Part 13

I may go farther, and say that in all religions, in the essence of religion itself, there lies concealed a certain contempt for the merely ethical, as compared with the mystical, in life. That which is wholly religious in thought and emotion is conscious of another, and, it claims, a loftier origin than that which is moral only, based as the latter is, on solely social considerations. I have heard from the pulpits of our own land very gloomy predictions of the fate of the “merely moral man.”[283]

5. That which we call “modern progress” is due to the increase of positive knowledge, the enlargement of the domain of objective truth. To this, religion in its early stages made important contributions. The motions of the celestial bodies were studied at first for ceremonial reasons only. They fixed the sacred year and the periods for festivals and sacrifices. Out of this grew astronomy, the civil calendar, and other departments of infantile science.

The rudiments of mathematics were discovered and developed chiefly by the priestly class, and at first for hieratic purposes; and the same is true of the elements of botanical and zoölogical knowledge. The practice of medicine owes some of its most useful resources to the observations of the “medicine-men” or shamans of savage tribes.

While this much and more may justly be stated concerning the contributions of Religion to Science, there can be no question of the irreconcilable conflict between the two. They arise in totally different tracts of the human mind, Science from the conscious, Religion from the sub- or unconscious intelligence. Therefore, there is no common measure between them.

Science proclaims that man is born to know, not to believe, and that truth, to be such, must be verifiable. Religion proclaims that faith is superior to knowledge, and that the truth which is intuitive is and must be higher than that which depends on observation. Science acknowledges that it can reach no certain conclusions; its final decisions are always followed by a mark of interrogation. Religion despises such hesitancy, and proceeds in perfect confidence of possessing the central and eternal verity. Science looks upon the ultimate knowable laws of the universe as mechanical, religion as spiritual or demonologic.

These differences have always existed, and have, in the main, resulted in placing religions at all times in antagonism to universal ethics, to general rules of conduct, and to objective knowledge. Everywhere, the religious portion of the community have entertained a secret or open contempt for “worldly learning”; everywhere they have proclaimed that the knowledge of God is superior to the knowledge of his works; and that obedience to his law is of more import than the love of humanity.

We may turn to the American Indians, the tribes of Siberia or the Dyaks of Borneo, and we shall find that the ordinary “doctor” who cured by a knowledge of herbs, of nursing, and of simple mechanical means, was far less esteemed than the shaman who depended not on special knowledge but on the possession of mysterious powers which gave him control over demons[284]; or we may take that Protestant sect of the Reformation, who opposed anyone learning the alphabet, lest he should waste his time on vain human knowledge[285]; or a thousand other examples; and the contrast is always the same.

The conclusion, therefore, is that early religion did assist the development of the race along these lines, but only incidentally and, as it were, unwittingly; while it was, at heart, unfriendly to them.

6. It is otherwise when we turn to Art, especially esthetic Art. Its aim is the realisation, the expression in the object, of the idea of the Beautiful. This idea does not belong to the conscious intelligence. It cannot be expressed in the formulas of positive knowledge. The esthetic, like the religious, emotions, send their roots far down into the opaque structure of the sub-conscious intelligence, and hence the two are natural associates. What Professor Bain says of Art may be extended to Religion: “Nature is not its standard, nor is [objective] truth its chief end.”[286]

It has been seriously questioned whether the idea of the beautiful existed among primitive peoples, apart from a desire for mere gaudy colouring or striking display. No one would doubt its universal presence could he but free his judgment from his own canons of the beautiful, and accept those which prevail in the savage tribe he is studying. Darwin, in his work on the _Descent of Man_, collected evidence from the rudest hordes of all continents to prove that all were passionate admirers of beauty, as measured by their own criteria; and he reached also the important conclusion that their completest expression of it was to be found in their religious art. “In every nation,” he says, “sufficiently advanced to have made effigies of their gods, or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have endeavoured to express their highest idea of beauty.”[287]

We should also remember that the same great teacher says: “It is certainly not true that there is in the human mind any universal standard of beauty;” and this is so, both of the human form and of those expressions of the beautiful which appeal to the ear and the touch. The music and the metre of one race generally displease another; and there is no one norm by which the superiority of either can be absolutely ascertained.

In their own way, however, Art and Religion have this in common, that they make a study of Perfection, and aim to embody it in actuality; whereas Science or positive knowledge confines itself to reality, which is ever imperfect.

