Part 32 (1/2)

We defended the nature of our evidence, as before anthropologists, by showing that, for the savage belief in the supernormal phenomena, we have exactly the kind of evidence on which all anthropological science reposes.

The relative weakness of that evidence, our need of more and better evidence, we would be the very last to deny, indeed it is part of our case. Our existing evidence will hardly support any theory of religion.

Anyone who is in doubt on that head has only to read M. Reville's 'Les Religions des Peuples Non-Civilises,' under the heads 'Melanesiens,'

'Mincopies,' 'Les Australiens' (ii. 116-143), when he will observe that this eminent French authority is ignorant of the facts about these races here produced. In 1883 they had not come within his ken. Such minute and careful inquiries by men closely intimate with the peoples concerned, as Dr. Codrington's, Mr. Hewitt's, Mr. Man's, and the authorities compiled by Mr. Brough Smyth, were unfamiliar to M. Reville, Thus, in turn, new facts, or facts unknown to us, may upset my theory. This peril is of the essence of scientific theorising on the history of religion.

Having thus justified our evidence for the savage _belief_ in supernormal phenomena, as before anthropologists, we turned to a court of psychologists in defence of our evidence for the _fact_ of exactly the same supernormal phenomena in civilised experience. We pointed out that for subjective psychological experiences, say of telepathy, we had precisely the same evidence as all non-experimental psychology must and does rest upon. Nay, we have even experimental evidence, in experiments in thought-transference. We have chiefly, however, statements of subjective experience. For the coincidence of such experience with unknown events we have such evidence as, in practical life, is admitted by courts of law.

Experimental psychology, of course, relies on experiments conducted under the eyes of the expert, for example, by hypnotism or otherwise, under Dr.

Hack Tuke, Professor James, M. Richet, M. Janet. The evidence is the conduct rather than the statements of the subject. There is also physiological experiment, by vivisection (I regret to say) and post-mortem dissection. But non-experimental psychology reposes on the self-examination of the student, and on the statements of psychological experiences made to him by persons whom he thinks he can trust. The psychologist, however, if he be, as Mr. Galton says, 'unimaginative in the strict but unusual sense of that ambiguous word,' needs Mr. Galton's 'word of warning.' He is asked 'to resist a too frequent tendency to a.s.sume that the minds of every other sane and healthy person must be like his own. The psychologist should inquire into the minds of others as he should into those of animals of different races, and be prepared to find much to which his own experience can afford little if any clue.'[5] Mr. Galton had to warn the unimaginative psychologist in this way, because he was about to unfold his discovery of the faculty which presents numbers to some minds as visualised coloured numerals, 'so vivid as to be undistinguishable from reality, except by the aid of accidental circ.u.mstances.'

Mr. Galton also found in his inquiries that occasional hallucinations of the sane are much more prevalent than he had supposed, or than science had ever taken into account. All this was entirely new to psychologists, many of whom still (at least many popular psychologists of the press) appear to be unacquainted with the circ.u.mstances. One of them informed me, quite gravely, that '_he_ never had an hallucination,' therefore--_his_ mind being sane and healthy--the inference seemed to be that no sane and healthy mind was ever hallucinated. Mr. Galton has replied to _that_ argument! His reply covers, logically, the whole field of psychological faculties little regarded, for example, by Mr. Sully, who is not exactly an imaginative psychologist.

It covers the whole field of automatism (as in automatic writing) perhaps of the divining rod, certainly of crystal visions and of occasional hallucinations, as Mr. Galton, in this last case, expressly declares.

Psychologists at least need not be told that such faculties cannot, any more than other human faculties, be always evoked for study and experiment. Our evidence for these faculties and experiences, then, is usually of the cla.s.s on which the psychologist relies. But, when the psychologist, following Leibnitz, Sir William Hamilton, and Kant, discusses the Subconscious (for example, knowledge, often complex and abundant, unconsciously acquired) we demonstrated by examples that the psychologist will contentedly repose on evidence which is not evidence at all. He will swallow an undated, unlocalised legend of Coleridge, reaching Coleridge on the testimony of rumour, and told at least twenty years after the unverified occurrences. Nay, the psychologist will never dream of procuring contemporary evidence for such a monstrous statement as that an ignorant German wench unconsciously acquired and afterwards subconsciously reproduced huge cantles of dead languages, by virtue of having casually heard a former master recite or read aloud from Hebrew and Greek books. This legend do psychologists accept on no evidence at all, because it ill.u.s.trates a theory which is, doubtless, a very good theory, though, in this case, carried to an extent 'imagination boggles at.'

