EARLY RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES
+101+. The earliest known forms of social life are characterized by the
performance of public ceremonies, which are almost always religious.
Religion in some form enters into all the details of early life--there
is no event that is not supposed to be caused or affected by a
supernatural Power or influence. A vaguely conceived force (_mana_), an
attribute of life, is believed to reside in all things, and under
certain circumstances has to be reckoned with. Mysterious potencies in
the shape of souls, spirits, gods, or mana are held to preside over and
control all affairs--birth, sickness, death, hate and love, hunting and
war, sowing and reaping. There is no dogma except belief in this
extrahuman influence--no conception of moral effort as based on and
sanctioned by a definite moral ideal, no struggle of the sort that we
call spiritual. Religion consists of a body of practices whose authority
rests on precedent; as it is supposed they have existed from time
immemorial, they are held to be necessary to secure the well-being of
the tribe (a sufficient supply of food, or victory over enemies); to the
question why such and such things are done, the common reply of the
savage is that without them the thing desired could not be got.
+102+. In the earliest stages known to us these procedures are already
elaborate and distinct; they are generally conducted by the tribal
leaders (old men, chiefs, magicians), by whom they are handed down from
generation to generation.[208] Their precise origin is lost in the
depths of antiquity. Doubtless they arose from social needs, and their
precise forms were suggested by crude observation and reasoning.
Reflection on processes of nature, guided sometimes by fortunate or
unfortunate accidents, may have led to the establishment of methods of
procedure for gaining social and individual ends; and, as at this
formative period the whole life of the community was permeated by
religious conceptions, the procedures either were originally religious
or speedily took on a religious coloring.
+103+. Two characteristics belong to early ceremonies: they are
communal, and they are generally sacred mysteries. Whatever be the
origin of the tribal and clan institutions of society, these are
practically universal in the world as it is now known. Even in the few
cases where men live in the comparative isolation of individual family
groups (as the Eskimo, Fuegians, and others are said to do[209]), there
is a communal feeling that is shown in the identity of customs and ideas
among the isolated groups. In early man there is little individuality of
thought or of religious experience,[210] and there is no observable
difference between public and private religious worship. Ceremonies,
like language, are the product of social thought, and are themselves
essentially social. When a man performs an individual religious act (as
when he recognizes an omen in an animal or bird, or chooses a guardian
animal or spirit, or wards off a sickness or a noxious influence), he is
aware that his act is in accordance with general usage, that it has the
approval of the community, and that its potency rests on the authority
of the community. It is true that such communal character belongs, in
some degree, to all religious life--no person's religion is wholly
independent of the thought of his community; but in the lower strata the
acceptance of the common customs is unreflective and complete. When
definite individualism sets in, ceremonies begin to lose their old
significance, though they may be retained as mere forms or with a new
interpretation.
+104+. That the ceremonial observances are usually sacred is obvious
from all the descriptions we have of them. Their power is not always
attributed to the action of external personal, supernatural agencies
(though such agencies may have been assumed originally); in many cases,
it is held to reside in themselves.[211] They are sacred in the sense
that they are mysterious, acting in a way that is beyond human
comprehension and with a power that is beyond human control.[212] They
are efficacious only when performed by persons designated or recognized
by the community. Here there is undoubtedly a dim sense of law and unity
in the world, based on an interpretation of experiences. This is a mode
of thought that runs through the whole history of religion--only, in the
earliest stages of human life, it is superficial and narrow. The earlier
ceremonial customs contain the germs and the essential features of the
later more refined procedures.
+105+. Without attempting to give an exhaustive list, the principal
early ceremonies may be divided into classes as follows:
EMOTIONAL AND DRAMATIC CEREMONIES
+106+. The dances that are so common among savage tribes are in many
instances now (and doubtless this has always been the case) simply the
expression of animal joyousness.[213] They are like the caperings of
young animals--only, the human feeling of rhythm asserts itself, the
movements are often measured and graceful. There is naturally an
accompaniment of noise--shouting and beating on pieces of wood, bone, or
metal, with songs or chants, the beginnings of vocal and instrumental
music.
Words and melodies are simple and rude; they are the productions of
individual singers, often, of course, made from a stock of material
common to all members of the clan or the tribe. In Australia songs are
thought to be obtained by bards during sleep from the souls of the dead
(sometimes from Bunjil), or the bard is possessed by the soul of a
beast; chants are employed in magical ceremonies, and there are
lullabies and other children's songs.[214] The Muscogee "Song of the
Sabbea" is very sacred.[215] In West Africa minstrels recite
song-stories, every story being attached to an object (bone, feather,
etc.).[216] Songs are chanted at festivals in Guiana (and at night men
tell endless stories).[217]
+107+. The movements of the dance are sometimes in imitation of those of
animals,[218] sometimes spontaneous, and sometimes from our point of
view indecent. The indecency and obscenity originated and has continued
in a period when no moral element entered into such performances--they
simply follow animal instincts and impulses, are controlled by them, and
appear usually not to affect the customs relating to marriage and
chastity (so in the Areoi festivities of Tahiti, and among the Central
Australians[219]).
+108+. In accordance with the law by which religion appropriates social
customs, the dance is devoted to religious purposes and acquires a
sacred character.[220] It is a common ceremony as a preparation for war:
the warriors of the tribe jump about with violent gesticulations and
shouts, brandishing weapons and mimicking the acts of attacking and
slaying enemies.[221] Here, doubtless, the object is partly to excite
the men to fury and thus prepare them for combat, but there is also the
conviction that the ceremony itself has a sacred potency.[222] A similar
occult power is attached to dancing in Timorlaut, where, when a ship is
at sea, the girls sing and dance on the beach daily to bring the men
back.[223] There are dances in commemoration of the
dead[224]--apparently a combination of affection and homage, with the
general purpose of conciliating the departed and procuring their aid;
the belief being, apparently, that the dead see these demonstrations and
are pleased with them. A Ghost Dance formerly performed in California
had for its object bringing back the dead.[225]
+109+. At a later time such ceremonies were connected with the worship
of gods: sometimes they were of the nature of offerings of homage to the
supernatural Powers, as in the Young Dog Dance;[226] sometimes they took
on a symbolic and representative or dramatic character. Among the Redmen
the dramatic dances are elaborate, often representing the histories of
divine persons, these latter frequently appearing in the form of
animals.[227] The accompanying songs or chants relate stories that are
intended to explain, wholly or in part, the details of the rite.[228]
+110+. Thus combined with other ceremonies, dances become important
means of religious culture. In Greece dances were connected with many
cults, among others with the Dionysiac ceremonies, out of which grew the
Greek drama. Among the Hebrews the ancient ceremonial dance appears as
late as the time of David,[229] though it was then, perhaps, falling
into desuetude, since his wife, Michal, is disgusted at his procedures.
The violent movement of the dance excites not only warlike rage but also
religious ecstasy, and has been used abundantly for this purpose by
magicians, prophets, and mystics; the performer is regarded as a
vehicle of divine revelation, all abnormal excitement being ascribed to
possession by a spirit.[230]
+111+. With dances may be classed processions, in which usually a god is
invoked or praised. In Ashantiland, in time of war, when the men are
with the army, processions of women, wives of the warriors, march
through the streets, invoking the gods on behalf of the absent men.[231]
Often the performers bear a sacred object, as a stone (sometimes
inclosed in a box[232]), a boat, or an image; in early times such
objects not only represent the gods but actually embody them, or are
themselves superhuman Powers.
+112+. A peculiar form of procession is that in which the worshipers
move round a sacred object, perhaps the adoption of a natural form of
play. The original design in such movements may have been simply to show
respect to the object in question and secure its favor, the circular
movement being a natural way of keeping in touch with it. In certain
cases the circumambulation is connected with the movement of the sun in
the sky--probably a later interpretation of the ceremony. Examples are
found in Hindu, Greek, and Roman practices, and in some modern Christian
usages (in the Greek and Roman churches). As a magical efficiency was
held to attach to the ceremony, its effect was sometimes held to depend
on the direction of the movement; if it was to the right--passing from
east through south to west (the worshiper facing the east)--it was good,
but bad if in the opposite direction. Though traces of solemn
circumambulation are found in some lower tribes, it has been, and is,
practiced chiefly in the higher cults.[233]
+113+. Sacred dances and processions are natural human expressions of
emotions that have been adopted by religious sentiment, and are often
supposed to have potency in themselves. They tend to disappear with the
progress of general refinement and of ethical conceptions of life and of
deity. They continue, however, far into the civilized period, in which
we find dramatic representations (as the Eleusinian rites and the
medieval Mystery Plays), processions of priests bearing or conducting
sacred objects, processions of devotees with music, and pilgrimages to
shrines. Such ceremonies, while they are regarded by educated persons
simply as expressions of reverence and accompaniments of prayer, are
still believed by many to have an innate or magic potency, insuring
prosperity to the participants.