Perfection is, however, an unconditioned mode of existence, not measurable by our senses, and hence outside the domain of inductive research. The tendency of organic forms and cosmic motions is always toward it, but they always fall short of it.[288] We are aware of it only through the longings of our sub-conscious minds, not through the laws of our reasoning intelligence. Yet so intense is our conviction, not only that it is true, but that final truth lies in it alone, that it has ever been and will ever be the highest and strongest motive of human action.

Beginning with those arts which are avowedly the expression of beauty in line, colour, or form, it is easy to show how they were fostered by the religious sense. The inscribed shells and tablets from the mounds of the Mississippi Valley present complex and symmetrical drawings, clearly intended for some mythical being or supernatural personage.

Among the Salishan Indians of British Columbia, when a girl reaches maturity she must go alone to the hills and undergo a long period of retirement. At its close, she records her experiences by drawing a number of rude figures in red paint on a boulder, indicating the rites she has performed and the visions she has had.[289] Such rock-writing, or petroglyphs, nearly always of religious import, are found in every continent, and offer the beginnings of the art of drawing.

It is possible that the oldest known examples, scratched with a flint on the bones of reindeers dug up in the caves of southern France, may represent the totems or deified heroes of the clan. Certain it is that a class of symbolic figures, which recur the world over, often dating from remote ages, such as the crescent, the cross, the svastika, the triskeles, the circle, and the square, were of religious intention, and conveyed mystic knowledge or supernatural protection in the opinion of those who drew them.

The early cultivation of painting in religious art arose chiefly from the symbolism of colours, to which I previously made a passing allusion. Its origin was in the effect which certain hues have upon the mind, either specifically or from association. Colour-symbolism, indeed, forms a prominent feature in nearly every primitive religion. The import of the different colours varies, but not to the degree which excludes some general tendencies. The white and the blue are usually of cheerful and peaceful signification, the black and the red are ominous of strife and darkness. In many tribes the yellow bore the deepest religious meaning. The Mayas of Yucatan assigned it to the dawn and the east; and when the Aztecs gathered around the dying bed of one they loved, and raised their voices in the paean which was to waft the soul to its higher life beyond the grave, they sang: “Already does the dawn appear, the light advances. Already do the birds of yellow plumage tune their songs to greet thee.”

These symbolic colours are those with which the early temples were tinted and the rude images of the gods stained. They were rarely harmonious, but they were effective, and appealed to the people for whom they were intended. Their preparation and their technical employment were improved, and, as the art advanced, it reacted on the religion, directing its conceptions of divinity into higher walks and toward nobler ideals.

Art in line and colour is of vast antiquity, probably preceding that in shape or form, carving or sculpture. But this, too, we find was fairly understood by the cave-dwellers of France and Switzerland at a time when the great glacier still covered a good part of the European continent, and there is scarcely a savage tribe to-day that does not make some rude attempts at carving the images of its deities.

A natural object which has a chance resemblance to a man or beast is chosen as a fetish, and the worshipper by chipping or rubbing increases slightly the likeness. This is the infancy of the sculptor’s art, and it is usually for a religious purpose that it is exercised. Soon it is developed, and in stone, or bone, or wood, in baked clay, or rags, or leaves, we find thousands of effigies in use to represent the tutelary deities and the other denizens of the supernatural world.

So prominent was the early progress of religious art in this direction that it gave the name to early religion itself. It was distinctly “idolatry,” or “image worship,” the objective expression overwhelming the inward sentiment.

Its excess in this direction led to reactions and protests as long ago as the dawn of history. “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything,” was a command taken so literally that it has swept away ever since in some of the Semitic peoples all interest in plastic or pictorial art, whether sacred or secular. It was believed that the contemplation of a divinity not represented by any visible object would maintain and develop a higher conception than if portrayed under tangible form, no matter how beautiful or how symbolic.

This opinion would not and did not exclude the cultivation of the beautiful under non-sensuous forms, such as appeal to the ear rather than to the eye. I refer to metre and music, to oratory and literary composition.

From some cause which it might be difficult to explain satisfactorily the natural expression of religious emotion in language is universally metrical. The rites of every barbarous tribe are conducted in or accompanied by rude chants or songs, which both stimulate the religious feelings and give appropriate vent to them. Many of these chants are mere repetitions of phrases, or refrains, destitute of meaning, but they answer the purpose, and are the germs from which, in appropriate surroundings, have been developed the great poems of the race, the inspirations of its immortal bards.

Hundreds of examples of these primitive religious chants have been collected of recent years, when, for the first time, their ethnologic importance has been understood. They present a striking similarity, whether from the Polynesian Islands, the desert-dwellers of Australia, or the Navahoes and Sioux of our own reservations. Many of them are scarcely more than inarticulate cries, but even these have a certain likeness, containing the same class of vowels, and often leading, through this physiological correlation of sound to emotion, to similar words in the religious language of far-distant peoples.

