81. Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, i. p. xxxviii.
Howitt, 'Australian Medicine Men,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xvi.
30. Langloh Parker, _Euahlayi Tribe_, p. 38. Gason, 'Dieyerie
Tribe,' in Curr, _op. cit._ ii. 52.]
[Footnote 53: Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 752.]
[Footnote 54: Gason, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 172.]
[Footnote 55: Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 753. McDonald,'Mode of
Preparing the Dead among the Natives of the Upper Mary River,
Queensland,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ ii. 179.]
[Footnote 56: Bonney, 'Aborigines of the River Darling,' in
_Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xiii. 135.]
[Footnote 57: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 461.]
[Footnote 58: Crauford, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 182.]
[Footnote 59: _Supra_, i. 458.]
[Footnote 60: Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p.
749 _sq._ (all the tribes of the Wotjo nation, and the Tatathi
and other tribes on the Murray River frontage). Stanbridge,
'Tribes in the Central Part of Victoria,' in _Trans. Ethn. Soc.
London_, N.S. i. 289. Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of
Central Australia_, pp. 52, 475 (Luritcha tribe).]
[Footnote 61: Wallace, _Travels on the Amazon_, p. 498 (Tariánas,
Tucános, and some other tribes of the Uaupés). Coudreau, _La
France équinoxiale_, ii. 173 (Cobbéos, of the Uaupés). Monteiro,
quoted by von Spix and von Martius, _Reise in Brasilien_, iii.
1207, n. * (Jumánas). Koch, _loc. cit._ p. 83 _sq._ Dorman, _op.
cit._ p. 151.]
[Footnote 62: Couto de Magalhães, _Trabalho preparatorio para
aproveitamento do selvagem e do solo por elle occupado no
Brazil--O selvagem_, p. 132. _Cf._ de Castelnau, _Expédition dans
les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud_, iv. 382 (Camacas).]
The belief in the principle of transference has also led to
cannibalism in connection with human sacrifice and to the eating
of man-gods. At Florida, in the Solomon Islands, human flesh was
eaten in sacrifice only.[63] In Hawaii, "après le sacrifice, le
peuple, qui d'ailleurs ne fut jamais anthropophage, pratiquait
une sorte de communion en mangeant certaines parties de la
victime."[64] In West Equatorial Africa, according to Mr. Winwood
Reade, there are two kinds of cannibalism--the one is simply an
{563} act of _gourmandise_, the other is sacrificial and is
performed by the priests, whose office it is to eat a portion of
the victims, whether men, goats, or fowls.[65] And this
sacrificial cannibalism is not restricted to the priests. In
British Nigeria "no great human sacrifice offered for the purpose
of appeasing the gods and averting sickness or misfortune is
considered to be complete unless either the priests or the people
eat the bodies of the victims";[66] and among the Aro people in
Southern Nigeria the human victims offered to the god were eaten
by all the people, the flesh being distributed throughout their
country.[67] The inhabitants of the province of Caranque, in
ancient Peru, likewise consumed the flesh of those whom they
sacrificed to their gods.[68] The Aztecs ate parts of the human
bodies whose blood had been poured out on the altar of
sacrifice,[69] and so did the Mayas.[70] In Nicaragua the
high-priests received the heart, the king the feet and hands, he
who captured the victim took the thighs, the entrails were given
to the trumpeters, and the rest was divided among the people.[71]
In ancient India it was a prevalent opinion that he who offered a
human victim in sacrifice should partake of its flesh; though, in
opposition to this view, it was also said that a man cannot be
allowed, much less required, to eat human flesh.[72] The
sacrificial form of cannibalism obviously springs from the idea
that a victim offered to a supernatural being participates in his
sanctity[73] and from the wish of the worshipper to transfer to
himself something of its benign virtue. So also the divine
qualities of a man-god are supposed to be assimilated by the
person {564} who eats his flesh or drinks his blood.[74] This was
the idea of the early Christians concerning the Eucharist. In the
holy food they assumed a real bestowal of heavenly gifts, a
bodily self-communication of Christ, a miraculous implanting of
divine life. The partaking of the consecrated elements had no
special relation to the forgiveness of sins; but it strengthened
faith and knowledge, and, especially, it was the guarantee of
eternal life, because the body of Christ was eternal. The holy
food was described as the "medicine of immortality."[75]
[Footnote 63: Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 343. See also Geiseler,
_Die Oster-Insel_, p. 30 _sq._ (Easter Islanders).]
[Footnote 64: Remy, _Ka Mooolelo Hawaii_, p. xl.]
[Footnote 65: Reade, _op. cit._ p. 158. See also Schneider, _Die
Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker_, p. 209 _sq._]
[Footnote 66: Mockler-Ferryman, _British Nigeria_, p. 261.]
[Footnote 67: Partridge, _Cross River Natives_, p. 59.]
[Footnote 68: Ranking, _Researches on the Conquest of Peru_, p. 89.]
[Footnote 69: Prescott, _History of the Conquest of Mexico_, p. 41.
Réville, _Hibbert Lectures on the Religions of Mexico and Peru_,
p. 89. Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 176;
iii. 443 _sq._]
[Footnote 70: Bancroft, _op. cit._ ii. 725.]
[Footnote 71: _Ibid._ ii. 725.]
[Footnote 72: Weber, 'Ueber Menschenopfer bei den Indern der
vedischen Zeit,' in _Indische Streifen_, i. 72 _sq._]
[Footnote 73: See _supra_, i. 445 _sq._]
[Footnote 74: See Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 352, 353. 366.]
[Footnote 75: Harnack, _History of Dogma_, i. 211; ii. 144
_sqq._; iv. 286, 291, 294, 296, 297, 299 _sq._]
In various other instances human flesh or blood is supposed to
have a supernatural or medicinal effect upon him who partakes of
it. The Banks Islanders in Melanesia believe that a man or woman
may obtain a power like that of Vampires by stealing and eating a
morsel of a corpse; the ghost of the dead man would then "join in
a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would
gratify him by afflicting any one against whom his ghostly power
might be directed."[76] Australian sorcerers are said to acquire
their magic influence by eating human flesh.[77] The Egyptian
natives who accompanied Baker on one of his expeditions imagined
that the rite of consuming an enemy's liver would give a fatal
direction to a random bullet.[78] Among the aborigines of
Tasmania a man's blood was often administered as a healing
draught.[79] In China the heart, the liver, the gall, and the
blood of executed criminals are used for life-strengthening
purposes;[80] thus at Peking, when a person has been executed by
the sword, certain large pith balls are steeped in the blood and,
under the name of "blood-bread," sold as a medicine for
consumption.[81] Tertullian speaks of those "who at the
gladiatorial shows, for the cure of epilepsy, {565} quaff with
greedy thirst the blood of criminals slain in the arena, as it
flows fresh from the wound."[82] So also in Christian Europe the
blood of criminals has been drunk as a remedy against epilepsy,
fever, and other diseases.[83] In these cases the ascription of a
healing effect to the blood of the dead may perhaps have been
derived from a belief in the transference of some quality which
they possessed in their lifetime; the blood or life of a sound
and strong individual might impart health to the sickly. But the
mystery of death would also give to the corpse a miraculous power
of its own, especially when combined with the horror or awe
inspired by an executed felon.
[Footnote 76: Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 221 _sq._]
[Footnote 77: Eyre, _Expeditions of Discovery into Central
Australia_, ii. 255.]
[Footnote 78: Baker, _Ismailïa_, p. 393.]
[Footnote 79: Bonwick, _Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians_,
p. 89.]
[Footnote 80: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. iv. book) ii. 377.]
[Footnote 81: Rennie, quoted by Yule, in his translation of Marco
Polo, i. 275, n. 7.]
[Footnote 82: Tertullian, _Apologeticus_, 9 (Migne, _Patrologiæ
cursus_, i. 321 _sq._).]
[Footnote 83: Strack, _Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheit_, p.
27 _sqq._ Wuttke, _Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart_, §
189 _sqq._, p. 137 _sq._ Jahn, 'Ueber den Zauber mit Menschenblut,'
in _Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop._ 1888, p. 134 _sqq._
Havelock Ellis, _The Criminal_, p. 284. Peacock, 'Executed Criminals
and Folk-Medicine,' in _Folk-Lore_, vii. 270 _sq._]
In other instances, again, the belief in the wonderful effects of
cannibal practices may have originated in the notion that, if a
person or the essential part of him is eaten, he ceases to exist
even as a spirit, or at all events loses his power of doing
mischief. Among the Indians of British Guiana, when a man is
pointed out as the secret murderer of a relative who has died,
the avenger will shoot him through the back; and if he happens to
fall dead to the ground, his corpse is dragged aside and buried
in a shallow grave. The third night the avenger goes to the grave
and presses a pointed stick through the corpse; and if on
withdrawing the stick he finds blood on the end of it, he tastes
the blood in order to ward off any evil effects that might follow
from the murder, returning home appeased and apparently at ease.
But if it happens that the wounded individual is able to escape,
he charges his relatives to bury him after his death in some
place where he cannot be found. This is to punish the murderer
for his deed, "inasmuch as the belief prevails that if he taste
not the blood he must perish by madness."[84] In Prussia it was a
popular superstition that {566} if a murderer cut off, roasted,
and ate a piece of his victim's body, he would never after think
of his deed.[85] But by eating a part of the corpse a homicide
may also protect himself against the vengeance of the survivors,
presumably because he has now absorbed their relative into his
own system.[86] The natives of New Britain eat their enemies and
fix the leg and arm bones of the victims at the butt end of their
spears, believing that this not only gives them the strength of
the man whose bones they carry but also makes them invulnerable
by his relatives.[87] The Botocudos thought that by devouring
their fallen enemies they both protected themselves from the
hatred of the dead and at the same time prevented the arrows of
the hostile tribe from hitting them.[88] In Greenland the
relatives of a murdered person, when highly enraged, will cut to
pieces the body of the murderer and devour part of the heart or
liver, "thinking thereby to disarm his relatives of all courage
to attack them."[89] In the South of Italy there is a popular
belief that a murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste
or bedaub himself with his victim's blood.[90] Sometimes, we are
told, cannibalism is even supposed to have a positively injurious
effect upon the victim's relatives, in accordance, as it seems,
with the principle of sympathetic magic. Among the Chukchi, in
the case of revenge for blood, the slayers eat a little bit of
the enemy's heart or liver, supposing that they in this way cause
the hearts of his kinsfolk to sicken.[91]
[Footnote 84: Bernau, _Missionary Labours in British Guiana_,
p. 57 _sq._]
[Footnote 85: von Tettau and Temme, _Die Volkssagen
Ostpreussens_, p. 267.]
[Footnote 86: _Cf._ Hartland, _op. cit._ ii. 245 _sq._]
[Footnote 87: Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild Country_, p. 92.]
[Footnote 88: Castelnau, _Expédition dans les parties centrales
de l'Amérique du Sud_, iv. 382.]
[Footnote 89: Cranz, _History of Greenland_, i. 178.]
[Footnote 90: Pasquarelli, quoted by Hartland, _op. cit._ ii. 246.]
[Footnote 91: Ratzel, _History of Mankind_, ii. 212.]
Human flesh or blood is not only believed to impart certain
qualities or beneficial magic energy to him who partakes of it,
but also serves as a means of transferring conditional curses
from one person to another. This I take to be the explanation of
cannibalism as a covenant rite; in a previous chapter I have
tried to show that the {567} main principle underlying the
blood-covenant is the idea that the transference of blood conveys
to the person who drinks it, or is inoculated with it, a
conditional curse which will injure or destroy him should he
break his promise.[92] The drinking of human blood, or of wine
mixed with such blood, has been a form of covenant among various
ancient and mediæval peoples, as well as among certain
savages.[93] In some South Slavonic districts compacts between
different clans are even now made by their representatives
sucking blood from each other's right hands and swearing fidelity
till the grave.[94] In certain parts of Africa, again, the
partaking of human flesh, generally prepared in a kind of paste
mixed with condiments and kept in a quaintly-carved wooden box
and eaten with round spoons of human bone, constitutes a bond of
union between strangers who are suspicious of one another or
between former enemies, or accompanies the making of a solemn
declaration or the taking of an oath.[95] Among the Bambala, a
Bantu tribe in the Kasai, south of the River Congo, cannibalism
accompanies the ceremony by which a kind of alliance is
established between chiefs of the same region. The most powerful
chief will invite the other chiefs of the neighbourhood to a
meeting held on his territory, in order to make a compact against
bloodshed. "A slave is fattened for the occasion and killed by
the host, and the invited chiefs and their followers partake of
the flesh. Participation in this banquet is taken as a pledge to
prevent murder. Supposing that a chief, after attending an
assembly of this kind, kills a slave, every village which took
part in the bond has the right to claim compensation, and the
murderer is sure to be completely ruined."[96]
[Footnote 92: _Supra_, ii. 208.]
[Footnote 93: Strack, _op. cit._ p. 9 _sqq._ Rühs, _Handbuch der
Geschichte des Mittelalters_, p. 323. _Supra_, ii. 207 _sqq._]
[Footnote 94: Krauss, 'Sühnung der Blutrache im Herzögischen,' in
_Am Ur-Quell_, N.F. i. 196.]
[Footnote 95: Johnston, in _Fortnightly Review_, N.S. xlv. 28.]
[Footnote 96: Torday and Joyce, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxv.
404, 409.]
For the practice of eating relatives or friends, finally, some
special reasons are given besides those already mentioned.{568}
It is represented as a mark of affection or respect for the
dead,[97] as an act which benefits not only the person who eats
but also him who is eaten. The reason which the Australian
Dieyerie assign for their endo-anthropophagy is, that should they
not eat their relatives they would be perpetually crying and
become a nuisance to the camp.[98] The natives of the Boulia
district, Queensland, among whom children that die suddenly are
partly eaten by the parents and their blood brothers and sisters,
say that "putting them along hole" would make them think too much
about their beloved little ones.[99] In the Turrbal tribe in
Southern Queensland a man who happened to be killed in one of the
ceremonial combats which followed the initiation rites was eaten
by those members of the tribe who were present; and the motive
stated is that they ate him because "they knew him and were fond
of him, and they now knew where he was, and his flesh would not
stink."[100] The Bataks of Sumatra declared that they frequently
ate their own relatives when aged and infirm, "not so much to
gratify their appetite, as to perform a pious ceremony."[101]
Among the Samoyedes old and decrepit persons who were no longer
able to work let their children kill and eat them in the hope
that they thereby might fare better after death.[102] The Indian
of Hayti "would think he was wanting to the memory of a relation,
if he had not thrown into his drink a small portion of the body
of the deceased, after having dried it . . . and reduced it to
powder."[103] Among the Botocudos old men who were unable to keep
up in the march were at their own request eaten up by their sons
so that their {569} enemies should be prevented from digging up
and injuring their bodies;[104] whilst mothers not infrequently
consumed their dead children out of love.[105] The Mayorunas
considered it more desirable for the departed to be eaten by
relatives than by worms;[106] and the Cocomas, a tribe of the
Marañon and Lower Huallaga, said it was better to be inside a
friend than to be swallowed up by the cold earth.[107] It is
impossible to decide how far these statements represent original
motives for the custom of eating dead relatives. They may be
later interpretations of a habit which in the first place sprang
from selfishness rather than love.
