«ir cyGCtceAct. mA OCci M'( «'='■ f *' fir : OCT • .9« ^ « PRINCETON, N. J. '^, Division Section Shelf. Number . ..,.B.2.S... ..v.,.l \^¥\j \-> ^H ^^^W V 'w' W ^^^tjJjoMi^^^ •U^wW''. 'z^'^mm c^ v^. f^^M 'vyw««sii^^^ S^^^^3 .'^yw^ '-/ Vw/ V/ ,'\-/o. •^^ '^ Vw\j '-'' y ^ *<'' '*'■ ww^ ^V'^. /V^^ /l;v^^ ^VwC w/ r^^Ai^?- WV ■^-iWii gv^^ V-',....Vs;.r^\-...>^, :^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ■^^Wv^wW c^'W. ■•:.^^ ,^-:^^^^,^>^--5. d.J^ V\ ^ THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EELIGIOUS BELIEF RIYINGTONS aoniron ... ... ... ..• ••• Waterloo Place ©iforlr ... ... ... ••• •■• High Street CTambrilJgP ... ... ... •■• Trinity Street THE OEIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EELIGIOUS BELIEF BY / S. BARING-GOULD, M.A., AUriKlR OF "curious MYTJIS of the middle AliES," "THE SILVER STORE," ETC. PART I HEATHENISM AND MOSAISM EIVINGTONS IContion, (S^xfoiti, anK OTambrtUge ]8G9 flcDitatib TO MY FATHER. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE SEAT OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. The doctrine of the Correlation of Force — The planes of existence— The individual spontaneous force lifts from one to the other — Mode of cellular growth — Functions of the spontaneous force — Diiferen- tiation of cellular action — Nervous apjmratus — Reflex, consensual, and intellio;ent action — Nervous structure in man — The homologues in lower organisms — The functions of the cerebral ganglia — Mental action a resolution of force — Ideas are formed by force becoming latent — Instinct — The seat of the emotions— The seat of the intelligence — The importance of the feelings — The feelings are the social organ, the intellect is the individual organ — The co- ordination of iutellectand feelings is the province of religion Page 1 CHAPTEE II. THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS. Difference between inorganic and organic substances — Mode in which life functionates — Life the assimilation and liberation of force — Organisms built on two types, the cellular and the axidal — The latter developed from the former — Advance in development when each 2)ole assumes a distinct office — Position in the scale of beings determined by complexity in the differentiation of jjarts — Life demands a certain amount of consciousness — This consciousness the measure of development — Office of the senses — Perceptions of viii CONTENTS. pleasure and pain limited to objects necessary for development- Development of consciousness in man necessitated by arrest in physical development — Man's sense of pleasure and pain extends to objects in no way affecting his physical well-being — Mental effort detrimental to physical perfection — Perception a resolution of force — The object of spiritual perception the development of spiritual life, not the progress of the species — The religious sentiment an expression of the spiritual instincts of humanity — An historical survey of these instincts will show in what direction man must seek his spiritual development Faiji, 33 CHAPTEE III. THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA. Two principal instincts in man ; the craving to find a cause for every effect, and the prosecution of an ideal of perfection — Analysis of consciousness — Rudimentary beliefs — The belief in causation — The idea of cause not simple — Is it trustworthy ? — Necessary for the development of mankind — The belief in causation makes man seek a cause for every effect man sees — He believes this cause to be a will resembling his own — The ideal of perfection — The selective faculty — The imagination — Is the imagination illusive ? — Concur- rence of thought and sentiment in religion — Necessity for their co-ordination — Directions taken by the great races of mankind in the pursuit of the ideal Pagv, 55 CHAPTEE IV. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. Prevalence of the idea of immortality — Difficulty of forming negative ideas — Want of discrimination between objective and ideal ex- istence — The instinct of self-conservation — Reasons inducing man to believe in immortality : 1. Fear of death; 2. Mode of accounting for anomalies of life — Retribution — Forms assumed by the beUef in immortality : 1. Degeneration ; 2. Continuous existence similar to that in life ; 3. Metempsychosis ; 4. Cyclical life ; 5. Develop- ment — Conjectures on mode of life after death — Evil effects pro- duced by the belief — Demonology and witchcraft . . . Fage, 70 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER V. THE NAMES OF GOD. Advantage of comparative philology — Root ideas and root words — Soul names — Relation observed between wind, breath, smoke, and the soul — Roots expressive of force — Names of God expressive of force —Titles of pre-eminence — Attributive names — Names derived from localization — The multiplicity of Divine names — Avoidance of using names — Semitic language a protest against polytheism — Instances of attributes becoming distinct deities . . . Page 91 CHAPTER VI. THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. Varieties of religious beliefs — The result of natural law— Same law prevails in physics, social life, and politics — Variety produced by simple means — Dynamics of religion^Belief progressive — Analogy of human embryo — The motor is a craving after truth — Constant flux in belief the result — Analogy of language — Accident causes rapid development or retardation of religious growth — Religion the synthesis of reason and sentiment — Dogma— Worship — Discipline — The statics of religion — The double tendency in all religions — Habit — Theocracies — Revelations — Benefits derived from arrest of too rapid development — Examples of counter currents — Example of stagnation Page 107 CHAPTER VII. THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM. Difficulty of realizing the state of mind of a savage — The first stage in prima:'val religion one of autotheism ; then a perception and veneration of resistances — Classification of resisting forces — Nature worship — Brute worship — Personification of phenomena — The Greek the typical polytheist — The names of the sun become distinct solar deities — Moral deities — Astrolatry — Theogonies . Page ] :?■"> CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. THE ORIGIN OF MYTHOLOGY. Mythology not the invention of priests — Confusion in myths — The causes of the rise of myth : 1. Forgetfuhiess of the signification of words ; 2 . Confusion arising from words having several meanings ; 3. Accumulation of similitudes ; 4. Philological attempts to explain the significance of words that are antiquated ; 5. Allegories mis- understood ; 6. Attempts to account for natural curiosities — Brotomorphosis or Euhemerism Faqe, 151 CHAPTER IX. IDOLATRY. Idolatry, the worship of a person or object — Forms assumed by idolatry : 1. Fetishism — The philosophy of Fetishism — Obligations owed by humanity to Fetishism — Defect in Fetishism ; 2. Sym- bolism — All expressions of ideas are symbolic — Symbolic writing — Symbolic gesture — Symbolic language — Obligations due to sym- bolism — Defect ill symbolism ; 3. Ideolatry — Anthropomorphism Tage, 169 CHAPTER X. THEOCRACIES. Three modes of life, the hunting, the pastoral, and the agricultural- Difficulty of passing from one mode to another— Requisites of the agricultural mode : 1. Community of land— Else of castes— Terri- torial aristocracies and theocracies; 2, Government— democratic, then feudal, then monarchic— Theocratic government ; 3. Ethics must be based on authority— Provhice of prophetism— of theo- cracies to codify laws — Theocratic codes very minute— Their object, the destruction of uidividuality — This not peculiar to theocracies — Benefits of theocracies Fag^ 190 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER Xr. THE ETHICS OP RELIGION. The moral sense an intellectual faculty — Arises from the perception of pleasure and pain, and the belief in causation — Necessity of ethics to man — Growth of the moral faculty — Conscience directed by the law — Sense of responsibility — Duties to man, to God, to beasts, to self — Precepts of an ethic code — Jewish code — Mazdtean code — The ethical bearings of Polytheism — Greek morals — Scan- dinavian morals — The ethical bearings of Monotheism — Jewish morals — Mohammedan morals — The ethical bearings of Pantheism — Aristotle's Ethics — The desire of happiness the key to moral activity — This is self-love, a natural instinct — Ancient confusion of responsibilities — Modern disengagement of duties and their systematization Pa^e 207 CHAPTEK Xll. THE ORIGIN OP MONOTHEISM. The mode by which conclusions are reached not generally considered — Concrete terminology inadequate to express abstract ideas — Tendency of all religious systems to gravitate into Theism or PaDtheism — First vaguo ideas of God — Polytheism, its logical difficulties — Escape in the direction of Monotheism — Absolute unity — Relative unity — The recognition of natural law — The idea of the unity of this law — The idea of transcendental knowledge — The idea of the unity of the Creator — The idea of the infinity of space, and of time — The idea of substance ; which is spiritual or corporeal — The idea of the unity of corporeal substance the basis of Pantheism ; that of the unity of spiritual substance the basis of Theism — Materialism — Theism and Pantheism not necessarily antagonistic Fage, 237 CHAPTEE XIII. THE HISTORY OP MONOTHEISM. The Semitic race and monotheism — Jewish monotheistic ideas gradually developed — Characteristics of Semitic progress — Shape finally assumed by Jewish theism — Jewish indifference to phUo- xii CONTENTS. sophy and science — Mohammedan monotheism — Calvinistic mono- theism — Classic theism — Fate — Hindu monotheism — Traces of theism among barbarous races — Conclusion Page. 259 CHAPTEE XIY. PANTHEISM. Theories to account for the existence of the world — The atomic theory — The evolutive theory — The dualistic theory — The theory of Pyrrhonic idealism — The theory of Hegelian idealism — The theistic theory of creation — The phusitheistic theory of emanence and immanence Page 281 CHAPTEli XV. THE HISTORY OF THEOSOPHY. The task undertaken by philosophy— Theism and pantheism, 1. Greek philosophy — The Ionic school— Heraclitus— The Atomists— Empe- docles — Anaxagoras — Pythagorff'ans— Eleatic school — The Sophists —Socrates— Plato— Aristotle — Epicurajan school — The Stoics— The New Sceptics— The Neoplatonists. 2. Indian philosophy— Brahmanism— Sankliya philosophy— Buddhism. 3. Chinese philo- sophy—Confucianism — Chinese dualism — Taoism. 4. Christianity. 5. Modem philosophy — Descartes — Leibnitz — Hobbes— Locke — Hume— Kant — Fichte — Hegel. Conclusions .... Page 293 CHAPTEK XVI. THE IDEA OF EVIL. The idea of evil a generalization from the perception of pain — Per- soiiification of evil — The first idea of evil the idea of God — The second stage is the belief in the capriciousness of the gods — The third stage is dualism— The fourth stage is Satanism — The fifth stage the denial of the absolute existence of evil — Objections to this theory Page 326 CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTER XVII. ASCETICISM AND MYSTICISM. Ascetic instinct united with religious instinct — Buddhist ascetics — Asceticism of the Brahman and Mohammedan — Egyptian abste- miousness — Jewish and Ssabian fasts— Fasting among Red Indians and Peruvians, and Mexicans — Motives for practising austerities — Facts, not motives, important — Self-denial a law of human nature ; Reason why — Polarization of force — All reformers ascetics — Asceti- cism may lead to polarization of force on mind or on feelings — Buddhism an instance of the former ; its deficiencies — Christian mysticism an instance of the latter; its mischievous effects Page 343 CHAPTER XVIII. SACRIFICE. Tlie theory of compensation for wrong done, the basis of criminal law — Illustrations — Saxon, Indian, Icelandic law — The theory of compensation applied to religious wrongs — Originates sacrifice- Life and honour the two best gifts — Rites of Moloch and Mylitta — Human sacrifices among the Carthaginians — Arabs — Egyptians — Persians— Greek islands — Greeks — Romans — Gauls and Britons — Germans — ^ Lithuanians — Scandinavians — American Indians — Peruvians — Aztecs — Dahomians — The prevalence of sacrifice not an evidence of a consciousness of sin — Expiatory sacrifices — when instituted — The sense of sin — The demand for expiation — Vicarious suffering according to natural law — Suffering the means of ob- taining benefits Page 368 CHAPTER XIX. SACRAMENTS. The belief in a Divine Person necessitates prayer and sacraments — Man not perfect without feeling — The religious passion — its ex- pression prayer- -its satisfaction sacrament — Prayer a liberation xiv CONTENTS. of force— a necessity of man's nature — Sacraments — The object for which they are designed — Purificatory sacraments — Baptisms — Sprinklings with water and blood — Baptisms of fire — Confession — Communion — by sexual union — by dreams — by j)artaking of a sacrifice — Omophagic rites — Soma rites — Cannibalism — Theory of sacramental communion Page 390 CHAPTER XX. THE HUMAN IDEALS. The necessity of an Ideal — When God is the essence of abstraction, hero-worship steps in — Types of heroes worshipped — The theory of hero-worship — The ideal of beauty — of dignity— The female ideal — JNIary, the Christian female ideal Pcujc 412 PEEFACE. rnmS book is ^vritten from a philosophic, and not from a religious point of view. I have therefore subjected Mosaism, as I have Heathenism, and as I shall, in the next volume, subject Christianity, to criticism. Every man has his convictions of what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, and can never therefore be wholly unprejudiced in his estimates. A man without convictions is a man without judgment, I can frankly say, that I have tried to appreciate the various religions that come under review with impartiality. The subject of these volumes has been studied for, and thought over, for many years. I had intended to analyse separately the religions, ancient and modern, of which we know anything, but the publication of the late Archdeacon Hardwick's volumes, " Christ and other Masters," altered my intention. Though I cannot sym- pathise with the views of that writer, his knowledge and research render his book the best of the kind, and I have found it trustworthy and useful. This work being an attempt on purely positive grounds to determine the religious instincts of humanity. The reader is requested to bear in mind : — 1. That the existence of a God is not assumed. 2. That the truth of Revelation is not assumed. ?y. That hypothesis has been avoided, and the argu- ment based on demonstration. xvi PREFACE. Consequently, the Bible is quoted, not as authoritative, but as an historical record open to criticism. I have been precluded from using the Bible in any other way, by the exigencies of my argument. The question of the truth of Eevelation is one on which I do not touch. We have a revelation in our own nature. An historical revelation is necessarily sub- ject to historical criticism, and it can never be proved to be true. The revelation of our own nature is never antiquated, and is always open to be questioned. On this Eevelation the Church of the future must establish its claims to acceptance. I hope in this volume to show what are the religious instincts of humanity: in the second volume I intend to show how that Christianity by its fundamental postu- late — the Incarnation — assumes to meet all these instincts ; how it actually does so meet them ; and how failure is due to counteTacting political or social causes. Tlie science of comparative theology is as yet in its infancy. The study of comparative anatomy has led to discoveries of which our parents never dreamed. That of comparative theology will not prove less fruitful in significant results. To this science, the following treatise is a contribution. I have only to add that on p. 170 I have borrowed a line of thought from an article in, I think, the Saturday Reviciv, but from not having the article by me, nor remembering the date, I have been unable to refer to it in a foot-note. Dalton, Thirsk, June 27, 18G9. THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. CHAPTER I. THE SEAT OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. The doctrine of the Correlation of Force — The planes of existence — The individual spontaneous force lifts from one to the other — Mode of cellular growth — Functions of the spontaneous force — Differen- tiation of cellular action — Nervous apparatus — Reflex, consensual, and intellio;ent action — Nervous structure in man — The homolofmes in lower organisms — The functions of the cerebral ganglia — Mental action a resolution of force — Ideas are formed by force becomino- latent— Instinct — The seat of the emotions — The seat of the intelligence — The importance of the feelings — The feelings are the social organ, the intellect is the individual organ — The co- ordination of intellect and feelmgs is the province of religion. TTIORCE is that whicli produces or resists motion.^ -'- It is indestructible. When it has ceased to exhibit itself in one form, it has not ceased to he, but it has assumed expression in some other form. A force cannot originate otherwise than by devohition from some pre-existing force or forces. ^ Grove: Correlation of Physical Forces ; London, 1842. Tyndall : Heat considered as a Mode of Motion; London, 1868. Mayer: Die organische Bewegung in ihrer Zusammenhang m. d. Stoffwechsel, 1845. Bray : On Force and its Mental Correlates ; London, n.d. Cranbrook : Doctrine of Correlation of Forces ; Edinburgh, 1867. VOL. I. B THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF 111 physics, liglit, colour, heat, electricity, chemical affinity, attraction and repulsion, are modes of force. Matter is the vehicle through which force acts, is pro- pagated, and alters its direction. Motion is the mode of alteration of force, and the transfer of it in greater or less intensity from one point to another. Light, heat, electricity, &c. are correlatives; and the degree, intensity, or quantity of the one taking the place of, or superinduced hy another, always bears an exactly definite proportion to the degree, intensity, or quantity of tliat other whose place it takes, or by which it is super- induced. The quantity, intensity, or degree of motion of one kind superinduced in a body by motion of another kind is always in exact relation to the quantity, intensity, or degree of that superinducing motion. Thus, when water at 212° is converted into steam, the heat which it receives is no longer manifested as heat, but mechanical force is developed in its stead, and this in a definite ratio. The locomotive force of the railway eno'ine is this mechanical force evolved from coal. AVhen a station is approached a brake is applied, and smoke and sparks fly from the wheel pressed by it. The train is brought to rest by reconversion of the propelling force into heat. Count Kumford boiled water by hammering on iron ; in wieldinCT his hammer he expended muscular force. That muscular force he derived from the food he had assimi- lated, that food had drawn its force from earth and air and water, and into air and water it returned. AYhen chemical decomposition takes place, heat is o-enerated ; that is, the cohesive force which combined the moleciiles in a certain relation, being no longer needed THE SEA T OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 3 to maintain that relation, is liberated, and takes fliglit as caloric. The evolution of electricity produces vibrations, which meeting the ear are registered as sounds, and meeting the eye are noted as light, and meeting the touch pro- duce pain. We shall see, presently, that vital and mental and ner- vous action are also modifications of force. There are four phases of existence known to us, raised, as planes, one above the other. The first and lowest is that of elementary existence. The second is the plane of chemical compounds, or the mineral kingdom. The third is the plane of vegetable existence. The fourth is the plane of animal life. It is the special function of force acting as chemical affinity to raise matter from plane 1 to 2 ; and all changes which take place on this plane are under the guidance and control of this force. It is obvious that to maintain com- bination some force must be superadded to the latent forces in the elements themselves. Thus, oxygen and hydrogen are placed in juxtaposition at an ordinary temperature, but they will not combine. A flame must be applied to the mechanical mixture — that is, the force dis- charged from the match in combustion must be applied — to unite the chemical elements. AVith this superadded force union is at once effected, and water is the result. It is the special prerogative of vegetative force to lift matter from plane 2 to plane 3, All tlie changes taking place on this plane, the laws of which constitute vegetable physiology, are under the guidance and control of this force. B 2 4 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Here, again, to form organic cellular growth a force must be superadded to the chemical forces. Whence is this obtained ? AVithout denying the possibility of spon- taneous generation, in the lowest forms of vegetable life, it may be safely asserted that this co-ordinating, selecting, and constructive force is derived from the parent plant, and is contained in the germ. Finally, the force of animal life, and that alone, enjoys the privilege of lifting matter still higher, into the plane of animal existence. If then it be admitted that this is the relative position of the planes, and that it requires a greater and greater expenditure of force to maintain matter upon each succes- sive plane, then it follows that any amount of matter returning to a lower plane by decomposition must set free or develop a force which may under favourable cir- cumstances raise other matter from a lower to a higher condition.-^ Let us consider vegetable matter in decomposition. The act of decomposition liberates the vegetative force. In this matter low cellular organisms appear in great abundance. Now these may either be spontaneously generated or may be developed from eggs deposited in the matter. It has been said that belief in spontaneous generation varies directly with our ignorance of the real physiology of reproduction. Thus, the ancients believed that rats and mice sprang from the earth without parents, and till the time of Eedi maggots were supposed to be immediate products of decomposition. But the current of scientific progress has served to show that every organism, of whatever kind, is the immediate product of previously-existing organisms. Infusorial plants » Philosophical Magazine, 1860, p. 133. THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 5 and animals alone now are believed by some to be con- structed by the action of some undiscovered laws operating immediately from matter. It is possible that — say electricity, may have super- added the requisite force to lift the decaying vegetable matter into a growing unicellular animalcule. The following interesting account of the development of some of these germs is given by a careful experimental naturalist, M. Pouchet. He steeped darnel in water for one hour, then filtered the water and set it aside. On the next day a number of monads appeared on the surface of the filtered fluid. These were nearly all dead on the following day, and their bodies formed a thin granular scum on the surface. On the third day there began to appear some "ceufs spontan(5es," first as little greenish- yellow clots formed of some of the granules of the scum. The central granules were larger and more compact than the rest, and the outside ones more delicate and exhibit- ing looseness of cohesion, forming, as the mass gradually assumed a spheroidal form, a kind oi zona pellucida. This was more distinct in other specimens, and then the vitellus was seen in gyration. On the fourth day almost all the eggs were perfectly formed, and on the fifth day perfect Paramecia appeared. In the lowest infusoria, such as the Bacteria, all these changes cannot be followed ; but they are observed to appear in clots in a way quite inconsistent with the notion that they had been produced from eggs dropping acci- dentally from the surrounding air. The surface of a fluid in fermentation is seen to be covered with a delicate mucous film. In this film there appear all at once a number of pale motionless lines, nearly parallel to one another, and of the form and size of bacteria, and in a few 6 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF hours they have developed into living and active infusoria.^ That eggs do float in the air has, however, been ascertained experimentally, by drawing a column of air through gun- cotton, and then dissolving the gun-cotton, when a number of small, round, or oval bodies, quite indistinguishable from the spores of mmute plants and the ova of infusoria, were found. ^ The question, therefore, remains as yet undecided, whence these early forms of life arise ; but for their development it has been ascertained that three requisites must unite, — organic matter, water, and air. The cell is not the first living organism, however, for the Protozoa exhibit a still more rudimentary condition, consisting of homogeneous jelly-like substance; and the chief modification this undergoes consists in the consolida- tion of certain parts of it by the deposit of horny, calcareous or silicious matter. This may take place on the outer surface only, so as to form shells, or in the construction of an internal network, as in the sponge. The Amoeba is an example of an organization at its lowest term, without the distinct differentiation into con- taining and contained parts necessary to constitute a cell. " However inert this creature may seem when first glanced at, its possession of vital activity is soon made apparent by the movements which it executes and the changes of form it undergoes ; these being, in fact, parts of one and the same set of actions. For the shapeless mass puts forth one or more finger-like prolongations, which are simply extensions of its gelatinous substance in those particular directions; and a continuation of the same action, just 1 Pouchet: Nouvelles Experiences sur la G^n^ratiou Spontaii^e, pp. 111-16 ; Paris, 1864. 2 Pasteur : Mt^moires sur les Corpuscules organises ; Paris, 1861. THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 7 distending tlie prolongation, and then, as it "were, carrying the whole body into it, causes the entire mass to change its place. When, in the course of its progress, it meets with a particle appropriate to its nutriment, its gelatinous body spreads itself over this, so as to envelope it com- pletely ; and the substance, sometimes animal, sometimes vegetable, thus taken into this extemporized stomach, undergoes a sort of digestion therein, the nutrient material passing into the substance of the sarcode, and any indi- gestible portion making its way to the surface, from some part of which it is, as it were, finally squeezed out." ^ Inherent in the primordial cell of every organism, whether it be vegetable or animal, and in all the tissues that are developed out of it, is a governing principle or force which, acting independently of the consciousness of the organism, and whether the latter be endowed with consciousness or not, builds matter into machines of singular complexity for a fixed, manifest, and apparently pre-determined object — the preservation and perfection of the individual, and the continuance of the species. This spontaneous force, for which it is difficult to select a name, operates through and upon matter in three modes : — 1. It moulds and compounds matter into living organisms. 2. It moves and regulates the motions of these organisms. 3. It acts — in those animals endowed with conscious- ness — on the vesicular neurine, contained in the cranium, which it has already accumulated, in the production of thought, ^ Carpenter: Animal Physiology, s. 129 ; London, 1867. 8 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF In simple cellular animalcules tliis force is central. It has raised the material of which the cell is composed out of the vegetable plane into that of animal life. Whence it came is uncertain, but most probably it is derived from a germ. When a number of cells, each possessing the same properties, are combined into one mass, we have a living being without individuality : such is the yeast plant, and the hydra. They are rather societies of unicellular organ- isms than compound individuals. But in the higher types of plants, the functions of the cells are diversified. Some secrete colouring matter ; others starch, gum, sugar, oil ; and another the material for repro- duction. In the higher animals, and in some vegetable organisms, the functions are more specialized, and are carried on by special apparatuses constructed for the purpose. Food is assimilated by one class, is carried thus assimilated to the molecular tissues by another ; the results of waste and repair are carried off by machinery adapted to the purpose ; the germ-cells and sperm-cells are developed also in special tissues — the reproductive organs. There are also apparatuses for the prehension of food, for the supply of the oxidizing material, &c. All these require to be combined in action for the attainment of the objects of the organism as a unity, and we have therefore a special apparatus formed for this end, in which that unconscious force, previously, and indeed still, present alike in all the cells, is now specially localized : this apparatus is the nervous system. In the invertebrate sub-kingdom is seen the simplest form of nervous system, which consists of distinct ganglia with commissural cords and nerves, administering to the functions of automatic life. THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 9 A nerve consists of two portions, one vascular, the other fibrous. The function of the vascuhar portion is to convey impressions inwards, that of the fibrous portion is to reflect the impressed force outward, resolving it into muscular action. The simplest mode of action is when an impression made on the afferent nerve thrills to the ganglionic centre in which the nerve terminates, when it alters its direction, and is shot down the motor nerve which sets the muscles in operation, and at once discharges the force received. This action is simply reflex. Thus a force a acting on the afferent nerve becomes b, which is precisely equivalent in amount to the force A, The nervous system of the lower organisms is simply one of reflex action. If the ganglion be one through which consciousness is necessarily affected, sensation becomes a necessary link in the circle, and the action is then called consensual. Sensation is the lowest form of mental action. The next stage is that called idco-motor action, in which the sensation is resolved into an idea, and the idea sets the muscles in operation, if the will approves, and expends the force received, or else stores it up for future expenditure. In the lowest organisms that have nervous apparatuses each ganglion has the same function as any other. In the Eadiata the nervous system consists of a ring around the mouth, with ganglia at the base of each ray. Each of these ganglia is precisely similar in character to all the others. In the Mollusca, which inhabit univalve shells, there is no such repetition of parts, but there is a single ganglion, or, if the creature have a foot, there is added a special pedal ganglion, united by a commissure to the main ganglion. lo THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF In the Concliifera, inhabiting bivalve shells, there are at least two ganglia, generally three or four. Of these one is posterior to the others, and is of large size. It has reference to the hinge of the valves. It is the branchial ganglion, the seat of muscular action, whilst the smaller ganglia in the forepart are the seats of sensation. Through these the animal receives impressions, which it commu- nicates to the posterior knot, which converts them into muscular action. In the Articulata, the apparatus of motion is greatly- developed, and the nervous system assumes an axidal position, and consists of a line of smaU ganglia, some thirteen at most, of which all but the two foremost, which are in the same plane, are repetitions one of another. The exceptions are the cephalic ganglia. This arrangement is observable in the larva, but in the perfected insect a redis- tribution of ganglia takes place, several disappear, the two at the posterior extremity coalesce, the cephalic ganglia increase in size, and the thoracic ganglia, from which tlie legs and wings are supplied, are concentrated and enlarged. In the Vertebrata the ganglia are no longer distributed like tubers with commissural filaments, but are united into one continuous column, expanding at the head into. a large knot of ganglia ; the whole enclosed in strong bony armour. In the Vertebrata the cerebral ganglia consist of — •1. The sensory ganglia, including those of sight and smell. 2. The cerebric hemispheres. 