notion is due to missionary influence. But, in regard to the whole chapter
of savage Supreme Beings, we must, as Mr. Tylor advises, keep watching for
Christian and Islamite contamination. The savage notions, as Mr. Tylor
says, even when thus contaminated, may have 'to some extent, a native
substratum.' We shall select such savage examples of the idea of a
Supreme Being as are attested by ancient native hymns, or are inculcated
in the most sacred and secret savage institutions, the religious Mysteries
(manifestly the last things to be touched by missionary influence), or are
found among low insular races defended from European contact by the
jealous ferocity and poisonous jungles of people and soil. We also note
cases in which missionaries found such native names as 'Father,' 'Ancient
of Heaven,' 'Maker of All,' ready-made to their hands.
It is to be remarked that, while this branch of the inquiry is practically
omitted by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Tylor can spare for it but some twenty pages
out of his large work. He arranges the probable germs of the savage
idea of a Supreme Being thus: A god of the polytheistic crowd is simply
raised to the primacy, which, of course, cannot occur where there is no
polytheism. Or the principle of Manes worship may make a Supreme Deity
out of 'a primeval ancestor' say Unkulunkulu, who is so far from being
supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in
Nature-worship, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative
philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through
and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach
their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may accumulate all
powers of all polytheistic gods, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and
calm ... too benevolent to need human worship ... too merely existent to
concern himself with the petty race of men.'[14] But he is always
animistic.
Now, in addition to the objections already noted in passing, how can we
tell that the Supreme Being of low savages was, in original conception,
_animistic_ at all? How can we know that he was envisaged, originally, as
_Spirit_? We shall show that he probably was not, that the question
'spirit or not spirit' was not raised at all, that the Maker and Father in
Heaven, prior to Death, was merely regarded as a deathless _Being_, no
question of 'spirit' being raised. If so, Animism was not needed for
the earliest idea of a moral Eternal. This hypothesis will be found to
lead to some very singular conclusions.
It will be more fully stated and illustrated, presently, but I find that
it had already occurred to Dr. Brinton.[15] He is talking specially of a
heaven-god; he says 'it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to
the heavens _long ere man asked himself, Are the heavens material and God
spiritual_?' Dr. Brinton, however, does not develop his idea, nor am I
aware that it has been developed previously.
The notion of a God about whose spirituality nobody has inquired is new to
us. To ourselves, and doubtless or probably to barbarians on a certain
level of culture, such a Divine Being _must_ be animistic, _must_ be a
'spirit.' To take only one case, to which we shall return, the Banks
Islanders (Melanesia) believe in ghosts, 'and in the existence of Beings
who were not, and never had been, human. All alike might be called
spirits,' says Dr. Codrington, but, _ex hypothesi_, the Beings 'who
never were human' are only called 'spirits,' by us, because our habits of
thought do not enable us to envisage them _except_ as 'spirits.' They
never were men, 'the natives will always maintain that he (the _Vui_) was
_something different_, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man,' while
resolute that he was not a ghost.[16]
This point will be amply illustrated later, as we study that strangely
neglected chapter, that essential chapter, the Higher beliefs of the
Lowest savages. Of the existence of a belief in a Supreme Being, not as
merely 'alleged,' there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in
the ethnographic region.
It is certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers,
and missionaries, have again and again recognised our God in theirs.
The mythical details and fables about the savage God are, indeed,
different; the ethical, benevolent, admonishing, rewarding, and creative
aspects of the Gods are apt to be the same.[17]
'There is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of
these people of the existence of God, or of a future state, 'the facts
being universally admitted.'[18]
'Intelligent men among the Bakwains have scouted the idea of any of them
ever having been without a tolerably clear conception of good and evil,
God and the future state; Nothing we indicate as sin ever appeared to
them as otherwise,' except polygamy, says Livingstone.
