History of Religion Part 15

The Eddas may be compared in many respects with the Homeric poems. As in the latter, the G.o.ds form a family, the members of which come together to a certain place for meetings, while individually they have their own adventures, their loves, their jealousies, their jokes, their tricks. In the Eddas too we find that the G.o.ds are not, strictly speaking, eternal; they succeeded an older race of G.o.ds, and their turn too may come to pa.s.s away. They are called aesir, which is the plural of As. The etymology of this is uncertain; compare the Sanscrit Asura, said to mean the living or breathing one. The aesir are spoken of in later times, not in the Eddas, as if they had been a race of warriors; they are said to have come in to Scandinavia and got the better of those who lived there before, because they worshipped a superior set of G.o.ds.[4] An historic reminiscence may lurk here. Before the aesir there were giants, and the earth with all its parts is made of the body of one of these giants,[5] whom the new race superseded as governors of the world. But the giants are still there and their spirit is unchanged; there is a danger of their interfering to subvert the rule of their successors.

[Footnote 4: See a similar statement about the Incas, chapter vi.]

[Footnote 5: Compare "Purusha" in the _Rigveda_.]

There are other cosmogonic myths besides that of the division of the giant Ymir. One is on this wise. Ere this world began, there was on one side Niflheim, the land of mist and cold, on the other side Muspelheim, the region of fire; between these two lay Ginnungagap, the north side of it frozen, the south side glowing hot, and life originated by the meeting, in one way or another, of the heat and cold. There are very primitive myths of the shaping of man out of two pieces of wood, of Night and Day as drivers of chariots and horses, of the sun and moon fleeing from wolves, and so on. A more poetic conception is the division of the world into Asgard, the garden of the aesir; Midgard, the world of man; and Utgard, the world outside.

In the first Odin has his seat Hlidskjalf; when he sits in it he can see and understand whatever is happening in any part of the broad world (is he the sun, then?). The third region is generally called Jotunheim, the home of the giants, an icy region at the extreme part of the habitable world. A bridge exists from the dwelling of men to that of the G.o.ds; it is called Bifrost, and is the rainbow.

The G.o.ds have various places of meeting; but their princ.i.p.al seat is under a great tree, the ash. Yggdrasil[6] is a tree worthy of the G.o.ds; it is a world-tree; its roots extend to all the worlds; its branches spread even over heaven. Under it is the fountain Mimir, spring of wisdom, from which Odin drinks daily. Near it is the dwelling of the Norns, fates or weird sisters, who establish laws and uphold them by their judgments, and allot to every man his span of life. They are named Urd the past, Verdandi the present, and Skuld the future. Daily do they water the ash from the spring to keep its leaves fresh, and help it to contend with its numerous foes, for a great serpent is continually gnawing at its root, and it has also other troubles. This myth of Yggdrasil is the apotheosis of Teutonic tree-worship, and is richly suggestive.[7]

[Footnote 6: Yggdrasil=Odin's horse=the gallows. Is it the cross?]

[Footnote 7: Carlyle in his _Heroes_, p. 18, draws out the spiritual significance of it and of Norse mythology generally.]

