.,^\^iXxtm<,U^M^ 
 
 m 
 
 PRINCETON,     N.    J. 
 
 <m 
 
 *t 
 
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 Shelf. 
 
 BL    181    .M8    1889 
 
 M  uller,  F.  Max  1823-1900 
 
 Natural  religion 
 
EVtvigc?. 
 
 ■ 
 
 ■ 
 
NATURAL  RELIGION 
 
 MAX  3IULLEB 
 
 A 
 
O*fov*> 
 
 HORACE    HART,    PRINTER    TO   THE   UNIVERSITY 
 
Natural   Religion 
 
 €$t  (Btffort)  Butuvte 
 
 DELIVERED 
 
 BEFORE   THE   UNIVERSITY  OF  GLASGOW 
 
 IN  1888 
 
 F.     MAX     MULLER,     K.M. 
 
 FOREIGN   MEMBER  OF  THE   FRENCH   INSTITUTE 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS,     GREEN,     AND    CO. 
 
 AND  NEW  YORK :    15  EAST  16th  STREET 
 
 1889 
 [  All  rights  reserved-] 
 
PEEPACE, 
 
 When  I  had  delivered  my  first  course  of  Gifford 
 Lectures  in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  I  was  asked  by 
 my  friends  to  publish  them  exactly  as  I  had  delivered 
 them,  and  not  to  delay  their  publication  by  trying  to 
 make  them  more  complete.  I  have  followed  their 
 advice,  and  I  now  present  these  lectures  to  the  public 
 at  large,  if  not  exactly  as  I  delivered  them,  at  least  as 
 I  had  prepared  them  for  delivery.  I  was  under  the 
 impression  that,  according  to  Lord  Gifford's  Will, 
 each  course  was  to  consist  of  not  less  than  twenty 
 lectures.  I  therefore  allowed  myself  that  number 
 for  my  introductory  course,  and  I  confess  I  found 
 even  that  number  barely  sufficient  for  what  I  had 
 chosen  as  my  subject,  namely, 
 
 (1)  The  definition  of  Natural  Religion, 
 
 (2)  The  proper  method  of  its  treatment,  and 
 
 (3)  The  materials  available  for  its  study. 
 
 In  order  to  discuss  these  preliminary  questions 
 with  any  approach  to  systematic  completeness,  I 
 could  not  avoid  touching  on  subjects  which  I  had 
 discussed  in  some  of  my  former  publications,  such  as 
 '  The  Science  of  Language,'  '  The  Science  of  Thought,' 
 and  '  The  Hibbert  Lectures  on  the  Origin  and  Growth 
 of  Religion.'  I  might  have  left  out  what  to  some 
 of  my  readers  will  seem  to  be  mere  repetition, 
 but   I    could    not    have    done   so    without    spoiling 
 
VI  PREFACE. 
 
 the  whole  plan  of  my  lectures.  Nor  would  it  have 
 seemed  respectful  either  to  my  audience  or  to  my 
 critics  if,  in  reiterating  some  of  my  statements  and 
 opinions,  I  had  not  endeavoured,  to  the  best  of  my 
 power,  to  vindicate  their  truth  and  to  answer  any 
 bond  fide  objections  which  have  been  raised  against 
 them  during  the  last  years. 
 
 No  one  can  be  more  conscious  than  myself  of  the 
 magnitude  of  the  task  with  which  the  University  of 
 Glasgow  has  entrusted  me,  and  of  my  own  inadequate- 
 ness  to  perform  it  as  it  ought  to  be  performed.  This 
 first  course  of  lectures  is  but  a  small  contribution 
 towards  an  immense  subject,  and  it  is  such  as  from  the 
 nature  of  my  own  special  studies  I  felt  best  qualified 
 to  give.  But  the  subject  admits  of  very  different 
 treatments;  and  in  nothing  has  Lord  Gifford  shown 
 himself  more  judicious  than  in  founding  not  one, 
 but  several  lectureships  in  Natural  Religion,  so  that 
 inquiries  which  were  so  near  his  heart  might  not 
 suffer  from  one-sided  treatment.  I  look  forward 
 to  the  lectures  of  my  learned  colleagues  at  Edin- 
 burgh, St.  Andrews,  and  Aberdeen,  not  only  for  in- 
 struction, but  also  for  correction ;  though  on  some 
 points,  I  may  hope,  for  confirmation  also  of  my  own 
 views  on  a  subject  which  has  been  confided  to  our 
 united  care,  and  which  more  than  any  other  requires 
 for  its  safety  a  multitude  of  counsellors. 
 
 F.  MAX  MULLER. 
 Oxfokd,  April  20,  1889. 
 
Extracts  from  the  Trust  Disposition  and  Set- 
 tlement of  the  late  Adam  Gifford,  sometime 
 one  of  the  Senators  of  the  College  of  Justice, 
 Scotland,  dated  21st  August,  1885. 
 
 I  AD  AM  GIFFORD,  sometime  one  of  the  Senators  of  the 
 j  College  of  Justice,  Scotland,  now  residing  at  Granton 
 House,  near  Edinburgh,  being  desirous  to  revise,  consolidate, 
 alter,  and  amend  my  trust- settlements  and  testamentary 
 writings,  and  having  fully  and  maturely  considered  my  means 
 and  estate,  and  the  circumstances  in  which  I  am  placed,  and 
 the  just  claims  and  expectations  of  my  son  and  relatives,  and 
 the  modes  in  which  my  surplus  funds  may  be  most  usefully 
 and  beneficially  expended,  and  considering  myself  bound  to 
 apply  part  of  my  means  in  advancing  the  public  welfare  and 
 the  cause  of  tiuth,  do  hereby  make  my  Trust-deed  and  latter 
 Will  and  Testament — that  is  to  say,  I  give  my  body  to  the 
 earth  as  it  was  before,  in  order  that  the  enduring  blocks  and 
 materials  thereof  may  be  employed  in  new  combinations  ;  and 
 I  give  my  soul  to  God,  in  Whom  and  with  Whom  it  always 
 was,  to  be  in  Him  and  with  Him  for  ever  in  closer  and  more 
 conscious  union ;  and  with  regard  to  my  earthly  means  and 
 estate,  I  do  hereby,  give,  grant,  dispone,  convey,  and  make 
 over  and  leave  and  bequeath  All  and  Whole  my  whole  means 
 and  estate,  heritable  and  moveable,  real  and  personal,  of  every 
 description,  now  belonging  to,  or  that  shall  belong  to  me  at 
 the  time  of  my  death,  with  all  writs  and  vouchers  thereof, 
 to  and  in  favour  of  Herbert  James  Gifford,  my  son  ;  John 
 Gifford,  Esquire,  my  brother  ;  Walter  Alexander  Raleigh, 
 my  nephew,  presently  residing  in  London ;  Adam  West 
 Gifford,  W.  S.,  my  nephew ;  Andrew  Scott,  C.  A.,  in  Edin- 
 burgh, husband  of  my  niece ;  and  Thomas  Raleigh,  Esquire, 
 barrister-at-law,  London,  and  the  survivors  and  survivor  of 
 them  accepting,  and  the  heirs  of  the  last  survivor,  and  to 
 such  other  person  or  persons  as  I  may  name,  or  as  may  be 
 assumed  or  appointed  by  competent   authority,  a  majority 
 
Vlll 
 
 LOED  GIFFORD'S   WILL. 
 
 Defini- 
 tion of 
 
 '  Residue. 
 
 being  always  a  quorum,  as  trustees  for  the  ends,  uses,  and 
 purposes  aftermentioned,  but  in  trust  only  for  the  purposes 
 following  :  (Here  follow  the  first  ten  purposes).     And  I  de- 
 clare the  preceding  ten  purposes  of  this  trust  to  be  preferable, 
 and  I  direct  that  these  ten  purposes  be  fulfilled  in  the  first 
 place  before  any  others,  and  before  any  residue  of  my  estate, 
 or  any  part  thereof,  is  disposed  of,  and  before  any  residue  is 
 ascertained  or  struck,  declaring  that  it   is  only  what  may 
 remain  of  my  means  and  estate  after  the  said  ten  purposes 
 are  fulfilled  that  I  call  herein  the  '  residue '  of  my  estate,  and 
 ,  out  of  which  I  direct  the  lectureships  aftermentioned  to  be 
 founded  and  endowed.    And  in  regard  that,  in  so  far  as  I  can 
 at  present  see  or  anticipate,  there  will  be  a  large  '  residue'  of 
 my  means  and  estate  in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  above 
 explained  the  word,  being  that  which  remains  after  fulfilling 
 the  above  ten  purposes,  and  being  of  opinion  that  I  am  bound 
 if  there  is  a  '  residue '  as  so  explained,  to  employ  it,  or  part 
 of  it,  for  the  good  of  my  fellow-men,  and  having  considered 
 how  I  may  best  do  so,  I  direct  the  '  residue'  to  be  disposed  of 
 as  follows  : — I  having  been  for  many  years  deeply  and  firmly 
 convinced  that  the  true  knowledge  of  God,  that  is,  of  the 
 Being,  Nature,  and  Attributes  of  the  Infinite,  of  the  All,  of  the 
 First  and  the  Only  Cause,  that  is,  the  One  and  Only  Substance 
 and  Being,  and  the  true  and  felt  knowledge  (not  mere  nominal 
 knowledge)  of  the  relations  of  man  and  of  the  universe  to 
 Him,  and  of  the  true  foundations  of  all  ethics  or  morals, 
 being,  I  say,  convinced  that  this  knowledge,  when  really  felt 
 and  acted  on,  is  the  means  of  man's  highest  wellbeing,  and 
 the  security  of  his  upward  progress,  I  have  resolved,  from  the 
 '  residue '  of  my  estate  as  aforesaid,  to  institute  and  found, 
 in    connection,   if  possible,  with   the  Scottish  Universities, 
 lectureships  or  classes  for  the  promotion  of  the  study  of  said 
 subjects,  and  for  the  teaching  and  diffusion  of  sound  views 
 regarding  them,   among  the  whole  population  of  Scotland. 
 Therefore,  I  direct  and  appoint  my  said  trustees  from  the 
 '  residue  '  of  my  said  estate,  after  fulfilling  the  said  ten  prefer- 
 able purposes,  to  pay  the  following  sums,  or  to  assign  and 
 make  over  property  of  that  value  to  the  following  bodies  in 
 trust : — First,  To  the  Senatus  Academicus  of  the  University 
 of  Edinburgh,  and  failing  them,  by  declinature  or  otherwise, 
 
LORD   GIFFOKD'S   WILL.  ix 
 
 to  the  Dean  and  Faculty  of  Advocates  of  the   College  of  £25,000  to 
 Justice  of  Scotland,  the  sum  of  £25,000.     Second,  To  the  Edinburgh 
 Senatus  Academicus  of  the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  fail-  Vniver~ 
 ing  them,  by  declinature  or  otherwise,   to  the   Faculty  ofslty' 
 Physicians  and  Surgeons  of  Glasgow,  the  sum  of  £20,000.  f  2Sf°° 
 Third,  To   the   Senatus   Academicus   of  the   University  of  xjmver?0" 
 Aberdeen,  whom  failing,  by  declinature  or  otherwise,  to  the  mty. 
 Faculty  of  Advocates    of  Aberdeen,   the  sum  of  £20,000.  £20,000  to 
 And  Fourth,  to  the  Senatus  Academicus  of  the  University  of  Aberdeen 
 St.  Andrews,  whom  failing,  by  declinature  or  otherwise,  to  Univer- 
 the   Physicians  and   Surgeons  of  St.  Andrews,  and  of  the'slty' 
 district  twelve  miles  round  it,  the  sum  of  £15,000  sterling,  £l5>°o° 
 amounting  the  said  four  sums  in  all  to  the  sum  of  £80,000  Andrews 
 sterling ;  but  said  bequests  are  made,  and  said  sums  are  to  Univer- 
 be  paid  in  trust  only  for  the  following  purpose,  that  is  to  say,  sity. 
 forthe  purpose  of  establishing  in  each  of  the  four  cities  of 
 Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Aberdeen,  and  St.  Andrews,  a  Lecture-  To  found 
 ship  or  Popular  Chair  for  <  Promoting,  Advancing,  Teaching,  chair  of 
 and  Diffusing  the  study  of  Natural  Theology,'  in  the  widest  Thto™1 
 sense  of  that  term,  in  other  words,  'The  Knowledge  of  God,       °  °gy* 
 the  Infinite,  the  All,  the  First  and  Only  Cause,  the  One  and 
 the  Sole  Substance,  the  Sole  Being,  the  Sole  Reality,  and  the 
 Sole  Existence,  the  Knowledge  of  His  Nature  and  Attributes, 
 the  Knowledge  of  the  Relations  which  men  and  the  whole 
 universe  bear  to  Him,  the  Knowledge   of  the  Nature  and 
 Foundation  of  Ethics  or  Morals,  and  of  all  Obligations  and 
 Duties  thence  arising/     The  Senatus  Academicus  in  each  of 
 the  four  Universities,  or  the  bodies  substituted  to  them  re- 
 spectively^ shall  be  the  patrons  of  the  several  lectureships,  and 
 the  administrators  of  the  said  respective  endowments,  and  of 
 the  affairs  of  each  lectureship  in  each  city.     I  call  them  for 
 shortness  simply  the  '  patrons.'     Now  I  leave  all  the  details 
 and  arrangements  of  each  lectureship  in  the  hands  and  in  the 
 discretion  of  the  '  patrons '  respectively,  who  shall  have  full 
 power  from  time  to  time  to  adjust  and  regulate  the  same  in 
 conformity  as  closely  as  possible  to  the  following  brief  prin- 
 ciples and  directions  which  shall  be  binding  on  each  and  all 
 of  the  '  patrons  '  as  far  as  practicable  and  possible.     I  only 
 indicate  leading  principles.    First,  The  endowment  or  capital  Conditions. 
 fund  of  each  lectureship  shall  be  preserved  entire,  and  be 
 
LORD    GIFFOKD'S   WILL. 
 
 Capital 
 
 preserved 
 
 entire. 
 
 Patrons 
 may  delay 
 institu- 
 tion of 
 chair,  &c. 
 
 Lecturers 
 appointed 
 for  two 
 years. 
 
 Qualifica- 
 tions of 
 lecturers. 
 
 Subject  to 
 be  treated 
 as  a  Natu- 
 ral .Science. 
 
 invested  securely  upon  or  in  the  purchase  of  lands  or  heritages 
 which  are  likely  to  continue  of  the  same  value,  or  increase 
 in  value,  or  in  such  other  way  as  Statute  may  permit, 
 merely  the  annual  proceeds  or  interest  shall  be  expended  in 
 maintaining  the  respective  lectureships.  Second,  The 
 '  patrons '  may  delay  the  institution  of  the  lectureships,  and 
 may  from  time  to  time  intermit  the  appointment  of  lecturers 
 and  the  delivery  of  lectures  for  one  or  more  years  for  the 
 purpose  of  accumulating  the  income  or  enlarging  capital. 
 Third,  The  lecturers  shall  be  appointed  from  time  to  time 
 each  for  a  period  of  only  two  years  and  no  longer,  but  the 
 same  lecturer  may  be  reappointed  for  other  two  periods  of 
 two  years  each,  provided  that  no  one  person  shall  hold  the 
 office  of  lecturer  in  the  same  city  for  more  than  six  years  in 
 all,  it  being  desirable  that  the  subject  be  promoted  and  illus- 
 trated by  different  minds.  Fourth,  The  lecturers  appointed 
 shall  be  subjected  to  no  test  of  any  kind,  and  shall  not  be 
 required  to  take  any  oath,  or  to  emit  or  subscribe  any 
 declaration  of  belief,  or  to  make  any  promise  of  any  kind  : 
 they  may  be  of  any  denomination  whatever,  or  of  no  de- 
 nomination at  all  (and  many  earnest  and  high-minded  men 
 prefer  to  belong  to  no  ecclesiastical  denomination);  they  may 
 be  of  any  religion  or  way  of  thinking,  or,  as  is  sometimes 
 said,  they  may  be  of  no  religion,  or  they  may  be  so-called 
 sceptics  or  agnostics  or  freethinkers,  provided  only  that  the 
 'patrons'  will  use  diligence  to  secure  that  they  be  able 
 reverent  men,  true  thinkers,  sincere  lovers  of  and  earnest 
 inquirers  after  truth.  Fifth,  I  wish  the  lecturers  to  treat 
 their  subject  as  a  strictly  natural  science,  the  greatest  of  all 
 possible ^  sciences,  indeed,  in  one  sense,  the  only  science,  that 
 of  Infinite  Being,  without  reference  to  or  reliance  upon  any 
 supposed  special  exceptional  or  so-called  miraculous  revela- 
 tion. I  wish  it  considered  just  as  astronomy  or  chemistry 
 is.  I  have  intentionally  indicated,  in  describing  the  subject 
 of  the  lectures^  the  general  aspect  which  personally  I  would 
 expect  the  lect'urers  to  bear,  but  the  lecturers  shall  be  under 
 no  restraint  whatever  in  their  treatment  of  their  theme  ; 
 for  example,  they  may  freely  discuss  (and  it  may  be  well  to 
 do  so)  all  questions  about  man's  conceptions  of  God  or  the 
 Infinite,  their  origin,   nature,  and  truth,   whether   he   can 
 
LORD   GIFFORDS   WILL.  XI 
 
 have  any  such  conceptions,  whether  God  is  under  any  or 
 what  limitations,  and  so  on,  as  I  am  persuaded  that  nothing 
 but  good  can  result  from  free  discussion.    /Sixth,  The  lectures  Lectures 
 shall    be    public    and    popular,    that    is,   open    not   only   tot°bepoPu- 
 students  of  the  Universities,  but  to  the  whole  community      ' c ' 
 without  matriculation,  as  T  think  that  the  subject  should  be 
 studied    and   known   by  all  whether   receiving    University 
 instruction  or  not.     I  think  such  knowledge,  if  real,  lies  at 
 the  root  of  all  wellbeing.     I  suggest  that  the  fee  should  be 
 as  small  as  is  consistent  with  the  due  management  of  the 
 lectureships,  and  the  due  appreciation  of  the  lectures.     Be- 
 sides a  general  and  popular  audience,   I    advise    that  the 
 lecturers  also  have  a  special  class  of  students  conducted  in 
 the   usual  way,  and  instructed  by  examination  and  thesis, 
 written  and  oral.    Seventh,  As  to  the  number  of  the  lectures,  Number  of 
 much  must  be  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  lecturer,  I  should  lectures, 
 think  the  subject  cannot  be  treated  even  in  abstract  in  less 
 than  twenty  lectures,  and  they  may  be  many  times   that 
 number.     Eighth,  The  '  patrons '  if  and  when  they  see  fit  Publica- 
 may  make  grants  from  the  free  income  of  the  endowments tlon  of 
 for  or  towards  the  publication  in  a  cheap  form  of  any  of  the 
 lectures,  or  any  part  thereof,  or  abstracts  thereof,  which  they 
 may  think  likely  to  be  useful.     Ninth,  The  '  patrons '  re-  Accounts 
 spectively  shall  all  annually  submit  their  accounts  to  some to  J® 
 one  chartered  accountant  in  Edinburgh,  to  be  named  from  annuaiiy. 
 time  to  time  by  the  Lord  Ordinary  on  the  Bills,  whom  failing, 
 to  the  Accountant  of  the  Court  of  Session,  who  shall  pre- 
 pare and  certify  a  short  abstract  of  the  accounts  and  invest- 
 ments, to  be  recorded  in  the  Books  of  Council  and  Session, 
 or  elsewhere,  for  preservation.     And  my  desire  and  hope  is 
 that   these    lectureships    and    lectures    may   promote    and 
 advance  among  all  classes  of  the  community  the  true  know- 
 ledge of  Him  Who  is,  and  there  is  none  and  nothing  besides 
 Him,  in  Whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,  and  in 
 Whom  all  things  consist,  and  of  man's  real  relationship  to 
 Him  Whom  truly  to  know  is  life  everlasting.     If  the  residue 
 of  my  estate,  in  the  sense  before  defined,  should  turn  out  in- 
 sufficient to  pay  the  whole  sums  above  provided  for  the  four 
 lectureships  (of  which  shortcoming,  however,  I  trust  there 
 is  no  danger),  then  each  lectureship  shall  suffer  a  propor- 
 
XII 
 
 LORD   GIFFORD's   WILL. 
 
 If  surplus 
 after  pay- 
 ing the 
 Univer- 
 sities, 
 One  half 
 to  H.  J. 
 Gifford  in 
 liferent. 
 
 Other 
 half  to 
 unmarried 
 nieces. 
 
 Testing 
 Clause. 
 
 tional  diminution ;  and  if,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  any 
 surplus  over  and  above  the  said  sum  of  £80,000  sterling,  it 
 shall  belong  one  half  to  my  son,  the  said   Herbert   James 
 Gifford,  in  liferent,  and  to  his  issue  other  than  the  heirs  of 
 entail  in  fee,  whom  failing,  to  my  unmarried  nieces  equally 
 in  fee  ;  and  the  other  half  shall  belong  equally  among  my 
 unmarried  nieces.     And  I  revoke  all  settlements  and  codicils 
 previous  to  the  date  hereof  if  this  receives  effect,  providing 
 that  any  payments  made  to  legatees  during  my  life  shall  be 
 accounted  as  part  payment  of  their  provisions.     And  I  con- 
 sent to  registration  hereof  for  preservation,  and  I  dispense 
 with  delivery  thereof. — In  witness  whereof,  these  presents, 
 written  on  this  and  the  six   preceding  pages  by  the  said 
 Adam  West  Gifford,  in  so  far  as  not  written  and  filled  in  by 
 my  own  hand,  are,  with  the  marginal  notes  on  pages  four  and 
 five  (and  the  word  '  secluding '  on  the  eleventh  line  from  top 
 of  page  third,  being  written  on  an  erasure),  subscribed  by  me 
 at    Granton    House,    Edinburgh,    this   twenty-first    day   of 
 August  Eighteen  hundred  and  eighty-five  years,  before  these 
 witnesses,   James   Foulis,   Doctor  of  Medicine,   residing  in 
 Heriot  Eow,  Edinburgh,  and  John   Campbell,  cab   driver, 
 residing  at  No.  5  Mackenzie  Place,  Edinburgh. 
 
 Ad.  Gifford. 
 
 James  Foulis,  M.D.,  Heriot  Eow, 
 Edinburgh,  witness. 
 
 John    Campbell,    cab    driver,    5 
 Mackenzie  Place,  witness. 
 
TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface  v 
 
 Loed  Gifford's  Will vii 
 
 LECTURE  I. 
 
 Introductory   Lecture   on  Lord  Gifford's  Be- 
 quest       1-26 
 
 LECTURE  II. 
 Definition  of  Religion. 
 
 Definition  of  religion,  why  wanted. — Great  differences  in 
 denning  religion.— Is  Buddhism  a  religion  ?— Definition  of 
 definition. — Etymological  definition.— Historical  definition. — 
 Dogmatic  definition. — Etymological  definition  of  religio.— His- 
 torical definition  of  religio. — Later  meanings  of  religio. — Dogmatic 
 definitions. — Religion  and  theology. — Dogmatic  and  practical 
 religion.— Comparative  theology.— Schleiermacher's  definition 
 of  religion. — Religion,  either  belief  or  body  of  doctrines  .       .  27-50 
 
 LECTURE   III. 
 
 Examination  of  Definitions.  . 
 
 Natural  and  revealed  religions. — Comparative  theology. — 
 Modus  cognoscendi  et  colendi  Deum. — Feeling  or  knowledge  as  mo- 
 tive of  action. — The  object  of  religion  must  be  defined.— Fichto 
 on  atheism. — Goethe  and  Lavater. — Different  classes  of  defini- 
 tions.— Practical  religion.— Kant. — Caird—  Pfleiderer. — Marti- 
 neau. — Schenkel  and  Newman. —Theoretical  religion. — Re- 
 ligion as  sentiment  or  knowledge. — Teichmuller.— Author  of 
 
XIV  TABLE   OF    CONTENTS. 
 
 Al.K 
 
 '  Natural  Religion.'  —  Goethe.  —  Mill.  —  Spinoza,  1632-77.  — 
 Schleiermacher,  1768-1834.— Hegel,  1770-1831.— Fichte,  1762- 
 1814.— How  to  account  for  these  different  definitions       .        51-72 
 
 LECTURE   IV. 
 
 Positivist  Definitions  of  Religion. 
 
 Wundt.— Feuerbach.— Gruppe.— Selfishness  as  source  of  re- 
 ligion.— Gruppe's  definition  too  narrow.— Universality  of 
 religion.— Angle  of  vision.— Darwin  on  Tierra  del  Fuego.— 
 Niebuhr  and  Bunsen.— Lubbock  v.  Quatrefages.— Preconceived 
 ideas.— Names  for  religion.— Words  for  religion  in  Chinese  ;  in 
 Arabic— Dharma.—  Veda.— Bhakti.— Sraddha,  faith.      73-102 
 
 LECTUEE   V. 
 My  own  Definition  of  Religion. 
 
 Is  Buddhism  a  religion  ?— Buddhism,  as  theoretical,  not  in- 
 cluded under  any  definition.— Ma  lunky  a  -put  ta  and  Bud- 
 dha.—Yam  aka,  on  life  after  death.— Dialogue  between  the 
 king  of  Kosala  and  the  nun  K  he  ma.— Buddhism,  as  practical, 
 not  included  under  any  definition.— The  doctrine  of  Karma.— 
 Definition  of  religion.— Religion  an  experience.— Experience 
 consists  of  sensations,  percepts,  concepts,  and  names.— Sensa- 
 tion and  perception  inexplicable.— The  working  of  our  mind.— 
 No  percept  without  language  ;  Helmholtz.— Perceptions  always 
 finite.— Finite  and  definite  —The  finite  implies  the  infinite.— 
 The  infinite  in  space.— The  infinite  in  time.— The  infinite  as 
 cause.— Misunderstandings.— Savages  without  words  for  finite 
 and  infinite.— The  Duke  of  Argyll's  definition  of  religion.— 
 Early  names  of  the  infinite.— Mana.— Manito.— Does  the  Vedic 
 religion  begin  with  sacrifice  ?— Germs  of  the  infinite  in  the 
 Veda.— The  infinitely  great.— The  infinitely  small.— Infinite 
 inseparable  from  finite.— The  concept  of  cause       .         .         103-140 
 
 LECTUEE   VI. 
 
 The  Infinite  in  Nature,  in  Man,  and  in  the  Self. 
 
 Positivist  objections.— Historical  evolution.— Positivist  point 
 of  view.— Rig-veda.— The  dawn.— End  and  endless. -Endless 
 in  the  Avesta.— Theogonic  elements.— How  thv  perception  of 
 
TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  XV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 the  infinite  led  to  religious  ideas. — Tangible,  semi-tangible, 
 intangible  objects. —  Trees. —  Mountains.  —  Rivers.—  Earth.  — 
 Clouds,  stars,  moon,  sun,  sky.— Demi-gods  and  great  gods. — The 
 infinite  in  man  as  an  object. — The  something  behind  man. — 
 The  infinite  behind  man. — Religious  ideas  springing  from  it. — 
 Animism. — Seelencitlt. — Strange  names  ;  Totemism. — The  infinite 
 in  man  as  a  subject. — Psychological  deities.— Sense,  imagina- 
 tion, intellect,  language. — Devatas. — Atma. — Natural  reli- 
 gion, as  physical,  anthropological,  and  psychological    .         141-165 
 
 LECTURE   VII. 
 
 Religion  different  from  Science. 
 
 Religious  character. — Religion  and  science. — What  imparts  a 
 religious  character. — Moral  influences  of  physical  phenomena. — 
 Vedic  prayers. — Early  morality. — Moral  influence  of  ancestral 
 spirits. —Ancestral  law  in  China.— Moral  influence  of  psycho- 
 logical deities. — Temple  to  Mens.  — Eros  and  Psyche. —  Con- 
 science.—  Remorse. —  Have  we  a  conscience? — Sacrifices  an 
 element  of  religion.— Priesthood. — Study  of  the  Veda.— Final 
 definition  of  religion        .......         166-191 
 
 LECTURE  VIII. 
 
 The  Historical  Method. 
 
 Criticisms  of  my  definition. — Pfleiderer.— Gruppe. — Religion 
 a  psychological  necessity. — History  v.  Theory. — Theory. — Corns- 
 alitas. — Eminentia. — Negatio.—  Cosmological,  teleological,  ontologi- 
 cal  arguments. — Historical  method. — Archaeology. — Theoretic 
 school. — Historical  school. — Study  of  language. — Historical 
 school. — Acatus. — Theoretic  school. —  Brinton  on  palaeolithic 
 language. — Advantages  of  both  theories. — Science  of  religion. — 
 Historical  school. — Semitic,  Aryan,  Chinese  religions.— Re- 
 ligions without  books      .......         192-220 
 
 LECTURE   IX. 
 Historical  Treatment  of  Religious  Questions. 
 
 Is  religion  possible  ?— -History  and  theory  inseparable. — 
 Agnosticism. — Epicurean  view  of  the  gods. — Chance  and  pur- 
 pose ;  Darwin. — Atheism. — Intuitive  knowledge  of  the  gods. — 
 
xvi  TABLE    OF   CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Philosophical  treatment.— Vision  in  the  Bhagavadgita.— 
 Revelation.— Historical  traces  in  the  Veda.— The  old  problems 
 in  their  simpler  form •         221-238 
 
 LECTURE   X. 
 
 i — 
 
 COMPAEATIVE  STUDY  OF  RELIGIOUS  PROBLEMS. 
 Modern  problems  to  be  traced  back.— Creation.— The  logic  of 
 facts.  _  Cosmological  argument.  —  Aryan  savages.  —Why  ?— 
 Answers  to  the  cosmological  question.— Emanation.— Emana- 
 tion or  srishtl— Golden  egg.— Teleological  argument.— An- 
 thropomorphism—  Ontological  argument.— A  creator.— Origin 
 of  the  idea  of  cause.— Religions  without  a  creator.— The 
 theory  of  evolution.— Meaning  of  evolution.— Darwin  admits  a 
 creator.— Herder,  the  precursor  of  Darwin.— Evolution  in  the 
 beginning  of  our  century.— Gottfried  Hermann.— Kant  on 
 the  Chimpanzee.  —  Darwin.  —  Oken.  —  Reaction.  —  Historical 
 school,  its  true  character.— Stanley.— Necessity  of  an  historical 
 study  of  religion.— Criticisms  answered  .         .         .         239-279 
 
 LECTURE   XI. 
 Materials  for  the  Study  of  Natural  Religion. 
 
 Language,  Myth,  Customs  and  Laws,  Sacred  Books.— Lan- 
 guage as  evidence.— Survey  of  languages.— A_ryan  Family.— 
 English.  —Veda  =  o?5a.— Anglo-Saxon.  —  Gothic—  Continental 
 Saxon.— Scandinavian.— Thorr  and  Thursday.— Tyr  and  Tues- 
 day. — Wodan  and  Wednesday.  —  High  German.  —  Celtic.  — 
 Italic.  —  Hellenic.  —  Slavonic.  —  North-Western  Division.  — 
 South-Eastern  Division.— Indie  class,  Vedic  Hymns,  Brah- 
 manas,  Sutras,  Pawinean  Sanskrit.— Inscriptions  of  Piyadasi, 
 third  century  b.  c— Buddhist  Sanskrit.— Renaissance  of  San- 
 skrit literature.— Prakrit.— Vernaculars.— Sacred  Books.— Iranic 
 class.  —  Cuneiform  Persian  inscriptions.  —  Pehlevi.  —  Bask, 
 Etruscan.— Semitic  Family.— Aramaic— Chaldaic  and  Syriac 
 —Hebraic— Arabic— Ethiopic 280-310 
 
 LECTURE  XII. 
 •    Principles  of  Classification. 
 
 Languages  not  Aryan  and  not  Semitic— Morphological 
 classification.- Genealogical   as  different   from   morphological 
 
TABLE   OF   CONTENTS.  XV11 
 
 PAGE 
 
 classification. — Degrees  of  relationship. — Morphological  classifi- 
 cation.—  Radical  stage.  —  Terminational  stage. — Inflectional 
 stage. —  Transitions  from  one  stage  to  another. — Chinese. — 
 Rask's  and  Prichard's  classification. — Vocalic  harmony  .       311-327 
 
 LECTURE   XIII. 
 Languages  not  Aeyan  and  not  Semitic. 
 
 The  Ural-Altaic  family. — Samoyedic. — Altaic  languages. — 
 Tungusic  class.  —  Mongolic  class.  —  Turkic  class.  —  Turkish 
 grammar.  — Finno-Ugric  class. —  Fins. —  Estonians. — Tamulic 
 languages. — Munda  languages. — Taic  languages. — Gangetic  lan- 
 guages.— Lohitic  languages.— Languages  of  Farther  India. — 
 Languages  of  the  Caucasus. — Egyptian. — Africa. — America. — 
 Oceanic  languages. — Malay. — Polynesia. — Melanesia      .         328-350 
 
 LECTURE   XIV. 
 Language  and  Thought. 
 
 What  should  we  be  without  language. — Definition  of  think- 
 ing.— What  are  we  thinking  of? — Thinking  in  German  or 
 English. — Why  we  cannot  think  without  words. — Communica- 
 tion, not  language. —  Images. — Involuntary  and  voluntary 
 sounds. — The  Bow-wow,  Pooh-pooh,  and  Yo-heho  theories. — 
 Roots. — Words  derived  from  conceptual  roots. — Are  concepts 
 possible  without  words  ? — Berkeley. — Process  of  naming. — Origin 
 of  concepts. — Former  theories. — The  clamor  concomitans. — The 
 conceptual  foundation  of  language. — Our  conceptual  world   351-384 
 
 LECTURE   XV. 
 Dynamic  Stage. 
 
 Lessons  of  language. — Roots  express  our  acts. — Some  acts 
 conceived  as  passive.  —  Subjective  acts  predicated  of  other 
 agents. — Subjective  acts  predicated  of  objects. — Dynamic  stage. 
 — Animism. — Egypt.— Semitic  names. — Finland. — Hidatsas  in 
 North  America. — Growth  of  language. — Causality. — Objections 
 answered.— Gender.— Dyaus,  as  a  masculine  .         .         .         385-410 
 
 B 
 
XVlli  TABLE   OF   CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE  XVI. 
 Mythology. 
 
 Myths-Meaning  of  mythology-Etymology  of  „S*os-Myth,  *"" 
 
 a  word  Eos  -Mythology  universal-Comparative  mythology 
 schto  S  ^f^^^-^P-ative  philology. -Etymological 
 school-Analogical  school—Psychological  school-Compara- 
 ive  mythology  A.  Barth— Etymological  school-Analogical 
 school-Psychological  school.-I.  The  Etymological  School- 
 Names  of  gods-Dialectic  varieties-Obsolete  names-The 
 Dawn— Religious  germs-Moral  germs— Ahana  =  Athene- 
 Daphne—  Benfey's  theory  of  Athene      ....         411-447 
 
 LECTUEE  XVII. 
 
 The  Genealogical  School. 
 
 Identification  and  comparison— Sarad  and  Ceres— Mytho- 
 logical  etymologies— Changes  in  the  character  of  gods—  Acci- 
 dental  similarities  of  names-Foreign  gods-Mythological 
 names  which  admit  of  no  etymology-The  names  of  gods- 
 The  etymological  meaning  must  be  physical— Learned  and 
 popular  etymologies  of  Greeks  and  Romans.  -  Haritas  and 
 Chantes.-Fors,  Fortuna— Nomina  and  cognomina       .        448-483 
 
 LECTUEE   XVIII. 
 The  Analogical  and  Pyschological  Schools. 
 
 II.  The  Analogical  School— Characters  common  to  gods  and 
 heroes  of  different  names— Rudra,  Apollon,  Wuotan— Myths 
 agreeing  in  one  and  differing  in  other  names— Varuna  and 
 Ormazd.-III.  The  Psychological  School.  -  Volker-psycho- 
 logie— Advantages  in  England,  India,  Colonies,  Missionary 
 Societies— Work  done  in  America— The  time  meaning  of 
 Manito  ...  *  r,n 
 •        .        484-518 
 
 LECTUEE   XIX. 
 On  Customs  and  Laws. 
 
 Materials  for  the  study  of  customs  and  laws— Customs  based 
 on  religious  ideas— Customs  generating  religious  ideas— Sol- 
 
TABLE   OF   CONTENTS.  XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 lennis. — Annual  festivals. — Istar  and  Tammuz. — Zeus  Xenios. 
 
 — How  customs  should  be  studied  .....         519-537 
 
 LECTURE   XX. 
 Sacred  Books. 
 
 What  is  a  sacred  book  ? — The  five  birthplaces  of  sacred 
 books. — Survey  of  sacred  books. — India. — The  Veda. — Bud- 
 dhism. —  Influence  of  the  Kshatriyas,  the  nobility.  —  Media 
 and  Persia.  —  China.  —  Palestine.  —  Judaism.  —  Christianity. 
 — Mohammedanism. — The  Eight  Religions. — Book-religions.— 
 The  invention  of  writing. — Influence  of  writing  on  religion. — 
 Individual  and  national  religions.  —  Mohammed. —  Christ. — 
 Buddha. —  Confucius. —  Lao-gze. — Zoroaster. —  Moses. —  Sacred 
 books,  when  consigned  to  writing. — The  founders  of  religions 
 are  never  the  writers  of  sacred  books. — The  Veda  originally  not 
 written. — The  Avesta  originally  not  written. — The  Tripifoka 
 not  Buddha's  work. — Confucius,  writer,  not  author,  of  the 
 Kings. — The  Old  Testament.— The  New  Testament. — Mohammed 
 could  neither  read  nor  write. — Religions  with  and  without 
 sacred  books. — Conclusion 538-577 
 
 Index 579-608 
 
NATURAL  THEOLOGY. 
 
 LECTURE   I. 
 
 LORD  GIFFORD'S  munificent  endowment  of  a 
 Lectureship  of  Natural  Theology,  to  which  I 
 have  had  the  undeserved  honour  of  being  elected  by 
 the  Senate  of  this  ancient  and  illustrious  University, 
 must  be  reckoned  among  the  signs  of  the  times,  preg- 
 nant with  meaning. 
 
 This  lectureship,  with  three  others  in  the  Univer- 
 sities of  Edinburgh,  St.  Andrews,  and  Aberdeen,  was 
 founded,  as  you  know,  by  the  late  Lord  Gifford,  a 
 Scotch  lawyer,  who  by  ability,  hard  work,  and  self- 
 denial  had  amassed  a  large  fortune,  and  attained  the 
 dignified  position  of  a  seat  on  the  Bench. 
 
 I  have  not  been  able  to  gather  from  his  friends 
 much  information  about  his  personal  character  and 
 the  private  circumstances  of  his  life.  Nor  do  they 
 all  agree  in  the  estimate  they  formed  of  him.  Some 
 represented  him  to  me  as  a  keen,  hardworking,  and 
 judicious  man,  engrossed  by  his  professional  work, 
 yet  with  a  yearning  for  quietness,  for  some  hours 
 of  idleness  that  should  allow  him  to  meditate  on 
 the  great  problems  of  life,  those  ancient  problems 
 which    the    practical    man    may    wave    away    from 
 
 B 
 
2  LECTURE   I. 
 
 year  to  year,  but  which  knock  at  our  door  louder 
 and  louder  as  we  grow  old,  and  will  not  allow  them- 
 selves to  be  turned  into  the  street,  like  beggars  and 
 vagabonds.  We  all  know  the  practical  man  of  the 
 world,  who  tells  us  that  he  has  no  time  to  listen  to 
 these  inward  questionings,  that  he  is  satisfied  with 
 what  the  Church  teaches  or  with  what  men  wiser  than 
 himself  have  settled  for  him,  that  he  has  tried  to  do 
 his  duty  to  his  neighbours,  and  that  he  trusts  to 
 God's  mercy  for  all  the  rest.  Men  like  to  entrench 
 themselves  in  their  little  castles,  to  keep  their  bridges 
 drawn  and  their  portcullis  ready  to  fall  on  any  un- 
 welcome guests.  Or,  to  quote  the  words  of  my  friend, 
 Matthew  Arnold, — 
 
 'I  knew  the  mass  of  men  conceal'd 
 Their  thoughts,  for  fear  that,   if  reveal  *d, 
 They  would  by  other  men  be  met 
 With  blank  indifference,   or  with  blame  reprov'd  : 
 I  knew  they  lived  and  mov'd 
 Trick'd  in  disguises,   alien  to  the  rest 
 Of  men,  and  alien  to  themselves.' 
 
 But  this  was  not  the  impression  which  Lord  GifFord 
 left  on  the  mind  of  those  who  knew  him  best.  Some 
 of  his  relations  and  a  few  of  his  more  intimate  friends 
 seem  to  have  been  startled  at  times  by  the  fervour 
 and  earnestness  with  which  he  spoke  to  them  on  re- 
 ligious and  philosophical  topics.  Even  when  he  was 
 in  full  practice  as  a  lawyer,  the  first  thing  he  did,  I 
 am  told,  when  he  returned  from  the  Parliament  House 
 on  Saturdays,  was  to  lock  the  door  of  his  library,  and 
 devote  himself  to  his  own  favourite  authors,  never 
 looking  at  a  professional  book  or  paper  till  it  was 
 necessary  to  begin  work  on  Monday.  He  had  a  sepa- 
 rate set  of  books  altogether  in  his  bedroom,  amongst 
 
LORD   GIFFORD'S  REQUEST.  3 
 
 which  he  spent  every  moment  of  his  spare  time  during 
 session,  and  probably  almost  his  whole  vacation.  He 
 was  devoted  to  Plato  as  well  as  to  Spinoza,  and  read 
 philosophy  both  ancient  and  modern  in  all  directions, 
 as  well  as  poetry  and  the  best  current  literature  of  the 
 day. 
 
 But  the  world  at  large  knew  him  chiefly  as  a  suc- 
 cessful lawyer,  as  a  man  always  ready  to  help  in  any 
 useful  and  charitable  work,  and  satisfied  to  accept  the 
 traditional   forms  of  public  worship,  as  a  necessary 
 tribute  which  every  member  of  a  religious  as  well  as 
 of  a  political  community  must  pay  for  the  mainten- 
 ance of  order,  peace,  and  charity.     During  the   last 
 seven  years  of  his  life,  when  confined  to  the  sick-room 
 by  creeping  paralysis,  his  mind,  always  active,  bright, 
 and  serene,  became  more  and  more  absorbed  in  the 
 study  of  the  various  systems  of  philosophy  and  reli- 
 gion, both  Christian  and  non-Christian,  and  he  made 
 no  secret  to  his  own  relatives  of  his  having  been  led 
 by  these   studies   to   surrender  some  of  the  opinions 
 which  they  and  he  himself  had  been  brought  up  to 
 consider  as  essential  to  Christianity.     There  can  be 
 no  doubt  that  he  deliberately  rejected  all  miracles, 
 whether  as  a  judge,  on  account  of  want  of  evidence, 
 or  as  a  Christian,  because  they  seemed  to  him  in  open 
 conflict  with  the  exalted  spirit  of  Christ's  own  teach- 
 ing.   Yet  he  remained  always  a  truly  devout  Christian, 
 trusting  more  in  the  great  miracle  of  Christ's  life  and 
 teaching  on  earth  than  in  the  small  miracles  ascribed 
 to  him  by  many  of  his  followers.    Some  of  his  lectures 
 and  manuscript  notes  are  still  in  existence,  and  may 
 possibly  some  day  be  published,  and  throw  light  on 
 the  gradual   development  of   his   religious    opinions, 
 
 R  2 
 
4  LECTURE    I. 
 
 After  his  elevation  to  the  Bench  gave  him  com- 
 parative leisure,  he  lectured  from  time  to  time  on 
 aesthetic,  literary,  philosophical  subjects ;  but  he  never 
 seems  to  have  given  offence,  and  those  who  knew 
 him,  little  suspected  this  hard-working  lawyer  of 
 having  his  whole  soul  engrossed  by  Spinoza's  Ethics 
 or  the  metaphysics  of  religion. 
 
 And  yet  when  his  Will  was  opened,  the  one  thing 
 which  that  excellent  man,  after  making  ample  provi- 
 sion for  his  family,  had  evidently  had  most  at  heart, 
 was  to  help  the  world  to  a  clearer  insight  into  the 
 great  problems  of  life  than  he  himself  in  his  busy 
 career  had  been  allowed  to  gain,  to  spread  more 
 correct  and  more  enlightened  views  on  the  origin,  the 
 historical  growth,  and  the  true  purpose  of  religion, 
 and  thus  to  help  in  the  future  towards  an  honest 
 understanding  between  those  who  now  stand  opposed 
 to  each  other,  the  believers  and  unbelievers,  as  they 
 are  called,  unaware  that  as  we  all  see  through  a 
 glass  darkly,  we  can  only  speak  through  our  words 
 faintly,  and  not  always,  rightly. 
 
 Allow  me  to  quote  some  extracts  from  this  remark- 
 able Will:— 
 
 '  /,  Adam  Gifford,  sometime  one  of  the  Senators  of 
 the  College  of  Justice,  Scotland,  .  .  .  having  fully 
 and  maturely  considered  my  means  and  estcde  .  .  • 
 and  the  just  claims  and  expectations  of  my  son  and 
 relations  .  .  .  and  considering  myself  bound  to  apply 
 part  of  my  means  in  advancing  the  public  welfare 
 and.,  the  cause  of  truth,  do  hereby  make  my  'Trust- 
 deed'  and  latter  Will  and  Testament,  that  is  to  ,niy, 
 I  give  my  body  to  the  earth  as  it  was  before,  in  order 
 that  the  enduring  blocks  and  materials  thereof  may 
 
LORD   GIFFORDS    BEQUEST.  5 
 
 be  employed  in  new  combinations ;  and  I  give  my 
 soul  to  God,  in  Whom  and  with  Whom  it  always  was, 
 to  be  in  Him  and  ivith  Him  for  ever  in  closer  and 
 more  conscious  union' 
 
 When  Lord  Gifford  proceeds  to  declare  that,  after 
 having  provided  for  his  relatives,  he  feels  himself 
 bound  to  employ  what  is  over  and  above,  for  the 
 good  of  his  fellow  men,  he  says, — 
 
 '  I,  having  been  for  many  years  deeply  and  firmly 
 convinced  that  the  true  knowledge  of  God,  that  is,  of 
 the  Being,  Nature,  and  Attributes  of  the  Infinite,  of 
 the  All,  of  the  First  and  only  Cause,  that  is,  the  One 
 and  Only  Substance  and  Being,  and  the  true  and 
 felt  knowledge  {not  merely  nominal  knowledge)  of  the 
 relations  of  man  and  of  the  universe  to  Him,  and  of 
 the  true  foundations  ofcdl  ethics  and  morals, — being, 
 I  say,  convinced  that  this  knowledge,  when  really  felt 
 and  acted  on,  is  the  means  of  mans  highest  well-being, 
 and  the  security  of  his  upward  progress,  I  have  re- 
 solved .  .  .  to  institute  and  found  .  .  .  lectureships  or 
 classes  for  the  promotion  of  the  study  of  said  sub- 
 jects, and  for  the  teaching  and  diffusion  of  sound 
 views  regarding  them,  among  the  whole  population 
 of  Scotland! 
 
 In  a  later  paragraph  of  his  Will,  he  defines  more 
 fully  what  he  understands  by  Natural  Theology  and 
 by  sound  views,  and  what  subjects  he  wishes  particu- 
 larly to  be  taught. 
 
 {  Natural  Theology  ]  he  says,  'in  the  widest  sense 
 of  that  term,  is  the  Knowledge  of  God,  the  Infinite, 
 the  All,  the  First  and  Only  Cause,  the  One  and  the 
 Sole  Substance,  the  Sole  Being,  the  Sole  Reality, 
 and  the  Sole  Existence,  the  Knowledge  of  His  Nd~ 
 
b  LECTURE    I. 
 
 ture  and  Attributes,  the  Knowledge  of  the  Relations 
 which  men  and  the  whole  universe  hear  to  Him, 
 the  Knowledge  of  the  Nature  and  Foundation  of 
 Ethics  and  Morals,  and  of  all  Obligations  and 
 Duties  hence  arising.' 
 
 If  Lord  GifFord  had  said  no  more  than  this  in  his 
 Will,  we  might  have  thought  that  he  had  been  in- 
 fluenced by  the  high  and  noble,  yet  not  very  un- 
 common, motives  of  a  man  who  wishes  to  see  his 
 own  peculiar  views  of  religion  perpetuated  for  the 
 benefit  of  mankind.  He  would  have  ranked  among 
 the  pious  founders  and  benefactors  of  this  country, 
 by  the  side  of  Chichele,  Wolsey,  Henry  the  Eighth, 
 and  other  patrons  of  the  Church  in  former  ages. 
 But  no  ;  and  here  we  see  the  wisdom  and  large- 
 mindedness  of  Lord  Gifford. 
 
 '  The  lecturers',  he  says,  '  shall  be  subjected  to  no 
 test  of  any  hind,  and  shall  not  be  required  to  take 
 any  oath,  or  to  emit  or  subscribe  any  declaration  of 
 belief,  or  to  make  any  -promise  of  any  kind;  they 
 may  be  of  any  denomination  whatever,  or  of  no 
 denomination  at  all  [and  many  earnest  and  high- 
 minded  men  prefer  to  belong  to  no  ecclesiastical 
 denomination)  ;  they  may  be  of  any  religion  or  way 
 of  thinking,  or,  as  is  sometimes  said,  they  may  be 
 of  no  religion,  or  they  may  be  so-called  sceptics  or 
 agnostics  or  freethinkers,  provided  only  that  the 
 " patrons"  will  use  diligence  to  secure  that  they  be 
 able,  reverent  men,  true  thinkers,  sincere  lovers  of 
 and  earnest  inquirers  after  truth.' 
 
 And  further — 
 
 '  I  wish  the  lecturers  to  treed  their  subject  as  a 
 strictly   natural  science,  the  greatest   of  cdl  p^ossible 
 
LORD    GIFFORD  S    BEQUEST.  7 
 
 sciences,  indeed,  in  one  sense,  the  only  science,  that  of 
 Infinite  Being,  without  reference  to  or  reliance  upon 
 any  supposed  exceptional  and  so-called  miraculous 
 revelation,  I  wish  it  considered  just  as  astronomy 
 or  chemistry  is.  I  have  intentionally  indicated,  in 
 describing  the  subject  of  the  lectures,  the  general 
 aspect  which  personally  I  would  expect  the  lectures 
 to  bear;  but  the  lecturers  shall  be  under  no  restraint 
 whatever  in  their  treatment  of  their  theme;  for 
 example,  they  may  freely  discuss — (and  it  may  be  well 
 to  do  so)— all  questions  about  mans  conceptions  of 
 God  or  the  Infinite,  their  origin,  nature,  and  truth, 
 whether  he  can  have  any  such  conceptions,  whether 
 God  is  under  any  or  what  limitations,  and  so  on, 
 as  I  am  persuaded  that  nothing  but  good  can  result 
 from  free  discussion' 
 
 You  will  now  understand  why  I  call  the  foundation 
 of  these  Lectureships  a  sign,  and  a  very  important  sign, 
 of  the  times.  Our  nineteenth  century,  which  will 
 soon  have  passed  away,  has  been  described  as  a  cen- 
 tury of  progress  and  enlightenment  in  all  branches  of 
 human  knowledge,  in  science,  in  scholarship,  in  philo- 
 sophy, and  in  art.  In  religion  alone  it  is  said  that 
 we  have  remained  stationary.  While  everything  else 
 has  been  improved,  while  new  discoveries  have  been 
 made  which  have  changed  the  whole  face  of  the 
 earth,  while  our  philosophy,  our  laws,  even  our 
 morality,  bear  the  impress  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
 nay,  of  all  the  nineteen  centuries  which  have  passed 
 over  them  since  the  beginning  of  our  era,  it  is  said, 
 and  not  without  a  certain  kind  of  pride,  that  our 
 religion  has  remained  unchanged,  at  least  in  all  its 
 essential  elements, 
 
»  LECTURE    I. 
 
 Whether  this  is  really  so,  depends  on  the  meaning 
 which  we  attach  to  the  essential  elements  of  religion, 
 and  in  religion,  more  than  in  anything  else,  essential 
 elements  are  but  too  often  treated  as  non-essential, 
 and,  what  is  worse,  non-essential  as  essential.  The  his- 
 torian would  have  no  great  difficulty  in  showing  that 
 the  Christianity  of  the  Council  of  Nicaea  is  not  in  all 
 essential  points  exactly  the  same  as  the  Christianity 
 of  the  Sermon  of  the  Mount,  and  that  the  reformers 
 of  the  sixteenth  century  at  all  events  did  not  consider 
 the  Christianity  of  Papal  Rome  essentially  the  same 
 as  that  of  the  Council  of  Nicaea.  There  has  been 
 change,  whether  we  call  it  growth  or  decay,  during 
 the  nineteen  centuries  that  Christ's  religion  has 
 swayed  the  destinies  of  the  world.  Yet  the  fact 
 remains,  that  while  in  all  other  spheres  of  human 
 thought,  what  is  new  is  welcomed,  anything  new  in 
 religion  is  generally  frowned  upon.  Nay,  even  when 
 we  seem  to  see  healthy  growth  and  natural  progress 
 in  religion,  it  generally  assumes  the  form  of  retro- 
 gression, of  a  return  to  the  original  intentions  of  the 
 founder  of  a  religion,  of  a  restoration  or  reform,  in 
 the  etymological  sense  of  that  word,  that  is,  of  a 
 going  back  to  the  original  form. 
 
 Why  should  that  be  so  ?  Why  should  there  be  pro- 
 gress in  everything  else,  only  not  in  religion?  The 
 usual  answer  that  religion  rests  on  a  divine  and 
 miraculous  revelation,  and  therefore  cannot  be  im- 
 proved, is  neither  true  nor  honest.  And  to  use  such 
 an  argument  in  this  place  would  be  disloyal  to  the 
 memory  of  the  Founder  of  this  lectureship;  who  wished 
 religion  to  be  treated  '  without  reference  to  or  reliance 
 upon  any  supposed  exceptional  and  so-called  miracu- 
 
LORD   GIFFORD's    BEQUEST.  9 
 
 lous  revelation.'  But  those  who  use  that  argument 
 seem  really  to  forget  that  they  are  contradicting  them- 
 selves. They  hold  the  Old  as  well  as  the  New 
 Testament  to  have  been  divinely  revealed,  and  yet 
 they  would  not  deny  that  the  New  Testament  repre- 
 sents a  decided  progress  as  compared  with  the  Old. 
 Through  the  whole  of  the  Gospels  there  seems  to 
 sound  that  one  deep  note,  'Ye  have  heard  that  it 
 was  said  by  them  of  old  time — But  I  say  unto  you.' 
 Nay,  we  might  go  further.  We  know  that  some  of 
 the  fundamental  doctrines  of  Christianity  were  in  the 
 eyes  of  the  Jews  irreligious.  The  idea  of  a  divine 
 sonship  was  not  only  new  to  the  Jews,  it  was  blas- 
 phemy in  their  eyes,  and  worthy  of  death.  And  yet 
 that  very  idea  has  become  the  corner-stone  of  a  new 
 religion,  which  new  religion  calls  itself  not  the  de- 
 struction, but  the  fulfilment  of  the  old. 
 
 There  is  nothing  in  the  idea  of  revelation  that 
 excludes  progress,  for  whatever  definition  of  revelation 
 we  may  adopt,  it  always  represents  a  communication 
 between  the  Divine  on  one  side  and  the  Human  on 
 the  other.  Let  us  grant  that  the  divine  element 
 in  revelation,  that  is,  whatever  of  truth  there  is  in 
 revelation,  is  immutable,  yet  the  human  element,  the 
 recipient,  must  always  be  liable  to  the  accidents  and 
 infirmities  of  human  nature.  That  human  element  can 
 never  be  eliminated  in  any  religion,  certainly  not  in 
 our  own,  unless  we  claim  infallibility  not  only  for  the 
 founder  of  our  religion  and  his  disciples,  but  for  their 
 disciples  also,  and  for  a  whole  succession  of  the  suc- 
 cessors and  vicars  of  Christ.  To  ignore  that  human 
 element  in  all  religions  is  like  ignoring  the  eye  as  the 
 recipient  and  determinant  of  the  colours  of  light.    AW 
 
10  LECTURE    I. 
 
 know  more  of  the  sun  than  our  forefathers,  though 
 the  same  sun  shone  on  them  which  shines  on  us ;  and 
 if  astronomy  has  benefitted  by  its  telescopes,  which 
 have  strengthened  the  powers  of  the  human  eye, 
 theology  also  ought  not  to  despise  whatever  can 
 strengthen  the  far-sightedness  of  human  reason  in  its 
 endeavours  to  gain  a  truer  and  purer  idea  of  the 
 Divine.  A  veil  will  always  remain.  No  astronomer 
 ventures  to  look  at  the  sun  without  darkening  his 
 lens,  and  man  will  have  to  look  at  what  is  beyond 
 through  a  glass  darkly.  But  as  in  every  other  pur- 
 suit, so  in  religion  also,  we  want  less  and  less  of 
 darkness,  more  and  more  of  light ;  we  want,  call  it 
 life,  or  growth,  or  development,  or  progress ;  we  do 
 not  want  mere  rest,  mere  stagnation,  mere  death. 
 
 Now,  I  say  once  more,  the  foundation  of  this 
 lectureship  of  Natural  Theology  seems  to  me  a  sign 
 of  the  times,  pregnant  with  meaning.  Lord  GifTord, 
 intelligent  observer  of  the  world  as  he  was,  must 
 have  been  struck  with  the  immense  advances  which 
 all  other  sciences  had  been  making  during  his  life- 
 time, and  the  increasing  benefits  which  they  had 
 conferred  on  society  at  large.  And  so  he  says  in  the 
 clearest  words  : 
 
 '/  wish  Natural  Theology  to  be  treated  by  my 
 lecturers  as  astronomy  or  chemistry  is,  as  a  strictly 
 natural  science,  the  greatest  of  all  possible  sciences, 
 indeed,  in  one  sense,  the  only  science."1 
 
 What  does  that  mean  ?  It  seems  to  me  to  mean 
 that  this  observant  and  clear-headed  Scotch  lawyer, 
 though  he  could  follow  the  progress  of  human  know- 
 ledge  from   a   distance  only,  had   convinced  himself 
 
LORD   GIFFORD's    BEQUEST.  11 
 
 that  theology  should  not  stand  aloof  from  the  on- 
 ward stream  of  human  knowledge,  that  it  should 
 not  be  treated  according  to  rules  of  evidence  and 
 principles  of  criticism  different  from  those  to  which 
 all  other  sciences,  and  more  particularly  his  own 
 science,  the  Science  of  Law,  owed  their  strength, 
 their  life,  and  their  vigorous  growth,  but  that  it 
 should  take  its  place  as  a  science  among  sciences, 
 undismayed  by  dangers,  and  trusting  in  the  inevit- 
 able triumph  of  truth.  Whatever  other  Universities 
 might  say,  he  wished  the  Scotch  Universities  to 
 take  the  lead,  and  to  stretch  out  the  right  hand  of 
 fellowship  to  the  newest  among  the  sciences,  the 
 last-born  child  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  Science 
 of  Religion. 
 
 Some  people  profess  to  be  frightened  at  the  very 
 name  of  the  Science  of  Religion  ;  but  if  they  ap- 
 proached this  new  science  more  closely,  they  would 
 soon  find  that  there  is  nothing  behind  that  name 
 that  need  frighten  them.  What  does  this  science 
 consist  in  ?  First  of  all,  in  a  careful  collection  of  all 
 the  facts  of  religion  ;  secondly,  in  a  comparison  of 
 religions  with  a  view  of  bringing  to  light  what  is 
 peculiar  to  each,  and  what  they  all  share  in  common ; 
 thirdly,  in  an  attempt  to  discover,  on  the  strength  of 
 the  evidence  thus  collected,  what  is  the  true  nature, 
 the  origin,  and  purpose  of  all  religion. 
 
 I  ask,  then,  Where  is  the  danger  ?  And  why  should 
 our  Universities  hesitate  to  recognise  the  Science  of 
 Religion  as  much  as  the  Science  of  Language,  or  the 
 Science  of  Thought?  The  first  Universities  which 
 provided  chairs  for  the  comparative  study  of  the 
 religions   of  the  world  were   those  of  little,  plucky 
 
12  LECTURE    T. 
 
 Holland.  In  1880  France  followed  their  example, 
 and  M.  Reville  was  appointed  the  first  professor  of 
 the  Science  of  Religion  at  the  College  de  France. 
 In  1886  a  special  school  was  founded  at  the  Scale 
 des  Hautes  JStudes  in  Paris  for  the  study  of  religions. 
 In  Germany  lectures  on  the  great  religions  of  the 
 world  were  generally  given  by  the  professors  who 
 taught  the  languages  in  which  the  sacred  writings 
 were  composed.  This  is  an  excellent  plan,  perhaps 
 the  best  that  could  be  devised.  The  professor  of 
 Arabic  would  lecture  on  the  Qur'an,  the  professor  of 
 Persian  on  the  Avesta,  the  professor  of  Sanskrit  on 
 the  Veda,  the  professor  of  Hebrew  on  the  Old  Testa- 
 ment. Lately,  however,  separate  chairs  have  been 
 created  for  Comparative  Theology  in  Germany  also, 
 and  even  in  the  Roman  Catholic  University  of  Frei- 
 burg this  new  study  has  now  found  a  worthy  repre- 
 sentative 1. 
 
 It  may  seem  strange  to  some  that  Lord  Gifford 
 should  have  expressed  a  wish  that  the  Science  of 
 Religion  should  be  treated  as  a  strictly  natural 
 science.  He  may  have  thought  of  the  method  of  the 
 natural  sciences  only ;  but  it  seems  to  me  not  un- 
 likely that  he  meant  more,  and  that  looking  on  man 
 as  an  integral  part,  nay  as  the  very  crown  of  nature, 
 he  wished  religion  to  be  treated  as  a  spontaneous  and 
 necessarv  outcome  of  the  mind  of  man,  when  brought 
 under  the  genial  influence  of  surrounding  nature.  If  re- 
 ligion, such  as  we  find  it  in  all  ages  and  among  all  races 
 of  men,  is  a  natural  product  of  the  human  mind — and 
 who  denies  this  ?— and  if  the  human  mind,  in  its  his- 
 
 1  Die  allgemeine  vergleichende  Religionswisseyischaft  im  akademischen  Stu- 
 tli urn  unserer  fk&t,  von  Dr.  E.  Hardy,  Freiburg  im  Breisgau.  1887. 
 
LORD    GIFFORD's    BEQUEST.  13 
 
 torical  development,  cannot  be  dissevered  from  that 
 nature  on  whose  breasts  it  feeds  and  lives  and  grows, 
 the  Science  of  Religion  has  certainly  as  perfect  a 
 right  as  the  Science  of  Language  to  be  classed  as  one 
 of  the  natural  sciences. 
 
 But  that  view  does  by  no  means  exclude  an  his- 
 torical study  of  religion ;  nay,  to  my  mind,  the  more 
 interesting,  if  not  the  more  important  part  of  the 
 Science  of  Religion,  is  certainly  concerned  with  what 
 we  call  the  historical  development  of  religious  thought 
 and  language.  It  is  the  same  with  the  Science  of 
 Language.  That  science  is  certainly  one  of  the  natural 
 sciences,  but  we  should  never  forget  that  it  is  full  of 
 interest  also  when  treated  as  an  historical  science. 
 The  line  of  demarcation  between  the  natural  and 
 the  historical  sciences  is  not  so  easy  to  draw  as  some 
 philosophers  imagine,  who  would  claim  even  the 
 Science  of  Language  as  an  exclusively  historical 
 science.  All  depends  here  as  elsewhere  on  a  proper 
 definition  of  the  terms  which  we  employ.  If  we  once 
 clearly  understand  what  we  mean  by  the  natural  and 
 what  by  the  historical  sciences,  we  shall  quickly 
 understand  each  other ;  or,  if  we  differ  still,  we  may 
 at  all  events  agree  to  differ.  Without  it,  all  wrangling 
 pro  or  con  is  mere  waste  of  time,  and  may  be  carried 
 on  ad  infinitum  1. 
 
 From  my  own  point  of  view,  which  I  need  not 
 vindicate  again,  I  am  able  to  accept  Lord  Gifford's 
 designation  of  the  Science  of  Religion  as  a  natural 
 science  in  both  meanings  of  which  that  name  admits. 
 I  share  with  him  the  conviction  that  the  same  treat- 
 
 1  Lecture  on  the  Science  qf  Language,  vol.  i.  p.  1;  'The  Science  <>i 
 Language  as  one  of  the  Physical  Sciences.' 
 
14  LECTURE    I. 
 
 nient  which  has  caused  the  natural  sciences  to  gain 
 their  greatest  triumphs,  namely,  a  critical  collection 
 of  facts,  will  be  the  most  appropriate  treatment  of  the 
 Science  of  Religion ;  nor  should  I  differ  from  him  in 
 looking  on  man,  in  his  purely  phenomenal  character, 
 as  a  part  of  nature,  nay,  as  her  highest  achievement, 
 so  that,  if  religion  can  be  shown  to  be  a  natural  out- 
 come of  our  faculties,  we  may  readily  accept  the 
 Science  of  Religion  as  one  of  the  natural  sciences,  in 
 the  most  comprehensive  meaning  of  that  term.  Any- 
 how, I  hope  I  shall  best  carry  out  the  intentions  of 
 the  founder  of  this  lectureship  by  devoting  these 
 lectures,  firstly,  to  a  careful  collection  of  the  facts  of 
 religion  ;  secondly,  to  an  intercomparison  of  these  facts  ; 
 and  thirdly,  to  an  interpretation  of  their  meaning. 
 
 But  Lord  Gilford  has  not  only  indicated  what  he 
 wished  chiefly  to  be  taught  in  these  lectures  on 
 Natural  Theology  ;  he  has  been  even  more  careful 
 to  indicate  the  spirit  by  which  he  hoped  that  his 
 lecturers  would  be  guided.  And  this  seems  to  me  the 
 most  remarkable  feature  of  his  bequest.  Lord  Gifford 
 was  evidently  what  the  world  would  call  a  devout  and 
 religious  man,  and  you  have  heard  how  in  his  Will 
 he  expressed  his  conviction  that  a  true  knowledge  of 
 God  is  the  means  of  man's  highest  well-being  and 
 the  security  of  his  upward  progress.  Yet  so  strong 
 was  his  conviction  that  all  scientific  inquiry  must  be 
 perfectly  free,  if  it  is  to  be  useful,  that  he  would  hear 
 of  no  restrictions  in  the  choice  of  his  lecturers. 
 
 '  They  may  be  of  any  denomination  whatever,'  he 
 says,  'or  of  no  denomination  at  all ;  they  may  be  of 
 any  religion  or  of  no  religion  at  all ;  they  may  be  so- 
 called  sceptics  or  freethinkers,  so  long  as  they  have 
 
lord  gifford's  bequest.  15 
 
 proved  themselves  sincere  lovers  of  and  earnest   in- 
 quirers after  truth? 
 
 Now  in  this  large-hearted  charity,  and  at  the  same 
 moment,  in  this  unshaken  faith  in  the  indestructible 
 character  of  religion,  we  may  surety  recognise  a  sign 
 of  the  times.  Would  such  a  Will  have  been  possible 
 fifty  years  ago  ?  Would  any  English,  would  any 
 Scotch  University  at  that  time  have  accepted  a 
 lectureship  on  such  conditions  ?  I  doubt  it ;  and  I 
 see  in  the  ready  acceptance  of  these  conditions  on 
 the  part  of  the  Scotch  Universities  the  best  proof 
 that  in  the  study  and  true  appreciation  of  religion 
 also,  our  nineteenth  century  has  not  been  stationary. 
 
 When  it  was  first  suggested  that  one  of  these 
 Gifford  readerships  might  be  offered  to  me,  I  replied 
 at  once  to  my  friends  at  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  and 
 St.  Andrews,  that  I  could  not  become  a  candidate.  It 
 so  happened  that  I  was  informed  at  the  same  time  that 
 my  own  University  might  again  require  my  services, 
 and  I  felt  very  strongly  that  at  my  time  of  life  I 
 ought  not  to  undertake  new  duties,  but  rather  finish, 
 if  possible,  the  work  which  I  had  in  hand.  If  I 
 tell  you  that  I  was  pledged  to  a  new  edition  of  the 
 Rig-veda,  which  consists  of  six  volumes  quarto,  of 
 about  a  thousand  pages  each,  and  that  besides  that, 
 I  was  engaged  in  putting  a  finishing  touch  to  an 
 English  translation  of  the  hymns  of  that  Veda, — to 
 say  nothing  of  new  editions  of  several  of  my  other 
 books,  which,  like  myself,  had  grown  old  and  anti- 
 quated, you  will  readily  believe  that,  strongly  as  I  felt 
 tempted,  and  highly  as  I  felt  honoured  that  I  should 
 have  been  thought  of  as  a  fit  candidate,  I  thought 
 it  wise  not  to  enter  on  a  new  campaign. 
 
16  LECTURE   I. 
 
 But  when  I  was  informed  by  your  Principal  that, 
 though  not  a  candidate,  I  had  been  elected,  and 
 unanimously  elected,  by  the  Senate  of  your  Uni- 
 versity, I  had  not  strength  enough  to  say  No. 
 Whether  I  acted  wisely  or  foolishly,  the  future  must 
 show.  But  when  I  had  once  said  Yes,  I  must  con- 
 fess it  was  to  me  like  the  beginning  of  a  new  life. 
 Some  of  the  work  on  which  I  was  engaged  had  to  be 
 thrown  overboard ;  but  I  had  now  an  opportunity, 
 and  a  splendid  opportunity,  for  summing  up  the 
 whole  work  of  my  life. 
 
 Forgive  me  if,  for  a  short  while,  I  speak  of  myself. 
 I  know  it  is  very  wrong,  and  may  sound  very  selfish. 
 But  I  am  anxious  to  explain  to  you  what  the  main 
 outline  of  the  work  of  my  life  has  been,  and  why  I 
 hope  that  in  these  lectures  I  may  be  able  to  gather 
 up  what  seems  to  me  worth  preserving,  and  at  the 
 same  time  to  place  before  you  the  final  outcome  of 
 life-long  labours,  devoted  to  what  the  ancient  Greeks 
 called  tcl  [xkyivTa,  the  greatest  things.  As  a  student 
 at  Leipzig,  in  the  year  1841,  I  began  my  studies 
 as  a  classical  scholar,  as  a  pupil  of  Gottfried 
 Hermann,  Haupt,  Westermann,  Nobbe,  and  Stallbaum. 
 These  were  great  names  at  the  time,  and  excellent 
 teachers  ;  but  even  before  I  had  taken  my  degree, 
 I  was  tempted  away  by  philosophy,  attending  the  lec- 
 tures of  Christian  H.  Weisse,  Drobisch,  Hartenstein, 
 and  Lotze.  Leipzig  was  then  richer  in  great  teachers 
 than  any  other  University  in  Germany.  Hartenstein 
 represented  the  classical  Kantian  school ;  Drobisch 
 was  a  follower  of  Herbart ;  Weisse  made  propaganda 
 for  Hegelian isni ;  Lotze,  then  quite  a  young  Privat- 
 docent,  started  a  philosophical  system  of  his   own, 
 
lord  gifford's  bequest.  17 
 
 which  now  begins,  I  believe,  to  attract  attention  in 
 Scotland  also.  I  imagined  at  that  time  I  was  a 
 Hegelian,  and  I  well  remember  when  I  passed  my 
 final  Examination  at  Leipzig,  and  had  been  wrangling 
 for  a  long  time  with  my  Examiner,  Professor  Drobisch, 
 all  in  Latin,  on  the  respective  merits  of  Hegel  and 
 Herbart,  Drobisch,  who  was  then  Dean  of  the  Philo- 
 sophical Faculty,  and  who  I  believe  is  lecturing  still 
 at  Leipzig,  addressed  me  in  the  following  words :  Vir 
 doctissime,  quamvis  nostris  sententiis  toto  coelo  dis- 
 temus,  tot/men  te  creo  atque  pronuntio  magisbrwni 
 Artium  et  Doctor  em  Philosophiae  in  Universitate 
 nostra.  The  dissertation  which  I  wrote  in  1843, 
 in  order  to  obtain  my  Doctor's  degree,  was  '  On  the 
 Third  Book  of  Spinoza's  Ethics,  De  Affeetihas! 
 
 In  the  meantime,  like  many  other  youug  philo- 
 sophers, I  had  been  attracted  by  Schelling's  fame  to 
 Berlin,  where  I  attended  his  lectures,  and  soon  be- 
 come personally  acquainted  with  the  old  sage.  He 
 was  at  that  time  an  old  man,  more  of  a  poet  and 
 prophet  than  of  a  philosopher  ;  and  his  lectures  on  the 
 philosophy  of  mythology  and  religion  opened  many 
 new  views  to  my  mind.  But,  though  I  admired  the 
 depth  and  the  wide  range  of  his  ideas,  I  could  not 
 help  being  struck  by  what  seemed  to  me  his  un- 
 founded statements  with  regard  to  the  ancient  reli- 
 gions  of  the  East.  I  had  at  Leipzig  studied  Arabic 
 under  Fleischer,  and  Sanskrit  under  Brockhaus,  and 
 I  was  then  reading  Persian  with  Riickert  at  Berlin. 
 Though  I  was  a  mere  boy,  Schelling  was  quite  will- 
 ing to  listen  to  some  of  my  criticisms,  and  at  his 
 request  I  then  translated  for  him  some  of  the  most 
 important  Upanishads,  which  form  part  of  the  ancient 
 
18  LECTURE    I. 
 
 Vedic  literature.  I  have  never  been  able  to  recover  that 
 translation,  and  it  was  not  till  1879  that  I  published 
 a  new,  and,  I  hope,  more  accurate  translation  of  these 
 theosophic  treatises,  in  my  Sacred  Books  of  the  East. 
 
 I  soon  came  to  see,  however,  that  these  Upani- 
 shads  were  only  the  latest  outcome  of  Vedic  litera- 
 ture, and  that  in  order  to  know  their  antecedents, 
 in  order  to  be  able  to  appreciate  the  historical 
 growth  of  the  Indian  mind  during  the  Vedic  age,  we 
 must  study  the  ancient  hymns  of  the  Veda.  I  re- 
 member having  a  most  interesting  discussion  on  the 
 relative  importance  of  the  Vedic  hymns  and  the 
 Upanishads  with  Schopenhauer  at  Frankfort.  He 
 considered  that  the  Upanishads  were  the  only  por- 
 tion of  the  Veda  which  deserved  our  study,  and  that 
 all  the  rest  was  priestly  rubbish  (Priester-wirthschaft). 
 His  own  philosophy,  he  declared,  was  founded  on 
 the  Upanishads,  which,  as  he  says  in  one  of  his  books, 
 'have  been  the  solace  of  my  life,  and  will  be  the 
 solace  of  my  death1.'  To  me  it  seemed  that  an 
 historical  study  of  the  Vedic  religion  ought  to  begin 
 with  the  hymns  of  the  Rig-veda,  as  containing  in 
 thought  and  language  the  antecedents  of  the  Upani- 
 shads. The  first  book  only  of  the  Rig-veda,  the 
 collection  of  hymns,  had  then  been  published  by 
 Frederick  Rosen,  and  Rosen  had  died  before  even 
 that  first  volume  was  printed.  I  felt  convinced  that 
 all  mythological  and  religious  theories  would  remain 
 without  a  solid  foundation  till  the  whole  of  the  Rier- 
 veda  had  been  published.  This  idea  took  complete 
 possession  of  me,  and  young  as  I  was,  and,  I  ought  to 
 
 1  Upanishads,  translated  by  Max  Miiller.  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
 vol.  i.  p.  lxi. 
 
lord  gtfford's  bequest.  19 
 
 add,  reckless  as  I  was,  instead  of  beginning  my  work- 
 as  a  lecturer  in  one  of  the  German  Universities,  I 
 went  to  Paris  to  attend  Bnrnouf's  lectures,  and  to 
 copy  and  collate  the  MSS.  of  the  Veda  and  its  volu- 
 minous commentary.  It  was  hard  work,  very  uphill 
 work  indeed,  for  Sanskrit  was  not  known  then  as  it- 
 is  now,  and  the  whole  literature  on  which  Sayawa's 
 great  commentary  on  the  Rig-veda  is  founded,  was 
 then  almost  entirely  a  terra  incognita,  and  had  first 
 to  be  discovered,  and  to  be  studied  from  MSS.  in  the 
 Bibliotheque  Royale,  as  it  was  then  called,  or  in  Bnr- 
 nouf's private  library.  I  often  thought  that  I  should 
 have  to  give  it  up,  and  return  as  a  Privatdocent  to 
 a  German  University,  for  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say 
 that  during  all  that  time  at  Paris,  I  had  to  maintain 
 myself,  as  I  have  done  ever  since,  with  these  three 
 fingers.  However,  encouraged  and  helped  by  Bur- 
 nouf,  I  persevered,  and  when  I  was  ready  to  begin 
 the  printing  of  the  first  volume,  I  came  to  England, 
 as  I  thought  for  a  few  weeks  only,  to  collate  some 
 MSS.  at  the  East  India  House  in  Leadenhall  Street, 
 and  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  Professor  Wilson, 
 at  that  time  the  Nestor  of  real  Sanskrit  scholars  in 
 Europe.  New  clouds,  however,  were  then  gathering 
 on  my  horizon.  The  Imperial  Academy  of  St.  Peters- 
 burg, even  at  that  time  deeply  interested  in  Indian 
 literature,  had  voted  large  funds  for  bringing  out  an 
 edition  of  the  Rig-veda  with  Saya>?a's  commentary, 
 and  had  asked  the  East  India  Company  for  the  loan 
 of  those  very  MSS.  which  I  had  come  to  London  to 
 copy  and  collate.  At  the  same  time  Professor  Wilson, 
 in  the  name  of  the  East  India  Company,  had  sent 
 invitations   to    the  most   learned    Pandits   in    India, 
 
 c  2 
 
20  LECTURE    T. 
 
 asking  them  whether  they  would  undertake  an 
 edition  of  the  Rig-veda  in  India.  All  my  plans 
 seemed  thus  to  collapse  ;  but  I  need  not  trouble  you 
 with  my  personal  troubles.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the 
 Pandits  of  India  declined  to  undertake  the  edition  of 
 the  text  and  commentary  of  the  Rig-veda,  for  the 
 simple  reason  that  the  study  of  Veclic  literature  had 
 at  that  time  been  entirely  neglected  in  India ;  that 
 the  Directors  of  the  late  East  India  Company  thought 
 it  unfair  that  the  MSS.  of  the  Rig-veda  should  be 
 sent  to  the  Imperial  Academy  at  St.  Petersburg  at 
 the  very  time  when  I  had  come  to  London  to  make 
 use  of  them  ;  and  that,  on  the  recommendation  of  my 
 old  friend,  Professor  Wilson,  the  East  India  Company 
 entrusted  me  with  the  publication  of  the  Rig-veda  at 
 their  expense. 
 
 I  did  not  accept  this  offer  with  a  light  heart.  It 
 meant  giving  up  my  University  career  in  Germany, 
 and  more  than  that,  it  meant  severe  drudgery  and 
 the  very  smallest  pay  for  many  years  to  come.  I 
 had  no  illusions  about  Saya?ia's  commentary.  I  knew 
 it  was  the  sine  qua  non  for  all  scholarlike  study  of 
 the  Veda ;  but  I  had  seen  enough  of  it  to  know  that 
 it  certainly  did  not  contain  the  key  to  a  real  under- 
 standing of  the  ancient  hymns  of  the  Veda.  Besides 
 that,  even  the  Veda  was  to  me  only  a  means  to  an 
 end,  namely,  a  philosophy  of  mythology  and  religion, 
 based  on  more  trustworthy  materials  than  those  on 
 which  Schelling  had  been  able  to  build  his  later  philo- 
 sophy of  religion  and  mythology. 
 
 Thus,  while  I  determined  to  work  for  others  in 
 bringing  out  as  complete  and  correct  an  edition  of 
 the  Rig-veda  and  its  commentary  as  was  then  pos- 
 
LORD   GIFFORD'S    BEQUEST.  21 
 
 sible,  I  made  up  my  mind  at  the  same  time  to  carry 
 on  my  own  work.  Having  then  settled  at  Oxford, 
 and  having  been  appointed  to  lecture  on  Modern 
 Literature  and  Language,  I  devoted  my  leisure  to  a 
 study  of  the  Science  of  Language.  A  study  of  lan- 
 guage is  absolutely  necessary  as  an  introduction  to 
 the  study  of  philosophy  as  well  as  of  religion. 
 Whatever  further  research  may  teach  us  about  the 
 true  nature  of  language,  it  is  clear,  from  a  purely 
 practical  point  of  view,  that  language  supplies  at 
 least  the  tools  of  thought,  and  that  a  knowledge  of 
 these  tools  is  as  essential  to  a  philosopher,  as  a  know- 
 ledge of  his  ship  and  his  oars  is  to  a  sailor.  The 
 Science  of  Language,  as  I  treated  it  in  my  Lectures 
 at  Oxford,  is  pre-eminently  an  analytical  science.  We 
 take  languages  as  we  find  them,  we  trace  them  back 
 to  their  earliest  forms,  and  classify  them,  and  then 
 analyse  every  word  till  we  arrive  at  elements  which 
 resist  further  analysis.  These  elements  we  call  roots, 
 and  leave  them,  for  the  present,  as  ultimate  facts. 
 In  tracing  the  upward  growth  of  words  we  arrive  at 
 a  stage  where  we  can  clearly  see  the  branching  off  of 
 a  large  number  of  meanings,  springing  from  the  same 
 stem.  And  among  these  earliest  ramifications  we 
 meet  with  a  number  of  names  familiar  to  us  from 
 what  is  called  the  mythology  of  ancient  nations. 
 We  soon  discover  that  these  mythological  expressions 
 are  by  no  means  restricted  to  religious  ideas,  but  that 
 there  is  a  period  in  the  growth  of  language  in  which 
 everything  may  or  must  assume  a  mythological  ex- 
 pression. It  was  the  object  of  the  second  volume  of 
 my  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  to  establish 
 the  fact  that  mythology,  in  its  true  sense,  was  an 
 
22  LECTURE    I. 
 
 inevitable  phase  in  the  development  of  the  human 
 mind,  and  that  we  could  solve  many  of  its  riddles 
 with  the  help  of  such  indications  as  were  supplied  to 
 us  by  a  careful  study  of  the  general  growth  of  lan- 
 guage. I  called  this  peculiar  phase  or  affection  of 
 language  a  kind  of  disease,  though,  like  many  dis- 
 eases, it  ought  really  to  be  recognised  as  a  recuperative 
 crisis  in  the  youthful  constitution  of  the  human 
 mind.  In  some  few  cases  only,  to  which,  on  account 
 of  their  perplexing  nature,  I  called  particular  atten- 
 tion, could  mythology  rightly  be  considered  as  a 
 disease,  as  a  premature  hardening,  so  to  say,  of  the 
 organic  tissues  of  language,  namely,  when  a  word  had 
 lost  its  original  meaning,  and  was  afterwards  inter- 
 preted, or  rather  misinterpreted,  in  accordance  with 
 the  ideas  of  a  later  age.  I  tried  to  work  out  this 
 principle  in  a  number  of  essays  which  formed  the 
 foundation  of  what  is  now  called  Comparative  My- 
 thology or  the  Science  of  Mythology.  In  spite  of  much 
 opposition,  arising  chiefly  from  a  failure  on  the  part  of 
 my  critics  to  understand  the  principles  which  I  followed 
 and  to  comprehend  the  objects  I  had  in  view,  that 
 Science  of  Mythology  is  now  as  firmly  established  as  the 
 Science  of  Language1,  and  I  can  honestly  say  that 
 nothing  has  strengthened  my  faith  in  it  so  much  as  a 
 gallant  and  powerful  charge  lately  made  against  it  by  a 
 most  learned  and  conscientious  critic,  I  mean  Professor 
 Gruppe,  in  his  Griechische  Culte  und  Alythen,  1887. 
 I  shall  often  have  to  refer  to  this  book  in  the  course 
 of  my  lectures,  I  shall  often  have  to  express  my  en- 
 tire dissent  from  it ;  but,  before  we  come  to  blows,  I 
 
 1  See  A.  Barth,  Bulletin  de  la  Mythologie  Aryenne,  in  the  Revue  dc 
 
 VHistoire  des  Religions,  1880.  p.  109. 
 
LORD   GIFFORD'S   BEQUEST.  23 
 
 like  thus  publicly  to  shake  hands  with  an  antagonist 
 who  is  learned,  serious,  honest,  and  honourable. 
 
 These  mythological  researches  led  me  back  natur- 
 ally to  the  problem  with  which  I  had  started,  the  pro- 
 blem of  the  origin  and  growth  of  religion.  And  here 
 it  was  a  similar  summons  to  that  which  has  brought 
 me  here  to-day,  namely,  an  invitation  to  deliver  the 
 tirst  course  of  the  Hibbert  Lectures  in  London,  in 
 1878,  that  enabled  me  to  lay  before  a  large  public  the 
 principles  of  the  Science  of  Religion  and  Comparative 
 Theology1,  as  applied  to  the  origin  and  growth  of 
 religion  in  India. 
 
 It  was  while  engaged  in  these  researches  that 
 I  began  to  feel  the  absolute  necessity  of  our  possess- 
 ing trustworthy  translations,  not  only  of  the  Veda, 
 but  of  all  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  I  had  by 
 that  time  finished  the  edition  of  the  Rig-veda  and 
 its  commentary,  and  it  was  expected  that  I  should 
 publish  a  complete  translation  of  it.  But  here  I 
 broke  down,  for  reasons  which  those  who  know  any- 
 thing of  the  present  state  of  Vedic  scholarship  will 
 readily  understand.  The  accumulation  of  material 
 was  too  great  for  a  single  and  no  longer  a  young 
 scholar.  The  one  scholar  in  Germany  who  by  his 
 lexicographic  labours  would  seem  to  have  been  best 
 qualified  for  that  task,  Professor  Roth,  declared 
 honestly  that  a  translation  of  the  Veda  is  a  task 
 not  for  this,  but  for  the  next  century. 
 
 I  had  still  many  things  to  finish,   and  I  felt  the 
 
 time  had   come   for   drawing  in   my  sails.     Having 
 
 lectured  for  twenty-five  years  at  Oxford,  I  thought 
 
 I  had  a  right  to   be  relieved  ;  nay,  I  felt  it  a  duty 
 
 1  Hibiert  Lectures,  Longmans,  1882. 
 
24  LECTURE    I. 
 
 to  the  University  to  make  room  for  younger  and 
 more  vigorous  men.  I  then  formed  a  small  society, 
 consisting  of  the  best  Oriental  scholars  in  Europe  and 
 India,  and  we  began  to  publish  a  series  of  translations 
 of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  which  by  this  time 
 amounts  to  thirty  volumes,  and  will  ultimately  com- 
 prise forty- eight. 
 
 While  engaged  in  conducting  this  undertaking,  I 
 felt  it  necessary,  before  resuming  my  study  of 
 religion,  to  define  more  clearly  my  own  philosophical 
 position.  I  had  from  the  very  first  made  it  sufficiently 
 clear,  I  thought,  that  to  my  mind  language  and 
 thought  were  inseparable,  that  thought  was  language 
 minus  sound,  instead  of  language  being,  as  was 
 commonly  supposed,  thought  plus  sound.  It  was 
 from  that  point  of  view  that  I  felt  justified  in  treat- 
 ing mythology  as  I  had  done,  namely,  as  an  affection, 
 or  even  as  a  disease,  of  language,  and  it  was  in  the 
 same  sense  that  I  had  tried  to  read  in  the  annals  of 
 language  some  of  the  secrets  of  the  growth  of  reli- 
 gion. The  common  illusion  that  language  is  different 
 from  thought,  and  thought  different  from  language, 
 seemed  to  me  one  of  the  best  illustrations  of  modern 
 philosophical  mythology  ;  but  I  found  that  even  pro- 
 fessed philosophers  clung  to  that  myth  with  the  same 
 tenacity  with  which  they  cling  to  their  belief  in 
 faculties  and  forces,  as  different  from  their  manifesta- 
 tions. They  had  so  little  understood  the  fundamental 
 principle  on  which  my  system  rested,  namely,  the 
 absolute  identity  of  language  and  thought,  that  one 
 of  them,  Professor  Gruppe,  published  his  large  work 
 on  Mythology,  chiefly  in  order  to  show  that  instead 
 of  explaining  mythology  as  a  peculiarity  of  language, 
 
LORD   GIFFOIID'S   BEQUEST.  25 
 
 I  ought  to  have  explained  it  as  a  peculiarity  of 
 thought.  What  is  one  to  say  to  this  kind  of  criti- 
 cism, which  ignores,  or  rather  runs  its  head  against, 
 the  very  walls  of  the  fortress  which  it  means  to 
 besiege  ?  I  thus  was  almost  compelled  to  publish 
 my  last  book,  the  Science  of  Thought,  in  which  I 
 collected  all  the  facts  that  had  been  brought  to  light 
 by  the  Science  of  Language,  in  support  of  a  theory 
 held  by  the  most  eminent  philosophers  from  Plato  to 
 Hegel  *,  namely,  that  Logos  is  the  same  thing,  whether 
 you  translate  it  by  language  or  by  thought,  and  that 
 as  there  is  no  language  without  reason,  neither  is 
 there  any  reason  without  language. 
 
 I  hope  to  treat  this  question  more  fully  in  some 
 of  my  later  lectures.  At  present  I  only  wished  to 
 show  what  is  the  red  thread  which  holds  my  literary 
 work  together,  and  to  explain  to  you  why,  when  I 
 received  the  invitation  to  lecture  on  Natural  Theology 
 in  this  University,  I  felt  that,  if  life  and  health  were 
 granted  me,  this  was  the  very  work  I  ought  still  to 
 accomplish.  I  want,  if  possible,  to  show  you  how  the 
 road  which  leads  from  the  Science  of  Language  to  the 
 Science  of  Mythology  and  to  the  Science  of  Thought, 
 is  the  only  safe  road  on  which  to  approach  the  Science 
 of  Religion.  This  Science  of  Religion  will  thus  become 
 the  test,  and  I  hope  the  confirmation,  of  previous 
 theories  on  language,  mythology,  and  thought ;  and 
 the  work  which  I  began  at  Leipzig  in  1843,  will,  if 
 my  life  is  spared,  be  brought  to  its  final  consummation 
 in  the  Lectures  which  you  have  allowed  me  to  give  in 
 the  University  of  Glasgow. 
 
 The  task  with  which  you  have    entrusted  me  is 
 
 1  See  Contemporary  Review,  October,  1888  :   'My  Predecessors.' 
 
26  LECTURE    I. 
 
 enormous— far  beyond  the  powers  of  any  one  man, 
 and  I  know  full  well,  far  beyond  my  own  powers. 
 All  I  can  promise  you  is  to  help  to  clear  the  ground 
 and  to  lay  the  foundation ;  but  to  erect  a  building, 
 such  as  Lord  Gifford  shadowed  forth  in  his  Last 
 Will,  to  raise  a  temple  wide  enough,  strong  enough, 
 high  enough  for  all  the  religious  aspirations  of  the 
 human  race,  that  we  must  leave  to  future  generations 
 —to  younger,  to  stronger,  and  to  better  hands. 
 
LECTURE  II. 
 
 DEFINITION    OF    RELIGION. 
 Definition  of  Religion,  why  wanted. 
 
 IF  the  Science  of  Religion  is  to  be  treated  as  one  of 
 the  natural  sciences,  it  is  clear  that  we  must  begin 
 with  a  careful  collection  of  facts,  illustrating  the  origin, 
 the  growth,  and  the  decay  of  religion. 
 
 But  we  shall  find  it  impossible  to  do  so,  unless  we 
 first  enter  on  a  preliminary  and,  I  must  add,  a  some- 
 what difficult  inquiry,  namely,  What  is  meant  by 
 religion.  Unless  we  can  come  to  a  clear  understanding 
 on  that  point,  we  shall  find  it  impossible  to  determine 
 what  facts  to  include,  and  what  facts  to  exclude  in 
 collecting  our  evidence  for  the  study  of  religion. 
 
 What  then  is  religion  ?  To  many  people  this  will 
 sound  a  very  easy  question,  as  easy  as  the  question, 
 What  is  man  ?  Practical  people  object  to  such 
 questions,  and  consider  any  attempt  to  answer  them 
 as  mere  waste  of  time.  Now  it  is  quite  true  that 
 there  is  a  kind  of  public  opinion,  which  for  all  ordi- 
 nary purposes  settles  the  meaning  of  words,  and  by 
 which  we  may  allow  ourselves  to  be  guided  in  the 
 daily  concerns  of  life.  But  in  philosophical  discussions 
 this  is  strictly  forbidden.  What  is  philosophy  but  a 
 perpetual  criticism  and  correction  of  language,  and 
 the  history  of  philosophy  but  a  succession  of  new 
 definitions  assigned  to  old  and  familiar  terms  ? 
 
28  LECTURE    II. 
 
 Great  differences  in  defining*  Religion. 
 
 Besides,  there  is  anything  but  agreement  on  the 
 true  meaning  of  religion.  Most  people,  whatever  their 
 opinions  might  be  on  other  points,  would  probably 
 hold  that  religion  must  always  have  something  to  do 
 with  God  or  the  gods.  But  even  that  is  not  the  case. 
 Buddhism,  for  instance,  which  is  a  creed  professed  by 
 the  largest  number  of  human  beings,  recognises,  as 
 taught  by  Buddha  &akyamuni,  no  god,  or  at  all  events 
 no  creator  of  the  universe,  and  it  has  been  held  in 
 consequence  that  Buddhism  could  not  be  called  re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Is  Buddhism  a  Religion? 
 
