concerned touches the evolution of the Trinitarian idea.[73.2] Here
{74} again it is necessary carefully to sift the phenomena of the
contiguous religions, to consider whether they present such a
conception at all, and whether in any of them it had gained sufficient
vividness and power to be likely to evoke a dogma of religious
metaphysic. Moreover, to understand the complete genesis of the
Christian doctrine, we must trace out the idea of divine emanations in
the Mediterranean and the East; for the religions of the Iranian and
even the Greek world present us with parallels to the process whereby
the Holy Spirit becomes in relation to the personal God a distinct
though closely attached personality. In the Zoroastrian ritual the
Fravashi or Soul of Ahura receives reverence,[74.1] and in Greek
speculation and even cult the θεοῦ Πρόνοια or Divine Providence is
sometimes regarded as an individual and {75} personal power;[75.1]
nor is the conception of a plurality of beings within the limits of
the same personality unfamiliar to primitive thought. The subject is
one of the most intricate in the field of religious study, and the
more hopeful investigation of it would demand anthropological study in
its widest sense, combined with a knowledge of the later Greek
metaphysic which has clearly left its impress on our doctrine.
I will close these illustrations with the most obvious example of the
contribution of anthropological study to our knowledge of actual
Christendom. One of the most fruitful offshoots of the older Hellenic
system was hero-worship, which itself may have arisen as a development
of ancestor-cult. At first confined to the mythic figures of the past,
it came to be applied to founders of colonies, legislators, and even
to athletes; in its final development in the last centuries before
Christ it was chiefly consecrated to kings and dynasts, {76} the
founders of religious societies, men of science, and political
benefactors. The divine worship of the mortal, an idea abhorrent to
Judaism, and not accepted by the severer Zoroastrian, was part of the
state system of earlier and later Egypt, and was finally imposed on
the Greco-Roman world. The soil in which it had most rankly flourished
was Greek, and Greece and Anatolia were crowded with chapels
consecrated to recently living men or to faded figures who were
supposed to have once lived on earth, some of them perhaps actual
ancestors, some imaginary personages of the epic or legendary world,
some merely functional divinities of subordinate departments, like the
hero of the ploughshare or the tutelary hero of the potters. This
growth of polytheism had struck its roots so deeply that Christianity,
in spite of its monotheistic ideal, was unable to eradicate it. The
ancient hero may sometimes be lurking under the later disguise of the
saint: the mediæval guild, like the Attic fraternity of potters, {77}
had its sacred tutelary patron; and it is curious to observe that in
the matter of canonisation the Pope came to play exactly the same part
as the Delphic oracle had played in the public consecration of the
hero-cult: the divine authorisation is given or withheld by the vicar
or agent of God. The importance of this inherited tradition in
determining our religious estimate of historical Christendom is of the
highest: for whatever may have been or may be the orthodox dogma of
the Church concerning the status of the saint, such worship inevitably
means polytheism from the point of view of the popular faith: and we
gather that in many outlying communities of Christendom, as of the
ancient Greek world, the lower cult overshadows the higher. And this
is one of the most salient and sure examples that we can quote of the
direct influence of the older religions upon the later. This special
influence is mainly Greek, though the pagan North, the Celtic and
Lithuanian, and perhaps the {78} Teutonic peoples, have contributed
much to the tradition of saint-worship.
The illustrations given may suffice as a sketch of the various
applications of a comparative method to the problems that the
phenomena of Christianity offer to the student. In the choice of
illustration I may seem to have ignored the strength of the Judaic
element in determining the evolution; but I have considered it
unnecessary to touch on this, as it has long been the familiar theme
of scientific theology. I have also ventured to suggest that our own
religious history should be traced back to the period of our ancestral
paganism. And I would strongly recommend to the student of comparative
religion in England a devoted attention to the world of the Norse
Saga: for this has been strangely and fatally neglected by our English
system of culture, with grievous loss to our poetic imagination, and
to our knowledge of the early law and the religious institutions and
temperament of our ancestors. Such a work {79} as Golther’s _Handbuch
der germanischen Mythologie_ shows us what a harvest may be reaped in
that field for the science of religion. The subject in its own right
claims our interest, and certain phenomena in the old Teutonic
religion, its fatalistic ideas, its eschatologic beliefs concerning a
“day of judgment,” demand consideration in the light of more advanced
creeds. On the other hand it may be wrong to attribute to it any
direct influence on the inner development of Northern Christianity;
for there may be reason for the view that, when the new religion
conquered the Teutonic North, it found there in some sense a religious
vacuum, the old ritual and faith having lost its vitality and hold;
and certainly our ancestral paganism made no such struggle to survive
as did the Greco-Roman. Nevertheless the history of its institutions
may be necessary, as has been suggested already, to explain the
struggle between Church and State in Teutonic lands; and, further, it
is only the pages of the Norse Saga-book that can yield us {80} an
answer to the question whether we may not have inherited from remote
times a certain average racial law of religious temperament resulting
in a characteristic attitude towards matters of religion that may have
determined our religious history. If the answer were affirmative and
definite, the fact would have a practical no less than a speculative
importance. At least we shall not know ourselves completely in this or
in other matters if we continue to think that Greece and Rome and
Palestine are our sole intellectual and spiritual ancestors; in fact
we may say that no account of the history of Christianity in any
European State can be real and complete unless we can get back to the
pre-Christian past of that community.
