An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion Part 4

Returning now to the question what fetichism is--a question which must be answered before we can enquire what religious value it possesses, and whether it can be of any use for the practical purposes of the missionary in his work--we have now seen that a fetich is not merely an "inanimate," but something more; and that an object to become regarded as a fetich must attract the attention of the man who is to adopt it, and must attract the attention of the man when he has business on hand, that is to say when he has some end in view which he desires to attain, or generally when he is in a state of expectancy. The process of choice is one of "natural selection." Professor Hoffding sees in it "the simplest conceivable construction of religious ideas. The choice is entirely elementary {115} and involuntary, as elementary and involuntary as the exclamation which is the simplest form of a judgment of worth. The object chosen must be something or other which is closely bound up with whatever engrosses the mind. It perhaps awakens memories of earlier events in which it was present or cooperative, or else it presents a certain--perhaps a very distant--similarity to objects which helped in previous times of need. Or it may be merely the first object which presents itself in a moment of strained expectation. It attracts attention, and is therefore involuntarily a.s.sociated with what is about to happen, with the possibility of attaining the desired end" (_Philosophy of Religion_, E. T., p. 139).

And then Professor Hoffding goes on to say, "In such phenomena as these we encounter religion under the guise of desire." Now, without denying that there are such things as religious desires--and holding as we do that religion is the search after G.o.d and the yearning of the human heart after Him, "the desire of all nations," we shall have no temptation to deny that there are such things as religious desires--yet we must for the moment reserve our decision on the question whether it is in such phenomena {116} as these that we encounter religious desires, and we must bear in mind that there are desires which are not religious, and that we want to know whether it is in the phenomena of fetichism that we encounter religious desires.

That in the phenomena of fetichism we encounter desires other than religious is beyond dispute: the use of a fetich is, as Dr. Na.s.sau says, "to aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some specific wish" (_Fetichism in West Africa_, p. 82); that is, of any specific wish. Now, a fetich is, as we have seen, an inanimate object and something more. What more? In actual truth, nothing more than the fact that it is "involuntarily a.s.sociated with what is about to happen, with the possibility of attaining the desired end." But to the possessor the something more, it may be said, is the fact that it is not merely an "inanimate" but also a spirit, or the habitation of a spiritual being. When, however, we reflect that fetichism goes back to the animistic stage of human thought, in which all the things that we term inanimate are believed to be animated by spirits, it is obvious that we require some differentia to mark off those things (animated by spirits) which are fetiches from those things (animated by spirits) {117} which are not. And the differentia is, of course, that fetiches are spirits, or objects animated by spirits, which will aid the possessor in the accomplishment of some specific wish, and are thought to be willing so to aid, owing to the fact that by an involuntary a.s.sociation of ideas they become connected in the worshipper's mind with the possibility of attaining the end he has in view at the moment.

To recognise fetichism, then, in its simplest if not in its most primitive form, all we need postulate is animism--the belief that all things are animated by spirits--and the process of very natural selection which has already been described. At this stage in the history of fetichism it is especially difficult to judge whether the fetich is the spirit or the object animated by the spirit. As Dr.

Haddon says (p. 83), "Just as the human body and soul form one individual, so the material object and its occupying spirit or power form one individual, more vague, perhaps, but still with many attributes distinctively human. It possesses personality and will ...

it possesses most of the human pa.s.sions,--anger, revenge, also generosity and grat.i.tude; it is within reach of influence and may be benevolent, hence to be deprecated and placated, and its aid enlisted."

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A more advanced stage in the history of fetichism is that which is reached by reflection on the fact that a fetich not unfrequently ceases to prosper the undertakings of its possessor in the way he expected it to do. On the principles of animism, everything that is--whether animate, or inanimate according to our notions--is made up of spirit, or soul, and body. In the case of man, when he dies, the spirit leaves the body. When, therefore, a fetich ceases to act, the explanation by a.n.a.logy is that the spirit has left the body, the inanimate, with which it was originally a.s.sociated; and when that is the case, then, as we learn from Miss Kingsley (_Travels in West Africa_, pp. 304-305), "the little thing you kept the spirit in is no more use now, and only fit to sell to a white man as 'a big curio.'" The fact that, in native belief, what we call an inanimate thing may lose its soul and become really dead is shown by Miss Kingsley in a pa.s.sage quoted by Dr.

