I
_SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION_
We all know what we mean by science; science is 'organised common
sense.' Her aim is the acquisition of reasoned and orderly knowledge.
Presented with a collection of verified facts, it is the part of
science to reduce them to order, and to account for their existence in
accordance with her recognised theory of things. If the facts cannot
be fitted into the theory, it must be expanded or altered; for we must
admit that, if the facts are verified, there is need for change and
expansion in the theory. The 'colligation' of facts demands hypotheses,
and these may not, at the moment of their construction, be verifiable.
The deflections of a planet from its apparently normal course may be
accounted for by the hypothesis of the attraction of another heavenly
body not yet discovered. The hypothesis is legitimate, for such bodies
are known to exist, and to produce such effects. When the body is
discovered, the hypothesis becomes a certainty. On the other hand,
the hypothesis that some capricious and conscious agency pushed the
planet into deflections would be illegitimate, for the existence of
such a freakish agency is not demonstrated. Our hypotheses then must be
consistent with our actual knowledge of nature and of human nature,
and our conjectured causes must be adequate to the production of the
effects. Thus, science gradually acquires and organises new regions of
knowledge.
Superstition is a word of much less definite meaning. When we call a
man 'superstitious,' we usually mean that evidence which satisfies
him does not satisfy us. We see examples daily of the dependence of
belief on bias. One man believes a story about cruelties committed by
our adversaries; another, disbelieving the tale, credits a narrative
about the misconduct of our own party. Probably the evidence in neither
case would satisfy the historian, or be accepted by a jury. A man in a
tavern tells another how the Boers, retreating from a position, buried
their own wounded. 'I don't believe that,' says the other. 'Then you
are a pro-Boer.'
The sceptic reasoned from his general knowledge of human nature. The
believer reasoned from his own prejudiced and mythopœic conception of
people whom he disliked. If the question had been one of religion the
believer might be called superstitious; the sceptic might be called
scientific, if he was ready to yield his doubts to the evidence of
capable observers of the alleged fact.
Superstition, like science, has her hypotheses, and, like science,
she reasons from experience. But her experience is usually fantastic,
unreal, or if real capable of explanation by causes other than those
alleged by superstition. A man comes in at night, and says he has seen
a ghost in white. That is merely his hypothesis; the existence of
ghosts in white is not demonstrated. You accompany him to the scene
of the experience, and prove to him that he has seen a post, not a
ghost. His experience was real, but was misinterpreted by dint of an
hypothesis resting on no demonstrated fact of knowledge.
The hypotheses of superstition are familiar. Thus, an event has
happened: say you have lost your button-hook. You presently hear of a
death in your family. Ever afterwards you go anxiously about when you
have lost a button-hook. You are confusing a casual sequence of facts
with a causal connection of facts. Sequence in time is mistaken for
sequence of what we commonly style cause and effect. In the same way,
superstition cherishes the hypothesis that like affects like. Thus, the
sun is round, and a ball of clay is round. Therefore, if an Australian
native wishes to delay the course of the round sun in the heavens,
he fixes a round ball of clay on the bough of a tree; or so books on
anthropology tell us. Acting on the hypothesis that like affects like,
a man makes a clay or waxen image of an enemy, and sticks it full of
pins or thorns. He expects his enemy to suffer agony in consequence,
and so powerful is 'suggestion' that, if the enemy knows about the
image, he sometimes falls ill and dies. This experience corroborates
the superstitious hypothesis, and so the experiment with the image is
of world-wide diffusion. Everything is done, or attempted, on these
lines by superstition. Men imitate the killing of foes or game, and
expect, as a result, to kill them in war or in the chase. They mimic
the gathering of clouds and the fall of rain, and expect rain to fall
in consequence. They imitate the evolution of an edible grub from the
larva, and expect grubs to multiply; and so on.
All this is quite rational, if you grant the hypotheses of
superstition. Her practices are magic. We are later to discuss a theory
that men had magic before they had religion, and only invented gods
because they found that magic did not work. Still later they invented
science, which is only magic with a legitimate hypothesis, using real,
not fanciful, experience. In the long run magic and religion are to die
out, perhaps, and science is to have the whole field to herself.
