Part 2 (2/2)

According to Mr. Spencer ”the rudimentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead ancestors.” Men concluded, as soon as they were capable of such reasoning, that the life they witnessed in plants and animals, in sun and moon and other parts of nature, was due to their being inhabited by the spirits of departed men. With all respect for the splendid exposition given by Mr. Spencer[2] of the early beliefs of mankind regarding spirits, it is impossible to think that he has made out his case when he treats the G.o.ds of early India and of Greece as deified ancestors. If the natural incredulity we feel at being told that Jupiter, Indra, the sun, the sacred mountain, and the stars all alike came to be wors.h.i.+pped because each of them represented some departed human hero, is not at once decisive, we have only to wait a little to see whether some other theory cannot account for these G.o.ds in a simpler way.

[Footnote 2: _Sociology_, vol. i. Also _Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions_, p. 675; ”ghost-propitiation is the origin of all religions.”]

Mr. Tylor also derives all religion from the wors.h.i.+p of spirits, but in a different way. His is the most comprehensive system of Animism, using that term in the narrower sense of soul-wors.h.i.+p. Starting from the doctrine of souls, reached by early man in the way described above (p. 33, _sqq._), he argues that when once this notion was reached it would be applied to other beings as well as man. Not having learned to distinguish himself clearly from other beings, man would judge that they had souls like his own; and so every part of nature came to have its soul, and everything that went on in the universe was to be explained as the activity of souls. It was in this way, according to Mr. Tylor, that the view of the universal animation of nature, characteristic of early thought, was reached. ”As the human body was held to live and act by virtue of its own inhabiting spirit-soul, so the operations of the world seemed to be carried on by other spirits.” At this point the soul is an unsubstantial essence inhabiting a body, it has its life and activity only in connection with the body; but the step was easily taken to the further belief in spirits like the souls, but not attached to any body. The spirits moved about freely, like the genii, demons, fairies, and beings of all kinds, with whom to the mind of antiquity the world was so crowded.

Three cla.s.ses of spirits we have up to this point: those of ancestors, those attached to the various parts of the life of nature, and those existing independently. Can the higher nature-deities be accounted for by this theory as well as the minor spirits of the parts of nature? Mr. Tylor considers that they can; he declares that the ”higher deities of polytheism have their place in the general animistic system of mankind.” He acknowledges that, with few exceptions, great G.o.ds have a place as well as smaller G.o.ds in every non-civilised system of religion. But in origin and essence he holds they are the same. ”The difference is rather of rank than of nature.”

As chiefs and kings are among men so are the great G.o.ds among the lesser spirits. The sun, the heavens, the stars, are living beings, because they have spirits as man has a soul, or as a spring has a spirit that haunts it. Thus in the doctrine of souls is found the origin of the whole of early religion. Mr. Tylor confesses, however, that it is impossible to trace the process by which the doctrine of souls gave rise to the belief in the great G.o.ds.

The weakness of this view is that it involves a denial that the great powers of nature could be wors.h.i.+pped before the process of reasoning had been completed which led to the belief that they had souls or spirits. But how did early man regard these great powers before this?

Did they not appear to him adorable by the very impressions they made upon his various senses? Did he really need to argue out the belief that they had souls, before he felt drawn to wonder at them, and to seek to enter into relations with them?

Animism.--The word Animism, it should here be noticed, is used in the study of religions in a wider sense than that of Mr. Tylor. Many of the great religions are known to have arisen out of a primitive wors.h.i.+p of spirits and to have advanced from that stage to a wors.h.i.+p of G.o.ds. The G.o.d differs from the spirit in having a marked personal character, while the spirits form a vague and somewhat undistinguishable crowd; in having a regular _clientele_ of wors.h.i.+ppers, whereas the spirit is only served by those who need to communicate with him; in having therefore a regular wors.h.i.+p, while the spirit is only wors.h.i.+pped when the occasion arises; and in being served from feelings of attachment and trust, and not like the spirits from fear. When G.o.ds appear, some writers hold, then and not till then does religion begin; before that point is reached magic and exorcism are the forms used for addressing the unseen beings, but when it is reached we have wors.h.i.+p; intercourse is deliberately sought with beings who hold regular relations with man. The word Animism is best employed to denote the wors.h.i.+p of spirits as distinguished from that of G.o.ds. Whether or not early man derived his belief in the mult.i.tude of spirits by which he believed himself to be surrounded, from his belief in the separable human soul, there is no doubt that he did consider himself to be so surrounded. Animism in this sense is undoubtedly the beginning of some at least of the great religions.

