CHAPTER XIV: THE MORAL INFLUENCES OF PRIESTHOODS.

§ 646. As was said when treating of “The Military Functions of Priests,” there exists in most minds an erroneous association between religious ministrations and moral teachings. Though priests habitually enforce conduct which in one way or other furthers preservation of the society; yet preservation of the society is so often furthered by conduct entirely unlike that which we now call moral, that priestly influence serves in many cases rather to degrade than to elevate.

Reading as we do of the Tahitian god Oro, that when war “proceeded in its bloodiest forms, it was supposed to afford him the highest satisfaction”—reading again of the Mexican king Montezuma, that he avoided subduing the neighbouring Tlascalans “that he might have Men to sacrifice” (thus making Tlascala a preserve of victims for the gods)—reading once more of the Chibchas that “the sacrifices which they believed to be most welcome to their gods were those of human blood;” we are reminded that priests who carry on propitiations of cannibal deities and deities otherwise atrocious (deities almost everywhere worshipped in early days) have done anything but foster high forms of conduct. Robbery as well as murder has had, and has still in some places, a religious sanctification. Says Burton of the Beloochis, “these pious thieves never rob, save in the name of Allah.” Of a robber-tribe among the Chibchas, Piedrahita writes, “they regard as the most acceptable sacrifice Edition: current; Page: [141] that which they offer up out of the robbery to certain idols of gold, clay, and wood, whom they worship.” And at the present time in India, we have freebooters like the Domras, among whom “a successful theft is always celebrated by a sacrifice” to their chief god Gandak. Nor is it only by encouraging disregard for life and property, that various cults, and by implication their priests, have aided in demoralizing men rather than in moralizing them. On finding that “among the Friendly Islanders the chief priest was considered too holy to be married, but he had the right to take as many concubines as he pleased”—that among the Caribs, “the bride was obliged to pass the first night with the priest, as a form essentially necessary to constitute the legality of the marriage”—that among some Brazilian tribes “the Pajé [priest], like the feudal lord of former times in some parts of England, enjoys the jus primæ noctis;” or again on being reminded of the extent to which prostitution in temples was a religious observance among Eastern peoples; we are shown in yet another way that there is no necessary connexion between priestly guidance and right action: using the word right in the sense at present given to it.

But now carrying with us the implied qualifications, let us ask in what ways Ecclesiastical Institutions have affected men’s natures. We shall find that they have been instrumental in producing, or furthering, certain all-important modifications.

§ 647. When describing the action of “An Ecclesiastical System as a Social Bond,” it was pointed out that a common worship tends to unify the various groups which carry it on; and that, by implication, the priests of such worship usually act as pacificators. While often instigating wars with societies of other blood, worshipping other gods, they, on the average of cases, check hostilities between groups of the same blood worshipping the same gods. In this way they aid social co-operation and development.

This function, however, is but a collateral display of their fundamental function—the maintenance of subordination: primarily to the deified progenitor, or the adopted god, and secondarily to his living descendant or appointed vicegerent. It is scarcely possible to emphasize enough the truth that, from the earliest stages down to existing stages, the one uniform and essential action of priesthoods, irrespective of time, place, or creed, has been that of insisting on obedience. That primitive men may be moulded into fitness for social life, they must be held together; and that they may be held together, they must be made subject to authority. Only by restraints of the most powerful kinds can the unregulated explosive savage be made to co-operate permanently with his fellows; and of such restraints the strongest, and apparently the indispensable one, is fear of vengeance from the god of the tribe, if his commands, repeated by his successor, are disobeyed. How important is the agency of Ecclesiastical Institutions as thus re-inforcing Political Institutions, is well seen in the following description Ellis gives of the effects produced by undermining local religions in Polynesia.

The result, as described by Ellis, being that social order was in a considerable degree disturbed.

This maintenance of subordination, to which an ecclesiastical system has been instrumental, has indirectly subserved other disciplines of an indispensable kind. No developed social life would have been possible in the absence of the Edition: current; Page: [143] capacity for continuous labour; and out of the idle improvident savage there could not have been evolved the industrious citizen, without a long-continued and rigorous coercion. The religious sanction habitually given in early societies to rigid class-distinctions and the concomitant slavery, must be regarded as having conduced to a modification of nature which furthered civilization.

