SOCIOLOGY AND RELIGION
THOSE branches of cultural anthropology which deal with comparative
sociology and magico-religious data are sometimes designated as
“ethnology.” It frequently happens that students who have written upon
these and closely allied subjects have in the same book treated the
archæological, technical, and linguistic aspects of cultural
anthropology or ethnology in the larger sense. It is therefore
impossible to keep to a precise classification of the subject when
dealing with it historically.
[Sidenote: =Comparative Ethnology.=]
The main stumbling-block in the way of comparative ethnology was the
difficulty of establishing the study on a firm scientific basis. “Man
cannot be secluded from disturbing influences, and watched, like the
materials of a chemical experiment in a laboratory.”[99] Ethnologists
were accused of basing their conclusions on the most fragile evidence,
collected from most untrustworthy sources:—
Footnote 99:
Lang, 1898, p. 39.
Anything you please ... you may find among your useful
savages.... You have but to skim a few books of travel, pencil
in hand, and pick out what suits your case.... Your testimony is
often derived from observers ignorant of the language of the
people whom they talk about, or who are themselves prejudiced by
one or other theory or bias. How can you pretend to raise a
science on such foundations, especially as the savage informants
wish to please or to mystify inquirers, or they answer at
random, or deliberately conceal their most sacred institutions,
or have never paid any attention to the subject? (_l.c._, p.
41).
To remove this reproach was the work of Professor Tylor.
[Sidenote: =Edward Burnett Tylor.=]
It is difficult to express in adequate terms what Professor E. B. Tylor
has done for ethnology. He is the founder of the science of comparative
ethnology; and his two great works, _Early History of Mankind_ (1865)
and _Primitive Culture_ (1871), while replete with vast erudition, are
so suggestive and graced by such a charming literary style and quiet
humour that they have become “classics,” and have profoundly influenced
modern thought. From their first appearance it was recognised that a
master-mind was guiding the destinies of the nascent science. Some idea
of the magnitude and diversity of his work may be gathered from the
bibliography of 262 items, published between 1861 and 1907, collected by
Miss Freire-Marreco, _Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett
Tylor in Honour of his Seventy-first Birthday, Oct. 2, 1907_. An
appreciation of the labours of Professor Tylor is given by Andrew Lang
in this volume. The true significance of the aims of “Mr. Tylor’s
Science,” as Max Müller called it, may be best gathered from Professor
Tylor’s own words:—
For years past it has become evident that the great need of
anthropology is that its methods should be strengthened and
systematised. The world has not been unjust to the growing
science, far from it. Wherever anthropologists have been able to
show definite evidence and inference, for instance, in the
development series of arts in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford,
not only specialists, but the educated world generally, are
ready to receive the results and assimilate them into public
opinion. Strict method has, however, as yet, only been
introduced over part of the anthropological field. There has yet
to be overcome a certain not unkindly hesitancy on the part of
men engaged in the precise operations of mathematics, physics,
chemistry, biology, to admit that the problems of anthropology
are amenable to scientific treatment. It is my aim to show that
the development of institutions may be investigated on a basis
of tabulation and classification.
This is the opening of a masterly paper “On a Method of Investigating
the Development of Institutions; applied to Laws of Marriage and
Descent.”[100]
Footnote 100:
_J. A. I._, xviii., 245, 1889.
The tabular method is not applicable to much of the vast mass of
material with which Tylor dealt; but the accuracy and systematising of
method are found throughout, and were of invaluable service to a science
peculiarly attractive to the vague speculator and enthusiastic
_dilettante_.
Tylor (1871) insisted on the necessity of sifting and testing all the
evidence, relying to a great extent on “the test of recurrence,” or of
undesigned coincidence in testimony; he says: “the more odd the
statement, the less likely that several people in several places should
have made it wrongly. This being so, it seems reasonable to judge that
the statements are in the main truly given, and that their close and
regular coincidence is due to the cropping-up of similar facts in
various districts of culture. Now the most important facts of
ethnography are vouched for in this way” (2nd ed., 1873, p. 10).