3. The Minor Nature-wors.h.i.+p came First.--M. Reville holds[3] that the tree and the river and other such beings were the first G.o.ds, and that the deification of the great powers of nature came afterwards as an extension of the same principle. Mr. Max Muller seems to share this view when he says that man was led from the wors.h.i.+p of semi-tangible objects, which provided him with semi-deities, to that of intangible objects, which gave him deities proper. The Germans, as a rule, hold the view that the great nature-wors.h.i.+p came first, and that the sanct.i.ty of the tree and the river came to them from above, these objects being regarded as lesser living beings deserving to be wors.h.i.+pped as well as the greater ones. The English school let the sanct.i.ty of these objects come to them as it were from below; when man has come to believe in spirits, he concludes that they have spirits too, and wors.h.i.+ps the spirits he supposes to dwell in them.

It does not seem that these theories are entirely exclusive of each other. French writers suppose that the minor nature-wors.h.i.+p first sprang up of itself, half-animal man respecting the animals as rivals, the trees as fruit-bearers for his hunger, and so on, and that spirits were added to these beings when the great animistic movement of thought in which these writers believe took place, of course at a very early period.[4]

[Footnote 3: Reville, _Histoire des religions des peuples non-civilises_, ii. 225.]

[Footnote 4: This view is the basis of M. Andre Lefevre's _La Religion_. Paris, 1892.]

4. The Great Nature-powers came First.--We come in the last place to that cla.s.s of deities which we spoke of first--the powers of nature.

By several great writers it is held that the wors.h.i.+p of these is the original form of all religion. We shall give two of the leading theories on the subject, that of Mr. Max Muller and that of Ed. von Hartmann.

Mr. Max Muller has written very strongly against the view that fetis.h.i.+sm is a primary form of religion, and holds that the wors.h.i.+p of casual objects is not a stage of religion once universally prevalent, but is, on the contrary, a parasitical development and of accidental origin. He does not tell us what the original religion of mankind was. The work in which he deals most directly with this question[5] is concerned chiefly with the Indian faith, the early stages of which he regards as the most typical instance of the growth of religion generally. He does not, however, tell us definitely out of what earlier kind of religion that of the Aryans grew, which India best teaches us to know, or what religion they had before they developed that of the Vedic hymns. We may infer, however, what his view on this point is from the very interesting sketch he draws of the psychological advance man could make, in selecting objects of reverence, from one cla.s.s of things to another (p. 179, _sqq._).

First, there are tangible objects, which, however, Mr. Max Muller denies that mankind as a whole ever did wors.h.i.+p; such things as stones, sh.e.l.ls, and bones. Then second, semi-tangible objects; such as trees, mountains, rivers, the sea, the earth, which supply the material for what may be called _semi-deities_. And third, intangible objects, such as the sky, the stars, the sun, the dawn, the moon; in these are to be seen the germs of _deities_. At each of these stages man is seeking not for something finite but for the infinite; from the first he has a presentiment of something far beyond; he grasps successive objects of wors.h.i.+p not for themselves but for what they seem to tell of, though it is not there, and this sense of the infinite, even in poor and inadequate beliefs, is the germ of religion in him. When he rises after his long journey to fix his regards on the great powers of nature, he apprehends in them something great and transcendent. He applies to them great t.i.tles; he calls them _devas_, s.h.i.+ning ones; _asuras_, living ones; and, at length, _amartas_, immortal ones. At first these were no more than descriptive t.i.tles, applied to the great visible phenomena of nature as a cla.s.s. They expressed the admiration and wonder the young mind of man felt itself compelled to pay to these magnificent beings. But by giving them these names he was led instinctively to regard them as persons; he ascribed to them human attributes and dramatic actions, so that they became definite, transcendent, living personalities. In these, more than in any former objects of his adoration, his craving for the infinite was satisfied. Thus the ancient Aryan advanced, ”from the visible to the invisible, from the bright beings that could be touched, like the river that could be seen, like the thunder that could be heard, like the sun, to the devas that could no longer be touched or heard or seen.... The way was traced out by nature herself.”

