Part 7 (1/2)
(2) The Four Stages, p. 140.
And farther back still in the evolutionary process we may trace (as in chapter iv above) the divinization or deification of four-footed animals and birds and snakes and trees and the like, from the personification of the collective emotion of the tribe towards these creatures. For people whose chief food was bear-meat, for instance, whose totem was a bear, and who believed themselves descended from an ursine ancestor, there would grow up in the tribal mind an image surrounded by a halo of emotions--emotions of hungry desire, of reverence, fear, grat.i.tude and so forth--an image of a divine Bear in whom they lived and moved and had their being. For another tribe or group in whose yearly ritual a Bull or a Lamb or a Kangaroo played a leading part there would in the same way spring tip the image of a holy bull, a divine lamb, or a sacred kangaroo. Another group again might come to wors.h.i.+p a Serpent as its presiding genius, or a particular kind of Tree, simply because these objects were and had been for centuries prominent factors in its yearly and seasonal Magic. As Reinach and others suggest, it was the Taboo (bred by Fear) which by first forbidding contact with the totem-animal or priest or magician-chief gradually invested him with Awe and Divinity.
According to this theory the G.o.d--the full-grown G.o.d in human shape, dwelling apart and beyond the earth--did not come first, but was a late and more finished product of evolution. He grew up by degrees and out of the preceding animal-wors.h.i.+ps and totem-systems. And this theory is much supported and corroborated by the fact that in a vast number of early cults the G.o.ds are represented by human figures with animal heads. The Egyptian religion was full of such divinities--the jackal-headed Anubis, the ram-headed Ammon, the bull-fronted Osiris, or Muth, queen of darkness, clad in a vulture's skin; Minos and the Minotaur in Crete; in Greece, Athena with an owl's head, or Herakles masked in the hide and jaws of a monstrous lion. What could be more obvious than that, following on the tribal wors.h.i.+p of any totem-animal, the priest or medicine-man or actual king in leading the magic ritual should don the skin and head of that animal, and wear the same as a kind of mask--this partly in order to appear to the people as the true representative of the totem, and partly also in order to obtain from the skin the magic virtues and mana of the beast, which he could then duly impart to the crowd? Zeus, it must be remembered, wears the aegis, or goat-skin--said to be the hide of the goat Amaltheia who suckled him in his infancy; there are a number of legends which connected the Arcadian Artemis with the wors.h.i.+p of the bear, Apollo with the wolf, and so forth. And, most curious as showing similarity of rites between the Old and New Worlds, there are found plenty of examples of the wearing of beast-masks in religious processions among the native tribes of both North and South America. In the Atlas of Spix and Martius (who travelled together in the Amazonian forests about 1820) there is an understanding and characteristic picture of the men (and some women) of the tribe of the Tecunas moving in procession through the woods mostly naked, except for wearing animal heads and masks--the masks representing Cranes of various kinds, Ducks, the Opossum, the Jaguar, the Parrot, etc., probably symbolic of their respective clans.
By some such process as this, it may fairly be supposed, the forms of the G.o.ds were slowly exhaled from the actual figures of men and women, of youths and girls, who year after year took part in the ancient rituals. Just as the Queen of the May or Father Christmas with us are idealized forms derived from the many happy maidens or white-bearded old men who took leading parts in the May or December mummings and thus gained their apotheosis in our literature and tradition--so doubtless Zeus with his thunderbolts and arrows of lightning is the idealization into Heaven of the Priestly rain-maker and storm-controller; Ares the G.o.d of War, the similar idealization of the leading warrior in the ritual war-dance preceding an attack on a neighboring tribe; and Mercury of the foot-running Messenger whose swiftness in those days (devoid of steam or electricity) was so precious a tribal possession.
And here it must be remembered that this explanation of the genesis of the G.o.ds only applies to the SHAPES and FIGURES of the various deities.