Here the psychologist may reply that much less evidence will content him for a fact to which he possesses, at least, a.n.a.logies in accredited experience, than for a fact (say telepathic crystal-gazing) to which _he_ knows, in experience, nothing a.n.a.logous. Thus, for the mythical German handmaid, he has the a.n.a.logy of languages learned in childhood, or pa.s.sages got up by rote, being forgotten and brought back to ordinary conscious memory, or delirious memory, during an illness, or shortly before death. Strong in these a.n.a.logies, the psychologist will venture to accept a case of language _not_ learned, but reproduced in delirious memory, on no evidence at all. But, not possessing a.n.a.logies for telepathic crystal-gazing, he will probably decline to examine ours.

I would first draw his attention to the difference between revived memory of a language once known (Breton and Welsh in known examples), or learned by rote (as Greek, in an anecdote of Goethe's), and verbal reproduction of a language _not_ known or learned by rote but overheard--each pa.s.sage probably but once--as somebody recited fragments. In this instance (that of the mythical maid) 'the difficulty ... is that the original impressions had not the strength--that is, the distinctness--of the reproduction. An unknown language overheard is a mere sound....'[6]

The distinction here drawn is so great and obvious that for proof of the German girl's case we need better evidence than Coleridge's rumour of a rumour, cited, as it is, by Hamilton, Maudsley, Carpenter, Du Prel, and the common run of manuals.

Not that I deny, _a priori_, the possibility of Coleridge's story. As Mr.

Huxley says, 'strictly speaking, I am unaware of anything that has a right to the t.i.tle of an ”impossibility,” except a contradiction in terms.'[7]

To the horror of some of his admirers, Mr. Huxley would not call the existence of demons and demoniacal possession 'impossible.'[8] Mr. Huxley was no blind follower of Hume. I, too, do not call Coleridge's tale 'impossible,' but, unlike the psychologists, I refuse to accept it on 'Bardolph's security.' And I contrast their conduct, in swallowing Coleridge's legend, with their refusal (if they do refuse) to accept the evidence for the automatic writing of not-consciously-known languages (as of eleventh-century French poetry and prose by Mr. Schiller), or their refusal (if they do refuse) to look at the evidence for telepathic crystal-gazing, or any other supernormal exhibitions of faculty, attested by living and honourable persons.

I wish I saw a way for orthodox unimaginative psychology out of its dilemma.

After offering to anthropologists and psychologists these considerations, which I purposely reiterate, we examined historically the relations of science to 'the marvellous,' showing for example how Hume, following his _a priori_ theory of the impossible, would have declined to investigate, because they were 'miraculous,' certain occurrences which, to Charcot, were ordinary incidents in medical experience.

We next took up and criticised the anthropological theory of religion as expounded by Mr. Tylor. We then collected from his work a series of alleged supernormal phenomena in savage belief, all making for the foundation of animistic religion. Through several chapters we pursued the study of these phenomena, choosing savage instances, and setting beside them civilised testimony to facts of experience. Our conclusion was that such civilised experiences, if they occurred, as they are universally said to do, among savages, would help to originate, and would very strongly support the savage doctrine of souls, the base of religion in the theory of English anthropologists. But apart from the savage doctrine of 'spirits' (whether they exist or not), the evidence points to the existence of human faculties not allowed for in the current systems of materialism.

We next turned from the subject of supernormal experiences to the admitted facts about early religion. Granting the belief in souls and ghosts and spirits, however attained, how was the idea of a Supreme Being to be evolved out of that belief? We showed that, taking the creed as found in the lowest races, the processes put forward by anthropologists could not account for its evolution. The facts would not fit into, but contradicted, the anthropological theory. The necessary social conditions postulated were not found in places where the belief is found. Nay, the necessary social conditions for the evolution even of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p were confessedly not found where the supposed ultimate result of ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, the belief in a Supreme Being, flourished abundantly.

