8. VIII
PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH
WE have suggested in the last chapter how the conceptions
of Sin and Sacrifice coming down to us from an extremely
remote past, and embodied among the various peoples
of the world sometimes in crude and bloodthirsty rites,
sometimes in symbols and rituals of a gentler and more
gracious character, descended at last into Christianity and
became a part of its creed and of the creed of the
modern world. On the whole perhaps we may trace a
slow amelioration in this process and may flatter ourselves
that the Christian centuries exhibit a more philosophical
understanding of what Sin is, and a more humane conception
of what Sacrifice should be, than the centuries
preceding. But I fear that any very decided statement
or sweeping generalization to that effect would be—to
say the least—rash. Perhaps there is a very slow
amelioration;
but the briefest glance at the history of the Christian
churches—the horrible rancours and revenges of the
clergy and the sects against each other in the fourth
and fifth centuries A.D., the heresy-hunting crusades at
Beziers and other places and the massacres of the Albigenses
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the witch-findings
and burnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth, the hideous
science-urged and bishop-blessed warfare of the twentieth
—horrors fully as great as any we can charge to the account
of the Aztecs or the Babylonians—must give us pause.
Nor must we forget that if there is by chance a substantial
amelioration in our modern outlook with regard to these
matters the same had begun already before the advent
of Christianity and can by no means be ascribed to any
miraculous influence of that religion. Abraham was
prompted to slay a ram as a substitute for his son, long
before the Christians were thought of; the rather savage
Artemis of the old Greek rites was (according to
Pausanias)
[1]
honored by the yearly sacrifice of a perfect boy and girl,
but later it was deemed sufficient to draw a knife across their
throats as a symbol, with the result of spilling only a
few drops of their blood, or to flog the boys (with the
same result) upon her altar. Among the Khonds in old
days many victims (
meriahs) were sacrificed to the gods,
"but in time the man was replaced by a horse, the horse by
a bull, the bull by a ram, the ram by a kid, the kid
by fowls, and the fowls by many
flowers.''
[2] At one time,
according to the Yajur-Veda, there was a festival at which
one hundred and twenty-five victims, men and women,
boys and girls, were sacrificed; "but reform supervened,
and now the victims were bound as before to the stake,
but afterwards amid litanies to the immolated (god)
Narayana, the sacrificing priest brandished a knife and
—severed the bonds of the
captives.''
[3] At the Athenian festival
of the Thargelia, to which I referred in the last chapter,
it appears that the victims, in later times, instead of being
slain, were tossed from a height into the sea, and after
being rescued were then simply banished; while at Leucatas
a similar festival the fall of the victim was
graciously broken by tying feathers and even living birds to
his body.
[4]
With the lapse of time and the general progress of mankind,
we may, I think, perceive some such slow ameliorations
in the matter of the brutality and superstition of the old
religions. How far any later ameliorations were due to
the direct influence of Christianity might be a difficult
question; but what I think we can clearly see—and what
especially interests us here—is that in respect to its main
religious ideas, and the matter underlying them (exclusive
of the
manner of their treatment, which
necessarily has varied
among different peoples) Christianity is of one piece
with the earlier pagan creeds and is for the most part a
re-statement and renewed expression of world-wide doctrines
whose first genesis is lost in the haze of the past, beyond all
recorded history.
I have illustrated this view with regard to the doctrine of
Sin and Sacrifice. Let us take two or three other
illustrations. Let us take the doctrine of Re-birth or Regeneration.
The first few verses of St. John's Gospel are occupied
with the subject of salvation through rebirth or regeneration.
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.'' . . . "Except a man be born of water
and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.''
Our Baptismal Service begins by saying that "forasmuch as all
men are conceived and born in sin; and that our Saviour Christ
saith, None can enter into the kingdom of God except he be
regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost''; therefore
it is desirable that this child should be baptized, "received
into Christ's Holy Church, and be made a lively member of the
same.'' That, is to say, there is one birth, after the
flesh, but a second birth is necessary, a birth after the
Spirit and into the Church of Christ. Our Confirmation
Service is simply a service repeating and confirming
these views, at an age (fourteen to sixteen or so) when the
boy or girl is capable of understanding what is being
done.
