THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF GOD.
The alleged universality of the belief in God is only inferentially an
argument for its truth. The inference is that if men have everywhere
developed a particular belief, this general agreement could only have
been reached as a consequence of a general experience. A universal
effect implies a universal cause. So put the argument seems impressive.
As a matter of fact the statement is one long tissue of fallacies and
unwarranted assumptions.
In the first place, even admitting the universal pressure of certain
facts, it by no means follows that the theistic interpretation of those
facts is the only one admissible. There is no exception to the fact that
men have everywhere come to the conclusion that the earth was flat, and
yet a wider and truer knowledge proved that universal belief to be quite
false. The fact of a certain belief being universal only warrants the
assumption that the belief itself has a cause, but it tells us nothing
whatever concerning its truthfulness. The truth here is that the
argument from universality dates its origin from a stage of human
culture suitable to the god idea itself, a stage when very little was
known concerning the workings of the mind or the laws of mental
development. Otherwise it would have been seen that all the universality
of a belief really proves is the universality of the human mind--and
that means that, given an organism of a certain kind, it will react in
substantially an identical manner to the same stimuli. Thus it is not
surprising to find that as the human organism is everywhere
fundamentally alike, it has everywhere come to the same conclusions in
face of the same set of conditions. A man reacts to the universe in one
way, and a jelly fish in another way. And universality is as true of the
reactions of the latter as it is of those of the former.
And this means that a delusion may be as widespread as truth, a false
inference may gain as general an acceptance as a true one. What belief
has been more general than the belief in witches, fairies, and the like?
But we see in the prevalence of these and similar beliefs, not a
presumption of their truth, but only the grounds for a search after the
conditions, social and psychological, which gave them birth.
The truth is that the conditions which give rise to the belief in gods
are found in all ages, and no one would be more surprised than the
Atheist to find it otherwise. But here, precisely as in the case of good
and bad spirits, the vital question is not that people have everywhere
believed in the existence of supernatural beings,[1] but an
understanding of the conditions from which the beliefs themselves have
grown. That alone can determine whether in studying the god idea we are
studying the acquisition of a truth or the growth of a fallacy.
Next, while it may be granted, at least provisionally, that the belief
in supernatural beings is universal, against that has to be set the fact
that the whole tendency of social development is to narrow the range of
the belief, to restrict the scope of its authority, and to so attenuate
it that it becomes of no value precisely where it is supposed to be of
most use. The belief in God is least questioned where civilisation is
lowest; it is called into the most serious question where civilisation
is most advanced. To-day the belief in God is only universal in the
sense that some representatives of it are to be found in all societies.
The majority may still profess to have it, but it has ceased to be
universal in the strict sense of the term. Nor will it be disputed that
the number of convinced disbelievers is everywhere on the increase. The
fact is everywhere lamented by the official exponents of religion. All
that we can say is that the belief in God is universal--with those who
believe in him. And even here universality of belief is only secured by
their refraining from discussing precisely what it is they mean by
"God," and what it is they believe in. There is agreement in obscurity,
each one dreading to see clearly the features of his assumed friend for
fear he should recognise the face of an enemy.
Finally, the suspicious feature must be pointed out that the belief in
God owes its existence, not to the trained and educated observation of
civilised times, but to the uncritical reflection of the primitive mind.
It has its origin there, and it would indeed be remarkable if, while in
almost every other direction the primitive mind showed itself to be
hopelessly wrong, in its interpretation of the world in this particular
respect it has proved itself to be altogether right. As a matter of
fact, this primitive assumption is going the way of the others, the only
difference being that it is passing through more phases than some. But
the decay is plain to all save those who refuse to see. The process of
refinement cannot go on for ever. In other matters knowledge passes from
a nebulous and indefinite stage to a precise and definite one. In the
case of theism it pursues an opposite course. From the very definite
god, or gods, of primitive mankind we advance to the vague and
indefinite god of the modern theist--a God who, apparently, means
nothing and does nothing, and at most stands as a symbol for our
irremovable ignorance. Clearly this process cannot go on for ever. The
work of attenuation must stop at some point. And one may safely predict
that just as the advance of scientific knowledge has taken over one
department after another that was formerly regarded as within the
province of religion, so one day it will be borne in upon all that an
hypothesis such as that of theism, which does nothing and explains
nothing, may be profitably dispensed with.
What really remains for discussion is a problem of socio-psychology.
That is, we have to determine the conditions of origin of so widespread
a belief, but which we believe to be false. The materials for answering
this question are now at our command, and whatever differences of
opinion there may be concerning the stages of development, there is
very little concerning their essential character. And it is not without
significance that this question of origin is one that the present-day
apologists of theism seem pretty unanimous in leaving severely alone.
