from all parts of the world--that myths are aetiological, that their
purpose is to give the reason of things, to explain the origin of
fire, agriculture, civilisation, the world--of anything, in fact, that
to the savage seems to require explanation. In the animistic period,
man found gods everywhere because everywhere he was looking for gods.
To every object that arrested his attention, in the external world, he
put, or might put, the question, 'Art thou there?' Every happening
that arrested the attention of a whole community, and provoked from
the common consciousness the affirmation, 'Thou art there,' was, by
that affirmation, accepted as the doing of a god. But neither at this
stage, nor for long after, is there any myth. The being, whose
presence is thus affirmed, has at first no name: his personality is of
the faintest, his individuality, the vaguest. Mythology does not begin
until the question is put, 'Why has the god done this thing?' A myth
consists, or originally consisted, of the reason which was found and
adopted by the common consciousness as the reason why the god did what
he did do. It is in this sense that myths are aetiological. The
imagination which produces them is, in a sense, a 'scientific
imagination.' It works within limits. The data on which it works are
that this thing was done, or is done, by this god; and the problem set
to the mythological imagination is, 'Why did he, or does he, do it?'
The stories which were invented to answer this question constituted
mythology; and the fact that myths were invented for the purpose of
answering this question distinguishes them from stories in the
invention of which the imagination was not subject to restriction, was
not tied down to this god and to this action of his, and was not
limited to the sole task of imagining an answer to the question, 'Why
did he do it?' All myths are narratives, but not all narratives are
myths. Some narratives have men alone for their heroes. They are
imaginative but not mythological. Some narratives are about gods and
what they did. Their purpose is to explain why the gods did what they
did do, and those narratives are mythological.
It may, perhaps, seem that the imagination of early man would from the
first be set to work to invent myths in answer to the question, 'Why
did the god do this thing?' But, as a matter of fact, man can get on
for a long time without mythology. A striking instance of this is
afforded by the _di indigites_ of Italy. Over everything man did, or
suffered, from his birth to his death, one of these gods or goddesses
presided. The Deus Vagitanus opened the lips of the new-born infant
when it uttered its first cry; the Dea Ossipago made the growing
child's bones stout and strong; the Deus Locutius made it speak
clearly; the goddess Viriplaca restored harmony between husband and
wife who had quarrelled; the Dea Orbona closed a man's eyes at death.
These _di indigites_ had shrines and received sacrifices. They were
distinguished into gods and goddesses. Their names were proper names,
though they are but words descriptive of the function which the deity
performed or presided over. Yet though these _di indigites_ are gods,
personal gods, to whom prayer and sacrifice are offered, they have no
mythology attached to them; no myths are told about them.
The fact thus forced on our notice by the _di indigites_ of Rome
should be enough to warn us that mythology does not of necessity
spring up, as an immediate consequence of the worship of the gods. It
may even suggest a reason why mythology must be a secondary, rather
than a primary consequence of worship. The Romans were practical, and
so are savages: if they asked the question, 'Why did this god do this
thing?' they asked it in no spirit of speculation but for a practical,
common-sense reason: because they did not want this thing done again.
And they offered sacrifices to the god or goddess, with that end in
view. The things with regard to which the savage community first asks
the question, 'Why did the god do it?' are things disastrous to the
community--plague or famine. The answer to the question is really
implied by the terms in which the question is stated: the community,
or some member of the community has transgressed; he must be
discovered and punished. So long and so far as the question is thus
put and thus answered, there is little room for mythology to grow in.
And it did not grow round the _di indigites_ in Italy, or round
corresponding deities in other countries.
But the question, 'Why did the god do it?' is susceptible, on
reflection, of another kind of answer. And from minds of a more
reflective cast than the Roman, it received answer in the form of
mythology, of aetiological myths. Mythology is the work of reflection:
it is when the community has time and inclination to reflect upon its
gods and their doings that mythology arises in the common
consciousness. For everything which happens to him, early man has one
explanation, if the thing is such as seems to him to require
explanation, and the explanation is that this thing is the doing of
some god. If the thing that arrests attention is some disaster, which
calls for remedy, the community approaches the god with prayer and
sacrifice; its object is practical, not speculative; and no myth
arises. But if the thing that arrests attention is not one which calls
for action, on the part of the community, but one which stimulates
curiosity and provokes reflection, then the reflective answer to the
question, why has this thing been done by whatever god that did it, is
a myth.
