Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume I Part 30

While the current theory thus appears to break down over the deities of certain Australian tribes and of other low savages to be more particularly described later, it is not more successful in dealing with what we have called the "fault" or break in the religious strata of higher races. The nature of that "fault" may thus be described: While the deities of several low savage peoples are religiously regarded as guardians and judges of conduct both in this life and in the next, among higher barbarians they are often little, or not at all, interested in conduct. Again, while among Australians, and Andamanese, and Fuegians, there is hardly a verifiable trace, if any trace there be, of sacrifice to any divine being, among barbarians the G.o.ds beneath the very highest are in receipt even of human sacrifice. Even among barbarians the highest deity is very rarely worshipped with sacrifice. Through various degrees he is found to lose all claim on worship, and even to become a mere name, and finally a jest and a mockery. Meanwhile ancestral ghosts, and G.o.ds framed on the same lines as ghosts, receive sacrifice of food and of human victims. Once more, the high G.o.ds of low savages are not localised, not confined to any temple or region. But the G.o.ds of higher barbarians (the G.o.ds beneath the highest), are localised in this way, as occasionally even the highest G.o.d also is.

All this shows that, among advancing barbarians, the G.o.ds, if they started from the estate of G.o.ds among savages on the lowest level, become demoralised, limited, conditioned, relegated to an otiose condition, and finally deposed, till progressive civilisation, as in Greece, reinstates or invents purer and more philosophic conceptions, without being able to abolish popular and priestly myth and ritual.

Here, then, is a flaw or break in the strata of religion. What was the cause of this flaw? We answer, the evolution, through ghosts, of "animistic" G.o.ds who retained the hunger and selfishness of these ancestral spirits whom the lowest savages are not known to worship.

The moral divine beings of these lowest races, beings (when religiously regarded) unconditioned, in need of no gift that man can give, are not to be won by offerings of food and blood. Of such offerings ghosts, and G.o.ds modelled on ghosts, are notoriously in need. Strengthened and propitiated by blood and sacrifice (not offered to the G.o.ds of low savages), the animistic deities will become partisans of their adorers, and will either pay no regard to the morals of their worshippers, or will be easily bribed to forgive sins. Here then is, ethically speaking, a flaw in the strata of religion, a flaw found in the creeds of ghost-worshipping barbarians, but not of non-ghost-worshipping savages.

A crowd of venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved out of ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude early form of theism. Granting the facts, we fail to see how they are explained by the current theory which makes the highest G.o.d the latest in evolution from a ghost. That theory wrecks itself again on the circ.u.mstance that, whereas the tribal or national highest divine being, as latest in evolution, ought to be the most potent, he is, in fact, among barbaric races, usually the most disregarded. A new idea, of course, is not necessarily a powerful or fashionable idea. It may be regarded as a "fad," or a heresy, or a low form of dissent. But, when universally known to and accepted by a tribe or people, then it must be deemed likely to possess great influence. But that is not the case; and among barbaric tribes the most advanced conception of deity is the least regarded, the most obsolete.

An excellent instance of the difference between the theory here advocated, and that generally held by anthropologists, may be found in Mr. Abercromby's valuable work, Pre-and Proto-Historic Finns, i.

150-154. The G.o.ds, and other early ideas, says Mr. Abercromby, "could in no sense be considered as supernatural". We shall give examples of G.o.ds among the races "nearest the beginning," whose attributes of power and knowledge can not, by us at least, be considered other than "supernatural". "The G.o.ds" (in this hypothesis) "were so human that they could be forced to act in accordance with the wishes of their worshippers, and could likewise be punished." These ideas, to an Australian black, or an Andamanese, would seem dangerously blasphemous.

These older G.o.ds "resided chiefly in trees, wells, rivers and animals".

But many G.o.ds of our lowest known savages live "beyond the sky". Mr.

Abercromby supposes the sky G.o.d to be of later evolution, and to be worshipped after man had exhausted "the helpers that seemed nearest at hand... in the trees and waters at his very door". Now the Australian black has not a door, nor has he G.o.ds of any service to him in the "trees and waters," though sprites may lurk in such places for mischief.

But in Mr. Abercromby's view, some men turned at last to the sky-G.o.d, "who in time would gain a large circle of worshippers". He would come to be thought omnipotent, omniscient, the Creator. This notion, says Mr.

Abercromby, "must, if this view is correct, be of late origin". But the view is not correct. The far-seeing powerful Maker beyond the sky is found among the very backward races who have not developed helpers nearer man, dwelling round what would be his door, if door he was civilised enough to possess. Such near neighbouring G.o.ds, of human needs, capable of being bullied, or propitiated by sacrifice, are found in races higher than the lowest, who, for their easily procurable aid, have allowed the Maker to sink into an otiose G.o.d, or a mere name. Mr.

