Tylor. And Mr. Tylor says: 'Savage Animism is almost devoid of that
ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the very mainspring
of practical religion.'[31] 'Yet it keeps the Indians very strictly
within their own rights and from offending the rights of others.' Our own
religion is rarely so successful.[32]
In the Indians of Guiana we have an alleged case of a people still deep in
the animistic or ghost-worshipping case, who, by the hypothesis, have not
yet evolved the idea of a god at all.
When the familiar names for God, such as Maker, Father, Ancient of Days,
occur in the Indian language, Mr. Im Thurn explains the neglected Being
who bears these titles as a remote deified ancestor. Of course, when a
Being with similar titles occurs where ancestors are not worshipped, as in
Australia and the Andaman Islands, the explanation suggested by Mr. Im
Thurn for the problem of religion in Guiana, will not fit the facts.
It is plain that, _a priori_, another explanation is conceivable. If a
people like the Andamanese, or the Australian tribes whom we have studied,
had such a conception as that of Puluga, or Baiame, or Mungan-ngaur and
then, _later_, developed ancestor-worship with its propitiatory sacrifices
and ceremonies, ancestor-worship, as the newest evolved and infinitely the
most practical form of cult, would gradually thrust the belief in a
Puluga, or Mungan-ngaur, or Cagn into the shade. The ancestral spirit, to
speak quite plainly, can be 'squared' by the people in whom he takes a
special interest for family reasons. The equal Father of all men cannot
be 'squared,' and declines (till corrupted by the bad example of ancestral
ghosts) to make himself useful to one man rather than to another. For
these very intelligible, simple, and practical reasons, if the belief in
a Mungan-ngaur came first in evolution, and the belief in a practicable
bribable family ghost came second, the ghost-cult would inevitably crowd
out the God-cult.[33] The name of the Father and Maker would become a
mere survival, _nominis umbra_, worship and sacrifice going to the
ancestral ghost. That explanation would fit the state of religion which
Mr. Im Thurn has found, rightly or wrongly, in British Guiana.
But, if the idea of a universal Father and Maker came last in evolution,
as a refinement, then, of course, it ought to be the newest, and therefore
the most fashionable and potent of Guianese cults. Precisely the reverse
is said to be the case. Nor can the belief indicated in such names
as Father and Maker be satisfactorily explained as a refinement of
ancestor-worship, because, we repeat, it occurs where ancestors are not
worshipped.
These considerations, however unpleasant to the devotees of Animism, or
the ghost theory, are not, in themselves, illogical, nor contradictory of
the theory of evolution, which, on the other hand, fits them perfectly
well. That god thrives best who is most suited to his environment. Whether
an easy-going, hungry ghost-god with a liking for his family, or a moral
Creator not to be bribed, is better suited to an environment of not
especially scrupulous savages, any man can decide. Whether a set of not
particularly scrupulous savages will readily evolve a moral unbribable
Creator, when they have a serviceable family ghost-god eager to oblige, is
a question as easily resolved.
Beyond all doubt, savages who find themselves under the watchful eye of a
moral deity whom they cannot 'square' will desert him as soon as they have
evolved a practicable ghost-god, useful for family purposes, whom they
_can_ square. No less manifestly, savages, who already possess a throng of
serviceable ghost-gods, will not enthusiastically evolve a moral Being who
despises gifts, and only cares for obedience. 'There is a great deal of
human nature in man,' and, if Mr. Im Thurn's description of the Guianese
be correct, everything we know of human nature, and of evolution, assures
us that the Father, or Maker, or Ancient of Days came first; the
ghost-gods, last. What has here been said about the Indians of Guiana
(namely, that they are now more ghost and spirit worshippers, with only a
name surviving to attest a knowledge of a Father and Maker in Heaven)
applies equally well to the Zulus. The Zulus are the great standing type
of an animistic or ghost-worshipping race without a God. But, had they a
God (on the Australian pattern) whom they have forgotten, or have they not
yet evolved a God out of Animism?