3. Tlie cerebellum. The sjpmal cord in the lower vertebrate species is thick, and branches at its junction with the brain. The optic and olfactory ganglia predominate, the cerebellum is small, and the cerebrum smaller yet. THE SEA T OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 1 1 In higher types, where there is great complication of muscular action, the cerebellum assumes importance. In man, the cerebrum is far larger than any of the other portions, its hemispheres overlap all the other parts, and are marked out with convolutions. In reptiles, birds, and mammals the fork which appears in fish at the junction of the spinal cord and brain is filled up ; the spinal cord becomes gn^adually less thick and important as the type rises, and the preponderating nervous tract is located in the skuU.^ The vascular afferent matter of the nervous system is grey, the fibrous efferent matter is white. Throughout the whole length of the spine the grey lies within tlie white. Towards the loins the amoimt of grey is greater than at the small of the back ; this is the representative of the posterior ganglion in the lower organisms. The spinal cord receives afferent fibres from every portion of the body and gives origm to efferent fibres, which unite with the former at a short distance from the spine ; thus each nerve has two roots, and has at once a centripetal and a centrifugal action. The spine being a nucleus of nervous matter, a continuous ganglion, it can resolve force without transmitting it to the brain, but this action is simply reflex. Towards the jimction of the spine and brain is the medulla oblongata, a prolongation and expansion of spinal matter. This is the ganglionic centre of the resj)iratory and deglutive action. This is of a strictly reflex character also, all such action being due to an impression exerted upon the periphery of the system, which being reported to the centre returns as a motor impulse. ^ This is summarized from Dr. Carpenter's " Principles of General and Comparative Physiology," and Valentin's " Text Book of Physi- ology," London, 1853. 12 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Overhanging the fourth ventricle of the brain is a great laminated masS; the cerebellum ; on each side, this organ sends down layers of transverse fibres, which sweep across the brain and meet in the middle line of its base, forminsr a kind of bridge, called the Pons Varolii. The longitudinal nerve-fibres of the medidla oblongata pass forward, and emerge in front of this bridge as two broad diverging bimdles, called crura cerebri. Above these lies a mass of nervous matter, raised into four hemispherical elevations, called corpora quadrigemina. The crura then pass into a second large mass of nervous matter, called thalami optici, from which the fibres pass on into a body of grey and white matter, called corpus striatum. Adjoining these are the olfactory ganglia. The auditory ganglia are lodged in the substance of the medulla ob- longata on either side of the fourth ventricle, and the gustatory ganglion is probably another node similarly imbedded in the medulla oblongata. The sensory ganglia form the base of the cerebral hemispheres. In the medulla oblongata the grey vesicular substance occupies the same position within the white as it does in the spinal cord, but in the cerebral hemispheres and in the cerebellum the grey matter is external. From the thalami optici and corpora striata, fibres radiate to the surface of the cerebrum. The cerebellum has no direct communication with the cerebrum, but possesses independent connexions with the upper part of the spinal cord ; it has its white matter so disposed within the grey as to exhibit a very peculiar and beautiful tree-like appearance, termed the arbor vit^e. Such is the structure of the human brain. We will next consider w^hat each portion is homologous to in the lower organisms. THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 13 In the lowest forms of animal life wbicli are provided with a nervous system, all nervous action is reflex. In man, the spine (which is a continued chain of ganglia fused into one), the visceral ganglia, and the medulla ob- longata are the homologues of these reflex motor nervous structures. To the cephalic ganglia of those insects which have perception of smeU and sound, and which have visual organs, answer the sensory ganglia in man. In myriads of animals, indeed in the whole of the invertebrate sub- kingdom, no cerebrum exists ; and, even in the lower Vertebrata, the olfactory, optic, and auditory ganglia have no direct connexion with it, so that the totality of their life is made up of sensational consciousness, which is formularized by sensori-motor action. In those animals which exhibit great variety of motion, the cerebellum assumes prominence. Eeptiles are the most inert of vertebrate animals, and in them the cere- bellum is small. The active predaceous fishes have it largely developed. The vermiform fishes, whose progres- sion is accomplished by flexion of the body, have a cere- bellum so small as to be scarcely discoverable. On turn- ing to the class of birds, we observe that the active falcons and swift-winged swallows have a cerebellum much larger in proportion than that of the gallinaceous birds, whose powers of flight are small, or than that of the struthious tribe, in which they are altogether absent. Among mammals, its size bears a fixed proportion to the number and variety of muscular actions requiring combined move- ments of which they are respectively capable. In the adult brain of man, in whom exists a necessity for co-ordination of an immense variety of voluntary and locomotive actions, no part of the encephalon has such H THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF extensive connexions with the cerebro-spinal axis, for it is iu union with each segment of the great nervous centres, upon which the sensations and movements of the body depend. The cerebrum in like manner exhibits a steady increase in size as we ascend the vertebrate scale, till it culminates in man. In the bat, the mole, and the rat, as in birds, the cerebral hemispheres are perfectly plain and smooth, though divided by the Sylvian fissure ; in the rabbit, the beaver, and porcupine this fissure is strongly marked, but there are only a few depressions indicating the future sulci on the surface of the hemispheres. In the fox, the wolf, and the dog the simplest form of the true convolutions are first met with, the fundamental convolutions of Leuret. In the fox, as a typical example, they are six in number. In the human brain, there are three external fundamental convolutions, which are tortuous ; and between the anterior and posterior portions of these three external convolutions are interposed, on the upper surface of the hemispheres, two sets of transverse convolutions, divided by a distinct sulcus. In each of the hemispheres there are four orders of convolutions. In the first there is but one, surrounding the hemispheres like a riband. Of the second order, the marginal convolutions, there are two. The internal convolutions form those of the third order. Those of the fourth, the largest, deepest, and least symmetrical of aU, are especially characteristic of the human brain. We will proceed next to consider the functions of the different portions of the brain. The sjiinal cord, as has been already observed, is a distinct and independent centre of action, consisting of a series of segmental ganglia and nerves, structurally THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 15 homologous, and functionally analogous to tlie jointed ganglionic cord of the Articulata. The excito-motoiy and reflex actions of which it is the seat are evidently suhservient to the conservation of the organism. Tlie functions of the medulla oblongata have been described. We come now to the corpora striata, which are in close connexion with the cerebral hemispheres. Im- planted upon the motor tracts of the crura cerebri and medulla oblongata, in them the motor fibres terminate, and they thus, with the vesicular matter of the locus niger and the anterior segmental ganglia of the spinal cord, consti- tute the motor axis of the cerebro-spinal system, and are the source of all the movements of the body, whether reflex, consensual, emotional, or voluntary. They are not, however, the seat of volition, but the encephalic motor centres through which the mandates of the will or feelings are propagated, the connecting links of thought and action. Their commissural connexions with the cerebric hemispheres are so intimate and numerous, that they are evidently placed in subserviency at every point to the volitional power of the cerebrum. But the corpora striata are not solely the motor centres of volition. From their close commissural relations with the thalami optici, they are also and equally the centres and channels of respondent sensori-motor actions, and of consensual, instinctive, and emotional movements. The thalami optici form a nucleus around which the corpora striata bend. These are the essential ganglia of the sensory tracts, as the corpora striata are of the motor. Im- planted upon the sensory tracts of the crura cerebri and medulla oblougata, in them the afferent fibres end. Tliey are the great centres of sensorial feeling, receiving impres- sions from the sentient extremities of all the different !6 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF nerves distributed over the whole surface of the body and resolving them into sensation. They have, however, another office ; they are the seat of the inner sensibilities. Lying witliin the band of the corpora striata, tlie thalami, like those bodies, are in most intimate and extensive relationship with the cerebrum, through the instrumentality of innumerable fan-like commissural fibres, the connecting links of thought with feeling, and of ideation with emotion. " It may be inferred," writes Dr. Todd, "from their connexions with nerves chiefly of a sensitive kind, that the olivary columns and the optic thalami, which are continuous with them, are chiefly con- cerned in the reception of sensitive impressions, which may principally have reference merely to informing the mind (so to speak), or partly to the excitation of motion, as in deglutition, respiration, &c. The posterior horns of the grey matter of the cord, either by direct continuity with the olivary columns, or their union with them through commissural fibres, become part and parcel of a great centre of sensation, whether for mental or physical actions ; and this leads us to view the thalami optici as the principal foci of sensibility, in intimate connexion with the convoluted surface of the brain, through its extensive fan-like radiations, and without which the mind could not perceive the physical change resulting from a sensitive impression. Again, the pyramidal bodies evidently con- nect the grey matter of the cord with the corpora striata ; and not only these, but also the intervening masses of vesicular matter, such as the locus niger, and the vesicular matter of the pons and of the olivary columns; and, supposing the corpora striata to be the centres of volition in connexion with the convoluted surface of the brain by their numerous radiations, all these several parts are linked THE SEAT OF RELIGFOUS SENTIMENT 17 together for the common purposes of volition, and consti- tute a great centre of voluntary actions, amenable to the influence of the will at every point." ^ The corpora quadrigemina are manifestly the seat of those objective emotional feelings which are aroused through the agency of sight. In the brain of the fish, these bodies are united with the optic thalami into one mass, forming the optic lobes ; and this exhibits the closeness of the union of these two ganglionic masses, if it does not establish an identity of function. The cerebellum is the seat of the muscular sense, and according to Serres, Gall, and others, of the sexual instinct. Comparative anatomy, pathological research, and experi- mental inquiry alike establish the position that the office of this organ is the co-ordination of voluntary and loco- motive action. The direct structural connexion subsisting between these co-ordinating organs and the corpora quadrigemina indicate the importance of the guiding influence of the visual sense in co-ordinating movements, and the restiform bodies act as channels for the trans- mission upwards to the corpora dentata, of impressions appertaining to the muscular sense. The cerebrum is the seat of perceptive consciousness, intellectual action, and volitional power ; in a word, of the understanding and will.- From the above outline of nervous anatomy it will be possible to group the different classes of vital and mental operation carried on among animals about nervous gan- glionic centres. * Todd and Bowman : Physiological Anatomy, &c. p. 348. * Dunn: Physiological Psychology ; London, 1855. Also his valuable papers in the " Journal of Psychological Science," to which I am greatly indebted. VOL. I. C THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF The classes of operations are three : — I. Keflex action, which is executed only in response to impressions made upon the nerves proceeding to a ganglionic centre. IT. Sensational action, which is never performed without consciousness on the part of the animal, though the animal in executing it is not necessarily guided by any perception of the object to be attained, or of the means by which it is to be accomplished, but acts impulsively, without or even against its will. III. Intelligent action, in which the will and the reason are the immediate agents. The arrangement and connexions of the parts executing these three modes of action is concisely expressed by Dr. Carpenter, in a tabular view, which I take the liberty of extracting from his work on " Human Physiology," and slightly modifying. Cerebral Ganglia, The centres of the operations of Intelligence and Will. Sensory Ganglia, j iThe centres of feelings and acts which arei Consensual, Instinctive, and Emotional. Nerves of Special Sensation. Nerves of Special Sensation. Cerebellum. For harmonization of general Muscular Action. Medulla Oblongata. Nerves of Respiratioi., , c t> ^ a i- • t. • ^■ Deolutition V^e centre oiRefitx Action m Kespiration, | °&c. Trunks of Spinal Nerves connected with ex- tremities. Deglutition, &c. Nerves of Respiration, Deglutition, ^ &c. O o o « rj ^ fi •a O ,©■3 en £^ cd ro o X O Trunks of Spinal Nerves |> connected Avith ex- tremities, &c. THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 19 Man, ill infancy, exhibits an incessant energy of animal life, and play of instinct. Physical organization is then supreme, and the medulla oblongata and cerebellum are the organs of the brain — the lowest in character — most in requisition. In youth, obedience to instinct is replaced by sensation and desire ; the exuberance of organization is restrained by the development of the higher mental organs ; sensation then holds sway, and the vital force is exerted in dis- integration, and reconstruction, and expansion of the sensory ganglia. In matured manhood, instmcts, sensations, and desires are rendered subservient to reason ; then the cerebrie hemispheres are chiefly called into play. Man has, therefore, three directions in which he can develop — animalism, sentiment, and reason. That spontaneous principle which underlies all organic life is the active agent in producing reflex, consensual, in- stinctive, and intelligent action. That it is a force cannot be doubted, but that it is merely a mode of force has not yet been proved. This vital energy assimilates force and then liberates it by action, by emotion, by thought, or will. Thus, violent muscular action produces an appetite ; intense emotion is the cause of great prostration ; intense mental application, or concentration of the will, makes a man hungry. The reason is, that the vital principle demands fuel in the shape of food, or a stimulant, which it can turn into muscular or nervous fibre. Having used up so much force placed at its disposal, it demands a supply to enable it to preserve equilibrium. A very curious instance of the modification of force in producing a radical change in constitution is presented by the bees when they have lost a queen. The workers are c 2 20 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF sexless — or ratliei", tliey are females with the reproductive organ undeveloped. When a colony of bees is without a queen, one of the worker grubs is taken and fed on stimu- lating food, reserved for exclusive use by the queen. This strong diet soon develops the sexual organ of the bee, alters the shape of her tongue, jaws, and sting, deprives her of the power of producing wax, and obliterates the hollows in the thighs adapted for the transport of pollen. The vital principle having accumulated force, can expend it either in animalism, sentiment, or reason. Every animal, except man, expends it on securing its own growth and conservation, and on transmission of vitality to another generation. Such reason as it has, is used to find its food, build its home, and seek out one of another sex. Tlie caterpillar eats its own weight in a day, because it is accumulating the force which will develop it into a butter- fly ; but when in its imago condition, it scarcely eats, as it has reached the limit of its development. Its butterfly life is the expenditure of what was collected so diligently in its larva state. Man can at his choice use up that force Avhicli he assimilates by his food in perfecting his vegetative life, or in the elaboration of brain matter. The country cloNvn lives a life very little above that of the brute ; he con- sumes a prodigious amount of force and material, and this he converts into muscle, flesh, blood, and sperm. He lives only to sustain his life and propagate his species. Education tends to precipitate the force acquired upon the cerebral hemispheres ; it sends a stream of blood over the whole surface, which oxidizes the grey vascular matter, and this oxidation is a manifestation of the production of thought. In sleep, nature builds up what has been pulled down during the day, adds cells, deepens the couvo- THE SEAT OE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 21 lutions of the brain, and thus exposes more surface to oxidation. The waste and wear is carried off' in the urine, as alkaline phosphates. The amount of earthy phosphates present in the urine is found to bear a constant relation to that which is contained in the food, but the amount of alkaline phosphates varies with different conditions of mental action ; and it is found that when severe intellectual exertion has impaired the nutrition of the brain, any pre- mature attempt to renew the activity of its exercise causes the reappearance of an excessive phosphatic discharge. But all the force absorbed has not been voided in the urine. Mental exertion has produced ideas which remain in the mind, and the maintenance of these ideas consumes a large portion of the force received, which thus becomes latent. It is not only through food that force passes to the brain ; each sense is a force-conductor, as each muscle is a force-liberator. Sights, sounds, scents are modes of motion, ; nay, even qualities arc so much more or so much less force. Thus ice takes up from the surrounding atmosphere a certain amount of heat, which is a form of force : this becomes latent in it when it assumes the state of water. And water absorbs more force to become steam. Thus solidity, liquefaction, vaporization are modes of force. It is evident also that dimension is a modification of force ; for dimension is due to the greater or less degree of cohesion in the mass, and this again is due to the amount of heat latent in it. Light is a modification of force. According to the theory now universally received, it con- sists of a vibratory motion of the particles of a luminous body propagated in waves, which flow in at the pupil of the eye, and, breaking upon the retina at the back, transmit their motion along the optic nerve to the brain, where they 22 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF announce themselves as consciousness of liglit, by resolution into an idea, Sound is the undulation of the air. The force applied by the finger to a harp-string flings the air into agitation, and the ripples sweep in at the ear, vibrate on the tympanum, and are thrilled to the auditory ganglion, where they transform themselves into a musical idea. " The spectrum is to the eye," says Professor Tyndall, " what the gamut is to the ear ; its different colours repre- sent notes of different pitch. The vibrations which pro- duce impressions of red are slower, and the ethereal waves which they generate are longer, than those which produce the impression of violet ; while the other colours are excited by waves of some intermediate length. The length of the waves, both of sound and light, and the number of shocks which they respectively impart, both to the ear and the eye, have been strictly determined. Let us here go through a simple calculation. Light travels through space at a velocity of 192,000 miles a second. Eeducing this to inches, we find the number to be 12,165,120,000. Now, it is found that 39,000 waves of red light, placed end to end, would make up an inch ; multiplying the number of inches in 192,000 miles by 39,000, we obtain the number of waves of red light in 192,000 miles : this number is 474,439,680,000,000. All these waves enter the eye in a single second. To produce the impression of red in the bram, the retina must be hit at this almost incredible rate. To produce the impression of violet, a still greater number of impulses is necessary ; it would take 57,500 waves of violet to fill an inch, and the number of shocks required to produce the impression of this colour amounts to six hundred and ninety-nine millions of millions per second. The other colours of the spectrum rise gradually in pitch from red to violet. But beyond the violet we have rays of THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 23 too high a pitch to be visible, and beyond the red we have rays of too low a pitch to be visible." ^ I have said that nervous action is a transmission of force. This statement is not merely hypothetical. Nervous force has been ascertained by experiment to bear a very striking resemblance to electricity, though its difference is also evident, A feeble galvanic current transmitted along the motor nerve of an animal recently killed will produce muscular contraction ; whilst, on the other hand, a similar current transmitted along an afferent nerve will excite reflex movement through its ganglionic centre. " However strongly we may be convinced of the absence of identity between nervous and electric forces, it is impossible to be otherwise than impressed with the extraordinary analogy which exists between them. To use Professor Grove's term, they are mutually correlated, and that in the closest degree," 2 Heat, in like manner, if applied to a motor nerve in its course, calls forth muscular contractions, and if applied to a sensory nerve it will occasion sensations, both common and special, precisely after the manner of electricity. The same may be said of chemical affinity ; for if cer- tain reagents be applied to nerve-trunks they may be made to call into action their various endowments, whether these be motory or sensory ; whilst, on the other hand, there is ample evidence that the chemical properties of secretions may be greatly changed under the direct influence of nervous force.^ 1 Tyndall : Heat as a Mode of Motion, p. 255. 2 Dr. Carpenter on Mattrucci's Lectures, in Medico-Chirurgical Review, 1848. ^ Philosophical Transactions, vol. cxl. (1850), p. 745. 24 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF In the brute, every impression through a sense produces a corresponding muscular discharge. We can thus com- plete the circle. But with man — and the brute which has cerebral hemispheres, and uses them in accumulating ideas — the circle is as yet incomplete. We can trace, say, the force of the impact on the retina of scarlet waves to the brain, but we see no corresponding liberation of this force. It is therefore taken up, and becomes latent, just as the solar force has become latent in the beds of coal, and is only liberated when the coal is burnt. The force from the stroke of the waves of scarlet light is taken up by the brain, and there becomes an idea. In the formation of the idea the force becomes passive. Where there is no perception, there is no idea to answer to it. The man blind from his birth can form no con- ception of scarlet ; for the optic ganglia have not been charged with the force which forms the idea of scarlet, and ex nilhilo nihil fit applies to ideas as well as to material objects. Thus we can form no ideas of that which we have never seen, heard, smelt, or tasted. Idealization is the accumulation of remembrances — that is, of fossil percepts — and the using of them up ; if this ideal be not spent, it remains in the brain. Say it is an ideal of beauty : the sculptor elaborates it in marble, and runs the pent-up force out of his brain. In the beast whose action is sensori-motrix, this action is wliat is generally called instinctive : no reasoning takes place ; the creature receives an impression which becomes a sensation, and acts blindly on it. But in man, the sensa- tion is transmitted to the great hemispherical ganglia, or cerebrum, and is there idealized and registered. Perception is the portal to intellectual actiou ; for while in sensation THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 25 the conscious mind feels intuitively the physical impulse of the outward object as it affects the consciousness through the sensorium, in perception the nervous impression is carried a stage farther, and, by virtue of the harmony which exists between the percipient mind and the external world, the sensory impression is intuitively translated into the form of intelligence, and becomes an intellectual phe- nomenon. If we reflect on the processes that go on in ouv own minds, we easily distinguish between a sensation and an idea, and are able to mark the sequential origin of the latter. We often hear words, but they convey no idea to our minds for some minutes, when all at once their signi- ficance breaks upon us. The correlated physiological phe- nomena may be thus stated : The auditory ganglia receive the sentient impression at once ; its passage onward is delayed ; presently, however, the obstruction is removed, the sensation flows into the hemispheric ganglia, oxidation takes place, and the ideas are formed corresponding to the words received by the ear.^ A schoolmaster complains that his boys will not pay attention to their lessons. The vital force of the children is at the time engaged upon the digestion of raw apples, robbed from the master's garden. If a portion of the skull of one of these urchins were removed, the brain would be found to be almost colourless, and by no means filling the cavity of the cranium. Let, however, this boy suddenly resolve to apply his mind to the task : instantly a delicate rosy flush will appear over the surface of the cerebrum ; it will swell and protrude from the opening. The vital energy has jerked the blood from the coats of the stomach into the veins of the head. 1 Noble : Correlation of Psychology and Physiology, p. 27 ; and Dunn : Physiological Psychology. 26 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF The sensory ganglionic tract is, as has been said, the seat of the emotions. Man has the power, shared with him by some of tlie higher Vertebrata, but by them in a vastly inferior degree, of resolving an idea into an emotion — that is, of fixing his affections on some conception of the cerebrum. He forms an idea not always out of imme- diately received impressions, and this idea lie transmits to the thalami optici, where it becomes an object of emotion ; the corpora striata and the cerebellum share in the agita- tion, and the muscular action expends the force. Thus, I see an object : the perception becomes one of danger ; my emotion of fear is aroused, and contraction of the heart and cessation of breathing ensue. Or I call up ideally some image of beauty : the emotion of love is excited, muscular action is again set up, and the heart beats rapidly and the breath comes short and quick. The importance of the cerebral hemispheres to man cannot be questioned. As the seat of intelligence, tliey place man above the brute, the European above the red- skin, and the red-skin above the negro. In the European the cerebrum is far larirer than in the red-skin and neOTO : and this is due, possibly, to a long training, which lias developed cerebral cells at the expense of cerebellic cells. The red-skin depends for subsistence on his agility, and therefore his vital energy labours to perfect the cerebellum, ill which co-ordination of muscular action takes place. But it is not so witli the European ; he depends on the activity of his intelligence, and therefore the energizing principle enlarges the amount of cerebrum, and deepens its con- volutions. We all know by experience that the exercise of muscle tends to strengthen it ; that is, the direction of tlie attention of our vital energy is devoted to the con- struction of musculai' (ibre. We know that education THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 27 sharpens the wits ; that is, the same vital energy is turned to the ehaboratiou of brain matter. We know also Ly experience that in proportion as we use up acquired force in muscular exertion intellectual action fails, and in pro- portion as mental work is executed does muscular power languish. We will not consider the importance of intellect, which is admitted by all, but the importance of emotion, or feel- ings, which some are disposed to underrate. The feelings are the great incentives to intellectual activity. They register pleasure and pain. Certain sights and sounds afford them gratification, and they urge the in- tellect to seek out modes of reproducing those impressions. Other sights and sounds distress them, and they excite the intellect to devise methods of avoiding them. The feelings seem to be tuned in a definite key, and certain undula- tions of sound or of light set them in rhythmical har- monious vibration, whilst others throw them into discordant agitation. Without the feeling of pleasure derived from study there would be no intellectual advance among mankind ; with- out that of domestic love there would be no association ; without the feeling of delight produced by harmonies of shape, colour, and sound, there woiQd be no art. The emotions are indeed the spring of intellectual activity, and their development is as essential to man's well-being and jjre-eminence as is that of his reasoning powers. And, as the reasoning powers can be directed towards any one point, or on any one subject, so can the affections take one direction to the exclusion of other directions. The emotions and thoughts are so closely con- nected that they usually work together ; but occasionally they are in antagonism, as when the desire tends towards 28 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF what the reason knows to "be unadvisable. " The pas- sions," said Sydney Smith, " are, in morals, what motion is in physics : they create, preserve, and animate ; and witli- out them, all would be silence and death. Avarice guides men across the deserts of the ocean ; pride covers the earth with troi^hies, mausoleums, and pyramids ; love turns men from their savage rudeness ; ambition shakes the very foundation of kingdoms. By the love of glory, weak nations swell into magnitude and strength. Whatever there is of terrible, whatever there is of beautiful in human events, all that shakes the soid to and fro, and is remembered while thought and flesh cling together, — all these have their origin in the passions. As it is only ui storms, and when their coming waters are driven up into the air, that we catch a glimpse of the depths of ocean ; so it is only in the season of perturbation that we have a glimpse of the real internal nature of man. It is then only that the might of these eruptions, shaking his frame, dissipate all the feeble coverings of opinion, and rend in pieces that cobweb veil with which fashion hides the feelings of the heart. It is then only that Nature speaks her genuine feelings ; and as at the last night of Troy, when Venus illumined the darkness, and ^neas saw the gods themselves at work, so may we, when the blaze of passion is flung upon man's nature, mark in him the signs of a celestial origin, and tremble at the invisible agent of God." Tliat the feelings exert a powerful influence over the physical condition is well known. Fear produces cardiac hypertrophy ; shame projects the blood over the surface of the body. Intense emotion will often disorganize the cerebral tissue, and disease of the brain may derange or instantly annihilate the manifestation of mind. Emotion affects llie secretions. Fear will frequently THE SEAT OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 29 induce diuresis and diarrhcea; anger and jealousy will soon clog the bile ducts and originate jaundice. The sexual stimulus is constantly influenced by these emotions, which interfere with or neutralize instinctive passion. In Lord Anson's voyage, despondency and hope were proved to be exciting cause and remedy in the most malignant attacks of scorbutus. On the other hand, the emotions, and through them the mind, are disturbed by morbid conditions of the bodily functions. Eobespierre, over whose cruelty we shudder, was found after death to have extensive visceral disease. Judge Jeffreys — of whom Macaulay says that as he pro- ceeded in his bloody work, " his spirits rose higher and higher ; he laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him drunk from morning to night" — was tortured by a cruel internal malady. An English traveller calling on Voltaire, at Ferney, found him desponding, grumbling, and dissatisfied with mankind. The Frenchman's ennui and the Englishman's spleen exalt- ing the mutual discontent of both parties, they ended by deciding that existence was intolerable, and they agreed to commit suicide together on the following morning. The Englishman, punctual to his engagement, arrived at the appointed spot ; but the volatile Frenchman was no longer in the same miserable, suicidal mood. " Monsieur," he said, " mon lavement a tres bien op^r^ ce matin, et cela a change toutes ces idees la." ^ The feelings are the subjective or feminine portion of the mind, and the intellect is the objective and masculine portion. The development of intellect exclusively, tends to narrow the scope of the feelings and exhaust them ^ Dr. Forbes Winslow : Lettsomian Lectures ; I. The Psychological Vocation of the Physician. 