FAMILY INFLUENCES IN RELIGION
[Sidenote: The role of parent-regarding feelings in primitive notions
concerning the Divine]
We saw in the last chapter that the feelings with which men tend to look
upon the holders of the highest earthly dignity and power--the heads of
churches, states and empires--are to a large extent derived from those
which had originally shaped and coloured the child's attitude towards
its parents. From the position of supreme human authority to that of
superhuman power is, in imagination, but one further step; and accordingly
we find that the tendencies and emotions connected with the parents can
frequently and easily, by a further process of displacement, bridge over
the gulf between kings and gods; and, by their association with the ideas
of the Superhuman and the Divine, become important factors in moulding the
religious feelings of mankind.
Apart from this however, reasons for the transfer of many of the
parent-regarding emotions to the sphere of religion are not far to seek.
There exists a close and obvious correspondence between the attitude
of the young child towards his parents and that of man towards the
superhuman powers which he personifies as God, the Divine Father. In
both cases the individual's life and destiny are controlled by powers
that seem, in comparison with his own puny capacity and understanding,
to be immeasurable in their might and mystery. In both cases the health,
happiness and even the very existence of the individual seem to be
dependent upon the beneficence and approval of these powers; powers which
can be terrible, and against which no effort will avail, if once aroused
to wrath; but which nevertheless can be to some extent controlled and
made to work in harmony with the individual's needs and desires, if the
latter will but conduct himself towards them obediently and with due
persuasiveness and understanding.
Small wonder then that the adult human being, confronted with the mighty
forces of nature, the laws of which he is compelled to follow, if he
would avoid destruction, but which--especially if he be ignorant or
uncivilised--he cannot comprehend, tends to revert to the attitude of mind
in which, in childhood, he looked upon his parents as the forces--equally
powerful, as they then seemed, and equally inscrutable--that controlled
his fate. In proportion as the child, with increasing age and experience,
loses the delusions he had entertained as regards the all-powerfulness,
all-knowingness and all-goodness of his parents, he begins to realise,
both from his own experience and from instruction and tradition, that
there are powers in the Universe which exceed the greatest human might,
powers before whom the child's own parents--together with all other
mortals--must acknowledge their own humility and impotence, powers so vast
that it may seem only reasonable and befitting to regard the wielder of
them as the possessor of those qualities of omnipotence and omniscience
that were once, in the crude ignorance of infancy, vaguely attributed
to the parents and to other adult persons of importance. The divine and
superhuman forces, about which the child thus begins to have some notions,
constitute in this way a very natural substitute for the exaggerated and
idealised estimation of the parents which the child's increasing knowledge
of human life compels him to abandon, but which he nevertheless, as we
have seen (_cp._ above p. 55), gives up reluctantly.
[Sidenote: The divine and the human parent]
The displacement of the parent-regarding emotions and tendencies in this
direction is, in the case of the individual, often further facilitated in
the three following ways:--(1) owing to the generally pronounced animistic
tendency of the primitive mind, the child naturally and indeed inevitably
conceives of natural forces in a personal and usually in a human form;
(2) the child early learns to conceive of the supreme forces of the
Universe as creative--creative on a large scale, just as his own parents
and other human beings are creative on a small scale; further he learns
that he owes his own creation to God as much as to his own parents--to God
ultimately, to his parents proximately; (3) in both these respects the
individual tendency to endow the Divinity with attributes derived from the
parents is greatly stimulated and reinforced by the suggestive power of
religious tradition, working through the channels of direct teaching or of
representation in language, literature and art.
[Sidenote: Remoter ancestors as divine parent substitutes]
The correspondence between the divine and the human parent is one that,
for these reasons among others, is very deeply rooted in the human mind.
In an advanced stage of culture it may find its most natural expression in
the related concepts of an ultimate and an immediate creator respectively,
but at a more primitive mental level it is usually brought into connection
with the distinction between remoter ancestors and immediate parents.
There can be no doubt that the most important aspects of the theory
and practice of religion are very largely derived from, and influenced
by, ancestor worship, even though they may not, as Herbert Spencer has
contended[162], have entirely originated from this source. Granted the
fundamental assumption of animism--the existence of an individual soul or
spirit which is to some extent independent of the body and may survive
bodily death--it becomes easy to attribute to one's dead parents or to
one's remoter ancestors powers that exceed those of persons who are
still alive. There is not, as in the case of the living, any obvious and
well defined limit to their capacity, and it becomes possible therefore
to displace freely on to them the exaggerated notions which it is no
longer possible to hold with regard to parents who are still subject
to the conditions of earthly existence. The tendency which thus arises
is reinforced by the very general fear of the dead[163], which easily
attributes to its objects an exaggerated power--especially for evil. The
more remote the ancestors in time, the more easy does it become to assign
to them a power which is manifestly superior to that of the living, though
the ideas of the ancestors and of their power necessarily become at the
same time more shadowy and vague.
[Sidenote: Unsatisfying features of simple ancestor worship]
The conditions are thus given for a religion of simple ancestor worship,
such as has existed in very many parts of the world[164] and has often
continued to exist alongside of a wider state religion, as for instance
in Rome. As a rule however a further step is involved, probably because
a simple ancestor worship of this kind is both too indefinite and too
individualistic to prove permanently satisfactory, either from the
point of view of the individual himself or of the community of which
he forms a part. It is too indefinite because it does not provide any
sufficiently clear and characteristic object or objects upon which the
displaced parent-regarding feelings can be directed; and it is too
individualistic because, so long as each family is thrown back solely
upon its own ancestors as objects of worship, the religious feelings and
tendencies aroused lack the stimulating force which they derive from the
co-operation of the herd instinct (in virtue of which the individual is
particularly liable to be affected by the emotions to which his fellows
give expression)[165] and through which alone, in many cases, religion is
able to become a permanent and stable form of expression for the displaced
parent-regarding tendencies of childhood and a social force which has
proved to be of the greatest importance in the history and development of
mankind.
