Introduction to the History of Religions Part 6

+220+. Ceremonies of a serious character occur in connection with the eating of the first fruits of the year. In developed cults (as in the Hebrew) the deity is recognized as the giver by the presentation of a portion of the new crop.[420] In very early cults there are other procedures, the origin and significance of which are not always clear.

So far as the ceremonial eating, a preliminary to general use, is concerned, this may be understood as a recognition, more or less distinct, of some supernatural Power to whom (or to which) the supply of food is due. The obscurest form of such recognition is found among the Australian Arunta.[421] The Nandi practice is clearer--the G.o.d is invoked to bless the grain.[422] In the Creek Puskita (Busk) there is perhaps a worship of the sun as the source of fertility.[423] Probably the element of recognition of extrahuman power (the object being to secure its favor) is to be found in all first-fruits ceremonies. A natural result of this recognition is that it is unlawful (that is, dangerous) to partake of the new food till it has been properly offered to the deity. The ceremonial features (such as the choice of the persons to make the offering) are simply the carrying over of general social arrangements into religious observances--the ministrant is the father of the family, or the chief of the tribe, or the priest or other elected person, according to the particular local customs.

+221+. The sadness or gloom that sometimes attaches to these ceremonies has been variously explained, and is due doubtless to various orders of ideas; it comes probably from the coalescence of other cults with the agricultural cults proper. The remembrance of ancestors is not unnatural at such a time, and sorrow may be expressed for their death; such is perhaps the case in the Nandi usage mentioned above--the women sorrowfully take home baskets of elusine grain, and the bits that drop in the house are left to the souls of the deceased. Sorrow appears also in other agricultural seasons, as in the Roman Vestalia (in June) and the Greek Thesmophoria (in the autumn), in which cases more likely it is connected with the fear of evil influences.[424] So the great tribal purification of the Creeks, at the beginning of a new year, naturally coincides with the gathering of the new crop.

+222+. A further extension of the conception of the sacredness of food (whether or not of the first eating) appears in the Mexican custom (in May and December) of making dough images of G.o.ds, the eating of which sanctifies the worshiper;[425] here the G.o.d dwells in the bread of which he is the giver.

+223+. In addition to the astral and agricultural festivals above described there has been the observance of long periods to which a religious significance was sometimes attached. The Egyptian Sothis period[426] (of 1461 years), the Greek period of eight years (oktaeteris), and the Mexican period of fifty-two years were calendary--attempts to harmonize the lunar and solar years; in Mexico the new cycle introduced a new religious era--a great ceremony was held in which domestic fires were rekindled from the sacred fires. The Hebrew jubilee period (of fifty years), apparently a late development from the sabbatical year, was intended, among other things, to maintain the division of landed property among the people--all alienated land was to return finally to its original owner--partic.i.p.ation in the blessings bestowed by the national deity being conditioned on having a share in the land, of which he was held to be the proprietor; the proposed arrangement turned out, however, owing to changed social conditions, to be impracticable.

+224+. It thus appears that ceremonies of various sorts have played a very important part in religious life. They have been the most popularly effective presentation of religious ideas, and they have preserved for us religious conceptions that without them would have remained unknown.

Their social character has insured their persistence[427]--ceremonies of to-day contain features that go back to the earliest known stratum of organized religious life. While the motives that underlie them (desire to propitiate supernatural Powers, demand for an objective presentation of ideas, and love of amus.e.m.e.nt) are the same throughout the world, their forms reflect the various climatic, economic, and general cultural conditions of clans, tribes, and nations. They acquire consistency with the organization of society; they tend to become more and more elaborate, just as in other points social intercourse tends to produce formal definiteness; they grow decrepit and have to be artificially strengthened and revived; they lose their original meanings and must be constantly reinterpreted to bring them into accord with new ideas, social, moral, and religious. Their history, in a word, is the history of the development of human ideas, and it sets forth the religious unity of the race. The selections given above are only a small part of the known material, a full treatment of which would require a separate volume.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY CULTS

+225+. The lowest tribes known to us regard the whole world of nature and the human dead as things to be feared and usually as things to be propitiated. In most cases they conceive of some anthropomorphic being as the creator or arranger of the world. But in all cases they regard animals, plants, and inanimate objects as capable of doing extraordinary things. All these beings they think of as akin to men; transformations from human to nonhuman and from nonhuman to human are believed to be possible and frequent.