But our Baptismal and Confirmation ceremonies combined
are clearly the exact correspondence and parallel
of the old pagan ceremonies of Initiation, which are or
have been observed in almost every primitive tribe over
the world. "The rite of the second birth,'' says Jane
Harrison,
[5] "is
widespread, universal, over half the savage
world. With the savage to be twice-born is the rule. By
his first birth he comes into the world; by his second he
is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his
mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes
a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the
warriors of his tribe.'' . . . "These rites are very various,
but they all point to one moral, that the former things are
passed away and that the new-born man has entered upon
a new life. Simplest of all, and most instructive, is the
rite practised by the Kikuyu tribe of British East Africa,
who require that every boy, just before circumcision,
must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy
crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the
labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe
and is washed.''
[6]
Let us pause for a moment. An Initiate is of course one
who "enters in.'' He enters into the Tribe; he enters into
the revelation of certain Mysteries; he becomes an associate
of a certain Totem, a certain God; a member
of a new Society, or Church—a church of Mithra, or Dionysus
or Christ. To do any of these things he must be
born again; be must die to the old life; he must pass
through ceremonials which symbolize the change. One
of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe
is washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and
as by primitive man (and not without reason) bloodwas
considered the most vital and regenerative of fluids, the
very elixir of life, so in earliest times it was common to
wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be born
anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first
die. So, not unfrequently, he was wounded, or scourged,
and baptized with his own blood, or, in cases, one of
the candidates was really killed and his blood used
as a substitute for the blood of the others. No doubt
human sacrifice attended the earliest initiations.
But later
it was sufficient to be half-drowned in the blood of a Bull as
in the Mithra cult,
[7] or
`washed in the blood of the Lamb'
as in the Christian phraseology. Finally, with a growing
sense of decency and aesthetic perception among the
various peoples, washing with pure water came in the
initiation-ceremonies to take the place of blood; and our
baptismal service has reduced the ceremony to a mere
sprinkling with water.
[8]
To continue the quotation from Miss Harrison: "More
often the new birth is stimulated, or imagined, as a death
and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of
some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among
some tribes of South-east Australia, when the boys are
assembled an old man dressed in stringy bark-fibre lies
down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks and
earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man
holds in his hand a small bush which seems to be growing
from the ground, and other bushes are stuck in the
ground round about. The novices are then brought to the
edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the
song goes on, the bush held by the buried man begins
to quiver. It moves more and more, and bit by bit the man
himself starts up from the grave.''
Strange in our own Baptismal Service and just before the
actual christening we read these words, "Then shall the
Priest say: O merciful God, grant that old Adam in
this child may be so buried. that the new man may
be raised up in him: grant that all carnal affections may
die in him, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may
live and grow in him!'' Can we doubt that the Australian
medicine-man, standing at the graveside of the re-arisen old
black-fellow, pointed the same moral to the young initiates
as the priest does to-day to those assembled before
him in church—for indeed we know that among
savage tribes initiations have always been before all things
the occasions of moral and social teaching? Can we doubt
that he said, in substance if not in actual words: "As
this man has arisen from the grave, so you must also arise
from your old childish life of amusement and self-gratification
and,
enter into the life of the tribe, the life of
the
Spirit of the tribe.'' "In totemistic societies,'' to quote
Miss Harrison again, "and in the animal secret societies that
seem to grow out of them, the novice is born again
as the sacred animal. Thus among the Carrier
Indians
[9]
when a man wants to become a
Lulem or `Bear,' however cold
the season he tears off his clothes, puts on a bear-skin
and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or
four days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go
out in search parties to find him. They cry out
Yi!
Kelulem (come on, Bear), and he answers with angry growls.
Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at last himself.
He is met, and conducted to the ceremonial lodge,
and there in company with the rest of the Bears dances
solemnly his first appearance. Disappearance and reappearance
is as common a rite in initiation as stimulated
killing and resurrection, and has the same object. Both
are rites of transition, of passing from one to another.'' In
the Christian ceremonies the boy or girl puts away
childish things and puts on the new man, but instead of
putting on a bear-skin he puts on Christ. There is not so
much difference as may appear on the surface. To be identified
with your Totem is to be identified with the
sacred being who watches over your tribe, who has given
his life for your tribe; it is to be born again, to be washed
not only with water but with the Holy Spirit of all your
fellows. To be baptized into Christ ought to mean to be
regenerated in the Holy Spirit of all humanity; and no
doubt in cases it does mean this, but too often unfortunately
it has only amounted to a pretence of religious sanction given
to the meanest and bitterest quarrels of the Churches and
the States.
