_THE TRADITION OF THE HUMAN RACE._
"Tradition reveals the past to us, and consequently it reveals
to us also the future. It is the tie which binds the past, the
present, and the future together, and is the science of them
all. If we possessed the memory of mankind, as we do that of our
personal existence, we should know all. But if we have not the
memory of mankind, does not mankind possess it? Is mankind without
memory, without tradition?... There is no nation which does not
exist through tradition, not only historical traditions relative to
its earthly existence, but through religious traditions relative to
its eternal destiny. To despise this treasure, what is it but to
despise life, and that which constitutes its connection, its unity,
its light, as we have just seen?... When God spoke to men His Word
passed into time ... Happily tradition seized upon it as soon as it
left the threshold of eternity; and tradition is neither an ear,
nor a mouth, nor an isolated memory, but the ear, the mouth, and
the memory of generations united together by tradition itself, and
imparting to it an existence superior to the caprices and weakness
of individuals. Nevertheless, God would not trust to oral tradition
alone ... Symbolical tradition was to add itself to oral tradition
by sustaining and confirming it ... The five terms constituting
the mystery of good and evil: the existence of God, the creation
of the world and of man by God, the fall of man, his restoration
by a great act of divine mercy, and, lastly, the final judgment
of mankind ... and that which oral tradition declared, symbolical
tradition should repeat at all times and in all places, in order
that the obscured or deceived memory of man might be brought back
again to truth by an external, a public, an universal, all-powerful
spectacle. [Lacordaire is speaking principally with reference to
sacrifice and the sacrifice of Mount Calvary.] ... Each time that
oral tradition underwent a movement of renovation by the breath of
God, symbolical tradition felt the effects of it. The sacrifice
of Abel marks the era of patriarchal tradition; the sacrifice of
Abraham marks the era of Hebrew tradition; the sacrifice of Jesus
Christ, the final and consummating sacrifice, marks the era of
Christian tradition.... Such is the nature of tradition, and such
its history. Tradition is the connection of the present with the
past, of the past with the future; it is the principle of identity
and continuity which forms persons, families, nations, and mankind.
It flows in the human race by three great streams which are clearly
perceptible--the Christian, the Hebrew, and the patriarchal or
primitive; in all these three it is oral and symbolical, and
whether as oral or symbolical it speaks of God, the creation, the
fall, reparation and judgment.... Without occupying ourselves with
the question as to whether Scripture was a gift from above or an
invention of men, we see that there exists two kinds of it--human
and sacred scripture. I understand by human scripture, that which
is considered by men as the expression of the ideas of a man; I
understand by sacred scripture that which is venerated by nations
as containing something more than the ideas of a man.... There are
in the world an innumerable quantity of books, nevertheless there
are but six of them which have been venerated by nations as sacred.
These are the 'Kings' of China, the Vedas of India, the Zend-Avesta
of the Persians, the Koran of the Arabs, the Law of the Jews, and
the Gospel. And at first sight I am struck with this rarity of
sacred writings. So many legislators have founded cities, so many
men of genius have governed the human understanding, and yet all
these legislators, all these men of genius, have not been able to
cause the existence of more than six sacred books upon earth!...
Every sacred book is a traditional book, it was venerated before
it existed, it existed before it appeared. The Koran, which is
the last of the sacred writings in the order of time, offers to
us a proof of this worthy of our thoughtful attention. Without
doubt, Mahommed relied upon pretended revelations; however, it
is clear to all those who read the Koran, that the Abrahamic
tradition was the true source of its power.... The same traditional
character shines upon each page of the Christian and Hebrew books;
we find it also in the Zend-Avesta, the Vedas, and the Kings of
the Chinese. Tradition is everywhere the mother of religion; it
precedes and engenders sacred books, as language precedes and
engenders scripture; its existence is rendered immovable in the
sacred books ... a sacred book is a religious tradition which has
had strength enough to sign its name.... The sacred writings are,
then, traditional; it is their first character. I add that they are
constituent, that is to say, they possess a marvellous power for
giving vitality and duration to empires. Strange to say, the most
magnificent books of philosophers have not been able to found, I do
not say a people, but a small philosophical society; and the sacred
writings, without exception, have founded very great and lasting
nations. Thus the Kings founded China, the Vedas India, &c.... Look
at Plato ... how is it that Plato has not been able to constitute,
I do not say a nation, but simply a permanent school? How is it
that communities totter when thinkers meddle with them, and that
the _precise moment of their fall_ is that when men announce to
them that mind is emancipated, that the old forms which bound
together human activity are broken, that the altar is undermined
and reason is all-powerful? Philosophers! if you speak the truth,
how is it that the moment when all the elements of society become
more refined and develop themselves, _is the moment of its
dissolution_?"--_From Père Lacordaire's "Conferences." Conf. 9 and
10._ (Tran. H. Langdon; Richardson, 1852.)
I should also wish M. Auguste Nicolas' "Etudes Philosophiques
sur le Christianisme"--particularly lib. I. chap. v., "Necessite
d'une revelation Primitive;" and lib. II. chap. iv., "Traditions
universelles"--to be read in connection with the following chapter.
I did not become acquainted with M. Nicolas until after the chapter
was concluded. I have, however, fulfilled my obligations in the
above extract from L'Abbe Lacordaire, which lies more _au fond_ of
my view than the chapters referred to in M. Nicolas. I also wish to
direct attention to a remarkable article in the _Home and Foreign
Review_, Jan. 1864, entitled "Classical Myths in relation to the
Antiquity of Man," signed F. A. P.
Tradition, in the sense in which we have just seen it used by
Lacordaire, in what we may call its widest signification, is not
limited to oral tradition, but may be termed the connection of
evidence which establishes the unity of the human race; and, with this
evidence, establishes the identity and continuity of its belief, laws,
institutions, customs, and manners (Manners, _vide_ Goguet's "Origin
of Laws," i. 327-329). The more closely the tradition is investigated,
the more thoroughly will it be found to attest a common origin, and the
more fully will its conformity with the scriptural narrative be made
apparent.
Now, although in all ages there have been men of great intellect who
have held to tradition, it may be stated as one of those truths,
_qui saute aux yeux_, and which will not be gainsaid, that the human
intellect has been throughout opposed to tradition, has been its most
constant adversary, equally when it was the tradition of a corrupt
polytheism, as when it was the tradition of uncontested truth; and so
active has been this antagonism, that the marvel is that anything of
primitive tradition should have remained.
Hence arose the divergence between religion and philosophy--a
divergence which, as it seems to me, is inexplicable from the point of
view of those who believe that, in the centuries which preceded the
coming of our Lord,[78] religion simply was not, had ceased to be;
unless we suppose that a tradition of the antagonism had survived,
which would still partially disclose how it came about that when
religion had ceased to be (_pro argumento_), or had become corrupt,
philosophy, which then (_ex hypothesi_) alone soared above the
intellect of the crowd, did not, and could not become a religion to
them, _infra_, pp. 142, 145, 146.
[78] Such appears to me to be the conclusion of Mr Allies in his
learned work ("The Formation of Christendom," ii. chap. viii.
57), "Universality of false worship in the most diverse
nations the summing up of man's whole history." I request
attention, however, to the following passage, at page 382,
which has an especial bearing upon my argument:--"No doubt the
Greek mind had lived and brooded for ages upon the remains
of original revelation, nor can any learning now completely
unravel the interwoven threads of tradition and reason so as
to distinguish their separate work. However, it is certain
that in the sixth century B.C., the Greeks were
without a hierarchy, and without a definite theology: not
indeed without individual priesthoods, traditionary rites,
and an existing worship, as well as certain mysteries which
professed to communicate a higher and more recondite doctrine
than that exposed to the public gaze. But in the absence of
any hierarchy ... a very large range indeed was given to the
mind, acting upon this shadowy religious belief, and re-acted
upon by it, to form their philosophy. The Greeks did not, any
more than antiquity in general, use the acts of religious
service for instruction by religious discourse. In other
words, there was no such thing as preaching among them. A
domain, therefore, was open to the philosopher, on which he
might stand without directly impeaching the ancestral worship,
while he examined its grounds, and perhaps _sapped its
foundations_. He was therein taking up a position which these
priests, the civil functionaries of religious rites, _scarcely
any longer_ retaining a spiritual meaning or a moral cogency,
had not occupied."
And the history of this antagonism seems to be, that the human
intellect has ever had, and now more confidently than ever, the aim
and ambition to substitute something better than the revelation of
primitive tradition, and the experiences of the human race.
It is quite conceivable that human life and human institutions might
have been arranged upon some scheme different from that of the divine
appointment; and although we may believe that any such scheme would
result in ultimate confusion and the final extinction of the human
race, it is still theoretically possible that the experiment might have
been made.[79]
[79] Take for instance Mr J. S. Mill's peculiar views as to the
status of women, "The law of servitude in marriage" ["Wives
be obedient to your husbands," St Paul], he says, "is in
monstrous contradiction to all the principles of the modern
world" (p. 147). "Marriage is the only actual bondage known
to our law," _id._ But at p. 49, Mr Mill says, "The general
opinion of men is supposed to be, that the natural vocation
of a woman is that of a wife and mother." But he then adds
(p. 37), "It will not do to assert in general terms that the
experience of mankind has pronounced in favour of the existing
system. Experience cannot possibly have decided between two
courses, so long as there has only been _experience of one_.
If it be said that the doctrine of the equality of the sexes
rests only on theory, it must be remembered that the contrary
doctrine also has only theory to rest upon. All that is
proved in its favour by direct experience, is that mankind
have been able to exist under it, and to attain the degree of
improvement and prosperity which we now see; but whether that
prosperity has been attained sooner, or is now greater than it
would have been under the other system, experience does not
say."
Take in illustration, again, the communistic schemes
as against the institution of property. Now, although
Christianity has realised all that will ever be possible in
the way of communism in its religious orders, the communistic
sects have always instinctively directed their first efforts
against religion as against the basis of the social order of
things which they attacked. This was forcibly brought out in
certain letters on "European Radicalism," in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, October and November 1869, _e.g._ "all the contests
on the three capital questions ('government, property,
religion') which we are now engaged in, are but continuations
of the _original divergence_ of opinion (before settled
government), considerably modified, of course, under the
influence of time, the various _traditional notions_ mankind
preserves under the _name of beliefs_, and the whole stock of
experience it has accumulated under the name of knowledge. So
like, indeed, are the ancient and modern contests on these
matters," &c.... (Letter I.) Again (Letter V.), speaking of
our English socialist discussing "the necessity of building
social edifices upon material, not religious grounds," the
writer adds, that among continental socialists "no one thinks
there of the possibility of matters standing otherwise;" and
that in the socialist workshops of France and Germany it is
well known "that the very basis of social radicalism requires
the abandonment of all kinds of religious discussion, as
matter of purely personal inclination, and the abolition of
all kinds of privileges as incompatible with equality." [All
this has been put out of date by the deeds of the Commune
and the programme of the "International Society"--viz. "_The
burning of Paris_ we _accept the responsibility of_. _The old
society must_ and will perish."] The _Spectator_, December
1869, speaks still more explicitly:--"Infirm and crippled
though she be, the Roman Church is still the only one who
has the courage to be cosmopolitan, and claim the right to
link nation with nation, and literature with literature. Such
an assembly as the Council is, at least, an extraordinary
testimony to the cosmopolitanism of the great Church
which seems trembling to its fall; and who can doubt that
that fall, whenever it comes, will be followed by a great
temporary loosening of the faith in human unity--in spite of
the electric telegraph--by a deepening of the chasm between
nation and nation, by the loss of at least a most potent
spell over the imagination of the world, by a contraction
of the spiritual ideal of every church? This ideal, even
Protestants, even Sceptics, even Positivists have owed, and
have owned that they owed, to the Roman Church, the only
Church which has really succeeded in uniting the bond between
any one ecclesiastical centre and the distant circumference
of human intelligence and energy. But if the consequence of
the collapse of Romanism would be in this way a loss of power
to the human race, think only of the gain of power which
would result from the final death of sacerdotal ideas, from
the final blow to the system of arbitrary authority exercised
over the intellect and the conscience, from the new life which
would flow into a faith and science resting on the steady
accumulation of moral and intellectual facts and the personal
life of the conscience in Christ--from the final triumph of
moral and intellectual order and freedom. It would doubtless
be a new life, subject to great anarchy at first; but the old
authoritative systems have themselves been of late little more
than anarchy just kept under by the authority of prescription
and tradition; and one can only hope for the new order from
the complete recognition that it is to have no arbitrary or
capricious foundation."
