declared she would as soon eat a child as a robin, a thoroughly Totemist
sentiment. A whole body of protective superstition has crystallised
around certain creatures which, because of their confiding nature, their
charming ways, their welcome appearance at particular seasons, inspired
man with an unusually strong impulse to spare them. I was interested to
find the stork as sacred to the Arabs in Tunis and Algeria as he is to
his German friends in the North. A Frenchman remarked that “sacred birds
are never good to eat,” but he might have remembered the goose and hen
of the ancient Bretons which Cæsar tells us were kept “for pleasure” but
never killed; not to speak of the pigeons of Moscow and of Mecca.
It should be observed how quickly the spared or cherished bird or beast
becomes “lucky.” In Germany and Scandinavia it is lucky to have a
stork’s nest on the roof. The regimental goat is the “luck of his
company.”
M. S. Reinach’s opinion that in Totemism is to be found the secret of
the domestication of animals offers an attractive solution to that great
problem, but it has not been, nor do I think that it will ever be,
generally accepted. It, is however, plain, that where population is
sparse, and dogs and guns undreamt of, wild animals would be far less
wild than in countries with all the advantages of civilisation; the
tameness of birds on lonely islands when the explorer first makes his
descent is a case in point. No doubt, therefore, with the encouragement
they received, the animal Totems acquired a considerable degree of
tameness, but from that to domestication there is a long step. Our
household “Totem,” the robin, is relatively tame; he will even eat
crumbs on the breakfast-table, but he flies away in springtime and we
see him no more.
Besides being a social institution and a friendly bond between man and
beast, Totemism is an attempt to explain the universe. Its spiritual
vitality depends on the widely rooted belief in archetypes; the things
seen are the mirror of the things unseen, the material is unreal, the
immaterial the only reality. We are ourselves but cages of immortal
birds. The real “I” is somewhere else; it may be in a fish, as in the
Indian folk-tale, or it may be in a god. I do not know, by the by, if it
has been remarked that a man can be a Totem: the incarnation of the
indwelling race-spirit. The Emperor of Japan corresponds exactly to this
description. The deified Cæsar was a Totem. A god can be a Totem: among
the Hidery (islanders of the North Pacific whose interesting legends
were published by the Chicago Folk-lore Association) the raven, which is
their Totem, is the manifestation of the god Ne-kilst-lass who created
the world. Here Totemism approaches till it touches Egyptian
zoomorphism. Was this form an earlier or a later development than that
in which the Totem is merely an ancestor? Our inability to reply shows
our real want of certainty as to whether Totemism is a body of belief in
a state of becoming or _in a state of dissolution_.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Egypt Exploration Fund._
HATHOR COW.
Cairo Museum.
(_Found in 1906 by Dr. E. Naville at Deir-el-bahari._)]
We do know that Egyptian zoomorphism is not old, at least in the
exaggerated shape it assumed in the worship of the bull Apis. It is a
cult which owed its success to the animistic tendency of the human mind,
but its particular cause is to be looked for in crystallised figurative
language. The stupendous marble tombs of the sacred bulls that seem to
overpower us in the semi-obscurity of the Serapeum remind one of how
easy it is to draw false conclusions relative to the past if we possess
only half-lights upon it: had Egyptian hieroglyphics never yielded up
their secret we might have judged the faith of Egypt to have been the
most material, instead of one of the most spiritual of religions.
In Egyptian (as in Assyrian) cosmogony the visible universe is the
direct creation of God. “The god who is immanent in all things is the
creator of every animal: under his name of Ram, of the sheep, Bull, of
the cows: he loves the scorpion in his hole, he is the god of the
crocodile who plunges in the water: he is the god of those who rest in
their graves. Amon is an image, Atmee is an image, Ra is an image: HE
alone maketh himself in millions of ways.” Amon Ra is described in
another grand hymn as the maker of the grass for the cattle, of fruitful
trees for men yet unborn; causing the fish to live in the river, the
birds to fill the air, giving breath to those in the egg, giving food to
the bird that perches, to the creeping thing and to the flying thing
alike, providing food for the rats in their holes, feeding the flying
things in every tree. “Hail to thee, say all creatures. Hail to thee for
all these things: the One, Alone with many hands, awake while all men
sleep, to seek out the good of all creatures, “Amon Sustainer of all!”
