The Making of Religion Part 21

The case of the Andaman Islanders may be especially recommended to believers in the anthropological science of religion. For long these natives were the joy of emanc.i.p.ated inquirers as the 'G.o.dless Andamanese.'

They only supply Mr. Spencer's 'Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions' with a few instances of the ghost-belief.[3] Yet when the Andamanese are scientifically studied _in situ_ by an educated Englishman, Mr. Man, who knows their language, has lived with them for eleven years, and presided over our benevolent efforts 'to reclaim them from their savage state,'

the Andamanese turn out to be quite embarra.s.singly rich in the higher elements of faith. They have not only a profoundly philosophical _religion_, but an excessively absurd _mythology_, like the Australian blacks, the Greeks, and other peoples. If, on the whole, the student of the Andamanese despairs of the possibility of an ethnological theory of religion, he is hardly to be blamed.

The people are probably Negritos, and probably 'the original inhabitants, whose occupation dates from prehistoric times.'[4] They use the bow, they make pots, and are considerably above the Australian level. They have second-sighted men, who obtain status 'by relating an extraordinary dream, the details of which are declared to have been borne out subsequently by some unforeseen event, as, for instance, a sudden death or accident.' They have to produce fresh evidential dreams from time to time. They see phantasms of the dead, and coincidental hallucinations.[5] All this is as we should expect it to be.

Their religion is probably not due to missionaries, as they always shot all foreigners, and have no traditions of the presence of aliens on the islands before our recent arrival.[6] Their G.o.d, Puluga, is 'like fire,'

but invisible. He was never born, and is immortal. By him were all things created, except the powers of evil. He knows even the thoughts of the heart. He is angered by _yubda_ = sin, or wrong-doing, that is falsehood, theft, grave a.s.sault, murder, adultery, bad carving of meat, and (as a crime of witchcraft) by burning wax.[7] 'To those in pain or distress he is pitiful, and sometimes deigns to afford relief.' He is Judge of Souls, and the dread of future punishment 'to _some_ extent is said to affect their course of action in the present life.'[8]

This Being could not be evolved out of the ordinary ghost of a second-sighted man, for I do not find that ancestral ghosts are worshipped, nor is there a trace of early missionary influence, while Mr. Man consulted elderly and, in native religion, well-instructed Andamanese for his facts.

Yet Puluga lives in a large stone house (clearly derived from ours at Port Blair), eats and drinks, foraging for himself, and is married to a green shrimp.[9] There is the usual story of a Deluge caused by the moral wrath of Puluga. The whole theology was scrupulously collected from natives unacquainted with other races.

The account of Andamanese religion does not tally with the anthropological hypothesis. Foreign influence seems to be more than usually excluded by insular conditions and the jealousy of the 'original inhabitants.' The evidence ought to make us reflect on the extreme obscurity of the whole problem.

Anthropological study of religion has. .h.i.therto almost entirely overlooked the mysteries of various races, except in so far as they confirm the entry of the young people into the ranks of the adult. Their esoteric moral and religious teaching is nearly unknown to us, save in a few instances. It is certain that the mysteries of Greece were survivals of savage ceremonies, because we know that they included specific savage rites, such as the use of the _rhombos_ to make a whirring noise, and the custom of ritual daubing with dirt; and the sacred _ballets d'action_, in which, as Lucian and Qing say, mystic facts are 'danced out.'[10] But, while Greece retained these relics of savagery, there was something taught at Eleusis which filled minds like Plato's and Pindar's with a happy religious awe.

Now, similar 'softening of the heart' was the result of the teaching in the Australian _Bora_: the Yao mysteries inculcate the victory over self; and, till we are admitted to the secrets of all other savage mysteries throughout the world, we cannot tell whether, among mummeries, frivolities, and even license, high ethical doctrines are not presented under the sanction of religion. The New Life, and perhaps the future life, are undeniably indicated in the Australian mysteries by the simulated Resurrection.

I would therefore no longer say, as in 1887, that the h.e.l.lenic genius must have added to 'an old medicine dance' all that the Eleusinian mysteries possessed of beauty, counsel, and consolation[11]. These elements, as well as the barbaric factors in the rites, may have been developed out of such savage doctrine as softens the hearts of Australians and Yaos. That this kind of doctrine receives religious sanction is certain, where we know the secret of savage mysteries. It is therefore quite incorrect, and strangely presumptuous, to deny, with almost all anthropologists, the alliance of ethics with religion among the most backward races. We must always remember their secrecy about their inner religion, their frankness about their mythological tales. These we know: the inner religion we ought to begin to recognise that we do not know.

