_Sources of the Theistic Idea._
Our argument may fitly begin with an inquiry into the sources of
the theistic idea and the shape which it has universally assumed
among untutored men. The most primitive element which it contains
is doubtless the notion of _dependence_ upon something outside of
ourselves. We are born into a world consisting of forces which sway
our lives and over which we can exercise no control. The individual
man can indeed make his volition count for a very little in modifying
the course of events, but this end necessitates strict and unceasing
obedience to powers that cannot be tampered with. To the behaviour of
these external powers our actions must be adapted under penalty of
death. And upon grounds no less firm than those on which we believe in
any externality whatever, we recognize that these forces antedated our
birth and will endure after we have disappeared from the scene. No one
supposes that he makes the world for himself, so that it is born and
dies with him. Every one perforce contemplates the world as something
existing independently of himself, as something into which he has
come, and from which he is to go; and for his coming and his going, as
well as for what he does while part of the world, he is dependent upon
something that is not himself.
Between ancient and modern man, as between the child and the adult,
there can be no essential difference in the recognition of this
fundamental fact of life. The primitive man could not, indeed, state
the case in this generalized form, any more than a young child could
state it, but the facts which the statement covers were as real to him
as they are to us.[A] The primitive man knew nothing of a world, in
the modern sense of the word. The conception of that vast consensus of
forces which we call the world or universe is a somewhat late result of
culture; it was reached only through ages of experience and reflection.
Such an idea lay beyond the horizon of the primitive man. But while
he knew not the world, he knew bits and pieces of it; or, to vary the
expression, he had his little world, chaotic and fragmentary enough,
but full of dread reality for him. He knew what it was to deal from
birth until death with powers far mightier than himself. To explain
these powers, to make their actions in any wise intelligible, he had
but one available resource; and this was so obvious that he could not
fail to employ it. The only source of action of which he knew anything,
since it was the only source which lay within himself, was the human
will;[3] and in this respect, after all, the philosophy of the primeval
savage was not so very far removed from that of the modern scientific
thinker. The primitive man could see that his own actions were prompted
by desire and guided by intelligence, and he supposed the same to
be the case with the sun and the wind, the frost and the lightning.
All the forces of outward nature, so far as they came into visible
contact with his life, he personified as great beings which were to be
contended with or placated. This primeval philosophy, once universal
among men, has lasted far into the historic period, and it is only
slowly and bit by bit that it has been outgrown by the most highly
civilized races. Indeed the half-civilized majority of mankind have by
no means as yet cast it aside, and among savage tribes we may still see
it persisting in all its original crudity. In the mythologies of all
peoples, of the Greeks and Hindus and Norsemen, as well as of the North
American Indians and the dwellers in the South Sea islands, we find
the sun personified as an archer or wanderer, the clouds as gigantic
birds, the tempest as a devouring dragon; and the tales of gods and
heroes, as well as of trolls and fairies, are made up of scattered and
distorted fragments of nature-myths, of which the primitive meaning had
long been forgotten when the ingenuity of modern scholarship laid it
bare.[4]
[A] See note A at the end of the volume.
In all this personification of physical phenomena our prehistoric
ancestors were greatly assisted by that theory of ghosts which was
perhaps the earliest speculative effort of the human mind. Travellers
have now and then reported the existence of races of men quite
destitute of religion, or of what the observer has learned to recognize
as religion; but no one has ever discovered a race of men devoid of
a belief in ghosts. The mass of crude inference which makes up the
savage's philosophy of nature is largely based upon the hypothesis
that every man has _another self_, a double, or wraith, or ghost.
This "hypothesis of the _other self_, which serves to account for
the savage's wanderings during sleep in strange lands and among
strange people, serves also to account for the presence in his dreams
of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to be dead and buried. The
other self of the dreamer meets and converses with the other selves
of his dead brethren, joins with them in the hunt, or sits down with
them to the wild cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief in an
ever-present world of ghosts, a belief which the entire experience of
uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand."[5] Countless tales and
superstitions of savage races show that the hypothesis of the other
self is used to explain the phenomena of hysteria and epilepsy, of
shadows, of echoes, and even of the reflection of face and gestures in
still water. It is not only men, moreover, who are provided with other
selves. Dumb beasts and plants, stone hatchets and arrows, articles of
clothing and food, all have their ghosts;[6] and when the dead chief is
buried, his wives and servants, his dogs and horses, are slain to keep
him company, and weapons and trinkets are placed in his tomb to be used
in the spirit-land. Burial-places of primitive men, ages before the
dawn of history, bear testimony to the immense antiquity of this savage
philosophy. From this wholesale belief in ghosts to the interpretation
of the wind or the lightning as a person animated by an indwelling soul
and endowed with quasi-human passions and purposes, the step is not a
long one. The latter notion grows almost inevitably out of the former,
so that all races of men without exception have entertained it. That
the mighty power which uproots trees and drives the storm-clouds across
the sky should resemble a human soul is to the savage an unavoidable
inference. "If the fire burns down his hut, it is because the fire is
a person with a soul, and is angry with him, and needs to be coaxed
into a kindlier mood by means of prayer or sacrifice." He has no
alternative but to regard fire-soul as something akin to human-soul;
his philosophy makes no distinction between the human ghost and the
elemental demon or deity.
It was in accordance with this primitive theory of things that the
earliest form of religious worship was developed. In all races of men,
so far as can be determined, this was the worship of ancestors.[7]
The other self of the dead chieftain continued after death to watch
over the interests of the tribe, to defend it against the attacks of
enemies, to reward brave warriors, and to punish traitors and cowards.
His favour must be propitiated with ceremonies like those in which
a subject does homage to a living ruler. If offended by neglect or
irreverent treatment, defeat in battle, damage by flood or fire,
visitations of famine or pestilence, were interpreted as marks of his
anger. Thus the spirits animating the forces of nature were often
identified with the ghosts of ancestors, and mythology is filled with
traces of the confusion. In the Vedic religion the _pitris_, or
"fathers," live in the sky along with Yama, the original _pitri_ of
mankind: they are very busy with the weather; they send down rain to
refresh the thirsty earth, or anon parch the fields till the crops
perish of drought; and they rush along in the roaring tempest, like the
weird host of the wild huntsman Wodan. To the ancient Greek the blue
sky Uranos was the father of gods and men, and throughout antiquity
this mingling of ancestor-worship with nature-worship was general.
With the systematic development of ethnic religions, in some instances
ancestor-worship remained dominant, as with the Chinese, the Japanese,
and the Romans; in others, a polytheism based upon nature-worship
acquired supremacy, as with the Hindus and Greeks, and our own Teutonic
forefathers. The great divinities of the Hellenic pantheon are all
personifications of physical phenomena. At a comparatively late date
the Roman adopted these divinities and paid to them a fashionable
and literary homage, but his solemn and heartfelt rites were those
with which he worshipped the _lares_ and _penates_ in the privacy of
his home. His hospitable treatment of the gods of a vanquished people
was the symptom of a commingling of the various local religions of
antiquity which insured their mutual destruction and prepared the way
for their absorption into a far grander and truer system.[8]