This is, indeed, a majestic psalm of universal life.
Contrary to what was long the impression, the Wheel of Being was not an
Egyptian doctrine, but the dead, or rather some of them, were believed
to have the power of transforming themselves into animals for limited
periods. It was a valued privilege of the virtuous dead: the form of a
heron, a hawk or a swallow was a convenient travelling dress.
Four-footed beasts were reserved to gods.
There was no prejudice against sport if carried on with due regard to
vested sacred rights. The first hunting-dog whose name we know was
Behkaa, who was buried with his master, his name being inscribed over
his picture on the tomb. The injury of animals sacred to the gods was,
of course, a grave sin. Among the protests of innocence of a departing
soul we read: “I have not clipped the skins of the sacred beasts; I have
not hunted wild animals in their pasturages; I have not netted the
sacred birds; I have not turned away the cattle of the gods; I have not
stood between a god and his manifestation.”
The Egyptian mind, which was essentially religious, saw the “god who is
immanent in all things” yet standing outside these things to sustain
them with a guiding providence; the highly trained Chinese mind, with
its philosophic trend, saw the divine indivisible intelligence without
volition illuminating all that lived: “The mind of man and the mind of
trees, birds and beasts, is just the one mind of heaven and earth, only
brighter or duller by reflection: as light looks brighter when it falls
on a mirror than when it falls on a dark surface, so divine reason is
less bright in cow or sheep than in man.” This fine definition was given
by Choo-Foo-Tsze, the great exponent of Confucianism, who, when he was
four years old, surprised his father by asking, on being told that the
sky was heaven, “What is above it?” Choo-Foo-Tsze in the thirteenth
century anticipated some modern conclusions of geology by remarking that
since sea shells were found on lofty mountains as if generated in the
middle of stones, it was plain “that what was below became lifted up,
what was soft became hard”; it was a deep subject, he said, and ought to
be investigated. Long before the Nolan, Confucius had conceived the idea
of the great Monad: “one God who contains and comprehends the whole
world.” It was an idea entirely incomprehensible to all but a few
educated men in any age. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism left the
Chinese masses what they found them—a people whose folk-lore was their
religion. Were they asked to believe in the Wheel of Being? They made
that folk-lore too. Dr. Giles tells the folk-tale of a certain gentleman
who, having taken a very high degree, enjoyed the privilege (which is
admitted to be uncommon) of recollecting what happened between his last
death and birth. After he died, he was cited before a Judge of Purgatory
and his attention was attracted by a quantity of skins of sheep, dogs,
oxen, horses, which were hanging in a row. These were waiting for the
souls which might be condemned to wear them; when one was wanted, it was
taken down and the man’s own skin was stripped off and the other put on.
This gentleman was condemned to be a sheep; the attendant demons helped
him on with his sheep-skin when the Recording Officer suddenly mentioned
that he had once saved a man’s life. The Judge, after looking at his
books, ruled that such an act balanced all his misdoings: then the
demons set to work to pull off the sheep-skin bit by bit, which gave the
poor gentleman dreadful pain, but at last it was all got off except one
little piece which was still sticking to him when he was born again as a
man.
This story is amusing as showing what a mystical doctrine may come to
when it gets into the hands of the thoroughgoing realist. For the
Chinese peasant the supernatural has no mystery. To him it is a mere
matter of ordinary knowledge that beasts, birds, fishes and insects not
only have ghosts but also ghosts of ghosts—for the first ghost is liable
to die. If any of these creatures do not destroy life in three
existences, they may be born as men—a belief no doubt due to the
Buddhists, who in China seem to have concentrated all their energies on
humanitarian propaganda and let metaphysics alone. Taoism has been
called an “organised animism.” Organised or unorganised, animism is
still the popular faith of China. It is too convenient to lightly
abandon, for it explains everything. For instance, whatever is odd,
unexpected, very lucky, very unlucky, can be made as plain as day by
mentioning the word “fox.” Any one may be a fox without your knowing it:
the fox is a jinnee, an elf who can work good or harm to man; who can
see the future, get possession of things at a distance, and generally
outmatch the best spiritualist medium. In Chinese folk-lore the fox has,
as it were, made a monopoly of the world-wide notion that animals have a
more intimate knowledge of the supernatural than men. Soothsayers are
thought to be foxes because they know what is going to happen.
