morals in Australia. A watchful being observes and rewards the conduct or
men; he is named with reverence, if named at all; his abode is the
heavens; he is the Master and Lord of things; his lessons 'soften the
heart,'[14]
'What wants this Knave
That a _God_ should have?'
I shall now demonstrate that the religion patronised by the Australian
Supreme Being, and inculcated in his Mysteries, is actually used to
counteract the immoral character which natives acquire by associating with
Anglo-Saxon Christians.[15]
Mr. Howitt[16] gives an account of the Jeraeil, or Mysteries of the
Kurnai. The old men deemed that through intercourse with whites 'the lads
had become selfish and no longer inclined to share that which they
obtained by their own exertions, or had given them, with their friends.'
One need not say that selflessness is the very essence of goodness, and
the central moral doctrine of Christianity. So it is in the religious
Mysteries of the African Yao; a selfish man, we shall see, is spoken of as
'uninitiated.' So it is with the Australian Kurnai, whose mysteries and
ethical teaching are under the sanction of their Supreme Being. So much
for the anthropological dogma that early theology has no ethics.
The Kurnai began by kneading the stomachs of the lads about to be
initiated (that is, if they have been associating with Christians), to
expel selfishness and greed. The chief rite, later, is to blindfold every
lad, with a blanket closely drawn over his head, to make whirring sounds
with the _tundun_, or Greek _rhombos_, then to pluck off the blankets, and
bid the initiate raise their faces to the sky. The initiator points to it,
calling out, 'Look there, look there, look there!' They have seen in this
solemn way the home of the Supreme Being, 'Our Father,' Mungan-ngaur
(Mungan = 'Father,' ngaur = 'our'), whose doctrine is then unfolded by the
old initiator ('headman') 'in an impressive manner.'[17] 'Long ago there
was a great Being, Mungan-ngaur, who lived on the earth.' His son Tundun
is _direct ancestor_ of the Kurnai. Mungan initiated the rites, and
destroyed earth by water when they were impiously revealed. 'Mungan left
the earth, and ascended to the sky, where he still remains.'
Here Mungan-ngaur, a Being not defined as spirit, but immortal, and
dwelling in heaven, is Father, or rather grandfather, not maker,
of the Kurnai. This _may_ be interpreted as ancestor-worship, but the
opposite myth, of making or creating, is of frequent occurrence in many
widely-severed Australian districts, and co-exists with evolutionary
myths. Mungan-ngaur's precepts are:
1. _To listen to and obey the old men_.
2. _To share everything they have with their friends_.
3. _To live peaceably with their friends_.
4. _Not to interfere with girls or married women_.
5. _To obey the food restrictions until they are released from them by
the old men_.
Mr. Howitt concludes: 'I venture to assert that it can no longer be
maintained that the Australians have no belief which can be called
religious, that is, in the sense of beliefs which govern tribal and
individual morality under a supernatural sanction.' On this topic
Mr. Hewitt's opinion became more affirmative the more deeply he was
initiated.[18]
The Australians are the lowest, most primitive savages, yet no
propitiation by food is made to their moral Ruler, in heaven, as if he
were a ghost.
The laws of these Australian divine beings apply to ritual as well as to
ethics, as might naturally be expected. But the moral element is
conspicuous, the reverence is conspicuous: we have here no mere ghost,
propitiated by food or sacrifice, or by purely magical rites. His very
image (modelled on a large scale in earth) is no vulgar idol: to make such
a thing, except on the rare sacred occasions, is a capital offence.
Meanwhile the mythology of the God has often, in or out of the rites,
nothing rational about it.
On the whole it is evident that Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example,
underrates the nature of Australian religion. He cites a case of
addressing the ghost of a man recently dead, which is asked not to bring
sickness, 'or make loud noises in the night,' and says: 'Here we may
recognise the essential elements of a cult.' But Mr. Spencer does not
allude to the much more essentially religious elements which he might have
found in the very authority whom he cites, Mr. Brough Smyth.[19] This
appears, as far as my scrutiny goes, to be Mr. Spencer's solitary
reference to Australia in the work on 'Ecclesiastical Institutions.' Yet
the facts which he and Mr. Huxley ignore throw a light very different from
theirs on what they consider 'the simplest condition of theology.'
