book sealed with seven seals.' The Vedas are interpreted in very
different ways by different Oriental scholars. It does not yet appear
to be known whether a certain word in the Vedic funeral service means
'goat' or 'soul'! Mr. Max Mueller's rendering is certain to have the
first claim on English readers, and therefore it is desirable to
investigate the conclusions which he draws from his Vedic studies. The
ordinary anthropologist must first, however, lodge a protest against
the tendency to look for _primitive_ matter in the Vedas. They are the
elaborate hymns of a specially trained set of poets and philosophers,
living in an age almost of civilisation. They can therefore contain
little testimony as to what man, while still 'primitive,' thought
about God, the world, and the soul. One might as well look for the
first germs of religion, for _primitive_ religion strictly so called,
in _Hymns Ancient and Modern_ as in the Vedas. It is chiefly, however,
by way of deductions from the Vedas, that Mr. Max Mueller arrives at
ideas which may be briefly and broadly stated thus: he inclines to
derive religion from man's sense of the Infinite, as awakened by
natural objects calculated to stir that sense. Our position is, on the
other hand, that the germs of the religious sense in early man are
developed, not so much by the vision of the Infinite, as by the idea
of Power. Early religions, in short, are selfish, not disinterested.
The worshipper is not contemplative, so much as eager to gain
something to his advantage. In fetiches, he ignorantly recognises
something that possesses power of an abnormal sort, and the train of
ideas which leads him to believe in and to treasure fetiches is one
among the earliest springs of religious belief.
Mr. Mueller's opinion is the very reverse: he believes that a
contemplative and disinterested emotion in the presence of the
Infinite, or of anything that suggests infinitude or is mistaken for
the Infinite, begets human religion, while of this religion fetichism
is a later corruption.
* * * * *
In treating of fetichism Mr. Mueller is obliged to criticise the system
of De Brosses, who introduced this rather unfortunate term to science,
in an admirable work, _Le Culte des Dieux Fetiches_ (1760). We call
the work 'admirable,' because, considering the contemporary state of
knowledge and speculation, De Brosses' book is brilliant, original,
and only now and then rash or confused. Mr. Mueller says that De
Brosses 'holds that all nations had to begin with fetichism, to be
followed afterwards by polytheism and monotheism.' This sentence would
lead some readers to suppose that De Brosses, in his speculations, was
looking for the origin of religion; but, in reality, his work is a
mere attempt to explain a certain element in ancient religion and
mythology. De Brosses was well aware that heathen religions were a
complex mass, a concretion of many materials. He admits the existence
of regard for the spirits of the dead as one factor, he gives Sabaeism
a place as another. But what chiefly puzzles him, and what he chiefly
tries to explain, is the worship of odds and ends of rubbish, and the
adoration of animals, mountains, trees, the sun, and so forth. When he
masses all these worships together, and proposes to call them all
Fetichism (a term derived from the Portuguese word for a talisman), De
Brosses is distinctly unscientific. But De Brosses is distinctly
scientific when he attempts to explain the animal-worship of Egypt,
and the respect paid by Greeks and Romans to shapeless stones, as
survivals of older savage practices.
The position of De Brosses is this: Old mythology and religion are a
tissue of many threads. Sabaeism, adoration of the dead, mythopoeic
fancy, have their part in the fabric. Among many African tribes, a
form of theism, Islamite, or Christian, or self-developed, is
superimposed on a mass of earlier superstitions. Among these
superstitions, is the worship of animals and plants, and the cult of
rough stones and of odds and ends of matter. What is the origin of
this element, so prominent in the religion of Egypt, and present, if
less conspicuous, in the most ancient temples of Greece? It is the
survival, answers De Brosses, of ancient practices like those of
untutored peoples, as Brazilians, Samoyeds, Negroes, whom the
Egyptians and Pelasgians once resembled in lack of culture.
