any idea of the principles on which he spoke, of the laws of speech or
of the grammar of his language; just as he reasoned, long before he
made the reasoning process matter of reflection, and reduced it to the
laws of logic; so from the beginning he was religious though he had no
more idea that there were principles of religion, than that there were
principles of grammar or laws of correct thought. 'First principles of
every kind have their influence, and indeed operate largely and
powerfully, long before they come to the surface of human thought and
are articulately expounded' (Ferrier: _Institute of Metaphysics_, p.
13).
But this is not to say that primitive man argued, or thought, with
never an error, or spoke with never a mistake, until by some
catastrophe he was expelled from some paradise of grammarians and
logicians. Though correct reasoning was logical before the time of
Aristotle, and correct speech grammatical before the time of Dionysius
Thrax; there was before, as there has been since, plenty both of bad
logic and bad grammar. But that is very different from saying that, in
the beginning, all reasoning was unsound, or all speech ungrammatical.
To say so, would be as unmeaning and as absurd as to say that
primitive man's every action was immoral, and his habitual state one
of pure, unmitigated wickedness. If the assumption of a primitive
paradise is unworkable, neither will the assumption of a primitive
inferno act, whether it is for the evolution of the grammar of
language or morality, or of logic or religion, that we wish to
account. It is to ask too much, to ask us to believe that in the
beginning there was only wrong-doing and no right, only error and no
correctness of thought or speech, only spell and no prayer. And if
both have been always, as they are now, present, there must also
always have been a tendency in that which has prevailed to conquer. We
may say that, in the process of evolution, man becomes aware of
differences to which at first he gave but little attention; and, so
far as he becomes conscious of them, he sets aside what is illogical,
immoral, or irreligious, because he is satisfied it is illogical,
immoral, or irreligious, and for no other reason.
The theory that spell preceded prayer in the evolution of religion
proceeds upon a misconception of the process of evolution. At one time
it was assumed and accepted without question that the vegetable and
animal kingdoms, and all their various species, were successive stages
of one process of evolution; and that the process proceeded on one
line and one alone. On the analogy of the evolution of living beings,
as thus understood, all that remained, when the theory of evolution
came to be applied to the various forms of thought and feeling, was to
arrange them also in one line; and that, it was assumed, would be the
line which the evolution of religion had followed. On this assumption,
either magic must be prior to religion, or religion prior to magic;
and, on the principle that priority must be assigned to the less
worthy, it followed that magic must have preceded religion.
It will scarcely be disputed that it was on the analogy of what was
believed to be the course of evolution, in the case of vegetable and
animal life, that the first attempts to frame a theory of the
evolution of religion proceeded, with the result that gods were
assumed to have been evolved out of fetishes, religion out of magic,
and prayer out of spell. To disprove this, it is not necessary to
reject the theory of evolution, or to maintain that evolution in
religion proceeds on lines wholly different from those it follows
elsewhere. All that is necessary is to understand the theory of the
evolution of the forms of life, as that theory is held by naturalists
now; and to understand the lines which the evolution of life is now
held to have followed. The process of evolution is no longer held to
have followed one line alone, or to have described but one single
trajectory like that of a cannon-ball fired from a cannon. The process
of evolution is, and has been from the beginning, dispersive. To
borrow M. Bergson's simile, the process of evolution is not like that
of a cannon-ball which followed one line, but like that of a shell,
which burst into fragments the moment it was fired off; and these
fragments being, as it were, themselves shells, in their turn burst
into other fragments, themselves in their turn destined to burst, and
so on throughout the whole process. The very lines, on which the
process of evolution has moved, show the process to be dispersive. If
we represent the line by which man has risen from the simplest forms
of life or protoplasm by an upright line; and the line by which the
lowest forms of life, such as some of the foraminifera, have continued
on their low level, by a horizontal line starting from the bottom of
the upright line, then we have two lines forming a right angle. One
represents the line of man's evolution, the other that of the
foraminifera. Between these two lines you may insert as many other
lines as necessary. That line which is most nearly upright will
represent the evolution of the highest form of vertebrate, except man;
the next, the next highest; and so on till you come to the lines
representing the invertebrates; and so on till you come to the lines
which are getting nearer and nearer to the horizontal. Thus you will
have a whole sheaf of lines, all radiating indeed from one common
point, but all nevertheless dispersing in different directions.