+226+. From the point of view of the savage mind this theory of the world is inevitable. Ignorant of what we call natural law, they can see no reason why the phenomena of life should not be under the control of any of the powers known to them; and for sources of power they look to the things around them. All objects of nature are mysterious to the savage--stones, hills, waters, the sky, the heavenly bodies, trees, plants, fishes, birds, beasts, are full of movement, and seemingly display capacities that induce the savage to see in them the causes of things. Since their procedures seem to him to be in general similar to his own, he credits them with a nature like his own. As they are mysterious and powerful, he fears them and tries to make allies of them or to ward off their injurious influences.

+227+. But while he excludes nothing from his list of possible powers, he is vitally interested only in those objects with which he comes into contact, and he learns their powers by his own experience or through the wisdom inherited from his forefathers. His procedure is strictly scientific; he adopts only what observation has shown him and others to be true. Different tribes are interested in different things--some are indifferent to one thing, others to another, according to the topographical and economic milieu. The savage is not without discrimination. He is quite capable of distinguishing between the living and the dead. Not all stones are held by him to be alive in any important sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which he divides all things are determined by his own sense of self-interest.[428]

+228+. It is often by accident that one object or another displays itself as helpful or harmful, just as, in a later and higher form of religious belief, a theophany is often, as to time and place, a matter of accident. Indeed, most manifestations of extrahuman power in the earliest times may be said to come to man incidentally, since he does not generally demand them from the G.o.ds or make experiments in order to discover them. But in the nature of the case many things meet him as to which he is obliged to use judgment, and of these a certain number appear to him to be powerful.

+229+. These objects are held by him to be in some sort akin to man.

This seems to be his view of certain dead things in which a mysterious power is held to reside. When such objects are parts of animals (bones, feathers, claws, tails, feet, fat, etc.), or of vegetables that are used as charms, it may be supposed that they simply retain the power resident in the objects of which they are parts--objects originally living and sacred. In other cases an indwelling supernatural being is a.s.sumed, as, for example, in minerals whose shape and color are remarkable.

+230+. Fetish objects in West Africa are believed to be inhabited by spirits.[429] The Australian sacred object called _churinga_--a thing of mysterious potency--is believed to be the abode of the soul of an ancestor endowed with extraordinary power. Many such fetish objects are found all over the world.

+231+. Further, the conception of a life-force, existing in many things (perhaps in all things), appears to have been prominent in savage religious systems. Life implies power; but while it is held to reside in all things, its manifestations vary according to the relations between things and human needs. The life-force in its higher manifestations has been isolated in thought by some more advanced savages, especially in North America and Polynesia, and has been given a definite name; in Polynesia and Melanesia it is called _mana_, and other names for it occur elsewhere.[430]

+232+. It shows itself in any object, nonhuman or human, that produces extraordinary effects. In the Pacific islands all great achievements of men are attributed to it--all great chiefs possess it in an eminent degree;[431] it is then nearly equivalent to what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);[432] here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.[433] Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor to another person or object. In some cases its name is given to the thing to which it is attached.[434]

+233+. How widely the conception exists is uncertain; further research may discover it in regions where up to now it has not been recognized.

Scarcely a trace of it exists in the higher ancient religions. The Latin _genius_, the indwelling power of the man, bears a resemblance to it.

The Old Testament "spirit of G.o.d" is said to "come on" a man or to be "poured out on" him, as if it were a physical thing--it gives courage and strength to the warrior and knowledge to the worshiper;[435] the power or energy is here (in the earlier Hebrew writings) identified with the spirit or animus of the deity, which appears to be thought of as physical.

