known savages, men roaming wild, when originally met, on a continent
peopled by older kinds of animals than ours, was (as we regard purity) on
a higher plane by far than the gods of Greeks and Semites in their
earliest known myths. Setting mythology aside and looking only at cult,
the God of the Murring or the Kurnai, whose precepts soften the heart,
who knows the heart's secrets, who inculcates chastity, respect of age,
unselfishness, who is not bound by conditions of space or place, who
receives no blood of slaughtered man or beast, is a conception from which
the ordinary polytheistic gods of infinitely more polite peoples are
frankly degenerate. The animistic superstitions wildly based on the belief
in the soul have not soiled him, and the social conditions of aristocracy,
agriculture, architecture, have not made him one in a polytheistic
crowd of rapacious gods, nor fettered him as a Baal to his estate, nor
localised him in a temple built with hands. He cannot appear as a 'God of
Battles;' no _Te Deum_ can be sung to him for victory in a cause perhaps
unjust, for he is the Supreme Being of a certain group of allied local
tribes. One of these tribes has no more interest with him than another,
and the whole group do not, as a body, wage war on another alien group.
The social conditions of his worshippers, then, preserve Darumulun from
the patent blots on the escutcheon of gods among much more advanced races.
Once more, the idea of Animism admits of endless expansion. A spirit can
be located anywhere, in any stone, stick, bush, person, hill, or river. A
god made on the animistic model can be assigned to any department of
human activity, down to sports, or lusts, or the province of Cloacina.
Thus religion becomes a mere haunted and pestilential jungle of beliefs.
But the theistic conception, when not yet envisaged as spiritual, cannot
be subdivided and _éparpillé_. Thus, from every point of view, and on
every side, Animism is full of the seeds of religious degeneration, which
do not and cannot exist in what I take to be the earliest known form of
the theistic conception: that of a Being about whose metaphysical
nature--spirit or not spirit--no questions were asked, as Dr. Brinton long
ago remarked.
That conception alone could neither supply the moral motive of 'a soul to
be saved,' nor satisfy the metaphysical instinct of advancing mankind. To
meet these wants, to supply 'soul,' with its moral stimulus, and to
provide a phrase or idea under which the Deity could be envisaged (i.e. as
a _spirit_) by advancing thought, Animism was necessary. The blending of
the theistic and the animistic beliefs was indispensable to religion.
But, in the process of animistic development under advancing social
conditions, degeneration was necessarily implied. Degeneration of the
theistic conception for a while, therefore, occurred. The facts are the
proofs; and only contradictory facts, in sufficient quantity, can
annihilate the old theory of Degeneration when it is presented in this
form.
It mast be repeated that on this theory an explanation is given of what
the old Degeneration hypothesis does not explain. Granting a primal
religion relatively pure in its beginnings, why did it degenerate?
Mr. Max Mullet, looking on religion as the development of the sentiment of
the Infinite, regards fetishism as a secondary and comparatively late form
of belief. We find it, he observes, in various forms of Christianity;
Christianity, therefore, is primary there, relic worship is secondary.
Religion beginning, according to him, in the sense of the infinite, as
awakened in man by tall trees, high hills, and so on, it advances to the
infinite of space and sky, and so to the infinitely divine. This is
primary: fetishism is secondary. Arguing elsewhere against this idea, I
have asked: What was the _modus_ of degeneration which produced similar
results in Christianity, and in African and other religions? How did it
work? I am not aware that Mr. Max Müller has answered this question.
But how degeneration worked--namely, by Animism supplanting Theism--is
conspicuously plain on our theory.
Take the early chapters of Genesis, or any savage cosmogonic myth you
please. Deathless man is face to face with the Creator. He cannot
degenerate in religion. He cannot offer sacrifice, for the Creator
obviously needs nothing, and again, as there is no death, he cannot slay
animals for the Creator. But, in one way or another, usually by breach of
a taboo, Death enters the world. Then comes, by process of evolution,
belief in hungry spirits, belief in spirits who may inhabit stones or
sticks; again there arise priests who know how to propitiate spirits
and how to tempt them into sticks and stones. These arts become lucrative
and are backed by the cleverest men, and by the apparent evidence of
prophecies by convulsionaries. Thus every known kind of degeneration in
religion is inevitably introduced as a result of the theory of Animism. We
do not need an hypothesis of Original Sin as a cause of degeneration, and,
if Mr. Max Müller's doctrine of the Infinite were _viable_, we have
supplied, in Animism, under advancing social conditions, what he does not
seem to provide, a cause and _modus_ of degeneration. Fetishism would
thus be really 'secondary,' _ex hypothesi_, but as we nowhere find
Fetishism alone, without the other elements of religion, we cannot say,
historically, whether it is secondary or not. Fetishism logically needs,
in some of its aspects, the doctrine of spirits, and Theism, in what we
take to be its earliest known form, does not logically need the doctrine
of spirits as given matter. So far we can go, but not farther, as to the
fact of priority in evolution. Nevertheless we meet, among the most
backward peoples known to us, among men just emerged from the palaeolithic
stage of culture, men who are involved in dread of ghosts, a religious
Idea which certainly is not born of ghost-worship, for by these men,
ancestral ghosts are not worshipped.