This may be a glorious though a remote prospect. But surely it is
above all things needful that our science should be scientific. She
must not blink facts, merely because they do not fit into her scheme
or hypothesis of the nature of things, or of religion. She really
must give as much prominence to the evidence which contradicts as to
that which supports her theory in each instance. Not only must she
not shut her eyes to this evidence, but she must diligently search
for it, must seek for what Bacon calls _instantice contradictorim_,
since, if these exist, the theory which ignores them is useless. If she
advances an hypothesis, it must not be contradictory of the whole mass
of human experience. If science finds that her hypothesis contradicts
experience, she must seek for an hypothesis which is in accordance
with experience, and, if that cannot be found, she must wait till it
is found. Again, science must not pile one unverified hypothesis upon
another unverified hypothesis till her edifice rivals the Tower of
Babel. She must not make a conjecture on p. 35, and on p. 210 treat
the conjecture as a fact. Because, if one story in the card-castle is
destroyed by being proved impossible, all the other stories will 'come
tumbling after.' It seems hardly necessary, but it is not superfluous,
to add that, in her castle of hypotheses, one must not contradict,
and therefore destroy, another. We must not be asked to believe that
an event occurred at one date, and also that it occurred at another;
or that an institution was both borrowed by a people at one period,
and was also possessed, unborrowed, by the same people, at an earlier
period. We cannot permit science to assure us that a certain fact was
well known, and that the knowledge produced important consequences;
while we are no less solemnly told that the fact was wholly unknown,
whence it would seem that the results alleged to spring from the
knowledge could not be produced.
This kind of reasoning, with its inferring of inferences from other
inferences, themselves inferred from conjectures as to the existence
of facts of which no proof is adduced, must be called superstitious
rather than scientific. The results may be interesting, but they are
the reverse of science.
It is perhaps chiefly in the nascent science of the anthropological
study of institutions, and above all of religion, that this kind of
reasoning prevails. The topic attracts ingenious and curious minds.
System after system has been constructed, unstinted in material,
elegant in aspect, has been launched, and has been wrecked, or been
drifted by the careless winds to the forlorn shore where Bryant's
ark, with all its crew, divine or human, lies in decay. No mortal
student believes in the arkite system of Bryant, though his ark, on the
match-boxes of Messrs. Bryant and May, perhaps denotes loyalty to the
ancestral idea.
The world of modern readers has watched sun myths, and dawn myths, and
storm myths, and wind myths come in and go out: _autant en emporte
le vent._ Totems and taboos succeeded, and we are bewildered by the
contending theories of the origins of taboos and totems. Deities of
vegetation now are all in all, and may it be far from us to say that
any one from Ouranos to Pan, from the Persian King to the horses of
Virbius, is not a spirit of vegetable life. Yet perhaps the deity has
higher aspects and nobler functions than the pursuit of his 'vapid
vegetable loves;' and these deserve occasional attention.
The result, however, of scurrying hypotheses and hasty generalisations
is that the nascent science of religious origins is received with
distrust. We may review the brief history of the modern science.
Some twenty years ago, when the 'Principles of Sociology,' by Mr.
Herbert Spencer, was first published, the book was reviewed, in 'Mind,'
by the author of 'Primitive Culture.' That work, again, was published
in 1871. In 1890 appeared the 'Golden Bough,' by Mr. J. G. Frazer, and
the second edition of the book, with changes and much new matter, was
given to the world in 1900.
Here, then, we have a whole generation, a space of thirty years,
during which English philosophers or scholars have been studying the
science of the Origins of Religion. In the latest edition of the
'Golden Bough,' Mr. Frazer has even penetrated into the remote region
where man neither had, nor wanted, any religion at all. We naturally
ask ourselves to what point we have arrived after the labours of a
generation. Twenty years ago, when reviewing Mr. Spencer, Mr. Tylor
said that a time of great public excitement as to these topics was
at hand. The clamour and contest aroused by Mr. Darwin's theory of
the Origin of Species and the Descent of Man would be outdone by the
coming war over the question of the Evolution of Religion. But there
has been no general excitement; there has been little display of public
interest in these questions. They have been left to 'the curious' and
'the learned,' classes not absolutely identical. Mr. Frazer, indeed,
assures us that the comparative study of human beliefs and institutions
is 'fitted to be much more than a means of satisfying an enlightened
curiosity, and of furnishing materials for the researches of the
learned.'[1]
But enlightened curiosity seems to be easily satisfied, and only very
few of the learned concern themselves with these researches, which Mr.
