Chapter II: THE PERSONAL RITES, those for the benefit of the individual, will (1)

next occupy us.

I have already observed that while the tribe or gens in primitive conditions worships in common one or several divinities, most of the religious acts of the individual are directed toward a deity whom he may claim as his own special guardian and friend. This is his tutelary god, his personal δαίμων, his “mystagogue,” who will not merely look after the welfare of his human ward, but introduce him into the higher and occult knowledge and power.

This personal deity reveals himself at birth, or may await some later year or incident of life to manifest his name and nature. He may be the spirit of some ancestor or great chieftain or mighty shaman; or he may belong to those deities who never assume mortal habiliments. The teachers of early faiths differed on these points; but nearly all agreed that to each person some such guardian angel or genius was assigned. From these spirits the personal names were frequently received, and, lest these should be misused, they were usually kept secret.

These beliefs are too wide-spread to require support from examples. Probably every American tribe shared them. They are familiar in classic Greece and Rome. The Finns and the ancient Celtic peoples possessed them in marked forms; and they survive in the tutelary Saints of the Roman Church.

Principally to these the adults paid their devotions and offered their vows for what concerned their personal welfare; and many of the rites which I am about to describe, derive their meaning from their connection with this belief. I shall classify them as relating: 1, to birth; 2, to naming; 3, to puberty; 4, to marriage; and 5, to death and the disposal of the corpse.

_1. Rites Relating to Birth._—Although the immediate act of childbirth may not cause the savage mother severe suffering, the appearance of a new human being in the world is not considered of light importance. In her description of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, Mrs. Stevenson remarks that some “of their most sacred and exclusive rites are connected with childbirth,” and her full and accurate account of them reveals in a strong light how solemn the event was considered.[234]

In many tribes the child was considered bound to its father by some mysterious tie closer than connected it with its mother. Among the Northern Indians, the father will not bridle a horse or perform sundry other acts for a fixed period after the birth of his child, for if he did it would die![235] In the rites of Mexico and South America, this refraining from certain labours passed into the strange custom of the _couvade_. This was, that upon the birth of the child, the _father_ took to his bed and remained there for a number of days. Did he neglect this, it was believed that the child would die or have bad luck. For the same reason he had to be extremely careful of his own health and guarded in his actions during his wife’s pregnancy, or otherwise the unborn babe would suffer.[236]

Not less strange are the wide-spread rites and opinions connected with the umbilical cord. As it united the unborn infant to the life of the mother, it was generally held to retain that power in a mystical sense. Among the American Indians, it was a frequent custom to carry it to a distance and bury it, and it became the duty of the individual, in his later life, to visit alone from time to time that spot, and perform certain ceremonies.[237]

Thus the religious life of a person began with his birth. Not infrequently at that time his tutelary divinity was ascertained by the priests and assigned him, as among the Mayas, and the Africans of the Congo River. With the latter, it was also customary to lay upon the new-born babe a series of “vows,” or resolutions touching his conduct in life. These were impressed on the mother, who adopted it as a sacred duty to bring up her child in obedience to them. A similar habit prevailed in the Andaman Islands and elsewhere.[238]

With these vows was often associated the rite of baptism, by sprinkling or by immersion in water. Even among the rude Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego we find that the child, when born, was promptly dipped in water, not for sanitary but for religious reasons.

The ancient inhabitants of Teneriffe considered it necessary to have a child formally asperged by a priestess before acknowledging it as a member of the family,[239] and some such rite was prevalent in many tribes. It was in one sense an initiation, as it was with the neophytes of the mysteries of Mithras, who, according to Tertullian, were baptised upon entering the novitiate. In another, it would seem to have been a purification from inherited sin, in which sense it was practised by the Nahuas of Mexico and the Quichuas of Peru. With the Mayas of Yucatan, it was in common usage and was known by the significant name, “the second birth.”[240]

_2. Relating to the Name_.—The Name, as we have already seen, was looked upon as a part of the person, one of his forms or modes of life. Very generally, its selection was a matter of religious moment, and accompanied with solemn ceremonies. A person might have many names, but there was one which was taken from or referred to his or her tutelary spirit, and this was holy and not to be lightly used.

Among the Nahuas this was generally announced by the priest on the seventh day after birth, but as it would be profane to speak it constantly, another was employed for ordinary conversation. The Algonquin children, says one who lived among them long, are taught by their mothers not to divulge their real names, lest by so doing they should offend the personal god who has taken them under his protection.[241]

When a babe, among the Seminoles of Florida, was about a fortnight old, the mother took it in her arms and walked three times around the public square of the village, calling aloud the name given it; but this name was not that by which it was later known; and “they were always averse to telling it.”[242] With some tribes, as the Choctaws, the idea of profanity existed only if the person himself spoke his name; so that, “it is impossible to get it from him unless he has an acquaintance present, whom he will request to tell it for him.”[243] Analogous customs abound in early religions and many of them survive in modern folk-lore.[244]

In some instances the American Indian would exchange his name for that of a friend, or extend to him his name; a rare and high sign of amity, as it signified that the receiver was thus placed under the guardianship of the same tutelar deity. This custom extended widely throughout the island world of the Pacific and among many primitive peoples. It has often been noted, but its peculiarly religious meaning has generally been misunderstood.