Let us commence with the fact that religion is something that is
acquired. Every work on the origin of religion assumes it, and all
investigation warrants the assumption. The question at issue is the mode
of acquisition. And here one word of caution is advisable. The wide
range of religious ideas and their existence at a very low culture
stage, precludes the assumption that religious ideas are generated in
the same conscious way as are scientific theories. Even with the modern
mind our conclusions concerning many of the affairs of life are formed
in a semi-conscious manner. Most frequently they are generated
subconsciously, and are only consciously formulated under pressure of
circumstances. And if we are to understand religion aright we must be on
our guard against attributing to primitive mankind a degree of
scientific curiosity and reflective power to which it can lay no claim.
We have to allow for what one writer well calls "physiological thought,"
thought, that is, which rises subconsciously and has its origin in the
pressure of insistent experience.
A comprehensive survey of religious beliefs show that there are only two
things that can be said to be common to them all. They differ in
teachings, in their conceptions of deity, and in modes of worship. But
all religions agree in believing in some kind of ghostly existence and
in a continued life beyond the grave. I use the expression, "ghostly
existence," because we can really trace the idea of God backward until
we lose the definite figure in a very general conception, much as
astronomers have taught us to lose a definite world in the primitive
fire-mist. So when we get beyond the culture stage at which we meet with
the definite man-like God, we encounter an indefinite thought stage at
which we can dimly mark the existence of a frame of mind that was to
give birth to the more concrete conception.
The most general term for the belief in the various orders of gods thus
becomes the belief in invisible, super-material beings, like, and yet
superior to man. It is for this reason that Professor Tylor's definition
of religion as "the belief in spiritual beings--so long as we do not use
the term "spiritual" in its modern sense"--seems to me the moat
satisfactory definition yet offered. It is the one point on which all
religions agree, and for this reason may be regarded as their essential
feature.
This taken for granted, our next point of enquiry is, What was there in
the conditions of primitive life that would give rise to a belief in
this super-material, or in modern language, spiritual existence? Now
there are at least two sets of experiences that seem adequate to the
required explanation. The one is normal, the other abnormal. The first
is connected directly with the universal experience of dreams. The
savage is, as Tylor says, a severely practical person. He believes what
he sees and, one may add, he sees what he believes. Knowing nothing of
the distinction we draw between a fact and an illusion, ignorant of the
functions, or even the existence of a nervous system, the dreams of a
savage are to him as real as his waking experiences. He does not say "I
dreamed I saw So-So," but like the Biblical characters he says, "I saw
So-So in a dream." The two forms of expression carry all the difference
between fact and fancy. One thing is therefore obvious to the savage
mind--something escapes from the body, travels about, and returns. Such
a conviction does not represent the conclusions of a genius speculating
upon the meaning of unexplained facts. It is a conviction steadily built
up by the pressure of unvarying experience, as steadily as is the
conviction that fire burns or that water is wet. The very universality
of the belief is proof that it had some such sub-conscious origin.
A second class of experiences lead to the same conclusion. In temporary
loss of consciousness the savage again sees proof of the existence of a
double. With epilepsy or insanity there is offered decisive proof that
some spirit has taken possession of the individual's body. Even in
civilised countries this belief was widely held hardly more than a
century ago. And both these classes of experience are enforced by the
belief that the shadow of a man, an echo, a reflection seen in water,
etc., are all real things. The proofs that the belief in a "soul" does
originate in this way are now so plentiful that exact references are
needless. Examination of primitive religious beliefs all over the world
yield the one result, without there being any evidence to the contrary.
Primitive philosophy does not stop here. Man dreams of things as well as
of persons, and a general extension of the belief in a ghost or double
is made until it covers almost everything. As Tylor says, "the doctrine
of souls is worked out with remarkable breadth and consistency. The
souls of animals are recognised by a natural extension from the theory
of human souls; the souls of trees and plants follow in some vague
partial way; and the souls of inanimate objects expand the category to
the extremest boundary." The reasoning of the primitive mind is thus,
given its limitations and unsound premises, uncompromisingly logical.
One can trace the processes of reasoning more easily than is the case
with modern man because it is less disturbed by cross-currents of
acquired knowledge and conflicting interests.
I am giving but the barest outline of a vast subject because I am
desirous of keeping the attention of the reader on what I believe to be
the main issue. For that reason I am not discussing whether animism--the
vitalising of inanimate objects--has an independent origin, or whether
it is a mere extension of the ghost theory. Either theory does not
affect my main position, which is that the idea of God is derived from
the ignorance of primitive humanity, and has no other authority than a
misunderstanding of natural facts. On that point the agreement among all
schools of anthropologists is now very general. Personally, however, I
do not believe that men would ever have given a soul to trees or other
natural objects unless they had first given them to living beings, and
had thus familiarised themselves with the conception of a double.
