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THE IDEA OF GOD IN EARLY RELIGIONS
by
F. B. JEVONS, LITT.D.
Professor of Philosophy in the
University of Durham
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1913
First Edition, 1910
Reprinted 1911, 1913
_With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the
design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by
the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_
PREFACE
In _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ the late Professor William
James has said (p. 465): 'The religious phenomenon, studied as an
inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological
complications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its
stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse
between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves
to be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both
active and mutual.' The book now before the reader deals with the
religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, in the earlier stages
of religion. By 'the Idea of God' may be meant either the
consciousness which individuals have of higher powers, with which they
feel themselves to be related, or the words in which they, or others,
seek to express that consciousness. Those words may be an expression,
that is to say an interpretation or a misinterpretation, of that
consciousness. But the words are not the consciousness: the feeling,
without which the consciousness does not exist, may be absent when the
words are spoken or heard. It is however through the words that we
have to approach the feeling and the consciousness of others, and to
determine whether and how far the feeling and the consciousness so
approached are similar in all individuals everywhere and at all
stages.
F. B. JEVONS.
HATFIELD HALL,
DURHAM.
_October, 1910_
CONTENTS
PAGE
BIBLIOGRAPHY ix
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE IDEA OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY 30
III. THE IDEA OF GOD IN WORSHIP 60
IV. THE IDEA OF GOD IN PRAYER 103
V. THE IDEA AND BEING OF GOD 152
INDEX 167
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Grant. The Evolution of the Idea of God. London, 1897.
Anthropology and the Classics. Oxford, 1908.
Bastian, A. Volks- und Menschenkunde. Berlin, 1888.
Bousset, W. What is Religion? (English Translation). London, 1907.
Crawley, A.E. The Idea of the Soul. London, 1909.
Fossey, C. La Magie Assyrienne. Paris, 1902.
Frazer, J.G. Early History of the Kingship. London, 1895.
---- The Golden Bough. London, 1900.
---- Psyche's Task. London, 1909.
Gardner, P. Modernity and the Churches. London, 1909.
Hobhouse, L.T. Morals in Evolution. London, 1906.
Hoeffding, H. The Philosophy of Religion (English Translation).
London, 1906.
Hollis, A.C. The Masai. Oxford, 1905.
---- The Nandi. Oxford, 1909.
James, W. The Varieties of Religious Experience. London, 1902.
Jastrow, M. Jun. Study of Religion. London, 1901.
Jevons, F.B. Introduction to the History of Religion. London,
1896.
---- Religion in Evolution. London, 1906.
---- Study of Comparative Religion. London, 1908.
Lang, A. Magic and Religion. London, 1901.
---- The Making of Religion. London, 1898.
Mackenzie, W.D. The Final Faith. London, 1910.
Marett, R.R. The Threshold of Religion. London, 1909.
Mitchell, H.B. Talks on Religion. London, 1908.
Nassau, R.H. Fetichism in West Africa. London, 1904.
Parker, K.L. The Euahlayi Tribe. London, 1905.
Saussaye, P.D.C. de la. Religionsgeschichte. Freiburg i. B., 1889.
Schaarschmidt, C. Die Religion. Leipzig, 1907.
Thompson, R.C. Semitic Magic. London, 1908.
Tisdall W. St C. Comparative Religion. London, 1909.
Transactions of the Third International Congress of the History of
Religions. Oxford, 1908.
Tylor, E.B. Primitive Culture. London, 1873.
Westermarck, E. Origin and Development of Moral Ideas. London,
1906.
Wundt, W. Voelkerpsychologie. Leipzig, 1904-6.
I
INTRODUCTION
Every child that is born is born of a community and into a community,
which existed before his birth and will continue to exist after his
death. He learns to speak the language which the community spoke
before he was born, and which the community will continue to speak
after he has gone. In learning the language he acquires not only words
but ideas; and the words and ideas he acquires, the thoughts he thinks
and the words in which he utters them, are those of the community from
which he learnt them, which taught them before he was born and will go
on teaching them after he is dead. He not only learns to speak the
words and think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he
does the form of speech, of the circumambient community: he is taught
and learns to act as those around him do--as the community has done
and will tend to do. The community--the narrower community of the
family, first, and, afterwards, the wider community to which the
family belongs--teaches him how he ought to speak, what he ought to
think, and how he ought to act. The consciousness of the child
reproduces the consciousness of the community to which he belongs--the
common consciousness, which existed before him and will continue to
exist after him.