Haddon: "Everything that he," the native, "knows by means of his senses he regards as a twofold ent.i.ty--part spirit, part not spirit, or, as we should say, matter; the connection of a certain spirit with a certain ma.s.s of matter, he holds, is not permanent. He will point out to you a lightning-struck tree, and tell {119} you its spirit has been broken; he will tell you when the cooking-pot has been broken, that it has lost its spirit" (_Folk-Lore_, VIII, 141). We might safely infer then that as any object may lose its spirit, so too may an object which has been chosen as a fetich; even if we had not, as we have, direct testimony to the belief.

Next, when it is believed that an object may lose its spirit and become dead indeed, there is room and opportunity for the belief to grow that its spirit may pa.s.s into some other object: that there may be a transmigration of spirits. And when this belief arises, a fresh stage in the history of fetichism is evolved. And the fresh stage is evolved in accordance with the law that governs the whole evolution of fetichism. That law is that a fetich is an object believed to aid its possessor in attaining the end he desires. In the earliest stage of its history anything which happens to arrest a man's attention when he is in a state of expectancy "is involuntarily a.s.sociated with what is about to happen," and so becomes a fetich. In the most developed stage of fetichism, men are not content to wait until they stumble across a fetich, and when they do so to say, "Ha! ha! art thou there?" Their mental att.i.tude becomes {120} interrogative: "Ha! ha! where art thou?"

They no longer wait to stumble across a fetich, they proceed to make one; and for that procedure a belief in the transmigration of spirits is essential. An object, a habitation for the spirit, is prepared; and he is invited, conjured, or conjured, into it. If he is conjured into it, the att.i.tude of the man who invites him is submissive; if conjured, the mental att.i.tude of the performer is one of superiority. Colonel Ellis throughout all his careful enquiries found that "so great is the fear of giving possible offence to any superhuman agent" that (in the region of his observation) we may well believe that even the makers of fetiches did not a.s.sume to command the spirits. But elsewhere, in other regions, it is impossible to doubt but that the owners of fetiches not only conjure the spirits into the objects, but also apply coercion to them when they fail to aid their possessor in the accomplishment of his wishes. That, I take it, is the ultimate stage in the evolution, the fine flower, of fetichism. And it is not religion, it has no value as religion, or rather its value is anti-religious. Even if we were to accept as a definition of religion that it is the conciliation of beings conceived to be superior, we should be compelled by {121} the definition to say that fetichism in its eventual outcome is not religion, for the att.i.tude of the owner towards his fetich is then one of superiority, and his method is, when conciliation fails, to apply coercion.

But it may perhaps be argued that fetichism, except in what I have termed its ultimate evolution, is religion and has religious value; or, to put it otherwise, that what I have represented as the eventual outcome is really a perversion or the decline of fetichism. Then, in the fetichism which is or represents the primitive religion of mankind we meet, according to Professor Hoffding, "religion under the guise of desire." Now, not all desires are religious; and the question, which is purely a question of fact, arises whether the desires which fetichism subserves are religious. And in using the word "religious" I will not here place any extravagant meaning on the word; I will take it in the meaning which would be understood by the community in which the owner of a fetich dwells himself. In the tribes described by Colonel Ellis, for instance, there are worshipped personal G.o.ds having proper names; and the worship is served by duly appointed priests; and the worshippers consist of a body of {122} persons whose welfare the G.o.d has at heart. Such are some of the salient features of what all students of the science of religion would include under the head of the religion of those tribes. Now amongst those same tribes the fetich, or _suhman_, as it is termed by them, is found; and there are several features which make a fetich quite distinguishable from any of the G.o.ds which are worshipped there. Thus, the fetich has no body of worshippers: it is the private property, of its owner, who alone makes offerings to it. Its _raison d'etre_, its special and only function, is to subserve the private wishes of its owner. In so far as he makes offerings to it he may be called its priest; but he is not, as in the case of the priests of the G.o.ds who are worshipped there, the representative of the community or congregation, for a fetich has no plurality of worshippers; and none of the priests of the G.o.ds will have anything to do with it. Next, "though offerings are made to the _suhman_ by its owner, they are made in private" (Jevons, _History of Religion_, p. 165)--there is no public worship--and "public opinion does not approve of them." The interests and the desires which the fetich exists to promote are not those of the community: they are antisocial, for, as Colonel Ellis {123} tells us, "one of the special attributes of a _suhman_ is to procure the death of any person whom its worshipper may wish to have removed"--indeed "the most important function of the _suhman_ appears to be to work evil against those who have injured or offended its worshipper."