This idea of a New Birth at initiation explains the
prevalent pagan custom of subjecting the initiates to serious
ordeals, often painful and even dangerous. If one
is to be born again, obviously one must be ready to face
death; the one thing cannot be without the other. One
must be able to endure pain, like the Red Indian braves;
to go long periods fasting and without food or drink,
like the choupan among the Western Inoits—who, wanders
for whole nights over the ice-fields under the moon, scantily
clothed and braving the intense cold; to overcome the
very fear of death and danger, like the Australian novices
who, at first terrified by the sound of the bull-roarer
and threats of fire and the knife, learn finally
to cast their fears away.[10]
By so doing one puts off
the old childish things, and qualifies oneself by firmness
and courage to become a worthy member of the society
into which one is called.
[11] The
rules of social life are taught
—the duty to one's tribe, and to oneself, truth-speaking,
defence of women and children, the care of cattle,
the meaning of sex and marriage, and even the mysteries of
such religious ideas and rudimentary science as the tribe
possesses. And by so doing one really enters into a new
life. Things of the spiritual world begin to dawn. Julius
Firmicus, in describing the mysteries of the resurrection of
Osiris,
[12] says
that when the worshipers had satiated themselves
with lamentations over the death of the god then
the priest would go round anointing them with oil and
whispering, "Be of good cheer, O Neophytes of the
new-arisen God, for to us too from our pains shall come
salvation.''
[13]
It would seem that at some very early time in the history
of tribal and priestly initiations an attempt was made to
impress upon the neophytes the existence and
over-shadowing presence of spiritual and ghostly beings. Perhaps
the pains endured in the various ordeals, the long fastings,
the silences in the depth of the forests or on the mountains
or among the ice-floes, helped to rouse the visionary faculty.
The developments of this faculty among the black and
colored peoples—East-Indian, Burmese, African,
American-Indian, etc.—are well known. Miss Alice Fletcher, who
lived among the Omaha Indians for thirty years, gives
a most interesting account[14] of
the general philosophy of
that people and their rites of initiation. "The Omahas
regard all animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena,
as pervaded by a common life, which was continuous with
and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in
themselves. This mysterious power in all things they
called
Wakonda, and through it all things were related
to man and to each other. In the idea of the continuity
of life a relation was maintained between the seen and
the unseen, the dead and the living, and also between
the fragment of anything and its
entirety.''
[15] Thus an
Omaha novice might at any time seek to obtain
Wakonda
by what was called
the rite of the vision. He
would go out
alone, fast, chant incantations, and finally fall into a
trance (much resembling what in modern times has been called
cosmic consciousness) in which he would perceive
the inner
relations of all things and the solidarity of the least object
with the rest of the universe.
Another rite in connection with initiation, and common all
over the pagan world—in Greece, America, Africa, Australia,
New Mexico, etc.—was the daubing of the novice all
over with clay or chalk or even dung, and then after a
while removing the same.[16] The
novice must have looked
a sufficiently ugly and uncomfortable object in this state;
but later, when he was thoroughly washed, the
ceremony
must have afforded a thrilling illustration of the idea of
a new birth, and one which would dwell in the minds of
the spectators. When the daubing was done as not infrequently
happened with white clay or gypsum, and the
ritual took place at night, it can easily be imagined
that the figures of young men and boys moving about in
the darkness would lend support to the idea that they
were spirits belonging to some intermediate world—who
had already passed through death and were now waiting
for their second birth on earth (or into the tribe) which
would be signalized by their thorough and ceremonial
washing. It will be remembered that Herodotus (viii, 27)
gives a circumstantial account of how the Phocians in
a battle with the Thessalians smeared six hundred of their
bravest warriors with white clay so that, looking like
supernatural beings, and falling upon the Thessalians by
night, they terrified the latter and put them to instant
flight.