Yet, while making full allowance for the influence of special
ancestral traditions, those who work on the lines which have been
indicated in the illustrations of method which I have selected, will
acquire the ever-growing conviction that Hellas has dominated the {81}
creed as she has dominated the intellectual history of Christendom;
that the new faith, in spite of its fierce or contemptuous intolerance
of the past, was only able to transform but not to abolish the
Mediterranean tradition: that in fact Sir Henry Maine’s often quoted
aphorism, while by no means wholly true, was truer in respect of
religious history than he himself was aware.
I have been speaking hitherto mainly on the relations of anthropology
to the comparative study of religion. And it may be well now to point
out that anthropology, as I have tried to define and distinguish its
functions, though an essential part, is only a part of the whole. For
we must know not only the past but the present conditions, not only
the embryology but the perfected growth. And, again, we compare
religions not merely to test theories of origin, ancestry, and
indebtedness, but also to form the proper estimate of each one, and to
correct the one-sided judgment that is always quick to pronounce this
phenomenon {82} or feature in any particular system as unique. If the
comparison reveals more divergences than parallels, the result is no
less important. And the comparative method should be applied not
merely to ritual, liturgy, hieratic institutions, legends, and dogmas,
but also to the varying phenomena and expressions of the religious
temperament in the various races. Only the study of the latter can
enable us to test the living force of a faith, the degree with which
it possesses the national mind; and such a study is only possible when
a nation has produced a rich religious literature or monuments of art
embodying the public and private worship and religious sentiment. We
know what we have gained by the discovery of the sacred books of the
East, by the interpretation of the Babylonian inscriptions, and from
their revelation to us in the Vedic, Iranian, and Mesopotamian
cult-centres of a fervour as deep and passionate as any that we find
in Hebraic or Christian writings. On the other hand, when a religion
has passed away, {83} as is the case with that of pre-Hellenic Rome,
without leaving any articulate expression of its inner life, our
knowledge of it can be superficial only, confined to mere ritual,
fragments of liturgies, and the externals of cult.
A dispassionate and uncontroversial study of that which is at least
one of the greatest forces in human society cannot but be interesting,
and fruitful also for other branches of inquiry, such as the history
of early law and morals, of which in many primitive communities the
religion is the only record. It may even solve certain problems
concerning the early migrations of races, as I have been convinced by
the investigation of various Greek cults. In England the trained
workers in this field are still unfortunately few, perhaps because a
certain latent prejudice, born of religious partisanship, is not yet
extinct, and may act somewhat as a deterrent. I have avoided hitherto
alluding to any of the practical and controversial considerations {84}
which the methodical pursuit and propagation of this science may
excite, though I am well aware that its practical effects may be of
high importance; but they are not immediately our concern at present.
There is, however, one such consideration that it is pertinent to
touch on before concluding the survey of the methods and functions of
this branch of historical inquiry, which deals much with origins and
with the evolution of higher forms of religion from the lower.
Discoveries of origins may appear to affect the validity of a creed or
certain articles of creed. That this is actually the case in regard to
the great problem with which the illustrations I have put before you
are mainly concerned, namely, the genesis of Christianity, has been
recently frankly admitted by a leading dignitary of the Roman Church:
who, moved by a rumour of anthropological research, has promptly
turned it to the profit of his cause by maintaining that the Roman
ritual and communion gains in force and validity by {85} the discovery
that it has inherited and absorbed the religious thought and practice
of ancient Greece and Rome. On the other hand, others may find the
exposition of the so-called pagan elements in the essence of
Christianity repugnant to their sentiment; and hence are inclined to
accept the dictum “that origin does not affect validity.” I imagine
the facts of religious psychology make somewhat against this aphorism.
