Universe, inhabiting and animating all things, recognized in rocks and
trees, in cataracts and clouds, in thunder and lightning, in tempest and
zephyr, becoming incarnate in birds and beasts as titular deities,
existing in the world under every possible form, animate and
inanimate.[816] Whether the Red Indian mind even in modern times really
entertained this extreme pantheistic scheme, we may well doubt. In early
times of American discovery, the records show a quite different and more
usual conception of a supreme deity. Among the more noteworthy of these
older documents are the following. Jacques Cartier, in his second
Canadian voyage (1535), speaks of the people having no valid belief in
God, for they believe in one whom they call Cudouagni, and say that he
often speaks with them, and tells them what the weather will be; they
say that when he is angry with them he casts earth in their eyes.
Thevet’s statement somewhat later is as follows: ‘As to their religion,
they have no worship or prayer to God, except that they contemplate the
new moon, called in their language Osannaha, saying that Andouagni calls
it thus, sending it little by little to advance or retard the waters.
For the rest, they fully believe that there is a Creator, greater than
the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, and who holds all in his power. He it
is whom they call Andouagni, without however having any form or method
of prayer to him.’[817] In Virginia about 1586, we learn from Heriot
that the natives believed in many gods, which they call ‘mantoac,’ but
of different sorts and degrees, also that there is one chief god who
first made other principal gods, and afterwards the sun, moon, and stars
as petty gods. In New England, in 1622, Winslow says that they believe,
as do the Virginians, in many divine powers, yet of one above all the
rest; the Massachusetts call their great god Kiehtan, who made all the
other gods; he dwells far westerly above the heavens, whither all good
men go when they die; ‘They never saw _Kiehtan_, but they hold it a
great charge and dutie, that one age teach another; and to him they make
feasts, and cry and sing for plentie and victorie, or anything is good.’
Another famous native American name for the supreme deity is Oki.
Captain John Smith, the hero of the colonization of Virginia in 1607, he
who was befriended by Pocahontas, ‘La Belle Sauvage,’ thus describes the
religion of the country, and especially of her tribe, the Powhatans:
‘There is yet in Virginia no place discovered to be so Savage in which
they haue not a Religion, Deer, and Bow and Arrowes. All things that are
able to doe them hurt beyond their prevention, they adore with their
kinde of divine worship; as the fire, water, lightning, thunder, our
Ordnance peeces, horses, &c. But their chiefe god they worship is the
Devill. Him they call Okee, and serue him more of feare than loue. They
say they haue conference with him, and fashion themselves as neare to
his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples they haue his image
evill favouredly carved, and then painted and adorned with chaines of
copper, and beads, and covered with a skin in such manner as the
deformities may well suit with such a God.’[818] This quaint account
deserves to be quoted at length as an example of the judgment which a
half-educated and whole-prejudiced European is apt to pass on savage
deities, which from his point of view seem of simply diabolic nature. It
is known from other sources that Oki, a word belonging not to the
Powhatan but to the Huron language, was in fact a general name for
spirit or deity. We may judge the real belief of these Indians better
from Father Brebeuf’s description of the Heaven God, cited here in a
former chapter: they imagine in the heavens an Oki, that is, a Demon or
power ruling the seasons of the year, and controlling the winds and
waves, a being whose anger they fear, and whom they call on in making
solemn treaties.[819] About a century later, Father Lafitau wrote
passages which illustrate well the transformation of native animistic
conceptions under missionary influence into analogues of Christian
theology. Such general terms for spiritual beings as ‘oki’ or ‘manitu’
had become to him individual names of one supreme being. ‘This great
Spirit, known among the Caribs under the name of _Chemiin_, under that
of _Manitou_ among the Algonquin nations, and under that of _Okki_ among
those who speak the Huron tongue ...’ &c. All American tribes, he says,
use expressions which can only denote God: ‘they call him the great
Spirit, sometimes the Master and Author of Life ...’ &c.[820] The longer
rude tribes of America have been in contact with European belief, the
less confidently can we ascribe to purely native sources the theologic
scheme their religions have settled into. Yet the Creeks towards the end
of the 18th century preserved some elements of native faith. They
believed in the Great Spirit, the Master of Breath (a being whom Bartram
represents as a soul and governor of the universe): to him they would
address their frequent prayers and ejaculations, at the same time paying
a kind of homage to the sun, moon, and stars, as the mediators or
ministers of the Great Spirit, in dispensing his attributes for their
comfort and well-being in this life.[821] In our own day, among the wild
Comanches of the prairies, the Great Spirit, their creator and supreme
deity, is above Sun and Moon and Earth; towards him is sent the first
puff of tobacco-smoke before the Sun receives the second, and to him is
offered the first morsel of the feast.[822]
Turning from the simple faiths of savage tribes of North America to the
complex religion of the half-civilized Mexican nation, we find what we
might naturally expect, a cumbrous polytheism complicated by mixture of
several national pantheons, and beside and beyond this, certain
appearances of a doctrine of divine supremacy. But these doctrines seem
to have been spoken of more definitely than the evidence warrants. A
remarkable native development of Mexican theism must be admitted, in so
far as we may receive the native historian Ixtlilxochitl’s account of
the worship paid by Nezahualcoyotl, the poet king of Tezcuco, to the
invisible supreme Tloque Nahuaque, he who has all in him, the cause of
causes, in whose star-roofed pyramid stood no idol, and who there
received no bloody sacrifice, but only flowers and incense. Yet it would
have been more satisfactory were the stories told by this Aztec
panegyrist of his royal ancestor confirmed by other records. Traces of
divine supremacy in Mexican religion are especially associated with
Tezcatlipoca, ‘Shining Mirror,’ a deity who seems in his original nature
the Sun-God, and thence by expansion to have become the soul of the
world, creator of heaven and earth, lord of all things, Supreme Deity.
Such conceptions may in more or less measure have arisen in native
thought, but it should be pointed out that the remarkable Aztec
religious formulas collected by Sahagun, in which the deity Tezcatlipoca
is so prominent a figure, show traces of Christian admixture in their
material, as well as of Christian influence in their style. For
instance, all students of Mexican antiquities know the belief in
Mictlan, the Hades of the dead. But when one of these Aztec
prayer-formulas (concerning auricular confession, the washing away of
sins, and a new birth) makes mention of sinners being plunged into a
lake of intolerable misery and torment, the introduction of an idea so
obviously European condemns the composition as not purely native. The
question of the actual developments of ideas verging on pantheism or
theism, among the priests and philosophers of native Mexico, is one to
be left for further criticism.[823]
In the islands of the Pacific, the idea of Supreme Deity is especially
manifested in that great mythologic divinity of the Polynesian race,
whom the New Zealanders call Tangaroa, the Hawaiians Kanaroa, the
Tongans and Samoans Tangaloa, the Georgian and Society islanders Taaroa.