DECORATIVE AND CURATIVE CEREMONIES
+114+. Love of ornament is found among all savage peoples; the value
they attach to beads and all colored things is well known to travelers
and traders. It has been plausibly argued that the origin of clothing is
to be found in the desire of each sex to make itself beautiful in the
eyes of the other.[234] However that may be, the employment of leaves
for headdresses and waistbands is general among lower tribes.[235]
+115+. Equally popular is the adornment of the body by colored marks
made with red ocher, pipe-clay, turmeric, charcoal, and such like things
as are furnished by nature. Elaborate designs, of straight and curved
lines, are traced on the skin, and these are gradually differentiated
and become marks of rank and function. The war paint of the American
Indians is governed by fixed rules, the object being to make the warrior
terrible to enemies.[236] Rings, quills, sticks, and stones, worn in
holes made in ears, nose, lips, and cheeks, are all originally
decorative; and so also prickings and gashes in the body, often in
regular outlines.[237]
+116+. These latter, made according to tribal custom and law, become
tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the
community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North
America.[238] The use of oil and other unguents early established itself
as a custom of savage society. They were probably useful in a variety of
ways. For the hair they made up for the absence of comb and brush; in
combat they enabled the warrior to slip from the grasp of his enemy;
they defended the naked body from rain, and from soiling and injury
produced by contact with the earth and hard bodies; and in sickness they
were regarded as curative.[239] Oil was abundantly used as an article of
food.
+117+. All these materials of decoration are transferred to the service
of religion. The headdress becomes a mask to represent an animal in a
sacred ceremony,[240] or a priestly tiara. In such ceremonies
(especially in those of initiation) the painting of the body plays an
important part, the traceries varying according to the thing represented
and the symbolism of the action.[241] It is often difficult to see the
precise significance of the paintings, but in certain cases they are
totemic marks, and represent whatever is sacred in totemic belief.[242]
+118+. It is possible to construe the development in two ways: the
paintings may be regarded as originally totemic or other clan marks, and
as afterwards employed as ornaments, or the order of movement may be
taken to be in the reverse direction; but when we consider the primitive
character of decoration, the second suggestion seems the more probable.
The same remark applies to the practice of pricking, scarring, and
tattooing.[243] For the body-markings blood is sometimes employed,
perhaps in part on account of its decorative color, but also probably
with a religious significance.[244]
+119+. Decoration has been and is largely employed in structures and
dress connected with religious life. Posts and beams of houses, totem
posts and masts of vessels are covered with figures in which artistic
feeling is discernible;[245] and in late periods all the resources of
art are devoted to the form and adornments of temples, altars, and
images. The designs are taken from familiar objects, mostly from plants
and animals. The ultimate motive is love of ornament, which, while it
finds abundant expression in ordinary social life, has its greatest
development in religion--a natural result of the fact that in a large
part of human history religion has been the chief organizing factor of
society.
+120+. The tendency has been to make the dress of ministers of religion
ornate.[246] This tendency has arisen partly from love of ornament, and
partly, doubtless, it is the transference of court customs to religious
ceremonial.[247]
+121+. Symbolism has entered largely into religious decoration. In very
early times figures of animals, plants, and human beings were used as
records of current events, and were sometimes supposed to have magical
power, the picture being identified with the thing represented. In a
more advanced stage of culture the transition was easy to the conception
of the figures as representing ideas, but the older conception is often
found alongside of the later--a symbolical signification is attached to
pictures of historical things. These then have a spiritual meaning for
higher minds, while for the masses they may be of the nature of
fetishes.[248] In both cases they may serve a good purpose in worship by
fixing the mind on sacred things.
ECONOMIC CEREMONIES
+122+. The first necessity of savages is a sufficient supply of food,
and this, they hold, is to be procured either by the application of what
they conceive to be natural laws, or by appeal to superhuman Powers.
Among economic ceremonies, therefore, we may distinguish those which may
be loosely described as natural, those in which a supernatural element
enters, and those in which the two orders of procedure appear to be
combined.
+123+. Savages are generally skillful hunters. They know how to track
game, to prepare nets and pits, and to make destructive weapons. The
African pygmies have poisoned arrows, with which they are able to kill
the largest animals.[249] The people of British New Guinea organize
hunts on a large scale.[250] In Australia, Polynesia, and America there
is no tribe that is not able to secure food by the use of natural means.
+124+. But such means are often supplemented by ceremonies that involve
some sort of supernatural influence. These ceremonies appear to assume a
social relation between man and beasts and plants; in some cases there
is assumed a recognition by animals of the necessities of the case and a
spirit of friendly coöperation; in other cases a magical power is called
into play.
+125+. Desire to propitiate the hunted animal, in order not only to
avert the anger of its kin but also to obtain its aid, appears in the
numerous cases in which excuses are made for the killing, and the animal
is implored to make a friendly report of the man to its friends and to
return in order that it may be killed.[251] Formal prayer is sometimes
made to the animal in important tribal ceremonies, as in British
Columbia a boy is ordered by the chief to pray to the first salmon
sighted for a good catch;[252] here the good will of the salmon tribe
and the quasi-human intelligence of the fish are assumed.
+126+. Precautions are taken to guard against antagonistic extrahuman
influences; there are taboos and rules of purification in preparation
for hunting. In New Guinea hunters are required to abstain from certain
sorts of food and to perform purificatory ceremonies.[253] Among the
Nandi some men are forbidden to hunt, make traps, or dig pits for
game;[254] these men, it would seem, are supposed to be, for ceremonial
reasons, antipathetic to the animals to be hunted, as, on the other
hand, there are men who attract game.[255] The taboos of food and other
things imposed are doubtless intended to guard against malefic spirits
or mana. The particular rules are determined by local conditions.
+127+. Certain rules about eating the food secured by hunting appear to
have come from the desire to act in an orderly manner and with due
respect to the animal. When it is prescribed that a bone shall not be
broken this may be for fear of giving offense to the animal kin and thus
insuring failure in further hunting.[256] The provision that each man
shall gather of a fruit or vegetable only so much as will suffice for a
single day may have had an economic ground, the desire to avoid waste;
or it may have been made also partly in the interest of orderliness, and
so have had originally no reference to any superhuman being.[257]
Naturally it was taken up into religion and given a religious sanction.
+128+. In Central Australia, where every clan is charged with the duty
of procuring a particular food (its totem) for the tribe, the custom is
that when the product of hunting or gathering is brought in to be thrown
into the tribal store, the principal men of the hunting group begin by
eating a little of the food, after which the food is licit for the rest
of the tribe but illicit for the hunters.[258] This custom has been held
to have a sacramental significance; it has been suggested that the food
is sanctified by the touch of the elders and thus made lawful for the
tribe, or that, as naturally sacred, it secures, when eaten, union
between the eater and a superhuman Power. But there is no hint of such a
conception in the Australian ceremony or elsewhere. The procedure is
obligatory and solemn--to omit it would be, in the feeling of the
people, to imperil the life of the tribe; but all such usages are
sanctified by time. We should rather seek for the origin of the custom
in some simple early idea. It is not unusual, in parts of Australia and
in other lands, that a man, though he may not eat his totem, may kill it
for others; the eating in this case is the important thing--there is
magical power in it--and the economic obligation to provide food
overbears the sense of reverence for the totem. The only obscure point
in the ceremony under consideration is the obligation on the killer or
gatherer to taste the food before he gives it to his fellows. This may
be a survival of the rule, known to exist among some tribes, that in a
hunting party he who kills an animal has the first right to it. The
Australian hunter cannot eat his totem, but he may hold to his
traditional right; the result will be the custom as it now exists. With
our present knowledge no quite satisfactory explanation of the origin of
this particular rule can be given.
+129+. The employment of magical means for procuring food appears in the
performance of ceremonial dances, in the use of charms, the imitation of
animals, and other procedures. In California the supply of acorns and
animals is supposed to be increased by dances.[259] The New Guinea Koita
give their hunting dogs decoctions of sago and other food into which are
put pieces of odoriferous bark;[260] these charms are said to have been
got from the Papuans, the lowest race of the region. A Pawnee folk-story
(which doubtless reflects a current idea) tells how a boy by his songs
(that is, magic songs or charms) brought the buffalo within reach of
his people.[261] Among the Melanesians of New Guinea the hunting expert
plays a great rôle--his presence is necessary for the success of an
expedition.[262] He fixes the date of the hunt, prepares himself by a
series of abstinences,[263] and at the appointed time assembles the men,
recites spells addressed to ancestors, and passing along the lines of
the hunters imitates the movements of the animal sought.[264]
+130+. Very elaborate ceremonies including imitations of animals
(imitative or sympathetic magic) are found in Central Australia.[265]
When any animal is to be hunted the old men of the appropriate totemic
group, dressed to imitate the totem and accompanied by some of the young
men, repair to a spot regarded as sacred, and, along with other
ceremonies, trace on the sacred rock, with blood drawn from the young
men, a picture of the animal, or figures representing its growth--in
general, something that sets forth its personality. These ceremonies,
very numerous and extending over a long space of time, constitute the
main business of the elders, as, in fact, the procuring of food is the
chief concern of the people.
+131+. There is no perceptible religious element in these Australian
ceremonies--no utterance of charms or prayers, no mention of any
supernatural being. The acts appear to be simply procedures of imitative
magic, customs sanctified by long usage. They relate to the life of the
tribe; this life, like all life, is mysterious and therefore
sacred.[266] The belief in the potency of the ceremonies appears to come
from belief in the vital identity of the two groups, human and
nonhuman--the latter is supposed to respond, in some occult way, to the
expression of kinship involved in the official proceedings.
+132+. The employment of blood (considered as the locus of life) may
indicate more definitely a sense of the unity of life-force; the human
blood is, perhaps, supposed to stimulate life in the kindred animal
group, and so to produce a large supply of individuals. In the
published accounts there is no hint that the blood is supposed to have
atoning power. There is no sense of wrongdoing or unworthiness on the
part of the performers, or of any relation to a deity. The theology of
Central Australia is still obscure--the general religious situation in
that region has much that is enigmatical.
