Chapter I: Part 1

RITUAL AND BELIEF

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGION

BY EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND, F.S.A.

LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1914

PREFACE

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Among the various intellectual activities of the last fifty years none has awakened a more widespread interest than that of the study of the evolution of human civilization. The reason is apparent: it has revolutionized our conception of human history, and has shaken to their very centre the religious traditions of Europe and civilized America. The general doctrine of evolution as applied to the universe at large was established shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century by Darwin and Spencer. Geology had already revealed the enormous age of the earth, and the long procession of periods through which the flora and fauna had advanced to ever higher organization. Archæology had begun its enquiries into the antiquity of man; but the evidence was not yet fully understood, and its weight or even its existence was denied. While theology, after first indignantly repudiating the new teachers, was trying with many grimaces to accommodate itself to their teaching, new lines of investigation were entered upon in this country and America by Lubbock, Tylor, M‘Lennan, and Morgan. The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned. In a country like ours, where an established Church {vi} arrogated to itself all social and almost all intellectual influences, and where it was very generally supported by those who dissented from it on other points in its dogmatic opposition to the results of scientific enquiry, it was natural that attention should be directed to the bearing of those results on theology. Anthropology, as the new Science of Man came to be called, was materially assisted in the quarrel by Biblical criticism begun in Germany and popularized in England by Colenso and others. The authenticity of the books so long attributed to Moses was questioned and overthrown; they themselves were emptied of all historical authority, and put on a level in this respect with the books of heathen nations. Professor Robertson Smith’s fight for liberty of criticism in the Free Church of Scotland roused the enthusiasm even of men who did not agree with all his opinions; and when he was finally ejected from his chair at Aberdeen, he was provided with a home first at Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, and the editorship of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. Thus unmuzzled, he devoted himself to the study of Semitic religion and customs on the largest scale and in the most unbiassed spirit. Unfortunately, his health gave way; and two precious volumes are well-nigh all that has reached us of his labours. But his influence at Cambridge, and particularly over a younger fellow-countryman to whom we owe _The Golden Bough_, was of a most fruitful character. To the impulse he gave is to be traced much--perhaps more than we suspect--of what anthropology has accomplished in various directions during the last five-and-twenty years.

Meanwhile revolt against false interpretation of known facts and inadequate methods of enquiry had spread elsewhere. Professor Max Müller, by his unsurpassed {vii} powers of exposition, his eloquence and his wide knowledge of the Aryan tongues, had become the champion in this country of the German explanation of myths as a disease of language, a teacher on whose lips learned and simple hung. Great as was his learning, however, it was circumscribed by the Indo-European languages and literature. He took little account of savage myths which could not be interpreted on his principles, and still less of the equally important rites and beliefs of European peasants and primitive peoples beyond the seas. In Germany, Mannhardt, originally a disciple of the same school, had turned to more reasonable and penetrating modes of interpretation. It is his glory to have been the first to combat the fancies of the philologists in a series of works steeped as deeply in classical learning as theirs, but with a much wider outlook and a keener sense of actuality. Yet he died without having made many converts; and in Germany still the sun-myth lingers, though hastening fast to its inevitable setting. In England his works were hardly known, when, in 1887, Andrew Lang, after a powerful article on “Mythology” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and other preliminary essays, published _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, in which he attacked with overwhelming acumen and wit the philological position. It is not too much to say that as far as English-speaking countries were concerned the blow was decisive, the philological position was carried, and the enemy’s flag planted triumphantly on the battlements.

The way was thus cleared for a really scientific enquiry into the beginnings of religion. No longer were we hampered with the story of Genesis and the primitive revelation. Our vision was not to be bounded by the Aryan and Semitic peoples. The guesswork of the philological school was at an end, and ritual was admitted {viii} to be at least as indispensable to the enquiry as story and belief. Professor Tylor had already done something more than pioneer work in the chapters on Mythology and Animism in _Primitive Culture_. In the chapters on Animism in particular he had exhibited the universal belief in the souls, not merely of human beings, but of other animate, and even of inanimate, creatures. He had boldly discussed the relation of this belief to the doctrine of spirits generally, and considered the transitional series of ideas through the cult of the dead, possession, fetishism, idol-worship, and the beliefs of the Christian Fathers. It became evident that a doctrine so complex and subtle, even in its simpler manifestations, could not bean original and innate belief of the human mind, but that it must have been evolved from something simpler, perhaps vaguer, certainly more comprehensive. “A theoretical conception of primitive philosophy, designed to account for phenomena now classed under Biology, especially Life and Death, Health and Disease, Sleep and Dreams, Trance and Visions” pre-supposes a long period of observation, comparison and discussion, during which the ideas slowly took shape and ranged themselves round a central theory.