Here comes in, with its full significance, the great saying of
Lacordaire's--"Order I compare to a pyramid reaching from heaven to
earth. Men cannot overthrow its base, because the finger of God rests
upon its apex."
If the finger of God did not so rest, there is no assignable reason
why this pyramid--this incubus, as some would call it--which goes
back, stone upon stone, to the primitive ages, should not have been
overturned, and some system purely atheistical, purely material, purely
communistic, substituted for it. But I believe that no democratic
organisation, however extended among the masses, will overthrow the
established order of things, so long as the possessors of property,
the upper classes, are true to the objects for which property was
instituted.
Considering how much man has effected in the material order, and
considering also the varied intellectual faculties with which he is
endowed, it strikes one as strange, as something which has to be
accounted for, that he has been able to effect so little in the moral
order. It is the same whether we regard the action of the intellect
upon the individual man, or upon society. And from this latter point
of view it is so true, that it is more than doubtful whether those
epochs in which man has attained the highest point of intellectual and
material civilisation, are not those also in which he has reached the
lowest depths of immorality;[80] and in which--having touched the
lowest point of corruption--the human intellect is unable to devise
any better plan for the government of mankind, than the repression of
despotism.[81]
[80] "It is, upon the whole, extremely doubtful whether those
periods which are the richest in literature, possess the
greatest shares, either of moral excellence or of political
happiness. We are well aware that the true and happy ages of
Roman greatness long preceded that of Roman refinement and
Roman authors; and, I fear, there is but too much reason to
suppose that in the history of the modern nations we may find
many examples of the same kind" (F. Schlegel's "History of
Literature," i. 373). See also the account of the corruption
of morals in Rome in the Augustan period (Allies' "Form. of
Christendom," I. Lect. I.) "It is curious to observe that the
more eloquent, polite, and learned the Greeks became, in the
same proportion they became the more degraded and corrupt in
their national religion" (Godfrey Higgins' "Celtic Druids,"
1829, p. 207).
[81] "Il n'y a, Messieurs, que deux sortes de repression
possibles: l'une intérieure, l'autre extérieure.... Elles
sont de telle nature que quand le thermomètre politique est
élevé, le thermomètre de la religion est bas, et quand le
thermomètre religieux est bas, le thermomètre politique, la
repression politique, la tyrannie s'élève. Ceci est une loi
de l'humanité, une loi de l'histoire." _Vide_ Disc. de Donoso
Cortes (Marq. de Valdegamas), 4th January 1849; in which he
pursues this remarkable parallelism throughout history.
But if the human intellect cannot prevent or control corruption, cannot
it disenchant vice of its evil, and so counteract its effects? Is there
no new conception of virtue with which to allure mankind? No second
decalogue which will attract by its novelty, or convince by logical
cogency and force? The Comtists, I believe, have a scheme for setting
all these things right. But what portion of mankind do they influence?
They are at present formidable only as may be the cloud on the horizon,
nor have they found sympathy even where they might have had some
expectation of finding it. If there was any separate section of mankind
which might have given them countenance, it would, one would think,
be the rationalist section, whose principles would disincline them to
regard old modes of thought with undue partiality. It is from this
quarter, if I mistake not, that the unkindest cut has come, and that
it has been said that "the latter half of Comte's career and writings
is the despair and bewilderment of those who admire the preceding
half;" yet in this latter half he only aimed at converting rationalism
from a negative to a positive system. But, allowing that a system of
some sort might thus be constructed, can positivism be defined as
more than the system of those who are positive by mutual consent and
agreement without faith or certainty, and who are the more positive
in proportion as they recede from Catholic truth and tradition. We,
however, who believe in the identity of Catholicism and Christianity,
may still appreciate Professor Huxley's definition of positivism,
viz.--"Catholicism _minus_ Christianity."[82]
[82] Montalembert ("Disc. de Reception," 1852, Discours iii.
pp. 614, 615, 621, 622) says of the Constituent Assembly
of 1789--"It was the Assembly of 1789 which made the word
revolution the synonyme of methodical destruction, of
permanent war against all order and all authority.... It had
that mania for uniformity which is the parody of unity, and
which Montesquieu called the passion of mediocre minds....
In a word, the Constituent Assembly was wanting not only in
justice, courage, and humanity, but it was also deficient in
good sense. The evil which it created has survived it. It has
made us believe that it is possible to destroy everything
and to reconstruct everything in a day.... God has chastised
it, above all, by the sterility of its work. It had had the
pretence of laying the foundations of liberty for ever, and
it had for its successors the most sanguinary tyrants who
ever dishonoured any nation. Its mission was to re-establish
the finances, the empire of the law, and it has bequeathed
to France bankruptcy, anarchy, and despotism--despotism
without even the repose which they have wrongly taken as the
compensation of servitude. It has done more: it has left
pretexts for every abuse of force, and precedents for any
excess of future anarchy. [Montalembert could hardly have
foreseen the last application of its principles which we
have recently witnessed in Paris by the Commune, which, too,
forsooth, was to have inaugurated a new era for humanity.] But
it (this Constituent Assembly) founded nothing--Nothing! The
ancient society which it reversed had lasted, in spite of its
abuses, a thousand years."
Can any one adduce a more typical representative of the clear,
powerful, penetrating intellect of man than Voltaire! Voltaire,
moreover, had the aim and ambition ("ecraser l'infame") to obliterate
the tradition of the past; yet can there be a better example of
the impotence of the intellect in the moral order? Does it not seem
startling that, when the human intellect, as in the case of Voltaire,
should be able to detect with so much acumen, so much wit, what is
wrong, that it should be wholly struck with sterility when it attempts
to tell us what is right, to reveal to man any truth in the moral order
not traditionally known to them. And if the disciples of Voltaire have
occasionally, in spasmodic efforts, attempted this, it has not been in
the manner of Voltaire; it has been in the spirit of eclecticism, of
reconstruction out of the elements of the past--that is to say (with
pardon, if the phrase has been used before), an attempt to create, out
of the elements he would have spurned, edifices which he would have
derided.
Now, the pretension of the human intellect is quite contrary to this
experience. It claims to have progressively elevated mankind out of
a state of primitive barbarism, to have indoctrinated them with the
ideas of morality which they possess, to have humanised them, and thus
affirms the converse of the theory of tradition which it pursues with
much unreasoning and implacable animosity.
The _Saturday Review_ (July 24, 1869), in reviewing Mr Gladstone's
"Juventus Mundi," says--"Mr Gladstone is doubtless well aware that
there was no portion of his Homeric studies which was received with
more surprise, or with more unfavourable comment, than his speculations
on what he described as the traditive and the inventive elements in
the Homeric mythology."[83] In consequence, Mr Gladstone says he has
endeavoured to avoid in his more recent work "a certain crudity of
expression." The _Saturday Review_, however, says--"That 'the crudity
of expression' here referred to seems to have been corrected and
modified to some extent by disguising the process of argument by which
it was sustained, and by the adoption of a lighter touch and slighter
treatment of the subject than in the former book. But the theory
itself, we believe, remains the same."
[83] From a purely philosophical point of view, why should these
speculations of Mr Gladstone have been received "with more
surprise and unfavourable comment" than any other "portions of
his Homeric studies?"
I may assume, then, that the passage which I have elsewhere quoted
from Mr Gladstone, and laid as the basis of my argument, still has
his countenance and support, in spite of the manifest antagonism it
has provoked. And this passage, I venture to think, acquires fresh
light and an accession of force when placed in juxtaposition with the
parallel passages from De Maistre and Dr Newman. These passages will
present no difficulties to the believer in the Bible. How far the
view is sustainable, with reference to the more recent conclusions in
chronology, I shall consider in another chapter; but, assuming that it
is not chronologically disproved, there is no intrinsic impossibility
which will debar belief.
The general probability of tradition being thus avouched,[84] I proceed
to examine certain statements that have been made as to its necessary
variability, and as to the uncertainty and indefiniteness of its
utterances.
[84] In one way, nothing is so uncertain as tradition, and,
moreover, tradition is rarely positive and direct, but, on the
contrary, prone to concrete into strange, fragmentary, and
distorted shapes. As an instance, we may take the tradition
which Genesis attests,--When Abraham's hand had been stayed by
the angel from the sacrifice of Isaac, ... "He called the name
of that place 'The Lord seeth.' Whereupon, even to this day it
is said, '_In the mountain the Lord will see_.'"--_Gen._ xxii.
14.
In illustration of the mode and manner of tradition, is the
anecdote of Mr Hookham Frere, who states, that when the
Maltese talk without reserve upon religious subjects, they
say, "Everybody knows that Adam was the first man, but we
alone know that he possessed fishing-boats;" which Bunsen says
"Can be nothing but a Phoenician reminiscence."--"Egypt,"
iv. 215, the reminiscence of the legend of the Fisherman.
Compare the Fisherman and his wife in Grimm's "Popular Stories
from Oral Tradition."
In the first place, as to its variability, it is true that tested by
the experience which we possess of the persistency and exactness of
family and local traditions, tradition in the broader sense which I
have indicated may appear to be of little value. I have elsewhere
attended a closer argument on this point in reply to Sir John Lubbock
(ch. xii.), but I may also make what appears to me, as regards this
matter, a sufficiently important distinction.
Family tradition is so confused, because at each remove in each
generation, it is necessarily crossed through marriage with
the traditions of another family. These may be either rival or
irreconcileable. But this remark will apply with much less force,
it will only secondarily and accidentally apply at all to the
common traditions, the inheritance of all families starting from a
common origin. If these traditions acquired some dross through the
intermarriage of families, they will, on the other hand, through the
very action of intermarriages, have been more frequently compared,
more vividly, therefore, kept in remembrance, and more recognisable
in their distortion, because the distortion is more likely to have
been in the way of super-addition of what was thought congruous and
supplemental. And this seems to me to meet Mr Max Müller's objection in
the _Contemporary Review_ for April 1870. "Comparative philology," he
says, "has taught again and again, that when we find _exactly_ the same
name in Greek and Sanscrit, we may be certain that it cannot be the
same word;" for we here see reason why and how these traditions have
been specially protected against the natural action and law which it is
the peculiar province of philology to trace.
I say this more especially with reference to the etymology in Bryant's
and other kindred works, which it is now the fashion to set aside
with much _hauteur_; and I assert it without impugning in any way the
results of modern philological inquiry, extending, of course, over a
much wider field than the writers of the last century could embrace.
But I do contend, that when the discussion has reference to the common
progenitors of the human race, or the incidents of primitive life--for
instance, the names of the ark, and what I may call its accessories,
the dove and the rainbow[85]--a certain probability of identity may
be presumed in such sort that it may chance that the probabilities of
tradition must be held to override the conjectures, and in some cases
even the conclusions of philology.[86]
[85] _Vide_ "Bryant's Mythology," ii.
[86] After the exposition of his own theory, Mr Grote says--"It
is in this point of view that the myths are important for
any one who would correctly appreciate the general tone of
Grecian thought and feeling, for they were the _universal
mental stock_ of the Hellenic world, _common to men and
women, rich and poor_, ignorant and instructed, they _were in
every one's memory and in every one's mouth_, while science
and history were confined to comparatively few. We know from
Thucydides how erroneously and carelessly the Athenian public
of his day retained the history of Pisistratus, only one
century past; but the adventures of the gods and heroes, the
numberless explanatory legends attached to visible objects
and _periodical ceremonies_, were the theme of _general
talk_, and every man unacquainted with them would have
found himself partially excluded from the sympathies of his
neighbours."--_Hist. Greece_, i. p. 608; comp. _infra_, ch.
xi.