Now we may agree with Mr. Tylor that modern theologians, familiar
with savage creeds, will scarcely argue that 'they are direct or
nearly direct products of revelation' (vol. ii. p. 356). But we may
argue that, considering their nascent ethics (denied or minimised by many
anthropologists) and the distance which separates the high gods of
savagery from the ghosts out of which they are said to have sprung;
considering too, that the relatively pure and lofty element which, _ex
hypothesi_, is most recent in evolution, is also, _not_ the most honoured,
but often just the reverse; remembering, above all, that we know nothing
historically of the mental condition of the founders of religion, we may
hesitate to accept the anthropological hypothesis _en masse_. At best
it is conjectural, and the facts are such that opponents have more
justification than is commonly admitted for regarding the bulk of
savage religion as degenerate, or corrupted, from its own highest
elements. I am by no means, as yet, arguing positively in favour of that
hypothesis, but I see what its advocates mean, or ought to mean, and the
strength of their position. Mr. Tylor, with his unique fairness, says
'the degeneration theory, no doubt in some instances with justice, may
claim such beliefs as mutilated and perverted remains of higher religion'
(vol. ii. p. 336).
I do not pretend to know how the lowest savages evolved the theory of a
God who reads the heart and 'makes for righteousness,' It is as easy,
almost, for me to believe that they 'were not left without a witness,'
as to believe that this God of theirs was evolved out of the maleficent
ghost of a dirty mischievous medicine-man.
Here one may repeat that while the 'quaint or majestic foreshadowings'
of a Supreme Being, among very low savages, are only sketched lightly
by Mr. Tylor; in Mr. Herbert Spencer's system they seem to be almost
omitted. In his 'Principles of Sociology' and 'Ecclesiastical
Institutions' one looks in vain for an adequate notice; in vain for almost
any notice, of this part of his topic. The watcher of conduct, the
friendly, creative being of low savage faith, whence was he evolved? The
circumstance of his existence, as far as I can see; the chastity, the
unselfishness, the pitifulness, the loyalty to plighted word, the
prohibition of even extra-tribal homicide, enjoined in various places on
his worshippers, are problems that appear somehow to have escaped
Mr. Spencer's notice. We are puzzled by endless difficulties in his
system: for example as to how savages can forget their great-grandfathers'
very names, and yet remember 'traditional persons from generation to
generation,' so that 'in time any amount of expansion and idealisation can
be reached,'[19]
Again, Mr. Spencer will argue that it is a strange thing if 'primitive men
had, as some think, the consciousness of a Universal Power whence they and
all other things proceeded,' and yet 'spontaneously performed to that
Power an act like that performed by them to the dead body of a fellow
savage'--by offerings of food.[20]
Now, first, there would be nothing strange in the matter if the crude idea
of 'Universal Power' came _earliest_, and was superseded, in part, by a
later propitiation of the dead and ghosts. The new religious idea would
soon refract back on, and influence by its ritual, the older conception.
And, secondly, it is precisely this 'Universal Power' that is _not_
propitiated by offerings of food, in Tonga, (despite Mr. Huxley)
Australia, and Africa, for example. We cannot escape the difficulty by
saying that there the old ghost of Universal Power is regarded as dead,
decrepit, or as a _roi-fainéant_ not worth propitiating, for that is not
true of the punisher of sin, the teacher of generosity, and the solitary
sanction of faith between men and peoples.
It would appear then, on the whole, that the question of the plain man to
the anthropologist, 'Having got your idea of spirit into the savage's
mind, how does he develop out of it what I call God?' has not been
answered. God cannot be a reflection from human kings where there have
been no kings; nor a president elected out of a polytheistic society of
gods where there is as yet no polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor
where men do not worship their ancestors; while, again, the spirit of a
man who died, real or ideal, does not answer to a common savage conception
of the Creator. All this will become much more obvious as we study in
detail the highest gods of the lowest races.
Our study, of course, does not pretend to embrace the religion of all the
savages in the world. We are content with typical, and, as a rule,
well-observed examples. We range from the creeds of the most backward and
worst-equipped nomad races, to those of peoples with an aristocracy,
hereditary kings, houses and agriculture, ending with the Supreme Being of
the highly civilised Incas, and with the Jehovah of the Hebrews.
[Footnote 1: _Journal Anthrop. Inst._ xi. 874. We shall return to this
passage.]
[Footnote 2: Vol. i. p. 389, 1892.]
[Footnote 3: Payne, i. 458.]
[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult._ vol. ii. p. 381; _Science and Hebrew
Tradition_, pp. 346, 372.]
[Footnote 5: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. p. 109.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 110.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 113.]
[Footnote 8: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 115, 116, citing Callaway and
others.]