The late Mr Andrew Lang was the first seriously to consider the questions involved. His answer, given in _The Making of Religion_ (1898), was twofold. On the one hand, he suggested that “the savage theory of the soul may be based, at least in part, on experiences”--hypnotism, clairvoyance, hallucination, and so forth--“which cannot at present be made to fit into any purely materialistic system of the universe.” On the other hand, he contended that “the idea of God, in its earliest known shape, need not logically be derived from the idea of spirit, however that idea itself may have been attained or {ix} evolved.” In this he was aiming partly at Sir Edward Tylor’s theory of Animism, as developed in the last of his famous chapters on that subject, partly at the theory of the ancient sceptic Euhemerus, revived and championed within recent years by Herbert Spencer and Grant Allen, that gods had been developed out of the ghosts of dead men. He sought to draw a broad distinction between the two concepts, that of a god and that of a spirit of any sort. He claimed that the idea of God was earlier than that of a spirit, and that “a relatively Supreme God,” often expressly described as Creator, existing before death came into the world, and practically eternal, had everywhere preceded the propitiation of the dead. He did not commit himself to any definite opinion as to how this idea of a Supreme God was reached by the rude forefathers of the race. But when he oracularly observed, “The hypothesis of St Paul seems not the most unsatisfactory,” it is no wonder that orthodox readers understood by that expression a primitive revelation, whereas what he meant was the argument from Design as stated in Rom. i. 19, 20. Though Lang’s book, therefore, was hailed as a sign that anthropological science was after all coming round to the support of the old orthodoxy, he himself was too true a sceptic to fall satisfactorily into line. In fact, he solved nothing. The “High Gods” of the lowest savages must have had some origin, must have been evolved out of conceptions lower or more indefinite.

Professor Frazer has approached the problem from another side. In the first edition of _The Golden Bough_ he attempted no definition of Religion; and the relation of Magic to Religion, therefore, was hardly clear. Critics did not fail to call his attention to this. In the second edition (1900) he accordingly proceeded to define {x} his position. There, with Sir Alfred Lyall and Professor Jevons, he recognizes “a fundamental distinction and even opposition of principle between magic and religion”; and in _The Magic Art_, he has more recently somewhat expanded his exposition of their relations. Magic, it appears, is a false science based on the assumption “that in nature one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency.” Religion is “a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.” Man began with magic. He knew of no beings superior to himself, and he believed that by certain ceremonies he could cause the results he desired. “Yet his power, great as he believes it to be, is by no means arbitrary and unlimited. He can wield it only so long as he strictly conforms to the rules of his art, or to what may be called the laws of nature as conceived by him. To neglect these rules, to break these laws in the smallest particular is to incur failure, and may even expose the unskilful practitioner himself to the utmost peril. If he claims a sovereignty over nature, it is a constitutional sovereignty, rigorously limited in its scope, and exercised in exact conformity with ancient usage.” After a while man found out his blunder. “The shrewder intelligences must in time have come to perceive that magical ceremonies and incantations did not really effect the results they were designed to produce, and which the majority of their simpler fellows still believed that they did actually produce.… The discovery amounted to this, that men for the first time recognized their inability to manipulate at pleasure certain natural forces which hitherto they had believed to be completely within their control. It was a confession of human {xi} ignorance and weakness. Man saw that he had taken for causes what were no causes, and that all his efforts to work by means of these imaginary causes had been vain.… Not that the effects which he had striven so hard to produce did not continue to manifest themselves. They were still produced, but not by him.” In this emergency he turned to “a new system of faith and practice, which seemed to offer a solution of his harassing doubts and a substitute, however precarious, for that sovereignty over nature which he had abdicated. If the great world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings, like himself, but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its course and brought about all the varied series of events which he had hitherto believed to be dependent on his own magic.… To these mighty beings, whose handiwork he traced in all the gorgeous and varied pageantry of nature, man now addressed himself, humbly confessing his dependence on their invisible power, and beseeching them of their mercy to furnish him with all good things.” Here, to be sure, was a revolution. The Age of Religion succeeded to the Age of Magic, though gradually, reluctantly, and, as regards at least the majority of mankind, incompletely even to the present day.

It is needless to dwell on the contrast between this hypothesis and Lang’s. The one traces religion back to the belief in a Supreme God, the other to a reaction against the belief in magic. They are alike in one respect: they both derive it from an exercise of man’s reasoning faculties. It seems a just criticism to say that neither of them takes sufficient account of man’s emotional nature. Yet it must have played an important part in the evolution of religion. It is, if I may say so, the merit of another {xii} enquirer, Dr R. R. Marett, that he was the first to point this out. In an article published in _Folk-lore_ in the year 1900, he analyzed, with psychological knowledge and skill, the experiences that underlay Animism, and came to the conclusion that behind the logic was emotion, the recoil from the uncanny and the mysterious, “that basic feeling of awe, which drives a man, ere he can think or theorize upon it, into personal relations with the Supernatural.” Dr Marett’s views have been subsequently developed in a series of papers printed in different periodicals and collections, and republished in 1909 in a volume entitled _The Threshold of Religion_. This has been supplemented more recently by his inaugural lecture as Reader in Social Anthropology at Oxford, on _The Birth of Humility_ (1910), in which he takes the opportunity of criticizing with vivacity and effect Professor Frazer’s exposition of the relations of magic and religion. His opinions have been reinforced by the independent enquiries of two learned Frenchmen, MM. Hubert and Mauss, who in 1904 published in _L’Année Sociologique_ a remarkable “Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la Magie,” reissued five years later among their collected essays entitled _Mélanges d’Histoire des Religions_. They approach the subject from the social side, insisting that religion is before everything a social matter, its judgements are social judgements, its rites social rites. They point out its intimate connection with magic, and by skilful analysis exhibit the parallelism between them.

