THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
The discussion in the last chapter illustrated how closely pain and
pleasure, truth and error, and thought and its laws have been related to
the forms of religions, and their dogmatic expressions. The character of
the relatively and absolutely true was touched upon, and the latter, it
was indicated, if attainable at all by human intelligence, must be found
in the formal laws of that intelligence, those which constitute its
nature and essence, and in the conclusions which such a premise forces
upon the reason. The necessity of this preliminary inquiry arose from
the fact that every historical religion claims the monopoly of the
absolutely true, and such claims can be tested only when we have decided
as to whether there is such truth, and if there is, where it is to be
sought. Moreover, as religions arise from some mental demand, the
different manifestations of mind,--sensation, emotion and
intellect--must be recognized and understood.
Passing now to a particular description of the Religious Sentiment, it
may roughly be defined to be the feeling which prompts to thoughts or
acts of worship. It is, as I have said, a complex product, made up of
emotions and ideas, developing with the growth of mind, wide-reaching in
its maturity, but meagre enough at the start. We need not expect to find
in its simplest phases that insight and tender feeling which we
attribute to the developed religious character. “The scent of the
blossom is not in the bulb.” Its early and ruder forms, however, will
best teach the mental elements which are at its root.
The problem is, to find out why the primitive man figured to himself any
gods at all; what necessity of his nature or his condition led him so
universally to assume their existence, and seek their aid or their
mercy? The conditions of the solution are, that it hold good everywhere
and at all times; that it enable us to trace in every creed and cult the
same sentiments which first impelled man to seek a god and adore him.
Why is it that now and in remotest history, here and in the uttermost
regions, there is and always has been this that we call _religion_?
There must be some common reason, some universal peculiarity in man’s
mental formation which prompts, which forces him, him alone of animals,
and him without exception, to this discourse and observance of religion.
What this is, it is my present purpose to try to find out.
In speaking of the development of mind through organism, it was seen
that the emotions precede the reason in point of time. This is daily
confirmed by observation. The child is vastly more emotional than the
man, the savage than his civilized neighbor. Castren, the Russian
traveller, describes the Tartars and Lapps as a most nervous folk. When
one shocks them with a sudden noise, they almost fall into convulsions.
Among the North American Indians, falsely called a phlegmatic race,
nervous diseases are epidemic to an almost unparalleled extent. Intense
thought, on the other hand, as I have before said, tends to lessen and
annul the emotions. Intellectual self-consciousness is adverse to them.
But religion, we are everywhere told, is largely a matter of the
emotions. The pulpit constantly resounds with appeals to the feelings,
and not unfrequently with warnings against the intellect. “I acknowledge
myself,” says the pious non-juror, William Law, “a declared enemy to the
use of reason in religion;” and he often repeats his condemnation of
“the labor-learned professors of far-fetched book-riches.”[49-1] As the
eye is the organ of sight, says one whose thoughts on such matters equal
in depth those of Pascal, so the heart is the organ of religion.[49-2]
In popular physiology, the heart is the seat of the emotions as the
brain is that of intellect. It is appropriate, therefore, that we
commence our analysis of the religious sentiment with the emotions which
form such a prominent part of it.
Now, whether we take the experience of an individual or the history of a
tribe, whether we have recourse to the opinions of religious teachers or
irreligious philosophers, we find them nigh unanimous that the emotion
which is the prime motor of religious thought is _fear_. I need not
depend upon the well-known line of Petronius Arbiter,
Primus in orbe deos fecit timor;
for there is plenty of less heterodox authority. The worthy Bishop Hall
says, “Seldom doth God seize upon the heart without a vehement
concussion going before. There must be some blustering and flashes of
the law. We cannot be too awful in our fear.”[50-1] Bunyan, in his
beautiful allegory of the religious life, lets Christian exclaim: “Had
even Obstinate himself felt what I have felt of the terrors of the yet
unseen, he would not thus lightly have given us the _back_.” The very
word for God in the Semitic tongues means “fear;”[50-2] Jacob swore to
Laban, “by Him whom Isaac feared;” and Moses warned his people that
“God is come, that his fear may be before your faces.” To _venerate_ is
from a Sanscrit root (_sêv_), to be afraid of.
But it is needless to amass more evidence on this point. Few will
question that fear is the most prominent emotion at the awakening of the
religious sentiments. Let us rather proceed to inquire more minutely
what fear is.
I remarked in the previous chapter that “the emotions fall naturally
into a dual classification, in which the one involves pleasurable or
elevating, the other painful or depressing conditions.” Fear comes of
course under the latter category, as it is essentially a painful and
depressing state of mind. But it corresponds with and implies the
presence of Hope, for he who has nothing to hope has nothing to
fear.[51-1] “There is no hope without fear, as there is no fear without
hope,” says Spinoza. “For he who is in fear has some doubt whether what
he fears will take place, and consequently hopes that it will not.”
We can go a step further, and say that in the mental process the hope
must necessarily precede the fear. In the immediate moment of losing a
pleasurable sensation we hope and seek for its repetition. The mind,
untutored by experience, confidently looks for its return. The hope only
becomes dashed by fear when experience has been associated with
disappointment. Hence we must first look to enjoy a good before we can
be troubled by a fear that we shall not enjoy it; we must first lay a
plan before we can fear its failure. In modern Christianity hope, hope
of immortal happiness, is more conspicuous than fear; but that hope is
also based on the picture of a pleasant life made up from experience.