I incline, moreover, to the belief that the fidelity and persistency of
local tradition is greater than is generally supposed. Sir H. Maine[87]
says--"The truth is, that the stable part of our mental, moral, and
physical constitution is the largest part of it, and the resistance it
opposes to change is such that, though the variations of human society
in a portion of the world are plain enough, they are neither so rapid
nor so extensive that their amount of character and general direction
cannot be ascertained." This establishes a presumption, at any rate,
in favour of tradition, although I admit that the quotation from Sir
H. Maine does not go further than point to a tradition of usages; but
I contend that a tradition of usage would enable us, after the manner
of Boulanger,[88] to disclose "L'antiquite devoilée par ses usages,"
and to establish the main points and basis of the history of the human
race, _e.g._ the Fall, the Deluge, the Dispersion, the early knowledge
and civilisation of mankind, the primitive monotheism, the confusion of
tongues, the family system, marriages, the institution of property, the
tradition of a common morality,[89] and of the law of nations.
[87] "Ancient Law," p. 117.
[88] "Pour trouver le veritable objet de ces dernières solemnités,
dont les motifs sont compliqués, nous nous attachons à
analyser leur cérémoniel et à chercher l'esprit de leurs
usages; et cet esprit achève de nous faire reconnaître
l'objet que nous n'avions d'abord qu'entrevu ou soupçonné,
quelquefois même il nous développe encore la nature des
motifs étrangers et mythologiques, et ces motifs se trouvent
pour la plûpart n'être que des traditions du _même fait_
qui ont été ou corrompués par le temps, ou travesties par
des allégories."--Boulanger, _"L'Antiquite devoilée par ses
Usages"_, i. 31.
[89] _Vide_ other lines of tradition indicated in B. iii., C. iii.,
of De Maistre, "Du Pape."
This inquiry might no doubt form a department either of scriptural
exegesis, universal history, or of ethnological research; but, in
point of fact, its scope is too large practically to fall within such
limits; whereas, if it were recognised as a separate branch of study,
it would, I venture to think, in the progress of its investigation,
bring all these different branches of inquiry into harmony and
completeness. And I further contend, that the conclusions thus attained
are as well-deserving of consideration as the conclusions of science
from the implements of the drift, or as the evidence of "some bones,
from the pliocene beds of St Prest, which appear to show the marks of
knives;"[90] which are adduced in evidence of a Palæolithic age. So
that, when on one side it is said that science (meaning the science
of geology or philology, &c.) has proved this or that fact apparently
contrary to the scriptural narrative, it can, on the other hand, be
asserted that the facts, or the inferences from them, are incompatible
with the testimony of the science of tradition. The defenders of
Scripture will thus secure foothold on the ground of science, which,
when properly entrenched, will stand good against the most formidable
recognizances or assaults of the enemy.
[90] Sir J. Lubbock, Intro. to Nillson's "Stone Age," xii.
I cannot help thinking that some such thought lurks in the following
passage of Cardinal Wiseman's Second Lecture on "Science and Revealed
Religion" (5th Edition, p. 73)--
"Here again I cannot but regret our inability to comprehend in
one glance the bearings and connections of different sciences;
for, _if_ it appears that ages must have been required to bring
languages to the state wherein we first find them, other researches
would show us that these ages never existed; and we should thus be
driven to discover some shaping power, some ever-ruling influence,
which could do at once what nature would take centuries to effect;
and the Book of Genesis hath alone solved this problem."
No doubt a greater general acquaintance and power to grasp--or better
still, an intuitive glance--with which to comprehend "the bearings and
connections of different sciences," would tend to circumscribe the
aberrations of any particular science; but the special intervention
which appears to me destined to bring the various sciences into
harmony, will be the elevation of the particular department of history
or archæology which has to do with the traditions of the human race
as to its origin into a separate and recognised branch of inquiry;
and I am satisfied that if any portion of that intellect, which is
cunning in the reconstruction of the mastodon from its vertebral bone,
had been directed to the great lines of human tradition, that enough
of the "reliquiæ" and vestiges of the past remain to establish their
conformity with that "which alone has solved this problem--the Book of
Genesis;" and which, apart from the consideration of its inspiration,
will ever remain the most venerable and best attested of human
records.[91]
[91] _E.g._, Mr Grote says, in his Introduction, that through the
combination and illustration of scanty facts, "the general
picture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a
degree of fidelity which, considering our imperfect materials,
it is curious to contemplate."
The Duke of Argyll ("Primeval Man," p. 24) says--"Within
certain limits it is not open to dispute that the early
condition of mankind is accessible to research. Contemporary
history reaches back a certain way. Existing monuments afford
their evidence for a considerable distance farther. _Tradition
has its own province still more remote_; and latterly geology
and archæology have met upon common ground--ground in which
man and the mammoth have been found together."
It is much too readily assumed that traditions must be worthless where
no records are kept. Gibbon,[92] I think, was the first who took
this position. To this I reply, that although records are valuable
for the attestation, they are not guarantees for the fidelity of
tradition.[93] I do not assert that the tradition is more trustworthy
than the record; but that, when mankind trust mainly to tradition, the
faculties by which it is sustained will be more strongly developed, and
the adaptation of society for its transmission more exactly conformed.
In other words, tradition in ancient times seemed to flow as from a
fountain-head, and the world was everywhere grooved for its reception.
We may take in evidence the strange resemblances in mythological
tradition in various parts of the world on the one hand, and on the
other the oral tradition of the Homeric verses; the frequent concourse
of citizens, and at recurring festivals of the surrounding populations,
to listen to their recital. And not only was there oral tradition in
verse, but all public events were recorded in the attestations of the
market-place. When a treaty was ratified it was commonly before some
temple, or in some place of public resort, and its terms were committed
to memory by some hundred witnesses; and in like manner was the
recollection of other public events and memorable facts preserved.[94]
(_Vide_ Pastoret's "Hist. de la Législation," i. 71; also, account of
"Annales Maximi" in Dyer's "Rome," xvii.)
[92] Gibbon ("Decline and Fall," i. 353) says, "But all this
well-laboured system of German antiquities is annihilated
by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt,
and of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply.
The Germans, in the days of Tacitus, were unacquainted with
the use of letters, and the use of letters is the principal
circumstance which distinguishes a civilised people from a
herd of savages, incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without
that artificial help, the human memory ever dissipates or
corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge." Compare with
Coleridge, _infra_, p. 122; Ozanam, _infra_, ch. xiii.
[93] Eusebius ("Ecclesiastical Hist.," ch. xxxvi.) says, speaking
of St Ignatius--"He exhorted them to adhere firmly to the
tradition of the apostles; which, for the sake of greater
security, he deemed it necessary to attest by committing it
to writing." I do not remember to have seen this quoted in
testimony and proof of ecclesiastical tradition.
[94] Goguet ("Origin of Laws," i. 29) says--"The _first laws_
of all nations were composed in verse, and sung. Apollo,
according to a very ancient tradition, was one of the first
legislators. The same tradition says that he published his
laws to the sound of his lyre; that is to say, that he had
set them to music. We have certain proof that the first
laws of Greece were a kind of song. The laws of the ancient
inhabitants of Spain were verses, which they sung. Tuiston was
regarded by the Germans as their first lawgiver. They said he
put his laws into verses and songs. This ancient custom was
long kept up by several nations."
E. Warburton ("Conquest of Canada," i. 214) says--"The want
of any written or hieroglyphic records of the past among the
Northern Indians was to some extent supplied by the accurate
memories of their old men; they were able to repeat speeches
of four or five hours' duration, and delivered many years
before, without error, or even hesitation; and to hand them
down from generation to generation with equal accuracy.... On
great and solemn occasions belts of wampum were used as aids
to recollection ... when a treaty or compact was negotiated."
Yet, although during long periods oral transmission was for mankind
the main channel of tradition, it must not necessarily be concluded
that writing was unknown, and was not employed for monumental and
other purposes. What strikes one most forcibly in contemplating these
ages, is the contrast between their intellectual knowledge and their
mechanical and material contrivances for its application. During these
centuries in which the 30,000 hexameters of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey"
were transmitted in memory, by repetition, at public festivals, oral
tradition was doubtless employed, because during this period "paper,
parchment, or even the smoothed hides, as adapted for the purposes of
writing, were unknown."[95] This, whilst it certainly is in evidence of
the paucity of their available resources, at the same time establishes
the retentive strength of their memory,[96] and their intellectual
familiarity with great truths.
[95] _Vide_ H. N. Coleridge ("Greek Classic Poets," p. 38-42), in
speaking of the "Dionysiacs, the Thebaids, the Epigoniads,
Naupactica, genealogies, and the other works of that sort,"
p. 44, he adds--"Just as in the Indian and Persian epics, in
the Northern Eddas, in the poem of the 'Cid,' in the early
chronicles of every nation with which we are acquainted, one
story follows another story in the order of mere history; and
the skill and fire of the poet are shown, not in the artifice
of grouping a hundred figures into one picture, but in raising
admiration by the separate beauty of each successive picture.
_They tell the tale as the tale had been told to them, and
leave out nothing._"
[96] According to the account which the Chinese themselves give of
their annals, the works of Confucius were proscribed, after
his death, by the Emperor Chi-Hoangti, and all the copies,
including the Chu-King, were recovered from the dictation of
an old man who had retained them in memory.
"The great moralist of the East" himself, Confucius,
asserted--"that he only wrought on materials already
existing." _Vide_ Klaproth ap., Cardinal Wiseman, "Science and
Rev. Religion," ii. p. 49.
In the article in the _Cornhill Magazine_, Nov. 1871,
containing the valuable collection of Dravidian (South Indian)
folk-songs, it is said, p. 577, that "they are handed down
from generation to generation, entirely vivâ voce, and from
the minstrels have passed into public use."
And this seems to me the sufficient reply to Sir Charles Lyell's
somewhat captious objection, that if the intellectual knowledge of the
primitive age was so great, we ought now to be digging up steam engines
instead of flint implements.
Every age has its own peculiar superiority, as hath each individual
mind--_non omnia possumus omnes_--and it is as reasonable to object
to an age of philosophic thought, or of intuitive perception, that it
was not rich in the wealth of material civilisation, as it would be
to object to Plato or Shakspeare, that they did not acquire dominion
over mankind; or to Alexander, that he did not excel Aristotle; or
to Sir C. Lyell, supposing geology to be certain, that he did not
anticipate Darwin, supposing Darwinism to be true. And if it should
be more precisely objected that, if in those ages there was the
knowledge of writing for monumental purposes, we ought at least to find
monuments,[97] I say that the _onus probandi_ lies with the objector to
prove the invention or introduction of writing in the interval between
the age of Homer and the age of Pericles, as against us who believe in
its primeval transmission; or to show that its introduction was more
probable at this latter period than at the former.[98]
[97] The Duke of Argyll ("Primeval Man," p. 30) says--"Knowledge,
for example, or ignorance of the use of metals are, as we
shall see, characteristics on which great stress is laid"
(by the advocates of the "savage theory"). "Now, as regards
this point, as Whately truly says, the narrative of Genesis
distinctly states that this kind of knowledge did not belong
to mankind at first.... It is assumed in the savage theory
that the presence or absence of this knowledge stands in close
and natural connection with the presence or absence of other
and higher kinds of knowledge, of which an acquaintance with
metals is but a symbol and a type. Within certain limits this
is true."
