PART VI: ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS.

CHAPTER I: THE RELIGIOUS IDEA.

§ 583. There can be no true conception of a structure without a true conception of its function. To understand how an organization originated and developed, it is requisite to understand the need subserved at the outset and afterwards. Rightly to trace the evolution of Ecclesiastical Institutions, therefore, we must know whence came the ideas and sentiments implied by them. Are these innate or are they derived?

Not only by theologians at large but also by some who have treated religion rationalistically, it is held that man is by constitution a religious being. Prof. Max Müller’s speculations are pervaded by this assumption; and in such books as that by Mr. R. W. Mackay on The Progress of the Intellect, it is contended that man is by nature a monotheist. But this doctrine, once almost universally accepted, has been rudely shaken by the facts which psychologists and anthropologists have brought to light.

There is clear proof that minds which have from infancy been cut off by bodily defects from intercourse with the minds of adults, are devoid of religious ideas. The deaf Dr. Kitto, in his book called The Lost Senses (p. 200), quotes the testimony of an American lady who was deaf and dumb, but at a mature age was instructed, and who said “the idea that the world must have had a Creator never occurred to her, nor to any other of several intelligent pupils, of similar Edition: current; Page: [4] age.” Similarly, the Rev. Samuel Smith, after “twenty-eight years’ almost daily contact” with such, says of a deaf-mute, “he has no idea of his immortal nature, and it has not been found in a single instance, that an uneducated deaf-mute has had any conception of the existence of a Supreme Being as the Creator and Ruler of the universe.”

The implication is that civilized men have no innate tendency to form religious ideas; and this implication is supported by proofs that among various savages religious ideas do not exist. Sir John Lubbock has given many of these in his Prehistoric Times and his Origin of Civilization; and others may be added. Thus of a Wedda, who, when in jail received instruction, Mr. Hartshorne writes—“he had no idea of a soul, of a Supreme Being, or of a future state.” Concerning an African race Heuglin says—“the Dōr do not seem to have religious conceptions properly so called, but they believe in spirits.” We learn from Schweinfurth that “the Bongo have not the remotest conception of immortality. . . . All religion, in our sense of the word religion, is quite unknown to the Bongo.” It is true that in such cases there is commonly a notion, here distinct and there vague, of something supernatural associated with the dead. While now, in answer to a question, asserting that death brings annihilation, the savage at another time shows great fear of places where the dead are: implying either a half-formed idea that the dead will suddenly awake, as a sleeper does, or else some faint notion of a double. Not even this notion exists in all cases; as is well shown by Sir Samuel Baker’s conversation with a chief of the Latooki—a Nile tribe.

And then in response to Baker’s repetition of St. Paul’s argument derived from the decaying seed, which our funeral service emphasizes, Commoro said:—

Clearly, then, religious ideas have not that supernatural origin commonly alleged; and we are taught, by implication, that they have a natural origin. How do they originate?

§ 584. In the first volume of this work, nearly a score chapters are devoted to an account of primitive ideas at large; and especially ideas concerning the natures and actions of supernatural agents. Instead of referring the Edition: current; Page: [6] reader back to those chapters, I think it better to state afresh, in brief, the doctrine they contain. I do this partly because that doctrine, at variance both with current beliefs and the beliefs of the mythologists, needs re-emphasizing; partly because citing a further series of illustrations will strengthen the argument; and partly because a greater effect may be wrought by bringing the several groups of facts and inferences into closer connexion.

As typifying that genesis of religious conceptions to be delineated in this chapter, a statement made by Mr. Brough Smyth in his elaborate work The Aborigines of Victoria may first be given. When an Australian, of mark as a hunter or counsellor, is buried, the medicine-man, seated or lying beside the grave, praising the deceased and listening for his replies, said—“The dead man had promised that if his murder should be sufficiently avenged his spirit would not haunt the tribe, nor cause them fear, nor mislead them into wrong tracks, nor bring sickness amongst them, nor make loud noises in the night.” Here we may recognize the essential elements of a cult. There is belief in a being of the kind we call supernatural—a spirit. There are praises of this being, which he is supposed to hear. On condition that his injunctions are fulfilled, he is said to promise that he will not make mischievous use of his superhuman powers—will not hurt the living by pestilence, nor deceive them, nor frighten them.

Is it not manifest that from germs of this kind elaborate religions may be evolved? When, as among the ancestor-worshipping Malagasy, we find, as given by M. Réville, the prayer,—“Nyang, méchant et puissant esprit, ne fais pas gronder le tonnerre sur nos têtes. Dis à la mer de rester dans ses bords. Épargne, Nyang, les fruits qui mûrissent. Ne sèche pas le riz dans sa fleur;” it is a conclusion scarcely to be resisted that Nyang is but the more developed form of a spirit such as that propitiated and petitioned by the Australian. On reading the Japanese sayings, “that the spirits Edition: current; Page: [7] of the dead continue to exist in the unseen world, which is everywhere about us, and that they all become gods, of varying character and degrees of influence,” and also that “the gods who do harm are to be appeased, so that they may not punish those who have offended them, and all the gods are to be worshipped, so that they may be induced to increase their favours;” we are strengthened in the suspicion that these maleficent gods and beneficent gods have all been derived from “the spirits of the dead . . . of varying character and influence.” From the circumstance that in India as Sir Alfred Lyall tells us, “it would seem that the honours which are at first paid to all departed spirits come gradually to be concentrated, as divine honours, upon the Manes of notables,” we derive further support for this view. And when by facts of these kinds we are reminded that among the Greeks down to the time of Plato, parallel beliefs were current, as is shown in the Republic, where Socrates groups as the “chiefest of all” requirements “the service of gods, demigods, and heroes . . . and the rites which have to be observed in order to propitiate the inhabitants of the world below,” proving that there still survived “that fear of the wrath of the departed which strongly possessed the early Greek mind;” we get from this kinship of beliefs among races remote in time, space, and culture, strong warrant for the inference that ghost-propitiation is the origin of all religions.

This inference receives support wherever we look. As, until lately, no traces of pre-historic man were supposed to exist, though now that attention has been drawn to them, the implements he used are found everywhere; so, once being entertained, the hypothesis that religions in general are derived from ancestor-worship, finds proofs among all races and in every country. Each new book of travels yields fresh evidence; and from the histories of ancient peoples come more numerous illustrations the more closely they are examined.