In their hearts, on their lips, in their moral training we find (however
blended with barbarous absurdities, and obscured by rites of another
origin) the faith in a Being who created or constructed the world; who was
from time beyond memory or conjecture; who is primal, who makes for
righteousness, and who loves mankind. This Being has not the notes of
degeneration; his home is 'among the stars,' not in a hill or in a house.
To him no altar smokes, and for him no blood is shed.
'God, that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is lord
of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is
worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed any thing ... and hath
made of one blood all nations of men ... that they should seek the Lord,
if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far
from every one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being.'
That the words of St. Paul are literally true, as to the feeling after a
God who needs not anything at man's hands, the study of anthropology seems
to us to demonstrate. That in this God 'we have our being,' in so far
as somewhat of ours may escape, at moments, from the bonds of Time and the
manacles of Space, the earlier part of this treatise is intended to
suggest, as a thing by no means necessarily beyond a reasonable man's
power to conceive. That these two beliefs, however attained (a point on
which we possess no positive evidence), have commonly been subject to
degeneration in the religions of the world, is only too obvious.
So far, then, the nature of things and of the reasoning faculty does not
seem to give the lie to the old Degeneration theory.
To these conclusions, as far as they are matters of scientific opinion, we
have been led by nothing but the study of anthropology.
[Footnote 1: _Myths of the New World_, p. 44.]
[Footnote 2: _Prim. Cult_. i. 35.]
[Footnote 3: _Introduction_, p. 199; also p. 161.]
[Footnote 4: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360,361.]
[Footnote 5: Prof. Menzies, _History of Religion_, p. 23.]
[Footnote 6: [Greek: legomenai theion anagchai.] Porphyry.]
[Footnote 7: Ixtlilochitl. Balboa, _Hist. du Pérou_, p. 62.]
[Footnote 8: Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 104, 105.]
[Footnote 9: Op. cit. p. 106.]
[Footnote 10: On the Glenelg some caves and mountain tops are haunted or
holy. Waitz, vi. 804, No authority cited.]
[Footnote 11: _Religion of Semites_, p. 110.]
[Footnote 12: _Rel. Sem_. p. 71.]
[Footnote 13: Howitt, _J.A.T_. 1884, p. 187.]
[Footnote 14: Op. cit. p. 188.]
[Footnote 15: _Rel. Sem_. p. 207.]
[Footnote 16: _Rel. Sem_. p. 225.]
[Footnote 17: Op. cit. p. 247.]
[Footnote 18: Op. cit. p. 269.]
[Footnote 19: Op. cit. p. 277.]
[Footnote 20: Op. cit. p. 343. Citing Gen. xxii 2 Kings xxi. 6, Micah
vi. 7, 2 Kings iii. 27.]
[Footnote 21: I mean, does not occur to my knowledge. New evidence is
always upsetting anthropological theories.]
XVI
THEORIES OF JEHOVAH
All speculation on the curly history of religion is apt to end in the
endeavour to see how far the conclusions can be made to illustrate the
faith of Israel. Thus, the theorist who believes in ancestor-worship as
the key of all the creeds will see in Jehovah a developed ancestral
ghost, or a kind of fetish-god, attached to a stone--perhaps an ancient
sepulchral stele of some desert sheikh.
