The history of religions

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Definitions, Sources, Classifications of Religions I

II General Characteristics of Primitive Religions . 14

Chapter One Definitions, Sources And Classifications Of Religions

A CERTAIN Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, Augustine by name, seeking to define time, said: ''Ask me, and I do not know; ask me not, and I know." Every one knows time, feels conscious of it, recognizes that man exists in time. Yet who can define it properly, or say that it ever began or never began? So it is with religion. We are conscious of it, we feel that it exists and that we exist as religious beings; and each of us may know what his own religion is. Yet who can say of religion in general that it is this or that and who would venture to assert that his own religion is the only religion? To take a concrete example, what shall we say of a moral atheist and of an immoral theist, are they religious or irreligious? 1 Nevertheless, we^must, as students of religion, attempt some definition of what we are to study, and for the purposes of religious history this definitiori^ust exclude^jB aiticulars and include ^y hat is common to all the religions jye a^re to investigate. Now what is common "to all religions is belief in a superhuman power and an adjustment of human activities to the requirements of that power, such an adjustment as may enable the individual believer to exist more jiappily. As physical life must be adjusted to its environment, so mental life must be adjusted, and this adjustment is expressed by the activities exercised in view of the religious belief. Our definition then must imply belief, but it should also emphasize the activity, mental and physical, which results from that belief.

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On the other hand, we ought not to intrude into the definition any implication or expression of the answer to the query whether man has an innate religious faculty or merely impressions that produce that faculty, and we may not even imply in our definition that religion necessitates a belief in spiritual powers, because such belief is not essential. To 2Ut into the definition what cannot be omitted and to omit what oCfght"hot to be put in : Religion is Squaring hu mak life with superhuman life. In the effort to adjust oneself to superhuman life, belief is assumed, but the definition rather stresses that adjustment without which religion becomes pretence or hypocrisy. As to belief in a superhuman power, even Positivism, with its '* veneration for the power which exercises a dominant influence over life" (Frederic Harrison's definition of religion), really reveres a nonmaterial, if not spiritual power, inasmuch as the power venerated cannot be explained in terms of matter or material force and is beyond the control of humanity, while directing it. And so too Buddhism, which has been a thorn in the flesh of those who have tried to make it fit into their more elaborate definitions of religion, is included as a real religion in this definition, for Karma is a superhuman power which Hes outside of sense-experience.^

It may perhaps be objected that such a definition as has been proposed is too cold or too vague and does not correspond to what we feel religion should be; it ought to contain something which implies a belief in the immortality of thesoul, in God, and in our feeling of dependence on him. But this is exactly what has destroyed the value of many famous definitions of religion, which have substituted what men think ought to be the hall-mark of religion for that which is actually found to be essential. Vpor in adopt-

1 Although Buddha was an atheist, Tide represents Buddhism as haying " Buddha for its God/' simply because Tiele's definition requires a belief in God as the base of reHgion. And Sir Monier- Williams, confronted with the same problem as to the status of Buddhism, boldly declared that Buddhism is no religion at all!

DEFINITIONS 3

ingany such definition we drop back into the attitude^,.©^ those~wHonmake-a~distin:cti6irEeFw the false and the true, as' they understand it, the test of real religion; who say, or think, "that what they themselves believe is religion and what they do not believe is superstition. ^

Yet the definitions of religion furnished by others are of value to the student, who ought not to be without such historical background and to whom it is important to know what other investigators of religion mean when they use that word. Even to glance at the interpretation of religion conveyed by philology is not a waste of time.

To begin with some of these unconscious revelations given by man's crystallized thought, the Greek sebas and the Latin reverentia imply a theory of religious origins still taught in our schools. Sebas is " shrinking " and reverentia' is " timidity," and before reverentia became piety or sebas had formed its child eusebeia, these were the earliest verbal equivalents of religion. The word religion itself was defined by the later Romans as justitia adversus deos. Cicero derived it from relego, implying a careful knowledge of the needs of the gods — religentem esse oportet religiosum nefas (be religious but not superstitious). Others connected the word with lex, law, and religo, implying an obligation. Earlier still is the notion of religion furnished by Plato in the mocking challenge of the Euthyphro : " Is not religion perhaps merely a science of begging and getting?" This last explanation of religion takes us direct to the modern theory of Lyall,^ who regards the principle of do ut des as the " foundation of natural religion." Andrew Lang has remarked that this is virtually the definition of Frazer, who makes religion " a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man." ^

The definition of Seneca, who says that "to know God and imitate him " is religion, brings us to the practical diffi-