The common consciousness is not only the source from which the
individual gets his mode of speech, thought and action, but the court
of appeal which decides what is fact. If a question is raised whether
the result of a scientific experiment is what it is alleged by the
original maker of the experiment to be, the appeal is to the common
consciousness: any one who chooses to make the experiment in the way
described will find the result to be of the kind alleged; if everyone
else, on experiment, finds it to be so, it is established as a fact of
common consciousness; if no one else finds it to be so, the alleged
discovery is not a fact but an erroneous inference.
Now, it is not merely with regard to external facts or facts
apprehended through the senses, that the common consciousness is
accepted as the court of appeal. The allegation may be that an
emotion, of a specified kind--alarm or fear, wonder or awe--is, in
specified circumstances, experienced as a fact of the common
consciousness. Or a body of men may have a common purpose, or a common
idea, as well as an emotion of, say, common alarm. If the purpose,
idea or emotion, be common to them and experienced by all of them, it
is a fact of their common consciousness. In this case, as in the case
of any alleged but disputed discovery in science, the common
consciousness is the court of appeal which decides the facts, and
determines whether what an individual thinks he has discovered in his
consciousness is really a fact of the common consciousness. The idea
of powers superior to man, the emotion of awe or reverence, which goes
with the idea, and the purpose of communicating with the power in
question are facts, not peculiar to this or that individual
consciousness, but facts of the common consciousness of all mankind.
The child up to a certain age has no consciousness of self: the
absence of self-consciousness is one of the charms of children. The
child imitates its elders, who speak of him and to him by his name. He
speaks of himself in the third person and not in the first person
singular, and designates himself by his proper name and not by means
of the personal pronoun 'I'; eventually the child acquires the use and
to some extent learns the meaning of the first personal pronoun; that
is, if the language of the community to which he belongs has developed
so far as to have produced such a pronoun. For there was a period in
the evolution of speech when, as yet, a first personal pronoun had not
been evolved; and that, probably, for the simple reason that the idea
which it denotes was as unknown to the community as it is to the child
whose absence of self-consciousness is so pleasing. For a period, the
length of which may have been millions of years, the common
consciousness, the consciousness of the community, did not discover or
discriminate, in language or in thought, the existence of the
individual self.
The importance of this consideration lies in its bearing upon the
question, in what form the idea of powers superior to man disclosed
itself in the common consciousness at that period. It is held by many
students of the science of religion that fetishism preceded polytheism
in the history of religion; and it is undoubted that polytheism
flourished at the expense of fetishism. But what is exactly the
difference between fetishism and polytheism? No one now any longer
holds that a fetish is regarded, by believers in fetish, as a material
object and nothing more: everyone recognises that the material object
to which the term is applied is regarded as the habitation of a
spiritual being. The material object in question is to the fetish what
the idol of a god is to a god. If the material object, through which,
or in which, the fetish-spirit manifests itself, bears no resemblance
to human form, neither do the earliest stocks or blocks in which gods
manifest themselves bear any resemblance to human form. Such unshaped
stocks do not of themselves tell us whether they are fetishes or gods
to their worshippers. The test by which the student of the science of
religion determines the question is a very simple one: it is, who
worships the object in question? If the object is the private property
of some individual, it is fetish; if it is worshipped by the community
as a whole, it, or rather the spirit which manifests itself therein,
is a god of the community. The functions of the two beings differ
accordingly: the god receives the prayers of the community and has
power to grant them; the fetish has power to grant the wishes of the
individual who owns it. The consequence of this difference in function
is that as the wishes of the individual may be inconsistent with the
welfare of other members of the community; as the fetish may be, and
actually is, used to procure injury and death to other members of the
community; a fetish is anti-social and a danger to the community,
whereas a god of the community is there expressly as a refuge and a
help for the community. The fetish fulfils the desires of the
individual, the self; the god listens to the prayers of the community.
Let us now return to that stage in the evolution of the community
when, as yet, neither the language nor the thought of the community
had discovered or discriminated the existence of the individual self.
If at that stage there was in the common consciousness any idea,
however dim or confused, of powers superior to man; if that idea was
accompanied or coloured by any emotion, whether of fear or awe or
reverence; if that emotion prompted action of any kind; then, such
powers were not conceived to be fetishes, for the function of a fetish
is to fulfil the desires of an individual self; and until the
existence of the individual self is realised, there is no function for
a fetish to perform.