The rush of life, the _elan de la vie_, is thus dispersive; and if we
are to interpret the evolution of mental on the analogy of physical
life, we shall find, M. Bergson says, nothing in the latter which
compels us to assume either that intelligence is developed instinct,
or that instinct is degraded intelligence. If that be so, then, we may
say, neither is there anything to warrant us in assuming either that
religion is developed magic, or magic degraded religion. Spell is not
degraded prayer, nor is prayer a superior form of spell: neither does
become or can become the other, though man may oscillate, with great
rapidity, between the two, and for long may continue so to oscillate.
The two moods were from the beginning different, though man for long
did not clearly discriminate between the two. The dispersive force of
evolution however tends to separate them more and more widely, until
eventually oscillation ceases, if it does not become impossible.
The dispersive force of evolution manifests itself in the power of
discrimination whereby man becomes aware of differences to which, in
the first confusion of thought, he paid little attention; and
ultimately may become conscious of the first principles of reason,
morality or religion, as normative principles, in accordance with
which he feels that he should act, though he has not always acted, and
does not always act in accordance with them. In the beginning there is
confusion of feeling and confusion of thought both as to the quarter
to which prayer is addressed and as to the nature of the petitions
which should be proffered. But we should be mistaken, if from the
confusion we were to infer that there was no principle underlying the
confusion. We should be mistaken, were we to say that prayer, if
addressed to polytheistic gods, is not prayer; or that prayer, if
addressed to a fetish, is not prayer. In both cases, the being to whom
prayer is offered is misconceived and misrepresented by polytheism and
fetishism; and the misconception is due to want of discrimination and
spiritual insight. But failure to observe is no proof either that the
power of observation is wanting or that there is nothing to be
observed. The being to whom prayer is offered may be very different
from the conception which the person praying has of him, and may yet
be real.
Petitions, then, put up to polytheistic gods, or even to fetishes, may
still be prayers. But petitions may be put up, not only to
polytheistic gods, or to fetishes, but even to the one god of the
monotheist, which never should be put up. 'Of thy goodness, slay mine
enemies,' is, in form, prayer: it is a desire, a petition to a god,
implying recognition of the superiority of the divine power, implying
adoration even. But eventually it comes to be condemned as an
impossible prayer: spiritually it is a contradiction in terms. If
however we say that it is not, and never was, prayer; and that only by
confusion of thought was it ever considered so, we may be told that,
as a simple matter of actual fact, it is an actual prayer that was
actually put up. That it ought not--from the point of view of a later
stage in the development of religion--to have been put up, may be
admitted; but that it was a prayer actually put up, cannot be denied.
To this the reply seems to be that it is with prayer as it is with
argument: a fallacy is a fallacy, just as much before it is detected
as afterwards. The fact that it is not detected does not make it a
sound argument; still less does it prove either that there are now no
principles of correct reasoning or that there were none then; it only
shows that there was, on this point, confusion of thought. So too we
may admit--we have no choice but to admit--that there are spiritual
fallacies, as well as fallacies of logic. Of such are the petitions
which are in form prayers, just as logical fallacies are, in form,
arguments. They may be addressed to the being worshipped, as fallacies
are addressed to the reason; and eventually their fallacious nature
may become evident even to the reason of man. But it is only by the
evolution of prayer, that is by the disclosure of its true nature,
that petitions of the kind in question come to be recognised and
condemned as spiritual fallacies. The petitioner who puts up such
petitions is indeed unconscious of his error, but he errs, for all
that, just as the person who uses a fallacious argument may be
himself the victim of his fallacy: but he errs none the less because
he is deceived himself. There are normative principles of prayer as
well as the normative principles of thought; and both operate 'long
before they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately
expounded.' It is in thinking that the normative principles of thought
emerge. But it is by no means the case that they come to the surface
of every man's thought. So too it is in prayer that the normative
principles of prayer emerge; yet men require teaching how to pray.
Some petitions are permissible, some not.
If then there are normative principles of prayer, just as there are of
action, thought and speech; if there are petitions which are not
permissible, and which are not and never can be prayers, though by a
spiritual fallacy, analogous to logical fallacies, they may be thought
to be prayers, what is it that decides the nature of an admissible
petition? It seems to be the conception of the being to whom the
petition is addressed. Thus it is that prayer throws light on the idea
of God. From the prayers offered we can infer the nature of the idea.
The confusion of admissible and inadmissible petitions points to
confused apprehension of the idea of God. It is not merely imperfect
apprehension but confused apprehension. In polytheism the confusion
betrays itself, because it leads to collision with the principles of
morality: of the gods who make war upon one another, each must be
supposed to hold himself in the right; therefore either some gods do
not know what is right, or there is no right to be known even by the
gods. From this confusion the only mode of escape, which is
satisfactory both to religion and to morality, is to recognise that
the unity of morality and the unity of the godhead mutually imply one
another. But so long as a plurality of gods, with a shifting standard
of morality, is believed in, the distinction between admissible and
inadmissible petitions cannot be firmly or correctly drawn.