The G.o.ds of the Eddas.--We now come to the G.o.ds of the system. Odin is in the Eddas the founder of the world as now const.i.tuted. He has displaced the old formless race of G.o.ds, and is the leader of a new and vigorous race now ruling in their stead. The old scholars rationalised Odin into a chief who had led a migration from Asia to Norway in early times. He is the inventor of the art of writing by runes and the founder of poetry; thus he has the aspect of a culture-hero; that is to say, of a man of advanced views who, for the benefits he conferred on his people, was exalted first to a hero and then to a G.o.d. But the worship of Odin or Wodan is one of the earliest things we know about the German race. He is the G.o.d of the South-Germans from the very first. His earliest character is that of a storm-G.o.d. Whether his name is connected with the German _wuthen_, rage (Scot. _wud_) or with the Vedic Vata, who is a G.o.d of storm, he is from the first an impetuous being. The early myth of him is scarcely dead at this day; the peasant hears him rushing through the woods at night. That is the "wild hunt of Wodan," he says; the G.o.d is out with his followers, and woe to him who gets in his way! The early Germans thought of him as a kind being who fulfilled the wishes of men, and it was probably this side of his character that caused him to be identified with Mercury. In the Eddic theology he is a patron of war, as becomes the chief G.o.d of a warlike people. He arranges battle and dispenses victory; the heroes who fall in battle he receives into his heavenly army; they live with him in Valhalla or Valholl, the hall of choice. Odin chooses those who are to go there; he is a.s.sisted in this by the Valkyries or choice-maidens. Life in Valhalla is a constant round of fighting, the wounds of which are healed at once, and feasting, the materials for which are ever renewed. Odin, like other great G.o.ds, bears traces of low surroundings, as if he had once lived among savages. He can turn himself into an eagle or other animal to gain his object, and he has engaged in disreputable adventures. But he tends to improve, and the Eddas show him at his best. Here he is called the All-father, the Ruler of all, who gave man a soul that shall never perish; and we hear that he needs no food and takes no share himself in the feasts of the heroes. All the righteous shall be with him in Vingolf (the same as Valhalla), but the wicked shall go to Hel, the kingdom of Hel or Hela, the G.o.ddess of the under-world.

Thor or Donar, Thunder, is said to be the mightiest of the G.o.ds; he is identified, as we saw, with Jove, but he is a rougher and more primitive deity. He drives in a chariot drawn by two goats, and is possessed of three things which have wonderful properties. The first is the hammer Mjolnir, which the Frost- and Mountain-giants cannot resist when he throws it; the second is the belt of strength, which makes him twice as strong when he puts it on; and the third a pair of gauntlets with which he grasps his mallet. Many stories are told of his prowess, of his conflicts with the giants, who, however, give him a good deal of trouble with their cunning; and of his catching the Midgard serpent which surrounds the world at the bottom of the sea.

Being a G.o.d of storm, he forms a connection with agriculture, and thus gains a more sedate aspect; he has also to do with marriage, and a hammer is used symbolically at Icelandic weddings. Thor is only half-brother to the other sons of Odin; his mother was Fiorgyn, the earth; the worships of Odin and Thor, originally distinct, seem to have been united at an early period.

The G.o.d Tyr, son of Odin by a giantess, is the Eddic figure of the German Tiw or Ziu, etymologically equivalent to Zeus or Jupiter, but identified by the Romans with Mars. His greatness belongs to early times; he was then a sword-G.o.d, and had an extensive worship in various parts of Europe. In the Eddas he has scarcely any character, and seldom takes a prominent part in the legend. Loki, by etymology a fire-G.o.d (Germ. _Lohe_, Scot. _Lowe_),[8] is in one account the brother of Odin, in another his son by a giantess. His character is fitful; sometimes he acts a brotherly part by the G.o.ds and helps them out of their difficulties by clever devices, and sometimes he provides entertainment for them; but for the most part he is an embodiment of cunning and mischief; his course is downwards, he tends to become a being purely evil, setting himself heartlessly against the wishes of the other G.o.ds, and acting so as to imperil them and their world till they are obliged to cast him out of heaven. He is thus a kind of Lucifer or Satan, and like the Christian devil, his ultimate fate is to be bound till the end of the world shall arrive.

Baldur, the son of Odin and Frigga, is the best and brightest of the G.o.ds. Like Apollo, he has to do with light, and no pollution can come near him; he has also to do with the administration of justice, and p.r.o.nounces sentences which can never be reversed. Heimdall also is a light and gracious G.o.d; he is the warder of the aesir, and stays near the bridge Bifrost. Of him it is told that he wants less sleep than a bird, sees a hundred miles off by night or day, and hears the gra.s.s grow on the ground and the wool on the sheep's back. Bragi is the G.o.d of poetry and eloquence, the best of all skalds.

[Footnote 8: The etymology is not perhaps correct, but it suggested itself and influenced the view taken of this G.o.d, in very early times.]

Of the G.o.ddesses, Frigga, wife of Odin, stands first, an august matron of mysterious knowledge, whom even G.o.ds consult, and by whom men swear; she has also to do with marriage, and the childless appeal to her. Etymologically she is scarcely to be distinguished from Freya, wife of Odur, who, however, is lighter in character, and is rather a G.o.ddess of love. The G.o.ddesses in the Eddas are more shadowy figures than the G.o.ds; there are others, and an attempt is made to reckon up twelve of them to answer to the twelve chief G.o.ds, but their names are taken from the qualities they represent, and they have little reality.

