religious progress of the race, the first floor of which was fetishism,
the second polytheism, and the third monotheism, falls helplessly to the
ground.
There is no real distinction between fetishism and idolatry, unless
we choose to say that the latter refers to the worship of objects
artificially shaped; but many fetishes are so likewise.
Nor can we say, with Professor Rialle, that fetishism confounds the
unseen agent with the thing itself, while the idolatry of developed
polytheism regards the agent as something exterior to the object, an
independent existence.[157] For not only does fetishism recognise the
power of the supernatural outside of all objects, but the idols of
polytheism are unquestionably just as holy, just as much limbs of the
gods, as the dolls of the Melanesians.
We cannot even take fetishism as a special form of the cult or external
worship; for it goes hand in hand with every phase of objective religion.
It is quite as prevalent now, in proportion to the general strength of
the religious sentiment, as it ever was, and is visible in the sacredness
which all sects of the highest religions attach to certain objects and
places. When the Christian touches the bone of a saint that he may be
healed of an infirmity, or when he speaks of his church edifice as “the
house of God,” or when he packs in his trunk a Bible “for luck’s sake,”
he is as much a fetish worshipper as the negro _caboceer_ who collects
around him a thousand pieces of rubbish because he thinks they have
brought him good fortune.[158]
Modern folk-lore is full of fetishism, and it is a development of the
religious sentiment which flourishes in all times and climes. Amulets,
charms, lucky stones, everything that we now call by the familiar term
of _mascot_, partakes of the nature of a fetish. Through some fancied
potency, not to be found among its physical qualities, it is believed to
bring us good fortune.
Nor is it a distinctive character of fetish worship, as has been
maintained by some, that in it compulsion or constraint is endeavoured to
be exercised on the gods to force them to be favourable and exert their
power in aid of the supplicant. The earliest prayers are not of this
character, as I showed in my last lecture; and, on the other hand, the
notion of constraining the gods extended widely in higher religions and,
indeed, probably in a metaphysical sense, was taught by the founder of
Christianity himself, as in the parable of the unjust judge.
As there is nothing deeper than an external distinction between fetishism
and idolatry, so there is no special form of religious thought which
expresses itself as what has been called by Dr. Tylor, “animism,” the
belief that inanimate objects are animated and possess souls or spirits.
This opinion, which in one guise or another, is common to all religions
and many philosophies, is merely a secondary phenomenon of the religious
sentiment, and not a trait characteristic of primitive faiths. The
idea of the World-Soul, manifesting itself individually in every form
of matter from the star to the clod, is as truly the belief of the
Sioux Indian or the Fijian cannibal, as it was of Spinoza or Giordano
Bruno.[159]
This vague and universal divine potency extends through all nature,
organic and inorganic, expressing itself in personality wherever
separateness, oneness, is visible. Not merely did animals and trees share
in the World-soul, but every object whatever. With the American Indians,
the commonest sticks and stones, even the household vessel fashioned
out of clay, or the hollowed stone on which the maize was pounded,
had its spiritual essence, which might speak, act, and require to be
venerated.[160] The Vitian Islanders held that each cocoanut had its own
spirit, and occasionally many cocoanuts assembled for a jollification,
at which times the joyous cracking of their sides kept the natives
awake![161]
But no error would be greater than to confound this with a veneration of
such objects in themselves.
To the mind of the savage, whatever displayed movement, emitted sound or
odour, or by its defined limits and form indicated unity, was to him
a manifestation in personality of that impersonal, spiritual Power of
which he felt himself but one of the expressions. All other expressions
shared his powers, and did not, in essence, differ from him. The brute,
the plant, the stone, the wandering orbs of night, the howling wind,
the crackling fire, the towering hill, all were his fellow-creatures,
inspired by the same life as himself, drawing it from the same universal
font of life.