Both hope and fear, therefore, have been correctly called secondary or
derived emotions, as they presuppose experience and belief, experience
of a pleasure akin to that which we hope, belief that we can attain such
a pleasure. “We do not hope first and enjoy afterwards, but we enjoy
first and hope afterwards.”[52-1] Having enjoyed, we seek to do so
again. A desire, in other words, must precede either Hope or Fear. They
are twin sisters, born of a Wish.
Thus my analysis traces the real source of the religious sentiment, so
far as the emotions are concerned, to a Wish; and having arrived there,
I find myself anticipated by the words of one of the most reflective
minds of this century: “All religion rests on a mental want; we hope,
we fear, because we wish.”[53-1] And long before this conclusion was
reached by philosophers, it had been expressed in unconscious religious
thought in myths, in the Valkyria, the Wish-maidens, for instance, who
carried the decrees of Odin to earth.
This is no mean origin, for a wish, a desire, conscious or unconscious,
in sensation only or in emotion as well, is the fundamental postulate of
every sort of development, of improvement, of any possible future, of
life of any kind, mental or physical. In its broadest meaning, science
and history endorse the exclamation of the unhappy Obermann: “_La perte
vraiment irréparable est celle des désirs._”[53-2]
The sense of unrest, the ceaseless longing for something else, which is
the general source of all desires and wishes, is also the source of all
endeavor and of all progress. Physiologically, it is the effort of our
organization to adapt itself to the ever varying conditions which
surround it; intellectually, it is the struggle to arrive at truth; in
both, it is the effort to attain a fuller life.
As stimuli to action, therefore, the commonest and strongest of all
emotions are Fear and Hope. They are the emotional correlates of
pleasure and pain, which rule the life of sensation. Their closer
consideration may well detain us awhile.
In the early stages of religious life, whether in an individual or a
nation, the latter is half concealed. Fear is more demonstrative, and as
it is essentially destructive, its effects are more sudden and visible.
In its acuter forms, as Fright and Terror, it may blanch the hair in a
night, blight the mind and destroy the life of the individual. As Panic,
it is eminently epidemic, carrying crowds and armies before it; while in
the aggravated form of Despair it swallows up all other emotions and
prompts to self destruction. Its physiological effect is a direct
impairment of vitality.
Hope is less intense and more lasting than fear. It stimulates the
system, elates with the confidence of control, strengthens with the
courage derived from a conviction of success, and bestows in advance the
imagined joy of possession. As Feuchtersleben happily expresses it:
“Hope preserves the principle of duration when other parts are
threatened with destruction, and is a manifestation of the innermost
psychical energy of Life.”[54-1]
Both emotions powerfully prompt to action, and to that extent are
opposed to thought. Based on belief, they banish uncertainty, and
antagonize doubt and with it investigation. The religion in which they
enter as the principal factors will be one intolerant of opposition,
energetic in deed, and generally hostile to an unbiased pursuit of the
truth.
Naturally those temperaments and those physical conditions which chiefly
foster these emotions will tend to religious systems in which they are
prominent. Let us see what some of these conditions are.
It has always been noticed that impaired vitality predisposes to fear.
The sick and feeble are more timorous than the strong and well. Further
predisposing causes of the same nature are insufficient nourishment,
cold, gloom, malaria, advancing age and mental worry. For this reason
nearly invariably after a general financial collapse we witness a
religious “revival.” Age, full of care and fear, is thus prompted to
piety, willing, as La Rochefoucauld remarks, to do good by precept when
it can no longer do evil by example. The inhabitants of swampy,
fever-ridden districts are usually devout. The female sex, always the
weaker and often the worsted one in the struggle for existence, is when
free more religious than the male; but with them hope is more commonly
the incentive than fear.
Although thus prominent and powerful, desire, so far as its fruition is
pleasure, has expressed but the lowest emotions of the religious
sentiment. Something more than this has always been asked by sensitively
religious minds. Success fails to bring the gratification it promises.
The wish granted, the mind turns from it in satiety. Not this, after
all, was what we sought.
The acutest thinkers have felt this. Pascal in his _Pensées_ has such
expressions as these: “The present is never our aim. The future alone is
our object.” “Forever getting ready to be happy, it is certain we never
can be.” “’Tis the combat pleases us and not the victory. As soon as
that is achieved, we have had enough of the spectacle. So it is in play,
so it is in the search for truth. We never pursue objects, but we pursue
the pursuit of objects.” But no one has stated it more boldly than
Lessing when he wrote: “If God held in his right hand all truth, and in
his left the one unceasingly active desire for truth, although bound up
with the law that I should forever err, I should choose with humility
the left and say: ‘Give me this, Father. The pure truth is for thee
alone.’”[56-1] The pleasure seems to lie not in the booty but in the
battle, not in gaining the stakes but in playing the game, not in the
winning but in the wooing, not in the discovery of truth but in the
search for it.
What is left for the wise, but to turn, as does the preacher, from this
delusion of living, where laughter is mad and pleasure is vain, and
praise the dead which are dead more than the living which are yet alive,
or to esteem as better than both he that hath never been?
Such is the conclusion of many faiths. Wasted with combat, the mortal
longs for the rest prepared for the weary. Buddha taught the
extinguishment in Nirvana; the Brahman portrays the highest bliss as
_shanti_, complete and eternal repose; and that the same longing was
familiar to ancient Judaism, and has always been common to Christianity,
numerous evidences testify.[57-1] Few epitaphs are more common than
those which speak of the mortal resting _in pace, in quiete_.
