CHAPTER X

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION

+1014+. Religion is social because man is a social animal. This does not

exclude individual religion--in fact religion must have begun with

individuals, as is the case with all social movements. Morality, indeed,

understood as a system of conduct among human beings, could not exist

except in a society which included at least two persons; but if we could

imagine a quite isolated rational being, he might be religious if, as is

perfectly possible, he conceived himself as standing in relation with

some supernatural being or beings. This question, however, is not a

practical one--there is no evidence of such isolation, and no

probability that there ever has been a time when man was not social.

+1015+. It is generally agreed that men lived at first in small detached

groups, gradually forming tribes and nations, and finally effecting a

social fusion of nations. Religious worship has followed these changes.

Religion is simply one line of social growth existing along with others,

science, philosophy, art; all these, as is remarked above,[1830] go on

together, each influencing and influenced by the others. Human life has

always been unitary--no one part can be severed from the others; it is a

serious error, impairing the accuracy of the conception of religion, to

regard it as something apart from the rest of human life.

+1016+. The external history of religion, then, is the history of social

growth in the line of religious organization; that is, it has been

determined by religious outward needs in accordance with the growth of

ideas. In the consideration of this history we have to note a growth in

ritual, in devotional practices, and in the organization of religious

usages, first in tribal or national communities and then in religious

communities transcending national and racial boundaries.

EXTERNAL WORSHIP

+1017+. We assume a human society recognizing some supernatural or

extrahuman object or force that is regarded as powerful and as standing

in some sort of effective relation with human life. It is possible that

societies exist that do not recognize any such object or force or,

recognizing them, do not employ any means of entering into relation with

them. Such cases, if they exist (and their existence has not been fully

established), we may pass by with the remark that the absence of worship

need be taken to show only that ritual has been a slow growth.

Our information regarding the least-developed communities indicates that

with them religion, when it exists, is an affair of custom, of tradition

and usage, handed down during a period the history of which we have no

means of knowing. Worship as it first appears consists of ceremonies,

generally, perhaps always, regarded as having objective

effectiveness.[1831] The ritual act itself, in the earliest systems, is

powerful, in a sort magical, but tends to lose this character and take

on the forms of ordinary human intercourse.

+1018+. The precise ways in which extrahuman Powers were first

approached by men it is not possible now to determine--these procedures

lie far back in a dim prehistoric time. Coming down to our first

knowledge of religious man it may be assumed that the superhuman Powers

recognized by him were of varying sorts: a quasi-impersonal energy

which, however, must probably be ascribed ultimately to a personal

being; animals; ghosts; spirits resident in objects; anthropomorphic

beings. With all these it was necessary to establish relations, and

while the methods employed varied slightly according to the nature of

the object of worship, the fundamental cultic principle appears to have

been the same for all. Several different methods of approaching the

Powers appear in the material known to us, and these may be mentioned

without attempting exact chronological arrangement.

+1019+. One of the earliest methods of establishing a relation with the

Powers is by certain processes--acts or words. The most definite

example of a mere process is that found among the Central Australians,

the nature of which, however, is not yet well understood. They perform

ceremonies intended to procure a supply of food. It is not quite clear

whether these ceremonies are merely imitations of animals and other

things involved, or whether they contain some recognition of a

superhuman Power. In the former case they are magical, not religious in

the full sense of the term. But if they involve a belief in some force

or power with which man may enter into relation, however dim and

undefined this conception may be, then they must be regarded as

belonging definitely in the sphere of religion. A certain direct effect

is in many cases supposed to issue from ritualistic acts, a belief that

is doubtless a survival of the old conception of mana.[1832]

+1020+. In many cases efficacy is attached by savages to singing--the

word "sing" is used as equivalent to "exert power in a superhuman way."

It is not the musical part of this procedure that is effective--the

singing is simply the natural tendency of early man--the power lies in

the words which may be regarded as charms. A charm is primarily a form

of words which has power to produce certain results with or without the

intervention of the gods.[1833] In the form of an invocation of a deity

the charm belongs to a comparatively late stage of religion; but where

its power lies wholly in its words, it involves merely some dim sense of

relation, not necessarily religious. Obviously the idea of law underlies

all such procedures, but the law may be a sort of natural law and the

charm will then not be religious. Religious charms are to be sharply

distinguished from prayers; a prayer is a simple request, a charm is an

instrument of force.[1834] The history of the growth of savage charms it

is impossible for us to recover; it can only be supposed that they have

grown up through a vast period of time and have been constructed out of

various signs and experiences of all sorts that appeared to connect

certain words with certain results. There is no evidence that they came

originally or usually from prayers that had lost their petitionary

character, petrified prayers, so to speak, of which there remained only

the supposition that they could gain their ends, though bits of prayers,

taken merely as words, are sometimes supposed to have such potency.

Charms and prayers are found side by side in early stages of religion;

the former tend to decrease, the latter to increase. Charms are allied

to amulets, exorcism, and to magic in general.[1835]

+1021+. Certain processes and words are supposed to have power to summon

the dead and to gain from them a knowledge of the future. This is a case

of coercion by magical means. Nonmagical coercion belongs to a

relatively late period in religious history and may be passed over at

this point. It is not in itself incompatible with religion; a god is

subject to caprice and ill humor, and may have to be controlled, and we

know that coercion of the gods has been practiced by many peoples, with

the full sanction of the religious authorities.[1836] But coercive

procedures do not accord with the general line of social development.

The natural tendency is to make friends with the gods, and coercive

methods have died out with the growth of society.

+1022+. The methods of establishing friendly relations with the

supernatural Powers are the same as those which are employed to approach

human rulers, namely, by gifts and by messengers or intermediaries.

_Gifts._ The custom of offering gifts to the dead is universal.[1837]

Among low tribes and in highly civilized peoples (the Egyptians and

others) things are placed by the grave which it is supposed the spirits

of the dead will need. Food and drink are supplied, and animals and

human beings are slain and left to serve as ministers to the ghosts in

the other world. Possibly these provisions for the dead are sometimes

suggested by sentiments of affection, but more commonly the object in

making the provision appears to be to secure the favor of the deceased:

ghosts were powerful for good or for evil--they were numerous, always

hovering round the living, and the main point was to gain their good

will. For a similar reason such gifts were made to spirits and to gods.

It was a common custom to leave useful articles by sacred trees and

stones, or to cast them into rivers or into the sea. The food and drink

provided was always that in ordinary use among the worshipers: grain,

salt, oil, wine, to which were often added cooking and other utensils.

It was common also to offer the flesh of animals, as, for example, among

the Eskimo, the American Indians (the Pawnees and others), the Bantu,

the Limbus, and the Todas of Southern India.[1838] It was supposed that

the god, when he was in need of food, sometimes used means to stimulate

his worshipers on earth to make him an offering.

+1023+. Since it was obvious that the food set forth for the spirit or

deity remained untouched, it was held that the gods consumed only the

soul of the food. This conception, which is found in very early times,

was natural to those who held that every object, even pots and pans, had

its soul. The ascending smoke carried with it the essence of the food to

spirits and deities--they smelled the fragrance and were

satisfied.[1839] The visible material part of the offering, thus left

untouched by the god, was often divided among his worshipers, and

generally it furnished a welcome meal. These communal feasts are found

in various parts of the world, among the Ainu of the Japan Archipelago,

the American Indians, and others.[1840] They were social and economical

functions. It was desirable that the good food not consumed by the deity

should be utilized for the benefit of his worshipers. There was also the

natural desire and custom of eating with friends. To this was added the

belief that the bodies of such animals possessed powers which the

worshiper might acquire by eating. The powers and qualities of the

animal were both natural and sacred, or divine. The devotion of the dog,

the courage and physical power of the bear, the cleverness of the

fox--all such natural powers might be assimilated by the worshiper; and

since the animal was itself sacred, its body, taken into the human body,

communicated a certain special capacity. Thus the virtue of the communal

feast was twofold: it placated the supernatural Power, and it procured

for the worshiper a satisfactory meal and probably also an infusion of

superhuman power. The favor of the deity was gained simply by the

presents offered him; in these early times there is no indication of the

belief that there was a recognized sacramental sharing of sacred food by

the gods and their worshipers.

+1024+. _Messengers._ The supernatural Power was sometimes approached by

a messenger who was instructed to ask a favor. The messenger was an

animal regarded as sacred, akin to men and to gods, and therefore fitted

to be an intermediary. Examples of such a method of approaching a deity

are found among the Ainu, in Borneo, and among the North American

Indians. The Ainu, before slaying the bear who is to serve as messenger,

deliver to him an elaborate address in which he is implored to represent

to his divine kinsfolk above how well he has been treated on earth and

thus gain their favor; he is also invited to return to earth that he may

be again captured and slain. His flesh is eaten by the worshipers, and

his head is set up as an object of worship. Thus, he is after death a

divine Power and a portion of his own flesh is offered to his head, but

this is simply to gain his good will, and there is no suggestion of a

joint feast of gods and men.[1841] Somewhat like this is the procedure

in Borneo, where on special occasions when some particular favor is

desired, a pig is dispatched with a special message to the gods.[1842]

In America the sacred turtle, regarded as a brother to the tribe and

affectionately reverenced by his human brethren, is dispatched with

tears to the other world to join his kinsmen there and be an ambassador

and friend.[1843] A similar conception is to be found perhaps in the

great Vedic animal sacrifice in which the victim was likewise made ready

by ceremonies to go to the heavenly court and there stand as the friend

of the worshipers.[1844]

+1025+. In all these cases there was a certain identification of the

victim with men on the one side and gods on the other. This is simply a

part of the general belief in the kinship existing between all forms of

being. Early men in choosing animal gifts for the gods, or an animal as

messenger to them, could not go astray, for all animals were sacred. The

effective means of procuring the favor of the supernatural Powers is

always a friendly gift or a friendly messenger. When animals lost their

religious prestige, their ambassadorial function gave way to the

mediatorial function of gods and men.

