"And Moses was enraged against the chief officers of the army, against the
tribunes, and the centurions who returned from battle.
"And he said unto them, Why have you saved the women and the children?
"Slay therefore all the males amongst the children, and the women who have
been married.
"But reserve for yourselves all the young girls who are still virgins."
Moses spoke "in the name of God," as does his Holiness at Rome to-day.
Comment is hardly necessary. A few more quotations from the Vedas:
"A virtuous woman needs no purification, for she is never defiled, even by
contact with impurity.
"Women should be shielded by fostering solicitude by their fathers, their
brothers, their husbands, and the brothers of their husbands, if they hope
for great prosperity.
"When women are honored, the divinities are content, but where they are
not honored, all undertakings fail."
The sacerdotal caste in Egypt followed the inspiration of the Brahmans,
and took care to make no change in that situation.
And Moses followed the example of the priests of Egypt, where woman was a
slave or a prostitute in the temples as out.
The degeneracy of a people, the decay of religion, and the degradation of
woman are inseparable, and it is so-called "religion" that institutes the
change, and sets the pace, "down the steep descent."
The Brahmans "forgot God" and instituted the worship of saints and holy
men, and mythological characters, just as Rome does to-day. The women of
America to-day by a consensus of public opinion should make auricular
confession _disreputable_.
Excommunication, which is such a power in the hands of Rome, is merely a
subterfuge and substitute for the degradation of "outcasts," and pariahs,
instituted by the Brahman priests to terrify the disobedient and retain
their power.
If the reader cares to know the danger and the degradation to woman
fostered and protected through the Confessional by the Celibate Roman
priesthood, he should read "The History of Auricular Confession," by De
Lasteyrie, translated into English and printed in London in 1848. Now and
then a Pope or a council undertook to institute reform, but found, as in
Spain, prostitution of women by priests through the confessional so
widespread and universal that they more often gave up the attempt through
fear of scandal and contempt for the Church itself.
Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," records the case of "the
abbot-elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, who in 1171 was found on
investigation to have _seventeen illegitimate children in a single
village_; or, an abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, who in 1130 was proved to
have kept no less than seventy concubines; or Henry III, Bishop of Liège,
who was deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate children."
(History of European Morals. P. 350.)
If the reader remarks that "this is ancient history," he should remember
that a celibate priesthood to-day have the same opportunity, through the
secrecy and power of the Confessional, as ever.
I have barely touched on this disgusting but all-important question on the
general thesis of Jacolliot, viz.: "The first result of the baneful
domination of priests in India was the abasement and moral degradation of
woman."
Rome, who derived her religious code from paganized Egypt, added celibacy
to the opportunities and inducements for the degradation of woman. Rome
never attained the heights from which the Brahman priesthood plunged into
debauchery. Even to-day in the festivals in the Brahman temples wholesale
orgies of prostitution are sometimes found, as witnessed and recorded by
Jacolliot. From the first, Brahman priests have married and reared
families. Their degradation and debauchery, therefore, cannot be charged
to their original "Divine Revelation," but to their corruption of it.
I have given a few brief quotations among hundreds recorded by Jacolliot
as to the respect and veneration accorded to woman in early Vedic times,
and in the Laws of Manu.
"The Brahman may not approach the altar of sacrifice _but with a soul
pure, in a body undefiled_.
"Spirituous liquors beget drunkenness, neglect of duty, and they profane
prayer.
"The antiquity of India stands forth to establish its priority of
religious legislation in prohibiting to priests the use of spirituous
liquors, and especially in forbidding the pleasures of love when they are
about to offer sacrifice.
"The woman whose words and thoughts and person are pure is a celestial
balm.
"Happy shall he be whose choice is approved by all the good.
"It is ordained that a devotee shall choose a wife from his own class.
"The Brahman who marries a woman who is not a virgin, who is a widow, or
divorced by her husband, or who is not known as a virtuous woman, cannot
be permitted to offer sacrifice, for he is impure, and nothing can cleanse
him from his impurities."
And Jacolliot adds, "It is not recorded, says the divine Manu, that a
Brahman has ever, even by compulsion, married a girl of low class.
"Let the Brahman espouse a Brahmine, says the Veda.
"Let him take a well-formed virgin, of an agreeable name, of the graceful
carriage of the swan, or of the young elephant, whose body is covered with
light down, her hair fine, her teeth small, and her limbs charmingly
graceful."
Jacolliot compares these early Vedic injunctions with Leviticus, Chapter
XXI, and the absurdities introduced by Moses as to a "crooked nose or a
squint eye."
Woman here in the West is just emerging from the slavery and degradation
of ages, and she _ought_ to know that that degradation was not the
handicap of barbaric and undeveloped races, so far as the Aryan race is
concerned, but a demoralization and degradation instituted by priests, in
the name of religion, through which they have sought to rule the world,
and so far as institutional religions are concerned, woman has had to
progress _in spite of them_.
Without the aid and influence of woman to-day, neither Protestant nor
Roman Church could exist at all, as witness almost any Sabbath service
where women outnumber men often ten to one.
One day woman will be wise enough and brave enough to dictate terms, as
she did ages ago in old Aryavarta. When that day comes, and the really
Divine Motherhood planted in every true woman's soul is recognized by man
and woman alike, God grant that she may thenceforth hold the fort till the
Kali-Yuga is at full tide, and the Spiritual Evolution of our present
Humanity is fully accomplished.
In the meantime the world will have learned to _know_ Jesus, who and what
he was, and how he became the Christ, and will have joined in his Divine
Mission to man, as the teeming millions joined in old India under Christna
ages ago.
CHAPTER IX
HERO WORSHIP AND FOLKLORE
The history of every people, of all time, and of every religion of which
we have any record, reveals a similar origin, course, and destiny.
We of the present day have the advantage of these records upon which to
institute comparisons, ascertain relations, and draw conclusions.
True, the partisans and postulants of all these religions at the present
day will claim exception in favor of their own cult, and regard as
sacrilegious and profane any attempt to institute comparisons and draw
general conclusions.
Any attempt to persuade them of their error would be useless.
The essentials of their religion will not be called in question, but on
the other hand, they will find that it is impossible to escape from the
habitual and universal tendencies in which they are involved.
However veritable may have been the original revelations, the tendencies
and habits of weaving around them the traditions and superstitions of
folklore seem to have been inevitable and universal.
It is the province of Science to ascertain the facts in any given case, to
institute comparisons, and to draw deductions and generalizations
dispassionately and relentlessly.
It is thus that every tradition, superstition, creed, dogma, and
revelation comes under review, and is placed on trial.
True science has no preconceived notion, no foregone conclusion. Each
subject examined must tell its own story and in its own way, and stand or
fall measured by intrinsic evidence and revealed fact.
To this tribunal every episode in the life of man and the history of the
human race must at last come.
What are the _facts_? What do they reveal and signify?
