hands, runs about a table inscribed with letters at which it points), I
have known curious successes to be achieved by amateurs. Thus, in the
house of a lady who owned an old _château_ in another county, the _ouija_,
operated on by two ladies known to myself, wrote a number of details about
a visit paid to the _château_ for a certain purpose by Mary Stuart. That
visit, and its object, a purely personal one, are unknown to history, and
the _château_ is not spoken of in Mr. Hay Fleming's careful, but
unavoidably incomplete, itinerary of the Queen's residence in Scotland.
After the communication had been made, the owner of the _château_
explained that she was already acquainted with the circumstances
described, as she had recently read them in documents in her charter
chest, where they remain.
Of course, the belief we extend to such narratives is entirely conditioned
by our knowledge of the personal character of the performers. The point
here is merely the civilised and savage practice of _automatism_, the
apparent eliciting of knowledge not otherwise accessible, by the
movements of a stick, or a bit of wood. These movements, made without
conscious exertion or direction, seem, to savage philosophy, to be caused
by in-dwelling spirits, the sources of Fetishism.
These examples, then, demonstrating unconscious movement of objects by the
operators, make it clear that movements even of touched objects, may be
attributed, by some civilised and by savage amateurs, to 'spirits.' The
objects so moved may, by savages, be regarded in some cases as fetishes,
and their movements may have helped to originate the belief that spirits
can inhabit inanimate objects. When objects apparently quite untouched
become volatile, the mystery is deeper. This apparent animation and
frolicsome behaviour of inanimate objects is reported all through history,
and attested by immense quantities of evidence of every degree. It would
be tedious to give a full account of the antiquity and diffusion of reports
about such occurrences. We find them among Neo-Platonists, in the English
and Continental Middle Ages, among Eskimo, Hurons, Algonkins, Tartars,
Zulus, Malays, Nasquapees, Maoris, in witch trials, in ancient Peru
(immediately after the Spanish Conquest), in China, in modern Russia, in
New England (1680), all through the career of modern spiritualism, in
Hayti (where they are attributed to 'Obeah'), and, sporadically,
everywhere.[12]
Among all these cases, we must dismiss whatever the modern paid medium
does in the dark. The only thing to be done with the ethnographic and
modern accounts of such marvels is to 'file them for reference.' If a
spontaneous example occurs, under proper inspection, we can then compare
our old tales. Professor James says: 'Their mutual resemblances suggest a
natural type, and I confess that till these records, or others like them,
are positively explained away, I cannot feel (in spite of such vast
amounts of detected frauds) as if the case of physical mediumship itself,
as a freak of nature, were definitely closed.... So long as the stories
multiply in various lands, and so few are positively explained away, it is
bad method to ignore them.'[13] Here they are not ignored, because,
whatever the cause or causes of the phenomena, they would buttress, if
they did not originate, the savage belief in spirits tenanting inanimate
matter, whence came Fetishism. As to facts, we cannot, of course, 'explain
away' events of this kind, which we know only through report. A conjurer
cannot explain a trick merely from a description, especially a description
by a non-conjurer. But, as a rule, nothing so much leads to doubt on this
theme as the 'explanation' given--except, of course, in the case of 'dark
séances' got up and prepared by paid mediums. We know, sometimes, how the
'explanation' arose.
Thus, the house of a certain M. Zoller, a lawyer and member of the Swiss
Federal Council, a house at Stans, in Unterwalden, was made simply
uninhabitable in 1860-1862. The disturbances, including movements of
objects, were of a truly odious description, and occurred in full
daylight. M. Zoller, deeply attached to his home, which had many
interesting associations with the part his family played in the struggle
against revolutionary France, was obliged to abandon the place. He had
made every conceivable sort of research, and had called in the local
police and _savants_, to no purpose.
But the affair was explained away thus: While the phenomena could still be
concealed from public curiosity, a client called to see M. Zoller, who was
out. The client, therefore, remained in the drawing-room. Loud and heavy
blows resounded through the room. The client, as it chanced, had once felt
the effects of an electric battery, for some medical reason, apparently.