[Footnote 97: Dawson, _op. cit._ p. 67 (tribes of Western
Victoria). McDonald, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ ii. 179 (natives of
the Upper Mary River, Queensland). Featherman, _op. cit._
'Oceano-Melanesians,' p. 243 (Hawaiians). Southey, _History of
Brazil_, i. 379 (Tapuyas). Marcgravius de Liebstad, _Historia
rerum naturalium Brasiliæ_, viii. 12, p. 282 (ancient Tupis).]
[Footnote 98: Gason, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 172. _Idem_,
in Woods, _op. cit._ p. 274.]
[Footnote 99: Roth, _North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines_,
p. 166.]
[Footnote 100: Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 753.]
[Footnote 101: Leyden, 'Languages and Literature of the
Indo-Chinese Nations,' in _Asiatick Researches_, x. 202.]
[Footnote 102: Preuss, _op. cit._ p. 218.]
[Footnote 103: Bembo, quoted by von Humboldt, _op. cit._ v. 248.]
[Footnote 104: Voss, in _Verhandl. Berliner Geellsch. Anthr._
1891, p. 26.]
[Footnote 105: Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, iii. 446.]
[Footnote 106: von Schütz-Holzhausen, _Der Amazonas_, p. 209.]
[Footnote 107: Markham, 'List of the Tribes in the Valley of the
Amazon,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 253.]
The cannibalism of modern savages has often been represented as
the survival of an ancient practice which was once universal in
the human race.[108] The advocates of this theory, however, have
not generally made any serious attempts to prove it. I have in
another place put the question how ethnographical facts can give
us information regarding the early history of mankind, and my
answer was:--We have first to find out the causes of the social
phenomena; we may then from the prevalence of the causes infer
the prevalence of the phenomena themselves, if the former must be
assumed to have operated without being checked by other
causes.[109] This seems a very obvious method; but, so far as I
know, Dr. Steinmetz is the only one who has strictly applied it
to the question of cannibalism. He has arrived at the conclusion
that primitive man most probably was in the habit of eating the
bodies of his dead kinsmen as also of slain enemies. His argument
is briefly as follows:--{570} The chief impulse of primitive man
was his desire for food. He fed not only on fruits and
vegetables, but on flesh. His taste for animal food was not
limited by any sufficient esthetic horror of human corpses. Nor
was he kept back from eating them by fear of exposing himself to
the revenge of the disembodied soul of his victim, nor by any
fantastic sympathy for the dead body. Consequently, he was an
habitual cannibal.[110] If I cannot accept Dr. Steinmetz's
conclusion it is certainly not because I find fault with his
method, but because I consider his chief premise exceedingly
doubtful.
[Footnote 108: Andree, _op. cit._ p. 98 _sq._ Lippert,
_Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit_, ii. 279. Schurtz,
_Speiseverbote_, p. 25. Réville, _Hibbert Lectures on the
Religions of Mexico and Peru_, p. 87. Johnston, in _Fortnightly
Review_, N.S. xlv. 28. M. Letourneau (_L'évolution de la morale_,
p. 76) calls cannibalism "le péché originel de toutes les races
humaines."]
[Footnote 109: Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 3 _sq._]
[Footnote 110: Steinmetz, _Endokannibalismus_, p. 34 _sqq._]
It is quite likely that early man preferred cannibalism to death
from starvation, and that he occasionally practised it from the
same motive as has induced many shipwrecked men even among
civilised peoples to have recourse to the bodies of their
comrades in order to save their lives. But we are here concerned
with habitual cannibalism only. Although I consider it highly
probable that man was originally in the main frugivorous, there
can be no doubt that he has from very early times fed largely on
animal food. We may further take for granted that he has
habitually eaten the flesh of whatever animals he could get for
which he had a taste and from the eating of which no
superstitious or sentimental motive held him back. But that he at
first had no aversion to human flesh seems to me a very
precarious assumption.
A large number of savage tribes have never been known to be
addicted to cannibalism, but are, on the contrary, said to feel
the greatest dislike of it. In times of scarcity the Eskimo will
eat their clothing sooner than touch human flesh. The Fuegians
have been reported to devour their old women in cases of extreme
distress;[111] but Mr. Bridges, who has spent most part of his
life among them, emphatically affirms that cannibalism is unknown
amongst the natives of Cape Horn and that {571} they abhor
it.[112] Concerning the natives of South Andaman Mr. Man
observes:--"Not a trace could be discovered of the existence of
such a practice in their midst, even in far-off times. . . . They
express the greatest horror of the custom, and indignantly deny
that it ever held a place among their institutions."[113] We meet
with similar statements with reference to many African tribes.
The editor of Livingstone's 'Last Journals' says that it was
common on the River Shiré to hear Manganja and Ajawa people speak
of tribes far away to the north who eat human bodies, and that on
every occasion the fact was related with the utmost abhorrence
and disgust.[114] Amongst the Dinka the accounts of the
cannibalism of the Niam-Niam excites as much horror as amongst
ourselves.[115] The Bakongo "shudder with repugnance at the mere
mention of eating human flesh."[116] Among the Bayaka, in the
Congo Free State, "cannibalism is never found, and is regarded as
something quite abhorrent."[117] No intermarriage takes place
between the Fans and their non-cannibal neighbours, as "their
peculiar practices are held in too great abhorrence."[118]
According to Burton, cannibalism "is execrated by the Efiks of
Old Calabar, who punish any attempts of the kind with extreme
severity."[119] Even amongst the South Sea Islanders there are
tribes which have been known to view cannibalism with great
repugnance.[120]
[Footnote 111: Darwin, _Journal of Researches_, p. 214. King and
Fitzroy, _Voyages of the "Adventure" and "Beagle,"_ ii. 183, 189.]
[Footnote 112: Bridges, 'Manners and Customs of the Firelanders,'
in _A Voice for South America_, xiii. 207. _Idem_, quoted by
Hyades and Deniker, _Mission scientifique du Cap Horn_, vii. 259.]
[Footnote 113: Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman
Islands,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xii. 113.]
[Footnote 114: Livingstone, _Last Journals_, ii. 39.]
[Footnote 115: Schweinfurth, _Heart of Africa_, i. 158.]
[Footnote 116: Ward, _Five Years with the Congo Cannibals_, p. 37.]
[Footnote 117: Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Yaka,' in
_Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxvi. 42.]
[Footnote 118: Du Chaillu, _Explorations in Equatorial Africa_, p. 97.]
[Footnote 119: Burton, _Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, i. 216 _sq._]
[Footnote 120: Nisbet, _op. cit._ ii. 136. Turner, _Samoa_, p.
305 (Savage Islanders). Angas, _Polynesia_, p. 385 (natives of
Bornabi, in the Caroline Islands). Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild
Country_, p. 247 (some of the tribes in New Guinea). Calder,
'Native Tribes of Tasmania,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ iii. 23;
Ling Roth, _Aborigines of Tasmania_, p. 111.]
It is true that the information which a traveller visiting a
savage tribe receives as regards its attitude towards {572}
cannibalism is often apt to be misleading. There is nothing as to
which many savages are so reticent or the practice of which they
will deny so readily as cannibalism, though at the same time they
are much inclined to accuse other peoples of it.[121] The reason
why they are so anxious to conceal its prevalence among
themselves is of course their knowledge of the detestation in
which it is held by the visiting stranger; but not infrequently
they really seem to feel that it is something to be ashamed of.
It has been said of some Australian natives that, "unlike many
other offences with which they are justly charged, . . . this one
in general they knew to be wrong," their behaviour when they were
questioned on the subject showing that "they erred knowingly and
wilfully."[122] At all events the reproaches of the whites have
been taken to heart with remarkable readiness. Even among peoples
who have been extremely addicted to it, cannibalism has
disappeared with a rapidity to which, I think, there is hardly
any parallel in the history of morals. Erskine wrote in the
middle of the last century:--"Our experience in New Zealand has
proved that this unnatural propensity can be eradicated from the
habits of a whole savage nation, in the course of a single
generation. I have heard it asserted that there did not exist in
1845 many New Zealand males of twenty years of age who had not,
in their childhood, tasted of human flesh; yet it is perfectly
well known that at the present time the occurrence of a single
case of cannibalism, in any part of those islands, would attract
as much notice as in any country of Europe; and that, when a
native can be induced to talk on the subject, his information is
given reluctantly, and with an unmistakable consciousness of
degradation, and a feeling of shame that he and his {573}
countrymen should ever have been liable to such a reproach."[123]
Of the Bataks it was said some time ago that the rising
generation began to refrain from cannibalism, and that those of
them who had submitted to European rule thought with horror of
the wild times when they or their ancestors were addicted to
it.[124] Cieza de Leon remarks with some astonishment that, as
soon as the Peruvian Incas began to put a stop to this practice
among all the peoples with whom they came in contact, it was in a
short time forgotten throughout their empire even by those who
had previously held it in high estimation.[125] Moreover, the
extinction of cannibalism has not always been due to the
intervention of superior races.[126]
[Footnote 121: Curr, _The Australian Race_, i. 77; Brough Smyth,
_Aborigines of Victoria_, i. p. xxxvii. _sq._; Fraser,
_Aborigines of New South Wales_, p. 56. Romilly, _Western
Pacific_, p. 59 _sqq._ _Idem_, _From my Verandah in New Guinea_,
p. 68. Powell, _op. cit._ pp. 52, 59 (natives of the Duke of York
Group). Erskine, _op. cit._ p. 190 _sq._ (Fijians). Melville,
_op. cit._ p. 341 (Polynesians). Reade, _op. cit._ p. 159;
Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_, p. 330 (Fans). At the same
time there are many cannibals who make no attempts to conceal the
practice.]
[Footnote 122: Brough Smyth, _op. cit._ i. p. xxxviii.]
[Footnote 123: Erskine, _op. cit._ p. 275 _sq._]
[Footnote 124: Buning, in _Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago_,
p. 74.]
[Footnote 125: Cieza de Leon, _Segunda parte de la Crónica del
Perú_, ch. 25, p. 100.]
[Footnote 126: Waitz-Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_,
vi. 158 _sqq._ (Polynesians). Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 303. Ribot,
_Psychology of the Emotions_, p. 295 _sq._ Schurtz,
_Speiseverbote_, p. 26. _Cf._ Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes
of Central Australia_, p. 324.]
Even among peoples very notorious for cannibalism there are
individuals who abhor the practice. Dr. Schweinfurth asserts that
some of the Niam-Niam "turn with such aversion from any
consumption of human flesh that they would peremptorily refuse to
eat out of the same dish with any one who was a cannibal."[127]
With reference to Fijian cannibalism Dr. Seemann observes:--"It
would be a mistake to suppose that all Fijians, not converted to
Christianity, are cannibals. There were whole towns, as for
instance Nakelo, on the Rewa river, which made a bold stand
against this practice, declaring that it was _tabu_ forbidden to
them by their gods, to indulge in it. The common people
throughout the group, as well as women of all classes, were by
custom debarred from it. Cannibalism was thus restricted to the
chiefs and gentry, and again amongst them there is a number . . .
who never eat human flesh, nor go near the biers when any dead
bodies have been brought in, and who abominate the practice as
much as any white man does."[128] {574} It should also be
remembered that many cannibals eat human flesh not as ordinary
food, but only in special circumstances, and that their
cannibalism is often restricted to the devouring of some small
part of the victim's body.
[Footnote 127: Schweinfurth, _op. cit._ ii. 18 _sq._]
[Footnote 128: Seemann, _Viti_, p. 179 _sq._ _Cf._ Williams and
Calvert, _op. cit._ p. 179.]
The dislike of cannibalism may be a complex feeling. In many
instances sympathy for the dead is undoubtedly one of its
ingredients. It is true that endo-anthropophagy is frequently
described as a mark of affection, but on the other hand there are
many cannibals who never eat their dead friends though they eat
strangers or foes. Some cannibals exchange their own dead for
those of another tribe so as to avoid feeding on their
kinsmen;[129] the natives of Tana, in the New Hebrides, are said
to do so "when they happen to have a particular regard for the
deceased."[130] But neither affection nor regard can be the
reason why savages abstain from eating their enemies. I think
that aversion to cannibalism is most likely, in the first
instance, an instinctive feeling akin to those feelings which
regulate the diet of the various animal species. Although our
knowledge of their habits in this respect is defective, there can
be little doubt that carnivorous animals as a rule refuse to eat
members of their own species; and this reluctance is easy to
understand considering its race-preserving tendency.
[Footnote 129: Arbousset and Daumas, _Exploratory Tour to the
Cape of Good Hope_, p. 123. Steinmetz, _Endokannibalismus_,
pp. 22, 47.]
[Footnote 130: Brenchley, _op. cit._ p. 209.]