Thus the mood, or state of mind, in which mythology originates is
clearly different from that in which the community approaches its
offended gods for the purpose of appeasing them. The purpose in the
latter case is atonement and reconciliation. The state of mind in the
former case is one of enquiry. The emotion, of mingled fear and hope,
which constitutes the one state of mind, is clearly different from the
spirit of enquiry which characterises and constitutes the other state
of mind. The one mood is undeniably religious; the other, not so. In
the one mood, the community feels itself to be in the presence of its
gods; in the other it is reflecting and enquiring about them. In the
one case the community appears before its god; in the other it is
reflectively using its idea of god, for the purpose of explaining
things that call for explanation. But the idea of God, when used in
this way, for the purpose of explaining things by means of myths, is
modified by the use it is put to. It is not merely that everything
which happens is explained, if it requires explanation, as the doing
of some god; but the motives which early man ascribed, in his
mythological moments, to the gods--motives which only undeveloped man
could have ascribed to them--became part of the idea of God on which
mythology worked and with which myths had to do. The idea of god thus
gradually developed in polytheistic myths, the accumulated reflections
of savage, barbarous and semi-barbarous ancestors, tends eventually to
provoke reaction. But why? Not merely because the myths are immoral
and irrational. But because of the essential impiety of imputing
immoral and irrational acts to the divine personality. Plainly, then,
those thinkers and writers who were painfully impressed by such
impiety, who were acutely conscious that divine personality was
irreconcilable with immorality and irrationality, had some other idea
of God than the mythological. We may go further: we may safely say
that the average man would not have been perturbed, as he was, by
Socrates, for instance, had he, also, not found within him some other
idea of God than the mythological. And we can understand, to some
extent, how this should be, if we call to mind that, though mythology
grows and luxuriates, still the worship of the gods goes on. That is
to say, the community, through it all, continues to approach its gods,
for the purpose, and with the emotion of mingled fear and hope, with
which it had always come into the presence of its gods. It is the
irreconcilability of the mood of emotion, which is essentially
religious, with the mythological mode of reflective thought, which is
not, that tends to bring about the religious reaction against
mythology. It is not however until the divergence between religion
and mythology has become considerable that the irreconcilability
becomes manifest. And it is in the experience of some individual, and
not in the common consciousness, that this irreconcilability is first
discovered. That discovery it is which makes the discoverer realise
that it is not merely when he comes before the presence of his gods in
their temples, but that, whenever his heart rises on the tide of
mingled fear, hope and thanksgiving, he comes into the presence of his
God. Having sought for the divine personality in all the external
objects of the world around him in the end he learns, what was the
truth from the beginning,--that it is in his heart he has access to
his God.
The belief in gods does not of necessity result in a mythology. The
instance of the _di indigites_ of Italy is there to show that it is no
inevitable result. But mythology, wherever it is found, is of itself
sufficient proof that gods are, or have been, believed in; it is the
outcome of reflection and enquiry about the gods, whom the community
approaches, with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and worships with
sacrifice and prayer. Now, a mythology, or perhaps we should rather
say fragments of a mythology, may continue to exist as survivals, long
after belief in the gods, of whom the myths were originally told, has
changed, or even passed away entirely. Such traces of gods dethroned
are to be found in the folk-lore of most Christian peoples. Indeed,
not only are traces of bygone mythology to be found in Christendom;
but rites and customs, which once formed part of the worship of now
forgotten gods; or it may be that only the names of the gods survive
unrecognised, as in the names of the days of the week. The existence
of such survivals in Europe is known; their history has been traced;
their origin is undoubted. When, then, in other quarters of the globe
than Europe, amongst peoples which are as old as any European people,
though they have no recorded history, we find fragments of mythology,
or of ritual, or mere names of gods, without the myths and the ritual
which attach elsewhere to gods, the presumption is that here too we
have to deal with survivals of a system of worship and mythology,
which once existed, and has now gone to pieces, leaving but these
pieces of wreckage behind. Thus, amongst the Australian black-fellows
we find myths about gods who now receive no worship. But they never
could have become gods unless they had been worshipped at some time;
they could not have acquired the proper, personal names by which they
are designated in these surviving myths, if they had not been
worshipped long enough for the words which designate them to become
proper names, i.e. names denoting no other person than the one
designated by them. Amongst other backward peoples of the earth we
find the names of gods surviving, not only with no worship but no
myths attached to them; and the inference plainly is that, as they are
still remembered to be gods, they once were objects of worship
certainly, and probably once were subjects of mythology. And if, of a
bygone religious system all that remains is in one place some
fragments of mythology, and in another nothing but the mere names of
the gods, then it is nothing astonishing if elsewhere all that we find
is some fragment of worship, some rite, which continues to be
practised, for its own sake, even though all memory of the gods in
whose worship it originated has disappeared from the common
consciousness--a disappearance which would be the easier if the gods
worshipped had acquired no names, or names as little personal as those
of the _di indigites_. Ritual of this kind, not associated with the
names of any gods, is found amongst the Australian tribes, and may be
the wreckage of a system gone to pieces.
