Part 20 (1/2)

[Footnote 15: From a brief account of the Fire Ceremony, or _Engwurra_ of certain tribes in Central Australia, it seems that religious ceremonies connected with Totems are the most notable performances. Also 'certain mythical ancestors,' of the '_alcheringa_, or dream-times,' were celebrated; these real or ideal human beings appear to 'sink their ident.i.ty in that of the object with which they are a.s.sociated, and from which they are supposed to have originated.' There appear also to be places haunted by 'spirit individuals,' in some way mixed up with Totems, but nothing is said of sacrifice to these Manes. The brief account is by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. F.J. Gillen, _Proc. Royal Soc.

Victoria_, July 1897. This Fire Ceremony is not for lads--not a kind of confirmation in the savage church--but is intended for adults.]

[Footnote 16: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1886, p. 310.]

[Footnote 17: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1885, p. 313.]

[Footnote 18: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. p. 459.]

[Footnote 19: _Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions_, p. 674.]

[Footnote 20: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 450.]

[Footnote 21: Cranz, pp. 198, 199.]

[Footnote 22: _Journal Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. 348-356.]

[Footnote 23: Rom. i. 19. Cranz, i. 199.]

[Footnote 24: In Mr. Carr's work, _The Australian Race_, reports of 'G.o.dless' natives are given, for instance, in the Mary River country and in Gippsland. These reports are usually the result of the ignorance or contempt of white observers, cf. Tylor, i. 419. The reader is referred to the Introduction for additional information about Australian beliefs, and for replies to objections.]

XI

SUPREME G.o.dS NOT NECESSARILY DEVELOPED OUT OF 'SPIRITS'

Before going on to examine the high G.o.ds of other low savages, I must here again insist on and develop the theory, not easily conceived by us, that the Supreme Being of savages belongs to another branch of faith than ghosts, or ghost-G.o.ds, or fetishes, or Totems, and need not be--probably is not--essentially derived from these. We must try to get rid of our theory that a powerful, moral, eternal Being was, from the first, _ex officio_, conceived as 'spirit;' and so was necessarily derived from a ghost.

First, what was the process of development?

We have examined Mr. Tylor's theory. But, to take a practical case: Here are the Australians, roaming in small bands, without more formal rulers than 'headmen' at most; not ancestor wors.h.i.+ppers; not polytheists; with no departmental deities to select and aggrandise; not apt to speculate on the _Anima Mundi_. How, then, did they bridge the gulf between the ghost of a soon-forgotten fighting man, and that conception of a Father above, 'all-seeing,' moral, which, under various names, is found all over a huge continent? I cannot see that this problem has been solved or frankly faced.

The distinction between the Australian deity, at his highest power, unpropitiated by sacrifice, and the ordinary, waning, easily forgotten, cheaply propitiated ghost of a tribesman, is essential. It is not easy to show how, in 'the dark backward' of Australian life, the notion of Mungan-ngaur grew from the idea of the ghost of a warrior. But there is no logical necessity for the belief in the evolution of this G.o.d out of that ghost. These two factors in religion--ghost and G.o.d--seem to have perfectly different sources, and it appears extraordinary that anthropologists have not (as far as I am aware) observed this circ.u.mstance before.

Mr. Spencer, indeed, speaks frequently of living human beings adored as G.o.ds. I do not know that these are found on the lowest levels of savagery, and Mr. Jevons has pointed out that, before you can hail a man as a G.o.d, you must have the idea of G.o.d. The murder of Captain Cook notoriously resulted from a scientific experiment in theology. 'If he is a G.o.d, he cannot be killed.' So they tried with a dagger, and found that the honest captain was but a mortal British mariner--no G.o.d at all. 'There are degrees.' Mr. Spencer's men-G.o.ds become real G.o.ds--after death.[1]

Now the Supreme Being of savage faith, as a rule, never died at all. He belonged to a world that knew not Death.

One cause of our blindness to the point appears to be this: We have from childhood been taught that 'G.o.d is a Spirit.' We, now, can only conceive of an eternal being as a 'spirit.' We know that legions of savage G.o.ds are now regarded as spirits. And therefore we have never remarked that there is no reason why we should take it for granted that the earliest deities of the earliest men were supposed by them to be 'spirits' at all. These G.o.ds might most judiciously be spoken of, not as 'spirits,' but as 'undefined eternal beings.' To us, such a being is necessarily a spirit, but he was by no means necessarily so to an early thinker, who may not yet have reached the conception of a ghost.

A ghost is said, by anthropologists, to have developed into a G.o.d. Now, the very idea of a ghost (apart from a wraith or fetch) implies the previous _death_ of his proprietor. A ghost is the phantasm of a _dead_ man. But anthropologists continually tell us, with truth, that the idea of death as a universal ordinance is unknown to the savage. Diseases and death are things that once did not exist, and that, normally, ought not to occur, the savage thinks. They are, in his opinion, supernormally caused by magicians and spirits. Death came into the world by a blunder, an accident, an error in ritual, a decision of a G.o.d who was before Death was. Scores of myths are told everywhere on this subject.[2]

The savage Supreme Being, with added power, omniscience, and morality, is the idealisation of the savage, as conceived of by himself, _minus_ fleshly body (as a rule), and _minus_ Death. He is not necessarily a 'spirit,' though that term may now be applied to him. He was not originally differentiated as 'spirit' or 'not spirit.' He is a Being, conceived of without the question of 'spirit,' or 'no spirit' being raised; perhaps he was originally conceived of before that question could be raised by men. When we call the Supreme Being of savages a 'spirit' we introduce our own animistic ideas into a conception where it may not have originally existed. If the G.o.d is 'the savage himself raised to the n^th power' so much the less of a spirit is he. Mr. Matthew Arnold might as well have said: 'The British Philistine has no knowledge of G.o.d. He believes that the Creator is a magnified non-natural man, living in the sky.' The Gippsland or Fuegian or Blackfoot Supreme Being is just a _Being_, anthropomorphic, not a _mrart_, or 'spirit.' The Supreme Being is a _wesen_, Being, _Vui_; we have hardly a term for an immortal existence so undefined. If the being is an idealised first ancestor (as among the Kurnai), he is not, on that account, either man or ghost of man. In the original conception he is a powerful intelligence who was from the first: who was already active long before, by a breach of his laws, an error in the delivery of a message, a breach of ritual, or what not, death entered the world. He was not affected by the entry of death, he still exists.

Modern minds need to become familiar with this indeterminate idea of the savage Supreme Being, which, logically, may be prior to the evolution of the notion of ghost or spirit.

But how does it apply when, as by the Kurnai, the Supreme Being is reckoned an ancestor?

It can very readily be shown that, when the Supreme Being of a savage people is thus the idealised First Ancestor, he can never have been envisaged by his wors.h.i.+ppers as at any time a _ghost_; or, at least, cannot logically have been so envisaged where the nearly universal belief occurs that death came into the world by accident, or needlessly.