Chapter 6

We have, however, now to notice a consequence which ensues upon the community's custom of not eating until after the first-fruits have been offered to the god. Not only is a habit or custom hard to break, simply because it is a habit; but, when the habit is the habit of a whole community, the individual who presumes to violate it is visited by the disapproval and the condemnation of the whole community. When then the custom has established itself of abstaining from eating, until the first-fruits have been offered to the god, any violation of the custom is condemned by the community as a whole. The consequence of this is that the fruit or the animal tends to be regarded by the community as sacred to the god, and not to be meddled with until after the first-fruits have been offered to him. The plant or animal becomes sacred to the god because the community has offered it to him, and intends to offer it to him, and does offer it to him annually. Now it is not a necessary and inevitable consequence that an animal or plant, which has come to be sacred, should become divine. But where we find divine animals or animal gods--divine corn or corn-goddesses--we are entitled to consider this as one way in which they may have come to be regarded as divine, because sacred, and as deities, because divine. When we find the divine plant or animal constituting the sacrifice, and furnishing forth the sacrificial meal, there is a possibility that it was in this way and by this process that the plant or animal came to be, first, sacred, then divine, and finally the deity, to whom it was offered. In many cases, certainly, this last stage was never reached. And we may conjecture a reason why it was not reached. Whether it could be reached would depend largely on the degree of individuality, which the god, to whom the offering was made, had reached. A god who possesses a proper, personal name, must have a long history behind him, for a personal name is an epithet the meaning of which comes in course of time to be forgotten. If its meaning has come to be entirely forgotten, the god is thereby shown not only to have a long history behind him but to have acquired a high degree of individuality and personality, which will not be altered or modified by the offerings which are made to him. Where, however, the being or power worshipped is, as with the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur, still nameless, his personality and individuality must be of the vaguest; and, in that case, there is the probability that the plant or animal offered to him may become sacred to him; and, having become sacred, may become divine. The animal or plant may become that in which the nameless being manifests himself. The corn or maize is offered to the nameless deity; the deity is the being to whom the corn or maize is habitually offered; and then becomes the corn-deity or maize-deity, the mother of the maize or the corn-goddess.

Like the _di indigites_ of Italy, these vegetation-goddesses are addressed by names which, though performing the function of personal names and enabling the worshippers to make appeals to the deities personally, are still of perfectly transparent meaning. Both present to us that stage in the evolution of a deity, in which as yet the meaning of his name still survives; in which his name has not yet become a fully personal name; and in which he has not yet attained to full personality and complete individuality. This want of complete individuality can hardly be dissociated from another fact which goes with it. That fact is that the deity is to be found in any plant of the species sacred to him, or in any animal of the species sacred to him, but is not supposed to be found only in the particular plant or animal which is offered on one particular occasion. If the corn-goddess is present, or manifests herself, in one particular sheaf of corn, at her harvest festival this year, still she did manifest herself last year, and will manifest herself next year, in another. The deity, that is to say, is the species; and the species, and no individual specimen thereof, is the deity. That is the reason which prevents, or tends to prevent, deities of this kind from attaining complete individuality.

This want of complete individuality and of full personality it is which characterises totems. The totem, also, is a being who, if he manifests himself in this particular animal, which is slain, has also manifested himself and will manifest himself in other animals of the same species: but he is not identical with any particular individual specimen. Not only is the individuality of the totem thus incomplete, but in many instances the name of the species has not begun to change into a proper personal name for the totem, as 'Ceres' or 'Chicomecoatl' or 'Xilonen' have changed into proper names of personal deities. Whether we are or are not to regard the totem as a god, at any rate, viewed as a being in the process of acquiring individuality, he seems to be acquiring it in the same way, and by the same process, as corn-goddesses and maize-mothers acquired theirs, and to present to our eyes a stage of growth through which these vegetation-deities themselves have passed. They also at one time had not yet acquired the personal names by which they afterwards came to be addressed. They were, though nameless, the beings present in any and every sheaf of corn or maize, though not cabined and confined to any one sheaf or any number of sheaves. And these beings have it in them to become--for they did become--deities. The process by which and the period at which they may have become deities we have already suggested: the period is the stage at which offerings, originally made at irregular times of distress, become annual offerings, made at the time of harvest; the process is the process by which what is customary becomes obligatory. The offerings at harvest time, from customary, become obligatory. That which is offered, is thereby sacred; the very intention to offer it, this year in the same way as it was offered last year, suffices to make it sacred, before it is offered. Thus, the whole species, whether plant or animal, becomes sacred, to the deity to whom it is offered: it is his. And if he be as vague and shadowy as the power or being to whom the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur make their offerings at stated seasons, then he may be looked for and found in the plant or animal species which is his. The harvest is his alone, until the first-fruits are offered. He makes the plants to grow: if they fail, it is to him the community prays. If they thrive, it is because he is, though not identical with them, yet in a way present in them, and is not to be distinguished from the being who not only manifests himself in every individual plant or animal of the species, though not identical with any one, but is called by the name of the species.