It may well be that the gradual development of self-consciousness, and
the slow steps by which language helped to bring forth the idea of
self, were from the first, and throughout, accompanied by the gradual
development of the idea of fetishism. But the very development of the
idea of a power which could fulfil the desires of self, as
distinguished from, and often opposed to, the interests of the
community, would stimulate the growth of the idea of a power whose
special and particular function was to tend the interests of the
community as a whole. Thus the idea of a fetish and the idea of a god
could only persist on condition of becoming more and more inconsistent
with, and contradictory of, one another. If the lines followed by the
two ideas started from the same point, it was only to diverge the
more, the further they were pursued. And the tendency of fetishism to
disappear from the later and higher stages of religion is sufficient
to show that it did not afford an adequate or satisfactory expression
of the idea contained in the common consciousness of some power or
being greater than man. That idea is constantly striving, throughout
the history of religion, to find or give expression to itself; it is
constantly discovering that such expressions as it has found for
itself do it wrong; and it is constantly throwing, or in the process
of throwing, such expressions aside. Fetishism was thrown aside sooner
than polytheism: for it was an expression not only inadequate but
contradictory to the idea that gave it birth. The emotions of fear and
suspicion, with which the community regarded fetishes, were emotions
different from the awe or reverence with which the community
approached its gods.
What practically provokes and stimulates the individual's dawning
consciousness of himself, or the community's consciousness of the
individual as in a way distinct from itself, is the dash between the
desires, wishes, interests of the one, and the desires, wishes and
interests of the other. But though the interests of the one are
sometimes at variance with those of the other, still in some cases,
also, the interests of the individual--even though they be purely
individual interests--are not inconsistent with those of the
community; and in most cases they are identical with them--the
individual promotes his own interests by serving those of the
community, and promotes those of the community by serving his own. In
a word, the interests of the one are not so clearly and plainly cut
off from those of the other, that the individual can always be
condemned for seeking to gratify his self-interests or his own
personal desires. That is presumably one reason why fetishism is so
wide-spread and so long-lived in Western Africa, for instance: though
fetishes may be used for anti-social purposes, they may be and are
also used for purposes which if selfish are not, or are not felt to
be, anti-social. The individual owner of a fetish does not feel that
his ownership does or ought to cut him off from membership of the
community. And so long as such feeling is common, so long an
indecisive struggle between gods and fetishes continues.
Now this same cause--the impossibility of condemning the individual
for seeking to promote his own interests--will be found on examination
to be operative elsewhere, viz. in magic. The relation of magic to
religion is as much a matter of doubt and dispute as is that of
fetishism to religion. And I propose to treat magic in much the same
way as I have treated fetishism. The justification which I offer for
so doing is to be found in the parallel or analogy that may be drawn
between them. The distinction which comes to be drawn within the
common consciousness between the self and the community manifests
itself obviously in the fact that the interests and desires of the
individual are felt to be different, and yet not to be different, from
those of the community; and so they are felt to be, yet not to be,
condemnable from the point of view of the common consciousness. Now,
this is precisely the judgment which is passed upon magic, wherever it
is cultivated. It is condemnable, it is viewed with suspicion, fear
and condemnation; and yet it is also and at the same time viewed and
practised with general approval. It may be used on behalf of the
community and for the good of the community, and with public approval,
as it is when it is used to make the rain which the community needs.
It may be viewed with toleration, as it is when it is believed to
benefit an individual without entailing injury on the community. But
it is visited with condemnation, and perhaps with punishment, when it
is employed for purposes, such as murder, which the common
consciousness condemns. Accordingly the person who has the power to
work the marvels comprehended under the name of magic is viewed with
condemnation, toleration or approval, according as he uses his power
for purposes which the common consciousness condemns, tolerates or
approves. The power which such a person exerts is power personal to
him; and yet it is in a way a power greater and other than himself,
for he has it not always under his control or command: whether he
uses it for the benefit of the community or for the injury of some
individual, he cannot count on its always coming off. And this fact is
not without its influence and consequences. If he is endeavouring to
use it for the injury of some person, he will explain his failure as
due to some error he has committed in the _modus operandi_, or to the
counter-operations of some rival. But if he is endeavouring to
exercise it for the benefit of the community, failure makes others
doubtful whether he has the power to act on behalf of the community;
while, on the contrary, a successful issue makes it clear that he has
the power, and places him, in the opinion both of the community and of
himself, in an exceptional position: his power is indeed in a way
personal to himself, but it is also greater and other than himself.
His sense of it, and the community's sense of it, is reinforced and
augmented by the approval of the common consciousness, and by the
feeling that a power, in harmony with the common consciousness and the
community's desires, is working in him and through him. This power,
thus exercised, of working marvels for the common good is obviously
more closely analogous to that of a prophet working miracles, than it
is to that of the witch working injury or death. And, in the same way
that I have already suggested that gods and fetishes may have been
evolved from a prior indeterminate concept, which was neither but
might become either; so I would now suggest that miracles are not
magic, nor is magic miracles, but that the two have been
differentiated from a common source. And if the polytheistic gods,
which are to be found where fetishism is believed in, present us with
a very low stage in the development of the idea of a 'perfect
personality,' so too the sort of miracles which are believed in, where
the belief in magic flourishes, present us with a very low stage in
the development of the idea of an almighty God. Axe-heads that float
must have belonged originally to such a low stage; and rods that turn
into serpents were the property of the 'magicians of Egypt' as well as
of Aaron.
