Volume I Part 30 (1/2)

While the current theory thus appears to break down over the deities of certain Australian tribes and of other low savages to be more particularly described later, it is not more successful in dealing with what we have called the ”fault” or break in the religious strata of higher races. The nature of that ”fault” may thus be described: While the deities of several low savage peoples are religiously regarded as guardians and judges of conduct both in this life and in the next, among higher barbarians they are often little, or not at all, interested in conduct. Again, while among Australians, and Andamanese, and Fuegians, there is hardly a verifiable trace, if any trace there be, of sacrifice to any divine being, among barbarians the G.o.ds beneath the very highest are in receipt even of human sacrifice. Even among barbarians the highest deity is very rarely wors.h.i.+pped with sacrifice. Through various degrees he is found to lose all claim on wors.h.i.+p, and even to become a mere name, and finally a jest and a mockery. Meanwhile ancestral ghosts, and G.o.ds framed on the same lines as ghosts, receive sacrifice of food and of human victims. Once more, the high G.o.ds of low savages are not localised, not confined to any temple or region. But the G.o.ds of higher barbarians (the G.o.ds beneath the highest), are localised in this way, as occasionally even the highest G.o.d also is.

All this shows that, among advancing barbarians, the G.o.ds, if they started from the estate of G.o.ds among savages on the lowest level, become demoralised, limited, conditioned, relegated to an otiose condition, and finally deposed, till progressive civilisation, as in Greece, reinstates or invents purer and more philosophic conceptions, without being able to abolish popular and priestly myth and ritual.

Here, then, is a flaw or break in the strata of religion. What was the cause of this flaw? We answer, the evolution, through ghosts, of ”animistic” G.o.ds who retained the hunger and selfishness of these ancestral spirits whom the lowest savages are not known to wors.h.i.+p.

The moral divine beings of these lowest races, beings (when religiously regarded) unconditioned, in need of no gift that man can give, are not to be won by offerings of food and blood. Of such offerings ghosts, and G.o.ds modelled on ghosts, are notoriously in need. Strengthened and propitiated by blood and sacrifice (not offered to the G.o.ds of low savages), the animistic deities will become partisans of their adorers, and will either pay no regard to the morals of their wors.h.i.+ppers, or will be easily bribed to forgive sins. Here then is, ethically speaking, a flaw in the strata of religion, a flaw found in the creeds of ghost-wors.h.i.+pping barbarians, but not of non-ghost-wors.h.i.+pping savages.

A crowd of venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved out of ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude early form of theism. Granting the facts, we fail to see how they are explained by the current theory which makes the highest G.o.d the latest in evolution from a ghost. That theory wrecks itself again on the circ.u.mstance that, whereas the tribal or national highest divine being, as latest in evolution, ought to be the most potent, he is, in fact, among barbaric races, usually the most disregarded. A new idea, of course, is not necessarily a powerful or fas.h.i.+onable idea. It may be regarded as a ”fad,” or a heresy, or a low form of dissent. But, when universally known to and accepted by a tribe or people, then it must be deemed likely to possess great influence. But that is not the case; and among barbaric tribes the most advanced conception of deity is the least regarded, the most obsolete.

An excellent instance of the difference between the theory here advocated, and that generally held by anthropologists, may be found in Mr. Abercromby's valuable work, Pre-and Proto-Historic Finns, i.

150-154. The G.o.ds, and other early ideas, says Mr. Abercromby, ”could in no sense be considered as supernatural”. We shall give examples of G.o.ds among the races ”nearest the beginning,” whose attributes of power and knowledge can not, by us at least, be considered other than ”supernatural”. ”The G.o.ds” (in this hypothesis) ”were so human that they could be forced to act in accordance with the wishes of their wors.h.i.+ppers, and could likewise be punished.” These ideas, to an Australian black, or an Andamanese, would seem dangerously blasphemous.

These older G.o.ds ”resided chiefly in trees, wells, rivers and animals”.

But many G.o.ds of our lowest known savages live ”beyond the sky”. Mr.

Abercromby supposes the sky G.o.d to be of later evolution, and to be wors.h.i.+pped after man had exhausted ”the helpers that seemed nearest at hand... in the trees and waters at his very door”. Now the Australian black has not a door, nor has he G.o.ds of any service to him in the ”trees and waters,” though sprites may lurk in such places for mischief.

But in Mr. Abercromby's view, some men turned at last to the sky-G.o.d, ”who in time would gain a large circle of wors.h.i.+ppers”. He would come to be thought omnipotent, omniscient, the Creator. This notion, says Mr.

Abercromby, ”must, if this view is correct, be of late origin”. But the view is not correct. The far-seeing powerful Maker beyond the sky is found among the very backward races who have not developed helpers nearer man, dwelling round what would be his door, if door he was civilised enough to possess. Such near neighbouring G.o.ds, of human needs, capable of being bullied, or propitiated by sacrifice, are found in races higher than the lowest, who, for their easily procurable aid, have allowed the Maker to sink into an otiose G.o.d, or a mere name. Mr.

