VII. MYTHS
+819+. Myths represent the savage and half-civilized science of origins, the imaginary construction of the world. From the earliest times men have shown curiosity respecting the origin of the things that lie about them. In the presence of plains and mountains, trees and rivers, sun, moon, and stars, beasts and human beings, they have felt the necessity of accounting for the beginning of all these objects.[1413] This attempt at giving a natural history of the world is in itself a scientific procedure, but in the earlier periods of humanity it naturally attached itself to the hypothesis of superhuman Powers--the production of this variety of mysterious things appeared to demand capacity above that of man. The science and the fancy of early man combined to produce a great mass of theories and stories which to their inventors seemed to be a satisfactory account of the origin of all things.[1414]
+820+. Myths thus furnish an important contribution to the history of early opinion, scientific and religious; in the absence of written records they often offer our only means of information concerning early thought. They describe the origin not only of the physical world but also of communities and social organizations and institutions. They have a noteworthy vitality, lasting from the beginning of human communal life into periods of advanced civilization; and, when adopted by great religious organizations and interwoven into their theories of salvation, they perpetuate to civilized times the ideas of the crude period in which they originated. In many cases they stand side by side, and in sharp contrast, with elevated moral conceptions of the deity, and then have to be harmonized, usually with a great expenditure of exegetical ingenuity, with the higher ideas of society.
+821+. The mythopoeic age, in the widest sense of the term, embraces the whole period in which appeal is made, for the explanation of phenomena, to other than natural agencies; but it is generally understood to extend only up to the time when, though a general divine Power is invoked for creation, this is regarded as working solely through the laws of nature.[1415] And within this period the myth-making impulse lasted longer in some directions than in others. In general, the mythical theories concerning the larger processes, as, for example, the creation of the world, received no addition after the establishment of a settled civilization; but after this time even well-advanced communities continued to invent mythical accounts of the origin of customs, institutions, genealogies, and similar facts. Throughout the whole myth-making period a progression may be recognized in the character of the myths: from the earlier animal and human creators we pass to the higher anthropomorphic forms, the great gods; there is increased literary excellence, a molding and a remolding of the old crude stories, with a combination of them into well-ordered histories; they are constantly modified by the growing acquaintance with the laws of nature and by the higher intellectual conceptions of the deity; and they are more and more infused with ethical significance.
+822+. An examination of myths all over the world shows that the most of them, especially those relating to creation and to the histories of the gods, originated at a period when men stood intellectually and morally on a very low plane.[1416] The first myth-makers were savages, with all the well-known characteristics of savage life. Having next to no knowledge of natural law, and holding to a practical identity of nature among men, beasts, and physical things, they had no difficulty in imagining all sorts of transformations and creative procedures. No limit was conceived of for the power of beasts and men--there was no object in heaven or earth which, according to the current ideas, could not have been produced by some procedure which was similar to the procedures of ordinary life. The ethical character of the creators and of the introducers of general culture was that of the communities that imagined them; naturally the stories were full of ethical barbarities and violations of all the moral rules recognized at a later period; and, as is remarked above, these stories continued into civilized times, and had to be interpreted by various devices.
+823+. One of the most noteworthy facts in the history of mythology is the general similarity of the myths that are found all over the world. Allowing for continuous moral and intellectual progress and for local differences of surroundings, it may be said that the theories of the production of the earth and the heavenly bodies, of man and other objects, of customs and institutions, show substantially the same types everywhere. The question has been raised whether this virtual identity is to be explained by the supposition of independent origination at various points, or is to be attributed to a borrowing by one community from another. The question of the migration of myths is a part of the larger question of the migration of culture, and is attended with all the difficulties that attach to this latter. It is not possible at present to give an answer which shall embrace all the phenomena. Obviously any satisfactory solution of the problem must be preceded by a thorough examination of all particular myths, all social characteristics, and all geographical and migratory relations affecting the early communities; and on these points there is yet much to learn.
+824+. It is well known that customs and beliefs have sometimes passed from one tribe or nation to another, when there has been close social intercourse between the two. It is known also that early men were capable of long journeys by land and by water: the migration legends of various peoples are full of the details of such movements; in comparatively recent times there have been great migrations of large bodies of people, as, for example, from the Arabian desert to the north and northwest, and from the central Asiatic steppes westward and eastward; and the tribes of the Pacific Ocean appear to have traversed long distances in their canoes. And when we consider the great lapse of time, many thousands of years, that preceded the formation of the human society with which we are acquainted, it appears to be impossible to assign any limit to the possibility of tribal movements on the face of the earth. On the other hand, we do not know whether, or how far, such migrations issued in social fusion; and all the well-attested cases of borrowing of customs and ideas have sprung from long-continued social union.
+825+. Further, a distinction must be made between general resemblances and minute agreement or complete identity; there may be a similarity so great as to force on us the hypothesis of imitation, and there may be general similarities that may be ascribed to ordinary human thought working in different places under similar conditions. In fact, the conditions of existence have not varied very greatly over the globe. There are differences of climate and soil and surface-configuration, but everywhere there have been the sky with the heavenly bodies, the sequence of day and night, sunshine and rain, hunting and fishing, trees, rivers, beasts and birds, and the cultivable soil; and as man's problem was everywhere the same--namely, how to put himself into good relation with his surroundings--and as his intellectual equipment was everywhere substantially the same, it would not be surprising if he should fall on similar methods of thought and procedure independently in various parts of the world. It was natural to early man to think of the sun as a ball of fire which had somehow been thrown up into the sky, and of the moon as associated with the sun as sister or wife or husband, and of the stars as children of these two. For creative agents early man had to look to the beings about him, particularly to beasts, birds, and insects. The process of creation was simple--the story usually amounts merely to saying that such and such a beast or other being made this or that object; and there is very rarely, if ever, a conception of an absolute beginning; almost always a reconstruction of existing material is assumed.
+826+. Both explanations of the resemblances in myths, it thus appears, are reasonable in themselves, and every case must be considered separately. That a community has borrowed one story does not prove borrowing in the case of any other story; and that a people has been a center of distribution of certain myths does not prove that it was the originator of all myths. These two propositions appear to be self-evident, but they have often been ignored in discussions of the provenance of mythical material.[1417]
+827+. The similarities in myths all over the world extend over the whole domain of religion. Myths may be divided into those which deal with the creation of the world and of man (cosmogonic), those which deal with the origins of tribes and nations (ethnogonic), those which refer to the origin of customs and institutions (sociogonic), and those which are based on the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies, clouds, winds, and so forth (solar, lunar, procellar, and so forth).
+828+. Cosmogonic myths.[1418] Among early tribes the creators are very often familiar animals, such as the coyote, the raven, the hare (North America), the wagtail (among the Ainu), the grasshopper (among the Bushmen)--in general, whatever animals appear to the men of a particular tribe to show skill and power. Reference is made above to the reasons which led early men to pay such high regard to the lower animals.[1419] But in more advanced savage communities the creative function is ascribed to a man, as among the Thompson River Indians and in Southeast Australia; in Central Australia the authors of creation or of the arrangement of things are beings who are indifferently men or animals, but are regarded as the ancestors of the tribes. In the higher religions the creators are nature gods and great gods, and finally the one God stands alone as creator.
+829+. The act of creation is commonly represented as a process. Mud is brought up from a pool, or an island is raised from the sea (the Maoris, the Redmen), and these are stretched out so as to meet the needs of men; or a dragon or a giant is cut to pieces and the various parts of the universe are made from the pieces (Babylonia, India, Scandinavia); or, in still later times, an unformed mass of water is conceived of as the original state out of which all things are fashioned (Babylonians, Hebrews, Hindus, Greeks); or the universe issues from an egg (the origin of the egg being left unexplained),[1420] or the earth is represented as the mother of all things (California). Elaborate cosmogonies are found in New Zealand (the Maoris), in North America (the Pawnees, the Lenâpé, and so forth), in Australia, and elsewhere. An interesting example is the Californian Achomāwi cosmogony. In the beginning, according to this scheme, were only the sea and the sky, and from the sky came down the Creator; or a cloud, at first tiny, grew large, condensed, and became the Silver-Gray Fox, the Creator, and out of a fog, which in like manner was condensed, came the Coyote, and these two made the earth and man.[1421]
+830+. In all these cases the creation is out of already existing material[1422] and the creator is really a culture-hero or transformer, a character that clings to deities in the most advanced religions, as the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek. The character of these early transformers and creators is that of the communities in which they originate. Morally they represent both the higher and the lower sides of life, and this is true in all periods--the Hindu Indra is as tricksy and unmoral as the North American Coyote, and the early form of Zeus resembles these and other savage figures.[1423] The conceptions of the creator grew more and more ethically good, but the lower representations continued to exist side by side with the higher.[1424]
+831+. It is not altogether strange that the two sorts of creative Powers should be early thought of as mutually antagonistic. The Maidu bad creator is constantly opposing and bringing to naught the work of his good rival, and their collision produces the actual state of things on the earth.[1425] It is probably by way of explanation of the evil in the world that in this myth the bad Coyote finally overcomes his rival. The resemblance of this scheme to the Mazdean dualism, except in the outcome, is obvious. For a full account of these systems we must await further information; but at present there is no ground for holding that the similarity is due to borrowing.
+832+. In various early cosmogonies the representation is found of an earlier race or an early world that had been destroyed, sometimes by a flood (Babylonia, India, Greece, Polynesia, North America, South America), sometimes in other ways.[1426] Flood stories probably arise from local inundations, and may therefore have been constructed independently in various regions. In some cases the general conditions favor the supposition of distribution from one point: it seems probable, for example, that the Babylonian flood story was adopted by the Canaanites and from them by the Hebrews (the supposition of common descent from an original Semitic myth is made improbable by the closeness of resemblance between the Babylonian and Hebrew forms); it may have passed to India, but the Hindu story may be accounted for from local conditions. But we know of no such intercourse between the Americas, Polynesia, and Western Asia, as would suggest a migration of the myth from the latter to the two former, though this is conceivable.
+833+. The origin of man is included in that of the world. He is made from clay or wooden figures or stones, or, as in Australia, out of a shapeless mass. The conception found in various parts of the world, that the present race of men was preceded by another, appears to be due sometimes to a real, though often confused, tradition of an earlier population, sometimes to a vague conception of the conflict and incompleteness in the world. Traditions of predecessors are found in various parts of the world. In North America--as, for example, among the Navahos--a part of the early history is the conflict with certain mighty and evil beings who made good life impossible--a semidualistic scheme.[1427] This view comes from the general disposition to conceive of the past as the time of mightier agencies, good and bad, than now exist.
+834+. A not uncommon representation is that man was originally not mortal, or that it was a question whether or not he should be mortal (death being generally regarded by early man as an abnormal event, produced by supernatural agency). In such cases mortality is brought about by an accident or an error: among the Maoris by a mistake of the hero Maui;[1428] among the Hebrews by the disobedience of the first man, or by his failure to eat of the tree of life; in South Africa by the accident that the messenger who was to announce immortality was outrun by one who announced mortality.[1429]
+835+. The belief that the earliest men were longer-lived and of larger stature than their successors is found among certain peoples.[1430] Of the origin of this belief in ancient times we have no accounts. It may have been suggested by various objects supposed to be remains of men, or it may have been due simply to a tendency to conceive of the beginners of human society as superior beings (dedivinized gods). The Hebrew tradition ascribed great age to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, on a generally descending scale; the longevity of the antediluvians is perhaps a speculative continuation of the series back of Abraham on an ascending scale, though special mythical traits here come in.
Connected with the general belief in the superiority of early conditions of life is the belief in a primitive earthly paradise; the history of this conception is not clear, but in some cases the paradise appears to have been the delightful abode of a deity, into which human beings were for various reasons admitted, or the primeval fair and happy earth.[1431]
+836+. The belief that the world or the existing order is to be destroyed appears to be connected with the conception of history as involving a cycle of ages, and the theory of ages may have arisen from the tradition or the knowledge of social and political revolutions, the rise of each new phase of civilization involving the destruction of its predecessor. Traditions of past cataclysms may have helped toward the formulation of an expectation of coming destruction. This expectation, generalized under the influence of belief in a final judgment of men by God, would lead to the announcement of a final destruction of the present world. This destruction, which ushers in a new age, is accomplished in various ways, sometimes by water, wind, or fire,[1432] sometimes by supernatural enemies.[1433] The Hindu and the Persian schemes of successive ages are relatively late theological constructions, but they are based on the older idea that present things must have an end.[1434] The Navaho series of five worlds represents, apparently, nothing but traditions of social changes, interspersed with minor ætiologic myths.[1435]
+837+. Many other cosmogonic details, common to various peoples, might be added. Transformation from human to animal or mineral forms and the reverse are to be found, as we have seen, everywhere. The slaying of dragons by gods or heroes is often connected with creation, but belongs sometimes in the category of cultural or nature myths. Abnormal forms of birth and generation may be sometimes products of savage fancy, or they may be attempts to set forth the mysterious or the supernatural in certain beings, or they may be nature myths: in various mythologies a god or a hero is born from the side or the thigh or the head of the mother or the father; fecundation by other means than sexual union appears in North America, Egypt, Greece, and generally in savage tribes.[1436] The representation of the primeval parents, Heaven and Earth, as having been originally united in a close embrace and then separated, Heaven being lifted up and Earth remaining below, is so remarkable that it might be doubted whether it arose independently in different places; yet, as it is found in New Zealand,[1437] in Egypt,[1438] in India,[1439] among the Masai of Eastern Central Africa,[1440] and as the supposition of borrowing for these widely separated communities would be difficult (except, perhaps, as between Egypt and the Masai land), it is simpler to regard the myth as a natural effort of early science.[1441] It need hardly be added that with all the similarities in the various cosmogonic systems the diversities among different peoples are as numerous as the differences of surroundings and character.
+838+. Among most early communities the great figures of the past (creations of imagination) to whom are ascribed the introduction of the arts of life and the general betterment of society are regarded as demigods, descended from parents one of whom is divine and the other human; it is sometimes the father, sometimes the mother, that is divine.[1442] This conception is a simple and natural explanation of the supposed extraordinary powers of the personages in question. A more refined conception represents man as receiving life from the breath of God,[1443] whence easily comes the idea that man is the child of God and has in him a spark of divinity.
+839+. Ethnogonic myths. Early science has to account not only for the origin of the world and the human race, but also for the origin of particular tribes and their surroundings. The area involved is the known world, which among savage peoples is small in extent but increases with knowledge, the general method of accounting for social division remaining, however, the same. As a rule, the center of the distribution of mankind is the territory of the particular tribe in which the myth originates. There is always the conviction, expressed or implied, that the tribe in question is the center of the world and the favorite of the creative Power;[1444] it being established in its place, the rest of the world is divided among other tribes--a conception that survives among civilized peoples of antiquity.[1445]
+840+. The ethnogonic history generally takes the form of a genealogy--every tribe or other group is derived from a mythical ancestor, who among savages is frequently a beast, or half-beast half-human, or even in some cases a rock or a stone. Familiar examples are the genealogical systems of the Australians, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Samoans, the American Indians;[1446] but the conception appears to be universal. There was indeed no other natural way of accounting for the origin of a tribe: as an existing family would reckon its beginning from the grandfather, so the tribe would come from some remote person, and so at a later time the nation, and then finally the human race. As there were no historical records of such beginning, the scientific imagination of early peoples constructed the first parents in various ways, often by personifying the tribe and transferring its name to the mythical ancestor. It is in this way that the genealogical lists of the post-Mohammedan Arabians arose; it is certain that they had no records of the past extending further than a few generations, and in some cases the origins of the names in genealogical lists may be fixed. The Greek method of naming ancestors is simple and obvious: the sons of Hellen are Dorus, Xuthus, Æolus; the sons of Xuthus are Achæus and Ion; and these are all descended from Deucalion. In like manner the Pelasgians are carried back to the ancestor Pelasgus, and the Peloponnesians to Pelops. The Roman Romulus, Remulus, Remus, are natural inventions based on the name of the city.
+841+. Genealogical elaboration was carried out more fully by the Hebrews than by any other ancient people. Not only were tribal names, Jacob, Israel, Judah, Joseph, Ephraim, and the rest, personified, but they were arranged in a well-shaped family system; and, the same method being applied to all the nations known to them, these were carried up to the three sons of Noah, and finally through Noah up to the first man, whose Hebrew name, Adam, means simply man.[1447] The table of nations in Genesis x is a remarkable example of ethnographic organization. As it is based on geographical relations, it does not in all particulars accord with modern ethnological schemes, but it is a noteworthy attempt to embrace the whole world in a family picture. The view that the division of the earth among the various peoples revolved around the Israelite territory is expressed in the poem cited above,[1448] which is of the seventh century B.C., and it may be inferred that this large genealogical unification was completed among the Israelites at a time when they felt the influence of the great Assyrian civilization, with which they seem to have come into somewhat intimate contact. Later examples are found in Vergil's Æneid and Milton's "History of Britain" (in which he adopts early attempts at genealogical construction).
+842+. Sociogonic myths. Most of the customs and institutions of early peoples go back to a time when there were no records, and their introduction was naturally referred, so soon as reflection thereon began, to gods and heroes of primeval time.
+843+. The arts of life are commonly explained in this mythical way. The beginnings of agriculture are referred in Melanesia to the Little One or to Qat, in Mexico to the god or culture-hero Quetzalcoatl, in Peru to Viracocha or Pachacamac, or to Manco Capac and his wife. For the Algonkins Michabo, the Great Hare, was the teacher of fishing and of other pursuits.[1449] The Babylonian god Ea was the instructor of his people in all the arts of civilization.[1450] In the Old Testament Cainite (Kenite) genealogy the originators of pastoral life, of metal-working, and of music, are the ancient ancestors.[1451] In the Book of Enoch the employment of metals, the use of writing, and in general all the early arts of civilization are ascribed to the fallen angels, whose children are represented in the Book of Genesis[1452] as the culture-heroes of the olden time. The introduction of writing into Greece is ascribed by the Greeks to the mythical hero or demigod Cadmus.[1453] Fire is in India the production of the god Agni[1454] (who is simply fire elevated to the rank of a personal divinity); in the Greek myth it is stolen and given to men by the demigod Prometheus[1455] against the will of the gods, who are jealous of human progress.[1456] Among various savage tribes there are similar histories of the derivation of the use of fire from superhuman beings.[1457]
+844+. Early ceremonies, as we have seen,[1458] are universally connected with religion, and their origin is ascribed to divine or semi-divine figures of the past. In Australia the initiation ceremonies, which take up a great part of the tribal life, are regarded as having been established by the mythical ancestors.[1459] Among the Hebrews when circumcision, an early initiation ceremony,[1460] became religiously important, its establishment was referred to the ancestor Abraham, who is said to have acted by direct command of God,[1461] but in earlier documents there are hints of other origins for the rite.[1462] The ritual dances of the North American Indians, which are very elaborate, are accompanied by explanations in which the origin of every detail is referred to some event or person in the supernatural past;[1463] and similar explanations are given of the dances of Mexico.[1464] In many cases the restrictions of food and other things are ascribed to the experiences of the ancestors or to the commands of deities: the Hebrew usage of not eating a certain sinew is connected with the story of the struggle between Jacob and a divine being.[1465]
+845+. Festivals also were treated in this manner as soon as men began to reflect on the origin of society. As one feature in the festival sacred to Mars (March 1) was the dancing of the priests who carried curious shields, it was narrated, to account for this, that the shield of Mars fell down from heaven;[1466] and the goddess Maia, according to one conjecture, was invented to explain the name of the month of May.[1467] A Greek explanation of the fact that children at a later period were not called by the mother's name was that in the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the control of the city of Athens the latter deity prevailed by the votes of the women, who were in the majority, and to appease the wrath of Poseidon this rule was then made by the men.[1468] The Gileadite festival in which maidens lamented the death of the daughter of Jephthah[1469] was doubtless an old rite in which the death of some divinity was bewailed. The Greek Boedromia was referred to the succor given by Theseus against the Amazons,[1470] and in the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries ætiological myths connected with Demeter, Kore, and Dionysos formed the central part of the proceedings.[1471] In the Old Testament the spring festival (Passover) is connected with the departure of the people from Egypt, and the autumn festival (Tabernacles) with the sojourn in the wilderness; and by the later Jews the midsummer festival (the Feast of Weeks, Pentecost) was similarly brought into connection with the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.
+846+. Relation between myth and ritual. The question whether myth comes from ritual or ritual from myth has been much discussed. Obviously universal precedence cannot be allowed to either of the two. There are cases in which primary mythical beliefs determine the form of religious procedure: the belief, for example, that a god, as anthropomorphic divine patron, must be placated and provided with all the accessories of a potentate, leads to the offering of food and other gifts and to the establishment of abodes and attendants; the sense of his aloofness and of his powerful and dangerous qualities induces cautionary rules for approach to his presence; because he has manlike intellectual and emotional limitations his favor must be secured by prayers and praises; if he has a son, this latter may act as mediator between his father and a suppliant, or one god may mediate with others in behalf of men.[1472] On the other hand, there are many examples of myths that arise as explanation of ritualistic details.[1473] It is sometimes hard to say on which side the precedence in time lies. In general, it seems, it is from broader and fundamental mythical conceptions that ritual arises, while mythical narratives spring from particular ritualistic observances.