[Sidenote: =Avebury.=]
A further stimulus to the study of comparative ethnology in this country
was given by the publication of Sir John Lubbock’s (Lord Avebury’s)
_Origin of Civilisation_ (1870), and opened the eyes of a large public
to the interest of ethnology and its value in throwing light upon the
earlier stages of culture of civilised peoples.
[Sidenote: =Sociology.=]
The question as to the influence of environment on the development of
social organisation is as old as the world’s oldest thinkers, and finds
expression in Aristotle and in Plato, though Sociology, as a science, is
a product of the last century. The word “Sociology” was first used by
Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who showed its aim to be to discover the
nature, the natural causes, and the natural laws of society. With the
development of natural science came the insistence on a naturalistic
interpretation of social differences, demonstrated by Guyot (1807-1884)
and Draper (1811-1882), and over-emphasised by Buckle (1821-1862).
[Sidenote: =Comte Buckle.=]
Comte’s method was that of deductive construction and prescription.
Buckle’s plan was to evolve a social science inductively through a study
of history, with the help of economics and statistics. His _History of
Civilisation_ answers the great question which he sets himself: “Are the
actions of men, and therefore of societies, governed by fixed laws, or
are they the result either of chance or of supernatural interference?”
He attempted to show how “Climate, Food, Soil, and the General Aspect of
Nature” were the dominant influences in early societies, determining the
food supply, the degree of population, and the economic condition.
Unfortunately, in pursuit of this idea Buckle was apt to overlook the
influences of culture-contact, and of economic factors; thus deserving,
to some extent, the censure of Jevons: “Buckle referred the character of
a nation to the climate and the soil of its abode.”[101] At the same
time Buckle must be regarded as the first historical sociologist of the
modern scientific movement.
Footnote 101:
_Letters and Journal of Stanley Jevons_, 1866, p. 454.
[Sidenote: =Herbert Spencer.=]
The evolutionist explanation of the natural world as applied to
sociology found its fullest exponent in Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who
studied the anatomy of the social frame. He derived the principles of
sociology from the principles of psychology and of biology, and regarded
social development as a super-organic evolution.
But all these earlier attempts to discover a social science were
speculative rather than practical. The solid foundations of inductive
sociology were laid by Bachofen, Morgan, J. F. McLennan, and others.
[Sidenote: =Bachofen, Morgan, McLennan, and others.=]
Bachofen (1861) was the first to study the system of filiation through
the mother, or mother-right, which was widely distributed among ancient
peoples, and still occurs in many regions in a more or less developed
condition. McLennan frankly states that “the honour of that discovery,
the importance of which, as affording a new starting-point for all
history, cannot be over-estimated, must, without stint or qualification,
be assigned to him” (1876, p. 421). Independently, however, J. F.
McLennan (1827-1881), in his _Primitive Marriage_ (1865), arrived at the
conclusion “that the most ancient system in which the idea of
blood-relationship was embodied was a system of kinship through females
only.”[102] He points out more than once that “Mr. Maine seems not to
have been able to conceive of any social order more primitive than the
patriarchal.”[103] This book was reprinted with additions in 1876, and
his two other books were published posthumously (1885, 1896). In these
and more fugitive writings McLennan was a keen controversialist, and
with unnecessary vigour and animus attacked Morgan, Sir Henry Maine, and
Dr. Howitt. McLennan’s attitude may be partly explained by the fact that
he was a lawyer and a theorist, but he possessed great enthusiasm, with
which he infused those who came into contact with him, and his labours
served to advance the study of sociology.
