Prolegomena of the History of Religions

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Preface

This book is the reproduction, in a condensed form, of Lectures which I gave at the College de France during some months of the last spring and summer. I have not reproduced them literally, in eoctenso, because it seems to me that the same forms which are suitable to an oral lesson are not so suitable to a book. That which the Professor says in a lecture in order to be well and clearly understood by his audience, is apt to degenerate into redundancy and prolixity in a book. Beading allows of more reflection than hearing ; it requires also more rapidity in development

I do not claim to have exhausted in these chapters all that

might come into a general Introduction to the History of Eeli-

gions. There are subjects which those who are familiar with

this kind of studies could easily point out which are not even

approached, because it is only later that they could be usefully

dealt with. At the beginning of a course in which his powers

would fail the Professor long before the matter he has to treat of

is exhausted, I have sought simply to bring together data and

judgments which are most necessary for those who wish to

follow it profitably. It is a digest to which I may from time

to time be allowed to refer, in order not to lengthen the way

thus be avoided by this statement of the principles and of the

b

VI PREFACE,

tendency which direct my I'esearches in a domain where confusion of ideas and of words is as easy as it is frequent. I would venture to hope that, in default of any other merit, the mark of that strictly scientific spirit which should preside over studies of this kind will be found here. I do not consider the very real sympathy which I openly profess for their object as in any way opposed to that spirit. I believe, on the contrary, that the love of religion within one*s-self — like the love of nature to the naturalist, like the love of art to the theorist of the beautiful — is indispensable to the historian of religions. These various affections are not at war; on the contrary, they nourish and inspire the love of truth.

ALBERT RfiVILLE.

Introduction

I WAS delighted when I heard that M. R^\'ille's excellent Prol^om^nes de VHistoire des Religions were to be translated into English, and if I hesitated before acceding to the request that I should add a few lines by way of introducing his book to the English public, it was simply because I remembered the old English saying that good wine needs no bush.

I do not doubt that all real students of the History of Eeligion have by this time read M. E^ville's book in the original. But the interest in the Science of Eeligion is spreading rapidly and widely, and there are large classes of English readers who seldom see a book which is published abroad, and who are more easily reached by an English translation.

I hope, therefore, that M. R^ville's book in its English translation will be read even more widely in England than it has been ; and I trust that it may help to remedy the injury which has of late been done to the Science of Religion in this country, both by its indiscriminate enemies and by its indiscriminate admirers.

Its indiscriminate enemies have often represented that new science as entirely hostile to religion. The author of our book, however, has not only been an active clergyman, but he is not afraid, as the first Professor of the History of Religions at tlie ColUge de France, to confess his real love of religion.

viii INTRODUCTION,

But the indiscrimisate admirers of the Science of Religion have proved almost more mischievous than our enemies by raising a prejudice against us among men who, though few in number, always tell in the end, and who, from the unscientific way in which the history of religion, or, I should rather say, the evolution of religion, has often been treated in recent publications, have naturally been led to believe that this new so-called science is rather an amusement for amateurs than a study for scholars. Long ago, I ventured to apply to the study of religion what Goethe had said of the study of language, that he who knows one knows none. A man may know his own religion very well, but he is not thereby a theologian, as little as a man is an astronomer because he knows the sun and the moon and the stars that rise above his own horizon. Now in M. E^ville we have a writer who has carefully studied, not his own religion only, but most of the really important religions of mankind, and who never forgets the duty of the true historian to treat all religions, the lowest as well as the highest, with perfect impartiality and fairness.

But greater mischief even than has been done by those who know or who recognize one religion only, has been done to our young science by those who profess to know all religions, whether ancient or modern, whether savage or civilized. This comprehensive treatment of religions may have its advantages, and may no doubt claim its proper place in anthropological and psychological works. It is full of interest, and even of amusement, but it is simply intolerable in the Science of Religion. In Comparative Theology, no less than in Comparative Philology and Mythology, it is necessary before all things that whosoever wishes to do any real good, should make himself a scholar, and should acquire not only the knowledge, but also the conscience

INTRODUCTION. IX

of a scholar. What should we say of a writer who undertook to teach us anything about Zeus, and was not able to spell his name rightly ? Yet men venture to write about the religions of literate and illiterate nations without attempting to learn even the alphabet or the grammar of their languages. C*est VMignifigue, mais ee n*esi pas la guerre.

