has been described as a being 4 4 of limited intelligence animated by the same passions as the people them¬ selves.” 8 Finally, Yaliweh is the creator of darkness and evil (Isaiah 45:7). The Mohammedan Allah inherits the position of Yaliweh, or rather is Yaliweh modified by a new environment; merciful, but judge rather than father, jealous rather than generous. In other forms of attempted monotheism, polytheism survives, as in India and Egypt; or a practical ethical monotheism, like that of Zoroaster, is so rooted in poly¬ theism that it ends by embracing many gods; or the attempt, as in Taoism, falls far short of accomplishment. In Greece, a moral philosophy gradually developed apart from the gods. The Hebrews alone united ethics, religion, and an anti-polytheistic philosophy. They kept on their course till they ended as ethical monotheists and as they advanced the character of Yahweh was purged of its defects, till the image of a pure ethical divinity emerged. He became not the only spirit, for angels are recognized in both Testaments and Satan still rages in the minds of many, but the only God. The system of religious phi¬ losophy thus expressed fails to harmonize the different aspects of the world into a unitary whole, but practically it is the only one which can appeal to the mass of people, partly because the antithesis of spirit and matter is easier to understand than their identity, partly because it is optimistic, partly because an active Power working in an intelligent manner seems to imply personal intelli- 8 Professor A. II. Keane, in the Tlibl>ert Journal, October. 1905. BELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 285 gence, and partly because the emotions have a great deal to do with religion and an impersonal immanent Power is not one easily to be appealed to, as is a personal ob¬ jective God, to whom one in trouble can turn for comfort and aid as “a very present help.” Dualism: Hebrew monotheism is dualistic. God creates the world as he creates evil, but the two creations are not one with him. At the root of this view lies the old an¬ tithesis between matter and spirit, between good and evil. All religions as religions and not as philosophies are dualistic in the same way. Savages recognize a prin¬ ciple of evil opposed to a principle or god of good, as they recognize that light is different from darkness. A god is outside of his creation as a carpenter is separate from his car; a good god is not at the same time a bad god. He may seem to be capricious, but in that case he is not understood or is regarded as not quite good. A number of natural antitheses lead to dualistic concep¬ tions of the universe, such as the difference between the sexes, on which a whole system of philosophy has been established in China; but the distinction most widelv em- phasized is not between male and female, or between soul and body, or spirit and matter, but between good and evil. In the end, the good becomes the god, the daur be¬ comes the deil. This contrast was united in Yoga philoso¬ phy with the antithesis between spirit and matter: spirit is changeless, male, good; matter is ever-changing, female, evil; varium et mutabile semper femina (‘ matter’ is fe¬ male) ; also, as in other Hindu systems, there is an an¬ tithesis of light and dark (in the Upanishads God is the great Light of the World). The Hebrews were content to let the problem stand as tradition had explained it; God created the world out of nothing; he creates darkness and evil; he is Lord of all, even of Sheol. But to the mind of Zoroaster the world ranged itself into two great camps 286 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION of warring Minds, the Evil Mind opposing the Good Mind, each with its own armies of spirits and separate creations. It is doubtful whether Zoroaster himself ever imagined that these two were forms of one (as the later system taught); but his religion was optimistic; he be¬ lieved that in the end the Good Mind would overthrow’ the Evil Mind, and that Evil Mind himself vfith the rest of evil would be finally overcome, a conception still lin¬ gering in Christianity, which is perhaps indebted to Zoroaster for its later conception of the Evil One, as well as for one or more of its greater angels, wdio v T ere origi¬ nally both male and female. Zoroastrianism then, though dualistic, v’as essentially a monotheism, teaching the existence of one supreme moral ruler of the universe, albeit the path trod by this god v r as one of long contest both with the powders of evil and vfith the supposed friends of the Good Mind, who w r ere really enemies in disguise; for all the polytheistic nature-powers who fought for the Good Mind v’ere at bottom insidious foes, undermining the belief in one god with recrudescent be¬ lief in old Aryan divinities. A more thoroughgoing dualistic religion is that of the above-mentioned Yoga in its earlier form as Shankhya philosophy. Here mind is an evolved form of matter, which is eternal and eternally opposed to spirit, or rather to innumerable spirits. It is the object of the Yogi to at¬ tain salvation by freeing himself from the bonds of mat¬ ter through various devices of concentration and trance- producing states of aloofness, till he attains absolute 4 1 apartness’’ from all material taints. In its later de¬ velopment the Shankhya admitted the existence of one greatest spirit called Lord, whose spirituality v’as util¬ ized as helpful rather than necessary, a sort of model of what a spirit might become rather than a god from which it came. The present Jain religion in India, which is RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 287 atheistic, conserves the older Shankhya view and its de¬ votion is paid not to a god bnt to superior saints or em¬ bodied spirits of the past who have been teachers of men. Such teachers are also revered in Buddhism, but not with the understanding that there was an immortal soul or spirit in any one of them. In the Jain dualism there are spirits, eternal entities, eternal matter, and also mys¬ terious principles of Right and Wrong, which are con¬ ceived as interpenetrating powers apparently eternal. None of these systems attempted to do away with poly¬ theism; but the gods were interpreted as angels or de¬ moniac powers of a lower order and were practically ignored as beings of no importance. Pantheism: Philosophy is an expression of the “as¬ piration after a knowledge of an all-including unity” and as such originates in religion. Derived from the same polytheistic environment as monotheism but embracing, instead of discarding, other gods, pantheism starts with the unification of the spiritual world and then derives from it the material world. Prajapati, the terminus of Yedic thought as non-phenomenal supreme ruler, repre¬ sented by time, by the year, but above all by the figure of a father-god, does not exactly create the world; but he becomes the world; he transforms himself into it. So in more advanced thought, the universe does not become God; God becomes the universe. It makes a notable dif¬ ference, for if God be one with the universe he is no more intelligent or spiritual than is matter of which the uni¬ verse is made. But if the universe be one with God, -then it too is intelligent, divine. Philosophers in India, work¬ ing on two theses, maintained both that matter was not really existent, a pure idealism (the All-Soul being with¬ out attributes) and that the world was actual as was the Highest Soul, a being superior to the individual soul. This highest soul became practically God in a theistic 288 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION sense, a supreme Power, not without attributes, to whom the faithful soul will go at death, enjoying pure bliss in the presence of the Lord God . 9 In either case, the reli¬ gious element consists in the recognition of a spiritual environment, with which man feels himself identified, either entirely one with it or in closest union without ab¬ solute identification. The ethical standard of one who argues that Brahma or the All-Soul, being without attri¬ butes, is unmoral, is not based on imitation of any divine model but on knowledge. Through knowledge that man is one with God man rises above the distinction of good and evil, even as to God, the All-Soul, there is no such dis¬ tinction; yet in the knowledge that all souls are one with himself every man is withheld from injuring others, since no man will injure himself. Knowing the true Soul of the World man cannot sin, as God cannot sin; “who¬ ever is born of God sinneth not. ’’ In Greece, Xenophanes taught that ‘ ‘ all is one ’’ and the One is divine; his pupil, Parmenides, that being and thought are one. But, except for originating the idea of One God (which is how the poet and religious teacher in¬ terpret the God One), the views of Greek pantheists had no effect on religion apart from cultured circles, until the Stoics taught the immanence of God and, finally, Plotinus carried out Neoplatonic thought and invented his mystic monism. Many of the earlier expressions may be interpreted as monotheistic (see above) rather than pantheistic, as is true also of the so-called pantheism of Egypt. One might imagine that an impersonal spiritual power, such as that conceived in the pure monism of the Ve- s On the other hand, in the monistic Vedanta system, Brahma is not a being, but being; not an intelligent being, but intelligence. See below, on the Hindu Trinity. Pantheism was also a late outgrowth of Buddhism and of Chinese philosophy. RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 289 danta, would be lacking in religious qualifications, but it would be quite wrong to belittle the deep religious satis¬ faction which the philosopher draws from his “ knowl¬ edge ’ ’ that the All-Soul (Atman as Brahma) is to be found in his own self. As is said in the Upanishad: “Let all the world be sunk in God, all that exists upon the earth. Who all renounces winneth all. This Soul of All is far away, yet near at hand; ’tis there, ’tis here. In every creature God abides. But he who in his very self sees God, and sees himself in God, who knows that God is all in all, he has no fear, naught troubles him. One with his God is he indeed, who knows the unity of all. What fear of death, what grief is his, who is himself th’ immortal God?” “Knowledge” here and in the Upanishad religion generally is always the mystic rapt realization of one¬ ness with God as the All-Soul or cosmic consciousness. So much for the sage. But often for the ordinary man something more, or, as the sage would say, something less, is needed than an impersonal All-Soul. He demands, as has been said, a person who sympathizes, to whom he can make appeal . 10 This person he finds in the active God of the monotheist and pantheist alike. But both inter¬ pretations are philosophically awkward; the monothe¬ istic, because God has to be regarded both as the un¬ qualified Absolute and as the active sympathetic Father Creator; the pantheistic, because, in the end, God in this form is merely a form, docetic, not the Be-all of the universe. Yet from a religious point of view both the Christian monotheist and the Vedanta pantheist have as a prac- 10 This is not always the case. In Pericles’s great speech there is not a word of “religious consolation, ’ ’ only an intense patriotism, a devotion to an ideal rather than to an idol or a god, and the consolation that one has lived up to that ideal. But the speaker (or writer) was not an ordinary man. 290 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tical object of belief a personal supreme moral governor of the universe, God. And more. Both monotheist and pantheist recognize that Absolute Divinity may assume a third form, not that of the Absolute, not that of the Supreme God, but that of the still more sympathetic divine man, Vishnu as incarnate in Krishna, and “I and my Father are one . 77 Moreover, as the atheistic philoso¬ phy of Buddhism gradually changed till it converted Buddha himself into divinity and at the same time recog¬ nized that an Absolute must lie behind phenomena, this religion also became an advocate of the view that the divine manifests itself in three ways. But before discussing this subject in detail it will be advisable to say a few words in regard to the general religious significance of the triad. CHAPTER XVII THE TRIAD Why Three should have become a “holy number’’ has long been the subject of speculation. One modern theory suggests that, as man has three finger-joints, his reckon¬ ing arose from his fingers and three became the base of order, hence holy. Another contends that three is the base of all rhythmic movements and man is a rhythmical crea¬ ture. Still another theory is that, as some savages cannot count beyond two, three became synonymous with the all or perfection. Aristotle said long ago that three repre¬ sents all and hence is the perfect number. Now it is true that we think in triads, because three are natural divisions, yesterday, today, and tomorrow; child¬ hood, youth, and age; here, above, below; sunrise, noon, sunset; sun, moon, stars; earth, air, sky; father, mother, child; three is the whole, the all. But is it not quite as natural to think in pairs, as savages are apt to do, past and present, here and elsewhere, day and night, sun and moon, earth and sky, strength and weakness, male and female! As for rhythm, the childish swing of “one, two, three, and away we go ’ ’ adds a fourth; and as a matter of fact four among some savages was a holier number than three, notably over all the Western world, where, both in North and South America, four, based on the four directions (cardinal points), was the really religious number. Five, too, has a limited sanctity, especially in India, where groups of gods and peoples appear in pen¬ tads. Then again, seven is, if anything, the truly religious number, as sacred in India as in Greece. In India, the 292 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION sub-divided month gave weekly holy days at seven-day intervals, but long before such days were known seven formed a group of itself, the Seven Stars, the Seven Divers, etc. Seven may at first have connoted merely “several” and then, from the group itself, become ritu¬ ally sacrosanct . 1 But there is a difference, not hitherto noticed, between the holiness of three and that of seven. Seven is religious; three is first magical, before becoming a religious num¬ ber. Its primitive connotation of completeness or extra¬ completeness leads to its universal use in magical com¬ pulsive operations, such as lustrations, exorcisms of all kinds, oaths, etc. Thus it is rather adopted than origi¬ nated by religion, whereas seven is practically not rec¬ ognized at all until advanced religions employ it as a sacred number. A sure test may be made by comparing savage religious rites, which employ three and seven, with savage magic, which ignores seven and everywhere (in Australia, Africa, India, America) employs three, the cogent number , 2 while in lustrations three even intrudes upon the province of the sacred (American) four. The oath, repeated three times by savages, tends in religion to become the “oath by three gods” (Zeus, Athene, Apollo), 1 Seven as an indefinite number (above, p. 62) remains for a long time synonymous witli ‘ ‘ several, ” as in the Greek Seven Seas, Seven Islands, “seven mouths,’’ “seven-fold courage” (Aristophanes). Strabo, c. 602, gives Ileptaporos as synonymous with Polyporos, the name of a river (com¬ pare the “ seven-mouthed ’ ’ streams of India). In the great Hindu epic, Vishnu is called sapta-mahabhdga, “seven-fold blessed.” Shakespeare’s 11 this seven vears ’ ’ means only several vears. %/ * 2 That is, when a tribe has not yet been affected by missionary or Mo¬ hammedan influence, as among the Guinea Africans, where baptism alone is affected by seven (a girl is baptized “after seven days” from birth). Burial rites are based on three. Mourners may not wash for three days; on the third day after death the dead man is three times asked to depart, etc. The Amerinds also occasionally use seven as a ritual number, but probably not of their own initiative. Three was the magic number in Greece and Rome. THE TRIAD 293 such as was usual in Greece, but its compelling force came first from the three . 3 Sick people among the old savage Slavs climbed three times through an aperture in a holy oak. Both India and China have the threefold ambulation around the grave. When Babur “sacrificed himself ” for his dying son he walked three times around the couch, thus extracting the sickness and compelling it to enter his own body. The Chinese ghost is placated by a threefold oblation of water. Asseverating, cursing, spit¬ ting, exorcisms of all kinds, are well done when thrice done; this is the binding number. Hence the threefold lustration of savages and (inherited) of civilized peoples. Baptism follows lustration; hence it is threefold, with three invocations. The earliest employment of the trini¬ tarian formula was in connection with baptism. In the case of the death-ritual, the special sanctity of three may be based on natural causes, since the corpse clearly de¬ mands burial within three days except in cold climates. So the Scythians buried after weeks of waiting but gen¬ erally, as in Australia and Africa, the ghost lingers about for three days and then rises and departs from the body. Even a dead god rises “after three days,” as in the resurrection of Attis in the Megalesia rite. It is possible that three in this and similar instances is first a natural rather than a sacred number, yet by rea¬ son of its already holy significance it sanctifies itself afresh. There was, for example, a very good natural rea¬ son why the Hindus offered oblations to the sun thrice daily; for sunrise, noon, and sunset were natural points at which to make obeisance. Hence it is not quite ob¬ vious that the Hindus offered oblation to the gods thrice daily because three was a holy number. From an earlier 3 Touching wood (originally the Cross) three times to avert evil began religiously as an invocation of the three persons of the Trinity; the rite has now relapsed into a magical form. 294 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION stage the number was holy anyway and this seemed to be a fresh case, so they reasonably enough spoke of the “holy threefold offering,” but if there had been a fourth point naturally indicating an oblation the three would have been ignored. The sanctity of three is not explained by any “god’s delight in odd numbers’ 1 ; the odd number is another in¬ stance of the binding force of super-completeness, as in the baker’s dozen and the Vedic god-group reckoned as three times ten-plus-one and the “hundred and one” of popular Indie use (priests, diseases, veins, etc.), the magical idea in religious use. Three in magic is cogent; it binds. In religion, three simply gives an air of holi¬ ness, except, of course, when religion preserves a magi¬ cal content, as it does often in particular instances. The religion of Greece, like that of India, was a mixture of prayer and curse, religion and magic. “Thrice seven,” trisapta, is especially ritualistic in India, though it also indicates an indefinitely large number . 4 Divine triads also, like the threefold oblation, really owe but a small part of their superior holiness to the triadic form. National mythological triads usually in¬ clude gods who, being themselves superior or markedly different from other gods, make a natural group, triadic only because the three components represent strikingly different spheres. A palpable instance is that of the early Shinto triad of primeval gods, sun, moon, and storm (or 4 Thrice seven are the symbolic fire-sticks in the spirit-sacrifice; thrice seven the hills rent by Indra’s lightning, and thrice seven seventies are his steeds (Rig-Veda, 8, 46, 26; 96, 2, etc.). Three and seven are often grouped 'without connection, as when the Fire-god and the fiery dragon are both described as having three heads and seven flames (ib. 1, 146, 1; 10, 8, 8). The Vedic gods were reckoned first as 33, i.e., three times eleven (10 + 1) ; then as 34 (33 + 1), and then as 3339 in number. In imitation, the Nats, or spirits, of Burma are 37 in number, headed by Indra (the rest being heroes) and enlarged by four local deities. THE TRIAD 295 water). Similar is the Babylonian triad, Ann, Enlil, Ea (sky and sea, with storm, dnbions, between). Homer’s triad, Zens, Poseidon, Hades, personified as brothers, rep¬ resent sky, sea, and nnder-world. Now sncb a gronp is tri¬ adic bnt it lacks the essential element of a trinity; it con¬ sists not in bomogeneons bnt in heterogeneous elements. Its oneness is because the group is diverse from other groups, not because its parts are triune. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades are as a group the great spiritual powers ruling three different realms; but they are not united in any way till made into “brothers,” and then they are mutually antagonistic. So in the case of triads not mytho¬ logical but ethical. The Zoroastrian triad, “thought, word, deed,” and the Buddhistic triad representing the aims of life, “religion, pleasure, wealth,” contain not identical but antithetical constituents. This is the case also with the small popular mythological triads of Greece, three Fates, three Graces, thrice three Muses; not unity, but differentiation distinguishes their elements, as may be clearly seen when they can be traced back. For example, the older form of the Moirai was one, not three; and either one or two were originally Nymph, Grace, Siren, and Kabir (usually these triads are feminine). Only later reflection converts them into a triad; but the triad is never a mere triplication; it introduces a fresh conception. Failure to recognize the distinction between a triadic group of heterogeneous gods and a real trinity has viti¬ ated the work of various scholars . 5 Anu, Enlil, Ea, and the corresponding Japanese gods and the Homeric group (above), form respective triads, not trinities. Osiris, Isis, and Horus are distinct gods, later joined in a family re¬ lationship. The several Zoroastrian triads, such as Or- s This error has, for example, affected The Ethnic Trinities of Bev. L. L. Paine (1901). To Mr. Paine, any triad appears to be a trinity. 296 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION muzd, Analiita, Mithra, are far from being a trinity, as may be seen clearly in the triad, Ormuzd, Mithra, Aliri- man. There is really only one early triad in Zoroastrian¬ ism, the Wise Spirit, (its) Eight (order), and (its) Good Mind, but the last two are in fact personified attributes of the One Wise Spirit. It is unnecessary to catalogue all such 4 4 trinities, ’’ as careless writers call them. The triad Zeus, Poseidon, Hades yielded to Zeus, Hera, Athene , 6 and this in turn to Zeus, Athene, Apollo. Scandinavia had its Odhin, Thor, Frey; Babylonia had sundry triads besides the one men¬ tioned, Shamash, Sin, Ramman (sun, moon, storm), Sin, Shamash, Ishtar, etc. Often the group, as in Egypt, adds a fourth member; it is not static, or, when it remains the same in number, the members shift; there is no real tri- unity . 7 In these mythological triads, especially where there is a family relationship imagined between the members, there is sometimes developed the belief that one member c The Roman triad, Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, copies the Greek model. A Phocian town between Delphi and Daulis had this group, worshipped to¬ gether in one hall as land-guardians (Paus., 10, 5, 2), so that the estab¬ lishment of the three in one edifice is not uniquely Roman. In one particu¬ lar there is a difference. Hera sits on the right of Zeus and Juno on the left of Jupiter; but in each case the goddess has the seat of honor, which in Greece was on the right hand and in Rome on the left. 7 In regard to Babylon, Sayce erroneously calls sky, earth, and sun an Accadian ‘ ‘ trinity, ” an idea curiously expanded by Rev. Hugo Radau, who, in Bel the Christ of Ancient Times, was content (in 1903) to see a tendency toward monotheism in Babylonian religion, at most an almost pure monotheism. But the same material a few years later (1908) appears as 11 a monotheistic trinitarian religion,” patterned after a Nippur group of Enlil, Ninib, and Ninlil, interpreted as father, son, and mother, the “Nippur Trinity,” as it is colled thereafter. Here a vagueness of divine functions leads the author to imagine a trinity where there is a triad. In The Creation Story (1902), the author was more judicious and spoke merely of two triads, Ann, Ea, Bel, and Sin, Ramman, Shamash. Nielsen’s Dcr Vreieinirje Gott (1922) assumes a general Semitic trinity of father, son, and mother, but his evidence is far from conclusive. THE TRIAD 297 is a mediator between man and a higher member of the divine gronp. But it is another error on the part of those who have discovered trinities everywhere to assume that the mediatorial principle arises first within the trinity. It has in reality nothing to do therewith, for it is far older than any trinity. The savage Shaman is the earliest mediator, being himself no ordinary fellow but a man supernaturally inspired. The savage quite generally rec¬ ognizes (1) the Power, (2) himself as seeking supernatu¬ ral power, and (3) the power-filled man (he may be priest) mediating between man and the Power. Such a human mediator represents a union of human and divine, who labors for the safety or salvation of the mere man, and he appears in history as priest or prophet, or, in higher form, as a revealer or a revelation. This concep¬ tion may fit into a trinitarian scheme, but it has in fact a broader basis. Many of the messenger-sacrifices al¬ ready discussed are virtually mediatorial; the Ainu bear is a mediator. So wide is the conception that Dr. Soeder- bloih s does not hesitate to interpret all religions as media¬ torial, because each recognizes a supernatural Power, a union of divine and human, and an ethical result, such as taboo, new spiritual life, the Holy Spirit, and in this sense he also calls them all trinitarian. But this is merely an exaggeration producing a scheme into which anything will fit. For example, Dr. Soederblom gives, as types of the mediator, Christ and a fetish. But a fetish has no mediatorial function whatever; man coerces it or appeals to it directly. Before discussing the real trinities furnished by reli¬ gion it will be convenient to speak of certain illusive forms which in themselves offer no difficulty save as modern in¬ terpreters misinterpret them. These are the tliree-headed and three-bodied monsters of Indie, Greek, and Gallic an- 8 D. X. Soederblom, Vater, Sohn, und Geist (Tubingen, 1909). 298 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tiquity, best known through the figures of three-headed Shivas, the Kerberos, and Geryon trimembris. The three¬ headed dragon is Greek as well as Indie. Kronos as dragon has a goat’s head between the heads of a bull and a lion. A three-headed dragon or worm is mentioned in the Vedas. Now it is the contention of Usener that the Keltic (Gal¬ lic) figures with three heads and all other tricipites, wherever found, revert, as trinities, to three forms of one god, first duplicated and then made threefold. 9 As an il¬ lustration, he cites the Arabian Uzza, worshipped in three trees and regarded as threefold. But Usener over¬ looks the fact that the bipartite or tripartite form intro¬ duces a specialization or differentiation, just as the dif¬ ferent Roman Jupiters or the saints of today of the same name but of different shrines are practically different persons arising in most cases from a consolidation of a totally different power with a form of the nominal power. A virgin of Lourdes cures only at that shrine; a Jupiter Dolichenus is not the same as a Jupiter Heliopolitanus. Nor is it at all probable that three heads imply three persons in every case. Three heads as well as three eyes (also in Usener’s view indicative of three persons) be¬ long both to Shiva and to the demon slain by Vishnu, but neither the god nor the demon had three bodies. Hekate as three-bodied is the result of a late identification with two other goddesses or (the ancients were not sure) of the idea that she had three powers or represented three forms of the moon. The three goddesses of destruction in the Rig-Veda called Nirritis, perhaps of the under-world, are an esoteric development (‘‘known to the wise”) of o Usener in Iihcinisches Museum fur Phil., 1903, pp. 31 ff., followed by Soederblom, op. cit., supports this as one of three theses, namely, that all three-headed gods revert to three separate forms as duplicates of an original one form; that all triads revert to duads; and that three was higher than man could originally count and hence became, as Diehls before Usener said, “the typical end-number. ’ ’ THE TRIAD 299 one earth-goddess (Nerthus?). Priapus is triphallus not because he had three but because he had one huge phallus. So Gervon’s three forms mav have meant an original huge form. The three heads in any case do not imply three bodies in the case of Marici or of three-faced Mava (mother of Buddha). An Egyptian goddess with a human face and the face of a dog and of a goat or cow is an exact parallel to uniform three-headed Marici. Hermes’s three heads merely meant that he watched all wavs, as Janus watches two ways, and the Zeus Herkaios of Argos had three eyes for the same reason. An excellent example is Argus, whose many watchful eyes appear as three ac¬ cording to Pherekydes. If in this case the three eyes implied bodies, as TTsener says (p. 183), then Argus’s usual form would imply a multiplicity of bodies. But, as already shown, primitive artistry indicates the super¬ natural by multiplicity in designing superior powers, the many-breasted Artemis, the eleven-headed Avalo- J 7 kiteshvara of Tibet, the three-eyed guardian gods, the three-headed monster robbed of cattle and slain by In- dra. His counterpart was robbed of his cattle by Hera- kles. But if in fact this monster is the original of Geryon, the Hindu type is distinctly not three-bodied, though three-headed. Unless we are prepared to believe that an eleven-headed god is a development from a god with eleven bodies we may not assert that a three-headed god implies one with three forms. But there is one three-headed god who actually is trini¬ tarian in that he appears in three distinct manifestations embodying one spiritual power. This is the Yedic “three- headed Fire-god” Agni (Latin ignis ), whose threefold¬ ness gives him a number of epithets and invocations based thereon, “with threefold protection be kind,” etc. He is the “bull with three faces” and is “born of three mothers,” the “god of three places,” and his ritual is 300 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION based on the same number. Three times he goes about the sacrifice; the bride thrice circumambulates the god Fire; his earthly sacrificial places are three. As the Or- pliics identified Iielios and fire, so the Hindus identified sun, fire, and lightning and, as the Rig-Veda says, 4 4 they called variously him who is really one. ” He mediates between man and the gods by carrying offerings to the gods and bestowing in turn divine blessings; but he does not mediate between man and any one high god. He is simply the “messenger” to and from all the gods and he himself is the first receiver of the oblation, petitioned directly, not only as mediator, with prayers for help and wealth. As Fire, he is heat and creative power both in the sun and in all reproductive powers; hence a crea¬ tor-god, both Father-god to man and a cosmic creator; but at the same time he is a destructive force, burning houses and sinners. He is invoked as protector of law and destroyer of sinners (perhaps implying a fire-ordeal); he was born in the sky and brought to man by the will of the gods (not against the divine will, as in the Prome¬ theus story), or by certain “fire-priests.” The trinitarian character of Agni is made manifest in the descriptions of him as sun, lightning, and fire, “the threefold light, the eternal fire, the Creator with many names, to be worshipped as Vishnu, as Indra, as Varuna, as Rudra, the maker [creator], the sun, Bhaga [the Slavic form of this name means ‘God’], who blesses even wdien he burns.” Mystically, he is the priest and the oblation (the divine in the offering), as he says: “I am the three-fold Light, the heat, and the oblation.” He is Indra and Varuna because these gods are those of the storm and rain of the sky and Agni is born as lightning in rain, “the son of the water.” 10 io References to the Vedic passages cited will be found in the writer’s Religions of India. THE TRIAD 301 This is indeed a trinity, the earliest known. But it is a trinity of a peculiar sort. There is no interrelation of the constituents. Agni is not son of the sun; he is the sun. At most, in a mystic hymn, RV., 1, 164, 1, fire (of the sacri¬ fice) is a brother to the lightning and to the sun. But usually these three are not three forms of one hut the one in three places. Lightning is not a form of fire or brother of fire, hut fire in the clouds, as the sun is fire in the sky; hence Agni’s standing epithet is not “having three forms,” hut “having three abodes,” on earth, in the clouds, in the sky, or, as the ritual prefers to interpret it, having three altars. He has also three names, rather than three forms, and is so called, trinaman, “having three names.” 11 Of these fires, in the course of time, two be¬ came members of the later popular trinity, but under different names, the sun as Vishnu, lightning as Shiva, identified with Rudra the lightning-god. The third mem¬ ber preserved only the idea of the Creator-god, one of the many aspects of Agni. With this introduction we may turn to the history of the only real trinities, those of the Brahmans, the Bud¬ dhists, and the Greeks or Christians. They are not, like those hitherto considered, mythological, but philosophi¬ cal, though they are ensconced in a mythological nomen¬ clature. ii Compare Eros, Himeros, and Pothos as names (aspects) of one god. Triads are common in the Rig-Veda, groups such as Mitra, Aryaman, Va- runa, and fire, wind, sun, but the parts are not identical and the triad is casual, another god or name being often added to the group. More common is the Vedic grouping in pairs, sky and earth, Varuna and Mitra, Indra and Agni; but there is no Vedic parallel to the “ goddess and son” pair of Semitic mythology. CHAPTER XVIII THE HINDU TRINITY The Hindu trinity in both forms may be called the Bralimanic in distinction from the Buddhistic trinity, but in reality the earlier form is Hindu and popular rather that priestly (Brahmanic) and orthodox. In both forms it retains the original sun-god, Vishnu, though in the philosophic interpretation this is so much a mere name that any other name meaning the active Supreme Power would do as well, even as, already in the Rig- Veda. Agni mav be called by various names and is actu- ally god of life and of death, creator and destroyer. The Trimurti or ‘‘three form” trinity is, as has been intimated, a later adaptation of Vedic gods of a popular sort to a priestly conception of a creator; primarily it is two thirds phenomenal, one third philosophical. But Vishnu and Shiva, the two chief gods, had long since ceased to be phenomena; they were no more the sun and lightning than Zeus to the Greeks was" sky or Thor to the Teutons thunder. Each of the three was a god with a long mythology behind him; stories of personal exploits exalted each; each had his own ardent worshippers. They first began to be grouped together, just as Zeus and his brothers were grouped, because they stood out promi¬ nently as superior gods in their several environments, not because they represented in the slightest degree a unified god or trinity. It was a group not even wholly triadic, for other great gods were often made members of the whole group. Negligently triadic, not at all trini¬ tarian, it appears first in the sub-Vedic period of the THE HINDU TRINITY 303 philosophical tracts called Upanishads. Their authors conceived the idea of One Supreme Spirit and they say of it that it is One and that ‘‘this One is called Brahman, Shiva, Indra, Eternal Lord,” by way of illustration of what the One is; but a later redaction of this passage 1 in¬ serts Vishnu (Hari) between Shiva and Indra, thus lead¬ ing off with the three of the Trimurti, albeit not in their later order, as if an early Christian, seeing the statement that God was Father and Son, had inserted Holy Spirit between the two. In another tract, the All-Soul is depicted as active in the form of the triad, fire, wind, sun, and again in that of Brahman, Rudra [Shiva], and Vishnu. The same tract in the following section 2 has a hymn to the All-Soul beginning: “Thou art Brahman, Vishnu, Rudra [Shiva], Prajapati, Agni, Varuna, Vayu [wind], Indra, the night-god [Moon] ”; and then identifies Brah¬ man with energy, Vishnu with pure being (goodness), and Rudra (Shiva) with darkness or sloth, that is, with the three different constituents of being according to the dualistic philosophy. Similarly, in the Brahma Upani- shad, out of a group of more than these three members these three are selected as the most prominent in the declaration that the soul when awake is Brahman; when dreaming, Vishnu; when in profound sleep, Rudra [Shiva] ; as in trance it is the Supreme Power, “the im¬ mortal One, who is Sun, Vishnu, Shiva, spirit, soul, Fire.” It is clear from such grouping that the triad is not originally trinitarian and that the triad itself is a more or less fortuitous group of high gods loosely connected in contrast with other ritual groups of three, as they are juxtaposed, for example, in the Brahma Vidya Upani- shad with triads of Vedas, of fires, etc. But gradually 1 Mahanar, 11, 12. 2 Maitr., 4, 5, and 5, 1. 304 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION they became the most outstanding forms of the All-Soul. So in the Dhyanabindu (Up., 11-17), Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva appear thus; parallel to which is the utterance of the Rama-uttara-tapaniya (5) that “Rama is Brah¬ man, Vishnu and the Lord [Shiva].” In the former Yoga Upanishad we find too the important statement, to which we shall have to refer later, that “Vishnu out of his grace 3 became man” ( ibid .). This, too, is the triad in¬ tended when in late Smriti literature, as in Vishnu Smriti, 31, 7, it is asserted that the triad of father, mother, and spiritual teacher are as worthy of reverence as “the three Vedas, the three gods, the three worlds, and the three fires.” Nevertheless, a triad which casually admits a fourth member is not yet a trinity and this is the case in the Kaivalva Upanishad (8), where the Su¬ preme Spirit is declared to be “Brahman, Shiva, Indra, Vishnu, the Fire of destruction, and the Moon,” and in the Shiva Upanishad Atharvashikha, which derives “Brahman, Vishnu, Rudra, Indra” from the All-Soul Shiva. In the Vishnu tracts, the Supreme Spirit is simi¬ larly Vishnu, who then stands at the head of the triad, Vishnu, Shiva, Brahman (Nrisinha-uttara-tapaniya, 9). Here, in this sectarian interpretation of divinity, we have the key to the Trimurti, which is comparatively modern. It is not recognized before the third or fourth century of our era, when the Trimurti is formally estab¬ lished as three forms of One God. Epic literature gives no hint of such a consummation till its very end and even then what is really celebrated is the duad, Vishnu and Shiva as One God. Brahman comes into the group as a matter of form, because it was impossible for the sectarian worshipper to deny the old orthodox Crea¬ tor, who had been chief of the pantheon, the old Father of gods and men, since the end of the Vedic age. More- 3 Still earlier, man is saved through the grace of the All-Soul. THE HINDU TRINITY 305 over, the orthodox priests themselves were all more or less sectarian, that is, they lived in an environment of Vislmu-worshippers or of Shiva-worshippers and were not inclined to deny the majesty of the god everybody regarded as paramount, though ritualistically they still saluted Brahman as head-god. Then, too, while each of these gods was complete in himself, each being creator, preserver, and destroyer, 4 yet Brahman’s special repute was that of creator, Vishnu’s that of preserver, and Shiva’s that of destroyer, so that it was not difficult to make each into a specialist, so to speak, and consider the three as representative of the three special functions. It was an easy matter to make Shiva hark back to his origi¬ nal lightning-power, Vishnu to his sun-power, which they had never really lost, and say, ‘Here you have the god of kindly light, the sun, representing preservation; here, the god of destructive lightning; and here the old Crea¬ tor.’ A compromise was thus effected between the or¬ thodox Brahmanic faith and the two warring sects, who from early times had cried out, “Our god is the god.” They united, but with the tacit admission that each sect might continue to hold its own god in greatest esteem. The Shivaite said, “These three are one, but mine is the greatest”; the Vishnuite replied, “These three are one, but mine is the greatest.” So a Vishnu-tract says that the three gods are forms of the One God, but the other two were born of or created by Vishnu, and the Shiva- tract says the same only substituting Shiva for Vishnu. 5 This attitude still obtains in India and these two are still the popular gods, with many temples, but rare or unique are the temples of Brahman and there is no 4 Traces of the belief in Brahman as exercising all these functions are found in the Mahabharata. See the writer’s Epic Mythology, p. 193. 5 To explain the Trimurti by a casual identification of the three gods with the three gunas of Shankhya philosophy, is temerarious. The gunas are fitted to the group already known. 