Incense, tobacco, and other such things that were burned before the

deity are also to be regarded as food, though in the course of time,

when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a

conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more

refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia

and nectar, but these also were finally given up.

+1026+. Food was conveyed to the gods either by simply laying it down at

some sacred place (where it was devoured by beasts, but more generally

taken by official ministers of the god), or by burning it.[1845] In the

body of the victim the blood came to play the most important part as an

expiatory force. Early observation, as is pointed out above,[1846]

showed that the life was in the blood, and so a principle of economy

naturally suggested that it would be sufficient to offer the blood to

the deity, though this was generally supplemented by some choice portion

of the flesh. Thus, the opinion arose that blood had a special

expiatory power, and this conception remained to a late period.[1847]

But the expiatory power rested finally on the fact that the blood was a

gift of food to the gods. The gift was most effective, apparently, when

the whole of the animal was burned, since thus the greatest honor was

shown the deity and the most ample satisfaction of his bodily needs was

furnished. The holocaust proper appears in religious history at a

comparatively late stage, but the essence of it is found in all early

procedures in which the whole of any object is given to the deity.

+1027+. _Human sacrifice._ That taste for human flesh on the part of men

is not unnatural is shown by the prevalence of cannibal customs in many

parts of the world. When such customs existed, it was natural that the

flesh of human beings should be offered to the supernatural Powers.

The slaying of human beings at the graves of deceased clansmen or

friends has prevailed extensively, though apparently not among the

lowest tribes; it represents a certain degree of reflection or

intensity; it is found in the midway period when religious customs were

fairly well organized and when manners were not yet refined. Not every

slaughter at a grave, however, is an act of religious offering to the

dead. It is sometimes prompted by the spirit of revenge, to ease the

mind of the slayer, or perhaps by desire to do honor to the

deceased--doubtless there was a sentiment of piety toward the dead.

+1028+. The slaughter of slaves and wives to be the attendants of the

deceased in the other world is of the nature of an offering--it is

intended to procure the good will of the ghost. The self-immolation of

widows and other dependents was in some cases a selfish act. It was

supposed that the persons thus offering themselves up would procure

certain advantages in the other world, while at the same time they would

there minister to the manes of their husbands or lords.

As there was no practical difference between ghosts and spirits or gods

in respect of power and influence in human life, the offering of human

beings to these last came as a matter of course. Their bodily appetites

were the same as those of men--they were fond of human flesh. Wherever

it was necessary to invoke their special aid this sort of offering was

presented: for the success of crops; to insure the stability of houses

and bridges[1848]; to avert or remove calamities, such as pestilence and

defeat in battle.

+1029+. While in the simpler societies human sacrifice was simply an

offering of food to the Powers, in later times it came to be conceived

of as the devotion of an object to the deity, and thus as a sign of

obedience and dependence. The offering of first-born children was a

recognition of the fact that the god was the giver of children as of

crops. The sacrifice of the dearest object, it was supposed, would

soften the heart of the deity. In some cases the person who was supposed

to be the occasion or source of misfortune was offered up. In general,

human sacrifice followed the lines of all other sacrifices and

disappeared when it became repugnant to humane and refined feelings.

+1030+. The testimonies to its existence are so numerous that we may

suppose it to have been universal among men.[1849] There is a trace of

its early existence in Egypt.[1850] In the Semitic region it is known to

have been practiced by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Moabites,

Hebrews, Arameans, and some Arabs.[1851] There is no evidence of the

practice in Babylonia; an indication of its existence in Assyria is

possibly found in an Old Testament passage.[1852] Its existence in early

times in India is held to be implied in the Rig-Veda.[1853] It appears

in the Brahmanic period also: a man (who had to be a Brahman or a

Warrior) was bought, allowed liberty and the satisfaction of all his

desires (except that sexual intercourse was forbidden) for one year, and

then ceremonially slain.[1854] It is only recently that the sacrifice of

children in the New Year festival at the mouth of the Ganges has been

abolished; and it is doubtful whether, in spite of the efforts of the

British Government, it has been completely put down among the wild

tribes, as the Gonds and the Khonds.[1855] The records of China, from

the eighth century B.C. onward are said to prove the existence of human

sacrifice.[1856] Among the ancient Scandinavians and Germans it was

frequent.[1857] In more recent times the practice is known either to

exist or to have existed in Polynesia (Fiji, Samoa), Melanesia (Florida

Islands), Borneo (formerly),[1858] and North America (the Iroquois, the

Natchez, the Florida peninsula, and the Southwest coast).[1859] Nowhere

does it appear on so large a scale as in Mexico; and it existed also in

Peru.[1860] In Africa it was practiced to a frightful extent in

Ashantiland and Dahomiland and more guardedly in Yoruba.[1861]

+1031+. Its gradual disappearance (a result of increasing refinement of

feeling) was marked by the substitution of other things for human

victims or of aliens for tribesmen. In early times indeed it seems to

have been slaves and captives taken in war that were commonly

sacrificed. In more civilized times the blood of a tribesman, as more

precious than other blood, was regarded as being more acceptable to the

deity, and it was then a sign of advance when aliens were substituted

for tribesmen. Lower animals were sacrificed in place of men: in India,

where the recently sown fields had been fertilized with human blood, it

became the practice to kill a chicken instead of a human being; and so

in the story of Abraham (Gen. xxii) a ram is substituted for the human

being.[1862] Elsewhere paste images are offered to the deity as

representing men; an interesting development is found in Yoruba, where

the proposed victim, instead of being sacrificed, becomes the protector

of the sacrificer; that is, he is regarded as substantially divine, as

he would have been had he been sacrificed.[1863]

+1032+. Along with gifts, which formed perhaps the earliest method of

conciliating divine beings, we find in very early times a number of

procedures in honor of the deity, and intended in a general way to

procure divine favor. Among these procedures dances and processions are

prominent. The dance, as is observed above,[1864] is simply the

transference to religious rites of a common social act. It is, however,

often supposed to have been communicated supernaturally, and in some

cases it attains a high religious significance by its association with

stories of divine persons. This organized symbolic dance has been

developed to the greatest extent among certain North American Indian

tribes.[1865] Here every actor and every act represents a personage or

procedure in a myth, and thus the dance embodies religious conceptions.

This sort of symbolism has been adopted also in some sections of the

Christian church, where it is no doubt effective in many cases as an

element of external worship.

+1033+. While human sacrifice continued to a comparatively late period,

it was the ordinary sort of sacrifice that constituted the main part of

the ancient religious bond of society.[1866] In the course of time the

apparatus of sacrifice was elaborated--altars, temples, priests came

into existence, and an immense organization was built up. Sacrifices

played a part in all the affairs of life, took on various special

shapes, and received different names. They were all placatory--in every

case the object was to bring men into friendly relations with the god.

They were _expiatory_ when they were designed to secure forgiveness for

offenses, whether by bloody or by unbloody offerings, or by anything

that it was supposed would secure the favor of the deity. They were

performed when it was desired to procure some special benefit, for on

such occasions it was necessary that the deity should be well disposed

toward the supplicant; such _supplicatory_ or _impetratory_ sacrifices

have been among the most common--they touch the ordinary interests of

life, the main function of religious exercises in ancient times being to

procure blessings for the worshiper. These blessings secured, it was

necessary to give thanks for them--_eucharistic_ sacrifices formed a

part of the regular worship among all civilized peoples. When the crops

came in, it was felt to be proper to offer a portion, the first fruits,

to the deity, as among the Hebrews and many others, and, this custom

once established, the feeling naturally arose that to partake of the

fruits of the earth before the deity had received his part would be an

impious proceeding likely to call down on the clan or tribe the wrath of

the god. When a gift was made to a temple, since it was desirable that

the deity should accept it in a friendly spirit, a sacrifice was proper.

In the numerous cases in which some person or some object was to be

consecrated to the deity a sacrifice was necessary in order to secure

his good will; the ordination of temple-ministers, or the initiation of

the young into the tribe, demanded some _consecrative_ sacrifice. And,

on the other hand, there was equal necessity for a sacrifice, a

_deconsecrative_ or _liberative_ ceremony, when the relation of

consecration was to be terminated (as in the case of the Hebrew

Nazirite) or when a person was to be relieved from a taboo--in this

latter case the ceremony of cleansing and of sacrificing was intended to

secure the approval of the deity in whose name and in whose interest the

taboo had been imposed.