Here I will re-exemplify the chief factors and stages in this genesis of religious beliefs; citing, in large measure, books that have been published since the first volume of this work.

§ 585. The African savage Commoro, quoted above, and shown by his last reply to be more acute than his questioner, had no theory of dreams. To the inquiry how he accounted for the consciousness of wandering while asleep, he said—“It is a thing I cannot understand.” And here it may be remarked in passing, that where there existed no conception of a double which goes away during sleep, there existed no belief in a double which survives after death. But with savages who are more ready to accept interpretations than Commoro, the supposition that the adventures had in dreams are real, prevails. The Zulus may be instanced. To Bishop Callaway one of them said:—

Similarly with the Andamanese (who hold that a man’s reflected image is one of his souls), the belief is that “in dreams it is the soul which, having taken its departure through the nostrils, sees or is engaged in the manner represented to the sleeper.”

Abnormal forms of insensibility are regarded as due to more prolonged absences of the wandering double; and this is so whether the insensibility results naturally or artificially. That originally, the accepted interpretations of these unusual states of apparent unconsciousness were of this kind, we see in the belief expressed by Montaigne, that the “souls of men when at liberty, and loosed from the body, either by sleep, or some extasie, divine, foretel, and see things which whilst joyn’d to the body they could not see.” Then at the Edition: current; Page: [9] present time among the Waraus (Guiana Indians) to gain magical power a man takes infusion of tobacco, “and, in the death-like state of sickness to which it reduces him, his spirit is supposed to leave the body, and to visit and receive power from the yauhahu . . . the dreaded beings under whose influence he is believed to remain ever after.”

From the ordinary absence of the other-self in sleep and its extraordinary absences in swoon, apoplexy, etc., the transition is to its unlimited absence at death; when, after an interval of waiting, the expectation of immediate return is given up. Still, the belief is that, deaf to entreaties though the other-self has become, it either does from time to time return, or will eventually return. Commonly, the spirit is supposed to linger near the body or revisit it; as by the Iroquois, or by the Chinooks, who “speak of the dead walking at night, when they are supposed to awake, and get up to search for food.” Long surviving among superior races, in the alleged nightly wanderings of de-materialized ghosts, this belief survives in its original crude form in the vampyre stories current in some places.

One sequence of the primitive belief in the materiality of the double, is the ministering to such desires as were manifest during life. Hence the shell with “some of her own milk beside the grave” of an infant, which an Andamanese mother leaves; hence the “food and oblations to the dead” by the Chippewas, etc.; hence the leaving with the corpse all needful implements, as by the Chinooks; hence the “fire kept burning there [the grave] for many weeks,” as among the Waraus; hence the immolation of wives and slaves with the chief, as still, according to Cameron, at Urua in Central Africa. Hence, in short, the universality among the uncivilized and semi-civilized of these funeral rites implying belief that the ghost has the same sensations and emotions as the living man. Originally this belief is entertained literally; as by the Zulus, who in a case named said, “the Ancestral spirits came and eat up all the meat, and Edition: current; Page: [10] when the people returned from bathing, they found all the meat eaten up.” But by some peoples the ghost, conceived as less material, is supposed to profit by the spirit of the thing offered: instance the Nicaraguans, by whom food “was tied to the body before cremation;” and instance the Ahts, who “burn blankets when burying their friends,” that they may not be “sent shivering to the world below.”

Ministrations to the double of the deceased, habitually made at the funeral, are in many places continued—here on special occasions and here at regular intervals. For if the ghost is not duly attended to, there may come mischief. Men of various types visit their dead from time to time to carry food, drink, etc.; as the Gonds, by whom, at the graves of honoured persons, “offerings continue to be presented annually for many years.” Others, as the Ukiahs and Sanéls of California, “sprinkle food about the favorite haunts of the dead.” Elsewhere, ghosts are supposed to come to places where food is being prepared for them; as instance Zululand. Bishop Callaway quotes a Zulu as saying—“These dead men are fools! Why have they revealed themselves by killing the child in this way, without telling me? Go and fetch the goat, boys.”

The habitats of these doubles of the dead, who are like the living in their appetites and passions, are variously conceived. Some peoples, as the Shillook of the White Nile, “imagine of the dead that they are lingering amongst the living and still attend them.” Other peoples, as for instance the Santals, think that the ghosts of their ancestors inhabit the adjacent woods. Among the Sonoras and the Mohaves of North America, the cliffs and hills are their imagined places of abode. “The Land of the Blest” says Schoolcraft, “is not in the sky. We are presented rather . . . with a new earth, or terrene abode.” Where, as very generally, the ghost is believed to return to the region whence the tribe came, obstacles have to be overcome. Some, as the Chibchas, tell of difficult rivers to be crossed to reach Edition: current; Page: [11] it; and others of seas: the Naowe (of Australia) think that their ghosts depart and people the islands in Spencer’s Gulf. With these materialistic conceptions of the other-self and its place of abode, there go similarly materialistic conceptions of its doings after death. Schoolcraft, describing the hereafter of Indian belief, says the ordinary avocations of life are carried on with less of vicissitude and hardship. The notion of the Chibchas was that “in the future state, each nation had its own particular location, so that they could cultivate the ground.” And everywhere we find an approach to parallelism between the life here and the imagined life hereafter. Moreover, the social relations in the other world, are supposed, even among comparatively-advanced peoples, to repeat those of this world. “Some of them [Taouist temples] are called Kung, palace; and the endeavour is made in these to represent the gods of the religion in their celestial abodes, seated on their thrones in their palaces, either administering justice or giving instruction:” recalling the Greek idea of Hades. That like ideas prevailed among the early English, is curiously shown by a passage Kemble quotes from King Alfred, concerning the permission to compound for crimes by the bot in money, “except in cases of treason against a lord, to which they dared not assign any mercy; because Almighty God adjudged none to them that despised him, nor did Christ . . . adjudge any to him that sold him unto death: and he commanded that a lord should be loved like himself.”