To most religionists this method and aim of science seem as relentless and
dogmatic as their own creed or dogmas.
It is a sifting and discriminative process, that, while relentless, is in
the end eminently Just, and in the end will be found to be the revealer of
all that is essential and true in religion itself.
In itself, science is not and never can be a religion.
It is a _method_ only, which, like a search-light, reveals all religions
in all their essentials, and places them in their true light.
Religion _per se_ is an essential element in the nature and life of man
and of the human race.
Science is a method, a way of procedure in the intelligent mind of man in
its search for truth.
Religion is vital, essential, basic. It is born of the relation which
inheres in the kinship of the individual intelligence to the Universal
Spirit of Nature and of all life.
Science is the intelligent and rational use of the mental powers of man.
Religion is intuitional, spiritual perception, involving the heart, the
affections. Man aspires, worships, adores, and by the light of Faith or
intuitive conviction, recognizes that which he cannot explain and cannot
get rid of if he tries.
Science is the just weight and measure of things seen, and of the natural
causes of phenomena.
Religion--the evidence of things unseen. Religion, as a _fact_, can never
be explained away by Science.
The so-called science that assumes or undertakes to do that, is
materialism and nescience.
Superstition is the false interpretation of religion, and folklore and
tradition are the accretions that gather around the foundations and
original revelations of religion, and lead at last to obscuration and the
need of a new revelation.
Each genuine new "revelation" is but the rehabilitation of the primeval
religion in which accretions, false interpretations, and dogmatic
assertions are cast aside.
Religion represents man's endeavor to apprehend and interpret the unseen;
that "something more" and "something beyond" the visible, the sensuous,
and the tangible.
It is this conscious _awareness_ of something more and something beyond
the visible and the tangible, that furnishes man with a conception of God
and of the human soul. This is a natural intuition, inseparable from the
_awareness_ of self. It lies at the foundation like man's self-conscious
identity, and can neither be explained nor explained away.
Here lies the root of all religions. The imagery of man's imagination, in
his effort to apprehend the unseen, and to formulate the unknown, gives
rise to myths, allegory, tradition, folklore, and in the end, to
superstition, creed, and dogma.
Then come priestcraft, oppression, persecution. The death of religion, the
deification of the revealer or _Avatar_, and the substitution of the
priesthood as of divine authority, in place of the _revealer_ or the
revelation.
Jove, Orpheus, Jehovah, and at last Jesus, are enthroned beyond the
clouds, and priest or church assume the earthly prerogative, speak in
their place, assume dogmatic authority, promise heaven and happiness for
obedience, and dire penalties for disobedience, and resort to persecution
to maintain their authority.
The traditions, mythologies, and folklore of all the past have thus
arisen. The creeds and dogmas of the present constitute the effort of man
to assume exclusive dominion, and to exercise divine authority over the
masses of mankind. It is only another form of the ambition of individuals
for wealth, fame or power, lifting them to a "class" above the toiling,
suffering, and sorrowing masses.
There are exceptional individuals all along the way, who conceive, hold,
and exercise the spirit of the Master, and sink self in the service of
man, and but for these the organized priesthood would be execrated by
mankind long before.
The organized church deifies, where the true disciple humanizes and helps
mankind in the name and in the spirit of the Master.
This is the spirit, the origin, the genius and the history of every
Avatar, of Christna, and all the Buddhas, the Saviors and Redeemers of
history.
The orthodox Christian of to-day, whether Catholic or Protestant, will be
likely to admit the foregoing outline except as it applies to his own
religion. Whereas it is abundantly proven to-day regarding his own
religion as nowhere else in history.
The histories of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over
by tradition, myth, and folklore, as to be difficult to trace.
The beginnings, history, and progress of the Christian religion are
comparatively nearer at hand, and the process above outlined readily
demonstrable.
Not only so, but the recognition of the facts and processes is everywhere
in evidence.
This fact, however, by no means ends the controversy.
Traditions, creeds, and dogmas die hard, and fight to the last extremity.
Nothing else known to man fights so desperately and dies so hard as an
organized priesthood, and beyond this, they are upheld by the ignorance,
superstition, the fear, and the faith of the masses.
Their adherents often believe and assume that they have discovered final
truths, essential and unalterable verities. They undertake to support and
to maintain these by dogmatic authority, a holy book, a "thus sayeth the
Lord."
"There it is, down in black and white." No further evidence is required.
To question such authority is to be damned. To believe, accept, and to
conform, is to be _saved_.
Difference of opinion and of interpretation inevitably arise, even among
those who dare not question the ultimate authority and genuineness of the
original revelation. Hence arise sects, schisms, and theological warfare.
Notwithstanding all this, the original revelation becomes a matter of
thorough investigation and of criticism.
The so-called "higher criticism" had already discovered errors in
translation, and contradictions in interpretation, resulting in a "revised
edition" of the sacred books, while under the name "_Pragmatism_," certain
metaphysical writers and accredited teachers have undertaken to determine
essential meanings and interpretations, and to submit religious
revelations, creeds, dogmas, and theologies to critical analysis.
How far this analysis has gone, and how little of the original
interpretation actually remains, only they are aware who keep abreast of
current thought, and who with open mind care more for the simple truth
than for custom, tradition, theologies, and the folklore of the past.
Dogmatic theological authority is completely undermined, and its days are
numbered.[1]
With the masses there is the habitual unrest, the feeling of uncertainty,
the social upheaval, with the inevitable tendency to confusion and
anarchy. A new religion is already in the formative stage, a new Avatar
inevitable.
It is to be less a repudiation than a revision and rehabilitation of the
old religion.
People everywhere are looking for the new revelation, for the coming of
_Christos_, for the new Avatar, and few are aware that he is already
here.
It should be borne strictly in mind that in every instance in the past,
the advent of the Avatar has been unattended by signs and wonders, has
come upon the stage of human action in the most commonplace way, and that
myth, miracle, and folklore have followed as time went on.
To the people of his time Jesus was the "son of the carpenter," whose
family was obscure. He came "eating with publicans and sinners."
Jesus, the demigod of to-day, was unknown and undreamed of in Galilee.
Philo Judæus seems never to have heard of him.
What and who Jesus was, and what he did, is separated from what the church
and theologians have made of him by a gulf that seems almost impassable,
and yet this gulf has already been bridged and passed.
The new Avatar has for its mission the rehabilitation of Jesus as he
actually existed, divested of all myth and miracle, while the mission for
which he came, and the doctrines for which he lived and died are to be
completely restored to mankind in their purity.
The old Hindoos would call this transformation a "reincarnation of
Vishnu," a "new Avatar."
It will mean Jesus the divine Man, the master, _Christos_, restored to the
heart of Humanity from the mysticism and miracle of monks and theologies,
from the superstitions and folklore of the multitude.
This means a reconstruction and a restatement of the religion of Jesus.
