Chapter 8

W. H. Hudson--whose mind is certainly not of a quality to be jeered at--speaks of Animism as "the projection of ourselves into nature: the sense and apprehension of an intelligence like our own, but more powerful, in all visible things"; and continues, "old as I am this same primitive faculty which manifested itself in my early boyhood, still persists, and in those early years was so powerful that I am almost afraid to say how deeply I was moved by it." (1) Nor will it be quite forgotten that Shelley once said:--

The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends A world of loves and hatreds.

(1) Far Away and Long Ago, ch. xiii, p. 225.

The tendency to animism and later to anthropomorphism is I say inevitable, and perfectly logical. But the great value of the work done by some of those investigators whom I have quoted has been to show that among quite primitive people (whose interior life and 'soul-sense' was only very feeble) their projections of intelligence into Nature were correspondingly feeble. The reflections of themselves projected into the world beyond could not reach the stature of eternal 'gods,' but were rather of the quality of ephemeral phantoms and ghosts; and the ceremonials and creeds of that period are consequently more properly described as Magic than as Religion. There have indeed been great controversies as to whether there has or has not been, in the course of religious evolution, a _pre_-animistic stage. Probably of course human evolution in this matter must have been perfectly continuous from stages presenting the very feeblest or an absolutely deficient animistic sense to the very highest manifestations of anthropomorphism; but as there is a good deal of evidence to show that _animals_ (notably dogs and horses) see ghosts, the inquiry ought certainly to be enlarged so far as to include the pre-human species. Anyhow it must be remembered that the question is one of _consciousness_--that is, of how far and to what degree consciousness of self has been developed in the animal or the primitive man or the civilized man, and therefore how far and to what degree the animal or human creature has credited the outside world with a similar consciousness. It is not a question of whether there _is_ an inner life and _sub_-consciousness common to all these creatures of the earth and sky, because that, I take it, is a fact beyond question; they all emerge or have emerged from the same matrix, and are rooted in identity; but it is a question of how far they are _aware_ of this, and how far by separation (which is the genius of evolution) each individual creature has become conscious of the interior nature both of itself and of the other creatures _and_ of the great whole which includes them all.

Finally, and to avoid misunderstanding, let me say that Anthropomorphism, in man's conception of the gods, is itself of course only a stage and destined to pass away. In so far, that is, as the term indicates a belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT conception of ourselves--that is as separate personalities having each a separate and limited character and function, and animated by the separatist motives of ambition, possession, power, vainglory, superiority, patronage, self-greed, self-satisfaction, etc.--in so far as anthropomorphism is the expression of that kind of belief it is of course destined, with the illusion from which it springs, to pass away. When man arrives at the final consciousness in which the idea of such a self, superior or inferior or in any way antagonistic to others, ceases to operate, then he will return to his first and primal condition, and will cease to need ANY special religion or gods, knowing himself and all his fellows to be divine and the origin and perfect fruition of all.

VII. RITES OF EXPIATION AND REDEMPTION

There is a passage in Richard Jefferies' imperishably beautiful book The Story of my Heart--a passage well known to all lovers of that prose-poet--in which he figures himself standing "in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory," and pondering on the vast crowd and the mystery of life. "Is there any theory, philosophy, or creed," he says, "is there any system of culture, any formulated method, able to meet and satisfy each separate item of this agitated pool of human life? By which they may be guided, by which they may hope, by which look forward? Not a mere illusion of the craving heart--something real, as real as the solid walls of fact against which, like seaweed, they are dashed; something to give each separate personality sunshine and a flower in its own existence now; something to shape this million-handed labor to an end and outcome that will leave more sunshine and more flowers to those who must succeed? Something real now, and not in the spirit-land; in this hour now, as I stand and the sun burns.... Full well aware that all has failed, yet, side by side with the sadness of that knowledge, there lives on in me an unquenchable belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet something to be found.... It must be dragged forth by the might of thought from the immense forces of the universe."

In answer to this passage we may say "No,--a thousand times No! there is no theory, philosophy, creed, system or formulated method which will meet or ever satisfy the demand of each separate item of the human whirlpool." And happy are we to know there is no such thing! How terrible if one of these bloodless 'systems' which strew the history of religion and philosophy and the political and social paths of human endeavor HAD been found absolutely correct and universally applicable--so that every human being would be compelled to pass through its machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under its Juggernath wheels! No, thank Heaven! there is no theory or creed or system; and yet there is something--as Jefferies prophetically felt and with a great longing desired--that CAN satisfy; and that, the root of all religion, has been hinted at in the last chapter. It is the CONSCIOUSNESS of the world-life burning, blazing, deep down within us: it is the Soul's intuition of its roots in Omnipresence and Eternity.