+847+. Important religious changes which have come to pass through natural changes of thought, usually by the movement toward greater refinement, are explained as having been introduced by some great reformer. The abrogation of human sacrifice was a reform of great moment: in Mexico it is ascribed to the god Quetzalcoatl,[1474] and in the Old Testament to Abraham acting by command of God.[1475] One of the Incas of Peru is said to have reached monotheistic views by a process of reasoning, and the post-Biblical Jewish myths ascribed the same achievement to Abraham.[1476]
+848+. As a rule sacred places were connected with stories of the presence of divine personages or mythical ancestors. In Samoa, the Hawaian group, and other Pacific Islands many stones are connected with stories of heroes, spirits, or gods.[1477] In Central Australia every stone, rock, or tree has its myth of the half-bestial ancestors.[1478] In Greece, as Pausanias relates, there was hardly a place that did not have its story of the origin of some sacred spot or thing due to a god.[1479] In the earlier books of the Old Testament the sacred places, which were Arabian or Canaanite shrines adopted by the Hebrews, are generally connected with the presence of the patriarchs or other great men. The magical qualities of springs, pools, and other bodies of water are explained by stories in which a god or other divine person descends into them, or in some other way communicates power.[1480]
+849+. Myths of heavenly bodies, winds, and vegetation. As the sun, the moon, and other objects of nature were regarded as anthropomorphic persons and naturally came into relation with men, their imagined adventures have produced a great mass of stories in all parts of the world. These stories are partly attempts to account for phenomena and partly are simply products of fancy; the myth-maker is very often a mere story-teller. The sun, conceived of usually as an old man, is supposed to live in a house up in the sky, to have his wife and children, to receive visitors, and to interfere to some extent in human affairs. An eclipse was obviously to be regarded as the work of an enemy of the sun, usually a dragon (so in many low tribes, and in India). A great excess of heat on the earth might be explained by the supposition that the chariot of the sun had been driven too near the surface.[1481] The waning of the moon was supposed to be due to her sorrow at the loss of her children, the stars, which were devoured by the sun. The moon might be a fair woman who becomes enamored of a human being. At a later time in the progress of astronomical knowledge the planets and certain of the stars were individualized--they became actors in human history or, still later, the abode of supernatural beings.[1482]
+850+. The beginnings of astrological theory are probably to be recognized at a very early period. The height of the sky above the earth, the persistence with which the stars seem to look down on men, the invariability of their courses, the mysteriousness of their origin would naturally lead to the belief that they had some control over human affairs. Meteors, regarded as falling stars, have always been objects of dread. The development of astrology has been due to the increase of astronomical knowledge and to the tendency to organize religion in its aspect of dependence on the supernatural Powers.[1483]
+851+. Winds have played a less prominent part in theistic history than the heavenly bodies, but have given rise to not a few myths in religions of different grades of culture and in different parts of the world.[1484] In the Scandinavian myths the storm wind as a representative of the prevailing climatic condition has assumed special prominence. In the Iliad when a messenger is dispatched to the abode of the winds to secure their aid, these are found feasting like a human family.[1485] Later, winds are, of course, subordinated to the great gods.
+852+. From time to time theories have arisen explaining many deities and heroes as representatives of the heavenly bodies, and many stories of gods and heroes as reflecting the phenomena of the sky or the air. Such theories have been carried so far sometimes as to explain everything in mythology as a solar or lunar or astral myth. These constructions leave much to the fancy, and it is not difficult to find in mythical narratives references to the movements of the sun or the moon or the stars or the winds. It is possible that such reference really exists in certain stories. It is probable also that simple myths representing such phenomena have been in later times elaborated and brought into connection with a more detailed astronomical knowledge. The same principles of interpretation should guide us here as are referred to above.
+853+. There are doubtless cases in which a hero or a god represents the sun or the moon, the correspondence between the adventures of the hero and the movements of the heavenly bodies being plain. The twelve labors of Heracles may represent the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac; but if this be the case, it is certain that such construction was relatively late, and that the separate adventures must be referred to some more simple facts. If Heracles slays the Hydra, it is more natural to regard this as having represented originally some mundane phenomenon of nature or some simple conflict of the savage life. The same thing is probably true of the adventures of the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh, who is sometimes considered to be the original of Heracles. Nothing is easier than to expound the story of Samson in the Old Testament as a series of solar and other phenomena,[1486] but the probability is that he embodies the vague recollections of early tribal adventures, and, notwithstanding his name (which means 'solar,' that is, devoted to the sun), there is no good ground for supposing that his history has been astronomically worked over. A similar remark applies to many discussions respecting various deities, Hindu (as Indra), Egyptian (as Osiris), Semitic (as Nergai, Marduk, Nabu), and Greek (as Apollo). In all such cases it is necessary to inquire first whether the explanation of the myth may not be found naturally in some ordinary human experience or some very simple natural phenomenon, and a line of demarcation must be drawn between original forms of the myth and later learned constructions.
+854+. Another source of mythical narration is the history of vegetation, which at the present time has largely supplanted the solar theory. The amazing spectacle of the decay and revival of vegetation, naturally referred to superhuman power, and the importance of plants for human life, have led to the construction of stories (sometimes founded on ritual) in which the adventures of the spirit of vegetation are recounted. Obviously there is a sound basis for this view. The earth was necessarily regarded as the mother from whom came the corn and wine that supported human life. The study of the relatively modern European ceremonies[1487] has brought out the persistence of such an idea, and the similarity between the new ceremonies and the old may be said to have demonstrated the existence of an early cult of the divine Power controlling vegetation.
+855+. The Asian Magna Mater and the Greek Mother (Demeter) or Maiden (Kore, Persephone) are identical in function with the corn maiden of modern times, and the latter figure may be a degraded or socialized descendant of an early deity. When we add that ancient local deities all took account of the products of the soil, it will not seem improbable that a great mass of stories should have arisen describing the adventures of the Spirit of Vegetation.[1488] The descent of a hero or a god into Hades may be explained as the passage of the sun from its summer warmth to its winter feebleness, or as the annual death and revival of vegetation. Which of these views shall be adopted will depend in any case on the particular coloring of the story, on the signification of the names involved, or on the ceremonies accompanying the worship. It is not now possible to frame a theory that shall embrace all possible phenomena.
+856+. Certain great myths have in the course of time taken on elaborate literary form, and in this form show traces of advanced thought on some fundamental questions. Such myths occur among half-civilized peoples. There is, for example, the great mythical cosmogony of the Maoris of New Zealand--a scheme seemingly so philosophic in form that it excites wonder as to how it could have arisen in such a place.[1489] The story of the adventures of Maui, a general Polynesian figure, constitutes a Polynesian history of the rise of civilization. Among the North American Indians the mythological systems of the Algonkins, the Pawnees, and other tribes, include the origin of all forms of natural objects and all institutions of society. The histories of the Great Hare of the Lenâpé, the Thunder Bird of the West, and the various transformers or culture-heroes, are scarcely less elaborate than the New Zealand stories. The mythologies of the Finns also (given in the Kalevala) are noteworthy. Passing to higher forms, it is sufficient to note the suggestive story of Balder among the Scandinavians, and, in the ancient world, the Egyptian Osiris myth, the Great Dragon myth of the Babylonian cosmogony, the various forms of the story of a primeval paradise, and the ceremonies and ideas that have arisen in connection with the death of a god.
+857+. The motif of the antagonism between light and darkness appears to be attached to or involved in certain myths, especially the great cosmogonies and stories in which solar deities figure prominently. The original unformed mass of matter is often, perhaps generally, conceived of as being in darkness, and its transformation is attended with the appearance of light[1490]--light is an essential element in the conditions that make earthly human life possible; in contrast with the Upperworld the Underworld is dark. The diffusion of light is a main function of the sun, and the high gods dwell in continual brightness.[1491] Light is the symbol of right, security, and happiness. But it is doubtful whether the expression of the antithesis and conflict of light and darkness is the immediate object of the early portraitures of deities and the mythical narratives of creation and the future of the world. The Egyptian Ra has no conflict with darkness, and the struggle between Osiris (and Horus) and Set, while it may be and often is interpreted in this sense, is susceptible of other interpretations. The motif in the Babylonian cosmogony is the bringing of order out of disorder, in which work the creation of light is an incident. In ethically advanced religious systems, such as the Hindu and the Persian, the good Powers are connected with light and the wicked Powers with darkness, but a conflict between these adjuncts is not brought out clearly. No such conflict appears in Greek mythology. Where a supernatural being intervenes in defense of light (as when a god destroys a dragon-creature who attempts to swallow the sun), this is simply an explanation of a physical phenomenon, and not a conflict between light and darkness.
+858+. The theory, widely held, that a great body of early myths, including the conception of the characters and functions of many deities, represent the struggle between light and darkness, is, therefore, not sustained by the facts. Such a generalization is found in late philosophic systems, but it does not belong to early religious thought, which deals with concrete personal agents.[1492] A conflict between two gods is often to be explained as the rivalry of two districts or of two forms of culture. Attacks on luminous bodies, or defenses of them, are common as ætiological myths, and an antagonism between light and darkness then naturally appears, as is observed above, as an accessory or incident, but not as an immediate object of mythical portraiture. The closeness of the relation between the light-and-darkness theory and the solar theory of myths is obvious.
+859+. Myth and legend. In the course of the formulation of myths they have naturally become mingled with legend. As they narrate the achievements of the great supernatural figures of the past, these achievements have often become blended in the twilight of tradition with actual (though embellished) experiences of the clan or tribe and of the great men therewith connected.[1493] In such cases it is generally difficult to decide where legend ends and myth begins, and every story must be investigated separately, and its nature determined from what is known of the real history of the time and of the development of mythical ideas. Familiar examples of this combination of legend and myth appear in connection with the Homeric poems, certain Asian and Greek cults, and the early histories of Greece and Rome and Israel.[1494] The elucidation of such narratives must be left to the technical investigator in the various historical periods. In general, it may be said, there is enough historical material to enable us to trace the development of tribes and nations with a fair degree of certainty; and the caution already expressed against excessive mythological interpretation is especially in place in such researches.[1495]
The material published under the general title of "folk-lore" consists of various elements--purely religious usages and ideas, mythical and legendary narratives, and fanciful stories. As the term, defined precisely, refers only to popular survivals from defunct religious systems, its material shows a constant process of modification from generation to generation by newer ideas. The mythical element, extricated from the general mass, must be treated in accordance with the general principles of the criticism of myths.[1496]
+860+. Mythical biographies. As gods and heroes are the actors in mythical constructions of society, the stories in such constructions generally assume the form of anecdotal biographies of these personages. Such sketches gather fresh material from generation to generation, are gradually worked up into literary shape, and, being brought into connection with historical traditions, assume historical form, and are then sometimes accepted in their homes and elsewhere as historical.[1497] As they embody the ideas of the times in which they originate, they have, in so far, historical and psychological value. Charm of style has given some of these stories literary value, and they have been accepted as part of the literary treasure of the world. They are sometimes combinations or fusions of myth and legend, and these two elements are not always easily distinguishable the one from the other.[1498]
+861+. In questions that touch the original nature of a god the possible difference between earlier and later conceptions of him must, of course, be borne in mind. When a deity has been definitely shaped and has become a patron of a community, he may be identified by the people, or particularly by poets and priests, with any object or idea that is of special interest to the community. The baals of the agricultural Canaanites presided over irrigation, but were not specifically underground gods;[1499] they were rather general divine patrons interested in all that interested the people. A solar deity, becoming the favorite god of an agricultural community, may be regarded as connected with vegetation; or a god of vegetation may be associated, in astronomical circles, with the sun. A divine figure is often composite, the product of the coalescence of several orders of ideas. In general it may be said that the simplest and least socially refined function of a god is likely to indicate his original character. We must go behind the conceptions of cultivated times to the hints given in popular observances and poetry.
+862+. Interpretation of myths. For savage and half-civilized communities, and for the masses in civilized times, the stories of the achievements and adventures of gods, heroes, and ancestors, accepted as history, have been and are sources of enjoyment and of intellectual impulse. Narrated by fathers to their families, and recited or sung by professional orators and poets to groups and crowds throughout the land,[1500] they have been expanded and handed down from generation to generation, receiving from every generation the coloring of its experiences and ideas, and in the course of time have taken literary shape under the hands of men of genius, and have been committed to writing. For the early times they not only formed a body of historical literature, but also, since they described relations between men and gods, came to be somewhat vague yet real sacred scriptures of the people.[1501] As such, being regarded simply as statements of facts, they needed no outside interpretation; and being molded by human experience, they carried with them such moral and religious instruction as grew naturally out of the situations described. A more highly cultivated age, dissatisfied with bald facts, desired to find in the stories the wisdom of the fathers, and the imagination of poets and philosophers was long occupied with discovering and expounding their deeper meanings till further research set aside such attempts as useless. The treatment of mythical material thus shows three stadia: the acceptance of myths as genuine history; esoteric explanations of their assumed profound teachings; and finally, return to their original character as primitive science, having their origin in crude conceptions of life. A brief sketch may show how the interpretation of myths has come to be regarded as an historical and sociological science.
+863+. Ancient interpretations of myths. When the progress of thought, especially in Greece, made it impossible to accept the current beliefs concerning gods and their doings, it was felt necessary to put some higher meaning into them--they were rationalized and spiritualized by a process of allegorization. This process seems to have begun in Greece as early as the sixth century B.C.[1502] It was the philosophers who undertook to reinterpret the Homeric mythical material, and the extent to which this procedure had been carried in the time of Plato is indicated by the fact that he ridicules these modes of dealing with the poet.[1503] But Homer maintained his place in literature, and the demand for a spiritualizing of his works increased rather than diminished. A science of allegory was created, Pergamus became one of its chief centers,[1504] and the Alexandrian Jew Philo applied the method to the interpretation of the Pentateuch. It was speedily adopted in the Christian world, and has there maintained itself, though in diminishing extent, up to the present day.[1505] As a serious interpretation of ancient myths, outside of the Old Testament, it is no longer employed. Myths are, indeed, important as reflecting early opinions, religious and other--good doctrinal matter may be extracted from them, but this must not be ascribed to the intention of their authors and reporters. In the Old Testament itself the Jewish editors have socialized the mythical material (weaving it into the history, as in Genesis), or have brought it under the work of the national deity.
+864+. Recent interpretations. In recently proposed interpretations we may note first certain attempts at a unification of some body of myths or of all known mythical material. These attempts, almost without exception, take the sky and the heavenly bodies as their basis.
At the end of the eighteenth century, when the theory of human unity had taken hold of the French revolutionists, C. F. Dupuis[1506] undertook to explain all the cults of the world as having come from the worship of the universe--a conception broad enough to cover everything; but he practically reduces it to the worship of the heavenly bodies, particularly the sun, and derives all myths from stellar objects. His work is ingenious, learned, and suggestive, but in his day the facts of ancient mythology were insufficiently known.
+865+. In the next century the study of Sanskrit and Old Persian widened the field of knowledge, the science of Indo-European grammar was created, and on this followed attempts at the construction of an Indo-European mythology. The first definitely formulated unification was the theory of F. Max Müller,[1507] which derived all Aryan (Indo-European) myths from phenomena of the sun and the dawn, largely, he held, through misunderstandings of the meaning of old descriptive terms (myths as a "disease of language"). It is conceivable that a word, originally used simply as descriptive of an actual fact, may have passed into a proper name and become personalized and the center of adventures; but the character of early man's thought, as we now know it, makes it impossible to regard such a view as a probable explanation of the mass of mythological material. Müller's services to the science of the history of religions were great, but his theory of the origin of myths has now been generally abandoned.[1508]
+866+. The great discoveries of literary material made in Egypt and Babylonia since the middle of the nineteenth century have aroused special interest in the religions of these countries. Leadership in ancient civilization is claimed by Egyptologists and Assyriologists, each party for its own land. It is, however, Babylonia that has given rise to the largest theories of the unity of myths--a fact due in part to its development of astronomy, in part, perhaps, to the resemblance between the Babylonian mythical material and that of the Old Testament. Dupuis[1509] had observed that the ancient Chaldeans taught that the heavenly bodies controlled mundane destinies, and, according to Diodorus, that the planets were the interpreters of the will of the gods. This is substantially the point of view of E. Stucken,[1510] who, in common with Dupuis (though, apparently, independently), holds to the unity of ancient religions and the astral origin of all myths. From Babylonia, he thinks, myths passed to all parts of the world, Egypt, Asia, Europe, Polynesia, and America--in such migrations, however, it was the motif that passed; the personages might vary in different lands.[1511] Finally he traces all sagas of all peoples to the creation myth.[1512] This supreme unification is reached by arguments so far-fetched as to deprive them of force.
Stucken's position was adopted and elaborated by H. Winckler, who was followed by A. Jeremias and some others.[1513] Winckler attempts to show that a single religion existed in the ancient Oriental world (with a single system of myths), and that this was dominated by the conception that there was a correspondence between the heavenly world and the lower world in such wise that all earthly affairs were indicated by the movements of the heavenly bodies, whence arose the whole religious system of Western Asia and Greece.
+867+. What is true in this theory (to which the name of "Panbabylonianism" has been given) is that Semitic mythology is a unit, with Babylonia as its birthplace, and that certain elements are common to the Egyptian, Semitic, Greek, and other mythological systems. The substantial identity of Babylonian, Aramean (Syrian), and Canaanite myths is generally acknowledged:[1514] the Old Testament dragon-myth (which occurs also in the New Testament Apocalypse) is found in full shape only in Babylonian material;[1515] the Syrian Adonis myth is at bottom the Babylonian story of Tammuz and Ishtar. The probability is that all early Semitic schemes of creation and prehistoric life are essentially one. Further, such conceptions as the origin of the world from an unshaped mass of matter and the origin of man from the earth are widely distributed over the earth.
+868+. Babylonia, then, is the chief mythopoeic center for the Semitic region, but we are not warranted in extending its influence as myth-maker beyond this region. The myths of the Indo-European peoples have in general the stamp of independent creation. Loans there may be (as, for example, in the myths connected with Aphrodite and Heracles, and perhaps others), but these do not affect the character of the whole. The relation between the Semitic and the Egyptian mythologies is still under discussion.
+869+. The astral element of the theory, based on arbitrary parallelisms carried out without regard to historical conditions, is an unauthorized extension of the generally accepted fact that certain myths are astral. Winckler's assumption of an astral "system" that obtained throughout the Western world is supported only by unproved assertions of the sort just referred to.
+870+. Jensen's contention that all myths come from the Babylonian Gilgamesh story[1516] exhibits the same general method as the theories of Stucken and Winckler (giving assertion in place of proof), differing from them only in the material of comparisons.
+871+. The fundamental vice of these theories (apart from the arbitrary character of the assertions made by their authors) is the failure to take into account the historical development of mythical conceptions, their beginnings in the rudest periods of human thought, and their gradual elaboration and distinct formulation in the great communities, in which process, along with the varieties of local conditions, certain fundamental resemblances remain throughout.[1517]
+872+. Besides these more prominent or more definitely formulated theories there has been in some quarters a disposition to insist too strongly on lines of mythical development connected with the plant world, particularly with the death and revival of vegetation. All that we know of the history of mythical material among existing savages and in the earliest forms of belief of civilized nations forbids the limitation of the origin of myths to any one department of nature or to any one part of the world. Myths, like gods, may be composite: of this nature, probably, are some cosmogonic histories,[1518] and the stories of Gilgamesh, Heracles, Perseus, and many others. The lines of origin mentioned above have, naturally, in some cases, coalesced, and their combination into single coherent narratives has been spread over long periods of time. For this reason there is always need of detailed investigations of particular myths as a preparation for a general history of mythology.[1519]
+873+. Modern critical methods in the interpretation of myths. The treatment of myths has followed the general course of the development of thought in the world. In the old national religions they were incorporated in the substance of the religious beliefs. The reformers of thought either ignored them (so, for example, Confucius and Buddha), or denounced their absurdities (so Plato and others), or allegorized or rationalized them (so many Greek philosophers); the early Christian writers treated Old Testament myths as history, and ridiculed the myths of Greece and Rome. During the long period when the European peoples were assimilating the ideas of Christianity the study of myths remained in abeyance. After the classical revival there was a return to the allegorizing method, the fondness for which has not yet completely died out.[1520]
+874+. The extension of knowledge in the eighteenth century gave an impetus to the study of religion, the results of which for mythological investigation appear in the works of Dupuis and others.[1521] These authors were necessarily ignorant of many important facts, but they have the merit of having collected much material, which they treated as something that had to be explained in accordance with the laws of human thought.
+875+. The turning-point in the development of mythological science was the rise of the modern critical study of history, begun by Voltaire and Gibbon and carried on by Niebuhr and others. A vigorous group of writers arose in Germany. Creuzer,[1522] indeed, holding that the myths of the ancients must embody their best thought, and falling back on symbolism, cannot be said to have advanced his subject except by his collection of materials; there is some basis for his position if the ancient myths are taken in the sense given them by the later poets and philosophers, but the supposition of a primary symbolism in myths is set aside by an examination of the ideas of undeveloped races. Creuzer's theory was effectively combated by Voss.[1523] Other writers of the time adopted exacter methods of inquiry,[1524] and K. O. Müller,[1525] particularly, laid the foundation for a scientific treatment of myths by distinguishing between their real and their ideal elements, between the actual phenomenon and the imaginative (the true mythical) explanation of it.
+876+. The next generation witnessed two retrograde movements in the interpretation of myths. F. Max Müller, dazzled by the wealth of Sanskrit mythological material, revived the solar theory, with a peculiar appendage;[1526] the defects of his theory must not blind us to the great service he performed in arousing interest in the comparative study of myths and leading the way to a formulation of the conception of the general history of religion. On another side the vast accumulation of the religious ideas and usages of lower tribes led Herbert Spencer to his euhemeristic view.[1527] Neither of these theories has seriously affected the growth of the science of mythology.
+877+. A saner direction was given to investigation by the great biological and sociological studies made in the second half of the nineteenth century.[1528] E. B. Tylor definitely stated the view that the origin of myths is to be found in all the ideas of early man. By a very large collection of facts[1529] he showed that the same representations that are familiar in Egyptian, Semitic, Hindu, Greek, Roman, and other ancient myths occur also in the systems of half-civilized and savage communities; and he pointed out how such representations had their basis in the simple ideas of undeveloped men and how their survival is to be traced through all periods of history. This fruitful view has been illustrated and developed by later writers,[1530] and much light has been thrown on the genesis and growth of myths by studies of existing popular customs in civilized communities.[1531]
+878+. Interest in the subject has now become general, and collections of material are being made all over the world.[1532] At the same time it is recognized that every local mass of myths must be studied first by itself and then in connection with all other known material, and that great caution must be exercised in dealing with questions of origin, transmission, and survival. Archæological and geographical discoveries have widened the known area of human life on earth; it is seen that the history of man's development is more complicated than was formerly supposed.