[Sidenote: The All-Father]
For these and other reasons, ancestor worship is not often found in its
pure and simple form, but is usually complicated and modified in at least
two important ways:--(1) a single ancestor is selected as the originator
and founder of the family, the high patriarchal attributes being for the
most part reserved for him alone; (2) this same ancestor is regarded as
the founder, not merely of a single family, but of the whole clan, tribe,
nation or other social unit, or, by a further extension, of the whole
human race, of all living beings or, ultimately, of the whole Universe.
There is thus created the notion of a single All-Father, who serves at
once as the supreme and most satisfying embodiment of the father-ideal
for the individual and as a potent means of strengthening and uniting the
community through the sense of brotherhood and loyalty that attaches to a
common worship and a common origin from a divine ancestor. The satisfying
character of the religious concept that is here reached is apt to be
still further increased by a complete or partial fusion of the notion of
the divine father with that of the kingly father which we have already
discussed. The mythical divine ancestor, the founder of the race, is
frequently supposed to have been originally a king also, and it is usual
for the reigning line of sovereigns to trace their descent more especially
from him. Very often too the kings, or at any rate the greater ones among
them, receive divine honours at their death, being then worshipped along
with the other illustrious ancestors of the tribe, having but exchanged
their earthly power for a more exalted throne in heaven.
[Sidenote: Totemism]
[Sidenote: Exogamy]
[Sidenote: The totem as a father]
It is in the early stages of tribal ancestor worship of the kind we
have been here considering that we come across a widespread social and
religious system so curious in nature that it may undoubtedly rank as one
of the most remarkable discoveries brought about by the study of primitive
man. I refer, of course, to Totemism. In Totemism the mythical ancestor
takes on a non-human form, being as a rule some animal, but sometimes
also a plant or even an inanimate object. All examples of the totem class
are, as a rule, held sacred by those who belong to the respective totem,
and must be treated with care and reverence, but (in the case of animal
totems at any rate) are sometimes killed and eaten at a solemn sacrificial
feast. Combined with these religious or quasi-religious manifestations
of Totemism there are usually to be found certain well marked features
of social organization. A single totem is not, as a rule, common to a
whole tribe, but each tribe consists of two or more (most often four, but
sometimes as many as eight) totem clans, which are all strictly exogamous,
no man being allowed to take a wife from his own clan; the field of choice
being indeed sometimes still further restricted, in such a way that the
women of only one small section of the total tribe are available for
this purpose. The sociological and psychological influences that led to
the creation of the totemic system in a number of widely separated parts
of the world are still to a large extent a matter of dispute. A number
of theories have been propounded on the subject, and although many of
them are suggestive, there is perhaps no single one as that fully and
satisfactorily accounts for all the facts[166]. Among the few points that
emerge clearly from the investigations and discussions to which the matter
has given rise is the connection of the totem with the father. It has
been shown that the totem spirit regularly, either to a complete or to a
partial extent, plays the father's part in the creation of the child; the
substitution of totem for father being rendered easier by the existence of
a confused and ignorant state of mind on the subject of paternity; which
makes it conceivable that the spirit of an animal or other object should
enter into the mother's womb and thus produce conception[167].
[Sidenote: Relics of Totemism in religion]
[Sidenote: and in the individual mind]
That this vagueness on the subject of paternity in the mind of primitive
man finds its counterpart even in civilised societies[168] is shown by
the many legends of a supernormal birth in which the father is dispensed
with or is replaced by some non-human being[169]. The deep rooted and
persistent nature of the tendency to totemism is shown also by the very
frequent occurrence at all stages of culture of theriomorphic gods,
whose cult often leads to certain animals or classes of animals being
regarded as sacred, just as in the case of totemic communities. Even
when the gods are no longer habitually regarded as animals, they still
occasionally take on animal form (_cp._ the frequent animal disguises of
Zeus) or are connected with, or represented by, animal symbols (_cp._
the dove, the pelican, the lamb, the fish and the ass in Christianity).
In the individual mind of the civilised person animals are frequently
utilised as symbols of the parents in dreams and other productions of
the Unconscious[170]. There are indeed persons who experience a peculiar
fascination for some kind of animal, which they regard with mixed feelings
among which love, admiration, awe, disgust and hate are often to be
found; those emotions usually predominating which are most prominent in
the individual's relations to his father. Thus in one case well known to
the present writer, in which the ideas connected with the father were
chiefly those of goodness and wisdom, the hostile aspects being much
repressed, the owl was looked upon very much in the light of an individual
totem, the solemn stare and pouting figure of the bird appearing to
symbolise the kindly beneficence and immense wisdom of the (earthly and
heavenly) father--with just so much of mystery and possibility of evil as
to add a tinge of awe and horror to the total attitude. Freud[171] and
Ferenczi[172] have each reported interesting cases in this connection,
in both of which the father-regarding tendencies and emotions had become
displaced on to a particular kind of animal (in one case the horse, in the
other the fowl) with the result that this animal exercised an intense and
persistent fascination, in which opposing elements of love and hate could
clearly be distinguished[173].
[Sidenote: The psychological connection between Totemism and Exogamy]
If, as thus seems probable, we have in Totemism a peculiar form of
displacement of the feelings originally directed to the parents (and
especially the father), it is not surprising that Totemism should be
frequently accompanied by manifestations of the other, and sexual, aspect
of the Œdipus complex. Such manifestations are, in effect, not far to
seek and are in all probability to be found in the system of Exogamy
which almost invariably accompanies the institution of Totemism. Whether
or not Exogamy is co-eval with Totemism (some authorities think that
it is of later origin), there is now a very fair measure of agreement
that Exogamy has (consciously[174] or unconsciously) been created as a
means of avoiding incest. If this view is correct it would appear that
the connection between Totemism and Exogamy (a connection the nature of
which had for long been anything but clear) is due to the fact that the
two institutions have respectively come into being as the result of the
operation of two closely-joined psychic factors, namely the two principal
elements of the Œdipus complex. Just as in the individual mind, the
presence in any high degree of one of these elements tends to bring about
the presence of the other, so too in societies, the manifestations of the
one element tend to be closely correlated with the manifestations of the
other[175].