The supposition at the root of these longings is that action must bring
fatigue and pain, and though it bring pleasure too, it is bought too
dearly. True in fact, I have shown that this conflicts with the theory
of perfect life, even organic life. The highest form of life is the most
unceasing living; its functions ask for their completest well being
constant action, not satisfaction. That general feeling of health and
strength, that _sens de bien être_, which goes with the most perfect
physical life, is experienced only when all the organs are in complete
working order and doing full duty. They impart to the whole frame a
desire of motion. Hence the activity of the young and healthy as
contrasted with the inertness of the exhausted and aged.
How is it possible to reconcile this ideal of life, still more the hope
of everlasting life, with the acknowledged vanity of desire? It is
accomplished through the medium of an emotion which more than any I have
touched upon reveals the character of the religious sentiment--Love.
This mighty but protean feeling I shall attempt to define on broader
principles than has hitherto been done. The vague and partial meanings
assigned it have led to sad confusion in the studies of religions. In
the language of feeling, love is a passion; but it does not spring from
feeling alone. It is far more fervid when it rises through intellect
than through sense. “Men have died from time to time, and worms have
eaten them, but not for love,” says the fair Rosalind; and though her
saying is not very true as to the love of sense, it is far less true as
to the love of intellect. The martyrs to science and religion, to
principles and faith, multiply a hundred-fold those to the garden god.
The spell of the idea is what
“Turns ruin into laughter and death into dreaming.”
Such love destroys the baser passion of sense, or transfigures it so
that we know it no longer. The idea-driven is callous to the
blandishments of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love to
woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch for the kingdom of heaven’s
sake are the exemplars of the love to God.
What common trait so marks these warring products of mind, that we call
them by one name? In what is all love the same? The question is
pertinent, for the love of woman, the love of neighbor, the love of
country, the love of God, have made the positive side of most religions,
the burden of their teachings. The priests of Cotytto and Venus, Astarte
and Melitta, spoke but a more sensuous version of the sermon of the aged
apostle to the Ephesians,--shortest and best of all sermons--“Little
children, love one another.”[59-1]
The earliest and most constant sign of reason is “working for a remote
object.”[59-2] Nearly everything we do is as a step to something beyond.
Forethought, conscious provision, is the measure of intelligence. But
there must be something which is the object, the aim, the end-in-view of
rational action, which is sought for itself alone, not as instrumental
to something else. Such an object, when recognized, inspires the
sentiment of love. It springs from the satisfaction of reason.
This conclusion as to the nature of love has long been recognized by
thinkers. Richard Baxter defined it as “the volition of the end,” “the
motion of the soul that tendeth to the end,” and more minutely, “the
will’s volition of good apprehended by the understanding.”[60-1] In
similar language Bishop Butler explains it as “the resting in an object
as an end.”[60-2] Perhaps I can better these explanations by the phrase,
_Love is the mental impression of rational action whose end is in
itself_.
Now this satisfaction is found only in one class of efforts, namely,
those whose result is continuity, persistence, in fine, _preservation_.
This may be toward the individual, self-love, whose object is the
continuance of personal existence; toward the other sex, where the
hidden aim is the perpetuation of the race; toward one’s fellows, where
the giving of pleasure and the prevention of pain mean the maintenance
of life; toward one’s country, as patriotism; and finally toward the
eternally true, which as alone the absolutely permanent and
preservative, inspires a love adequate and exhaustive of its conception,
casting out both hope and fear, the pangs of desire as well as the
satiety of fruition.
In one or other of these forms love has at all times been the burden of
religion: the glad tidings it has always borne have been “love on
earth.” The Phœnix in Egyptian myth appeared yearly as newly risen,
but was ever the same bird, and bore the egg from which its _parent_ was
to have birth. So religions have assumed the guise in turn of self-love,
sex-love, love of country and love of humanity, cherishing in each the
germ of that highest love which alone is the parent of its last and only
perfect embodiment.
Favorite of these forms was sex-love. “We find,” observes a recent
writer, “that all religions have engaged and concerned themselves with
the sexual passion. From the times of phallic worship through Romish
celibacy down to Mormonism, theology has linked itself with man’s
reproductive instincts.”[61-1] The remark is just, and is most
conspicuously correct in strongly emotional temperaments. “The
devotional feelings,” writes the Rev. Frederick Robertson in one of his
essays, “are often singularly allied to the animal nature; they conduct
the unconscious victim of feelings that appear divine into a state of
life at which the world stands aghast.” Fanaticism is always united with
either excessive lewdness or desperate asceticism. The physiological
performance of the generative function is sure to be attacked by
religious bigotry.
So prominent is this feature that attempts have been made to explain
nearly all symbolism and mythology as types of the generative procedure
and the reproductive faculty of organism. Not only the pyramids and
sacred mountains, the obelisks of the Nile and the myths of light have
received this interpretation, but even such general symbols as the
spires of churches, the cross of Christendom and the crescent of
Islam.[62-1]
Without falling into the error of supposing that any one meaning or
origin can be assigned such frequent symbols, we may acknowledge that
love, in its philosophical sense, is closely akin to the mystery of
every religion. That, on occasions, love of sex gained the mastery over
all other forms, is not to be doubted; but that at all times this was
so, is a narrow, erroneous view, not consistent with a knowledge of the
history of psychical development.
Sex-love, as a sentiment, is a cultivated growth. All it is at first is
a rude satisfaction of the erethism. The wild tribes of California had
their pairing seasons when the sexes were in heat, “as regularly as the
deer, the elk and the antelope.”[63-1] In most tongues of the savages of
North America there are no tender words, as “dear,” “darling,” and the
like.[63-2] No desire of offspring led to their unions. The women had
few children, and their fathers paid them little attention. The family
instinct appears in conditions of higher culture, in Judea, Greece, Rome
and ancient Germany. Procreation instead of lust was there the aim of
marriage. To-day, mere sentiment is so much in the ascendant that both
these elements are often absent. There is warm affection without even
instinctive knowledge of the design of the bond assumed.[63-3]
Those who would confine the promptings of the passion of reproduction as
it appears in man to its objects as shown in lower animals, know little
how this wondrous emotion has acted as man’s mentor as well as paraclete
in his long and toilsome conflict with the physical forces.