+879+. We are still without a general survey of myths arranged in some orderly fashion.[1533] The material for such a collection is scattered through a great number of publications, in which the mythical stories are not always treated critically. The most useful principle of tabulation, perhaps, would be an arrangement according to motifs, under which geographical or ethnological and geographical relations might be noted. At the present time it would be possible only to make a beginning in such a work, since the obtainable material is not all recorded, and the complicated character of many myths makes an arrangement by place and motif difficult. Still, even an incomplete digest would be of service to students of mythology and would pave the way for a more comprehensive work. The importance of the study of mythology for the general history of religions is becoming more and more manifest. This study, in its full form, includes, of course, psychological investigation as well as collections of statistics; but the psychology finds its material in the facts--we must first know what men believe, and then explain why they believe.
+880+. It must, however, be added that myths have influenced mainly the dogmas and ceremonies of religion--their part in more intimate or spiritual worship, the converse of the worshiper with the deity, has been comparatively slight. Religious ceremonies are ordinary social customs and forms transferred to dealings with supernatural Powers. Dogmas are quasi-philosophical expressions of conceptions concerning the nature of these Powers and their relations with men, and sometimes contain mythical material which is then introduced into worship; if, for example, a man is divinized and worship is paid him, the tone of the worship is affected by the divine character thus ascribed to him. But in general, as men, in worship proper, approach a deity to get some advantage from him, the appeal is to him directly without regard to ceremonies or minute dogmas. Savages, though in theory they may make a god to be an animal or a plant, come to him devoutly as a superior being who can grant their requests. In higher religions the deity addressed is for the moment an omnipotent friend standing apart from the stories told of him. Rival sects lose sight of their differences in the presence of needs that drive them to God for help. Prayer is a religious unifier--communion with the Deity is an individual experience in which all men stand on common ground, where ritual and dogmatic accessories tend to fade or to disappear.
+881+. Long after myths in their original forms have ceased to be believed they persist in the form of "fairy tales," which retain something of the old supernatural framework, but sink into mere stories for amusement.[1534]
But fairy tales are not the only form in which ancient myths persist. Myths have played their prominent part in the history of religion for the reason that they embody the conception of the tangible supernatural in a vivid and dramatic way. To this personalization and socialization of the supernatural men have continued to cling up to the present time; the mass of men demand not only the presence of the supernatural as protection and guidance, but also the realization of it in objective form. This objectiveness was useful and necessary in early times, and the demand for it remains in periods of advanced civilization. In the reigning religions of the world at the present day myths continue to hold their place and to exercise their influence,[1535] the more that in the course of time they become fused with the constantly advancing ethical and spiritual thought of the communities in which they exist. The tendency appears to be to minimize, under the influence of general enlightenment, the crude supernatural parts of such combinations, to exalt the moral and spiritual, and to allegorize or rationalize the rest. But along with such process of rationalization the mythical form is maintained and continues to be a powerful element in the general structure of religious opinion and life.
VIII. MAGIC AND DIVINATION
+882+. The regulation of relations with the superhuman world has been attempted by means of friendly social intercourse with supernatural Powers, and by studying their methods of procedure with a view to applying these methods and thereby gaining beneficial results. Friendly social intercourse is practical religion in the higher sense of that term. The application and use of superhuman procedures takes two lines of action: the powers of superhuman agents may be appropriated and used independently of them, or the object may be simply to discover their will in order to be guided by it. The first of these lines is magic, the second is divination. While the two have in common the frank and independent employment of the supernatural for the bettering of human life, their conceptions and modes of procedure differ in certain respects, and they may be considered separately.
MAGIC[1536]
+883+. The perils and problems of savage life, more acute in certain directions than those that confront the civilized man, demand constant vigilance, careful investigation, and prompt action. So far as familiar and tangible enemies (beasts and men) are concerned, common sense has devised methods of defense, and ordinary prudence has suggested means of providing against excessive heat or cold and of procuring food. But there are dangers and ills that in the savage view cannot be referred to such sources, but must be held to be caused by intangible, invisible forces in the world, against which it is man's business to guard himself. He must learn what they are and how to thwart or use them as circumstances may require. They could be studied only in their deeds, and this study involves man in the investigation of the law of cause and effect. The only visible bond between phenomena is that of sequence, and on sequence the savage bases his science of causes--that which precedes is cause, that which follows is effect. The agencies he recognizes are spirits, gods, the force resident in things (mana), and human beings who are able to use this force.
+884+. But belief in such agencies would be useless to man unless he also believed that he could somehow determine their actions, and belief in the possibility of determining these appears to have come to him through his theory of natural law. The reasoning of savages on this point has not been recorded by them, but the character of their known procedures leads us to suppose that they have a sense of a law governing the actions of superhuman Powers. Being conscious that they themselves are governed by law, they may naturally in imagination transfer this order of things to the whole invisible world; spirits, gods, and the mana-power, it is assumed, work on lines similar to those followed by man, only with superhuman breadth and force. The task before the originators of society was to discover these modes of procedure in order to act in accordance with them. The discovery was made gradually by observation, and there grew up thus in process of time a science of supernatural procedure which is the basis of the practice of magic.
This science does not necessarily regard the superhuman power as purposely antagonistic to man. Rather its native attitude appears to have been conceived of as one of indifference (as nature is now regarded as careless of man); it was and is thought of as a force to be guarded against and utilized by available means, which, of course, were and are such as are proper to an undeveloped stage of social growth.
+885+. Magic is a science of sequences, but only of sequences supposed not to be explicable from ordinary experience. When the savage puts his hand into the fire or receives a spear-thrust in his body he recognizes visible and familiar causes of pain, and accepts the situation as a fact of life, calling for no further explanation. But when the pain comes from no familiar tangible source he is driven to seek a different sort of source. A cause there must be, and this cause, though superhuman, must follow definite methods--it must have the will to act, and it must have knowledge and skill to carry out its designs. To discover its methods man must observe the processes of nature and imitate them, and must at the same time have in mind familiar human modes of action. The savage scientific explanation of mysterious facts is that superhuman Powers are intellectually akin to human beings; the question of motive in such Powers (except in the case of developed gods) seems not to be considered. The basis of magical procedure is imitation of nature and of man. This principle is supplemented by the conception of the unity of the world, a feeling at first vague, that all things have the same nature and are bound together in a cosmos; animals and men, trees, stones and waters, and fragments of all these are parts of one great whole, and each feels, so to speak, what is done to or by one of the others. This feeling, derived from observation and reflection, is not formulated, but is influential in the construction of the unconscious philosophy of the savage.
+886+. The methods of man's magical procedure follow these principles; they are as various as the sequences that savage man thinks he observes.[1537] Many of them are suggested by natural phenomena. Since rain was observed to fall from the sky, it was held that in time of drought it might be obtained by casting water into the air and letting it fall, or by dipping a stone in water and letting it drip; in general, by any process in which water falls on the ground. The wind might be raised by ejecting air from the mouth (as by whistling). Or ordinary human actions might be imitated: a stick thrown or pointed toward an enemy, it was believed, would cause a spear to enter his body;[1538] a hostile glance of the eye, indicating desire to inflict injury, might carry ill luck.[1539] In such cases the fundamental conceptions are the sympathy that comes from unity and the activity of the pervasive mana. These conceptions are visible in procedures in which action on a part of the human body, or on an image or picture of it, was supposed to reach the body itself. The possession of a piece of the bone, skin, hair, or nail of a man might enable one who had knowledge of superhuman laws and processes to affect the man with sickness or even to cause his death. Contact of objects naturally suggests their unity, but the sympathy between them was not held to be dependent on contact; a man's bone remained a part of him, however far it might be separated from him. A dead body did not lose its virtues; the qualities of a dead warrior might be acquired by eating his flesh. The mysterious unity of things seems to have resided, in savage thought, in the omnipresent mana, a force independent of human limitations. Not that there was a definite theory on the subject, but something of this sort seems to be assumed in the ideas and usages of many low tribes.[1540]
On the other hand, a magical effect may be set aside by magic. A sick man, believing his sickness to be the work of a magician (the usual savage theory of the cause of bodily ills), sends for another magician to counteract the evil work; and a magician, failing to cure his patient, ascribes his failure to the machinations of a powerful rival. In all such cases the theory and the methods are the same; the magic that cures is not different in principle (though it may differ in details) from the magic that kills.
+887+. The facts observed by practicers of magic probably contributed to the collections of material that furnished the starting-point for the scientific study of physical phenomena. The interest in the facts arose at first simply from their relation to magical procedure--it was from them that certain laws of supernatural action were learned, and men thus got control of this action. Magic is essentially a directive or coercive procedure and differs in this respect from fully formed religion, which is essentially submissive and obedient.
+888+. It is true that coercion of divine beings appears in well-developed religions. A Babylonian goddess (Nana) was carried off by the Elamites to their land that she might there do duty as divine protector; restored to her proper home 1635 years later, she resumed her old functions.[1541] The Egyptians are said by Plutarch to have slain their divine animals if these failed to avert or remove calamity.[1542] Prometheus and certain Homeric heroes are victorious over gods. In some savage tribes divine kings are put to death if they fail to do what is expected of them. A god was sometimes chained or confined in his temple to prevent his voluntary or constrained departure. A recusant deity was sometimes taunted or insulted by his disappointed worshipers.[1543] There is, however, a difference between the two sets of coercive acts. The force used by developed religion is physical, that employed in magic is psychological and logical. When a god is chained or carried off, it is only his body that is controlled--he is left to his own thoughts, or it is assumed that he will be friendly to his enforced locus. Magic brings the supernatural Power under the dominion of law against which his nature is powerless. Religion, even when it employs force, recognizes the protective function of the deity; magic is without such acknowledgment, without emotion or worship. While it has, on one side, a profounder conception of cosmic force than appears in early religion, it is, on the social side, vastly inferior to the latter, to which it has necessarily yielded in the course of human progress. Nevertheless, if religion in the broadest sense includes all means of bringing man into helpful relations with the supernatural world, then magic is a form of religion.
+889+. The much-discussed question whether magic was the earliest form of religion is not susceptible of a definite answer for the reason that we have no account of man's earliest conceptions of his relations with the world of invisible forces. There is some reason to hold, as is remarked above,[1544] that in the lowest stage of life known to us men were logically indifferent spectators of the world, but in general stood in awe of phenomena, so that fear was their prevailing feeling. It may be surmised that this feeling would engender a sense of antagonism to such superhuman Powers as came to be conceived of, on which would naturally follow a desire to get control of them. Yet it is impossible to say at what stage of social development the necessity would be felt of establishing friendly relations with the Powers. The two lines of effort may have begun and gone on side by side, the two springing from the same utilitarian impulse, but each independent of the other--a coexistence that actually appears in many tribes; finally the coercive effort tends to yield to the kindly influences of organized society. There is no ground for calling magic a "disease of religion." The presumption, from the general law of progress, is that, when there is a chronological difference, the socially lower precedes the socially higher. Religion and magic come to be mutually antagonistic, except in cases where religious authorities adopt magical procedures, giving them a theistic and socially useful coloring. Magic has been a natural, if not a necessary, step in the religious organization of society.[1545]
+890+. Since religion and magic have in common the purpose to establish relations with extrahuman Powers the dividing line between the two is in some cases not easily fixed--the same procedure may be held to belong in the one category or the other, according as it invokes or does not invoke the aid of a god in friendly and submissive fashion. We may thus be carried back to a time when a sharp distinction between the two did not exist, as there was a time when such a distinction is not visible between "gods" (friendly divine members of the human community) and "demons" (unfriendly outside beings), both classes being regarded simply as agents affecting human life. Even when some fairly good form of organization has been reached it is often hard to say to which class a particular figure belongs. The Hawaiian Pele (the "goddess" of the great and dangerous volcano) is often vindictive, and then differs little or not at all from a demon that sends sickness and death.[1546] The Babylonians gave the same name (shedu) to a class of demons proper and to the divine or half-divine winged beings (to which, apparently, the Hebrew cherubs are allied) that guarded the entrances to temples, sacred gardens, and palaces.[1547] The Navaho beings called yei and anaye seem to hover on the border line between the divine and the demonic classes.[1548] The difference between the two seems to be merely that the one class (the gods) has been adopted (for reasons not originally ethical) into the human community, while the other has not received such adoption.[1549] In such a case a given figure may easily pass from one class into the other. According to the Thompson River folk-lore the sun was once a cannibal but became beneficent.[1550] The early Christians converted the Græco-Roman gods (daimonia) into "demons."[1551] There being this fluid relation between supernatural beings, it is not strange that such a relation should exist between procedures intended to act on them.[1552]
+891+. Magic, as we have seen, is based on the observation of sequences, and before the development of reflection and the acquisition of a knowledge of natural law the disposition of human beings is to regard all sequences as exhibiting the relation of cause and effect. A typical example is that of the anchor driven ashore, a piece of which was broken off by a man who died soon after; the conclusion was that the anchor caused his death and therefore was divine, and accordingly it received religious worship.[1553] In the course of ages thousands of such sequences must have been observed, and these, handed down from one generation to another, would shape themselves into a handbook of magic. They would, however, be constantly reëxamined and sifted under the guidance of wider experience and a better acquaintance with natural causes, and this process, carried on by experts, would give rise to the science of magic as we find it among lower tribes.
Magic, like religion, is a social product. The two, as is remarked above, may coexist in the same community. But when a State religion is established to which all citizens are expected to conform, the pursuit of magic assumes the aspect of departure from, and hostility to, the tribal or national cult. It is then under the ban, and can be carried on only in secret[1554] (as is the case with prohibited religions also). Secrecy of practice is not of the essence of magic; among the Australian Arunta, for example, magical ceremonies constitute the publicly recognized business of the community acting through its accredited representatives; the partial exclusion of women and uninitiated boys from these ceremonies (and from political councils) is due mainly to the desire of the elders to keep the power in their own hands. The State religion may sometimes be forced by public opinion to adopt particular magical procedures.
+892+. It was natural that the specific study of sequences and laws should fall into the hands of special persons and classes of men. The human agent in the discovery of laws is the magician (sorcerer, shaman), who, since he was generally a physician also, sometimes received the name of "medicine man." As the office of chief arose for the direction of social culture and political affairs, so the office of magician arose naturally for the direction of supernatural relations. He may have been the earliest religious teacher and guide.[1555] He knows the will and nature of the supernatural Powers and is therefore a necessity to men. He is specifically in charge of all that relates to the control of these Powers.
+893+. In the course of time there arises a differentiation of functions, and, when religion becomes friendly, the office of priest is created. The priest, like the magician, understands the will of the gods, but his procedure is intended simply to propitiate them or to discover their will in particular cases.[1556] He is a development out of the magician in so far as friendly religion is a development out of magical religion.[1557] The prophet also, in the rôle in which he appears among the Greeks, is a development out of the old magician; he knows the will of the gods and is thus able to predict events. This is the character of the old Hebrew seer; the Hebrew prophet, originally a seer, assumed in the course of time a quite different character--he became a preacher of ethical religion.
+894+. The office of magician, once established, became subject to all the rules that govern official persons in barbarous, half-civilized, and civilized societies. Of the way in which the position was attained in the earliest times we have no information, but in relatively low tribes it appears that it is attained in various ways. There is sometimes a suggestion of vocation in a dream or a vision.[1558] Among some tribes a candidate for the office has to undergo a process of education, that is, of training in the signs by which the presence of superhuman Powers is recognizable and of the way of dealing with disease and other evils.[1559] It is not unusual that the candidate is required to submit to a test, sometimes of physical endurance (as is required also in the case of the young warrior), but chiefly of susceptibility to supernatural influences and capacity of insight, and of the conduct of magical operations.[1560] Generally in the lower tribes the office comes by free choice of the individual, or by choice of the body of magicians, without regard to the social position of the man. In West Africa, says Miss Kingsley, everybody keeps a familiar spirit or two for magical purposes; this is unlawful only when the spirit is harmful.[1561]
+895+. In somewhat more advanced societies the office falls into the hands of families and descends from father to son, in which case the younger man is instructed by the older in the secrets of the profession.[1562] In some higher religions magical performances are in the hands of certain clans or tribes. In most of these cases women as well as men may be masters of the art. In the more advanced systems it is often the case that it is especially women who are considered adepts; so it was in Babylonia;[1563] in the Old Testament Saul seeks the woman of Endor;[1564] Thessalian witches were famous;[1565] women who tie magical knots are provided against in the Koran by a special form of prayer;[1566] in Europe, medieval and later, the practicers of magic have generally been women.
+896+. The grounds for the ascription of magical superiority to women--whether from their supposed greater susceptibility to demoniac influence, or for some other reason--are not clear. In the lowest tribes sorcerers are commonly men[1567]--the profession is an influential and honored one, and naturally falls into the hands of leading men; the magician is often the most powerful man in the community.
+897+. Reputation for magical power appears sometimes to attach to a tribe or other body of persons as the representatives of a religion which is adopted by a lower community. Possibly this is the explanation of the rôle ascribed at an early period to the Mazdean Magi.[1568] The Magi (apparently Median of origin) formed the priestly tribe of the Mazdean religion, and we do not know that they played originally any part as sorcerers. But it seems that they were so considered in Greece as early as the fifth century B.C.,[1569] and after the Moslem conquest of Persia and the suppression of Zoroastrianism a fire-worshiper or Magian is especially a representative of magic.[1570] On the other hand, it sometimes happens among adjoining tribes that the lower become the special practitioners of magic,[1571] which is then considered to be a mysterious art, alien to the official religion, and therefore proper to the ministers of the old mysterious cults.
+898+. The power exercised by the magician extends over the whole world of men and things, and is generally considered to be practically without limit. He guards men against diseases, noxious beasts, and all other forms of injury; he destroys one's enemies and guards one against plots of enemies, including other magicians; he is able to induce or destroy love, to give physical strength, to inflict disease, to kill, and to restore to life; he ascends to heaven or descends into the world below; he is able to coerce the gods themselves; in fact, he does everything that a god is commonly supposed to do--the tendency was to identify the magician and the god.[1572] Such identification is natural or necessary in early faiths, inasmuch as it was held that there was no difference of nature between men and gods. A god was as a rule the stronger. But how gods arose and how they gained their superior strength was not clear, and it might thus easily happen that a man should acquire powers equal to those of divine beings.[1573]
+899+. The methods employed by the magician to effect his purpose are various. In early times it is usual for him to fall into an ecstatic state; by drinking intoxicating liquors, by violent movements, or by contemplation he gets out of himself and comes into relations with the mysterious potencies. In such a condition he acts as his imagination suggests.[1574] But in the organized forms of magic long experience has devised various means of producing results beyond the power of ordinary men. Certain objects are magically charged with supernatural power (charms), and these worn on the person guard the possessor against malign influences. Various formulas are employed which are supposed to coerce the Powers; these are sometimes names of ordinary objects regarded as sacred, the name of some plant or animal.[1575] Names of divine persons have special potency. The name of a god was supposed to carry with it his power, and the utterance of his name secured all that he could secure; thus, in the early Christian times the tetragrammaton YHWH (Yahweh) had absolute power against demons.
+900+. Similar efficacy attached to sacred compositions, prayers,[1576] and the like. The Mazdean petition, Honover (Ahuna-Vairya), was so employed, and in Christian circles even the Lord's Prayer. Charms or incantations often took rhythmical form--verses, couplets, or quatrains were widely used. All such methods were the product of ages of experience.[1577] They were handed down from generation to generation, often in families or classes of magicians, were modified or enlarged from time to time, and thus came at last to form a literature.
+901+. In the great civilized religions magical practice gradually assumed a tone somewhat different from that of the earliest times. It continued to be coercive toward evil Powers, but in regard to the good Powers it assumed rather to discover their modes of action. It was not anti-religious; it remained alongside of the official religious systems in friendly relations. It relied on the assistance of the good gods and not on that of the demons. There was good magic and bad magic, white magic and black magic, as these came to be called. A procedure of white magic can thus, from the point of view of religion, hardly be distinguished from prayer to a deity. The difference between the two appears to be that the magic produces abnormal or violent effects, which experience taught could not reasonably be expected from the deity. It is the old crude science brought (as the lesser divine Powers were brought) into a relation of subordination to the chief god of the community.
+902+. Elaborate magical systems are found in some of the ancient national religions. In India the Atharva-Veda, though it contains a mass of crude old material, is nevertheless recognized as one of the sacred books, standing by the side of the Rig-Veda, though of less authority and significance than that. The Atharvan was originally a priest of fire, but in this work he becomes simply a magician; the immense number of magical procedures in the book provided for all emergencies of life.[1578] The Babylonian magical formulas also go back to an early time, but they were preserved by the priests and recognized as a legitimate element in the religious practice.[1579] The old Egyptian stories introduce a number of magical proceedings, and the formulas have been preserved in treatises.[1580] Of the earliest periods of the Mazdean religion we have unfortunately no records; in the time of the decadence of the national religion, especially in the Thousand and One Nights, the fire-worshiper or Magian is commonly a wicked magician, as was natural since he belonged to a faith hostile to Islam, and the practicer of good magic is generally a Moslem.[1581] The early Greeks and Romans appear not to have been greatly interested in magical practices, though these existed.[1582] But a great outburst of magic occurred in the Græco-Roman world in the first and second centuries of our era, the magician being, however, generally not Greek or Roman, but of an inferior alien race.[1583] Among the old Hebrews we have no details of magical procedure except in the invocation of the dead;[1584] this procedure was denounced by the prophets as hostile to the worship of the national god, but it continued among the people a long time.[1585] The practice of magic existed abundantly among the early peoples of Europe, the Teutons, and others. The primacy, however, in magic belongs to the Finns and Lapps, alien races regarded as inferior in civilization.