306 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION temple 6 of the trinity. In short, the 14 trinitarian’’ mass worship either Vishnu or Shiva but rarely conjoin them and practically never notice Brahman. But the formal equation representing godhead under the thr.ee aspects of creation, preservation, and destruc¬ tion, went beyond the original conception of a destruc¬ tion caused by lightning and extended it to the idea of world-destruction, so that the series represented a cosmic development and the trinity expressed past, present, and future. Yet in truth, so little stress is laid on the trini¬ tarian conception that even in the epic appendix called Harivansha the duad Hari-Harau (Vishnu-Shiva) is the real object of laudation: “These two highest gods are in their nature one” (10672 f.). The sects are still active in India; a rivalry between them still exists; their adherents are marked with different devices. In the Puranas each god is worshipped separately. Each sect still asserts that, though the equation Vishnu == Shi va=One holds good, yet Shiva or Vishnu (as the case may be) is distinctly in¬ ferior to the other rival god. No Hindu philosopher has ever taken this trinity seriouslv and no theologian has discussed it. In the Shiva manifestation, divinity is androgynous and the “female potency’’ becomes at times so prominent as to result in the worship of God as mother. This is most pronounced in the later Tantric (Shakta) form of Shi- vaistic religion (amalgamated with Buddhism), which asserts that the Divine Female Power is superior to all the three gods of the trinity; but it is also common in popular belief. Thus in South India the mother-form of God becomes so important that Ellamma (Mother God) is described as the hen which hatched out the trinitv. 6 The three-faced statue in the caves of Elephanta is said to be a statue of Shiva. But the first doctrine is el.a murtis trayo devds (H. 10660), which implies three gods in one body (a triceps?). THE HINDU TRINITY 307 This belief, however, is found also among the mystics. Eamkrishna, the teacher of Vivekananda, especially af¬ fected the worship of the Mother-Spirit of God. People in sorrow or of a sentimental religiosity are rather in¬ clined to turn to the Mother as more sympathetic, even when she is not a mediating saint or virgin. The Hindu interpretation may be compared with the early Chris¬ tian interpretation of the Holy Spirit as Mother-power of God. 7 It will have been observed that in the Trimurti there is no original interrelation of the members. Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva do not stand to each other in any family relation or in any metaphysical relation. When the triad was first formed there was no idea of its rep¬ resenting God as past, present, and future; each member represented a special aspect of the One, but only as any other member, incidentally added, might represent an aspect. There was nothing philosophical in the group; it was only a mythological illustration of divine aspects. The really important trinity of the Hindus is, as every such trinity must be, one not based on local conditions, historical and mythological, but built upon universal truths. Of these there are but three in the world (we may except the crude trinitarianism of the Egyptian Serapis) 8 and two of them are so closely connected historically and metaphysically that they might be treated as two presen¬ tations of the same system; but as each of the two has its own special background it will make the matter clearer to explain each by itself. Incidentally, it may be remarked 7 The erotic rites of this Hindu mysticism may be illustrated by the parallel eroticism of the Gnostic mater viventium (triadic, as father, mother, and son). But in India, it has been observed, the divine female element is more active and stimulating than the male; in China, the male is more active. s Serapis as Osiris and Apis, the bull, with the cow-moon, Isis, and child, Horus. 308 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION that these two, the Brahmanic and Buddhistic trinities, are both considerably later than the Christian trinity, with which, however, they have no historical connection. 9 We have seen, first, that the belief in incarnate divinity reverts to savage notions of beasts which harbor the souls of men or are gods in animal forms temporarily assumed (in distinction from really animal gods). A ghost, demon, or god can assume a human form or can be born in human form. A god can be born thus and yet continue to live in heaven in his true form, according to the mythological lore of Greece and India, and when this happens the liuman-born representative is recognized as a son of the god or as a “part” of the god. To generalize, a particular person may be especially divine and, con¬ versely, if a man seems to be especially full of power, physical or spiritual, this power is often explained as the result of his divine paternity. Again, we have seen that, as early as the Upanishads, a tlieistic element work¬ ing in a pantheistic environment had already tried to explain the active energy of the spiritual power called the All-Soul by the assumption that when the All-Soul would manifest itself it did so in the form of the ener¬ getic, creative, spiritual power called the god, or by the special name of a god; that Vishnu and Shiva were the names most popular in connection with this manifesta¬ tion ; and, finally, that Vishnu became so prominent as a name of God that he was regarded as the Supreme Being who by his grace became a man. Thirdly, we have seen that the philosopher demanded as the substratum of the universe a being without parts, known only by negations (that is, indefinable), called Brahma (neuter) but also 9 The Trimurti, of course, is in its formation older than Christianity, as its tentative beginnings revert to the Upanishad period; but the com¬ pleted doctrine, the idea of the Three in One, like the name Trimurti, is also later than our era. First, three or more gods are forms of the One. THE HINDU TRINITY 309 (to emphasize its spirituality as not mere matter) called All-Soul. This All-Soul or World-Soul is then the Abso¬ lute, Brahma, Power. 10 It was with such mythological and metaphysical ele¬ ments that the philosophers operated when they created the Brahmanic trinity. As a matter of fact they did not care for the human-divine member and very little for */ Vishnu or Shiva. They were intent on explaining the origin of the world and satisfied their own religious needs by proving that they themselves were one with Brahma. But at the same time they recognized that ordi¬ nary men wished a more substantial god and that count¬ less thousands of their fellow men believed that such a god existed and had become incarnate on earth in the persons of Krishna and Rama. 11 They themselves be¬ lieved after a fashion in a god of this sort, but usually they preferred to call God by the name of Shiva. In that case they ignored Vishnu and his incarnations altogether or gave them only the grudging, somewhat contemptuous recognition which they accorded to idols as “harboring the divine, ” while they occupied themselves with demon¬ strating that the world was an illusion or was not an illu¬ sion and that “God” was really an illusion or was a projection or form of the Absolute, according to the 10 Such, in the writer’s opinion, was the primary, as it is the etymologi¬ cal, meaning of Brahma, which became in the Vedas a spell of power or charm under the form of prayer. Most modern writers, however, regard Brahma as originally “prayer” and secondarily ‘ 1 power.” Deussen, after arguing that it means prayer, translates it regularly with ‘ 1 power, ” be¬ cause by the beginning of the philosophical period that was its real mean¬ ing. This word as neuter (brahma like Karma and Greek pragma ) must be distinguished from Brahman, masculine, the Creator-god, which in turn is (unfortunately) the present English form of Brahmana, the priest or Brahmin. More unfortunately, many writers use brahman for brahma and Brahma or Brahma for the name of the god. In the original, the two words are differentiated by gender and accent. 11 See above, pp. 70, 87. 310 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION schools of thought they represented, that of pure ideal¬ ism or that of “mixed” idealism. Rama and Krishna, the incarnate forms of Vishnu, were not at first divine through him but in their own right as superhuman men or demigods. They were drawn, however, into the list of avatars or earthly de¬ scents of the god, who had also appeared upon earth in animal-guise, as in the fish that saved Mann, the boar- form and ape-form, in each case, be it noticed, not because of a whim but because the god in his kindness wished to help or save earth and its creatures, either from physi¬ cal misfortune or from moral evil. As late as the Bhaga- vad Gita and the end of the original Ramayana the he¬ roes Krishna and Rama were still independent, not yet forms of the All-Soul or of Vishnu as manifestation of the All-Soul. But a little before the Christian era the popular adulation of these heroes of antiquity led to their being accepted as human descents (incarnations) of Vishnu, who was, to a multitude of people, the Su¬ preme Spirit. Their faith may be stated thus: There is one Supreme Spirit, maker and preserver and eventual destroyer of this world. He is good and merciful. He pities man’s helplessness and when the world goes wrong, physically or morally, this god descends to earth to aid it, being born in an earthly form. Thus, though divine, he lives as a man among men, fighting against evildoers, teaching truth and right, and bringing man back to God, the Supreme Spirit. Whoever believes on him in his hu¬ man incarnation and in proof of belief follows his law, expressing that belief verbally or by doing what he com¬ manded, shall at death come to him and abide with him in paradise. This belief is strictly a modified monotheism, polythe¬ istic in form, for it does not deny the existence of a great host of other gods, but still essentially monotheistic. Only THE HINDU TRINITY 311 one God is of real account. The liberal sectarian believers granted that both Rama and Krishna were true incarna¬ tions of Vishnu ; 12 the narrower sort held that only Rama or only Krishna was the true incarnation, but both agreed that Vishnu was God. Such a creed, when overhauled by the idealist philosophers, who harked back to the All-Soul as an undifferentiated Absolute, appeared in rather a different fashion. Not only did they grant that Rama and Krishna were both forms of Vishnu to all seeming, but they said that Vishnu and Shiva were both equally divine forms of the All-Soul, whose lack of all qualities makes it (as Brahma) indefinable, though it may be explained or postulated as being, intelligence, joy, which is the sum total that can be said of Brahma as All-Soul. This to them was God, namely, the undefinable universal spirit, stripped bare of non-essentials. To them, the idealists, it was a matter of indifference whether one called God by the name of Vishnu or Shiva, for both were only forms of the One; still more a matter of indifference whether one worshipped Vishnu under the form of Krishna or Rama. But these forms were entrenched in the field of popular religion; they served a good purpose in keeping ignorant people virtuous. Besides, Vishnu, however in¬ terpreted, was lauded in the Rig-Veda and Shiva was a supreme god in the age immediately following the early Veda; both were revered under the banner of orthodoxy and even to the philosophers orthodoxy was the only right belief. The philosophers tried to be orthodox; every truth they enunciated was carefully bolstered up by ap¬ peals to orthodoxy. “Thus saith the holy Veda” was a better argument than any logic. The effort cost them a great deal; it made them dependent upon tradition and 12 The deification of Krishna has a modern parallel in the outspoken belief that Kabir ( c. 1500 A. D.) was an incarnation of God. Theological^, God became Kabir; historically, Kabir became God. 312 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION weakened them as world-thinkers, as a modern system of philosophy would be weakened by forcing it to agree with Genesis. But it had advantages from the dialectic side. For holy tradition contradicted itself so often that one conld al¬ ways find a support for any theory in it. Thus in the great, the burning question whether creation was il¬ lusory or real and if real, whether the material world was identical with Brahma or not, there was equal au¬ thority for either view in the inspired Vedas and Upani- sliads (now equal to the Vedas in prestige). So the view of the philosopher Sliankara, which did not deny the practical reality of Vishnu and the world but held that the real existence of everything except immanent spirit is illusory, was founded on tradition as well as on logic; while the opposed view of Ramanuja, that the world is not illusive but real and is, as it were, the body of God, was also based on tradition and upheld by logic. Of the human soul, Shankara taught that it is eternal Brahma and is not individual (though it seems to be so), while Ramanuja taught that it is eternal but not identical with the All-Soul. Ramanuja proved from revelation that Brahma develops; Shankara, that the development is illusory. Between these two schools, religion naturally inclined to the one which taught that a real personality rather than an illusory personality underlies what the ordinarv man calls God. It required a god real enough to have qualities; it demanded a soul whose individuality was not a farce. Because the founder of this school lived in South India, where the cult of Vishnu was vyell known (though he did not especially “follow Rama,” as his name would indicate), the religious philosophy of his school took Vishnu as the form of the divine (Shankara rather fa¬ vored Shiva as a name). It is significant that this reli- 313 THE HINDU TRINITY gious philosophy flourished first as a religion fostered by “ songs of devotion, ” somewhat as the early Christians sang songs to Christ as God (Pliny) before there was any trinitarian creed. Pious hymns rather than reasoned philosophy expressed religious belief. These hymns were, so to speak, a human answer to the inhuman idea of God which from the ninth to the eleventh century had been accepted as incontrovertible. The poor people did not know what to say to Shankara and his illusive God and illusive soul. They did not say anything. They kept on loving Rama, the man-god, and adoring God, in songs of great spiritual beauty. Then among them rose others of superior intelligence who said, “Our faith can be proved,” and finally Ramanuja proved it for them . 13 This faith was based on the love of God; its completed system under Ramanuja assumed three eternal principles, the Supreme Lord (God), thinking beings (souls), and the unthinking world (matter). Brahma is all three. In a great Upanishad it is said that the Supreme Lord or controlling Soul lives in all things “and all else is griev¬ ous,” ato ’nyad art am , 14 The antithesis here presented between the material wretched (evil) world of matter and its soul, which is one with the individual soul, is ex¬ plained thus. The individual soul and the material world are the body of the Supreme Soul. There is one entity, Brahma, consisting in the controlling Supreme Soul abiding in the individual soul and in the material world. Before creation the Supreme Soul exists in a subtle form and at creation develops as the universe. As efficient is Ramanuja’s greatness has overshadowed his predecessors, but there is reason to believe that he was rather the completer than the originator of his religious philosophy. He lived in the eleventh century; the work of Shankara (b. 788) belongs to the ninth. Ramanuja’s name for God was by preference Vasudeva or Narayana, as title of Vishnu. 14 Briliad Ar. Up., 3, 7, 23. Ramanuja upheld the Pancaratra sect of Vishnuites. 314 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION cause, the inner soul of all wills to create but it is also the material cause of the existing world. This Supreme Soul, God, is the Lord. He is without defects or faults; he per¬ vades all, controls all; he is pure bliss and is possessed of knowledge and power; he is creator and destroyer; he confers blessings, prosperity, religious merit, and salvation. He is truly the Lord of the Celestial City in heaven. The individual soul, in Sliankara’s view, cannot be a part of Brahma because Brahma is 4 4 without parts. ” But Ramanuja made the soul a part of God and his successor Madliva went further and made it a different thing from Brahma (this directly opposed inspired authority), while, in Northern India, theology interpreted the soul as a metamorphose of Brahma, and taught that the grace of God was won by approximation to God’s character. It was to these churches, as we may call them, all one, whether a man preferred to love Rama or love Krishna, but the cult of Rama led to a rather cleaner spiritual mysticism than did that of Krishna, whose devotees were apt to lose themselves in erotic mysticism, practiced un¬ der the name of 44 loving faith,” bhakti, which some emi¬ nent scholars think has been influenced by Christian 4 4 love ’ ’ of God. Be that as it may, there was a steady set of the religious tide toward a practically monotheistic in¬ terpretation of the world, for, though nominally pan¬ theistic, the whole weight of the religion lay in stressing the personality of God, the Creator, the (not illusive) soul of man dependent on this God, and the identity of God with the All-Soul or Absolute. Man’s soul is self- illumined, blissful, immortal, subject to God’s control, dependent for existence on God; it shares with God self- consciousness, knowledge, the union of soul and body (epitome of All-Soul and world), and agency . 15 One must is On the other hand, according to Shankara, the All-Soul does not THE HINDU TRINITY 315 yield all to God, having faith that he will protect and save and praying to him to save. Surrender to God, prapatti, is the keynote of the religions life. There are two diver¬ gent later schools, based on the relation between God’s grace and man’s effort in effecting salvation. According to the Northern school (the term is relative, both schools being in South India), the initiative comes from the wor¬ shipper, as a young monkey, to be saved, seizes its mother round the neck; according to the Southern school, the initiative comes from God, as a cat, to save its kit, seizes it in her mouth, the kit making no effort. Self-surrender, according to the cat-doctrine, is necessary; according to the monkey-doctrine, it is a means of salvation employed only by those intellectually incapable of employing other means. Perhaps it is not without connection with this distinction that only the school holding the cat-doctrine admits low-caste men to equal treatment with their social superiors and that it has adopted the unethical view that viciousness is dear to God because it offers him more field for exercising his grace and love ( doshabhogya ). According to the Krishna-worship of the North, in the theology of Caitanya, Krishna as God appears in the forms intelligence, consciousness, love, and joy (or sportiveness), which are personified, as holy beings. Love here replaces the mind and sportiveness replaces the self- consciousness of the older system of Ramanuja, in which these are derivatives of the Supreme Lord . 16 The religion, as a whole, though nominally pantheistic, is not only monotheistic but trinitarian. Its creed is that God is immanent, but, as self-conscious, the spirit of God is a personal Holy Spirit; in this form God became in- have the attribute of intelligence but is pure thought and the individual soul has neither substantiality nor agency, nor is it dependent on God. 16 Compare Sir E. G. Bhandarkar, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Minor Religious Systems, pp. 52 ff., and, for the Vedanta, Paul Deussen, Outlines of Indian Philosophy (1907). 316 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION carnate on earth, to deliver man from sin; and, since in him the Holy Spirit was made flesh, worship and love are due to him, the god-man, even as to God. The later parallel in the mysticism of this ‘‘love of God” to the mystical eroticism of Christian saints has already been animadverted upon. But it need not be over¬ emphasized. In fact, for pure love of God, sweetness, nobility, humility, for charming examples of the ecstatic vision, one may turn to the saints of India, both Shivaite and Vishnuite, as they have mourned and rejoiced in this plastic religion, where often only one member of the trinity is thought of by the worshipper. But, be his cry Hari or Kama, be his supplication made to Shiva or to Vishnu or to Vishnu’s incarnate representative, it is al¬ ways with the conviction that God is One, though natu¬ rally enough the saint and the philosopher see from dif¬ ferent angles, and with the former God as the Absolute is not so prominent as is God the Ruler, the Creator. Thus practically the humble worshipper is apt to come back to the theism with which his religious system began, a belief in God and his incarnate divine representative on earth. Nevertheless, he has by tradition an elaborate theological system and, if interrogated, will explain that, before becoming the active Spirit, who is really one with God, God as All-Soul is immanent in the universe, as he is in the human soul; that the world is to God as man’s body is to his soul. The pure Shivaite also sees in Shiva the one who is both God and godhead, but his religion goes hack to a svstem which regards God as distinct from the world which he creates and religiouslv he is inclined to be a dualist rather than a monist, while he recognizes no avatars of God. The relation between the popular and the philosophic trinity is simple. The Trimurti represents three stages or manifestations of the One, as a creative, preservative, THE HINDU TRINITY 317 and destructive divine Power, that is, as the active God, in distinction from the Absolute (godhead) of the phi¬ losopher; but since this Power, despite its active con¬ sciousness, is also the universe, it is at once God and godhead . 