+1034+. Sacrifices might be individual or communal, occasional or

periodical. The early organization of society into clans made the

communal sacrifice the more prominent[1867]--the clan was the social

unit, the interests of the individual were identical with those of the

clan, and there was rarely occasion for a man to make a special demand

on the deity for his individual benefit. Such occasions did, however,

arise, and there was no difficulty in an individual's making a request

of the tribal god provided it was not contrary to the interests of the

tribe. If the petitioner went to some god or supernatural Power other

than the tribal god, this was an offense against tribal life.

+1035+. The great communal sacrifices were periodical. They were

determined by great turning-points in the seasons or by agricultural

interests. Sowing time; when the crops became ripe; harvest time;

midsummer and midwinter--such events were naturally occasions for the

common approach of the members of the tribe to the tribal deity. The

same thing is true of military expeditions, which were held to be of

high importance for the life of the tribe. War was, as W. R. Smith calls

it, a "holy function,"[1868] and its success was supposed (and is now

often supposed) to depend on the supernatural aid of the deity. The

particular method of conducting the ceremonies in such cases varied with

the place and time, but the purpose of the worshiper and the general

methods of proceeding are the same among all peoples and at all times.

Occasions connected with the individual, such as birth, initiation,

marriage, death, and burial, are also affairs of the family or clan, and

the same rule applies to sacrifices on such occasions as to the great

communal periodical offerings.

+1036+. It was inevitable that the ritual, that is, the specific mode of

procedure, should receive a great development in the course of history.

As colleges of priests were established, ceremonial elaborateness would

become natural, and precise methods of proceeding would be handed down

from generation to generation. Thus in many cases the worshiper had to

be prepared by purificatory and other ceremonies, and the priest had to

submit to certain rules before he could undertake the sacrifice. The

victim was selected according to certain prescriptions: it had to be of

a certain age or sex, of a certain color, generally free from impurities

and defects, and sometimes it was necessary that it should show itself

willing to be sacrificed.[1869] These details do not at all affect the

essence of the sacrifice. They are all the result of the ordinary human

tendency to organization, to precise determination of particulars, and

while certain general features are easily understood (those, for

example, relating to the perfectness of the victim) others are the

result of considerations which are unknown to us. It would be a mistake

to seek for the origin of sacrifice in such ritualistic details.

THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF SACRIFICE

+1037+. Up to a very recent time the institution of sacrifice was

generally accepted either as a natural human custom, due to reverence

for the gods, or as of divine prescription. In very early documents, as,

for example, in the Iliad and in certain parts of the Old Testament, it

is assumed that the material of sacrifice is the food of the gods--a

fact of interest in the discussion of the origin of sacrifice, never,

however, in ancient times formulated as a theory. In the Græco-Roman and

later Jewish periods sacrifices seem to have been conceived of in a

general way as a mark of respect to the deity and fell more and more

into disuse as the ethical feeling became distincter. In the New

Testament there is a trace of the view that the victim is a substitute

for the offerer: in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said that the blood

of bulls and goats could never effect the remission of sin--a nobler

victim was necessary.[1870] A similar conception is found in the later

Greek and Roman literature, but there is still no distinct theory. In

the third century of our era Porphyry, who was greatly interested in

religious matters and, doubtless, represents a considerable body of

thoughtful current opinion, says simply that sacrifices are offered to

do honor to a deity or to give thanks or to procure favors.[1871] The

early Christian writers make no attempt to explain the origin of the

custom, nor do we find any such attempt in the European philosophy of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was not until the spirit of

historical inquiry had entered the sphere of religious investigation

that the question as to the historical beginning and the significance of

sacrifice was fairly put.

+1038+. In discussions of this question a distinction is sometimes made

between bloody and unbloody offerings--they are supposed to differ in

placatory or expiatory virtue, and one or the other of them is held to

precede in order of time. The facts seem, however, not to warrant this

distinction. Everywhere the two sorts of offering have equal power to

please and placate the deity; the special prominence that may be given

to the one or the other is due to peculiar social conditions that do not

affect the essential nature of the rite.[1872] As to precedence of one

or the other in time the available data offer nothing definite beyond

the fact that choice between them is determined by the circumstances of

a community--the material of an offering is whatever (food or other

thing) seems natural and appropriate in a particular place and at a

particular time, and this may vary, of course, in the same community at

different stages of culture.

+1039+. Current theories of the origin and significance of sacrifice

divide themselves into two general groups, the one laying stress on the

idea of gift, the other on the idea of union with the deity. Both go

back ultimately to the same conception, the conviction, namely, that

man's best good can be secured only by the help of the supernatural

Powers; but they approach the subject from different points of view and

differ in their treatment of the rationale of the ritual.

+1040+. The conception of an offering as a gift to a deity is found in

very early times and is common in low tribes. In Greece the word for

"gift," as offering, occurs from Homer on, and in Latin is frequent, and

such a term is employed in Sanscrit. The common Hebrew term for

sacrifice (_min[h)]a_) has the same sense; it is used for both bloody

and unbloody offerings, though from the time of Ezekiel (sixth century

B.C.) onward it became a technical term for cereal offerings.[1873] The

details of savage custom are given by Tylor,[1874] who proposes as the

scheme of chronological development "gift, homage, abnegation." This

order, which is doubtless real, embodies and depends on growth in social

organization and in the consequent growth in depth and refinement of

religious feeling. The object of a gift is to procure favor and

protection; homage involves the recognition of the deity as overlord,

and, in the higher stages of thought, as worthy of reverence--always,

however, with the sense of dependence and the desire for benefits;

abnegation is the devotion of one's possessions and, ultimately, of

one's self; this idea sometimes assumes a low form, as if the deity were

pleased with human loss and suffering, or as if human enjoyment were

antireligious,[1875] sometimes approaches the conception of the unity of

the worshiper with the object of worship.[1876]

+1041+. A special form of the gift-theory, with a peculiar coloring, is

that which holds that some object is substituted for the worshiper who

has fallen under the displeasure of the deity and is in danger of

punishment. This conception, however, is found only in the most advanced

religions. The cases in which an animal is substituted for a human

victim[1877] are of a different character--they are humane

reinterpretations of old customs. In early popular religion the only

examples of a deity's deliberately inflicting on innocent persons the

punishment of another's wrongdoing are connected with the old conception

of tribal and national solidarity--OEdipus, Achan, David, and others,

by their crimes, bring misfortune on their peoples; when the guilty have

received their punishment the innocent are relieved. A real vicarious

suffering is not found in these cases or in any ancient sacrificial

ritual--the victim is not supposed to bear the sin of the

sacrificant.[1878] It is only in comparatively late theological

constructions that vicarious atonement occurs. Some Jewish thinkers were

driven to such a theory by the problem of national misfortune. The pious

and faithful part of the nation, the "Servant of Yahweh," had shared in

its grievous sufferings, and, as the faithful did not deserve this

punishment, the conclusion was drawn that they suffered for the

iniquities of the body of the people;[1879] their suffering, however,

was to end in victory and prosperity. In this conception the theory of

solidarity is obvious, but it differs from the old tribal theory in that

the suffering of the innocent brings salvation to the whole mass. In the

prophetic picture there is no explanation of how this result was to be

brought about--there is no mention of a moral influence of the few on

the many--only there is the implication that the nation, taught by

suffering, would in future be faithful to the worship of the national

deity. It does not appear wherein the ethical and religious significance

of the unmerited suffering of the pious consisted; apparently the object

of the writer is merely to account for this suffering and to encourage

his countrymen. In another passage,[1880] suffering is represented as

having in itself expiatory power; the view in this case is that a just

deity must punish sin, forgives, however, when the punishment has been

borne.

+1042+. The view that the efficacy of sacrifice is due to the fact that

it brings about a _union between the deity and the worshiper_ has been

construed in several different ways according as the stress is laid on

one or another of the elements of the rite. One theory represents

atonement, the reconciliation of god and man, as effected by the

physical act of sharing the flesh of a sacred animal; another finds it

in the death of an animal made sacred and converted into an intermediary

by a series of ceremonies; a third holds that union with the divine is

secured by whatever is pleasing to the deity.