Footnote 102:
P. 124 of 1876 ed.
Footnote 103:
P. 181, _ibid._
“From the time of Plato downwards, theories of human society have been
current in which the family living under the headship of a father is
accepted as the ultimate social unit. These theories have taken various
shapes ... with Sir Henry Maine (_Ancient Law_, 1861) the theory becomes
a theory of the origin of society, or at least of the earliest stage of
society in which Comparative Jurisprudence is called upon to take
interest.”[104]
Footnote 104:
D. McLennan, _The Patriarchal Theory_, 1885, p. x.
Morgan was undoubtedly the greatest sociologist of the past century, and
in his monumental work (1871) laid a solid foundation for the study of
the family and kinship systems; he formulated a scheme of the evolution
of the family based on a study of the classificatory system of
relationships,[105] of which he was the discoverer. According to this
scheme, human society has advanced, through gradual evolution, from a
state of complete promiscuity to one characterised by monogamy. Dr.
Rivers[106] points out that “In recent years the scheme has encountered
much opposition.... The opponents of Morgan have made no attempt to
distinguish between different parts of his scheme, but, having shown
that certain of its features are unsatisfactory, they have condemned the
whole.” The greater part of Morgan’s work is, however, of lasting value.
Morgan based his conclusions on an enormous number of kinship terms
collected by himself and others from every available source. Dr. Rivers
has introduced[107] a new method of collecting similar data by means of
recording exhaustive genealogies from a limited area. In this way not
only can kinship terms be collected with accuracy, but a large number of
other sociological data are obtained with a readiness and precision not
hitherto possible. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that this method
is producing a revolution in the method of sociological field work.
Footnote 105:
W. H. R. Rivers, “On the Origin of the Classificatory System of
Relationships,” Anthropological Essays (Tylor Volume), 1907.
Footnote 106:
_Jour. Anth. Inst._, xxx., 1900, p. 74; _Sociological Rev._, 1910.
Footnote 107:
In the classificatory system most of the kin in the same generation
are grouped under one general term; _e.g._, all the males of the
grandfather’s generation are called by one term—another term includes
father, father’s brothers, father’s male cousins, mother’s sisters’
husbands, mother’s female cousins’ husbands, and so on.
In a later book (1878) Morgan summarised his earlier conclusions and
proposed a classification of culture consisting of a lower, middle, and
an upper Status of Savagery, a lower, middle, and an upper Status of
Barbarism, and the Status of Civilisation based upon certain inventions
and industries.
About this time various students wrote on marriage and the family, of
whom the foremost were Giraud Teulon (1867, 1874, 1884), H. Post (1875),
Letourneau (1888), Von Hellwald (1889), and others, the conclusions of
the earlier writers being summed up by Professor E. Westermarck in his
masterly _History of Human Marriage_ (1891); but much has been written
since that date on this subject of perennial interest.
Professor F. H. Giddings, in his _Principles of Sociology_, sums up in
the following words the trend of modern writers on ethnological
sociology:—
Professor Ludwig Gumplowicz [1883] has tried to demonstrate that
the true elementary social phenomena are the conflicts,
amalgamations, and assimilations of heterogeneous ethnical
groups. M. Novicow [1893], generalising further, argues that
social evolution is essentially a progressive modification of
conflict by alliance, in the course of which conflict itself is
transformed from a physical into an intellectual struggle.
Professor De Greef [1886], looking at the question in a very
different way, finds the distinctive social fact in contract,
and measures social progress according to the displacement of
coercive authority by conscious argument. Mr. Gabriel Tarde
[1890], in an original and fascinating study, which has made an
enduring impress on both psychological and sociological thought,
argues that the primordial social fact is imitation, a
phenomenon antecedent to all mutual aid, division of labour, and
contract. Professor Émile Durkheim [1895], dissenting from the
conclusions of M. Tarde, undertakes to prove that the
characteristically social process, and therefore the ultimate
social phenomenon, is a coercion of every individual mind by
modes of action, thought, and feeling that are external to
itself (p. 14).
According to Giddings, the original and elementary subjective fact in
society is “the consciousness of kind.”