It does not apply to the genesis of the widespread belief in spirits or a Great Spirit generally; that, as I think will become clear, has quite another source. Some people have jeered at the 'animistic' or 'anthropomorphic' tendency of primitive man in his contemplation of the forces of Nature or his imaginations of religion and the G.o.ds. With a kind of superior pity they speak of ”the poor Indian whose untutored mind sees G.o.d in clouds and hears him in the wind.” But I must confess that to me the ”poor Indian” seems on the whole to show more good sense than his critics, and to have aimed his rude arrows at the philosophic mark more successfully than a vast number of his learned and scientific successors. A consideration of what we have said above would show that early people felt their unity with Nature so deeply and intimately that--like the animals themselves--they did not think consciously or theorize about it. It was just their life to be--like the beasts of the field and the trees of the forest--a part of the whole flux of things, non-differentiated so to speak. What more natural or indeed more logically correct than for them to a.s.sume (when they first began to think or differentiate themselves) that these other creatures, these birds, beasts and plants, and even the sun and moon, were of the same blood as themselves, their first cousins, so to speak, and having the same interior nature? What more reasonable (if indeed they credited THEMSELVES with having some kind of soul or spirit) than to credit these other creatures with a similar soul or spirit? Im Thurn, speaking of the Guiana Indians, says that for them ”the whole world swarms with beings.”
Surely this could not be taken to indicate an untutored mind--unless indeed a mind untutored in the nonsense of the Schools--but rather a very directly perceptive mind. And again what more reasonable (seeing that these people themselves were in the animal stage of evolution) than that they should pay great reverence to some ideal animal--first cousin or ancestor--who played an important part in their tribal existence, and make of this animal a totem emblem and a symbol of their common life?
And, further still, what more natural than that when the tribe pa.s.sed to some degree beyond the animal stage and began to realize a life more intelligent and emotional--more specially human in fact--than that of the beasts of the field, that it should then in its rituals and ceremonies throw off the beast-mask and pay reverence to the interior and more human spirit. Rising to a more enlightened consciousness of its own intimate quality, and still deeply penetrated with the sense of its kins.h.i.+p to external nature, it would inevitably and perfectly logically credit the latter with an inner life and intelligence, more distinctly human than before. Its religion in fact would become MORE 'anthropomorphic' instead of less so; and one sees that this is a process that is inevitable; and inevitable notwithstanding a certain parenthesis in the process, due to obvious elements in our 'Civilization' and to the temporary and fallacious domination of a leaden-eyed so-called 'Science.' According to this view the true evolution of Religion and Man's outlook on the world has proceeded not by the denial by man of his unity with the world, but by his seeing and understanding that unity more deeply. And the more deeply he understands himself the more certainly he will recognize in the external world a Being or beings resembling himself.
W. H. Hudson--whose mind is certainly not of a quality to be jeered at--speaks of Animism as ”the projection of ourselves into nature: the sense and apprehension of an intelligence like our own, but more powerful, in all visible things”; and continues, ”old as I am this same primitive faculty which manifested itself in my early boyhood, still persists, and in those early years was so powerful that I am almost afraid to say how deeply I was moved by it.” (1) Nor will it be quite forgotten that Sh.e.l.ley once said:--
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends A world of loves and hatreds.
(1) Far Away and Long Ago, ch. xiii, p. 225.
The tendency to animism and later to anthropomorphism is I say inevitable, and perfectly logical. But the great value of the work done by some of those investigators whom I have quoted has been to show that among quite primitive people (whose interior life and 'soul-sense' was only very feeble) their projections of intelligence into Nature were correspondingly feeble. The reflections of themselves projected into the world beyond could not reach the stature of eternal 'G.o.ds,' but were rather of the quality of ephemeral phantoms and ghosts; and the ceremonials and creeds of that period are consequently more properly described as, Magic than as Religion. There have indeed been great controversies as to whether there has or has not been, in the course of religious evolution, a PRE-animistic stage. Probably of course human evolution in this matter must have been perfectly continuous from stages presenting the very feeblest or an absolutely deficient animistic sense to the very highest manifestations of anthropomorphism; but as there is a good deal of evidence to show that ANIMALS (notably dogs and horses) see ghosts, the inquiry ought certainly to be enlarged so far as to include the pre-human species. Anyhow it must be remembered that the question is one of CONSCIOUSNESS--that is, of how far and to what degree consciousness of self has been developed in the animal or the primitive man or the civilized man, and therefore how far and to what degree the animal or human creature has credited the outside world with a similar consciousness. It is not a question of whether there IS an inner life and SUB-consciousness common to all these creatures of the earth and sky, because that, I take it, is a fact beyond question; they all emerge or have emerged from the same matrix, and are rooted in ident.i.ty; but it is a question of how far they are AWARE of this, and how far by separation (which is the genius of evolution) each individual creature has become conscious of the interior nature both of itself and of the other creatures AND of the great whole which includes them all.
