Part 4 (1/2)
Growth of the Great Religions out of these Beliefs.--These various developments of thought about the G.o.ds did, as a matter of fact, take place in primitive times, and that is almost all that can be said. In the religion of savages the various elements we have so briefly indicated cross and recross each other, in endless combinations; none of them is to be found entirely by itself. There is no fetish wors.h.i.+p which is not accompanied by traces of an early belief in great G.o.ds; there is no belief in great G.o.ds which is not accompanied by a belief in lower spirits. With regard to every savage religion the student has to ask what the const.i.tuent elements of it are, in what way the various beliefs of the early world, beliefs arising from such different sources, meet in it and combine with one another.
In each of the higher religions, too, the same questions have to be asked. The beliefs which we have sketched are the materials out of which they also arose. They did not _originate_ the belief in high G.o.ds with power over nature, nor the belief in the lesser spirits which busy themselves with man's affairs. They did not originate the belief in a life after death, nor was it left to them to appoint sacred seasons in the year, or to consecrate the spots to which wors.h.i.+p has always clung. All these beliefs are prehistoric, and what remained for the great religions was not to bring them forward for the first time, but to surround them with a new kind of authority, and to establish as a matter of positive ordinance or revelation what had formerly grown up without any ordinance by the unconscious work of custom. It was not left for any of the great founders to plant religion in the world as a new thing, but only to add to the old religion new forms and new sanctions.
It may be said that if these are the elements of which religion as a whole is made, then religion arose at first out of illusions. That is no doubt true, in a sense. It was an illusion on the part of early man to suppose that the powers of heaven were animated beings who could be his allies and answer his appeals; it was an illusion to think that the tree or the stone contained a spirit, and an illusion to think that men's spirits can go and wander about the earth by themselves, leaving their bodies untenanted. But these illusions were after all only the outward and inadequate expression in which the spirit of religion then clothed itself. Religion must always express itself in terms of the knowledge which exists in the world at a particular time; and if the knowledge is defective to which the world has attained, religious beliefs must share in its defects. But, on the other hand, religion is something more than knowledge; it is also faith and communion, and these can be deep and true, even when the knowledge which provides their forms of expression is greatly mistaken. And when the forms of knowledge in which religion has clothed itself are found to be mistaken, religion has power to leave them behind and to adopt other forms, as the tree is clothed with fresh leaves in place of those which are withered.
Yet it would be wrong to admit that even in its character as knowledge early religion was illusion and no more. The poetic faculty, the faculty which prompts us to find outside us what we feel to be within us and to a.s.sert its reality, led man right and not wrong. What he wors.h.i.+pped was not the bare object which met the eye and ear, but the thing as he conceived it. He conceived that there was without him that of which his inner consciousness bore witness, an ideal, a being not grasped by the senses, which could help him, with which he could hold intercourse, which had the power he himself had not. This, not the faulty outward expressions in which the sentiment clothed itself, was the living and growing element of his religion.
In addition to the books cited in this chapter, we may mention--
C. Botticher, _Der Baumkultus der h.e.l.lenen_, 1856.
J. Ferguson, _Tree and Serpent Wors.h.i.+p_, 1868.
J. Ferguson, _Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries_, 1872.
J. G. Fraser, _Totemism and Exogamy_, 4 vols. 1910. An immense collection of material on the subject of totemism, with fresh conclusions as to the origin and meaning of the system.
CHAPTER V EARLY DEVELOPMENTS--PRACTICES
In early religion it is important to remember that belief counted for much less than it now does; a man's religion consisted in the religious acts he did, and not in the beliefs or thoughts he cherished about his G.o.d. Wors.h.i.+p, moreover, is that element of religion which in all ages and lands is apt to advance most slowly.
Even in times of ferment of ideas and change of belief, we often see that the wors.h.i.+p of a former time, be it simple or stately, goes on in its old forms, as if it were a thing that could not change. Men alter their beliefs more readily than their habits, especially the habits connected with their faith. If this is the case generally, it was much more the case in the early world than it is now. The religion of a shrine in old times consisted of a certain story about the G.o.d, and certain acts done before or near the object which represented him. There was no compulsion, however, to believe the story if a man did the acts or took part in them. As to his private beliefs no one inquired; if he took part in the proper acts of wors.h.i.+p he counted as a religious man, unless he went so far as openly to flout the current opinions of his time.