^ Sir A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, London, 1899, ii, p. 172. 2 Andrew Lang, Magic and Religion, London, 1901, p. 59.

culty already discussed. This admirable definition is rather a precept than a definition; it is not what religion is but what it should be. So with definitions which make religion imply the love of God, the command of conscience, the feeling of trust in God, etc. From the point of view of our study, Schleiermacher's " consciousness of contact between the soul and the universe," though a noble definition of religion, is too noble ; it does not apply to the religion of savages. Bishop Butler's famous definition, *' Religion is « the belief in one God or Creator and Moral Governor of the world and in a future state of retribution," would today exclude a host of religious civilized people of his own church, as it even then excluded hosts who were not believers in his religion. The same may be said of James Martineau's *' Religion is a belief in an everlasting God, that is, a divine mind and will ruling the universe and holding moral relations with mankind." Noticeable is it that these theologians regard religion as wholly an intellectual conviction, with not a word to imply that man does anything as part of his religion. On the other hand, we have to be on guard just as carefully against those who do not regard intelligence but feeling as the one and only thing in religion. " The mark of real religion," says Pfleiderer, " is sentiment." Tiele, a professed student of religion but more a theologian, agrees with Pfleiderer ; while Reville goes so far as to make this sentiment love; but it is clear that here also " real religion " is merely the author's religion. Tiele, however, resolves religion into " words and deeds," and that is an advance on the definition given by the philosophers and theologians cited above.^

So, to define religion as the " determination of human life by the sentiment of a bond uniting the human mind to that mysterious mind whose domination of the world and of itself it recognizes and to whom it delights in feeling itself

^ Tiele, Elements of Religion, London, 1877, makes words and deeds the expression of conceptions and emotions, but he takes emotion as the starting-point.

DEFINITIONS 5

united " (Reville) is much more than can be said of many religions, and the same fault vitiates Max Miiller's otherwise defective definition of religion as *' a longing after the infinite" and " a mental faculty which enables man to apprehend the infinite," the latter being only a little more incredible than the former, as was felt by the author himself.^

From the philosophers we do indeed get one definition that might answer for every phase of belief. This is Edward Caird's, as given in a popular article,^ when he says that " a man's religion is the expression of his summed up meaning and the purport of his whole consciousness of things " ; but this implies merely a mental state and attitude toward life and does not imply the recognition of anything superhuman or spiritual, the one essential of religion differentiating it from philosophy, which may or may not recognize a superhuman element. One may of course arbitrarily define religion as being devoid of such an element, just as a painter may say that art is his religion or Heine that blaue Augen are his heaven ; but he is simply using a well-known conception in an extraordinary manner. Virtually equivalent to Reville's definition is a recent attempt to define religion psychologically as " the endeavour to secure the recognition of socially recognized values through specific actions that are believed to evoke some agency dififerent from the ordinary ego of the individual, or from other merely human beings, and that imply a feeling of dependence upon this agency." ^

On the whole, the anthropologists have defined religion in better terms than have the students of comparative religion. They at least know that the Andaman Islander does not apprehend the infinite or feel himself delightfully united to a

1 In his Gifford Lectures of 1891, Miiller attempted to explain away the definition given in those of 1880.

^Metaphysical Magazine, June, 1902.

3 See W. K. Wright in the American Journal of Theology, July, 1912, p. 385f.

mysterious mind. But the trouble with the definitions of the anthropologists is that each reflects a one-sided theory. This is the case with E. B. Tylor's " belief in spiritual beings," while as a definition it ignores activities set in motion by belief. Mere belief is not rehgion. One may believe in the moon without having religious relations with the moon, and so one may believe in spirits without their making part of one's religion. On the other hand, when Saussaye defines religion as the " belief in superhuman powers and worship of them," there is a vitiating error in the assumption that religion implies worship, for there may be no worship and yet a change of conduct may be religious, be, in fact, the sole outer activity resulting from the religious belief.^ Finally it may be said of Arnold's memorable dictum (religion is "morality touched with emotion") that from an historical or comparative point of view it is meaningless. Some religions are immoral, as Arnold would define morality, while some are unmoral, or have no obvious connection with morality.

Thus the history of religion is simply the story of how different communities have succeeded in adjusting their lives to what they have believed to be a living power, not identical with their own power but superhuman, even if they themselves may expect eventually, when they too have become more than human, to obtain a similar power or become identified with it. They may even expect as human beings to control this power, but it is not a power they themselves possess in the same degree as does the religious object. We make here, provisionally, no distinction between magic and religion, for, as will be seen, the two are not absolutely separate. They are, in fact, closely inter-related. Both at least respect a superhuman power. It is, moreover, a living power. The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone, but to him they are not mere wood and stone.

