The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 8

The father as head of the family is the basis of the idea of "father-king." This is seen among the Matchlapis, a Kaffir tribe, where "those who own a sufficient number of cattle to maintain a family have the right to the t.i.tle of chief"; this resembles the inst.i.tution of the _pater familias_ in ancient Latium (100. 459,533).

Dr. von Held thus expresses himself upon this point: "The first, and one may say also the last, naturally necessary society of man is the family in the manifold forms out of which it has been historically developed.

Its beginning and its apex are, under given culture-conditions, the man who founds it, the father. What first brought man experientially to creation as a work of love was fatherhood. This view is not altered by the fact that the father, in order to preserve, or, what is the same, to continue to produce, to bring up, must command, force, punish. If the family depends on no higher right, it yet appears as the first state, and then the father appears not only as father, but also as king" (75.

119).

The occurrence to-day of "King" as a surname takes us back to a time when the head of the family enjoyed the proud t.i.tle, which the Romans conferred upon Caesar Augustus, _Pater et Princeps_, the natural development from Ovid's _virque paterque gregis_.

The Romans called their senators _patres_, and we now speak of the "city fathers," aldermen, _elder_men, in older English, and the "fathers" of many a primitive people are its rulers and legislators. The term "father" we apply also to those who were monarchs and chiefs in realms of human activity other than that of politics. Following in the footsteps of the Latins, who spoke of Zeno as _Pater stoicorum_, of Herodotus as _Pater historioe_, and even of the host of an inn as _Pater cenoe_, we speak of "fathering" an idea, a plot, and the like, and denominate "father," the pioneer scientists, inventors, sages, poets, chroniclers of the race.

From _pater_ the Romans derived _patrimonium_, patrimony, "what was inherited from the father," an interesting contrast to _matrimonium_; _patronus_, "patron, defender, master of slaves"; _patria_ (_terra_), "fatherland,"--Ovid uses _paterna terra_, and Horace speaks of _paternum flumen_; _patricius_, "of fatherly dignity, high-born, patrician," etc. Word after word in the cla.s.sic tongues speaks of the exalted position of the father, and many of these have come into our own language through the influence of the peoples of the Mediterranean.

_Father-Priest_.

Said Henry Ward Beecher: "Look at home, father-priest, mother-priest; your church is a hundred-fold heavier responsibility than mine can be.

Your priesthood is from G.o.d's own hands." The priesthood of the father is widespread. Mr. Gomme tells us: "Certainly among the Hindus, the Greeks, the Romans, and, so late down as Tacitus, the Germans, the house-father was priest and judge in his own clan" (461.104). Max Muller speaks to the same effect: "If we trace religion back to the family, the father or head of the family is _ipso facto_ the priest. When families grew into clans, and clans into tribes and confederacies, a necessity would arise of delegating to some heads of families the performance of duties which, from having been the spontaneous acts of individuals, had become the traditional acts of families and clans"

(510.183). Africa, Asia, America, furnish us abundant evidence of this.

Our own language testifies to it also. We speak of the "Fathers of the Church,"--_patres_, as they were called,--and the term "Father" is applied to an ecclesiastic of the Roman Catholic Church, just as in the Romance languages of Europe the descendants of the Latin _pater_ (French _pere_, Spanish _padre_, Italian _padre_, etc.) are used to denote the same personage. In Russian an endearing term for "priest" is _batyushka_, "father dear"; the word for a village-priest, sometimes used disrespectfully, is _pop_. This latter name is identical with the t.i.tle of the head of the great Catholic Church, the "Holy Father," at Rome, viz. _papa_, signifying literally "papa, father," given in the early days of Latin Christianity, and the source of our word _Pope_ and its cognates in the various tongues of modern Europe. The head of an abbey we call an _abbot_, a name coming, through the Church-Latin _abbas_, from the Syriac _abba_, "father"; here again recurs the correlation of priest and father. It is interesting to note that both the words _papa_ and _abba_, which we have just discussed, and which are of such importance in the history of religion, are child-words for "father," bearing evidence of the lasting influence of the child in this sphere of human activity. Among the ancient Romans we find a _pater patratus_, whose duty it was to ratify treaties with the proper religious rites. Dr. von Held is of opinion that, "in the case of a special priesthood, it is not so much the character of its members as spiritual fathers, as their calling of servants of G.o.d, of servants of a Father-G.o.d, which causes them to be termed fathers, papas" (75. 120).

_Father-G.o.d_.

Shakespeare has aptly said, in the words which Theseus addresses to the fair Hermia:--

"To you your father should be as a G.o.d; One that composed your beauties, yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax, By him imprinted, and within his power To leave the figure or disfigure it,"

and widespread indeed, in the childhood of the race, has been the belief in the Fatherhood of G.o.d. Concerning the first parents of human kind the ancient Hebrew Scripture declares: "And G.o.d created man in His own image," and long centuries afterwards, in his memorable oration to the wise men of Athens upon Mars' Hill, the Apostle Paul quoted with approval the words of the Greek poet, Cleanthes, who had said: "For we are all His off-spring." Epictetus, appealing to a master on behalf of his slaves, asked: "Wilt thou not remember over whom thou rulest, that they are thy relations, thy brethren by nature, the offspring of Zeus?"