+903+. The hold of magic on the minds of men is shown by the fact that it has persisted up to the present day. Its basis is a belief in occult powers and the conviction that man may attain to mastery over them. Certain forms of this belief, called theosophical, are held by many at the present day; it is supposed that men are capable of transcending the ordinary limitations of humanity. In general, however, the whole system of magic yielded gradually to the organized religions, the essence of which was a friendly and rational relation with the deity. Religion has organized itself in accord with the general organization of human social systems. It has seen the necessity of getting rid of force, of depending on humane feeling, cultivating simply friendly relations, attempting a unity of work, a coöperation of divine and human forces. All this has worked against magic. In addition to these tendencies the constantly growing belief in the domination of natural forces has made it impossible in civilized societies to accept the powers called magical.[1586]
+904+. To sum up: magic is a means of securing superhuman results by adopting the methods of the superhuman Powers.[1587] It may be coeval with religion proper or may have preceded it in human religious organization. In any case it has been, up to the present day, the rival of religion, though more and more driven to take a secondary place. It has collected physical facts which have served as a basis for the study of physical science and have indirectly furthered the cause of religion by leading men to recognize natural law and also by necessitating a distinction between theistic and other superhuman results.[1588] In the absence of distinct religious systems it has been a bond of social union, and to that extent has been a civilizing influence. On the other hand, it has fostered belief in a false science of sequences and thus helped to introduce confusion into thought and the conduct of life. The aim of religion has been, and is, to banish magic from the world.[1589]
DIVINATION
+905+. Divination is the science that seeks to discover the will of the supernatural Powers by means of the observation of phenomena. Men desire to learn the causes of present and past misfortunes and the story of the future, that they may know at any moment what is the best course to pursue. The underlying supposition is that these things are indicated by the appearances and movements of the various objects of the world. It is in these phenomena that the purposes of superhuman forces become visible to man; the gods, it is held, cannot but so reveal themselves (for they produce all phenomena), and man's task is to discover the laws of phenomenal revelation. The question of the motive in this revelation is not distinctly raised, but it is taken for granted that the Powers are willing to help man by guiding his uncertain footsteps; their attitude is so far friendly--they belong in feeling to the human community.[1590]
Divination has in common with magic the assumption of the unity of the world and its control by law, and the search for divine activity in the facts of life. But the two differ essentially in their aims. Divination seeks to learn the divine will in order to be guided; magic studies divine action in order to imitate it and accomplish divine results. Divination is an inquirer, and its virtue is obedience; magic is an investigator, and its virtue is achievement. Both are self-seeking, but divination is the more reverent and allies itself more easily with religion. But both tend to become corrupt and decadent, and their rôles are determined from time to time by the conditions of the communities in which they are found.[1591]
+906+. The organization of divination resembles that of magic in several respects. It comes to have its special functionaries, into whose hands all its authority falls. The divinatory power (like the magical) comes to a man sometimes as a gift of nature (that is, of a god) or in some mysterious external way, sometimes as a result of a course of training in which the significance of the various signs is learned. It is sometimes a property of a clan or a family and descends from father to son, always, however, under the condition of instruction of the young by the old. The diviner, like the magician, sometimes performs various ceremonies for the purpose of bringing himself into relation with the gods, and his utterances are frequently given in an ecstatic condition. In this condition he is said in some instances (as among the Todas[1592]) to speak a language not his own, with which in his ordinary state of mind he is unacquainted, or to utter words that are not understood either by himself or by others. Ecstasy means possession by the deity; the interpretation of the diviner's words, which, in the ecstatic condition, are the words of a spirit or a god, is sometimes left to the bystanders, or, if unintelligible to them, must be recovered by the seer himself when he returns to his normal condition.
+907+. The highest development of ecstasy is found in the prophet proper. Originally the prophet was a foreteller and acted under the inspiration of a god, a divine seizure that was allied to madness. The ravings of the savage shaman[1593] are repeated in the ravings of Cassandra and in the excited utterances and bodily exhaustion of the early Hebrew prophets.[1594] A nobler use of ecstasy is exhibited in the youth of Byblos, who rescued an unfortunate Egyptian envoy from insult and secured him honorable treatment.[1595] The more advanced thought tended to abandon the abnormal state of the diviner and make him simply a recipient of divine knowledge by the favor of a god--the gods came to choose thoughtful men instead of beasts as their intermediaries.[1596] The Hebrew prophets whose utterances have been preserved, from Amos onward, are men of insight, essentially critics of the national life, and moral watchmen; but features of the old conception of divinatory power continue for some time to attach to them.[1597]
+908+. The differentiation of functions between magician, diviner, and priest appears to have taken place at a comparatively early period, though it is probable that in the earliest times all these characters might be united in a single person. As soon as an organized religion is established the priest acquires his specific function as intermediator between men and gods, often, however, retaining the power of discovering the will of the deity.[1598] Magic, as we have seen, tends to become an unsocial and hostile thing, and the magician is in later times punished or discountenanced by public opinion. The diviner, on the other hand, has generally retained possession of his public for the reason that he is in sympathy with the gods of the community and his work is held to be wholly friendly. In all stages of religious development, except the very highest, he has been recognized by public opinion and by law as a part of the religious constitution of society and has often attained great civil and political power.[1599] Among civilized peoples he comes to be a man of learning, acquainted with many things besides the mere signs of the will of the gods.
+909+. Divinatory signs may be grouped in various classes according as they belong to the outer world or to men's inward experiences, and according as they present themselves without or with preparation by man. Outward signs in ordinary occurrences which, so far as human initiative is concerned, are accidental may be called, for convenience, "omens." Uncommon occurrences may be called, if they appear in the forms of men and animals, "prodigies," and if they are seen in the physical world, "portents." These designations are arbitrary, and sometimes two or more of them may be appropriate for the same event. Inward signs are dreams, revelations in the ecstatic state, and prophetic inspirations.[1600] We may begin with divination from the observation of external objects, and consider first such as are accidental (omens, prodigies, portents).
+910+. Omens, prodigies, and portents are to be regarded as the product of ages of experience. The observations of early men seem to them to show that certain appearances are followed by certain events, and the details of experience, handed down and interpreted by successive generations, are in the course of time sifted, systematized, and formulated. In savage and half-civilized communities divinatory signs are usually simple, drawn from appearances of familiar objects and occurrences. They become more complicated in civilized times--they are mingled with elaborate astrological ideas. Divination becomes a science for the practice of which a technical education is required. Belief in omens and other signs survives among the highest civilized peoples long after the conceptions on which they rest have been abandoned. The origin of signs among savage peoples may often be traced with more or less probability; in the case of such as survive in periods of high culture the origin is necessarily obscured by the lapse of time and can be surmised only by comparison with earlier conceptions.
The belief in such signs may be traced over a great part of the world. It is found among the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hindus, Chinese, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and at a later time among the Celtic, Slavic, and Teutonic peoples.[1601] At the present day it occurs most highly developed in Polynesia, Northern Africa, Southern India, and Central Asia; it is relatively unimportant in Western and Central Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. One difference between divination and magic thus appears to be that the latter is vigorous in savage communities that pay little attention to the former. Further collections of facts may require a modification of this statement; but, in general, it would seem that an organization of signs, demanding, as it does, orderly reflection on phenomena, is proper to communities that have advanced beyond the hunting and nomadic stages. For the rest, there are few objects or occurrences that have not been regarded at some time by some people as indications of divine will in respect to present, past, or future events.
+911+. A fair illustration of the early belief in omens is afforded by the divinatory system that prevails in Samoa and the neighboring group of islands.[1602] It appears that all omens are derived either from the movements of animals that are regarded as incarnations of deities,[1603] or from phenomena that are held to be produced immediately by deities. The flight of owls, bats, or rails, according to its direction, indicates the result of a battle or a war; the howling of a dog is a sign of coming misfortune; if a centipede crawls on the top of a mat it is a good omen, if on the bottom of a mat it is bad; it is unfortunate when a lizard crosses one's path; if a basket be found turned upside down in a road, this is a sign of evil; the way in which sacred stones fall to the ground is an indication of the future. The animals mentioned above (and there are many other such) are all regarded as incarnations of deities. So as to portents: loud thunder, taken to be the voice of the great god Tangaloa, is a good sign; the significance of lightning (which also is sent by the god) depends upon the direction taken by the flash. An eclipse is regarded as a presage of death. A similar system of interpretation of signs is found elsewhere. The Masai and the Nandi draw omens from the movements of birds.[1604] In Ashantiland the cry of the owl means death.[1605] When in Australia the track of an insect is believed to point toward the abode of the sorcerer by whom a man has been done to death, the conception is probably the same. The modern Afghans hold that a high wind that continues three days is a sign that a murder has been committed.[1606] Examples from Brazil, Borneo, New Zealand, Old Calabar and Tatarland are given by Tylor.[1607] In the early Hebrew history it appears that a rustling in trees was looked on as a sign of divine intervention.[1608]
+912+. In ancient Babylonia and Assyria an elaborate system of interpretation of ordinary occurrences prevailed--the movements and appearances of various species of birds, of bulls, of dogs of all colors are noted, with minute interpretations.[1609] The Greeks recognized omens in the acts of various animals, especially in the flight and cries of birds; so important were these last that the words for 'bird' came to be employed for 'omens from birds' and even simply for 'omens';[1610] Aristophanes, laughing at the Athenians, declares that they called every mantic sign 'bird'.[1611] Skepticism, however, appears in Hector's passionate rejection of the signs of birds and his declaration that the best omen is to fight for one's country.[1612] A similar mantic prominence of birds appears in ancient Rome where the terms for the observation of birds (auspicium, augurium) came to signify 'omens' in general. The preëminence thus accorded to birds was due perhaps to the fact that they move in a region above the earth, the larger species (οιωνός) seeking the sky near the abode of the gods, as well as to the frequency and variety of their actions.[1613] The feeling of direct contact with the deity appears in the significance attached to the movements of a sacrificial animal: if it approached the altar willingly, this, showing accord with the deity, was a good omen, and unwillingness was a bad omen.[1614] Among the later Romans the entrance of a strange black dog into a house, the falling of a snake through the opening in the roof, the crowing of a hen were unfavorable signs which prevented the immediate undertaking of any new affair;[1615] these were all unusual and therefore uncanny occurrences. Some of the animals that furnish omens are totems, and in such cases the totemic significance coalesces with that of the omen; the animal that appears to the young Sioux candidate as his manitu has both characters--it is the sign of divine acceptance and the embodiment of the divine patron.[1616]
+913+. Prodigies connected with the birth of children are numerous. The complete or incomplete character of the infant's body, various marks and colors, and the number produced at a birth have been carefully noted by many peoples. The birth of twins seems to have been more commonly regarded in savage and half-civilized communities either as a presage of misfortune (as being unusual and mysterious) or as a sign of conjugal unfaithfulness (as indicating two fathers, one of whom might be a god). Interpretations of births are given in Babylonian records.[1617] Everywhere monstrous births, misshapen forms, and abnormal colors in the bodies of men and beasts have been regarded as indications of divine displeasure.
+914+. That the stars early attracted the attention of man is shown by the fact that constellations are recognized in some lower tribes--for example, in the New Hebrides Islands, among the Todas, the Masai, the Nandi, and elsewhere.[1618] Since all heavenly bodies were regarded originally as divine, and later as controlled by divine beings, sometimes also as the abodes of the dead or as the souls of the dead, it was natural that astral movements should be looked on as giving signs of the will of the gods. Astronomy appears to have been pursued in the first instance not from interest in the natural laws governing the movements of sun, moon, and stars, but from belief in their divinatory significance. How far this study was carried on all over the ancient world we have no means of knowing; but, as far as the records go, it was the Babylonians that first reduced astral divination to the form of a science,[1619] and it is probable that from them it spread over Western Asia and India, and perhaps into Europe. Babylonian and Assyrian documents contain many accurate statements of the appearances of heavenly bodies; and in the third or second century B.C., as we learn from the Book of Daniel, the term 'Chaldean' was synonymous with 'magician.' While astronomy was pursued by the Egyptians with great success, whereby they made a notable construction of the calendar, they seem not to have cultivated astrology, though they associated certain stars with certain gods and with lucky or unlucky days.[1620]
+915+. Of all divinatory methods astrology has played the greatest rôle in human history, and is still believed in and studied by not a few persons. It derived its prominence originally, no doubt, from the splendor and mystery of the sidereal heavens; the identification (by the Babylonians) of certain planets with certain deities gave it more definite shape. It was necessarily a learned pursuit, and, falling naturally into the hands of priestly bodies, was developed by them in accordance with the needs of the situation. Rules of interpretation were established that became more and more specific. In the early period of astrology it was concerning matters of public interest that information was sought--crops, wars, and the fortunes of the king as the head of the nation.[1621] At a later time, but before the beginning of our era, in accordance with the growth of ethical individualism, the stars were interrogated for the destinies of private individuals;[1622] the aspect of the heavens at the moment of birth, the horoscope, announced the fate of the nascent man.[1623]
In the hands of the Chaldeans astrology remained exclusively or largely a science of omens. An advance toward a higher conception, however, was made by their identification of certain planets with certain gods,[1624] whereby the regularity and certainty of movement of the astral world were carried over to the world of divine Powers. When, in the centuries just preceding and following the beginning of our era, Chaldean astrology was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, it was organized by them in accordance with their philosophy, and it entered into alliance with all the higher religious tendencies of the period. In the unchangeableness of stellar movements the Stoics saw a principle substantially identical with their doctrine of fate. Along various lines (in Judaism and Christianity, and in the mysteries of Mithra and Isis) men were moving toward the conception of a single supreme ruler of the world, and astrology fell into line with this movement. The starry universe was held to be the controller of human life, worthy of worship, and able to call forth emotion. Thus astrology became a religion[1625]--it was adopted by learned and unlearned, its ethical and spiritual quality being determined by the character and thought of the various groups that professed it. For some centuries it was a religious power in the world; as a religious system it gave way gradually to more definite constructions, but it survived as a science long after it had ceased to be believed in as a life-giving faith.
The persistence of faith in it as a science is an additional illustration of men's demand for visible signs of the intervention of the deity in human affairs;[1626] as often as certain supposed embodiments of the supernatural are discarded, others are taken up. The earlier philosophical views of the relation of the heavenly bodies to human life are now generally abandoned, and such belief in this relation as now exists has no scientific basis, but is founded on vague desire.
In savage and in civilized times eclipses, comets, the appearance of a new star, and earthquakes have been regarded as indications of the attitude of the deity--sometimes favorable, sometimes unfavorable.
+916+. The words and actions of men and their normal peculiarities of bodily form have furnished comparatively few divinatory signs, the reason being, probably, that in early times animals and other nonhuman things arrested the attention of observers more forcibly, while in later times such acts and forms were more readily explained from natural conditions and laws. The palpitation of the eye, which seems sometimes to uneducated man to be produced by an external force, has been taken as a presage of misfortune. A burning sensation in the ear is still believed by some persons to be a sign that one is being talked about; in early stages of culture the sensation was regarded as a warning sent by the guardian spirit or some other superhuman being. Sneezing was once looked on as a happy omen: when Telemachus gave a resounding sneeze Penelope interpreted it as a sign that news of his father was at hand.[1627] An act performed without ulterior purpose may be taken to symbolize some sort of fortune. When the Calif Omar sent an embassy to the Persian King Yezdegird summoning him to embrace Islam, the angry king commanded that a clod of earth should be brought and that the ambassadors should bear it out of the city, which they accordingly did; and this act was taken both by Arabs and by Persians as a presage of Moslem victory--the invaders had a portion of Persian soil.[1628] An element of magic, however, may have entered into this conviction; the bit of soil was supposed, perhaps, to carry with it the whole land. A chance word has often been seized on as an indication of the future, or a proper name taken as a presage.
+917+. The belief in the sacredness or divinity of the human body has led to the search for divinatory signs in its parts. But it is only the hand that has been extensively employed in this way. The hand has offered itself as most available for divination, partly, perhaps, because of the variety and importance of its functions, partly because of the variety of lines it shows and the ease with which it may be examined. Chiromancy, or palmistry, has been developed into a science and has maintained itself to the present day; but it has largely lost its divinatory significance and has become a study of character, which is supposed to be indicated by the lines of the hand. In its divinatory rôle it has often been connected with astrology.
+918+. The preceding examples deal with occurrences that present themselves without human initiation. In certain cases the materials for divination are arranged by men themselves. In such methods there is always an appeal to the deity, a demand that a god shall intervene and indicate his will under the conditions prepared by men, the assumption being that the god has prepared the event or thing in question, and that, when properly approached, he will be disposed to give his worshipers the assistance desired. The casting of lots and similar random procedures have been common methods of divination the world over. The African Kafir diviner detects criminals by the fall of small objects used as dice. The Ashanti discover future events by the figures formed when palm wine is thrown on the ground, and from the nature of the numbers, whether even or odd, when one lets fall a handful of nuts. In a dispute the Yoruban priest holds in his hand a number of grass stalks, one of which is bent, and the person who draws the bent stalk is adjudged to be in fault.[1629] The Hebrews had the official use of objects called "urim and thummim" (terms whose meaning is unknown to us), which were probably small cubes, to each of which was somehow attached an answer "yes" or "no," or the name of a person. Thus, when David inquired whether he was to attack the Philistines, the answer seems to have been "yes."[1630] When it was a question who had violated the taboo announced by Saul, the urim and thummim first decided that it was not the people but the royal family; and then, as between Saul and Jonathan, that it was the latter who was guilty.[1631] According to the Book of Ezekiel the Chaldean King Nebuchadrezzar drew lots by arrows to determine what road he should take in a campaign.[1632] The old Arabs employed a species of divination by arrows, which, when thrown down, by their position indicated the will of the gods; and in the division of the flesh of a beast slaughtered by a clan or group, the portions to be assigned to various persons were determined by the drawing of arrows.[1633] Divination by lot was also largely employed by the Greeks and the Romans.[1634] The method called "sortes vergilianae" is still in vogue; it was and is a custom among pious persons, Christian or Moslem, to learn the course that they are to take in an emergency by opening a Bible or a copy of the Koran at random and accepting the first words on which the eye falls as an indication of the divine will, the deity being supposed to direct the eye.[1635]
+919+. One of the commonest and most important methods of divination in antiquity was the examination of the entrails of animals (haruspication). Of this system there are a few examples among savage peoples,[1636] but it has attained special significance only among the great civilized nations and especially among the Babylonians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks and Romans. The slaughtered animal was generally held to be itself sacred or divine, and, as it was offered to the deity, it was a natural belief that the god would indicate his will by the character of the inward parts, which were supposed to be particularly connected with the life of the animal. Of these animal parts the liver was regarded as the most important. The liver was for the Babylonians the special seat of thought, whether from its position or its size or from some other consideration we have no means of knowing. The explanation of the form and appearance of the liver became itself a separate science, and this science was developed with extraordinary minuteness by the Babylonians. The whole structure of the liver, together with the gall, bladder, and the ducts, was analyzed, and to every part, every line, and every difference of appearance a separate significance was assigned. Thus hepatoscopy, demanding long training and influencing political action (and, doubtless, calling for ingenuity and tact in interpretations), assumed great importance in Babylonia and Assyria; and it was hardly less important among the Etruscans, the Greeks, and the Romans.[1637] It is held by some scholars that Babylonia was the original home of the developed science, whence it passed into Greece and Italy.[1638] It may be recognized in Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., and there is no improbability in the supposition that Babylonian influence was felt in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe; but, in view of the number of possibly independent centers of culture in this region in ancient times and the paucity of data, the question may be left open.
+920+. Other parts of the animal bodies also were employed in divination. Tylor[1639] mentions the examination of the bones of the porcupine among North American Indians, the color giving indications as to the success of hunting expeditions. The shoulder blade, when put into the fire, showed by splits in it various kinds of fortune. The heart was of less significance in ancient thought than the liver, it being of less size, and its function in the circulation of the blood not being known. The brain also did not come, until a comparatively late period, to be regarded as the seat of the intellect.[1640]
+921+. From these external signs we may now pass to consider divinatory facts derived from men's inward experience.
Dreams. The importance attached all over the world to dreams as presages is a familiar fact. It would appear that among savage peoples a dream is regarded as representing an historical fact, the actual perception of an occurrence or a situation. It is believed that the mysterious inward thing, the soul, endowed with peculiar power, is capable, during sleep, of leaving the body and wandering to and fro;[1641] why, then, in its journeys, should it not be able to see the plans of friends and enemies, and in general to observe the course of events? We do not know the nature of savage logic in dealing with these visions of the night, but some such line of reasoning as this, it seems probable, is in their minds. The soul, they hold, is an entity, possessing intellectual powers like those of the ordinary living man--it sees certain things, and its knowledge becomes the possession of the man when he awakes. Thus the soul in dreams is a watchman, on the lookout for what may help or harm the man. Perhaps there is, even in low tribes, a vague feeling that it has extraordinary powers of perception; whether such a feeling, if it exists, is connected with a belief that, during sleep, the soul is freed from the limitations of the everyday corporeal man we are not able with our present data to say.[1642] Savages often follow the suggestions made in dreams[1643] (particularly when they are vivid) and are confirmed in their faith by occasional fulfillments of predictions; the mind, working during sleep on the observations made by day, may sometimes fall on situations that afterwards really appear, and a few such realizations are sufficient to establish a rule or creed.