It is not without reason, therefore, that the undeveloped religious
longings ask for something concrete to represent divinity. Through its
visible and audible traits the power of the Unseen Ruler is brought
sharply to the consciousness. We sympathise even with the poor Oraons
of Bengal, who, seeing nothing nobler to embody the divine, place a
ploughshare on their altar as the object of adoration.[162]
Although in the limitless field of his religious insight everything in
nature was to him a manifestation of divinity, primitive man everywhere
indicated a preference for certain objects and groups of objects,
evidently led to single them out on account of the strength or frequency
of the appeals they make to his senses of sight and hearing.
With the utmost brevity I will enumerate the most important of these
groups, and endeavour at the same time to point out why they were
everywhere selected to convey conceptions of the nature and attributes of
God.
_1. The Celestial Bodies._—The first group that I shall mention is that
of the Celestial Bodies, the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The traits which
connected them with the ideas of the divine are almost too obvious to
require mention. They are bringers of light and warmth, they define the
momentous change of day and night, their motions usher in the seasons and
mark the progress of time. They are remote, aloft, inscrutable, dwellers
in a realm which man may distantly perceive but never enter.
So much has been written of solar myths and star worship that every
reader is aware of their practical universality among early nations. It
is probable that the division of our week into seven days arose either
from the dedication of one to each of the seven greatest luminaries or
to a division of the moon’s apparent course into four parts. Judicial
astrology, which is not yet wholly dead, always maintained that the
nativities were decided by the position of the stars.
All such survivals carry us back to primitive religions in which the
astral bodies were prominent figures in the cult. Many writers have
maintained that the American Indians from north to south were always and
mainly sun-worshippers. Though this is too hasty a statement, everyone
will acknowledge that the sun is ever a conspicuous figure in their myths
and rites. So it is among the Polynesians and Africans, and so we find it
in the early forms of Aryan, Semitic, and Egyptian belief.
It is at first sight strange that in many mythologies the moon plays a
more important rôle than the sun. But if we reflect that the night is the
time when spirits walk abroad; when sounds strike the ear with mysterious
notes; when nocturnal birds and beasts stir the senses with strange
cries; when, on the other hand, the cooling zephyrs and soft moonlight
bring sweet ease, and the gentle dews refresh the parched leaves; then we
can understand why, both in modern folk-lore[163] and in primitive myths,
the moon and the stars are often far more conspicuous than the flaming
sun. The night, in fact, draws the veil from the spiritual world; as has
been said so beautifully by Shelley:
“As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the _veil of daylight_ concealed him from her.”
A few examples will illustrate this: The Dieyeris of Australia believe
that man and all other beings were created by the moon. In many American
languages the moon is regarded as male and the sun is referred to as “his
companion.” The Ipurinas, a Brazilian tribe, address the orb as “Our
Father,” and imagine him a little old man who was their ancestor and
still watches over their prosperity. In like manner the eastern Eskimos
say that their ancestors came from the moon to the earth. With the rude
tribes of southern Borneo it is stated that the veneration of the moon
forms the chief basis of their worship and myths.[164]
I can but refer to the lesser luminaries of the night. The stars have
at all times been associated with religious meditations. The various
constellations are familiar to most primitive peoples and are personified
under living forms. Widely in South America and Polynesia the Pleiades
enjoyed an especial homage, as marking the advent of the seasons and
as connected with the production of vegetable life. In Peru they were
styled the gods of rains; and the natives of the Gulf of California
venerated them to that degree that even to look at them heedlessly was
deemed calamitous; while some Australians held that it was from them
that fire first descended to the world.[165] In such remote districts as
Australia and Greenland the Milky-way was regarded as the path by which
the souls ascended to their homes in the sky. In the one land the Aurora
Australis, in the other the Aurora Borealis, was looked upon as the dance
of the gods across the star-lit vault. Indeed, the study of the stellar
bodies and the definition of their periodical appearance date directly to
the veneration they excited in religious minds.
_2. The Four Elements._—The simple theory that the world is composed of
four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, is one which presents itself
so naturally to primitive thought that traces of it can be seen in most
mythologies which have passed beyond the rudimentary forms.