More recently the psychological aspect of the problem has been considered by a group of American writers, notably by Professor James Leuba (_A Psychological Study of Religion_) and Dr Irving King (_The Development of Religion_, New York, 1910). The latter work is a most suggestive and judicious survey of the evidence afforded {xiii} by savage rites and belief. The writer insists on the priority of rites to belief, and finds their origin in social activities, largely in what he calls play-activities, and in spontaneous reactions to the environment. The religious attitude may be coeval with these activities, but organized beliefs were developed gradually. The particular forms they took were the result of different social situations, these in turn depending on the physical and cultural environment. “In and so far as they have elements which are similar functionally, religion and magic,” he holds, “originally formed a part of a primitive, undifferentiated attitude, and separated from each other as experience became more complex and the requirements of action more varied.” Magic became the individualist and antisocial application of the impulses and organized methods of which religion was the social expression and application.

Lastly, Professor Durkheim, taking Totemism as the most primitive religion known to us, has in _Les Formes Elémentaires de la vie Religieuse_ analyzed elementary conceptions, with the result that he derives religious ideas and practices entirely from a social origin. As I have considered his theory more fully on another page, it needs no further reference here.

Thus at the present moment the controversy stands--if it be legitimate to call it a controversy. Criticism, according to a pregnant saying of Andrew Lang’s, is a form of co-operation--of co-operation in the pursuit of truth. The following essays are intended in that spirit as a humble contribution to the discussion. Their primary intention is not controversial. They rather seek to express some of the results of a study of the phenomena, from the point of view of one who has been convinced that the emotions and the imagination--and {xiv} not merely the individual, but the collective emotions and imagination--have had at least as much to do with the generation of religious practices and beliefs as the reason, and that for the form they may have assumed, physical, social, and cultural influences must be held accountable.

The essay on “The Relations of Religion and Magic” is an expansion of two presidential addresses, one delivered to the Anthropological Section of the British Association at York in 1906, the other to the section on the Religions of the Lower Culture at the International Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford in 1908. The essay on “The Rite at the Temple of Mylitta” was contributed to the volume of _Anthropological Essays_ presented to Sir Edward Tylor, in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1907. That on “The Voice of the Stone of Destiny” was published in _Folk-lore_, 1903. Both of these have undergone revision. The remaining essays are new. One of them deals as a preliminary with some of the difficulties that beset the enquirer into the religious ideas of the lower races, with wandering fires that mislead him, with barriers that seem impassable. The others seek to concentrate attention on particular instances of ritual or belief, to elucidate the ideas and emotions that underlie them, or further to illustrate their evolution. I am indebted to the publishers of such as have been already published for their courtesy in facilitating reproduction here.

E. SIDNEY HARTLAND

Highgarth, Gloucester,
_January_ 1914.

CONTENTS

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LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK” THE RELATIONS OF RELIGION AND MAGIC: I. THE COMMON ROOT II. THEORIES AND DEFINITIONS III. DEVELOPMENT IV. DIVERGENCE THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS THE HAUNTED WIDOW THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOURNING CLOTHES THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE OF MYLITTA THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF DESTINY BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST ENDNOTES

RITUAL AND BELIEF

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LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK”

Sir Edward Tylor begins the chapters on Animism in that great work which laid the foundation of the modern study of the history of civilization, by a discussion of the evidence for the existence of tribes destitute of religion. In some half-dozen pages he easily shows that the existence of such tribes, “though in theory possible, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled to demand.” He convicts travellers and missionaries who have made the assertion, of contradicting themselves; and he renders probable that the denial of religion to peoples in the lower culture is begotten of a perverted judgement in theological matters, and “the use of wide words in narrow senses.”[1.1]

Other causes are equally prolific of error in regard to savage beliefs. Sir Edward Tylor refers to haste and imperfect acquaintance by the traveller with the people whose beliefs he is professing to repeat. These are obvious causes on which it is needless to dwell. Many peoples, too, are accustomed out of mere politeness to endeavour to divine what sort of answer to his remarks will please a guest, or what sort of answer an enquirer expects to his questions, and to make it accordingly, {2} regardless whether it has any relation to the facts or not. This courtier-like etiquette of agreement applies to every subject, and is emphasized when the enquirer is an official or social superior from whom favour may be looked for or displeasure apprehended. The Malayans, a jungle tribe of southern India, invariably say “Yes” in reply to a question by a government officer or a member of a higher caste, “believing that a negative answer might displease him.”[2.1] In such cases it is difficult to extract the truth on the most indifferent and trivial, to say nothing of weightier, matters.