Grave-heaps on which food is repeatedly placed, as by the Woolwas of Central America, or heaps of stones such as the “obo” described by Prejevalski, which “a Mongol never passes without adding a stone, rag, or tuft of camels’ hair, as an offering,” and which, as in Afghanistan, manifestly arise as coverings over dead men, are by such observances made into altars. In some cases they acquire this character quite definitely. On the grave of a prince in Vera Paz, there was “a stone altar erected above all, upon which incense was Edition: current; Page: [12] burned and sacrifices were made in memory of the deceased.” Various peoples make shelters for such incipient altars or developed altars. By the Mosquitos “a rude hut is constructed over the grave, serving as a receptacle for the choice food, drink,” etc. In Africa the Wakhutu “usually erect small pent-houses over them [the graves], where they place offerings of food.” Major Serpa Pinto’s work contains a cut representing a native chief’s mausoleum, in which we see the grave covered by a building on six wooden columns—a building needing but additional columns to make it like a small Greek temple. Similarly in Borneo. The drawing of “Rajah Dinda’s family sepulchre,” given by Bock, shows development of the grave-shed into a temple of the oriental type. A like connexion existed among the Greeks.

And in our own time Mohammedans, notwithstanding their professed monotheism, show us a like transformation with great clearness. A saint’s mausoleum in Egypt, is a “sacred edifice.” People passing by, stop and become “pious worshippers” of “our lord Abdallah.” “In the corner of the sanctuary stands a wax candle as long and thick as an elephant’s tusk;” and there is a surrounding court with “niches for prayer, and the graves of the favoured dead.” The last quotation implies something more. Along with development of grave-heaps into altars and grave-sheds into religious edifices, and food for the ghost into sacrifices, there goes on the development of praise and prayer. Instance, in addition to the above, the old account Dapper gives, translated by Ogilby, which describes how the negroes near the Gambia erected small huts over graves, “whither their surviving Friends and Acquaintance at set-times repair, to ask pardon for any offences or injuries done them while alive.”

The growth of ancestor-worship, thus far illustrated under Edition: current; Page: [13] its separate aspects, may be clearly exhibited under its combined aspects by quotations from a recent book, Africana, by the Rev. Duff MacDonald, one of the missionaries of the Blantyre settlement. Detached sentences from his account, scattered here and there over fifty pages, run as follows:—

Let us pass now to certain more indirect results of the ghost-theory. Distinguishing but confusedly between semblance and reality, the savage thinks that the representation of a thing partakes of the properties of the thing. Hence he believes that the effigy of a dead man (originally placed on the grave) becomes a habitation for his ghost. This belief spreads to effigies otherwise placed. Concerning “a rude figure of a naked man and woman” which some Land Edition: current; Page: [14] Dyaks place on the path to their farms, St. John says “These figures are said to be inhabited each by a spirit.”

Because of the indwelling doubles of the dead, such images are in many cases propitiated. Speaking of the idols made by the people west of Lake Nyassa, Livingstone says “they present pombe, flour, bhang, tobacco, and light a fire for them to smoke by. They represent the departed father or mother, and it is supposed that they are pleased with the offerings made to their representatives . . . names of dead chiefs are sometimes given to them.” Bastian tells us that a negress in Sierra Leone had in her room four idols whose mouths she daily daubed with maize and palm-oil: one for herself, one for her dead husband, and one for each of her children. Often the representation is extremely rude. The Damaras have “an image, consisting of two pieces of wood, supposed to represent the household deity, or rather the deified parent,” which is brought out on certain occasions. And of the Bhils we read—“Their usual ceremonies consist in merely smearing the idol, which is seldom anything but a shapeless stone, with vermilion and red lead, or oil; offering, with protestations and a petition, an animal and some liquor.”

Here we see the transition to that form of fetichism in which an object having but a rude likeness to a human being, or no likeness at all, is nevertheless supposed to be inhabited by a ghost. I may add that the connexion between development of the ghost-theory and development of fetichism, is instructively shown by the absence of both from an African people described by Thomson:—

And just the same connexion of facts is shown in the account of the Masai more recently given by him.

In several ways there arises identification of ancestors Edition: current; Page: [15] with animals, and consequent reverence for the animals: now resulting in superstitious regard, and now in worship. Creatures which frequent burial places or places supposed to be haunted by spirits, as well as creatures which fly by night, are liable to be taken for forms assumed by deceased men. Thus the Bongo dread—

Similarly, the belief that ghosts often return to their old homes, leads to the belief that house-frequenting snakes are embodiments of them. The negroes round Blantyre think that “if a dead man wants to frighten his wife he may persist in coming as a serpent;” and “when a man kills a serpent thus belonging to a spirit, he goes and makes an apology to the offended god, saying, ‘Please, please, I did not know that it was your serpent.’ ” Moreover, “serpents were regarded as familiar and domestic divinities by a multitude of Indo-European peoples;” and “in some districts of Poland [in 1762] the peasants are very careful to give milk and eggs to a species of black serpent which glides about in their . . . houses, and they would be in despair if the least harm befel these reptiles.” Beliefs of the same class, suggested in other ways, occur in North America. The Apaches “consider the rattlesnake as the form to be assumed by the wicked after death.” By the people of Nayarit it was thought that “during the day they [ghosts] were allowed to consort with the living, in the form of flies, to seek food:” recalling a cult of the Philistines and also a Babylonian belief expressed in the first Izdubar legend, in which it is said that “the gods of Uruk Suburi (the blessed) turned to flies.”

Identification of the doubles of the dead with animals—now with those which frequent houses or places which the doubles are supposed to haunt, and now with those which are like certain of the dead in their malicious or beneficent Edition: current; Page: [16] natures—is in other cases traceable to misinterpretation of names. We read of the Ainos of Japan that “their highest eulogy on a man is to compare him to a bear. Thus Shinondi said of Benri the chief ‘He is as strong as a bear,’ and the old Fate praising Pipichari called him ‘The young bear.’ ” Here the transition from comparison to metaphor illustrates the origin of animal names. And then on finding that the Ainos worship the bear, though they kill it, and that after killing it at the bear-festival they shout in chorus—“We kill you, O bear! come back soon into an Aino,” we see how identification of the bear with an ancestral Aino, and consequent propitiation of the bear, may arise. Hence when we read “that the ancestor of the Mongol royal house was a wolf,” and that the family name was Wolf; and when we remember the multitudinous cases of animal-names borne by North American Indians, with the associated totem-system; this cause of identification of ancestors with animals, and consequent sacredness of the animals, becomes sufficiently obvious. Even without going beyond our own country we find significant evidence. In early days there was a tradition that Earl Siward of Northumbria had a grandfather who was a bear in a Norwegian forest; and “the bear who was the ancestor of Siward and Ulf had also, it would seem, known ursine descendants.” Now Siward was distinguished by “his gigantic stature, his vast strength and personal prowess;” and hence we may reasonably conclude that, as in the case of the Ainos above given, the supposed ursine descent had arisen from misinterpretation of a metaphor applied to a similarly powerful progenitor. In yet other cases, sacredness of certain animals results from the idea that deceased men have migrated into them. Some Dyaks refuse to eat venison in consequence of a belief that their ancestors “take the form of deer after death;” and among the Esquimaux “the Angekok announces to the mourners into what animal the soul of the departed has passed.” Thus there are several ways in which respect for, Edition: current; Page: [17] and sometimes worship of, an animal arises: all of them, however, implying identification of it with a human being.