The gods and the creeds of the past, as shown in the last chapter--whatever they may have been, animistic or anthropomorphic or transcendental, whether grossly brutish or serenely ideal and abstract--are essentially projections of the human mind; and no doubt those who are anxious to discredit the religious impulse generally will catch at this, saying "Yes, they are mere forms and phantoms of the mind, ephemeral dreams, projected on the background of Nature, and having no real substance or solid value. The history of Religion (they will say) is a history of delusion and illusion; why waste time over it? These divine grizzly Bears or Aesculapian Snakes, these cat-faced Pashts, this Isis, queen of heaven, and Astarte and Baal and Indra and Agni and Kali and Demeter and the Virgin Mary and Apollo and Jesus Christ and Satan and the Holy Ghost, are only shadows cast outwards onto a screen; the constitution of the human mind makes them all tend to be anthropomorphic; but that is all; they each and all inevitably pass away. Why waste time over them?"

And this is in a sense a perfectly fair way of looking at the matter. These gods and creeds ARE only projections of the human mind. But all the same it misses, does this view, the essential fact. It misses the fact that there is no shadow without a fire, that the very existence of a shadow argues a light somewhere (though we may not directly see it) as well as the existence of a solid form which intercepts that light. Deep, deep in the human mind there is that burning blazing light of the world-consciousness--so deep indeed that the vast majority of individuals are hardly aware of its existence. Their gaze turned outwards is held and riveted by the gigantic figures and processions passing across their sky; they are unaware that the latter are only shadows--silhouettes of the forms inhabiting their own minds. (1) The vast majority of people have never observed their own minds; their own mental forms. They have only observed the reflections cast by these. Thus it may be said, in this matter, that there are three degrees of reality. There are the mere shadows--the least real and most evanescent; there are the actual mental outlines of humanity (and of the individual), much more real, but themselves also of course slowly changing; and most real of all, and permanent, there is the light "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world"--the glorious light of the world-consciousness. Of this last it may be said that it never changes. Every thing is known to it--even the very IMPEDIMENTS to its shining. But as it is from the impediments to the shining of a light that shadows are cast, so we now may understand that the things of this world and of humanity, though real in their degree, have chiefly a kind of negative value; they are opaquenesses, clouds, materialisms, ignorances, and the inner light falling upon them gradually reveals their negative character and gradually dissolves them away till they are lost in the extreme and eternal Splendor. I think Jefferies, when he asked that question with which I have begun this chapter, was in some sense subconsciously, if not quite consciously, aware of the answer. His frequent references to the burning blazing sun throughout The Story of the Heart seem to be an indication of his real deep-down attitude of mind.

(1) See, in the same connection, Plato's allegory of the Cave, Republic, Book vii.

The shadow-figures of the creeds and theogonies pass away truly like ephemeral dreams; but to say that time spent in their study is wasted, is a mistake, for they have value as being indications of things much more real than themselves, namely, of the stages of evolution of the human mind. The fact that a certain god-figure, however grotesque and queer, or a certain creed, however childish, cruel, and illogical, held sway for a considerable time over the hearts of men in any corner or continent of the world is good evidence that it represented a real formative urge at the time in the hearts of those good people, and a definite stage in their evolution and the evolution of humanity. Certainly it was destined to pass away, but it was a step, and a necessary step in the great process; and certainly it was opaque and brutish, but it is through the opaque things of the world, and not through the transparent, that we become aware of the light.

It may be worth while to give instances of how some early rituals and creeds, in themselves apparently barbarous or preposterous, were really the indications of important moral and social conceptions evolving in the heart of man. Let us take, first, the religious customs connected with the ideas of Sacrifice and of Sin, of which such innumerable examples are now to be found in the modern books on Anthropology. If we assume, as I have done more than once, that the earliest state of Man was one in which he did not consciously separate himself from the world, animate and inanimate, which surrounded him, then (as I have also said) it was perfectly natural for him to take some animal which bulked large on his horizon--some food-animal for instance--and to pay respect to it as the benefactor of his tribe, its far-back ancestor and totem-symbol; or, seeing the boundless blessing of the cornfields, to believe in some kind of spirit of the corn (not exactly a god but rather a magical ghost) which, reincarnated every year, sprang up to save mankind from famine. But then no sooner had he done this than he was bound to perceive that in cutting down the corn or in eating his totem-bear or kangaroo he was slaying his own best self and benefactor. In that instant the consciousness of DISUNITY, the sense of sin in some undefined yet no less disturbing and alarming form would come in. If, before, his ritual magic had been concentrated on the simple purpose of multiplying the animal or, vegetable forms of his food, now in addition his magical endeavor would be turned to averting the just wrath of the spirits who animated these forms--just indeed, for the rudest savage would perceive the wrong done and the probability of its retribution. Clearly the wrong done could only be expiated by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind on the part of the man, or the tribe--that is by the offering to the totem-animal or to the corn-spirit of some victim whom these nature powers in their turn could feed upon and assimilate. In this way the nature-powers would be appeased, the sense of unity would be restored, and the first At-one-ment effected.