But it only concerns the science of comparative religion, because in
the history of creeds validity has been very often found to maintain
itself mainly by an appeal to origin; and as our science, to
reiterate, is much concerned with origins, it is indirectly concerned
with those claims of validity that support themselves by such an
appeal.
Another cause of the paucity of workers in this field is the
complexity and difficulty of the subject, which can be handled
successfully only by the advanced and mature student. The
pre-requisites of competence are an {86} exact philological as well as
an archæological training, with a view to the proper appreciation
both of texts and monuments; secondly, a general acquaintance with the
problems and history of philosophy, and especially of ethics, and with
the history of early social institutions and law; thirdly, a
comprehensive study of anthropology. To this must be added a
sympathetic and minute knowledge of at least two of the great
world-religions, whereby alone a critical insight into the essential
and significant phenomena of the religious experiences of our race can
be obtained. The comparative science of religion has now become
possible, thanks partly to the labours of philological specialists in
the ancient languages of Europe and Asia, and partly to the
organisation of anthropological travel.
Let me conclude with remarking that subdivision of labour is
imperative in this field: and it is especially in Oxford that the
opportunities for the requisite preliminary {87} training are
plentiful. It would be a gain for more than science if we could see a
group of mature students organised here exploring the various
departments of this complex subject in co-operation and with mutual
assistance.
LECTURE III.
THE RITUAL OF PURIFICATION AND THE CONCEPTION OF PURITY: THEIR
INFLUENCE ON RELIGION, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL CUSTOM
{88}
Among all the varied religious acts of man, there is probably none
that has been so widely prevalent throughout the different races of
mankind as the ritual of purification, nor does any idea seem to have
possessed so strong a legislative power in the various departments of
our life as the concept of purity. We can trace it back to instincts
that we appear to share with the higher animals, and we can track it
upwards through the complex rites of the higher religions. The record
presents us with a vast mass of phenomena which, as far as I am able
to discover, have not yet been reduced to system or unified by any
constructive {89} theory of evolution. In this lecture I venture to
attempt the systematisation of the subject, first giving a brief
summary of the main facts which are well known to the students of
primitive anthropology and comparative religion and which confront us
in nearly all the societies that have been explored.
In the stage of our conscious life which we may call, relatively to
man’s growth, primeval, certain bodily acts and states and certain
material substances are regarded as unclean and impure, likely to
imprint a stain upon the person. It is impossible here to attempt to
enumerate all the examples, and it is enough to mention a few that are
salient and typical. The generative processes of life, the states and
activities of the male and especially the female organism connected
with them, the bodily changes incident on puberty, are among the most
familiar phenomena with which the idea of impurity in some peculiar
sense has been universally associated. A chief centre or {90} “nidus”
of impurity is child-birth; but still more dangerously impure is its
counterpart, death and all the phenomena of death. In respect of
child-birth the idea is fading away from our civilised consciousness;
but it has left a deep deposit in our conscious or subconscious self
in regard to death. The material substance that has been most
generally felt to be impure is blood; the curious feeling that the
mere mention of the word often excites in certain modern people is a
faint reflex of the savage mental state in respect to the thing; and
the influence of this disposition upon advanced society raises the
most interesting question in which comparative law, ethics, and
religion are jointly concerned, and which will be considered later. To
continue our enumeration we may not find that the objects of the
inanimate world outside ourselves are usually regarded by primitive
thought as in themselves impure, but all or most of them are capable
of catching the infection from ourselves, from death or child-birth
{91} for instance: hence it may be necessary to break or destroy or
purify the utensils and furniture of the house where a death or a
birth has occurred. At a somewhat more advanced stage, certain
food-stuffs come to rank as impure, and a complicated code of “tapu”
is established for specially sanctified persons. Then we are
confronted, but not apparently in the most primitive period, with the
distinction between pure and impure animals, which also dictates
certain rules and practices of diet.
On the other hand certain natural things may come to be regarded as
specially “pure,” whether on the ground of a certain intrinsic
quality, because for instance they are bright and lustrous, or from
the fact that they were habitually used for cathartic or cleansing
processes, as fire, water, odorous wood or spices, or substances which
emitted a pungent odour such as sulphur. Such objects “are used in
ritual,” says Jamblichus,[91.1] {92} “because they are specially full
of the divine nature.” But the psychic phenomena and the corresponding
acts with which we are dealing may be well suspected of descending
from an age at which no definite concept of a divine nature had as yet
arisen, an age not yet perhaps even animistic, for in their crudest
form they do not seem necessarily to imply any articulate system of
belief in a world of ghosts and spirits. And this reflection brings us
to the first question of importance, what this primitive concept of
purity and impurity really is, and what were the sensations from which
it was evolved. Nothing is more difficult to describe than simple
sensations, but it is possible to distinguish one from another. And we
must distinguish between the modern feeling about cleanliness and the
primitive feelings which we are considering. That “cleanliness is next
to godliness” is an aphorism suggested no doubt by sensations
fundamentally akin to these; but many a savage who is most particular
about “impurity” {93} cares little or nothing for what we call
“cleanliness.” We consider that the cleansing acts we ourselves
perform are purely hygienic or pleasure-giving, partly connected with
the instinct of self-preservation, and some of them we find performed
by other animals than man.