This, briefly stated, is the hypothesis of De Brosses. If he had
possessed our wider information, he would have known that, among
savage races, the worships of the stars, of the dead, and of plants
and animals, are interlaced by the strange metaphysical processes of
wild men. He would, perhaps, have kept the supernatural element in
magical stones, feathers, shells, and so on, apart from the triple
thread of Sabaeism, ghost-worship, and totemism, with its later
development into the regular worship of plants and animals. It must be
recognised, however, that De Brosses was perfectly well aware of the
confused and manifold character of early religion. He had a clear view
of the truth that what the religious instinct has once grasped, it
does not, as a rule, abandon, but subordinates or disguises, when it
reaches higher ideas. And he avers, again and again, that men laid
hold of the coarser and more material objects of worship, while they
themselves were coarse and dull, and that, as civilisation advanced,
they, as a rule, subordinated and disguised the ruder factors in their
system. Here it is that Mr. Max Mueller differs from De Brosses. He
holds that the adoration of stones, feathers, shells, and (as I
understand him) the worship of animals are, even among the races of
Africa, a corruption of an earlier and purer religion, a 'parasitical
development' of religion.
However, Mr. Max Mueller himself held 'for a long time' what he calls
'De Brosses' theory of fetichism.' What made him throw the theory
overboard? It was 'the fact that, while in the earliest accessible
documents of religious thought we look in vain for any very clear
traces of fetichism, they become more and more frequent everywhere in
the later stages of religious development, and are certainly more
visible in the later corruptions of the Indian religion, beginning
with the Atharva_n_a, than in the earliest hymns of the Rig Veda.'
Now, by the earliest accessible documents of religious thought,
Professor Max Mueller means the hymns of the Rig Veda. These hymns are
composed in the most elaborate metre, by sages of old repute, who, I
presume, occupied a position not unlike that of the singers and seers
of Israel. They lived in an age of tolerably advanced cultivation.
They had wide geographical knowledge. They had settled government.
They dwelt in States. They had wealth of gold, of grain, and of
domesticated animals. Among the metals, they were acquainted with that
which, in most countries, has been the latest worked--they used iron
poles in their chariots. How then can the hymns of the most
enlightened singers of a race thus far developed be called 'the
earliest religious documents'? Oldest they may be, the oldest that are
accessible, but this is a very different thing. How can we possibly
argue that what is absent in these hymns, is absent because it had not
yet come into existence? Is it not the very office of _pii vates et
Phoebo digna locuti_ to purify religion, to cover up decently its rude
shapes, as the unhewn stone was concealed in the fane of Apollo of
Delos? If the race whose noblest and oldest extant hymns were pure,
exhibits traces of fetichism in its later documents, may not that as
easily result from a recrudescence as from a corruption? Professor Max
Mueller has still, moreover, to explain how the process of corruption
which introduced the same fetichistic practices among Samoyeds,
Brazilians, Kaffirs, and the people of the Atharva_n_a Veda came to be
everywhere identical in its results.
Here an argument often urged against the anthropological method may be
shortly disposed of. 'You examine savages,' people say, 'but how do
you know that these savages were not once much more cultivated; that
their whole mode of life, religion and all, is not debased and
decadent from an earlier standard?' Mr. Mueller glances at this
argument, which, however, cannot serve his purpose. Mr. Mueller has
recognised that savage, or 'nomadic,' languages represent a much
earlier state of language than anything that we find for example, in
the oldest Hebrew or Sanskrit texts. 'For this reason,' he says,[197]
'the study of what I call _nomad_ languages, as distinguished from
_State_ languages, becomes so instructive. We see in them what we can
no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew.
We watch the childhood of language with all its childish freaks.' Yes,
adds the anthropologist, and for this reason the study of savage
religions, as distinguished from State religions, becomes so
instructive. We see in them what we can no longer expect to see even
in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew faiths. We watch the childhood
of religion with all its childish freaks. If this reasoning be sound
when the Kaffir tongue is contrasted with ancient Sanskrit, it should
be sound when the Kaffir faith is compared with the Vedic faith. By
parity of reasoning, the religious beliefs of peoples as much less
advanced than the Kaffirs as the Kaffirs are less advanced than the
Vedic peoples, should be still nearer the infancy of faith, still
'nearer the beginning.'