Passing over these commonplaces, let us pause for a moment on another cause mentioned by Tylor, namely, the natural reluctance of savages to reveal “to the prying and contemptuous foreigner their worship of gods who seem to shrink, like their worshippers, before the white man and his mightier Deity.”[2.2] Very instructive is the account given by Kolben of the Hottentots. Writing in the early years of the eighteenth century, he says it is “a difficult thing to get out of the Hottentots what are really their notions concerning God and religion, or whether they have any at all. They keep all their religious opinions and ceremonies, as they do every other matter established among them, as secret as they can from Europeans, and when they are questioned concerning such matters are very shy in their answers and hide the truth as much as they can.” They take refuge from questions in “a thousand fictions,” which they excuse, when taxed with them, by alleging that “the Europeans are a crafty, designing people. They never ask a question for the sake of the answer only, but have other ends to serve, perhaps against the peace and security of the Hottentots.” From this source, we are told, have sprung {3} most of the contradictions to be found in authors upon the religion of the Hottentots.[3.1] More than a hundred years after Kolben’s day a British traveller, exploring Great Namaqualand under the auspices of the British Government and of the Royal Geographical Society, assembled some of the old men among the Namaqua and put them through an examination. His thirst for information was doubtless praiseworthy; and he was at least successful in proving, albeit unconsciously, the truth of the older traveller’s words. For the proceeding he adopted affords a brilliant example of “how not to do it.” I quote some of his questions: “What laws have the Namaqua?” Answer--“They have none; they only listen to their chiefs.” “Do the people know anything of the stars?” Answer--“Nothing.” “Do the Namaqua believe in lucky and unlucky days?” Answer--“They don’t know anything of these things.” “Are there rainmakers in the land?” Answer--“None.” “What do the old Namaqua think becomes of people when they die?” Answer--“They know nothing of these things; all they see is that the people die and are buried, but what becomes of them they know not; and before the missionaries came to the Great River the people had never heard of another world.”[3.2]

Many European casuists justify one who is questioned concerning matters he desires to keep secret, and who meets the inquisitive person with a falsehood. It cannot therefore be surprising that these poor Hottentots thus took advantage of the only defence open to them when they found their most cherished beliefs and customs the subject of impertinent and bungling interrogations by an {4} unsympathetic intruder into their country. Their Bantu neighbours do the same. The Kaffir, we are told, “dislikes to find Europeans investigating his customs, and he usually hides all he can from them and takes a sportive pleasure in baffling and misleading them.”[4.1] When questioned by Andersson, the Ovambo denied that they had any belief, or abruptly stopped him with a “Hush!”[4.2] Prying of this kind is rarely welcomed even among peoples on a much higher plane of civilization. Not to appeal to our own feelings, we may take as an illustration a people of the Far East. To question a native of Korea concerning custom or belief at once arouses his suspicions. Indeed, for a stranger to enquire the number of houses in a village, or what the land produces, needs much tact if bad feeling is to be avoided. A missionary who lived for many years in the country was of opinion that people are unconscious of their customs. At any rate a Korean asked suddenly about a certain custom will in all likelihood deny that such a thing exists; and yet he may be absolutely free from dishonesty in the matter: he is simply unconscious, he has never thought about it.[4.3]

To this point we will return directly: our present point is the conscious refusal of information. And here it should be noted that savages, as well as others, do not hide their beliefs only because they do not understand the motive of enquiry, or because they are afraid of ridicule or of the denunciations of the missionary, even where the Christian priest can call down the thunderbolt of the magistrate. These reasons operate, but not alone. {5} From all quarters of the world comes the report that the native is uncommunicative. The Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco are quite aware that their “superstition is regarded with disfavour by the missionaries”; but they are naturally “very reticent in these matters,” and their reticence is only heightened--not caused--by this knowledge.[5.1] An excellent illustration of the difficulty of discovering the beliefs and even the practices of savages is afforded by Mr Batchelor, a missionary who, having resided among the Ainu of Japan for more than twelve years, wrote an interesting book upon them. He naturally supposed that so long a residence and intimacy with them entitled him to think he knew practically all that could be told about them. Alas for the fallibility of even a careful observer! There was one chamber in the mind of every Ainu which he had not explored. When another twelve years had elapsed he wrote that “when writing that book I must frankly confess that I had no idea, nor had I for many years after, that ophiolatry was practised at all by this people.” And all the while the Ainu whom he knew so well were holding beliefs, relating myths, and practising rites of which he had not the least suspicion.[5.2] Nor is there any reason to suggest that they were concealing those things from him out of fear of ridicule or clerical reproofs.