 Now  it  is  quite  true,  we  may  so  define  religion  that 
 the  name  could  not  be  applied  to  Buddhism  ;  but  the 
 question  is,  who  has  the  right  so  to  narrow  the  defini- 
 tion of  the  word  '  religion '  that  it  should  cease  to  be 
 applicable  to  the  creed  of  the  majority  of  mankind? 
 You  see  that  the  right  of  definition  is  a  most  sacred 
 right,  and  has  to  be  carefully  guarded,  if  we  wish  to 
 avoid  the  danger  of  mere  logomachies.  How  often 
 have  I  been  asked,  Do  you  call  Buddha's  religion  a  re- 
 ligion, do  you  call  DarwinV  philosophy  philosophy,  or 
 Wagner's  music  music  ?  What  can  we  answer  under 
 such  provocation,  except,  Define  what  you  mean  by 
 religion,  define  what  you  mean  by  philosophy,  define 
 what  you  mean  by  music,  and  then,  and  then  only,  we 
 may  possibly  come  to  an  agreement  as  to  whether 
 Buddha's  doctrines  may  be  called  religion,  Darwin's 
 writings  philosophy,  and  Wagner's  compositions  music. 
 I  know  full  well  that  nothing  irritates  an  adversary 
 so  much  as  to  be  asked  for  a  definition  ;  and  yet  it  is 
 well  known,  or  ought  to  be  well  known,  that  defini- 
 
DEFINITION   OF    RELIGION.  ^9 
 
 tion  formed  the  very 'foundation  of  the  philosophy  of 
 the  ancients,  of  Socrates,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  while 
 the  absence  of  proper  definitions  has  been  and  is  still 
 the  curse  of  modern  philosophy1. 
 
 Definition  of  Definition. 
 
 But  before  we  can  give  a  definition  of  religion,  we 
 must  first  give  a  definition  of  definition  itself,  however 
 pedantic  such  a  request  may  appear. 
 
 There  are  at  least  three  kinds  of  definitions,  the 
 etymological,  the  historical,  and  the  dogmatic. 
 
 Etymological  Definition. 
 
 Many  people  still  imagine  that  an  etymology  is  in 
 itself  a  definition.  This  was  an  impression  which 
 prevailed  widely  in  early  times 2,  before  the  true 
 principles  of  etymology  had  been  discovered  ;  and  it 
 prevails  even  now,  though  there  is  no  longer  any 
 excuse  for  it.  Homer,  for  instance,  is  very  fond  of 
 etymologies  which  are  to  account  for  the  peculiar 
 character  of  certain  gods  and  heroes.  Plato  extends 
 this  practice  even  more  widely,  though  he  often  leaves 
 us  in  doubt  whether  he  is  really  serious  in  his  etymo- 
 logies or  not.  You  know  how  in  his  Cratylus  (410) 
 he  derives  a?/p,  air,  from  aiptiv,  to  raise,  as  the  element 
 which  raises  things  from  the  earth  ;  How  he  explains 
 aldrjp,  ether,  as  aecOeijp,  because  this  element  is  always 
 running  in  a  flux  about  the  air  (ael  del  aepa  pecov).  He 
 derives  deoi,  the  gods,  also  from  the  same  root  delv,  to 
 run,  because  he  suspected,  as  he  says  3,  '  that  the  sun, 
 moon,  earth,  stars,  and  heaven,  which  are  still  the 
 
 1  See  Mill,  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  4. 
 
 2  Cf.  Sarikhyatattvakaiimudi,  §  4  ;  tannirvafcanaw  fea  lakshanam, 
 'the  etymological  interpretation  is  the  definition.' 
 
 3  Cratylus,  397  C. 
 
30  LECTURE    II. 
 
 gods  of  many  barbarians,  were  the  only  gods  known  to 
 the  aboriginal  Hellenes  ;  and  seeing  that  they  were 
 always  moving  and  running,  from  this  their  running 
 nature,  they  called  them  gods  or  runners  ;  and  after- 
 wards,, when  they  had  discovered  all  the  other  gods, 
 they  retained  the  old  name.'  Aristotle  was  more  sparing 
 in  his  etymological  definitions,  yet  he  too  derived  aldrjp, 
 the  ether,  from  ael  Oelv,  because  it  was  always  running 
 and  moving1. 
 
 The  Komans  followed  the  example  of  the  Greeks  2. 
 Poets  like  Lucretius  and  Ovid  indulged  in  etymologies, 
 whenever  they  seemed  to  agree  with  their  opinions, 
 and  to  the  latest  times  Koman  lawyers  delighted  in 
 supporting  their  definitions  of  legal  terms  by  more  or 
 less  fanciful  derivations. 
 
 In  India  also  these  etymological  definitions  were 
 recognised  from  the  earliest  times.  They  are  generally 
 introduced  in  the  following  way  :  '  This  is  the  saddle- 
 hood  of  a  saddle  that  we  sit  on  it ' ;  '  this  is  the  road- 
 hood  of  a  road  that  we  ride 3  on  it ' ;  '  this  is  the 
 heaven-hood  of  heaven  that  it  has  been  heaved  on 
 high.'  Only,  while  these  etymologies  are  historically 
 correct,  any  etymology  is  welcome  to  the  authors  of 
 the  Brahma^a  or  the  Nirukta.  if  only  it  explains  some 
 meaning  of  the  word. 
 
 In  some  cases  these  etymological  definitions  are 
 very  useful,  but  they  require  the  greatest  caution. 
 First  of  all,  many  popular  etymologies  4  are  phonetic- 
 ally untenable  and  historically  wrong.     God,  for  in- 
 
 1  T)e  Mundo,  ed.  Didot,  vol.  iii.  p.  628.  1.  28  ;  Sta  to  del  6eii>. 
 
 2  Lersch,  Die  Sprachphilosopliie  der  Alten,  vol.  iii ;  Cic.  Nat,  Deor.  iii.  24. 
 
 3  See  Academy,  Dec.  1888  ;  also  Plutarch,  Fragm.  21.  27. 
 
 4  Varro.  LI.  v.  7.  ed.  Egger.  •  Quattuor  explicandi  gradus  :  in- 
 fimus  is  quo  etiam  populus  venit.  Quis  enim  non  videt  unde  areni- 
 fodinae  et  viocurus?'     Lersch,  1.  c.  vol.  iii.  p.  126. 
 
DEFINITION    OF    RELIGION.  31 
 
 stance,  cannot  be  derived  from  good,  because  phonetic 
 laws  will  not  allow  it,  and  because  the  two  words  run 
 parallel,  and  never  approach  one  another,  as  far  as  we 
 can  follow  their  history. 
 
 But  even  where  an  etymology  is  unassailable 
 on  phonetic  and  historical  grounds,  it  can  never 
 give  us  more  than  the  first  starting-point  of  a  word. 
 It  may  teach  us  how  the  object  to  be  named  was 
 first  conceived,  but  no  more.  We  know,  for  in- 
 stance, that  deus  in  Latin  represents  the  Sanskrit 
 (leva,  perhaps  also  the  Greek  6e6s,  though  neither  of 
 these  etymologies  is  in  strict  accordance  with  phonetic 
 rules1,  and  that  deva  meant  originally,  bright.  This 
 is  extremely  important  as  showing  us  that  one  of  the 
 many  conceptions  of  the  Divine  started  from  the  con- 
 cept of  bright  and  beneficent  beings,  such  as  sun,  and 
 moon,  and  stars,  in  opposition  to  the  dark  and  deadly 
 aspects  of  the  night;  but  to  imagine  that  this  could 
 help  us  to  understand  the  concept  of  God  in  the  mind 
 of  such  a  thinker  as  Pascal,  would  be  absurd.  We 
 can  never  be  too  grateful,  if  we  can  discover  the 
 germinal  idea  of  a  word,  if  we  can  prove,  for  instance, 
 that  dens  was  originally  no  more  than  a  bright  being, 
 that  a  priest  was  originally  an  elder,  a  minister  a 
 servant,  a  bishop  an  overseer ;  but  if  we  were  to  give 
 these  etymologies  as  more  than  historical  curiosities, 
 and  mistake  them  for  definitions,  we  should  only  prove 
 our  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  language,  which  is  in  a 
 constant  state  of  ebb  and  flow,  and  exhibits  to  us  the 
 process  of  continuous  evolution  better  than  any  other 
 part  of  nature. 
 
 1  See  Selected  Essays,  i.  p.  215.  I  still  hold  to  the  opinions  there 
 expressed. 
 
32  LECTURE    IT. 
 
 Historical  Definition. 
 
 We  now  come  to  historical  definitions.  What  I  call 
 an  historical  definition  is  an  account  of  these  very 
 changes  which  take  place  in  the  meaning  of  a  word, 
 so  long  as  it  is  left  to  the  silent  and  unconscious 
 influences  which  proceed  from  the  vast  community  of 
 the  speakers  of  one  and  the  same  language.  Thus  an 
 historical  definition  of  deus  would  have  to  show  the 
 various  changes  which  led  from  cleva,  bright,  as  ap- 
 plied to  the  sun,  the  dawn  and  other  heavenly  pheno- 
 mena, to  the  Devas,  as  powers  within  or  behind  these 
 heavenly  bodies,  and  lastly  to  the  beneficent  agents  in 
 nature  or  above  nature,  whom  the  Hindus  called 
 Devas,  and  the  Romans  dii.  As  the  biography  of  a 
 man  may  be  called  his  best  definition,  what  I  call 
 biographies  of  words  are  perhaps  the  most  useful  de- 
 finitions which  it  is  in  our  power  to  give. 
 
 Dogmatic  Definition. 
 
 Lastly  come  the  dogmatic  definitions,  by  which  I 
 mean  definitions  given  on  the  authority  of  individuals, 
 who,  whatever  a  word  may  have  meant  etymologically, 
 and  whatever  it  may  have  come  to  mean  historically, 
 declare  that,  for  their  own  purposes,  they  intend  to 
 use  it  in  such  and  such  a  sense.  This  is  chiefly  done 
 by  philosophers,  lawyers,  and  men  of  science,  who  feel 
 unable  to  use  important  words  with  all  the  vagueness 
 of  their  etymological  and  historical  meaning,  and 
 determine  once  for  all,  generally  by  the  old  logical 
 method  of  settling  their  genus  and  their  specific 
 difference,  in  what  exact  sense  they  ought  to  be  em- 
 ployed in  future. 
 
 Let  us  now  see  how  these  three  kinds  of  definition 
 
DEFINITION    OF   RELIGION.  33 
 
 have  been  applied  to  the  word  with  which  we  have  to 
 deal,  namely  religion. 
 
 Etymological  Definition  of  Religio. 
 
 The  etymological  definition  of  religion  has  attracted 
 considerable  interest  among  theologians,  owing  to 
 that  kind  of  tacit  persuasion  that  the  etymology  of 
 the  word  must  somehow  or  other  help  to  disclose  its 
 real  meaning.  It  is  well  known  that  Lactantius 
 derived  religio  from  religare,  to  bind  or  hold  back, 
 and  he  did  so,  not  simply  as  a  philologist,  but  as  a 
 theologian.  '  We  are  born,'  he  says,  '  under  the  con- 
 dition that,  when  born,  we  should  offer  to  God  our 
 justly  due  services,  should  know  Him  only,  and 
 follow  Him  only.  We  are  tied  to  God  and  bound 
 to  Him  (religati)  by  the  bond  of  piety,  and  from  this 
 has  religion  itself  received  its  name,  and  not,  as 
 Cicero  has  interpreted  it,  from  attention  (a  rele- 
 gehdo)1.' 
 
 Before  we  examine  this  etymology,  it  will  be  use- 
 ful to  give  the  etymology  which  Lactantius  ascribes 
 to  Cicero,  and  which  he  is  bold  enough  to  reject. 
 Cicero  says  :  '  Those  who  carefully  took  in  hand  all 
 things  pertaining  to  the  worship  of  the  gods,  were 
 called  religiosi,  from  reUgere,  —  as  neat  people 
 (elegantes)  were  so  called  from  elegere2,  to  pick  out; 
 likewise  diligent  people,  diligentes,  from  diligere,  to 
 choose,  to  value,  and   intelligent  people  from   Intel- 
 
 1  Lactantius,  Instttut.  Div.  iv.  28,  'Hac  conditione  gignimur,  ut 
 generati  nos  Deo  justa  et  debita  obsequia  praebeamus,  hunc  solum 
 noverimus,  hunc  sequamur.  Hoc  vinculo  pietatis  obstricti  Deo  et 
 religati  sumua  ;  unde  ipsa  religio  nomen  accepit,  non,  ut  Cicero  in- 
 terpretatus  est,  a  relegendo.' 
 
 2  Rather  from  a  lost  verb  elegare. 
 
34  LECTURE   11. 
 
 ligere,  to  understand  ;  for  in  all  these  words  there  is 
 the  meaning  of  legere,  to  gather,  to  choose,  the  same 
 as  in  rellgiobus 1. 
 
 Let  us  first  clear  the  ground  of  some  statements 
 which  are  repeated  again  and  again,  but  which  have 
 really  no  foundation.  It  is  often  said  that  Varro2 
 supports  the  etymology  of  Lactantius,  but  Varro 
 simply  treats  of  legere  and  legio,  and  thus  supports 
 indirectly  the  etymology  of  Cicero,  rather  than  that 
 of  Lactantius. 
 
 Festus,  again,  if  he  is  to  be  quoted  at  all  as  having 
 given  an  etymology  of  rellgio,  sides  with  Cicero,  and 
 not  with  Lactantius,  for  he  says  that  people  are  called 
 religiosi  if  they  make  a  choice  (delectus)  of  what  has 
 to  be  done  or  to  be  omitted  in  the  worship  of  the 
 gods,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  state,  and  do  not 
 entangle  themselves  in  superstitions  3. 
 
 Of  later  writers  St.  Augustin  follows  sometimes 
 the  one,  sometimes  the  other  derivation,  as  it  suits 
 his  purpose ;  while  among  modern  theologians  it  has 
 actually  been  maintained  that  rcligio  was  descended 
 from  vellgare  as  well  as  from  relegere,  so  as  to  com- 
 bine the  meanings  of  both  4. 
 
 From  a  purely  philological  point  of  view  it  cannot 
 
 1  Cicero,  De  Nat.  Dear.  ii.  28,  'Qui  autem  omnia  quae  ad  cultum 
 deorum  pertinerent  diligenter  retractarent  et  tamquam  relegerent 
 sunt  dicti  religiosi  ex  relegendo,  ut  elegantes  ex  eligendo,  itemque 
 ex  diligendo  diligentes,  et  intelligendo  intelligentes.  His  enim  in 
 verbis  omnibus  inest  vis  legendi  eadem  quae  in  religiose' 
 
 2  Varro,  Be  ling.  lat.  v.  68  ;  ed.  Egger.  Legio,  '  quod  leguntur 
 milites  in  delectu  ;'  Nitzsch,  Studien  mid  Kritikcn,  i.  p.  527. 
 
 3  Festus,  p.  236,  'Religiosi  dicuntur,  qui  faciendarum  praeter- 
 mittendarumque  rerum  divinarum  secundum  morem  civitatis  de- 
 lectum  habent  nee  se  superstitionibus  implicant.' 
 
 4  'Relegendo  se  sentit  religatum,'  von  Drey,  as  quoted  by  Nitzscb, 
 I.e. 
 
DEFINITION   OP    RELIGION.  35 
 
 be  denied  that  religio  might  have  sprung  from  religa  re 
 quite  as  well  as  from  rdegere.  The  ordinary  objection 
 that  from  religare  we  should  have  religatio,  and  not 
 religio,  has  no  real  weight,  for  we  find  by  the  side  of 
 opinari  such  words  as  opinio,  not  opinatio,  and 
 necopinus  ;  and  by  the  side  of  rebellare,  rebellis  and 
 rebellio.  In  lictor  also,  if  it  meant  originally  a  man 
 who  binds  the  criminal,  we  should  have  to  admit  a 
 root  ligere,  by  the  side  of  ligare. 
 
 The  real  objection  to  our  deriving  religio  from 
 religare  is  the  fact  that  in  classical  Latin  religare  is 
 never  used  in  the  sense  of  binding  or  holding  back. 
 In  that  sense  we  should  have  expected  obligatio,  or 
 possibly  obligio,  but  not  religio.  Cicero's  etymology 
 is  therefore  decidedly  preferable,  as  more  in  accordance 
 with  Latin  idiom.  Relegere  would  be  the  opposite  of 
 neglegere  or  negligere1,  and  as  neglegere  meant  'not 
 to  care,'  relegere  would  naturally  have  meant  'to 
 care,'  'to  regard,'  '  to  revere'2.  From  a  verse  quoted 
 by  Nigidius  Figulus  from  an  ancient  writer,  and 
 preserved  by  Gellius  (iv.  9),  we  learn  that  religeus 
 was  actually  used,  as  opposed  to  religiosus.  He  said: 
 Religentem  esse  oportet,  religiosus  ne  fuas,  'it  is 
 right  to  be  reverent,  but  do  not  be  religious,'  that  is, 
 superstitious  3. 
 
 1  The  change  of  e  into  i  is  historical.  We  find  neglego  and  negligo, 
 mteUego  and  intelligo.  The  spelling  with  e  is  the  old  spelling'  but 
 there  are  modern  compounds  also  which  have  always  e,  such  as 
 pcrl'go,  inxielego. 
 
 2  M.  M.  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  22. 
 
 3  Gellius,  ed.  Hertz,  iv.  «J.  Adjectives  in  osus  generally  imply  an 
 excess,  as  vinosus,  muUcrosus.  Thus  Nigidius  Figulus  said  :  'Hoc  in- 
 clmamentum  semper  hujuscemodi  verborum,  ut  vinosus.  mulierosus, 
 religiosus  significat  copiam  quandam  immodicam  red  super  qua 
 dicitur.  Quocirca  religiosus  is  appellabatur  qui  nimia  et  super- 
 stitiosa rehgione  sese  alligaverat,  eaque  res  vitio  assignabatur.'   -bed 
 
 D  2 
 
36  LECTURE    II. 
 
 The  German  word  Anclacht,  literally  thoughtful- 
 ness,  then  reverence,  has  sometimes  been  compared 
 with  religio,  but  there  is  a  slight  difference,  for 
 Andacht  conveys  the  meaning  of  meditation  rather 
 than  of  regard  and  reverence. 
 
 There  is  one  more  etymological  definition  of  religion 
 which  Gellius  (iv.  9)  ascribes  to  one  Masurius  Sabinus. 
 He  derived  religiosum,  in  the  sense  of  sacred,  from 
 relinquere,  to  leave  or  put  aside,  as  something  too 
 sacred  for  ordinary  purposes1.  As  phonetic  laws 
 would  not  allow  of  this  derivation,  we  need  not 
 discuss  it  further. 
 
 So  much  for  the  etymology  of  religio,  which  in  its 
 first  conception  can  only  have  meant  respect,  care, 
 reverence. 
 
 Historical  Definition  of  Religio. 
 
 We  now  come  to  what  I  called  the  historical  defini- 
 tion, or  what  others  might  prefer  to  call  an  historical 
 description  of  the  fates  of  the  word  religio,  while  con- 
 fined to  its  own  native  soil.  Most  words,  particularly 
 those  which  form  the  subject  of  controversies,  have 
 had  a  history  of  their  own.  Their  meaning  has 
 changed  from  century  to  century,  often  from  genera- 
 tion to  generation ;  nay,  like  the  expression  of  the 
 human  face,  the  expression  of  a  word  also  may 
 change  from  moment  to  moment.  In  one  sense  our 
 historical  definition  may  be   called  the  biography  of 
 
 praeter  ista,'  thus  Gellius  continues,  -quae  Nigidius  elicit,  alio  quo- 
 dam  diverticulo  significations,  religiosus  pro  casto  atque  observant! 
 cohibentique  sese  certis  legibus  finibusque  dici  coeptus.' 
 
 1  'Masurius  autem  Sabinus  in  commentariis  quos  de  indigenia 
 composuit,  religiosum,  inquit,  est  quod  propter  sanctitatem  aliquam 
 remotum  ac  sepositum  a  nobis  est,  verbum  a  relinquendo  dictum, 
 tamquam  caerimonia  a  carendo.'     Gellius,  ed.  Hertz,  iv.  9. 
 
DEFINITION    OP   RELIGION.  37 
 
 a  word,  and  if  only  it  can  be  recovered  with  any 
 approach  to  completeness,  such  a  biography  conveys 
 to  us  more  information  than  can  be  gathered  from 
 any  logical  or  etymological  definition. 
 
 So  long  as  the  word  religio  remains  on  Roman  soil, 
 all  changes  of  meaning  seem  perfectly  intelligible,  if 
 only  we  take  into  account  the  influence  of  those 
 forces  which  determine  the  growth  of  meaning  in  all 
 words.  Afterwards,  when  the  word  religio  is  trans- 
 ferred from  a  Roman  to  a  Christian  atmosphere,  from 
 classical  to  mediaeval  Latin  and  the  modern  Romanic 
 dialects,  from  popular  parlance  to  technical  theology, 
 the  case  becomes  different.  We  then  enter  on  purely 
 dogmatic  or  self-willed  definitions,  the  natural  growth 
 of  language  seems  arrested,  and  all  we  can  do  is  to 
 register  the  various  meanings  which  have  been 
 assigned  to  the  word  religion  by  philosophers  and 
 theologians  of  authority  and  influence. 
 
 Tracing  the  history  of  religio,  we  find  it  used  in 
 Latin  in  its  original  and  wider  sense  of  regard  or 
 respect,  in  such  expressions  as  religio  jurisjurandi, 
 reverence  for  an  oath,  as  distinguished  from  metus 
 deorum,  fear  of  the  gods1. 
 
 Religio  and  metus  occur  frequently  together,  for 
 instance,  Cic.  ii.inVerr.  4,  45,  101,  ut  earn  (cupidita- 
 tem)  non  metus,  non  religio  contineret,  where  we  can 
 translate  the  two  words  metus  and  religio  by  fear 
 and  awe,  fear  expressing  the  fear  of  men  or  of  conse- 
 quences, awe  the  fear  of  the  gods  It  is  said  in  another 
 place  that  when  the  moon  was  suddenly  eclipsed  on  a 
 
 1  Cic.  Font.  ix.  30.  'An  vero  istas  nationes  religione  jurisjurandi 
 ac  metu  deorum  immortalium  in  testimoniis  dicendis  commoveri 
 arbitramini,  quae  tantum  a  ceterarum  gentium  more  ac  natura 
 dissentiunt,' 
 
38  LECTURE   II. 
 
 clear  night,  the  whole  army  was  perturbed  religione 
 et  metu,  by  awe  and  fear.  Such  expressions  also  as 
 religio  est  facer e  aliquid  do  not  refer  to  religious 
 scruples 1  only,  but  to  any  qualms  of  conscience. 
 
 After  a  time,  however,  religio  became  more  and 
 more  defined  as  the  feeling  of  awe  inspired  by 
 thoughts  of  divine  powers.  Thus  Cicero2  states, 
 religio  est  quae  mperioris  cujusdam  naturae  quam 
 divinam  vocant  curam  caerimoniamque  affevt, 
 'Religion  is  what  brings  with  it  the  care  and  cult 
 of  some  higher  power  which  they  call  divine.'  As  we 
 find  here  religio  and  caerimonia  placed  side  by  side, 
 we  find  likewise  cultus  and  religio  3  joined,  the 
 former  expressing  the  outward,  the  latter  the  inward 
 worship  of  the  gods. 
 
 A  distinction  is  soon  made  also  between  religion 
 and  superstition,  as  Cicero  says,  nee  vero  super- 
 stitions tollerida4  religio  tollitur,  'though  super- 
 stition should  be  removed,  religion  is  not.' 
 
 Lastly,  religio,  and  also  the  plural  religiones5, 
 became  the  recognised  names  of  outward  religious 
 acts,  of  cult  and  ceremony.  Thus  Cicero  °  distinctly 
 explains  religio  by  cidtus  deorum,  and  he  declares 7 
 that  the  religion  of  the  Romans  is  divided  into  sacra, 
 
 1  Liv.  ii.  62,  'Ut  numine  aliquo  defensa  castra  oppugnare  iterum 
 religio  fuerit.' 
 
 2  Invent,  ii.  53,  161.  ,.  .    ,. 
 
 3  Cic.  JV.  D.  i.  43,  121,  'Quis  aut  cultu  aut  religione  dignaa  judi- 
 care  (imagines).' 
 
 4  Be  Div.  ii.  72,  148. 
 
 5  Cic.  ii.  Verr.  v.  13,  34,  '  Contra  fas,  contra  auspicia,  contra  omnes 
 divinas  atque  humanas  religiones.' 
 
 c  iV.  D.  ii.  3,  8,  '  Religione,  id  est  cultu  deorum.  multo  supenores. 
 
 7  De  Nat.  Deor.  iii.  1,  'Quumque  omnis  populi  Romani  religio 
 in  sacra  et  auspicia  divisa  sit,  et  tertium  adjunctum  sit,  si  quid 
 praedictionis  caussa  ex  portentis  et  monstris  Sibyllae  interpretes 
 haruspicesve  monuerunt. ' 
 
DEFINITION   OF    RELIGION.  39 
 
 sacrifices,  and  auBpida,  observations  of  the  flight  of 
 birds,  to  which  a  third  part  has  been  added,  namely, 
 when  the  interpreters  of  the  Sibyl  or  the  haruspices 
 declared  something  for  the  sake  of  prophecy  from 
 portenta  and  monstra.  The  ausjneia  he  supposes  to 
 have  been  founded  by  Romulus,  the  sacra  by  Numa. 
 In  another  place  he  distinguishes  superstition  from 
 religion,  quae  deorum  cultu  pio  continetur1,  'which 
 consists  in  the  devout  worship  of  the  gods.'  We  meet 
 even  with  such  expressions  as  veligio  deorum  im- 
 mortalium  2,  i.  e.  the  worship  of  the  immortal  gods. 
 
 So  far  we  can  watch  the  natural  development  of 
 the  word  veligio  in  Latin.  It  began  with  the  mean- 
 ing of  care,  attention,  reverence,  awe ;  it  then  took 
 the  moral  sense  of  scruple  and  conscience  ;  and  lastly 
 became  more  and  more  exclusively  applied  to  the 
 inward  feeling  of  reverence  for  the  gods  and  to  the 
 outward  manifestation  of  that  reverence  in  worship 
 and  sacrifice.  There  are  some  late  writers  who  use 
 religio  in  the  sense  of  faith ;  for  instance,  Cassiodorus 
 (died  562,  A.D.),  Religionem  cogere  non  possumus, 
 quia  nemo  eogitur  ut  invitus  credat  33  '  We  cannot 
 force  religion,  for  no  one  is  ever  forced  to  believe 
 against  his  will ' :  but  in  classical  Latin  religio  never 
 has  that  meaning. 
 
 Thus  ends  the  biography  of  the  word  religio,  so 
 long  as  it  lived  its  natural  life,  unchequered  by 
 technical  definition.  We  can  clearly  see  that  what 
 the  Romans  expressed  by  religio  was  chiefly  the 
 moral  or  practical,  not  the  speculative  or  philo- 
 sophical side   of  religion.      The  questions   as  to  the 
 
 1  N.  D.  i.  42,  117.  -  Cic.  Lad.  25.  96. 
 
 3  Variorum  Libri,  ii.  27. 
 
40  LECTURE  IT. 
 
 existence,  the  character  and  powers  of  their  gods,  did 
 not  trouble  their  minds,  so  long  as  they  were  left  to 
 themselves ;  still  less  did  they  make  their  sense  of 
 moral  obligation,  which  they  called  religio,  dependent 
 on  their  faith  in  the  gods  only.  They  had  a  feeling 
 of  awe  in  their  hearts  at  the  sight  of  anything  that 
 seemed  to  them  overpowering  and  beyond  the  grasp 
 of  their  senses  and  their  understanding.  They  did 
 not  care  much  whence  that  feeling  arose,  but  they 
 called  it  religio,  that  is,  considering,  thinking  twice, 
 hesitating  ;  that  was  enough  for  them.  The  idea  that 
 the  gods  had  implanted  that  feeling  in  their  hearts,  or 
 that  a  thing  was  wrong  or  right  because  the  gods  had 
 forbidden  or  commanded  it,  did  not  occur  to  them, 
 till  they  had  come  in  contact  with  Greek  philosophy. 
 Their  religion,  if  we  may  use  that  word  in  its  later 
 and  far  more  general  sense,  was  very  much  what 
 Spinoza  in  his  Tractatus  theologico-politicus  thinks 
 that  practical  religion  ought  always  to  be,  simple 
 piety  and  obedience,  as  distinguished  from  philosophy 
 and  love  of  knowledge.  The  gods  were  accepted 
 without  any  misgivings,  their  approval  of  what  was 
 right  and  good  was  taken  for  granted,  and  no  further 
 questions  were  asked.  So  great  is  the  difference 
 between  religio,  as  understood  by  the  Romans,  and 
 religio  as  commonly  understood,  by  us,  that  religio 
 Romana  would  never  have  conveyed  to  Cato  the 
 idea  of  his  knowledge  of  Jupiter,  Mars,  or  Vesta,  and 
 the  duties  he  owed  to  them,  but  rather  that  of 
 ancient  Roman  piety.  There  is  a  well-known  verse 
 by  Schiller: 
 
 '  Which  religion  I  have  ?     There  is  none  of  all  you  may  mention. 
 Which  I  embrace,  and  the  cause?     Truly,  religion  it  is,' 
 
DEFINITION    OF   RELIGION.  41 
 
 Here  he  uses  religion  in  the  first  line  in  a  purely 
 modern  sense,  in  the  second  line  in  a  truly  classical 
 sense.  .What  he  meant  was  that  he  was  held  back 
 by  awe,  by  reverence  and  humility,  from  deciding  on 
 the  truth  of  any  single  form  of  faith,  and  this  the 
 Romans  too  might  have  called  religion. 
 
 French  has  in  some  expressions  retained  the  class- 
 ical meaning  of  religio.  In  such  a  phrase  as  II  a 
 line  religion  inviolable  pour  sa  parole  we  recognise 
 the  Latin  religio  jurisjurandi1. 
 
 Later  meanings  of  Religio. 
 
 We  now  have  to  follow  the  word  religio  in  its  later 
 wanderings.  Transferred  to  a  Christian  soil,  religion 
 became  really  a  foreign  word,  and  as  such  had  to  be 
 defined  by  those  who  used  it.  and  chiefly  by  theolo- 
 gians and  philosophers.  We  naturally  look  first  to 
 the  Old  and  New  Testament  to  see  in  what  sense 
 religion  is  used  there.  But  in  the  translation  of  the 
 Old  Testament  the  word  religion  never  occurs,  and  in 
 the  New  Testament  it  occurs  three  times  only  ;  and  in 
 one  of  these  passages  the  translation  varies  between 
 religion  and  superstition.  In  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
 xxvi.  5,  we  read  :  '  I  lived  a  Pharisee  after  the  most 
 straitest  sect  of  our  religion.'  Here  religion,  in  the 
 Vulgate,  religio,  corresponds  to  the  Greek  Op-qaKeta, 
 which  means  outward  worship  of  the  gods.  In  the 
 Epistle  of  St.  James  (i.  26,  27),  we  have  dprjo-Kcia,  reli- 
 gious worship,  and  the  adjective  6pr\o-Kos,  which  is 
 rendered  by  religious,  in  the  Vulgate  by  religiosus. 
 
 In  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (i.  13,  14)  the  trans- 
 
 1  See  Littre",  s.v.  He  also  cites  such  expressions  as  il  a  une  religion 
 et  un  sele  pour  les  Merits  du  roi,  or  il  sefait  urn  religion  d'icouter  les  rations. 
 
42  LECTURE   IT. 
 
 lation  the  'Jews'  religion'  is  meant  to  render  the 
 Greek  'lovba'lanos,  which  is  retained  in  the  Vulgate  as 
 Judaismus.  Lastly,  in  the  Acts,  xxv.  19,  '  they  had 
 certain  questions  against  him  of  their  own  supersti- 
 tion, and  of  one  Jesus,  which  was  dead,  whom  Paul 
 affirmed  to  be  alive,'  we  have  in  Greek  heicnhai\xovia, 
 which  really  means  the  fear  of  the  gods,  and  which  the 
 Vulgate  translates  rightly  by  superstitio,  the  Ke vised 
 Version  less  correctly  by  religion  \ 
 
 In  all  these  passages,  what  is  intended  by  religio,  as 
 used  in  the  Vulgate,  is  a  system  of  religious  belief  and 
 worship  ;  no  longer  what  was  meant  by  religio  in  its 
 classical  sense.  The  nearest  approach  to  religio  in 
 its  original  meaning  is  found  in  the  Greek  evaefieia. 
 The  verb  o-efio\iai 2,  expressed  at  first  being  awestruck, 
 standing  back  with  awe.  Thus  o-e/3as  \x  e^et  eicropoWra 
 meant  '  awe  holds  me  back  while  I  behold.'  It  after- 
 wards is  used  for  reverence  towards  the  gods.  Thus 
 cvo-ifieia  Ztjvos  is  used  by  Sophocles  (Electra,  1097)  in 
 the  sense  of  reverence  towards  Zeus,  and  the  same 
 word  with  the  preposition  eh  occurs  in  the  sense  of 
 piety  towards  parents,  as  in  Plato's  Kepublic,  615  C, 
 evcrefieia  eh  Oeovs  kcll  yoveas.  After  Homer  we  find 
 o-ejBoixai  used  with  the  accusative,  like  veneror,  for 
 instance,  o-ef/3o/xai  Oeovs,  I  worship  the  gods. 
 
 At  first  the  Greeks  used  heiaihai^ovia^  fear  of  the 
 
 1  Other  Biblical  expressions  for  religion  are  <p6t3os  tov  Oeov,  Xarpeia, 
 5ovXda.     See  E.  Hatch,  Essays  in  Biblical  Greek,  p.  45. 
 
 2  Brugmann's  derivation  of  atfiofiai  and  <xe(3as  from  Sanskrit  tyag, 
 to  leave,  is  not  tenable,  on  account  of  the  difference  of  meaning ; 
 see  Kuhn's  Zeitschrift,  xxv,  p.  301.  If  an  etymology  must  be  given, 
 I  should  connect  ae&as  with  oo/Btoj,  to  scare  away,  and  Sanskrit 
 kshubh,  to  perturb.  The  transition  of  ks  into  s  in  Greek  is  irregu- 
 lar, but  not  without  analogy ;  see  Curtius,  p.  696.  In  kshubh  we 
 should  havo  to  recognise  a  parallel  form  of  kshabh.  But  this  is 
 very  doubtful. 
 
DEFINITION    OF   RELIGION.  43 
 
 gods  or  of  the  demons,  and  <j)o(3el(r0ai  to  6tlov,  to  fear 
 the  divine  power,  in  a  good  sense.  But  very  soon 
 heio-ihanxovia  was  used  in  a  bad  sense,  as  superstition, 
 so  that  Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus  (161-180,  a.d.) 
 speaks  of  ^eoo-e/3r)?  %(ap\s  hzicrihai\xovias,  god-fearing 
 without  superstition 1. 
 
 Dogmatic  Definitions. 
 
 We  have  now  to  consider  the  third  class  of  defini- 
 tions, which  I  called  dogmatic.  They  differ  from  the 
 etymological  and  historical  definitions  in  that  they 
 give  us  the  opinions  of  individuals;  whether  theolo- 
 gians or  philosophers,  who  take  upon  themselves  to 
 say,  not  so  much  what  religion  does  mean  or  did 
 mean,  but  what  it  shall  mean.  There  is  generally 
 something  dictatorial  in  such  definitions.  I  open  the 
 pages  of  a  philosophical  journal2,  and  I  find  in  close 
 proximity  the  following  definitions  of  religion :  '  Reli- 
 gion is  our  recognition  of  the  unity  of  nature,  and 
 teaches  us  to  consider  ourselves  as  parts  of  the  whole  ; 
 and  who  can  doubt  its  strong  influence  upon  all  our 
 conduct!'  On  the  next  page  I  read,  'Theology  and 
 Metaphysics  have  nothing  to  do  with  Morality,'  and 
 soon  after,  '  Religion  has  never  been  other  than 
 science,  plus  worship  or  emotion.' 
 
 We  can  hardly  open  a  book  without  meeting  with 
 similar  random  definitions  of  religion.  Religion  is 
 said  to  be  knowledge,  and  it  is  said  to  be  ignorance. 
 Religion  is  said  to  be  freedom,  and  it  is  said  to  be 
 dependence.  Religion  is  said  to  be  desire,  and  it  is 
 said  to  be  freedom  from  all  desires.  Religion  is  said 
 to  be  silent  contemplation,  and  it  is  said  to  be  splendid 
 
 1  Ets  lavTuv,  lib.  vi.  §  30,  ed.  Gataker,  p.  52. 
 
 2  The  Open  Court,  vol.  i.  pp.  978-981. 
 
44  LECTURE   II. 
 
 and  stately  worship  of  God.  People  take  every  kind 
 of  liberty  with  this  old  word.  Young  poets  will  tell 
 you  that  poetry  is  their  religion,  young  artists,  that 
 their  religion  is  art,  while  it  has  been  said  of  old  that 
 ' pure  religion  is  to  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in 
 their  affliction,  and  to  keep  yourselves  unspotted  from 
 the  world  V 
 
 We  cannot  contest  the  right  of  every  one  to  define 
 religion  as  he  understands  it.  For  see  how  the  matter 
 stands  with  regard  to  definition.  We  have  the  etymo- 
 logical meaning  of  religion,  but  that  is  not  binding ; 
 and  we  have  the  various  historical  meanings  of  reli- 
 gion, and  they  again  are  not  binding.  What  criteria 
 then  can  we  discover  for  testing  the  truth  of  what  I 
 call  the  dogmatic  definitions  of  religion  ?  Some  are 
 clearly  far  too  narrow,  others  far  too  wide.  Some  are 
 faulty  in  themselves,  others  prove  deficient  when  we 
 try  to  apply  them  to  historical  facts.  We  must  examine 
 the  most  important  of  them,  and  though  such  an  ex- 
 amination, even  of  the  most  important  definitions 
 only,  will  no  doubt  occupy  some  time,  we  ought  to 
 remember  how  often  a  whole  dialogue  has  been 
 devoted  by  Plato  to  this  kind  of  philosophical  recon- 
 noitring, and  ought  not  to  grudge  the  time  which  we 
 have  to  devote  to  this  preliminary  inquiry. 
 
 Religion  and  Theology. 
 
 In  conducting  this  inquiry  we  must  be  careful  in 
 the  choice  and  use  of  our  own  words,  and  we  must 
 try,  as  far  as  possible,  to  use  every  word  in  one  sense 
 only.  We  must  distinguish,  for  instance,  between 
 religion  and  theology,  though  these  words  have  often 
 
 1  Ep.  St.  James,  i.  27. 
 
DEFINITION    OF    KELIGION.  45 
 
 been  used  promiscuously.  By  religion  we  should 
 always  understand  the  subject  itself,  by  theology  the 
 study  or  science  of  that  subject.  This  terminology, 
 so  far  as  the  word  theology  is  concerned,  has  prevailed 
 ever  since  the  time  of  Abelard,  and  there  seems  to  be 
 no  reason  for  changing  it. 
 
 The  Greek  word  th-eologos  was  used  originally  in  a 
 different  sense.  Thus  Homer  and  Hesiod  were  called 
 theologi  (Herodotus,  ii.  53),  not  in  the  modern  sense  of 
 theologians,  but  as  conversant  with  the  origin  and 
 history  of  the  gods.  Hesiod' s  Theogony  might  have 
 been  called  his  Theology,  or,  at  all  events,  a  part  of  it, 
 and  that  name  is  applied  to  similar  works,  such  as  the 
 Theology  of  Thamyris,  and  of  Orpheus,  who  is  speci- 
 ally called  6  Oeokoyos  by  the  Neo-platonists  1.  Plato 
 and  Aristotle  used  theology  in  the  sense  of '  doctrine 
 concerning  Deity  and  Divine  things,'  koyoi  irepl  rod  deov 
 /cat  7rept  t&v  6tiQ>v. 
 
 In  Latin  theologia  was  taken  by  Varro  in  the  sense 
 of  what  we  call  religion,  there  being  according  to  him 
 three  kinds  of  theology,  the  mythical,  the  pltysical, 
 and  the  civil.  The  mythical  theology  contained  the 
 fables  about  the  gods,  and  many  things,  we  are  told, 
 contrary  to  the  dignity  of  immortal  beings.  The 
 physical  theology  was  described  by  him  as  beyond 
 the  capacity  of  the  vulgar,  while  he  considered  the 
 civil  theology,  the  received  religion  of  Rome,  as  best 
 for  a  good  citizen  to  believe. 
 
 In  Christian  phraseology  theologos  meets  us  first  as 
 
 the  name  of  the  author  of  the  Apocalypse,  John  the 
 
 Divine,  or  the  theologos.     This  name,  however,  wre  are 
 
 told,  was  given  to  him,  not  simply  because   he  was 
 
 1  See  Grappe,  Die  griechischen  Quite,  ]>[>.  t>32-637. 
 
46  LECTUKE   II. 
 
 what  we  call  a  theologian,  but  because  he  maintained 
 the  divinity  of  the  Logos.  In  the  third  and  fourth 
 centuries  theologos  is  said  to  have  meant  usually  one 
 who  defended  that  doctrine. 
 
 Later,  and  particularly  during  the  middle  ages,  theo- 
 logy came  to  mean  religious  doctrine  in  general,  as 
 studied  by  theologians  or  priests,  and  Abelard's  Theo- 
 logia  Christiana  was  meant  to  represent  what  was 
 afterwards  called  Summa  theologlae,  a  body  of  sys- 
 tematical knowledge  concerning  Christian  religion  1. 
 
 Dogmatic  and  Practical  Religion. 
 
 The  fashion  which  prevailed  for  some  time,  par- 
 ticularly in  Germany,  of  using  religion  in  the 
 sense  of  practical  and  moral  religion,  while  re- 
 serving theology  as  a  name  of  dogmatic  religion, 
 is  objectionable,  and  can  only  create  confusion.  We 
 may  distinguish  between  dogmatic  and  practical 
 religion,  and  we  may  equally  distinguish  between 
 dogmatic  and  practiced  theology.  But  as  a  theo- 
 logian is  now  always  used  in  the  sense  of  a  man  who 
 studies  religion  professionally  or  who  belongs  to 
 the  faculty  of  theology,  it  will  be  best  to  reserve 
 theology  as  a  name  of  this  study.  A  mere  believer  in 
 the  dogmas  of  any  religion  is  not  yet  a  theologian.  I 
 therefore  propose  to  retain  religion  in  its  general  sense, 
 comprising  both  dogmatic  and  practical  religion,  and 
 reserve  theology  as  the  name  for  a  scientific  study  of 
 both.  This  will  prevent  all  misunderstanding,  unless 
 we  prefer  to  drop  the  name  of  theology  altogether, 
 and  replace  it  by  the  name  of  the  Science  of  Religion. 
 
 1  8eo  Flint,  in  Encyckp,  Brit.  s.v.  Theology. 
 
DEFINITION   OF    RELIGION.  47 
 
 Comparative  Theology. 
 
 It  is  likewise  a  mere  abuse  of  technical  terms  to 
 speak  of  Comparative  Religion.  There  is  religion  and 
 there  is  a  science  of  religion,  just  as  there  is  language 
 and  a  science  of  language.  But  no  one  would  speak  of 
 Comparative  Language ;  neither  ought  we  to  speak  of 
 Comparative  Religion.  It  is  different  with  mythology. 
 Mythology  may  be  used,  not  only  for  a  collection  of 
 myths,  but  likewise  for  a  scientific  treatment  of  them, 
 and  in  the  latter  sense  therefore  it  would  be  correct  to 
 speak  of  Comparative  Mythology. 
 
 Wo  have  thus  far  distinguished  between : 
 Religion,  dogmatic  and  practical,  and 
 Theology,  dogmatic  and  practical. 
 
 To  some  philosophers,  and  theologians  also,  such  a 
 division  between  practical  and  dogmatic  religion  seems 
 objectionable,  nay,  impossible,  because  they  maintain 
 that  morality  cannot  possibly  exist  without  some  be- 
 lief in  a  divine,  or,  at  least,  a  rational  government  of 
 the  world,  and  that  dogma  again  would  be  useless, 
 unless  it  became  the  motive  of  practical  morality. 
 This  may  be  true,  but  we  need  not  enter  into  that 
 question  at  present,  for  by  simply  qualifying  religion 
 as  either  dogmatic  or  practical,  we  only  distinguish, 
 we  do  not  separate  ;  and  without  committing  our- 
 selves as  yet  to  any  opinion  as  to  whether  morality 
 can  exist  without  dogma  or  dogma  without  morality, 
 we  do  no  more  by  our  nomenclature  than  admit  the 
 existence  of  a  common  element  in  both. 
 
 Schleiermacher's  Definition  of  Religion. 
 
 Some  philosophers,  however,  and  particularly  Schlei- 
 ermacher,  claim  the  right  of  using  religion  in  a  still 
 
48  LECTURE    II. 
 
 higher  sense. "  They  deny  that  religion  is  either  dog- 
 matic or  moral :  they  deny  also  that  a  combination 
 of  dogma  and  morality  would  give  us  religion.  They 
 point  out  that  when  we  say  that  a  man  is  without 
 religion,  we  do  not  mean  simply  that  he  does  not 
 believe  in  Judaism,  Christianity,  or  any  other  form  of 
 faith,  or  declines  to  submit  to  their  moral  codes.  We 
 mean  really  that  he  is  without  any  religious  senti- 
 ment. Schleiermacher  explains  religious  sentiment 
 as  being  the  immediate  consciousness  that  all  that 
 seems  finite  is  infinite,  that  all  that  seems  temporal  is 
 eternal.  '  To  seek  and  find  what  is  infinite  and 
 eternal  in  all  that  lives  and  moves,  in  all  changes  and 
 chances,  in  all  doing  and  suffering,  in  fact  by  an  im- 
 mediate sentiment  to  have  and  know  life  itself  as  the 
 infinite  and  eternal  life,  that,'  he  says,  '  is  religion.' — 
 '  From  that  point  of  view,  if  once  reached,  all  events 
 become  real  miracles,  all  miracles  become  real  events  ; 
 all  experience  becomes  revelation,  all  revelation  ex- 
 perience.'— '  If  we  do  not  see  our  own  miracles  around 
 us,  if  we  do  not  perceive  within  us  our  own  revela- 
 tions, if  our  soul  does  not  yearn  to  draw  in  the  beauty 
 of  the  whole  world  and  to  be  pervaded  by  its  spirit ; 
 if  in  the  highest  moments  of  our  life  we  do  not  feel 
 ourselves  impelled  by  the  divine  spirit  and  speaking 
 and  acting  from  our  own  holy  inspiration,  if  we  do 
 not  at  least  feel  all  that  we  feel  as  an  immediate  in- 
 fluence of  the  universe,  and  yet  discover  in  it  some- 
 thing that  is  our  own,  that  cannot  be  imitated,  but 
 can  prove  its  pure  origin  within  ourselves,  we  have  no 
 religion.' 
 
 We  shall  have  to  consider  this  meaning  of  religion 
 when  we  come  to  examine  the  Upanishads,  the  Ve- 
 
DEFINITION    OF    RELIGION.  49 
 
 danta  philosophy,  the  poetry  of  the  Sufis,  and  the 
 speculations  of  the  mediaeval  mystics  ;  but  it  seems 
 to  me  that  it  would  be  better  if  a  different  name 
 could  be  assigned  to  what  may  be  the  highest  height 
 which  religion  can  reach,  but  is  nevertheless  a  com- 
 plete transfiguration  rather  of  human  nature  than  a 
 system  of  doctrines  about  the  Divine,  and  a  code  of 
 precepts  inspired  by  our  belief  in  the  Divine.  In 
 German  it  is  called  Religiositat ;  in  English  religious- 
 ness or  devotion  might  be  used  in  the  same  sense. 
 
 Religion,  either  belief  or  body  of  doctrines. 
 
 We  have  still  one  remark  to  make  with  regard  to 
 the  ordinary  use  of  the  word  '  religion,'  before  we  can 
 feel  ourselves  properly  equipped  for  grappling  with 
 the  great  historical  definitions  of  religion  which  have 
 to  be  examined.  Like  many  terms  of  the  same 
 character,  religion  can  be  used  either  for  our  own 
 intellectual  possession  of  theoretic  dogmas  and  moral 
 principles,  or  as  a  name  of  a  body  of  doctrines  and 
 precepts  collected  by  authority,  chiefly  for  the  pur- 
 pose of  teaching  these  doctrines  and  practices.  Thus 
 we  may  say  that  a  person  has  changed  the  Jewish  for 
 the  Christian  religion,  that  is  to  say,  that  he  has 
 changed  his  own  religious  convictions.  But  we  may 
 also  say  that  a  person  is  studying  the  Buddhist  re- 
 ligion, either  by  reading  the  sacred  books  of  the 
 Buddhists  or  by  watching  the  life  of  the  Buddhists  in 
 Ceylon  or  China,  without  allowing  these  studies  to 
 exercise  the  least  effect  on  his  own  convictions.  This 
 ambiguity  can  hardly  be  avoided,  and  we  have  to  make 
 allowance  for  it  in  all  branches  of  knowledge.  We 
 speak  of  logic,  meaning  either  the  laws  of  thought  as 
 
 E 
 
50  LECTURE    II. 
 
 we  know  and  follow  them  ourselves,  or  a  body  of 
 doctrines,  contained  in  essays  and  manuals ;  and  we 
 shall  have  to  bear  in  mind  the  same  double  meaning 
 when  we  speak  of  religion. 
 
 A  strict  adherence  to  the  terminology,  as  we  have 
 now  explained  it,  will  help  us,  I  hope,  to  avoid  many 
 misunderstandings,  and  enable  us  at  the  same  time 
 to  assign  to  each  of  the  various  definitions  of  religion 
 its  proper  place. 
 
LECTURE   III. 
 
 EXAMINATION   OF    DEFINITIONS. 
 Natural  and  Revealed  Religions. 
 
 MOST  of  the  earlier  definitions  of  religion  which 
 we  shall  have  to  examine,  have  reference  to 
 Judaism  and  Christianity  only. 
 
 These  two  religions  were  considered,  in  Europe  at 
 least,  as  different  in  kind  from  all  the  rest,  being 
 classed  as  supernatural  and  revealed,  in  opposition  to 
 all  other  religions  which  were  treated  as  not-revealed, 
 as  natural,  and  by  some  theologians  even  as  inspired 
 by  the  powers  of  evil. 
 
 In  an  historical  study  of  religion,  however,  such  a 
 distinction  is  untenable1,  for  we  shall  find  that  the 
 claim  of  revelation  or  the  assertion  of  a  supernatural 
 origin  is  by  no  means  peculiar  to  Christianity  and 
 Judaism.  Most  of  the  great  religions  of  the  world 
 were  by  their  followers  believed  to  have  been  revealed, 
 and  the  arguments  by  which  such  a  belief  was  sup- 
 ported are  much  the  same  among  all  theologians. 
 
 As  the  founders  of  most  religions  professed  to  teach 
 what  no  eye  had  seen  nor  ear  heard,  they  could  not 
 invoke  the  ordinary  authorities  for  the  truth  of  their 
 doctrines,  but  had  to  appeal  to  supernatural  sources  of 
 knowledge.     And  even  in  cases  where  the   founders 
 
 1  See  Flint,  Theism,  p.  323. 
 E  2 
 
52  LECTURE    ITT. 
 
 themselves  made  no  such  claim,  but  took  their  stand 
 on  the  testimony  of  the  spirit  of  truth  only,  their  fol- 
 lowers would  soon  ascribe  to  them  a  higher  authority,  so 
 as  to  render  all  questionings  and  all  opposition  to  their 
 doctrines  impossible.  This  applies  to  all  or  nearly  all 
 religions,  and  the  claim  of  a  supernatural  origin,  so 
 far  from  being  exceptional,  is  really  one  of  the  most 
 natural  tendencies  of  natural  religion. 
 
 The  student  of  Comparative  Theology  therefore  can 
 claim  no  privilege,  no  exceptional  position  of  any 
 kind,  for  his  own  religion,  whatever  that  religion  may 
 be.  For  his  purposes  all  religions  are  natural  and 
 historical.  Even  the  claim  of  a  supernatural  character 
 is  treated  by  him  as  a  natural  and  perfectly  intelli- 
 gible claim,  which  may  be  important  as  a  subjective 
 element,  but  can  never  be  allowed  to  affect  the  ob- 
 jective character  of  any  religion. 
 
 Comparative  Theology. 
 
 In  that  respect  Comparative  Theology  has  but  fol- 
 lowed the  example  of  what  used  to  be  called  Natural 
 Theology,  which  was  always  denned  as  the  study  of 
 religion,  independent  of  revelation.  It  professed  to 
 comprise  all  that  could  be  known  of  God  by  the  aid 
 of  the  human  understanding  alone.  This  system  of 
 natural  religion,  such  as  we  find  it  elaborated,  for  in- 
 stance, by  Raymundus  de  Sabunde  (or  Sebonde),  was 
 intended  at  first  to  serve  as  an  introduction  only  to 
 revealed  religion1.     But  it  soon  became  independent, 
 
 »  Thus  we  read  in  the  Theologia  XatumUs  sive  Liber   CreaUn-anon 
 speciaiiter  de  homine  et  de  natura  ejus  in  quantum  homo   et  dehis 
 quae  sunt  ei  necessaria  ad  cognoscendum  seipsum  et  deum,  et  omne 
 Sum  ad  quod  homo  tenetur  et  obligatur  turn  Deo  quam .proximo, 
 Argentinae,  1496,   'Liber  creaturarum  est  porta,  via,  janua,   intio- 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  53 
 
 and  Natural  Religion,  in  its  purity  and  reasonable- 
 ness, threatened  to  excel  all  revealed  religion.  In 
 the  last  century  all  religions  began  to  be  treated  as 
 sects,  if  not  as  corruptions,  of  Natural  Religion,  and  a 
 study  which  at  first  was  looked  upon  as  a  powerful 
 aid  to  faith,  was  afterwards  discouraged  as  dangerous 
 to  the  interests  of  true  religion. 
 
 Natural  Theology  differed,  however,  from  what  is 
 now  called  Comparative  Theology  in  that  it  paid  but 
 scant  attention  to  the  historical  religions  of  the  world, 
 framing  its  ideal  of  what  natural  religion  ought  to  be,' 
 from  the  inner  consciousness  only. 
 
 But  in  the  same  way  as  towards  the  beginning  of 
 our  century  General  Grammar,  which  taught  what, 
 according  to  the  rules  of  logic,  language  ought  to  be, 
 was  replaced  by  Comparative  Grammar,  which 
 showed  what  language  really  had  been,  the  study  of 
 Natural  or  General  Theology  also  had  to  make  room 
 for  the  study  of  Comparative  Theology,  or  what  may  be 
 called  the  Science  of  Religions,  as  distinguished  from 
 the  Science  of  Religion.  While  Natural  Theology 
 treated  of  religion  in  the  abstract,  or  of  what  religion 
 might  or  should  have  been,  Comparative  Theology 
 studies  religions  as  they  have  been,  and  tries  to  discover 
 what  is  peculiar  to  each  and  what  is  common  to  all, 
 with  a  silent  conviction  that  what  is  common  to  all 
 religions,  whether  revealed  or  not,  may  possibly  con- 
 stitute the  essential  elements  of  true  religion. 
 
 Modus  cognoscendi  et  colendi  Deum. 
 
 The  first  definition  with  which  we  have  to  deal,  and 
 which  is  perhaps  the  most  widely  accepted  among 
 
 ductorium  et  lumen  quoddam  ad  lihruni  sacrae  Bcripturae  in  quo 
 sunt  verba  Dei,  et  ideo  ille  praesupponit  istum.'    (Titulua  ccxii. 
 
54  LECTUKE    TIL 
 
 Christian  theologians,  existed,  as  we  shall  see,  with  a 
 very  slight  alteration,  among  non-Christian  as  well  as 
 among  Christian  theologians.  In  most  theological 
 manuals  we  find  religion  defined  as  modus  cognoscendi 
 et  colendi  Deum, '  a  mode  of  knowing  and  worshipping 
 God.' 
 
 Though  accepted    by   most   theologians   as   unob- 
 jectionable, this  definition  has  not  escaped  criticism. 
 It  is  said 1  that  a  definition  should  trace  whatever  has 
 to  be  defined  back  to  one  genus  prosrimum,  not  to  two  ; 
 that  if  religion  is  a  mode  of  knowing  God,  well  and 
 good ;  but  that  it  cannot  be  at  the  same  time  a  mode 
 of  worshipping  God.     This  may  be  true  in  logic,  but 
 what  can  we  do  if,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  same  name 
 has  been  given  to  our  knowledge  as  well  as  to  our 
 worship  of  God  ?   In  that  case  the  definition  of  religio 
 as  modus  cognoscendi  et  colendi  Deum  would  at  all 
 events  be  historically  correct.     But  that  is  not  all. 
 There  are  surely  many  concepts  which  have  two  sides, 
 nay,  which  become  complete  only  when  we  compre- 
 hend these  two  or  more  sides  as  sides  of  one  and  the 
 same  concept.     We  may  define  a  triangle  by  its  three 
 angles  as  well  as  by  its  three  sides.    Our  definition  of 
 logic  becomes  complete  only  if  we  define  it  both  as  a 
 knowledge  and  as  an  art.      Even  while  engaged   in 
 studying  logic  and  gaining  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
 thought,  we  practise  these  very  laws,  while  afterwards 
 in  practising  the  laws,  we  know  also  as  logicians  that 
 we  know  them.     It  is  the  same  in  medicine,  in  law, 
 and  in  most  of  what  we  call  the  applied  sciences. 
 
 1  This  is  powerfully  stated  by  Teichmuller  in  his  Religionsphilo- 
 
 sophie,  1886,  p.  16. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  55 
 
 Knowledge  and  practice,  e7rto-r?j/x?/  and  ri-^vrj,  are  mostly 
 inseparable. 
 
 And  this  realty  holds  true  in  religion  more  than 
 anywhere  else.  Is  not  religion  as  mere  knowledge  or 
 faith  said  to  be  '  dead,  being  alone  1,'  that  is,  being 
 without  works  ?  And  would  not  works,  however  per- 
 fect and  useful,  cease  to  be  religions,  if  performed 
 without  a  motive,  without  a  knowledge  of  God  ? 
 
 Peeling1  or  Knowledge  as  motive  of  action. 
 
 But  we  may  even  go  a  step  further.  A]l  our  acts 
 are  stimulated  either  by  feeling  or  by  knowledge,  by 
 percepts  or  by  concepts.  A  feeling  of  pain  makes  us 
 act  in  one  way,  a  feeling  of  pleasure  in  another.  A 
 mere  perception  of  distance  makes  the  crow  fly  direct, 
 that  is  by  the  shortest  road,  and  induces  a  peasant  to 
 cross  a  field  diagonally,  instead  of  laterally.  A  know- 
 ledge of  geometry  produces  the  same  action,  only 
 lined  with  intelligence.  An  engineer  does  what  the 
 crow  does,  only  he  does  it,  not  simply  by  intuition, 
 but  because  he  knows  that  the  hypothenuse  of  any 
 triangle  is,  nay,  must  always  be,  shorter  than  the  two 
 other  sides  together.  In  this  way  every  act  of  ours 
 may  be  shown,  I  believe,  to  be  under  the  influence  of 
 either  feeling  or  knowledge,  and  thus  the  active  side 
 of  religion  also  could  easily  be  shown  to  be  insepar- 
 able from,  though  of  course  not  identical  with,  the 
 theoretic  side. 
 
 The  logical  fault,  therefore,  of  tracing  religion  to 
 two  proximo,  genera  instead  of  one,  if  fault  it  be, 
 would  have  its  historical  justification  in  the  fact  that 
 active  religion,  whether  worship  or  morality,  is,  in 
 its  beginning  at  all  events,  inseparable  from  religious 
 1  Ep.  James  iii.  17. 
 
56  LECTURE   III. 
 
 knowledge,  while  in  most  cases  religious  knowledge 
 would  by  its  very  nature  lead  to  religious  acts. 
 
 The  object  of  religion  must  be  denned. 
 
 There  is,  however,  a  much  more  serious  difficulty  in 
 this  definition,  and  this  may  best  be  discovered,  if  we 
 examine  the  same  definition  as  we  find  it  in  a  very 
 similar  wording  in  the  writings  of  a  heathen  philo- 
 sopher, namely  Seneca.     He  defines  religion  as  Gog- 
 noscere  Deum  et  imitari\  '  to  know  God  and  imitate 
 him.'     Now  let  us  remark  that  Seneca  does  not  say, 
 to  know  the  gods  and  imitate  them,  but  to  know  God 
 and  imitate  him.     We  must  indeed  not  lay  too  much 
 stress  on  this,  for  it  is  well  known  how  promiscuously 
 philosophers  of  his  age  used  dens  either  in  the  singular 
 or  the  plural.     Thus  the  same  Seneca 2  says :  '  I  do 
 not  obey  God,  but  I  assent  to  him  with  all  my  heart ; 
 he  worships  the  gods  best  who  imitates  them.'     Now, 
 if  Seneca  had  in  his  definition  of  religion  spoken  of  an 
 imitation  of  the  gods,  we  should  probably  have  de- 
 tected at  onced  the  serious  fault  which  his  definition 
 shares  in  common  with  that  of  our  own  theological 
 manuals.     We  shall  see  that  in  defining  religion,  both 
 definitions  leave  the  most  important  part,  namely,  the 
 object    of   religion,    undefined.     If   Seneca   had    ex- 
 plained  religion    as  a   knowledge   and  imitation   of 
 Mars,  Bacchus,   or  Venus,   we  should   have    said  at 
 once,  But  how  do   you   know   that   there   are   such 
 beings  as  Mars,  Bacchus,  or  Venus  1     What  do  you 
 know  about  their  character  and  their   proceedings, 
 
 1  Imitation  of  God  had  been  prescribed  by  Pythagoras  also,  and 
 ^Yitll  some  restriction  (as  far  as  nature  permits)  by  Plato. 
 
 2  Epist.  i.  !»5,  96,  <Non  pareo  Deo,  sed  adsentior  ex  annuo;  satis 
 coluit  Deos  quisquis  eos  imitatus  est.' 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  57 
 
 and  why  do  you  advise  us  to  imitate  them?  The 
 flaw  which  in  Seneca's  definition  of  religion  would 
 thus  have  become  palpable  at  once,  can  hardly  escape 
 notice  in  the  Christian  adaptation  of  it.  If  the  object 
 of  religion,  if  what  is  to  be  known  and  to  be  wor- 
 shipped, can  thus  be  taken  for  granted  and  left  un- 
 defined, by  simply  calling  it  God,  we  might  with  the 
 same  right  explain  physical  science  as  a  knowledge  of 
 nature,  or  moral  science  a  knowledge  of  good  and 
 evil,  without  stating  what  we  mean  by  nature,  or 
 what  we  understand  by  good  and  evil.  Such  de- 
 finitions would  be  pure  tautology.  If  we  once  know 
 what  we  mean  by  god  or  gods,  the  definition  of  reli- 
 gion becomes  easy  enough.  But  the  discovery  and 
 elaboration  of  the  name  and  concept  of  gods  and 
 god,  form  really  the  most  important  and  the  most 
 difficult  chapter  in  the  history  of  religion,  and  to 
 take  that  fundamental  element  of  religion  as  simply 
 granted,  is  to  overlook  the  most  difficult  part  in  a 
 definition  of  religion. 
 
 It  will  be  easily  seen,  however,  that  nearly  all  de- 
 finitions of  religion,  and  particularly  those  of  modern 
 philosophers,  take  the  object  of  religion  for  granted, 
 or  explain  it  by  terms  which  themselves  stand  in  need 
 of  definition.  Plato  naturally  does  not  like  to  speak 
 of  gods  in  the  plural,  but  when  he  uses  instead,  the 
 Divine,  to  Qtiov,  he  ought  to  have  defined  it.  Of 
 modern  philosophers  Schleiermacher  used  the  Infinite, 
 instead  of  God ;  Professor  Pfleiderer  speaks  of  the 
 world-controlling  Power ;  Dr.  Martineau  in  his  recent 
 work  on  Religion  of  the  Divine  Mind  and  the  Divine 
 Will,  or  even  of  the  Unknown  ;  and  the  author  of  the 
 PMloBOphy  of  Religion,  your  own  honoured  Principal, 
 
58  LECTUKE   III. 
 
 defines  religion  as  a  surrender  of  the  finite  will  to  the 
 infinite  will. 
 
 If  we  were  all  agreed  on  the  meaning  of  these 
 terms,  the  Divine,  the  Infinite,  the  Unknown,  the 
 world-controlling  Power,  the  infinite  Will,  no  formal 
 objections  could  be  taken  to  these  definitions.  But 
 our  antagonists  will  not  allow  us  to  take  any  of  these 
 terms  for  granted,  or  as  requiring  no  definition. 
 
 If  religion  is  knowledge,  they  say,  does  not  all 
 depend  on  what  we  know  ?  If  religion  is  belief,  must 
 we  not  ask,  first  of  all,  what  it  is  that  we  are  to 
 believe,  or  how  our  mind  got  possession  of  the  con- 
 cept and  name  of  divine  beings  that  are  to  be  believed  ? 
 Let  religion  be  fear  or  love,  worship  or  meditation, 
 its  essential  character  must  always  be  determined  by 
 the  object  to  which  it  looks.  If  we  call  that  object 
 God,  does  that  tell  us  anything,  so  long  as  it  is  left 
 uncertain  what  is  meant  by  God,  whether  something 
 visible  or  invisible,  something  comprehensible  or  in- 
 comprehensible, something  that  can  be  named  or 
 something:  that  must  for  ever  remain  nameless  ?  How 
 often  in  the  religious  battles  of  the  world  do  we  hear 
 the  combatants  say,  What  you  call  God,  I  deny  to  be 
 God.    If  you  call  me  an  atheist,  I  call  you  an  idolator. 
 
 Fichte  on  Atheism. 
 
 When  Fichte  was  accused  of  atheism,  what  did  he 
 reply  :  *  Your  God,'  he  said,  '  is  the  giver  of  all  enjoy- 
 ment, the  distributor  of  all  happiness  and  of  all  un- 
 happiness  among  human  beings.  That  is  his  real 
 character.  But  he  who  wants  enjoyment  is  a  sensual, 
 carnal  man,  who  has  no  religion,  and  is  incapable  of 
 religion.  The  first  truly  religious  sentiment  kills  all 
 desire  within  us.     A  o-0d  who  is  to  serve  our  desires, 
 
EXAMINATION    OF    DEFINITIONS.  59 
 
 is  a  contemptible  being,  an  evil  being,  for  he  supports 
 and  perpetuates  human  ruin  and  the  degradation  of 
 reason.  Such  a  god  is  in  truth  the  prince  of  this 
 world,  who  has  been  condemned  long  ago  through 
 the  mouth  of  truth.  What  they  call  God,  is  to  me 
 not- God.  They  are  the  true  atheists ;  and  because  I 
 do  not  accept  their  not-God  as  the  true  God,  they 
 call  me  an  atheist.' 
 
 Goethe  and  Lavater. 
 
 And  even  in  a  more  friendly  encounter,  as  that 
 between  Goethe  and  Lavater,  we  see  how  entirely 
 what  the  one  and  the  other  called  religion  was  deter- 
 mined by  the  object  to  which  their  religion  was 
 directed.  'To  recognise  God  wheresoever  and  how- 
 soever he  reveals  himself,  that  is  true  blessedness  on 
 earth,'  Goethe  says,  and  he  would  call  that  true 
 religion.  His  friend  Lavater,  on  the  contrary,  could 
 see  the  Divine  revealed  in  one  person  only,  in  Christ, 
 so  that  his  personal  religion  consisted,  as  he  declared, 
 in  his  own  soul  being  hid  in  Christ. 
 
 All  definitions  of  religion,  therefore,  in  which  the 
 object  of  religious  knowledge  or  reverence  or  love  is 
 left  undefined,  may  indeed  interest  us  as  throwing 
 light  on  the  relation  between  the  subject  and  the 
 object  of  religion,  between  man  and  what  is  called 
 God,  but  they  can  hardly  claim  the  title  of  a  formal 
 and  complete  definition,  in  the  recognised  sense  of 
 that  term. 
 
 Different  classes  of  Definitions. 
 
 We  can  best  examine  some  of  the  most  important 
 and  instructive  definitions  of  religion  by  classing 
 them,  not  according  to  the  subject  of  religion,  which 
 
60  LECTUEE   III. 
 
 is  always  man,  or  according  to  the  object,  which  is 
 called  by  various  names,  but  according  to  the  form 
 in  which  this  relation  between  man  and  God  is 
 supposed  to  manifest  itself. 
 
 Most  definitions  may  be  arranged  under  two  heads, 
 in  so  far  as  they  lay  the  chief  stress  either  on  the 
 practical  or  on  the  theoretical  side  of  religion. 
 Let  us  begin  with  the  former. 
 
 Practical  Religion. 
 
 The  old  scholastic  definition,  according  to  which 
 religion  is  '  the  chain  of  conscience  by  which  we  feel 
 ourselves  bound  to  the  Godhead  in  all  we  think  and 
 will  and  do  V  refers  to  the  practical  side  of  religion, 
 to  what  has  been  called  our  conscience  or  the  voice 
 of  God  within  us,  so  far  as  it  regulates  our  actions. 
 
 Kant. 
 
 It  is  well  known  that  Kant  took  a  similar  view  of 
 religion.  '  Religion,5  he  wrote,  '(as  subjective)  con- 
 sists in  our  recognising  all  our  duties  as  divine  com- 
 mandments 2,'  or,  '  in  our  regarding  God  as  the  uni- 
 versally to  be  revered  lawgiver  for  all  our  duties  V 
 He  is  very  careful,  however,  to  exclude  mere  cultus 
 or  worship  from  the  sphere  of  religion,  and  he  declares 
 that  any  attempt  to  please  the  Deity  by  acts  which 
 by  themselves  have  no  moral  value,  by  mere  external 
 worship,  is  not  religion,  but  simply  superstition  4. 
 
 Caird. 
 
 We  must  likewise  class  here  the  definition  of 
 religion  given  by  the  author  of  the  Philosophy  of 
 
 1  *  Conscientiae  vinculum,  quo  cogitando  et  volendo  et  agendo 
 numini  nos  obstrictos  sentimus.'   Amnion,  Summa  Theolog.  Christ.  §  1. 
 
 2  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  14. 
 
 3  Beligion  innerhaXb  iter  Gnnzvn  der  bhssen  Vemunft,  p.  13*.^. 
 
 4  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  18. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  61 
 
 Religion,  though  it  aims  at  a  higher  phase  of 
 religious  morality  than  that  of  Kant.  According  to 
 him,  '  Religion  is  the  surrender  of  the  finite  will  to 
 the  infinite,  the  abnegation  of  all  desire,  inclination, 
 volition  that  pertains  to  me  as  this  private  individual, 
 the  giving  up  of  every  aim  or  activity  that  points 
 only  to  my  exclusive  pleasure  and  interest,  the 
 absolute  identification  of  my  will  with  the  will  of 
 God1. 
 
 Pfleiderer. 
 
 A  similar  thought  underlies  the  definition  which 
 Professor  Pfleiderer  has  given  in  the  second  edition 
 of  his  excellent  work  Die  Beligionsphilosopkie2,  of 
 which  an  English  translation  is  now  in  course  of 
 publication,  or  has  lately  been  completed.  '  Religion,' 
 he  writes,  'is  the  relation  of  our  life  to  the  world- 
 controlling  Power,  which  is  to  become  a  community 
 of  life  with  it  V  '  Relation  of  our  life  to  the  world- 
 controlling  Power '  is  only  a  more  generalised  con- 
 ception of  what  Dr.  Caird  has  called  the  surrender  of 
 the  finite  will  to  the  infinite.  But  the  highest  object 
 of  religion  is  conceived  as  the  same  by  both  philo- 
 sophers, '  the  community  of  life  with  the  world- 
 controlling  Power'  being  evidently  intended  by 
 Pfleiderer  for  what  Dr.  Caird  calls  '  the  absolute 
 identification  of  my  will  with  the  will  of  God.' 
 
 The  difficult  point,  however,  in  all  these  definitions 
 of  religion  as  the  submitting  of  our  will  to  the  will  of 
 God,  seems  to  me  this — that  they  leave  unexplained 
 
 •    l  Caird,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  296. 
 
 2  Pfleiderer,  vol.  ii.  p.  29. 
 
 3  It  is  almost  impossible  to  render  the  exact  meaning  in  English. 
 '  Der  gemeinsame  Kern  dor  Religion  in  alien  ihren  Formen  ist  jene 
 Lebensbeziehung  auf  die  weltbeherrschende  Macht.  welche  zur 
 Lebensgemeinschaft  mit  ilir  werden  will.' 
 
62  LECTURE    III. 
 
 our  knowledge  of  the  will  of  God,  nay,  even  our  know- 
 ledge of  the  existence  and  character  of  what  we  call 
 God. 
 
 Martineau. 
 
 Nor  is  much  light  thrown  on  that  dark  point  if  we 
 simply  substitute  belief  for  knowledge.  In  his  recent 
 work,  On  the  Study  of  Religion,  Dr.  Martineau 
 defines  religion  as  'a  belief  in  an  Ever-living  God, 
 that  is,  a  Divine  Mind  and  Will,  ruling  the  Universe 
 and  holding  moral  relations  with  mankind.'  Here 
 '  a  belief  in  an  Ever-living  God '  has  as  much  to  be 
 accounted  for  as  a  knowledge  of  God,  and  the  defini- 
 tion of  God  as  a  Divine  Mind  and  Will  would  like- 
 wise call  for  an  historical  justification.  If  a  definition 
 of  religion  could  be  silent  on  these  points,  or  could 
 take  man's  knowledge  of  God  and  of  the  will  of 
 God,  or  man's  belief  in  a  Divine  Mind  and  Will, 
 for  granted,  al  difficulties  would  certainly  seem 
 to  vanish.  But  a  glance  at  the  history  of  reli- 
 gion teaches  us  that  we  should  thus  leave  unex- 
 plained those  long  periods  during  which  the  human 
 mind,  after  many  struggles,  arrived  at  last  at  the 
 abstract  and  sublime  conception  of  a  Divine  Mind 
 and  a  Divine  Will.  If  religion  has  become,  as  no 
 doubt  it  has  in  many  minds,  a  complete  submission 
 to  the  will  of  God,  such  submission  must,  in  the 
 beginning,  at  all  events,  have  been  preceded  by  an 
 intellectual  struggle  which  left  behind  as  its  result  such 
 concepts  and  names  as  '  God '  and  '  the  will  of  God: 
 Man's  readiness  to  submit  to  the  will  of  God  would- 
 be  inconceivable  without  a  previous  concept  of  God 
 which  justified  such  submission  and  rendered  it 
 intelligible.      All  definitions,  therefore,  of  religion  as 
 
EXAMINATION    OF    DEFINITIONS.  63 
 
 simply  practical,  and  particularly  that  of  Kant,  seem 
 to  me  like  the  definition  of  a  fruit-bearing  tree, 
 which  should  ignore  its  invisible  roots. 
 
 Schenkel  and  Newman. 
 
 In  order  to  avoid  this  difficulty  of  taking  the 
 concept  of  God  for  granted  in  our  definition  of 
 religion,  and  making  our  conscience  the  vinculum 
 with  something  unknown  or  undefined,  some  theo- 
 logians maintain  that  our  conscience  is  the  very 
 faculty  which  gives  us  an  immediate  knowledge  of 
 God,  and  wish  us  to  accept  conscience  as  the  religious 
 organ  of  the  soul.  In  Germany  this  view  has  been 
 eloquently  defended  by  Dr.  Schenkel,  in  England  by 
 John  Newman,  who  has  always  pointed  to  conscience 
 as  the  creative  principle  of  religion.  Still  we  gain  but 
 little  for  a  better  definition  of  religion  by  adopting 
 this  opinion,  which  may  be  quite  true  as  a  matter  of 
 personal  experience  in  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
 which  fails  to  remove  the  historical  difficulty,  how 
 from  the  earliest  times  the  human  conscience  elabo- 
 rated the  idea  of  the  Godhead,  and  thus  and  thus  only 
 made  religion  a  possibility  * 
 
 Theoretical  Religion. 
 
 Equally  defective,  however,  are  the  other  definitions 
 of  religion,  which  I  call  theoretical,  as  opposed  to 
 practical.  They  seem  to  look  to  the  invisible  roots 
 only,  and  forget  the  tree  and  the  fruit  which  these 
 roots  were  meant  to  support  and  to  nourish.  With- 
 out its  practical  results,  nay,  without  its  practical 
 purposes,   religion  would  never   have  been  religion. 
 
 1  See  Professor  Flint's  remarks  in  his  Baird  Lectures  on  Theism. 
 p.  210. 
 
64  LECTURE    ITT. 
 
 It  might  have  been  theory  or  dogma,  it  might  have 
 grown  into  a  system  of  philosophy,  but  never  into  a 
 religion,  whether  manifested  by  outward  worship  or 
 by  inward  piety. 
 
 Religion  as  sentiment  or  knowledge. 
 
 Most  philosophers  in  attempting  to  define  religion 
 in  its  theoretic  character,  have  explained  it  as  a 
 sentiment;  few  only  as  simple  knowledge,  like  all 
 other  knowledge.  Even  in  ancient  times,  sentiments, 
 particularly  the  sentiments  of  fear  or  admiration  or 
 reverence,  were  supposed  to  form  the  very  essence  of 
 religion.  Fear,  the  ancients  declared,  made  the  gods, 
 and  even  in  modern  Christian  phraseology,  the  fear  of 
 God,  Gottesfurcht,  <j>6pos  0eov,  are  often  used  as  synony- 
 mous with  religion. 
 
 Teichmuller. 
 
 One  of  the  most  eminent  of  modern  philosophers  l 
 who  have  lately  been  writing  on  the  philosophy  of 
 religion,  Professor  Teichmuller  of  Dorpat,  whose  recent 
 death  has  been  a  serious  loss  to  our  studies,  combines 
 the  sentiments  of  fear  and  reverence  in  his  definition 
 of  religion,  and  adds  to  it  a  third,  namely  the  senti- 
 ment of  moral  goodness. 
 
 Religion,  he  says,  consists,  (1)  Of  personal  feelings 
 of  fear,  of  complete  dependence  on  unknown  powers, 
 which  form  a  motive  leading  man  to  seek  comfort  in 
 a  view  of  the  world  not  supported  by  experience. 
 
 (2)  It  consists  of  aesthetic  feelings,  which  surrender 
 themselves  in  admiration  to  the  Beautiful,  and  lead 
 to  the  erection  of  an  ideal  world. 
 
 (3)  It  consists  of  moral  feelings,  which  lead  to  an 
 
 1  ReUgiomphihsophie,  Breslau.  1886. 
 
EXAMINATION  OF  DEFINITIONS.  65 
 
 attempt  to  construct  such  a  system  of  the  universe 
 as  should  in  turn  make  them  (our  moral  feelings)  in- 
 telligible 1. 
 
 Author  of  Natural  Religion. 
 
 The  author  of  Natural  Religion,  whoever  he  may 
 be,  lays  the  chief  stress  on  the  sentiment  of  admira- 
 tion, defining  religion  as  a  habitual  and  permanent 
 feeling  of  admiration. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 Goethe  preferred  reverence  instead  of  admira- 
 tion, though  he  speaks  of  the  result  rather  than  of 
 the  nature  of  religion.  '  A  threefold  reverence,'  he 
 writes,  '  has  to  be  called  forth  in  man  by  religion : 
 a  reverence  for  what  is  above,  for  what  is  around,  and 
 for  what  is  beneath  us.  The  last  is  the  most  difficult, 
 and  has  been  realised  by  Christianity  only,  because  it 
 alone  has  been  able  to  recognise  even  misery  and 
 poverty,  scorn  and  contempt,  shame  and  disgrace, 
 suffering  and  death  as  divine;  nay  to  honour  and 
 cherish  even  sin  and  crime,  not  as  impediments,  but 
 as  helps  to  the  Saint.' 
 
 Mill. 
 
 Mill  also,  in  his  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  pub- 
 lished after  his  death,  in  1874,  would  seem  to  trace 
 back  religion  to  a  feeling  of  admiration,  or,  as  he 
 expresses  it,  to  a  craving  for  an  ideal  object.  '  So 
 long  as  human  life  is  insufficient,'  he  writes,  'to 
 satisfy  human  aspirations,  so  long  there  will  be  a 
 craving  for  higher  things  which  finds  its  most  obvious 
 satisfaction  in  religion.'     And  again  :  '  The  essence  of 
 
 '  Teichmiiller,  I.e.,  p.  22.  On  page  91,  he  gives  a  more  concise 
 definition  of  religion  as  'the  disposition  (Gesinnung)  which,  being 
 joined  to  God-consciousness,  symbolises  itself  in  the  common  function 
 of  knowledge,  feeling,  and  action.' 
 
 F 
 
66  LECTURE    III. 
 
 religion  is  the  strong  and  earnest  direction  of  the 
 emotions  and  desires  towards  an  ideal  object,  recog- 
 nised as  of  the  highest  excellence,  and^  as  rightfully 
 paramount  over  all  selfish  objects  of  desire1.' 
 
 After  having  examined  these  two  classes  of  defini- 
 tions, which  look  exclusively  to  either  the  practical 
 or  the  theoretical  side  of  religion,  we  have  still  to  say 
 a  few  words  on  the  views  taken  of  religion  by  one 
 of  the  most  theological  of  philosophers,  Spinoza,  and 
 by  one  of  the  most  philosophical  of  theologians, 
 Schleiermacher. 
 
 Spinoza,  1632-77. 
 
 Though  Spinoza  defines  true  religion  and  piety  as 
 love  of  God,  founded  on  a  knowledge  of  his  divine 
 perfections— a  definition  with  which  Leibniz  seems 
 t0  agree— yet  he  considers  that  with  us  practical  reli- 
 gion should  come  first,  should  in  fact  remain  the  only 
 religion  for  the  majority  of  mankind,  while  a  higher 
 and&philosophical  faith  should  be  reserved  for  the  few. 
 What  Spinoza  means  by  practical  religion^  is  simple 
 obedience  to  divine  commands,  while  the  higher  reli- 
 gion consists  in  the  intellectual  love  of  God,  insepar- 
 able from  a  true  philosophical  knowledge  of  God  and 
 man,  and  leading  to  that  true  blessedness  which  arises 
 from  the  consciousness  of  our  own  God-given  powers. 
 The  former  he  considers  as  based  entirely  on  sacred 
 books  and  historical  revelation,  the  latter  on  the 
 highest  knowledge  which  can  only  be  the  work  of  our 
 own  mind.  The  former  ought  to  be  beneficial,  the 
 latter  ought  to  be  true  ;  the  former  is  to  serve  for  the 
 public  good,  the  latter  is  to  lead  to  that  peace  and 
 
 1  Three  Essays,  p.  104. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  67 
 
 love  of  God,  which  passeth  all  understanding.  Spinoza's 
 view  of  religion  does  not  in  this  respect  differ  much 
 from  that  of  the  Brahmans.     As  they  look  upon  the 
 first  and  second  period  in  a  man's  life  as  a  discipline 
 to    subdue    our    human    passions    and    weaknesses, 
 Spinoza  too   expects   practical  religion   to   curb   the' 
 passions  and  thus  to  prepare  man  for  a  higher  life 
 Only  after  this  has  been  achieved  is  the  mind  prepared 
 for  a  purer  light.     In   India   this    progress    from  a 
 lower  to  a  higher  religion  was  supposed  to  take  place 
 in  the  same  individual,  when  passing  through  the  four 
 stages  of  his  life,  the  four  asramas.     In  Spinoza's 
 time,  and  in  the  society  by  which  he  was  surrounded, 
 such  a  hope  was  impossible.     Few  only  might  find 
 the  way  to  the  highest  beatitude ;  but  even  for  those 
 who  rested   half-way,  practical  religion   supplied,  as 
 Spinoza   thought,  all   those   comforts   which   human 
 nature  requires  in  every  stage  of  its  growth. 
 
 This  was  the  man  who  not  more  than  200  years 
 ago  was  considered  the  most  dangerous  heretic  by  his 
 Jewish  co-religionists. 
 
 Schleiermacher,  1768-1834. 
 
 Let  us  now  hear  what  Schleiermacher  has  to  say 
 on  religion,  he  who  has  likewise  been  spoken  of  as  a 
 most  dangerous  heretic  by  his  Christian  co-religionists. 
 I  mentioned  already  that  he  recognised  true  religion 
 neither  in  thoughts  nor  in  deeds,  nor  in  both  combined, 
 but  rather  in  a  certain  disposition  or  tone  or  character 
 of  the  whole  man,  in  what  is  called  in  German  religiose 
 Shmmung.  Religion  was  to  him  a  kind  of  music 
 pervading  all  our  sentiments,  our  thoughts  and  our 
 
 F  2 
 
68  LECTUBE    III. 
 
 acts  '  Religion,'  he  say  s  \  '  is  neither  knowing  nor  doing, 
 but  an  inclination  and  determination  of  our  sentiments, 
 which  manifests  itself  in  an  absolute  feeling  of  de- 
 pendence on  God.'  Or  again :  '  Religion  consists  m  our 
 consciousness  of  absolute  dependence  on  something 
 which,  though  it  determines  us,  we  cannot  determine 
 
 in  turn2.'  ,  .     .. 
 
 He  tries  to  describe  this  feeling  or  this  disposition 
 and  inclination  of  the  mind  or  the  heart  in  ever  vary- 
 ing expressions.     He  calls  it  '  a  sentiment,  sense,  taste 
 of  the  Infinite.'    In  his  Second  Discourse  on  Religion, 
 he  is  anxious  to  show  that  religion  is  neither  meta- 
 physics  nor  ethics,  nor  a  mixture  of  both,  though 
 something   of   each   is   mixed   up    with  all   positive 
 religions.     'Religion  is  not  knowledge,  because  the 
 measure  of  knowledge  is  not  the  measure  of  piety. 
 Observation  may  be  said  to  belong  to  religion,  but  the 
 observation  of  religion  is  different  from  that  of  science. 
 It  does  not  aim  at  knowing  the  finite  m  relation  to 
 the  infinite,  nor  the  nature  of  the  highest  cause  by 
 itself    or  in  relation  to   finite  causes.     It  strives  to 
 view'the  universe,  to  watch  it  reverently  in  its  own 
 manifestations  and  acts,  and  to  let  itself  be  grasped  and 
 filled  in  childlike  passivity  by  its  immediate  influences. 
 Religion  is  the  immediate  consciousness  of  all  that  is 
 finite  within  the  infinite,  of  all  that  is  temporal  within 
 
 the  eternal.' 
 
 "This  intuition,  however,'  he  adds,  'without  senti- 
 ment would  be  nothing,  and  cannot  have  either  the 
 right  origin  or  the  right  force.  Sentiment  also  with- 
 out intuition  would  be  nothing,  and  both  together  are 
 
 «  Christliche  Glaubenskkre,  §  3.  2  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  19. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF    DEFINITIONS.  69 
 
 something  only  when  they  are  undivided,  and  because 
 they  are  originally  undivided.' 
 
 Hegel,  17  70-1 831. 
 
 In  opposition  to  this  sentiment  of  dependence  and 
 devotion  which,  according  to  Schleiermacher  and  his 
 numerous  disciples,  constitutes  the  essential  character 
 of  religion,  Hegel  defines  religion  as  perfect  freedom. 
 If  the  sense  of  dependence  constituted  religion,  he 
 says,  the  dog  might  be  called  the  most  religious 
 animal  K  Religion,  with  Hegel,  is  perfect  freedom ; 
 it  is  in  fact  the  Divine  Spirit  as  becoming  conscious 
 of  Himself  through  the  finite  spirit.  Or  again, 
 'Religion  is  the  knowledge  acquired  by  the  finite 
 spirit  of  its  essence  as  absolute  spirit.' 
 
 Pichte,  1"762-1814. 
 
 With  equal  boldness  does  another  philosopher, 
 Fichte,  define  religion,  not  as  sentiment,  but  as 
 knowledge.  'Religion  is  knowledge,'  he  says.  'It 
 gives  to  man  a  clear  insight  into  himself,  answers 
 the  highest  questions,  and  thus  imparts  to  us  a 
 complete  harmony  with  ourselves,  and  a  thorough 
 sanctification  to  our  mind2.' 
 
 1  What  was  considered  a  rather  coarse  joke  of  Hegel's  has  now 
 become  a  serious  doctrine.  'The  feeling  of  religious  devotion,' 
 Darwin  writes,  '  is  a  highly  complex  one,  consisting  of  love,  com- 
 plete submission  to  an  exalted  and  mysterious  superior,  a  strong 
 sense  of  dependence,  fear,  reverence,  gratitude,  hope  for  the  future, 
 and  perhaps  other  elements.  No  being  could  experience  so  complex 
 an  emotion  until  advanced  in  his  intellectual  and  moral  faculties 
 to  at  least  a  moderately  high  level.  Nevertheless  we  see  some  dis- 
 tant approach  to  this  state  of  mind  in  the  deep  love  of  a  dog  for  his 
 master,  associated  with  complete  submission,  some  fear,  and  per- 
 haps other  feelings.'  M.  Houzian  (Etudes  sur  les  Faculty's  Mentales  des 
 Animaux,  pp.  271-273)  thinks  that  there  are  many  persons  and  even 
 peoples  not  so  religious  as  dogs.'  The  monkeys  of  the  Sun  da 
 Isles,  we  are  told,  gather  shortly  before  sunrise  in  the  highest  tree- 
 tops,  and  salute  the  rising  sun  with  clamorous  shouts.  Open  Court, 
 1889,  p.  1458. 
 
 2  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  15.     We  must  here  remember  that  knowledge 
 
70  LECTURE   III. 
 
 How  to  account  for  these  different  definitions. 
 
 It  may  seem  difficult  to  understand  how  it  is  pos- 
 sible that  men  whose  knowledge  and  whose  honesty 
 of  purpose  admit  of  no  doubt  should  have  arrived  at 
 such  different,  nay  contradictory,  definitions  of  religion. 
 How  could  Schleiermacher  see  in  religion  absolute  de- 
 pendence, when  Hegel  perceives  in  it  the  most  abso- 
 lute freedom?  How  could  Fichte  define  religion  as 
 the  highest  knowledge,  while  Agnostics  in  ancient  as 
 well  as  in  modern  times  have  represented  the  object 
 of  religion  as  beyond  the  sphere  of  human  know- 
 ledge ?  Such  contradictions  have  often  been  pointed 
 out  and  made  use  of  in  order  to  prove  the  vanity  of 
 all  human  knowledge,  or,  at  all  events,  the  futility  of 
 philosophy,  when  applied  to  religious  problems.  But 
 there  is  no  reason  to  despair.  I  believe  that  the 
 Science  of  Thought,  as  based  on  the  Science  of  Lan- 
 guage, supplies  a  solution  to  this  as  to  many  other 
 riddles  of  philosophy.  There  is  but  one  solution  for 
 them  all,  and  this  consists  in  our  denning  the  words 
 which  we  use  in  philosophical  discussions. 
 
 At  first  sight  dependence  seems  indeed  the  very 
 opposite  of  freedom ;  but  we  have  only  to  define  de- 
 pendence as  trust,  and  then  dependence  or  trust  in 
 God  as  the  wisest,  the  most  perfect  and  most  power- 
 has  been  used  in  very  different  senses,  varying  from  mere  ac- 
 quaintance with  a  subject  to  a  perfect  understanding  of  it.  Thus 
 while  most  theologians  use  belief  as  different  from  or  even  as  opposed 
 to  knowledge,  Dr."  Flint,  in  his  Lectures  on  Theism  (p.  86,  Appen- 
 dix X,  On  Intuition,  Feeling,  Belief,  and  Knowledge  in  Beligion\ 
 declares  that  '  belief  is  inseparable  from  knowledge,  and  ought  to  be 
 precisely  co-extensive  with  knowledge.'  This  may  throw  light  on 
 the  real  intention  of  his  definition  of  religion.  'Perhaps/  he  says, 
 '  if  we  say  that  religion  is  man's  belief  in  a  being  or  beings,  mightier 
 than  himself  and  inaccessible  to  his  senses,  but  not  indifferent  to 
 his  sentiments  and  actions,  we  have  a  definition  of  the  kind  required.' 
 (Theism,  p.  32.)  But  can  belief  in  what  is  inaccessible  to  our  senses 
 be  rightly  called  knowledge? 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  71 
 
 fnl  Being,  is  changed  at  once  into  a  perfect  consensus 
 or  accord  with  the  will  of  God,  nay  into  perfect  and 
 unhesitating  atoneness  with  even  His  most  inscrutable 
 counsels.  So  long  as  man  stands  face  to  face  to  God, 
 conscious  only  of  his  own  physical  weakness  and  of 
 the  overwhelming  power  of  what  is  above,  and  be- 
 neath, and  around  him,  he  may  feel  himself  dependent 
 only,  a  creature,  a  slave,  a  mere  nothing ;  but  when 
 he  has  discovered  the  omnipresence  of  the  Divine,  not 
 only  without  but  within  himself,  then  that  feeling 
 of  dependence  is  inevitably  changed  into  a  feeling  of 
 union,  trust,  and  love,  and  he  begins  to  understand 
 what  was  called  of  old  the  liberty  of  the  children  of 
 God. 
 