Abercromby unconsciously proves our case by quoting the example of a Samoyede. This man knew a Sky-G.o.d, Num; that conception was familiar to him. He also knew a familiar spirit. On Mr. Abercromby's theory he should have resorted for help to the Sky-G.o.d, not to the sprite. But he did the reverse: he said, ”I cannot approach Num, he is too far away; if I could reach him I should not beseech thee (the familiar spirit), but should go myself; but I cannot”. For this precise reason, people who have developed the belief in accessible affable spirits go to them, with a spell to constrain, or a gift to bribe, and neglect, in some cases almost forget, their Maker. But He is wors.h.i.+pped by low savages, who do not propitiate ghosts and who have no G.o.ds in wells and trees, close at hand. It seems an obvious inference that the greater G.o.d is the earlier evolved.

These are among the difficulties of the current anthropological theory.

There is, however, a solution by which the weakness of the divine conception, its neglected, disused aspect among barbaric races, might be explained by anthropologists, without regarding it as an obsolescent form of a very early idea. This solution is therefore in common use.

It is applied to the deity revealed in the ancient mysteries of the Australians, and it is employed in American and African instances.

The custom is to say that the highest divine being of American or African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is, especially, a savage refraction from the G.o.d of missionaries. If this can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless ”Master of Life”

of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint unsuccessful refraction. He has been introduced by Europeans, it is argued, but is not in harmony with his new environment, and so is ”half-remembered and half forgot”.

The hypothesis of borrowing admits of only one answer, but that answer should be conclusive. If we can discover, say in North America, a single instance in which the supreme being occurs, while yet he cannot possibly be accounted for by any traceable or verifiable foreign influence, then the burden of proof, in other cases, falls on the opponent. When he urges that other North American supreme beings were borrowed, we can reply that our crucial example shows that this need not be the fact. To prove that it is the fact, in his instances, is then his business. It is obvious that for information on this subject we must go to the reports of the earliest travellers who knew the Red Indians well. We must try to get at G.o.ds behind any known missionary efforts. Mr. Tylor offers us the testimony of Heriot, about 1586, that the natives of Virginia believed in many G.o.ds, also in one chief G.o.d, ”who first made other princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, and then the sun, moon and stars as petty G.o.ds”.(1) Whence could the natives of Virginia have borrowed this notion of a Creator before 1586? If it is replied, in the usual way, that they developed him upwards out of sun, moon and star G.o.ds, other princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, and finally reached the idea of the Creator, we answer that the idea of the Maker is found where these alleged intermediate stages are NOT found, as in Australia. In Virginia then, as in Victoria, a Creator may have been evolved in some other way than that of gradual ascent from ghosts, and may have been, as in Australia and elsewhere, prior to verifiable ghost-wors.h.i.+p. Again, in Virginia at our first settlement, the native priests strenuously resisted the introduction of Christianity. They were content with their deity, Ahone, ”the great G.o.d who governs all the world, and makes the sun to s.h.i.+ne, creating the moon and stars his companions.... The good and peaceable G.o.d... needs not to be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good unto them.” This good Creator, without sacrifice, among a settled agricultural barbaric race sacrificing to other G.o.ds and ghosts, manifestly cannot be borrowed from the newly arrived religion of Christianity, which his priests, according to the observer, vigorously resisted. Ahone had a subordinate deity, magisterial in functions, ”looking into all men's actions” and punis.h.i.+ng the same, when evil. To THIS G.o.d sacrifices WERE made, and if his name, Okeus, is derived from Oki = ”spirit,” he was, of course, an animistic ghost-evolved deity. Anthropological writers, by an oversight, have dwelt on Oki, but have not mentioned Ahone.(2) Manifestly it is not possible to insist that these Virginian high deities were borrowed, without saying whence and when they were borrowed by a barbaric race which was, at the same time, rejecting Christian teaching.

(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 341.

(2) History of Travaile into Virginia, by William Strachey, 1612.

Mr. Tylor writes, with his habitual perspicacity: ”It is the widespread belief in the Great Spirit, whatever his precise nature and origin, that has long and deservedly drawn the attention of European thinkers to the native religions of the North American tribes”. Now while, in recent times, Christian ideas may undeniably have crystallised round ”the Great Spirit,” it has come to be thought ”that THE WHOLE DOCTRINE of the Great Spirit was borrowed by the savages from missionaries and colonists. But this view will not bear examination,” says Mr. Tylor.(1)

(1) Prim. Cult, ii. pp. 339, 340 (1873). For some reason, Mr. Tylor modifies this pa.s.sage in 1891.

Mr. Tylor proceeds to prove this by examples from Greenland, and the Algonkins. He instances the Ma.s.sachusett G.o.d, Kiehtan, who created the other G.o.ds, and receives the just into heaven. This was recorded in 1622, but the belief, says Winslow, our authority, goes back into the unknown past. ”They never saw Kiehtan, but THEY HOLD IT A GREAT CHARGE AND DUTY THAT ONE AGE TEACH ANOTHER.” How could a deity thus rooted in a traditional past be borrowed from recent English settlers?

In these cases the hypothesis of borrowing breaks down, and still more does it break down over the Algonkin deity Atahocan.