In touching on the subject of Exogamy, we have come very near to the
most fundamental sociological problems connected with the main theme of
this book. To these problems and to the whole question of the meaning of
Exogamy we shall return in a later chapter. For the moment we must leave
them, in order to pass on to the consideration of certain other aspects
of the influence upon religion of psychic tendencies connected with the
family.
[Sidenote: The ambivalent attitude towards the father as reflected in
religion]
We have seen that the child's attitude towards his father is usually
an ambivalent one, _i. e._ it is determined partly by tenderness and
affection and partly by hostility or fear. Naturally the relative
predominance of one or other motive varies from one case to another,
both as regards the religious life of individuals and as regards the
beliefs and forms of worship adopted by various races, nations, sects
or denominations. Thus the paternal qualities ascribed to the deity are
sometimes derived chiefly from that attitude of the child towards its
father in virtue of which it sees in him a being full of helpful wisdom
and tender pity, to whom it can turn for encouragement, guidance and
assistance in the difficult affairs of life, and especially in times of
trouble; sometimes on the other hand more emphasis is laid upon those
aspects of the father in which he appears as a severe and perhaps cruel
master or tyrant who enforces strict obedience to his harsh commands and
who inflicts dire penalties upon all who dare to oppose his wishes or
defy his laws. In the higher forms of religion the more directly hostile
relations between child and parent are seldom openly manifested, the
conception of the father as wicked or immoral tending to disappear with
increasing culture, though the notion of obedience to a stern, relentless
authority may be maintained. This in its turn however frequently gives
place to the idea of the kindly, helpful and forgiving father, according
to a process of development which in many respects appears to resemble
the evolution of thought as regards the relations of the individual to
the state or the king, to which we have already drawn attention. It
is a change of this nature for instance that, more perhaps than all
else, marks the step from Judaism to Christianity; the latter giving
promise of a reign of kindliness and forgiveness in place of the harsh
and uncompromising exercise of paternal authority so characteristic of
the former. It is for this reason that Christianity (at any rate in
its primitive form) especially appealed to and encouraged the poor,
the weak and the helpless, those who were most in need of kindness and
assistance; and by so doing has encountered the opposition or contempt
of those who see the paternal authority (and therefore its projection as
the authority of the Universe) in a sterner shape[176], or of those who
(like Nietzsche's Supermen), in their own sense of power and independence,
despise all who, as though they were still children, require the
assistance of a beneficent father to help them through their lives.
[Sidenote: The splitting up of parental attributes among two or more
divinities]
[Sidenote: The Devil]
[Sidenote: The dissociation of good and evil in theology and in the
individual mind]
In polytheistic religions, or those with polytheistic tendencies, the
different paternal qualities may be divided among a number of divinities;
though as a rule there is a single heavenly father who combines in his
person the most exalted aspects of creative and paternal power. Especially
frequent is the splitting up of what appear to be the desirable and
undesirable aspects of the father and the attribution of them to distinct
deities, so that a kind, benevolent, forgiving and protecting divinity,
upon the one hand, is contrasted with a stern, wicked and cruel one
upon the other. The mediaeval conception of the Devil corresponds for
instance, as has been shown by Ernest Jones[177] in his suggestive work
upon this subject, to a deity thus obtained by the splitting off of the
evil attributes of the father; a deity upon whom hatred, fear and even
contempt may be freely poured and who can conveniently be made responsible
for men's ill deeds and evil thoughts[178]; the attitude towards the
heavenly father being correspondingly purged of these undesirable
features. The process of duplication, which is frequently operative in
other fields than that of religion, particularly in those of myth and
legend[179] arises of course as a consequence of the psychical antagonism
and resulting dissociation between the love and the hate attitudes towards
the father, and can easily be made use of in religion owing to the general
correspondence that may appear to exist between the benevolent and
malevolent aspects of the all-powerful parent and the equally inexplicable
and uncontrollable aspects of the natural forces to which the adult human
being is exposed. In this way both the love and the hate elements in the
primitive levels of the mind have relatively free play without becoming
involved in moral or emotional conflicts or in intellectual contradiction;
the double (ambivalent) mental attitude being projected so as to form a
dualistic principle of the Universe.
[Sidenote: The mother regarding feelings in religion]
Although of all the members of the family, the father, as its head, most
frequently and regularly undergoes apotheosis, the other members of the
family are not without considerable influence on the conceptions that
are formed as to the nature and qualities of divine beings. Foremost as
regards such influence, after the father, is of course the mother. In a
strict monotheism the mother elements would seem to be almost always, if
not invariably, subordinate to those of the father; the former, so far
as they are represented at all, being submerged or incorporated into the
latter[180]. But very few religions remain strictly and consistently
monotheistic; and in most of those that show tendencies towards polytheism
the mother elements are represented in a separate person or a separate
principle. Thus, both in primitive and in more advanced forms of religion
it is usual to find mother goddesses who bear the same relation to the
earthly mother as does the father-god to the earthly father.