The case of the Andamanese has taught us how vague, even now, is our knowledge, and how obscure is our problem. The example of the Melanesians enforces these lessons. It is hard to bring the Melanesians within any theory. Dr. Codrington has made them the subject of a careful study, and reports that while the European inquirer can communicate pretty freely on common subjects 'the vocabulary of ordinary life in almost useless when the region of mysteries and superst.i.tions is approached.'[12] The Banks Islanders are most free from an Asiatic element of population on one side, and a Polynesian element on the other.

The Banks Islanders 'believe in two orders of intelligent beings different from living men.' (1) Ghosts of the dead, (2) 'Beings who were not, and never had been, human.' This, as we have shown, and will continue to show, is the usual savage doctrine. On the one hand are separable souls of men, surviving the death of the body. On the other are beings, creators, who were before men were, and before death entered the world. It is impossible, logically, to argue that these beings are only ghosts of real remote ancestors, or of ideal ancestors. These higher beings are not safely to be defined as 'spirits,' their essence is vague, and, we repeat, the idea of their existence might have been evolved _before the ghost theory was attained by men_. Dr. Codrington says, 'the conception can hardly be that of a purely spiritual being, yet, by whatever name the natives call them, they are such as in English must be called spirits.'

That is our point. 'G.o.d is a spirit,' these beings are G.o.ds, therefore 'these are spirits.' But to their initial conception our idea of 'spirit'

is lacking. They are beings who existed before death, and still exist.

The beings which never were human, never died, are _Vui_, the ghosts are _Tamate_. Dr. Codrington uses 'ghosts' for _Tamate_, 'spirits' for _Vui_.

But as to render _Vui_ 'spirits' is to yield the essential point, we shall call _Vui_ 'beings,' or, simply, _Vui_. A Vui is not a spirit that has been a ghost; the story may represent him as if a man, 'but the native will always maintain that he was something different, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man.'[13]

This distinction, ghost on one side--original being, not a man, not a ghost of a man, on the other--is radical and nearly universal in savage religion. Anthropology, neglecting the essential distinction insisted on, in this case, by Dr. Codrington, confuses both kinds under the style of 'spirits,' and derives both from ghosts of the dead. Dr. Codrington, it should be said, does not generalise, but confines himself to the savages of whom he has made a special study. But, from the other examples of the same distinction which we have offered, and the rest which we shall offer, we think ourselves justified in regarding the distinction between a primeval, eternal, being or beings, on one hand, and ghosts or spirits exalted from ghost's estate, on the other, as common, if not universal.

There are corporeal and incorporeal Vuis, but the body of the corporeal Vui is '_not_ a human body.'[14] The chief is Qat, 'still at hand to help and invoked in prayers.' 'Qat, Marawa, look down upon me, smooth the sea for us two, that I may go safely over the sea!' Qat 'created men and animals,' though, in a certain district, he is claimed as an _ancestor_ (p. 268). Two strata of belief have here been confused.

The myth of Qat is a jungle of facetiae and frolic, with one or two serious incidents, such as the beginning of Death and the coming of Night.

His mother was, or became, a stone; stones playing a considerable part in the superst.i.tions.

The incorporeal Vuis, 'with nothing like a human life, have a much higher place than Qat and his brothers in the religious system.' They have neither names, nor shapes, nor legends, they receive sacrifice, and are in some uncertain way connected with stones; these stones usually bear a fanciful resemblance to fruits or animals (p. 275). The only sacrifice, in Banks Islands, is that of sh.e.l.l-money. The mischievous spirits are Tamate, ghosts of men. There is a belief in _mana_ (magical _rapport_). Dr.

