Religion in human affairs

Front matter

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Preface

Man’s interest in religon is perennial. He has never learned to take either the presence or absence of gods for granted. Since the prophets of Jahveh first poured their wrath upon the priests of Baal, philosophers, theologians, anthropologists and, in recent years, psychologists have puzzled over the phenomena of human worship. An attempt here has been made to bring together the best modern scientific thought in regard to the origin, social function and destiny of religion. The goal of the book is a searching yet objective pursuit of facts and their implications with full awareness that, ‘Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine that lights the pathway but one step ahead across a void of mystery and dread.”

A broader treatment of the subject is attempted than is usually found in the innumerable books that specialize in a discussion of primitive religion, comparative religion, Christian origins or contemporary religious problems. ‘This synthetic approach leads to a sadly superficial treatment of many topics and the vastness of the field makes necessary the reliance upon secondary sources in many instances. The general reader may be interested, however, in a bird’s-eye view and the teacher may supplement the text according to the needs of his students.

Religion is approached as a culture pattern and more stress is laid on the sociological viewpoint than in the historical and descriptive studies of comparative religion or the theoretical discussions of the psychology of religion. The primary emphasis is placed upon social processes and

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Viil PREFACE cultural relationships. No attempt is made to present a systematic account of Christian origins in view of the excellent treatments by Case, Lake and others. It is not difficult, however, to find the processes and motives discussed in this book, at work in the Christian tradition and the concepts introduced may be readily applied by those who see their applications and implications.

It was originally intended to present surveys of three sample religions, those of the Winnebago, the Ekoi and the ancient Egyptians, in order to give the reader a perspective less limited by the influence of his own culture and to provide illustrative facts less ruthlessly torn from their culture settings. These descriptive studies proved so voluminous that it was necessary to omit them from the present volume. Many illustrations are taken, however, from these religions. The author is greatly indebted to the works of European scholars like Petrie, Erman and Sayce and most notably to those of America’s leading Egyptologist, Professor James Breasted, for material dealing with Egyptian religion. For data on the Ekoi people of Nigeria, Talbot's excellent book In the Shadow of the Bush was heavily drawn upon. For information concerning the Winnebago religion the writings of Dr. Paul Radin proved invaluable.

There will be many readers who will doubtless disagree heartily with various portions of this book. It can only be said that the book was written with a keen awareness of the prevalence of wishful thinking and that a sincere attempt was made to keep personal values in the background and separate in so far as possible from the facts under discussion. There is no more insidious rationalization, however, than a claim to complete objectivity.

_ The book has profited by the use of some of the chapters in a course offered at the University of Pennsylvania dealing with social institutions. As projected, this volume repre-

PREFACE 1x sents the first of a group, dealing with social institutions such as the family, the state and the church, under the supervision of Professor Donald Young of the University of Pennsylvania and will form a part of the Wiley Social Science Series, edited by Professor Henry Pratt Fairchild.

Thanks are due to many friends who have given assistance and helpful criticism. The contribution of Professor Donald Young should be stressed. It was under his leadership that volumes dealing with social institutions were planned. He gave most generously of his knowledge and sacrificed much time and effort to the dreary task of going over the entire original manuscript. Much credit is due to him for the present organization of the book. Valuable suggestions and comments were made by Professors F. H. Hankins, H. E. Barnes, Carl Kelsey and Dr. J. K. Shryock after reading the manuscript. Professors Frank Speck and W. C. MacLeod were kind enough to grant the privilege of examining portions of unpublished material. Professor MacLeod’s manuscript has since been included in his scholarly book, The American Indian Frontier.

To my wife is due gratitude for invaluable assistance during each stage of the work and for substantial contributions to the discussion of the relation of art and religion.

CLIFFORD KIRKPATRICK.

PHILADELPHIA, April 18, 1929.