Among the causes of confusion in thought upon religion, Mr. Tylor mentions
'the partial and one-sided application of the historical method of inquiry
into theological doctrines.'[20] Here, perhaps, we have examples. In its
highest aspect that 'simplest theology' of Australia is free from the
faults of popular theology in Greece. The God discourages sin, though, in
myth, he is far from impeccable. He is almost too revered to be named
(except in mythology) and is not to be represented by idols. He is not
moved by sacrifice; he has not the chance; like Death in Greece, 'he only,
of all Gods, loves not gifts.' Thus the status of theology does not
correspond to what we look for in very low culture. It would scarcely be a
paradox to say that the popular Zeus, or Ares, is degenerate from
Mungan-ngaur, or the Fuegian being who forbids the slaying of an enemy,
and almost literally 'marks the sparrow's fall.'
If we knew all the mythology of Darumulun, we should probably find it
(like much of the myth of Pundjel or Bunjil) on a very different level
from the theology. There are two currents, the religious and the mythical,
flowing together through religion. The former current, religious, even
among very low savages, is pure from the magical ghost-propitiating habit.
The latter current, mythological, is full of magic, mummery, and
scandalous legend. Sometimes the latter stream quite pollutes the
former, sometimes they flow side by side, perfectly distinguishable, as
in Aztec ethical piety, compared with the bloody Aztec ritualism.
Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on the impure stream, the
lusts, mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively,
or altogether, neglecting (as we have shown) what is honest and of good
report.
The worse side of religion is the less sacred, and therefore the more
conspicuous. Both elements are found co-existing, in almost all races, and
nobody, in our total lack of historical information about the beginnings,
can say which, if either, element is the earlier, or which, if either, is
derived from the other. To suppose that propitiation of corpses and then
of ghosts came first is agreeable, and seems logical, to some writers
who are not without a bias against all religion as an unscientific
superstition. But we know so little! The first missionaries in Greenland
supposed that there was not, there, a trace of belief in a Divine Being.
'But when they came to understand their language better, they found quite
the reverse to be true ... and not only so, but they could plainly gather
from a free dialogue they had with some perfectly wild Greenlanders (at
that time avoiding any direct application to their hearts) that their
ancestors must have believed in a Supreme Being, and did render him some
service, which their posterity neglected little by little...'[21] Mr.
Tylor does not refer to this as a trace of Christian Scandinavian
influence on the Eskimo.[22]
That line, of course, may be taken. But an Eskimo said to a missionary,
'Thou must not imagine that no Greenlander thinks about these things'
(theology). He then stated the argument from design. 'Certainly there
must be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too...
Ah, did I but know him, how I would love and honour him.' As St. Paul
writes: 'That which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath
showed it unto them ... being understood by the things which are made ...
but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was
darkened.'[23] In fact, mythology submerged religion. St. Paul's theory of
the origin of religion is not that of an 'innate idea,' nor of a direct
revelation. People, he says, reached the belief in a God from the Argument
for Design. Science conceives herself to have annihilated teleological
ideas. But they are among the probable origins of religion, and would lead
to the belief in a Creator, whom the Greenlander thought beneficent, and
after whom he yearned. This is a very different initial step in religious
development, if initial it was, from the feeding of a corpse, or a ghost.
From all this evidence it does not appear how non-polytheistic,
non-monarchical, non-Manes-worshipping savages evolved the idea of a
relatively supreme, moral, and benevolent Creator, unborn, undying,
watching men's lives. 'He can go everywhere, and do everything.'[24]
[Footnote 1: Fitzroy, ii. 180. Darwin. _Descent of Man_, p. 67.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. We seem to have little information about Fuegian
religion either before or after the cruise of the _Beagle_.]
[Footnote 3: _Principles of Sociology_, i. 422.]
[Footnote 4: Fitzroy, ii. 190, 191]
[Footnote 5: _Travels in West Africa_, p. 442.]
[Footnote 6: _Early Voyages to Australia_, 102-111 (Hakluyt Society).]
[Footnote 7: _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 846.]