Nor were the acts which went to make up religion of an elaborate or difficult nature. No minute ritual regulated in early times the approaches to the deity; they were a matter of common knowledge, and were fixed not by law, which did not yet exist in any form, but by public custom and public opinion. The manner in which a G.o.d is to be served is known of course to his own people who dwell around him; others do not know it. The immigrants from a.s.syria had to send for a Hebrew to teach them the ritual of the G.o.d of Palestine, as they were on his ground and did not know the right way to wors.h.i.+p Him (2 Kings xvii. 24 _sqq._). It is later that the rite becomes a mystery, known only to the professional guardian of the shrine or to the initiated few.
Sacrifice is an invariable feature of early religion. Wherever G.o.ds are wors.h.i.+pped, gifts and offerings are made to them of one kind or another. It is in this way that, in antiquity at least, the relation with the deity was renewed, if it had been slackened or broken, or strengthened and made sure. Sacrifice and wors.h.i.+p are in the ancient world identical terms. The nature of the offering and the mode of presenting it are infinitely various, but there is always sacrifice in one form or another. Different deities of course receive different gifts; the tree has its roots watered, or trophies of battle or of the chase are hung upon its branches; horses are thrown into the sea.
But of primitive sacrifice generally we may affirm that it consists of such food and drink as men themselves partake of. Whether it be the fruit of the field or the firstling of the flock that is offered at the sacred stone, whether the offering is burnt before the G.o.d or set down and left near him, or whether he is summoned to come down from the sky or to travel from the far country to which he may have gone, it is of the materials of a meal that the sacrifice consists.
In some cases it appears to be thought that the G.o.d consumes the offering, as when Fire is wors.h.i.+pped with offerings which he burns up, or when a fissure in the earth closes upon a victim; but in most cases it is only the spirit or finer essence of the sacrifice that the G.o.d enjoys; the rest he leaves to men. And thus sacrifice is generally accompanied by a meal. The offering is presented to the G.o.d whole, but the wors.h.i.+ppers help to eat it. The G.o.d gets the savour of it which rises into the air towards him, while the more material part is devoured below. Every sacrifice is also a festival.[1] If this be the case it is unnecessary to spend much time in considering a number of theories formerly regarded with favour as to the original meaning and intention of sacrifice. The view that it is originally simply a bribe to the deity to induce him to afford some needed help, receives a good deal of countenance from primitive expressions. ”_Do ut des_,”
”I give to thee that thou mayest give to me.” ”Here is b.u.t.ter, give us cows!” ”By gifts are the G.o.ds persuaded, by gifts great kings.”
Was early sacrifice then simply a business transaction, in which man bringing a prayer to the deity brought a gift too, as he was accustomed to do to the great ones of the earth, in order that the deity might be well disposed towards him and grant his pet.i.tion? Even if this was the case, if sacrifice were offered with the direct and almost the avowed intention of getting good value for it, yet if it takes the form of a meal, it is lifted above the most sordid form of bribery. There is a difference between slipping money into a man's hand and asking him to dinner, even if the object aimed at be in both cases the same; and when the invitations are numerous and formal, there must be a moral, not an immoral, relation between the two parties. Where the sacrifice is a meal, intercourse is sought for; a certain sympathy exists between wors.h.i.+pper and wors.h.i.+pped; they stand to each other not only in the relation of briber and bribed, buyer and seller, but in that of patron and client, or of father and son.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Tylor (_Prim. Cult._ vol. ii. p. 397) states that ”sacrifices to deities, from the lowest to the highest levels of culture, consist, to the extent of nine-tenths or more, of gifts of food and sacred banquets.”]