Man’s speculations about himself and the universe arrange themselves
under three heads: those which have not yet become a system, those which
are a system, those which are the remains of a system. It is impossible
that any set of ideas began by being a system unless it were revealed by
an angel from heaven. But no sooner do ideas become systematic than they
pass into the stage of dogma which is accepted not discussed. Everything
is made to fit in with them. Thus to find the free play of the human
mind one must seek it where there are the fewest formulæ, written or
unwritten, for tradition is as binding as any creed or code. There are
savage races which, if they ever had Totemism, have preserved few if any
traces of it. To take them one by one and inquire into their views on
animals would be well worth doing, but it is beyond my modest scope. I
will say this, however—show me a savage who has not some humane and
friendly ideas about animals! The impulse to confess brotherhood with
man’s poor relations is everywhere the same: the excuses or reasons
given for it vary a little. The animal to be kindly treated is the
sanctuary of a god, the incarnation of a tribe, or simply the shelter of
a poor wandering ghost.
The Amazulu, one of the finest of savage races, believe that _some_
snakes are Amatongo—some, not all. In fact, these snakes which are dead
men are rather rare. One kind is black and another green. An Itongo does
not come into the house by the door, nor does it eat frogs or mice. It
does not run away like other snakes. Some say, “Let it be killed.”
Others interfere, “What, kill a man?” If a man die who had a scar and
you see a snake with a scar, ten to one it is that man. Then, at night,
the village chief _dreams_ and the dead man speaks to him. “Do you now
wish to kill me? Do you already forget me? I thought I would come and
ask you for food, and do you kill me?” Then he tells him his name.
Without any teaching, without any system, the savage thinks that the
appearances which stand before him in sleep are real. If they are not
real, what are they? The savage may not be a reasonable being, but he is
a being who reasons.
In the morning the village chief tells his dream and orders a
sin-offering to the Itongo (ghost) lest he be angry and kill them. A
bullock or a goat is sacrificed and they eat the flesh. Afterwards they
look everywhere for the snake, but it has vanished.
A snake that forces its way rapidly into a house is known to be a liar
and he is a liar still. Do they turn him out of doors with a lecture on
the beauty of veracity? Far from that. “They sacrifice something to such
an Itongo.” A few men turn into poisonous snakes, but this is by no
means common. If offended, the Amatongo cause misfortune, but even if
pleased they do not seem to confer many benefits; perhaps they cannot,
for surely it is easier to do evil than good. Once, however, a snake
which was really the spirit of a chief, placed its mouth on a sore which
a child had; the mother was in a great fright, but happily she did not
interfere and the snake healed the sore and went silently away.
[Illustration:
_Photo:_ _Mansell._
WILD GOATS AND YOUNG.
British Museum.
(_Assyrian Relief._)]
Other animals are sometimes human beings as well as snakes. The lizard
is often the Itongo of an old woman. A boy killed some lizards in a
cattle-pen with stones. Then he went and told his grandmother, who said
he had done very wrong—those lizards were chiefs of the village and
should have been worshipped. I think the grandmother was a humane old
person; I even suspect that she said the lizards were chiefs and not old
women to make the admonition more awful. The man who told this story to
Canon Callaway (from whose valuable work on the Amazulu I take these
notes) added that, looking back to the incident, he doubted if the
lizards were Amatongo after all, because no harm came of their murder.
He thought that they must have been merely wild animals which had become
tame owing to people mistakenly thinking that they were Amatongo.
What can one say to boys who ill-treat lizards? I own that I have
threatened them with ghostly treatment of the same sort. I even tried
the supernatural argument with a little Arab boy, otherwise a nice
intelligent child, who was throwing stones at a lizard which was moving
at the bottom of the deep Roman well at El Djem: I did not know then
that the persecution of lizards in Moslem lands is supposed (I hope
erroneously) to have been ordered by Mohammed “because the lizard mimics
the attitude of the Faithful at prayer.”