The evidence, collected by Dr. Callaway, is honest, but confused. One
native, among others, put forward the very theory here proposed by us as
an alternative to that of Mr. Im Thurn. 'Unkulunkulu' (the idealised but
despised First Ancestor) 'was not worshipped [by men]. For it is not
worship when people see things, as rain, or food, or corn, and say,
"Yes, these things were made by Unkulunkulu.... Afterwards they [men]
had power to change those things, that they might become the Amatongos"
[might belong to the ancestral spirits]. _They took them away from
Unkulunkulu_.'[34]
Animism supplanted Theism. Nothing could be more explicit. But, though we
have found an authentic Zulu text to suit our provisional theory, the most
eminent philosophical example must not reduce us into supposing that this
text settles the question. Dr. Callaway collected great masses of Zulu
answers to his inquiries, and it is plain that a respondent, like the
native theologian whom we have cited, may have adapted his reply to what
he had learned of Christian doctrine. Having now the Christian notion of a
Divine Creator, and knowing, too, that the unworshipped Unkulunkulu is
said to have 'made things,' while only ancestral spirits, are worshipped,
the native may have inferred that worship (by Christians given to the
Creator) was at some time transferred by the Zulus from Unkulunkulu to the
Amatongo. The truth is that both the anthropological theory (spirits
first, Gods last), and our theory (Supreme Being first, spirits next) can
find warrant in Dr. Callaway's valuable collections. For that reason, the
problem must be solved after a survey of the whole field of savage and
barbaric religion; it cannot be settled by the ambiguous case of the
Zulus alone.
Unkulunkulu is represented as 'the First Man, who broke off in the
beginning.' 'They are ancestor-worshippers,' says Dr. Callaway, 'and
believe that their first ancestor, the First Man, was the Creator.'[35]
But they may, like many other peoples, have had a different original
tradition, and have altered it, just because they are now such fervent
ancestor-worshippers. Unkulunkulu was prior to Death, which came among men
in the usual mythical way.[36] Whether Unkulunkulu still exists, is
rather a moot question: Dr. Callaway thinks that he does not.[37] If not,
he is an exception to the rule in Australia, Andaman, among the Bushmen,
the Fuegians, and savages in general, who are less advanced in culture
than the Zulus. The idea, then, of a Maker of things who has ceased to
exist occurs, if at all, not in a relatively primitive, but in a
relatively late religion. On the analogy of pottery, agriculture, the use
of iron, villages, hereditary kings, and so on, the notion of a dead Maker
is late, not early. It occurs where men have iron, cattle, agriculture,
kings, houses, a disciplined army, _not_ where men have none of these
things. The Zulu godless ancestor-worship, then, by parity of reasoning,
is, like their material culture, not an early but a late development. The
Zulus 'hear of a King which is above'--'the heavenly King.'[38] 'We did
not hear of him first from white men.... But he is not like Unkulunkulu,
who, we say, made all things.'
Here may be dimly descried the ideas of a God, and a subordinate demiurge.
'The King is above, Unkulunkulu is beneath.' The King above punishes sin,
striking the sinner by lightning. Nor do the Zulus know how they have
sinned. 'There remained only that word about the heaven,' 'which,' says
Dr. Callaway, 'implies that there might have been other words which are
now lost.' There is great confusion of thought. Unkulunkulu made the
heaven, where the unknown King reigns, a hard task for a
First Man.[39]
'In process of time we have come to worship the Amadhlozi (spirits) only,
because we know not what to say about Unkulunkulu.'[40] 'It is on that
account, then, that we seek out for ourselves the Amadhlozi (spirits),
that we may not always be thinking about Unkulunkulu.'
All this attests a faint lingering shadow of a belief too ethereal, too
remote, for a practical conquering race, which prefers intelligible
serviceable ghosts, with a special regard for their own families.
Ukoto, a very old Zulu, said: 'When we were children it was said "The Lord
is in heaven." ... They used to point to the Lord on high; we did not hear
his name.' Unkulunkulu was understood, by this patriarch, to refer to
immediate ancestors, whose mimes and genealogies he gave.[41] 'We heard it
said that the Creator of the world was the Lord who is above; people used
always, when I was growing up, to point towards heaven.'