A pupil of the Edinburgh institution for deaf-mutes said, “before I came to school, I thought that the stars were placed in the firmament like grates of fire.” Recalling, as this does, the belief of some North Americans, that the brighter stars in the Milky Way are camp-fires made by the dead on their way to the other world, we are shown how naturally the identification of stars with persons may occur. When a sportsman, hearing a shot in the adjacent wood, exclaims—“That’s Jones,” he is not supposed to mean that Jones is the sound; he is known to mean that Jones made the sound. But when a savage, pointing to a particular star originally thought of as the camp-fire of such or such a departed man, says—“There he is,” the children he is instructing naturally suppose him to mean that the star itself is the departed man: especially when receiving the statement through an undeveloped language. Hence such facts as that the Californians think ghosts travel to “where earth and sky meet, to become stars, chiefs assuming the most brilliant forms.” Hence such facts as that the Mangaians say of certain two stars that they are children whose mother “was a scold and gave them no peace,” and that going to “an elevated point of rock,” they “leaped up into the sky;” where they were followed by their parents, who have not yet caught them. In ways like these there arises personalization of stars and constellations; and remembering, as just shown, how general is the identification of human beings with animals in primitive societies, we may perceive how there also originate animal-constellations; such as Callisto, who, metamorphosed into a she-bear, became the bear in heaven. That metaphorical naming may cause personalization of the heavens at large, we have good evidence. A Hawaiian king bore the name Kalani-nui-Liho Liho, meaning “the heavens great and dark;” whence it is clear that (reversing the order alleged by the mythologists) Edition: current; Page: [18] Zeus may naturally have been at first a living person, and that his identification with the sky resulted from his metaphorical name.

There are proofs that like confusion of metaphor with fact leads to Sun-worship. Complimentary naming after the Sun occurs everywhere; and, where it is associated with power, becomes inherited. The chiefs of the Hurons bore the name of the Sun; and Humboldt remarks that “the ‘sun-kings’ among the Natches recall to mind the Heliades of the first eastern colony of Rhodes.” Out of numerous illustrations from Egypt, may be quoted an inscription from Silsilis—“Hail to thee! king of Egypt! Sun of the foreign peoples. . . . Life, salvation, health to him! he is a shining sun.” In such cases, then, worship of the ancestor readily becomes worship of the Sun. The like happens with other celestial appearances. “In the Beirût school,” says Jessup, “are and have been girls named . . . Morning Dawn, Dew, Rose. . . . I once visited a man in the village of Brummana who had six daughters, whom he named Sun, Morning, Zephyr breeze,” &c. Another was named Star. Here, again, the superiority, or good fortune, or remarkable fate, of an individual thus named, would originate propitiation of a personalized phenomenon. That personalization of the wind had an origin of this kind is indicated by a Bushman legend. “The wind” it says “was formerly a person. He became a feathered thing. And he flew, while he no longer walked as formerly; for he flew, and he dwelt in the mountain . . . he inhabited a mountain-hole.” Here, too, we are reminded that in sundry parts of the world there occurs the notion that not only the divine ancestors who begat the race came out of caves, but that Nature-gods also did. A legend of the Mexicans tells of the Sun and Moon coming out of caves; and in the conception of a cave inhabited by the wind, the modern Bushman does but repeat the ancient Greek. As descending from the traditions of cave-dwellers, stories of this kind, with accompanying Edition: current; Page: [19] worship, are natural; but otherwise they imply superfluous absurdities which cannot be legitimately ascribed even to the most unintelligent. That in primitive times names are used in ways showing such lack of discrimination as leads to the confusions here alleged, we have proof. Grote says of the goddess Atē,—“the same name is here employed sometimes to designate the person, sometimes the attribute or event not personified.” And again, it has been remarked that “in Homer, Aïdes is invariably the name of a god; but in later times it was transferred to his house, his abode or kingdom.” Nature-worship, then, is but an aberrant form of ghost-worship.

In their normal forms, as in their abnormal forms, all gods arise by apotheosis. Originally, the god is the superior living man whose power is conceived as superhuman. From uncivilized peoples at present, and from civilized peoples during their past, evidence is derived. Mr. Selous says—“the chief of these kraals, ‘Situngweesa,’ is considered a very powerful ‘Umlimo,’ or god, by the Amandebele.” So, too, among existing Hindus, “General Nicholson . . . was adored as a hero in his lifetime, in spite of his violent persecution of his own devotees.” The Rig Veda shows that it was thus with the ancient people of India. Their gods are addressed—“Thou, Agni, the earliest and most Angiras-like sage” (R. V., i, 31). “Thou Agni, the most eminent rishi” (iii, 21, 3). “Thou [Indra] art an anciently-born rishi” (viii, 6, 41). “Indra is a priest, Indra is a rishi” (viii, 16, 7). That Achilles was apotheosized, and that according to tradition the Pythian priestess preferred to address Lykurgus as a god, are examples sufficiently reminding us of man-derived deities among the Greeks. It is a familiar fact, too, that with the Romans and subject peoples emperor-worship became a developed cult. In “every one of the Gaulish cities,” “a large number of men, who belonged to the highest as well as to the middle classes, were priests and flamens of Augustus, flamens of Drusus, priests Edition: current; Page: [20] of Vespasian or Marcus Aurelius.” “The statues of the emperors were real idols, to which they offered incense, victims, and prayers.” And how natural to other European peoples in those days were conceptions leading to such cults, is curiously shown by an incident in the campaign of Tiberius, then a prince, carried on in Germany in ad 5, when Romans and Teutons were on opposite sides of the Elbe.