Each of these elements has its own group of religious associations, and
they present themselves with that uniformity which we find so universal
in religious expression, to be explained, as I have so often said, by
the identity everywhere of the psychic sources of religion.
Perhaps the earliest of all the elements to receive this adoration
was _fire_. With its discovery man first entered into human social
life. Everywhere and in all peoples it has been in a manner sacred.
With the Kafirs every religious ceremony must be performed in front
of a fire.[166] In the Rig Veda the crackling of the blazing twigs is
regarded as the speech of the gods, just as it is to-day in Borneo. The
institutions of the sacred fire and the perpetual fire recur in every
continent, and we have but to enter a church of the Roman communion
on the morning of Holy Saturday to witness the impressive ceremonies
with which the creation of the “new fire” is to this day celebrated in
our midst. The custom of passing an infant “through the fire” was as
much practised by the Aztecs in Mexico as by the Moloch worshippers of
Syria.[167] The Peruvians held that divine inspiration was to be obtained
by sacrifices to the god of fire; and those of Guatemala adored it as
their greatest and oldest deity.[168]
In all these and in a hundred other examples which I might cite, the main
thought is that in fire and its products—warmth, heat, light, flame—lies
the essential principle of life; and the worship of Life was the central,
positive conception in primitive ceremonies.
The _air_ to early man is recognised in motion as the winds; and these,
in his myths and rites, occupy a conspicuous position. Conceived as four,
blowing more or less directly from the four corners of the earth-plane,
they are the rain-bringers, the gods of the seasons and the year,
controlling the products of the harvest and hence the happiness and life
of man. The outlines of the story are the same whether we listen to the
Maoris of New Zealand, who tell us of Tawhiri-matea, god of the winds,
who divided his progeny into four broods and sent one to each quarter of
the compass; to the Eskimos, who narrate just the same of Sillam Innua,
owner of the winds, and his four sons; or to a score of like myths which
I could quote from American storyland.[169]
The house of the winds, where they are imagined to be stored, a mythical
notion which Professor Schwartz has shown to be so wide-spread in the Old
World, recurs with scarcely less frequency in the New World.[170]
_Water_, as moisture, the dew, the fertilising showers, the green
bordered streams and lakes, was ever connected with vegetable life and
its symbols. In most cosmogonies the land rose from the bosom of some
primal sea; in most primitive geographies the solid earth is surrounded
by the mighty ocean-stream which stretches out to the uttermost space.
“All of us,” said the Aztecs, “are children of water.” Hence the spring,
the stream, the lake, was ever regarded as a beneficent being, who should
rightly call for the adoration of the true in soul. Tlaloc, god of rains,
and the many-named gods of the heavenly vase in which the rains were
stored on high, were conspicuous figures in the American pantheon.[171]
Virgil speaks of “Oceanus, _pater rerum_”; and in the Finnish epic, the
Kalewala, it reads: “Three infants came forth from the same womb; water
the oldest, fire the youngest, and iron between them.”[172]
Water also entered into numberless rites of purification, of penitence,
and sanctification.[173] Baptism by sprinkling or immersion belongs to
the most ancient sacred rites; and the use of the fluid in divination,
lustration, and libation was world-wide.
The most venerable god of Chaldean mythology was Êa, lord of the _earth_
and “the waters under the earth.” He was the deity in whose gift were
the harvest, the germination of seeds, the fertility of the soil.
Extending the idea to embrace all life, the Aztecs worshipped the earth
as Tonantzin, Our Beloved Mother, and the Peruvians as Mama Cocha, Mother
Earth. From her womb, said they, do all that live proceed, and to her
silent breast will all again return. Far below her opaque surface is the
realm which the sun lights at night, the abode of happy souls, said the
Aztecs, ruled by the clement Quetzalcoatl, who there abides until the
time fixed for his return to men.