[Footnote 9: The Zulu religion will be analysed later.]
[Footnote 10: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 130-144.]
[Footnote 11: Ibid. vol. ii. p. 248.]
[Footnote 12: And very few civilised populations, if any, are monotheistic
in this sense.]
[Footnote 13: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 332, 333.]
[Footnote 14: _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. pp. 335, 336.]
[Footnote 15: _Myths of the New World_, 1868, p. 47.]
[Footnote 16: I observed this point in _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, while
I did not see the implication, that the idea of 'spirit' was not
necessarily present in the savage conception of the primal Beings,
Creators, or Makers.]
[Footnote 17: See one or two cases in _Prim. Cult_. vol. ii. p. 340.]
[Footnote 18: Livingstone, speaking of the Bakwain, _Missionary Travels_,
p. 168.]
[Footnote 19: _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. p. 450.]
[Footnote 20: Op. cit. vol. i. p. 302.]
X
HIGH GODS OF LOW RACES
To avoid misconception we must repeat the necessary cautions about
accepting evidence as to high gods of low races. The missionary who does
not see in every alien god a devil is apt to welcome traces of an original
supernatural revelation, darkened by all peoples but the Jews. We shall
not, however, rely much on missionary evidence, and, when we do, we must
now be equally on our guard against the anthropological bias in the
missionary himself. Having read Mr. Spencer and Mr. Tylor, and finding
himself among ancestor-worshippers (as he sometimes does), he is apt to
think that ancestor-worship explains any traces of a belief in the Supreme
Being. Against each and every bias of observers we must be watchful.
It may be needful, too, to point out once again another weak point in all
reasoning about savage religion, namely that we cannot always tell what
may have been borrowed from Europeans. Thus, the Fuegians, in 1830-1840,
were far out of the way, but one tribe, near Magellan's Straits,
worshipped an image called Cristo. Fitzroy attributes this obvious trace
of Catholicism to a Captain Pelippa, who visited the district some time
before his own expedition. It is less probable that Spaniards established
a belief in a moral Deity in regions where they left no material traces of
their faith. The Fuegians are not easily proselytised. 'When discovered by
strangers, the instant impulse of a Fuegian family is to run off into the
woods.' Occasionally they will emerge to barter, but 'sometimes nothing
will induce a single individual of the family to appear.' Fitzroy thought
they had no idea of a future state, because, among other reasons not
given, 'the evil spirit torments them in _this_ world, if they do wrong,
by storms, hail, snow, &c.' Why the evil spirit should punish evil deeds
is not evident. 'A great black man is supposed to be always wandering
about the woods and mountains, who is certain of knowing every word and
every action, who cannot be escaped and who influences the weather
according to men's conduct.'[1]
There are no traces of propitiation by food, or sacrifice, or anything but
conduct. To regard the Deity as 'a magnified non-natural man' is not
peculiar to Fuegian theologians, and does not imply Animism, but the
reverse. But the point is that this ethical judge of perhaps the lowest
savages 'makes for righteousness' and searches the heart. His morality is
so much above the ordinary savage standard that he regards the slaying of
a stranger and an enemy, caught redhanded in robbery, as a sin. York's
brother (York was a Fuegian brought to England by Fitzroy) killed a 'wild
man' who was stealing his birds. 'Rain come down, snow come down, hail
come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow. Very bad to kill man. Big man
in woods no like it, he very angry.' Here be ethics in savage religion.