+922+. This naïve conception of dreams as products of the soul's perception of realities survives to a greater or less extent among higher tribes and nations, but finally gives way, when some sort of theistic construction is reached, to the view that they are sent immediately by deities. An approach to this view appears in North America when, for example, a Pawnee Indian sees in a dream some being who gives him important information, though in the folk-tales nothing is said of the source of the dream.[1644] A step in advance appears in the belief of the Ashanti, according to which the existence of a tutelary family deity is indicated in a dream;[1645] it is, however, not clear whether or not they hold that the tutelary deity has himself suggested the dream. In the higher religions a dream is often sent by a patron deity as a prediction or for guidance in a coming emergency. Doubtless it was only in the case of specially distinct dreams and such as related to important matters that attention was paid to them--the deity intervened only in affairs that called for his special direction. Examples are numerous in the history of the great nations of antiquity. The Egyptian King Merneptah in a time of great danger had a dream in which the god Ptah appeared to him and bade him banish fear;[1646] and the Hebrew Yahweh is represented as having sent dreams to a king of Egypt (probably in the interests of the Hebrews) to warn him of a coming famine.[1647] The Assyrian Ashurbanipal was favored with special communications from Ishtar, and the god Ashur in a dream ordered Gyges, King of Lydia, to submit to the Assyrian king.[1648] In some documents of the Pentateuch Yahweh regularly announces his will in dreams to both Hebrews and non-Hebrews;[1649] and a Hebrew writer of a later time (the third or second century B.C.) represents the God of Israel as giving Nebuchadrezzar an outline of the history of the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Western Asia and Greece.[1650] A god might employ a dream for a less worthy purpose: Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon to mislead him and thus direct the issue of the war.[1651] So important for life did the Greeks conceive the dream to be that, as it would seem, they personified it.[1652]
Incubation. Divine direction by dreams was not always left to chance. The custom arose of sleeping near a shrine (engkoimesis, incubation) where, doubtless, after appropriate ritual preparation the god was expected to signify his will in a dream (his generally friendly feeling was assumed and the dream would be of the nature of an answer to prayer). This was one of the means employed by Saul when he desired to learn what would be the issue of the impending battle with the Philistines.[1653] In Greece, and later in Italy, the most famous shrine of incubation was that of Asklepios (Aesculapius), which was widely resorted to and came to exert a good moral influence.[1654] The renown of the shrine was doubtless increased by the fact that Asklepios was a god of healing.[1655]
+923+. As a dream was often obscure the services of a trained interpreter became necessary in order that the dream might be effective. The interpreters were magicians, priests, or sages[1656]--men in intimate association with deities and acquainted with their modes and vehicles of revelation;[1657] dreams thus became equivalent to oracular responses. An interpreter would become famous in proportion to the number of fulfillments of his interpretations, and his god would share in the glory of his renown.[1658] Of the particular conditions through which certain men and certain shrines attained special fame we have few details.
Oneiromancy, in unorganized form, was studied in very early periods of religious life. It shared in the general advance of thought, and in the course of time a traditional science of the explanation of dreams arose. There were records of experiences, particularly of notable fulfillments, and it became possible to make lists of dreams with interpretations;[1659] these were written down and passed on from generation to generation, increasing in volume as they went. Such manuals have played no inconsiderable part in the life of the people.[1660]
+924+. Ordeals. Divination has played an important part in civil life as a means of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person. From very early times ordeals of various sorts have been devised for securing a judicial opinion when ordinary means of investigation have failed. One of the simplest methods is to require an accused person to swear that he is innocent, the belief being that the god will avenge false swearing with immediate and visible punishment.[1661] This method is employed by the Ashanti:[1662] the accused is required to drink a certain decoction; if he is made sick by it this is proof of his innocence;[1663] and if there be a question between two men, and one after drinking is made sick, the other is regarded as guilty, and executed. On the Lower Congo the accused swallows a pill made of a bark said to be poisonous; if he soon vomits it he is declared innocent, if not, he is adjudged guilty.[1664] A similar procedure was employed in Samoa:[1665] standing in the presence of representatives of the village god, the suspected person laying his hand on the object wishes that if he is guilty he may speedily die. Among the Hill people of Ceylon also this custom exists. Ordeals in Loango are described by Purchas.[1666]
+925+. Among the ancient nations the earliest example of an ordeal occurs in the code of Hammurabi (about 2000 B.C.). Here the accused is thrown into the sacred water, and if not drowned is declared innocent; he is protected by the deity.[1667] The same principle appears in the old Hebrew ordeal: when a woman was accused of unfaithfulness to her husband the accused was made to drink sacred water; if she was innocent no bad consequences followed; if she was guilty she died.[1668] In India, where various tests by fire, water, and food have been and are employed, the decision is sometimes as in the Hebrew procedure; sometimes (when the accused is thrown into the water) the principle (found elsewhere abundantly) is recognized that it is the innocent person that suffers and the guilty that is uninjured.[1669] The ordeal as a civil process continued in Europe until the Middle Ages. In the submersion in water of a woman suspected of being a witch the principle of decision was the same as is now practiced in Ashantiland and India--if the woman was drowned it was a sign that she was innocent, but if she rose unharmed from the water she was adjudged guilty and was put to death.[1670]
+926+. The imprecation is similar to the ordeal. A man invokes the curse of the deity on his enemy, and it is supposed that such curse will bring its punishment.[1671] A curse was regarded as an objective thing, which reached its object quite independently of guilt or innocence.[1672] In Morocco a conditional curse is pronounced and is supposed to become effective if the wrong complained of is not righted.[1673] These ordeals and imprecations were sometimes effective in fixing guilt; the dread of incurring the wrath of the deity sometimes forced a guilty person to confess, or his dread of the punishment produced signs of guilt. On the other hand, it is probable that just as often innocent persons were convicted and punished through such tests.
With all such systems of signs may be compared the Chinese quasi-science called Fung-Shui ('Wind and Water'), which determines proper sites for graves and for temples and other buildings by observations of the influences of the sky (moisture, warmth, wind, thunder), of waters and hills, and of the earth, and by the study of various magical combinations. Thus, it is held, it is possible in important undertakings to obtain the favor and support of the good Powers of the world. The site of a grave, affecting the future of the dead, is of especial significance, and the Fung-Shui interpreters, regularly trained men, levy what contributions they please from surviving relatives, sometimes purposely prolonging their investigations at a ruinous cost to the family of the deceased.[1674] The system sprang from the Chinese conception of heaven and earth as the controlling Powers of the world; but, neglecting the higher side of this conception, it has sunk into a fraudulent trade.[1675]
+927+. Oracles. As men went to the tents or palaces of chiefs or kings for guidance in ordinary matters, so they went to the dwelling places of superhuman Powers for direction in matters that were beyond human ken. Such appeal to divine or quasi-divine beings began early in religious history. In Borneo and the islands of Torres Straits the abodes of skulls are places from which responses are obtained;[1676] speaking heads are found there and elsewhere. The Sunthals of West Bengal have the ghost of a specially revered ancestor as a dispenser of superhuman knowledge.[1677] When local gods arose every local shrine, it is probable, contained an oracle.[1678] The shrines of the great gods naturally acquired special prominence, their oracles were consulted by kings and other leaders on affairs of importance, and thus came to exert a great influence on the course of events.[1679] The stars also, though they had no earthly habitations, were consulted through their interpreters. Such astrological oracles, as used by men like Posidonius, the teacher of Cicero, might be morally inspiring; but when, at a later time, the consultation of heavenly bodies fell into the hands of wandering "Chaldeans" (who might be of any nation) it became a system of charlatanry, and thus morally debasing.[1680]
The greater nations of antiquity differed considerably among themselves in regard to the part played in their lives by oracles. In general, the organization of oracular shrines grew in proportion to the rise of manlike gods--deities whose relation to men was socially intimate. In Egypt such shrines were not of prime importance;[1681] the functions of the gods were mainly governmental--the most human of them, Osiris, became an ethical judge rather than a personal friend. The pre-Mohammedan Arabs did not create great gods, and their resort to local divinities was commonly in order to ask whether or not a proposed course of action was desirable; the answer was "yes" or "no."[1682] The famous warrior and poet, Imru'l-Kais, desiring to go to war to avenge his father's death, received at a shrine three times a negative answer, whereupon, hurling abusive epithets at the god, he exclaimed, "If it were your father, you would not say 'no.'" Such independence was probably rare; most men would have accepted the divine decision. The answer of the Hebrew oracle was, as among the Arabs, "yes" or "no" (by urim and thummim)--the gods were remote, and the oracle, whose minister was a priest, gradually yielded to the prophet, the human interpreter of the deity.[1683] The Philistines appear to have had well-organized oracles; when King Ahaziah was sick he sent to inquire of Baalzebub, god of Ekron, whether or not he should recover.[1684] Many Babylonian and Assyrian deities gave oracular responses;[1685] it is not known whether the shrines were resorted to by the people at large, and their importance was probably diminished by the great rôle played by the priestly interpretation of omens, whereby the will of the gods was held to be clearly revealed. The Romans under the republic were practically independent of oracles at shrines: in household affairs they had a family god for every department and every situation, and for State matters they found the Sibylline oracles sufficient.[1686] Later, with the widening of the horizon of religion, the resort to Greek and other oracular shrines became general--a departure from the old Roman constitution.[1687] The greatest development of oracular service took place in Greece. The Greek gods, with their anthropomorphically emotional characters, entered intimately and sympathetically into human life, communal and individual. The great shrines of Zeus at Dodona and Apollo at Delphi were centers of Hellenistic religious life, and there were others of less importance.[1688] Zeus, as head of the pantheon, naturally took a distinguished place as patron of oracles; and Apollo's relation to music and inspiration may account in part for the preëminence of his oracular shrine. In many cases, however, the grounds of the choice of a particular deity as oracle-giver escape us.
The human demand for divine guidance long maintained the influence of oracles everywhere, and it is not improbable that in general they furthered what was good religiously and socially. They were bonds of union between communities, and their authoritative rôle would naturally force on them a certain sense of responsibility. As to the character of the mouthpieces of the gods and the material on which they based their answers to questions we have not the means of forming a definite opinion. There can be little doubt that the official persons were sometimes sincere in the belief that they were inspired--such is the testimony of observers for both savage and civilized communities--and many modern instances bear out this view. On the other hand, there is reason to suppose that pretense and fraud often crept into the administration of the oracles. When the questions were known beforehand the responses may have been based on information that came from various quarters and on insight into the particular situation about which the inquiry was made. When the questions were not known beforehand we are in the dark as to the source of the answers. Sometimes, doubtless, they were happy or unhappy guesses; sometimes they were enigmatical or ambiguous in form, so that they could be made to agree with the events that actually occurred. In most cases the authorities would know how to explain the issue in such a way as to maintain the credit of the oracle. The best-known and the most impressive of the utterers of oracles is the priestess of Apollo at Delphi, the Pythia. She occupied a commanding position in the Hellenic world (and beyond it), such as was enjoyed by few persons of the time.[1689] She was invested with special sanctity as the dispenser of divine guidance to the Western world (to nations and individuals). It was required of her that she be morally and ceremonially pure, and she had to undergo a special preparation for the delivery of her message. The manner of her revelation did not differ from that of similar officials in noncivilized communities--she spoke in a condition of ecstasy; she is the best representative of the intimate union of the diviner and a great god, a union that tended to give dignity and wisdom as well as authority to the oracular utterance.[1690] She was, thus, in the best position for exerting a good influence on the world of her time. How far the oracles of Apollo and other deities furthered the best interests of religion it may be difficult to say--the data for an exact answer are lacking. Socially they were useful in maintaining a certain unity among peoples, and they may sometimes have upheld justice and given judicious advice, but they were always exposed to the temptation of fraud.
Necromancy. While in ancient times the dead were everywhere placated by gifts and were sometimes worshiped, the consultation of them for guidance seems to have been relatively infrequent. The attitude of existing lower tribes toward ghosts varies in different places,[1691] but the predominant feeling seems to be fear; these tribes have not accomplished that social union between themselves and the departed without which, as it appears, the living do not feel free to apply to the latter for information concerning things past, present, and future.[1692] Savage and half-civilized peoples depend for such information on divination by means of common phenomena (omens) and on the offices of magicians and soothsayers, and references in published reports to necromantic usages among them are rare and vague. But among civilized peoples also application to the dead is not as frequent as might be expected; there is still fear of ghosts, and the part assigned in early times to spirits in the administration of human life has been given over to gods--family divinities and the great oracular deities supply the information that men need. There are few signs of dependence on necromancy in China, India, Persia, and Rome. The Babylonian mythical hero Gilgamesh procures (through the aid of an Underworld god) an interview with his dead friend Eabani in order to learn the nature of the life below;[1693] this story points, perhaps, to necromantic usages, but in the extant literature there are no details of such usages. Application to the dead is certified for the old Hebrews not only by the story of Saul's consultation of Samuel (which, though a folk-story, may be taken to prove a popular custom) but by a prophetic passage condemning the practice.[1694] Teraphim were employed, probably, for divination, but there is no proof that they were connected with necromancy.[1695] After the sixth century B.C. we hear nothing of consultation of the dead by the pre-Christian Jews. Among the Greeks also such consultation seems not to have enjoyed a high degree of favor. There were oracles of the dead (of heroes and others), but these were inferior in importance to the oracles of the great gods[1696] and gradually ceased to be resorted to. Where the practice of incubation existed, answers to inquiries were sometimes, doubtless, held to come from the dead, but more commonly it was a god that supplied the desired information.
The stages in the history of necromantic practice follow the lines of growth of psychical and theistic beliefs. There was first the era of spirits when men were doubtful of the friendliness of ghosts, and held it safer in general to trust to soothsayers for guidance in life. Then, when the gods took distinct shape, they largely displaced ghosts as dispensers of knowledge of the future, and these latter, standing outside of and in rivalry with the circle of State deities, could be approached only in secret--necromancy became illicit and its influence was crippled. And when, finally, in the earlier centuries of our era, the old gods disappeared, the rise of monotheistic belief was accompanied by a transformation of the conception of the future of the soul; it was to be no longer the inert earthly thing of the old theories but instinct with a high life that fitted it to be the companion of divine beings and the sharer of their knowledge and their ideals.[1697] This conception led to the belief in the possibility of a nonmagical friendly intercourse with the departed, who, it was assumed, would be willing to impart their knowledge to their brethren on earth. Saints have thus been appealed to, and it has been attempted in recent times to enter into communication with departed kin and other friends.
+928+. The office of diviner, though it has always been an influential one, has followed in its development the general course of social organization, becoming more and more specialized and defined. In the simplest religions the positions of magician and diviner are frequently united in one person. In Greenland the Angekok, acting as the interpreter or mouthpiece of a supernatural being from whom men learn how they may be fortunate, foretells the condition of the weather and the fortunes of fishing.[1698] A similar combination of the offices is found among the Ainu, and apparently among the Cakchiquels, among whom the divining function is said to have related particularly to war.[1699]
+929+. There was, however, as is remarked above, a tendency to invest the priest with the function of divination. The Arabian kahin was a soothsayer, the Hebrew kohen was a priest.[1700] The Yorubans have a special god of divination whose priest is the soothsayer of the community. In Ashantiland priests and priestesses, who are exceedingly influential and powerful, owe a great deal of their importance to their ability to explain signs and omens, especially to discover guilt and to foretell events.[1701] In the elaborate divinatory ceremonies of the Ahoms of Southeastern Asia, the conductors, who are highly considered in the community, are priests; these people are partly Hinduized, but probably retain much of their ancient religious forms.[1702] A noteworthy specialization of functions is found among the Todas of Southern India, who distinguish the diviner from the magician, the prophet, and the dairyman. The diviner is inspired by a god, gives his utterances in an ecstatic state, and for the most part limits himself to the explanation of the origin of misfortunes.[1703] It would be a matter of interest to trace, if it were possible, a history of this specialization, but the early fortunes of the Toda religion are without records and can only be surmised. In ancient Gaul the diviner, it is said, was distinguished from the priest and the prophet.[1704] Where divination is the duty of the priestly body, there is sometimes a differentiation within this body, some persons devoting themselves specifically to soothsaying; so among the Babylonians, where this function was most important.[1705]
+930+. Among the old Hebrews the soothsaying function is connected not only with priests but also with prophets.[1706] The priest was the official diviner, employing the urim and thummim. Prophets and dreamers are mentioned together as persons of the same class and as sometimes employing their arts for purposes contrary to the national religion; various classes of diviners are mentioned as existing among the Israelites in the seventh century B.C., but the distinctions between them are not given.[1707] From a statement in Isaiah ii, 6, it may perhaps be inferred that some form of divination was imported into Israel in the eighth century or earlier from the more developed Philistines and from the countries east of the Jordan;[1708] and the passage just referred to in Deuteronomy probably reveals Assyrian influence. While the Egyptian documents have much to say of magic, they give little information with regard to the existence of a class of diviners; but it appears, according to a Hebrew writer,[1709] that the art of divination might belong to any prominent person--Joseph is represented as divining from a cup.
+931+. The greatest development of the office of the diviner in ancient times was found among the Greeks and Romans.[1710] The Greek word mantis appears to have been a general term for any person, male or female, who had the power of perceiving the will of the gods. The early distinction between the mantis and the prophetes is not clear. Plato, indeed, distinguishes sharply between the two terms:[1711] the mantis, he says, while in an ecstatic state cannot understand his own utterances, and it is, therefore, the custom to appoint a prophetes who shall interpret for him; some persons, he adds, give the name mantis to this interpreter, but he is only a prophetes. We find, however, that the terms are frequently used interchangeably; thus the Pythia is called both mantis and prophetis. Whatever may have been the original sense of these terms, the office of diviner in Greece was in the main separate from that of priest. It is found attached to families and was hereditary. It was recognized by the State from an early time and became more and more influential. According to Xenophon Socrates believed in and approved divination.[1712] Plato held that it was a gift of the gods, and that official persons so gifted were to be held in high esteem.
+932+. In Rome, in accordance with the genius of the nation, soothsaying was at a comparatively early period organized and taken in charge by the State. There were colleges of augurs,[1713] standing in various relations to political and social life, having their heads (chief augurs)--thus in their organization similar to the priesthood, but standing quite apart from this. The same sort of organization was established in the Etruscan office of haruspex[1714] when this was introduced into Rome. The members of these colleges were at first Etruscans and, as such, looked down on; but gradually Roman youth of good family and education were trained for the duty, and in the time of the Emperor Claudius the social difference between augurs and haruspices seems to have been almost eliminated.[1715]
+933+. Sibyls. In the old Græco-Roman world inspired women played a great rôle.[1716] The belief in such personages goes back to the old conception of the possession of human beings by a supernatural being, which, as we have seen, was common in early forms of religion. This idea assumed various shapes in Greece, and in the course of time the inspired women were connected with various deities. In the Dionysus cult the orgiastic rites (in which women took a chief part) seem to have grown up from old agricultural ceremonies in which the spirit or god of vegetation was invoked to give his aid. Such ceremonies naturally coalesced here as elsewhere with the license of popular festivities. The legends connected with the Dionysus cult introduced savage features into the rites, as, for example, in the story of Pentheus.[1717] But whatever may have been the case in Thrace, whence the cult came to Greece, it was not so in historical times in Greece, where the celebrations were controlled by the State. These exhibit then only the natural frenzy of excited crowds without the element of divination.
+934+. The development of the rôle of women as representatives of deities is illustrated by the character of the priestesses of oracular shrines.[1718] These, like the Dionysiac devotees, are seized and possessed by the god, and speak in a state of frenzy. But their frenzy is controlled by civilized conditions. It exists only as a preparation for divination; it is the movement of the god in them laboring to express himself, and his expression is couched in intelligible human language. The priestess is a part of an organized and humanized cult and, as such, represents to a certain extent the ideas of a civilized society. The Dionysiac woman yields to an excess of animal excitement, without thought for society; the priestess feels herself responsible to society. A similar progress in civilized feeling appears among the old Hebrews; the incoherency of the earlier prophets[1719] gives way to the thoughtful discourses of the ethical leaders.[1720] The manner and the expression of revelation always conform to existing social usages.
+935+. Of a still different character is the figure of the Sibyl, created by the Greeks and adopted by the Romans.[1721] She, too, is possessed by a god and sometimes, at least, raves in ecstasy; but she does not officiate at a shrine and is not controlled by any official body. She dwells in a cave or a grotto, has her life in the open air, and gives her answers on the leaves of the forest. She represents the divine voices that are heard by early men everywhere in the world; in the myth, when she displeases Apollo she is condemned to fade finally, after a long life, into a voice.[1722] She is not, like the Pythia, an actual human being--she is never seen except in legends and myths. She is a creature of Greek imagination, the embodiment of all the divine suggestions that come to man from the mysterious sounds around him.
+936+. The historical origin of the fully developed figure of the Sibyl is obscure.[1723] In the literature she appears first in the sixth century B.C. along with the Pythia, but she was then thought of as well established and ancient. She is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod, but their silence is not proof positive that the conception of the character did not exist in their time; they may have had no occasion to mention her, or the figure may have been so vague and unimportant as not to call for special mention. For such a figure it is natural to assume a long development, the beginnings of which are, of course, enveloped in obscurity. However this may be, the Sibyl appears to have received full form under the religious impulse of post-Homeric times, under conditions the details of which are not known to us.
+937+. In the scant notices of the figure that have been preserved the indications are that there was originally only one Sibyl--she was the mythical embodiment of divine revelation, as the muse was the embodiment of intellectual inspiration. At a later time many sibyls came into being; Varro reckons ten and other authors give other numbers. Apparently a process of local differentiation went on; when the idea of the revealer was once established and the historical beginnings of the figure were unknown, many a place would be ambitious to have so noble a figure domiciled in its midst. One line of tradition referred the original Sibyl to the Ionian Erythræ, and when the Sibylline Books were burned in the year 83 B.C., it was to Erythræ that the Romans sent to make a new collection of oracles. Whatever the original home of the figure, one of the most famous of the Sibyls was she of Cumæ.[1724] She was regarded as being very old, and she was probably a permanent diviner of that place. It was from Cumæ, according to the legend, that the Sibylline Books came to Rome. The story of how they were first offered to King Tarquinius Priscus, who refused to pay the price, how three of them were destroyed and then three more, and how finally the required price was paid for the remaining three, points to a belief that the material of the oracles had once been larger than that which came to Rome. There is also the assertion that the utterances of the Sibyl were at that time recorded in books. This fact suggests that oracular responses had long been known at Cumæ, and that some persons, of whose character and functions we know nothing, had from time to time written them down, so that a handbook of divination had come into existence.