We have been occupied, perhaps, too long with De Brosses and our
apology for De Brosses. Let us now examine, as shortly as possible,
Mr. Max Mueller's reasons for denying that fetichism is 'a primitive
form of religion.' The negative side of his argument being thus
disposed of, it will then be our business to consider (1) his
psychological theory of the subjective element in religion, and (2)
his account of the growth of Indian religion. The conclusion of the
essay will be concerned with demonstrating that Mr. Max Mueller's
system assigns little or no place to the superstitious beliefs without
which, in other countries than India, society could not have come into
organised existence.
* * * * *
In his polemic against Fetichism, it is not always very easy to see
against whom Mr. Mueller is contending. It is one thing to say that
fetichism is a 'primitive form of religion,' and quite another to say
that it is 'the very beginning of all religion.' Occasionally he
attacks the 'Comtian theory,' which, I think, is not now held by many
people who study the history of man, and which I am not concerned to
defend. He says that the Portuguese navigators who discovered among
the negroes 'no other trace of any religious worship' except what they
called the worship of _feiticos_, concluded that this was the whole of
the religion of the negroes (p. 61). Mr. Mueller then goes on to prove
that 'no religion consists of fetichism only,' choosing his examples
of higher elements in negro religion from the collections of Waitz. It
is difficult to see what bearing this has on his argument. De Brosses
(p. 20) shows that _he_, at least, was well aware that many negro
tribes have higher conceptions of the Deity than any which are
implied in fetich-worship. Even if no tribe in the world is
exclusively devoted to fetiches, the argument makes no progress.
Perhaps no extant tribe is in the way of using unpolished stone
weapons and no others, but it does not follow that unpolished stone
weapons are not primitive. It is just as easy to maintain that the
purer ideas have, by this time, been reached by aid of the
stepping-stones of the grosser, as that the grosser are the corruption
of the purer. Mr. Max Mueller constantly asserts that the 'human mind
advanced by small and timid steps from what is intelligible, to what
is at first sight almost beyond comprehension' (p. 126). Among the
objects which aided man to take these small and timid steps, he
reckons rivers and trees, which excited, he says, religious awe. What
he will not suppose is that the earliest small and timid steps were
not unaided by such objects as the fetichist treasures--stones,
shells, and so forth, which suggest no idea of infinity. Stocks he
will admit, but not, if he can help it, stones, of the sort that
negroes and Kanekas and other tribes use as fetiches. His reason is,
that he does not see how the scraps of the fetichist can appeal to the
feeling of the Infinite, which feeling is, in his theory, the basis of
religion.
After maintaining (what is readily granted) that negroes have a
religion composed of many elements, Mr. Mueller tries to discredit the
evidence about the creeds of savages, and discourses on the many
minute shades of progress which exist among tribes too often lumped
together as if they were all in the same condition. Here he will have
all scientific students of savage life on his side. It remains true,
however, that certain elements of savage practice, fetichism being one
of them, are practically ubiquitous. Thus, when Mr. Mueller speaks of
'the influence of public opinion' in biassing the narrative of
travellers, we must not forget that the strongest evidence about
savage practice is derived from the 'undesigned coincidence' of the
testimonies of all sorts of men, in all ages, and all conditions of
public opinion. 'Illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each
other, bring the same reports from various quarters of the globe,'
wrote Millar of Glasgow. When sailors, merchants, missionaries,
describe, as matters unprecedented and unheard of, such institutions
as polyandry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence is so strong,
because the witnesses are so astonished. They do not know that any one
but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before their eyes.
