Part 3 (1/2)
The savage could have a variety of G.o.ds of very different natures, who formed in his mind quite a happy family. When he found a new G.o.d, that did not oblige him to part with any old one; it was one G.o.d he was seeking, but he could not settle on one G.o.d as yet, when there were so many beings with a good claim to the position. He made his G.o.ds not out of nothing, but out of a great variety of experiences and impressions, and they acted and reacted on each other in an endless variety of ways. One G.o.d came to the front here and another there; an object was deified here from one reason and there from another; new G.o.ds in time turned old and were less thought of while forgotten G.o.ds of former days came back to memory and were wors.h.i.+pped once more. Endless change, endless recurrences of growth and of decay filled up those great s.p.a.ces and periods, measureless and trackless almost as the expanses of the ocean, that were covered by the prehistoric life of mankind.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 1896.
E. S. Hartland, in _Proceedings of Oxford Congress of the History of Religion_, p. 21, _sqq._
Of the large cla.s.s of books reporting the manners and beliefs of special savage races we may specify--
D. G. Brinton, _The Myths of the New World_, 1896.
W. W. Gill, _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, 1876.
Kingsley, Miss, _West African Studies_, 1899.
Callaway, _The Religious System of the Amazulu_, 1863-72.
Duff Macdonald, _Africana, the Heart of Heathen Africa_, 1882.
G. Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-Western and Western Australia_, 1841.
Spencer and Gilpen. _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899.
CHAPTER IV EARLY DEVELOPMENTS--BELIEF
We have seen from what materials early man made his G.o.ds. As the G.o.ds differed in their origin, they differed also from the very first in the mode of their development. The great nature-G.o.ds gave rise to one kind of religion, and the minor nature-G.o.ds to another, the thought of the departed members of the household to a third. But these various religions could not develop side by side without influencing each other. These different wors.h.i.+ps began in the very earliest times to get mixed up together; there is none of the great religions which we do not find to be a combination of them. It will be well to consider them in the first place separately.
1. Growth of the Great G.o.ds.--Taking them in the order we have already followed, we come first to the great nature-wors.h.i.+p, of which heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, dawn and sunset, and then the phenomena of the weather, rain, storm, and thunder and lightning, are the objects. It cannot be too clearly borne in mind that what was wors.h.i.+pped was originally the natural object itself, regarded, after the earliest habit of thought, as living. To heaven itself, to the sun as he rose or set, to the storm itself, men addressed prayers and made offerings; and in many quarters, both among savages and in the great religions, the same thing occurs to this day.
But it was impossible for man to stop here, his imagination would not allow him to do so. In some races, imagination was more active than in others, but nowhere was it quite inoperative; and so it happened that man was led, here to a greater there to a less extent, beyond the direct and simple adoration of the powers of nature. When he began to give them names, a first and a great step was taken in advance of the original simplicity. A name is a power; if it is anything more than a mere t.i.tle or label, and all primitive names are more than this, it brings with it a.s.sociations of its own, and thus men are led to ascribe to the object indicated by the name, a new character and new powers. They proceed to argue about the name and draw conclusions from it as to the nature of the being they wors.h.i.+p, and so come to think of their deity in quite a different manner. Even to cla.s.sify objects together and give them a common t.i.tle, ”the bright ones,” or ”the living ones,” as the early Aryans did, gives them an independent position of their own, and tempts the imagination to go further in describing them. Striving to find names for those beings he wors.h.i.+ps and thinks about so much, early man gives them the names of living creatures with whom he is familiar, and in this way he brings them much nearer to himself, and at the same time appears to himself to know a great deal more about them. The moon, for example, has horns, the moon is a cow. Heaven is over all, heaven is a father. And as he knows all about a cow, and all about a father, he at once has these deities made much more real to him, they have an independent existence to him. But, on the other hand, he has got something more in his deity than there is in the natural object. It is no longer the mere naked heaven or the mere moon he wors.h.i.+ps; but these beings with additions made to them by his own imagination.
As time goes on the additions grow more and more. Having got living persons for his deities, early man readily goes on to weave their histories and their relations. If the moon is a cow, the sun is a bull chasing her round the sky. This is an instance of a principle which obtains in many at least of the early religions and which it is important to remember, viz. that the powers of nature were first identified with animals. The zoomorphic stage of the nature-G.o.ds comes before the anthropomorphic (_cf._ the signs of the zodiac), and in many savage tribes it still survives.
But it is when the G.o.ds begin to be thought of after the likeness of human beings that the decisive step is made in their development. If heaven is a father, it is easy to go on from that. Earth will be the corresponding mother (an idea found all over the world); and all men will be their children. If the sun is invested with a name of masculine gender (but the sun is frequently feminine), he must do feats becoming such a character. If the storm is a male G.o.d, he will be a warrior or a huntsman. Thus the G.o.d acquires a personal character and an independent movement; what is told about him has reference, of course, to the natural object he sprang from, or the season with which he is connected; but the deity is becoming more and more separate from the natural object, and acquiring a character and history of his own. The stories connected with the G.o.d vary according to the habits and the imaginations of different peoples; in some cases the G.o.ds remain pure and exalted beings, in others savage and indecent myths are acc.u.mulated around them, and these primitive myths adhere to their persons long after they themselves have felt an upward tendency and acquired a civilised character with the moral elevation of their peoples. We shall see in many instances how the nature-G.o.ds were personified, made into beasts, made into men, and surrounded with myths and legends. That is the natural history of the nature-G.o.ds; the process through which they must pa.s.s if they grow at all.
