Ever since the time of Aristotle it has been an accepted truth that man
is a social animal. Not only is individual human nature such that it
craves for intercourse with its kind, but it can only be effectively
understood in the light of those thousands of generations of associated
life that lie behind us all. As an isolated object, considered, that is,
apart from his fellows, man is more or less of a myth. At any rate, he
would not be the man we know and so may well be left out of account. Man
as we know him is essentially a member of a group; he is a part of a
really organic structure inasmuch as the characteristics of each part
are determined by its relations to the whole, and the characteristics of
the whole determined by a synthesis of the qualities of the parts.
But while there is agreement in the fact, there is a considerable
divergence of opinion as to its nature. What is the nature of this fact
of sociability? What is the character of the force that binds the
members of a group so closely together? By some, the cause of
sociability is found in the pressure exerted upon all by purely external
forces. The need for protection, it is said, drives human beings
together, and thus in course of time the feeling of sociability is
developed. This seems much like mistaking a consequence for a cause. It
certainly leaves unanswered the question _Why_ should people have drawn
together in the face of danger? Most certainly collective action
strengthens the capacity for defence; and it also increases the
certainty of obtaining the means of subsistence. Such consequences
furnish a justification, so to speak, of group life, but they disclose
neither its nature nor its cause. And most certainly they do not bring
us into touch with the fundamental qualities of _human_ society. The
need for food, shelter, or protection will not differentiate the
gregarious from the non-gregarious forms of life, nor the social from
the merely gregarious. All forms of life require food, protection, and
shelter; they are part of animal economics. There is nothing
specifically human about them.
We may reach what I conceive to be the truth in another way. Environment
is to-day almost a cant word. It is very largely used, and, as one might
expect, largely misunderstood. Without actually saying it in so many
words, a vast number of people seem to conceive the environment as
consisting of the purely material surroundings of man. This is to
overlook a most important fact. Even in the lowest stages of human
society, where man's power over natural forces is of the poorest kind,
it is not an exact statement of the case, and it is profoundly untrue
when we take society in its higher developments. If we take the lowest
existing savage race we find that its attitude towards life, what it
does, and what it refrains from doing, is the product of a certain
mental attitude, which is itself the outcome of a number of inherited
ideas and customs. A number of white people, placed in exactly the same
material environment and faced with exactly the same external
circumstances, bring a different psychological inheritance into play,
and act in an entirely different manner. If we transport a Chinaman into
England, or an Englishman into China, we find that both of them possess
the same biological and material needs whether in their native country
or elsewhere. Yet this community of needs does not make the Chinaman a
member of English society, nor an Englishman a member of Chinese
society. They are one in virtue of certain broad human characteristics;
they are divided by certain qualities characteristic of their special
groups. Each society is marked by the possession of certain
psychological characteristics--a number of specific beliefs and
emotional developments--without which its distinctive group character
disappears. This is true of groups within the State; it is true of the
State as a whole; it is true, on the most general scale of all, of the
race.
In other words, the distinguishing feature of human society is the
possession of a psychological medium. The adaptations that the human
being must make are mainly of a psychological character. Their _form_
may be partly determined by external conditions, but this does not
affect the general truth. Whether we take man in a civilised or in an
uncivilised state we find the important thing about him to be his
relations to his fellows. He is not merely a member of a tribe or a
society, but he thinks that society's thoughts, he feels their emotions,
his individual life is an expression of the psychical life of the group
to which he belongs. And his transactions with nature are an expression
of the ideas and beliefs current in the society of which he is a part.
The recognition of this truth was one of the outstanding contributions
of Herbert Spencer to the science of sociology. Whereas other writers
had stressed the power of the environment, as a purely material thing,
in shaping human institutions, Spencer placed chief stress upon the
emotional and intellectual life of primitive man as determining their
beginnings. He showed how man's feelings and beliefs about himself, and
about his fellows, and about the world of living forces with which he
believed himself to be surrounded, were the all-important factors of
social evolution. And the subsequent history of society has been such
that scientific sociology is very largely the study of the growth and
elaboration of an essentially psychical environment. The lower animal
world--except so far as we allow for the operation of instincts--has,
broadly, only the existence of other animals and the physical
surroundings for its environment. With man it is vastly different. Owing
primarily to language, the environment of the man of to-day is made up
in part of the ideas of men who lived and died thousands of years ago.