Such then—though only very scantily described—were some
of the rites of Initiation and Second Birth celebrated in the
old Pagan world. The subject is far too large for adequate
treatment within the present limits; but even so
we cannot but be struck by the appropriateness in many
cases of the teaching thus given to the young, the concreteness
of the illustrations, the effectiveness of the symbols
used, the dramatic character of the rites, the strong
enforcement of lessons on the nature and duties of the
life into which the candidates were about to enter. Christianity
followed on, and inherited these traditions, but
one feels that in its ceremonies of Baptism and Confirmation,
which of course correspond to the Pagan Initiations,
it falls short of the latter. Its ceremonies
(certainly as we have them to-day in Protestant countries)
are of a very milk-and-watery character; all allusion to
and teaching on the immensely important subject of Sex
is omitted, the details of social and industrial morality are
passed by, and instruction is limited to a few rather commonplace
lessons in general morality and religion.
It may be appropriate here, before leaving the subject of
the Second Birth, to inquire how it has come about that
this doctrine—so remote and metaphysical as it might
appear—has been taken up and embodied in their creeds
and rituals by quite primitive people all over the
world,
to such a degree indeed that it has ultimately been adopted
and built into the foundations of the latter and more
intellectual religions, like Hinduism, Mithraism, and the
Egyptian and Christian cults. I think the answer to
this question must be found in the now-familiar fact that
the earliest peoples felt themselves so much a part of
Nature and the animal and vegetable world around them
that (whenever they thought about these matters at all)
they never for a moment doubted that the things which
were happening all round them in the external world were
also happening within themselves. They saw the Sun,
overclouded and nigh to death in winter, come to its birth
again each year; they saw the Vegetation shoot forth
anew in spring—the revival of the spirit of the Earth;
the endless breeding of the Animals, the strange
transformations of Worms and Insects; the obviously new life
taken on by boys and girls at puberty; the same at a later
age when the novice was transformed into the
medicine-man—the
choupan into the
angakok among the Esquimaux,
the Dacotah youth into the
wakan among the Red
Indians; and they felt in their sub-conscious way the
same everlasting forces of rebirth and transformation working
within themselves. In some of the Greek Mysteries
the newly admitted Initiates were fed for some time
after on milk only "as though we were being born
again.'' (See Sallustius, quoted by Gilbert Murray.) When
sub-conscious knowledge began to glimmer into direct
consciousness one of the first aspects (and no doubt one of
the truest) under which people saw life was just thus: as
a series of rebirths and
transformations.
[17] The most modern
science, I need hardly say, in biology as well as
in chemistry and the field of inorganic Nature, supports
that view. The savage in earliest times
felt the
truth of
some things which we to-day are only beginning intellectually
to perceive and analyze.
Christianity adopted and absorbed—as it was bound
to do—this world-wide doctrine of the second birth. Passing
over its physiological and biological applications, it
gave to it a fine spiritual significance—or rather it insisted
especially on its spiritual significance, which (as we have
seen) had been widely recognized before. Only—as I
suppose must happen with all local religions—it narrowed
the application and outlook of the doctrine down to a special
case—"As in Adam all die, so in
Christ shall all
be
made alive.'' The Universal Spirit which can give rebirth
and salvation to
every child of man to whom it
comes, was offered only under a very special form—that of
Jesus Christ.
[18]
In this respect it was no better than the
religions which preceded it. In some respects—that is,
where it was especially fanatical, blinkered, and hostile to
other sects—it was
worse. But to those who
perceive
that the Great Spirit may bring new birth and salvation
to some under the form of Osiris, equally well as to others
under the form of Jesus, or again to some under the form
of a Siberian totem-Bear equally as to others under the
form of Osiris, these questionings and narrowings fall
away as of no importance. We in this latter day can see
the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is just
one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding
its scope, but whose chief attitudes and orientations have been
the same through the centuries.
Many other illustrations might be taken of the truth of
this view, but I will confine myself to two or three more.
There is the instance of the Eucharist and its exceedingly
widespread celebration (under very various forms) among
the pagans all over the world—as well as among Christians.
I have already said enough on this subject, and need not
delay over it. By partaking of the sacramental meal, even
in its wildest and crudest shapes, as in the mysteries
of Dionysus, one was identified with and united to the
god; in its milder and more spiritual aspects as in the Mithraic,
Egyptian, Hindu and Christian cults, one passed behind
the veil of
maya and this ever-changing world, and entered
into the region of divine peace and
power.
[19]
Or again the doctrine of the Saviour. That also is one
on which I need not add much to what has been said already.