The story of the death of Baldur, brought about by the evil mind of Loki in defiance of the whole divine family, sounds the note of tragedy in the divine family of the Eddas. The G.o.ds themselves suffer, and are unable to retrieve the misfortune which has come upon them. With one accord they try to get Baldur brought back from the under-world, but they are foiled by the same agency of evil which carried him off. With the death of Baldur the G.o.ds feel that their rule, which, we saw, had a beginning, and with it the world they govern, for the two are inseparably bound up with each other, is coming to an end. The G.o.ds perish in the ruin of the world; and this is well, for sin cleaves to them and to their house, and they are not fit to endure. Ragnarok, the twilight of the G.o.ds, comes on; the universe is burnt up in a mighty conflagration, and while there are abodes of bliss and abodes of misery where some survive, the universe as a whole is entirely changed, and a milder race of G.o.ds will rule over a better world.

If this mythology were found to be of native Scandinavian growth, it would prove that Teutonic religion was capable of lofty development, and would throw back an interesting light upon its previous history.

Here, it has been maintained, we see the Teutonic faith rising to monotheism. Odin has among his other t.i.tles that of All-father; he is rising above the other G.o.ds to a position of supremacy, which will fit him, if the process were allowed, as it was not, to advance somewhat further, to represent pure deity and to attract to himself an undivided reverence. Here also we find a religion which was formerly a rude intercourse between barbarous men and savage G.o.ds, clothing itself with an ideal element. As the Greeks found religion in beauty and the Romans in utility, so did the Germans find it at last in pathos. They attain to the conception of suffering deity; in Baldur a G.o.d falls victim to malice and wickedness, and the sorrow of his fall takes possession of the whole of heaven. Thus pain and sacrifice are hallowed, for man by the history of the G.o.ds, and his intercourse with them leads him into heights and depths unknown before.

But the conviction is now establishing itself that this phase of Teutonic religion is borrowed from Christianity, which was then seriously menacing the existence of the old faith, and that it is the shadow of their approaching extinction by the new religion, which occasions among the Northern G.o.ds this feeling of sadness. They feel themselves falling from their position; they are to be G.o.ds no longer, but are to yield to the world-order, based on a deeper law than theirs, which called them into being and now is preparing their dismissal. Distinctly Christian ideas enter the old world of G.o.ds; the ideas of sin, of sacrifice, of a final judgment, of a good G.o.d who dies, of an evil spirit who, after prevailing for a time, is chained up to await his doom. That a sense of guilt rests on the G.o.ds shows that they are abandoning their rule, and they acknowledge that their successors will be better than they have been.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

Grimm's _German Mythology_, translated by Stallybra.s.s, 4 vols.

Grimm's _Fairy Tales_. Mr. Lang writes an Introduction to the English translation in Bell's edition.

Mannhardt, _Germanische Mythen_, 1858, and _Wald- und Feld-kulte_, 1875, 77.

For the later Northern section, Vigfusson and Powell's _Corpus Poetic.u.m Boreale_, especially the Excursus on Religion, i. 401.

Dasent, _Burnt Njal; or Life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century_.

Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_.

Thorpe, _Northern Mythology_.

De la Saussaye, _The Religion of the Teutons_, 1902, the most comprehensive statement of the whole subject.

Ralston, _Songs of Russian People_, and _Russian Folk Tales_.

Simrock, _Handb. der deutschen Mythologie_.

R. M. Meyer, _Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte_, 1910.

Sir John Rhys, _Oxford Proceedings_, p. 201, _sqq._

CHAPTER XVI GREECE

The history of Europe begins in Greece. It is there that the Aryans in Europe first feel the touch of the arts and civilisation of the East, and are stirred up to new activities; and the life thus quickened in Greece transmitted its spark to Italy, and so to the whole of Europe.