The Sixth Commandment is in force. The Being also prohibits the slaying of
flappers before they can fly. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come wind,
come rain, blow, very much blow.'[2]
Now this big man is not a deified chief, for the Fuegians 'have no
superiority of one over another ... but the doctor-wizard of each party has
much influence.' Mr. Spencer disposes of this moral 'big man' of the
Fuegians as 'evidently a deceased weather-doctor.'[3] But, first, there is
no evidence that the being is regarded as ever having died. Again, it is
not shown that Fuegians are ancestor-worshippers. Next, Fitzroy did not
think that the Fuegians believed in a future life. Lastly, when were
medicine-men such notable moralists? The worst spirits among the
neighbouring Patagonians are those of dead medicine-men. As a rule
everywhere the ghost of a 'doctor-wizard,' shaman, or whatever he may be
called, is the worst and wickedest of all ghosts. How, then, the Fuegians,
who are not proved to be ancestor-worshippers, evolved out of the
malignant ghost of an ancestor a being whose strong point is morality, one
does not easily conceive. The adjacent Chonos 'have great faith in a good
spirit, whom they call Yerri Yuppon, and consider to be the author of all
good; him they invoke in distress or danger.' However starved they do not
touch food till a short prayer has been muttered over each portion, 'the
praying man looking upward.'[4] They have magicians, but no details are
given as to spirits or ghosts. If Fuegian and Chono religion is on this
level, and if this be the earliest, then the theology of many other higher
savages (as of the Zulus) is decidedly degenerate. 'The Bantu gives one
accustomed to the negro the impression that he once had the same set of
ideas, _but has forgotten half of them_,' says Miss Kingsley.[5]
Of all races now extant, the Australians are probably lowest in culture,
and, like the fauna of the continent, are nearest to the primitive
model. They have neither metals, bows, pottery, agriculture, nor fixed
habitations; and no traces of higher culture have anywhere been found
above or in the soil of the continent. This is important, for in some
respects their religious conceptions are so lofty that it would be natural
to explain them as the result either of European influence, or as relics
of a higher civilisation in the past. The former notion is discredited
by the fact that their best religious ideas are imparted in connection
with their ancient and secret mysteries, while for the second idea, that
they are degenerate from a loftier civilisation, there is absolutely no
evidence.
It has been suggested, indeed, by Mr. Spencer that the singularly complex
marriage customs of the Australian blacks point to a more polite condition
in their past history. Of this stage, as we said, no material traces have
ever been discovered, nor can degeneration be recent. Our earliest account
of the Australians is that of Dampier, who visited New Holland in the
unhappy year 1688. He found the natives 'the miserablest people in the
world. The Hodmadods, of Mononamatapa, though a nasty people, yet for
wealth are gentlemen to these: who have no houses, sheep, poultry, and
fruits of the earth.... They have no houses, but lie in the open air.'
Curiously enough, Dampier attests their _unselfishness_: the main ethical
feature in their religious teaching. 'Be it little or be it much they get,
every one has his part, as well the young and tender as the old and
feeble, who are not able to go abroad, as the strong and lusty.' Dampier
saw no metals used, nor any bows, merely boomerangs ('wooden cutlasses'),
and lances with points hardened in the fire. 'Their place of dwelling was
only a fire with a few boughs before it' (the _gunyeh_).
This description remains accurate for most of the unsophisticated
Australian tribes, but Dampier appears only to have seen ichthyophagous
coast blacks.
There is one more important point. In the _Bora_, or Australian
mysteries, at which knowledge of 'The Maker' and of his commandments is
imparted, the front teeth of the initiated are still knocked out. Now,
Dampier observed 'the two fore-teeth of their upper jaw are wanting in all
of them, men and women, old and young.' If this is to be taken quite
literally, the Bora rite, in 1688, must have included the women, at least
locally. Dampier was on the north-west coast in latitude 16 degrees,
longitude 122-1/4 degrees east (Dampier Land, West Australia). The natives
had neither boats, canoes, nor bark logs; but it seems that they had their
religious mysteries and their unselfishness, two hundred years ago.[6]
The Australians have been very carefully studied by many observers, and
the results entirely overthrow Mr. Huxley's bold statement that 'in its
simplest condition, such as may be met with among the Australian savages,
theology is a mere belief in the existence, powers, and dispositions
(usually malignant) of ghost-like entities who may be propitiated or
scared away; but no cult can properly be said to exist. And in this stage
theology is wholly independent of ethics.'
Remarks more crudely in defiance of known facts could not be made. The
Australians, assuredly, believe in 'spirits,' often malicious, and
probably in most cases regarded as ghosts of men. These aid the wizard,
and occasionally inspire him. That these ghosts are _worshipped_ does not
appear, and is denied by Waitz. Again, in the matter of cult, 'there is
none' in the way of _sacrifice_ to higher gods, as there should be if
these gods were hungry ghosts. The cult among the Australians is the
keeping of certain 'laws,' expressed in moral teaching, supposed to be in
conformity with the institutes of their God. Worship takes the form, as at
Eleusis, of tribal mysteries, originally instituted, as at Eleusis, by
the God. The young men are initiated with many ceremonies, some of which
are cruel and farcical, but the initiation includes ethical instruction,
in conformity with the supposed commands of a God who watches over
conduct. As among ourselves, the ethical ideal, with its theological
sanction, is probably rather above the moral standard of ordinary
practice. What conclusion we should draw from these facts is uncertain,
but the facts, at least, cannot be disputed, and precisely contradict the
statement of Mr. Huxley. He was wholly in the wrong when he said: 'The
moral code, such as is implied by public opinion, derives no sanction from
theological dogmas,'[7] It reposes, for its origin and sanction, on such
dogmas.
