appear to be derived from their theory of ghosts. As far as we can say, in
the inevitable absence of historical evidence, the highest gods of savages
may have been believed in, as Makers and Fathers and Lords of an
indeterminate nature, before the savage had developed the idea of souls
out of dreams and phantasms. It is logically conceivable that savages may
have worshipped deities like Baiame and Darumulun before they had evolved
the notion that Tom, Dick, or Harry has a separable soul, capable of
surviving his bodily decease. Deities of the higher sort, by the very
nature of savage reflections on death and on its non-original casual
character, are prior, or may be prior, or cannot be shown not to be prior,
to the ghost theory--the alleged origin of religion. For their evolution
the ghost theory is not logically demanded; they can do without it. Yet
_they_, and not the spirits, bogles, Mrarts, _Brewin_, and so forth, are
the high gods, the gods who have most analogy--as makers, moral guides,
rewarders, and punishers of conduct (though that duty is also occasionally
assumed by ancestral spirits)--with our civilised conception of the
divine. Our conception of God descends not from ghosts, but from the
Supreme Beings of non-ancestor-worshipping peoples.
As it seems impossible to point out any method by which low, chiefless,
non-polytheistic, non-metaphysical savages (if any such there be) evolved
out of ghosts the eternal beings who made the world, and watch over
morality: as the people themselves unanimously distinguish such beings
from ghost-gods, I take it that such beings never were ghosts. In this
case the Animistic theory seems to me to break down completely. Yet these
high gods of low savages preserve from dimmest ages of the meanest culture
the sketch of a God which our highest religious thought can but fill up to
its ideal. Come from what germ he may, Jehovah or Allah does not come from
a ghost.
It may be retorted that this makes no real difference. If savages did not
invent gods in consequence of a fallacious belief in spirit and soul,
still, in some other equally illogical way they came to indulge the
hypothesis that they had a Judge and Father in heaven. But, if the ghost
theory of the high Gods is wrong, as it is conspicuously superfluous, that
_does_ make some difference. It proves that a widely preached scientific
conclusion may be as spectral as Bathybius. On other more important
points, therefore, we may differ from the newest scientific opinion
without too much diffident apprehensiveness.
[Footnote 1: _Principles of Sociology_, i. 417, 421. 'The medicine men
are treated as gods.... The medicine man becomes a god after death.']
[Footnote 2: I have published a chapter on Myths on the Origin of Death in
_Modern Mythology_.]
[Footnote 3: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 311-316.]
[Footnote 4: Jevons, _Introduction_, p. 197.]
[Footnote 5: Robertson Smith. _The Prophets of Israel_, p. 61.]
[Footnote 6: _Evolution of the Idea of God_, p. 170.]
XII
SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS
It is among 'the lowest savages' that the Supreme Beings are most regarded
as eternal, moral (as the morality of the tribe goes, or above its
habitual practice), and _powerful_. I have elsewhere described the Bushman
god Cagn, as he was portrayed to Mr. Orpen by Qing, who 'had never
before seen a white man except fighting.' Mr. Orpen got the facts from
Qing by inducing him to explain the natives' pictures on the walls of
caves. 'Cagn made all things, and we pray to him,' thus: 'O Cagn, O Cagn,
are we not thy children? Do you not see us hunger? Give us food.' As to
ethics, 'At first Cagn was very good, but he got spoilt through fighting
so many things.' 'How came he into the world?' 'Perhaps with those who
brought the Sun: only the initiated know these things.' It appears that
Qing was not yet initiated in the dance (answering to a high rite of the
Australian _Bora_) in which the most esoteric myths were unfolded.[1]
In Mr. Spencer's 'Descriptive Sociology' the religion of the Bushmen is
thus disposed of. 'Pray to an insect of the caterpillar kind for success
in the chase.' That is rather meagre. They make arrow-poison out of
caterpillars,[2] though Dr. Bleek, perhaps correctly, identifies Cagn
with i-kaggen, the insect.
The case of the Andaman Islanders may be especially recommended to
believers in the anthropological science of religion. For long these
natives were the joy of emancipated inquirers as the 'godless Andamanese.'
They only supply Mr. Spencer's 'Ecclesiastical Institutions' with
a few instances of the ghost-belief.[3] Yet when the Andamanese are
scientifically studied _in situ_ by an educated Englishman, Mr. Man, who
knows their language, has lived with them for eleven years, and presided
over our benevolent efforts 'to reclaim them from their savage state,'
the Andamanese turn out to be quite embarrassingly rich in the higher
elements of faith. They have not only a profoundly philosophical
_religion_, but an excessively absurd _mythology_, like the Australian
blacks, the Greeks, and other peoples. If, on the whole, the student of
the Andamanese despairs of the possibility of an ethnological theory of
religion, he is hardly to be blamed.