That certain names are auspicious and others inauspicious is a belief that belongs everywhere to mankind in the primitive stage of thought. But it is curious to note that while generally the auspicious names are those of sweet sound and favourable sense, in Tonkin, Siam, and some other regions ugly and unpleasant names are preferred, because these will frighten away the evil spirits.[245]

_3. Rites Relating to Puberty._—On the momentous crisis in the personal life when the boy enters into manhood and the girl becomes a woman, in nearly all primitive tribes a solemn rite is prescribed, the object of which is to prepare the child for the duties of the wider life, which it is about to begin.

No better example for such a ceremony could be selected than that which prevails among the southern tribes of Australia. It is their principal public act of worship. The name by which it is known is the _Bora_,[246] a word derived from the belt or girdle which the men wear, and which is at that time conferred on the youth. Its celebration involves extensive preparations and occupies a number of days. The youths are submitted to severe tests and sometimes to dreadful mutilations. They are taught the holy names and sacred traditions; and when they have satisfied their elders of their endurance and fidelity, they are admitted to the manhood of the tribe.

The _Bora_ is a distinctly religious ceremony. It is said to have been instituted by their chief god Turamulun himself, and remains under his spiritual charge. Its rites “involve the idea of a dedication to supernatural powers,” and the figure of the god, moulded in high relief on the earth in the costume and attitude of the sacred dance, is intended to represent his personal presence. The aim is the education of the individual to fill his place properly in the tribal life; and one of the most intelligent of English observers expresses his conviction that “every rule of conduct under which the novice is placed is directly intended to some end beneficent to the community or believed to be.”

Throughout most of America, a similar initiation was required of the youth before he was entitled to the privileges of manhood. It was frequently accompanied by the most painful tests of his courage and endurance. His naked back was lacerated with rods, his strength was tried by prolonged hunger, thongs were inserted into his flesh and torn out by the bystanders.

More frequently the boy was sent alone into the woods, and there, exposed to inclement weather, cold, hunger and thirst, self-torture and meditation, awaited the divine revelation which entitled him to call himself a man!

“Could it be possible,” exclaims an intelligent traveller, “to hear anything stranger, more wonderful, than these stories of unheard-of castigations and torments to which boys of thirteen or fourteen subject themselves, merely for the sake of an idea, a dream, the fulfilment of a religious duty? More surprising is it that not merely some extraordinary youth is capable of this, but that every young Indian, without exception, displays such heroism.”[247]

The same rule applied to the girl. As it became evident that the period had arrived in her life-history when she was capable of the sacred duties of motherhood, she either retired into the forest, there to commune alone with her guardian spirit, or, as among the Sioux Indians, the fact was made known to the village, and a solemn feast announced by her parents. At this, some venerable priest addressed the guests, “calling attention to the sacred and mysterious manner in which nature had announced the fact that she was ready to embrace the duties of matrimony!”[248]

In these ceremonies, which may be said to belong to primitive religions in all times, we recognise again the one idea which more than any other permeated all their myths and rites,—the idea of Life. It was because the boy and girl, passing to riper years, indicated the acquisition of the power to perpetuate and transmit Life, that at this age it was held necessary for them to mark the epoch by rites of the most sacred import.

_4. Rites Relating to Marriage._—If the notion of life was thus the inspiration of the rites of puberty, still more potently did it control those relating to marriage.

Much has been written by special students concerning the forms of primitive marriage, and much of what has been written is theory only, not supported by actual and intimate knowledge of facts.

The assertion is common in works of the kind that the earliest form of marriage was no marriage at all,—mere promiscuity,—and that, later, a modified form of the same, known as “communal” marriage, prevailed. Not a single example of either of these has been known in history or in ethnology, and it is a gratuitous hypothesis only that either ever prevailed in a permanent community.

What we first discern is the family, generally centred around the mother, and tracing descent through the maternal ancestors only. This is the “matriarchal” as distinguished from the “patriarchal” system, the latter being that in which the father is the centre and head of the family, and the genealogy is traced in his line. Both these forms, however, have existed, so far as we know, in wholly primitive conditions. The selection of one or the other was a matter of local accident or incident.

The primitive family, held together by one or other of these ties of blood-relationship, was a close corporation. It might adopt outsiders, but after admission they were considered of the same blood and lineage. Its property was in common, its laws were laid on all, its very gods were its own. Especially, the rules relating to marriage were prescribed with rigid formality.

The general practice was that the youth must seek his bride from another recognised family (gens or totem) of the tribe. To choose her from his own immediate family was a crime of such deep dye that even an Australian savage “could not consider such a thing possible”; although, in later conditions, this artificial barrier was often weakened.[249]

In matriarchal systems, the husband usually went to live with the gens of the wife, but did not become a member of it. He was looked upon as a stranger and an interloper. Among some Australian and American tribes, he never spoke directly to his wife’s mother, or even looked at her. His children did not acknowledge him as a blood-relation, and when he grew old and useless, he had to look to his own family, not to his own offspring, for his maintenance.