The evidence as to Australian religion is abundant, and is being added to
yearly. I shall here content myself with Mr. Howitt's accounts.[8]
As regards the possible evolution of the Australian God from
ancestor-worship, it must be noted that Mr. Howitt credits the groups with
possessing 'headmen,' a kind of chiefs, whereas some inquirers, in Brough
Smyth's collection, disbelieve in regular chiefs. Mr. Howitt writes:--
'The Supreme Spirit, who is believed in by all the tribes I refer to here
[in South-Eastern Australia], either as a benevolent, or more frequently
as a malevolent being, it seems to me represents the defunct headman.'
Now, the traces of 'headmanship' among the tribes are extremely faint; no
such headman rules large areas of country, none is known to be worshipped
after death, and the malevolence of the Supreme Spirit is not illustrated
by the details of Mr. Howitt's own statement, but the reverse. Indeed, he
goes on at once to remark that '_Darumulun_ was not, it seems to me,
everywhere thought a malevolent being, but he was dreaded as one who could
severely punish the trespasses committed against these tribal ordinances
and customs whose first institution is ascribed to him.'
To punish transgressions of his law is not the essence of a malevolent
being. Darumulun 'watched the youths from the sky, prompt to punish, by
disease or death, the breach of his ordinances,' moral or ritual. His name
is too sacred to be spoken except in whispers, and the anthropologist will
observe that the names of the human dead are also often tabooed. But the
divine name is not thus tabooed and sacred when the mere folklore about
him is narrated. The informants of Mr. Howitt instinctively distinguished
between the mythology and the religion of Darumulun.[9] This distinction--
the secrecy about the religion, the candour about the mythology--is
essential, and accounts for our ignorance about the inner religious
beliefs of early races. Mr. Howitt himself knew little till he was
initiated. The grandfather of Mr. Howitt's friend, _before the white men
came to Melbourne_, took him out at night, and, pointing to a star, said:
'You will soon be a man; you see _Bunjil_ [Supreme Being of certain
tribes] up there, and he can see you, and all you do down here.' Mr.
Palmer, speaking of the Mysteries of Northern Australians (mysteries under
divine sanction), mentions the nature of the moral instruction. Each lad
is given, 'by one of the elders, advice so kindly, fatherly, and
impressive, as often to soften the heart, and draw tears from the youth.'
He is to avoid adultery, not to take advantage of a woman if he finds her
alone, he is not to be quarrelsome.[10]
At the Mysteries Darumulun's real name may be uttered, at other times he
is 'Master' (_Biamban_) or 'Father' (_Papang_), exactly as we say 'Lord'
and 'Father.'
It is known that all these things are not due to missionaries, whose
instructions would certainly not be conveyed in the _Bora_, or tribal
mysteries, which, again, are partly described by Collins as early as 1798,
and must have been practised in 1688. Mr. Howitt mentions, among moral
lessons divinely sanctioned, respect for old age, abstinence from lawless
love, and avoidance of the sins so popular, poetic, and sanctioned by the
example of Gods, in classical Greece.[11] A representation is made of the
Master, Biamban; and to make such idols, except at the Mysteries, is
forbidden 'under pain of death.' Those which are made are destroyed as
soon as the rites are ended.[12] The future life (apparently) is then
illustrated by the burial of a living elder, who rises from a grave.
This may, however, symbolise the 'new life' of the Mystae, 'Worse have I
fled; better have I found,' as was sung in an Athenian rite. The whole
result is, by what Mr. Howitt calls 'a quasi-religious element,' to
'impress upon the mind of the youth, in an indelible manner, those rules
of conduct which form the moral law of the tribe.'[13]