Moreover, the eating of human flesh is regarded with some degree
of superstitious dread. This is not seldom the case even among
peoples who are themselves cannibals. In Lepers' Island, in the
New Hebrides, where cannibalism still prevails, the natives say
that "to eat human flesh is a dreadful thing," and that a
man-eater is a person who is afraid of nothing; hence "men will
buy flesh when some one has been killed, that they may get the
name of valiant men by eating it."[131] In those parts of Fiji
where cannibalism was a national institution, only the select
few, the taboo-class, the priests, chiefs, and higher orders,
were deemed fit to indulge in it; and {575} whilst every other
kind of food was eaten with the fingers, human flesh was eaten
with forks, which were handed down as heirlooms from generation
to generation, and with which the natives would not part even for
a handsome equivalent.[132] The Fijians of Nakelo, again, who did
not practise cannibalism, attributed to it those fearful skin
diseases with which children are so often visited in Fiji.[133]
The New Caledonians, who are exo-anthropophagous, believe that if
a man eats a tribes-fellow he will break out into sores and
die.[134] Among the Maoris no men but sacred chiefs could partake
of human flesh without becoming _tapu_, in which state they could
not return to their usual occupations without having the _tapu_
removed from their bodies.[135] So also among the Kwakiutl
Indians of British Columbia a man who has eaten human flesh as a
ceremonial rite is for a long time afterwards subject to a
variety of restrictions, being considered unclean. For sixteen
days he must not eat any warm food. For four months he is not
allowed to blow hot food in order to cool it. For the same period
he uses a spoon, dish, and kettle of his own, which are thrown
away after the lapse of the prescribed time. He must stay alone
in his bedroom, and is not allowed to go out of the house door
but must use the secret door in the rear of the house. And for a
whole year he must not touch his wife, nor is he allowed to
gamble or to work.[136] Among the West African Fans, before a
cannibal meal, the corpse is carried to a hut built on the
outskirts of the settlement. There "it is eaten secretly by the
warriors, women and children not being allowed to be present, or
even to look upon man's flesh; and the cooking pots used for the
banquet must all be broken. A joint of 'black brother' is never
seen in the villages."[137] So also {576} among the Bambala,
south of the River Congo, vessels in which human flesh has been
cooked are broken and the pieces thrown away.[138] In Eastern
Central Africa the person who eats a human being is believed to
run a great risk; Mr. Macdonald knew a headman whose success in
war was attributed to the fact that he had eaten the whole body
of a strong young man, but it was supposed that if he had not
been protected by powerful charms, such cannibalism might have
been dangerous to him.[139]
[Footnote 131: Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 344.]
[Footnote 132: Seemann, _Viti_, pp. 179, 181 _sq._]
[Footnote 133: _Ibid._ p. 179 _sq._]
[Footnote 134: Atkinson, 'Natives of New Caledonia,' in
_Folk-Lore_, xiv. 253.]
[Footnote 135: Thomson, _op. cit._ i. 147 _sq._]
[Footnote 136: Boas, 'Social Organization of the Kwakiutl
Indians,' in _Report of the U.S. National Museum_, 1895, p. 537
_sq._ _Cf._ Woldt, _Kaptein Jacobsens Reiser til Nordamerikas
Nordvestkyst_, p. 44 _sqq._; Mayne, _Four Years in British
Columbia_, p. 256 _sq._]
[Footnote 137: Burton, _Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, i. 212.]
[Footnote 138: Torday and Joyce, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxv. 404.]
[Footnote 139: Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 170.]
One reason for this superstitious dread of cannibalism is
undoubtedly fear of the dead man's spirit, which is then supposed
not to be annihilated by the act, but to become a danger to him
who partakes of the corpse. The Fijian cannibals avowed "that
they were always frightened at night lest the spirit of the man
they had eaten should haunt them."[140] In the Luritcha tribe in
Central Australia care is invariably taken to destroy the bones
of those enemies who have been eaten, "as the natives believe
that unless this is done the victims will arise from the coming
together of the bones, and will follow and harm those who have
killed and eaten them."[141] And among the Kwakiutl Indians the
taboos imposed upon a cannibal are more obligatory when he has
devoured a corpse than when he has contented himself with taking
bites out of a living man.[142] But it may also be that the
superstitious fear of cannibalism is to some extent an outcome of
the natural reluctance to partake of human flesh, just as the
aversion to eating certain animals may give rise to the idea that
their meat is unwholesome food,[143] and as the supernatural
dangers attributed to incest spring from the instinctive horror
of it.[144]
[Footnote 140: Pritchard, _op. cit._ p. 372.]
[Footnote 141: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 475.]
[Footnote 142: Boas, _loc. cit._ p. 537 _sq._ _Cf._ Frazer,
_Golden Bough_, i. 342.]
[Footnote 143: _Supra_, ii. 332.]
[Footnote 144: _Supra_, ii. 375 _sq._]
The fact that so many peoples partake or are known to have
partaken of human flesh without repugnance, or even with the
greatest eagerness, by no means proves {577} that there was no
original aversion to it in the human race. It is easy to imagine
that the feeling of reluctance may have been overcome by other
motives, such as hunger, revenge, the desire to acquire another
person's courage or strength, the hope of making an enemy
harmless, or of gaining supernatural benefits. And everybody
knows that men and even many animals, when once induced to taste
a certain food which they have previously avoided, often conceive
a great liking for it. There is evidence that this also applies
to cannibalism. In 1200 Egypt was afflicted with a terrible
famine, in consequence of which the poor fed even upon human
corpses and fell to devouring children. An eyewitness, the
Arabian physician [(]Abd-Allatif, writes that, when the poor
began to eat human flesh, the wonder and horror excited were
such, that these crimes were in every mouth, and people were
never weary of the extraordinary topic. But by degrees custom
operated, and produced even a taste for such detestable repasts.
Many men made children their ordinary food, eating them from pure
gluttony and laying up stores of their flesh. Various modes of
cooking and seasoning this kind of food were invented; and the
practice soon spread through the provinces, so that there was not
a single district in which cannibalism became not common. By this
time it caused no longer either surprise or horror, and the
matter was discussed with indifference. Diverse rich people, who
could have procured other food, seemed to become infatuated, and
practised cannibalism as a luxury, using murderers as their
purveyors and inviting their friends to dinner, without taking
too much trouble to conceal the truth.[145] There is a similar
story from Polynesia. Cannibalism, we are told, was introduced
into Futuna by king Veliteki in consequence of a great tempest
which brought on a disastrous famine; but in time it became a
dreadful scourge, which threatened to depopulate the island. The
desire to eat human flesh arrived at such a point that wars no
longer sufficed to {578} furnish victims in sufficient numbers,
hence the people took to hunting down members of their own
tribes.[146] It has been suggested that in other islands of the
South Seas cannibalism likewise arose in times of great famine,
and that the inhabitants, becoming used to it, acquired a taste
for human flesh.[147] In Western Equatorial Africa, again,
gastronomic cannibalism has been supposed to be a practical
extension of the sacrificial ceremony, neither the women nor the
young men being allowed to touch the dainty.[148] That such a
practice may easily grow up when the beginning has been made, is
well illustrated by the words of a cannibal chief who declared
that he who has once indulged in a repast of human flesh will
find it very difficult to abstain from it in the future.[149]
[Footnote 145: [(]Abd-Allatif, _Relation de l'Égypte_, p. 360
_sqq._]
[Footnote 146: Percy Smith, 'Futuna,' in _Jour. Polynesian Soc._
i. 37.]
[Footnote 147: Macdonald, _Oceania_, p. 196 _sq._ Powell,
_Wanderings in a Wild Country_, p. 248.]
[Footnote 148: Reade, _op. cit._ p. 158.]
[Footnote 149: Powell, _op. cit._ p. 248.]
The question whether early man was in the habit of eating human
flesh may thus, I think, be resolved into the question whether
his natural shrinking from it may be assumed to have been subdued
by any of those factors which in certain circumstances have
induced men to become habitual cannibals. For such an assumption
I find no sufficient grounds. On the contrary, I maintain that it
is made highly improbable by the fact that cannibalism is much
less prevalent among the lowest savages than among races somewhat
more advanced in culture.[150] In America, instead of being
confined to savage peoples, it was practised "to a greater extent
and with more horrible rites among the most civilised. Its
religious inception," Mr. Dorman adds, "was the cause of
this."[151] Humboldt observed long ago:--"The nations who hold it
a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not always the
rudest and most ferocious . . . . The Cabres, the Guipunavis, and
the Caribees, have {579} always been more powerful and more
civilised than the other hordes of the Oroonoko; and yet the
former are as much addicted to anthropophagy, as the last are
repugnant to it."[152] In Brazil, Martius found the cannibalism
of the Central Tupis to form a strange contrast to their
relatively high state of culture.[153] Cannibals like the Fijians
and Maoris were on the verge of semi-civilisation, and the Bataks
of Sumatra were already in early times so advanced as to frame an
alphabet of their own, though after the Indian model. Among the
African Niam-Niam and Monbuttu a great predilection for human
flesh coexists with a remarkable degree of culture; whereas in
the dwarf tribes of Central Africa, which are of a very low type,
Mr. Burrows never heard of a single case of cannibalism.[154]
[Footnote 150: See Peschel, _Races of Man_, p. 162 _sq._;
Schneider, _Die Naturvölker_, i. 186; Bergemann, _op. cit._
p. 53; Ratzel, _op. cit._ ii. 352; Sutherland, _Origin and
Growth of the Moral Instinct_, i. 372.]
[Footnote 151: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 152.]
[Footnote 152: von Humboldt, _op. cit._ v. 424 _sq._]
[Footnote 153: von Martius, _op. cit._ i. 199 _sq._]
[Footnote 154: Burrows, _Land of the Pigmies_, p. 149.]
It would be very instructive to follow the history of cannibalism
among those peoples who are, or have lately been, addicted to it,
if we were able to do so; but the subject is mostly obscure. The
most common change which we have had an opportunity to notice is
the decline and final disappearance of the practice under
European influence; but we must not assume that every change has
been in the direction towards extinction. Among the East African
Wadoe and Wabembe cannibalism is, according to their own account,
of modern origin.[155] Mr. Torday informs me that among some of
the Congo natives it is spreading in the present day. In the
Solomon Islands it has recently extended itself; it is asserted
by the elder natives of Florida that man's flesh was formerly
never eaten except in sacrifice, and that human sacrifice is an
innovation introduced from further west.[156] Erskine maintains
that in Fiji cannibalism, though a very ancient custom, did not
prevail in earlier times to the same extent as it did more
recently;[157] and Mr. Fornander has arrived {580} at the
conclusion that among the Polynesians this practice was not an
original heirloom brought with them from their primitive homes in
the Far West, but was adopted subsequently by a few of the tribes
under conditions and circumstances now unknown.[158] For various
reasons, then, it is an illegitimate supposition to regard the
cannibalism of modern savages as a survival from the first
infancy of mankind, or, more generally, from a stage through
which the whole human race has passed.
[Footnote 155: Burton, _Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, i. 214.]
[Footnote 156: Codrington, _op. cit._ p. 343.]
[Footnote 157: Erskine, _op. cit._ p. 272.]
[Footnote 158: Fornander, _Account of the Polynesian Race_, i. 132.]
As for the moral opinions about cannibalism, we may assume that
peoples who abstain from it also generally disapprove of it, or
would do so if they were aware of its being practised. Aversion,
as we have often noticed, leads to moral indignation, especially
where the moral judgment is little influenced by reflection.
Another source of the condemnation of cannibalism may be
sympathetic resentment resulting from the idea that the dead is
annihilated or otherwise injured by the act, or from the feeling
that it is an insult to him to use his body as an article of
food; but this could certainly not be the origin of savages
disapproval of eating their foes. Among civilised races, as well
as among non-anthropophagous savages, horror or disgust is
undoubtedly the chief reason why cannibalism is condemned as
wrong. This emotion is often so intense that the same people
whose moral feelings are little affected by a conquest, with all
its horrors, made for the purpose of gain, shudder at the stories
of wars waged by famished savages for the purpose of procuring
human flesh for food. On the other hand, where the natural
aversion to such food is for some reason or other overcome, the
disapproval of cannibalism is in consequence no longer felt. But
an attitude of moral indifference towards this practice has also
been advocated on a totally different ground, by persons whose
moral emotions are too much tempered by thought to allow them to
pronounce an act as wrong simply because it creates in them {581}
disgust. Thus, Montaigne argued that it is more barbarous to
torture a man to death under colour of piety and religion than to
roast and eat him after he is dead.[159] And he quotes with
apparent agreement the opinion of some Stoic philosophers that
there is no harm in feeding upon human carcases to avoid
starvation.[160]
[Footnote 159: Montaigne, _Essais_, i. 30.]
[Footnote 160: Diogenes Laertius, _Vitæ philosophorum_, vii. 1.
64 (121); vii. 7. 12 (188). Zeller, _Stoics_, p. 307.]
CHAPTER XLVII
THE BELIEF IN SUPERNATURAL BEINGS
WE now come to the last of those six groups of moral ideas into
which we have divided our subject--ideas concerning conduct
towards beings, real or imaginary, that are regarded as
supernatural. But before we enter upon a discussion of human
behaviour in relation to such beings, it is necessary to say some
words about man's belief in their existence and the general
qualities attributed to them.
Men distinguish between two classes of phenomena--"natural" and
"supernatural,"[1] between phenomena which they are familiar with
and, in consequence, ascribe to "natural causes," and other
phenomena which seem to them unfamiliar, mysterious, and are
therefore supposed to spring from causes of a "supernatural"
character. We meet with this distinction at the lowest stages of
culture known to us, as well as at higher stages. It may be that
in the mind of a savage the natural and supernatural are often
confused, and that no definite limit can be drawn between the
phenomena which he refers to the one class and those which he
refers to the other; but he certainly sees a difference between
events of everyday occurrence or ordinary objects of nature and
other events or objects which fill him with mysterious awe. The
germ of such a {583} distinction is found even in the lower
animal world. The horse fears the whip but it does not make him
shy; on the other hand, he may shy when he sees an umbrella
opened before him or a paper moving on the ground. The whip is
well known to the horse, whereas the moving paper or umbrella is
strange and uncanny. Dogs and cats are alarmed by an unusual
noise or appearance, and remain uneasy till they have by
examination satisfied themselves of the nature of its cause.[2]
Professor Romanes frightened a dog by attaching a fine thread to
a bone and surreptitiously drawing it from the animal, giving to
the bone the appearance of self-movement; and the same dog was
frightened by soap-bubbles.[3] Even a lion is scared by an
unexpected noise or the sight of an unfamiliar object; a horse,
the lion's favourite prey, has been known to wander for days in
the vicinity of a troop of these animals and be left unmolested
simply because it was blanketed and knee-haltered.[4] And we are
told of a tiger which stood trembling and roaring in an ecstasy
of fear when a mouse tied by a string to a stick had been
inserted into its cage.[5] Little children are apt to be
terrified by the strange and irregular behaviour of a feather as
it glides along the floor or lifts itself into the air.[6]
[Footnote 1: I do not share the objections raised by various
writers to the term "supernatural." It has the sanction of common
usage; and I consider it preferable to the word "superhuman,"
when applied to inanimate things or animals which are objects of
worship.]
[Footnote 2: Morgan, _Animal Life and Intelligence_, p. 339.]
[Footnote 3: Romanes, _Animal Intelligence_, 455 _sq._]
[Footnote 4: Gillmore, quoted by King, _The Supernatural_, p. 80.]