The people are probably Negritos, and probably 'the original inhabitants,
whose occupation dates from prehistoric times.'[4] They use the bow, they
make pots, and are considerably above the Australian level. They have
second-sighted men, who obtain status 'by relating an extraordinary dream,
the details of which are declared to have been borne out subsequently by
some unforeseen event, as, for instance, a sudden death or accident.' They
have to produce fresh evidential dreams from time to time. They see
phantasms of the dead, and coincidental hallucinations.[5] All this is as
we should expect it to be.
Their religion is probably not due to missionaries, as they always shot
all foreigners, and have no traditions of the presence of aliens on the
islands before our recent arrival.[6] Their God, Puluga, is 'like fire,'
but invisible. He was never born, and is immortal. By him were all things
created, except the powers of evil. He knows even the thoughts of the
heart. He is angered by _yubda_ = sin, or wrong-doing, that is falsehood,
theft, grave assault, murder, adultery, bad carving of meat, and (as a
crime of witchcraft) by burning wax.[7] 'To those in pain or distress he
is pitiful, and sometimes deigns to afford relief.' He is Judge of Souls,
and the dread of future punishment 'to _some_ extent is said to affect
their course of action in the present life.'[8]
This Being could not be evolved out of the ordinary ghost of a
second-sighted man, for I do not find that ancestral ghosts are
worshipped, nor is there a trace of early missionary influence, while
Mr. Man consulted elderly and, in native religion, well-instructed
Andamanese for his facts.
Yet Puluga lives in a large stone house (clearly derived from ours at Port
Blair), eats and drinks, foraging for himself, and is married to a green
shrimp.[9] There is the usual story of a Deluge caused by the moral wrath
of Puluga. The whole theology was scrupulously collected from natives
unacquainted with other races.
The account of Andamanese religion does not tally with the anthropological
hypothesis. Foreign influence seems to be more than usually excluded by
insular conditions and the jealousy of the 'original inhabitants.' The
evidence ought to make us reflect on the extreme obscurity of the whole
problem.
Anthropological study of religion has hitherto almost entirely overlooked
the mysteries of various races, except in so far as they confirm the entry
of the young people into the ranks of the adult. Their esoteric moral and
religious teaching is nearly unknown to us, save in a few instances. It is
certain that the mysteries of Greece were survivals of savage ceremonies,
because we know that they included specific savage rites, such as the use
of the _rhombos_ to make a whirring noise, and the custom of ritual
daubing with dirt; and the sacred _ballets d'action_, in which, as Lucian
and Qing say, mystic facts are 'danced out.'[10] But, while Greece
retained these relics of savagery, there was something taught at Eleusis
which filled minds like Plato's and Pindar's with a happy religious awe.
Now, similar 'softening of the heart' was the result of the teaching in
the Australian _Bora_: the Yao mysteries inculcate the victory over self;
and, till we are admitted to the secrets of all other savage mysteries
throughout the world, we cannot tell whether, among mummeries,
frivolities, and even license, high ethical doctrines are not presented
under the sanction of religion. The New Life, and perhaps the future life,
are undeniably indicated in the Australian mysteries by the simulated
Resurrection.
I would therefore no longer say, as in 1887, that the Hellenic genius must
have added to 'an old medicine dance' all that the Eleusinian mysteries
possessed of beauty, counsel, and consolation[11]. These elements, as well
as the barbaric factors in the rites, may have been developed out of such
savage doctrine as softens the hearts of Australians and Yaos. That this
kind of doctrine receives religious sanction is certain, where we know the
secret of savage mysteries. It is therefore quite incorrect, and strangely
presumptuous, to deny, with almost all anthropologists, the alliance of
ethics with religion among the most backward races. We must always
remember their secrecy about their inner religion, their frankness about
their mythological tales. These we know: the inner religion we ought to
begin to recognise that we do not know.
The case of the Andamanese has taught us how vague, even now, is our
knowledge, and how obscure is our problem. The example of the Melanesians
enforces these lessons. It is hard to bring the Melanesians within any
theory. Dr. Codrington has made them the subject of a careful study, and
reports that while the European inquirer can communicate pretty freely on
common subjects 'the vocabulary of ordinary life in almost useless when
the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.'[12] The Banks
Islanders are most free from an Asiatic element of population on one side,
and a Polynesian element on the other.