Jesus remaining what he actually was and is, it will be the province of
Natural Science to explain and to demonstrate by natural and spiritual
law, how, without mystery or miracle, Jesus became the Master _Christos_
and so remains to-day.
Natural Science is not the invention of man, more than is the law of
gravitation, the law of equilibrium, or the binomial theorem. Man may
discover these laws from the phenomena of Nature, and demonstrate their
existence and mode of operation like any others.
It is a question of dispassionate and intelligent apprehension and
demonstration.
All actual progress of man up to the present time lies along these lines.
Beyond this all is conjecture and guess-work. Natural Science, however, is
far more than modern physical science so-called. It includes physical,
mental, moral, and spiritual science.
Its _methods_ everywhere and at all times are the same.
It may theorize, but never dogmatize, and it must _demonstrate_ at every
step. Facts must not only support the theorem, but demonstrate the
conclusions as inevitable, and the basis of all such actual demonstration
must be a verifiable individual experience, with formulated laws and
processes for its repetition, just as in physical science, in chemistry,
and mathematics. Nothing less than this on any plane or in any department
of investigation can enable the individual to declare "_I Know_."
Demonstration is the sign manual of knowledge; Dogmatism the arrogance of
ignorance.
It is impossible to make these radical distinctions too clear and
specific.
When this method of Natural Science is applied to the investigation of
religions, tradition is separated from fact, dogma from demonstration,
miracle from natural law, mythology and folklore are found to be the
fabric woven by the imagination of mankind around the receding
revelations, deifying their authors, and mingling fact with fable, till
the originals become unrecognizable.
Romance and superstition become substitutes for simple Faith, moral law,
and social Justice.
To question or to repudiate the dogmas of superstition becomes a "mortal
sin," even when the most plain and specific moral or ethical obligations
are entirely subverted or reversed by dogmatic authority.
It is thus that the original revelation is subverted and at last
overthrown.
From first to last, the whole fabric is claimed to be "sacred and divine,"
and to question it, "sacrilege" and "profanation of holy things." Thus,
that which seemed originally as wings to the toiling, sorrowing children
of men, becomes at last a "millstone about the neck," a "burden grievous
to be borne."
Then comes protest, repudiation, reform, and usually a new revelation,
embodying the primitive faith, and adapting it to modern times and
conditions.
This is, in brief, the history of the Avatars of Ancient India, the
Buddhas and the Zoroasters of later centuries; of the Greek Orpheus; of
the legends and folklore clustering around many of the sages of Israel,
and though in a less miraculous fashion, of Confucius and Laotse. But most
patent of all does this principle apply to the founder of the Christian
religion, because less ancient and more readily verifiable.
Though no new Avatar is yet recognized, the _spirit_ of _modern science_
does not hesitate to repudiate myth, miracle, and superstition, and to
insist on fact and natural law.
-----
[1] See President Eliot's latest utterances.
CHAPTER X
CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE
The devout and conscientious believers in the Christian Religion of to-day
often view with sorrow and alarm the encroachments of modern science.
Unable to prevent these encroachments, they stubbornly resent them. Once
admitted, it seems to them that nothing sacred or worthy the name of
Religion would remain. To shift to other and more ancient faiths can never
be considered at all, for the "higher criticism" and "pragmatism" have
left them all in even a worse plight.
It seems to these devout souls like the death of religion itself, and its
elimination from the life of man.
The intuitive basis and the intrinsic necessity of religion in some form
have already been considered.
This point is often overlooked or ignored by the Iconoclasts.
Their position would seem to be, "Unravel the superstition, disprove the
possibility of miracle, and let the deluge come if it must."
Neither pragmatism nor higher criticism has been in any large sense
constructive, but more largely destructive. The really spiritual element
in all religions, already referred to, is generally lost sight of.
Modern psychology is no nearer a science of the soul, than are folklore
and superstition to true religion. It should be recognized and granted
once for all that psychology, as a department of modern physical science,
has no substitute whatever to offer in the place of Religion.
It is gathering facts, classifying, and labeling psychic phenomena.
Here and there an advanced scientist, like Sir Oliver Lodge, ignores
tradition, repudiates orthodox scientific restraints, and steps over the
border of actual or implied nihilism.
This smug nihilism with its superior air of scientific wisdom, is often
only the opposite pole of the dogmatic certitude of the churchman. Actual
knowledge of the human soul is quite as far removed from the one as from
the other. Credulity and Incredulity simply annul each other; often make
faces at each other; while Progress stalks alone in the middle of the
road, a "tramp" or a "vagabond," like Paracelsus, "reading the leaves of
the book of Nature," laughing at poverty, fleeing from persecution, yet
_knowing_, and "becoming a light to man forever."
The consensus of opinion among the presidents and professors in the
leading colleges and universities of this country, their unhesitating and
unqualified denial or repudiation of the claims set up by the church
regarding revelation and the basic dogmas of the Christian Religion, and
which his "Holiness" of the Vatican designates as "Modernism," reveal, not
only the "signs of the times," but show indisputably that modern education
has shaken itself free from the superstitions of the past, and repudiated
the old restraints to free thought and modern progress.
Orthodoxy in religious matters has often nothing to do in determining
college curriculums, in the selection of presidents, or in filling the
chairs.
Bright young men and women, the advanced students of the schools of
to-day, who are to become the leaders of thought and the teachers of
to-morrow, find little restraint and no formative element in the creeds
and dogmas that in the past have been so much in evidence, and so
constraining. Intensity of feeling has given place to breadth and
inclusiveness, and under the name of "Comparative Religions," ancient
faiths and modern, are classified, and studied like fossils in the
different ages of the past.
The "crusader impulse" has rather settled down in each individual breast,
as the master passion, to do, to dare, and to become something more and
better than the individual, or than the past has hitherto known. Such a
general period of intellectual activity, with so few restraints, history
nowhere else records, and the world has never before known.
Here lie the elements, the impulses, and the formative stage of the new
Avatar.
At this stage of our discussion it is of exceeding interest and importance
to bear in mind one great fact. The average intelligent student of to-day
may take this fact tentatively, reserving final judgment till accumulative
evidence becomes satisfactory and conclusive.
No one who is dominated by shallow incredulity, and who attempts to close
this door contemptuously, will ever arrive at the real truth. The judgment
of such individuals is simply worthless, notwithstanding the smug conceit
of their own opinions.
The important fact referred to, is the demonstrated existence, all through
the ages, of the so-called _Mysteries_.
Their existence is beyond all question. What they concealed and taught is
sometimes difficult to determine.
There were also the genuine and the spurious Mysteries, and a fair
appreciation of their origin, purpose, methods, and genius, as illustrated
by Plato, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and nearly every great sage of antiquity,
leaves no possible doubt that in these "Secret Orders" were preserved the
loftiest and the most profound mental and spiritual achievements of all
previous human history.
If there were no other evidence in existence at the present day except the
traditions, landmarks, ritual, and Genius of Freemasonry, a careful and
intelligent study of that Ancient Order would be sufficient.