The exclusive admirer of the hypothesis of Totemism will find evidence for
his belief in worship of the golden calf and the bulls. The partisan of
nature-worship will insist on Jehovah's connection with storm, thunder,
and the fire of Sinai. On the other hand, whoever accepts our suggestions
will incline to see, in the early forms of belief in Jehovah, a shape of
the widely diffused conception of a Moral Supreme Being, at first (or, at
least, when our information begins) envisaged in anthropomorphic form,
but gradually purged of all local traits by the unexampled and unique
inspiration of the great Prophets. They, as far as our knowledge extends,
were strangely indifferent to the animistic element in religion, to the
doctrine of surviving human souls, and so, of course, to that element
of Animism which is priceless--the purification of the soul in the light
of the hope of eternal life. Just as the hunger after righteousness of the
Prophets is intense, so their hope of finally sating that hunger
in an eternity of sinless bliss and enjoyment of God is confessedly
inconspicuous. In short, they have carried Theism to its austere
extreme--'though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him'--while unconcerned
about the rewards of Animism. This is certainly a strange result of a
religion which, according to the anthropological theory, has Animism for
its basis.
We therefore examine certain forms of the animistic hypothesis as applied
to account for the religion of Israel. The topic is one in which special
knowledge of Hebrew and other Oriental languages seems absolutely
indispensable; but anthropological speculators have not been Oriental
scholars (with rare exceptions), while some Oriental scholars have
borrowed from popular anthropology without much critical discrimination.
These circumstances must be our excuse for venturing on to this difficult
ground.
It is probably impossible for us to trace with accuracy the rise of the
religion of Jehovah. 'The wise and learned' dispute endlessly over dates
of documents, over the amount of later doctrine interpolated into
the earlier texts, over the nature, source, and quantity of foreign
influence--Chaldaean, Accadian, Egyptian, or Assyrian. We know that Israel
had, in an early age, the conception of the moral Eternal; we know that,
at an early age, that conception was contaminated and anthropomorphised;
and we know that it was rescued, in a great degree, from this corruption,
while always retaining its original ethical aspect and sanction. Why
matters went thus in Israel and not elsewhere we know not, except that
such was the will of God in the mysterious education of the world. How
mysterious that education has been is best known to all who have studied
the political and social results of Totemism. On the face of it a
perfectly crazy and degrading belief--on the face of it meant for nothing
but to make the family a hell of internecine hatred--Totemism rendered
possible--nay, inevitable--the union of hostile groups into large and
relatively peaceful tribal societies. Given the materials as we know them,
we never should have educated the world thus; and we do not see why it
should thus have been done. But we are very anthropomorphic, and totally
ignorant of the conditions of the problem.
An example of anthropological theory concerning Jehovah was put forth by
Mr. Huxley.[1] Mr. Huxley's general idea of religion as it is on the
lowest known level of material culture--through which the ancestors of
Israel must have passed like other people--has already been criticised.
He denied to the most backward races both cult and religious sanction of
ethics. He was demonstrably, though unconsciously, in error as to the
facts, and therefore could not start from the idea that Israel, in the
lowest historically known condition of savagery, possessed, or, like other
races, might possess, the belief in an Eternal making for righteousness.
'For my part,' he says, 'I see no reason to doubt that, like the
rest of the world, the Israelites had passed through a period of mere
ghost-worship, and had advanced through ancestor-worship and Fetishism and
Totemism to the theological level at which we find them in the Books of
Judges and Samuel.'[2]
But why does he think the Israelites did all this? The Hebrew ghosts,
abiding, according to Mr. Huxley, in a rather torpid condition in Sheol,
would not be of much practical use to a worshipper. A reference in
Deuteronomy xxvi. 14 (Deuteronomy being, _ex hypothesi_, a late pious
imposture) does not prove much. The Hebrew is there bidden to remind
himself of the stay of his ancestors in Egypt, and to say, 'Of the
hallowed things I have not given aught for the dead'--namely, of the
tithes dedicated to the Levites and the poor. A race which abode for
centuries among the Egyptians, as Israel did--among a people who
elaborately fed the _kas_ of the departed--might pick up a trace of a
custom, the giving of food for the dead, still persevered in by St. Monica
till St. Ambrose admonished her. But Mr. Huxley is hard put to it for
evidence of ancestor-worship or ghost-worship in Israel when he looks for
indications of these rites in 'the singular weight attached to the
veneration of parents in the Fourth Commandment.'[3] The _Fourth_
Commandment, of course, is a slip of the pen. He adds: 'The Fifth
Commandment, as it stands, would be an excellent compromise between
ancestor-worship and Monotheism.' Long may children practise this
excellent compromise! It is really too far-fetched to reason thus: 'People
were bidden to honour their parents, as a compromise between Monotheism
and ghost-worship.' Hard, hard bestead is he who has to reason in that
fashion! This comes of 'training in the use of the weapons of precision of
science.'
