felt in the earliest of ages on occasions when calamity befalls the
community. The calamity is interpreted as sent by the god; and the god
is conceived to have been provoked by an offence of which some member
of the community had been guilty. We may say, therefore, that from
the beginning there has been present in the common consciousness a
sense of sin and the desire to make atonement. Psychologically it
seems clear that at the present day, in the case of the individual,
personal religion first manifests itself usually in the consciousness
of sin. And what is true in the psychology of the individual may be
expected within limits to hold true in the psychology of the common
consciousness. But though we may say that, in the beginning, it was by
the occurrence of public calamity that the community became conscious
that sin had been committed, still it is also true to say that the
community felt that it was by some one of its members, rather than by
the community, that the offence had been committed, for which the
community was responsible. It was the responsibility, rather than the
offence, which was prominent in the common consciousness--as indeed
tends to be the case with the individual also. But the fact that the
offence had been committed, not by the community, but by some one
member of the community, doubtless helped to give the community the
confidence without which its attitude towards the offended power would
have been simply one of fear. Had the feeling been one of fear, pure
and unmixed, the movement of the community could not have been towards
the offended being. But religion manifests itself from the beginning
in the action of drawing near to the god. The fact that the offence
was the deed of some one member, and not of the community as a whole,
doubtless helped to give the community the confidence, without which
its attitude towards the offended power would have been simply one of
fear. But it also tended necessarily to make religion an affair of the
community rather than a personal need: sin had indeed been committed,
but not by those who drew near to the god for the purpose of making
the atonement. They were not the offenders. The community admitted its
responsibility, indeed, but it found one of its members guilty.
We may, therefore, fairly say that personal religion had at this time
scarcely begun to emerge. And the reason why this was so is quite
clear: it is that in the infancy of the race, as in the infancy of the
individual, personal self-consciousness is as yet undeveloped. And it
is only as personal self-consciousness develops that personal religion
becomes possible. We must not however from this infer that personal
religion is a necessary, or, at any rate, an immediate consequence of
the development of self-consciousness. In ancient Greece one
manifestation--and in the religious domain the first manifestation--of
the individual's consciousness of himself was the growth of
'mysteries.' Individuals voluntarily entered these associations: they
were not born into them as they were into the state and the
state-worship. And they entered them for the sake of individual
purification and in the hope of personal immortality. The desire for
salvation, for individual salvation, is manifest. But it was in rites
and ceremonies that the _mystae_ put their trust, and in the fact that
they were initiated that they found their confidence--so long as they
could keep it. The traditional conviction of the efficacy of ritual
was unshaken: and, so long as men believed in the efficacy of rites,
the question, 'What shall I do to be saved?' admitted of no
permanently satisfactory answer. The only answer that has been found
permanently satisfying to the personal need of religion is one which
goes beyond rites and ceremonies: it is that a man shall love his
neighbour and his God.
But in thus becoming personal, religion involved man's fellow-men as
much as himself. In becoming personal thus, religion became, thereby,
more than ever before, the relation of the community to its God. The
relation however is no longer that the community admits the
transgressions of some one of its members: it prays for the
forgiveness of 'our trespasses'; and though it prays for each of its
members, still it is the community that prays and worships and comes
before its God, as it has done from the beginning of the history of
religion. It is with rites of worship that the community, at any
period in the history of religion, draws nigh to its god; for its
inward purpose cannot but reveal itself in some outward manifestation.
Indeed it seeks to manifest itself as naturally and as necessarily as
thought found expression for itself in the languages it has created;
and, though the re-action of forms of worship upon religion sometimes
results, like the re-action of language upon thought, in misleading
confusion, still, for the most part, language does serve to express
more or less clearly--indeed we may say more and more clearly--that
which we have it in us to utter.
As there are more forms of speech than one, so there are more forms of
religion than one; and as the language of savages who can count no
higher than three is inadequate for the purposes of the higher
mathematics, so the religion of man in the lower stages of his
development is inadequate, compared with that of the higher stages.
Nevertheless the civilised man can come to understand the savage's
form of speech; and it would be strange to say that the savage's form
of speech, or that his form of religion, is unintelligible nonsense.
Behind the varieties of speech and of religion there is that in the
spirit of man which is seeking to express itself and which is
intelligible to all, because it is in all. Though few of us understand
any but civilised languages, we feel no difficulty in believing that
savage languages not merely are intelligible but must have sprung from
the same source as our own, though far inferior to it for every
purpose that language is employed to subserve. The many different
forms of religion are all attempts--successful in as many very various
degrees as language itself--to give expression to the idea of God.