Deeper reasons exist. German missionaries have been labouring for a number of years among the tribes on the north-eastern coast of New Guinea. In view of the various difficulties attending the investigation of the beliefs of these tribes the latest scientific explorer of the country called in the aid of some of the more experienced {6} of the missionaries. He thus sums up the position: “The heathen Papuan is a reticent fellow, and no power in the world can move him to disclose the secrets of his fathers. He has too much fear of the vengeance of the spirits and of the sorcerers, who would infallibly kill him if he betrayed the smallest thing. Long years of work accomplished with endless patience have been necessary to convince the Black that sorcery is powerless,--that it is all lies and deceit. Only if he is about to be baptized will he voluntarily deliver up to his teacher his knowledge of witchcraft and its methods. In plain terms, he feels the need on this point to lighten both his conscience and his pocket.”[6.1] Reasons of this order have never been better put than by an eminent French anthropologist whose untimely death a few years ago was a serious blow to the cause of science. Reviewing the work of a lady for whom English colleagues yet mourn, he says: “The savage does not like to speak of his belief; he fears the contemptuous mockery of the Whites. Perhaps, too, he fears to give an advantage over himself, in allowing more to be known than is fitting of the rites by which he tries to conciliate the benevolence of the spirits, or to turn away their disfavour from his hut and his plantations. To make known his resources for the fight would be to half-disarm him; surrounded with supernatural dangers, he does not willingly indicate the supernatural means by which he guarantees himself against them.”[6.2] One other reason may be added to these: a reason probably operative in many more cases than enquirers have been aware of. The things after which they ask are often revealed only to the initiate. An {7} outsider, one who is not known to be, or at least treated as, an initiate, will seek in vain by means direct or indirect for information on these matters. A stony silence or repeated lies are all he will get. This has been the cause of much mystification and many contradictory statements about tribes in various parts of the world, not the least in Australia.[7.1]

It is not suggested, of course, that all contradictory statements emanate from the deliberate mystification of non-initiate enquirers. We have not by any means exhausted the causes of error in regard to savage beliefs. Contradictory statements are made in good faith because those who make them hold contradictory beliefs. On the subject, for example, of the future life the mutually destructive character of the beliefs often held by the same tribes, and even by the same individuals, is one of the truisms of anthropology. The Zulus and their neighbours hold that their dead are to be recognized in the form of various animals, notably snakes, that haunt the tomb or the abodes of the living, and yet that these very dead dwell in the bowels of the earth, presiding in patriarchal fashion over shadowy kraals, and rejoicing in the possession of herds of sky-blue kine with red and white spots. Moreover, notwithstanding this wealth of cattle, they are dependent, if not for their continued existence, at least for their comfort, on the sacrifices offered by their descendants. The truth is that “the whole spirit-world is one of haze and uncertainty.”[7.2] This opinion, expressed by an experienced missionary, {8} is true of all savage and barbarous nations. It is not merely the doctrine of souls that is difficult to understand fully and to state clearly: all the relations with the supernatural are shifting; and the supernatural itself melts away into mist and gloom and the undefined terrors of night.

Proof of the mental capacity of peoples in the lower culture, and their alertness within the narrow range of their appetites, their bodily needs, and the warfare they wage for existence against untoward environment of various kinds, is to be found in every record of exploration, in the reports of every missionary. Beyond that range there are differences between races, as between individuals, in reasoning power, in curiosity, and in general development. Some cause to us unknown may have turned the thoughts of one people into profounder and subtler channels than those of another. We are told of two neighbouring tribes in California that their differences are very striking, and are based on deep-lying racial factors. The mythology of the one is more dramatic, that of the other is more metaphysical, exhibiting “more of the power of abstract thought and intellectual conception.”[8.1] We must beware of reading too extensive a meaning into what is after all merely a comparison of characteristics. It is adduced here for the sole purpose of illustrating the statement that such differences exist even between tribes that are subject to similar external influences. In spite of these differences the unanimous verdict, alike of missionaries and explorers, scientific enquirers and traders, given with tiresome iteration, is that of dormant faculties, want of interest, inability to follow a train of thought, and dislike of intellectual effort. These are qualities that we are sufficiently familiar {9} with at home to render them fully credible in “the poor heathen.” Ask a man anywhere--ask a Zulu, ask an English peasant--why such and such a thing is done. He will tell you: “It is the custom,” and will look at you with wondering eyes that you can demand a reason or dream of any alternative as possible. Custom to him is more than a second nature. It is nature itself, the established order, the cosmos. To conceive of departure from it would entail a greater burden of thought than he has ever undertaken or would willingly bear. It may even be so much a part of his existence that, like the Korean referred to above, he is barely conscious of it.