A tribal god is petitioned to slay the tribe's enemies, because he is
conceived as the god of the tribe and not the god of its enemies. If
the declaration, that 'I am thy servant,' is affirmed with emphasis on
the first personal pronoun, so as to imply that others are no servants
of thine, the implication is that thy servants' enemies are thy
enemies; whereas if there is, for all men, one God only, then all men
are his servants, and not one person, or one tribe, alone. The
conception of God as the god of one tribe alone is an imperfect and
confused apprehension of the idea of God. But it is less so than is
the conception of a god as belonging to one individual owner, as a
fetish does. To a fetish the distinctive, though not the only, prayer
offered, precisely is 'Slay mine enemies'; and therein it is that lies
the difference between a fetish and a god of the community. The
difference is the same in kind as that between a tribal god and the
God of all mankind. The fetish and the tribal god are both inadequate
ideas of God; and the inadequacy implies confusion--the confusion of
conceiving that the god is there only to subserve the desires and to
do the will of the individual worshipper or body of worshippers.
Escape from this confusion is to some extent secured by the fact that
prayers to the community's god are offered by the community aloud, in
public and as part of the public worship; and, consequently, with the
object of securing the fulfilment of the desires of the community as a
community. The blessing on the community is, at this stage, the only
blessing in which the individual can properly share, and the only one
for which he can pray to the god of the community. Thus the nature of
the petitions, and the quarter to which permissible petitions can be
addressed, are determined by the fact that prayer is an office
undertaken by the community as a community. If the desires which an
individual entertains are such as would be repudiated by the
community, because injurious to the community, they cannot be
preferred, in the presence of the community, to the god of the
community; and thus permissible petitions begin to be differentiated
from those which are impermissible--a normative principle of prayer
emerges, and the idea of God begins to take more definite form, or to
emerge somewhat from the mist which at first enveloped it.
But though permissible petitions be distinguished from petitions
which are impermissible, it by no means follows that impermissible
petitions cease to be put up. What actually happens is that since the
community does not, and cannot, allow petitions, conceived to be
injurious to itself, to be put up to its god, they are put up
privately to a fetish; or, to put the matter more correctly, a being
or power not identified with the welfare of the community is sought
in such cases; and the being so found is known to the science of
religion as a fetish. But though a fetish differs from a god,
inasmuch as the fetish will, and a god will not, injure a member of
the tribe, the distinction is not clear-cut. There are things which
both alike may be prayed to do: both may be besought to do good to
the individual who addresses them. To this protective mimicry the
fetish owes in part its power of survival. For the same reason spell
and magic contrive to continue their existence side by side with
religion and prayer. What conduces to this result is that at first
the god of the community is conceived as listening to the prayers of
the community rather than of the individual: from the beginning it
is part of the idea of God that He cares for all His worshippers
alike. This conviction, to be carried out to its full consequences,
both logical and spiritual, requires that each individual worshipper
should forget himself, should renounce his particular inclinations,
should abandon himself and long to do not his own will but that of
God. But before self can be consciously abandoned, the consciousness
of self must be realised. Before self-will can be surrendered, its
existence must be realised. And self-consciousness, the recognition
of the existence of the will and the reality of the self, comes
relatively late both in the history of the community and in the
personal history of the individual. At first the existence of the
individual will and the individual self is not recognised by the
community and is not provided for in the community's worship and
prayers. It is the community, as a community, and not as so many
individual worshippers, offering separate prayers, that first
approaches the community's god. The existence of the individual
worshipper, as an individual is not denied, it is simply unknown, or
rather not realised by the community. But its stirrings are felt in
the individual himself: he is conscious of desires which are other
than those of the community, and the fulfilment of which forms no
part of the community's prayers to the community's god. His
self-consciousness, his consciousness of himself as contrasted with
the community, is fostered by the growth of such desires. For the
fulfilment of some of them, those which are manifestly anti-social,
he must turn to his fetish, or rely upon the power of magic. Even for
the fulfilment of those of his desires which are not felt to be
anti-social, but which find no place in the prayers of the community,
he must rely on some other power than that of the god of the
community; and it is in spells, therefore, that he continues to trust
for the fulfilment of these innocent desires, inasmuch as the prayers
of the community do not include them.