IV
THE IDEA OF GOD IN PRAYER
The question may perhaps be raised, whether it is necessary for us to
travel beyond worship, in order to discover what was, in early
religions, or is now, the idea of God, as it presents itself to the
worshipper. The answer to the question will depend partly on what we
consider the essence of religion to be. If we take the view, which is
held by some writers of authority on the history of religion, that the
essence of religion is adoration, then indeed we neither need nor can
travel further, for we shall hold that worship is adoration, and
adoration, worship.
To exclude adoration, to say that adoration does not, or should not,
form any part of worship, seems alike contrary to the very meaning of
the word 'worship' and to be at variance with a large and important
body of the facts recorded in the history of religion. The courts of a
god are customarily entered with the praise which is the outward
expression of the feeling of adoration with which the worshippers
spiritually gaze upon the might and majesty of the god whom they
approach. He is to them a great god, above all other gods. Even to
polytheists, the god who is worshipped at the moment, is, at that
moment, one than whom there is no one, and nought, greater, _quo nihil
maius_. A god who should not be worshipped thus--a god who was not the
object of adoration--would not be worthy of the name, and would hardly
be called a god. So strongly is this felt that even writers who
incline to regard religion as an illusion, define gods as beings
conceived to be superior to man. The degree of respect, rising to
adoration, will vary directly with the degree of superiority
attributed to them; but not even in the case of a fetish, so long as
it is worshipped, is the respect, which is the germ of adoration,
wholly wanting. Even in the case of gods, on whom, on occasion, insult
is put, it is precisely in moments when their superiority is in doubt
that the worship of adoration is momentarily wanting. Worship without
adoration is worship only in name, or rather is no worship at all.
Only with adoration can worship begin: 'hallowed be Thy name'
expresses the emotion with which all worship begins, even where the
emotion has not yet found the words in which to express itself. It is
because the emotion is there, pent up and seeking escape, that it can
travel along the words, and make them something more than a succession
of syllables and sounds.
If then it is on the wings of adoration that the soul has at all times
striven to rise to heaven to find its God, even though it flutters but
a little height and soon falls again to the ground, then we must admit
that from the beginning there has been a mystical element, or a
tendency to mysticism, in religion. In the lowest, and probably in the
earliest, stages of the evolution of religion, this tendency is most
manifest in individual members of the community, who are subject to
'possession,' ecstasy, trance and visions, and are believed, both by
themselves and others, to be in especial communion with their god.
This is the earliest manifestation of the fact that religion, besides
being a social act and a matter in which the community is concerned,
is also one which may profoundly affect the individual soul. But in
these cases it is the exceptional soul which is alone affected--the
seer of visions, the prophet. And it is not necessarily in connection
with the ordinary worship, or customary sacrifice, that such instances
of mystic communion with the gods are manifested. For the development
of the mystical tendency of worship and sacrifice, we must look, not
to the lowest, or to the earliest, stages of religious evolution, but
to a later stage in the evolution of the sacrificial meal. It is
where, as in ancient Mexico, the plant, or animal, which furnishes
forth the sacrificial meal, is in some way regarded as, or identified
with, the body of the deity worshipped, that the rite of sacrifice is
tinged with mysticism and that all partakers of the meal, and not some
exceptional individuals, are felt to be brought into some mystic
communion with the god whom they adore.
In these cases, adoration is worship; and worship is adoration--and
little more. Judging them by their fruits, we cannot say that the
Mexican rites, or even the Greek mysteries, encourage us to believe
that adoration is all that is required to make worship what the heart
of man divines that it should be. Doubtless, this is due in part to
the fact that the idea of God was so imperfectly disclosed to the
polytheists of Mexico and Greece. Let us not therefore use Greece and
Mexico as examples for the disparagement of mysticism or for the
depreciation of man's tendency to seek communion with the Highest. Let
us rather appeal at once to the reason which makes mysticism, of
itself, inadequate to satisfy all the needs of man. The reason simply
is that man is not merely a contemplative but an active being. If
action were alien to his nature, then man might be satisfied to gaze,
and merely gaze, on God. But man is active and not merely
contemplative. We must therefore either hold that religion, being in
its essence adoration and nothing more, has no function to perform, or
sphere to fill, in the practical life of man; or else, if we hold
that it does, or should, affect the practice of his life, we must
admit that, though religion implies adoration always, it cannot
properly be fulfilled in quietism, but must bear its fruit in what man
does, or in the way he does it. The being or beings whom man worships
are, indeed, the object of adoration, an object _quo nihil maius_; but
they are something more. To them are addressed man's prayers.