Thus, a very clear distinction exists between the worship of a fetich and the worship of the G.o.ds. It is not merely that the fetich is invoked occasionally in aid of antisocial desires: nothing can prevent the worshipper of a G.o.d, if the worshipper be bad enough, from praying for that which he ought not to pray for. It is that the G.o.ds of the community are there to sanction and further all desires which are for the good of the community, and that the fetich is there to further desires which are not for the good of the community,--hence it is that "public opinion does not approve of them." At another stage of religious evolution, it becomes apparent and is openly p.r.o.nounced that neither does the G.o.d of the community approve of them; and then fetichism, like the sin of witchcraft, is stamped out more or less.

But amongst the tribes who have only reached the point of religious progress attained by the natives of West Africa, public opinion has {124} only gone so far as to express disapproval, not to declare war.

If, then, we are to hold to the view of Professor Hoffding and of Dr.

Haddon, that fetichism is in its essence, or was at the beginning, religious in its nature, though it may be perverted into something non-religious or anti-religious, we must at any rate admit that it has become non-religious not only in the case of those fetichists who a.s.sume an att.i.tude of superiority and command to their fetiches, but also in the earlier stage of evolution when the fetichist preserves an att.i.tude of submission and conciliation towards his fetich, but a.s.sumes the att.i.tude only for the purpose of realising desires which are anti-social and recognised to be anti-religious.

But, if we take--as I think we must take--that line of argument, the conclusion to which it will bring us is fairly clear and is not far off. The differentia or rather that differentia which characteristically marks off the fetich from the G.o.d is the nature of the desires which each exists to promote; the function which each exists to fulfil, the end which is there for each to subserve. But the ends are different. Not only are they different, they are antagonistic. And the process of evolution does {125} but bring out the antagonism, it does not create it. It was there from the beginning. From the moment there was society, there were desires which could only be realised at the cost and to the loss of society, as well as desires in the realisation of which the good of society was realised. The a.s.sistance of powers other than human might be sought; and the nature of the power which was sought was determined by the end or purpose for which its aid was employed or invoked--if for the good of society, it was approved by society; if not, not. Its function, the end it subserved, determined its value for society--determined whether public opinion should approve or disapprove of it, whether it was a G.o.d of the community or the fetich of an individual. Society can only exist where there is a certain community of purpose among its members; and can only continue to exist where anti-social tendencies are to some extent suppressed or checked by force of public opinion.

Fetichism, then, in its tendency and in its purpose, in the function which it performs and the end at which it aims is not only distinguishable from religion, it is antagonistic to it, from the earliest period of its history to the latest. Religion is social, an {126} affair of the community; fetichism is anti-social, condemned by the community. Public opinion, expressing the moral sentiments of the community as well as its religious feeling, p.r.o.nounces both moral and religious disapproval of the man who uses a _suhman_ for its special purpose of causing death--committing murder. Fetichism is offensive to the morality as well as to the religion even of the native. To seek the origin of religion in fetichism is as vain as to seek the origin of morality in the selfish and self-seeking tendencies of man. There is no need to enquire whether fetichism is historically prior to religion, or whether religion is historically prior to fetichism. Man, as long as he has lived in societies, must have had desires which were incompatible with the welfare of the community as well as desires which promoted its welfare. The powers which are supposed to care whether the community fares well are the G.o.ds of the community; and their worship is the religion of the community. The powers which have no such care are not G.o.ds, nor is their worship--if coercion or cajolery can be called worship--religion. The essence of fetichism on its external side is that the owner of the fetich alone has access {127} to it, alone can pray to it, alone can offer sacrifices to it. It is therefore in its inward essence directly destructive of the unity of interests and purposes that society demands and religion promotes.

Perhaps it would be going too far to say that the practice of making prayers and offerings to a fetich is borrowed from religious worship: they are the natural and instinctive method of approaching any power which is capable of granting or refusing what we desire. It is the quarter to which they are addressed, and the end for which they are employed, that makes the difference between them. It is the fact that in the one case they are, and in the other are not, addressed to the quarter to which they ought to be addressed, and employed for the end for which they ought to be employed, that makes the difference in religious value between them.