30 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF of power. The development of feeling or sentiment at the expense of reason makes a man impulsive, amiable, and foolish. The office of the feelings is to excite the intellect, that of the intellect is to modulate the feelings ; the office of neither is to destroy the other. The intellect is that which individualizes man : the sentiment is that which socializes him. Intellectually, he could live alone in vacuum ; but the sentiment places him en rcqyport with the material world. Mentally he is one, sentimentally he is one among many. Individuality tends constantly to break the social chain. It detaches man from man as effectually as it does from the brute. This exhibits itself in the tendency to withdraw into themselves, and out of the world, apparent in men of strong mental powder unbalanced by sociality. On the other hand, the tendency of exaggeration of sociality is towards the obliteration of individuality and the formularization of thought. Intel- lect without sentiment would isolate man. His inde- pendence and individuality would become more and more pronounced, and therewith his incompatibility to live as a member of a community. The instinct of self-conservation would be the only motive actuating an intelligent being without sentiment. In the lowest organisms this instinct is the only one they know, and their generative process is by gemmation, which is purely selfish. In higher organisms sexual love and maternal love take the creature out of itself, but only in a measure ; for distress through deprivation of the means of relieving itself of certain secretions is the real motive. Still, in these instances the animal does act for another, and in so acting develops a power and skill of which the monogamous animals exhibit no trace. This skill and THE SEA T OF RELIGIO US SENTIMENT 3 1 power appear in their building of habitations suitable for the protection of their young. In man the social instinct is only one of a series of emotional cravings, all of which tend to withdraw him from himself, and attach him to human beings, or to objects of nature ; and which are the means of developing his mental powers in the arts and sciences. " In every complex existence," says Comte, " the general harmony can only result from a proper subordination of all spontaneous impulses to a single preponderant motor. Now this dominating 'penchant is either egoistic or altruistic. Not only does this latter surpass the former, as the only one compatible with the social state, but besides, it con- stitutes, even in the individual, a unity more complete, more easy, and more durable. The inferior instincts direct the conduct according to motives purely internal, whose multiplicity and variation allow him no steadiness of movement, nor indeed any habitual character, except during the impulses produced by the periodic exigencies of certain appetites. The being must subordinate itself to an exterior existence in order that it may find its proper stability. Moreover, this condition can only be realized effectively under the influence of desires disposing each to live chiefly for others. Every individual, man or beast, which, loving nothing outside of itself, lives solely for itself, finds itself to be by that alone habitually condemned to a miserable alternative of ignoble torpor and unregulated agitation. Unquestionably, the main object of every living being ought to be the perfecting of this universal consensus in which resides the essential attribute of vitality. This is why even personal happiness and merit depend every- where on a just ascendency of the sympathetic instincts. Our race is the only one destined to entirely develop 32 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF sucli a scheme, by constituting its sociocracy after long initiation." ^ To co-ordinate the mind and the sentiment, to unite subjectivity and objectivity in a common work, to develop equally and harmoniously the cerebrum and the sensory sanslionic tract, and to subordinate to the domination of the reason and the feelings, acting conjointly, the actions of the body — this is what religion undertakes to perform. Philosophy, the cultivation of logic, the abstract sciences, tend to raise the pitch of the intelligence. Solidarity, politics, social life, give tone to the feelings ; but religion claims as its special prerogative to develop equally and justly both the mind and the affections, to hold the balance between reason and sentiment, to direct the spontaneous life-force to the development and oxidation of cerebric and sensory tissue. * A. Comte : Systems de Politique Positive, i. 700 ; Paris, 1851. THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 33 ciiAiTEii n. THE IIELIGIOUS INSTINCTS. Difference between inorganic and ortjanic substances — Mode in which life functionates — Life the assimilation and liberation of force — Organisms built on two types, the cellular and the axidal— The latter developed from the former — Advance in development when each pole assumes a distinct office — Position in the scale of beings determined by complexity in the differentiation of parts — Life demands a certain amount of consciousness — This consciousness the measure of development — Office of the senses — Perceptions of pleasure and pain limited to objects necessary for development — Development of consciousness in man necessitated by arrest in physical development — Man's sense of pleasure and pain extends to objects in no way affecting his physical well-being — Mental effort detrimental to physical perfection — Perception a resolution of force — The object of spiritual perception the development of spiritual life, not the progress of the species — The religious sentiment an expression of the spiritual instincts of humanity — An historical survey of these instincts will show in what direction man mus seek his spiritual development. /~\PiGAXIS]\IS may be roughly distinguislied from in- ^^ organic substances l)y the property of development. Inertness is the attribute of lifeless existences, and evolu- tive life of those which are organized; that is, in the former force is latent, in the latter it is developed. Matter postulates space ; for extension is a necessary property of matter. Life demands time, for duration is a property of life. Inorganic substances are, organisms become. Chemical elements know no youth, no age. VOL. I. . D 3+ THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Oxygen is the same to-day in every particular that it was yesterday, and will be to-morrow: to it, time is not. But life is a fountain of being, throwing up vital waves in rhythmic succession. We do know that life is force, but we do not know that all force is life. Certain inorganic structures grow, Init their mode of growth is different from that of organisms. The crystal, for instance, is built up, but the force determining the crystal is a static force, whereas that developing the plant is clearly dynamic. The crystal, when its apex is formed, is complete for ever, and the force that erected it maintains the cohesion of the particles, and does notliing more ; whereas the plant force thrusts forth living seeds to hand on life to another generation. Life functionates in two ways, in the accumulation of force, and in the liberation of force. This liberation takes place in two ways ; in direct expenditure, or in transmis- sion. Thus the plant by its centripetal power incorporates matter through its roots, and with matter, force ; and by its centrifugal power expends it, first in the evolution of leaf and flower, and then in the transfer of life to the seed. An animal expends force in its quest for food, assimilates force through its nutriment, and propagates it through its offspring. Growth is due to a surplusage of absorbent power over waste. Decay and death are due to the liberation of force more rapidly than the body can acquire it by assimilation. The exercise of muscle, nerve, and brain is a discharge of force. The dynamic energy of life impels organisms to the development of the individual and the propagation of the THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 35 species. For both purposes it accumulates force, and then distributes it, first upon one point, and then upon the other. Bloom is the highest term of life reached by tlie flower. The rose is in its glory when covered with blossoms ; after it has reached this climax, its individual life wastes ; petals fall off, and leaves shrivel, for its force is turned on the transfer of life througli the seeds in its scarlet pods. Organisms are built upon two types, — about a centre, and about an axis ; that is, force is concentrated on, and radiates from one point in cellular plants and cystic animalcules, whereas in trees and animals it operates along an axis, precipitating itself now on one pole and now on the other. The latter type is probably a develop- ment of the former. It is obvious that, when the accretive power is great, and the capability of the plant or animal to expend it on individual expansion is limited, it must discharge its superabundant force and matter in some other way. An individual of the Foraminifera, genus Triloculina, has been observed to reproduce itself by pro- trudino' its sarcoid substance through the foramina of its shell, and floating away in the shape of minute independent granules, leaving the parent shell empty. Thus the life of one individual, having felt itself straitened within the calcareous shell of its own construction, subdivided itself into some forty or fifty separate centres of action. But other Foraminifera present a difl'erent mode of reproduction. The primitive gelatinous grain secretes around itself a rigid envelope, and having grown too large for its habita- tion, it protrudes a portion of itself through one of the orifices, and forms a second segment. If by a process of spontaneous fission this portion becomes detached from D 2 36 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF the parent, it repeats the life and reproductive method of the latter, and a series of monothalamous shells is the result. But if, by means of a sarcoid thread, the primitive segment maintains its connexion with its immediate off- spring, a polythalamous shell is the result, and a compound form of life is presented in which the vital force acts from a succession of centres as numerous as are the buds successively protruded. An advance is made in the mode of life when each of these centres assumes a different office ; wlien, for instance, one becomes a force-absorbing centre, and another a force liberator. In the plant, the life acts along the axis of the structure ; and though at every point it operates centri- petally and centrifugally, yet at the roots the force-accu- mulating power is exhibited most prominently, and at the other extremity of the stalk is the chief expenditure of force. The process of nature in a tree is this. In spring, the root-fibres select from the soil those substances which are necessary for the well-being of the plant and con- vert them into a fluid, which ascends from the roots between the bark and the wood, gradually coagulating as it mounts. On reaching the leaves it gives off through the pores of one of the leaf-surfaces a gas, and inhaling another gas through the other surface, redescends the plant to the extremities of the roots, whose growth it determines. The position of a plant or animal in the scale of beings is determined by the complexity in the differentiation of the parts. In the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, every portion of the organism is equally fitted to act any part. In the Protozoa, the lowest known form of animal life, those vital operations which we are accustomed to see THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 37 carried on by elaborate apparatus, in the higher structures, have no special instruments provided for the performance of distinct functions. " A little particle of apparently- homogeneous jelly changes itself into a greater variety of form than the fabled Proteus, laying hold of its food with- out members, swallowing without a mouth, digesting it without a stomach, appropriating its nutritious material without absorbent vessels, feeling (if it has any power to do so) without nerves, multiplying itself without eggs." ^ A polype may be sliced into fifty pieces, and each portion will become a different animal ; a fragment of begonia leaf planted in the soil, and kept at the requisite temperature, will take upon itself the functions of a seed, and will produce young plants. In the vertebrate animals, and in man especially, the differentiation is most complete. In man, tlie vital action lies along an axis in which the kidneys, the stomach, the lieart, and the brain, are the principal acquisitive and secretive cores. Each has a function peculiar to itself, which it does not share with any other, but all are bound together by a common necessity. The vital force may be directed on any one of these nodes, and set it in action, leaving the others partially quiescent. Thus, after a meal, the vital energy is occupied in the assimilation of food, and at that time the brain is deserted. If, immediately after a meal, intense mental exertion is required, the food remains undigested. We shall return to this point shortly. It has been said above, that organized life has before it two clearly perceptible aims, the development of the individual, and the propagation of the kind. ' Dr. W. B. Carpenter : lutrod. to the Study of Foraiuiintera ; London, 1862. 38 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Life Laving assimilated force, must liberate it. In order that it may assimilate and liberate matter and force, it needs a certain amount of consciousness. This may be very lo^A'■, where the organic structure is low ; but as the differentiation of force increases in complexity, conscious- ness must be proportionately illumined. Life, said Leibnitz, sleeps in the mineral, dreams in the; flower, wakens in man ; this is because man is the most complex in structure. This consciousness must consist of a will to live and grow, and to produce offspring, and an instinct by means of which it may know how to groAv and how to propagate its race. Without instinct it could not select what is suitable for its development from what is unsuitable, and wdthout a will to live it would make no use of its knowledge. Two powers are seated, and must be seated, in the conscious life, a vis motrix and a vis directrix. The instinct is obviously the measure of development. It is nicely adjusted to the necessities of each being ; it is neither more nor less than is required to lead the will to its two aims. For if the instinct were not thus adjusted, the creature w^ould expend its force in vain striving after what was unattainable ; its reproductive x>owers would suffer, and the race dwindle and die out, A plant demands light for its proper development. One grown in a warm dark closet expends all the force derived from the soil in straining after what it cannot get ; and when its powers fail, it dies without fruit. In the same way, suppose a plant craved for locomotion ; it would exhaust its energies in the endeavour to uproot itself, and would die in the attempt. In the plant we see the consciousness balancing exactly the necessities of its beiii^- f n order that it may come to THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 39 perfection, it requires a certain number of chemical con- stituents, some five or six in all, and these it has the dis- criminatory power to select from the ground in which its roots are fixed, and from the air in which its leaves expand. As long as the mechanism of life and the place where it functionates are such that the locality supplies all that the life requires, the organic machinery is devoid of all other powers than the assimilation of what is necessary, and the rejection of what is unnecessary for its perfection. The elements requisite for the sustentation and develop- ment of animal life are not gathered into one spot, but are distributed over an extended area, and to collect them the animal requires locomotive power. With this, Nature has furnished it. The animal is also given a stimulus which is not pos- sessed by the plant ; this stimulus is the sensation of pleasure, when it does that which conduces to its perfect development ; and of pain, when it does that which will arrest or impede its progress. If the animal did not feel pain in its vitals, it would not eat, and would die of inani- tion ; if it did not smart when running among thorns, it woukb tear itself to pieces before it was aware of what it was doing. The senses excite the will and educate the instinct ; but they do not precede or produce either. The little bird not only thinks in the egg, but it acts, for it breaks the shell to escape ; and when it has issued forth, it opens its beak for food. A sense of restraint no doubt prompted the little will which set the muscles in motion and broke the shell ; but it was instinct, not experience, which taught it to burst through its closed white prison into the liberty without ; and instinct, not experience, bids it gape for 4t» THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF food, rather than perform any other muscular action. Tlie tiny creature lives, and desires to live. Life has been given to it, and with life a love of life ; and it claims a sustentation of that life as its rightful prerogative. The new-born babe enters the world with an active will and a directive instinct, and sensations to set the will in motion. To live is, to the infant, enjoyment. Desire is its first sensation ; the satisfaction of desire its first pleasure ; the non-satisfaction of desire its first pain; to demand satisfaction its first effort. Xo experience has taught it that the absorption of milk through the mouth and throat is necessary for its existence, for hitherto it has derived its nutriment through the umbilical duct. Yet it is instinc- tively impelled to that complex muscular action of the lips and thorax which will relieve its sensations of hunger. The animal only receives such impressions, pleasurable or painful, as conduce to its animal development. Tlie desires of the beast do not extend beyond the orbit of sensualism. All that surrounds the animal influences it pleasurably or painfully, only so far as the well-being of the individual or the propagation of its kind is affected. Like the collodionized plate, the conscious self registers only one class of phenomena. The beast lives for itself, for its animal nature ; it has no other pleasures, for it has no other nature. A horse is indifferent to the rainbow, because the rainbow in no way affects its well-being. The cat has a sense of smell, but this sense is graduated by the rule of the useful. The mouse is more fragrant to puss than the crust of bread, and the crust is incomparably sweeter than the rose. AVith the brute the dulcc is strictly the idile. That this is not mere unfounded assertion will appear from the following consideration. The nervous system is THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 41 a powerful force conductor. This oclinometer is an ap- paratus of sensitive fibres spreading over the whole surface, branching out of trunk-nerves which have thin tuberous roots called ganglions, which are intimately united, and transmit the impressions received from the outermost nerve to the terminus of the brain, which registers all such impressions as ideas. The exterior sensation extended over the whole surface of the body is called the touch. Extremes of cold and heat are injurious to the system. The instant that the touch encounters what is intensely cold or hot, it sends a message flying to the brain, which at once sets the will in motion, and the will acting upon the muscles withdraws the nervous surface from the position that excited it. Here, then, is a force reacting and producing equipoise. In some localities of the body the sensibility is gathered up, and undergoes peculiar modification. At the ex- tremity of a cluster of nerves is spread a mirror of diminutive surface, on which are refracted with inimitable precision the play of light, and the permanent and tran- sient details of the horizon which it embraces. In the midst of another series of nerves is stretched a membrane which vibrates at every sonorous undulation of the air. Other nerves, delicately woven into an extremely sensi- tive tissue, detect those minute particles floating in the air, too small to be distinguished by the eye, which, if seen, would confuse the vision as effectually as a shower veils the landscape. The pulsations of light and of sound transmit force through the optic and auditory nerves to the brain, where the force is resolved ; its resolution is the formation of an idea. Action taken upon ideas ex- pends the accumulated force. Now the brute never acts upon any ideas except those which conduce to its two 42 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF aims, its personal well-being and its propagation ; con- sequently, we may fairly conclude that its brain only resolves a certain class of forces, and that another class appreciable by man are not cognizable by the brute. Man differs from the beast in many important par- ticulars. Every other animal sensible of cold and heat is provided by nature with clothing and shelter. It has fur, or plumage, or scales, or it is given an underground habi- tation beyond the reach of extremes of temperature, and its nervous tissue is coarse and but slightly sensitive. But the nervous surface of man's body is more acutely appre- ciative than that of any other animal, and yet he is introduced into the world in a state of nudity. Conse- quently, he must have artificial clothing. But to clothe himself he must be provided with a faculty above the instinct of the brute ; or rather, the animal instinct must be developed to meet this contingency. Thus, intelligence is a necessity of man's animal nature. Every creature is furnished with a faculty designed to meet a necessity of its being, and, moreover, that faculty is exactly commensurate with the necessity. The instinct is not only a requisite of the well-being, but it is the measure of the well-being. If we apply what has been said above on the absorption of force and matter and their after liberation by living organisms, we shall see that in this case also nature pre- serves equilibrium. In the sheep, the matter and force taken in with the food are assimilated, and the force produces the matter in the shape of wool. In man the force and matter derived from nutriment have another development, and produce brain, and thus enable him artificially to protect himself from cold. Xow if we look at man's faculties, we see that their THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 43 sweep extends far beyond the term of the development of his sensual life. The intelligence of the Andaman islander may possibly not over-step this limit. He knows, and desires to know, perhaps, nothing but what will prevent the sun from blistering his skin. He is a naked monkey, 'plns the faculty of covering his nakedness. But with the vast majority of tlie races of men it is otherwise. Their faculties extend beyond these narrow bounds. Through eye and ear enter gleams that illumine a phase of life other than that which is animal, and fill it with longings and impulses to which the material existence is a stranger. The human mind is open to a chain of pleasurable im- pressions in no way conducive to the preservation of man's sensual being, and to the perpetuation of his race. He derives pleasure from harmonies of colour and grace of form, and from melodious succession of notes. His animal life needs neither. He is conscious of instincts which the gratification of passion does not satisfy, for they are beside and beyond the animal instincts. He feels that his orbit is an ellipse around two foci, that there are two centres of attraction to him, an animal conscious- ness, and that which Ave will call a spiritual consciousness. Unless we suppose a second centre, a series of instincts, sensations, and volitions remain unaccounted for. Man derives his liveliest gratification and acutest pain from objects to which his animal consciousness is indifferent. The rainbow charms him. Why ? Because the sight con- duces to the welfare of his spiritual being. An infant manifests these instincts in a pronounced manner. It dreads and hates darkness : light fills it with ecstasy. It distinguishes between persons. The solicitations of some are received with smiles, those of others meet with an 44 THE ORIGIN Of RELIGIOUS BELIEF opposite response. It crows with delight at the sight of a rose ; it laughs with pleasure on hearing a tune. A pictured angel pleases it, a painted devil appals it. All these instincts are utterly waste, unless we suppose that there is another consciousness in man beside that of the animal. Man's structure is axidal, as has already been said. Towards the lower pole are the seats of the animal apparatus, towards the higher pole is the spiritual ap- paratus. To the lower pole belong the reproductive and the digestive organs — the latter the apparatus for acquiring force, the former that for disengaging the force requisite for propagation. At the higher end of the axis is the brain, the seat of the intellect. The vital power can, at will, be precipitated on any point. Sentiment stands as it were on the fulcrum, and inclines either to the side of the animal or to that of the spiritual nature according to circumstances. When, as among savages, the vital energy is expended on the sensual life, the brain is inactive. When, as among men of intellect, the vital force is directed upon the brain, the sensual life is enfeebled. This is capable of direct proof. Intense mental application, involving great waste of the nervous tissues, and a corresponding con- sumption of nervous matter for their repair, is found to be accompanied by a cessation in the production of sperm cells. The reverse is also true ; an undue production of sperma- tozoa involves cerebral inactivity.^ Consequently, mental ' Intellectual activity does not depend on the size of the brain, nor altogether on the amount of surface exposed to corrosion, but on the amount of phosphorus it contains. The granular particles in vitalizing sperm appear to be almost, if not quite, pure phosphorus. I'l.'yclopa'diu THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 45 activity is directly antagonistic to reproductiveness, for it uses up tliat force which would otherwise be employed in the formation of cells for the transmission of life. The antagonism of the two poles of consciousness is indeed sufiiciently apparent to all, and finds expression in such sayings as that of the AVise Man : " The cor- ruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things ; "^ and that of St. Paul : " With the mind I myself serve the law of God ; but with the flesh the law of sin."^ When the animal nature is made the object of attention, and when to it the intelligence and affections are rendered subservient, the mind acts solely as an animal instinct, and the sensations of pleasure derived from the acquisition of knowledge, from the exercise of reason, the perception of the beautiful, &c. disappear. On the other of Anatomy and Physiology, and Journal of Psychological Medicine, No. xxii.) In In In In In Infants. Youth. Adults. Old Men. Idiots. Solid constituents in one hundred parts of brain of man . . . 17.21 25.74 27.49 26.15 29.07 Of these solid constituents the phosphorus amounts to . . . 0.8 1.65 1.80 1.00 0.85 Percentage of phosphorus in the solid constituents .... 4.65 6.41 6.54 3.82 2.91 The surface of the right hemisphere of the human brain in SQuare inches 332.5 The surface of the left hemisDhere 326.5 Jt- AA^-/ »J V*i A. i.tW^-'^.^ V^ \J ^M, \J ^.\^ A V ** V. i*ri A.»J |..^iA. A x^'i \^ m * Total amount of surface 659.0 . . . 95.8 Surface of a pig's braui . „ sheep's brain . . . 62.4 „ dog's brain . . . . 40.56 „ cat's brain . . . . 20.28 „ rabbit's brain . . . 9.36 ' Wisdom ix. 18. - Rom. vii. 2 J. 46 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF hand, wlien the intellect is highly wrought, the sense of pleasure and pain derived from things beyond the animal horizon is intensified, and the physical nature languishes. Man is conscious of an apparent strain on the link of cohesion, as though the vital force strove to concentrate itself on the spiritual pole, and resolve the motion of life into a revolution about it, by rupturing the tie whicli binds it to the animal pole. The perception of pleasure or pain is a resolution of force. This is evident in the life of the animal. "Where there is no pleasurable or painful sensation there is no arrest and disintegration of force. A clown placed before a painting by Kaphael is insensible to its beauty. The waves of light pass through his brain as through a sheet of clear glass. But a connoisseur before it is sensible of delight, because the pulsations of light are stopped and resolved in his mind, which like a convex mirror focuses and refracts the force, and like a lens resolves it. The formation of an idea, as has already been said, is an assi- milation and alteration of force, and a stream of ideas passing through the brain leaves evidence of its material action in the excretion of alkaline phosphates by the kidneys. The resolution of muscle, on the contrary, produces lithates. There seems to be — but this is merely suggested, not in- sisted upon — a spiritual force as well as a material force, and a process of spiritual generation going on in the ideal world, not unlike that Avith which we are familiar in the physical world. Three hundred years ago, let us say, a man of genius writes a book. His ideas are thrown out like so many spores, and they lie imbedded in printer's ink till I read his book. They at once take root and develop in my brain. THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 47 and I, in conversation or in writing, transmit them to others. We find the same ideas, the same speculations, the same plays of fancy, reproduced generation after genera- tion, with modifications peculiar to the time, as though they were living descendants of original ideas whicli were brought into being before the dawn of history. But this is mere conjecture, and must be laid aside for what is provable. The alteration of force in the physical world is great, and in the modifications force undergoes it assumes a variety of expressions, as light, heat, electricity. In like manner, force modified by the brain appears as volition, cognition, and feeling. In animal life, pleasure and pain indicate the resolution of force, and we can measure the force evolved by the force absorbed. In spiritual life, pleasure and pain indicate likewise the resolution of force. We know that force has been absorbed and evolved by the process of thought. The object of life, the object for which pleasure and pain operate, is the development of the animal and the propa- gation of its kind. The object of the spiritual consciousness is the develop- ment of the spiritual life. Growth is due to excess of assimilating power over liberating power. Through life the spiritual life can grow and develop. To every plant and animal there is a term of development beyond which it does not extend. What is the term of the spiritual life? The fact of man being awake to pleasures unconnected with his material well-being assures him that in him is a dynamic force urging him to some point. But what is that point ? 