In such a case the custom may be denied in perfect good faith. Sometimes, it is true, another cause may lead to the denial. This is well illustrated in a recent work on the Holy Land. The author, speaking of local variations of custom, says: “The small area in which peculiar customs occur, and the comparative isolation of these areas which still prevails, make it often extremely difficult to ascertain local customs and usages. Many of these can only be discovered accidentally or by long residence in the particular locality. The people of neighbouring villages may be quite unaware of the existence of a certain custom, while only a few miles away it may be very familiar. I have known intelligent, educated natives to be entirely ignorant of certain customs, and even to deny their existence, because they were not in vogue in their own particular district, whereas further enquiry or fuller acquaintance with other parts revealed the fact that they were perfectly familiar to others.”[9.1] Here the expression “intelligent, educated natives” must be interpreted of course by reference to the standard {10} of intelligence and education in the rural parts of a country so backward as Palestine. In such a case the ignorance by natives described as intelligent and educated of customs quite different from, and perhaps opposed to, their own may be due to the concentration of their faculties in the struggle for daily needs, or the absorption of their interests in the concerns of their own little community. Millions of men and women in our country, who may be fairly described, by reference to their class and occupation, as “intelligent, educated natives,” are quite ignorant--and supremely indifferent--about everything not pertaining to their material well-being, their habitual amusements, the affairs of their little town, their family or their church, or the latest scandal whispered in their tiny coterie. These fill up their life; they have neither leisure nor inclination to worry about anything beyond. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that where the facilities for communication are smaller and the general indigence greater, similar mental indolence may exist. Economic causes, the product themselves of the environment, are often responsible for internal conditions, and cannot be disentangled from them. Intelligent curiosity about things not immediately or apparently affecting ourselves is a rare virtue, and of late development. We ourselves often deem that we pay it abundant homage by witnessing the exhibition of a few lantern slides, or slumbering tranquilly through a lecture on Dante. But to it, if rightly and strenuously pursued, we owe how much of modern discovery and the amenities of civilization! Let us, however, return to our savages.

Of the Nootkas or Ahts of Vancouver Island we are told by Sproat in a passage that has often been quoted that he “had abundant proof in conversing with them about matters in which they took an interest, that their mental {11} capacities are by no means small. It is true that the native mind, to an educated man, seems generally to be asleep; and if you suddenly ask a novel question, you have to repeat it while the mind of the savage is awaking, and to speak with emphasis until he has got your meaning. This may partly arise from the questioner’s imperfect knowledge of the language; still, I think, not entirely, as the savage may be observed occasionally to become forgetful when voluntarily communicating information. On his attention being fully aroused he often shows much quickness in reply and ingenuity in argument. But a short conversation wearies him, particularly if questions are asked that require efforts of thought or memory on his part. The mind of the savage then appears to rock to and fro out of mere weakness, and he tells lies and talks nonsense.”[11.1] On this Professor Boas, the distinguished American anthropologist, comments thus: “I happen to know through personal contact the tribes mentioned by Sproat. The questions put by the traveller seem mostly trifling to the Indian; and he naturally soon tires of a conversation carried on in a foreign language, and one in which he finds nothing to interest him. As a matter of fact, the interest of those natives can easily be raised to a high pitch, and I have often been the one who was wearied out first. Neither does the management of their intricate system of exchange prove mental inertness in matters which concern the natives. Without mnemonic aids, they plan the systematic distribution of their property in such a manner as to increase their wealth and social position. These plans require great foresight and constant application.”[11.2]

So far as this comment is directed to depreciate the {12} value of Sproat’s estimate of the mental powers of the Nootkas, I cannot think that Professor Boas has been quite fair to the writer. Sproat was no passing traveller, speaking to the natives in a foreign language, and jotting down superficial impressions derived from hasty observation. He had “lived among them and had a long acquaintanceship with them.” He was a settler, and for five years a colonial magistrate in constant contact with several of their tribes. His own account of his method of collecting information and the substance of his book are conclusive as to his painstaking researches; and Professor Boas himself elsewhere bears testimony to his trustworthiness.[12.1] Moreover, a comparison of the quotations renders it clear that on the whole they confirm one another. Probably, however, Professor Boas’ criticism is intended to apply not so much to Sproat’s statements as to the use made of them by Herbert Spencer and other theorists. It comes to this, therefore, that the Nootka’s mental capacity is considerable, his mind is alert and active on subjects that interest him, but that he is not interested in many of those on which an anthropologist desires to learn, and hence he speedily becomes “bored” and answers at random.

The horizon of savage interests among the neighbouring Dene or Ten’a of the Yukon Valley is thus defined by an experienced missionary: “The activity of their minds is commonly confined within a narrow circle, as is evidenced by their favourite subjects of conversation. Food, hunting and fishing, with their attendant circumstances, family happenings, health and disease, devils and their actions, sexual propensities--such are the topics which practically sum up the encyclopædia of their conversation.” “The {13} Ten’a mind,” he says in another place, “is anything but speculative, and its imaginative powers have not been turned to building theories of its belief, but rather to excogitate a variety of ways whereby this belief perseveringly asserts itself.” The native’s “dogmas are very nebulous and undefined, and he has never heard them explicitly formulated, nor even attempted to state them distinctly to himself.” Consequently, “whereas there is a certain uniformity in the practices, and an overabundance of them, there are very few points of belief common to several individuals, and these are of the vaguest kind.”[13.1]