People and Land.--There is no direct evidence that the Greeks came to their country from elsewhere; and the theory of a Graeco-Italic period, in which the future inhabitants of Greece and Italy lived together somewhere to the north of both these countries and made common advances in civilisation, is now abandoned. There are, however, faint indications that the Greeks spread over their country from the north southwards. What people dwelt in it before them it is impossible to say; the Pelasgi and Leleges, whom they themselves conceived to have preceded them, left behind them no other trace than that belief. When first we descry this land in the faint dawn of history, it is tenanted by the people whose name it bears, touched only by the Thracians to the north, and the Illyrians to the west, these also being Aryan races. Though the Greeks are on both sides of the Egean, which seems from the earliest times to have connected rather than divided them, their centre of gravity is in the mainland of h.e.l.las, including the Peloponnesus. In this country many a migration no doubt took place before the people was finally arranged in it; and some of these migrations are faintly known to history.

When once the settlement had been accomplished, the nature of the country did much to fix the inst.i.tutions of the people and the mutual relations of their various communities. Large tribes coming into the narrow valleys and sequestered coasts of Greece necessarily broke up into small cantons, each of which, though not cut off from intercourse with its neighbours, was free to develop by itself. The country is said by travellers to be the most beautiful in the world.

The branch of the Aryans which settled in it may have brought scanty acquirements with them, but they brought great capacities. The Greeks had an unrivalled talent for doing what they saw others do, in a much better way, and so making it their own. They had an inborn disposition to what is reasonable. That they had a deep-seated inclination to what is harmonious and beautiful is proved by their first great work of art, their language. Of that language there were several dialects in the earliest times; the princ.i.p.al ones being the broad Doric of the peninsula and the colonies, and the softer Ionic of which the cla.s.sical language is a branch. But the Greeks of all dialects could understand each other, and regarded as barbarians those without who spoke other tongues. Thus from the first this people was much divided, but was also held together by strong bonds.

Earliest Religion--Functional Deities.--The religion the Greeks brought with them to their country was undoubtedly that which we have discussed in our chapter on the Aryans. The primitive elements of Aryan religion all reappear in Greece; the combination of many small household worships with the supra-family worship of a great G.o.d or G.o.ds, the few great G.o.ds who are surrounded by a mult.i.tude of spirits, some of these also growing into G.o.ds, the recognition of spiritual presences in many a natural object, living or dead. All this we find in early Greece. The whole nation believes in Zeus; to all he is the Lord of heaven, the giver of rain, the fertiliser of mother earth, the supreme ruler in earth as well as in heaven, the father of the G.o.ds as well as of men. This is the first bond of unity in Greek religion. But every family, every village, every town has its own peculiar worship which is to be found nowhere else. That worship may be addressed to Zeus with a local t.i.tle; each circle of men has its own particular Zeus, who is their protector and ruler; and thus Zeus has many forms and names. In each community there is also the worship of the G.o.ddess of the hearth (Hestia); each household has its own Hestia, and carries on the worship which in other Aryan peoples is connected with the memory of departed ancestors. But the family or the township has also other objects of worship. There are other G.o.ds besides Zeus who are connected with heaven, such as Apollo and Heracles. There are G.o.ds connected with each activity of the people. Artemis is G.o.ddess of hunting, Aphrodite of the peaceful life of nature and of gardens, and also of love.

Poseidon, the sea-G.o.d, was also worshipped inland, and was perhaps originally a G.o.d of horses and oxen; Hephaestus was the G.o.d of workers in metal, Ares the G.o.d of battle. These are in their origin what are called functional deities, that is to say, G.o.ds who are present in the function with which they are a.s.sociated, and of which they const.i.tute the ideal or sacred side, and who have no existence apart from it.

The G.o.ds of Greece in fact had their origin in that view of nature as animated in every part, which the Greeks shared with other branches of the Aryans, and with early man generally. Like the Latins, the Greeks at first saw a mystery, a spirit, in every part of life; each fountain had its nymph, each forest glade its dryad; and they felt the G.o.ds to be returning to fresh life when spring came with its flowers. Each of their own activities also had its unseen genius.

Each enclosure for flocks had its Apollo, "him of the sheepfold," who protected the flock and the shepherd; and each boundary stone its Hermes, "him of the boundary," who also watched over flocks and took charge of marches and of paths.

