CIVILISATION
In dealing with the long vista of prehistoric time, it is very difficult
for us, in our effort after perspective, not to shorten unduly in our
thoughts the vast epochs of its duration. We tend, too, to forget, that
in these unnumbered millennia there was ample time for it to be possible
over certain areas of Europe to evolve what were practically new races,
through the prepotency of particular stocks and the annihilation of
others. During these epochs, again, after speech had arisen, there was
time enough to recast completely many a language, for before the dawn of
history language was no more free from change than it is now, and in
these immense epochs whatever ideas as to the world of their surroundings
were vaguely felt by prehistoric men and formulated for them by their
kinsmen of genius, had abundant time in which to die or to win supremacy.
There must have been aeons before the dawn even of conscious animism, and
the experiment of trying sympathetic magic was, when first attempted,
probably regarded as a master-stroke of genius. The Stone Age itself was
a long era of great if slow progress in civilisation, and the evolution
of the practices and ideas which emerge as the concomitants of its
agricultural stage, when closely regarded, bear testimony to the mind's
capacity for religious progress in the light of experience and
intelligent experiment, and at the same time to the errors into which it
fell. The Stone Age has left its sediment in all the folk-lore of the
world. To the casual observer many of the ideas embedded in it may seem
a mass of error, and so they are when judged unhistorically, but when
viewed critically, and at the same time historically, they afford many
glimpses of prehistoric genius in a world where life was of necessity a
great experiment. The folk-lore of the world reveals for the same stages
of civilisation a wonderful uniformity and homogeneity, as Dr. J. G.
Frazer has abundantly shown in his _Golden Bough_. This uniformity is
not, however, due to necessary uniformity of origin, but to a great
extent to the fact that it represents the state of equilibrium arrived at
between minds at a certain level and their environment, along lines of
thought directed by the momentum given by the traditions of millennia,
and the survival in history of the men who carefully regarded them. The
apparently unreasoned prohibitions often known as 'taboos,' many of which
still persist even in modern civilised life, have their roots in ideas
and experiences which no speculation of ours can now completely fathom,
however much we may guess at their origin. Many of these ancient
prohibitions have vanished under new conditions, others have often
survived from a real or supposed harmony with new experiences, that have
arisen in the course of man's history. After passing through a stage
when he was too preoccupied with his material cares and wants to consider
whether he was haunted or not, early man in the Celtic world as
elsewhere, after long epochs of vague unrest, came to realise that he was
somehow haunted in the daytime as well as at night, and it was this sense
of being haunted that impelled his intellect and his imagination to seek
some explanation of his feelings. Primitive man came to seek a solution
not of the Universe as a whole (for of this he had no conception), but of
the local Universe, in which he played a part. In dealing with Celtic
folk-lore, it is very remarkable how it mirrors the characteristic local
colouring and scenery of the districts in which it has originated. In a
country like Wales, for example, it is the folk-lore of springs, caves,
mountains, lakes, islands, and the forms of its imagination, here as
elsewhere, reflect unmistakably the land of its origin. Where it depicts
an 'other world,' that 'other world' is either on an island or it is a
land beneath the sea, a lake, or a river, or it is approachable only
through some cave or opening in the earth. In the hunting-grounds of the
Celtic world the primitive hunter knew every cranny of the greater part
of his environment with the accuracy born of long familiarity, but there
were some peaks which he could not scale, some caves which he could not
penetrate, some jungles into which he could not enter, and in these he
knew not what monsters might lurk or unknown beings might live. In
Celtic folk-lore the belief in fabulous monsters has not yet ceased. Man
was surrounded by dangers visible and invisible, and the time came when
some prehistoric man of genius propounded the view that all the objects
around him were no less living than himself. This animistic view of the
world, once adopted, made great headway from the various centres where it
originated, and man derived from it a new sense of kinship with his
world, but also new terrors from it. Knowing from the experience of
dreams that he himself seemed able to wander away from himself, he
thought in course of time that other living things were somehow double,
and the world around him came to be occupied, not merely with things that
were alive, but with other selves of these things, that could remain in
them or leave them at will. Here, again, this new prehistoric philosophy
gave an added interest to life, but it was none the less a source of
fresh terrors. The world swarmed with invisible spirits, some friendly,
some hostile, and, in view of these beings, life had to be regulated by
strict rules of actions and prohibitions. Even in the neolithic stage
the inhabitants of Celtic countries had attained to the religious ideas
in question, as is seen not only by their folk-lore and by the names of
groups of goddesses such as the Matres (or mothers), but by the fact that
in historic times they had advanced well beyond this stage to that of
named and individualised gods. As in all countries where the gods were
individualised, the men of Celtic lands, whether aborigines or invaders,
had toiled along the steep ascent from the primitive vague sense of being
haunted to a belief in gods who, like Esus, Teutates, Grannos, Bormanus,
Litavis, had names of a definite character.