The venereal sense is unlike the other special senses in that it is
general, as well as referable to special organs and nerves. In its
psychological action it “especially contributes to the development of
sympathies which connect man not only with his coevals, but with his
fellows of all preceding and succeeding generations as well. Upon it is
erected this vast superstructure of intellect, of social and moral
sentiment, of voluntary effort and endeavor.”[64-1] Of all the
properties of organized matter, that of transmitting form and life is
the most wonderful; and if we examine critically the physical basis of
the labors and hopes of mankind, if we ask what prompts its noblest and
holiest longings, we shall find them, in the vast majority of instances,
directly traceable to this power. No wonder then that religion, which we
have seen springs from man’s wants and wishes, very often bears the
distinct trace of their origin in his reproductive functions. The liens
of the family are justly deemed sacred, and are naturally associated
with whatever the mind considers holy.
The duty of a citizen to become a father was a prominent feature in
many ancient religions. How much honor the sire of many sons had in Rome
and Palestine is familiar to all readers. No warrior, according to
German faith, could gain entrance to Valhalla unless he had begotten a
son. Thus the preservation of the species was placed under the immediate
guardianship of religion.
Such considerations explain the close connection of sexual thoughts with
the most sacred mysteries of faith. In polytheisms, the divinities are
universally represented as male or female, virile and fecund. The
processes of nature were often held to be maintained through such
celestial nuptials.
Yet stranger myths followed those of the loves of the gods. Religion, as
the sentiment of continuance, finding its highest expression in the
phenomenon of generation, had to reconcile this with the growing concept
of a divine unity. Each separate god was magnified in praises as
self-sufficient. Earth, or nature, or the season is one, yet brings
forth all. How embody this in concrete form?
The startling refuge was had in the image of a deity at once of both
sexes. Such avowedly were Mithras, Janus, Melitta, Cybele, Aphrodite,
Agdistis; indeed nearly all the Syrian, Egyptian, and Italic gods, as
well as Brahma, and, in the esoteric doctrine of the Cabala, even
Jehovah, whose female aspect is represented by the “Shekinah.” To this
abnormal condition the learned have applied the adjectives epicene,
androgynous, hermaphrodite, arrenothele. In art it is represented by a
blending of the traits of both sexes. In the cult it was dramatically
set forth by the votaries assuming the attire of the other sex, and
dallying with both.[66-1] The phallic symbol superseded all others; and
in Cyprus, Babylonia and Phrygia, once in her life, at least, must every
woman submit to the embrace of a stranger.
Such rites were not mere sensualities. The priests of these divinities
often voluntarily suffered emasculation. None but a eunuch could become
high priest of Cybele. Among the sixteen million worshippers of Siva,
whose symbol is the Lingam, impurity is far less prevalent than among
the sister sects of Hindoo religions.[66-2] To the Lingayets, the member
typifies abstractly the idea of life. Therefore they carve it on
sepulchres, or, like the ancient nations of Asia Minor, they lay clay
images of it on graves to intimate the hope of existence beyond the
tomb.
This notion of a hermaphrodite deity is not “monstrous,” as it has been
called. There lies a deep meaning in it. The gods are spirits, beings
of another order, which the cultivated esthetic sense protests against
classing as of one or the other gender. Never can the ideal of beauty,
either physical or moral, be reached until the characteristics of sex
are lost in the concept of the purely human. In the noblest men of
history there has often been noted something feminine, a gentleness
which is not akin to weakness; and the women whose names are ornaments
to nations have displayed a calm greatness, not unwomanly but something
more than belongs to woman. Art acknowledges this. In the Vatican Apollo
we see masculine strength united with maidenly softness; and in the
traditional face and figure of Christ a still more striking example how
the devout mind conjoins the traits of both sexes to express the highest
possibility of the species. “Soaring above the struggle in which the
real is involved with its limitations, and free from the characteristics
of gender, the ideal of beauty as well as the ideal of humanity, alike
maintain a perfect sexual equilibrium.”[67-1]
Another and more familiar expression of the religious emotion, akin to
the belief in double-sexed deities,--nay, in its physiological aspect
identical with it, as assuming sexual self-sufficiency, is the myth of
the Virgin-Mother.
When Columbus first planted the cross on the shores of San Domingo, the
lay brother Roman Pane, whom he sent forth to convert the natives of
that island, found among them a story of a virgin Mamóna, whose son
Yocaúna, a hero and a god, was chief among divinities, and had in the
old times taught this simple people the arts of peace and guided them
through the islands.[68-1] When the missionaries penetrated to the
Iroquois, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and many other tribes, this same story
was told them with such startling likeness to one they came to tell,
that they felt certain either St. Thomas or Satan had got the start of
them in America.
But had these pious men known as well as we do the gentile religions of
the Old World, they would have seasoned their admiration. Long before
Christianity was thought of, the myth of the Virgin-Mother of God was in
the faith of millions, as we have had abundantly shown us of late years
by certain expounders of Christian dogmas.