[98] Presuming total ignorance of writing--its invention at _any_
period seems to me much more marvellous than the discovery
of printing after the invention of writing. For the rest we
have seen that writing was known at an early period to the
Chaldæans and Egyptians, and probably to the Chinese and
Japanese, and to the Medians (ch. xii.) Plutarch tells us
that a law of Theseus, written on a column of stone, remained
even to the time of Demosthenes.
Schlegel says[99]--
"I have laid it down as an invariable maxim to follow historical
tradition, and to hold fast by that clue, even when many things
in the testimony and declarations of tradition appear strange and
almost inexplicable; or, at least, enigmatical; for so soon as,
in the investigations of ancient history, we let slip that thread
of Ariadne, we can find no outlet from the labyrinth of fanciful
theories and the chaos of clashing opinion."
[99] Phil. Hist.
I propose to give a few instances of tradition, casually selected,
which appear to me to be in illustration of this dictum of Schlegel's.
Take, in illustration, the question whether mankind commenced with the
state of monogamy. Not that there is any obscurity on this point in
the Book of Genesis. It is indeed sometimes loosely said that we find
instances of polygamy in patriarchal times; but, as our Lord said, it
was not so in the beginning; and the Book of Genesis exhibits mankind
as commencing with a single pair, and subsequently as re-propagated
through a group of families, all represented to us at their
commencement as monogamous. But if this highest testimony is discarded,
and men gravely discuss whether or not they commenced with a state of
promiscuity, the argument from tradition will go for as much as the
argument from the analogy of circumstances and conditions as inferred
from the existing state of savages, since this state, from our point of
view, must have been the result of degeneracy.[100]
[100] Burke ("Regicide Peace,") says--"The practice of divorce,
though in some countries permitted, has been discouraged in
all. In the East polygamy and divorce are in discredit, and
the manners correct the laws."
I must, moreover, contend that the practice of monogamy, in any one
case, must weigh for very much more than the practice of polygamy in
ten parallel instances; because the natural degeneracy and proclivity
of man in his fallen state is in this direction.
And also, polygamy is much more naturally regarded as the departure
from monogamy, than the latter as the restraint of, or advance out of,
a state of promiscuity.
It may further, I think, be maintained that monogamy--in the way
of separation with a single woman by reason of strong love or
preference--would be the more probable escape from the state of
promiscuity than through the intermediary and progressive stage of
polygamy.[101]
[101] This was written before the appearance of Sir J. Lubbock's
chapter on "Marriage," in his "Origin of Civilization," to
which reference is made at pp. 51, 52.
Now, I need scarcely say, that the opponents of monogamy can show
no instance of an advance out of the state of promiscuity either to
monogamy or polygamy. But they can point to certain communities in
ancient and modern times in a state of polygamy.
Either, then, they must have degenerated into this state from the
primitive monogamous family system, or they must have arrived at the
stage in growth and progress out of a state of promiscuity.
Does tradition give any clue out of this labyrinth? To simplify the
question, I will consent to appeal to the identical tradition to which
the advocates of an original promiscuity direct our attention.
Mr J. F. M'Lennan, who, in his "Primitive Marriage," 1865 (_vide
supra_), apparently describes mankind as originally in a state of
promiscuity, subsequently limited by customs of tribal exogamy and
endogamy, in a recent article in the _Fortnightly Review_ (Oct. 1869),
"Totems and Totemism," sees further evidence of his theory in the
following traditions from Sanchoniathon:--
"Few traditions respecting the primitive condition of mankind are
more remarkable, and perhaps none are more ancient, than those that
have been preserved by Sanchoniatho; or rather, we should say,
that are to be found in the fragments ascribed to that writer by
Eusebius. They present us with an outline of the earlier stages
of human progress in religious speculation, which is shown _by
the results of modern inquiry to be wonderfully correct_. They
tell us for instance that '_the first men consecrated the plants
shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods_, and worshipped
them upon whom they themselves lived, and all their posterity,
and all before them, and to these they made their meat and drink
offerings.'[102] They further tell us that the first men believed
the heavenly bodies to be animals, only differently shaped and
circumstanced from any on the earth. 'There were certain animals
which had no sense, out of which were begotten intelligent animals
... and they were formed alike in the shape of an egg. Thus shone
out Môt [the luminous vault of heaven?], the sun and the moon,
and the less and the greater stars.' _Next they relate, in an
account of the successive generations of men_, that _in the first
generation the way was found out of taking food from trees_;
that, in the second, men, having suffered from droughts, began to
worship the sun--the Lord of heaven; that in the third, Light,
Fire, and Flame [conceived as persons], were begotten; that in the
fourth giants appeared; while in the fifth, 'men were named from
their mothers' because of the uncertainty of male parentage, this
generation being distinguished also by the introduction of 'pillar'
worship. It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods
appeared that figure most in the old mythologies, such as Kronos,
Dagon, Zeus, Belus, Apollo, and Typhon; and then the queen of
them all was the _Bull_-headed Astarte. The sum of the statements
is, that men first worshipped plants; next the heavenly bodies,
supposed to be animals; then 'pillars;' ... and, last of all, the
anthropomorphic gods. Not the least remarkable statement is, that
in primitive times there was kinship through mothers only, owing to
the uncertainty of fatherhood."[103]
[102] A tradition of the constellations, a proof from tradition that
they were so named in the ante-diluvian period.
[103] Sanchoniatho's "Phoenician History," by the Right Rev. R.
Cumberland. London, 1720, pp. 2, 3, 23, _et seq._ Eusebius,
Præpar. Evangel. lib. i. cap. 10.
The fragments of Sanchoniathon here referred to are found at earlier
date than Eusebius, having been copiously extracted by Philo (_vide_
Bunsen's "Egypt").
Sanchoniathon was to Phoenicia what Berosus was to Assyria; that is
to say, the earliest post-diluvian compilers of history when tradition
was becoming obscure. Let us scrutinise his testimony. We are here
told "that the first men _consecrated the plants_ shooting out of the
earth, and _judged them gods_."... "Next they relate, in an account of
the successive generations of men, that in the first generation _the
way was found out of taking food from trees_." Here, I submit, that we
have plainly and unmistakably a tradition of that first commencement
of evil, the first man and woman plucking the apple from the tree,
thinking they would become as gods (Gen. iii. 4, 5), ... "and the
serpent said ... for God doth know that in what day soever you shall
eat thereof ... and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
Then follows the succession of ages (_vide infra_, ch. xiii.), of
which there is a curious parallel tradition in Hesiod and Apollodorus,
and partial correspondences in the traditions of India, China, and
Mexico (_infra_, ch. xiii.).[104]
[104] _Vide_ Grote, i.
It will be noted, however, that whilst running into the tradition of
Hesiod on the one side (in Hesiod and in the Chinese tradition there
is trace of a double tradition, ante and post-diluvian), Sanchoniathon
still more closely runs in with the narrative of Genesis on the other,
thus connecting the links of the chain of tradition.[105]
[105] This chapter was written before I became acquainted with Mr
Palmer's "Chronicles of Egypt" (_vide_ ch. vi.) If the
reader will refer to chap. i., he will there find a learned
and exhaustive exposition of the ages of Sanchoniathon,
identifying them with Scripture on the one side, and Egyptian
tradition on the other.
In the succession of ages we have in outline the history of mankind in
the ante-diluvian period--the Fall, _supra_--followed in the succeeding
age by a great _drought_--[compare this tradition with the following
passage in Fran. Lenormant's "Histoire Ancienne," i. p. 5, 2d ed.,
Paris 1868--"and when geology shows us the first ante-diluvian men who
came into our part of the world, living in the midst of ice, under
conditions of climate analogous to those under which the Esquimaux live
at the present day ... one is naturally brought to the recollection
of _that ancient tradition of the Persians_, fully conformable to the
information which the Bible supplies on the subject of the fall of man,
... which ranks among the first of the chastisements which followed
the fall, along with death and other calamities, the advent of an
_intense and permanent cold_ which man could scarcely endure, and which
rendered the earth almost uninhabitable."[106]] It is to this period,
and the short period immediately following the Deluge (_vide_ ch. ii.
p. 21, and _infra_, pp. 136, 137), that I am inclined to trace
the notions of a primitive barbarism--compare, for instance, the facts
which Goguet, in his "Origin of Laws," i. p. 72, adduces in proof of
his progress from barbarism, with the above tradition of the Persians
recorded by Lenormant.
[106] Is not this the meaning of the cxlvii. psalm, in the
expression, "ante faciem frigoris ejus quis sustinebit"?
Does not the psalm recount to the Jewish people, in rapid
allusions, all that God had done for them, in contrast to the
chastisements that had befallen other nations; and if it is
objected that there is no allusion to the Deluge, unless in
its indirect and beneficial influences, in the words, "flavit
spiritus ejus et fluent aquæ," I reply that to the survivors,
the Deluge, regarded largely, and in its permanent effects,
was no calamity, but the commencement of a new and more
favoured era.
Goguet says--"The Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and
several other nations (_vide_ his references, p. 72), acknowledged that
their ancestors were once without the use of fire. The Chinese confess
the same of their progenitors.... Pomponius, Mela, Pliny, Plutarch, and
other ancient authors speak of nations, who, at the time they wrote,
knew not the use of fire, or had only just learned it. Facts of the
same kind are attested by several modern relations." Let this latter
statement be compared with _infra_, pp. 136, 137 .
In the third age we are told--"Light, Fire, and Flame (conceived as
persons) were begotten," which looks like a tradition of Vulcan,
Tubalcain, &c. (_vide_ ch. xii. _infra_); and "in the fourth, giants
appeared;" while in the fifth, the corruption of mankind is indicated,
as is declared in Genesis vi. 4: "Now giants were upon the earth in
those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men
and brought forth children," &c., ver. 12, "and when God had seen
that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way
upon the earth), ver. 13, He said to Noe," &c. "It was not till the
twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figured most in the
old mythologies," says Mr M'Lennan, quoting Sanchoniathon, or what is
believed to be his testimony. I trust that this fragment of tradition
may be remembered in connection with what I have written in chapters
viii., ix., x. [107]
[107] Compare ch. xiii. The successive ages of Hesiod, more
especially the lines describing the iron age, parallel to the
tradition, _supra_, "that in the fifth age _men were named
from their mothers_."
"No fathers in their sons their features trace,
The sons reflect _no more_ their father's face;
The host with kindness greets his guest no more,
And friends and brethren love not as of yore."
--HESIOD.
President Goguet ("Origin of Laws," i. 21,) had noticed
the ancient allusions to "kinship through mothers," and
his statement that "women belonged to the man who seized
them first.... The children who sprang from this irregular
intercourse scarce ever knew who were their fathers. They knew
only their mothers, for which reason they always bore their
name." For this statement he also quotes Sanchoniathon, ap.
Eus. p. 34, as his principal authority. But Sanchoniathon's
statement, as we have seen, refers to the ante-diluvian
period, in which it is borne out by Genesis vi. 4.
There is one fact adduced by Goguet (i. 43), viz. that the
_Assyrians_ had an analogous ceremony which must be decisive
for us, though not, perhaps, for Mr M'Lennan, that the custom
of seizure was ante-diluvian, since the commencement of the
Assyrian monarchy in the times immediately following the
flood, is one of the best established foundations of history.
_Vide_ Genesis and Rawlinson.
"This race of _many languaged_ man." To any one who rightly
grasps the bearing of the argument, the appositeness of
this quotation will, I think, be rather strengthened than
diminished by the evidence that the lines of Hesiod plainly
refer to post-diluvian times (_vide_ ch. xiii.)
"The sum of the statements" then, so regarded, is to confirm the
tradition of the human race as recorded in Genesis, that they sprang
from three brothers and their three wives, forming three monogamous
pairs who accompanied their father Noah into the ark, with his wife;
and who again were more remotely descended from a single pair.
If, then, in the two most ancient traditions of which we have any
record, we find concordance on some points and divergence on others,
the circumstance of identity at all is so much more startling than the
occurrence of discrepancy, that it will fairly be taken to warrant
the presumption of a common origin; and this conformity will also be
naturally claimed in support of our narrative as against the other
on the points of disagreement, which will then be set down to the
corruption of that which is deemed the most ancient and authentic.