+133+. A more advanced ritual occurs among certain agricultural tribes,
among whom is found a more elaborate use of blood and a definite
recognition of superhuman beings. In these communities it is regarded as
necessary to profitable tilling to fertilize the soil with the blood of
a slain victim, sometimes human (as among the Khonds of Orissa, the
Pawnees, and others[267]), sometimes bestial (as in Southern
India[268]); parts of the victim's flesh are buried, or blood is
sprinkled on the seed, and homage is paid to a sacred stone or some
similar object.
+134+. In more civilized agricultural communities these ceremonies
persist in attenuated form. There is a sacrifice of first-born animals
to a deity and an offering of the first fruits of the field; and as
children, no less than crops, are the gift of the gods, whose bounty
must be recognized, it is not surprising to find that, along with the
first fruits of the field, first-born children are sometimes sacrificed
to the deity. Such a custom is reported as existing or having existed in
New South Wales, Florida, East Africa, heathen Russia, the Fiji Islands,
and Northern India.[269] A trace of the custom among the early Hebrews
is, probably, to be recognized in the provision of the Old Testament
code that the first-born children are to be redeemed by an animal
sacrifice.[270]
+135+. In the course of time many ceremonies grew up in connection with
the procuring and housing of crops and other supplies. In Australia the
men of the clan charged with assuring any sort of food were unarmed and
fasted during their ceremony.[271] Among the Kondyan plowing and sowing
are solemn seasons, an auspicious day is chosen, and there are
religious songs and choruses.[272] For the Hos of Northeastern India the
harvest home is a great festival, held with sacrifice and prayer (though
also with great license of manners).[273] A dim conception of law
underlies all these procedures. The law is sometimes natural, as in
imitative processes, sometimes religious, as when blood is employed or
the agency of religious official persons is called in.
+136+. The economical importance of rain has led to various
quasi-scientific and magical devices for securing it, and to the rise of
professional rain makers. The methods commonly employed are mimic
representations of rainfall or of a storm.[274] The Australian Arunta
have a rain clan whose function is to bring the desired supply by
nonsacred dancing festivals and sacred ceremonies. A more advanced
method is to dip a stone, as rain-god, into a stream.[275] Certain
American tribes assign the duty of rain making to secret societies or to
priests.
+137+. All such economical ceremonies disappear with the progress of
knowledge, though traces of them linger long in civilized communities.
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen note the gradual disappearance of the
economical and magical aspect of ceremonies in parts of Australia, and a
similar process is to be observed elsewhere.[276]
APOTROPAIC CEREMONIES
+138+. The savage and half-civilized belief (a belief that has survived
to some extent in civilized communities) is that the ills that afflict
or threaten a community (such as epidemics and shortage of crops) are
due not to natural causes but to supernatural agencies. But man, it is
held, may control the hostile supernatural agents--they are subject to
fear and other emotions, and though powerful are not omnipotent; they
may be expelled or otherwise got rid of--violence may be used against
them, or the aid of stronger supernatural Powers may be called in. In
pursuance of these ends ceremonies have been devised in many parts of
the world; though differing in details they are alike in principle; the
question is how man may become the master of the demons. The ceremonies
are sometimes performed on the occasion of particular afflictions,
sometimes are massed at stated seasons, as at the beginning of the year
or in connection with some agricultural festival.
+139+. Man's defensive attitude toward the supernatural world appears in
many usages connected with ordinary life. Fear of the hostility of
ghosts has led surviving friends to take precautions against their
return--their own houses are closed to them and they are driven away
with blows.[277] They are too near akin to be trusted, and they are
believed to be able and willing to do harm.[278] At the other extreme of
life, when the child comes into the world, mother and child must be
guarded against hostile demonic influences.[279] When a demon is known
to have entered into a human being, producing sickness or madness,
exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able
by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the
afflicted to health. Ritual taint (which is supernatural), incurred, for
example, by touching a dead body, is removed by sprinkling with sacred
water.[280]
+140+. But the term "apotropaic" is generally used of expulsive
ceremonies in which a whole community takes part. In the simplest forms
of procedure the hostile spirits are driven out of the village by shouts
and blows; crowds of men rush through the streets, searching houses,
expelling spirits at every possible point of ingress, and finally
forcing them outside the limits of the community. Examples of such a
custom are found in the Pacific Islands, Australia, Japan, Indonesia,
West Africa, Cambodia, India, North America (Eskimo), South America
(Peru),[281] and there are survivals in modern Europe. In China this
wholesale expulsion is still practiced in a very elaborate form.[282]
Among the Ainu, it is said, on the occasion of any accident the "spirit
of accidents" (a useful generalization) is driven away by the
community.[283] In these cases the spirits are thought of as being in a
sort corporeal, sensitive to blows, and also as afraid of noise. There
is sometimes a combination of natural and supernatural conceptions:
while the violent expulsive process is going on the household utensils
are vigorously washed by the women; washing, known to cleanse from mere
physical dirt, here also takes on, from its association with the men's
ceremony of expulsion, a supernatural potency--it removes the injurious
mana of the hostile spirits.
+141+. Less violent methods of riddance may be employed. Evil, being a
physical thing, may be embodied in some object, nonhuman or human, which
is then carried forth or sent away to some distant point, or destroyed.
With this principle of transference may be compared the conception of
solidarity of persons and things in a tribe or other community: what one
unit does or suffers affects all--the presence of an accursed thing with
one person brings a curse on his nation,[284] and conversely, the
removal of the evil thing or person removes the curse, which may, under
certain circumstances, be shifted to some other place or person.
+142+. The particular method of expulsion or transference is
immaterial.[285] The troublesome evil may be carted or boated away
according to local convenience, or it may depart in the person of an
animal. Leprous taint is transferred to a bird, which, having been
dipped in the blood of a sacred animal, is allowed to fly away carrying
the taint off from the community.[286] Even moral evils (sin) may thus
be got rid of. In the great Hebrew annual ceremony of atonement not only
the ritual impurity of the sanctuary and the altar, but also the sin of
the nation, is laid on a goat and sent away to the wilderness demon,
Azazel.[287]
+143+. Examples of human apotropaic vehicles occur in the ancient
civilized world. In the Athenian Thargelia the Pharmakos was supposed to
bear in his person crimes and evils, and was driven forth from the
city.[288] The same conception is found, perhaps, in the Roman Mamuralia
and Lupercalia. In the first of these Mamertius is driven forth from the
city and consigned to the keeping of hostile persons;[289] in the
second, young men ran about the streets beating the women with strips of
goatskin, the skin being that of a sacred animal--a proceeding that was
regarded as purificatory, and seems to be naturally explicable as an
expulsion of evil spirits or injurious mana.[290]
+144+. In another direction expulsion of evil, or protection against it,
is effected by the blood of a sacrificed (and therefore sacred) animal.
A well-known example of this sort of ceremony is the Hebrew _pesah_ (the
old lamb ceremony, later combined with the agricultural festival of
unleavened bread, at the time of the first harvest, the two together
then constituting the passover); here the doorposts and lintel of every
house were sprinkled with the blood of a slain lamb by the master of the
house,[291] and the hostile spirits hovering in the air were thus
prevented from entering. The sacred blood seems to have been conceived
of as carrying with it the power of the family god (who was also the
clan god), which overbore that of the demons (in the earliest period,
however, the efficacy was doubtless held to reside simply in the blood
itself). The ceremony belonged to each family, but it belonged also to
the clan since it was performed by every family, and ultimately it
became a national usage.
+145+. Apotropaic ceremonies appear to have been performed originally
at various times during the year as occasions arose; the increasing
pressure of occupations,[292] the necessity of consulting people's
convenience, and the demand for order and precision led here (as in
other cases) to the massing of the observances. When so massed they
begin to lose their original significance, to yield to the knowledge of
natural law, to be reinterpreted from time to time, and finally to
become mere social events or to be dropped altogether. Apotropaism has
hardly survived at all in the higher religions.[293] In popular customs
it appears in the reliance placed on horseshoes and other objects as
means of keeping witches and similar demonic things out of houses.[294]
CEREMONIES OF PUBERTY AND INITIATION
+146+. Ceremonies in connection with the arrival of young persons, male
and female, at the age of maturity appear to be universal, and they
yield in importance to no other class of social procedures. The basis of
most of these is civil; their object is to prepare young persons for
entering on the active duties of what may be called citizenship. They
involve a distinct idea of the importance of the clan, the necessity of
maintaining its life unimpaired, and, to that end, preparing with the
utmost care the younger portion of the community to take up the duties
of the older. The boys are to be trained to be the hunters and rulers of
the clan, the girls are to be fitted to become the wives and mothers of
the next generation. But while the ceremonies in question have their
foundation in the needs of civil life, they inevitably receive a
religious coloring, since religion is intimately connected with all the
details of early life.
+147+. Among the details of the initiation of boys, tests of endurance
occupy a prominent place. In various ways the capacity of the lad to
endure physical pain or to face apparent dangers is tested,[295] and in
some cases one who fails to stand such tests is refused admission into
the clan and forever after occupies an inferior and despised position.
Such persons are sometimes treated as women; they are required to wear
women's dress and to do menial work.[296]
+148+. The seclusion of girls on arriving at the age of puberty, with
imposition of various taboos (of food, etc.), is a widespread custom.