Codrington cannot determine the connection of this belief with that in spirits. Mana is the uncanny, is X, the unknown. A revived impression of sense is _nunuai_, as when a tired fisher, half asleep at night, feels the 'draw' of a salmon, and automatically strikes.[15] The common ghost is a bag of _nunuai_, as living man, in the opinion of some philosophers, is a bag of 'sensations.' Ghosts are only seen as spiritual lights, which so commonly attend hallucinations among the civilised. Except in the prayers to Qat and Marawa, prayer only invokes the dead (p. 285). 'In the western islands the offerings are made to ghosts, and consumed by fire; in the eastern (Banks) isles they are made to spirits (beings, _Vui_), and there is no sacrificial fire.' Now, the worship of ghosts goes, in these isles, with the higher culture, 'a more considerable advance in the arts of life;' the worship of non-ghosts, _Vui_, goes with the lower material culture.[16] This is rather the reverse of what we should expect, in accordance with the anthropological theory. According, however, to our theory, Animism and ghost-worship may be of later development, and belong to a higher level of culture, than worship of a being, or beings, that never were ghosts. In Leper's Isle, 'ghosts do not appear to have prayers or sacrifices offered to them,' but cause disease, and work magic.[17]

The belief in the soul, in Melanesia, does _not_ appear to proceed 'from their dreams or visions in which deceased or absent persons are presented to them, for they do not appear to believe that the soul goes out from the dreamer, or presents itself as an object in his dreams,' nor does belief in other spirits seem to be founded on 'the appearance of life or motion in inanimate things.'[18]

To myself it rather looks as if all impressions had their _nunuai_, real, bodiless, persistent, after-images; that the soul is the complex of all of these _nunuai_; that there is in the universe a kind of magical other, called _mana_, possessed, in different proportions, by different men, _Vui_, _tamate_, and material objects, and that the _atai_ or _ataro_ of a man dead, his ghost, retains its old, and acquires new _mana_.[19] It is an odd kind of metaphysic to find among very backward and isolated savages.

But the lesson of Melanesia teaches us how very little we really know of the religion of low races, how complex it is, how hardly it can be forced into our theories, if we take it as given in our knowledge, allow for our ignorance, and are not content to select facts which suit our hypothesis, while ignoring the rest. On a higher level of material culture than the Melanesians are the Fijians.

Fijian religion, as far as we understand, resembles the others in drawing an impa.s.sable line between ghosts and eternal G.o.ds. The word _Kalou_ is applied to all supernal beings, and mystic or magical things alike. It seems to answer to _mana_ in New Zealand and Melanesia, to _wakan_ in North America, and to _fee_ in old French, as when Perrault says, about Bluebeard's key, 'now the key was _fee_.' All G.o.ds are _Kalou_, but all things that are _Kalou_ are not G.o.ds. G.o.ds are _Kalou vu_; deified ghosts are _Kalou yalo_. The former are eternal, without beginning of days or end of years; the latter are subject to infirmity and even to death.[20]

The Supreme Being, if we can apply the term to him, is Ndengei, or Degei, 'who seems to be an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence.' This idea is not easily developed out of the conception of a human soul which has died into a ghost and may die again. His myth represents him as a serpent, emblem of eternity, or a body of stone with a serpent's head. His one manifestation is given by eating. So neglected is he that a song exists about his lack of worshippers and gifts. 'We made men,' says Ndengei, 'placed them on earth, and yet they share to us only the under sh.e.l.l.'[21] Here is an extreme case of the self-existent creative Eternal, mythically lodged in a serpent's body, and reduced to a jest.

It is not easy to see any explanation, if we reject the hypothesis that this is an old, fallen form of faith, 'with scarcely a temple.' The other unborn immortals are mythical warriors and adulterers, like the popular deities of Greece. Yet Ndengei receives prayers through two sons of his, mediating deities. The priests are possessed, or inspired, by spirits and G.o.ds. One is not quite clear as to whether Ndengei is an inspiring G.o.d or not; but that prayers are made to him is inconsistent with the belief in his eternal inaction. A priest is represented as speaking for Ndengei, probably by inspiration. 'My own mind departs from me, and then, when it is truly gone, my G.o.d speaks by me,' is the account of this 'alternating personality' given by a priest.[22]

After informing us that Ndengei is starved, Mr. Williams next tells about offerings to him, in earlier days, of hundreds of hogs.[23] He sends rain on earth. Animals, men, stones, may all be _Kalou_. There is a Hades as fantastic as that in the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead,' and second sight flourishes.