17 17 It is perhaps indicative of Christian influence that Bamanuja’s suc¬ cessor, Madhva, founded in the thirteenth century a theistic church which not only maintained that God was not one with the soul of man and the world, but established a trinity of Vishnu, Lakshmi (the female potency), and their divine son, Vayu, the Holy Spirit (vayu is etymologically con¬ nected with Latin ventus), incarnate in Madhva. In the Shiva cult of South India a similar divine son-god is Narayana (Ayenar), son of Shiva as father and of Vishnu as mother (Vishnu in female manifestation), though originally Narayana was an independent quasi monotheistic god, who has thus been subordinated to the two great figures of the Trimurti through adoption as their son. Usually the feminizing of male divinities is rather a Buddhistic than Brahmanie trait (compare li Mother Buddha, Kuannon, etc.), and the androgynous spirit is more apt to be Shiva than Vishnu. CHAPTER XIX THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY The Buddhistic trinity reverts to an incredibly simple beginning*, namely, to the formula of confirmation which the professing Buddhist took when he became a member of the Congregation (Church): “I take my refuge in (Gotama) Buddha and in the Dliamma (Law) and in the Church. ” This was the formula when Gotama Buddha, a venerable but not divine teacher, was instructing the world that there was no God and that man did not have an immortal soul. Later, yet still early, came the concep¬ tion of Buddha as Supreme Lord, of the Bodhisat as the corporeal but superior Holy Spirit, and of Gotama (the man Buddha) as an incarnation of the divine Buddha. These, be it observed, are both triads, Teacher, Law, and Congregation, and Supreme Lord, Holy Spirit, Incarnate Savior. But in what way could this second triad arise from the first? To the primitive Buddhist, the mainstay of his religion was the personal Gotama Buddha, who was already a superman and after his death naturally became exalted as a spiritual Lord, adored, in pious fancy, by all divine beings, as he was revered on earth with an almost mono¬ theistic devotion. While living, his personality was mag¬ netic; he must have been a wonderful man, spiritual, sympathetic, wise, and tender; one can see that, even at this distance. Such a man, dead though he was, could not die. Personal devotion to the man, the superman, was transferred to him as a spirit. The man Buddha became secondary. To the later churchman of the Congregation the only “refuge” was the Supreme Spiritual Being, to THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 319 whom he gave the same title, Buddha. So Gotama be¬ came a spiritual Power. As for the Law, the Word of the earthly master was left to his Congregation as the in¬ spired Law which he himself had dictated and which after his death should represent him; he thus became incor¬ porate in the Law. Hence the early Church said, “The Law is the Buddha.’ ’ Again, as for the Church, the more profound members of the Church, versed in the wisdom of the master and, like him, endowed (it was thought) with superhuman powers, were known as Bodhisats, Il¬ luminati, attached to transcendent illumination (but also, by virtue of their power, wizards, wiseacres), whom, as a group, the Church idealized. These Bodhisats rose as the master, in historical advance, was exalted from hu¬ man to superhuman, from superhuman to divine or su¬ perdivine, until, when Buddha had become a supreme spiritual Lord, the Bodhisats, representing his Church, still accompanied him (in the thought of the devout) as spiritual powers that surrounded him and were “almost as wise” as he. They were, in fact, in a manner to be explained immediately, conceived as one with himself. Thus, since the Law was Buddha and the Church in Bodhisat form was Buddha, the primitive triad of con¬ firmation became the symbol of a metaphysical One Bud¬ dha, who was at once the Supreme Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and the Incarnate Spirit. The Bodhisats were now no longer the perfected saints of early belief; they had become higher than the angels, a host of spirits, each of whom was in fact an embryonic Buddha. It was believed that they came into being only through Karma as a hidden cause, no outward cause being known, but they were without parents, corporeal existences beyond phe¬ nomena, who, if they would, could exercise all magical powders, becoming invisible, passing through solids, walk¬ ing on water, travelling through space, not to speak of 320 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the lesser powers that were shared even by human adepts, such as causing earthquakes. But an earthquake always ensues “whenever a Bodliisat deliberately leaves his heaven to be reborn on earth” as an incarnate Buddha. In this last statement lies the implication of the one¬ ness of the Buddha and the Bodliisat, who began by being a saint of the Yogi type but was admired even by the primitive Congregation as a perfected heavenly being, corporeal and capable of performing magical acts. As the crown of saintliness the Bodliisat deliberatelv lowers himself to be born of a woman and appear on earth as the savior of men. In other words, Buddha has a preced¬ ent stage as a Bodliisat. The Supreme Being called Tathagata (Buddha) is a perfected Bodliisat. The High Council, circa 300 B. C., in which was the nucleus of the High Church (called Maliayana), had already inter¬ preted Buddha as the supernatural, omniscient, spiritual Buddha, who lived on earth as Gotama after a precedent heavenly existence as a Bodliisat. The difference between a Buddha and a Bodliisat otherwise is merelv one of relative wisdom or knowledge. A Bodliisat knows almost everything, but a Buddha knows everything. The Bo- dhisat forms known as Avalokiteshvara, etc., are not yet Buddhas. Such great spirits stand to right and left of the Buddha, fanning him in sign of devotion and in¬ feriority. The Lotus of the Good Law, a text composed in the first centuries of our era, calls them “sons of the Lord of the world, ” lohadliipatisya putras, and says that the Tathagata Buddha “from the beginning, ” adit as, roused them to become Bodhisats (Saddh., 14, 37). In this Lotus of the Good Laic, Buddha, as “king of law,” says of himself: “I am the Father of the world, the self-born, the Healer, the jirotector of all creatures.” In other words, Buddha has here taken the place of the Brahmanic Creator-Father, as, like him also, Buddha is enthroned THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 321 upon a lotus-seat. In plain imitation of the Bhagavcidgita, the Lotus says that the Lord “does not rest,” though he might do so; that he neither loves nor hates anyone and is indifferent toward morality and immorality, heresy and orthodoxy: “I am the Lord who appear in the world to save it; I love none, hate none; I feel the same toward the moral and the immoral, the heretic and the true be¬ liever. ’ n But Buddha is not yet an everlasting personal God. He is one of a series of an almost endless succession of cyclic Buddhas. The Buddha of today as a form is rather paeneternal than sempiternal. Yet when the Lord says he is everlasting he means that other Buddhas before and after are forms of himself. There is one Buddha, who appears in successive cycles in successive forms. Between this Supreme Buddha and the incarnate Buddha (such as Gotama), the Bodliisat is a connecting link; he is an apparitional corporeal body whose reflex is the earthly Buddha. This idea of precedent Buddhas is quite primi¬ tive ; they were at first, however, limited, to three, to six, to thirty-four, till later they became innumerable and were recognized as forms of one universal Buddha. The belief practically amounted to this, that each cycle (and by human computation a cycle is a little eternity) has in turn its Supreme Lord Buddha, its special Bodhisat, and its earthly incarnate Buddha. The Lotus itself glorifies as risen Lord the once incar¬ nate Gotama, while the later appendix rather glorifies Avalokiteshvara, who is also revered in the Karanda- i Lotus, 5, 22 f.; 14, 43 (aditas) ; 15, 21. Chapters 21-26 are in the na¬ ture of an appendix. The Lotus was translated into Chinese c. 265-316 A. D. and may be referred to about 200 A. D.; the appendix is perhaps fifty years later. Its conception of Bodhisats is still in part that of elders, as if still earthly saints. Cf. ibid., 3, and 18, 17. For the Gita, compare 3, 22, and 9, 29, “no man is hateful [to God] nor beloved” (for himself). See Kern’s Lotus, Introduction, SBE. XXI. 322 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Vyulia, where lie is regarded as an emanation from the original Buddha and as the savior who goes to hell to save sinners from their merited sufferings. This view is based on the belief that out of an infinite store of merit the savior can transfer his credit to the sinner, whose ransom is thus paid by the savior. In his mercy and kind¬ ness every Bodhisat resolves to sacrifice his own im¬ mediate felicity by vowing to save the world through the voluntary bestowal of his own merit for the salvation of all sinners. As Christ in Gnostic belief went to hell, so the Bodhisat goes to hell, to endure unmerited suffering, that thereby he may save the world. In his infinite com¬ passion he takes upon himself all sins and thus redeems all sinners. He “gives himself in exchange; for it is better that one should suffer than that the multitude should suffer.” Hence his vow: “Through my own suf¬ fering I will redeem the world from hell and from re¬ birth. May all the sorrows of the world be mine, for the benefit of all creatures. I will be the ransom for all and become a Buddha, not for my own sake, but to deliver the world. Mav all the sorrows of the world come to an end with me.” The Bodhisat is thus not a mediator, but of his own free will he is a savior, though his thought stirs in an¬ swer to the Buddha’s thought. The “gift of merit” was not unknown to primitive Buddhism; but in the High Church of later Buddhism it became a constant motive. Love for mankind, not, as in primitive Buddhism, desire of personal salvation, is the keynote of the High Church, and this love is expressed by self-sacrifice. In the Hina (or Low Church), though it was recognized that Gotama Buddha was himself a living example of self-sacrifice, yet the ideal was rather that of self-centred absorption in one’s own salvation. 2 2 Partly because the Mahayana treats the Hina as low (the Lotus uses the THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 323 It is interesting and not unimportant as a matter of religions history to know the origin of the names given to the various spiritual powers known as Buddhas and Bodhisats. In sum, these names are largely titles of Hindu gods. In other words, we find here a phenomenon parallel to the conversion of old Slavic gods into angels and saints of the Slavic Christian Church and the per¬ petual worship of Demeter in Greece (till the year 1801) under the name of Saint Demetra. Moreover, this loan from Hinduism to Buddhism is not confined to names of spirits. The hymn to Buddha in Mahavastu, 1, 163 f., breathes the very spirit of Puranic Hinduism. In short, as was to be expected, Buddhism in India caught up from its environment many Hindu features anew, as it had retained without questioning their validity the doctrines of innumerable gods and spirits and of hell as a place of future punishment. The greatest of these names is that of the Bodhisat Avalokiteshvara, which, contrary to modern opinion, really means what tradition says it is, “the Lord looking down with pity” (not “lord of the seen” or “revealed lord”). This is an echo of the old Yedic idea of a god looking down with pity, as this Bodhisat ’s other appella¬ tion, Lokanatha, “lord of the world,” is also an old epi¬ thet of Vishnu. 3 The figure of Avalokiteshvara in the Lalitavistara is essentially that of a great and merciful Bodhisat; but neither this work nor the older Mahavastu word 7iina of low occupations and condemns the Hina ideal as expressed by Arhats and Praty-eka hermits) and partly because the difference between the two Yanas (churches as means of salvation) is not without analogy to our Low and High Churches, it is possible to render by these terms Hina and Mahayana. But as with us, the two schools or churches never broke apart; they were always one Congregation of the Lord, however much they differed. Beformation did not sunder the spiritual union. s So * Juggernaut,’ jagannatha, is epithet of both Buddha and Vishnu as “Lord of the universe.” 324 ORIGIN ANI) EVOLUTION OF RELIGION knows a Bodliisat of this name. He surpasses the Hina Bodhisat Maitreya and appears almost as great as Amitabha, the Buddha of “endless light/’ to whom he stands, however, in the relation of sunlight to infinite light; though as ruler of the Western Paradise he prac¬ tically usurps the commanding position of Amitabha. It is, of course, especially his compassion which gives him religious vogue, as Mary, because of her compassion, be¬ came a Syrian deity. And Avalokiteshvara himself be¬ comes female in the Far East, which, having inherited a Buddhism mixed with Shivaism, created out of Avalo¬ kiteshvara its “goddess of mercy” (Ivuanyin, Kuannon) in China and Japan, where the Bodhisat is sometimes male or sexless but is generally female, very likely iden¬ tified with a corresponding local deity of female form. 4 In Tibet, it is Avalokiteshvara who is incarnate in the Dalai lama. Other epithets of these great spiritual powers, which have become their regular names, are “holder of the thunderbolt,” an epithet taken directly from Indra; “far-shining,” an old epithet of the sun-god, and the companion epithet “endless light,” also of solar origin. A triad of venerable figures is sometimes made of Gotama (who was), Avalokiteshvara (who is), and Mai¬ treya (who is to be), comparable to the time series ex¬ pressed by Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva; but such a group is not intended as a trinity. There are several such triads. One, which is popular in North India, is composed of Avalokiteshvara, as the spirit of mercy, Vajradhara (or Vajrapani, “holder of the thunderbolt”), as the spirit of power, and Manjushri, as the savior-teacher. This Manju- sliri (Shri is a complimentary title meaning his Grace) 4 In Wu-Tai, Biuldha himself is worshipped as Mother Buddha (to be distinguished from the “Mother of Buddhas,” a personification of the philosophic ‘void’). THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 325 was probably a missionary, who traversed the wild coun¬ try north of India proper and (like Buddha himself) has become practically deified (as Bodhisat); he is still adored with a cult in the Buddhist Japanese Kegon sect. The name Maitreya means (lord of) love or “lovingly disposed” and is an epic title of the sun, conjoined with one meaning “compassionate”; it refers always to a Bodhisat who is to come, a prediction of a Spirit of Love ruling the universe. As we saw in the analysis of the Hindu trinity that it reverts not so much to a polytheistic basis as to a strong monotheistic trend in Hindu thought, so (as just ex¬ plained) in Buddhism there was before the completed trinity an almost monotheistic expression, shown in the utterances of the Lotus, where a Father-god Creator Spirit is really the deity adored. This expression comes to the fore again in the mystic theory of trance-worlds. There are five groups of these trance-worlds and a sepa¬ rate trance-Buddha is assigned to each. Each trance- Buddha (Dhyani Buddha) then has his corresponding in¬ carnate form and his Bodhisat. The first of the Buddhas is Vairocana, the “far-shining,” who has virtually be¬ come God in Java and (as Biroshana) is revered in the Japanese Shingon sect. In the present age, the Buddha is Amitabha (“endless light”), his Bodhisat is Avalo- kiteshvara and his earthly incarnation is (the historical) Gotama. These powers were originally recognized by the early Church simply as spiritual manifestations. The idea of an emanation, which marks this trance-theory, is palpably late, probably not older than the seventh cen¬ tury; some scholars refer it to the tenth. It is really a Gnostic view, according to which the second member is an emanation from the first, the third an emanation from the second, and so on. The five are onlv of one division of time and the number is not necessarily confined to the 326 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION pentad. The idea of an Adi (original) Buddha may per¬ haps revert to the Lotus notion of the “ Buddha from the beginning, ’ ’ aditas, already mentioned, combined with that of trance-Buddhas. In completed form this doctrine appears as that of the Hina (Nepal) Adi-Bud- dlia, from whom emanate in five trances the five Buddhas of trance, each of whom by mental activity alone, after emerging from the Original or precedent Buddha, gives birth to the Bodliisat, who in turn creates the physical universe, all earthly Buddhas (such as Gotama) being reflexes of their Bodhisats. The Bodhisat and the incar¬ nate Buddha are thus one with the Original Buddha. This whole system lacks the stamp of orthodoxy and appears to be more Tantric than Buddhistic, but it was influential in visioning the idea of One God, though under a mystic form. We come now to the trinity. This is a further extension of the original triad in terms of metaphysics. The phi¬ losophy of primitive Buddhism was materialistic. It united, however, with the philosophy current among the Brahmans and developed into nihilism on the one hand but into idealism on the other. Now the two systems, of Brahmanism and Buddhism, are almost identical in the idealistic outcome. In Buddhistic idealism, there is no constant nature of things; distinctions are caused by the fallacy of the ego; all things are mental phenomena. Thus mental phenomena rest on the supreme reality of thought; undifferentiated thought is the basis of all be¬ ing; it is the dhamma, the same word that is used in primitive Buddhism to designate Law. The Body of Law, or the Buddha as Law, thus becomes Buddha as the Ab¬ solute, just as in Sliankara’s pure idealism it is Brahma as pure intelligence. Moreover, just as in Brahmanism the self-conscious form of Brahma is the god Vishnu, so in Buddhistic idealism the Lord (Buddha) is the active, THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 327 personal force of this Pure Being (or Absolute). At this point some modern interpreters argue that Pure Being itself, because of its operations in developed form, may be assumed to possess will and love. 5 But this is not the current philosophical point of view; it is rather a reli¬ gious interpretation thereof. Yet the Bodhisat, both as such and as Buddha in the developed stage, is an active personal Lord as form of the dhammci, to which or whom is given the name Body of Bliss. The third form is called the Body of Transformation, the “change form” of the same Absolute (equivalent to absolute Mind) in personal, incarnate appearance. That is, there is here, as in Brah¬ manism, a trinity of Mind, as the One, of active intelli¬ gence, as the Lord, and of Gotama, or any other super¬ man or teacher (even an artist), as incarnate expression of the same Mind-as-Pure-Being. Gotama of course dif¬ fers from Rama and Krishna in that these were divine before being conceived as forms of the trinity; but the adoring respect with which the historical Gotama Bud¬ dha was looked upon even in his lifetime made him at least a superhuman being. 6 Modern writers, especially those belonging to the Bud¬ dhist faith, naturally are inclined to think that Brail- manic philosophy, as expressed by the theory of relative truth, was borrowed from the Buddhists and point to the opprobrium cast upon Shankar a by his opponents (no- 5 This is the interpretation of Professor Suzuki, Outlines of Mcihayana Buddhism (1907), though he admits that few will agree with him. The Buddhist Absolute seems to be rather a still inchoate intelligence in the form of law or religion yet undeveloped acting as ‘ 1 support. ” It is difficult to imagine dhamma as devoid of all its old religious connotation, though mod¬ ern interpreters translate it by 11 support” or base of being. 