Abercromby unconsciously proves our case by quoting the example of a Samoyede. This man knew a Sky-G.o.d, Num; that conception was familiar to him. He also knew a familiar spirit. On Mr. Abercromby's theory he should have resorted for help to the Sky-G.o.d, not to the sprite. But he did the reverse: he said, "I cannot approach Num, he is too far away; if I could reach him I should not beseech thee (the familiar spirit), but should go myself; but I cannot". For this precise reason, people who have developed the belief in accessible affable spirits go to them, with a spell to constrain, or a gift to bribe, and neglect, in some cases almost forget, their Maker. But He is worshipped by low savages, who do not propitiate ghosts and who have no G.o.ds in wells and trees, close at hand. It seems an obvious inference that the greater G.o.d is the earlier evolved.

These are among the difficulties of the current anthropological theory.

There is, however, a solution by which the weakness of the divine conception, its neglected, disused aspect among barbaric races, might be explained by anthropologists, without regarding it as an obsolescent form of a very early idea. This solution is therefore in common use.

It is applied to the deity revealed in the ancient mysteries of the Australians, and it is employed in American and African instances.

The custom is to say that the highest divine being of American or African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is, especially, a savage refraction from the G.o.d of missionaries. If this can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of Life"

of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint unsuccessful refraction. He has been introduced by Europeans, it is argued, but is not in harmony with his new environment, and so is "half-remembered and half forgot".

The hypothesis of borrowing admits of only one answer, but that answer should be conclusive. If we can discover, say in North America, a single instance in which the supreme being occurs, while yet he cannot possibly be accounted for by any traceable or verifiable foreign influence, then the burden of proof, in other cases, falls on the opponent. When he urges that other North American supreme beings were borrowed, we can reply that our crucial example shows that this need not be the fact. To prove that it is the fact, in his instances, is then his business. It is obvious that for information on this subject we must go to the reports of the earliest travellers who knew the Red Indians well. We must try to get at G.o.ds behind any known missionary efforts. Mr. Tylor offers us the testimony of Heriot, about 1586, that the natives of Virginia believed in many G.o.ds, also in one chief G.o.d, "who first made other princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, and then the sun, moon and stars as petty G.o.ds".(1) Whence could the natives of Virginia have borrowed this notion of a Creator before 1586? If it is replied, in the usual way, that they developed him upwards out of sun, moon and star G.o.ds, other princ.i.p.al G.o.ds, and finally reached the idea of the Creator, we answer that the idea of the Maker is found where these alleged intermediate stages are NOT found, as in Australia. In Virginia then, as in Victoria, a Creator may have been evolved in some other way than that of gradual ascent from ghosts, and may have been, as in Australia and elsewhere, prior to verifiable ghost-worship. Again, in Virginia at our first settlement, the native priests strenuously resisted the introduction of Christianity. They were content with their deity, Ahone, "the great G.o.d who governs all the world, and makes the sun to shine, creating the moon and stars his companions.... The good and peaceable G.o.d... needs not to be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth all good unto them." This good Creator, without sacrifice, among a settled agricultural barbaric race sacrificing to other G.o.ds and ghosts, manifestly cannot be borrowed from the newly arrived religion of Christianity, which his priests, according to the observer, vigorously resisted. Ahone had a subordinate deity, magisterial in functions, "looking into all men's actions" and punishing the same, when evil. To THIS G.o.d sacrifices WERE made, and if his name, Okeus, is derived from Oki = "spirit," he was, of course, an animistic ghost-evolved deity. Anthropological writers, by an oversight, have dwelt on Oki, but have not mentioned Ahone.(2) Manifestly it is not possible to insist that these Virginian high deities were borrowed, without saying whence and when they were borrowed by a barbaric race which was, at the same time, rejecting Christian teaching.

(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 341.

(2) History of Travaile into Virginia, by William Strachey, 1612.

Mr. Tylor writes, with his habitual perspicacity: "It is the widespread belief in the Great Spirit, whatever his precise nature and origin, that has long and deservedly drawn the attention of European thinkers to the native religions of the North American tribes". Now while, in recent times, Christian ideas may undeniably have crystallised round "the Great Spirit," it has come to be thought "that THE WHOLE DOCTRINE of the Great Spirit was borrowed by the savages from missionaries and colonists. But this view will not bear examination," says Mr. Tylor.(1)

(1) Prim. Cult, ii. pp. 339, 340 (1873). For some reason, Mr. Tylor modifies this pa.s.sage in 1891.