The mysteries include the sham raising of the dead, and appear to be directed at propitiatory ghosts rather than at Ndengei. There are scenes of license; 'particulars of almost incredible indecency have been privately forwarded to Dr. Tylor.'[24]

Suppose a religious reformer were to arise in one of the many savage tribes who, as we shall show, possess, but neglect, an Eternal Creator.

He would do what, in the secular sphere, was done by the Mikado of j.a.pan.

The Mikado was a political Dendid or Ndengei--an awful, withdrawn, impotent potentate. Power was wielded by the Tyc.o.o.n. A Mikado of genius a.s.serted himself; hence arose modern j.a.pan. In the same way, a religious reformer like Khuen Ahten in Egypt would preach down minor G.o.ds, ghosts and sacred beasts, and proclaim the primal Maker, Ndengei, Dendid, Mtanga.

'The king shall hae his ain again.' Had it not been for the Prophets, Israel, by the time that Greece and Rome knew Israel, would have been worshipping a horde of little G.o.ds, and even beasts and ghosts, while the Eternal would have become a mere name--perhaps, like Ndengei and Atahocan and Unkulunkulu, a jest. The Old Testament is the story of the prolonged effort to keep Jehovah in His supreme place. To make and to succeed in that effort was the _differentia_, of Israel. Other peoples, even the lowest, had, as we prove, the germinal conception of a G.o.d--a.s.suredly not demonstrated to be derived from the ghost theory, logically in no need of the ghost theory, everywhere explicitly contrasted with the ghost theory.

'But their foolish heart was darkened.'

It is impossible to prove, historically, which of the two main elements in belief--the idea of an Eternal Being or Beings, or the idea of surviving ghosts--came first into the minds of men. The idea of primeval Eternal Beings, as understood by savages, does not depend on, or require, the ghost theory. But, as we almost always find ghosts and a Supreme Being together, where we find either, among the lowest savages, we have no historical ground for a.s.serting that either is prior to the other. Where we have no evidence to the belief in the Maker, we must not conclude that no such belief exists. Our knowledge is confused and scanty; often it is derived from men who do not know the native language, or the native sacred language, or have not been trusted with what the savage treasures as his secret. Moreover, if anywhere ghosts are found without G.o.ds, it is an inference from the argument that an idea familiar to very low savage tribes, like the Australians, and falling more and more into the background elsewhere, though still extant and traceable, might, in certain cases, be lost and forgotten altogether.

To take an example of half-forgotten deity. Mr. Im Thurn, a good observer, has written on 'The Animism of the Indians of British Guiana.' Mr. Im Thurn justly says: 'The man who above all others has made this study possible is Mr. Tylor.' But it is not unfair to remark that Mr. Im Thurn naturally sees most distinctly that which Mr. Tylor has taught him to see--namely, Animism. He has also been persuaded, by Mr. Dorman, that the Great Spirit of North American tribes is 'almost certainly nothing more than a figure of European origin, reflected and transmitted almost beyond recognition on the mirror of the Indian mind,' That is not my opinion: I conceive that the Red Indians had their native Eternal, like the Australians, Fijians, Andamanese, d.i.n.kas, Yao, and so forth, as will be shown later.

Mr. Im Thurn, however, dilates on the dream origin of the ghost theory, giving examples from his own knowledge of the difficulty with which Guiana Indians discern the hallucinations of dreams from the facts of waking life. Their waking hallucinations are also so vivid as to be taken for realities.[25] Mr. Im Thurn adopts the hypothesis that, from ghosts, 'a belief has arisen, but very gradually, in higher spirits, and, eventually, in a Highest Spirit; and, keeping pace with the growth of these beliefs, a habit of reverence for and worship of spirits.' On this hypothesis, the spirit latest evolved, and most worshipful, ought, of course, to be the 'Highest Spirit.' But the reverse, as usual, is the case. The Guiana Indians believe in the continued, but not in the everlasting, existence of a man's ghost.[26] They believe in no spirits which were not once tenants of material bodies.[27]

The belief in a Supreme Spirit is only attained 'in the highest form of religion'--Andamanese, for instance--as Mr. Im Thurn uses 'spirit' where we should say 'being.' 'The Indians of Guiana know no G.o.d.'[28]

'But it is true that various words have been found in all, or nearly all, the languages of Guiana which have been supposed to be names of a Supreme Being, G.o.d, a Great Spirit, in the sense which those phrases bear in the language of the higher religions.'