A very old woman was most reluctant to speak of Unkulunkulu; at last she
said, 'Ah, it is he in fact who is the Creator, who is in heaven, of whom
the ancients spoke.' Then the old woman began to babble humorously of how
the white men made all things. Again, Unkulunkulu is said to have been
created by Utilexo. Utilexo was invisible, Unkulunkulu was visible, and so
got credit not really his due.[42] When the heaven is said to be the
Chief's (the chief being a living Zulu) 'they do not believe what they
say,' the phrase is a mere hyperbolical compliment.[43]
On this examination of the evidence, it certainly seems as logical to
conjecture that the Zulus had once such an idea of a Supreme Being as
lower races entertain, and then nearly lost it; as to say that Zulus,
though a monarchical race, have not yet developed a King-God out of the
throng of spirits (Amatongo). The Zulus, the Norsemen of the South, so to
speak, are a highly practical military race. A Deity at all abstract was
not to their liking. Serviceable family spirits, who continually provided
an excuse for a dinner of roast beef, were to their liking. The less
developed races do not kill their flocks commonly for food. A sacrifice is
needed as a pretext. To the gods of Andamanese, Bushmen, Australians, no
sacrifice is offered. To the Supreme Being of most African peoples no
sacrifice is offered. There is no festivity in the worship of these
Supreme Beings, no feasting, at all events. They are not to be 'got at' by
gifts or sacrifices. The Amatongo are to be 'got at,' are bribable, supply
an excuse for a good dinner, and thus the practical Amatongo are honoured,
while, in the present generation of Zulus, Unkulunkulu is a joke, and the
Lord in Heaven is the shadow of a name. Clearly this does not point to the
recent but to the remote development of the higher ideas, now superseded
by spirit-worship.
We shall next see how this view, the opposite of the anthropological
theory, works when applied to other races, especially to other African
races.
[Footnote 1: When I wrote _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_ (ii. 11-13) I
regarded Cagn as 'only a successful and idealised medicine man.' But I now
think that I confused in my mind the religious and the mythological
aspects of Cagn. One of unknown origin, existing before the sun, a Maker
of all things, prayed to, but not in receipt of sacrifice, is no medicine
man, except in his myth.]
[Footnote 2: The omissions in Mr. Spencer's system may possibly be
explained by the circumstance that, as he tells us, he collected his
facts 'by proxy.' While we find Waitz much interested in and amazed by the
benevolent Supreme Being of many African tribes, that personage is only
alluded to as 'Alleged Benevolent Supreme Being' in Mr. Spencer's
_Descriptive Sociology_, and is usually left out of sight altogether in
his _Principles of Sociology_ and _Ecclesiastical Institutions_. Yet we
have precisely the same kind of evidence of observers for this 'alleged'
benevolent Supreme Being as we have for the _canaille_ of ghosts and
fetishes. If he is a deity of a rather lofty moral conception, of course
he need not be propitiated by human sacrifices or cold chickens. _That_
kind of material evidence to the faith in him must be absent by the
nature of the case; but the coincident testimony of travellers to belief
in a Supreme Being cannot be dismissed as 'alleged.']
[Footnote 3: Pp. 676, 677.]
[Footnote 4: Man, _J.A.I_. xii. 70.]
[Footnote 5: Man, _J.A.I_. xii. 96-98.]
[Footnote 6: xii. 156, 157.]
[Footnote 7: xii. 112.]
[Footnote 8: xii. 158.]
[Footnote 9: xii. 158.]
[Footnote 10: _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 281-288.]
[Footnote 11: Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, 133.]
[Footnote 12: _J.A.I_. x. 263.]
[Footnote 13: _J.A.I_. 267.]
[Footnote 14: _J.A.I_. x. 267.]
[Footnote 15: P. 281. This is a _nunuai_ with which I am familiar. Flying
fish, in Banks Island, take the _rôle_ of salmon. The natives think it
real, but without form or substance.]
[Footnote 16: Codrington, _Melanesia_, p. 122.]
[Footnote 17: _J.A.I_. x. 294.]
[Footnote 18: Op. cit. x. 313.]
[Footnote 19: _J.A.I_. x. 300.]
[Footnote 20: Williams's _Fiji_, p. 218. See Mr. Thomson's remarks cited
later.]
[Footnote 21: _Fiji_, p. 217.]
[Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 228.]
[Footnote 23: Ibid. p. 230.]
[Footnote 24: _J.A.I_. xiv. 30.]
[Footnote 25: _J.A.I_. xi. 361-366.]
[Footnote 26: Ibid. xi. 374.]
[Footnote 27: Ibid. xi. 376.]
[Footnote 28: Ibid. xi. 376]
[Footnote 29: _J.A.I_. xi. 378.]
[Footnote 30: Ibid. 382.]
[Footnote 31: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360.]
[Footnote 32: Conceivably, however, the Guiana spirits who have so much
moral influence, exert it by magical charms. 'The belief in the power of
charms for good or evil produces not only honesty, but a great amount of
gentle dealing,' says Livingstone, of the Africans. However they work, the
spirits work for righteousness.]
[Footnote 33: Obviously there could be no Family God before there was the
institution of the Family.]
[Footnote 34: Callaway, _Rel. of Amazulu_, p. 17.]
[Footnote 35: Callaway, p. 1.]