Students of the science of religion who hold polytheism to be but the
mis-development of a primal idea of divine unity, which in spite of
corruption continues to pervade it, might well choose this South Sea
Island divinity as their aptest illustration from the savage world.
Taaroa, says Moerenhout, is their supreme or rather only god; for all
the others, as in other known polytheisms, seem scarcely more than
sensible figures and images of the infinite attributes united in his
divine person. The following is given as a native poetic definition of
the Creator. ‘He was; Taaroa was his name; he abode in the void. No
earth, no sky, no men. Taaroa calls, but nought answers; and alone
existing, he became the universe. The props are Taaroa; the rocks are
Taaroa; the sands are Taaroa; it is thus he himself is named.’ According
to Ellis, Taaroa is described in the Leeward Islands as the eternal
parentless uncreate Creator, dwelling alone in the highest heaven, whose
bodily form mortals cannot see, who after intervals of innumerable
seasons casts off his body or shell and becomes renewed. It was he who
created Hina his daughter, and with her aid formed the sky and earth and
sea. He founded the world on a solid rock, which with all the creation
he sustains by his invisible power. Then he created the ranks of lesser
deities such as reign over sea and land and air, and govern peace and
war, and preside over physic and husbandry, and canoe-building, and
roofing, and theft. The version from the Windward Islands is that
Taaroa’s wife was the rock, the foundation of all things, and she gave
birth to earth and sea. Now, fortunately for our understanding of this
myth, the name of Taaroa’s wife, with whom he begat the lesser deities,
was taken down in Tahiti in Captain Cook’s time. She was a rock called
Papa, and her name plainly suggests her identity with Papa the Earth,
the wife of Rangi the Heaven in the New Zealand myth of Heaven and
Earth, the great first parents. If this inference be just, then it seems
that Taaroa the Creator is no personification of a primæval theistic
idea, but simply the divine personal Heaven transformed under European
influence into the supreme Heaven-god. Thus, when Turner gives the
Samoan myths of Tangaloa in heaven presiding over the production of the
earth from beneath the waters, or throwing down from the sky rocks which
are now islands, the classic name by which he calls him is that which
rightly describes his nature and mythic origin—Tangaloa, the Polynesian
Jupiter. Yet in island district after district, we find the name of the
mighty heavenly creator given to other and lesser mythic beings. In
Tahiti, the manes-worshipper’s idea is applied not only to lesser
deities, but to Taaroa the Creator himself, whom some maintained to be
but a man deified after death. In the New Zealand mythology, Tangaroa
figures on the one hand as Sea-god and father of fish and reptiles, on
the other as the mischievous eaves-dropping god who reveals secrets. In
Tonga, Tangaloa was god of artificers and arts, and his priests were
carpenters; it was he who went forth to fish, and dragged up the Tonga
islands from the bottom of the sea. Here, then, he corresponds with
Maui, and indeed Tangaroa and Maui are found blending in Polynesia even
to full identification. It is neither easy nor safe to fix to definite
origin the Protean shapes of South Sea mythology, but on the whole the
native myths are apt to embody cosmic ideas, and as the idea of the Sun
preponderates in Maui, so the idea of the Heaven in Taaroa.[824] In the
Fiji Islands, whose native mythology is on the whole distinct from that
of Polynesia proper, a strange weird figure takes the supreme place
among the gods. His name is Ndengei, the serpent is his shrine, some
traditions represent him with a serpent’s head and body and the rest of
him stone. He passes a monotonous existence in his gloomy cavern,
feeling no emotion nor sensation, nor any appetite but hunger; he takes
no interest in any one but Uto, his attendant, and gives no sign of life
beyond eating, answering his priest, and changing his position from one
side to the other. No wonder Ndengei is less worshipped than most of the
inferior gods. The natives have even made a comic song about him, where
he talks with his attendant, Uto, who has been to attend the feast at
Rakiraki, where Ndengei has especially his temple and worship.
_Ndengei._ ‘Have you been to the sharing of food to-day?’
_Uto._ ‘Yes: and turtles formed a part; but only the under-shell was
shared to us two.’
_Ndengei._ ‘Indeed, Uto! This is very bad. How is it? We made them
men, placed them on the earth, gave them food, and yet they share to
us only the under-shell. Uto, how is this?’[825]
The native religion of Africa, a land pervaded by the doctrines of
divine hierarchy and divine supremacy, affords apt evidence for the
problem before us. The capacity of the manes-worshipper’s scheme to
extend in this direction may be judged from the religious speculations
of the Zulus, where may be traced the merging of the First Man, the
Old-Old-One, Unkulunkulu, into the ideal of the Creator, Thunderer, and
Heaven-god.[826] If we examine a collection of documents illustrating
the doctrines of the West African races lying between the Hottentots on
the south and the Berbers on the north, we may fairly judge their
conceptions, evidently influenced as these have been by Christian
intercourse, to be nevertheless based on native ideas of the personal
Heaven.[827] Whether they think of their supreme deity as actively
pervading and governing his universe, or as acting through his divine
subordinates, or as retiring from his creation and leaving the lesser
spirits to work their will, he is always to their minds the celestial
ruler, the Heaven-god. Examples may be cited, each in its way full of
instruction. In the mind of the Gold-coast negro, tendencies towards
theistic religion seem to have been mainly developed through the idea of
Nyongmo, the personal Heaven, or its animating personal deity. Heaven,
wide-arching, rain-giving, light-giving, who has been and is and shall
be, is to him the Supreme Deity. The sky is Nyongmo’s creature, the
clouds are his veil, the stars his face-ornaments. Creator of all
things, and of their animating powers whose chief and elder he is, he
sits in majestic rest surrounded by his children, the wongs, the spirits
of the air who serve him and represent him on earth. Though men’s
worship is for the most part paid to these, reverence is also given to
Nyongmo, the Eldest, the Highest. Every day, said a fetish-man, we see
how the grass and corn and trees spring forth by the rain and sunshine
that Nyongmo sends, how should he not be the Creator? Again, the mighty
Heaven-god, far removed from man and seldom roused to interfere in
earthly interests, is the type on which the Guinea negroes may have
modelled their thoughts of a Highest Deity who has abandoned the control
of his world to lesser and evil spirits.[828] The religion of another
district seems to show clearly the train of thought by which such ideas
may be worked out. Among the Kimbunda race of Congo, Suku-Vakange is the
highest being. He takes little interest in mankind, leaving the real
government of the world to the good and evil kilulu or spirits, into
whose ranks the souls of men pass at death. Now in that there are more
bad spirits who torment, than good who favour living men, human misery
would be unbearable, were it not that from time to time Suku-Vakange,
enraged at the wickedness of the evil spirits, terrifies them with
thunder, and punishes the more obstinate with his thunderbolts. Then he
returns to rest, and lets the kilulu rule again.[829] Who, we may ask,
is this divinity, calm and indifferent save when his wrath bursts forth
in storm, but the Heaven himself? The relation of the Supreme Deity to
the lesser gods of polytheism is graphically put in the following
passage, where an American missionary among the Yorubas describes the
relation of Olorung, the Lord of Heaven, to his lesser deities (orisa),
among whom the chief are the androgynous Obatala, representing the
reproductive power of nature, and Shango the Thunder-god. ‘The doctrine
of idolatry prevalent in Yoruba appears to be derived by analogy from
the form and customs of the civil government. There is but one king in
the nation, and one God over the universe. Petitioners to the king
approach him through the intervention of his servants, courtiers, and
nobles: and the petitioner conciliates the courtier whom he employs by
good words and presents. In like manner no man can directly approach
God; but the Almighty himself, they say, has appointed various kinds of
orisas, who are mediators and intercessors between himself and mankind.