+938+. In whatever manner the oracles were first brought to Rome it is certain that they were accepted by the Romans in all good faith, and they came to play a very important part in the conduct of public affairs. They were placed in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus under the charge of two men (duumviri), and later a college was established for their guardianship. They were used in Rome especially for guidance in national calamities: when the existence of the city was threatened by the victorious career of Hannibal, it was the Sibyl who prescribed the importation of the worship of the Phrygian Great Mother. It is certain that the books were manipulated by political and religious leaders for their own purposes, old dicta being recast and new ones inserted as occasion required;[1725] but probably this procedure was unknown to the people--it does not appear that it affected their faith. Even Augustine speaks of the theurgi as dæmones, and cites a passage from the Erythræan Sibyl as a prediction of Christ.[1726]
+939+. To the poetical books which have come down to us under the name of Jewish Sibylline Oracles no value attaches for the history of the Sibyl except so far as they are an indication of the hold that the conception kept on men's minds.[1727] They are a product of the passion for apocalyptic writing that prevailed among the Jews and Christians in Palestine and Alexandria, from the second century B.C. into the third century of our era. The fame of the Græco-Roman Sibyl was widespread, and to the Jews and Christians of that time it seemed proper that she should be made to predict the history of Judaism and Christianity; possibly it was believed that such a prophetess must have spoken of this history. Naturally the Jewish Sibyl has a Biblical genealogy--she is the daughter of Noah.
+940+. Her utterances, given in heavy Greek hexameters, have been preserved for us in a great mass of ill-arranged fragments, with many repetitions, indicating them as the work of various authors. What we have is clearly only a part of what was produced, but the nature of the whole body of pseudo-predictions is easily understood from the material that has been preserved. They follow the history down to the author's time, giving it sometimes an enigmatical form, and the future is described in vague phrases that embody the guesses or hopes of the writer. It seems certain that all of the existent material of these oracles is from Jewish and Christian hands. Even when Greek mythical stories are introduced, as in the euhemeristic description of the origin of the Greek dynasties of gods in the third book, the whole is conceived under the forms of Jewish or Christian thought. The Sibyllines are quoted by Josephus and by many Christian writers from Justin Martyr to Augustine and Jerome and later. They give a picture of certain Jewish and Christian ideas of the period and of the opinions held concerning certain political events, but otherwise have no historical value. An illustration of the fact that the belief in them as real inspired prediction continued to a late time is found in the hymn Dies Irae, in which the Sibyl is cited along with David as a prophet of the last judgment. The whole history of the figure is a remarkable illustration of the power of a written record, held to be a divine revelation, to impress men's minds and control their beliefs and actions.
+941+. While divination has played a great part in the religious history of the world, it has rarely brought about important political or religious results.[1728] The exceptions are the great Greek oracles of Dodona and Delphi and the Roman Sibylline Books; to these last, as is observed above, the Roman people owed the introduction of some important religious cults. But for ordinary procedures priests and other officiators everywhere were disposed to give favorable responses, especially to the questions of prominent men; and military and other political enterprises were usually in such form that they could not conveniently be modified in accordance with unfavorable omens--the omen had to be favorable. There were exceptions, but this was the general rule. The science of divination, however, did good service in fostering the observation of natural phenomena, and especially in the development of astronomy and anatomy. In connection with these observations it called into being bodies of men--corporations that in process of time became centers of general culture.
+942+. On the ethical side it may be doubted whether divination has been an advantage to society. It has produced much deceit, unconscious and conscious. Whether diviners believed or did not believe in their science, the result was bad. If they did not believe, they fostered a system of deceit. Whether there was real belief or not, the practice of divination encouraged false methods and turned men's minds away from immediate appeals to the deity, and in general from a spiritual conception of religion. On the other hand, it helped to maintain the external apparatus of religion, which for ancient life was an important thing. Like all great institutions its effects have been partly good, partly bad. It belongs to a lower stage of human thought and tends to disappear gradually before enlightenment.
IX. THE HIGHER THEISTIC DEVELOPMENT
+943+. The preceding survey of early religious customs and institutions discloses a recognizable unity in diversity. Everywhere we find the same classes of sacred objects and the same methods of approaching them. Whether the supernatural Powers are conceived of as animals or as plants or as what we call inanimate things, or, in more advanced thought, as ghosts or spirits or gods, they are held to be factors in human life, are regarded with awe, are dreaded and avoided, or are welcomed as helpers, and in any case are propitiated by gifts and other marks of respect. The potency inherent in things is the object of observation, its laws are studied, and it is used for purposes of life. The diversities in the form of ceremonies, in the conception of the characters of the Powers, and in the general tone and coloring of worship arise from economic and cultural differences, and are as numerous as the tribes of men; the unity of cults is a result of the psychological unity of the human race--the religious needs of men in all stages of culture are the same; there is nothing in the highest religious systems that is not found in germ in the lowest.
+944+. The earliest expression of religious feeling, as is pointed out above,[1729] is in the form of ceremonies. But ceremonies tend to group themselves round the persons of divine beings. Gods, as the controllers of human fortunes here and hereafter, naturally become the centers of religious thought. Their characters and functions reflect the ideals of their worshipers, and all ritualistic and other usages and all doctrines concerning the relations between gods and men and, in general, all ideas concerning the physical and moral constitution of the world attach themselves perforce to the divine embodiments of these ideals. Thus, in one sense, the history of the gods is the history of religion. From the earliest times up to the present the efforts of men have been directed toward defining the divine Powers that have been supposed to stand behind all phenomena. The problem of harmonizing diverse divine activities has always been a serious one, and its solution has been sought in various ways. Gods have been locally limited, every one to his own human tribe, district, or nation; or, when they dwell together and their spheres of influence are larger, they have been given free scope of action, and the resulting contradictions in human affairs have been accepted as a part of the mysterious nature of things; or order has been sought in simplification--headship has been ascribed to some one deity, and the relation between him and the subordinate divinities has been somehow explained or has been left unexplained. The process of simplification has gone steadily on with the result that the great religious systems of the world fall into groups distinguished from one another by their conceptions of the divine government of the world, whether as pluralistic or as unitary. The development of these different conceptions may be traced here in outline, though the absence of exact data and the variety and complexity of the formative influences (economic, philosophical, political, and other) necessarily make it difficult or impossible to account satisfactorily for all details. The groups to be considered are polytheism, dualism, and monotheism, to which may be added brief mention of systems that do not recognize a personal divine ruler of the world.
POLYTHEISM
+945+. The first stage in the final theistic history of the world up to the present day, polytheism, appears in all the great civilized nations. The great polytheistic systems have much in common: for example, protection of civil order and morality by a god; prominence of the god of a ruling tribe or family or of a great city; disposition to embody certain general facts, as war, love, learning, in divine figures; tendency to make some god universal. On the other hand, they differ among themselves in certain regards: in the degree of specialization and differentiation of divine functions, and in the stress that they lay on the various departments of human life. Their agreements and disagreements seem to be in some cases independent of racial relations and climatic conditions; their roots lie so far back in history that we have no means of tracing their genesis and development.
+946+. The Egyptian and the Semitic peoples were parts of the same original stock,[1730] and their systems of social and political organization were substantially identical--the government in its developed form was monarchical, but tribal and other locally isolated forms of organization maintained themselves to a certain extent--and their literary and artistic outputs do not differ materially. We might, then, expect their religions to be in the main identical. In fact they agree in having a relative meagerness of theistic differentiation, but in some important points they are far apart. The Semites were indifferent to the future life, the Egyptians constructed it elaborately (in this point taking precedence among the ancients); the Semites were averse to divinizing human beings, for the Egyptians kings were divine. In this last point Egypt resembles China, but in other respects is at a world-wide remove from it. Other peoples thought of their gods as having relations with beasts; the Egyptians alone, among civilized nations, worshiped the living animal.[1731] Some Greek writers regarded Egypt as the religious mother of Greece, but Hellenic cults show little resemblance to Egyptian.
+947+. The Hebrews had the general Semitic theistic and cultic scheme, but in their capacity (in their higher development) to content themselves with one deity, and in their elaboration of ritualistic forms and institutions, were more closely akin to the Aryan Persians than to any Semitic community, and borrowed freely from them. The resemblance between the two cults, however, was confined to these two points; in other respects they were very different.
+948+. The linguistic identity of the Indo-European peoples does not carry with it theologic identity. The theistic scheme of India is more nearly allied, in the disposition to grant equality of significance to all gods, to the Egyptian and Semitic than to the Persian and the Greek, yet the tone and color of the Hindu deities do not resemble the tone and color of the Egyptian and Babylonian divinities.
Even between Greece and Rome the religious differences are great. Greece stands alone in its artistic creation of divine forms. Rome rather resembles the Hebrews in its sobriety of theistic creations, and particularly is like the Chinese in the purpose to make religion subservient to the interests of the family and the State; Roman religion, like Chinese, might be described as a body of public and private ceremonies to which gods were attached.[1732] The Roman gods, however, are much more definite figures than the Chinese; the latter are either unimportant folk-gods or powers of nature.
+949+. The contrast between Mexico, with its considerable number of departmental gods, some of them savage, and Peru, whose quasi-monotheistic system is relatively mild, is striking. But the origin of these two peoples (who perhaps are made up of different sets of tribes) is involved in obscurity, and it is uncertain whether or not we should expect a greater resemblance between their cults.
+950+. The differentiation in the theistic scheme of the Teutons, especially the Scandinavians, is noteworthy. Several of their deities, particularly Wodan (Odin), Thor, and Loki, are well-developed persons, and these and some others do not differ materially in character from the earlier corresponding Hindu and Greek gods. A comparison between the Teutonic figures and the Celtic and Slavic would be pertinent if we knew more of the character of these last; but the information about them is slight.[1733]
+951+. The extent of the anthropomorphization of gods in any system may be measured by the richness and refinement of its mythology. When the gods live apart from men, being conceived of mainly as transcendent Powers, or when they are not fully developed men, there is little room for the play of social emotions and for the creation of biographies of individual deities. It is the humanized god that has emotional life, and it is in this mythical life that the religious feeling of the worshiper is expressed with greatest fullness of detail.
+952+. The development of mythology through all its gradations of fullness and fineness can be traced in the religious systems of the world.[1734] Where there is no recognizable worship there is, of course, no mythology. This is the case in Australia, in Pygmy lands, in Tierra del Fuego, in parts of New Guinea, and perhaps elsewhere.[1735] Scarcely above these are parts of Central and Southern Africa, the countries of the Bantu, the Hottentots, and the Bushmen.[1736] A feeble mythological invention appears among the Zulus, whose conception of gods is indistinct;[1737] and the Masai and the Nandi, who are somewhat farther advanced in the construction of deities, show mythopoeic imagination in a single case only (the famous myth of the embrace of the earth and the sky), and this is perhaps borrowed.[1738] Along with these we may place the Todas whose theogonic conceptions appear to have been cramped by their buffalo cult, and their mythical material is small and vague.[1739]
+953+. A somewhat higher stage of mythopoeic development is represented by peoples of Oceania and North America. The myths are still prevailingly cosmologic and sociologic, but the beginning of biographical sketches of supernatural Powers is visible. The Melanesian Qat and the Polynesian Maui are on the border line between culture-heroes and gods, but they are real persons, and their adventures, while they describe origins, are also descriptions of character. Hawaii and Borneo have departmental gods and a body of stories about them.[1740] Certain tribes of Redmen have not only divine genealogical systems but also narratives resembling the Melanesian in character, the line between myth proper and folk-lore being often hard to trace.[1741] The stories fall into more or less well-defined groups, and of the Coyote and, less definitely, of certain other personages biographies might be written.
+954+. The half-civilized peoples of Madagascar, West Africa (Dahomi, Ashanti, Yoruba), the Malay Peninsula, and Southern India (Khonds) have more coherent figures and stories of divine personages.[1742] Here something like living human beings appear, though there is crudeness in the portraiture, and the interest is chiefly in the history of origins. The Malayan and Khond figures are especially noteworthy, but are not free from the suspicion of influence from higher religions.
+955+. True literary mythology is found only in civilized peoples, and among these a gradation is recognizable. We have first the stage of culture represented by the Japanese, the Finns, the Mexicans, and the Peruvians, with fairly well-developed gods, who have emotions and histories. In this group Japan takes the lowest place;[1743] it is chiefly in the figures regarded as deified men that definiteness of character and human warmth are found. Japanese theogony was depressed by the interest of the people in family and State organization; the gods, though civilized, are vague personalities. The Finnish literary mythical material, given in the Kalevala, has a highly humanized coloring and is worked up into a coherent story; the social system revealed in the myths is superior in many regards to that of the Redmen, but the theistic scheme is crude.[1744] The few Mexican myths that have come down to us (probably only the remains out of a large mass) show reflection and portray human experiences.[1745] Both in Mexico and in Peru the Spanish conquest appears to have destroyed no little material that, if preserved, would have illustrated the mythical constructions of these lands. In Peru, further, it may be that the monotheistic tinge of the State religion had the effect of banishing subordinate deities and the stories connected with them. For whatever reason little is known of its mythical material, but the little that is known shows a certain degree of refinement. South America, excluding Peru, has no mythical constructions of interest.[1746]
+956+. Of the great religions the Chinese may be passed by in the present sketch; its form leaves no place for mythology; its virtual monotheism excludes lesser supernatural figures as actors in the drama of human life.[1747]
+957+. The Persian cosmogonic myths are merely statements of great facts without biographical features. In the hands of late writers they shaded into legendary accounts of the origin of the kingdom, and the whole was colored by the developed Mazdaism. We thus have theological constructions rather than true myths.[1748] The few mythical stories that have survived play an insignificant part in the religious system--a sort of result that is to be expected whenever a substantially definite monotheistic conception has been reached.
+958+. Egypt produced a couple of myths of great interest.[1749] The story of Ra's anger with men, and his act of wholesale destruction, belongs in the group of myths (in which flood stories and others are included) the motif of which is antagonism between gods and men. The conception of such antagonism seems to go back to the early opinion that all misfortunes were caused by supernatural beings; in civilized times some great calamity would be singled out as a special result of divine anger, and imagination would construct a history of the event, why the god was angry, and how he was appeased. What particular occurrence this Egyptian story refers to is unknown.
The Osiris myth has better literary form and more cultic significance.[1750] The slaying of Osiris by Set, Isis's search for the body of her husband, and the rôle of the young Horus as avenger of his father make a coherent history. Osiris had the singular fortune of being the most widely popular god in Egypt, the hero of a romantic episode, and the ethical judge of men in the Underworld. The motif of the myth is the cosmic struggle between life and death; the actors are made real persons, and the story is instinct with human interest. No great cultic association like the Eleusinian mysteries was created in connection with it, but the echo of the conception appears in the great rôle later assigned to Isis.
+959+. All Semitic myths of which we have records are cosmogonic or sociologic or, in some late forms, theological constructions. It is Babylonia that has furnished the greater part of the material, perhaps all of it.[1751] The stories preserved give little or no portraiture of divine persons--it is always cosmic phenomena that are described, and gods and heroes are introduced simply as actors. The purpose in the two cosmogonic poems--to explain the reduction of the world to order and the existing constitution of earth and sky--is one that is found everywhere in ancient systems of thought. The Gilgamesh epic, a collection of popular usages and tales without definite unity, is contaminated with legend; Gilgamesh is now a god, now a national hero; at the end, however, there is a bit of speculation concerning the future state of men. Ishtar's descent to the Underworld is a pure nature myth; Ishtar and the goddess of the Underworld are real persons, yet merely attachments to the fact. The seizure of the tablets of fate from Bel by the storm-god Zu represents some natural phenomenon (perhaps the reign of winter), possibly, also, a transference of headship from one deity to another. The story of Adapa is in part an explanation of how men came to lose immortality. There is, thus, in these myths a fairly full history of the origin of the large facts of human life, with little interest in the personalities of the divine actors.
Hebrew mythical material is in general identical with Babylonian; its Old Testament form has been more or less revised by late monotheistic editors. The two cosmogonies in Genesis, the flood story, and the dragon of chaos (a late figure in the Old Testament[1752]) are merely descriptions of cosmic or local facts. The dispersion at Babel (not now found in Babylonian records, but paralleled elsewhere) deals with a sociological fact of great interest for the Hebrews, marking them off, as it did, from all other peoples.[1753] The heroes of the early time[1754] belong to folk-lore, probably a mixture of myth and legend. The explanation of various human experiences in the Eden story[1755] appears to be of Hebrew origination; it is, however, rather a late theological theory than a myth. The Syrian and Palestinian Tammuz (Adonis) myth is identical in general form with the Babylonian myth of Tammuz and Ishtar.[1756]
+960+. The Indo-European mythical material shows an advance over the Egyptian and Semitic in distinctness and fullness of life corresponding to the distincter individuality of the Indo-European divine personages. These are not mere powers in the world, more or less identified with natural forces and phenomena, nor a collection of deities substantially identical in character and functions; they have grown into persons, differing, indeed, in the degree of individualization, but all pronounced personalities.
+961+. Hindu myths, though less numerous and less highly elaborated than the Greek, still reflect fairly well the characters of certain divinities, especially Indra, Agni, the Açvins, the Maruts, and some others.[1757] Indra, particularly, is portrayed in detail, so that he is as distinct a person as Ares or Mars. Krishna and other figures in the epics live human lives with all human virtues and vices.
+962+. The full literary form of the myth is found only in Greece. As Zeus, Apollo, Athene, Aphrodite, and others are well-defined personalities, each with certain intellectual and moral characteristics and with a unity of development, so the stories about them recount adventures and acts that form biographical unities; and, as these stories are of diverse nature, some reflecting barbarous periods, others marked by refinement, they exhibit, when brought together and arranged in order of moral or intellectual excellence or according to their geographical or ethnical origin, not only the history of the gods, but also the development of Greek religious feeling. Being the embodiment of human experiences, they lend themselves readily to processes of allegorizing and spiritualizing.[1758]
+963+. Roman gods, homely figures, occupied with agriculture and affairs of State, have no adventures and no biographies. The practical Roman mind was concerned with the domestic functions of divine beings, and the Roman genius was not of a sort to conceive gods as individuals leading lives filled with human passions. Myths do not figure in the Roman religious scheme except as they are borrowed from Greece or from some other land.
+964+. Teutonic mythology is largely cosmogonic or cosmologic, not without shrewd portraitures and attractive episodes, but never reaching the point of artistic roundness and grace.[1759] The adventures of Odin, Thor, Loki, and other divine persons reflect for the most part the daring and savagery of the viking age, though there are kindly features and an occasional touch of humor.[1760] Loki in some stories is a genuine villain, and the death of Balder is a real tragedy. The great cosmogonic and eschatological myths are conceived in grandiose style. The struggle between gods and giants is in its basis the widespread nature myth of the conflict of seasons. The overthrow of the old divine government (the Twilight of the Gods) and the rise of a new order appear to have a Christian coloring, but the belief that the world is to be destroyed may be old Teutonic.[1761]
The history of theistic movements in civilized peoples shows that the effectiveness of a polytheistic system as a framework of religious life is in proportion to the extent of its anthropomorphization of deities, that is, it is in proportion to their humanization that gods enter into intimate association with human experiences. On the other hand, it is true that the tendency toward a unitary conception of the divine government of the world is in inverse proportion to such humanization; the more definitely aloof from men the gods have stood (as among the Hebrews and the Persians), the easier it has been for the people to attach themselves to a single deity as all-sufficient. The Romans form no exception to this general rule, for though, while they did not create great anthropomorphic deities, there was yet no native Roman movement toward monolatry, the place of such deities in worship was taken by a multitude of minor divine patrons who presided over all the details of private and public life and satisfied the demand for divine guidance.
While polytheism has assumed various forms, differing from one another in elaboration of deities and in general cultural character, it has had, as a system, a distinctly marked place in human experience.
+965+. General rôle of polytheism. Polytheism has played a great rôle in the religious history of the world. Representing in general a thoughtful protest against the earlier shapeless mass of spirits, it expressed more definitely the belief in the intellectual and moral divine control of all things. It flourished at a time when there was no general demand in human thought for coöperation in supernatural Powers. The sense of variety in the world was predominant, corresponding to the absence of coöperation among the tribes and nations of the world; the apparently isolated character of natural phenomena and the independence of the nations, each of the others, seemed to men to demand a number of separate divine agencies. These were all made to accord with the external and internal condition of their worshipers and met the demands of life in that they represented redemption, salvation, and, in general, all blessings. They were not offensive ethically to the people for the reason that they embodied the ethical conceptions and usages of their time. Thus they furnished the framework for religious feeling--they secured the union of divine and human in life, brought the divine, indeed, into most intimate contact with the human, and so supplied the material for the expression of pious feeling. When the gods were represented by idols, these tended to become merely the symbols and reminders of their divine originals. The elastic character of this theistic system permitted the widest variety of cults, with the possibility of bringing any new social tendency or idea into immediate connection with a divine patron, so that human life became religious with a degree of intelligence and intensity that has perhaps not existed under any other system.
+966+. The great civilizations of the ancient world arose and were developed under polytheism--many noble human characters and customs and institutions were created under the dominance of this system in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere--that is to say, human instincts and aspirations developed freely under a theistic organization that satisfied in general the intellectual and moral needs of the time. The different polytheistic cults of the world differed considerably in intellectual and moral value. These differences pertain to the diversity of characteristics among the nations of the world and are to be studied in connection with the histories of the various peoples. Here it is sufficient to note the general position which polytheism has occupied in the whole religious development of the world.[1762]
+967+. At a relatively early time, however, dissatisfaction arose with the discordances of the polytheistic conception. It raised many problems and failed to account for many phenomena, and efforts were made to systematize and simplify the conceptions of the divine government of the world. These efforts took the shape of dualism, monotheism, pantheism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and later tended to regard the supernatural in the world as Ultimate Force or as Moral Ideal. These tendencies may be examined in the order just given.