Whether we are to see in totems, as they occur in Australia, beings in the stage through which vegetation deities presumably passed, before they became corn-goddesses and mothers of the maize, is a question, the answer to which depends upon our interpretation of the ceremonies in which they figure. It is difficult, at least, to dissociate those ceremonies from the ritual of first-fruits. The community may not eat of the animal or plant, at the appropriate season, until the head-man has solemnly and sparingly partaken of it. About the solemnity of the ceremonial and the reverence of those who perform it, there is no doubt. But, whereas in the ritual of first-fruits elsewhere, the first-fruits are, beyond possibility of doubt or mistake, offered to a god, a personal god, having a proper name, in Australia there is no satisfactory evidence to show that the offerings are supposed, by those who make them, to be made to any god; or that the totem-spirit, if it is distinguished from the totem-species, is regarded as a god. There has accordingly been a tendency on the part of students of the science of religion to deny to totemism any place in the evolution of religion, and even to regard the Australian black-fellows as exemplifying, within the region of our observation, a pre-religious period in the process of human evolution. This latter view may safely be dismissed as untenable, whether we do or do not believe totemism to have a religious side. There is sufficient mythology, still existing amongst the Australian tribes, to show that the belief in gods survives amongst them, even though, as seems to be the case, no worship now attaches to the gods, with personal names, who figure in the myths. That myths survive, when worship has ceased; and that the names of gods linger on, even when myths are no longer told of them, are features to be seen in the decay of religious systems, all the world over, and not in Australia alone. The fact that these features are to be found in Australia points to a consideration which hitherto has generally been overlooked, or not sufficiently weighed. It is that in Australia we are in the midst of general religious decay, and are not witnessing the birth of religion nor in the presence of a pre-religious period. From this point of view, the worship of the gods, who figure in the myths, has ceased, but their names live on. And from this point of view, the names of the beings worshipped, in the totemistic first-fruits ceremonies, have disappeared, though the ceremonies are elaborate, solemn, reverent, complicated and prolonged; and religion has been swallowed up in ritual.

Even amongst the Aztecs, who had reached a stage of social development, barbarous or semi-civilised, far beyond anything attained by the Australian tribes, the degree of personality and individuality reached by the vegetation deities was not such that those deities had strictly proper names: the deity of the maize was still only 'the maize-mother.' Amongst the Australians, who are so far below the level reached in Mexico, the beings worshipped at the first-fruits ceremonies may well have been as nameless as the beings worshipped by the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur. Around these nameless beings, a ritual, simple in its origin, but luxuriant in its growth, has developed, overshadowing and obscuring them from our view, so that we, and perhaps the worshippers, cannot see the god for the ritual.