48 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF To these questions two answers liave been given. One is, that the presence of these instincts and volitions tend to the perfection of the species. The other is, that they indicate an individual perfection in another stage of existence. The first of these answers has satisfied the Chinese mind, which considers political and social organization as the object upon which every faculty not expended on animal and individual development is to be directed. The second has been the answer of all those peoples who have found expression for their belief in religion. According to Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism, the human race, conceived as a continuous whole, is a concrete existence. This great collective Being is in a condition of progress towards perfection. All generations of men are indissolubly united into a single image, com- bining all the power over the mind of the idea of pos- terity, with our best feelings towards the present which surrounds us, and aspirations after a perfected future. The present lives and rejoices on the wisdom acquired, and the knowledge accumulated by the past ; and as the present is wiser and more knowing than the past, so will the future be wisest and most knowing. The good of the human race is the ultimate standard of right and wrong, and moral discipline consists in cultivating the utmost possible repugnance towards all conduct injurious to the general well-being. The dominant religion of the Chinese is of the same nature. The Chinese mind was sluggishly rolling towards Deism, when Confucius suddenly diverted it into Positivism. He taught that man was a member of a mighty organism, the perfection of which was the co-ordination of every part, and of this organism the emperor was the apex. " If you desire to establish your institutions on the THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 49 securest basis," said Confucius, " educate the young, diffuse intelligence in every direction ; but insist chiefly on the study of that science which surpasses every other, the science of political economy, which enables you to turn all other kinds of knowledge to a practical account." It is very doubtful whether this solution of the question is the correct one. It is open to the following objections : Intellectual development necessarily leads to a deterioration of the physique of the species ; high civilization introduces a multitude of disorders unknown to savage life ; and such deterioration must end in the extinction of the race. In a simple and barbarous state of society, the weak and de- formed die as children. Civilization tends to accumulate and propagate disease and malformation ; for science, and the attention which in a cultivated race can be bestowed on the infirm, keep the diseased and deformed alive, and sufTer them to breed and spread their disorder and mal- formation through generations of children. In savage life the process of natural selection tends to raise the type of man, the inferior types dying out ; but civilized life pre- vents the operation of this natural law, and therefore tends to the deterioration of the race. . ^ The lowest organisms are those with the greatest powers of reproduction. The yeast fungus in a few hours pro- pagates itself through a large mass of wort. The micro- scopic Protococcus nivalis in a night reddens many square miles of snow. The Protozoa have powers of reproduction almost beyond belief. Whole districts are suddenly blighted by the aphis, which multiplies at a prodigious rate by internal gemmation. Among Mammalia, beginning with small rodents, which quickly reach maturity, and which produce large litters, as we advance step by step to tlie VOL. I, E 5Q THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF higher animals, in proportion as intelligence lightens does reproductive power diminish. Among human beings the same law is observable. The poor, who exert muscle rather than decompose brain matter, have large families. Among the highly educated, who expend their force in the corrosion of nerve, small families are found. Every year that intellectual activity advances, reproductive activity falls back. The reason is, that sperm cells are composed of the same constituents as neurine, and that the vital force, if liberated by decomposition of brain matter, is diverted from the development of sperm cells for the transfer of life. Again, the progress of the species is towards social unity, which is the differentiation of functions which in an unsocial state were exercised by the same individual. The unsocial barbarian is his own smith, tailor, builder, &c. As the body politic advances, one man exercises the trade of smith, another of tailor, and a third of builder. A further advance is made when there is a whitesmith, a blacksmith, and a goldsmith ; a draper, a tailor, and a clothier ; and in like manner trades become more and more minutely divided up. In a generation or two it will be one man's trade to hold a nail and another man's to strike it. "Whether such a subdivision of labour is really indica- tive of progress of the species is open to question. Men's interests are too self-centred to make them find solid consolation amidst present trouble in the reflection that a thousand years hence the race will have worked itself clear of such things. And on the whole, it will be found that the amount of happiness in a race not highly civilized is far more general, and its sum total far higher, than that of an over-civilized race. The rude and simple Swiss peasantry are thoroughly happy, whilst in a large eity like London, the upper stratum of society is engaged in THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 51 nervous quest of pleasure which ever eludes them, whilst the lower is plunged in misery. Besides, what is really meant by the progress of the species ? " The only tangible superiority of a generation over that which has preceded it, appears to consist in its having within its reach a larger accumulation of scientific or literary materials for thought, or a greater mastery over the forces of inanimate nature ; advantages not without their drawbacks, and at any rate of a somewhat superficial kind. Genius is not progressive from age to age ; nor yet the practice, how^ever it may be with the science, of moral excellence. And, as this pro- gress of the species is only supposed, after all, to be an improvement of its condition during men's first lifetime, the belief — call it, if you will, but a dream — of a pro- longed existence after death reduces the whole progress to insignificance. There is more, even as regards quantity of sensation, in the spiritual well-being of one single soul, with an existence thus continuous, than in the increased physical or intellectual prosperity, during one lifetime, of the entire human race." ^ The development of social life can moreover be ac- counted for without having recourse to all those instincts directive of what we call the spiritual consciousness of man. The bees exhibit a marvellous example of a society in which each individual works for the common weal. The workers devote themselves to the labours of constructing cells and storing them with honey, the nurses to the education of the larvpe. But nature has not provided the bees with a special instinct for the elaboration of their social economy. The workers labour to accumulate food for their own eating, and the preservation and enjoyment ' Lowndes : Philosophy of PrimaiT Beliefs, p. 235 ; 1865, K 2 52 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF of life is their sole motive of action. How, then, does nature produce this commonwealth ? By an arrest in the development of the workers. They are sexless. Every carnivorous animal is provided with physical means of satisfying its appetite ; it is given weapons forged on nature's anvil. The lion has power to leap on his prey, claws wherewith to rend it, and jaM^s of prodigious strength wherewith to crush its bones. Man comes into the world wholly unprovided with natural weapons. Their development has been arrested, and this arrest throws him into corporate life, to ensure his preservation. The arrest in the development of fur or horny hide is another mode adopted by nature for stimulating man's contrivance. In China, where political economy has been the religion for two thousand four hundred years, it has failed in its task ; for, instead of being progressive, it has proved sta- tionary : invention, art, speculation, are at a standstill. The Eeligious Sentiment is the feeling of man after an individual aim other than that of his animal nature ; and as that which is individual must necessarily interest and excite him to activity more readily than that which affects the general good, it is more likely in its nature to prove a developing stimulus. That such a feeling should exist is a fairly presumable proof that it is not illusive. The idea of altruism is evidence that the subordination of the personal will to the general welfare will lead to progress in social and political economy ; and the idea of egoism is evidence that the pursuit of individual aims will lead to individual progress. It is against the analogy of nature that all those instincts and faculties the possession of which distin- guishes man from the brute should have no positire aim. The beast conceives no idea, nor makes that idea an object THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCTS 53 of desire, unless it conduce to its developniciit. The rabbit never imagines the possibility of its eating flesh, because animal food is not necessary for its development. Those objects for which man's animal nature crave have real being, and so probably have those objects for which his mental and emotional nature cries out. What we call instinct is a desire to follow out a law of our being, and the object of all law is the perfection and happiness of the creature. In tracing the religious instincts of humanity, we are tracing the working out of the law of its well-being. Wherever a religious instinct appears it must Tje noted, for it is the voice of the spiritual nature clamouring for food necessary for its life and perfection. Wherever a reli- gious instinct leads- awrong, it is not that the instinct is wrong, but that it runs counter to or overrides correlative instincts. When man has pursued one instinct across and athwart other instincts, which it tramples down in its fanaticism, he fails through exaggeration. Religious instincts resemble political instincts. Every form of government is based on a right principle, but where other and equally right principles have been over- looked, misery ensues. Political mistakes have their origin in a lack of knowledge. There were ten famines in France in one century ; the country had bred soldiers, not farmers. When a religious instinct produces error — that is, when religion becomes superstition, there is something wrong in its organization. There is an undue preponderance given to this truth, and there is a forgetfulness of that timth. Every phase of religion the world has yet seen has broken down through exaggeration of one truth at the expense of another. 54 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF The history of religious experiments is exceedingly instructive, for it shows us, first, what are the religious instincts of humanity ; and, secondly, failure, through im- perfect co-ordination of these instincts. A review of the religions of the world will show us of what nature that religion must be which alone will satisfy humanity — a re- ligion in which those inherent tendencies of the mind and soul which produced Fetishism, Anthropomor]3hism, Poly- theism, Monotheism, Spiritualism, Idealism, Positivism, will find their co-ordinate expression ; a religion in which all the sacred systems of humanity may meet, as in a Field of the Cloth of Gold, to adorn it with their piety, their mysticism, their mythology, their subtlety of thought, their splendour of ceremonial, their adaptability to progress, their elasticity of organization — and, meeting, may exhaust their own resources — " By this to sicken their estates, that never They shall abound as formerly." i 1 Henry VIIL, Act i. s. 1. THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 55 CHAPTER III. THE OEIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA, Two principal instincts in man ; the craving to find a cause for every eflfect, and the prosecution of an ideal of perfection — Analysis of consciousness — Rudimentary beliefs — The belief in causation — The idea of cause not simple — Is it trustworthy? — Necessary for the development of mankind — The belief in causation makes man seek a cause for every effect man sees — He believes this cause to be a will resembling his own — The ideal of perfection — The selective faculty — The imagination — Is the imagination illusive \ — Concur- rence of thought and sentiment in religion — Necessity for their co-ordmation — Directions taken by the great races of mankind in the pursuit of the ideal. A MONG the instincts of humanity, not shared by the ^-^ brute creation, and which have no directive action on the material life, and exert but a secondary and sub- sidiary influence over social progress, are two which demand a close scrutiny. The first of these instincts is the craving man feels to discover a cause to account for every phenomenon. The second is the prosecution of an ideal of perfection. We shall examine each of these instincts in turn. Man's consciousness has been divided by Sir William Hamilton into cognitions, feelings, and volitions. He does not affirm that these three operations — thinking, feeling, and acting — make up the sum total of the conscious life, but that they constitute the broad and clearly-defined groups into which 56 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF the data of consciousness may be sorted. This arrange- ment is more perfect than that of Eeid, who divided the powers of the mind into understanding and will — com- prehending under the latter, not only the active force precipitating action, but also the affections and passions. The cognitions may be subdivided into presentations, external and internal; representations, including remem- brances and acts of imagination ; and lastly, notions, or thoughts proper. The external presentations are those in which the mind by means of a sense is brought in contact with some external object, and from it receives an impression. In such, the sense is the vehicle through which mind and matter are brought into relation; and where a sense is deficient the corresponding ideas cannot be formed. Thus, the man born blind cannot conceive what is meant by the term scarlet. The internal presentations are those in which the mind is brought into contact with the self, the indivisible being which constitutes our individuality. Such are the percepts of pleasure, anger, desire. These perceptions are simple and indivisible, and escape definition. They are the ultimate atoms of the inner consciousness, ready to enter into endless combinations and undergo countless permutations, but not reducible to any prevenient ideas. Built up on these precepts are certain rudimentary beliefs, so universal and so early acquired, that they deserve to be considered as the radicals of other beliefs. Such is the belief in causation. An instinct prompts man to seek a cause, because he is strongly convinced of the truth of the doctrine of causality. Without this belief he would make no progress in the world, for the THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 57 world would be to him but an assemblage of chance results, and ethics and science would cease to be studied. What do we mean by cause ? All that makes a thing pass from not being to being is a primary cause ; all that modifies an already existing being is a secondary cause. If a body in motion impinge on another body at rest, and disturb it, the secondary cause is the motive force of the former. But there is a presumption that some cause set the first body in motion. Secondary causality represents a concatenation of objects forming a series, which termi- nates in the first cause ; and man instinctively gropes up the chain of secondary causes in search of the self-gene- rating spring of motion which he calls the first cause. The idea of cause is not a simple idea, for it contains (1) The idea of being ; and (2) the relation of that which passes from not being to being. The idea of being is not sufiicieut to constitute the idea of cause, for it is quite possible to conceive being apart from causative force. A thing is : we cannot define what we mean by this statement, but it conveys to us a perfectly intelligible proposition. Let us abstract all that is not it, and let us endeavour to suppose no other being which may have pro- duced it, or taken part in its production. The possibility of transition from not being to being becomes to us utterly inconceivable. We not only do not see the possibility of the emergence of being out of not being, but we see in this idea the impossibility of this emergence. They are ideas which exclude one another.^ Whatever passes from a condition of not being to being requires something distinct from itself to produce this transition. Such is a primary belief of mankind, a belief wholly ineradicable, upon which even those metaphysicians 1 Balmez : Fundamental Philosophy, book x. 58 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF who deny causality are constrained to act at every moment of their lives. Is the belief in causation a trustworthy belief, or is it an illusion ? Mr. J. S. Mill adopts the latter view. He says : " The law of causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in nature, and some other fact which has preceded it ; independently of all consideration respecting the ultimate mode of production of phenomena, and of every other question regarding the nature of ' things in themselves.' " ^ The idea of causality he derives from experience of a regular succession of phenomena which we suppose will continue permanently successive. The idea involves that of necessity, and the idea of necessity he contends to be pure illusion. It is neither our purpose, nor is this the place, to combat this view; we will merely note a few facts tending to confirm the popular conviction in the reliability of the belief in causality. Perception of cause does necessarily attach itself to one term in a repeating series of two, and not to the other. If the belief in causation be mere illusion, why should the mind attach the notion of cause to a term which may synchronize with or precede another ? The change of the moon and the flow of the tides have been observed to synchronize. Men attribute the tidal flow to the influence of the changing moon; but cannot suppose that the waxing and waning of the luminary are ruled by the ebb and flow of the tide. ^ Mill : Logic, i. 359. THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 59 Successions have been observed to be invariable, and it is presumed that they will maintain their invaria- bility ; and yet the idea of cause has not attached itself to either of tlie phenomena. Day follows night ; and yet, as has been observed by Eeid, man does not regard night as causing day. The belief in causation grows stronger by experience ; indeed, experience educates the belief, just as sensation educates the animal instinct. If experience did not exist, we should not know that causality was possible, because the idea of being does not necessarily embrace the idea of force. Force might be conceived, but we could not know whether anything in reality corresponded with it. We should thus have the notion of the force, but not the notice of its existence. The belief in causation is necessary for man's develop- ment — not for his animal development, but for the progress of his higher being. The brute has little idea of cause ; it perceives only secondary causes. Experience teaches the rook, e.g., to dread a gun. It knows that a shot from the barrel causes pain and death, but it does not care to inquire why it does so ; consequently, a brute will never discover the composition of gunpowder. If causation be an illusive belief, it is singular that it should have not broken down under the experience of millions, and that it should have led man out of barbarism into civilization. According to the zeal with which man investigates causes, so is his progress. The savage who halts at secondary causes is in the same position as the beast. The rudest mind is conscious of having force located in it, and it recognises the will as the seat of this force. From no other source can man's acts, even the most 6o THE ORIGIX OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF trifling, be deduced. Tliougli his consciousness is not always sufficiently sensitive to register every manifestation of the will, yet the will is regarded as operative, even though he is unconscious that it is so. Every step taken in walking is attributable to the will, though the conscious- ness does not indicate the direction taken by it upon this or that muscle. Nevertheless, we know that, were the will to be arrested, the power to walk would simultaneously fail. Volition being ordinarily considered as in itself a force, it is also regarded as free. Man supposes that his will is free, and that his actions are directly attributable to this independent power. " It is a sort of doing violence to his own instinctive belief, when he tries to persuade himself that his own acts of will are mere passive effects of remoter causes. He can only train himself into this belief by a somewhat severe logical process." ^ In the material world,] man is a spectator of changes taking place among objects destitute of intelligent volition. He recognises movements which he has not set in motion, and results brought about through no instrumentality of his own. He is constrained to acknowledge the presence of power over which he can exercise no control, which did not originate with himself, and which is mightier than himself. In man, mind operates upon matter. Where matter is set in motion independently of man, he looks for a cause, and expects to discover it, in a force outside of himself similar to that working within him. That force must be seated either in the object moved, or it must be outside and, as it were, behind it, operating through it. A low intelligence or inaccurate observation may be arrested at inferior causes ; but as reason lightens and enlarges, and as ^ Lowndes, p. 191. THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 6i observation acquires sharpness by use, the understanding pierces beyond the mediate to the immediate, and along a series of subsidiary causes stretches towards the self- generating spring of movement. Sight is a sense wherewith the vast majority of men have been endowed by nature ; but all do not possess the faculty in an equal degree of delicacy and power. To see correctly is rather the result of education than of superior organization of the eye. It is the same with the mental powers of vision. Some see through effects to causes with greater penetration than others, but to be able to shell off inferior causes till the core of primary force is reached can only be performed by an educated intellect. It was a legitimate inference from the known to the unknown drawn by man, when he attributed the force in nature to a will like in kind to that he was conscious existed in himself. A power of free volition within or outside all matter in motion was a rational solution to the problem of effects of which man could not account himself the cause. Such is the origin of the idea of God ; — of God, whether many, inhabiting each brook, and plant, and breeze, and planet, or as being a world-soul, or as a supreme cause, the creator and sustainer of the universe. The common consent of mankind has been adduced as a proof of a tradition of a revelation in past times ; but the fact that most races of men believe in one or more deities proves nothing more than that aU men have drawn the same inference from the same premises. It is idle to speak of a Sensus aSTuminis as existing as a primary con- viction in man, when the conception may be reduced to more rudimentary ideas. The Revelation is in man's being, in his conviction of the truth of the principle of Causation, and thus it is a revelation made to eveiy rational being. 62 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF M. Bouclier de Perthes' testimony is remarkable : " It is impossible for man to extinguish in himself his conviction that there is a God, Doubtless the insane form very false ideas of the Divinity ; some believe themselves to be God, others declare war against Him ; but I have never heard of a case in which madness consisted in disbelief in Him : the insane are not materialists. It has been said that children derive their idea of God from the instruction of others, and that it is never original. I am convinced of the contrary. The smallest, before one has told them a word about Him, have an instinctive feeling of a myste- rious power, which they personify without defining, and from which they expect something good, and sometimes also something evil. They are subject to hallucinations, they fear the dark, they do not like to be alone, they are superstitious, witliout knowing what superstition is : Croquemitaine was not revealed to them, they invented him. I myself was a child at a period when religion was pro- scribed, in which one did not even venture to allude to it : the churches were shut, and the priests were persecuted. Nevertheless, I remember that the aspect of the sky made me dream ; I always saw in it something that was not of the world. When I spoke stammeringly about it — for I expressed myself with difficulty — I was silenced, but my mind recurred to the idea. I searched there above for something that I did not see, but whose existence I divined. Yes ! the intuition of God was in me. Since then I have questioned many little children on this intui- tion, and I have discovered it in nearly all. The child that thinks itself abandoned or threatened, and has vainly called its mother, has recourse to this invisible power which its instinct reveals to it. It invokes this with tears and cries. In those moments of anguish, let a THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 63 light appear, and it is instantly calm : it is God who appears to it." 1 We pass now to the instinct impelling man to pursue an ideal of perfection. The different stages of life in the world may be expressed by the difference in selective power. In the phenomena of chemical affinity, the material substance chooses, among the atomic elements, those which will concur to form a certain compound. In all organic life a similar process prevails ; the substance chooses among the elements surrounding it, those which will concur to form and preserve a definite type to which its vegetative force instinctively tends. In the higher forms of animal life, this substance, already trenching on indi- vidualization, selects among the elements of its intellectual determinations those which concur with the pleasure and conservation of the material self. In human life there is a substance, immaterial, which selects, among the elements of its determinations, those which tend to enhance the pleasures and develop the faculties of the immaterial self. But in this case, because man has got at once a material and an immaterial self, his selection is constantly oscillating betwixt those objects which conduce to material, and those conducing to immaterial pleasures. Man's course being an ellipse around two foci, there is a constant tendency of each focus to counteract the attraction of the other, and make life revolve around that one alone. Nothing is more striking than the antagonism in man's nature between the material and immaterial impulses. The animal life has its definite aim, and its instincts all tend towards the accomplishment of this aim. But be- sides the centripetal force, there is a strong centrifugal ^ Boucher de Perthes : Des Id^es Inures, p. 15 ; Paris, 1867. 64 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF force, which impels him to burst through the ring of sensual pleasure, and fly away into unexplored regions where fresh pleasures are constantly opening out upon his perception. Material and immaterial life have their parallel stages, the one parasitic, the other independent. The first stage of material life — the parasitic mode — is the plant. The second stage of material life — the independent mode — is the animal. The first stage of immaterial life — the parasitic mode — is the intelligence of the being reduced to animal instinct. The second stage of immaterial life — the independent mode — is the intelligence of man.