M. Zoller writes: 'My eldest son was present at the time, and, when my
client asked whether there was such a thing as an electrical machine in
the house (the family having been enjoined to keep the disturbances as
secret as possible), he allowed S. to think that there was.' Consequently,
the phenomena were set down to M. Zoller's singular idea of making
his house untenantable with an 'electric machine'--which he did not
possess.[14] A number of the most respected citizens, including the
Superintendent of Police, and the chief magistrate for law, published a
statement that neither Zoller, nor any of his family, nor any of
themselves, produced or could have produced the phenomena witnessed by
them in August 1862. This declaration they put forth in the 'Schwytzer
Zeitung,' October 5, 1863.[15] No electric machine known to mortals
could have produced the vast variety of alleged effects, none was ever
found; and as M. Zoller changed his servants without escaping his
tribulations, they can hardly be blamed for what, _prima facie_, it seems
that they could not possibly do. However, 'electricity,' like Mesopotamia,
is 'a blessed word.'[16]
My own position in this matter of 'physical phenomena' is, I hope, clear.
They interest me, for my present purpose, as being, whatever their real
nature and origin, things which would suggest to a savage his theory of
Fetishism. 'An inanimate object may be tenanted by a spirit, as is proved
by its extraordinary movements.' Thus the early thinker might reason, and
go on to revere the object. It is to be wished that competent observers
would pay more attention to such savage practices as crystal-gazing and
automatism as illustrated by the sticks of the Melanesians, Zulus, and
Yaos. Our scanty information we pick up out of stray allusions, but
it has the advantage of being uncontaminated by theory, the European
spectator not knowing the wide range of such practices and their value in
experimental psychology.
We have now finished our study of the less normal and usual phenomena,
which gave rise to belief in separable, self-existing, conscious, and
powerful souls. We have shown that the supernormal factors which, when
reflected on, probably supported this belief, are represented in civilised
as well as in savage life, while as to their existence among the founders
of religion we can historically know nothing at all. If we may infer from
certain considerations, the supernormal experiences were possibly more
prevalent among the remote ancestors of known savage races than among
their modern descendants. We have suggested that clairvoyance, thought
transference, and telepathy cannot be dismissed as mere fables, by a
cautious inquirer, while even the far more obscure stories of 'physical
manifestations' are but poorly explained away by those who cannot explain
them.[17] Again, these faculties have presented--in the acquisition of
otherwise unattainable knowledge, in coincidental hallucinations, and in
other ways--just the kind of facts on which the savage doctrine of souls
might be based, or by which it might be buttressed. Thus, while the
actuality of the supernormal facts and faculties remains at least an open
question, the prevalent theory of Materialism cannot be admitted as
dogmatically certain in its present shape. No more than any other theory,
nay, less than some other theories, can it account for the psychical facts
which, at the lowest, we may not honestly leave out of the reckoning.
We have therefore no more to say about the supernormal aspects of the
origins of religion. We are henceforth concerned with matters of
verifiable belief and practice. We have to ask whether, when once the
doctrine of souls was conceived by early men, it took precisely the course
of development usually indicated by anthropological science.
[Footnote 1: Darwin, _Journal_, p. 458; Tylor, _Prim. Cult_. ii. 152. The
spoon was not untouched.]
[Footnote 2: Rowley, _Universities' Mission_, p. 217.]
[Footnote 3: _Africana_, vol. i. p. 161.]
[Footnote 4: In the author's _Custom and Myth_, 'The Divining Rod.']
[Footnote 5: Codrington's _Melanesia_, p. 210.]
[Footnote 6: Op. cit. pp. 229-325.]
[Footnote 7: _Prim. Cult_. vol. i. p. 125.]
[Footnote 8: Callaway, _Amazulu_, p. 330.]
[Footnote 9: Callaway, _Amazulu_, p. 368.]
[Footnote 10: _The So-called Divining-Rod_, S.P.R. 1897.]
[Footnote 11: See especially _The Waterford Experiments_, p. 106.]
[Footnote 12: Authorities and examples are collected in the author's _Cock
Lane and Common Sense_.]
[Footnote 13: _Proceedings_, xii. 7, 8.]
[Footnote 14: _Personal Narrative_, by M. Zoller. Hanke, Zurich, 1863.]
[Footnote 15: Daumer, _Reich des Wundersamen_, Regensburg, 1872,
pp. 265, 266.]