[Footnote 5: Basil Hall, quoted _ibid._ p. 81. See also _ibid._
p. 78 _sqq._; Vignioli, _Myth and Science_, p. 58 _sqq._]
[Footnote 6: Sully, _Studies of Childhood_, p. 205 _sq._]
But the primitive mind not only distinguishes between the natural
and the supernatural, it makes, practically, yet a further
distinction. The supernatural, like the natural, may be looked
upon in the light of mechanical energy, which discharges itself
without the aid of any volitional activity. This is, for
instance, the case with the supernatural force inherent in a
tabooed object; mere contact with such an object communicates the
taboo infection. So also the baneful energy in a curse is
originally conceived as a kind of supernatural miasma, which
injures or destroys anybody to whom it cleaves; in fact, to {584}
taboo a certain thing commonly consists in charging it with a
curse. On the other hand, supernatural qualities may also be
attributed to the mental constitution of animate beings,
especially to their will. Such an attribution makes them
supernatural beings, as distinct from any ordinary individuals
who, without being endowed with special miraculous gifts, may
make use of supernatural mechanical energy in magical practices.
This distinction is in many cases vague; a wizard may be looked
upon as a god and a god as a wizard. But it is nevertheless
essential, and is at the bottom of the difference between
religion and magic. Religion may be defined as a belief in and a
regardful[7] attitude towards a supernatural being on whom man
feels himself dependent and to whose will he makes an appeal in
his worship. Supernatural mechanical power, on the other hand, is
applied in magic. He who performs a purely magical act utilises
such power without making any appeal at all to the will of a
supernatural being.[8]
[Footnote 7: Though somewhat indefinite, the epithet "regardful"
seems a necessary attribute of a religious act. We do not call it
religion when a savage flogs his fetish to make it submissive.]
[Footnote 8: See _infra_, Additional Notes.]
This, I think, is what we generally understand by religion and
magic. But in the Latin word _religio_ there seems to be no
indication of such a distinction. _Religio_ is probably related
to _religare_, which means "to tie." It is commonly assumed that
the relationship between these words implies that in religion man
was supposed to be tied by his god. But I venture to believe that
the connection between them allows of another and more natural
interpretation--that it was not the man who was tied by the god,
but the god who was tied by the man. This interpretation was
suggested to me by certain ideas and practices prevalent in
Morocco. The Moors are in the habit of tying rags to objects
belonging to a _síyid_, that is, a place where a saint has, or is
supposed to have, his grave, or where such a person is said to
have sat or camped. In very many cases, at least, this tying of
rags is _[(]âr_ upon the {585} saint, and _l-[(]âr_ implies the
transference of a conditional curse.[9] Thus, in the Great Atlas
Mountains I found a large number of rags tied to a pole which was
stuck in a cairn dedicated to the great saint Mûlai
[(]Abd-[)u]l-[k.]âder, and when I asked for an explanation
the answer was that petitioners generally fasten a strip of their
clothes to the pole muttering some words like these:--"O saint,
behold! I promised thee an offering, and I will not release
(literally 'open') thee until thou attendest to my business." If
the petitioner's wish is fulfilled he goes back to the place,
offers the sacrifice which he promised, and unties the knot which
he made. A Berber servant of mine from Aglu in Sûs told me that
once when in prison he invoked Lälla R[)a][h.]ma Yusf, a great
female saint whose tomb is in a neighbouring district, and tied
his turban, saying, "I am tying thee, Lälla R[)a][h.]ma Yusf, and
I am not going to open the knot till thou hast helped me." Or a
person in distress will go to her grave and knot the leaves of
some palmetto growing in its vicinity, with the words, "I tied
thee here, O saint, and I shall not release thee unless thou
releasest me from the toils in which I am at present." All this
is what we should call magic, but the Romans would probably have
called it _religio_. They were much more addicted to magic than
to true religion; they wanted to compel the gods rather than to
be compelled by them. Their _religio_ was probably nearly akin to
the Greek [Greek: kata/desmos], which meant not only an ordinary
tie, but also a magic tie or knot or a bewitching thereby.[10]
Plato speaks of persons who with magical arts and incantations
bound the gods, as they said, to execute their will.[11] That
_religio_, however, from having originally a magical
significance, {586} has come to be used in the sense which we
attribute to the term "religion," is not difficult to explain.
Men make use of magic not only in relation to their fellow men,
but in relation to their gods. Magical and religious elements are
often almost inseparably intermingled in one and the same act;
and, as we shall soon see, the magical means of constraining a
god are often externally very similar to the chief forms of
religious worship, prayer and sacrifice.
[Footnote 9: See Westermarck, '_L-[(]âr_, or the Transference of
Conditional Curses in Morocco,' in _Anthropological Essays
presented to E. B. Tylor_, p. 361 _sqq._]
[Footnote 10: I am indebted to my friend Mr. R. R. Marett for
drawing my attention to this meaning of the word [Greek:
kata/desmos]. So also the verb [Greek: katade/ô] means not only
"to tie" but "to bind by magic knots" (Athenaeus, _Deipnosophistæ_,
xv. 9, p. 670; Dio Cassius, _Historia Romana_, l. 5), and [Greek:
kata/desis] is used to denote "a binding by magic knots" (Plato,
_Leges_, xi. 933). See Liddell-Scott, _Greek-English Lexicon_,
p. 754; Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_,
p. 138 _sqq._]
[Footnote 11: Plato, _Respublica_, ii. 364.]
That mystery is the essential characteristic of supernatural
beings is proved by innumerable facts. It is testified by
language. The most prominent belief in the religion of the North
American Indians was their theory of _manitou_, that is, of "a
spiritual and mysterious power thought to reside in some material
form." The word is Algonkin, but all the tribes had some
equivalent for it.[12] Thus the Dacotahs express the essential
attribute of their deities by the term _wakan_, which signifies
anything which they cannot comprehend, "whatever is wonderful,
mysterious, superhuman, or supernatural."[13] The Navaho word
_d[)i]g[)i]'n_ likewise means "sacred, divine, mysterious, or
holy";[14] and so does the Hidatsa term _mahopa_.[15] In Fiji
"the native word expressive of divinity is _kalou_, which, while
used to denote the people's highest notion of a god, is also
constantly heard as a qualification of anything great or
marvellous."[16] The Maoris of New Zealand applied the word
_atua_, which is generally translated as "god," not only to
spirits of every description, but to various phenomena not
understood, such as menstruation and foreign marvels, a compass
for instance, or a barometer.[17] The natives of Madagascar,
{587} says Ellis, designate by the term _ndriamanitra_, or god,
everything that exceeds the capacity of their understanding.
"Whatever is new and useful and extraordinary, is called god. . . .
Rice, money, thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, are all
called god. . . . _Taratasy_, or book, they call god, from its
wonderful capacity of speaking by merely looking at it."[18] The
Monbuttu use the word _kilima_ for anything they do not
understand--the thunder, a shadow, the reflection in water, as
well as the supreme being in which they vaguely believe.[19] The
Masai conception of the deity (_ng[)a]i_), says Dr. Thomson,
"seems to be marvellously vague. I was Ng[)a]i. My language was
Ng[)a]i. Ng[)a]i was in the steaming holes. . . . In fact,
whatever struck them as strange or incomprehensible, that they at
once assumed had some connection with Ng[)a]i."[20] Mr. and Mrs.
Hinde use "the Unknown" as their equivalent of the word _ng[)a]i_.[21]
[Footnote 12: Dorman, _Origin of Primitive Superstitions_, p.
226. Parkman, _Jesuits in North America_, p. lxxix. Brinton,
_Religions of Primitive Peoples_, p. 102. Hoffman, 'Menomini
Indians,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xiv. 39, n. 1.]
[Footnote 13: Schoolcraft, _Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge_,
iv. 642. Dorsey, 'Siouan Cults,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi.
366. McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' _ibid._ xv. 182 _sq._]
[Footnote 14: Matthews, _Navaho Legends_, p. 37.]
[Footnote 15: _Idem_, _Hidatsa Indians_, p. 47 _sq._]
[Footnote 16: Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, p. 183.]
[Footnote 17: Best, 'Lore of the Whare-Kohanga,' in _Jour.
Polynesian Soc._ xiv. 210. Dieffenbach, _Travels in New Zealand_,
ii. 116, 118. The word _tupua_ (or _tipua_) is used in a very
similar way (Tregear, _Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary_,
p. 557).]
[Footnote 18: Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 390 _sqq._]
[Footnote 19: Burrows, _Land of the Pigmies_, p. 100.]
[Footnote 20: Thomson, _Through Masai Land_, p. 260.]
[Footnote 21: Hinde, _Last of the Masai_, p. 99.]
The testimony of language is corroborated by kindred facts
referring to the nature of those objects which are most commonly
worshipped.[22] Among all the American tribes, says Mr. Dorman,
"any remarkable features in natural scenery or dangerous places
became objects of superstitious dread and veneration, because
they were supposed to be abodes of gods."[23] A great cataract, a
difficult and dangerous ford in a river, a spring bubbling up
from the ground, a volcano, a high mountain, an isolated rock, a
curious or unusually large tree, the bones of the mastodon or of
some other immense animal--all were looked upon by the Indians
with superstitious respect {588} or were propitiated by
offerings.[24] In Fiji "every object that is specially fearful,
or vicious, or injurious, or novel," is eligible for admission to
the native Pantheon.[25] It is said that when the Aëtas of the
Philippines saw the first locomotive passing through their
country "they all fell upon their knees in abject terror,
worshipping the strange monster as some new and powerful
deity."[26] Of the shamanistic peoples in Siberia Georgi writes,
"All the celestial bodies, and all terrestrial objects of a
considerable magnitude, all the phenomena of nature that can do
good or harm, every appearance capable of conveying terror into a
weak and superstitious mind, are so many gods to whom they direct
a particular adoration."[27] Among the Samoyedes "a curiously
twisted tree, a stone with an uncommon shape would receive, and
in some quarters still receives, not only veneration but actual
ceremonial worship."[28] Castrén states that the Ostyaks
worshipped no other objects of nature but such as were very
unusual and peculiar either in shape or quality.[29] The Lapps
made offerings not only to large and strange-looking objects, but
to places which were difficult to pass, or where some accident
had occurred, or where they had been either exceptionally unlucky
or exceptionally lucky in fishing or the chase.[30] The Ainu of
Japan deify all objects and phenomena which seem to them
extraordinary or dreadful.[31] In China "a steep mountain, or any
mountain at all remarkable, is supposed to have a special local
spirit, who acts as guardian."[32] The average middle-class
Hindu, according to Sir Alfred Lyall, worships stocks or stones
which are unusual or grotesque in size, shape, or position; or
inanimate things which are gifted with mysterious {589} motion;
or animals which he fears; or visible things, animate or
inanimate, which are directly or indirectly useful and profitable
or which possess any incomprehensible function or property.[33]
From all parts of Africa we hear of similar cults.[34] The
Negroes of Sierra Leone dedicate to their spirits places which
"inspire the spectator with awe, or are remarkable for their
appearance, as immensely large trees rendered venerable by age,
rocks appearing in the midst of rivers, and having something
peculiar in their form, in short, whatever appears to them
strange or uncommon."[35] When Tshi-speaking natives of the Gold
Coast take up their abode near any remarkable natural feature or
object, they worship and seek to propitiate its indwelling
spirit; whereas they do not worship any of the heavenly bodies,
the regularity of whose appearance makes little impression upon
their minds.[36] Throughout East Africa the people seem to attach
religious sanctity to anything of extraordinary size; in the
island of Zanzibar, where the hills are low, they reverence the
baobab tree, which is the largest growing there, and in all parts
of the country where hills are not found they worship some great
stone or tall tree.[37] In Morocco places of striking appearance
are generally supposed to be haunted by _jnûn_ (_jinn_) or are
associated with some dead saint.[38] As I have elsewhere tried to
show, the Arabic _jinn_ were probably "beings invented to explain
what seems to fall outside the ordinary pale of nature, the
wonderful and unexpected, the superstitious imaginations of men
who fear";[39] and the saint was in many cases only the successor
of the _jinn_. Indeed, the superstitious dread of unusual objects
is not altogether dead even among ourselves.{590} It survives in
England to this day in the habit of ascribing grotesque and
striking landmarks or puzzling antiquities to the Devil, who
became the residuary legatee of obsolete pagan superstitions in
Christian countries.[40]
[Footnote 22: See, besides the instances referred to below,
Karsten, _Origin of Worship_, p. 14 _sqq._; von Brenner, _Besuch
bei den Kannibalen Sumatras_, p. 220 (Bataks); _Mitteil. d.
Geograph. Gesellsch. zu Jena_, iii. 14 (Bannavs, between Siam and
Annam). In Lord Kames's _Essays on the Principles of Morality and
Religion_ there is (p. 309 _sqq._) an interesting discussion on
the dread of unknown objects.]
[Footnote 23: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 300. See also Müller,
_Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, i. 52; Harmon,
_Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America_, p. 363
_sq._; Smith, 'Myths of the Iroquois,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._
ii. 51.]
[Footnote 24: Dorman, _op. cit._ pp. 279, 290, 291, 302, 303,
308, 313-315, 319. Chamberlain, in _Jour. American Folk-Lore_,
i. 157 (Mississagua Indians). Georgi, _Russia_, iii. 237 _sq._
(Aleuts.)]
[Footnote 25: Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._ p. 183.]
[Footnote 26: Lala, _Philippine Islands_, p. 96.]
[Footnote 27: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 256.]
[Footnote 28: Jackson, in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxiv. 398. _Cf._
Castrén, _Nordiska resor och forskningar_, iii. 230.]
[Footnote 29: Castrén, _op. cit._ iii. 227.]
[Footnote 30: _Ibid._ iii. 210. Högström, _Beskrifning öfver de
til Sveriges Krona lydande Lapmarker_, p. 182. Leem, _Beskrivelse
over Finmarkens Lapper_, p. 442 _sq._ Friis, _Lappish Mythologi_,
p. 133 _sq._]
[Footnote 31: Sugamata, quoted in _L'Anthropologie_, x. 98.]
[Footnote 32: Edkins, _Religion in China_, p. 221.]
[Footnote 33: Lyall, _Asiatic Studies_, p. 7.]
[Footnote 34: Wilson, _Western Africa_, p. 388 (Mpongwe).
Mockler-Ferryman, _British Nigeria_, p. 255. Fritsch, _Die
Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's_, p. 340 (Hottentots).]
[Footnote 35: Winterbottom, _Native Africans of Sierra Leone_,
i. 223.]
[Footnote 36: Ellis, _Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave
Coast_, p. 282. _Idem_, _Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold
Coast_, p. 21.]
[Footnote 37: Chanler, _Through Jungle and Desert_, p. 188.]
