The explanations of things always includes the origin of human
institutions. So the welfare of society is based on philosophy, and the
venerable sayings which constitute philosophy are thus held as sacred.
So ancientism is developed from accumulated life-experiences; by the
growth of story in repeated narration; by the steadily increasing power
of affirmatization, and by respect for the authority upon which the
institutions of society are based; all accumulating as they come down
the generations. That we do thus inherit effects we know, for has it not
been affirmed in the Book that "the fathers have eaten grapes, and the
children's teeth are set on edge"? As men come to believe that the "long
ago" was better than the "now," and the dead were better than the
living, then philosophy must necessarily include a theory of degeneracy,
which is a part of ancientism.
_Theistic Society._--Again, the actors in mythologic philosophy are
personages, and we always find them organized in societies. The social
organization of mythology is always found to be essentially identical
with the social organization of the people who entertain the philosophy.
The gods are husbands and wives, and parents and children, and the gods
have an organized government. This gives us theistic society, and we
cannot properly characterize a theism without taking its mythic society
into consideration.
_Spiritism._--In the earliest stages of society of which we have
practical knowledge by acquaintance with the people themselves, a belief
in the existence of spirits prevails--a shade, an immaterial existence,
which is the duplicate of the material personage. The genesis of this
belief is complex. The workings of the human mind during periods of
unconsciousness lead to opinions that are enforced by many physical
phenomena.
First, we have the activities of the mind during sleep, when the man
seems to go out from himself, to converse with his friends, to witness
strange scenes, and to have many wonderful experiences. Thus the man
seems to have lived an eventful life, when his body was, in fact,
quiescent and unconscious. Memories of scenes and activities in former
days, and the inherited memories of scenes witnessed and actions
performed by ancestors, are blended in strange confusion by broken and
inverted sequences. Now and then the dream-scenes are enacted in real
life, and the infrequent coincidence or apparent verification makes deep
impression on the mind, while unfulfilled dreams are forgotten. Thus the
dreams of sleepers are attributed to their immaterial duplicates their
spirits. In many diseases, also, the mind seems to wander, to see sights
and to hear sounds, and to have many wonderful experiences, while the
body itself is apparently unconscious. Sometimes, on restored health,
the person may recall these wonderful experiences, and during their
occurrence the subject talks to unseen persons, and seems to have
replies, and to act, to those who witness, in such a manner that a
second self--a spirit independent of the body--is suggested. When
disease amounts to long-continued insanity all of these effects are
greatly exaggerated, and make a deep impression upon all who witness the
phenomena. Thus the hallucinations of fever-racked brains, and mad
minds, are attributed to spirits.
The same conditions of apparent severance of mind and body witnessed in
dreams and hallucinations are often produced artificially in the
practice of _ecstasism_. In the vicissitudes of savage life, while
little or no provision is made for the future, there are times when the
savage resorts to almost anything at hand as a means of subsistence, and
thus all plants and all parts of plants, seed, fruit, flowers, leaves,
bark, roots--anything in times of extreme want--may be used as food. But
experience soon teaches the various effects upon the human system which
are produced by the several vegetable substances with which he meets,
and thus the effect of narcotics is early discovered, and the savage in
the practice of his religion oftentimes resorts to these native drugs
for the purpose of producing an ecstatic state under which divination
may be performed. The practice of ecstasism is universal in the lower
stages of culture. In times of great anxiety, every savage and barbarian
seeks to know of the future. Through all the earlier generations of
mankind, ecstasism has been practiced, and civilized man has thus an
inherited appetite for narcotics, to which the enormous propensity to
drunkenness existing in all nations bears witness. When the great actor
in his personation of Rip Van Winkle holds his goblet aloft and says,
"Here's to your health and to your family's, and may they live long and
prosper," he connects the act of drinking with a prayer, and
unconsciously demonstrates the origin of the use of stimulants. It may
be that when the jolly companion has become a loathsome sot, and his
mind is ablaze with the fire of drink, and he sees uncouth beasts in
horrid presence, that inherited memories haunt him with visions of the
beast-gods worshipped by his ancestors at the very time when the
appetite for stimulants was created.
But ecstasism is produced in other ways, and for this purpose the savage
and barbarian often resorts to fasting and bodily torture. In many ways
he produces the wonderful state, and the visions of ecstasy are
interpreted as the evidence of spirits.
Many physical phenomena serve to confirm this opinion. It is very late
in philosophy when shadows are referred to the interception of the rays
of the sun. In savagery and barbarism, shadows are supposed to be
emanations from or duplicates of the bodies causing the shadows. And
what savage understands the reflection of the rays of the sun by which
images are produced? They also are supposed to be emanations or
duplications of the object reflected. No savage or barbarian could
understand that the waves of the air are turned back, and sound is
duplicated in an echo. He knows not that there is an atmosphere, and to
him the echo is the voice of an unseen, personage--a spirit. There is no
theory more profoundly implanted in early mankind than that of
spiritism.