[Footnote 16: A criticism of modern explanations of the phenomena here
touched upon will be found in Appendix B.]
[Footnote 17: See Appendix B.]
IX
EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
To the anthropological philosopher 'a plain man' would naturally put the
question: 'Having got your idea of spirit or soul--your theory of
Animism--out of the idea of ghosts, and having got your idea of ghosts out
of dreams and visions, how do you get at the Idea of God?' Now by 'God'
the proverbial 'plain man' of controversy means a primal eternal Being,
author of all things, the father and friend of man, the invisible,
omniscient guardian of morality.
The usual though not invariable reply of the anthropologist might be given
in the words of Mr. Im Thurn, author of a most interesting work on the
Indians of British Guiana:
'From the notion of ghosts,' says Mr. Im Thurn, 'a belief has arisen, but
very gradually, in higher spirits, and eventually in a Highest Spirit,
and, keeping pace with the growth of these beliefs, a habit of reverence
for, and worship of spirits.... The Indians of Guiana know no God.'[1]
As another example of Mr. Im Thurn's hypothesis that God is a late
development from the idea of spirit may be cited Mr. Payne's learned
'History of the New World,' a work of much research:[2]
'The lowest savages not only have no gods, but do not even recognise those
lower beings usually called spirits, the conception of which has
invariably preceded that of gods in the human mind.'
Mr. Payne here differs, _toto caelo_, from Mr. Tylor, who finds no
sufficient proof for wholly non-religious savages, and from Roskoff, who
has disposed of the arguments of Sir John Lubbock. Mr. Payne, then, for
ethnological purposes, defines a god as 'a benevolent spirit, permanently
embodied in some tangible object, usually an image, and to whom food,
drink,' and so on, 'are regularly offered for the purpose of securing
assistance in the affairs of life.'
On this theory 'the lowest savages' are devoid of the idea of god or of
spirit. Later they develop the idea of spirit, and when they have secured
the spirit, as it were, in a tangible object, and kept it on board wages,
then the spirit has attained to the dignity and the savage to the
conception of a god. But while a god of this kind is, in Mr. Payne's
opinion, relatively a late flower of culture, for the hunting races
generally (with some exceptions) have no gods, yet 'the conception of a
creator or maker of all things ... obviously a great spirit' is 'one of
the earliest efforts of primitive logic.'[3]
Mr. Payne's own logic is not very clear. The 'primitive logic' of the
savage leads him to seek for a cause or maker of things, which he finds in
a great creative spirit. Yet the lowest savages have no idea even of
spirit, and the hunting races, as a rule, have no god. Does Mr. Payne mean
that a great creative spirit is _not_ a god, while a spirit kept on board
wages in a tangible object is a god? We are unable, by reason of evidence
later to be given, to agree with Mr. Payne's view of the facts, while his
reasoning appears somewhat inconsistent, the lowest savages having, in his
opinion, no idea of spirit, though the idea of a creative spirit is, for
all that, one of the earliest efforts of primitive logic.
On any such theories as these the belief in a moral Supreme Being is a
very late (or a very early?) result of evolution, due to the action of
advancing thought upon the original conception of ghosts. This opinion of
Mr. Im Thurn's is, roughly stated, the usual theory of anthropologists.
We wish, on the other hand, to show that the idea of God, as he is
conceived of by our inquiring plain man, is shadowed forth (among
contradictory fables) in the lowest-known grades of savagery, and
therefore cannot arise from the later speculation of men, comparatively
civilised and advanced, on the original datum of ghosts. We shall
demonstrate, contrary to the opinion of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and even
Mr. Tylor, that the Supreme Being, and, in one case at least, the casual
sprites of savage faith, are active moral influences. What is even more
important, we shall make it undeniable that Anthropology has simplified
her problem by neglecting or ignoring her facts. While the real problem is
to account for the evolution out of ghosts of the eternal, creative moral
god of the 'plain man,' the germ of such a god or being in the creeds of
the lowest savages is by anthropologists denied, or left out of sight, or
accounted for by theories contradicted by facts, or, at best, is explained
away as a result of European or Islamite influences. Now, as the problem
is to account for the evolution of the highest conception of God, as far
as that conception exists among the most backward races, the problem can
never be solved while that highest conception of God is practically
ignored.