[Sidenote: The mother-son relationship and its repression]
[Sidenote: The struggle round the mother element in Christianity]
Nevertheless, it would appear that the mother-goddess is, at a certain
stage of culture at any rate, liable to meet with opposition from which
the corresponding father-god is usually exempt. This opposition would seem
to be due to the admixture of incestuous passion which is brought over
into religion from the original attachment of the child (and especially
of course the son) to his earthly mother. The relations between mother
and son fairly often find expression in religious stories, as in the
cases of Cybele and Attis, Ishtar and Tammuz, Mary and Christ and (in the
displaced form of brother and sister love) Isis and Osiris. As a rule
however the mother-son relationship is not permanent but is disturbed and
broken by evil plottings and brutal actions on the part of some third
person (usually a father or a brother substitute), as a result of which
the young son-god often meets with his death. The relations of Attis and
of Christ to their mothers are of special interest in this connection,
inasmuch as they plainly indicate the existence of an inner inhibition on
the son's part as well as a separation brought about by interference from
without. Attis according at least to some versions of his story, unmans
himself on discovering the incestuous nature of his affection (as Œdipus
himself had done, in a symbolic form, by putting out his eyes). In Christ
the repression of the mother-regarding tendencies seems to have led to
an attitude of aloofness towards his mother, and through her towards all
women (_cp._ his words "Woman, what have I to do with thee?," John 2,
4)--an attitude that has profoundly affected his followers throughout the
ages: for in the history of the Christian religion there is evidence--even
apart from its notorious aversion from and distrust of women in
general--of the existence of a constant struggle centering round the idea
of the divine mother. In the early days of the Church there are accounts
and rumours of sects which endeavoured to establish the worship of Mary
alongside that of the Father and the Son, and there is evidence to show
that the notion of the Holy Ghost corresponds in one of its aspects to
that of a female deity who completes the natural trinity of Father, Mother
and Son[181]. In the Roman Church Mary, as the mother of Christ, has
received a widespread and often profound (though to some extent of course
unofficial) adoration, being regarded perhaps especially as the helper in
time of trouble, to whom men and women may go for comfort, protection,
guidance or forgiveness in just the same way as they did to their earthly
mother in their childhood: an adoration which has tended to call forth a
feeling of disgust and horror in the Protestant Church, in which the more
primite Christian tradition of the repression of the mother-regarding
feelings has in this respect been kept alive[182].
[Sidenote: The Immaculate Conception]
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which has played such a
prominent part in Christian theology and theological discussion, is
of course only one of the many similar instances of the notion of the
supernatural birth[183]. Like many of these other instances, it is due,
not merely to the fact of its being a relic from a time when there was
little certainty or knowledge as to the nature of paternity, but to the
fact that it constitutes an active expression of a strong (though usually
unconscious) wish--a wish that is compounded from a number of separate,
though of course related, elements, of which the chief are perhaps the
following:--(1) the desire for "purity" on the part of the mother, in
order that she may belong to the revered rather than to the sexually
attractive but despised group of women (_cp._ above p. 110)--a desire
which at the same time purifies the mother-regarding love of its grosser
elements and renders it less liable to repression; (2) the desire to be
independent of the father and to owe nothing to him (_cp._ above p. 109);
(3) a desire to avoid sexual jealousy of the father together with the
envy, hostility or contempt that would inevitably--especially in view of
the general Christian attitude towards sex--accompany the notion of the
father as a sexually active being. These factors combine to make the idea
of sexual relations between the parents one that is peculiarly distasteful
to their children, particularly when it is a question not of ordinary
human parents with their admitted imperfections but of their heavenly and
perfected counterparts, and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
satisfactorily removes the necessity for this idea[184].
[Sidenote: Open depiction of the parents and of the Œdipus complex in
primitive religions]
In more primitive forms of religion the correspondence of the heavenly
family to the earthly family and the projection on to the former of
the feelings and tendencies aroused in connection with the latter (and
particularly those which enter into the Œdipus complex) can as a rule
be even more clearly and unmistakably observed. Thus in primitive
cosmogonies[185] there are usually two world parents whose relations to
each other are disturbed by their children, the son as a rule becoming
hostile to the father, deposing him from his position of authority,
killing or unmanning him or separating him from the mother. Of these world
parents the father is very frequently regarded as a personification of
the heavens, while the mother is identified with the Earth[186]; Heaven
and Earth being sometimes considered as having been separated by their
children from the close embrace in which they had previously been lying
(as in the case of Atlas, who in this way keeps Heaven apart from Earth--a
story which has many parallels, especially in Polynesian Mythology). In
the Greek version Ouranos and Gaia (of whom the latter seems to have been
the mother of the former, their union being thus incestuous) are separated
by their son Cronos, who, at the instigation of his mother, deposes and
castrates his father and marries his sisters Cybele, the mother of the
gods. In the next generation these barbarous relations between parents and
children are repeated. Cronos, fearing that he in his turn will become a
victim to the same treatment as that which he himself had accorded to his
father, endeavours to escape the threatened danger by eating his children
as soon as they are born. Zeus however, being saved by a stratagem of his
mother, performs the very act which his father had sought to prevent, and
himself becomes firmly seated on the throne of Heaven and is married to
his sister Hera.
[Sidenote: Indications of mental conflict and repression]
[Sidenote: Rebellion and punishment]
In primitive myths of this kind we see the hostile relations between
successive generations displayed crudely and nakedly, without any attempt
at disguise or concealment. In others, probably dating from a more
cultured epoch, there are signs of a mental conflict, the hostile actions
being no longer performed with the same singleness of purpose and freedom
from inhibition, but being accompanied by indications of a sense of
guilt, or of an ability to understand or sympathise with the opponent's
point of view. In the battle of the Titans against Zeus, some of the
former fought on the side of the gods (_i. e._ defended their parents) and
those who rebelled against the paternal power were in the end defeated
and punished (though the punishment itself may sometimes--by a piece of
over-determination--constitute a continuation of the rebellious deed, as
in the above-mentioned case of Atlas); Adam and Eve, on transgressing the
divine prohibition to eat of the tree of knowledge (_cp._ the forbidden
question motive, p. 104) are turned out of Eden; the builders of the Tower
of Babel (_cp._ the attempt to storm Heaven by Otos and Ephialtes in
Greek mythology) likewise meet with disaster; and in the noble story of
Prometheus, who stole the fire[187] from Heaven to benefit mankind, the
offender is brought into conflict with the father from the highest motives
and bears his punishment with a resignation and fortitude that places him
among the most splendid figures in Greek tragedy.