For those, therefore, who believe the Bible to be the revealed Word
of God, and even for those who regard it as the most ancient record,
the coincidences with Sanchoniathon will afford a striking testimony;
whereas the coincidence of the fifth age of Sanchoniathon with
Genesis (chap. vi. 1, 2, 4) and the tradition of Hesiod, must be an
embarrassment to those who seek in this tradition evidence that what
was characteristic of the fifth age, was true of the preceding and
pristine ages.
To take a second instance, more exactly in illustration of the
quotation from F. Schlegel, _supra_, p. 124, there is no such barrier
to tradition (regarded retrospectively) as the notion, if we accept
it, which crept over many nations, that they were "autochthones."
Like the sand-drifts known to geologists as dunes, such notions, if
they had been received absolutely, would have involved all tradition
in a general extinction. But as the dunes, when minutely measured and
submitted to calculation, have afforded the best evidence in favour
of what may be called the diluvian chronology, so will this notion
that men sprang out of the soil in which they dwelt, when analysed,
contribute fresh evidence to the truth and persistence of tradition.
But first of all, will any one start with the theory--that any nation
that had this notion about itself--the Greeks, for instance, were
really autochthones? There is, then, simply a confusion of ideas, a
difficulty which has to be unravelled; but seeing that the Greeks
notoriously believed themselves to be autochthones, it becomes an
obstruction in the main channel of tradition, and it is especially
incumbent upon us to consider the facts.
In the "Supplicants" of Æschylus--and I am not aware that the notion
crops up at earlier date--Pelasgus is introduced as saying--
"Pelasgus bids you, sovereign of the land,
My sire, Palæcthon, of _high ancestry,
Original_ with this _earth_; from me, their king,
The people take their name, and boast themselves
Pelasgians."
--v. 275.
Here the high descent, and the origin from the soil, the ancestry
referred to in the same breath with the allusion to his sire, "original
with this earth," strikes one as incongruous. And the incongruity
appears still greater when we recollect that Pelasgus is the person
whom all historical evidence proves to have been the first settler in
the country; it being also borne in mind that the term "autochthones,"
whether in a primary or a secondary sense, is always applied to the
supposed aboriginals of the country, and therefore excludes the
hypothesis of any more primitive colonisation.[108]
[108] The Phoenician cosmogony seems to me to clinch the argument.
There (_vide_ Bunsen, Egypt, iv. 234), "_The son of Eliun_ is
called by Philo, Epigeios or _autokhthon_, 'the earth-born,'
primeval inhabitant. By the latter of these expressions we
have no doubt that Adam-Tadmon ('the Kadmos of the Greeks,'
p. 195), the first man, the man of God, is implied" ("Eliun,
_i.e._ Helyun, God the Most High," p. 232).
There is an analogy in their confused tradition of the
creation. "Eudemus says, according to the Phoenician
mythology, which _was invented by Môkhos_, the first principle
was æther and air; from these two beginnings sprang Ulômos
(the eternal), the rational (conscious) God" (Bunsen, iv.
179). Bunsen, (178) adds, "as regards Môkhos the thing is
clear enough; the old materialistic philosopher is matter,
and that in the sense of primeval slime." [Whence it has been
suggested that we derive our word Muck, Môkh, or Môkhos.]
This beginning Bunsen considers (p. 179) "a philosophising
amplification of the simply sublime words of Genesis: 'The
earth was without form, and void, and darkness was over the
face of the waters.'" Here we see the human reason hampered
by the tradition that confused matter or chaos was somehow
at the commencement, and with the conflicting tradition and
conclusion of the intellect that it was, and must have been,
created by a power superior to matter ("In the beginning God
created heaven and earth"), emancipating itself, so far as to
identify the Creator with the æther and air, as nearer the
conception of a pure Spirit, and personifying matter, and so
shunting it aside as the "inventor of the mythology."
But if we regard it as a corruption of the tradition that man was
created out of the earth ("for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt
return," Genesis iii. 19), does not this solve all difficulties? The
extension of the knowledge that they were created out of the earth, to
the notion that they were created out of this or that particular clay,
is not violent. Is it not this same Æschylus[109] who has the allusion
"to the earth drinking the blood of the two rival brothers, the one
slain by the other." It will be seen at p. 175, that the Mexicans
believed that the first race of men were created "out of the earth,"
and "the third out of a tree," a reminiscence of the creation, and of
the fall, the intermediate event being probably the creation of Eve. In
like manner, the Red Indians have a tradition that they were created
out of the _red clay_ by the Great Spirit; and to go to another part of
the world, the supposed aboriginal tribes of China were called Miautze,
or "soil children."[110]
[109] _Vide_ De Maistre (ch. xii.)
[110] Max Müller, "Chips," &c., ii. 274. The Titans were also said
to be "earth-born." Bryant (iii. 445) says Berosus gives the
following tradition of the Creation. Belus after deification
being confounded with the Creator, as we have seen Prometheus,
id. 104--"Belus, the deity above mentioned, cut off his own
head, upon which the other gods mixed the blood as it gushed
out _with the earth_, and _from thence_ men _were formed. On
this_ account it is that they are rational and partake of
divine knowledge. _This_ Belus, whom men called _Dis, divided
the darkness_ and separated the heavens from the earth," &c.
This testimony must be connected with the phrase so startling in the
seventh ode of the fourth book of Horace, "_pulvis_ et umbra sumus,"
and with the text in Genesis iii. 19, "for dust thou art."[111] It may
possibly be said that this is merely matter of every day's experience.
But it is precisely at this point that we must ask those who dispute
tradition to discard tradition. Do bodies--so far as the exterior
senses tell us--return to dust, or to other forms of life? If it is
true that we return to dust--Scripture apart--it is tradition and not
experience which attests it, and yet so common is the belief, that it
might readily pass as the result of common observation.
[111] Compare Cicero, De Legibus, i. 8: "Est igitur homini _cum deo
similitudo_;" and with Gen. ii. 26, 27: "and God created man
in his own likeness."
So general a tradition that man was created, and created out of
the ground,[112] is so completely in accordance with the text of
Genesis, that one can hardly see what more can be demanded; yet
Catlin says[113]--"Though there is not a tribe in America but what
has _some_ theory of man's _creation_, there is not one amongst them
all that bears the _slightest resemblance_ to the Mosaic account."
Catlin instances the traditions of the Mandans, Choctaws, and the
Sioux--_1st_, The Mandans (who have the ceremony commemorative of
_the Deluge_ referred to, ch. xi.), believe that they were created
"under the ground." _2d_, The Choctaws assert that they "were created
crawfish, living alternately under the ground and above it as they
chose; and, creeping out at their little holes in the earth to get the
warmth of the sun one sunny day, a portion of the tribe was driven
away and could not return; they built the Choctaw village, and the
remainder of the tribe are still living under the ground." The Iroquois,
however, believe that they "came out of the ground," which is identical
with the Greek notion of their being "autochthones" (_vide_ Colden,
ii. 103), where one of their chiefs speaks thus--"For we must tell you
that long before one hundred years our ancestors _came out of this very
ground_.... You _came out of the ground_ in a country that lies beyond
the seas." Now, even if we consent to detach the Iroquois tradition,
there is still in both the Mandan and Choctaw tradition, a common idea
of their having come from "under the ground," which seems to me the
tradition that they were created out of the ground at one remove. To
this it would seem the Choctaws have super-added their recollection
of some incident of their tribe, possibly that they were an offshoot
of the Esquimaux, or were at one period in their latitude and lived
their life, which would be in accordance with the theory of their
migrations from Asia by Behring's Straits. 3_d_, About the Sioux, the
third instance of contrariety adduced by Catlin, it seems to me that
there is no room for argument, the Sioux having the tradition referred
to above, that the Great Spirit _told_ them that "The red stone was
their flesh." To these three instances Mr Catlin adds--"Other tribes
were created under the water, and at least _one half of the_ tribes in
America represent that man was created _under the ground_ or in the
rocky caverns of the mountains. Why this diversity of theories of the
Creation if these people brought their traditions of the Deluge from
the land of inspiration?"[114]
[112] "The Chinese cosmogony speaks as follows of the creation of
man--'God took some yellow earth, and He made man _en deux
sexes_.'" This is the true origin of the human race. A Hebrew
tradition says that it was of the red earth, which is the
same idea. The Hebrew word "Adam" expresses this idea. This
correspondence as to the manner in which the body of the
first man was formed, between two people who have never had
relations, is very remarkable. Indian and African cosmogonies
relate that the name of the first man was 'Adimo,' that of
his wife 'Hava,' and that they were the last work of the
Creator."--Gainet, _La Bible sans la Bible_, i. p. 74. I must
note, too, the identity of the American Indian (_supra_) and
the Hebrew tradition, which is curious, as it might naturally
be supposed that the tradition of the Red Indian took its
_colour_ from his own complexion.
Max Müller ("Lect. on the Science of Language," 1st series,
p. 367) says of "man"--"The Latin word _homo_, the French
_l'homme_, ... is _derived from the same root_, which we
have in _humus_, soil, _humilis_, humble. _Homo_, therefore,
would express the idea _of being made out of the dust
of the earth_." Bunsen also ("Phil. Univ. Hist." i. 78)
says--"The common word for man in all German dialects is
'manna,' containing the same root as Sanscrit 'manusha' and
'manueshya.' The Latin 'homo' is intimately connected with
'humus' and [Greek: chamai] and means _earth-born_; [Greek:
anthrôpôn chamaigeneôn], says Pindar. But what is [Greek:
anthrôpos]?"
[113] "Last Rambles," p. 324.
[114] The following tradition of the Tartar tribes seems to supply a
link. In their tradition of the Deluge (_vide_ Gainet, i. 209)
it is said, "that those who saved themselves from the Deluge
shut themselves up with their provisions in the crevices of
mountains, and that after the scourge had passed they came out
of their caverns."
And compare, again, with the tradition of Kronos (Noah, _vide_
Bryant's "Mythology," iii. 503)--"He is said to have had
_three_ sons (Sanch. ap. Euseb. P. E., lib. i. c. 10, 37), and
in a _time of danger_ he formed a _large cavern in the ocean_,
and in this he shut himself up, together _with these sons_,
and thus escaped the danger."--_Porph. de Nymphar. Antro._, p.
109.
Bryant ("Mythology," iii. 405) says--"I have shown that Gaia,
in its original sense, signified a sacred cavern, a hollow in
the earth, which, from its gloom, was looked upon as an emblem
of the ark. Hence Gaia, like Hasta Rhoia Cybele, is often
represented as the mother of mankind." The following is very
important with reference to my argument above:--The Scholiast
upon Euripides says--"[Greek: Meta ton kataklysmon en oresin
oikountôn tôn Argeiôn prôtos autous synôkisen Inachos]. When
the Argivi or Arkites, _after the Deluge_, lived _dispersed on
the mountains_, Inachus first brought them together and formed
them into communities."--Comp. _infra_, p. 157, 158, 193,
332.
The instances adduced of myths connecting man with the monkey
are, as a rule, traditions of degeneracy, _i.e._ of men turned
into monkeys (_vide_ Tylor's "Primitive Culture," i. 340),
and to which I would add the rabbinical tradition of men
turned into monkeys at the Tower of Babel (De Quincey, Works,
xiii. 235), and the classical epic of the Ceropes, "founded
on the transformation of a set of jugglers into monkeys."