Whether one Mason in a thousand to-day apprehends and realizes this fact,
has nothing whatever to do with the real question. The evidence is there,
and the indifference or superficial intelligence of numbers cannot alter
it.
CHAPTER XI
CONCEPTIONS AND PORTENTS OF AN AVATAR
The conflict between Science and Religion has been thoroughly thrashed out
during the last half century, and the "reign of law," and orderly, and
progressive evolution, have made for themselves a habitation and a name
that nothing is likely to overthrow.
It is recognized that every effect has a sufficient and a commensurate
cause, not _en bloc_, but in matter, energy, mind, and spirit. Action and
reaction are definite mathematical processes. The parallelogram of force
tends everywhere to equilibrium and secures further action and new
processes under universal law.
The "special creation" theory--everything made out of nothing by a
personal God--is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals,
though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for
the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially
and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as though it really explained
anything.
"The rational order that pervades the universe," as Prof. Huxley defined
the concept and aim of scientific discovery, has steadily gained
ascendancy, until it dominates and measures individual intelligence.
The criticism is still occasionally made that this means Pantheism,
overlooking the fact that in all mythologies and cosmologies, an ideal and
pure theism was recognized as lying back of and beyond the pantheons of
the gods and the deification of the powers of Nature.
This was true in the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Hindoo mythologies.
Back of the many, and beyond the transient and contending divinities, was
the _One_, postulated, but unknown and changeless.
Every religion known to man, with the advancing civilization of a people,
copied, modified, adopted, and adapted the mythology and folklore of some
pre-existing religion and people. This is readily demonstrable with the
Hebrew, Greek, and later Christian dispensations, notwithstanding the most
strenuous and persistent determination to deny, disprove, and destroy the
ancient records.
It is embodied in the etymology of the very names of heroes, gods, and
demigods. A new language arising with any people _de novo_ can nowhere be
found.
Phonetics and picturegraphs, the various alphabets and glyphs, are mixed
and modified, but never invented nor altogether changed.
Complicated as they may be, it is thus that philology, ethnology,
theology, and anthropology constitute a consistent whole, the mythology
and folklore of mankind. This reveals the practical unity and solidarity
of the human race.
The tradition and prophecy among the ancient Hebrews of the coming of the
Messiah, the portents that heralded, and the signs and wonders that
preceded or accompanied his appearance, are merely translations or
adaptations from previous eras, Buddhas, or Avatars.
Whether Christian or non-Christian, the object of the advent is always
identical.
The light of the spirit having become enfeebled or obscured, the people
are left in darkness and given over to sin and wickedness. Moral ruin
seems inevitable unless there is a divine influx, a new Avatar, or Buddha,
or Advent of the God-man.
God incarnates himself as the son of Mary, and Jesus says, "I am come a
light into the world that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in
darkness."
Christna says, "Though I am unborn, and my nature is eternal, and I am the
Lord also of all creatures, yet taking control of my nature-form, I am
born by my illusive power. For whenever piety decays, O son of Bharata,
and impiety is in the ascendant, then I produce myself. For the protection
of good men, for the destruction of evildoers, for the re-establishment of
piety, I am born from age to age." (Bhagavadgita.)
The historical Buddha taught that he was only one of a long series of
Buddhas, who appear at intervals in the world, and who all teach the same
system. After the death of each Buddha his religion flourishes for a time
and then decays, till at last it is completely forgotten and wickedness
and violence rule the earth. The names of twenty-four of these Buddhas who
appeared previous to Gautama have been handed down to us, just as the
"second coming of Christ" is believed in and referred to among the
Christians.
Even the Mohammedan Koran refers to this succession of prophets and
messengers of Allah. The same is true of the Parsis.
"I have said that I first of all chose Abad, and after him I sent thirteen
prophets in succession, all called Abad. By these fourteen prophets the
world enjoyed prosperity."
"Tradition informs us that when these auspicious prophets and their
successors behold evil to prevail among mankind, they invariably withdraw
from among them--as they could not endure to behold or hear wickedness."
This is precisely what happened to Egypt after the ambitious priesthood
had gained the ascendency. The Master Builders retired.
Bonwick says ("Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought"): "What is commonly
called the _Christ idea_ of humanity, thus appears to have been the hope
and consolation of the ancient Egyptians so many thousand years ago."
That which thus appears and disappears, dies out and is born again, is the
spiritual light in the soul of man.
The diversity of man's intellectual activities exercise, elaborate, and
deepen his mental perceptions, and these largely concern the things of
sense and time, his appetites, passions, desires, and ambitions.
Back of and beyond all these lie the things of the spirit. On the physical
plane of life the former obscure and crowd out the latter, which are thus
continually in need of renewal.
In adapting the new revelation to the conditions of life on the physical
plane, it is intellectualized and theologized. Pundits and theologians
undertake to _explain_ what it all means and how it happened to be. Hence
arise wrangles, disputes, and finally creeds, dogmas, and persecution.
"Men fight like devils for the love of God." This is the ultimate history
of every religion known to man.
Meantime, the soul of man, a spiritual being dwelling in a material body
on the physical plane, is seeking real knowledge of spiritual things.
This real knowledge is an experience of the soul. It concerns, and is
comprised in, the _living of a life_. It is more than mind or intellect.
It is _knowledge_ gained by experience. "This only I know, that whereas I
was blind, now I see."
"Whether in the body or out of the body, I know not, but I saw things
impossible to utter."
Gradually man's _idea_ of God and his conception of Nature have changed
and enlarged.
Man, as a spiritual being, is part of a spiritual universe. He has been
able to harmonize his concept of God and Nature progressively as he has
gained larger views and deeper insight of both. He is no longer a puppet
of infinite caprice, nor a somewhat "improved animal."
The idea of man as a "fallen god" with the capacity to regain his heavenly
estate, is far nearer the truth.
As man advances in knowledge through the combined experiences of his
spiritual nature and his physical embodiment, his beliefs change, his
horizon enlarges, and his concepts become elevated and purified. The past
is apprehended and utilized and the future intelligently anticipated. He
begins to understand.
This means the recognition of law and order, permanency, _Foundation_, and
stability.
The birth stories, the portents, signs and wonders that announce,
accompany, or follow the birth of a Messiah or Avatar, are almost
identical. A common instinct seems to have led all scripture-compilers to
infer a simultaneous stimulus of nature and man upon the appearance of
what the Hindoo calls an Avatar.
Men, too, seem prepared to expect such an advent as its necessary time
approaches. It is an instinct which tells them that "the darkest hour
precedes the dawn."
In the Christian scriptures the premonitions and birth stories are found
largely in the Apocryphal books. Doubtless the copying and substitution
from the lives of Christna and Buddha were too plain.
At the death of Jesus the seismic, astral, and cosmic disturbances are
graphically described, as befitting the death of a god. "The veil of the
temple was rent in twain," etc.