1 This is ignored by the French sociologists. Thus M. Durkheim defines religious phenomena as croyances obligatoires connexes de pratigues deiinies (i.e., of taboo, etc.), and religion as a unified system of beliefs and practices (see below).

SOURCES

SOURCES AND NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE

Our present knowledge of religious phenomena is based upon various bodies of evidence, none of them unimpeachable. Since it is quite as important to know the value of the evidence as to be acquainted with the source and the matter itself, it will be well to range the sources in an ascending scale according to their comparative worth.

First. The linguistic evidence. Although, as in the example given from the Greek sebas, linguistic evidence may occasionally be of considerable value, yet it is more likely to lead astray than to lead aright. It is not evidence that can be accepted, even on the authority of an expert, without great reserve. Especially is etymological evidence of questionable validity. It is liable to be overthrown at any time and is never much more than learned guesswork. Theories based on the identity of Yahweh with a word meaning " hurrah," or on the common origin of god-names in different branches even of the same race may be true, but they are often as lacking in truth as they are commonly full of ingenuity. Many of them are like a certain theory of the identity of the Aryan and Semitic races, based on the selfevident fact that Abraham is " a Brahman."

Another point in regard to linguistic evidence is often overlooked. This is that even when the derivation of a word is fairly certain, the etymology itself may mislead us, because words change from their etymological meaning and the concept of a divinity which appears to be revealed by a true derivation may not be at all the concept of the divinity as it was when the particular word was applied as a name to the divinity. For example, deus in Latin no more means " shining " than god in English means " invoked," although the etymology of deus and of god point to these conceptions, respectively, as the meaning back of the historical words. The past meaning is not often the present meaning and the two must be carefully distinguished. Further, the concept of any divinity, however named, is from its inception conditioned by the mental and social status of the community. A day called Thursday means the day of Thor and thor is thunder, but for all that we do not recognize a ** day of Thor " or a '* day of thunder," and no more did the historic Germans worship a god thunder. In fact, far from being a mere noise in the sky, Thor was a heavenly man with a decent family of his own and with intimate relations with his clan on earth. To interpret him in any historical period as mere sound would be an unsound interpretation (to put an old pun to a new use), and so, generally, the names of gods do not really reflect the nature of gods at any historical period, and they may never have done so. For back of the time we know the god there is only the word ; but how it was applied we cannot tell, whether to designate a god, a devil, or a sound per se (in the case of Thor), for we know nothing as to the worship of this now unknown being.

Second. Archaeological evidence. Testimony of the monuments of (a) the neolithic age, and (b) of later times. Meagre and uncertain is the earliest evidence of religion. We learn that skulls were trepanned and because savages now trepan in order to let out the soul, therefore (it is argued) the men of neolithic times believed in soul. For the same reason they are thought to have believed in a future life. A nascent fetishism has also been predicated of neolithic man because of the objects found buried with his remains, which to others seem proof of a belief in a future life. The testimony, such as it is, is the more uncertain because of the uncertainty when the bronze age, as compared with the neolithic age, begins. But it is not of moment when the animal man began to be religious, especially since we can trace the religious elements as far back as the bronze age. The objects buried with the corpse may show that at this period men believed in a happy future life of eating and drinking, when children would need their playthings and men their weapons and customary implements. The cave-pictures of France may point to a prehistoric magical use of ancient

SOURCES 9

figures. Prehistoric stone circles may be of religious significance, but they may be without religious bearing.

Third. The testimony of ancient writers. Here we must distinguish between descriptions of own religions and appraisals of foreign religions. Owing to the fact that the writers who described the religions of others were generally ignorant of them or prejudiced and as a rule got all their information at second hand, the value of this testimony is extremely variable; often it is most valuable when the author is not trying to describe religion at all but, by accident, as it were, lets out a secret of religion known not even to himself. The most obvious fault in this class of evi^ dence, whether furnished by native or foreigner, is its deficiency. Whole chapters of religion remain unnoticed, either because the author is ignorant or because he chooses to ignore certain features. Homer, though a Greek, gives but a restricted view of Greek religion; therefore a Greek religion of the Homeric age based only on Homer is incorrect. Tacitus gives a foreigner's appraisement of the religion of the ancient Germans ; but it is by no means to be taken as exhaustive or even correct as far as it goes. The testimony of literature anyway, it must be remembered, is only the testimony of those who were able to compose, to leave essays of lasting worth. Thus almost all the testimony of this sort comes from the upper intellectual stratum and gives a one-sided impression. In all such testimony we learn more about the higher side of religion, less about the lower ; more of gods, less of goblins. Homer shows us the court-beauties of heaven. The poets of the Rig Veda are concerned less with demonology than with the worship of the great gods. But all the time, both in Greece and in India, the lower cult was there; only it is not recorded by the poets.