DUALISM
+968+. In all the religious systems so far considered the existence of human suffering is assumed. The sole object of religious practices, in all cults except the highest, has been to secure extrahuman or superhuman aid and comfort in the ills of life. There has been the conviction, for the most part implicit, that man is not in harmony with his surroundings. We have now to consider those systems of religious thought in which the existence of this disharmony is more or less distinctly announced and the effort is made to discover its source.
The conception of two sets of Powers in the world, one helpful and the other harmful, is suggested by human experience and by the larger observation of natural phenomena, and it is found all over the world, among low communities as well as high, perhaps in all tribes of men.[1763] Possibly there are some low groups, such as the Fuegians and the African Pygmies in which the conception does not exist; but as the religious ideas of these low groups are yet imperfectly understood, we cannot say what their position on this point is. In general, for the lower tribes the world is peopled by spirits, which are the ghosts of the departed or the embodiment of natural forces, and the feeling has been that these are sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly.[1764] In some cases the hurtful spirits stand in contrast with a god who may be a strict ruler and somewhat indifferent to men, but not hostile; in other cases there is a simple division of spirits into two classes, the friendly and the unfriendly,[1765] and in the higher forms of savage life there may be two such classes of deities.[1766] The double feeling of man respecting the attitude of ghosts toward living human beings is referred to above.[1767]
+969+. In certain higher forms of savage and half-civilized life we find the conception of a definite contrast between the two sets of Powers. The Hottentots are said to believe in two opposed supernatural beings, the struggle between them ending to the advantage of the one who is beneficent toward men.[1768] The Masai have two powerful beings, one accounted good, the other bad; the difference between them is not ethical, but represents only the relation of their acts to man's well-being.[1769] The Malays have a very elaborate system of good and evil spirits, but the system is colored by foreign influences.[1770] For the Ainu snakes are an embodiment of merely physical evil, and other Powers are the dispensers of physical well-being.[1771] The Arab jinn represent the unwholesome and antagonistic conditions of nature, stand opposed to the gods, and are without ethical motives.[1772] Even the Andamanese, one of the lowest of human communities, have a division of Powers into one who is friendly and two who are unfriendly.[1773] In all these cases we have to recognize simply the expression of the perception of two sets of physical agencies in the world. It is easy to exaggerate the nature of these contrasts and to represent certain low tribes as possessing general divine embodiments of good and evil.
+970+. Such a conception has been attributed to the American Redmen,[1774] but on insufficient grounds. The most careful recent investigations of the religious ideas of the Creeks, the Lenâpé, the Pawnees, and the Californian Shasta (four typical communities) fail to discover anything that can be called a real dualistic conception.[1775] Dorsey mentions a Pawnee myth of the introduction of death into the world by a member of the heavenly council of gods who felt himself slighted; but this isolated story does not prove the existence of a general dualistic scheme--the act in question has parallels in savage systems that recognize various unfriendly Powers.[1776] The reports we have of two definite morally antagonistic deities in Redmen tribes resolve themselves on examination into misconceptions or exaggerations on the part of the reporters; or, so far as the antagonism really exists, it is due to Christian influence. The Iroquois dualistic system as described by Chief Cusic (in 1825)--two brothers, Good Mind and Bad Mind, the former the creator of all things good, the latter the creator of all things bad--appears in the version of Brébeuf (in 1636) as a simple nature myth, the two deities in question being somewhat more definite forms of the friendly and unfriendly spirits met with in all lower communities.[1777] In like manner Winslow's two opposed Powers of the New England Algonkins turn out not to be morally antagonistic to each other, in fact, according to Brinton, not antagonistic at all.[1778] These facts warn us to treat with caution the vague statements of early travelers respecting dualistic views supposed to be held by tribes in North America and South America.[1779]
+971+. In West Africa the Ashanti embody the sources of physical misfortune in several deities, who are malignant but do not stand in opposition to the friendly gods. A preliminary step to the conception of a god of misfortunes is the assignment of a sort of headship to one of a mass of unfriendly or hurtful spirits--such a crude organization is natural in a community in which there is a fairly developed form of social organization, and the head spirit easily grows into a god. A simple headship over hurtful spirits appears to be found in the Ainu system, though this latter is in general not well developed.[1780]
+972+. A definite antagonism of good and bad Powers is found in the religion of the non-Aryan Khonds of Orissa: the earth-goddess Tari, the creature but the opponent of the sun-god Bella Pennu, introduced sin and death into the world and contested (and, according to one native account, still contests) with her creator the control of life. This explanation of the origin of death is a higher form of stories that occur abundantly in savage lore, with the important difference that in these death comes by accident, but here by malicious purpose. It is not clear whether or not the characters of Tari and Bella Pennu are conceived of ethically. The weapons (comets, winds, mountains) employed by the two deities indicate that the basis of the representation is a nature myth. Advanced eschatological thought appears in the opinion, held by some natives, that the good god was victorious in the contest.[1781]
+973+. In the great ancient religions, with the exception of Zoroastrianism, no dualistic scheme appears. An Egyptian god may be angry, as, for example, Ra, who in a fit of resentment causes men to be slain but soon repents; and Set, the enemy of Osiris, a nature god, seemed at one time to be on the way to become an embodiment of evil, but the Egyptian cult rejected this idea and Set gradually disappeared.[1782] The Babylonian cosmogonic myth, in which Tiamat is the enemy of the gods of order, has no cultic significance; the great mass of demonic beings was not organized into a kingdom of evil, and the Underworld deities, nature gods, while subject to ordinary human passions, are not hostile to the gods of heaven and earth. The Hebrews adopted the Babylonian cosmogonic myth,[1783] but it became a mere literary attachment to the conception of the supreme god Yahweh, and was otherwise ineffective.
+974+. The same thing is true of certain cosmogonic myths of the Greeks, such as the war of the Titans against Zeus and similar episodes. Ate and the Erinyes are embodiments of man's own evil nature or represent the punishment that overtakes guilt, but they do not represent a formal opposition to goodness nor are they organized into a definite body.[1784] The Roman Furies are practically identical in function with the Erinyes. In the old Teutonic religion the only figure who approaches essential badness is Loki; but he, though at times malignant and treacherous (as a human chieftain might be), remains a recognized member of the assembly of gods. As a nature god he may represent the elements of darkness and unhappiness in life, just as the various evil spirits in the world do, but he never approaches the position of an independent creator of evil.[1785] The Celtic deities Llew and Dylan are said to stand over against each other and to represent good and bad tendencies and elements of life; but they are not very distinct and are probably nothing more than somewhat developed local deities.[1786] In the Chinese and Japanese cults there is no indication of a conflict; evil spirits there are in abundance, but no cosmic antagonism.
+975+. In India the cosmogonic myths are to be interpreted in the same way as those mentioned above. Soma and Indra, as slayers of the demon Vritya, represent order as against disorder, but Vritya never had cultic significance; he appears only as a bodily demonstration of the power of the great gods. The asuras are not essentially different from the harmful spirits of savages, though it is true that they come into conflict with the friendly gods. Rahu, who causes eclipses by swallowing the sun, is only a nature deity of great might. In the Mahabharata there are powerful demons, and the Çivaite cult includes the worship of dread beings, but such worship only reflects the fear of the unfriendly elements of physical nature.[1787] Nor do we find in the persons of Durga, Kali, and the Yakshas, unpleasantly savage as these are, a conception of evil as an organized force directed against the good gods; they are rather the embodiment of evil human dispositions. The underground demons are punishers of sin, but not themselves morally evil. There is, it is true, in the Hindu religious scheme the general antithesis of light and darkness, which are connected with right and wrong--an antithesis that appears abundantly in other religious systems;[1788] but the powers of darkness are not organized against the powers of light, and there is no complete dualism, though we have here, perhaps, the starting-point for such a conception.
+976+. While thus a vague sense of duality has existed all over the world, and in certain cases, as it seems, there were vague attempts at organization, it is only in Zoroastrianism that the decisive step has been taken. We have to recognize in this system a distinct movement towards a unitary conception of the world; but the sense of difference in human experiences was so great in the mind of the creators of the system that they were led to a unification in two divisions.[1789] The origin of the movement lies far back at a time when there were no records of thought and social movements, and it is impossible now to say definitely what were the original elements of the cult. We may surmise that there was an Indo-Iranian conception of a general contrast between light and darkness, and that this was the starting-point or the basis of the developed Iranian theological system. The old Indic and the old Iranian religions seem to have been independent developments from a common original mass of material; but we do not know what determined the differences in the two developments. The constructions were the work, doubtless, of successions of reformers, but the details of these long-continued efforts have not come down to us.[1790] The essential point is that the evil mass in the world was conceived of as a unity by the Iranians and assigned a head, Angro Mainyu. This name does not occur in the Achæmenian inscriptions, but it is mentioned in the Gathas and by Aristotle,[1791] so that it appears to belong to an early stratum of the Iranian religion. The present state of the world is regarded as the result of a constant series of antagonisms between the two creators, Spenta Mainyu (Ahura Mazda) and Angro Mainyu, these being attended each by a circle of helpers. A polytheistic interpretation of the helpers is avoided by making them abstractions (though with a tendency toward personification), the representatives of various features or elements in the government of the world or in the experiences of men.[1792]
+977+. A strictly dualistic system recognizes only two Powers in the world. The Avestan religion, however, admits other deities besides Ahura Mazda and Angro Mainyu; Mitra, Anahita, and others are objects of worship. The ancient national faiths, that is, were not content with a simple division of things between two divine beings. An approach to such a view was made by Judaism, which, partly under Persian influence, produced the figure of the Satan, a quasi-independent being hostile to the Supreme Deity.[1793] Christianity, adopting this conception from Judaism, elaborated it into the person of the Devil, the veritable head of a kingdom of evil, called in the New Testament "the god of this age."[1794] Though doomed to final defeat, as Ahriman in the Avesta is doomed, the Devil in the orthodox Christian system is practically omnipresent and is powerful enough to defeat the plans of God in many cases. In modern enlightened Christian feeling, however, he has become little more than a name. Though he is credited in theory with suggesting evil and alluring men to sin, this dogma has small force in the better minds against the strong conviction of individual freedom and responsibility. Current Christianity, in its highest forms, is theoretically, but not really, dualistic. The Satan is taken more seriously by Islam, which has adopted the conception from Christianity and Judaism.[1795] For the ordinary Moslem he belongs in the category of evil spirits and is as real as one of the jinn; he may be cursed and stoned and driven away,[1796] but he does not affect the Moslem belief in the oneness of God.
+978+. From the conquest of Persia by Alexander to the fall of the Parthian dynasty (a period of over five hundred years) little is known of the history of Mazdaism beyond the fact that it seems to have been adopted by the Parthians in a debased form; but about the time of the Persian revival under the Sassanians (226 A.D.) it passed the bounds of its native land and made its way into the Roman Empire in the shape of Manichæism, a mixture of dualistic and Christian Gnostic conceptions. That Manichæism had a certain force is shown by the fact that it attracted such a man as Augustine, and its survival for several centuries in spite of persecutions attests its vitality. It may be doubted whether its attractiveness lay so much in its dualism as in its gnosticism, though the former element maintained itself in some minor Christian sects. However this may be, it gradually faded away, leaving no lasting impression; it was a form of faith not suited to the peoples who professed Christianity.[1797]
+979+. The modern philosophic proposals to recognize two deities instead of one are as yet too vague to call for discussion. Dualism, though it accounts in some fashion for the twofold character of human experiences, raises as many problems as it solves; in particular it finds itself confronted apparently by a physical and psychological unity in the world which it is hard to explain on the hypothesis of conflicting supernatural Powers.[1798] On the moral side the record of dualistic schemes is in general good. The ethical standard of Mazdaism is high, and the ethical practice of Mazdean communities hardly differs from that of other prominent modern religious bodies. Though the Manichæans were accused of immoral practices, it does not appear that Mani himself or any prominent disciple of his announced or favored or permitted such practices.
MONOTHEISM
+980+. The preceding survey has shown that the theory of dualism has not proved in general acceptable to men. It was adopted by one people only, and even by them not in complete form, and its character as a national cult was destroyed by the Moslem conquest of Persia in the seventh century. The Zoroastrian system was indeed carried by a body of emigrants to India and has since been professed by the Parsis there; but it has been converted by them into a practical monotheistic cult, so that a consistent dualism now exists nowhere in the world. The thought of the great civilized nations has turned rather to a unitary view of the divine government of the world.
+981+. The history of the movement which has elevated monotheism to the highest place among the civilized cults extends over the whole period of man's life on the earth. It is pointed out above[1799] that very generally in low tribes a local supernatural personage is invested with great power: he is creator, ruler, and guardian of morals; where a tolerably definite civil and political organization exists he has virtually the position and performs the functions of the tribal chief, only with vastly greater powers and privileges; where there is no such organization he is simply a vaguely conceived, mysterious man who has control of the elements and of human fortunes, and punishes violations of tribal custom. Such a personage is, however, at best only the highest among many supernatural Powers. It is immaterial whether we regard such a figure as developed from a spirit or as the direct product of religious imagination. He is always crudely anthropomorphic and, notwithstanding his primacy, is limited in power by his own nature, by other supernatural Powers, and by men. Frequently, also, he tends to become otiose and virtually loses his supremacy;[1800] that is to say, in the increased complexity of social life a god who was once sufficient for the needs of a simpler organization has to give way to a number of Powers which are regarded as the controllers of special departments of life. Such an otiose form may sometimes indicate a succession of divine quasi-dynasties, somewhat as in the Greek sequence of Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus. Handed down from a former generation, he becomes dim and is neglected. That he is not worshiped is a result of the fact that other divine beings, standing nearer to existing human interests, have come to the front.
+982+. The theory has been held in the past, and is still held, that monotheism was the primitive form of religion and that the worship of many spirits or many gods is a corruption of primitive thought due to man's intellectual feebleness or to his moral depravity. It is urged that such a monotheistic system was the natural one for unsophisticated man. The view has been widely held also that it was the result of a primitive divine revelation to men. It is obvious that neither of these opinions is susceptible of proof on a priori grounds; the question can be settled only by a survey of the phenomena known to us. When the facts are clearly stated, it is then allowable to deduce from them such conclusions as may seem legitimate.
+983+. As a matter of fact, it does not appear that real monotheistic belief exists or has existed among savage and half-civilized communities of whose history we have any knowledge. Where a certain supernatural being is described by observers as "the god" or "the supreme god" of a tribe, it turns out on inquiry that he is at most, as is remarked above, a very prominent divine figure, perhaps the most prominent, but never standing alone and never invested with those physical, intellectual, and moral capacities that are necessary for a complete monotheistic faith.
+984+. While, however, this conclusion is generally admitted for the majority of cases,[1801] it has been held, and is still held, that there are found in savage cults certain "self-existent, eternal, moral" beings who satisfy all the conditions of a monotheistic faith. Among the examples cited are the American gods described by Strachey and Winslow as supreme in power and ethically good.[1802] But, even in the curt and vague accounts of these early observers (who were not in position to get accurate notions of Indian beliefs), it appears that there were many gods, the supposed supreme deity being simply the most prominent in the regions known to the first settlers. The "Great Spirit" of the Jesuit missionaries is found, in like manner, to be one of many supernatural patrons, locally important but not absolute in power.[1803] The Zulu Unkulunkulu is revered by the natives as a very great being, morally good according to the standards of the people, but he is of uncertain origin and is valueless in the existing cult.[1804] The much-discussed Australian figures, Baiame, Bunjil, and Daramulun, appear not to differ essentially from those just mentioned. The reports of the natives who have been questioned on the subject are often vague and sometimes mutually contradictory, and exact biographical details of these divine personages are lacking; but careful recent observers are of opinion that they are nothing more than supernatural headmen, having such power as tribal chiefs or headmen possess, and credited in different regions with different moral qualities.[1805]
+985+. In the systems of many other low tribes there are quasi-divine beings who are credited with great power and are revered without being thought of as eternal or as standing alone in the government of the world. A specially interesting example is the Andaman Puluga, a sort of creator who receives no worship; his abode is a mountain or the sky, and he seems to have been originally a local supernatural figure who is traditionally respected but is no longer thought of as an efficient patron.[1806] The mysterious Ndengei of Fiji is judge of the dead, but one of many gods and not all-powerful.[1807] In many tribes there is no one great divine figure; the control of things is divided among hosts of spirits and gods. This is the case with the Ainu, the Maoris, the Greenlanders, the Kwakiutl of Northwest America,[1808] and is probably the rule in most of the lower communities.
The terms 'self-existent' and 'eternal' are not found in savage vocabularies and seem to have no representatives in savage thought. Savage cosmology carries the history of the world back to a certain point and stops when there is no familiar hypothesis of genesis.[1809] As a rule spirits (as distinguished from ghosts) are not thought of as having a creator; they are a part of the system of things and are not supposed to need explanation, and so it seems to be with simple clan gods. Nor is there any reason, in savage theory, why gods or spirits should die; death is an accident for human beings, not an essential feature of their constitution; but such an accident is not usually supposed to occur in the case of gods. What takes the place of the conception of 'eternal' in savage thought is an existence that is supposed to continue for the reason that its cessation does not come into consideration. As to creation, there is no need, in a low community, to suppose more than one originator of the world, and cosmogonic theory may stop at that point, though this is not an invariable rule. The title "father" for persons of distinction, human or divine, is found among many undeveloped peoples, and a headman or patron may be called, by a natural extension of thought, "all-father," a title that is not essentially different in signification from the simple "father," and does not carry with it the refined sense of later times. The question of savage monotheism need present no difficulty if the conditions are clearly defined.[1810] It is true that there is in some cases a monarchical conception of the divine control of a clan or a tribe, and that this simple system is followed by a more or less elaborate theology. In both civil and religious systems the increasing complexity of social life has called forth correspondingly complex organizations, but this movement away from simplicity does not denote falling off in civil and religious purity and wisdom. A true monotheism has never arisen except as a criticism of polytheism.
+986+. It is obvious that the popular cults of the great nations of antiquity were far removed from monotheism. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Hindus, the Greeks and the Romans, down to a late period, worshiped a multitude of gods and were not disturbed by any feeling of lack of unity in the divine government of the world. The proof that such was the case among the ancient Hebrews down to the sixth century B.C. is found in the Old Testament writings: the historical books from the entrance of the Hebrew tribes into Canaan down to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans and the prophetical writings of the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries represent the people generally as addicted to the worship of a great number of gods. In Persia also, since the Mazdean system recognized a considerable number of deities, it cannot be doubted that the people were polytheistic, not to speak of the probability that there were survivals of a lower form of religion which preceded Mazdaism. In the modern nations of the east of Asia, China and Japan, the popular worship is anything but monotheistic: in China the local spirits play a very great part in the life of the people, and in Japan the old gods are still objects of worship. It may be added that among the masses in some nominally Christian countries, particularly among the peasants of Southern Europe, the old polytheism continues in the form of the worship of saints and the Madonna.
+987+. While the popular cults in the civilized world have held somewhat pertinaciously to pluralistic views, there has been a general tendency in advanced circles everywhere toward a unitary conception of the government of the world. As this tendency has been general it must be referred to the general progress of thought, the demand of the human mind for unity or simplicity. The particular lines of the movement have varied among different peoples according to the peculiarities of their culture, and the unitary feeling has varied in its degree of definiteness. In some cases the political predominance of a city or region has secured preëminence for its deity, or national attachment to the national god has elevated him above all other gods; where a people has cultivated poetry or philosophy, the idealizing thought of the one or the scientific analysis of the other has led in the same direction.
+988+. First, then, we may note the disposition to give substantial absoluteness to some one god, the choice of the deity being determined by the political condition as is suggested above, or by local attachments, or possibly by other conditions which do not appear in the meager records of early times. Examples of this form of thought are found in several of the great nations of antiquity. The hymns to the Egyptian gods Ra, Amon, Amon-Ra, Osiris, and the Nile describe these deities as universal in attributes and in power. At the moment the poet conceives of the god whom he celebrates as practically the only one--if Ra does everything, there is no need of any other deity. At another moment, however, the same poet may celebrate Osiris with equal enthusiasm--these high gods are interchangeable. The suggestion from such fluid conceptions of the divine persons is that the real thought in the mind of the poet was the supremacy of some divine power which is incorporated now in one familiar divine name, now in another. It does not, however, quite reach the point of well-defined monotheism, for these gods remain distinct, sometimes with separate functions and duties.
+989+. But this mode of conceiving of the supernatural Power would naturally pave the way for monotheism, and it is not surprising that very early in Egypt a definite monotheistic view was developed. King Amenophis IV, or to give him the name that he adopted in conformity with his later cult, Khuen-Aten, made a deliberate attempt to elevate the sun-god Aten to the position of sole ruler and object of worship. Though the nature of his belief in this deity is not stated in the documents with the fullness and precision that we should desire, it seems clear, from the fact that he ordered the destruction of the shrines of the other deities in the land, that he regarded the worship of this one god as sufficient. The movement was not a successful one in so far as the national religion was concerned--it lasted only during his lifetime and that of his son, and then a counter-revolution swept Aten away and reinstated the Theban Amon in all his former dignity and powers--but its very existence is a testimony to the direction of thought of educated minds in Egypt about the year 1400 B.C. The Aten revolution appears to have been distinctively Egyptian--there is no trace of foreign influence in its construction. It has been suggested that Amenophis got his idea from Semites of Western Asia or particularly from the Hebrews. But neither the Hebrews nor any other Semitic people of that period were monotheistic, nor do we find in Egyptian history at the time such social intercourse as might produce a violent upturning of the religious usage. We can only suppose that Amenophis was a religious genius who put into definite shape a conception that was in the air, and by the force of his enthusiasm made it for the moment effective. Such geniuses have arisen from time to time in the world, and though the revolution of this Egyptian king may seem to us to have sprung up with abnormal abruptness, it is more reasonable to suppose that the way had been prepared for it in Egyptian thought. He was a man born out of due time; but it cannot be said that his attempt was without influence on succeeding generations.