The origin of these strange usages was strictly religious. They have been analysed as they existed in many nations by one of the ablest of German ethnologists, and their source has been shown to be that the gods of the one gens never willingly accept the introduction of a stranger into the household except by the regular formulas of adoption, which would prevent marriage; hence, the husband is, and ever remains, a foreigner and an interloper in the matriarchal household. His wife’s god is not his god, nor are her people his people.[250]

The actual ceremony of marriage itself often indicates this. Much has been said by writers on ethnology of “marriage by capture,” and it is often asserted to be that most usual among primitive peoples, and to continue in survivals in higher conditions of culture.

There is, indeed, very frequently a ceremony which presents the appearance of violently seizing and carrying away by main force the bride-elect. But it is not to be understood as the reminiscence of a time when the man went forth and snatched a girl from some neighbouring tribe to become his slave and his wife. I doubt if in the true totemic marriage, considered as distinct from concubinage, any such method was practised. It is not so to-day, even among the Australian Blacks. If they steal a woman, they first inquire as to her kinship, and if she belongs to a class into which her captor cannot marry, according to the laws of his clan, he sets her free.[251]

The so-called “marriage by capture” was either a recognised tribute to maidenly coyness, by which her real or feigned resistance was to be overcome in a manner creditable to herself,—a sentiment constantly witnessed in the lower animals as well as in modern life; or it was a method of conciliating her household gods, the deities of the gens, by giving the appearance of constraint and succumbing to force on the part of the girl. Some of the northern tribes of America carried these notions to the extent of a pretended concealment of the marriage long after it had been performed. The husband was obliged to enter the home of his wife by night and secretly. To approach it in daytime or to be seen in her company would have been a grave impropriety.[252]

The second primitive form of marriage is by purchase. This also is far less usual than many writers have assumed. There is indeed, very commonly, as in civilised society, an exchange of goods along with or previous to the marital ceremony. But with us it is not regarded as a purchase and sale when an American girl’s father gives his daughter and a million to a foreign nobleman in exchange for the title conferred on the bride. It may in reality be a mere commercial transaction, but in theory it is not so.

Just as little is the “marriage by purchase” among most of the aboriginal tribes, where we find it in vogue. The exchange of goods is often a form of compensation to the household gods for the privilege of remaining a member of the clan, or for the permission to enter its ranks as an authorised resident.

Of course, women were bought and sold as any other commodity; they were part of the booty of victors, and were dispensed as gifts, or kept for enjoyment. But when we confine ourselves to the examination of the strictly totemic marriage we find even among the wildest tribes that it was generally founded in mutual liking, that it was contracted under the sanction of the recognised family laws, and that its ritual was that of a religious ceremony.[253] The poor Bushmen, even, believe that the laws relating to marriage are of divine origin, enacted by the sacred ant-eater, and that their infraction will be severely punished.[254]

The gifts which accompanied the rite were in the nature of offerings. Ceremonies of lustration and purification, in which the sacred elements, fire and water, took a prominent part, were general, and the relationship established was in its essence one of religious significance, and not one of mere secular import.

_5. Relating to Death._—An attractive writer, Professor Frank Granger, remarks in a recent volume: “The first attitude of primitive man to his dead seems to have been one of almost unmixed terror.”[255] Would that we could give primitive man so much credit! But we cannot. The evidence is mountain-high that in the earliest and rudest period of human history the corpse inspired so little terror that it was nearly always eaten by the surviving friends![256]

We can look back clearly through the corridors of time to that stage of development when death and the dead inspired no more terror or aversion in man than they do to-day among the carnivorous brutes.

Throughout the whole of the palæolithic period of culture we discover extremely faint traces of any mode of sepulture, any respect for the dead.

The oldest cemeteries or funeral monuments of any sort date from the neolithic period. Then the full meaning of Death seems to have broken suddenly on man, and his whole life became little more than a _meditatio mortis_, a preparation for the world beyond the tomb. What Professor Granger says of the ancient Romans applies to very many primitive tribes: “In the belief of the Romans, the right to live was not estimated more highly than the right to receive proper burial.”[257]

The funeral or mortuary ceremonies, which are often so elaborate, and so punctiliously performed in savage tribes, have a twofold purpose. They are equally for the benefit of the individual and for that of the community. If they are neglected or inadequately conducted, the restless spirit of the departed cannot reach the realm of joyous peace, and therefore he returns to lurk about his former home and to plague the survivors for their carelessness.

It was therefore to lay the ghost, to avoid the anger of the disembodied spirit, that the living instituted and performed the burial ceremonies; while it became to the interest of the individual to provide for it that those rites should be carried out which would conduct his own soul to the abode of the blessed.

These were as various as were the myths of the after-world and the fancies as to the number and destiny of the personal souls.

Most common of them all was some sort of funeral feast. The disagreeable suggestion is close, that this was a survival of the habit of eating the corpse itself. Up to a very recent date that habit prevailed among the Bolivian Indians; and so desirable an end was it esteemed that the traveller D’Orbigny tells of an old man he met there whose only regret at embracing Christianity was that his body would be eaten by worms instead of by his relations!

