In my last lecture I called attention to the fact that the subject of
prayer has been strangely neglected by the science of religion.
Religion, in whatever form it manifests itself, is essentially
practical; man desires to enter into communication or into communion
with his god, and in so doing he has a practical purpose in view. That
purpose may be to secure a material blessing of a particular kind, such
as victory in war or the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth in their
due season, or the purpose may be to offer thanks for a harvest and to
pray for a continuance of prosperity generally. Or the purpose of
prayer may be to ask for deliverance from material evils, such as
famine or plague. Or it may be to ask for deliverance from moral evils
and for power to do God's will. In a word, if man had no prayer to
make, the most powerful, if not the only, motive inciting him to seek
communion would be wanting. Now, to some of us it may seem _a priori_
that there is no reason why the communion thus sought in {176} prayer
should require any external rite to sanction or condition it. If that
is our _a priori_ view, we shall be the more surprised to find that in
actual fact an external rite has always been felt to be essential; and
that rite has always been and still is sacrifice, in one or other of
its forms. Or, to put the same fact in another way, public worship has
been from the beginning the condition without which private worship
could not begin and without which private worship cannot continue. To
any form of religion, whatever it be, it is essential, if it is to be
religion, that there shall be a community of worshippers and a god
worshipped. The bond which unites the worshippers with one another and
with their god is religion. From the beginning the public worship in
which the worshippers have united has expressed itself in rites--rites
of sacrifice--and in the prayers of the community. To the end, the
prayers offered are prayers to "Our Father"; and if the worshipper is
spatially separated from, he is spiritually united to, his
fellow-worshippers even in private prayer.
We may then recognise that prayer logically and ultimately implies
sacrifice in one or other of its senses; and that sacrifice as a rite
is meaningless and impossible without prayer. But if we recognise
{177} that sacrifice wherever it occurs implies prayer, then the fact
that the observers of savage or barbarous rites have described the
ritual acts of sacrifice, but have not observed or have neglected to
report the prayers implied, will not lead us into the error of
imagining that sacrifice is a rite which can exist--that it can have a
religious existence--without prayer. We may attend to either, the
sacrifice or to the prayer, as we may attend either to the concavity or
the convexity of a curve, but we may not deny the existence and
presence of the one because our attention happens to be concentrated on
the other. The relation in primitive religion of the one to the other
we may express by saying that prayer states the motive with which the
sacrifice is made, and that sacrifice is essential to the prayer, which
would not be efficacious without the sacrifice. The reason why a
community can address the god which it worships is that the god is felt
to be identified in some way with the community and to have its
interests in his charge and care. And the rite of sacrifice is felt to
make the identification more real. Prayer, again, is possible only to
the god to whom the community is known; with whom it is identified,
more or less; and with whom, when his help is required, the {178}
community seeks to identify itself more effectually. The means of that
identification without which the prayers of the community would be
ineffectual is sacrifice. The earliest form of sacrifice may probably
be taken to be the sacrifice of an animal, followed by a sacrificial
meal. Later, when the god has a stated place in which he is believed
to manifest himself,--tree or temple,--then the identification may be
effected by attaching offerings to the tree or temple. But in either
case what is sought by the offering dedicated or the meal of sacrifice
is in a word "incorporation." The worshippers desire to feel that they
are at one with the spirit whom they worship. And the desire to
experience this sense of union is particularly strong when plague or
famine makes it evident that some estrangement has taken place between
the god and the community which is normally in his care and under his
protection. The sacrifices and prayers that are offered in such a case
obviously do not open up communication for the first time between the
god and his tribe: they revive and reenforce a communion which is felt
to exist already, even though temporal misfortunes, such as drought or
famine, testify that it has been allowed by the tribe to become less
close than it ought to be, or that {179} it has been strained by
transgressions on the part of individual members of the community. But
it is not only in times of public distress that the community
approaches its god with sacrifice and prayer. It so happens that the
prayers offered for victory in war or for rain or for deliverance from
famine are instances of prayer of so marked a character that they have
forced themselves on the notice of travellers in all parts of the
world, from the Eskimo to the Australian black fellows or the negroes
of Africa. And it was to this class of prayers that I called your
attention principally in the last lecture. But they are, when we come
to think of it, essentially occasional prayers, prayers that are
offered at the great crises of tribal life, when the very existence of
the tribe is at stake. Such crises, however, by their very nature are
not regular or normal; and it would be an error to suppose that it is
only on these occasions that prayers are made by savage or barbarous
peoples. If we wish to discover the earliest form of regularly
recurring public worship, we must look for some regularly recurring
occasion for it. One such regularly recurring occasion is harvest
time, another is seed time, another is the annual ceremonial at which
the boys who {180} attain in the course of the year to the age of
manhood are initiated into the secrets or "mysteries" of the tribe.