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CHAPTER

Contents

PAGE I. THe BEGINNING OF RELIGION . ; A i é I II, Wuat Is RELIGION? . ) : : 3 ‘ ; 12

Definitions of Religion Stressing Belief—Religion as a Search for Values—Definitiong Emphasizing Emotion—A Working. Definition of Religion—Tylor’s Doctrine of Animism—The Origin of Belief in Spirits—Belief in a Future Life— Animistic Origin of Religion—Spencer’s Theory of Ancestor Worship—The Origin of Belief in Spirits—The Spirit World—The Dogma of Original Ancestral Ghost Worship— Worship of Non-Human Objects—The Origin of Deities— Evolution of Ecclesiastical Institutions—Durkheim’s Sociological Theory—Durkheim’s Definition and Approach—The Crowd Psychology Theory of Religious Emotion—The Origin of the Idea of a Soul—The Origin of Mourning Rites— Criticism of Durkheim’s Theory.

III. THE Sources oF RELIGION. : , ‘ 4

Chapter I The Beginning Of Religion

The beginning of religion is unknown. From the very dawn of human history man is found bending his knee in supplication to unknown powers, practicing dark rites to achieve his ends, and creating a rich and varied mass of myths, superstitions, and beliefs concerning gods and devils, spirits, fays, and god-like heroes. Countless gods have been cast down and have faded from the mind of man; thousands of ceremonies have sunk into oblivion, or linger on stripped of their meaning and original emotional appeal. Invariably, however, new manifestations of man’s religious nature have sprung up to take their place.

Many centuries before the birth of Christ clear evidence of a highly developed religion is to be found in Egypt. Since that time an ever-changing panorama of cults and creeds, beliefs and-practices has been unrolled. The picture is often blurred. A lack of data makes analysis most difficult. There is a strange fusion of religious beliefs and rites, and when the historical record is complete it frequently discloses only the dry bones of what was once a warm and living human experience. Furthermore, from the Eskimo to the Patagonian, from the Veddah of Ceylon to the Bushman of Africa, one finds the earth covered with countless groups, large and small, each with some means, more or less peculiar to itself, of approaching the supernatural. How is it possible to find uniformity in such diversity, or order in such confusion ?

Who can say that the religious experience of an American of the twentieth century corresponds to that of the Australian aborigine or the Hindu mystic, or that any one religion typifies the religious experience of the entire human race? One cannot know the stature of Englishmen from the measurements of two or three Britons. Neither is it possible to draw general conclusions concerning religious experience from a small number of localities or from limited periods of time.

What is religion and what are the criteria of the religious? These are questions that will offer difficulty and perhaps can receive no complete answer. Religion merges with magic and with mythology. It is bound up with social and political organization. It joins hands at times with art and literature. It enters into economic life, as among the Todas where religion centers upon the production and use of milk, and the dairyman is the priest. Ethical and religious concepts are frequently found in close alliance, as in Confucianism. In fact, it is a question whether Confucianism in its original form should not be regarded as a system of ethics rather than as a religion."

Often religions show a strange blend in regard to motive and ritual. As Carpenter points out, ‘Among the Indians of North America speculation is sometimes highly elaborated in mythological tradition; and out of the fusion of nationalities in Mexico rose a developed polytheism in which lofty religious sentiment seems strangely blended with a hideous and sanguinary ritual: Peru, no less, presented to the Spanish conquerors bewildering and incongruous aspects.

1 Soper, E. D.—The Religions of Mankind, Abingdon Press, N. Y., 1921, Pp. 222-237.

THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION 3

In these two cultures native American civilization reached its highest forms. In Mexico the apparatus of religion was minutely organized. There were immense temples, which required large numbers of priests and servitors. The capital alone is said to have contained 2,000 sacred buildings, and the great temple had a staff of 5,000 priests. There were religious orders and temple-schools; rites of baptism and circumcision; feasts and sacrifices and sacraments, in which the monkish chroniclers found strange parallels to their own practice.”’? Religion may thus be infinitely complex and may enter into every phase of human experience and resist any attempt to isolate it and place it on the operating table for dissection and examination.