Lastly, our yoimg science has sufiTered much from the embraces of that philosophy which tries to know how everything ought to have been, without first trying to know something of what really has been, and which, if facts happen to run counter to its postulates, disposes of all difficulties with a self-complacent TarU pis pour lesfaits. Having been myself one of the earliest and most outspoken admirers of Darwin's work, and having stood up, even before Darwin, for the theory of evolution, which nowhere, I believe, has achieved greater triumphs than in the Science of Language, I cannot protest too strongly against degrading the name of Darwin by applying it to that pseudo-philosophical sciolism which tries to put evolution in the place of history, and which, instead of descending from the known to the unknown, imagines that we can ascend far more easily from the unknown to the known. Before we have recourse to the theories of evolution in reUgion, language, or mythology, we ought surely first to learn what history has to teach us. When tjiat is done, but not till then, there will be time for reasoning out what is required as necessarily antecedent by the very facts which are still within our reach. Let us by all means study history in order to show that there is a unity of purpose, that there is the evolution of an idea in it. But let us not imagine that evolution can defy the authority of history. It was one of the glories of our century that in the study of the earliest history of mankind we had shaken ourselves free from the d priori theories of the last

X INTRODUCTION.

century, the Euhemerism of Banier, the Fetichism of De Brosses, the Infantism of Voltaire, the Animism of Bousseau, and the Savageism {sit venia verba) of Lord Monboddo. If the Science of Man is to descend once more to that low levels it will become again a subject for dabblers, but not for students who have patiently tried to learn the great lessons which the true antiquities of the world, the tools of man, the languages of man, the religions of man, the earliest laws and literatures of man, are able to teach.

That is the spirit in which M. B^ville's Prolegomena are written — Prolegomena of the history, not of the romance^ of religion. We find ourselves throughout its pages, as well as in his other works, Les Religions des Peuples Non-dvUis^, and his excellent Hibbert Lectv/res, under the guidance of a scholar and an historian ; though he also shows us, when we have come to the Land's End, those dim and distant regions in the growth of the human mind which no history and no scholarship can reach, and where the philosopher finds ample scope both for his reasoning and for his imaginative powers. It is quite true that the human mind must not shrink from embarking on that dark ocean which beats everywhere against the shores of our historical knowledge. All I say is, that those who venture on that perilous voyage which is to lead them to the discovery of the oldest world, should possess not only the boldness of the psychologist, but likewise the caution of the scholar and the tact of the historian, as the only safe compass to guide them across mists and darkness from the safe shore which they leave to the unknown harbour which they hope to reach.

F. MAX MULLEE.

Oxford, Oct. 17, 1884

Contents

PAOI

M. Riville's Preface v

Professor Max MUller's Introduction vii

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II

PEOLEGOMENA

OF

THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS.

gixBt ^ari

I.

RELIGION.

A. — Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Of all subjects of study, Eeligion is perhaps the one which has suffered most from misapprehension. There is none more constantly under discussion by those who do not possess even the simple elementary knowledge which is indispensable for the formation of a competent judgment. There are hundreds of thousands of minds to whom "Eeligion/* "Christianity," " Catholicism," " Theology," are synonyms which they use indifferently one for the others. Eeligion is one of those domains in which the accident is continually confounded with the substance, the accessory with the essential That is attributed to all humanity which is true of only a fraction, and that which endures but for a moment is held to be etemaL

Hence the necessity, before entering on the historical task which we have set ourselves, of a sort of general survey which may help us in our long journey by defining notions and terms which are far from being sufficiently understood. We shall travel from the surface to the centre, in order to return from the centre to the surface, and so determine with more accuracy the meaning and bearing of certain general phenomena which

B met us at the outset, but which it was impossible to understand fully apart from their common source.

The first thing that strikes us on glancing over a map of the religions of the globe, is their multiplicity and diversity. Creeds, rites, moral precepts or simple religious observances ; fetichism, animism, polytheism, dualism, monotheism, pantheism; ritual obligations passing from crime to heroism, from prostitution to spotless purity, from cruel immolation of others to complete sacrifice of self — all, principles and forms, produce at first sight the effect of a confused mingling of incongruous phenomena, to which it seems very rash to ascribe beforehand any element in common.