These are the chief and perhaps the only regularly recurring occasions
of public worship as distinguished from the irregular crises of war,
pestilence, drought, and famine which affect the community as a whole,
and from the irregular occasions when the individual member of the
community prays for offspring or for delivery from sickness or for
success in the private undertaking in which he happens to be engaged.
Of the regularly recurring occasions of public worship I will select,
to begin with, the rites which are associated with harvest time. And I
will do so partly because the science of religion provides us with very
definite particulars both as to the sacrifices and as to the prayers
which are usually made on these occasions; and partly because the
prayers that are made are of a special kind and throw a fresh light on
the nature of the communion that the tribe seeks to effect by means of
the sacrificial offering.
At Saa, in the Solomon Islands, yams are offered, and the person
offering them cries in a loud voice, "This is yours to eat" (Frazer,
_G. B._^2, II, 465). In {181} the Society Islands the formula is,
"Here, Tari, I have brought you something to eat" (_ib._, 469). In
Indo-China, the invitation is the same: "Taste, O goddess, these
first-fruits which have just been reaped" (_ib._, 325). There are no
actually expressed words of thanks in these instances; but we may
safely conjecture that the offerings are thank-offerings and that the
feeling with which the offerings are made is one of gratitude and
thankfulness. Thus in Ceram we are told that first-fruits are offered
"as a token of gratitude" (_ib._, 463). On the Niger the Onitsha
formula is explicit: "I thank God for being permitted to eat the new
yam" (_ib._, 325). At Tjumba in the East Indies, "vessels filled with
rice are presented as a thank-offering to the gods" (_ib._, 462). The
people of Nias on these occasions offer thanks for the blessings
bestowed on them (_ib._, 463). By a very natural transition of thought
and feeling, thankfulness for past favours leads to prayer for the
continuance of favour in the future. Thus in Tana, in the New
Hebrides, the formula is: "Compassionate father! here is some food for
you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it" (_ib._, 464); while the
Basutos say: "Thank you, gods; give us bread to-morrow also" (_ib._,
459); and in Tonga the prayers {182} made at the offering of
first-fruits implore the protection of the gods, and beseech them for
welfare generally, though in especial for the fruits of the earth
(_ib._, 466).
The prayers of primitive man which I quoted in my last lecture were in
the nature of petitions or requests, as was natural and indeed
inevitable in view of the fact that they were preferred on occasions
when the tribe was in exceptional distress and required the aid of the
gods on whose protection the community relied. But the prayers which I
have just quoted are not in their essence petitions or requests, even
though in some cases they tend to become so. They are essentially
prayers of thanksgiving and the offerings made are thank-offerings.
Thus our conception of primitive prayer must be extended to include
both mental attitudes--that of thankfulness for past or present
blessings as well as the hope of blessings yet to come. And inasmuch
as sacrifice is the concomitant of prayer, we must recognise that
sacrificial offerings also serve as the expression of both mental
attitudes. And we must note that in the regularly recurring form of
public or tribal worship with which we are now dealing the dominant
feeling to which expression is given is {183} that of thankfulness.
The tribe seeks for communion with its god for the purpose of
expressing its thanks. Even the savage who simply says, "Here, Tari, I
have brought you something to eat," or, still more curtly, "This is
yours to eat," is expressing thanks, albeit in savage fashion. And the
means which the savage adopts for securing that communion which he
seeks to renew regularly with the tribal god is a sacrificial meal, of
which the god and his worshippers partake. Throughout the whole
ceremony, whether we regard the spoken words or the acts performed,
there is no suggestion of magic and no possibility of twisting the
ceremony into a piece of magic intended to produce some desired result
or to exercise any constraint over the powers to which the ceremony is
addressed. The mental attitude is that of thankfulness.