At present, though, we are on the track of the gods. The belief that
every human being, and nearly every object, possesses a soul, ends in
surrounding man with a cloud of spirits against which he has to be
always on his guard. The general situation is well put by Miss Kingsley,
who gives a picture of the West African that may well stand for the
savage world in general.
Everything happens by the action of spirits. The thing he does
himself is done by the spirit within acting on his body, the matter
with which that spirit is associated. Everything that is done by
other things is done by their spirit associated with their
particular mass of matter.... The native will point out to you a
lightning stricken tree and tell you its spirit has been killed. He
will tell you, when the earthen cooking pot is broken, it has lost
its spirit. If his weapon failed him, it is because he has stolen
or made its spirit sick by means of his influence on other spirits
of the same class.... In every action of his life he shows you how
he lives with a great, powerful spirit world around him. You see
him before running out to hunt or fight rubbing stuff in his weapon
to strengthen the spirit that is in it; telling it the while what
care he has taken of it; running through a list of what he had
given it before, though these things had been hard to give; and
begging it, in the hour of his dire necessity, not to fail him....
You see him bending over the face of the river, talking to its
spirit with proper incantations, asking it when it meets an enemy
to upset his canoe and destroy him ... or, as I have myself seen in
Congo Francaise, to take down with it, away from his village, the
pestilence of the spotted death. (_West African Studies_; pp.
394-5).
When Feurbach said that the "realm of memory was the world of souls," he
expressed a profound truth in a striking manner. It is dreams, swoons,
catalepsy, with their allied states which suggest the existence of a
double or ghost. Even in the absence of the mass of evidence from all
quarters in support of this, the fact of the ghost always being pictured
as identical in clothing and figure with the dead man would be almost
enough to demonstrate its dream origin. Into that aspect of the matter,
however, we do not now intend to enter. We are now only concerned with
the bearing of the ghost theory on the origin of God. Another step or
two and we shall have reached that point. Believing himself surrounded
on all sides by a world of ghosts the great concern of the savage is to
escape their ill-will or to secure their favour. Affection and
fear--fear that the ghost, if his wants are neglected, will wreak
vengeance through the agency of disease, famine, or accident--leads
insensibly to the ghosts of one's relations becoming objects of
veneration, propitiation, and petition. All ghosts receive some
attention for a certain time after death, but naturally special and
sustained honours are reserved for the heads of families,[2] and for
such as have been distinguished for various qualities during life. In
this way ancestor worship becomes one of the most general forms of
religious observances, and the gradual development of the great man or
the deceased ancestor into a deity follows by easy stages. The
principles of ancestor worship, to again cite the indispensible Tylor,
are not difficult to understand:--
They plainly keep up the social relations of the living world. The
dead ancestor, now passed into a deity, simply goes on protecting:
his own family and receiving suit and service from them as of old;
the dead chief still watches over his own tribe, still holds his
authority by helping friends and harming enemies, still rewards the
right and sharply punishes the wrong.
That this deification of ancestors and of dead men actually takes place
is indisputable. The Mythologies of Greece and Rome offer numerous
examples, and the deification of the Roman Emperors became the regular
rule. Numerous examples to the same end are supplied from India by Mr.
W. Crookes and Sir A. C. Lyall. That this way of honouring the dead is
not limited to natives is shown by the famous case of General Nicholson,
who actually received the honour of deification during his lifetime.
Anyone who cares to consult those storehouses of information, Spencer's
"Principles of Sociology" (Vol. I.), Tylor's "Primitive Culture," and
Frazer's "Golden Bough" will find the whole god-making process set forth
with a wealth of illustration that can hardly fail to carry conviction.