The number of pagan deities (mostly virgin-born and
done to death in some way or other in their efforts to
save mankind) is so
great[20] as to be difficult to keep
account of. The god Krishna in India, the god Indra
in Nepaul and Thibet, spilt their blood for the salvation
of men; Buddha said, according to Max
Müller,[21] "Let all
the sins that were in the world fall on me, that the world
may be delivered''; the Chinese Tien , the Holy One—"one
with God and existing with him from all eternity''—died
to save the world; the Egyptian Osiris was called Saviour,
so was Horus; so was the Persian Mithras; so was
the Greek Hercules who overcame Death though his body
was consumed in the burning garment of mortality, out of
which he rose into heaven. So also was the Phrygian
Attis called Saviour, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis
likewise—both of whom, as we have seen, were nailed
or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose again from their
biers, or coffins. Prometheus, the greatest and earliest
benefactor of the human race, was nailed by the
hands and
feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of Mount
Caucasus. Bacchus or Dionysus, born of the virgin Semele
to be the Liberator of mankind (Dionysus Eleutherios
as he was called), was torn to pieces, not unlike Osiris. Even
in far Mexico
Quetzalcoatl, the Saviour, was born of a virgin,
was tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and
his second coming looked for so eagerly that (as is well known)
when Cortes appeared, the Mexicans, poor things, greeted
him as the returning
god!
[22] In Peru and among
the American
Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar legends
are, or were, to be found.
Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite
abundantly that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide
and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated
the same and (as the other cults did) gave it a special
color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would
have been far better and more generally known, had not the
Christian Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts
and taken the greatest precautions to extinguish and
snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on the subject.
There is much to show that the early Church took this
line with regard to pre-Christian
saviours;[23] and in later times
the same policy is remarkably illustrated by the treatment
in the sixteenth century of the writings of Sahagun
the Spanish missionary—to whose work I have already referred.
Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and
fine man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities
of the Aztec religion, was truthful enough to point out
redeeming traits in the manners and customs of the
people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and
practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the
newly formed Mexican Church. They purloined the manuscripts
of Sahagun's Historia and scattered and hid them
about the country, and it was only after infinite labor
and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them
together again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated
them into Spanish (from the original Mexican) he
sent them in two big volumes home to Spain for safety;
but there almost immediately
they disappeared, and
could
not be found! It was only after
two centuries that
they
ultimately turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in
Navarre. Lord Kingsborough published them in England
in 1830.
I have thus dwelt upon several of the main doctrines of
Christianity—namely, those of Sin and Sacrifice, the Eucharist,
the Saviour, the Second Birth, and Transfiguration—as
showing that they are by no means unique in
our religion, but were common to nearly all the religions
of the ancient world. The list might be much further extended,
but there is no need to delay over a subject which is
now very generally understood. I will, however, devote a
page or two to one instance, which I think is very remarkable,
and full of deep suggestion.
There is no doctrine in Christianity which is more
reverenced by the adherents of that religion, or held in higher
estimation, than that God sacrificed his only Son for the
salvation of the world; also that since the Son was not
only of like nature but of the same nature with
the
Father, and equal to him as being the second Person of
the Divine Trinity, the sacrifice amounted to an immolation
of Himself for the good of mankind. The doctrine
is so mystical, so remote, and in a sense so absurd
and impossible, that it has been a favorite mark through
the centuries for the ridicule of the scoffers and enemies
of the Church; and here, it might easily be thought, is a
belief which—whether it be considered glorious or whether
contemptible—is at any rate unique, and peculiar to that
Church.
And yet the extraordinary fact is that a similar belief
ranges all through the ancient religions, and can be traced
back to the earliest times. The word host which is used
in the Catholic Mass for the bread and wine on the Altar,
supposed to be the transubstantiated body and blood of
Christ, is from the Latin
Hostia which the dictionary
interprets as "an animal slain in sacrifice, a sin-offering.'' It
takes us far far back to the Totem stage of folk-life,
when the tribe, as I have already explained, crowned a
victim-bull or bear or other animal with flowers, and
honoring it with every offering of food and worship,
sacrificed the victim to the Totem spirit of the tribe, and
consumed it in an Eucharistic feast—the medicine-man
or priest who conducted the ritual wearing a skin of the
same beast as a sign that he represented the
Totem-divinity, taking part in the sacrifice of `himself to himself.'