Even when the external forms are accurately described, how is the observer to project himself into the minds of the worshipers and share their subtle emotional experiences “Twice a year was the great Mexican deity Huitzilopochtli presented in the form of dough images to his worshipers, and with elaborate ceremonies was consumed. ‘Tezxatlipoca, in like manner, chief god of the Aztecs, represented by a handsome and noble captive wearing the divine emblems, was slain on the great altar; the body of the victim was respectfully carried down into the court below, divided into small pieces, and distributed among the priests and nobles as blessed food.” * How difficult it is to fathom the mental processes of the participants in this ceremony; the anticipated results, the emotions of awe and reverence, the degree of belief in the efficacy of the rite!

Another difficulty is suggested by the above example. Suppose that one of the priests were asked to explain the meaning of the ceremony, have we any assurance that his interpretation would fairly represent the beliefs and feelings

2 Carpenter, J. E——Comparative Religion, Holt, N. Y., n.d., p. 57. 3 Ibid., n.d., p. 147.

of the mass of the people? One should be on guard against assuming religious homogeneity even within the same group. Would a curious observer from Mars obtain the same interpretation of the Christian religion from a theologian and an ignorant laborer?

The most difficult task of the social scientist has always been to free his mind from the various forms of bias and preconceived opinion and to follow where the search for truth may lead him, accepting results and conclusions that he does not like with the same alacrity as those that are pleasing to him. It is so easy to see what we want to see and to believe what we want to believe. Every evaluation that is made has as its basis some standard which is consciously or unconsciously absorbed from a cultural environment. Resemblances to one’s own ways of action or thought are considered superior and differences constitute inferiority in proportion to the degree of divergence. These difficulties are especially prominent in connection with the study of religion, for the student has been so immersed most of his life in some cultural atmosphere that it pervades his entire personality and affects his judgment in favor of the attitudes of his own culture group. Occasionally an individual breaks away from the religious influences and dogmas to which he has been subjected and through the very violence of his antagonism to them loses sanity and perspective in his judgments. The erstwhile religious man is likely to be the most rabid atheist, indicating that he still struggles with his past sentiments which are now suppressed.

It may be helpful to show more definitely the effects of bias acquired in a particular cultural atmosphere. Not long ago the students of religion made their initial classification of religion on the basis of truth or falsity, thus introducing bias into the analysis at the very beginning. “Dr. Johnson could sententiously declare that ‘there are two objects of

THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION | 5 curiosity: the Christian world and the Mohammedan world —all the rest may be considered as barbarous.’ ” *

Even the very definition of a problem and the use of descriptive terms reflect the bias of a particular culture. Says Parson Thwackum in Tom Jones, ‘“When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the ~ Christian religion but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.” ® Perhaps, after all, such an explicit statement is not objectionable, for it is conceivable that more subtle identification of religion with personal concepts and standards may be fraught with greater danger of error.

The question arises whether or not the ideally competent student of religion be merely a thinking machine free from all trace of emotion. It would hardly seem so, for observation and study of the religious attitudes of peoples of other cultures is more penetrating when it is sympathetic. Study of a poem, a painting or a piece of sculpture with a foot rule and a magnifying glass might be strictly scientific but it would fail to give any complete understanding of the phenomena in question. As Havelock Ellis has argued there is no necessary antagonism between the artist or the mystic, as he calls him, and the scientist. In fact, it is the normal thing to have them combined in the same person when not opposed by artificial influences although a mixture of the two at the wrong times and in the wrong way may be disastrous.°®

In view of the difficulties outlined a word should be said concerning the aim of this study of religion. Its pur-

4 Quoted, Carpenter, J. E—Comparative Religion, Holt, N. Y., n.d., p. 24.

5 Quoted, Lowie, R—Primitive Religion, Boni and Liveright, N. Y., 1924, Intro. p. x.

S Ellis, H.—The Dance of Life, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1923, pp. 196-204.

pose is to explain something of the origin, nature, and significance in social life of man’s religious attitude. No attempt will be made to pass judgment on the ultimate truth or falsity of religious beliefs, for that is the field of theology and philosophy. We are interested solely in observable facts and their relationships, and merely seek to understand rather than to praise or blame religious beliefs and customs. The chemist accepts his elements without terming them good or bad, and without trying to wish others into existence. We shall try to follow this example in our own field of discussion.