The Banks Islanders 'believe in two orders of intelligent beings different
from living men.' (1) Ghosts of the dead, (2) 'Beings who were not, and
never had been, human.' This, as we have shown, and will continue to show,
is the usual savage doctrine. On the one hand are separable souls of men,
surviving the death of the body. On the other are beings, creators,
who were before men were, and before death entered the world. It is
impossible, logically, to argue that these beings are only ghosts of real
remote ancestors, or of ideal ancestors. These higher beings are not
safely to be defined as 'spirits,' their essence is vague, and, we repeat,
the idea of their existence might have been evolved _before the ghost
theory was attained by men_. Dr. Codrington says, 'the conception can
hardly be that of a purely spiritual being, yet, by whatever name the
natives call them, they are such as in English must be called spirits.'
That is our point. 'God is a spirit,' these beings are Gods, therefore
'these are spirits.' But to their initial conception our idea of 'spirit'
is lacking. They are beings who existed before death, and still exist.
The beings which never were human, never died, are _Vui_, the ghosts are
_Tamate_. Dr. Codrington uses 'ghosts' for _Tamate_, 'spirits' for _Vui_.
But as to render _Vui_ 'spirits' is to yield the essential point, we shall
call _Vui_ 'beings,' or, simply, _Vui_. A Vui is not a spirit that has
been a ghost; the story may represent him as if a man, 'but the native
will always maintain that he was something different, and deny to him the
fleshly body of a man.'[13]
This distinction, ghost on one side--original being, not a man, not a
ghost of a man, on the other--is radical and nearly universal in savage
religion. Anthropology, neglecting the essential distinction insisted on,
in this case, by Dr. Codrington, confuses both kinds under the style of
'spirits,' and derives both from ghosts of the dead. Dr. Codrington, it
should be said, does not generalise, but confines himself to the savages
of whom he has made a special study. But, from the other examples of the
same distinction which we have offered, and the rest which we shall offer,
we think ourselves justified in regarding the distinction between a
primeval, eternal, being or beings, on one hand, and ghosts or spirits
exalted from ghost's estate, on the other, as common, if not universal.
There are corporeal and incorporeal Vuis, but the body of the corporeal
Vui is '_not_ a human body.'[14] The chief is Qat, 'still at hand to help
and invoked in prayers.' 'Qat, Marawa, look down upon me, smooth the sea
for us two, that I may go safely over the sea!' Qat 'created men and
animals,' though, in a certain district, he is claimed as an _ancestor_
(p. 268). Two strata of belief have here been confused.
The myth of Qat is a jungle of facetiae and frolic, with one or two
serious incidents, such as the beginning of Death and the coming of Night.
His mother was, or became, a stone; stones playing a considerable part in
the superstitions.
The incorporeal Vuis, 'with nothing like a human life, have a much higher
place than Qat and his brothers in the religious system.' They have
neither names, nor shapes, nor legends, they receive sacrifice, and are in
some uncertain way connected with stones; these stones usually bear a
fanciful resemblance to fruits or animals (p. 275). The only sacrifice, in
Banks Islands, is that of shell-money. The mischievous spirits are Tamate,
ghosts of men. There is a belief in _mana_ (magical _rapport_). Dr.
Codrington cannot determine the connection of this belief with that in
spirits. Mana is the uncanny, is X, the unknown. A revived impression of
sense is _nunuai_, as when a tired fisher, half asleep at night, feels the
'draw' of a salmon, and automatically strikes.[15] The common ghost is a
bag of _nunuai_, as living man, in the opinion of some philosophers, is a
bag of 'sensations.' Ghosts are only seen as spiritual lights, which so
commonly attend hallucinations among the civilised. Except in the prayers
to Qat and Marawa, prayer only invokes the dead (p. 285). 'In the western
islands the offerings are made to ghosts, and consumed by fire; in the
eastern (Banks) isles they are made to spirits (beings, _Vui_), and
there is no sacrificial fire.' Now, the worship of ghosts goes, in these
isles, with the higher culture, 'a more considerable advance in the arts
of life;' the worship of non-ghosts, _Vui_, goes with the lower material
culture.[16] This is rather the reverse of what we should expect, in
accordance with the anthropological theory. According, however, to our
theory, Animism and ghost-worship may be of later development, and belong
to a higher level of culture, than worship of a being, or beings, that
never were ghosts. In Leper's Isle, 'ghosts do not appear to have prayers
or sacrifices offered to them,' but cause disease, and work magic.[17]
The belief in the soul, in Melanesia, does _not_ appear to proceed 'from
their dreams or visions in which deceased or absent persons are presented
to them, for they do not appear to believe that the soul goes out from the
dreamer, or presents itself as an object in his dreams,' nor does belief
in other spirits seem to be founded on 'the appearance of life or motion
in inanimate things.'[18]
To myself it rather looks as if all impressions had their _nunuai_, real,
bodiless, persistent, after-images; that the soul is the complex of all of
these _nunuai_; that there is in the universe a kind of magical other,
called _mana_, possessed, in different proportions, by different men,
_Vui_, _tamate_, and material objects, and that the _atai_ or _ataro_ of a
man dead, his ghost, retains its old, and acquires new _mana_.[19] It is an
odd kind of metaphysic to find among very backward and isolated savages.
