seem to have in them the elements which exist in the ripest and the
noblest; and these elements work for good wherever they exist. However
rude the form of belief in agencies above those of the material world,
in a higher law than that confessedly of solely human enactment, and
in a standard of duty prescribed by something loftier than immediate
advantage,—such a belief must prompt the individual, anywhere, to a
salutary self-discipline which will steadily raise him above his merely
animal instincts, and imbue him with nobler conceptions of the aims of
life.
When he feels himself under the protection of some unseen, but ever near,
beneficent power, his emotions of gratitude and love will be stimulated;
and when he recognises in the ceremonial law a divine prescription for
his own welfare and that of his tribe, he will cheerfully submit to the
rigours of its discipline.
The various lines of development which were thus marked out and pursued
through the influence of early religious thought, and which reacted to
develop it, deserve to be pointed out in detail, since they have so
generally been overlooked or misunderstood.
For convenience of presentation they may be examined under seven
headings, as they were connected with: 1. The primitive social bond; 2.
The family and the position of woman; 3. The growth of jurisprudence; 4.
The development of ethics; 5. The advance in positive knowledge; 6. The
fostering of the arts; and 7. The independent life of the individual.
These are the main elements of ethnology; and as they progressed to
higher forms and finer specialisations, partly through the influence of
religion, they in turn reflected back to it their brighter lustre, and
the symmetrical growth of a richer culture was thus secured.
1. The first to be named should be the construction of the primitive
society. This was essentially religious. I have already emphasised how
completely the savage is bound up in his faith, how it enters into nigh
every act and thought of his daily life. This may be illustrated by its
part in four very early and widely existing forms of social ties—the
totem, the sacred society, the priesthood, and the ceremonial law.
The totemic bond I have previously explained. It existed in many
American and Australian tribes and relics of it can be discerned in
the early peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its constitution was
avowedly religious. The supposed or “eponymous” ancestor of the totem
was a mythical existence, a sort of deity. He was known only through
a revelation, either in visions, or, through the assertions of the
elders of the clan, in which latter case the myth was the origin of the
relationship. Theoretically, all members of the totem were kinfolk, “of
one blood,” and the numerous rites connected with the letting of blood
were generally to symbolise this teaching.[265]
In various tribes, as among the Sioux and in Polynesia, the totem did
not prevail. Its place was taken by societies, sacred in character, the
members of which were bound closely together by some supernatural tie. As
our Indians say, all the members “had the same medicine.” The relation
these societies bear to the tribe is not dissimilar to that elsewhere
held by totems.
In nearly all primitive peoples the priesthood exerts a powerful
influence in preserving the unity of the tribe, in presenting an
immovable opposition to external control. This is well known to the
Christian missionaries and bitterly resented by them. These shamans
and “medicine-men” are the most persistent opponents of civilisation
and Christianity; but it must be remembered that the same conservatism
on their part has for centuries been the chief preventive of tribal
dissolution and decay. While we regret that they should resist what is
good, we must recognise the value of their services to their people in
the past.[266]
The ceremonial law belongs, as I have elsewhere said, to the primary
forms of religion. It is in full force, as among the Mincopies and
Yahgans, where it is difficult to perceive any other form of religious
expression. It is deemed by all to be divine in origin, imparted in
dreams or visions by supernatural visitors, transcending therefore all
human enactments. It defines the proper conduct of the individual, and
prescribes what is allowed and what is forbidden to him. Obedience to it
is constantly inculcated under the threat of the severest penalties.
These are the main forces which moulded the earliest human societies
known to us, and may be said to have first created society itself. They
are all distinctly religious, and their consideration obliges us to
acknowledge the correctness of the statement of a distinguished Italian,
Professor Tito Vignoli,—“There is no society, however rude and primitive,
in which all the relations, both of the individual and of the society
itself, are not visibly based on superstitions and mythical beliefs.”[267]
2. Earlier, perhaps, than any definite social organisation was the
family bond which united together those of one kinship. This rested upon
marriage, the religious character of which in even the rudest tribes I
dwelt upon in the last lecture. I then explained the matriarchal system
prevalent in so many savage peoples. Necessarily, this exalted the
position of woman, by conferring upon her the titular position of head of
the house, and often the actual ownership of the family property.
It is a general truth in sociology that we may gauge the tendencies of a
given society towards progressive growth by the position it assigns to
woman, by the amount of freedom it gives her, and by the respect it pays
to her peculiar faculties. Religions which, like Mohammedanism, reduce
her to a very subordinate place in life, wholly secondary to that of the
male, have worked detrimentally to the advancement of the peoples who
have adopted them.