It is hardly necessary to recite in any detail the cruel and hideous sacrifices which have been perpetrated in this sense all over the world, sometimes in appeasement of a wrong committed or supposed to have been committed by the tribe or some member of it, sometimes in placation or for the averting of death, or defeat, or plague, sometimes merely in fulfilment of some long-standing custom of forgotten origin--the flayings and floggings and burnings and crucifixions of victims without end, carried out in all deliberation and solemnity of established ritual. I have mentioned some cases connected with the sowing of the corn. The Bible is full of such things, from the intended sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham, to the actual crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. The first-born sons were claimed by a god who called himself "jealous" and were only to be redeemed by a substitute. (1) Of the Canaanites it was said that "even their daughters they have BURNT in the fire to their gods"; (2) and of the King of Moab, that when he saw his army in danger of defeat, "he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt-offering on the wall!" (3) Dr. Frazer (4) mentions the similar case of the Carthaginians (about B.C. 300) sacrificing two hundred children of good family as a propitiation to Baal and to save their beloved city from the assaults of the Sicilian tyrant Agathocles. And even so we hear that on that occasion three hundred more young folk VOLUNTEERED to die for the fatherland.

(1) Exodus xxxiv. 20.

(2) Deut. xii. 31.

(3) 2 Kings iii. 27.

(4) The Golden Bough, vol. "The Dying God," p. 167.

The awful sacrifices made by the Aztecs in Mexico to their gods Huitzilopochtli, Texcatlipoca, and others are described in much detail by Sahagun, the Spanish missionary of the sixteenth century. The victims were mostly prisoners of war or young children; they were numbered by thousands. In one case Sahagun describes the huge Idol or figure of the god as largely plated with gold and holding his hands palm upward and in a downward sloping position over a cauldron or furnace placed below. The children, who had previously been borne in triumphal state on litters over the crowd and decorated with every ornamental device of feathers and flowers and wings, were placed one by one on the vast hands and ROLLED DOWN into the flames--as if the god were himself offering them. (1) As the procession approached the temple, the members of it wept and danced and sang, and here again the abundance of tears was taken for a good augury of rain. (2)

(1) It is curious to find that exactly the same story (of the sloping hands and the children rolled down into the flames) is related concerning the above-mentioned Baal image at Carthage (see Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14; also Baring Gould's Religious Belief, vol. i, p. 375).

(2) "A los ninos que mataban, componianlos en muchos atavios para llevarlos al sacrificio, y llevabos en unas literas sobre los hombros, estas literas iban adornadas con plumages y con flores: iban tanendo, cantando y bailando delante de ellos... Cuando Ileviban los ninos a matar, si llevaban y echaban muchos lagrimas, alegrabansi los que los llevaban porque tomaban pronostico de que habian de tener muchas aguas en aquel ano." Sahagun, Historia Nueva Espana, Bk. II, ch. i.

Bernal Diaz describes how he saw one of these monstrous figures--that of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, all inlaid with gold and precious stones; and beside it were "braziers, wherein burned the hearts of three Indians, torn from their bodies that very day, and the smoke of them and the savor of incense were the sacrifice."

Sahagun again (in Book II, ch. 5) gives a long account of the sacrifice of a perfect youth at Easter-time--which date Sahagun connects with the Christian festival of the Resurrection. For a whole year the youth had been held in honor and adored by the people as the very image of the god (Tetzcatlipoca) to whom he was to be sacrificed. Every luxury and fulfilment of his last wish (including such four courtesans as he desired) had been granted him. At the last and on the fatal day, leaving his companions and his worshipers behind, be slowly ascended the Temple staircase; stripping on each step the ornaments from his body; and breaking and casting away his flutes and other musical instruments; till, reaching the summit, he was stretched, curved on his back, and belly upwards, over the altar stone, while the priest with obsidian knife cut his breast open and, snatching the heart out, held it up, yet beating, as an offering to the Sun. In the meantime, and while the heart still lived, his successor for the next year was chosen.