No sacrifices are made to God, because he needs nothing; but the orisas,
being much like men, are pleased with offerings of sheep, pigeons, and
other things. They conciliate the orisa or mediator that he may bless
them, not in his own power, but in the power of God.’[830]
Rooted as they are in the depths of nature-worship, the doctrines of the
supreme Sun and Heaven both come to the surface again in the native
religions of Asia. The divine Sun holds his primacy distinctly enough
among the rude indigenous tribes of India. Although one sect of the
Khonds of Orissa especially direct their worship to Tari Pennu the
Earth-goddess, yet even they agree theoretically with the sect who
worship Bura Pennu or Bella Pennu, Light-god or Sun-god, in giving to
him supremacy above the manes-gods and nature-gods, and all spiritual
powers.[831] Among the Kol tribes of Bengal, the acknowledged primate of
all classes of divinities is the beneficent supreme deity, Sing-bonga,
Sun-god. Among some Munda tribes his authority is so real that they will
appeal to him for help where recourse to minor deities has failed; while
among the Santals his cultus has so dwindled away that he receives less
practical worship than his malevolent inferiors, and is scarce honoured
with more than nominal dignity and an occasional feast.[832] These are
rude tribes who, so far as we know, have never been other than rude
tribes. The Japanese are a comparatively civilized nation, one of those
so instructive to the student of culture from the stubborn conservatism
with which they have consecrated by traditional reverence, and kept up
by state authority, the religion of their former barbarism. This is the
Kami-religion, Spirit-religion, the ancient but mixed faith of divine
spirits of ancestors, nature-spirits, and polytheistic gods, which still
holds official place by the side of the imported Buddhism and
Confucianism. The Sun-goddess, Amaterasu, ‘Heaven-shiner,’ though but
sprung from the left eye of the parent Izanagi, came to be honoured
above all lesser kamis or gods, while by a fiction of ancestor-worship
the solar race, as in Peru, became the royal family, her spirit
descending to animate the Mikado. Kaempfer, in his ‘History of Japan,’
written early in the 18th century, showed how absolutely the divine
Tensio Dai Sin, represented below on the imperial throne, was looked
upon as ruler of the minor powers; he mentions the Japanese tenth month,
called the ‘godless month,’ because then the lesser gods are considered
to be away from their temples, gone to pay their annual homage to the
Dairi. He describes, as it was in his time, the great Japanese place of
pilgrimage, Yse. There was to be seen the small cavern in a hill near
the sea, where the divine Sun once hid herself, depriving the world of
light, and thus showing herself to be supreme above all gods. Within the
small ancient temple hard by, of which an account and a picture are
given from a Japanese book, there were to be seen round the walls the
usual pieces of cut white paper, and in the midst nothing but a polished
metal mirror.[833]
Over the vast range of the Tatar races, it is the type of the supreme
Heaven that comes prominently into view. Nature-worshippers in the
extreme sense, these rude tribes conceived their ghosts and elves and
demons and great powers of the earth and air to be, like men themselves,
within the domain of the divine Heaven, almighty and all-encompassing.
To trace the Samoyed’s thought of Num the personal Sky passing into
vague conceptions of pervading deity; to see with the Tunguz how Boa the
Heaven-god, unseen but all-knowing, kindly but indifferent, has divided
the business of his world among such lesser powers as sun and moon,
earth and fire; to discern the meaning of the Mongrel Tengri, shading
from Heaven into Heaven-god, and thence into god or spirit in general;
to follow the records of Heaven-worship among the ancient Turks and
Hiong-nu; to compare the supremacy among the Lapps of Tiermes, the
Thunderer, with the supremacy among the Finns of Jumala and Ukko, the
Heaven-god and heavenly Grandfather—such evidence seems good ground for
Castrén’s argument, that the doctrine of the divine Sky underlay the
first Turanian conceptions, not merely of a Heaven-god, but of a highest
deity who in after ages of Christian conversion blended into the
Christian God.[834] Here, again, we may have the advantage of studying
among a cultured race the survival of religion from ruder ancient times,
kept up by official ordinance. The state religion of China is in its
dominant doctrine the worship of Tien, Heaven, identified with Shang-ti,
the Emperor-above, next to whom stands Tu, Earth; while below them are
worshipped great nature-spirits and ancestors. It is possible that this
faith, as Professor Max Müller argues, may be ethnologically and even
linguistically part and parcel of the general Heaven-worship of the
Turanian tribes of Siberia. At any rate, it is identical with it in its
primary idea, the adoration of the supreme Heaven. Dr. Legge charges
Confucius with an inclination to substitute in his religious teaching
the name of Tien, Heaven, for that known to more ancient religion and
used in more ancient books, Shang-ti, the personal ruling Deity. But it
seems rather that the sage was in fact upholding the traditions of the
ancient faith, thus acting according to the character on which he prided
himself, that of a transmitter and not a maker, a preserver of old
knowledge, not a new revealer. It is in accordance with the usual course
of theologic development, for the divine Heaven to reign in rude
mythologic religion over the lesser spirits of the world before the
childlike poetic thought passes into the statesman’s conception of a
Celestial Emperor. As Plath well remarks, ‘It belongs to the Chinese
system that all nature is animated by spirits, and that all these follow
one order. As the Chinese cannot think of a Chinese Empire with an
Emperor only, and without the host of vassal-princes and officials, so
he cannot think of the Upper Emperor without the host of spirits.’