From beneath the earth, repeat a hundred mythologies, did the first of
men emerge seeking the light above but losing the joy below. So that
in such distant points as Kamtschatka and the Andaman Islands we meet
the same prophetic myth that at the end of the world the present earth
will be turned upside down, and its then inhabitants will rejoice in the
perennial warmth and light of the happier under-world.[174]
Intimately associated with the worship of the four elements, and also
with the myths of the cosmical concepts, we trace through primitive
religions the sacredness and symbolism of _colours_. Everywhere, in all
cults, they are connected with certain trains of religious thoughts,
certain expressions of religious emotions, though by no means always
the same. But I can only refer, in passing, to this extended subject,
which has not yet received the psychologic analysis which its importance
demands.[175]
_3. Stones and Rocks._—When we turn from these universal elements, which
we can readily conceive portrayed with some commensurate greatness the
idea of the supernatural, to such a gross and material object as a
_stone_, a common stone or rock, it is at first difficult to understand
its wide-spread acceptance as a symbol of the divine. But if we reflect
on its hardness and durability, on its colour and lustre, and on the
strange shapes in which it is found, we can see why it was so chosen.
In the early Semitic records we often read of Beth-el, the House of God.
This was usually nothing but an amorphous stone, which the god was
supposed to inhabit. The holy Kaaba of Mahometanism is no doubt such
an one, a rough, black piece of rock. The sacred image of Diana of the
Ephesians was nothing more, and the Latin father Arnobius tells us that
the image of earth, the Great Mother, brought to Rome from Phrygia with
sumptuous pomp, was merely “a small black stone, rough and unhewn.”[176]
To this instance, where the stone represents the Earth as the common
mother, we find many exact parallels in savage faiths. In the Tahitian
myths, _Papa_, Rock, was the name of the wife of the first man, mother
of the race of men, and under this form she was adored.[177] The Zulus
considered certain stones as sacred, because from one such, which split
in two, their ancestors emerged. Their neighbours, the Basutos, entertain
the same notion of a spheroidal granite boulder in their country, and
their worship of it consists in dancing around it and spitting at it. The
Indians of Colombia asserted that all men were once stones, and all will
again become such.[178] Those of Guatemala were wont to place a small
polished stone in the mouth of the dying to receive the soul, and thus
supply it with a permanent abode.
The most common of mascots is a “lucky stone,” and this goes back to the
time when such was the favourite material for household fetishes. To this
day the Canaras of India believe that the Bhutas, or familiar spirits,
inhabit rough stones, and in Melanesia similar stones are held to be the
abode of the _vui_ or demonic intelligences.[179]
Another source of the sacredness of stones was their identification as
“thunderbolts.” Certain ones were believed to be the missiles hurled from
the sky by the Thunder God in the lightning flash; though the Peruvians
had the prettier belief that, as the product of the heavenly fire, they
must retain its ardency, and therefore used them as love charms.[180]
Flint, which when struck with a bit of pyrites emits a spark, and
meteoric stones were especially recognised by these marks as of celestial
origin.
Such a flint stone, say the legends of the Nahuas, in the beginning of
the world fell from heaven to earth; as it broke to pieces each fragment
rose to life as a demi-god. All men, added the Mexicans, came originally
from such stones.[181]
Yet another origin of god-stones was the custom of erecting them as
monuments of the dead. We can see this in its simplicity in Southern
Polynesia. When a chief dies, a coral slab about three feet long is
placed erect over his grave—a tombstone, in other words. This is decked
with flowers and garlands, food is offered it, and invocations pronounced
before it, precisely as to a divinity. This is because the spirit of the
departed chief is believed to dwell within it.[182]
It was equally sacred when the stone was a mere cenotaph erected in
memory of a departed chief or saint. Such are found in all lands and in
all cults. They are the _menhirs_ of the Celts, and the grave-stones of
the Koders of India, often painted in strong colours.[183]
Certain stones, especially those we call “precious,” the gems, have
physical traits of transparency, lustre, and colour, which have ever made
them prized, and led to the belief that they exercise peculiar powers on
the mind.