More than this: we may lay down as a general rule that nothing is so tenacious as a religion, nothing more obstinately defies proscription and all attempts at extirpation, nothing resists with more constancy the contradictory demonstrations of palpable reality. History supplies examples of this which are almost appalling. Nevertheless, the number of religions which have become extinct or have disappeared is great. Buddh ism, after having been for ages the popular and official religion of Hindostan, from a certain date almost suddenly vanishes, and that, as it would seem, without any persecution having been directed against its votaries. The grand religion of Zoroaster, one of the most interesting and beautiful of antiquity, at present numbers only a few hundreds of professors, and is on the verge of extinction. In France, our religious history presents at least four successive stages — the old religion of the soil, on which was grafted a mystic^ruidism ; then the religion of the conquerors, who absorbed one and proscribed the other ; and at last Christianity, in its turn the point of departure of new evolutions. The Greco-Eoman, Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies — the Semitic polytheisms of Nineveh, Babylon, Biblos, Tyre and Carthage — the rich pantheon of ancient Egypt — the solar worship of the Incas — all these are dead, gone for ever. And we coidd add to this funereal list other names less known. So that

ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 3

religions exhibit this double phenomena of a vitality which we might suppose indestructible, and of a tendency to decay which frequently ends in complete annihilation. Later, we shall have to examine the hidden causes of this contradictory manifestation ; at the moment we content ourselves with noticing a fact which is brought more prominently forward through this very contradiction.

It is this, that if religions are mortal, religion never dies, or we may say, it dies under one form only to come to life again under another.

There is, then, underneath and within this multicoloured development a permanent and substantial element, something stable and imperishable, which takes a firm hold on human nature itself. It is like the tendency of man to live in society, or like the faculty of speech, two things which subsist through all changes, all governments, all revolutions of states and races. If we were called upon to write a comparative history of legislation, or a general history of art, we should begin by defining the idea of law or of art. In like manner, our first efifort now ought to be devoted to ascertaining what Rdigioii, the common cause of all these fluctuating, varied and successive phenomena, is in itself.

If the question is elementary, it is far from being easy of solution. It is with religion, in the abstract sense of the word, as with man himself, as with the state, art, philosophy, and so many other subjects of reflective thought. Their rigorous definition demands sustained effort, which is not always rewarded by success. We must bear this in mind in our summing up of what may be called the history of the definition of Eeligion.

The etymological meaning of the word itself does not throw much light on the question, though it contains an indication which we must not overlook. In spite of the objections of some philologers, we persist in thinking that the word religion, derived bom the Latin religio, conveys the idea of a bond, of something which attaches and binds, and, as a matter of fact^ we

b2

4 RELiaiON.

sliall find this idea in the definition which will result from our inquiry.^

^ The Greek does not possess any term exactly corresponding to the Latin religio: Opri(TKfia, 9fo<rtfif.taf ivtrffina, relate rather either to a ritual form of worship, or to the disposition which we call piety. The Greek expression, rd. xcpi tovq Q^ovq, or mpi Tov QfoVf that which concerns the gods or god, is too vague to serve as an equivalent. The German GottesdUnst, which we tlnd in all the languages of the Germanic family except in English, literally signifies service of God, that is, religions practice rather than religion itself. This is why the philosophers and theologians of Outre' Rhin borrow from us the term religion in their technical works. This, we may say in passing, singularly weakens the force of the reasoning in virtue of which it is often desired to insist upon the absence of a notion, or of a faculty, or of a moral disposition among certain peoples, founding this argument on the fact that their language did not contain the precise word for designating it.

Etymologists, whose opinion we do not share, refer the term religion to re-legere, to collect anew, re-collect, to take again something in order to devote one's attention to it. It is thus, it is added, that intelligere means to collect several things, to dispose them, arrange them, comprehend them ; that nec-ligere (negligere) means not to collect^ to leave aside, neglect ; that di-Ugere supposes that one has collected, but has put something apart from the others, whence the meaning of liking, preferring, cherishing. Relegere would be equivalent to the French word repctsseVf revolve (in mind or memory), and in fact this is the meaning which the Latins themselves have assigned to religion. Cicero, for example (De Nat. D. ii. 28, 72), says, in reference to this : Qui omnia qua! ad ciiltum deorum pertinerent diligenter retractarent et tanquam reUgerent^ sunt dicti reliqiosi cx releoendo, ut eleganter ex eligendo, tanquam a diligendo diligenter, ex intelligendo intelligenter ; his enim in verbis omnibus in est vis legend* eadem quce in religioso.

With all deference, however, to Cicero, whose etymologies often leave much to be desired, his comparison is open to very grave objections. The greater number of substantives formed with intelligere, diligere, eligere, negligere, take the termination entia, intelligent ia, diligentia, elegantia^ negligentia; consequently religere ought to give religentia, not religio, Religiosus has so little the meaning of repassant, revolving, reviewing carefully, that another Latin, quoted by Aulus Gellius (iv. 9), clearly distinguishes between the meaning of religens and that of rcligiosv>8, this last being understood as the equivalent of our word " superstitious : " Religentem esse oportet, religiosum nefas. Finally, the word religion is employed in Latin in the sense of a sacred or solemn bond which it is not lawful to break, a meaning which is preserved in such phrases as ** Religion du serment," "Religion du drapeau.^^ Religione jvsjurandi ac metu Deorum in testimoniis dicendis commoveri, said Fonteius, ix. 20.