But the lesson of Melanesia teaches us how very little we really know of
the religion of low races, how complex it is, how hardly it can be forced
into our theories, if we take it as given in our knowledge, allow for our
ignorance, and are not content to select facts which suit our hypothesis,
while ignoring the rest. On a higher level of material culture than the
Melanesians are the Fijians.
Fijian religion, as far as we understand, resembles the others in drawing
an impassable line between ghosts and eternal gods. The word _Kalou_ is
applied to all supernal beings, and mystic or magical things alike. It
seems to answer to _mana_ in New Zealand and Melanesia, to _wakan_ in
North America, and to _fée_ in old French, as when Perrault says, about
Bluebeard's key, 'now the key was _fée_.' All Gods are _Kalou_, but all
things that are _Kalou_ are not Gods. Gods are _Kalou vu_; deified ghosts
are _Kalou yalo_. The former are eternal, without beginning of days or end
of years; the latter are subject to infirmity and even to death.[20]
The Supreme Being, if we can apply the term to him, is Ndengei, or Degei,
'who seems to be an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal
existence.' This idea is not easily developed out of the conception of a
human soul which has died into a ghost and may die again. His myth
represents him as a serpent, emblem of eternity, or a body of stone with a
serpent's head. His one manifestation is given by eating. So neglected is
he that a song exists about his lack of worshippers and gifts. 'We made
men,' says Ndengei, 'placed them on earth, and yet they share to us only
the under shell.'[21] Here is an extreme case of the self-existent
creative Eternal, mythically lodged in a serpent's body, and reduced to a
jest.
It is not easy to see any explanation, if we reject the hypothesis that
this is an old, fallen form of faith, 'with scarcely a temple.' The other
unborn immortals are mythical warriors and adulterers, like the popular
deities of Greece. Yet Ndengei receives prayers through two sons of his,
mediating deities. The priests are possessed, or inspired, by spirits and
gods. One is not quite clear as to whether Ndengei is an inspiring god or
not; but that prayers are made to him is inconsistent with the belief in
his eternal inaction. A priest is represented as speaking for Ndengei,
probably by inspiration. 'My own mind departs from me, and then, when it
is truly gone, my god speaks by me,' is the account of this 'alternating
personality' given by a priest.[22]
After informing us that Ndengei is starved, Mr. Williams next tells about
offerings to him, in earlier days, of hundreds of hogs.[23] He sends rain
on earth. Animals, men, stones, may all be _Kalou_. There is a Hades as
fantastic as that in the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead,' and second sight
flourishes.
The mysteries include the sham raising of the dead, and appear to be
directed at propitiatory ghosts rather than at Ndengei. There are scenes
of license; 'particulars of almost incredible indecency have been
privately forwarded to Dr. Tylor.'[24]
Suppose a religious reformer were to arise in one of the many savage
tribes who, as we shall show, possess, but neglect, an Eternal Creator.
He would do what, in the secular sphere, was done by the Mikado of Japan.
The Mikado was a political Dendid or Ndengei--an awful, withdrawn,
impotent potentate. Power was wielded by the Tycoon. A Mikado of genius
asserted himself; hence arose modern Japan. In the same way, a religious
reformer like Khuen Ahten in Egypt would preach down minor gods, ghosts
and sacred beasts, and proclaim the primal Maker, Ndengei, Dendid, Mtanga.