The mysterious change in the girl is supposed to be produced by some
supernatural and dangerous Power, and she is therefore to be shielded
from contact with all injurious things. The details of the procedure
depend on local ideas, but the principle is the same everywhere. The
object is the preparation of the girl for civic life, and the ceremony
inevitably becomes connected with tribal cults of the supernatural
Powers.[297]
+149+. A rearrangement of taboos is a frequent feature in ceremonies of
puberty and initiation. Certain taboos, no longer needed, are removed
and others are imposed; these latter refer, in the case of boys, to
intercourse with the men and women of the clan or tribe--they are
instructed not to speak to certain persons, and in general they are made
acquainted with the somewhat elaborate social system that prevails in
many early tribes. These taboos are intended to prepare the boys to
understand their position as members of the tribe, responsible for the
maintenance of its customs. The taboos relating to food have arisen from
conditions whose origins belong to a remote and unrecorded past, and
remain obscure.[298]
+150+. When the ceremony of initiation is elaborate and secret, it
becomes mysterious to boys, is looked forward to by them with
apprehension, and appeals to their imagination. Supernatural terrors are
provided by the leaders--noises are heard (made by the bull-roarer or
some similar device), and the report is circulated that the initiate is
in danger of death at the hands of a supernatural being. These methods
testify to the importance attached by early societies to the
introduction of the young into social and political life, and they
furnish an early example of the employment of the supernatural for the
government of the masses. The old men do not believe in their
supernatural machinery, and the boys, after initiation, are let into the
secret.
+151+. _Mutilation_ of the body is a widespread custom in connection
with initiation and arrival at the age of puberty.[299] In most cases
the origin of mutilating customs is obscure. Imitation of the form or
appearance of a sacred animal, embellishment of the initiate, or
consecration of a part of the body to a deity have been suggested as
motives; but there is no clear evidence of such designs. The knocking
out of a tooth may be for convenience in taking food; it seems not to
have religious significance except in so far as all tribal marks become
religiously important.[300] Boring through the septum of the nose is
perhaps for decorative purposes. The cutting of the hair is possibly for
convenience, possibly for dedication to a deity.[301]
+152+. Among the most important of the customs of initiation are those
connected with the organs of generation, excluding, as is remarked
above, complete excision, which belongs to conceptions of religious
asceticism (consecration to a deity, preservation against temptation) in
the higher cults, and is not found among savages.[302] Partial excision
occurs in circumcision, for males, and in similar operations for
females.
+153+. _Circumcision of males._[303] The most widely diffused of such
customs of initiation is the gashing or the complete removal of the
prepuce. It existed in ancient times among the Egyptians, the
Canaanites, and the Hebrews (for the Arabs, the Syrians, and the
Babylonians and Assyrians we have no information), not, so far as the
records go, among the Greeks, Romans, and Hindus. At the present time it
is found among all Moslems and most Jewish communities, throughout
Africa, Australia, Polynesia and Melanesia, and, it is said, in Eastern
Mexico. It is hardly possible to say what its original distribution was,
and whether or not there was a single center of distribution. As to its
origin many theories have been advanced. Its character as initiatory is
not an explanation--all customs of initiation need to have their origins
explained. It may be said at the outset that a usage prevalent in low
tribes and clearly beginning under savage conditions of life must,
probably, have sprung from some simple physical need, not from advanced
scientific or religious conceptions. We may briefly examine the
principal explanations of its origin that have been offered.
+154+. It cannot be regarded as a test of endurance, for it involves no
great suffering, and neither it nor the severer operation of
subincision[304] (practiced in Australia) is ever spoken of as an
official test.
+155+. A hygienic ground is out of the question for early society. The
requisite medical observation is then lacking, and there is no hint of
such a motive in the material bearing on the subject. Circumcision is
employed in modern surgery for certain diseases and as a generally
helpful operation, but such employment appears to be modern and of
limited extent. The exact meaning of Herodotus's statement that the
Egyptians were circumcised for the sake of cleanliness, preferring it to
beauty,[305] is not clear; but in any case so late an idea throws no
light on the beginnings.
+156+. Somewhat more to the point is Crawley's view that the object of
the removal of the prepuce is to get rid of the dangerous emanation from
the physical secretion therewith connected.[306] Such an object would
issue from savage ideas of magic, the secretions of the human body (as
urine and dung) being often supposed to contain the power resident in
all life. But this view, though conceivably correct, is without support
from known facts. There is no trace of fear of the secretion in
question, and the belief in power, when such a belief appears, attaches
rather to the oblated prepuce (which is sometimes preserved as a sort of
charm, or hidden, or swallowed by the boy or by some other person) than
to the secretion. Nor does this theory account for the custom of
subincision.
+157+. As circumcision is often performed shortly before marriage it has
been suggested that its object is to increase procreative power by
preventing phimosis.[307] The opinion that such is its effect, though it
has no scientific support, has been and is held by not a few persons.
Such an object, however, is improbable for low stages of society--it
implies an extent of observation that is not to be assumed for savages;
and there is, besides, the fact that certain tribes (in Australia and
elsewhere) that practice circumcision do not connect the birth of
children with sexual intercourse. In general it is not to be supposed
that savages make well-considered physical preparation for marriage in
the interests of procreation. The choice of mates is determined by
tribal law, but in other respects the individual is generally left free
before marriage to satisfy his appetite--it is instinct that controls
the relations between the sexes.
+158+. There is no clear evidence that the origin of circumcision is to
be traced to religious conceptions. It has been held that it is
connected with the cult of the generative organs (phallic worship).[308]
It is true that a certain sacredness often attached to these organs;
this appears, for example, in the oath taken by laying the hands upon or
under the thigh, as in the story of Abraham.[309] In some parts of
Africa circumcision is directly connected or combined with the worship
of the phallus.[310] But, on the other hand, each of these customs is
found frequently without the other: in India we have phallic worship
without circumcision, in Australia circumcision without phallic worship;
and this separateness of the two may be said to be the rule. The cult of
the phallus seems not to exist among the lowest peoples.
+159+. The view that circumcision is of the nature of a sacrifice or
dedication to a deity, particularly to a deity of fertility, appears to
be derived from late usages in times when more refined ideas have been
attached to early customs. The Phrygian practice of excision was
regarded, probably, as a sacrifice. But elsewhere, in Egypt, Babylonia,
Syria, and Canaan, where the worship of gods and goddesses of fertility
was prominent, we do not find circumcision connected therewith. In the
writings of the Old Testament prophets it is treated as a symbol of
moral purification. Among the lower peoples there is no trace of the
conception of it as a sacrifice. It is not circumcision that makes the
phallus sacred--it is sacred in itself, and all procedures of savage
veneration for the prepuce assume its inherent potency.
+160+. Nor can circumcision be explained as an attenuated survival of
human sacrifice. The practice (in Peru and elsewhere) of drawing blood
from the heads or hands of children on solemn occasions may be a
softening of an old savage custom, and the blood of circumcision is
sacred. But this quality attaches to all blood, and the essential thing
in circumcision is not the blood but the removal of the prepuce.
+161+. The suggestion that the object of detaching and preserving the
foreskin (a vital part of one's self) is to lay up a stock of vital
energy, and thus secure reincarnation for the disembodied spirit,[311]
is putting an afterthought for origin. The existence of the practice in
question is doubtful, and it must have arisen, if it existed, after
circumcision had become an established custom. Savages and other
peoples, when they feel the need of providing for reincarnation,
commonly preserve the bones or the whole body of the deceased.
+162+. _Circumcision and other operations performed on females._
Circumcision of girls is practiced by many African savage tribes (Nandi,
Masai, Mandingos, and others), by Malays and Arabs, Gallas and
Abessinians and others. Introcision appears to be confined to Australia.
Infibulation is practiced in Northeastern Africa and by the Mohammedan
Malays.[312] The effect, and doubtless the purpose, of the first and
second of these operations is to facilitate coition; the object of the
third is to prevent coition until the proper time for it arrives. They
are all connected more or less with initiation or with arrival at the
age of puberty, and they are, naturally, sometimes associated with other
ceremonies.
+163+. _Origin of circumcision._ The preceding review may be taken to
make it probable that the origin of circumcision is not to be referred
to reflection or to religious ideas. We must look for a cruder motive,
and several considerations point to the desire to facilitate coition as
the starting-point of the custom (so also R. F. Burton). Reports from
all over the savage world testify to the prominence of sexual
intercourse in the lower forms of human life. Folk-stories are full of
coarse details of the practice. Popular festivals are often
characterized by gross license. To lend a wife to a guest is in many
places a recognized rule of hospitality.[313] In all this there is
nothing immoral--it is permitted by the existing law and is in accord
with the current ideas of propriety. Early man seems in this regard to
have obeyed his animal appetite without reflection. This form of
pleasure occupied (and occupies) a great part of his life, and it was
not unnatural that he should seek to remove all hindrances from it. It
is quite conceivable that early observation led him to regard the
prepuce as a hindrance.
+164+. About the motives of early man in the adoption of these customs
of excision we have, of course, no direct information; but some later
usages favor the explanation suggested above. The operations performed
on females are obviously dictated by considerations of convenience or
propriety in coition. Various means are adopted of increasing the
pleasure of sexual intercourse (in Indonesia and elsewhere).[314] These
procedures are purely animal, nonmoral, and without ulterior design;
there is no thought of progeny or, in general, of preparation for
marriage--the frame of mind is appropriate to the lowest grade of life.