And when Mr. Mueller tries to make the testimony about savage faith
still more untrustworthy, by talking of the 'absence of recognised
authority among savages,' do not let us forget that custom (~nomos~)
is a recognised authority, and that the punishment of death is
inflicted for transgression of certain rules. These rules generally
speaking, are of a religious nature, and the religion to which they
testify is of the sort known (too vaguely) as 'fetichistic.' Let us
keep steadily before our minds, when people talk of lack of evidence,
that we have two of the strongest sorts of evidence in the world for
the kind of religion which least suits Mr. Mueller's argument--(1) the
undesigned coincidences of testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness and
sanction of elementary criminal law. Mr. Mueller's own evidence is that
much-disputed work, where 'all men see what they want to see, as in
the clouds,' and where many see systematised fetichism--the Veda.[198]
The first step in Mr. Max Mueller's polemic was the assertion that
Fetichism is nowhere unmixed. We have seen that the fact is capable of
an interpretation that will suit either side. Stages of culture
overlap each other. The second step in his polemic was the effort to
damage the evidence. We have seen that we have as good evidence as can
be desired. In the third place he asks, What are the antecedents of
fetich-worship? He appears to conceive himself to be arguing with
persons (p. 127) who 'have taken for granted that every human being
was miraculously endowed with the concept of what forms the predicate
of every fetich, call it power, spirit, or god.' If there are
reasoners so feeble, they must be left to the punishment inflicted by
Mr. Mueller. On the other hand, students who regard the growth of the
idea of power, which is the predicate of every fetich, as a slow
process, as the result of various impressions and trains of early
half-conscious reasoning, cannot be disposed of by the charge that
they think that 'every human being was miraculously endowed' with any
concept whatever. They, at least, will agree with Mr. Max Mueller that
there are fetiches and fetiches, that to one reverence is assigned for
one reason, to another for another. Unfortunately, it is less easy to
admit that Mr. Max Mueller has been happy in his choice of ancient
instances. He writes (p. 99): 'Sometimes a stock or a stone was
worshipped because it was a forsaken altar or an ancient place of
judgment, sometimes because it marked the place of a great battle or a
murder, or the burial of a king.' Here he refers to Pausanias, book i.
28, 5, and viii. 13, 2.[199] In both of these passages, Pausanias, it
is true, mentions stones--in the first passage stones on which men
stood ~hosoi dikas hypechousi kai hoi diokontes~, in the second,
barrows heaped up in honour of men who fell in battle. In neither
case, however, do I find anything to show that the stones were
worshipped. These stones, then, have no more to do with the argument
than the milestones which certainly exist on the Dover road, but which
are not the objects of superstitious reverence. No! the fetich-stones
of Greece were those which occupied the holy of holies of the most
ancient temples, the mysterious fanes within dark cedar or cypress
groves, to which men were hardly admitted. They were the stones and
blocks which bore the names of gods, Hera, or Apollo, names perhaps
given, as De Brosses says, to the old fetichistic objects of worship,
_after_ the anthropomorphic gods entered Hellas. This, at least, is
the natural conclusion from the fact that the Apollo and Hera of
untouched wood or stone were confessedly the _oldest_. Religion,
possessing an old fetich, did not incur the risk of breaking the run
of luck by discarding it, but wisely retained and renamed it. Mr. Max
Mueller says that the unhewn lump may indicate a higher power of
abstraction than the worship paid to the work of Phidias; but in that
case all the savage adorers of rough stones _may_ be in a stage of
more abstract thought than these contemporaries of Phidias who had
such very hard work to make Greek thought abstract.