The simple fact is that mankind feels instinctively in the soul the
far-reaching influences at work. The spiritual nature is stirred to its
depths, and when he tries to describe what he sees and feels, his
emotions, fears, or aspirations being at white heat, his imagination draws
from the folklore of other times, races, and religions, to express what he
so powerfully, but vaguely senses.
But beyond all this, the time of great religious revivals and social
upheavals is likely to coincide with seismic disturbance, tidal waves and
the like, owing to the conjunction of planets under the general law of
cycles. Man is completely involved with and evolved from the bosom of
Nature. His freedom is determined by knowledge and obedience to Law.
From the mystic Hymns of Orpheus, with the legends of Gods, demigods, and
heroes, and the personification of the varied powers of man and nature,
arose the Greek Pantheon, which, in poetic concept, romantic and dramatic
embodiment and expression, as a concise and complete whole, has probably
never been equaled by man.
True, every essential element, under a different name and detail, may be
found elsewhere, but never equaled in concise and constructive folklore
and mythology.
But running underneath all this, like a vein of gold under the mountain,
was the philosophy of Plato. Grasping the _One_ from the many, Unity from
the fantastic diversity, he came to the individual experience of the human
soul and its conscious mastership over the body and the things of sense
and time.
Civic pride, patriotism, and heroism, walked side by side with dialectics,
and the pantheon of the gods and the achievements of warriors rivaled each
other on the stage, as themes for the poetic philosopher and dramatist.
Mythology and folklore here furnished a background from which the
philosophy of the mysteries and the real science of life gained a
hearing.
Plato and Pythagoras generalized, and with many reservations represented
that which they had been taught in the mysteries of Egypt.
Greece, with its triumphs in literature, in the drama and in art, and all
its magnificent civilization, knew no Avatar.
Jacolliot, in his "Bible in India," has shown conclusively that not only
the whole Greek pantheon, its folklore and mythology, and even its civil
code were adopted from the Laws of Manu and the far older Aryan
civilization, including even the names of heroes.
The fame of Greece rests upon its _Genius fo Construction_ in Art and
Architecture and the Drama, and upon the open door it gave to Philosophy.
There was no dominant priesthood to close the door of progress.
It utilized all the past and built and beautified the present.
It bequeathed no creed nor dogma to the future, and yet its civilization
was transcendent and is immortal.
It had its canons of Art and of Architecture. These it demonstrated by
constructive work. It illustrated, explained and exemplified, but it did
not argue nor dogmatize.
The world for two thousand years has been "going back to Greece" and
trying to explain how it all happened, just as we have been trying to
explain Goethe's "Faust."
Genius is transcendent and immortal.
With the decline of Greece there arose the Genius of the Tiber, Imperial
Rome, and the Cæsars.
Rome created an _Avatar_ out of the "Babe of Bethlehem." Having enthroned
Jehovah, it proceeded to deify Jesus, and then by substitution to take the
place of both.
Imperial Rome, the "Scarlet Mother of the Tiber," assumed the government
and dictatorship of the world. Imperial, dogmatic, relentless, the arbiter
of the fate of humanity on earth and beyond.
Here was arbitrary, relentless _power_ at any cost, to be maintained on
any terms. "The end always justified the means."
In the civilization of Greece, the Individual, the citizen was first, and
association and co-operation built the State.
With Rome the Individual is nothing but a pawn, an accessory to the
Church. It was and is the Church first, last, and all the time. The
Individual can claim no right nor prerogative except as a concession from
the Church.
The contrast is extreme and absolute between the Genius of Greece and that
of Rome.
As the Genius of Greece was adapted from the older Aryan, so also was that
of Rome, from the Brahmans, through Egypt.
Among the various Avatars of old India designated as "Incarnations of
Vishnu," Siva "_the destroyer_," was often in evidence.
Rome proceeded to adopt the Hindoo Trinity--Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva--(the
Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer), and to so shape its creed and
dogmas as to secure and maintain the power of Mother Church, simply with a
change of names--"Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
It has enslaved nations and slaughtered millions in order to maintain its
power. For more than fifteen hundred years it has maintained its
relentless warfare against the inalienable rights of the Individual, and
the inevitable progress of humanity.
It has escaped the execration of the world only by its priestly trick of
deifying Jesus and sophisticating every doctrine that he taught.
Supporting its pretensions by Mariolatry, the Auricular Confession, and
its army of spies and inquisitors, it has dominated mankind, impoverished
whole nations, devastated provinces and murdered all who opposed its
progress wherever and whenever it has gained civil power.
Rome is to-day the literal and visible reincarnation of _Siva_, the
_Avatar of Destruction_. She has originated nothing. Her mass and all her
ritualistic mummeries are adopted from paganism at its worst stage and in
its most degenerate form, and she awaits the fate that befell Egypt and
all her predecessors, "Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain."
Protestantism has hitherto "protested" only in part. Refusing Mariolatry
and auricular confession, Protestantism, by accepting the miraculous
conception, the deification of Jesus and the vicarious atonement, has kept
Rome in countenance.
When these are swept away, and their doom is already declared by the
leaders of thought in nearly all our institutions of higher learning, the
Roman _Avatar_ will stand revealed in all its nakedness and villainy to
the execration of mankind. It is this "_Modernism_" that "His Holiness" so
much fears and is trying to arrest. It is too late, unless civilization
and the march of time move backward.
The most amazing thing about it all is, how the world, with its present
intelligence and culture, can be so indifferent to this most aggressive,
cruel, and relentless Avatar of all the ages, instead of repelling it with
contempt and execration.
Thirty-seven Italian Cardinals,[2] proud and arrogant, rule the Church,
elect the Pope, and assume dictatorship of the earth, as also arbiters of
human destiny, here and hereafter. America, the corn-bin of this modern
Egypt, by courtesy has _one cardinal_, just to keep her in countenance.
The effrontery is cyclopean, but our supineness and indifference are
deplorable and inexcusable.
Shipping her impoverished, degraded, criminal, and priest-ridden hordes to
America by the million every year, Rome is massing her army for the
overthrow of our government and all our present civilization. With her
dogma of obedience, her army now _votes_ and will, by and by, _fight_
under the dictatorship of the Cardinals at Rome. Already undermining our
Public Free Schools, boycotting the public press, with their army of
Jesuit spies and secret assassins of every liberty prized by man, the
"merry war" goes on right under our eyes, and we sleep and dream and
blindly assume that "there is no danger."
Read the history of the Crusaders, of the Protestant Reformation and of
the "Holy Inquisition," and if further enlightenment is needed, study the
origin, history, and denouement of all the Avatars of the past, the fate
of Egypt, the cities of the plain, where paganism and a degenerate
priesthood usurped the place of pure and undefiled religion, and literally
wiped from the map of the world the civilizations of the past. _Nemesis_
is written in letters of flame across the starry heavens, as an atonement
for the blood of nations and the degeneracy and diabolism of an ambitious,
cruel, relentless, and unrestrained priesthood. And it is all being
literally repeated to-day without the novelty of a new idea, or method, or
device, or motive. It is _The Reincarnation of the Avatar of Siva, the
Destroyer_.