Social psychology offers a vast and fertile field which has been but
little worked, and there was needed an introduction to the subject which
should afford that general point of view which is the starting-point of
further studies. This Dr. W. McDougall has attempted in a recently
published little book.[108] His general conclusion is that the life of
societies is not merely the sum of the activities of individuals moved
by enlightened self-interest, or by intelligent desire for pleasure and
aversion from pain; but that the springs of all the complex activities
that make up the life of societies must be sought in the instincts and
in the other primary tendencies that are common to all men and are
deeply rooted in the remote ancestry of the race. Professor E. A. Ross,
of Wisconsin, simultaneously attacked the same subject, on the problems
of which he had previously written.[109]
[Sidenote: =Magic and Religion.=]
Magic and religion are very generally held to be not only distinct from
one another, but antithetical. There is, however, a tendency among
certain living students to regard them as analogous phenomena, both
being expressions of a belief in a power or energy which may be
designated by the Melanesian term “mana,” or the American “orenda.” It
has more than once been pointed out that it is in some cases very
hard—perhaps impossible—to determine whether certain actions can be
classed as either magical or religious, as they appear to belong to both
categories. As in the case of religion from the ethnological standpoint,
magic has been investigated in the field, and immediate references to it
are to be found in ethnological literature—the comparative study of
magic has to some extent been undertaken by Frazer, Jevons, and others;
but one of the most important contributions to the subject is by Hubert
and Mauss,[110] who treat it from a sociological aspect.
Footnote 108:
_An Introduction to Social Psychology_, 1908.
Footnote 109:
_Congress of Arts and Sci., St. Louis_, 1904, v. (1906), p. 869.
Footnote 110:
H. Hubert et M. Mauss, “Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la magie,”
_L’Année sociologique_, vii., 1904. M. Mauss, “L’Origine des pouvoirs
magiques dans les sociétés Australiennes,” _École pratique des Haute
Études_ (Sec. Relig.), 1904.
[Sidenote: =Anthropology and Religion.=]
Parson Thwackum in _Tom Jones_ says: “When I mention religion I mean the
Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the
Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the
Church of England.” Anthropology, by a reverse process, passes “in
larger sympathy from specific creeds to partake of the universal spirit
which every creed tries to embody.”[111] The interest of Anthropology in
religion was defined by Huxley.[112] “Anthropology has nothing to do
with the truth or falsehood of religion—it holds itself absolutely and
entirely aloof from such questions—but the natural history of religion,
and the origin and growth of the religions entertained by the different
tribes of the human race, are within its proper and legitimate
province.”
Footnote 111:
Clodd, _Animism_, 1905, p. 11.
Footnote 112:
Address to Dept. of Anthrop., Brit. Ass. Dublin, 1878.
This is not the place to attempt a definition of religion—a task which
has led to so many failures. We must be content with the statement that
it most frequently presents itself under the aspects of ritual, myth,
and belief. Anthropology has hitherto practically confined its attention
to ritual and myth, and but too frequently exclusively to the last.
As Andrew Lang (1887)[113] points out, in the sixth century B.C.
Xenophanes complained that the gods were credited with the worst crimes,
and other classical writers were shocked at the contradictions between
the conception and ritual worship of the same god. In ancient Egypt the
priests strove to shift the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from their
own deities. It taxed the ingenuity of pious Brahmans to explain the
myths which made Indra the slayer of a Brahman. Euhemerus (316 B.C.), in
his philosophical romance, _Sacra Historica_, in rationalising the
fables about the gods was regarded as an atheist. Certain writers like
Plutarch (60 A.D.) and Porphyry (270 A.D.) made the ancient deities
types of their own favourite doctrines, whatever these might happen to
be. The early Christians had a good case against the heathen. Eusebius,
in the _Præparatio Evangelica_, anticipating Andrew Lang himself,
“ridiculed, with a good deal of humour, the old theories which resolved
so many mythical heroes into the sun” (p. 20). “The physical
interpreters,” said Eusebius, “do not even agree in their physical
interpretations.” The light of the anthropological method had dawned on
Eusebius. Many centuries later Spencer, Master of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge (1630-93), had no other scheme in his mind in his
erudite work on Hebrew ritual,[114] which he considered was but an
expurgated adaptation of heathen customs. Fontenelle[115] explained the
irrational element in myth as inherited from savagery.