+1043+. _Reconciliation through a communal meal._ Meals in which the

worshipers partook of the flesh of a sacred animal (in which sometimes

the dead animal itself shared) have probably been celebrated from an

immemorial antiquity. Examples of such customs among savages are given

above.[1881] A familiar instance of a communal meal in civilized society

is the Roman festival in which the shades of the ancestors of the clan

were honored (the _sacra gentilicia_)--a solemn declaration of the unity

of the clan-life.[1882] A more definite act of social communion with a

deity seems to be recognizable in the repasts spread in connection with

the Eleusinian mysteries, which appear, however, to have been merely a

social attachment to the mysteries proper.[1883] In the feasts of the

Mithraic initiates, in which mythological symbolism is prominent, a more

spiritual element becomes visible: the participant absorbs something of

the nature of the god--power to overcome evil, with hope of

immortality.[1884]

+1044+. In the ancient records of these ceremonies there is no theory of

the means by which man comes into friendly relations with the deity. The

meal is an act of friendly intercourse--it doubtless involves the

ancient belief that those who eat together thus absorb a common life and

are bound together by a strong tie. In the earliest and simplest

instances the feeling apparently is that the communion is between the

human participants--the divine animal is honored as a brother; but, even

when, as among the Ainu,[1885] he receives a part of the food, the tie

that binds him to them rests on the fact of original kinship rather than

on the communal eating. Later the view that the god was pleased and

placated by the nourishment offered him assumed more definite

form;[1886] but it is doubtful whether on such occasions man was

regarded as the guest of the deity.[1887]

+1045+. However this may be, it is the effect of the food on the god

that has been made by W. Robertson Smith the basis of an elaborate

theory of sacrifice;[1888] his view is that the assimilation of the

flesh and blood of the kindred divine animal strengthens the deity's

sense of kinship with his worshipers, and thus, promoting a kindly

feeling in him, leads him to pardon men's offenses and grant them his

protection. Smith's argument is mainly devoted to illustrating the

ancient conception of blood-kinship between gods, men, and beasts. He

assumes that sacrifice is the offering of food to the deity (the blood

of the animal, as the seat of life, coming naturally to be the most

important part of the offering), the sacredness of the victim, and the

idea of communion, and further that the victim is a totem--the existence

of totemism in the Semitic area, he holds, though not susceptible of

rigid proof, is made practically certain by the wide diffusion of the

totemic conception elsewhere.[1889] As evidence that the effective thing

in sacrifice is the sharing of sacred flesh and blood, he adduces a

great number of offerings (such as the shedding one's own blood and the

offering of one's hair) in which there is no death of a victim, and no

idea of penal satisfaction of the deity. In the Israelite ritual he lays

special stress on the common clan-sacrifice (the _zeba[h.]_) in which a

part of the victim is given to the god and a part is consumed by the

worshiper; this he contrasts with offerings that are given wholly to the

god, and, leaving aside piacula and holocausts, this distinction he

makes correspond to that between animal and vegetable offerings, the

latter, he holds, being originally not conciliatory. Thus, he concludes,

the expiatory power lies in the sharing of animal flesh. Here the theory

is confronted by the holocaust and the piaculum, expiatory sacrifices in

which there is no communal eating. Smith meets this difficulty by

suggesting that these two sorts of sacrifice belong to a relatively late

period, when, in the progress of society, the original conception had

become dim. As time went on, he says, the belief in kinship with animals

grew fainter. Sacrificial meals became merely occasions of feasting, and

at the same time the establishment of kingly government familiarized men

with the idea of tribute--so sacrifice came to be regarded as a gift and

the victim was wholly burnt (holocaust); the same result was reached

when the feeling arose that the victim was too sacred to be eaten--it

must be otherwise disposed of (piaculum). The piacula he refers to times

of special distress, when recourse was had to the sacrifice of ancient

sacred animals, old totems (Hebrew: "unclean" animals), supposed to have

special potency.[1890] It is true that in the course of time certain old

conceptions grew dim, but this does not set aside the fact that

expiatory power was supposed to attach to animal sacrifices in which

there was no communal eating; though some of these were late, they

doubtless retained the old idea of the nature of the efficacy of

sacrifice.

+1046+. In Smith's theory there is confusion between the two ideas of

communion and expiation or placation. All the facts adduced by him go to

show only that the earliest form of animal sacrifice took the form of

communal eating; and in such repasts, as in the savage feasts on the

bodies of warriors and others, the prominent consideration seems to have

been the assimilation of the qualities of the thing consumed--in this

case a divine animal. There is not a word of proof of the view that the

placation of the deity was due to his assimilation of kindred flesh and

blood. Such a view is not expressed in any ancient document or

tradition, and, on the other hand, placation by gifts of food (animal or

vegetable) and other things appears in all accounts of early ritual.

Even in the sacramental meals of later times, Eleusinian, Christian, and

Mithraic, there is no trace of the theory under consideration. In the

"Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (ix f.) the conception of the

eucharistic meal is simply symbolical. The origin of the Australian

custom[1891] (in which the food brought in by a clan is not eaten till

the old men have first tasted it) is obscure; but there is no hint that

the food was supposed to be shared by a supernatural being.[1892]

Piacula arose under the influence of a deep sense of individual relation

to the deity, and sometimes in connection with voluntary associations in

which a special sanctity was held to accrue to the initiates through the

medium of a cult in which special sacrifices were prominent It was

natural that peculiarly solemn or dreadful offerings should be made to

the deity in times of great distress; the placating efficacy in such

cases seems to have been due to the pleasure taken by the deity in the

proof of devotion given by the worshipers. In general, the communal meal

lost its early significance as time went on, and came at last to be

celebrated merely as a traditional mark of respect to the deity, or as a

social function; the belief in its efficacy, however (and sometimes

belief in its magical power), survived into a relatively late period.

+1047+. In one point, the death of the god, J. G. Frazer, while

accepting Smith's theory in general, diverges from his view. Smith

regards the death of the god as having been originally the sacrificial

death of the divine totem animal, with which later the god was

identified. Frazer[1893] (here following Mannhardt[1894]) finds its

origin in the death of the vegetation-spirit (the decay of vegetation),

which was and is celebrated in many places in Europe, and furnishes an

explanation of the myths of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter and

Proserpine, and Lityerses. This explanation is adopted and expanded by

Hubert and Mauss.[1895] So far as the mere fact of the sacrifice of a

divine being is concerned it might be accounted for by either of these

theories; but the numerous points of connection between the deities in

question and the ancient ideas concerning the death of vegetation make

the view of Mannhardt and Frazer the more probable. The kernel of the

original custom is not expiation but celebration or worship; the myths

are dramatic developments of the simple old idea. Frazer suggests that

the spirit or god, supposed to be enfeebled by age, was slain by the

worshipers in order that a more vigorous successor might infuse new life

into the world--an explanation that is possible but cannot be considered

as established or as probable.[1896] However this may be, it was at a

relatively late period that the conception of communion was introduced

into ceremonies connected with the death of a deity. Originally the

grain, identified with the god, was eaten in order to acquire his

strength;[1897] such seems to be the purpose in the Mexican ceremonies

in which paste images of the deity were eaten by all the people. With

the growth of moral and spiritual conceptions of worship such communal

eating came naturally to be connected with a sense of union of soul with

the deity, as we find in the higher religions, but still without the

feeling that reconciliation and unity were effected through the

absorption, by god and man, of the same sacred food.

+1048+. In some forms of Christianity the sacramental eating is brought

into connection with the atoning death of a divine person, but this

latter conception came independently by a different line of thought. Its

basis is the idea of redemption, which is an element in all sacrifice

proper. And, as the death of the divine victim is held to rescue the

worshiper from punishment for ill doing, the conclusion is natural that

the former stands in the place of the latter. In the higher forms of

thought such substitution could only be voluntary on the part of the

victim. Traces of the self-sacrifice of a god have been sought in such

myths as the stories of the self-immolation of Dido and Odin; but the

form and origin of these myths are obscure[1898]--all that can be said

of them in this connection is that they seem not to contain expiatory

conceptions.[1899] The higher conception of a divine self-sacrifice is a

late historical development under the influence of convictions of the

moral majesty of God and the sinfulness of sin.

+1049+. _Union with the divine through a sanctified victim._ The

conception of sacrifice as bringing about a union of the divine and the

human is reached in a different way from that of Smith by MM. Hubert and

Mauss, and receives in their hands a peculiar coloring.[1900] They hold

that the numerous forms of sacrifice cannot be reduced to "the unity of

a single arbitrarily chosen principle"; and in view of the paucity of

accurate accounts of early ritual (in which they include the Greek and

the Roman) they reject the "genealogical" (that is, the evolutionary)

method, and devote themselves to an analysis of the two ancient rituals,

the Hindu and the Hebrew, that are known in detail and with exactness.

They thus arrive at the formula: "Sacrifice is a religious act which, by

the consecration of a victim, modifies the state of the moral person who

performs it, or of certain objects in which this person is interested."

The procedure in sacrifice, they say, consists in establishing a

communication between the sacred world and the profane world by the

intermediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that is destroyed in the

course of the ceremony; it thus serves a variety of purposes, and is

dealt with in many ways: the flesh is offered to hostile spirits or to

friendly deities, and is eaten in part by worshipers or by priests; the

ceremony is employed in imprecations, divination, vows, and is

redemptive by the substitution of the victim for the offender; the soul

of the beast is sent to join its kin in heaven and maintain the

perpetuity of its race; all sacrifices produce either sacralization or

desacralization--both offerer and victim must be prepared (for the

victim is not, as Smith holds, sacred by nature, but is made sacred by

the sacrifice), and, the ceremony over, the person must be freed from

his sanctity (as in the removal of a taboo); all sacrifice is an act of

abnegation, but the abnegation is useful and egoistic, except in the

case of the sacrifice of a god.