The later theory, however, was that then the soul itself was supplied with food. It partook spiritually of the viands and thus, well fortified for its long journey, departed in good humour with those it left behind. The same notion led to the world-wide custom of providing it with many articles by placing them in the tomb or burning them on the funeral pyre. This extended not only to weapons, utensils, ornaments, and clothing, but not infrequently to companions. On the coast of Peru the wives of a man were burned alive with his dead body, and among the Natchez they were knocked on the head and interred under the same mounds.[258] I have seen the mummy of a woman from the Cliff Dwellers of Arizona, holding in her arms the body of her babe which had been strangled with a cord, still tightly stretched around its little neck. Plainly the sympathetic survivors had reflected how lonely the poor mother would be in the next world without her babe, and had determined that its soul should accompany hers. Elsewhere, slaves or companions in arms were slain or slew themselves that they might accompany some famous chieftain to his long home.

In these funeral rites the disposal of the corpse depended upon ethnic traits, ancestral usage, or the instructions of the priests.

Perhaps the earliest was simple exposure. The body was left in the forest for the beasts and birds to consume, as among the Caddo Indians and others; or it was sunk in the waters that the fish should perform the same office; the usual object being to obtain the bones with the least trouble. The oldest of all burials yet discovered, those in the caves in the south of France, were of this character, simple “seposition” as it is called. The body was merely laid in a posture of repose on the cave floor, with the weapons and ornaments it had used during life.[259]

Next in point of time doubtless came inhumation, the interment of the body in the ground or covering it, laid on the surface, with stones and earth,—the burial mound. Homeric Greeks, American Indians, and tribes of all continents practised this method in different ages, and the barrows or tumuli thus erected remain in thousands to this day to attest the religious earnestness of those early peoples. The vast monuments which at times they constructed for their dead, the pyramids, dolmens, and teocalli, have never since been equalled in magnitude or cubical contents.

Another and significant funeral rite of high antiquity is that of cremation or incineration. It was symbolic in character, the body being given to the flames in order that the spirit, by their purifying agency, should promptly be set free and united with the gods. This method also prevailed extensively among the American race, and was quite in consonance with their opinions of the after-life. “It is the one passion of his superstition,” writes Mr. Powers of the Californian Indian, “to think of the soul of his departed friend as set free, and purified by the flames; not bound to the mouldering body, but borne up on the soft clouds of the smoke toward the beautiful sun.”[260]

Other peoples entertained the opinion that the body as it is, in all its parts, must be preserved in order that it might be again habitable for the soul, when this ethereal essence should return to earth from its celestial wanderings. Therefore, with utmost care they sought for means to preserve the fleshly tenement. In Virginia, in some parts of South America, on the Madeira Islands, the aboriginal population dried the corpse over a slow fire into a condition that resisted decay; while elsewhere, the nitrous soil of caves offered a natural means of embalming. The Alaskan and Peruvian mummies, like those of ancient Egypt, were artificially prepared and swathed in numerous cerecloths. In all, the same faith in the literal resurrection of the flesh was the prevailing motive.

More generally, the belief was held that the soul remained attached in some way to the bones. These were carefully cleaned and either preserved in the house, or stored in ossuaries. Frequently they were kept as amulets or mascots, in the notion that the friendly spirit which animated the living person would continue to hover around his skeleton or skull, and exert its amicable power. The Peruvians held that the bones of their deceased priests were oracular, speaking good counsel, and the missionaries were obliged to break them into small fragments to dispel this superstition[261]; though they themselves continued to hold it heretical to doubt the efficacy of the bones of the saints! A tribe on the Orinoco was wont to beat the bones of their dead into powder and mix it with their cassava bread, holding that thus their friends and parents lived again in the bodies of the eaters!

After cremation, the ashes were left upon the altar, and the whole covered with earth; or they were preserved in urns with the fragments of the bones; or, as with a tribe of the Amazon, they were cast upon the waters of the great river and floated down to the limitless ocean.

Thus closed the last scene in the existence of the primitive man. From birth to death he had been surrounded and governed by the ceremonies of his religion; and on his passage out of this life, he confidently looked to another in which he should find a compensation and a consolation for the woes of his present condition.

Following these funerary functions came the customs of mourning. They were often excessively protracted and severe, involving self-mutilation, as the lopping of a finger or an ear, scarification, flagellation, fasting, and cutting the hair. These were shared by the friends and relatives of the deceased, and at the death of some famous chief “the whole tribe will prostrate themselves to their woe.”

The psychic explanation of these demonstrations is not wholly clear. By some they have been interpreted as a commutation for cannibalism, and by others as an excuse for not accompanying the corpse into the other world. One writer says: “Barbarism, abandoned to sorrow, finds physical suffering a relief from mental agony.”[262] On the other hand, a recent student of the subject claims that in these rites we perceive “the oldest evidence of active conscience in the human race; the individual laid hands on himself in order to restore the moral equilibrium.”[263] Need we go farther than to see in them merely exaggerated forms of the same emotional outbursts which lead nervous temperaments everywhere to wring the hands and tear the hair in moments of violent grief?

LECTURE VI.

The Lines of Development of Primitive Religions.