[Footnote 8: _Journal of the Anthrop. Institute_, 1884. See, for less
dignified accounts, op. cit. xxiv. xxv.]
[Footnote 9: _Journal_, xiii. 193.]
[Footnote 10: _Journal_, xiii. 296.]
[Footnote 11: Op. cit. p. 450.]
[Footnote 12: P. 453.]
[Footnote 13: P. 457.]
[Footnote 14: See Brough Smyth, _Aborigines_, i. 426; Taplin, _Native
Races of Australia_. According to Taplin, Nurrumdere was a deified black
fellow, who died on earth. This is not the case of Baiame, but is said,
rather vaguely, to be true of Daramulun. _J.A.I._, xiii. 194, xxv. 297.]
[Footnote 15: From a brief account of the Fire Ceremony, or _Engwurra_ of
certain tribes in Central Australia, it seems that religious ceremonies
connected with Totems are the most notable performances. Also 'certain
mythical ancestors,' of the '_alcheringa_, or dream-times,' were
celebrated; these real or ideal human beings appear to 'sink their
identity in that of the object with which they are associated, and from
which they are supposed to have originated.' There appear also to be
places haunted by 'spirit individuals,' in some way mixed up with Totems,
but nothing is said of sacrifice to these Manes. The brief account is by
Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. F.J. Gillen, _Proc. Royal Soc.
Victoria_, July 1897. This Fire Ceremony is not for lads--not a kind of
confirmation in the savage church--but is intended for adults.]
[Footnote 16: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1886, p. 310.]
[Footnote 17: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. 1885, p. 313.]
[Footnote 18: _J. Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. p. 459.]
[Footnote 19: _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, p. 674.]
[Footnote 20: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 450.]
[Footnote 21: Cranz, pp. 198, 199.]
[Footnote 22: _Journal Anthrop. Inst_. xiii. 348-356.]
[Footnote 23: Rom. i. 19. Cranz, i. 199.]
[Footnote 24: In Mr. Carr's work, _The Australian Race_, reports of
'godless' natives are given, for instance, in the Mary River country and
in Gippsland. These reports are usually the result of the ignorance or
contempt of white observers, cf. Tylor, i. 419. The reader is referred to
the Introduction for additional information about Australian beliefs, and
for replies to objections.]
XI
SUPREME GODS NOT NECESSARILY DEVELOPED OUT OF 'SPIRITS'
Before going on to examine the high gods of other low savages, I must here
again insist on and develop the theory, not easily conceived by us, that
the Supreme Being of savages belongs to another branch of faith than
ghosts, or ghost-gods, or fetishes, or Totems, and need not be--probably
is not--essentially derived from these. We must try to get rid of our
theory that a powerful, moral, eternal Being was, from the first, _ex
officio_, conceived as 'spirit;' and so was necessarily derived from a
ghost.
First, what was the process of development?
We have examined Mr. Tylor's theory. But, to take a practical case: Here
are the Australians, roaming in small bands, without more formal rulers
than 'headmen' at most; not ancestor worshippers; not polytheists; with
no departmental deities to select and aggrandise; not apt to speculate on
the _Anima Mundi_. How, then, did they bridge the gulf between the ghost
of a soon-forgotten fighting man, and that conception of a Father above,
'all-seeing,' moral, which, under various names, is found all over a huge
continent? I cannot see that this problem has been solved or frankly
faced.
The distinction between the Australian deity, at his highest power,
unpropitiated by sacrifice, and the ordinary, waning, easily forgotten,
cheaply propitiated ghost of a tribesman, is essential. It is not easy to
show how, in 'the dark backward' of Australian life, the notion of
Mungan-ngaur grew from the idea of the ghost of a warrior. But there is no
logical necessity for the belief in the evolution of this god out
of that ghost. These two factors in religion--ghost and god--seem to
have perfectly different sources, and it appears extraordinary that
anthropologists have not (as far as I am aware) observed this circumstance
before.