If we turn to an entirely different race, the same features present themselves. The capacity of the Bantu peoples of the Lower Congo for the intellectual acts of perception, recognition, memory, and so forth, is well developed and appears early in childhood. “In this respect the natives are much on a par with the civilized races; but the limit is reached early in life, and but little mental progress is observable after adolescence is reached. The ideas are mostly of the simpler forms, seldom passing the concretes of actual experience, generalizations being as a rule beyond their power. Association of ideas, though good as implied by good memory, only takes place in the concrete form of contiguity in time and space as actually already perceived; analogies are confined to the crudest forms, and a very simple figure of speech is apt to be unintelligible.… The fundamental act of intelligence, the intuition of likeness and unlikeness, is very circumscribed; and high acts of intellect are thereby negatived.… An accompanying trait is the absence of rational surprise. On seeing something new a vacant wonder is all that is observable; and this is very transient, and the {14} new experience is classified as ‘white man’s fashion.’ It almost follows as a matter of course that there is no curiosity, no wish to enquire into the cause of a novel experience; it never occurs to the native that there is a cause of the novelty or an explanation required. In like manner there is almost total absence of theorizing about natural phenomena.” In fact, the relation of cause and effect in all but the most patent and mechanical cases is said to be beyond his grasp.[14.1] In general terms this description may stand for all the Bantu, due allowance being made, as pointed out above, for individual and tribal differences.

The natural result is vagueness on all religious and metaphysical subjects. This is a characteristic of savages all over the world. Nor is it limited by any means to them. Recent investigations have established the evolution of some at least of the majestic figures of the Olympian Pantheon from not merely rude but vague and nameless personalities; and to the very end of Hellenic religion, unknown gods and dim, indefinite heroes continued to be honoured not merely in every country place, but in Athens herself. The Arabs of Moab have professed for many generations the religion of the Prophet. Yet they have the feeblest apprehension of that great Allah in whom they are supposed to believe. When questioned on his nature, his abode, his occupation, they usually answer: “We do not know.” One of them told a missionary: “It is said that Allah is like an old man with a white beard, but I do not know where he dwells; it is asserted that he is above,” pointing to the sky. They also honour numerous beings called by the generic name of _Wely_ (protector or friend), who are identified with rocks, trees, and other holy places. Even of these, however, {15} their ideas are obscure. Like the local hero of the Greeks, the _Wely_ is not as a rule individualized with a personal name. Who he is in most cases is unknown. His exact connection with the spot where he is honoured is equally unknown. Some Arabs say that it is he who gives vigour to the sacred tree; others declare that he dwells beneath it, or that he dwells in the branches and the leaves; but Allah knows.[15.1] And the pious reference to Allah and his knowledge is sufficient for the Arab.

The fact is that on these subjects the majority of the human race, whether savage or civilized, think little. Their minds are seldom excited to the point of reasoning on their beliefs. They accept what they are told, and do not even know whether they believe it or not, because they have never reflected upon it. One has only to talk for a few minutes to a peasant at home to find out how narrow the border of his knowledge is, how misty and uncertain is everything beyond the routine of his daily life and the village gossip and amusements, unless where in the neighbourhood of a town the supreme interests of football open to him a prospect into another world. Gossip, amusements, his daily bread are subjects of importance; they fill his horizon; on them his views are perfectly definite. Nor does he differ in this respect from people who are looked upon as his social superiors. It would be making too strenuous a demand upon their intellectual life to expect them to rise above the markets, the newspaper, the latest novel, the county cricket-score, and the problems of golf and bridge. All the rest they are content to leave to their professional advisers, who in nine cases out of ten, if the truth must be told, have as little taste or capacity as themselves for metaphysical speculation, historical research or theological enquiry, and {16} are bound as tightly in the cords of tradition as the far more imaginative Zulu medicine-man, or the Eskimo wizard. For the average man in civilization appraises the subjects of thought no otherwise than does his brother in savagery. Each alike is eminently practical. Something done, or to be done, by himself or others is what interests him. Some personal gain, some bodily pleasure--for this he will think and think hard; all other mental exertion must be easy and short. Nor could the human race exist on any other terms.

Still further difficulties beset the enquirer into the beliefs of the lower culture. On the threshold is that of language. To be sure that you have grasped the real meaning of your savage friend you must be able to talk his language as he talks it himself--and even then you may be mistaken. “When there is no certain medium of communication,” says Bishop Codrington, writing of the Melanesians, “when a native interpreter who speaks a little broken English is employed to ask questions and to return the answers, nothing can be depended on as certain which is received. To be able to use some European word, or word supposed to be English, to describe a native practice or to convey a native belief, is to have an easy means of giving information; and so among the islands ‘plenty devil’ is the description given of a sacred spot, and ‘_tevoro_’ (devil) in Fiji has become the common appellation of the native ghosts or spirits. Supposing, again, that the enquirer is able to communicate pretty freely on ordinary subjects in the language of any island, he will surely find himself baffled when any one of the elder people undertakes to give him information. The vocabulary of ordinary life is almost useless when the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.”[16.1]