Fourth. Ethnography. From the study of race-peculiarities by trained modern observers is to be obtained the most valuable evidence in regard to religious phenomena in our own day. But, ideal as this testimony might be, much lO THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

of it is vitiated by the fact that the observer is not trained ; much, by the fact that he is trained to see everything through a theory of reUgious origins, which influences his testimony. It does not make a real difference whether one be an untrained missionary or a prejudiced scientist. All this testimony has to be sifted with great care and even then some of it is entirely worthless. Taken as a whole, however, of course the body of material is of inestimable worth. Fortunately we do not have to depend on isolated or individual observation and generally the reports are mutually corrective. It is only necessary to warn the student against trusting too entirely the word of any one authority, however honest and learned he may be. This source contains all the data collected by comparative ethnography, including folk-lore and the translations of original hymns and legends.

CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS

Attempts to classify religions have all failed, because there are no clear lines of demarcation between them. Classifications suggested are, for example, natural and redemptive, natural and moral, tribal, national, and universal. But natural and ethical religions cannot be sharply sundered, and the traits of one race reappear in another. Unsatisfactory is even the minuteness of De la Grasserie, who has made twenty-two divisions of religions.^ The classification of Reville, into polytheistic, monotheistic, national, and nomistic religions, indicates, at best, striking points of difference between important groups. Of all the distinctions suggested, those between egoistic and altruistic and natural and ethical are perhaps the worst, yet even national and nomistic are terms largely exchangeable. We shall consider religions solely as expressions of various stages of culture found among various races.

Yet even in the loosest grouping we must guard against one error, the implication of an assumed order of progres-

1 Compare Jastrow, Study of Religion, New York, 1901, p. 95.

CLASSIFICATION II

sion. For example, if animism be discussed before naturism, the implication is that the former is more primitive. Again, retrogression in religion must be reckoned with. A religion may have fallen from its former estate and appear as mere devil-worship, whereas in fact it is only a higher religion that has become decadent. Also chance evidence may lead to error. For example, animism has been predicated as the " earliest form " of religion on the ground that the trepanned skull of prehistoric man indicates a belief in soul or spirit. But what if, though improbable, the earliest religion was worship of tfie sun or moon? No trace might have been left of this belief, whereas the skull has remained.

One of the oldest classifications of religions is that which separates them all into orthodox and heterodox. But a little study will show that no religion is altogether heterodox. Yet to realize this the study is necessary and it must be pursued with the Buddhist's *' open mind." If we take up the superstitions that have grouped themselves about the practice of taboo, for instance, only to find them risible or disgusting, we shall lose their ethical and religious bearing. Difficult as it is, we must endeavour rather to put ourselves in the position of the taboo-fearing savage and see what this brother intended and accomplished. God gave him no Moses, but he evolved some of the ten commandments ; his taboos were his tables of the law.

Especially is this attitude desirable in the study of higher religions, where heterodoxy almost blends with orthodoxy. We must examine not with hostility but with sympathetic interest the reason why the Hindu is almost but not quite persuaded. And as with religions, so with theories of religion. Here care and candor are needed. It is careless to assert that there is no race without religion before defining religion and examining all races. It is careless to induce from the data of one field that the Semitic theory of sacrifice explains all sacrifice. Candor here, too, implies toleration, to listen hopeful of gain to all theories, to dub no school or scholar " all wrong." All schools see some truth ; no sober scholar is all wrong. Animist and naturist may learn much from each other ; worshippers of the Year-demon may reap a harvest from, the devotees of ghosts; even the mythologist and the anthropologist, not to speak of the sociologist, might conceivably lie down together, not only in safety but to their mutual advantage.