'The king shall hae his ain again.' Had it not been for the Prophets,
Israel, by the time that Greece and Rome knew Israel, would have been
worshipping a horde of little gods, and even beasts and ghosts, while the
Eternal would have become a mere name--perhaps, like Ndengei and Atahocan
and Unkulunkulu, a jest. The Old Testament is the story of the prolonged
effort to keep Jehovah in His supreme place. To make and to succeed in
that effort was the _differentia_, of Israel. Other peoples, even the
lowest, had, as we prove, the germinal conception of a God--assuredly not
demonstrated to be derived from the ghost theory, logically in no need of
the ghost theory, everywhere explicitly contrasted with the ghost theory.
'But their foolish heart was darkened.'
It is impossible to prove, historically, which of the two main elements in
belief--the idea of an Eternal Being or Beings, or the idea of surviving
ghosts--came first into the minds of men. The idea of primeval Eternal
Beings, as understood by savages, does not depend on, or require, the
ghost theory. But, as we almost always find ghosts and a Supreme Being
together, where we find either, among the lowest savages, we have no
historical ground for asserting that either is prior to the other. Where
we have no evidence to the belief in the Maker, we must not conclude that
no such belief exists. Our knowledge is confused and scanty; often it is
derived from men who do not know the native language, or the native sacred
language, or have not been trusted with what the savage treasures as his
secret. Moreover, if anywhere ghosts are found without gods, it is an
inference from the argument that an idea familiar to very low savage
tribes, like the Australians, and falling more and more into the
background elsewhere, though still extant and traceable, might, in certain
cases, be lost and forgotten altogether.
To take an example of half-forgotten deity. Mr. Im Thurn, a good observer,
has written on 'The Animism of the Indians of British Guiana.' Mr. Im
Thurn justly says: 'The man who above all others has made this study
possible is Mr. Tylor.' But it is not unfair to remark that Mr. Im Thurn
naturally sees most distinctly that which Mr. Tylor has taught him to
see--namely, Animism. He has also been persuaded, by Mr. Dorman, that the
Great Spirit of North American tribes is 'almost certainly nothing more
than a figure of European origin, reflected and transmitted almost beyond
recognition on the mirror of the Indian mind,' That is not my opinion: I
conceive that the Red Indians had their native Eternal, like the
Australians, Fijians, Andamanese, Dinkas, Yao, and so forth, as will be
shown later.
Mr. Im Thurn, however, dilates on the dream origin of the ghost theory,
giving examples from his own knowledge of the difficulty with which Guiana
Indians discern the hallucinations of dreams from the facts of waking
life. Their waking hallucinations are also so vivid as to be taken for
realities.[25] Mr. Im Thurn adopts the hypothesis that, from ghosts, '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.' On this hypothesis,
the spirit latest evolved, and most worshipful, ought, of course, to be
the 'Highest Spirit.' But the reverse, as usual, is the case. The Guiana
Indians believe in the continued, but not in the everlasting, existence of
a man's ghost.[26] They believe in no spirits which were not once tenants
of material bodies.[27]
The belief in a Supreme Spirit is only attained 'in the highest form of
religion'--Andamanese, for instance--as Mr. Im Thurn uses 'spirit' where
we should say 'being.' 'The Indians of Guiana know no god.'[28]
'But it is true that various words have been found in all, or nearly all,
the languages of Guiana which have been supposed to be names of a Supreme
Being, God, a Great Spirit, in the sense which those phrases bear in the
language of the higher religions.'
Being interpreted, these Guiana names mean--
_The Ancient One,
The Ancient One in Sky-land,
Our Maker,
Our Father,
Our Great Father._
'None of those in any way involves the attributes of a god.'
The Ancient of Days, Our Father in Sky-land, Our Maker, do rather convoy
the sense of God to a European mind. Mr. Im Thurn, however, decides that
the beings thus designated were supposed ancestors who came into Guiana
from some other country, 'sometimes said to have been that entirely
natural country (?) which is separated from Guiana by the ocean of the
air.'[29]
Mr. Im Thurn casually observed (having said nothing about morals in
alliance with Animism):
'The fear of unwittingly offending the countless visible and invisible
beings ... kept the Indians very strictly within their own rights and from
offending against the rights of others.'
This remark dropped out at a discussion of Mr. Im Thurn's paper, and
clearly demonstrated that even a very low creed 'makes for
righteousness.'[30]
Probably few who have followed the facts given here will agree with Mr. Im
Thurn's theory that 'Our Maker,' 'Our Father,' 'The Ancient One of the
Heaven,' is merely an idealised human ancestor. He falls naturally into
his place with the other high gods of low savages. But we need much more
information on the subject than Mr. Im Thurn was able to give.