(388.210).

At the battle of Kadshu, Rameses II., of Egypt, abandoned by his soldiers, as a last appeal, exclaimed: "I will call upon thee, O my father Amon!" (388. 209).

Many prophets and preachers have there been who taught to men the doctrine of "G.o.d, the Father," but last and best of all was the "Son of Man," the Christ, who taught his disciples the world-heard prayer: "Our Father, who art in Heaven," who pro-claimed that "in my Father's house are many mansions," and whose words in the agony of Gethsemane were: "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt."

Between the Buddhist Kalmucks, with whom the newly married couple reverently utter these words: "I incline myself this first time to my Lord G.o.d, who is my father and my mother" (518. I. 423), and the deistic philosophers of to-day there is a vast gulf, as there is also between the idea of Deity among the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala, where the words for G.o.d _alom_ and _achalom_ signify respectively "begetter of children," and "begetter of sons," and the modern Christian concept of G.o.d, the Father, with His only begotten Son, the Saviour of the world.

The society of the G.o.ds of human creation has everywhere been modelled upon that of man. He was right who said Olympus was a Greek city and Zeus a Greek father. According to D'Alviella: "The highest point of development that polytheism could reach is found in the conception of a monarchy or divine family, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even the whole universe. The divine monarch or father, however, might still be no more than the first among his peers. For the supreme G.o.d to become the Only G.o.d, he must rise above all beings, superhuman as well as human, not only in his power, but in his very nature" (388. 211).

Though the mythology of our Teutonic forefathers knew of the "All-Father,"--the holy Odin,--it is from those children-loving people, the Hebrews, that our Christian conception of "G.o.d the Father," with some modifications, is derived. As Professor Robertson Smith has pointed out, among the Semites we find the idea of the tribal G.o.d as father strongly developed: "But in heathen religions the fatherhood of the G.o.ds is a physical fatherhood. Among the Greeks, for example, the idea that the G.o.ds fashioned men out of clay, as potters fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception is that the races of men have G.o.ds for their ancestors, or are the children of the earth, the common mother of G.o.ds and men, so that men are really of the same stock or kin of the G.o.ds. That the same conception was familiar to the older Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes idolaters as saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth.

In the ancient poem, Num. xxi. 29, the Moabites are called the sons and daughters of Chemosh, and, at a much more recent date, the prophet Malachi calls a heathen woman, 'the daughter of a strange G.o.d'" (535.

41-43).

Professor Smith cites also the evidence furnished by genealogies and personal names: "The father of Solomon's ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, was called _Abibaal_, 'my father is Baal'; Ben-Hadad, of Damascus, is 'the son of the G.o.d Hadad'; in Aramaean we find names like _Barlaha_, 'son of G.o.d,' _Barba'shmin_, 'son of the Lord of Heaven,' _Barate_, 'son of Ate,' etc." We have also that pa.s.sage in Genesis which tells how the "sons of G.o.d saw the daughters of men that were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" (vi. 2), while an echo of the same thought dwells with the Polynesians, who term illegitimate children _tamarika na te Atua_, "children of the G.o.ds"

(458. 121). D'Alviella further remarks: "Presently these family relations of the G.o.ds were extended till they embraced the whole creation, and especially mankind. The confusion between the terms for creating and begetting, which still maintained itself in half-developed languages, must have led to a spontaneous fusion of the ideas of creator and father." But there is another aspect of this question. Of the Amazulu Callaway writes: "Speaking generally, the head of each house is worshipped by the children of that house; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children; they remember his kindness to them whilst he was living; they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it, and say, 'He will treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others beside us; he will regard us only.'" Of these people it is true, as they themselves say: "Our father is a great treasure to us, even when he is dead" (417.144).

Here we pa.s.s over to ancestor worship, seen at its height in China, whose great sage, Confucius, taught: "The great object of marriage is to beget children, and especially sons, who may perform the required sacrifices at the tombs of their parents" (434. 126).

In this connection, the following pa.s.sage from Max Muller is of interest: "How religious ideas could spring from the perception of something infinite or immortal in our parents, grandparents, and ancestors, we can see even at the present day. Among the Zulus, for instance, _Unkulunkulu_ or _Ukulukulu_, which means the great-great-grandfather, has become the name of G.o.d. It is true that each family has its own _Unkulunkulu,_ and that his name varies accordingly. But there is also an _Unkulunkulu_ of all men (_unkulunladu wabantu bonke_), and he comes very near to being a father of all men. Here also we can watch a very natural process of reasoning. A son would look upon his father as his progenitor; he would remember his father's father, possibly his father's grandfather. But beyond that his own experience could hardly go, and therefore the father of his own great-grandfather, of whom he might have heard, but whom he had never seen, would naturally a.s.sume the character of a distant unknown being; and, if the human mind ascended still further, it would almost by necessity be driven to a father of all fathers, that is to a creator of mankind, if not of the world" (510. 156).