It reminds us of the Khonds of Bengal sacrificing their
meriahs crowned and decorated as gods and goddesses;
of the Aztecs doing the same; of Quetzalcoatl pricking
his elbows and fingers so as to draw blood, which he offered
on his own altar; or of Odin hanging by his own desire upon
a tree. "I know I was hanged upon a tree shaken by
the winds for nine long nights. I was transfixed by
a spear; I was moved to Odin, myself to myself.'' And
so on. The instances are endless. "I am the oblation,''
says the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad
Gita,
[24] "I am the
sacrifice, I the ancestral offering.'' "In the truly orthodox
conception of sacrifice,'' says Elie
Reclus,
[25] "the consecrated
offering, be it man, woman or virgin, lamb or
heifer, cock or dove, represents
the deity
himself. . . .
Brahma is the `imperishable sacrifice'; Indra, Soma, Hari and
the other gods, became incarnate in animals to the
sole end that they might be immolated. Perusha, the
Universal Being, caused himself to be slain by the Immortals,
and from his substance were born the birds of the
air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of butter
and curds. The world, declared the Rishis, is a series
of sacrifices disclosing other sacrifices. To stop them
would be to suspend the life of Nature. The god Siva, to
whom the Tipperahs of Bengal are supposed to have sacrificed
as many as a thousand human victims a year, said to the
Brahamins: `It is I that am the actual offering; it is I that
you butcher upon my altars.' ''
It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson,
paraphrasing the Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse
of his:-
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I take, and pass, and turn again.
I say it is an astonishing thing to think and realize that
this profound and mystic doctrine of the eternal sacrifice
of Himself, ordained by the Great Spirit for the creation
and salvation of the world—a doctrine which has attracted
and fascinated many of the great thinkers and nobler minds
of Europe, which has also inspired the religious teachings
of the Indian sages and to a less philosophical degree the
writings of the Christian Saints—should have been seized
in its general outline and essence by rude and primitive
people before the dawn of history, and embodied in their
rites and ceremonials. What is the explanation of this
fact?
It is very puzzling. The whole subject is puzzling. The
world-wide adoption of similar creeds and rituals (and,
we may add, legends and fairy tales) among early peoples,
and in far-sundered places and times is so remarkable
that it has given the students of these subjects
`furiously to
think'[26]—yet for the most part without great
success in the way of finding a solution. The supposition
that (1) the creed, rite or legend in question has
sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one place, and
then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility)
over the rest of the world, is of course one that commends
itself readily at first; but on closer examination the
practical difficulties it presents are certainly very great.
These include the migrations of customs and myths in quite
early ages of the earth across trackless oceans and continents,
and between races and peoples absolutely incapable
of understanding each other. And if to avoid
these difficulties it is assumed that the present human
race all proceeds from one original stock which radiating
from one centre—say in South-Eastern
Asia
[27]—overspread the
world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why, then we
are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation
to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents
being then all more or less conjoined) and at a period
when it is doubtful if any religious rites and customs
at all existed; not to mention the further difficulty of supposing
all the four or five hundred languages now existing
to be descended from one common source. The far
tradition of the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible
explanation of the community of rites and customs between
the Old and New World, and this without assuming
in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the
original and
sole cradle of the human
race.
[28] Anyhow it
is clear that these origins of human culture must be of
extreme antiquity, and that it would not be wise to be
put off the track of the investigation of a possible common
source merely by that fact of antiquity.
A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural
psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various
times and climes led folk of the most diverse surroundings
and heredity—and perhaps even sprung from separate
anthropoid stocks—to develop their social and religious
ideas along the same general lines—and that even to the
extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in
minute details. This is a theory which commends itself
greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration;
but it brings us up point-blank against another
most difficult question (which we have already raised),
namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive
peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland
of the animal life, having been
susceptible to the
germs
of great religious ideas (such as we have mentioned) and
having been instinctively—though not of course by any process
of conscious reasoning—moved to express them in
symbols and rites and ceremonials, and (later no doubt)
in myths and legends, which satisfied their
feelings and
sense of fitness—though they may not have known
why—
and afterwards were capable of being taken up and embodied
in the great philosophical religions.