In some savage tribes, the woman is a mere chattel or slave, denied
actual participation in religious rites. But that is by no means the
case with all. Among the Hottentots, for example,—who were, when first
discovered, a people of respectable culture,—a man can take no higher
oath than to swear by his eldest sister; and such is the respect
inculcated through his religion, that he never speaks to her unless she
addresses him first.[268]
The more delicate nervous organisation of women adapts them peculiarly
to the perception of those sub-conscious states which are the psychic
sources of inspiration and revelation. Very widely, therefore, in
primitive religions they occupied the position of seeresses and
priestesses, and were reverenced in accordance therewith. Among the Dyaks
of Borneo, in former days, all the recognised priestly class were women.
Their bodies were supposed to be the chosen residence of the Sangsangs,
beautiful beings, friendly to men. These inspired women, called Bilians
or Borich, were subject to theoleptic fits, in which they gave advice,
foretold the future, recited rhythmic songs, etc. They were under no
restraint of conduct, as what they did, it was held, was the prompting of
the god. So firm was their influence that, when, in modern days, the men
also became priests, they were obliged to wear the garb of women.[269]
The Siamese also entertain this opinion. Their gods speak through the
mouth of some chosen woman. When she feels the visit of the spirit to be
near, she arrays herself in a handsome red silk garment, and as the deity
enters her, she discourses of the other world, tells where lost objects
are to be found, and the like. The assembled company worship her, or
rather the god in her. On recovering from her theopneustic trance, she
professes entire unconsciousness of what has taken place.[270]
The American Indians very generally concede to their women an exalted
rank in their religious mysteries. The Algonquins had quite as famous
“medicine-women” as medicine-men, and the same was true generally. Mr.
Cushing tells me that there is only one person among the Zuñis who is a
member of all the sacred societies and thus knows the secrets of all, and
that person is a woman.
When Votan, the legendary hero of the Tzentals of Chiapas, left them for
his long journey, he placed his sacred apparatus and his magical scrolls
in a cave under the charge of a high priestess, who was to appoint her
successor of the same sex until his return. The secret was faithfully
kept and the successors appointed for more than a hundred and fifty years
after their conversion to Christianity; until, in 1692, on the occasion
of the visit of the Bishop to the hamlet where the priestess lived, she
disclosed the story, and the holy relics were burned.[271]
Twenty years later, as if to avenge this, the Tzentals revolted in a
body, their leader being an inspired prophetess of their tribe, a girl of
twenty, fired with enthusiasm to drive the Spaniards from the land and
restore the worship of the ancient gods.[272]
It is quite usual to find in early religions many rites, such as dances
and sacrifices, which women alone carry out, and to which it is _tabu_
for any man to be admitted. This naturally arises in those cults where
the deities are divided sexually into male and female. Such in their
origin were the Bacchanals of ancient Greece, participated in at first by
women and girls only, celebrated in devotion to the productive powers of
nature, which were held to belong more especially to the female sex.[273]
The “wise women” of many primitive faiths formed a close caste by
themselves, no male being admitted, in imitation of their mythological
prototypes in the heavens. The “witches” of the Middle Ages were lineal
successors of the Teutonic priestesses, who took as their model the
“swan-maidens” or “wish-women” of Odin.[274]
Another form of early institutions was that of the societies of virgins,
such as that which from primitive Italic times kept alive the holy fire
of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Extensive associations of a
similar nature were found by the European explorers in Mexico, Yucatan,
Peru, and elsewhere.
A curious teaching of several wide-spread cults was that women alone
were endowed with immortality. Such was the opinion of the natives of
the Marquesas Islands, and in Samoa the myth related that the god Supa
(paralysis) ordained in the council of creation that the life of a man
should be like a torch, which, when blown out, cannot be again lighted by
blowing; but that a woman’s soul should live always.[275]
No one can doubt that in thus assigning a high and often the highest
place in the religious mysteries to woman, many primitive religions
surrounded her with a sacredness which was constantly recognised, and
thus aided in the improvement of her social relations. The value of
virtue and purity was increased, mere animal desires were subjected to
religious restraint, and the relations of sex came increasingly to be
regarded as instituted by divine wisdom for special purposes.
3. Although the specifications of the ceremonial law were often
capricious and absurd, and sometimes positively hurtful, yet it developed
the habit of obedience and the respect for authority. In this manner it
potently aided the evolution of jurisprudence—that is, of those rules
of conduct which grow out of the habit of men living together and which
are necessary to preserve amicable relations. These had their origin in
other than religious considerations, but when once consciously recognised
as beneficial, the religion of the tribe generally adopted them, claimed
their creation, and threw around them the garb of its own protective
power. Religion then actively aided in the fulfilment of purely social
duties, as these were understood by the tribe.
In primitive conditions, all laws are God’s laws. As we would say, there
is no separation of the civil and criminal from the canon law. To the
Mohammedan, the Koran is the source of all jurisprudence. This is a
survival from early thought.