That some of our own ancestors regarded gods simply as superior men is also clear. If the Norseman “thought himself unfairly treated, even by his gods, he openly took them to task and forsook their worship;” and, reminding us of some existing savages, we read of a Norse warrior “wishing ardently that he could but meet with Odin, that he might attack him.”

As, in primitive thought, divinity is thus synonymous with superiority; and as at first a god may be either a powerful living person (commonly of conquering race) or a dead person who has acquired supernatural power as a ghost; there come two origins for semi-divine beings—the one by unions between the conquering god-race and the conquered race distinguished as men, and the other by supposed intercourse between living persons and spirits. We have seen that dream-life in general is at first undistinguished from waking life. And if the events of ordinary dreams are regarded as real, we may infer that the concomitants of dreams of a certain kind create a specially strong belief in their reality. Once having become established in the popular mind, Edition: current; Page: [21] this belief in their reality is, on occasion, taken advantage of. At Hamóa (Navigator’s Islands) “they have an idea which is very convenient to the reputation of the females, that some of these hotooa pow [mischievous spirits] molest them in their sleep, in consequence of which there are many supernatural conceptions.” Among the Dyaks it is the same. We are told both by Brooke and St. John of children who were begotten by certain spirits. Of like origin and nature was the doctrine of the Babylonians concerning male and female spirits and their offspring. And the beliefs in incubi and succubi lasted in European history down to comparatively late times: sometimes giving rise to traditions like that of Robert the Devil. Of course the statement respecting the nature of the supernatural parent is variable—he is demoniacal or he is divine; and consequently there now and then result such stories as those of the Greeks about god-descended men.

Thus Comparative Sociology discloses a common origin for each leading element of religious belief. The conception of the ghost, along with the multiplying and complicating ideas arising from it, we find everywhere—alike in the arctic regions and in the tropics; in the forests of North America and in the deserts of Arabia; in the valleys of the Himalayas and in African jungles; on the flanks of the Andes and in the Polynesian islands. It is exhibited with equal clearness by races so remote in type from one another, that competent judges think they must have diverged before the existing distribution of land and sea was established—among straight-haired, curly-haired, woolly-haired races; among, white, tawny, copper-coloured, black. And we find it among peoples who have made no advances in civilization as well as among the semi-civilized and the civilized. Thus we have abundant proofs of the natural genesis of religions.

§ 586. To give to these proofs, re-inforcing those before given, a final re-inforcement, let me here, however, instead Edition: current; Page: [22] of taking separately each leading religious conception as similarly exhibited by different peoples, take the whole series of them as exhibited by the same people.

That belief in the reality of dream-scenes and dream-persons, which, as we before saw (§ 530), the Egyptians had in common with primitive peoples at large, went along with the belief, also commonly associated with it, that shadows are entities. A man’s shadow was “considered an important part of his personality;” and the Book of the Dead treats it “as something substantial.” Again, a man’s other-self, called his ka, accompanied him while alive; and we see “the Egyptian king frequently sculptured in the act of propitiating his own ka,” as the Karen does at the present day. “The disembodied personality” had “a material form and substance. The soul had a body of its own, and could eat and drink.” But, as partially implied by this statement, each man was supposed to have personalities of a less material kind. After death “the soul, though bound to the body, was at liberty to leave the grave and return to it during the daytime in any form it chose;” and a papyrus tells of mummies who “converse in their catacomb about certain circumstances of their past life upon earth.” Having desires, the ka must be ministered to; and, as M. Maspero says, “le double des pains, des liquides, de la viande, passait dans l’autre monde et y nourrissait le Double de l’homme.” Along with this belief that the bodily desires and satisfactions continued in the second life, there naturally went a conception of the second life as substantially like the first; as is shown by the elaborate delineations of it contained in ancient tombs, such as the tomb of Ti.

Along with ministrations to the appetites of the supposed material or semi-material dead, resulting from these beliefs, there went ministrations to desires of other kinds. In the richly-adorned sepulchral chamber of king Mycerinus’s daughter, there was a daily burning of incense; and at night a lamp was “kept burning in the apartment.” Habitually Edition: current; Page: [23] there were public praises of the dead; and to tempt back to Egypt a valued subject, a king promises that “the poor shall make their moan at the door of thy tomb. Prayers shall be addressed to thee.” Such sacrifices, praises, and prayers, continued from festival to festival, and, eventually, from generation to generation, thus grew into established worships. “The monuments of the time of the building of the pyramids mention priests and prophets which were devoted to the service of Kheops, Chabryes, and other rulers, and who offered them sacrifices”—priests who had successors down even to the 26th dynasty. Such priesthoods were established for worship not of the royal dead only, but for worship of other dead. To ensure sacrifices to their statues, great landowners made “contracts with the priests of their town,” prescribing the kinds of food and drink to be offered. So far was this system carried that Hapi Tefa, the governor of a district, to maintain services to himself “for all time . . . provides salaries for the priests.” As implied in some of the foregoing extracts, there arose an idol-worship by differentiation from worship of the dead. The ka, expected eventually to return and re-animate the mummy, could enter also a statue of wood or stone representing the deceased. Hence some marvellous elaborations. In the Egyptian tomb, sometimes called the “house of the double,” there was a walled-up space having but a small opening, which contained images of the dead, more or less numerous; so that if re-animation of the mummy was prevented by destruction of it, any one of these might be utilized in its place.

The proofs thus furnished that their idolatry was developed from their ancestor-worship, are accompanied by proofs that their animal-worship was similarly developed. The god Ammon Ra is represented as saying to Thothmes III—

Here, in the first place, we are shown, as we were shown by the Ainos, that there takes place a transition from simile to metaphor: “thy majesty, as it were a bull,” presently becomes “Horus, valiant bull.” This naturally leads in subsequent times to confusion of the man with the animal, and consequent worship of the animal. We may further see that complimentary comparisons to other animals, similarly passing through metaphors into identifications, are likely to generate belief in a deified individual who had sundry forms. Another case shows us how, from what was at first eulogistic naming of a local ruler, there may grow up the adoption of an animal-image for a known living person. We read of “the Ram, who is the Lord of the city of Mendes, the Great God, the Life of Ra, the Generator, the Prince of young women.” We find the king speaking of himself as “the image of the divine Ram, the living portrait of him . . . the divine efflux of the prolific Ram . . . the eldest son of the Ram.” And then, further, we are told that the king afterwards deified the first of his consorts, and “commanded that her Ram-image should be placed in all temples.”