Now, it is, I venture to suggest, impossible to dissociate from the
first-fruits ceremonials which I have described the ceremonies observed
by Australian black fellows on similar occasions. And it is also
impossible to overlook the differences between the ceremony in
Australia and the ceremony elsewhere. In Australia, as elsewhere, when
the time of year arrives at which the food becomes fit for eating,
{184} a ceremony has to be performed before custom permits the food to
be eaten freely. In Australia, as elsewhere, a ceremonial eating, a
sacramental meal, has to take place. But whereas elsewhere the god of
the community is expressly invited to partake of the sacramental meal,
even though he be not mentioned by name and though the invitation take
the curt form of "This is yours to eat," in Australia no words whatever
are spoken; the person who performs the ceremony performs it indeed
with every indication of reverential feeling, he eats solemnly and
sparingly, that is to say formally and because the eating is a matter
of ritual, but no reference is made by him so far as we know, to any
god. How then are we to explain the absence of any such reference?
There seems to me to be only one explanation which is reasonably
possible. It is that in the Australian ceremony, which would be
perfectly intelligible and perfectly in line with the ceremony as it
occurs everywhere else, the reference to the god who is or was invited
to partake of the first-fruits has in the process of time and, we must
add, in the course of religious decay, gradually dropped out. The
invitation may never have been more ample than the curt form, "This is
yours to eat." Even in the {185} absence of any verbal invitation
whatever, a gesture may long have sufficed to indicate what was in the
mind and was implied by the act of the savage performing the ceremony.
Words may not have been felt necessary to explain what every person
present at the ceremony knew to be the purpose of the rite. But in the
absence of any verbal formula whatever the purpose and meaning of the
rite would be apt to pass out of mind, to evaporate, even though custom
maintained, as it does in Australia to this day maintain, the punctual
and punctilious performance of the outward ceremony. I suggest,
therefore, that in Australia, as elsewhere, the solemn eating of the
first-fruits has been a sacramental meal of which both the god and his
worshippers were partakers. The alternative is to my mind much less
probable: it is to use the Australian ceremony as it now exists to
explain the origin of the ceremony as we find it elsewhere. In
Australia it is not now apparently associated with the worship of any
god; therefore it may be argued in other countries also it was not
originally part of the worship of any god either. If, then, it was not
an act of public worship originally, how are we to understand it? The
suggestion is that the fruits of the earth or the animals which become
the food of {186} man are, until they become fit for eating, regarded
as sacred or taboo, and therefore may not be eaten. That suggestion
derives some support from the fact that in Australia anything that is
eaten may be a totem and being a totem is taboo. But if it is thus
sacred, then in order to be eaten it must be "desacralised," the taboo
must be taken off. And it is suggested that that precisely is what is
effected by the ceremonial eating of the totem by the headman of the
totem clan: the totem is desacralised by the mere fact that it is
formally and ceremonially eaten by the headman, after which it may be
consumed by others as an ordinary article of food. But this
explanation of the first-fruits ceremony is based upon an assumption
which is contrary to the facts of the case as it occurs in Australia.
It assumes that the plant or the animal until desacralised is taboo to
all members of the tribe, and that none of them can eat it until it has
been desacralised by the ceremonial eating. But the assumption is
false; the plant or animal is sacred and taboo only to members of the
clan whose totem it is. It is not sacred to the vast majority of the
tribe, for they have totems of their own; to them it is not sacred or
taboo, they may kill it--and they do--without breaking any taboo. The
ceremonial {187} eating of the first-fruits raises no taboo as far as
the tribe generally is concerned, for the plant or animal is not taboo
to them. As far as the tribe generally is concerned, no process of
desacralisation takes place and none is effected by the ceremonial
eating. It is the particular totem group alone which is affected by
the ceremony; and the inference which it seems to me preferable to draw
is that the ceremonial eating of the first-fruits is, or rather has
been, in Australia what it is elsewhere, viz. an instance of prayer and
sacrifice in which the worshippers of a god are brought into
periodic--in this case annual--communion with their god. The
difference between the Australian case and others seems to be that in
the other cases the god who partakes of the first-fruits is the god of
the whole community, while in Australia he is the god of the particular
totem group and is analogous to the family gods who are worshipped
elsewhere, even where there is a tribal or national god to be
worshipped as well.