It is legitimate, however, to speculate as to the stage in the evolution of man in which the first dim consciousness of the supernatural came into existence. Do animals have religion? ‘The question is interesting, although to attempt a complete answer would anticipate our later discussion of the exact meaning of religion and magic. Some writers have attempted to demonstrate the beginnings of religion in the higher animals. Such a demonstration is facilitated if the famous view of Hobbes be accepted that the essence of all religion is fear. It is alleged that the strange, the mysterious, and the fearful excite in higher animals what is equivalent to the religious thrill of humans. An oft-cited experiment of Romanes consisted in attaching a fine thread to a bone and thus terrifying a dog by producing movements without any visible cause.? Spencer mentions the emotion of a dog in the presence of an umbrella mysteriously moved by the wind. Such anecdotes have little significance since the exact conditions and the past experiences of the dogs are un-

7Leuba, J. H.—A Psychological Study of Religion, Macmillan, N. Y., 1912, Chapt. III. See also Clodd, E.—Animism the Seed of Religion, Constable, London, 1905.

8 Spencer, H.—Principles of Sociology, Appleton, N. Y., 1908, Vol. I, pp. 127-128.

THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION ii known. ‘The situation may have had something in common with a past situation involving pain or injury. It is a question also whether a deity exists for the’devoted dog in the master who dispenses praise and blame, rewards and punishments. ‘This claim is a more or less futile attempt to interpret canine behavior in human terms. Frazer, in arguing for the early development of magic prior to the appearance of religion through the mistaken association of ideas, a theory which we shall examine later, says:

‘The very beasts associate the ideas of things that are like each other or that have been found together in their experience; and they could hardly survive for a day if they ceased to do so. But who attributes to the animals a belief that the phenomena of nature are worked by a multitude of invisible animals or by one enormous and _ prodigiously strong animal behind the scenes? It is probably no injustice to the brutes to assume that the honour of devising a theory of this latter sort must be reserved for human reason.” ®

Even if mistaken associations of ideas were the whole story of magic it is stretching a point to attribute either worship or sorcery to animals. True, they do form associations or conditioned responses so as to react to some element of a past situation or according to a new gestalt, yet no dog shuns the flesh of a rabbit for fear of acquiring the timidity of that animal nor does a cat scratch an image of a dog with the belief that the canine himself will suffer accordingly. While the dog may fawn upon the human he does not pray to a mental image of his master. Animals do not often react to things not present nor do they apparently have conscious anticipation as a rule of the future results of present acts.

What then is the mental basis of the supernaturalism

®Frazer, J. G—The Golden Bough, Macmillan, N. Y., abridged ed., 1922, PP- 54-55- which is essentially peculiar to man? Three things may be mentioned: (1) imagination, (2) complex emotional development, and (3) language, as made possible by highly developed association areas in the human brain. Imagination is the power of the human organism to store up impressions, to condense them into images or symbols and to recombine them and project them into the future. Man makes his gods by means of his imagination just as he does his scientific systems although he is less inclined in the former case to check up his conceptions with the aid of observation. Again the emotional life of humans is ‘more complicated than that of animals. Awe, love, reverence, wonder and other more or less complex emotional states are possible to him and may be associated with ideas or sub-vocal responses corresponding to things not present to the senses. Such systems of ideas and emotions may be called complexes, sentiments or attitudes and constitute the very core of religious life. Finally, it should be noted that the human power of speech makes possible the transmission of religious beliefs and practices from one generation to another.

The conclusion then must be that magico-religious behavior is not found at the sub-human level but there is reason to think that when man acquired his essentially human traits religion soon appeared. It is something of a paradox that the common-sense behavior of animals degenerates in man, at least for a time, into fantastic magic and gross superstition. The animal fears its natural enemy but being blessed with no imagination does not people the world with evil spirits, demons, hobgoblins, witches and wrathful gods nor does it devise the eight Hells of Japanese Buddhism with their excruciating and eternal tortures for hapless souls. |

It has already been ventured that man did not have to rise far from the brute level before his religious life began.

THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION 9

The best evidence of this is furnished by anthropology and archeology. Let us take a hasty glance at what these sciences have to show us concerning the antiquity of religion. Unfortunately religious practices are not preserved to us as are stone tools, yet Kroeber writes: ‘‘As far back as the Mousterian, thirty thousand years ago, certain practices were being observed by the Neanderthal race of western Europe which modern savages observe in obedience to the dictates of their religion. When these people of the Mousterian laid away their dead, they put some of their belongings with them. When existing nations do this, it is invariably in connection with a belief in the continued existence of the soul after death. We may reasonably conclude therefore that even in this long-distant period human beings had arrived at a crude recognition of the difference between flesh and spirit; in short, religion had come into being.” *° Somewhat later the Cro-Magnon people folded and painted the bodies of their dead, and buried flint implements and food in their graves.

Ancient skulls have been found pierced presumably to permit the egress of evil spirits believed to cause headaches, if we can judge the purpose of contemporary practices of some primitive people. Another line of evidence is found in the cave paintings dating back some twenty thousand years. Whitnall. says that, ‘‘Practically all the finest paintings are of animals that were used for food.’ ** Furthermore these paintings are found in the most distant and secluded portions of the caves and in this respect at least justify the term ‘‘Prehistoric Sanctuary” applied by Marret to one of these caves at Niaux.’? Recently an underwater

10 Kroeber, A. L.—Anthropology, Harcourt, Brace & Co. N. Y., 1923, p. 171. | 11 Whitnall, H. O—The World and Art of the Ancient Cave Men, Sci. Mo., Vol. XVII:1, Nov., 1923, p. 425. 12 Marret, R. R—Threshold of Religion, Chapt. VIII.

swim through a subterranean stream by an adventurous archeologist revealed in a cavern at Montespan the clay image of a bear apparently pierced with spear thrusts. Many of the animals painted on the walls of the French caves are found to be wounded in vital spots.*

These latter facts take on significance when it is recalled that many peoples the world over have magic rites in which a desired act or achievement is imitated in the hope and doubtless belief that a mysterious connection between the symbol and the reality will give them the effect desired. Living races pierce images of animals they wish to kill, sprinkle water to produce rain and perform other magical rites. Certainly the hypothesis that magico-religious beliefs and practices entered into the life of man at least twenty thousand years ago is in accord with these facts.

Again, the universality of some sort of religion among the peoples of the entire earth suggests great antiquity for religion. If magic and religion were developed but once in the history of the human race as some anthropologists are inclined to believe, then it must have taken a long time for them to diffuse over the world. On the other hand, if magico-religious practices originated several times and in different places it still would probably mean a venerable age for this social invention. If such an invention were difficult to hit upon it would have taken a long period of time for all peoples to make the discovery, while if it were a natural and inevitable product of the human mind it would have come into being in the dim mists of antiquity when mind first reached the human level, perhaps before the original dispersion of the human species. In studying religion, we are consequently dealing with phenomena almost as old as man himself which have loomed large in human experience even down to the present day.

THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION 11

It is impossible, then, to trace out the ultimate origins of religion. We must of necessity content ourselves for our foundations with a study of religious systems among contemporary pre-literate peoples. A complete survey of the religious beliefs of pre-literate peoples would be desirable but is, of course, out of the question in the limited space available in this study. Such surveys as have been made have been weakened by the use of the comparative method which takes facts out of their cultural settings and hence leads to comparison of things not properly comparable. It is also true that no one primitive religion is typical of all religions, but there is perhaps less danger in an intensive study of the role of religion in certain sample cultures than in an extensive analysis of isolated ethnological anecdotes. Consequently three religions have been selected for detailed study, namely, the religions of the American Winnebago, the African Ekoi and the ancient Egyptians. It is hoped that this procedure will give to the reader a sense of perspective, an insight into cultures other than his own, an understanding of some simpler religions relatively free of secondary accretions not essentially religious, and finally that the samples will serve the author as a convenient source of illustrative material.