If we bear in mind the simple fact that fetichism is condemned by the religious and moral feelings of the communities in which it exists, we shall not fall into the mistake of regarding fetichism either as the primitive religion of mankind or as a stage of religious development or as "a basis from which many other modes of religious thought have been developed."

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Professor Hoffding, holding that fetichism is the primitive religion, out of which polytheism was developed, adopts Usener's theory as to the mode of its evolution. "The fetich," Professor Hoffding says (p. 140), "is only the provisional and momentary dwelling-place of a spirit. As Hermann Usener has strikingly called it, it is 'the G.o.d of a moment.'"

But though Professor Hoffding adopts this definition of a fetich, it is obvious that the course of his argument requires us to understand it as subject to a certain limitation. His argument in effect is that fetichism is not polytheism, but something different, something out of which polytheism was evolved. And the difference is that polytheism means a plurality of G.o.ds, whereas fetichism knows no G.o.ds, but only spirits. Inasmuch then as, on the theory--whether it is held by Hoffding or by anybody else--that the spirits of fetichism become the G.o.ds of polytheism, there must be differences between the spirits of the one and the G.o.ds of the other, let us enquire what the differences are supposed to be.

First, there is the statement that a fetich is the "G.o.d of a moment,"

by which must be meant that the spirits which, so long as they are momentary and {129} temporary, are fetiches, must come to be permanent if they are to attain to the rank of G.o.ds.

But on this point Dr. Haddon differs. He is quite clear that a fetich may be worshipped permanently without ceasing to be a fetich. And it is indeed abundantly clear that an object only ceases to be worshipped when its owner is convinced that it is not really a fetich; as long as he is satisfied that it is a fetich, he continues its cult--and he continues it because it is his personal property, because he, and not the rest of the community, has access to it.

Next, Hoffding argues that it is from these momentary fetiches that special or specialised deities--"departmental G.o.ds," as Mr. Andrew Lang has termed them--arise. And these "specialised divinities const.i.tute an advance on G.o.ds of the moment" (p. 142). Now, what is implied in this argument, what is postulated but not expressed, is that a fetich has only one particular thing which it can do. A departmental G.o.d can only do one particular sort of thing, has one specialised function. A departmental G.o.d is but a fetich advanced one stage in the hierarchy of divine beings. Therefore the function of the fetich in the first instance was specialised {130} and limited. But there it is that the _a priori_ argument comes into collision with the actual facts. A fetich, when it presents itself to a man, a.s.sists him in the particular business on which he is at the moment engaged. But it only continues to act as a fetich, provided that it a.s.sists him afterwards and in other matters also. The desires of the owner are not limited, and consequently neither are his expectations; the business of the fetich is to procure him general prosperity (Haddon, p. 83). As far as fetiches are concerned, it is simply reversing the facts to suppose that it is because one fetich can only do one thing, that many fetiches are picked up. Many objects are picked up on the chance of their proving fetiches, because if the object turns out really to be a fetich it will bring its owner good luck and prosperity generally--there is no knowing what it may do. But it is only to its owner that it brings prosperity--not to other people, not to the community, for the community is debarred access to it.

The next difference between fetichism and polytheism, according to Hoffding, is that the G.o.ds of polytheism have developed that personality which is not indeed absolutely wanting in the spirits of fetichism but can hardly be said to be properly {131} there. "The transition," he says, "from momentary and special G.o.ds to G.o.ds which can properly be called personal is one of the most important transitions in the history of religion. It denotes the transition from animism to polytheism" (p. 145). And one of the outward signs that the transition has been effected is, as Usener points out with special emphasis, "that only at a certain stage of evolution, _i.e._, on the appearance of polytheism, do the G.o.ds acquire proper names" (_ib._ 147).

Now, this argument, I suggest, seeks to make, or to make much of, a difference between fetichism and polytheism which scarcely exists, and so far as it does exist is not the real difference between them. It seeks to minimise, if not to deny, the personality of the fetich, in order to exalt that of the G.o.ds of polytheism. And then this difference in degree of personality, this transition from the one degree to the other, is exhibited as "one of the most important transitions in the history of religion." The question therefore is first whether the difference is so great, and next whether it is the real difference between fetichism and religion in the polytheistic stage.