But if compared with the above tradition, I think that the
only two instances (Tylor, i. 341) which seem to bear out the
opposite theory will wear a different aspect. I quote from
Tylor as above--"Wild tribes of the Malay peninsula, looked
down upon as lower animals by the more warlike and civilised
Malays, have among them traditions of their own descent from
_a pair_ of the "unka-putch" or _white_ monkeys, who reared
their young ones _and sent them into the plains_, and there
they perfected so well that they and their descendants became
men, but those _who returned to the mountains_ still remained
apes. The Buddhist legend relates the origin of the flat-nosed
uncouth tribes of Tibet, offspring of _two miraculous apes_,
transformed to _people_ the snow-kingdom. Taught to till the
ground, when they had grown corn and eaten it, their tails
and hair gradually disappeared, they began to speak, became
men, and clothed themselves with leaves. The population grew
closer, the land was more and more cultivated, and at last a
prince of the race of Sakya, driven from his home in India,
_united their isolated tribes_ into a single kingdom."--Comp.
Cecrops, &c., p. 332, _infra_.
Now, just as the tribes who said they were created "under the ground"
implied the same tradition as those who said they were created _out
of_ the ground, so, too, the tribes who said they were created "under
the water" probably held the tradition that the creation of the race
preceded the Deluge.
The tradition which connects the creation with "the rocky caverns of
the mountains" is more recondite--may it possibly be a recollection of
the commencement of civil life after the Deluge, when Noah led them,
according to tradition, from the mountains to the plains?
M. L'Abbé Gainet says (i. 176)--"The Lord repeated four times the
promise that He would not send another deluge.... The children of Noah
were long scared by the recollection of the dreadful calamity.... It is
probable that they did not decide upon leaving the 'plateaux' of the
mountains till quite late. Moreover, caverns have been found in the
mountains of the Himalaya, and in many other elevated regions of Asia,
which they suppose to have been formed by the first generations of man
after the Deluge. The works of the learned M. de Paravey make frequent
mention of them." This tradition is supported by the lines of Virgil
referring to Saturn (_vide infra_, p. 210).
"Is genus indocile, ac dispersum _montibus altis_
Composuit; legesque dedit."--_Æn._ viii. 315.
I give these suggestions for what they may be worth.[115] Truly,
where some see nothing but harmony, others see nothing but diversity.
Only to put it to a fair test, I should like to see Mr Catlin or
some one else group these various traditions round any one tradition
which they believe to be at variance with the revelation of Genesis,
and which, at the same time, they happen to consider to be the true
one. It must be conceded that in one way the facts accord with Mr
Catlin's theory--contradicted, however, by other evidence (_infra_, ch.
xi.)--that the Indians were created on the American continent. But
upon any theory that they were not created at all, but existed always
in pantheistic transformation, or had progressed from the monkey,
or had been developed in evolution from some protoplasm, is not the
tradition incongruous and inexplicable?
[115] It occurs to me as possible that these various traditions may
have had their foundation in the recollection of hardship, at
some early period of their subsequent migration, which were
transferred back and connected with their tradition of the
altered state of things after the Deluge, arising out of the
substitution of animal for vegetable food--of which the notion
that man once lived on acorns may have been only an extreme
form of expression. The following tradition of Saturn (_vide
infra_, Saturn, p. 210), seems to tend in this direction:
"Diodorus Siculus gives the same history of Saturn as is by
Plutarch above given of Janus--[Greek: ex agriou diaitês eis
êmeron Bion metarêsa anthrôpous].--Diodorus, 1. 5, p. 334. He
brought mankind from their foul and savage way of _feeding_ to
a more mild and rational _diet_."--Bryant, ii. 261.
To take another instance. The Hindoos had a fanciful notion that the
world was supported by an elephant, and the elephant by a tortoise.
Nothing can be imagined more incongruous and grotesque. Yet Dr Falconer
has recently discovered, in his explorations in India, a fossil
tortoise adequate to the support of an elephant. The incongruity then
of the tradition disappears; its grotesqueness remains. I cannot help
thinking, however, that it may have been the embodiment in symbol, or
else the systematisation of the confused medley of their tradition
of the order, _i.e. of the sequence of days of the creation_ (_vide_
Appendix to this chapter).[116]
[116] This fable of the tortoise is also among the Mandans, whom,
Catlin (_supra_, 135) says, had no other tradition of the
Creation than that they were created under the ground. Their
tradition is confused with the Deluge, which dominates in
their tradition.
"The Mandans believed that the earth rests on four tortoises.
They say that "each tortoise rained ten days, making forty
days in all, and the waters covered the earth" (_vide_
"O-kea-pa," p. 39, _infra_, ch. xi.) Does not this
tradition of the tortoise decide the _Oriental_ origin of the
North American Mandans?
Falconer's "Palæontological Mem.," 1868, i. 297, ii. 377-573,
&c., "As the pterodactyle more than realised the most
extravagant idea of the winged dragon, so does this huge
tortoise come up to the lofty conceptions of Hindoo mythology;
and could we but recall the monsters to life, it were not
difficult to imagine an elephant supported on its back"(i. 27).
The New Zealanders have a curious tradition of their ancestors
having encountered a gigantic saurian species of reptile,
which must have been before they arrived in New Zealand.
_Vide_ Shortland's "Traditions of the New Zealanders," p. 73.
I have alluded, p. 199, to the tradition preserved by Berosus, that
Oannes, whom I identify with Noah, left writings upon the origin of the
world, in which he says, "that there was a time when all was darkness
and water, and that this darkness and water contained _monstrous
animals_." Here, perhaps, two distinct traditions are confused; but
is not the tradition of animals so much out of the ordinary nature of
things as to be called monstrous sufficiently marked to make us ask
if the discovery of the skeleton of the "megatherium" ought to have
come upon the scientific world as a surprise? Might they not have
anticipated the discovery if they had duly trusted tradition?
Other instances might doubtless be adduced. My present object is merely
to suggest that there may be truths in tradition not dreamt of by
modern philosophy. If the human intellect were as capacious as it is
acute, we might then listen with greater submission to its strictures
upon tradition; because then we might at least believe that its
vision extended to all the facts. But in truth, no intellect, however
encyclopædic, can grasp them all. Indeed, knowledge in many departments
is becoming more and more the tradition of experts, and must be
taken by the outside world on faith. How many facts, again, once in
tradition, but at some period put on record, lie as deeply shrouded
in the dust of libraries as they had previously lain hidden in the
depths of ages? Who will say what facts are traditional in different
localities? Barely do we move from place to place without eliciting
some information strange and new. Who again will say what ideas are
traditional in different minds? Barely is there a discussion which
provokes traditional lore or traditional sentiment which does not bring
to light some such thought or experience, re-appearing, like the lines
in family feature, after the lapse of several generations.
Whenever, then, mankind is called upon to discard its traditions at the
voice of any intellect, however powerful, is it unreasonable to demand
that some cognizance should be taken of these facts.[117]
[117] I have elsewhere (_vide_ ch. iv., _et seq._, x., xi.) traced
the tradition of the Deluge, of the chronology of the world,
&c., &c.
Let us now, returning to the tradition we have more especially in view,
ask this further question,--What could the human intellect have done
towards the regeneration of the race if there had been no revelation
and no tradition?
It is not often that unbelief is constructive and supplies us with the
necessary data with which to furnish the answer. But recently a work
which is said to embody considerable learning has appeared, entitled,
"The Origin and Development of Religious Belief," which is written
"from a philosophic and not from a religious point of view;" in which
"the existence of a God is not assumed, the truth of revelation is not
assumed," and "the Bible is quoted not as an authoritative, but as an
historical record open to criticism."--Mr Baring Gould, "Origin and
Development of Religious Belief," preface, 1869.
Here then, if anywhere, we are likely to get the solution from the
point of view of unbelief.
At p. 119, Mr B. Gould thus summarises his views:--
"Religion, as has been already shown, is the synthesis of thought
and sentiment. It is the representation of a philosophic idea. It
always reposes on some hypothesis. At first it is full of vigour,
constantly on the alert to win converts. Then the hypothesis
is acquiesced in, it is received as final, its significance
evaporates. The priests of ancient times were also philosophers,
but not being able always to preserve their intellectual
superiority, their doctrines became void of meaning, hieroglyphs
of which they had lost the key; and then speculation ate its way
out of religion, and left it an empty shell of ritual observance,
void of vital principle. Philosophy alone is not religion, nor is
sentiment alone religion; but religion is that which, based on an
intelligent principle, teaches that principle as dogma, exhibits
it in worship, and applies it in discipline. Dogma worship and
discipline are the constituents, so to speak, the mind spirit, and
body of religion."--"_Origin and Development of Religious Belief._"
By S. Baring Gould, M.A. Rivingtons, 1869. Part i., p. 119.
Here it is said that "religion is the representative of a philosophic
idea. It always reposes on some hypothesis." This philosophic idea
may be that there must necessarily be a Creator. But also it may not
be, for "the existence of God is not assumed" (_vide_ preface).
If it is not, then, according to this definition, religion may be
the representative of any philosophic idea (_i.e._ any idea of any
philosopher), even that which may be diametrically opposed to the
existence and goodness of God.[118] But if, on the other hand, the
existence of God is this primary philosophic idea, then all other
philosophic ideas must succumb to it. It is a point which you must
settle at starting in your definition of religion.
[118] Devil-worship is based upon the hypothesis that the evil
spirit exists, and is the influence from which man has most
to dread. Prudence suggests that it is wise to propitiate
evil when it is powerful; and if "the existence of God is not
assumed," or the conception of God not yet developed, it is
hard to see how the conclusion can be impugned; and (_vide_
next page) Mr Baring Gould endorses Grimm's opinion that man's
first "idea of God is the idea of a _devil_."
What follows seems to assume that some individual, or some set of
individuals, at a period more or less remote, evolved the idea of
God and religion out of their own consciousness; but that, as the
descendants of these individuals had not the same intellectual vigour,
the conception lapsed,--"their doctrines became hieroglyphs of which
they had lost the key." Nothing can be more conformable to the theory
of tradition;[119] but from the point of view of Mr Baring Gould,
what was to forbid other individuals broaching fresh conceptions? Is
there, however, any instance known to us? Is there any instance of a
religion not eclectic or pantheistic (the one being the mere revivalism
or reconstruction of the elements of former beliefs, and the other
their absorption), any religion "based on an intelligible principle,"
heretofore unknown to mankind, rising up and obtaining even a temporary
ascendancy among mankind? No; mankind, even in the darkness of
Paganism, persistently distinguished between religion and philosophy,
priests and sophists--though intellectually so much alike--and this
I consider to be a master-key to the history of the past (_ante_, p.
109).
[119] The most favourable review of Mr B. Gould's work which I
have seen says:--"In tracing the origin and development
of religious belief, the object of Mr Baring Gould is to
establish the foundation of _Christian_ doctrine on the
nature, the intuitions, and the reason of man, _rather than
upon traditionary dogmas_, historical documents, or written
inspirations. He is of opinion that the elements of true
religion are to be found in a revelation naturally impressed
upon the soul of man, and that the investigation of man's
moral nature will be found to disclose the surest proofs of
his religious wants and destination. The author holds that
if theological doctrines can be inculcated by demonstrative
evidence of their harmony with man's intellectual and moral
constitution, they will be received with more perfect
acquiescence and conviction than when appeals are made simply
to man's veneration for antiquity and authority." I think I
am, at any rate, right in taking Mr B. G.'s as the view most
directly opposed to tradition, and it is from this point of
view that I am brought into collision with him.
There is a further point which Mr Baring Gould must settle. Religion
may be theoretically regarded as an affair of growth, progressive,
or as an affair of revelation, or something so nearly counterfeiting
revelation as to arise spontaneously; but it cannot well be both. Now,
in the pages of Mr Baring Gould it appears at one time "springing
into life" (p. 109), and, as in the passage above, analogously to a
conception in the mind:--"_At first_ it is full of vigour, constantly
on the alert to win converts;" at another, "as a conception slowly
evolved;" then all at once "a living belief, vividly luminous"
(p. 109). Again (p. 110), "Religion does not reach perfection of
development at a bound; generations pass away, before," &c.; and (p.