[Footnote 38: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of
Holiness (Baraka)_, _passim_.]
[Footnote 39: _Idem_, 'Nature of the Arab _[vG]inn_,' in _Jour.
Anthr. Inst._ xxix. 268.]
[Footnote 40: Lyall, _op. cit._ p. 9.]
The common prevalence of animal worship is no doubt due to the
mysteriousness of the animal world; the most uncanny of all
creatures, the serpent, is also the one most generally
worshipped. Throughout India we meet with the veneration of
animals which by their appearance or habits startle human
beings.[41] In the Indian tribes of North America animals of an
unusual size were objects of some kind of adoration.[42] In
certain parts of Africa a cock crowing in the evening or a crane
alighting on a house-top is regarded as supernatural.[43] White
men have often been taken for spirits by red, yellow, or black
savages, when seen by them for the first time.[44] Religious
veneration is among various races bestowed on persons suffering
from some abnormality, such as deformity, albinoism, or
madness.[45] Some South American Indians "regard as divinities
all phenomenal children, principally such as are born with a
larger number of fingers or toes than is natural."[46] The Hindus
venerate persons remarkable for any extraordinary qualities great
valour, virtue, or even vice.[47] By performing miracles men
directly prove that they are supernatural beings. The Muhammedan
saints, like the Christian in olden days, are believed to perform
all kinds of wonders, such as flying in the air, passing unhurt
{591} through fire, walking upon water, transporting themselves
in a moment of time to immense distances, or supporting
themselves and others with food in desert places.[48] When
Muhammed first claimed to be the Prophet of Allah, he was urged
to give proof of his calling by working some miracle; and though
he uniformly denied that he possessed such power, it was
nevertheless ascribed to him even by his contemporaries.[49]
[Footnote 41: _Ibid._ p. 13.]
[Footnote 42: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 258. Harmon, _op. cit._ p. 364.]
[Footnote 43: Macdonald, _Religion and Myth_, p. 39.]
[Footnote 44: Avebury, _Origin of Civilisation_, pp. 272, 273,
375. Goblet d'Alviella, _Hibbert Lectures on the Origin and
Growth of the Conception of God_, p. 67. Schultze,
_Fetischismus_, p. 224. In Australia and elsewhere white people
were taken for ghosts by the natives (Fison and Howitt,
_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 248; Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of
Victoria_, ii. 269 _sq._; Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 5
_sq._; Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 170 _sq._).]
[Footnote 45: Schultze, _op. cit._ p. 222. _Supra_, i. 270 _sq._
"Among many savage or barbarous peoples of the world albinos have
been reserved for the priestly office" (Bourke, 'Medicine-Men of
the Apache,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 460).]
[Footnote 46: Guinnard, _Three Years' Slavery among the
Patagonians_, p. 144.]
[Footnote 47: Monier-Williams, _Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism_,
p. 350. For criminal-worship in Sicily, see Peacock, 'Executed
Criminals and Folk-Medicine,' in _Folk-Lore_, vii. 275.]
[Footnote 48: Lane, _Arabian Society in the Middle Ages_, p. 49.
Westermarck, 'Sul culto del santi nel Marocco,' in _Actes du XII.
Congrès International des Orientalistes_, iii. 153 _sqq._ _Idem_,
_The Moorish Conception of Holiness_, p. 77 _sqq._]
[Footnote 49: Muir, _Life of Mahomet_, i. p. lxv. _sq._ Bosworth
Smith, _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_, p. 19. Sell, _Faith of
Islám_, p. 218.]
The dead are objects of worship much more commonly than are the
living. Whilst the human individual consisting of body and soul
is as a rule well-known, the disembodied soul, seen only in
dreams or visions, is a mysterious being which inspires the
survivors with awe. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Grant Allen even regard
the worship of the dead as "the root of every religion."[50] But
this is to carry the ghost theory to an extreme for which there
is no justification in facts. The spirits of the dead are
worshipped because they are held capable of influencing, in a
mysterious manner, the welfare of the living; but there is no
reason to assume that they were originally conceived as the only
supernatural agents existing. We have noticed that even the lower
animals show signs of the same feeling as underlies the belief in
supernatural beings; and we can hardly suppose that they are
believers in ghosts.
[Footnote 50: Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 411. Grant
Allen, _The Evolution of the Idea of God_, pp. 91, 433, 438, &c.]
On account of their wonderful effects medicines, intoxicants, and
stimulants, are frequently objects of veneration. Most of the
plants for which the American Indians had superstitious feelings
were such as have medical qualities;[51] tobacco was generally
held sacred by them,[52] and so was cocoa in Peru.[53] The Vedic
deification {592} of the drink _soma_ was due to its exhilarating
and invigorating effects.[54]
[Footnote 51: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 298 _sq._ Dorsey, 'Siouan
Cults,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 428.]
[Footnote 52: Mooney, 'Myths of the Cherokee,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ xix. 439. Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 295.]
[Footnote 53: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 295.]
[Footnote 54: Whitney, 'Vedic Researches in Germany,' in _Jour.
American Oriental Soc._ iii. 299. Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_,
p. 108.]
Among all the phenomena of nature none is more wonderful,
impressive, awe-inspiring than thunder, and none seems more
generally to have given rise to religious veneration. But with
growing reflection man finds a mystery even in events of daily
occurrence. The Vedic poet, when he sees the sun moving freely
through the heavens, asks how it comes that it does not fall
downward, although "unpropped beneath, not fastened firm, and
downward turned";[55] and it seems to him a miracle that the
sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever
filling it.[56] "Verily," says the Koran, "in the creation of the
heavens and the earth, and in the succession of night and day,
are signs to those possessed of minds."[57]
[Footnote 55: _Rig-Veda_, iv. 13. 5.]
[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ v. 85. 6.]
[Footnote 57: _Koran_, iii. 87.]
The attribution of miraculous power to a certain object or being
may be due to direct experience of some effect produced by it, as
in the case of a medical plant, or a poisonous snake, or a
miracle-working spring, or a Christian or Muhammedan saint. Or it
may be based on the inference that objects with a strange and
mysterious appearance also possess strange and mysterious powers.
This inference, too, is in a way supported by facts. The unusual
appearance of the object makes an impression on the person who
sees it, and predisposes him to the belief that the object is
endowed with secret powers. If then anything unusual actually
happens in its neighbourhood or shortly after it has been seen,
the strange event is attributed to the influence of the strange
object. Thus a Siberian tribe came to regard the camel as the
small-pox demon because, just when the animal had appeared among
them for the first time with a passing caravan, the small-pox
broke out.[58] Of the British Guiana Indian we are {593} told by
Sir E. F. Im Thurn that if his eye falls upon a rock in any way
abnormal or curious, and if shortly after any evil happens to
him, he regards rock and evil as cause and effect, and perceives
a spirit in the rock.[59] With the lapse of time the data of
experience readily increase. If a certain object has gained the
reputation of being supernatural, it is looked upon as the cause
of all kinds of unusual events which may possibly be associated
with it. When I visited the large cave Imi-nta[k.][k.]ándut in
the Great Atlas Mountains, the interior of which is said to
contain a whole spirit city, my horse happened to stumble on my
way back to my camp, and fell upon one of my servants who was
carrying a gun. The gun was broken and the man became lame for
some days. I was told that the accident was caused by the cave
spirits, because they were displeased at my visit. When the
following day I again passed the cave with my little caravan,
heavy rain began to fall; and now the rain was attributed to the
ill-temper of the spirits.
[Footnote 58: Tiele, _Elements of the Science of Religion_, i. 70.]
[Footnote 59: Im Thurn, _Indians of Guiana_, p. 354.]
Startling events are ascribed to the activity not only of
visible, but of invisible supernatural agents. Thus sudden or
strange diseases are, at the lower stages of civilisation,
commonly supposed to be occasioned by a supernatural being, which
has taken up its abode in the sick person's body, or otherwise
sent the disease.[60] Among the Maoris, for instance, "each
disease was supposed to be occasioned by a different god, who
resided in the part affected."[61] The Australian Kurnai maintain
that phthisis, pneumonia, bowel complaints, and insanity are
produced by an evil spirit, "who is like the wind."[62] According
to Moorish beliefs convulsions, epileptic or paralytic fits,
rheumatic or neuralgic pains, and certain rare and violent
epidemics, like the cholera, are caused by spirits, which either
strike their victim, or enter his body, or sometimes, in the case
of an epidemic, shoot at the {594} people with poisonous arrows.
Indeed, unexpected events of every kind are readily ascribed to
supernatural influence, in Morocco and elsewhere. Among the North
American Indians "the storms and tempests were generally thought
to be produced by aërial spirits from hostile lands."[63] Among
the Hudson Bay Indians "everything not understood is attributed
to the working of one of the numerous spirits."[64] "Dans toute
l'Afrique," says M. Duveyrier in his description of the Touareg,
"il n'y a pas un individu, éclairé ou ignare, instruit ou
illettré, qui n'attribue aux génies tout ce qui arrive
d'extraordinaire sur la terre."[65] Of the South African natives
Livingstone writes, "Everything not to be accounted for by common
causes, whether of good or evil, is ascribed to the Deity."[66]
With the progress of science the chain of natural causes is
extended, and, as Livy puts it, it is left to superstition alone
to see the interference of the deity in trifling matters. Among
ourselves the ordinary truths of science are so generally
recognised that in this domain God is seldom supposed to
interfere. On the other hand, with regard to social events, the
causes of which are often hidden, the idea of Providence is still
constantly needed to fill up the gap of human ignorance.
[Footnote 60: Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 146 _sqq._
Schneider, _Die Naturvölker_, i. 217. Bartels, _Die Medicin der
Naturvölker_, p. 27 _sqq._ Höfler, 'Krankheits-Dämonen,' in
_Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, ii. 86 _sqq._ Karsten, _op.
cit._ p. 27 _sqq._]
[Footnote 61: Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_, p. 137.]
[Footnote 62: Fison and Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 250.]
[Footnote 63: Dorman, _op. cit._ p. 350.]
[Footnote 64: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in
_Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 272.]
[Footnote 65: Duveyrier, _Exploration du Sahara_, p. 418. See
also Schneider, _Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker_, p. 103.]
[Footnote 66: Livingstone, _Expedition to the Zambesi_, p. 521
_sq._]
Man's belief in supernatural agents, then, is an attempt to
explain strange and mysterious phenomena which suggest a
volitional cause.[67] The assumed cause is the will of a
supernatural being. Such beings are thus, in the first place,
conceived as volitional. But a being which has a will must have a
mind, with emotions, desires, and a certain amount of
intelligence. Neither the savage nor ourselves can imagine a
volitional being {595} which has nothing but a will. If an object
of nature, therefore, is looked upon as a supernatural agent,
mentality and life are at the same time attributed to it as a
matter of course. This I take to be the real origin of animism.
It is not correct to say that "as the objects of the visible
world are conceived as animated, volitional, and emotional, they
may be deemed the originators of those misfortunes of which the
true cause is unknown."[68] This is to reverse the actual order
of ideas. Inanimate things are conceived as volitional,
emotional, and animate, _because_ they are deemed the originators
of startling events. The savage does not speculate upon the
nature of things unless he has an interest in doing so. He is not
generally inquisitive as to causes.[69] The natives of West
Australia, says Eyre, "are not naturally a reasoning people, and
by no means given to the investigation of causes or their
effects."[70] In matters not concerning the common wants of life
the mind of the Brazilian Indian is a blank.[71] When Mungo Park
asked some negroes, what became of the sun during the night? they
considered his question a very childish one; "they had never
indulged a conjecture, nor formed any hypothesis, about the
matter."[72] I often found the Beduins of Morocco extremely
curious, but their curiosity consisted in the question, What?
rather than in the question, Why?
[Footnote 67: Already Hobbes (_Leviathan_, i. 12, p. 79) traced,
in part, the origin of religion to the fact that when man cannot
assure himself of the true causes of things, he supposes causes
of them. See also Meiners, _Geschichte der Religionen_, i. 16.]
[Footnote 68: Peschel, _Races of Man_, p. 245.]
[Footnote 69: _Cf._ Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 86
_sq._; Karsten, _op. cit._ p. 43 _sq._]
[Footnote 70: Eyre, _Expeditions of Discovery into Central
Australia_, ii. 355.]
[Footnote 71: Bates, _The Naturalist on the River Amazons_, ii. 163.]
[Footnote 72: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior of Africa_, i. 413.]
Whilst belief in supernatural agents endowed with a will made the
savage an animist, the idea that a mind presupposes a body, when
thought out, led to anthropomorphism. Impossible as it is to
imagine a will without a mind, it is hardly less impossible to
imagine a mind without a body. The immaterial soul is an
abstraction to which has been attributed a metaphysical reality,
but of which no clear conception can be formed. As Hobbes
observed, the opinion that spirits are incorporeal or immaterial,
"could {596} never enter into the mind of any man by nature;
because, though men may put together words . . . . as _Spirit_
and _Incorporeall_; yet they can never have the imagination of
anything answering to them."[73] Descartes himself frankly
confessed, "What the soul itself was I either did not stay to
consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something
extremely rare and subtile, like wind, or flame, or ether, spread
through my grosser parts."[74] The supernatural agents were
consequently of necessity considered to possess a more or less
material constitution. The disembodied human soul which the
savage saw in dreams or visions, in the shadow or the reflection,
was only the least material being which he could imagine; and
when raised to the dignity of an ancestor-god, it by no means
lost its materiality, but, on the contrary, tended to acquire a
more substantial body.
[Footnote 73: Hobbes, _op. cit._ i. 12, p. 80.]
[Footnote 74: Descartes, _Meditationes_, 2, p. 10.]
Of a grosser substantiality and very unlike the human shape are
the inanimate objects of nature which receive divine veneration.
It has been said of savages that they do not worship the thing
itself, only the spirit dwelling in it. But such a distinction
cannot be primitive. The natural object is worshipped because it
is believed to possess supernatural power, but it is nevertheless
the object itself that is worshipped.[75] Castrén, who combined
great personal experience with unusual acuteness of judgment,
states that the Samoyedes do not know of any spirits attached to
objects of nature, but worship the objects as such; "in other
words, they do not separate the spirit from the matter, but adore
the thing in its totality as a divine being."[76] Of the
deification of the Nerbudda river Sir W. H. Sleeman likewise
observes, "As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself
to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in
it, or presiding over it--the stream itself is the deity which
fills their imaginations, and receives their {597} homage."[77]
The animist who endows an inanimate object with a soul regards
the visible thing itself as its body.[78] How a being with such a
body, like a tree or a stone, can hear the words of men, can see
their doings, and can partake of the food they offer, might be
difficult to explain--if it had to be explained. But, as I have
said, the inquisitiveness of savage curiosity does not go to the
roots of things, and religion is in its essence mystery.