+1050+. The essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss is rather a description of the

mode of procedure in Hindu sacrifice than an explanation of the source

of its power. A victim, it is said, sanctified by the act of sacrifice,

effects communication between the two worlds, but we are not told

wherein consists this sanctifying and harmonizing efficacy. The rituals

chosen for analysis are the product of many centuries of development and

embody the conceptions of theological reflection; it does not appear why

they should be preferred, as sources of information concerning the

essential nature of sacrifice, to the simple rites of undeveloped

communities. The authors of the essay, though they deny the possibility

of finding a single explicative principle chosen arbitrarily,

themselves announce a principle, which, however, amounts simply to the

statement that sacrifice is placatory. In thus ascribing the virtue of

the ceremony to the act itself it is possible that they may have been

influenced by the Brahmanic conception that sacrifice had power in

itself to control the gods and to secure all blessings for men; it was

credited by them with magical efficacy, and the efficacy depended on

performing the act with minutest accuracy in details--the slightest

error in a word might vitiate the whole proceeding.[1901] The developed

Hindu system thus embodied in learned form the magical idea that is

found in many early procedures, and in some other cults of civilized

communities. So far as regards the variety of functions assigned by MM.

Hubert and Mauss to sacrifice, they may all be explained as efforts to

propitiate supernatural Powers; and the obligation on priests and

worshipers to purify themselves by ablutions and otherwise arises from a

sense of the sacredness of the sacrificial act, which is itself derived

from the feeling that the sacredness of supernatural beings communicates

itself to whatever is connected with them. The view that the victim is

not in itself sacred is contradicted by all the phenomena of early

religion. Though the essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss formulates no

definition of the ultimate efficient cause in sacrifice, passing remarks

appear to indicate that they look on the offering as a gift to

superhuman Powers, and that their object is to show under what

conditions and circumstances it is to be presented.

+1051+. _Sacrifice as the expression of desire for union with the

Infinite._ Professor C. P. Tiele, dissatisfied with existing theories of

the significance of sacrifice, contents himself with a general

statement.[1902] After pointing out that the material of sacrifice in

any community is derived from the food of the community, he passes in

review briefly the theories of Tylor (gifts to deities), Spencer

(veneration of deceased ancestors), and Robertson Smith; all these,

though he thinks it would be presumptuous to condemn them hastily, he

finds insufficient, most of them, he says, confining themselves to a

single kind of offering, whereas every kind should be taken into

account, gifts presented, objects and persons consecrated, victims slain

with or without repasts, possessions and pleasures renounced, acts of

fasting and abstinence, every kind of religious self-denial or

self-sacrifice. The question being whether one and the same religious

need is to be recognized in all the varieties, he finds the root of

sacrificial observances in the yearning of the believer for abiding

communion with the supernatural Power to which he feels himself akin,

the longing of finite man to become one with the Infinity above him.

+1052+. Tiele here has in mind the highest form of the religious

consciousness, which he carries back to the beginnings of religious

thought. He is justified in so doing in so far as all later developments

must be supposed to exist in germinal form at the outset of rational

life; but such a conception tells us nothing of the historical origin of

customs. The idea of the relation between the finite and the infinite is

not recognizable in early thought; to trace the history of such an

institution as sacrifice we desire to know in what sort of feeling it

originated, and we may then follow its progress to its highest

definition. All the details mentioned by Tiele are included under the

head of gift except acts of abstinence and self-sacrifice, and these

last belong properly not to what is technically known as "sacrifice,"

but to man's endeavor to bring himself into ethical harmony with an

ethical deity. With equal right prayer and all moral conduct might here

be included; Tiele thinks of "sacrifice" as embracing the whole

religious life. In the earliest known cults the "yearning for union with

the Infinite" takes the form of desire to enter into friendly relations

with superhuman Powers by gifts, in order to derive benefit from them;

when old forms have been outgrown the conviction arises that what is

well-pleasing to God is the presentation of the whole self, as a "living

sacrifice," in service in accordance with reason (Rom. xii, 1).

+1053+. The various theories of the origin and efficacy of sacrifice

(omitting the ambassadorial conception) are thus reducible to three

types: it is regarded as a gift, as a substitution, or as an act

securing union (physical or spiritual) with the divine. These have all

maintained themselves, in one form or another, up to the present day.

The old ritual slaughter of an animal and the presentation of vegetables

and other things have, indeed, vanished. The movement of thought against

animal sacrifice began in the Western world (among the Greeks and the

Hebrews) probably as early as the fourth century B.C.[1903] In Greece

the formulation of philosophic thought and the rise of individualism in

religion (embodied, for example, in the great Mysteries) brought larger

and more spiritual ideas into prominence. Rational law and inward

impulse took the place, in the higher circles, of ritual offerings. The

object of law, says Plato, is the encouragement of virtue of all kinds

and the securing of the highest happiness; but, he holds, there is

something higher than law: the good Athenian is above other men, for he

is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by inspiration of

nature, and is not manufactured by law.[1904] The Mysteries assumed that

every man, with suitable inward preparation, was fitted to enter into a

spiritual union with the deity. The later Jews showed equal devotion to

their law, held to be divinely given, laying the stress on the moral

side;[1905] jurists became more important than priests, and the

synagogue (representing individual worship) more influential than the

temple-ritual. In certain psalms[1906] sacrifice is flatly declared not

to be acceptable to God; this attitude had been taken by the earlier

prophets,[1907] but is emphasized in the psalms in the face of the later

opinion that the sacrificial ritual was of divine ordination (so in

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers). In the Gospels the sacrificial ritual is

practically ignored. In India the Brahmanic and Buddhistic movements

toward rational conceptions of religion showed themselves as early as

the sixth century B.C. Thus, over a great part of the civilized world

intellectual and moral progress took the form of protest against the old

idea of sacrifice.

+1054+. Yet old customs are long-lived, and the ancient theories, as is

remarked above, still have a certain power. The crudest of them--that

the deity may be propitiated by gifts--shows itself in the belief that

ill-doing may be atoned for by the support of charitable and religious

institutions--by the building of churches and hospitals, by the

maintenance of religious worship, and by aid to the poor. Society has

benefited largely by this belief, especially in medieval Europe and to

some extent in Buddhistic and Moslem communities; it has formed a

transition to higher conceptions, by which it has now been in great

measure replaced. The same thing is true of ascetic observances. The

idea of sacrificial substitution, which has been prominent in organized

Christianity from an early period (though it has no support in the

teaching of Jesus), might seem to be prejudicial to religion for the

reason that it tends to depress the sense of individual responsibility

by relegating the reconciliation with the deity to an external

agency--and such has often been its effect; but this unhappy result has

been more and more modified, partly by the natural human instinct of

moral responsibility and the ethical standard of the Christian

Scriptures, partly by the feeling of gratitude and devotion that has

been called forth by the recognition of unmerited blessing. The third

theory of sacrifice, according to which its essence is union with the

divine, has passed gradually from the sphere of ritual to that of moral

culture. In mystical systems, Christian and Moslem, it has lent itself

sometimes to immorality, sometimes to a stagnant, egoistic, and

antisocial quietism; but in the main it has tended to avoid or abandon

mechanical and mystical features, and confine itself to the conception

of sympathetic and intelligent coöperation with what may be regarded as

the divine activities of the world.

+1055+. _Further external apparatus of religion._ Along with the growth

of sacrifice there has been a natural development of everything that was

necessary to give permanent form to public worship--ritual, priests,

temples, idols, and whatever was connected with the later church

organizations.

RITUAL

Apart from magical procedures the earliest known public religious

worship consisted simply in the offering of an animal, a vegetable, a

fluid, or other object to a superhuman being, the offering being

performed by any prominent person and without elaborate ceremonies.

Inevitably, however, as the social organization grew more complex and

the conception of sanctity more definite, the ceremonial procedure

became more elaborate. The selection and the handling of the victim came

to be objects of anxious care, and the details increased in importance

as they increased in number. It was believed that minute accuracy in

every ritual act was necessary for the success of the offering. Various

elements doubtless entered into this belief: often a magical power was

attributed to the act of sacrifice; and there was a feeling, it may be

surmised, that the deity was exacting in the matter of ceremonies--these

were marks of respect, such as was paid to human potentates, and

well-defined court rituals (on which the religious ritual was probably

based) appear in early forms of society. Thus ritual tended to become

the predominant element in worship, serving first the interests of unity

and order in religion, and later always in danger of becoming a

mechanical and religiously degrading influence.