+234+. Mana is conceived of by the peoples mentioned above not as a vague influence diffused through the world, but as a power resident in certain definite persons or things. It is impersonal in the sense in which any quality, as courage, is impersonal, but it is not itself an object of worship; worship is directed toward the thing that possesses or imparts mana. It may reside in a natural object or in a supernatural being--the object will be used to secure it, the supernatural being will be asked to bestow it. In both cases the act will be religious.

+235+. Mana is itself, strictly speaking, a scientific biological conception, but it necessarily enters into alliance with religion.

Belief in it exists along with belief in ghosts, spirits, and G.o.ds--it is not a rival of these, but an attachment to them. As a thing desirable, it is one of the good gifts that the great Powers can bestow, and it thus leads to worship. It is found in distinct form, as is pointed out above, only in superior tribes--it has not been discovered in very low communities, and appears not to belong to the earliest stratum of religious beliefs. But it rests on the view that all things are endowed with life, and this view may be taken to be universal. The doctrine of mana gradually vanishes before a better knowledge of the human const.i.tution,[436] a larger conception of the G.o.ds, and a greater trust in them.[437]

+236+. Things and persons endowed with peculiar power, whether as seats of mana or as abodes of spirits, are set apart by themselves, are regarded with feelings of awe, and thus become "sacred." In process of time the acc.u.mulated experience of generations builds up a ma.s.s of sacred objects which become a part of the religious possessions of the community. The quality of sacredness is sometimes attached to objects and customs when these are regarded as necessary to the well-being of the community, or highly convenient. A house, for example, represents the life of the family, and is therefore a thing to be revered; and in many tribes the walls, which guard the house against intrusion, and the door and the threshold, which offer entrance into it, are considered sacred; the hearth especially, the social center of the dwelling, becomes a sacred place.

+237+. The savage communities with which we are acquainted all possess their stock of such things--the beliefs concerning sacred objects are held by all the members of the tribe. The development of the idea of 'sacred' is a social communal one, but it is impossible for us to say precisely how all the individual sacred objects were selected, or what was the exact att.i.tude of primeval man toward all the things that are now regarded as sacred.

+238+. The conception of power resident in certain things to control human life is represented by our term "luck." The formulation of "luck"

systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by the growth of the conception of natural law. But long after the grounds of belief in luck have ceased to be accepted by the advanced part of the community, many individual forms of good luck and bad luck maintain themselves in popular belief.[438] Some of these beliefs may be traced back to their savage sources, especially those that are connected with animals; the origin of most of them is obscure. They coalesce to some extent with conceptions derived from magic, divination, and taboo. The persistence of such savage dogma into civilized times enables us to understand how natural this dogma was for early forms of society.

+239+. In the practices mentioned above there is no worship proper. Mana is not thought of as being in itself a personal power, and worship is paid only to objects regarded as having personality. The fetish derives its value from the spirit supposed to be resident in the fetish objects; these are commonly worn as charms, and the att.i.tude of the man to such a charm, though he regards it as powerful, seems to be not exactly that of worship--he keeps it as a protection so long as it appears to be useful, but, as is remarked above, he acts as if he were its master. He believes that the efficient factor is the indwelling spirit, but he commonly distinguishes between this spirit and a G.o.d proper. When, however, the fetish is regarded as a tutelary divinity, it loses its lower character and takes its place among the G.o.ds.

+240+. We turn now to man's att.i.tude toward other objects, similarly regarded as sacred, but invested with distinct personality, and supposed to act consciously on human life. These are all such things as men's experiences bring them into intimate relations with, this relationship forming the basis of the high regard in which they are held. They are animals, plants, mountains, rivers, heavenly bodies, living men, and ghosts. These are objects of cults, many of them in some cases being worshiped at the same time in a single community. A chronological order in the adoption of such cults it is not possible to determine. All objects stand together in man's consciousness in early cultural strata, and the data now at command do not enable us to say which of them first a.s.sumed for him a religious character; the chronological order of cults may have differed in different communities when the general social conditions were different. We may begin with the cult of animals without thereby a.s.suming that it came first in order of time.