So, too, literal interpretation of metaphors leads to worship of heavenly bodies. As above, the star Seschet comes to be identified with an individual; and so, continually, does the Sun. Thus it is said of a king—“My lord the Sun, Amenhotep III, the Prince of Thebes, rewarded me. He is the Sun-god himself;” and it is also said of him “no king has done the like, since the time of the reign of the Sun-god Ra, who possessed the land.” In kindred manner we are told of the sarcophagus provided for another king, Amenemhat, that “never the like had been provided since the time of the god Ra.” These quotations show that this complimentary metaphor was used in so positive a way as to cause acceptance of it as fact; and thus to generate a belief that the Sun had been actual ruler over Egypt.

The derivation of all these beliefs from ancestor-worship, clear as the above evidence makes it, becomes clearer still when we observe, on the one hand, how the name “god” was applied to a superior living individual, and, on the other hand, how completely human in all their attributes were the gods, otherwise so-called. The relatively small difference between the conceptions of the divine and the human, is shown by the significant fact that in the hieroglyphics, one and the same “determinative” means, according to the context, god, ancestor, august person. Hence we need not wonder on finding king Sahura of the 5th dynasty called “God, who strikes all nations, and reaches all countries with his arm;” or on meeting with like deifications of other historical kings and queens, such as Mencheres and Nofert-Ari-Aáhmes. And on finding omnipotence and omnipresence ascribed to a living king, as to Ramses II., we see little further scope for deification. Indeed we see no further scope; since along with these exalted conceptions of certain men there went low conceptions of gods.

The saying that one half the world does not know how the other half lives, may be paralleled by the saying that one half the world has no idea what the other half thinks, and what it once thought itself. Habitually at a later mental stage, there is a forgetting of that which was familiar at an earlier mental stage. Ordinarily in adult life many thoughts and feelings of childhood have faded so utterly that there is an incapacity for even imagining them; and, similarly, from the consciousness of cultured humanity there have so completely disappeared certain notions natural to the consciousness of uncultured humanity, that it has become almost incredible they should ever have been entertained. But just as certain as it is that the absurd beliefs at which parents laugh when displayed in their children, were once their own; so certain is it that advanced peoples to whom primitive conceptions seem ridiculous, had forefathers who held these primitive conceptions. Their own theory of things has arisen by slow modification of that original theory of things in which, from the supposed reality of dreams, there resulted the supposed reality of ghosts; whence developed all kinds of supposed supernatural beings.

§ 587. Is there any exception to this generalization? Are we to conclude that amid the numerous religions, varying Edition: current; Page: [27] in their forms and degrees of elaboration, which have this common origin, there exists one which has a different origin? Must we say that while all the rest are natural, the religion possessed by the Hebrews which has come down to us with modifications, is supernatural?

If, in seeking an answer, we compare this supposed exceptional religion with the others, we do not find it so unlike them as to imply an unlike genesis. Contrariwise, we find it presenting throughout remarkable likenesses to them. We will consider these in groups.

In the first place, the plasma of superstitions amid which the religion of the Hebrews evolved, was of the same nature with that found everywhere. Though, during the early nomadic stage, the belief in a permanently-existing soul was undeveloped, yet there was shown belief in the reality of dreams and of the beings seen in dreams. At a later stage we find that the dead were supposed to hear and sometimes to answer; there was propitiation of the dead by gashing the body and cutting the hair; there was giving of food for the dead; spirits of the dead were believed to haunt burial-places; and demons entering into men caused their maladies and their sins. Much given, like existing savages, to amulets, charms, exorcisms, etc., the Hebrews also had functionaries who corresponded to medicine men—men having “familiar spirits,” “wizards” (Isaiah viii, 19), and others, originally called seers but afterwards prophets (1 Sam. ix, 9); to whom they made presents in return for information, even when seeking lost asses. And Samuel, in calling for thunder and rain, played the part of a weather-doctor—a personage still found in various parts of the world.

Sundry traditions they held in common with other peoples. Their legend of the deluge, besides being allied to that of the Accadians, was allied to that of the Hindus; among whom the Sathapatha-brāhmana tells how Manu was instructed by Vishnu to make an ark to escape the coming Edition: current; Page: [28] flood, which came as foretold and “swept away all living creatures; Manu alone was left.” The story of Moses’ birth is paralleled by an Assyrian story, which says—“I am Sargina the great King . . . my mother . . . in a secret place she brought me forth: she placed me in an ark of bulrushes . . . she threw me into the river . . .” etc. Similarly with the calendar and its entailed observances. “The Assyrian months were lunar . . . the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days, being the sabbaths. On these sabbath days, extra work and even missions of mercy were forbidden . . . The enactments were similar in character to those of the Jewish code.”

So again is it with their Theology. Under the common title Elohim, were comprehended distinguished living persons, ordinary ghosts, superior ghosts or gods. That is to say, with the Hebrews as with the Egyptians and numerous other peoples, a god simply meant a powerful being, existing visibly or invisibly. As the Egyptian for god, Nutar, was variously used to indicate strength; so was Il or El among the Hebrews, who applied it to heroes and also “to the gods of the gentiles.” Out of these conceptions grew up, as in other cases, the propitiation or worship of various supernatural beings—a polytheism. Abraham was a demi-god to whom prayers were addressed. “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not” (Deut. xxxii, 17). That the belief in other gods than Jahveh long survived, is shown by Solomon’s sacrifices to them, as well as by the denunciations of the prophets. Moreover, even after Jahveh had become the acknowledged great-god, the general conception remained essentially polytheistic. For just as in the Iliad (bk. v, 1000-1120) the gods and goddesses are represented as fighting with sword and lance the battles of the mortals whose causes they espoused; so the angels and archangels of the Hebrew pantheon are said to fight in Heaven when the peoples they respectively Edition: current; Page: [29] patronize fight on earth: both ideas being paralleled by those of some existing savages.