How is this strange, impossible belief to be explained? Of what secret,
unconscious, psychological working was it the expression? Look at its
result. It is that wherever this doctrine is developed the _status
matrimonialis_ is held to be less pure, less truly religious, than the
_status virginitatis_. Such is the teaching to-day in Lhassa, in Rome;
so it was in Yucatan, where, too, there were nunneries filled with
spouses of God. I connect it with the general doctrine that chastity in
either sex is more agreeable to God than marriage, and this belief, I
think, very commonly arises at a certain stage of development of the
religious sentiment, when it unconsciously recognises the indisputable
fact that sex-love, whether in its form of love of woman, family, or
nation, is not what that sentiment craves. This is first shown by
rejecting the idea of sex-love in the birth of the god; then his priests
and priestesses refuse its allurements, and deny all its claims, those
of kindred, of country, of race, until the act of generation itself is
held unholy and the thought of sex a sin. By such forcible though rude
displays do they set forth their unconscious acknowledgment of that
eternal truth: “He that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not
worthy of Me.”
The significance of these words is not that there is an antagonism in
the forms of love. It is not that man should hate himself, as Pascal,
following the teachings of the Church, so ably argued; nor that the one
sex should be set over against the other in sterile abhorrence; nor yet
that love of country and of kindred is incompatible with that toward the
Supreme of thought; but it is that each of these lower, shallower,
evanescent forms of emotion is and must be lost in, subordinated to,
that highest form to which these words have reference. Reconciliation,
not abnegation, is what they mean.
Even those religions which teach in its strictness the oneness of God
have rarely separated from his personality the attribute of sex. He is
the father, _pater et genitor_, of all beings. The monotheism which we
find in Greece and India generally took this form. The ancient Hebrews
emphasized the former, not the latter sense of the word, and thus
depriving it of its more distinctive characteristics of sex, prepared
the way for the teachings of Christianity, in which the Supreme Being
always appears with the attributes of the male, but disconnected from
the idea of generation.
Singularly enough, the efforts to which this latent incongruity prompts,
even in persons speaking English, in which tongue the articles and
adjectives have no genders, point back to the errors of an earlier age.
A recent prayer by an eminent spiritualist commences:--“Oh Eternal
Spirit, our Father and our Mother!” The expression illustrates how
naturally arises the belief in a hermaphrodite god, when once sex is
associated with deity.
Of all founders of religions, Mohammed first proclaimed a divinity
without relation to sex. One of his earliest suras reads:
“He is God alone,
God the eternal.
He begetteth not, and is not begotten;
And there is none like unto him.”
And elsewhere:--
“He hath no spouse, neither hath he any offspring.”[71-1]
While he expressly acknowledged the divine conception of Jesus, he
denied the coarse and literal version of that doctrine in vogue among
the ignorant Christians around him. Enlightened christendom, to-day,
does not, I believe, differ from him on this point.
Such sexual religions do not arise, as the theory has hitherto been,
from study and observation of the generative agencies in nature, but
from the identity of object between love in sense and love in intellect,
profane and sacred passion. The essence of each is _continuance_,
preservation; the origin of each is subjective, personal; but the former
has its root in sensation, the latter in reason.
The sex-difference in organisms, the “abhorrence of self-fertilization”
which Mr. Darwin speaks of as so conspicuous and inexplicable a
phenomenon, is but one example of the sway of a law which as action and
reaction, thesis and antithesis, is common to both elementary motion and
thought. The fertile and profound fancy of Greece delighted to prefigure
this truth in significant symbols and myths. Love, Eros, is shown
carrying the globe, or wielding the club of Hercules; he is the unknown
spouse of Psyche, the soul; and from the primitive chaos he brings forth
the ordered world, the Kosmos.
The intimate and strange relation between sensuality and religion, so
often commented upon and denied, again proven, and always
misinterpreted, thus receives a satisfactory explanation. Some singular
manifestations of it, of significance in religious history, are
presented by the records of insane delusions. They confirm what I have
above urged, that the association is not one derived from observation
through intellectual processes, but is a consequence of physiological
connections, of identity of aim in the distinct realms of thought and
emotion.
That eminent writer on mental diseases, Schroeder van der Kolk, when
speaking of the forms of melancholy which arise from physical
conditions, remarks: “The patient who is melancholy from disorders of
the generative organs considers himself sinful. His depressed tone of
mind passes over into religious melancholy; ‘he is forsaken by God; he
is lost.’ All his afflictions have a religious color.” In a similar
strain, Feuchtersleben says: “In the female sex especially, the erotic
delusion, unknown to the patient herself, often assumes the color of the
religious.”[73-1] “The unaccomplished sexual designs of nature,”
observes a later author speaking of the effects of the single life,
“lead to brooding over supposed miseries which suggest devotion and
religious exercise as the nepenthe to soothe the morbid longings.”[73-2]
Stimulate the religious sentiment and you arouse the passion of love,
which will be directed as the temperament and individual culture prompt.
Develope very prominently any one form of love, and by a native affinity
it will seize upon and consecrate to its own use whatever religious
aspirations the individual has. This is the general law of their
relation.
All the lower forms of love point to one to which they are the gradual
ascent, both of the individual and on a grander scale of the race, to
wit, the love of God. This is the passion for the highest attainable
truth, a passion which, as duty, prompts to the strongest action and to
the utter sacrifice of all other longings. No speculative acquaintance
with propositions satisfies it, no egotistic construction of systems,
but the truth expressed in life, the truth as that which alone either
has or can give being and diuturnity, this is its food, for which it
thirsts with holy ardor. Here is the genuine esoteric gnosis, the sacred
secret, which the rude and selfish wishes of the savage, the sensual
rites of Babylon, “mother of harlots,” and the sublimely unselfish
dreams of a “religion of humanity,” have alike had in their hearts, but
had no capacity to interpret, no words to articulate.