ANIMALS

+241+. Of all nonhuman natural objects it would seem to have been the animal that most deeply impressed early man.[439] All objects were potentially divine for him, and all received worship, but none entered so intimately into his life as animals. He was doubtless struck, perhaps awed, by the brightness of the heavenly bodies, but they were far off, intangible; mountains were grand and mighty, but motionless; stones lay in his path, but did not approach him; rivers ran, but in an unchanging way, rarely displaying emotion; plants grew, and furnished food, but showed little sign of intelligence. Animals, on the other hand, dwelt with him in his home, met him at every turn, and did things that seemed to him to exhibit qualities identical with his own, not only physical but also mental--they showed swiftness, courage, ferocity, and also skill and cunning. In certain regards they appeared to be his superiors, and thus became standards of power and objects of reverence.

+242+. At a very early period the belief in social relations between men and animals appears. The latter were supposed to have souls, to continue their existence after death, sometimes to come to life on earth after death. Their social life was supposed to be similar to that of men;[440]

in Samoa the various species form social units,[441] the Ainu see tattoo marks on frogs and sparrows,[442] the Arabs recognize a clan organization in beasts.[443]

+243+. From ident.i.ty of nature comes the possibility of transformation and transmigration.[444] An Australian of the Kangaroo clan explained that he might be called either kangaroo or man--it was all the same, man-kangaroo or kangaroo-man, and the Australian legends constantly a.s.sume change from human to animal and from animal to human.[445] The same belief appears in Africa and North America, and may be a.s.sumed to be universal among savages. It survives in the Greek transformation stories and in the werwolf and swan maiden of the European popular creed. It is the basis of a part of the theory of the transmigration of souls.[446]

+244+. The relations of early man with animals are partly friendly, partly hostile. A friendly att.i.tude is induced by admiration of their powers and desire for their aid. Such an att.i.tude is presupposed in the myths of intermarriage between beasts and men. It is perhaps visible also in the custom of giving or a.s.suming names of animals as personal names of men, though this custom may arise from the opinion that animals are the best expressions of certain qualities, or from some conception underlying totemistic organization; the general history of savage proper names has not yet been written. Beast tales, likewise, bear witness to man's opinion of the cleverness or folly of his nonhuman brethren, and perhaps originally to nothing more. The distinctest expression of friendliness is seen in certain religious customs spoken of below.

+245+. On the other hand, early man necessarily comes into conflict with animals. Against some of them he is obliged to protect himself by force or by skillful contrivance; others must be slain for food. With all of them he deals in such a way as to secure his own well-being, and thus comes to regard them as things subservient to him, to be used in such way as he may find profitable. Those that he cannot use he gradually exterminates, or, at a later stage, these, banished to thickets, mountains, deserts, caves, and other inhospitable places, are excluded from human society and identified with demons.[447]

+246+. The two att.i.tudes, of friendliness and of hostility, coexist throughout the savage period, and, in softened form, even in half-civilized life. They represent two points of view, both of which issue from man's social needs. Early man is logical, but he comprehends the necessity of not pushing logic too far--he is capable of holding at the same time two mutually contradictory views, and of acting on each as may suit his convenience; he makes his dogma yield to the facts of life (a saving principle not confined to savages, but acted on to a greater or less extent by all societies). He slays sacred animals for divinatory and other religious purposes, for food, or in self-defense; he fears their anger, but his fear is overcome by hunger; he offers profuse apologies, explains that he acts without ill will and that the bones of the animal will be preserved and honored, or he declares that it is not he but some one else that is the slayer--but he does not hesitate to kill.[448]

+247+. This fact--the existence of different points of view--enables us to understand in part the disrespectful treatment of sacred animals in folk-tales. Such tales are the product of popular fancy, standing apart from the serious and solemn conceptions of the tribal religion. The reciter, who will not fail at the proper time to pay homage to his tribal patron, does not hesitate at other times to put him into ridiculous and disgraceful situations.[449]