Seeing then that Jahveh was originally one god among many—the god who became supreme; let us ask what was his nature as shown by the records. Not dwelling on the story of the garden of Eden (probably accepted from the Accadians) where God walked and talked in human fashion; and passing by the time when “the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded;” we may turn to such occasions as those on which Jacob wrestled with him, and on which “the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” These, and many kindred statements, show that by the Hebrews in early days, Jahveh, “the strong one,” “a man of war,” having been originally a local potentate (like those who even now are called gods by the Bedouins), was, in after times, regarded as the most powerful among the various spirits worshipped: the places where sacrifices to him were made, being originally high places (2 Kings xii, 3), such as those habitually used for the burials of superior persons; as they are still in the same regions. Says Burkhardt of the Bedouins—“the saints’ tombs are generally placed on the summits of mountains,” and “to him [a saint] all the neighbouring Arabs address their vows.” Here we see parallelism to the early religious ideas of Greeks, Scandinavians, and others; among whom gods, indistinguishable from men in appearance, sometimes entered into conflicts with them, not always successfully. Moreover, this “God of battles,” whose severe punishments, often inflicted, were for insubordination, was clearly a local god—“the god of Israel.” The command “thou shalt have none other gods but me,” did not imply that there were none other, but that the Israelites were not to recognize their authority. The admission that the Hebrew god was not the only god is tacitly made by the expression “our” god as used by the Hebrews to distinguish Jahveh from others. And though with these admissions that Edition: current; Page: [30] Jahveh was one god among many, there were assertions of universality of rule; these were paralleled by assertions concerning certain gods of the Egyptians—nay, by assertions concerning a living Pharaoh, of whom it is said “no place is without thy goodness. Thy sayings are the law of every land. . . . Thou hast millions of ears. . . . Whatsoever is done in secret, thy eye seeth it.” Along with the limitations of Jahveh’s authority in range, went limitations of it in degree. There was no claim to omnipotence. Not forgetting the alleged failure of his attempt personally to slay Moses, we may pass on to the defeats of the Israelites when they fought by his advice, as in two battles with the Benjaminites, and as in a battle with the Philistines when “the ark of God was taken” (1 Sam. iv, 3-10). And then, beyond this, we are told that though “the Lord was with Judah,” he “could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” (Judges i, 19.) That is, there were incapacities equalling those attributed by other peoples to their gods. Similarly with intellectual and moral nature. Jahveh receives information; he goes to see whether reports are true; he repents of what he has done—all implying anything but omniscience. Like Egyptian and Assyrian kings, he continually lauds himself; and while saying “I will not give my glory to another” (Isai. xlviii, 11), he describes himself as jealous, as revengeful, and as a merciless destroyer of enemies. He sends a lying spirit to mislead a king, as Zeus does to Agamemnon (2 Chron. xviii, 20-2); by his own account he will deceive a prophet that he may prophesy falsely, intending then to destroy him (Ezekiel xiv, 9); he hardens men’s hearts that he may inflict evils on them for what they then do; and, as when he prompts David to number Israel, suggests a supposed sin that he may afterwards punish those who have not committed it. He acts as did the Greek gods; from whom bad impulses were supposed to come, and who were similarly indiscriminate in their revenges.

The forms of worship show us like parallelisms. Not dwelling on the intended or actual human sacrifices (though by grouping the sacrifice of a son with sacrifices of rams and calves, as methods of propitiation to be repudiated, Micah implies in ch. vi, 6-9 that the two had been associated in the Hebrew mind), it suffices to point out that the prescribed ceremonies in temples, had the characters usual everywhere. Called in sundry places the “bread of God,” the offerings, like those to Egyptian gods and mummies, included bread, meat, fat, oil, blood, drink, fruits, etc.; and there was maintained, as by other peoples, a constant fire, as well as burnings of incense: twice daily by the Hebrews, and four times daily by the Mexicans. Jahveh was supposed to enjoy the “sweet savour” of the burnt offerings, like the idol-inhabiting gods of the negroes (§ 161). Associated with the belief that “the blood is the life,” this, either poured on the ground or on the altar, according to circumstances, was reserved for Jahveh; as with the ancient Mexican and Central American gods, to whom was continually offered up the blood alike of sacrificed men and animals: now the image of the god being anointed with it, and now the cornice of the doorway of the temple. As the Egyptians and as the Greeks, so did the Hebrews offer hecatombs of oxen and sheep to their god; sometimes numbering many thousands (1 Kings viii, 62-64). To the Hebrews, it was a command that unblemished animals only should be used for sacrifices; and so among the Greeks a “law provided that the best of the cattle should be offered to the Gods,” and among the Peruvians it was imperative that “all should be without spot or blemish.” A still more remarkable likeness exists. Those orders made in Leviticus, under which certain parts of animals are to be given to Jahveh while other parts are left to the priests, remind us of those endowment-deeds, by which Egyptian landowners provided that for their ghosts should be reserved certain joints of the sacrificed animals, while the remaining parts were made Edition: current; Page: [32] over to the ka-priests. Again, just as we have seen that the gods of the Wayao, who were ghosts of ancient great chiefs, dwelt on the cloudy summits of certain adjacent mountains; and just as the residence of “cloud-compelling Jove” was the top of Olympus, where storms gathered; so the Hebrew god “descended in the cloud” on the summit of Mount Sinai, sometimes with thunder and lightning. Moreover, the statement that from thence Moses brought down the tables of the commands, alleged to be given by Jahveh, parallels the statement that from Mount Ida in Crete, from the cave where Zeus was said to have been brought up (or from the connected Mount Iuktas reputed in ancient times to contain the burial place of Zeus), Rhadamanthus first brought down Zeus’ decrees, and Minos repaired to obtain re-inforced authority for his laws.*

