of Life is anterior in the human mind to that of Death. Had they studied
the beliefs of primitive peoples, their doubts would have disappeared.
The savage knows not death as a natural occurrence. His language has no
word meaning “to die,” but only “to be killed.” Disease is an unseen
shaft, or the work of a malignant sorcerer. To him, all things live
and live forever. Each bird, each bush, each rock has its own vital
principle. By reason of the consciousness of his own living Self, he
imputes life to all around him, but in a higher degree and of some rarer
quality to those existences which he holds as his deities. His god is
supremely a living god, the source of Life, its creator, preserver, and
sustainer.
If we seek the recondite meaning hidden behind the two words which
throughout Polynesia expressed in its most general sense the concept of
the Divine, _io_, and _atua_, we discover that it is in both “the central
cause or essentiality of Life.”[62] So among the Indians of Michoacan the
epithet of the chief goddess of their cult was, “The Sustainer of Life”;
the highest divinity of the Aztecs was Tonacatecutli, “God of Our Life”;
and in the Muskoghean tribes His name was “The Master of Life.”
So full, I say, was the mind of primitive man with the vision of
universal and immortal life, that to him there was no such thing as
death. The fact, indeed, remained. The tree was shrivelled by the
lightning, the brute fell by the arrow, man himself gasped his last
breath and lay an inert mass. The loved child, the warrior hero, passed
out of sight to the unseen beyond.
But not forever! No! They hovered around the familiar spot, they visited
the living in dreams, their voices were heard in the rustling leaves and
the falling waters. Not only men, but all things lived again. In the
mythology of the Vitians there is a heaven even for cocoanuts! To the
Kamschatkans the smallest flies have souls which are immortal.[63]
This is the doctrine of souls, the source of those innumerable
beliefs and rites which are centred around the sepulchre, so solemn,
so profoundly significant, that many writers have maintained that
“religion began, when the living thought seriously of the dead”;
that “all religions have crystallised around the tomb”; and that in
the propitiation of departed souls, in the worship of the spirits of
ancestors, and in the preparation in this life for another beyond the
grave, the whole aim and essence of religion are embraced.[64]
I have already said that this is a hasty assertion, for there are
religions which recognise a soul scarcely or at all; but they are not
of a primitive character.[65] In the latter, some such belief is
universally shown either by the treatment of the corpse, or the modes of
mourning for the dead, or by myths concerning the life and actions of the
departed.
It is generally held that the soul is multiple, two, three, or four being
assigned to a person. One or more of these may perish with the body, or
shortly afterwards; but one at least survives indefinitely, and concerns
itself with the doings of those it has left behind in life. Its powers
for good and evil are increased by its translation to another sphere of
existence; and to secure its assistance, or at least its neutrality,
is the aim of that cult of the departed souls and of the spirits of
ancestors which is so widely defined in primitive conditions.
They are not identical, and we find in many tribes much attention paid
to conciliating the souls of the dead where ancestor worship is unknown.
In fact, the former is the older and more general observance. The aim is
to get rid of the soul, to put it to rest or send it on its journey to a
better land, otherwise it will annoy the survivors.[66]
In many primitive tribes, therefore, there is little fear of death. The
soul leaves the body in sleep to wander over the earth, and the only
difference of death is that it does not return in time. More than this,
the soul of the living can visit the realms of the dead. The Comanches
knew of men who had spent two days looking at the white tents of the
encampment of souls far west under the setting sun; and the Zuñi mothers
who had lost their little darlings are reconciled by being cast into a
deep sleep, during which they go and see them in the mystic world beyond.
So also believe the Australians and numberless other tribes.[67]
We need not look for any definiteness of statement as to what the soul
is. In many tribes the word for it is akin to that for breath, as in our
own expression, “the breath of life.” Frequently it is identified with
the shadow, as among the Zulus of Africa, and the Eskimos, Algonquins,
and Quiches of America. Others, as the Mincopies (Andaman Islands), think
they see it in the reflection of the body in still water or a mirror.
The Australians assert that it is a mist, fog, or smoke, etc.