It is vain to pretend that prayer, even the simple petition for our
daily bread, is not religious. It may perhaps be argued that prayer is
not essential to religion; that it has not always formed part of
religion; and that it is incompatible with that acquiescence in the
will of God, and that perfect adoration of God, which is religion in
its purest and most perfect sense. Whether there is in fact any
incompatibility between the petition for deliverance from evil, and
the aspiration that God's will may be done on earth, is a question on
which we need not enter here. But the statement that prayer has not
always formed part of religion is one which it should be possible to
bring to the test of fact.
In the literature of the science of religion, the prayers of the lower
races of mankind have not been recorded to any great extent by those
who have had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with them,
if and so far as they actually exist. This is probably due in part to
their seeming too obvious and too trivial to deserve being put on
record. It may possibly in some cases be due to the reticence the
savage observes towards the white man, on matters too sacred to be
revealed. The error of omission, so far as it can be remedied
henceforth, will probably be repaired, now that savage beliefs are
coming to be examined and recorded on the spot by scientific students
in the interests of science. And the reticence of the savage promises
to avail him but little: the comparative method has thrown a flood of
light on his most sacred mysteries.
There may however be another reason why the prayers of the lower races
have not been recorded to any great extent: they may not have been
recorded for the simple reason that they may not have been uttered.
The nature and the occasion of the rite with which the god is
approached may be such as to make words superfluous: the purpose of
the ceremony may find adequate expression in the acts performed, and
may require no words to make it clear. If a community approaches its
god with sacrifice or offering, in time of sore distress, it
approaches him with full conviction that he understands the
circumstances and the purpose of their coming. Words of
dedication--'this to thee' is a formula actually in use--may be
necessary, but nothing more. Indeed, the Australian tribes, in rites
analogous to harvest-offerings, use no spoken words at all. We cannot,
however, imagine that the rites are, or in their origin were,
absolutely without meaning or purpose. We must interpret them on the
analogy of similar rites elsewhere, the purpose of which is expressed
not merely, as in Australia, by gesture-language, but is reinforced by
the spoken word. Indeed, we may, perhaps, go even further, and believe
that as gesture-language was earlier than speech, so the earliest
rites were conducted wholly by means of ritual acts or gestures; and
that it was only in course of time, and as a consequence of the
development of language, that verbal formulae came to be used to give
fuller expression to the emotions which prompted the rites.
If then we had merely to account for cases in which prayer does not
happen to have been recorded as a constituent part of the rite of
worship, we should not be warranted in inferring that prayer was
really absent. The presumption would rather be that either the records
are faulty, or that prayer, even though not uttered in word, yet
played its part. The ground for the presumption is found in the nature
of the occasions on which the gods are approached in the lower stages
of religion. Those occasions are either exceptional or regularly
recurring. The exceptional occasions are those on which the community
is threatened, or afflicted, with calamity; and on such occasions,
whether spoken words of prayer happen to have been recorded by our
informants, or not, it is beyond doubt that the purpose of the
community is to escape the calamity, and that the attitude of mind in
which the god is approached is one of supplication or prayer. The
regularly recurring occasions are those of seed-time and harvest, or
first-fruits. The ceremonies at seed-time obviously admit of the
presumption, even if there be no spoken prayers to prove it, that they
too have a petitionary purpose; while the recorded instances of the
prayers put up at harvest time, and on the occasion of the offering of
first-fruits, suffice to show that thanksgiving is made along with
prayers for continued prosperity.
It is however not merely on the ground of the absence of recorded
prayers that it is maintained that there was a stage in the evolution
of religion when prayer was unpractised and unknown. It is the
presence and the use of spells which is supposed to show that there
may have been a time when prayer was as yet unknown, and that the
process of development was a progress from spell to prayer. On this
theory, spells, in the course of time, and in accordance with their
own law of growth, become prayers. The nature and operation of this
law, it may be difficult or impossible now for us to observe. The
process took place in the night of time and is therefore not open to
our observation. But that the process, by which the one becomes the
other, is a possible process, is perhaps shown by the fact that we can
witness for ourselves prayer reverting or casting back to spell.
Wherever prayers become 'vain repetitions,' it is obvious that they
are conceived to act in the same way as the savage believes spells to
act: the mere utterance of the formula has the same magical power, as
making the sign of the cross, to avert supernatural danger. If prayers
thus cast back to spells, it may reasonably be presumed that it is
because prayer is in its origin but spell. It is because oxygen and
hydrogen, combined, produce water, that water can be resolved into
oxygen and hydrogen.