Related to this emotional phase of the religious sentiment is the
theurgic power of certain natural objects over some persons. The
biblical scholar Kitto confesses that the moon exerted a strange
influence on his mind, stirring his devotional nature, and he owns that
it would not have been hard for him to join the worshippers of the
goddess of the night. Wilhelm von Humboldt in one of his odes refers to
similar feelings excited in him by the gloom and murmur of groves. The
sacred poets and the religious arts generally acknowledge this
_fascination_, as it has been called, which certain phenomena have for
religious temperaments.
The explanation which suggests itself is that of individual and
ancestral association. In the case of Kitto it was probably the latter.
His sensitively religious nature experienced in gazing at the moon an
impression inherited from some remote ancestor who had actually made it
the object of ardent worship. The study of the laws of inherited memory,
so successfully pursued of late by Professor Laycock, take away anything
eccentric about this explanation, though I scarcely expect it will be
received by one unacquainted with those laws.
The emotional aspect of religion is not exhausted by the varieties of
fear and hope and love. Wonder, awe, admiration, the æsthetic emotions,
in fact all the active principles of man’s mental economy are at times
excited and directed by the thought of supernatural power. Some have
attempted to trace the religious sentiment exclusively to one or the
other of these. But they are all incidental and subsidiary emotions.
Certain mental diseases, by abnormally stimulating the emotions,
predispose strongly to religious fervor. Epilepsy is one of these, and
in Swedenborg and Mohammed, both epileptics, we see distinguished
examples of religious mystics, who, no doubt honestly, accepted the
visions which accompanied their disease as revelations from another
world. Very many epileptics are subject to such delusions, and their
insanity is usually of a religious character.
On the other hand, devotional excitement is apt to bring about mental
alienation. Every violent revival has left after it a small crop of
religious melancholies and lunatics. Competent authorities state that in
modern communities religious insanity is most frequent in those sects
who are given to emotional forms of religion, the Methodists and
Baptists for example; whereas it is least known among Roman Catholics,
where doubt and anxiety are at once allayed by an infallible referee,
and among the Quakers, where enthusiasm is discouraged and with whom the
restraint of emotion is a part of discipline.[76-1] Authoritative
assurance in many disturbed conditions of mind is sufficient to relieve
the mental tension and restore health.
If, by what has been said, it is clear that the religious sentiment has
its origin in a wish, it is equally clear that not every wish is
concerned in it. The objects which a man can attain by his own unaided
efforts, are not those which he makes the subjects of his prayers; nor
are the periodic and regular occurrences in nature, how impressive they
may be, much thought of in devotional moods. The moment that an event is
recognized to be under fixed law, it is seen to be inappropriate to seek
by supplication to alter it. No devotee, acquainted with the theory of
the tides, would, like Canute the King, think of staying their waves
with words. Eclipses and comets, once matters of superstitious terror,
have been entirely shorn of this attribute by astronomical discovery.
Even real and tragic misfortunes, if believed to be such as flow from
fixed law, and especially if they can be predicted sometime before they
arrive, do not excite religious feeling. As Bishop Hall quaintly
observes, referring to a curious medieval superstition: “Crosses, after
the nature of the cockatrice, die if they be foreseen.”
Only when the event suggests the direct action of _mind_, of some free
intelligence, is it possible for the religious sentiment to throw around
it the aureole of sanctity. Obviously when natural law was little known,
this included vastly more occurrences than civilized men now think of
holding to be of religious import. Hence the objective and material form
of religion is always fostered by ignorance, and this is the form which
prevails exclusively in uncultivated societies.
The manifestations of motion which the child first notices, or which the
savage chiefly observes, relate to himself. They are associated with the
individuals around him who minister to his wants; the gratification of
these depend on the volitions of others. As he grows in strength he
learns to supply his own wants, and to make good his own volitions as
against those of his fellows. But he soon learns that many events occur
to thwart him, out of connection with any known individual, and these
of a dreadful nature, hurricanes and floods, hunger, sickness and death.
These pursue him everywhere, foiling his plans, and frustrating his
hopes. It is not the show of power, the manifestations of might, that he
cares for in these events, but that they touch _him_, that they spoil
_his_ projects, and render vain _his_ desires; _this_ forces him to cast
about for some means to protect himself against them.
In accordance with the teaching of his experience, and true moreover to
the laws of mind, he refers them, collectively, to a mental source, to a
vague individuality. This loose, undefined conception of an unknown
volition or power forms the earliest notion of Deity. It is hardly
associated with personality, yet it is broadly separated from the human
and the known. In the languages of savage tribes, as I have elsewhere
remarked, “a word is usually found comprehending all manifestations of
the unseen world, yet conveying no sense of personal unity.”[78-1]
By some means to guard against this undefined marplot to the
accomplishment of his wishes, is the object of his religion. Its
primitive forms are therefore defensive and conciliatory. The hopes of
the savage extend little beyond the reach of his own arm, and the tenor
of his prayers is that the gods be neuter. If they do not interfere he
can take care of himself. His religion is a sort of assurance of life.
Not only the religion of the savage, but every religion is this and not
much but this. With nobler associations and purer conceptions of life,
the religious sentiment ever contains these same elements and depends
upon them for its vigor and growth. It everywhere springs from _a desire
whose fruition depends upon unknown power_. To give the religious wish a
definition in the technic of psychology, I define it as: _Expectant
Attention, directed toward an event not under known control, with a
concomitant idea of Cause or Power_.