Christ himself is only one of the last of the long line of filial
insurgents, substituting as he does, to a considerable extent, the milder
rule of the Son for the harsher regime of the Judaic Father-God. In so
doing he surrenders his life, thus suffering the penalty which, in one
form or another, overtook his predecessors. In his case however, as in
theirs, the penalty itself is over-determined. Christ dies:--in the first
place, as a scapegoat, taking upon himself the guilt of his brothers and
hence becoming the saviour of mankind, who are by his sacrifice freed
from the consequences of their equal guilt[188]; secondly, as one who
suffers the talion punishment for the original sin of the son towards the
father, the guilt attaching to the death of the father being wiped out
by the death of the son; thirdly, by this very sacrifice manifesting his
divine nature and raising himself to a place alongside the father, thus
ultimately pointing the way to a reconciliation between father and son (a
reconciliation that is already hinted at in the story of Prometheus).
[Sidenote: Family influences in religious rites and practices]
[Sidenote: Baptism and Confirmation]
Not only religious beliefs, but many religious rites, ceremonies and
practices may be shown to be connected with the ideas, feelings and
tendencies which centre round the family. We have already seen how the
rite of baptism (besides of course its significance as a purification
or washing away of sin)[189] is linked on to the ideas of re-birth
and initiation, with all that these imply (_cp._ above Chs. VIII and
IX). Still more intimately connected with the idea of initiation, and
corresponding to the initiation ceremonies that are performed at the time
of adolescence in so many parts of the world, is the Christian sacrament
of Confirmation; which can, appropriately enough, only be conducted by a
senior member of the Church (father representative).
[Sidenote: The Communion]
Of particular interest in this connection is the central rite of the
Christian Church--the sacrament of the Communion[190], which has
connections with the practices and beliefs of Totemism, with the
widespread religious rite of sacrifice and with the relations between
father and son to which we have just had occasion to refer.
[Sidenote: Totemic and sacrificial elements in the Communion]
[Sidenote: Their psychological significance]
Although Totemism is by many authorities supposed to have been foreign to
the culture and religions of those peoples from whom western civilisation
has chiefly sprung, Robertson Smith has brought much evidence to show
that many of the religious and social practices of the Semitic races bear
traces of totemic origin[191]. Among these not the least important are
those connected with sacrifice--animal and human. In animal sacrifice the
slaughtered animal was originally regarded as a kinsman[192]; it was also
at the same time related to or identified with the god who protected the
animal and in whose honour the animal was slain[193]; it was also in many
cases regarded with mingled feelings of reverence and horror very similar
to those with which the totem animal is often looked upon[194], the
Semitic concept of Uncleanness corresponding closely to the Polynesian
notion of Taboo. In these respects we have a striking resemblance to
Totemism as practised in more primitive communities.
Now we have seen that the totem animal is, in one of its most important
aspects, a father surrogate. The slaying of the totem animal, therefore,
ultimately represents the murder of the father; at the same time the
slaughtered animal represents a sacrifice in honour of the father and a
gift to him. We have here an example of the ambivalent attitude towards
the totem-father; the father, as the God to whom the sacrifice is offered,
is honoured and regarded with affection; the father, as the animal, is
cruelly killed. At the same time the victim would appear in another
aspect to stand as a substitute for the son who, as we have seen, may be
slain instead of the father, atoning by his own death for the intended or
wished-for murder of the father.
As regards the eating of the sacrifice, it may perhaps in one respect be
regarded as the consummation of the hostile act. Cronos eats his children
in order to be sure of getting rid of them; and the swallowing of children
or even of grown men by an ogre, giant, monster or witch is a not uncommon
theme in folklore. The eating of the parents by the children in their turn
is a natural and obvious form of revenge; and has actually been practised
by some primitive people[195].
At the same time eating may be regarded as an honour or as a sign of
affection; as is necessarily to some extent the case, since the totem
animal represents the god and is itself as a rule sacred and inviolable
except in certain circumstances. This aspect indeed obviously plays a part
of great importance in the Christian sacrament in its present form[196].
The most important aspect of all however is that in virtue of which the
eater is supposed to acquire or to participate in the nature, qualities
or properties of that which is eaten, the worshipper thus becoming one
with the God whose flesh and blood he consumes; in this way at one and
the same time:--(a) himself acquiring directly some of the qualities of
the divinity, (b) becoming assured of his kinship with God, the common
meal being regarded as the especial symbol of this kinship (as indeed of
kinship in general)[197], (c) becoming likewise assured of his kinship
with his fellow worshippers, all becoming brothers by participation in the
divine meal and in the underlying ideas--including of course the original
father hatred and the atonement for this--which this meal implies.
Thus it appears that the food which is consumed in the Communion
represents:--
(1) the Father
(a) as hated and killed,
(b) as honoured.
(2) the Son, as slain to atone for the father-murder and offered up in
honour to the Father.
The actual consumption of the food represents:--
(1) the eating of the Father
(a) as a sign of hostility,
(b) as a sign of honour or affection,
(c) as a means of partaking of the divine nature (_i. e._ acquiring
the father attributes).
(2) the eating of the Son, as a means of establishing identity with him
and thus sharing in the atonement which he has made by his sacrifice.
(3) the establishment of a sense of communion and of kinship between the
fellow worshippers themselves and between them and the deity, through
participation in the divine meal with all that this implies.