The use of clothing and the invention of tools would alone make mind a
dominant fact in human life. But apart from these things, the great fact
of social heredity, in virtue of which one generation enjoys the
acquired culture of preceding generations, and without which
civilisation would have no existence, is a great and dominant _mental_
fact. Our institutions, our customs, are transmitted to us as so many
psychic facts. Every new invention, every fresh culture acquisition, is
helping to strengthen and broaden the psychical environment of man. Each
newcomer is born into it; it moulds his nature and determines his life,
as his own career and his own acquisition help to mould the life of his
successors. Whether the phenomena be simple or complex, whether we are
dealing with man in a civilised or in an uncivilised state, there is no
escape from the general truth that man is everywhere under the
domination of his mental life.
So far as this enquiry is concerned, we need only deal with one aspect
of the psychological medium in which primitive human life moves. And so
far as primitive mankind seeks to control the movements of social life,
there can be no question that this is done under the impulsion of that
class of beliefs which we call religious. The operation of religious
belief in savage society is neither spasmodic nor local. It is, on the
contrary, universal and persistent. It influences every event of daily
life with a force that the modern mind finds very difficult to
appreciate. In almost every action the savage feels himself to be in
touch with a supersensual world of living beings that exert a direct and
inescapable influence. And any study of human evolution that is to be of
real value must take this circumstance into consideration to a far
greater extent than is usually done. Professor Frazer, dealing with the
origin of various social institutions, rightly observes that "we are
only beginning to understand the mind of the savage, and therefore the
mind of our savage forefathers who created these institutions and handed
them down to us," and warns us that "a knowledge of the truth may
involve a reconstruction of society such as we can hardly dream of." He
also warns us that we have at all times, in dealing with social origins,
to "reckon with the influence of superstition, which pervades the life
of the savage and has contributed to build up the social organism to an
incalculable extent."[14]
In emphasising this it must not be taken to imply that because social
institutions and human actions are in primitive times moulded by
religious beliefs, they stand to them in a relation of complete
dependence. It only means that the psychological medium is of such a
character that supernaturalistic reasons are found for doings things
that are susceptible to a totally different explanation. The facts of
life are expressed in terms of supernaturalism. Birth, marriage, death,
social cohesion, leadership, health and disease, are all natural facts,
and the mere play of social selection determines the weeding out of
practices that are sufficiently adverse to tribal well-being to threaten
its security. But in primitive times all these facts are allied with
religious beliefs, and to the primitive mind the religious belief
becomes the chief feature connected with them. As a matter of fact, this
is far from an uncommon feature of social life to-day. The amount of
supernaturalism current is still very large; and one still finds people
explaining some of the plainest facts of social life in terms of
supernaturalistic beliefs. It is all part of the truth that man is
always under the domination of the psychological forces.
This being granted, the enquiry immediately presents itself, How comes
it that the facts of social life should be expressed in terms of
supernaturalism? Why do these facts not immediately present themselves
in their true nature? To answer this question one must bear in mind a
yet further truth. This is that the explanation which man offers to
himself or to others of phenomena must always be in terms of current
knowledge. A modern called upon to explain a storm, an eclipse, or a
disease, does so in terms of current physical or biological science.