[Footnote 75: _Cf._ Tiele, _Max Müller und Fritz Schultze über
ein Problem der Religionswissenschaft_, p. 35; Parkman, _op.
cit._ p. lxvii. (North American Indians).]
[Footnote 76: Castrén, _op. cit._ iii. 192. _Cf._ _ibid._ iii.
161, 200 _sq._]
[Footnote 77: Sleeman, _Rambles and Recollections of an Indian
Official_, i. 20.]
[Footnote 78: Castrén, _op. cit._ iii. 164 _sq._]
However, in proportion as a supernatural being comes more and
more to occupy the thoughts of its worshippers and to stir their
imagination, a more distinct personality is attributed to it; and
at length neither the ethereal or vaporous materiality of a
departed human soul, nor the crude substantiality of an inanimate
object is considered a satisfactory body for such a being. It is
humanised also with regard to its essential shape. The Koriaks of
Siberia believe "that objects and phenomena of nature conceal an
anthropomorphic substance underneath their outer forms"; but they
also show the first signs of a belief in spiritual owners or
masters ruling over certain classes of things or over large
objects.[79] The supernatural being which is originally embodied
in a natural phenomenon is gradually placed behind it. In the
Vedic hymns we may study this anthropomorphism as a process in
growth. The true gods of the Veda are almost without exception
the deified representatives of the phenomena or forces of
nature,[80] which are personified, though in varying degrees.
When the name of the god is the same as that of his natural
basis, the personification has not yet advanced beyond the
rudimentary stage; names like Dyaus ("heaven"), P[r.]thiv[=i]
("earth"), S[=u]rya ("sun"), U[s.]as ("dawn"), represent the
double character of natural phenomena and of the personalities
presiding over them. Speaking of the nature of the gods, the
ancient Vedic interpreter Y[=a]ska remarks that "what is seen of
the gods is certainly not {598} anthropomorphic, for example the
sun, the earth, and so forth."[81] Again, when the name of the
god is different from that of the physical substance he is
supposed to inhabit, the anthropomorphism is more developed,
though never very distinct. The Vedic people always recognised
behind its gods the natural forces of which they were the
expression, and their physical appearance often only represents
aspects of their natural bases figuratively described to
illustrate their activities. The sun is spoken of as the eye with
which Varuna observes mankind;[82] or it is said that the
all-seeing sun, rising from his abode, goes to the dwellings of
Mitra and Varuna to report the deeds of men.[83] Even to this day
the Hindu, to whatever sect he may belong, does homage to the
rising sun every morning of his life by repeating a text of the
Veda.[84] The god does not very readily change his old solid body
for another which, though more respectable, has the disadvantage
of being invisible. The simple unreflecting mind finds it easier
to worship a material thing which may be seen, than a hidden god,
however perfect in shape. To the common Japanese the sun is still
the god to whom he prays morning and evening.[85] Whilst Chinese
scholars declare that the sacrifice offered to Heaven "is
assuredly not addressed to the material and sensible heaven,
which our eyes see, but to the Master of heaven, earth, and all
things,"[86] the people are less metaphysical; and the Russian
peasant to this day makes an appeal to the Svarog of the old
religion when crying, "Dost thou hear, O Sky? dost thou see, O
Sky?"[87] That the worship of animals survives at comparatively
late stages of civilisation is probably due to the double
advantage of their bodies being both visible and animate.
[Footnote 79: Jochelson, 'Koryak Religion and Myth,' in _Jesup
North Pacific Expedition_, vi. 115, 118.]
[Footnote 80: Oldenberg, _Religion des Veda_, p. 591 _sqq._]
[Footnote 81: _Nirukta_, vii. 4, quoted by Hopkins, _Religions of
India_, p. 209.]
[Footnote 82: _Rig-Veda_, i. 50. 6. Hopkins, _op. cit._ p. 67.
_Cf._ _Rig-Veda_, i. 25. 10 _sq._; i. 136. 2.]
[Footnote 83: _Rig-Veda_, vii. 60. 1 _sq._ See Macdonell, _op.
cit._ pp. 2, 15, 17, 23; Muir, _Original Sanskrit Texts_, v. 6;
Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 178; Oldenberg, _Religion des
Veda_, p. 591 _sqq._]
[Footnote 84: Monier-Williams, _Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism_,
p. 342.]
[Footnote 85: Griffis, _Religions of Japan_, p. 87.]
[Footnote 86: Legge, _Notions of the Chinese concerning God and
Spirits_, p. 38.]
[Footnote 87: Ralston, _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 362.]
{599} But though man created his gods in his own image and
likeness, endowing them with a mind and a body modelled after his
own, he never lost sight of the difference between him and them.
He always ascribed to them a superior power of action; otherwise
they would have been no gods at all. In many cases, at least, he
also attributed to them a superior knowledge. The Bechuanas
maintain that their gods are much wiser than they are
themselves.[88] In the admonitions of an Aztek mother to her
daughter reference is made to a god who "sees every secret
fault."[89] The gods of the Greeks and Romans were possessed of
superhuman wisdom,[90] and so was Yahveh. It is true that the
anthropomorphic god acquires knowledge of the affairs of men
through his senses. When hearing the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah,
Yahveh said, "I will go down now, and see whether they have done
altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and
if not, I will know."[91] But the senses of a god are generally
superior to those of a man. "A god," says Orestes, "can hear even
from a distance."[92] Varuna has an all-seeing eye, and the
Zoroastrian Mithra has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes.[93]
In other respects, also, the bodies of gods excel the bodies of
men. Sometimes they are more beautiful, sometimes they have a
gigantic shape. When Ares is felled to the ground by the stone
flung by Athene, his body covers seven roods of land. [94] When
Here takes a solemn oath, she grasps the earth with one hand and
the sea with the other.[95] In three steps Poseidon goes an
immense distance;[96] in three paces Vishnu traverses earth, air,
and sky.[97]
[Footnote 88: Arbousset and Daumas, _Exploratory Tour to the
North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope_, p. 341.]
[Footnote 89: Sahagun, _Historia general de las cosas de Nueva
España_, vi. 19, vol. ii. 131.]
[Footnote 90: _Cf._ Westcott, _Essays in the History of Religious
Thought_, p. 101.]
[Footnote 91: _Genesis_, xviii. 20 _sq._]
[Footnote 92: Aeschylus, _Eumenides_, 297.]
[Footnote 93: _Yasts_, x. 7.]
[Footnote 94: _Iliad_, xxi. 407.]
[Footnote 95: _Ibid._ xiv. 272 _sq._]
[Footnote 96: _Ibid._ xiii. 20.]
[Footnote 97: Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, i. 325.]
However, the tendency to make gods more and more {600}
perfect--of which I shall say more in a following chapter--gradually
led to the notion that materiality is a quality which is not
becoming to a god; hence men endeavoured, to the best of their
ability, to grasp the idea of a purely spiritual being, endowed
with a will and even with human emotions, but without a material
body. Like Xenophanes in Greece, the Inca Yupangui in Peru
protested against the prevailing anthropomorphism, declaring that
purely spiritual service was befitting the almighty creator, not
tributes or sacrifices.[98] In the Bible we notice a successive
transformation of the nature of the deity, from crude
sensuousness to pure spirituality. According to the oldest
traditions, Yahveh works and rests, he plants the garden of Eden,
he walks in it in the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve hear his
voice. In a great part of the Old Testament he is expressly bound
by conditions of time and space. He is attached in an especial
manner to the Jerusalem temple or some other shrine, and his
favour is gained by definite modes of sacrifice. At the time of
the Prophets the cruder anthropomorphisms of the earlier religion
have been overcome; Yahveh is no longer seen in person, and by a
prophet like Isaiah his residence in Zion is almost wholly
dematerialised. Yet, as Professor Robertson Smith observes, not
even Isaiah has risen to the full height of the New Testament
conception that God, who is spirit and who is to be worshipped
spiritually, makes no distinction of spot with regard to worship,
and is equally near to receive men's prayers in every place.[99]
Moslem theologians take pains to point out that God neither is
begotten nor begets, and that he is without figure, form, colour,
and parts. He hears all sounds, whether low or loud; but he hears
without an ear. He sees all things, even the steps of a black ant
on a black stone in a dark night; {601} but he has no eyes, as
men have. He speaks; but not with a tongue, as men do.[100] He is
endowed with knowledge, feelings, and a will.[101] Thus the
dematerialised god still retains a mental constitution modelled
upon the human soul, with all its bodily desires and imperfections
removed, with its higher qualities indefinitely increased, and,
above all, endowed with a supernatural power of action.
[Footnote 98: Brinton, _American Hero-Myths_, p. 236.]
[Footnote 99: Goblet d'Alviella, _op. cit._ p. 216. Toy, _Judaism
and Christianity_, p. 87. Montefiore, _op. cit._ p. 424.
Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 117.]
[Footnote 100: Risálah-i-Berkevi, quoted by Sell, _op. cit._
p. 166 _sq._]
[Footnote 101: Sell, _op. cit._ p. 185.]
In following chapters we shall see how the moral ideas of men
have been influenced by the attributes they ascribe to
supernatural beings.
CHAPTER XLVIII
DUTIES TO GODS
MEN not only believe in the existence of supernatural beings, but
enter into frequent relations with them. In every religion we may
distinguish between two elements: a belief, and a regardful
attitude towards the object of this belief. At the same time the
assumption that supernatural beings exist is not necessarily
connected with religious veneration of them. Relations may be
established with some of them to the exclusion of others. If the
relations between man and a certain supernatural being are of a
more or less permanent character, the latter is generally called
his god.
As man attributes to his gods a variety of human qualities, his
conduct towards them is in many respects determined by
considerations similar to those which regulate his conduct
towards his fellow men. He endows them with rights quite after
human fashion, and imposes on himself corresponding duties.
Gods have the rights to life and bodily integrity. They are not
necessarily either invulnerable or immortal.[1] According to
ancient Egyptian beliefs, the life of a god is indeed longer than
that of a man, but death puts an end to the one as well as to the
other.[2] The Vedic gods were mortal at first; immortality was
only bestowed upon them by Savitr or by Agni, or they obtained it
by drinking {603} _soma_, or by practising continence and
austerity, or by the performance of certain ceremonies.[3] Nor
were the Greek gods eternal by nature; they secured immortality
by feasting on nectar and ambrosia.[4] The Scandinavian gods had
in Idun's apples a means of preserving perpetual freshness and
youth; but for all that they were subject to the encroachments of
age, and their death is spoken of without disguise.[5]
[Footnote 1: See Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 1 _sqq._]
[Footnote 2: Wiedemann, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, p.
173. _Cf._ Maspero, _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 111; Erman, _Life
in Ancient Egypt_, p. 265.]
[Footnote 3: Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, p. 17. Oldenberg,
_Religion des Veda_, p. 176.]
[Footnote 4: _Iliad_, v. 339 _sqq._ _Odyssey_, v. 199. _Cf._
Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, i. 317 _sq._]
[Footnote 5: Grimm, _op. cit._ i. 318 _sqq._]
Though liable to death, the invisible anthropomorphic gods
generally run little risk of being killed by men. But the case is
different with such supernatural beings as live on earth in a
visible and destructible shape. They may be, and occasionally
are, slain by human hands, although in this case killing hardly
means absolute destruction, the soul surviving the death of the
body. But to kill such a being is in ordinary circumstances
looked upon as a dangerous act. We have noticed above that people
are often reluctant to slay animals of certain species for fear
lest either the disembodied spirit of the slain animal or others
of its kind should avenge the injury;[6] and the danger is
naturally increased when the victim and its whole species are
regarded as divine. Savages as a rule avoid killing animals of
their own totem, and various statements imply that the act is
disapproved of.[7]
[Footnote 6: _Supra_, ii. 491.]
[Footnote 7: Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 7 _sqq._; _Idem_, _Totemism
and Exogamy_, iv. 6 _sq._]
It has been suggested that this regard for the life of a totemic
animal is due to the notion that a man is akin to his totem.[8]
But the various taboos imposed upon him with reference to it, and
the nature of the penalties incurred by the taboo-breaker,[9]
indicate that the relation between a human individual and the
animal members of his totem are after all somewhat different from
that between cousins. It seems that the totemic animal is in
{604} the first place looked upon as a supernatural being, and
that a person's attitude towards it depends on the degree of
dread or veneration which he feels for it. Such sacred animals as
are not conceived to be of one stock with their devotees are
equally tabooed; in ancient Egypt, we are told, offences against
holy animals were punished even with death.[10] On the other
hand, so little respect is not seldom felt for the totem that it
is treated in a way to which there is no parallel in the
treatment of human relatives. Speaking of the native tribes of
Central Australia, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen observe, "That the
totemic animal or plant is not regarded exactly as a close
relative, whom it would be wrong to kill, or to assist any one
else to kill, is very evident; on the contrary, the members of
one totem not only, as it were, give their permission to those
who are not of the totem to kill and eat the totemic animal or
plant, but . . . they will actually help in the destruction of
their totems."[11] The South Australian Narrinyeri kill their
totemic animals if they are good for food.[12] A Bechuana will
kill his totem if it be a hurtful animal, for instance a lion;
the slayer then only makes an apology to the beast and goes
through a form of purification for the sacrilege.[13] Among the
Menomini Indians a man belonging to the Bear clan may kill a
bear, although he must first address himself to his victim and
apologise for depriving it of life.[14] The Indian tribes in the
South-Eastern States had no respect for their totems and would
kill them when they got the chance.[15] Among the Thlinkets a
Wolf man will hunt wolves without hesitation, although he calls
them his relatives when praying them not to hurt him.[16]
[Footnote 8: Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 285.
_Cf._ Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 7.]
[Footnote 9: See Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 11 _sqq._; Spencer and
Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 322, 324 _sq._]
[Footnote 10: Wiedemann, _Herodots zweites Buch_, p. 279.]
[Footnote 11: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 207.]
[Footnote 12: Taplin, 'Narrinyeri,' in Woods, _Native Tribes of
South Australia_, p. 63.]
[Footnote 13: Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 211.]
[Footnote 14: Hoffman, 'Menomini Indians,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur.
Ethn._ xiv. 44.]
[Footnote 15: Adair, _History of the American Indians_, p. 16.]
[Footnote 16: Boas, in _Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes
of Canada_, p. 23. For some other instances see Frazer,
_Totemism_, p. 19.]