 So  again,  when  the  Agnostic  says  that  we  cannot 
 know  God,  when  he  calls  God  the  Unknown,  nay  even 
 the  Unknowable,  he  is  perfectly  right  so  long  as  he  uses 
 the  verb  to  knoiv  in  its  ordinary  sense.  To  know,  in  its 
 ordinary  sense,  means  first  to  perceive  through  the 
 senses,  and  then  to  conceive  by  means  of  language. 
 All  our  phenomenal  knowledge  is  such  and  cannot  be 
 otherwise.  Nihil  est  in  intellects  quod  non  ante,  or 
 rather,  quod  non  simul  fuerit  in  sensu1;  and  nihil  est 
 in  intellects  quod  non  simul  fuerit  in  lingua.  Now 
 to  know  the  Divine  by  this  knowledge,  by  the  same 
 knowledge  with  which  we  know  a  stone,  or  a  tree, 
 or  a  dog,  would  be  tantamount  to  annihilating  the 
 Divine.  A  known  God,  in  that  sense,  would  ijiso  facto 
 cease  to  be  God.  It  would  become  a  phenomenal 
 object,  an  idol,  if  you  like,  or  a  fetish,  or  a  totem,  but 
 not  what  tve  mean  by  God.     Scitur  Deus  ncsciendo. 
 
 1  This  saying,  commonly  ascribed  to  Locke,  I  have  traced  back  to 
 Sir  Thomas  Bodley.  I  have  seen  it  quoted  also  by  M.  Moms,  in  a  letter 
 to  Descartes,  March  5,  1649  (Descartes,  (Euvres,  vol.  x.  p.  213),  as  cet 
 axiome  d'Aristote,  il  n'y  a  rim  dans  V intellect  qvi  n'ait passd par  les  sens. 
 
72  LECTUEE   III. 
 
 But  as  soon  as  we  recognise  that  the  very  concept 
 of  phenomenal  is  impossible  without  the  correlative 
 concept  of  the  noumenal,  or,  in  other  words,  that 
 there  can  be  no  appearance  without  something  that 
 appears,  and,  behind  its  appearance,  is  or  exists  by 
 and  in  and  for  itself ;  as  soon  as  we  have  learnt  to 
 recognise  the  invisible  in  the  visible,  the  eternal  in 
 the  temporal,  the  infinite  in  the  finite,  the  Divine 
 Presence  in  nature  and  in  man,  then  we  can  under- 
 stand what  Fichte  meant  when  he  called  religion  the 
 highest  knowledge,  for  it  is  religion  in  its  truest  sense 
 which  opens  our  eyes  and  makes  us  perceive  the  nou- 
 menal in  the  phenomenal,  the  supernatural  in  the 
 natural,  and  thus  changes  the  very  veil  of  nature  into 
 a  never-ceasing  revelation  of  the  Divine.   All  religions 
 may  be  called  endeavours  to  give  expression  to  that 
 sense  of  the  real  presence  of  the  Divine  in  nature  and 
 in  man.      Philosophers  called  that  sense  the  sensus 
 numinis,  and  when  Aristotle  said  that '  all  things  are 
 full  of  the  gods  \  whatsoever  appears  before  our  sight, 
 or  our  hearing,  or  any  other  sense,'  he  meant  what  we 
 mean,  that  by  knowing  the  finite  we  know  the  infinite, 
 by  knowing  nature  we  know  God,  by  knowing  our- 
 selves we  come  to  know  the  Highest  Self,  that  Self 
 which  poets  and  prophets  have  called  by  many  names, 
 but  which,  by  its  very  essence,  is  and  must  be  above 
 all  names,  the  Unknown,  in  one  sense,  and  yet  the 
 fountain  of  all  knowledge,  in  the  truest  sense  of  the 
 word. 
 
 1  Atb  teal  twv  iraXaioJv  eiireiv  rives  Trpor)x^€0av  °TI  TWTa  ravra  kari 
 6ewv  7r\ea  ra  teal  Si'  6(f)9a\^aiu  IvSaWofxeva  rjniv  nal  Si'  atiorjs  real  Trdarjs 
 aiadrfffews.     Arist.  ed.  Didot,  iii.  p.  636,  1.  38.     Be  Munch,  cap.  vi, 
 
LECTURE   IV. 
 
 Positivist  Definitions  of  Religion. 
 
 RESIDES  the  definitions  which  we  have  hitherto 
 examined,  and  which  all  proceed  from  men  who 
 took  an  historical  and  impartial  view  of  religion,  there 
 is  another  class  which  betray  a  decidedly  polemical 
 spirit,  and  which  proceed  chiefly  from  what  are  called 
 positivist  philosophers.  Even  they  cannot  deny  that 
 religion  has  a  deep  foundation  in  human  nature,  but 
 they  look  upon  it  as  a  mistake,  as  a  disease,  as  some- 
 thing that  ought  not  to  be,  and  they  ascribe  its  origin, 
 not  to  the  noblest,  but  rather  to  the  meanest  and  most 
 selfish  motives  of  our  human  nature. 
 
 Wundt. 
 
 Professor  Wundt,  for  instance,  a  most  eminent 
 German  physiologist  and  psychologist,  declares  that 
 all  percepts  and  sentiments  become  religious  as  soon 
 as  they  have  reference  to  some  ideal  existence  which 
 can  supply  the  wishes  and  requirements  of  the  human 
 heart l.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  this  is  one  side  of 
 religion ;  but  it  is  not  the  whole  of  it,  nor  would  it  be 
 true  to  say  that  all  wishes,  even  the  most  selfish  and 
 sordid,  were  ever  supposed  to  receive  their  fulfilment 
 from  that  ideal  existence  which  is  postulated  by 
 religion. 
 
 l  Teichmuller,  Religionsphiloscyhie,  xxxiii ;  Gruppe,  Die  Griechischen 
 
 Quite  unci  Mijthen,  1887,  p.  246. 
 
74  LECTURE   IV 
 
 Feuerbach. 
 
 Feuerbach  was  more  decided  still,  and  declared 
 that  the  gods  were  nothing  but  the  wishes  of  men, 
 conceived  as  realised.  But  there  are  wishes  and 
 wishes,  and  even  admitting  that  some  of  the  ancient 
 gods  represented  the  very  lowest  wishes  of  men 
 realised,  there  would  be  others  also,  representing  the 
 realisation  of  the  highest  ideals  which  the  human 
 mind  can  conceive. 
 
 Generally  speaking,  positivist  philosophers  have 
 added  little  to  an  historical  study  of  religion.  They 
 have  told  us,  not  so  much  what  religion  has  been,  as 
 what,  according  to  their  view  of  the  development  of 
 the  human  mind,  it  ought  or  it  ought  not  to  have 
 been. 
 
 Gruppe. 
 
 There  is  one  exception,  however.  In  a  decidedly 
 learned  work,  published  in  1887,  Die  Griechischen 
 Culte  UTid  My  then,  Professor  Gruppe  has  put  forward 
 a  view  of  religion  which  deserves  the  most  careful 
 consideration,  and  which  I,  at  all  events,  cannot  pass 
 over  in  silence,  considering  that  the  greater  part  of  his 
 first  volume,  consisting  of  more  than  700  pages,  is 
 directed  against  myself.  His  book  is  certainly  in- 
 structive, and  though  I  differ  from  Professor  Gruppe 
 on  almost  every  point,  I  cannot  but  admire  his 
 learning,  nor  should  I  ever  wish  for  a  better  and  more 
 valiant  antagonist.  Let  us  hear  then  the  worst  that 
 can  be  said  of  religion. 
 
 Selfishness  the  Source  of  Religion. 
 
 According  to  Dr.  Gruppe,  who  may  well  be  taken 
 as  the  most  powerful  representative  of  the  extreme 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  75 
 
 positive  and,  at  the  same  time,  negative  school  of 
 philosophy,  religion  exists  simply  because  it  satisfies 
 certain  selfish  instincts  of  man.  It  has  no  other 
 raison  d'etre.  The  rapid  spreading  of  religion  all 
 over  the  world  is  likewise  ascribed  to  a  social  instinct 
 which  is  supposed  to  be  gratified  by  certain  advan- 
 tages which  all  religions  provide.  Religions,  we  are 
 told,  do  not  only  give  pleasure,  but  they  enable  the 
 individual  members  of  a  society  to  develop  their 
 faculties  far  better  than  the  mere  laws  of  family  and 
 state  would  allow.  By  an  inner  bond  of  thought 
 and  feeling  which  unites  a  religious  community,  the 
 individual  gains  more  power  of  resistance  in  the 
 struggle  of  all  against  all.  It  is  only  because  it 
 answers  these  requirements  of  society  that  religion 
 flourishes.  It  keeps  the  poor  and  miserable  quiet 
 by  promising  them  pleasures  in  the  world  to  come, 
 and  thus  enables  the  rich  and  noble  to  enjoy  their 
 pleasures  on  earth  in  safety.  It  alone  can  strengthen 
 law  and  morality  in  a  state  of  society  where  there  is 
 no  equality,  and  it  would  probably  cease  to  exist 
 altogether,  if  all  inequalities  on  earth  could  be  re- 
 moved. Without  accusing  the  founders  of  religion  of 
 selfish  motives  in  the  lowest  sense,  Professor  Gruppe 
 is  nevertheless  convinced  that  they  were  all  uncon- 
 scious egotists.  They  enjoyed  the  reverence  shown 
 them  by  the  multitude  to  that  extent  that  they  did 
 not  shrink,  as  he  thinks,  even  from  a  martyr's  death. 
 But  generally,  while  professing  to  found  a  new  king- 
 dom of  heaven,  they  succeeded  in  founding  a  kingdom 
 of  this  world. 
 
 The  three  true  causes  of  the  wide  and  rapid  spread  of 
 religion  are  therefore  (I.e.,  p.  273),  according  to  him  — 
 
76  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 (1)  the  unconscious  vanity  of  its  founders, 
 
 (2)  a  belief  in  the  happiness  which  it  procures  to 
 its  believers,  and 
 
 (3)  the  substantial  advantages  which  society  derives 
 from  it. 
 
 This  would  really,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  leave 
 the  question  of  the  origin  of  religion  in  the  mind 
 of  its  founders  unsolved  ;  but  this,  we  are  told,  is 
 of  little  consequence,  for  the  mere  fancy  of  any 
 single  individual  would  have  answered  the  purpose. 
 Besides,  it  is  asserted  (p.  276)  that  all  historical  reli- 
 gions presuppose  older  religions,  and  are  reformations 
 rather  than  original  intellectual  creations,  while  the 
 first  conception  of  religious  thought  required  no  more 
 than  a  high  degree  of  personal  energy  to  induce 
 people  to  believe  what  was  irrational,  and  to  do  in 
 their  primitive  sacrifices  what  was  absurd.  Here, 
 again,  however,  the  question  why  any  single  in- 
 dividual should  have  invented  what  was  so  utterly 
 irrational,  remains  unanswered. 
 
 Professor  Gruppe's  formal  definition  of  religion  I 
 must  give  in  his  own  words  : — 
 
 '  We  call  religious  belief  a  belief  in  a  state  or  in 
 a  being  which,  properly  speaking,  lies  outside  the 
 sphere  of  human  striving  and  attainment,  but  can  be 
 brought  into  this  sphere  in  a  particular  way,  namely, 
 by  means  of  sacrificial  ceremonies,  prayers,  penances 
 and  self-denial.  It  might  seem  possible  that  on  the 
 strength  of  such  a  belief  an  individual  should  simply 
 for  his  own  benefit  invent  means  by  which  such  a 
 possibility  could  be  realised.  But  in  history  the  re- 
 ligious belief  always  meets  us  as  a  doctrine,  professing 
 to  be   able  to  produce  the  union  with  those  beings, 
 
EXAMINATION    OF   DEFINITIONS.  77 
 
 and  the  attainment  of  that  state  for  a  large  number 
 of  men.     Such  a  doctrine  we  call  religion.' 
 
 His  definition  too  narrow. 
 
 You  see  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  take  a  lower 
 view  of  religion.  However,  as  I  remarked  before, 
 everybody  is  at  liberty  to  give  his  own  dogmatic 
 definition  of  religion.  The  only  question  is  whether 
 the  definition  given  by  Professor  Gruppe,  and  eagerly 
 adopted  by  those  who  claim  the  name  of  positivist 
 philosophers,  comprehends  really  all  that  in  the 
 history  of  the  world  has  been  comprehended  under 
 the  name  of  religion.  That  there  have  been,  and  that 
 possibly  there  are  even  now,  human  beings  to  whom 
 religion  is  nothing  but  disguised  selfishness,  may  be 
 true  ;  but  that  there  have  been,  and  that  possibly  there 
 are  even  now,  human  beings  willing  and  able  to 
 surrender  their  own  will  to  a  Divine  Will,  can  hardly 
 be  doubted  even  by  Professor  Gruppe.  His  definition 
 of  religion  is  therefore  at  all  events  too  narrow,  and  it 
 might  possibly  be  found  to  apply  to  religion,  not  in 
 its  original,  but  in  its  most  depraved  state  ;  not  as 
 conceived  by  the  founders  of  religion  and  by  those 
 who  were  found  willing  to  become  martyrs  to  their 
 convictions,  but  as  adopted  by  those  who  under  the 
 cloak  of  religion  were  bent  on  gratifying  the  lowest 
 passions  of  human  nature.  On  this  point  Professor 
 Gruppe  is  not  quite  explicit,  and  we  must  wait  for 
 the  appearance  of  his  next  volumes,  before  we  can 
 believe  that  the  impression  left  on  our  mind  by  his 
 first  volume  is  really  quite  correct. 
 
 So  far  as  he  has  gone  at  present,  his  argument 
 seems  to  be  this,  that  religion  is  something  so  irra- 
 
78  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 tional,  not  to  say,  so  absurd,  that  it  could  have  been 
 invented  once  and  once  only  in  the  whole  history  of 
 mankind.  He  denies  altogether  that  religion  is  a 
 general  characteristic  of  man,  and  that  there  is  any 
 excuse  for  it  either  in  human  nature  or  in  its  sur- 
 roundings. Once,  or  possibly  twice  only,  he  main- 
 tains, did  such  a  paradox  as  religion  enter  into  the 
 heart  of  man.  All  similarities  therefore  which  have 
 been  discovered  between  religions  are  ascribed  by 
 Professor  Gruppe  to  an  historical  transmission,  which 
 began  probably  not  much  earlier  than  the  seventh 
 centuiy  B.C.  We  are  not  told  as  yet  where  and 
 when  this  monstrous  birth  took  place,  but  everything 
 seems  to  point  to  Phoenicia,  or  possibly  to  India  (1.  c, 
 p.  499).  We  are  given  to  understand  in  several 
 places  that  the  Nile  has  borrowed  from  the  Ganges, 
 not  the  Ganges  from  the  Nile  (pp.  499,  502,  507). 
 The  greater  antiquity  of  the  Egyptian  literature  is 
 questioned  again  and  again,  and  in  Babylon  also  no 
 trustworthy  dates  are  admitted  before  the  seventh 
 century  (p.  345).  That  missionaries  could  have 
 travelled  to  Greece,  Italy,  and  Central  Europe  from 
 the  South  is  said  to  be  proved  by  discoveries  of 
 articles  dropped  on  their  journeys  by  early  commer- 
 cial caravans.  That  Eastern  Asia,  China,  and  Japan 
 could  have  been  reached  by  early  missionaries  from 
 India,  is  said  to  be  proved  by  the  success  of  Buddhist 
 missionaries  at  a  later  time  ;  and  that  from  Eastern 
 Asia  the  transit  to  America  was  not  altogether  impos- 
 sible is  now  admitted,  we  are  told,  by  the  most 
 competent  authorities.  Again,  we  are  reminded  that 
 the  Mohammedan  religion  found  its  way  in  later  times 
 from  Eastern  Asia  to  Australia,  on  one  side,  and  to 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  79 
 
 Madagascar  and  Africa  on  the  other,  so  that  there 
 really  was  no  physical  impediment  that  could  have 
 prevented  the  spread  of  the  earliest  religion  in  the 
 same  directions.  Even  Northern  Asia,  we  are  told, 
 was  in  later  times  touched  by  Persian  influences,  and 
 might  therefore  have  been  reached  by  the  emissaries 
 of  those  who  had  made  the  first  discovery  of  religion. 
 At  all  events,  no  difficulties  in  the  historical  spreading 
 of  this  religion,  when  once  discovered,  could  compare, 
 according  to  Professor  Gruppe,  with  the  difficulty  of 
 accounting  for  the  discovery  of  something  so  opposed 
 to  all  the  laws  of  thought  as  religion.  One  man,  he 
 thinks,  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world,  may  have 
 committed  that  logical  suicide  (p.  277),  possibly  two, 
 if  America  could  not  have  been  reached  from  China, 
 but  certainly  no  more. 
 
 This  is  Professor  Gruppe's  theory,  which  sounds 
 almost  incredible  in  the  nineteenth  century  after 
 Christ,  but  which  is  put  forward  and  defended  with 
 so  much  earnestness  and  so  much  learning  that  it 
 requires  and  deserves  a  careful  answer.  When  philo- 
 sophers had  proved,  or  imagined  they  had  proved,  that 
 religion  in  some  form  or  other  was  inevitable,  and 
 inseparable  from  human  nature,  to  be  told  that  reli- 
 gion would  never  have  arisen  but  for  the  chance 
 discovery  of  one  single  individual— and  he  a  fool- 
 is  startling.  When  archaeologists  had  proved,  or 
 imagined  they  had  proved,  that  the  images  of 
 Egyptian  deities  went  back  to  4000  B.C.  and  that 
 some  of  the  statues  of  Babylon  could  not  be  much 
 more  modern  \  to  be  told  that  in  Babylon  evervthin^ 
 before  the  seventh  century  is  nothing  but  constructive 
 
 1  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  33. 
 
80  LECTURE   IV. 
 
 chronology,  and  that  in  Egypt  all  dates  before  1000 
 b.  o.  are  uncertain,  was  enough  to  rouse  considerable 
 indignation.  Still  one  cannot  help  respecting  the 
 opinions  of  a  man,  who,  besides  being  a  classical 
 scholar,  has  made  himself  master  of  Hebrew,  and  has 
 not  shrunk  from  studying  Sanskrit,  Zend,  Hierogly- 
 phics and  Cuneiform  Inscriptions,  before  he  ventured 
 on  his  dangerous  voyage  of  discovery.  In  spite  of  all 
 drawbacks,  I  can  strongly  recommend  his  book  as 
 containing  most  useful  information.  I  myself  feel 
 most  grateful  for  it,  for  I  am  convinced  that  if  my 
 own  system  can  resist  so  powerful  and  well  delivered 
 an  attack  as  Professor  Gruppe's,  it  need  fear  no  serious 
 danger  in  future. 
 
 There  is  another  advantage  to  be  derived  from  the 
 study  of  Professor  Gruppe's  work.  If  other  writers 
 tell  us  the  best  that  can  be  said  of  religion,  he  tells  us 
 the  worst.  Most  writers  who  are  honest  enough  to 
 point  out  the  weak  points  of  religion,  and  who  do 
 not  shut  their  eyes  to  the  infinite  mischief  that  has 
 been  wrought  in  its  name,  always  plead  for  its  purifi- 
 cation and  reformation,  not  for  its  total  abolition. 
 They  see  the  rubbish,  but  they  also  see  the  grains  of 
 gold  even  in  the  most  degraded  forms  of  religion. 
 Not  so  Professor  Gruppe.  Looking  on  all  religion  as 
 an  outrage  on  human  reason,  he  hopes  that  the  time 
 may  come  when  religion  will  have  clean  vanished 
 from  the  earth,  and  when  the  world  will  have  become 
 so  perfect  that  no  more  perfect  world  could  be 
 imagined  or  desired.  It  is  well  that  we  should  see 
 ourselves  as  we  are  seen  by  others,  and  no  one  cer- 
 tainly has  enabled  us  to  do  that  better  than  Professor 
 Gruppe. 
 
EXAMINATION    OF    DEFINITIONS.  81 
 
 We  have  now  finished  our  historical  survey  of  the 
 most  important  definitions  of  religion,  though  I  am 
 well  aware  that  there  are  others  which  would  have 
 deserved  and  would  have  repaid  a  careful  examina- 
 tion \  This  survey  has  taken  up  much  of  our  time, 
 but  the  advantages  which  accrue  from  a  careful  defini- 
 tion of  religion,  and  of  all  the  words  which  we  use  in 
 philosophical  discussions,  will  be  perceived  again  and 
 again  at  every  step  of  our  inquiries. 
 
 Universality  of  Religion. 
 
 Let  us  to-day  take  one  instance  only.     No  question 
 has  excited  so  much   interest  and  has   produced  so 
 much  heat  and  passion  as  that  of  the  universality  of 
 religion.     Are  there  at   present  any   human    beings 
 without  religion,  or  does  history  tell  us  of  any  ?     You 
 may  read  book  after  book  on  the  subject,  and  you 
 will  ask  how  it  is  possible  that  on  so  simple  a  matter 
 of  fact  there  can  be  any  difference  of  opinion.     But 
 not  only  is  there  difference  of  opinion,  but  there  is 
 flat  contradiction.    The  same  tribes  who  are  described 
 by  some  observers  as  deeply  religious,  are  described 
 by  others   as   without   an   idea   of  anything   super- 
 natural.    How  is  this  to  be  accounted  for  ? 
 
 Angle  of  Vision. 
 
 Some  allowance  must,  no  doubt,  be  made  for  the 
 angle  of  vision  which  varies  in  every  observer.  This 
 does  not  necessarily  arise  from  dishonesty,  as  is  so 
 
 1  St,riSUf  ,(?e,fines  religion  as  a  feeling  for  or  touch  with  the  Uni- 
 verse Gefuhl  fur  das  Universum)  ;  H.  Lang  as  love  of  the  Infinite  ; 
 a/  J  i  oil°mp?,0n  m  his  work  on  Thc  ReKwous  Sentiments  of  the  Human 
 Mind,  18&8,  as  the  aggregate  of  those  sentiments  in  the  human  mind 
 arising  in  connection  with  the  relations  assumed  to  subsisl  between 
 the  order  of  nature  (inclusive  of  the  observer)  and  a  postulated 
 supernatural.  r 
 
 G 
 
82  LECTURE   IV. 
 
 often  supposed,  but  simply  from  a  weakness  inherent 
 in  human  nature.  We  all  are  inclined  to  see  what 
 we  expect  or  wish  to  see,  and  if  we  see  what  we 
 expect  or  wish  to  see,  we  are  naturally  less  incredulous 
 and  less  critical  than  if  we  see  what  we  did  not 
 expect  or  did  not  wish  for.  We  are  all  liable  to 
 this,  and  we  have  all  to  learn  to  be  doubly  incredulous 
 when  we  meet  with  unexpected  confirmations  of  our 
 own  favourite  theories.  I  shall  give  you  two  illus- 
 trations only  of  what  I  mean,  cases  where  men, 
 famous  for  their  honesty  and  their  critical  disposi- 
 tion, were  completely  deceived  in  what  they  saw  and 
 heard. 
 
 Darwin  on  Tierra  del  Pueffo. 
 
 One  is  the  case  of  Darwin.     We  know  how  from 
 his   early   youth    his   mind   was    dominated   by  the 
 idea  of  evolution,  and  how  his  researches  led  him  to 
 look   everywhere    for  evidence   in    support    of  that 
 theory  and  for  an  explanation  of  its  working.  ^  He 
 wished  to  find  men  as  low  as  animals,  or,  if  possible, 
 even  on  a  slightly  lower  stage  than  that  reached  by 
 some  of  the   higher   animals.     When  he  visited  the 
 coasts  of  South  America  he  thought  he  had  found  in 
 the  inhabitants  of  Tierra  del  Fuego  what  he  was  look- 
 ing for,  and  he  accordingly  described  these  people  as 
 like  the  devils  which  come  on  the  stage  in  such  plays 
 as  the  Freischiitz.     'Viewing  such    men,'  he  writes, 
 '  one  can  hardly  believe  that  they  are  fellow-creatures, 
 and  inhabitants  of  the  same  world.     Their  language 
 scarcely  deserves   to   be   called   articulate.     Captain 
 Cook  compared  it  to  a  man  clearing  his  throat ;  but 
 certainly  no  European  ever  cleared  his  throat  with 
 
EXAMINATION   OF  DEFINITIONS.  83 
 
 so  many  hoarse,  guttural,  and  clicking  sounds.'    With 
 regard  to  the  physical  features  of  these  Fuegians  also 
 Darwin  must  either  have  been  very  unlucky  in  the 
 specimens  he  met,  or  he  must  even  then  have  used 
 his   own   somewhat    coloured   Darwinian   spectacles. 
 Captain  Snow  speaks  of  exactly  the  same  race,  which 
 Darwin  describes  as  hideous  devils,  as  really  beautiful 
 representatives    of  the    human    race,    and   Professor 
 Virchow,  who  exhibited  a  number  of  natives  from 
 Tierra  del  Fuego  at  Berlin,  protested  warmly  against 
 the  supposition  that  they  were  by  nature  an  inferior 
 race.     But   more    than    that.     Their    very  language 
 which  had  been  described  by  Captain  Cook  and  by 
 Darwin  as  worse  than  the  noise  of  a  man  clearing  his 
 throat,  has  lately  been  studied  by  Giacomo  Bove,  who 
 describes  it  as  '  sweet,  pleasing,  and  full  of  vowels,' 
 and  who  states  that  the   number  of  words  forming 
 their  dictionary  amounts  to  32,430.     If  we  remember 
 that  Shakespeare  could  say  all  he  wished  to  say— and 
 who  has  poured  out  a  greater  wealth  of  thought  and 
 feeling  than  Shakespeare  ?- with  about  15,000  words, 
 a  race  possessed  of  more  than  double  that  number  of 
 words   can   hardly   be   said   to   be    below  the    level 
 reached    by   some  of   the    higher   animals.     I    have 
 quoted  this  case  on  several  occasions,  not  in  order  to 
 question  Darwin's  honesty,  but  simply  to  illustrate 
 one  cause  of  error  to  which  all  human  observations 
 are  liable— a  disposition  to  see  what  we  expect  and 
 wish    to    see.     Darwin   was  honest  enough  to   con- 
 fess his  error,  and  that  is  more  than  can  be  said  of 
 many  other  observers.     And  I  feel  therefore  all  the 
 more  bound  to  state   that  there   are   some   dialects 
 spoken  in  Tierra  del  Fuego,  such  as  the  Alacalu  or 
 
 G   2 
 
84  LECTURE   IV. 
 
 Ona,  which  Signor  Bove  himself  declares  to  be  harsh 
 and  guttural l. 
 
 ITielmlir  and  Bunsen. 
 
 Lest  I  should  appear   unfair   in  quoting  Darwin 
 only,  let  me  tell  you  what   happened   to   Niebuhr. 
 The  story  was  told  me  by  my  friend  Bunsen,  who 
 was  his  secretary  when  Niebuhr  was  Prussian  Mimster 
 at   Rome.     Niebuhr   was   very   anxious  to   discover 
 traces  of  Greek  in  Italian,  as  spoken  by  the  common 
 people  in  the  South  of  Italy.     He  thought  that  the 
 occupation  of  the  country' by  the  Greeks,  when  the 
 South  of  Italy  was  called  Magna  Graecia,  ought  to 
 have  left  at  least  a  few  vestiges  behind,  just  as  the 
 occupation  of  Britain  by  the  Romans  can  be  proved 
 by  such  words  as  Chester  in  Dorchester,  Lat.  castrum; 
 coin  in  Lincoln,  Lat.  eolonia;   cheese,  Lat.  casern; 
 street,  Lat.  strata,   scil.  via*.     Finding  himself  one 
 day  with  Bunsen  in  a  small  boat,  and  being  caught 
 by  a  storm,  Niebuhr  listened  attentively  to  the  sailors, 
 who  were  rowing  with  all  their  might  and  shouting 
 what  sounded  to  Niebuhr's  ears  like  ttAo'ij.     '  Listen, 
 he   said  to   Bunsen,   'they  call   for   *AA|  or  euvkor, 
 Ulnkoia),  a  fair  voyage.     There  you  have  a  survival 
 of  the   Greek  spoken   in   Magna   Graecia.     Bunsen 
 listened  attentively.     He  saw  that  one  of  the  sailors 
 looked   very   English,    and   that   the    others   simp  y 
 repeated  what  he  said  and  what  seemed  to  them  to 
 possess  a  certain  charm  ;  and  he  soon  discovered  that 
 what  to  Niebuhr  sounded  like   wXo'ij  or  ei-TtAo.,,  was 
 really  the  English,  '  Pull  away.' 
 
 •  Sec  Bove,  Patagonia,  Terra  id  Fuom,  Eapporto  del  Tenente  Giaeomc 
 
EXAMINATION    OF   DEFINITIONS.  85 
 
 If  such  things  can  happen  to  Niebuhr  and  Darwin, 
 we  must  not  be  surprised  if  they  happen  to  smaller 
 men  ;  and,  to  return  to  our  subject,  we  must  not  be 
 surprised  if  some  missionaries  find  no  trace  of  religion 
 where  anthropologists  see  the  place  swarming  with 
 ghosts  and  totems  and  fetishes  ;  while  other  mission- 
 aries discover  deep  religious  feelings  in  savages  whom 
 anthropologists  declare  perfectly  incapable  of  any- 
 thing beyond  the  most  primitive  sensuous  perceptions. 
 
 Lubbock  v.  Quatrefages. 
 
 But  though  a  certain  bias  must  be  admitted  in  writers 
 on  anthropology,  that  does  not  suffice  to  account 
 for  such  books  as  Sir  John  Lubbock's  Prehistoric 
 Times,  as  illustrated  by  Ancient  Remains  and  the 
 Manners  and  Customs  of  Modern  Savages,  1865,  as 
 compared  with  Quatrefages,  L'espece  humaine,  1877, 
 and  Roskoff,  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  Naturvolker, 
 1880.  Sir  John  Lubbock  collects  all  the  evidence 
 that  can  possibly  prove  the  existence  even  now  of 
 tribes  without  religion,  while  Quatrefages  and  Roskoff 
 sifting  the  same  materials,  show  on  the  contrary  that 
 there  is  no  trustworthy  evidence  whatsoever  to  sup- 
 port such  a  theory  *.  Neither  the  facts  adduced  by 
 Roskoff,  nor  the  arguments  founded  on  these  facts,, 
 have  ever  been  controverted,  and  until  that  has  been 
 done  —  and  I  doubt  whether  it  can  be — this  controversy 
 ought  to  be  considered  at  an  end. 
 
 My  friend,  Dr.  Tylor,  also  made  some  time  ago  a  very 
 useful  collection  to  show  how  the  same  people  who  by 
 one  missionary  are  said  to  worship  either  one  or  many 
 
 1  Introcl.  to  the  Science  of  Belly  ion,  p.  277. 
 
86  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 gods,  are  declared  by  another  to  have  no  idea  and  no 
 name  of  a  Divine  Being,  and  how  even  the  same  person 
 sometimes  makes  two  equally  confident  assertions  which 
 flatly  contradict  each  other.  Thus  in  one  place  Sparr- 
 mann1  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  Hottentots  believe 
 in  a  Supreme  Being,  and  tells  us  that  the  Khoi-Khoi 
 themselves  declared  that  they  were  too  stupid  to 
 understand  anything,  and  never  heard  of  a  Supreme 
 Being ;  while  in  another  place  the  same  Sparrmann 
 argues  that  the  Khoi-Khoi  must  believe  in  a  supreme, 
 very  powerful,  but  fiendish  Being,  from  whom  they 
 expect  rain,  thunder,  lightning  and  cold.  Liechten- 
 stein, again,  while  denying  in  one  place  that  there  is 
 any  trace  of  religious  worship  among  the  Khosa 
 Kafirs,  admits  in  another  that  they  believe  in  a 
 Supreme  Being  who  created  the  world,  though,  if  we 
 are  to  believe  Van  der  Kamp  (died  1811),  they  have 
 no  name  for  such  a  being. 
 
 Preconceived  Ideas. 
 
 It  may  seem  strange  why  there  should  be  so  much 
 animus  in  these  discussions,  and  why  missionaries 
 and  anthropologists  should  not  be  satisfied  with  simply 
 stating  the  facts,  such  as  they  are.  But  there  is  a 
 reason  for  it.  It  seems  important  to  some  people  to 
 prove  that  religion  is  a  necessity  of  the  human  mind, 
 or,  as  it  was  formerly  expressed,  is  innate,  or,  as  Cicero 
 says,  is  engraved  by  nature  on  our  minds  -.  To  them, 
 therefore,  it  seems  of  vital  interest  to  prove  that  no 
 race  of  men  has  ever  been  found  without  some  kind 
 
 1  Theophilus  Hahn,  Tsuni-Goam,  the  Supreme  Being  of  the  Khoi-Khoi, 
 1881,  p.  45.  .  _ 
 
 2  Cic.  Be  Nat.  B.  i.  17,  45,  'Natura  insculpsit  in  mentibus  ut  Deos 
 aeternos  et  beatos  haberemus.' 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  87 
 
 of  religion,  as  little  as  any  human  beings  have  ever 
 been  found  without  the  cravings  of  hunger  and  thirst. 
 Other  philosophers,   on  the  contrary,   like  Professor 
 Gruppe,  are  anxious  to  prove  that  religion  is  not  an 
 essential  ingredient  of  human  nature,  but  an  acquired 
 social  habit ;  and  in  their  eyes  the  actual  existence  of 
 non-religious  races  acquires  an  immense  importance, 
 as  confirming  their  view  of  human  nature.     In  this 
 they  totally  forget  that  all  human  beings,  whether  we 
 call  them   savages   or   not,  may  formerly  have  had 
 a  whole  pantheon   of  supernatural  beings  and  have 
 forgotten  or  surrendered  it,  just  as  the  Hindus,  in 
 becoming  Buddhists,  surrendered  their  belief  in  the 
 ancient  Devas.     But  this  would  be  against  another 
 article  of  the  anthropologist  faith,  namely  that  savages, 
 who  are  really  far  more  changeable  than  civilised 
 races,  are  stereotyped  once  for  all,  and  unchangeable. 
 Sometimes  these  two  parties  change  sides  in  a  very 
 strange  way.     When  the  Missionary  wants  to  prove 
 that  no  human  being  can  be  without  some  spark  of 
 religion,  he  sees  religion  everywhere,  even  in  what  is 
 called  totemism  and  fetishism ;  while,  if  he  wants  to 
 show  how  necessary  it  is  to  teach  and  convert  these 
 irreligious  races,  he  cannot  paint  their  abject  state  in 
 too  strong  colours,  and  he  is  apt  to  treat  even  their 
 belief  in  an  invisible  and  nameless  god,  as  mere  hallu- 
 cination.     Nor  is  the  anthropologist  free  from  such 
 temptations.      If  he  wants  to  prove   that,  like  the 
 child,  every  race  of  men  was  at  one  time  atheistic, 
 then  neither  totems,  nor  fetishes,  not  even  prayers  or 
 sacrifices  are  any  proof  in  his  eyes  of  an  ineradicable 
 religious  instinct.     If,  on  the  contrary,  he  is  anxious 
 to  show  that  the  religions  of  the  highest  races  are  but 
 
88  LECTUKE   IV. 
 
 an  evolution  of  lower  types  of  faith,  or,  as  Darwin 
 would  wish  us  to  belie ve,Nbi^at  even  animals  possess 
 something  like  religious  feeling  then  a  sigh,  a  tear, 
 a  sudden  silence,  an  involuntary  interjection,  or  even 
 a  curse,  become  proof  positive  of  thV- existence  of 
 germs  of  religion,  though  in  a  most  rudimentary  state. 
 
 We  ought  to  be  as  cautious  at  least  as  Cicero,  who, 
 after  he  has  introduced  Velleius  as  upholding  the 
 universality  of  religion1,  makes  Cotta  say  that  such 
 important  questions  cannot  be  settled  by  majorities, 
 provided  even  that  we  knew  the  religions  of  all  races 
 of  men 2.  Though  we  know  a  good  deal  more  of  the 
 world  than  was  known  at  the  time  of  Plutarch,  yet  we 
 should  probably  hesitate  to  say  what  he  says,  '  that  you 
 may  indeed  find  towns  without  walls,  without  letters, 
 without  kings,  without  houses,  without  wealth,  not 
 requiring  coined  money,  ignorant  of  theatres  and 
 gymnasia.  But  there  is  no  one  who  has  seen  or  who 
 ever  will  see  a  town  without  temples  and  without 
 gods,  not  employing  prayers,  oaths,  or  oracles,  and  not 
 performing  sacrifices  to  render  thanks  for  good  things 
 or  to  avert  misfortunes  3.' 
 
 The  historian  of  religion  must  try  to  be  as  free  as 
 possible  from  all  preconceived  opinions.  He  may 
 be  convinced,  as  a  philosopher,  that  it  is  impos- 
 sible for  any  human  being  to  be  without  something 
 like  what  we  mean  by  religion,  but  as  every  child  is 
 born  both  without  religion  and  without  language,  the 
 possibility  at  least  ought  to  be  admitted  that  some 
 
 1  Cic.  Ik  Sot.  Dear.  i.  16,  43,  'Quae  est  enim  gens,  aut  quod  genus 
 hominum  quod  non  habeat  sine  doctrina  anticipationem  quandam 
 deoruni  ?  ' 
 
 2  Cic,  /.  (.,  iii.  4,  11,  'Placet  igitur  tantas  res  opinione  stultorum 
 j  udicari  ? ' 
 
 3  Plutarch.  Adv.  Cohten,  cap.  31. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF    DEFINITIONS.  89 
 
 races  might  have  remained  in  a  state  of  childish 
 idiotcy,  might  be  without  religion,  without  language, 
 nay,  without  reason. 
 
 In  most  cases,  however,  which  I  have  been  able  to 
 examine  where  some  authorities  maintained  that 
 certain  savage  tribes  had  never  heard  of  religion,  while 
 other  observers  declared  that  they  had  discovered  in 
 their  language  names  for  good  and  evil  spirits,  these 
 strange  contradictions  could  always  be  accounted  for 
 by  the  absence  of  a  proper  definition  of  religion.  If 
 religion  can  be  used,  and  has  been  used,  in  so  many 
 different  and  even  contradictory  senses  as  we  saw 
 in  our  last  lecture,  we  need  not  wonder  that  there 
 should  be  so  much  conflict  of  opinion  when  it  has  to 
 be  determined  whether  Negroes  or  Australians  do  or 
 do  not  possess  religion. 
 
 If  religion  is  defined  as  a  modus  cognoscendi  et 
 volendi  Deum,  even  Buddhism  would  not  be  a  religion. 
 If  it  is  defined  as  a  surrender  of  the  finite  will  to  the 
 infinite,  even  Judaism,  at  least  in  its  earliest  form, 
 would  hardly  deserve  the  name  of  religion.  If  a 
 belief  in  a  more  perfect  future  life  is  considered  an 
 essential  element  of  religion,  then  the  faith  of  the 
 early  Greeks  would  not  be  a  religion1.  If  temples  and 
 sacrifices  are  indispensable  for  religion,  the  ancient 
 Germans,  and  some  of  the  Polynesian  tribes  2,  even  at 
 present,  would  be  without  a  religion. 
 
 This  is  but  one  instance  to  show  how  much  all  our 
 inquiries   into   the  history   of  religion,   and   all    our 
 
 1  Mill,  Three  Essays,  p.  121. 
 
 2  Chamisso,  Werke,  ii.  p.  258,  '  Es  giebt  auf  Ulea  und  den  Ostlichereii 
 Inseln  (Lamureck,  etc.)  weder  Tempel  noch  Priester,  und  es 
 finden  keine  feierlichen  Opfcr  statt,  Auf  Mogemug,  Eap  und  Ngoli 
 sind  eigene  Tempel  erbaut,  Opfer  werden  dargebracht,  und  es  giebt 
 einen  religiosen  Dienst.' 
 
90  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 theories  on  the  origin  of  religion,  depend  on  a  clear 
 and  correct  definition  of  what  we  mean  by  religion,  of 
 what  is  included,  in  and  what  is  excluded  from  the 
 sphere  of  that  name. 
 
 Names  for  Religion. 
 
 Before,  however,  I  proceed  to  give  you  what  seems 
 to  me  the  right  definition  of  religion,  at  all  events 
 from  an  historical  point  of  view, — a  definition,  I  mean, 
 of  what  religion  has  been,  rather  than  of  what,  accord- 
 ing to  the  opinions  of  various  philosophers,  it  ought  to 
 be,  I  have  a  few  words  to  say  on  the  names  for  reli- 
 gion in  foreign,  and  particularly  in  Oriental  languages. 
 It  is  surprising  to  find  how  difficult  it  is  to  discover 
 words  in  these  languages  which  correspond  exactly  to 
 our  concept  of  religion.  This  difficulty  applies,  no  doubt, 
 to  many  words,  and  it  is  a  very  useful  lesson  which 
 the  study  of  foreign  languages  teaches  us. 
 
 When  we  first  begin  to  learn  a  new  language,  all 
 seems  easy.  The  dictionary  gives  us  the  corresponding 
 words,  the  grammar  the  corresponding  forms.  But  the 
 more  we  learn  of  a  foreign  language,  the  more  difficult 
 do  we  find  it  to  discover  words  that  will  really  square 
 our  own  words.  There  is  always  something  too  much 
 or  too  little.  We  enter  really  into  a  new  atmosphere 
 as  soon  as  we  speak  in  a  new  language,  and  there  are 
 associations  playing  round  every  one  of  our  own 
 expressions  which,  like  the  light  and  shade  of  the 
 clouds,  like  the  rustling  of  the  leaves,  and  like  the 
 freshness  of  the  air,  determine,  without  being  per- 
 ceived, the  whole  character  of  a  landscape. 
 
 So  common  a  word  as  philosopher,  for  instance,  has 
 a  much  narrower  meaning  in  German  than  in  English. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  9] 
 
 A  man  like  Darwin  would  not  be  called  ein  Pkilo- 
 soph  in  German,  but  ein  Naturforscher.  Philosophie 
 in  German  has  remained  restricted  to  Logic,  Psycho- 
 logy, Ethics,  Metaphysics,  Aesthetics;  and  we  have 
 Darwin's  own  confession  that  of  all  these  subjects  he 
 was  absolutely  ignorant.  It  is  a  standing  joke  among 
 German  philosophers  against  English  philosophy,  that 
 in  England  you  can  buy  philosophical  instruments. 
 The  joke  loses  its  point  as  soon  as  it  is  known  that 
 philosophy  in  English  means  likewise  the  study  of 
 nature,  such  as  chemistry,  optics,  acoustics  and  all 
 the  rest,  and  that  therefore  what  in  German  are 
 called  plxysicalische  Instrumente  may  well  be  called 
 philosophical  instruments  in  English. 
 
 There  are  many  such  words  in  all  languages  which 
 are  the  despair  of  the  translator.  A  very  common 
 word  in  German  is  zweckmdssig,  that  is,  anything 
 so  contrived  that  it  answers  its  purpose.  From 
 it,  Zweckmassigkeit,  which  we  may  translate  by 
 appropriateness,  but  which  means  a  great  deal 
 more.  We  can  speak  of  the  innere  Zweckmas- 
 sigkeit eines  Organismus,  that  is,  an  organism  in 
 which  everything  is  so  contrived  that  it  answers 
 exactly  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  intended  ;  but  I 
 know  no  word  in  English  or  French  which  fully 
 conveys  that  meaning  1. 
 
 However,  the  modern  languages  of  Europe  have  so 
 many  of  their  antecedents  in  common,  that  in  a  rough 
 and  ready  way  one  can  be  made  to  answer  as  well  as 
 another  to  express  our  thoughts.     We  lose  a  little 
 
 1  Dr.  Martineau  (Study  of  Religion,  ii.  p.  154)  translates  it  by 
 •adaptation  to  internal  ends,'  or  '  internal  conformity  to  an  end,' 
 but  he  generally  retains  the  German  expression 
 
92  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 when  we  exchange  a  shilling  for  a  German  Mark, 
 and  we  lose  more  when  we  accept  a  franc  for  a 
 shilling  ;  still,  if  we  are  not  too  exacting,  we  can  make 
 our  way  through  the  world  with  one  coinage  as  well 
 as  with  the  other. 
 
 But  when  we  leave  Europe  to  travel  in  Eastern 
 countries,  the  exchange  becomes  more  and  more 
 difficult,  both  with  our  monetary  and  with  our  in- 
 tellectual coinage.  It  sounds  hardly  credible,  but  if 
 you  take  so  rich  a  language  as  Sanskrit,  and  a  liter- 
 ature so  full  of  religion  as  that  of  India,  you  look  in 
 vain  for  a  word  for  religion.  To  a  certain  extent 
 this  is  our  own  fault.  If  we  put  so  many  ill- defined 
 meanings  into  a  word  as  have  been  put  into  religion, 
 we  must  not  be  surprised  if  we  do  not  find  exactly 
 the  same  conglomerate  elsewhere.  Here  it  is  where 
 thinking  in  two  languages  often  proves  very  useful, 
 by  making  us  aware  of  the  presence  of  the  many 
 amorphous  particles  of  thought  which  will  not  pass 
 through  the  sieve  of  another  language.  But  it  is 
 strange,  nevertheless,  that  a  word  which  seems  to  us 
 so  simple  and  so  clear  as  religion,  should  be  without 
 its  exact  counterpart  in  any  language. 
 
 Words  for  Keliglon  in  Chinese. 
 
 It  may  easily  be  imagined  that  if  so  rich  a  language 
 as  Sanskrit  is  deficient  in  names  corresponding  exactly 
 to  our  idea  of  religion,  other  languages  do  not  supply 
 us  with  better  equivalents  for  that  word. 
 
 In  Chinese,  for  instance,  there  is,  as  Professor  Legge 
 informs  us,  no  word  corresponding  exactly  to  our  word 
 religion. 
 
 To  Confucianism  there  is  applied  more  especially 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  93 
 
 the  character  Chido,  meaning  '  the  Teaching  or  In- 
 struction,' Doctvina. 
 
 To  Buddhism  the  character  Fa  is  commonly  given, 
 meaning  '  Law.'  Fo  FA,  '  the  Law  of  Buddha,'  is 
 Buddhism. 
 
 Taoism  is  Tdo,  '  the  Way.' 
 
 These  are  often  spoken  of  as  San  Chido,  '  The  Three 
 Systems  of  Teaching, '  for  which  phrase  the  best 
 rendering  seems  to  be  '  the  Three  Religions.'  But  if 
 the  three  be  spoken  of  discriminatingly,  the  different 
 terms  are  appropriate  to  them  severally. 
 
 The  authors  of  the  famous  Nestorian  Inscription 
 applied  all  the  three  names  to  Christianity.  Now  it 
 is  with  them  '  the  Doctrine,'  now  '  the  Law,'  and  now 
 '  the  Way.'  They  found  it  difficult,  they  say,  to  fix 
 on  a  distinctive  name  for  it,  and  finally  determined  to 
 call  it  Citing  Chido,  '  the  Illustrious  Doctrine,'  using 
 the  terms  which  Lao-tze  employs,  when  he  says  he 
 would  call  his  subject  or  system  the  Tdo  or  Way. 
 
 The  general  term  for  'having  faith'  is  lisin,  in- 
 dicating the  idea  of  '  believing.' 
 
 Words  for  Religion  in  Arabic. 
 
 In  Arabic,  which  reflects  more  advanced  and  subtle 
 thought  on  religious  topics  than  most  languages, 
 there  is,  nevertheless,  no  word  that  can  be  considered 
 a  real  equivalent  of  our  word  religion.  Bin,  ac- 
 cording to  Lane,  implies  obedience  and  submission 
 to  the  law,  and  is  used  in  Arabic  for  religion  in  the 
 widest  sense,  both  historical  and  practical.  Ahla-d- 
 din,  however,  people  of  religion,  is  a  term  restricted 
 to  those  who  profess  to  found  their  faith  upon  re- 
 vealed scriptures,  Mohammedans,  Jews,  and  Christians, 
 
94  LECTURE   IV. 
 
 while  the  followers  of  natural  religion  are  classed 
 with  the  followers  of  philosophical  systems,  as  ahlu- 
 bahwd,  people  of  opinions. 
 
 Dharma. 
 
 I  know  the  difficulty  of  finding  a  word  for  religion 
 in  Sanskrit  from  practical  experience. 
 
 Some  years  ago  an  enlightened  and  very  zealous 
 gentleman  in  India,  Behramji  M.  Malabari,  conceived 
 the  plan  of  having  my  Hibbert  Lectures  '  On  the 
 Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion'  translated  not  only 
 into  Sanskrit,  but  into  the  principal  vernaculars  of 
 the  country.  The  question  was,  how  to  translate  the 
 title.  If  the  book  had  been  on  the  origin  of  any 
 particular  religion,  such  as  the  teaching  of  Buddha 
 or  Mohammed  or  Christ,  there  would  have  been  no 
 difficulty.  But  the  idea  of  religion  in  general  had 
 not  presented  itself  clearly  to  the  Hindu  mind,  and 
 hence  there  was  no  recognised  name  for  it.  After 
 long  consideration,  we  settled  that  it  should  be  simply 
 Dharma-vyakhyana,  'an  explanation  of  Dharma,' 
 that  is,  the  Law,  and  under  that  title  translations  of 
 my  Hibbert  Lectures  have  appeared  in  Bengali, 
 Guzarati,  and  Marathi,  and  more  will  appear  in 
 Sanskrit,  Hindi,  and  Tamil. 
 
 This  dharma  certainly  means  religion  in  one  sense, 
 but  in  one  sense  only.  It  means  law,  and  a  law-book 
 therefore  is  called  Dharma-sastra.  The  same  word 
 dharma  may  be  used  to  express  dogma  or  objective 
 religion,  but  it  cannot  include  the  subjective  disposi- 
 tion which  we  likewise  comprehend  under  the  name 
 of  religion. 
 
 In  the  Rig-veda  dharma,  law,  does  not  yet  occur, 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  95 
 
 but  only  the  other  form  dharman.  With  the  accent 
 on  the  first  syllable  dharman  means  one  who  holds 
 and  upholds;  with  the  accent  on  the  last,  dharma1 
 means  support,  fid-cram  ;  then  law  and  order,  what 
 holds  things  as  they  are  and  as  they  ought  to  be. 
 The  gods  are  looked  upon  as  the  givers  and  guardians 
 of  these  d harm  as  or  laws.  In  later  Sanskrit  dharma 
 has  the  same  meaning  of  law,  then  of  duty  and  virtue, 
 that  is,  of  law  performed.  Lastly,  it  has  been  used  in 
 the  sense  of  the  nature  or  essence  of  a  thing,  as  we 
 might  say  the  law  or  character  of  a  thing,  the  elbos. 
 When  Manu  (II.  12)  in  his  Law-book  explains  dharma, 
 he  represents  it  as  consisting  of  the  Veda  (revelation), 
 of  Smriti  (tradition),  of  Sada&ara  (the  behaviour  of 
 good  people),  and  of  what  is  dear  to  oneself,  that  is, 
 what  meets  with  the  approval  of  our  own  con- 
 science. 
 
 It  was  with  the  Buddhists  that  dharma  became 
 more  exclusively  the  name  of  the  doctrines  taught 
 by  Buddha,  which  contained  all  that  was  supposed 
 necessary  for  salvation.  The  three  great  treasures  of 
 the  Buddhists  are  Buddha,  the  Church  (saiigha),  and 
 the  Law  (dharma) ;  and  when  a  man  embraced 
 Buddhism,  he  recited  the  formula,  'I  take  refuge 
 with  Buddha,  with  the  Church,  and  with  the  Law,  as 
 preached  by  Buddha.' 
 
 But  through  all  these  phases  dharma  always 
 retains  something  of  its  etymological  meanings.  It  is 
 what  holds  us  in  the  right  path,  and  keeps  us  from 
 what  is  wrong.  It  is  the  law  that  comes  to  us  from 
 without,  not  the  law  or  the  will,  or  whatever  else  we 
 may  call  it,  that  comes  from  within. 
 
 1  Rv.  V.  15,  2. 
 
96  LECTURE    IT. 
 
 Veda. 
 
 A  Brahman,  when  speaking  of  his  own  religion, 
 might  use  the  word  Veda.  Veda  means  originally 
 knowledge,  but  it  has  been  restricted  so  as  to  signify 
 exclusively  what  a  Brahman  considers  as  sacred  and 
 revealed  knowledge.  Instead  of  Veda  we  find  in 
 Sanskrit  another  curious  word  for  revelation,  namely, 
 #ruti,  which  means  hearing,  from  sru,  to  hear,  the 
 Greek  k\v(*>.  It  is  most  carefully  denned  by  Hindu 
 theologians,  so  as  to  exclude  all  secular  knowledge, 
 and  so  as  to  comprehend  such  knowledge  only  as  is 
 received  by  direct  inspiration  from  a  divine  source. 
 Even  the  Laws  of  Manu,  though  invested  with  a 
 sacred  character,  are  not  iSfruti,  but  only  Smriti, 
 which  means  remembering  or  tradition,  not  revelation  ; 
 so  that  whenever  there  should  be  a  conflict  between 
 Smriti  and  £ruti,  Snmti  is  at  once  overruled  by 
 &ruti.  All  these  expressions,  however,  refer  clearly 
 to  objective  religion  only,  to  a  body  of  doctrines 
 placed  before  us  for  acceptance  or  rejection.  They  do 
 not  render  what  we  mean  by  subjective  or  inward 
 religion,  an  idea  that  seemed  quite  strange,  and  proved 
 therefore  untranslatable,  to  my  Hindu  translators. 
 
 Bhakti. 
 
 There  is,  however,  in  later  Sanskrit  one  expression 
 which  comes  very  near  to  what  we  mean  by  subjective 
 religion,  namely  bhakti,  devotion  and  faith. 
 
 The  verb  bhat/,  bhagrati,  from  which  bhakti  is 
 derived,  means  first  of  all  to  divide,  to  distribute,  to 
 give.  We  read  in  the  Rig-veda  of  the  gods  distri- 
 buting gifts  to  men,  and  also  of  rich  people  giving 
 presents  to  their  friends  and  followers.     The   same 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  97 
 
 verb,  however,  particularly  if  used  in  the  Atmanepada 
 or  the  middle,  takes  also  the  meaning  of  giving  some- 
 thing to  oneself,  that  is,  choosing  it  for  oneself, 
 holding  it,  loving  it.  From  meaning  to  choose,  to 
 love,  hh&g  took  the  more  special  meaning  of  loving, 
 venerating,  and  worshipping  a  deity.  Bhakta,  the 
 participle,  thus  came  to  mean  a  devoted  worshipper, 
 and  bhakti  faith,  devotion,  and  love. 
 
 Bhakti,  in  the  sense  of  loving  devotion  directed 
 towards  a  certain  deity,  does  not  occur  in  the  Vedic 
 literature,  except  in  some  of  the  Upanishads.  It 
 gains  more  and  more  ground,  however,  in  the  Bhaga- 
 vadgita,  where  it  means  the  loving  worship  paid  to 
 Krishna,,  and  it  then  comes  so  near  to  the  Christian 
 conception  of  faith  and  ]ove  that  several  Sanskrit 
 scholars  as  well  as  missionaries  have  expressed  their 
 conviction  that  the  idea  of  bhakti  must  have  been 
 borrowed  by  the  Brahmans  from  Christianity l.  It  is 
 strange  that  these  scholars  should  not  see  that  what 
 is  natural  in  one  country  is  natural  in  another  also. 
 If  fear,  reverence,  and  worship  of  the  Supreme  God 
 could  become  devotion  and  love  with  Semitic  people, 
 why  not  in  India  also  ?  Besides,  we  can  see  in  India 
 the  same  development  of  thought  as  in  Palestine. 
 No  doubt  the  gods  are  feared  and  reverenced  in  India, 
 but  they  are  also  addressed  as  friends,  and  sentiments 
 such  as  '  thou  art  like  a  father  to  a  son,'  are  by  no 
 means  unfrequent  in  the  earliest  portions  of  the  Rig- 
 vecla.  We  read  in  the  very  first  hymn  of  the  Rig- 
 veda, '  Be  easy  of  access  to  us,  as  a  father  to  his  son.' 
 In  the  Upanishads,  when  the  different  gods  of  the 
 
 See    Die    Bhagavctdgttd,    iibersetzt    und    erliiutert    von    Dr.    F. 
 
98  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 Veda  have  been  superseded  by  the  Supreme  Lord,  the 
 f.svara,  the  feelings  of  love  and  devotion  are  trans- 
 ferred to  him.  And  at  a  still  later  time,  when  Krishna, 
 was  worshipped  as  the  manifestation  of  the  Supreme 
 Spirit,  we  see  in  the  Bhagavadgita  every  expression 
 that  human  love  is  capable  of,  lavished  on  him. 
 
 I  shall  read  you  first  an  extract  from  the  #veta- 
 svatara  Upanishad  l : 
 
 '1.  Some  wise  men,  being  deluded,  speak  of 
 Nature,  and  others  of  Time  (as  the  cause  of  every- 
 thing) ;  but  it  is  the  greatness  of  God  by  which  this 
 Brahma- wheel  (the  world)  is  made  to  turn. 
 
 7.  Let  us  know  that  highest  great  Lord  of  lords, 
 the  highest  deity  of  deities,  the  master  of  masters, 
 the  highest  above,  as  God,  the  Lord  of  the  world,  the 
 adorable. 
 
 10.  That  only  God  who  spontaneously  covered 
 himself,  like  a  spider,  with  threads  drawn  from  nature 
 (pradhana,  the  chief  cause),  may  he  grant  us  entrance 
 into  Brahman. 
 
 11.  He  is  the  one  God,  hidden  in  all  things,  per- 
 vading all,— the  Self  within  all  beings,  watching  over 
 all  works,  dwelling  in  all  beings,  the  witness,  the 
 perceiver,  the  only  one,  free  from  all  qualities. 
 
 12.  He  is  the  one  ruler  of  many  who  are  above 
 their  acts2;  he  who  makes  the  one  seed  manifold. 
 The  wise  who  perceive  him  within  their  self,  to 
 them  belongs  eternal  happiness,  not  to  others. 
 
 20.  When  man  shall  roll  up  the  sky  like  a  hide, 
 then  only  will  there  be  an  end  of  misery,  unless 
 that  God  has  first  been  known. 
 
 1  UpanishadSj  translated  by  M.  M.,  in  Sacred  Book*  of  (he  East,  xv.  260. 
 
 2  Nishkriva,  without  acts,  i.  e.  not  really  active,  but  passive  ; 
 merely  looking  on  while  the  organs  perform  their  acts. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF  DEFINITIONS.  99 
 
 23.  If  these  truths  have  been  told  to  a  high- 
 minded  man,  who  feels  the  highest  devotion  (bhakti) 
 for  God  \  and  as  for  God  so  for  his  Guru,  then  they 
 will  shine  forth,  then  they  will  shine  forth  indeed.' 
 
 Here  then  we  have  in  the  Upanishads  the  idea  of 
 bhakti  or  devotion  clearly  pronounced,  and  as  no 
 one  has  as  yet  ventured  to  put  the  date  of  the 
 #vetasvatara 2  Upanishad  later  than  the  beginning  of 
 our  era,  it  is  clearly  impossible  to  admit  here  the 
 idea  of  early  Christian  influences. 
 
 The  date  of  the  Bhagavadgita,  in  which  KWstma  L« 
 represented  as  the  Supreme  Spirit,  and  loving  devo- 
 tion for  him  is  demanded  as  the  only  means  of  salva- 
 tion, is  more  doubtful 3.  Still,  even  if,  chronologically, 
 Christian  influences  were  possible  at  the  time  when 
 that  poem  was  finished,  there  is  no  necessity  for  ad- 
 mitting them.  I  do  not  wonder  at  readers,  unaccus- 
 tomed to  Oriental  literature,  being  startled  when  they 
 read  in  the  Bhagavadgita  IX.  29  :  '  They  who  worship 
 me  (bha^anti)  with  devotion  or  love  (bhaktya),  they 
 are  in  me  and  I  in  them  (mayi  te,  teshu  Mpy 
 aham)  V 
 
 But  such  coincidences  between  the  thoughts  of 
 the  New  Testament  and  the  thoughts  of  Eastern 
 sages,  will  meet  us  again  and  again,  because  human 
 
 1  Saudilya  (Sutra  18)  explains  deva  as  a  god,  not  as  fsvara,  the 
 Lord. 
 
 2  Professor  Weber  in  one  of  his  earliest  treatises  (Indische  Studies, 
 i.  421  seq.)  has  indeed  discovered  in  the  name  Svetasvatara,  i.e. 
 white  mule,  something  that  may  remind  us  of  a  Syro-Christiaii 
 Mission,  but  I  doubt  whether  he  would  still  like  to  be  held  respon- 
 sible for  such  an  opinion.  With  the  same  right  Krishna  might 
 remind  us  of  an  Ethiopian  missionary. 
 
 3  See  the  Bhagavadgita,  translated  by  K.  T.  Telang,  Sacred  Books 
 of  the  East,  viii.  34,  1882. 
 
 4  St.  John  vi.  57 ;  xvii.  23. 
 
 H  1 
 
100  LECTURE   IV. 
 
 nature  is  after  all  the  same  in  all  countries  and  at  all 
 times. 
 
 A  whole  system  of  religious  philosophy  has  been 
 built  up  in  later  times,  founded  on  the  principle  of 
 bhakti  or  love,  namely  the  Sutras  of  >S'a?ic?ilya  \  who 
 in  his  second  Sutra  explains  bhakti  as  affection 
 fixed  on  God. 
 
 And  at  the  present  moment  no  system  is  more 
 popular  in  Bengal  than  that  of  ifaitanya.  ifaitanya 
 was  born  in  1486,  and  he  did  much  to  popularize 
 and  humanize  the  old  Brahmanic  doctrines  2.  With 
 him  bhakti  or  love  became  the  foundation  of  every- 
 thing, and  different  steps  are  laid  down  through 
 which  a  worshipper  may  reach  the  highest  perfection. 
 The  exoteric  steps  consist  in  discipline,  (1)  social 
 discipline  (svadharma&arar^a) ;  (2)  discipline  of  the 
 intellect  and  a  surrender  of  all  to  Krishna,  (Kn'sh?ia- 
 karmarpa?ia) ;  (3)  mendicity  (svadharmatyaga) ;  (4) 
 philosophic  culture  (#;7anamkra  bhakti) ;  (5)  simplicity 
 of  the  heart  (gwanasunyabhakti)  ;  and  (6)  dispassion 
 (santabhava). 
 
 Then  follow  the  higher  or  esoteric  steps,  viz.  loving 
 devotion  (preinabhakti),  consisting  in  humility  (dasya), 
 friendship  (sakhya),  and  tenderness  (vatsalya) ;  and, 
 as  the  crowning  step,  sweetness  and  love  (madhu- 
 rabhava,  kantabhava),  represented  by  the  highest  and 
 purest  love  between  husband  and  wife. 
 
 Bhakti,  therefore,  may  be  used  as  an  equivalent  of 
 religion  in  the  sense  of  devotion  and  love,  but  it  is, 
 comparatively  speaking,  a  modern  word  in  Sanskrit. 
 
 1  Edited  by  Ballantyne  in  the  Bibliotheca  Indica,  1861,  and  trans- 
 lated by  Prof.  Cowell  in  the  same  collection,  No.  409. 
 
 2  See  Yogendra  Chandra  Ghosh,  Chaitanyas  Ethics,  Calcutta,  18b4  ; 
 A.  de  Grubernatis,  Giornale  della  Societa  Asiat.  Italiana,  18S8.  p.  116  ; 
 and  A'aitanya-A-androdaya,  ed.  Rajendralal  Mitra,  Bibl  Indica. 
 
EXAMINATION   OF   DEFINITIONS.  101 
 
 Sraddha.  faith. 
 
 There  is,  however,  a  very  ancient  word  for  faith. 
 It  is  a  very  important  word,  for  while  bhakti  is  a 
 purely  Indian  concept,  and  even  in  India  of  later 
 growth,  sraddha,  faith,  is  a  very  old  word,  and  must 
 have  existed  before  the  Aryan  nations  separated  *. 
 Think  what  that  implies.  We  read  in  the  Rig-veda 
 I.  55,  5 :  c  When  the  fiery  Indra  hurls  down  the 
 thunderbolt,  then  people  believe  in  him.' 
 
 Adha  Arana  srat  dadhati  tvishimate 
 Indraya  va^ram  nighanighnate  vadham. 
 
 Here  you  have  in  one  line  the  whole  secret  of 
 natural  religion.  When  people  see  the  manifestation 
 of  power  in  the  storm  and  lightning,  then  they  believe 
 in  Indra.  It  is  not  said  that  they  perceive  Indra,  or 
 that  they  find  out  by  reasoning  that  there  must  be  a 
 god,  called  Indra  :  no,  they  believe  in  him,  they  accept 
 him,  they  do  not  doubt  his  existence.  Or  again,  Rv. 
 I.  102,  2  :  '  Sun  and  moon  move  in  regular  succession, 
 that  we  may  have  faith,  0  Indra.' 
 
 Asme  surya/randramase  abhiAakshe 
 Sraddhe  kam  indra  ka.rsda.fi  vitarturam. 
 
 Here  we  have  no  longer  faith  in  Indra  or  any  par- 
 ticular deity,  but  faith  in  general,  and  that  faith  is 
 taken  as  the  result  of  our  seeing  the  regular  rising 
 and  setting  of  sun  and  moon. 
 
 Faith,  therefore,  is  represented  as  reposing  on 
 terror  produced  by  the  overpowering  convulsions  of 
 nature,  and  on  trust,  called  forth  by  the  discovery  of 
 law  and  order  in  nature.     Few  of  the    best   living 
 
 1  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  300.  According  to  Sandilya  (Sutra  24),  bhakti 
 is  not  identical  with  sraddha,  because  sraddha,  belief,  is  merely 
 subsidiary  to  ceremonial  works  ;  but  not  so  is  faith  in  tsvara. 
 
102  LECTURE    IV. 
 
 philosophers  have  anything  better  to  say  on  the  origin 
 of  faith. 
 
 And  now  let  us  consider  this  word  sraddha  a  little 
 more  closely.  It  is  letter  by  letter  the  same  as  the 
 Latin  credo,  and  our  creed.  When  the  Brahmans  said 
 srad-dadhe,  the  Romans  said  credidi;  when  the 
 Brahmans  said  sr  add  hit  am,  the  Romans  said  ere- 
 ditum. 
 
 The  two  words  are  therefore  clearly  the  same  ;  but 
 if  you  ask  me  what  sraddha  meant  etymologically, 
 I  can  only  say,  We  do  not  know.  Professor  Darmesteter 
 derives  it  from  srad,  in  the  sense  of  heart,  and  dha, 
 to  place.  Phonetically  this  etymology  might  be 
 defended,  though  srad,  by  the  side  of  hrid,  the 
 regular  word  for  heart  in  Sanskrit,  would  be  without 
 analogy.  But  Professor  Darmesteter  has  not  con- 
 sidered that  srad  occurs  elsewhere  by  itself,  and  that 
 there  it  cannot  possibly  mean  heart.  For  instance, 
 Rv.  VIII.  75,  2,  srat  visva  varya  kWdhi, '  Make  all  our 
 wishes  true  ! '  Here  srad  cannot  possibly  be  taken  as 
 a  dialectic  form  of  hrid. 
 
 How  srat  should  come  to  mean  true,  and  sraddha, 
 to  make  true,  to  accept  as  true,  we  do  not  know.  But 
 this  only  shows  how  old  a  word  sraddha  really  is, 
 and  how  early  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind  the 
 idea  must  have  sprung  up  that  we  may  accept  as  true 
 what  can  neither  be  confirmed  by  our  senses  nor  proved 
 by  our  reasoning,  but  what  is  nevertheless  irresistible. 
 Here  you  see  how  we  may  discover  embedded  in  the 
 very  deepest  strata  of  language  the  germs  of  religion 
 —for  there  can  be  no  name  for  believing  before  the 
 first  rays  of  faith  have  dawned  in  the  human  heart. 
 
LECTURE  V. 
 
 MY    OWN   DEFINITION   OF    RELIGION. 
 Former  Definitions. 
 
 TT7E  have  now  examined  the  most  important  and 
 T  »  most  characteristic  definitions  of  religion.  We 
 have  seen  how  some  of  them  looked  chiefly  to  the 
 practical  character,  others  to  the  theoretic  character 
 of  religion,  while  some  philosophers,  such  as  Schleier- 
 macher,  would  recognise  the  true  essence  of  religion 
 neither  in  its  practical  nor  in  its  theoretic  manifesta- 
 tions, but  only  in  a  complete  change  of  our  nature, 
 in  a  loving  devotion  to  and  almost  union  with  the 
 Supreme  Being. 
 
 Do  not  suppose  that  I  look  upon  all  these  defini- 
 tions as  wrong,  or  that  I  intend  to  criticise  them  one  by 
 one.  On  the  contrary,  I  believe  that  most  of  them  con- 
 tain some  truth,  some  very  important  truth,  but  they 
 all  seem  to  me  to  be  vulnerable  in  one  and  the  same 
 point,  namely  in  taking  the  object  of  religious  thought 
 for  granted  and  therefore  leaving  it  undefined.  This 
 may  be  defensible,  if  in  defining  religion  we  only 
 think  of  our  own,  or  of  the  religion  of  the  present 
 age.  But  if  the  historical  school  has  proved  anything, 
 it  has  established  the  fact,  to  which  I  alluded  at  the 
 end  of  my  last  lecture,  that  in  religion  as  in  language 
 there  is  continuity,  there  is  an  unbroken  chain  which 
 
104  LECTURE    V. 
 
 connects  our  thoughts  and  our  words  with  the  first 
 thoughts  conceived  and  with  the  first  words  uttered 
 by  the  earliest  ancestors  of  our  race.  A  definition  of 
 religion  ought  therefore  to  be  applicable,  not  only  to 
 what  religion  is  now,  but  to  what  religion  was  in  its 
 origin,  and  in  its  earliest  developments.  Keligion  may 
 change,  and  it  has  changed,  as  we  know ;  but  however 
 much  it  may  change,  it  can  never  break  entirely  with 
 its  past,  it  can  never  be  severed  from  its  deepest  roots, 
 and  it  is  in  these  deepest  roots  that  we  ought  to  seek, 
 as  it  seems  to  me,  the  true  essence  of  religion. 
 
 But  it  is  not  only  religion  in  its  origin  which  the 
 ordinary  definitions  would  fail  to  comprehend.  There 
 are  several  of  the  historical  developments  of  religion 
 also  which  could  hardly  be  brought  within  their  gage. 
 
 Is  Buddhism  a  religion? 
 
 If  you  tried,  for  instance,  to  bring  Buddhism  within 
 the  compass  of  any  of  the  definitions  hitherto  exam- 
 ined, you  would  find  it  impossible  to  do  so,  and  yet, 
 as  you  know,  the  largest  number  of  human  beings 
 have  trusted  to  Buddha's  teaching  as  their  only 
 means  of  salvation.  Those  who  define  religion  as  a 
 theory,  as  a  mode  of  knowledge,  must  necessarily,  as 
 I  pointed  out  before,  supply  an  object  that  is  to  be 
 known,  whether  they  call  it  gods  or  god,  the  father, 
 the  creator,  the  Supreme  Being,  or  the  Supreme  Will. 
 
 Buddhism,  as  theoretical,  not  incliided  under  any  definition. 
 
 But  in  Buddhism — I  mean  in  Southern  Buddhism, 
 which  ought  to  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
 Northern  Buddhism  or  Bodhism — there  is  no  mention 
 of  God  as  a  creator  or  ruler  of  the  world1;  on  the 
 
 1  See  the  account  of  Brahman  as  a  Creator  in  Selected  Essays,  ii.  297. 
 
MY    OWN    DEFINITION.  105 
 
 contrary,  a  belief  in  creation  is  condemned,  if  not  as 
 heresy,  at  all  events  as  a  conceit  highly  reprimanded 
 by  Buddha  himself.  Gods  or  Devas  are  mentioned 
 indeed,  but  only  as  subordinate,  legendary  beings, 
 accepted  as  part  of  the  traditional  phraseology  of  the 
 times.  From  a  kind  of  compassion  they  seem  to  have 
 been  accommodated  with  a  new  position  as  servants 
 and  worshippers  of  the  Buddha.  Several  of  the  great 
 questions  of  religion,  besides  that  of  the  existence  of 
 a  Deity  or  Creator,  are  banished  once  for  all  from  the 
 discussions,  nay  from  the  thoughts  of  orthodox  Bud- 
 dhists. Some  of  Buddha's  own  disciples  are  introduced 
 as  blaming  the  master  for  not  enlightening  them  on 
 such  questions  as  whether  the  world  is  eternal  or  had 
 a  beginning,  whether  Buddha  and  those  who,  like 
 him,  have  arrived  at  perfect  knowledge,  will  live  after 
 death  or  not?  Whether  the  living  soul  is  identical 
 with  the  body  or  not  ? 
 
 Malunkya-putta  and  Buddha. 
 
 After  Malunkya-putta  had  expostulated  with  Buddha 
 for  leaving  his  disciples  in  uncertainty  on  such  im- 
 portant points,  Buddha  answers1 : 
 
 How  did  I  speak  to  thee  formerly,  Malunkya- 
 putta  ?  Did  I  say :  Come,  and  be  my  disciple,  and  I 
 will  teach  thee  whether  the  world  is  eternal  or  not, 
 whether  the  world  is  finite  or  infinite,  whether  the 
 living  principle  is  identical  with  the  body  or  different 
 from  it,  whether  the  perfect  man  lives  after  death  or 
 does  not,  whether  he  lives  and  does  not  live  at  the 
 
 1  Mr.  Rhys  Davids,  in  his  translation  of  the  Milinda-pariha  (i.  199), 
 calls  him  the  son  of  the  Malunkya  woman  (Malunkyfi-putta).  but  he 
 mentions  Malunka  as  a  various  reading.  Professor  Oldenberg  (Buddha. 
 p.  231")  gives  the  name  as  Malukya-putta,  or  simply  Malukya. 
 
106  LECTURE    V. 
 
 same  time,  or  whether  he  neither  lives  nor  does  not 
 live. 
 
 Malunkya-putta  replied:  Master,  you  did  not 
 say  so. 
 
 Then  Buddha  continued :  Then,  did  you  say  to 
 me,  I  will  become  thy  disciple,  but  answer  me  all 
 these  questions  ? 
 
 Malunkya-putta  confesses  that  he  did  not. 
 
 After  that  Buddha  proceeds :  A  man  was  once 
 wounded  by  a  poisoned  arrow.  His  friends  and  rela- 
 tions called  in  an  experienced  physician.  What,  if 
 the  wounded  person  had  said,  I  shall  not  allow  my 
 wound  to  be  treated  till  I  know  who  the  man  is  by 
 whom  I  was  wounded,  whether  he  is  a  nobleman,  or 
 a  Brahmawa,  or  a  Vaisya,  or  a  #udra.  Or  what,  if  he 
 said,  I  shall  not  allow  my  wound  to  be  treated  till  I 
 know  how  the  man  is  called  by  whom  I  was  wounded, 
 to  what  family  he  belongs,  whether  he  is  tall  or  short 
 or  of  middle  stature,  and  what  the  weapon  was  like 
 by  which  I  was  wounded.  What  would  be  the  end 
 of  it  ?     The  man  surely  would  die  of  his  wound. 
 
 Buddha  then  lets  Malunkya-putta  see  that  when  he 
 came  to  him  he  was  like  the  wounded  man  who 
 wished  to  be  healed,  and  he  finishes  his  lesson  by 
 saying :  Let  what  has  not  been  revealed  by  me  re- 
 main unrevealed,  and  let  what  has  been  revealed  by 
 me  remain  revealed. 
 
 It  was  natural  that  the  opponents  of  the  Buddhists 
 should  make  this  reticence  of  Buddha  on  points  of 
 the  highest  importance  a  ground  of  attack.  We  find 
 the  question  fully  discussed,  for  instance,  in  the  Mi- 
 linda-panha1,  a  theological  and  philosophical  dialogue 
 
 1  Translated  by  Mr.  Rhys  Davids  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East. 
 
MY   OWN    DEFINITION.  107 
 
 in  which  the  Yavana  King,  Milinda  (Menandros, 
 about  100  B.  a),  exchanges  his  views  on  Buddhism  with 
 Nagasena.     Here  the  King  says  : 
 
 'Venerable  Nagasena,  it  was  said  by  the  Blessed 
 One :  "  In  respect  of  the  truths,  Ananda,  the  Tatha- 
 gata  has  no  such  thing  as  the  closed  fist  of  a  teacher 
 who  keeps  something  back."  But  on  the  other  hand, 
 he  made  no  reply  to  the  question  put  by  the  son  of 
 the  Malunkya  woman.  This  problem,  Nagasena,  will 
 be  one  of  two  ends,  on  one  of  which  it  must  rest,  for 
 he  must  have  refrained  from  answering  either  out  of 
 ignorance,  or  out  of  wish  to  conceal  something.  If 
 the  first  statement  be  true,  it  must  have  been  out  of 
 ignorance.  Bat  if  he  knew,  and  still  did  not  reply, 
 then  the  first  statement  must  be  false.  This  too  is  a 
 doubled-pointed  dilemma.  It  is  now  put  to  you,  and 
 you  have  to  solve  it. 
 
 '  The  Blessed  One,  O  king,  made  that  first  statement 
 to  Ananda,  and  he  did  not  reply  to  Malunkya-putta's 
 question.  But  that  was  neither  out  of  ignorance,  nor 
 for  the  sake  of  concealing  anything.  There  are  four 
 kinds  of  ways  in  which  a  problem  may  be  explained. 
 And  which  are  the  four?  There  is  the  problem  to 
 which  an  explanation  can  be  given  that  shall  be 
 direct  and  final.  There  is  the  problem  which  can  be 
 answered  by  going  into  details.  There  is  the  problem 
 which  can  be  answered  by  asking  another.  And  there 
 is  the  problem  which  can  be  put  on  one  side. 
 
 '  And  which  is  the  problem  which  can  be  put  on 
 one  side  ?  It  is  such  as  this — "  Is  the  universe  ever- 
 lasting ? "  "  Is  it  not  everlasting  ? "  "  Has  it  an 
 end?"  "Has  it  no  end?"  "Is  it  both  endless  and 
 unending  ?  "     "  Is  it  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  ?  " 
 
108  LECTURE   V. 
 
 "Are  the  soul  and  the  body  the  same  thing?"  "Is 
 the  soul  distinct  from  the  body?"  "Does  a  Tatha- 
 gata  exist  after  death?"  "Does  he  not  exist  after 
 death?"  "  Does  he  both  exist  and  not  exist  after 
 death  ?  "  "  Does  he  neither  exist  nor  not  exist  after 
 death  ? " 
 
 ;  Now  it  was  on  such  a  question,  that  ought  to  be 
 put  on  one  side,  that  the  Blessed  One  gave  no  reply 
 to  Malunkya-putta.  And  why  ought  such  a  question 
 to  be  put  on  one  side  ?  Because  there  is  no  reason  or 
 object  for  answering  it.  That  is  why  it  should  be  put 
 aside.  For  the  Blessed  Buddhas  lift  not  up  their 
 voice  without  a  reason  and  without  an  object. 
 
 '  Very  good,  Nagasena.  Thus  is  it,  and  I  accept  it 
 as  you  say.' 
 
 Buddha  does  not  imply  that  he  could  not  have 
 answered  these  questions  or  revealed  these  mysteries, 
 if  he  had  chosen.  He  professes  the  same  philosophical 
 abstinence,  or  e^ox?/,  or  agnosticism,  as  it  is  now 
 called,  as  Socrates,  and  he  utters  the  strongest  con- 
 demnation of  those  of  his  disciples  who  ventured  to 
 give  either  a  positive  or  a  negative  answer. 
 
 Yamaka,  on   Life  after  Death. 
 
 Thus  one  of  them,  called  Yamaka,  taught  openly 
 that  a  monk,  if  free  from  sin,  would  cease  to  exist 
 after  death.  But  for  this  he  was  found  guilty  of 
 heresy,  and  had  to  be  converted  to  the  true  view, 
 namely  to  abstain  from  expressing  any  opinion  on  a 
 subject  which  is  beyond  our  knowledge  l. 
 
 Dialogue  between  the  King  of  Kosala  and  the  nun  Khema. 
 
 The   question   whether   the    Buddha    himself,    the 
 
 1  Oldenberg,  Buddha,  p.  237- 
 
MY   OWN    DEFINITION.  109 
 
 founder  of  what  we  call  Buddhism,  continued  to  exist 
 after  death  was  naturally  a  question  of  a  more  than 
 purely  speculative  interest.  It  touched  the  hearts  of 
 his  disciples,  and  there  must  have  been  the  strongest 
 inclination  on  their  part  to  answer  it  in  the  affirma- 
 tive. The  Northern  Buddhists  admit  the  existence  of 
 Buddha  and  of  all  Buddhas  after  the  end  of  their 
 earthly  career.  But  the  Southern  Buddhists  abstain. 
 Thus  in  a  dialogue  between  Pasenadi,  the  King  of 
 Kosala,  and  the  nun  Khema,  the  King  is  introduced 
 as  asking  the  question  again  and  again,  whether 
 Buddha  exists  after  death,  or,  as  we  should  say, 
 whether  the  founder  of  that  religion  enjoyed  eternal 
 life.  But  the  nun  is  immovable.  She  simply  repeats 
 the  old  answer  :  '  The  perfect  Buddha  has  not  revealed 
 it.'  And  when  questioned  further,  why  the  perfect 
 Buddha  should  have  left  so  momentous  a  question 
 unanswered,  she  says  ] : 
 
 0  great  King,  have  you  an  arithmetician  or  a  master 
 of  the  mint  or  an  accountant  who  could  count  the 
 grains  of  sand  of  the  Ganges,  and  could  say,  there  are 
 there  so  many  grains,  so  many  hundreds,  so  many 
 thousands,  or  so  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
 grains  ? 
 
 The  King  replied,  I  have  not,  0  reverend  lady. 
 
 Or  have  you,  O  great  King,  the  nun  continued,  an 
 arithmetician,  a  master  of  the  mint,  or  an  accountant 
 who  could  measure  the  water  in  the  great  ocean,  and 
 could  say,  there  are  there  so  many  pints  of  water,  so 
 many  hundreds,  so  many  thousands,  or  so  many 
 hundreds  of  thousands  of  pints  1 
 
 The  King  replied,  I  have  not,  O  reverend  lady. 
 
 1  Oldenberg,  Buddha,  p.  284. 
 
HO  LECTURE   V. 
 
 And  why  not  1  she  said.  The  great  ocean  is  deep, 
 immeasurable,  unfathomable.  And  in  the  same  man- 
 ner, O  King,  if  one  tried  to  conceive  the  nature  of  the 
 perfect  Buddha  by  the  predicates  of  corporeity,  these 
 predicates  would  be  impossible  in  the  perfect  Buddha, 
 their  very  root  would  be  annihilated,  they  would  be 
 cut  down,  like  a  palm-tree,  and  removed,  so  that  they 
 could  never  rise  again.  The  perfect  Buddha,  O  King, 
 is  released  from  having  his  nature  to  be  counted  by 
 the  numbers  of  the  corporeal  world ;  he  is  deep,  im- 
 measurable, unfathomable,  like  the  great  ocean.  To 
 say  that  the  perfect  Buddha  is  beyond  death,  is  wrong  ; 
 to  say  that  he  is  not  beyond  death  is  wrong  likewise  ; 
 to  say  that  he  is  at  the  same  time  beyond  and  not  be- 
 yond, is  wrong  ;  and  to  say  that  he  is  neither  beyond 
 nor  not  beyond  1  is  wrong  again. 
 
 With  this  answer  the  King  must  be  satisfied,  and 
 millions  of  human  beings  who  call  themselves  Bud- 
 dhists have  had  to  be  satisfied.  They  have  no  God,  no 
 creator  or  ruler  whom  they  could  know,  there  is  no 
 modus  cognoscendi  et  colendi  Deum  for  them  ;  and  yet 
 who  would  say  that  they  have  no  religion  1 
 
 Buddhism,  as  practical,  not  included  under  any  definition. 
 
 And  so  again,  if  we  tried  to  apply  to  Buddhism 
 those  definitions  which  see  in  religion  not  so  much  a 
 theory  as  a  practice,  which,  for  instance,  as  Kant's 
 definition,  explain  it  as  a  recognition  of  all  our  duties 
 as  divine  commands,  how  would  Buddhism  then  be 
 brought  in  ? 
 
 The  Doctrine  of  Karma. 
 
 The  essence  of  Buddhist  morality  is  a   belief  in 
 
 1  W  eva  hoti  na  na  hoti  tathagato  param  maia/ia  'ti  pi  na  upeti. 
 
MY    OWN    DEFINITION.  HI 
 
 Karma,  that  is,  of  work  done  in  this  or  in  a  former 
 life,  which  must  go  on  producing  effects  till  the  last 
 penny  is  paid.  The  same  thought  pervades  much  of 
 the  Brahmanic  literature,  and  it  is  still  one  of  the 
 most  familiar  ideas  among  the  Hindus  of  the  present 
 day. 
 
 We  find  the  first  traces  of  this  belief  in  Karma  in 
 the  Upanishads.  Thus  we  read  in  the  Brihadarau- 
 yaka 1  III.  2,  1 : 
 
 '  Y%»avalkya,'  said  Garatkarava  Artabhaga, '  when 
 the  speech  of  a  dead  person  enters  into  the  fire,  breath 
 into  the  air,  the  eye  into  the  sun,  the  mind  into  the 
 moon,  the  hearing  into  space,  into  the  earth  the  body, 
 into  the  ether  the  self,  into  the  shrubs  the  hairs  of  the 
 body,  into  the  trees  the  hairs  of  the  head,  when  the 
 blood  and  the  seed  are  deposited  in  the  water,  where 
 is  then  that  person  V 
 
 Y%>7avalkya  said  :  'Take  my  hand,  my  friend.  We 
 two  alone  shall  know  of  this  ;  let  this  question  of  ours 
 not  be  (discussed)  in  public.' 
 
 Then  the  two  went  out  and  argued,  and  what  they 
 said  was  Karma,  work,  and  what  they  praised  was 
 Karma,  work,  namely  that  a  man  becomes  good  by 
 good  work,  and  bad  by  bad  work.  And  after  that 
 (raratkarava  Artabhaga  held  his  peace. 
 
 Among  the  Buddhists,  however,  the  belief  in  Karma 
 took  a  most  prominent  place.  In  the  very  first  verse 
 of  the  Dhammapada  2,  we  read  : 
 
 'All  that  we  are  is  the  result  of  what  we  have 
 thought :  it  is  founded  on  our  thoughts,  it  is  made  up 
 of  our  thoughts.   If  a  man  speaks  or  acts  with  an  evil 
 
 1  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  xv.  126. 
 3  Sacred  Books  of  th<  East,  x.  3. 
 
112  LECTURE   V. 
 
 thought,  pain  follows  him,  as  the  wheel  follows  the 
 foot  of  the  ox  that  draws  the  carriage.' 
 
 And  again,  verse  127: 
 
 '  Not  in  the  sky,  not  in  the  midst  of  the  sea,  nor  if 
 we  enter  into  the  clefts  of  the  mountains,  is  there 
 known  a  spot  in  the  whole  world  where  a  man  might 
 be  freed  from  an  evil  deed.' 
 
 There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  faith  has  produced 
 very  beneficial  results,  and  that  it  would  explain 
 many  things  which  to  us  remain  the  riddles  of  life — 
 but  is  it  religion  1 
 
 While  to  us  the  inequalities  with  which  men  are 
 born  into  the  world  seem  often  unjust,  they  can  be 
 justified  at  once  by  adopting  the  doctrine  of  Karma. 
 We  are  born  as  what  we  deserved  to  be  born 2,  we  are 
 paying  our  penalty  or  are  receiving  our  reward  in  this 
 life  for  former  acts.  This  makes  the  sufferer  more 
 patient,  for  he  feels  that  he  is  wiping  out  an  old  debt, 
 while  the  happy  man  knows  that  he  is  living  on  the 
 interest  of  his  capital  of  good  works,  and  that  he  must 
 try  to  lay  by  more  capital  for  a  future  life.  It  may 
 be  said  that  in  the  absence  of  all  proof  of  such  a 
 theory,  and  with  the  total  extinction  of  any  recollection 
 of  our  former  good  or  evil  deeds,  very  little  practical 
 effect  could  be  expected  from  this  assumption.  But 
 this  is  not  the  case,  for  the  assumption  has  become  a 
 belief,  as  strong  as  any  belief  in  a  religious  dogma. 
 Besides,  though  it  cannot  be  proved,  it  helps  to  explain 
 many  difficulties,  and  this  gives  it  a  strong  hold  on 
 man's  convictions.     The  Buddhist  trusting  in  Karma 
 
 1  '  My  possessions  are  my  Karma,  my  inheritance  is  my  Karma, 
 my  mother's  womb  is  my  Karma,'  etc.  ;  see  Oldenberg,  Buddha, 
 p.  248,  quotation  from  the  Anguttara  Nikaya,  Pa?7Aaka  Nipata. 
 
MY    OWN    DEFINITION.  113 
 
 can  honestly  say,  Whatever  is,  is  right,  and  the  same 
 belief  which  makes  him  see  in  what  he  now  suffers 
 and  enjoys  the  natural  outcome  of  his  former  works, 
 will  support  him  in  trying  to  avoid  evil  and  to  do 
 good  for  its  own  sake,  knowing  that  whatever  may 
 befall  in  this  life,  no  good  and  no  evil  word,  thought, 
 or  deed,  can  ever  be  lost  in  the  life  of  the  uni- 
 verse. 
 
 Of  course,  like  every  honest  belief,  this  belief  in 
 Karma  too  may  degenerate  into  superstition.  I  read 
 not  long  ago  in  a  Ceylon  paper,  that  when  an  Eng- 
 lish judge  condemned  a  Buddhist  to  death,  the  cul- 
 prit said  quietly :  '  Thank  you,  my  lord,  you  also  will 
 die.'  He  then  went  on  to  threaten  the  judge.  '  You 
 will  become  a  bullock  in  your  next  life,'  he  said,  '  and 
 I  shall  then  be  a  driver,  and  I'll  drive  you  up  the 
 Kadujanava  Pass,'— one  of  the  steepest  of  the  steep 
 paths  of  Ceylon. 
 
 While  Christian  teachers  comfort  the  afflicted  by 
 telling  them  that  all  injustice  in  this  life  will  be 
 remedied  in  the  next,  that  Lazarus  will  be  in 
 Abraham's  bosom  and  the  rich  man  in  torments, 
 Buddha  teaches  those  who  seem  to  suffer  unjustly  in 
 this  life  that  they  have  deserved  their  punishment  by 
 their  former  deeds,  that  they  must  be  grateful  to  pay 
 off  their  old  debts,  and  that  they  should  try  to  lay  in 
 a  store  of  good  works  for  the  time  to  come. 
 
 While  ordinary  mortals  must  be  satisfied  with  this 
 general  belief,  Buddha  himself  and  those  who  have 
 reached  a  high  stage  of  enlightenment,  are  supposed  to 
 possess  the  power  of  remembering  their  former  states 
 of  existence ;  and  many  of  the  most  touching  legends 
 in  the  Buddhist  canon  are  the  recollections  of  his 
 
114  LECTURE   V. 
 
 former  existences  by  Buddha  himself,  the  so-called 
 Gatakas. 
 
 All  this  is  most  excellent,  and,  I  believe,  has  proved 
 most  extensively  useful ;  but  when  we  are  asked 
 whether  it  could  be  accommodated  under  any  of  the 
 definitions  of  religion  which  we  have  passed  in  review, 
 we  have  to  answer  that  it  cannot. 
 
 Let  us  then  attempt  our  own  definition. 
 
 My  own  definition  of  Religion. 
 
 A  definition,  as  logicians  tell  us,  ought  to  begin 
 with  the  summum  genus,  to  which  what  we  have  to 
 define  belongs,  and  should  then  proceed  to  narrow  the 
 sphere  of  the  summum  genus  by  those  differences 
 which  distinguish  our  object  from  all  other  objects 
 belonging  to  the  same  genus. 
 
 Religion  an  Experience. 
 
 I  well  remember  Professor  Weisse,  the  Hegelian 
 Professor  at  Leipzig,  beginning  his  lectures  on  the 
 Philosophy  of  Religion,  by  telling  us  that  religion 
 was,  first  of  all,  an  experience. 
 
 To  many  of  his  hearers  this  seemed  at  the  time  a 
 mere  truism,  but  one  comes  to  learn  that  some  truisms 
 are  not  only  true,  but  also  very  important. 
 
 Unless  religion  can  be  proved  to  be  an  experience, 
 in  the  ordinary  sense  of  that  word,  and  as  sharing  the 
 essential  qualities  of  all  other  experience,  it  will 
 always  lack  the  solid  foundation  on  which  all  our 
 knowledge  rests.  Religion,  if  it  is  to  hold  its  place 
 as  a  legitimate  element  of  our  consciousness,  must, 
 like  all  other  knowledge,  begin  with  sensuous  experi- 
 ence.    If  that   foundation  is  wanting,  there  can  be 
 
MY   OWN    DEFINITION.  115 
 
 neither  natural  nor  supernatural  religion,  for  the 
 supernatural  is  not  what  is  unnatural,  but  what  is 
 superimposed  on  the  natural.  In  that  sense  I  hold  as 
 strongly  as  ever,  and  in  spite  of  all  the  false  interpre- 
 tations that  have  been  put  on  it,  that  Nihil  est  in  fide 
 quod  non  ante  fuerit  in  sensu. 
 
 In  order  to  explain  my  meaning  more  clearly,  it  will 
 be  necessary  to  show  in  greater  detail,  of  what  all  our 
 experience,  all  our  states  of  consciousness,  all  our  Ego- 
 knowledge  really  consists,  and  how  even  our  highest 
 aspirations  have  their  roots  in  the  universal  soil  of 
 sensuous  experience. 
 
 Our  experience  consists  of  sensations,  percepts,  concepts, 
 and  names. 
 