Theories in regard to religious phenomena are very old. Six or seven hundred years before Christ, the Hindus were already arguing whether their chief devil had been an actual person or was merely a natural phenomenon. A few centuries later a Hindu materialist defended the opinion (maintained two thousand years later by Toland),^ that religion was the creation of selfish priests. Others argued that it was a gift of God. But neither with such theories nor with others has the history of religions to do, except as they involve or ignore important data. It has not to establish any theory of the origin of religion but to exhibit the facts on which different theories have been built. Thus we shall ! not discuss as theories Mannhardt's hypothesis of religion originating in the cult of vegetation-spirits, nor Robertson Smith's view that sacrifice begins as a communion-feast, nor Usener's idea that all gods are at first functional powers, nor Sir J. G. Frazer's ever-changing interpretation of totemism and his contention that redemption begins with the regicide, though we shall have occasion to refer to them all. For the same reason it will be unnecessary to examine the theory of Messrs. Durkheim and Mauss that the collective rather than the individual mind originates religion, a theory which practically maintains that it is impossible to understand any religion other than that of the human group in which each is born; which group has a consciousness so unique that no outsider can do more than register its objective phenomena. Hence modern French sociologists disapprove of all attempts to appreciate sympathetically any

1 John Toland, Christianity not Mysterious, London, 1696; Jastrow, op. cit., p. 15.

CLASSIFICATION 13

religion, more particularly those " pre-logical," remote in time, but also those remote in place. They believe with the Hindu that only a snake can see a snake's legs and they are not altogether wrong. Man is the product of his group's experience. Nevertheless, it will not be a loss if the student begins by trying to understand the feeling as well as the formal ritual of the other man; and it is still questionable whether one man is not more like another because of his humanity than unlike because of his social group; whether, in short, pre-logical and logical are proper substitutes for primitive and civilized.

Finally, a word as to the utility of our study. It is with religions as with languages, " he who knows one knows none " ; that is, he who knows only his own does not know it well. A man may be a good Buddhist without knowing Christianity, but through knowing Christianity he will be a better Buddhist; for he will learn what the two religions have in common and thus realize that what is common cannot be unique. So, knowing better his own, he will become a better Buddhist, since not to know is to be circumscribed, which leads to the misunderstanding of relative values, even, at times, to the acceptance, in evaluating one's own religion, of the adventitious for the essential, the packing for the package, the myth for the spirit.

Morris Jastrow, Jr., The Study of Religion, New York, 1901. C. H. Toy, Introduction to the History of Religion, Boston,

1913- Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion, London, 1900. C. C. J. Webb, Group Theories of Religion and the Individual,

New York, 1916.

Chapter Two General Characteristics Of Primitive Religions

In using the word primitive of early undeveloped forms of religion it must be understood that primitive is not synonymous with primordial. The word is applied exactly as it is commonly applied to primitive art, to connote art found among peoples at a low stage today or in ancient times. With some exceptions the simpler form is the more primitive form of thought, whether in art or religion, rather more so in fact in religion than in art, as when the Roman advanced industrially to the iron age and yet used a stone knife for sacrifice, and the Teuton used a stone hammer in the religious rite of settling a boundary, and the Australian, to whom even stone art is modern, still uses a sharpened stick for the rite of circumcision. But there are two aspects of religion, creed and cult. They advance unequally. Creed always outstrips cult. What is no longer believed is still practised ; the rite preserves as myth the older creed. That religions may all be traced back to one primordial religion is not wholly a narrow " orthodox " view. In this form, however, it is still held by both the Hindu and the Christian of very conservative type. For example, about two thousand years ago Manu, the Hindu law-giver, declared, what is still believed by orthodox Brahmans, that one true religion was revealed to man in the beginning and that all later types of religion have been vain divergencies from this divine model, and Dr. Nassau, in his useful book on fetishism, says : " All religions had but one source and that a pure one. From it have grown perversions varying in their proportions of truth and error," almost as if he were translating Manu.^

But, with less universal scope and with no implication of divine origin, other modern writers have maintained that religion has spread out from one centre and infected or affected the whole known world, or, more conservatively, a great part of the world. Thus the Akkadian theory of Mr. J. F. Hewitt ^ attempts to explain the religions of France and Mexico as due to the Akkadians of 15000 b. c. in an ingenious but not very judicious flood of speculation. Another theory, somewhat like it but sober enough to have been adopted by some scientists, is the theory of adaptionism advocated by O. Gruppe. Starting with a study of Greek Cults in relation to Oriental religions, the author has tried to show that religion originated in the deification of intoxicants in western Asia and thence extended itself in all directions. Such anthropologists as have been influenced by this theory accordingly hold that northern Europe, originally irreligious, received religion from Asia Minor after the glacial period and this they think is the reason why the remains of corpses are found in the kitchenmiddens, lack of burial proving lack of religion. But perhaps friends were buried in the sea and foes were left unburied. It is at any rate a slender proof of irreligion.