-----
[2] At the death of Pope Leo there were 65 Cardinals, 39 of
whom were Italians.
CHAPTER XII
PORTENTS OF THE PRESENT TIME
There is no disguising nor denying the fact that during the past half
century institutional religion in the West has steadily lost its hold upon
the great mass of the people. Creeds and dogmas are denied and
repudiated.
The "higher criticism" represents the reluctant yielding of theologians to
the existing conditions. In order to maintain any hold whatever upon the
people and retain a semblance of the old faith, they have revised and
modified beliefs and interpretations, and relaxed completely the former
demand for the confession of faith and acceptance of the old creeds. Mere
general verbal assent admitting of many mental reservations is now often
deemed sufficient.
In the meantime, the living of the life and the doing of the work demanded
by Jesus have come more and more into demand and general recognition.
The "Emmanuel Movement," now gaining such recognition and making such
rapid progress, is sufficient evidence at this point.
With the Church of Rome no such change is manifest. By keeping its people
in ignorance, by condemning all change or any improvement under the name
of "Modernism," and by insisting upon the dogma of infallibility and blind
obedience, Rome thus far has resisted all change and refused all
compromise.
The change in Protestantism represents the growth of intelligence, the
recognition of the rights of conscience, and individual and intellectual
freedom.
The stability so apparent in Romanism relies solely on Ignorance,
Superstition, and Fear, enforced by the dogma of "_Infallibility_," and
reinforced by the power of "Excommunication" and the penalty of
"Anathema."
The unity and stability of the Roman Church, thus secured by force, will
presently be found to be apparent only. It could only work and hold in the
dark ages. Internal division and dissension, now known to exist, await
only some fresh act of oppression, or some new abomination, or abuse of
political power, to disrupt its solidarity.
In the meantime physical science has steadily advanced, opening new
avenues of wealth, industry, and opportunity, and so developing the
resources of this Western world.
But more important and far-reaching still have been the discoveries
regarding the finer forces of nature.
The wonderful development and application of discoveries in Electricity
have not only opened a new world previously unknown and unsuspected, but
have seemed to endow these subtle forces almost with an intelligence of
their own. Crass materialism is dead and space practically annihilated.
If a single wire or a vibrating disc cannot originate intelligent speech,
it can retain, repeat, and transmit the qualities, tones and inflections
of the human voice in a way that seems miraculous and uncanny. It is thus
that our concepts of nature have been enlarged, refined, and actually
spiritualized. "Brutal" and "dead" matter are no longer in evidence nor
even mentioned.
With the advent of modern spiritualism came another group of phenomena.
Making the largest allowance for fraud, self-deception, and all the
vagaries of the imagination, no intelligent individual, familiar with the
phenomena, will attempt to deny the extension of man's psychic world of
consciousness and the manifestation of intelligence in ways and under
conditions previously unknown. The identification of these intelligences,
always difficult, and generally problematical, need not here be discussed
at all. The facts and the phenomena are all that we are here concerned
with.
The most important consideration regarding all these phenomena is that
they do not _develop_, but on the contrary _dominate_ the individual. They
are, in fact, altogether subjective. The medium may put himself in the
negative or passive condition to be controlled, but he cannot _command_
nor _control_ the influence nor the "entity" that influences him, and
eventually he loses the power to resist it, and likewise the power of
self-control.
Science demands _facts_, and here are facts in abundance. These facts
supplement the discoveries in electricity and nature's finer forces, and
pass from physics to metaphysics, from physiology to psychology, and push
back the veil of the unseen, and hitherto unknown, many degrees.
The trend of all this progress, and of these discoveries, is exceedingly
plain.
Our concepts of Nature, of Life, and of Man have been almost immeasurably
enlarged, refined, and elevated.
Expectancy is in the air. "What next is going to happen?" is the question
everywhere asked. The conditions and portents, in a general way, are those
that herald a new Avatar; an Avatar now, of science rather than of
religion; of knowledge rather than of faith, and this knowledge is to be
of spiritual things, the foundations of which are already in evidence.
This science is not to be time-serving, but man-serving; not so much a
renewal of faith as a revelation of knowledge; less anxious for the glory
of God than for the elevation of man, which is the more direct and certain
way of honoring Divinity.
This does not mean the decay nor the repudiation of religion, but a
_realization_ of _true_ religion, such as heretofore prophets have
foretold, revelation has forecast, and toward which humanity has toiled
and journeyed in sorrow and pain; the very religion that Jesus lived and
taught. "A clean life, an open mind, an unveiled spiritual perception, a
brotherliness for all, and human life a journeying upward toward the
realms of eternal day, 'with no night there, and no sorrow.'"
_And why not?_ If man can conceive it, why may he not _realize_ it? The
"Old Adam" as an excuse is exploded. The "New Adam" is indeed "a
quickening spirit."
Nothing is plainer nor more demonstrable at the present day than the fact
that mankind is slowly but surely shaking off the traditions and the
superstitions that have bound it in the past, rising above the myths and
the folklore of every age and clime, and awaking as if from slumber, to
behold a new day and a new world.
This awakening is even more in evidence and remarkable in the case of
woman than of man. Progress here during the last decade has been such as
the world has never before seen on any such scale, and it means more to
the elevation of humanity than anyone has hitherto been able to forecast
or to measure.
In the meantime social and economic conditions with the great masses of
the people are very far from what they should be.
Unrest and confusion are strongly in evidence. On the whole, there is far
less suffering and destitution than ever before. Oppression and
abominations meet with quick and powerful protest from all classes, when
exposed, and at least temporary relief is quick to follow.
The blame is confined to no one class, rich or poor. The equitable
distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunity that have developed
beyond all precedent during the last half century, requires time. Justice
and equity are not dead, but everywhere in evidence, dominating mankind at
large. Public sentiment was never more keen and never nearer right than
to-day. There is general confusion, however, as to methods and ways and
means. The cunning shark and the selfish brute resort to concealment,
cunning and subterfuge, to deceive the people and often succeed for a
time, only to meet with condemnation and execration later. Injustice is
often in evidence, but it is neither rampant nor dominant. It stands in
fear of public sentiment.
These, in brief and in outline, are the conditions, the portents, to-day,
everywhere in evidence:
1. The decay of creeds and dogmas.
2. Great progress in Science, Art, and the Crafts.
3. Immense discoveries regarding Nature's finer forces and the psychical
powers latent in man.
4. Great expectancy as to new revelations.
5. Unprecedented increase in wealth and the development of natural
resources.
6. Enfranchisement of woman, and immense progress as to her rights and
opportunities.
7. Economic Justice recognized and aimed at, and fortified by public
sentiment, with strong efforts to secure and maintain it.