[Footnote 5: _Lectures on the Origin of Religion_, 1882.]

This famous theory is, when we come to examine it, rather puzzling.

It does not account for the first beginnings of religion except by inference, and it does so in two contradictory ways; for, on the one hand, Mr. Max Muller enumerates tangible objects first as those from which men rose to higher objects, and on the other he denies that fetis.h.i.+sm is a primitive formation. He suggests that there were earlier G.o.ds than the devas, but he tells us nothing about them, except that they were not fully deities; they were only semi-deities, or not deities at all. The wors.h.i.+p of spirits he leaves entirely out of consideration; religion did not, in his view, begin with Animism.

When he does tell us of the beginnings of religion, what is his view?

The religion of the Aryans began, and it is a type--the other religions presumably began in the same way, _e.g._ those of China and of Egypt--by the impression made on man from without by great natural objects co-operating with his inner presentiment of the infinite, which they met to a greater degree than any objects he had tried before. Religion was due accordingly to aesthetic impressions from without, answering an aesthetic and intellectual inner need. Those needs, then, which led men to make G.o.ds of the great powers of earth and heaven were not of an animal or material nature, but belonged to the intellectual part of his const.i.tution. Those who framed such a religion for themselves must have been raised above the pressing necessities and cares of savage life; they were not absorbed in the task of making their living, but had leisure to stand and admire the heavenly bodies, and to a.n.a.lyse the impressions made on them by the waters and the thunder. Nay, they had sufficient power of abstraction to form a cla.s.s of such great beings, to bestow on them a common t.i.tle, not only one but several progressive common t.i.tles, each expressing a deeper reflection than the last. Thus did they reflect on the nature of the cosmic powers, taken as a cla.s.s. This, evidently, is not the beginning of religion. It is the religion of a comparatively lofty civilisation; lower stages of civilisation, and of religion also, must have preceded this one. Even the heavenly bodies, it appears to many scholars, must have been wors.h.i.+pped by men who regarded them not with aesthetic admiration and intellectual satisfaction only, but in the light of more pressing and practical interests.

We take Edward von Hartmann as the representative of those who, like Mr. Max Muller, trace the origin of religion to the wors.h.i.+p of the heavenly powers, but who carry back that wors.h.i.+p to the earliest stage. Writers who disagree with his philosophy take grave exception to his treatment of religion, for he regards religion, as he considers consciousness itself, not as an original and inseparable element of human nature, but as a thing acquired by man on his way upwards; and he finds the original motive of religion to have lain in egoistic eudaemonism, in the selfish desire of happiness, which at that stage of man's life determined all his actions. The account, however, given by Von Hartmann of the beginning of religion in the adoration of the powers of nature is of singular freshness and power, and we can deduct from it, after stating it, the peculiarities arising out of his philosophical system.

The first religion that existed in the world had for its objects the heavenly powers. The objects wors.h.i.+pped are known, indeed, before religion begins; the illusions of early thought have settled on the heavenly powers before they are wors.h.i.+pped; on the outward object the mind has conferred the character of a living and acting being, which it is henceforth to wear. This transformation, poetic fancy, not mere logic and not merely utilitarian considerations, has brought about.