A discipline allied and yet different, to which superior as well as inferior classes have been subjected by Ecclesiastical Institutions, has been the discipline of asceticism. Considered in the abstract asceticism is indefensible. As already shown (§§ 140 and 620) it grew out of the desire to propitiate malicious ghosts and diabolical deities; and even as displayed among ourselves at present, we may trace in it the latent belief that God is pleased by voluntarily-borne mortifications and displeased by pursuit of gratifications. But if instead of regarding self-infliction of suffering, bodily or mental, from the stand-point of absolute ethics, we regard it from the stand-point of relative ethics, as an educational regimen, we shall see that it has had a use, and perhaps a great use. The common trait of all ascetic acts is submission to a pain to avoid some future greater pain, or relinquishment of a pleasure to obtain some greater pleasure hereafter. In either case there is sacrifice of the immediate to the remote. This is a sacrifice which the uncivilized man cannot make; which the inferior among the civilized can make only to a small extent; and which only the better among the civilized can make in due degree. Hence we may infer that the discipline which, beginning with the surrendering of food, clothing, etc., to the ancestral ghost, and growing into the voluntary bearing of hunger, cold, or pain, to propitiate deities, has greatly aided in developing the ability to postpone present to future. Possibly only a motive so powerful as that of terror of the supernatural, could have strengthened the habit of self-denial in the requisite degree—a habit which, we must remember, is an essential factor in right conduct towards others, Edition: current; Page: [144] as well as in the proper regulation of conduct for self-benefit.

Irrespective, then, of the particular traits of their cults, Ecclesiastical Institutions have, in these ways, played an important part in moulding human nature into fitness for the social state.

§ 648. Among more special moral effects wrought by them, may be named one which, like those just specified, has been wrought incidentally rather than intentionally. I refer to the respect for rights of property, curiously fostered by certain forms of propitiation. Whether or not Mariner was right in saying that the word taboo, as used in the Tonga Islands, literally meant “sacred or consecrated to a god,” the fact is that things tabooed, there and elsewhere, were at first things thus consecrated: the result being that disregard of the taboo became robbery of the god. Hence such facts as that throughout Polynesia, “the prohibitions and requisitions of the tabu were strictly enforced, and every breach of them punished with death” (the delinquent being sacrificed to the god whose tabu he had broken); and that in New Zealand “violators of the tapu were punished by the gods and also by men. The former sent sickness and death; the latter inflicted death, loss of property, and expulsion from society. It was a dread of the gods, more than of men, which upheld the tapu.”

Obviously a sacredness thus given to anything bearing a sign that it belongs to a god, may easily be simulated. Though the mark on an animal or a fruit implies that an offering to a god will eventually be made of it; yet, since the time of sacrifice is unspecified, there results the possibility of indefinite postponement, and this gradually opens the door to pretended dedication of things which never are sacrificed—things which nevertheless, bearing the sign of dedication, no one dares meddle with. Thus we read that in the New Hebrides “the tapu is employed in all the islands to preserve persons and objects;” that in New Zealand, Edition: current; Page: [145] tapu, from being originally a thing made sacred, has come to mean a thing forbidden. Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa furnish kindred facts: the last place being one in which the name of the tabu indicates the sort of curse which the owner of a tabued thing hopes may fall on the thief. In Timor, “a few palm leaves stuck outside a garden as a sign of the ‘pomali’ [tabu] will preserve its produce from thieves as effectually as the threatening notice of man-traps, spring guns, or a savage dog, would do with us.” Bastian tells us that the Congoese make use of the fetich to protect their houses from thieves; and he makes a like statement respecting the negroes of the Gaboon. Livingstone, too, describes the Balonda as having this usage; and evidence of kindred nature is furnished by the Malagasy and by the Santals.

As, originally, this dedication of anything to a god is made either by a priest or by a chief in his priestly capacity, we must class it as an Ecclesiastical Institution; and the fostering of respect for proprietary rights which grows out of it, must be counted among the beneficial disciplines which Ecclesiastical Institutions give.

§ 649. Respecting the relation which exists between alleged supernatural commands and the right ruling of conduct at large, it is difficult to generalize. Many facts given in foregoing chapters unite to show that everything depends on the supposed character of the supernatural being to be propitiated. Schoolcraft says of the Dakotahs—

But if, as happens in many cases, a dying man’s peremptory injunction to his son (like that of David to Solomon) is to wreak vengeance on those who have injured him, fear of his ghost becomes not a moralizing but a demoralizing influence; using these words in their modern acceptations. Edition: current; Page: [146] When, concerning the deities of Mangaia, we read that “the cruel Kereteki, twice a fratricide, and his brother Utahea, were worshipped as gods in the next generation;” we are shown that divine example, if not precept, is in some cases a prompter to crime rather than otherwise. But on the average an opposite effect may be inferred. As the deified chief must be supposed to have had at heart the survival and spread of his tribe, sundry of his injunctions are likely to have had in view that maintenance of order conducing to tribal success. Hence rules traditionally derived from him are likely to be restraints on internal aggressions. Ferocious as were the Mexicans, and bloody as were their religious rites, they nevertheless had, as given by Zurita, a moral code which did not suffer by comparison with that of Christians: the one like the other claiming divine authority. Concerning the Peruvians, who like various of these semi-civilized American peoples had confessors, the account runs that—

And in this case, as in many other cases, we see that after the first and greatest sin of insubordination to the deity, come sins constituted by breaches of those laws of conduct needful for social concord.