Three elements are embraced in this definition, a wish, an idea of
power, ignorance of the nature of that power. The first term prompts the
hope, the third suggests the fear, and the second creates the
personality, which we see set forth in every religious system. Without
these three, religion as dogma becomes impossible.
If a man wishes for nothing, neither the continuance of present comforts
nor future blessings, why need he care for the gods? Who can hurt him,
so long as he stays in his frame of mind? He may well shake off all
religions and every fear, for he is stronger than God, and the universe
holds nothing worth his effort to get. This was the doctrine taught by
Buddha Sakyanuni, a philosopher opposed to every form of religion, but
who is the reputed founder of the most numerous sect now on the globe.
He sought to free the minds of his day from the burden of the Brahmanic
ritual, by cultivating a frame of mind beyond desire or admiration, and
hence beyond the need of a creed.
The second element, the idea of power, is an intellectual abstraction.
Its character is fluctuating. At first it is most vague, corresponding
to what in its most general sense we term “the supernatural.” Later, it
is regarded under its various exhibitions as separable phenomena, as in
polytheisms, in which must be included trinitarian systems and the
dualistic doctrine of the Parsees. But among the Egyptians, Greeks and
Aztecs, as well as in the words of Zarathustra and in the theology of
Christianity, we frequently meet with the distinct recognition of the
fundamental unity of all power. At core, all religions have seeds of
monotheism. When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force
beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we
recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity
under which we must give them abstract expression. This is the process,
often unconscious, which has carried most original thinkers to
monotheistic doctrines, no matter whence they started.
The idea of power controlling the unknown would of itself have been of
no interest to man had he not assumed certain relations to exist between
him and it on the one hand, and it and things on the other. A
dispassionate inquiry disproves entirely the view maintained by various
modern writers, prominently by Bain, Spencer and Darwin, that the
contemplation of power or majesty in external nature prompts of itself
the religious sentiment, or could have been its historical origin. Such
a view overlooks the most essential because the personal factor of
religion--the wish. Far more correct are the words of David Hume, in the
last century, by which he closes his admirable _Natural History of
Religions_: “We may conclude, therefore, that in all nations the first
ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature,
but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the
incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind.” A century
before him Hobbes had written in his terse way: “The natural seed of
religion lies in these four things: the fear of spirits, ignorance of
secondary causes, the conciliation of those we fear, and the assumption
of accidents for omens.”[81-1] The sentiment of religion is in its
origin and nature purely personal and subjective. The aspect of power
would never have led man to worship, unless he had assumed certain
relations between the unseen author or authors of that power and
himself. What these assumptions were, I shall discuss in the next
chapter.
Finally, as has so often been remarked in a flippant and contemptuous
way,[82-1] which the fact when rightly understood nowise justifies,
religion cannot exist without the aid of ignorance. It is really and
truly the mother of devotion. The sentiment of religious fear does not
apply to a _known_ power--to the movement of an opposing army, or the
action of gravity in an avalanche for example. The prayer which under
such circumstances is offered, is directed to an unknown intelligence,
supposed to control the visible forces. As science--which is the
knowledge of physical laws--extends, the object of prayer becomes more
and more intangible and remote. What we formerly feared, we learn to
govern. No one would pray God to avert the thunderbolt, if lightning
rods invariably protected houses. The Swiss clergy opposed the system of
insuring growing crops because it made their parishioners indifferent to
prayers for the harvest. With increasing knowledge and the security
which it brings, religious terror lessens, and the wants which excite
the sentiment of devotion diminish in number and change in character.
This is apt to cast general discredit on religion. When we make the
discovery that so many events which excited religious apprehension in
the minds of our forefathers are governed by inflexible laws which we
know all about, we not only smile in pity at their superstitions, but
make the mental inference that the diminished emotion of this kind we
yet experience is equally groundless. If at the bottom of all displays
of power lies a physical necessity, our qualms are folly. Therefore, to
the pious soul which still finds the bulk of its religious aspirations
and experiences in the regions of the emotions and sensations, the
progress of science seems and really does threaten its cherished
convictions. The audacious mind of man robs the gods of power when he
can shield himself from their anger. The much-talked-of conflict between
religion and science is no fiction; it exists, and is bound to go on,
and religion will ever get the worst of it until it learns that the
wishes to which it is its proper place to minister are not those for
pleasure and prosperity, not for abundant harvests and seasonable
showers, not success in battle and public health, not preservation from
danger and safety on journeys, not much of anything that is spoken of
in litanies and books of devotion.
Let a person who still clings to this form of religion imagine that
science had reached perfection in the arts of life; that by skilled
adaptations of machinery, accidents by sea and land were quite avoided;
that observation and experience had taught to foresee with certainty and
to protect effectively against all meteoric disturbances; that a
perfected government insured safety of person and property; that a
consummate agriculture rendered want and poverty unknown; that a
developed hygiene completely guarded against disease; and that a
painless extinction of life in advanced age could surely be calculated
upon; let him imagine this, and then ask himself what purpose religion
would subserve in such a state of things? For whatever would occupy it
then--if it could exist at all--should _alone_ occupy it now.
FOOTNOTES:
[49-1] _Address to the Clergy_, pp. 42, 43, 67, 106, etc.
[49-2] E. von Hardenberg [Novalis], _Werke_, s. 364.
[50-1] _Treatises Devotional and Practical_, p. 188. London, 1836.
[50-2] In Aramaic _dachla_ means either a god or fear. The Arabic Allah
and the Hebrew Eloah are by some traced to a common root, signifying to
tremble, to show fear, though the more usual derivation is from one
meaning to be strong.