_Thaumaturgics._--The gods of mythologic philosophies are created to
account for the wonders of nature. Necessarily they are a wonder-working
folk, and, having been endowed with these magical powers in all the
histories given in mythic tales of their doings on the earth, we find
them performing most wonderful feats. They can transform themselves;
they can disappear and reappear; all their senses are magical; some are
endowed with a multiplicity of eyes, others have a multiplicity of ears;
in Norse mythology the watchman on the rainbow bridge could hear the
grass grow, and wool on the backs of sheep; arms can stretch out to
grasp the distance, tails can coil about mountains, and all powers
become magical. But the most wonderful power with which the gods are
endowed is the power of will, for we find that they can think their
arrows to the hearts of their enemies; mountains are overthrown by
thought, and thoughts are projected into other minds. Such are the
thaumaturgics of mythologic philosophy.
_Mythic tales._--Early man having created through the development of his
philosophy a host of personages, these gods must have a history. A part
of that history, and the most important part to us as students of
philosophy, is created in the very act of creating the gods themselves.
I mean that portion of their history which relates to the operations of
nature, for the gods were created to account for those things. But to
this is added much else of adventure. The gods love as men love, and go
in quest of mates. The gods hate as men hate, and fight in single combat
or engage in mythic battles; and the history of these adventures
impelled by love and hate, and all other passions and purposes with
which men are endowed, all woven into a complex tissue with their doings
in carrying out the operations of nature, constitutes the web and woof
of mythology.
_Religion._--Again, as human welfare is deeply involved in the
operations of nature, man's chief interest is in the gods. In this
interest religion originates. Man, impelled by his own volition, guided
by his own purposes, aspires to a greater happiness, and endeavor
follows endeavor, but at every step his progress is impeded; his own
powers fail before the greater powers of nature; his powers are pygmies,
nature's powers are giants, and to him these giants are gods with wills
and purposes of their own, and he sees that man in his weakness can
succeed only by allying himself with the gods. Hence, impelled by this
philosophy, man must have communion with the gods, and in this communion
he must influence them to work for himself. Hence, religion, which has
to do with the relations which exist between the gods and man, is the
legitimate offspring of mythologic philosophy.
Thus we see that out of mythologic philosophy, as branches of the great
tree itself, there grow ancientism, theistic society, spiritism,
thaumaturgics, mythic tales, and religion.
_THE COURSE OF EVOLUTION IN MYTHOLOGIC PHILOSOPHY._
I shall now give a summary characterization of zooetheism, then call
attention to some of the relics of hecastotheism found therein, and
proceed with a brief statement of the higher stages of theism. The
apparent and easily accessible is studied first. In botany, the trees
and the conspicuous flowering plants of garden, field, and plain were
first known, and then all other plants were vaguely grouped as weeds;
but, since the most conspicuous phenogamous plants were first studied,
what vast numbers of new orders, new genera, and new species have been
discovered, in the progress of research, to the lowest cryptogams!
In the study of ethnology we first recognized the more civilized races.
The Aryan, Hamites, Shemites, and Chinese, and the rest were the weeds
of humanity--the barbarian and savage, sometimes called Turanians. But,
when we come carefully to study these lower people, what numbers of
races are discovered! In North America alone we have more than
seventy-five--seventy-five stocks of people speaking seventy-five stocks
of language, and some single stocks embracing many distinct languages
and dialects. The languages of the Algonkian family are as diverse as
the Indo-European tongues. So are the languages of the Dakotans, the
Shoshonians, the Tinneans, and others; so that in North America we have
more than five hundred languages spoken to-day. Each linguistic stock is
found to have a philosophy of its own, and each stock as many branches
of philosophy as it has languages and dialects. North America presents a
magnificent field for the study of savage and barbaric philosophies.
This vast region of thought has been explored only by a few adventurous
travelers in the world of science. No thorough survey of any part has
been made. Yet the general outlines of North American philosophy are
known, but the exact positions, the details, are all yet to be filled
in--as the geography of the general outline of North America is known by
exploration, but the exact positions and details of topography are yet
to be filled in as the result of careful survey. Myths of the Algonkian
stock are found in many a volume of _Americana_, the best of which were
recorded by the early missionaries who came from Europe, though we find
some of them, mixed with turbid speculations, in the writings of
Schoolcraft. Many of the myths of the Indians of the south, in that
region stretching back from the great Gulf, are known; some collected by
travelers, others by educated Indians.
Many of the myths of the Iroquois are known. The best of these are in
the writings of Morgan, America's greatest anthropologist. Missionaries,
travelers, and linguists have given us a great store of the myths of the
Dakotan stock. Many myths of the Tinnean also have been collected.