We are then inclined, for these and other reasons, to explain the
ceremonial eating of the totem plant or animal in Australia by the
analogy of the ceremonial eating of first-fruits elsewhere, and to
regard the ceremony as being in all cases an act of worship, {188} in
which at harvest time the worshippers of a god seek communion with him
by means of sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving. But if we take this
view of the sacrifice and prayers offered at harvest time, we shall be
inclined to regard the rites which are performed at seed time, or the
period analogous to it, as being also possibly, in part, of a religious
character. In the case of agricultural peoples it is beyond doubt that
some of the ceremonies are religious in character: where the food plant
is itself regarded as a deity or the mode in which a deity is
manifested, not only may there be at harvest time a sacramental meal in
which, as amongst the Aztecs, the deity is formally "communicated" to
his worshippers, but at seed time sacrifice and prayer may be made to
the deity. Such a religious ceremony, whatever be the degree of
civilisation or semicivilisation which has been reached by those who
observe the ceremony, does not of course take the place of the
agricultural operations which are necessary if the fruits are to be
produced in due season. And the combination of the religious rites and
the agricultural operations does not convert the agricultural
operations into magical operations, or prove that the religious rites
are merely pieces of magic {189} intended to constrain the superior
power of the deity concerned. Indeed, if among the operations
performed at seed time we find some that from the point of view of
modern science are perfectly ineffectual, as vain as eating tiger to
make you bold, we shall be justified in regarding them as pieces of
primitive science, eventually discarded indeed in the progress of
advancing knowledge, but originally practised (on the principle that
like produces like) as the natural means of producing the effect
desired. If we so regard them, we shall escape the error of
considering them to be magical; and we shall have no difficulty in
distinguishing them from the religious rites which may be combined with
them. Further, where harvest time is marked by the offering of
sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving, we may not unreasonably take it
that the religious rites observed at seed time or the period analogous
to it are in the nature of sacrifice and prayers addressed to the
appropriate deity to beseech him to favour the growth of the plant or
animal in question. In a word, the practice of giving thanks to a god
at harvest time for the harvest creates a reasonable presumption that
prayer is offered to him at seed time; and if thanks are given at a
period analogous to {190} harvest time by a people like the Australian
black fellows, who have no domesticated plants or animals, prayers of
the nature of petitions may be offered by them at the period analogous
to seed time.
The deity to whom prayers are offered at the one period and
thanksgiving is made at the other may be, as in the case of the Aztec
Xilonen, or the Hindoo Maize-mother, the spirit of the plant envisaged
as a deity; or may be, not a "departmental" deity of this kind, but a
supreme deity having power over all things. But when we turn from the
regularly recurring acts of public worship connected with seed time and
harvest to the regularly recurring ceremonies at which the boys of a
tribe are initiated into the duties and rights of manhood, it is
obvious that the deity concerned in them, even if we assume (as is by
no means necessary) that he was originally "departmental" and at first
connected merely with the growth of a plant or animal, must be regarded
at the initiation ceremonies as a god having in his care all the
interests of that tribe of which the boys to be initiated are about to
become full members. Unmistakable traces of such a deity are found
amongst the Australian black fellows in the "father of all," "the
all-father" described by Mr. Howitt. The {191} worship of the
"all-father" is indeed now of a fragmentary kind; but it fortunately
happens that in the case of one tribe, the Euahlayi, we have evidence,
rescued by Mrs. Langloh Parker, to show that prayer is offered to
Byamee; the Euahlayi pray to him for long life, because they have kept
his law. The nature of Byamee's law may safely be inferred from the
fact that at this festival, both amongst the Euahlayi and other
Australians, the boys who are being initiated are taught the moral laws
or the customary morality of the tribe. But though prayers are still
offered by the Euahlayi and may have at one time been offered by all
the Australian tribes, there is no evidence at present to show that the
prayer is accompanied by a sacrifice, as is customary amongst tribes
whose worship has not disintegrated so much as is the case amongst the
Australians.
The ceremonies by which boys are admitted to the status of manhood are,
probably amongst all the peoples of the earth who observe them, of a
religious character, for the simple reason that the community to which
the boy is admitted when he attains the age of manhood is a community,
united together by religious bonds as a community worshipping the same
god or gods; and it is to the {192} worship and the service of these
gods that he is admitted. But the ceremonies themselves vary too much
to allow of our drawing from them any valuable or important conclusion
as to the nature and import of sacrifice as a religious institution.