In Mexico the vegetation-goddesses struggled for existence amongst a crowd of more developed deities, just as in Italy the _di indigites_ competed, at a disadvantage, with the great gods of the state. In Australia the greater gods of the myths seem to have given way before--or to--the spread of totemism. Where gods are worshipped for the benefits expected from them, beings who have in charge the food-supply of the community will be worshipped not only annually at the season of the first-fruits, but with greater zeal and more continuous devotion than can be displayed towards the older gods who are worshipped only at irregular periods. Not only does the existence of mythology in Australia indicate that the gods who figure in the myths were once worshipped, though worship now no longer is rendered to them; but the totemistic ceremonies by their very nature show that they are a later development of the sacrificial rite. The simplest form of the rite is that in which the community draw near to their god, bearing with them offerings, acceptable to the god: it is at a later stage in the development of the rite that the offerings, having been accepted by the god, are consumed by the community, as is the case with the totem animals and plants. At its earliest stage, again, the rite is performed, at irregular periods, on occasions of distress: it is only at a more advanced stage that the rite is performed at fixed, annual periods, as in Australia. And this change of periodicity is plainly connected with the growth of the conviction that the annual first-fruits belong to the gods--a conviction springing from the belief that they are annually accepted by the god, a belief which in its turn implies a prior belief that they are acceptable. In other words, the centre of religious interest at first lies in approaching the god, that is in the desire to restore the normal state of relations, which calamity shows to have been disturbed. But in the end, religious interest is concentrated on, and expressed by, the feast which terminates the ceremony and marks the fact that the reconciliation is effected. What is at first accepted by the god at the feast comes to be regarded as belonging to him and sacred to him: the worshippers may not touch it until a portion of it, the first-fruits, has been accepted by him. Thus the rite which indicates and marks his acceptance becomes more than ever the centre of religious interest. The rite may thus become of more importance than the god, as in Australia seems to be the case; for the performance of the rite is indispensable if the community is to be admitted to eat of the harvest. When this point of view has been reached, when the performance of the rite is the indispensable thing, the rite tends to be regarded as magical. If this is what has happened in the case of the Australian rite, it is but what tends to happen, wherever ritual flourishes at the expense of religion. If it were necessary to assume that only amongst the Australian black-fellows, and never elsewhere, did a rite, originally religious, tend to become magical, then it would be _a priori_ unlikely, in the extreme, that this happened in Australia. But inasmuch as this tendency is innate in ritual, it is rather likely that in Australia the tendency has run its course, as it has done elsewhere, in India, for example, where, also, the sacrificial rite has become magical. Whether a rite, originally religious, will become assimilated to magic, depends very much on the extent to which the community believes in magic. The more the community believes in magic, the more ready it will be to put a magical interpretation on its religious rites. But the fact that, in the lower communities, religion is always in danger of sinking into magic, does not prove that religion springs from magic and is but one kind of magic. That view, once held by some students, is now generally abandoned. It amounts simply to saying once more that in the earliest manifestations of religion there was no religion, and that religion is now, what it was in the beginning--nothing but magic. If that position is abandoned, then religious rites are, in their very nature, and from their very origin, different from magical rites. Religious rites are, first, rites of approach, whereby the community draws nigh to its god; and, afterwards, rites of sacramental meals whereby the community celebrates its reconciliation and enjoys communion with its god. Those meals are typically cases of 'eating with the god,' celebrated on the occasion of first-fruits, and based on the conviction, which has slowly grown up, that 'the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' Meals, such as were found in Mexico, and have left their traces in Australia, in which the fruit or the animal that was offered had come to be regarded as standing in the same relation to the god as an individual does to the species, are meals having the same origin as those in which the community eats with its god, but following a different line of evolution.

The object of the sacrificial rite is first to restore and then to maintain good relations between the community and its god. Pushed to its logical conclusion, or rather perhaps we should say, pushed back to the premisses required for its logical demonstration, the very idea of renewing or restoring relations implies an original understanding between the community and its god; and implies that it is the community's departure from this understanding which has involved it in the disaster, from which it desires to escape, and to secure escape from which, it approaches its god, with desire to renew and restore the normal relations. The idea that if intelligent beings do something customarily, they must do so because once they entered into a contract, compact or covenant to do so, is one which in Plato's time manifested itself in the theory of a social compact, to account for the existence of morality, and which in Japan was recorded in the tenth century A.D. as accounting for the fact that certain sacrifices were offered to the gods. Thus in the fourth ritual of 'the Way of the Gods'--that is Shinto--it is explained that the Spirits of the Storm took the Japanese to be their people, and the people of Japan took the Spirits of the Storm to be gods of theirs. In pursuance of that covenant, the spirits on their part undertook to be Gods of the Winds and to ripen and bless the harvest, while the people on their part undertook to found a temple to their new gods; and that is why the people are now worshipping them. It was, according to the account given in the fourth ritual, the gods themselves who dictated the conditions on which they were willing to take the Japanese to be their people, and fixed the terms of the covenant. So too in the account given in the sixth chapter of Exodus, it was Jehovah himself who dictated to Moses the terms of the covenant which he was willing to make with the children of Israel: 'I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God.' In Japan it was to the Emperor, as high priest, that the terms of the covenant were dictated, in consequence of which the temple was built and the worship instituted.