[Sidenote: The influence of family tendencies in religion]
We thus see that, as regards both religious beliefs and religious
practices, the emotions, feelings and tendencies originally aroused in
connection with the family play a part of great importance. The gods in
whose form man has personified the natural forces of the Universe, or whom
he has himself called into being, are to a very large extent projections
of the infantile conceptions of the parents--beings whom he has created
in his phantasy to serve as objects on to whom might be transferred that
part of what remains of his primitive attitude towards the parents which
has found no adequate sublimation on to living human beings. Sometimes
the phantasy is worked out entirely in the dramatic form, the desires and
tendencies connected with the family finding their projected expression
in the behaviour of the divine beings. It is for this reason that the
conduct of the gods is, from the moral standpoint, often below rather
than above the human standard; the crude and primitive wishes belonging
to the infancy of the individual and the race, wishes that so far as
adult and civilised life is concerned have been outgrown or at least
repressed and held in check, finding a relatively unobstructed outlet in
the (usually archaic) forms and ritual of religion. At other times it is
only the figures of the gods themselves that are projected, the worshipper
remaining himself in intimate contact with them through a relationship
which represents a sublimated form of that which existed between child and
parent.
[Sidenote: Value of religion as a form of displacement]
In spite of its basis in primitive infantile fixations, there can of
course be no doubt that religion has performed a work of very great value
in the history of human culture. Both in the case of the individual and
in that of the race the displacement of the primitive tendencies directed
towards members of the family has been, as we have seen, a matter of the
greatest importance, but at the same time of the greatest difficulty, in
the history of mental and moral development. The provision of a suitable
outlet for those parts and aspects of the tendencies in question which
could find no adequate object among living human beings was of itself
no mean service. The establishment of a moral authority which should
stand in the same relation to adult men as parents do to children,
thus affording a higher sanction for morality than could otherwise be
obtained under primitive conditions; the solidification of the social bond
between neighbours and fellow tribesmen, through the consciousness of a
common worship and a common parentage from the same divine ancestor; the
utilisation of the exaggerated and idealised notions that had been formed
concerning the parents in early childhood, to create the concept of a
being of more than human virtue, a being who enjoined the nearest possible
approach to his own divine perfection on the part of his human followers,
thus contributing in no small measure to the raising of the level of
morality; the confirmation (through the idealised and sublimated love of
the divine parents) of the stage of object-love as contrasted with the
lower stage of Narcissism[198]; the stimulation of interest in natural
forces, objects and events by endowing them with the strong emotional tone
originally connected with the parents; these are some (and only some)
of the benefits which humanity has derived from the displacement of the
primitive parent-regarding feelings that is involved in religion.
It is easy of course to point to the numerous evils that religion has
directly or indirectly brought about; conservatism, intolerance,
persistent opposition to the progress of scientific or unprejudiced
thought, the fostering of manifold delusions and absurdities, the
retention of vast masses of mankind in superstitious fear and ignorance
when they should have been acquiring confidence and knowledge. In spite
however of these and of the many other very serious charges that may be
brought against it, religion can claim to have played a very necessary and
beneficial rôle in the past history of culture. Sublimation is, as we have
seen, a process that works slowly and by finely graduated steps, so that
neither in the individual nor the race can we expect to see far-reaching
moral transformations rapidly and easily achieved. The feelings and
tendencies of the child in relation to the family environment are in
many of their aspects so primitive and crude and yet so powerful and
persistent, that we must welcome gladly any means of displacement that has
proved itself of value to the individual and to Society. It is for this
service, above all others, that we are indebted to religion in the past.
[Sidenote: The future of religion]
As regards the future, it is evident that the needs of humanity to which
religion has ministered will, in some sense at any rate, long continue
to exist. The backward pull of the tendencies of infancy and childhood,
forming, as they do, the foundation upon which all subsequent desires and
aspirations are built up; the closeness of the similarity between the
situation of the adult confronted with the vast and overwhelming power of
Nature and that of the child who helplessly depends upon his parents both
for happiness and life--these are influences which may well continue to
make religion in some form a permanent necessity.
Nevertheless it would appear that the future progress of human culture
will demand a very considerable modification and purification of most
existing religious forms. The study of the psychology of religion
is showing that these forms are, for the most part, based on crude
unconscious motives which have to be outgrown and superseded if
civilisation is to prosper and advance. In retaining and fostering these
forms we are in many cases playing into the hands, not of the higher, but
of the baser and more primitive aspects of our nature, aspects which, at
our present level of development, it is necessary indeed to understand,
but not to venerate or even to approve. Even in so far as the forms of
religion give expression not so much to the direct promptings of these
baser aspects as to the reactions we have formed against them, it must
be remembered that true moral advance lies in sublimation rather than
in repression and that so long as the human mind confines itself to the
purely negative task of opposing its own primitive tendencies, it will
never achieve either true emancipation or true progress[199].
Further, the study of religion shows that the conceptions which religion
has formed as to the nature and working of the Universe have arisen as
products of the human emotions, having no necessary counterparts in the
real world; much the same indeed in this respect as the inventions of
the fairy stories and imaginative games of childhood or the day-dreams,
romances and novels of a later age. In adult life such phantasies
must either be abandoned or, if indulged in, recognised for what they
are--productions of the mind which, apart from objective evidence, have
no valid claim upon reality. They may indeed guide us in our ideals and
aspirations and so lead ultimately to the reconstruction of the outer
world through our own efforts, but in themselves they must be held
distinct from the order of reality belonging to this outer world. Only
so will Man achieve his full stature and be able to play that part in
Nature's scheme of things to which, in virtue of his intellectual powers
and his moral aspirations, he appears to be entitled.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 162: "Principles of Sociology." Vol. I.]
[Footnote 163: A fear which, as modern psychological knowledge seems to
show, is largely the result of the guilty conscience of the living; the
feelings of hostility (including of course death wishes) which the living
had experienced towards the dead during their lifetime being projected on
to the dead (in accordance with the now familiar mechanism, which can be
studied most clearly in psychopathological disorders such as Paranoia;
_cp._ above pp. 116, 130); as a result of which the dead are conceived as
being on the whole evilly disposed towards the living and consequently to
be feared. Hence the very general fear of ghosts. _Cp._ Freud, "Totem and
Taboo," 88 ff.]