But religion only begins when man sets himself to wors.h.i.+p these beings, and to this he is driven by his material needs. Religion begins in a being as yet without religion and without morality. The need for food is the motive that brings about the change, for that pure egoist early man has seen that the powers of nature are able to help or hinder him in his search for a living; the sun can set his plants growing or can burn them up, and the thunderstorm can revive them. His happiness depends on these powers, and he seeks to set up relations with them. He seeks to gain as an ally the heavenly power who is so able to further or to thwart his aims; he makes known to it his wishes by calling upon it, and he offers presents to it. He wors.h.i.+ps the heavenly powers, and religion has begun. Wors.h.i.+p lends to these powers, though they were known before, a fixity and reality they did not formerly possess. Von Hartmann is inclined to trace all the various wors.h.i.+ps of these powers, which have prevailed in the most different parts of the earth, to the same original centre, while at the same time he maintains that even if all the instances of this wors.h.i.+p cannot be referred to any common origin, it must have arisen in this way, wherever men of the same nature dwelt; the psychological necessity of this development accounts for the appearance of this same religion in different lands and among dissimilar races.

The wors.h.i.+p of the heavenly powers, accordingly, is with this writer the original religion. While admitting that the wors.h.i.+p of domestic spirits grew up in the way described by the English anthropologists, he denies that Animism is ever a religion by itself without being combined with higher beliefs. He denies also that fetis.h.i.+sm could ever be an original religious product, or that men could ever pa.s.s from having no religion to the religion of fetis.h.i.+sm. Wherever it appears, it is a religion of decay. All the religion in the world has come from the wors.h.i.+p of nature, which, whether arising at one centre or at several, spread over the world, and is to be recognised, clearly or dimly, in the religions of all lands.

This view of the origin of religion is shared in the main by Otto Pfleiderer,[6] and other German writers. It was from the impressions made on man by the powers of nature, these scholars hold, and not from his belief in spirits, that his religion came. But it was not necessarily due to pure egoism, as Von Hartmann represents; the earliest religions need not, they hold, have been a mere attempt at bribery. The motives which first caused man to wors.h.i.+p the heavenly powers surely arose from other needs than that for food alone. The intellectual craving, the desire to know the nature of the world he lived in, and to refer himself to the highest principle of it, as far as that could be attained; the aesthetic need, the desire to have to do with objects which filled his imagination; the moral need, the desire not to occupy a purely isolated position, but to place himself under some authority, and to feel some obligation, these also, though in the dimmest way, as matters of presentiment rather than clear consciousness, entered into the earliest wors.h.i.+p of the heavenly powers. This view has the great advantage over that of Von Hartmann, that it makes the development of religion continuous from the first, instead of representing it as being originally a purely selfish thing, into which the character of affection and devotion only entered at some subsequent stage. If man's nature is essentially religious, then all that const.i.tutes religion must have been with him from the first, in however unconscious and undeveloped form.

[Footnote 6: _Philosophy of Religion_, vol. iii. chap. i.]

Conclusion.--We have enumerated the different kinds of G.o.ds wors.h.i.+pped by early man--fetishes, spirits, the powers of nature. We have found a general agreement that fetis.h.i.+sm is not an original form of religion, but a product of the decay of higher forms in unfavourable conditions. As to the other two kinds of deities, it is impossible to deny that G.o.ds have been formed from the very first in each of these two ways. The domestic wors.h.i.+p of the early world cannot be derived from nature-wors.h.i.+p, but grew out of the belief awakened in early man, by the familiar experiences mentioned above.

That the greater nature-wors.h.i.+p, on the other hand, can be derived from the belief in spirits is an a.s.sertion which can never be proved, or even made probable; that it arose from the impressions produced on early man by the great objects and forces of nature, is a thing we can understand and believe. The minor nature-wors.h.i.+p is also a very intelligible thing, even without Mr. Tylor's theory of souls to explain it. What more natural than that the savage should wors.h.i.+p the great oak or the waterfall, or should think himself surrounded by invisible beings, even if he did not frame the latter on the model of the human soul? We arrive therefore at the conclusion that with the exception of the doctrines about death and the abode of spirits, we must regard the wors.h.i.+p of nature as the root of the world's religion.

We must beware, however, of imputing to the thoughts of early men about their G.o.ds, any such qualities as consistency or regularity.

The power of holding at one and the same time religious beliefs which are inconsistent with each other, is one which even in the most developed religions is by no means wanting; and how much more was this the case among men who lived before there was any exact thought!

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