Developed in a different line, the idea of a supreme Heaven comes to
pervade Chinese philosophy and ethics as a general expression of fate,
ordinance, duty. ‘Heaven’s order is nature’—‘The wise man readily awaits
Heaven’s command’—‘Man must first do his own part; when he has done all,
then he can wait for Heaven to complete it’—‘All state officers are
Heaven’s workmen, and represent him’—‘How does Heaven speak? The four
seasons have their course, the hundred things arise, what speaks
he?’—‘No, Heaven speaks not; by the course of events he makes himself
understood, no more.’[835]
These stray scraps from old Chinese literature are intelligible to
European ears, for our Aryan race has indeed worked out religious ideas
from the like source and almost in the like directions. The Samoyed or
Tunguz Heaven-god had his analogue in Dyu, Heaven, of the Vedic hymns.
Once meaning the sky, and the sky personified, this Zeus came to mean
far more than mere heaven in the minds of Greek poets and philosophers,
when it rose toward ‘that conception which in sublimity, brightness, and
infinity transcended all others as much as the bright blue sky
transcended all other things visible upon earth.’ At the lower level of
mythic religion, the ideal process of shaping the divine world into a
monarchic constitution was worked out by the ancient Greeks, on the same
simple plan as among such barbarians as the Kols of Chota-Nagpur or the
Gallas of Abyssinia; Zeus is King over Olympian gods, and below these
again are marshalled the crowded ranks of demigods, heroes, demons,
nymphs, ghosts. At the higher level of theologic speculation, exalted
thoughts of universal cause and being, of physical and moral law, took
personality under the name of Zeus. It is in direct derivation along
this historic line, that the classical heaven-cultus still asserts
itself in song and pageant among us, in that quaintest of quaint
survivals, the factitious religion of the Italian Opera, where such
worship as artistic ends require is still addressed to the divine Cielo.
Even in our daily talk, colloquial expressions call up before the mind
of the ethnographer outlines of remotest religious history. Heaven
grants, forbids, blesses still in phrase, as heretofore in fact.
Vast and difficult as is the research into the full scope and history of
the doctrine of supremacy among the higher nations, it may be at least
seen that helpful clues exist to lead the explorer. The doctrine of
mighty nature-spirits, inhabiting and controlling sky and earth and sea,
seems to expand in Asia into such ideas as that of Mahâtman the Great
Spirit, Paramâtman the Highest Spirit, taking personality as Brahma the
all-pervading universal soul[836]—in Europe into philosophic conceptions
of which a grand type stands out in Kepler’s words, that the universe is
a harmonious whole, whose soul is God. There is a saying of Comte’s that
throws strong light upon this track of speculative theology: he declares
that the conception among the ancients of the Soul of the Universe, the
notion that the earth is a vast living animal, and in our own time, the
obscure pantheism which is so rife among German metaphysicians, are only
fetishism generalized and made systematic.[837] Polytheism, in its
inextricable confusion of the persons and functions of the great
divinities, and in its assignment of the sovereignty of the world to a
supreme being who combines in himself the attributes of several such
minor deities, tends toward the doctrine of fundamental unity. Max
Müller, in a lecture on the Veda, has given the name of kathenotheism to
the doctrine of divine unity in diversity which comes into view in these
instructive lines:—
‘Indram Mitram Varunam Agnim âhur atho
divyah sa suparno Garutmân:
Ekam sad viprâ bahudha vadanti Agnim
Yamam Mâtariçvânam âhuh.’
‘They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then he is the
beautiful-winged heavenly Garutman: That which is One the wise call it
in divers manners; they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtariçvan.’[838]
The figure of the supreme deity, be he Heaven-god, Sun-god, Great
Spirit, beginning already in uncultured thought to take the form and
function of a divine ruler of the world, represents a conception which
it becomes the age-long work of systematic theology to develop and to
define. Thus in Greece arises Zeus the highest, greatest, best, ‘who was
and is and shall be,’ ‘beginning and chief of all things,’ ‘who rules
over all mortals and immortals,’ ‘Zeus the god of gods.’[839] Such is
Ahura Mazda in the Persian faith, among whose seventy-two names of might
are these: Creator, Protector, Nourisher, Holiest Heavenly One, Healing
Priest, Most Pure, Most Majestic, Most Knowing, Most Ruling at
Will.[840] There may be truth in the assertion that the esoteric
religion of ancient Egypt centred in a doctrine of divine unity,
manifested through the heterogeneous crowd of popular deities.[841] It
may be a hopeless task to disentangle the confused personalities of
Baal, Bel, and Moloch, and no antiquary may ever fully solve the enigma
how far the divine name of El carried in its wide range among the Jewish
and other Semitic nations a doctrine of divine supremacy.[842] The great
Syro-Phœnician kingdoms and religions have long since passed away into
darkness, leaving but antiquarian relics to vouch for their former
might. Far other has been the history of their Jewish kindred, still
standing fast to their ancient nationality, still upholding to this day
their patriarchal religion, in the midst of nations who inherit from the
faith of Israel the belief in one God, highest, almighty, who in the
beginning made the heavens and the earth, whose throne is established of
old, who is from everlasting to everlasting.
Before now bringing these researches to a close, it will be well to
state compactly the reasons for treating the animism of the modern
savage world as more or less representing the animism of remotely
ancient races of mankind. Savage animism, founded on a doctrine of souls
carried to an extent far beyond its limits in the cultivated world, and
thence expanding to a yet wider doctrine of spiritual beings animating
and controlling the universe in all its parts, becomes a theory of
personal causes developed into a general philosophy of man and nature.