In certain cases divine animals are killed as a religious {605}
or magical ceremony. Several instances of this have been pointed
out by Sir J. G. Frazer.[17] Sometimes, when the revered animal
is habitually spared, it is nevertheless killed on rare and
solemn occasions. In other cases, when the revered animal is
habitually killed, there is a special annual atonement, at which
a select individual of the species is slain with extraordinary
marks of respect and devotion. Frazer has offered ingenious
explanations of both customs. As regards the former one he argues
that the savage apparently thinks that a species left to itself
will grow old and die like an individual, and that the only means
he can think of to avert the catastrophe is to kill a member of
the species in whose veins the tide of life is still running
strong and has not yet stagnated among the fens of old age; "the
life thus diverted from one channel will flow, he fancies, more
freshly and freely in a new one."[18] The latter custom, again,
is explained by Frazer as a kind of atonement; by showing marked
deference to a few chosen individuals of a species the savage
thinks himself entitled to exterminate with impunity all the
remainder upon which he can lay hands.[19] These explanations, as
Frazer himself is the first to admit, are only hypothetical, but,
so far as I know, they are the only ones yet offered. However, it
is worth noticing that certain acts accompanying the slaughter of
divine animals sometimes clearly indicate a desire in the
worshippers to transfer to themselves supernatural benefits--as
when they eat the flesh of the animal, or sprinkle themselves
with its blood, or by other means place themselves in contact
with it; and it may be that in such cases the animal is killed
for the express purpose of communicating to the people the
sanctity, or beneficial magic energy, with which it is endowed.
The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa furnish an instructive
example. Once a year, as it seems, a very choice lamb is killed
by a man belonging to a kind of priestly order, who {606}
sprinkles some of the blood four times over the assembled people
and then smears each individual with the same fluid. But this
ceremony is also observed on a small scale at other times--if a
family is in any great trouble, through illness or bereavement,
their friends and neighbours come together and a lamb is killed
with a view to averting further evil.[20] Among the Arunta and
some other tribes in Central Australia, as we have noticed above,
at the time of Intichiuma, totemic animals are killed with the
object of being eaten. But here the sacramental meal is a magical
ceremony intended to multiply the species, so as to increase the
food supply for other totemic groups; the fundamental idea being
that the members of each totemic group are responsible for
providing other individuals with a supply of their totem.[21]
[Footnote 17: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 366 _sqq._]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid._ ii. 368.]
[Footnote 19: _Ibid._ ii. 435.]
[Footnote 20: Felkin, 'Madi or Moru Tribe of Central Africa,' in
_Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xii. 336 _sq._]
[Footnote 21: _Supra_, ii. 210 _sq._ Spencer and Gillen, _Native
Tribes of Central Australia_, ch. vi. _Iidem_, _Northern Tribes
of Central Australia_, ch. ix. _sq._]
Frazer has also called attention to various instances in which a
man-god or divine king is put to death by his worshippers, and
has suggested the following explanation of this custom:--Primitive
people sometimes believe that their own safety and even that of
the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men or
human incarnations of the divinity. They therefore take the
utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own. But no
amount of care and precaution will prevent the divine king from
growing old and feeble and at last dying. And in order to avert
the catastrophes which may be expected from the enfeeblement of
his powers and their final extinction in death, they kill him as
soon as he shows symptoms of weakness, and his soul is
transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously
impaired by the threatened decay. But some peoples appear to have
thought it unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of decay
and have preferred to kill the divine king while he is still in
the full vigour of life. Accordingly, they have fixed a term
beyond which he {607} may not reign, and at the close of which he
must die, the term fixed upon being short enough to exclude the
probability of his degenerating physically in the interval. Thus
it appears that in some places the people could not trust the
king to remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more than a
year; whilst in Ngoio, a province of the ancient kingdom of
Congo, the rule obtains that the chief who assumes the cap of
sovereignty one day shall be put to death on the next.[22]
[Footnote 22: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 5 _sqq._]
Every reader of _The Golden Bough_ must admire the ingenuity,
skill, and learning with which its author has worked out his
theory, even though he may fail to find the argument in every
point convincing. It is obvious that the supernatural power of
divine kings is frequently supposed to be influenced by the
condition of their bodies. In some cases it is also obvious that
they are killed on account of some illness, corporal defect, or
symptom of old age, and that the ultimate reason for this lies in
the supposed connection between physical deterioration and waning
divinity. But, as Frazer himself observes, in the chain of his
evidence a link is wanting: he can produce no direct proof of the
idea that the soul of the slain man-god is transmitted to his
royal successor.[23] In the absence of such evidence I venture to
suggest a some what different explanation, which seems to me more
in accordance with known facts--to wit, that the new king is
supposed to inherit, not the predecessor's soul, but his divinity
or holiness, which is looked upon in the light of a mysterious
entity, temporarily seated in the ruling sovereign, but separable
from him and transferable to another individual.
[Footnote 23: _Ibid._ ii. 56.]
This modification of Frazer's theory is suggested by certain
beliefs prevalent among the Moors. The Sultan of Morocco, who is
regarded by the people as "the vicegerent of God," appoints
before his death some member of his family--by preference one of
his sons--as his successor, and this implies that his _baraka_,
or holiness, will {608} be transferred to the new sovereign. But
his holiness may also be appropriated by a pretender during his
lifetime, which proves that it is regarded as something quite
distinct from his soul. Thus the people told me that the
pretender Bu[h.]amâra had come into possession of the Sultan's
_baraka_, and that he would subsequently hand it over to one of
the Sultan's brothers, who was then denied his liberty. Like the
sultans of Morocco, the divine Kafir kings of Sofala, who were
put to death if afflicted with some disease, nominated their
successors.[24] In ancient Bengal, again, whoever killed the king
and succeeded in placing himself on the royal throne, was
immediately acknowledged as king; the people said, "We are
faithful to the throne, whoever fills the throne we are obedient
and true to it."[25] In the kingdom of Passier, on the northern
coast of Sumatra, whose sacred monarch was not allowed by his
subjects to live long, "the man who struck the fatal blow was of
the royal lineage, and as soon as he had done the deed of blood
and seated himself on the throne he was regarded as the
legitimate king, provided that he contrived to maintain his seat
peaceably for a single day."[26] In these cases, it seems, the
sanctity was considered to be inherent in the throne and to be
partly communicated to persons who came into close contact with it.[27]
[Footnote 24: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 10.]
[Footnote 25: _Ibid._ ii. 16.]
[Footnote 26: _Ibid._ ii. 16.]
[Footnote 27: Since the above was written, Sir J. G. Frazer
himself has kindly drawn my attention to some statements in his
_Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship_ (p. 121 _sqq._)
from which it appears that in some parts of the Malay region the
regalia are regarded as wonder-working talismans or fetishes, the
possession of which carries with it the right to the throne.
Among the Yorubas of West Africa, a miraculous virtue seems to be
attributed to the royal crown, and the king sometimes sacrifices
sheep to it (_ibid._ p. 124, n. 1). See _infra_, Additional Notes.]
Now, as we have noticed before, holiness is generally held to be
exceedingly susceptible to any polluting influence,[28] and this
would naturally suggest the idea that, in order to remain
unimpaired, it has to be removed from a body which is defiled by
disease or blemish. Such an idea may be supposed to underlie
those cases in which {609} even the slightest bodily defect is a
sufficient motive for putting the divine king to death. It is of
the greatest importance for the community that the holiness on
which its welfare depends should not be attached to an individual
whose organism is no longer a fit receptacle for it, and who is
consequently unable to fulfil the duties incumbent upon a divine
monarch; and it may be thought that the only way of removing the
holiness from him is to kill him. The same explanation would seem
to apply to the killing of kings or magicians who have actually
proved incapable of bringing about the benefits expected from
them, such as rain or good crops,[29] although in these instances
the murderous act may also be a precaution against the revenge
they might otherwise take for being deposed, or it may be a
punishment for their failure,[30] or have the character of a
sacrifice to a god.[31] Moreover, the disease, weakness, or
physical deterioration of the king might cause his death; and,
owing to the extremely polluting effect ascribed to natural
death, this would be the greatest catastrophe which could happen
to the holiness seated in him. The people of Congo believed that
if their pontiff, the Chitomé, were to die a natural death, the
world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by
his power and merit, would immediately be annihilated; hence,
when he fell ill and seemed likely to die, the man who was
destined to be his successor entered the pontiff's house with a
rope or a club and strangled or clubbed him to death.[32] Similar
motives may also have induced people to kill their divine king
after a certain period, as everybody is sooner or later liable to
fall ill or grow weak and die. But I can also imagine another
possible reason for this custom. Supernatural {610} energy is
sometimes considered so sensitive to external influences that it
appears to wear away almost by itself in the course of time. I
have heard from Arabs in Morocco that a pretender's holiness
usually lasts only for half a year. And it may be that some of
the divine kings mentioned by Frazer were exposed to a similar
fatality and therefore had to be slain in time.
[Footnote 28: See especially _supra_, ii. 294-296, 352, 353, 415
_sqq._]
[Footnote 29: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, i. 158 _sq._ Landtman,
_Origin of Priesthood_, p. 144 _sqq._]
[Footnote 30: Landtman, _op. cit._ p. 144. Divine animals are
sometimes treated in a similar way. In ancient Egypt, if the
sacred beasts could not, or would not, help in emergency, they
were beaten; and if this measure failed to prove efficacious,
then the creatures were punished with death (Wiedemann, _Religion
of the Ancient Egyptians_, p. 178; _Idem_, _Herodots zweites
Buch_, p. 428 _sq._).]
[Footnote 31: _Supra_, i. 443.]
[Footnote 32: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 8.]
As the right to life, generally granted to gods, is thus in
certain circumstances abrogated for the benefit of their
worshippers, so their right to bodily integrity may be suspended
if their behaviour does not answer the expectations of their
devotees. Men punish their gods as they punish their fellow men.
Among the Amazulu, when it thunders or, as they say, "the heaven
is coming badly," the doctors go out and scold it; "they take a
stick and say they are going to beat the lightning of heaven."[33]
The negro cudgels his fetish unmercifully to make it submissive.[34]
The Samoyede flogs his idol or throws it away if he does not succeed
in his doings.[35] The idols of the Typees, in the Marquesas Islands,
"received more hard knocks than supplications."[36] When his guardian
spirit proves stubborn, the Hudson Bay Eskimo deprives it of food,
or strips it of its garments.[37]
[Footnote 33: Callaway, _Religious System of the Amazulu_, p. 404.]
[Footnote 34: Bastian, _Afrikanische Reisen_, p. 61.]
[Footnote 35: von Struve, in _Ausland_, 1880 p. 795.]
[Footnote 36: Melville, _Typee_, p. 261.]
[Footnote 37: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in
_Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 194.]
* * * * *
In normal circumstances men regard it as a duty, not only to
refrain from killing or injuring their gods, but positively to
promote their existence and comfort. According to early beliefs,
supernatural beings are subject to human needs. The gods of the
heathen Siberians laboured for their subsistence, engaged in
hunting and fishing, and laid up provisions of roots against
times of dearth.[38] When the heavens appear checkered with white
clouds on a blue surface, the Maoris of New Zealand say that the
god is planting his potatoes and {611} other divine edibles.[39]
The Fijian gods are described as enormous eaters.[40] The Vedic
gods wore clothes, were great drunkards, and suffered from
constant hunger;[41] I need only refer to the numerous passages
in the Rig-Veda where mention is made of the appetite or thirst
of Indra and the pleasure he has in filling his belly.[42] An
Egyptian god cannot be conceived without his house in which he
lives, in which his festivals are solemnised, and which he never
leaves except on professional days. His dwelling has to be
cleaned, and he is assisted at his toilet by his attendants; the
priest has to dress and serve his god, and places every day on
his table offerings of food and drink.[43] So also the Chaldean
gods had to be nourished, clothed, and amused; and the stone or
wooden statues erected to them in the sanctuaries furnished them
with bodies which they animated with their breath.[44]
[Footnote 38: Georgi, _Russia_, iii. 259.]
[Footnote 39: Polack, _Manners and Customs of the New
Zealanders_, i. 244.]
[Footnote 40: Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, pp. 184, 195.]
[Footnote 41: Oldenberg, _Religion des Veda_, pp. 304, 366 _sqq._
Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 36, n. 2.]
[Footnote 42: _Rig-Veda_, ii. 11. 11; viii. 4. 10; viii. 17. 4;
viii. 78. 7; x. 86. 13 _sqq._]
[Footnote 43: Erman, _op. cit._ pp. 273, 275, 279. Maspero, _op.
cit._ p. 110.]
[Footnote 44: Ball, 'Glimpses of Babylonian Religion,' in
_Proceed. Soc. Biblical Archæology_, xiv. 153 _sqq._ Maspero,
_op. cit._ p. 679.]
The idea that supernatural beings have human appetites and human
wants leads to the practice of sacrifice. Whatever means they may
have of earning their livelihood, they are certainly not
indifferent to gifts offered by men. If such offerings fail them
they may even suffer want and become feeble and powerless. The
Egyptian gods, says M. Maspero, "were dependent upon the gifts of
mortals, and the resources of each individual deity, and
consequently his power, depended on the wealth and number of his
worshippers."[45] We meet with the same idea at every step in the
Vedic hymns.[46] Should sacrifices cease for an instant to be
offered, the gods would cease to send rain, {612} to bring back
at the appointed hour Aurora and the sun, to raise and ripen
harvests--not only because they would be unwilling, but because
they would be unable to do so.[47] It was by sacrifice that the
gods delivered the world from chaos, and it is by sacrifice that
man prevents it from lapsing back into the same state;[48] in the
'Laws of Manu' it is said that sacrifices support "both the
movable and the immovable creation."[49] The Zoroastrian books
likewise represent the sacrifice as an act of assistance to the
gods, by which they become victorious in their combats with the
demons.[50] When not strengthened by offerings they fly helpless
before their foes. Overcome by the demon Apaosha, the bright and
glorious Tistrya cries out in distress:--"Woe is me, O Ahura
Mazda! . . . Men do not worship me with a sacrifice in which I am
invoked by my own name. . . . If men had worshipped me with a
sacrifice in which I had been invoked by my own name, as they
worship the other Yazatas with sacrifices in which they are
invoked by their own names, I should have taken to me the strength
of ten horses, the strength of ten camels, the strength of ten bulls,
the strength of ten mountains, the strength of ten rivers."[51]
[Footnote 45: Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 302. _Cf._ Wiedemann,
_Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 46: _Rig-Veda_, ii. 15. 2; x. 52. 5 _sq._; x. 121. 7.