[51-1] “Wen die Hoffnung, den hat auch die Furcht verlassen.” Arthur
Schopenhauer, _Parerga und Paralipomena_. Bd. ii. s. 474.
[52-1] Alexander Bain, _On the Study of Character_, p. 128. See also his
remarks in his work, _The Emotions and the Will_, p. 84, and in his
notes to James Mill’s _Analysis of the Mind_, vol. i., pp. 124-125.
[53-1] Wilhelm von Humboldt’s _Gesammelte Werke_, Bd. vii., s. 62.
[53-2] De Senancourt, _Obermann_, Lettre xli.
[54-1] _Elements of Medical Psychology_, p. 331.
[56-1] Lessing’s _Gesammelte Werke_. B. ii. s. 443 (Leipzig, 1855).
[57-1] See Exodus, xxiii. 12; Psalms, lv. 6; Isaiah, xxx. 15; Jeremiah,
vi. 16; Hebrews, v. 9. So St. Augustine: “et nos post opera nostra
sabbato vitæ eternæ requiescamus in te.” _Confessionum Lib._ xiii. cap.
36.
[59-1] “Filioli, diligite alterutrum.” This is the “testamentum
Johannis,” as recorded from tradition by St. Jerome in his notes to the
Epistle to the Galatians.
[59-2] Alexander Bain, _The Senses and the Intellect_, Chap. I.
[60-1] _A Christian Directory._ Part I. Chap. III.
[60-2] “The very nature of affection, the idea itself, necessarily
implies resting in its object as an end.” _Fifteen Sermons by Joseph
Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham_, Preface, and p. 147 (London, 1841).
[61-1] Dr. J. Milner Fothergill, _Journal of Mental Science_, Oct. 1874,
p. 198.
[62-1] The most recent work on the topic is that of Messrs. Westropp and
Wake, _The Influence of the Phallic Idea on the Religions of Antiquity_,
London, 1874.
[63-1] Schoolcraft’s _History and Statistics of the Indian Tribes_, Vol.
iv. p. 224.
[63-2] Richardson, _Arctic Expedition_, p. 412.
[63-3] Most physicians have occasion to notice the almost entire loss in
modern life of the instinctive knowledge of the sex relation. Sir James
Paget has lately treated of the subject in one of his _Clinical
Lectures_ (London, 1875).
[64-1] Dr. J. P. Catlow, _Principles of Aesthetic Medicine_, p. 112.
This thoughtful though obscure writer has received little recognition
even in the circle of professional readers.
[66-1] This is probably what was condemned in Deuteronomy xxii. 5, and
Romans, i. 26.
[66-2] “The worship of Siva is too severe, too stern for the softer
emotions of love, and all his temples are quite free from any allusions
to it.”--Ferguson, _Tree and Serpent Worship_, p. 71.
[67-1] W. von Humboldt, in his admirable essay _Ueber die Männliche und
Weibliche Form_ (_Werke, Bd. I._). Elsewhere he adds: “In der Natur des
Gœttlichen strebt alles der Reinheit und Vollkommenheit des
Gattungsbegriff entgegen.”
[68-1] I have collected the Haitian myths, chiefly from the manuscript
_Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentales_ of Las Casas, in an
essay published in 1871, _The Arawack Language of Guiana in its
Linguistic and Ethnological Relations_.
[71-1] _The Koran_, Suras,[TN-5] cxii., lxii., and especially xix.
[73-1] _Elements of Medical Psychology_, p. 281.
[73-2] J. Thompson Dickson, _The Science and Practice of Medicine in
relation to Mind_, p. 383 (New York, 1874).
[76-1] Dr. Joseph Williams, _Insanity, its Causes, Prevention and Cure_,
pp. 68, 69; Dr. A. L. Wigan, _The Duality of the Mind_, p. 437.
[78-1] _The Myths of the New World, a Treatise on the Symbolism and
Mythology of the Red Race of America_, p. 145.
[81-1] _Leviathan, De Homine_, cap. xii.
[82-1] For instance, of later writers from whom we might expect better
things, Arthur Schopenhauer. He says in his _Parerga_ (Bd. ii. s. 290):
“Ein gewisser Grad allgemeiner Unwissenheit ist die Bedingung aller
Religionen;” a correct remark, and equally correct of the pursuit of
science and philosophy. But the ignorance which is the condition of such
pursuit is not a part of science or philosophy, and no more is it of
religion.
THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.
SUMMARY.
Religion often considered merely an affair of the feelings. On the
contrary, it must assume at least three premises in reason, its
“rational postulates.”
I. There is Order in things.
The religious wish involves the idea of cause. This idea not
exhausted by uniformity of sequence, but by quantitative relation,
that is, Order as opposed to Chance. Both science and religion
assume order in things; but the latter includes the Will of God in
this order, while the former rejects it.
II. This order is one of Intelligence.
The order is assumed to be a comprehensible one, whether it be of
law wholly or of volition also.
III. All Intelligence is one in kind.
This postulate indispensable to religion, although it has been
attacked by religious as well as irreligious philosophers. Its
decision must rest on the absoluteness of the formal laws of
thought. The theory that these are products of natural selections
disproved by showing, (1) that they hold true throughout the
material universe, and (2) that they do not depend on it for their
verity. Reason sees beyond phenomena, but descries nothing alien to
itself.
The formal laws of reason are purposive. They therefore afford a
presumption of a moral government of the Universe, and point to an
Intelligence fulfilling an end through the order in physical laws.
Such an assumption, common to all historic religions, is thus
justified by induction.