THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS LIFE
The failure to recognise in Religion three functionally related
constituents--conation, feeling, and thought--is responsible for a
confusing use of the term 'origin.' Some have said that Religion began
with the belief in superhuman, mysterious beings; others that it had its
origin in the emotional life, and these usually specify fear; while a
third group have declared that its genesis is to be found in the
will-to-live. At this stage of our inquiry the reader realises no doubt
that these three utterances are incomplete, inasmuch as each one of them
expresses either the origin, or the original form, of only one of the
constituents of Religion.
I have in the preceding sections dealt with the establishment of the
religious attitude or behaviour and, afterwards, more specifically, with
the origin of the god-idea. The space at my disposal does not allow me to
say anything regarding the rise of the methods by which man entered in
relation with the divine beings in whom he believes. For the same reason,
I shall have to be very brief in dealing with the original emotional form
of Religion.
Two opposed opinions divide the field. The more widely held is that fear
is the beginning of Religion; the other, accepted by a small but weighty
minority, that it has its origin in a 'loving reverence for known gods.'
We shall have little difficulty in arriving at an understanding of the
matter in which these two views, instead of opposing, supplement each
other. The origin of the two emotions mentioned, fear and love, fall, of
course, outside the limits of this essay, since they both existed before
Religion.
'Fear begets gods,' said Lucretius. Hume concluded that 'the first ideas
of religion arose ... from a concern with regard to the events of life and
fears which actuate the human mind.' A similar opinion is maintained by
most of our contemporaries. Among psychologists, Ribot, for instance,
affirms that 'the religious sentiment is composed first of all of the
emotion of fear in its different degrees, from profound terror to vague
uneasiness, due to faith in an unknown, mysterious, impalpable Power.'[43]
The fear-theory is well supported by two classes of interdependent facts
observed, we are told, in every uncivilised people: (1) Evil spirits are
the first to attain a certain degree of definiteness; (2) man enters into
definite relations first with these evil spirits. If the reader will refer
to _The Origin of Civilisation_ by Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock), 3rd
ed., pp. 212-215, he will see there how widely true is the opinion
expressed by Scheinfurth:--'Among the Bongos of central Africa good
spirits are quite unrecognised, and, according to the general negro idea,
no benefit can ever come from a spirit.' In many other tribes the good
spirits are known, but the savage always 'pays more attention to
deprecating the wrath of the evil than securing the favour of the good
beings.' The tendency is to let alone the good spirits, because, being
good, they will do us good of themselves, just as evil spirits do us harm
unsolicited.
Shall we, then, admit the fear-origin of Religion? Yes, provided it be
understood that fear represents only one of the three constituents of
Religion, that it is not in virtue of a particular quality or property
that fear is the primitive emotional form of Religion, and that this
admission is not intended to imply the impossibility of Religion having
ever anywhere begun with aggressive or tender emotions. Regarding the
second reservation, it should be understood that the making of Religion
requires nothing found in fear that is not also present in other emotions.
If aggressive emotions are not conspicuous at the dawn of Religion, it is
only because it so happens that the circumstances in which the least
cultured peoples known to us live are such as to keep fear in the
foreground of consciousness. Fear was the first of the well-organised
emotional reactions. It antedated the human species, and appears to this
day first in the young animal, as well as in the infant. No doubt, before
the protective fear-reaction could have been established, the lust of life
had worked itself out into aggressive habits, those for the securing of
food, for instance. But these desires did not, as early as in the case of
fear, give rise to any emotional reaction possessing the constancy,
definiteness, and poignancy of fear. The place of fear in primitive
Religion is, then, due not to its intrinsic qualities, but simply to
circumstances which made it appear first as a well-organised emotion
vitally connected with the maintenance of life. It is for exactly the same
reason that the dominant emotion in the relations of uncivilised men with
each other, and still more evidently so, of wild animals with each other,
is usually that of fear.
When I said that fear need not have been the original religious emotion, I
had in mind the possibility of groups of primitive men having lived in
circumstances so favourable to peace and safety that fear was not very
often present with them. This is not a preposterous supposition. Wild men
need not, any more than wild animals, have found themselves so situated as
to be kept in a constant state of fright. If the African antelope runs for
its life on an average twice a day, as Francis Galton supposes, the wild
horse on the South American plains, before the hunter appeared on his
pastures, ran chiefly for his pleasure. Travellers have borne testimony to
the absence of fear in birds inhabiting certain regions. But, it may be
asked, would Religion have come into existence under these peaceful
circumstances? A life of relative ease, comfort, and security is not
precisely conducive to the establishment of practical relations with gods.
Why should happy and self-sufficient men look to unseen, mysterious beings
for an assistance not really required? Under these circumstances the
unmixed type of fear-Religion would never have come into existence.
Religion would have appeared later, and from the first in a nobler form.
In such peoples a feeling of dependence upon benevolent gods, regarded
probably as Creators and All-Fathers, eliciting admiration rather than
fear or selfish desire, would have characterised its beginnings. This
possibility should not be rejected _a priori_.
The other theory is well represented by W. Robertson Smith. He denies that
the attempt to appease evil beings is the foundation of Religion. I quote:
'From the earliest times religion, as distinct from magic or sorcery,
addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed be angry
with their people for a time, but are always placable except to the
enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the community. It
is not with a vague fear of unknown powers but with a loving reverence for
known gods who are knit to their worshippers by strong bonds of kinship,
that religion, in the only sense of the word, begins.'[44] One may agree
with Robertson Smith without denying that certain practices intended to
avert impending evils preceded the establishment of affectionate relations
with benevolent powers. As a matter of fact, our author admits this fully.
What he denies is that the attempt to propitiate, in dread, evil spirits,
is Religion. It cannot be doubted that the inner experience as well as
the outer attitude and behaviour of a person are substantially different
when he seeks to conciliate a radically evil being and when he communes
with a fundamentally benevolent one. Yet in both cases an anthropopathic
relation with a personal being is established. In this respect, both stand
opposed to magical behaviour. This common element is so fundamental that
it seems to us advisable to make the name Religion include both types of
relation. And since they differ, nevertheless, in important respects, the
phrases _Negative_ Religion may be used to designate man's dealings with
radically bad spirits, and _Positive_ Religion his relations with
fundamentally benevolent ones.
Positive Religion is at first not at all free from fear. The benevolent
gods are prompt to wrath, and cruelly avenge their broken laws. The more
striking development of religious life is the gradual substitution of love
for fear in worship.[45] This is one more reason for not completely
dissociating the propitiation of evil spirits from the worship of kindly
gods.