Again we reach the "Father" of Pope's "Universal Prayer"--

"Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,"

having started from the same thought as the Hebrews in the infancy of their race. An Eastern legend of the child Abraham has crystallized the idea. It is said that one morning, while with his mother in the cave in which they were hiding from Nimrod, he asked his mother, "Who is my G.o.d?" and she replied, "It is I." "And who is thy G.o.d?" he inquired farther. "Thy father" (547.69). Hence also we derive the declaration of Du Vair, "Nous devons tenir nos peres comme des dieux en terre," and the statement of another French writer, of whom Westermarck says: "Bodin wrote, in the later part of the sixteenth century, that, though the monarch commands his subjects, the master his disciples, the captain his soldiers, there is none to whom nature has given any command except the father, 'who is the true image of the great sovereign G.o.d, universal father of all things'" (166. 238).

_Father-Sky._

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky,"

sang the poet Herbert, unconsciously renewing an ancient myth. As many cosmologies tell, Day and Dawn were born of the embraces of Earth and Sky. Ushas, Eos, Aurora, is the daughter of heaven, and one story of the birth is contained in the Maori myth of Papa and Rangi. Ushas, Max Muller tells us, "has two parents, heaven and earth, whose lap she fills with light" (510. 431). From Rangi, "Father-Sky," and Papa, "Mother-Earth," say the Maoris of New Zealand, sprang all living things; and, in like manner, the Chinese consider the Sky or Heaven,--Yang, the masculine, procreative, active element,--to be the "father of all things," while the Earth,--Yu, the feminine, conceiving, pa.s.sive element,--is the "mother of all things." From the union of these two everything in existence has arisen, and consequently resembles the one or the other (529. 107).

Among the primitive Aryans, the Sky, or Heaven G.o.d, was called "Father,"

as shown by the Sanskrit _Dyaus Pitar_, Greek _Zeus Pataer_, Latin _Jupiter_, all of which names signify "sky father." Dyaus is also called _janitar_, "producer, father," and Zeus, the "eternal father of men," the "father of G.o.ds and men, the ruler and preserver of the world." In the Vedic hymns are invocations of Dyaus (Sky), as "our Father," and of Prithivi (Earth), as "our Mother" (388. 210).

Dyaus symbolizes the "bright sky"; from the same primitive Indo-European root come the Latin words _dies_ (day), _deus_ or _divus_ (G.o.d); the dark sombre vault of heaven is Varuna, the Greek [Greek: _Ouranos_], Latin _Ura.n.u.s_.

Other instances of the bridal of earth and sky,--of "mother earth," and "father sky,"--are found among the tribes of the Baltic, the Lapps, the Finns (who have Ukko, "Father Heaven," Akka, "Mother Earth"), and other more barbaric peoples.

In Ashanti, the new deity, which the introduction of Christianity has added to the native pantheon, is called _Nana Nyankupon_, "Grandfather-sky" (438. 24).

The shaman of the Buryats of Alarsk prays to "Father Heaven"; in the Altai Mountains the prayer is to

"Father Yulgen, thrice exalted, Whom the edge of the moon's axe shuns, Who uses the hoof of the horse.

Thou, Yulgen, hast created all men, Who are stirring round about us, Thou, Yulgen, hast endowed us with all cattle; Let us not fall into sorrow!

Grant that we may resist the evil one!" (504. 70, 77).

We too have recollections of that "Father-Sky," whom our far-off ancestors adored, the bright, glad, cheerful sky, the "ancestor of all."

Max Muller has summed up the facts of our inheritance in brief terms:--

"Remember that this _Dyaush Pitar_ is the same as the Greek [Greek: _Zeus Pataer_], and the Latin _Jupiter_, and you will see how this one word shows us the easy, the natural, the almost inevitable transition from the conception of the active sky as a purely physical fact, to the _Father-Sky_ with all his mythological accidents, and lastly to that Father in heaven whom aeschylus meant when he burst out in his majestic prayer to Zeus, _whosoever he is_" (510. 410).

Unnumbered centuries have pa.s.sed, but the "witchery of the soft blue sky" has still firm hold upon the race, and we are, as of old, children of "our Father, who art in Heaven."

_Father-Sea._

Montesinos tells us that Viracocha, "sea-foam," the Peruvian G.o.d of the sea, was regarded as the source of all life and the origin of all things,--world-tiller, world-animator, he was called (509. 316).

Xenophanes of Kolophon, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C., taught that "the mighty sea is the father of clouds and winds and rivers." In Greek mythology Ocea.n.u.s is said to be the father of the princ.i.p.al rivers of earth. Neptune, the G.o.d of the sea,--"Father Neptune," he is sometimes called,--had his a.n.a.logue in a deity whom the Libyans looked upon as "the first and greatest of the G.o.ds." To Neptune, as the "Father of Streams," the Romans erected a temple in the Campus Martius and held games and feasts in his honour. The sea was also spoken of as _pater aequoreus_.