From this it followed that the punishment of crime and the decisions
between litigants were, properly, judgments of God. This universal
opinion is reflected in a number of traits in jurisprudence, some of
which are still in vogue in civilised lands. The most noteworthy are the
ordeal, trial by battle, oaths, and the privilege of sanctuary.
Ordeals were universal. They all rested on the belief that the gods would
rescue the innocent man from danger. He might be required to hold red-hot
iron in his hands; he might be plunged long under water; swallow poison;
or in any other way expose himself to pain or death; if he were unjustly
accused, the invisible powers would protect him.[276]
The trial by battle involved the same opinion. “If the Lord is on my
side, why should I fear?” is the confident belief at the basis of every
such test of skill and strength.[277]
These forms of decision have disappeared, but the oath remains as
vigorous as ever in our law courts. It is, however, as has been pointed
out by the able ethnologist and lawyer, Dr. Post, originally and in
spirit nothing else than an ordeal. The false witness, the perjurer,
is believed to expose himself to the wrath of God and to suffer the
consequences in this or another life.[278]
The rite of sanctuary was distinctly religious. The criminal among the
Hebrews, who could escape to the temple and cling to the horns of the
altar, must not be seized by the officers of justice. The Cherokee
Indians, like the Israelites, had “cities of refuge,” which they called
“white towns.” With the Acagchemem, a Californian tribe, the temples were
so purifying that the evil-doer, were he guilty even of murder, who could
reach them before he was caught, was cleansed of his sin and absolved
ever after from any punishment for it.[279]
In these vital relations we see how religion entered deeply into civil
life, and became a guide and director of its most essential procedures.
Its development grew with its responsibilities and with the intimacy it
cultivated with practical affairs.
The codes of statutes instituted by ancient legislators, usually
personified under some one famous name, as Moses, Manu, Menes, or the
like, obtained general adoption through the belief that they emanated
directly from divinity, and were part of the ceremonial law. Under favour
of this disguise, they worked for the good of those who followed them,
and gained a credence which would not have been conceded to them, had it
been thought that they were of human manufacture.
Toward merely human law the religious sentiment is in its nature and
derivation in frequent opposition. It claims a nobler lineage and a
higher title. In theory, the Church must always be above the State,
as God is superior to man. Religion, when vital and active, is ever
revolutionary and anarchic. It ever aims at substituting divine for human
ordinances.
This has been from earliest times its constant tendency. It has been a
potent dissolvent of states and governments and of such older religious
expressions as have become humanised by usage and formality.
In this manner it has been the most powerful of all levers in stimulating
the human mind to active enterprise and the use of all its faculties. Man
owes less to his conscious than to his sub-conscious intelligence, and of
this religion has been the chief interpreter.
4. The severest blows have been dealt at primitive or pagan religions on
account of the inferiority of their ethics. It has often been asserted
that they do not cultivate the moral faculties and benevolent emotions,
but stifle and pervert them. They are, therefore, considered to be
distinctly evil in tendency.
This important criticism cannot be disposed of by a mere denial. There is
no doubt that the ethics of barbarism is not that of a high civilisation.
But if we understand the necessary conditions of tribal life in the
unending conflicts of the savage state, we can see that the highest moral
code would find no place there.
All tribal religions preach a dualism of ethics, one for the members of
the tribe, who are bound together by ties of kinship and by union to
preserve existence; and the other, for the rest of the world. To the
former are due aid, kindness, justice, truth and fair dealing; to the
latter, enmity, hatred, injury, falsehood, and deceit. The latter is just
as much a duty as the former, and is just as positively enjoined by both
religion and tribal law.[280]
The state of barbarism is one of perpetual war, in which each petty
tribe is striving to conquer, rob, and destroy its neighbours. The
Patagonians and Australians wander about their sterile lands in small
bands, naked and shelterless, owning nothing but the barest necessities.
But whenever two of these bands approach each other, it is the signal for
a murderous struggle, in order to obtain possession of the wretched rags
and trumperies of the opponent.
For this reason, the development of ethics must be studied on inclusive
lines, as to what extent they were cultivated between members of the
same social unit, the totem or the tribe. The duty of kindness to others
extended to a very limited distance, but, within that area, may have
been, and generally was, punctually observed. The devotion of members
of the same gens to each other, even to the sacrifice of life, has been
often noted among savages. The duties involved by this connection were
frequently onerous and dangerous, as in the common custom of blood
revenge, where a man, at the imminent peril and often at the loss of his
own life, felt constrained to slay the murderer of a fellow-clansman.
The character of the early gods was, as a rule, non-ethical. They
were generally neither wholly good nor wholly bad. They were more or
less friendly toward men, but rarely constantly either beneficent or
malignant. They were too human for that.[281]
Hence the religions which were founded upon such conceptions were not in
their prescriptions of conduct chiefly ethical, but rather ceremonial.