 All  that  we  have  or  know  consists  of  sensations, 
 percepts,  concepts,  and  names.     But  though  these  four 
 phases  of  knowledge  may  be  distinguished,  they  can- 
 not be  separated  as  entirely  independent  functions  of 
 our  mind.     They  form  parts  of  one  whole,  members 
 of    one    living    organism.     In    the    actual   work    of 
 thought,  as  carried  on  by  educated  men,  we  deal  with 
 names  as  the  embodiments  of  concepts,  we  deal  with 
 concepts  as  the  result  of  percepts,  and  we  deal  with 
 percepts   as   the  residue  of  sensations.     The  process 
 which  changes  sensations  into  percepts,  and  percepts 
 into  concepts  and  names  belongs  to  the  very  earliest 
 age  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind.     In  learning 
 our  language  we  enter  at  once  on  an  inheritance  which 
 has  been  amassed  by  our  predecessors  during  thou- 
 sands   of    years,    and    to   which    we    ourselves    may 
 add  something,   but  very  little  in   comparison  with 
 what  we  receive  ready-made.     It  has   been   argued 
 thnt  even  with  us  sensations  may  exist  by  themselves, 
 
 I  2 
 
116  LECTURE   V. 
 
 as  when  we  feel  a  blow,  taste  what  is  bitter,  smell 
 what  is  nauseous,  see  what  is  dark,  hear  what  is  loud. 
 They  exist,  no  doubt ;  but  as  soon  as  we  become 
 conscious  of  them,  know  them,  think  them,  they  are 
 more  than  sensations ;  they  have  become  percepts, 
 concepts,  and  names.  From  the  very  expressions 
 which  we  use  for  these  sensations,  it  is  clear  that  as 
 soon  as  we  not  only  suffer  a  dumb  pain,  but  are 
 becoming  conscious  of  it,  we  have  raised  the  momen- 
 tary feeling  into  a  permanent  image,  into  something 
 that  causes  what  we  call  the  percept  of  a  blow, — of 
 something  that  bites,  and  is  therefore  called  bitter,  or 
 of  something  that  is  like  sea-sickness,  and  is  there- 
 fore called  nauseous,  or  of  something  like  the  night, 
 and  is  therefore  called  dark,  or  of  something  like  a 
 shout,  and  is  therefore  called  loud.  However,  let  it 
 be  granted  that,  like  dumb  animals,  we  may  stare  at 
 the  blue  sky  or  the  green  forest,  without  knowing 
 anything  about  blue  or  green  or  colour ;  even  then 
 that  state  of  receptive  passiveness  should  at  all  events 
 not  be  called  thought,  but  have  its  own  distinctive 
 name.  Real  thought  (anta/dvarana,  inward-doing) 
 begins  when  we  leave  that  merely  passive  stage  of 
 staring  or  dreaming,  when  we  do  what  no  one  can  do 
 for  us,  namely,  combine  the  percepts  of  sensations 
 into  concepts  by  discovering  something  they  share  in 
 common,  and  embody  that  common  property  in  a  sign 
 or  a  name. 
 
 Sensation  and  perception  inexplicable. 
 
 This  process  of  conceiving  and  naming,  or  naming 
 and  conceiving,  though  it  leads  on  to  the  most  mar- 
 vellous results,  is  in  itself  extremely  simple  and  per- 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  117 
 
 fectly  intelligible,  whereas  the  previous  process,  that 
 of  feeling  and  perceiving,  is  not  only  mysterious,  but 
 altogether  beyond  our  powers  of  comprehension. 
 Formerly  people  took  the  very  opposite  view.  It 
 was  supposed  that  sensation  and  perception  were  so 
 simple  and  natural  as  to  require  no  philosophical  ex- 
 planation at  all,  while  understanding  and  reason  and 
 all  the  rest  were  looked  upon  as  powers  so  mysterious 
 that,  like  language,  they  could  only  be  explained  as 
 divine  gifts. 
 
 All  this  is  changed  now.  All  that  is  done  by 
 ourselves,  call  it  conception  or  naming  or  adding 
 and  subtracting,  our  understanding,  our  reason,  our 
 language,  our  intellect,  all  this  we  can  account  for  ; 
 and  though  we  may  make  occasional  mistakes  in  un- 
 ravelling the  network  of  language  and  reason,  true 
 philosophy  does  not  and  need  not  despair  of  disen- 
 tangling in  the  end  the  threads  with  which  we  our- 
 selves or  our  forefathers  have  woven  the  woof  and 
 warp  of  our  thoughts.  But  the  problem  of  sensation 
 we  must  leave  to  be  dealt  with  by  other  hands. 
 We  accept  the  discoveries  of  physical  science.  We 
 believe  that  what  is  meant  by  seeing  is  really  an 
 ethereal  tremor  striking  the  retina  and  conveyed  by 
 the  optic  nerve  to  specialised  cells  of  cerebral  tissue. 
 But  how  that  tremor  becomes  a  sensation  of  light,  or 
 to  put  it  into  more  technical  language,  '  how  *  the 
 excitation  from  the  peripheral  end  of  the  afferent 
 nerve  reaches  its  termination  in  the  sensifacient  sen- 
 sorium,'  passes  all  understanding.  Touch,  odour, 
 taste,  colour,  and  sound  are  our  sensations.  We 
 know  them,  and  grow  more  perfect  in  our  knowledge 
 
 1  What   t\  Religion?  by  C.  N.3  p.  54 ;    quotation  from  Huxley's 
 
 Science  and  Culture. 
 
118  LECTURE    V. 
 
 of  them  from  the  first  years  of  our  childhood,  till  our 
 organs  of  sense  become  blunted  again  by  old  age, 
 fade  away  and  perish  by  death.  We  also  know  that 
 what  causes  these  sensations  are  vibrations  of  some 
 unknown  medium  which  in  the  case  of  light  has  been 
 called  ether.  But  what  relation  there  is  between  the 
 effect,  namely,  our  sensation  of  red,  and  the  cause, 
 namely,  the  500  millions  of  millions  of  vibrations  of 
 ether  in  one  second,  neither  philosophy  nor  physical 
 science  has  yet  been  able  to  explain.  We  can  only 
 accept  the  fact,  that  vibration  is  translated  into  sen- 
 sation, but  how  it  is  so  translated  will  probably 
 remain  a  mystery  for  ever. 
 
 How  strange,  therefore,  that  these  sensations,  which 
 are  the  most  wonderful  elements  of  our  mind,  should 
 have  been  looked  upon  as  common,  as  low  and 
 material,  compared  with  our  own  workmanship,  the 
 concepts  and  names,  through  which  we  handle  them. 
 If  anything  deserves  the  name  of  a  revelation,  it 
 is  our  sensations,  what  is,  as  even  Kant  says,  given 
 us ,  what  we  cannot  produce  ourselves,  but  must 
 accept  as  coming  from  a  power  other  than  ourselves. 
 If  we  ascribe  these  sensations  to  matter,  what  can 
 justify  us  in  looking  down  on  matter  as  something 
 inferior,  or,  as  some  philosophers  and  founders  of 
 religion  have  held,  as  something  vile,  nay,  as  the 
 very  work  of  the  devil  ?  What  should  we  be  with- 
 out what  we  call  the  material  or  objective  world, 
 which,  though  it  has  been  blasphemed  against  as  the 
 work  of  the  devil,  has  also  been  called  the  creation  of 
 God?  We  might  exist  without  it,  but  all  that  we 
 prize  most  highly,  our  knowledge,  our  science,  our 
 philosophy,  our  morality,  our  whole  intellectual  and 
 
MY    OWN   DEFINITION.  119 
 
 spiritual  life  would,  without  an  objective  material 
 world,  be  a  mere  blank.  What  does  even  Kant  say, 
 he  who  was  so  anxious  to  reestablish  the  claims  of 
 pure  reason  to  her  ancient  possessions  against  the 
 levelling  tendencies  of  Locke  and  Hume  :  '  Concepts 
 without  intuitions  are  empty,'  he  says ;  '  intuitions 
 without  concepts  are  blind  1,'  that  is  to  say,  Without 
 our  senses  our  mind  would  be  empty,  without  our 
 mind  our  senses  would  be  blind.'  To  compare  and 
 weigh  mind  against  sense,  to  call  the  one  sublime,  the 
 other  low,  would  be  absurd.  The  one  is  as  necessary 
 as  the  other;  only  while  what  the  senses  bring  to 
 us,  whether  you  call  it  divine  or  diabolic  or  neither, 
 is  certainly  beyond  all  human  comprehension,  what 
 the  mind  makes  of  it  is  perfectly  intelligible. 
 
 The  working  of  our  mind. 
 
 Let  us  look  into  the  workshop  of  what  we  call  our 
 mind.  What  is  brought  ml  Sensations,  or  some- 
 thing which  we  feel. 
 
 We  may  go  a  step  further,  and  ask  what  is  meant 
 by  sensation,  and  our  answer  would  be  that  feeling 
 in  the  highest  sense  is  resisting.  In  the  fight  of  all 
 against  all,  or,  as  others  call  it,  under  the  pressure  of 
 the  universe,  resistance  produces  what  may  be  called 
 vibration,  a  coming  and  going,  a  yielding  and  return- 
 ing, according  to  the  pressure  which  impinges  upon 
 us  and  is  repelled  by  us.  Our  very  existence  has 
 been  called  by  Schopenhauer  resistance  or  will. 
 There  are  different  kinds  of  pressure.  Some  may 
 pass  us  without  being  even  perceived,  others  may 
 crush  and  almost  annihilate  us.     Our  first  sensations 
 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  143. 
 
120  LECTURE   V. 
 
 may  be  simply  sensations  of  pain  or  pleasure,  accord- 
 ing as  we  have  to  resist  the  impacts  made  upon  us 
 with  violent  effort,  or  are  able  to  acquiesce  in  them 
 without  any  effort.  But  there  are  also  many  kinds 
 of  pressure  which  give  neither  pain  nor  pleasure,  but 
 which  produce  in  us  a  rhythmic  movement,  a  yielding 
 at  first  and  then  a  corresponding  recovery,  a  kind  of 
 swing-swang,  which  we  call  vibration,  and  which,  in 
 a  sensuous  and  self-conscious  being,  is  sensation  in 
 the  widest  sense  of  the  word,  though  not  yet  percep- 
 tion. We  may  stare  at  the  blue  sky,  the  green  forest, 
 the  red  flowers  ;  we  may  watch  the  flight  of  the  clouds 
 and  listen  to  the  song  of  birds  ;  or  we  may  be  startled 
 by  a  clap  of  thunder,  frightened  by  a  flash  of  light- 
 ning, and  driven  away  by  the  terror  of  falling  trees. 
 We  may  be  in  a  state  of  perturbation  or  of  rest,  and 
 we  may  act  under  the  influence  of  what  we  thus  see 
 and  hear.  We  may  even  be  said  to  act  rationally, 
 just  as  a  dog  is  said  to  act  rationally  when,  on  seeing 
 his  master  raise  his  whip,  he  runs  away. 
 
 No  percept  without  language.     Helmholtz. 
 
 But,  though  we  may  imagine  such  a  state,  and 
 though  I  do  not  like  to  contradict  collectors  of 
 psychological  curiosities  who  maintain  they  have 
 actually  experienced  it,  I  hold  myself  as  strongly  as 
 ever  that  not  until  we  have  a  name  and  concept  of 
 sky,  can  we  truly  be  said  to  see  the  sky  ;  not  till  we 
 have  a  name  for  blue,  do  we  know  that  the  sky  is 
 blue.  Philosophers  have  long  known  this,  but  the 
 best  students  of  physical  science  also,  some  of  the 
 highest  authorities  on  optics  and  acoustics,  have  at 
 last  come   to    see   the   same.     '  Only  after   the  per- 
 
MY    OWN    DEFINITION.  121 
 
 ceptions  of  the  senses  have  become  fixed  by  language, 
 are  they,  (the  senses),  that  is  to  say.  are  we  brought  to 
 a  conscious  possession  and  a  real  understanding  of 
 them  V  These  are  not  the  speculations  of  a  meta- 
 physician or  of  a  student  of  language,  they  are  the 
 ipsissima  verba  of  one  who  stands  foremost  among 
 experimental  philosophers,  and  who  in  England  as 
 well  as  in  Germany  is  recognised  as  one  of  the  high- 
 est authorities  on  optics  and  acoustics,  that  is,  on  the 
 sensuous  perceptions  of  sight  and  hearing — they  are 
 quoted  from  Professor  Helmholtz. 
 
 Perceptions  always  finite. 
 
 Let  us  now  consider  the  general  character  of  our 
 percepts.  There  is  one  characteristic  which  is  com- 
 mon to  all  of  them,  and  therefore  to  all  our  concepts 
 and  names, — to  all  we  know, — they  are  always  finite 
 in  themselves  ;  or,  if  you  like,  the  objects  to  which 
 they  refer  are  taken  as  finite.  Some  critics  have 
 objected  to  the  term  finite,  and  maintained  that  I 
 ought  to  have  used  definite  instead. 
 
 Finite  and  definite. 
 
 I  see  no  objection  whatever  to  using  definite  instead 
 of  finite  ;  my  only  reason  for  preferring  finite  was  that 
 it  seemed  to  me  wider  than  definite,  wdrich  is  fre- 
 quently used  in  the  restricted  sense  of  what  has  been 
 defined  by  logical  terms.  The  important  point,  how- 
 ever, is  not  the  name,  so  long  as  we  see  clearly  that 
 all  objects  which  we  perceive  and  afterwards  conceive 
 and  name  must  be  circumscribed,  must  have  been 
 separated  from  their  surroundings,  must  be  measur- 
 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  151. 
 
122  LECTURE   V. 
 
 able,    and    can    thus   only    become   perceivable   and 
 knowable  and  namable. 
 
 And  this  applies  not  only  to  finiteness  in  space  and 
 time,  but  also  to  finiteness  in  quality.  We  know 
 now  that  all  shades  of  colour,  even  those  which  our 
 unassisted  eye  cannot  distinguish,  are  clue  to  so  mauy 
 and  no  more  vibrations  of  ether  within  a  given  time. 
 They  are  therefore  finite  in  their  very  nature.  The 
 same  applies  to  every  tone  which  we  hear.  It  con- 
 sists of  a  finite  or  definite,  i.  e.  a  limited,  or  count- 
 able number  of  vibrations  in  a  second.  And  as  our 
 perceptions  of  material  objects,  such  as  stones  or  trees 
 or  animals,  must  be  outlined,  must  have  a  beginning 
 and  an  end,  our  concepts  and  names  also  are  possible 
 only  with  well  denned  groups,  or,  at  all  events,  with 
 groups  that  ought  to  be  well  defined,  if  they  are  to 
 answer  their  purpose.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  con- 
 cepts can  be  represented,  as  they  have  been  by  Euler 
 and  others,  by  spheres  of  greater  or  smaller  extent, 
 the  definition  determining  the  extension  of  a  concept 
 as  a  circumference  determines  the  extension  of  a 
 sphere. 
 
 The  finite  implies  the  infinite. 
 
 But  if  finiteness  is  thus  a  necessary  characteristic 
 of  our  ordinary  knowledge,  it  requires  but  little  re- 
 flection to  perceive  that  limitation  or  finiteness,  in 
 whatever  sense  we  use  it,  always  implies  a  something 
 beyond.  We  are  told  that  our  mind  is  so  constituted, 
 whether  it  is  our  fault  or  not,  that  we  cannot  conceive 
 an  absolute  limit.  Beyond  every  limit  we  must  always 
 take  it  for  granted  that  there  is  something  else.  But 
 what  is  the  reason  of  this  ?     The  reason  why  we  can- 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  123 
 
 not  conceive  an  absolute  limit  is  because  we  never 
 perceive  an  absolute  limit ;  or,  in  other  words,  because 
 in  perceiving  the  finite  we  always  perceive  the  infi- 
 nite also.  Descartes,  who  has  so  often  been  called  the 
 founder  of  modern  philosophy,  declares  without  any 
 hesitation :  '  I  ought  not  to  think  that  I  perceive  the 
 infinite  only  by  the  negation  of  the  finite,  as  I  per- 
 ceive rest  and  darkness  by  negation  of  motion  and 
 light ;  on  the  contrary,  I  clearly  ^>e?'ceive  that  there  is 
 more  of  reality  in  infinite  substance  than  in  finite, 
 and  therefore  that,  in  a  certain  sense,  the  idea  of  the 
 infinite  is  prior  to  me  to  the  finite.' 
 
 The  infinite  in  space. 
 
 I  do  not  go  quite  so  far  as  Descartes,  but  it  seems 
 to  me  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt,  that  even  in  our 
 earliest  and  simplest  perceptions  we  always  perceive 
 the  finite  and  the  infinite  simultaneously,  though  it 
 takes  a  long  time  before  we  clearly  conceive  and 
 name  the  two  as  simply  finite  and  infinite.  If  we 
 perceive  a  square  we  can  only  perceive  it  by  per- 
 ceiving at  the  same  time  the  space  beyond  the  square. 
 If  we  perceive  the  horizon,  we  perceive  at  the  same 
 time  that  which  hems  in  our  senses  from  going  be- 
 yond the  horizon.  There  is  no  limit  which  has  not 
 two  sides,  one  turned  towards  us,  the  other  turned 
 towards  what  is  beyond ;  and  it  is  that  Beyond  which 
 from  the  earliest  days  has  formed  the  only  real  foun- 
 dation of  all  that  we  call  transcendental  in  our  per- 
 ceptual as  well  as  in  our  conceptual  knowledge, 
 though  no  doubt  it  has  also  been  peopled  with  the 
 manifold  creations  of  our  poetic  imagination.  To 
 the  early  nations  the  West,  the  setting  of  the  sun, 
 
124  LECTURE   V. 
 
 was  the  extreme  limit  of  the  world— to  the  Buddhists 
 the  golden  gate  that  opens  to  receive  the  setting  sun 
 in  the  West  has  become  the  Eastern  gate  of  a  more 
 distant  West,  of  Sukhavati,  the  land  of  bliss. 
 
 The  infinite  in  time. 
 
 And  what  applies  to  space  applies  to  time.  As  we 
 cannot  perceive  and  therefore  conceive  anything  in 
 space  without  a  something  beyond,  we  cannot  per- 
 ceive or  conceive  anything  in  time  without  a  some- 
 thing beyond,  a  before  and  an  after.  Here,  too, 
 imagination  has  stretched  its  view  as  far  as  language 
 will  carry  it.  The  number  of  years  by  which  Hindus 
 and  Buddhists  have  tried  to  measure  the  infinitude  of 
 time  are  simply  appalling— yet  beyond  the  giddy 
 height  and  depth  which  they  have  reached,  there 
 always  remained  that  eternal  Beyond  from  which  no 
 human  mind  can  escape. 
 
 The  infinite  as  cause. 
 
 Closely  connected  with  the  infinite,  as  it  is  postu- 
 lated in  space  and  time,  is  a  third  infinite,  namely, 
 that  of  cause.  This  has  been  called  by  some  philoso- 
 phers a  mere  illusion,  a  mere  weakness  of  the  human 
 mind.  There  are  some  strong-minded  philosophers 
 who  hold  that  a  world  is  possible  in  which  there  is  no 
 cause  and  no  effect,  and  in  which  two  and  two  would 
 not  make  four.  But  wherever  that  Erehivon  may  be,  in 
 our  sublunary  world,  and  I  may  add  in  our  sublunary 
 language,  two  and  two  will  always  make  four,  and  as 
 we  can  never  shake  off  the  chain  of  causality,  we  shall 
 always  be  forced  to  admit  not  only  a  beyond  beyond 
 all  beyonds,  but  also  a  cause  beyond  all  causes. 
 
 If  therefore  our  ordinary  sensations  and  perceptions 
 
MY    OWN    DEFINITION.  125 
 
 are  at  the  same  time  both  of  the  finite  and  of  the 
 infinite,  they  naturally  call  forth  and  leave  in  our 
 mind  and  in  our  language  the  concept  of  finite,  and  at 
 the  same  time  the  concept  of  infinite.  I  speak  here  of 
 a  logical  and  psychological  necessity  only  ;  and  not 
 yet  of  the  realisation  of  these  concepts  of  finite  and 
 infinite  in  history. 
 
 Misunderstanding's , 
 
 It  is  extraordinary  how  difficult  it  is  to  avoid  mis- 
 understandings even  on  the  part  of  honest  critics,  to 
 say  nothing  of  dishonest  opponents.  In  answer  to 
 what  I  tried  to  show,  that  every  single  perception,  so 
 far  as  it  is  finite,  involves,  whether  we  are  conscious 
 of  it  or  not,  some  perception  of  the  infinite  — which  is 
 really  only  a  freer  rendering  of  the  old  scholastic 
 formula,  (minis  detevminatio  est  negatio,  I  am  told 
 that  there  are  many  savage  tribes  even  now  who  do 
 not  possess  a  word  for  finite  and  infinite.  Is  that  an 
 answer  ? 
 
 Savages  without  words  for  finite  and  infinite. 
 
 No  one  can  doubt  that  the  idea  of  the  infinite,  as  a 
 pure  abstraction,  is  one  of  the  latest,  and  that  when 
 we  trace  religion  back  to  a  perception  of  the  infinite 
 in  nature  or  in  man,  we  can  mean  no  more  than  that 
 the  infinite,  as  hidden  in  the  finite,  left  some  impres- 
 sion on  our  senses  and  on  our  mind  from  the  very  first 
 dawn  of  human  intelligence,  and  that  it  is  that  very 
 impression  which,  after  passing  through  a  long  hiber- 
 nation, grows  and  grows,  and  bursts  forth  at  the  very 
 last,  like  the  butterfly  from  the  chrysalis,  as  the  infinite 
 in  its  most  general,  most  abstract,  most  purified  sense. 
 
 It  is  very  easy  to  be  positive  about  the  languages  of 
 
126  LECTURE    V. 
 
 ancient  savages,  for  we  know  so  little  about  them. 
 But  supposing  that  languages  spoken  by  ancient 
 savages  were  known  in  which  no  words  occur  for  the 
 boundless  sky  or  the  shoreless  sea,  this  would  not  in 
 the  least  affect  our  position.  On  the  contrary,  the 
 more  savage  tribes  can  be  produced  without  names 
 and  concepts  for  what  is  endless,  deathless,  or  infinite, 
 the  stronger  the  proof  that  these  concepts  were  only 
 gradually  evolved  out  of  percepts  in  which  they  were 
 contained,  but  from  which  they  had  not  yet  been 
 separated. 
 
 The  Duke  of  Argyll's  Definition  of  Religion. 
 
 I  must  try  to  define  my  position  as  clearly  as  pos- 
 sible. I  hold  that  the  only  justification  for  a  belief  in 
 a  Beyond  of  any  kind  whatever,  lies  in  the  original 
 perception  of  something  infinite  which  is  involved  in 
 a  large  class  of  our  ordinary  sensuous  and  finite  per- 
 ceptions. But  I  hold  equally  strongly  that  this 
 perception  of  a  Beyond  remained  undeveloped  for  a 
 long  time,  that  it  assumed  its  first  form  in  the  num- 
 berless names  of  what  we  call  deities,  till  at  last  it 
 threw  off  its  husk  and  disclosed  the  ripe  grain,  namely 
 the  name  and  concept  of  a  Beyond,  of  an  Infinite,  or, 
 in  the  highest  sense,  of  a  Supreme  Being. 
 
 Here  is  the  point  where  I  differ,  for  instance,  from 
 the  Duke  of  Argyll.  In  his  great  work,  The  Unity  of 
 Nature,  the  Duke  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  re- 
 ligion begins  with  '  a  belief  in  supernatural  beings,  in 
 living  agencies,  other  and  higher  than  our  own ' 
 (p.  466),  and  he  maintains  that  '  to  conceive  of  the 
 energies  that  are  outside  of  man  as  like  the  energies 
 that  he  feels  within  him,  is  simply  to  think  of  the  un- 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  127 
 
 known  in  terms  of  the  familiar  and  the  known.'  '  To 
 think  this,'  he  writes,  '  can  never  have  been  to  man 
 any  matter  of  difficult  attainment.  It  must  have  been, 
 in  the  very  nature  of  things,  the  earliest,  the  simplest, 
 and  the  most  necessary  of  all  conceptions '  (p.  474). 
 
 We  shall  see  hereafter  that  this  definition  contains 
 a  great  deal  of  truth.  The  reason  why  I  cannot  accept 
 it  is  that  it  makes  religion  begin  with  concepts,  and 
 not  with  percepts,  and  it  is  with  percepts  that  all  our 
 knowledge,  even  the  most  abstract,  ought  to  begin. 
 We  cannot  perceive  supernatural  beings,  or  living 
 agencies,  but  we  can  perceive  the  sky,  and  in  per- 
 ceiving it  as  finite,  perceive  at  the  same  time  the 
 necessary  complement  of  the  Infinite.  There  are  many 
 steps  which  must  have  preceded  such  concepts  as 
 £  energies  without,  being  like  the  energies  within  us.' 
 To  conceive  and  name  energies  within  us  is  a  process 
 unknown  to  the  large  majority  of  mankind  even  at 
 the  present  day,  and  to  think  of  energies  without  as 
 like  the  energies  within,  is  very  different  from  seeing 
 the  sky  or  the  fire,  and  conceiving  and  naming  such 
 beings  as  Dyaus  or  Zeus,  as  Indra  or  Agni,  The 
 Duke  speaks  of  a  belief  in  superhuman  beings,  and 
 considers  such  concepts  as  a  being  and  a  superhuman 
 being  as  very  early  and  very  simple.  But  the  very 
 verb  to  be  is  a  very  late  creation,  and  the  noun  being 
 much  later  still.  Even  Cicero  looked  still  in  vain  for 
 such  a  word  as  ens  or  essentia  1. 
 
 It  is,  on  the  contrary,  one  of  the  most  interesting  sub- 
 jects for  the  historian  of  religion  to  see  how  the  more 
 abstract  concept  of  superhuman  beings  was  slowly 
 evolved  out  of  such  concrete  and  full  concepts  as  Dya  us, 
 
 '  Seneca,  Epist.  58. 
 
128  LECTUKE   V. 
 
 sky,  A'gni,  fire,  Vdyu,  wind,  Surya,  sun.  Instead  of 
 the  more  general  concept  coming  first  and  being 
 gradually  invested  with  differentiating  attributes, 
 history  shows  that  the  differentiated  and  almost  dra- 
 matic characters  came  first,  and,  by  being  divested  of 
 their  various  attributes,  left  behind  them  the  more 
 general,  but,  at  the  same  time,  more  exalted  concepts 
 of  beings  or  superhuman  beings.  There  is  no  trace 
 whatever,  so  far  as  I  know,  of  any  of  the  early  nations 
 having  first  elaborated  the  concepts  and  names  of 
 superhuman  beings,  and  then  having  connected  them 
 with  various  attributes.  Among  most  nations  also, 
 so  far  as  historical  evidence  enables  us  to  judge,  a 
 belief  in  many  superhuman  beings  preceded  a  belief 
 in  one  superhuman  being,  and  for  a  long  time  what 
 seem  to  us  two  contradictory  beliefs,  a  belief  in  one 
 and  a  belief  in  many  gods,  were  held  to  be  perfectly 
 compatible  in  the  same  religion.  The  Duke  of  Argyll, 
 unless  his  own  words  misrepresent  him,  represents  the 
 connection  of  these  superhuman  beings  with  material 
 objects  as  a  later  phase.  '  The  nature  of  that  connec- 
 tion,' he  writes,  '  may  not  be  always,  it  may  not  even 
 in  any  case,  be  perfectly  clear  and  definite.  Some- 
 times the  material  object  is  an  embodiment,  sometimes 
 it  is  a  symbol,  often  it  may  be  only  an  abode.  Nor  is 
 it  wonderful  that  there  should  be  a  like  variety  in  the 
 particular  objects  which  have  come  to  be  so  regarded. 
 Sometimes  they  are  such  material  objects  as  the 
 heavenly  bodies.  Sometimes  they  are  natural  pro- 
 ductions of  our  own  planet,  such  as  particular  trees, 
 or  particular  animals,  or  particular  things  in  them- 
 selves inanimate,  such  as  springs,  or  streams,  or  moun- 
 tains.    Sometimes    they   are   manufactured   articles, 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  129 
 
 stones  or  blocks  of  wood,  cut  into  some  shape  which 
 have  a  meaning  either  obvious  or  traditional '  (p.  480). 
 There  are  manifestly  two  ways  only  in  which  the 
 truth  of  such  statements  can  be  tested.     We  have  to 
 ask  whether  they  rest  on  historical  facts  or  on  any 
 logical  necessity.     Tevtium  non  datur.     Now,  I  can 
 see  no  logical  necessity  for  admitting  even  the  possi- 
 bility of  any  concepts  which   are   not   founded   on 
 previous  percepts.     On  the  contrary,  if  only  we  define 
 these  terms  properly,  the  existence  of  concepts  with- 
 out previous  percepts  would  become  self-contradictory. 
 And  as  to  facts,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that, 
 so  far  as  our  knowledge  of  ancient  religions  reaches  at 
 present,  they  do  not  support  the  opinion  that  religion 
 began  anywhere  with  the  general  concept  of  super- 
 human beings,  and  that  at  a  later  time  only  these 
 mere    beings    were    connected   with    differentiating 
 qualities.     Logically,   no   doubt,    the    general   comes 
 first,  and  the  particular  follows  ;  but  what  is  first  by 
 itself  is  not  first  to  us,  and  in  the  growth  of  concepts 
 the  historical  process  is  generally  the  reverse  of  the 
 logical.     I  hold  that  before  man  could  speak  even  of 
 the  infinite  sky  or  Dyaus,  he  must  actually  have  per- 
 ceived something  infinite,  and  must  have  been  brought 
 in  sensuous   contact  with  something  not  finite  like 
 everything  else  ;  but  to  conceive  an  infinite  being,  or 
 even  a  number  of  infinite  beings,  is  a  very  different 
 process,  which  comes  in  earlier,  it  is  true,  than  we 
 expected,  but  still  much  later  than  the  naming  and 
 conceiving  of  the  infinite  sky,  the  infinite  earth,  the 
 infinite  sea. 
 
 While  the  Duke  considers  that  religious  thought 
 began  with  the  conception  of  superhuman  beings,  and 
 
130  LECTURE   V. 
 
 that  these  were  afterwards  connected  with  dis- 
 tinguishing mythological  attributes,  it  seems  to  me 
 that  we  must  learn  the  very  opposite  lesson  from 
 history,  namely  that  religious  thought  began  with 
 the  naming  of  a  large  number  of  clearly  marked  and 
 differentiated  beings,  such  as  Sky,  Dawn,  Thunder, 
 Lightning,  Storm,  Mountains,  Trees,  etc.,  and  that  the 
 concept  of  superhuman  beings  arose  afterwards,  as 
 a  concept  common  to  all,  when  divested  of  their 
 characteristic  differences.  In  the  Veda  we  look  in 
 vain  for  words  of  so  abstract  a  character  as  super- 
 human beings  or  personal  agencies.  Even  the  words  for 
 gods  in  general,  such  as  deva,  bright,  vasu,  brilliant, 
 asura,  living,  are  still  full  of  physical  meaning  in 
 the  more  ancient  hymns.  We  are  confronted  from  the 
 first  with  such  strongly  marked  dramatic  characters 
 as  Dyaus,  the  bright  sky,  Varuna,  the  dark  sky, 
 Marut,  the  storms,  Agni,  the  fire,  Us  has,  the  dawn. 
 We  can  understand  the  origin  of  these  mythological 
 characters,  because  in  their  material  aspect  at  least, 
 whatever  may  have  been  suspected  behind  them,  they 
 offered  themselves  to  the  eyes  and  ears  of  those  who 
 framed  their  names  and  believed  in  their  existence. 
 But  mere  superhuman  beings,  without  definite  attri- 
 butes, never  presented  themselves  to  their  senses,  and 
 could  never,  therefore,  have  found  an  entrance  into 
 their  intellect.  Dyaus  in  the  Veda  was  originally  a 
 name  of  the  sky,  but  of  an  active  and  subjective  sky. 
 The  purely  material  characteristics  of  the  sky  are  still 
 there,  faintly  visible  ;  but  they  slowly  vanish,  and  in 
 the  end  there  remains  the  name  only,  which  coupled 
 with  pita,  father,  appears  in  the  earliest  Aryan 
 prayers,  as  D  y a u  s h  p  i  t a,  Jujjiter,  Heaven-father,  and 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  131 
 
 in  the  end,  even  in  the  language  of  philosophers,  as 
 the  Supreme  Being.  And  what  applies  to  the  name 
 of  Dyaus,  applies  likewise  to  the  names  of  other  gods. 
 They  are  names  of  material  objects  or  phenomena  of 
 nature,  though  all  of  them  with  the  background  of 
 the  infinite  behind  them.  They  lose  their  individual 
 character  very  gradually,  and  in  the  end  only  stand 
 before  us  sublimised  into  superhuman  beings  or  per- 
 sonal agencies.  The  germ  of  the  superhuman,  or,  as 
 I  like  to  call  it  by  a  more  general  name,  of  the  in- 
 finite element,  was  there  from  the  first,  but  it  was 
 involved  as  yet  in  sensuous  perception,  not  yet 
 evolved  in  a  conceptual  name. 
 
 Early  Names  of  the  Infinite. 
 
 But  though  these  conceptual  names  of  superhuman 
 beings    and    living    agencies    are    clearly,    from    an 
 historical  point  of  vieAV,  of  later  growth,  it  is  true 
 nevertheless  that  we  meet  with  names  for  the  Beyond 
 or  the  Infinite  in  documents   of  great  antiquity.     I 
 see,  however,  that  some  remarks  of  mine  on  the  early 
 occurrence  of  names  for  the  Infinite,  have  caused  some 
 misapprehension,   which  I  must    try  to   remove.      I 
 expressed  my  surprise   that  such  a  name   as  Acliti 
 should  occur  in  the  Rig-veda,  for,  so  far  as  we  know 
 at  present,  Aditi  is  derived  from  the  negative  a  and 
 dita,  bound,  so  that  it  seems  to  have  expressed  from 
 the   beginning   an   unbound,  unbounded,  or    infinite 
 being.      But   the    Rig-veda,    though   it   is    the   most 
 ancient  document  of  Aryan  thought  within  our  reach, 
 contains  relics   of  different  ages,  and  even  its  most 
 ancient  relics  are  relics  of  Aryan  thought  only,  and 
 are  separated  by  an  immeasurable  distance  from  what 
 people  are  pleased  to  call  the  beginning  of  all  things. 
 
 k  2 
 
132  LECTURE  V. 
 
 We  can  clearly  see  the  linguistic  and  intellectual 
 detritus  on  which  the  Veda  rests,  and  though  the 
 occurrence  of  such  words  as  Adit i  will  always  remain 
 startling,  it  can  never  be  used  to  prove  that  the  Vedic 
 Rishis  or  their  distant  Aryan  ancestors  began  life 
 with  a  clear  conception  and  definite  name  of  the 
 Infinite  in  the  abstract. 
 
 Mana. 
 
 My  remarks  on  Mana  also  have  been  supposed  to 
 mean  something  very  different  from  what  I  intended. 
 Mana1  is  the  name,  not  of  any  individual  super- 
 human being,  but  it  is  used,  we  are  told,  by  most  of 
 the  Pacific  races,  in  the  sense  of  a  supernatural  power, 
 distinct  from  all  physical  powers,  yet  acting  every- 
 where in  nature,  and  believed  to  be  conciliated  by 
 prayers  and  sacrifices.  If  that  name  is  spread  over 
 the  whole  Pacific,  we  are  justified  in  supposing  that  it 
 existed  before  the  final  separation  of  the  Polynesian 
 races,  and  such  a  date,  however  vague,  may.  when  we 
 deal  with  illiterate  races,  be  called  an  early  date. 
 
 But  this  is  very  different  from  supposing  that 
 Mana  was  the  most  primitive  concept  of  the  whole 
 Polynesian  race,  and  that  its  whole  religion  and 
 mythology  were  founded  on  it.  The  mythological 
 and  religious  language  of  this  race,  so  far  from 
 being  what  people  call  primitive  or  primordial, 
 shows  so  many  antecedents,  so  much  that  is  already 
 petrified,  decayed,  and  unintelligible,  that  the  Vedic 
 language  may  be  called  primitive  as  compared  with  it. 
 I  never  could  share  the  opinion  that  the  thoughts  of 
 savage  races,  simply  because  they  are  the  thoughts 
 
 1  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  55. 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  133 
 
 of  savage  races,  carry  us   back  into  a  more  distant 
 antiquity  than  the  thoughts  of  civilised  and  literate 
 nations.     These   so-called  savages  are,  so  far  as  we 
 know,  not  a  day  older  or  younger  on  the  surface  of 
 the  earth  than  the  present  inhabitants  of  India,  China, 
 or   even   of  England.      They  have   probably  passed 
 through  more   changes    and   chances  than   our   own 
 ancestors,  unless  we   assume   that    by    some   special 
 providence  they  were  kept  stationary  or  preserved  in 
 spirits  for  the  special  benefit  of  future  anthropologists. 
 In  the   eyes  of  an  historian,  therefore,  a  word  like 
 Mana,  though  extremely  curious  and  instructive,  can 
 claim  no  greater  antiquity  than  the  stratum  of  lan- 
 guage in  which  it  has   been  found.     It  may  be  an 
 ancient  survival,  a  mediaeval  revival,  or  a  modern 
 imagination,  but  it  cannot  possibly  be  forced  into  an 
 argument  to  prove  that  religion  began  anywhere  with 
 a  belief  in  supernatural  beings  or  living  agencies,  and 
 not  with  a  naming  of  the  great  phenomena  of  nature 
 behind  which  such  beings  or  agencies  were  suspected. 
 
 Manito. 
 
 The  last  word  which  I  mentioned  as  a  name  for  a 
 supreme  being  without  any  physical  attributes  was 
 Manito.  This  word,  used  by  the  Red  Indians  as  a 
 name  of  the  Supreme  Spirit,  has  been  proved  to  mean 
 originally  no  more  than  Beyond.  Here,  therefore, 
 there  seemed  to  be  another  proof  that  religion  among 
 savage  people  might  begin  with  such  abstract  concepts 
 as  that  of  Beyond.  The  fact  itself  was  so  curious 
 that  I  thought  it  right  to  point  it  out,  though  as  we 
 know  the  word  Manito  and  its  various  dialectic  forms 
 in  documents  of  the  last  century  only,  I  never  under- 
 
134  LECTURE   V. 
 
 stood  by  what  right  it  could  possibly  be  transferred 
 to  the  primitive  periods  of  humanity.  And  here  a 
 very  useful  lesson  has  been  read  to  anthropologists,  in 
 whose  eyes  every  nineteenth- century  savage  becomes 
 an  antediluvian.  For,  according  to  the  most  recent 
 researches,  there  seems  to  be  little  doubt  that  Manito 
 was  introduced  in  the  last  century  only  by  Christian 
 Missionaries  as  a  name  for  the  Supreme  Being,  and 
 had  never  been  used  before  in  that  sense  by  the  Red 
 Indians  themselves  l. 
 
 1  hope  I  have  thus  made  it  clear  that  in  citing 
 these  names  of  the  Infinite,  whether  in  the  Veda,  or 
 among  the  Pacific  tribes,  or  among  the  Red  Indians,  I 
 never  intended  to  imply  that  they  could  have  repre- 
 sented under  any  circumstances  the  earliest  phases 
 of  religious  thought.  The  perception  of  the  Infinite, 
 which  is  the  necessary  foundation  of  all  religious 
 thought,  is  something  quite  different.  It  is  the  per- 
 ception of  the  infinite  within  the  finite,  and  hence, 
 whenever  these  perceptions  are  raised  to  a  conceptual 
 level  and  named,  the  names  of  the  finite  remain  and 
 become  imperceptibly  the  names  of  the  Infinite. 
 
 Does  the  Vedic  Religion  begin  with  Sacrifice? 
 
 Let  us  now  consider  another  objection.  The  per- 
 ception of  the  Infinite,  it  has  been  said 2,  can  have 
 nothing  to  do  with  the  origin  of  religion,  because  the 
 Vedic  religion  begins  not  with  faith  in  infinite  beings, 
 but  with  sacrifice. 
 
 These  are  bold  statements.  First  of  all,  it  should 
 never   be  forgotten  that  the  deities  invoked  in   the 
 
 1  See  Brinton,  Myths  of  the  New  World,  p.  53. 
 
 2  Gruppe,  p.  221. 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  135 
 
 Veda  must  have  existed  long  before  the  hymns  which 
 we  possess  were  composed.  Some  of  them  exist  in 
 other  Aryan  languages  and  must  therefore  have  been 
 framed  prior  even  to  the  Aryan  separation.  The 
 origin  of  their  names  lies,  therefore,  far  beyond  the 
 Vedic  age,  and  if  they  were  originally  names  of  finite 
 phenomena,  conceived  as  infinite  in  the  evolution  of 
 religious  thought,  whatever  the  Vedic  hymns  and 
 Brahmatias  might  say  to  the  contrary,  would  be  of 
 very  little  weight.  But,  secondly,  what  possible  mean- 
 ing can  we  connect  with  the  statement  that  the  Vedic 
 religion  begins  with  sacrifice  ? 
 
 When  sacrifices  come  in,  for  whom  are  they  meant? 
 Surely  for  somebody,  for  beings  who  are  the  object  of 
 faith,  for  beings  different  from  things  we  can  touch  or 
 see,  for  infinite  beings,  if  only  in  the  sense  that  their 
 life  has  no  end,  and  that  they  are  in  that  sense, 
 immortal,  endless,  infinite. 
 
 And  what  can  be  the  meaning  of  such  a  sentence 
 (p.  221)  as  this,  that  in  the  Veda  '  the  faithful  knows  that 
 the  lighting  of  the  matutinal  sacrificial  fire  drives  away 
 the  demons  of  night,  and  supports  the  approaching 
 sun-god  in  his  fight  against  them.  He  has  been  taught 
 by  his  ancestors  that  the  sacrificial  potion  and  the 
 intoxicating  Soma  invigorate  Indra  for  his  fight  with 
 the  dragon,  and  he  sacrifices  gladly,  because  he  hates 
 the  night,  which  is  full  of  dangers,  and  because  he 
 loves  the  break  of  day.  For  this  reason,  and  not  from 
 a  desire  for  the  infinite,  does  he  call  the  bright  deities 
 his  friends  and  the  sky  his  father.  And  when  the 
 faithful  has  performed  his  sacrificial  rite,  he  expects 
 that  heaven  will  do  his  part,  increase  the  cattle  of  the 
 faithful,  fertilise  his  fields  and  destroy  his  enemies. 
 
136  LECTURE   V. 
 
 In  this  very  finite  sphere  does  the  religion  of  those 
 early  days  have  its  being.' 
 
 If  we  dissolve  these  assertions  into  their  constituent 
 elements,  we  shall  find  that  they  have  absolutely 
 no  bearing  whatever  on  the  question  at  issue.  We 
 wanted  to  know  how  the  concept  of  any  so-called 
 gods  or  divine  powers  arose,  of  beings  to  whom  at  a 
 later  time  sacrifices  may  be  offered  ;  and  we  are  told 
 that  the  faithful  knows  that  his  sacrifice  will  support 
 the  sun-god  in  his  fight  against  the  demons  of  night ! 
 (p.  276.)  But  here  everything  which  we  wish  to 
 account  for  is  taken  for  granted.  When  people  had 
 arrived  at  the  conception  of  a  sun-god  and  of  noc- 
 turnal demons,  the  whole  battle  of  the  human  intellect 
 was  won.  But  who  ever  told  them  of  a  sun-god,  or, 
 as  we  should  say,  what  perceptions  led  them  on  to 
 such  a  concept  and  such  a  name?  Then  again,  whence 
 came  that  idea  that  a  sacrifice  could  invigorate  the 
 sun-god  ?  We  are  told  that  man  learnt  it  from  his 
 ancestors.  Yes,  but  we  want  to  know  how  his  ances- 
 tors learnt  it.  We  are  really  speaking  of  two  totally 
 different  periods  in  the  development  of  human  thought. 
 If  man  has  once  arrived  at  the  idea  of  bright  deities, 
 we  can  understand  why  he  should  call  them  his 
 friends ;  but  why  did  he  call  anything  bright  deities  ? 
 
 Then  again,  the  idea  that  an  intoxicating  beverage 
 like  Soma,  taken  by  the  sacrifice!',  should  invigorate 
 the  god  fighting  against  the  dragon,  is  so  late,  so 
 secondary,  even  in  so  late  and  so  secondary  a  phase  of 
 religion  as  we  see  represented  in  the  Veda,  that  it  is 
 difficult  enough  to  discover  all  the  missing  links  in 
 the  intellectual  chain  that  led  to  it.  But  to  suppose 
 that  religion  could  begin  with  Indra  drinking  Soma 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  137 
 
 offered  at  a  sacrifice,  is  like  supposing  that  the  Aryan 
 language  could  begin  with  French. 
 
 And  is  it  really  a  very  finite  sphere  of  thought,  if 
 people  have  actually  brought  themselves  to  believe, 
 not  only  that  there  are  bright  gods  in  heaven,  but 
 that  these  gods  in  heaven  can  hear  our  prayers,  and 
 that,  though  unseen  themselves,  they  are  able  to  in- 
 crease the  cattle  of  the  faithful  and  destroy  their 
 enemies?  Where  in  all  our  finite  experience  is  there 
 any  evidence  for  such  thoughts,  thoughts  which  become 
 intelligible  only  by  patient  research,  just  as  French 
 words  become  intelligible  only,  if  we  trace  them  back 
 through  various  phases  to  Latin,  and  from  Latin  to 
 some  Aryan  root  the  meaning  of  which  is  sometimes 
 so  different  that,  without  a  knowledge  of  the  inter- 
 mediate links,  we  could  never  believe  that  the  two 
 had  any  organic  relationship  at  all. 
 
 Germs  of  the  Infinite  in  the  Veda. 
 
 Any  one  who  is  able  to  understand  the  Veda,  will 
 find  no  difficulty  in  discovering  the  true  germs  of  the 
 infinite  in  the  conception  of  what  the  Vedic  poets  call 
 devas.  It  makes  no  difference  whether  we  call  those 
 poets  primitive  or  modern,  savage  or  civilised,  so  long 
 as  we  know  what  thoughts  they  were  capable  of. 
 Now  the  thought  of  the  infinite,  in  space  and  time  at 
 least,  was  certainly  not  beyond  their  grasp. 
 
 When  a  Vedic  poet,  such  as  Vasish^Aa,  stood  on  a 
 high  mountain  in  the  land  of  tne  Seven  Rivers,  as  he 
 called  the  Punjab,  and  let  his  eye  travel  across  land 
 and  water  as  far  as  it  could  reach,  had  he  not  a  per- 
 ception of  the  infinite  ? 
 
 When  a  Greek  hero,  such  as  Odysseus,  was  tossed 
 
138  LECTUKE   V. 
 
 about  on  the  vast  commotion  of  the  waves,  seeing  no 
 stars  and  no  land  anywhere,  had  he  no  perception  of 
 the  infinite  1     And  are  we  so  different  from  them  ? 
 
 The  Infinitely  Great. 
 
 When  we  ourselves. — savages  as  we  are,  according 
 to  Bacon,  in  spite  of  all  our  syllogisms  1, — have  learnt 
 to  look  upon  the  boundless  earth  with  its  boundless 
 ocean,  no  longer  as  a  stupendous  mass,  but  as  a  small 
 globe  or  globule,  moving  with  other  globes  across  the 
 infinite  firmament ;  wrhen  wider  infinitudes  than  the 
 infinite  firmament  open  before  us,  and  the  sun,  which 
 was  once  so  near  and  dear  to  us,  becomes  a  fiery  mass, 
 the  magnitude  of  which  defies  our  power  of  imagina- 
 tion ;  when  afterwards,  the  magnitude  of  the  sun  and 
 its  distance  from  us,  which  is  expressed  in  millions  of 
 miles,  dwindle  down  again  into  nothing  as  compared 
 with  the  nearest  star,  which,  we  are  told,  lies  twenty 
 millions  of  millions  of  miles  from  our  earth,  so  that  a 
 ray  of  light,  if  travelling  with  the  velocity  of  187,000 
 miles  in  a  second,  would  take  more  than  three  years 
 in  reaching  us ; — nay  even  this  is  not  yet  all, — when 
 we  are  assured  by  high  astronomical  authorities  that 
 there  are  more  than  one  thousand  millions  of  such 
 stars  which  our  telescopes  have  discovered,  and  that 
 there  may  be  millions  of  millions  of  suns  within  our 
 sidereal  system  which  are  as  yet  beyond  the  reach  of 
 our  best  telescopes  ;  and  that  even  that  sidereal  system 
 need  not  be  regarded  as  single  within  the  universe, 
 but  that  thousands  of  millions  of  sidereal  systems  may 
 be  recognised  in  the  galaxy  2 — if  we  listen  to  all  this, 
 do    we   not   feel  the  overwhelming   pressure    of  the 
 
 1  See  De  Bonald,  Mel  i.  100. 
 
 'J  See  E.  A.  Proctor,  in  Secular  Thought,  April  21,  1888. 
 
MY   OWN   DEFINITION.  139 
 
 infinite,  the  same  infinite  which  had  impressed  the 
 mind  of  Vasish^Aa  and  Odysseus,  and  from  which  no 
 one  can  escape  who  has  eyes  to  see  or  ears  to  hear  ? 
 
 The   Infinitely  Small. 
 
 But  there  is  another  infinite,  the  infinitely  small, 
 which  is  even  more  wonderful  than  the  infinitely 
 distant  and  great.  When  we  turn  away  our  eyes 
 from  the  immensity  which  surrounds  us,  and  look  at 
 one  small  drop  of  water  taken  from  the  boundless 
 ocean,  a  new  universe  seems  to  open  before  us.  There 
 are  in  that  drop  of  water  atoms  of  atoms  moving 
 about,  some  visible,  some  invisible,  some  hardly 
 imaginable.  A  high  authority,  Sir  Henry  Roscoe, 
 has  told  us  '  that  the  chemists  are  now  able  to  ascer- 
 tain the  relative  position  of  atoms  so  minute  that 
 millions  upon  millions  of  them  can  stand  upon  a 
 needle's  point.5  Is  not  that  infinitude  of  atoms  as 
 wonderful  as  the  infinitude  of  stars? 
 
 Infinite  Inseparable  from  Finite. 
 
 I  maintain  then  that  the  infinite  is  the  necessary 
 complement  of  the  finite  in  every  human  mind,  that 
 it  was  involved  in  the  first  perceptions  and  became 
 part  of  the  silent  clockwork  within  us,  though  it  may 
 have  taken  thousands  of  years  before  the  necessity 
 was  felt  to  give  it  its  final  expression,  as  the  Infinite, 
 or  the  Unknown,  or  the  Beyond. 
 
 The  Concept  of  Caixse. 
 
 And  it  is  the  same  with  the  idea  of  cause  and 
 causality.  There  may  be  ancient,  there  may  be 
 modern  savages,  who  have  no  such  word  as  cause. 
 Does  that  prove  that  they  had  no  other  expression  for 
 that  concept  1  When  we  now  speak  of  the  cause  of  the 
 world,  we  could  in  the  childhood  of  our  thought  and 
 
140  LECTUKE   V. 
 
 language  have  said  no  more  than  '  the  father  or  pro- 
 genitor of  heaven  and  earth,'  r/anita  dyavap?^thi- 
 vyoA  ;  or,  if  our  thought  dwelt  more  on  the  forming 
 and  shaping  of  the  world,  the  carpenter  of  heaven  and 
 earth,  tvash^a  (tUtlov)  dyavapvuthivyoA.  When 
 afterwards  it  was  felt  to  be  less  important  to  dwell  on 
 the  act  of  begetting  or  shaping,  when  in  fact  it  was 
 felt  desirable  to  drop  these  special  features,  human 
 thought  and  language  reduced  the  begetter  and  shaper 
 to  a  mere  maker  or  creator.  And  when  those  names 
 also  were  felt  to  be  too  full  of  meaning,  they  were 
 lightened  once  more  till  they  conveyed  no  more  than 
 author,  source,  origin,  principle,  cause.  This  is  the 
 historical  and  genetic  account  of  the  concept  of  cause. 
 It  began  with  a  real  maker,  like  unto  ourselves  when 
 we  do  a  thing  and  see  that  it  is  done  ;  it  ended  with 
 something  that  is  neither  human,  nor  divine,  nor  even 
 real  in  the  sense  of  perceptible  by  the  senses — a  mere 
 cause. 
 
 I  hope  that  I  have  thus  made  it  clear  in  what  sense 
 I  consider  the  perception  of  the  infinite  to  have, 
 from  the  very  beginning,  formed  an  ingredient,  or  if 
 you  like,  a  necessary  complement  to  all  finite  know- 
 ledge 1.  I  am  quite  willing  to  admit  that  finite  and 
 infinite  are  not  always  quite  adequate  terms  to  express 
 all  that  we  want  to  express,  and  that  I  sometimes 
 should  prefer  visible  and  invisible,  known  and  un- 
 known, definite  and  indefinite.  But  every  one  of 
 these  expressions  proves  even  more  inadequate  in 
 certain  circumstances  than  finite  and  infinite,  and  if 
 technical  terms  have  once  been  properly  defined,  I  do 
 not  see  how  they  can  be  misunderstood. 
 
 1  This  point  has  been  carefully  reasoned  out  by  D.  G.  Thompson 
 in  his  Religious  Sentiments,  London,  1888. 
 
LECTURE  VI. 
 
 THE    INFINITE    IN    NATURE,  IN  MAN,  AND  IN   THE   SELF. 
 Positivist  Objections. 
 
 WHEN  it  has  been  my  chief  endeavour  to  show 
 that  religion  did  not  begin  with  abstract  con- 
 cepts and  a  belief  in  purely  extra-mundane  beings, 
 but  that  its  deepest  roots  can  be  traced  back  to  the 
 universal  stratum  of  sensuous  perception,  it  is  some- 
 what hard  to  be  told  that  '  I  must  necessarily  admit 
 an  extra-mundane  Logos  in  man,  and  derive  mytho- 
 logy and  religion  from  extra-mundane  causes '  (Gruppe, 
 p.  218).  Still  more  extraordinary  does  it  seem  that 
 the  ground  on  which  this  charge  is  founded  should  be 
 my  holding  in  some  modified  form  the  opinion  of 
 Schleiermacher,  Wuttke,  Hellwald,  and  others,  that 
 '  the  infinite  can  be  known  in  the  finite  only,  and  that 
 it  should  be  known  here  always  and  everywhere.' 
 
 Again,  I  am  told  (p.  222)  that  if  I  trace  the  concept 
 of  the  infinite  back  to  the  most  primitive  percepts  of 
 not  quite  finite  things,  I  must  mean  by  the  infinite  '  a 
 potentia  of  the  infinite,  the  infinitely  infinite,  the 
 infinite  per  se,  the  absolute.'  If  these  words  have 
 any  meaning  at  all,  they  would  show  a  complete  mis- 
 apprehension of  my  position.  I  spoke  of  the  sensuous 
 pressure  of  the  infinite  which  is  contained  in  the 
 simplest  perceptions  of  our  senses,  while  I  represented 
 the  pure  concept  of  the  infinite,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
 absolute,  as  the  very  last  result  of  a  long  historical 
 
142  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 process  of  intellectual  evolution.  To  fix  the  exact 
 time  when  the  indications  of  the  infinite,  which  are 
 latent  in  all  sensuous  perceptions,  became  recognised 
 either  in  mythology  or  religion,  and  lastly  in  philo- 
 sophy, is  completely  beyond  our  power.  It  is  enough 
 if  we  can  show  that  the  rudiments  of  later  mytholo- 
 gical, religious  and  philosophical  expressions  were 
 present  in  what  I  call  the  early  pressure  of  the  infinite 
 upon  our  senses.  I  do  not  object  if,  from  another 
 point  of  view,  this  may  be  called  an  intellectual  pres- 
 sure 1  also ;  but  what  is  really  important  is  to  under- 
 stand that  mankind  did  not  begin  with  the  abstract 
 concepts  of  infinity,  still  less  of  the  absolute,  whatever 
 that  may  mean,  but  with  the  simplest  perceptions 
 which,  in  addition  to  their  finite  contents,  implied 
 likewise  something  beyond  the  finite. 
 
 The  question,  again,  whether  this  evolution  of 
 thought,  beginning  with  the  simplest  perceptions,  and 
 ending  with  the  highest  abstractions,  was  teleological 
 or  not — whether  it  was  purposed,  whether  it  was 
 meant  to  lead  us  on  to  a  higher  conception  of  the 
 world — does  not  concern  us  at  present.  It  is  enough 
 for  us  that  it  was  real,  that  it  is  strictly  historical, 
 and  that  it  is  at  the  same  time  intelligible.  Whether 
 it  was  meant  or  intended,  by  whom  it  was  intended, 
 and  for  what  it  was  intended,  these  are  questions 
 which  need  not  disturb  our  equanimity.  So  far  as  I 
 can  see,  the  evidence  for  and  against  a  teleological 
 interpretation  is  equally  feeble,  but,  at  all  events  it 
 need  not  disquiet  those  who  are  only  concerned  with 
 the  establishment  of  facts,  and  with  a  suggestion  of 
 their  possible  origin. 
 
 1  '  Aber  dieser  Druck  ist  ein  intellectueller.'    Gruppe,  p.  225. 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.     143 
 Historical  Evolution. 
 
 My  principal  object  has  always  been  to  discover  an 
 historical  evolution  or  a  continuous  growth  in  religion 
 as  well  as  in  language.  It  seems  strange,  therefore, 
 that  while  in  England  some  Darwinians,  though  not 
 Darwin  himself,  have  attacked  me  for  not  bein^  a 
 thorough-going  evolutionist,  Professor  Gruppe  should 
 try  so  very  hard  to  prove  that  I  am  an  evolutionist, 
 and  that  therefore  I  am  behind  the  time,  as  time  is 
 understood  in  certain  quarters.  Evolution,  we  are 
 told  (pp.  233,  235),  is  but  the  disguised  sister  of 
 Hegelian  speculation.  We  ought  to  be  transforma- 
 tionists, and  no  longer  evolutionists.  I  do  not  know 
 what  transformations  may  still  await  us,  but  for  the 
 present  I  certainly  am  and  mean  to  remain  an  evolu- 
 tionist in  the  study  of  language,  mythology,  and  reli- 
 gion— that  is  to  say,  I  shall  always  try  to  discover  in 
 them  an  intelligible  historical  growth.  That  I  have 
 not  ascribed  any  evolutionary  power  to  ideas  or  con- 
 cepts by  themselves,  apart  from  the  persons  by  whom 
 they  are  held,  and  uninfluenced  by  the  objective  world 
 by  which  they  are  determined,  I  need  hardly  attempt 
 to  prove,  considering  that  I  have  always  adopted  as 
 the  foundation  of  all  philosophy  Kant's  well-known 
 principle,  that  concepts  without  intuitions  are  empty, 
 intuitions  without  concepts  are  blind.  There  are 
 misapprehensions  against  which  it  is  difficult  to  de- 
 fend oneself,  because  it  seems  incredible  that  they 
 should  ever  have  been  raised. 
 
 Positivist  Point  of  View. 
 
 Nor  do  I  believe  that  Professor  Gruppe  or  anybody 
 else  really  thinks  me  capable  of  believing  in  self- 
 evolving  Hegelian  ideas,  floating  about  in  metaphysical 
 
144  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 air  or  blown  into  our  face  like  soap  bubbles  by  an 
 extra-mundane  Logos.  On  the  contrary,  he  knows, 
 and  he  says  so  himself,  that  my  starting-point  is  from 
 a  positivist  point  of  view  impregnable1,  and  it  is 
 exactly  this  impregnable  character  of  the  position  I 
 have  taken  that  has  roused  so  much  anger  among 
 positivist  philosophers. 
 
 But  now  comes  the  strangest  of  all  arguments.  The 
 premisses  from  which  I  start  are  admitted  to  be 
 impregnable,  but  as  the  facts  in  the  history  of  religion 
 are  against  them,  it  follows  that  after  all,  my  premisses, 
 positivist  though  they  may  be,  must  be  wrong. 
 
 It  is  generally  supposed  that  when  we  come  to 
 facts,  all  controversy  must  end,  but  we  shall  see  that 
 facts  as  well  as  fictions  require  careful  handling. 
 
 Rig"-veda. 
 
 I  had  taken  some  of  my  facts  from  the  Rig-veda,  not 
 because  I  consider  that  these  hymns  can  bring  us  near 
 to  the  very  cradle  of  religious  concepts,  but  simply 
 because  we  possess  no  literary  documents,  so  far  as  I 
 know,  that  can  bring  us  nearer  to  it,  at  least  on 
 Aryan  ground.  I  maintained  that  when  the  Vedic 
 Rishis  celebrated  the  rivers,  the  dawn, .  the  sky,  or 
 Indra,  the  god  of  the  sky,  they  did  not  simply  mean 
 the  objects  which  they  saw,  but  also  something  be- 
 yond, call  it  unknown,  indefinite,  infinite,  or  divine. 
 
 Here  I  am  flatly  contradicted.  '  The  Hindu  of  the 
 older  Rig-veda/  we  are  told  (p.  221),  '  does  not  adore 
 the  Infinite  which  lies  within  or  behind  the  dawn,  but 
 the  dawn  herself,  whosoever  that  may  be.'     Yes,  'who- 
 
 1  G-ruppe,  p.  222,  <Der  Ausgangspimkt  ist  vom  positivistischen 
 Standpunkt  aus  unanfechtbar. ' 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.     145 
 
 soever  that  may  be,'  ootisttot  ea-riv,  and  this  'whosoever 
 that  may  be'  is  exactly  what  I  mean  by  the  invis- 
 ible, the  unknown,  or  the  infinite  behind  the  mere 
 splendour  of  the  morning  rays.  Who  ever  maintained 
 that  the  Hindu  adored  the  Infinite  in  its  abstract 
 form,  or  the  Infinite  by  itself,  as  lying  within  or  be- 
 hind the  dawn  ?  All  I  said  was  that  in  choosing  the 
 dawn  as  a  recipient  of  his  praises,  the  Vedic  poet, 
 whether  he  was  as  yet  conscious  of  it  or  not,  meant 
 something  more  than  the  definite  dawn,  the  reflected 
 splendour  of  the  sun,  that  lasted  for  a  short  time  every 
 day,  and  then  vanished  for  ever.  He  meant  some- 
 thing within  or  behind  the  dawn  which  did  not  vanish, 
 which  came  again  day  after  day,  which  manifested 
 itself  to  his  senses,  but  could  never  be  fully  grasped  by 
 them.  This  is  so  clear  and  so  undeniable  that  nothing 
 but  the  weakest  objections  could  be  raised*against  it. 
 We  are  assured  that  '  nothing  was  further  from 
 the  thoughts  of  the  ancient  poets  than  to  try  to  com- 
 prehend or  actually  to  grasp  the  incomprehensible 
 and  ungraspable,  to  fly  up  to  the  solar  bird  and  there 
 to  see  the  eternal  miracle  face  to  face.'  WTho  ever 
 suggested  such  wild  flights  of  fancy  for  the  Vedic 
 poets  1  It  is  wonderful  enough  that  in  their  concep- 
 tion of  one  of  their  deities,  of  Adit i,  the  concept  of 
 the  infinite  should  have  found  so  early  an  expression, 
 though  here  too  probably  at  first  under  the  image  of 
 the  dawn  or  what  lies  beyond  the  dawn 1.     We  can 
 
 1  '  Aditi,  an  ancient  god  or  goddess,  is  in  reality  the  earliest  name 
 to  express  the  Infinite  ;  not  the  Infinite  as  the  result  of  a  long  pro- 
 cess of  abstract  reasoning,  but  the  visible  Infinite,  visible  by  the 
 naked  eye,  the  endless  expanse  beyond  the  earth,  beyond  the  clouds, 
 beyond  the  sky.  That  was  called  A-diti,  the  un-bound,  the  un- 
 bounded ;  one  might  almost  say,  but  for  fear  of  misunderstandings, 
 
 L 
 
146  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 see  again  and  again  how  the  germs  of  the  infinite, 
 which  are  latent  in  such  concepts  as  that  of  the  dawn 
 from  the  very  beginning,  burst  out  under  different 
 forms  in  the  hymns  of  the  Rig-veda. 
 
 The  Dawn. 
 
 One  of  the  salient  features  of  the  dawn  was  its  wide- 
 spreading  splendour.  All  the  other  luminaries  had 
 their  small  circumscribed  spheres.  The  dawn,  how- 
 ever, was  always  called  the  far-reaching,  reaching  to 
 the  very  ends  of  heaven  and  earth.  Thus  we  read, 
 '  The  Dawns  adorn  themselves  with  splendours  in  the 
 ends  of  the  sky  V 
 
 End  and  Endless. 
 
 This  end  and  the  ends  of  heaven  and  earth  are 
 often  mentioned  as  the  limit  of  everything  that 
 can  be  seen.  We  hear  of  the  enemies  of  Indra 
 who  could  not  reach  the  end  of  heaven  and  earth  2, 
 and  of  the  birds  which  at  the  time  of  dawn  come 
 forth  from  the  ends  of  heaven3.  Then  we  meet 
 with  questions  as  to  where  the  end  of  the  waters  in 
 heaven  may  be.  In  one  passage  the  poet  says : 
 '  Where  is  the  highest  point,  where  is  their  lowest,  0 
 waters  (of  heaven),  where  is  your  middle,  where  your 
 end 4  ? '  This  is  how  ideas  sprout  and  grow,  and 
 this  is  how  the  idea  of  the  endless  and  infinite  opens 
 slowly  and  quietly  before  our  very  eyes. 
 
 the  Absolute.  Aditi  is  a  name  for  the  distant  East,  but  Aditi  is 
 more  than  the  dawn.  Aditi  is  beyond  the  dawn,  and  in  one  place 
 (I.  113,  19)  the  dawn  is  called  the  face  of  Aditi.'  (M.  M.,  Hymns  to 
 the  Maruts,  1869,  pp.  230-231.  See  also  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Lan- 
 guage, 1864,  ii.  547.) 
 
 1  Vi  a^ate  diva/*  anteshu  aktim — ushasaft.     Rv.  VII.  79,  2. 
 
 2  Na  ye  diva/t  pn'thivya/j  antam  apu/t.     Rv.  I.  33,  10. 
 
 3  Diva/t  antebhya/i  pari.     Rv.  I.  49,  3. 
 
 4  Kva  svit  agram  kva  budhna/i  asam  apa/i  madhyam  kva  va/i 
 nunam  antaft.     Rv.  X.  Ill,  8. 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.    147 
 
 Heaven  and  earth  are  called  at  first  wide  and  broad, 
 afterwards  dure-ante,  with  distant  ends  (I.  185,  7). 
 Then  the  roads  are  mentioned  on  which  day  and  nio-ht 
 wander  across  heaven  and  earth,  and  these  roads  are 
 distinctly  called  an  ant  a  or  endless.     Thus  we  read, 
 '  The  same  road  of  the  two  sisters,  that  is,  of  day  and 
 night,  is  endless1.'     Again,  'Wide  and  endless  roads 
 go  round  heaven  and  earth  on  all  sides  V     After  this 
 there  was  but  a  small  step  before  the  light  of  the  sun 
 could  be  called  endless  (I.  115,  5),  before  heaven  was 
 called   endless  (I.  130,  3  ;  IV.  1,  7),  and  before  the 
 power  of  several  of  the  gods  received  the  same  name. 
 Thus  we  read,  '  The  end  of  thy  power,  O  Indra,  cannot 
 be  reached  V     The  same  is  said  of  the  might  of  the 
 Maruts,  the  storms  (I.  167,  9  ;  I.  64,  10)  ;  and  of  Vishnu 
 (VII.  99, 2) ;  and  at  last  even  of  the  power  of  the  rivers 
 Sarasvati  and  Sindhu  (VI.  61,  8 ;  X.  75,  3). 
 
 Endless  in  the  Avesta. 
 
 The  same  intellectual  process  which  in  the  Veda  is 
 carried  on  before  our  eyes  in  all  its  completeness,  can 
 be  watched,  though  in  a  more  fragmentary  form  only, 
 in  the  Avesta  also.  There,  too,  we  read,  for  instance, 
 in  the  XIII  Yast  (I.  2),  the  Yaat  of  the  Farvardin  (i.e. 
 the  Fravashis)  : 
 
 '  2.  Through  their  brightness  and  glory,  O  Zarathu*- 
 tra,  I  (Ahura  Mazda)  maintain  that  sky  there  above, 
 shining  and  seen  afar,  and  encompassing  this  earth  all 
 around. 
 
 3.  It  looks  like  a  palace,  that  stands  built  of  a  heavenly 
 
 1  Samana/i  adhva  svasro/i  ananta//,     Rv.  I.  113,  3. 
 
 2  Anantasa/i  urava/i  visvata/«  sim  pari  dyavaprithivi  yanti  lmntha/t 
 Rv.  V.  47,  2. 
 
 3  Nahi  te  anta/j  savasa/t  parinase.     Rv.  I.  54, 1 ;  see  also  1. 100, 15  ; 
 VI.  29,  5. 
 
 L  2 
 
148  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 substance,  firmly  established,  with  ends  that  lie  far 
 apart,  shining  in  its  body  of  ruby  over  the  three-thirds 
 (of  the  earth) ;  it  is  like  a  garment  inlaid  with  stars, 
 made  of  a  heavenly  substance,  that  Mazda  nuts  on, 
 along  with  Mithra  and  Kashnu  and  Spe?ita-Armaiti, 
 and  on  no  side  can  the  eye  perceive  the  end  of  it! 
 
 This  is  what  I  meant  when  I  said  that  the  infinite 
 was  perceived  in  the  finite  phenomena  of  nature,  till 
 those  phenomena  themselves  were  conceived  and  named 
 as  endless  beings. 
 
 Theogonic  Elements. 
 
 Every  one  of  our  perceptions  comprises  a  multitude 
 of  ingredients,  though  we  are  not  aware  of  them  till 
 we  call  them  by  a  name.  We  think  of  the  dawn  and  of 
 heaven  and  earth  at  first  neither  as  finite  nor  infinite  ; 
 but  as  soon  as  our  attention  is  called  to  their  character, 
 we  speak  of  them  and  conceive  them  as  either  finite  or 
 infinite.  Not  every  object,  however,  of  our  sensuous 
 perception  can  be  thus  called  and  conceived.  A  stone 
 is  not  infinite,  nor  a  shell,  nor  an  apple,  nor  a  dog,  and 
 hence  they  have  no  theogonic  capacity.  But  a  river  or  a 
 mountain,  and  still  more  the  sky  and  the  dawn,  possess 
 theogonic  capacity,  because  they  have  in  themselves 
 from  the  beginning  something  going  beyond  the  limits 
 of  sensuous  perception,  something  which,  for  want  of  a 
 better  word,  I  must  continue  to  call  infinite. 
 
 All  this  Professor  Gruppe,  if  he  had  read  with  a 
 willing  and  unprejudiced  mind,  would  easily  have  dis- 
 covered in  my  former  explanations,  instead  of  assuring 
 me  and  other  Vedic  scholars  'that  Vedic  poets  do  not 
 fly  up  to  the  solar  bird.'  It  is  painful  to  see  a  real 
 scholar  condescend  to  such  unscholarlike  manoeuvres. 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.     149 
 How  the  Perception  of  the  Infinite  led  to  Religious  Ideas. 
 
 If  then  we  have  clearly  established  the  fact  that 
 our  experience,  or  our  states  of  consciousness,  or  our 
 Ego-knowledge,  whatever  you  like  to  call  it,  consists 
 of  perceptions  of  the  finite,  and  with  it,  at  the  same 
 time,  of  the  infinite,  we  may  now  go  on  to  divide  off 
 that  portion  in  the  perceptions  of  the  finite  and  the 
 infinite  which  constitutes  the  proper  domain  of  re- 
 ligion ;  and  we  have  to  show  how  these  perceptions 
 are  worked  up  into  religious  concepts  and  names. 
 
 It  may,  no  doubt,  be  said  that  the  perception  of  the 
 infinite  is  in  itself  a  perception  of  something  negative 
 only,  of  something  which  is  not  the  finite  such  as  we 
 perceive  it  in  all  its  variety,  and  of  which  therefore 
 we  can  predicate  nothing  except  that  it  is.  We 
 know  that  the  infinite  is,  but  we  do  not  know  what 
 it  is,  because  it  always  begins  where  our  finite  know- 
 ledge seems  to  end. 
 
 This  is  perfectly  true  logically,  but  it  is  not  true 
 psychologically.  The  human  mind  in  discovering 
 the  infinite  behind  the  finite,  does  not  separate  the 
 two.  We  can  never  draw  a  line  where  the  finite  ends 
 and  the  infinite  begins.  The  sky,  for  instance,  was 
 perceived  as  blue  or  grey,  it  had  its  horizon,  and  so 
 far  it  was  perceived  as  finite  ;  but  it  was  at  the  same 
 time  the  infinite  sky,  because  it  was  felt  that  beyond 
 what  was  seen  of  the  sky  there  is  and  must  be  an 
 infinite  complement  which  no  eye  could  see.  The 
 infinite  per  se,  as  a  mere  negative,  would  have  had 
 no  interest  for  primitive  man  ;  but  as  the  background, 
 as  the  support,  as  the  subject  or  the  cause  of  the 
 finite  in  its  many  manifestations,  it  came  in  from  the 
 earliest   period  of  human   thought.     There  were    in 
 
150  LECTUKE    VI. 
 
 fact  few  finite  things  which  were  conceived  without 
 some  infinite  complement. 
 
 Tangible,  Semi-tangible,  Intangible  Objects. 
 
 Let  us  see  how  this  arose.  It  might  seem  as  if  our 
 five  senses  delivered  to  us  nothing  but  objects  com- 
 plete in  themselves,  which  we  can  touch  and  handle 
 all  round,  which  we  can  smell,  taste,  see  and  hear. 
 But  is  that  so  ? 
 
 It  is  true1,  no  doubt,  of  such  objects  as  stones, 
 bones,  shells,  flowers,  berries,  logs  of  wood.  All 
 these  are  complete  in  themselves,  and  no  one  would 
 suspect  anything  in  them  beyond  what  we  can  see 
 and  touch. 
 
 But  very  soon  our  surroundings  accustom  us  to 
 other  objects  which  seem  indeed  perfect  in  themselves, 
 but  which  do  not  lie  completely  within  the  grasp  of 
 our  senses.  Without  being  aware  of  it,  we  are  made 
 familiar  with  objects  which  we  treat  as  if  we  knew 
 them  as  well  as  a  stone,  or  a  bone,  or  a  shell,  but 
 which,  if  we  examine  them  more  closely,  contain 
 more  or  less  of  an  unknown  residuum.  I  call  this 
 first  class  of  objects,  those  which  we  know  all  round, 
 tangible  objects,  and  I  distinguish  them  from  semi- 
 tangible  and  intangible  objects,  which  we  shall  now 
 have  to  examine. 
 
 Trees. 
 
 Trees,  mountains,  rivers  and  the  earth  seem  all 
 very  tangible  and  completely  perceptible  objects,  but 
 are  they  so  ?  We  may  stand  beneath  a  tree,  touch  it, 
 look  up  to  it,  but  our  senses  can  never  take  in  the 
 whole  of  it.     Its  deepest  roots  are  beyond  our  reach, 
 
 1  See  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  180  seq. 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.     151 
 
 its  highest  branches  tower  high  above  our  head. 
 Besides,  there  is  something  in  the  tree  which,  for 
 want  of  a  better  name,  we  call  its  life,  and  which 
 to  an  unscientific,  and  possibly  to  a  scientific  gener- 
 ation likewise,  is  something  mysterious,  something 
 beyond  the  reach  of  our  senses,  and  it  may  be,  of 
 our  understanding  also.  A  tree,  therefore,  has  some- 
 thing intangible,  something  unknowable,  something 
 infinite  in  it.  It  combines,  as  I  said,  the  finite  and 
 the  infinite,  or  it  presents  to  us  something  infinite 
 under  a  finite  appearance l. 
 
 Mountains. 
 
 The  same  applies  to  mountains.  The  early  settlers 
 of  this  earth,  when  standing  at  the  foot  of  a  mountain 
 and  looking  up  to  where  its  head  vanishes  in  the 
 clouds,  could  not  help  feeling  overawed  by  these 
 stupendous  giants.  We  take  all  these  things  for 
 granted,  and  we  have  learnt  to  know  what  is  beyond 
 these  mountains ;  nay,  how  they  were  made,  and 
 how  they  can  be  unmade.  But  to  the  early  people  a 
 mountain-range  marked  the  end  of  their  little  world. 
 They  saw  the  dawn,  the  sun,  the  moon  and  the  stars 
 rising  above  the  mountain-tops,  the  very  sky  seemed 
 to  rest  on  them  ;  but  what  was  beyond  or  beneath 
 or  above,  no  one  could  guess.  In  later  times  the 
 highest  mountains  were  often  believed  to  be  the  seats 
 of  the  gods,  and  the  highest  points  were  often  chosen 
 as  the  most  appropriate  for  building  temples  to  the 
 gods.  And  let  us  think  not  of  our  own  small  valleys 
 and  wooded  hills  only,  but  of  that  country  where  the 
 Vedic    hymns    were    first    uttered,    and   where    Dr. 
 
 1  See  Hibbert  Lectures  by  John  Rhys  p.  216. 
 
152  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 Hooker  saw  from  one  point  twenty  snow-peaks  each 
 over  20,000  feet  high,  supporting  the  blue  dome  of  an 
 horizon  that  stretched  over  one-hundred-and-sixty 
 degrees.  We  shall  then  more  easily  understand  how 
 the  view  of  a  temple  resting  on  such  columns  might 
 call  out  a  feeling  of  the  presence  of  the  infinite  even 
 in  the  most  simple-minded  spectator. 
 
 Rivers. 
 
 Next  to  mountains  come  rivers  and  waterfalls. 
 Here  too  we  see  indeed  the  mass  of  water  which 
 daily  passes  before  our  eyes,  but  we  never  see  the 
 whole  river,  we  never  see  the  same  river.  Without 
 thinking  of  all  the  benefits  which  rivers  confer  on 
 those  who  settle  on  their  banks,  by  fertilising  their 
 fields,  feeding  their  flocks,  and  defending  them  better 
 than  any  fortress  against  the  assaults  of  their  enemies  ; 
 without  thinking  also  of  the  fearful  destruction  that 
 can  be  wrought  by  an  angry  river,  or  of  the  sudden 
 death  of  those  who  sink  into  its  waves,  the  mere 
 sight  of  a  torrent  coming  they  know  not  whence  and 
 going  they  know  not  whither,  must  have  called  forth 
 a  feeling  in  the  heart  of  man  that  he  stood  in  the 
 presence  of  powers  which  were  to  him  invisible  and 
 infinite,  and  which  he  afterwards  called  divine. 
 
 Earth. 
 
 Nothing  again  may  seem  to  us  more  simple  and  real 
 than  the  earth  on  which  we  stand.  But  if  we  want  to 
 speak  of  it  as  something  complete  in  itself,  like  a  stone, 
 or  a  shell,  or  an  apple,  our  senses  fail  us,  and  we  can 
 trust  to  our  imagination  only.  What  corresponds  to 
 the  name  earth  is  not  something  of  which  we  can  see 
 the  horizon,  not  something  finite,  but  something  ex- 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.    153 
 
 tending  far  beyond  our  sensuous  horizon,  something- 
 visible  to  a  very  small  extent  only,  and  beyond  that 
 again  undefined,  unknown,  or  infinite. 
 
 In  the  perception  of  these  so-called  semi-tangible 
 objects  we  see  the  steps  supplied  by  nature  herself 
 on  which  the  human  mind  advanced,  almost  uncon- 
 sciously, from  the  finite  to  the  not  altogether  finite, 
 and  at  last  to  the  infinite.  It  is  important  to  observe 
 that  these  steps  were  not  the  result  of  reasoning; 
 they  were  advances  almost  inevitable  in  the  slow  dis- 
 covery and  conquest  of  the  world  by  which  man  was 
 surrounded. 
 
 But  besides  these  semi-tangible  objects,  our  ex- 
 perience supplies  us  with  others  which  are  altogether 
 intangible. 
 
 Clouds,  Stars,  Moon,  Sun,  Sky. 
 
 Strange  as  it  may  seem,  there  are  many  things 
 which  we  can  see,  but  which  we  cannot  touch.  The 
 clouds  are  visible,  but  generally  not  tangible.  But 
 even  if  we  reckoned  the  clouds  among  our  semi-tan- 
 gible percepts,  there  is  the  sky,  there  are  the  stars, 
 and  the  moon,  and  the  sun,  none  of  which  can  ever  be 
 touched.  In  all  these  percepts  the  infinite  prepon- 
 derates over  the  finite,  and  the  mind  of  man  is  driven, 
 whether  he  likes  it  or  not,  to  admit  something  beyond 
 the  finite.  When  from  some  high  mountain-peak  our 
 eye  travels  as  far  as  it  can,  watching  the  clouds,  and 
 the  sky,  and  the  setting  sun  and  the  rising  stars,  it  is 
 not  by  any  process  of  conscious  reasoning  that  we 
 conclude  there  is  something  infinite  beyond  the  sky, 
 beyond  the  sun,  beyond  the  stars.  It  might  truly  be 
 said  that  we  are  actually  brought  in  sensuous  contact 
 with  it ;  we  see  and  feel  it.     In  feeling  the  limit,  we 
 
154  LECTURE   VI, 
 
 cannot  help  feeling  also  what  is  beyond  the  limit ;  we 
 are  in  the  actual  presence  of  a  visible  infinite. 
 
 Demi-Gods  and  Great  Gods. 
 
 If  then  we  look  at  these  three  classes  of  tangible, 
 semi-tangible,  and  intangible  objects,  we  shall  see  at 
 once  that  while  the  first  class  lent  itself  to  no  religious 
 development — for  fetishism  or  the  worship  of  stones 
 and  bones  is  a  retrogressive,  not  a  progressive  religious 
 development — the  second  class  has  supplied  ample 
 material  for  what  we  call  demi-gods,  while  the  third 
 class  contains  the  germs  of  most  of  the  great  gods  of 
 the  ancient  world.  What  Hesiod  called  the  first-born 
 gods  were  mostly  identical  with  semi-tangible  mani- 
 festations, '  Tell  us,'  he  says,  '  how  at  first  gods  and 
 the  earth  arose,  and  the  rivers,  and  the  endless  sea, 
 with  swollen  waves,  and  the  bright  stars  and  the  wide 
 sky  above  ;  and  those  who  arose  hence,  the  gods,  the 
 givers  of  good  things  V 
 
 What  we  call  spirits  of  the  trees,  or  Dryacles,  spirits 
 of  the  brooks,  or  Nymphs,  were  likewise  originally 
 semi-tangible  percepts.  Seneca,  in  one  of  his  letters, 
 says  :  '  We  contemplate  with  awe  the  heads  or  sources 
 of  the  great  rivers.  We  erect  altars  to  a  rivulet  which 
 suddenly  and  vigorously  breaks  forth  from  the  dark. 
 We  worship  the  springs  of  hot  water,  and  certain 
 lakes  are  sacred  to  us,  on  account  of  their  darkness 
 and  unfathomable  depth.'  Here  we  have  a  recognition 
 of  the  sense  of  the  infinite  as  the  source  of  religious 
 imagination  and  worship. 
 
 1  Hesiod,  Theog.  i.  108  : 
 
 Eiirare  8'  dis  ra  irpouTa  6(ol  Kal  yaia  yevovro, 
 
 Kal  TTOTdfAol  Kal  TTUVTOS  aTTiipiTOS,   Ol8fJ.aTl   0VQJV, 
 
 darpa  re  \af/.TT€TuoovTa  xal  ovpavus  evpvs  vnepdtv, 
 oi  t  Ik  rwv  kyevovro  Oeol,  hojTTJpcs  laoov. 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.     155 
 
 Intangible  objects  grow  mostly  into  great  gods,  and 
 when  Ennius  exclaims, 
 
 Adspice  hoc  sublime  candens,  quern  invocant  omnes  Iovem  l, 
 
 we  see  how  to  him  the  sublime  light  in  the  highest 
 heaven  was  the  first  manifestation  of  the  highest  god. 
 
 The  Infinite  in  Man  as  an  Object. 
 
 But  the  infinite  was  not  discovered  behind  the  veil 
 of  nature  only,  though  its  manifestation  in  physical 
 phenomena  was  no  doubt,  as  we  shall  see,  the  most 
 primitive  and  the  most  fertile  source  of  mythological 
 and  religious  ideas.  There  were  two  more  manifesta- 
 tions of  the  infinite  and  the  unknown,  which  must  not 
 be  neglected,  if  we  wish  to  gain  a  complete  insight 
 into  the  theogonic  process  through  which  the  human 
 mind  had  to  pass  from  its  earliest  days.  The  infinite 
 disclosed  itself  not  only  in  nature,  but  likewise  in 
 man,  looked  upon  as  an  object,  and  lastly  in  man, 
 looked  upon  as  a  subject. 
 
 The  Something-  behind  Man. 
 
 Man  looked  upon  as  an  object,  as  a  living  thing,  was 
 felt  to  be  more  than  a  mere  part  of  nature,  more  than 
 a  river,  or  a  tree,  or  an  animal.  There  was  something 
 in  man,  whether  it  was  called  breath  or  spirit  or  soul 
 or  mind,  which  was  perceived  and  yet  not  perceived, 
 which  was  behind  the  veil  of  the  body,  and  from  a 
 very  early  time  was  believed  to  remain  free  from 
 decay,  even  when  illness  and  death  had  destroyed 
 the  body  in  which  it  seemed  to  dwell  There  was 
 nothing  to  force  even  the  simplest  peasant  to  believe 
 that  because  he  saw  his  father  dead  and  his  body 
 decaying,  therefore  what  was  known  as  the  man  him- 
 
 1  Cic.  N.  D.  ii.  25,  65. 
 
156  -  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 self,  call  it  his  soul,  or  his  mind,  or  his  person,  had 
 vanished  altogether  out  of  existence.  A  philosopher 
 may  arrive  at  such  an  idea,  but  a  man  of  ordinary 
 understanding,  though  terrified  by  the  aspect  of  death, 
 would  rather  be  inclined  to  believe  that  what  he  had 
 known  and  loved  and  called  his  father  or  mother,  must 
 be  somewhere,  though  no  longer  in  the  body. 
 
 We  need  not  here  inquire  into  the  logical  correctness 
 of  the  argument  on  which  a  belief  in  the  continuance  of 
 a  personal  existence  is  based.  These  questions  belong 
 to  a  much  later  time.  All  we  have  to  do  is  to  under- 
 stand how  natural  the  supposition  was  that  there  was 
 such  a  continuance.  It  is  perhaps  too  much  to  say 
 that  such  a  belief  was  universal ;  but  it  certainly  was 
 widely  spread  and  is  still  very  widely  spread.  In 
 fact  it  constitutes  a  very  large  portion  of  religion  and 
 religious  worship,  and  has  been  very  fully  examined 
 of  late  by  students  of  Natural  Theology. 
 
 The  Infinite  behind  Man. 
 
 If  I  call  the  recognition  of  an  immortal  element  in 
 man  a  perception  of  the  infinite,  I  am  well  aware  that 
 I  stretch  the  meaning  of  infinite  beyond  its  usual 
 limits.  But  I  look  in  vain  for  another  term  equally 
 comprehensive  and  less  liable  to  ambiguity.  The 
 perception  of  something  beyond  the  grasp  of  our 
 senses,  is  always  perception  of  something  infinite, 
 though  in  this  case  the  infinite  would  have  to  be 
 further  defined  as  immortal. 
 
 Religious  Ideas  springing-  from  it. 
 
 How  religious  ideas  could  spring  from  the  perception 
 of  something  infinite  or  immortal  in  our  parents, 
 grand-parents  and  ancestors,  we  can  see  even  at  the 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.    157 
 
 present  day.  Among  the  Zulus,  for  instance,  Unku- 
 lunkulu  or  Ukidukulu,  which  means  the  great- 
 great-grandfather,  has  become  the  name  of  god.  It 
 is  true  that  each  family  has  its  own  Unkulunkuht, 
 and  that  his  name  varies  accordingly1.  But  there  is 
 also  an  Unkidunkulu  of  all  men  (unkidimkuho 
 wabantu  bonke),  and  he  comes  very  near  to  being 
 a  father  of  all  men.  Here  also  we  can  watch  a  very 
 natural  process  of  reasoning.  A  son  would  look 
 upon  his  father  as  his  progenitor ;  he  would  re- 
 member his  father's  father,  possibly  his  father's 
 grandfather.  But  beyond  that  his  own  experience 
 could  hardly  go,  and  therefore  the  father  of  his  own 
 great-grandfather,  of  whom  he  might  have  heard,  but 
 whom  he  had  never  seen,  would  naturally  assume  the 
 character  of  a  distant  unknown  being  ;  and  if  the 
 human  mind  ascended  still  further,  it  would  almost 
 by  necessity  be  driven  to  a  father  of  all  fathers, 
 that  is,  to  a  creator  of  mankind,  if  not  of  the  world. 
 
 Animism. 
 
 It  is  difficult  to  find  a  proper  name  for  this  belief 
 in  and  worship  of  our  fathers.  It  has  been  called 
 Animism,  but  this  has  proved  so  misleading  a  name 
 that  hardly  any  scholar  now  likes  to  employ  it. 
 In  itself  that  name  would  not  be  objectionable,  but 
 unfortunately  the  same  name  has  also  been  used  for 
 a  totally  different  phase  of  religious  thought,  namely 
 for  the  recognition  of  an  active,  living,  or  even  per- 
 sonal element  in  trees,  rivers,  mountains,  and  other 
 parts  of  nature.  As  the  German  expression  Natur- 
 beseelung  was  wrongly  rendered  in  English  by 
 Animism,  we  have  had  two  Animism    to  deal  with, 
 
 1  Callaway,  Unkulunkulu,  p.  103. 
 
158  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 and  there  have  not  been  wanting  attempts  to  show 
 that  the  two  sprang  from  the  same  source. 
 
 Seelencult. 
 
 This  is,  of  course,  thoroughly  misleading.  The  belief 
 in  and  worship  of  ancestral  spirits  is  called  in  German 
 Seelencult  \  but,  to  make  confusion  worse  confounded, 
 Animismhas  been  chosen  by  Lippert,  the  most  powerful 
 advocate  of  this  theory,  as  a  subdivision  of  Seelencult. 
 Nay,  worse  still,  from  the  idea,  prevalent  in  some  popular 
 superstitions,  that  the  soul  of  a  deceased  person  may 
 not  only  haunt  his  former  abode,  but  may  enter  into 
 anything  that  happens  to  be  in  the  way,  a  stone 
 or  a  shell  or  a  log  of  wood,  Fetishism  has  been 
 identified  with  Animism,  and  has  been  defined  as 
 '  the  capability  of  the  soul  to  take  possession  of  any 
 thing  whatsoever  V  And  as  if  this  were  not  yet  suffi- 
 ciently chaotic,  the  ancient  worship  of  nature-gods 
 has  been  explained  by  one  of  these  ancestral  souls 
 having  been  raised  to  the  state  of  a  fetish,  and  taking- 
 possession  of  heaven  and  earth,  of  sun,  moon,  and 
 stars  and  all  the  rest.  Thus,  we  are  told,  Jupiter 
 himself  was  but  a  fetish,  and  a  belief  in  him  was  due 
 to  fetishism,  which  was  evolved  from  animism, 
 which  was  a  belief  in  our  ancestors.  If  one  considers 
 what  fetishism  really  is  3,  namely  the  very  last  stage 
 in  the  downward  course  of  religion,  this  attempt  to 
 make  a  little-understood  superstition  of  some  modern 
 Negro  tribes  the  key  to  the  religion  of  Greeks  and 
 
 1  J.  Lippert,  Der  Seelencult  in  seinen  Beziehungen  zur  althebrdischen 
 Religion,  1881  ;  Die  Religionm  der  europaischeyi  Cidturvolker,  1881  ;  AUgc 
 meinc  Geschichte  des  Priestertums,  1883,  1884. 
 
 2  Gruppe,  p.  241. 
 
 3  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  54,  'Is  Fetishism  a  Primitive  Form  of 
 Religion  ? ' 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATUKE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.     159 
 
 Romans,  nay  of  most  of  the  civilised  nations  of  the 
 world,  is  perfectly  marvellous. 
 
 Of  course  a  philosopher  is  at  liberty  to  define  his 
 words  as  he  pleases,  and  if  any  one  chooses  to  call  the 
 belief  in  '  the  capability  of  the  soul  to  take  possession 
 of  anything  whatever '  fetishism,  or  any  other  ism, 
 he  cannot  easily  be  restrained.  Only  it  should  be 
 clearly  understood  that  the  poor  Negroes  are  not 
 responsible  for  this  confusion  of  language  and  thought, 
 and  that,  if  we  continue  to  call  a  portion  of  their 
 religion  fetishism,  that  fetishism  has  hardly  anything 
 in  common  with  the  fetishism  of  modern  philosophers. 
 
 Strange  Names.     Totemism. 
 
 There  seems  to  be  a  peculiar  fascination  in  strange 
 names.  They  sound  learned  and  mysterious,  and 
 seem  to  be  above  definition.  Like  fetishism,  totemism 
 has  a  perfectly  legitimate  and  well  understood  mean- 
 ing among  the  Red  Indians.  We  shall  have  to  treat 
 of  Totemism  very  fully  when  we  come  to  treat  of 
 customs  and  their  relation  to  religious  ideas.  But 
 the  real  meaning  of  Totemism  has  been  so  much 
 watered  down  that  almost  anything  in  the  shape 
 of  a  sign  of  recognition  or  emblem  can  now  be 
 baptised  a  totem.  The  British  Lion  has  scarcely  es- 
 caped being  christened  a  totem,  and  the  rose,  sham- 
 rock, and  thistle,  particularly  the  last,  stand  in  equal 
 danger  of  losing  their  good  name.  And  thus  it  has 
 really  come  to  pass  that  certain  philosophers,  after 
 satisfying  themselves  that  the  human  mind  must 
 everywhere  pass  through  the  stages  of  animism  and 
 fetishism,  have  landed  us  finally  in  totemism.  Pro- 
 fessor  Gruppe  tells  us  (p.  241)  that  if  a  sky-fetish  or 
 
160  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 a  star-fetish  becomes  a  totem,  new  ideas  spring  up 
 in  the  human  mind  leading  to  a  belief  in  'sons  of 
 heaven,'  or  '  children  of  the  sun ; '  so  that  in  the 
 end  every  religion,  whether  ancient  or  modern,  not 
 excluding  Christianity,  can  be  fully  accounted  for 
 by  Animism,  Fetishism,  and  Totemism. 
 