Finally, in the case of Japan and China we have living examples of an
organised system of religion based upon the deification of ancestors.[3]
It will make it easier to understand the evolution of the god from the
ghost if we bear in mind that with primitive man the gods are conceived
neither as independent existences nor as creators. Even immortality is
not asserted of them. The modern notions of deity, largely due to the
attempt to accommodate the idea of god to certain metaphysical and
philosophical conceptions, are so intermingled with the primitive idea,
that there is always the danger of reading into the primitive
intelligence more than was ever there. The consequence is that by
confusing the two senses of the word many find it difficult to realise
how one has grown out of the other. Such ideas as those of creation and
independence are quite foreign to the primitive mind. Savages are like
children in this respect; their interest in things is primarily of a
practical character. A child does not begin by asking how a thing came
to be; it asks what it is for or what it does. So the prime concern of
the savage is, what are certain things for? what will they do? are they
injurious or beneficial? It is because of this practical turn of mind
that so much attention is paid to the ghost, having once accepted its
existence as a fact. The superiority of the gods do not consist in their
substantial difference from himself, but in the greater power for good
or evil conferred upon them by their invisible existence. Creation is a
conception that does not arise until the capacity for philosophical
speculation has developed. Then reflection sets to work; the nature of
the god undergoes modification, and the long process of accommodating
primitive religious beliefs to later knowledge commences, the end of
which we have not yet seen.
The process of reading modern speculations into the religion of the
savage leads to some curious results, one of which we cannot forbear
mentioning. In his little work on "Animism" Mr. Edward Clodd, after
tracing the fundamental ideas of religion to primitive delusion, says:--
Herein (_i.e._, in dream and visions) are to be found the sufficing
materials for a belief in an entity in the body, but not of it,
which can depart and return at will, and which man everywhere has
more or less vaguely envisaged as his "double" or "other self."...
The distinction between soul and body, which explained to man his
own actions, was the key to the actions of animate and inanimate
things. A personal life and will controlled them. This was
obviously brought home to him more forcibly in the actions of
living things, since these so closely resembled his own that he saw
no difference between themselves and him. _Not in this matter alone
have the intuitions of the savage found their confirmation in the
discoveries of modern science_.... Ignorant of the reflection of
sound, how else could he account for the echoes flung back from the
hillside? Ignorant of the law of the interruption of light, how
else could he explain the advancing and retreating shadows? _In
some sense they must be alive; an inference supported by modern
science._
The italics in the above passages are mine, and they serve to illustrate
how certain writers manage to introduce quite misleading conceptions to
their readers. It almost causes one to cease wondering at the
persistence of religion when one finds a writer accepting the results of
anthropological research, and at the same time claiming that savage
"intuitions" are confirmed by modern science. If that be true, then all
that Mr. Clodd has previously written must be dismissed as untrue. The
statement is, however, quite inaccurate. The inference drawn by the
savage is not supported by modern science. Neither on the existence of a
soul nor on the existence of a god, nor on the nature of disease, nor on
the causes of physical or psychical states has science confirmed the
"intuitions" (whatever that conveniently cloudy word may mean) of the
primitive savage. The acquisition of correct views would indeed be an
easy thing if they could be gained by the "intuitions" of an untaught
savage.
The assertion that "in some sense" natural forces must be alive (as
though there can be any real sense in a term except the right sense),
and that this inference is "supported by modern physics," is an
illustration of that playing with words which is fatal to exact thought.
The only sense in which the expression is used in physics is that of
"active," and both "active" and "alive" owe their vogue to the necessity
for controverting the older view that natural forces are "inert" or
"dead" and need some external force to produce anything. It is a mere
figure of speech; the evil is when it is taken and used as an exact
expression of scientific fact. Let a reader of Mr. Clodd ask himself
whether the life he thinks of when he speaks of forces being alive is
animal life, and he will at once see the absurdity of the statement. And
if he does not mean animal life, what life does he mean?
Putting on one side all such attempts at accommodation, we may safely
say that given the origin of religion in the manner indicated, one may
trace--at least in outline--the development of religion from the
primitive ghost worship up to the rituals and beliefs of current creeds.
I do not mean by this that _all_ religious beliefs and practices spring
directly from ghost worship. Once religion is established, and the
myth-making capacity let loose, additions are made that are due to all
sorts of causes. The Romans and Greeks, for example, seem to have
created a number of deities out of pure abstractions--gods of peace, of
war, of fortune, and so forth. Why particular deities were invented, and
how they became attached to particular groups of phenomena, are
questions that it is often impossible to answer with any great degree of
certainty, but why there should be any gods at all is a question that
can be answered, I think, on the lines above indicated.