The difference in point of personality between the spirits of fetichism and the G.o.ds of polytheism is not {132} absolute. The fetich, according to Dr. Haddon, "_possesses personality_ and will, it has also many human characters. It possesses most of the human pa.s.sions, anger, revenge, also generosity and grat.i.tude; it is within reach of influence and may be benevolent, is hence to be deprecated and placated, and its aid to be enlisted" (p. 83); "the fetich is worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, and talked with" (p. 89).

But, perhaps it may be said that, though the fetich does "possess personality," it is only when it has acquired sufficient personality to enjoy a proper name that it becomes a G.o.d, or fetichism pa.s.ses into polytheism. To this the reply is that polytheism does not wait thus deferentially on the evolution of proper names. There was a period in the evolution of the human race when men neither had proper names of their own nor knew their fellows by proper names; and yet they doubted not their personality. The simple fact is that he who is to receive a name--whether he be a human being or a spiritual being--must be there in order to be named. When he is there he may receive a name which has lost all meaning, as proper names at the present day have generally done; or one which has a meaning. {133} A mother may address her child as "John" or as "boy," but, whichever form of address she uses, she has no doubt that the child has a personality. The fact that a fetich has not acquired a proper name is not a proof that it has acquired no personality; if it can, as Dr. Haddon says it can, be "petted or ill-treated with regard to its past or future behaviour" (p. 90), its personality is undeniable. If it can be "worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, talked with," it is as personal as any deity in a pantheon. If it has no proper name, neither at one time had men themselves. And Hoffding himself seems disinclined to follow Usener on this point: "no important period," he says (p. 147), "in the history of religion can begin with an empty word. The word can neither be the beginning nor exist at the beginning." Finally Hoffding, to enforce the conclusion that polytheism is evolved from fetichism, says: "The influence exerted by worship on the life of religious ideas can find no more striking exemplification than in the word 'G.o.d' itself: when we study those etymologies of this word which, from the philological point of view, appear most likely to be correct, we find the word really means 'he to whom sacrifice is made,' or 'he who is worshipped'" (p.

148). {134} Professor Wilhelm Thomsen considers the first explanation the more probable: "In that case there would be a relationship between the root of the word '_gott_' and '_giessen_' (to pour), as also between the Greek _cheein_, whose root _chu_ = the Sanskrit _hu_, from which comes _huta_, which means 'sacrificed,' as well as 'he to whom sacrifices are made'" (p. 396). Now, if "G.o.d" means either "he to whom sacrifice is made" or "he who is worshipped," we have only to enquire by whom the sacrifice is made or the worship paid, according to Professor Hoffding, in order to see the value of this philological argument. A leading difference between a fetich and a G.o.d is that sacrifice is made and worship paid to the fetich by its owner, to the G.o.d by the community. Now this philological derivation of "G.o.d" throws no light whatever on the question by whom the "G.o.d" is worshipped; but the content of the pa.s.sage which I have quoted shows that Professor Hoffding himself here understands the worship of a G.o.d to be the worship paid by the community. If that is so, and if the function or a function of the being worshipped is to grant the desires of his worshippers, then the function of the being worshipped by the community is to grant the desires of the community. {135} And if that is the distinguishing mark or a distinguishing mark of a G.o.d, then the worship of a G.o.d differs _toto caelo_ from the worship paid to a fetich, whose distinguishing mark is that it is subservient to the anti-social wishes of its owner, and is not worshipped by the community. And it is just as impossible to maintain that a G.o.d is evolved out of a fetich as it would be to argue--indeed it is arguing--that practices destructive of society or social welfare have only to be pushed far enough and they will prove the salvation of society.

If in the animistic stage, when everything that is is worked by spirits, it is possible and desirable for the individual to gain his individual ends by the cooperation of some spirit, it is equally possible and more desirable for the community to gain the aid of a spirit which will further the ends for the sake of which the community exists. But those ends are not transient or momentary, neither therefore can the spirit who promotes them be a "momentary" G.o.d. And if we accept Hoffding's description of the simplest and earliest manifestation of the religious spirit as being belief "in a power which cares whether he [man] has or has not experiences which he values," we must be careful to make it clear that the {136} power worshipped by a community is worshipped because he is believed to care that the community should have the experiences which the community values.