[Footnote 164: For numerous examples, see Herbert Spencer, "Principles of
Sociology." Vol. I, Part I, Ch. 20. p. 280 ff.]
[Footnote 165: _Cp._ W. McDougall, "Social Psychology," 1908, pp. 84 ff.,
296 ff. W. Trotter, "Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War," 1916.]
[Footnote 166: A clear and instructive examination of the whole question
is given by Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. IV.]
[Footnote 167: It is still to some extent a matter of dispute as to how
far existing races of savages are ignorant of the rôle of the father
in reproduction. There is much evidence in favour of such ignorance
being often very considerable and sometimes perhaps complete (See E. S.
Hartland, "Primitive Paternity," 1910). Some authors however (_e. g._
Walter Heape, "Sex Antagonism," and Carveth Read, "No Paternity," _Jour.
Royal Anthrop. Inst._ 1918, XLVIII, 146) have maintained that the facts
do not admit of the assumption of complete ignorance. Read especially
has shown that such ignorance as exists may often be due to social or
individual inhibitions, which prevent the knowledge of the true facts (a
knowledge which exists in certain persons even in primitive communities)
from penetrating to the consciousness of the majority of the inhabitants.
If this view is correct, it reveals an interesting parallel to the fate
of sexual knowledge in the individual; psycho-analytic investigation
often showing that knowledge of the facts of sex and reproduction can be
repressed from consciousness, though persisting in the unconscious levels
of the mind. (_Cp._ Freud, "Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex," 37
ff., 51.)]
[Footnote 168: Where of course the vagueness in question is beyond all
doubt due to repression.]
[Footnote 169: E. S. Hartland, "Primitive Paternity." Vol. I, Ch. 1.]
[Footnote 170: A frequent dream in childhood consists in being chased by
some wild and dangerous animal, which on analysis is almost invariably
found to represent the father--the dream being comparable as regards
conative tendency to the games of being pursued, in which children so
often delight and which arouse in them a pleasant combination of fear and
excitement, highly tinged with masochistic feeling. As regards mythology,
the cases in which--as in that of Romulus and Remus--the rôle of foster
parent is taken over by animals are of course quite numerous (_cp._ too in
this connection the recent literary examples of Mowgli and Tarzan; also
the dog Nana in Peter Pan), while in fairy stories there are also many
examples of animals being endowed with parent attributes.]
[Footnote 171: "Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben." _Jahrbuch
für Psychopathologische und Psychoanalytische Forschungen_, 1909. Vol. I,
p. 1.]
[Footnote 172: "Contributions to Psycho-Analysis," Ch. IX, 204.]
[Footnote 173: Sometimes however, one of these opposing elements is
directed to the animal, the other to the human parent. Thus, as Mr. Burt
has suggested to me, it would seem that in delinquents the tender elements
are often withdrawn from the parents and manifest themselves in the
excessive fondness for animal pets, to which Lombroso has drawn attention.
("Criminal Man," 1911, 62-3.)]
[Footnote 174: Frazer considers that the Australian system of exogamy
bears the stamp of "deliberate design." "Totemism and Exogamy," IV, 112
ff.]
[Footnote 175: Freud, "Totem and Taboo," 198 ff.]
[Footnote 176: The Puritanical movement represented, in one of its most
important aspects, an attempt to re-introduce the notion of the stern,
relentless father. It is interesting to note that there seems to exist
an association between the puritanical attitude in religion and a harsh,
authoritative relationship between parents and children.]
[Footnote 177: "Der Alptraum in seiner Beziehung zu gewissen Formen des
mittelalterlichen Aberglaubens." Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde.]
[Footnote 178: Particularly for undesirable thoughts of a sexual nature,
the Devil being the recognised source of temptations and obsessions of
this kind. The sexual aspects of the Father God are of course throughout
chiefly noticeable in his relations to women and in the attitude adopted
towards him by women. Thus the long series of amorous adventures on the
part of Zeus are typical instances of father-daughter incest. In many
places the cohabitation of a god with a mortal woman, who is regarded as
his bride, has been an essential part of religious ceremonial; though the
god himself is often, conveniently enough, impersonated for this purpose
by his priest. The very widespread practice of religious prostitution
seems to be derived from the same source (_Cp._ Frazer, "Adonis, Attis,
Osiris," I., 57 ff.). That girls should, before they marry, give
themselves to the god, to his representative, or to some other man under
his auspices, may be regarded as a custom having some relation to the
initiation phantasies and ceremonies which we have already considered; the
girl's introduction to sex life being, through this custom, accomplished
by the father, or at least under his guidance and with his approval. A
social parallel to this religious custom is to be found in the _droit
de seigneur_, in virtue of which the lord of the manor had the right to
sexual intercourse with a bride before she could be claimed by her husband.
In the Christian Church, owing, we may suppose, to the increasing
repression of the more directly sexual aspects of the father-regarding
feelings, the sexual elements in the religious attitude of women is more
frequently directed to Christ than to God the Father (corresponding
to a brother-sister rather than to the older father-daughter type of
affection). Nevertheless, the persistence of incestuous tendencies towards
the father, can often be observed in individual cases.]
[Footnote 179: _Cp._ Rank, "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero," 83 ff.]
[Footnote 180: Though there are indications that the Christian God is
sometimes regarded as bisexual (_cp._ von Winterstein, "Psychoanalytische
Anmerkungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie," _Imago_, 1913, II, 195),
comparing in this respect with the original bisexual world parents found
in some more primitive religions, _e.g._ Ymir, the giant out of whose body
the world was made according to Scandinavian mythology.]