Among the prohibitions which had established themselves among the races
of Celtic lands, as elsewhere, was that directed against the shedding of
the blood of one's own kin. There are indications, too, that some at any
rate of the tribes inhabiting these countries reckoned kinship through
the mother, as in fact continued to be the case among the Picts of
Scotland into historic times. It does not follow, as we know from other
countries, that the pre-Aryan tribes of Gaul and Britain, or indeed the
Aryan tribes themselves in their earliest stage, regarded their original
ancestors as human. Certain names of deities such as Tarvos (the bull),
Moccos (the pig), Epona (the goddess of horses), Damona (the goddess of
cattle), Mullo (the ass), as well as the fact that the ancient Britons,
according to Caesar, preserved the hen, the goose, and the hare, but did
not kill and eat them, all point to the fact that in these countries as
elsewhere certain animals were held in supreme respect and were carefully
guarded from harm. Judging from the analogy of kindred phenomena in
other countries, the practice of respecting certain animals was often
associated with the belief that all the members of certain clans were
descended from one or other of them, but how far this system was
elaborated in the Celtic world it is hard to say. This phenomenon, which
is widely known as totemism, appears to be suggested by the prominence
given to the wild boar on Celtic coins and ensigns, and by the place
assigned on some inscriptions and bas-reliefs to the figure of a horned
snake as well as by the effigies of other animals that have been
discovered. It is not easy to explain the beginnings of totemism in Gaul
or elsewhere, but it should always be borne in mind that early man could
not regard it as an axiomatic truth that he was the superior of every
other animal. To reach that proud consciousness is a very high step in
the development of the human perspective, and it is to the credit of the
Celts that, when we know them in historic times, they appear to have
attained to this height, inasmuch as the human form is given to their
deities. It is not always remembered how great a step in religious
evolution is implied when the gods are clothed with human attributes. M.
Salomon Reinach, in his account of the vestiges of totemism among the
Celts, suggests that totemism was merely the hypertrophy of early man's
social sense, which extended from man to the animals around him. This
may possibly be the case, but it is not improbable that man also thought
to discover in certain animals much-needed allies against some of the
visible and invisible enemies that beset him. In his conflict with the
malign powers around him, he might well have regarded certain animals as
being in some respects stronger combatants against those powers than
himself; and where they were not physically stronger, some of them, like
the snake, had a cunning and a subtlety that seemed far to surpass his
own. In course of time certain bodies of men came to regard themselves
as being in special alliance with some one animal, and as being descended
from that animal as their common ancestor. The existence side by side of
various tribes, each with its definite totem, has not yet been fully
proved for the Gaulish system, and may well have been a developed social
arrangement that was not an essential part of such a mode of thought in
its primary forms. The place of animal-worship in the Celtic religion
will be more fully considered in a later chapter. Here it is only
indicated as a necessary stage in relation to man's civilisation in the
hunting and the pastoral stages, which had to be passed through before
the historic deities of Gaul and Britain in Roman times could have come
into being. Certain of the divine names of the historic period, like
Artio (the bear-goddess), Moccus (the pig), Epona (the mare), and Damona
(the sheep), bear the unmistakable impress of having been at one time
those of animals.
As for the stage of civilisation at which totemism originated, there is
much difference of opinion. The stage of mind which it implies would
suggest that it reflects a time when man's mind was preoccupied with wild
beasts, and when the alliances and friendships, which he would value in
life, might be found in that sphere. There is much plausibility in the
view put forward by M. Salomon Reinach, that the domestication of animals
itself implies a totemistic habit of thought, and the consequent
protection of these animals by means of taboos from harm and death. It
may well be that, after all, the usefulness of domestic animals from a
material point of view was only a secondary consideration for man, and a
happy discovery after unsuccessful totemistic attentions to other
animals. We know not how many creatures early man tried to associate
with himself but failed.
In all stages of man's history the alternation of the seasons must have
brought some rudiments of order and system into his thoughts, though for
a long time he was too preoccupied to reflect upon the regularly
recurring vicissitudes of his life. In the pastoral stage, the sense of
order came to be more marked than in that of hunting, and quickened the
mind to fresh thought. The earth came to be regarded as the Mother from
whom all things came, and there are abundant indications that the earth
as the Mother, the Queen, the Long-lived one, etc., found her natural
place as a goddess among the Celts. Her names and titles were probably
not in all places or in all tribes the same. But it is in the
agricultural stage that she entered in Celtic lands, as she did in other
countries, into her completest religious heritage, and this aspect of
Celtic religion will be dealt with more fully in connection with the
spirits of vegetation. This phase of religion in Celtic countries is one
which appears to underlie some of its most characteristic forms, and the
one which has survived longest in Celtic folk-lore. The Earth-mother
with her progeny of spirits, of springs, rivers, mountains, forests,
trees, and corn, appears to have supplied most of the grouped and
individualised gods of the Celtic pantheon. The Dis, of whom Caesar
speaks as the ancient god of the Gauls, was probably regarded as her son,
to whom the dead returned in death. Whether he is the Gaulish god
depicted with a hammer, or as a huge dog swallowing the dead, has not yet
been established with any degree of certainty.