Agreeing with Servius, Lactantius and Augustine, we think that the word religion must be connected with religare, to bind, to connect with. Pott (Etymol. Forsch. i. 20) objects that religare ought to give religatio, as obligare makes oUigatio, But we may reply that the termination are of Latin verbs of the first conjugation is not primitive ; it represents a-ere. This is why the penultimate of substantives formed out of these verbs may vary. We have, for example, opinio by the side of opinari, optio by the side of optare, rebellio by the side of rebellare. Nothing, then, is philologically opposed to the derivation of religio from religa-ere, or rather from the root lig, which is common to them. M. Max Miiller, from whom we borrow several of the preceding observations, also appears to prefer this etymology.

ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE A0E3. 6

But while admitting that religion may be a bond, that tells us nothing of what that bond consists in, nor especially of what it unites or attaches.

The ancients concerned themselves with religion itself, independently of its historic forms. For them, in fact, religion had no history. It would be impossible to give this name to myths Telating how younger gods were substituted for more ancient deities, like those which told of the dethronement of Uranus, to "be replaced by Kronos, and of Kronos again dispossessed by Zeus or Jupiter. These revolutions among their deities formed a pait of the traditional mythology which the thinkers of antiquity rarely openly combatted. They saw in it something establislied, secular, venerable and inevitable, to which they had to accommodate themselves, even while they discerned its puerile and fabulous character. The Greek philosophers knew little of the world, and those who began to know it somewhat better were neither Greeks nor philosophers. What the former knew of Asia, of Egypt, of the regions of the North, showed them nothing which differed essentially from that Hellenic polytheism in the bosom of which they had been born and would die. Eeligion, as distinguished from religions, and as constituting the internal spring of their development, could not be to them an object of study.

Whenever they did not yield to scepticism or to a grosser materialism, they sought to form a rational idea of the normal relation necessarily existing between man and that higher Power whose will or whose nature determines human destiny. The popular religion appeared to their minds as a form adapted to the intellectual weaknes8_of_the masses, in which to present to them the highest truth under a disguise which would render it accessible to uncultivated intelligences. The almost total absence of dogma from the mythological traditions greatly facilitated this position, half scornful, half benevolent. It is especially in the Platonic school, as well as in the Pythagorean societies, that we find this philosophical notion of religion, one which it has been

6 RBLIQION.

sought to revive in our own day, but with no great success, inasmuch as it is with religions infinitely more systematized, more dogmatic and more dominant than the old Paganism that we have to do.

According to Plato, the Absolute is the ideal and real good, the intelligible sun, the action of which results in the formation of matter by means of ideas which impart to it whatever it possesses of reason, order and beauty. The human soul, a combination of the divine and of the material, participates in divine things through the divine element in its nature ; while in like manner, through the material element, it is dragged down to the troubled region of blinding and hurtful passions. The mythological tendency of his mind causes Plato to mix with tliis fundamental notion various elements which find a place rather in the regions of poetry than in the severer atmosphere of a system purely rational (reminiscences of an anterior life, prophetic ecstacy, &c., are among these) ; but it is evident that in his view the religious destiny of the soul, the essence and the end of religion, is o/xotWis t<J) Gc^, likeness to God, founded on the co-essentiality of the human soul and of the Deity.

This mode of comprehending religion, already indicated by Socrates and implied in the Pythagorean reform, is typical in the history of the ancient philosophy. We meet it again, with variations which in no way affect the principle, in Stoicism, Alexandrian Judaism, Christianity of the same name, and in Neo-Platonism. It is easy to understand how relations on the whole sufficiently amicable might be established between the philosophical point of view and the popular faith. We must take care not to apply the intolerance of our modern logic to these ancient relations between philosophy and religious tradition. Where we should at once have seen two religions distinct and hostile, the ancients saw but one. It is true that Socrates, Anaxagoras, Plato and others, aroused in a certain number of minds fears which found their relief in actual persecution. This, however, was partly due to political animosity, partly because

ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 7

the popular polytheism at the time believed itself to be attacked in principle. But the proof that these passing emotions never j)enetrated very deeply, is found in the fact that the very doctrines ^which had excited them continued to be taught and propagated without any serious opposition being made to them by either the state or the priesthood. The question of the true or false in ^religion was not then submitted to the conscience of the people, as it has been sinca Thence a certain serenity, a benevolent optimism, prevailed in the mutual relations between philosophy and the popular faith. The ancient religions were utterly destitute of all spirit of propagandism. The philosophers did not distinguish themselves from the people in their observance of traditional rites. The people, on their side, did not look too closely into matters. They were quite contented that poetry, the drama and comedy should be associated with the old myths and the hereditary deities. The philosophers readily sought support to their systems by pointing out the analogies in form or in origin which the popular tradition offered. Their language is almost always half-mythological. They delighted in personifying abstract ideas, a tendency which dates from the time of Hesiod. A personified idea would be indeed unlucky if in the traditional pantheon it could not find some deity whom it resembled. Plato could raise his voice against the eflBcacy which superstition attributes to sacrifices, and against the employment of scandalous myths in the education of youths ; Cicero could exhibit his scepticism in regard to divination, oracles, auguries. This did not prevent either of them from offering sacrifices or taking part in the ceremonial of divination. Herodotus among the Greeks, and Caesar and Tacitus among the Romans, furnish us with familiar examples of the facility with which they identified the gods of strange or barbarous nations with those of the Greco- Eoman polytheism. As to the grotesque or the decidedly immoral elements of the mythic tradition, it is to be presumed that the sages applied to them a treatment analogous to that which many Christians in our day use to remove from their consciences r the painful impression which many passages in the Old Testament are likely to cause them. They either do not consider them at all, or they complacently interpret them allegorically or in a modified sense ; in no case do they accord to the real sense any influence on their thouglits or life.

The school of Epicurus is always held to be irreligious, because, in spite of the TrpoXr/^t?, the anteccepta grucedam informatio Deorum which he recognized to exist in the human soul, Epicurus, by banishing the divine power into space without admitting any actual bond between it and humanity, suppressed at the same time all religious relation between the two terms. There was no longer any actual relation between man and the Deity. But the Epicurean in his daily life showed himself scrupulously conservative in regard to the established religion. With Lucretius, it is tru6, philosophical thought took a higher flight. Lucretius is not an atheist, as he has been called : he is rather a pantheist ; and one often feels, in reading his great poem, as it were a breath of profound and mystic piety. It is untrue, a wide- spread notion to the contrary notwithstanding, that he was the author of the famous verses which attribute to fear the origin of the earliest beliefs. But while recognizing, in his contemplation of the universe, the mens agitans molem, which separates him entirely from Epicurus, he exhibits, in a far higher degree than the other independent thinkers of the period, a violent repulsion against the popular religion, and he delights in reproaching it with all the evil it has done to men. This negative point of view could not then, any more than it could now, prepare him for the serious study of what we may call "the natural history" of religion.

To sum up, the ancients did not and could not. acquire an experimental and historical notion of religion in itself, still less of the common cause of its various manifestations. The materials for study were wanting ; and that sort of intellectual simplicity which is induced by the absence of contradiction, disableS" them from recognizing even the existence of the problem.

The situation was greatly changed when a new religion placed

ANTIQUITY AND THB MIDDLE AQBS. 9

itself in antagonism to the old. One thing especially afiPected the minds of those who, brought up in polytheism, were accustomed to attach only a minor importance to the question of truth in religion. The new faith offered itself to their acceptance in these terms : " Your religion is error, and I am truth ; you are plunged in darkness, while I soar in the brightest light ; your gods are false ; your myths are lies ; your faith is no longer Deeded on the eartL" Such language had never before been ieard in the Western world.

By the time that the Christian Church was in a position to speak authoritatively, she was already in possession of an orthodoxy, that is, of a canonical list of doctrines, which it was necesfi^y to profess under pain of exclusion. Although this orthodoxy was then very modest in comparison with what it afterwards ^came, it none the less contributed to widen the gulf of separation between the two powers. More, the Church had inherited from Judaism a peremptory mode of accounting for the existence ^d prevalence of the mythological religion. It was purely and simply the work of the devil ; and if any one remarked that, ^nevertheless, even from her own point of view, the Church ought ^ recognize the presence of certain divine rays in the thick dark- ^^ss of popular traditions, she replied by the mouth of her most approved apologists, that the devil, this imitator, this "ape" of ^od, had purposely introduced these into the mass of corruption ^^^d lies in order the more easily to seduce mankind. In truth, ^t Avas not a religion which she had to oppose ; quite the cont^ary ; there was but one religion, her own.