These ideas are, of course, material. They impute to the soul similar
wants to that of the corporeal man. It desires a dwelling, needs food,
takes visible forms, and the like; but also it is endowed with faculties
transcending those it possessed in the flesh, and these may be directed
to the benefit or the injury of the survivors. Therefore its wants should
be gratified, and its temper conciliated by offerings and appropriate
funeral rites.[68]
3. I turn now to a perception of the primitive man, a contrast of
impressions on his senses, more potent, I believe, than even the
immeasurable one of Life and Death. It is Light and Darkness. This
universal, ever recurring change in nature controlled all his actions,
and reacted as a powerful stimulus on his religious emotions. I could
almost be willing to subscribe to the expression of a German writer that
“the adoration of Light was the foundation of all religion.”[69] The rude
litanies of paganism all over the world seem to join in the solemn chant
of the Evangelist—“God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
We may begin with the Australian Blacks, who averred the supreme divinity
lives in _keladi_, eternal brightness, up above the sky. His name is
_Baiame_, meaning “the maker” or “the cutter out,” as one cuts out
patterns from a skin. He sees and knows all things.[70]
Through most of Polynesia, the chief deity was Ka-ne, which means
sunlight, the opposite of darkness, and is allied to the verb _kanea_, to
see. Another name for Ka-ne is Tangaloa, the lord of light. The colour
red is sacred to him, he was portrayed with long blond hair, and children
who had light hair or were albinos were deemed his progeny. When the
fair-skinned Europeans first landed on the islands they were called the
“children of Tangaloa.”[71]
Sometimes the myths represent Tangaloa as the son of Vatea (Avatea,
Wakea), “noon” or “noon-day.” He was father of gods and man, half man,
half fish, to typify land and water, and it was said of him that his
right eye was the sun, his left the moon. So far removed was he that no
worship was ever paid him, and no representation made of him.[72]
If we turn to the extremely savage inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,
a remnant of the ancient, almost pygmy, black race of Southern Asia, we
find that their supreme being is Puluga, the creator of all things, who
was never born and will never die. He is invisible, but of the nature
of light; he lives in the sky, and placed there the sun and moon. He is
omniscient, but only while it is day, when he can see.[73]
As the red rays of the morning and evening light caused in Polynesia all
things red to be sacred to Tangaloa, so among the Hottentots of South
Africa their supreme being was named Tsuni Goab, the red light of the
Dawn, who in mythology stood in opposition to Gaunah, the Dark Sky.[74]
This worship of light has several constant associations in religious
thought which find expression in the myth and cult.
In nature, light is a potent stimulus of organic growth, and this fact,
obscurely apprehended by the primitive mind, led to the equivalence of
Light and Life. Light as the vital principle recurs in most mythologies.
As we obtain light artificially from fire, whose general warmth also
is akin to that of the living as contrasted to the dead body, the soul
or living element was allied to flame. In ancient German mythology the
soul was called a torch or taper (J. Grimm), and in the beliefs of the
Polynesians and American Indians the ghosts of the dead usually appear as
luminous masses.[75] All will remember the words of Othello—
“Put out the light, and then,—put out the light!”
A second association of light was with the sky, in day the home of the
bright sun, at night where glitter a thousand points of brilliancy.
In most mythologies the sky is supposed to be a solid, shining arch or
dome which covers the earth like a roof. Upon it, out of sight to mortal
eyes, live the gods. It constitutes the “Hill of Heaven,” the celestial
mountain upon which are the homes of the divine beings. So it is oft
likened to some known terrestrial elevation, as in Greek mythology, Mt.
Olympus, and in that of India, Mt. Meru. Such sacred hills are mentioned
by most of the American tribes.[76] In Polynesian myth it was “the blue
mountain, the land of the divine water,” a fluid of such vital virtue
that were even a dead man sprinkled with it he would come to life. On
the island of Mangaia a certain hill was pointed out which in old times
propped up the sky.[77]
The Tehuelches of Patagonia relate that the Creator first moulded men and
all animals on the “Hill of God” and then set them loose to people the
earth. The natives of Southern Borneo assign to their supreme divinity
Atala a home in the highest heaven, on the shore of the “celestial lake,
moved by the Moon and surrounding the Sun.” Homi, the high heaven, is the
deity of the Hottentots, who pours the rains, blows the wind, and sends
heat and cold on earth.[78]
Thus it is that everywhere the Sky God is also the High God. This
blending of the ideas of life and light with the sky led to another and
obvious association which has left its mark on every religion, primitive
or developed. The sky is, in direction, above us. The god of the sky is
therefore the god on high. He is the one who dwells above, our lord in
the heaven.