Polytheism.--Another general feature of the wors.h.i.+p of the great natural objects has to be mentioned. Each G.o.d has a history of his own; he has grown up separately as men concentrated their attention upon him. But as one G.o.d grows up after another, or as the G.o.ds who grow up in two countries are afterwards brought together, it comes to pa.s.s that there are many of them, and none of them is necessarily supreme. What is the wors.h.i.+pper to do? The least reflection will convince us that in any act of wors.h.i.+p man fixes his attention on one object only. That belongs to the very nature of religion; as a child could not treat several men at once as its father, nor a servant be equally faithful to several masters, so man naturally tends to have one G.o.d. He turns to the highest he knows, who is most likely to be able to help him, and there cannot be two highests, but only one. But man's position in the early world does not allow him to be true to this religious instinct. As he sees one aspect of the world to-day, and another to-morrow, he cannot, when his G.o.d is a power of nature, always see the same G.o.d before him. But can he not wors.h.i.+p another G.o.d when the first one is out of sight and out of mind? Though he wors.h.i.+pped heaven yesterday, can he not wors.h.i.+p the sun to-day, or the storm, or the great sea? And though the former generation wors.h.i.+pped one of these beings in the foremost place, may not the existing generation devote itself princ.i.p.ally to another? That power does not cease to be a deity which is not immediately before his mind. It is still a deity, and in a while he will turn to it again, and make it first. Thus it comes about by inevitable logic that when man gets his G.o.ds from nature, he has a number of them. When he gets a new G.o.d he does not deny the G.o.d he had before; he is not yet in a position to conclude that there can only be one G.o.d. When he is wors.h.i.+pping he feels as if there were only one; but this feeling applies at different times to a number of different beings, and from such inconsistency he lacks the power to free himself. The other is a G.o.d too; all the G.o.ds he has ever wors.h.i.+pped he may on occasion wors.h.i.+p again. Nor can he refuse to recognise the G.o.ds of others; to them no doubt they are G.o.ds, if not to him; they are beings of the same cla.s.s with his G.o.d. And thus early man is a polytheist.
Polytheism is a complex product; it is the addition to each other of a number of cults which have grown up separately.
In Polytheism, however, very different religious positions are possible. Men may feel that the whole set of the G.o.ds in whose existence they believe have claims on them, and may regard themselves as wors.h.i.+ppers of them all, resorting, as feeling and old a.s.sociation moves them, now to one and now to another, or defining the places or occasions at which each of them is to be sought, or in some other way adjusting their various claims; or, on the other hand, while believing in the existence of many G.o.ds, they may confine their wors.h.i.+p to one. A man knows that there are many G.o.ds, but says that he has only to do with one of them. This is a religious position very frequently met with in antiquity. A circle of G.o.ds is believed in, but one of them comes into prominence at a time and is wors.h.i.+pped as supreme. This is called Kathenotheism: the wors.h.i.+p of one G.o.d at a time. The t.i.tle was invented by Mr. Max Muller, who also gives the t.i.tle of Henotheism to that position in which many G.o.ds are believed in as existing, but wors.h.i.+p is given to only one. The following are examples of the various positions:--
The language of Polytheism is--”Father Zeus that rulest from Ida, most glorious, most great, and thou sun that seest all things, and ye rivers and thou earth, and ye that in the underworld punish whosoever sweareth falsely--be ye witnesses.”--_Iliad_, iii. 280.
The Jews at the time of Josiah were accomplished polytheists, as we may see from the catalogue of the wors.h.i.+ps suppressed at Jerusalem by that monarch, 2 Kings xxiii. The G.o.ds of each of the surrounding tribes appear to have been wors.h.i.+pped there, and the old G.o.ds of the separate tribes and families of Israel appear to have been kept up.
Kathenotheism.--The Vedic poets, as we shall see, speak of the G.o.d they are immediately addressing as supreme, and heap upon him all the highest attributes, while not thinking of denying the divinity of other G.o.ds.
The language of Henotheism is--”Thou, O Jehovah, art far above all the earth; thou art exalted far above all G.o.ds” (Ps. xcvii. 9).
”There is none like unto Thee among the G.o.ds, O Lord!... Thou art great, and doest wondrous things: Thou art G.o.d alone” (Ps. lx.x.xvi.
8, 10). Here the other G.o.ds are recognised as existing, but only one is wors.h.i.+pped. Compare also St Paul: ”There are G.o.ds many, and lords many, but to us there is one G.o.d” (1 Cor. viii. 5, 6).
The language of Monotheism is--”All the G.o.ds of the peoples are idols: but Jehovah made the heavens” (Ps. xcvi. 5), and ”Thou shalt have no other G.o.d before Me.”