329) we find that in all _primitive_ religions the idea of God is the
idea of a _devil_, or (_id._) "that the first stage in the conception
of a devil is the attribution of evil to God," which is different,
inasmuch as it supposes man to start with the knowledge of God, and is,
moreover, inconsistent with what is said at page 113:--"The shapeless
religion of a primitive people gradually assumes a definite form. It
is that of _nature_ worship. It progresses through polytheism and
idolatry, and emerges into monotheism or pantheism." Of course this
is said upon _the assumption_ that the primitive man was barbarous.
But however remote from the fact, it is theoretically as conceivable
that man should worship nature as an ideal of beauty and power, as
that he should regard it from the first as an apparition of terror;
or, in other words, that taking nature-worship for granted, Mr Max
Müller's view of it, viz.:--"He begins to lift up his eyes, he stares
at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it? He opens his eyes
to the winds, and asks them whence and whither? He is awakened from
darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and Him whom his eyes
cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his
existence, he calls 'his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and
Protector'" (Chips, i. 69, _apud_ B. G., 139),--is as likely to be
the true one as Mr Baring Gould's,[120] viz.:--"At first man is ...
antitheist; but presently he feels resistances.... The convulsions
of nature, the storm, the thunder, the exploding volcano, the raging
seas, fill him with a sense of there being a power superior to his
own, before which he must bow. His religious thought, vague and
undetermined, is roused by the opposition of nature to his will" (p.
137).
[120] _Vide_, however, Dr Newman's "Grammar of Assent," p. 386, _et
seq._
Mr Baring Gould postulates, I am aware, the lapse of several
generations for the evolution of these ideas. But there is nothing in
Mr Baring Gould's statement of the progression or development of the
conception of the Deity among mankind which might not pass in rapid
sequence through the mind of the primitive man,--call him "Areios,"
if you shrink from close contact with history, and refuse to call
him Adam. Why then the indefinite lapse of time? why the progressive
advance of the idea through successive generations of mankind? Why,
except that the primitive barbarism _must_ be assumed; and because (p.
239), "in the examination of the springs of religious thought, we have
to return again and again to the wild bog of savageism in which they
bubble up." But if the savagery was so great, the perplexity how man
ever came to make the first step in the induction is much greater than
that, having made it, he should proceed on to make the last.
It is certain that reason can prove the existence of God and His
goodness, and this knowledge evokes the instincts of love and worship.
It is true also that man has a conscience of right and wrong, and that
among its dictates is a sense of the obligation of love and worship.
Still this will not account for the existence of religion in the world.
Much less will Mr Baring Gould's theory of an induction by mankind
collectively, spread over several centuries, account either for the
notion or for the institution.
Neither, apart from direct or indirect revelation, would it prove
more than that man was religious, though without religion; capable of
arriving at the knowledge of God's existence, but without any knowledge
how to propitiate him; seeking God, but not able to find Him.
Therefore, Mr Baring Gould truly says--"Philosophy alone is not
religion." Philosophy, as we have seen, may prove the existence of God.
But religion, from the commencement of the world, has conveyed the idea
that there is a particular mode in which God must be worshipped. Here
philosophy is entirely at fault. Mr Baring Gould again truly says that
"dogma, worship, and discipline are the constituents, so to speak, the
mind, spirit, and body of religion" (p. 119). But he goes no further,
and does not explain how it came about that mankind in all ages have
adhered with singular pertinacity to the notion that religion could
teach that on which philosophy must perforce be silent. Has not the
greater intellect ever been on the side of philosophy? Nay,[121] in the
epochs in which intellectual superiority was undeniably on the side of
philosophy, did the populace go to the academy or to the oracles? If
the human intellect had originally framed the ritualistic observances,
which bore so strange a resemblance in different parts of the world;
if human sagacity had originated the idea of sacrifice (and wherefore
sacrifice from the point of view of human sagacity?); if philosophy had
revealed to them the religious conceptions which they retained, and
had been able to define the relation of man to the Divinity--would not
mankind, in all ages, have had recourse to its greatest intellects for
the solution of its doubts, rather than to the guardians of an obscure
and corrupt tradition? The question no doubt is complicated with the
evidence as to demonolatry; but the extent to which this prevailed only
enforces the argument against Mr Baring Gould, to whom, apparently, the
demon (p. 135) is not a real existence, but only the embodiment of a
phase of thought, and must seriously embarrass those who attribute the
regeneration of man from savagery to intellectual growth and natural
progress.
[121]
"The lively Grecian, in a land of hills,
Rivers, and fertile plains, and sounding shores,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In despite
Of the gross fictions chanted in the streets
By wandering rhapsodists, and in contempt
Of doubt and bold denial hourly urged
Amid the wrangling schools, a Spirit hung,
Beautiful region! o'er thy towns and farms,
Statues and temples, and memorial tombs;
And emanations were perceived, and acts
Of immortality, in nature's course,
Exemplified by mysteries that were felt
As bonds, _on grave philosopher imposed_,
And armed warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed,
When piety more awful had relaxed."
--WORDSWORTH, _Excursion_, B. iv.
But demonology apart, what would have countervailed against the
superiority of reason and the intellectual prestige of the world except
a belief in a tradition of primitive revelation? What else will account
for the different recognitions of philosophy and religion--priests and
sophists? What else would have prevented mankind from resorting in
their difficulties to where the greatest intellect was found?
At page 134, this truth seems to gain partial recognition in the pages
of Mr Baring Gould:--
"In conclusion, it seems certain that for man's spiritual
well-being, these forces ('the tendency to crystallise, and the
tendency to dissolve') need co-ordination. Under an infallible
guide, regulating every moral and theological item of his spiritual
being, his mental faculties are given him that they may be
atrophied, like the eyes of the oyster, which, being useless in the
sludge of its bed, are re-absorbed. Under a perpetual modification
of religious belief, his convictions become weak and watery,
without force, and destitute of purpose. In the barren wilderness
of Sinai there are here and there green and pleasant oases. How
come they there? By basaltic dykes arresting the rapid drainage
which leaves the major part of that land bald and waste. So in the
region of religion, _revelations and theocratic systems have been
the dykes saving it_ from barrenness, and encouraging mental and
sentimental fertility" (p. 134).
It is impossible that we should quarrel with this illustration, it
is so exactly to our point. Is it not another way of affirming the
position which I maintain against Sir John Lubbock? (ch. xii.) May
not we, too, take our stand upon these "oases" of tradition, which
"revelations" and "theocratic systems" have formed, and ask what the
human intellect has been able to achieve for the spiritual cravings of
man in the waste around?
Mr Baring Gould, indeed, says (p. 61):--
"A power of free volition within or outside all matter in motion
was a rational solution to the problems of effects of which man
could not account himself the cause. Such is the origin of the
idea of God--of God _whether many_, inhabiting each brook and
plant, and breeze and planet, _or as_ being a world-soul, _or
as_ a supreme cause, the Creator and sustainer of the universe.
The common consent of mankind has been adduced as a proof of a
tradition of a revelation in past times; but the fact that most
races of men believe in one or more deities proves nothing more
than that all men have drawn the same inference from the same
premises. It is idle to speak of a 'Sensus Numinis' as existing as
a primary conviction in man, when the conception may be reduced to
more rudimentary ideas. The revelation is in man's being, in his
conviction of the truth of the principle of causation, and thus it
is a revelation made to every rational being."
Grant that it is so, there is nothing here which militates against our
position, which is this,--not certainly that there is not a revelation
of God in man's being, made to every rational creature, but that
there has been an express revelation superadded to it; and that it is
not true that "the common consent of mankind to the existence of God
has been adduced as a proof of a tradition of a revelation in past
times," but that the mode and manner of the consent attests the fact of
tradition and the fact of revelation. But what have we just heard? That
there is a revelation of God's existence in man's nature, _i.e._ in
_each_ man's nature--"it is a revelation made to every man's nature."
Then the indefinite lapse of time demanded for the evolution of the
ideas, which we have just been combating, is not after all necessary.
"_Habemus reum confitentum._"
But inasmuch as the consent of mankind is only "to one or more
deities," it is only so far a testimony to the existence of God as
it is shown that polytheism arose out of the corruption of this
belief; and, moreover, by no means proves "that all men have drawn the
same inference from the same premises," even if it were possible to
reconcile this statement with what is said at page 113--"The shapeless
religion of a primitive people gradually assumes a definite form. It
is that of nature-worship. _It progresses through_ polytheism and
idolatry, _and emerges into_ monotheism or pantheism" (_vide infra_).
At this point I should wish to put in the accumulation of evidence
which L'Abbe Gainet has collected to prove that monotheism was the
primitive belief.[122] When this evidence is dispersed, it will be
time enough to return to the subject.
[122] "Monotheisme des Peuples Primitifs," in vol. iii. of "La
Bible sans la Bible."
In any case, we may fall back upon the following testimony in Mr Baring
Gould:--
"It is the glory of the Semitic race to have given to the world, in
a compact and luminous form, that monotheism which the philosophers
of Greece and Rome only vaguely apprehended, and which has become
the heritage of the Christian and Mohammedan alike. Of the Semitic
race, however, one small branch, Jewdom, preserved and communicated
the idea. Every other branch of that race _sank into_ polytheism
(_vide supra_).... It is at first sight inexplicable that Jewish
monotheism, which was in time to exercise such a prodigious
influence over men's minds, should have so long remained the
peculiar property of an insignificant people. But every religious
idea has its season, and the thoughts of men have their avatars....
It was apparently necessary that mankind should be given full
scope for unfettered development, that they should feel in all
directions after God, if haply they might find Him, in _order that_
the foundations of _inductive philosophy might be laid_, that the
religious idea might run itself out through polytheistic channels
_for the development of art_. Certainly Jewish monotheism remained
in a state of congelation till the religious thought of antiquity
_had exhausted its own vitality_, and _had worked out every other
problem of theodicy_; then suddenly thawing, it poured over the
world its fertilising streams" (p. 259).[123]
[123] Mr B. Gould also says, p. 104--"The Semitic divine names
bear _indelibly on their front the stamp of their origin_,
and the language itself testifies against the insulation and
abstraction of these names from polytheism. The Aryan's tongue
bore no such testimony to him. The spirit of his language
_led him away from monotheism_, whilst that of the Shemite
was an ever-present monitor, directing him to a God, sole and
undivided. 'The glory of the Semitic race is this,' says M.
Renan, 'that from _its earliest days_ it grasped that notion
of the Deity which all other people have had to adopt from its
example, and on the faith of its declaration.'"
From all this it results that, so far as the testimony of the Semitic
race is concerned (which, by the by, a concurrence of tradition points
to as the oldest), the human race did not "emerge into monotheism," but
"sank into polytheism;" that monotheism was their belief from "their
earliest days," and their language bearing testimony to the same, shows
also that it was primitively so. It moreover results, that although
mankind may have been allowed to sink into polytheism, as a warning or
a chastisement, it certainly could not have been "in order that the
foundations of inductive philosophy might be laid;" for it is quite
apparent from this extract that the induction was _never made_ that man
did _not_ "emerge into monotheism;" but that having "_exhausted its
vitality_," and "worked out every problem of theodicy" in the way of
corruption, it _received_ monotheism back again from the only people
who had preserved it intact.
At any rate, monotheism came to it _ab extra_, and before polytheism
had attained the "full scope of that development" which was necessary
for the perfection of art!
But Mr Baring Gould having a perception that this admission (although
he has not apparently seen its full significance) is fatal to his
theory, hastens to unsay it at page 261, "Whence did the Jews derive
their monotheism? Monotheism is _not_ a feature of any primitive
religion; but that which is a feature of secondary religions is the
appropriation to a tribe of a particular god, which that tribe exalts
above all other gods." In support of this view, Mr Baring Gould quotes
certain texts of Scripture--Isa. xxxvi. 19, 20 (_i.e._ words spoken by
Rabsaces the Assyrian), and Jos. xxiv. 15, "But if it seem evil to you
to serve _the Lord_, you have your choice: choose this day that which
pleaseth you, whom you would rather serve, whether the gods which your
fathers served in Mesopotamia [query, an allusion to the idolatry in
the patriarchal households? Gen. xxxv. 2, "the gods" being of the same
kind with "the gods of the Amorites"], or the gods of the Amorites,
in whose land you dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve
_the Lord_." One would have thought this text too plain to be cavilled
at. Is not _the Lord_ whom Josue invokes _the same Lord_ who (Gen. i.