+165+. In the course of time, however, all such customs tend to become
sanctified and to take on new meanings. When the importance of
circumcision was generally felt, it was natural that it should be
performed at puberty and at initiation.[315] It would thus come to be
regarded as an introduction to the tribal life--not as preparation, but
as a custom established by unwritten law. Its origination would be put
far back in the past and sometimes ascribed to supernatural
personages--the Central Australians refer it to the mythical ancestors,
the later Jews to the command of the national deity issued to the
legendary or mythical ancestor Abram.[316] Under certain circumstances
it might become a tribal mark; the Hebrews thus distinguished themselves
from their neighbors the Philistines, and "uncircumcised" was a term of
reproach.[317]
+166+. Apart from its use in initiation the cultic rôle of circumcision
has been small. It does not appear as an element in the worship of any
deity, neither in that of such gods as Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, Attis,
nor in that of any other. It is not represented in ancient records as a
devotion of one's self or an assimilation of one's self or of a child to
the tribal or national god. Its performance is generally a religious
duty, as is true of every established custom, but this fact throws no
light on its origin. The prepuce is sometimes treated as an amulet or in
general as a magically powerful or sacred thing; but many other parts of
the body (hair, finger nails, etc.) are so treated.
+167+. In the higher religions circumcision is generally viewed as an
act of physical purification or as a symbol of moral purification. The
former view, perhaps, prevailed in Egypt, though on this point the
records appear to be silent.[318] The latter view is that of the Old
Testament prophets and the New Testament.[319] It has now ceased to
have any effective religious significance, and is retained in some
communities merely as a national social tradition or as an ancient
divine ordinance.
+168+. The origin of circumcision suggested above seems to account
sufficiently for all usages and ideas connected with it; the possibility
of several different origins need not be denied, but the practical
identity of the customs in all parts of the world in which the
institution exists, makes the simpler hypothesis the more probable.
+169+. Certain features of ceremonies of initiation appear to be
designed to secure _union_ between the initiate and the clan. Such, for
example, is the custom found in New South Wales of the initiate's
drinking the blood of his companions. In other cases there is a union
with other parts of the body. Such usages arise from the idea that
physical union is essential to social union--a conception which
elsewhere takes the form of blood-brotherhood.[320] This is a scientific
rather than a religious idea, depending on the belief that the body is
an essential part of the personality.[321]
+170+. Another noteworthy custom is the feigned _resurrection_ of the
initiate. In Australia the women are informed that the youth during the
process of initiation is slain by a supernatural being and brought to
life again. Elsewhere the initiate is supposed to forget his former life
completely and to be obliged, on emerging from the ceremony, to recover
slowly his knowledge of things.[322] The origin of this custom is
obscure, but it appears to express the idea that the youth now enters on
an entirely new life, and having come into new relations and
responsibilities, is to forget what he was and what he did before--a
profound conception which has been taken up into some of the most
advanced religions (as, for example, in baptism and confirmation).
+171+. In certain half-civilized tribes a higher type of initiatory
ceremonies is found. The youth must perform a lonely vigil, going into
the forest or some other solitary place, and there wait for the vision
or revelation of a supernatural protector.[323] This procedure is
connected with the advance of individualism, the old totemic or other
relation being superseded by an individual relation to a guardian
spirit. The development of this higher religious conception will be
discussed below.[324]
+172+. Finally, instruction forms a part of most initiation ceremonies.
The youth is told the secrets of the tribe, and is thus inducted into
its higher and more intimate life.[325] This confiding of tribal secrets
(the tradition and the knowledge of sacred things) to the young man
about to enter on public life is a political necessity, but in the
nature of the case connects itself with religious conceptions.
Generally, also, moral instruction is given.[326] The ethical code is
usually good so far as intratribal relations are concerned (foreigners
are not considered): the youth is told that he must obey his elders,
respect the rights of his fellow clansmen, and especially be careful in
his attitude toward women. In some cases a supernatural sanction for
such instructions is added; it is impressed on the youth that some
supernatural being will punish him if he disobeys these instructions.
The moral code in question is one which springs naturally and
necessarily from the relations of men in society, and the supernatural
sanction affixed to it is a consequence of the belief that the tribal
deity is the lord of the tribe and the natural and most effective
guardian of its rights.
+173+. From this brief statement of initiation ceremonies it appears
that they rest substantially on social ideas and necessities. Religion
enters into them, as is pointed out above, when a superhuman being is
represented as the patron of the clan and the protector of its
ceremonies, or when the moral teaching is referred to such a being, or
when the initiate seeks a supernatural patron with whom to enter into
relations, or when, as in some North Australian tribes, the
supernatural being is believed to be angry at the omission of the
ceremonies. This last case might recall the displeasure of the Greek
gods when sacrifices to them were withheld or diminished; but more
probably it involves simply the belief that all important ceremonies and
affairs are under the control of the being in question, who demands
obedience to him as lord.
+174+. In later stages of savage or semicivilized life the clan
constitution as a rule has been succeeded by the formation of secret
societies, and then initiation into a society takes the place of the old
initiation into the clan.[327] Initiation into such a society is often
elaborate and solemn--it is carried out in great detail in many
Polynesian, African, and North American tribes--but its general features
are the same as those of the earlier procedure. Savage societies and
civilized mysteries all have their secrets and their moral instruction,
and they all represent an advance in individualism. Still later the
church takes the place of the mysteries, and here the process of
initiation, though more refined, is still in essence identical with the
earlier forms.[328] Naturally in the increasing refinement of the
ceremonies there is an increasing prominence of the supernatural
element, for the reason that the special care of religion recedes more
and more from general society (which tends to occupy itself with civil
and political questions solely), and is intrusted to special voluntary
organizations.
MARRIAGE CEREMONIES
+175+. Marriage is so important a fact for the communal life that it has
always been regulated to a greater or less extent by the community,
which defines its methods, rights, and obligations.[329]
+176+. In the lowest known tribes the ceremony of marriage is simple:
the woman is given to the man by the constituted authorities--that is,
the relatives of the parties and the elders of the clan or tribe--and by
that act the two become husband and wife. At this stage of social growth
the stress is laid on preparation for marriage in the ceremonies of
puberty and initiation. The members of the tribe being thus prepared for
union, marriage is merely the assignment of a given woman to a given
man. The wife is selected according to established custom; that is, in
accordance with customary law, which in most cases defines precisely
from what group of the tribe the woman proper to a given man shall be
taken.
+177+. Though the origin of this law goes back to a remote antiquity and
is involved in obscurity, it seems to have been originally simply a
matter of social agreement. It came to be, however, connected with
systems of totemism and taboo, and thus to have acquired a certain
religious character; and, as being important for the tribal life, it
would come under the control of the tribal god when there is such a god.
A similar remark may be made in regard to exogamy. Why marriage between
members of the same tribe, clan, or phratry should be prohibited is not
clear.[330] The rule arose, doubtless, from some social feature of
ancient society, and only later was involved in the general religious
atmosphere.[331]
+178+. Gradually greater freedom of choice was allowed men and women,
and the ceremonies of marriage became more elaborate. Certain of these
seem intended to secure the complete union of husband and wife; such,
for example, are the customs of eating together, of the inoculation of
each party with the blood of the other or with some bodily part of the
other, and the giving of presents by each to the other. All these rest
on the conception that union between two persons is effected by each
taking something that belongs to the other; each thus acquires something
of the other's personality. This is a scientific biological idea; and
though it had its origin doubtless in some very crude notion of life, it
has maintained itself in one form or another up to the present time.
+179+. Among many communities the custom is for the bride to hide
herself and to be pursued and taken by the bridegroom. This custom,
again, is in its origin obscure. Almost certainly it does not point to
original marriage by capture, for of such a customary method of
acquiring wives there is no trace in savage communities (though in
particular cases women may have been captured and married). Possibly it
reflects merely the coyness of the woman; or it may be simply a festive
procedure, an occasion of fun for the young people, as indeed a wedding
now commonly is. In many cases, however, it appears to represent the
transference of the woman from her own tribe to that of her husband.
Though she was thus transferred bodily and brought into civic relations
with the latter, certain taboos, arising from her original tribal
position, often clung to her. The right to dwell in her own house in her
own tribe, and to receive there her foreign husband, belongs to a
relatively late social stage.[332]
+180+. The defloration of the woman before marriage is rather a
preparation for marriage than a marriage ceremony; or it may represent
the social right of the elders of the tribe and the relatives of the
bride to the possession of her, perhaps symbolizing her entrance into a
family.[333] The hypothesis that such a custom points to primitive
promiscuity is ably combated by Westermarck, and is involved in great
difficulties; it is, however, maintained by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen
in their two works on Australian tribes, whose customs seem to them to
be inexplicable except on the supposition of primitive promiscuity, in
spite of Westermarck's arguments; and in support of this view the sexual
license granted in many tribes to unmarried girls may be adduced.
However this may be, the custom in question appears to be civil and not
religious. The same thing is true of the ceremonies in which bridegroom
and bride are hailed as king and queen--a very natural form of
merrymaking.[334] The purchase of wives is probably a simple commercial
act.
+181+. The marriage ceremonies mentioned above appear to be all social
in their nature. Into them the supernatural is introduced in proportion
as the conception of a divine control of society obtains.[335] On the
other hand, those customs which are intended to ward off evil spirits or
general evil influences from the married pair are religious or magical.
+182+. Mr. Crawley[336] holds that all marriage ceremonies are
essentially religious, as involving the conception of something strange
and dangerous in the contact of men and women; they are intended, he
thinks, to neutralize dangers by reversing taboos and by assimilating
the two persons each to the other, the dangers in question being not
merely distinctly sexual but those of contact in general. Though he
carries his application of the principle of taboo too far, he has
collected a large number of examples which illustrate the separation
between the sexes in early society, and the taboos which hold in their
social intercourse. The separation of the sexes in early times seems to
have resulted largely from the difference in their occupations and the
consequent isolation of each from the other. Possibly one result of this
isolation was that each saw something strange and wonderful in the
other; but it must be remembered that the taboo laws were made by men
and are therefore directed particularly against women. The belief in the
sacredness of life would act more particularly on the ideas concerning
birth.