Finally, and to avoid misunderstanding, let me say that Anthropomorphism, in man's conception of the G.o.ds, is itself of course only a stage and destined to pa.s.s away. In so far, that is, as the term indicates a belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT conception of ourselves--that is as separate personalities having each a separate and limited character and function, and animated by the separatist motives of ambition, possession, power, vainglory, superiority, patronage, self-greed, self-satisfaction, etc.--in so far as anthropomorphism is the expression of that kind of belief it is of course destined, with the illusion from which it springs, to pa.s.s away.
When man arrives at the final consciousness in which the idea of such a self, superior or inferior or in any way antagonistic to others, ceases to operate, then he will return to his first and primal condition, and will cease to need ANY special religion or G.o.ds, knowing himself and all his fellows to be divine and the origin and perfect fruition of all.
VII. RITES OF EXPIATION AND REDEMPTION
There is a pa.s.sage in Richard Jefferies' imperishably beautiful book The Story of my Heart--a pa.s.sage well known to all lovers of that prose-poet--in which he figures himself standing ”in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory,” and pondering on the vast crowd and the mystery of life. ”Is there any theory, philosophy, or creed,” he says, ”is there any system of culture, any formulated method, able to meet and satisfy each separate item of this agitated pool of human life? By which they may be guided, by which they may hope, by which look forward? Not a mere illusion of the craving heart--something real, as real as the solid walls of fact against which, like seaweed, they are dashed; something to give each separate personality suns.h.i.+ne and a flower in its own existence now; something to shape this million-handed labor to an end and outcome that will leave more suns.h.i.+ne and more flowers to those who must succeed? Something real now, and not in the spirit-land; in this hour now, as I stand and the sun burns.... Full well aware that all has failed, yet, side by side with the sadness of that knowledge, there lives on in me an unquenchable belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet something to be found.... It must be dragged forth by the might of thought from the immense forces of the universe.”
In answer to this pa.s.sage we may say ”No,--a thousand times No! there is no theory, philosophy, creed, system or formulated method which will meet or ever satisfy the demand of each separate item of the human whirlpool.” And happy are we to know there is no such thing! How terrible if one of these bloodless 'systems' which strew the history of religion and philosophy and the political and social paths of human endeavor HAD been found absolutely correct and universally applicable--so that every human being would be compelled to pa.s.s through its machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under its Juggernath wheels! No, thank Heaven! there is no theory or creed or system; and yet there is something--as Jefferies prophetically felt and with a great longing desired--that CAN satisfy; and that, the root of all religion, has been hinted at in the last chapter. It is the CONSCIOUSNESS of the world-life burning, blazing, deep down within us: it is the Soul's intuition of its roots in Omnipresence and Eternity.
The G.o.ds and the creeds of the past, as shown in the last chapter--whatever they may have been, animistic or anthropomorphic or transcendental, whether grossly brutish or serenely ideal and abstract--are essentially projections of the human mind; and no doubt those who are anxious to discredit the religious impulse generally will catch at this, saying ”Yes, they are mere forms and phantoms of the mind, ephemeral dreams, projected on the background of Nature, and having no real substance or solid value. The history of Religion (they will say) is a history of delusion and illusion; why waste time over it? These divine grizzly Bears or Aesculapian Snakes, these cat-faced Pashts, this Isis, queen of heaven, and Astarte and Baal and Indra and Agni and Kali and Demeter and the Virgin Mary and Apollo and Jesus Christ and Satan and the Holy Ghost, are only shadows cast outwards onto a screen; the const.i.tution of the human mind makes them all tend to be anthropomorphic; but that is all; they each and all inevitably pa.s.s away. Why waste time over them?”