As such, it may be reasonably accounted for as the direct product of
natural religion, using this term according to the sense of its
definition by Bishop Wilkins: ‘I call that Natural Religion, which men
might know, and should be obliged unto, by the meer principles of
Reason, improved by Consideration and Experience, without the help of
Revelation.’[843] It will scarcely be argued by theologians familiar
with the religions of savage tribes, that they are direct or nearly
direct products of revelation, for the theology of our time would
abolish or modify their details till scarce one was left intact. The
main issue of the problem is this, whether savage animism is a primary
formation belonging to the lower culture, or whether it consists, mostly
or entirely, of beliefs originating in some higher culture, and conveyed
by adoption or degradation into the lower. The evidence for the first
alternative, though not amounting to complete demonstration, seems
reasonably strong, and not met by contrary evidence approaching it in
force. The animism of the lower tribes, self-contained and
self-supporting, maintained in close contact with that direct evidence
of the senses on which it appears to be originally based, is a system
which might quite reasonably exist among mankind, had they never
anywhere risen above the savage condition. Now it does not seem that the
animism of the higher nations stands in a connexion so direct and
complete with their mental state. It is by no means so closely limited
to doctrines evidenced by simple contemplation of nature. The doctrines
of the lower animism appear in the higher often more and more modified,
to bring them into accordance with an advancing intellectual condition,
to adapt them at once to the limits of stricter science and the needs of
higher faith; and in the higher animism these doctrines are retained
side by side with other and special beliefs, of which the religions of
the lower world show scarce a germ. In tracing the course of animistic
thought from stage to stage of history, instruction is to be gained
alike from the immensity of change and from the intensity of permanence.
Savage animism, both by what it has and by what it wants, seems to
represent the earlier system in which began the age-long course of the
education of the world. Especially is it to be noticed that various
beliefs and practices, which in the lower animism stand firm upon their
grounds as if they grew there, in the higher animism belong rather to
peasants than philosophers, exist rather as ancestral relics than as
products belonging to their age, are falling from full life into
survival. Thus it is that savage religion can frequently explain
doctrines and rites of civilized religion. The converse is far less
often the case. Now this is a state of things which appears to carry a
historical as well as a practical meaning. The degradation-theory would
expect savages to hold beliefs and customs intelligible as broken-down
relics of former higher civilization. The development-theory would
expect civilized men to keep up beliefs and customs which have their
reasonable meaning in less cultured states of society. So far as the
study of survival enables us to judge between the two theories, it is
seen that what is intelligible religion in the lower culture is often
meaningless superstition in the higher, and thus the development-theory
has the upper hand. Moreover, this evidence fits with the teaching of
prehistoric archæology. Savage life, carrying on into our own day the
life of the Stone Age, may be legitimately claimed as representing
remotely ancient conditions of mankind, intellectual and moral as well
as material. If so, a low but progressive state of animistic religion
occupies a like ground in savage and in primitive culture.
Lastly, a few words of explanation may be offered as to the topics which
this survey has included and excluded. To those who have been accustomed
to find theological subjects dealt with on a dogmatic, emotional, and
ethical, rather than an ethnographic scheme, the present investigation
may seem misleading, because one-sided. This one-sided treatment,
however, has been adopted with full consideration. Thus, though the
doctrines here examined bear not only on the development but the actual
truth of religious systems, I have felt neither able nor willing to
enter into this great argument fully and satisfactorily, while
experience has shown that to dispose of such questions by an occasional
dictatorial phrase is one of the most serious of errors. The scientific
value of descriptions of savage and barbarous religions, drawn up by
travellers and especially by missionaries, is often lowered by their
controversial tone, and by the affectation of infallibility with which
their relation to the absolutely true is settled. There is something
pathetic in the simplicity with which a narrow student will judge the
doctrines of a foreign religion by their antagonism or conformity to his
own orthodoxy, on points where utter difference of opinion exists among
the most learned and enlightened scholars. The systematization of the
lower religions, the reduction of their multifarious details to the few
and simple ideas of primitive philosophy which form the common
groundwork of them all, appeared to me an urgently needed contribution
to the science of religion. This work I have carried out to the utmost
of my power, and I can now only leave the result in the hands of other
students, whose province it is to deal with such evidence in wider
schemes of argument. Again, the intellectual rather than the emotional
side of religion has here been kept in view. Even in the life of the
rudest savage, religious belief is associated with intense emotion, with
awful reverence, with agonizing terror, with rapt ecstasy when sense and
thought utterly transcend the common level of daily life. How much the
more in faiths where not only does the believer experience such
enthusiasm, but where his utmost feelings of love and hope, of justice
and mercy, of fortitude and tenderness and self-sacrificing devotion, of
unutterable misery and dazzling happiness, twine and clasp round the
fabric of religion. Language, dropping at times from such words as soul
and spirit their mere philosophic meaning, can use them in full
conformity with this tendency of the religious mind, as phrases to
convey a mystic sense of transcendent emotion. Yet of all this religion,
the religion of vision and of passion, little indeed has been said in
these pages, and even that little rather in incidental touches than with
purpose. Those to whom religion means above all things religious
feeling, may say of my argument that I have written soullessly of the
soul, and unspiritually of spiritual things. Be it so: I accept the
phrase not as needing an apology, but as expressing a plan. Scientific
progress is at times most furthered by working along a distinct
intellectual line, without being tempted to diverge from the main object
to what lies beyond, in however intimate connexion. The anatomist does
well to discuss bodily structure independently of the world of happiness
and misery which depends upon it. It would be thought a mere
impertinence for a strategist to preface a dissertation on the science
of war, by an enquiry how far it is lawful for a Christian man to bear
weapons and serve in the wars. My task has been here not to discuss
Religion in all its bearings, but to portray in outline the great
doctrine of Animism, as found in what I conceive to be its earliest
stages among the lower races of mankind, and to show its transmission
along the lines of religious thought.