Being interpreted, these Guiana names mean--

_The Ancient One, The Ancient One in Sky-land, Our Maker, Our Father, Our Great Father._

'None of those in any way involves the attributes of a G.o.d.'

The Ancient of Days, Our Father in Sky-land, Our Maker, do rather convoy the sense of G.o.d to a European mind. Mr. Im Thurn, however, decides that the beings thus designated were supposed ancestors who came into Guiana from some other country, 'sometimes said to have been that entirely natural country (?) which is separated from Guiana by the ocean of the air.'[29]

Mr. Im Thurn casually observed (having said nothing about morals in alliance with Animism):

'The fear of unwittingly offending the countless visible and invisible beings ... kept the Indians very strictly within their own rights and from offending against the rights of others.'

This remark dropped out at a discussion of Mr. Im Thurn's paper, and clearly demonstrated that even a very low creed 'makes for righteousness.'[30]

Probably few who have followed the facts given here will agree with Mr. Im Thurn's theory that 'Our Maker,' 'Our Father,' 'The Ancient One of the Heaven,' is merely an idealised human ancestor. He falls naturally into his place with the other high G.o.ds of low savages. But we need much more information on the subject than Mr. Im Thurn was able to give.

His evidence is all the better, because he is a loyal follower of Mr.

Tylor. And Mr. Tylor says: 'Savage Animism is almost devoid of that ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the very mainspring of practical religion.'[31] 'Yet it keeps the Indians very strictly within their own rights and from offending the rights of others.' Our own religion is rarely so successful.[32]

In the Indians of Guiana we have an alleged case of a people still deep in the animistic or ghost-worshipping case, who, by the hypothesis, have not yet evolved the idea of a G.o.d at all.

When the familiar names for G.o.d, such as Maker, Father, Ancient of Days, occur in the Indian language, Mr. Im Thurn explains the neglected Being who bears these t.i.tles as a remote deified ancestor. Of course, when a Being with similar t.i.tles occurs where ancestors are not worshipped, as in Australia and the Andaman Islands, the explanation suggested by Mr. Im Thurn for the problem of religion in Guiana, will not fit the facts.

It is plain that, _a priori_, another explanation is conceivable. If a people like the Andamanese, or the Australian tribes whom we have studied, had such a conception as that of Puluga, or Baiame, or Mungan-ngaur and then, _later_, developed ancestor-worship with its propitiatory sacrifices and ceremonies, ancestor-worship, as the newest evolved and infinitely the most practical form of cult, would gradually thrust the belief in a Puluga, or Mungan-ngaur, or Cagn into the shade. The ancestral spirit, to speak quite plainly, can be 'squared' by the people in whom he takes a special interest for family reasons. The equal Father of all men cannot be 'squared,' and declines (till corrupted by the bad example of ancestral ghosts) to make himself useful to one man rather than to another. For these very intelligible, simple, and practical reasons, if the belief in a Mungan-ngaur came first in evolution, and the belief in a practicable bribable family ghost came second, the ghost-cult would inevitably crowd out the G.o.d-cult.[33] The name of the Father and Maker would become a mere survival, _nominis umbra_, worship and sacrifice going to the ancestral ghost. That explanation would fit the state of religion which Mr. Im Thurn has found, rightly or wrongly, in British Guiana.

But, if the idea of a universal Father and Maker came last in evolution, as a refinement, then, of course, it ought to be the newest, and therefore the most fashionable and potent of Guianese cults. Precisely the reverse is said to be the case. Nor can the belief indicated in such names as Father and Maker be satisfactorily explained as a refinement of ancestor-worship, because, we repeat, it occurs where ancestors are not worshipped.

These considerations, however unpleasant to the devotees of Animism, or the ghost theory, are not, in themselves, illogical, nor contradictory of the theory of evolution, which, on the other hand, fits them perfectly well. That G.o.d thrives best who is most suited to his environment. Whether an easy-going, hungry ghost-G.o.d with a liking for his family, or a moral Creator not to be bribed, is better suited to an environment of not especially scrupulous savages, any man can decide. Whether a set of not particularly scrupulous savages will readily evolve a moral unbribable Creator, when they have a serviceable family ghost-G.o.d eager to oblige, is a question as easily resolved.