Everywhere we find these metrical outbursts controlled by the sense of rhythmical repetition; and it was to accentuate this that instruments of music were first invented. Their rudest forms may be seen in the two flat sticks which the Australians use to beat time for their singing in their _corroborees_, or festal ceremonies; or in the hollow log, pounded by a club, which some Central American tribes still employ. All the native American musical instruments appear to have been first invented for aiding the ritual; and tradition assigns with probability the same origin for most of those in the Old World.

Uniform rhythmic motion is a powerful means of intensifying collective suggestion; and its action is the more potent the more we yield our minds to the control of their unconscious activities,—the realm in which the religious sentiment is supreme.

In the initiation ceremonies of the Australians—called the _Bora_—the youth are obliged to listen to long speeches from the old men, containing instructions in conduct and the ancestral religious beliefs. Such customs as this,—and in one or another form they are universal in primitive religions—led to the development of the art of Oratory. It was cultivated assiduously in primitive conditions. We have several volumes largely filled with the prolix addresses of the Aztec priests and priestesses on various solemn occasions, as birth, entering adult life, marriage, etc.[290] To learn these long formulas by heart was one of the duties, and not an easy one, of the neophytes.

In most tribes they are couched in forms apart from those of daily use, the words being unusual, with full vowels and sonorous terminations. Some of these peculiarities survive in the “pulpit eloquence” of our own day, testifying to the influence of religious thought on the development of the modes of dignified expression.

It was in this connection and under this inspiration that man invented the greatest boon which humanity has ever enjoyed,—a system of writing, a means of recording and preserving facts and ideas. Our present alphabet is traced lineally back to the sacred picture-writing of ancient Egypt; and the less efficient method employed by the natives of Mexico and Central America originated in devices to preserve the liturgic songs and religious formulas. For generations, in both areas, its chief cultivation and extension lay with the priestly class: although its final application to the uses of daily life was due to merchants rather than to scholars.

This discovery made possible such a treasure as a literature; and that we find its beginnings and oldest memorials chiefly of religious contents is ample testimony to this incalculable debt we owe to the religious sentiment. The papyri of Egypt, the codices of Central America, the Sanscrit Rig Veda, and the Persian Vendidad testify to the diligence with which the ancient worshippers sought to preserve the sacred chants and formulas.

We discern the same anxiety among rude savages to pass down in their integrity the liturgies of their worship; and in the “meday sticks” of the Chipeways and the curiously incised wooden tablets of Easter Island, we have the beginnings of written literature,—always the purpose being religious in character.

It is unnecessary to dwell in detail upon the fostering influence of early religion on the useful arts. In their numerous applications to the ritual and the objective expression of the religious sentiment, they were constantly stimulated by it and by the reward it was ever prepared to offer, both in this world and that to come.

But one art of utility was so pre-eminently religious in its source that it merits especial comment, that is, building or architecture. Nearly all the great monuments of the ancient world, most of the important structures of primitive tribes everywhere, have in them something religious in aim, or are avowedly so. We know little or nothing of the builders of the mysterious “megalithic monuments,” the dolmens and cromlechs which to the number of thousands rise on the soil of France and England; but their arrangement and character leave no doubt that they were for some religious purpose. So the mighty piles which excite our astonishment in the valley of the Nile or the Euphrates, or on the highlands of Mexico, or in the tropical forests of Yucatan, reveal the same inspiration.

In his altars and temples, in his shrines and funerary monuments, his fanes and cathedrals, man has at all times expended his efforts and his means with a prodigality lavished on no other edifices. The orders of architecture arose from his desire to erect dwellings worthy of the god who should inhabit them. No beauty of line, no majesty of proportion, no abundance of decoration, was too great to secure this purpose. Such surroundings in time imparted dignity and permanence to the cult, and embellished the religious sentiment through noble artistic associations.

7. Let us now turn from these considerations of a general nature to the more pointed one, whether primitive religions exerted an improving influence on the independent life of the individual; for that is the test to which all institutions should finally be brought.

The savage is not the type of a free man, although in popular estimation he is generally so considered. He is, in fact, tyrannically fettered by traditional laws and tribal customs. He is merged in his clan or gens, against whose rules, often most painful and arbitrary, he dares take no step. As an individual, he cannot escape from their invisible chains.[291]

His only avenue to permitted freedom is through the higher law of his personal religion. If he pleads that his own tutelary spirit has ordered him to an act contrary to custom, or that his own magical powers enable him to defy established usage, his disregard of it will be condoned.