Evidently through long stages of individual and social evolution, belief in the alleged divine origin of such laws is beneficial. The expected supernatural punishments for breaches of them, usefully re-inforce the threats of natural punishments. And various cases might be given showing that the moral code required for each higher stage, gaining alleged divine authority through some intermediating priest or inspired man, thus becomes more effective for the time being than it would otherwise be: the cases of Moses and of the later Hebrew prophets serving as examples.

§ 650. Multitudinous anomalies occur, however—anomalies which seem unaccountable till we recognize the truth that in all cases the one thing which precedes in importance the special injunctions of a cult, is the preservation of the cult itself and the institutions embodying it. Hence the fact that everywhere the duty which stands higher than duties properly called moral, is the duty of obedience to an alleged divine will, whatever it may be. Hence the fact that to uphold the authority of a sacerdotal hierarchy, by which the divine will is supposed to be uttered, is regarded by its members and adherents as an end yielding in importance only to recognition of the divine will itself. And hence the fact that the histories of Ecclesiastical Institutions show us how small is the regard paid to moral precepts when they stand in the way of ecclesiastical supremacy.

Of course the atrocities perpetrated in inquisitions and the crimes committed by popes will come into all minds as illustrations. But there are more remarkable illustrations even than these. The bitterest animosity shown by established churches against dissenting sects, has been shown against those which were distinguished by endeavours to fulfil the precepts of Christianity completely. The Waldenses, who “adopted, as the model of their moral discipline, the Sermon of Christ on the Mount,” but who at the same time rebelled against ecclesiastical rule, suffered a bloody persecution for three centuries. The Quakers, who alone among protestants sought to obey the commands of the Christian creed not in some ways only but in all, were so persecuted that before the accession of James II. more than 1500 out of their comparatively small number were in prison. Evidently, then, the distinctive ethics of a creed, restrain but little its official administrators when their authority is called in question.

Not only in such cases, however, are we shown that the chief concern of a sacerdotal system is to maintain formal subordination to a deity, as well as to itself as his agency, and that the ordering of life according to the precepts of the Edition: current; Page: [148] professed religion is quite a secondary matter; but we are shown that such a right ordering of life is little insisted on even where insistence does not conflict with ecclesiastical supremacy. Through all these centuries Christian priests have so little emphasized the virtue of forgiveness, that alike in wars and in duels, revenge has continued to be thought an imperative duty. The clergy were not the men who urged the abolition of slavery, nor the men who condemned regulations which raised the price of bread to maintain rents. Ministers of religion do not as a body denounce the unjust aggressions we continually commit on weak societies; nor do they make their voices loudly heard in reprobating such atrocities as those of the labour-traffic in the Pacific, recently disclosed by a Royal Commission (see Times, June 18th, 1885). Even where they are solely in charge, we see not a higher, but rather a lower, standard of justice and mercy than in the community at large. Under clerical management, public schools have in past times been the scenes of atrocities not tolerated in the world outside of them; and if we ask for a recent instance of juvenile savagery, we find it at King’s College School, where the death of a small boy was caused by the unprovoked blows given in sheer brutality by cowardly bigger boys: King’s College being an institution established by churchmen, and clerically governed, in opposition to University College, which is non-clerical in its government and secular in its teaching.

§ 651. Contemplating Ecclesiastical Institutions at large, apart from the particular cults associated with them, we have, then, to recognize the fact that their presence in all societies which have made considerable progress, and their immense predominance in those early societies which reached relatively high stages of civilization, verify inductively the deductive conclusion, that they have been indispensable components of social structures from the beginning down to the present time: groups in which they did not arise having failed to develop.

As furnishing a principle of cohesion by maintaining a common propitiation of a deceased ruler’s spirit, and by implication checking the tendencies to internal warfare, priesthoods have furthered social growth and development. They have simultaneously done this in sundry other ways: by fostering that spirit of conservatism which maintains continuity in social arrangements; by forming a supplementary regulative system which co-operates with the political one; by insisting on obedience, primarily to gods and secondarily to kings; by countenancing the coercion under which has been cultivated the power of application; and by strengthening the habit of self-restraint.

Whether the modifications of nature produced by this discipline, common to all creeds, are accompanied by modifications of higher kinds, depends partly on the traditional accounts of the gods worshipped, and partly on the social conditions. Religious obedience is the primary duty; and this, in early stages, often furthers increase of ferocity. With the change from a more militant to a more industrial state, comes a reformed ethical creed, which increases or decreases in its influence according as the social activities continue peaceful or again become warlike. Little as such reformed ethical creed (presently accepted as of divine origin) operates during periods when war fosters sentiments of enmity instead of sentiments of amity, advantage is gained by having it in reserve for enunciation whenever conditions favour.

But clerical enunciation of it habitually continues subject to the apparent needs of the time. To the last as at first, subordination, religious and civil, is uniformly insisted on—“fear God, honour the king;” and providing subordination is manifested with sufficient emphasis, moral shortcomings may be forgiven.