Thus, anthropologists, as a rule, in place of facing and solving their
problem, have merely evaded it--doubtless unwittingly. This, of course, is
not the practice of Mr. Tylor, though even his great work is professedly
much more concerned with the development of the idea of spirit and with
the lower forms of animism than with the real crux--the evolution of the
idea (always obscured by mythology) of a moral, uncreated, undying God
among the lowest savages. This negligence of anthropologists has arisen
from a single circumstance. They take it for granted that God is always
(except where the word for God is applied to a living human being)
regarded as Spirit. Thus, having accounted for the development of the
idea of spirit, they regard God as that idea carried to its highest
power, and as the final step in its evolution. But, if we can show that
the early idea of an undying, moral, creative being does not necessarily
or logically imply the doctrine of spirit (or ghost), then this idea of an
eternal, moral, creative being may have existed even before the doctrine
of spirit was evolved.
We may admit that Mr. Tylor's account of the process by which Gods were
evolved out of ghosts is a little _touffu_--rather buried in facts. We
'can scarcely see the wood for the trees.' We want to know how Gods,
makers of things (or of most things), fathers in heaven, and friends,
guardians of morality, seeing what is good or bad in the hearts of men,
were evolved, as is supposed, out of ghosts or surviving souls of the
dead. That such moral, practically omniscient Gods are known to the very
lowest savages--Bushmen, Fuegians, Australians--we shall demonstrate.
Here the inquirer must be careful not to adopt the common opinion that
Gods improve, morally and otherwise, in direct ratio to the rising grades
in the evolution of culture and civilisation. That is not necessarily the
case; usually the reverse occurs. Still less must we take it for granted,
following Mr. Tylor and Mr. Huxley, that the 'alliance [of religion and
morality] belongs almost, or wholly, to religions above the savage
level--not to the earlier and lower creeds;' or that 'among the Australian
savages,' and 'in its simplest condition,' 'theology is wholly independent
of ethics.'[4] These statements can be proved (by such evidence as
anthropology is obliged to rely upon) to be erroneous. And, just because
these statements are put forward, Anthropology has an easier task in
explaining the origin of religion; while, just because these statements
are incorrect, her conclusion, being deduced from premises so far false,
is invalidated.
Given souls, acquired by thinking on the lines already described, Mr.
Tylor develops Gods out of them. But he is not one of the writers who is
certain about every detail. He 'scarcely attempts to clear away the haze
that covers great parts of the subject.'[5]
The human soul, he says, has been the model on which man 'framed his
ideas of spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports
in the grass up to the heavenly creator and ruler of the world, the
Great Spirit.' Here it is taken for granted that the Heavenly Ruler was
from the first envisaged as a '_spiritual_ being'--which is just the
difficulty. Was He?[6]
The process of framing these ideas is rather obscure. The savage 'lives
in terror of the souls of the dead as harmful spirits.' This might yield
a Devil; it would not yield a God who 'makes for righteousness.'
Happily, 'deified ancestors are regarded, on the whole, as kindly
spirits.' The dead ancestor is 'now passed into a deity.'[7] Examples of
ancestor-worship follow. But we are no nearer home. For among the Zulus
many Amatongo (ancestral spirits) are sacred. 'Yet their father
[i.e. the father of each actual family] is far before all others when
they worship the Amatongo.... They do not know the ancients who are dead,
nor their laud-giving names, nor their names.'[8] Thus, each new
generation of Zulus must have a new first worshipful object--its own
father's Itongo. This father, and his very name, are, in a generation or
two, forgotten. The name of such a man, therefore, cannot survive as that
of the God or Supreme Being from age to age; and, obviously, such a real
dead man, while known at all, is much too well known to be taken for the
creator and ruler of the world, despite some African flattering titles and
superstitions about kings who control the weather. The Zulus, about
as 'godless' a people as possible, have a mythical first ancestor,
Unkulunkulu, but he is 'beyond the reach of rites,' and is a centre of
myths rather than of worship or of moral ideas.[9]
After other examples of ancestor-worship, Mr. Tylor branches off into a
long discussion of the theory of 'possession' or inspiration,[10] which
does not assist the argument at the present point. Thence he passes to
fetishism (already discussed by us), and the transitions from the
fetish--(1) to the idol; (2) to the guardian angel ('subliminal self');
(3) to tree and river spirits, and local spirits which cause volcanoes;
and (4) to polytheism. A fetish may inhabit a tree; trees being
generalised, the fetish of one oak becomes the god of the forest. Or,
again, fetishes rise into 'species gods;' the gods of _all_ bees, owls,
or rabbits are thus evolved.