Again, the belief in a Supreme Being, _ex hypothesi_ the latest in evolution, therefore the most potent, was often shelved and half forgotten, or neglected, or ridiculed, where the belief in Animism (_ex hypothesi_ the earlier) was in full vigour. We demonstrated by facts that Anthropology had simplified her task by ignoring that essential feature, _the prevalent alliance of ethics with religion_, in the creed of the lowest and least developed races. Here, happily, we have not only the evidence of an earnest animist, Mr. Im Thurn, on our side, but that of a distinguished Semitic scholar, the late Mr. Robertson Smith. 'We see that even in its rudest forms Religion was a moral force, the powers that man reveres were on the side of social order and moral law; and the fear of the G.o.ds was a motive to enforce the laws of society, which were also the laws of morality.'[9] Wellhausen has already been cited to the same effect.

However, the facts proving that truth, and unselfishness, surely a large element of Christian ethics, are divinely sanctioned in savage religion are more potent than the most learned opinion on that side.

Our next step was to examine in detail several religions of the most remote and backward races, of races least contaminated with Christian or Islamite teaching. Our evidence, when possible, was derived from ancient and secret tribal mysteries, and sacred native hymns. We found a relatively Supreme Being, a Maker, sanctioning morality, and unpropitiated by sacrifice, among peoples who go in dread of ghosts and wizards, but do not always wors.h.i.+p ancestors. We showed that the anthropological theory of the evolution of G.o.d out of ghosts in no way explains the facts in the savage conception of a Supreme Being. We then argued that the notion of 'spirit,' derived from ghost-belief, was not logically needed for the conception of a Supreme Being in its earliest form, was detrimental to the conception, and, by much evidence, was denied to be part of the conception. The Supreme Being, thus regarded, may be (though he cannot historically be shown to be) prior to the first notion of ghost and separable souls.

We then traced the idea of such a Supreme Being through the creeds of races rising in the scale of material culture, demonstrating that he was thrust aside by the compet.i.tion of ravenous but serviceable ghosts, ghost-G.o.ds, and shades of kingly ancestors, with their magic and their b.l.o.o.d.y rites. These rites and the animistic conception behind them were next, in rare cases, reflected or refracted back on the Supreme Eternal.

Aristocratic inst.i.tutions fostered polytheism with the old Supreme Being obscured, or superseded, or enthroned as Emperor-G.o.d, or King-G.o.d. We saw how, and in what sense, the old degeneration theory could be defined and defended. We observed traces of degeneration in certain archaic aspects of the faith in Jehovah; and we proved that (given a tolerably pure low savage belief in a Supreme Being) that belief _must_ degenerate, under social conditions, as civilisation advanced. Next, studying what we may call the restoration of Jehovah, under the great Prophets of Israel, we noted that they, and Israel generally, were strangely indifferent to that priceless aspect of Animism, the care for the future happiness, as conditioned by the conduct of the individual soul. That aspect had been neglected neither by the popular instinct nor the priestly and philosophic reflection of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Christianity, last, combined what was good in Animism, the care for the individual soul as an immortal spirit under eternal responsibilities, with the One righteous Eternal of prophetic Israel, and so ended the long, intricate, and mysterious theological education of humanity. Such is our theory, which does not, to us, appear to lack evidence, nor to be inconsistent (as the anthropological theory is apparently inconsistent) with the hypothesis of evolution.

All this, it must be emphatically insisted on, is propounded 'under all reserves.' While these four stages, say (1) the Australian unpropitiated Moral Being, (2) the African neglected Being, still somewhat moral, (3) the relatively Supreme Being involved in human sacrifice, as in Polynesia, and (4) the Moral Being reinstated philosophically, as in Israel, do suggest steps in evolution, we desire to base no hard-and-fast system of ascending and descending degrees upon our present evidence.

The real object is to show that facts may be regarded in this light, as well as in the light thrown by the anthropological theory, in the hands whether of Mr. Tylor, Mr. Spencer, M. Reville, or Mr. Jevons, whose interesting work comes nearest to our provisional hypothesis.

We only ask for suspense of judgment, and for hesitation in accepting the dogmas of modern manual makers. An exception to them certainly appears to be Mr. Clodd, if we may safely attribute to him a review (signed C.) of Mr. Grant Allen's 'Evolution of the Idea of G.o.d.'