Tylor expected to be so generally exciting.
A member of the University of Oxford informed me that the study of
beliefs, and of anthropology in general, is almost entirely neglected
by the undergraduates, and when I asked him 'Why?' he replied 'There is
no money in it.' Another said that anthropology 'had no evidence.' In
the language of the economists there is no supply provided at Oxford
because there is no demand. Classics, philology, history, physical
science, and even literature, are studied, because 'there is money
in them,' not much money indeed, but a competence, if the student is
successful. For the study of the evolution of beliefs there is no
demand, or very little. Yet, says Mr. Frazer, 'well handled, it may
become a powerful instrument to expedite progress, if it lays bare
certain weak spots in the foundations on which modern society is
built.' We all desire progress (in the right direction), we all pine to
lay bare weak spots, and yet we do not seem to be concerned about the
services which might be done for progress by the study of the evolution
of religion. 'It is indeed a melancholy and, in some respects,
thankless task,' says Mr. Frazer, 'to strike at the foundations of
beliefs in which, as in a strong tower, the hopes and aspirations of
humanity through long ages have sought a refuge from the storm and
stress of life.' 'Thankless,' indeed, these operations are. 'Yet sooner
or later,' Mr. Frazer adds, 'it is inevitable that the battery of the
comparative method should-breach these venerable walls, mantled over
with the ivy and mosses and wild flowers of a thousand tender and
sacred associations. At present we are only dragging the guns into
position; they have hardly yet begun to speak.'
Mr. Frazer is too modest: he has dragged into position a work of
immense learning and eloquent style in three siege guns, we may say,
three volumes of the largest calibre, and they have spoken about
500,000 words. No man, to continue the metaphor, is better supplied
than he with the ammunition of learning, with the knowledge of facts
of every kind. Yet the venerable walls,--with their pleasing growth
of ivy, mosses, wild flowers, and other mural vegetation, do not, to
myself, seem in the least degree impaired by the artillery, and I try
to show cause for my opinion.
Why is this, and why is the portion of the public which lives within or
without the venerable walls mainly indifferent?
Several sufficient reasons might be given. In the first place many
people have, or think they have, so many other grounds for disbelief,
that additional grounds, provided by the comparative method, are
regarded rather as a luxury than as supplying a felt want. Again,
but very few persons have leisure, or inclination, or power of mind
enough to follow an elaborate argument through fifteen hundred pages,
not to speak of other works on the same theme. Once more, only a
minute minority are capable of testing and weighing the evidence, and
criticising the tangled hypotheses on which the argument rests, or in
which it is involved.
But there is another and perhaps a sounder argument for indifference.
The learned are aware that the evidence for all these speculations is
not of the nature to which they are accustomed, either in historical
or scientific studies. More and more the age insists on strictness in
appreciating evidence, and on economy in conjecture. But the study of
the evolution of myth and belief has always been, and still is, marked
by an extraordinary use, or abuse, of conjecture. The 'perhapses,' the
'we may supposes,' the 'we must infers' are countless.
As in too much of the so-called 'Higher Criticism' hypothesis is piled,
by many anthropologists, upon hypothesis, guess upon guess, while, if
only one guess is wrong, the main argument falls to pieces. Moreover,
it is the easiest thing, in certain cases, to explain the alleged facts
by a counter hypothesis, not a complex hypothesis, but at least as
plausible as the many combined conjectures of the castle architects,
though perhaps as far from the truth, and as incapable of verification.
Of these statements examples shall be given in the course of this book.
We are all, we who work at these topics, engaged in science, the
science of man, or rather we are painfully labouring to lay the
foundations of that science. We are all trying I to expedite progress.
But our science cannot expedite progress if our science is not
scientific. We must, therefore, however pedantic our process may seem,
keep insisting on the rejection of all evidence which is not valid,
on the sparing use of conjecture, and on the futility of piling up
hypothesis upon unproved hypothesis. To me it seems, as I have already
said, that a legitimate hypothesis must 'colligate the facts,' that it
must do so more successfully than any counter hypothesis, and that it
must, for every link in its chain, have evidence which will stand the
tests of criticism.