The common source, then, from which flows the power of working marvels
for the community's good, or of working magic in the interest of one
individual member and perhaps to the injury of another, is a personal
power, which in itself--that is to say, apart from the intention with
which it is used and apart from the consequences which ensue--is
neither commendable nor condemnable from the community's point of
view; and which consequently can neither be condemned nor commended by
the common consciousness, until the difference between self and the
community has become manifest, and the possibility of a divergence
between the interests of self or _alter_ and those of the community
has been realised. Further, this power, in whichever way it comes to
be exercised, marks a strong individuality; and may be the first, as
it is certainly a most striking, manifestation of the fact of
individuality: it marks off, at once, the individual possessing such
power from the rest of the community. And the common consciousness is
puzzled by the apparition. Just as it tolerates fetishes though it
disapproves of them and is afraid of them, so it tolerates the
magician, though it is afraid of him and does not cordially approve of
him, even when he benefits an individual client without injuring the
community. But though the man of power may use, and apparently most
often does use, his power, in the interest of some individual and to
the detriment of the community; and though it is this condemnable use
which is everywhere most conspicuous, and probably earliest developed;
still there is no reason why he should not use, and as a matter of
fact he sometimes does use, his power on behalf of the community to
promote the food-supply of the community or to produce the rain which
is desired. In this case, then, the individual, having a power which
others have not, is not at variance with the community but in harmony
with the common consciousness, and becomes an organ by which it acts.
When, then, the belief in gods, having the interests of the community
at heart, presents itself or develops within the common consciousness,
the individual who has the power on behalf of the community to make
rain or increase the food supply is marked out by the belief of the
community--or it may be by the communings of his own heart--as
specially related to the gods. Hence we find, in the low stages of the
evolution of religion, the proceedings, by which the man of power had
made rain for the community or increased the food-supply, either
incorporated into the ritual of the gods, or surviving traditionally
as incidents in the life of a prophet, e.g. the rain-making of Elijah.
In the same way therefore as I have suggested that the resemblances
between gods and fetishes are to be explained by the theory that the
two go back to a common source, and that neither is developed from the
other, so I suggest that the resemblances between the conception of
prophet and that of magician point not to the priority of either to
the other, but to the derivation or evolution of both from a prior and
less determinate concept.
Just as a fetish is a material thing, and something more, so a
magician is a man and something more. Just as a god is an idol and
something more, so a prophet or priest is a man and something more.
The fetish is a material thing which manifests a power that other
things do not exhibit; and the magician is a man possessing a power
which other men have not. The difference between the magician and the
prophet or priest is the same as the difference between the fetish and
the god. It is the difference between that which subserves the wishes
of the individual, which may be, and often are, anti-social, and that
which furthers the interests of the community. Of this difference each
child who is born into the community learns from his elders: it is
part of the common consciousness of the community. And it could not
become a fact of the common consciousness until the existence of self
became recognised in thought and expressed in language. With that
recognition of difference, or possible difference, between the
individual and the community, between the desires of the one and the
welfare of the other, came the recognition of a difference between
fetish and god, between magician and priest. The power exercised by
either was greater than that of man; but the power manifested in the
one was exercised with a view to the good of the community; in the
case of the other, not. Thus, from the beginning, gods were not merely
beings exercising power greater than that of man, but beings
exercising their power for the good of man. It is as such that, from
the beginning to the end, they have figured both in the common
consciousness of the community, and in the consciousness of every
member born into the community. They have figured in both; and,
because they have figured both in the individual consciousness and the
common consciousness, they have, from the beginning, been something
present to both, something at once within the individual and without.
But as the child recognises objects long before he becomes aware of
the existence of himself, so man, in his infancy, sought this power or
being in the external world long before he looked for it within
himself.
It is because man looked for this being or power in the external world
that he found, or thought he found, it there. He looked for it and
found it, in the same way as to this day the African negro finds a
fetish. A negro found a stone and took it for his fetish, as Professor
Tylor relates, as follows:--'He was once going out on important
business, but crossing the threshold he trod on this stone and hurt
himself. Ha! ha! thought he, art thou there? So he took the stone, and
it helped him through his undertaking for days.' So too when the
community's attention is arrested by something in the external world,
some natural phenomenon which is marvellous in their eyes, their
attitude of mind, the attitude of the common consciousness, translated
into words is: 'Ha! ha! art thou there?' This attitude of mind is one
of expectancy: man finds a being, possessed of greater power than
man's, because he is ready to find it and expecting it.