Mr. Spencer, indeed, speaks frequently of living human beings adored as
gods. I do not know that these are found on the lowest levels of savagery,
and Mr. Jevons has pointed out that, before you can hail a man as a god,
you must have the idea of God. The murder of Captain Cook notoriously
resulted from a scientific experiment in theology. 'If he is a god, he
cannot be killed.' So they tried with a dagger, and found that the honest
captain was but a mortal British mariner--no god at all. 'There are
degrees.' Mr. Spencer's men-gods become real gods--after death.[1]
Now the Supreme Being of savage faith, as a rule, never died at all. He
belonged to a world that knew not Death.
One cause of our blindness to the point appears to be this: We have from
childhood been taught that 'God is a Spirit.' We, now, can only conceive
of an eternal being as a 'spirit.' We know that legions of savage gods are
now regarded as spirits. And therefore we have never remarked that there
is no reason why we should take it for granted that the earliest deities
of the earliest men were supposed by them to be 'spirits' at all. These
gods might most judiciously be spoken of, not as 'spirits,' but as
'undefined eternal beings.' To us, such a being is necessarily a spirit,
but he was by no means necessarily so to an early thinker, who may not
yet have reached the conception of a ghost.
A ghost is said, by anthropologists, to have developed into a god. Now,
the very idea of a ghost (apart from a wraith or fetch) implies the
previous _death_ of his proprietor. A ghost is the phantasm of a _dead_
man. But anthropologists continually tell us, with truth, that the idea
of death as a universal ordinance is unknown to the savage. Diseases and
death are things that once did not exist, and that, normally, ought not to
occur, the savage thinks. They are, in his opinion, supernormally caused
by magicians and spirits. Death came into the world by a blunder, an
accident, an error in ritual, a decision of a god who was before Death
was. Scores of myths are told everywhere on this subject.[2]
The savage Supreme Being, with added power, omniscience, and morality, is
the idealisation of the savage, as conceived of by himself, _minus_
fleshly body (as a rule), and _minus_ Death. He is not necessarily a
'spirit,' though that term may now be applied to him. He was not
originally differentiated as 'spirit' or 'not spirit.' He is a Being,
conceived of without the question of 'spirit,' or 'no spirit' being
raised; perhaps he was originally conceived of before that question could
be raised by men. When we call the Supreme Being of savages a 'spirit' we
introduce our own animistic ideas into a conception where it may not have
originally existed. If the God is 'the savage himself raised to the n^th
power' so much the less of a spirit is he. Mr. Matthew Arnold might as
well have said: 'The British Philistine has no knowledge of God. He
believes that the Creator is a magnified non-natural man, living in the
sky.' The Gippsland or Fuegian or Blackfoot Supreme Being is just a
_Being_, anthropomorphic, not a _mrart_, or 'spirit.' The Supreme Being is
a _wesen_, Being, _Vui_; we have hardly a term for an immortal existence
so undefined. If the being is an idealised first ancestor (as among the
Kurnai), he is not, on that account, either man or ghost of man. In the
original conception he is a powerful intelligence who was from the first:
who was already active long before, by a breach of his laws, an error in
the delivery of a message, a breach of ritual, or what not, death entered
the world. He was not affected by the entry of death, he still exists.
Modern minds need to become familiar with this indeterminate idea of the
savage Supreme Being, which, logically, may be prior to the evolution of
the notion of ghost or spirit.
But how does it apply when, as by the Kurnai, the Supreme Being is
reckoned an ancestor?
It can very readily be shown that, when the Supreme Being of a savage
people is thus the idealised First Ancestor, he can never have been
envisaged by his worshippers as at any time a _ghost_; or, at least,
cannot logically have been so envisaged where the nearly universal
belief occurs that death came into the world by accident, or needlessly.
Adam is the mythical first ancestor of the Hebrews, but he died, [Greek:
uper moron], and was not worshipped. Yama, the first of Aryan men who
died, was worshipped by Vedic Aryans, but _confessedly_ as a ghost-god.
Mr. Tylor gives a list of first ancestors deified. The Ancestor of the
Maudans did not die, consequently is no ghost; _emigravit_, he 'moved
west.' Where the First Ancestor is also the Creator (Dog-rib Indians), he
can hardly be, and is not, regarded as a mortal. Tamoi, of the Guaranis,
was 'the ancient of heaven,' clearly no mortal man. The Maori Maui was the
first who died, but he is not one of the original Maori gods. Haetsh,
among the Kamchadals, precisely answers to Yama. Unkulunkulu will be
described later.[3]
This is the list: Where the First Ancestor is equivalent to the Creator,
and is supreme, he is--from the first--deathless and immortal. When he
dies he is a confessed ghost-god.