This is done in virtue of a mass of prepared knowledge, slowly
accumulated by preceding generations, and which forms part of his social
heritage. Primitive man likewise explains things in terms of current
knowledge, but in his case the amount of reliable information is of a
very scanty and generally erroneous description. The inherited knowledge
which enables a modern schoolboy to start life with what would have been
an outfit to an ancient philosopher, had yet to be created. Instead of
finding, as we find, tools ready to hand, replies prepared to questions
that may arise, primitive mankind must create its own tools and prepare
its own answers. And in consequence of this the social environment,
which at all times determines the form of man's mental output, is with
primitive man radically different from our own. But however the form
varies there is agreement on this one point--in both cases phenomena are
explained in terms of known forces; the reasoning of each is determined
by the knowledge of each. The laws of mental life remain the same in all
stages of culture. The brain functions identically whether we take the
savage or the scientist. In a general way the savage intelligence is as
rational as that of a modern thinker. The difference is dependent upon
the accuracy and extent of the information possessed by each. Hence the
vital difference in the conclusions reached. Hence, too, the dominance
of supernaturalism in primitive times.
The great distinction between primitive and scientific thinking may be
expressed in a sentence--the modern mind explains man by the world,
primitive thought explained the world by man. In the one case we move
from within outward, in the other from without inward. We are not now
concerned with semi-metaphysical idealistic theories that would reduce
the "whole choir of heaven and furniture of earth" to the creation of
mental activity, but with the plain, understandable truth that the
human organism is fashioned by the environment in which it dwells. And
there is amongst those capable of expressing an authoritative
opinion--an agreement supported by evidence that has simply nothing
against it--that the world of primitive man is overpoweringly animistic.
In the absence of that mass of scientifically verified knowledge which
forms part of our social heritage, humanity commences its intellectual
career by endowing natural forces with the qualities possessed by
itself. The forces conceived are living ones. They are to be dreaded
exactly as human beings are to be dreaded; to be appeased or
circumvented by the same methods that man applies to his fellows. The
problem before the savage is thus a very real one. In essence it is the
problem that is ever before humanity--that of subjugating forces to its
own welfare. Primitive man is not, however, concerned with the
elaboration of theories; nor is he consumed with vague 'spiritual
yearnings.' His difficulty is how to control or placate those invisible
but very real powers upon which he believes everything depends. He would
willingly ignore them if he could, and would cheerfully dispense with
their presence altogether if he believed that things would proceed as
well in their absence. But there they are, inescapable facts that have
to be reckoned with.
The general outlook of the primitive mind is well put by Miss Mary
Kingsley in the following passage:--
"To the African the Universe is made up of matter permeated by spirit.
Everything happens by the direct action of spirit. The thing he does
himself is done by the spirit within him acting on his body ...
everything that is done by other things is done by their spirit
associated with their particular mass of matter.... The native will
point out to you a lightning-stricken tree and tell you that its spirit
has been killed. He will tell you, when the earthen cooking pot is
broken, it has lost its spirit. If his weapon fails him, it is because
someone has stolen its spirit or made it weak by means of his influence
on spirits of the same class.... In every action of his life he shows
you how he lives with a great spirit world around him. You see him
before he starts out to fight rubbing stuff into his weapon to
strengthen the spirit that is in it; telling it the while what care he
has taken of it.... You see him leaning over the face of the water
talking to its spirit with proper incantations, asking it when it meets
an enemy of his to upset his canoe and destroy him.... If a man is
knocked on the head with a club, or shot by an arrow or a bullet, the
cause of death is clearly the malignity of persons using these weapons;
and so it is easy to think that a man killed by the falling of a tree,
or by the upsetting of a canoe in the surf, or in a whirlpool in the
river is also a victim of some being using these things as weapons. For
a man holding this view, it seems both natural and easy to regard
disease as a manifestation of the wrath of some invisible being, and to
construct that intricate system which we find among the Africans, and
agree to call Witchcraft, Fetish, or Juju."[15]
Miss Kingsley is here dealing specifically with West Africa, but her
description applies in a general way to uncivilised people all over the
world. There is much closer resemblance between the beliefs of
uncivilised peoples than between civilised ones, because the conditions
are much more alike. And under substantially identical conditions the
human mind has everywhere reached substantially identical conclusions.