1) "in the beginning created heaven and earth," and who said to Noah
(Gen. vi. 7), "I will destroy _man whom I have created_, from the face
of the earth;" and who (Exod. iii. 2) appeared to Moses in a flame of
fire in the bush which was not consumed; and to whom Moses said, "Lo, I
shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them, _The God of your
fathers_ hath sent me to you; if they should say to me, What is His
name? what shall I say to them? (ver. 14), God said to Moses, _I am who
am_: He said thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel, _He who is_
hath sent me to you." When or where has monotheism been more explicitly
declared? Is there any phrase which the human mind could invent in
which it could be more adequately defined? And when God speaks as "the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," is it not as if He would
say, I am not only the God who speaks to the individual heart, but
who is _also traditionally_ known to you all collectively through my
manifestations and revelations to your forefathers? Compare Matt. xxii.
32.
_Inter alia_, Mr B. Gould also instances such unmistakable orientalisms
as "'Among the gods there is none like unto Thee, O Lord,' says David,
and he exalts Jehovah above the others as a 'King above all gods.'"
Where, then, may we ask, is the monotheism, "the glory of the Semitic
race," to be found, if not in the time of David?
The proof which follows is more clinching still--
"Jacob seems to have made a sort of bargain with Jehovah that he
would serve Him instead of other gods, on condition that He took
care of him during his exile from home. The _next_ stage in popular
Jewish theology was a denial of the power of the Gentile gods,
and the treatment of them as idols. Tradition and history point
to Abraham as the first on whom the idea of the impotence of the
deities of his father's house first broke. He is said to have
smashed the images in Nahor's oratory, and to have put a hammer
into the hands of one idol which he left standing, as a sign to
Nahor that that one had destroyed all the rest."
Unfortunately for this view--according to the only authentic narrative
we have of the facts, Gen. xii.--Abraham must have preceded Jacob by at
least two generations!
I think that, after this, we may fairly ask Mr Baring Gould, who is
learned in medieval myths, to trace for us more distinctly the notion
of the chronicler who had a theory that Henry II. lived before Henry I.
With this passage I shall conclude this chapter, merely observing, that
if any department of study existed which had for its special object the
investigation of tradition,[124] it is simply impossible that a work
(clever in many respects) such as that of Mr Baring Gould should ever
have been written.
[124] I append, however, the following passage from Mr Baring
Gould, as it may be serviceable in tracing tradition, and
to which I may have occasion to recur (p. 161):--"Among the
American Indians an object of worship, and the centre of a
cycle of legend, is Michabo, the great hare or rabbit. From
the remotest wilds of the north-west to the coast of the
Atlantic, from the southern boundaries of Carolina to the
cheerless swamps of Hudson's Bay, the Algonquins are never
tired of gathering round the winter fire, and repeating the
story of Manibozho or Michabo, the Great Hare. With entire
unanimity, their various branches, the Powhatans, &c., ... and
the western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of this
'chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries called it,
as their common ancestor (Brinton's "Myths of the New World,"
p. 162). Michabo is described as having been four-legged,
monstrous, crouching on the face of the primeval waste of
waters, with all his court, composed of four-footed creatures,
around him. He formed the earth out of a grain of sand taken
from the bottom of the ocean. It is strange that such an
insignificant creature as a hare should have received this
apotheosis, and it has been generally regarded as an instance
of the senseless brute-worship of savages. But its prevalence
leads the mythologist to suspect that some confusion of words
has led to a confusion of ideas, a suspicion which becomes a
certainty when the name is analysed, for it is then found to
be The Great White One, or Great Light, and to be in reality
the sun, a fact of which the modern Indians are utterly
unaware."
If Mr Baring Gould finds that the word Michabo also signifies
"The Great Light," or "The Great White One," it goes far to
identify the worship of the hare with the worship of the
sun, more especially when it is noted (_vide_ Prescott's
"Conquest of Mexico," i. 103) that the hare was one of the
four hieroglyphics of the year among the ancient Mexicans.[A]
Animal worship seems here plainly connected with sun-worship.
But above and beyond it, do we not here also get a glimpse of
more celestial light? "The Great Light" is also "The Great
White One." He is described as "crouching on the face of the
primeval waste of waters." In these phrases we seem almost to
read the text of Gen. i. 3, "And God said, Be light, and light
was made;" ver. 2, "Darkness was on the face of the deep, and
the Spirit of God moved over the waters."
The Indians also say that he "formed the earth out of a grain
of sand taken from the bottom of the ocean." Does not this not
only embody the tradition that God created the world out of
nothing, but also the mode of the creation by the separation
of the water from the land: ver. 9, "God also said, Let the
waters that are under the heavens be gathered together in one
place; and let the dry land appear.... And God called the dry
land earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called
seas."
[A] These hieroglyphics were symbolical of the four elements.
Prescott adds--"It is not easy to see the connection between
the terms 'rabbit' and 'air,' which lead the respective
series." Possibly he may not have been aware of the tradition
of the Algonquins as above.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII.
CARDINAL WISEMAN ("Lectures on Science and Religion," ii.
228-232), in speaking of what was characteristic of most Oriental
religions--a belief "in the existence of emanated influences
intermediate between the divine and earthly natures," is led on to give
an account of the curious Gnostic sect, the Nazarians--"The first of
these errors was common, perhaps, to other Gnostic sects; but in the
Codex Nasaræus we have the two especially distinguished as different
beings--light and life. In it the first emanation from God is the king
of light; the second, fire; the third, water; the fourth, life." I wish
to note that, whether or not their notions as to emanations originally
meant more than the act of creation, a tradition as to the successive
order of the creation seems clearly embodied in the text. God created
first of all light; _then_ the sun (the firmament) is fire (the
distinct creation of the light and the sun in Genesis is so marked as
to create a special difficulty in the cosmogony); _then_ water; _then_
life, in beasts, birds, reptiles, &c.; lastly, man. Comp. with _supra_,
p. 138, and with the above legend of Michabo.
"A SLAVONIAN ACCOUNT OF CREATION.--The current issue of the
Literary Society of Prague includes a volume of popular tales collected
in all the Slavonian countries, and translated by M. Erben into Czech.
We extract the shortest--'_In the beginning there was only God, and He
lay asleep and dreamed._ At last it was time for Him to wake and look
at the world. Wherever He looked through the sky, a star came out. He
wondered what it was, and got up and began to walk. At last He came to
our earth; He was very tired; the sweat ran down His forehead, and a
drop fell on the ground. We are all made of this drop, and that is why
we are the sons of God. Man was not made for pleasure; he was born of
the sweat of God's face, and now he must live by the sweat of his own:
that is why men have no rest.'"--_The Academy_, Feb. 12, 1870.
I wish also to examine, in greater detail than I should have had space
for in a note, how far the case of the Samoyeds bears out Mr Baring
Gould's theory of the development of idolatry from its grosser to its
more refined manifestations, or of the progress of the human race from
barbarism to the light of religion and of civilisation.
Mr Baring Gould says, p. 136--
"'When a Schaman is aware that I have no household god,' said a
Samoyed to M. Castren, the linguist, 'he comes to me, and I give him a
squirrel, or an ermine skin.' This skin he brings back moulded 'into
a human shape.' ... 'This Los is a fetish; it is not altogether an
idol; it is a spirit entangled in a material object. What that object
is matters little; a stump of a tree, a stone, a rag, or an animal,
serves the purpose of condensing the impalpable deity into a tangible
reality.' Through this coarse superstition glimmers an intelligent
conception. It is that of an all-pervading Deity, who is focussed, so
to speak, in the fetish. This deity is called Num. 'I have heard some
Samoyeds declare that the earth, the sea--all nature, in short--are
Num.' 'Where is Num? asked Castren of a Samoyed, and the man pointed
to the blue sea: but an old woman told him that the sun was Num. The
Siethas, worshipped by the Lapps, had no certain figure or shape formed
by nature or art; they were either trees or rough stones, much _worn
by water_. Tomæus says they were often mere tree stumps with the roots
upwards."[125]
[125] Is not "Num" cognate to "Numen?" and their worship of trees
and worn stones worship of memorials of the Deluge? Compare
Boulanger, _infra_, ch. xi., and on the regard for boulders
in India (_vide_ Gainet, vol. i.) Bryant ("Mythology," iii.
532) says, speaking of the Egyptians--"I have mentioned that
they showed a reverential regard to fragments of rock which
were particularly uncouth and horrid; and this practice seems
to have prevailed in _many other countries_." Probably for the
same reason the Lapps worshipped their lakes and rivers, as is
known from the names annexed to them--"Ailekes Jauvre," that
is, sacred lake, &c. _Vide_ Pinkerton, i. 468. (Leems.)
It is curious to contrast this recent account of the Samoides with
an account, apparently well informed and discriminating, in 1762.
Pinkerton, i. 522--"The religion of the Samoides is very simple....
They _admit the existence of a Supreme Being_, Creator of all things,
eminently good and beneficent; a quality which, according to their mode
of thinking, dispenses them from any adoration of Him, or addressing
their prayers to Him, because they suppose this Being takes no interest
in mundane affairs; and consequently, does not exact nor need the
worship of man. They join to this idea that of a being eternal and
invisible, very powerful, though subordinate to the first, and disposed
to evil. It is to this being that they ascribe all the misfortunes
which befall them in this life. Nevertheless, they do not worship,
although much in fear of him. If they place any reliance in the
counsels of Koedesnicks or Tadebes (the 'Schamans' referred to above),
it is only on account of the connection which they esteem these people
to have with this evil being; otherwise they submit themselves with
perfect apathy to all the misfortunes which can befall them." "The
sun and moon, as well, hold the place of subaltern deities. It is by
their intervention, they imagine, that the Supreme Being dispenses
His favours; but they worship them as little as the idols or fitches
(fetishes) which they carry about them according to the recommendation
of their Koedesnicks." Without pursuing the investigation further, it
seems plain that the Samoides, from being (at least) Deists in the last
century (Dr Hooker, "Himalayan Journal," gives a similar account of the
Lepchas), have lapsed, apparently through sun-worship, to a state of
Pantheism, if not Fetishism.
Of the Tongusy, a people who, if not kin to the Samoides, have an
analogous worship--("They are altogether unacquainted with any kind
of literature, and worship the sun and moon. They have many Shamans
among them, who differ little from those I formerly described."--Bell's
"Travels in Asia, Siberia")--Bell, travelling in Siberia, 1720,
says--"Although I have observed that the Tongusy in general worship
the sun and moon, there _are many exceptions_ to this observation.
I have found intelligent people among them who believed there was a
Being superior to both sun and moon, and who _created them and all
the world_." If, then, we may connect the Tongusy with the Samoides,
it would appear that whereas Mr Baring Gould (_i.e._, Castren) finds
the latter sunk in Fetishism, they were, the one in 1762, the other in
1720, the worshippers of the sun and moon, joined with the knowledge
and tradition of the true God still subsisting amongst them.
F. Schlegel ("Phil. of History," p. 138) says--"The Greeks, who
described India in the time of Alexander the Great, divided the Indian
religious sects into Brachmans and _Samaneans_.... But by the Greek
denomination of _Samaneans_ we must certainly understand the Buddhists,
as among the _rude nations of Central Asia_, as in other countries,
the priests of the religion of Fo bear _at this day_ the name of
_Schamans_." Compare Professor Rawlinson, "Ancient Monarchies," i. 139,
172. (_Vide infra_, p. 163, 164, 205.)