Next,[11]
'As chiefs and kings are among men, so are the great gods among the lesser
spirits.... With little exception, wherever a savage or barbaric system of
religion is thoroughly described, great gods make their appearance in the
spiritual world as distinctly as chiefs in the human tribe.'
Very good; but whence comes the great God among tribes which have neither
chief nor king and probably never had, as among the Fuegians, Bushmen, and
Australians? The maker and ruler of the world known to _these_ races
cannot be the shadow of king or chief, reflected and magnified on the mist
of thought; for chief or king these peoples have none. This theory
(Hume's) will not work where people have a great God but no king or
chief; nor where they have a king but no Zeus or other supreme King-god,
as (I conceive) among the Aztecs.
We now reach, in Mr. Tylor's theory, great fetish deities, such as Heaven
and Earth, Sun and Moon, and 'departmental deities,' gods of Agriculture,
War, and so forth, unknown to low savages.
Next Mr. Tylor introduces an important personage. 'The theory of family
Manes, carried back to tribal Gods, leads to the recognition of superior
deities of the nature of Divine Ancestor, or First Man,' who sometimes
ranks as Lord of the Dead. As an instance, Mr. Tylor gives the Maori Maui,
who, like the Indian Yama, trod first of men the path of death. But
whether Maui and Yama are the Sun, or not, both Maori and Sanskrit
religion regard these heroes as much later than the Original Gods. In
Kamschatka the First Man is the 'son' of the Creator, and it is about the
origin of the idea of the Creator, not of the First Man, that we are
inquiring. Adam is called 'the son of God' in a Biblical genealogy, but,
of course, Adam was made, not begotten. The case of the Zulu belief will
be analysed later. On the whole, we cannot explain away the conception
of the Creator as a form of the conception of an idealised divine
First Ancestor, because the conception of a Creator occurs where
ancestor-worship does not occur; and again, because, supposing that the
idea of a Creator came first, and that ancestor-worship later grew more
popular, the popular idea of Ancestor might be transferred to the waning
idea of Creator. The Creator might be recognised as the First Ancestor,
_après coup_.
Mr. Tylor next approaches Dualism, the idea of hostile Good and Bad
Beings. We must, as he says, be careful to discount European teaching,
still, he admits, the savage has this dualistic belief in a 'primitive'
form. But the savage conception is not merely that of 'good = friendly
to me,' 'bad = hostile to me.' Ethics, as we shall show, already come into
play in his theology.
Mr. Tylor arrives, at last, at the Supreme Being of savage creeds. His
words, well weighed, must be cited textually--
'To mark off the doctrines of monotheism, closer definition is required
[than the bare idea of a Supreme Creator], assigning the distinctive
attributes of Deity to none save the Almighty Creator. It may be declared
that, in this strict sense, no savage tribe of monotheists has been ever
known.[12] Nor are any fair representatives of the lower culture in a
strict sense pantheists. The doctrine which they do widely hold, and
which opens to them a course tending in one or other of these directions,
is polytheism culminating in the rule of one supreme divinity. High above
the doctrine of souls, of divine Manes, of local nature gods, of the great
gods of class and element, there are to be discerned in barbaric theology,
shadowings, quaint or majestic, of the conception of a Supreme Deity,
henceforth to be traced onward in expanding power and brightening glory
along the history of Religion. It is no unimportant task, partial as it
is, to select and group the typical data which show the nature and
position of the doctrine of supremacy, as it comes into view within the
lower culture.[13]
We shall show that certain low savages are as monotheistic as some
Christians. They have a Supreme Being, and the 'distinctive attributes of
Deity' are not by them assigned to other beings, further than as
Christianity assigns them to Angels, Saints, the Devil, and, strange as
it appears, among savages, to mediating 'Sons.'