Here, too, there is opportunity again, for the same error as that into
which students of mythology once fell before, when they found, or
thought they found, in mythology, profound truths, known or revealed
to sages of old. The survivals mentioned in the last paragraph may be
interpreted as survivals of a prior monotheism or a primitive
revelation. But if they are survivals, at all, then they are
survivals from a period when the ancestors of the present-day Africans
or Australian black-fellows were in an earlier stage of social
development--in an earlier stage even of linguistic development and of
the thought which develops with language--than their descendants are
now. Even in that earlier stage of development, however, man sought
for God. If he thought, mistakenly, to find Him in this or that
external object, he was not wrong in the conviction that underlay his
search--the conviction that God is at no time afar off from any one of
us.
III
THE IDEA OF GOD IN WORSHIP
We have found mythology of but little use in our search after the idea
of God; and the reason, as we have suggested, is that myth-making is a
reflective process, a process in which the mind reflects upon the
idea, and therefore a process which cannot be set up unless the idea
is already present, or, rather we should say, has already been
presented. When it has been presented, it can become food for
reflection, but not until then. If then we wish to discover where and
when it is thus immediately presented, let us look for it in worship.
If it is given primarily in the moment of worship, it may be
reproduced in a secondary stage as a matter for reflection. Now, in
worship--provided that it be experienced as a reality, and not
performed as a conventionality--the community's purpose is to approach
its God: let us come before the Lord and enter His courts with praise,
are words which represent fairly the thought and feeling which, on
ordinary occasions, the man who goes to worship--really--experiences,
whether he be polytheist or monotheist. I have spoken of 'the moment
of worship,' but worship is, of course, a habit: if it is not a habit,
it ceases to be at all, in any effective sense. And it is a habit of
the community, of the common consciousness, which is continuous
through the ages, even though it slowly changes; and which, as
continuous, is conservative and tenacious. Even when it has become
monotheistic, it may continue to speak of the one God as 'a great god
above all other gods,' in terms which are survivals of an earlier
stage of belief. Such expressions are like the clouds which, though
they are lifting, still linger round the mountain top: they are part
of the vapour which had previously obscured from view the reality
which was there, and cannot be shaken at any time.
Worship may include words spoken, hymns of praise and prayer; but it
includes also things done, acts performed, ritual. It is these acts
that are the facts from which we have now to start, in order to infer
what we can from them as to the idea of God which prompted them. There
is an infinite diversity in these facts of ritual, just as the gods of
polytheism are infinite in number and kind. But if there is diversity,
there is also unity. Greatly as the gods of polytheism differ from one
another, they are at least beings worshipped--and worshipped by the
community. Greatly as rituals vary in their detail, they are all
ritual: all are worship, and, all, the worship rendered by the
community to its gods. And there can be no doubt as to their object or
the purpose with which the community practises them: that purpose is,
at least, to bring the community into the presence of its Lord. We may
safely say that there can be no worship unless there is a community
worshipping and a being which is worshipped. Nor can there be any
doubt as to the relation existing between the two. The community bow
down and worship: that is the attitude of the congregation. Nor can
there be any doubt as to the relation which the god bears, in the
common consciousness, to his worshippers: he is bound to them by
special ties--from him they expect the help which they have received
in ages past. They have faith in him--else they would not worship
him--faith that he will be what he has been in the past, a very help
in time of trouble. The mere fact that they seek to come before him is
a confession of the faith that is in them, the faith that they are in
the presence of their God and have access to Him. However primitive,
that is rudimentary, the worship may be; however low in the scale of
development the worshippers may be; however dim their idea of God and
however confused and contradictory the reflections they may make
about Him, it is in that faith that they worship. So much is implied
by worship--by the mere fact that the worshippers are gathered
together for worship. If we are to find any clue which may give us
uniform guidance through the infinite variety in the details of the
innumerable rituals that are, or have been, followed in the world, we
must look to find it in the purpose for which the worshippers gather
together. But, if we wish to be guided by objective facts rather than
by hasty, _a priori_ assumptions, we must begin by consulting the
facts: we must enquire whether the details of the different rituals
present nothing but diversity, or whether there is any respect in
which they show likeness or uniformity. There is one point in which
they resemble one another; and, what is more, that point is the
leading feature in all of them; they all centre round sacrifice. It is
with sacrifice, or by means of sacrifice, that their gods are
approached by all men, beginning even with the jungle-dwellers of
Chota Nagpur, who sacrifice fowls and offer victims, for the purpose
of conciliating the powers that send jungle-fever and murrain. The
sacrificial rite is the occasion on which, and a means by which, the
worshipper is brought into that closer relation with his god, which he
would not seek, if he did not--for whatever reason--desire it. As
bearing on the idea of God, the spiritual import, and the practical
importance, of the sacrificial rite is that he who partakes in it can
only partake of it so far as he recognises that God is no private idea
of his own, existing only in his notion, but is objectively real. The
jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur may have no name for the being to whom,
at the appointed season and in the appointed place, he sacrifices
fowls; but, as we have seen, the gods only come to have proper,
personal names in slow course of time. He may be incapable of giving
any account, comprehensible to the civilised enquirer, of the idea
which he has of the being to whom he offers sacrifice: more
accomplished theologians than he have failed to define God. But of the
reality of the being whom he seeks to approach he has no doubt. It is
not the case that the reality of that being, by whomsoever worshipped,
is an assumption which must be made, or a hypothesis that must be
postulated, for the sake of providing a logical justification of
worship. The simple fact is that the religious consciousness is the
consciousness of God as real, just as the common consciousness is the
consciousness of things as real. To represent the reality of either as
something that is not experienced but inferred is to say that we have
no experience of reality, and therefore have no real grounds for
inference. We find it preferable to hold that we have immediate
consciousness of the real, to some extent, and that by inference we
may be brought, to a larger extent, into immediate consciousness of
the real.
