The Making of Religion Part 19

There is one more important point. In the _Bora_, or Australian mysteries, at which knowledge of 'The Maker' and of his commandments is imparted, the front teeth of the initiated are still knocked out. Now, Dampier observed 'the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all of them, men and women, old and young.' If this is to be taken quite literally, the Bora rite, in 1688, must have included the women, at least locally. Dampier was on the north-west coast in lat.i.tude 16 degrees, longitude 122-1/4 degrees east (Dampier Land, West Australia). The natives had neither boats, canoes, nor bark logs; but it seems that they had their religious mysteries and their unselfishness, two hundred years ago.[6]

The Australians have been very carefully studied by many observers, and the results entirely overthrow Mr. Huxley's bold statement that 'in its simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages, theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and dispositions (usually malignant) of ghost-like ent.i.ties who may be propitiated or scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage theology is wholly independent of ethics.'

Remarks more crudely in defiance of known facts could not be made. The Australians, a.s.suredly, believe in 'spirits,' often malicious, and probably in most cases regarded as ghosts of men. These aid the wizard, and occasionally inspire him. That these ghosts are _worshipped_ does not appear, and is denied by Waitz. Again, in the matter of cult, 'there is none' in the way of _sacrifice_ to higher G.o.ds, as there should be if these G.o.ds were hungry ghosts. The cult among the Australians is the keeping of certain 'laws,' expressed in moral teaching, supposed to be in conformity with the inst.i.tutes of their G.o.d. Worship takes the form, as at Eleusis, of tribal mysteries, originally inst.i.tuted, as at Eleusis, by the G.o.d. The young men are initiated with many ceremonies, some of which are cruel and farcical, but the initiation includes ethical instruction, in conformity with the supposed commands of a G.o.d who watches over conduct. As among ourselves, the ethical ideal, with its theological sanction, is probably rather above the moral standard of ordinary practice. What conclusion we should draw from these facts is uncertain, but the facts, at least, cannot be disputed, and precisely contradict the statement of Mr. Huxley. He was wholly in the wrong when he said: 'The moral code, such as is implied by public opinion, derives no sanction from theological dogmas,'[7] It reposes, for its origin and sanction, on such dogmas.

The evidence as to Australian religion is abundant, and is being added to yearly. I shall here content myself with Mr. Howitt's accounts.[8]

As regards the possible evolution of the Australian G.o.d from ancestor-worship, it must be noted that Mr. Howitt credits the groups with possessing 'headmen,' a kind of chiefs, whereas some inquirers, in Brough Smyth's collection, disbelieve in regular chiefs. Mr. Howitt writes:--

'The Supreme Spirit, who is believed in by all the tribes I refer to here [in South-Eastern Australia], either as a benevolent, or more frequently as a malevolent being, it seems to me represents the defunct headman.'

Now, the traces of 'headmanship' among the tribes are extremely faint; no such headman rules large areas of country, none is known to be worshipped after death, and the malevolence of the Supreme Spirit is not ill.u.s.trated by the details of Mr. Howitt's own statement, but the reverse. Indeed, he goes on at once to remark that '_Darumulun_ was not, it seems to me, everywhere thought a malevolent being, but he was dreaded as one who could severely punish the trespa.s.ses committed against these tribal ordinances and customs whose first inst.i.tution is ascribed to him.'

To punish transgressions of his law is not the essence of a malevolent being. Darumulun 'watched the youths from the sky, prompt to punish, by disease or death, the breach of his ordinances,' moral or ritual. His name is too sacred to be spoken except in whispers, and the anthropologist will observe that the names of the human dead are also often tabooed. But the divine name is not thus tabooed and sacred when the mere folklore about him is narrated. The informants of Mr. Howitt instinctively distinguished between the mythology and the religion of Darumulun.[9] This distinction-- the secrecy about the religion, the candour about the mythology--is essential, and accounts for our ignorance about the inner religious beliefs of early races. Mr. Howitt himself knew little till he was initiated. The grandfather of Mr. Howitt's friend, _before the white men came to Melbourne_, took him out at night, and, pointing to a star, said: 'You will soon be a man; you see _Bunjil_ [Supreme Being of certain tribes] up there, and he can see you, and all you do down here.' Mr.

Palmer, speaking of the Mysteries of Northern Australians (mysteries under divine sanction), mentions the nature of the moral instruction. Each lad is given, 'by one of the elders, advice so kindly, fatherly, and impressive, as often to soften the heart, and draw tears from the youth.'

He is to avoid adultery, not to take advantage of a woman if he finds her alone, he is not to be quarrelsome.[10]

At the Mysteries Darumulun's real name may be uttered, at other times he is 'Master' (_Biamban_) or 'Father' (_Papang_), exactly as we say 'Lord'

and 'Father.'