+1056+. In most savage and half-civilized communities sacrifice is a

simple affair, and the details of the ceremonies of worship are rarely

reported by travelers and other observers.[1908] An exception exists in

the case of the Todas of Southern India, who have elaborate ceremonies

connected with the milking of buffaloes.[1909] The ordinary buffaloes of

a village are cared for by some prominent man (never by a woman), who is

sometimes a sacred person and while carrying on his operations performs

devotional acts (prayer and so forth), but without a fixed ritual. A

higher degree of sanctity attaches to the institution called _ti_, which

comprises a herd of buffaloes belonging to a clan and provided with

dairies and grazing-grounds; each dairy has appropriate buildings, and

the _ti_ is presided over by a sort of priest called a _palol_. The

migration of the buffaloes from one grazing-ground to another is

conducted as a sacred function. In the case of an ordinary herd the

procession of animals is accompanied by a religious official who

carries the dairy implements; on reaching the destination the new dairy

is purified, the sun is saluted, and prayer is offered. In a _ti_

migration the procedure is more elaborate: the milking of the buffaloes

is accompanied by prayers for the older and the younger members of the

herd, and every act of the _palol_ is regulated by law. The same thing

is true of the animal sacrifices: the slaughter of the victim and the

disposal of the various parts are accomplished in accordance with

definite rules that are handed down orally from one generation to

another. The Todas are a non-Aryan people, hardly to be called

half-civilized: if the buffalo-ritual is native with them, the natural

inference will be that the custom is ancient. Rivers adduces a

considerable number of similarities between Toda institutions and those

of the Malabar coast (such as polyandry and other marriage

institutions), and this agreement, as far as it goes, may point to a

common culture throughout a part of Southern India;[1910] the early

history of these tribes is, however, obscure. It is possible that the

Todas have borrowed some customs from the Hindus. They have certainly

adopted some Hindu gods, and Rivers suspects Hindu influence in their

recognition of omens and lucky and unlucky days, in certain of their

magical procedures, and in their use of pigments and ashes in some

sacred ceremonies. There seems, however, to be no proof that the

buffalo-ritual has been borrowed from the Hindus. On this question,

which is of importance as bearing on the early history of ritual, it is

to be hoped that further information will be got.

+1057+. Various nonsacrificial rituals (dances and so forth) are

referred to above.[1911] Magical processes should be here included so

far as they involve a recognition of superhuman agents; they are then to

be regarded as religious. Definite magical ritual is found in many of

the lower tribes, and there are ceremonies in which a shaman is the

conductor--these are governed by fixed customs as to dress, posture,

acts, and words.[1912] They differ from magical processes in that they

are assemblies of the people, religious because there is communication

with spirits. In the Californian tribes and others they become occasions

of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu

and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and

words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this

feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency

to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such

regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be

regarded with probability as universal.

+1058+. For the ancient national religions we have the fullest details

in the case of the Hindus and the Hebrews. The Hindu sacrificial ritual

is described by MM. Hubert and Mauss;[1913] the Hebrew procedure is

given in the later sections of the Pentateuch.[1914] The Egyptian ritual

also appears to have been elaborate, including much music.[1915] These

show methods similar to those described above, and probably the same

general modes of procedure were followed in Babylonia and Persia, though

of the ritual in these countries only slight notices have been handed

down.[1916] The great Chinese Imperial sacrifices are described by H.

Blodget.[1917]

+1059+. These national systems exhibit a gradual quiet enlargement of

the ritual resulting from increasing specialization in the conception of

sin and forgiveness and in the functions of religious officials. A

different sort of development appears in the rites of the cults that

sprang up on the ruins of the old faiths--Greek Mysteries, Mithraism,

Isisism, Christianity. These were all redemptive religions, highly

individualistic and intense, efforts to infuse into old forms the ideas

concerning moral purity, union with the deity, immortality, and future

salvation that had arisen in the Græco-Roman world by the natural

growth of thought and the intermingling of the various existing schemes

of religious life. They are all marked by a tendency toward elaborate

organization, a sharp differentiation from the national cults, and

purificatory and other ceremonies of initiation. The differentiation was

most definite in Christianity, the ritual was most highly developed in

the other movements. In the Greek public Mysteries[1918] and in those of

Mithra[1919] there were (besides ablutions) the old communal meals,

processions, striking dramatic performances, and brilliant effects of

light and music, and in Mithraism trials of courage for the neophyte

after the manner of the old savage initiations. The ceremonies in the

Isis cult were less sensational, more quiet and dignified.[1920] In all

these cults there was symbolism, and the moral teaching was of a lofty

character.

+1060+. Christian ritual was at first simple,[1921] but rapidly grew in

elaborateness. The liturgy and the eucharistic ceremonies were expanded

into great proportions, and came to be the essence of worship. This

movement went on throughout Christendom (with variations here and there)

up to the rise of Protestantism, and after that time continued in the

Greek and Roman Churches. Protestantism, in its recoil from certain

doctrines of the Church of Rome, threw off much of its ceremonial, which

in the minds of the people was associated with the rejected dogmas.

Since the separation, however, especially in the last hundred years, the

violent antagonism having largely quieted down, there has been in some

Protestant bodies a slow but steady movement in the direction of

ritualistic expansion; procedures that three centuries ago would have

called forth earnest protest are now accepted and interpreted in

accordance with Protestant ideas. Doubtless the temperament of a people

has something to do with the amount of ceremonial it favors in religious

service.

+1061+. The history of ritual thus shows that it tends to grow in

elaborateness and importance as social forms become more elaborate and

important--the mode of approaching the deity imitates the mode of

approaching human dignitaries, postures are borrowed from current

etiquette.[1922] Form was especially sought after under the old

monarchies, Egyptian and Assyrian.[1923] The exaggerated Oriental court

etiquette, introduced into Roman life as early as the time of

Diocletian, was maintained and developed under the Byzantine

emperors.[1924] These usages may have affected the growth of the Greek

and Roman Church liturgies.[1925] In modern China, under the imperial

government, divine worship was substantially identical in form with the

worship of the emperor. In some cases it may be doubtful in which

direction the borrowing has been.

The expansion of liturgical forms has often been accompanied by the

effort to interpret them symbolically. Intelligent reflection has led to

the conviction that forms without religious meaning are valueless, and

it has been easy, after ceremonies were established, to attach spiritual

definitions to their details. This relieves their materialism, and gives

a certain realness and force to religious feeling.

PRIESTS[1926]

+1062+. A priest is a person commissioned by the community or its head

to conduct the sacrificial service and related services connected with

shrines. Such a person differs in two respects from the religious

official of the simplest times, the magician (shaman, or medicine man):

the latter acts in his own name and by his own authority, and the

methods he employs are magical--they are based on the belief that the

supernatural Powers are subject to law and may be controlled by one who

knows this law; the priest acts in the name and by the authority of the

community, and his methods are dictated by the friendly social relation

existing between the community and the Powers. He differs, further, from

those religious ministrants (chiefs of clans, fathers of families, and

other prominent men) who acted by virtue of their social or political

positions in that his functions are solely religious and are in that

regard distinct from his civil position. He represents a differentiation

of functions in an orderly nonmagical religious society. Such an office

can arise only under a tolerably well-organized civil government and a

fairly well-defined sacrificial ritual. It is doubtless a slow growth,

and there may be, in a community, a period of transition from one grade

of religious ministers to another when the distinction between the

priest and the magician or between the priest and the headman is hardly

recognizable; the distinction comes, however, to be well marked, and

then indicates an important turning-point in religious history. It may

be, also, that at certain times under certain circumstances the civil

ruler may have priestly functions or the priest may exercise civil

authority; but these exceptional cases do not affect the specific

character of the sacerdotal office.

+1063+. The priest is a sacred person, and is affected by all the

conditions pertaining to the conception of "sacred." In early times he

has to be guarded against contamination by impure or common (profane)

things, and care has to be taken that his quality of sacredness be not

injuriously communicated to other persons or to any object.[1927] The

parts of his person, such as hair and nail-parings, must not be touched

by common folk. The dress worn by him when performing his sacred duties

must be changed when he comes out to mix with the people. He must keep

his body clean, and the food that he may or may not eat is determined by

custom or by law. His sexual relations are defined--sometimes he is

forbidden to marry or to approach a woman, sometimes the prohibition

extends only to marriage with a certain sort of woman (a foreigner, a

widow, or a harlot). In some cases he is forbidden to engage in warfare

or to shed human blood;[1928] the ground of this prohibition was

physical, not moral.[1929]

+1064+. Similar rules in regard to food, marriage, chastity applied to

priestesses.[1930] Women were often, in ancient times, the ministrants

in the shrines of female deities--there was a certain propriety in this

arrangement; they were, however, in some cases attached to the service

of male deities.[1931] Their duties were in general of a secondary

character: they rarely, if ever, offered sacrifice;[1932] they were

often in charge of the temple-music; the function of soothsaying or of

the interpretation of oracular sayings was sometimes assigned them. On

the other hand, female ministrants in temples, who were closely

connected with temple duties, were sometimes considered as wives of the

god, and in some cases had sexual relations with priests and worshipers,

and became public prostitutes.[1933] This custom does not exist among

the lowest tribes, and it attained its largest development in some of

the great civilized cults. It seems not to have existed in Egypt.[1934]

The consecrated maidens described in the Code of Hammurabi appear to

have been chaste and respected;[1935] the relation between these and the

harlots of the early Ishtar cult is not clear. A distinction may be made

between priestesses proper and maidens (hierodules) consecrated to such

a deity as Aphrodite Pandemos; Solon's erection of a temple to this

goddess, which he supplied with women, may have been an attempt to

control the cult of the hetæræ. The thousand hierodules at Corinth[1936]

were probably not priestesses, and the same thing may be surmised to be

true of the women devoted to the Semitic prototype of Aphrodite, the

Syrian Ashtart (Astarte), and to the Babylonian Ishtar.[1937]