[Footnote 36: Op. cit. p. 8.]
[Footnote 37: Op. cit. p. 7.]
[Footnote 38: Op. cit. p. 19.]
[Footnote 39: Callaway, pp. 20, 21.]
[Footnote 40: Pp. 26, 27.]
[Footnote 41: Pp. 49, 50.]
[Footnote 42: P. 67.]
[Footnote 43: P. 122.]
XIII
MORE SAVAGE SUPREME BEINGS
If many of the lowest savages known to us entertain ideas of a Supreme
Being such as we find among Fuegians, Australians, Bushmen, and
Andamanese, are there examples, besides the Zulus, of tribes higher in
material culture who seem to have had such notions, but to have partly
forgotten or neglected them? Miss Kingsley, a lively, observant, and
unprejudiced, though rambling writer, gives this very account of the Bantu
races. Oblivion, or neglect, will show itself in leaving the Supreme Being
alone, as he needs no propitiation, while devoting sacrifice and ritual to
fetishes and ghosts. That this should be done is perfectly natural if the
Supreme Being (who wants no sacrifice) were the first evolved in thought,
while venal fetishes and spirits came in as a result of the ghost theory.
But if, as a result of the ghost theory, the Supreme Being came last in
evolution, he ought to be the most fashionable object of worship, the
latest developed, the most powerful, and most to be propitiated. He is the
reverse.
To take an example: the Dinkas of the Upper Nile ('godless,' says Sir
Samuel Baker) 'pay a very theoretical kind of homage to the all-powerful
Being, dwelling in heaven, whence he sees all things. He is called
"Dendid" (great rain, that is, universal benediction?).' He is omnipotent,
but, being all beneficence, can do no evil; so, not being feared, he is
not addressed in prayer. The evil spirit, on the other hand, receives
sacrifices. The Dinkas have a strange old chant:
'At the beginning, when Dendid made all things,
He created the Sun,
And the Sun is born, and dies, and comes again!
He created the Stars,
And the Stars are born, and die, and come again!
He created Man,
And Man is born, and dies, and returns no more!'
It is like the lament of Moschus.[1]
Russegger compares the Dinkas, and all the neighbouring peoples who hold
the same beliefs, to modern Deists.[2] They are remote from Atheism and
from cult! Suggestions about an ancient Egyptian influence are made, but
popular Egyptian religion was not monotheistic, and priestly thought could
scarcely influence the ancestors of the Dinkas. M. Lejean says these
peoples are so practical and utilitarian that missionary religion takes no
hold on them. Mr. Spencer does not give the ideas of the Dinkas, but it is
not easy to see how the too beneficent Dendid could be evolved out of
ghost-propitiation, 'the origin of all religions.' Rather the Dinkas, a
practical people, seem to have simply forgotten to be grateful to
their Maker; or have decided, more to the credit of the clearness of their
heads than the warmth of their hearts, that gratitude he does not want.
Like the French philosopher they cultivate _l'indépendance du coeur_,
being in this matter strikingly unlike the Pawnees.
Let us now take a case in which ancestor-worship, and no other form of
religion (beyond mere superstitions), has been declared to be the practice
of an African people. Mr. Spencer gives the example of natives of the
south-eastern district of Central Africa described by Mr. Macdonald in
'Africana.'[3] The dead man becomes a ghost-god, receives prayer and
sacrifice, is called a Mulungu (= great ancestor or = sky?), is preferred
above older spirits, now forgotten; such old spirits may, however, have a
mountain top for home, a great chief being better remembered; the
mountain god is prayed to for rain; higher gods were probably similar
local gods in an older habitat of the Yao.[4]
Such is in the main Mr. Spencer's _résumé_ of Mr. Duff Macdonald's report.
He omits whatever Mr. Macdonald says about a Being among the Yaos,
analogous to the Dendid of the Dinkas, or the Darumulun of Australia, or
the Huron Ahone. Yet analysis detects, in Mr. Macdonald's report,
copious traces of such a Being, though Mr. Macdonald himself believes in
ancestor-worship as the Source of the local religion. Thus, Mulungu,
or Mlungu, used as a proper name, 'is said to be the great spirit,
_msimu_, of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed spirits
together.[5] This is a singular stretch of savage philosophy, and
indicates (says Mr. Macdonald) 'a grasping after a Being who is the
totality of all individual existence.... If it fell from the lips of
civilised men instead of savages, it would be regarded as philosophy.