But the savage ritual of purification does not by any means tend
necessarily to self-preservation, but at times may lead to
self-destruction, and no hygienic or utilitarian or secular
considerations will carry us far in explaining the cathartic code of
Leviticus or the Zend-Avesta, or Buddhism, or the impurity of tabooed
animals. These codes, while some of their prescriptions may be such as
modern utilitarian ideas might dictate, are obviously instinct with
religious or superstitious beliefs, and to explain the distinction
between the pure and the impure animals would need a long excursus
into primitive religion; the distinction is certainly not one between
wholesome and unwholesome, or pleasant and unpleasant, meat.
{94}
We may probably discover the nature of the instinct underlying much of
the cathartic custom-law by taking as our typical example the savage
feeling about blood. Evidence from almost every society in the world
yields proof that the stain of blood is the primary impurity that
needs a purifying ritual: hence arose a body of rules that were a
burden upon domestic life, hence the elaborate purifications of
warriors after battle or of the individual homicide. Such rules in no
way remind us of the natural desire to take a bath at the end of a
warm field-day: the savage purifications after battle may last for
weeks; it is recorded that a North American Indian tribe was
extirpated because it needed a month to wipe off the stain of a single
conflict, while their enemies needed only a week for that purpose and
therefore had the advantage of three weeks’ start in preparing for the
next attack. The sense-instinct that suggests all this is probably
some primeval terror or aversion evoked by certain objects, as we see
animals {95} shrink with disgust at the sight or smell of blood. The
nerves of savage man are strangely excited by certain stimuli of
touch, smell, taste, sight: the specially exciting object is something
that we should call “mysterious,” “weird,” or, still more
expressively, “uncanny.” To the primitive mind nothing was more
uncanny than blood, and there are people still who faint at the sight
of it: for “the blood is the life,” life and death are the great
primeval mysteries, and all the physical substances that are
associated with the inner principle of either partake of this
mysteriousness. For the savage, what is mysterious is also dangerous
and not to be lightly handled or approached. Now, the man who incurs
such stain not merely is exposed to some unaccountable danger himself,
but he is able to infect others by contagion; he spreads a sort of
miasma, he is the conducting vehicle of a dangerous spiritual
electricity--mere metaphors, which, however, may enable us to catch
something of the primitive thought. Such a {96} man therefore must
avoid communion with his fellows for a time, must be “tabooed”; and
will naturally endeavour to remove the “tapu” or dangerous “miasma” by
some magic rites of cleansing or release. The kinsmen of the recently
dead in all primitive societies are impure, because they have come
into contact with death, the chief source of all impurity; therefore
they must be isolated, and, until they are purified, must wear some
badge or external mark--which we call “mourning”--to warn others
against approaching them. The “tapu” still remains in civilised
communities; we abstain from intruding on the bereaved family, though
we give a different motive for our keeping aloof. It so often happens
that in such matters we act as the savage acts; but we must abandon
for a time our normal way of looking at things in order to imagine
his. To us a corpse may be an object of aversion, and it is in some
degree contagious; but our view of it, when we are cool, is secular
and scientific: while the primitive aspect of it is {97} supranormal
and mystic, and the contagion is something spiritual and incalculably
dangerous. In the Zend-Avesta we find an interesting special
application of this idea: the defiling power of the dead varies
directly according to the sanctity or rank of the deceased; thus it is
greatest in the corpse of the priest, somewhat less in that of a
warrior, and least in that of the husbandman:[97.1] _corruptio optimi
pessima_: the most sacred person can defile the most, because he is
charged with the most mysterious and therefore dangerous potency. The
Latin term “sacer” has the double meaning of “holy” and “accursed”:
from the same Greek root, αγ, spring a word connoting holiness and a
word meaning “pollution.” Primeval thought or feeling holds together
in a vague unity ideas that afterwards differentiate themselves and
even become antithetical. The same power of radiating dangerous
influence, supposed {98} to attach to the holy man, the polluted man
and the polluting thing, brought them originally under the same dim
conception.