^ This intelligence determines the growth of the imma- terial life by selection ; and that not arbitrarily, but accord- ing to an instinct of what is good, and conducive to the aim of the spiritual life, just as selection made by the instinct governing the material life conduces to the aim of the animal life. The selection is formed by representing before the mind's eye a number of objects or sensations, and choosing from among them those which instinct or experience points out to be best. The imagination then combines all that is most conducive to pleasure, and forms of this com- bination an ideal of perfection which it presents to the affections, and by engaging them starts the will in the pursuit of this ideal. In the animal the imagination plays but an incon- spicuous part. It only produces before the beast's interior vision the animal-self tasting pleasure and shrinking from danger, and it surrounds that self with images representing ^ Lambert : Le Systfeme du Monde Moral, p. 364 ; Paris, 1862. THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS. IDEA 65 the circumstances leading to pleasure or danger. All the brute's mental pictures are on one or the other model, and a slight modification of circumstances is all that dis- tinguishes the different images raised by this faculty. In the animal, the imagination has little or no educative power. But with man it is not so. "Were man destined to a mere sensual life, the imagination would not present him with more than a kaleidoscopic series of changes of the same pleasurable sensations pictured in his mind. But it has a higher toU. Memory exhibits to the intelli- gence realized facts, but imagination shoots ahead to the consequences. It is a faculty which can in a measure take the place of the senses, and thus suppress the last link that subordinates the operations of the intellect to the perceptions received by means of the special apparatus of the organism. At will, it exercises the functions of sight and hearing ; and by it the immaterial self can transport and fix its faculties of sight and hearing, untrammelled by the necessities of time and space, on abstract images to which it can give a fictitious being. Nothing limits, nothing restrains, this vehement faculty. It flies before realization, bearing a flaming torch to light the way, and incite the will to follow. It inspires hope, but never satiates it. It arouses inquiry, it quickens speculation ; it never drops into their wake. If a spark were to fall on the representative faculty in the brute, it would start from its lethargy and rise in the scale of beings. But the beast cannot conceive an ideal, and therefore it remains stationary. With man, the attainment of his desire never altogether satisfies him. He has a craving for something beyond, and he leaves those things that are behind, and presses after his ideal image, which may be a mirage painted by a VOL. I. F 66 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF delusive faculty, but which is probably an instinct leading him to a distant perfection. The idealizing tendency of the imagination is a con- tinual process of selection, and therefore of judgment between the desirable and undesirable, and of discrimina- tion between perceptions of pleasure and pain. The ideal of one mind or of one race of men may not be the same as the ideal of another ; but it does not follow that they are contradictory, it only shows that each is partial ; and a study of human ideals will exhibit them as having a certain reciprocal appropriateness, which indicates a type to which they all tend, a perfection whicli will harmonize all. Thus, to one man red may seem the most perfect colour. It was the fashion in Manchester some years ago ; and gowns, ties, coaches, windows, everything was scarlet. Another man, or group of men, may consider blue the perfection of colour. A third may make yellow his ideal. Each only sees a portion or side of that perfection, which takes the three ideals and binds them into a glorious bow of graduated colour. The ideal of perfection, whether of power, or of wisdom, or of justice, or of goodness, or of beauty, is always beyond man ; that is, he can conceive a perfection beyond man's attainment. His idea of causation has led his intel- ligence to the conception of a final cause, which he calls God. Naturally his ideal adheres to this intellectual con- cept, and in the final cause he seeks to focus all his con- ceptions of perfection ; and thus God comes to be regarded as all-mighty, all-wise, the perfection of justice, of good- ness, and of beauty. Is the imaginative faculty illusive ? Is the sense of goodness, beauty, justice, like the belief in causation, to be pronounced arbitrary and deceptive ? THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 67 Sad would it be for humanity were it so. Man has in him as rooted a conviction that he has a spirit capable of growth, as that he has a body capable of growth. He has experimental certainty that it can grow, and that it tastes new pleasures at every stage of growth. Without an ideal to move before him, like the pillar of fire that guided Israel, there would be no poets, painters, or musicians. The mightiest effort of a Michael Angelo would then be the construction of a bark wigwam, and the proudest achievement of a Shakespeare, monkey imitation. Man has two needs, that of knowmg, and that of loving. " Every religious state," says Comte, " demands the con- tinuous concurrence of two spontaneous influences : the one objective, essentially intellectual ; the other subjective, purely moral. Thus, religion relates at once to the reason and to the sentiment ; of these either alone would not be suitable to establish a veritable unity, either individual or collective. On one side, the intelligence makes us con- ceive outside of us a power sufficiently superior to demand the constant subordination of our existence. On the other side, it is equally indispensable that one should be animated with a sentiment capable of co-ordinating all the others. These two fimdamental conditions have a natural tendency to combine, since external submission necessarily seconds interior discipline — which, in turn, spontaneously disposes to external submission." ^ Again : " The religious sentiment reposes on the permanent combination of two equally fundamental conditions, loving and believing, which, though profoundly distinct, must naturally concur. Each of these, besides its proper necessity, adds to the other a complement indispensable for its full efficacy." ^ ^ Systeme de Politique Positive, ii. 11 ; Paris, 1852. - lb. p. 17. f2 68 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Eeligion is always tlie expression of an idea. Man conceives the notion of a great cause ; guided by his feelings, by a process of selection he conceives an ideal, and this ideal becomes to him an object of passionate devotion. If reason and affection be not co-ordinated, religion resolves itself into philosophy or mysticism. A religion which is purely speculative is no religion at all ; it is a philosophy. A religion which consists of emotion only is nothing but sentimentalism, and is often gross superstition. Eeligious sentiment is sometimes ex- travagant mysticism or abject terrorism. Either form is injurious, as it is an exaggeration of one side of religion at the expense of the other. The aspirations of the heart must be controlled by the reason, and the intelligence must be humanized by the affections. The search after a supreme cause has taken two main forms, monotheism and polytheism. The Semitic races seized on the idea of one force, the cause of every effect. The Aryan deified secondary forces manifest in nature. The Turanian cowered before force, and inquired not whence it came and where it was seated. And the Chinese proclaimed that the inquiry was futile, and of no practical importance. The great watersheds of language have been the great watersheds of thought. In the search after the ideal these great races have taken different directions. The Turanian race, impressed with a vague and childlike sense of the mysterious, has not advanced into the idealizing stage, God, to the nomads of Northern Asia, is awful, undefined. They feel His presence about them, above them, and with dazzled and bewildered mind seek to know nothing more. The ideal of the Chinese is a perfectly organized government. THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGIOUS IDEA 69 The Shemite grasped the notion of an ideal of power, and his god is the force of nature personified, the Mighty- One riding on the whirlwind, touching the mountains, and lo, they smoke, uttering His voice in the thunder, shaking the cedar-trees, dividing the seas with His breath. The Aryan, with a rich poetic fancy, beheld everywhere an ideal of goodness ; he saw beautiful Iris in the sky bearino- the rain ^[oblet, zoned with colour ; foam-forms rising out of the sea radiant with beauty, lovely gliding shapes in the streams, and dreams of grace haunting the groves. The philosophic study of the ideals of the human race, and the theories of causation it has formed, will show us what the religion of humanity must become to co-ordinate all its faculties ; and thus we shall see, in Comte's expres- sive words, that religion was " first spontaneous, then inspired, and is finally demonstrated ; " and, also what Comte did not see, that it is always the same. 70 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF CHAPTEK IV. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY. Prevalence of the idea of immortality — Difficulty of forming negative ideas — Want of discrimination between objective and ideal ex- istence — The instinct of self-conservation — Reasons inducing man to believe in immortality: 1. Fear of death ; 2. Mode of accounting for anomalies of life — Eetribution — Forms assumed by the belief in immortality : 1. Degeneration; 2. Continuous existence similar to that in life ; 3. Metempsychosis ; 4. Cyclical life; 5. Develop- ment — Conjectures on mode of life after death — EvU effects pro- duced by the belief — Demonology and witchcraft. npHE idea of tlie immortality of the soul is far more widely -*- spread than the idea of the existence of one or more Gods. Barbarous people, standing on the lowest rung of the scale of civilization, incapable of the smallest mental advance, unable to draw inferences which are self-suggestive, and to argue from palpable analogies — and this is all that is required for conceiving the idea of God — are nevertheless found to believe explicitly or implicity in the perpetuation of life after death. The aborigines of California, when first visited, were as near beasts as men ever become. The missionaries likened tliem to " herds of swine, who neither worshipped the true and only God, nor adored false deities ; " yet they must have liad some vngue notion of an after-life, for the writer who paints the darkest picture of their condition remarks, " I saw them frequently putting THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY ji shoes on the feet of the dead, which seems to indicate that they entertain the idea of a journey after death." ^ Tlie natives of Australia, who have no idea of God, believe that after death their souls mount to the clouds, or cross the ocean to a distant land.^ The existence of funeral rites is a proof that those who practise them have some idea, indistinct enough perhaps, that the dead are not annihilated. Tlie prevalence of a belief in the continued vitality of the soul after death is evidence that the idea must rest on an exceedingly simple basis. The conception of a deity requires some mental exer- tion ; the conception of immortality requires none. Given the consciousness of personality, of a self the seat of the will, the thoughts, and the feelings, and the belief in the perpetuity of its life follows at once. For the supposition tliat death annihilates tlie conscious principle could not be entertained by an unphilosophic mind. A high degree of education must be attained before the notion of annihilation can be apprehended. The mind receives positive impressions only, and intelligentially con- ceives negatives by eliminating positive impressions. Night is regarded as the absence of day, death as the absence of life. In order to form an idea of the destruction of the conscious self, an amount of exhaustion of impressions is required wholly beyond the powers of an uncultivated mind. Man's personality is so distinctly projected on the surface of his consciousness, that the idea of its obliteration is inconceivable without doing violence to his primary convictions. Let any one try to imagine himself extinguished, — his 1 Brinton : Myths of N'^w World, p. 234 ; New York, 1S68. 2 D'Urville : Voyages, i. 399. 72 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF powers of thought, his feelings, his volitions, his percep- tions broken short off, — and he will see how extremely difficult is the task, and how incomplete is his success. The phenomenon of death is the cessation of the action of the will in such a manner as to be cognizable. But to argue from such premises that the existence of the will is at an end is illogical. It has ceased to act in one way ; that is all that can be said. The savage A has a rooted conviction that 5's actions are determined by an inner force. B dies. A observes that B no longer eats and Avalks, hunts and fights. Unless ^ be a metaphysician, his conviction in the persistence in the life of the soul of B is not disturbed ; he simply concludes that the soul of B is operating in a way hitherto unusual To suppose that the soul-force is extinct is to infer that, because one set of modes of operation has ceased, the force is inca- pacitated from operating according to another set of modes. It is far easier for A to allow his conception of the positive existence of B to remain undisturbed, than to distress his mind by thinking of B as an aggregation of nega- tive ideas. The popular belief in apparitions illustrates this truth. In most cases of ghost-seeing, the dead are beheld dressed in the clothes they wore during life, and are engaged in a customary pursuit. These supposed apparitions, of which one hears M'ell-authenticated stories every day, ])rove that minds continue to represent the dead as existing in the same way as in past times. Most persons experience a difficulty in realizing a startling event, such as the death of a relative. To realize is to see a fact in all its bearings, and these, in the case of death, are of a negative descrip- tion ; such as " A, who has hitherto sat in this chair, will occupy it no more. He will not take a walk after break- THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 73 fast, nor read his newspaper, nor smoke his pipe," and so on. When spectres are said to have been seen, it is evident that the seer is of shiggish intellect ; and, as a matter of fact, it will he found on examination that ghost- seers are not imaginative, but prosaic personages. The more imaginative a person is, the more able he is to per- ceive the bearings of a fact, and the less likely he is to be deluded by fancy. Another cause of the wide-spread belief in the immor- tality of the soul is the want of discrimination between objective and ideal existence. When a man dies, the remembrance of him survives. To those who knew him he is not annihilated, because they are able to remember or re-present him ideally. The dead man produces no longer material impressions, but his personality survives in the remembrance of his friends. The savage is unable to distinguish between an idea and an object, an imagina- tion and a reality, a dream and a fact. The inhabitants of Madagascar believe that every apparition seen in a dream has a substantial existence. When a European dreams of liis distant country, the Dayaks think his soul has anni- hilated space, and paid a flying visit to Europe during the night. "Whoso seeth me in his sleep," said Mahonuned, " seeth me truly." The Basutos, when they dream of a deceased relative, believe that he has really visited them ; and they sacrifice a victim on his grave, thmking that he must be hungry. " Whiles I think my piiir bairn's dead," said Madge Wildfire, " ye ken very weel it's buried — but that signifies naething. T have had it on my knee a hundred times, and a hundred till that, since it was buried ; and how could that be were it dead, ye ken ? — it's merely impossible." 74 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Those whom education has taught to discriminate be- tween fact and fancy know that the re-presentation is merely ideal ; but this the rude intellect does not know, and it regards it as a tangible reality. Man, as has been justly remarked by Feuerbach,^ is led to believe in immortality by the instinct of self-conser- vation. He cannot endure the idea of letting that which he possesses escape his hands ; what he has, he desires to have for ever. " "We cannot," said Fi elite, " love any object which we do not regard as eternal." This is true, for we will not undertake the execution of any task unless we are assured that it will last. Who would build a house if he knew that to-morrow it woidd fall ? If I regard the pos- sibility as a probability, I lose all desire of building. The idea of eternity is an idea of vague continuance. I build a house, hoping that it will last, and I do not care to think when it will fall ; I do not attempt to fix a date at which it will fall. My idea of its lasting is indefinite. So the idea of the savage concerning the continued vitality of his friend's soul is that it will last on, and on, and on ; and it is no concern of his when that indefinite duration will be cut short. The Fiji Islanders are said to believe that the soul of the dead man passes through two stages or con- ditions of existence, one of happiness, the next of misery ; and that then it undergoes annihilation.- This, however, is nothing more than a supposition that the soul is born at death into a life of vigour, which passes into age, and ends in a second death, beyond which the Fiji mind does not attempt to follow it. 1 La Religion, p. 233 ; Paris, 1846. 2 United States Exjjloring Expedition, Report of Hale^, p. 5i ; Philadelphia; 1846. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 75 There are potent reasons to induce man to cling tena- ciously to the belief in the immortality of the soul. The instinctive clinging to life is essential to organic life ; it is especially pronounced in man, exhibiting itself in intense repugnance to death. Death fills him with craven fear; it is to him the worst of ills, the most appalling catastrophe that can take place ; and if some make a dis- play of indifference at its approach, it is not that they are insensible to dread, but that they desire to exhibit the highest courage by facing unflinchingly that for which they feel the extremest terror. Any idea which can alleviate this dread, and lighten, though wath the feeblest glimmer, the awful blackness of uncertainty beyond the tomb, has been seized on with eagerness and clung to with desperation. The definiteness of Christian teaching on this point conduced greatly to its acceptance. When the missionaries of the Cross preached before King Edwin, an old chief rose and said : " king, as we sit by night round the fire in the hall, and make good cheer, it often happens that a little bird flies for a moment into the light and heat ; it comes out of the cold and darkness, and then it goes out into the cold and darkness ; but none knew whence it comes, and none can tell whither it goes. And so is our own life. We come, and our wise men cannot tell us whence ; we go, and they cannot tell us whither. Therefore, if there be any who can give us certainty about a future state, in God's name let us hea them." A second reason for the adoption of a belief in the im- mortality of the soul is that such a doctrine can alone reconcile the anomalies of life. This is not a reason to influence a savage, but it is a powerful one in the breast of 76 THE ORIGIN OF REIIGIOUS BELIEF a man of tliouglit and feeling. He sees the lots of men unequally balanced ; misery, wrong, oppression, blot the history of the past, and smear that of the present. Patriots gToan in dungeons. Civilization enriches one, and pauperizes a score. Juggernaut's car rolls over the necks of thousands. " Abel's blood cries out of the ground," writes Theodore Parker, " but there is no ear of justice to hear it ; and Cain, red with slaughter, goes off welcomed to the arms of the daughters of Nod ; the victims of nobleness rot in their blood ; booty and beauty are both for him. The world festers with the wounds of the hero ; but there is no cure for them : the hero is a fool — his w^ounds prove it. Saint Catherine has her wheel. Saint Andrew his sword. Saint Sebastian his arrow, Saint Lawrence his fire of green wood ; Paul has his fastings, his watchings, his scourge, and his jail, his perils of waters, of robbers, of the city and the wilderness, his perils among false brethren, and Jesus His thorny crown. His malefactor's death ; Kossuth gets his hard fate, and Francis the Stupid sits on the Hungarian throne; — Austrian, Hungarian, German, French, Italian dungeons are crowded with the noblest men of the age, who do perpetual penance for their self- denial, their wisdom, their justice, their affection for man- kind, and their fidelity to Crod. These die as the fool dieth. There is no hope for any one of them in a body without a soul, in an earth without a heaven, in a world without a God." ^ The belief, the hope, that there is a future in which the wrongs of suffering humanity will be righted, has been ploughed into the conscience of mankind by the oppression of centuries. But that men held a doctrine of future re- tribution for wrong-doing they would have sunk into ' ^\'ol■k^^, vol xi. p. 1') ; Londuii, 1867. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 77 despair. Theodosius ordered tlie slangliter of the popula- tion of a city because his statues had been defaced. Adonibezek cut off the thumbs and great toes of threescore and ten kings, and made them gather crumbs under his table ; CaBsar wished that mankind had but one neck, that he might hack through it ; Justinian blinded the saviour of his throne. The King of Dahomey sips sugar and water whilst a hundred human beings are being massacred before his eyes, and their blood is being puddled with the blood of tigers. History paints oppression whirling its bloody lash after man, and man in the madness of his despair flying like Orestes to the temple of God, and there sitting as a suppliant, sullen and resolute : — " Here will I keep my station and await the event of judgment."^ Without a belief in God, the avenger of all such as call upon Him, and a future life, in which the wicked should cease from troubling and be troubled himself in turn, man, the most down-trodden of all creatures, would wrap his mantle about his face, creep like a wounded hare into a corner, and sob to death. The belief in a just God, and in a future state in which wrongs will be redressed, has been forced into prominence to restrain despotism. Even with such a belief the earth is full of violence, but without it she would brim over. Take away the idea of responsibility, and the fear of future retribution, and the veriest King Log will become a King Stork. A belief in a future of rewards and punishments has thus been a natural escape for man groaning under des- potism. Under the most stinging wrongs, he will and must hope, and hoping believe, that somewhere there is 1 iEsch. : Furies, 240. 78 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF One above the wrong-doer, and that at some time He will recompense the wrong done. When oppression is most intolerable the conviction of a future of retributive justice is most lively, but when prosperity smiles it is almost for- gotten. When absolute monarchy or feudal des]3otism racked men wantonly, men trusted that hereafter the king and the noble would writhe in the agonies they inflicted on their subjects. When the power of the crown and of the coronet is assumed by Justice, men hope that there is no future of suffering, or believe that it is easily evaded. Thus in the times when Eoman despotism had reached its acme, men burst away from the slavery popularly called citizenship, and realizing with an awful intensity the justice of God, which they imprecated on the tyrants, they fasted and tortured their bodies in dens and caves of the earth, that they might satisfy during life that Divine justice which they believed would as surely exact satisfaction for their offences, as it would wreak vengeance on the op- pressor for his crimes. If we turn to later ages, when political wrongdoing is less in amount, or affects indi- viduals less perceptibly, we find that the sense of Divine justice and the belief in future retribution fade from the religious horizon, and that faith is taught to justify and ensure a heaven, even without repentance. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has taken shape in different forms. Of these the most prominent are — I. degeneration ; II. continuous life, unruled ; III. me- tempsychosis ; IV. cyclical life ; V. development. These systems are not, however, clearly defined ; they are found to interpenetrate one another. This, indeed, is rendered necessary by the fact that each man forms his own idea of immortality, even with a revelation to give some shape to THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 79 his idea ; and that the religious belief, of a tribe or nation is tlie fusion of a multitude of individual beliefs, out of which all the exceptional theories droi^, and in which all the general ideas gather consistency. 1. The doctrine of degeneration is that, as the bodily and mental faculties decay with old age, so is the future life one of gradual loss of powder, terminating in extinc- tion. Such a theory lies at the root of those terrible customs of murdering the sick, and those who approach old age, and also of those schemes of future life of later deve- lopment in which there is a Valhalla for those who die able-bodied, and a hell for those who die on the bed of sickness. The Vitians of Fiji argue that the condition after death is identical in every way with that in which man dies, during a long period, and that death arrests age and decay for a while, but that after a period they reassert their power, and drag the disembodied soul into a spiritual death. On this theory the Fiji islanders destroy their re- latives and friends, and even themselves, long before the natural close of existence, in the hope of thus escaping the dishonour of entering the world of spirits in a condition of decrepitude. So rife, indeed, has grown the practice of strangulation or of burying men alive from a real wish to benefit the person immolated, that only a single instance of natural death came imder the observation of Europeans during a protracted stay in one of these islands. II. The idea of the future life being precisely like that of the present is far more common. Throughout the world at this day, and among civilized races in past ages, the notion has been prevalent that the dead live on disem- bodied, with all the passions, caprices, and contradictions of mortality, with no future open to them save that of continued being, with capabilities of wreaking vengeance 8o THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF on those who incur their wrath, and dependent on the living for the means of subsistence and enjoyment in the spirit realm. " When the mingkieu (a musical instrument of stone) is played, and the lyre and guitar are struck and accompanied with songs," said an ancient Cliinese writer, " grandfather and father come up to listen." ^ The China- man feeds and dresses his ancestors, who are supposed to be. wholly dependent for subsistence on the gratuities of their descendants. The departed are addressed in prayer as counsellors of the living, and are gratified by presents, and bribed to interest themselves in the affairs of their children. " We bring fat cattle and sheep to the sacrifice. Prayer and the oblation are made at the gate. The sacrifice is completed, and our ancestor appears. He takes the offering. Pious descendants have luck. The kettle is heated in haste. Some roast, some bake flesh, and offer to tlie guest, then to the host. The wine is poured out. The patron spirit is present. The pious offerings smell. The meat and drink gratify the spirit. The spirit has satisfied himself with the wine.""-^ At the present day relatives transmit money to their indigent parents by burning in the sacrificial fire strips of gilt paper, and supply them with suitable garments by deli- neating them on paper, and passing them through the flame into the soul- world. The placing of clothing, utensils of cooking, and im- plements of war with the dead w^as the custom of our European ancestors, and is that of the American Indians at the present day. Sometimes the dog or horse, the slaves or the wife of the deceased, were slain to accompany the ' Schu-King Cap Y-tsi, i. 5, p. 38. 2 Shi-King Siao-ya Tsu-tseu, ii. 6, 5, in Plath : Die ReHgiou u. der Cultn.s d. alien Chinesen, ii. 121 ; Miinchen, 1863. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 8i dead to the shadow realm, and attend on his comforts there. Among the Natchez Indians of the Lower Missis- sippi, when a chief died some of his wives and his most distinguished officers were knocked on the head and buried with him.i The Indians light a fire on the grave of the deceased, and maintain it for several days, to light him on his journey. The ancient Icelanders put shoes on the feet of the dead, tliat they might not he footsore in making their journey. Combs and mirrors have been found in ancient tombs — proofs that their fair occupants were expected to be as greatly addicted to vanity in the spirit world as in that of the flesh. " That there are logical contradictions in this belief and in these cere- monies, that the fire is always in the same spot, that the weapons and utensils are not carried away by the departed, and that the food placed for his sustenance remains un- touched, is very true. But those who would therefore argue that they were not intended for the benefit of the soul, and seek some recondite meaning in them as unconscious emblems of struggling faith, or expressions of inward emotions, are led astray by the very simplicity of their real intention. Where is the faith, where the science, that does not involve logical contradictions just as gross as these ? They are tolerable to us merely because we are used to them. What value has the evidence of the senses anywhere against a religious faith ? None whatever. A stumbling-block though this be to the materialist, it is the universal truth, and as such it is well to accept it as an experimental fact."^ III. The soul was also supposed by some to pass after death into some other body. This doctrine is based on ^ Dupratz : History of Louisiana, ii. 219. 2 Brintoii : Myths of New World, p. 241 ; New York, 1868. VOL. I. G 82 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF the consciousness of gradation between beasts and men ; the boundaries of instinct and reason are too dimly traced to be at once and by all perceived. The human soul, with its consciousness of infinity, seemed to be something already perfected in a pre-existing state, something which had gone through a succession of phases of existence, and which would undergo a further succession. In the dream of metempsychosis we may trace the yearnings and gropings of the soul after the source whence it has derived its consciousness, counting its dreams and hallucinations as gleams of memory, reflecting acts which had taken place in a former state of being. After death, the transla- tion of the soul was supposed to continue. It passed into another man, or it Avas degraded to animate a brute. Philosophy, when brought to bear on transmigration, placed its extreme development in absorption into the deity. Thus Empedocles taught that he had been, in a former condition, shrub, bird, fish, and maiden ; and that after death noble souls pass into the bodies of the higher animals, such as the lion ; and that after a series of migra- tions, through the stages of poets, physicians, and princes, they become at last gods in a blissful sphere of perennial youth. ^ Plato held that there were ten migrations for the soul, each of a thousand years, after which it returned to an incorporeal existence in God, and to the pure con- templation of Him and the divine ideas.- The Brahmanic doctrine is similar. The human soul is held to be indestructible, and death to be the passage of the spirit from one body to another. It may animate the lowest or the highest of the species of organic life. Beings rise by a succession of births from the lowest organized masses to the highest intelligence. After having reached 1 Eniped. v. 16, sqc^. ^ Republic, x. 615. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 83 the human body, a trial begins which determines its future destiny. It may mount directly to the region of gods, or sink into the lower forms of existence. But if it ascend, it is not to a permanent abode of peace, but to rest there for a space, and then to plunge once more to the bottom of animate life, and to rise slowly and j)ainfully again through the scale of creatures. Buddha sought to escape this terrible fatality, to cut short tins perpetual gyration. Death, according to the Hindu belief, was but a passage from one into some other phase of misery, on the edge of which loomed the black cloud of another death, and a future plunge into the abyss of being. To dissipate this terrible''prospect, Buddha taught that by entire disengage- ment of the mind from all material objects, and of the affections from all human subjects, the soul could annihilate itself. By contemplation this condition is reached. In contemplation there are four degrees : — 1. The internal happiness arising from a sense of disengagement from the sensual world. In this condition reason and judgment remain, so that the postulant can distinguish and choose between what is conducive to his final state and what draws him from it. 2. In the second stage judgment and reason fail, and the intellect remains centred on Nirvana, the ultimate state to which the ascetic desires to attain. '6. At the third degi-ee, all sense of satisfaction disappears, and indifference supervenes, but withal there remains a confused self-consciousness. 4. At the fourth stage all consciousness dies out, memory has vanished, desire is atrophied, and absolute apathy characterises the state which is as near Nirvana as man can reach in his present life. IV. Of the theory that souls pass through cycles of existence, little more need be said. It has never been a G 2 8j THE ORTGIN OF RELIGIOUS RELIEF popular theory, and has only Ijecn embraced by a few philosophers, and adopted into the Brahmanic psychology alone. Heraclitus araono- the Greeks seems to have held a doctrine of this nature, for he taught that spirits were whirled through a succession of existences, of which there was no end. V. The fifth and noblest theory is, that the soul after death passes into another sphere, in which, if it has deserved well, it enjoys that perfection which was un- attainable when united to the body ; or if it has deserved ill, it undergoes suffering. Tliis is the scheme of immor- tality held by peoples which have reached a high state of civilization. " Awake, awake ! " was the address of a Mexican to a dying person ; " already the morning breaks on you, and now the light is dawning. Already the yellow-plumed birds are singing to greet you ; already the gorgeous butterflies flutter about you."^ "One knows not," said Socrates, " whether death be not the greatest of all blessings to man."^ And Euripides puts the sentiment into the mouth of Theseus, " From whence each particle entered the body, thither has it gone — the spirit indeed to the sky, and the body to the earth." ^ The opinion of a perfecting of the soul after death has undergone several modifications. One view is, that all souls pass into a condition of happiness ; another is, that the souls of those who have committed certain crimes are purged of their sin before they enter into happiness. A third tenet is, that death irrevocably fixes the condition of the soul in a state of bliss or of woe. A fourth tenet is, that the soul is imperfect without the body, and that it rests till the end of the world, when it will be ' Sahagun : Hist, de la N. Espafia, x. 29. 