6 Thus the earliest account of his death represents nature as convulsed with grief at the tragedy and the inhabitants of the various heavens, though gods themselves, as distracted with sorrow. The first Psalms of the primi¬ tive Buddhists also recognize that Gotama is ‘ ‘ Kin of the Sun, ’ ’ a divine being. 328 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION tably by Ramanuja's predecessor) as teaching, in his doc¬ trine of illusion, merely “a hidden Buddhist doctrine.” 7 But on the other hand it must not be forgotten that, long before Shankara, the foremost Buddhist philosophers were converted Brahmans, who doubtless based their philosophy on what they had already believed as Brah¬ mans as well as on what they received from the followers of their new faith. The idealist, far from agreeing with the nihilist that “nothing can be affirmed,” affirms the reality of mind and, according to some, even the reality of matter and individuality. To him, Buddha becomes a name for the real universe; the “void” becomes “empty thought,” thought free of attributes, or pure mind, without sub¬ ject, object, or conscious act; but, pragmatically, it may be identified for religious purposes with the idea of God; the quiescent Mind is the “womb of Buddha,” from which issue all individualities. To the pious, earthly and heavenly bodies are real; to the philosopher, docetic displays. It is thus that religion is permitted to convert the (real) “apex of nothingness” into a Creative Power, the Body of Bliss being also the Body of Support. The Nepal theory of the Original Buddha fits into this scheme, as he is to be regarded as only a personification of the impersonal Buddha, while the Body of Bliss corresponds to the Dhyani-Buddhas and Bodhisats, though, in stricter interpretation, Dhyani-Buddhas are archetypes and not permanent and even the Original Buddha is only of this aeon ; 8 while the Body of Bliss belongs to all time. ~ Mayavadam cisac chunam pracchannam bauddham ucyate. Compare, on this point, Louis de la Vallee-Poussin, in the Journal of the Boyal Asiatic Society, 1908, p. 885. s One thousand million times ten thousand aeons (Ivalpas) pass before a Buddha begins to grow old; but grow old he must and his time is not eternity. Ordinary Buddhas in the Adi-belief are emanations not docetic V V forms. That Gotama was a docetic form is a theory found in both High THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 329 The Original Buddha is not a god to be worshipped with prayer; he is pure light, self-existent, of all forms, and comes from the void. So Pure Mind is too impersonal to worship. Even as the full moon, it is said, is more glorious than the new moon and yet people worship not the full moon but the new moon, so do people worship not the impersonal Buddha but the Bodhisat, who owes his spiritual power to the Buddha and is thus, as it were, begotten by the Buddha; but, as Bodhisats become Bud¬ dhas, the Bodhisat is also the predecessor or original form of every Buddha. Only the debased Tantric belief converted the Bodhisat into a being begotten and born of “Buddha and his wife.” But in matters religious, philosophy is an intruder, which descends from a mental height and attempts to explain for its own satisfaction what the believer already knows. It is the innumerable Buddhists of this class who give us the religious evaluation of Buddhism. They rec¬ ognize philosophy in so far as they recognize in Buddha the divine substratum of the world; but they see Buddha also as their real, wise, and loving savior, their personal Lord; and finally they believe that this Lord was incar¬ nate in the person of the great human Teacher. On this point let Nichiren speak, whose Japanese theology is one modern expression of religious Buddhism: “These three, the Lord of eternity, the Spirit of Mercy, and Gotama Buddha, are a Trinity. The first is the Lord of life and glory illimitable, Amid a. 9 The second is the Spirit of Mercy, Kuannon [above, p. 324]. The third is Saka (Gotama). But these three are one and this one is three.” In the sects of the Happy Land (or Pure and Low Churches (in the Vetulyaka and Sautrantika s^ets of the Hina- yana). 9 Amida, the Japanese form of Amitabha, ‘ ‘ of endless light, ’ ’ title of Buddha. 330 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Land), which revert to the Lotus, the Happy Land, Su- khakara or Sukhavati, is the heaven of the Lord Amida, who by his grace grants salvation to that worshipper “who even remembers his name for a night.” The older Japanese sects insisted on good works as a prerequisite for obtaining grace, but the later teaching dispenses with the requirement of 4 ‘works” and makes faith the only means of salvation. To pronounce the name of Amida is a sufficient act of faith, a theory which is carried to such an extent that even if one pronounce his Blessed Name in blasphemy, the result is to ensure the sinner’s bliss hereafter, which, it must be admitted, turns religion into magic. But with religious aberrations of this sort we are not at present concerned. This Japanese faith is old; it is embodied in scriptures translated into Chinese in the second century of our era. Buddha is a real and loving Lord and Father; as the Spirit of Mercy he has taken upon himself the sins of the world and redeemed men from the grip of hell and Karma; as Gotama, the earthly Teacher, he was born of a woman miraculously (some say in docetic form) ; 10 he is thus both divine and human. Theologians argue whether the human Gotama was “spiritual or real,” and whether he was born laden with sin; but this discussion need not detain us. He is born possessed of the “thirty-two marks and eighty signs” of spiritual greatness, which exhibit a certain affinity with the “signs” of the god Vishnu. He stands (in time) between the Bodhisat and Lord Buddha, two forms of one apparitional supreme spiritual power. Moreover, in India, even the Madhyamika school of nihilism, which be¬ lieved that all is a void of which nothing can be known, 10 The virgin birth of the incarnate Buddha Gotama is attested by the Mahavastu, a Hina text, and is an article of faith in the Mahayana; but it is not a primitive belief of Buddhism. The worship of Buddha and Bodhisat is as old as the third century B. C. THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 331 yet admitted the doctrine of a transcendental soul or pnre intelligence as immanent reality; and, if this was at first a concession implying that God is a mere name, it ended by being a tenet of faith. Thus Ramai Pandit, who, in the Middle Ages, was an earthly expounder of the ‘‘great void’’ doctrine (and was soon afterwards revered as a worker of miracles, a supernatural power), ad¬ dresses this “form of the void,” shunyamurti, as “sole lord of all the worlds” and begs it as “highest god” to confer boons. The Krishna-cult in India amalgamated with Buddhism even in its nihilistic form to such an ex¬ tent that Balarama Dasa (c. 1600) can say that “the great void assumed the form of a human being.” At the same time the five Buddhas of the Adi-Buddha faith were interpreted as five forms of Vishnu, so that there was a complete coalescence of Brahmanism and Buddhism, even to the interpretation of the void as “Mother Void,” 11 and of this same void as synonymous with both Nirvana and “Vishnu’s heaven.” In part this amalgamation was local, an inevitable re¬ sult of a decadent faith relapsing into its primitive mythology; but it was far more an expression of the same religious needs which converted Shankara’s void in South India into Ramanuja’s God. And the proof of this is that its counterpart is to be found outside of India, where no precedent Vishnu suggested the theistic inter¬ pretation. The immanent One, which transcends the limitation of phenomenality, is not denied by the be¬ liever, but he puts his faith in the manifestation of it as a Power in which we have our being, a One with the ii In Nepal, the figure of Dharma, dhamma, is regularly that of a female, that is, the creative power as female assumes the form of Dharma. For an illuminating account of the modern 11 hidden Buddhism” of Orissa and Bengal and its amalgamation with Vishnuism and Krishnaism, see The Modern Buddhism of Nagendranath Vasu (1911). 332 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION aspects of intelligence and love as expressed in a Per¬ sonal Lord, represented on earth in lesser degree by every superior soul, and supremely made manifest as the Spirit of Mercy, horn on earth to redeem man as incar¬ nate Teacher. The Buddha-citta of the Zen school in Japan is religiously the Holy Spirit of Christian belief. It is a curious fact that Vishnu (II. 2382) is also called Dharma (Buddhist Dhamma), hut with the connotation of moral ‘support.’ He brings in righteousness and de¬ stroys sin in the world, as does Buddha. The modern Buddhist’s religious point of view is this: Every superior soul manifests the glory of the eternal wisdom hut even such souls need the awakening of spirit¬ uality which comes through love or the desire for wisdom. The soul striving to join its archetype is usually too weighed down with lust and ignorance to do so. But Grotama was the ideal human being, filled with perfect love and wisdom. Love, it is said, is blind and wisdom is lame; each must help the other on; but love is more im¬ portant than knowledge, for “knowledge begins with love.” This is the teaching of the Buddhist, whose catho¬ licity, not denying the incarnate divinity of other great teachers than his own, admits the divinity of Jesus and of Socrates, while he still finds the highest expression of that divinity in his own Gotama, to whom he ascribes as attributes supreme love and wisdom, representing them in personified form as his attendants. A group of figures found in Hina temples presents this idea by rep¬ resenting Buddha in the middle with Wisdom personified on his right hand and Love personified on his left. 12 12 Such groups in triadic form are not trinitarian but are visible proof of the powerful hold which the personified Spirit of Love has upon the people. Buddha is often represented in groups of this sort, sometimes with more than three figures, either Bodhisats or personified Law (represented by a book) and personified Church. Early Japan kept the original triad. In Shotoku’s laws ( c . 600 A. D.) “priests, ritual, founder” represent thus THE BUDDHISTIC TRINITY 333 The theistic form of Buddhism found in the Lotus was brought to China in the second century and it has remained under the influence of philosophic speculation in trinitarian form, exactly as we have seen it expressed in Japan and India. The impersonal ‘ ‘ undefinable pure being” of the philosopher has become a personal God. The empty One has become Nous; Buddha is threefold, pure being, pure blissful intellectual being, and pure human being. The “Body of dhamma” in theistic Buddhism has be¬ come the omnipresent personal God, even in Japan, where (we are told) “philosophers prefer not to speak of God at all,” because they believe that the Lord is a per¬ sonal corporeal reflex of the impersonal world-intelli¬ gence, as docetic as Gotama, the earthly reflex. But this is to grant that God is as real as was Gotama Buddha, which is all that is needed to build religion upon. Belief in God has not been disturbed for the believer, Buddhist or Christian, by discussion of the relation between the Heavenly Father and the Absolute, the exalted Christ and the eternal Logos. Philosophers play a smaller part in religion than they imagine; religion is intuitive not ratiocinative, as is aptly stated in the Christian carol, “In order to know Him we first must adore.” So the Spirit of Mercy and Love ousts in importance the first member of the traditional and philosophical triad and one worships Vairocana or Amitabha rather than Bud¬ dha as the Absolute, Vishnu rather than Brahma, and in the highest earthly type the believer everywhere sees a true reflection of the divine, let the philosophers say what they will; as what they say is, after all, not so much Church, Law, and Gotama, an inverted form of the first triad. The Indie trinity is also liberally inclined to admit both Krishna and Eama as incar¬ nate forms of God, while to these it adds Buddha and the founder of the Jain sect as other incarnations. For the view above, see Suzuki, op. cit. 334 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION a presentation of new truth as a restatement in their own language of a truth which is older than they. 13 is The idea of redemption in Buddhism differs according to the sect. Primitive Buddhism recognized no redemption save that man through suf¬ fering might work himself free of the bonds of Karma; but somewhat il- logically it permitted a transfer of merit whereby the living and the dead might benefit or be redeemed through the good works of others. This idea in the Mahayana grew into great proportions and permitted the assumption that the Bodhisat might in this way redeem the world through his own suffering. The idea of transfer of merit is not altogether absent from Christianity as it appears in the form of vicarious sanctification: “The un¬ believing husband is sanctified by his wife” (I Cor. 7: 14). Hindu theology has a savior-god but he does not redeem the sinner, who is saved by faith or by good works or by knowledge, i.e., the realization of his union with the divine. The god-man sects ignore as salutary everything except faith. Even primitive Buddhism insisted on faith in Buddha and his teaching as the prerequisite of the religious life. CHAPTER XX THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY Christianity, though built upon the rock of Peter, utilized for the construction of its Church much pagan material, some of which had filtered through Jewish sources, while some was inherited from Mediterranean and Grecian cults. Baptism, fast, purification, vigil, the hope of immortality and resurrection, miraculous cures, water turned into wine, all these were pre-Christian. The religions of the divine Mother and of Mithra had already taught the doctrine of a redeeming god, whose experience was shared by the initiated believer. Mortal man through the death and resurrection of the god became by partak¬ ing in the sacraments a partaker also in the divine na¬ ture ; he was mystically cleansed of sin by blood or water and became a sharer in divine immortality. The epiphany of Dionysos became the epiphany of Christ. The pagan gods were still remembered under a new form or re¬ garded as demons. Sometimes they were transformed into angels and saints to whom man still prayed. The Christian sacraments, it was anxiously explained by the Church, owed their pagan resemblance to the fact that demons had parodied Christianity. Unconsciously re¬ turning to the magical point of view, Ignatius declared that the communion bread was the “medicine of im- mortality. ” The idea of a secret brotherhood of the Church was that of the Greek mysteries and, like these, gave a sense of union mystically consummated between the divine Power and a select band of human beings. 1 i But it is improbable that Christianity borrowed directly its rites, sac¬ raments, etc. It utilized what had long been known. See above, p. 197. 336 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION As among the common people, so among the thinkers of the Church, pagan influence was inevitable. In Tarsus, where Paul lived, Stoic philosophy was well known. It conceived of a spiritual Power in the world, a Logos or Reason immanent in the universe. The early Church de¬ clared that Christ was the Logos and that the Logos was God. As such, though the earlier Gospels give no hint of this, Christ in John is represented as remembering his preexistence. Paul does not say that Christ is God, but lie identifies Christ with the Holy Spirit and applies to him words of the Old Testament used of God: “I am God and . . . unto me every knee shall bow” (Is. 45: 22, 23; Phil. 2:10). Christ is God’s Spirit from heaven reigning in men, Lord and Master, opposed to flesh (Adam). Thus Paul’s mysticism concerned Christ, whereas the mysti¬ cism of John concerned God; not spirit and flesh, but light and darkness, a Gnostic antithesis, neither Jewish nor early Greek. The germs of the Logos-doctrine are found in Paul’s later epistles. Justin, Tatian, and other early writers identified the Spirit and Logos. The begin¬ ning of the doctrine of the trinity appears already in John ( c . 100). To Jesus and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; at any rate, they say nothing about it. The word trinity is not used before 180- 200, in Greek and Latin form. As in India and with the Buddhists, there were separate objects of adoration aft¬ erwards united for practical or philosophical reasons. It was the practical mind of the West which urged the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not at first on metaphysical grounds, but because, to make headway against polytheism, a stricter monotheism had to be pre¬ sented than was implied in the separate adoration of two or three gods, and it had been openly charged against the Christians that thev were duotlieistic or tritheistic. But the early Church Fathers differed among them- THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 337 selves in the interpretation of Christ and the Holy Spirit by every shade of meaning. The first Christian reformer, Marcion, regarded Christ as a docetic manifestation of the trne God of mercy, opposed to the false Yahweh, and denied his real incarnation. Fifty years later (180-200) Noetus taught that God himself was crucified; Christ, as Praxeas explained, was a temporary form of God. At the same period, Theodotus argued that the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus first at his baptism; Jesus’s divinity was denied altogether by some of this teacher’s fol¬ lowers ; he was not really the son of God but an adopted son, a view which represents one of the oldest types of Christology. Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch (c. 200), declared that the Logos is an impersonal divine attribute described as God’s son. 2 This Logos filled Jesus, a man, with divine power so that he became morally and inspirationally one with God, but not substantially. Op¬ posed to the general Antioch theory that the Son is a creature and God dwells apart from his creation, the Alexandrine school taught that the Son is not a creature and God is immanent in his creation. Christ to Origen was a secondary God, a Nous between God and world. In this “mottled Christianity” the Spirit is sometimes one with the Logos, as the Logos in Christ is identified with the Father, and sometimes a mere creature or mani¬ festation of God, and even interpreted as a Mother Spirit, uniting with Father and Son in a triad; but again, 2 The expression 11 only beloved son ’ ’ -was first applied to Israel, chosen to reveal to the world the Unknown Father, a conception adopted by Christianity and applied to Christ in whom rests the Spirit of Wisdom (as in Israel). The Wisdom Spirit in Palestine became incorporate in the Torah, as Buddha was identified with the Dhamma; in Alexandria it w 7 as in¬ terpreted as Logos. A trinity was established at Antioch consisting of God, his Word, his Wisdom. On the transference from Israel to Christ of son- ship and Wisdom, see Professor Bacon’s article on “The Son as Organ of Bevelation, ” Harvard Theological Rev., 1916, p. 382. 338 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION by the Semi-Arians, its divinity is denied. On the other hand, as Syrian Christians “worshipped two gods, Jesus and Mary, besides God,” Mary was also regarded as the Holy Spirit. An angry dissension rent the early Church on the question whether Mary was Mother of God. But the Mother element came to the fore in two other concep¬ tions, one in the hypostasis of the Church as Mother (in Hennas, Eusebius, and others), and another in the honor paid to deaconesses in the third century as Holy Spirit, analogous to the hypostasis of the Buddhist church members as Bodliisats. As hyperdulia was permitted to Mary, she tended to replace the Holy Spirit in the affec¬ tion of the masses and Jesus in a non-canonical Gospel is said to have spoken of “my mother the Holy Spirit.” 