Mr. Tylor proceeds to prove this by examples from Greenland, and the Algonkins. He instances the Ma.s.sachusett G.o.d, Kiehtan, who created the other G.o.ds, and receives the just into heaven. This was recorded in 1622, but the belief, says Winslow, our authority, goes back into the unknown past. "They never saw Kiehtan, but THEY HOLD IT A GREAT CHARGE AND DUTY THAT ONE AGE TEACH ANOTHER." How could a deity thus rooted in a traditional past be borrowed from recent English settlers?

In these cases the hypothesis of borrowing breaks down, and still more does it break down over the Algonkin deity Atahocan.

Father Le Jeune, S.J., went first among the Algonkins, a missionary pioneer, in 1633, and suffered unspeakable things in his courageous endeavour to win souls in a most recalcitrant flock. He writes (1633): "As this savage has given me occasion to speak of their G.o.d, I will remark that it is a great error to think that the savages have no knowledge of any deity. I was surprised to hear this in France. I do not know their secrets, but, from the little which I am about to tell, it will be seen that they have such knowledge.

"They say that one exists whom they call Atahocan, who made the whole.

Speaking of G.o.d in a wigwam one day, they asked me 'what is G.o.d?' I told them that it was He who made all things, Heaven and Earth. They then began to cry out to each other, 'Atahocan! Atahocan! it is Atahocan!'"

There could be no better evidence that Atahocan was NOT (as is often said) "borrowed from the Jesuits". The Jesuits had only just arrived.

Later (1634) Le Jeune interrogated an old man and a partly Europeanised sorcerer. They replied that nothing was certain; that Atahocan was only spoken of as "of a thing so remote," that a.s.surance was impossible. "In fact, their word Nitatohokan means, 'I fable, I tell an old story'."

Thus Atahocan, though at once recognised as identical with the Creator of the missionary, was so far from being the latest thing in religious evolution that he had pa.s.sed into a proverb for the ancient and the fabulous. This, of course, is inconsistent with RECENT borrowing. He was neglected for Khichikouai, spirits which inspire seers, and are of some practical use, receiving rewards in offerings of grease, says Le Jeune.(1)

(1) Relations, 1633, 1634.

The obsolescent Atahocan seems to have had no moral activity. But, in America, this indolence of G.o.d is not universal. Mr. Parkman indeed writes: "In the primitive Indian's conception of a G.o.d, the idea of moral good has no part".(1) But this is definitely contradicted by Heriot, Strachey, Winslow, already cited, and by Pere Le Jeune. The good attributes of Kiehtan and Ahone were not borrowed from Christianity, were matter of Indian belief before the English arrived. Mr. Parkman writes: "The moment the Indians began to contemplate the object of his faith, and sought to clothe it with attributes, it became finite, and commonly ridiculous". It did so, as usual, in MYTHOLOGY, but not in RELIGION. There is nothing ridiculous in what is known of Ahone and Kiehtan. If they had a mythology, and if we knew the myths, doubtless they would be ridiculous enough. The savage mind, turned from belief and awe into the spinning of yarns, instantly yields to humorous fancy. As we know, mediaeval popular Christianity, in imagery, marchen or tales, and art, copiously ill.u.s.trates the same mental phenomenon. Saints, G.o.d, our Lord, and the Virgin, all play ludicrous and immoral parts in Christian folk-tales. This is Mythology, and here is, beyond all cavil, a late corruption of Religion. Here, where we know the history of a creed, Religion is early, and these myths are late. Other examples of American divine ideas might be given, such as the extraordinary hymns in which the Zunis address the Eternal, Ahonawilona. But as the Zuni religion has only been studied in recent years, the hymns would be dismissed as "borrowed," though there is nothing Catholic or Christian about them. We have preferred to select examples where borrowing from Christianity is out of the question. The current anthropological theory is thus confronted with American examples of ideas of the divine which cannot have been borrowed, while, if the G.o.ds are said to have been evolved out of ghosts, we reply that, in some cases, they receive no sacrifice, sacrifice being usually a note of ghostly descent. Again, similar G.o.ds, as we show, exist where ghosts of chiefs are not worshipped, and as far as evidence goes never were worshipped, because there is no evidence of the existence at any time of such chiefs. The American highest G.o.ds may then be equally free from the taint of ghostly descent.

(1) Parkman, The Jesuits in North America. p. lxxviii.