2 Plato : Apol. Socrat. ^ Eurip. Suppliants, v. 534. THE IDEA OE IMMORTALITY 85 reunited to tlie body, and that the body will be raised glorious or loathsome, according as the soul is destined to bliss or woe. The first of these conjectures is that formed by certain savage nations, and is found to co-exist with a low moral consciousness, and with rudimentary political organization. Where there is little restraint on personal freedom, there is small sense of moral responsibility, and few acts are admitted to be criminal ; consequently, every man is respectable enough to merit future happiness. As the sense of responsibility forms, and the idea of morality acquires precision, men adopt views of eternal happiness which would be incompatible with the admission into it of all men without some purgation to rid them of offensive habits, disorderly passions, evil humours, which w^ould make eternity an endless scene of irritations and quarrels. The third view is that life is the time of probation, and that the eternal condition is fixed by man's conduct during life. This theory leads to the somewhat startling con- sequence that endless punishments are exacted for crimes committed, possibly, without premeditation. The last theory, that of the resurrection of the body and its union with a purified soul, is pecviliarly Chiistian ; it will be considered at length in the second volume. o The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has exercised a tremendous influence, not only in leading man towards civilization, but also in restraining him from advance. That it should have an elevating tendency is obvious, but that it should have a degrading tendency is not so clear. The reason of this latter influence is, that upon this doctrine has been erected a vast superstructure of angelology and de mono logy. 86 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF There are several theories to account for angels and devils, but, among a vast number of nations, the angels are the souls of the good, and the devils are those of the bad. A modern writer who has deeply studied the savage races of man observes : " Their religions have not acted as levers to raise them into civilization, but have rather worked, and that powerfully, to impede every step in advance ; in the first place, by ascribing everything unin- telligible in nature to spiritual agency, and then, by making the fate of man dependent on mysterious and capricious forces, not on his own skill and foresight." ^ This is perfectly true, because these religions have been steeped in spirit-worship, and saturated with sorcery, which is the conjuration of spirits. Necromancy is the shadow of religion. The priest was the philosopher of the early religions. The sorcerer sought to stamp out speculation. Eeligion pointed to an ideal, but the only ideal of which witchcraft knew was an ideal of horror. Thus, instinctively, religion and sorcery, the worship of good and the conjuration of evil, became antauonistic. The Jewish law forbade witch and sorcerer to live. The Norseman drew a sack over the head of the dealer with familiar spirits, and precipitated him from a cliff. The twelve tables denounced the Eoman saga ; the adorer of divs, or demons, was accursed by the Mazda^an, and St. Paul warned the early Christians against "the worshipping of spirits " and " the doctrines of demons." The belief in demons is but another form of the belief in the disembodied spuits of the departed. At a time when every man's hand was against liis fellow, the charac- teristic of the human soul was cunning, cruelty, and envy. Souls, when freed from the body, were supposed to retain ^ Waitz : Anthropologie cles Naturvolker, i. 459. THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 87 their cunning, cruelty, and envy. The ancestral souls of the King of Dahomey shake the earth because the old customs of steeping the soil in human gore are not kept n}>. The Arkansas Indians burn lodge and all its con- tents over a corpse, in their dread of its malice. The Algonquins carry it forth by a hole cut opposite the door, and beat the walls with sticks to frighten away the linger- ing ghost. Burying-places were always avoided witli fear. The Scandinavians believed that the dead fattened in their cairns on the blood of those they nightly slew. I quote from a recent work on Bulgaria an example of the mode in which the spirit of the dead becomes transformed in popular belief into a demon : ^ — " When a man who has vampire blood in his veins (for this condition is not only epidemic and endemic, but hereditary), or who is other- wise predisposed to become a vampire, dies, nine days after his burial he returns to upper earth in an aeriform sliape. The presence of the vampire in this his first con- dition may be easily discerned in the dark by a succession of sparks like those from a flint and steel — in the light, by a shadow projected upon a wall, and varying in density according to the age of the vampire in his career. In this stage he is comparatively harmless, and is only able to play the practical jokes of the German Kobold and Gnome, of the Irish Phooka, or the English Puck ; he roars in a terrible voice, or amuses himself by calling out the inhabitants of a cottage by the most endearing terms and then beating them black and blue. The father of our servant Theodore was a vampire of this class. One night he seized by the waist (for vampires are capable of exer- cising considerable physical force) Kodja Keraz, the ' " Residence in Bulgaria," by Captain S. Clair and Charles Brophy ; Lv»ik1oii, 1869. 88 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF PeJilivan, or champion wrestler of Derekuui, crying out, ' I^ow then, old Cherry-tree, see if you can throw me.' The village champion put forth all his strength, but the vampire was so heavy that Kodja Keraz broke his own jaw in throwing the invisible being who was crushing him to death. At the time of this occurrence, five years ago, our village was so infested by vampires that the inhabit- ants were forced to assemble together in two or three houses, to burn candles all night, and to watch by turns in order to avoid the assaults of the Obours, who lit up the streets with their sparkles, and of whom the most enter- prising threw their shadow on the walls of the room where the peasants were dying of fear; whilst others howled, shrieked, and swore outside the door, entered the abandoned houses, spat blood into the floor, turned everything topsy- turvy, and smeared the whole place, even the pictures of the saints, with cow-dung." But when the homicidal mania which infects savages subsided, these malevolent spirits were classed apart from human souls, which were not now always supposed to raven for slaugliter, and thus the human spirits of their ancestry came to be regarded as a distinct species of spirits, i.e. demons. Man regarded himself as living in the midst of an invisible world of spiritual beings, by whom he was influenced, and his destiny was swayed. These beings he regarded as controlling the elements, and disturbing the flow of natural law. They had to be con- jured not to injure, or warded off with amulets. The conjuration of fiends and the fabrication of amulets be- came the occupation of a class. And thus arose the necromancer and witch. The necromancer and the witch were the hierophants of evil, as the priest and the vestal were the celebrants of good. Ilulda was prophetess in THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY 89 the temple, and in Eiiduv lurked a witcli. The priest sacrificed to God, the magicians immolated to Satan. The fears of the ignorant created this order of spirit-conjurers. He dared not face the darkness whicli his terror had peopled with hideous shapes. Fancy made him believe that the dead arose from their graves and prowled about, thirsting for blood ; that they swept the plains in the shape of wolves, with lupine rage and hist ; that they wavered as sheeted ghosts in the gloom of the forest ; that they danced on the moonlit turf; jabbered at his window, shrieked in at liis door, squatted on his breast at night. Every Christian churchyard, every American bone-mound, every Siberian tumulus, every Hindu place of burning, every Egyptian tomb, is haunted by spectres. Man lives in perpetual dread of their power. The sun sets, and he flies to his home, and shuts himself within and bars his fears out. If he is obliged to stir abroad in the night, he treads stealthily wdth the utmost circumspection, and with ear on the alert. He mutters incantations, clasps amulets, starts at the rustle of the leaves, and sliivers at the growl of a beast. He is a ready prey to the schaman, the enchanter, or the witch, whom his fears have summoned to his aid. Sir Walter Scott deduces demonology from the same origin : " The general, or, it may be termed, the universal belief of the inhaliit- ants of the earth in the existence of spirits separated from the encumbrance and incapacities of the body, is grounded on the consciousness of the divinity tliat speaks in our owti bosoms, and demonstrates to all men, except the few wdio are hardened to the celestial voice, that there is witliin us a portion of the divine substance, wdiich is not subject to the law of death and dissolution, Itut which, where the body is i|0 longer fit for its abode, shall seek its go THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF own place, as a sentinel dismissed from liis post. Un- aided by revelation, it cannot be hoped tliat mere earthly- reason should be able to form any rational or precise con- jecture concerning the destination of the soul when parted from the body ; but the conviction that such an inde- structible essence exists, the belief expressed by the poet in a different sense, non omnis moriar, must infer the existence of many millions of spirits, who have not been annihilated, though they have become invisible tu mortals, who still see, hear, and perceive only by means of the imperfect organs of humanity. Probability may lead some of the most reflecting to anticipate a state of future rewards and punishments ; as those experienced in the education of the deaf and dumb find that their pupils, even while cut off from all instruction by ordinary means, have been able to form, out of their own unassisted con- jectures, some ideas of the existence of a Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and the body — a circum- stance which proves how naturally these truths arise in the human mind. The principle that they do so arise, being taught or communicated, leads to farther conclu- sions."^ Denionology and Witchcraft, p. 3 ; 2d Edit. 1831. THE NAMES OF GOD 91 CHAPTER V. THE NAMES OF GOD. Advantage of comparative philology — Root ideas and root words— Soul names — Relation observed between wind, breath, smoke, and the soul— Roots expressive of force — Names of God expressive of force — Titles of pre-eminence — Attributive names — Names derived from localization— The multiplicity of Divine names — Avoidance of using names — Semitic language a protest against polytheism — Instance of attributes becoming distinct deities. THE idea of God having been conceived, it became necessary for man to find a name which should express his apprehension of the Deity. We have seen that the perception of a self-generating force in the human will originated the conception of God. It is, therefore, probable that the primitive names of God should bear some analogy to those which designate our personality. Language and ideas are intimately connected, both in their origin, in their progress, and in their decay ; and the analysis of names will often lead us to the root ideas which produced them. Through the rich and tangled jungle of polytheism, comparative philology is the most reliable guide ; and in monotheism also it enables us to pierce at once to the root of the God-idea. Primary perceptions are not, however, always represented by root words, for rudi- 92 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF inentary intuitions are jvist those wliich are the last to need indication. Our ideas can all be traced back to certain radicals, limited in number ; and it is the same with words. The large vocabulary at our command can be reduced to a fixed number of root sounds, with fixed ideas attached to them. As ideas enlarge and interpenetrate and diverge, language is modified and moulded to express tl e new and changing ideas. The glossary of a people is a measure of their thoughts. The English rustic is said to have only some three hundred words at his command ; this is because he has but three hundred ideas. The Australian savage has no word for tree, because he has not arrived at a generalizing stage of intellectual progress. He has a name for the eucalyptus, and a name for the cocoa-nut, but has no generic title including both. A name designating existence will be the nearest approach to a rudimentary conception of the Deity ; and, as a conception of His existence is a deduction from the consciousness of man's own existence, we expect to find the highest and most monotheistic names of God related to the names descriptive of our own conscious principle. Accordingly, before we deal with the Divine names \\q must examine the soul names. In many instances the terms used to designate the seat of life and perception are derived from a secondary and analogical idea. The soul is the energizing principle, and breath is life, or conterminous with life. When life ceases, breath ceases, and vice versa. The connexion ob- served to exist between them supplied man with a name for the soul, when it became necessary for him to express in words the idea of his existence, apart from his body. Such a stock of sold words as '^v)(i'], Trvev/xa, ruah, THE NAMES OF GOD 93 animus, ghost, exhibit a rude condition of mind wlien they were formed, ready to give names on the most superficial analogies, witliout troubling to penetrate into the depths of the personality in cj^uest of a true basis on which to raise a fabric of psychic terminology. The analogy between soul and breath was so plain that it was at once concluded that tliey were identical, or, if not identical, were very similar, -v/ry;^?; is breath or soul, from a root expressive of blowing, a root that reappears in ylrvy/j,6Tdna, spirit, the Greek av€[xo<;, the Irish anal, breath, and anam, life or soul. Spirit is from a root sv=^sp with a similar meaning, and onomatopoetic, a sound imitative of that produced by breathing. Thence the Sanskrit svas, and the Latin siriro, spiriUis, &c. The Teutonic ylicist, our gliost, is from a root signifying to blow with violence, which reappears in gust, and in the Icelandic gcysir, and in the Scandinavian verb gfosa, to pour forth. In the primitive tongues of America, a similar identi- fication of soul and breath, spirit and wind, appears. In the Dakota language niga is literally breath, figuratively life ; in Netela, pints is breath and soul ; silla in Esquimo means air, and also the reasoning faculty. In the Yakama tongue of Oregon whrisha expresses wind, and tvJcrishivit, ^ Nonius Marcel. 426, 427. 94 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF life ; with the Aztecs checatl had the meaning of wind, of soul and of life ; and in Mohawk, atonritz, the soul, is derived from atonrion, to breathe.^ Yet, though the relationship of words expressing soul and breath point to a confusion of ideas touching the life and the breath, yet, in all cases, the name for soul is not derived from the word for breath, but from a root expressive of force common to both. Thus, in Sclavonic each branch idea is distinct. The radical is du ; thence have been derived donnon, to breathe, and dyma, the seat of force, the mind. From dounon is derived duim smoke, because the breath has a vaporous appearance ; but dyma is not derived from dounon, but from the root. The Greek Ovfxo'^ did not primitively signify breatli ; its root is 6v, equivalent to the Sanskrit di%, and has the meaning of setting in motion ; 6vfic, expressive of the volent self. The application of the idea of this conscious self to the Cause of nature took place in Vaidic times. " Atman (self; is the Lord of all things, self is the king of all things. Brahman (force) itself is but Atman (self)." 2 This is pre- cisely what has been laid down as the basis of Theism. In Vaidic mythology Atman, however, never solidified into a more tangible conception, though Brahman became one in ^ Horace : Od. iv. 7. 16. 2 Brihad-aranyaka, ed. Eoer, p. 478 ; quoted by Max Miiller : " Chips from a German Workshop," i. 70. 96 THE ORTCrX OF RF.LTGTOUS BELTKF a trilogy, and rapidly involved himself in a cloud of fable. In Iranian theology, Ahura is the supreme God. The cognate Sanskrit word is A sura. The root of Ahura and Asura is ami, the thought, or the breath. The Asuras are the ^sir of the Scandinavians. The original conception of d^ was the living, breathing, thinking cause ; but the remi- niscence which was preserved in Iranian mythology was lost in a family of demigods among the Norsemen, and was abased to a tribe of demons among the Hindus. Although the first conception of the vEsir as intelligent forces faded completely from the unphilosophic minds of the Norsemen, the presence of the Vanir opposed to them in their tradi- tions should have acted as a reminder of the original idea. For as the ^sir represent active force, the Vanir derive their name from an absence, want, emptiness, which shows them to have been mere negatives. The Sanskrit van is to kill, or bring to nought ; in Erse hana is death, a state of nothingness. Want and vanity are derived from the same root. If we look for the names of God derived from analogues of our breath, w^e find them in great abundance. Some- times the name for God and that for wind are identical. Where we read, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth,"^ the Vulgate renders the passage, " The Spirit breathes where He wUls, and thou hearest His voice, but thou knowest not whence He cometh, and whither He goeth." In the Mosaic account of Creation the RvmIi, Spirit of God, moves upon the face of the waters ;^ which the Targum of Onkelos 1 Jolin iii. 8. ^ q^^_ j_ £_ THE NAMES OF GOD 97 paraphrases, " And a wind from before the Lord blew upon the face of the waters." ^ The Creek Indians call their chief deity Esaugetah Emissee, the master of breath or wind ; and the Aztec god Yoalliehecatl meant ' the wind of night.' Odin is ' the raging gale,' and derives his name from the preterite of the verb signifying ' to rage,' Infln. Preterite. Whence the name. Icelandic . . . . Va*a . . 0* . . . Od-m. Old High Dutch . . Watan . . Wuot . . Wuotan. Old Saxon . . . . Wadan . . W6d . . W6dan. Other names of God would be titles of pre-eminence. The monotheistic Jew called his God Adonai, Lord, and the Phoenician named him Adon. The Canaanitish Moloch, the Ammonitish Milcom, signified the King, like the Hebrew Malka ; and Solomon was blind indeed to erect separate altars to Moloch and ]\Iilcom, whilst in the Temple he worshipped Malka. The Chaldean and Canaanite named God Bel or Baal, also the Lord ; or Kimmon, and Eam, the Exalted One : just as the Chinese indicated the supremacy of the sky by the title of Shangti, the Great Khan. The attributes of God would also be the sources of appellations. The idea of strength centred in Him would originate His name of Brahma and El. That of splendour gave Him the name Div, whence the Sanskrit Deva ; the ancient Euss Dia, the Gothic Tuisco, the Gallic Tieu, the Erse Dia, the Greek ©eo?, and the Latin Deus. As He was considered to be the perfection of goodness, He was termed God, the ISTorse GucJ, and the German Gott ; as eternal, the Carib called Him the Ancient of 1 Targum of Onkelos, Genesis, liy Etlieridge, i. .35. VOL. I. H 98 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Days, and the Phoenician Beltain, or the venerable Bel ; and the Egyptian, Kneph.^ As the mysterious one. He was called hy the Egyptians Amoun ; ^ and as the revealer, Ptah.^ That mysterious name of God found among the Scla- vonic nations — the Euss Bog, the Tongu Buga or Bogdoi — seems to be derived from the root in Sanskrit loa/j, which has the meaning of ' to divide,' and also ' to worship ; ' whence Mgci, portion, felicity, and Mg, reverence. What its original significance was is not clear, nor why it became a divine name. Possibly it indicated God as the giver of good, the divider of lots. The same name exists among our- selves as that of evil spirits, Bogies and Bogarts, precisely as the name Deus with us has an evil signification as the Deuce. In the cuneiform inscriptions the sacred name of Baga appears ; this is the Persian Bhaga, cognate to the Sanskrit 5'(i//a,good fortune, and the sun. As the generator of life, the name of Hermes (from epixa) is given to the Deity ; as Lord of heaven, the Quiche called God Ah- raxa-tzel ; as giver of life, Quaholon ; as creator, Tzakol ; and as Lord, Tepeu. The localization of the Deity in heaven gave birth to a number of other names. From the first moment that the consciousness of a God rose upon man's soul, like the morning sun, he lifted his head on high and sought him in the sky. That vast uplifted sphere, now radiant with light, now twinkling with countless stars ; whether flooded 1 Plutarch : Isis and Osiris, ed. Parthey, c. xxi. : Y^oKovaiv avroi Kvi](j), uyivvrjTOV uvra (cal adavarov. '^ Plutarcli : Isis and Osiris, ed. Parthey,. c. ix.:"ETiSe rau TvoWm pofii^ovTcov '1810V Trap AiyimTion vvofia rod Aius elvai tuv ^ Kfxovv, M.avrj6ui<, fikv 6 2e/3ei'wVj;s to KiKpvfJijxivov oUrai Koi rijv Kpvy^iv vno Tavrrji 8rj\oia6a rrjs (jxovfjs. 3 Bunseu : Egypt's Place, i. 383, n. 252. THE NAMES OF GOD 99 with glory by the sun, or traversed by the moon, calm or rufiled, so changing yet so enduring, vague, myste- rious, unattainable, never wasting or waxing old, attracted the wonder of man, and in it he placed the home of his gods. Heaven was an upper world inhabited by deities. The Esth supposed it to be a blue tent, behind which Ukko the Ancient, and the sustainers of sun, moon, and stars, and the guardians of the clouds dwelt in splen- dour.i Men for a long time supposed that the earth was a flat plain surrounded by the sea, and that the sky was a roof on which the heavenly bodies travel, or from which they are suspended as lamps. " The Polynesians, who thought, like so many other peoples, ancient and modern, that the sky descended at the horizon and enclosed the earth, still call foreigners papalangi, or heaven-bursters, as having broken in from another world outside. The sky is to most savages what is called in a South American language mumeseke, that is, ' the earth-on-high.' There are holes or windows through this roof or firmament, where the rain comes through, and if you climb high enough you can get through and visit the dwellers above, who look, and talk, and live very much in the same way as the people upon earth. As above the flat earth, so below it, there are regions inhabited by men or man-like creatures, who some- times come up to the surface, and sometimes are visited by the inhabitants of the upper earth. We live as it were upon the ground-floor of a great house, with upper storeys rising one over another above us, and cellars down below." ^ -^ The gods inhabiting this upper storey were called by the Latins Dii Superi, and by the Greeks ol ovpdvioi, ol avo), ol viraTOL, and by the American Indians, Oki, ' those ^ Kalewipoeg, Eime xvi. 38 — 42. 2 Tylor : Early History of Mankind, p. 34.9 ; London, 1S6.5. H 2 «. t loo THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF above.' But if at one time the gods were supposed to inhabit the sky, at another they were identified with the sky and its phenomena : — " Adspice hoc sublime candens quern invocaut omnes Jovem ; " ^ and moderns speak of Heaven's will, Heaven's purpose. The Chinese, before they settled into atheism, called the sky Thian, and compounded his hieroglyph of the cha- racter Ta, great, -^^ and the sign for one — , thus repre- senting heaven as the Great One.^ The Finn named his god Jumala, which is the same as the Lapp Jubmel, the Tscherk Juma, and the Samojed Num ; the name being an onomatopoetic designation of the thunder. They applied this name to the sky as the seat of thunder, and thus to the God whom they identified with the sky.^ The Arau- canians designate God as "the soul of the sky," and the Quiches name him " The Master of the Azure Surface." The North Pole, around which the constellations wheel, was regarded by some peoples as the especial seat of the Deity. The Chinese name, Tay-ye, signifying the Great Unity, has been by them applied to the North Star. The disciples of Lao-tse venerated the North, and regarded it as a sin to spit in that direction ; and Confucius, on his return from Lou, fasted, and then, having purified himself, assembled his disciples before an old altar, and having laid on it the six kings, or books he had composed, he knelt down with his face turned north, to adore Heaven.* Isaiah speaks of Lucifer in his opposition to the Most Hio'h establishing his throne in the sides of the Nortli.^ ^ Ennius, in Cic. de Nat. Deor. xxv. 2 Plath : Cultus and Eelig. p. 18. » Gastrin : Finnische Myth. p. IG. * Memoires concernant les Chinois, xii. 379. ^ Isai. xiv. 13, 14. 772^^ NAMES OF GOD loi The seven stars of the constellation Ursus major received special reverence and deification as wheeling around the North. They were the seven Eischis of India, and the seven Kudai of the Minussinian^Tartars. Tlie multiplication of names for the Deity is due to several causes. To the principal of these we shall allude in the chapter on Polytheism. But there was a potent cause which must be mentioned here. Words and ideas are so closely united, that men think there is some real hond of connexion between the thing and the name belonging to it ; and among savages, it is popularly supposed that to mention the name of an object at a distance has a direct effect upon it. The name is held to be a part of the very being of man, so that by it his personality may be carried away and grafted elsewhere. A man may be cursed or bewitched through his name. The names of drugs written on slips of paper and swal- lowed by a patient are held to work as efticaciously as the medicines themselves. ^ " This confusion of objective with subjective connexion, which shows itself so uniform in principle, though so various in details," says Mr. Tylor, one of the shrewdest observers of the characteristics of savage thought, "in the practices upon images and names, done with a view of acting through them on their originals or their owners, may be applied to explain one branch after another of the arts of the sorcerer and diviner, till it almost seems as though we were coming near the end of his list, and might set down practices not based on this mental process as exceptions to a general rule. When a lock of hair is cut off as a memorial, the subjective con- nexion between it and its former owner is not severed. ^ Davis : Chinese, ii. 215. I02 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF In the mind of the friend who treasures it up, it recalls thoughts of his presence, it is still something belonging to him. We know, however, that the objective connexion was cut by the scissors, and that what is done to that hair afterwards is not felt by the head on which it grew. But this is exactly what the savage has not come to know. He feels that the subjective bond is imbroken in his own mind, and he believes that the objective bond, which his mind never gets clearly separate from it, is unbroken too." ^ As with the hair, so with the name. Among the lower races a remarkable aversion is noticeable to the designa- tion by name of a friend or relative, lest the use of the name should produce a bad effect on the person spoken of. Thus the Indians of British Columbia exhibit an extreme dislike to mention their names, lest these names should be employed to hurt them.^ Among the Algon- quins the real name is kept a profound secret, and the ciu-rent designation is a mere nickname. It is next to impossible to induce an Indian to utter personal names ; the utmost he will do, if a person implicated is present, is to move his lips, without speaking, in the direction of the personage.^ A Hindu wife will never, under any circumstances, mention the name of her husband ; she wiU call him the Master, Swamy, &c., but will refrain carefully from giving his true name. The names of the dead are avoided with horror, lest the utterance of them should call up the ghost. This is very general among all savage races. Dr. Lang tried to get the name of a relative who had been killed ^ Tylor : Early History of Mankiiid, p. 127. 2 Mayne : British Columbia, p. 278 ; London, 1862. 3 Schoolcraft : Historical and Statistic Information, &c. part ii. pp. (55, 433; Philadelphia, 1851. THE NAMES OF GOD 103 from an Australian, " He told me who the lad's father was, who "Was his brother, what he was like, how he walked when he was alive, how he held his tomahawk in his left hand instead of his right (for he was left-handed), and with whom he usually associated; but the dreaded name never escaped his lips ; and I believe no promises or threats could have induced him to utter it." ^ The same dislike is felt to mention any spiritual beings, or anything to which supernatural powers are ascribed, not lest the naming of them should hurt them, but lest it should attract their attention to the speaker. The Dyak will not speak of the small-pox by name, but will call it " the chief," or "jungle leaves." "Talk of the Devil, and he is sure to appear," is a familiar proverb among ourselves, indicative of the same feeling. Our countryfolk will not mention the fairies and pyxies except by some euphemism, as "the Good Folk." The Yezidis, who worship the Evil One, have a horror of his name being mentioned. The Greeks called the Furies Eumenides, the gracious ones. The Mahommedan supposes that the name of God is known only to the prophets, and Allah is regarded by them as a mere title. So the Jew held that Jehovah had an incommunicable name ; and in his legends told how Solomon, beginning to utter it, made heaven and earth quake. An aged Indian of Lake Michigan Explained why tales of the spirits were only told in winter, by saying that when the deep snow is on the ground the voices of those repeating their names is muffled, but that in summer the slightest mention of them must be avoided lest the spirits should be offended.^ ^ Lang : Queensland, pp. 367, 387 ; London, 1861. Schoolcraft, part. iii. pp. 314, 492. 104 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF This dread of vexing tlie gods by mentioning their names has led to the formation of a multitude of attribu- tive titles and epithets, which could be familiarly used. In course of time these titles became sacred names, and euphemisms had to be coined for common use that they, in turn, might be avoided. The Semitic divine names bear indelibly on their front the stamp of their origin, and the language itself testifies against the insulation and abstraction of these names for polytheism. The Aryan's tongue bore no such testimony to him. The spirit of his language led him away from monotheism, whilst that of the Shemite was an ever- present monitor, directing him to a God, sole and un- divided. " The glory of the Semitic race is this," says M. Eenan, "that from its earliest days it grasped that notion of the Deity which all other peoples have had to adopt from its example, and on the faith of its declara- tion." ^ That it w^as so is, to a very great extent, owing to the construction of the language, which is such that its roots lie unaltered in every inflexion and combination, without undergoing the modifications which have, in the Aryan tongues, almost obliterated the root-form. " Li the Semitic languages, the roots expressive of the predicates wliich were to serve as the proper names of any subjects, remained so distinct within the body of a w^ord, that those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning, and retained in most cases a distinct conscious- ness of its appellative power." ^ Consequently the reduc- tion of Semitic words to their roots is infallible, whilst, on the other hand, the reduction of Aryan words to their roots is liable to error. ^ Renan : Hist. Gen. des Langnes S^mitiques, i. 5. 2 M. Miiller : Chips from a German Workshop, i. 356. THE NAMES OF GOD 105 The difference in the two linguistic families greatly affected their respective religions : whereas the structure of their words led the Shemites at once to the original signi- fication of their divine names, the shifting character of the Aryan roots obliterated rapidly their primitive meanings. .Thus there was a linguistic tendency among the Shemites to fix the theologic idea, and among the Aryans there was an opposite tendency to its obscuration. " I invoke," says the Ya^na, " I celebrate the Creator, Ahura-Mazda, lumi- nous, resplendent, very great, very active, very intelligent, and very beautiful, eminent in purity, possessor of true knowledge, source of pleasures. Him who has created, who has moulded, who has nourished us." ^ Epitliets such as these easily detached themselves from the Supreme Deity, and became the proper names of inferior gods, even in that Zarathustrian creed which almost touched the sublime conception of a sole cause, so that we find like qualities to these becoming Ameschaspends : Vohumano (from voliu, Skr. vasu, good ; and memo, Skr. manas, thought) benevo- lence ; Craosho (from crush, to hear) obedience ; Quareno glory ; Ardvi-sura (from Ardvi, Skr. ridh, high) the exalted. " These Ameschaspends, kings just and generous, deliver us from all the Devas, and the ills they bring, and from the hostile army."^ With the Aryan the significance of the old epithet was lost, and thus it became the name of a distinct god. But with the Shemite the significance was never lost. If his first conception of God was one of force, he called Him El ; and ever after, into whatever combina- tions that root would enter, the idea of force would pene- trate. If he conceived Him as a being, he would term Him Jah; and Jah would ever convey to Him the notion of divine existence. In the same way, a title of honour to ^ Yagna, ed, Spiegel, c. i. § 1. 