But the chief cause of indifference is the character of our evidence.
We can find anything we want to find people say--not only 'the man
in the street' but the learned say--among reports of the doings of
savage and barbarous races. We find what we want, and to what we do
not want we are often blind. For example, nothing in savage religion
is better vouched for than the belief in a being whom narrators of
every sort call 'a Creator who holds all in his power.' I take the
first instance of this kind that comes to hand in opening Mr. Tylor's
'Primitive Culture.' The being is he whom the natives of Canada 'call
"Andouagni," without, however, having any form or method of prayer to
him.' The date of this evidence is 1558. It is obvious that Andouagni
(to take one case out of a multitude) was not invented in the despair
of magic. Mysticism has been called the despair of philosophy, and Mr.
Frazer, as we shall see, regards religion as the despair of magic. By
his theory man, originally without religion, and trusting in magic,
found by experience that magic could not really control the weather and
the food supply. Man therefore dreamed that 'there were other beings,
like himself, but far stronger,' who, unseen, controlled what his
magic could not control. 'To these mighty beings ... man now addressed
himself ... beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him with all good
things....'[2]
But nobody beseeched Andouagni to do anything. The Canadians had 'no
method or form of prayer to him.'[3] Therefore Andouagni was not
invented because magic failed, and therefore this great power was
dreamed of, and his mercy was beseeched with prayers for good things.
That was not the process by which Andouagni was evolved, because nobody
prayed to him in 1558, nor have we reason to believe that any one ever
did.
From every part of the globe, but chiefly from among very low savage
and barbaric races, the existence of beings powerful as Andouagni,
but, like him, not addressed in prayer, or but seldom so addressed, is
reported by travellers of many ages, races, creeds, and professions.
The existence of the belief in such beings, often not approached
by prayer or sacrifice, is fatal to several modern theories of the
origin and evolution of religion. But these facts, resting on the
best evidence which anthropology can offer, and corroborated by the
undesigned coincidence of testimony from every quarter, are not what
most students in this science want to find. Therefore these facts have
been ignored or hastily slurred over, or the beliefs are ascribed to
European or Islamite influence. Yet, first, Christians or Islamites,
with the god they introduced would introduce prayer to him, and prayer,
in many cases, there is none. Next, in the case of Andouagni, what
missionary influence could exist in Canada before 1558? Thirdly, if
missionaries, amateur or professional, there were in Canada before
1558 they would be Catholics, and would introduce, not a Creator never
addressed in prayer, but crosses, beads, the Madonna, the Saints, and
such Catholic rites as would leave material traces.
In spite of all these obvious considerations, I am unacquainted with
any book on this phase of savage religion, and scarcely know any
book, except Mr. Tylor's 'Primitive Culture,' in which the facts are
prominently stated.
The evidence for the facts, let me repeat, is of the best character
that anthropology can supply, for it rests on testimony undesignedly
coincident, given from most parts of the world by men of every kind
of education, creed, and bias. Contradictory evidence, the denial
of the existence of the beliefs, is also abundant: to such eternal
contradictions of testimony anthropology must make up her mind. We can
only test and examine, in each instance, the bias of the witness, if
he has a bias, and his opportunities of acquiring knowledge. If the
belief does exist, it can seldom attest itself, or never, by material
objects, such as idols, altars, sacrifices, and the sound of prayers,
for a being like Andouagni is not prayed to or propitiated: one proof
that he is not of Christian introduction. We have thus little but the
reports of Europeans intimately acquainted with the peoples, savage or
barbaric, and, if possible, with their language, to serve as a proof
of the existence of the savage belief in a supreme being, a maker or
creator of things.