The lizard, one of the most winsome of God’s creatures, has suffered
generally from the prejudice which made reptile a word of reproach. It
is the more worthy of remark, therefore, that in a place where one would
hardly expect it, protective superstition has done its work of rescue:
Sicilian children catch lizards, but let them go unhurt to intercede for
them before the Lord, as the lizard is held to be “in the presence of
the Lord in heaven.” One wonders if this is some distant echo of the
text about the angels of the children (their archetypes) who always see
God.
Not always were reptiles scorned, but, possibly, they were always
feared. Man’s first idea is to worship what he fears; his second idea,
which may not come for many thousand years, is to throw a stone at it.
The stone, besides representing physical fear, at a given moment also
represents religious reprobation of what had been an object of worship
in a forsaken faith. Primitive man took the interest of a wondering
child in the great Saurian tribe. How did he know that they _flew_, that
there were “dragons” on the earth? How did he know that the snake once
had legs?—for if the snake of Eden was ordered to go on its belly, the
inference seems to be that he was thought once to have moved in another
way. The snake has lost his legs and the lizard his wings, and how the
ancient popular imagination of the world made such accurate guesses
about them must be left a riddle, unless we admit that it was guided by
the fossil remains of extinct monsters.
The serpent of the Biblical story was, says Dr. H. P. Smith, “simply a
jinnee—a fairy if you will—possessed of more knowledge than the other
animals, but otherwise like them.” Here, again, we meet in the most
venerable form, the belief that animals know more than men. Can we
resist the conclusion that to people constantly inclined towards magic
like the old-world Jews, it must have appeared that Eve was dabbling in
magic—by every rule of ancient religion, the sin of sins?
The cult of the serpent in its many branches is the greatest of animal
cults, and it is the one in which we see most clearly the process by
which man from being an impressionist became a symbolist, and from being
a symbolist became a votary. We have only to read the Indian statistics
of the number of persons annually killed by snake-bite to be persuaded
that fear must have been the original feeling with which man regarded
the snake. Fear is a religious feeling in primitive man, but other
religious feelings were added to it—admiration, for the snake, as all
who have had the good luck to observe it in its wild state must agree,
is a beautiful, graceful, and insinuating creature; a sense of mystery,
a sense of fascination which comes from those keen eyes fixed fearlessly
upon yours, the simple secret, perhaps, of the much discussed power of
snakes to fascinate their prey. What wonder if man under the influence
of these combined impressions, symbolised in the serpent a divine force
which could be made propitious by worship!
In the forming of cults there has always been this unconscious passage
from impressions to symbols, from symbols to “manifestations.” But there
has been also the conscious use of symbols by the priests and sages of
ancient religions, in imparting as much of divine knowledge to the
uninitiated as they thought that the uninitiated could bear. The origin
of serpent worship has a probable relationship with this conscious use
of symbols as well as with their unconscious growth.
Besides the prejudice against reptiles, modern popular superstition has
placed several animals under a ban, and especially the harmless bat and
the useful barn owl. Traditional reasons exist, no doubt, in every case;
but stronger than these are the associations of such creatures with the
dark in which the sane man of a certain temperament becomes a partial
lunatic; a prey to unreal terrors which the flap of a bat’s wing or the
screech of an owl is enough to work up to the point of frenzy. It is a
most unfortunate thing for an animal if it be the innocent cause of a
_frisson_, a feeling of uncanny dread. The little Italian owl,
notwithstanding that it too comes out at dusk, has escaped prejudice.
This was the owl of Pallas Athene and of an earlier cult. As in the case
of the serpent, its wiles to fascinate its prey were the groundwork of
its reputation for wisdom. Of this there cannot be, I think, any doubt,
though the droll bobs and curtesies which excite an irresistible and
fatal curiosity in small birds, have suggested in the mind of the modern
man a thing so exceedingly far from wisdom as _civetteria_, which word
is derived from _civetta_—“the owl of Minerva” as Italian class-books
say. The descent from the goddess of wisdom to the coquette is the
cruellest decadence of all!