Mr. Huxley goes on: 'The Ark of the Covenant may have been a relic of
ancestor-worship;' 'there is a good deal to be said for that speculation.'
Possibly there is, by way of the valuable hypothesis that Jehovah was a
fetish stone which had been a grave-stone, or perhaps a _lingam_, and was
kept in the Ark on the plausible pretext that it was the two Tables of
the Law!
However, Mr. Huxley really finds it safer to suppose that references to
ancestor-worship in the Bible were obliterated by late monotheistic
editors, who, none the less, are so full and minute in their descriptions
of the various heresies into which Israel was eternally lapsing, and must
not be allowed to lapse again. Had ancestor-worship been a _péché mignon_
of Israel, the Prophets would have let Israel hear their mind on it.
The Hebrews' indifference to the departed soul is, in fact, a puzzle,
especially when we consider their Egyptian education--so important an
element in Mr. Huxley's theory.
Mr. Herbert Spencer is not more successful than Mr. Huxley in finding
ancestor-worship among the Hebrews. On the whole subject he writes:
'Where the levels of mental nature and social progress are lowest, we
usually find, along with an absence of religious ideas generally, an
absence, or very slight development, of ancestor-worship.... Cook
[Captain Cook], telling us what the Fuegians were before contact
with Europeans had introduced foreign ideas, said there were no
appearances of religion among them; and we are not told by him or others
that they were ancestor-worshippers.'[4]
Probably they are not; but they do possess a Being who reads their hearts,
and who certainly shows no traces of European ideas. If the Fuegians
are not ancestor-worshippers, this Being was not developed out of
ancestor-worship.
The evidence of Captain Cook, no anthropologist, but a mariner who saw and
knew little of the Fuegians, is precisely of the sort against which Major
Ellis warns us.[5] The more a religion consists in fear of a moral
guardian of conduct, the less does it show itself, by sacrifice or rite,
to the eyes of Captain Cook, of his Majesty's ship _Endeavour_. Mr.
Spencer places the Andamanese on the same level as the Fuegians, 'so far
as the scanty evidence may be trusted.' We have shown that (as known
to Mr. Spencer in 1876) it may not be trusted at all; the Andamanese
possessing a moral Supreme Being, though they are not, apparently,
ancestor-worshippers. The Australians 'show us not much persistence in
ghost-propitiation,' which, if it exists, ceases when the corpses are tied
up and buried, or after they are burned, or after the bones, carried about
for a while, are exposed on platforms. Yet many Australian tribes possess
a moral Supreme Being.
In fact ghost-worship, in Mr. Spencer's scheme, cannot be fairly well
developed till society reaches the level of 'settled groups whose
burial-places are in their midst.' Hence the development of a moral
Supreme Being among tribes _not_ thus settled, is inconceivable, on
Mr. Spencer's hypothesis.[6] By that hypothesis, 'worshipped ancestors,
according to their remoteness, were regarded as divine, semi-divine, and
human.'[7] Where we find, then, the Divine Being among nomads who do not
remember their great-grandfathers, the Spencerian theory is refuted by
facts. We have the effect, the Divine Being, without the cause, worship of
ancestors.
Coming to the Hebrews, Mr. Spencer argues that 'the silence of their
legends (as to ancestor-worship) is but a negative fact, which may be as
misleading as negative facts usually are.' They are, indeed; witness
Mr. Spencer's own silence about savage Supreme Beings. But we may fairly
argue that if Israel had been given to ancestor-worship (as might partly
be surmised from the mystery about the grave of Moses) the Prophets would
not have spared them for their crying. The Prophets were unusually
outspoken men, and, as they undeniably do scold Israel for every other
kind of conceivable heresy, they were not likely to be silent about
ancestor-worship, if ancestor-worship existed. Mr. Spencer, then, rather
heedlessly, though correctly, argues that 'nomadic habits are unfavourable
to evolution of the ghost-theory.'[8] Alas, this gives away the whole
case! For, if all men began as nomads, and nomadic habits are unfavourable
even to the ordinary ghost, how did the Australian and other nomads
develop the Supreme Being, who, _ex hypothesi_, is the final fruit of the
ghost-flower? If you cannot have 'an established ancestor-worship' till
you abandon nomadic habits, how, while still nomadic, do you evolve a
Supreme Being? Obviously not out of ancestor-worship.