So strong is this expectancy, so ready is man to find this being,
superior to man, that he finds it wherever he goes, wherever he looks.
There is probably no natural phenomenon whatever that has not
somewhere, at some time, provoked the question or the reflection 'Art
thou there?' And it is because man has taken upon himself to answer
the question, and to say: 'Thou art there, in the great and strong
wind which rends the mountains; or, in the earthquake; or, in the
fire' that polytheism has arisen. Perhaps, however, we should rather
use the word 'polydaemonism' than 'polytheism.' By a god is usually
meant a being who has come to possess a proper name; and, probably, a
spirit is worshipped for some considerable time, before the
appellative, by which he is addressed, loses its original meaning, and
comes to be the proper name by which he, and he alone, is addressed.
Certainly, the stage in which spirits without proper names are
worshipped seems to be more primitive than that in which the being
worshipped is a god, having a proper name of his own. And the
difference between the two stages of polydaemonism and polytheism is
not merely limited to the fact that the beings worshipped have proper
names in the later stage, and had none in the earlier. A development
or a difference in language implies a development or difference in
thought. If the being or spirit worshipped has come to be designated
by a proper name, he has lost much of the vagueness that characterises
a nameless spirit, and he has come to be much more definite and much
more personal. Indeed, a change much more sinister, from the
religious point of view, is wrought, when the transition from
polydaemonism to polytheism is accomplished.
In the stage of human evolution known as animism, everything which
acts--or is supposed to act--is supposed to be, like man himself, a
person. But though, in the animistic stage, all powers are conceived
by man as being persons, they are not all conceived as having human
form: they may be animals, and have animal forms; or birds, and have
bird-form; they may be trees, clouds, streams, the wind, the
earthquake or the fire. In some, or rather in all, of these, man has
at some time found the being or the power, greater than man, of whom
he has at all times been in quest, with the enquiry, addressed to each
in turn, 'Art thou there?' The form of the question, the use of the
personal pronoun, shows that he is seeking for a person. And students
of the science of religion are generally agreed that man, throughout
the history of religion, has been seeking for a power or being
superior to man and greater than he. It is therefore a personal power
and a personal being that man has been in search of, throughout his
religious history. He has pushed his search in many directions--often
simultaneously in different directions; and, he has abandoned one line
of enquiry after another, because he has found that it did not lead
him whither he would be. Thus, as we have seen, he pushed forward, at
the same time, in the direction of fetishism and of polytheism, or
rather of polydaemonism; but fetishism failed to bring him
satisfaction, or rather failed to satisfy the common consciousness,
the consciousness of the community, because it proved on trial to
subserve the wishes--the anti-social wishes--of the individual, and
not the interests of the community. The beings or powers that man
looked to find and which he supposed he found, whether as fetishes in
this or that object, or as daemons in the sky, the fire or the wind,
in beast or bird or tree, were taken to be personal beings and
personal powers, bearing the same relation to that in which, or
through which, they manifested themselves, as man bears to his body.
They do not seem to have been conceived as being men, or the souls of
men which manifested themselves in animals or trees. At the time when
polydaemonism has, as yet, not become polytheism, the personal beings,
worshipped in this or that external form, have not as yet been
anthropomorphised. Indeed, the process which constitutes the change
from polydaemonism to polytheism consists in the process, or rather is
the process, by which the spirits, the personal beings, worshipped in
tree, or sky, or cloud, or wind, or fire came gradually to be
anthropomorphised--to be invested with human parts and passions and to
be addressed like human beings with proper names. But when
anthropomorphic polytheism is thus pushed to its extreme logical
conclusions, its tendency is to collapse in the same way, and for the
same reasons, as fetishism, before it, had collapsed. What man had
been in search of, from the beginning, and was still in search of, was
some personal being or power, higher than and superior to man. What
anthropomorphic polytheism presented him with, in the upshot, was with
beings, not superior, but, in some or many cases, undeniably inferior
to man. As such they could not thenceforth be worshipped. In Europe
their worship was overthrown by Christianity. But, on reflection, it
seems clear not only that, as such, they could not thenceforth be
worshipped; but that, as such, they never had been worshipped. In the
consciousness of the community, the object of worship had always been,
from the beginning, some personal being superior to man. The apostle
of Christianity might justifiably speak to polytheists of the God
'whom ye ignorantly worship.' It is true, and it is important to
notice, that the sacrifices and the rites and ceremonies, which
together made up the service of worship, had been consciously and
intentionally rendered to deities represented in human form; and, in
this sense, anthropomorphic deities had been worshipped. But, if
worship is something other than sacrifice and rite and ceremony, then
the object of worship--the personal being, greater than man--presented
to the common consciousness, is something other than the
anthropomorphic being, inferior in much to man, of whom poets speak in
mythology and whom artists represent in bodily shape.