The almost entire exclusion of ethical questions from this investigation
has more than a mere reason of arrangement. It is due to the very nature
of the subject. To some the statement may seem startling, yet the
evidence seems to justify it, that the relation of morality to religion
is one that only belongs in its rudiments, or not at all, to rudimentary
civilization. The comparison of savage and civilized religions bring
into view, by the side of a deep-lying resemblance in their philosophy,
a deep-lying contrast in their practical action on human life. So far as
savage religion can stand as representing natural religion, the popular
idea that the moral government of the universe is an essential tenet of
natural religion simply falls to the ground. Savage animism is almost
devoid of that ethical element which to the educated modern mind is the
very mainspring of practical religion. Not, as I have said, that
morality is absent from the life of the lower races. Without a code of
morals, the very existence of the rudest tribe would be impossible; and
indeed the moral standards of even savage races are to no small extent
well-defined and praiseworthy. But these ethical laws stand on their own
ground of tradition and public opinion, comparatively independent of the
animistic belief and rites which exist beside them. The lower animism is
not immoral, it is unmoral. For this plain reason, it has seemed
desirable to keep the discussion of animism, as far as might be,
separate from that of ethics. The general problem of the relation of
morality to religion is difficult, intricate, and requiring immense
array of evidence, and may be perhaps more profitably discussed in
connexion with the ethnography of morals. To justify their present
separation, it will be enough to refer in general terms to the accounts
of savage tribes whose ideas have been little affected by civilized
intercourse; proper caution being used not to trust vague statements
about good and evil, but to ascertain whether these are what philosophic
moralists would call virtue and vice, righteousness and wickedness, or
whether they are mere personal advantage and disadvantage. The essential
connexion of theology and morality is a fixed idea in many minds. But it
is one of the lessons of history that subjects may maintain themselves
independently for ages, till the event of coalescence takes place. In
the course of history, religion has in various ways attached to itself
matters small and great outside its central scheme, such as prohibition
of special meats, observance of special days, regulation of marriage as
to kinship, division of society into castes, ordinance of social law and
civil government. Looking at religion from a political point of view, as
a practical influence on human society, it is clear that among its
greatest powers have been its divine sanction of ethical laws, its
theological enforcement of morality, its teaching of moral government of
the universe, its supplanting the ‘continuance-doctrine’ of a future
life by the ‘retribution-doctrine’ supplying moral motive in the
present. But such alliance belongs almost or wholly to religions above
the savage level, not to the earlier and lower creeds. It will aid us to
see how much more the fruit of religion belongs to ethical influence
than to philosophical dogma, if we consider how the introduction of the
moral element separates the religions of the world, united as they are
throughout by one animistic principle, into two great classes, those
lower systems whose best result is to supply a crude childlike natural
philosophy, and those higher faiths which implant on this the law of
righteousness and of holiness, the inspiration of duty and of love.
Footnote 743:
Herrera, ‘Indias Occidentales,’ Dec. i. 3, 3; J. G. Müller, ‘Amer.
Urrel.’ pp. 175, 221.
Footnote 744:
Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 174.
Footnote 745:
Rivero and Tschudi, ‘Peru,’ p. 160.
Footnote 746:
Kingsborough, ‘Mexico,’ vol. v. p. 179.
Footnote 747:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 89.
Footnote 748:
Welcker, ‘Griech. Götterl.’ vol. i. p. 371.
Footnote 749:
Ovid. Fast. ii. 449.
Footnote 750:
Doolittle, ‘Chinese,’ vol. i. p. 264.
Footnote 751:
Morgan, ‘Iroquois,’ p. 158.
Footnote 752:
De Laet, ‘Novus Orbis,’ xv. 2; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 417; Brinson, pp.
152, 185; J. G. Müller, p. 271, &c.
Footnote 753:
D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. ii. p. 319.
Footnote 754:
Clavigero, ‘Messico,’ vol. ii. pp. 16, 68, 75.
Footnote 755:
Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 333. Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p.
115.
Footnote 756:
Cross, in ‘Journ. Amer. Oriental Soc.’ vol. iv. p. 316; Mason, p. 215.
Footnote 757:
Macpherson, ‘India,’ pp. 91, 355.
Footnote 758:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 89.
Footnote 759:
Welcker, ‘Griech. Götterl.’ vol. ii. p. 467. Cox, ‘Mythology of Aryan
Nations,’ vol. ii. p. 308.
Footnote 760:
J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrel.’ pp. 141, 271, 274, 591, &c.
Footnote 761:
Dobrizhoffer, ‘Abipones,’ vol. ii. p. 90.
Footnote 762:
Clavigero, ‘Messico,’ vol. ii. pp. 17, 81.
Footnote 763:
Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 326; vol. iv. p. 158. See also
Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. p. 112; Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p.
218.
Footnote 764:
Macpherson, ‘India,’ pp. 90, 360.
Footnote 765:
Doolittle, ‘Chinese,’ vol. i. p. 267.
Footnote 766:
Welcker, ‘Griech. Götterl.’ vol. i. p. 413. Cox, ‘Myth. of Aryan N.,’
vol. ii. pp. 254, 311.
Footnote 767:
J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrel.’ pp. 137, &c., 272, 286, &c., 500, &c. See
Sproat, p. 213 (Ahts), cited ante, p. 85. Chay-her signifies not only
the world below, but Death personified as a boneless greybeard who
wanders at night stealing men’s souls away.
Footnote 768:
Lery, ‘Bresil,’ p. 234.
Footnote 769:
Clavigero, vol. ii. pp. 14, 17; Brasseur, ‘Mexique,’ vol. iii. p. 495.
Footnote 770:
‘Rites and Laws of Yncas,’ tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham, pp. 32, 48
(prayer from MS. communication by C. R. M.); Garcilaso de la Vega,
lib. ii. c. 2, 7; Brinton, ‘Myths of New World,’ p. 251.
Footnote 771:
Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p. 237; Farmer, ‘Tonga,’ p. 126. Yate, ‘New
Zealand,’ p. 140; J. Williams, ‘Missionary Enterprise,’ p. 145. See
Schirren, ‘Wandersagen der Neuseeländer,’ p. 89; Williams, ‘Fiji,’
vol. i. p. 246.
Footnote 772:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ pp. 128, 147, 155; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 171
(Africa).
Footnote 773:
Welcker, ‘Griech. Götterl.’ vol. i. p. 395; Roscher, s.v. ‘Hades.’
Grimm, ‘Deutsch. Myth.’ p. 288.
Footnote 774:
Brugsch, ‘Religion der alten Aegypter’; ‘Book of Dead.’
Footnote 775:
Pr. Max. v. Wied, ‘N. Amerika,’ vol. ii. p. 157.
Footnote 776:
J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrel.’ pp. 133, &c., 228, 255. Catlin, ‘N. A.
Ind.’ vol. i. pp. 159, 177; Pr. Max v. Wied, vol. ii. pp. 149, &c.
Compare Sproat, ‘Savage Life,’ p. 179 (Quawteaht the Great Spirit is
also First Man).
Footnote 777:
D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. ii. p. 319.
Footnote 778:
Schirren, ‘Wandersagen der Neuseeländer,’ p. 64, &c., 88, &c. Ellis,
‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 111, vol. iv. pp. 145, 366.
Footnote 779:
Steller, ‘Kamtschatka,’ p. 271.
Footnote 780:
Callaway, ‘Religion of Amazulu,’ pp. 1-104.
Footnote 781:
‘Rig-Veda,’ x. ‘Atharva-Veda,’ xviii. Max Müller, ‘Lectures,’ 2nd Ser.
p. 514. Muir, ‘Yama,’ &c., in ‘Journ. As. Soc. N. S.’ vol. i. 1865.
Roth in ‘Ztschr. Deutsch. Morgenl. G.’ vol. iv. p. 426. Ward,
‘Hindoos,’ vol. ii. p. 60. Avesta: ‘Vendidad,’ ii. Pictet, ‘Origines
Indo-Europ.’ part ii. p. 621.