2 Vendidad, ii. 162. io6 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Him remained but a title, and nothing save the irresistible passion for " gods many and lords many," which wrought so potently among the ancient races, could have blinded the eyes of the speakers of a Semitic language, so as to make them adore Baal, Milcom, and Eimmon, as distinct deities with different attributes. The worship addressed to each severally was like paying thrice the legitimate tribute to the monarch, because he had assumed to be called High, Exalted, Illustrious. The pagan Shemite identified the active force in nature with the sun, and the passive force with the earth. Con- sequently he gave the sun the title of Baal and the earth that of Baaltis. But the sun has its variations of power and splendour, and these variations received special de- signations. By Serach was expressed the rising sun, by Baal-Chamman the blazing noon-day orb, by Adonis the sun alternating between summer and winter, life and death. The original idea of God was vague, but it was more true than those countless vagaries of human thought which peopled heaven and earth with innumerable deities, and worshipped the same under different names. The fire of the conception of the Deity having kindled in the breast of man, exploded into terminology, coruscated in fable, and strewed the globe with sparks of truth and ashes of superstition. THE LA W OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 107 CHAPTEE VL THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT. Varieties of religious beliefs — The result of natural law — Same law prevails in physics, social life, and politics — Variety produced by simple means — Dynamics of religion — Belief progressive — Analogy of human embryo — The motor is a craving after truth — Constant flux in belief the result — Analogy of language — Accident causes rapid development or retardation of religious growth — Eeligion the synthesis of reason and sentiment — Dogma — Worship— Discipline — The statics of religion — The double tendency in all religions — Habit — Theocracies — Revelations — Benefits derived from arrest of too rapid development— Examples of counter currents — Example of stagnation. rpHE world in all ages has teemed with religious beliefs -*- of the most diverse forms of ceremonial expression, strongly contrasting in system and opposed in dogma. Here the priest smears with human blood the idol which will be overthrown on the morrow by the mis- sionary of another creed. The gods of one nation are the devils of their neighbours. Here fathers pass their children through fire to a god, and there men shelter and feed orphans as a work acceptable to their deity. These transfix their flesh with skewers, those indulge their every lust, and both from a religious motive. One worships an ideal of beauty, another an ideal of ugliness. Jacob leans on his staff to pray, Moses falls flat on his face, the lo8 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Catholic bows his knee, and the Protestant settles himself into a seat. Social customs exhibit the same spectacle of variety and oppositions. English mothers are the objects of soli- citude after their confinement, and Basque fathers, at the birth of their children, are swathed in blankets and fed with pap. Filial love is here exhibited by protracting the life of parents by every scientific appliance avail- able ; there by cutting it short with a tomahawk. Political organizations exhibit the same differences. Here the welfare of thousands is subject to the caprice of a tyrant ; there all men are on an equality. Here is feudalism, there theocracy. Under all these diversities, philosophy has been able to detect radical affinities and unity of causes. Thus, out of love to a mother, the Fiji eats her, and the Euro- pean erects a mausoleum. The sentiment is the same, but the mode of exhibition is different. In political economy, the motive impulse is self-pre- servation, which throws men together into communities, and teaches them, by a series of experiments, to elaborate a system of government conducive to the advance of society and to the preservation of individuality. Yet each tentative form is so different from another that it is at first sight difficult to see that their very difference is proof of the unity of their origin. In natural science the same result is obtained. The surface of the earth is covered with a vast multitude of species of plants, differing in habits, mode of propagation, and manner of growth. If we suppose that nature is em- ploying incalculable efforts to produce this diversity, we are mistaken. Take specimens from every quarter of the globe, and analyse them separately, and you will find THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 109 that tlieir composition is almost identical. Five or six substances have sufficed to give birth to these hetero- geneous compound organisms ; nay, further, a great number of them are combined in precisely equal pro- portions, and, however contrasting they may be in appearance, in reality they are identical. Two trees grow side by side in the same orchard ; they have precisely the same organic structure, and are composed of the same chemical constituents, arranged in the same proportions, and apparently in the same order. Their roots extract the same nutriment from the soil in the same manner, their leaves inhale and exhale the same gases ; they undergo the same changes of heat and cold, light and darkness ; yet one converts its juices into pears and the other into cherries. Wherever we look, we find evidence that nature pro- duces the most complex effects with the simplest means. This law holds when applied to the religious beliefs of humanity. They fall into groups, and are reducible to a common origin. The religious idea, like everything else that is human, undergoes growth, maturity, and decay. Beliefs spring into life and exercise a spell over intellects and hearts, produce a splendid array of flowers, and then, as the icy breath of doubt touches them, their sap congeals, they shrivel up and die, yet not before they have scattered around them living germs of new beliefs. Eeligion is the phcenix of the fable ; growing old, it fires its nest, and in the flames finds renovation. In its birth, it is a conception slowly evolved; then it becomes all at once a living belief, vividly luminous, I'or a while its meaning is accepted as final ; then it becomes obscured, and again it bursts forth, brilliant and vigorous, at some other point. no THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Eeligion does not reach perfection of development at a bound. Generations pass away before it is brought to maturity, and in its advance it passes through a series of modifications. The world is strewn with religious ideas in their different stages of development, and in each stage the form is startlingly unlike those which preceded and those which will succeed it. We erro- neously suppose ourselves to be brought face to face simultaneously with a hundred different religions, whereas, in fact, we behold one religion in its transitory forms. It is hard to believe that Schamanism, Fetishism, Poly- theism, and Monotheism are essentially one, and yet comparative theology proves conclusively their identity. Nature swarms with analogies. If we compare the new-born babe with what it was immediately before birth, we shall be amazed to see the metamorphosis which has been wrought. The organs of respiration present the most remarkable. From the first inspiration of the babe, a fresh process of aeration of the blood is commenced, which will continue throughout life, and the circulation of the blood establishes itself such as it will continue till death supervenes. But before birth one of the walls of the heart was pierced by a hole which permitted a circulation appropriate to a parasitic life ; the lungs were inert, and the vessels de- signed to act in concert with the heart only served to convey from it to them the juices that build up their spongy fabric. But not in this particular alone is there startling change, nor is it confined to this period alone. The life and progress of the embryo from the moment of conception is one of marvellous transformation. At the moment of birth the heart is divided into four cavities grouped into a nearly cellular form. In the THE LA IV OF RELIGIO US DE VELOPMENT 1 1 1 original sketch, it was very unlike the organ into which it becomes perfected at a later period. At first it is a simple, undivided canal. This tube becomes doubled on itself, assuming the shape of a horse-shoe. The interior is now subdivided into three cavities, of which the two external become gradually approximated, whilst the cen- tral -chamber, outgrowing the others, especially at its convex border, bulges out and forms the future ven- tricles. By these and certain other changes the once simple straight tube is made, step by step, to assume the rounded form and complex structure of the fully developed heart. And so with the rest of the system. The embryo in its earliest condition is nourished by absorbing from the parts in immediate contact with it alimentary materials, exactly in the same manner as any simple cellular plant obtains from the surrounding elements carbonic acid and water, and whatever else it needs for its growth. Its life is strictly analogous to that of the protozoa. This simple arrangement soon gives place to another, better able to meet the wants of the increasing embryo, namely, the network of blood-vessels which is now formed all over the sack containing the yolk. By these vessels tlie yolk, that store of nutriment which nature provides for the support of the foetus during the earlier stages of its existence, is absorbed and carried into the circu- lation of the embryo in the form of blood, into wliich it becomes converted. This plan also lasts but for a time ; the yolk is all consumed, and the vesicle which contained it shrinks and disappears. But ere this the placenta has been formed, a temporary organ, by the means of which the blood of the foetus is brought into the most intimate relation to tlie blood of the mother ; 112 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF a relation very close, but witliout actual admixture of the two. The foetal blood is enabled to obtain from the blood of the parent all the nutriment that is requisite to bring the child to that state of development at which it is able to maintain a separate existence. There is an incessant instability in the relations be- tween the different parts of the little being, in whom the conditions of life, to arrive at their final expression, seem to be constrained to destroy each other. Before deciding on a direct course in the development of an organ, Nature appears to hesitate, and proceed tentatively. She abandons one point to turn her formative power on another; then she returns on her traces, and rapidly perfects what she had left for a while incomplete. From this irregular march result the greatest diversities in the general appear- ance which the embryo presents at different ages. It began like a cystic animal ; from a central focus of life it resolved itself into axidal action; and the parts were gradually differentiated. Before reaching the perfect type, it has traversed all the lower degrees at which the inferior creatures halt in their definite development. The em- bryonic life may be represented as composed of evolutive periods destined to sketch the features characterising each individual organism, beginning with the most general, and finishing with those which assign it its definite rank among the varieties of its species. It is a mechanism function- ating long before it has reached its'perfection, and Nature is never more admirable than when she allows us to surprise the ingenious expedients by which she works towards the contemplated form by passing through a succession of very different intermediary forms. In like manner, but more openly, Nature leads other creatures through a series of types before she accomplishes THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 113 her task. The loathsome maggot eventuates in a scarlet- eyed fly with gauzy wings, and a panoply of metallic golden green. The crinkled, apparently lifeless chrysalis hangintr in the chink of the wall, bursts and discloses a gorgeous butterfly. A mass of jelly, dotted with pin-points of black, nourishes those specks till they emerge as inform monsters with large heads, staring eyes, and a flexible tail ; in a little while the tail is shed, legs are protruded, and the tadpole has developed into an elegant batrachian with delicately clouded skin. The course of the religious idea in reaching maturity closely resembles the processes of nature sketched above. The shapeless religion of a primitive people gradually assumes a definite form. It is that of nature worship. It progresses through polytheism and idolatry, and emerges into monotheism or pantheism. Now it projects one reli- gious feature, now another, into undue prominence ; then it atrophies it, or develops other features, and so progresses by a series of jerks, till it reaches its ultimate limit. As we light on these religious embryons in all their stages of progression, we are startled at their monstrosity. But whence this monstrosity? The incompletion of the work. Here the doctrine of sin has forced the sacri- ficial ritual into frightful exaggeration, there the doctrine of election has atrophied all index^endence of action. Here ISTature is busy perfecting the emotional phase of religion, and there she is engaged upon intellectual elaboration. The formation of each organ in the child is for its physical well-being, and the little creature is not perfected till every organ has reached its definite development. If we look at the embryo during that stage when with scant traces of VOL. I. I 114 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF limbs it has all the appearance of a little seal, it is rex^iil- sive. It is the same with religion. Every religious phase is a spiritual organ — is the expression of a religious ten- dency. Every creed in which all the religious tendencies of mankind are not perfectly developed and nicely co- ordinated is necessarily imperfect. When we shrink from the licentious orgies of Baaltis, or shudder at the bloody rites of Moloch, we do so because the religion that sanctions them is structurally imperfect. The motive force in religion is the stretching towards some spiritual aim, which we will call truth. What that truth is, can only be guessed in an early age, and can only be ascertained in the present by a categorical criticism of the religious instincts of humanity. This motive force pre- cipitates man into superstition ; he takes hold of a single truth and makes a religious hobby of it, w^holly oblivious of collateral truths. When he finds that he has gone wrong, he turns upon some forgotten truth, and runs away with that, only again to find that he is not right, and again to pass through a religious crisis and revolution. I may be allowed here to quote what I have said elsewhere,^ Eeli- gion is, by the general consent of mankind, required to be based upon truth. The supreme importance of religion, as dealing with the mysteries of man's creation, being, and future existence, is acknowledged on all sides ; and the duties it imposes are accepted as binding. But this defer- ence is yielded only because religion is believed to be in- fallibly true. If in it there be uncertainty and unrelia- bility, its obligations become intolerable, and its restraints are found to be unendurable. At intervals the speculative world is agitated. It slowly awakes to consciousness that ^ Church and World, iii. 224 ; Longmans, 1868. THE LA IV OF RELIGIO US DE VELOPMENT 1 1 5 the current religion does not satisfy the requirements of truth. It detects flaws in its title-deeds, or discovers that it possesses no credentials at all. It subjects the assertions of religion to scrutiny. It questions its authority. Far from acting on any blind instinct of repulsion, speculation pursues with determination and enthusiasm the analysis of religion, that it may detach truth from those heterogeneous elements with which it has been combined by the fraud or ignorance of the past. Unlike Pilate, who, after asking what was truth, went forth leaving the question unsolved, with an intensity of purpose paralleled by that with which men in positions of danger strive for life, does it grapple with the momentous questions of theology, and wring from them a confession of their inherent truth or of their falsehood. The world of thouoiit, having satisfied itself with an answer — that answer being, not always highly satis- factory, but contenting the existing state of apprehension — tranquillity ensues, during which men glory in the achievements of tliose who purged their creed of what was false, and brought it into a condition of supposed permanent incorruptibility. In these times of repose thought stagnates, no fresh grains of ideas are thrown out, or fall on soil too exhausted to receive them, whilst those dispersed by the foregoing storm slowly fecundate, flower, seed, and decay. The old forces have apparently expended themselves. But this is not the case. Silently and im- perceptibly they are gathering for a fresh reassertion of their power, by overthrowing the purified faith, because it, too, has given evidence of imperfections, in order that a theology may be re-organized on a still newer and more comxolete system, which in its turn, in the fulness of time, will be itself subverted, after that it has satisfied I 2 ii6 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF the then cravings of men, and has accomplished its temporary mission. We see the law of religious renewal actuating most of the religions of antiquity, advancing hand in hand with civilization. A barbarous mythology will not long content an intellectually cultivated people ; and, unless a reforma- tion be brought about, and a system be elaborated to meet its requirements, that people must lapse into indifferentism or atheism, Babylonish idolatry was rebelled against by Yanbushadh, when the city was under the influence of social advance. Zoroaster reformed the Iranian creed when Persia was casting off its primeval barbarism, Buddha upreared his system against a degraded Brahmanism, to satisfy an awakening Indian mind. Votan reasserted the truth as the basis of religion in Mexico, when the Aztec empire was exhibiting a capacity for progression. And Mahomet subverted the Ssabian polytheism, when that polytheism was dying a natural death. The law of development, which is impressed on all animate nature, is stamped as weU on religious beliefs. As the lowest organisms contain rudimentary traces of members perfected in those above them, so also do inferior theological systems exhibit an upward tendency. And, in cases where civilization and mental culture are not checked, the lower type of religion will eventuate in one higher, truer, and nobler than itself ; not altogether perfect, maybe, Init in advance of its predecessor, and containing within itself springs which will impel it forward in its turn. Beliefs are never stationary ; they are in a state of continual flux. In this they resemble languages, which, though brought to an apparent standstill by a classic lite- rature, are full of dialectic currents, which interpenetrate, and in course of time overflow that barrier. " LanQuages." THE LA W OF RELIGIO US DE VEL OPMENT 1 1 7 says Professor Max Miiller, " are constantly changing ; Liit never in tlie history of man has there been a new lan- jmaffe. What does that mean ? Neither more nor less than that, in speaking as we do, we are using the same materials, however broken up, crushed, and put together anew, which were handled by the first speakers, i.e. the first real ancestor of our race. Call that ancestor Adam, and the world is still speakmg the language of Adam. Call those ancestors Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and the races of mankind are still speaking the languages of Shem, Ham, and Japheth." ^ In the following chapters we shall trace the history of the evolution of the religious idea through its difterent stages. In one race its development has been rapid, in another slow ; imperfect here, complete there : here one practice is exaggerated, there another, and there again a third has been built up to harmonize the other two. Thus the world is strewn with egg, grulj, chrysalis, and butter- fly creeds. The march of the religious idea depends on accidents. It is accelerated or retarded by those physical circum- stances which control the progress of the human race in every department. Geographical situation, social habits, and political fortune have left their stamp upon the reli- gious sentiment and religious idea. The blustering nature of the Scandinavian gods reflects the characteristics of a boreal climate ; the graceful mythology of Greece mirrors the graceful contours of a favoured southern land. Tlie sanguinary worship of the Aztecs arose from their having been compelled to battle their way into power, and to pre- ' Chips. &f., ii. 2.54. ii8 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF serve their supremacy by force of arms. The hippophagisra of the Tartar and ancient Norseman sprang up from tlie ne- cessities of a nomad life, and becoming a habit, became also ' a religious act. The cannibalism of the Maories was a sacred ceremony, because the islands they inhabited were void of mammals, and the race would have died out for want of nutritious diet had it not stocked its larder with human flesh. The desert made the Arab monotheistic ; the plains of Mesopotamia, bare of interest, directed the Chaldean into astrolatry ; and the mighty Nile flooded, not the valley of Egypt only, but the theodicy of the people also. Variety of natural conditions originates variety in natural types ; the friction of different interests produces originality ; the variety in climates produces variety in men. That which has made Europe great, and with her greatness has made her full of currents of religious specu- lation, is the great variety of races, classes, and individuals gathered together in a limited area, and with that area so indented with seas, so broken into varieties of level by mountains, so diversified in climate, that its geographical character creates a number of interests, and the clashing together of interests makes the race progressive. In the eternal summer of tropical Africa, the negro stagnates. Centuries roll over him, and he is the same. He has not the mental energy to add together numbers, nor the inven- tive genius to devise letters, nor the speculative elan to rise above fetishism. This also is quite according to the analogy of nature. There is a class of organisms whose origin has not yet been discovered, but which seem to be born of contingent cir- cumstances. It is possible to provoke their appearance by giving occasion to the circumstances favourable to their birth, as by leaving certain liquids at rest under the requi- THE LA W OF RELIGIO US DE VELOPMENT 1 1 9 site influences, or by allowing organized substauces to decompose. One may, moreover, obtain different beings according as these corpuscles are suffered to vivify in liglit or in darkness ; in the first case they produce animalcules, in the second cryptogamous plants : not only so, but the development of certain animals, when larvae, may be arrested and perfected in this way or that way at will, according to the course of treatment to which they are subjected. Eeligious ideas have been quite as dependent on cir- cumstances for their regular or intermittent advance, and for the peculiar type which they have assumed. With religious ideas, as with races and individuals, there is a constant struggle for existence, which results in the disappearance of baser forms before those of a higher type. The Finnish epic " Kalewala" closes with an account of the god Wainamoinen entering his coracle, and paddling north to the wastes of snow and eternal silence when he hears of the birth of Christ. Thus every imperfect creed has fled before that which is more perfect. If the people are mentally and morally advanced enough to receive it, then, well and good, the Dagons fall before the ark of a better covenant ; but, if the higher creed is pressed on a people not sufficiently educated to embrace it, it suffers degrada- tion till it reaches their level. Thus there is a retrograde movement in religions, a tendency to lose vigour, and originality, and refinement ; to become torpid and com- monplace. The symbol loses its significance and is mate- rialized, the allegory is perverted into a sacred tradition, and the hypothesis hardens into a doctrine. Eeligion, as has been already show^n, is the synthesis of thought and sentiment. It is the representation of a 120 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF philosophic idea. It always reposes on some hypothesis. At first it is full of vigour, constantly on the alert to win converts. Then the hypothesis is acquiesced in ; it is received as fi.nal ; its significance evaporates. The priests of ancient times were also philosophers, but not being able always to preserve their intellectual superiority, their doctrines became void of meaning, hieroglyphs of which they had lost the key, and then speculation ate its way out of religion, and left it an empty shell of ritual observance void of vital principle. Philosophy alone is not religion ; nor is sentiment alone religion ; but religion is that which, based on an intelligible principle, teaches that principle as dogma, exhibits it in worship, and applies it in discipline. Dogma, worship, and discipline are the constituents, so to speak, the mind, spirit, and body of religion. Every religion mnst have some reason to give for its existence. It must solve certain difficulties which perplex man, by telling him what is the cause of all the effects he cannot himself account for, and whither his spiritual instincts tend, and what wiU be his destiny after death ? Its doctrine must be intelligible ; that is, on the level of the comprehension of those who are expected to embrace it : for, if it be below this level, it will be discarded as insufficient; if it be above it, it will suffer immediate transformation and degradation. "Why did you baptize that Iroquois ? " asked a Huron Christian of the missionary; " if he gets to heaven before us Hurons, he will scalp us, and turn us out." ^ " Shall we have, in heaven, better pies than those the French make ? " asked another Indian.^ Worship is homage rendered to God. It is an attempt to bring man and God into mutual relation. The form ^ Le Mercier : Relation des Hurons ; 1637. 2 Parkman : Pioneers of France ; 1867. THE LA W OF RELIGIO US DE VELOPMENT 1 2 1 assumed by it to ensure permanence must harmonize with the dogmatic notion of God. If the god be an ideal of beauty, and his worship be conducted on a type the perfection of ugliness, one of two results must ensue; the idea of the god will be lowered to the type of worship, or the service will be revolted from by the worshipper. Thus, some of the Mexican gods were ideally beneficent and holy, and the devotion felt towards them exhibited itself in the sacrifice of that which by man is regarded as the most precious offering he can make — human life. When these benevolent gods' altars reeked with gore, their own characters deteriorated, and they came to be regarded as bloodthirsty and malicious deities. Man at once perceives the incongruity between the mode of worship and the idea of the object worshipped, and he seeks to harmonize them in the best way he can, generally by dragging the idea of God to the level of the mode of worship, rather than by elevating the worship to conform to the idea of God. Discipline is a rule of moral observance. Man exists in a relative position towards his fellow-men, and towards God. If the religion affect to interfere with his social and political relations, it lays down laws to direct his conduct as a member of society and of a political body. If it confine its attention to the regulation of his spirit, then its table of commandments bears only on liis re- sponsibilities towards God. If the precepts imposed with the sanction of religion be too numerous, minute, and burdensome, and be arbitrary, of no appreciable significance and practical use to himself or others, before long he will break the yoke from off his neck. A flaw in any one of these particulars will cause a disruption in any religious system, and the substitution 122 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF of another system supposed to be free from this defect. Wlien a religion fails to meet the demands of the intellect, the cravings of the heart, or the requirements of the moral sense, its doom is sealed. A reformation ensues. The new religion may not be better, but the fact of a change having been wrought is in itself evidence of the imperfec- tion of the former system, writing upon it, " Tekel : thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting." But in religion there is not only a dynamic force, but there is a static force as well — a force which tends to impede development, and whose action is at one time beneficial, at another detrimental. Every religion exhibits, more or less, this double tendency : one liberal, the other conservative ; one having for purpose the giving free scope to the expansion of man's faculties and activities, the other endeavouring to control the faculties and limit indi- vidual and social independence. Nowhere has one or other of these tendencies triumphed absolutely. Among those nations which have been subject to the most despotic theocracies, liberty of thought, like a subterranean fire, hidden and working secretly, suddenly manifests itself in eruptions and violent disturbance of the long regnant tranquillity. On the other hand, among prosperous nations which glory in their liberty, the theocratic element lies in some fold of the law, or presents itself to the imagination as an escape from the tyranny of public opmion, and it suddenly emerges from obscurity to grapple with its ancient rival ; and sometimes successfidly. The force arresting rapid change in religious beliefs exhibits itself in the formation of religious habits, and in the constitution of theocracies. A word on halDits. THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 123 They arrest development in two ways : first, through individual association ; and secondly, through destruction of individuality. A little child, with judgment unformed, and without experience to guide it, and tell it what to seek and what to shun, obeys in nearly all its determinations, and conse- quently in its acts, the example of others. It does what it sees others do, till the mode of viewing objects and acting upon sensations becomes habitual. It would seem as though every act directed the flow of a vital stream over some soft and loamy surface, which it furrowed into a channel, to be deepened by after acts, tiU an alteration of the course becomes an impossibility. Habit, feeble at first, grows daily stronger, and at length becomes irre- sistible. Habit is a second nature, says the proverb ; but the truth is understated ; habit becomes nature itself. It is, in fact, a law of nature manifesting itself in things called material as well as in those -which are intelligent. The more material and rude beings are, the more readily do they contract habits, and the more sure they are, having contracted habits, to remain invariable under them. Pos- sibly immobility may be a habit of the stone, and it does not alter its mode of being because it is so habituated to inertiou that it has not the vigour to break through it. Plants are susceptible of contracting habits. A branch which of its own accord would assume a vertical position, may be forced by an obstacle to take up one which is horizontal ; it resists at first, but after a while it yields, and having accepted a horizontal growth, prefers it. We know also, by observation, that animals can be trained to a number of actions which are not instinctive, and that after the habit has become old-established, they act upon it with apparent spontaneity, and transmit the habit to 124 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF their offspring.