 In  order  to  secure  clearness  of  thought  and  honesty 
 of  reasoning  in  the  study  of  religion,  I  am  afraid 
 these  three  terms  ought  to  be  sent  into  exile.  They 
 have  become  dangerous,  and  if  they  arc  to  be  restored 
 to  their  citizenship,  it  can  only  be  on  condition  that 
 they  should  be  confined  to  their  proper  and  accurately 
 defined  sphere,  Animism  as  the  name  of  a  belief  and 
 worship  of  ancestral  spirits  ;  Fetishism  as  the  name 
 of  a  belief  in  chance  objects  being  possessed  of  mira- 
 culous powers,  common  among  certain  Negro  tribes ; 
 and  Totemism  as  the  name  of  a  custom  widely  spread 
 among  Red  Indians  and  other  tribes,  who  have 
 chosen  some  emblem  as  the  token  of  their  family  or 
 tribe,  and  who  pay  reverence  to  it  or  regard  it  even 
 as  their  ancestor,  whether  human  or  superhuman. 
 
 If  we  keep  these  three  terms  properly  defined  and 
 separate,  it  will  be  clear  that  it  is  from  what  we  call 
 Animism,  from  the  wide-spread  belief  and  worship  of 
 ancestors,  that  the  simplest  and  most  primitive  ideas 
 of  immortality  arose  in  the  human  heart.  This 
 imparts  the  highest  importance  to  the  second  branch 
 of  our  subject,  the  study  of  the  infinite  as  perceived 
 in  man. 
 
 Tne  Infinite  in  Man  as  a  Subject. 
 
 The  third  and  last  manifestation  behind  which  it 
 was  possible  to  discover  something  infinite,  something 
 unknown  and  yet  real,  was,  what  I  call  the  Self,  that  is, 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.      161 
 
 man  himself,  looked  upon  not  objectively  as  another, 
 but  subjectively  as  the  self.  Little  as  we  may  suspect 
 it,  self-consciousness,  or  the  consciousness  of  self,  has 
 given  rise  from  the  earliest  times  to  as  rich  a  mytho- 
 logy as  the  intuition  of  nature  and  the  love  of  our 
 parents  and  ancestors.  That  mythology  has  really 
 survived  longer  than  any  other,  for  we  still  live 
 in  it  and  speak  of  spirit  and  soul  and  mind  and  in- 
 tellect and  genius  and  many  smaller  psychological 
 deities  as  so  many  independent  beings  or  powers  or 
 faculties,  just  as  the  Greeks  spoke  of  their  Zeus, 
 Apollo,  and  Athene.  But  what  our  genius  or  our 
 mind  or  our  soul  really  is,  what  they  are  made  of, 
 what  they  are  substantially,  we  know  as  little  as  the 
 Greeks  knew  what  Zeus,  Apollo,  and  Athene  were 
 made  of. 
 
 Psychological  Deities. 
 
 We  are  quite  willing  to  admit  that  there  never  was 
 a  Zeus  or  an  Apollo  or  an  Athene,  and  that  these  are 
 but  names  for  physical  phenomena  personified,  or  of 
 the  various  activities  of  an  unknown  agent  behind 
 nature.  But  to  be  asked  to  admit  that  there  is  no 
 such  thing  as  spirit,  mind,  understanding,  intellect  or 
 reason  within  us,  and  that  all  these  are  but  names  for 
 certain  activities  of  our  sentient  self,  seems  intolerable 
 as  yet,  though  thinkers  brought  up  in  the  strict 
 scholastic  training  of  the  middle  ages,  and  independent 
 thinkers  also,  such  as  Spinoza  1J  for  instance,  never 
 
 1  '  Mens  certus  et  determinates  modus  cogitandi  est,  adeoque 
 suarum  actionum  non  potest  esse  causa  libera.'  Ethica,  ii.  48, 
 Demonstr.  '  Eodem  hoc  modo  demonstratur  in  mente  nulla m  dari 
 facultatem  absolutam  intelligendi,  cupiendi,  amandi,  etc.  Unde 
 sequitur,  has  et  similes  facilitates  vel  prorsus  fictitias  vel  nihil  esse 
 praeter  entia  metaphysica  sive  universalia,  quae  ox  particularibus 
 
 M 
 
162  LECTUEE   VI. 
 
 hesitated  on  that  point.  But,  even  from  a  purely 
 historical  point  of  view,  it  is  clear  that  by  spirit  was 
 meant  at  first  nothing  but  the  air  which  is  drawn 
 in  by  our  lungs,  and  given  out  again  as  breath. 
 And  as  with  the  cessation  of  this  breathing  all  bodily 
 activity  came  to  an  end,  spiritus  came  naturally  to  be 
 used  as  a  synonym  for  life,  or  rather  it  meant  life, 
 before  there  was  this  more  abstract  name  of  life. 
 Again,  as  with  the  extinction  of  life,  all  mental 
 activity  also  became  extinguished,  spirit  came  like- 
 wise to  be  used  as  a  synonym  for  mental  life.  That 
 mental  life  consisted,  as  we  saw,  in  sensation  1,  per- 
 ception, conception,  and  naming,  and  in  accordance 
 with  this,  four  agencies,  if  not  agents,  were  imagined, 
 called  respectively  sense,  imagination,  intellect,  and 
 language  or  logos. 
 
 Sense,  Imagination,  Intellect,  Language. 
 
 With  regard  to  sense,  there  was  some  excuse,  be- 
 cause the  organs  of  sense,  the  eyes,  the  ears,  the  nose, 
 the  tongue  and  the  skin  were  actually  there.  But 
 when  the  power  of  changing  percepts  into  concepts 
 was  ascribed  to  the  faculty  of  imagination,  and  the 
 power  of  naming  concepts  to  the  faculty  of  language ; 
 when,  lastly,  the  process  of  adding  and  subtracting 
 concepts  and  names  was  ascribed  to  a  new  faculty, 
 that  of  reason,  there  arose  a  whole  Olympus  of  unseen 
 deities.  No  doubt,  as  Ennius  said,  '  Look  at  that 
 sublime  light  which  all  people  invoke  as  Jupiter,'  the 
 
 formare  solemus.     Adeo  lit  intellectus  et  voluntas  ad  hanc  et  illam 
 ideam  vel  ad  hanc  et  illam  volitionem  eodem  modo   sese  habeant 
 ac  lapideitas  ad  hunc  et  ilium  lapidem,  vel  ut  homo  ad  Petrum  et 
 Paulum.'     Eth.  ii.  48,  Schol     See  also  Caird,  Spinoza,  p.  195. 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  20. 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATURE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.      163 
 
 believer  in  these  mental  deities  also  might  say,  '  Look 
 at  that  sublime  light  within  you  which  all  people  call 
 Reason.'  But  as  we  have  ceased  to  believe  in  Jupiter, 
 we  shall  also  have  to  surrender  our  belief  in  Reason, 
 as  an  independent  agency,  or  faculty,  or  power,  and 
 translate  the  old  poetry  of  mythology  into  the  sober 
 prose  of  psychology. 
 
 We  shall  continue  to  reason  all  the  same,  though  we 
 do  not  profess  to  have  Reason,  just  as  we  continue  to 
 be  patient,  though  we  do  not  possess  a  something- 
 called  Patience.  The  change  is  not  so  violent  as  it 
 seems.  We  mean  much  the  same  when  we  say,  It 
 rains,  as  what  the  Greeks  meant  when  they  said  that 
 Zeus  rained ;  and  we  shall  continue  to  reason  just  the 
 same,  though  we  no  longer  say  that  we  are  guided  by 
 reason  or  fall  down  to  worship  a  goddess  of  Reason. 
 The  facts  remain,  only  we  conceive  them  more  cor- 
 rectly. 
 
 Devatas. 
 
 It  may  sound  strange  to  call  these  faculties  dei- 
 ties, but  in  India  that  name,  devata,  was  actually 
 used  from  a  very  early  period,  from  the  period 
 of  the  Upanishads,  and  they  formed  from  a  very 
 early  time  subjects,  not  indeed  of  adoration,  but 
 of  meditation.  This  led  to  a  philosophy  which  is  con- 
 tained in  the  Upanishads,  treatises  found  at  the  end 
 of  the  different  Vedas,  and  therefore  called  Vedanta. 
 
 Atma. 
 
 And  in  the  same  way  as  behind  the  various 
 gods  of  nature,  one  supreme  deity  was  at  last  dis- 
 covered in  India,  the  Brahmans  imagined  that  they 
 perceived  behind  these  different  manifestations  of 
 feeling,  thought,  and  will  also,  a  supreme  power  which 
 
 m  1 
 
164  LECTURE   VI. 
 
 they  called  Atma,  or  self,  and  of  which  these  intellec- 
 tual powers  or  faculties  were  but  the  outward  mani- 
 festations. This  led  to  a  philosophy  which  took  the 
 place  of  religion,  and  recognised  in  the  self  the  only 
 true  being,  the  unborn  and  therefore  immortal  ele- 
 ment in  man.  A  step  further  led  to  the  recognition 
 of  the  original  identity  of  the  subjective  Self  in 
 man  and  the  objective  Self  in  nature,  and  thus, 
 from  an  Indian  point  of  view,  to  a  solution  of  all  the 
 riddles  of  the  world.  The  first  commandment  of  all 
 philosophy,  '  Know  thyself,'  became  in  the  philosophy 
 of  the  Upanishads,  4  Know  thy  self  as  the  Self,'  or,  as 
 it  was  translated  into  religious  language,  '  Know  that 
 we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  in  God '  (Acts 
 xvii.  28). 
 
 Historically  this  Veclanta  philosophy  supplied  the 
 life-spring  of  the  Buddhist  religion  in  its  philosophical 
 aspect,  and  will  therefore  supply  the  last  and  per- 
 haps the  most  important  chapter  in  our  study  of 
 Natural  Theology. 
 
 Natural  Religion. 
 
 We  have  thus  surveyed  the  whole  field  of  Natural 
 Religion,  and  discovered  the  three  great  divisions 
 into  which  it  naturally  falls.  Nature,  Man,  and  Self 
 are  the  three  great  manifestations  in  which  the  infinite 
 in  some  shape  or  other  has  been  perceived,  and  every 
 one  of  these  perceptions  has  in  its  historical  develop- 
 ment contributed  to  what  may  be  called  religion. 
 
 Physical,  Anthropological,  Psychological  Religion. 
 
 I  shall  distinguish  these  three  divisions  as  Physical 
 Religion,  Anthropological  Religion,  and  Psychological 
 Religion,  and,  if  my  life  is  spared,  I  hope  to  make 
 
THE  INFINITE  IN  NATUKE,  MAN,  AND  THE  SELF.      165 
 
 these  three  the  subject  of  my  courses  of  lectures,  illus- 
 trated by  such  evidence  as  language,  myth,  custom, 
 and  sacred  literature  supply.  The  subject,  I  know,  is 
 enormous,  and  I  cannot  promise  you  more  than  an 
 outline,  but  such  an  outline,  I  hope,  as  may  be  filled 
 by  others  who  come  after  us,  and  whose  knowledge, 
 I  have  no  doubt,  will  shed  light  on  many  a  dark 
 passage  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind  which  we 
 must  leave  but  faintly  illuminated  by  the  information 
 at  present  without  our  reach. 
 
LECTURE  VII. 
 
 EELIGION   DIFFERENT   FROM   SCIENCE. 
 Religious  Character. 
 
 WE  have  not  finished  yet  with  mapping  out  the  plan 
 of  our  work,  and  with  denning  the  exact  limits 
 of  what  really  constitutes  religion.  We  have  seen  that 
 nature,  with  its  mountains,  rivers,  and  trees,  with  its 
 sky,  sun,  moon,  dawn,  and  wind,  can  supply  food  for 
 religious  thought.  We  have  seen  that  a  belief  in  man- 
 kind as  an  unbroken  chain  leading  from  our  own 
 father  to  the  great-great-grandfather  of  all  men  and 
 all -things,  may  likewise  become  a  most  powerful  re- 
 ligious influence ;  and  I  have  tried  to  explain  how  the 
 study  of  our  own  nature  with  its  various  capacities 
 may  lead  and  has  led  to  a  philosophical  religion  based 
 on  a  perception  of  our  true  self  and  its  relation  to  the 
 Universal  Self. 
 
 But  it  is  clear  that  every  one  of  these  vast  domains  of 
 thought  must  be  pervaded  by  a  very  peculiar  spirit 
 before  it  can  rise  to  the  level  of  what  we  mean  by 
 religion. 
 
 Religion  and  Science. 
 
 At  the  present  time,  for  instance,  we  see  that  not 
 only  religion  but  science  also  deals  with  the  infinite,  or 
 with  much  that  lies  beyond  the  horizon  of  our  sensuous 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  167 
 
 perception.  All  inquiries  into  the  causes  of  natural 
 phenomena  transcend  that  horizon.  When  science 
 traces  back  our  perception  of  sound  and  colour  to 
 vibrations  of  what  is  called  ether,  it  deals  with  the 
 finite  and  the  infinite.  All  the  so-called  forces  of  heat, 
 electricity,  magnetism  lie  beyond  the  finite,  and  by 
 their  very  nature  can  never  come  within  the  purview 
 of  finite  sensuous  perception.  If  the  sun  and  moon 
 and  the  stars  can  rouse  within  the  heart  of  man  re- 
 ligious emotions,  they  can  also  become  the  subject  of 
 minute  scientific  observation  and  calculation  in  the 
 mind  of  the  astronomer. 
 
 In  ancient  times,  however,  science  had  hardly  as 
 yet  separated  from  religion,  and,  historically  speak- 
 ing, science  seems  everywhere  to  have  taken  its 
 origin  from  religion.  The  first  attempts  at  lifting 
 the  veil  of  nature  and  fathoming  the  causes  of 
 things  were  religious.  The  first  astronomical  obser- 
 vatories in  the  world  were  the  towers  attached  to  the 
 temples  in  Babylon  \  When  the  question  was  asked 
 for  the  first  time,  whence  came  the  rain,  the  lightning, 
 and  the  thunder,  the  answer  was  that  rain  came  from 
 the  rainer,  Zcvs  uertoy,  in  Greece,  from  Jupiter  Pluvius 
 in  Italy,  from  Indra  or  PaiY/anya  in  India  ;  lightning 
 from  the  lightner,  Zeu?  Kepavvics,  rtpiriKipavvos,  Jupiter 
 fulgurator  and  fulminator ;  and  thunder  from  the 
 thunderer,  Zei>?  vy\nfSpep.i'n}si  Jupiter  tonans. 
 
 At  a  later  time,  when  these  answers  seemed  no 
 longer  satisfactory,  new  answers  were  attempted,  and 
 science  explained  lightning  as  a  discharge  of  elec- 
 tricity, thunder  as  a  tension  of  the  air,  rain  as  the 
 condensation  of  vapour.     WThat  had  to  be  explained 
 
 1  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  96,  156, 
 
168 
 
 LECTURE   VII. 
 
 remained  throughout  the  same;  the  difference  arose 
 from  the  new  spirit  of  inquiry. 
 
 We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  even  in  our  own 
 scientific  age  prayers  are  still  offered  for  rain,  that  is 
 to  say,  that  the  religious  view  of  nature  has  held  its 
 own,  if  not  against,  at  least  by  the  side  of  the  scientific 
 view.  And  this  will  help  us  to  mark  off  the  domain 
 of  religion  from  that  of  science.  Both  deal  with  that 
 which  lies  behind  or  beyond  our  knowledge,  but  while 
 science  looks  for  causes  of  events,  whatever  these 
 causes  may  be,  religion  is  satisfied  with  admitting 
 agents  for  actions,  who  assume  different  aspects  accord* 
 ing  to  the  poetical  genius  of  every  race. 
 
 What  imparts  a  Religious  Character. 
 
 But  we  must  restrict  the  sphere  of  religion,  so  far 
 as  it  is  founded  on  perceptions  of  the  infinite,  still 
 further.  The  mere  admission  that  there  in  an  agent 
 behind  the  rain,  the  lightning,  the  thunder,  behind 
 night  and  day,  behind  sun  and  moon,  is  not  yet  religion. 
 It  may  be  called  mythology  throughout,  but  in  some 
 cases  it  is  not  even  that.  If  we  say  the  wind  blows, 
 we  hardly  speak  mythologically,  though,  no  doubt,  a 
 very  small  addition  of  poetical  imagination  may  change 
 the  wind  into  an  Aeolus,  or,  as  in  modern  illustrated 
 books,  into  an  angel  with  wings,  blowing  a  visible  puff 
 of  air  out  of  his  mouth.  That  would  be  mythology, 
 but  not  yet  religion. 
 
 In  order  to  avoid  all  confusion  of  thought,  we  must 
 reserve  the  adjective  religious  for  those  perceptions  of 
 the  unknown  or  the  infinite  which  influence  man's 
 actions  and  his  whole  moral  nature.  The  mere 
 reasoning,  for  instance,  which  would  lead  a  sailor  to 
 
RELIGION   DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  169 
 
 spread  his  sail  so  as  to  catch  the  wind  blowing  from 
 the  West,  from  the  setting  of  the  sun,  would  not  yet 
 constitute  a  religious  act,  even  though  the  West- 
 wind  had  been  called  Zephyrus  \  and  become  known 
 as  the  son  of  Eos  and  Astraeos.  We  should  have 
 entered  the  domain  of  mythology,  but  not  yet  that  of 
 religion.  But  when  in  the  Iliad  (xxiii.  192)  the 
 funeral  pile  with  the  corpse  of  Patroklos  on  it,  does 
 not  burn,  and  Achilles  prays  to  the  two  winds,  Boreas 
 and  Zephyros,  and  promises  them  beautiful  offerings 
 (Upa  kclXcl)  if  they  will  come  and  kindle  the  flames, 
 we  shall  then  have  to  admit  that  we  are  at  least  on 
 the  threshold  of  religion,  though  as  yet  on  the  threshold 
 only.  For  though  sacrifices  are  generally  considered 
 as  religious  acts,  they  are  sometimes  mere  customs 
 which  in  the  beginning  had  little  or  nothing  of  religion 
 about  them. 
 
 When,  however,  men  begin  to  feel  constrained  to  do 
 what  they  do  not  like  to  do,  or  to  abstain  from  what 
 they  would  like  to  do,  for  the  sake  of  some  unknown 
 powers  which  they  have  discovered  behind  the  storm 
 or  the  sky  or  the  sun  or  the  moon,  then  we  are  at  last 
 on  religious  ground. 
 
 Moral  Influences  of   Physical  Phenomena. 
 
 It  has  often  been  considered  very  strange  that  a 
 mere  perception  of  the  powers  of  nature  should  have 
 influenced  the  acts  of  men,  or  that  even  a  belief  in 
 personal  agents,  as  manifested  in  such  phenomena  as 
 the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun,  the  changes  of  day 
 and  night,  of  the  seasons  and  of  the  year,  or  again  in 
 
 1  See  M.  M.,  '  ZephjTOS  und  Gahusha,'  in  Techmer's  Internationale 
 Zeitschrift  fur  Allgemeine  Sprachwissenschaft,  1  Band,  1  Heft,  1884. 
 
170 
 
 LECTURE   VII. 
 
 storm  and  rain,  in  thunder  and  lightning,  should  have 
 supplied  motives  for  virtuous  efforts. 
 
 I  am  far  from  maintaining  that  natural  phenomena 
 by  themselves  would  have  sufficed  to  call  out  moral 
 sentiments,  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  in  man.     This  is 
 a  subject  that  belongs  to  the  student  in  ethics,  and  on 
 which  I  do  not  at  present  mean  to  touch.     Thus  Dr. 
 Martineau   writes    in   his  Study  of  Religion,  i.   16 : 
 '  The  enquiries  on  which  we  are  now  entering  have 
 been  preceded  by  a  treatment  of  ethical  theory  (in  his 
 work,  The  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  1885),  the  results 
 of  which  will  here  be  assumed  as  known.     This  order 
 of  exposition  undoubtedly  implies  that  I  do  not  regard 
 moral  rules  as  depending  upon  prior  religious  belief  • 
 and  that  I  do  regard  the  consciousness  of  duty  as  an 
 originating  condition  of  religion.'    Professor  Flint  also, 
 in  his  works  on  Theism  and  Antitheistic  Theories,  re- 
 gards ethics  as  quite  independent  of  religion,  though 
 he  admits  the  powerful  influence  which  religion  may 
 exercise  on  morality.     In  his  chapter  on  Secularism 
 (p.  242)  he  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  morality  which 
 ignores  religion  is  inherently  weak  because  inherently 
 self-contradictory.     But  when   these    sentiments  had 
 once  been  called  forth,  in  however  rudimentary  a  form, 
 the  contemplation  of  natural  phenomena,  whether  in 
 their  unbroken  order  or  in  their  violent  disturbance, 
 might  well   have   reacted  upon  them  and  developed 
 them  in  a  new  direction.     It  has  often  been  said  l  that 
 fear  made  the  gods,  but  it  is  equally  true  to  say  that 
 the  gods,  even  in  their  purely  physical  character,  made 
 men  fear.      When  man   had  once  learnt  to  fear  the 
 gods  of  the  sky  in  their  terrible  aspect,  and  to  admire 
 
 1  '  Primus  in  orbe  deos  fecit  timor,'  Statius,  Tfieb.  iii.  661. 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT   FROM   SCIENCE.  171 
 
 them  in  their  beneficent  character,  what  was  more 
 natural  than  that  this  relation  between  man  and  the 
 gods  should  call  out  the  same  feelings  of  fear  and 
 awe,  but  also  of  respect  and  gratitude,  which  a  child 
 feels  towards  his  parents.  If  a  child  could  implore 
 his  father  to  spare  him,  or  thank  his  mother  for  acts 
 of  kindness,  why  should  not  man  have  implored  the 
 father  of  the  sky  to  restrain  the  storm,  or  thanked  the 
 mother  Earth  for  her  kindly  gifts  ? 
 
 It  is  sometimes  supposed  that  it  was  peculiar  to  the 
 Aryan  nations  only  to  interpret  the  signs  and  wonders 
 of  nature  in  a  religious  sense.  But  it  seems  to  me  that 
 the  same  spirit  pervades  all  the  pages  of  the  Old 
 Testament.  Every  deluge  was  accepted  as  a  punish- 
 ment, and  the  bow  in  the  cloud  was  interpreted  as  a 
 token  of  a  covenant  between  God  and  man.  In  the 
 Psalms  the  anger  of  the  Lord  is  constantly  perceived  in 
 the  great  commotions  of  the  sky  and  the  earth.  '  The 
 earth  shook  and  trembled,  the  foundations  also  of  the 
 hills  moved  and  were  shaken,  because  He  was  wroth.' 
 
 It  is  quite  true  that  not  every  natural  phenomenon, 
 nor  every  god,  would  evoke  such  feelings  of  fear  and 
 awe.  Hermes  and  Hephaestos,  Venus  and  Mars  were 
 not  likely  at  first  to  react  on  the  moral  character  of 
 those  who  believed  in  them  and  celebrated  their 
 achievements.  But  the  gods  of  thunder  and  lightning, 
 the  god  of  rain  and  sunshine,  as  soon  as  they  had  been 
 recognised,  could  hardly  help  being  addressed  by  sup- 
 plicants to  grant  them  their  favour  and  their  pro- 
 tection. 
 
 You  know  the  old  prayer  of  the  Athenians 1  :  vcrov, 
 vaov,  ob  cfiike  Zeu,  Kara  TrjS  apovpas  tG>v  ' kOiivaiuiv  kcu 
 1  Lecf.  S.  L.  ii.  476. 
 
172  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 tQ>v  ireblwv,  '  Rain,  rain,  O  dear  Zeus,  on  the  land  of 
 the  Athenians  and  on  the  fields.' 
 
 Here  we  might  translate  Zeus  by  sky,  but  the 
 vocative  $iAe  Zev,  dear  Zeus,  at  once  brings  in  the 
 personal  element. 
 
 Vedic  Prayers. 
 
 In  the  Veda  also  we  can  see  how  a  poet  first  appeals 
 to  the  mighty  works  achieved  by  Indra,  the  god  of 
 storm  and  thunder  and  lightning,  and  asks  people 
 to  believe  in  him ;  and  how  he  implores  the  same 
 god  not  to  hurt  his  children,  because  he  believes  in 
 him. 
 
 'Look1  at  this  great  and  mighty  work,'  he  says, 
 '  and  believe  in  the  power  of  Indra.' 
 
 And  again : 
 
 '  Do  not  hurt  our  nearest  kin,  O  Indra,  for  we 
 believe  in  thy  great  power.' 
 
 When  the  gods  have  thus  been  invoked  as  powerful 
 beings,  able  to  injure  man,  but  also  willing  to  protect 
 him,  a  mutual  relation  between  gods  and  men  is 
 soon  established,  and  people  profess  to  do  what  is 
 right  in  order  to  please  the  gods,  and  to  avoid  evil  in 
 order  to  escape  their  anger. 
 
 Early  Morality. 
 
 This  is  the  earliest  morality  founded  on  a  belief 
 in  physical  deities.  It  may  not  be  a  very  exalted 
 morality ;  it  is  very  much  founded  on  the  principle  of 
 Bo  ut  des.  But  it  contained  o-erms  which  might  otow 
 and  improve  till  men  could  say,  as  Fichte  said,  that 
 all  '  moral  action  flows  from  the  love  of  God  gently 
 and  quickly,  as  light  flows  from  the  sun.' 
 
 1  Ilibbert  Lectures,  p.  307. 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  173 
 
 Moral  Influence  of  Ancestral  Spirits. 
 
 That  a  belief  in  ancestral  spirits  might  likewise 
 influence  human  actions,  requires  hardly  any  proof. 
 I  believe  it  could  be  shown  that  the  earliest  ideas  of 
 right  and  wrong  in  a  legal  sense  arose  from  that 
 belief.  It  was  the  father  who  had  laid  down  what 
 should  be  done  during  his  life-time,  he  being  generally 
 the  stronger  and  the  wiser  man.  And  after  his 
 death,  whenever  doubts  arose  as  to  what  was  right  and 
 what  was  wrong  to  be  done,  an  appeal  to  what  the 
 father  had  settled  and  laid  down  would  often  decide 
 the  question.  Early  law-books  are  very  commonly 
 ascribed  to  some  distant  ancestor,  some  Unkulunkulu, 
 or,  as  in  India,  to  Manu,  the  father  of  mankind, 
 of  whom  it  was  said  that  '  whatever  Manu  declared, 
 was  medicine,'  that  is,  was  a  remedy,  and  a  prescrip- 
 tion that  ought  to  be  followed  by  his  children.  Sir 
 Henry  Maine,  in  his  work  on  Ancient  Law  (p.  125), 
 has  well  explained  how  law  was  originally  the 
 parent's  word,  and  how  in  Greece  the  so-called 
 Oepicrres  were  the  awards  of  judges,  whether  chiefs  of 
 families,  of  tribes,  or  of  confederacies.  They  were 
 not  laws  in  our  sense  of  the  word,  but  dooms,  de- 
 cisions, and  they  were  supposed  to  have  a  divine 
 character  and  even  a  divine  origin,  because  they  were 
 inspired  by  Justice,  the  daughter  of  Zeus,  and  only 
 pronounced  by  the  ancient  judges.  Sir  Henry  Maine 
 has  illustrated  this  first  phase  in  the  history  of  law 
 by  a  comparison  with  Indian  Law. 
 
 Ancestral  Law  in  China. 
 
 Let  me  give  you  another  illustration  from  China, 
 taken  from  a  recent  work  on  China,  its  social,  poli- 
 tical and  religious  life,  by  M.  Eug.  Simon.     M.  Simon, 
 
174  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 who  has  long  lived  in  China,  tells  us  that  the  whole 
 social  system  in  China  is  based  on  the  Family  Council 
 and  Tribunal. 
 
 The  incidents  of  the  Family  Council,  he  writes,  which 
 assembles  at  stated  periods,  are  roughly  as  follows  : 
 
 'The  Father  and  Mother  appear  in  the  family  as- 
 sembly, attended  by  their  family.  The  names  of  the 
 predecessors  of  the  family  are  first  recalled  indi- 
 vidually to  the  recollection  of  the  family. 
 
 '  Food  is  then  presented  to  their  memory  as  a  token 
 of  duties  performed  by  those  present,  in  consequence 
 of  duties  performed  by  those  departed,  and  as  a 
 pledge  for  the  conduct  of  those  to  come. 
 
 '  The  food,  the  result  of  a  typical  reward  for  duties 
 performed,  is  then  eaten,  with  portions  laid  aside 
 for  those  in  need. 
 
 '  This  is  the  first  part.  In  the  second,  the  father, 
 seated  between  his  wife  and  the  eldest  of  the  family, 
 opens  the  Books  of  Record. 
 
 '  These  family  books,  which  every  Chinese  family 
 must  keep,  render  unnecessary  State  interference  or 
 control,  and  are  considered  as  legal  documents. 
 
 '  One  contains  matter  relating-  to  civil  life,  births, 
 marriages,  deaths,  &c.  ;  the  others,  the  family  judg- 
 ments, records  and  biographies  of  the  dead,  their 
 Wills,  &c. 
 
 'The  necessary  records  having  been  entered,  the 
 book  containing  historical  record  is  opened,  and  the 
 life  and  action  of  those  departed  commented  on. 
 The  minds  of  all  being  steadied  by  such  reflections, 
 the  meeting  becomes  a  council,  and  balances  its 
 affairs,  enquiring  first  into  obligations  outside  the 
 family,  and   then   to   those  relating  to  the    interior 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  175 
 
 management.  The  family  would  consider  itself  dis- 
 honoured were  occasion  given  of  right  of  demand  for 
 State  or  outside  interference.  Lastly,  misdemeanours 
 are  enquired  into :  the  accused  is  at  once  separated 
 from  others  present,  for  trial,  or,  if  information  has  to 
 be  obtained  or  proofs  collected,  he  is  remanded  to  the 
 next  or  to  a  special  meeting. 
 
 '  Conceive  the  training  in  this  method  for  every 
 child.  This  is  the  paternal  authority — an  authority 
 based  only  on  judgment  and  method,  and  therefore 
 acting  with  a  power  and  a  love  that  we  cannot 
 understand. 
 
 '  Thus  is  to  be  seen  the  base  of  the  union  of  adminis- 
 trative and  judicial  functions  in  the  same  hands. 
 
 'This  method  of  judicial  sifting  of  evidence  before 
 action,  is  to  be  universally  found  at  the  origin  of  all 
 religion  and  government,  and  is  the  source  of  the 
 method  of  knowledge,  and  only  by  such  a  process 
 can  the  family  protection  exist  and  prosper. 
 
 '  Confucius  says  of  this  method  : 
 
 ' "  He  who  understands  the  ceremonies  of  the  offerings 
 to  Heaven  and  Earth,  and  the  meaning  of  the  several 
 offerings  to  ancestors,  would  find  the  government  of 
 a  kingdom  as  easy  as  to  look  into  the  palm  of  his 
 hand." ' 
 
 A  belief  in  ancestral  spirits,  therefore,  may  easily 
 become  the  foundation  of  a  system  of  morality,  or,  at 
 all  events,  of  law.  With  the  Chinese,  Filial  Piety  or 
 reverence  for  parents  and  ancestors  has  been  recog- 
 nised from  the  earliest  times  as  the  root  of  all  religion 
 and  government.  The  Hsiao  King  or '  Classic  of  Filial 
 Piety  '  is  one  of  their  most  sacred  books  *. 
 
 1  See  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iii. 
 
176  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 Moral  Influence  of  Psychological  Deities. 
 
 Whether  we  can  ascribe  a  similar  moral  influence 
 to  psychological  religion  also,  is  more  difficult  to  say. 
 It  has  certainly  developed  into  some  kind  of  religion 
 in  India,  where  meditation  on  the  self  within  us  and 
 the  recognition  of  its  true  relation  to  the  Supreme 
 Self  forms  to  the  present  day  the  highest  stage  that 
 can  be  reached  by  the  faithful.  In  other  countries 
 that  highest  stage  is  generally  divided  from  religion, 
 properly  so  called,  and  handed  over  to  the  philosopher 
 and  the  mystic.  But  apart  from  that,  we  often  see 
 isolated  germs  of  psychological  thought  fall  on  re- 
 ligious and  moral  soil,  and  develop  into  mythology 
 and  even  worship. 
 
 Temple    to    Mens. 
 
 In  Rome,  for  instance,  we  read  that  about  the 
 time  of  the  battle  on  Lake  Thrasymene,  or,  according 
 to  others,  one  hundred  years  later,  a  temple  was 
 built  to  31ens,  Mind,  in  order  that  the  Roman 
 citizens  might  always  be  of  good  mind1.  There 
 were  other  temples  dedicated  to  Pi  etas,  filial  piety, 
 Pudicitia,  chastity,  Virtus,  manliness,  Spes,  hope, 
 Fides,  faithfulness.  And  not  only  were  these  deities 
 worshipped  in  temples,  but  such  were,  for  a  time  at 
 least,  their  power  and  influence  that  Regulus  would 
 rather  die  than  break  his  fides  or  his  troth.  At  a 
 later  time,  during  the  Second  Punic  War,  Hannibal 
 allowed  ten  Roman  soldiers  to  proceed  to  Rome  on 
 their  word  of  honour.  Eight  only  returned,  but  the 
 other  two  were  declared  infamous  by  the  Roman 
 Censors,  and  such  was  then  still  the  power  of  public 
 
 1  Ovid,  Fast.  vi.  241  ;  Liv.  xxii.  9  and  10  ;  Cic.  X.  D.  ii.  22  ;  Leg. 
 ii.  11  ;  Hartimg,  Religion  der  Romer,  ii.  262. 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  177 
 
 opinion  that  both  are  said  to  have  committed  suicide, 
 because  no  one  would  treat  them  any  longer  as 
 Roman  citizens. 
 
 Eros  and  Psyche. 
 
 In  Greece  also  some  traces  may  be  discovered  of 
 psychological  mythology,  if  not  of  religion.  The  best 
 known  instance  is  that  of  Eros  and  Psyche,  Love  and 
 Soul.  In  the  form  in  which  that  legend  is  presented 
 to  us  by  Apuleius  it  is,  no  doubt,  modern — nearly  as 
 modern  in  conception  as  on  the  frescoes  of  the  Far- 
 nesina  Palace.  But  it  contains  old  elements — how  old, 
 it  is  difficult  to  say,  considering  how  freely  even  men 
 like  Socrates  still  claimed  the  right  of  inventing  or 
 modifying  a  myth,  if  it  helped  to  teach  some  philo- 
 sophical lesson. 
 
 Conscience. 
 
 And  even  in  our  own  language  there  are  survivals 
 of  psychological  mythology  and  morality.  There  is  a 
 well-known  line  quoted  from  Menander,  Monost.  654  : 
 
 Bporots  airaa-Lv  ?/  tivveibrjcns  6eos, 
 '  To  all  mortals  conscience  is  a  god.' 
 
 It  is  not  difficult  to  understand  what  Menander 
 (342-290  b.  c.)  really  meant  by  this  verse,  but  it  is  a 
 curious  verse  for  several  reasons,  and  in  particular 
 because  avveih-qais  is  not  the  common  word  for  con- 
 science in  classical  Greek,  though  it  is  the  recognised 
 term  in  the  New  Testament. 
 
 In  classical  Greek  crvveibrjo-is  means  consciousness 
 rather  than  conscience,  and  the  question  we  have  to 
 answer  first  is  how  such  words  as  cruvoiha  and  o-wei'8770-19, 
 from  meaning  to  be  conscious  or  cognisant,  came  to 
 mean  to  be  conscientious.     The  psychological  process 
 
 N 
 
178  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 seems  to  have  been  something  like  this.  In  primitive 
 times  a  man  might  often  do  what  seemed  wrong  to 
 others,  but  not  to  himself.  In  that  case,  he  himself 
 would  hardly  remember  what  he  had  done.  If  asked, 
 he  would  not  be  conscious  of  having,  for  instance, 
 taken  an  apple  from  a  garden,  because  he  was  in  the 
 habit  of  doing  so  and  saw  no  harm  in  it.  If,  however, 
 he  had  once  been  told  by  others  that  he  ought  not  to 
 take  an  apple  which  belonged  to  some  one  else,  or  even  if 
 some  unexplained  instinct  had  told  him  that  in  taking 
 it  away  he  was  doing  what  was  disapproved  by  others 
 or  dangerous  to  himself,  then  he  would  be  conscious 
 of  his  act,  and  his  consciousness  of  having  done  an 
 act  which  by  some  authority  or  other  had  been  judged 
 to  be  wrong,  would  gradually  become  what  we  call  a 
 conscience. 
 
 Again,  if  two  confederates  had  committed  a  criminal 
 act,  they  would,  if  cross-examined,  appear  as  avveiboTes, 
 as  knowing  what  they  had  done,  and  thus  o-weidco? 
 would  assume  the  meaning  of  an  accomplice.  Even 
 in  our  courts  of  law  a  man  is  said  to  look  conscious, 
 that  is,  guilty,  and  this  conscious  look  would  again 
 be  the  outer  manifestation  of  what  we  now  call  con- 
 science. Thus  conscience  came  to  be  a  recognised 
 name  of  what  was  originally  a  consciousness  or  a 
 knowledge,  however  acquired,  of  what  was  right  and 
 wrong. 
 
 But  this  was  not  the  only  name  by  which  this  well- 
 known  state  of  feeling  could  be  apprehended,  and  to 
 say  that,  because  there  is  in  Sanskrit  no  word  corre- 
 sponding to  conscience,  therefore  the  Hindus  did  not 
 know  what  conscience  means,  is  absurd.  Socrates 
 did  not  use  the  word  a-vveCbrjcns,  but  when  he  spoke  of 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  179 
 
 the  baiiJLoviov,  the  spirit  within  him,  he  meant  the 
 same  thing,  though  he  called  it  by  a  higher  name, 
 a  name  that  comes  very  near  to  what  the  early  Chris- 
 tians meant  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 
 
 In  ancient  languages,  like  Sanskrit,  we  must  expect 
 more  primitive  expressions  for  that  inward  state  of 
 consciousness  of  right  and  wrong. 
 
 In  Sanskrit  we  find  hri,  which  means  glow,  blush, 
 and  shame  *.  This  flushing  or  blushing  was  the  out- 
 ward sign  of  an  inward  commotion.  A  man  being- 
 charged  with  a  dishonourable  act,  blushed ;  that  was 
 quite  the  same  as  when  in  later  times  he  had  learnt  to 
 control  the  beating  of  his  heart,  and  only  looked  con- 
 scious or  foolish.  A  language  therefore  which  has  a 
 name  for  blushing  and  shame  has  to  all  intents  and 
 purposes  a  name  for  conscience.  A  man  who  is  said 
 to  blush  at  a  thing,  or  at  the  very  thought  of  a  thing, 
 may  be  said  to  be  warned  or  kept  by  his  conscience 
 from  doing  a  thing. 
 
 I  doubt  whether  the  German  nations  had  a  name 
 like  conscience  before  they  came  in  contact  with  the 
 Romans.  As  conscientia  was  a  translation  of  avveC- 
 brjo-is,  Geivissen  seems  a  mere  imitation  of  conscientia. 
 In  Gothic  it  is  midwissei.  But  the  German  had  the 
 word  shame,  which,  if  it  was  derived  from  a  root 
 skam  or  kam,  meaning  to  cover,  expressed  again 
 the  outward  sign  of  conscience,  the  covering  of  the 
 
 1  The  Rev.  W.  Gill  informs  me  that  in  Mangaia  (Hervcy  Group) 
 they  say,  Kua  renga  koa, '  You  are  yellow,'  or  more  fully,  Kua  renga  koe  i 
 te  akama,  '  You  are  yellow  with  shame.'  The  brownish  complexion  of 
 the  nation  seems  to  turn  more  yellow,  while  with  us  the  white  com- 
 plexion becomes  suffused  with  red.  To  turn  white  or  pale  is  with 
 us  a  sign  of  fear  rather  than  of  shame.  I  have  myself  watched  a 
 native  of  India  with  a  light  brown  complexion,  turning  ashy  grey 
 when  convicted  of  having  told  an  untruth. 
 
 N  2 
 
180  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 face  to  hide  the  flush,  or  to  avoid  the  searching  look 
 of  the  judge. 
 
 Remorse. 
 
 If  there  had  been  no  word  at  all  for  conscience  in 
 Latin,  an  expression  like  that  of  Lucretius  (iii.  839), 
 peccata  remordent, '  sins  bite  back,'  would  be  sufficient 
 to  show  that  he  at  least  knew  what  conscience 
 meant.  One  such  expression  of  a  single  poet  may 
 lead  to  an  abundant  growth  of  thought  and  language 
 in  the  same  direction.  Thus,  though  remorsus  is  not  a 
 classical  Latin  word,  it  rises  to  the  surface  in  mediaeval 
 Latin,  it  becomes  recognised  as  remors  in  French,  as 
 remorse  in  English.  And  as  we  find  conseientia  trans- 
 lated in  German  by  Geivissen,  and  in  Old  English 
 by  Inwyt,  we  find  remorse  rendered  literally  in  Old 
 English  by  Ayenbite,  that  is,  againbite,  the  two  words 
 together  forming  the  title  of  one  of  the  most  important 
 books  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the  Ayenbite  of  Inwyt 
 by  Dan  Michel 1.  In  German  too  we  speak  of  Geivissens- 
 bisse,  the  bitings  of  conscience,  that  is,  remorse. 
 
 In  watching  the  growth  of  these  names,  which  were 
 all  intended  for  one  and  the  same  state  of  mind,  we 
 can  see  how  easily  these  acts  of  ours  lead  to  the 
 admission  of  a  separate  mental  organ  or  faculty,  or, 
 as  the  Brahmans  boldly  called  it,  a  deity. 
 
 Have  we  a  Conscience? 
 
 Because  I  am  conscious  of  having  done  what  to  me 
 seems  either  right  or  wrong,  I  am  supposed  to  possess  a 
 consciousness,  or,  as  applied  to  moral  questions,  a  con- 
 science, which  tells  me  what  is  right  or  wrong.  But 
 why  should  a  man  be  supposed  to  possess  such  an  organ 
 
 1  Edited  by  Richard  Morris,  for  the  Early  English  Text  Society, 
 No.  23. 
 
RELIGION   DIFFERENT   FROM    SCIENCE.  181 
 
 or  faculty,  or  why  should  we  appeal  to  a  man's  con- 
 science, as  something  apart  from  the  man  1  If  a  man 
 is  tall,  he  does  not  possess  something  called  tallness. 
 If  he  is  hopeful,  there  is  not  inside  him  a  power  called 
 hope  ;  if  he  is  ashamed,  it  is  not  something  indepen- 
 dent of  him  that  makes  him  ashamed.  Even  his 
 blushes  are  only  the  effect  of  the  quicker  movement 
 of  the  heart,  and  what  makes  the  heart  move  more 
 quickly  is  the  quick  rushing  in  of  perceptions  and 
 imaginations  caused  by  circumstances  which  are 
 stronger  than  himself.  We  are  justified  therefore  in 
 saying  that  we  are  conscious  of  having  done  wrong  ; 
 but  as  soon  as  we  go  a  step  further  and  say  that  we 
 have  a  conscience  which  tells  us  what  is  right  or 
 wrong,  we  go  beyond  the  facts,  such  as  we  know 
 them.  Conscience  never  tells  us  what  is  right  or 
 wrong,  but  simply  whether  we  have  done  what  from 
 some  source  or  other  we  know  to  be  right  or  wrong. 
 Nothing  is  more  common  now  than  to  call  conscience 
 an  inward  monitor,  or  even  the  voice  of  God  x ;  to 
 speak  of  conscience  as  the  arbiter  of  right  and  wrong, 
 nay,  even  as  the  source  of  all  truth,  and  the  highest 
 witness  of  the  existence  of  God 2.  But  all  this  is 
 philosophical  mythology.  If  we  possessed  within  us 
 a  faculty,  or  an  oracle,  or  deity  to  tell  us  what  is 
 true,  and  what  is  right  and  wrong,  how  could  Pascal 
 have  said  that  good  and  evil,  truth  and  falsehood,  differ 
 with  a  few  degrees  of  latitude?  How  could  there 
 be  that  infinite  diversity  of  opinion  as  to  what  is  true 
 and  what  is  right  or  wrong  ?  We  must  learn  that 
 from  other  sources,  and  when  we  have  learnt  it  from 
 
 1  See  Flint,  Theism,  p.  216. 
 
 2  Goldwin  Smith,  in  MacmiUaris  Magazine,  Feb.  187^. 
 
182  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 our  teachers  and  by  our  own  experience  and  judgment, 
 then  and  then  only  do  we  become  conscious  of  having 
 done  what  is  right  or  wrong.  If  we  like  to  call  that 
 consciousness  or  that  shame  or  that  joy,  conscience, 
 we  may  do  so,  provided  we  remember  that  we  use 
 poetical  and  mythological  language,  and  that  such 
 language,  unless  properly  guarded,  may  exercise  a 
 powerful  influence  on  our  character,  whether  for  evil 
 or  for  good.  That  almighty  conscience  may  be  a  god 
 to  all  mortals,  as  Menander  says,  but  it  may  likewise 
 become  a  dumb  idol 1. 
 
 Sacrifices  an  Element  of  Religion. 
 
 It  may  seem  strange  that  in  trying  to  make  my 
 own  definition  of  religion  as  comprehensive  as  pos- 
 sible, I  should  nevertheless  have  left  out  what  to 
 many  people  seems  an  essential,  to  some  the  most 
 essential  element  of  religion,  namely,  sacrifice. 
 
 It  cannot  be  denied  that  sacrifice  has  assumed  con- 
 siderable prominence  in  most  religions.  Cicero,  as 
 we  saw,  defined  religion  simply  as  cultus  deorum  ; 
 but  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  there  were  religions 
 without  sacrifices  in  ancient  times,  and  that  in  modern 
 times  the  most  enlightened  minds  have  completely 
 freed  themselves  from  all  sacrificial  obligations,  in  the 
 usual  sense  of  that  word. 
 
 1  This  question  has  been  powerfully  argued  by  Professor  Lorimer 
 in  his  Institutes  of  Law,  Second  Edition,  1880,  pp.  186  seq.  'I  am 
 glad,'  he  writes,  '  that  the  doctrine  of  conscience  is  not  taught,  in 
 this  sense  (as  being  an  exceptional  organ  to  decide  what  is  right  or 
 wrong),  by  the  present  learned  occupant  of  the  Chair  of  Moral 
 Philosophy  in  Edinburgh.'  It  is,  however,  strongly  held  by  the 
 Professor  of  Divinity,  Dr.  Flint,  who  in  Iris  Lectures  on  Theism  vp.  216) 
 writes  :  '  It  is  not  more  certain  that  by  the  eye  we  see  colours,  and  that 
 by  the  ear  we  hear  sounds,  than  that  by  conscience  we  discern  good 
 and  evil.'  See  also  an  able  pamphlet  by  Wayfarer,  What  the  Conscience 
 is,  London,  1878. 
 
RELIGION   DIFFERENT   FROM    SCIENCE.  183 
 
 Priesthood. 
 
 I  go  even  further,  and  maintain  that  the  priesthood 
 also  ought  not  to  be  considered  as  essential  to  religion, 
 though  it  may  be  an  inevitable  outcome  of  it.  The 
 office  of  the  priest,  it  should  be  remembered,  is  always 
 vicarious,  a  fact  which,  with  the  increase  of  priestly 
 power,  may  be  forgotten  in  later  times,  but  which  is 
 self-evident  in  the  early  periods  of  all  religions.  If 
 we  look  on  religion  as  originally  the  property  of  each 
 individual  soul,  the  priest  would  have  no  locus  standi 
 at  all.  Or  if  we  trace  religion  back  to  the  family, 
 the  father  or  head  of  the  family  is  ipso  facto  the 
 priest.  When  families  grew  into  clans,  and  clans  into 
 tribes  and  confederacies,  a  necessity  would  arise  of 
 delegating  to  some  heads  of  families  the  performance 
 of  duties  which,  from  having  been  the  spontaneous 
 acts  of  individuals,  had  become  the  traditional  acts  of 
 families  and  clans.  The  origin  of  a  separate  priest- 
 hood varies  so  much  in  different  countries  that  it  is 
 almost  impossible  to  speak  about  it  in  general  terms. 
 In  some  countries  the  office  of  the  priest  would  remain 
 united  to  that  of  the  king ;  in  others  an  individual  of 
 exceptional  gifts  as  a  poet  and  prophet  would  obtain 
 for  himself  and  his  descendants  the  privileges  of  a 
 spiritual  ruler.  These  are  questions  concerning  the 
 history  of  different  nations  into  which  we  cannot 
 enter  at  present.  What  is  important  for  us  is  to 
 understand  clearly  that  the  first  origin  of  religion, — 
 and  it  is  with  this  alone  that  we  are  dealing  now, — 
 does  not  necessitate,  but  on  the  contrary,  does  really 
 exclude  the  admission  of  priests. 
 
 The  same  applies  to  sacrifices.  What  are  called  in 
 later  times  sacrifices  or  sacred  acts  must  all  in  their 
 
184  LECTUKE   VII. 
 
 beginning  have  been  natural  and  spontaneous  acts. 
 We  can  easily  trace  back  all  prayers  to  the  same 
 feeling  which  would  lead  a  child  to  ask  for  gifts  from 
 his  father ;  and  whoever  understands  the  thoughts  of 
 a  child  in  offering  to  his  father  a  flower  or  a  broken 
 toy,  whether  from  a  feeling  of  gratitude  or  from  a 
 hope  of  further  favours,  will  not  look  for  any  more 
 remote  motives  prompting  the  offering  of  more  or  less 
 valuable  gifts  to  the  gods,  after  such  gods  had  once 
 been  conceived.  Expiatory  or  purificatory  offerings 
 and  sacrifices  can  be  traced  back  to  the  same  source, 
 and  have  really  nothing  irrational  in  them,  nothing 
 that  requires  explanation;  nothing  with  which  we 
 cannot  fully  sympathise  ourselves. 
 
 But  all  these  prayers  and  praises  and  offerings  and 
 purifications,  even  in  their  simplest  form,  always  pre- 
 suppose the  belief  in  those  superhuman  or  supernatural 
 beings  whom  we  have  accustomed  ourselves  to  call 
 gods,  and  it  would  violate  all  rules  of  thought  to  place 
 the  sacrifice  first,  and  the  conception  of  a  person  to 
 whom  a  sacrifice  is  offered,  last. 
 
 Study  of  the  Veda. 
 
 It  seems  to  me  that  the  study  of  the  Veda  is  chiefly 
 responsible  for  this  delusion,  that  religion  begins  with 
 sacrifice.  At  first  it  was  the  fashion  to  represent  the 
 hymns  of  the  Rig-veda  as  the  most  primitive  utter- 
 ances of  religious  thought,  recalling  a  period  when 
 there  was  as  yet  no  system  of  religion,  no  creeds,  no 
 priesthood,  no  sacrifice.  I  remember  myself  speaking 
 of  the  Rig-veda  as  the  true  theogony  of  the  Aryan 
 race,  and  I  do  not  mean  in  the  least  to  retract  that 
 statement.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  say  that  the  Veda 
 brings   us  as  near  to   the   theogonic  process    of  the 
 
RELIGION   DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  185 
 
 Aryan  world  as  any  literary  document  will  ever  bring 
 us,  and  quite  another  to  imagine  that  the  Veda  was 
 composed  by  the  first  man  who  escaped  from  the 
 glacial  period,  or  by  the  first  poet  who  could  stammer 
 forth  human  language.  Why  will  people  always 
 imagine  the  impossible  to  be  possible  ?  However,  it 
 was  but  natural  that  after  expectations  had  been 
 raised  to  the  highest  pitch,  there  should  be  a  reaction. 
 The  Veda,  as  I  have  always  said,  in  spite  of  its 
 wonderful  antiquity,  is  like  an  oak  in  which  we  can 
 count  ring  after  ring,  testifying  to  an  infinite  succes- 
 sion of  intellectual  springs  and  winters.  Not  only 
 are  priests  and  sacrifices  presupposed  in  many  a 
 hymn,  but  most  elaborate  sacrifices  performed  by 
 ever  so  many  distinct  priests  are  mentioned,  at  all 
 events  in  the  more  modern  hymns.  Because  it  was 
 clear  that  some  of  the  hymns  had  been  composed  in 
 connection  with  these  sacrifices,  it  has  of  late  become 
 the  fashion  to  maintain  that  all  had  been,  that  in  fact 
 the  whole  Vedic  poetry  was  the  product  of  a  priestly 
 caste,  requiring  song  and  poetry  for  the  enlivenment 
 of  their  sacrifices. 
 
 It  is  quite  true  that  the  hymns  collected  in  what 
 are  called  the  Ya(/ur  and  Sama-veda,  have  no  other 
 object  than  to  be  employed  at  sacrifices.  But  it  is 
 equally  true  that  the  collection  of  the  Rig-veda  had 
 no  such  sacrificial  purpose.  And,  what  is  far  more 
 important  is  what  every  scholar  knows,  namely  that 
 even  many  of  the  passages  taken  from  the  Rig-veda 
 and  embodied  in  the  two  other  purely  sacrificial  Vedas, 
 are  so  turned  and  twisted  in  order  to  make  them 
 useful  for  liturgical  purposes  that  no  one  could  sup- 
 pose for  a  moment  that  they  were  first  composed  for 
 
186  LECTURE   VII. 
 
 liturgical,  and  afterwards  collected  for  hymnological 
 purposes.  This  idea,  however,  that,  because  some 
 hymns  were  meant  from  the  first  to  accompany  the 
 sacrifices,  all  Vedic  hymns  were  the  production  of 
 Vedic  priests ;  that,  in  fact,  the  Hindus  first  elaborated 
 a  most  complete  and  complicated  ceremonial,  and 
 then  only  set  to  work  to  invent  the  gods  to  whom 
 their  sacrifices  should  be  offered  and  to  compose  hymns 
 of  praise  to  celebrate  the  greatness  of  these  gods,— this 
 idea,  I  say,  has  so  completely  taken  possession  of 
 certain  philosophers,  that  they  now  appeal  to  the  Veda 
 as  the  best  proof  that  sacrifice  must  everywhere  have 
 come  first,  and  hymns  to  the  gods,  nay,  according  to 
 some,  even  belief  in  the  gods,  afterwards.  Gods,  we 
 are  told,  are  not  gods  till  they  are  worshipped  (Gruppe, 
 I.  c,  p.  81).  If  such  theories  can  be  proved  by  facts 
 in  any  part  of  the  globe,  let  it  be  so  ;  but  to  quote 
 the  Veda  in  support  of  them,  is  impossible. 
 
 And  what  applies  to  sacrifices  offered  to  the 
 gods  of  nature,  applies  with  equal  force  to  the 
 offerings  presented  to  ancestral  spirits.  We  have 
 been  told  of  late  that  sacrifices  arose  really  from 
 carousals,  and  I  do  not  deny  that  there  is  some  truth 
 in  this,  only  that,  as  usual,  it  is  spoiled  by  exaggera- 
 tion. Nothing  is  more  natural  than  that,  after  the 
 death  of  a  father,  his  place  at  dinner  should  be 
 kept  vacant,  or  that  his  share  of  food  should  actually 
 be  placed  on  the  exact  spot  where  he  used  to  sit. 
 That  may  seem  childish,  but  it  is  perfectly  human. 
 Again,  that  a  few  drops  of  whatever  served  for  drink 
 at  a  meal  should  be  poured  on  the  ground  in  memory 
 of  the  departed,  is  perfectly  intelligible.  But  in  that 
 case,  a  belief  in  ancestral  spirits  was  as  necessary  a 
 
RELIGION   DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  187 
 
 condition  of  such  pious  acts  as  a  belief  in  gods  is  pre- 
 supposed by  sacrificial  offerings. 
 
 What,  however,  quite  staggers  me,  is  the  idea  lately 
 broached,  that  not  only  did  all  religion  take  its  origin 
 in  these  carousals  \  but  that  the  first  idea  of  sacri- 
 fice arose  from  some  person  persuading  the  people 
 that  by  lighting  in  the  morning  the  fire  on  the 
 altar,  they  could  assist  the  sun  in  his  daily  or  yearly 
 fight  against  his  enemies.  Where  could  they  have 
 got  a  belief  in  the  sun  as  a  fighter  and  as  having 
 enemies'?  And  how  would  it  have  been  possible  to 
 convince  them,  in  spite  of  all  evidence  to  the  contrary, 
 that  the  small  rush-light  on  their  hearth  could  in- 
 vigorate the  power  of  the  sun  1  It  is  perfectly  true 
 that  such  ideas  appear  in  the  Veda,  but  they  appear 
 there  preceded  by  many  antecedent  ideas,  which  make 
 them  not  only  less  grotesque,  but  render  them  almost 
 intelligible.  But  to  imagine  that  such  thoughts  could 
 be  primitive,  and  that  they  could  help  us  to  account 
 psychologically  for  the  evolution  of  religious  and 
 sacrificial  ideas  in  the  world  at  large,  is  certainly  to 
 my  mind  passing  strange.  Well  may  the  author  of 
 such  a  theory  say  that  so  absurd  a  thing  could  have 
 happened  once  only  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and 
 that  therefore  all  religions  of  the  civilised  races  of 
 mankind  came  from  the  country  in  which  this  strange 
 hallucination  took  possession  of  one  weak-minded  in- 
 dividual (p.  277). 
 
 Although,  therefore,  a  definition  of  religion  which 
 should  exclude  sacrifices  and  priesthood  would  cer- 
 tainly be  deficient,  I  hold  that  both  the  sacrificial  and 
 
 1  *  Der  Cultusact  war  nicht  etwa  nur  mit  einem  Gelage  verbimden, 
 sondern  er  war  recht  eigentlich  em  Gelage.'     Gruppe,  p.  277. 
 
188  LECTUKE   VII. 
 
 priestly  character  of  religion  is  sufficiently  secured  by 
 our  restricting  the  perception  of  the  infinite  to  such 
 manifestations  as  are  able  to  influence  the  moral 
 character  of  man.  It  is  the  moral  character  of  man 
 that  shows  itself  in  those  acts  of  fear,  reverence, 
 gratitude,  love,  and  contrition  which  we  comprehend 
 under  the  general  name  of  sacrifice,  and  the  delegation 
 of  these  sacrificial  acts  to  agents,  better  qualified  or 
 more  worthy  to  perform  them  than  the  rest,  may  like- 
 wise be  traced  back  to  a  sense  of  humility  on  the  part 
 of  the  people  at  large,  or  what  we  now  call  the  laity. 
 
 If  now  we  gather  up  the  threads  of  our  argument, 
 and  endeavour  to  give  our  own  definition  of  religion, 
 it  would  be  this  : 
 
 '  Religion  consists  in  the  perception  of  the  infinite 
 under  such  manifestations  as  are  able  to  influence  the 
 moral  character  of  man! 
 
 I  look  upon  this  as  a  definition  of  religion  in  its 
 origin,  but  if  we  once  admit  a  continuity  in  the 
 historical  growth  of  religion,  the  same  definition  ought 
 to  remain  applicable  to  all  the  later  developments 
 through  which  religion  has  passed.  In  order  to 
 remain  applicable  to  all  these  later  developments,  our 
 definition  of  religion  must  necessarily  leave  out  what- 
 ever is  peculiar  to  one  or  other  of  these  later  develop- 
 ments only  ;  and  it  may  happen  therefore  that  what 
 seem  to  some  of  us  the  most  valuable  characteristics 
 of  religion,  are  missing  in  our  definition  of  it. 
 
 To  those  who  maintain  that  religion  is  chiefly  a 
 modus  cognoscendi  Deum,  a  mode  of  knowing  God, 
 we  should  reply  that  there  is  no  conceptual  knowledge 
 which  is  not  based  first  of  all  on  perceptual  knowledge, 
 and  that  Deus  or  God  is  not  the  only  object  of  reli- 
 
RELIGION    DIFFERENT    FROM    SCIENCE.  189 
 
 aion,  that  in  fact  so  narrow  a  definition  would  exclude 
 all  dualistic  and  polytheistic  religions  as  well  as  all 
 those  forms  of  faith  which  shrink  from  comprehending 
 the  Divine  under  the  limits  of  mere  human  person- 
 ality. 
 
 To  those  who  cling  to  the  idea  of  religion  as  chiefly 
 a  mode  of  worshipping  God,  modus  colendi  Deum,  our 
 answer  would  be  that  so  long  as  worship  is  a  genuine 
 expression  of  moral  sentiments,  it  is  included  in  our 
 definition ;  while  when  it  has  ceased  to  be  so,  it  is  no 
 longer  religion,  but  superstition  only. 
 
 Kant's  definition  that  '  religion  consists  in  our  re- 
 cognising all  our  duties  as  divine  commandments '  is 
 comprehended  in  our  own,  for  that  definition  represents 
 only  a  later  and  higher  stage  of  that  original  per- 
 ception of  something  unseen  and  infinite  which 
 determines  our  moral  acts.  Nay,  if  we  go  a  step 
 higher  still,  and  recognise  religion  as  the  surrender  of 
 the  finite  will  to  the  infinite,  we  have  here  again  the 
 fullest  realisation  of  that  primeval  perception  of  the 
 infinite  as  a  power,  not  entirely  different  from  our- 
 selves, that  makes  for  righteousness. 
 
 And  while  thus  the  highest  conceptions  of  religion 
 can  be  traced  back  as  natural  developments  to  that 
 broad  conception  of  religion  on  which  our  definition 
 is  based,  we  shall  find  that  the  lowest  forms  of  religion 
 likewise  are  easily  comprehended  under  it.  Roskoff, 
 in  his  learned  work  Das  Religionsivesen  der  rohesten 
 Naturvolker,  1880,  (The  religion  of  the  rudest  races,) 
 which  contains  a  most  elaborate  and  exhaustive  reply 
 to  Sir  John  Lubbock's  theories,  defines  the  religion  of 
 these  uncivilised  tribes  in  the  most  general  terms  as 
 'what  lifts  them  above  the  real  world.'     Much  the 
 
190 
 
 LECTURE  VII. 
 
 same  definition  of  religion  is  given  by  Hegel  also.  Here 
 we  have  only  to  replace  real  by  finite,  and  we  shall 
 see  that  what  he  means  is  exactly  what  we  mean  by 
 a  '  perception  of  something  infinite  beyond  the  finite 
 world,'  only  that  we  qualify  that  perception  of  the 
 infinite  and  restrict  it  to  that  class  of  perceptions 
 which  can  influence  the  moral  character  of  man. 
 
 I  know  in  fact  of  no  definition  of  religion— and  I 
 have  dwelt  in  my  lectures   on  the   most   important 
 only— which   cannot    be    accommodated  within    the 
 wide  boundaries  of  our  own,  and,  what  is  even  more 
 important,  I  know  of  no  religion,  whether  ancient  or 
 modern,    that    cannot   be    caught   in   that  wide   net. 
 Even  Buddhism— I  mean  Southern  Buddhism,  which 
 refused  to  be  caught  by  any  other  definition— cannot 
 escape.     Though    Buddha  declined  to  dogmatise  on 
 the   Beyond,   and   though  from  his  unwillingness  to 
 predicate   anything  about  it,  it   dwindled    down   in 
 the  minds  of  some  of  his  followers  to  a  mere  Nothing, 
 yet  even  that  Nothing  was  not  the  finite  or  material 
 world,  but  lay  beyond  it,  undefined,   if  not  infinite. 
 Buddha  was  lifted  beyond  the   real  world  ;   and  the 
 practical  side  of  Buddhism  also,  its  belief  in  trans- 
 migration and  the  never-resting  wheel  of  the  world, 
 presupposed  a  look  that  had  pierced  beyond  the  finite, 
 nay,  had  raised  the  perception  of  the  endless  con- 
 tinuance of  works  or  Karma  into  the  most  potent 
 faith  that  could  influence  the  moral  character  of  man. 
 '  We  are  what  we  are,'  as  Buddha  says  in  the  very 
 first  verse  of  his  Dhammapada,  '  by  what  we  have 
 thought  and  done.     As  the  cart  follows  on  the  heels 
 of  the  ox  that  draws  it,  so  do  our  thoughts  and  deeds 
 follow  us.'     The  experience  of  this  finite  world  could 
 
RELIGION   DIFFERENT   FROM    SCIENCE.  191 
 
 not  have  taught  him  that  lesson.  It  was  a  look  back- 
 ward and  forward  beyond  the  horizon  of  our  ex- 
 perience— though  not  in  his  case,  a  look  upward — 
 that  alone  could  have  taught  Buddha  that  faith  in 
 absolute  justice  and  eternal  right  which  has  made 
 his  religion  the  wonder  of  the  world. 
 
LECTURE  VIII. 
 
 THE     HISTORICAL     METHOD. 
 Criticism  of  My  Definition. 
 
 THE  definition  of  religion  at  which  we  arrived  in 
 our  last  lecture  has  received  the  support  of  a  large 
 number  both  of  philosophers  and  historians  ;  but  for 
 that  very  reason,  it  would  seem,  it  has  also  provoked 
 a  great  amount  of  very  determined  opposition. 
 
 Now  we  ought  always  to  be  truly  grateful  for 
 adverse  criticism.  It  generally  gives  us  something, 
 it  teaches  us  something  which  we  did  not  know 
 before,  whereas  assent  and  laudation,  though  they 
 may  give  us  more  confidence  in  our  own  opinions, 
 add  but  seldom  to  our  own  or  to  the  general  stock 
 of  knowledge.  After  all,  every  one  of  us  is  only  a 
 labourer,  each  having  his  special  work  assigned  to 
 him  in  raising  the  temple  of  knowledge.  It  is  of 
 that  temple  alone  that  every  honest  workman  ought 
 to  think,  and  not  of  himself,  for  he  is  but  one  in 
 a  million  of  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water. 
 If  he  is  planing  and  polishing  his  beam  carelessly,  or 
 if  he  is  spilling  the  water  on  the  way,  he  should  be 
 thankful  for  his  own  sake,  and  still  more  for  the 
 sake  of  the  great  work  which  is  entrusted  to  him,  if 
 his  fellow-labourers  will  warn  him,  correct  him, 
 advise  him,  and  help  him  in  his  work.  Who  knows 
 now  the  workmen  that  built  the  pyramids,  or  even 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  193 
 
 the  architect  that  devised  them  1  But  if  one  single 
 block  of  granite  had  been  placed  at  a  wrong  angle, 
 the  very  pyramid  would  probably  have  collapsed  long- 
 ago,  or  would  have  remained  blemished  for  ever  % 
 
 Pfleiderer's  Criticism. 
 
 I  feel  truly  grateful  therefore  for  the  criticisms 
 which  have  been  passed  by  Professor  Pfleiderer  and 
 others  on  my  former  definition  of  religion,  and  I  fully 
 admit  their  justness.  I  had  defined  religion  simply 
 as  '  a  perception  of  the  infinite,'  without  adding  the 
 restriction  '  a  perception  of  the  infinite  under  such 
 manifestations  as  are  able  to  influence  the  moral 
 character  of  man.'  The  fact  was  that  in  my  former 
 writings  I  was  chiefly  concerned  with  dogmatic 
 religion.  I  was  anxious  to  discover  the  origin  of 
 religious  concepts,  names,  and  theories,  and  I  left  the 
 question  of  their  influence  on  moral  actions  for  further 
 consideration.  We  cannot  do  or  say  everything  at 
 the  same  time,  and  it  is  perhaps  hardly  fair  that  we 
 should  be  supposed  to  have  negatived  what  we  simply 
 had  left  unmentioned.  Still,  I  plead  guilty  to  having 
 not  laid  sufficient  emphasis  on  the  practical  side  of 
 religion  ;  I  admit  that  mere  theories  about  the  in- 
 finite, unless  they  influence  human  conduct,  have  no 
 right  to  the  name  of  religion,  and  I  have  tried  now  to 
 remedy  that  defect  by  restricting  the  name  of  religion 
 to  those  perceptions  of  the  infinite  which  are  able  to 
 influence  the  moral  character  of  man. 
 
 Professor  Gruppe. 
 
 But  a  much  more  determined  attack  came  from  a 
 different  quarter.  As  I  had  meant  to  treat  the  Science 
 of  Religion  in  a  strictly  scientific  spirit,  1  had  care- 
 
194  LECTURE   VIII. 
 
 fully  excluded  all  theories  which  ascribe  the  origin  of 
 religion  either  to  innate  ideas  or  to  supernatural 
 revelation.  I  had  placed  myself  completely  on  what 
 is  called  the  positivist  platform.  '  We  are  told,'  I 
 said  1,  '  that  all  knowledge,  in  order  to  be  knowledge, 
 must  pass  through  two  gates  and  two  gates  only,  the 
 gate  of  the  senses,  and  the  gate  of  reason.  Keligious 
 knowledge  also,  whether  true  or  false,  must  have 
 passed  through  these  two  gates.  At  these  two  gates 
 therefore  we  take  our  stand.  Whatever  claims  to 
 have  entered  in  by  any  other  gate,  whether  that  gate 
 be  called  primeval  revelation  or  religious  instinct, 
 must  be  rejected  as  contraband  of  thought ;  and  what- 
 ever claims  to  have  entered  in  by  the  gate  of  reason, 
 without  having  first  passed  through  the  gate  of  the 
 senses,  must  equally  be  rejected,  as  without  sufficient 
 warrant,  or  ordered  at  least  to  go  back  to  the  first 
 gate,  in  order  to  produce  there  its  full  credentials  V 
 
 Religion  a  Psychological  Necessity  ? 
 
 Of  course,  if  the  psychological  analysis  of  the 
 earliest  religious  concepts  as  I  had  given  it  is  correct, 
 — and  no  one,  I  believe,  has  denied  the  simple  facts 
 on  which  it  rests — it  follows  that  religion  is  a  psycho- 
 logical necessity,  and  not,  as  positivist  philosophers 
 maintain,  a  mere  hallucination  or  a  priestly  fraud. 
 This,  I  believe,  is  the  real  reason  why  my  own  ex- 
 planation  of    religion,    though   admitted   to   be   im- 
 
 1  Hibbert  Lectures,  226  ;  Gruppe,  p.  218. 
 
 3  '  Das  ist  das  beriihmte  Miiller'sclie  System,  welches  eine  bcson- 
 ders  eingehende  Wurdigung  erfordert,  nicht  allein  wegen  der  per- 
 sbnlichen  Bedeutung  seines  Urhebers,  sondern  mehr  noch  weil  es 
 der  bered  teste  mid  systematischeste  Ausdrack  einer  Auffassung  ist, 
 von  welcher  aus  eine  ganze  Reihe  hervorragender  religionsgeschicht- 
 lichef  Werke  anderer  Forscher  geschrieben  sind.'     Gruppe,  p.  220. 
 
THE    HISTORICAL   METHOD.  195 
 
 pregnable,  has  been  so  fiercely  condemned  by  theposi- 
 tivists  themselves.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  condemn, 
 another  to  refute.  I  should  have  thought  that  my 
 critics  would  have  welcomed  my  admission,  Nihil  ed 
 in  fide  quod  non  anteafuerit  in  sensu,  with  open  arms. 
 But  no,  they  will  hear  of  no  psychological,  of  no  his- 
 torical explanation  of  one  of  the  greatest  psychological 
 and  historical  facts  in  the  world,  namely  religion.  If 
 anything,  however,  is  absurd,  it  is  surely  to  imagine 
 that  by  shutting  our  eyes,  we  can  annihilate  facts.  Is 
 not  religion  as  solid  a  fact  as  language,  law,  art,  science, 
 and  all  the  rest  ?  We  may,  if  we  like,  disapprove  of 
 every  one  of  these  achievements  of  the  human  mind  ; 
 but  even  then  we  cannot  get  rid  of  the  problem  as 
 to  how  they  came  to  exist.  Unless,  therefore,  some 
 intelligible  arguments  can  be  advanced  against  what 
 I  have  put  forward  as  the  conditio  sine  quel  non  of 
 all  religion,  I  shall  for  the  present  consider  the  follow- 
 ing points  as  firmly  established  : — 
 
 1.  That,  like  all  other  experience,  our  religious 
 experience  begins  with  the  senses  ; 
 
 2.  That  though  the  senses  seem  to  deliver  to  us 
 finite  experiences  only,  many,  if  not  all,  of  them  can 
 be  shown  to  involve  something  beyond  the  known, 
 something  unknown,  something  which  I  claim  the 
 liberty  to  call  infinite  ; 
 
 3.  That  in  this  way  the  human  mind  was  led  to  the 
 recognition  of  undefined,  infinite  agents  or  agencies 
 beyond,  behind,  and  within  our  finite  experience ; 
 and 
 
 4.  That  the  feelings  of  fear,  awe,  reverence  and 
 love  excited  by  the  manifestations  of  some  of  these 
 agents  or  powers  began  to  react  on  the  human  mind, 
 
 o  2 
 
196  LECTURE    Villi 
 
 and  thus  produced  what  we  call  Natural  Religion  in 
 its  lowest  and  simplest  form,- -fear,  awe,  reverence, 
 and  love  of  the  gods1. 
 
 History  v.  Theory. 
 
 After  we  have  once  established  these  premisses, 
 there  are  two  ways  open  for  the  study  of  Natural 
 Religion.  We  may  try  to  find  out  by  means  of 
 abstract  reasoning  what  ideas  would  naturally  spring 
 from  these  simple  premisses,  how  the  perception  of 
 the  Infinite  could  be  realised  in  language,  and  what 
 could  or  could  not  be  predicated  of  those  undefined 
 
 1  I  doubt  whether  the  writer  of  an  interesting  article  in  the  Scots 
 Magazine,  Feb.  1889,  can  have  attended  all  my  lectures  at  Glasgow. 
 He  says  that  my  definition  of  religion  seemed  to  him  to  labour 
 under  four  objections : 
 
 1.  'That  it  is  not  traced  back  to  the  promiscuum  (read  proximum) 
 genus,  just  as  much  and  just  as  little  as  the  definition  modus  cognoscendi, 
 etc'  But  my  definition  traces  religion  back  to  one  proximum  genus  only, 
 and  not  to  two.  It  traces  it  back  to  experience,  and  nothing  else, 
 not  to  both  cognoscere  and  colere. 
 
 2.  '  That  it  is  expressed  in  terms  which  require  definition.'  I  say 
 no,  unless  I  have  laboured  in  vain  in  trying  to  show  that  the  ex- 
 perience of  the  infinite  is  as  palpable  as  that  of  the  finite.  The  in- 
 finite in  this  its  simplest  and  most  primitive  sense  seems  to  me  t<> 
 require  no  further  definition,  nay  to  admit  of  none,  whereas  the 
 concept  of  Deus  is  so  full  of  historical  ingredients  that  it  almost 
 dories  definition. 
 
 3.  He  doubts  '  whether  my  definition  of  religion,  though  it  may 
 include  Buddhism,  would  include  Fetishism.'  Fetishism  is,  as  I 
 believe  to  have  shown,  the  very  last  corruption  of  religion  ;  but  even 
 in  that  corrupt  form  religion  is  based  on  the  perception  of  some- 
 thing beyond  the  actual  in  the  actual.  And  even  if  the  fetish  is 
 coerced  by  blows  instead  of  being  importuned  by  prayers,  the  moral 
 element  is  still  present  in  the  act  of  the  worshipper. 
 
 4.  My  critic  says  '  that  there  are  some  religions  which  do  not 
 affect  moral  character,  but  only  move  the  individual  to  the  me- 
 chanical performance  of  certain  external  acts.'  Yes,  but  these  are 
 again  corruptions  of  religion,  and  perfectly  intelligible  in  their 
 downward  movement.  Would  any  one  say  that  a  Megatherion 
 ought  not  to  be  defined  as  a  living  animal,  because  we  know  it  in 
 its  petrified  form  only  ? 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  197 
 
 agents  or  agencies  that  had  been  discovered  behind, 
 or  above,  or  within  nature. 
 
 Theory. 
 
 It  might  be  asked,  for  instance,  whether  the  human 
 mind  could  be  satisfied  with  an  indefinite  number  of 
 such  beings,  or  whether  after  a  time  the  mere  love  of 
 simplicity  would  lead  on  to  the  admission  of  one 
 supreme  being  only. 
 
 Again,  it  might  be  asked  whether  anything  beyond 
 mere  existence  could  be  predicated  of  the  infinite,  or 
 whether,  after  the  existence  of  supernatural  powers 
 has  been  admitted  and  their  number  fixed,  any  further 
 qualities  could  be  ascribed  to  them. 
 
 We  know  that  the  answer,  which  was  given,  quite 
 regardless  as  yet  of  historical  facts,  has  been  that  it 
 could  be  done  in  three  ways,  and  in  three  ways  only. 
 
 Causalitas. 
 
 First,  these  beings  might  be  looked  upon,  not  as 
 identical  with  nature,  but  as  behind  nature  ;  not  as 
 what  is,  but  as  the  cause  of  what  is  ;  or,  in  the  earliest 
 stages  of  human  thought  and  language,  as  makers, 
 shapers,  fathers,  and  rulers  of  the  world.  This  is  the 
 conception  of  the  divine  per  viam  causal 'if  at  is. 
 
 Eminentia. 
 
 Secondly,  as  they  were  conceived  as  powerful  and 
 perfect,  whatever  qualities  seemed  most  excellent  in 
 human  nature,  might  be  safely  ascribed  to  them  in  a 
 supreme  degree.  This  is  the  conception  of  the  divine 
 per  viam  eminent iae. 
 
 Negatio. 
 
 Thirdly,  whatever  seemed  imperfect  in  human 
 nature,  or   at   all    events,  weak   and   limited,   could 
 
198  LECTUKE  VITT. 
 
 safely  be  negatived  of  divine  beings,  per  warn  nega- 
 tion is. 
 
 Cosmological,  Teleological,  Ontological  Arguments. 
 
 Again,  the  so-called  proofs  of  the  existence  of 
 divine  beings  or  in  the  end  of  one  Supreme  God,  the 
 Cosmological,  Teleological,  and  Ontological,  might  be 
 examined  and  reasoned  out,  without  any  reference  to 
 the  history  of  religious  thought. 
 
 All  this  might  be  done,  and  has  been  done  and  well 
 done,  and  I  have  little  doubt  that  some  of  the 
 lecturers  on  Lord  GifFord's  foundation  will  do  full 
 credit  to  this  side  of  our  subject,  to  what  is  generally 
 called  the  Philosophy  of  Religion. 
 
 Historical  Method. 
 
 I  myself,  however,  am  not  going  to  follow  this 
 course,  and  this  for  various  reasons.  First  of  all,  the 
 philosophy  of  religion  has  such  eminent  representa- 
 tives in  Scotland,  and  more  particularly  in  this 
 University,  that  I  should  feel  it  presumptuous  on  my 
 part  to  treat  a  subject  which  has  been  much  better 
 treated  in  this  place  than  I  could  hope  to  do. 
 
 Secondly,  all  my  own  special  studies  have  been 
 devoted  to  the  history  of  religion,  and  I  can  hardly 
 be  mistaken  in  supposing  that  it  was  for  this  reason 
 that  I  was  chosen  to  fill  this  lectureship. 
 
 Thirdly,  I  must  openly  confess  that  I  have  great 
 faith  in  history,  as  showing  to  us,  if  not  the  best 
 possible,  at  all  events  the  only  real  arguments  in 
 support  of  the  tenets  of  Natural  Religion.  To  the 
 philosopher  the  existence  of  God  may  seem  to  rest  on 
 a  syllogism ;  in  the  eyes  of  the  historian  it  rests  on 
 the  whole  evolution  of  human  thought. 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD. 
 
 199 
 
 The  opinions  elaborated  by  the  whole  of  mankind 
 '  with  all  their  fluctuations  and  contradictions,'  seem 
 to  me  to  carry  a  certain  weight,  and,  at  all  events, 
 to  convey  more  instruction  than  the  system  of  any  or 
 even  of  all  of  our  living  philosophers. 
 
 Nor  is  it  necessary  that  an  historical  study  should 
 exclude  contemporary  history.  The  philosophers  of 
 to-day  will  to-morrow  be  philosophers  of  yesterday, 
 and  if  they  have  added  anything  original  to  the  in- 
 herited stock  of  human  knowledge,  they  will  take 
 their  proper  place   in  the  historical  Council  of  the 
 
 world. 
 
 Whatever  questions  I  have  had  to  deal  with,  I 
 have  always  found  their  historical  treatment  and 
 solution  the  most  satisfactory.  If  we  do  not  under- 
 stand a  thing,  if  we  hardly  know  what  it  is,  what  it 
 means,  and  how  to  call  it,  it  is  always  open  to  us  to 
 try  to  find  out  how  it  has  come  to  be  what  it  is.  It  is 
 wonderful  how  this  method  clears  our  thoughts,  and 
 how  it  helps  us  to  disentangle  the  most  hopeless 
 tangles  which  those  who  came  before  us  have  left  to 
 us  as  our  inheritance.  This  historical  method  has 
 regenerated  the  study  of  language,  it  has  infused  a 
 new  spirit  into  the  study  of  ancient  law;  why 
 should  it  not  render  the  same  kind  of  help  to  an 
 independent  study  of  religion  1 
 
 Archaeology. 
 
 Nowhere,  perhaps,  can  we  see  more  clearly  the 
 different  spirit  in  which  these  two  schools,  the  histor- 
 ical and  the  theoretical,  set  to  work  than  in  what 
 is  called  by  preference  the  Science  of  Man,  Anthro- 
 pology,   or   the  Science    of   People,  Ethnology;    or 
 
200  LECTURE    VII [. 
 
 more    generally    the    science    of   old    things,    0f    the 
 works  of  ancient  men,  Archaeology. 
 
 Theoretic   School. 
 
 The  Theoretic  School  begins,  as  usual,  with  an  ideal 
 conception  of  what  man  must  have  been  in  the 
 beginning.  According  to  some,  he  was  the  image 
 of  his  Maker,  a  perfect  being,  but  soon  destined  to 
 fall  to  the  level  of  ordinary  humanity.  According 
 to  others,  he  began  as  a  savage,  whatever  that  may 
 mean,  not  much  above  the  level  of  the  beasts  of 
 the  field,  and  then  had  to  work  his  way  up  through 
 successive  stages,  which  are  supposed  to  follow  each 
 other  by  a  kind  of  inherent  necessity.  First  comes 
 the  stage  of  the  hunter  and  fisherman,  then  that  of 
 the  breeder  of  cattle,  the  tiller  of  the  soil,  and  lastly 
 that  of  the  founder  of  cities. 
 
 But  while  one  school  of  anthropologists  would  thus 
 derive  civilisation  by  a  gradual  evolution  from  the 
 lowest  savagery,  another  school  considers  the  savage 
 as  a  stationary  and  quiescent  being,  so  much  so  that 
 it  bids  us  recognise  in  the  savage  of  to-day  the  un- 
 changed representative  of  the  primordial  savage,  and 
 encourages  us  to  study  the  original  features  of  man 
 in  such  survivals  as  the  Bushmen,  the  Papuans  and 
 the  Cherokees.  These  two  views  might  seem  con- 
 tradictory, unless  we  distinguish  between  stationary 
 savages  and  progressive  savages,  or  define  at  least  the 
 meaning  of  the  word,  before  we  allow  it  to  enter  into 
 our  scientific  currency. 
 
 Again,  as  man  is  defined  as  an  animal  which  uses 
 tools,  we  are  told  that,  according  to  the  various 
 materials  of  which  these  tools  were  made,  man  must 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  ^01 
 
 by  necessity  have  passed  through  what  are  called  the 
 three  stages  or  ages  of  stone,  bronze,  and  iron,  raising 
 himself  by  means  of  his  more  and  more  perfect 
 tools  to  what  we  might  call  the  age  of  steel  and 
 steam  and  electricity,  in  which  for  the  present  civil- 
 isation seems  to  culminate.  Whatever  discoveries  are 
 made  by  excavating  the  ruins  of  ancient  cities,  by 
 opening  tombs,  by  ransacking  kitchen-middens,  by 
 exploring  once  more  the  flint-mines  of  prehistoric 
 races,  all  must  submit  to  the  fundamental  theory,  and 
 each  specimen  of  bone  or  stone  or  bronze  or  iron 
 must  take  the  place  drawn  out  for  it  within  the  lines 
 and  limits  of  an  infallible  system. 
 
 Historical  School. 
 
 The  Historical  School  takes  the  very  opposite  line. 
 It  begins  with  no  theoretical  expectations,  with  no 
 logical  necessities,  but  takes  its  spade  and  shovel 
 to  see  what  there  is  left  of  old  things.  It  describes 
 them,  arranges  them,  classifies  them,  and  thus  hopes 
 in  the  end  to  understand  and  to  explain  them.  Thus 
 when  Schliemann  began  his  work  at  Hissarlik,  he 
 dug  away,  noted  the  depth  at  which  each  relic  was 
 found,  placed  similar  relics  side  by  side,  unconcerned 
 whether  iron  comes  before  bronze,  or  bronze  before 
 flint.  Here  are  the  facts,  he  seems  to  say  to  the 
 students  of  archaeology  —  now  arrange  them  and 
 draw  your  own  conclusions  from  them. 
 
 Let  me  quote  the  words  of  a  young  and  very 
 careful  archaeologist,  Mr.  Arthur  Evans,  in  describing 
 this  kind  of  work,  and  the  results  which  we  obtain 
 from  it l  : 
 
 '  In  the  topmost  stratum  of  Hissarlik,'  lie  writes. 
 
 1  Academy,  December  20,  1883. 
 
202  LECTURE   VIII. 
 
 '  (which  some  people  like  to  call  Troy,)  extending  six 
 feet  down,  we  find  remains  of  the  Eoman  and  Mace- 
 donian Ilios,  and  the  Aeolic  colony  ;  and  the  frag- 
 ments of  archaic  Greek  pottery  discovered  (hardly 
 distinguishable  from  that  of  Spata  and  Mykenai) 
 take  ns  back  already  to  the  end  of  the  first  millen- 
 nium before  our  era. 
 
 '  Below  this,  one  superposed  above  the  other,  lie  the 
 remains  of  no  less  than  six  successive  prehistoric 
 settlements,  reaching  down  to  over  fifty  feet  below 
 the  surface  of  the  hill.  The  formation  of  this  vast 
 superincumbent  mass  by  artificial  and  natural  causes 
 must  have  taken  a  long  series  of  centuries  ;  and  yet, 
 when  we  come  to  examine  the  lowest  deposits,  the 
 remains  of  the  first  and  second  cities,  we  are  struck 
 at  once  with  the  relatively  high  state  of  civilisation  at 
 which  the  inhabitants  of  this  spot  had  already  arrived. 
 
 '  The  food-remains  show  a  people  acquainted  with 
 agriculture  and  cattle-rearino-  as  well  as  with  hunt- 
 ing  and  fishing.  The  use  of  bronze  was  known, 
 though  stone-implements  continued  to  be  used  for 
 certain  purposes,  and  the  bronze  implements  do  not 
 show  any  of  the  refined  forms — notably  the  fibulae — 
 characteristic  of  the  later  Bronze  Age. 
 
 '  Trade  and  commerce  evidently  were  not  wanting. 
 Articles  de  luxe  of  gold,  enamel,  and  ivory  were 
 already  being  imported  from  lands  more  directly 
 under  Babylonian  and  Egyptian  influence,  and  jade- 
 axeheads  came  by  prehistoric  trade  routes  from  the 
 Kuen-Lun,  in  China.  The  local  potters  were  already 
 acquainted  with  the  use  of  the  wheel,  and  the  city- 
 walls  and  temples  of  the  Second  City  evince  con- 
 siderable progress  in  the  art  of  building.' 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  203 
 
 Such  is  the  method  of  the  Historical  School,  and 
 such  the  results  which  it  obtains.  It  runs  its  shaft 
 down  from  above ;  the  Theoretical  School  runs  its 
 shaft  up  from  below.  It  may  be  that  they  are  both 
 doing  good  work,  but  such  is  the  strength  of  tempera- 
 ment and  taste,  even  among  scientific  men,  that  you 
 will  rarely  see  the  same  person  working  in  both 
 mines  ;  nay,  that  not  seldom  you  hear  the  same 
 disparaging  remarks  made  by  one  party  of  the 
 other,  which  you  may  be  accustomed  to  hear  from 
 the  promoters  of  rival  gold  mines  in  India  or  in  the 
 South  of  Africa. 
 
 Study  of  Language  (Historical  School). 
 
 Let  us  now  cast  a  glance  at  the  work  which  these 
 two  schools,  the  historical  and  the  theoretical,  have 
 done  in  the  study  of  language.  The  Historical 
 School  in  trying  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  origin 
 and  growth  of  language,  takes  language  as  it  finds 
 it.  It  takes  the  living  languages  in  their  various 
 dialects,  and  traces  each  word  back  from  century  to 
 century,  until  from  the  English,  for  instance,  now 
 spoken  in  the  streets,  we  arrive  at  the  Saxon  of 
 Alfred,  the  Old  Saxon  of  the  Continent,  and  the 
 Gothic  of  Ulfilas,  as  spoken  on  the  Danube  in  the 
 fourth  century.  Even  here  we  do  not  stop.  For 
 finding  that  Gothic  is  but  a  dialect  of  the  great 
 Teutonic  stem  of  language,  that  Teutonic  again  is 
 but  a  dialect  of  the  great  Aryan  family  of  speech, 
 we  trace  Teutonic  and  its  collateral  branches,  Greek, 
 Latin,  Celtic,  Slavonic,  Persian,  and  Sanskrit,  back 
 to  that  Proto-Aryan  form  of  speech  which  contained 
 the  seeds   of  all  we   now  see   before    us    developed 
 
204  LECTURE    VIII. 
 
 into  germs,  plants,  flowers,  and  fruits  in  the  various 
 languages  of  the  Aryan  race. 
 
 After  having  settled  this  historical  outline  of  the 
 growth  of  our  family  of  speech,  the  Aryan,  we  take 
 any  word,  or  a  hundred,  or  a  thousand  words,  and 
 analyse  them,  or  take  them  to  pieces.  That  words 
 can  be  taken  to  pieces,  every  grammar  teaches  us. 
 The  Sanskrit  name  for  grammar  is  Vyakara?ia, 
 which  means  '  taking  to  pieces.'  This  process,  how- 
 ever, of  taking  them  to  pieces  scientifically  and 
 correctly,  dissecting  limb  from  limb,  is  often  as  diffi- 
 cult and  laborious  as  any  anatomical  preparation. 
 
 Acutus. 
 
 Well,  let  us  take  quite  a  modern  word — the 
 American  cute,  sharp.  We  all  know  that  cute  is  only 
 a  shortening  of  acute,  and  that  acute  is  the  Latin 
 acutus,  sharp.  In  acutus,  again,  we  easily  recognise 
 the  frequent  derivative  tits,  as  in  cornutus,  horned, 
 from  cornu,  horn.  This  leaves  us  acu,  as  in  acu-s,  a 
 needle.  In  this  word  the  u  can  again  be  separated, 
 for  we  know  that  it  is  a  very  common  derivative,  in 
 such  words  as  pec-u,  cattle,  Sanskrit  pasu,  from  PA#, 
 to  tether  ;  or  tanu,  thin,  Greek  ravv-s,  Latin  tenu-i-s, 
 from  TAN,  to  stretch.  Thus  we  arrive  in  the  end  at 
 AK,  and  here  our  analysis  must  stop,  for  if  we  were 
 to  divide  AK  into  A  and  K,  we  should  get,  as  even 
 Plato  knew  (Theaetetus,  205),  mere  letters,  and  no 
 longer  significant  sounds  or  syllables  Now  what  is 
 this  AK  ?  We  call  it  a  root,  which  is,  of  course,  a 
 metaphor  only.  What  we  really  mean  by  a  root  is 
 the  residuum  of  our  analysis,  and  a  residuum  which 
 itself  resists  all  further  analysis.  But  what  is  impor- 
 tant is  that  these  roots  represent  not  a  mere  theoretic 
 
THE    HISTOKICAL    METHOD.  205 
 
 postulate,  but  a  fact,  an  historical  fact,  and,  at  the 
 same  time,  an  ultimate  fact. 
 
 With  these  ultimate  facts—that  is,  with  a  limited 
 number  of  predicative  syllables,  to  which  every  word 
 in  any  of  the  Aryan  languages  can  be  traced  back,  or, 
 as  we  may  also  express  it,  from  which  every  word  in 
 these  languages  can  be  derived— the  historical  school 
 of  comparative  philology  is  satisfied,  at  least  to  a 
 certain  extent ;  but  it  has  also  to  account  for  certain 
 pronouns  and  adverbs  and  prepositions,  which  arc 
 not  derived  from  predicative,  but  from  demonstrative 
 roots,  and  wThich  have  supplied,  at  the  same  time, 
 many  of  those  derivative  elements,  like  tus  in  acu-tus, 
 which  we  generally  call  suffixes  or  terminations. 
 