Just as fetishism developed and persisted, because it did contain,
though it perverted, one element of religious truth--the accessibility
of the power worshipped to the worshipper--so too anthropomorphism,
notwithstanding the consequences to which, in mythology, it led, did
contain, or rather, was based on, one element of truth, viz. that the
divine is personal, as well as the human. Its error was to set up, as
divine personalities, a number of reproductions or reflections of
human personality. It leads to the conclusion, as a necessary
consequence, that the divine personality is but a shadow of the human
personality, enlarged and projected, so to speak, upon the clouds, but
always betraying, in some way or other, the fact that it is but the
shadow, magnified or distorted, of man. It excludes the possibility
that the divine personality, present to the common consciousness as
the object of worship, may be no reproduction of the human
personality, but a reality to which the human personality has the
power of approximating. Be this as it may, we are justified in saying,
indeed we are compelled to recognise, that in mythology, all the world
over, we see a process of reflection at work, by which the beings,
originally apprehended as superior to man, come first to be
anthropomorphised, that is to be apprehended as having the parts and
passions of men, and then, consequently, to be seen to be no better
than men. This discovery it is which in the long run proves fatal to
anthropomorphism.
We have seen, above, the reason why fetishism becomes eventually
distasteful to the common consciousness: the beings, superior to man,
which are worshipped by the community, are worshipped as having the
interests of the community in their charge, and as having the good of
the community at heart; whereas a fetish is sought and found by the
individual, to advance his private interests, even to the cost and
loss of other individuals and of the community at large. Thus, from
the earliest period at which beings, superior to man, are
differentiated into gods and fetishes, gods are accepted by the common
consciousness as beings who maintain the good of the community and
punish those who infringe it; while fetishes become beings who assist
individual members to infringe the customary morality of the tribe.
Thus, from the first, the beings, of whom the community is conscious
as superior to man, are beings, having in charge, first, the customary
morality of the tribe; and, afterwards, the conscious morality of the
community.
This conception, it was, of the gods, as guardians of morality and of
the common good, that condemned fetishism; and this conception it was,
which was to prove eventually the condemnation of polytheism. A
multitude of beings--even though they be divine beings--means a
multitude, that is a diversity, of ideas. Diversity of ideas,
difference of opinion, is what is implied by every mythology which
tells of disputes and wars between the gods. Every god, who thus
disputed and fought with other gods, must have felt that he had right
on his side, or else have fought for the sake of fighting.
Consequently the gods of polytheism are either destitute of morality,
or divided in opinion as to what is right. In neither case, therefore,
are the gods, of whom mythology tells, the beings, superior to man,
who, from the beginning, were present in the common consciousness to
be worshipped. From the outset, the object of the community's worship
had been conceived as a moral power. If, then, the many gods of
polytheism were either destitute or disregardful of morality, they
could not be the moral power of which the common consciousness had
been dimly aware: that moral power, that moral personality, must be
other than they. As the moral consciousness of the community
discriminated fetishes from gods and tended to rule out fetishes from
the sphere of religion; so too, eventually, the moral consciousness of
the community came to be offended by the incompatibility between the
moral ideal and the conception of a multitude of gods at variance with
each other. If the common consciousness was slow in coming to
recognise the unity of the Godhead--and it was slower in some people
than in others--the unity was logically implied, from the beginning,
in the conception of a personal power, greater and higher than man,
and having the good of the community at heart. The history of religion
is, in effect, from one point of view, the story of the process by
which this conception, however dim, blurred or vague, at first, tends
to become clarified and self-consistent.