CONTENTS:—Pagan Religions not wholly Bad—Their Lines of
Development as Connected with: 1. The Primitive Social Bond—The
Totem, the Priesthood, and the Law; 2. The Family and the
Position of Woman; 3. The Growth of Jurisprudence—The Ordeal,
Trial by Battle, Oaths, and the Right of Sanctuary—Religion is
Anarchic; 4. The Development of Ethics—Dualism of Primitive
Ethics—Opposition of Religion to Ethics; 5. The Advance in
Positive Knowledge—Religion _versus_ Science; 6. The Fostering
of the Arts—The Aim for Beauty and Perfection—Colour-Symbolism,
Sculpture, Metre, Music, Oratory, Graphic Methods—Useful Arts,
Architecture; 7. The Independent Life of the Individual—His
Freedom and Happiness—Inner Stadia of Progress: 1. From the
Object to the Symbol; 2. From the Ceremonial Law to the
Personal Ideal; 3. From the Tribal to the National Conception
of Religion—Conclusion.

It has always been, and is now, the prevailing belief in Christendom that pagan or heathen religions cannot exert and never have exerted any good influence on their votaries.

This opinion has also been defended by some modern and eminent authorities in the science of ethnology, as, for example, the late Professor Waitz.[264] It is a favourite teaching in missionary societies and in works of travellers who are keen observers of the shortcomings of others’ faiths.

I have never been able to share such a view. The lowest religions seem to have in them the elements which exist in the ripest and the noblest; and these elements work for good wherever they exist. However rude the form of belief in agencies above those of the material world, in a higher law than that confessedly of solely human enactment, and in a standard of duty prescribed by something loftier than immediate advantage,—such a belief must prompt the individual, anywhere, to a salutary self-discipline which will steadily raise him above his merely animal instincts, and imbue him with nobler conceptions of the aims of life.

When he feels himself under the protection of some unseen, but ever near, beneficent power, his emotions of gratitude and love will be stimulated; and when he recognises in the ceremonial law a divine prescription for his own welfare and that of his tribe, he will cheerfully submit to the rigours of its discipline.

The various lines of development which were thus marked out and pursued through the influence of early religious thought, and which reacted to develop it, deserve to be pointed out in detail, since they have so generally been overlooked or misunderstood.

For convenience of presentation they may be examined under seven headings, as they were connected with: 1. The primitive social bond; 2. The family and the position of woman; 3. The growth of jurisprudence; 4. The development of ethics; 5. The advance in positive knowledge; 6. The fostering of the arts; and 7. The independent life of the individual.

These are the main elements of ethnology; and as they progressed to higher forms and finer specialisations, partly through the influence of religion, they in turn reflected back to it their brighter lustre, and the symmetrical growth of a richer culture was thus secured.

1. The first to be named should be the construction of the primitive society. This was essentially religious. I have already emphasised how completely the savage is bound up in his faith, how it enters into nigh every act and thought of his daily life. This may be illustrated by its part in four very early and widely existing forms of social ties—the totem, the sacred society, the priesthood, and the ceremonial law.

The totemic bond I have previously explained. It existed in many American and Australian tribes and relics of it can be discerned in the early peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its constitution was avowedly religious. The supposed or “eponymous” ancestor of the totem was a mythical existence, a sort of deity. He was known only through a revelation, either in visions, or, through the assertions of the elders of the clan, in which latter case the myth was the origin of the relationship. Theoretically, all members of the totem were kinfolk, “of one blood,” and the numerous rites connected with the letting of blood were generally to symbolise this teaching.[265]

In various tribes, as among the Sioux and in Polynesia, the totem did not prevail. Its place was taken by societies, sacred in character, the members of which were bound closely together by some supernatural tie. As our Indians say, all the members “had the same medicine.” The relation these societies bear to the tribe is not dissimilar to that elsewhere held by totems.

In nearly all primitive peoples the priesthood exerts a powerful influence in preserving the unity of the tribe, in presenting an immovable opposition to external control. This is well known to the Christian missionaries and bitterly resented by them. These shamans and “medicine-men” are the most persistent opponents of civilisation and Christianity; but it must be remembered that the same conservatism on their part has for centuries been the chief preventive of tribal dissolution and decay. While we regret that they should resist what is good, we must recognise the value of their services to their people in the past.[266]

The ceremonial law belongs, as I have elsewhere said, to the primary forms of religion. It is in full force, as among the Mincopies and Yahgans, where it is difficult to perceive any other form of religious expression. It is deemed by all to be divine in origin, imparted in dreams or visions by supernatural visitors, transcending therefore all human enactments. It defines the proper conduct of the individual, and prescribes what is allowed and what is forbidden to him. Obedience to it is constantly inculcated under the threat of the severest penalties.

These are the main forces which moulded the earliest human societies known to us, and may be said to have first created society itself. They are all distinctly religious, and their consideration obliges us to acknowledge the correctness of the statement of a distinguished Italian, Professor Tito Vignoli,—“There is no society, however rude and primitive, in which all the relations, both of the individual and of the society itself, are not visibly based on superstitions and mythical beliefs.”[267]

2. Earlier, perhaps, than any definite social organisation was the family bond which united together those of one kinship. This rested upon marriage, the religious character of which in even the rudest tribes I dwelt upon in the last lecture. I then explained the matriarchal system prevalent in so many savage peoples. Necessarily, this exalted the position of woman, by conferring upon her the titular position of head of the house, and often the actual ownership of the family property.