Of the reality of Him, whom even the jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur
seeks to approach, it is only possible to doubt on grounds which seek
to deny the ultimate validity of the common consciousness on any
point. With the inferences which men have drawn about that reality,
and the ideas those inferences have led to, the case is different.
What exactly those ideas are, or have been, we have, more or less, to
guess at, from such facts as the science of religion furnishes. One
such set of facts is comprised under the term, worship; and of that
set the leading fact everywhere is the rite of sacrifice. By means of
it we may reasonably expect to penetrate to some of the ideas which
the worshippers had of the gods whom they worshipped. Unfortunately,
however, there is considerable difference of opinion, between students
of the science of religion, as to the idea which underlies sacrifice.
One fact from which we may start is that it is with sacrifice that the
community draws near to the god it wishes to approach. The outward,
physical fact, the visible set of actions, is that the body of
worshippers proceed, with their oblation, to the place in which the
god manifests himself and is to be found. The inference which follows
is that, corresponding to this series of outward actions, there is an
internal conviction in the hearts and minds of the worshippers: they
would not go to the place, unless they felt that, in so doing, they
were drawing near to their god.
In thus drawing near, both physically and spiritually, they take with
them something material. And this they would not do, unless taking the
material thing expressed, in some way, their mental attitude, or
rather their religious attitude. The attitude thus expressed must be
part of, or implied by, the desire to approach the god both physically
and spiritually. The fact that they carry with them some material
thing, expresses in gesture-language--such as is used by explorers
towards natives whose speech is unknown to them--the desire that
actuates them. And thus much may be safely inferred, viz. that the
desire is, at any rate, to prepossess favourably the person
approached.
Thus man approaches, bearing with him something intended to please the
god that he draws near. But though that is part of his intention, it
is not the whole. His desire is that the god shall be pleased not
merely with the offering but with him. What he brings--his
oblation--is but a means to that end. Why he wishes the god to be
pleased with him, we shall have to enquire hereafter. Thus far,
however, we see that that is the wish and is the purpose intimated by
the fact that he brings something material with him.
It seems clear also that the something material, with which the
community draws near to its god, need only be something which is
conceived to be pleasing to the god. All that is necessary is that it
should express, or symbolise, the feeling with which the community
draws near. So long as it does this, its function is discharged. What
it is of importance to notice, and what is apt to be forgotten, is the
feeling which underlies the outward act, and without which the action,
the rite, would not be performed. The feeling is the desire of the
worshipper to commend himself. If we take this point of view, then the
distinction, which is sometimes drawn between offerings and sacrifice,
need not mislead us. The distinction is that the term 'sacrifice' is
to be used only of that which is consumed, or destroyed, in the
service; while the term 'offering' is to be used only of what is not
destroyed. And the reason for drawing, or seeking to draw, the
distinction, seems to be that the destruction, or consumption, of the
material thing, in the service, is required to prove that the offering
is accepted. But, though this proof may have come, in some cases, to
be expected, as showing that the community was right in believing that
the offering would be acceptable; the fact remains that the
worshippers would not start out with the offering in their hands,
unless they thought, to begin with, that it was acceptable. They would
not draw near to the god, with an offering about the acceptability of
which they were in doubt. Anything therefore which they conceived to
be acceptable would suffice to indicate their desire to please, and
would serve to commend them. And the desire to do that which is
pleasing to their god is there from the beginning, as the condition on
which alone they can enter his presence. Neglect of this fact may lead
us to limit unduly the potentialities contained in the rite of
sacrifice, from the beginning.