Expressions of this kind among the natives are partly traditional, and
partly dictated by the big thoughts of the moment.' Philosophy it is, but
a philosophy dependent on the ghost theory.
I go on to show that the Wayao have, though Mr. Spencer omits him, a Being
who precisely answers to Darumulun, if stripped (perhaps) of his ethical
aspect. On this point we are left in uncertainty, just because Mr.
Macdonald could not ascertain the secrets of his mysteries, which, in
Australia, have been revealed to a few Europeans.
Where Mulungu is used as a proper name, it 'certainly points to a personal
Being, by the Wayao sometimes said to be the same as Mtanga. At other
times he is a Being that possesses many powerful servants, but is himself
kept a good deal beyond the scene of earthly affairs, like the gods of
Epicurus.'
This is, of course, precisely the feature in African theology which
interests us. The Supreme Being, in spite of the potency which his
supposed place as latest evolved out of the ghost-world should naturally
give him, is neglected, either as half forgotten, or for philosophical
reasons. For these reasons Epicurus and Lucretius make their gods
_otiosi_, unconcerned, and the Wayao, with their universal collective
spirit, are no mean philosophers.
'This Mulungu' or Mtanga, 'in the world beyond the grave, is represented
as assigning to spirits their proper places,' whether for ethical reasons
or not we are not informed.[6] Santos (1586) says 'they acknowledge a God
who, both in this world and the next, measures retribution for the good or
evil done in this.'
'In the native hypothesis about creation "the people of Mulungu" play a
very important part.' These ministers of his who do his pleasure are,
therefore, as is Mulungu himself, regarded as prior to the existing world.
Therefore they cannot, in Wayao opinion, be ghosts of the dead at all; nor
can we properly call them 'spirits.' They are _beings_, original,
creative, but undefined. The word Mulungu, however, is now applied to
spirits of individuals, but whether it means 'sky' (Salt) or whether it
means 'ancestor' (Bleek), it cannot be made to prove that Mulungu himself
was originally envisaged as 'spirit.' For, manifestly, suppose that the
idea of powerful beings, undefined, came first in evolution, and was
followed by the ghost idea, that idea might then be applied to explaining
the pre-existent creative powers.
Mtanga is by 'some' localised as the god of Mangochi, an Olympus left
behind by the Yao in their wanderings. Here, some hold, his voice is still
audible. 'Others say that Mtanga never was a man ... he was concerned in
the first introduction of men into the world. He gets credit for ...
making mountains and rivers. He is intimately associated with a year of
plenty. He is called Mchimwene juene, 'a very chief.' He has a kind of
evil opposite, _Chitowe_, but this being, the Satan of the creed, 'is a
child or subject of Mtanga,' an evil angel, in fact.[7]
The thunder god, Mpambe, in Yao, Njasi (lightning) is also a minister of
the Supreme Being. 'He is sent by Mtanga with rain.' Europeans are
cleverer than natives, because we 'stayed longer with the people of
God (Mulungu).'
I do not gather that, though associated with good crops, Mtanga or
Mulungu receives any sacrifice or propitiation. 'The chief addresses
his own god;'[8] the chief 'will not trouble himself about his
great-great-grand-father; he will present his offering to his own
immediate predecessor, saying, 'O father, I do not know all your
relatives; you know them all: invite them to feast with you.'[9]
'All the offerings are supposed to point to some want of the spirit,'
Mtanga, on the other hand, is _nihil indiga nostri_.
A village god is given beer to drink, as Indra got Soma. A dead chief is
propitiated by human sacrifices. I find no trace of any gift to Mtanga.
His mysteries are really unknown to Mr. Macdonald: they were laughed at
by a travelled and 'emancipated' Yao.[10]
'These rites are supposed to be inviolably concealed by the initiated, who
often say that they would die if they revealed them.'[11]
How can we pretend to understand a religion if we do not know its secret?
That secret, in Australia, yields the certainty of the ethical character
of the Supreme Being. Mr. Macdonald says about the initiator (a grotesque
figure):--
'He delivers lectures, and is said to give much good advice ... the
lectures condemn selfishness, and a selfish person is called _mwisichana_,
that is, "uninitiated."'
There could not be better evidence of the presence of the ethical element
in the religious mysteries. Among the Yao, as among the Australian Kurnai,
the central secret lesson of religion is the lesson of unselfishness.
It is not stated that Mtanga instituted or presides over the mysteries.
Judging from the analogy of Eleusis, the Bora, the Red Indian initiations,
and so on, we may expect this to be the belief; but Mr. Macdonald knows
very little about the matter.