That, however, is not the only point of view from which the history of
religion can, or ought to be, regarded. So long as we look at it from
that point of view, we shall be in danger of seeing nothing in the
history of religion but an intellectual process, and nothing in
religion itself but a mental conception. There is, however, another
element in religion, as is generally recognised; and that an emotional
element, as is usually admitted. What however is the nature of that
emotion, is a question on which there has always been diversity of
opinion. The beings, who figured in the common consciousness as gods,
were apprehended by the common consciousness as powers superior to
man; and certainly as powers capable of inflicting suffering on the
community. As such, then, they must have been approached with an
emotion of the nature of reverence, awe or fear. The important, the
determining, fact, however, is that they were approached. The emotion,
therefore, which prompted the community to approach them, is at any
rate distinguishable from the mere fright which would have kept the
community as far away from these powers as possible. The emotion which
prompted approach could not have been fear, pure and simple. It must
have been more in the nature of awe or reverence; both of which
feelings are clearly distinguishable from fear. Thus, we may fear
disease or disgrace; but the fear we feel carries with it neither awe
nor reverence. Again, awe is an inhibitive feeling, it is a feeling
which--as in the case of the awe-struck person--rather prevents than
promotes action or movement. And the determining fact about the
religious emotion is that it was the emotion with which the community
approached its gods. That emotion is now, and probably always was,
reverential in character. The occasion, on which a community
approaches its gods, often is, and doubtless often was, a time when
misfortune had befallen the community. The misfortune was viewed as a
visitation of the god's wrath upon his community; and fear--that 'fear
of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom'--doubtless played a
large part in the complex emotion which stirred the community, not to
run away but to approach the god for the purpose of appeasing his
wrath. In the complexity of an emotion which led to action of this
kind, we must recognise not merely fear but some trust and
confidence--so much, at least, as prevented the person who experienced
it from running away simply. The emotion is not too complex for man,
in however primitive a stage of development: it is not more complex
than that which brings a dog to his master, though it knows it is
going to be thrashed.
That some trust and confidence is indispensable in the complex feeling
with which a community approaches its gods, for the purpose of
appeasing their wrath--still more, for beseeching favours from
them--seems indisputable. But we must not exaggerate it. Wherever
there are gods at all, they are regarded by the community as beings
who can be approached: so much confidence, at least, is placed in them
by the community that believes in them. Even if they are offended and
wrathful, the community is confident that they can be appeased: the
community places so much trust in them. Indeed its trust goes even
further: it is sure that they do not take offence without reasonable
grounds. If they display wrath against the community and send calamity
upon it, it is, and in the opinion of the community, can only be,
because some member of the community has done that which he should not
have done. The gods may be, on occasion, wrathful; but they are just.
They are from the beginning moral beings--according to such standard
of morality as the community possesses--and it is breaches of the
tribe's customary morality that their wrath is directed against. They
are, from the beginning, and for long afterwards in the history of
religion, strict to mark what is amiss, and, in that sense, they are
jealous gods. And this aspect of the Godhead it is which fills the
larger part of the field of religious consciousness, not only in the
case of peoples who have failed to recognise the unity of the Godhead,
but even in the case of a people like the Jews, who did recognise it.
The other aspect of the Godhead, as the God, not merely of mercy and
forgiveness, but of love, was an aspect fully revealed in Christianity
alone, of all the religions in the world.
But the love God displays to all his children, to the prodigal son as
well as to others, is not a mere attribute assigned to Him. It is not
a mere quality with which one religion may invest Him, and of which
another religion, with equal right, may divest Him. The idea of God
does not consist merely of attributes and qualities, so that, if you
strip off all the attributes and qualities, nothing is left, and the
idea is shown to be without content, meaning or reality.
The Godhead has been, in the common consciousness, from the beginning,
a being, a personal being, greater than man; and it is as such that He
has manifested Himself in the common consciousness, from the beginning
until the present day. To this personality, as to others, attributes
and qualities may be falsely ascribed, which are inconsistent with one
another and are none of His. Some of the attributes thus falsely
ascribed may be discovered, in the course of the history of religion,
to have been falsely ascribed; and they will then be set aside. Thus,
fetishism ascribed, or sought to ascribe, to the Godhead, the quality
of willingness to promote even the anti-social desires of the owner of
the fetish. And fetishism exfoliated, or peeled off from the religious
organism. Anthropomorphism, which ascribed to the divine personality
the parts and passions of man, along with a power greater than man's to
violate morality, is gradually dropped, as its inconsistency with the
idea of God comes gradually to be recognised and loathed. So too with
polytheism: a pantheon which is divided against itself cannot stand.
Thus, fetishism, anthropomorphism and polytheism ascribe qualities to
the Godhead, which are shown to be attributes assigned to the Godhead
and imposed upon it from without, for eventually they are found by
experience to be incompatible with the idea of God as it is revealed in
the common consciousness.
On the other hand, the process of the history of religion, the process
of the manifestation or revelation of the Godhead, does not proceed
solely by this negative method, or method of exclusion. If an
attribute, such as that of human form, or of complicity in anti-social
purposes, is ascribed, by anthropomorphism or fetishism, to the divine
personality, and is eventually felt by the common consciousness to be
incompatible with the idea of God, the result is not merely that the
attribute in question drops off, and leaves the idea of the divine
personality exactly where it was, and what it was, before the
attribute had been foisted on it. The incompatibility of the quality,
falsely ascribed or assigned, becomes--if, and when, it does
become--manifest and intolerable, just in proportion as the idea of
God, which has always been present, however vaguely and ill-defined,
in the common consciousness, comes to manifest itself more definitely.