On the other hand, the ceremonies observed at harvest time, or the
analogous period, have, wherever they occur, such marked similarity
among themselves, and the institution of prayer and sacrifice is such a
prominent feature in them, that the evidence they afford must be
decisive for us in attempting to form a theory of sacrifice. Nor can
we dissociate the ceremonies observed in spring from the harvest
ceremonies; as Dr. Frazer remarks (_G. B._, II, 190), "Plainly these
spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of
thought and form parts of the same primitive heathendom." What, then,
are these "ancient modes of thought" and what the primitive customs
based upon them? We may, I think, classify them in four groups. If we
are to take first those instances in which the "ancient mode of
thought" is most clearly expressed--whether because they are the most
fully developed or because they retain the ancient mode most faithfully
and with the least disintegration--we must {193} turn to ancient Mexico
and Peru. In Mexico a paste idol or dough image of the god was made;
the priest hurled a dart into its breast; and this was called the
killing of the god, "so that his body might be eaten." The dough image
was broken and the pieces were given in the manner of a communion to
the people, "who received it with such tears, fear, and reverence, as
it was an admirable thing," says Father Acosta, "saying that they did
eat the flesh and bones of God." Or, again, an image of the goddess
Chicomecoatl was made of dough and exhibited by the priest, saying,
"This is your god." All kinds of maize, beans, etc., were offered to
it and then were eaten in the temple "in a general scramble, take who
could." In Peru ears of maize were dressed in rich garments and
worshipped as the Mother of the Maize; or little loaves of maize
mingled with the blood of sheep were made; the priest gave to each of
the people a morsel of these loaves, "and all did receive and eat these
pieces," and prayed that the god "would show them favour, granting them
children and happy years and abundance and all that they required." In
this, the first group of instances, it is plain beyond all possibility
of gainsaying that the spring and harvest customs consist {194} of the
worship of a god, of sacrifice and prayers to him, and of a communion
which bound the worshippers to one another and to him.
Our second group of instances consists of cases in which the corn or
dough or paste is not indeed made into the form or image of a god, but,
as Dr. Frazer says (_G. B._ II, 318), "the new corn is itself eaten
sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn spirit." The spirit
thus worshipped may not yet have acquired a proper name; the only
designation used may have been such a one as the Hindoo Bhogaldai,
meaning simply Cotton-mother. Indeed, even amongst the Peruvians, the
goddess had not yet acquired a proper name, but was known only as the
Mother of the Maize. But precisely because the stage illustrated in
our second group of instances is not so highly developed as in Mexico
or Peru it is much more widely spread. It is found in the East Indian
island of Euro, amongst the Alfoors of Minahassa, in the Celebes, in
the Neilgherry Hills of South India, in the Hindoo Koosh, in
Indo-China, on the Niger, amongst the Zulus and the Pondos, and amongst
the Creek, Seminole, and Natchez Indians (_ib._ 321-342). In this, the
second group of instances, then, though the god {195} may have no
special, proper, name, and though no image of him is made out of the
dough or paste, still "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that
is as the body of the corn spirit"; by means of the sacramental eating,
of sacrifice and prayer, communion between the god and his worshippers
is renewed and maintained.
The third group of instances consists of the harvest customs of
northern Europe--the harvest supper and the rites of the Corn-mother or
the Corn-maiden or the Kern Baby. It can scarcely be contended that
these rites and customs, so far as they survive at the present day,
retain, if they ever had, any religious value; they are performed as a
matter of tradition and custom and not because any one knows why they
are performed. But that they originally had a meaning--even though now
it has evaporated--cannot be doubted. Nor can it be doubted that the
meaning, if it is to be recovered, must be recovered by means of the
comparative method. And, if the comparative method is to be applied,
the Corn-mother of northern Europe cannot be dissociated from the
Maize-mother of ancient Peru. But if we go thus far, then we must,
with Dr. Frazer (_ib._ 288), recognise "clearly the {196} sacramental
character of the harvest-supper," in which, "as a substitute for the
real flesh of the divine being, bread and dumplings are made and eaten
sacramentally." Thus, once more, harvest customs testify in northern
Europe, as elsewhere, to the fact that there was once a stated, annual,
period at which communion between the god and his worshipper was sought
by prayer and sacrifice.