Mr. Mueller founds a very curious argument on what he calls 'the
ubiquity of fetichism.' Like De Brosses, he compiles (from Pausanias)
a list of the rude stones worshipped by the early Greeks. He mentions
various examples of fetichistic superstitions in Rome. He detects the
fetichism of popular Catholicism, and of Russian orthodoxy among the
peasants. Here, he cries, in religions the history of which is known
to us, fetichism is secondary, 'and why should fetiches in Africa,
where we do not know the earlier development of religion, be
considered as primary?' What a singular argument! According to
Pausanias, this fetichism (if fetichism it is) _was_ primary, in
Greece. The _oldest_ temples, in their holiest place, held the oldest
fetich. In Rome, it is at least probable that fetichism, as in Greece,
was partly a survival, partly a new growth from the primal root of
human superstitions. As to Catholicism, the records of Councils, the
invectives of the Church, show us that, from the beginning, the
secondary religion in point of time, the religion of the Church,
laboured vainly to suppress, and had in part to tolerate, the primary
religion of childish superstitions. The documents are before the
world. As to the Russians, the history of their conversion is pretty
well known. Jaroslaf, or Vladimir, or some other evangelist, had whole
villages baptised in groups, and the pagan peasants naturally kept up
their primary semi-savage ways of thought and worship, under the
secondary varnish of orthodoxy. In all Mr. Max Mueller's examples,
then, fetichism turns out to be _primary_ in point of time;
_secondary_ only, as subordinate to some later development of faith,
or to some lately superimposed religion. Accepting his statement that
fetichism is ubiquitous, we have the most powerful _a priori_ argument
that fetichism is primitive. As religions become developed they are
differentiated; it is only fetichism that you find the same
everywhere. Thus the bow and arrow have a wide range of distribution:
the musket, one not so wide; the Martini-Henry rifle, a still narrower
range: it is the primitive stone weapons that are ubiquitous, that are
found in the soil of England, Egypt, America, France, Greece, as in
the hands of Dieyries and Admiralty Islanders. And just as rough stone
knives are earlier than iron ones (though the same race often uses
both), so fetichism is more primitive than higher and purer faiths,
though the same race often combines fetichism and theism. No one will
doubt the truth of this where weapons are concerned; but Mr. Max
Mueller will not look at religion in this way.
Mr. Max Mueller's remarks on 'Zoolatry,' as De Brosses calls it, or
animal-worship, require only the briefest comment. De Brosses, very
unluckily, confused zoolatry with other superstitions under the head
of Fetichism. This was unscientific; but is it scientific of Mr. Max
Mueller to discuss animal-worship without any reference to totemism?
The worship of sacred animals is found, in every part of the globe, to
be part of the sanction of the most stringent and important of all
laws, the laws of marriage. It is an historical truth that the society
of Ashantees, Choctaws, Australians, is actually constructed by the
operation of laws which are under the sanction of various sacred
plants and animals.[200] There is scarcely a race so barbarous that
these laws are not traceable at work in its society, nor a people
(especially an ancient people) so cultivated that its laws and
religion are not full of strange facts most easily explained as relics
of totemism. Now note that actual living totemism is always combined
with the rudest ideas of marriage, with almost repulsive ideas about
the family. Presumably, this rudeness is earlier than culture, and
therefore this form of animal-worship is one of the earliest religions
that we know. The almost limitless distribution of the phenomena,
their regular development, their gradual disappearance, all point to
the fact that they are all very early and everywhere produced by
similar causes.
Of all these facts, Mr. Max Mueller only mentions one--that many races
have called themselves Snakes, and he thinks they might naturally
adopt the snake for ancestor, and finally for god. He quotes the
remark of Diodorus that 'the snake may either have been made a god
because he was figured on the banners, or may have been figured on the
banners because he was a god'; to which De Brosses, with his usual
sense, rejoins: 'We represent saints on our banners because we revere
them; we do not revere them because we represent them on our banners.'
In a discussion about origins, and about the corruption of religion,
it would have been well to account for institutions and beliefs almost
universally distributed. We know, what De Brosses did not, that
zoolatry is inextricably blent with laws and customs which surely must
be early, if not primitive, because they make the working faith of
societies in which male descent and the modern family are not yet
established. Any one who wishes to show that this sort of society is a
late corruption, not an early stage in evolution towards better
things, has a difficult task before him, which, however, he must
undertake, before he can prove zoolatry to be a corruption of
religion.
As to the worship of ancestral and embodied human spirits, which (it
has been so plausibly argued) is the first moment in religion, Mr. Max
Mueller dismisses it, here, in eleven lines and a half. An isolated but
important allusion at the close of his lectures will be noticed in its
place.