+183+. Among many half-civilized peoples and generally in Christian
communities marriage is regarded both as a religious ceremony and as a
civil contract, and is controlled in the one case by the religious
authorities, in the other case by the civil authorities. In Mohammedan
communities marriage is simply a civil contract, but religious
ceremonies are often connected with it.[337]
CEREMONIES AT BIRTH
+184+. It is possible that early man was so impressed by the fact of
life and the wonderfulness of the birth of a human being that he
included this latter fact in the sphere of the supernatural, and that
the taboos connected with it arose from his dread of supernatural,
dangerous influence.[338] Many of the ceremonies connected with the
birth of a child may be explained easily as resulting from the natural
care for mother and child. Both of these are, in the modern sense of the
term, sacred; and even in very early times ordinary humane feeling would
seek to protect them from injury.[339]
+185+. Thus the curious custom of the couvade,[340] in which the
husband, and not the wife, goes to bed on the birth of the child, may be
an effort on the man's part to share in the labor of the occasion, since
he has to take care of the child; or it may be primarily an economical
procedure--the woman must go out to work and the man must therefore stay
at home to take care of the house and the child. But probably something
more than this is involved--there seems to be fear of supernatural
danger. It is not necessary to suppose that the man takes the woman's
place in order to attract to himself the malevolent spirits that figure
on such occasions; but the belief in the intimate vital connection
between father and child may induce the desire to guard the former
against injury. Similar precautions are taken in regard to the
mother;[341] some of these have a natural basis in her physical
condition which necessitates a certain carefulness. Where such customs
connected with birth prevail, departure from them is thought to be
dangerous or fatal; but such a feeling exists in regard to all social
customs.
+186+. The belief that the newborn child is the reincarnation of an
ancestor is scientific rather than religious. In Central Australia every
child is held to be the reincarnation of a spirit ancestor; a similar
idea is found in North America, in Western Africa, and in Orissa.[342]
In searching for the cause of birth it is not unnatural that it should
be ascribed to a preëxistent being who desires to enter again into human
life.[343]
+187+. The ablutions or sprinklings of water practiced in some places
appear to be merely the expression of welcome into the community.[344]
The choice of a name for the child is frequently connected with
religious ideas. Among many tribes the custom is to seek for some hint
from the child itself, as by repeating a number of names and observing
which of them the child seems to recognize or accept. The help of a
deity is sometimes invoked, as in Borneo, where a pig is killed and its
spirit thus sent as messenger to a particular god, who is asked to
approve.[345] In Samoa a tutelary spirit is sometimes chosen for the
infant;[346] during childhood the child bears the name of a god, who
seems to be regarded as its protector. The identification of person and
name, common among savages, is also scientific rather than religious. At
the entrance into a secret society the novitiate may receive a new
name.[347] The adoption of a child's name by the father (teknonymy) may
be simply the expression of paternal pride, or possibly it is the
expression of the father's protection or of his identification with the
child. The adoption of a secret name that involves the man's personality
and is therefore to be withheld from enemies belongs to adult life.
+188+. The taboos imposed on the mother during pregnancy and after the
birth of the child, often numerous and oppressive, are derived from
local conditions, and are generally regulated by religion. With the
growth of refinement they tend to disappear, while the attendant
ceremonies take on a moral and spiritual character, culminating, in the
great religions, in the conception that the babe, as a child of God, is
to be taken into the religious fellowship of the community and trained
for a good life.
BURIAL CEREMONIES[348]
+189+. Among savage peoples grief for the dead expresses itself in a
variety of violent ceremonies of mourning, such as wailing, and cutting
and gashing the body. These are partly expressions of natural
sorrow,[349] but may be intended in part to propitiate the dead, who
thus sees that honor is paid him.
+190+. The belief that the dead person is powerful expresses itself in
the care with which the grave is guarded, it being held that injury to
the grave is an injury to the dead, and likely, therefore, to excite his
anger. Further, savage science as a rule does not recognize natural
causes of death. It regards death as murder, and there is accordingly
search for the murderer, often by protracted ceremonies with the aid of
a magician. The well-being of the dead man is provided for by placing
food and drink, utensils and weapons in his grave, that he may have the
means of enjoyment in the other world.[350] To assure him proper service
his wives and slaves are sometimes slain, that their souls may accompany
his; but this custom is not found among the lowest tribes--it belongs
to a relatively advanced conception of the other life.[351] In many
cases blood is sprinkled on the ground near the grave of the corpse, as
in Borneo (the blood of a fowl);[352] the blood may be meant to be food
for the dead, or its supernatural power may be supposed to guard against
injury from him to the living.
+191+. A ban of silence is often imposed--the name of the dead person is
not to be mentioned except by certain privileged men;[353] among certain
North American tribes on the death of a child there is a ban of silence
on the father.[354] The reason for this prohibition of the dead person's
name is not certain. It may be respect for him, or it may be merely an
expression of sorrow at his loss. More probably, however, it comes from
the belief that the dead man is powerful and may be hurtful, and that
therefore his name, which is identical with himself, is dangerous.[355]
+192+. In the cases mentioned above, the dead person is generally
regarded as dangerous--to be feared and appeased. Among some tribes,
indeed, precautions are taken to prevent his coming back to his house.
Very generally the presence of the corpse is held to cause a certain
pollution.[356] There is, however, another side to the attitude toward
the dead. As he is regarded as powerful, parts of his body are preserved
as amulets; wives wear parts of the bones of the dead husband, and the
skulls of the deceased are supposed to be especially powerful, in some
cases to give oracular responses.[357]
+193+. In general, early burial ceremonies appear to be designed to
assure the comfort of the deceased in the other world with a view to
securing his friendship and aid for the members of his family and clan
in this life. As he is of the nature of a divine person, the ceremonies
in question are naturally religious. Socially they are effective in
binding the members of a community together--a large sense of solidarity
is produced by the communal recognition of kinship with the dead.
Special stress is laid on this conception in China.[358]
CEREMONIES OF PURIFICATION AND CONSECRATION[359]
+194+. The essence of religion is a helpful relation to the
supernatural, but in early stages of culture man frequently finds
himself exposed to conditions, either resident in himself or induced
from without, that destroy this relation and disqualify him for the
performance of sacred acts. The result is a state of ritual impurity or
uncleanness, conceived of at first as purely physical, but tending to
become gradually moralized. The removal of the disqualification
constitutes purification; the positive preparation for the performance
of a sacred act constitutes consecration; the two procedures represent
two sides of the same idea, and they are related in a general way to
ceremonies of initiation and atonement.
+195+. The occasions for purification are numerous, including all
contacts or possibilities of contact with dangerous (sacred) things, and
thus often coinciding with taboo conceptions.[360] All acts connected
with procreation and birth; contact with a corpse, or with a sacred
person or thing, or with an object belonging to a sacred person; return
from a journey (in the course of which the traveler may have been
exposed to some injurious supernatural influence)[361]--such things as
these call for cleansing. Inanimate objects also, especially such as are
connected with religious worship (altars, vessels, and instruments),
require purification; these are thought of originally as having souls,
and as incurring defilement by the transmission of neighboring
impurities. A moral conception may seem to be involved in the
requirement of purification after the committal of a murder; certainly,
in the more advanced stages of society, the feeling in this case is
moral, but it is doubtful whether in earlier stages anything more is
involved than the recognition of ritual defilement by contact with
blood; homicide, as a social crime, is dealt with by the civil law, and
is generally excluded from the benefits of acts of ritual
atonement,[362] and so also all violations of tribal law.
+196+. The religious preparation for the performance of a sacred act
usually concerns official persons (see below, under _consecration_,
§ 202), but sometimes involves the purification of others. The largest
act of purification is that which includes a whole community or
people;[363] the social mass is then regarded as a unit, and there is no
reason, according to early thought, why such a mass should not, by a
ceremony, be freed from all ritual disabilities, the idea of moral
purification being, of course, absent or latent. Finally, ritual
purification is sometimes a preliminary to pleasing and influencing the
deity, who, as the most sacred and most dangerous object, must be
approached with the greatest precautions.[364]
+197+. The various methods of purification may be included under a few
heads, the principal of which are: the application of water (bathing,
sprinkling); the application of sand, dung, bark, and similar things;
exposure to fire; incantation and sacrifice; and fasting. In all these
cases the virtue lies either in a sacred thing or act that has the
quality of dissipating the mysterious defilement present, or in the
removal or avoidance of the defiling thing; it is frequently required
that the application of the cleansing substance be made by a sacred
person, whose character adds potency to the act. The use of water for
ceremonial purification has been, and is, practiced all over the world,
alike by savages and by civilized peoples:[365] the newborn child,
ritually impure by reason of the mystery of birth, is bathed or
sprinkled; before the performance of a sacred act the officiator must
bathe;[366] numerous ablutions are prescribed in the Old Testament;
similar usages obtained among the Egyptians, the Hindus and the
Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, the Chinese and the Japanese, the
Mexicans and the Peruvians, and other peoples.