The North-European harvest customs are further interesting and
important because, if they are clearly connected on the one hand with
the groups of instances already given, they are also connected on the
other with the group to which we have yet to call attention. Thus far
the wheat or maize, if not eaten in the form of little loaves or cakes,
has been made into a dough image, or else the ears of maize have been
dressed in rich garments to indicate that they represent the Mother of
the Maize; and in Europe also both forms of symbolism are found. But
in northern Europe, the corn spirit is also believed to be manifested,
Dr. Frazer says, in "the animal which is present in the corn and is
caught or killed in the last sheaf." The animal may be a wolf, dog,
cock, hare, cat, goat, bull, cow, horse, or pig. "The animal is slain
and its flesh and blood are partaken {197} of by the harvesters," and,
Dr. Frazer says, "these customs bring out clearly the sacramental
character of the harvest supper." Now, this manifestation of the corn
spirit in animal form is not confined to Europe; it occurs for instance
in Guinea and in all the provinces and districts of China. And it is
important as forming a link between the agricultural and the
pre-agricultural periods; in Dr. Frazer's words, "hunting and pastoral
tribes, as well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of
killing their gods" (_ib._ 366). In the pastoral period, as well as in
agricultural times, the god who is worshipped by the tribe and with
whom the tribe seeks communion by means of prayer and sacrifice, may
manifest himself in animal form, and "the animal is slain and its flesh
and blood are partaken of."
We now come to the fourth and the last of our groups of instances. It
consists of the rites observed by Australian tribes. Amongst these
tribes too there is what Dr. Frazer terms "a sacramental eating" of the
totem plant or animal. Thus Central Australian black men of the
kangaroo totem eat a little kangaroo flesh, as a sacrament (Spencer and
Gillen, p. 204 ff.). Now, it is impossible, I think, to {198}
dissociate the Australian rite, to separate this fourth group, from the
three groups already described. In Australia, as in the other cases,
the customs are observed in spring and harvest time, and in harvest
time, in Australia as well as elsewhere, there is a solemn and sparing
eating of the plant or animal; and, in Dr. Frazer's words, "plainly
these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of
thought, and form part of the same primitive heathendom." What, then,
is this ancient and primitive mode of thought? In all the cases except
the Australian, the thought manifestly implied and expressed is that by
the solemn eating of the plant or the animal, or the dough image or
paste idol, or the little loaves, the community enters into communion
with its god, or renews communion with him. On this occasion the
Peruvians prayed for children, happy years and abundance. On this
occasion, even among the Australians, the Euahlayi tribe pray for long
life, because they have kept Byamee's law. It would not, therefore, be
unreasonable to interpret the Australian custom by the same ancient
mode of thought which explains the custom wherever else--and that is
all over the world--it is found. But perhaps, if we can find some
other interpretation {199} of the Australian custom, we should do
better to reverse the process and explain the spring and harvest
customs which are found elsewhere by means of, and in accordance with,
the Australian custom. Now another interpretation of the Australian
custom has been put forward by Dr. Frazer. He treats the Australian
ceremony as being a piece of pure magic, the purpose of which is to
promote the growth and increase of the plants and animals which provide
the black fellows with food. But if we start from this point of view,
we must go further and say that amongst other peoples than the
Australian the killing of the representative animal of the spirit of
vegetation is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to
assure the revival of nature in spring." And if that is the nature of
the rite which appears in northern Europe as the harvest supper, it
will also be the nature of the rite as it appears both in our second
group of instances, where the corn is eaten "as the body of the
corn-spirit," and in the first group, where the dough image or paste
idol was eaten in Mexico as the flesh and bones of the god. That this
line of thought runs through Dr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_, in its second
edition, is indicated by the fact that the rite is spoken of throughout
as a {200} sacrament. That the Mexican rite as described in our first
group is sacramental, is clear. Of the rites which form our second
group of instances, Dr. Frazer says that the corn-spirit, or god, "is
killed in the person of his representative and eaten sacramentally,"
and that "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally; that is, as the
body of the corn-spirit" (p. 318). Of the North European rites, again,
he says, "the animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of
by the harvesters"--"these customs bring out clearly the sacramental
character of the harvest supper"--"as a substitute for the real flesh
of the divine being, bread or dumplings are made in his image and eaten
sacramentally." Finally, even when speaking of the Australians as men
who have no gods to worship, and with whom the rite is pure and
unadulterated magic, he yet describes the rite as a sacrament.
Now if, on the one hand, from its beginning amongst the Australians to
the form which it finally took amongst the Mexicans the rite is, as Dr.