Growth of Greek G.o.ds.--Such beings, however, are something less than G.o.ds; and the Greeks, long before we know them, had made the step which the Romans scarcely made at all, from the spirit to the G.o.d, from the vague unseen power behind an object or an act, to the free being conceived with human attributes and feelings, who can be the patron of a community, and afford help in all its concerns. Not all the spirits rise into G.o.ds; it depends on circ.u.mstances which of them are selected for that advance; but the choice once made, their rise was rapid. As the G.o.ds grew into personality and definite character, though the function out of which they first sprang was not forgotten, other functions were added to them; and as a G.o.d grew in power and consideration, his worship was set up in new places, where other t.i.tles and attributes awaited him. The local G.o.d might be identified with the great G.o.d from a distance. The G.o.d of a powerful community, as Athene ("she of Athens"), might be adopted wherever the influence of that community extended; thus new G.o.ds arose and old ones took local form. When a change took place in the habits of the people, it was followed by a corresponding change in the character of their G.o.ds. When agriculture comes in, the G.o.ds have to take notice of it, the pastoral G.o.d turns agricultural, and even the huntress Artemis becomes an encourager of fertility. When navigation rises in importance, a number of the G.o.ds, Poseidon at their head, become sea-G.o.ds.

Stones, Animals, Trees.--In Greece the worship of the G.o.ds soon superseded that of objects not possessing any human character. Traces of such lower worships survive, it is true, in the later religion in great abundance, but they have no influence in its development; they only tell their story of the otherwise forgotten past. Stones were worshipped in early Greece. Not to speak of the cromlechs and dolmens, which are found there as in all parts of Asia and Europe, and the meaning of which is so little understood, stones were preserved as sacred objects in various places, even to late times, and had no doubt originally been worshipped. The G.o.d Hermes was represented in every period by a slab of stone set upright, a human head and other human features being indicated on it. Even in later Greece, boards or blocks of wood were in some places exhibited on rare occasions, which were the oldest images of the Artemis or the Aphrodite there adored. Though for the public eye splendid statues had taken the place of the G.o.ddess, the original image was still thought to have a sanct.i.ty all its own. We also notice that the G.o.ds of Greece are a.s.sociated with animals. Zeus is a bull in Crete; he has also other transformations: Pan is a goat; Artemis is a bear in some provinces, elsewhere a doe. The Athene of the Acropolis is a serpent. Apollo is sometimes connected with the mouse. Along with these identifications of the G.o.ds with animals we may mention the animal emblems with which they are generally represented. The eagle is the bird of Zeus, the owl of Athene, the peac.o.c.k of Hera, the dove of Aphrodite. In this connection we cannot help thinking of the sacred animals of the Egyptian nomes; and the question may be asked whether such animals must be taken to be in Greece also the signs of a primitive totemism?

Of the tree-worship of Greece much has been written of late. The oak was the sacred tree of Zeus; he must have been conceived as living in it; he gave oracles at Dodona by the rustling of the branches of the tree. Athene has the olive, Apollo the palm, and also the laurel.

After the introduction of agriculture rustic cults arose, in which the inhabitants of a village followed in sympathetic rites the fortunes of the G.o.ds who live in the life of the plants in summer and die with them in autumn. The G.o.d of the Semites is generally a changeless being, who himself conducts and orders the changes of the seasons, but in Greece we find G.o.ds whom man can accompany in the tragedy of their fall and the triumph of their rise. We shall see afterwards that the rustic worships of Demeter and Proserpine were brought forward at a critical period in Greek religion, to supply an element which was much required in it. These worships, similar, as Mr. Frazer suggests,[1] to those still kept up by our own peasantry, were doubtless of immemorial antiquity in Greece, though in the earlier period they are little heard of.

[Footnote 1: _Golden Bough_, vol. i. p. 356.]

Thus the Greek G.o.ds grew up in the period before Greece was awakened to new thoughts by contact with foreign peoples. Many harsh and cruel rites were no doubt practised; human sacrifice, heard of even in later times in remote parts of the country, was not unknown, and practices were connected with the service of stern G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses which, though literature is silent about them, left their mark on custom. Zeus and one or two other G.o.ds are essentially moral, and some duties were strongly encouraged by religion, such as those of hospitality and strict regard for boundaries, of faithfulness to pledge, of respect for strangers. But many of the G.o.ds are too closely interwoven with external nature to be very decidedly moral powers; they are like the plants and animals, neither good nor bad but natural.