The philosophy of the savage is simple, comprehensive, and, given the
data, logical. He does not divide the world into the natural and the
supernatural; it is all one. At most, he has only the seen and the
unseen. The supernatural, as a distinct category, only appears when a
definite knowledge of the natural has arisen to which it can be opposed.
He has no such distinction as that of the material and the immaterial;
so far as he thinks of these things, the invisible is only a finer form
of the visible. Of one thing, however, he is perfectly convinced, and
this is that he is at all times surrounded by a host of invisible
agencies to which all occurrences are due, and with whom he must come to
terms. Even death wears a different aspect to the primitive mind from
that which it presents to the modern. To us death puts a sharp and
abrupt termination to life. To the primitive mind death involves no such
ending.[16] Death is no more of a break than is sleep; and at all times
the conception of an annihilation of personality requires a marked
degree of mental power. So with the savage--the 'dead' man simply goes
on living. He may be incarnated in some natural object, or he may simply
go on living as one of the innumerable company of tribal ghosts. But he
remains a force to be reckoned with, and the need for dealing with these
ghostly personages is one of the ever-present problems of primitive
sociology, and brings us very near the beginnings of all religious
beliefs and ceremonies--if it does not form their real starting-point.
On one point all modern schools of anthropologists are agreed. This is
that man's first conception of the supernatural--or what afterwards
ranks as such--is derived from a purely mistaken interpretation of
natural phenomena. In this they have returned to the standpoint of
Hobbes, that "fear of things invisible" forms the "natural seed of
religion." One source of origin of this belief in a supernatural world
is certainly found in the phenomena of dreaming. To the savage his
dreams are as real as his waking experiences. He does not _dream_ he
goes to distant places; he goes there during his sleep. He does not
_dream_ that people visit him; they actually come. If a West African
wakes up in the morning with a tired, bruised feeling, this arises, as
Miss Kingsley says, from his 'soul' having been out fighting and got
ill-treated. The only philosophy of dreaming amongst savage races is
that of the excursions and incursions of a 'soul' or double.
Another powerful factor in the development of belief in the supernatural
is that of man's attempt to explain natural happenings. Why do things
happen? Why does the sun rise and set, why does rain fall, thunder
crash, rivers flow? Note the way in which a child answers similar
questions, and one is on the track of the primitive intelligence. If
man's own movements are caused by a 'soul' or double, then other things
must also move because they possess a 'soul.' If an answer is to be
found at all, it is only along these lines that the primitive mind is
able to find it. And, once the answer is given, there are a thousand
and one things occurring that lend it apparent support. Resemblances in
nature, coincidences, echoes, shadows, etc., all give their support to
this primitive hypothesis--the only one possible in the circumstances,
and the one still endorsed by the majority of the world's population.
Particularly strong endorsement of this belief is supplied by disease
and abnormal nervous states. Instances to illustrate this are
innumerable, but from the numerous cases cited by Spencer I select the
following: Among the Amazulus convulsions are believed to be caused by
ancestral spirits. With Asiatic races epileptics are regarded as
possessed by demons. With the Kirghiz the involuntary muscular movements
of a woman in childbirth are believed to be caused by a spirit taking
possession of the body. The Samoans attribute all madness to possession.
The Congo people have the same notion of epilepsy. The East Africans
believe that falling sickness is due to spirits.[17] In Rajputana, says
Mr. W. Crooke, disease is generally attributed to Khor or the agency of
offended spirits. The Mahadeo Kolis of Ahmadnagar believe that every
malady or disease that seizes man, woman, or child, or cattle, is caused
either by evil spirits or by an angry god. The Bijapur Veddas have a
yearly feast to their ancestors to prevent the dead bringing sickness
into the house.[18] "A Catholic missionary," says Professor Frazer,
"observes that in New Guinea the _nepir_, or sorcerer, is everywhere....