The present age or epoch is not one of darkness, but of light; not of
discouragement, but of hope. It is neither retrograde nor stagnant, but
progressive to a degree never before witnessed in the history of man on so
large a scale and involving all classes and so many people at one time.
Organized or institutional religion alone is on the wane. Evidence and
utility are everywhere demanded. Nothing is sacred simply because it is
old; nor true merely because it is dogmatically asserted so to be.
Holy books, holy men, and holy days are matters of evidence, and not of
blind credence.
What will the new religion--the new revelation--be? and whence will it
come?
CHAPTER XIII
THE SEPARABLE SOUL IN FOLKLORE
Belief in a separable soul in man is virtually universal. Such belief is
found amongst the lowest races, and in the few instances where it has not
been clearly discovered it is admitted that it may still exist and be
disguised by the native meaning of words or signs that escape the
explorer.
The universality of this belief has often been urged as an evidence of its
validity and proof of the soul's existence.
Modern physical science deduces this belief from the phenomena of daily
life and the analogies of individual experience, thus giving precedence to
material causes for mental concepts, or universal ideas. This view is, I
think, entitled to the most careful consideration, but it cannot once for
all be admitted, nor is it consistent with the general theory and progress
of evolution that the phenomenal stands to the noumenal, the actual to the
ideal, as cause to effect. These two groups of experiences are alternate
and coincident; and, as to priority, it is only the old question in a new
form, as to which was first, the bird that laid the egg, or the egg that
hatched the bird.
This distinction is particularly pertinent to the present subject, for the
reason that by the method of modern physical science, in dealing with the
belief in the existence of the soul, the whole of this universal belief is
swept away. Its origin is found in the ignorance, superstition, and false
analogies of barbarous races, and the inference is that the belief can
only linger as a remnant of superstition among civilized men. This method
prejudges the whole question, and (while it must readily be admitted that
the opposite method equally prejudges it), my contention is for neither
the one nor the other, but for the careful consideration and final
blending of both. If at first sight these two theories, which form the
basis of the working hypothesis of the materialist and the spiritist, seem
paradoxical and wholly irreconcilable, with careful consideration and
unbiased investigation of both sides of the problem the paradox will
disappear.
With both the lowest and the highest races not only do we find the
existence of belief in the existence of a separable soul in man, but of
ghosts, gods, genii, a spirit of the air, and hierarchies of celestial and
infernal beings.
In this regard, philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras, the intellectual
giants of the human race, may be said to have elaborated and specialized
the rude conceptions of the Fiji Islander, and to vie with him in peopling
space with invisible entities and potencies. In spite of the dictum of
science, the world, intelligent and ignorant alike, believes, and will
continue to believe, in the reality of the unseen universe, and the
Platonic doctrine of "emanation" and the "world of divine ideas" not only
begin where modern physical science leaves off, but at this very point
science either begs the question, or ignores it entirely.
How things come to be what they are, and to evolve as they do, science
nowhere declares. It simply takes things as it finds them, and dubs
the ultimate and antecedent causation the _Unknowable_. The philosophy
of Plato, it is true, reaches at last the unknowable and the
incomprehensible, but only after revealing another universe, the
metaphysical and spiritual, entirely unknown to, or ignored or derided by
the materialist.
It is, however, from this invisible realm that all visible things have
come forth, the two being not only under absolute and universal law, but
bearing everywhere definite analogies to each other. Hence Plato says,
"God geometrizes." Absolute mathematics determines the relations of atoms
to suns, and the circulation of the blood in man to the revolutions of
suns and solar systems.
A further general consideration remains to be noted before taking up the
evidence of belief in the separable soul, and that is, the evolutionary
life-wave of humanity on our earth.
The progress of man for some millions of years past has by no means been a
straightforward climbing from barbarism to civilization. The wave of
evolution has ebbed and flowed. While at one place man has slowly emerged
from savagery, at another he has as surely sunk to it. Continents and
islands have risen from and again sunk to the bottom of the sea, bearing
the races of men in their upheavals or descent, and cataclysmic and
seismic or volcanic upheavals have blotted out in a day the accumulated
progress of centuries. The poles of the earth have shifted with results to
the life of the globe more awful than the imagination can portray. Bodies
of people like our North American Indians represent the remains of many
peoples, as in Russia or India to-day, fragments of many nationalities are
being absorbed in one.
Bearing in mind, therefore, that owing to many causes a nation may descend
to barbarism or disappear entirely, we shall find everywhere the fragments
and decay of the old belief no less than the dawn of the new. A noble
creed, or a philosophical concept of a highly advanced race, may exist as
a transformed and degrading superstition with a race, or a fragment of a
people, undergoing degeneracy.
Every religion known to man has gone through just this transformation. The
tendency is innate and inevitable and no civilization or religion has ever
yet been able long to resist it. If we bear this in mind we shall be less
surprised at anthropogeneses, cosmogeneses or psychologies found sometimes
among otherwise rude or savage peoples, and be better able to understand
the incongruities and lack of symmetry in their evolution. It would be
easy to cite instances and draw comparisons at this point.
Bearing in mind, then, these general considerations underlying all
interpretation, and nowhere more applicable than to our present subject,
the following illustrations of belief in the separable soul, gleaned
largely from Spencer's "Descriptive Sociology," may be of interest. It is
drawn largely from the lower civilizations, as all are more or less
familiar with the mythologies of the Greeks, Babylonians, Phoenicians,
etc., all of which are accessible. The material available is embarrassing
on account of its magnitude alone.
Oscar Peschel, in his "Races of Man," says that "perhaps the Brazilian
Botocudos, of all the inhabitants of the world, are most nearly in the
primitive state, and yet," he adds, "possibly we may be altogether
mistaken in this regard, as their languages are very imperfectly known."
Humboldt rescued the Caribs from such an impeachment and declares that
their language "combines wealth, grace, strength, and gentleness. It has
expressions for abstract ideas, for Futurity, Eternity, and Existence, and
enough numerical terms to express all possible combinations of our
numerals." It might be noted in passing that it was these same Brazilian
natives that the Portuguese settlers sought to decimate by spreading
smallpox and scarlet fever amongst them, as the English colonists in
Tasmania shot the natives when they had no better food for their dogs.
Hariot says that "many of the Indian natives of North and South America
believe that the soul, after its separation from the body, enters into a
wide path crowded with spirits which are journeying toward a region of
eternal repose. They have to cross an impetuous river on a trembling
wicker bridge which is very dangerous."
Some Greenlanders believe that the soul can go astray out of the body for
a considerable time. Some believe that they can leave their souls at home
when going on a journey, and others believe in the migration of souls.
Belief in the soul and a future state is universal among the Indians of
North America. All are familiar with the tradition of the "Happy Hunting
Ground." With them the future life is patterned after the present.
Schoolcraft says that the Chippewas believe that there are duplicate
souls, one of which remains with the body, while the other is free to
depart on excursions during sleep. After death the soul departs to the
Indian Elysium and a fire is kept burning on the newly-made grave for four
days, the time required for the soul to reach its destination.