Chapter II What Is Religion?

Any discussion of religion raises at once the baffling question, “What is religion?” Two people with different views as to what constitutes religion will write about quite different things and wonder why their conclusions are so at variance and why it is so difficult to understand each other. Once upon a time, so the story goes, four blind men felt of an elephant. One, feeling of the trunk, described the animal as like a snake; another, touching a leg, described it as like a tree; the third, touching a side, said that the creature was like a wall, while the fourth, grasping the tail, maintained that an elephant was like a rope. Each was right according to his own approach and so, perhaps, are various writers on religion, for each man is privileged to define his terms as he pleases so long as he uses them consistently. We may note that some writers have attempted to get at what one of them has called a “minimum definition of religion,” that is to say, a definition which picks out a common element in all religious experience and uses that element as a mark of identification.

DEFINITIONS OF RELIGION STRESSING BELIEF

Perhaps the matter would be made clearer by presenting some definitions of religion beginning with that of E. B. Tylor, who started the search for a ‘“‘minimum definition of religion.’ His definition, like those which are immediately to follow, lays primary stress upon belief.t| He concludes that, ‘‘it seems best to fall back at once on the essential source, and simply to claim, as a minimum definition of religion, the belief in spiritual beings.” ? He thinks that spirits take two general forms, first, as definite ghosts of dead men, and second, as spirits less distinctly associated with a human body, and varying in power up to actual gods. As will be shown later, he holds that belief in spiritual beings makes up an almost universal primitive philosophy known as animism. No group is known which after careful investigation is not found to have some such belief. It must be remembered, then, that according to Tylor the essential thing in religion is a particular belief.

The view of Frazer is not markedly different although he includes behavior as well as belief. “By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.” * Lang likewise lays stress on belief and makes religion essentially a matter of belief in God and immortality.*

Thouless defines religion briefly as a “‘felt practical relationship with what is believed in as a superhuman being or beings.” > Boas says, ‘“We may define religion as that group of concepts and acts which spring from the relation of the individual to the outer world, so far as these rela-

1 There is no intention of presenting a complete list of definitions of religion. A valuable collection of definitions may be found in the appendix to Leuba, J. A—A Psychological Study of Religion.

2Tylor, E. B.—Primitive Culture, 5th ed.. Murry, London, 1913, Vol. 1,

« 42

; race J. G—The Golden Bough, abridged ed., Macmillan, N. Y., 1922, » 50.

‘ ve A.—The Making of Religion, 2nd ed., Longmans, Green, London, 1900, p. 46.

5 Thouless, R. H.—An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion, Macmillan, N. Y., 1923, p. 4.

tions are not considered as due to physical forces the action of which is accounted for by purely rationalistic considerations.”’° In Leuba’s statement we find an appreciation of the broader aspects of religion as a thing woven into life experience. “Religion should, therefore, be looked upon as a functional part of life, as that mode of behavior in the struggle for life in which use is made of powers characterized here as psychic, superhuman, and usually personal. In its objective manifestations, religion appears as attitudes, rites, creeds, and institutions; in its subjective expression, it consists of impulses, desires, purposes, feelings, emotions, and ideas connected with the religious actions and institutions.” * Here we still have belief in more or less personal beings or powers as the essential thing but with recognition of both emotion and behavior as part of the religious complex.

A rather similar synthetic definition with stress on belief is presented by Jastrow. ‘Religion may be defined as the natural belief in a Power or Powers beyond our control, and upon whom we feel ourselves dependent; which belief and feeling of dependence prompt (1) to organization, (2) to-specific acts, and (3) the regulation of conduct, with a view to establishing favorable relations between ourselves and the Power or Powers in question.’ * ‘These definitions take into account behavior, in the sense of ritual, but there are some writers, as for example, Robertson Smith, who are inclined to make ritual the essential thing in religion.®