It is a general truth in sociology that we may gauge the tendencies of a given society towards progressive growth by the position it assigns to woman, by the amount of freedom it gives her, and by the respect it pays to her peculiar faculties. Religions which, like Mohammedanism, reduce her to a very subordinate place in life, wholly secondary to that of the male, have worked detrimentally to the advancement of the peoples who have adopted them.

In some savage tribes, the woman is a mere chattel or slave, denied actual participation in religious rites. But that is by no means the case with all. Among the Hottentots, for example,—who were, when first discovered, a people of respectable culture,—a man can take no higher oath than to swear by his eldest sister; and such is the respect inculcated through his religion, that he never speaks to her unless she addresses him first.[268]

The more delicate nervous organisation of women adapts them peculiarly to the perception of those sub-conscious states which are the psychic sources of inspiration and revelation. Very widely, therefore, in primitive religions they occupied the position of seeresses and priestesses, and were reverenced in accordance therewith. Among the Dyaks of Borneo, in former days, all the recognised priestly class were women. Their bodies were supposed to be the chosen residence of the Sangsangs, beautiful beings, friendly to men. These inspired women, called Bilians or Borich, were subject to theoleptic fits, in which they gave advice, foretold the future, recited rhythmic songs, etc. They were under no restraint of conduct, as what they did, it was held, was the prompting of the god. So firm was their influence that, when, in modern days, the men also became priests, they were obliged to wear the garb of women.[269]

The Siamese also entertain this opinion. Their gods speak through the mouth of some chosen woman. When she feels the visit of the spirit to be near, she arrays herself in a handsome red silk garment, and as the deity enters her, she discourses of the other world, tells where lost objects are to be found, and the like. The assembled company worship her, or rather the god in her. On recovering from her theopneustic trance, she professes entire unconsciousness of what has taken place.[270]

The American Indians very generally concede to their women an exalted rank in their religious mysteries. The Algonquins had quite as famous “medicine-women” as medicine-men, and the same was true generally. Mr. Cushing tells me that there is only one person among the Zuñis who is a member of all the sacred societies and thus knows the secrets of all, and that person is a woman.

When Votan, the legendary hero of the Tzentals of Chiapas, left them for his long journey, he placed his sacred apparatus and his magical scrolls in a cave under the charge of a high priestess, who was to appoint her successor of the same sex until his return. The secret was faithfully kept and the successors appointed for more than a hundred and fifty years after their conversion to Christianity; until, in 1692, on the occasion of the visit of the Bishop to the hamlet where the priestess lived, she disclosed the story, and the holy relics were burned.[271]

Twenty years later, as if to avenge this, the Tzentals revolted in a body, their leader being an inspired prophetess of their tribe, a girl of twenty, fired with enthusiasm to drive the Spaniards from the land and restore the worship of the ancient gods.[272]

It is quite usual to find in early religions many rites, such as dances and sacrifices, which women alone carry out, and to which it is _tabu_ for any man to be admitted. This naturally arises in those cults where the deities are divided sexually into male and female. Such in their origin were the Bacchanals of ancient Greece, participated in at first by women and girls only, celebrated in devotion to the productive powers of nature, which were held to belong more especially to the female sex.[273] The “wise women” of many primitive faiths formed a close caste by themselves, no male being admitted, in imitation of their mythological prototypes in the heavens. The “witches” of the Middle Ages were lineal successors of the Teutonic priestesses, who took as their model the “swan-maidens” or “wish-women” of Odin.[274]

Another form of early institutions was that of the societies of virgins, such as that which from primitive Italic times kept alive the holy fire of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Extensive associations of a similar nature were found by the European explorers in Mexico, Yucatan, Peru, and elsewhere.

A curious teaching of several wide-spread cults was that women alone were endowed with immortality. Such was the opinion of the natives of the Marquesas Islands, and in Samoa the myth related that the god Supa (paralysis) ordained in the council of creation that the life of a man should be like a torch, which, when blown out, cannot be again lighted by blowing; but that a woman’s soul should live always.[275]

No one can doubt that in thus assigning a high and often the highest place in the religious mysteries to woman, many primitive religions surrounded her with a sacredness which was constantly recognised, and thus aided in the improvement of her social relations. The value of virtue and purity was increased, mere animal desires were subjected to religious restraint, and the relations of sex came increasingly to be regarded as instituted by divine wisdom for special purposes.

3. Although the specifications of the ceremonial law were often capricious and absurd, and sometimes positively hurtful, yet it developed the habit of obedience and the respect for authority. In this manner it potently aided the evolution of jurisprudence—that is, of those rules of conduct which grow out of the habit of men living together and which are necessary to preserve amicable relations. These had their origin in other than religious considerations, but when once consciously recognised as beneficial, the religion of the tribe generally adopted them, claimed their creation, and threw around them the garb of its own protective power. Religion then actively aided in the fulfilment of purely social duties, as these were understood by the tribe.