It is known that all these things are not due to missionaries, whose instructions would certainly not be conveyed in the _Bora_, or tribal mysteries, which, again, are partly described by Collins as early as 1798, and must have been practised in 1688. Mr. Howitt mentions, among moral lessons divinely sanctioned, respect for old age, abstinence from lawless love, and avoidance of the sins so popular, poetic, and sanctioned by the example of G.o.ds, in cla.s.sical Greece.[11] A representation is made of the Master, Biamban; and to make such idols, except at the Mysteries, is forbidden 'under pain of death.' Those which are made are destroyed as soon as the rites are ended.[12] The future life (apparently) is then ill.u.s.trated by the burial of a living elder, who rises from a grave.

This may, however, symbolise the 'new life' of the Mystae, 'Worse have I fled; better have I found,' as was sung in an Athenian rite. The whole result is, by what Mr. Howitt calls 'a quasi-religious element,' to 'impress upon the mind of the youth, in an indelible manner, those rules of conduct which form the moral law of the tribe.'[13]

Many other authorities could be adduced for the religious sanction of morals in Australia. A watchful being observes and rewards the conduct or men; he is named with reverence, if named at all; his abode is the heavens; he is the Master and Lord of things; his lessons 'soften the heart,'[14]

'What wants this Knave That a _G.o.d_ should have?'

I shall now demonstrate that the religion patronised by the Australian Supreme Being, and inculcated in his Mysteries, is actually used to counteract the immoral character which natives acquire by a.s.sociating with Anglo-Saxon Christians.[15]

Mr. Howitt[16] gives an account of the Jeraeil, or Mysteries of the Kurnai. The old men deemed that through intercourse with whites 'the lads had become selfish and no longer inclined to share that which they obtained by their own exertions, or had given them, with their friends.'

One need not say that selflessness is the very essence of goodness, and the central moral doctrine of Christianity. So it is in the religious Mysteries of the African Yao; a selfish man, we shall see, is spoken of as 'uninitiated.' So it is with the Australian Kurnai, whose mysteries and ethical teaching are under the sanction of their Supreme Being. So much for the anthropological dogma that early theology has no ethics.

The Kurnai began by kneading the stomachs of the lads about to be initiated (that is, if they have been a.s.sociating with Christians), to expel selfishness and greed. The chief rite, later, is to blindfold every lad, with a blanket closely drawn over his head, to make whirring sounds with the _tundun_, or Greek _rhombos_, then to pluck off the blankets, and bid the initiate raise their faces to the sky. The initiator points to it, calling out, 'Look there, look there, look there!' They have seen in this solemn way the home of the Supreme Being, 'Our Father,' Mungan-ngaur (Mungan = 'Father,' ngaur = 'our'), whose doctrine is then unfolded by the old initiator ('headman') 'in an impressive manner.'[17] 'Long ago there was a great Being, Mungan-ngaur, who lived on the earth.' His son Tundun is _direct ancestor_ of the Kurnai. Mungan initiated the rites, and destroyed earth by water when they were impiously revealed. 'Mungan left the earth, and ascended to the sky, where he still remains.'

Here Mungan-ngaur, a Being not defined as spirit, but immortal, and dwelling in heaven, is Father, or rather grandfather, not maker, of the Kurnai. This _may_ be interpreted as ancestor-worship, but the opposite myth, of making or creating, is of frequent occurrence in many widely-severed Australian districts, and co-exists with evolutionary myths. Mungan-ngaur's precepts are:

1. _To listen to and obey the old men_.

2. _To share everything they have with their friends_.

3. _To live peaceably with their friends_.

4. _Not to interfere with girls or married women_.

5. _To obey the food restrictions until they are released from them by the old men_.

Mr. Howitt concludes: 'I venture to a.s.sert that it can no longer be maintained that the Australians have no belief which can be called religious, that is, in the sense of beliefs which govern tribal and individual morality under a supernatural sanction.' On this topic Mr. Hewitt's opinion became more affirmative the more deeply he was initiated.[18]

The Australians are the lowest, most primitive savages, yet no propitiation by food is made to their moral Ruler, in heaven, as if he were a ghost.

The laws of these Australian divine beings apply to ritual as well as to ethics, as might naturally be expected. But the moral element is conspicuous, the reverence is conspicuous: we have here no mere ghost, propitiated by food or sacrifice, or by purely magical rites. His very image (modelled on a large scale in earth) is no vulgar idol: to make such a thing, except on the rare sacred occasions, is a capital offence.

Meanwhile the mythology of the G.o.d has often, in or out of the rites, nothing rational about it.

On the whole it is evident that Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, underrates the nature of Australian religion. He cites a case of addressing the ghost of a man recently dead, which is asked not to bring sickness, 'or make loud noises in the night,' and says: 'Here we may recognise the essential elements of a cult.' But Mr. Spencer does not allude to the much more essentially religious elements which he might have found in the very authority whom he cites, Mr. Brough Smyth.[19] This appears, as far as my scrutiny goes, to be Mr. Spencer's solitary reference to Australia in the work on 'Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions.' Yet the facts which he and Mr. Huxley ignore throw a light very different from theirs on what they consider 'the simplest condition of theology.'