[Footnote 181: _Cp._ Frazer. "The Dying God," 5. Gibbon, "Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire," 1858, Vol. VI. Ch. L, 223. The notion of the Holy
Ghost as a mother is also found to occur spontaneously in children. _Cp._
Sully, "Studies of Childhood," 132.]
[Footnote 182: The repression of the mother-regarding feelings has had its
influence not only on the attitude towards the mother element in religion
and on the attitude towards women in general, but also on everything that
is (consciously or unconsciously) associated with women and especially
with the mother. There is one curious instance of this influence which
has been of very considerable importance in the history of philosophy,
science and of man's attitude towards some of the most important problems
of life and mind. There exists a very general association, on the one hand
between the notion of mind, spirit or soul and the idea of the father or
of masculinity; and on the other hand between the notion of the body or
of matter (_materia_ = that which belongs to the mother) and the idea of
the mother or of the feminine principle. The repression of the emotions
and feelings relating to the mother has, in virtue of this association,
produced a tendency to adopt an attitude of distrust, contempt, disgust
or hostility towards the human body, the Earth, and the whole material
Universe, with a corresponding tendency to exalt and over-emphasise the
spiritual elements, whether in man or in the general scheme of things. It
seems very probable that a good many of the more pronouncedly idealistic
tendencies in philosophy may owe much of their attractiveness in many
minds to a sublimation of this reaction against the mother, while the
more dogmatic and narrow forms of materialism may perhaps in their turn
represent a return of the repressed feelings originally connected with the
mother. (_Cp._ Von Winterstein, _op. cit._)]
[Footnote 183: See E. S. Hartland, "Primitive Paternity," Vol. I. Ch. I.]
[Footnote 184: It is suggestive to note that, in order to make sure that
Mary had no connection with men whatsoever, it was decided (Papal Bull
1853) that she did not even have a father.]
[Footnote 185: _Cp._ Lorenz, "Das Titanenmotiv in der allgemeinen
Mythologie," _Imago_, II.]
[Footnote 186: The very general identification of the Earth with the
mother has probably played an important part in the history of human
culture inasmuch as it has afforded a ready means of rendering psychic
energy available for the practice of agriculture; the cultivation of the
Earth's surface being from the psychological point of view a displacement
of the original incestuous desires directed to the mother. On the other
hand the very closeness of the association between mother and Earth has in
some places led to a reluctance to till the soil, such an act being looked
upon as impious (See Frazer, "Adonis, Attis, Osiris," I. 80 ff.).]
[Footnote 187: Ultimately of course a sexual symbol. _Cp._ Abraham, "Traum
und Mythus," 26 ff.]
[Footnote 188: For a full treatment of the Scapegoat motive. See Frazer,
"The Scapegoat."]
[Footnote 189: The "original sin" which it is intended to remove being
again not unconnected with the family complexes.]
[Footnote 190: _Cp._ throughout, with regard to this subject, Freud,
"Totem and Taboo," 220 ff.]
[Footnote 191: "Religion of the Semites."]
[Footnote 192: _Op. cit._ 289.]
[Footnote 193: _Op. cit._ 294.]
[Footnote 194: _Op. cit._ 294.]
[Footnote 195: Frazer, "The Dying God," 14.]
[Footnote 196: For a most important and illuminating discussion of the
psychology of eating and of the other activities of the mouth, see
Abraham, "Über die frühesten prägenitalen Entwicklungsstufen der Libido,"
_Imago_, 1916, IV.]
[Footnote 197: Robertson Smith, _op. cit._, 270.]
[Footnote 198: As Freud has pointed out ("Totem and Taboo," 147), there
exists a parallelism, on the one hand between the stage of Magic and
Animism and the Narcissistic level of individual development, and on the
other hand between the stage of Religion and that of the first object-love
as directed to the parents. In Magic man attributes omnipotence to
himself, while in Religion omnipotence is transferred to the gods, or in
so far as it is retained by the individual, can be exercised only through
the gods; man no longer finds the satisfaction of his own needs in and
through himself, but obtains his desires only through his relations with
others whom he loves and venerates.
In religion too however there exist, beside the object-regarding elements,
certain elements which are derived from, and give expression to, the
Narcissistic impulses. God is to some extent a projection of the primitive
mental egocentricity and self-sufficingness which the infant enjoys
before it becomes clearly conscious of the distinction between its own
organism and the external world--a distinction which necessarily brings
with it a gradually increasing realisation of the individual's limitations
and dependence. Unwilling to give up the primitive sense of power and
importance which a growing insight into reality shows to be unfounded,
Man displaces on to his God the desired qualities which he can no longer
attribute to himself and deludes himself into believing that he can still
attain his wishes, through prayer and similar rites, by merely wishing
them aloud to God. This mechanism is clearly seen at work in those persons
who (like the late Kaiser Wilhelm II) treat their God as a being whose
principal function it is to approve and carry to fulfilment their own
ambitions, schemes and undertakings.
The conception of the Devil also is to a very considerable extent derived
from the Narcissistic impulses--the individual _projecting_ on to "the
author of evil" those aspects of himself of which he disapproves (more
particularly perhaps the sexual aspects). In this way he, in a sense,
frees his own personality from tabooed wishes of whose operation in
himself he would otherwise become unpleasantly aware, and in this way
absolves himself from the responsibility for actions committed at the
instigation of these wishes.
These self-regarding aspects constitute without doubt a most important
factor in the psychology of Religion and serve to remind us once again
of the limitation of our psychological treatment. They fall outside our
present theme, inasmuch as they take their origin from a mental level
phylogenetically and ontogenetically prior to that at which are developed
the psychic relations of the individual to his family which constitute our
subject in this volume.]
[Footnote 199: _Cp._ J. C. Flügel, "Freudian Mechanisms as Factors in
Moral Development," _British Journal of Psychology_, 1917, VIII, 477.]