Footnote 113:
1899 ed., pp. 6, 7.
Footnote 114:
_De Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus_, 1732.
Footnote 115:
_De l’Origine des Fables: Œuvres_, Vol. III., 1758.
The revival of learning made scholars acquainted with the religions not
only of Greece and Rome, but of the nations with whom the Greeks and
Romans had come in contact—Egyptians, Semites, Persians, and Indians.
Travellers gave accounts of the religions they found in remote parts of
the world, and missionaries reported on beliefs and customs of many
nations. These were the sources from which were compiled the
comprehensive works on religion, from Alexander Ross, _View of All the
Religions in the World_, etc., 1652, to Dupuis, _Origine de tous les
cultes ou Religion Universelle_, 1794. All heathen religions were
believed to be based on sun and star worship.
New vistas were opened up by the writings of De Brosses (1760), who
investigated the beliefs of savage races and based all religion on
“Fetishism.”
To quote once more from Lang: “In the beginning of the [nineteenth]
century Germany turned her attention to mythology. In a pious kind of
spirit, Friedrich Creuzer [1771-1858] sought to find symbols of some
pure, early, and Oriental theosophy in the myths and mysteries of
Greece. The great Lobeck, in his _Aglaophamus_ (1829), brought back
common-sense, and made it the guide of his vast, his unequalled
learning. In a gentler and more genial spirit, C. Ottfried Müller
[1797-1840] laid the foundation of a truly scientific and historical
mythology. Neither of these writers had, like Alfred Maury [1857], much
knowledge of the myths and faiths of the lower races, but they often
seem on the point of anticipating the ethnological method.” (_L.c._, p.
23.)
[Sidenote: =Folklore.=]
The mythological aspect of the subject was illuminated by the researches
of the brothers Grimm (J. L. K., 1785-1863; W. K., 1786-1859), whose
collections of Märchen (1812-5) were found to contain Teutonic myths,
and by their resemblance to Norse, Greek, and Vedic mythology suggested
that in German folklore were remains of a common Indo-Germanic
tradition. This was the beginning of the intelligent study of Folklore.
Mannhardt (1865) and others investigated popular, and especially
peasant, customs and beliefs connected with agriculture and vegetation;
and showed that here, in what Christianity had reduced to superstition,
were to be found survivals of the religions that Christianity had
supplanted. Thenceforward the study of Folklore, and of the “lower
mythology” of beliefs, customs, and superstitions, gradually developed
into a science, which is now recognised as the valuable ally of
Anthropology. Meanwhile the anthropological signification of religion
was emerging from the mass of materials collected from all over the
globe. Anthropology established its universality, and made many attempts
to find a common factor, first in astral worship, then in Euhemerism
(Banier, 1738), Fetishism (De Brosses, 1709-1777), Nature-worship (Max
Müller, etc.), Ancestor-worship (Herbert Spencer, Lippert [1866], etc.),
and later in Totemism. These hypotheses were based on the erroneous
assumption that savage religion represented the primitive mode of
thought, out of which civilised religions had evolved. Later it was
realised that “The Australian black or the Andaman Islander is separated
by as many generations from the beginning of religion as his most
advanced contemporaries; and in these tens or hundreds of thousands of
years there has been constant change, growth, and decay—and decay is not
a simple return to the primal state. We can learn a great deal from the
lowest existing religions, but they cannot tell us what the beginning of
religion was, any more than the history of language can tell us what was
the first human speech.”[116]
Footnote 116:
G. F. Moore, “The Hist. of Religions in the Nineteenth Cent.,”
_Congress Arts and Sci., St. Louis_, 1904, p. 440.