Nothing happens without the sorcerer's intervention; wars, marriage,
death, expeditions, fishing, hunting, always and everywhere the
sorcerer."[19]
In Ancient Egypt, Chaldea, and Assyria there is ample evidence that the
same belief flourished. Everywhere we find the exorcist and the
witch-doctor existing as natural consequents of the belief that disease
has a supernatural origin. We see it in both the teaching and practice
of the early Christian Church. That great father of the Church, Origen,
says: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruption of
the air, and pestilence." St. Augustine said that "All diseases of
Christians are to be ascribed to demons." The Church of England still
retains in its Articles an authorisation for the expulsion of demons;
and a number of charms yet in wide use amongst civilised nations show
how persistent is this belief. For centuries there existed all over
Europe sacred pools, wells, grottos, etc., all bearing eloquent witness
to the deep-seated belief that disease was of supernatural origin, and
was to be conquered by supernatural means.
Enough has been said to indicate the kind of environment in which
primitive man moves, and also to understand why ideas concerning the
supernatural exert such an enormous influence in early society. In a
world where everything was yet to be learned, man's first attempts at
understanding himself and his fellows were necessarily blundering and
tentative. His first attempts at explanation are expressed in terms of
his own nature. He sees himself, his own passions, strengths, and
weaknesses reflected in the nature around him. This is the outstanding,
dominating fact in primitive life. Leave out this consideration and
primitive sociology becomes a chaos. Admit it, and we see the reason why
social institutions assumed the form they took, and also a key to much
that happens in subsequent human history. In primitive life religious
beliefs are not something separate from other forms of social life; so
far as man seeks consciously to shape that life they are to him an
essential part of it. And the mistake once made is perpetuated. The
initial blunder once committed, daily experience seems to give it
constant justification. In the absence of knowledge concerning natural
forces every event,--particularly if unusual,--every case of disease,
endorses and strengthens the mistake made. A psychological fatality
drives the human race along the wrong path of investigation, and only
very slowly is the mistake rectified. One cannot see how it could have
been otherwise. The only corrective is knowledge, and knowledge is a
plant of slow growth. This psychological first step was man's first
attempt to frame a theory of things satisfactory to his intellect--an
attempt that, beginning in the crude animism of the savage, ends in the
verifiable laws of modern science.
From the point of view of our present enquiry two things are to be
noted. The first is that man's conviction of the nearness of a
supernatural world began in his lack of knowledge concerning the nature
of natural forces. Of this there can be little doubt. One can take all
the facts upon which primitive mankind built, and still builds, its
theories of supernaturalism, and show that they may be explained in a
quite different manner. The movements of the planets, the rush of
comets, the presence of disaster, the thousand and one operations of
natural forces no longer suggest to educated minds the action of
personal beings. The whole data of the primitive theory of things have
been rejected. The premises were false, and the conclusions necessarily
false also.
The second point is that from the earliest times one of the strongest
proofs of human contact with a supernatural world has been found in the
existence of abnormal or pathological states of mind. These may have
sometimes arisen quite naturally; at other times they have been
deliberately induced. How much the perpetuation of religious beliefs as
a whole owes to this factor has never yet been adequately realised. That
it has had a very great influence seems beyond dispute. For it seems
certain that had not "proofs" of a supernatural world been offered in
the shape of visions, ecstatic states, etc., religious beliefs would
hardly have exercised the power that has been theirs. The number of
people who are able to maintain a strong consciousness of the truth of
religion, merely looking at it as a philosophy of existence, is
naturally very few. The great majority require more tangible evidence if
their belief is to be kept alive and active. And curiously enough, the
very growth of a naturalistic explanation has driven a great many to
find the evidence they desired in those abnormal states of mind that
seemed to defy scientific analysis. In succeeding chapters evidence will
be given to show to what extent this kind of evidence for the
supernatural has been offered and accepted. It will be seen, as
Professor Tylor points out, that the line of religious development is
continuous. The latest forms stretch back in an unbroken line to the
earliest. And if this proves nothing else, it at least proves that
consequences do not always die out with the conditions that gave them
birth. It was the world of the savage that gave birth to the
supernatural. But the supernatural is still with us, even though the
world that gave it birth has disappeared. We retain conclusions based on
admittedly false premises.