Now, ghost-worship and dead ancestor-worship are impossible before the
ancestor is dead and is a ghost. But the essential idea of Mungan-ngaur,
and Baiame, and most of the high gods of Australia, and of other low
races, is that _they never died at all_. They belong to the period before
death came into the world, like Qat among the Melanesians. They arise in
an age that knew not death, and had not reflected on phantasms nor evolved
ghosts. They could have been conceived of, in the nature of the case, by a
race of immortals who never dreamed of such a thing as a ghost. For these
gods, the ghost-theory is not required, and is superfluous, even
contradictory. The early thinkers who developed these beings did not need
to know that men die (though, of course, they did know it in practice),
still less did they need to have conceived by abstract speculation the
hypothesis of ghosts. Baiame, Cagn, Bunjil, in their adorers' belief, were
_there_; death later intruded among men, but did not affect these divine
beings in any way.
The ghost-theory, therefore, by the evidence of anthropology itself, is
not needed for the evolution of the high gods of savages. It is only
needed for the evolution of ghost-propitiation and genuine dead-ancestor
worship. Therefore, the high gods described were not necessarily once
ghosts--were not idealised _mortal_ ancestors. They were, naturally, from
the beginning, from before the coming in of death, immortal Fathers, now
dwelling on high. Between them and apotheosised mortal ancestors there is
a great gulf fixed--the river of death.
The explicitly stated distinction that the high creative gods never were
mortal men, while other gods are spirits of mortal men, is made in every
quarter. 'Ancestors _known_ to be human were _not_ worshipped as
[original] gods, and ancestors worshipped as [original] gods were not
believed to have been human.'[4]
Both kinds may have a generic name, such as _kalou_, or _wakan_, but the
specific distinction is universally made by low savages. On one hand,
original gods; on the other, non-original gods that were once ghosts. Now,
this distinction is often calmly ignored; whereas, when any race has
developed (like late Scandinavians) the Euhemeristic hypothesis ('all gods
were once men'), that hypothesis is accepted as an historical statement of
fact by some writers.
It is part of my theory that the more popular ghost-worship of souls of
people whom men have loved, invaded the possibly older religion of the
Supreme Father. Mighty beings, whether originally conceived of as
'spirits' or not, came, later, under the Animistic theory, to be reckoned
as spirits. They even (but not among the lowest savages) came to be
propitiated by food and sacrifice. The alternative, for a Supreme Being,
when once Animism prevailed, was sacrifice (as to more popular ghost
deities) or neglect. We shall find examples of both alternatives. But
sacrifice does not prove that a God was, in original conception, a ghost,
or even a spirit. 'The common doctrine of the Old Testament is not that
God is spirit, but that the spirit [_rúah_ = 'wind,' 'living breath'] of
Jehovah, going forth from him, works in the world and among men.'[5]
To resume. The high Gods of savagery--moral, all-seeing directors of
things and of men--are not explicitly envisaged as spirits at all by their
adorers. The notion of soul or spirit is here out of place. We can best
describe Pirnmeheal, and Nápi and Baiame as 'magnified non-natural men,'
or undefined beings who were from the beginning and are undying. They are,
like the easy Epicurean Gods, _nihil indiga nostri_. Not being ghosts,
they crave no food from men, and receive no sacrifice, as do ghosts, or
gods developed out of ghosts, or gods to whom the ghost-ritual has been
transferred. For this very reason, apparently, they seem to be spoken of
by Mr. Grant Allen as 'gods to talk about, not gods to adore; mythological
conceptions rather than religious beings.'[6] All this is rather hard on
the lowest savages. If they sacrifice to a god, then the god is a hungry
ghost; if they don't, then the god is 'a god to talk about, not to adore,'
Luckily, the facts of the Bora ritual and the instruction given there
prove that Mungan-nganr and other names _are_ gods to adore, by ethical
conformity to their will and by solemn ceremony, not merely gods to talk
about.