Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so admirably, in his _Principles
of Sociology_, the progress of development from the Ghost to
the God that I do not propose in this chapter to attempt much
more than a brief recapitulation of his main propositions, which,
however, I shall supplement with fresh examples, and adapt at
the same time to the conception of three successive stages in
human ideas about the Life of the Dead, as set forth in the
preceding argument.
In the earlier stage of all--the stage where the actual bodies
of the dead are preserved--gods, as such, are for the most part
unknown: it is the corpses of friends and ancestors that are
worshipped and reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the
corpse of a Tahitian chief, that it was placed in a sitting
posture under a protecting shed; "a small altar was erected
before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were
daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to
attend the body." (This point about the priest is of essential
importance.) The Central Americans, again, as Mr. Spencer notes,
performed similar rites before bodies dried by artificial
heat. The New Guinea people, as D'Albertis found, worship
the dried mummies of their fathers and husbands. A little
higher in the scale we get the developed mummy-worship of
Egypt and Peru, which survives even after the evolution of
greater gods, from powerful kings or chieftains. Wherever
the actual bodies of the dead are preserved, there also worship
and offerings are paid to them.
Often, however, as already noted, it is not the whole body,
but the head alone, that is specially kept and worshipped.
Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people of Buru: "The dead
are buried in the forest on some secluded spot, marked by a
_merang_, or grave pole, over which at certain intervals the
relatives place tobacco, cigarettes, and various offerings.
When the body is decomposed the son or nearest relative
disinters the head, wraps a new cloth about it, and places
it in the Matakau at the back of his house, or in a little
hut erected for it near the grave. It is the representative
of his forefathers, whose behests he holds in the greatest
respect."
Two points are worthy of notice in this interesting account,
as giving us an anticipatory hint of two further accessories
whose evolution we must trace hereafter: first, the grave-stake,
which is probably the origin of the wooden idol; and second,
the little hut erected over the head by the side of the grave,
which is undoubtedly one of the origins of the temple, or
praying-house. Observe, also, the ceremonial wrapping of the
skull in cloth and its oracular functions.
Throughout the earlier and ruder phases of human evolution
this primitive conception of ancestors or dead relatives as the
chief known object of worship survives undiluted; and ancestor-
worship remains to this day the principal religion of the Chinese
and of several other peoples. Gods, as such, are practically
unknown in China. Ancestor-worship, also, survives in many
other races as one of the main cults, even after other elements
of later religion have been superimposed upon it. In Greece
and Rome it remained to the last an important part of domestic
ritual. But in most cases a gradual differentiation is set up
in time between various classes of ghosts or dead persons, some
ghosts being considered of more importance and power than others;
and out of these last it is that gods as a rule are finally
developed. A god, in fact, is in the beginning, at least, an
exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost--a ghost able to help,
and from whose help great things may reasonably be expected.
Again, the rise of chieftainship and kingship has much to do
with the growth of a higher conception of godhead; a dead king
of any great power or authority is sure to be thought of in time
as a god of considerable importance. We shall trace out this
idea more fully hereafter in the religion of Egypt; for the
present it must suffice to say that the supposed power of the
gods in each pantheon has regularly increased in proportion to
the increased power of kings or emperors.
When we pass from the first plane of corpse preservation and
mummification to the second plane, where burial is habitual,
it might seem, at a hasty glance, as though continued worship
of the dead, and their elevation into gods, would no longer be
possible. For we saw that burial is prompted by a deadly fear
lest the corpse or ghost should return to plague the living.
Nevertheless, natural affection for parents or friends, and the
desire to insure their goodwill and aid, make these seemingly
contrary ideas reconcilable. As a matter of fact, we find that
even when men bury or burn their dead, they continue to worship
them; while, as we shall show in the sequel, even the great
stones which they roll on top of the grave to prevent the dead
from rising again become, in time, altars on which sacrifices
are offered to the spirit.
Much of the Bible is evidently legendary. Here we have a jumble of
ancient myths, allegories, and mysteries drawn from many sources and
remote ages, and adapted, altered, and edited so many times that in many
instances their original or inner meaning has become obscure. And it is
folly to accept the tangled legends and blurred or distorted symbols as
the literal history of a literal tribe, and the literal account of the
origin of man, and the genesis of religion.
The real roots of religion lie far deeper: deeper, perhaps, than
sun-worship, ghost-worship, and fear of demons. In _The Real Origin of
Religion_ occurs the following:
Quite recently theories have been advocated attempting to
prove that the minds of early men were chiefly concerned with
the increase of vegetation, and that their fancy played so much
round the mysteries of plant growth that they made them their
holiest arcana. Hence it appears that the savages were far more
modest and refined than our civilised contemporaries, for almost
all our works of imagination, both in literature and art, make
human love their theme in all its aspects, whether healthy or
pathological; whereas the savage, it seems, thought only of his
crops. Nothing can be more astonishing than this discovery,
if it be true, but there are many facts which might lead us to
believe that the romance of love inspired early art and religion
as well as modern thought.
And again:
Religion is a gorgeous efflorescence of human love. The tender
passion has left its footsteps on the sands of time in magnificent
monuments and libraries of theology.
This may seem startling to many orthodox readers, but it is no new
theory, and is doubtless quite true, for all gods have been made by
man, and all theologies have been evolved by man, and the odour and the
colour of his human passions cling to them always, even after they are
discarded. Under all man's dreams of eternal gods and eternal heavens
lies man's passion for the eternal feminine. But on these subjects
"Moses" spoke in parables, and I shall not speak at all.
Mr. Robertson, in _Christianity and Mythology_, says of the Bible:
It is a medley of early metaphysics and early fable--early,
that is, relatively to known Hebrew history. It ties together
two creation stories and two flood stories; it duplicates
several sets of mythic personages--as Cain and Abel, Tubal-Cain
and Jabal; it grafts the curse of Cham on the curse of Cain,
making that finally the curse of Canaan; it tells the same
offensive story twice of one patriarch and again of another;
it gives an early "metaphysical" theory of the origin of death,
life, and evil; it adapts the Egyptian story of the "Two Brothers,"
or the myth of Adonis, as the history of Joseph; it makes use
of various God-names, pretending that they always stood for
the same deity; it repeats traditions concerning mythic
founders of races--if all this be not "a medley of early fable,"
what is it?