Part 18 (1/2)

It is to be remarked that, while this branch of the inquiry is practically omitted by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Tylor can spare for it but some twenty pages out of his large work. He arranges the probable germs of the savage idea of a Supreme Being thus: A G.o.d of the polytheistic crowd is simply raised to the primacy, which, of course, cannot occur where there is no polytheism. Or the principle of Manes wors.h.i.+p may make a Supreme Deity out of 'a primeval ancestor' say Unkulunkulu, who is so far from being supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in Nature-wors.h.i.+p, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may acc.u.mulate all powers of all polytheistic G.o.ds, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and calm ... too benevolent to need human wors.h.i.+p ... too merely existent to concern himself with the petty race of men.'[14] But he is always animistic.

Now, in addition to the objections already noted in pa.s.sing, how can we tell that the Supreme Being of low savages was, in original conception, _animistic_ at all? How can we know that he was envisaged, originally, as _Spirit_? We shall show that he probably was not, that the question 'spirit or not spirit' was not raised at all, that the Maker and Father in Heaven, prior to Death, was merely regarded as a deathless _Being_, no question of 'spirit' being raised. If so, Animism was not needed for the earliest idea of a moral Eternal. This hypothesis will be found to lead to some very singular conclusions.

It will be more fully stated and ill.u.s.trated, presently, but I find that it had already occurred to Dr. Brinton.[15] He is talking specially of a heaven-G.o.d; he says 'it came to pa.s.s that the idea of G.o.d was linked to the heavens _long ere man asked himself, Are the heavens material and G.o.d spiritual_?' Dr. Brinton, however, does not develop his idea, nor am I aware that it has been developed previously.

The notion of a G.o.d about whose spirituality n.o.body has inquired is new to us. To ourselves, and doubtless or probably to barbarians on a certain level of culture, such a Divine Being _must_ be animistic, _must_ be a 'spirit.' To take only one case, to which we shall return, the Banks Islanders (Melanesia) believe in ghosts, 'and in the existence of Beings who were not, and never had been, human. All alike might be called spirits,' says Dr. Codrington, but, _ex hypothesi_, the Beings 'who never were human' are only called 'spirits,' by us, because our habits of thought do not enable us to envisage them _except_ as 'spirits.' They never were men, 'the natives will always maintain that he (the _Vui_) was _something different_, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man,' while resolute that he was not a ghost.[16]

This point will be amply ill.u.s.trated later, as we study that strangely neglected chapter, that essential chapter, the Higher beliefs of the Lowest savages. Of the existence of a belief in a Supreme Being, not as merely 'alleged,' there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in the ethnographic region.

It is certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers, and missionaries, have again and again recognised our G.o.d in theirs.

The mythical details and fables about the savage G.o.d are, indeed, different; the ethical, benevolent, admonis.h.i.+ng, rewarding, and creative aspects of the G.o.ds are apt to be the same.[17]

'There is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of G.o.d, or of a future state, 'the facts being universally admitted.'[18]

'Intelligent men among the Bakwains have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception of good and evil, G.o.d and the future state; Nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared to them as otherwise,' except polygamy, says Livingstone.

Now we may agree with Mr. Tylor that modern theologians, familiar with savage creeds, will scarcely argue that 'they are direct or nearly direct products of revelation' (vol. ii. p. 356). But we may argue that, considering their nascent ethics (denied or minimised by many anthropologists) and the distance which separates the high G.o.ds of savagery from the ghosts out of which they are said to have sprung; considering too, that the relatively pure and lofty element which, _ex hypothesi_, is most recent in evolution, is also, _not_ the most honoured, but often just the reverse; remembering, above all, that we know nothing historically of the mental condition of the founders of religion, we may hesitate to accept the anthropological hypothesis _en ma.s.se_. At best it is conjectural, and the facts are such that opponents have more justification than is commonly admitted for regarding the bulk of savage religion as degenerate, or corrupted, from its own highest elements. I am by no means, as yet, arguing positively in favour of that hypothesis, but I see what its advocates mean, or ought to mean, and the strength of their position. Mr. Tylor, with his unique fairness, says 'the degeneration theory, no doubt in some instances with justice, may claim such beliefs as mutilated and perverted remains of higher religion'

(vol. ii. p. 336).

I do not pretend to know how the lowest savages evolved the theory of a G.o.d who reads the heart and 'makes for righteousness,' It is as easy, almost, for me to believe that they 'were not left without a witness,'

as to believe that this G.o.d of theirs was evolved out of the maleficent ghost of a dirty mischievous medicine-man.

Here one may repeat that while the 'quaint or majestic foreshadowings'

of a Supreme Being, among very low savages, are only sketched lightly by Mr. Tylor; in Mr. Herbert Spencer's system they seem to be almost omitted. In his 'Principles of Sociology' and 'Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions' one looks in vain for an adequate notice; in vain for almost any notice, of this part of his topic. The watcher of conduct, the friendly, creative being of low savage faith, whence was he evolved? The circ.u.mstance of his existence, as far as I can see; the chast.i.ty, the unselfishness, the pitifulness, the loyalty to plighted word, the prohibition of even extra-tribal homicide, enjoined in various places on his wors.h.i.+ppers, are problems that appear somehow to have escaped Mr. Spencer's notice. We are puzzled by endless difficulties in his system: for example as to how savages can forget their great-grandfathers'

very names, and yet remember 'traditional persons from generation to generation,' so that 'in time any amount of expansion and idealisation can be reached,'[19]

Again, Mr. Spencer will argue that it is a strange thing if 'primitive men had, as some think, the consciousness of a Universal Power whence they and all other things proceeded,' and yet 'spontaneously performed to that Power an act like that performed by them to the dead body of a fellow savage'--by offerings of food.[20]

Now, first, there would be nothing strange in the matter if the crude idea of 'Universal Power' came _earliest_, and was superseded, in part, by a later propitiation of the dead and ghosts. The new religious idea would soon refract back on, and influence by its ritual, the older conception.

And, secondly, it is precisely this 'Universal Power' that is _not_ propitiated by offerings of food, in Tonga, (despite Mr. Huxley) Australia, and Africa, for example. We cannot escape the difficulty by saying that there the old ghost of Universal Power is regarded as dead, decrepit, or as a _roi-faineant_ not worth propitiating, for that is not true of the punisher of sin, the teacher of generosity, and the solitary sanction of faith between men and peoples.

It would appear then, on the whole, that the question of the plain man to the anthropologist, 'Having got your idea of spirit into the savage's mind, how does he develop out of it what I call G.o.d?' has not been answered. G.o.d cannot be a reflection from human kings where there have been no kings; nor a president elected out of a polytheistic society of G.o.ds where there is as yet no polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor where men do not wors.h.i.+p their ancestors; while, again, the spirit of a man who died, real or ideal, does not answer to a common savage conception of the Creator. All this will become much more obvious as we study in detail the highest G.o.ds of the lowest races.

Our study, of course, does not pretend to embrace the religion of all the savages in the world. We are content with typical, and, as a rule, well-observed examples. We range from the creeds of the most backward and worst-equipped nomad races, to those of peoples with an aristocracy, hereditary kings, houses and agriculture, ending with the Supreme Being of the highly civilised Incas, and with the Jehovah of the Hebrews.

[Footnote 1: _Journal Anthrop. Inst._ xi. 874. We shall return to this pa.s.sage.]

[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 389, 1892.]

[Footnote 3: Payne, i. 458.]

[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult._ vol. ii. p. 381; _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, pp. 346, 372.]

[Footnote 5: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. p. 109.]

[Footnote 6: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 110.]