The way in which the primitive ghost worship probably paved the way for
some of the doctrines of the "higher" religions may be seen on taking a
story such as the death and resurrection of the Gospel Jesus. In his
treatise on "The Attis" Mr. Grant Allen made the ingenious suggestion
that the greater fertility of the ground on and near the grave, owing to
the food placed there to feed the ghost, would produce in the savage
mind the conviction that this increased fertility was due to the
beneficent activity of the double of the dead man. Reasoning from this
basis, it would be a simple conclusion that the production, or lack, of
crops was everywhere due to the action of good or evil spirits. In the
next place, it must be remembered that it is the act of dying which
raises the human being to the level of a guardian spirit or god; and
from this to the production of a god by ceremonial killing would be a
natural and an easy step. In this last respect, at least, we are upon
the firm ground of fact, and not on that of mere theory. If a reader
will take the trouble to peruse the numerous examples collected by Tylor
in the first chapter of his "Primitive Culture," and those provided by
Frazer in the "Golden Bough," he will find the evidence for this
overwhelming. Examples of the practice of killing a human being and
burying his body under the foundations of a castle or a bridge are very
common, and the modern custom of burying coins under a foundation-stone
is a harmless and interesting survival of this custom. In some parts of
Africa a boy and girl are buried where a village is to be established.
In Polynesia the central pillar of a temple was placed on the body of a
human victim. In Scotland there is the legend that St. Columba buried
the body of St. Oran under his monastery to make the building secure.
Any country will supply stories of a similar kind. Finally, we have the
amusing story of the manner in which Sir Richard Burton narrowly escaped
deification. Exploring in Afghanistan in the disguise of a Mohammedan
fakir, he received a friendly hint that he would do well to get off
without delay. He expressed surprise, as the people seemed very fond of
him. That, it was explained, was the cause of the trouble. They thought
so much of him they intended to kill him, and thus retain so excellent a
man with them for ever.
When Tylor wrote, the prevalent impression was that this killing of
human beings was due to a desire to appease the spirits of the place.
Later investigation showed that instead of a sacrifice it was a
creation. The purpose was to create a local god who would watch over the
building or settlement. God-making was thus shown to be a universal
practice.
Our next step must be taken in the company of Sir James Frazer. On
all-fours with the practice of creating a guardian deity for a building
is that of making a similar guardian for crops and vegetation. The
details of this practice are interesting, but they need not now detain
us. It is enough that the practice existed, and, as Frazer shows, was an
annual practice. Year by year the god was killed in order that the seed
might ripen and the harvest be secured. In some cases the body was cut
up and pieces buried in the fields; in other cases it was burned and the
ashes scattered over the ground. Gradually the ritual becomes more
elaborate, but the central idea remains intact that of a human being
converted into a god by being killed, a man sacrificed for the benefit
of the tribe. In the light of these researches the New Testament story
becomes only a more recent version of a widespread savage superstition.
The time of the sacrifice, the symbolism, the practices all prove this.
The crucified Saviour, in honour of whom all the Christian cathedrals
and churches of the world are built, is only another late survival of
the god-making practice of primitive savagery.
The gods are, then, ultimately deified ghosts. They are born of
misinterpreted subjective and objective experiences. This is among the
surest and most firmly established results of modern investigation. It
matters not what modifications later knowledge may demand; it will only
mean a change of form, not of substance. On any scientific theory we are
bound to explain the origin of the gods in terms of human error. And no
subsequent development can alter its character. We may trace the various
stages of a universal delusion, but nothing can convert a delusion into
a reality. It is now universally recognised that the primitive notions
of gods represent false conclusions from misunderstood facts. No one now
believes that the visions seen during sleep are proofs of a wandering
double. No one believes that it is necessary to supply the ghost of the
dead with food, or with weapons, or with wives. We do not believe that
the wind, the stars, the waters are alive or are capable of being
influenced by our petitions. All the phenomena upon which the god idea
was originally built are now known to be susceptible to a radically
different explanation. And if this is so, what other foundations have we
on which to build a belief in God? There is none. There is only one
plausible reason for the belief in God, and that is the reason advanced
by the savage. When we get beyond that we are not dealing with reasons
for holding the belief, but only with excuses for retaining it.
Unfortunately, thousands are familiar with the excuses, and only a few
with the reasons. Were it otherwise a great deal of what follows need
never have been written.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Both the words "supernatural" and "God" are here used somewhat
loosely. In fact the conception of the supernatural arises gradually,
and as a consequence of developing knowledge which, so to speak, splits
the universe into two. So also with the belief in God. There is clearly
an earlier form in which there exists a kind of mental plasma from which
the more definite conception of God is subsequently formed. On this
topic the reader may consult "The Threshold of Religion," by R. R.
Marett, 1914.
[2] For the importance of this in the history of religion see Fustel de
Coulanges' "The Ancient City."
[3] The perpetuation of this earlier stage of religion in China and
Japan appears to make the transition to Free-thought easier than in
countries where religion has under-gone a more advanced evolution. In
both the countries named, the better minds find it quite easy to treat
their religion as merely the respect paid to ancestors, and thus divest
it of the supernatural element. In Christian countries there is also the
attempt to restate beliefs in terms of current morality and sociology,
but the transition is more difficult.