Having made that stipulation, we may accept Hoffding's further statement (p. 147) that "even the momentary and special G.o.ds implied the existence of a personifying tendency and faculty"; for, although from our point of view a momentary G.o.d is a self-contradictory notion, we are quite willing to agree that this tendency to personification may be taken as primary and primitive: religion from the beginning has been the search after a power essentially personal. But that way of conceiving spiritual powers is not in itself distinctive of or confined to religion: it is an intellectual conception; it is the essence of animism, and animism is not religion. To say that an emotional element also must be present is true; but neither will that serve to mark off fetichism from religion. Fetichism also is emotional in tone: it is in hope that the savage picks up the thing that may prove to have the fetich power; and it is with fear that he recognises his neighbour's _suhman_. A G.o.d is not merely a power conceived of intellectually and felt emotionally to be a personal power from whom things may {137} be hoped or feared; he must indeed be a personal power and be regarded with hope and fear, but it is by a community that he must be so regarded. And the community, in turning to such a power, worships him with sacrifice: a G.o.d is indeed he to whom sacrifice is made and worship paid by the community, with whose interests and whose morality--with whose good, in a word, he is from the beginning identified. "In the absence of experience of good as one of the realities of life, no one," Hoffding says, "would ever have believed in the goodness of the G.o.ds"; and, we may add, it is as interested in and caring for the good of the community that the G.o.d of the community is worshipped. It is in the conviction that he does so care, that religious feeling is rooted; or, as Hoffding puts it (p. 162), it is rooted in "the need to collect and concentrate ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves supported and carried by a power raised above all struggle and opposition and beyond all change." There we have, implicit from the beginning, that communion with G.o.d, or striving thereafter, which is essential to worship. It is faith. It is rest.

It is the heart's desire. And it is not fetichism, nor is fetichism it.

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PRAYER

The physician, if he is to do his work, must know both a healthy and a diseased body, or organ, when he sees it. He must know the difference between the two and the symptoms both of health and disease. Otherwise he is in danger of trying to cure an organ which is healthy already--in which case his remedies will simply aggravate the disease. That is obviously true of the physician who seeks to heal the body, and it is equally, if not so obviously, true of the physician who seeks to minister to a mind, or a soul, diseased. Now, the missionary will find that the heathen, to whom he is to minister, have the habit of prayer; and the question arises, What is to be his att.i.tude towards it? He cannot take up the position that prayer is in itself a habit to be condemned; he is not there to eradicate the habit, or to uproot the tendency. Neither is he there to create the habit; it already exists, and the wise missionary will acknowledge its existence with thankfulness. His business is not to teach his flock to {139} pray, but how to pray, that is to say, for what and to whom. But even if he thus wisely recognises that prayer is a habit not to be created, but to be trained by him, it is still possible for him to a.s.sume rashly that it is simply impossible for a heathen ever to pray for anything that is right, and therefore, that it is a missionary's duty first to insist that everything for which a savage or barbarian prays must be condemned as essentially irreligious and wicked. In that case, what will such a missionary, if sent to the Khonds of Orissa, say, when he finds them praying thus: "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to us!"? Can he possibly say to his flock, "All your prayers, all the things that you pray for now, are wicked; and your only hope of salvation lies in ceasing to pray for them"? If not, then he must recognise the fact that it is possible for the heathen to pray, and to pray for some things that it is right to pray for. And he must not only recognise the fact, but he must utilise it. Nay! more, he must not only recognise the fact if it chances to force itself upon him, he must go out of his way with the deliberate purpose of finding out what things are prayed for. He will then find himself in {140} more intimate contact with the soul of the man than he can ever attain to in any other way; and he may then find that there are other things for which pet.i.tions are put up which could not be prayed for save by a man who had a defective or erroneous conception of Him who alone can answer prayer.

But it is a blundering, unbusinesslike way of managing things if the missionary has to go out to his work unprepared in this essential matter, and has to find out these things for himself--and perhaps not find them out at all. The applied science of religion should equip him in this respect; it should be able to take the facts and truths established by the science of religion and apply them to the purposes of the missionary. But it is a striking example of the youth and immaturity of the science of religion that no attempt has yet been made by it to collect the facts, much less to coordinate and state them scientifically. If a thing is clear, when we come to think of it, in the history of religion, it is that the G.o.ds are there to be prayed to: man worships them because it is on their knees that all things lie. It is from them that man hopes all things; it is in prayer that man expresses his hopes and desires. It is from his prayers that we should be able to find out {141} what the G.o.ds really are to whom man prays.