In primitive conditions, all laws are God’s laws. As we would say, there is no separation of the civil and criminal from the canon law. To the Mohammedan, the Koran is the source of all jurisprudence. This is a survival from early thought.

From this it followed that the punishment of crime and the decisions between litigants were, properly, judgments of God. This universal opinion is reflected in a number of traits in jurisprudence, some of which are still in vogue in civilised lands. The most noteworthy are the ordeal, trial by battle, oaths, and the privilege of sanctuary.

Ordeals were universal. They all rested on the belief that the gods would rescue the innocent man from danger. He might be required to hold red-hot iron in his hands; he might be plunged long under water; swallow poison; or in any other way expose himself to pain or death; if he were unjustly accused, the invisible powers would protect him.[276]

The trial by battle involved the same opinion. “If the Lord is on my side, why should I fear?” is the confident belief at the basis of every such test of skill and strength.[277]

These forms of decision have disappeared, but the oath remains as vigorous as ever in our law courts. It is, however, as has been pointed out by the able ethnologist and lawyer, Dr. Post, originally and in spirit nothing else than an ordeal. The false witness, the perjurer, is believed to expose himself to the wrath of God and to suffer the consequences in this or another life.[278]

The rite of sanctuary was distinctly religious. The criminal among the Hebrews, who could escape to the temple and cling to the horns of the altar, must not be seized by the officers of justice. The Cherokee Indians, like the Israelites, had “cities of refuge,” which they called “white towns.” With the Acagchemem, a Californian tribe, the temples were so purifying that the evil-doer, were he guilty even of murder, who could reach them before he was caught, was cleansed of his sin and absolved ever after from any punishment for it.[279]

In these vital relations we see how religion entered deeply into civil life, and became a guide and director of its most essential procedures. Its development grew with its responsibilities and with the intimacy it cultivated with practical affairs.

The codes of statutes instituted by ancient legislators, usually personified under some one famous name, as Moses, Manu, Menes, or the like, obtained general adoption through the belief that they emanated directly from divinity, and were part of the ceremonial law. Under favour of this disguise, they worked for the good of those who followed them, and gained a credence which would not have been conceded to them, had it been thought that they were of human manufacture.

Toward merely human law the religious sentiment is in its nature and derivation in frequent opposition. It claims a nobler lineage and a higher title. In theory, the Church must always be above the State, as God is superior to man. Religion, when vital and active, is ever revolutionary and anarchic. It ever aims at substituting divine for human ordinances.

This has been from earliest times its constant tendency. It has been a potent dissolvent of states and governments and of such older religious expressions as have become humanised by usage and formality.

In this manner it has been the most powerful of all levers in stimulating the human mind to active enterprise and the use of all its faculties. Man owes less to his conscious than to his sub-conscious intelligence, and of this religion has been the chief interpreter.

4. The severest blows have been dealt at primitive or pagan religions on account of the inferiority of their ethics. It has often been asserted that they do not cultivate the moral faculties and benevolent emotions, but stifle and pervert them. They are, therefore, considered to be distinctly evil in tendency.

This important criticism cannot be disposed of by a mere denial. There is no doubt that the ethics of barbarism is not that of a high civilisation. But if we understand the necessary conditions of tribal life in the unending conflicts of the savage state, we can see that the highest moral code would find no place there.

All tribal religions preach a dualism of ethics, one for the members of the tribe, who are bound together by ties of kinship and by union to preserve existence; and the other, for the rest of the world. To the former are due aid, kindness, justice, truth and fair dealing; to the latter, enmity, hatred, injury, falsehood, and deceit. The latter is just as much a duty as the former, and is just as positively enjoined by both religion and tribal law.[280]

The state of barbarism is one of perpetual war, in which each petty tribe is striving to conquer, rob, and destroy its neighbours. The Patagonians and Australians wander about their sterile lands in small bands, naked and shelterless, owning nothing but the barest necessities. But whenever two of these bands approach each other, it is the signal for a murderous struggle, in order to obtain possession of the wretched rags and trumperies of the opponent.

For this reason, the development of ethics must be studied on inclusive lines, as to what extent they were cultivated between members of the same social unit, the totem or the tribe. The duty of kindness to others extended to a very limited distance, but, within that area, may have been, and generally was, punctually observed. The devotion of members of the same gens to each other, even to the sacrifice of life, has been often noted among savages. The duties involved by this connection were frequently onerous and dangerous, as in the common custom of blood revenge, where a man, at the imminent peril and often at the loss of his own life, felt constrained to slay the murderer of a fellow-clansman.

The character of the early gods was, as a rule, non-ethical. They were generally neither wholly good nor wholly bad. They were more or less friendly toward men, but rarely constantly either beneficent or malignant. They were too human for that.[281]

Hence the religions which were founded upon such conceptions were not in their prescriptions of conduct chiefly ethical, but rather ceremonial. Moral conduct was of less importance than the performance of the rites, the recitation of the formulas, and the respect for the _tabu_.[282]

I may go farther, and say that in all religions, in the essence of religion itself, there lies concealed a certain contempt for the merely ethical, as compared with the mystical, in life. That which is wholly religious in thought and emotion is conscious of another, and, it claims, a loftier origin than that which is moral only, based as the latter is, on solely social considerations. I have heard from the pulpits of our own land very gloomy predictions of the fate of the “merely moral man.”[283]

5. That which we call “modern progress” is due to the increase of positive knowledge, the enlargement of the domain of objective truth. To this, religion in its early stages made important contributions. The motions of the celestial bodies were studied at first for ceremonial reasons only. They fixed the sacred year and the periods for festivals and sacrifices. Out of this grew astronomy, the civil calendar, and other departments of infantile science.