+1065+. The origin of temple prostitution is not clear. In many cases

(in Greece, Rome, Mexico, Peru, and elsewhere) the consecrated women

were required to be virgins and to remain chaste--this higher conception

is obviously the natural one in a civilized community in which the

purity of wives and daughters is strictly guarded. The old idea that

sexual union was defiling may have originated or strengthened the demand

for chastity. The institution of the lower class of women does not seem

to have originated in a society in which this regard for purity is

lacking, for the hierodulic class is rarely if ever found in existing

societies of this sort. The origin of the class is not to be sought in a

low valuation of woman, nor, on the other hand, is it to be found in a

desire to secure fruitfulness; fruitfulness is generally secured by

offerings to the gods, and though the belief has doubtless existed that

it could be secured by commerce with a supernatural being,[1938] there

is no trace of this belief in the accounts of the lives of the

hierodules; the benefit would be restricted also to a small number of

women. Probably the custom was developed gradually and, like other such

customs, had its ground in simple needs. Women were required for the

menial work of shrines.[1939] Once established in service, they would

acquire a certain sanctity and power by their relation to sacred things,

and at the same time would, as unattached, be sought by men. Their

privileges and license would grow with time--they would become an

organized body, and would seek to increase their power. In the course of

time current religious ideas, low or high, would attach to them. They

would be supposed to be in the confidence of the deity, able to

interpret his will, and endowed with the power of cursing or

blessing.[1940] With the growth of refinement they would be thought of

as servants of the deity, belonging to him and to no other, and might

be described, as in fact they are sometimes described, as his wives. The

title "wife" would be compatible with purity in the higher religious

systems, but in the lower systems would be connected with license.

+1066+. _Theories of the origin of religious prostitution._ The license

just referred to is a part of a widespread custom of the prostitution of

sacred persons, of which various explanations have been offered.[1941]

The existence of the custom is attested for the larger part of the

ancient civilized and half-civilized world, and for many more recent

peoples. In old Babylonia, Canaan, Syria, Phoenicia, Asia Minor,

Armenia, Greece, and now in West Africa and India, we find officially

appointed "sacred" women a part of whose religious duty it was or is to

offer themselves to men.[1942] The service in ancient times was not

regarded as degrading; on the contrary, maidens of the noblest families

were sometimes so dedicated, and the rôle of devotee might be continued

in a family for generations.[1943] Such service was sometimes a

necessary preliminary to marriage. This seems to be the case in the

custom reported by Herodotus[1944] that every native Babylonian woman

had, once in her life, to sit in the temple of Mylitta (Ishtar) and wait

till a piece of money was thrown into her lap by a stranger, to whom she

must then submit herself--this duty to the goddess accomplished, she

lived chastely. In Byblos a woman who refused to sacrifice her hair to

Ashtart on a certain festival day had to yield herself to a

stranger.[1945]

Official male prostitutes also there were in some ancient cults; but

information about such persons is scanty, and they seem not to have been

numerous.[1946] The most definitely named case is that of the Hebrew

official class called _kedeshim_, that is, persons devoted to the

service of the deity and therefore sacred[1947] (as it is said in Zech.

xiv, 20 ff., that bells on horses and temple-vessels shall be sacred to

Yahweh). These, together with the female devotees, _kedeshot_

("prostitutes"), are denounced as abhorrent to Yahweh; both were

features in the ritual of the Jerusalem temple of the seventh century

B.C. and apparently earlier.[1948] The female devotee is called a

"harlot" and the male a "dog" (_kalb_). The original religious sense of

the latter term is uncertain. In the Old Testament it occurs, in this

sense, only in the passage cited above. In a Phoenician inscription of

Larnaca (in Cyprus)[1949] the plural of the word designates a class of

attendants in a temple of Ashtart, and there are proper names in which

the term is an element (and therefore an honorable title). It is not

improbable that it meant originally simply a devotee or minister of a

god in a temple,[1950] the bad sense having been attached to it in the

Old Testament from the license sometimes practiced by such ministers.

The sentiment of chastity is a product of the highest civilization. In

many savage and half-civilized tribes the obligation on a woman to keep

herself pure is not fully recognized, and in the case of married women

the opposition to unfaithfulness sometimes springs from the view that it

is a violation of the husband's right of property in the wife. In some

ancient civilized communities a god's right to a woman seems to have

been taken for granted.[1951] Ordinary prostitution seems to have

existed in the world, in all grades of civilization, from the earliest

times. This attitude toward the custom being so widespread, it is not

strange that it has established itself in religious organizations.

Two types of organized religious prostitution have to be

considered:[1952] there is the Babylonian (Mylitta) type, in which every

woman must thus yield herself before marriage; and there is the

attachment of a company of official public women to a temple permanently

or for a considerable time. The explanations that have been offered of

these institutions fall into two classes, one tracing their origin to

some nonreligious custom, the other regarding them as originally

religious (these classes are, however, not necessarily mutually

exclusive).

_Secular explanations._ It has been held that all such customs go back

to a period of sexual promiscuity,[1953] which has been modified in the

course of ages. It is doubtful whether such a period ever existed,[1954]

but it is certain that prenuptial license has been common, and this

laxity may have prepared the way for organized prostitution. More

particularly, reference is made to puberty defloration ceremonies, when

the girl is handed over to certain men no one of whom can, by tribal

rule, be her husband--that is, before marriage she becomes sexually the

property of the tribe through its regularly appointed representatives,

and is thus prepared for membership; then, it is added, at a later

period, when religious service has been established, the girl is given

over or devoted not to the tribe but to the tribal god, in whose shrine

she must submit to defloration, in accordance with rules fixed from time

to time. The act thus becomes religious--it is a recognition of the

sovereignty of the deity, and procures divine favor. Such may be a

possible explanation of the procedure in the temple of Mylitta and at

Byblos.[1955] But the meaning of the condition imposed at these places,

namely, that the man to whom the woman yields herself must be a

stranger, is not clear. It is hardly probable that an outsider was

called on to perform what was regarded as a dangerous duty--a stranger

would not be likely to undertake what a tribesman feared to do.[1956]

Nor is the power of a stranger to confer benefits so well established

that we can regard his presence as intended to bring a blessing to the

girl.[1957] More to the point, in one respect, is the conjecture that we

have here an attenuated survival of the exogamic rule--the girl must

marry out of her social group;[1958] the old social organization having

disappeared, the "stranger" takes the place of the original functionary,

and the deity the place of the clan. This explanation has much in its

favor; but, as it is hardly possible to establish an historical

connection between the older and the later custom, it cannot be said to

be certain, and the origin of the "stranger-feature" remains obscure.

_Religious explanation._ Sacred prostitution is supposed by many writers

to have sprung from the cult of the goddess who represented the

productive power of the earth[1959] (Mother Earth, the Great Mother).

While such a figure is found in many of the lower tribes, it is only

among civilized peoples, and particularly in Western Asia, that the cult

acquired great importance. By the side of the female figure there

sometimes stands a male representative of fertility (Tammuz by the side

of Ishtar, Attis by the side of Kybele) who is regarded as the husband

or the lover of the goddess, but occupies a subordinate position. In

early times the goddess is represented as choosing her consorts at will,

but this is merely an attribution to her of a common custom of the

period. All deities, male and female, might be and were appealed to for

increase of crops and children, but a Mother goddess would naturally be

looked on as especially potent in this regard. Prayer would be

addressed to her, and that, with offerings, would be sufficient to

secure her aid; simply as patroness of fertility she would not demand

prostitution of her female worshipers--some special ground must be

assumed for this custom, and it is held that, as fertility was produced

by the union of the goddess with her consort or her lovers, this union

must be imitated by the women who sought a blessing from her.[1960] The

probability of such a ground for sacred prostitution is not obvious.

There are communities of temple-courtesans (in West Africa and India)

where such an idea does not exist. If the license was in imitation of

the goddess, this feature of her character requires explanation, and the

natural explanation is that such a figure is a product of a time of

license. In the ancient world it was only in Asia Minor and the adjacent

Semitic territory that religious orgies and debauchery existed--they

seem to have been an inheritance from a savage age. Or, if the

prostitution is explained as a magical means of obtaining

children,[1961] this also would go back to a religiously crude period.

Magical rites, many and of various sorts, have been performed by women

desiring offspring--imitations and simulations.[1962] But the giving up

of the body is not imitation or simulation--it is the procreative act

itself.

Organized official sacred prostitution must be regarded as the outcome

of a long period of development. License, starting at a time when sexual

passion was strong and continence was not recognized as a duty or as

desirable, found entrance into various social and religious customs and

institutions, accommodating itself in different places and periods to

current ideas of propriety. Appropriated by organized religion, it

discarded here and there its more bestial features, adopted more refined

religious conceptions, its scope was gradually reduced, and finally it

vanished from religious usage. The objections urged to such a process of

growth are not conclusive.[1963] Explanations of communities of

temple-courtesans and male prostitutes and of customs affecting

individual women are suggested above.[1964] Many influences, doubtless,

contributed to the final shaping of the institution, and we can hardly

hope to account satisfactorily for all details; but the known facts

point to an emergence from savage conditions and a gradual modification

under the influence of ideas of morality and refinement.