Frazer systematically calls it, a sacrament; and if, on the other, it
is, in Dr. Frazer's words, "a magical rite intended to assure the
revival of nature in spring," then the conclusion which the reader
cannot help {201} drawing is that a sacrament, or this sacrament at
least, is in its origin, and in its nature throughout, a piece of
magic. Religion is but magic written in different characters; and for
those who can interpret them it spells the same thing. But though this
is the conclusion to which Dr. Frazer's argument leads, and to which in
the first edition of his _Golden Bough_ it clearly seemed to point; in
the preface to the second edition he formally disavows it. He
recognises that religion does not spring from magic, but is
fundamentally opposed to it. A sacrament, therefore, we may infer,
cannot be a piece of magic. The Australian sacrament, therefore, as
Dr. Frazer calls it, cannot, we should be inclined to say, be a piece
of magic. But Dr. Frazer still holds that the Australian rite or
sacrament is pure magic--religious it cannot be, for in Dr. Frazer's
view the Australians know no religion and have no gods.
Now if the rite as it occurs in Australia is pure magic, and if
religion is not a variety of magic but fundamentally different from it,
then the rite which, as it occurs everywhere else, is religious, cannot
be derived from, or a variety of, the Australian piece of magic; and
the spring and harvest customs which are found in Australia cannot be
"based on the {202} same ancient modes of thought or form part of the
same primitive heathendom" as the sacramental rites which are found
everywhere else in the world. The solemn annual eating of the totem
plant or animal in Australia must have a totally different basis from
that on which the sacrament and communion stands in every other part of
the globe: in Australia it is based on magic, elsewhere on that which
is, according to Dr. Frazer, fundamentally different and opposed to
magic, viz. religion. Before, however, we commit ourselves to this
conclusion, we may be allowed to ask, What is it that compels us thus
to sever the Australian from the other forms of the rite? The reply
would seem to be that, whereas the other forms are admittedly
religious, the Australian is "a magical rite intended to assure the
revival of nature in spring." Now, if that were really the nature of
the Australian rite, we might have to accept the conclusion to which we
hesitate to commit ourselves. But, as a matter of fact, the Australian
rite is not intended to assure the revival of nature in spring, and has
nothing magical about it. It is perfectly true that in spring in
Australia certain proceedings are performed which are based upon the
principle that like produces like; and {203} that these proceedings
are, by students of the science of religion, termed--perhaps
incorrectly--magical. But these spring customs are quite different
from the harvest customs; and it is the harvest customs which
constitute the link between the rite in Australia and the rite in the
rest of the world. The crucial question, therefore, is whether the
Australian harvest rite is magical, or is even based on the principle
that like produces like. And the answer is that it is plainly not.
The harvest rite in Australia consists, as we know it now, simply in
the fact that at the appointed time a little of the totem plant or
animal is solemnly and sparingly eaten by the headman of the totem.
The solemnity with which the rite is performed is unmistakable, and may
well be termed religious. And no attempt even, so far as I am aware,
has been made to show that this solemn eating is regarded as magic by
the performers of the rite, or how it can be so regarded by students of
the science of religion. Until the attempt is made and made
successfully, we are more than justified in refusing to regard the rite
as magical; we are bound to refuse to regard it as such. But if the
rite is not magical--and _a fortiori_ if it is, as Dr. Frazer terms it,
sacramental--then it is {204} religious; and the ancient mode of
thought, forming part of primitive heathendom, which is at the base of
the rite, is the conviction that manifests itself wherever the rite
continues to live, viz. that by prayer and sacrifice the worshippers in
any community are brought into communion with the god they worship.
The rite is, in truth, what Dr. Frazer terms it as it occurs in
Australia--a sacrament. But not even in Australia is a sacrament a
piece of magic.
In the animistic stage of the evolution of humanity, the only causes
man can conceive of are animated things; and, in the presence of any
occurrence sufficiently striking to arrest his attention, the questions
which present themselves to his mind are, Who did this thing, and why?
Occurrences which arrest the attention of the community are occurrences
which affect the community; and in a low stage of evolution, when the
most pressing of all practical questions is how to live, the
occurrences which most effectually arrest attention are those which
affect the food supply of the community. If, then, the food supply
fails, the occurrence is due to some of the personal, or
quasi-personal, powers by whom the community is surrounded; and the
reason why such power so acted is found in the wrath which {205} must
have actuated him. The situation is abnormal, for famine is abnormal;
and it indicates anger and wrath on the part of the power who brought
it about. But it also implies that when things go on in the normal
way,--when the relations between the spirit and the community are
normal,--the attitude of the spirit to the community is peaceable and
friendly. Not only, however, does the community desire to renew
peaceable and friendly relations, where pestilence or famine show that
they have been disturbed: the community also desires to benefit by them
when they are in their normal condition. The spirits that can disturb
the normal conditions by sending pestilence or famine can also assist
the community in undertakings, the success of which is indispensable if
the community is to maintain its existence; for instance, those
undertakings on which the food supply of the community depends. Hence
the petitions which are put up at seed time, or, in the
pre-agricultural period, at seasons analogous to seed time. Hence,
also, the rites at harvest time or the analogous season, rites which
are instituted and developed for the purpose of maintaining friendly
relation and communion between the community, and the spirit whose
favour {206} is sought and whose anger is dreaded by the community.