What is said about them in mythology--or even in theology--is the product of reflection, and is in many cases demonstrably different from what is given in consciousness at the moment when man is striving after communion with the Highest. Yet it is from mythology, or from the still more reflective and deliberative expression of ritual, of rites and ceremonies, that the science of religion has sought to infer the nature of the G.o.ds man worships. The whole apparatus of religion, rites and ceremonies, sacrifice and altars, nature-worship and polytheism, has been investigated; the one thing overlooked has been the one thing for the sake of which all the others exist, the prayer in which man's soul rises, or seeks to rise, to G.o.d.

The reason given by Professor Tylor (_Primitive Culture_, II, 364) for this is not that the subject is unimportant, but that it is so simple; "so simple and familiar," he says, "is the nature of prayer that its study does not demand that detail of fact and argument which must be given to rites in comparison practically insignificant." Now, it is indeed the case that things which are familiar may appear to be simple; but it is also the case that sometimes things {142} are considered simple merely because they are familiar, and not because they are simple. The fact that they are not so simple as every one has a.s.sumed comes to be suspected when it is discovered that people take slightly different views of them. Such slightly different views may be detected in this case.

Professor Hoffding holds that, in the lowest form in which religion manifests itself, "religion appears under the guise of desire," thus ranging himself on the side of an opinion mentioned by Professor Tylor (_op. cit._, II, 464) that, as regards the religion of the lower culture, in prayer "the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage." Now, starting from this position that prayer is the expression of desire, we have only to ask, whose desire? that of the individual or that of the community? and we shall see that under the simple and familiar phrase of "the accomplishment of desire" there lurks a difference of view which may possibly widen out into a very wide difference of opinion. If we appeal to the facts, we may take as an instance a prayer uttered "in loud uncouth voice of plaintive, piteous tone" by one of the Osages to Wohkonda, {143} the Master of Life: "Wohkonda, pity me, I am very poor; give me what I need; give me success against mine enemies, that I may avenge the death of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take horses!" etc. (Tylor, II, 365). So on the Gold Coast a negro in the morning will pray, "Heaven! grant that I may have something to eat this day" (_ib._, 368), not "give us this day our daily bread"; or, raising his eyes to heaven, he will thus address the G.o.d of heaven: "G.o.d, give me to-day rice and yams, gold and agries, give me slaves, riches and health, and that I may be brisk and swift!" (_ib._). On the other hand, John Tanner (_Narrative_, p. 46) relates that when Algonquin Indians were setting out in a fleet of frail bark canoes across Lake Superior, the chief addressed a prayer to the Great Spirit: "You have made this lake; and you have made us, your children; you can now cause that the water shall remain smooth while we pa.s.s over in safety." The chief, it will be observed, did not expressly call the Great Spirit "our Father," but he did speak of himself and his men as "your children." If we cross over to Africa, again, we find the Masai women praying thus; and be it observed that though the first person singular is used, {144} it is used by the chorus of women, and is plural in effect:--

I

"My G.o.d, to thee alone I pray That offspring may to me be given.

Thee only I invoke each day, O morning star in highest heaven.

G.o.d of the thunder and the rain, Give ear unto my suppliant strain.

Lord of the powers of the air, To thee I raise my daily prayer.

II

"My G.o.d, to thee alone I pray, Whose savour is as pa.s.sing sweet As only choicest herbs display, Thy blessing daily I entreat.

Thou hearest when I pray to thee, And listenest in thy clemency.

Lord of the powers of the air, To thee I raise my daily prayer."

--HOLLIS, _The Masai_, p. 346.

When Professor Tylor says that by the savage "the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage," we must be careful not to infer that the only advantage a savage is capable of praying for is his own selfish advantage.

Professor Tylor himself quotes (II, {145} 366) the following prayer from the war-song of a Delaware:--

"O Great Spirit there above, Have pity on my children And my wife!

Prevent that they shall mourn for me!

Let me succeed in this undertaking, That I may slay my enemy And bring home the tokens of victory To my dear family and my friends That we may rejoice together....

Have pity on me and protect my life, And I will bring thee an offering."

Nor is it exclusively for their own personal advantage that the Masai women are concerned when they pray for the safe return of their sons from the wars:--

"O thou who gavest, thou to whom we pray For offspring, take not now thy gift away.

O morning star, that shinest from afar, Bring back our sons in safety from the war."