The attribution, to the divine personality, of qualities, which are
eventually found incompatible with it, may prove the occasion of the
more precise and definite manifestation; we may say that action
implies reaction, and so false ideas provoke true ones, but the false
ideas do not create the new ones. The false ideas may stimulate closer
attention to the actual facts of the common consciousness and thus may
stimulate the formation of truer ideas about them, by leading to a
concentration of attention upon the actual facts. But it is from this
closer attention, this concentration of attention, that the newer and
truer knowledge comes, and not from the false ideas. What we speak
of, from one point of view, as closer attention to the facts of the
common consciousness, may, from another point of view, be spoken of as
an increasing manifestation, or a clearer revelation, of the divine
personality, revealed or manifested to the common consciousness. Those
are two views, or two points of view, of one and the same process. But
whichever view we take of it, the process does not proceed solely by
the negative method of exclusion: it is a process which results in the
unfolding and disclosure, not merely of what is in the common
consciousness, at any given moment, but of what is implied in the
divine personality revealed to the common consciousness. If we choose
to speak of this unfolding or disclosure as evolution, the process,
which the history of religion undertakes to set forth, will be the
evolution of the idea of God. But, in that case, the process which we
designate by the name of evolution, will be a process of disclosure
and revelation. Disclosure implies that there is something to
disclose; revelation, that there is something to be revealed to the
common consciousness--the presence of the Godhead, of divine
personality.
II
THE IDEA OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY
The idea of God is to be found, it will be generally admitted, not
only in monotheistic religions, but in polytheistic religions also;
and, as polytheisms have developed out of polydaemonism, that is to
say, as the personal beings or powers of polydaemonism have, in course
of time, come to possess proper names and a personal history, some
idea of divine personality must be admitted to be present in
polydaemonism as well as in polytheism; and, in the same way, some
idea of a personality greater than human may be taken to lie at the
back of both polydaemonism and fetishism.
If we wish to understand what ideas are in a man's mind, we may infer
them from the words that he speaks and from the way in which he acts.
The most natural and the most obvious course is to start from what he
says. And that is the course which was followed by students of the
history of religion, when they desired to ascertain what idea exactly
man has had of his gods. They had recourse, for the information they
wanted, to mythology. Later on, indeed, they proceeded to enquire into
what man did, into the ritual which he observed in approaching his
gods; and, in the next chapter, we will follow them in that enquiry.
But in this chapter we have to ask what light mythology throws upon
the idea man has had of his gods.
Before doing so, however, we cannot but notice that mythology and
polytheism go together. Fetishism does not produce any mythology.
Doubtless, the owner of a fetish which acts knows and can tell of the
wonderful things it has done. But those anecdotes do not get taken up
into the common stock of knowledge; nor are they handed down by the
common consciousness to all succeeding generations of the community.
Mythology, like language, is the work, and is a possession, of the
common consciousness.
Polydaemonism, like fetishism, does not produce mythology; but, for a
different reason. The beings worshipped in the period of polydaemonism
are beings who have not yet come to possess personal names, and
consequently cannot well have a personal history attached to them. The
difficulty is not indeed an absolute impossibility. Tales can be told,
and at a certain stage in the history of fiction, especially in the
pre-historic stage, tales are told, in which the hero has no proper
name: the period is 'once upon a time,' and the hero is 'a man'
_simpliciter_. But myths are not told about 'a god' _simpliciter_. In
mythology the hero of the myth is not 'a god,' in the sense of any god
you like, but this particular, specified god. And the reason is clear.
In fiction the artist creates the hero as well as the tale; and the
primitive teller of tales did not find it always necessary to invent a
name for the hero he created. The hero could, and did, get along for
some time without any proper name. But with mythology the case is
different. The personal being, superior to man, of whom the myth is
told, is not the creation of the teller of the tale: he is a being
known by the community to exist. He cannot therefore, when he is the
hero of a myth, be described as 'a god--any god you like.' Nor is the
myth a tale which could be told of any god whatever: if a myth is a
tale, at any rate it is a tale which can be told of none other god but
this. Indeed, a myth is not a tale: it is an incident--or string of
incidents--in the personal history of a particular person, or being,
superior to man.
It is then as polydaemonism passes into polytheism, as the beings of
the one come to acquire personal names and personal history, and so to
become the gods of the other, that mythology arises. It is under
polytheism that mythology reaches its most luxuriant growth; and when
polytheism disappears, mythology tends to disappear with it. Thus, the
light which mythology may be expected to throw on the idea of God is
one, which, however it may illumine the polytheistic idea of God, will
not be found to shine far beyond the area of polytheism.