[Sidenote: =Comparative Religion.=]
The study of comparative religion, though not originated by Max Müller
(1823-1900), owed much to his energy. His lectures on Comparative
Mythology (1856) were followed by lectures on the Science of Religion
(1870), and on the religions of the world (1873). He inaugurated the
annual series of the Hibbert Lectures with a study of the origin and
growth of Religion, as illustrated by the religions of India; and as
Gifford lecturer at Glasgow (1888-1892), discussed Natural Religion,
Physical Religion, Anthropological Religion, and Theosophy or
Psychological Religion. His _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_
appeared in 1897. His method of investigation was almost entirely
linguistic, based on phonetic laws which later research has discredited;
and his theory of “mythology as the disease of language” is no longer
tenable.
The charm of the writings of Max Müller, and the interest which they
awakened in Vedic studies, gave a new impulse to the study of the
history of religions. The hymns of the Rig-Veda are by no means the
product of a simple society, as he supposed; in his view hymns and myths
were dissociated from ritual religion, and gods were identified with
natural objects. The death-blow to this method of studying religion in
our country was given by the keen criticism of Andrew Lang (1884, 1887).
The too-narrow basis of Max Müller’s theories was overthrown by
arguments derived from comparative ethnology; “the silly, senseless, and
savage element” (as he termed it) in classical mythology proved to be
the stumbling-block over which he fell.
A firmer foundation for the study was laid by Tylor and Lubbock. Though
Max Müller originated the name Science of Religion, it was Tylor who
first introduced into it a scientific method, and so laid the
foundations for future investigation.
Later workers in the field fall naturally into two groups. Some make
intensive studies of particular forms of religion, either historical,
such as Robertson Smith (1846-1894), or living, such as Codrington in
Melanesia, J. O. Dorsey[117] in America, Spencer and Gillen in
Australia, and many others.
Footnote 117:
“Omaha Sociology,” _Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Ethn. Rep._ iii., 1884; “Siouan
Sociology,” xv., 1897.
Other workers attempt, by correlating the mass of material, to discover
the fundamental religious conceptions of man, and to trace their
subsequent development. Among these may be noted Grant Allen, Crawley,
Frazer, Hartland, Jevons, Andrew Lang, Marett, and many others.
To those who are acquainted with the modern study of comparative
religion in this country it is unnecessary to point out the influence of
such workers as Mannhardt, Tylor, and Robertson Smith on subsequent
writers; nor is it needful to draw attention to the vast erudition and
eloquent writing of Professor J. G. Frazer, whose monumental work on
_The Golden Bough_ has become a classic, or to the memorable _Legend of
Perseus_ by E. S. Hartland.
The study of the myths of various peoples is receiving the attention of
numerous students, and in Germany certain ethnologists, such as
Ehrenreich, Foy,[118] and Frobenius,[119] find sun and moon gods in the
most unlikely places. There is, however, considerable danger that this
nature-mythology is being carried too far.
Footnote 118:
_Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, x., 1907, etc.
Footnote 119:
“Die Weltanschauung der Naturvölker,” _Beitr. z. Volks-und
Völkerkunde_, vi., 1898; _Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes_, i., 1904;
_The Childhood of Man_, 1909.
The origin of the moral idea has also been discussed from the
ethnological point of view, as Hobhouse (1906) and Westermarck (1906)
have exemplified in their great books.
Magic, religion, and morality have, as we have seen, especially of late
years, been regarded almost entirely from the anthropological
standpoint. But a new school of French students has arisen who maintain
that these are essentially social phenomena. The writings of Durkheim,
Hubert and Mauss[120] have initiated a new method of study which
promises to have far-reaching results.
Footnote 120:
The work of this school is mainly to be found in _L’Année
sociologique_ (1898).
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