+198+. These usages have arisen doubtless from observation of the
natural cleansing power of water and other things in conjunction with
the belief in their sacred character. Adopted by the higher religions
they have been more or less spiritualized by the infusion into them of
ideas of penitence, forgiveness of sin, and regeneration--so in India,
Persia, and Peru. Christian baptism seems to have come from Jewish
proselyte baptism:[367] the proselyte was by immersion in water
symbolically cleansed from sin and introduced into a new religious life,
and such was the significance of the rite practiced by John, though his
surname "the Baptizer" probably indicates that he gave it a broader and
deeper meaning; he overstepped national bounds, receiving Jews as well
as non-Jews.[368] Moslem ritual requires ablutions before the stated
prayers and at certain other times; every mosque has its tank of water
for the convenience of worshipers.
+199+. Where water cannot be had, usage in Islam and in some forms of
Christianity permits the substitution of sand or dust--both thought to
have cleansing power. Similar power is ascribed to urine and dung of
domestic animals.[369] Such usages may originate in a belief in the
physical cleansing efficacy of those substances (the Toda women employ
dried buffalo's dung in household cleaning), or they may be supposed to
derive their efficacy from the sacredness of the animals. The Todas also
make much use of a certain bark for purification.[370] The origin of
these customs is obscure; they go back to times and conditions for a
knowledge of which data are lacking--possibly to the early conception of
the sacredness of all natural objects.[371] It is less difficult to
explain the belief in the purifying power of fire. Its splendor and
utility caused it to be regarded as a god in India and Persia, and if it
was also destructive, it often consumed hurtful things. It was sacred,
and might, therefore, be a remover of impurity. Its employment for this
purpose is, however, not frequent;[372] it is oftener used to consume
corpses and other unclean things.
+200+. In the more developed religious rituals, sacrifice is a common
accompaniment of purifying ceremonies, the object being to procure the
forgiveness of the deity for the offense held to be involved in the
impurity; the conception of sin in such cases is sometimes physical,
sometimes moral, and the ceremony is always nearly allied to one of
atonement. In the Hebrew ritual a human bodily impurity and the
apparatus of the temple alike require a sin-offering.[373] In India the
bath of purification stood in close relation with a sacrifice.[374] In
Greece the two were associated in the cults of Apollo and Dionysos and
in ordinary worship in general.[375] Thus, men and gods take part in the
process of freeing the worshiper from the impure elements of life: the
man obeys the law of the ritual, and the god receives him into
association with the divine.
+201+. Ancient examples of the purification of a whole community are the
Hebrew ceremony on the annual day of atonement[376] (which is called in
the text a purification), and the Roman Lupercalia.[377] An elaborate
festival of this sort was observed every year by the Creeks;[378] it
lasted eight days, included various cathartic observances, and ended in
a physical and moral reconstruction of the nation. Among the Todas a
similar ceremony for the purification of a village exists.[379]
+202+. Ceremonies of _consecration_ are similar to those of
purification, only usually more formal and solemn. Entrance on a sacred
function, which involves special direct contact with a deity, requires
special preparation. Even before a simple act of prayer it was felt to
be proper to cleanse one's person;[380] how much more important was
bodily cleansing and other preparation for one who was chosen by the
community to represent it in its relations with the supernatural Powers!
The preparation for such an office is in earlier times ritual and
external, and becomes gradually moralized. Magicians must submit to
purificatory restrictions, and prove their fitness by various
deeds.[381] Initiation into secret societies (whose members had a
certain official character) was, and is, often elaborate.[382] Priests
in Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, Canaan, India, Greece and Rome, were
subject to conditions of purity, always physical and sometimes moral,
that secured a daily consecration.
+203+. Methods of initial consecration were, probably, of the general
character of those prescribed in the Hebrew ritual law.[383] Authority
is often conferred by a high official, whose consecrating act is then
generally regarded as essential.[384] The priest becomes invested with a
quasi-divine authority. The consecration of kings follows the same
general lines as that of priests. In both cases the desire is to have
some visible form of the deity whose relations with men may be felt to
be direct.
+204+. No purificatory and consecrative usage has been more widespread
than fasting.[385] It is found throughout religious history in the
lowest tribes and in the most highly civilized peoples, has been
practiced in a great variety of circumstances, and has been invested
with a special sanctity and efficacy. It has been regarded as necessary
before partaking of sacred food, before the performance of a sacred
ceremony, after a death, in the presence of a great occurrence (as an
eclipse or a thunderstorm, regarded as supernatural), as a part of the
training of magicians, as a preparation for the search after a guardian
spirit, as a part of ceremonies in honor of gods, as an act of
abstinence in connection with a calamity (or in general as a self-denial
proper to sinful man and pleasing to the deity as an act of humility),
and, finally, as a retirement from fleshly conditions in preparation for
spiritual exercises.
+205+. A great number of explanations of the origin of the custom have
been proposed, and it is obvious that the particular usages come from
somewhat different conceptions. Apparently, however, all these usages of
purification by fasting go back to the idea that the body, which is
identified with the human personality, is in its ordinary state
nonsacred[386] and therefore unfit for the performance of a sacred act,
and that it is rendered especially unfit by contact with a ritually
unclean thing. Ordinary food, nourishing the body and becoming a part of
it, thus maintains it in its nonsacred character. This point of view
appears in the practice of administering a purge as a means of
ceremonial purification; the Nandi, for example, give a purge to a girl
before her circumcision, and in some cases to any one who has touched a
taboo object.[387]
+206+. The essence of fasting is the avoiding of defiling food; this
conception may be traced in all instances of the practice, though it may
be in some cases reënforced by other considerations, and is sometimes
spiritualized. The efficacy of sacred food would be destroyed if it
came in contact with common food, or it might itself become
destructive.[388] A sacred ceremony demands a sacred performer, one who
has not taken a defiling substance into his being. Death diffuses
defilement, and makes the food in the house of the deceased dangerous.
+207+. Other ideas may here come in: abstinence may be a sign or a
result of grief, though this does not seem likely except in refined
communities; or its ground may be fear of eating the ghost, which is
believed to be hovering about the dead body;[389] it is hardly the
result of "making excessive provision for the dead."[390] Special
communion with supernatural Powers, by magicians and others (including
conditions of ecstasy), requires ritual purity, and similar preparation
of the body is proper when it is desired to avert the anger of a deity
or to do him honor.
+208+. Once established, the custom has maintained itself in the higher
religions[391] in connection with more or less definite spiritual aims
and with other exercises, particularly prayer. The dominant feeling is
then self-denial, at the bottom of which the conviction appears to be
that the deity demands complete subordination in the worshiper and is
displeased when he asserts himself. This conviction, which is a
fundamental element in all religious thought, pertains properly only to
inward experience, but naturally tends to annex nonspiritual acts of
self-abnegation like fasting. As a moral discipline, a training in the
government of self and a preparation for enduring times of real
privation, fasting is regarded by many persons as valuable. Its power to
isolate the man from the world and thus minister to religious communion
differs in different persons. The Islamic fast of Ramadan is said to
produce irritability and lead to quarrels. In general, fasting tends to
induce a nonnatural condition of body and mind, favorable to ecstatic
experiences, and favorable or not, as the case may be, to a genuine
religious life.[392]
+209+. As with other religious observances, so with purificatory
ceremonies the tendency is to mass and organize them--they are made to
occur at regular times and under fixed conditions, as in the Christian
Lent, the Moslem Ramadan, and the Creek Busk. Such arrangements give
orderliness to outward religious life, but are likely to diminish or
destroy spontaneity in observances. Ceremonies of this sort have great
vitality--they are handed on from age to age, the later religion
adopting and modifying and reinterpreting the forms of the earlier. In
such cases the lower conceptions survive in the minds of the masses, and
are moralized by the more spiritual natures, and their influence on
society is therefore of a mixed character.
CEREMONIES CONNECTED WITH SEASONS AND PERIODS
+210+. Some of these have already been mentioned under "Economic
Ceremonies." We may here take a general survey of festivals the times of
whose celebration are determined by the divisions of the year, and thus
constitute calendars.[393] The earliest calendars appear to have been
fixed by observation of the times when it was proper to gather the
various sorts of food--to hunt animals and gather grubs and plants (as
in Central Australia), or this or that species of fish (as in Hawaii).
The year was thus divided according to the necessities of life--seasons
were fixed by experience.
+211+. At a comparatively early period, however, the phases of the moon
attracted attention, and became the basis of calendars. Lunar calendars
are found among savage and half-civilized tribes of various grades of
culture in Polynesia, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, and were retained
for a time by most ancient civilized peoples. Later observation included
the movements of the sun; it is only among advanced peoples that
festivals are connected with equinoxes and solstices. The more
scientific calendars gradually absorbed the earlier, and it is probable
that simple ceremonies that were originally neither agricultural nor
astral were taken up into the later systems and reinterpreted.[394]
+212+. When, from observation of climatic conditions and lunar changes,
a general division of the year came to be made into spring, summer,
autumn, and winter, or several similar seasons (sometimes with
intermediate points), festivals gradually arranged themselves in the
various periods. The terms designating the four seasons are, however,
somewhat indefinite in regard to position in the year and duration,
varying in these points in different places, and it is better, in
considering agricultural ceremonies, to make a general division into
times of planting and times of harvesting. It is not certain whether
lunar or agricultural festivals came first in the development of public
religious life, but as (omitting the lowest tribes) the former are found
where there is no well-organized agricultural system, we may begin with
them.