 After  this  analysis  is  finished,  the  historical  student 
 has  done  his  work.  AK,  he  says,  conveys  the  concept  of 
 sharp,  sharpness,  being  sharp  or  pointed.  How  it  came 
 to  do  that  we  cannot  tell,  or,  at  least,  we  cannot  find  out 
 by  historical  analysis.  If  we  like  to  guess  on  the  sub- 
 ject, Plato  has  shown  us  how  to  do  it,  and  no  one  is 
 likely  to  do  it  more  ingeniously  than  he.  But  that 
 it  did  convey  that  concept,  we  can  prove  by  words 
 derived  from  AK  in  Sanskrit,  Greek,  Latin,  in  Celtic, 
 Slavonic,  and  Teutonic  speech.  For  instance :  Sanskrit 
 asu,  quick  (originally  sharp),  Greek  wm,  Lat.  oc-ior, 
 Lat.  ac-er}  eager,  acus,  acuo,  acies,  acumen;  Greek 
 ckpi,  the  highest  point,  A.-S.  cecg-,  also  to  egg  on; 
 ciKcav,  a  javelin,  acidus,  sharp,  bitter,  ague,  a  sharp 
 fever,  ear  of  corn,  Old  High  German  ahir,  Gothic  ahs, 
 Lat.  (lea*,  aceris,  husk  of  grain,  and  many  more. 
 
 Theoretic  School. 
 
 Let  us  now  look  at  the  Theoretical  rJchoul  and  its 
 treatment  of  language.     How  could  language  arise  i 
 
206  LECTURE   VIII. 
 
 it  says  ;  and  it  answers,  Why,  we  see  it  every  day. 
 We  have  only  to  watch  a  child,  and  we  shall  see  that 
 a  child  utters  certain  sounds  of  pain  and  joy,  and  very 
 soon  after  imitates  the  sounds  which  it  hears.  It 
 says  Ah!  when  it  is  surprised  or  pleased;  it  says 
 Bah !  when  it  sees  a  lamb,  Boiv-wow  !  when  it  sees  a 
 dog ;  and  it  soon  says  See-saw,  when  it  swings  its 
 doll.  Language,  we  are  told,  could  not  arise  in  any 
 other  way ;  so  that  involuntary  interjections  and 
 imitations  must  be  considered  as  the  ultimate,  or 
 rather  the  primary  facts  of  language,  while  their 
 transition  into  real  words  is,  we  are  assured,  a  mere 
 question  of  time. 
 
 This  theory,  or  rather  these  three  theories,  which 
 have  been  called  the  Pooh-pooh,  Bow-wow,  and 
 Yo-heo  theories,  are  said  to  be  easily  confirmed  by  a 
 number  of  words  in  all  languages,  which  still  exhibit 
 most  clearly  the  signs  of  such  an  origin  ;  and  still 
 further,  by  the  fact  that  these  supposed  rudiments  of 
 human  speech  exist;  even  at  an  earlier  stage,  in  the 
 development  of  animal  life,  namely,  in  the  sounds 
 uttered  by  dogs,  parrots,  and  other  animals ;  though, 
 curiously  enough,  far  more  fully  and  frequently  by 
 our  most  distant  ancestors,  the  birds,  than  by  those 
 who  claim  to  be  our  nearest  relatives,  the  apes. 
 
 It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  all  who  believe 
 in  a  possible  transition  from  an  ape  to  a  man  should 
 gladly  have  embraced  this  theory  of  the  origin  of 
 language. 
 
 The  only  misfortune  is  that  such  a  theory,  though 
 it  easily  explains  utterances  which  really  require  no 
 explanation  at  all,  such  as  boiv-tvow  and  cuckoo  ; 
 pooh-pooh  and  fie  !  yo-heo  and  see-saw,  or  even  words 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  207 
 
 such  as  crashing,  cracking,  creaking,  crunching, 
 scrunching,  leaves  us  entirely  in  the  lurch  as  soon  as 
 we  come  to  deal  with  real  words — I  mean  words 
 expressive  of  general  concepts,  such  as  man,  tree, 
 name,  law — in  fact,  nine-tenths  of  our  dictionary. 
 
 The  Theoretical  School  has  certainly  one  great 
 advantage.  It  goes  to  the  very  bottom  of  the  ques- 
 tion, and  explains  the  very  origin  of  language,  as  it 
 took  place  in  the  nursery  of  the  first  Pithecanthropos 
 or  Anthropopithecos,  and  it  explains  it  in  so  simple  a 
 way  that  every  child  can  understand  it.  If  a  child 
 can  say  Bow-wow,  what  difference  is  there  between 
 that  and  saying  Dog  ?  If  a  child  can  say  Fie,  why 
 should  it  not  say  '  I  disapprove '  1  If  a  child  says  Ding- 
 dong,  why  should  it  not  say  Bell  ?  All  these,  we  are 
 told,  are  differences  of  degree  only,  whatever  that  may 
 mean,  and  with  a  sufficient  allowance  of  time,  there  is 
 nothing  that  will  not  become  anything. 
 
 The  Historical  School  cannot  match  such  perform- 
 ances. When  by  a  most  laborious  analysis  it  has 
 reduced  one  language,  or  one  family  of  languages,  to 
 its  constituent  elements,  it  cannot  claim  to  have 
 accounted  for  the  origin  of  all  language,  but  only 
 of  one  or  two  or  three  families  of  human  speech. 
 When  it  has  placed  before  us  the  roots  of  one  lan- 
 guage, or  one  family  of  languages,  it  has  come  to  the 
 end  of  its  work.  It  can  do  no  more  than  leave  these 
 roots  as  ultimate  facts,  though  between  these  roots 
 and  the  first  friendly  grunts  that  passed  between 
 anthropopithecos  and  pithecanthropos,  there  may  bo 
 millions  of  millions  of  years. 
 
 Then  why  not  adopt  the  Bow-wow,  the  Pooh-pooh, 
 and  the  Yo-heo  theories,  which  explain  everything  so 
 
208  LECTURE    TUT. 
 
 easily  and  so  completely?  For  the  simple  reason 
 that  real  language,  when  we  trace  it  back  to  its  real 
 constituent  elements,  shows  no  trace  whatever  of  these 
 mere  imitations  of  so-called  natural  sounds.  They 
 exist  not  as  part  and  parcel  of  real  language,  but 
 simply  by  the  side  of  it.  Even  admitting  the  possi- 
 bility that  they  might  have  grown  into  some  kind  of 
 language,  the  fact  remains  that  they  have  not  done 
 so  *.  What  we  call  roots  do  not  only  show  no  out- 
 ward similarity  with  these  natural  sounds,— that 
 would  be  the  smaller  difficulty, — but  they  are  totally 
 different  in  nature  ;  and  this  is  the  point  which  so  few 
 anthropologists  seem  able  to  see.  These  roots  are  not 
 simply  perceptual,  like  all  Bow-wow,  Pooh-pooh,  and 
 Yo-heo  utterances  ;  but  they  are  conceptual  in  char- 
 acter, as  the  elements  of  conceptual  language  ought 
 to  be,  if  they  are  to  help  us  to  explain  what  has  to 
 be  explained,  namely,  conceptual  speech. 
 
 Brin ton  on  Palaeolithic  Language. 
 
 This  has  evidently  been  perceived  by  Dr.  Brinton, 
 now  Professor  of  American  Linguistics  in  the  Univer- 
 sity of  Pennsylvania.  He  knows  that  interjections 
 and  all  the  rest  will  not  grow  into  real  language. 
 But  he  thinks  that  the  American  languages  will  help 
 us  to  get  behind  the  scene,  and  he  has  drawn  up  a 
 picture  of  what,  following  their  guidance,  he  imagines 
 the  language  of  Palaeolithic  Man  to  have  been2.  '  It 
 was  far   more    rudimentary,'    he    writes,    '  than   any 
 
 1  On  the  possibility  of  such  a  transition,  see  Science  of  Thought  pp. 
 3UD-315,  a  chapter  for  which  I  have  been  much  blamed  by  scholars', 
 while  anthropologists  have  construed  a  limited  concession  into  a 
 complete  surrender. 
 
 '-'  The  Language  <>f  Palaeolithic  Man,  by  Daniel  G.  Brinton.  M  D. 
 Head  before  the  American  Philosophical  Society,  October  5,  128b. 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  209 
 
 language  known  to  us.  It  had  no  grammatical  form. 
 So  fluctuating  were  its  phonetics,  and  so  much  de- 
 pended on  gesture,  tone,  and  stress,  that  its  words 
 could  not  have  been  reduced  to  writing,  nor  arranged 
 in  alphabetic  order.'  To  give  an  idea  of  what  ho  sup- 
 poses the  phonetic  chaos  of  that  palaeolithic  language 
 to  have  been,  he  mentions  that  in  the  Araucanian  of 
 Chili  the  following  letters  are  permutable.  B  may 
 become  W,  W  F,  F  U,  U  TJ,  U  1,  I  E,  E  G,  G  GH, 
 GH  Hu  i. 
 
 But  that  is  not  all.  '  These  palaeolithic  words 
 often  signified  logical  contradictories,  and  which  of 
 the  antithetic  meanings  was  intended  could  be  guessed 
 only  from  the  accent  or  a  sign.'  This  will  delight  Dr. 
 Abel.  '  It  possessed  no  prepositions  nor  conjunctions, 
 no  numerals,  no  pronouns  of  any  kind,  no  forms  to 
 express  singular  and  plural,  male  nor  female,  past  nor 
 present.  The  different  vowel  sounds  and  the  different 
 consonantal  groups  conveyed  specific  significance, 
 and  were  of  more  import  than  the  syllables  which  they 
 formed.' 
 
 This  last  rather  mysterious  theory  of  vowels  and 
 consonants  being  more  significant  than  the  syllables 
 which  consist  of  them  is  illustrated  by  some  remarks 
 made  by  Bishop  Faraud 2,  on  the  Tinne  or  Athapascan 
 language,  spoken  widely  in  British  America,  and 
 closely  allied  to  the  Apache  «and  Navaho  dialects, 
 spoken  in  the  United  States.  Being,  as  we  are  told, 
 a  thorough  master  of  Tinne,  the  Bishop  states  that  its 
 significant  radicals  are  the  five  primitive  vowels,  A, 
 E,  I,  0,  U.     Of  these  A  expresses  matter,  E  existence, 
 
 1  Dr.  Darapsky,  Zr*  Lengua  Araucana,  Santiago  de  Chile,  1888,  p.  15. 
 
 2  JJix-hiiit  ans  chez  les  Sauvages,  p.  85. 
 
 J' 
 
210  LECTURE    VIII. 
 
 I  force  or  energy,  O  existence  doubtful,  and  U  exist- 
 ence absent,  non-existence,  negation,  or  succession. 
 These  vowels  are  put  in  action  by  single  or  double 
 consonants,  which  have  more  or  less  value  in  propor- 
 tion as  the  vowel  is  more  or  less  strong:.  Father 
 Petitot1  tells  us  that  there  are  '  sixty -three  consonants, 
 divided  into  nine  classes,  each  of  which  conveys  a 
 series  of  related  or  associated  ideas  in  the  native 
 mind.  Labials  express  the  idea  of  time  and  space, 
 as  age,  length,  distance,  and  also  whiteness— the  last- 
 mentioned,  perhaps,  through  association  with  the 
 white  hair  of  age,  or  the  endless  snow-fields  of  their 
 winter.  The  dentals  express  ail  that  relates  to  force, 
 &c  &c.' 
 
 Here  I  stop,  and  though  I  am  afraid  it  will  sound 
 most  audacious,  I  cannot  help  expressing  my  convic- 
 tion that  all  this  is  simply  wrong,  and  that  language 
 could  never  have  been  built  up  with  such  materials, 
 as  little  as  it  was  built  up  with  interjections.  I  know 
 this  audacity  will  seem  quite  intolerable.  My  only 
 excuse  is  that  I  could  produce  books  published  during 
 the  prehistoric  times  of  Comparative  Philology,  in 
 which  English  and  other  Aryan  languages  have  been 
 reduced  as  triumphantly  to  significant  vowels  and 
 significant  consonants. 
 
 The  Historical  School  therefore  leads  us  up  to  a 
 certain  point,  up  to  where  all  is  safe,  but  beyond 
 which  all  is  darkness,  at  least  without  the  light  of 
 hypothetical  illustration.  It  never  pretends  to  prove 
 that  the  roots  which  it  leaves  as  ultimate  facts  were  the 
 primordial  elements  of  human  speech.  It  admits  the 
 possibility  of  aeons  after  aeons  between  the  first  man, 
 
 1  Petitot,  THctionnaire  de  la  Langue  D.'nte  Dindjie, 
 
THE   HISTORICAL    METHOD.  211 
 
 fresh  from  the  hands  of  nature,  and  the  roots  of  the 
 Aryan  or  Semitic  family  of  speech.  All  it  does  is 
 to  venture  on  a  guess.  We  found  that  nearly  all  the 
 concepts  expressed  by  these  roots  are  significant  of 
 acts.  Now  as  the  great  difficulty,  which  is  hardly 
 ever  realised  by  anthropologists,  consists  in  our  having 
 to  account  for  the  origin  of  concepts,  and  sounds  ex- 
 pressive of  concepts,  and  not  merely  of  percepts,  and 
 sounds  expressive  of  percepts,  the  suggestion  first 
 made  by  Noire'  is  that  these  roots  were  originally 
 sounds  uttered  by  men  while  performing  certain  acts 
 in  common.  How  little  the  real  character  of  this 
 theory  has  been  understood  is  best  shown  by  the 
 fact  that  it  has  been  actually  mistaken  for  what  is 
 called  the  Yo-heoic  theory.  No  doubt  it  is  a  sugges- 
 tion, and  no  more,  for  who  would  dare  to  speak  with 
 positive  certainty  on  matters  so  distant  from  us  in 
 time,  and  still  more  distant  from  us  in  thought  ?  All 
 we  can  say  is  that  such  a  suggestion  would  fulfil 
 three  essential  conditions  ;  it  would  explain  the  simul- 
 taneous origin  of  concepts  and  roots  ;  it  would  account 
 for  their  intelligibility  among  fellow- workers,  and 
 it  would  explain  what  has  to  be  explained,  viz.  con- 
 ceptual, not  perceptual  language  ;  language  such 
 as  it  is,  not  language  such  as  it  might  have  been.  If 
 any  one  has  anything  better  to  suggest,  let  him  do 
 so  ;  if  not,  Ills  utere  mecum. 
 
 Advantages  of  both  Theories. 
 
 I  certainly  do  not  wish  to  throw  unmerited  con- 
 tempt on  the  Theoretical  School.  Far  from  it.  We 
 want  the  theorist  quite  as  much  as  the  historian.  The 
 one  must  check  the  other,  nay,  even  help  the  other, 
 
 P  2 
 
212  LECTURE    VIII. 
 
 just  as  every  government  wants  an  opposition  to  keep 
 it  in  order,  or,  I  ought  perhaps  to  say,  to  give  it  from 
 time  to  time  new  life  and  vigour.  I  only  wished  to 
 show,  by  an  example  or  two,  what  is  the  real  differ- 
 ence between  these  two  schools,  and  what  I  meant 
 when  I  said  that,  whether  by  temperament,  or  by 
 education,  or  by  conviction,  I  myself  have  always 
 belonged  to  the  Historical  School. 
 
 Science  of  Religion. 
 
 If  now  we  return  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  we 
 shall  find  here  again  the  same  difference  of  treatment 
 between  the  historian  and  the  theorist. 
 
 The  theorist  begins  by  assuring  us  that  all  men 
 were  originally  savages,  or,  to  use  a  milder  term, 
 children.  Therefore,  if  we  wish  to  study  the  origin  of 
 religion,  we  must  study  children  and  savages. 
 
 Now  at  the  present  moment  some  savages  in  Africa, 
 Australia,  and  elsewhere  are  supposed  to  be  fetish- 
 worshippers  and  nothing  else.  Therefore  we  are 
 assured  that  five  thousand  or  ten  thousand  years  ago 
 religion  must  have  begun  with  a  worship  of  fetishes 
 — that  is,  of  stones,  and  shells,  and  sticks,  and  other 
 inanimate  objects. 
 
 Again,  children  are  very  apt  not  only  to  beat  their 
 dolls,  but  even  to  punish  a  chair  or  a  table,  if  they 
 have  hurt  themselves  against  it.  This  shows  that 
 they  ascribe  life  and  personality — nay,  something  like 
 human  nature — to  inanimate  objects.  Hence  we  are 
 told  that  savages  would  naturally  do  the  same,  or 
 have  actually  done  the  same  from  the  earliest  time  to 
 the  present  day.  A  savage  is,  in  fact,  the  most 
 obliging  creature,  for  he   does  everything  that  any 
 
THE    HISTORICAL   METHOD.  213 
 
 anthropologist  wishes  him  to  do.  But,  even  then,  the 
 question  of  all  questions,  why  he  does  what  he  is  sup- 
 posed to  do,  is  never  asked.  We  are  told  that  he 
 worships  a  stone  as  his  god,  but  how  he  came  to 
 possess  the  idea  of  God,  and  to  predicate  it  of  a  stone, 
 is  called  a  metaphysical  question  of  no  interest  to 
 the  student  of  anthropology — that  is,  of  man.  Never- 
 theless it  is  the  primary  question  that  is  of  interest, 
 and  the  most  vital  interest  to  us. 
 
 If  then  we  press  for  an  answer  to  this  all-important 
 question,  we  are  informed  that  animism,  personifica- 
 tion, and  anthropomorphism  are  the  three  well-known 
 agencies  which  fully  account  for  the  fact  that  the 
 ancient  inhabitants  of  India,  Greece,  and  Italy  be- 
 lieved that  there  was  life  in  the  rivers,  the  mountains, 
 and  the  sky ;  that  the  sun,  and  the  moon,  and  the 
 dawn  were  cognisant  of  the  deeds  of  men,  and,  finally, 
 that  Jupiter  and  Juno,  Mars  and  Venus,  were  endowed 
 with  the  form  and  the  beauty,  the  feelings  and  pas- 
 sions of  men  ....  We  might  as  well  be  told 
 that  all  animals  are  hungry,  because  they  have  an 
 appetite. 
 
 We  read  in  many  of  the  most  popular  works  of  the 
 day  how,  from  the  stage  of  fetishism,  there  was  a 
 natural  and  necessary  progress  to  polytheism,  mono- 
 theism, and  atheism,  and  after  these  stages  have  been 
 erected  one  above  the  other,  all  that  remains  is  to  fill 
 each  stage  with  illustrations  taken  from  every  race 
 that  ever  had  a  religion,  whether  these  races  were 
 ancient  or  modern,  savage  or  civilised,  genealogically 
 related  to  each  other,  or  perfect  strangers. 
 
 Again,  I  must  guard  most  decidedly  against  being 
 supposed  to  wish  to  throw  contempt  or  ridicule  on  this 
 
214  LECTURE    VIII. 
 
 school.  Far  from  it.  I  differ  from  it ;  I  have  no  taste  for 
 it ;  I  think  it  is  often  very  misleading.  But  to  compare 
 the  thoughts  and  imaginations  of  savages  and  civilised 
 races,  of  the  ancient  Egyptians,  for  instance,  and  the 
 modern  Hottentots,  has  its  value,  if  carried  out  by 
 real  scholars.  We  learn  as  much  by  contrast  as  by 
 comparison,  and  the  bold  adventures  of  the  Theoretic 
 School  have  often  proved  a  useful  warning  at  all 
 events  to  later  explorers. 
 
 Historical  School. 
 
 Let  us  now  see  how  the  Historical  School  goes  to 
 work  in  treating  of  the  origin  and  growth  of  religion. 
 It  begins  by  collecting  all  the  evidence  that  is  ac- 
 cessible, and  classifies  it.  First  of  all,  religions  are 
 divided  into  those  that  have  sacred  books,  and  those 
 that  have  not.  Secondly,  the  religions  which  can  be 
 studied  in  books  of  recognised  or  canonical  authority, 
 are  arranged  genealogically. 
 
 Semitic  Religions. 
 
 The  New  Testament  is  traced  back  to  the  01d;  the 
 Koran  to  both  the  New  and  Old  Testaments.  This 
 gives  us  one  class  of  religions,  the  Semitic. 
 
 Aryan   Religions. 
 
 Then,  again,  the  sacred  books  of  Buddhism  and 
 £ainisin,  of  Zoroastrianism,  and  of  Brabmanism  are 
 classed  together  as  Aryan,  because  they  all  draw 
 their  vital  elements  from  one  and  the  same  Proto- 
 Aryan  source.  This  gives  us  a  second  class  of 
 religions,  the  Aryan. 
 
 Chinese  Religions. 
 
 Outside    the  pale  of   the    Semitic    and   Aryan    re- 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  215 
 
 ligions,  we  have  the  two  book-religions  of  China, 
 the  old  national  traditions  collected  by  Confucius, 
 and  the  moral  and  metaphysical  system  of  Lao-jze. 
 These  two  constitute  a  third  class  of  Chinese  re- 
 ligions. 
 
 The  study  of  religions  which  have  sacred  books 
 is  in  some  respects  easy,  because  we  have  in 
 these  books  authoritative  evidence  on  which  our 
 further  reasonings  and  conclusions  can  be  based. 
 But,  in  other  respects,  the  very  existence  of  these 
 books  creates  new  difficulties,  because,  after  all, 
 religions  do  not  live  in  books  only,  or  even  chiefly, 
 but  in  human  hearts  ;  and  when  we  have  to  deal 
 with  Vedas,  and  Avestas,  and  Tripifoikas,  Old  and 
 New  Testaments,  and  Korans,  we  are  often  tempted 
 into  taking  the  book  for  the  religion. 
 
 Still  the  study  of  book-religions,  if  we  once  have 
 mastered  their  language,  admits  at  all  events  of  a 
 critical  and  scholarlike  study,  while  a  study  of  native 
 religions  which  have  no  books,  no  articles,  no  tests, 
 no  councils,  no  pope,  withdraws  itself  almost  entirely 
 from  a  definitely  scientific  treatment.  Any  one  who 
 attempts  to  describe  the  religion  of  the  ancient 
 Greeks  and  Romans — I  mean  their  real  faith,  not 
 their  mythology,  their  ceremonial,  or  their  philo- 
 sophy— knows  the  immense  difficulty  of  such  a  task. 
 And  yet  we  have  here  a  large  literature,  spread  over 
 many  centuries,  wTe  know  their  language,  we  can  even 
 examine  the  ruins  of  their  temples. 
 
 Religions  without  Books. 
 
 Think  alter  that,  how  infinitely  greater  must  be 
 the  difficulty  of  forming  a  right  conception,   say.  of 
 
216  LECTURE   VIII. 
 
 the  religion  of  the  Red  Indians,  the  Africans,  the 
 Australians.  Their  religions  are  probably  as  old  as 
 their  languages,  that  is,  as  old  as  our  own  language  ; 
 but  we  know  nothing  of  their  antecedents,  nothing 
 except  the  mere  surface  of  to-day,  and  that  immense 
 surface  explored  in  a  few  isolated  spots  only,  here 
 and  there,  and  often  by  men  utterly  incapable  of 
 understanding  the  language  and  the  thoughts  of  the 
 people.  The  mistakes  committed  by  students  of 
 these  savage  religions  would  fill  volumes,  as  has 
 been  shown  by  Roskoff  in  his  answer  to  Sir  John 
 Lubbock  1.  And  yet  we  are  asked  to  believe  by  the 
 followers  of  the  Theoretic  School  that  this  mere 
 surface  detritus  is  in  reality  the  granite  that  underlies 
 all  the  religions  of  the  ancient  world,  more  primitive 
 than  the  Old  Testament,  more  intelligible  than  the 
 Veda,  more  instructive  than  the  mythological  lan- 
 guage of  Greece  and  Rome.  It  may  be  so.  The 
 religious  map  of  the  world  may  show  as  violent 
 convulsions  as  the  geological  map  of  the  earth,  and 
 what  is  now  on  the  surface  may  belong  to  the  lowest 
 azoic  rocks.  But  this  would  have  to  be  proved,  and 
 cannot  be  simply  taken  for  granted.  What  I  have 
 ventured  to  say  on  several  occasions  to  the  en- 
 thusiastic believers  in  this  contorted  evolution  of 
 religious  thought  is,  let  us  wait  till  we  know  a 
 little  more  of  Hottentots  aud  Papuans  ;  let  us  wait 
 till  we  know  at  least  their  language,  for  otherwise 
 we  may  go  hopelessly  wrong. 
 
 The  Historical  School,  in  the  meantime,  is  carrying 
 on  its  more  modest   work  by  publishing  and  trans- 
 lating the  ancient   records  of  the  great  religions  of 
 1  See  Roskoft'.  Bas  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  NaturvoUcer,  1880. 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  217 
 
 the  world,  undisturbed  by  the  sneers  of  those  who  do 
 not  find  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  what  they, 
 in  their  ignorance,  expected.  They  can  hardly  be 
 aware  of  what  is  thought  of  their  daintiness.  Would 
 geologists  turn  up  their  noses  at  a  kitchen-midden, 
 because  it  did  not  contain  their  own  favourite  lolly- 
 pops  1  And  yet  that  is  what  some  students  of  ancient 
 religion  seem  inclined  to  do,  when  the  ancient  iftshis 
 of  the  Veda  are  not  as  complacent  as  the  primeval 
 savages,  and  do  not  think  exactly  what  synthetic 
 philosophers  think  they  ought  to  have  thought. 
 
 Where  there  are  no  sacred  texts  to  edit  and  to 
 translate,  the  true  disciples  of  the  Historical  School- 
 men such  as,  for  instance,  Castre'n  in  Finland,  Bishop 
 Caldwell  or  Dr.  Hahn  in  South  Africa,  Horatio  Hale 
 or  Dr.  Brinton  in  North  America— do  not  shrink 
 from  the  drudgery  of  learning  the  dialects  spoken  by 
 savage  tribes,  gaining  their  confidence,  and  gathering 
 at  last  from  their  lips  some  records  of  their  popular 
 traditions,  their  ceremonial  customs,  some  prayers,  it 
 may  be,  and  some  confession  of  their  ancient  faith. 
 But  even  with  all  these  materials  at  his  disposal,  the 
 historical  student  never  forgets  that  these  commu- 
 nications on  religious  subjects  gathered  from  the  lips 
 even  of  a  Cetwayo,  can  hardly  be  more  trustworthy 
 than  a  description  of  the  doctrines  of  Christianity, 
 gathered  by  the  same  Cetwayo  during  his  stay 
 in  England  from  the  lips  of  a  London  coal-heaver. 
 He  does  not  rush  at  once  to  the  conclusion  that  in 
 the  Legends  of  the  Eskimos  any  more  than  in  the 
 hymns  of  the  Vedic  Aryas,  he  can  find  the  solution  of 
 all  the  riddles  in  the  science  of  religion.  He  only 
 says  that  we  are  not  likely  to  find  any  evidence  much 
 
218  LECTURE    Yin. 
 
 more  trustworthy,  and  that  therefore  we  are  justified 
 in  deriving  certain  lessons  from  these  materials. 
 
 And  what  is  the  chief  lesson  to  be  learnt  from 
 all  these  materials '?  It  is  this,  that  they  contain 
 certain  words  and  concepts  and  imaginations  which 
 are  as  yet  inexplicable,  which  seem  simply  irrational, 
 and  require  for  their  full  explanation  antecedents 
 which  are  lost  to  us  ;  but  that  they  contain  also 
 many  words  and  concepts  and  imaginations  which 
 are  perfectly  intelligible,  which  presuppose  no  ante- 
 cedents, and  which,  whatever  their  date  may  be,  may 
 be  called  primary  in  that  sense. 
 
 However  strange  it  may  seem  to  us,  if  we  simply 
 follow  the  evidence  placed  before  us,  there  can  be 
 little  doubt  that  the  perception  of  the  Unknown  or 
 the  Infinite  was  with  many  races  as  ancient  as  the 
 perception  of  the  Known  or  the  Finite,  that  the  two 
 were,  in  fact,  inseparable.  To  men  who  lived  on  an 
 island,  the  ocean  was  the  Unknown,  the  Infinite,  and 
 became  in  the  end  their  God.  To  men  who  lived  in 
 valleys,  the  rivers  that  fed  them  and  whose  sources 
 were  unapproachable,  the  mountains  that  protected 
 them,  and  whose  crests  were  inaccessible,  the  sky 
 that  overshadowed  them,  and  whose  power  and 
 beauty  were  incomprehensible,  these  were  their  un- 
 known beings,  their  infinite  beings,  their  bright  and 
 kind  beings,  what  some  of  them  called  their  Devas, 
 the  Bright,  the  same  word  which,  after  passing 
 through  many  changes,  still  breathes  in  our  own 
 word,  Divinity. 
 
 This  unconscious  process  of  theogony  is  historically 
 attested,  is  intelligible,  requires  no  antecedents,  and 
 may  in  that  sense  be  called  a  primary  process.     How 
 
THE    HISTORICAL    METHOD.  219 
 
 old  it  is,  chronologically,  who  would  venture  to  ask 
 or  to  tell?     All  that  the  Historical  School  ventures 
 to  assert  is  that  it  explains  one  side  of  the  origin  of 
 religion,  namely,  the  gradual  process  of  naming  or 
 conceiving  the  Infinite.     While  the  Theoretic  School 
 takes  the  predicate  of  God,  when  applied  to  a  fetish, 
 as   requiring   no    explanation,    the  Historical  School 
 sees  in  it  the  problem  of  all  problems,  the  result  of 
 a    long-continued    evolution    of    thought,    beginning 
 with  the  vague  consciousness  of  something  invisible, 
 unknown,   and  unlimited,   which   gradually  assumes 
 a   more   and    more    definite    shape   through    similes, 
 names,  myths,  and  legends,  till  at  last  it  is  divested 
 again  of  all  names,  and  lives  within  us  as  the   in- 
 visible,  inconceivable,  unnameable — the  infinite  God. 
 Even  if  it  should  be  possible  to  discover  traces  of 
 fetishism  in  really  ancient  documents,   in  Egyptian 
 and  Eabylonian  inscriptions,  in  Chinese  legends,  or 
 in  Yedic  hymns,  an  accurate  student  of  the  historical 
 growth  of  religious  ideas  would  always  ask  for  its 
 antecedents.     Fetishism,  from  its  very  nature,  cannot 
 be  primitive,  because  it  always  presupposes  the  pre- 
 vious growth    of  the   divine    predicate.     As   to   the 
 fetishism  of  modern  negroes,  we  know   now  that  it 
 represents  the  very  lowest  stage  which  religion  can 
 reach,   whether   in  Africa  or  any   other  part   of   the 
 world,  and  I  know  of  no  case,  even  among  the  most 
 degraded  of  Negro  tribes,  where  remnants  of  a  higher 
 religious  belief  have  not  been  discovered  by  the  side 
 of  this    degraded   belief  in   amulets,   talismans,  and 
 fetishes.     The  idea  of  De  Brosses  and  his  followers, 
 that  fetishism  could  reveal  to  us  the  very  primordial 
 of  religious  thought,  will  remain  for  ever  one  of  the 
 
220  LECTURE   VIII. 
 
 strangest  cases  of  self-delusion,  and  one  of  the  boldest 
 anachronisms  committed  by  students  of  the  history 
 of  religion. 
 
 I  need  hardly  say  that  though  in  the  science  of 
 religion  as  in  the  science  of  language,  all  my  sym- 
 pathies are  with  the  Historical  School,  I  do  not 
 mean  to  deny  that  the  Theoretical  School  has  like- 
 wise done  some  good  work.  The  very  opposition 
 roused  by  such  men  as  Schelling  and  Hegel  has 
 been  of  immense  assistance.  Let  both  schools  work 
 on,  carefully  and  honestly,  and  who  knows  but  that 
 their  ways,  which  seem  so  divergent  at  present,  may 
 meet  in  the  end. 
 
LECTURE   IX. 
 
 HISTORICAL   TREATMENT    OF   RELIGIOUS   QUESTIONS. 
 Is  Religion  Possible? 
 
 IT  has  often  been  said,  What  can  be  the  good  of 
 an  historical  study  of  religious  questions  ?  We 
 do  not  want  to  know  what  Manu,  or  Buddha,  or 
 Socrates,  or  Christ  thought  about  the  questions 
 which  trouble  us.  We  want  to  know  whether  any 
 living  man  can  give  us  an  answer  that  will  satisfy 
 the  requirements  of  our  own  age,  or  prescribe  a 
 remedy  which  will  cure  the  complaints  of  our  own 
 society.  The  burning  question  of  the  day  is  not 
 what  religion  has  been,  or  how  it  came  to  be  what 
 it  is.  The  real  question  is  the  possibility  of  an}' 
 religion  at  all,  whether  natural  or  supernatural ;  and 
 if  that  question  has  once  been  answered  in  the 
 negative,  as  it  has  been  by  some  of  the  most  popular 
 philosophers  of  our  century,  why  not  let  the  dead 
 bury  the  dead  1 
 
 The  fact  that,  as  far  as  history  can  reach,  no 
 single  human  being  has  ever,  from  his  childhood  to 
 his  old  age,  been  without  something  that  may  be 
 called  religion,  would  carry  very  little  weight.  The 
 limitation,  'as  far  as  history  can  reach,'  would  at 
 once  be  construed  into  a  confession  of  our  ignorance, 
 so  long  as  there  remained  a  single  nook  or  corner 
 on   earth    that   had    not    been   explored   by  anthro- 
 
222  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 pologists.  In  other  cases,  again,  where  the  existence 
 of  a  religion  cannot  be  denied,  the  religion  of  the 
 child  would  be  explained  as  an  hereditary  taint, 
 that  of  the  old  man  as  mere  dotage  or  second  child- 
 hood. The  fact  again  that,  so  long  as  we  know 
 anything  of  the  different  races  of  mankind,  we  find 
 them  always  in  possession  of  something  that  may 
 be  called  religion, — a  fact  which  may  now  be  readily 
 granted, — and  that  out  of  the  sum  total  of  human 
 beings  now  living  on  this  earth  (that  number  varies 
 from  1400  to  1500  millions1 — if  you  can  realise 
 such  a  sum  or  even  such  a  difference)  those  who 
 are  ignorant  and  those  who  deny  the  existence  of 
 any  supernatural  beings  form  a  mere  vanishing 
 quantity,  would  make  no  impression  whatever  on 
 those  who  consider  that  the  very  word  supernatural 
 has  no  right  to  exist  and  should  be  expunged  in 
 oar  dictionary. 
 
 I  do  not  wish  to  prejudge  any  of  these  questions ; 
 and  in  choosing  for  my  own  task  a  careful  study  of 
 the  historical  development  of  religious  thought  among 
 the  principal  nations  of  the  world,  I  claim  for  it  at 
 first  no  more  than  that  it  may  serve  at  least  as  a 
 useful  preparation  for  a  final  solution  of  the  difficult 
 problems  which  the  great  philosophers  of  our  age 
 have  placed  before  us.  It  would  be  strange  indeed 
 if  in  religion  alone  we  could  learn  nothing  from 
 those  who  have  come  before  us,  or  even  from  those 
 who  differ  from  us.  My  own  experience  has  been, 
 on  the  contrary,  that  nothing  helps  us  so  much  to 
 understand  and  to  value  our  own  religion  as  a  study 
 
 1  MM.  Selected  Essays,  ii.  228;    Lehrbuch  der  Religi&nsgescMchte  vm 
 Vhanti pl<  <?e  la  Saussaye,  p.  41. 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RELIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.    223 
 
 of  the  religions  of  other  nations,  and  that  nothing- 
 enables  us  better  to  deal  with  the  burning  questions 
 of  to-day  than  a  knowledge  of  the  difficulties  in- 
 herent in  all  religions.  These  questions  which  are 
 placed  before  us  as  the  burning  questions  of  the  day. 
 have  been  burning  for  centuries.  Under  slightly 
 varying  aspects  they  belong  to  the  oldest  questions 
 of  the  world,  and  they  occupy  a  very  prominent 
 place  in  every  history  of  religion.  If  there  is  con- 
 tinuity anywhere,  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  growth 
 of  religious  opinions. 
 
 History  and  Theory  inseparable. 
 
 Even  our  modern  philosophers  and  theologians  are 
 what  they  are,  and  think  what  they  think,  because 
 they  stand  on  the  historical  accumulation  of  the 
 religious  thoughts  and  religious  theories  of  former 
 ages  ;  and  the  religious  thoughts  and  religious 
 theories  of  former  ages  were  in  their  time  of  exactly 
 the  same  kind  as  the  thoughts  of  our  present  philo- 
 sophers. And  not  till  our  young  philosophers  have 
 learnt  that  lesson,  not  till  they  will  consent  to  serve 
 a  humble  apprenticeship  under  the  guidance  of  those 
 who  came  before  them,  is  there  any  hope  of  a  healthy 
 development  in  our  modern  philosophy.  If  there  is 
 evolution  everywhere,  is  there  to  be  no  evolution  in 
 philosophy  alone  1 
 
 Agnosticism. 
 
 Let  us  examine  a  few  of  the  more  important  of  our 
 so-called  burning  questions  of  the  day,  in  order  to  see 
 what  kind  of  help  we  may  expect  to  derive  from 
 history  in  trying  to  answer  them.  We  are  told  that 
 Agnosticism  is  an  invention  of  our  own  age,  and  that, 
 
224  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 if  it  is  once  accepted,  there  must  be  an  end  of  all  that 
 is  called  religion.  This  shows  at  all  events  a  con- 
 siderable agnosticism  of  the  history  of  philosophy. 
 
 When  a  poet  of  the  Yeda  (VII.  86,  2),  though  fully 
 believing  in  Varcma,  utters  his  complaint  that  he 
 does  not  know  how  to  get  near  him  or  into  him, 
 what  is  that  but  the  most  simple  and  primitive  expres- 
 sion for  the  modern  phrase,  How  can  we  know  the 
 Unknowable  ? 
 
 Modern  Agnosticism  has  been  defined  as  the  pro- 
 fession of  an  incapacity  to  discover  the  indispensable 
 conditions  of  either  positive  or  negative  knowledge  1. 
 In  that  sense,  Agnosticism  simply  represents  the  old 
 Academic  e-ox?/.  the  suspense  of  judgment,  so  strongly 
 recommended  by  all  philosophers2,  and  so  rarely 
 observed  by  any  one  of  them,  not  excluding  the 
 Agnostics.  When  the  word  is  applied  in  a  more 
 special  sense,  namely  as  expressing  man's  inability 
 to  assert  either  the  existence  or  the  non-existence 
 of  God,  there  was  the  old  Greek  word  Agiwia 
 which  would  have  avoided  the  ambiguity  of  the 
 word  Agnosticism.  For  Agnosticism  seems  at  first 
 sight  merely  the  opposite  of  Gnosticism,  and  it  has 
 to  be  carefully  explained  that  it  has  nothing  to  do 
 with  Gnosticism,  in  the  usual  sense  of  that  word, 
 not  even  as  its  negation.     And  even  if  we  are  told 
 
 1  Huxley,  Hume,  i.  60. 
 
 2  Cic.  Be  Nat.  Dear.  i.  1,'De  qua  (religione]  tarn  variae  sunt 
 doctissimorum  sententiae  ut  magno  argumento  esse  debeat,  caussam, 
 id  est  principium  philosophiae,  esse  inscientiam,  prudenterque 
 Academicos  a  rebus  incertis  assensionem  cohibuisse.  Quid  est  enim 
 temeritate  turpius?  aut  quid  tarn  temerariuin  fcamque  indignum 
 sapientis  gravitate  atque  constantia,  quam  aut  falsum  sentire,  aut. 
 quod  nun  satis  explorate  perceptum  sit  et  cognitum.  sine  ulla 
 dubitatione  defendere  ? ' 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RELIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.     225 
 
 that  the  name  Agnostic  was  really  derived,  not  from 
 Gnosticism,  but  from  ayvwrros,  the  unknown  God,  whose 
 altar  at  Athens  is  mentioned  by  St.  Paul  \  this  would 
 not  make  Agnosticism  a.  better  name,  for  Agnosticism 
 is  supposed  neither  to  deny  nor  to  assert  the  ex- 
 istence of  a  god,  while  a  god  who  has  an  altar  is 
 a  very  real  god,  although  he  may  be  said  to  be 
 unknowable  by  men. 
 
 Plutarch,  in  his  treatise  on  Superstition,  calls  what 
 we  mean  by  Agnosticism,  Agnoia  or  Amathia,  and 
 he  states  that  it  generally  branches  off  in  two  direc- 
 tions, leading  either  to  atheism  (adcori]?)  or  to  super- 
 stition (bei(TibaLiJLOVLa)  2. 
 
 Agnosticism,  therefore,  is  at  all  events  not  a 
 modern  invention,  and  if  we  want  an  answer  to  it, 
 we  may  find  it  in  the  words  of  one  who  has  fre- 
 quently been  counted  not  only  as  an  agnostic,  but 
 even  as  an  atheist.     This  is  what  Goethe  says : 
 
 'The  brightest  happiness  of  a  thoughtful  man  is 
 to  have  fathomed  what  is  fathomable,  and  silently 
 to  adore  the  unfathomable.' 
 
 '  Das  schonste  Gliick  des  denkenden  Menschen  ist : 
 
 1  On  Fimbul-ty,  the  unknown  god  among  Celts,  see  Hibbert 
 Lectures  by  John  Rhys,  p.  613.  In  the  Babylonian  psalms  we  con- 
 stantly meet  with  expressions  such  as :  <  To  the  god  that  is  known 
 and  that  is  unknown  ;  to  the  goddess  that  is  known  and  that  is 
 unknown,  do  I  lift  up  my  prayer.'  See  Hibbert  Lectures  by  Sayce, 
 pp.  217,304,  349.  In  Egypt  we  meet  with  unnamed  gods  and  god- 
 desses and  such  invocations  as  '  Oh,  all  ye  gods  and  goddesses  who 
 are  unnamed,  let  a  child  remain  in  my  place  for  ever  and  ever,  keep- 
 ing alive  the  name  of  my  house.'  Le  Page  Renouf,  Hibbe)t  Lectures, 
 p.  141. 
 
 -  Plut.  Dr  SupersUtUme,  i.  1,  Trjs  -ntpl  6ewv  auaBias  km  dyvoias  evOiis 
 e£  apXHS  8t'x«  pvuarjs,  to  pt.lv,  cuanep  kv  xwpiois  OKkrjpois,  tois  o.vtitvitois 
 rj6eai  ttjv  aQtoT-qra,  to  be,  woirtp  tv  lypols,  tois  airaXois,  T7jv  SiiaLdatpwviav 
 tpnrevoi7]K(v. 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 LECTURE    IX. 
 
 das  Erforschliche  erforscht  zu  haben  und  das  Uner- 
 forschliche  ruhig  zu  verehren.' 
 
 Epicurean  view  of  the  Gods. 
 
 Another  phase  of  thought  which  seems  equally 
 modern,  namely  the  theory  that  there  may  be  gods 
 or  supernatural  powers,  but  that  nature,  when  once 
 started,  is  governed  by  her  own  laws,  and  men  left 
 to  their  own  fate,  was  one  of  the  best  discussed 
 problems  of  the  Epicureans  both  in  Greece  and  in 
 Rome.  The  verses  which  Cicero  ascribes  to  Ennius 
 are  well  known  : 
 
 '  I  have  always  said  and  shall  say  that  a  race  of 
 heavenly  gods  exists,  but  I  hold  that  they  do  not 
 care  what  the  human  race  may  do  ;  for  if  they  did, 
 it  would  go  well  with  the  good  and  bad  with  the 
 bad — which  is  not  so  V 
 
 Chance  and  Purpose.     Darwin. 
 
 This  Epicurean  concept  of  deity  is  very  prevalent 
 at  the  present  time  among  what  may  be  called  the 
 right  wing  of  the  Darwinians.  Darwin,  as  is  well 
 known,  retained  the  idea  of  a  Creator,  but  he  did 
 not  claim  for  Him  more  than  that  He  created  a  few 
 original  forms,  which  were  left  to  self-development 
 into  other  and  needful  forms.  He  saw  in  the 
 actual  world,  not  the  realisation  of  an  ever-present 
 Divine  Thought  and  Will,  but  the  result  of  what  he 
 called  Natural  Selection,  Survival  of  the  Fittest,  and 
 all  the  rest.     Whether  there    is   any   difference   be- 
 
 1  Cie.  Be  Div.  ii.  50  : 
 Ego  deum  genus  esse  semper  dixi  et  dicam  eoelitum, 
 Sed  eos  non  curare  opinor,  quid  agat  hominum  genus ; 
 Nam  si  curent,  bene  bonis  sit,  malis  male,  quod  nunc  abest. 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RELIGTOUS  QUESTIONS.    227 
 
 tween  the  old  war  of  all  against  all  and  the  survival  of 
 the  fittest  and  strongest,  or  again,  between  chance 
 and  natural  selection,  depends  on  a  definition  of 
 terms,  and  no  term  requires  so  careful  a  definition 
 as  'natural  selection,'  unless,  like  the  Duke  of 
 Argyll,  we  condemn  it  altogether  as  self-contra- 
 dictory. For  in  ordinary  parlance  selection  requires 
 one  who  selects,  and  if  nature  can  select,  then  we 
 have  certainly  a  right  to  ask  whether  we  may  spell 
 this  selecting  or  discriminating  Nature  with  a  capital 
 N.  But  at  all  events  the  question  between  chance 
 or  purpose  in  the  Universe  has  been  argued  before 
 by  men  not  inferior  to  ourselves,  and  the  difficulties 
 inherent  in  a  belief  in  listless  gods  have  been  dis- 
 cussed so  fully  that  the  experience  then  gained 
 should  not  be  ignored  in  reopening  that  old  question. 
 Here  also  Goethe's  words  deserve  at  least  as  much 
 attention  as  the  saying  of  Epicurus  or  Lucretius. 
 '  God,'  he  writes,  '  did  not  rest  after  the  six  days  of 
 work ;  on  the  contrary,  he  continues  to  work  as  on 
 the  first  day.' 
 
 Atheism. 
 
 That  atheism  also  is  not  an  invention  of  yesterday 
 is  generally  admitted,  though  it  seems  hardly  known 
 at  how  early  a  date  of  the  history  of  religion  it 
 comes  in.  In  the  Vedic  hymns  we  can  still  watch 
 the  Aryan  theogony,  the  very  transition  of  natural 
 phenomena  into  natural  gods.  But  even  there 
 doubts  spring  up,  and  the  ancient  poets  suddenly 
 ask  themselves  whether  after  all  there  are  such 
 beings  as  the  Devas.  In  a  well-known  hymn  of  the 
 Rig-veda  a  poet  expresses  his  doubts  whether  Indra, 
 the  chief  god  of  the  Vedic  Indians,  really  exists. 
 
228  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 The  same  doubt  as  to  the  real  existence  of  such 
 gods  as  Indra,  that  had  grown  into  impossible  beings 
 by  the  accumulation  of  all  kinds  of  misunderstood 
 legends  about  them,  occurs  again  and  again  in  Indian 
 literature.  But  we  must  remember  that  to  doubt  or 
 to  deny  the  existence  of  Indra  or  of  Jupiter  is  not 
 Atheism,  but  should  be  distinguished  by  a  separate 
 name,  namely  Adevism.  The  early  Christians  were 
 called  a0€oc,  because  they  did  not  believe  as  the 
 Greeks  believed  nor  as  the  Jews  believed.  Spinoza 
 was  called  an  atheist,  because  his  concept  of  God 
 was  wider  than  that  of  Jehovah  ;  the  Reformers  were 
 called  atheists,  because  they  would  not  deify  the 
 mother  of  Christ  nor  worship  the  Saints.  This  is 
 not  Atheism  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  and  if 
 an  historical  study  of  religion  had  taught  us  that  one 
 lesson  only,  that  those  who  do  not  believe  in  our  God 
 are  not  therefore  to  be  called  Atheists,  it  would  have 
 done  some  real  good,  and  extinguished  the  fires  of 
 many  an  auto  da  fe. 
 
 Intuitive  knowledge  of  Gods. 
 
 And  if  another  school  of  modern  philosophers, 
 baffled  in  their  search  for  unconditioned  knowledge, 
 takes  refuge  in  intuition  as  the  true  foundation  of 
 religious  knowledge,  this  idea  too  is  foreshadowed 
 in  the  Vedic  hymns.  In  a  hymn  addressed  to 
 Varuwa1,  the  poet  begins  with  a  confession  that  he 
 has  neglected  the  works  of  Varu^a,  that  he  has 
 offended  against  his  laws.  He  craves  his  pardon ; 
 he  appeals  in  self-defence  to  the  weakness  of  human 
 nature ;    he  deprecates  death  as  the  reward  of  sin. 
 
 1  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  295. 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RELIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.    229 
 
 '  My  thoughts,'  he  says  (I.  25,  16),  'move  onwards 
 towards  thee,  as  cows  move  to  their  pasture.'  And 
 then  he  exclaims  suddenly,  '  Did  I  see  him  who  is 
 seen  by  all  1  Did  I  see  his  chariot  on  the  earth  1 
 Yes,  he  has  heard  these  my  prayers.' 
 
 In  another  hymn  (VIII.  10),  where  the  poet  had  first 
 expressed  his  doubts  whether  the  great  god  Indra 
 existed  at  all,  because  it  was  said  that  no  one  had 
 ever  seen  him,  he  immediately  introduces  Indra  him- 
 self1, saying,  'Here  I  am,  O  worshipper!  behold  me 
 here.     In  strength  I  overcome  all  creatures.' 
 
 Here  we  have  intuition  of  the  divine  in  its  most 
 primitive  form.  That  idea,  however,  develops  and 
 becomes  very  prominent  in  the  later  theological  and 
 philosophical  literature  of  India.  As  in  the  Old 
 Testament,  the  poet  in  the  Veda  too,  the  Riahi,  was 
 interpreted  as  a  seer,  not  as  a  maker.  His  poems 
 were  called  God-given  2 ;  or  the  gods  were  called  the 
 friends  and  helpers  of  the  poets. 
 
 Philosophical  treatment. 
 
 In  later  philosophical  systems  the  question  is  most 
 fully  discussed,  whether  we  ought  or  ought  not  to 
 admit  an  intuition  as  a  kind  of  perception,  by  the 
 side  of  ordinary  sensuous  perceptions. 
 
 A  few  extracts  from  the  Sfinkhya-sutras,  one  of 
 the  six  recognised  systems  of  Hindu  philosophy,  will 
 show  you  how  small  the  world  of  thought  really  is, 
 and  how  exactly  the  same  difficulties  which  trouble 
 us,  have  troubled  the  minds  of  the  gymnosophists 
 on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges.  Kapila,  the  supposed 
 author  of  the  Sankhya-philosophy,  admits  three  kinds 
 
 1  Hibbert  Lectures,  i>  309.  -  Ibid.  {>.  141. 
 
230  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 of  evidence,  and  no  more.  These  are  called1  praty- 
 aksha,  sensuous  perception,  anumana,  inference,  and 
 sab  da,  the  word,  particularly  the  sacred  word  or  the 
 Veda.  You  see  therefore  that  this  philosophy,  though 
 it  is  suspected  of  being  atheistic,  tries  to  appear 
 orthodox.  It  begins  by  defining  perception  or  the 
 evidence  of  the  senses,  by  the  following  aphorism 
 (I.  90) :  '  Perception  is  the  discernment  which  por- 
 trays the  form  of  that  with  which  it  is  being  brought 
 into  contact.' 
 
 The  author  then  proceeds  to  defend  his  definition 
 of  sensuous  perception  against  those  who  object  that 
 it  is  not  wide  enough,  because  it  does  not  include  the 
 perceptions  of  the  Yogins,  the  people  who  by  means 
 of  fasting  and  other  kinds  of  penance  bring  them- 
 selves to  have  ecstatic  visions. 
 
 Kapila  rejoins  that  these  perceptions  of  the  Yogins 
 are  not  perceptions  of  things  outside  them  with  which 
 their  senses  can  be  brought  into  contact.  And  if  it 
 should  be  said  that  these  Yogins,  in  their  state  of 
 exaltation,  might  have  perceptions  arising  from  con- 
 tact with  hidden  or  invisible  things  or  things  which 
 exist  as  past  and  future,  though  not  as  present 2,  his 
 own  definition  would  then  be  wide  enough  to  compre- 
 hend them. 
 
 After  this,  Kapila  proceeds  to  meet  another  objec- 
 tion. The  critics  of  his  definition  of  sensuous  percep- 
 tion seem  to  have  pointed  out  to  him  that  his  defini- 
 tion was  not  wide  enough  to  include  the  ecstatic 
 visions    having    Is  vara,   the    Lord,    for   their  object. 
 
 1  Sankliya-sutras,  I.  3  ;  cf.  R.  Garbe,  Die  Theorie  der  iwdisehi  n 
 Eationalisten ,  1888. 
 
 2  Yoga-sfttras,  III.  16. 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RELIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.    231 
 
 Some  Yogins  must  have  pretended  to  have  had  such 
 visions  by  means  of  something  like  sensuous  percep- 
 tion (Yoga-sutras,  II.  44-45).  But  Kapila  declines  to 
 entertain  these  objections  or  to  modify  his  definition 
 accordingly,  because,  as  he  says,  the  existence  of  such 
 a  Lord  has  never  been  established  (Sankhya-sutras, 
 I.  92).  From  his  own  point  of  view  the  concept  of 
 an  Isvara  or  Lord,  as  defined  by  the  Yogins,  would  be 
 self-contradictory  (I.  95),  and,  as  he  points  out  in  a 
 subsequent  chapter  (V.  10),  would  not  be  established 
 by  sensuous  evidence,  by  induction,  or  by  revelation 1. 
 He  does  not  deny  thereby  the  existence  of  a  Lord, 
 but  only  of  such  a  Lord  as  the  Yogins  assert,  namely, 
 a  being  that  can  be  reached  by  sensuous  contact  and 
 perceived  by  ecstatic  vision 2. 
 
 Vision  in  the  Bhagavadgita. 
 
 How  prevalent  a  belief  in  such  ecstatic  visions  of 
 a  deity  became  in  the  religious  philosophy  of  the 
 Indian  people,  we  see  from  the  famous  episode  in  the 
 Bhagavadgita,  where  KWsh?ia  appears  in  his  true 
 nature  before  the  eyes  of  Ar^/una. 
 
 Aiv/una  said  3  to  Krishna, :  '  I  have  heard  from  you 
 about  the  production  and  dissolution  of  things,  and 
 also  about  this  your  inexhaustible  greatness.  O  highest 
 
 1  The  commentator  says,  fsvare  tavat  pratyaksham  nastityanu- 
 lnanasabdav  eva  pramawe  vaktavye,  te  ka,  na  sambhavata  ity  arthafr 
 This  shows  that  my  interpretation  of  Sutra  I.  92  was  right,  not  that 
 of  Ballantyne  and  Cowell,  who  suppose  that  Kapila  refers  to  the 
 perceptions  possessed  by  Isvara. 
 
 *  Ballantyne  translates,  that  any  Lord  exists  is  not  proved,  but 
 Kapila  restricts  his  remark  to  the  Isvara  of  the  Yoga-philosophy, 
 and  the  commentator  warns  us  against  taking  this  as  a  general 
 denial  of  the  existence  of  a  Lord.  See  also  Yoga-sutras,  I.  23  seq. ; 
 and  Zeitschrift  dry  Dmtschen  Morgenltindiscfien  Gesellschaft,  vii.  304. 
 
 3  Bhagavadgita,  translated  by  Telang,  S.  B  E.  viii.  92.  I  have 
 abbreviated  the  extract  and  tried  to  make  it  more  intelligible. 
 
232  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 Lord,  I  wish  now  to  see  your  divine  form.  If,  O 
 Lord,  you  think  that  it  is  possible  for  me  to  look 
 upon  it,  then,  O  Lord  of  the  possessors  of  mystic 
 powers,  show  your  inexhaustible  form  to  me.' 
 
 The  Deity  said :  '  In  hundreds  and  in  thousands  see 
 my  forms,  various,  divine ;  see  wonders  in  numbers 
 unseen  before.  Within  my  body  see  to-day  the 
 whole  universe.  But  you  will  not  be  able  to  see  me 
 with  merely  this  eye  of  yours.  I  give  you  an  eye 
 divine.' 
 
 Having  spoken  thus  the  great  Lord  showed  his 
 supreme  divine  form.  If  in  the  heavens,  the  lustre  of 
 a  thousand  suns  burst  forth  all  at  once,  that  would  be 
 like  the  lustre  of  that  mighty  one. 
 
 Then  Aiv/una  said :  '  0  God,  I  see  within  your  body 
 the  gods,  as  also  all  the  groups  of  various  beings ;  and 
 the  lord  Brahman  seated  on  his  lotus  seat,  and  all 
 the  sages  and  religious  snakes.  I  see  you  who  are  of 
 countless  forms,  possessed  of  many  arms,  chests, 
 mouths,  and  eyes  on  all  sides.  And,  O  Lord  of  the 
 universe  !  O  you  of  all  forms !  I  do  not  see  your 
 end  or  middle  or  beginning.  I  see  you  bearing  a 
 coronet  and  a  mace  and  a  discus, — a  mass  of  glory, 
 brilliant  on  all  sides,  difficult  to  look  at,  having  on 
 all  sides  the  effulgence  of  a  blazing  fire  of  sun,  and 
 indefinable.  ...  I  believe  you  to  be  the  eternal 
 Being.  I  see  you  .  .  .  having  the  sun  and  moon 
 for  eyes,  having  a  mouth  like  a  blazing  fire,  and 
 heating  the  universe  with  your  radiance.  The  space 
 between  heaven  and  earth  and  all  the  quarters 
 are  pervaded  by  you  alone.  Looking  at  this  wonder- 
 ful and  terrible  form  of  yours  the  three  worlds  arc 
 affrighted.' 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RELIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.    233 
 
 In  Sanskrit  all  this  sounds  very  grand,  and  when 
 the  vision  is  over,  Krishna,  assumes  again  his  own 
 human  form.  '  I  cannot  be  seen,'  he  says,  '  in  this 
 form  by  any  one  but  yom  even  by  the  help  of  the 
 study  of  the  Vedas  or  of  sacrifices,  nor  by  gifts,  nor  by 
 actions,  nor  by  fierce  penances.  Be  not  alarmed,  be 
 not  perplexed,  at  seeing  this  form  of  mine.,  fearful 
 like  this.  Free  from  fear  and  with  delightful  heart, 
 see  now  again  that  same  form  of  mine.' 
 
 The  visions  of  Santa  Theresa  and  of  even  more 
 modern  saints  are  so  like  the  earlier  visions  of  Indian 
 heroes  that  we  cannot  be  far  wrong  in  ascribing  both 
 to  the  same  source  and  treating  them  both  with  the 
 same  indulgence. 
 
 Revelation. 
 
 In  close  connection  with  this  question,  the  possi- 
 bility of  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  God,  another 
 question  also,  that  of  the  possibility  of  a  revelation, 
 of  a  communication  of  divine  or  absolute  truth  to 
 man, — a  question  so  hotly  discussed  at  present, — 
 meets  us  again  and  again  in  our  wanderings  through 
 the  history  of  religion.  In  the  Veda  the  inspiring 
 influence  of  the  gods  is  simply  taken  for  granted. 
 The  gods  are  said  to  have  roused  and  sharpened 
 the  mind  of  the  poets  \  and  in  the  end  the  gods  them- 
 selves were  called  seers  and  poets.  As  soon  as  the 
 Vedic  religion  became  systematised,  and  had  to  be 
 defended  against  the  doubts  of  friends  and  foes,  the 
 Erahmans  elaborated  an  apologetic  philosophy  which 
 seems  to  me  unsurpassed  in  subtlety  and  acuteness 
 by  any  other  defence  of  a  divinely  inspired  book. 
 The  whole  of  the  Veda  was  represented  as  divine  in 
 '  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  141 ;  Rv.  VI.  47,  10  ;  I.  31,  1. 
 
234  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 its  origin,  and  therefore  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt. 
 It  was  not  to  be  looked  on  as  the  work  of  men,  but 
 only  as  seen  by  inspired  poets.  It  was  supposed  to 
 date  from  all  eternity,  and  to  be  so  prehistoric  in 
 character  that  when  unfortunately  the  names  of  real 
 kings  and  real  cities  occurred  in  some  of  the  Vedic 
 hymns,  as  they  do,  they  had  to  be  explained  away  as 
 meaning  something  quite  different. 
 
 Historical   traces  in  the  Veda. 
 
 We  find,  for  instance,  in  the  Rig-veda  III.  53,  14, 
 the  following  verse : 
 
 Kim  te  kn'nvanti  Kf'kateshu  gava/*,  na  asiram  duhre  na  tapanti 
 
 ^  gharmam, 
 
 A  na/j  bhara  Pramagandasya  veda/i,  Naiftasakham  maghavan 
 
 randhaya  naft. 
 
 This  means : 
 
 What  are  thy  cows  doing  among  the  Kikatas  ?     They  yield  no 
 
 milk,  they  heat  no  kettle  ; 
 Bring  us  the  wealth   of  Pramaganda,  subdue,  O   Maghavan, 
 
 Nai/casakha  ! 
 
 These  Kika£as  are  evidently  a  tribe  which  did  not 
 worship  Indra  and  which  Inclra  is  asked  to  subdue. 
 The  name  does  not  occur  again  in  the  Rig-veda,  but 
 it  is  said  to  have  been  the  old  name  of  Magadha  or 
 Behar  on  the  Ganges,  the  future  birthplace  of  Bud- 
 dhism. According  to  others  the  northern  part  of 
 Behar  was  properly  called  Magadha,  while  the  southern 
 portion  only  was  called  Kika^a K  Whatever  they 
 were,  they  must  have  been  a  real  race,  Pramaganda 
 must  have  been  a  real  king,  and  Nai&asiikha,  even 
 if  it  meant  originally,  as  Ludwig  thinks,  of  low  birth, 
 must  have  referred  to  some  real  historical  character. 
 But  all  this  is  denied  by  orthodox  theologians.     If 
 
 '  J.  Bird,  Historical  Researches,  p.  2. 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OP  RELIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.    235 
 
 it  were  so,  they  say,  the  Veda  would  not  be  nitya, 
 eternal,  or  as  we  say,  prehistoric.  '  It  has  been  said/ 
 they  argue,  'that  the  Veda  has  not  a  divine,  but  a 
 human  origin,  and  that  in  the  same  way  as  the 
 Mahabharata  was  composed  by  Vyasa,  the  Ramayana 
 by  Valmiki,  the  Raglmvamsa  by  Kalidasa,  so  the 
 Kanaka,  Kauthuma,  and  Taittiriyaka,  which  are 
 portions  of  the  Veda,  were  composed  by  K&tha, 
 Kuthuma,  and  Tittiri.  And  even  if  these  names 
 were  only  meant  to  signify  that  the  families  of  Ka^a, 
 Kuthuma,  and  Tittiri  were  in  traditionary  possession 
 of  these  portions  of  the  Veda,  yet  the  fact  that  his- 
 torical and  real  persons  are  mentioned  in  the  Veda 
 would  by  itself  be  sufficient  to  prove  that  the  Veda 
 cannot  be  considered  as  prehistoric.  Now  there  are 
 passages,  like  :  "  Babara,  the  descendant  of  Pravahana 
 wished;"  "  Kusurubindu,  the  descendant  of  Udda- 
 laka  wished,"  etc.  The  Veda  therefore  must  have 
 had  a  beginning  like  all  other  existing  things.'  So 
 far  the  opponent  who  denies  the  eternity  of  the 
 Veda. 
 
 All  this,  however,  is  stoutly  denied  by  (raimini,  the 
 representative  of  the  most  orthodox  philosophy  in 
 India.  '  The  Veda,'  he  says,  '  was  the  word  before  the 
 beginning ;  it  existed  before  all  other  words,  such  as 
 Ka^a,  Kuthuma,  Tittiri,  etc.,  so  that  titles  of  certain 
 parts  of  the  Veda,  such  as  Kanaka,  Kauthuma,  Tait- 
 tiriyaka, etc.  contain  merely  the  names  of  those  who 
 hauded  down  the  Veda  by  tradition.  As  to  such 
 names  as  Babara,  the  son  of  Pravahana,  they  must 
 not  be  taken  as  the  names  of  historical  persons ;  but 
 Babara  is  really  another  name  of  Vayu,  the  wind, 
 who  makes  a  sound  like  babara,  and  whose  nature  it 
 
236  LECTURE    IX. 
 
 is  to  drive  things  forward,  hence  called  pravahana 
 (provehere).  In  the  same  manner  all  other  historical 
 and  geographical  names  should  be  explained,  ety- 
 mologically,  not  historically.' 
 
 This  is  only  a  small  specimen  of  what  forensic 
 theology  can  achieve,  and  could  achieve  long  before 
 our  own  time.  It  enables  us  to  see  both  what  was 
 originally  intended  by  such  words  as  God-given,  God- 
 inspired,  $ruti,  what  has  been  heard,  Revelation, 
 what  has  been  unfolded,  and  what  was  made  of 
 these  words  afterwards.  It  was  the  sense  of  an 
 over-powering  truth  which  led  to  the  admission  of  a 
 revelation.  But  while  in  the  beginning  truth  made 
 revelation,  it  soon  came  to  pass  that  revelation  was 
 supposed  to  make  truth.  When  we  see  this  happening 
 in  every  part  of  the  world,  when  we  can  watch  the 
 psychological  process  which  leads  in  the  most  natural 
 way  to  a  belief  in  supernatural  inspiration,  it  will 
 hardly  be  said  that  an  historical  study  of  religion 
 may  be  useful  to  the  antiquarian,  but  cannot  help  us 
 to  solve  the  burning  questions  of  the  day.  But  this 
 is  not  what  I  am  pleading  forat  present.  At  present  I 
 want  to  prove  no  more  than  that  an  historical  study 
 of  the  religions  of  the  world  possesses  this  one  great 
 advantage,  that  it  familiarises  us  with  the  old  problems 
 of  the  philosophy  of  religion,  and  fits  us  for  a  more 
 fearless  treatment  of  them  in  their  modern  form. 
 
 The  old  Problems  in  their  simpler  Form. 
 
 And  by  showing  us  the  various  phases  through 
 which  many  of  these  problems  have  passed  before 
 they  assumed  their  present  form,  it  teaches  us  another 
 and  most  important  lesson,  namely,  that  in  attempting 
 to  solve  these  problems  we  must  not  attempt  to  solve 
 
HISTORICAL  TREATMENT  OF  RKLIGIOUS  QUESTIONS.     237 
 
 them  in  their  modern  form  only,  and  with  all  the 
 perplexities  which  they  present  to  us  in  their  often 
 obscure  metaphysical  phraseology,  but  that  we  must 
 trace  them  back,  as  far  as  we  can,  to  their  first  begin- 
 nings and  to  their  simplest  form. 
 
 It  is  with  these  religious  problems  as  it  is  with  the 
 problems  of  language.  Who  could  account  for  lan- 
 guage, if  he  only  knew  the  language  of  to-day  %  If 
 we  knew  none  of  the  antecedents  of  English,  as  it 
 now  exists  in  its  250,000  words,  many  of  them  with 
 different  meanings,  many  of  them  again  having  one 
 and  the  same  meaning,  even  the  wisest  of  us  could 
 say  no  more  than  what  Plato  said  in  the  Cratylus, 
 namely  that  language  could  not  possibly  have  been 
 invented  by  man1.  And  now  that  we  know  by  what 
 simple  process  language  was,  if  not  invented,  at  all 
 events  produced  and  elaborated  by  man,  does  it  lower 
 language,  because  it  was  not  invented  by  the  gods,  or 
 does  it  lower  man  because  he  was  not  presented  by 
 the  gods  with  a  language  ready  made  ?  I  believe 
 not,  and  I  hold  the  same  with  regard  to  religion.  If 
 we  see  with  what  natural  feelings  and  simple  senti- 
 ments religion  began,  and  then  follow  its  course  till  it 
 reaches  that  perfect,  or  at  all  events  that  complete 
 state  in  which  we  find  it  in  later  times,  we  shall 
 hardly  think  that  we  degrade  religion  by  accepting  it 
 as  the  most  precious  product  of  the  human  mind,  nor 
 shall  we  consider  man  as  robbed  of  his  dignity,  be- 
 
 1  Rousseau  makes  the  same  confession.  '  Quant  a  moi,'  he  writes, 
 'cfh;i\v  des  difficulty  qui  so  multiplient,  et  convaincu  de  I'impossi- 
 bilifce  presque  demontree  que  les  langues  aient  pu  naltre  ei  sYtablir 
 par  des  moyens  purement  humains,  je  laisse  a  qui  voudra  d'entre- 
 prendre  la  discussion  de  ce  difficile  probleme.'  See  De  Bonald, 
 Recherches  Philosophises,  p.  117. 
 
238  LECTURE   IX. 
 
 cause  on  the  day  of  his  birth  the  gods  did  not  descend 
 from  heaven  to  present  him  with  a  religion  ready 
 made  or  reduced  to  settled  creeds  and  finished  articles 
 of  faith,  but  left  him  to  grow  and  to  learn  to  stand  on 
 his  own  legs,  and  to  fight  his  own  battle  in  the  struggle 
 for  truth. 
 
LECTURE   X. 
 
 COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS. 
 The  Problem  of  Creation. 
 
 WHEN  we  study  the  same  problem,  first  in  the 
 heated  controversies  of  our  own  time,  and  then 
 look  at  it  from  a  more  elevated  position  which  allows 
 us  to  watch  its  historical  progress,  in  all  its  varying 
 aspects,  it  seems  often  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
 problem  is  really  the  same.  And  yet,  if  history  teaches 
 us  anything,  it  teaches  us  that  there  is  continuity 
 in  the  growth  of  thought  as  in  the  growth  of  lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Let  us  look  at  the  problem  of  creation.  The  question 
 which  the  Vedic  poet  asked  (X.  31,  7)  when  he  said, 
 '  What  was  the  forest,  what  was  the  tree  from  which 
 they  hewed  heaven  and  earth,'  is  in  reality  the  same 
 question  which  we  ask  to-day,  and  which  has  received 
 ever  so  many  answers  from  century  to  century,  and 
 will  receive  as  many  more,  so  long  as  heaven  and 
 earth  remain.  It  is  true  these  early  questioners  would 
 hardly  understand  our  language,  if  we  tried  to  put 
 them  off  with  the  nebular  theories  of  Kant  and  La- 
 place, with  Lyall's  explanation  of  the  formation  of  the 
 crust  of  the  earth,  or  with  Huxley's  account  of  the 
 transition  of  inorganic  into  organic  protoplasm.     But 
 
240  LECTUliE    X. 
 
 what  they  were  in  search  of  was  after  all  the  same, 
 and  what  they  called  wood,  out  of  which  heaven  and 
 earth  were  hewn,  was  but  another  name  for  v A.??,  wood. 
 materies,  wood,  then  material  and  matter,  something 
 behind  or  antecedent  to  the  phenomenal  world,  as  it 
 appears  before  our  eyes. 
 
 The  Logic  of  Pacts. 
 
 It  is  sometimes  quite  startling,  after  we  have  tried 
 to  unravel  the  subtle  webs  of  philosophy,  such  as  the 
 so-called  Gosmological,  Ontological,  and  Teleologl<<il 
 proofs  of  the  existence  of  a  supreme  deity,  to  have  to 
 face  the  question,  what  the  earliest  searchers  after 
 God  would  have  said  to  these  arguments.  They 
 would  hardly  have  comprehended  the  language  in 
 which  they  present  themselves  now,  and  if  we  tried 
 ourselves  to  translate  them,  for  instance,  into  Vedic 
 Sanskrit,  we  should  completely  fail.  And  yet  we  are 
 the  descendants  of  those  Yedic  poets,  their  language  is 
 essentially  our  language,  their  thoughts  are  essentially 
 our  thoughts,  the  world  we  live  in  is  much  the  same 
 as  their  Aryan  home,  and  whatever  discoveries  have 
 been  made  in  other  branches  of  knowledge,  no  new 
 facts  have  been  discovered  since  their  time  to  help 
 us  to  solve  that  old  and  yet  always  new  question, 
 whether  there  is  an  author  of  the  Universe,  whether 
 there  is  a  Creator  and  a  God. 
 
 That  the  three  famous  arguments,  the  Cosniological, 
 the  Ontological,  and  the  Teleological,  have  collapsed 
 before  the  tribunal  of  formal  logic,  may  be  admitted. 
 But  it  has  been  truly  said1  that  '  as  an  analysis  of  the 
 unconscious  or  implicit  logic  of  religion,  as   tracing 
 
 1  Caird,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  133. 
 
COMPARATIVE   STUDY   OF    RELIGIOUS   PROBLEMS.       241 
 
 the  steps  of  the  process  by  which  the  human  spirit 
 rises  to  the  knowledge  of  God,  and  finds  therein  the 
 fulfilment  of  its  own  highest  nature,  these  proofs 
 possess  great  value.'  We  must  not  imagine  that 
 belief  in  God  is  founded  on  a  subtle  syllogism. 
 Besides  the  logic  of  the  philosopher,  there  is  a  logic  of 
 facts,  or  a  logic  of  history,  and  where  can  we  find  these 
 facts,  and  where  can  we  find  the  steps  of  that  process 
 by  which  the  human  mind  rose  gradually  and  irre- 
 sistibly to  the  knowledge  of  God,  if  not  in  the  history 
 of  religions  ? 
 
 Cosmological  Argument. 
 
 The  cosmological  argument,  or  the  argument  a  con- 
 tingentid  mundi,  may  be  summed  up  in  the  language 
 of  the  nineteenth  century  in  the  following  words  : 
 '  The  human  mind 1  rises  from  the  perception  of  the 
 transitory,  contingent,  finite  character  of  the  world  to 
 the  notion  of  an  absolutely  necessary  or  infinite 
 Being.' 
 
 It  is  clear  that  language  like  this  would  be  as  much 
 beyond  the  comprehension  of  an  Aryan  savage  as  it 
 is  beyond  the  comprehension  of  a  child  in  the  nursery, 
 and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  even  of  the  majority  of  man- 
 kind, at  the  present  day. 
 
 Aryan  Savages. 
 
 But  we  must  reckon  in  all  these  questions  with 
 those  very  Aryan  savages.  They  began  the  work 
 which  we  are  continuing,  and  there  has  been  no 
 break  between  them  and  ourselves,  for  the  chain  of 
 language,  that  is,  of  thought,  is  perfect  in  all  its  links 
 from  Sanskrit  to  English.    From  the  very  annals  of 
 
 1  Oaird,  I.  c.  p.  15J. 
 R 
 
242  LECTURE    X. 
 
 language  it  has  been  possible  to  put  together  some 
 kind  of  picture  of  the  earliest  period  of  Aryan  life. 
 And  even  in  that  earliest  period  we  find  names  for  a 
 Heaven- father,  for  bright  and  heavenly  beings,  nay, 
 even,  if  you  remember,  for  faith. 
 
 But  for  that  very  reason  this  period  of  Aryan 
 language  and  thought  has  been  rejected  as  quite 
 modern,  and  a  very  different  picture  of  the  true  Aryan 
 savage  has  been  painted  for  us  by  Professor  Huxley. 
 In  his  :  Struggle  for  Existence  :  a  Programme,'  he  tells 
 us :  'In  the  cycle  of  phenomena  presented  by  the  life 
 of  man,  the  animal,  no  more  moral  end  is  discernible 
 than  in  that  presented  by  the  lives  of  the  wolf  and  of 
 the  deer.  However  imperfect  the  relics  of  prehistoric 
 man  may  be,  the  evidence  which  they  afford  clearly 
 tends  to  the  conclusion  that  for  thousands  and 
 thousands  of  years,  before  the  origin  of  the  oldest 
 known  civilisations,  men  were  savages  of  a  very  low 
 type.  They  strove  with  their  enemies  and  their  com- 
 petitors ;  they  preyed  upon  things  weaker  or  less 
 cunning  than  themselves  ;  they  were  born,  multiplied 
 without  stint,  and  died,  for  thousands  of  generations, 
 alongside  the  mammoth,  the  urus,  the  lion,  and  the 
 hyena,  whose  lives  were  spent  in  the  same  way ;  and 
 they  were  no  more  to  be  praised  or  blamed,  on  moral 
 grounds,  than  their  less  erect  and  more  hairy  com- 
 patriots. As  among  these,  so  among  primitive  men, 
 the  weakest  and  stupidest  went  to  the  wall,  while  the 
 toughest  and  shrewdest,  those  who  were  best  fitted  to 
 cope  with  their  circumstances,  but  not  the  best  in 
 any  other  sense,  survived.  Life  was  a  continual  free 
 fight,  and  beyond  the  limited  and  temporary  relations 
 of  the  family,  the  Hobbesian  war  of  each  against  all 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      243 
 
 was  the  normal  state  of  existence.  The  human  species, 
 like  others,  plashed  and  floundered  amid  the  general 
 stream  of  evolution,  keeping  its  head  above  water  as 
 it  best  might,  and  thinking  neither  of  whence  or 
 whither.' 
 
 Though  this  graphic  picture  of  the  state  of  man- 
 kind thousands  of  generations  ago  rests  chiefly  on 
 inductive  imagination,  I  am  quite  willing  to  accept  it. 
 The  greater  the  savagery,  the  dulness,  the  stupidity 
 with  which  Homo  sapiens  began,  the  greater  the 
 marvel  at  what  must  have  been  from  the  first,  though 
 undeveloped,  in  him,  and  made  him  in  the  end  what 
 we  find  him  to  be  in  the  men  of  light  and  leading  of 
 our  own  age.  For  whether  he  asked  his  Whence  or 
 Whither,  while  browsing  as  yet  on  the  lichens  of 
 glacial  fields  with  his  less  erect  compatriots,  the 
 mammoth,  the  urus,  the  lion,  and  the  hyena,  or 
 whether  that  question  was  first  asked  during  a  post- 
 glacial period,  certain  it  is  that  he  alone  asked  it, 
 and  that  he  alone  tried  to  answer  it  in  the  end  by 
 what  we  call  the  cosmological  argument. 
 
 Why? 
 
 That  very  question  may  be  illogical,  and  every 
 attempt  to  answer  it  still  more  illogical.  But  why 
 will  people  not  see  that  the  mere  fact  of  such  a 
 question  being  asked,  and  being  asked  at  a  time 
 when  as  yet  there  was  no  Bible,  no  creed,  no  dogma, 
 is  something  that  ought  to  make  us  reflect.  Why  did 
 man  alone  among  all  his  hairy  compatriots  ask  that 
 question  Whence  ?  Why  was  he  surprised,  when  no 
 one  else  was  ?  Why  was  he  not  satisfied  with  the 
 fulness  of  life  and  enjoyment  like  his  fellow-creatures, 
 
 R  2 
 
244  LECTURE   X. 
 
 the  mammoth,  the  urus,  the  lion,  and  the  hyena  ? 
 Can  we  ever  imagine  a  mammoth  saying  to  himself, 
 Who  is  my  father?  Who  was  my  grandfather,  my 
 great-grandfather,  my  great-great-grandfather,  the 
 father  of  all  fathers,  our  Father  in  heaven  1  Can  we 
 imagine  even  the  most  favoured  specimen  of  the  so- 
 called  Pithecanthropos,  the  ape-man,  uttering  the 
 question,  Whence  comes  this  world  ?  Yet  in  the 
 earliest  relics  of  ancient  thought,  in  the  hymns  of 
 the  Rig-veda,  that  question  is  asked.  I  cannot  enter 
 here  on  the  question  how  far  the  hymns  of  the  Rig- 
 veda  are  modern  or  ancient.  Let  them  be  as  modern 
 as  you  like,  yet  to  the  historian  they  represent  the 
 earliest  human  thought  within  his  reach.  In  that 
 Rig-veda  then,  and  I  am  quite  willing  to  admit  in  a 
 hymn  which,  compared  with  others,  strikes  me  as 
 decidedly  more  modern,  the  poet  asks  : 
 
 '  Who  knows  the  secret  1  who  proclaimed  it  here, 
 Whence,  whence  this  manifold  creation  sprang  1 ' 
 
 That  it  sprang  from  somewhere,  or,  as  we  should 
 say,  that  it  was  contingent  on  something  non-con- 
 tingent, is  taken  for  granted.  There  is  as  yet  no 
 cosmological  argument.  But  yet  the  question  is  there, 
 and  to  my  mind  that  question  is  far  more  important 
 than  all  its  answers.  It  is  in  that  question,  in  the 
 power  of  asking  that  question,  that  the  true  nerve 
 of  the  cosmological  argument  lies.  Man  is  so  made 
 that  he  cannot  be  satisfied  with  mere  perceptions,  but 
 must  proceed  to  ask  whence  they  come.  Philosophers 
 may  tell  us  that  it  is  a  very  foolish  and  illogical 
 question  to  ask  ;  but  it  is  not  the  fault  of  the  nightin- 
 gale that  it  sings,  nor  is  it  the  fault  of  man  that 
 he  asks  Whence  1     There  is  no  power  on  earth  to 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       245 
 
 stop  that  question,  not  even  the  power  of  logic.  The 
 answers  themselves,  as  I  said  before,  are  far  less 
 important,  but  they  are  interesting  nevertheless  as 
 showing  us  the  historical  development  of  the  human 
 mind  when  brought  face  to  face  with  that  Whence  ? 
 
 Answers  to  the  Cosmologlcal  Question. 
 
 Every  kind  of  answer,  more  or  less  childish  to  our 
 mind,  was  given  to  that  question  in  India,  in  China, 
 in  Palestine,  and  in  Greece  ;  and,  what  is  important, 
 some  of  the  earliest  answers  did  not  suggest  creation 
 by  a  personal  creator,  but  something  very  like  what 
 is  now  called  evolution.  In  India,  as  in  Greece,  water 
 was  at  first  guessed  to  have  been  the  beginning  of  all 
 things,  then  fire  and  heat  and  every  kind  of  element, 
 but  not  yet  a  creator.  Sometimes  fire  is  placed  first, 
 as  by  Heraclitus,  afterwards  water,  and  then  the 
 earth,  and  the  wind  1.  We  see  here  again  that  what 
 is  often  supposed  to  be  a  very  modern,  is  in  reality  a 
 very  ancient  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  world,  the 
 theory  of  emanation,  closely  connected  with  the  theory 
 of  evolution. 
 
 Emanation. 
 
 We  can  study  it  in  its  appearance  and  reappearance 
 from  century  to  century. 
 
 In  the  hymns  of  the  Kig-veda  the  two  ideas  of  an 
 uncreated  and  self-developing  world,  and  of  a  creator 
 or  a  maker,  run  side  by  side. 
 
 We  find  the  first  traces  of  a  maker  or  creator  in  the 
 Vedic  deity,  called  Tvash^ar,  the  carpenter,  jzktojv, 
 then  the  maker,  who  is  described  as  a  clever  work- 
 man (apasam  apastama//  X.  53,  9),  having  good 
 1   EeradiU  Reliquiae,  ed.  Bywater,  xxi. 
 
246  LECTURE   X. 
 
 hands  (supawi  III.  54,  12,  sugabhasti  VI.  49,  9)  ; 
 and  even  as  a  smith,  forging  the  thunder-bolt  for 
 Indra  (I.  32,  2).  But  he  is  also  the  maker  of  the 
 world  and  of  all  creatures  in  it.  Thus  we  read,  Rv. 
 III.  55,  19:      ^  .... 
 
 Devas  tvasma  savita  visvarupaft 
 Puposha  prac/a/?  purudha  c/a^ana, 
 Ima  Aa  visvH,  bhuvanani  asya, 
 
 '  The    god   Tvashfar,    the    enlivener,    endowed   with 
 many  forms,   has   nourished  the  creatures  and  pro- 
 duced them  in  many  ways  ;  all  these  worlds  are  his.' 
 And  again,  V%.  Samh.  XXIX.  9  : 
 
 Tvash/a  idam  visvam  bhuvanam  gagknn, 
 
 1  Tvash^ar  has  begotten  this  whole  world.' 
 
 Another  god  who  is  often  put  prominently  forward 
 as  the  maker  of  the  world  isVisvakarman,  literally 
 the  All-maker,  who  is  afterwards  called  Pra(/apati, 
 lord  of  creatures  (£at.  Br.  VIII.  2,  1,  10).  Of  him  we 
 read,  Rv.  X.  81,  2: 
 
 1  What  was  the  stand  on  which  he  rested,  how  was 
 it  and  where,  from  whence  the  all-seeing  Visva- 
 karman,  creating  the  earth,  disclosed  the  sky  by  his 
 power  ? ' 
 
 '  The  god  who  has  eyes  on  every  side,  and  a  face 
 on  every  side,  and  arms  on  every  side,  and  feet  on 
 every  side,  when  he  creates  heaven  and  earth,  being 
 alone,  he  forges  them  with  his  arms  and  with  wings 
 (used  as  bellows)  V 
 
 '  What  was  the  wood,  what  was  the  tree  whence 
 they  fashioned  heaven  and  earth  2  ?     Search,  0  sages, 
 
 1  Muir,  iv.  5. 
 
 a  See  also  Rv.  X.  31,  7,  where  the  same  line  occurs  followed  by 
 another,  '  the  two,  heaven  and  earth,  stand  together  and  do  not 
 grow  old  for  ever  ;  but  days  and  dawns  have  waxed  old.' 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       247 
 
 in  your  mind  for  that  on  which  he  stood  when  esta- 
 blishing the  worlds.' 
 
 Soon,  however,  the  thought  appears  that  all  these 
 questions  are  of  no  avail,  and  that  no  one  can  dis- 
 cover the  secret  of  creation.  Thus  the  poet  of  this 
 very  hymn  finishes  by  saying  : 
 
 '  You  will  not  know  him  who  produced  these 
 worlds  ;  something  else  is  within  you  ;  the  chanters 
 of  hymns  move  about  enveloped  in  mist,  talking 
 vaguely  and  enjoying  life.' 
 
 Emanation  or  S/7sh/i. 
 
 There  is,  however,  a  second  stream  of  ideas  which 
 likewise  comes  to  the  surface  in  the  Veda.  The 
 world  is  spoken  of  as  having  been  originally  water 
 without  light  (s  alii  am  apraketam),  and  very 
 soon  water  is  mentioned  as  the  beginning  of  all 
 things.  But  in  this  very  same  hymn  (X.  129),  the 
 poet  admits  that  no  one  knows,  and  no  one  can 
 declare  whence  this  creation  sprang.  The  gods  even 
 came  after  it.  and  he  who  is  called  the  seer  in  the 
 highest  heaven,  even  he  may  know,  or  he  may  not 
 know. 
 
 The  very  word  which  we  generally  translate  by 
 creation  teaches  us  a  lesson.  It  is  visriahti,  and 
 comes  from  a  root  Brig,  which  means  simply  to  let 
 out,  so  that  vis  Wsh£i  comes  much  nearer  to  emana- 
 tion or  even  evolution  than  to  creation. 
 
 The  idea  that  water  was  the  beginning  of  the 
 world  became  soon  very  popular.  It  is  said  in  the 
 Rig-veda  'the  waters  contained  a  germ  from  which 
 everything  else  sprang  forth  '  (Rv.  X.  82,  5-6 ;  X. 
 121,7). 
 
248  LECTURE    X. 
 
 G-olden  Egg". 
 
 In  the  Brahma'??  as  we  find  it  plainly  stated  that 
 this  (universe)  was  in  the  beginning  water,  '  Apo  ha 
 va  idam  agre  salilam  asa.'  From  the  water 
 arose  a  golden  egg,  which  floated  about  for  a  year. 
 Then  a  male  arose  and  this  was  Piwyapati,  the  lord  of 
 creatures.  He  divided  the  golden  egg  and  floated 
 about  in  it  for  another  year.  He  then  spoke  those 
 words,  bhur,  bhuva/t  and  svar,  and  by  them  he 
 created  the  earth,  the  firmament,  and  the  sky.  This 
 golden  egg  too  became  a  very  favourite  topic.  Thus 
 we  read  in  the  A7*andogya-Upanishad  III.  19  l  :  'In 
 the  beginning  this  was  not.  It  became,  it  grew.  I 
 turned  into  an  egg.  The  egg  lay  for  the  time  of  a 
 year.  It  broke  open.  The  two  halves  were  one  of 
 silver,  the  other  of  gold. 
 
 1  The  silver  one  became  this  earth,  the  golden  one 
 the  sky,  the  thick  membrane  (of  the  white)  the 
 mountains,  the  thin  membrane  (of  the  yoke)  the  mist 
 with  the  clouds,  the  small  veins  the  rivers,  the  fluid 
 the  sea. 
 
 '  And  what  was  born  from  it  was  the  sun.  When 
 he  was  born  shouts  of  hurrah  arose,  and  all  beings 
 arose,  and  all  things  which  they  desired.  Therefore 
 whenever  the  sun  rises  and  sets,  shouts  of  hurrah 
 arise,  and  all  beings  arise,  and  all  things  which  they 
 desire.' 
 
 The  idea  of  the  world  beginning  as  an  egg  is  so 
 natural  that  we  cannot  be  surprised  when  we  meet 
 with  it  again  and  again  in  different  parts  of  the 
 world  where  historical  communication  seems  out  of  the 
 
 1  This  is  paraphrased  in  Manu  I.  9-13. 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       249 
 
 question.     We   read    in    the    famous    Finnish    epic, 
 the  Kalevala1: 
 
 '  From  the  lower  half  of  the  egg 
 Shall  arise  the  roof  of  the  earth, 
 From  the  upper  half  of  the  egg 
 The  high  heaven  shall  arise. 
 The  white  that  is   in   the  egg 
 Shall  shine  bright   in  the  sky  ; 
 The  yellow  that  is  in  the  egg 
 Shall  beam  softly  as  moon  in  the  sky  ; 
 From  the  other  parts  of  the  egg 
 Stars  may  come  in  the  sky.' 
 
 Some  scholars  suppose  that  the  Fins  borrowed  this 
 idea  from  their  Slavonic  neighbours,  especially  the 
 Lituanians,  but  Castren  accepts  it  as  of  Finnish  origin. 
 
 If  we  turn  to  Egypt,  we  find  that  there  also  the 
 sun  is  represented  as  an  egg2.  Ra,  the  sun-god,  is 
 invoked :  '  O  Ra,  in  thine  egg,  radiant  in  thy  disk, 
 shining  forth  from  the  horizon,  swimming  over  the 
 steel  firmament — thou  who  producest  the  winds  by 
 the  flames  of  thy  mouth,  and  who  enlightenest  the 
 world  with  thy  splendours,  save  the  departed,'  etc. 
 
 In  the  Orphic  mythology  the  mundane  egg  is  fre- 
 quently mentioned,  but  from  what  sources  the  Orphic 
 poets  took  their  ideas  is  as  yet  very  doubtful. 
 
 The  Brahma?ias  are  overflowing  with  similar  specula- 
 tions, all  mere  guesses  at  truth,  it  is  true,  but  all  flowing 
 from  the  same  conviction  that  the  phenomenal  world  is 
 not  the  real  world,  or,  at  all  events,  that  behind  what 
 we  see  and  know  there  is  something  which  we  do  not 
 see  and  which  we  do  not  know,  that  there  is  some- 
 thing real  behind  the  contingent.  In  the  beginning, 
 the  Brahma?ias  say,  there  was  the  real,  the  sat,  that 
 
 1  Castren,  Finniscke  Mythologie,  p.  289  ;  Kellgren,  Myihus  de  ovo 
 mundano,  Helsingforsiae,  1840. 
 
 2  Le  Page  Renouf,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  190. 
 
250  LECTURE   X. 
 
 which  truly  is,  and  from  it  came  all  that  now  is  or 
 seems  to  be.  Here  we  see  the  root  of  the  cosmo- 
 logical  argument  :  and  the  whole  history  of  religious 
 thought,  thus  running  in  that  self-made  channel, 
 seems  to  me  stronger  than  any  elaborate  argument. 
 It  may  be  quite  true,  as  Kant  holds,  that  the  category 
 of  causality  is  applicable  to  the  deliverances  of  the 
 senses  only,  and  that  therefore  we  cannot  logically 
 prove  the  existence  of  an  extra-mundane  cause.  But 
 if  the  human  mind  has  once  formed  the  concept  of 
 phenomena  and  of  a  phenomenal  world,  that  very 
 word  and  concept  implies  the  admission  of  something 
 non-phenomenal,  by  whatever  name  we  like  to  call  it. 
 If  there  were  no  phenomena  at  all,  if  the  world  had 
 not  been  seen  through  and  found  out  to  be  trans- 
 parent, then  the  case  would  be  different,  and  Kant 
 would  be  riorht  in  his  demolition  of  the  cosinological 
 argument  ;  but  so  long  as  we  speak  of  the  pheno- 
 menal, as  Kant  does  himself,  we  speak  at  the  same 
 time  of  the  non-phenomenal.  It  is  this  non-pheno- 
 menal, or  trans-phenomenal,  which  the  cosmological 
 argument  postulates,  and  has  postulated  through  all 
 ages  ;  and  it  is  this  postulate,  this  craving  for  some- 
 thing more  real  than  this  so-called  real  world,  which 
 in  itself  is  more  convincing  to  me  than  any  subtle 
 argumentation  in  support  of  what  is  called  the  First 
 Cause  of  all  causes.  Ask  yourselves,  Can  you  imagine 
 the  craving  of  hunger  in  nature  unless  there  was 
 something  in  nature  to  satisfy  that  hunger  ?  I  go 
 even  further,  and  ask,  Can  you  imagine  an  eye  with- 
 out light,  or  an  ear  without  sound  ?  Neither  can  we 
 imagine  this  craving  for  the  Unseen,  the  Unheard, 
 the   Unperceived,  or   the    Infinite,  unless   there  was 
 
COMPARATIVE   STUDY   OF    RELIGIOUS   PROBLEMS.       251 
 
 something  to  satisfy  that  craving,  if  only  wo  look  for 
 it  where  alone  it  can  be  found. 
 
 Teleologlcal  Argument. 
 