{17}

The use of the word “devil,” universal in and around Melanesia when speaking in pigeon English of the native mysteries and the objects of the native cult or fear, illustrates one of the pitfalls in the path of the anthropologist. The native ideas do not coincide with ours. The history, the environment, the social and intellectual condition of peoples in the lower culture are as diverse from ours as their geographical situation. Consequently their speech contains no equivalent for many of our words, even of words that seem to us to convey ideas elementary and simple. No Australian language possesses a word which is the exact equivalent of our word “mother.” The word we roughly equate with “mother” includes a host of other women beside her who has given birth to the child. Some of these women we should designate as “aunt,” or as “stepmother”; but many of them stand in no relation of kinship according to our reckoning. Yet they are all addressed and spoken of by the same term as the veritable mother. Kinship, in fact, is counted in the lower culture along lines quite different from ours; and though it is probable that our degrees of kindred have evolved from a rudimentary condition similar to that which we find among savages, we have so far outgrown it that their reckoning is often unintelligible to us, and only a very few of the terms in use among European nations remain to point back to an earlier stage of development. If we have this difficulty in finding equivalents for terms expressive of the simplest relationships of our social life, how much greater must be our difficulty when we come to terms expressive of the mysterious and supersensual relations of man to the unknown and dimly conceived powers of the universe about him! We have no word to render the Fijian _mana_, the Siouan _wakan_, the Malagasy _andria-manitra_. {18} Conversely, scarce a savage language can render our word “God.” Over and over again missionaries have sought, and sought in vain, for a native word for the purpose. When they have fixed upon one, as often as not they have had to confess a blunder; and many times in despair they have invented a word. The idea embodied in the acts by which the mysterious relations between man and the supernatural are emphasized and knit together is equally incapable of translation by any one vocable. A Roman Catholic missionary, speaking of the religious assembly of the Creeks of North America, says: “The _mitewewin_ represents the highest expression of magic (_maeghiw_ or _maskikiy_) among the nations of the Algonkian stock. The word, in fact, signifies at the same time labour, occupation, judgement, adoration, and sacrifice. It is a religious act addressed to the _powakans_, or animal fetishes, and a sort of Illinoian freemasonry requiring initiation and inviolable secrecy; it is a camp-meeting…; it is the grand council of an entire nation.”[18.1] These sentences afford an excellent example of the difficulty of translating the native ideas into English words. They unite a brave and more or less successful attempt to convey the notion of _mitewewin_, with incidental but none the less certain failures in the cases of _maeghiw_ or _maskikiy_ and _powakan_. For none of them would a single English word, or even a phrase, be adequate.

The opportunity of blundering in the endeavour to understand and report the beliefs and usages of the lower races is obviously as great as could be desired. When to the various causes enumerated above is added not merely the conscious want of sympathy on the part of the observer, but his unconscious prejudice in favour of {19} certain interpretations derived from the civilized and the specifically Christian notions in which he has been brought up from his youth, the wonder is not that so many mistakes have been made, but that we have on the whole succeeded in obtaining so large a mass of fairly trustworthy information. Even that of which we are the best assured, however, must be used with caution. It must be criticized, checked with other accounts of the same or neighbouring tribes; and allowance must be made for the personal equation of the observer. The use of a word like _worship_, _spirit_, or _God_, which connotes to us very different ideas from those connoted to the native mind by the native word thus translated, must put us at once on our guard. Fancied resemblances between the myths, heard perhaps at second-hand and only half-understood, and some story, Biblical or other, known to the reporter, and the expectation of finding in savage tradition some fragment of divine revelation have proved real Will-o’-the-wisps to the unwary. Nor must we forget that things actually seen are also liable to be misinterpreted. Captain John Smith, in writing of Virginia, describes as a human sacrifice--a sacrifice of children--what seems to have been no more than the ceremony of initiation into manhood.[19.1] It is true that his account was written three hundred years ago, and that he was not allowed to witness the whole performance. But after all our subsequent experience and accumulation of records, nothing is harder even yet than to determine the meaning of ceremonies and institutions, often carefully examined and minutely described by skilled eyewitnesses and scientific explorers.

We may go further still. Where the observer puts aside his prejudices, where he is animated by true sympathy--not {20} the false and mawkish sympathy that too often takes its place--where he is able to communicate with the natives in their own tongue, there is notwithstanding very often a difficulty in following their ideas. We have been told of the Andaman Islanders that “with these, as with other savages, it is vain to expect them to understand the logical conclusions to which their beliefs tend.”[20.1] That may be because they have never thought them out. In the majority of cases it would probably be juster to say that their logic follows a different course, their ideas run in different channels, from ours. After conceding everything that has been said with perfect truth as to their vagueness, their indolence of mind on subjects not concerned with their daily life, and their dislike of intellectual effort, there remains the fact that they are human; they do reason, albeit after their own fashion. Language among the higher races has been trained and tortured during many centuries to express the highest thoughts of the highest thinkers; and how inadequate an instrument has it often been found! It must therefore not surprise us if the thought of races in the lower culture occasionally surpasses a language not yet exercised and adapted to the complicated processes of ideation and ratiocination. Thus not merely is it difficult or impossible to translate native words by English equivalents, as I have already pointed out: the native finds it not easy to translate his thoughts into his own tongue. When he has struggled with more or less success to effect this, his course of thought is so widely different from ours that we can hardly believe in its coherence.