Among the causes of confusion in thought upon religion, Mr. Tylor mentions 'the partial and one-sided application of the historical method of inquiry into theological doctrines.'[20] Here, perhaps, we have examples. In its highest aspect that 'simplest theology' of Australia is free from the faults of popular theology in Greece. The G.o.d discourages sin, though, in myth, he is far from impeccable. He is almost too revered to be named (except in mythology) and is not to be represented by idols. He is not moved by sacrifice; he has not the chance; like Death in Greece, 'he only, of all G.o.ds, loves not gifts.' Thus the status of theology does not correspond to what we look for in very low culture. It would scarcely be a paradox to say that the popular Zeus, or Ares, is degenerate from Mungan-ngaur, or the Fuegian being who forbids the slaying of an enemy, and almost literally 'marks the sparrow's fall.'

If we knew all the mythology of Darumulun, we should probably find it (like much of the myth of Pundjel or Bunjil) on a very different level from the theology. There are two currents, the religious and the mythical, flowing together through religion. The former current, religious, even among very low savages, is pure from the magical ghost-propitiating habit.

The latter current, mythological, is full of magic, mummery, and scandalous legend. Sometimes the latter stream quite pollutes the former, sometimes they flow side by side, perfectly distinguishable, as in Aztec ethical piety, compared with the b.l.o.o.d.y Aztec ritualism.

Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on the impure stream, the l.u.s.ts, mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively, or altogether, neglecting (as we have shown) what is honest and of good report.

The worse side of religion is the less sacred, and therefore the more conspicuous. Both elements are found co-existing, in almost all races, and n.o.body, in our total lack of historical information about the beginnings, can say which, if either, element is the earlier, or which, if either, is derived from the other. To suppose that propitiation of corpses and then of ghosts came first is agreeable, and seems logical, to some writers who are not without a bias against all religion as an unscientific superst.i.tion. But we know so little! The first missionaries in Greenland supposed that there was not, there, a trace of belief in a Divine Being.

'But when they came to understand their language better, they found quite the reverse to be true ... and not only so, but they could plainly gather from a free dialogue they had with some perfectly wild Greenlanders (at that time avoiding any direct application to their hearts) that their ancestors must have believed in a Supreme Being, and did render him some service, which their posterity neglected little by little...'[21] Mr.

Tylor does not refer to this as a trace of Christian Scandinavian influence on the Eskimo.[22]

That line, of course, may be taken. But an Eskimo said to a missionary, 'Thou must not imagine that no Greenlander thinks about these things'

(theology). He then stated the argument from design. 'Certainly there must be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too...

Ah, did I but know him, how I would love and honour him.' As St. Paul writes: 'That which may be known of G.o.d is manifest in them, for G.o.d hath showed it unto them ... being understood by the things which are made ...

but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.'[23] In fact, mythology submerged religion. St. Paul's theory of the origin of religion is not that of an 'innate idea,' nor of a direct revelation. People, he says, reached the belief in a G.o.d from the Argument for Design. Science conceives herself to have annihilated teleological ideas. But they are among the probable origins of religion, and would lead to the belief in a Creator, whom the Greenlander thought beneficent, and after whom he yearned. This is a very different initial step in religious development, if initial it was, from the feeding of a corpse, or a ghost.

From all this evidence it does not appear how non-polytheistic, non-monarchical, non-Manes-worshipping savages evolved the idea of a relatively supreme, moral, and benevolent Creator, unborn, undying, watching men's lives. 'He can go everywhere, and do everything.'[24]

[Footnote 1: Fitzroy, ii. 180. Darwin. _Descent of Man_, p. 67.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid. We seem to have little information about Fuegian religion either before or after the cruise of the _Beagle_.]

[Footnote 3: _Principles of Sociology_, i. 422.]

[Footnote 4: Fitzroy, ii. 190, 191]

[Footnote 5: _Travels in West Africa_, p. 442.]

[Footnote 6: _Early Voyages to Australia_, 102-111 (Hakluyt Society).]

[Footnote 7: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 846.]

[Footnote 8: _Journal of the Anthrop. Inst.i.tute_, 1884. See, for less dignified accounts, op. cit. xxiv. xxv.]

[Footnote 9: _Journal_, xiii. 193.]

[Footnote 10: _Journal_, xiii. 296.]

[Footnote 11: Op. cit. p. 450.]

[Footnote 12: P. 453.]

[Footnote 13: P. 457.]

[Footnote 14: See Brough Smyth, _Aborigines_, i. 426; Taplin, _Native Races of Australia_. According to Taplin, Nurrumdere was a deified black fellow, who died on earth. This is not the case of Baiame, but is said, rather vaguely, to be true of Daramulun. _J.A.I._, xiii. 194, xxv. 297.]