+990+. Passing now to the oldest Semitic civilizations, we find in Babylonia and Assyria many local deities, one or another of whom comes to the front under the hegemony of some city or state. Here we are met by the fact already referred to that the gods are interchangeable--it is practically a matter of indifference whether one deity or another is elevated to headship. In the great empires the gods of the capital cities naturally became preëminent; so Marduk in Babylonia and Ashur in Assyria. The royal inscriptions speak of these gods as if they were all-powerful and all-controlling. In both countries the goddess Ishtar appears as the supreme director of affairs, and other deities are similarly honored. What might have been the issue if the later Babylonian kingdom had continued for a long time it is impossible to say, but the impression made by the words of the devout king Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 B.C.) is that he would have been content with Marduk as the one object of worship. Babylonia produced no such radical reformer as the Egyptian Amenophis--there is no formulation of monotheism; but the general tone of the Babylonian religion of the sixth century is not very different from that of the Hebrew religion of the same time.
+991+. The religious point of view of the Vedas belongs in the same category with the early Egyptian. Varuna, Agni, and Indra appear in the hymns, each in his turn, as supreme. The rôle of Varuna seems to be practically identical with that of the Iranian Ahura, but unlike the latter he does not succeed in expelling his brother divinities. This difference of development between the Hindu and the Iranian people we cannot hope to explain. India moved not toward monotheism, but toward pantheism. But the Vedic hymns prove the existence of a certain sense of oneness in the world, held by the poets, though not by the mass of the people, and destined to issue in a very remarkable religious system.
+992+. It has been by a very different line that China has reached its unitary conception of the world. The details of the movement are obscure, but its general course is clear.[1811] As with many other peoples it is the objects of nature to which Chinese worship is mainly paid, but the Chinese mind, impressed by the power of these objects, is content to rest in them in their visible form; no proper names are attached to them, and they have a more or less vague personality which varies in definiteness at different times and with different persons. The theistic system is a reflection of the social system. The eminently practical Chinese mind lays the chief stress on the earthly life: in the common everyday life the family is the unit; but the general course of affairs is controlled by the great natural Powers of earth and sky, whence arise the two great divisions of Chinese worship. The State is a larger family in which the duke or emperor or other chief political officer occupies the same position that is occupied by the father in the smaller social circle; the government is patriarchal, with gradations which correspond to those of the family. Life, it is held, is controlled by the heavenly bodies, by the mountains and rivers of the earth, and by deceased members of families. To these the people sacrifice, the principal part being taken by the civil heads of the larger and smaller constituent parts of the empire; there is thus no place for priests. As the emperor (or other head of the State) is supreme on earth, so Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon occupy the highest positions in the divine hierarchy, and ancestors are influential and entitled to worship according to the rank of the families they represent.[1812] From an early time, long before Confucius, the headship of the divine Powers, it would seem, was assigned to Heaven--not the physical sky, but, at least in the thinking circles of the nation, the Power therein residing. Thus arose the conception of an imperial divine government in which Heaven, though it does not stand alone, is recognized as supreme. The larger theistic conception is embodied in the annual sacrifices conducted by the emperor,[1813] especially at the winter and summer solstices when sacrifices are offered to Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, the Four Quarters and the mountains and rivers of the empire and to his ancestors, whose worship includes the interests of the whole State. Thus with a vast number of objects of worship (spirits of all departments of life, and a few gods proper) the Chinese religion has attained and maintained a general unitary conception of the divine government of the world.[1814]
+993+. Some resemblance to the Chinese system appears in the religion of Peru, so far as this can be understood from the accounts that have come down to us.[1815] The supreme position given to the Sun in Peru and to the Inca as child of the Sun is parallel to the supremacy of Heaven in China and the headship of the emperor as the son of Heaven. The Peruvian cult appears not to have reached the distinctness of the Chinese. There were, in fact, in Peru a considerable number of tolerably well-formed divinities along with a vast crowd of spirits. Yet it appears that the sun was regarded, at least by the Inca and his circle, as supreme ruler of the world. The Sun, as god, has no proper name in Peru, as in China Heaven, as god, has no proper name. In both countries, it would seem, the imagination of the people was overpowered by the spectacle of the majesty of a great natural object. The two religions differ in their ritual development: while the Inca, like the Chinese emperor, was the religious head of the nation, the Peruvians created an elaborate system of worship, with temples and ministrants, which is wanting in China.[1816] The remarkable character of the Peruvian system makes it all the more regrettable that the data available do not enable us to trace its growth from the simplest beginnings.
+994+. Still another line of theistic development is furnished by the Hebrew system. The Hebrews are remarkable among ancient peoples as having had, so far as our information goes, only one national god. This god they brought with them into Canaan from the wilderness over which they appear to have roamed with their flocks for a period and under conditions not definitely known to us. Arrived in Canaan, the masses were attracted by the local Canaanite deities (whose worship represented a higher civilization than that of the nomadic Hebrews), and later, in the seventh century B.C., a great part of the people of the little kingdom of Judah adopted the Assyrian astral cult; but a group of Israelites had always remained faithful to the national deity Yahweh (Jehovah) and vigorously opposed all foreign worship. It was naturally the more thoughtful and ethically better-developed part of the community that took this uncompromising position, and their spokesmen, the writing prophets whose discourses are preserved in the Old Testament, became preachers of morality as well as champions of the sole worship of Yahweh. It does not appear that they denied the existence of other gods, but they regarded their own god as superior to all others in power, standing in a peculiarly close relation to his people and bound to them by peculiarly intimate ties.
+995+. This attachment to one deity proved to be the dominant sentiment of the nation. As time went on and the people were sifted by the Assyrian and Babylonian deportations, the higher moral feeling of the best men attached itself more and more definitely to the national god. Thus was established a monolatry which was practically monotheism, though a theory of absolute monotheism was never formulated by the pre-Christian Jews. It must be added, as is remarked above, that, from the third or second century B.C. on, the somewhat undefined range of activity attributed to Satan produced a sort of dualism, yet without impairing the practically unitary conception of the divine government of the world.[1817] The course of their national fortunes and the remarkable power of self-contained persistence of the Jews brought about a segregation of the people and, finally, their organization into a community governed by a law held to be divinely revealed. This capacity of social religious organization was the distinctive characteristic of the Jewish people and, supported by their unitary theistic system and a high moral code, gave the example of popular monotheism which, through the medium of Christianity, finally imposed itself upon the Roman world.
+996+. In the ancient world the most thorough investigation of the theistic problem was made by the Greeks, whose leading thinkers, like the Hebrews, moved steadily toward a unitary conception of the divine power, but, unlike the Hebrews, did not succeed in impressing their views on the people at large. What the theistic conception in the pre-Homeric times was we are unable to say definitely, but presumably in every separate community there was a local deity who had practically the direction of affairs. In process of time, through conditions not known to us, Zeus came to be recognized throughout the Hellenic world as the principal deity. In the Homeric poems and in Hesiod we find a political or governmental organization of the gods which followed the lines of the social organization of the times. As Agamemnon is the head chief over a group of local chiefs, so Zeus, though not absolutely supreme, is a divine king, the head over a considerable number of deities who have their own preferences and plans, and in ordinary matters go their own way and are not interfered with so long as they mind their own business; but at critical points Zeus, like Agamemnon, intervenes, and then no god disputes his decisions.
+997+. This conception of the divine government appears, therefore, to rest on the Greek demand for political organization; the world was thought of as divided into various departments which had to be brought into a unity by the ascription of a quasi-supreme authority to some one personage. Necessarily, however, larger intellectual and ethical ideas were incorporated in this political view. Though the popular anthropomorphic conceptions of the deities appear throughout the Homeric poems (the gods being sometimes morally low as well as limited in knowledge and power), yet on the other hand they are said to know everything. To Zeus in particular lofty qualities are ascribed; he is the father of men and their savior and the patron of justice. How it came about that these two sorts of conceptions of a supreme deity are mingled in the poems is a question that need not be discussed here; a similar mingling of contradictory ideas is found in the Old Testament, in which the unmoral god of the people stands alongside of the highly developed ethical Yahweh of the great prophets.
+998+. In Homer and Hesiod, however, the conception of headship is complicated by the introduction of the idea of fate. In the Iliad Zeus is sometimes ignorant of the future and has to employ the scales of destiny, and in Hesiod appear the three Fates who control the lives of men independently of the gods. The conception of a controlling fate may be regarded as an effort to reach an absolutely unitary view of the world. Above all the divine powers that regulate affairs, after the manner of the government by a king with his attendant chieftains and officers, there is a sense of a dim and undefined power of unknown origin, mysterious, absolute, universal. The question whether this conception was a reflection of a sense of the controlling power resident in the universe itself, or merely an endeavor to rise above the variations of anthropomorphic deities, is important from the point of view of the genesis of ideas, but its decision will not affect the fact just stated.[1818] Obviously in the Homeric world there appears this general conviction that men and gods are bound together in unity and that some force or power controls all things.[1819]
+999+. This sense of the governmental unity is further developed by the later great poets who infused into it higher and more definite moral elements. The polytheistic view continues; to the thinkers of the time there was no more difficulty in conceiving of a single headship along with many deities of particular functions than was felt by Hebrew prophets who recognized the existence of foreign deities, with Yahweh as a superior god, or by the modern Christian world with its apparatus of angels, saints, and demons alongside of the supreme God. For Pindar Zeus is lord of all things and is far removed from the moral impurities of the popular conception. Æschylus represents him as supreme and in general as just, though not wholly free from human weaknesses. A real unity of the world is set forth by Sophocles: there is a divinely ordered control by immutable law, and the will of Zeus is unquestioned. The unitary conception is found also in Euripides notwithstanding his skeptical attitude toward the current mythology. The sense of symmetry potent in the poets forced them to this unitary conception of government, and the natural progress of ethical feeling led them to ascribe the highest ethical qualities to the deities.
+1000+. Similar motives appear in the speculations of the Greek philosophers: Greek philosophy in seeking to discover the essential nature of the world moved definitely toward the conception of its unity--so, for example, as early as the sixth century, in Xenophanes and Parmenides. The conception of a supreme spiritual ruler of the world appears in Heraclitus and Anaxagoras (fifth century). To these and other Greek thinkers the unity of the world and the dominance of mind or spirit appeared to be necessary assumptions. The most definite expression of these conceptions is found in Plato and Aristotle. According to Plato (in the Timæus) God, the eternal Father, created the world (for nothing can be created without a cause), brought order out of disorder and made the universe to be most fair and good, so that it became a rational living soul, the one only-begotten universe, created the gods and the sons of the gods, and framed the soul to be the ruler of the body. Aristotle, in simpler phrase, represents the ground of the world as self-sufficient Mind, an eternal Power (δυναμις), from which all action or actuality (ενεργεια) proceeds.[1820]
+1001+. There are certain apparent limitations, it is true, to this conception of unity. Both Plato and Aristotle recognize the existence of a host of subordinate deities (created but immortal) to whom is assigned a share, by direction of the supreme God, in the creation of things; yet essentially these deities are nothing more than agents or intermediaries of the divine activity, and may be compared to the natural laws and agents of modern theism and, more exactly, to the Hebrew angels through whom, according to the Old Testament, God governed the world. Plato has also a somewhat vague notion of a something in the nature of the material of the world that limits or constrains the divine creative power--a "necessity" that forces the deity to do not the absolutely best but the best possible. Perhaps this is a philosophical formulation of the old "fate," perhaps Plato is merely trying to account for certain supposed inconcinnities and inadequacies in the world. He is not quite consistent with himself, since he represents the creation of the universe as resulting from the fact that necessity yielded to the persuasion of mind, which thus became supreme.[1821] In spite of this vagueness his view is unitary, and the unitary conception is continued by the Stoics, its best Stoic expression being found in the famous hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus: "Nothing occurs on earth apart from thee" and "We are thy offspring."[1822]
+1002+. In the last centuries before the beginning of our era the Jews, partly under Persian and Greek influence, clarified their theistic view, attaining a practically pure monotheism, only retaining their apparatus of angels and demons. This theistic scheme passed over in complete form to early Christianity, in which, however, greater prominence was given to the chief demon, the Satan; his larger rôle arose from the fact that he was brought into sharp antagonism with the Christ, the head of the kingdom of God. When Christianity was adopted by the Græco-Roman world, the doctrine of the Trinity was worked out and formulated in accordance with Greek and Roman philosophic thought, but was held not to impair the monotheistic view since the three Persons were regarded as being in substance one. Islam adopted the Jewish form of monotheism, with its Satan and angels, retaining also the old Arabian apparatus of demonic beings (the jinn).
+1003+. A certain tendency to a practically unitary view is discernible in the cults of Isis and Mithra, which were widely diffused in the Roman Empire.[1823] In both these cults the main interest of the worshipers was centered in a single deity, though other deities were recognized. The unifying impulse was devotional, not philosophic.
So far as a unitary conception of the divine government of the world existed it must be referred to the spirit of the age which had outgrown the old crude polytheism. Such modern monotheistic movements as the Brahma-Samaj and the Parsi in India, the Babist in Persia, and the reformed Shinto in Japan owe much to European influence, though doubtless some part of them is the outcome of natural progress in intellectual and moral conceptions.
PANTHEISTIC AND NONTHEISTIC SYSTEMS
+1004+. The systems of theistic thought considered above all make a sharp separation between God and the world. Plato and Aristotle regarded mind or spirit as a force that dominated matter. The Persian, Hebrew, and Christian theologies conceive of the deity as transcendent, standing outside of and above the world and entering into communication with it either by direct revelation or through intermediaries. To certain thinkers of ancient times this dualistic conception presented difficulties--an absolute unity was held to be incompatible with such separation between the world and God. The precise nature of the reflections by which the earliest philosophers reached this conclusion is not clearly set forth, but it may be surmised that in general there were two lines of thought that led to this inference: first, a metaphysical conception of unity as something that was demanded by the sense of perfectness in the world; and, secondly, observation of facts that appeared to characterize the world as a unit. Among several different peoples, and apparently in each independently, the idea arose that the divine manifests itself in the world of phenomena and is recognizable only therein. Such a view appears in India in the Vedanta philosophy, and in Greece a little later it is more or less involved in Orphic theories and in the systems of several philosophers. The tendency to deify nature appears even in writers who do not wholly exclude gods from their schemes of the world--in the sayings of Heraclitus, for example: "All things are one," "From all comes one, and from one comes all." A similar view is attributed to Xenophanes by Aristotle,[1824] and traces of such a conception appear in Euripides.[1825] For the modern forms of pantheism, in Spinoza and other philosophers, reference must be made to the histories of philosophy.
+1005+. Pantheism has never commended itself to the masses of men. It is definitely theistic, but the view that the divine power is visible only in phenomena and is to be identified practically with the world is one that men in general find difficult to comprehend. The demand is for a deity with whom one may enter into personal relations--the simple conception of a god who dwells apart satisfies the religious instincts of the majority of men. The ethical questions arising from pantheism seem to them perplexing: how can man be morally responsible when it is the deity who thinks and acts in him? and how can he have any sense of loyalty to a deity whom he cannot distinguish from himself? Nor do men generally demand so absolute a unity as is represented by pantheism. Such questions as those relating to the eternity of matter, the possibility of the existence of an immaterial being, and the mode in which such a being, if it exists, could act on matter, have not seemed practical to the majority of men. Man demands a method of worship, and pantheism does not permit organized worship. For these reasons it has remained a sentiment of philosophers, though it has not been without effect in modifying popular conceptions of the deity: the conception of the immanence of God in the world (held in many Christian orthodox circles), when carried to its legitimate consequences, it is often hard to distinguish from pantheism.
+1006+. Nontheistic systems. A further attempt to secure a complete unity of the world appears in those systems of thought which regard the world as self-sufficient and, therefore, dispense with extramundane agency. These start either from the point of view of man and human life or from contemplation of the world. In China the sense of the sole importance of the moral life and the impossibility of knowing anything beyond mundane life led Confucius practically to ignore divine agency. He did not deny the existence of Powers outside of men, but he declined to speak of them, regarding them as of no practical importance. This sort of agnosticism appears in Greece as early as the fifth century B.C., when Protagoras's view that "man is the measure of all things" makes extrahuman Powers superfluous. Epicurus reached a similar practical atheism apparently from a scientific view of the construction of the world. According to him there are gods, but they are otiose--living a life of happy ease, they are to be thought of as a pleasant phenomenon in the world, but ineffective as regards human fortunes, and men may go their ways certain that if they obey the laws of the world the gods will not interfere with them.
+1007+. The Sankhya philosophy of India dispenses completely with gods, holding that the primordial stuff is eternal, but it also holds that souls have a separate existence and are eternal. Thus a species of dualism emerges. Buddhism goes a step further, ignoring the soul as well as gods. It is agnostic in that, admitting the world to have a cause, it holds that it is impossible to know this cause. Its practical aim--to get rid of suffering by getting rid of desire, and thus to pass into a blissful state of existence in which apparently there is to be no effort as there is to be no pain--has enabled it to establish a vigorous organization, a sort of church, in which the undefined universe takes the place of a personal god, and character takes the place of soul, this character (Karma) passing from one being to another without the assumption of identity in the beings thus united in destiny.[1826]
+1008+. In Greece pure materialism (similar in essence to the Sankhya) took the shape of the assumption of an original and eternal mass of atoms whence have come all forms of being (so Democritus in the fifth century B.C.), and this conception was adopted by Epicurus and expounded at length by Lucretius.[1827] The necessary qualities and movements being attributed to the atoms, the conclusion was that nothing else was required in order to explain the world. With this may be compared the view of Empedocles (fifth century) that love and hate (in modern phrase, attraction and repulsion) are the creative forces of the world. The simplicity of this scheme has commended it to many minds in modern as in ancient times. Man, it is said, can know nothing outside of phenomena, and, so far as regards the origin of things, it is as easy to conceive of an eternal self-existent mass of matter as of an eternal self-existent deity. The nobler part of man, it is held, is not thereby surrendered--reason and all high ethical and spiritual ideals have grown naturally out of the primordial mass. In such systems there is often the hypothesis of an original force or life resident in matter, and this force or life, being credited with all that has issued from it, may be regarded as having the elements of personality, and in that case becomes practically a deity. Such a deistic materialism approaches pantheism nearly.
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE THEISTIC DEVELOPMENT
+1009+. The theistic conceptions of men have followed the general line of social development. All systems and shades of thought are faithfully reflected in the various ideas that men have formed for themselves of the gods. Human nature is the highest thing known to men, and their conception of supernatural forces has been based on ideals derived from experience. The sphere of divine activity has been determined for men by their systems of physical science; the moral character of the gods is a reflection of human ethical conceptions; the internal activity of the deity in man's mind is defined by man's spiritual experience.
+1010+. From the earliest times the extent to which the gods were supposed to intervene in human affairs has been fixed by scientific observation, by the knowledge of natural law--the gods have been called on to intervene only when it was necessary because ordinary powers failed. When finally the conception is reached that all nature is governed by natural law, the theistic view assumes that the deity works through ordinary natural means, and the supposition of particular interventions is rejected by the mass of scientific thinkers. It was natural in early times to suppose that reward and punishment were administered by the deity in this world in accordance with the principles of right, that the good prospered and the bad failed; but this view has vanished before observation, and, by those who demand an exact accordance between conduct and fortunes, the final compensations of life have been relegated to the other world.
+1011+. The belief in miracles, however, has never completely vanished from the world. A miracle is an intervention by the deity whereby a natural law is set aside. No a priori reasoning can ever prove or disprove the possibility of miracles--such proof or disproof would involve complete knowledge of the universe or of the divine power in the universe, and this is impossible for man. The indisposition to accept a miracle has arisen from the conviction that the demand for interventions that set aside the natural order is a reflection on the wisdom of the Creator's arrangement of the world, and further from long-continued observation of the dominance of natural law, and, when appeal is made to alleged miraculous occurrences, from the arbitrary way in which, according to the reports, these have been introduced. In the records of peoples we find that miracles increase in number and magnitude in proportion as we go back to dim times without exact historical documents. They appear, it is held, in connection usually with insignificant affairs while the really great affairs in later times are left without miraculous elements.[1828] The history of the world, so historical science holds, receives a satisfactory explanation from the character of the general laws of human nature, and the principle of parsimony demands that no unnecessary elements of action be introduced into affairs. The exclusion of miracles from the world does not exclude divine agency and government; it only defines the latter as being in accordance with man's observation of natural law.
+1012+. Philosophy constructs the constitution of the deity and the relation of divine elements to the world. Whether the deity stands outside of the world or within it, whether the divine power is unitary or dual or plural, or whether there is any need to assume a power outside of physical nature--these are the questions that are discussed by philosophy, whose conclusions sometimes favor a religious view of the world, sometimes oppose it. Few persons are able to follow elaborate philosophic lines of thought--the majority of men accept the simple doctrine of a personal god who is generally supposed to stand outside of the world. The controlling consideration here is that everything must have a cause--a line of reasoning in accordance with common sense, but not always, in its crude form, regarded by philosophers as decisive.
+1013+. The moral character of a deity is always in accordance with the moral ideas of his worshipers. Religions have sometimes been divided into the ethical and the nonethical; but so far as the character of the deity is concerned no such division holds, for there never has been a supernatural Power that has not reflected the moral ideas of its time and place. A cannibal god is not only natural in a cannibal society, but he represents moral ideals, namely, the attempt to acquire strength by absorbing the physical substance of men. The deity who deceives or is vindictive arises in a society in which deceit and vindictiveness are regarded as virtues. The pictures of what we regard as immoralities in the deity as given in the Iliad and in the Old Testament were not regarded as immoral by the writers. The progress in the characterization of the deity has been not by the introduction of an ethical element, but by the purification and elevation of the already existing ethical element.[1829]