There is another more or less moral North American deity whose evolution is rather questionable. Pere Brebeuf (1636), speaking of the Hurons, says that "they have recourse to Heaven in almost all their necessities,... and I may say that it is, in fact, G.o.d whom they blindly adore, for they imagine that there is an Oki, that is, a demon, in heaven, who regulates the seasons, bridles the winds and the waves of the sea, and helps them in every need. They dread his wrath, and appeal to him as witness to the inviolability of their faith, when they make a promise or treaty of peace with enemies. 'Heaven hear us to-day' is their form of adjuration."(1)

(1) Relations, 1636, pp. 106, 107.

A spiritual being, whose home is heaven, who rides on the winds, whose wrath is dreaded, who sanctions the oath, is only called "a demon" by the prejudice of the worthy father who, at the same time, admits that the savages have a conception of G.o.d--and that G.o.d, so conceived, is this demon!

The debatable question is, was the "demon," or the actual expanse of sky, first in evolution? That cannot precisely be settled, but in the a.n.a.logous Chinese case of China we find heaven (Tien) and "Shang-ti, the personal ruling Deity," corresponding to the Huron "demon". Shang-ti, the personal deity, occurs most in the oldest, pre-Confucian sacred doc.u.ments, and, so far, appears to be the earlier conception. The "demon" in Huron faith may also be earlier than the religious regard paid to his home, the sky.(1) The unborrowed antiquity of a belief in a divine being, creative and sometimes moral, in North America, is thus demonstrated. So far I had written when I accidentally fell in with Mr. Tylor's essay on "The Limits of Savage Religion".(2) In that essay, rather to my surprise, Mr. Tylor argues for the borrowing of "The Great Spirit," "The Great Manitou," from the Jesuits. Now, as to the phrase, "Great Spirit," the Jesuits doubtless caused its promulgation, and, where their teaching penetrated, shreds of their doctrine may have adhered to the Indian conception of that divine being. But Mr. Tylor in his essay does not allude to the early evidence, his own, for Oki, Atahocan, Kiehtan, and Torngursak, all undeniably prior to Jesuit influence, and found where Jesuits, later, did not go. As Mr. Tylor offers no reason for disregarding evidence in 1892 which he had republished in a new edition of Primitive Culture in 1891, it is impossible to argue against him in this place. He went on, in the essay cited (1892) to contend that the Australian G.o.d of the Kamilaroi of Victoria, Baiame, is, in name and attributes, of missionary introduction. Happily this hypothesis can be refuted, as we show in the following chapter on Australian G.o.ds.

(1) See Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 362, and Making of Religion, p. 318; also Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 108,109, and Dr. Legge's Chinese Cla.s.sics, in Sacred Books of the East, vols. iii., xxvii., xxviii.

(2) Journ. of Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxi., 1892.

It would be easy enough to meet the hypothesis of borrowing in the case of the many African tribes who possess something approaching to a rude monotheistic conception. Among these are the d.i.n.kas of the Upper Nile, with their neighbours, whose creed Russegger compares to that of modern Deists in Europe. The d.i.n.ka G.o.d, Dendid, is omnipotent, but so benevolent that he is not addressed in prayer, nor propitiated by sacrifice. Compare the supreme being of the Caribs, beneficent, otiose, unadored.(1) A similar deity, veiled in the instruction of the as yet unpenetrated Mysteries, exists among the Yao of Central Africa.(2) Of the negro race, Waitz says, "even if we do not call them monotheists, we may still think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism despite their innumerable rude superst.i.tions".(3) The Tshi speaking people of the Gold Coast have their unworshipped Nyankupon, a now otiose unadored being, with a magisterial deputy, worshipped with many sacrifices. The case is almost an exact parallel to that of Ahone and Oki in America. THESE were not borrowed, and the author has argued at length against Major Ellis's theory of the borrowing from Christians of Nyankupon.(4)

(1) Rochefort, Les Isles Antilles, p. 415. Tylor, ii. 337.

(2) Macdonald, Africana, 1, 71, 72, 130, 279-301. Scott, Dictionary of the Manganja Language, Making of Religion, pp. 230-238. A contradictory view in Spencer, Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions, p. 681.

(3) Anthropologie, ii. 167.

(4) Making of Religion, pp. 243-250.

To conclude this chapter, the study of savage and barbaric religions seems to yield the following facts:--

1. Low savages. No regular chiefs. Great beings, not in receipt of sacrifice, sanctioning morality. Ghosts are not worshipped, though believed in. Polytheism, departmental G.o.ds and G.o.ds of heaven, earth, sky and so forth, have not been developed or are not found.

2. Barbaric races. Aristocratic or monarchic. Ghosts are worshipped and receive sacrifice. Polytheistic G.o.ds are in renown and receive sacrifice. There is usually a supreme Maker who is, in some cases, moral, in others otiose. In only one or two known cases (as in that of the Polynesian Taaroa) is he in receipt of sacrifice.