_Cf._ _Atharva-Veda_, xi. 7. 14 _sq._; Hopkins, _Religions of
India_, p. 149; Kaegi, _Rigveda_, p. 31; Darmesteter, _Ormazd et
Ahriman_, p. 329.]
[Footnote 47: Barth, _op. cit._ p. 36.]
[Footnote 48: _Rig-Veda_, x. 130. Barth, _op. cit._ p. 37.]
[Footnote 49: _Laws of Manu_, iii. 75 _sqq._]
[Footnote 50: See Darmesteter, _Ormazd et Ahriman_, p. 327;
_Idem_, in _Sacred Books of the East_ (1st edit.), iv. p. lxviii.]
[Footnote 51: _Yasts_, viii. 23 _sq._]
Men are induced by various motives to offer sacrificial gifts to
supernatural beings. In early religion the most common motive is
undoubtedly a desire to avert evils; and we have reason to
believe that such a desire was the first source of religious
worship. In spite of recent assertions to the contrary, the old
saying holds true that religion was born of fear. Those who
maintain that the savage is little susceptible to this
emotion,[52] and that he for the most part takes his gods
joyously,[53] show ignorance {613} of facts. One of his
characteristics is great nervous susceptibility,[54] and he lives
in constant apprehension of danger from supernatural powers. We
are told of the Samoyedes that a sudden blow on the outside of a
tent will sometimes throw the occupants into spasms. "The
Indian," says Parkman, "lived in perpetual fear. The turning of a
leaf, the crawling of an insect, the cry of a bird, the creaking
of a bough, might be to him the mystic signal of weal or
woe."[55] From all quarters of the uncivilised world we hear that
terror or fear is the predominant element in the religious
sentiment, that savages are more inclined to ascribe evil than
good to the influence of supernatural agents, that their
sacrifices and other acts of worship more frequently have in view
to avert misfortunes than to procure positive benefits, or that,
even though benevolent deities are believed in, much more
attention is paid to malignant ones.[56] And even among peoples
who have passed beyond the stage of {614} savagery fear still
remains a prominent factor in their religion. The great bulk of
Homeric cult-operations lay in propitiatory rites in avoidance of
evil.[57] "No one," says Sir Monier-Williams, "who has ever been
brought into close contact with the Hind[=u]s in their own
country can doubt the fact that the worship of at least ninety
per cent. of the people of India in the present day is a worship
of fear."[58] In one of the Pahlavi texts we read that "he is not
to be considered as faithful who has no fear of the sacred
beings."[59] The Egyptian Amon Râ, who is praised as "the
beautiful and beloved god, who giveth life by all manner of
warmth, by all manner of fair cattle," is at the same time styled
"Lord of fear, great one of terror."[60] The Psalmist says that
"the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,"[61] and, as
Nöldeke points out, "the fear of God" was used in its literal
sense.[62] Although the Koran has much to tell about the loving
kindness of God, the god of Islam evokes much more fear than
love. Faith is said by Muhammedan theologians to "stand midway
between hope and fear."[63]
[Footnote 52: Gruppe, _Die griechischen Culte und Mythen_, p. 244
_sq._]
[Footnote 53: Grant Allen, _Evolution of the Idea of God_, p. 347.]
[Footnote 54: See Brinton, _Religions of Primitive Peoples_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 55: Parkman, _Jesuits in North America_, p. lxxxiv.]
[Footnote 56: Dorman, _Origin of Primitive Superstitions_, p. 391
(American Indians generally). Müller, _Geschichte der
Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, pp. 84, 171, 214, 260. von Spix and
von Martius, _Travels in Brazil_, ii. 243 (Coroados). Brett,
_Indian Tribes of Guiana_, p. 361 _sq._; Im Thurn, _Among the
Indians of Guiana_, p. 367 _sq._ Dunbar, 'Pawnee Indians,' in
_Magazine of American History_, viii. 736. McGee, 'Siouan
Indians,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xv. 184. Murdoch, 'Ethn.
Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' _ibid._ ix. 432 (Point
Barrow Eskimo). Ross, 'Eastern Tinneh,' in _Smithsonian Report_,
1866, p. 306. Radloff, _Schamanenthum_, p. 15 (Turkish tribes of
the Altai). Fawcett, _Saoras_, p. 57. Campbell, _Wild Tribes of
Khondistan_, p. 163 _sq._ Hunter, _Annals of Rural Bengal_,
i. 181 _sq._ (Santals). Mouhot, _Travels in the Central Parts of
Indo-China_, ii. 29 (Bannavs of Cambodia). Man, 'Aboriginal
Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._
xii. 157. Wilken, _Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen
Archipel_, p. 207 _sq._ St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far
East_, i. 69, 70, 178; Low, _Sarawak_, p. 253; Selenka, _Sonnige
Welten_, p. in (Dyaks). von Brenner, _Besuch bei den Kannibalen
Sumatras_, p. 216. Kubary, 'Die Palau-Inseln,' in _Jour. des
Museum Godeffroy_, iv. 44 (Pelew Islanders). Williams and
Calvert, _Fiji_, p. 189. Percy Smith, 'Uea,' in _Jour. Polynesian
Soc._ i. 114. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 21. Ellis, _Polynesian
Researches_, i. 336 (Tahitians). Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_,
pp. 104, 148; Yate, _Account of New Zealand_, p. 141; Polack, _op.
cit._ i. 244 (Maoris). Fritsch, _Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's_,
pp. 338, 339, 341 (Hottentots). Decle, _Three Years in Savage
Africa_, p. 153 (Matabele). Livingstone, _Missionary Travels_,
p. 435 (peoples inhabiting the country north of the Zambesi).
Monrad, _Skildring af Guinea-Kysten_, p. 2 (Negroes of Accra).
See also Karsten, _Origin of Worship_, p. 44 _sqq._; _infra_,
p. 665 _sqq._]
[Footnote 57: _Cf._ Keller, _Homeric Society_, p. 115 _sq._]
[Footnote 58: Monier-Williams, _Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism_,
p. 230.]
[Footnote 59: _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, xxxix. 33.]
[Footnote 60: Wiedemann, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, p.
111 _sq._]
[Footnote 61: _Psalms_, cxi. 10.]
[Footnote 62: Nöldeke, in _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, i. 362.]
[Footnote 63: Sell, _Faith of Islám_, p. 165.]
Hope, indeed, forms an element in every religion, even the
lowest. The assumed authors of painful or alarming events became
objects of worship because they were conceived, not as mechanical
causes, but as personal agencies which might be influenced by the
regardful attitude of the worshipper. The savage is not so
irrational as to make offerings to beings from whom he expects no
benefits in return. And in proportion as the deities grew more
benignant and their sphere of action was extended, their
worshippers became more confident, expecting from them not only
mercy but positive assistance.
We may suppose that already at an early stage of {615} culture
man, occasionally, was struck by some unexpected fortunate event
and ascribed it to the influence of a friendly spirit with which
he was anxious to keep on amicable terms. Among the Tshi-speaking
peoples of the Gold Coast worship is the result not only of fear,
but also of the hope of obtaining some direct advantage or
protection.[64] The pagans of Siberia accompanied their
sacrifices with words like these:--"Behold what I bring you to
eat; bring me then in return children, cattle, and a long
life."[65] The Point Barrow Eskimo, when he arrives at a river,
throws into the air a small piece of tobacco, crying out,
"Spirits, spirits, I give you tobacco, give me plenty of
fish!"[66] Of the Sia Indians (Pueblos) Mrs. Stevenson writes
that their religion is not mainly one of propitiation, but rather
of supplication for favours and payment for the same--they "do
the will of and thereby please the beings to whom they pray."[67]
We even hear of savages making thank-offerings to their gods. In
Fiji, after successful fishing for turtle, or remarkable
deliverance from danger in war or at sea, or recovery from
sickness, a kind of thank-offering was sometimes presented to the
deities.[68] When certain natives of Eastern Central Africa,
after they have prayed for a successful hunting expedition,
return home laden with venison or ivory, they know that they are
indebted to "their old relative" for their good fortune, and give
him a thank-offering.[69] We are told that in Northern Guinea,
when a person has been repeatedly fortunate through the agency of
a fetish, "he contracts a feeling of attachment and gratitude to
it."[70] Yet we have reason to suspect that the gratitude of the
sacrificer is commonly {616} of the kind which La Rochefoucauld
defined as "a secret desire to receive greater benefits in the
future."[71] Sometimes the thank-offering, if it may be called
so, is expressly preceded by a vow. Among the Kansas the warrior,
when going to war says, facing the East, "I wish to pass along
the road to the foe! O Wakanda! I promise you a blanket if I
succeed"; and turning to the West, "O Wakanda! I promise you a
feast if I succeed."[72] Even in religions of a higher type the
offering of sacrificial gifts is mainly a sort of bargain with
the god to whom they are offered. In the Vedic hymns the gods are
addressed by phrases like these, "If you give me this, I shall
give you that," or, "As you have given me this, I shall give you
that."[73] The singer naïvely confesses, "I looked forth in
spirit, seeking good, O Indra and Agni, to relations and kinsmen;
but I have no other helper than you; therefore I have made you a
powerful song."[74] The Greeks expressed the idea connected with
their sacrifices in the proverbial saying, [Greek: dô=ra theou\s
pei/thei].[75] The ancient Hebrew view on the subject is
illustrated by the vow of Jacob:--"If God will be with me, and
will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to
eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's
house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone,
which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all
that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee."[76]
[Footnote 64: Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_,
p. 17. _Cf._ _Idem_, _Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave
Coast_, p. 277.]
[Footnote 65: Georgi, _Russia_, iii. 284.]
[Footnote 66: Murdoch, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ix. 433.]
[Footnote 67: Stevenson, 'Sia,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xi. 67.]
[Footnote 68: Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._ p. 195.]
[Footnote 69: Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 61. For other instances
of thank-offerings see Shooter, _Kafirs of Natal_, p. 165; Smith,
'Myths of the Iroquois,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ ii. 51.
Jochelson, 'Koryak Religion and Myth,' in _Jesup North Pacific
Expedition_, vi. 25, 92. Leem, _Beskrivelse over Finmarkens
Lapper_, p. 431 (Lapps).]
[Footnote 70: Wilson, _Western Africa_, p. 212.]
[Footnote 71: La Rochefoucauld, _Maximes_, 298.]
[Footnote 72: Dorsey, 'Mourning and War Customs of the Kansas,'
in _American Naturalist_, xix. 678.]
[Footnote 73: Müller, _Physical Religion_, p. 100. Oldenberg,
_Religion des Veda_, pp. 302-326, 430 _sqq._]
[Footnote 74: _Rig-Veda_, i. 109. 1. _Cf._ _ibid._ i. 71. 7.]
[Footnote 75: Plato, _Respublica_, iii. 390.]
[Footnote 76: _Genesis_, xxviii. 20 _sqq._]
In many cases the sacrificial victims are intended to serve as
substitutes for other individuals, whose lives are in danger. We
have previously noticed that the practice of human sacrifice is
mainly based on the idea of substitution.[77] We have also seen
that a growing reluctance to this practice often led to the
offering of animals instead of {617} men.[78] But we have no
right to assume that the sacrifice of an animal for the purpose
of saving the life of a man is in every case a later modification
of a previous human sacrifice. The idea that spirits which
threaten the lives of men are appeased by other than human blood
may in some instances be primary though in others it is
derivative. The Moors invariably sacrifice an animal at the
foundation of a new building; and though this is said to be
_[(]âr_ upon the spirit owners of the place some idea of
substitution seems also to be connected with the act, as they
maintain that if no animal were killed the inmates of the house
would die or remain childless. A similar practice prevails in
Syria, where the people believe that "every house must have its
death, either man, woman, child, or animal."[79] Among the Jews
it is or has been the custom for the master of each house to kill
a cock on the eve of the fast of atonement. Before doing so he
strikes his head with the cock three times, saying at each
stroke, "Let this cock be a commutation for me, let him be
substituted for me"; and when he strangles his victim by
compressing the neck with his hand, he at the same time reflects
that he himself deserves to be strangled.[80] These customs can
certainly not be regarded as survivals of an earlier practice of
killing a human being. Moreover an animal is sometimes sacrificed
for the purpose of saving the lives of other animals. Thus in a
place in Scotland, in 1767, a young heifer was offered in the
holy fire during a cattle-plague.[81] And in Great Benin, in West
Africa, on the anniversary of the death of Adolo, king Overami's
father, not only twelve men, but twelve cows, twelve goats,
twelve sheep, and twelve fowls were offered, and Overami,
addressing his father, asked him to look after the "cows, goats,
and fowls, and everything in the farms," as well as the
people.[82] Sacrifices which are {618} substitutional in
character may or may not be intended to satisfy the material
needs of supernatural beings. In some cases, as we have seen,
their object is to appease a resentful god by the mere death of
the victim.[83]
[Footnote 77: _Supra_, ch. xix.]
[Footnote 78: _Supra_, i. 469 _sq._]
[Footnote 79: Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_,
p. 224 _sq._]
[Footnote 80: Allen, _Modern Judaism_, p. 406.]
[Footnote 81: Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, ii. 608.]
[Footnote 82: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton,
_Antiquities from the City of Benin_, p. 6, and by Ling Roth,
_Great Benin_, p. 70 _sq._]
[Footnote 83: _Supra_, i. 438 _sqq._]
We have further noticed that, in the case of human sacrifice, the
victim is occasionally regarded as a messenger between the
worshippers and their god even though the primary object of the
rite be a different one.[84] The same is sometimes true of other
offerings as well.[85] The Iroquois sacrifice of the white
dog[86] was, according to Mr. Morgan, intended "to send up the
spirit of the dog as a messenger to the Great Spirit, to announce
their continued fidelity to his service, and, also, to convey to
him their united thanks for the blessings of the year"; and in
their thanksgiving addresses they were in the habit of throwing
leaves of tobacco into the fire from time to time that their
words might ascend to the dwelling of the Great Spirit in the
smoke of their offerings.[87] The Huichols of Mexico often use
the arrows which they sacrifice to their gods as carriers of
special prayers.[88]
[Footnote 84: _Supra_, i. 465 _sq._]
[Footnote 85: _Cf._ Hubert and Mauss, 'Essai sur la nature et la
fonction du sacrifice,' in _L'année sociologique_, ii. 106, n. **1.]
[Footnote 86: See _supra_, i. 53, 64.]
[Footnote 87: Morgan, _League of the Iroquois_, p. 216 _sqq._]
[Footnote 88: Lumholtz, _Unknown Mexico_, ii. 205.]