Greek Religion is Local.--What strikes us most strongly about this early Greek religion is its entire want of system and its local and disintegrated character. Every town, every family, has its own religion. There is no central authority. New G.o.ds are constantly springing up; the old ones are constantly receiving new t.i.tles and forming new unions with each other or with newer G.o.ds. The G.o.d of one place is in another only a hero; the same G.o.d is represented in different places in entirely different ways, and entirely different legends are attached to his name. Thus the Greeks have from the first a mythology singularly extensive and inconsistent, and their worship also varies in each place. There is no general religion, but only a mult.i.tude of local ones. In story and in rite old and new are mixed up together,--what is local and what is imported, what is savage in its nature and origin, and what is on the side of progress. This is a state of matters which lies in every land before the beginning of organised religion. Rites and legends are everywhere of local growth, and the attempt to frame the various rites and legends into a consistent ritual and a systematic account of the G.o.ds, comes later.

In Greece, as Mr. Robertson Smith observes, the earlier state of matters continued longer and influenced the national faith more deeply than elsewhere. As the Greeks never succeeded in forming a central political system, so they never attained to unity in worship.

No national temple arose, the priesthood of which had power to frame the national religion, to lay down rules for sacrifice, or to edit sacred texts. The Greeks were less than any other people under the sway of religious authority. While local practice was fixed, and custom and tradition declared plainly enough what was to be regarded as religious duty, belief was quite free to grow as circ.u.mstances or the growth of culture dictated. A religion in such a position, and among a people of lively imagination and specially gifted in the direction of art, must necessarily receive its forms rather from the artist than the priest.

Artistic Tendency.--Thus we can discern from the first the direction which Greek religion must take. The Greeks shaped their G.o.ds earlier and more freely than other peoples, and went on shaping them till no further advance could be made in that way. Long before Homer they had been making their G.o.ds such as free men, and men endowed with a sense of beauty, could worship. They were not content to worship lifeless objects, but must have living beings. They were not content to worship beings without reason, they must worship reasonable beings.

They were not inclined to regard the natural objects they worshipped with terror or self-prostration, but rather in a spirit of genial friendliness and sympathy as being something like themselves. And so they turned their G.o.ds into men. The anthropomorphising tendency, present as we have seen in other lands and at much earlier periods, present indeed wherever religion is a growing power, had freer play with them than with any other people. Thus the spirits of the fountain and the tree, and of every part of nature that was worshipped, took human form. At first, no doubt, the nymph was in the fountain, the dryad in the oak, but as time went on the human maiden cast off her mosses and her bark and leaves, and stood forth to imagination a being wholly human, dwelling beside the fountain or the tree. In the same way heaven becomes a great human father, the sea an earth-shaking potentate drawn by dolphins over the waves, the sun a mighty archer, fire a lame craftsman (from the flickering of flame?) whose smithy is underground where the volcanoes are. And the figures once arrived at, it was no hard task to spin out their stories and their relations with each other, and to connect with them older tales, as taste or fancy suggested.

The thorough humanisation of the G.o.ds, the clothing of the G.o.ds in the highest types connected with free human society, is the first great contribution made by this gifted race to the progress of religion. Receiving from the earlier world the same kind of G.o.ds as other nations did, Greece proceeded to treat them in a way of her own, idealised and refined the parts of nature held divine, and ascribed to them not only, as all early races do, human motives and human pa.s.sions, but also human beauty and wisdom and goodness.

Whatever rude materials she received to work on, either from the earlier dwellers on Greek soil or from foreign lands, she made them her own by transfiguring them into ideal men and women. Thus the Greeks reached the position, which they taught the world first in immortal poetry and then in immortal plastic art, that man should not bow down to anything that is beneath him, and that nature can only become fit to be worshipped by being idealised and made human. An end was made to the dark imagination which was so apt to creep over all early religion, that deity and humanity may be different and opposite; that an object devoid of reason, an object or an animal admired not for its goodness but for something about it which man cannot understand, may be his G.o.d and have a claim to his allegiance.