Various other likenesses may be briefly noted. With the account of the council held by Jahveh when compassing Ahab’s destruction, may be compared the account of the council of the Egyptian gods assembled to advise Ra, when contemplating the destruction of the world, and also the accounts of the councils of the Greek gods held by Zeus. Images of the gods, supposed to be inhabited by them, have been taken to battle by various peoples; as by the Hebrews was the ark of the covenant, which was a dwelling place of Edition: current; Page: [33] Jahveh. As by many savages, who even when living dislike their names to be known, it is forbidden to call a dead man by his real name, especially if distinguished; and as among the early Romans, it was a “deeply cherished belief that the name of the proper tutelary spirit of the community ought to remain for ever unpronounced;” so was it with the Hebrews in early days: their god was not named. Dancing was a form of worship among the Hebrews as it was among the Greeks and among various savages: instance the Iroquois. Fast and penances like those of the Hebrews exist, or have existed, in many places; especially in ancient Mexico, Central America, and Peru, where they were extremely severe. The fulfilments of prophecies alleged by the Hebrews were paralleled by fulfilments of prophecies alleged by the Greeks; and the Greeks in like manner took them to be evidence of the truth of their religion. Nay we are told the same even of the Sandwich Islanders, who said that Captain Cook’s death “fulfilled the prophecies of the priests, who had foretold this sad catastrophe.” The working of miracles alleged of the Hebrew god as though it were special, is one of the ordinary things alleged of the gods of all peoples throughout the world. The translation of the living Elijah recalls the Chaldean legend of Izdubar’s “translated ancestor, Hasisadra or Xisuthrus;” and in New World mythologies, there are the cases of Hiawatha, who was carried living to heaven in his magic canoe, and the hero of the Arawâks, Arawanili. As by the Hebrews, Jahveh is represented as having in the earliest times appeared to men in human shape, but not in later times; so by the Greeks, the theophany frequently alleged in the Iliad becomes rare in traditions of later date. Nay, the like happened with the ancient Central Americans. Said an Indian in answer to Fr. Bobadilla—“For a long time our gods have not come nor spoken to them [the devotees]. But formerly they used to do so, as our ancestors told us.”

Nor do parallelisms fail us when we turn to the more Edition: current; Page: [34] developed form of the Hebrew religion. That the story of a god-descended person should be habitually spoken of by Christians as though it were special to their religion, is strange considering their familiarity with stories of god-descended persons among the Greeks,—Æsculapius, Pythagoras, Plato. But it is not the Greek religion only which furnished such parallels. The Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar asserted that he had been god-begotten. It is a tradition among the Mongols that Alung Goa, who herself “had a spirit for her father,” bore three sons by a spirit. In ancient Peru if any of the virgins of the Sun “appeared to be pregnant, she said it was by the Sun, and this was believed, unless there was any evidence to the contrary.” And among the existing inhabitants of Mangaia it is the tradition that “the lovely Ina-ani-vai” had two sons by the great god Tangaroa. The position, too, of mediator held by the god-descended son, has answering positions elsewhere. Among the Fijian gods, “Tokairambe and Tui Lakemba Randinandina seem to stand next to Ndengei, being his sons, and acting as mediators by transmitting the prayers of suppliants to their father.”

Once more we have, in various places, observances corresponding to the eucharist. All such observances originate from the primitive notion that the natures of men, inhering in all their parts, inhere also in whatever becomes incorporated with them; so that a bond is established between those who eat of the same food. As furnishing one out of many instances, I may name the Padam, who “hold inviolate any engagement cemented by an interchange of meat as food.” Believing that the ghosts of the dead, retaining their appetites, feed either on the material food offered or on the spirit of it, this conception is extended to them. Hence arise, in various parts of the world, feasts at which living and dead are supposed to join; and thus to renew the relation of subordination on the one side and friendliness on the other. And this eating with the ghost or the god, which by the Mexicans, Edition: current; Page: [35] was transformed into “eating the god” (symbolized by a cake made up with the blood of a victim), was associated with a bond of service to the god for a specified period. Briefly stringing together minor likenesses, we may note that the Christian crusades to get possession of the holy sepulchre, had their prototype in the sacred war of the Greeks to obtain access to Delphi; that as, among Christians, part of the worship consists in reciting the doings of the Hebrew god, prophets, and kings, so worship among the Greeks consisted partly in reciting the great deeds of the Homeric gods and heroes; that Greek temples were made rich by precious gifts from kings and wealthy men to obtain divine favour or forgiveness, as Christian cathedrals have been; that St. Peter’s at Rome was built by funds raised from various catholic countries, as the temple of Delphi was rebuilt by contributions from various Grecian states; that the doctrine of special providences, general over the world, was as dominant among the Greeks as it has been among Christians, so that, in the words of Grote, “the lives of the Saints bring us even back to the simple and ever-operative theology of the Homeric age;” and lastly that various religions, alike in the new and old worlds, show us, in common with Christianity, baptism, confession, canonization, celibacy, the saying of grace, and other minor observances.

§ 588. What are we to conclude from all this evidence? What must we think of this unity of character exhibited by religions at large? And then, more especially, what shall we say of the family likeness existing between the creed of Christendom and other creeds? Observe the facts.

Alike in those minds among the civilized which, by defective senses, have been cut off from instruction, and in the minds of various primitive peoples, religious conceptions do not exist. Wherever the rudiments of them exist, they of the dead. The ghost-theory, with resulting propitiation have, as their form, a belief in, and sacrifices to, the doubles of ordinary ghosts, habitually survives along with belief in, Edition: current; Page: [36] and propitiation of, supernatural beings of more powerful kinds; known at first by the same generic name as ordinary ghosts, and differentiating by small steps. And the worships of the supposed supernatural beings, up even to the highest, are the same in nature, and differ only in their degrees of elaboration. What do these correspondences imply? Do they not imply that in common with other phenomena displayed by human beings as socially aggregated, religions have a natural genesis?

Are we to make an exception of the religion current among ourselves? If we say that its likenesses to the rest hide a transcendant unlikeness, several implications must be recognized. One is that the Cause to which we can put no limits in Space or Time, and of which our entire Solar System is a relatively infinitesimal product, took the disguise of a man for the purpose of covenanting with a shepherd-chief in Syria. Another is that this Energy, unceasingly manifested everywhere, throughout past, present, and future, ascribed to himself under this human form, not only the limited knowledge and limited powers which various passages show Jahveh to have had, but also moral attributes which we should now think discreditable to a human being. And a third is that we must suppose an intention even more repugnant to our moral sense. For if these numerous parallelisms between the Christian religion and other religions, do not prove likeness of origin and development, then the implication is that a complete simulation of the natural by the supernatural has been deliberately devised to deceive those who examine critically what they are taught. Appearances have been arranged for the purpose of misleading sincere inquirers, that they may be eternally damned for seeking the truth.

On those who accept this last alternative, no reasonings will have any effect. Here we finally part company with them by accepting the first; and, accepting it, shall find that Ecclesiastical Institutions are at once rendered intelligible in their rise and progress.