+248+. Man's social contact with the lower animals is doubtless as old as man himself, but there are no records of his earliest life, and it is not possible to say exactly when and how his religious relations with them began. His att.i.tude toward them; as is remarked above, was a mixed one; in general, however, it may be a.s.sumed that constant intercourse with them revealed their great qualities and impressed on him the necessity of securing their good will. This was especially true of those of them that stood nearest to him and were of greatest importance for his safety and convenience. These, invested with mystery by reason of their power and their strangeness, were held in great respect as quasi-G.o.ds, were approached with caution, and thus acquired the character of sacredness. Gradually, as human society was better and better organized, as conceptions of government became clearer, and as the natures of the various animals were more closely studied, means were devised of guarding against their anger and securing their friendship and aid. Our earliest information of savage life reveals in every tribe an inchoate pantheon of beasts. All the essential apparatus of public religion is present in these communities in embryonic form--later movements have had for their object merely to clarify ideas and refine procedures.

+249+. The animals revered by a tribe are those of its vicinage, the inhabitants of its hunting grounds. Some of these man uses as food, some he fears. His relation to plains, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, influences his choice of sacred beasts. Usually there are many of them, and the natural inference is that originally all animals are sacred, and that gradually those most important for man are singled out as objects of special regard.

+250+. Thus, to mention the princ.i.p.al of them: in Africa we find lion, leopard, hyena, hippopotamus, crocodile, bull, ram, dog, cat, ape, gra.s.shopper; in Oceania, kangaroo, emu, pig, heron, owl, rail, eel, cuttlefish; in Asia, lion, elephant, bear, horse, bull, dog, pig, eagle, tiger, water wagtail, whale; in Europe, bear, wolf, horse, bull, goat, swan; in America, whale, bear, wolf, fox, coyote, hare, opossum, deer, monkey, tiger, beaver, turtle, eagle, raven, various fishes. The snake seems to have been generally revered, though it was sometimes regarded as hostile.[450] Since animals are largely valued as food, changes in the animals specially honored follow on changes in economic organization (hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages).

+251+. Often animals are looked on as the abodes or incarnations of G.o.ds or spirits: so various birds, fishes, and beasts in Polynesia (in Samoa every man has a tutelary deity, which appears in the form of an animal[451]), Siberia, Mexico, and elsewhere. In other cases they are revered as incarnations of deceased men.[452] Where a species of animal is supposed to represent a G.o.d, this view is probably to be regarded not as a generalization from an individualistic to a specific conception (a process too refined for savages), but as an attempt to carry over to the animal world the idea of descent from a common ancestor combined with the idea of a special creator for every family of animals.[453]

+252+. In the course of religious growth the beast-G.o.d may be replaced or succeeded by an anthropomorphic G.o.d, and then the former is regarded as sacred to the latter--the recollection of the beast form still remains after the more refined conception has been reached, and the two, closely connected in popular feeling, can be brought into harmony only by making one subordinate to the other.[454] A certain element or flavor of divinity clings to the beast a long time, but finally vanishes under the light of better knowledge.

+253+. While the cases, very numerous, in which animals are a.s.sociated in worship with G.o.ds--in composite forms (as in Egypt, Babylonia, and a.s.syria) or as symbols of deities or sacred to them--point probably to early beast-cults, Egypt alone of the ancient civilized nations maintained the worship of the living animal.[455] For the better thinkers of Egypt beasts doubtless were incarnations or symbols of deities; but the ma.s.s of the people appear to have regarded them as G.o.ds in their own persons.