This difficulty almost compels us to a view of human
knowledge which has found supporters among some able
thinkers—the view, namely, that a vast store of knowledge
is already contained in the subconscious mind of man
(and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer
experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second
stage of human psychology this process of crude and
piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for
the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be
re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and
harmonious plane—something like the present intuition of
the animals as we perceive it on the animal plane. However
this general subject is one on which I shall touch
again, and I do not propose to dwell on it at any length
now.
There is a third alternative theory (3)—a combination
of (1) and (2)—namely, that if one accepts (2) and the
idea that at any given stage of human development there
is a
predisposition to certain symbols and rites
belonging to
that stage, then it is much more easy to accept theory (1)
as an important factor in the spread of such symbols
and rites; for clearly, then, the smallest germ of a custom
or practice, transported from one country or people
to another at the right time, would be sufficient to wake
the development or growth in question and stimulate it into
activity. It will be seen, therefore, that the important point
towards the solution of this whole puzzling question is the
discussion, of theory (2)—and to this theory, as illustrated
by the world-wide myth of the Golden Age, I will
now turn.
[[1]]
vii. 19, and iii. 8, 16.
[[2]]
Primitive Folk, by Elie Reclus (Contemp.
Science Series), p. 330.
[[4]]
Muller's Dorians Book II, ch. ii, par.
10.
[[5]]
Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 104.
[[6]]
See also Themis, p. 21.
[[7]]
See supra, ch. iii. p. 43.
[[8]]
For the virtue supposed to reside in blood see
Westermarck's Moral Ideas, Ch. 46.
[[9]]
Golden Bough, III, p. 438.
[[10]]
According to accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of
Western Australia, in their initiations, the lads were frightened by a
large fire being lighted near them, and hearing the awful sound of the
bull-roarers, while they were told that Dhuramoolan was about to burn
them; the legend being that Dhuramoolan, a powerful being, whose voice
sounded like thunder, would take the boys into the bush and instruct
them in all the laws, traditions and customs of the community. So he
pretended that he always killed the boys, cut them up, and burnt them to
ashes, after which he moulded the ashes into human shape, and restored
them to life as new beings. (See R. H. Matthews, "The Wiradthuri
tribes,'' Journal Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxv, 1896, pp. 297
sq.)
[[11]]
See Catlin's North-American Indians, vol.
i, for initiations and ordeals among the Mandans.
[[13]]
Θαρρειτε,
μυσται τον θεου
σεσωσμενου,
Εσται γαρ ημιν
εκ πονων
σωτηρια.
[[14]]
Summarized in Themis, pp. 68-71.
[[15]]
A. C. Fletcher, The Significance of the
Scalp-lock, Journal of Anthropological Studies, xxvii (1897-8), p.
436.
[[16]]
See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, i,
274 sq.
[[17]]
The fervent and widespread belief in animal
metamorphoses among early peoples is well known.
[[18]]
The same happened with regard to another great
Pagan doctrine (to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of
transformations and metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in
these things, as the common and possible heritage of
every man, the Christians only allowed themselves
to entertain the idea in the special and unique instance of the
Transfiguration of Christ.
[[19]]
Baring Gould in his Orig. Relig. Belief, I.
401, says:—"Among the ancient Hindus Soma was a chief deity; he is
called the Giver of Life and Health. . . . He became incarnate among
men, was taken by them and slain, and brayed in a mortar [a god of corn
and wine apparently]. But he rose in flame to heaven to be `the
Benefactor of the World' and the `Mediator between God and Man!'
Through communion with him in his sacrifice, man (who partook of this
god) has an assurance of immortality, for by that sacrament he obtains
union with his divinity.''
[[20]]
See for a considerable list Doane's Bible
Myths, ch. xx.
[[21]]
Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.
[[22]]
See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol.
vi.
[[23]]
See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad
Nationes, c. xii.
[[25]]
Primitive Folk, ch. vi.
[[26]]
See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion,
vol. ii.
[[27]]
See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics,
art. "Ethnology.''
[[28]]
E. J. Payne, History of the New World called
America (vol. i, p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and
America once formed a single continent,'' but inroads of the sea "left
a vast island or peninsula stretching from Iceland to the Azores—which
gradually disappeared.'' Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene
Bridge'' between Siberia and the New World.