In savage life, the inspired and the insane are always ranked in the same category as above the law. Among the Kamschatkans, if a man declares that his personal divinity has in a dream commanded him to unite with some woman of the tribe, it is her duty to obey, no matter what her position or relationship.[292]

Although at times this freedom was doubtless abused, it secured for the individual a degree of personal liberty which he could have attained in no other manner. By recognising a law for the single conscience above that of either ancestral usage or popular religion, it paved the way to the development of the individual, free from all restraints other than his clear judgment would lay upon himself.

He who possessed the hidden knowledge, the esoteric _gnosis_, was by that knowledge released from bondage to his fellow-men. As the poet Chapman so well says:

“There is no danger to a man who knows What life and death is; there’s not any law Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law.”

This sense of superiority to all surroundings is disclosed everywhere in mystic religions. A Hindu prophetess was a few years ago imprisoned by the English civic judge for violation of the local laws and disturbing the peace. Her only statement in defence was: “Years ago, when a girl, I met in the jungle, face to face, the god Siva. He entered into my bosom. He abides in me now. My blessing is his blessing; my curse his curse.”[293] The Malay, when he “runs amuck,” regards himself exonerated from all restraint, moral or social; and that custom and belief are not confined to his race.[294]

It was held among the ancients that those who are “born of God,” that is, inspired by the divine afflatus, are not only above human law, but “are not subject even to the decrees of Fate.”[295]

The ceremonial law, so powerful in primitive condition, must have exerted a beneficial influence on the training of the individual. Its severe restrictions, its minute and ceaseless regulations of his life, taught him self-control and self-sacrifice. His first duty was not to himself but to the other members of his clan or totem. Obedience and systematic restraint were useful lessons inculcated on him from earliest childhood. The Congo Negro, the Andaman Islander, the American Indian, for whom his sponsors had taken vows at his birth, grew up to consider the fulfilment of these the chief end of his life. Their violation would entail disaster and disgrace not merely on himself but on his people. His religious education, therefore, cultivated in him some of the finest qualities of perfected manhood,—self-abnegation and altruism; for, as Professor Granger well says, “The primitive idea of holiness implies as its chief element, relation to the _communal_ life.”[296]

If, therefore, with some writers, we must concede that in primitive conditions the individual was ever conceived with reference to the gens or community, on the other hand, we must recognise the potency of the religious element occasionally to separate him from others as one of “the elect”; to train him in self-realisation and self-government; and to cherish in his mind the germs of a free personality.[297]

More difficult is the decision of the question whether primitive religions increased the happiness of the individual.

I have mentioned more than once the generally joyous character of many of them, as seen in their rituals. But it would be a grave error not to dwell also upon the dread of evil spirits which is so conspicuous a part of most, and which keeps their votaries in a state of perpetual anxiety. Nor can the self-sacrifice I have referred to increase the cheerfulness of life, associated as it often is with painful mutilations, with prolonged fasting, and exposure to cold and heat. The cruelty of the ceremonies is often shocking, the edicts of the religious code merciless.

To compensate this, “the fearful looking forward to the wrath to come,” the fertile source of mental misery in advanced faiths, scarcely exists in those of primitive conditions. Death itself is thus deprived of its greatest terror, and the indifference with which it is met by most savages is matter of common note among travellers.

Nor does there exist in primitive conditions that fertile source of human misery, religious bigotry or intolerance, with its fatal train of persecutions, torture, and suspicion. The bloodiest sacrifices of heathendom have never entailed such personal unhappiness as the gloomy fanaticism of some forms of Christianity.

All these several lines of development are, it will be noted, external to religion itself. They modify it, and are modified by it. But there are other changes, wrought within the religious sense itself, which we must now consider.

Religions, like all other institutions, are subject to growth and decay, evolution and retrogression, development and death.

The vast majority of primitive faiths have disappeared totally, leaving no trace behind except the nameless images of their gods, or not even these. They were obliterated by conquest, or merged and lost in other forms of belief, or degenerated and petrified until they died a natural death.

Others grew and extended, vitalised by new thoughts, appropriate to the new environment, or were carried far and wide by victorious rulers or enthusiastic votaries. It is generally true, as Professor Toy has observed, that, in early conditions, the life of a religion depends on the life of the tribe or state which has adopted it, and that “the larger the community, the more persistent and vigorous its religion will be.”[298]