 As  soon  as  this  non-phenomenal  is  represented  in 
 the  likeness  of  man, — and  man  knows  nothing  better 
 in  the  whole  world,  and  in  his  whole  mind  than  man, 
 —  the  teleological  argument  comes  in  by  itself.  The 
 author  and  creator  of  the  universe,  if  once  conceived, 
 cannot  be  conceived  except  as  a  wise  being,  or,  per 
 viam  emi'nentiae,  as  the  wisest  being,  and  man  claims 
 the  right  to  look  for  his  wisdom  in  his  works.  Thus 
 one  of  the  Vedic  poets  exclaims,  VII  86,  1 1 : 
 
 '  Wise  and  mighty  are  the  works  of  him  who 
 stemmed  asunder  the  wide  firmaments  (heaven  and 
 earth).  He  lifted  on  high  the  bright  and  glorious 
 heaven  ;  he  stretched  out  apart  the  starry  sky  and 
 the  earth.' 
 
 It  may  be  said  that  the  existence  of  a  creator  has 
 not  been  proved,  and  that  therefore  it  is  folly  to 
 predicate  anything  of  him  or  of  his  works.  I  do  not 
 deny  this,  I  only  assert  as  an  historical  fact,  what- 
 ever that  may  be  worth,  that  if  once  the  phenomenal 
 and  the  non-phenomenal  had  been  conceived,  man 
 being  what  he  is,  was  constrained,  and,  in  that  sense, 
 justified  in  conceiving  the  author  of  both  under  the 
 form  of  the  best  he  knew,  that  is,  under  the  form  of 
 man  or  anthropomorphically. 
 
 Anthropomorphism. 
 
 Man  may  know  that  anthropomorphism  is  wrong 
 in  the  abstract,  but  it  cannot  be  wrong  for   man,  for 
 
 1  Selected  Essays,  i.  14'.». 
 
252  LECTURE    X. 
 
 it  is  after  all  the  best  that,  being  what  he  is,  he  can 
 conceive.  If  he  could  imagine  or  conceive  anything 
 better  than  man,  naturally  the  anthropomorphic  con- 
 ception, or,  at  least  some  parts  of  it,  would  go.  But 
 unless  it  was  possible  to  conceive  anything  wiser  than 
 wise,  or  better  than  good,  the  author  and  creator 
 would  always  to  human  beings  retain  these  human 
 qualities,  and  his  work,  the  phenomenal  world,  would 
 necessarily  be  scanned  for  proofs  of  his  purposes  and 
 his  wisdom. 
 
 This  is  the  teleological  argument  in  its  most  rudi- 
 mentary form. 
 
 Ontoiogical  Argument. 
 
 As  to  the  ontoiogical  argument  we  may  discover 
 traces  of  this  also  in  the  earliest  speculations  of 
 Indian  sages.  We  saw  how  they  simply  state :  '  In 
 the  beginning  this  (world)  was  existent,  one  only, 
 without  a  second.'  But  they  add :  '  Others  say,  in 
 the  beginning  this  world  was  non-existent,  and  from 
 the  non-existent  the  existent  was  born.'  After  these 
 two  alternatives  follows  an  argument  which,  though 
 it  differs  from  the  ontoiogical  in  its  present  form,  con- 
 tains nevertheless  the  true  germ  of  it :  '  How  could 
 that  which  is,  be  born  of  that  which  is  not  ? '  This  is 
 the  question  asked  by  the  author  of  the  Brahma?^a, 
 and  the  very  question  supplies  the  answer,  It  could 
 not. 
 
 This  may  seem  a  very  crude  form  in  which  to  state 
 the  ontoiogical  argument,  but  it  is  its  very  crudeness 
 that  makes  it  instructive.  I  hope  I  shall  not  be 
 understood  as  if  I  thought  any  of  these  crude  attempts 
 at  solving  the  great  problems  of  the  world  supplied  a 
 real  solution  of  them.     History  cannot  replace  philo- 
 
COMPARATIVE   STUDY   OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       253 
 
 sophy,  but  it  can  assist  it,  it  can  serve  as  the  best 
 preparation  for  it. 
 
 A  Creator. 
 
 It  is  quite  true  that  the  fact  that  the  great  portion 
 of  the  human  race  believed  in  a  creator,  does  in 
 no  way  establish  the  existence  of  a  creator.  I  am 
 not  even  certain  that  we  should  find  that  the  majority 
 of  the  human  race  shared  in  the  belief  in  a  creator, 
 that  is  to  say,  a  maker,  such  as  a  carpenter  or  a 
 potter.  We  know  that  the  Buddhists,  whose  number 
 is  considerable,  reject  the  idea  of  a  creator,  or  at 
 all  events  do  not  either  assert  or  deny  it.  They 
 adduce  very  good  reasons  for  this  abstinence,  our  in- 
 competence to  know  anything  beyond  what  comes  to 
 us  first  through  the  senses,— the  very  argument  re- 
 peated by  Kant ;  and  secondly,  the  imperfection  of 
 the  world,  which  ought  to  restrain  us  from  ascribing 
 its  workmanship  to  a  perfect  being.  In  other  countries, 
 too,  the  idea  of  a  creation  was  sternly  rejected,  as,  for 
 instance,  by  Heraclitus,  who  declares  that  no  god  and 
 no  man  made  this  world,  but  that  it  was  always  and 
 is  and  will  be,  an  eternal  fire,  assuming  forms  and 
 destroying  them1.  And  this  protest,  it  should  be 
 remembered,  came  from  a  man  who  was  able  to  say 
 with  equal  honesty  that  '  God  is  day  and  night,  winter 
 and  summer,  war  and  peace,  satiety  and  hunger — and 
 that  he  is  called  according  to  the  pleasure  of  every 
 one  V  What  I  wish  to  put  clearly  before  you  is  that 
 neither  the  assertion  of  creation  by  certain  Semitic 
 authorities,   nor   the   denial    of   creation   by   certain 
 
 1  Heraditi  Reliquiae,  ed.  Bywater,  xx. 
 
 a  See  Pfieiderer,  Heraklit,  p.  353.     Could  we  read  okus  nvp  ok6to> 
 ovfifxiyes? 
 
254  LECTURE   X. 
 
 Aryan  authorities,  could  possibly  settle  that  question 
 in  one  way  or  the  other. 
 
 All  I  wish  to  show  is  that  an  historical  study  of 
 the  theory  of  creation,  and  of  the  reasons  for  which 
 it  was  either  held  or  rejected  in  different  countries 
 and  in  different  ages,  is  the  best  preparation,  nay,  an 
 indispensable  preparation,  before  we  approach  the 
 solution  of  the  problem  itself,  if  indeed  it  admits  of 
 any  solution  at  the  hand  of  created  beings. 
 
 Astronomers  study  the  Ptolemaic  before  they  ap- 
 proach the  Copernican  system,  and  they  become  most 
 hrmly  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  latter  after  they 
 have  themselves  discovered  the  flaws  inherent  in  the 
 former  system. 
 
 Origin  of  the  idea  of  cause. 
 
 We  can  see  how  at  a  very  early  period  in  the 
 growth  of  the  human  mind,  the  idea  of  a  father,  of  a 
 maker  and  fashioner  of  the  world,  was  inevitable,  and 
 it  is  equally  inevitable  at  the  present  day  with  large 
 classes  of  people  whose  mind  has  not  yet  risen  beyond 
 the  level  of  those  early  sages.  They  speak  a  lan- 
 guage of  their  own,  and  with  them  father  or  maker 
 expresses  all  they  have  to  express. 
 
 The  ideas  which  an  honest  peasant  connects  with 
 the  fatherhood  of  God  do  not  differ  much  from  what 
 the  natives  of  California  declared  in  their  simple  lan- 
 guage, when  asked  as  to  their  faith  in  any  higher 
 powers.  'Their  God,'  they  declared,  'had  neither 
 father  nor  mother,  and  his  origin  was  quite  unknown. 
 But  he  is  present  everywhere,  he  sees  everything  even 
 at  midnight,  though  himself  invisible  to  human  eyes. 
 He  is  the  friend  of  all  good  people,  and  punishes  the 
 evil-doers.' 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF   RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       255 
 
 If  our  metaphysicians  define  God  as  Causa  sui,  do 
 they  say  much  more  than  what  the  Californians 
 meant  when  they  said  that  their  God  had  neither 
 father  nor  mother  ?  or  what  the  Vedic  poets  meant  when 
 they  spoke  of  one  who  was  the  father  of  the  father  ? l 
 
 It  will  hardly  be  believed  that  these  Californians, 
 with  a  creed  to  my  mind  more  perfect  than  that  of 
 most  nations,  are  classed  by  Sir  John  Lubbock  among 
 the  races  without  any  religion  2. 
 
 At  a  later  time,  when  the  human  intellect  had 
 reached  a  higher  stage,  it  was  no  doubt  inevitable 
 that  many  characteristics  of  father  and  maker  should 
 have  to  be  eliminated  in  order  to  make  room  for  the 
 higher  concept  of  an  author  of  the  world.  Nay,  the 
 time  would  come  when  a  thinker  like  Heraclitus 
 would  revolt  against  the  very  idea  of  a  manufacturer 
 of  the  world,  and  would  assert  that  none  of  the  beings 
 who  were  then  called  gods  could  have  performed  so 
 stupendous  a  work.  This  idea  of  any  being  manufac- 
 turing the  world,  as  a  potter  on  his  wheel,  became  so 
 repugnant  to  more  enlightened  minds,  that  Buddha, 
 as  we  saw,  declared  it  irreverent  even  to  ask  that 
 question,  much  more  to  attempt  to  answer  it. 
 
 And  if  we  turn  our  eyes  away  from  that  Indian 
 sage,  who  became  the  founder  of  one  of  the  great 
 religions  of  the  world,  and  ask  what  Des  Cartes,  the 
 founder  of  modern  philosophy,  has  to  say  on  the  same 
 subject,  we  find  a  wonderful  similarity  of  thought,  in 
 spite  of  great  diversity  of  expression.  '  Knowing  as 
 I  do,'  he  writes,  '  that  my  nature  is  extremely  weak 
 
 1  Rv.  I.  164,  16,  B&h  pitu/;  pita  asat.     VI.  16,  35. 
 
 -  Roskoff,  Das  Beligwnsvoesen  der  rohestenNaturoolker,^.  66  ;  Lubbock, 
 
 Civilisation,  pp.  176,  271. 
 
256  LECTUKE   X. 
 
 and  limited,  while  that  of  God  is  immeasurable,  in- 
 comprehensible, and  infinite,  I  have  no  difficulty  in 
 acknowledging  that  he  has  command  of  an  infinitude 
 of  things  of  which  my  mind  cannot  compass  the  causes  ; 
 and  this  alone  suffices  to  convince  me  that  the  whole 
 class  of  causes  supplied  by  the  end  in  view  is  useless 
 in  regard  to  natural  things ;  for  it  seems  to  me,  it 
 would  be  rash  in  me  to  investigate  and  undertake  to 
 recover  the  impenetrable  ends  of  God  V 
 
 If  we  watch  these  changes  of  thought  among  men 
 anxious  for  truth  and  for  truth  only,  we  learn  at  all 
 events  to  approach  this  question  in  a  calm  and  per- 
 fectly judicial  spirit.  We  are  not  carried  away  into 
 mere  denunciation,  but  are  inclined  to  listen  with 
 equanimity  both  to  those  who  assert  and  to  those  who 
 deny  the  theory  of  creation  in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
 that  word. 
 
 Religions  without  a  Creator. 
 
 Unless  it  were  known  that  some  of  the  lowest  as 
 well  as  some  of  the  highest  races,  the  Negroes  of 
 Africa2,  for  instance,  and  the  Buddhists  of  Ceylon, 
 either  ignored  or  rejected  the  idea  of  creation  alto- 
 gether, and  yet  possessed  religions  of  great  efficacy 
 and  extreme  subtlety,  we  should  doubt  whether  reli- 
 gion was  even  possible  without  a  belief  in  a  Creator. 
 But  it  is  a  fact  that  the  very  denial  of  a  creating  God 
 arose  in  many  cases  from  a  too  exalted  conception  of 
 the  deity,  whether  on  moral  or  philosophical  grounds. 
 From  a  moral  point  of  view  it  has  been  asserted  again 
 and  again  that  so  imperfect  a  world  as  this  ought 
 
 1  Meditations,  ed.  Cousin,  i.  297  ;  Martineau,   Study  of  Religion,   i. 
 2/2. 
 
 Reville,  Lea  Religions  des  Pmples  no)i-civilises,  i.  271. 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY   OF   RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       ^57 
 
 not  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  work  of  a  perfect  Being  ; 
 while  from  a  philosophical  point  of  view  it  has  been 
 uro-ed  that  a  belief  in  a  Creator  would  involve  a 
 belief  that  there  was  a  time  when  there  was  a  divine 
 cause,  but  no  effect. 
 
 The  denial  of  a  Creator,  therefore,  so  far  from  being 
 necessarily  anti-religious,  may  be  traced  back  to  re- 
 ligion itself,  that  is,  to  a  feeling  that  shrinks  from 
 assigning  to  a  Supreme  Being  anything  unworthy  of 
 it  or  contradicting  its  essential  attributes. 
 
 The  Theory  of  Evolution. 
 
 If  this  had  been  clearly  seen,  and  if  our  modern 
 philosophers  had  learnt  from  history  that  a  man  who 
 does  not  admit  a  creator  is  not  ipso  facto  an  atheist, 
 a  controversy  which  in  England  at  least  has  of  late 
 excited  the  most  passionate  heat,  might  have  been 
 carried  on  with  perfect  scientific  composure — I  allude, 
 of  course,  to  the  theory  of  evolution,  as  revived  by 
 Darwin.  It  was  disheartening  to  hear  the  followers 
 of  Darwin  stigmatised  as  atheists,  because  they 
 rejected  the  theory  of  a  Creator  in  the  ordinary 
 acceptation  of  that  word.  It  was  equally  painful  to 
 see  the  opponents  of  Darwin's  theories  treated  as 
 mere  bigots,  because,  if  they  did  not  accept  the  theory 
 of  evolution,  they  must  believe  in  the  account  of 
 creation  as  given  in  Genesis.  Is  there  no  room  left 
 then  in  our  modern  schools  of  philosophy  for  men  like 
 Descartes  ? 
 
 It  was  owing  to  a  want  of  what  I  should  like  to 
 call  '  historical  preparedness  '  that  all  this  unseemly 
 squabbling  about  evolution  was  stirred  up.  In 
 Germany  the   idea  of  evolution    had    so   completely 
 
 s 
 
258  LECTURE    X. 
 
 pervaded  the  popular  literature  and  become  so  familiar 
 to  every  thinking  man  that  I  was  as  much  surprised 
 at  the  excitement  caused  by  the  '  Origin  of  Species,' 
 as  by  the  ferment  stirred  up  by  '  Essays  and  Eeviews.' 
 Darwin's  book  ushered  in  a  new  intellectual  spring, 
 but  it  produced  no  cataclysm  in  the  world  of  science. 
 
 As,  however,  we  have  lately  been  told  again,  after 
 it  seemed  that  the  principal  disputants  had  become 
 more  reasonable,  that  Darwin's  theory  of  evolution 
 forms  a  kind  of  deluge,  dividing  ante-diluvian  from 
 post-diluvian  science,  a  few  remarks  on  the  real 
 history  and  meaning  of  evolution  may  not  be  out 
 of  place  at  the  point  which  we  have  reached  in  our 
 own  argument.  We  want  to  establish  the  advantages 
 which  the  Historical  has  over  the  Theoretic  Method, 
 whether  in  the  Science  of  Religion  or  in  every  other 
 department  of  human  knowledge.  Let  us  see  then 
 what  advantages  it  would  have  conferred,  if  it  had 
 been  adopted  by  the  principal  disputants  in  the 
 Darwinian  controversy. 
 
 Meaning  of  Evolution. 
 
 Let  us,  first  of  all,  see  clearly  what  this  word  evolu- 
 tion really  means,  if  applied  to  nature  or  to  anything 
 else. 
 
 Evolution  is  really  the  same  as  history,  if  we  take 
 it  in  its  objective  sense.  Subjectively,  history  ([aropia) 
 meant  originally  inquiry,  or  a  desire  to  know ;  it 
 then  came  to  mean  knowledge,  obtained  by  inquiry ; 
 and  lastly,  in  a  purely  objective  sense,  the  objects  of 
 such  knowledge. 
 
 Natural  History  was  originally  an  inquiry  about 
 nature  (fj   -nepl   (frvaecos   laropia)  ;    then  knowledge   of 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      259 
 
 nature,  while  we  now  use  Natural  History  in  the 
 sense  of  the  facts  of  nature.  The  same  with  political 
 history.  It  meant  at  first  an  inquiry  into  political 
 events,  then  a  knowledge  and  likewise  a  coherent 
 account  of  such  events,  and  lastly,  these  political 
 events  themselves,  as  known  by  historians  and  philo- 
 sophers. 
 
 History,  however,  if  it  is  worthy  of  its  name,  is 
 more  than  a  mere  acquaintance  with  facts  and  dates. 
 It  is  the  study  of  a  continuous  process  in  the  events 
 of  the  world,  the  discovery  of  cause  and  effect,  and,  in 
 the  end,  of  a  law  that  holds  the  world  together. 
 Apply  this  historical  study  to  nature,  and  try  to  dis- 
 cover in  it  an  uninterrupted  succession  of  cause  and 
 effect,  a  continuity  which  holds  the  whole  of  nature 
 together  ;  and  what  is  this  but  what  is  now  called 
 evolution*  Evolution,  if  only  properly  understood, 
 has  always  seemed  to  me  a  very  old  friend  ;  it  is 
 history,  or  what  used  to  be  called  pragmatic  history, 
 under  a  new  name.  What  used  to  be  called  the 
 history  of  language,  is  now  called  its  evolution. 
 What  used  to  be  studied  under  the  name  of  the  his- 
 tory of  law  and  religion,  is  now  presented  to  us  as  the 
 evolution  of  law  and  religion.  Suppose  there  were 
 no  evolution  in  language,  in  law  or  in  religion,  would 
 there  be  a  history"?  Would  they  admit  of  any 
 scientific  treatment  at  all  ?  Nay,  is  not  evolution,  if 
 we  look  at  it  sharply,  nothing  but  an  alias  for 
 causality  in  all  our  experience,  and,  in  the  end,  from 
 Kant's  point  of  view,  a  necessity  inherent  in  all 
 rational  thought  1  Entivickelung  is  a  very  old  word 
 in  German,  and  seemed  very  harmless  ;  but  when  it 
 appeared  in  its  English  disguise  as  evolution,  it  was 
 
 S  2 
 
260  LECTURE   X. 
 
 supposed  to  portend  revolution,  and  all  that  is  terrible 
 and  destructive.  I  can  understand  a  man  not  be- 
 lieving in  gravitation,  but  a  rational  being  denying 
 evolution  in  its  true  sense  ceases  ipso  facto  to  be  a 
 rational  being. 
 
 Darwin  admits  a  Creator. 
 
 We  saw  that  with  regard  to  the  origin  of  the  world, 
 evolutionary  theories  were  much  older  than  any 
 others.  And  yet  when  Darwin  and  others  brought 
 forward  their  accumulated  knowledge  in  support  of 
 what  may  almost  be  called  the  primeval  theory  of 
 evolution,  the  outcry  against  it  became  so  overwhelm- 
 ing that  even  Darwin  himself  seems  to  have  been 
 frightened,  and  glad  to  avail  himself,  as  he  tells  us,  of 
 the  support  of  an  eminent  theologian. 
 
 Darwin  writes 1 :  '  I  see  no  good  reason  why  the 
 views  given  in  this  volume  should  shock  the  reli- 
 gious feelings  of  any  one  ...  A  celebrated  author  and 
 divine  has  written  to  me  that  he  has  gradually  learnt 
 to  see  that  it  is  just  as  noble  a  conception  of  the 
 Deity  to  believe  that  He  created  a  few  original  forms 
 capable  of  self-development  into  other  and  needful 
 forms,  as  to  believe  that  he  organised  a  fresh  act  of 
 creation  to  supply  the  voids  caused  by  the  action  of 
 his  laws.' 
 
 Herder,  the  precursor  of  Darwin. 
 
 Darwin  has  often  been  blamed  by  his  disciples  for 
 what  they  consider  a  '  timid  concession  to  the  pre- 
 judices of  theologians/  and  yet  there  are  theologians 
 to  whom  even  that  concession  does  not  seem   to  no 
 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  105 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      261 
 
 far   enough — so  well    are    they   acquainted,   as   they 
 imagine,  with  'the  impenetrable  ends  of  God.' 
 
 I  do  not  know  who  that  celebrated  author  and  di- 
 vine may  have  been,  but  Darwin,  if  he  had  been  better 
 acquainted  with  the  history  of  philosophy  during  the 
 last  century,  ought  to  have  known  a  most  celebrated 
 author  and  divine,  the  friend  of  Goethe  and  Schiller 
 and  Kant,  who  not  only  gave  the  sanction  of  his 
 office,  which  was  as  high  as  that  of  any  bishop  in 
 England,  to  the  theory  of  evolution,  but  worked  it 
 out  himself  in  so  comprehensive  a  spirit,  and,  at  the 
 same  time,  in  so  much  detail  that  in  reading  his 
 books  we  seem  to  be  reading  an  edition  of  Darwin, 
 only  published  a  hundred  years  ago.  I  am  speaking 
 of  Herder,  who  was  the  head  of  the  church  in  Saxe- 
 Weimar,  and  at  the  same  time  one  of  the  greatest 
 philosophers  and  writers  that  Germany  has  ever 
 produced.  He  was  born  in  the  same  year  as  Lamarck, 
 1744,  and  died  in  1803,  Lamarck  in  1829.  I  must 
 read  you  a  few  extracts  from  his  Ideen  zur  Plt'do- 
 sophie  der  Menschheit  (1784)  in  order  to  show  you 
 that  I  am  by  no  means  exaggerating  when  I  call 
 Herder  the  Darwin  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
 
 Herder  traces  the  process  of  evolution  from  in- 
 organic to  organic  nature,  from  the  crystal  through 
 plants  and  animals  to  man,  the  younger  brother  of 
 the  animals,  as  he  calls  him.  '  From  stone  to 
 crystal,'  he  writes  \  '  from  crystal  to  metals,  from 
 metals  to  the  creation  of  plants,  from  plants  to 
 animals,  and  from  these  to  man,  we  see  the  form  of 
 organisation  rising  higher  and  higher,  and  with  it 
 the  forces  and  .impulses  of  the  creature  becoming 
 1  Ideen  zur  Geschichte  d,  ,■  M<  nschfa  it,  Funftea  Buch,  p.  122. 
 
262  LECTURE   X. 
 
 differentiated,  till  all  that  can  be  comprehended  in 
 one  became  united  in  the  human  form.  With  man 
 the  series  stops ;  we  know  of  no  creature  above  him, 
 more  complex  and  perfect  in  its  organisation.  Man 
 seems  to  be  the  highest  form  which  an  earth-organism 
 can  reach.' 
 
 When  Herder  touches  the  problem  of  the  beginning 
 of  life,  he  allows  himself  some  poetic  licence.  '  In 
 the  sight  of  the  eternal  Being,'  he  writes,  '  the  shape 
 of  a  small  particle  of  ice,  as  it  forms  itself,  and  of 
 a  flake  of  snow  on  its  surface,  has  some  analogous 
 relationship  to  the  formation  of  the  embryo.'  (p.  49.) 
 
 1  The  plant  is  a  higher  kind  of  organisation  than 
 all  formations  of  the  earth,  and  the  kingdom  of  plants 
 has  so  wide  an  extension  that  it  loses  itself  in  those 
 formations,  and  on  the  other  hand  approaches  the 
 animal  kingdom  in  several  of  its  germs  and  varieties. 
 The  plant  possesses  a  kind  of  life  and  stages  of  life, 
 it  has  sex,  fructification,  birth  and  death.  The 
 surface  of  the  earth  was  ready  for  it  before  it  was 
 ready  for  animals  and  men.  The  plant  pushes 
 forward  before  them,  and  with  its  grasses,  mildew, 
 and  mosses  clings  to  those  barren  rocks  which  have 
 not  yet  been  trodden  by  the  foot  of  any  living  thing.' 
 
 Herder  then  traces  the  transition  from  plants  to 
 plant-animals.  '  The  nutritive  organs,'  he  says  (p.  63), 
 '  are  already  separated  in  them  ;  they  have  something 
 analogous  to  animal  sensation  and  voluntary  motion  ; 
 but  their  principal  organic  power  is  still  nutrition  and 
 propagation.'  He  then  proceeds  to  molluscs,  insects, 
 cold-blooded  and  warm-blooded  animals,  and  points 
 to  the  elements  in  which  they  live,  or  what  is  some- 
 times  ailed  their  environment,  as  a  determining  cause 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       263 
 
 of  their  peculiar  organisation.  '  The  bird,'  he  says 
 (p.  51),  '  flies  in  the  air  ;  every  deviation  of  its  form 
 from  that  of  terrestrial  animals  can  be  accounted  for 
 by  its  element.  As  soon  as  it  touches  the  earth 
 again,  even  if  only  in  some  monstrous  intermediate 
 form,  as  in  bats  and  vampires,  it  assimilates  itself  to 
 the  human  skeleton.  The  fish  swimming  in  the 
 water  has  its  hands  and  feet  grown  together  in  fins 
 and  a  tail,  and  there  is  little  articulation  in  its  limbs. 
 As  soon  as  it  dwells  on  land,  it  develops,  like  the 
 manatee,  at  least  its  forefeet,  and  the  female  develops 
 mamiDte.  The  sea-bear  and  sea-lion  show  clearly 
 their  four  feet,  though  they  are  not  able  as  yet  to 
 use  their  hind  feet,  but  drag  their  five  toes  like  rags 
 of  fins  behind.  They  creep  along  quietly  to  warm 
 themselves  in  the  rays  of  the  sun,  and  have  advanced 
 a  step  beyond  the  dulness  of  the  misshapen  seal. 
 Thus  there  is  progress  from  the  dust  of  worms,  from 
 the  chalk- houses  of  molluscs,  and  from  the  webs  of 
 insects  towards  more  fully  articulated  and  higher 
 organisations.'   .  .  . 
 
 'Each  species  takes  care  of  itself  (p.  45),  as  if  it 
 were  the  only  one  in  existence  ;  but  by  its  side  there 
 is  another  species  which  limits  it,  and  in  this  mutual 
 relation  of  different  and  opposite  species  nature  in 
 its  creative  power  found  the  means  of  preserving  the 
 whole.' 
 
 Herder  then  proceeds  to  show  how  in  this  struggle 
 for  existence  whole  species  of  animals  and  of  men 
 may  have  perished,  while  yet  a  general  equilibrium 
 was  maintained.  Man  is  in  Herders  eyes  no  more 
 than  the  brother  of  the  animals  (p.  44).  Nay,  he  goes 
 further,  and  in  order  to  bring  down  tho  pride  of  man 
 
264  LECTURE    X. 
 
 he  reminds  him  (p.  54)  that  he  is  nothing  but  a 
 digestive  tube  (an  ascidian),  like  his  lowest  brethren. 
 He  tells  Buffon  (p.  85)  that  he  is  wasting  his 
 eloquence  in  vain  in  denying  the  uniformity  of 
 organism  in  ape  and  man,  and  that  the  facts  which 
 he  has  collected  himself  refute  him. 
 
 And  yet  the  same  Herder  sees  as  clearly  as  any- 
 body the  specific  difference  of  man  and  animal.  After 
 showing  (p.  57)  how  irritations  of  the  senses  produce 
 a  reaction  and  a  corresponding  impulse,  how  sensa- 
 tions result  in  thought,  and  how  there  is  in  every 
 living  organism  a  perpetual  progress,  he  points  to 
 language  as  a  divine  gift  by  which  alone  our  slum- 
 bering reason  was  awakened,  or  by  which  the  mere 
 faculty  which  by  itself  would  have  remained  dead 
 for  ever,  became  living  force  (p.  101).  'Animals,'  he 
 says  (p.  104),  'are  truly  called  in  the  East  the  Silent 
 ones  of  the  earth;  for  with  the  organisation  of 
 language  only  did  man  receive  the  breath  of  the 
 deity,  the  seed  of  reason  and  eternal  perfection,  an 
 echo  of  that  creative  call  to  the  lordship  of  the  earth, 
 in  fact  the  divine  art  of  ideas,  the  mother  of  all  arts.' 
 
 These  ideas  enunciated  by  Herder  became  the  intel- 
 lectual property  of  the  whole  of  Germany,  and  reigned 
 supreme  in  schools  and  universities  during  the  early 
 part  of  this  century.  In  the  school  of  Oken,  in  the 
 first  philosophy  of  Schelling,  in  the  eloquent  treatises 
 of  Goethe,  all  was  evolution,  development,  or,  as  it 
 was  called  in  more  general  language,  Das  Werden,  the 
 Becoming.  The  same  spirit,  though  in  a  higher  sense, 
 pervaded  the  philosophy  of  Hegel.  According  to  him 
 the  whole  world,  as  conceived  by  man,  was  an  evolu- 
 tion, a  development  by  logical  necessity,  to  which  all 
 
COMPARATIVE   STUDY   OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      265 
 
 facts  must   bow.     If  they  would  not,  then  tant  pis 
 pour  lesfaits. 
 
 Evolution  in  the  beginning-  of  our  century. 
 
 I  do  not  remember  the  heyday  of  that  school,  but 
 I  still  remember  its  last  despairing  struggles.  I  still 
 remember  at  school  and  at  University  rumours  of 
 carbon,  half  solid,  half  liquid,  the  famous  Urschleim, 
 now  called  Protoplasm1,  the  substance  out  of  which 
 everything  was  evolved.  I  remember  the  more  or 
 less  amusing  discussions  about  the  loss  of  the  tail, 
 and  about  races  supposed  to  be  still  in  possession  of 
 that  ancestral  appendage.  I  do  not  know  whether 
 Lord  Monboddo's  works  are  still  read  in  Scotland, 
 but  whoever  wishes  for  evidence  in  support  of  our 
 descent  from  hairy  and  tailed  ancestors,  will  find 
 more  startling  evidence  in  his  portly  quartos  than  in 
 any  of  Darwin's  publications. 
 
 Gottfried  Hermann. 
 
 T  well  remember  my  own  particular  teacher,  the 
 great  Greek  scholar  Gottfried  Hermann2,  giving  great 
 otfence  to  his  theological  colleagues  by  publishing  an 
 essay  in  1840  in  which  he  tried  to  prove  the  descent 
 of  man  from  an  ape.  Allow  me  to  quote  a  few 
 extracts  from  this  rare  and  little-noticed  essay.  As 
 the  female  is  always  less  perfect  than  the  male,  Her- 
 mann, now  nearly  fifty  years  ago,  argued  that  the  law 
 of  development  required  that  Eve  must  have  existed 
 
 1  The  deep-sea  ooze  which  Haeckel  took  for  the  physical  basis  of 
 all  life  and  the  Protogenes  Haeckelii  have  both  been  surrendered  long 
 ago. 
 
 2  'Evam  ante  Adamum  creatam  fuisse,  sive  de  quodam  communi 
 apud  Mosen  et  Hesiodum  errore  circa  creationem  generis  humani,' 
 in  Ilgen's  Zeitschriftfur  die  histvr.  Theologie,  1840.  B.  x.  pp.  61-70. 
 
266  LECTURE    X. 
 
 before  Adam,   not   Adam   before   Eve.     Quoting  the 
 words  of  Ennius, 
 
 Simia  quam  similis,  turpissima  bestia,  nobis, 
 
 he  goes  on  in  his  own  peculiar  Latin : — 
 
 '  Ex  hac  nobili  gente  quid  dubitemus  unam  ali- 
 quando  simiam  exortam  putare,  quae  paullo  minus 
 belluina  facie  et  indole  esset?  Ea,  sive  illam  Evam 
 sive  Pandoram  appellare  placet,  quum  ex  alio  simio 
 gravida  facta  esset,  peperit,  ut  saepenumero  fieri  con- 
 stat, filium  matri  quam  patri  similiorem,  qui  primus 
 homo  fuit. 
 
 '  Haec  ergo  est  hominis  generisque  humani  origo, 
 non  ilia  quidem  valde  honesta.  sed  paullo  tamen 
 honestior  multoque  probabilior,  quam  si  ex  luto  aqua 
 permixto,  cui  anima  fuerit  inspirata,  genus  duce- 
 remus.' 
 
 Surely  Gottfried  Hermann  was  a  bolder  man  than 
 even  Darwin,  and  to  me,  who  had  attended  his  lec- 
 tures at  Leipzig  in  1841.  Darwin's  Descent  of  Man. 
 published  in  1871,  was  naturally  far  less  novel  and 
 far  less  startling  by  its  theory  than  by  the  new  facts 
 by  which  that  theory  was  once  more  supported. 
 
 Kant  on  the  Chimpanzee. 
 
 Kant's  philosophy  also  had  long  familiarised  students 
 of  Anthropology  with  the  same  ideas.  For  he,  too. 
 towards  the  end  of  his  Anthropologic,  had  spoken  of 
 a  future  period  in  the  development  of  nature,  when  an 
 Oran-Utang  or  Chimpanzee  may  develop  his  organs 
 of  locomotion,  touch,  and  speech  to  the  perfection  of 
 human  organs,  raise  his  brain  to  an  organ  of  thought, 
 and  slowly  elevate  himself  by  social  culture.  I  cannot 
 admire  such  airy  speculations,  even  if  they  come  from 
 Kant,   but   I  ask,   Is   there   anything  in   Darwin    so 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       267 
 
 much  more  startling  and  novel  than  these  theories  of 
 Herder,  Gottfried  Hermann,  and  Kant  ? 
 
 Darwin. 
 
 Darwin  felt  compelled  by  the  enormous  weight  of 
 analogy  to  adopt  the  theory  that  man  is  the  genea- 
 logical descendant  of  some  kind  of  ape.  Haeckel 
 adds  that  the  statement  that  man  was  developed  from 
 lower  vertebrates,  and  proximately  from  genuine  apes, 
 is  a  special  deduction  which  follows  with  absolute 
 certainty  from  the  general  induction  of  the  theory  of 
 descent  K  Even  if  that  were  so,  it  would  remain  a 
 deduction  from  a  general  intuition  of  a  theory  of 
 descent ;  it  would  remain  a  theoretical  conviction  of 
 an  eminent  zoologist.  But  we  must  not  forget  that 
 another  eminent  zoologist,  who  yields  to  no  one 
 either  in  knowledge  or  in  outspoken  honesty,  I  mean 
 Virchow,  has  never  on  this  point  allowed  himself  to 
 be  carried  away  by  mere  analogy,  or  even  by  the 
 powerful  pleading  of  Darwin.  We  know  how  able 
 and  persuasive  a  pleader  Darwin  could  be,  but  all  his 
 eloquence  was  in  vain  against  the  conscientious  con- 
 victions of  Virchow. 
 
 When  Darwin  wished  to  show  how  man  could 
 have  been  born  of  an  animal  which  was  hairy  and 
 remained  so  during  life,  he  could  not  well  maintain 
 that  an  animal  without  hair  was  fitter  to  survive 
 than  an  animal  with  hair.  He  therefore  appealed  to 
 sexual  selection,  and  wished  us  to  believe  that  our 
 female  semi-human  progenitrix  lost  her  hair  by  some 
 accident,  became  thus,  as  Hermann  would  have  said, 
 minus  belluina  facie  et  indole,  minus  belluina,  sed 
 
 1  See  Roskoff,  Religionswesen,  p.  165. 
 
268  LECTUKE    X. 
 
 magi s  bella,  so  that  in  the  process  of  time  this  partial 
 or  complete  baldness,  call  it  leprosy  or  leucoderma, 
 was  perpetuated  from  mother  to  son,  and  made  us 
 what  we  are. 
 
 Oken. 
 
 These  theories  put  forward  by  Herder  and  Kant, 
 and  more  or  less  seriously  advocated  by  Gottfried  Her- 
 mann, found  the  most  enthusiastic  defender  in  Oken. 
 Oken  (1779-1851)  was  not  satisfied  with  deriving 
 man  from  an  animal.  He  and  his  disciples  taught 
 that  the  transition  from  inorganic  to  organic  nature 
 was  likewise  a  mere  matter  of  development.  The 
 first  step,  according  to  him,  was  the  formation  of 
 rising  bubbles,  such  as  we  see  in  champagne,  which 
 he  at  that  time  called  infusoria,  and  the  manifold 
 repetition  of  which  led,  as  he  taught,  to  the  formation 
 of  plants  and  animals.  The  plant  was  represented  by 
 him  as  an  imperfect  animal,  the  animal  as  an  im- 
 perfect man.  To  doubt  that  the  various  races  of  men 
 were  descended  from  one  pair  was  considered  at  that 
 time,  and  even  so  late  as  the  days  of  Prichard,  not 
 only  a  theological,  but  a  biological  heresy.  All  variety 
 was  traced  back  to  unity — and  in  the  beginning  there 
 was  nothing  but  Being ;  which  Being,  coming  in 
 conflict  with  Not-being,  entered  upon  the  process  of 
 Becoming,  of  development,  of  evolution. 
 
 Reaction. 
 
 While  this  philosophy  was  still  being  preached  in 
 some  German  universities,  a  sharp  reaction  took  place 
 in  others,  followed  by  the  quick  ascendency  of  that 
 Historical  School  of  which  I  spoke  in  a  former  lecture. 
 It  was  heralded  in  Germany  by  such  men  as  Niebuhr, 
 Savigny,   Bopp,    Grimm,    Otfried    Miiller,    Johannes 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.       269 
 
 Midler,  the  two  Humboldts,  and  many  others  whose 
 names  are  less  widely  known  in  England,  but  who 
 did  excellent  work,  each  in  his  own  special  line. 
 
 Historical  School :    its  true  character. 
 
 It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
 Historical  School  was  exclusively  concerned  with  the 
 history  of  problems,  that  it  cared  for  the  past  only, 
 and  not  for  the  present  and  the  future.  On  the 
 contrary,  that  school  wants  to  show  that  there  is  no 
 break  between  the  past  and  the  present,  but  that  an 
 uninterrupted  continuity  connects  what  has  been 
 thought  of  old  with  what  is  being  thought  at  present. 
 History  is  to  teach  us  to  understand  what  is,  by 
 teaching  us  to  understand  what  has  been.  All  our 
 present  difficulties  are  difficulties  of  our  own  making. 
 All  the  tangles  at  which  we  are  so  impatiently 
 pulling  were  made  either  by  ourselves,  or  by  those 
 who  came  before  us.  Who  else  should  have  made 
 them  1  The  Historical  School,  knowing  how  hopeless 
 it  is  to  pull  and  tear  at  a  tangled  reel  by  main  force, 
 quietly  takes  us  behind  the  scenes,  and  shows  us  how 
 first  one  thread  and  then  another  and  a  third,  and  in 
 the  end  hundreds  and  thousands  of  threads  went 
 wrong,  and  became  entangled,  but  how  in  the  begin- 
 ning they  lay  before  man's  eyes  as  even  and  as 
 regular  as  on  a  weaver's  loom. 
 
 Men  who  possess  the  historical  instinct,  and  who, 
 whenever  they  have  to  deal  with  any  of  the  grave 
 problems  of  our  age,  always  ask  how  certain  diffi- 
 culties and  apparent  contradictions  first  arose,  are 
 what  we  should  call  practical  men  ;  and,  as  a  rule, 
 they  are  far  more  successful  in  unravelling  knotty 
 questions  than  the  philosopher  who  has  a  theory  and 
 
270  LECTUKE    X. 
 
 a   remedy   ready   for  everything,  and   who    actually 
 prides  himself  on  his  ignorance  of  the  past. 
 
 Stanley. 
 
 I  think  I  can  best  make  my  meaning  clear  by  taking 
 a  well-known  instance.  Whether  Dean  Stanley  was 
 what  is  now  called  a  scientific  historian,  a  very 
 laborious  student  of  ancient  chronicles  and  charters, 
 is  not  for  me  to  say ;  but  if  I  were  asked  to  define 
 his  mind,  and  his  attitude  towards  all  the  burning- 
 questions  of  the  day,  whether  in  politics,  or  morality, 
 or  religion,  I  should  say  it  was  historical.  He  was  a 
 true  disciple  of  the  Historical  School.  I  could  show 
 it  by  examining  the  position  he  took  in  dealing  with 
 some  of  the  highest  questions  of  theology.  But  I 
 prefer,  as  an  easier  illustration,  to  consider  his  treat- 
 ment of  one  of  the  less  exciting  questions,  the  ques- 
 tion of  vestments.  Incredible  as  it  may  sound  to  us, 
 it  is  a  fact  nevertheless  that  not  many  years  ago  a 
 controversy  about  surplices,  and  albs,  and  dalmatics, 
 and  stoles  was  raging  all  over  England.  The  ques- 
 tion by  whom,  at  what  time,  and  in  what  place,  the 
 surplice  should  be  worn,  divided  brother  from  brother, 
 and  father  from  child,  as  if  that  piece  of  white  linen 
 possessed  some  mysterious  power,  or  could  exercise 
 some  miraculous  influence  on  the  spirit  of  the  wearer. 
 Any  one  who  knew  Stanley  would  know  how  little 
 he  cared  for  vestments  or  garments,  and  how  difficult 
 he  would  have  found  it  to  take  sides,  either  right  or 
 left,  in  a  controversy  about  millinery  or  ritual.  But 
 what  did  he  do  ?  '  Let  us  look  at  the  surplice  his- 
 torically,' he  said.  What  is  a  surplice  ?— and  first  of 
 all,  what  is  the  historical  origin  or  the  etymology  of 
 the  word?     Surplice  is   the    Latin   super-petticium. 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      271 
 
 Super-pell icium  means  what  is  worn  over  a  fur  or 
 fur-jacket,  which  was  called  pelliciwm.  Now  this 
 fur-jacket  was  not  worn  by  the  primitive  Christians 
 in  Rome,  or  Constantinople,  or  Jerusalem,  nor  is 
 there  any  mention  of  such  a  vestment  at  the  time  of 
 the  Apostles.  What,  then,  is  the  history  of  that  fur- 
 jacket  ?  So  far  as  we  know,  it  .was  a  warm  jacket 
 worn  by  peasants  in  countries  of  colder  climate, 
 worn  in  many  countries  to  the  present  day.  Like 
 most  of  the  garments  which  we  now  consider  as 
 exclusively  ecclesiastical,  it  was  worn  by  clergy  and 
 laity  alike.  As  this  fur-jacket  was  apt  to  get  dirty 
 and  unsightly,  a  kind  of  smock-frock  or  blouse,  that 
 could  be  washed  from  time  to  time,  was  worn  over 
 it — and  this  was  called  the  supev-pellicium,  the 
 surplice.  Stanley  thought  it  sufficient  gently  to  remind 
 the  wearer  of  the  surplice  that  what  he  was  so 
 proud  of  was  only  the  lineal  descendant  of  a  German 
 peasant's  blouse  ;  and  I  believe  he  was  right,  and  his 
 historical  explanation  certainly  produced  a  better 
 effect  on  all  who  had  a  sense  of  history  and  of 
 humour  than  the  most  elaborate  argument  on  the 
 mystical  meaning  of  that  robe  of  purity  and  innocence. 
 Nor  did  this  historical  denouement  take  away 
 from  the  true  character  of  the  surplice.  Being  worn 
 over  the  every-day  garment,  the  shabby  and  dirty 
 fur-coat,  it  was  a  sign  of  real  respect  both  for  the 
 sacred  building  in  which  it  was  worn,  and  for  the 
 congregation  of  the  faithful  whose  minister  the 
 wearer  of  the  surplice  was.  That  was  the  real 
 meaning  of  the  white  and  pure  surplice,  and  we 
 find  here  as  elsewhere  that  we  never  lose  anything 
 that  is  worth  having,  bv  historical  truth. 
 
272  LECTURE   X. 
 
 Stanley  rendered  the  same  service  to  other  vest- 
 ments. Under  the  wand  of  the  historian,  the  alb 
 turned  out  to  be  the  old  Roman  tunic  or  shirt,  and 
 the  deacon  officiating  in  his  alb  was  recognised  as  a 
 servant  working  in  his  shirt-sleeves.  The  dalmatic, 
 again,  was  traced  back  to  the  shirt  with  long  sleeves 
 worn  by  the  Dalmatian  peasants,  which  became  re- 
 cognised as  the  dress  of  the  deacon  about  the  time  of 
 Constantine.  The  chasuble 1  turned  out  to  be  a 
 great-coat,  worn  originally  by  laity  and  clergy  alike  ; 
 while  the  cope,  descended  from  the  copa  or  capa,  also 
 called  pluviale,  was  translated  by  Stanley  as  a 
 '  waterproof.'  The  mitre  was  identified  with  the 
 caps  and  turbans  worn  in  the  East  by  princes  and 
 nobles,  and  to  this  day  by  the  peasant  women.  The 
 division  into  two  points  was  shown  to  be  the  mark 
 of  the  crease  which  is  the  consequence  of  its  having 
 been  folded  and  carried  under  the  arm,  like  an  opera- 
 hat.  The  stole,  lastly,  in  the  sense  of  a  scarf,  had  a 
 still  humbler  origin.  It  was  the  substitute  for  the 
 ovarium  or  handkerchief,  used  for  blowing  the  nose. 
 No  doubt,  the  possession  and  use  of  a  handkerchief 
 was  in  early  times  restricted  to  the  '  higher  circles.' 
 It  is  so  to  the  present  day  in  Borneo,  for  instance, 
 where  only  the  king  is  allowed  to  carry  a  hand- 
 kerchief and  to  blow  his  nose  in  that  way.  In  like 
 manner  then  as  in  Borneo  the  handkerchief  became 
 the  insignia  of  royalty,  it  rose  in  the  Roman  Church 
 to  become  the  distinctive  garment  of  the  deacon. 
 
 1  Chasuble,  Low  Lat.  casabula,  a  little  house  ;  cassock,  Ital.  casacca,  a 
 little  house.  Super-peUicium,  from  peUis,  skin  ;  but  plush,  Fr.  peluche, 
 from  pilucius,  hairy,  Lat.  pilus,  hair.  Wig,  Old  Ital.  piluccare,  to 
 j>luck  the  hair;  Sardinian  pilucca,  a  mass  of  hair:  Span,  peluca  ; 
 Port,  peruca;  Ital.  parruca  ;  Fr.  perruqm  ;  Germ.  Per&cke;  Dutch 
 peruyh  ;  Old  Engl,  perwigge,  periwig,  ivig. 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OP   RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      273 
 
 I  know  that  some  of  these  explanations  have  been 
 contested,  perhaps  rightly  contested,  but  the  general 
 drift  of  the  argument  remains  unaffected  by  such 
 reservations.  I  only  quote  them  in  order  to  explain 
 what  I  meant  by  Stanley's  historical  attitude,  the 
 very  attitude  which  all  who  belong  to  the  Historical 
 School,  and  are  guided  by  an  historical  spirit,  like  to 
 assume  when  brought  face  to  face  with  the  problems 
 of  the  day. 
 
 What  I  maintain  then  is  that  a  study  of  the  history 
 of  philosophy  would  in  this  as  in  other  instances 
 have  proved  an  immense  advantage.  It  would  have 
 prevented  on  the  one  hand  the  foolish  outcry  against 
 Darwin's  works,  as  if  they  had  broached  an  unheard- 
 of  heresy,  and  it  would  have  moderated  on  the  other 
 the  extravagant  and  ignorant  panegyrics  \  detested, 
 I  feel  sure,  by  no  one  more  than  by  Darwin  himself. 
 Darwin's  real  merit  consisted,  not  in  discovering 
 evolution,  but  in  suggesting  new  explanations  of 
 evolution,  such  as  natural  selection,  survival  of  the 
 fittest,  influence  of  environment,  sexual  selection, 
 etc.  These  explanations,  whether  they  are  still 
 adequate  or  not,  give  to  Darwin  his  commanding 
 position  in  the  history  of  natural  philosophy.  We 
 know  at  present  that,  from  a  physiological  point  of 
 view,  the  transition  from  any  other  animal  to  man  has 
 not  been  established  ;  and  we  likewise  know  that,  if  it 
 ever  were  established,  it  would  leave  us  exactly  as 
 we  are,  divided  by  language,  as  by  an  impassable 
 Rubicon,  from  every  other  animal.     The  nearer  the 
 
 1   'Eav  8'  kirl  pLiKpoh  tis  aepvvvrjrai,  roaovr'  a-ne\ti  tov  TifxTJs  tivus  5ia 
 ravra  Tv\eiv,  aiar'  aneiponaXos  irpus  i$o£(v  dvai.     Demosth,  Androl., 
 
 p.  6ir: 
 
 T 
 
274  LECTURE   X. 
 
 approach  between  the  physical  nature  of  an  ape  and 
 that  of  a  man,  the  wider  and  the  more  wonderful  will 
 that  gulf  appear  which  language  has  fixed  between 
 them  1. 
 
 Necessity  of  Historical   Study  of  Religion. 
 
 If  therefore  I  maintain  the  necessity  of  an  historical 
 and  comparative  study  of  religion,  or  venture  to  re- 
 present it  as  the  best  preparation  for  the  study  of  what 
 is  called  the  philosophy  of  religion,  what  I  mean  is 
 that  it  acclimatises  and  invigorates  our  mind,  and 
 produces  that  judicial  temper  which  is  so  essential  in 
 the  treatment  of  religious  problems.  Whatever  philo- 
 sophy may  have  to  teach  us  hereafter,  it  will  prove 
 useful  in  the  mean  time  to  have  learnt  from  history 
 at  least  so  elementary  a  lesson  as  that  no  opinion  is 
 true,  simply  because  it  has  been  held  either  by  the 
 greatest  intellects  or  by  the  largest  number  of  human 
 beings  at  different  periods  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
 No  one  can  spend  years  of  his  life  in  the  study  of  the 
 religions  of  the  world,  beginning  with  the  lowest  and 
 ending  with  the  highest  forms,  no  one  can  watch 
 the  sincerity  of  religious  endeavour,  the  warmth  of 
 religious  feeling,  the  nobleness  of  religious  conduct 
 among  races  whom  we  are  inclined  to  call  either 
 pagan  or  savage,  without  learning  at  all  events  a 
 lesson  of  humility.     Anybody,  be  he  Jew,  Christian, 
 
 1  Mr.  Romanes,  in  his  recent  work  on  Mental  Evolution  in  Man,  1888, 
 has  summed  up  the  old  arguments  in  favour  of  a  possible  transition 
 from  animal  to  human  intellect  with  great  ingenuity,  but  he  has 
 not  refuted  the  facts  on  the  other  side,  and  in  several  cases  hardly 
 apprehended  their  force.  Even  his  conception  of  evolution  seems  to 
 me  far  from  correct.  Again ,  when  he  states  that  I  admit  not  more  than 
 121  roots  as  the  residue  of  an  analysis  of  Aryan  speech,  he  mistakes 
 roots  for  radical  concepts,  and  Aryan  for  Sanskrit.  Whatever  we 
 may  hope  to  achieve  in  future,  we  have  not  as  yet  reduced  the 
 number  of  Sanskrit  roots  to  less  than  800. 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY   OF   RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      275 
 
 Mohammedan  or  Brahman,  if  he  has  a  spark  of 
 modesty  left,  must  feel  that  it  would  be  nothing 
 short  of  a  miracle  that  his  own  religion  alone  should 
 be  perfect  throughout,  while  that  of  every  other  be- 
 liever should  be  false  and  wrong  from  beginning  to  end. 
 History  teaches  us  that  religions  change  and  must 
 change  with  the  constant  changes  of  thought  and 
 language  in  the  progress  of  the  human  race.  The 
 Vedic  religion  led  on  to  the  religion  of  the  Upanishads, 
 the  religion  of  the  Upanishads  led  on  to  the  doctrines 
 which  Buddha  embodied  in  a  new  religion.  Not  only 
 the  Jewish  religion,  but  the  religion  of  Greece  and 
 Rome  also,  had  to  yield  to  Christianity  as  more 
 on  a  level  with  the  height  of  thought  reached  after 
 long  struggles  by  the  leading  nations  of  the  world. 
 It  is  wonderful,  no  doubt,  to  see  religions  belonging 
 to  an  almost  prehistoric  stratum  of  thought,  such  as 
 ancient  Brahmanism,  surviving  to  the  present  day  in 
 a  modified,  yet  not  always  more  elevated  form.  But 
 even  this  becomes  historically  intelligible,  if  we  con- 
 sider that  society  consists  of  different  intellectual 
 strata.  Some  of  the  reformers  of  our  own  religion 
 four  hundred  years  ago  stood  on  an  eminence  which 
 even  now  is  far  beyond  the  reach  of  the  majority. 
 In  theology,  as  in  geology,  the  whole  scale  of  super- 
 imposed strata  is  often  exhibited  on  the  surface  of 
 the  present  day,  and  there  may  still  be  Silurians 
 walking  about  among  us  in  broad  daylight.  It  seems 
 as  if  an  historical  study  of  religion  alone  could  enable 
 us  to  understand  those  Silurians,  nay  help  us  to  sym- 
 pathise with  them,  and  to  honour  them  for  the  excellent 
 use  which  they  often  make  of  the  small  talent  com- 
 mitted to  them. 
 
 T  2 
 
276  LECTURE    X. 
 
 Criticisms  answered. 
 
 After  having  said  so  much  in  support  of  the  His- 
 torical School,  more  particularly  for  a  right  study  of  re- 
 ligion. I  feel  bound  in  conclusion  to  notice  some  recent 
 criticisms  which  seem  to  me  to  arise  from  a  complete 
 misapprehension  of  the  character  of  that  school.  It  has 
 been  observed  by  an  eminent  Scotch  theologian \  that 
 the  tendency  to  substitute  history  for  science,  and  the 
 historical  method  for  the  scientific  method,  is  prevalent 
 in  the  present  day  in  theology,  as  well  as  in  ethics 
 and  jurisprudence,  social  philosophy  and  political 
 economy.  '  Obviously,  however,'  he  says,  '  it  rests  on 
 exaggeration  and  illusion,  and  confounds  things  which 
 ought  to  be  distinguished.  Neither  history  of  the 
 objects  of  a  science,  nor  history  of  the  ideas  or  doc- 
 trines of  a  science,  is  science,  and  the  historical 
 method  of  itself  can  only  give  us,  in  connexion  with 
 science,  either  or  both  of  these  forms  of  history.  It 
 is  therefore  inherently  absurd  to  suppose  that  the 
 historical  method  can  be  sufficient  in  such  theological 
 disciplines  as  Natural  Theology  and  Christian  Dog- 
 matics. In  reality  it  is  not  directly  or  immediately 
 available  in  the  study  of  these  disciplines  at  all,  and 
 that  just  because  it  does  not  directly  or  immediately 
 yield  theory,  doctrine,  science.  Only  he  who  knows 
 both  the  history  of  the  objects  and  the  history  of  the 
 ideas  of  a  science,  and  especially  of  a  psychological, 
 social,  or  religious  science,  can  be  expected  to  advance 
 the  science.' 
 
 Is  not  that  an  admission  which  covers  all  we 
 claim  for  the  Historical  School,  namely  that  it  alone 
 is  able  to  advance  the  science  of  religion1?  But 
 1  R.  Flint,  in  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  s.  v.  Theology,  p.  266. 
 
COMPARATIVE    STUDY    OF    RELIGIOUS    PROBLEMS.      277 
 
 he  goes  on : — '  In  the  sphere  of  religion,  as  in  every 
 other  sphere,  to  confound  history  with  science  is  to 
 eliminate  and  destroy  science;  but  in  no  sphere  is 
 knowledge  of  history  more  a  condition  of  the  attain- 
 ment of  science,  and  historical  research,  properly  con- 
 ducted, more  serviceable  to  scientific  investigation, 
 than  in  that  of  religion.' 
 
 I  claim  no  more,  and  should  be  quite  satisfied  by 
 this  admission. 
 
 And  lastly :  '  To  the  historical  method  we  owe,  not 
 only  the  historical  disciplines  of  theology,  but  also  in 
 a  considerable  measure  the  recent  progress  of  its 
 positive  or  theoretical  disciplines.  It  can  never, 
 however,  be,  as  some  fanatical  disciples  of  the  his- 
 torical school  would  have  us  to  suppose,  the  method 
 of  these  last.' 
 
 This  is,  as  you  will  perceive,  very  strong  language, 
 arising  no  doubt  from  a  very  strong  conviction.  But 
 you  will  generally  find  that  if  one  philosopher,  who 
 is  not  a  fool,  calls  another  philosopher  who  is  not  a 
 fool  either,  absurd,  there  is  some  misunderstanding 
 between  the  two.  Now  the  historical  school,  because 
 it  calls  itself  historical,  does  not  profess  to  devote 
 itself  to  the  history  only  of  any  given  science.  There 
 are,  for  instance,  the  inductive  sciences,  and  there  is 
 a  history  of  the  inductive  sciences.  Now  the  historical 
 school  never  intended  to  limit  itself  to  the  study  of 
 the  history  of  these  sciences.  That  is  a  subject  by 
 itself.  What  the  historical  school  meant  to  teach  was 
 that  no  actual  problem  of  any  science  should  be 
 studied  without  a  reference  to  what  had  been  said  or 
 written  on  that  problem  from  the  day  on  which  it 
 was  first  started  to  the  present  day.     I  see  no  other, 
 
278  LEOTUKE   X. 
 
 or  at  all  events,  no  better  means  by  which  the  mind 
 could  be  strengthened  and  matured  for  grappling 
 with  any  problem.  The  very  mistakes  of  those  who 
 came  before  us,  serve  us  often  as  finger-posts  for  our 
 own  line  of  research.  Suppose  a  man  were  to  study 
 Comparative  Philology  without  making  himself  ac- 
 quainted with  the  labours  of  Bopp,  and  Pott,  and 
 Grimm,  with  their  false  as  well  as  their  true  dis- 
 coveries, what  a  waste  of  time  would  it  entail  on  him 
 to  explore  afresh  all  the  avenues  which  they  had 
 explored  and  many  of  which  they  had  found  to  lead 
 to  nothing!  Or  suppose  a  man  should  attempt  the 
 etymology  of  a  modern  word,  without  tracing  it  back, 
 first  of  all,  to  its  earliest  form  that  is  within  our 
 reach.  We  should  then  have  again  such  etymologies 
 as  ear  of  corn  being  the  same  as  ear,  while,  if  we 
 only  go  as  far  back  as  Gothic,  we  find  ahs  for  ear  of 
 corn,  but  auso  for  ear. 
 
 Nor  should  it  be  supposed  that  history  ends  with 
 the  last  century.  The  principle  of  the  historical 
 school  is  not  to  ignore  the  present,  but  to  try  to 
 understand  the  present  by  means  of  the  past.  A  man 
 may  be  a  philosopher,  no  doubt,  without  knowing 
 Plato  or  Aristotle  or  Descartes  or  Kant;  but  unless 
 he  is  a  man  of  marvellous  intuition,  he  will  never 
 acquire  that  sure  judgment  and  that  sense  of  pro- 
 portion which  can  only  be  acquired  by  an  acquaintance 
 with  many  minds.  His  philosophy  will  be  in  great 
 danger  of  becoming  an  anachronism. 
 
 But  whatever  may  be  possible  in  other  sciences, 
 let  no  one  venture  on  the  open  sea  of  religious  dis- 
 cussion without  having  the  compass  of  history  steadily 
 before  his  eyes.    Let  no  one  attempt  to  study  Natural 
 
COMPARATIVE   STUDY   OF   RELIGIOUS   PROBLEMS.       279 
 
 Religion  without  having  served  his  apprenticeship  as 
 a  patient  student  of  the  history  of  the  religions  of  the 
 world.  I  cannot  sum  up  the  advantages  of  historical 
 study  and  of  the  historical  spirit  in  dealing  with  all 
 the'  problems  of  life  better  than  in  the  words  of  Mr. 
 John  Morley :  '  It  gives  us  a  view  of  the  ground  we 
 stand  on.  It  gives  us  a  solid  backing  of  precedent 
 and  experiences.  It  teaches  us  where  we  are.  It 
 protects  us  against  imposture  and  surprise  ! ' x 
 
 John  Morley,  On  the  Study  of  Literature,  p. 
 
 11. 
 
LECTURE  XI. 
 
 THE   MATERIALS   FOR  THE   STUDY  OF    NATURAL 
 RELIGION. 
 
 Language,  Myth,  Customs  and  Laws,   Sacred  Books. 
 
 TTAVING  first  determined  by  means  of  definition 
 ±±  the  exact  limits  of  Natural  Religion,  and 
 having  afterwards  explained  the  reasons  why  the 
 Historical  Method  seems  to  be  the  most  advantageous 
 for  a  truly  scientific  treatment  of  the  religions  of  the 
 world,  we  have  now  to  find  out  what  materials  there 
 are  accessible  to  us  from  which  to  study  the  growth 
 and  decay  of  Natural  Religion  in  the  widest  sense  of 
 the  word. 
 
 These  materials  may  be  divided  into  four  classes. 
 
 First  comes  language,  which  in  its  continuous 
 growth  leads  us  back  to  the  earliest  periods  of 
 thought,  or,  at  all  events,  to  periods  which  cannot  be 
 reached  by  any  other  kind  of  evidence. 
 
 The  second  class  is  formed  by  what  it  is  the  fashion 
 to  call  mythology,  which,  as  I  shall  show,  is  really  an 
 inevitable  phase  in  the  development  of  language  and 
 thought. 
 
 The  third  class  of  evidence  comprises  religious 
 customs  and  laws,  which  may  be  studied  either  in 
 historical  documents,  or  by  actual  observation  of  such 
 
MATERIALS  FOE  THE  STUDY  OP  NATURAL  RELIGION.  281 
 
 customs  and  laws  as  are  still  prevalent  among  civilised 
 as  well  as  uncivilised  races. 
 
 The  fourth  class  consists  of  the  /Sacred  Books  of  the 
 great  religions  of  the  world. 
 
 Language  as  Evidence. 
 
 If,  as  I  hope  to  show,  every  word  was  originally  a 
 deed,  was,  in  fact,  a  creative  act,  calling  into  life  a 
 concept  which  did  not  exist  before,  it  will  sound  less 
 surprising  that  it  is  possible  to  discover  in  words, 
 taken  by  themselves,  a  record  of  the  most  primitive 
 thoughts  of  mankind.  It  is  true  that  a  dictionary 
 by  itself  conveys  no  meaning,  and  that  it  is  only  in  a 
 sentence  that  words  become  significant.  But  we  know 
 now  that  originally  every  word  was  a  sentence. 
 When  a  man  said  sar-it,  river,  he  really  said,  'run- 
 ning (s a r)  here  (it)';  when  he  said  dar-u,  tree,  he 
 said, 'splitting  (da r)  here  (u).'  But  men  who  called 
 their  trees  '  splitting  here,'  or  what  is  split,  must 
 have  been  men  who  had  learnt  to  use  trees  for  certain 
 purposes,  and  who  probably  possessed  some  tools, 
 however  rude,  to  help  them  in  carrying  out  their 
 work.  Men  who  called  their  horse  a  quick  runner, 
 as-va,  equus,  Ittitos,  must  have  been  men  to  whom  the 
 horse  had  become  useful  as  a  runner,  for  there  were 
 many  wild  animals  quicker  than  the  horse,  though 
 they  were  not  even  singled  out  for  a  name,  but  were 
 comprehended  under  the  general  term  of  wild  animals. 
 
 You  will  see  now  how,  if  we  can  but  find  an  en- 
 trance into  the  ancient  workshop  of  language,  we  can 
 still  listen  there  to  the  earliest  thoughts  of  man.  But 
 where  is  that  workshop  ? 
 
 In  order  to  answer  that  question,  I   shall   have  to 
 
282  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 devote  some  of  my  next  lectures  to  giving  you  a  short 
 account  of  the  discoveries  made  by  the  students  of 
 the  Science  of  Language.  That  science  has  opened 
 before  us  a  new  world,  and  it  will  be  necessary  for 
 me  to  place  before  you  a  map  of  that  new  world, 
 though  in  the  broadest  outline  only,  in  order  that  you 
 may  be  able  to  watch  the  earliest  migrations,  not  only 
 of  language,  but  of  thought,  of  myth,  of  religion,  and 
 of  law  and  custom. 
 
 Survey  of  Languages.     Aryan  Family. 
 
 Let  us  begin  with  Europe,  and  in  Europe  with 
 England1. 
 
 English. 
 
 Have  you  ever  asked  yourselves  what  it  means  that 
 we  speak  English,  what  a  language  is,  what  the 
 English  language  is,  where  it  sprang  up  or  how  it  was 
 made,  and  how  it  came  to  be  spoken  in  these  distant 
 isles,  and  from  thence  again  over  nearly  the  whole 
 civilised  world  ? 
 
 Nothing  seems  to  me  so  wonderful  as  the  power 
 which  man  possesses  of  ceasing  to  wonder  at  what  is 
 most  wonderful.  It  has  been  said  with  great  truth 
 that  a  sign  or  wonder  can  never  exist  twice,  for  when 
 it  happened  the  second  time  we  should  call  it  quite 
 natural,  and  cease  to  wonder  at  it.  Some  philosophers 
 go  even  further  and  maintain  that  a  sign  or  wonder 
 ceases  to  exist  the  moment  it  does  exist,  because 
 whenever  it  exists,  there  must  have  been  a  sufficient 
 
 1  I  have  left  here  this  short  survey  of  languages,  which  I  found 
 it  necessary  to  give  in  my  first  course  of  lectures,  in  order  to  avoid 
 the  necessity  of  explaining  again  and  again  the  names  and  the 
 relationship  of  the  languages  in  which  the  religions  of  the  world 
 found  their  expression.  Readers  who  require  fuller  information, 
 may  consult  my  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language. 
 
MATEKIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  283 
 
 reason  for  it,  and  whatever  has  a  sufficient  reason, 
 ceases  to  be  wonderful.  Well,  whatever  the  reason 
 may  be,  we  certainly  all  of  us  seem  to  have  acquired 
 what  Orientals  consider  a  proof  of  the  highest  breed- 
 ing, namely  to  wonder  at  nothing,  to  be  surprised  by 
 nothing,  the  old  Nil  admirari. 
 
 Here  we  find  ourselves  in  a  small  island,  adjacent 
 to  what  is  a  mere  promontory  of  the  vast  Asiatic 
 continent.  And  in  this  small  island  which  we  call 
 Great  Britain,  and  in  this  mere  promontory  which 
 we  call  the  Continent  of  Europe,  we  speak  a  language 
 which  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  the  same  as 
 that  which  is  spoken  in  Ceylon,  an  island  adjacent 
 to  the  southern  promontory  of  the  same  Asiatic 
 continent,  called  the  Dekhan  or  Southern  India. 
 
 This  discovery  of  the  unity  of  language  in  India 
 and  England  is  only  about  a  hundred  years  old,  and 
 when  it  was  first  announced,  it  startled  some  of  the 
 most  learned  and  judicious  men  to  that  extent  that 
 Dugald  Stewart,  for  instance,  declared  it  was  an  utter 
 impossibility,  and  that  Sanskrit  must  be  an  invention 
 of  those  arch-deceivers,  the  Brahmans,  who  wanted 
 to  make  themselves  as  good  as  ourselves,  and  as  old 
 as  ourselves  ;  nay,  a  great  deal  better  and  a  great 
 deal  older  too. 
 
 We  have  recovered  from  that  surprise,  and  we 
 find  now  at  the  beginning  of  most  Latin  and  Greek 
 grammars  a  few  paragraphs  about  the  Indo-European 
 or  Aryan  family  of  speech,  and  a  statement  that 
 much  may  be  learnt  from  Sanskrit,  the  sacred  lan- 
 guage of  the  inhabitants  of  India,  as  to  the  ante- 
 cedents of  our  own  language,  and  as  to  how  Latin 
 and  Greek  became  what  they  are. 
 
284  LECTURE    XI. 
 
 But  there  are  still  greater  miracles  in  English  such 
 as  we  find  it  spoken  at  the  present  day,  if  only  we 
 had  eyes  to  see  and  ears  to  hear  them.  English  is 
 said  to  consist  of  250,000  words,  and  most  of  these 
 words  are  capable  of  ever  so  many  changes  which  we 
 call  declension,  conjugation,  degrees  of  comparison, 
 composition,  and  all  the  rest.  That  is  to  say,  there  is 
 ready  made  for  every  one  of  us  an  instrument  with 
 at  least  several  millions  of  keys  on  which  we  play, 
 as  if  it  were  a  pianoforte  with  ninety- six  keys. 
 
 When  uncivilised  people  hear  an  organ  for  the 
 first  time,  they  generally  feel  a  curiosity  to  open  it, 
 to  see  how  it  acts,  and  what  it  is  made  of.  But  this 
 gigantic  organ  which  we  call  our  language,  we  never 
 try  to  open,  we  never  ask  how  it  was  made  or  who 
 made  it.  No,  we  take  it  for  granted  or  given,  and 
 we  think  we  may  thump  and  hammer  on  it  to  our 
 heart's  content,  trusting  that  it  will  always  remain  in 
 tune. 
 
 Veda,  018a. 
 
 But  though  the  relationship  between  the  languages 
 of  India,  Persia,  Armenia,  Greek,  Latin,  Celtic, 
 Slavonic,  and  Teutonic  has  now  become  part  and 
 parcel  of  the  general  stock  of  knowledge,  it  is  seldom 
 realised  how  close  that  relationship  really  is.  It  is 
 known  that  the  roots  of  all  these  languages  are  the 
 same,  that  their  grammatical  articulation  is  the  same, 
 that  a  number  of  important  words,  such  as  the 
 numerals,  names  for  father,  mother,  sky,  sun  and 
 moon,  horse  and  cow,  are  the  same.  But  it  was  only 
 a  study  of  Sanskrit,  and  of  the  most  ancient,  the 
 Vedic  Sanskrit,  which  enabled  scholars  to  discover  that 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  285 
 
 so  mysterious  a  change  as  that  which  we  observe,  for 
 instance,  in  the  vowels  of  to  ivit,  to  know,  and  /  ivot, 
 I  know,  or  in  German  in  Ich  weiss,  I  know,  and 
 Wir  wissen,  we  know,  has  its  first  cause  in  a  change 
 of  accent  which  took  place  in  the  most  ancient 
 Sanskrit.  We  must  remember  that  the  accent  exists, 
 or,  at  all  events,  is  marked  in  Vedic  Sanskrit  only, 
 that  it  was  in  fact  unknown  to  scholars  till  the  Veda 
 began  to  be  studied,  and  we  shall  then  understand 
 what  it  means  that  a  change  of  accent  observed  in 
 Sanskrit  three  thousand  years  ago,  still  determines 
 the  vowels  of  words  which  we  use  to-day.  I  wot  is 
 the  AS.  wdt,  the  Gothic  wait,  I  know.  We  have  the 
 infinitive  preserved  in  the  phrase  to  wit.  This  wit  is 
 the  Sanskrit  vid,  to  know.  From  it  is  formed  in 
 Sanskrit  a  perfect  ve'da,  having  the  meaning  of  the 
 present,  just  like  the  Greek  olba,  i.  e.  Faida.  The 
 change  of  i  into  ai  or  e  is  due  to  the  accent,  which  in 
 Sanskrit  falls  in  the  singular  on  the  first  syllable. 
 This  diphthong  ai  in  Sanskrit,  ai  in  Gothic,  becomes 
 regularly  a  in  AS.,  and  o  in  English. 
 
 But  that  is  not  all.  Why  did  the  Greeks  say  otba  in 
 the  singular,  but  lo-^v  in  the  plural  ?  In  Greek  the 
 accent  does  not  move,  it  remains  throughout  on  the 
 first  syllable.  But  in  Sanskrit  the  accent  which  is 
 on  the  first  syllable  in  the  singular,  must  migrate  in 
 the  plural  to  the  last  syllable.  Why  it  did  so,  is  a 
 question  difficult  to  answer,  but  the  most  natural 
 reason  seems  to  be  that  the  differentiating  terminations 
 in  the  plural  continued  to  be  felt  as  such,  and  therefore 
 retained  their  stress  longer  than  those  of  the  singular. 
 Hence  we  say  ve'da,  vettha,  veda,  but  vidmas, 
 vida,  vid  us.     This  rule  and  this  rule  alone  enables 
 
286  LECTURE    XL 
 
 us  to  account  for  la-fiev  in  ancient  Greek,  for  Teh  weiss 
 and  Wir  wissen  in  modern  German. 
 
 This  will  give  you  an  idea  of  the  solidarity,  as  the 
 French  call  it,  that  binds  the  languages,  and,  if  the 
 languages,  then  the  thoughts  of  all  the  members  of 
 the  Aryan  people  together.  And  now  as  to  their 
 various  degrees  of  relationship. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 English,  as  now  spoken,  may  be  traced  back  in  one 
 uninterrupted  line  to  Anglo-Saxon.  Of  Anglo-Saxon 
 we  have  the  earliest  documents  in  the  seventh  cen- 
 tury, such  as  the  Beowulf,  an  ancient  epic  of  Teutonic 
 origin.  The  language  in  which  that  poem  is  written 
 was  brought  to  England,  or  rather  to  the  British  isles, 
 by  emigrants  and  conquerors  who  came  from  the  Con- 
 tinent. They  were,  as  you  know,  Jutes,  Saxons,  and 
 Angles,  and  they  all  spoke,  not  High  German,  but 
 Low  German.  Low  German  does  not  mean  vulgar 
 German,  but  the  German  spoken  in  the  low-lands  of 
 Germany.  This  Low  German  is  in  fact  one  of  the 
 four  principal  branches  of  the  Teutonic  class  of  the 
 Aryan  family,  the  other  branches  being  Gothic,  Scan- 
 dinavian, and  High  German. 
 
 Gothic. 
 
 Gothic  was  spoken  on  the  Danube  in  the  fourth 
 century,  and  it  has  left  us  the  oldest  specimens  of 
 Teutonic  speech,  the  translation  of  the  Bible  of  Ulfilas, 
 who  died  in  381. 
 
 Continental  Saxon. 
 
 Low  German  comprises  the  Saxon  of  the  Continent, 
 preserved  to  us  in  the  Heljand,  a  poem  of  the  ninth 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  287 
 
 century  ;  the  Anglo-Saxon,  which  we  have  already 
 mentioned  ;  the  Old  Frisian,  known  to  us  by  docu- 
 ments of  the  thirteenth  century,  and  slowly  dying  out 
 at  the  present  day;  and  lastly  the  Old  Dutch,  or  Low 
 Franconian,  of  which  we  have  specimens  in  the  so- 
 called  Carolingian  Psalms,  ascribed  to  the  ninth  cen- 
 tury, and  which  is  afterwards  represented  by  Middle 
 Dutch,  Modern  Dutch,  Flemish,  and  the  spoken  Low 
 Franconian. 
 
 Scandinavian. 
 
 The  third  branch,  the  Scandinavian,  is  represented 
 by  the  Old  Scandinavian  literature  between  800  and 
 1000  A.D.,  and  is  divided  into  (1)  West-Nordish,  i.e. 
 Icelandic,  and  Norwegian,  with  a  literature  dating 
 from  the  eleventh  century ;  and  the  East-Nordish, 
 that  is,  Swedish  and  Danish. 
 
 The  ancient  literature  of  Iceland,  the  two  Eddas 
 and  numerous  Sagas,  will  be  of  great  importance  to 
 us  for  mythological  purposes. 
 
 These  three  branches  have  one  common  character- 
 istic feature,  they  are  all  under  what  is  called  'Grimm's 
 Law,'  that  is  to  say,  to  put  it  broadly,  they  offer  an 
 aspirate  where  the  other  Aryan  languages  have  a  tenuis, 
 they  offer  a  tenuis  where  the  others  have  a  media,  and 
 they  offer  a  media  where  the  others  have  an  aspirate. 
 
 We  must  not  suppose,  because  Gothic  is  in  so  de- 
 cided a  minority,  as  compared  to  Sanskrit,  Greek, 
 Latin,  Celtic,  or  Slavonic,  that  therefore  its  aspirate 
 is  a  corruption  of  a  more  ancient  tenuis,  or  its  media  a 
 corruption  of  a  more  primitive  aspirate,  or  its  tenuis  a 
 corruption  of  a  former  media.  Looked  upon  as  merely 
 phonetic  corruptions,  such  changes  as  t  to  th,  th  to  d, 
 and  d  to  t  in  one  and  the  same  language  would  defy 
 
288  LECTURE   XT. 
 
 all  principles  of  phonetic  .science.  Gothic  is  as  old 
 and  as  independent  a  national  dialect  of  Aryan  speech 
 as  Sanskrit,  and,  as  such,  had  as  much  right  to  fix  on 
 tenuis,  aspirate,  and  media  for  the  discrimination  of 
 certain  roots  as  Sanskrit  had  in  fixing  on  media, 
 tenuis,  and  aspirate.  Thus  the  three  roots  which  appear 
 in  Sanskrit  as  tar,  rlhar,  and  d a r,  would  from  the 
 beginning  appear  in  Gothic  as  thar,  dar,  and  tar,  but 
 one  and  the  same  language  would  never  change  tar  into 
 tha  r,  dhar  into  da  r,  and  dar  into  tar.  We  know  Gothic 
 at  a  later  time  than  Sanskrit,  but  that  does  not  make 
 Gothic  a  less  primitive  language  than  Sanskrit.  And 
 what  applies  to  language,  applies  to  mythology  also. 
 We  know  Vedic  mythology  at  a  much  earlier  date 
 than  Teutonic  mythology,  but  that  does  not  prove 
 that  the  names  and  characters  of  the  Teutonic  gods 
 were  borrowed  from  the  Veda. 
 
 Thorr  and  Thursday. 
 
 It  is  quite  true,  for  instance,  that  if  we  want  to 
 know  the  original  meaning  of  the  Icelandic  god  Thorr, 
 we  have  to  trace  back  that  word  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
 Thunor,  the  modern  thunder.  It  is  true  also  that  we 
 have  only  to  replace  th  by  t,  in  order  to  be  able  to 
 identify  thunor  with  the  Latin  ton-are.  But  that  does 
 not  prove  that  the  Teutonic  god  Thorr,  who  still  lives 
 in  the  name  of  Thursday,  dies  Jovis,  was  not  as  old 
 a  god  as  any  of  the  Vedic  deities,  and  that  from  the 
 very  beginning  he  did  not  thunder  with  an  initial 
 aspirate,  instead  of  an  initial  tenuis. 
 
 Tyr  and  Tuesday. 
 
 If  we  apply  Grimm's  Law,  we  generally  begin  with 
 what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  the  classical  languages, 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELTGION.  289 
 
 Sanskrit,  Greek,  and  Latin.  If  therefore  we  find 
 Dyu,  nom.  Dyaus  in  Sanskrit,  Zevs  for  Aytvs  in 
 Greek,  Iu-jpiter  for  Dyu-piter  in  Latin,  we  trace  them 
 back  to  Gothic,  Icelandic,  Anglo-Saxon,  in  fact,  to  Low 
 German,  by  simply  replacing  the  media  by  the  tenuis. 
 This  gives  us  the  Icelandic  Tyr,  which  is  preserved  in 
 Ti/sdagr,  dies  Martis,  and  in  Tuesday,  the  Anglo- 
 Saxon  Tiwesdceg.  But  all  this  gives  us  no  right  to 
 treat  Tyr  as  a  later  corruption  of  the  Vedic  Dyaus. 
 
 Wodan  and  Wednesday. 
 
 Comparison,  no  doubt,  helps  us  in  discovering  the 
 origin  of  the  names  of  the  Aryan  gods,  and  as  the 
 ancient  mythology  of  the  Veda  is  more  richly  de- 
 veloped, or,  at  all  events,  has  been  more  carefully  pre- 
 served than  that  of  any  other  Aryan  race,  we  gener- 
 ally look  upon  the  Sanskrit  names  as  the  most 
 primitive.  But  historically  this  is  a  false  position. 
 We  may,  for  instance,  derive  the  name  of  the  Teutonic 
 god  Wodan  or  Odin  from  a  Sanskrit  root  which,  if  we 
 replaced  d  by  dh,  would  be  vadh,  to  strike.  From  it 
 we  have  the  Vedic  vadh-ar,  thunderbolt,  the  Anglo- 
 Saxon  iveder,  storm  and  weather,  and  from  it  we  may 
 guess  the  original  purport  of  Wod-an  to  have  been  the 
 god  of  the  thunderstorm,  who  still  lives  in  the  name 
 of  Wednesday,  as  W6dnes-dceg.  But  there  is  no  god 
 in  the  Veda  who  could  be  represented  as  the  exact 
 prototype  of  Wodan,  though  there  are  several  Vedic 
 gods  running  parallel  to  him,  just  as  the  Gothic  lan- 
 guage runs  parallel  to  Vedic  Sanskrit. 
 
 High  German. 
 
 Distinct  from  these  three  branches  of  the  Teutonic 
 class  is  the  fourth,  the  High  German,  which  as  a  rule 
 
 u 
 
290  LECTURE    XI. 
 
 represents  classical  tenuis  by  media,  classical  aspirate 
 by  tenuis,  and  classical  media  by  an  aspirate.  In 
 other  respects,  however,  High  German  is  very  close  to 
 Low  German,  so  that  many  scholars  now  group  Low 
 and  High  German  together  as  West-Teutonic,  and 
 Gothic  and  Scandinavian  as  East-Teutonic. 
 
 Old  High  German  is  known  to  us  from  about  700 
 to  1100  ;  it  is  then  succeeded  by  Middle  High  German 
 from  1100  to  1500,  and  this  by  Modern  High  German 
 spoken  and  written  to  the  present  day. 
 
 Celtic. 
 
 Besides  the  Low  German  which  took  possession  of 
 Britain  in  historic  times,  chiefly  after  the  fall  of  the 
 Roman  dominion,  another  branch  of  Aryan  speech 
 overspread  these  isles  in  prehistoric  times,  the  Celtic. 
 The  Celts  too  came  from  the  Continent,  where  we  find 
 them  migrating  from  East  to  West  through  Gaul  and 
 Spain,  occasionally  bursting  into  the  Balkan  and  the 
 Italian  peninsulas,  and  sending  out  one  colony  as  far 
 as  Galatia  in  Asia. 
 
 The  Celtic  class  is  divided  into  two  branches,  the 
 Cymric  and  the  Goidelic.  The  former  comprises 
 Welsh,  the  extinct  Cornish,  and  the  Armorican  of 
 Brittany;  the  Goidelic,  the  Irish,  Gaelic,  and  Manx. 
 There  are  besides  the  ancient  inscriptions  of  Gaul 
 which  are  sometimes  treated  as  a  third  branch,  the 
 Gallic.  Interesting  as  the  Celtic  languages  are  for 
 etjanological  and  grammatical  purposes,  their  litera- 
 ture is  recent,  not  going  back  beyond  the  eighth 
 century  a.  D.  Whatever  there  is  of  mythology  and 
 ancient  religion  has  evidently  passed  through  a 
 Christian  and  Romanic  filtering,  and  has  to  be  used 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  291 
 
 therefore    with    extreme    caution     for    comparative 
 purposes1. 
 
 Italic. 
 
 The  next  class  of  Aryan  speech  which  has  likewise 
 reached  the  shores  of  the  British  isles,  is  the  Italic. 
 The  literary  language  of  Rome  was  but  one  of  several 
 dialects,  elaborated  by  the  Aryas  when  they  settled 
 in  Italy.  Eesides  the  Latin  we  find  the  Oscan  and  the 
 Umbrian,  and  several  smaller  dialects  of  which  we 
 possess  monumental  fragments.  After  reaching  its 
 classical  culmination,  Latin  became  the  lingua  vul- 
 garis of  the  civilised  portion  of  Western  Europe,  and 
 developed  new  vulgar  and  afterwards  literary  lan- 
 guages in  Italy,  Gaul,  Spain,  Portugal,  in  the  Grisons, 
 and,  by  colonies,  in  Roumania.  We  have  the  earliest 
 documents  of  French  in  the  ninth  century,  of  Pro- 
 vencal in  the  tenth,  of  Italian,  Spanish,  and  Portuguese 
 in  the  twelfth. 
 
 The  language  of  England  was  touched  twice  by  the 
 waves  of  the  Latin  river,  the  first  time  through  the 
 Roman  legions  who  took  possession  of  Britain,  the 
 second  time  through  the  Norman  conquerors,  warriors 
 of  Teutonic  extraction  and  Scandinavian  blood,  who 
 after  their  conquest  of  Normandy  had  exchanged 
 their  Teutonic  speech  for  that  of  Northern  Gaul.  They 
 brought  with  them  into  England  a  Romanic  languao-e, 
 Romanic  thought,  manners,  and  tastes,  but  little  of 
 Romanic  blood.  There  may  be  some  Celtic  admixture 
 in  the  Teutonic  blood  of  England ;  but  the  grammar, 
 the  blood  of  the  English  language,  has  remained  Teu- 
 tonic throughout. 
 
 o 
 1  See  Professor  Rhys,  Hibbert  Lectures,  1886. 
 U  2 
 
292  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 Hellenic. 
 
 The  next  class  is  the  Hellenic,  And  here  we  must 
 guard  against  what  was  formerly  a  very  common 
 view,  namely  that  the  Aryas  who  came  to  people 
 Greece  and  Italy  were  more  closely  related  than  the 
 other  scions  of  the  Aryan  family.  Many  scholars 
 went  so  far  as  to  suppose  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
 Greeks  and  Romans  remained  united  for  a  time  after 
 they  had  become  separated  from  the  rest.  There  is 
 no  foundation,  however,  for  this  hypothesis,  at  least 
 not  so  far  as  language  is  concerned.  Greek  shows 
 greater  similarity  with  Sanskrit  than  with  Latin, 
 Latin  shows  greater  similarity  with  Celtic  than  with 
 Greek.  This  is  a  point  of  great  importance  to  us  in  our 
 mythological  and  religious  researches.  In  historical 
 times  the  Latin  language  and  the  Roman  mythology 
 and  religion  have  borrowed  so  much  from  Greek  that 
 scholars  are  apt  to  forget  that  the  borrower  was  not 
 altogether  a  pauper,  that  there  was  in  fact  a  fully 
 developed  religion  and  mythology  in  Italy  before  the 
 contact  with  Greece,  and  that  it  is  this  prehistoric 
 phase  of  Italian  life  which  is  of  chief  interest  to  the 
 student  of  ancient  folk-lore. 
 
 The  Hellenic  class,  in  its  four  dialects,  the  Doric, 
 Aeolic,  Attic,  and  Ionic,  is  so  well  known  that  I  need 
 say  no  more  about  it  in  this  place. 
 
 Slavonic. 
 
 We  have  still  one  more  class  of  Aryan  languages  in 
 Europe,  the  Slavonic,  or,  as  I  prefer  to  call  it,  the 
 Windic.  I  prefer  the  name  of  Windic,  because  the 
 oldest  name   under  which  the  tribes  speaking  those 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  293 
 
 languages  became  known  to  us,  is  not  Slaves,  but 
 Winidae. 
 
 This  class  is  divided  into  three  branches,  the  Lettic, 
 the  South-East  Slavonic,  and  the  West  Slavonic. 
 
 The  Lettic  comprises  (1)  the  Lettish,  now  spoken  in 
 Kurland  and  Livonia,  the  Baltic  provinces  of  Russia. 
 Its  literature  dates  from  the  sixteenth  century. 
 
 (2)  The  Lithuanian,  spoken  in  Eastern  Prussia 
 and  in  Russia,  by  about  a  million  of  people.  Its 
 literature  dates  from  1547,  of  which  date  we  possess 
 a  small  catechism. 
 
 (3)  The  old  Prussian,  which  became  extinct  in  the 
 seventeenth  century,  and  left  behind  a  few  fragments 
 only  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 
 
 The  South-East  Slavonic  comprises  the  old  Bul- 
 garian, in  which  we  possess  the  translation  of  the 
 Bible,  of  the  ninth  century,  which  is  still  used  as 
 the  '  authorised  version' ;  the  Slovenian,  Servian, and 
 Croatian  (sometimes  comprehended  under  the  common 
 designation  of  Illyrian),  with  literary  remains  of  the 
 tenth  century,  and  the  Russian,  the  literary  language 
 of  the  Russian  Empire. 
 
 The  West  Slavonic  consists  of  the  Polish,  with  a 
 literature  dating  from  the  fourteenth  century ;  the 
 Bohemian,  with  a  literature  dating  from  the  tenth 
 century,  and  the  dialects  still  spoken  by  Wends  and 
 Sorbs  in  Lusatia. 
 
 North- Western  Division. 
 
 These  five  classes  of  Aryan  speech  which  we  have 
 hitherto  passed  in  review  belong  all  to  Europe,  and 
 form  together  what  I  call  the  North-Western  division 
 of  the  Aryan  family. 
 
294  LECTUKE   XI. 
 
 Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  prove  that 
 before  they  became  settled  in  their  present  seats,  some 
 of  them  remained  together  for  a  longer  time  than  the 
 rest,  and  therefore  shared  certain  features  in  common 
 which  are  absent  in  others.  To  me  it  seems  that  all 
 these  attempts  have  been  in  vain,  and  that  all  the 
 evidence  that  is  brought  forward  in  support  of  what 
 has  been  called  a  genealogical  tree  of  the  Aryan 
 languages  can  be  fully  accounted  for,  if  we  admit 
 that  the  dialectic  varieties  which  afterwards  grew 
 into  national  languages  existed  before  the  Aryan 
 Separation,  that  whatever  forms  seemed  fittest  to  this 
 or  that  clan  survived,  but  that,  after  the  family  was 
 once  broken  up,  each  dialect  went  its  own  way,  un- 
 concerned about  its  neighbours.  Every  other  hypo- 
 thesis creates  as  many  difficulties  as  it  is  meant  to 
 solve.  That  geographical  contact  has  nothing  to  do 
 with  grammatical  similarity  we  see  most  clearly  in 
 Greek  and  Latin,  which,  though  very  close  neighbours, 
 are  really  as  distinct  as  any  other  two  Aryan  lan- 
 guages. Celtic  shows  certain  features  in  common 
 with  Latin,  Latin  with  Greek,  Teutonic  with  Lettic, 
 but  not  one  of  these  casual  coincidences  requires  for 
 its  explanation  more  than  the  admission  of  that 
 common  dialectic  fermentation  which  preceded  here 
 as  elsewhere  the  formation  of  national  languages. 
 
 South- Eastern  Branch. 
 
 It  is  useful,  however,  particularly  for  comparative 
 purposes,  to  distinguish  between  those  five  branches 
 which  together  form  the  North -Western  division  of  the 
 Aryan  family,  and  the  South- Fa  stern  division  which 
 consists  of  the  languages  of  India  and  Persia.     There 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  295 
 
 is  one  language  which  is  now  supposed  to  hold  an 
 intermediate  position  between  these  two  divisions,  the 
 Armenian,  but  its  exact  relationship  is  still  a  matter 
 of  controversy. 
 
 Why  this  division  into  a  North- Western  and  South- 
 Eastern  branch  is  useful  historically,  we  shall  see 
 when  we  come  to  consider  the  question  of  what  intel- 
 lectual level  had  been  reached  by  the  Aryan  family 
 before  they  separated.  As  it  is  quite  clear  that  in 
 historical  times  no  exchange  took  place  between  the 
 Aryas  who  travelled  in  a  South-Eastern  direction  to 
 Persia  and  India,  and  those  who  had  followed  a 
 North-Western  direction  towards  Europe,  every  word 
 which  they  share  in  common,  and  particularly  all 
 words  connected  with  mythology  and  religion,  can  be 
 claimed  as  the  common  property  of  the  whole  Aryan 
 race  before  its  first  dispersion. 
 
 The  languages  belonging  to  this  South-Eastern 
 division  are  of  special  interest  to  us,  as  the  principal 
 sacred  books  are  composed  in  them.  Europe  has  never 
 produced  a  religion.  All  religions  have  their  cradle 
 in  the  East,  and  the  languages  of  India  and  Persia  have 
 become  the  vehicles  of  three  of  the  greatest  religions 
 of  the  world,  Bralvniauism,  Buddhism,  in  its  three 
 divisions  of  Southern  Buddhism,  Northern  Buddhism, 
 and  (7ainism,  and  Zoroastrianism.  These  languages, 
 therefore,  will  require  more  careful  consideration. 
 
 Indie  Class.     Vedic  Hymns. 
 
 Let  us  begin  with  India.  The  oldest  monument  of 
 Indian  speech  is  the  Veda.  It  is  curious  that  wher- 
 ever we  have  sacred  books,  they  represent  to  us  the 
 oldest  language  of  the  country.     It  is  so  in  India,  it 
 
296  LECTURE   XT. 
 
 is  the  same  in  Persia,  in  China,  in  Palestine,  and  very 
 nearly  so  in  Arabia.  How  the  Veda,  which  is  referred 
 to  about  1500  B.C.,  was  preserved  to  the  present  day 
 is  a  kind  of  fairy  story  which  I  must  pass  by,  as  we 
 are  at  present  concerned  with  the  history  of  the 
 language  only ;  but  we  shall  have  to  consider  it  when 
 we  come  to  examine  the  fourth  class  of  our  materials 
 for  studying  Natural  Religion,  viz.  the  Sacred  Books. 
 The  language  of  the  Veda  must  of  course  have 
 been  at  one  time  the  spoken  language  of  those  who 
 composed  the  Vedic  hymns,  probably  in  the  North- 
 West  of  India.  But  in  the  history  of  India,  that  lan- 
 guage is  always  the  sacred  language,  and  it  possesses 
 words,  grammatical  forms,  and  syntactical  construc- 
 tions, unknown  in  later  Sanskrit. 
 
 Brahma// as. 
 
 The  next  stage  of  this  language  is  still  Vedic,  but 
 whereas  the  Vedic  hymns  are  all  in  metre,  the  next 
 stage  shows  us  the  prose  of  the  Brahma?ias,  works 
 intended  for  the  elucidation  of  the  Vedic  hymns  and 
 the  Vedic  sacrifices.  The  Sanskrit  of  these  Brahmawas 
 is  more  settled  and  regular  than  that  of  the  hymns, 
 but  it  still  represents  a  period  of  language  prior  to 
 that  which  is  presupposed  by  the  grammar  of  Pacini, 
 or,  what  used  to  be  called,  classical  Sanskrit. 
 
 Sutras. 
 