This he is in all mythologies. Among the Indians of the plains he is
(or, It is) “the great medicine _above_,” and in the sign language, to
indicate this, when the sign is made for “medicine” (mystery) the finger
is pointed to the zenith.[79] The Puluga of the Andamanese “lives in the
sky.” Tangaloa is addressed as “He above in the heavens”; the Finnish
Ukko is also called “The Navel of the Sky,” and so on.[80]
Examples are innumerable. But what need of collecting them? Do we not
ourselves constantly use the adjective the _Supreme_ Being, for God,
which means simply the highest being? And did not the founder of our
religion forbid his followers to swear by the sky, giving as the reason
that it was the throne of God, who sitteth upon it?[81]
This idea runs through the whole of his teachings. In the Gospel of
Matthew the same term, οὐρανιος, or, ἐν τοῖς οὐρανιος as a descriptive
term of divinity, is applied not less than eighty-eight times; and
in the first clause of the Lord’s Prayer, it is to “Our Father in the
Skies,” that the invocation is addressed.
Strange that this very word οἰρανὀς, in Sanscrit Uaruna, is that which,
in the primitive religion of the Aryan peoples, was applied to the most
exalted of their gods, to him “whose realm is above us,” “the very
strong,” “the shining one,” “the king of sky and earth,” “creator of all,
the earth-enveloping sky.”[82]
What more striking evidence do we wish of the indissoluble unity of
religious thought, no matter what its stage of development, in all
centuries and all races?
In the Polynesian mythology, Tangaloa, the bright daylight, has as his
brother, Rongo, the god of darkness and night. Tangaloa is fair-haired
and light in hue, Rongo is black in hair and skin. Tangaloa is
beneficent, the dispenser of good, and inventor of the arts of peace;
Rongo is the fomenter of strife, the god of war and author of bloodshed.
In accordance with these, all the gods were classed in two orders,
“dwellers in day,” and “dwellers in night.”[83]
The contrast which is here presented prevails throughout early cults.
The night, when man, deprived of light and sight, becomes the prey of
stealthy beasts, was everywhere considered the time when the unseen
powers of destruction are let loose and the malevolent agencies of the
spirit-world run riot.
This is one of the most primitive of religious beliefs and is discovered
in the rudest tribes. The Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego say that the
invisible spirits go about at night; the Australian tribes everywhere
manifested a deep dread of the darkness, not like the unconscious
shuddering of a child on entering a dark room, but because they believed
spirits walked in the gloom seeking whom they could devour. It is then,
said they, that Cuchi (Kootche) goes forth, either in the form of a snake
or some nocturnal bird. He it is who causes sickness among men. The
thunder is the growl of his anger, the whirlwinds his breath, and the
aurora australis the fitful light of his camp fire.[84]
Associated with the gloom of night, was the darkness of the storm, which
in many mythologies is contrasted with the sunshine in some divine
struggle. Endless are the tales and rites which bear upon this contest in
early religions. Indeed, according to some, they are the chief staple of
all mythologies.[85]
4. I have already mentioned that the idea of Power is one of the first
to be connected with deity. The god is one who can do more than man.
Especially any sudden and striking display of force, either in the
material or immaterial world, stimulates the religious sense. The
historian Buckle claimed that the inhabitants of countries subject
to earthquakes are peculiarly superstitious. In myths and names, the
hurricane of the tropics, the storm-winds of higher latitudes, indeed
all sudden and tremendous outbreaks of natural violence, are regarded as
exhibitions of divine Power.
Notably is this the case with the thunder storm. That manifestation
of tremendous power has excited the religious feelings of all races.
Moreover, the highly charged electrical atmosphere exerts a special
influence on the nervous system, predisposing it to emotional outbreaks.
The roll and reverberation of the thunder, the zigzag flash and
destructive blow of the lightning and the roar of the tempest, combine
to present the phenomenon as a manifest display of supernatural power.