In Book II, ch. 7 of the same work Sahagun describes the similar offering of a woman to a goddess. In both cases (he explains) of young man or young woman, the victims were richly adorned in the guise of the god or goddess to whom they were offered, and at the same time great largesse of food was distributed to all who needed. (Here we see the connection in the general mind between the gift of food (by the gods) and the sacrifice of precious blood (by the people).) More than once Sahagun mentions that the victims in these Mexican ceremonials not infrequently offered THEMSELVES as a voluntary sacrifice; and Prescott says (1) that the offering of one's life to the gods was "sometimes voluntarily embraced, as a most glorious death opening a sure passage into Paradise."

(1) Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.

Dr. Frazer describes (1) the far-back Babylonian festival of the Sacaea in which "a prisoner, condemned to death, was dressed in the king's robes, seated on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands he pleased, to eat, drink and enjoy himself, and even to lie with the king's concubines." But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. It is certainly astonishing to find customs so similar prevailing among peoples so far removed in space and time as the Aztecs of the sixteenth century A.D. and the Babylonians perhaps of the sixteenth century B.C. But we know that this subject of the yearly sacrifice of a victim attired as a king or god is one that Dr. Frazer has especially made his own, and for further information on it his classic work should be consulted.

(1) Golden Bough, "The Dying God," p. 114. (See also S. Reinach, Cults, Myths and Religion, p. 94) on the martyrdom of St. Dasius.

Andrew Lang also, with regard to the Aztecs, quotes largely from Sahagun, and summarizes his conclusions in the following passage: "The general theory of worship was the adoration of a deity, first by innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a MAN for the male gods, of a WOMAN for each goddess. (1) The latter victims were regarded as the living images or incarnations of the divinities in, each case; for no system of worship carried farther the identification of the god with the sacrifice (? victim), and of both with the officiating priest. The connection was emphasized by the priests wearing the newly-flayed skins of the victims--just as in Greece, Egypt and Assyria, the fawn-skin or bull-hide or goat-skin or fish-skin of the victims is worn by the celebrants. Finally, an image of the god was made out of paste, and this was divided into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those who communicated." (2)

(1) Compare the festival of Thargelia at Athens, originally connected with the ripening of the crops. A procession was formed and the first fruits of the year offered to Apollo, Artemis and the Horae. It was an expiatory feast, to purify the State from all guilt and avert the wrath of the god (the Sun). A man and a woman, as representing the male and female population, were led about with a garland of figs (fertility) round their necks, to the sound of flutes and singing. They were then scourged, sacrificed, and their bodies burned by the seashore. (Nettleship and Sandys.)

(2) A Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii, p. 97.

Revolting as this whole picture is, it represents as we know a mere thumbnail sketch of the awful practices of human sacrifice all over the world. We hold up our hands in horror at the thought of Huitzilopochtli dropping children from his fingers into the flames, but we have to remember that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content to describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about the floor of Hell! What sort of god, we may ask, did Augustine worship? The Being who could condemn children to such a fate was certainly no better than the Mexican Idol.

And yet Augustine was a great and noble man, with some by no means unworthy conceptions of the greatness of his God. In the same way the Aztecs were in many respects a refined and artistic people, and their religion was not all superstition and bloodshed. Prescott says of them (1) that they believed in a supreme Creator and Lord "omnipresent, knowing all thoughts, giving all gifts, without whom Man is as nothing--invisible, incorporeal, one God, of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." How can we reconcile St. Augustine with his own devilish creed, or the religious belief of the Aztecs with their unspeakable cruelties? Perhaps we can only reconcile them by remembering out of what deeps of barbarism and what nightmares of haunting Fear, man has slowly emerged--and is even now only slowly emerging; by remembering also that the ancient ceremonies and rituals of Magic and Fear remained on and were cultivated by the multitude in each nation long after the bolder and nobler spirits had attained to breathe a purer air; by remembering that even to the present day in each individual the Old and the New are for a long period thus intricately intertangled. It is hard to believe that the practice of human and animal sacrifice (with whatever revolting details) should have been cultivated by nine-tenths of the human race over the globe out of sheer perversity and without some reason which at any rate to the perpetrators themselves appeared commanding and convincing. To-day (1918) we are witnessing in the Great European War a carnival of human slaughter which in magnitude and barbarity eclipses in one stroke all the accumulated ceremonial sacrifices of historical ages; and when we ask the why and wherefore of this horrid spectacle we are told, apparently in all sincerity, and by both the parties engaged, of the noble objects and commanding moralities which inspire and compel it. We can hardly, in this last case, disbelieve altogether in the genuineness of the plea, so why should we do so in the former case? In both cases we perceive that underneath the surface pretexts and moralities Fear is and was the great urging and commanding force.

(1) Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.