Petitot has recorded a number of those found at the north, and we have
in manuscript some of the myths of a southern branch--the Navajos.
Perhaps the myths of the Shoshonians have been collected more thoroughly
than those of any other stock. These are yet unpublished, but the
manuscripts are in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology. Powers has
recorded many of the myths of various stocks in California, and the old
Spanish writings give us a fair collection of the Nahuatlan myths of
Mexico, and Rink has presented an interesting volume on the mythology of
the Innuits; and, finally, fragments of mythology have been collected
from nearly all the tribes of North America, and they are scattered
through thousands of volumes, so that the literature is vast. The brief
description which I shall give of zooetheism is founded on a study of the
materials which I have thus indicated.
All these tribes are found in the higher stages of savagery, or the
lower stages of barbarism, and their mythologies are found to be
zooetheistic among the lowest, physitheistic among the highest, and a
great number of tribes are found in a transition state: for zooetheism is
found to be a characteristic of savagery, and physitheism of barbarism,
using the terms as they have been defined by Morgan. The supreme gods of
this stage are animals. The savage is intimately associated with
animals. From them he obtains the larger part of his clothing, and much
of his food, and he carefully studies their habits and finds many
wonderful things. Their knowledge and skill and power appear to him to
be superior to his own. He sees the mountain-sheep fleet among the
crags, the eagle soaring in the heavens, the humming-bird poised over
its blossom-cup of nectar, the serpents swift without legs, the salmon
scaling the rapids, the spider weaving its gossamer web, the ant
building a play-house mountain--in all animal nature he sees things too
wonderful for him, and from admiration he grows to adoration, and the
animals become his gods.
Ancientism plays an important part in this zooetheism. It is not the
animals of to-day whom the Indians worship, but their progenitors--their
prototypes. The wolf of to-day is a howling pest, but that wolf's
ancestor--the first of the line--was a god. The individuals of every
species are supposed to have descended from an ancient being--a
progenitor of the race; and so they have a grizzly-bear god, an
eagle-god, a rattlesnake-god, a trout-god, a spider-god--a god for every
species and variety of animal.
By these animal gods all things were established. The heavenly bodies
were created and their ways appointed, and when the powers and
phenomena of nature are personified the personages are beasts, and all
human institutions also were established by the ancient animal-gods.
The ancient animals of any philosophy of this stage are found to
constitute a clan or _gens_--a body of relatives, or _consanguinei_ with
grandfathers, fathers, sons, and brothers. In _Ute_ theism, the ancient
_To-go-aev_, the first rattlesnake is the grandfather, and all the
animal-gods are assigned to their relationships. Grandfather _To-go-aev_,
the wise, was the chief of the council, but _Cin-au-aev_, the ancient
wolf, was the chief of the clan.
There were many other clans and tribes of ancient gods with whom these
supreme gods had dealings, of which hereafter; and, finally, each of
these ancient gods became the progenitor of a new tribe, so that we have
a tribe of bears, a tribe of eagles, a tribe of rattlesnakes, a tribe of
spiders, and many other tribes, as we have tribes of Utes, tribes of
Sioux, tribes of Navajos; and in that philosophy tribes of animals are
considered to be cooerdinate with tribes of men. All of these gods have
invisible duplicates--spirits--and they have often visited the earth.
All of the wonderful things seen in nature are done by the animal-gods.
That elder life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are
degenerate. Now and then as a medicine-man by practicing sorcery can
perform great feats, so now and then there is a medicine-bear, a
medicine-wolf, or a medicine-snake that can work magic.
On winter nights the Indians gather about the camp-fire, and then the
doings of the gods are recounted in many a mythic tale. I have heard the
venerable and impassioned orator on the camp-meeting stand rehearse the
story of the crucifixion, and have seen the thousands gathered there
weep in contemplation of the story of divine suffering, and heard their
shouts roll down the forest aisles as they gave vent to their joy at the
contemplation of redemption. But the scene was not a whit more dramatic
than another I have witnessed in an evergreen forest of the Rocky
Mountain region, where a tribe was gathered under the great pines, and
the temple of light from the blazing fire was walled by the darkness of
midnight, and in the midst of the temple stood the wise old man,
telling, in simple savage language, the story of _Ta-wats_, when he
conquered the sun and established the seasons and the days. In that
pre-Columbian time, before the advent of white men, all the Indian
tribes of North America gathered on winter nights by the shores of the
seas where the tides beat in solemn rhythm, by the shores of the great
lakes where the waves dashed against frozen beaches, and by the banks of
the rivers flowing ever in solemn mystery--each in its own temple of
illumined space--and listened to the story of its own supreme gods, the
ancients of time.