And this is in a sense a perfectly fair way of looking at the matter.
These G.o.ds and creeds ARE only projections of the human mind. But all the same it misses, does this view, the essential fact. It misses the fact that there is no shadow without a fire, that the very existence of a shadow argues a light somewhere (though we may not directly see it) as well as the existence of a solid form which intercepts that light.
Deep, deep in the human mind there is that burning blazing light of the world-consciousness--so deep indeed that the vast majority of individuals are hardly aware of its existence. Their gaze turned outwards is held and riveted by the gigantic figures and processions pa.s.sing across their sky; they are unaware that the latter are only shadows--silhouettes of the forms inhabiting their own minds. (1) The vast majority of people have never observed their own minds; their own mental forms. They have only observed the reflections cast by these.
Thus it may be said, in this matter, that there are three degrees of reality. There are the mere shadows--the least real and most evanescent; there are the actual mental outlines of humanity (and of the individual), much more real, but themselves also of course slowly changing; and most real of all, and permanent, there is the light ”which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”--the glorious light of the world-consciousness. Of this last it may be said that it never changes. Every thing is known to it--even the very IMPEDIMENTS to its s.h.i.+ning. But as it is from the impediments to the s.h.i.+ning of a light that shadows are cast, so we now may understand that the things of this world and of humanity, though real in their degree, have chiefly a kind of negative value; they are opaquenesses, clouds, materialisms, ignorances, and the inner light falling upon them gradually reveals their negative character and gradually dissolves them away till they are lost in the extreme and eternal Splendor. I think Jefferies, when he asked that question with which I have begun this chapter, was in some sense subconsciously, if not quite consciously, aware of the answer. His frequent references to the burning blazing sun throughout The Story of the Heart seem to be an indication of his real deep-down att.i.tude of mind.
(1) See, in the same connection, Plato's allegory of the Cave, Republic, Book vii.
The shadow-figures of the creeds and theogonies pa.s.s away truly like ephemeral dreams; but to say that time spent in their study is wasted, is a mistake, for they have value as being indications of things much more real than themselves, namely, of the stages of evolution of the human mind. The fact that a certain G.o.d-figure, however grotesque and queer, or a certain creed, however childish, cruel, and illogical, held sway for a considerable time over the hearts of men in any corner or continent of the world is good evidence that it represented a real formative urge at the time in the hearts of those good people, and a definite stage in their evolution and the evolution of humanity.
Certainly it was destined to pa.s.s away, but it was a step, and a necessary step in the great process; and certainly it was opaque and brutish, but it is through the opaque things of the world, and not through the transparent, that we become aware of the light.
It may be worth while to give instances of how some early rituals and creeds, in themselves apparently barbarous or preposterous, were really the indications of important moral and social conceptions evolving in the heart of man. Let us take, first, the religious customs connected with the ideas of Sacrifice and of Sin, of which such innumerable examples are now to be found in the modern books on Anthropology. If we a.s.sume, as I have done more than once, that the earliest state of Man was one in which he did not consciously separate himself from the world, animate and inanimate, which surrounded him, then (as I have also said) it was perfectly natural for him to take some animal which bulked large on his horizon--some food-animal for instance--and to pay respect to it as the benefactor of his tribe, its far-back ancestor and totem-symbol; or, seeing the boundless blessing of the cornfields, to believe in some kind of spirit of the corn (not exactly a G.o.d but rather a magical ghost) which, reincarnated every year, sprang up to save mankind from famine. But then no sooner had he done this than he was bound to perceive that in cutting down the corn or in eating his totem-bear or kangaroo he was slaying his own best self and benefactor. In that instant the consciousness of DISUNITY, the sense of sin in some undefined yet no less disturbing and alarming form would come in. If, before, his ritual magic had been concentrated on the simple purpose of multiplying the animal or, vegetable forms of his food, now in addition his magical endeavor would be turned to averting the just wrath of the spirits who animated these forms--just indeed, for the rudest savage would perceive the wrong done and the probability of its retribution.