But granting that early sacrifice was for the most part a meal, an observance, with a social element in it, between the G.o.d and the wors.h.i.+pper, what was the object of this meal, what was the motive for holding it? In some cases it looks as if the intention had been to strengthen the G.o.d, and to make him more vigorous, so that he might be able to do what was wanted of him. In the Vedic hymns this motive undeniably is to be met with. The notion is by no means unknown in early thought, that not only does man need G.o.d, but that G.o.d is also dependent on man, and capable of being aided and encouraged. In rites which are not strictly sacrifices, we notice men seeking to sympathise with their G.o.ds in what the G.o.ds are doing, and to take a share in it by doing similar things themselves. The Christmas and Easter fires in pagan times connected with the wors.h.i.+p of the sun, are examples of this, and many other instances might be cited.
This, however, is not the princ.i.p.al motive of early sacrifice. All the incidents of it suggest that it is not merely a thing offered to the deity, but a thing in which man takes part; if it is a meal, it is one of which the G.o.d and the wors.h.i.+ppers partake in common. In China the ancestors are invited to the family feast; their place is set for them; their share in the feast is placed before them. In the _Iliad_,[2] we have an account of a solemn religious act: after prayers the victims were slaughtered, choice slices were cut from them and cooked at the fire by the wors.h.i.+ppers, who then ate and drank their fill; after this ”all day long they wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.d with music, singing the beautiful paean to Apollo, and his heart was glad to hear.” In the Bible we know that the blood is poured out for the Deity, and in various sacrifices the parts He is to have are specified, while the rest is to be eaten by the priests. In the earlier sacrifices of the Hebrews there are no priests; those who present the sacrifice consume it after the act of presentation, and the occasion is one of mirth and jollity, as at a banquet (1 Sam. ix.
12, 13, and the following description; see also Exod. x.x.xii. 5, 6).
In fact it is a banquet. This is specially plain in the sacrifices of the Semites, as Mr. Robertson Smith has shown. Early Semitic usage exhibits clearly how sacrifice was an act of communion, in which the G.o.d and his human family proclaimed and renewed their unity with each other. The details may differ in other races, but in general it may be said that early sacrifice was an act done not by an individual, though plenty of individual sacrifices are also to be met with, but by a tribe, in which all the partakers of the blood of the tribe took part before the G.o.d who was their common ancestor, and who, as it were, presided over and shared in their feast. In some cases of totem-clans the totem animal is sacrificed, and all the members of the clan eat their animal ancestor (only on such a solemn occasion could the totem be eaten), and so renew their bond of members.h.i.+p and brotherhood. A covenant is made by sacrifice, to which the deity and all the members of his people are parties.
[Footnote 2: I. 457 _sqq._]
To these primitive conceptions others no doubt should be added. The mood was not always the same which prevailed when the tribe renewed its union with its G.o.d; that depended on circ.u.mstances. In general the sacrifice of early days is a joyous thing, but to a fierce G.o.d cruel rites belonged. When cannibalism was practised it also was such a primitive sacrifice, and the most powerful means, no doubt, of cementing the union of the G.o.d with the members of the tribe. When the G.o.d was noted for suffering, a tragic tone prevailed, and the sacrifice might have a dramatic character and represent the leading incident in the history of the G.o.d.
If we trace the history of sacrifice in any particular people we find two opposite tendencies at work in connection with it. On the one hand there is a disposition to smooth matters, to drop the harsher practices, to let an animal victim suffice where a man used to be sacrificed, to let the man off with some slight mutilation, such as circ.u.mcision; or to allow poor people to offer a less costly victim than the former custom claimed--the rite, in fact, becomes civilised, and adapts itself to the feelings of a humaner period. On the other hand there is a tendency to add to the value of the offerings, and to reckon the efficacy of sacrifice by its cost and painfulness. In periods of outward distress sacrifice attains a deeper earnestness, nothing is to be left undone, and no cost to be spared to bring the deity back to his people; darker customs which had become obsolete are revived again,[3] the ceremonial is made more elaborate, new kinds of sacrifice are introduced. The old social aspect of sacrifice grows faint; it becomes a propitiation or a trespa.s.s-offering; the notion is entertained that sacrifice is the more efficacious the more it has cost, or the more magnificent and awful its mode of presentation.