Mr. Spencer then assigns, as evidence for ancestor-worship in Israel,
mourning dresses, fasting, the law against self-bleeding and cutting off
the hair for the dead, and the text (Deut. xxvi. 14) about 'I have not
given aught thereof for the dead.' 'Hence, the conclusion must be that
ancestor-worship had developed as far as nomadic habits allowed, before it
was repressed by a higher worship.'[9] But whence came that higher worship
which seems to have intervened immediately after the cessation of nomadic
habits?
There are obvious traces of grief expressed in a primitive way among the
Hebrews. 'Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your
eyes for the dead' (Deut. xiv. 1). 'Neither shall men lament for them,
nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them; neither shall men
tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead' (by
way of counter-irritant to grief); 'neither shall men give them the cup
of consolation to drink for their father or their mother,' because the
Jews were to be removed from their homes.[10] 'Ye shall not make any
cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.'[11]
It may be usual to regard inflictions, such as cutting, by mourners, as
sacrifices to the ghost of the dead. But one has seen a man strike himself
a heavy blow on receiving news of a loss _not_ by death, and I venture to
fancy that cuttings and gashings at funerals are merely a more violent
form of appeal to a counter-irritant of grief, and, again, a token of
recklessness caused by a sorrow which makes void the world. One of John
Nicholson's native adorers killed himself on news of that warrior's death,
saying, 'What is left worth living for?' This was not a sacrifice to the
Manes of Nicholson. The sacrifice of the mourner's hair, as by Achilles,
argues a similar indifference to personal charm. Once more, the text in
Psalm cvi. 28, 'They joined themselves unto Baal-Peor, and ate the
sacrifices of the dead,' is usually taken by commentators as a reference
to the ritual of gods who are no gods. But it rather seems to indicate an
acquiescence in foreign burial rites. All this additional evidence does
not do much to prove ancestor-worship in Israel, though the secrecy of the
burial of Moses, 'in a valley of the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor;
but no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day,' may indicate a dread of
a nascent worship of the great leader.[12] The scene of the defection in
Psalm cvi., Beth-peor, is indicated in Numbers xxv., where Israel runs
after the girls and the gods of Moab: 'And Moab called the people unto the
sacrifices of their gods; and the people did eat, and bowed down to their
gods. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor.' Psalm cvi. is obviously a
later restatement of this addiction to the Moabite gods, and the Psalm
adds 'they ate the sacrifices of the dead.'
It is plain that, for whatever reason, ancestor-worship among the Hebrews
was, at the utmost, rudimentary. Otherwise it must have been clearly
denounced by the Prophets among the other heresies of Israel. Therefore,
as being at the most rudimentary, ancestor-worship in Israel could not be
developed at once into the worship of Jehovah.
Though ancestor-worship among the Hebrews could not be fully developed,
according to Mr. Spencer, because of their nomadic habits, it _was_ fully
developed, according to the Rev. A.W. Oxford. 'Every family, like every
old Roman and Greek family, was firmly held together by the worship of its
ancestors, the hearth was the altar, the head of the family the priest....
The bond which kept together the families of a tribe was its common
religion, the worship of its reputed ancestor. The chief of the tribe was,
of course, the priest of the cult.' Of course; but what a pity that Mr.
Huxley and Mr. Spencer omitted facts so invaluable to their theory! And
how does the Rev. Mr. Oxford know? Well, 'there is no direct proof,'
oddly enough, of so marked a feature in Hebrew religion but we are
referred to 1 Sam. xx. 29 and Judges xviii. 19. 1 Sam. xx. 29 makes
Jonathan say that David wants to go to a family sacrifice, that is, a
family dinner party. This hardly covers the large assertions made by
Mr. Oxford. His second citation is so unlucky as to contradict his
observation that 'of course' the chief of the tribe was the priest of the
cult. Micah, in Judges xvii., xviii., is _not_ the chief of his tribe
(Ephraim), neither is he even the priest in his own house. He 'consecrated
one of his own sons who became his priest,' till he got hold of a casual
young Levite, and said, 'Be unto me a _father_ and a priest,' for ten
shekels _per annum_, a suit of clothes, and board and lodging.
In place, then, of any remote reference to a chief's being priest of his
ancestral ghosts, we have here a man of one tribe who is paid rather
handsomely to be family chaplain to a member of another tribe. Some
moss-troopers of the tribe of Dan then kidnapped this valuable young
Levite, and seized a few idols which Micah had permitted himself to make.
And all this, according to our clerical authority, is evidence for
ancestor-worship![13]