Hence in innumerable tribes the thunder god was identified with, or was
the peer of, the highest in the Pantheon.[86] The same is true of potent
and coercive mental traits. Their possessors are regarded as partaking
of the deific being to a greater extent than others, or even actually
divine. It is not merely that they excite the emotion of fear. That is
a shallow interpretation of the psychic process. Underlying it is the
deeper suggestion of energy, of action, of the spiritual mastery of
material existence. This is as real, though not so clear, in the mind of
the savage as in that of the philosopher.
This is also seen in the names and titles applied to the concept of
Divinity by all nations. They speak of God “All-mighty,” the “Omnipotent
Ruler”; and ever the attribute of indefinite power belongs to the great
gods.
In early religions the manifestations of power are personified as
single deities. We thus find in native American myths the figures of
Huracan, the hurricane; Huemac, the Strong Hand, god of earthquakes, and
numberless thunder, lightning, and storm gods.
5. It has been remarked by a German historian that the richest
development of early poetry has been found among tribes dwelling by the
ocean or among mountains; and another writer has claimed that the most
rapid development of religions has taken place where the broad expanses
of deserts or seas have stimulated the mind to contemplation of spacial
magnitude on earth and in the sky.[87]
The languages of primitive peoples bear traces of this. In the Aztec
tongue any wide level prairie is called _teotlalli_, godland; and the
ocean, _teoatl_, godwater; among the Peruvians the term _huaca_, holy, is
synonymous with “vast” or “immense.” With the Polynesians _taula_, the
ocean space, is the home of the gods and where the souls go at death.
The traveller Castren once stood on the shore of the Arctic Ocean with a
Samoyed. Turning to the native, he asked, “where is Num?” (their chief
god). “There,” instantly replied the Samoyed, waving his hand toward
where “loomed the dark broad sea.”[88]
In many cults this idea is attempted expression by assigning to deities
hugeness of size. The colossal stone images of Easter Island, the huge
statues of the Maoris, are endeavours to present it to the senses.
In more developed faiths the same tendency prevails. The Buddhists
rival each other in constructing enormous statues of Sakya Muni; in the
Sanscrit Upanishads, Aditi, who represents the endless visible expanse,
is termed “mother and father of all gods and men, the substance of
whatever has been or shall be born”[89]; and according to some Mahommedan
writers, God is so great that it is 72,000 days’ journey between his eyes!
* * * * *
Such are some of the potent stimuli which stir the depths of man’s
psychical nature, awakening in him the belief in unknown powers far
beyond his ability to measure or to cope with. Not from any conscious
act of intelligence, not from any process of voluntary reasoning, is
that belief born, but from the unknown, the unplumbed abyss of the
sub-conscious mind.
Let not this be considered as something degrading to the religious
conceptions themselves. Though all are drawn from out the human spirit
itself, and are nowise the direct revelations their believers think
them, yet who dare measure the height and the depth of the sub-conscious
intelligence? It draws its knowledge from sources which elude scientific
research, from the strange powers which we perceive in insects and other
lower animals, almost, but not wholly, obliterated in the human line
of organic descent; and from others, now merely nascent or embryonic,
new senses, destined in some far off æon to endow our posterity with
faculties as wondrous to us as would be sight to the sightless.
More than this: the teachings of the severest science tell us that Matter
is, in its last analysis, Motion, and that motion is nought else than
Mind[90]; and who dare deny that in their unconscious functions our minds
may catch some overtones, as it were, from the harmonies of the Universal
Intelligence thus demonstrated by inductive research, and vibrate in
unison therewith?
LECTURE III.
Primitive Religious Expression: in the Word.
CONTENTS:—An Echo Myth—The Power of Words—Their Magical
Potency—The Curse—Power Independent of Meaning—The Name as an
Attribute—The Sacred Names—The Ineffable Name—“Myrionomous”
Gods—“Theophorous” Names—Suggestion and Repetition as
Stimulants—I. The Word _to_ the gods: Prayer—Its Forms,
Contents, and Aims—II. The Word _from_ the gods: The Law and
the Prophecy—The Ceremonial Law, or _tabu_—Examples—Divination
and Prediction—III. The Word _concerning_ the gods:
The Myths—Their Sources chiefly Psychic—Some from
Language—Examples—Transference—Similarities—The Universal
Mythical Cycles: 1. The Cosmical Concepts; 2. The Sacred
Numbers; 3. The Drama of the Universe; Creation and Deluge
Myths; 4. The Earthly Paradise; 5. The Conflict of Nature; 6.