The train of thought is quite clear and logically consistent. If the gods of the Winds were to be trusted--as they were unquestionably trusted--it must be because they had made a covenant with the people, and would be faithful to it, if the people were. The direct statement, in plain, intelligible words, in the fourth ritual, that a covenant of this kind had actually been entered into, was but a statement of what is implied by the very idea, and in the very act, of offering sacrifices. And sacrifices had of course been offered in Japan long before the tenth century: they were offered, and long had been offered annually to the gods of the Harvest. Probably they had been offered to the gods of the Storms long before they were offered to the gods of the Winds; and the procedure narrated in the fourth ritual records the transformation of the occasional and irregular sacrifices, made to the winds when they threatened the harvest with damage, into annual sacrifices, made every year as a matter of course. Thus, we have an example of the way in which the older sacrifices, made originally only in times of disaster, come to be assimilated to the more recent sacrifices, which from their nature and origin, are offered regularly every year. Not only is there a natural tendency in man to assimilate things which admit of assimilation and can be brought under one rule; but also it is advisable to avert calamity rather than to wait for it, and, when it has happened, to do something. It would therefore be desirable from this point of view to render regular worship to deities who can send disaster; and thus to induce them to abstain from sending it.

In the fourth Shinto ritual the gods of the Winds are represented as initiating the contract and prescribing its terms. But in the first ritual, which is concerned with the worship of the gods of the Harvest, it is the community which is represented as taking the first step, and as undertaking that, if the gods grant an abundant harvest, the people will, through their high priest, the Emperor, make a thank-offering, in the shape of first-fruits, to the gods of the Harvest. This is, of course, no more an historical account of the way in which the gods of the Harvest actually came to be worshipped, than is the account which the fourth Shinto ritual gives of the way the gods of the Winds came to be worshipped. In both cases the worship existed, and sacrifices had been made, as a matter of custom, long before any need was felt to explain the origin of the custom. As soon as the need was felt, the explanation was forthcoming: if the community had made these sacrifices, for as long back as the memory of man could run, and if the gods had granted good harvests in consequence, it must have been in consequence of an agreement entered into by both parties; and therefore a covenant had been established between them, on some past occasion, which soon became historical.

This history of the origin and meaning of sacrifice has an obvious affinity with the gift-theory of sacrifice. Both in the gift-theory and the covenant-theory, the terms of the transaction are that so much blessing shall be forthcoming for so much service, or so much sacrifice for so much blessing. The point of view is commercial; the obligation is legal; if the terms are strictly kept on the one part, then they are strictly binding on the other. The covenant-theory, like the gift-theory, is eventually discovered by spiritual experience, if pushed far enough, to be a false interpretation of the relations existing between god and man. Being an interpretation, it is an outcome of reflection--of reflection upon the fact that, in the time of trouble, man turns to his gods, and that, in returning to them, he escapes from his trouble. On that fact all systems of worship are based, from that fact all systems of worship start. If, as is the case, they start in different directions and diverge from one another, it is because men, in the process of reflecting upon that fact, come to put different interpretations upon it. And so far as they eventually come to feel that any interpretation is a misinterpretation, they do so because they find that it is not, as they had been taught to believe, a correct interpretation but a misinterpretation of the fact: there is found in the experience of returning to God, something with which the misinterpretation is irreconcilable; and, when the misinterpretation is dispersed, like a vapour, the vision of God, the idea of God, shines forth the more brightly. One such misinterpretation is the reflection that the favour of the gods can be bought by gifts. Another is the reflection that the gods sell their favours, on the terms of a covenant agreed upon between them and man. Another is that that which is offered is sacred, and that that which is sacred is divine--that the god is himself the offering which is made to him.