3 But quite apart from this, the mysticism of the Christian Church lias also reached the same position as that of Bama-Krishna in India. Thus the English mystic Julian (c. 1400) says that God is the Mother. In general it may be said that early Christian theology was a mixture of Stoic, Gnostic, and Platonic elements incongruously welded upon the old Jewish idea of a Spirit of God or Wisdom of God working in the Son of God, interpreted as Jesus Christ. But the first Christian theology was given in the words “I and my Father are one” and the plain faith of the early church members who were not doctrinaires was just this and nothing more. Jesus is God. So proclaimed the first hymns, sung by the early Church. Such hymns are attested by Pliny the Younger. Paul of Samosata had to put a ban upon hymns extolling Christ as God. So Ignatius, who has as yet no trinitarian formula, proclaimed, “one God Jesus 3 The Roman Catholic religion in India is now called the religion of the Mother, in distinction from the Protestant religion of the Book. Valen¬ tinus’s school of Gnostics (who recognized a viater viventium ) had a Mother-myth; as she finds her savior and has a “second marriage , i} so the soul finds a savior angel, in a mystic and erotic symbolism. THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 339 Christ” and spoke of deacons as “servants of God Christ. ’ ’ Christ as Son of God is identical with God both to Celsus, Pseudo-Barnabas, and the Clementines. It was a reproach hurled at the Jews by Justin that they “deny that he is God. ’ ’ In the third century, the Bishop of Pome says that some (Sabellians) believe Christ to be an emanation of God; some assume three hypostases; and some make Son and Holy Spirit to be mere creatures of God. Origen “will not affirm that the Saviour is God though some believe it” (to Origen he “had authority as Logos, Wisdom, Justice, Truth of God”). The same observer reports that ‘ ‘ some pray to God and some pray to Jesus.” The final orthodox definition of the trinity was largely a matter of church politics. It was attained after endless disputes as to how much divinity and how much humanity was in Jesus Christ, when his divinity began, whether he was a creature, an emanation, or consubstantial with God, whether he was one with the Holy Spirit, whether the Holy Spirit was one with God, and finally whether a Gnostic term was to define the triune relationship or not, all theological hairsplitting in regard to questions which were definitively answered only by a party vote. All that a layman could understand was that God, Holy Spirit, and Son are “three persons and one God.” The Church believed that “God” in the sense of an active creative power was the Holy Spirit of the Hebrews, the implication being that back of the Holy Spirit, as, in Greek theology, back of the Logos, lay a Power not so manifested, while it also believed with the first simple Christians that Jesus Christ was God on earth. The Holy Spirit was conceived as a divine Spirit of Mercy and of Wisdom 4 and of Truth, manifesting itself in Jesus and, 4 The Spirit of Wisdom, whether originally conceived under Hellenic in¬ fluence or not, is in line with the Hebrew conception of various spirits of 340 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION according to some, as a Mother Spirit; but this androgy¬ nous interpretation of God, analogous to the Hindu and Buddhist interpretation, could find no lasting place in Western theology. Otherwise, the idea of a God, of a Spirit of Mercy as manifestation of God, and of an earthly incarnate form of the Logos as God, was not fundamentally different from the Oriental conception as it appears in the two great churches of Hinduism and Buddhism. In all three there was also the same question as to whether the human form of God was real or docetic. But the Church through Augustine and the mystics of the Middle Ages was to be very strongly influenced by a form of Neoplatonism which has not yet been con¬ sidered. At the same time that Origen was laboring with the ill-defined nature of the trinity as historically presented and as philosophically conceivable—his system had no real place for the Holy Spirit—Plotinus (205-270), unin¬ fluenced by Jewish tradition but not free from the in- fluence of Gnosticism, according to some even versed in Indian mysticism (but this is improbable), evolved a form of Platonism which results in a trinity not dis- similar to that of orthodox Buddhism and Brahmanism. His theology, which was called “Platonic,” had no little influence upon the leaders of Christian opinion. Plato’s pure idealism had postulated a divine Nous and Psyche, a world-soul, mediator between the divine and individual souls of which Psyche was the author, a created mediating being, made by God, between idea and phenomenon. Later Platonism employed, as synonymous, Tlieos, Nous, Logos, and in Philo the man from heaven or Logos, though still wavering between personal and Yaliweh, such as the spirit of might, of error, etc., which are visualized either as attributes or as spirits in the service of God. The spirit possesses a prophet just as it possessed a Pythia or a Sibyl; it deifies man. THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 341 impersonal, yet already, as savior, threatens the su¬ premacy of God. Philo’s system was purely speculative 5 hut the mythological language survived. Behind the con¬ crete personal Nous (treated by Plato as Creator and Father) was postulated by the Neoplatonists an abstract One, neuter, but still called Father and God by Plotinus, though the One (to ev ) is without qualities. The world of ideas (according to Plato, immanent in God as Nous) is located in the mind of a second divine being, namely, the principle of intelligence generated by (evolved from) the abstract One, so that the world, as in Numenius of the second century, is the grandson of God, his series being 7 ra 7 T 7705 , e/cyoi'o?, aTroyovos. Plotinus, in preserving this series, discarded the notion that every body of the mate¬ rial world is an animated intelligent being which de¬ rives its animated life from the World-soul, and re¬ verting to Plato, made the spiritual the essentially real, as distinguished from phenomena, though with Philo he held that stars have life and mind. The media¬ torial Nous is never incarnate but transcendental like the two other existences (hypostases), so that we have a trinity of the One, Mind, Soul. The human soul, being spiritual, is immortal. God before the world makes the World-soul out of the unchangeable indivisible and the (corporeal) changeable divisible. The mediating princi¬ ple is an intermediate essence formed of the eternal spiritual and the material substratum of things, nega¬ tively space, as nurse of creation. 6 Since evil in this system is not an active principle but 5 In Plutarch, polytheism was explained on Platonic principles, but with a dualistic tinge. Osiris, Isis, Horus (the last as phenomena resulting from the union of Logos and Psyche) were opposed to Typhon, a good trinity against an evil principle. 6 Technically, of sameness and otherness, 1 r otherness ’ ’ arising in Nous and having full play in soul in contact with matter, which is infinite. Matter is the least real as it is the last and lowest creation. 342 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the defection, ellipsis, of good, God is not opposed to an abstract or personal Evil; but at the same time he is not Plato’s intelligent Father; he is not personal and not qualified by moral qualities. What Plato conceived as God, Plotinus made an inferior divinity; his own God is more like Aristotle’s Nous. Yet the God of Plotinus is de¬ finable only as One (neuter); cause of all activity and superior to all, because all derive from the One. The implication that whatever is derived is inferior is not proved . 7 The One is without ideas; all conscious ideas are in the Nous (Mind). But the One must be the Good because an unmoral One cannot produce a moral world (the same argument is used in Buddhism). The One is the Good above all good, as it is Beauty above all beauty, and toward it turns ever the Mind, Nous, receiving thence eternal energy and good. From the Nous is generated Psyche, Soul, inferior to it. Psvche turns to Nous as Nous turns to the One, but Psyche turns also to matter (the eternal capacity of life vitalized by Psyche). The nature of matter is to be receptive of forms; incapable of taking permanent hold of good, it is evil as “not-being. ” Psyche has one part on high, one conversant with corporeal things, and one subsisting between them; it generates the world . 8 The One, Mind, Soul, are not personal beings; yet Plotinus’s philosophy is a religion, withal a religion of vision and ecstasy. Vision is the base of faith and faith is higher than reasoned knowledge, said the religious in¬ terpreter (Proclus). Faith indeed is here rather the ap¬ prehension of metaphysical principles, but the general " In regard to immortality, Plotinus argues that man participates in eternity because he can talk intelligently about it. 8 Whether Plotinus, holding such views, was a pantheist or not (as W. E. Inge maintains) is open to discussion. According to Zeller, Plotinus be¬ lieved in free will; others hold that he was a determinist. See Whittaker’s Tlotinus, passim. THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 343 doctrine that faith surpasses science is common to all mystics . 9 Now in Plotinus we find what some Chnrch Fathers wanted but, in the face of tradition, did not dare to de¬ mand. God is the Absolute; not Reason, nor comprehen¬ sible through reason. He is absolute unity, the first cause, the World-power; but he does not create phenomena di¬ rectly. Out from him as full perfection, as rays from the sun, pours the Nous, wherein ideas are immanent, the causes of all things as creatures. Thence emanates the World-soul expended in individual souls. These individ¬ ual souls by birth in corporeal forms forget their divinity and desire to live independently, caring for things not spiritual. Their return to God is by way of knowledge and asceticism, by subjugation of the flesh, that the soul may be free to return to its spiritual home, and become like God. Through various stages of virtuous practices the soul reaches the serene life of spiritual contempla¬ tion and in this stage man becomes divine. But he still, though having to do with divine Nous alone, has not passed the gulf between divine Mind and God. Forgetful of self, devoid of all thought, in simple ecstasy, man al¬ ready divine must rise to the desired union with the One. This rapture of oneness with the One is identical with that which is to be seen in the ecstasy of the sages and saints of India. Sometimes it is concentrated upon Brahma as the One, sometimes upon the personal god¬ head as manifested in the Spirit of Mercy or in the God Incarnate, but always the emotion, for it is pure emotion, is the same. Above knowledge, above reason, in a par¬ oxysm of spiritual sur-excitation the soul realizes God. This immediate consciousness of God is one with that 9 Faith is real knowledge; this idea lurks also'in all the Hindu assevera¬ tions regarding salvation as won by 11 knowledge. ’ ’ 344 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OP RELIGION union with God whereof all mystics relate their deep ex¬ perience. And as with the names of the divine powers, so is it with the object of this mystic exaltation. It makes no difference whether union be felt with Brahma or God, with Vishnu Krishna or with Jesus Christ; pathologi¬ cally the effect is the same; religiously it is the same. It is the realization of union, not the special object of faith, which matters, which effects the transport. That faith is higher than (scientific) knowledge means in both religions, the Brahmanic-Buddhistic and the Christian-philosophic, not that we must believe in one form but that we can know God only bv intuition, to which we must trust for the proof of his existence and goodness. In all three forms of the trinity there is the same natu¬ ral philosophic preference for the Absolute, the same in¬ evitable religious preference for a personal God. With the exception of one important distinction, to wit, that in Greek philosophy the soul is a fallen creature struggling to regain primeval godliness, there is in all three systems a harmony of belief which is possible only because it is based on as near an approach to truth as human intellects can attain by ratiocination. All three systems struggle with the difficulty of defining God as something instead of somebody. God, Heavenly Spirit, Soul, is a trinity which the philosopher readjusting expresses as One (Ab¬ solute), Spirit (as God), Soul. God here must be an active creator, but with the definition of God as indefinable the Father God cannot be the indefinable Absolute. Hence, by imagining a creation or evolution or illusion, that which the believer means by God is interpreted by the philosopher as a secondary form of the Absolute One, the explicit as contrasted with the implicit, the energetic power rather than the potential power. As such, this God is one with the Heavenly Spirit and Logos, and when, as THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 345 witli Origen, one term is chosen, the other has no real validity, but is employed as a concession to tradition. In the Bralimanic, Buddhistic, and Christian trinities we have therefore the double series of the devotee and of the philosopher, if for brevity such nomenclature may be permitted (though the devotee has his philosophy, as the philosopher has his religious devotion), the double series, namely, (1) of Godhead, Creator Spirit, Soul, and (2) Absolute, Creator Spirit, Soul, in which latter series Spirit is really the active form of God as Father-Creator. But the trinity is primarily religious and while philo¬ sophical explanations are not uniform, either in the Occi¬ dent or the Orient, the religious explanation is every¬ where the same. In other words, the three trinities as religious expressions are identical. In each, a Supreme Being and Father God stands at the head of the trinity; the second member is the Holy Spirit, which, becoming man, takes flesh in the third member of the trinity. One may say: I believe in God as godhead, and in the divine incarnation, and in the creative Holy Spirit, as a Chris¬ tian, a Vishnuite, or a Buddhist. The three threes are one. There are no racial limitations to the kingdom of religion; as Paul saw when he said “He whom ye igno¬ rantly worship is God. ’ ’ To some it will be an insuperable objection that the Oriental God is immanent in nature, a pantheistic not a transcendental God. But, to the devotee, God, though a transcendent and ineffable being as godhead, yet having personal attributes, as of the Father, is chiefly a living and active spirit, so that practically he is not transcend¬ ent at all to the religious sense (this, for example, was the attitude of the early Christian Apologists). Thus it makes no religious difference whether God is regarded as essentially quite apart from or immanent in nature; as Father Creator both to pantheist and monotheist he is 346 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION the same. Again, if we say that God created the world out of nothing, ex niliilo creavit, then the world is fundamen¬ tally nothing, which is virtually what the idealist main¬ tains when he calls it an illusive creation of God. Yet the relation of spirit to matter is really not a fundamentally religious question; it does not affect in the least the at¬ titude of the believer toward the God whom he believes to be his Creator and Father . 10 The worshipper of Vishnu, the adorer of the Buddhist Spirit of Mercy, does not en¬ quire how his God stands in respect of matter; he knows him as a divine Spirit to be loved and worshipped. On the other hand, the historical factor is of course of religious moment. Too long has the inherited sense of God been attached to historical figures for the humble devotee to free himself from the feeling that for him there is a God under only one name, an incarnation of God known onlv as Jesus or as Gotama Buddha or as %/ Rama-Krishna. One cannot expect the worshipper of the historical Jesus Christ to pray to any other redeemer. But it should be to him a great joy that in their own province others have realized under their own names the fact of divine incarnations, have recognized that the Spirit has, in Oriental thought, been incarnated for re¬ demptive purpose, and that God is the same God in the Orient and in the Occident, as an arithmetical axiom re¬ mains the same truth whether uttered in English, San¬ skrit, or Japanese. Religiously, the God of Brahmanism and of Buddhism is not only the Supreme Spirit, he is a God of grace and loving kindness. St. Augustine and the saints of the Upanishads chant together “God is ex¬ pressed only by negations,” but immediately both in 10 According to Zwingli, God is the infinite essence or Absolute Being; Nature is the power of God in action; and all being is one; for the being of his creatures is in and by him. This Christian view is really that of the Hindu modified idealism. THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 347 India and Rome that God becomes God the Father, through whose grace one is saved. Even Plotinns, who denies Plato’s Mind as the highest, immediately imputes to the unqualified One goodness and beauty as the proto¬ plasm of divine intelligence. Eckhart in the fourteenth century recognized God-nature and godhead . 11 The wor¬ shippers of Rama believe in God, put their faith in his loving grace, and hope to live with him in Paradise. The keynote of High Church Buddhism is God’s self-sacrific¬ ing love for mankind; the keynote of Vishnuism is loving faith and devotion to God, Vishnu or Rama. That the two divine beings of Buddhism and Brahman¬ ism are one is expressed not only by philosophers but by the fused religion of Camboja, where the local Trimurti was composed of Brahman, Vishnu, and Buddha. In Java, also, Buddha and Shiva and Vishnu were all one; in Nepal, Shiva was identified with Buddha and with Avalo- kiteshvara, the Spirit of Mercy. The identity of God- concepts known by different names was thus quite gen¬ erally admitted. Whether one said Shiva or Buddha, meaning God, was not important. This catholicity is not general in the West but the author remembers that Pro¬ fessor Ladd, who was safely orthodox, returning from a tour in India once said: “I visited a Vedantist and after conversing with him I could not see but that we wor¬ shipped the same God.” As godhead, Brahma, Buddha, and God are one. As merciful Spirit and Creator, our God is one with Vishnu and with the second form of the god¬ head recognized by Buddhist philosophy; as Spirit in¬ carnate, Christ and Buddha and Krishna represent the same idea. In a world-church, which would stand to reli¬ gion of the parochial type as does the spirit of world- brotherhood to patriotism, this would be a new trinity, 11 Jones, Mystical Beligions, II, p. 313. Matter and soul are substance of God. 348 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Godhead, Heavenly Spirit, incarnate Spirit; for all these higher religions accept God as the divine Origin of all things, as divine Love or Mercy, and as divine spirit in man. In Christ is the Spirit of God; and 4 ‘Christ liveth in me. ’ 1 This following, in the words of the commentator, is the exposition of the modified idealistic pantheism of India: There is one Lord, whom the philosophers call highest Brahma (the Absolute); he is antagonistic to all evil; his nature is uniformly excellent; he is of unlimited exalted qualities, such as infinite intelligence and bliss; all his purposes come true; he is animated by infinite pity, tenderness, magnanimity; he is the Lord, yet also the Absolute, and he is the basis of all entities set forth in other religions (under other names); he is the Absolute yet also the Lord God, who manifests himself in the hu¬ man sold and in human incarnations of divine form; it is he who is manifested as God, as soul, as mind, as self- consciousness; he is the operative and substantial cause of the world; from him originates the individual sold, which is never outside God but has forever a separate existence and will at death pass to a life of bliss in the presence of God. Not very different from our own idea of God and the soul, this modified Hindu idealism in which the Lord God is the Creator, but also, when not creating and manifest¬ ing himself, is the godhead, and, when manifesting him¬ self, appears incarnate on earth as Teacher and Revealer. We have seen that Nichiren in Japan defines as a trinity the God known to Buddhism. This same trinity is defined in China also, as follows: (t The Three are all in¬ cluded An one substantial essence. The three are the same as one; not one, and yet not different; without parts or composition. When regarded as one, the three, persons are spoken of as the Perfect One (Tathagata). There is THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY 349 no real difference [between the three persons of the trinity]; they are manifestations, different aspects of the same unchanging substance . 