The existence, in the individual, of desires, other than those of the
community, wakes the individual to some consciousness of his
individual existence. The effort to secure the fulfilment of those
desires increases still further his self-consciousness, for he resorts
to powers which are not exercised solely in the interests of the
community, as are the powers of the community's god. But his
increasing self-consciousness cannot and does not fail to modify his
character and action as a worshipper of the community's gods. It
modifies his relation to the community's gods in this sense, viz. that
he appears before them not merely as a member of the community
undistinguished from other members, but as an individual conscious to
some extent of his individuality. He continues to take part in the
worship of the gods, but he comes to it conscious of wishes of his own
which may become petitions to the god, so far as they are not felt to
be inconsistent with the good of the community.
Of this stage we have ample evidence afforded by the cuneiform
inscriptions of Assyria. Spells employed to the hurt of any worshipper
of the gods are spells against which the worshipper may properly
appeal to the gods for protection. A god is essentially the protector
of his worshippers, and he protects each as well as all of them. Each
of them may therefore appeal to him for protection. But though any one
of them may so appeal, it is apparently only in course of time that
individual petitions of this kind come to be put up to the gods. And
the evidence of the cuneiform inscriptions is particularly interesting
and instructive on the way in which this came about.
In the 'Maklu' tablets we find that the writers of the tablets are, or
anticipate that they may be, the victims of spells. The inscriptions
themselves may be regarded, and by some authorities are described, as
counter-charms or counter-spells. They do in fact include, though they
cannot be said to consist of, counter-spells. Their typical feature is
that they include some such phrase as, 'Whoever thou art, O witch, I
bind thy hands behind thee,' or 'May the magic thou hast made recoil
upon thyself.' If the victim is being turned yellow by sickness, the
counter-spell is 'O witch, like the circlet of this seal, may thy face
grow yellow and green.'
The ceremonies with which these counter-spells were performed are
indicated by the words, and they are ceremonies of the same kind as
those with which spells are performed: they are symbolic actions, that
is to say, actions which express by gesture the same meaning and
intention as are expressed by the words. Thus, from the words:
'As the water trickleth away from his body
So may the pestilence in his body trickle away,'
it is obvious that this counter-spell accompanied a ceremonial rite of
the kind indicated by the words. As an image of the person to be
bewitched was used by the workers of magic, so an image of her 'who
hath bewitched me' is used by the worker of the counter-spell, with
the words:
'May her spell be wrecked, and upon her
And upon her image may it recoil.'
If, now, such words, and the symbolical actions which are described
and implied, were all that these Maklu tablets contained, it might be
argued that these counter-spells were pure pieces of magic. The
argument would not indeed be conclusive, because though the sentences
are in the optative mood, there would be nothing to show on what, or
on whom, the speaker relied for the fulfilment of his wish. But as it
happens, it is characteristic of these Maklu tablets that they are all
addressed to the gods by name, e.g. 'May the great gods remove the
spell from my body,' or 'O flaming Fire-god, mighty son of Anu! judge
thou my case and grant me a decision! Burn up the sorcerers and
sorceress!' It is the gods that are prayed to that the word of the
sorceress 'shall turn back to her own mouth; may the gods of might
smite her in her magic; may the magic which she has worked be crumbled
like salt.'
Thus these Maklu petitions are not counter-spells, as at first sight
they may appear; nor are they properly to be treated as being
themselves spells for the purpose of counteracting magic. They are in
form and in fact prayers to the gods 'to undo the spell' and 'to force
back the words' of the witch into her own mouth. But though in the
form in which these Maklu petitions are preserved to us, they appear
as prayers to the gods, and not as spells, or counter-spells; it is
true, and important to notice, that, in some cases, the sentences in
the optative mood seem quite detachable from the invocation of the
gods. Those sentences may apparently have stood, at one time, quite
well by themselves, and apart from any invocation of the gods; that
is to say, they may originally have been spells or counter-spells, and
only subsequently have been incorporated into prayers addressed to the
gods.
Let us then assume that this was the case with some of these Maklu
petitions, and let us consider what is implied when we make the
assumption. What is implied is that there are some wishes, for
instance those embodied in these Maklu petitions, which may be
realised by means of spells, or may quite appropriately be preferred
to the gods of the community. Such are wishes for the well-being of
the individual worshipper and for the defeat of evil-doers who would
do or are doing him wrong. When it is recognised that individuals--as
well as the community--may come with their plaints before the gods of
the community, the functions of those gods become enlarged, for they
are extended to include the protection of individual members of the
community, as well as the protection of the community, as such; and
the functions of the community's gods are thus extended and enlarged,
because the members of the community have become, in some degree,
individuals conscious of their individuality. The importance, for the
science of religion, of this development of self-consciousness is that
the consciousness of self must be realised before self can
consciously be abandoned, that is before self-will can be consciously
surrendered.