+1067+. _Organization and influence of the priesthood._ In accordance

with the law of natural human growth the priests in most of the greater

religions came to form an organized body, hierarchical grades were

established, many privileges were granted them, and they exercised great

influence over the people and in the government. In Egypt they were

exempt from taxes and had a public allowance of food; the temples at the

capitals, Memphis and Thebes, became enormously wealthy; the priests

exercised judicial functions (but under the control of the king); they

cultivated astronomy and arithmetic, and controlled the general

religious life of the people; as early as the thirteenth century B.C.

they had attained a political power with which the kings had to reckon,

and still earlier (ca. 1400 B.C.) the Theban priests were able to

overthrow the religious reformation introduced by Amenhotep IV; the

departments of sacerdotal functions were multiplied, and the high priest

of the Theban Amon, whose office became hereditary, controlled the

religious organization of the whole land, set himself up as a rival of

the Pharaoh in dignity, and finally became the head of a sacerdotal

theocracy.[1965]

+1068+. While the Babylonian and Assyrian priesthoods were not so highly

organized as the Egyptian, and never attained great political power,

they were nevertheless very influential. Astronomy and astrology, the

interpretation of omens and portents, the science of magic and

exorcisms, the direction of the religious life of kings and people were

in the hands of the priests; the great temples were rich, there were

various classes of temple-ministers, all well cared for, and the chief

priest of an important shrine was a person of great dignity and power.

The interpretation of sacrificial phenomena was made into a science by

the priests, and, passing from them to Greece and Italy, exerted a

definite influence on the religious life of the whole Western

world.[1966]

+1069+. The process of organizing the Hebrew priesthood began under

David and Solomon, at first, under Solomon (who favored the Zadok

family), affecting only the Jerusalem temple. In the Northern kingdom

(established about 930 B.C.) there seems to have been a similar

arrangement. As long as the old royal governments lasted (the Northern

kingdom fell in the year 722 B.C., the Southern in 586) the priests were

controlled by the kings. On the building of the Second Temple (516) and

the reorganization of the Judean community they became, under Persian

rule, independent of the civil government and finally, in the persons of

the high-priests, the civil heads of the Palestinian Jews. The Maccabean

uprising resulted in the establishment of the Asmonean priest-dynasty,

in which the offices of civil ruler and religious leader were united.

After the fall of this dynasty (37 B.C.) the priestly party (the

Sadducees, that is, the Zadokites), forming an aristocracy, conservative

of ritual and other older religious customs and ideas, was engaged in a

constant struggle with the democratic party (the Pharisees), which was

hospitable to the new religious ideas (resurrection, immortality,

legalism). The latter party was favored by the people, and with the

destruction of the temple (70 A.D.) the priests disappeared from

history. From the beginning they appear to have been not only religious

ministrants and guides but also civil judges; their great work was the

formulation of the religious law, as it appears in the Pentateuch, and

it is probable that the shrines (especially that of Jerusalem) were

centers of general literary activity. The national development turned,

however, from sacerdotalism to legalism--the later religious leaders

were not priests but doctors of law (Scribes and Pharisees).

+1070+. In India the priests formed the highest caste, were the authors

of the sacred books (which they alone had the right to expound),

conducted the most elaborate sacrificial ceremonies that man has

invented, and by ascetic observances, as was believed, sometimes became

more powerful than the gods.[1967] Ritual propriety was a dominant idea

in India, and the influence of the priesthood on the religious life of

the people was correspondingly great. Priests did not attempt to

interfere in the civil government, but their religious instruction may

sometimes have affected the policy of civil rulers. On the other hand,

the Hindu priesthood, by its poetical productions and its metaphysical

constructions, has become a permanent influence in the world.

+1071+. The early (pre-Zoroastrian) history of the Mazdean priesthood is

obscure. In the Avestan system, however, a great rôle is assigned the

priests, as is evident from the vast number of regulations concerning

ceremonial purity, of which they had charge.[1968] It does not appear

that the early sacerdotal organization was elaborate or strict. There

were various classes of ministrants at every shrine, but they differed

apparently rather in the nature of their functions than in rank.

+1072+. The Greek priestly class had the democratic tone of the Greek

people.[1969] There was little general organization: every priest was

attached to a particular deity except the Athenian King Archon, who had

charge of certain public religious ceremonies. The mutual independence

of the Greek States made the creation of a Hellenic sacerdotal head

impossible. In Sparta the priestly prerogatives of the king were long

maintained; usually, however, there was a separation of civil and

religious functions. Generally in Greece priests were chosen by lot, or

were elected by the priestly bodies or by the people, or were appointed

by kings or generals. They were usually taken from good families, were

held in honor, and were housed and fed at the public expense (their food

came largely from sacrificial offerings). It was required that they

should be citizens of the place where they officiated, and should be

pure in body and of good conduct. They seem to have been simply citizens

set apart to conduct religious ceremonies, and their influence on the

general life was probably less than that of civil officers, poets, and

philosophers. Greek educated thought moved at a relatively early period

from the conventional religious forms toward philosophical conceptions

of the relation between the divine and the human.[1970]

+1073+. The minute details of the Roman ritual might seem to give great

importance to priests;[1971] and the flamens (the ministers of

particular deities) were of course indispensable in certain sacrifices.

But the organization of Roman society was not favorable to the

development of specifically sacerdotal influence. Religion was a

department of State and family government. For the manifold events of

family life there were appropriate deities whose worship was conducted

by the father of the family. The title _rex_ (like the Greek

_basileus_), in some cases given to priests, was a survival from the

time when kings performed priestly functions. Later the consul was

sometimes the conductor of public religious ceremonies. There was hardly

a religious office, except that of the flamen, that might not be filled

by a civilian. In the Augustan revival membership in the College of the

Arval Brothers was sought by distinguished citizens. It was thought

desirable that the Pontifex Maximus, the most influential of the

priests, should be a jurist; and the office was held by such men as

Julius Cæsar and Augustus. The increase of temples and priests by

Augustus did not materially change the religious condition. The adoption

of foreign cults was accompanied by ideas that did not belong to the

Roman religion proper. In general, if we except the augurs, who

represent the lowest form of the sacerdotal office, the priest was

relatively uninfluential in Rome.[1972]

+1074+. The minimum of priestly influence is found in the national

religion of China, in which there is no priestly class proper.[1973] In

the worship of ancestors, which satisfies the daily religious needs of

the people, every householder and every civil official is a ministrant.

The great annual sacrifices to the heavenly bodies have been conducted

till recently by the emperor in person.[1974] Public religion is, in the

strictest sense, a function of the State. Society, according to the

Chinese view, is competent to manage relations with the supernatural

Powers--it needs no special class of intermediaries. This thoroughgoing

conception of civic autonomy in religion connects itself with the

supreme stress laid on conduct in the Confucian system, which represents

the final Chinese ideal of life:[1975] man constructs his own moral

life, and extrahuman Powers, while they may grant physical goods, are

chiefly valued as incidents in the good social life. The great

speculative systems of thought, Confucianism and Taoism, gradually gave

rise to definite sacerdotal cults; but the priests of the Confucian

temples serve mainly to keep before the people the teaching of the

Master, and the Taoist priests have become largely practicers of magic

and charlatans. Chinese religious practice remains essentially

nonsacerdotal.

+1075+. The Peruvian cult presents a remarkable example of a finely

organized hierarchy closely related to the civil government.[1976] The

priests were chosen from the leading families; the highpriest was second

in dignity to the Inca only. The functions of the priests were strictly

religious; and as the masses of the people were devoted to the worship

of local deities and natural objects, it seems probable that the

sacerdotal influence was merely that which belonged to their supervision

of the State religion. Details on this point are lacking.

Priests played a more prominent part in Mexico, entering, as they did,

more into the life of the people.[1977] On the one hand, the numerous

human sacrifices, of which the priests had complete control, kept the

terrible aspect of religion constantly before the mind of the public;

and, on the other hand, the milder side of the cult (for the Mexican

religion was composite) brought the priests into intimate relations with

adults and children. As the priests, apart from their monstrous

sacrificial functions, appear to have been intelligent and humane, it is

not unlikely that their general moral influence was good.

+1076+. The influence of the priesthood on religion (and on civilization

so far as religion has been an element of civilization) has been of a

mixed character. On the one hand, while not the sole representative of

the idea of the divine government of the world (for soothsayers and

prophets equally represented this idea), it has stood for friendly

everyday intercourse between man and the deity, and has so far tended to

bring about an equable and natural development of the ordinary religious

life; it was involved in the sacerdotal functions that the deity might

be placated by proper ceremonies, whence it followed that the priest,

who knew the nature of these ceremonies, was a benefactor, and, more

generally, that man had his salvation in his own hands. The business of

the priest was to maintain the outward forms of religion, to order and

elaborate the ritual, to organize the whole cultus.[1978] This was a

work that required time and the coöperation of many minds. Priests were,

in fact, naturally drawn together by a common aim and common

interests--with rare exceptions they lived in groups, formed societies

and colleges, had their traditions of policy, gathered wealth.[1979] For

this reason they were in general opposed to social changes--they were a

conservative element in society, and in this regard were the friends of

peace.