The Returning Saviour; 7. The Journey of the Soul—Conclusion as
to these Identities.
There is a pleasant myth told by the inhabitants of the island of Mangaia
in the South Pacific. When the Creator of all things had ordered the
solid land to rise from the primeval waters, he walked abroad to survey
his work. “It is good,” said he aloud to himself. “Good,” answered
an echo from a neighbouring hill. “What!” exclaimed the Creator. “Is
some one here already? Am not I first?” “I first,” answered the echo.
Therefore the Mangaians assert that earliest of all existences is the
bodiless Voice.[91] It is their way of saying, “In the beginning was the
Word.”
Not only may we call it the first, it is also the mightiest of the unseen
agencies which mould man and his destinies.
“Power over men,” remarks Count Tolstoï in one of his essays, “lies not
in material force, but in thought and its clear expression.” Disraeli,
that subtlest of diplomats, once said, “We govern men with—words.”
No idea can be clearly conveyed to another unless there is a word to
express it. Inward thought and outward utterance are the correlated
conditions of intelligent advancement. The spoken word evokes in the mind
of the hearer the picture, the emotion, the reasoning, which is occupying
our own. A thousand minds are brought instantly to bear on the same
thought by the words in the mouth of one. I cannot place too high the
instant and magical effect of the word.
Not only does it convey a new thought to the mind, but it is itself
the begetter of thought. It is a seed sown, which grows and branches,
bearing flower and fruit, beauteous and everlasting, or noxious and
destructive.
Through the faculty of speech, social life becomes possible; on it
depends the sweet interchange of souls; by it we are led to think in
unison; through it we share the meditations of the philosopher, and the
inspired visions of the poet and the prophet.
If there is any way in which the spirits of the sky and air, the hosts of
the Divine, can touch and teach our souls, it must be chiefly through the
spoken word.
Every religion of the world bears witness to this. There is no other
element in them in which all join with like unanimity. From the rudest
to the ripest they echo the verse of the evangelist philosopher when he
wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.”
The highest teachings of them all are expressed in the formula: “And the
word of the Lord came saying—”
We may go back to the earliest forms of the ancient Egyptian religion,
and we find the doctrine that the man who had learned and could pronounce
the divine words revealed through the god Thoth (Thought, Mind), by
their utterance would be elevated to the god, and be blended with
him, as one and inseparable. “The primary idea concerning the ritual
formulas was assimilation to God, brought about by the power of the words
themselves.”[92]
Probably in all primitive faiths the word is regarded as a magical power
in itself. In Egypt it was believed that by words the most powerful of
the gods could be made obedient to the will of man. By them, as exorcisms
or incantations everywhere, demons could be loosed or bound, and
spirits summoned from the vasty deep. The stock in trade of the Indian
medicine-man is principally his store of exorcisms, and among the Goras
of North-Western India any one can become a priest who will learn the
formulas which compel the demons.[93]
Our word “charm” comes from the Latin _carmen_, the sacred rhythmic
formula, such as Virgil averred could by its occult power drag the moon
from the sky.
“Carmina vel cælo possunt deducere lunam.”
There were such songs scarcely less potent among the Australian Blacks,
which could summon the rain in dry seasons or cause it to cease in
floods.[94]
No demon, however malevolent, can resist, in their belief, the power of
the right word. The natives of New South Wales say that an evil spirit
in the shape of a dwarf with monstrous head roams the woods at night and
devours those whom he meets. But if the man utters the word “Boonbolong,”
the dwarf passes on his way and does not harm him.[95]
When Jesus was in Capernaum, and at his command an unclean spirit had
gone out of a man possessed, the multitude said one to the other,—τις
εστι ουτος λογος, “What is this Word, by the authority and might of which
this man casts out devils?” (Luke iv., 36.) They believed he used some
cabalistic formula of exorcism which constrained the demons to obey his
will.
Nowhere did the Word display its terrible effect more fearfully than in
the curse or imprecation. In ancient Assyria, writes Professor Sayce,
“The power of the _mamit_, or curse, was such that the gods themselves
could not transgress it.”[96] Not only did it unloose the demons of
destruction, but it constrained the gods against their will, changing
them from protectors to enemies.[97]