This fact warns us to be cautious, but occasionally we have such
evidence as is supplied by Europeans initiated into the mysteries of
savage religion. Our best proof, however, of the existence of this
exalted, usually neglected belief, is the coincidence of testimony,
from that of the companions of Columbus, and the earliest traders
visiting America, to that of Mr. A. W. Howitt, a _mystes_ of the
Australian Eleusinia, or of the latest travellers among the Fangs, the
remote Masai, and other scarcely 'contaminated' races.[4]
If we can raise, at least, a case for consideration in favour of
this non-utilitarian belief in a deity not approached with prayer or
sacrifice, we also raise a presumption against the theory that gods
were invented, in the despair of magic, as powers out of whom something
useful could be got: powers with good things in their gift, things
which men were ceasing to believe that they could obtain by their own
magical machinery. The strong primal gods, unvexed by prayer, were not
invented as recipients of prayer.
To ignore this chapter of early religion, to dismiss it as a tissue of
borrowed ideas--though its existence is attested by the first Europeans
on the spot, and its originality is vouched for by the very absence of
prayer, and by observers like Mr. A. W. Howitt, Miss Kingsley, and Sir
A. B. Ellis, who proposed, but withdrew, a theory of 'loan-gods'--is
not scientific.
My own early readings in early religion did not bring rue acquainted
with this chapter in the book of beliefs. When I first noticed an
example of it, in the reports of the Benedictine Mission at Nursia, in
Australia, I conceived, that some mistake had been made in 1845, by the
missionary who sent in the report.[5] But later, when I began to notice
the coincidence of testimony from many quarters, in many ages, then I
could not conceal from myself that this chapter must be read. It is in
conflict with our prevalent theories of the development of gods out of
worshipped ancestral spirits: for the maker of things, not approached
in prayer as a rule, is said to exist where ancestral spirits are not
reported to be worshipped. But science (in other fields) specially
studies exceptional cases, and contradictory instances, and all that
seems out of accord with her theory. In this case science has glanced
at what goes contrary to her theory, and has explained it by bias
in the reporters, by error in the reporters, and by the theory of
borrowing. But such coincidence in misreporting is a dangerous thing
for anthropology to admit, as it damages her evidence in general.
Again, the theory of borrowing seems to be contradicted by the early
dates of many reports, made prior to the arrival of missionaries, and
by the secrecy in which the beliefs are often veiled by the savages; as
also by the absence of prayer to the most potent being.
We are all naturally apt to insist on and be pre-possessed in favour of
an idea which has come to ourselves unexpectedly, and has appeared to
be corroborated by wider research, and, perhaps, above all, which runs
contrary to the current of scientific opinion. We make a pet of the
relatively new idea; let it be the origin of mythology in 'a disease of
language;' or the vast religious importance of totems; or our theory
of the origin of totemism; or the tremendous part played in religion
by gods of plants. We insist on the idea too exclusively; we find it
where it is not--in fact, we are very human, very unscientific, very
apt to become one-idea'd. It is even more natural that we should be
regarded in this light by our brethren (_est-il embêtant avec son Etre
Suprême_!), whose own systems will be imperilled if our favourite idea
can be established.
I risk this interpretation when I keep maintaining--what--that the
chapter of otiose or unworshipped superior beings in the 'Early
History of Religion' deserves perusal. Not to cut its pages, to go on
making systems as if it did not exist, is, I venture to think, less
than scientific, and borders on the superstitious. For to build and
defend a theory, without looking closely to whatever may imperil it,
is precisely the fault of the superstitious Khond, who used to manure
his field with a thumb, or a collop from the flank of a human victim,
and did not try sowing a field without a collop of man's flesh, to
see what the comparative crops would be. Or science of this kind is
like Don Quixote, who, having cleft his helmet with one experimental
sword-stroke, repaired it, but did not test it again.
Like other martyrs of science, I must expect to be thought importunate,
tedious, a fellow of one idea, and that idea wrong. To resent this
would show great want of humour, and a plentiful lack of knowledge of
human nature. Meanwhile, I am about to permit myself to criticise some
recent hypotheses in the field of religious origins, in the interests
of anthropology, not of orthodoxy.
[1] _Golden Bough_, i. xxi., 1900.
[2] _G. B_. i. 77.
[3] Tylor, _Prim. Cult_. ii. 309, citing Thevet, _Singularitez de la
France Antarctique_, Paris, 1558, ch. 77.
[4] _Journal of Anthropological Institute_, Oct.-Dec. 1900 and N.S.
II., Nos. 1, 2, p. 85.
[5] Max Müller, _Hibbert Lectures,_ p. 16.