Footnote 782:
Eisenmenger, part i. p. 365.
Footnote 783:
Koran, ii. 28, vii. 10, &c.
Footnote 784:
Neander, ‘Hist. of Chr.’ vol. ii. pp. 81, 109, 174.
Footnote 785:
Oldfield in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 228. See also Eyre, vol. ii.
p. 356; Lang, ‘Queensland,’ p. 444.
Footnote 786:
Loskiel, ‘Gesch. der Mission unter den Ind. in Nord-Amer.’ part i. ch.
3.
Footnote 787:
Callaway, ‘Rel. of Amazulu,’ p. 348.
Footnote 788:
Rochefort, ‘Iles Antilles,’ p. 416. See J. G. Müller, p. 207.
Footnote 789:
Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part v. p. 632; see part i. p. 316, part
vi. p. 166; ‘Iroquois,’ p. 36, see 237; Brinton, ‘Myths of New World,’
p. 63.
Footnote 790:
Brebeuf in ‘Rel. des Jésuites dans la Nouvelle France,’ 1635, p. 34,
1636, p. 100. Sagard, ‘Histoire du Canada,’ Paris, 1636, p. 490. L. H.
Morgan, ‘Iroquois,’ p. 156. See ante, vol. i. pp. 288, 349.
Footnote 791:
Waitz, ‘Anthropologie,’ vol. iii. pp. 182, 330, 335, 345; Le Jeune in
‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1637, p. 49; La Potherie, ‘Hist. de l’Amér.
Septentrionale,’ Paris, 1722, vol. i. p. 121; J. G. Müller, p. 149,
&c. Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part i. p. 35, &c., 320, 412;
Catlin, vol. i. p. 156; Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p. 263.
Footnote 792:
Martius, ‘Ethnog. Amer.’ vol. i. pp. 327, 485, 583, 645, see 247, 393,
427, 696. See also J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrelig.’ pp. 259, &c., 403,
423; D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. i. p. 405, vol. ii. p. 257;
Falkner, ‘Patagonia,’ p. 114; Musters, ‘Patagonians,’ p. 179; Fitzroy,
‘Voy. of Adventure and Beagle,’ vol. i. pp. 180, 190.
Footnote 793:
Piedrahita, ‘Hist. de Neuv. Granada,’ part i. book i. ch. 3.
Footnote 794:
Molina, ‘Hist. of Chili,’ vol. ii. p. 84; Febres, ‘Diccionario
Chileño,’ s.v.
Footnote 795:
Proyart, ‘Loango,’ in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 504. Bastian, ‘Mensch,’
vol. ii. p. 109. See Kolbe, ‘Kaap de Goede Hoop,’ part i. xxix.:
Waitz, vol. ii. p. 342 (Hottentots).
Footnote 796:
J. L. Wilson, ‘W. Afr.’ pp. 217, 387. Waitz, vol. ii. p. 173.
Footnote 797:
Birch, in Bunsen, vol. v. p. 136. Wilkinson, ‘Ancient Eg.’ &c.
Footnote 798:
Macpherson, ‘India,’ p. 84.
Footnote 799:
Avesta, tr. by Spiegel. Vendidad, i.; ‘Khorda-Avesta.’ xlv. xlvi. Max
Müller, ‘Lectures,’ 1st Ser. p. 208.
Footnote 800:
Layard, ‘Nineveh,’ vol. i. p. 297; Ainsworth, ‘Izedis,’ in ‘Tr. Eth.
Soc.’ vol. i. p. 11.
Footnote 801:
Beausobre, ‘Hist. de Manichée,’ &c. Neander, ‘Hist. of Christian
Religion,’ vol. ii. p. 157, &c.
Footnote 802:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 155.
Footnote 803:
Klemm, ‘Cultur-Gesch.’ vol. vi. p. 85.
Footnote 804:
‘Études Philologiques sur quelques Langues Sauvages de l’Amérique,’
par N. O. (J. A. Cuoq.) Montreal, 1866, p. 14. Brinton, ‘Myths of New
World,’ p. 53. Schoolcraft, ‘Iroquois,’ p. 33.
Footnote 805:
De la Borde, ‘Caraibes,’ p. 524. J. G. Müller, ‘Amer. Urrel.’ p. 228.
Footnote 806:
Dobrizhoffer, ‘Abipones,’ vol. ii. p. 89.
Footnote 807:
Hutchinson, ‘Chaco Ind.’ in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. p. 327.
Footnote 808:
D’Orbigny, ‘L’Homme Américain,’ vol. ii. p. 319.
Footnote 809:
Molina, ‘Hist. of Chili,’ vol. ii. p. 84, &c. Compare Febres,
‘Diccionario Chileño.’
Footnote 810:
Rochefort, ‘Iles Antilles,’ p. 415. Musters, ‘Patagonians,’ p. 179.
Footnote 811:
‘Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas,’ trans. from the
original Spanish MSS., and ed. by C. R. Markham, Hakluyt Soc. 1873, p.
ix. 5, 16, 30, 76, 84, 154, &c. The above remarks are based on the
early evidence here printed for the first time, and on private
suggestions for which I am also indebted to Mr. Markham. The title
Pachacamac has been also considered to mean Animator or Soul of the
World, camani = I create, camac = creator, cama = soul (note to 2nd
ed.). Garcilaso de la Vega, lib. i., ii. c. 2, iii. c. 20; Herrera,
dec. v. 4; Brinton, ‘Myths of New World,’ p. 177, see 142; Rivero and
Tschudi, ‘Peruvian Antiquities,’ ch. vii.; Waitz, vol. iv. p. 447; J.
G. Müller, p. 317, &c.
Footnote 812:
Sagard, ‘Hist. du Canada,’ p. 490. Hennepin, ‘Voy. dans l’Amérique,’
p. 302. Gregg, ‘Commerce of Prairies,’ vol. ii. p. 237.
Footnote 813:
Le Jeune, ‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1637, p. 49; Brinton, p. 52; Lafitau, ‘Mœurs
des Sauvages Amériquains,’ vol. i. pp. 126, 145 (note to 3rd ed.).
Footnote 814:
Egede, ‘Descr. of Greenland,’ ch. xviii.; Cranz, ‘Grönland,’ p. 263;
Rink, ‘Eskimoiske Eventyr,’ &c., p. 28.
Footnote 815:
Le Jeune, 1633, p. 16; 1634, p. 13.
Footnote 816:
Schoolcraft, ‘Indian Tribes,’ part i. p. 15.