Such sacrificial rites may indeed be interpreted as the making of gifts
to the gods; and they do, as a matter of fact, often come so to be
regarded by those who perform them. From this undeniable fact the
inference may then be drawn, and by many students of the science of
religion it is inferred, that from the beginning there was in such
sacrificial rites no other intention than to bribe the god or to
purchase his favour and the good things he had to give. But the
inference, which, when properly limited, has some truth in it, becomes
misleading when put forward as being the whole truth. Unless there
were some truth in it, the rite of sacrifice could never have developed
into the form which was denounced by the Hebrew prophets and
mercilessly exposed by Plato. But had that been the whole truth, the
rite would have been incapable of discharging the really religious
function which it has in its history fulfilled. That function has been
to place and maintain the society which practises it in communion with
its god. Doubtless in the earliest stages of the history of the rite,
the communion thus felt to be established was prized and was mainly
sought for the external blessings which were believed {207} to follow
from it, or, as a means to avert the public disasters which a breach of
communion entailed. Doubtless it was only by degrees, and by slow
degrees, that the communion thus established came to be regarded as
being in itself the end which the rite of sacrifice was truly intended
to attain. But the communion of the worshippers with their god was not
a purpose originally foreign to the rite, and which, when introduced,
transformed the rite from what it at first was into something radically
different. On the contrary, it was present, even though not prominent
or predominant, from the beginning; and the rite, as a religious
institution, followed different lines of evolution, according as the
one aspect or the other was developed. Where the aspect under which
the sacrificial rite was regarded was that the offering was a gift made
to the deity in order to secure some specified temporal advantage, the
religious value of the rite diminished to the vanishing point in the
eyes both of those who, like Plato, could see the intrinsic absurdity
of pretending to make gifts to Him from whom alone all good things
come, and of those who felt that the sacrificial rite so conceived did
not afford the spiritual communion for which they yearned. Where even
the {208} sacrificial rite was regarded as a means whereby communion
between the worshipper and his god was attained or maintained, the
emphasis might be thrown on the rite and its due performance rather
than on the spiritual communion of which it was the condition. That is
to say, with the growth of formalism attention was concentrated on the
ritual and correspondingly withdrawn from the prayer which, from the
beginning, had been of the essence of the rite. By the rite of
sacrifice the community had always been brought into the presence of
the god it worshipped; and, in the prayers then offered on behalf of
the society, the society had been brought into communion with its god.
From that communion it was possible to fall away, even though the
performance of the rite was maintained. The very object of that
communion might be misinterpreted and mistaken to be a means merely to
temporal blessings for the community, or even to personal advantages
for the individual. Or the punctilious performance of each and every
detail of the rite might tend to become an end in itself and displace
the spiritual communion, the attainment of which had been from the
beginning the highest, even if not the only or the most prominent,
{209} end which the rite might subserve. The difference between the
possibilities which the rite might have realised and the actual
purposes for which it had come to be used before the birth of Christ is
a difference patent to the most casual observer of the facts. The
dissatisfaction felt alike by Plato and the Hebrew prophets with the
rite as it had come to be practised may be regarded, if we choose so to
regard it, as the necessary consequence of pre-existing facts, and as
necessarily entailing the rejection or the reconstitution of the rite.
As a matter of history, the rite was reconstituted and not rejected;
and as reconstituted it became the central fact of the Christian
religion. It became the means whereby, through Christ, all men might
be brought to God. We may say, if we will, that a new meaning was put
into the rite, or that its true meaning was now made manifest. The
facts themselves clearly indicate that from the beginning the rite was
the means whereby a society sought or might seek communion with its
god. They also indicate that the rite of animal sacrifice came to be
found insufficient as a means. It was through our Lord that mankind
learned what sacrifice was needed--learned to "offer and present unto
thee, O Lord, ourselves, our {210} souls and bodies, to be a
reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice unto thee." That is the
sacrifice Christ showed us the example of; that is the example which
the missionary devotes himself to follow and to teach.
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