+213+. The new moon, as marking the beginning of the month, and other
phases of the moon are frequently accompanied by observances of a more
or less definitely religious character, with great variety of detail in
different places. The Nandi[395] have two seasons (the wet and the dry)
and twelve months named from meteorological phenomena, and each day in
the month receives a name from the attendant phase of the moon. The
great ceremonies are conducted in the period of the waxing of the moon,
and its waning is an occasion of mourning. The new moon is greeted with
a prayer that it may bring blessing. A similar custom exists among the
Masai.[396] On the other hand the Todas, though the times of their
festivals are all regulated by the moon, appear to have no lunar
ceremony;[397] if there was ever any such ceremony, it has been absorbed
by the buffalo cult. The South American Arawaks have six ceremonies in
the year that seem to be fixed by the appearance of the new moon.[398]
The Hebrew first day of the (lunar) month was observed with special
religious ceremonies.[399] The full moon, the last phase of growth, is
less prominent; where it marks a festival day it is generally in
connection with an agricultural event, as among the non-Aryan Bhils of
India[400] and in the later Hebrew calendar;[401] in both these cases
the observance occurs only once in the year.
+214+. The new moon of the first month marks the beginning of the year,
and new year's day is celebrated, particularly in the more advanced
communities, with special observances. The Hindu _pongol_ and similar
festivals are seasons of merriment, with giving of presents, and
religious exercises.[402] Though these occasions now include
agricultural epochs, we may recognize in them an interest in the
beginning of a new era in life. A like character attaches to the
celebration of the Japanese new year's day.[403] Of Assyrian observances
of the day little is known, but at Babylon it was celebrated with great
pomp, and with it was connected the conception of the determination of
human fortunes for the year by Marduk, the chief deity of the city.[404]
The late Old Testament ritual makes it a taboo day (first day of the
seventh month, September-October); no servile work is to be done,
trumpets are to be blown (apparently to mark its solemnity), and a
special sacrifice is to be offered;[405] in post-Biblical times the
feature of the divine assignment of fates (probably adopted from the
Babylonians) appears. The old Roman religious year began with the
kalends of March, when the sacred fire of Vesta was renewed, a procedure
obviously intended to introduce a new era; on the later civil new year's
day (kalends of January) presents were exchanged,[406] a custom
everywhere relatively late, a feature in the gradual secularization of
ceremonies.
+215+. Solar festivals, as such, are less prominent than the lunar in
religious ritual. Though the sun was a great god widely worshiped, it
was little used in the construction of early calendars. Primitive
astronomy knew hardly anything of solstices and equinoxes, and where
these are noted in the more advanced rituals, they appear to be
attachments to observances founded on other considerations--so the Roman
Saturnalia, celebrated near the winter solstice, and apparently the
plebeian festival of the summer solstice attached to the worship of
Fortuna; and the same thing is probably true of the Semitic and Greek
festivals that occurred near the equinoxes and solstices.[407]
+216+. Elaborate solstitial ceremonies are practiced by the North
American Pueblos.[408] A well-developed solar system of festivals
existed in Peru, where the sun was the central object of worship;
equinoxes and solstices were observed with great ceremonies, and
especially at the summer solstice the rising of the sun was hailed with
popular rejoicing as a sign that the favor of the deity would be
extended to the nation.[409] Similar ceremonies may have existed in
Mexico and elsewhere, but in general, as is remarked above, the
astronomical feature at solar epochs yielded to other associations.
Occasional festivals occur in connection with the worship of stars
(especially the morning star);[410] the Pleiades are objects of
observation among some low tribes, and in some cases (Society Islands,
Tahiti, Hawaii, New Zealand) the year began with the rising of these
stars, but apparently no festivals are dedicated to them.[411] In the
later theistic development various deities are brought into connection
with heavenly bodies, and their cults absorb earlier observances.[412]
+217+. Socially the agricultural festivals are the most important of the
early festival ceremonies;[413] they unite the people in public
observances, thus furthering the communal life, and they satisfy the
popular demand for amusement. Doubtless under any social conditions
gatherings for merrymaking would have arisen, but, by reason of the
constitution of early society, they necessarily assume a religious
character. Whether for planting or for reaping, the local god must be
considered; it is he whose aid must be invoked for coming crops, and he
must be thanked for successful seasons. The festivals occur at various
times in the year among various peoples, but the tone of merriment is
the predominant one--it is only in a few cases that a touch of
seriousness or sadness is found. Early festal calendars are largely
agricultural. In Greece, Rome, and Peru there was a succession of
festivals, connected with planting and reaping, running substantially
through the year; other ceremonies, of course, stood side by side with
them, but these were relatively few.
+218+. Joyous festivals occur especially at the time of the ripening of
crops and harvest. The old Canaanite autumn feasts, adopted by the
Hebrews, were seasons of good cheer.[414] In Greece the Panathenæa fell
in July-August, the Thesmophoria in October, and the Anthesteria in
February,--all agricultural, with joyous features;[415] of the similar
Roman festivals the Feriæ Latinæ fell in April, the Feriæ Jovi in
August, the Saturnalia in December, and with these should perhaps be
included the Ambarvalia (in May) and the festival of the horse sacrifice
(in October).[416] Other ceremonies of this nature occur in India, New
Zealand, Torres Straits islands, and in the old Peruvian cult.
+219+. Popular festivities easily pass into license; examples are the
Roman Saturnalia and the Hindu Holi[417]; the harvest festival of the
Hos of Northeastern India is a debauch,[418] and with it is connected
the expulsion of evil spirits--an example of the coalescence of
festivals. A peculiar feature in certain of these ceremonies is the
exchange of places between masters and servants; this abandonment of
ordinary social distinctions is an expression of the desire for freedom
from all restraints, and is found in carnivals generally (in the
Saturnalia and elsewhere).[419]
+220+. Ceremonies of a serious character occur in connection with the
eating of the first fruits of the year. In developed cults (as in the
Hebrew) the deity is recognized as the giver by the presentation of a
portion of the new crop.[420] In very early cults there are other
procedures, the origin and significance of which are not always clear.
So far as the ceremonial eating, a preliminary to general use, is
concerned, this may be understood as a recognition, more or less
distinct, of some supernatural Power to whom (or to which) the supply of
food is due. The obscurest form of such recognition is found among the
Australian Arunta.[421] The Nandi practice is clearer--the god is
invoked to bless the grain.[422] In the Creek Puskita (Busk) there is
perhaps a worship of the sun as the source of fertility.[423] Probably
the element of recognition of extrahuman power (the object being to
secure its favor) is to be found in all first-fruits ceremonies. A
natural result of this recognition is that it is unlawful (that is,
dangerous) to partake of the new food till it has been properly offered
to the deity. The ceremonial features (such as the choice of the persons
to make the offering) are simply the carrying over of general social
arrangements into religious observances--the ministrant is the father of
the family, or the chief of the tribe, or the priest or other elected
person, according to the particular local customs.
+221+. The sadness or gloom that sometimes attaches to these ceremonies
has been variously explained, and is due doubtless to various orders of
ideas; it comes probably from the coalescence of other cults with the
agricultural cults proper. The remembrance of ancestors is not unnatural
at such a time, and sorrow may be expressed for their death; such is
perhaps the case in the Nandi usage mentioned above--the women
sorrowfully take home baskets of elusine grain, and the bits that drop
in the house are left to the souls of the deceased. Sorrow appears also
in other agricultural seasons, as in the Roman Vestalia (in June) and
the Greek Thesmophoria (in the autumn), in which cases more likely it is
connected with the fear of evil influences.[424] So the great tribal
purification of the Creeks, at the beginning of a new year, naturally
coincides with the gathering of the new crop.
+222+. A further extension of the conception of the sacredness of food
(whether or not of the first eating) appears in the Mexican custom (in
May and December) of making dough images of gods, the eating of which
sanctifies the worshiper;[425] here the god dwells in the bread of which
he is the giver.
+223+. In addition to the astral and agricultural festivals above
described there has been the observance of long periods to which a
religious significance was sometimes attached. The Egyptian Sothis
period[426] (of 1461 years), the Greek period of eight years
(oktaeteris), and the Mexican period of fifty-two years were
calendary--attempts to harmonize the lunar and solar years; in Mexico
the new cycle introduced a new religious era--a great ceremony was held
in which domestic fires were rekindled from the sacred fires. The Hebrew
jubilee period (of fifty years), apparently a late development from the
sabbatical year, was intended, among other things, to maintain the
division of landed property among the people--all alienated land was to
return finally to its original owner--participation in the blessings
bestowed by the national deity being conditioned on having a share in
the land, of which he was held to be the proprietor; the proposed
arrangement turned out, however, owing to changed social conditions, to
be impracticable.
+224+. It thus appears that ceremonies of various sorts have played a
very important part in religious life. They have been the most popularly
effective presentation of religious ideas, and they have preserved for
us religious conceptions that without them would have remained unknown.
Their social character has insured their persistence[427]--ceremonies of
to-day contain features that go back to the earliest known stratum of
organized religious life. While the motives that underlie them (desire
to propitiate supernatural Powers, demand for an objective presentation
of ideas, and love of amusement) are the same throughout the world,
their forms reflect the various climatic, economic, and general cultural
conditions of clans, tribes, and nations. They acquire consistency with
the organization of society; they tend to become more and more
elaborate, just as in other points social intercourse tends to produce
formal definiteness; they grow decrepit and have to be artificially
strengthened and revived; they lose their original meanings and must be
constantly reinterpreted to bring them into accord with new ideas,
social, moral, and religious. Their history, in a word, is the history
of the development of human ideas, and it sets forth the religious unity
of the race. The selections given above are only a small part of the
known material, a full treatment of which would require a separate
volume.