This theory, when examined, seems to imply that spell and prayer, so
far from being different and incompatible things, are one and the same
thing: seen from one point of view, and in one set of surroundings, it
is spell; seen from another point of view, and in other surroundings,
it is prayer. The point of view and the circumstances may change, but
the thing itself remains the same always. What then is the thing
itself, which, whether it presents itself as prayer or as spell, still
always remains the same? It is, and can only be, desire. In spell and
prayer alike the common, operative element present is desire. Desire
may issue in spell or prayer; but were there no desires, there would
be neither prayer nor spell. That we may admit. But, then, we may, or
rather must go further: if there were no desire, neither would there
be any action, whatever, performed by man. Men's actions, however,
differ endlessly from one another. They differ partly because men's
desires, themselves, differ; and partly because the means they adopt
to satisfy them differ also. It would be vain to say that different
means cannot be adopted for attaining one and the same end. Equally
vain would it be to say that the various means may not differ from one
another, to the point of incompatibility. If then we regard prayer and
spell as alike means which have been employed by man for the purpose
of realising his desires, we are yet at liberty to maintain that
prayer and spell are different and incompatible.
That there is a difference between prayer and spell--a difference at
any rate great enough to allow the two words to be used in
contradistinction to one another--is clear enough. The cardinal
distinction between the two is also clear: a spell takes effect in
virtue of the power resident in the formula itself or in the person
who utters it; while a prayer is an appeal to a personal power, or to
a power personal enough to be able to listen to the appeal, and to
understand it, and to grant it, if so it seems good. That this
difference obtains between prayer and spell will not be denied by any
student of the science of religion. But if this difference is
admitted, as admitted it must be, it is plain that prayer and spell
are terms which apply to two different moods or states of mind. Desire
is implied by each alike: were there no desire, there would be neither
prayer nor spell. But, whereas prayer is an appeal to some one who has
the power to grant one's desire, spell is the exercise of power which
one possesses oneself, or has at one's command.
That the two moods are different, and are incompatible with one
another, is clear upon the face of it: to beg for a thing as a mercy
or a gift is quite different from commanding that the thing be done.
The whole attitude of mind assumed in the one case is different from
that assumed in the other. It is possible, indeed, to pass from the
one attitude to the other. But it is impossible to say that the one
attitude is the other. It is correct to say that the one attitude may
follow the other. But it is to be misled by language to say that the
one attitude becomes the other. It is possible for one and the same
man to fluctuate between the two attitudes, to alternate between
them--possible, though inconsistent. The child, or even that larger
child, the man, may beg and scold, almost in the same breath. The
savage, as is well known, will treat his fetish in the same
inconsequential way. That it is inconsequential is a fact; but it is a
fact which, if learned, is but very slowly learned. The process by
which it is learned is part of the evolution of religion; and it is a
process in the course of which the idea of God tends to disengage
itself from the confusion of thought and the confusion of feeling, in
which it is at first enshrouded.
We, indeed, at the present day, may see, or at any rate feel, the
difference between magic and religion, between spell and prayer. And
we may imagine that the difference, because real, has always been seen
or felt, as we see and feel it. But, if we so imagine, we are
mistaken. The difference was not felt so strongly, or seen so
definitely, as to make it impossible to ascribe magic to Moses, or
rain-making to Elijah. In still earlier ages, the difference was still
more blurred. The two things were not discriminated as we now
discriminate them: they were not felt then, as they are felt now to be
inconsistent and incompatible. It was the likeness between the two
that filled the field of mental vision, originally. Whether a man
makes a petition or a command, the fact is that he wants something;
and, with his attention centred on that fact, he may be but little
aware, as the child is little, if at all, aware, that he passes, or is
guilty of unreasonable inconsistency in passing, from the one mood to
the other, and back again. It is in the course of time and as a
consequence of mental growth that he becomes aware of the difference
between the two moods.
If we insist on maintaining that, because spell and prayer are
essentially different, men have at all times been fully conscious of
the difference, we make it fundamentally impossible to explain the
growth of religion, or to admit that it can have any growth. Just as,
on the argument advanced in our first chapter, gods and fetishes have
gradually been differentiated from some conception, prior to them, and
indeterminate; just as magician and priest, eventually distinguished,
were originally undistinguished, for a man of power was potentially
both and might become either; so spell and prayer have come to be
differentiated, to be recognised as different and fundamentally
antagonistic, though originally the two categories were confused.
The theory that spell preceded prayer and became prayer, or that magic
developed into religion, finds as little support in the facts afforded
by the science of religion, as the converse theory of a primitive
revelation and a paradisaical state in which religion alone was known.
For what is found in one stage of evolution the capacity must have
existed in earlier stages; and if both prayer and spell, both magic
and religion, are found, the capacity for both must have pre-existed.
And instead of seeking to deny either, in the interests of a
pre-conceived theory, we must recognise both potentialities, in the
interest of truth.