Religion, in this stage of theism, is sorcery. Incantation, dancing,
fasting, bodily torture, and ecstasism are practiced. Every tribe has
its potion or vegetable drug, by which the ecstatic state is produced,
and their venerable medicine-men see visions and dream dreams. No
enterprise is undertaken without consulting the gods, and no evil
impends but they seek to propitiate the gods. All daily life, to the
minutest particular, is religious. This stage of religion is
characterized by fetichism. Every Indian is provided with his charm or
fetich, revealed to him in some awful hour of ecstasy produced by
fasting, or feasting, or drunkenness, and that fetich he carries with
him to bring good luck, in love or in combat, in the hunt or on the
journey. He carries a fetich suspended to his neck, he ties a fetich to
his bow, he buries a fetich under his tent, he places a fetich under his
pillow of wild-cat skins, he prays to his fetich, he praises it, or
chides it; if successful, his fetich receives glory; if he fail, his
fetich is disgraced. These fetiches may be fragments of bone or shell,
the tips of the tails of animals, the claws of birds or beasts, perhaps
dried hearts of little warblers, shards of beetles, leaves powdered and
held in bags, or crystals from the rocks--anything curious may become a
fetich. Fetichism, then, is a religious means, not a philosophic or
mythologic state. Such are the supreme gods of the savage, and such the
institutions which belong to their theism. But they have many other
inferior gods. Mountains, hills, valleys, and great rocks have their own
special deities--invisible spirits--and lakes, rivers, and springs are
the homes of spirits. But all these have animal forms when in proper
_personae_. Yet some of the medicine-spirits can transform themselves,
and work magic as do medicine-men. The heavenly bodies are either
created personages or ancient men or animals translated to the sky. And,
last, we find that ancestors are worshipped as gods.
Among all the tribes of North America with which we are acquainted
tutelarism prevails. Every tribe and every clan has its own protecting
god, and every individual has his _my god_. It is a curious fact that
every Indian seeks to conceal the knowledge of his _my god_ from all
other persons, for he fears that, if his enemy should know of his
tutelar deity, he might by extraordinary magic succeed in estranging
him, and be able to compass his destruction through his own god.
In this summary characterization of zooetheism, I have necessarily
systematized my statements. This, of course, could not be done by the
savage himself. He could give you its particulars, but could not group
those particulars in any logical way. He does not recognize any system,
but talks indiscriminately, now of one, now of another god, and with him
the whole theory as a system is vague and shadowy, but its particulars
are vividly before his mind, and the certainty with which he entertains
his opinions leaves no room to doubt his sincerity.
But there is yet another phase of theism discovered. Sometimes a
particular mountain, or hill, or some great rock, some waterfall, some
lake, or some spring receives special worship, and is itself believed to
be a deity. This seems to be a relic of hecastotheism. Fetichism, also,
seems to have come from that lower grade, and all the minor deities, the
spirits of mountains and hills and forest, seem to have been derived
from that same stage, but with this development, that the things
themselves are not worshipped, but their essential spirits.
From zooetheism, as described, to physitheism the way is long. Gradually,
in the progress of philosophy, animal gods are dethroned and become
inferior gods or are forgotten; and gradually the gods of the
firmament--the sun, the moon, the stars--are advanced to supremacy; the
clouds, the storms, the winds, day and night, dawn and gloaming, the
sky, the earth, the sea, and all the various phases of nature perceived
by the barbaric mind, are personified and deified and exalted to a
supremacy coordinate with the firmament gods; and all the gods of the
lower stage that remain--animals, demons, and all men--belong to
inferior tribes. The gods of the sky--the shining ones, those that soar
on bright wings, those that are clothed in gorgeous colors, those that
came from we know not where, those that vanish to the unknown--are the
supreme gods. We always find these gods organized in great tribes, with
mighty chieftains who fight in great combats or lead their hosts in
battle, and return with much booty. Such is the theism of ancient
Mexico, such the theism of the Northland, and such the theism discovered
among the ancient Aryans.
From this stage to psychotheism the way is long, for evolution is slow.
Gradually men come to differentiate more carefully between good and
evil, and the ethic character of their gods becomes the subject of
consideration, and the good gods grow in virtue, and the bad gods grow
in vice. Their identity with physical objects and phenomena is gradually
lost. The different phases or conditions of the same object or
phenomenon are severed, and each is personified. The bad gods are
banished to underground homes, or live in concealment, from which they
issue on their expeditions of evil. Still, all powers exist in these
gods, and all things were established by them. With the growth of their
moral qualities no physical powers are lost, and the sports of the
physical bodies and phenomena become demons, subordinate to the great
gods who preside over nature and human institutions.
We find, also, that these superior gods are organized in societies. I
have said the Norse mythology was in a transition state from physitheism
to psychotheism. The Asas, or gods, lived in Asgard, a mythic communal
village, with its Thing or Council, the very counterpart of the communal
village of Iceland. Olympus was a Greek city.