The rudiments of mathematics were discovered and developed chiefly by the priestly class, and at first for hieratic purposes; and the same is true of the elements of botanical and zoölogical knowledge. The practice of medicine owes some of its most useful resources to the observations of the “medicine-men” or shamans of savage tribes.

While this much and more may justly be stated concerning the contributions of Religion to Science, there can be no question of the irreconcilable conflict between the two. They arise in totally different tracts of the human mind, Science from the conscious, Religion from the sub- or unconscious intelligence. Therefore, there is no common measure between them.

Science proclaims that man is born to know, not to believe, and that truth, to be such, must be verifiable. Religion proclaims that faith is superior to knowledge, and that the truth which is intuitive is and must be higher than that which depends on observation. Science acknowledges that it can reach no certain conclusions; its final decisions are always followed by a mark of interrogation. Religion despises such hesitancy, and proceeds in perfect confidence of possessing the central and eternal verity. Science looks upon the ultimate knowable laws of the universe as mechanical, religion as spiritual or demonologic.

These differences have always existed, and have, in the main, resulted in placing religions at all times in antagonism to universal ethics, to general rules of conduct, and to objective knowledge. Everywhere, the religious portion of the community have entertained a secret or open contempt for “worldly learning”; everywhere they have proclaimed that the knowledge of God is superior to the knowledge of his works; and that obedience to his law is of more import than the love of humanity.

We may turn to the American Indians, the tribes of Siberia or the Dyaks of Borneo, and we shall find that the ordinary “doctor” who cured by a knowledge of herbs, of nursing, and of simple mechanical means, was far less esteemed than the shaman who depended not on special knowledge but on the possession of mysterious powers which gave him control over demons[284]; or we may take that Protestant sect of the Reformation, who opposed anyone learning the alphabet, lest he should waste his time on vain human knowledge[285]; or a thousand other examples; and the contrast is always the same.

The conclusion, therefore, is that early religion did assist the development of the race along these lines, but only incidentally and, as it were, unwittingly; while it was, at heart, unfriendly to them.

6. It is otherwise when we turn to Art, especially esthetic Art. Its aim is the realisation, the expression in the object, of the idea of the Beautiful. This idea does not belong to the conscious intelligence. It cannot be expressed in the formulas of positive knowledge. The esthetic, like the religious, emotions, send their roots far down into the opaque structure of the sub-conscious intelligence, and hence the two are natural associates. What Professor Bain says of Art may be extended to Religion: “Nature is not its standard, nor is [objective] truth its chief end.”[286]

It has been seriously questioned whether the idea of the beautiful existed among primitive peoples, apart from a desire for mere gaudy colouring or striking display. No one would doubt its universal presence could he but free his judgment from his own canons of the beautiful, and accept those which prevail in the savage tribe he is studying. Darwin, in his work on the _Descent of Man_, collected evidence from the rudest hordes of all continents to prove that all were passionate admirers of beauty, as measured by their own criteria; and he reached also the important conclusion that their completest expression of it was to be found in their religious art. “In every nation,” he says, “sufficiently advanced to have made effigies of their gods, or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have endeavoured to express their highest idea of beauty.”[287]

We should also remember that the same great teacher says: “It is certainly not true that there is in the human mind any universal standard of beauty;” and this is so, both of the human form and of those expressions of the beautiful which appeal to the ear and the touch. The music and the metre of one race generally displease another; and there is no one norm by which the superiority of either can be absolutely ascertained.

In their own way, however, Art and Religion have this in common, that they make a study of Perfection, and aim to embody it in actuality; whereas Science or positive knowledge confines itself to reality, which is ever imperfect.

Perfection is, however, an unconditioned mode of existence, not measurable by our senses, and hence outside the domain of inductive research. The tendency of organic forms and cosmic motions is always toward it, but they always fall short of it.[288] We are aware of it only through the longings of our sub-conscious minds, not through the laws of our reasoning intelligence. Yet so intense is our conviction, not only that it is true, but that final truth lies in it alone, that it has ever been and will ever be the highest and strongest motive of human action.

Beginning with those arts which are avowedly the expression of beauty in line, colour, or form, it is easy to show how they were fostered by the religious sense. The inscribed shells and tablets from the mounds of the Mississippi Valley present complex and symmetrical drawings, clearly intended for some mythical being or supernatural personage.

Among the Salishan Indians of British Columbia, when a girl reaches maturity she must go alone to the hills and undergo a long period of retirement. At its close, she records her experiences by drawing a number of rude figures in red paint on a boulder, indicating the rites she has performed and the visions she has had.[289] Such rock-writing, or petroglyphs, nearly always of religious import, are found in every continent, and offer the beginnings of the art of drawing.