Throughout Asia and America the varieties of jade or nephrite, a
greenish, semi-translucent mineral, has had a wide-spread reputation for
sacred meaning and magical potency. The _chalchiuhite_ of the Mexicans,
small green stones, believed to control the weather and representative of
the goddess of the waters and the rains, were of this material.
By attentively gazing into the transparency of a quartz crystal, the
Maya shaman of Yucatan still believes that he will see in its depths,
unfolded by the god whose dwelling it is, the picture of the future and
the decrees of fate.
_4. Trees and Plants._—Primitive man was arboreal. A hollow tree was
his home, its branches his place of refuge, its fruit his sustenance.
Naturally the tree became associated with his earliest religious
thoughts. It represented his protecting deity. He would not willingly
injure it. When the Mandans cut a pole for their tents, they swath it in
bandages so that its pain may be allayed. The Hidatsas would not cut down
a large cottonwood tree, because it guarded their tribe. The Algonquins
decked an old oak with offerings suspended to its branches, for the same
reason.[184]
Trees from their dripping foliage, and because their shade was associated
with the grey of a cloudy day, were believed to make the rains and thus
to refresh the fields and fertilise the seeds of the vegetable world.
The step was easily taken to extend this to all germs, animal as well
as vegetable. Thus the tree came to symbolise the source of Life, and to
represent both the clouds and rains and the fatherhood of men and brutes.
It could cause flocks to multiply and the barren womb to conceive.[185]
Among the Mexicans, the tree was invoked as Tota, “Our Father,” and was
spoken of as god of the waters and the green foliage. Some particular
species was chosen as the totem of various American gentes, and in the
earliest legends of Greece and Persia sundry famous families traced their
descent from a tree.
These ideas led to the mythical association of the tree with the origin
of life, and with various objective expressions of this in the cult.
In most American stories where we hear of the first of men emerging
from the under-world, it is by climbing a tree. This tree also supports
the sky, and is so represented in the native books of the Mayas and
Nahuas.[186] The Yurucares of Bolivia relate that their god Tiri, when he
would people the earth with men, cleft a tree, and from the opening came
forth the various tribes of the world.[187]
When the tree was not worshipped as itself, but under a symbolic form,
this was usually as the sacred pole or the cross.
The sacred pole was found widely among the American Indians. It was
planted in the centre of their villages, or, if the tribe was nomadic, it
was carried about in an ark or wrapping and set up in a tent by itself
in their encampment. It typified the communal life of the tribe and
represented the “mystery tree,” which was intimately associated in their
legendary origin.[188]
In early art the cross as a sacred design is often derived from the
conventional figure of a tree, and symbolises the force of life, the four
winds, the rain, and the waters. This is notably the case in Mexico and
Central America, where we have abundant testimony that this is the origin
and meaning of the cross-symbol so frequent on their monuments.
The sacred tree is a conspicuous figure in the earliest bas-reliefs
of the Chaldeans. It is often represented in a cruciform shape, and
frequently a winged seraph is holding up to it a pine cone, the fruit of
the sacred cedar, either as an emblem of fertility, or, more likely, as
an aspergillum, with which to bedew it from the holy water, which is
carried in a bucket in the other hand.[189]
That a tree is a “thing of life” it is hard for us even yet to doubt,
and we can scarcely avoid being attracted by Fechner’s pleasing theories
of a “plant-soul.”[190] The sound of the wind in the leaves, rising from
the softest of mystic whispers to the roaring of the wild blast, seems to
proceed from some mind or spirit. The Australians say that these are the
voices of the ghosts of the dead, communing one with another, or warning
the living of what is to come. They and other tribes also believe that
it is through understanding this mysterious language that the “doctors,”
or shamans, communicate with the world of spirits and derive their
supernatural knowledge.[191] Hence we can easily see arose the myth of
“the tree of knowledge,” which we find in the earliest Semitic annals and
monuments. It belonged to the same species as the oracular oak of Zeus at
Dodona, and the laurel of Apollo at Delphi, from the whispers of whose
leaves the sibyls interpreted the sayings of the gods.