12 Bnt after all, the triune God is a mystery rather than a personal object of adoration. Yet to the Buddhist, as to the Hindu, God is also the Father. The same work from which the definition of the trinity has just been cited contains also the “daily prayers” of the Buddhist. This little prayer is to be said “on bowing down before Buddha. ’ ’ Truth compels one to admit that it is probably an image of Buddha. Bnt let ns not cry out “Ah, the wretched idolater!” Let us rather see what is behind, or, more truly, above the image and in the heart of him who prays thus: “King of the Law and most exalted Lord, Unequalled through the threefold world, Teacher and guide of men and spirits, Our loving Father and of all that breathes, I bow to thee in reverence, and pray Thou wilt destroy all sins of old committed. Ever I praise thee, though to praise thee fully Eternity itself would not suffice. ” 12 Cited in Beal’s Catena, p. 124, from Jin Ch’au in the Fah-lcai-on- lili-to; dharmalcaya, sambhogalcdya, nirmdnaTcdya, as three Tathagatas. CHAPTER XXI THE REALITY OF RELIGION Up to this point we have examined the data of reli¬ gious origins as objective historical phenomena without raising the question whether these data correspond to anything real. In closing this investigation, however, it is almost inevitable that we ask ourselves whether there is any reason to believe in the reality of religion. Is there only a mass of nebular hypotheses regarding gods and God to examine as historical products similar to other human illusions, such as the philosopher’s stone and the fountain of youth, or are the religious phenomena of the world the weak but illuminative expression of an under¬ hung verity? Belief is widespread, but by establishing the fact of belief we do not establish the reality of what is believed, only the reality of believing. Nor is even univer¬ sal savage belief a ground of belief to anyone except a savage. Savages from China to Peru believe many things which are quite absurd, for example, that animals talk Chinese or Chibcha, a belief which persisted in semi- civilized circles until recent times, for in the Middle Ages fishes came up once a year to hear Mass and birds dis¬ cussed theology with saints. The test ought to be whether religion is real not to all savages but to all civilized peo¬ ple, but there are many civilized people who think that there is no basis for religious belief at all, that there is no spiritual power in the world, and that soul, as the scoffing Hindu said six centuries before Christ, is only “a sort of bodily effervescence like the foam of beer.” It is not, however, because the question is one rather THE REALITY OF RELIGION 351 vital to us that we may legitimately raise it here, but be¬ cause in a way it is the logical end of our historical sur¬ vey. We ought to trace back religion to its source if that is possible before we conclude the study of religious prin¬ ciples. If to do so we have to venture out of the history of man into that of other creatures and trace man himself back to his non-human beginnings, we are in truth only extending the domain of history. But first let us reconsider for a moment the statement that religion is universal. When an informed writer says this, he does not mean that all savages believe in God and an immortal soul, but that savages have some “ ideas of higher beings in at least a rudimentary state’’ (Tylor) or that no races are “destitute of all idea of religion” (Jevons). Now many of the savages thus cited believe only in ghosts, which are merely human beings that have disappeared from view and, as many of these savages think, will soon fade out altogether even from the tenuous post-mortem existence they enter at death. A belief in ghosts is merely a belief in a continuation of life in a man; it is not, to speak strictly, a belief in higher beings, only in men surviving death and often not so capable in that condition as when they were alive. This itself would seriously impair the validity of the argument based on universality of religion; but as a matter of fact some savages do not believe in a life after death and appear to believe in no spiritual power at all. In man’s own belief as thus revealed there is therefore no cogent argument for the reality of religion. Of course, belief in special forms of spiritual powers, such as gods, angels, devils, and so on, is today not based upon individual testimony or tangible evidence but upon faith in tradition. Such tradition is furnished, for ex¬ ample, by the Vedas, the Buddhist scriptures, the Koran, and the Bible, all of unimpeachable authority to those 352 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION who believe that they are divinely inspired, and there are millions of men who believe that each of them is divinely inspired; but such belief and faith objectively regarded are of themselves incapable of demonstrating their own trustworthiness, since for every man who be¬ lieves in the authority of Veda or Koran there are many more who believe not. If there were only one sacred tradi¬ tion, it would at least be supported by the universal faith of those who believed in tradition at all. As it is, the sacred books of the world are sacred only to part of the world. We resume then the principles of religion by extending the investigation to a pre-religious stage, in order to see whether the history of man himself affords ground for belief in his belief. Man bears within himself the record of his slow upward growth. Superfluous and even dan¬ gerous structures survive in his body to show that he was once a different sort of creature from that which he now is, as the six aortic arches of the lizard, where but one arch is needed, show that they revert to a precedent type, where all six were useful, or as a whale’s structure still shows that he was once a hairy quadruped living on land. The germ cell in developing reflects man’s progress. He once had a brain like that of a fish, then like that of a reptile, and so on through the types of bird and mar¬ supial, upward to the brain of the higher mammals. At first only a prolonged spinal cord, the brain is enlarged into several ganglia, of which that one which is to be¬ come the adult brain is the smallest. Then the cerebrum gradually covers the optic lobes, as in the bird stage, till \ it becomes so large that it overhangs and conceals all other parts. These embryonic changes reproduce the stage of evolution and in like manner the inner changes of man’s brain correspond in succession to the stage represented by fish, reptile, bird, before becoming that THE REALITY OF RELIGION 353 of the adult mammal, the cerebrum being smooth at first and then becoming convoluted till in man the inequalities are greatest. The greater the inequalities the more the surface of grey matter. Fishes are the earliest verte¬ brates ; man has a brain the earliest form of which in the embryo is like that of the fish. After the fishes come in due order reptiles, birds, marsupials, and the higher mammals, the series recapitulated in the growth of the human embryo. Man then was not suddenly created. But in explaining how man was gradually created the biologist does not explain what life is. All that can be said is that there was an orderly change or growth, as the astronomer also shows that there has been an orderly reduction of matter in the sky. If we might assume a capitalized Heaven, we should say that Order is Heaven’s great law. In establishing this order, a natural process must be granted, but a directive power would not be ruled out, a power acting not dynamically but persist¬ ently. The orderliness of the process would suggest that it was not a result of chance; but the Yedic poet said long ago that the regular succession of seasonal phe¬ nomena was “for our faith” and Euripides declared that belief in the gods springs from the recognition of universal law; so that this solution of law’s origin is naught new. But a new presentation of this truth has been advanced by Professor Boyce in the following argument. If any power is in control of the universe, it directs forms of life in an orderly way from invertebrate to ver¬ tebrate, from vertebrate to conscious, self-conscious, ra¬ tional, orderly life. A remarkable exhibition of this in¬ nate orderliness has been given by the scientists who for two generations or more have laboriously collected all the material facts in the universe open to their view and arranged them in methodical array, tabulating mechani¬ cal changes and verifying the unvarying laws of the 354 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION physical world, specializing in matter till they know it so well that they have come to regard it as a form of force. But why have they devoted so much time and labor to matter and its laws? Obviously because they desire order. Man has from the beginning sought to bring order out of chaos. In chaos he is uncomfortable; he wishes to escape from it and enjoy the comfort of feeling that he is in a well regulated world. He began by trying to make the world orderly by magic; he now orders it by understanding it. He feels that only by understanding it can he better himself. Like the Hindu sage, though with a different implication, he thinks that knowledge is his salvation. Perhaps it is, but knowledge to be effective must not be one-sided. A body of selected facts proves only what certain facts prove, not what all facts taken together prove. The very investigator who proves by an indispu¬ table array of facts that nature is subject to mechanical laws and then argues from this that life is mechanical, is himself a part of nature; but no one can predict what he will do; he is not himself subject to material laws in his volition. His array of natural facts is not complete until it includes the operation of will, not of his own will alone but of that of others, and their will is not based on his subjective impression but is objective fact. The ideality of another produces creations of the individual will not subject to mechanical laws; the investigator’s own ideal of order, far from proving that there is no ideal in na¬ ture, shows that such an ideal exists. The materialistic protest against ideality is based on the ideal of order. As Professor Boyce has said, the growth and increasing love of ideals, in being part of civilization, is part of na¬ ture, as man is part of nature and his ideals are part of man . 1 i International Quarterly, VII, pp. 85 ff. THE REALITY OF RELIGION 355 Life then possesses an immaterial something actually existing as an objective reality. Whether nature is dual or one of these phases be an expression of the other, in either case an immaterial power must be accepted. If we reduce matter and force to different manifestations of the same thing, we shall still have to admit that the force- form cannot be explained, for example, as electricity, for electricity has no will power. There must be a power im¬ plying will, of which electricity is one expression, for will cannot be referred to matter without force, only to force or energy. Energy operative with will must then be as¬ sumed in the infinite as it is revealed in the finite. Whether it is called energized will or willing energy or some unknown power, which for want of a better term may be described as a spiritual power, is unimportant. Some call it God. Life as it now is thus demands the explanation of an immaterial power, infinite energy or will, operative in the universe and controlling it. Life as it has been in the past shows that whatever power is in control directs life to a higher plane, from invertebrate unconscious life to a rational moral life in the highest vertebrates. Life therefore as a whole, past and present, shows a steady de¬ velopment toward a higher level, in which self-conscious¬ ness is the final finite expression, a development appar¬ ently controlled and as such the expression of will, either immanent in matter or exterior to it. Natural phenomena are, or may be, objectified modes of immaterial thought, a form not of my idea but of the infinite idea, which, whether immanent or not, since it produces ever higher forms, must be a conscious power. Consciously and in ac¬ cordance with will an intellectual power controls the uni¬ verse and directs its development. “God,” says Le Conte, who speaks not as a metaphysician but as a scientist, 356 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION 4 ‘ God is infinite self or will.’ ,2 Lord Kelvin, as a scientist, says, “If you think strongly enough, you will he forced by science to the belief in God. ” 3 It is interesting to see that science is gradually becoming weaned from mate¬ rialism. The real and the ideal are no longer opposed; perhaps the only real is the ideal. Yet it may be asked, How does this concern us after all? A belief in an intelligent or call it spiritual power, immanent or not immanent, in the universe, what is this but the old problem of ancient Hindu sages with their solution, ‘ ‘ There is One eternal Thinker thinking non-eternal thoughts ’’ f How does it affect man todav? The most obvious replv is that if we are ourselves the expression of a power ever manifesting itself in higher forms, then for our own higher development we should practice that which con¬ forms to the higher manifestation or we shall descend to the lower. All types arising from careful cultivation tend when neglected to retrograde. For example, a cultivated but neglected cat or dog or orange tree will at once tend to a lower type. As morality is the result of a more de¬ veloped social and mental process than immorality, we shall be moral through logical necessity; we shall not withstand but, so to speak, stand in with the spiritual power that governs us, since faith in a moral ideal is founded on reason and history. Immorality is a repudia¬ tion of that faith. There is no reason to suppose that man has not developed or has ceased to develop 4 and by reach- 2 Le Conte, Evolution and Its Eolation to Religious Thought. s The Nineteenth Century, 1903, p. 1069. Man ’s social development is higher even if, as an individual, he is not more intellectually capable than of old. Man inherits not only his ancestor’s mind but what that mind has accomplished. THE REALITY OF RELIGION 357 ing np and grasping at higher things he can perhaps aid in this development. This leads ns to the idea of con¬ formity to an ideal, which has been expressed in all higher religions as conformity to the will of God, in the practice of which conformity awe and sympathy have equal part. Sympathy again will make ns concerned with others as the Power in the universe has apparently been concerned not with onrselves alone bnt with the race, with others; in them we may love Him, if one may so speak of this Power. At any rate, what is done nnto the least is done nnto the highest, from this point of view, as well as from that of the Christian believer. To do this calls often for the abnegation of self, bnt to overcome the lower for the higher is a sacrifice not to be despised, and to give oneself for others entails snch a sacrifice in an¬ other form. Moral evil is only the result of harmful neglect to keep up to the standard set by a more advanced civilization. As has been said, much that we now call sinful was once righteous, that is, necessary to the salvation of the race and individual. The lex talionis was once a condition of individual security and so of advancing civilization; at a later stage it became harmful, that is, evil. Physical evil also has done more good than harm. Hunger, want, weak¬ ness, have forced men to live in communities, to work for common ends, to exchange horde for tribe, to develop, to inaugurate civilization. Ease, which is now necessary for mental development, meant to the savage isolation and stagnation, and development is impossible in a stagnant community. Strife and conflict were necessary for that which is called the survival of the fittest, as they are still necessary in matters of opinion, and desirable in the in¬ dividual, for every man has advanced to efficient man¬ hood only through physical and-moral strife. We must pay for our blessings. The individual has been destroyed, 358 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION physical suffering has existed, but the result is the ad¬ vance of the race. We lose to gain, sacrifice to obtain more; do ut des, God gives nothing for nothing. The in¬ dividual shares in what the race obtains, both physically and morally. A single man may renounce his birthright and give up what the struggle of the race has won for him, but on the other hand he may share in that heritage, abide by the results of knowledge and truth, as inter¬ preted by science, and so abide by the supreme Will, which is revealed in all knowledge. Whether called divine or not, one controlling conscious intelligence appears to exert its will toward the realization of a moral ideal in which we participate. It is as if the Unknown Power were it¬ self knowable to this extent that it must be ethical, or it would not have guided man toward a moral goal. Evil is the struggle of human will against the divine will, even as it seemed to Aeschylus. But our conception of morality is limited and there may be a moral governor of the uni¬ verse who yet is little concerned with human ignorance except to diminish it gradually. Some of our ethical rules may be provisional; a higher social environment will perhaps recognize them merely as steps of attain¬ ment useful for a once-needed uplift. The history of religions, finally, teaches us little in re¬ gard to the nature of the individual soul, only the weird ideas that man has had about it, which have already been explained. In general, it is clear that it is the self rather than a spiritual double or other-self which is imagined in a post-mortem existence, a self which at first is re¬ garded as of doubtful longevity, but is afterwards thought of as existing indefinitely and finally as im¬ mortal, like God, its creator or source. Taking up this conception from the same point of view as has been adopted in regard to man and God, we find that a pro¬ gressive series offers two solutions of the soul. At any THE REALITY OF RELIGION 359 one moment in tlie series a new principle may have been introduced. Incandescent gas does not appear to have life such as an animal has; at some point, life may have been introduced. Similarly, at a later period in evolution, the soul-principle may have been inserted into the series; it would not be a mere product of evolution of incan¬ descent gas. According to this theory, advocated by Le Conte, sentient life and self-consciousness mark other like stages; and soul was infused into man (not the in¬ dividual but the species) when he became self-conscious. Matter is first ennobled by life and then by thought and finally by soul. But it is not plain how this agrees with Le Conte’s belief that “ consciousness and will which are in nature belong to nature from within.’ ’ Opposed to this theory would be the explanation that energy immanent in the universe is manifested in more individuated forms as progress is made in the series; life, thought, self-consciousness, would each be a form in higher grade of the same energy or power. It is not known that any new thing enters into vegetal life and turns it into animal; the line between is not apparent. Some things are both animal and vegetal and, on the other hand, a vegetable growth does not become an ani¬ mal. Both seem to be differentiations of an anterior form. The intelligence of an invertebrate is that of a verte¬ brate, only there is less of it, as it is only a question of degree in the intelligences of different vertebrates. It would seem, therefore, that one universal intelligence pervades the universe, manifesting itself in different de¬ grees in different forms. As very young children are not self-conscious, so the human series goes back to a con¬ scious but not self-conscious man or human prototype. “An original series of automata does not suddenly give place to an intellectual series, but a simple diffused in¬ telligence in an undifferentiated body gradually becomes 360 ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF RELIGION specialized in a nervous system and greatly developed in range and scope.” Such is the explanation of Professor Slialer, who would then define soul as the fullest individu¬ alized expression of the spiritual power found in the highest or most differentiated bodily environment. Soul would thus be a part of the supreme Power, an idea beau¬ tifully expressed by the Polynesians when they said, as they baptized an infant, that a god had breathed a soul into it. This soul, as the Hebrews, who held the same opinion, said, is the breath of God, which at death goes back to Him. The series of development may also point to the im- mortalitv of the human soul, in that matter becomes ever less the controlling power, as if, in the language of the Upanishad, soul might in the end shake itself free of matter altogether, “as a great horse of noble breed, long fettered to the peg within the ground, rouses him¬ self ; then struggling and rearing in disdain of the fas¬ tening, breaks it at last, and so leaps free of all restrain¬ ing bonds”; and thus finally it may become aware of itself as one with the heart of reality. Religion itself, in what we are pleased to call its mystic phase, is the ex¬ perience in which the soul thus becomes conscious of it¬ self as one with the divine soul. It is an experience which can convince only him who experiences it, but to him the proof is irrefragable and not to be gainsaid. INDEX Abeghian, 81 Abelard, 266 Abnegation, 157, 164, 177, 357 Absolute, The, 309 f., 343. See Brahma Absolution, 197 Abstractions, divine, 91 f., 283 Actors, 186 Adam, 228 Adi Buddhas, 325 f., 328, 331 Adonis, 27, 31, 187, 198 Aeschylus, 92, 358 Agni, see Fire Agriculture, religious effect of, 20, 181, 218, 280 Air, 49. See Soul Alexandria, school of, 337 Allah, 284 Allegorical interpretation, 179, 241 All-soul, 165, 257, 287, 304, 308 f., 311; soul of all, in Greece, 277; world-soul made by God, 341. See Atman Amen-hotep, 59 Amida, Amitabha, 325, 329 Ancestors, 54, 72 f., 80, 83, 183 Androgynous spirit, 317 Angels, 284 Animals, solidarity of, 7; unclean, 34; worship of, 32 f., 277; lan- I guage of, 350; horse and dog, 33 Animism, 3 Antioch, school of, 337 Aphrodite, cult of, 192 Apollo, 27, 43 Apostolic succession, parallel to, 214 Apotropaie rites, 79, 186, 194 f. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 266 Arabs, sacrifice of, 176; religion of, 218, 232 Arethousa, 49 Aristophanes, 292 Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics, 267; Nous of, 342 Armenian cult, 81 Artemis, 41, 192, 276 Aryan, meaning of, 201, in Greece, 276; religion, 218 Asceticism, 164, 177 Ashera, 26 Ashoka, 217 Asklepios, as saint, 192, 208 Astrolatry, 54 Asylum, 219 Atharva-Veda, 126 Athena, 15, 85 Atman, 132, 148, 289 Atonement, 178, 194 Attis, tree of, 29; death and resur¬ rection of, 170, 293 Augustine, St., 340 Avalokiteshvara, 320 f., 323 f., 347 Avatars, 310 Bab, 71 Babel, 239 Babylon, 54, 59, 81, 129, 138, 176, 194 f., 206, 219; triads of, 295 f. Bacon, Benj. W., 337 Baptism, 47, 117, 173, 193, 197, 292 f. Barnabas (Pseudo-), 339 Bartel, 113 Beal, Catena, 349 Bell, 77 Betyls, 15 Bhagavad Gita, 310, 321 Bhakti, 172, 314, 316 Bhandarkar, Sir B. G., 315 Bhuvaneshvar, 14 Bible, references to, 26 f., 55, 80, 113, 115, 128 f., 163, 195, 231, 236, 242 f., 266, 282, 334, 351 Biology, 107, 224, 352 362 INDEX Birds, worship of, 34; as symbols, 44 f., bird-soul, 145 Blood, 16, as soul, 113; offered to spirits, 166, 170 Bo-tree, 24 Bodhisat, 318 f., 325 f., 334 Bonaventura, 266 f. Brahma, Brahman, 35, 42, 63 f., 2SS f., 303 f., 312, 348; meaning of, 309 Brahmana, reference to, 125 f., 166, 175 f. Brandstetter, 132 Breath, as soul, 131 f. See Wind Bridge of judgment, 233 Buddha, 65, 72, 177, 179, 282, 318 f.; as saint, 192; miracles of, 242; as savior, 195, 257, 322; love for, 264; as mother, 317, 324; and Bodhisat, 329 f.; has signs of Vishnu, 330. See Bodhisat, Bud¬ dhism Buddhism, 39, 57; soul in, 146, 148; redemption in, 163; sacrifice in, 174; loan from, 193; temples of, 203; priest of, 206; pantheism of, 288; psalms in, 327; triads of, 295; trinity of, 318 f.; paradise of, 330; unites with Krishna- Cult, 331. See Lamaism Bush-soul, 23, 139 I Callaway, 74 Campbell, J. C., 281 Cannibalism, 148 Catlin, 96, 114, 119, 123, 134, 173, 233 Celibacy, 213 Celsus, 339 Chaldeans, 54, 60 Chaos, 232, 278. See Order Cherubim, 282 China, 57, 140, 165; early priests of, 205; code of, 265; controls reli¬ gion, 221; pantheism of, 288; con¬ trasted with India, 307. See Con¬ fucius, Heaven, Taoism Christ (Christmas), birthday of, 60; teaching of, 150; as priest, 209; as ethical teacher, 263 f., epiph¬ any of, 335 Chrysippus, 132 Chunder Sen, 71 Church, origin of, 202; priest and Church, 204 f., 216 f.; Church and State, 217 f., 220; and ethics, 271; brotherhood, 335; as mother, 338 Cicero, 115 Circle, in magic, 77; of hair, 123; of dance, 186 Circumcision, 196 Civilization, 357 Clementines, 339 Codes, ethical, 260 Coe, G. A., 105 Colenso, Bishop, 233 Collectivism, collective representa¬ tion, 5 f. See Durkheim Color, religious significance of, 77, 126; red (paint), as blood, 16, 119; red hair taboo, 126. See Mourning Commandments, Ten, 265 Communal meal, communion, 155, 157, 166, 168. See Eucharist Conduct, see Ethics Confession, 197, 212 Confirmation, ritual of, 195 f. Confucius, ethics of, 254 Conscience, 266, 268 Corn-mother, 30 Cosmic egg, 230 Cosmogonies, 229 f. Creation, myth of, 227 Creator-god, 63. See Brahman, Prajapati Creed, 224 Cremation, 148 Crooke, W., 16, 33, 36, 48, 75, 116, 119, 124 Cross, 45, 197, 293 Crown, 123 Crucifixion, 170 Cultivation, of morality, 356 Culture-heroes, 231 Cumberland, 267 Cumont, 60 INDEX 363 Curse, 48, 236 Custom, 9 f. Cybele, 15 Dalai lama, 211, 216. See Lamaism Dance, 97, 103, 183, 186 f., 204; of gods, 216; dancing-girls, 215 Davenport, F. M., 105 David, dance of, 187 Davidson, R., 105 Dawn, cult of, 51 Deacons, deaconess, 338 f. Dead, treatment of, 33, 148 Deazil, 58 Deb, H. 1ST., 46 Decorations, 181, 191 Deluge, myth of, 35, 230 f., 237 f. Demeter, 31, 103, 153, 192, 208, 276. See Mother-goddess Descartes, 130 Deussen, 309, 315 Devil, deil, origin of, 285. See Dis¬ ease-devils, Satan Dhamma, dharma, 94, 319 f.; dha- makaya, etc., 327, 337; as female power, 331 Dhyani Buddhas, 325, 328 Dietrich, A., 20 Dionysos, 192, 335 Disease-devils, 74 f., 87; as sin, 163 Dobrizhoffer, 115 Docetic forms, 328, 333, 337, 340 Dogma, 224 Doshabhogva, 315 Dragon, three-headed, 298 Dream, 204 Dress, 181, 216 Druid, 219 Drummond, 107 Dryads, 24 f. Dualism, 285 f. Du Bois, 21 Duns Scotus, 267 Durkheim, E., 4 f., 8 f., 11, 158, 166, 180, 183 1, 188, 190, 226, 275. See Collectivism * Ea, 42, 86, 231, 238 Earth, as mother, 19 f., 53, 60; cult of, 276. See Demeter, Mother-god- dess Easter fire-cult, 194 Echo, 134 Eckhart, 347 Eclipse-demon, 41 Ecstasy, 343 Eggeling, 126 Egypt, 66, 82, 142, 202, 208, 221, 232, 237, 288 Elements, cult of, 47 f. Elephant-god, see Ganesha Elephanta, statue at, 306 Eliot, Sir Charles, 202, 216 Ellamma, Mother God, 306 Ellis, 76/ 124, 138, 250 Emanation theory, 328, 338 Embalming, 149. See Mummification Embryonic forms, 357 Emotions, 93 f., 104 Empedocles, 115 Environment, 6, 8, 66, 89, 183 Epiphany, 335 Erinys, a wronged soul, 229 Eros, in triad, 301 Eroticism, 186, 216, 254, 307. See Love Eschatology, 228 f. Ethics, and religion, 229, 245 f., 278; ethical codes, 252 f.; basis of, 259 f.; explanation of, 266; provisional, 358 Eucharist, 177. See Thanksgiving Eusebius, 338 Evil, idea of, 257 f., 285 f.; created by Yahweh, 284; in Plotinus, 341; as lack of good and source of good, 357 Evolution, 352 Exorcism, 205, 293 Eye-power, evil eye, 112 f., 126 Faith, 177 f., 330, 342, 344, 351 Farnell, L. R., 174 Fasting, 164, 193 f. Fate, 55, 278; three fates, 91, 295 Father, as priest, 205; -god, 279, 341. See Prajapati Fear, 89, 93 f.; as god, 101 364 INDEX Fergusson, 3S, 202 Fetish, fetishism, 18 f., 61, 71, 98 f., 118, 297 Fire, 25, 49 f., 64, 194; fire-god as mediator, 169; form of, 294 f.; as trinity, 299 f. Fish, worship of, 35; as symbol, 42 f., 45; as incarnation, 238, 310; in evolution-series, 353 Foster, 120, 233 Four, holy, 173, 291 Fravaslii, 81, 145 Frazer, Sir J. G., 4, 56, 117 f., 120, 122, 127, 170 Funeral, ritual, 122 Future life, 109, 148 f., 232 f. Galen, 131 Games, become religious, 208 Ganesha, elepliant-god, 42 Gemini, 280 Genius, Roman, 138 Ghosts, 73 f., 77 f., 109 f., 139 f., 155 f., 275 f., become vegetation- spirits, 280. See Manes Gift-sacrifice, 155, 165. See Sacri¬ fice Gilgamesh, 74 Gnostic belief, 130, 307, 322, 336, 338 God, 89; as clan, 6; ethical advance in conception of, 251, 257; father¬ hood of, 263, 349; unknown, 278; in pantheism, 287, 311, 321, 326; in Buddhism, 333; in Christianity, 336 f., 340; in science, 356 Goldziher, 120 Good and Evil, 257, 285. See Right and Wrong Gotama, 24, 318, 327, 330. See Buddha Grace, of God, 304, 314, 330 Grain, type of resurrection, 30. See Corn-mother, Mother-goddess Gratitude. See Thanksgiving Greece, ethics of, 260; triads of, 295. See Ghosts, Presumption, Zeus, etc. Green, T. IT., 268 Grotius, 267 Group-religion, 5, 7, 184 f. See Col¬ lectivism Grove as temple, 30. See Trees ^ruppe, O., 9 Gun as, 305 Guru, 210 Iladad, 86 Hair, 80, 115; red, 126 Halo, 193 Hari, Harivansha, 306 Heart, 129, 283 Heaven, 70, 83, 139, 143, 237, 278. See Sky Hebrews, religion of, 6, 204; priests of, 207, 209; cult of dead, 281; polytheism of, 282; belief in spirits, 339; sacrifice of, 176 f. Hekate, 33 Helios, 58, 153. See Sun Hell, 228 f., 234 f., 330 Hellwig, 220 | Hera, 276 f., 296 Heraclitus, 130 Hernias, 338 Hermes, a stone, 19 Heroes, 81. See Culture-heroes Hierodoulai, Sacred prostitutes, 176, 216 Hinayana, 320 f. Hobbes, 267 Holy Grail, 198 Holy Spirit, as Mother, 307, 315; as Son, 317; in Buddhism, 318 f., 330, 333; in Christianity, 336 f., 339 Hom-plant, 27 f. Homer, 101, 128; sacrifice in, 174; priest in, 207; triads in, 295 Hope, 89, 98 f. Horse-races, become religious, 208 Horus, 307 Hospitality, 219 Hubert and Mauss, theory of, 167 f. Hunger, 100; source of good, 357 Hyperboreans, 231 Hypnotism, 242 INDEX 365 Ideal, in nature, 354; conformity to, 357 Idealism, 287 Idol, 21 f.; care of, 200. See Images Ignatius, 338 Images, 15, 21, 182, 191, 203 Imagination, 90 f. Immanence, of God, 345 Immortality, 150, 231, 234 f., 335, 360; water of, 36 Inca, trend to monotheism, 278 Incarnation. See Avatars Incense, 29, 165, 191, 193, 199, 224 Indra, 49, 86, 239, 300, 303 Indulgences, 211 Inge, W. R., 342 Inspiration, 262 Intoxicating plants, deified, 27 Ishtar, 55, 87, 236 Isis, 207 Islam, 206 Jahn, 113 Jain religion, 17, 39, 286 Janus, 43 Japan, sun-goddess of, 57; sacrifices of, 189 Jastrow, M., 57, 122, 128 f. Jataka, 135 Jesus, use of name of, 195; teach¬ ing of, 224; in Buddhism, 332; divinity of, 337 f., 339 Jevons, 191, 351 Jews, Jewish Theology, 338 f. Jinns, 22 John, St., 336 Jones, 347 Judge, priest as, 219; of hell, 228 Juggernaut, 323 Julian, 338 Jupiter, as stone, 17; sky, 53; and Juno, in triad, 296 Justice, 255, 260, 283 Justin, 336, 339 Ka and Kra, 137 Kaaba-stone, 15 Kabir, deified, 311 Kalpas, 328 Kama, Love, water-born, 48 Kapuralas, devil-dancers, 216 Karma, 147, 163; an ethical power, 268 f.; Buddha saves from, 330, 334 Keane, A. H., 284 Kelvin, Lord, 356 Kerberos, 33, 298 Kern, 321 Khwaja Khizr, as totem, 36 King, worship of, 68 f., 216; and priest, 206; every man a king, 220 King, Irving, 6, 8 Kingsley, Miss, 250 Knowledge, sin according to, 207; as religious factor, 288 f., 332; tree of, 24 Koran, 351 Krishna, 70, 87, 102, 104, 179, 216; miracles of, 242; incarnate form of Vishnu, 290, 309 f.; Caitanya’s interpretation of, 315; as Buddha, 331 Kuannon, 317, 324, 329 Kurus, 231 Ladd, G. T., 347 Lagrange, 170 Lakshmi, as divine mother, 317 Lalitavistara, 323 Lamaism, ritual of, 192, 211, 216, 324 Laws, validity of, 9. See Codes Le Conte, 355, 359 Lemures, 78 Lenormant, 16 Lex talionis, 357 Life, tree of, 24; as power, 110; controlled by will, 355 Light, as soul, 130; as God, 285, 336 Liver, 54, 128, 143, 168 Logos, 283, 336 f. Lotus, of the Good Law, 320 f., 326; lotus-plant, 26 Love, 48, 100 f., 103 f., 172, 263; free love and religion, 270; in Buddhism, 332 Lyall, 153 366 INDEX Maat, 66 Madliva, 314, 317 Madliyamika tenets, 330 Magic, 4, 56, 172, 292. See Mysti¬ cism Mahabharata, 62 f., 242 Mahayana, 178, 320 f., 334 Maitreya, 324 Man, worship of, 67 f. Mana, 12, 98, 158, 170, 175 Manes, sacrifice to, 154, 175. See Ghosts Manjushri, 324 Mann, 35, 126, 231, 238, 265 Mareion, 337 Marduk, 236; Bel, 238, 240, 275 Mars, 27, 55, 85; wife of, 91 Maruts, 49 Mary, 324, 338 Mass, 209 Mater viventium, 307, 338 Matter, as sentient, 11, 110; and force, 355 May-pole, 103, 188 Mecca, 15, 190 Mediation, 169; of priest, 210; mediatorial office, 297 f., 340 f.; of Agni, 300 Menander, 266 Merit, transferred, 334. See Bud¬ dhism, Karma Messenger-spirit, 168, 300. See Liver Metempsychosis, 139, 234 Mexico, 58 f., 86, 197, 208, 219, 231 Mind, organ of soul, 133; Good and Evil, 286; as One, 327 Miracles, 241 f. Mitliraism, 59, 192, 335 Mohammed, 71; religion of, 225 Monastic orders, 216 f. Monogamy, 246 Monolatry, Monotheism, 275 f., 281 f., 314 Month-gods, 281 Moon, 55, 57, 155, 329 Moore, Clifford II., 279 Morality, result of evolution, 356. See Ethics Morsein, 94 Moses, 283; horns of, 45 Mother-goddess (spirit), 15, 20, 30 f., 85 f., 103, 216, 306 f., 335, 337 f., 340. See Demeter Mountains, 19 Mourning, 48, 120 f., 159 f., 188 Muller, Max, 4, 13, 101, 108; W. M., 232 Mummification, 38. See Embalming Murray, Gilbert, 279 Music, 97, 176, 187 Mutilation, 159 Mysticism, 10, 54, 72, 104, 125, 132, 149, 157, 174 f., 196, 243, 270 f., 300, 307, 335 f., 343, 360 Myths, 92; and ritual, 182; crea¬ tion, 227; mythology and reli¬ gion, 226 f. Nakedness, in ritual, 188 Name, 330 Narayana, 317 Nassau, R. H., 76 Nats, number of, 294 Naturalism, 4; natural phenomena, 280 Nature (and nurture), 89 Necessity (Fate), 55 Negro, soulless, 109; soul-belief of, 125; sacrifice of, 156; ritual of, 105, 186 Neoplatonism, 288, 340 f. Nichiren, 329 Nielsen, 296 Nihilism, 330 Nioba, lapidea, 18 Noetus, 337 Nous, 340 f. Numbers, 291 f.; odd, 294. See Seven, Three Numenius, 341 Oath, on stone, 16, 118 Offerings, 77; of hair, 121 Oil, religious use of, 181, 191 Om, 46, 189 Oman, 28 One, The, 76, 341 Optimism, 285 INDEX 367 Oracles, 82; oracular tree, 26 Ordeals, 48, 51, 194; stages in, 256 Order, divine power, 65; opposed to Chaos, 230, 240, 278; in evolution, 353 Origen, 150, 337, 339, 345 Ormuzd, 282, 296 Orphic mystics, 197, 300 Osiris, 27, 142, 146, 170, 295 Pagan, ethics, 259, 265; influence, 336 Pantheism, 287 f., 348 Paradise, myth of, 147, 226, 230 f., 330 Parkman, 44, 106, 114, 138 Parmenides, 288 Passover, 195 Paton, L. B., 33, 82 f., 236, 278 Pattee, F. L., 55 Pattidana, 177 Paul, St., 30, 150, 242, 336; of Samosata, 337 f. Pausanias, 296 Penitential hymns, 200 Pentecost, 182 Persia, 65. See Zoroaster Peru, 58 f.; and Egypt, 202 Petronius, 94 Philo, 340 f. Philosophy, 274 f. Pilgrimages, 190 Pindar, 58 Pipal tree, 24 Pir, 81 Pisehel, 45 Planets, 55 Plants. See Trees, Tulsi Plato, 92, 115, 179, 222, 340; Pla¬ tonic elements in Christianity, 338 Pleiades, 52 Pliny, the Younger, 338 Plotinus, 288, 340 f., 347 Plutarch, 341 Polytheism, 281, 286 Prajapati, 275, 287, 303 Prana, breath, soul, 132 Prapatti, 315 Praxeas, 337 Prayers, to the dead, 177 Pre-logical man, 10 f. Preman, love, 172 Presumption, sin of, 239, 250 Priest, 2, 68 f.; and Church, priest¬ hood, 204 f.; of different nations, 208; Christian 209; good and evil of, 212 f.; priestess, 214 f., 216; fire as priest, 300 Proclus, 342 Propitiation-rite from purification, 189 Prometheus, 128 Psyche, 131, 139; Platonic, 340 f. Puja, 67 Puranas, 71, 306 Purification, 51, 189, 193 f., 208 Purim, 82 Ea, 60. See Sun Eadau, Hugh, 296 Eainbow, cult of, 51 Eakshasas, 23, 278 Eama, 70, 87, 223, 309 f.; in the trinity, 333 Eamanuja, 312 f., 315 Eambha, a nymph, 18 Eebirth, regeneration, 158, 179. See Eesurrection Eed, see Color Eedemption, 95, 162 f., 330, 334 Eelics, cult of, 147 Eeligion, universality of, 1 f.; theo¬ ries of origin, 3 f.; base of, 105 f., 107; and art, 19; and games, 208; and theology, 223; of Mother and of Book, 338 Eepentance, 96 f., 177 Eesurrection, 30, 146, 149, 197, 236; of Attis, 293 Eetribution, 249 Eight and Wrong, Jain principles of philosophy, 287 Eig-Yeda, 18, 23, 48, 51, 61, 65, 100, 129 f., 235, 255, 275, 294, 300 f., 311 Eita, Eight Order, 65, 278 Eitual, 79, 179 f. Eome, 219, 231 368 INDEX Rosary, 193 Roscher, 50 Rotarians, ethics of, 272 Royce, J., 358 f. Rudra (Shiva), 200, 303 f. See Shiva Sabellians, creed of, 339 Sacraments, 335 Sacrifice, to human-gods, 71; series of, 177; of blood, 114; mystery of, 125; theories of, 151 f.; of a pure heart, 164; piaeular, 172; eucharistic, 173; of riddance, 174; truth of, 179; to Ganesha, 202; in civilization, 179, 358 Sacrilege, 249 Saints, images of, 182; as inter¬ cessors, 197; as day-spirits, 281; in Jainism and Buddhism, 17, 287; pagan gods as Christian saints, 192, 335 Saliva, 135 Salvation, 178, 195 Samoan souls, 109, 148 Samson, 119 Sanctification, 159 Satan, 239 f., 284 Saussaye, C. de, 13, 49, 108 Savage belief (general), 351 Savior, in Zoroastrianism, 146; Bud¬ dha as, 322; -god, 334 Sayce, A. H., 296 Schmidt, Richard, 127 Schooling, Sir William, 273 Schopenhauer, ethics of, 269 Secret societies, 196 f. Sects, 225, 306 Self-consciousness, 359 Seligman, 76, 113 Semi-Arians, 338 Semites, 80, 283. See Arabs, Baby¬ lon, Hebrews Serapis, 307 Serpents, cult of, 36 f., 51, 276 Seven, as indeterminate number, 62; holy, 173, 238, 292 Seymour, T. D., 128 Sex, in religion, 277, 285, 307. See Love, Mother-goddess Shadow, soul and divine, 133 f., 142 Shakti, 25 Slialagrama Stone, 18, 23 Slialer, N. S., 360 Shamanism, 33, 84, 183, 189, 205 Shamash, 55, 60. See Sun Shami-tree, 25 Shankara, 312 f., 314, 326 f. Shankhya, 286, 305 Slieol, 80, 139, 285 Shintoism, 83 Shiva, 24, 41, 61; wife of, S8; at¬ tendant of, 101, 139; necklace of, 193; miracles of, 242; men as his children, 263; dance of, 270; divinity of, 303 f., 311 f.; one with Buddha, 347 Shraddha, 155 Sidgwick, H., 264 f. Sikhs, 105 Sin, consciousness of, 96; implies debt, 162; unintentional, 251; origin of, 258 f.; knowledge de¬ stroys, 288 Sin, Moon-god, 55; and Sinai, 56 Skull, 126, 141. See Soul Sky, as father, 19, 53, 83. See Heaven, Zeus Smith, Elliot, 38, 46 Smith, Robertson, 115, 122, 166 Smotherers, 271 Socrates, 115, 266, 332 Soederblom, D. N., 297 f. Soma, 27 f., 57, 72, 130, 132; as king of priests, 206 Somo (ancestors), 84 Soul, If., 33, 54; persisting, 106, 109 f., 132 1, 136 1, 141, 148; subtle body of, 146; in plants, 235; and body, 285; in Vedanta philosophy, 314; in Buddhism, 332; in Plotinus, 341; as effer¬ vescence, 350; nature of, 358 1, 360 Spencer, Herbert, 3, 51, 116 Spencer and Gillen, 162 Spirit, as mind, 11 ; distinguished INDEX 369 from soul, 109, 113; and matter, 285; spirit and form in religion, 224; spirituality, 110 Spring-festival, 61, 105 Starbuck, E. D., 105 f. Stars, cult of, 52 f., 125 Stoic philosophy, 288, 336, 338 Stones, worship of, 13 f.; as witness, 17; perforated, 18; massebas, 20; Shalagrama-stone, 23; burial, 75 Strabo, 292 Sukhavati, 330 Sun, 50; worship of, 56, 58 f.; Sun¬ day, 60; hymns to, 61 f.; type of Supreme, 65; in Egypt, 146; sun- rite, 187; as energizing power, 277. Suzuki, D. T., 327, 332 f. Svastika, 38, 45 f. Symbol, Symbolism, 41 f., 92 f., 124 Sympathy, 95 f.; sympathetic magic, 172; religious bearing of, 357 Syrian Christians, 338 Tabernacles, feast of, 181 Taboo, 5, 971, 175, 185, 214; and ethics, 248 Tammuz, 74, 187, 282 Tantrie Buddhism, 306, 329 Taoism, 284 Tathagata, 320 f., 348 Tatian, 336 Temple, 21, 29, 147, 200 f., 202, 204 Temple, R. C., 46 Tertullian, 150 Thankfulness, Thanksgiving, 96, 107, 173, 184 Theodotus, 337 Theology, and religion, 223 Thirst, 100 Thor and Thunder, 91 Three, Thrice, 135; holy number, 291 f. Tiamat, 240. See Chaos Tiele, C. P., 95, 101, 108, 166 Tillinghast, J. A., 105 Toleration, 223 Tongaloa, 53 Torah, incorporates Wisdom Spirit, 337 Totem, Totemism, 11, 28, 33, 36, 39 f., 100, 155, 166, 171, 218 Trees, worship of, 22 f.; marriage of, 23; dryad, 23 f.; tree of life, 24; Bo-tree, 24; May-tree, 25; Gods as trees, 27; plant of life, 28; Christmas tree, 29; of Paradise, 231. See Christmas, Temple Triad, 55, 291 f.; Roman, 296; Bud¬ dhistic, 332 Triceps, 297 f. Trimurti, 302 f., 306; date of, 308 Trinity, invocation of, 293; Hindu, 3021; Buddhistic, 318 1, 327, • 329, 348; Christian, 335 f.; Three¬ fold, 345 Trita, 164 Trumbull, H. C., 114 Truth, 248 f. Tulsi-plant, wedded, holy, 23 1, 26 Tylor, Sir Edward, 3, 61, 116 1, 133, 153, 351 Unity in godhead, 278 Unknown God, 278, 358 Upanishads, 65, 285, 288 1, 303, 308^3121, 360 Usener, 298 1 Vac (vox), deified, 283 Vairocana, 325 Vajradhara, 324 Valentinus, 338 Varuna, 42, 53, 251, 300, 303 Vata, 49; as Vayu, 303 Vedanta, 288, 314 Veddas, 76 Venus, becomes Christian saint, 192 Vergil, as magician, 243 Vestals, 50, 215 Vir, hero, cult of, 81 Virgin, Artemis as, 192 Virgin-birth, 65, 330 A 7 ishnu, 18, 24, 35, 42, 601, 125, 290, 303 1, 310 1, 317; as Bud¬ dha, 323, 330 1, 347; as Dharma, 332 370 INDEX Vishnuism, sacrifice in, 174 Void, The, 324, 328 Warren, H., 76 Water, cult of, 47 f.; purifies, 164, 193. See Baptism Webb, C. C. J., 8, 11 Week, 56 Weininger, 109 Wellhausen, 115 Weregeld, theory of, 163, 220 Westermarck, 170 Whittaker, 342 Wife, worships husband, 70; conse¬ crates husband, 334 Wilson, J. W., 76; T., 46 Will, in evolution, 354, 358 Wilutzky, 219 Wind, 49; and breath, 133 Windisch, Ernst, 115 Wisdom, spirit of, 284, 337. See Holy Spirit Women, and Moon-cult, 55; men dressed as, 216; in ethics, 253; and snakes, 276. See Dance, Priestess, Virgin, Wife World-soul, see All-soul Wundt, 112 f., 120, 134 1, 137, 139, 180 Xenophanes, 288 Yaliweh, 27, 35, 204, 236, 251, 275, 281 1, 285, 336 1; spirits of, 339 f. Yama and Yiraa, myth of, 231 f. Yang and Yin, 140 Yazatas, 281 Year-demon, 30, 287 Yggdrasil, tree of life, 24 Yoga, dualism of, 285 Yogi, 45, 126 1, 148, 178, 243 Zeller, 342 Zen, school, 332 Zeno, 130 Zeus, 16 1, 53, 92, 277; in triad, 295; three-eyed, 299 Zodiac, 54 Zoroaster, 65, 71, 167, 173, 284 f. Zoroastrianism, 76, 144 1, 150, 178, 225, 231, 233, 257, 281 ; triads of, 295 Zwingli, 346 / PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA r i I Date Due f SMS H! ■^J l& $ HOPKINS Z « Hist. Origin & evolution of religion.