Moral conduct was of less importance than the performance of the rites,
the recitation of the formulas, and the respect for the _tabu_.[282]
I may go farther, and say that in all religions, in the essence of
religion itself, there lies concealed a certain contempt for the merely
ethical, as compared with the mystical, in life. That which is wholly
religious in thought and emotion is conscious of another, and, it claims,
a loftier origin than that which is moral only, based as the latter is,
on solely social considerations. I have heard from the pulpits of our own
land very gloomy predictions of the fate of the “merely moral man.”[283]
5. That which we call “modern progress” is due to the increase of
positive knowledge, the enlargement of the domain of objective truth.
To this, religion in its early stages made important contributions. The
motions of the celestial bodies were studied at first for ceremonial
reasons only. They fixed the sacred year and the periods for festivals
and sacrifices. Out of this grew astronomy, the civil calendar, and other
departments of infantile science.
The rudiments of mathematics were discovered and developed chiefly by the
priestly class, and at first for hieratic purposes; and the same is true
of the elements of botanical and zoölogical knowledge. The practice of
medicine owes some of its most useful resources to the observations of
the “medicine-men” or shamans of savage tribes.
While this much and more may justly be stated concerning the
contributions of Religion to Science, there can be no question of the
irreconcilable conflict between the two. They arise in totally different
tracts of the human mind, Science from the conscious, Religion from the
sub- or unconscious intelligence. Therefore, there is no common measure
between them.
Science proclaims that man is born to know, not to believe, and that
truth, to be such, must be verifiable. Religion proclaims that faith is
superior to knowledge, and that the truth which is intuitive is and must
be higher than that which depends on observation. Science acknowledges
that it can reach no certain conclusions; its final decisions are always
followed by a mark of interrogation. Religion despises such hesitancy,
and proceeds in perfect confidence of possessing the central and eternal
verity. Science looks upon the ultimate knowable laws of the universe as
mechanical, religion as spiritual or demonologic.
These differences have always existed, and have, in the main, resulted
in placing religions at all times in antagonism to universal ethics, to
general rules of conduct, and to objective knowledge. Everywhere, the
religious portion of the community have entertained a secret or open
contempt for “worldly learning”; everywhere they have proclaimed that
the knowledge of God is superior to the knowledge of his works; and that
obedience to his law is of more import than the love of humanity.
We may turn to the American Indians, the tribes of Siberia or the Dyaks
of Borneo, and we shall find that the ordinary “doctor” who cured by
a knowledge of herbs, of nursing, and of simple mechanical means, was
far less esteemed than the shaman who depended not on special knowledge
but on the possession of mysterious powers which gave him control over
demons[284]; or we may take that Protestant sect of the Reformation, who
opposed anyone learning the alphabet, lest he should waste his time on
vain human knowledge[285]; or a thousand other examples; and the contrast
is always the same.
The conclusion, therefore, is that early religion did assist the
development of the race along these lines, but only incidentally and, as
it were, unwittingly; while it was, at heart, unfriendly to them.
6. It is otherwise when we turn to Art, especially esthetic Art. Its aim
is the realisation, the expression in the object, of the idea of the
Beautiful. This idea does not belong to the conscious intelligence. It
cannot be expressed in the formulas of positive knowledge. The esthetic,
like the religious, emotions, send their roots far down into the opaque
structure of the sub-conscious intelligence, and hence the two are
natural associates. What Professor Bain says of Art may be extended to
Religion: “Nature is not its standard, nor is [objective] truth its chief
end.”[286]
It has been seriously questioned whether the idea of the beautiful
existed among primitive peoples, apart from a desire for mere gaudy
colouring or striking display. No one would doubt its universal presence
could he but free his judgment from his own canons of the beautiful, and
accept those which prevail in the savage tribe he is studying. Darwin,
in his work on the _Descent of Man_, collected evidence from the rudest
hordes of all continents to prove that all were passionate admirers
of beauty, as measured by their own criteria; and he reached also the
important conclusion that their completest expression of it was to be
found in their religious art. “In every nation,” he says, “sufficiently
advanced to have made effigies of their gods, or of their deified rulers,
the sculptors no doubt have endeavoured to express their highest idea of
beauty.”[287]
We should also remember that the same great teacher says: “It is
certainly not true that there is in the human mind any universal
standard of beauty;” and this is so, both of the human form and of those
expressions of the beautiful which appeal to the ear and the touch. The
music and the metre of one race generally displease another; and there
is no one norm by which the superiority of either can be absolutely
ascertained.
In their own way, however, Art and Religion have this in common, that
they make a study of Perfection, and aim to embody it in actuality;
whereas Science or positive knowledge confines itself to reality, which
is ever imperfect.