The Dakotas stand in great fear of the spirits of the dead, who they think
have power to injure them, and they recite prayers and give offerings to
appease them.
The Mandans, according to Schoolcraft, have anticipated Prof. Lloyd's
Etidorhpa, even to the beautiful maiden. They believe that they were the
first people created on the earth, and that they first lived inside the
globe. They raised many vines, one of which having grown up through a hole
in the earth, one of the young men climbed up until he crawled out on the
bank of the river where the Mandan village stands. (Jack and the bean
stalk.) The young man returned to the nether world and piloted several of
his companions to the outer world, and among them two very beautiful
virgins. Among those who tried to get up was a very large and fat woman,
who was ordered by the chiefs to remain behind. Her curiosity prompted her
secretly to make the trial. The vine broke under her weight and she was
badly hurt by the fall, but did not die, and was ever after in disgrace
for having cut off all communication with the upper world. Those who had
already ascended built the Mandan village, and when these die they expect
to return to the nether world from which they came. They also believe the
earth a great tortoise, and have a tradition of a universal deluge.
The Indians of Guiana believe in the immortality of the soul, as do also
the Arawaks. The Brazilians are said by Spix and Martins to have had no
religious belief whatever before mingling with the civilized races. The
Guaranis believed in a soul which remained in the grave with the body.
The Patagonians believe in a country of the dead which they call Alhue
Mapu and they kill the horses of the deceased in order that their owner
may ride in Alhue Mapu.
From the beliefs of the Negritto and Malayo-Polynesian races, I glean the
following: The Fuegians believe in a superior being, and in good and evil
spirits, in dreams, omens, signs, etc. Fitzroy says he could not satisfy
himself that they had any idea of the immortality of the soul.
The Veddahs believe in the guardianship of the spirits of the dead, who
visit them in dreams and minister to them in sickness, and they have
ceremonies of invocation.
Eyra says some at least of the Australians believe in the existence and
separability of the soul.
The Tasmanians believed in a future life as a tradition of a primitive
religion, and Bonwick says they conversed with the spirits of the dead.
The New Caledonians believe that white men are the spirits of the dead,
and that they bring sickness. They believe that the soul on leaving the
body goes to the Bush, and every fifth month they have a "spirit night" or
"grand concert of spirits." The gods of the New Caledonians are their
ancestors, whose relics they keep and idolize.
The Fijians believe in a separable soul, and dying is by them described by
the same terms as sunset.
Belief in a future state among them is said by Siemann to be universal. In
Fiji heaven the inhabitants plant, live in families, fight, and so repeat
the incidents of life on earth. They believe that the spirit of men, while
still alive, may leave the body and trouble other people when asleep.
The Sandwich Islanders believe that the spirit of the departed hovers
about his former home, appears to his relatives in dreams, and they
worship an image which they believe to be in some way connected with the
departed. They regard the spirit of one of their ancient kings as a
tutelar deity, and the king and the priest were believed to be descended
from the gods.
The Tahitians believe in a separable soul which, on leaving the body, is
seized by other spirits and conducted to the state of night, where it is
by degrees eaten by the gods. A few escape this fate, while others, after
being three times eaten, become immortal.
The Tongons believe that the human soul is the more ethereal part of the
body and that it exists in Bolotoo in the form and likeness of the body
the moment after death.
The Samoans believe that the spirits of the dead have power to return and
to cause disease and death in other members of the family, hence all are
anxious to part with the dying on good terms.
The New Zealanders believe that during sleep the mind leaves the body, and
that dreams are the objects seen during its wanderings. They believe in
two separate abodes for departed spirits, the sky, and the sea, and that
the abodes of souls are to be approached only down the face of a steep
precipice--Cape Maria Van Dieman.
The Dyaks have great difficulty in distinguishing sleep from death. They
believe that the soul during sleep goes on an expedition of its own, and
sees, hears, and talks. They believe in spirits, omens, and in all that
occurs in dreams as real and literally true.
The Sumatrans believe in spirits and superior beings, and are said to have
a vague idea of the immortality of the soul, and the Malays believe in
spirits, good and bad, and seem to have a vague idea of a separable soul.
The Mexicans believed in a separable soul, and distinguished three
different abodes for it after death.
Landa says the people of Yucatan have always believed more firmly in the
immortality of the soul than other people, though they were less advanced
in civilization. They believed that after death there would be a better
life, which the soul would enjoy after its separation from the body. They
worshiped their dead kings as gods. The mythology of the people of
Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua is extensive and complicated and their
National Book, the Popol Vuh, possesses intense interest for the student.
There can be no doubt that these people believed in a separable soul, as
did also the Chibchas.
It was the belief of the ancient Peruvians that the soul leaves the body
during sleep, and that the soul itself cannot sleep, but that dreams are
what the soul sees in the world while the body sleeps. Waitz says they
believed in the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals.
In the case of the Arabians the primitive belief, which was Sabianism, has
been altered far less by Mohammedan invasion than most persons suppose.
Burton says Mohammed and his followers conquered only the more civilized
Bedouins, and Baker says that the Arabs are unchanged, and that the
theological opinions which they now hold are the same as those which
prevailed in remote ages, and of this belief the soul and its immortality
formed a part.
In general the Hill Tribes of India share in the universal belief in the
soul, in spirits, gods, and devils, though of many of these tribes little
is really known in modern times.
Nearly all our North American Indians (I can find no exceptions) bury
objects with their dead, such as food implements, jewelry, etc., and kill
the horses of the deceased that he may ride in the Happy Hunting Ground.
With the Carib's death his wife and captives were killed, and food
utensils, etc., were buried with him.
A curious custom prevailed with some Brazilian tribes. After burying food,
utensils, arms, etc., with the body, a month after death the body was
disinterred, put in a pan over a fire, the volatile substances driven off,
the black residue reduced to powder and mixed with water and drunk by the
company.
The Patagonians bury all the possessions of the deceased with the body.
With the Hottentots, widows lose one joint of a finger as an offering to
the deceased husband every time they re-marry.
With the Kaffirs, the hut and utensils of the deceased are burnt. The East
Africans offer prayer to the dead.
The Congo people bury ornaments, utensils, arms, etc., and embalm the body
after one or two years. The body of the chief must be carried in a
straight line from the hut to place of burial, and if trees or huts impede
the passage, they are cut down.
The Coast Negroes bury property with the body and have a ceremony like an
Irish wake, as do also the Abyssinians.
With the Ashantis, gold dust and utensils are buried and human sacrifices
occur.
The wives of the Fijians are strangled that they may attend their lords in
the new country.
The people of Malagasy bury in vaults 10×12, and 7 feet high, and put in a
large quantity of property.
With the ancient Mexicans, wives, slaves, concubines, and chaplains were
slaughtered to attend the deceased.