Footnote 817:
Cartier, ‘Relation;’ Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 212; Lescarbot, ‘Nouvelle
France,’ p. 613. Thevet, ‘Singularitez de la France Antarctique,’
Paris, 1558, ch. 77. See also J. G. Müller, p. 102. Andouagni is
perhaps a miscopied form of Cudouagni. Other forms, Cudruagni, &c.,
occur.
Footnote 818:
Smith, ‘Hist. of Virginia,’ London, 1632, in Pinkerton, ‘Voyages,’
vol. xiii. pp. 13, 18, 244 (New Eng.); see Arber’s edition. Priority
has been claimed for E. Strachey (see Lang, ‘Making of Religion,’ p.
254), but this copyist seems only to have copied Capt. Smith’s ‘Map of
Virginia’ (1608). Brinton, p. 58; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 177, &c. J. G.
Müller, pp. 99, &c.; Loskiel, part i. pp. 33, 43.
Footnote 819:
Brebeuf in ‘Rel. des Jés.’ 1636, p. 107; see above, p. 255. Sagard, p.
494; Cuoq, p. 176; J. G. Müller, p. 103. For other mention of a
Supreme Deity among North American tribes see Joutel, ‘Journal du
Voyage,’ &c., Paris, 1713, p. 224 (Louisiana); Sproat in ‘Tr. Eth.
Soc.’ vol. v. p. 253 (Vancouver’s I.).
Footnote 820:
Lafitau, ‘Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains,’ 1724, vol. i. pp. 124-6.
Footnote 821:
Bartram in ‘Tr. Amer. Eth. Soc.’ vol. iii. pp. 20, 26.
Footnote 822:
Schoolcraft, ‘Ind. Tribes,’ part ii. p. 127.
Footnote 823:
Prescott, ‘Mexico,’ book i. ch. vi. Sahagun, ‘Hist. de Nueva España,’
lib. vi. in Kingsborough, vol. v.; Torquemada, ‘Monarq. Ind.’ lib. x.
c. 14. Waitz, vol. iv. p. 136; J. G. Müller, p. 621, &c.
Footnote 824:
Moerenhout, ‘Voy. aux Iles du Grand Océan,’ vol. i. pp. 419, 437.
Ellis, ‘Polyn. Res.’ vol. i. p. 321, &c. J. R. Forster, ‘Voyage round
the World,’ pp. 540, 567. Grey, ‘Polyn. Myth.’ p. 6. Taylor, ‘New
Zealand,’ p. 118; see above, vol. i. p. 322. Turner, ‘Polynesia,’ p.
244. Mariner, ‘Tonga Is.’ vol. ii. pp. 116, 121. Schirren,
‘Wandersagen der Neuseeländer,’ pp. 68, 89.
Footnote 825:
Williams, ‘Fiji,’ vol. i. p. 217.
Footnote 826:
Callaway, ‘Religion of Amazulu,’ part i. See ante, pp. 116, 313.
Footnote 827:
See especially Waitz, vol. ii. p. 167, &c.; J. L. Wilson, ‘W. Afr.’
pp. 209, 387; Bosman, Mungo Park, &c. Comp. Ellis, ‘Madagascar,’ vol.
i. p. 390.
Footnote 828:
Steinhauser, ‘Religion des Negers,’ in ‘Mag. der Miss.’ Basel, 1856.
No. 2, p. 128. J. L. Wilson, ‘W. Afr.’ pp. 92, 209; Römer, ‘Guinea,’
p. 42. See also Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 171, 419.
Footnote 829:
Magyar, ‘Reisen in Süd-Afrika,’ pp. 125, 335.
Footnote 830:
Bowen, ‘Gr. and Dic. of Yoruba,’ p. xvi. in ‘Smithsonian Contr.’ vol.
i.
Footnote 831:
Macpherson, ‘India,’ p. 84, &c.
Footnote 832:
Dalton, ‘Kols,’ in ‘Tr. Eth. Soc.’ vol. vi. p. 32. Hunter, ‘Rural
Bengal,’ p. 184.
Footnote 833:
Siebold, ‘Nippon.’ Kaempfer, ‘Hist. of Japan,’ 1727, book I. ch. I,
IV. For accurate modern information, see papers of Chamberlain and
Satow in ‘Tr. As. Soc. Japan,’ and Murray’s Handbook (note to 3rd
ed.).
Footnote 834:
Castrén, ‘Finn. Myth.’ p. 1, &c. Klemm, ‘Cultur-Gesch.’ vol. iii. p.
101. ‘Samoiedia,’ in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 531. ‘Georgi, Reise im
Russ. Reich.’ vol. i. p. 275.
Footnote 835:
Plath, ‘Rel. der Alten Chinesen,’ part i. p. 18, &c. See Max Müller,
‘Lectures on Science of Religion,’ No. III. in ‘Fraser’s Mag.’ 1870.
Legge, ‘Confucius,’ p. 100.
Footnote 836:
See Colebrooke, ‘Essays,’ vol. ii. Wuttke, ‘Heidenthum,’ part i. p.
254. Ward, ‘Hindoos,’ vol. i. p. xxi. vol. ii. p. 1.
Footnote 837:
Comte, ‘Philosophie Positive.’ Cf. Bp. Berkeley’s ‘Siris’; and for a
modern dissertation on the universal æther as the divine soul of the
world, see Phil. Spiller, ‘Gott im Lichte der Naturwissenschaften,’
Berlin, 1873 (note to 2nd ed.).
Footnote 838:
‘Rig-Veda,’ i. 164, 46. Max Müller, ‘Chips,’ vol. i. pp. 27, 241.
Footnote 839:
See Welcker, ‘Griech. Götterlehre,’ pp. 143, 175.
Footnote 840:
Avesta; trans. by Spiegel, ‘Ormazd-Yasht.’ 12.
Footnote 841:
Wilkinson, ‘Ancient Eg.’ vol. iv. ch. xii.; Bunsen, ‘Egypt,’ vol. iv.
p. 325.
Footnote 842:
Movers, ‘Phönizier,’ vol. i. p. 169, &c.
Footnote 843:
‘Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion,’ London, 1678, book
i. ch. vi. Johnson’s Dictionary, s.v. The term ‘natural religion’ is
used in various and even incompatible senses. Thus Butler in his
‘Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
Course of Nature,’ signifies by ‘natural religion’ a primæval system
which he expressly argues to have been not reasoned out, but taught
first by revelation. This system, of which the main tenets are the
belief in one God, the Creator and Moral Governor of the World, and in
a future state of moral retribution, differs in the extreme from the
actual religions of the lower races.