^ So with man. A habit once acquired is never wholly cast off. An habitual mode of believing, thinking, worshipping, becomes a portion of his nature. His convictions may be violently dislocated, but the cus- tomary manner of thinking and exj^ressing himself main- tains itself He knows that the sun does not revolve about the earth, and yet he always thinks and speaks of it as if it did, because his senses have habituated him to regard it as rising and setting. In like manner, habits founded in faith prolong themselves long after that faith is extinct. What men are accustomed to they are attached to ; their reason and their sentiment are ranged on oppo- site sides, and they allow reason to wink at the habits to which they cling with affection. Use becomes law, and they will not overthrow use except when its burden becomes intolerable. The Eoskolniks separated from the Orthodox Church in Eussia, because that Church admitted an improvement in the mode of singing, and in the paint- ing of icons, and in the cut of the priests' hats. Habit was so strong even in Socrates, that he, in dying, offered a cock to Esculapius, in whom he had ceased to believe. The tendency of civilization and social levelling is to destroy individuality. In a rude age every man thinks for himself, and believes what he thinks proper ; but those times when liberty of thought and expression are most loudly proclaimed are precisely the times when least originality of thought will manifest itself, and the smallest amount of real liberty is accorded. For that habit of thought, belief, and action which is common to the many becomes a law for all, and an infringement of the cus- tomary is resented by the community. Tlie giant forms 1 Cf. Sierebois : La Morale, cap. ii. Du Pouvoir de rHabitude ; Paris, 1867. THE LA W OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 125 of religious reformers appear in the cliiaroscuro of vio- lently contrasting social positions and political systems, but only commonplace characters creep through the uniform grey of social equality. People believe in herds, and disbelieve in herds. One Swiss canton is Catholic, the next is Protestant; nearly all the inhabitants of each are of one way of thinking. The cantons of Berne and Lucerne are both German, but in the former Protestantism is the general creed ; in the latter, Catholicism. The men of Vaud and the men of Chablais are alike French, but the first hold with Calvin, and the second hold with the Pope. This is because men do not ask themselves. What is right ? but, What do others think right ? They shrink from adopt- ing a view which is not that of all their neighbours. Popular opinion fixes the creed, the ethics, and the ritual of the religion of the many. The censorship of the public invades every act and feeling of personal conduct, and it holds up the consent of the majority as a standard of orthodoxy, and of sentiment, and of morality, to which the minority are forced to conform : the method of compul- sion is at one time persecution with faggot and sword, at another with slander and obloquy. People shrink from the adoption of an unpopular line of conduct, and the habit of believing and thinking and acting like every one else becomes confirmed. " It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus, the mind itself is bowed to the yoke : even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of ; they like in crow^ds ; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes, until, by dint of not following their own nature, they have no nature to follow ; their human capacities are wither 126 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF and starved ; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home-growth, or properly their own."i We will consider next the theocratic force arresting development. God is held to govern the world directly or indirectly. When God is supposed to govern tlie world directly, the theocracy is divine ; God himself is King. 'When He governs indirectly, the intermediaries are priests, kings, or revealed codes. Consequently, we have four stages of theocratic civilization ; three forms of re- ligious arrest : — The divine age, when God was king. The sacerdotal age, when the priest was king. The monarcho-sacerdotal age, when the king was priest. The bibliocratic age, when the authority was lodged in a charter. In Ethiopia, the gods were at first regarded as the only kings ; the priests succeeded them ; he among them who was touched by the image of the god carried in proces- sion was proclaimed sovereign by the people, who regarded him as the elect of the gods. Warrior kings succeeded, under the authority and direction of the priest, till they acquired sufficient independence to break the sacerdotal yoke.^ According to Herodotus and Diodorus, Egypt was suc- cessively governed by gods of first, second, and third orders. Those of the first order represent the divine age ; those of the second and third were pontiffs, or human gods, and constitute the sacerdotal age ; finally, with Menes, the 1 J. S. Mill : On Liberty, p. 36 ; People's edition, 1867. 2 Died. Siciil. iii. 5, 6. THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 127 sovereignty passed from the sacerdotal caste to that of the warriors, but did not cease to be a theocracy still. A Pharaoh who could order the male children of a portion of his subjects to be drowned like whelps, might not assume despotic power till he had passed through the school of the clergy, and had been incorporated into their order. When consecrated, he regulated the whole cycle of religious worship, as well as the machinery of the Egyptian state. In Peru, where the Emperor chose mates for his marriageable subjects, and regulated their daily diet, a word against the Inca was regarded as a blasphemy against God. In China, religion and politics have become so fused that they have become indistinguishable. Mounted on his " dragon throne," the Emperor is always orthodox, is the source and champion of established order, the exponent of the mysterious principles which underlie the course of nature, and the organ of that energy which lingers about and above us. Heaven itself is present in him, and he becomes in that presence a celestial potentate, and the pattern of perfection to every member of the human race. Among the Hebrews, the theocracy passed through all four forms. Jehovah, the Most High, was the sovereign of the race, reigning directly by Himself, and indirectly through prophets, Levites, judges, kings, and the law. This sovereignty was at first exercised immediately; it was so in the age of the Patriarchs. Moses brought it into the sacerdotal form, which continued after the rise of the monarcho-theocratic period, beginning with Saul, who passed through the school of the prophets and was specially inspired, David, Solomon, and their successors retained this sacred authority and character, and were always in communication with God, either directly or mediately. 128 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF The ruin of the Jewish monarchy put a term to this age, and it was succeeded by the bibliocratic age, wlien the source of authority, of law, the revelation of the truth, was sought in sacred writings. The history of Christianity exhibits three successions. The apostolic and sub-apostolic age was one of pure divine theocracy. To this succeeded the sacerdotal theocracy of the middle ages, gradually tending towards regal theocracy, exhibiting itself in the consecration of kings, and resigna- tion to their hands of the appointment of prelates and the regulation of ecclesiastical discipline. They became monarchs " by the grace of God," " Most Christian," " Apostolic " kings, " eldest sons of the Church," and " Defenders of the Faith." The next stage was the biblio- cratic age, opened with the Eeformation. The Scriptures were then assumed to be the ultimate authority on doctrine and ethics ; they w^ere supposed to contain " all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." ^ This mode of arresting modification is not, however, final, and cannot in the nature of things be final : for, firstly, the significance of the terms in which the revelation is couched must be subject to the most conflicting interpretations ; and secondly, the authority of the revelation will be constantly exposed to be questioned, and the genuineness of the documents to be disputed. It would be unjust to conclude that the static force in religion is invariably mischievous. Far from it ; its opera- tion has been often salutary. Without it religious ideas ^ Articles of Religion, Art. vi. THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 129 would have never assumed consistency ; the world would have been filled with as many religions as there were individuals, and these persons would have been contin- ually modifying their views, which they would as lightly fling aside as they would lightly adopt them. The definite systematization of religion would prove a link of cohesion binding tribe to tribe into the nation, and thus producing civilization. Eeligion has been the nurse of science, of the arts, of poetry, painting, sculpture, archi- tecture, and music. It has been so solely because the evolution of new theological speculations has been arrested. In the most remote ages of which tradition speaks, Egypt was a country inhabited by wandering hordes of shepherds, hunters, and fishers. A few centuries later we find the same land covered with crops, teeming with busy people, who are obedient to law, devoted to agriculture, and actively intelligent. How was this transformation wrought ? By the establishment of a sacerdotal caste, and a consolidation of the floating theological dreams of the barbarous natives into a religious system. Among the North American Indians religious belief is not fixed, and it changes in every generation, and every sacred myth becomes altered in the mouth of every narrator. These peoples have been singularly free from any tendency to arrest the flux of belief, and they have never emerged out of barbarism. Probably the static force is as necessary as the dynamic force to produce the well-being of man, and preserve equi- librium. A theocracy, up to a certain point, is educative ; beyond that point, it is obstructive. Religious indepen- dence, without religious conservatism to fret it, would lapse into irreligious indifference. These are opposed forces, but VOL. I. K I30 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF their mean is human advantage. Where there are no currents, stagnation supervenes. Thus the history of great nations exhibits them reeling from one extreme to another, but at each recoil shooting forward. The tendency to crystallize and the tendency to dissolve are apparent in all the great religions of antiquity, under different forms, according to the temperament and genius and degree of civilization peculiar to each people. In Egypt, the double tendency appeared in a struggle between castes, and especially between the priestly and military castes. From the reign of Menes, the first human king of that country, the theocracy protested, and the priests forced the successors of Menes to inscribe on their monuments curses against that prince. Under Cheops and Chephreu the temples were closed, and the sacerdotal caste appeared to be crushed ; but it revived more powerful than ever with the election of Sethos, priest of Phtah ; the warriors, despoiled of their lands, abandoned the king, and emigrated in a mass to Ethiopia. The inferior castes pro- fited by this emigration ; they were armed for the defence of the country, and were called to public life. Psammeti- chus and his successors opened the ports to strangers ; Greeks were admitted into Egypt as mercenaries ; a Greek dynasty replaced that of the kings descendants of the gods ; the isolation and ancient immobility of Egypt gave way to progress, to the exchange of products and of ideas. The old theocratic forms survived, but the spirit was gone ; and to the priests themselves the mysteries of their order, their sacred books, their symbolic ceremonies, became in- comprehensible, and as hard to decipher as the hieroglyphic inscriptions that adorned their temple walls. In Judffia, the powerful theocracy under Saul and his THE LAW OF REIJGIOUS DKVELOPAfENr 131 successors found a counterpoise in proplietism. The kings, though true to the theocratic principle, attempted to infuse heathenism into the veins of Mosaism. Solomon built the Temple, and dedicated it to the Most High, but he was a heathen at heart. The tone of his estimate of life and of society, and his views of government, were all essentially heathen ; his habits, manners, and morals were therefore heathen. And the same may be said of his successors. But opposed to them were the prophets, men from among the people, pleaders and defenders of the popular cause.^ In India, which has long and erroneously been regarded as a land of immobility, the religious life aj^pears more active and developed than in any other country. The struggle between the two principles or systems of liberty and religious despotism is found to have raged there, as in Egypt, under the form of caste-rivalry. From the earliest times, when India was conquered by the Aryans, the Brah- mans formed themselves into a superior caste, in opposition to the Kshatriyas, or warriors, who strove in vain to over- throw them. The history of these struggles has not been preserved, but traces of them remain in the great epics of India. From that time the warriors only preserved and exercised their privileges under the tutelage of the priest- hood, and bound hand and foot by sacred laws. Such an enormous tension of the theocratic power necessarily produced a corresponding reaction ; it mani- fested itself, not by a violent revolution, nor by a special revelation, but by the calm and logical reasoning of a philosophic doctrine, which, after its founder, has been called Buddhism. Buddhism, at the outset, appears as a ^ Philippsohn : Development of the Religious Idea, Lect. iv. " Prophetisni ;" London, 1855. k2 132 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF rational protest against the system of castes, and of reli- gious and political despotism, Qakya-mouni, the promul- gator of this doctrine, attacked with equal violence despotic tyranny, formalism, liypocrisy, and hereditary monopoly of religious or political power. To the outcast and the poor he opened a road, without distinction of persons, to that religious life which had been hitherto regarded as the special prerogative of the Brahman. To these principles of liberty Buddhism owed its tremendous influence and rapid progress. But it is so true that every religion, how- ever liberal and spiritual it may be at first, must fall under the influence of the converse tendency, that we see Bud- dhism almost everywhere giving birth to results diame- trically contradictory to its primitive doctrine. Thus, in Ceylon, it admits and tolerates the existence of caste. In China, the Buddhist patriarchs are placed above the laity, and receive the pompous title of " Princes of Doc- trine." In Thibet, a theocracy as powerful as that of the Brahman s, and more despotically constituted, has issued from tlie pure democracy of Buddha. The chief of the priests, the Grand Llama, is the incarnation of the Divinity, and is adored as God, all-powerful, infallible, immortal, having the supreme control over all things temporal and spiritual, the power of remitting sins, and of dominating over the political chiefs.'^ Christianity has exhibited the same contradiction in its development. Sacerdotal despotism succeeded in the middle ages in concentrating all power over consciences and intelligences in the hands of an order whose centre was in Piome. Philosophy was made the handmaid of religion, and not its consort. Innovation was error; spe- culation was profanity. Aristotelianism invaded the intel- ^ Flotard : Etudes sur la Theocratic ; Paris, ISCl. THE LAW OF RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT 133 lectual world, and dogmatism took tlie alarm, and de- nounced syllogistic and rational method. S. Thomas Aquinas filled his pitcher at the fountain of the Stagyra, and poured it forth in theologic wine : then Aristotle was countenanced, Descartes was persecuted ; but afterwards Cartesian philosophy was reverted to as a safeguard of religion. Galileo was imprisoned, ISTewton condemned, and, after all, their views have been accepted. " Strange destiny, that of theology, to be condemned to be for ever attaching itself to those systems which are crumbling away," writes M. Maury ; " to be essentially hostile to all science that is novel, and to all progress." 1 The Reformation was a revolt against tliat oppressive despotism of the Eoman theocracy which crushed the human intellect and paralysed freedom of action. But what was the result of the Eeformation ? The esta- blishment of a royal alongside of a biblical theocracy. The Crown became the supreme head to order what religion is to consist of, how worship is to be conducted, and what articles of faith are to be believed. Or else religion is anchored to a sacred volume, and " a mere literal adhe- rence to the text of the Bible has constituted as complete a spiritual slavery as any which had been imposed by the dictation of a domineering priesthood, and an infallible Church ; they did but transfer the claim of oracular authority from the priest to the text, or rather to the preacher's interpretation of it. Such was the first prin- ciple and foundation of the system which may be best designated by the name of Puritanism, which has exerted as pernicious an influence over modern Christianity, on the one side, as Eomanism on the other." ^ ' Essai sur les Legendes pieuses, p. xix. ; Paris, 1843. ^ Baden Powell : (Jhiistianity without Judaism, p. 81 ; London, 1858. 134 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF lu China we liave an instance of a vast nation in which no counter currents of religious despotism and religious freedom occur : the result is absolute indifference. For thousands of years the Chinese have been stationary ; they all think alike, behave alike, believe alike, disbelieve alilce. Habit has materialized them, and brought them to permanent rest. In Europe we have an instance of a perpetual clashing of these antagonistic forces, resulting in an earnest and enthusiastic passion for truth, which those petrified by au absolute theocracy, or those weakened by the wash of fluctuating opinion, can never realize. In conclusion : It seems certain that for man's spiritual well-being these forces need co-ordination. Under au infallible guide, regulating every moral and theological item of his spiritual being, his mental faculties are given him that they may be atrophied, like the eyes of the oyster, which, being useless in the sludge of its bed, are re-absorbed. Under a perpetual modification of religious belief, his convictions become weak and watery, without force, and destitute of purpose. In the barren wilderness of Sinai there are here and there green and pleasant oases. How come they there ? By basaltic dykes arresting the rapid drainage which leaves the major part of that land bald and waste. So, in the region of religion, revelations and theocratic systems have been the dykes saving it from barrenness, and encouraging mental and sentimental fertility. THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM 135 CHAPTER VII. THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM. Difficulty of realizing the state of mind of a savage — The first stage in prinia^'val religion one of autotheism ; then a perception and veneration of resistances — Classification of resisting forces — Nature woi-ship— Brute worship — Personification of phenomena — The Greek the typical polytheist — The names of the sun become distinct solar deities — Moral deities — Astrolatry — Theogonies. TT is no easy matter for a man of ordinary education to -*- form a notion of the mental fallowness of a rustic of his own day ; it is far more difficult for him to divest his mind of all its acquisitions through study and observa- tion, and reduce his ideas to the level of those of the progenitor of his race, whom we will call Areios. This, however, must be our task if we are to arrive at a true conception of the dawn and development of religious ideas. With our clear sense of the oneness of God, of His moral perfections, and of His relation to nature, we can with difficulty jjicture to ourselves the rude theological attempts of our early forefathers. The path leading to theism is to our eyes a way of light, and we forget that it is like the path traced by the sun upon the waters, over restless waves and unfathomed deeps. Man had to fray his road through a wilderness of fable before he could reach the truth, and traverse a multitude of intermediary deities before he could conceive a King of gods, which, 136 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF thougli it is an idea divided from pure monotheism by a gulf, is yet within view of it. Let us attempt to cast ourselves back in imagination to pre-historic ages, and observe the acts and measure the thoughts of Areios, new upon the earth. All his faculties are in abeyance, and he knows not what capacities and powers are his. The world outside is nothing to him yet ; lie first explores his own being. He has a vigorous in- telligence, without being aware of it, for he has not used it. Slowly he acquires facts, assimilates them, and draws conclusions from them. In his attempts to advance he stumbles and falls. Yet every fault gives him an impetus forward. The pain produced by error is the whip that urges him into civilization. Before man can learn to do things right, he must do things wrong. Before he can discover the right path in science, religion, and political economy, he has to flounder through a bog of blunders. The girl strums discords before she strikes harmonies ; the boy scratches pothooks before he draws straight lines. The early religious beliefs of the human family are its discords and pothooks, the stages of error by which it has travelled before correct ideas can be attained. At first, then, man is conscious of no existence save his own ; he is like the brute, self-centred and seK-sufficient ; he is his own God. He is Autotheist. But presently he feels resistances. Effects surround him of which he is not the cause. The outlines of the exterior world loom out of the fog and assume precision. He acknowledges that there are other objects, that there exist other forces, beside himself The convulsions of nature, the storm, the thunder, the exploding volcano, the raging sea, fill him with a sense of there being a power THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM 137 superior to bis own, before wbicb be must bow. His religious tbougbt, Vcague and undetermined, is roused by tbe opposition of nature to bis will. His next stage is tbe classification of tbe pbysical forces. His intellectual ideas are like metal in fusion : tbe material world is tbe mould into wbicb tbey fiow and from wbicb tbey receive tbeir sbape. Nature is miglity, beautiful, wise. He bows to it in its various manifesta- tions, and adores tbe sun, tbe sky, tbe dawn, tbe tempest, witbout for a moment forgetting tbeir pbysical cbaracter. It is not inert nature tbat be worsbips, but one animated, and invested by bim witb bis own sentiments ; for be bas not yet learned to distinguisb bimself from otber creatures, as tbe sole rational being. Tberefore he attributes to all objects a life and a reason analogous to bis own. Cbildren in play act in tbe same manner; addressing tbeir dolls and pets as tbougb tbey were endowed witb under- standing. Caspar Hauser, tbat mysterious boy brougbt up in isolation and ignorance, was a striking example of tbe degree of intelligence wbicb primitive peoples must bave possessed. He exbibited almost tbrougbout bis wbole life an incredible difficulty in distinguisbing tbose tbiugs wbicb were animate from tbose wbicb were inanimate. Every movement be supposed to be spontaneous. If be toucbed bis little wooden borses and tbey moved, be attributed tbe motion to tbeir shrinking from bis toucb. If any one struck a stock or stone, be exbibited distress, thinking tbat these objects must be sensible to pain. Mademoiselle Leblanc, the savage woman, of whom Louis Eacine bas given such a valuable biography, exbibited a precisely similar want of capacity. iS8 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF The intelligence apparent in tlie beast bears such a close resemblance to that in man, that it is not to be wondered at if Areios failed to detect the line of demarcation between instinct and reason. It was not a merely fancied external resemblance between the beast and man, but it was a perception of the similarity of the skill, pursuits, desires, sufferings, and griefs of tlie brnte to those of him- self which led him to seek within the beast something analogous to the soul within himself ; and this, notwith- standing the points of contrast existing between them, elicited in his mind so strong a sympathy that, without a great stretch of imagination, he invested the animal with his own attributes, and with the full powers of his own understanding. He regarded it as actuated by the same motives, as subject to the same laws of honour, as moved by the same prejudices; and the higher the beast was in the scale, the more he regarded it as his equal, and even as his superior.^ In the struggle with the savage races of beasts in the hunter's life, how many members of the tribe were tracked down and devoured ? Man was forced to protect himself against the lion, the tiger, the wolf, and above all the serpent, which, gliding through the herbage, struck, when least expected, its poison-fangs into his flesh, and slew him. In order to preserve himself from their attacks, he adored those which he could not master, and thus arose zoolatria. If the worship of the lion and the tiger died out, it was because man discovered the use of iron, and could stab or shoot his god. If ophic worship perpetuated itself long after other forms of zoolatry had disappeared, it was because the serpent was that creature against which weapons and precautions were of least avail. In southern 1 Baring-Gould : Book of Werewolves, p. 155 ; Loiulon, li:G5. THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM 139 lands the dread of the serpent is most intense, for there the danger arising from it is most felt, and it is because this danger can be so imperfectly guarded against that, among the religions of hot countries, " The trail of the serpent is over them all." In the North, the bear was the object of dread, and con- sequently the object of worship. The Finn believed it came from the land of sun and moon, and was born miraculously,^ and he venerated it as an inferior deity. Sun, moon, and stars were also invested by man with a life and knowledge like his own. " He begins to lift up his eyes," says Professor Max Miiller ; " he stares at the tent of heaven, and asks who supports it ? He opens his ears to the winds, and asks them whence and Avhither ? He is awakened from darkness and slumber by the light of the sun, and him whom his eyes cannot behold, and who seems to grant him the daily pittance of his existence, he calls ' his life, his breath, his brilliant Lord and Protector.' He gives names to all the powers of nature."- He could not name the objects of nature without giving them sex, nor speak of abstract qualities without determining them by articles. Every subject in a phrase was presented as an acting being, every idea became an action, and every action whether transitory or continuous was limited in duration by the tense of the verb. We are in the habit of compensating in our own minds for the deficiencies of language ; but this habit was as yet unformed by Areios. With him every object was personified and endowed with life by the exigencies of speech. Every substantive was an animated being, every verb a physical act.^ Areios ^ Kalewala, lUiii. xlvi. 355—458. 2 Chips, &c. i. 69, ^ Breal : Ilercule ct Cacus, p. 9 ; Paris, 1863 I40 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF personitied his very words. The hymn addressed to some deified natural object, as it escaped his lips invested itself with human attributes. The speech of the Hindu Areios became incarnate as Sarasvati ; his prayer was deified as Vtigdevata. It was the same with tlie Greek Areios ; in Homer, we see prayers [hna'C) regarded as the divine daughters of Zeus ;^ and by Philochorus, the first-fruits of sacrifice are spoken of as 6v\al, god-like daughters of earth. But this impersonation was carried to greater exaggeration by the Indian than by, the Greek. Every incident and circumstance connected with sacrifice de- tached itself from the object, clothed itself with human nature, and was sublimated into divinity. His excited imagination saw heavenly beings, Apris, in the flames that danced on the altar. The herbage around, the gates of the sacred enclosure, the mortar in which the twigs of the soma were pounded, the very spoon Avhich scattered the drops of the sacred drink upon the fire, tlie w^ood of the sacrifice, were divine ; nay, even the fingers of the priest became ten priestesses assisting at the offering.^ The spectacles of nature now became a stately drama in which all the actors were divine. Tlie sun was supposed to be a warrior clad in golden panojjly, the moon to be a queen, the stars to bo armies of heroes or spirits ; the rivers moved of their own accord, the tides were the pulsations of the living heart of ocean. " Thus, the ancients spoke of everything as if it were alive, and instead of saying, as we say, that the morning comes before the sunset, they spoke of the sun as the lover of the dawn, or morning, who went before him, as longing to overtake her, and as killing her with his bright rays, 1 Iliad, i, 502. " Miiury : Croyances et Lcgcndes, p. 89 ; Paris, 1863. THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM 141 wliicli shone like spears. We talk of the clouds which scud along the sky ; but they spoke of the cows of the sun, which the chiklren of the morning drove every day to their pastures in the blue fields of heaven. So too, when the sun set, they said that the dawn, with its soft and tender light, had come to soothe her son or her husband in his dying hour. In the same way, the sun was the child of darkness, and in the morning he wove for his bride in the heavens a fairy network of clouds, which reappeared when she came back to him in the evening. When the sun shone with a pleasant warmth, they spoke of him as the friend of man ; when his scorching heat brought a drought, they said that the sun was slaying his children, or that some one else, who knew not how to guide them, was driving the horses of his chariot through the sky. As they looked on the dark clouds which rested on the earth without giving any rain, they said that the terrible being whom they named the snake or dragon was shutting up the waters in a prison-house. When the thunder rolled, tliey said that this hateful monster was uttering his hard riddles ; and when, at last, the rain burst forth, they said that the bright sun had slain his enemy, and brought a stream of life for the thirsting earth." ^ It is as exhibiting this process of the human mind in tlie mythopoeic age that the Vedas are so valuable. They are a photograph of religious opinion rising to the adora- tion of nature, and holding in suspense the material out of which mythology will be constructed, before it falls and foams into polytheism, and strews the world with its treasures of fable. ^ Cox : Manual of Mythology, p. xi. ; London, 1867. 142 THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF Let VIS look once more at Areios, and follow his wander- ings. The Shemite remains on his sandy plains gazing into the cloudless sky, lost in the sense of the majesty of infinity, and slowly excogitating the idea of a sole God. The Turanian has planted his lodge on the wastes of Northern Asia. He crouches over his fire hearkening to the sob and growl of the wind, or he creeps through the forests of the Altai, and hears on all sides unintellioible whispers that fill his soul with terror. He conceives himself the sport of spiritual influences, vague, mysterious, and unknown. But the Aryan grows up among mountain pastures, whence he watches " Far up the solitary morning smite The streaks of virgin snow." Heaven is not so far above him. The clouds spread and flash fire below his feet. Impelled by that daring and vagabond curiosity wliich drives the bird from its nest, he rushes from his heights, like one of his mountain burns, " in cataract after cataract to the sea ; " his whole being fresh with tlie mountain breezes, and fragrant with the upland thyme. We will follow one stream of that great family which has divided and watered nearly the whole earth. As the Hellenic Areios descends the mountains, before him lies a little strait, across which, it was said, an ox had swum. He overleaps it, and is in possession of a land of promise. Under a blue sky, in which the clouds lie tranq^uil like lodged avalanches, in the midst of a twinkling sea, strewn with fairy groups of islands, is a little mulberry leaf of land attached to a continental bough, a little land ribbed with mountain chains of rough-hewn marble, veined with purple gorges, pierced with winding THE ORIGIN OF POLYTHEISM 143 gulfs ; a land of vinej^ards and olive-groves, where roses bloom all the year, and where the pomegranate holds its glowing cheek to a sun that is never shorn of its rays. In Greece, nature is easy and refined ; it presents no abrupt contrasts, produces no giant effects. Man naturally assumes prominence, and nature becomes a lovely back- ground. To the imaginative spirit of the Greek, this was no uninhabited land ; everywhere his glad heart recognised the presence of a God. " Sunbeams upon distant hill Gliding apace with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly." Springs, daughters of heaven, fluttered down the moun- tain sides, to meet in the meadows below, througli which to dance and race. Over the sea, stained with all the dyes of a peacock's neck, tripped the daughters of ocean, witli their dvrjptOfJiov