+254+. Reverence for animals persists in attenuated form in civilized nations in various superst.i.tions connected with them. Their appearances and their cries are believed to portend success or disaster. The great number of "signs" recognized and relied on by uneducated and educated persons at the present day bear witness to the strong hold that the cult of animals had on early man.[456]

+255+. It is in keeping with early ideas that savages often, perhaps generally, ascribe the creation or construction of the world (so far as they know it) to animals. The creation (whether by beasts or by other beings) is not conceived of as produced out of nothing; there is always preexisting material, the origin of which is not explained; primitive thought seems not to have considered the possibility of a situation in which nothing existed. The "creation" conceived of is the arrangement of existing material into the forms familiar to man--every tribe accounting thus for its own environment. The origin of the land, of mountains, defiles, lakes, rivers, trees, rocks, sun, moon, and stars, wind and rain, human beings and lower animals, and sometimes of social organizations and ceremonies, is explained in some way natural to the thought of the time and place. Not all these details occur in the cosmogony of every tribe or clan, but the purpose of every cosmogony is to account for everything in the origin of which the people are interested.

+256+. The creator in the cosmogonies known to us is not always an animal--he is sometimes a man, sometimes a G.o.d; it is possible, however, that human and divine creators are the successors of original animal creators. In Central Australia the production of certain natural features of the country and the establishment of certain customs are ascribed to ancestors, mythical beings of the remote past, creatures both animal and human, or rather, either animal or human--possibly animals moving toward the anthropomorphic stage.[457] However this may be, there are instances in which the creator is an animal pure and simple, though, of course, endowed with extraordinary powers. The beast to which the demiurgic function is a.s.signed is selected, it would seem, on the ground of some peculiar skill or other power it is supposed to possess; naturally the reason for the choice is not always apparent. For the Ainu the demiurge is the water wagtail;[458] for the Navahos and in California,[459] the coyote or prairie wolf; among the Lenni-Lenape, the wolf.[460] Various animals--as elephants, boars, turtles, snakes--are supposed to bear the world on their backs. The grounds of such opinions, resting on remote social conditions, are obscure.

+257+. Though, in early stadia of culture, animals are universally revered as in a sort divine, there are few recorded instances of actual worship offered them.[461] Whether the Bushmen and the Hottentots worship the mantis (the Bushman G.o.d Cagn) as animal is not quite clear.[462] The bear, when it is ceremonially slain, is treated by the Ainu as divine--it is approached with food and prayer, but only for the specific purpose of asking that it will speak well of them to its divine kin and will return to earth to be slain. The Zuni cult of the turtle and the Californian worship of the bird called _panes_[463] present similar features. The non-Aryan Santhals of Bengal are said to offer divine worship to the tiger.[464] Such worship appears to be paid to the snake by the Naga tribes and the Gonds of India, and by the Hopi of North America.[465]

+258+. In these and similar cases it is sometimes difficult to say whether the animal is worshiped in its own person merely, or as the embodiment or representative of a G.o.d or of ancestors. The usages in question are almost entirety confined to low tribes, and disappear with the advance of civilization; wild animals are banished from society and cease to be sacred, and the recollection of their early character survives only in their mythological attachment to deities proper. For a different reason domesticated animals lose their sacredness--they become merely servants of men. The Egyptian cult of the bull is the best-attested instance of actual worship of a domestic animal, and parallels to this it is hard to find; the Todas, for example, for whom the buffalo is the central sacred object, do not now pay worship to the animal--they may have done so in former times.

+259+. The sacredness of animals, and the fact that they are regarded as embodying the souls of things and human beings, have led to a coalescence of their cults with other religious observances. They are abundantly employed in magical procedures and in sacrifices; they are often identified with spirits of vegetation, any locally revered animal being chosen for this purpose; they are brought into connection with astral objects and their forms are fancifully seen in sun, moon, and constellations; they play a great role in apotropaic and purificatory ceremonies; and they appear in myths of all sorts,[466] especially in the histories of G.o.ds.

+260+. But, though they are in many cases regarded as tutelary beings, it is doubtful whether they ever develop into anthropomorphic deities.[467] The creation of such deities followed a different line[468] and dispensed with the lower quasi-divine forms. Such manlike attributes as beasts were supposed to have were taken up into the distincter and n.o.bler conceptions of tribal G.o.ds to whom beasts were more and more subordinated. The latter were allegorized and spiritualized, and came to serve merely as material for poetry.