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VI
THE FAITH OF IRAN
THE Zoroastrian theory of animals cannot be severed from the religious
scheme with which it is bound up. It is not a side-issue, but an
integral part of the whole. It would be useless to attempt to treat it
without recalling the main features in the development of the faith out
of which it grew.
In the first place, who were the people, occupying what we call Persia,
to whom the Sage, who was not one of them, brought his interpretation of
the knowledge of good and evil? The early Iranians must have broken off
from the united body of the Aryans at a time when they spoke a common
language, which though not Sanscrit, was very like it. The affinities
between Sanscrit and the dialect called with irremediable inaccuracy
“Zend” are of the strongest. From this we conclude that, on their
establishment in their new home, the Iranians differed little from the
race of whose customs the Rig-Veda gives—not a full picture—but a
faithful outline. Pastoral folk, devoted to their flocks and herds, but
not unlearned in the cultivation of the earth and the sowing of grain,
they had reached what may be called the highest stage of primitive
civilisation. Though milk, butter and cooked corn formed their principal
food, on feast days they also ate meat, chiefly the flesh of oxen and
buffaloes, which they were careful to cook thoroughly. The progressive
Aryans, who called half-raw meat by a term exactly corresponding to the
too familiar “rosbif saignant,” denounced the more savage peoples who
consumed it as “wild men” or “demons.” They kept horses, asses and
mules; horses were sacrificed occasionally; for instance, kings
sacrificed a horse to obtain male issue. The wild boar was hunted, if
not in the earliest, at least in very early times. The dog was prized
for its fidelity as guardian of the house and flocks, but there is no
trace of its having been protected by extraordinary regulations such as
those which later came into force in Iran. On the other hand, the name
of dog had never yet been used in reproach. It seems to have been among
Semitic races that the contempt for man’s best friend arose, but it is
morally certain that it arose nowhere till dogs became scavengers of
cities. It was the homeless pariah cur that gave the dog the bad name
from which have sprung so many ugly words registered in modern
vocabularies. Even now, when Jew or Moslem uses “dog” in a bad sense, he
means “cur”; he knows quite well the other kind of dog—he knows Tobit’s
dog, which, bounding on before the young man and the angel, told the
glad tidings of his master’s return; Tobit’s dog which was one of the
animals admitted by Mohammed into highest heaven. But “pariah dog”
became synonymous of pariah, and notwithstanding the present tendency to
attribute the opprobrium of the pig to original sanctity (and consequent
reservation), I am inclined to think that the pig likewise came to be
scorned because he was a scavenger. In some Indian cities herds of wild
pigs still enter the gates just before they are closed at dusk, to pass
out of them as soon as they are opened in the morning: during the night
they do their work excellently, and by day they take a well-earned sleep
in the jungle. They deserve gratitude, for they keep the cities free
from disease, but, like other public servants, they scarcely get it.
In Vedic times every home had its watch-dog, whose warning bark was as
unwelcome to lovers as it was to robbers. The Rig-Veda preserves the
prayer of a young girl who asks that her father, her mother, her
grandfather, _and the watch-dog_ may sleep soundly while she meets her
expected lover: a charming glimpse of the chaste freedom of early Aryan
manners. The newly-wedded wife enters her husband’s house as mistress,
not as slave; the elders say to the young couple: “You are master and
mistress of this house; though there be father-in-law and mother-in-law,
they are placed under you.” If that was not quite what happened, yet the
principle was granted, and there is much in that. The bride rode to her
new home in a car drawn by four milk-white oxen; when she alighted at
the threshold, these golden words were spoken to her: “Make thyself
loved for the sake of the children that will come to thee; guard this
house, be as one with thy husband; may you grow old here together. Cast
no evil looks, hate not thy spouse, be gentle in thought and deed _even_
_to the animals of this home_.” Bride and bridegroom are exhorted to be
of one heart, of one mind, “to love each other as a cow loves her calf,”
a simple and true metaphor full of the country-side, full of the youth
of the world.