 The  next  phase  of  Sanskrit  is  that  of  the  SiUras, 
 which  is  likewise  in  some  points  different  from  the 
 Sanskrit  which  Pa?iini  would  consider  as  regular,  but 
 approaches  to  it  so  closely  that  the  chronological  inter- 
 val separating  the  two  can  only  have  been  very  small. 
 
 The  whole  of  this  literature,  which  has  been  pre- 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  297 
 
 served  to  us  in  its  three  stages,  is  exclusively  a  priestly 
 literature,  and  what  seems  at  first  sight  almost  in- 
 credible, the  whole  of  it  was  preserved  for  a  long 
 time  by  oral  tradition  only.  The  hymns  must  at 
 a  very  early  time  have  become  the  subject  of  the 
 most  careful  study.  Not  only  every  word,  but 
 every  letter  and  every  accent  were  settled  in  the 
 teaching  of  the  schools,  and  the  only  marvel  is 
 that  so  many  irregular  forms  should  have  escaped 
 the  levelling  influence  of  teachers  from  generation  to 
 generation.  Still,  with  all  its  irregularities,  the  Vedic 
 language,  as  we  know  it,  has  clearly  passed  through 
 a  grammatical  discipline,  and  we  actually  possess, 
 dating  from  the  third  or  the  Sutra  period,  a  number 
 of  treatises,  the  so-called  Pratisakhyas,  which  show  us 
 with  what  extraordinary  minuteness  the  hymns  of 
 the  Veda  had  been  analysed. 
 
 Pa/'inean  Sanskrit. 
 
 With  the  Sutras  this  stream  of  Vedic  language 
 comes  to  an  end.  The  famous  grammar  of  Pibiini, 
 which  is  generally  referred  to  the  fourth  century 
 B.  c,  treats  the  Vedic  Sanskrit  as  already  exceptional 
 and  antiquated,  and  presupposes  a  language  and  a 
 literature  of  a  different  character. 
 
 We  must  never  forget  that  in  ancient  times 
 literature  gives  us  generally  specimens  of  one  dialect 
 only,  and  that  this  literary  dialect,  being  lifted 
 out  of  the  living  stream  of  language,  becomes  what 
 is  called  classical,  that  is  stagnant  and  dead.  The 
 other  non-literary  dialects  withdraw  themselves  from 
 our  observation,  but  if  after  a  time  a  new  language 
 rises  to  the  surface  and  brings  with  it  a  new  liter- 
 
298  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 ature,  that  new  language  is  always  a  sister  dialect 
 rather,  and  not  a  direct  descendant  of  the  old  classical 
 language.  The  language  for  which  Pacini's  rules 
 are  intended  is  not  Vedic  Sanskrit,  but  a  Sanskrit 
 nevertheless  closely  allied  to  it.  From  Panini's  time 
 to  the  present  day  that  Sanskrit,  as  a  new  literary 
 language,  has  remained  perfectly  stationary,  for  the 
 simple  reason  that  any  infraction  of  Pacini's  rules, 
 any  deviation  from  the  classical  type  as  fixed  by 
 him,  would  have  been  considered,  and  is  considered 
 to  the  present  day,  a  grammatical  blunder. 
 
 Inscriptions  of  Piyadasi,  Third  Century  B.C. 
 
 If  we  only  knew  the  language  of  India  in  these 
 two  channels,  the  Vedic  and  the  Paninean,  all  would 
 be  intelligible.  But  the  marvel  is  that  when  for  the 
 first  time  we  come  across  an  historical  specimen  of 
 the  spoken  language  of  India,  that  language  is  totally 
 different.  The  first  truly  historical  documents  in 
 India  are  the  inscriptions  of  Piyadasi  or  Asoka  in 
 the  middle  of  the  third  century  B.C.  These  in- 
 scriptions we  have  now  before  us  as  they  were 
 written  at  the  time.  They  contain  edicts  intended 
 to  be  understood  by  the  people,  and  we  are  safe  in 
 supposing  that  the  language  in  which  they  are 
 composed  must  have  been,  if  read  out,  intelligible 
 to  the  people. 
 
 I  cannot  describe  the  state  of  that  language  better 
 than  by  representing  it  to  you  as  a  spoken  vulgar 
 dialect  of  Sanskrit,  just  as  Italian  was  a  spoken 
 vulgar  dialect  of  Latin.  Thus,  Avhile  the  Vedic  and 
 the  Paninean  Sanskrit  present  to  us  two  old  dialects, 
 regulated  by  careful  grammatical  study  and  reserved 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  299 
 
 for  literary  purposes,  these  inscriptions  of  the  third 
 century  B.C.  represent  to  us  the  living  dialects  of 
 the  people,  reduced  by  phonetic  wear  and  tear  to  a 
 mere  ghost  of  their  former  self. 
 
 And  that  is  not  all.  While  the  Sanskrit  of  the 
 Veda  as  well  as  the  Sanskrit  of  Pacini  is  rendered 
 uniform  by  rule,  the  language,  as  recorded  in  these 
 inscriptions,  allows  an  unbounded  variety,  such  as 
 would  not  be  tolerated  in  any  purely  literary 
 language.  We  have  here  the  language  of  India  as 
 it  was  actually  spoken  in  the  third  century  B.  c, 
 and  its  discovery  was  no  small  surprise  to  the 
 believers  in  one  uniform  classical  Sanskrit. 
 
 Buddhist  Sanskrit. 
 
 Nor  is  this  all.  While  Brahmanism  disdained  to 
 use  any  language  but  Sanskrit  for  religious  subjects, 
 Buddhism,  which  was  at  that  time  the  rising  and 
 growing  religion  of  India,  availed  itself  of  the  spoken 
 dialects  in  order  to  influence  the  great  masses  of  the 
 people  ;  and  so  we  find  that  one  collection  of  the 
 sacred  writings  of  the  Buddhists,  commonly  called 
 the  Northern,  is  composed  in  an  irregular  dialect, 
 closely  resembling  the  dialect  of  Asoka's  inscriptions, 
 while  the  second  collection,  commonly  called  the 
 Southern,  is  written  in  another  vulgar  dialect,  but 
 essentially  differing  from  the  former  by  having  evi- 
 dently received  a  more  careful  grammatical  polish. 
 The  former  dialect  is  generally  called  the  Gdthd 
 dialect,  or  Mixed  Sanskrit,  the  latter  is  called  Pali, 
 and  may  be  called  MdgadM,  though  it  ought  not  to 
 be  confused  with  the  later  Prakrit  dialect  of  the 
 same    name.     These   two    dialects    we  can   fix   his- 
 
300  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 torically,  at  least  so  far  that  we  may  assign  to  the 
 literature,  composed  in  the  Gatha  dialect,  a  date 
 anterior  to  the  Christian  era,  because  we  have 
 Chinese  translations  of  some  of  the  books  of  the 
 Northern  canon  about  that  time.  The  text  of  the 
 Southern  canon,  after  having  been  handed  down 
 by  word  of  mouth,  was  reduced  to  writing  in  88 
 B.C.1  What  chiefly  distinguishes  the  Southern  Pali 
 text  from  the  Northern  Gatha  text  is  that  the  former 
 has  clearly  undergone  a  strict  grammatical  revision, 
 while  the  latter  has  not. 
 
 Renaissance  of  Sanskrit  Literature. 
 
 After  the  end  of  the  first  century  A.D.,  Sanskrit, 
 that  is  to  say,  the  Pawinean  Sanskrit,  comes  more 
 and  more  to  the  front,  and  we  see  it  used  for  the 
 ordinary  purposes  of  life,  and  likewise  for  public 
 inscriptions.  What  we  generally  understand  by 
 Sanskrit  literature  begins  about  400  A.D.,  and  to 
 about  the  same  period  we  may  refer  the  grammatical 
 cultivation  of  the  Prakrit  dialects. 
 
 Prakrit. 
 
 These  Prakrit  dialects  are  probably  the  lineal 
 descendants  of  the  uugrammatical  dialects,  preserved 
 to  us  in  the  inscriptions  of  Asoka,  and  again  in  some 
 of  the  texts  of  the  Northern  Buddhist  canon.  But 
 whereas  at  that  time  they  were  like  wild-growing 
 plants,  they  have  now  been  trimmed  and  shorn  and 
 regulated  by  strict  grammatical  rules,  after  the 
 pattern  of  Pacini's  grammar.  In  that  form  they  are 
 used  in  the  Sanskrit  plays,  much  in  the  same  manner 
 
 1  Vinaya-pitaka,  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xiii,  p.  xxxv. 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  301 
 
 as  the  Italian  dialects  were  used  in  the  Comeclia  delle 
 arte,  where  the  Doctor  always  speaks  Bolognese, 
 Arleckmo  Bergarnese,  Pantaleone  Venetian,  while  the 
 pure  Tuscan  or  Roman  was  reserved  for  the  Amorosos 
 and  Inamoratas1. 
 
 Vernaculars. 
 
 But  again,  while  the  classical  Sanskrit  and  the 
 now  equally  classical  Prakrit  remained  henceforth 
 stationary,  the  old  springs  of  language  were  not 
 stopped,  but  poured  on  chiefly  in  two  great  channels, 
 the  Western  and  the  Eastern,  the  former  represented 
 in  our  time  by  Sindhi,  Gujarat! ,  Panjabi,  and  Western 
 Hindi,  the  Eastern  by  Bihari,  Bengali,  Uriya,  and 
 Asami.  The  Nepali  in  the  North  shows  more 
 affinity  with  the  Western,  the  Marathi  in  the  South 
 with  the  Eastern  division. 
 
 Sacred  Books. 
 
 It  is  necessary  to  keep  this  outline  of  the  growth 
 and  the  ramification  of  language  clearly  before  our 
 mind,  for  the  Sacred  Books  with  which  we  shall 
 deal  have  grown,  as  it  were,  on  the  branches  of  this 
 tree  of  speech.  We  have  the  hymns  of  the  Veda,  the 
 Brahmawas,  and  Sutras  preserved  to  us  in  Vedic 
 Sanskrit.  We  have  the  Law  Book  of  Manu  and  the 
 Pura?ias  composed  in  literary  Sanskrit,  according  to 
 Pacini's  pattern.  We  have  the  Southern  canon  of 
 Buddhism  in  Pali,  the  Angas  of  the  £ainas  in  old 
 Maharashfri,  and  the  Northern  canon  of  the  Bud- 
 dhists in  ungrammatical  Prakrit.  We  shall  see  that 
 there   is    even   a    certain    parallelism    between    the 
 
 1  Cf.  M.  M. ,  On  Bengali,  in  Report  of  the  British  Association  for 
 1847,  p.  322. 
 
302  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 growth  of  language  and  the  growth  of  religion,  and 
 that  without  a  knowledge  of  the  historical  develop- 
 ment of  the  language  many  points  in  the  history  of 
 the  religions  of  India  would  remain  unintelligible. 
 
 Iranic  Class. 
 
 The  last  class  of  the  Aryan  family  which  we  have 
 still  to  examine  is  the  Iranic.  Here  we  find  much 
 the  same  phenomena  as  in  India.  The  most  ancient 
 specimen  of  the  language  is  found  in  the  sacred  book 
 of  Persia,  the  Avesta.  It  is  called  Zend,  which,  though 
 it  is  an  entire  misnomer,  will  probably  remain  the 
 recognised  name.  It  is  supposed  with  considerable 
 probability  that  this  ancient  dialect  was  that  of 
 Media  rather  than  of  Persia. 
 
 Cuneiform  Persian  Inscriptions. 
 
 When,  however,  we  get  the  first  glimpse  of  the  lan- 
 guage of  Persia  in  contemporary  documents,  I  mean 
 in  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Cyrus,  Darius,  and 
 Xerxes,  we  find  there  a  language  closely  allied  to  that 
 of  the  sacred  writings  of  Zoroaster,  yet  different  from 
 it.  These  inscriptions  cover  the  time  of  the  Achae- 
 menian  dynasty  from  about  500  to  336  B.C. 
 
 Pehlevi. 
 
 Then  follows  a  break  of  more  than  five  centuries  ; 
 but  when  we  meet  again  with  a  new  literature  at  the 
 time  of  the  Sassanian  dynasty  in  the  first  half  of  the 
 third  century  a.d.,  the  language,  then  called  Pehlevi, 
 is  a  decayed  Persian,  written  no  longer  in  cuneiform 
 letters,  but  in  a  Semitic  alphabet  and  syllabary.  The 
 Pehlevi  literature,  chiefly  concerned  with  the  explana- 
 tion of  the  Avesta  and  with  religious  questions,  lasts 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  303 
 
 till  about  900  a.d.  With  1000  a.d.  begins  the  modern 
 Persian,  as  we  have  it  in  its  purity  in  the  great  epic 
 of  Firdusi,  the  SMhn&meh,  while  in  later  times  it 
 becomes  more  and  more  mixed  with  Arabic  words 
 through  the  influence  of  the  Mohammedan  religion. 
 
 These  are  the  principal  languages  of  the  Aryan 
 family,  and  those  which  are  of  special  interest  to  us 
 in  the  study  of  religion.  There  are  some  other  lan- 
 guages, such  as  Armenian  and  Ossetian  in  Asia,  and 
 Albanian  in  Europe,  which  are  clearly  of  Aryan  de- 
 scent, but  which  have  not  yet  been  referred  with 
 perfect  precision  to  any  of  the  great  classes  of  that 
 family.  Modern  Albanian  is  supposed  to  represent 
 the  ancient  Illyrian.  Armenian  may  constitute  a  lan- 
 guage by  itself,  more  closely  related,  as  shown  by 
 Hiibschmann,  to  the  North- Western  than  to  the 
 South-Eastern  division. 
 
 Bask  and  Etruscan. 
 
 Before  we  leave  the  Aryan  family,  we  should  still 
 mention  two  languages,  not  Aryan  in  character,  but 
 surrounded  on  all  sides  by  people  of  Aryan  speech, 
 and  well-nigh  absorbed  by  them,  those  of  the  Basks 
 and  the  Etruscans. 
 
 The  Basks,  interesting  as  they  are  for  linguistic 
 purposes,  yield  us  little  information  with  regard  to 
 what  their  ancient  religion  may  have  been.  The 
 Etruscans,  on  the  contrary,  have  left  us  ample 
 materials  in  monuments  and  inscriptions,  though  it 
 must  be  confessed  that  not  until  a  really  safe  key  to 
 their  language  has  been  discovered,  will  there  be  any 
 chance  of  our  understanding  the  true  character  of  their 
 religion. 
 
304  LECTURE    XI. 
 
 Semitic  Family. 
 
 Quite  independent  of  this  enormous  stream  of  lan- 
 guage which  dominates  India,  Persia,  Armenia  and 
 nearly  the  whole  of  Europe,  there  is  another  stream, 
 the  Semitic,  running  in  a  bed  of  its  own  from  the  very 
 beginning,  and  feeding  two,  if  not  three  of  the  great 
 religions  of  the  world,  that  of  the  Jews,  that  of  the 
 Christians,  and  that  of  the  Mohammedans. 
 
 The  Semitic  family  may  be  divided  into  three 
 branches,  the  Aramaic,  the  Hebraic  and  the  Arabic, 
 or  into  two,  the  Northern,  comprising  the  Aramaic 
 and  Hebraic,  and  the  Southern,  the  Arabic. 
 
 Aramaic. 
 
 The  Aramaic  comprises  the  ancient  language  of 
 Assyria  and  Babylon,  so  far  as  it  has  been  discovered 
 and  deciphered  in  the  cuneiform  inscriptions.  The 
 grammatical  structure  of  this  ancient  language  is  not 
 yet  sufficiently  made  out  to  enable  scholars  to  trace 
 its  exact  relation  to  the  later  Aramaic.  Geographi- 
 cally, however,  the  ancient  language  of  Mesopotamia 
 may  for  the  present  be  classed  as  Aramaic.  If  some 
 of  these  cuneiform  inscriptions  go  back,  as  some 
 scholars  maintain,  to  4000  B.C.,  they  would  represent 
 the  oldest  remnants  of  Semitic  speech.  And  if  that 
 Semitic  literature  was  preceded,  as  seems  very  gener- 
 ally admitted,  by  another  civilisation,  not  Semitic, 
 and  generally  called  Sumero-Accaclian,  we  should  get 
 an  insight  into  a  past  more  distant  than  even  that 
 which  is  claimed  for  Egypt  and  China.  It  may  be  so, 
 but  even  though  chronologically  the  religious  ideas 
 conveyed  to  us  by  the  sacred  hymns  of  Babylon 
 should  prove  to  be  so  much  earlier  than  those  of  any  of 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  305 
 
 the  Aryan  races,  I  must  say  at  once  that  they  appear  to 
 me  much  more  advanced,  much  more  modern  in  point 
 of  civilisation.  They  presuppose  towns,  temples, 
 idols,  a  knowledge  of  metals  and  all  kinds  of  precious 
 stones,  familiarity  with  writing,  and  a  number  of 
 abstract  ideas  which  we  should  look  for  in  vain  in  the 
 Vedic  hymns.  Linguistically  also  there  is  little  in 
 these  inscriptions  which  we  should  call  much  more 
 primitive  than  what  we  see  in  the  grammatical 
 structure  of  Syriac,  Arabic,  or  Hebrew.  Many  diffi- 
 culties have  here  still  to  be  cleared  up.  An  important 
 mine  however  for  religious  studies  has  no  doubt  been 
 opened  there,  and  several  of  the  antecedents  of  Hebrew 
 tradition  have  already  been  discovered  in  the  cunei- 
 form literature  of  Babylon.  If,  as  we  read,  Abraham 
 came  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  his  language  ought  to 
 have  been  akin  to  that  of  the  cuneiform  inscriptions. 
 But  his  name  and  all  connected  with  him  passed  in 
 later  times  through  the  channel  of  a  different  language, 
 which  we  now  call  Hebrew;  and  the  date  at  which 
 whatever  was  known  of  him  was  reduced  to  writing- 
 in  that  form  in  which  we  now  possess  it  is  still  un- 
 certain, but  at  all  events  much  later  than  was  formerly 
 supposed. 
 
 Chaldee  and  Syriac. 
 
 In  historical  times  we  find  Aramaic  spoken  in  the 
 kingdoms  of  Babylon  and  Assyria,  and  spreading 
 thence  into  Syria  and  Palestine.  Owing  to  the  politi- 
 cal and  literary  ascendancy  of  these  kingdoms,  Ara- 
 maic seems  for  a  time  to  have  been  a  kind  of  lingua 
 franca  extending  its  influence  to  Persia,  Syria,  Asia 
 Minor,  Egypt,  and  even  to  Arabia. 
 
 It  has  been  usual  to  distinguish  between  the  Ara- 
 
306  LECTURE    XI. 
 
 maic  as  used  by  the  Jews,  and  the  Aramaic  as  used  in 
 later  times  by  Christian  writers,  the  former  being- 
 called  Gkaldee,  the  latter  Syriac.  It  may  be  true  that 
 the  name  Chaldee  owes  its  origin  to  the  mistaken 
 notion  of  its  having  been  introduced  into  Palestine  by 
 the  Jews  returning  from  the  Babylonian  captivity. 
 But  the  name  has  been  too  long  in  possession  to  make 
 it  advisable  to  replace  it  by  a  new  name,  such  as 
 Western  Aramaic. 
 
 This  Jewish  Chaldee  shows^tself  first  in  some  of  the 
 books  of  the  Old  Testament,  such  as  Ezra  and  Daniel. 
 Afterwards  we  find  it  in  the  Targums  or  Chaldee 
 translations  of  the  Pentateuch  (Onkelos)  and  the 
 Prophets  (Jonathan),  which  were  read  in  the  Syna- 
 gogues long  before  they  were  finally  collected  in  about 
 the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  a.d.  The  Jerusalem  Tar- 
 gums and  the  Jerusalem  Talmud  represent  the  Chaldee 
 as  spoken  at  that  time  by  the  Jews  in  Jerusalem  and 
 in  Galilee.  Christ  and  his  disciples  must  have  em- 
 ployed the  same  Aramaic  dialect,  though  they  also 
 used  Greek  in  addressing  the  people  at  large.  The 
 conquests  of  the  Arabs  and  the  spreading  of  their 
 language  interfered  with  the  literary  cultivation  of 
 Chaldee  as  early  as  the  seventh  century ;  but  it  con- 
 tinued to  be  employed  by  some  Jewish  writers  down 
 to  the  tenth  century. 
 
 The  Samaritans  translated  the  Pentateuch  into 
 their  own  Aramaic  dialect,  which  differs  but  little 
 from  that  of  the  Jews. 
 
 The  Mandaeans  also,  a  somewhat  mixed  Christian 
 sect  in  Babylonia,  spoke  and  wrote  a  Chaldee  dialect, 
 which  is  preserved  in  their  writings  and  in  the  jargon 
 of  a  few  surviving  members  of  that  sect. 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  307 
 
 Syriac,    though    spoken    long    before    the    rise    of 
 
 Christianity,  owes  its  literary  cultivation  chiefly  to 
 
 Christian   writers.     The    Old   and    New   Testaments 
 
 were    translated    into    Syriac    (the    Peshito)   in    the 
 
 second  century,  and  became   the  recognised  text  in 
 
 the  school  of  Edessa  and  elsewhere.    A  large  literature 
 
 accumulated  from  the  third  to  the  seventh  century, 
 
 and  extended  its  influence  to  Persia  and  the  Eastern 
 
 Roman  Empire.     The  Arabic  conquests,  however,  put 
 
 an  end  to  the  literary  cultivation  of  this   language 
 
 ill 
 aJso,  though  it  lived  on  both  as  a  written  and  spoken 
 
 dialect  to  the  twelfth  century,  and  afterwards,  as  a 
 
 language  of  the  learned,  to  the  present  day. 
 
 The  Neo-Syriac  dialects,  still  spoken  in  some  parts 
 
 of  Mesopotamia,  chiefly  by  Nestorian  Christians   in 
 
 the  neighbourhood  of  Mosul,  and  in  Kurdistan  as  far 
 
 as   Lake   Urmia,  are  not  directly  derived   from   the 
 
 literary  Syriac,  but  represent  remnants  of  the  spoken 
 
 Aramaic.     One  of  these  dialects  has  lately  received 
 
 some   literary  cultivation   through   the  exertions   of 
 
 Christian  missionaries. 
 
 Hebraic. 
 
 The  second  branch,  the  Hebraic,  comprises  Phe- 
 nician  and  Carthaginian,  as  known  to  us  from 
 inscriptions  dating  from  about  600  B.C.,  and  the 
 Hebreiv  of  the  Old  Testament. 
 
 The  Moabites  spoke  Hebrew,  as  may  be  seen  from 
 the  language  of  the  inscription  of  King  Mesha,  about 
 900  B.C.  The  Philistines  also  seem  to  have  spoken 
 the  same  language,  though,  it  may  be,  with  dialectic 
 varieties.  About  the  time  of  the  Maccabees,  Hebrew 
 and  its  cognate  dialects  ceased  to  be  spoken  by  the 
 people  at  large,  though  Hebrew  remained  the  language 
 
 x  i 
 
308  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 of  the  learned  long  after  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem 
 by  Titus.  Even  at  present  the  Jews  employ  an 
 artificial  and  corrupt  Hebrew  for  literary  discussions 
 and  among  themselves. 
 
 Arabic. 
 
 The  third  branch,  the  Arabic,  has  its  home  in  the 
 Arabian  peninsula,  where  it  is  still  spoken  by  the 
 bulk  of  the  inhabitants,  and  from  whence  it  spread 
 over  Asia,  Africa,  and  Europe  at  the  time  of  the 
 Mohammedan  conquests.  There  was  a  popular 
 Arabic  literature  long  before  Mohammed  (Mo'allakat), 
 and  there  are  inscriptions  in  the  north  of  the  Hijaz, 
 commonly  called  Thamudic,  which  are  supposed 
 to  be  of  an  ante-Christian  date.  Arabic  inscriptions 
 continue  to  be  found,  attesting  the  use  of  Arabic 
 as  a  cultivated  language,  long  before  the  age  of 
 Mohammed.  The  trilingual  inscription  of  Zabad 
 (Aramaic,  Arabic,  Greek)  dates  from  513  A.  D. ; 
 a  bilingual  inscription  of  Harran  (Arabic  and  Greek) 
 from  568  A.  D.  A  new  impulse  was  given  to  the 
 literary  life  of  the  Arabs  by  the  new  religion  preached 
 by  Mohammed  and  his  successors.  The  language  of  the 
 Qur'an  became  a  new  type  of  literary  excellence  by 
 the  side  of  the  ancient  Bedouin  poetry.  In  the  second 
 century  after  the  Hejra  grammatical  studies  fixed  the 
 rules  of  classical  Arabic  permanently,  and  after  1200 
 years  the  Qur'an  is  still  read  and  understood  by  all 
 educated  Arabs.  The  spoken  Arabic,  however,  differs 
 dialectically  in  Egypt,  Algeria,  Syria,  and  Arabia. 
 One  Arabic  dialect  continues  to  be  spoken  in  Malta. 
 
 Sabaean  or  Himyaritic. 
 
 Iii  the  South  of  the  Arabian  peninsula  there  existed 
 
MATERIALS  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  NATURAL  RELIGION.  309 
 
 an  ancient  Sabaean  civilisation,  remnants  of  which 
 have  been  discovered  in  colossal  monuments  and  in 
 numerous  inscriptions,  written  in  a  peculiar  alphabet, 
 generally  called  Himyaritic.  Their  age  is  doubtful, 
 but  some  of  them  are  supposed  to  date  from  before  our 
 era  and  to  extend  to  the  fourth  century  A.D.  It  is 
 possible  to  distinguish  traces  of  different  dialects  in 
 these  Sabaean  inscriptions,  but  they  are  all  closely 
 connected  with  Arabic.  The  Sabaean  language  was 
 probably  spoken  in  the  South  of  the  Arabian  peninsula 
 till  the  advent  of  Mohammedanism,  which  made 
 Arabia  the  language  of  the  whole  of  Yemen. 
 
 Ethiopic. 
 
 In  very  early  times  a  colony  from  Arabia,  or,  more 
 correctly,  from  Sabaea,  seems  to  have  crossed  to 
 Africa.  Here,  south  of  Egypt  and  Nubia,  an  ancient 
 and  very  primitive  Semitic  dialect,  closely  allied  to 
 Sabaean  and  Arabic,  has  maintained  itself  to  the 
 present  day,  the  Ethiopic  or  Abyssinian,  or  Geez. 
 We  have  translations  of  the  Bible  in  Ethiopic,  dating 
 from  the  third  or  fourth  century.  Other  works 
 followed,  all  of  a  theological  character. 
 
 There  are  inscriptions  also  in  ancient  Ethiopic, 
 dating  from  the  days  of  the  kingdom  of  Axum,  which 
 have  been  referred  to  350,  and  500  A.D. 
 
 This  ancient  Ethiopic  ceased  to  be  spoken  in  the 
 ninth  century,  but  it  remained  in  use  as  a  literary 
 language  for  a  long  time. 
 
 Beginning  with  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 
 a  new  language  appears,  the  Amharic.  In  it  the  Semitic 
 type  has  been  intensely  modified,  probably  owing  to 
 the  fact  that  the  tribes  who  spoke  it  were  of  Hamitic 
 
310  LECTURE   XI. 
 
 origin.  It  is  a  spreading  language,  and  has  given  rise 
 in  modern  times  to  a  new  literature. 
 
 Other  dialects,  such  as  Tigre,  EhJdli,  and  Harrari, 
 so  called  from  the  localities  in  which  they  are  spoken, 
 have  not  yet  been  sufficiently  explored  to  enable 
 Semitic  scholars  to  pronounce  an  opinion  whether 
 they  are  varieties  of  Amharic,  or  representatives  of 
 more  ancient  independent  dialects  1. 
 
 The  family  likeness  of  the  Semitic  is  quite  as 
 strong  as  that  of  the  Aryan  languages,  nay  even 
 stronger.  Their  phonetic  character  is  marked  by  the 
 preponderance  of  guttural  sounds,  their  etymological 
 character  by  the  triliteral  form  of  most  of  the  roots, 
 and  the  manner  in  which  these  roots  are  modified  by 
 pronominal  suffixes  and  prefixes ;  their  grammatical 
 character  by  the  fixity  of  the  vowels  for  expressing 
 the  principal  modifications  of  meaning,  a  fixity  which 
 made  it  possible  to  dispense  with  writing  the  vowel 
 signs.  These  characteristic  features  are  so  strongly 
 developed  that  they  render  it  quite  impossible  to 
 imagine  that  a  Semitic  language  could  ever  have 
 sprung  from  an  Aryan  or  an  Aryan  from  a  Semitic. 
 Whether  both  could  have  sprung  from  a  common 
 source  is  a  question  that  has  often  been  asked,  and 
 has  generally  been  answered  according  to  personal 
 predilections.  Most  scholars,  I  believe,  would  admit 
 that  it  could  not  be  shown  that  a  common  origin  in 
 far  distant  times  is  altogether  impossible.  But  the 
 evidence  both  for  and  against  is  by  necessity  so 
 intangible  and  evanescent  that  it  does  not  come 
 within  the  sphere  of  practical  linguistics. 
 
 1  The  latest  and  best  account  of  the  Semitic  languages  is  given  by 
 Noldeke  in  the  Cyclop.  Britannica. 
 
LECTURE  XII. 
 
 PRINCIPLES    OF    CLASSIFICATION. 
 Languages  not  Aryan  and  not  Semitic. 
 
 THE  two  families  of  language  which  we  have 
 hitherto  examined,  the  Aryan  and  Semitic,  are 
 the  most  important  to  the  student  of  religion.  Not 
 only  are  the  principal  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  with 
 the  exception  of  those  of  China,  composed  in  Sanskrit, 
 Pah,  Prakrit,  Zend,  Pehlevi,  Hebrew,  Greek,  and 
 Arabic,  but  the  religious  and  mythological  phrase- 
 ology of  the  leading  nations  of  Europe— Greeks,  Ro- 
 mans, Germans,  Slaves  and  Celts— are  all  embodied 
 in  Aryan  and  Semitic  speech.  It  was  necessary 
 therefore  to  give  a  fuller  account  of  these  two  families, 
 so  as  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  explaining  again  and 
 again  the  linguistic  evidence  on  which  so  much  in  the 
 study  of  the  great  religions  of  the  world  depends. 
 
 With  regard  to  the  remaining  families  of  speech, 
 however,  it  will  be  sufficient  if  I  place  before  you  a 
 short  outline  only.  Though  outside  the  pale  of  the 
 Aryan  and  Semitic  languages  the  progress  of  Com- 
 parative Philology  has  been  very  slow,  still  we  know 
 in  many  cases  which  languages  in  Asia,  Africa,  Poly- 
 nesia and  America  are  related  and  which  are  not,  and 
 to  know  this  is  of  course  of  the  greatest  help  in  the 
 study  of  religion.  When  we  meet  with  the  same  re- 
 ligious ideas  or  religious  customs  in  distant  parts  of 
 the  world,  the  question  whether  they  are  the  result  of 
 
312  LECTURE    XII. 
 
 our  universal  human  nature  or  whether  they  have 
 been  transferred  from  one  race  to  another,  depends 
 chiefly  on  the  question  whether  there  is  a  more  or  less 
 distant  relationship  between  the  languages.  If  we 
 know  that  the  languages  spoken  on  the  East-coast  of 
 Africa  from  several  degrees  north  of  the  equator  to 
 nearly  the  Cape  belong  to  one  and  the  same  strongly 
 marked  family,  that  of  the  so-called  Bantu  languages, 
 coincidences  between  the  religious  and  mythological 
 ideas  of  the  races  speaking  these  languages  admit  of 
 an  historical  interpretation,  and  need  not  be  accepted 
 as  the  simple  result  of  our  common  human  faculties. 
 If  it  could  be  proved  that  the  Hottentots,  the 
 southern  neighbours  of  these  Bantu  races,  were  really, 
 as  maintained  by  Lepsius  and  others,  emigrants  from 
 Egypt>  this  again  would  throw  a  new  light  on  certain 
 coincidences  in  their  customs  and  those  of  the  ancient 
 Egyptians. 
 
 The  Hurons !  of  the  Anderdon  reserve,  visited  by 
 Mr.  Horatio  Hale  in  1872  and  1874,  tell  the  story  of 
 the  earth  being  sustained  by  a  tortoise,  yet  no  one 
 would  think  that  they  borrowed  it  from  India.  They 
 likewise  know  of  two  supernatural  beings  who  were 
 to  prepare  the  world  to  be  the  abode  of  man.  The 
 one  was  good,  the  other  bad.  The  bad  brother  cre- 
 ated monstrous  creatures,  the  good  brother  innocent 
 and  useful  animals,  and  though  he  could  not  destroy 
 the  evil  animals  altogether,  he  reduced  them  in  size, 
 so  that  man  would  be  able  to  master  them.  What- 
 ever beneficent  work  the  good  brother  accomplished 
 was  counteracted  by  the  bad  brother.  At  last  the 
 two  brothers  fought,  the  evil  spirit  was  overcome  by 
 
 1   Horatio  Hale  in  Journal  of  American  Folklore,  vol.  i.  p.  ISO. 
 
PRINCIPLES   OF    CLASSIFICATION.  313 
 
 the  good,  but  retired  to  the  West  where,  as  he  de- 
 clared, all  men  would  go  after  death.  All  this  might 
 be  taken  from  the  A  vesta ;  yet  though  the  two 
 brothers  are  actually  styled  by  the  Hurons  the  ;  Good 
 Mind '  and  the  '  Bad  Mind '  (in  Zend,  Vanheus 
 Mainyus,  Anro  Mainyus),  no  one  would  suppose  that 
 the  Hurons  borrowed  from  Zoroaster  or  Zoroaster 
 from  the  Hurons. 
 
 It  is  essential  also  that  students  of  religion  and 
 mythology  should  possess  a  general  knowledge  of  the 
 grammatical  character  of  the  languages,  for  it  has 
 been  clearly  shown  that  such  peculiarities  as,  for 
 instance,  the  distinction  of  masculine,  feminine,  and 
 neuter  nouns,  have  been  productive  of  a  whole  class  of 
 legends  which  are  absent  when  the  idea  of  gender  has 
 not  been  realised  in  language.  My  own  conviction  has 
 always  been  that  a  truly  scientific  study  of  religion  and 
 mythology  is  impossible  unless  we  know  the  language 
 which  forms  the  soil  from  which  religion  and  mytho- 
 logy spring  K  All  attempts  therefore  to  study  the  re- 
 ligions, particularly  of  uncivilised  tribes,  whose  dialects 
 are  but  little  known  and  whose  linguistic  affinities 
 with  other  tribes  are  not  yet  clearly  established,  must 
 be  looked  upon  for  the  present  as  provisional  only. 
 These  studies,  though  full  of  promise,  are  at  the  same 
 time  full  of  danger  also. 
 
 Morphological  Classification  of  Languages. 
 
 It  may  be  well  to  keep  in  mind  that  languages  may 
 be  and  have  been  classified,  not  only  genealogically, 
 
 1  Professor  Tiele,  one  of  the  highest  authorities  on  Comparative 
 Theology,  agrees  with  me  as  to  the  intimate  relationship  between 
 language,  religion,  and  nationality.  But  he  very  wisely  puts  in  a 
 reservation,  namely  that,  'the  farther  history  advances,  the  more 
 does  religion  become  independent  of  both  language  and  nationality.' 
 
314  LECTURE   XTI. 
 
 but  morphologically  also,  and  that  a  morphological 
 similarity  between  certain  languages,  though  it  does 
 in  no  way  prove  their  common  descent,  indicates  a 
 common  bent  in  the  thoughts  of  those  who  speak 
 them.  I  have  already  mentioned  the  grammatical 
 distinction  of  gender  as  an  important  element  in  the 
 formation  of  mythology  and  religion.  Other  elements 
 of  the  same  kind  are  the  manner  in  which  certain 
 languages  keep  the  radical  portion  of  every  word 
 from  phonetic  corruption,  while  others  allow  it  to 
 become  absorbed  and  almost  lost.  Words  which  dis- 
 play their  radical  elements  retain  a  certain  perspicuity, 
 and  are  less  liable  therefore  to  mythological  misunder- 
 standings. Thus  the  Semitic  languages  in  which  the 
 triliteral  skeleton  is  generally  clearly  discernible  in 
 every  word  have  produced  less  of  poetical  mythology 
 than  the  Aryan  languages.  The  power  of  forming 
 abstract  nouns,  of  employing  compound  words,  of 
 using  impersonal  verbs,  has  often  to  be  appealed  to  in 
 the  interpretation  of  mythological  and  religious  modes 
 of  expression. 
 
 I  saw  a  curious  instance  of  the  almost  unconscious 
 influence  which  peculiarities  of  language  may  exer- 
 cise on  the  expression  of  religious  dogma  in  the  case 
 of  a  Mohawk  who  came  to  Oxford  to  study  medicine, 
 and  who  gave  me  lessons  in  his  native  language. 
 In  that  language  it  is  impossible  to  say  the  father,  or 
 the  son ;  we  must  always  say  my,  thy,  or  his  father 
 or  son.  Thus  we  cannot  say  '  I  believe  in  God,  the 
 father,'  but  we  must  say,  '  I  believe  in  God,  our  father.' 
 Again,  instead  of  saying  '  I  believe  in  God,  the  son,' 
 we  have  to  say,  '  I  believe  in  God,  his  son.'  But 
 when  we  come  to  say  '  I  believe  in  God,  the  Holy 
 
PRINCIPLES   OF   CLASSIFICATION.  315 
 
 Ghost,'  we  cannot,  as  in  English,  leave  the  question 
 of  the  procession  of  the  Spirit  from  the  father,  or  from 
 the  father  and  the  son,  an  open  one.  We  must  say, 
 either  '  his  Holy  Ghost,'  or  '  their  Holy  Ghost.'  That 
 is  to  say,  language  would  force  a  Mohawk  to  declare 
 himself  for  the  single  or  double  procession,  a  question 
 which  most  of  us  may  leave  to  be  settled  by  theolo- 
 gians by  profession. 
 
 Genealogical  as  different  from  Morphological  Classification. 
 
 The  Aryan  and  Semitic  languages  are  held  together, 
 as  we  saw,  by  the  closest  ties  of  a  real  genealogical 
 relationship.  They  both  presuppose  the  existence  of 
 a  finished  system  of  grammar,  previous  to  the  first 
 divergence  of  their  dialects.  Their  history  is  from  the 
 very  beginning  a  history  of  decay  rather  than  of  growth, 
 and  hence  the  unmistakeable  family-likeness  which 
 pervades  every  one  even  of  their  latest  descendants. 
 The  languages  of  the  Sepoy  and  that  of  the  English 
 soldier  are,  in  one  sense,  one  and  the  same  language. 
 They  are  both  built  up  of  materials  which  were  defi- 
 nitely shaped  before  the  Teutonic  and  Indie  branches 
 separated.  No  new  root  has  been  added  to  either 
 since  their  first  separation  ;  and  the  grammatical 
 forms  which  are  of  more  modern  growth  in  English 
 or  Hindustani  are,  if  closely  examined,  new  combina- 
 tions only  of  elements  which  existed  from  the  be- 
 ginning in  all  the  Aryan  dialects.  In  the  termination 
 of  the  English  he  is,  and  in  the  inaudible  termination 
 of  the  French  il  est,  we  recognise  the  result  of  an  act 
 performed  before  the  first  separation  of  the  Aryan 
 family,  the  combination  of  the  predicative  root  AS 
 with  the  demonstrative  element  ta,  or  ti ;  an  act  per- 
 
316  LECTURE    XII. 
 
 formed  once  for  all,  and  continuing  to  be  felt  to  the 
 present  day. 
 
 It  was  the  custom  of  Nebuchadnezzar  to  have  his 
 name  stamped  on  every  brick  that  was  used  during 
 his  reign  in  erecting  his  colossal  palaces.  Those 
 palaces  fell  to  ruins,  but  from  the  ruins  the  ancient 
 materials  were  carried  away  for  building  new  cities  ; 
 and,  on  examining  the  bricks  in  the  walls  of  the 
 modern  city  of  Bagdad  on  the  borders  of  the  Tigris, 
 travellers  have  discovered  on  every  one  the  clear  traces 
 of  that  royal  signature.  It  is  the  same  if  we  examine 
 the  structure  of  modern  languages.  They  too  were 
 built  up  with  the  materials  taken  from  the  ruins  of 
 the  ancient  languages,  and  every  word,  if  properly 
 examined,  displays  the  royal  stamp  impressed  upon 
 it  from  the  first  by  the  founders  of  the  Aryan  and 
 the  Semitic  empires  of  speech. 
 
 Degrees  of  Relationship. 
 
 The  relationship  of  languages,  however,  is  not  always 
 so  close.  Languages  may  diverge  before  their  gram- 
 matical system  has  become  fixed  and  hardened  by 
 tradition  or  literary  culture  ;  and  in  that  case  they 
 cannot  be  expected  to  show  the  same  marked  features 
 of  a  common  descent,  as,  for  instance,  the  Neo-Latin 
 dialects,  French,  Italian,  and  Spanish. 
 
 They  may  have  much  in  common,  but  they  will 
 likewise  display  an  aftergrowth  in  words  and  gram- 
 matical forms  peculiar  to  each  dialect.  With  regard 
 to  words,  for  instance,  we  see  that  even  languages  so 
 intimately  related  to  each  other  as  the  six  Romanic 
 dialects,  diverged  in  some  of  the  commonest  expres- 
 sions.    Instead  of  the  Latin  word  f rater,  the  French 
 
PRINCIPLES   OF   CLASSIFICATION.  317 
 
 frere,  we  find  in  Spanish  hermano.  There  was  a  very 
 good  reason  for  this  change.  The  Latin  word  frater, 
 changed  into  fray  and  frayle,  had  been  applied  to 
 express  a  brother,  in  the  sense  of  a  friar.  It  was  felt 
 inconvenient  that  the  same  word  should  express  two 
 ideas  which  it  was  sometimes  necessary  to  distinguish, 
 and  therefore,  by  a  kind  of  natural  elimination,  frater 
 was  given  up  as  the  name  of  brother  in  Spanish,  and  re- 
 placed from  the  dialectical  stores  of  Latin  by  (jermanus. 
 In  the  same  manner  the  Latin  word  for  shepherd, 
 pastor,  was  so  constantly  applied  to  the  shepherd  of 
 the  souls,  or  the  clergyman,  le  pasteur,  that  a  new 
 word  was  wanted  for  the  real  shepherd.  Thus  berbi- 
 cariu8s  from  berbex  or  vervex,  a  wether,  was  used 
 instead  o£  pastor,  and  changed  into  the  French  berger. 
 Instead  of  the  Spanish  enfevmo,  ill,  we  find  in  French 
 malade,  in  Italian  malato.  Languages  so  closely  re- 
 lated as  Greek  and  Latin  have  fixed  on  different 
 expressions  for  son,  daughter,  brother,  woman,  man, 
 sky,  earth,  moon,  hand,  mouth,  tree,  bird,  &C.1  That 
 is  to  say,  out  of  a  large  number  of  synonymes  which 
 were  supplied  by  the  numerous  dialects  of  the  Aryan 
 family,  the  Greeks  perpetuated  one,  the  Romans 
 another.  It  is  clear  that  when  the  working  of  this 
 principle  of  natural  selection  is  allowed  to  extend 
 more  widely,  languages,  though  proceeding  from  the 
 same  source,  may  in  time  acquire  a  totally  different 
 nomenclature  for  the  commonest  objects.  The  number 
 of  real  synonymes  is  frequently  exaggerated,  and  if  we 
 are  told  that  in  Icelandic,  for  instance,  there  are  120 
 names  for  island,  or  in  Arabic  500  names  for  lion  2, 
 
 1  S(M'  Letter  "n  the  Turanian  Languages,  p.  62. 
 a  Renan,  Histuirc  des  Langues  semitiques,  p.  137 
 
318  LECTUBE   XII. 
 
 and  1000  names  for  sword1,  many  of  these  are  no 
 doubt  purely  poetical.  But  even  where  there  are  in  a 
 language  only  four  or  five  names  for  the  same  objects, 
 it  is  clear  that  four  languages  might  be  derived  from 
 it,  each  in  appearance  quite  distinct  from  the  rest2. 
 
 The  same  applies  to  grammar.  When  the  Romanic 
 languages,  for  instance,  formed  their  new  future  by 
 placing  the  auxiliary  verb  habere,  to  have,  after  the 
 infinitive,  it  was  quite  open  to  any  one  of  them  to  fix 
 upon  some  other  expedient  for  expressing  the  future. 
 The  French  might  have  chosen  je  vais  dire  or  je  dir- 
 vais  (I  wade  to  say)  instead  of  je  dir-ai,  and  in  this 
 case  the  future  in  French  would  have  been  totally 
 distinct  from  the  future  in  Italian.  If  such  changes 
 are  possible  in  literary  languages  of  such  long  stand- 
 ing as  French  and  Italian,  we  must  be  prepared  for  a 
 great  deal  more  in  languages  which,  as  I  said,  diverged 
 before  any  definite  settlement  had  taken  place,  either 
 in  their  grammar  or  their  dictionary.  If  we  were  to 
 expect  in  them  the  definite  criteria  of  a  genealogical 
 relationship  which  unites  the  members  of  the  Aryan 
 and  Semitic  families  of  speech,  we  should  necessarily 
 be  disappointed.  Such  criteria  could  hardly  be  ex- 
 pected to  exist  in  these  languages. 
 
 But  there  are  criteria  for  determining  even  these 
 more  distant  degrees  of  relationship  in  the  vast  realm 
 of  speech  ;  and  they  are  sufficient  at  least  to  arrest  for 
 the  present  the  hasty  conclusions  of  those  who  would 
 deny  the  possibility  of  a  common  origin  of  any  lan- 
 guages more  removed  from  each  other  than  French  and 
 
 1  Pococke,  Notes  to  Abulfaragius,  p.  153  ;  Stoddart,  Glossology,  p.  352. 
 See  infra,  p.  438. 
 
 2  See  Terrien  Poncel,  Du  Language,  p.  213. 
 
PRINCIPLES   OF   CLASSIFICATION.  319 
 
 Italian,  Sanskrit  and  Greek,  Hebrew  and  Arabic.  This 
 will  be  more  clearly  seen  after  we  have  examined  the 
 principles  of  what  I  call  the  Morphological  Classifica- 
 tion of  human  speech. 
 
 Morphological  Classification. 
 
 As  all  languages,  so  far  as  we  can  judge  at  present, 
 can  be  reduced  in  the  end  to  roots,  predicative  and 
 demonstrative,  it  is  clear  that,  according  to  the  man- 
 ner in  which  roots  are  put  together,  we  may  expect 
 to  find  three  kinds  of  languages,  or  three  stages  in  the 
 gradual  formation  of  speech. 
 
 1.  Roots  may  be  used  as  words,  each  root  preserving 
 its  full  independence. 
 
 2.  Two  roots  maybe  joined  together  to  form  words, 
 and  in  these  compounds  one  root  may  lose  its  inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 3.  Two  roots  maybe  joined  together  to  form  words, 
 and  in  these  compounds  both  roots  may  lose  their 
 independence. 
 
 What  applies  to  two  roots,  applies  to  three  or  four 
 or  more.  The  principle  is  the  same,  though  it  would 
 lead  to  a  more  varied  subdivision. 
 
 Radical  Stage. 
 
 The  first  stage,  in  which  each  root  preserves  its  in- 
 dependence, and  in  which  there  is  no  formal  distinction 
 between  a  root  and  a  word,  I  call  the  Radical  Stage. 
 Languages  while  belonging  to  this  first  or  Radical 
 Stage  have  sometimes  been  called  Monosyllabic  or 
 Isolating. 
 
 Terminational  Stage. 
 
 The  second  stage,  in  which  two  or  more  roots 
 coalesce  to  form  a  word,  the  one  retaining  its  radical 
 
320  LECTURE   XII. 
 
 independence,  the  other  sinking  down  to  a  mere 
 termination,  I  call  the  Terminational  Stage.  The 
 languages  belonging  to  it  have  generally  been  called 
 agglutinative,  from  gluten,  glue. 
 
 Inflectional  Stage. 
 
 The  third  stage,  in  which  roots  coalesce  so  that 
 neither  the  one  nor  the  other  retains  its  substantive 
 independence,  I  call  the  Inflectional  Stage.  The  lan- 
 guages belonging  to  it  have  sometimes  been  distin- 
 guished by  the  name  of  amalgamating  or  organic. 
 
 The  first  stage  excludes  phonetic  corruption  alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The  second  stage  excludes  phonetic  corruption  in 
 the  principal  root,  but  allows  it  in  the  secondary  or 
 determinative  elements. 
 
 The  third  stage  allows  phonetic  corruption  both  in 
 the  principal  root  and  in  the  terminations. 
 
 Transitions  from  one  stage  to  another. 
 
 It  is  perfectly  true  that  few  languages  only,  if  we  can 
 trace  their  history  during  any  length  of  time,  remain 
 stationary  in  one  of  these  stages.  Even  Chinese,  as 
 has  been  shown  by  Dr.  Edkins,  exhibits  in  its  modern 
 dialects  traces  of  incipient  agglutination,  if  not  of 
 inflection.  The  Ugric  languages  show  the  most  decided 
 traces  of  phonetic  corruption1,  and  in  consequence 
 clear  tendencies  toward  inflexion,  while  the  modern 
 Aryan  languages,  such  as  French  and  English,  avail 
 themselves  of  agglutinative  expedients  for  contriving 
 
 1  Thus,  to  quote  Professor  Hunfalvy,  sydcim,  heart,  iu  Finnish 
 has  been  changed  to  sydm,  in  Vogul.  to  sim,  in  Hungarian  to  sziiv 
 and  szu.  The  Ostjak.  jdgot,  bow,  is  jaut  and  jajt  in  Yogul. ,  jout-se  in 
 Finnish,  ij  and  iv  in  Hungarian.  The  Ostjak.  kauh,  kouh  or  hxu, 
 stone,  is  kav  or  kciv  in  Vogul.,  kjvi  in  Finnish,  ko  in  Hungarian. 
 
PRINCIPLES   OF    CLASSIFICATION.  321 
 
 new  grammatical  forms.  So  far  I  quite  agree  with 
 Professor  Hunfalvy,  who  has  so  strongly  protested 
 against  substituting  a  morphological  for  a  genealogical 
 classification  of  languages.  Such  a  substitution  is 
 impossible,  and  was  never  contemplated.  The  two 
 classifications  are  both  useful,  each  for  its  own  pur- 
 poses, but  the  genealogical  classification  should  always 
 be  considered  the  more  important. 
 
 Nor  was  it  even  supposed  that  the  two  classifica- 
 tions could  run  parallel.  We  saw  how  an  isolating 
 language,  like  Chinese,  might  in  the  end  produce 
 inflectional  forms,  and  I  hold  as  strongly  as  ever  that 
 every  inflectional  language  must  have  passed  through 
 an  agglutinative  stage,  and  that  this  agglutination  is 
 always  preceded  by  the  isolating  stage. 
 
 It  should  be  quite  clearly  understood  therefore  that 
 morphological  similarity  is  no  proof  whatever  of  real 
 historical  relationship.  It  may  indicate  such  relation- 
 ship, but  a  very  different  kind  of  evidence  is  required 
 in  addition,  to  establish  the  common  descent  of  lan- 
 guages standing  on  the  same  morphological  stage. 
 This  may  require  some  further  illustration. 
 
 Chinese. 
 
 In  the  first  morphological  stage  every  word  can  be 
 called  a  root,  before  it  is  used  as  part  of  a  sentence. 
 This  stage  is  best  represented  by  Chinese,  and  to  a 
 certain  extent  by  ancient  Egyptian.  There  is  no 
 formal  distinction  in  ancient  Chinese  between  a  noun, 
 a  verb,  an  adjective,  an  adverb,  and  a  preposition.  The 
 same  root,  according  to  its  position  in  a  sentence,  may 
 be  employed  to  convey  the  meaning  of  great,  greatness, 
 greatly,  to  grow,  and  to  be  great.     All  depends  on 
 
 Y 
 
322  LECTURE   XII. 
 
 position,  not  on  grammatical  terminations.  Thus 
 ngb  td  ni  means  'I  beat  thee,'  and  ni  td  ago  would 
 mean  '  thou  beatest  me.'  Ngo  gin  means  ;  a  bad  man  ; ' 
 gin  ngtf would  mean  'the  man  is  bad.' 
 
 When  we  say  in  Latin  baculo,  with  a  stick,  we  should 
 have  to  say  in  Chinese  y  6dng\  Here  y  might  be 
 taken  for  a  mere  preposition,  like  the  English  with. 
 But  in  Chinese  this  y  is  a  root  ;  it  is  the  same  word 
 which,  if  used  as  a  verb,  would  mean  '  to  employ.' 
 Therefore  in  Chinese  y  6dng  means  literally  '  employ 
 stick.'  Or  again,  where  we  say  in  English  at  home, 
 or  in  Latin  do  mi,  the  Chinese  say  ud-li,  uti  meaning 
 house,  and  li  originally  inside2.  The  name  for  day  in 
 modern  Chinese  is  gi-tse,  which  meant  originally 
 son  of  the  sun3,  or,  connected  with  the  sun. 
 
 As  long  as  every  word,  or  part  of  a  word,  is  felt  to 
 express  its  own  radical  meaning,  a  language  belongs  to 
 the  first  or  radical  stage.  As  soon  as  such  words  as 
 tse  in  gi-tse,  day,  li  in  ud-li,  at  home,  or  y  in  y-l'dng, 
 with  the  stick,  lose  their  etymological  meaning  and 
 become  mere  signs  of  derivation  or  of  case,  language 
 enters  into  the  second  or  terminational  stage.  And 
 this  transition  from  one  class  into  another  does  not, 
 as  Professor  Hunfalvy  supposes,  vitiate  our  division. 
 On  the  contrary,  it  confirms  it  from  an  historical 
 point  of  view. 
 
 In  some  respects  the  ancient  language  of  Egypt,  as 
 revealed  to  us  in  the  earliest  hieroglyphic  inscriptions, 
 
 1  Endlicher,  Chinesische  Grammatik,  s.  223.  2  Ibid,,  s.  339. 
 
 3  In  this  word  tse  (tseu)  does  not  signify  son  ;  it  is  an  addition  of 
 frequent  occurrence  after  nouns,  adjectives,  and  verbs.  Thus,  lao, 
 old,  +  tseu  is  father ;  net,  the  interior,  +  tseu  is  wife ;  hiayig,  scent, 
 +  tseu  is  clove  ;  hoa,  to  beg,  +  tseu,  a  mendicant ;  hi,  to  act,  +  tseu, 
 an  actor. — Stanislas  Julien. 
 
PRINCIPLES   OF   CLASSIFICATION.  323 
 
 may  be  classed  with  Chinese.  But  the  points  of 
 similarity  are  chiefly  negative.  They  arise  from  the 
 absence  of  grammatical  differentiation  and  articula- 
 tion, and  from  the  possibility  in  consequence  of  the 
 same  word  or  root  being  used  as  a  substantive,  adjec- 
 tive, verb,  or  adverb.  But  there  is  no  trace  of  any 
 material  relationship  between  the  two  languages. 
 
 Chinese  stands  by  itself  as  a  language  which  has 
 changed  very  little  since  we  know  it  in  its  most 
 ancient  literary  records.  Some  scholars  maintain 
 that  even  in  its  earliest  stage  it  shows  signs  of  previous 
 phonetic  corruption.  This  may  be  so,  and  it  seems 
 confirmed  by  the  evidence  of  local  dialects.  But  we 
 can  hardly  imagine  that  its  grammatical  simplicity,  or 
 rather  its  freedom  from  all  grammar,  in  our  sense  of 
 the  word,  could  be  due,  as  in  the  case  of  English,  to  a 
 long-continued  process  of  elimination  of  useless  ele- 
 ments. Here  we  must  wait  for  the  results  of  further 
 researches.  The  age  claimed  for  the  ancient  Chinese 
 literature  seems  to  me  as  yet  unsupported  by  any 
 such  evidence  as  would  carry  conviction  to  a  student 
 of  Greek,  Latin,  or  Sanskrit  literature.  Even  if  we 
 admit  that  much  of  the  ancient  literature  which  was 
 systematically  destroyed  by  the  Emperor  of  Khin, 
 B.C.  213,  may  have  been  recovered  from  oral  tradition 
 and  scattered  MSS.,  we  cannot  claim  for  the  works  of 
 Confucius  and  Lao-^ze  an  earlier  date  than  that  of 
 their  compilers.  They  may  contain  much  older 
 materials,  but  they  give  them  to  us  as  understood  in 
 the  sixth  century  B.C.,  and  they  too  may  not  altogether 
 have  escaped  the  effects  of  the  burning  of  books  under 
 the  Emperor  of  Khm. 
 
 Y  2 
 
324  LECTURE   XII. 
 
 Ural-Altaic  Languages. 
 
 West  of  China  there  stretches  a  cluster  of  languages 
 which  are  on  the  point  of  leaving  or  have  left  the 
 isolating  stage,  which  show  the  development  of  agglu- 
 tination in  high  perfection,  and  in  some  instances  rise 
 to  the  level  of  inflectional  grammar.  They  are  called 
 Ural-Altaic  or  Ugro-Tataric.  In  one  of  my  earliest 
 essays,  'A  Letter  on  the  Turanian  Languages,'  1854,  I 
 proposed  to  comprehend  these  languages  under  the 
 name  of  Turanian.  I  went  even  further,  and  distin- 
 guished them  as  Forth-Turanian,  in  opposition  to 
 what  in  my  youth  I  ventured  to  call  the  South-Tura- 
 nian languages,  namely  the  Tamulic,  Taic,  Gangetic, 
 Lohitic,  and  Malaic.  During  the  last  thirty  years, 
 however,  the  principles  of  the  Science  of  Language 
 have  been  worked  out  with  so  much  greater  exact- 
 ness, and  the  study  of  some  of  these  languages  has 
 made  such  rapid  progress,  that  I  should  not  venture 
 at  present  to  suggest  such  wide  generalisations,  at  all 
 events  so  far  as  the  Tamulic,  Taic,  Gangetic,  Lohitic, 
 and  Malaic  languages  are  concerned. 
 
 It  is  different,  however,  with  the  languages  I  com- 
 prehended as  North-Turanian.  They  share  not  only 
 common  morphological  features,  but  they  are  held 
 together  by  a  real  genealogical  relationship,  though 
 not  a  relationship  so  close  as  that  which  holds  the 
 Aryan  or  Semitic  languages  together. 
 
 Rask's  and  Frichard's  Classification. 
 
 Though  I  am  responsible  for  the  name  Turanian, 
 and  for  the  first  attempt  at  a  classification  of  the 
 Turanian  languages  in  the  widest  sense,  similar  at- 
 tempts to   comprehend    the   languages   of   Asia  and 
 
PRINCIPLES    OF   CLASSIFICATION.  325 
 
 Europe,  which  are  not  either  Aryan  or  Semitic,  under 
 a  common  name  had  been  made  long  ago  by  Rask,  by 
 Pilchard  and  others.  Rask  admitted  three  families, 
 the  Thracian  (Aryan),  the  Semitic,  and  the  Scythian, 
 the  latter  comprising  most  of  what  I  call  the  Turanian 
 languages.  During  his  travels  in  India,  Rask,  in  a 
 letter  dated  30th  July,  1821,  claimed  for  the  first  time 
 the  Dra vidian  languages  also,  Tamil,  Telugu,  etc.,  as 
 decidedly  Scythian  l. 
 
 The  name  Allophylian,  proposed  by  Pri chard,  is  in 
 some  respects  better  than  Turanian. 
 
 Rask's  Scythian  and  Prichard's  Allophylian  race 
 was  supposed  to  have  occupied  Europe  and  Asia 
 before  the  advent  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  races,  a 
 theory  which  has  lately  been  revived  by  Westergaard, 
 Norris,  Lenormant,  and  Oppert,  who  hold  that  a 
 Turanian  civilisation  preceded  likewise  the  Semitic 
 civilisation  of  Babylon  and  Nineveh,  that  the  cunei- 
 form letters  were  invented  by  that  Turanian  race,  and 
 that  remnants  of  its  literature  have  been  preserved  in 
 the  second  class  of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions,  called 
 sometimes  Scythian,  sometimes  Median,  and  possibly 
 in  that  large  class  of  inscriptions  now  called  Akkadian 
 or  Sumerian 2. 
 
 Whatever   may  be    thought   of  these  far-reaching 
 
 1  Professor  De  Lagarde  has  stated  that  F.  Ruckert  lectured  at 
 Berlin  in  1843  on  the  relationship  of  the  Providian  and  Turanian 
 languages,  and  that  I  received  the  first  impulse  from  him.  It  may 
 be  so,  though  I  am  not  aware  of  it.  Anyhow,  the  first  impulse 
 came  from  Rask;  Samlede  Afhandlinger  af  I,'.  K.  Rask,  Kobenhavn, 
 1836,  pp.  323  seq. 
 
 2  Tho  affinity  of  Akkadian  and  Sumerian  with  the  Finno-Ugric 
 languages  lias  been  disproved  by  Donner.  Their  affinity  with  the 
 Altaic  Languages  is  maintained  by  Hommel, '  Die  Sumero-Akkaden, 
 •  •in  altaisches  Volk,'  in  Correspondez-Blatt  der  deutschen  Ges.  fur  Antkro- 
 pologie,  xv.    Jahrg.  No.  8,  1884.  p.  63. 
 
326  LECTURE   XII. 
 
 theories,  no  one,  I  believe,  doubts  any  longer  a  close 
 relationship  between  Mongolia  and  Turkic,  a  wider 
 relationship  between  these  two  and  Tungusic,  and  a 
 still  wider  one  between  these  three  and  Finnic  and 
 Samoyedic.  Hence  the  Mongolic,  Turkic,  and  Tun- 
 gusic languages  have  been  comprehended  under  the 
 name  of  Altaic,  the  Finnic  languages  are  called  Ugric 
 (including  Hungarian),  while  Samoyedic  forms,  ac- 
 cording to  some,  a  more  independent  nucleus.  All 
 five  groups  together  constitute  what  is  called  the 
 Ugro-Altaic  family. 
 
 Vocalic  Harmony. 
 
 There  is  one  peculiarity  common  to  many  of  the 
 Ugro-Altaic  languages  which  deserves  a  short  notice, 
 the  law  of  Vocalic  Harmony.  According  to  this  law 
 the  vowels  of  every  word  must  be  changed  and  modu- 
 lated so  as  to  harmonise  with  the  key-note  struck  by 
 its  chief  vowel.  This  law  pervades  the  Tungusic, 
 Mongolic,  Turkic,  Samoyedic,  and  Finnic  classes  ;  and 
 even  in  dialects  where  it  is  disappearing,  it  has  often 
 left  traces  of  its  former  existence  behind.  The  same 
 law  has  been  traced  in  the  Tamulic  languages  also, 
 particularly  in  Telugu,  and  in  these  languages  it  is  not 
 only  the  radical  vowel  that  determines  the  vowels  of 
 the  suffixes,  but  the  vowel  of  a  suffix  also  may  react 
 on  the  radical  vowel 1.  The  vowels  in  Turkish,  for 
 instance,  are  divided  into  two  classes,  sharp  said  flat. 
 If  a  verb  contains  a  sharp  vowel  in  its  radical  portion, 
 the  vowels  of  the  terminations  are  all  sharp,  while  the 
 same  terminations,  if  following  a  root  with  a  flat 
 vowel,  modulate  their  vowels  into  a  flat  key.     Thus 
 
 1  Cf.  Caldwell,  Dravidian  Grammar,  second  eel.,  p.  7b. 
 
PRINCIPLES    OF    CLASSIFICATION.  327 
 
 we  have  sev-mek,  to  love,  but  bak-mak,  to  regard, 
 mek  or  male  being  the  termination  of  the  infinitive. 
 Thus  we  say  ev-ler,  the  houses,  but  at-lar,  the  horses, 
 lev  or  lar  being  the  termination  of  the  plural. 
 
 No  Aryan  or  Semitic  language  has  preserved  a 
 similar  freedom  in  the  harmonic  arrangement  of  its 
 
 o 
 
 vowels,  while  traces  of  it  have  been  found  among  the 
 most  distant  members  of  the  Turanian  family,  as  in 
 Hungarian,  Mongolian,  Turkish,  the  Yakut,  spoken  in 
 the  north  of  Siberia,  in  Telugu,  Tulu1,  and  in  dialects 
 spoken  on  the  eastern  frontier  of  India. 
 
 '  '  In  Tulu  final  short  u  is  left  unchanged  only  after  words  con- 
 taining labial  vowels  [bududu,  having  left)  ;  it  is  changed  into  >"> 
 after  all  other  vowels  jpandudii,  having  said).' — Dr.  Gundert. 
 
LECTURE  XIII. 
 
 The  Ural-Altaic  Family. 
 
 W 
 
 E  now  proceed  to  examine  the  principal  lan- 
 guages belonging  to  the  Ural-Altaic  family. 
 
 The  Samoyedic. 
 
 The  tribes  speaking  Samoyedic  dialects  are  spread 
 along  the  Yenisei  and  Ob  rivers,  and  were  pushed 
 more  and  more  North  by  their  Mongolic  successors. 
 They  have  now  dwindled  down  to  about  16,000  souls. 
 Five  dialects,  however,  have  been  distinguished  in 
 their  language  by  Castren,  the  Yurakian,  Tawgyan, 
 Yeniseian,  Osty'ako-Samoyede,  and  Kamassinian,  with 
 several  local  varieties. 
 
 The  vocalic  harmony  is  most  carefully  preserved 
 in  the  Kamassinian  dialect,  but  seems  formerly  to 
 have  existed  in  all.  The  Samoyedic  has  no  gender  of 
 nouns,  but  three  numbers  singular,  dual,  and  plural, 
 and  eight  cases.  The  verb  has  two  tenses,  an  Aorist 
 (present  and  future)  and  a  Preterite.  Eesides  the 
 indicative,  there  is  a  subjunctive  and  an  imperative. 
 
 Altaic  Languages. 
 
 This  name  comprehends  the  Tungusic,  Mongolic, 
 and  Turkic  languages.  Some  of  the  Tungusic  and 
 Mongolic  dialects  represent  the  lowest  phase  of  agglu- 
 tination, which  in  some  cases  is  as  yet  no  more  than 
 juxtaposition,    while    in    Turkish    agglutination    has 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT  AEYAN  AND  NOT  SEMITIC.   329 
 
 really  entered  into  the  inflectional  phase.    The  vocalic 
 harmony  prevails  throughout. 
 
 Tungusic  Class. 
 
 The  Tungudc  branch  extends  from  China  north- 
 ward to  Siberia  and  westward  to  113°,  where  the 
 river  Tunguska  partly  marks  its  frontier.  The  Tun- 
 gusic  tribes  in  Eastern  Siberia  are  under  Russian 
 sway.  They  consist  of  about  70,000  souls  ;  some  are 
 called  Tchapogires,  some  Orotongs.  Other  Tungusic 
 tribes  belong  to  the  Chinese  empire,  and  are  known 
 by  the  name  of  MandsJm,  a  name  taken  after  they 
 had  conquered  China  in  1644,  and  founded  the  present 
 imperial  dynasty.  Their  country  is  called  Mand- 
 shuria. 
 
 Mongolic   Class. 
 
 The  original  seats  of  the  people  who  speak  Mon- 
 golic dialects  lie  near  the  Lake  Baikal  and  in  the 
 eastern  parts  of  Siberia,  where  we  find  them  as 
 early  as  the  ninth  century  after  Christ.  They  were 
 divided  into  three  classes,  the  Mongols  proper,  the 
 Bur  Hits,  and  the  Olots  or  Kalmnks.  Chingis-Khan 
 (1227)  united  them  into  a  nation  and  founded  the 
 Mongolian  empire,  which  included,  however,  not 
 only  Mongolic,  but  likewise  Tungusic  and  Turkic 
 (commonly,  though  wrongly,  called  Tataric)  tribes. 
 
 The  name  of  Tatar  soon  became  the  terror  of  Asia 
 and  Europe,  and,  changed  into  Tartar,  as  if  derived 
 from  Tartarus,  it  was  applied  promiscuously  to  all 
 the  nomadic  warriors  whom  Asia  then  poured  forth 
 over  Europe.  Originally  Tatar  was  a  name  of  the 
 Mongolic  races,  but  through  their  political  ascendancy 
 in  Asia  after  Chingis-Khan,  it  became  usual  to  call 
 all  the  tribes  which  were  under  Mongolian  sway  by 
 
330  LECTURE   XI EI. 
 
 the  name  of  Tatar.  In  linguistic  works  Tataric  is 
 now  used  in  two  several  senses.  Following  the 
 example  of  writers  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Tataric,  like 
 Scythian  in  Greek,  has  been  fixed  upon  as  the  general 
 term  comprising  all  languages  spoken  by  the  nomadic 
 tribes  of  Asia.  Secondly,  Tataric,  by  a  strange  freak, 
 has  become  the  name  of  that  class  of  languages  of 
 which  the  Turkish  is  the  most  prominent  member. 
 While  the  Mongolic  class — that  which  in  fact  has  the 
 greatest  claims  to  the  name  of  Tataric — is  never  so 
 called,  it  has  become  an  almost  universal  custom  to 
 apply  this  name  to  the  third  or  Turkic  branch  of  the 
 Ural-Altaic  division ;  and  the  races  belonging  to  this 
 branch  have  in  many  instances  themselves  adopted 
 the  name. 
 
 The  conquests  of  the  Mongols,  or  the  descendants 
 of  Chingis-Khan,  were  not  confined,  however,  to  these 
 Turkish  tribes.  They  conquered  China  in  the  East, 
 where  they  founded  the  Mongolic  dynasty  of  Yuan, 
 and  in  the  West,  after  subduing  the  Khalifs  of 
 Bagdad  and  the  Sultans  of  Iconium,  they  conquered 
 Moscow,  and  devastated  the  greater  part  of  Russia. 
 In  1240  they  invaded  Poland,  in  1241  Silesia.  Here 
 they  recoiled  before  the  united  armies  of  Germany, 
 Poland,  and  Silesia.  They  retired  into  Moravia,  and, 
 having  exhausted  that  country,  occupied  Hungary. 
 
 At  that  time  they  had  to  choose  a  new  Khan, 
 which  could  only  be  done  at  Karakorum,  the  old 
 capital  of  their  empire.  Thither  they  withdrew  to 
 elect  an  emperor  to  govern  an  empire  which  then 
 extended  from  China  to  Poland,  from  India  to  Siberia. 
 But  a  realm  of  such  vast  proportions  could  not  be 
 long    held    together,    and    towards    the    end    of  the 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT    ARYAN   AND    NOT   SEMITIC.       331 
 
 thirteenth  century  it  broke  up  into  several  independent 
 states,  all  under  Mongolian  princes,  but  no  longer 
 under  one  Khan  of  Khans.  Thus  new  independent 
 Mongolic  empires  arose  in  China,  Turkestan,  Siberia, 
 Southern  Russia,  and  Persia.  In  1360  the  Mongolian 
 dynasty  was  driven  out  of  China  ;  in  the  fifteenth 
 century  they  lost  their  hold  on  Russia.  In  Central 
 Asia  they  rallied  once  more  under  Timur  (1369), 
 whose  sway  was  again  acknowledged  from  Kara- 
 korum  to  Persia  and  Anatolia.  But,  in  1468,  this 
 empire  also  fell  by  its  own  weight,  and  for  want  of 
 powerful  rulers  like  Chingis-Khan  or  Timur.  In 
 Jagatai  alone — the  country  extending  from  the  Aral 
 Lake  to  the  Hindu-Kush  between  the  rivers  Oxus 
 and  Yaxartes  (Jihon  and  Sihon),  and  once  governed 
 by  Jagatai,  the  son  of  Chingis-Khan — the  Mongolian 
 dynasty  maintained  itself,  and  thence  it  was  that 
 Baber,  a  descendant  of  Timur,  conquered  India,  and 
 founded  there  a  Mongolian  dynasty,  surviving  up  to 
 our  own  times  in  the  Great  Moguls  of  Delhi.  Most 
 Mongolic  tribes  are  now  under  the  sway  of  the  nations 
 whom  they  once  had  conquered,  the  Tungusic  sove- 
 reigns of  China,  the  Russian  Czars,  and  the  Turkish 
 Sultans. 
 
 The  Mongolic  language,  although  spoken  (but  not 
 continuously)  from  China  as  far  as  the  Volga,  has 
 given  rise  to  but  few  dialects.  Next  to  the  Tungusic, 
 the  Mongolic  is  the  poorest  language  of  the  Ural- 
 Altaic  family,  and  the  scantiness  of  grammatical  ter- 
 minations accounts  for  the  fact  that,  as  a  language,  it 
 has  remained  very  much  unchanged.  There  is,  however, 
 a  distinction  between  the  language  as  spoken  by  the 
 Eastern,  Western,  and  Northern  tribes ;  and  incipient 
 
332  LECTUKE  XIII. 
 
 traces  of  grammatical  life  have  lately  been  discovered 
 by  Castren,  the  great  Swedish  traveller  and  Turanian 
 philologist,  in  the  spoken  dialect  of  the  Buriats.  In 
 it  the  persons  of  the  verb  are  distinguished  by  affixes, 
 while,  according  to  the  rules  of  Mongolic  grammar, 
 no  other  dialect  distinguishes  in  the  verb  between 
 amo,  amas,  ama£. 
 
 Turkic  Class. 
 
 Much  more  important  are  the  Turkic  languages, 
 most  prominent  among  which  is  the  Turkish  itself,  or 
 the  Osmanli  of  Constantinople.  The  different  Turkic 
 dialects,  of  which  the  Osmanli  is  one,  occupy  one  of 
 the  largest  linguistic  areas,  extending  from  the  Lena 
 and  the  Polar  Sea  down  to  the  Adriatic. 
 
 Turkish  Grammar. 
 
 It  is  a  real  pleasure  to  read  a  Turkish  grammar, 
 even  though  one  may  have  no  wish  to  acquire  it 
 practically.  The  ingenious  manner  in  which  the 
 numerous  grammatical  forms  are  brought  out,  the 
 regularity  which  pervades  the  system  of  declension 
 and  conjugation,  the  transparency  and  intelligibility 
 of  the  whole  structure,  must  strike  all  who  have  a 
 sense  for  that  wonderful  power  of  the  human  mind 
 which  is  displayed  in  language.  Given  so  small  a 
 number  of  graphic  and  demonstrative  roots  as  would 
 hardly  suffice  to  express  the  commonest  wants  of 
 human  beings,  to  produce  an  instrument  that  shall 
 render  the  faintest  shades  of  feeling  and  thought ; 
 given  a  vague  infinitive  or  a  stern  imperative,  to 
 derive  from  it  such  moods  as  an  optative  or  subjunc- 
 tive, and  tenses  such  as  an  aorist  or  paulo-post  future  ; 
 given  incoherent  utterances,  to  arrange  them  into  a 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT    ARYAN    AND    NOT    SEMITIC.       333 
 
 system  where  all  is  uniform  and  regular,  all  combined 
 and  harmonious, — such  is  the  work  of  the  human 
 mind  which  we  see  realised  in  language.  But  in  most 
 languages  nothing  of  this  early  process  remains  visible. 
 They  stand  before  us  like  solid  rocks,  and  the  micro- 
 scope of  the  philologist  alone  can  reveal  the  remains 
 of  organic  life  with  which  they  are  built  up. 
 
 In  the  grammar  of  the  Turkic  languages,  on  the 
 contrary,  we  have  before  us  a  language  of  perfectly 
 transparent  structure,  and  a  grammar  the  inner  work- 
 ings of  which  we  can  study,  as  if  watching  the 
 building  of  cells  in  a  crystal  beehive.  An  eminent 
 Orientalist  remarked,  '  We  might  imagine  Turkish  to 
 be  the  result  of  the  deliberations  of  some  eminent 
 society  of  learned  men;'  but  no  such  society  could 
 have  devised  what  the  mind  of  man  produced,  left  to 
 itself  in  the  steppes  of  Tartary,  and  guided  only  by  its 
 innate  laws,  or  by  an  instinctive  power  as  wonderful 
 as  any  within  the  realm  of  nature. 
 
 Finno-Ugric  Class. 
 
 We  now  proceed  to  the  Finnic  class,  which,  accord- 
 ing to  Castren,  is  divided  into  four  branches. 
 
 (1)  The  Ugric,  comprising  Ostjakian,  Vogulian,  and 
 Hungarian. 
 
 (2)  The  Bulgaria  13  comprising  Tcheremissian  and 
 Mordvinian. 
 
 1  The  name  Bulgaric  is  not  borrowed  from  Bulgaria,  on  the 
 Danube  ;  Bulgaria,  on  the  contrary,  received  its  name  (replacing 
 Moesia)  from  Bulgaric  armies  by  whom  it  was  conquered  in  the 
 seventh  century.  Bulgarian  tribes  marched  from  the  Volga  to  the 
 Don,  and  after  remaining  for  a  time  under  the  sovereignty  of  the 
 Avars  on  the  Don  and  Dnieper,  they  advanced  to  the  Danube  in 
 635,  and  founded  there  the  Bulgarian  kingdom.  This  has  retained 
 its  name  to  the  present  day,  though  the  original  Bulgarians  have 
 long  been  absorbed  and  replaced  by  Slavonic  inhabitants,  and  both 
 brought  under  Turkish  sway  since  1302. 
 
334  LECTURE    XIII. 
 
 (3)  The  Permic,  comprising  Permian,  Syrjanian, 
 Votjakian. 
 
 (4)  The  Finnic,  comprising  Finnish,  Estonian.  Lap- 
 ponian,  Karelian,  Livonian,  Wotian. 
 
 Pins. 
 
 For  our  own  purposes  the  Fins  and  Estonians  are 
 the  most  interesting  among  the  Finno-Ugric  tribes. 
 The  Fins  call  themselves  Suomalainen,  i.  e.  in- 
 habitants of  fens.  They  are  settled  in  the  province  of 
 Finland  (formerly  belonging  to  Sweden,  but  since 
 1809  annexed  to  Russia),  and  in  parts  of  the  govern- 
 ments of  Archangel  and  Olonetz.  Their  literature 
 and,  above  all,  their  popular  poetry  bear  witness  to  a 
 high  intellectual  development  in  times  which  we  may 
 call  almost  mythical,  and  in  places  more  favourable 
 to  the  glow  of  poetical  feelings  than  their  present 
 abode,  the  last  refuge  Europe  could  afford  them.  The 
 epic  songs  still  live  among  the  poorest,  recorded  by 
 oral  tradition  alone,  and  preserving  all  the  features  of 
 a  perfect  metre  and  of  a  more  ancient  language.  A 
 national  feeling  has  lately  arisen  amongst  the  Fins, 
 despite  of  Russian  supremacy;  and  the  labours  of 
 Sjogren,  Lonnrot,  Castren,  Kellgren,  Donner  and  others, 
 receiving  hence  a  powerful  impulse,  have  produced 
 results  truly  surprising.  From  the  mouths  of  the 
 aged  an  epic  poem  has  been  collected  equalling  the 
 Iliad  in  length  and  completeness — nay,  if  we  can 
 forget  for  a  moment  all  that  we  in  our  youth 
 learned  to  call  beautiful,  not  less  beautiful.  A  Fin  is 
 not  a  Greek,  and  Wainamoi'nen  was  not  a  Homeric 
 rhapsodos.  But  if  the  poet  may  take  his  colours 
 from  that  nature  by  which  he  is  surrounded,  if  he  may 
 depict  the  men  with   whom   he  lives,  the  Kalevala 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT  ARYAN  AND  NOT  SEMITIC.   335 
 
 possesses  merits  not  dissimilar  from  those  of  the  Iliad, 
 and  will  claim  its  place  as  the  fifth  national  epic  of 
 the  world,  side  by  side  with  the  Ionian  songs,  with 
 the  MahdbMrata, the  Shdhmmeh,  and  the  Mbdunge. 
 If  we  want  to  study  the  circumstances  under  which 
 short    ballads    may  grow  up   and   become    amalga- 
 mated after  a  time  into  a  real  epic  poem,  nothing  can 
 be  more  instructive  than  the  history  of  the  collection 
 of  the  Kalevala.     We  have  here  facts  before  us,  not 
 mere  surmises,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Homeric  poems 
 and  the  Nibelunge.    We  can  still  see  how  some  poems 
 were  lost,  others  were  modified  ;  how  certain  heroes 
 and  episodes  became  popular,  and  attracted  and  ab- 
 sorbed what  had  been  originally  told  of  other  heroes 
 and  other  episodes.    Lonnrot  could  watch  the  effect  of 
 a  good  and  of  a  bad  memory  among  the  people  who 
 repeated  the  songs  to  him,  and  he  makes  no  secret  of 
 having  himself  used  the   same   freedom  in  the  final 
 arrangement  of  these  poems  which  the  people  used 
 from  whom  he  learnt  them.     This  early  literary  culti- 
 vation has  not  been  without  a  powerful  influence  on 
 the    language.     It  has  imparted  permanence   to   its 
 forms  and  a  traditional  character  to  its  words,  so  that 
 at   first   sight  we  might  almost   doubt  whether  the 
 grammar  of  this  language  had  not  left  the  agglutina- 
 tive stage  altogether.     The  agglutinative  type,  how- 
 ever, yet  remains,  and  its  grammar  shows  a  luxuriance 
 of  grammatical  combination  second  only  to  Turkish 
 and  Hungarian.     Like  Turkish  it  observes  the  ■  har- 
 mony of  vowels,'   a  feature   which   lends   a  peculiar 
 charm  to  its  poetry. 
 
 The  yield  of  this  popular  poetry  for  mythological 
 and  religious  researches  is  very  considerable. 
 
336  LECTURE    XIII. 
 
 The  Estonians. 
 
 The  Ests  or  Estonians,  neighbours  of  the  Fins, 
 and  speaking  a  language  closely  allied  to  the  Finnish, 
 possess  likewise  large  fragments  of  ancient  national 
 poetry.  Dr.  Kreutzwald  has  been  able  to  put  together 
 a  kind  of  epic  poem,  called  Kalewipoeg,  the  Son  of 
 Kalew,  not  so  grand  and  perfect  as  the  Kalevala,  yet 
 interesting  as  a  parallel. 
 
 The  languages  which  I  formerly  comprehended  under 
 the  general  name  of  South-Turanian,  should,  for  the 
 present  at  least,  be  treated  as  independent  branches  of 
 speech. 
 
 Tamulic  Languages. 
 
 There  can  be  no  doubt  about  the  Tamulic  or  Dra vi- 
 dian languages  constituting  a  well-defined  family,  held 
 together  by  strongly  marked  grammatical  features. 
 Tamil,  Telugu,  Canarese,  and  Malayalam  occupy 
 nearly  the  whole  of  the  Indian  peninsula.  Some 
 scattered  dialects,  still  spoken  north  of  the  Dekhan, 
 such  as  those  of  the  Gonds,  Uraon-Kols,  Rdjmahals, 
 and  Brahuis,  show  that  the  race  speaking  Tamulic 
 languages  occupied  formerly  more  northern  seats,  and 
 was  driven  from  the  North  to  the  South  by  the  Aryan 
 colonists  of  the  country. 
 
 Munda  Languages. 
 
 There  is  another  cluster  of  languages,  the  Munda  or 
 Kol,  which  were  formerly  classed  with  the  Tamulic, 
 but  which,  as  I  was  the  first  to  prove  in  my  Letter  on 
 the  Turanian  Languages1,  constitute  by  themselves 
 an  independent  family  of  speech.  The  dialects  of  the 
 Santhals,  Kols,  Hos,  BJmmij  belong   to   this   class. 
 
 1  Letter  to  Chevalier  Bunsen,  '  On  the  Turanian  Languages,'  in 
 Bunsen's  Christianity  and  Mankind,  vol.  iii.  p.  263.    1854. 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT   ARYAN   AND   NOT   SEMITIC.       337 
 
 These  dialects,  which   I   had  called   Munda,   Sir   G. 
 Campbell  proposed  to  call  Kolarian. 
 
 Taic  Languages. 
 
 Iii  the  same  Letter  on  the  Turanian  Languages,  I 
 comprehended  under  the  name  of  Taic,  the  Siamese, 
 and  its  congeners,  such  as  Laos,  Shan  (Tenasserim), 
 Ahom,  Khamti,  and  Kassia. 
 
 Gangetic  Languages. 
 
 Under  Gangetic  I  classed  Tibetan,  with  such  related 
 dialects  as  Lepclia,  Murnri,  Magar,  Gurung,  etc. 
 
 Lohitic  Languages. 
 
 Under  Lohitic  I  arranged  Burmese  with  Boclo,  Garo, 
 Xdcja,  Singjyho,  and  similar  dialects. 
 
 The  Lohitic  and  Gangetic  languages  together  are 
 sometimes  spoken  of  as  Bhotiya. 
 
 Languages  of  Farther  India. 
 
 There  are  still  the  languages  of  what  used  to  be 
 called  Farther  India,  but  these  languages,  now  spoken 
 by  Anamites,  Peguans,  Cambodjans,  and  others,  have 
 been  so  little  explored  in  the  spirit  of  comparative 
 philology  that  it  must  suffice  for  the  present  to  men- 
 tion their  names.  For  our  own  purposes,  the  study  of 
 Natural  Religion,  they  have  yielded  as  yet  very  little. 
 They  have  long  been  under  the  influence  of  either 
 China,  Tibet,  or  India,  and  have  hardly  attracted  the 
 attention  of  the  collector  of  sacred  folk-lore. 
 
 Languages  of  the  Caucasus. 
 
 The  same  remark  applies  to  the  languages  spoken 
 in  the  Caucasus,  such  as  the  Georgian,  Lazian,  Suanian, 
 
 z 
 
338      .  LECTUKE   XIII. 
 
 Mingrelian,  Abchasian,  Circassian,  Thush,  etc.  They 
 have  been  studied,  but  they  have  not  yet  been 
 classified  with  any  degree  of  success,  and  they  yield 
 us  hardly  any  information  on  the  natural  growth  of 
 religious  ideas. 
 
 Language  and  Religion. 
 
 We  have  thus  surveyed  the  principal  languages 
 of  Europe  and  Asia,  more  particularly  those  which 
 have  supplied  the  living  soil  for  the  growth  of 
 mythology  and  religion.  I  have  intentionally  con- 
 fined my  remarks  to  languages,  without  saying  much 
 of  those  who  spoke  them. 
 
 Blood  and  hair  and  bones  can  teach  us  nothing  or 
 very  little  about  religion,  and  the  more  carefully  the 
 two  sciences  of  ethnology  and  philology  are  kept 
 apart,  the  better,  I  believe,  it  will  be  for  both.  We 
 know,  from  history,  that  races  may  give  up  their  own 
 language  and  adopt  that  of  their  conquerors,  or,  in 
 some  cases,  of  the  conquered.  Much  more  is  this  the 
 case  with  religion.  Our  interest  therefore  is  with  re- 
 ligion, whoever  the  people  were  who  believed  in  it, 
 just  as  we  classify  languages  regardless  of  the  people 
 by  whom  they  were  spoken.  Buddhism,  for  instance, 
 •is  an  Aryan  religion,  and  its  origin  would  be  unin- 
 telligible on  any  but  an  Aryan  substratum  of  language 
 and  thought.  But  it  has  been  adopted  by  races  whose 
 languages  belong  to  a  totally  different  family,  and 
 whose  intellectual  peculiarities  have  completely 
 changed  the  original  character  of  Buddha's  teaching. 
 Who  could  understand  Buddhism  if  he  knew  it  in 
 its  Chinese,  Mongolian,  or  Japanese  form  only  ? 
 
 In  the  case  of  Christianity  we  have  a  Semitic  re- 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT   ARYAN   AND   NOT  SEMITIC.       339 
 
 ligion  which  has  become  Aryan  in  every  sense  of  the 
 word.  And  again,  I  ask,  who  could  understand  the 
 original  character  of  Christianity,  unless  he  knew  the 
 language  which  gave  rise  to  such  names  and  concepts 
 as  Elohim  and  Jehovah  and  Messiah,  unless  he  knew 
 its  antecedents  in  the  Old  Testament  1 
 
 It  may  happen  that  whole  nations,  most  interesting 
 to  us  in  their  ethnological  and  political  character,  are 
 of  no  account  whatever  in  the  study  of  religion. 
 Japan,  for  instance,  so  far  as  it  is  Buddhist,  can 
 teach  us  nothing  except  by  showing  us  how  a  re- 
 ligion, most  spiritual  in  its  origin,  may  become  formal 
 and  ceremonial  and  unmeaning,  if  transferred  to  an 
 uncongenial  soil.  Fortunately,  however,  something 
 of  the  native  religion  of  Japan  also  has  been  pre- 
 served to  us  in  the  Shintoism  of  the  past  and  of  the 
 present  day.  It  is  by  this  that  Japan  supplies  a  really 
 important  chapter  in  the  history  of  Natural  Keligion. 
 
 What  applies  to  Japan,  applies  likewise  to  such 
 countries  as  Tibet,  Burmah,  and  Siam,  all  of  which 
 have  adopted  the  religion  of  Buddha,  and  can  be  of 
 real  interest  to  us  by  the  remnants  of  their  ancient 
 popular  religion  only,  which  survive  here  and  there 
 in  superstitions,  customs,  and  legends. 
 
 Egyptian. 
 
 A  larger  harvest  awaits  the  student  of  religion  in 
 Egypt.  Here,  however,  both  ethnology  and  philology 
 offer  us  as  yet  but  little  help.  Whether  the  ancient 
 language  of  Egypt  shows  any  traces  of  real  relation- 
 ship with  Aryan  and  Semitic  speech,  is  a  question 
 which  has  been  asked  again  and  again,  but  has  never 
 been  satisfactorily  answered.     Similarities   with  Se- 
 
 z  2 
 
340  LECTURE   XIII. 
 
 mitic  grammar  there  are,  and  there  are  coincidences 
 between  Egyptian  and  Aryan  roots  which  are  some- 
 times startling.  Some  scholars  have  gone  so  far  as  to 
 recognise  in  the  language  of  Egypt  the  most  primitive 
 form  of  human  speech,  previous  even  to  its  differen- 
 tiation as  Aryan  and  Semitic.  That  Egypt  was  open 
 from  the  earliest  times  to  ethnic  influences  from  the 
 Semitic,  the  Aryan,  and  likewise  from  the  African 
 world,  cannot  be  denied.  But,  for  the  present,  we 
 must  be  careful  not  to  dogmatise  on  these  problems, 
 and  it  will  be  best  to  treat  the  Egyptian  religion,  for 
 the  study  of  which  we  possess  such  ample  materials, 
 as  an  independent  nucleus  of  religious  thought. 
 
 The  adjacent  languages  of  Northern  Africa  are  like- 
 wise as  yet  in  what  may  be  called  an  unclassified 
 state.  In  ancient  times  the  language  of  Carthage  and 
 other  Phenician  settlements  on  the  Northern  coast 
 was  Semitic.  But  what  are  called  the  Sub-Semitic 
 or  sometimes  the  Hamitic  languages,  the  Berber  or 
 Libyan  (Kabyle,  Shilhe,  Tuareg  or  Tamasheg),  and 
 some  of  the  aboriginal  dialects  of  Abyssinia  or  Ethi- 
 opia (the  Somali,  Galla,  Beja  or  Bihari,  Agau,  Dan- 
 kali,  etc.),  must  be  submitted  to  a  far  more  searching 
 analysis  before  they  can  claim  a  real  right  to  the 
 name  of  either  Hamitic  or  Sub- Semitic.  Fortunately 
 they  are  of  small  importance  to  us  in  our  investiga- 
 tions of  primitive  religious  concepts  and  names,  as 
 Mohammedanism  has  effaced  nearly  every  trace  of 
 religious  beliefs  which  preceded  it  in  those  regions. 
 
 Africa. 
 
 There  is  no  time,  and  there  is  no  necessity,  for  my 
 laying  before  you  the  as  yet  only   partially   disen- 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT   ARYAN   AND   NOT   SEMITIC.       341 
 
 tangled  network  of  languages  spread  over  the  rest  of 
 Africa.  For  our  own  purposes  it  will  be  sufficient  if 
 we  distinguish  between  those  linguistic  and  religious 
 groups  to  which  reference  will  have  to  be  made  in  the 
 course  of  our  studies. 
 
 The  Nubas  on  the  Upper  Nile,  who,  according  to 
 F.  Miiller,  constitute  with  the  Fulahs  a  separate  lin- 
 guistic class,  need  not  occupy  us  at  present,  because 
 here  also  little  is  known  of  their  ancient  religion 
 previous  to  their  conversion  to  Mohammedanism. 
 Lepsius,  in  his  '  Nubische  Grammatik,'  denies  the  in- 
 dependent character  of  the  language.  There  remain 
 therefore  : 
 
 1.  The  Hottentots  and  Bushmen  in  the  South.  The 
 best  judges  now  consider  these  two  races,  in  spite  of 
 striking  differences  in  language  and  religion,  as  ori- 
 ginally one. 
 
 2.  The  Bantu  races,  or  Kafirs,  who  extend  in  an 
 unbroken  line  on  the  East-coast  from  several  degrees 
 north  of  the  Equator  down  to  the  Hottentots,  with 
 whom  they  are  often  closely  united.  They  have 
 spread  from  East  to  West  across  the  whole  continent. 
 The  typical  form  of  their  language  is  so  pronounced 
 that  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  relationship  of 
 these  languages,  though  it  may  be  that  several  little 
 explored  dialects  are  at  present  treated  as  Bantu 
 which  further  analysis  will  have  to  adjudge  to  a 
 different  class.  Dr.  Bleek,  who  was  the  first  to  esta- 
 blish the  relationship  of  the  best-known  Bantu  lan- 
 guages on  a  truly  scientific  basis,  was  also  the  first  to 
 show  the  influence  which  such  languages  would  na- 
 turally exercise  on  the  religious  ideas  of  those  who 
 spoke  them.     Being  without  grammatical  gender,  in 
 
342  LECTURE  XII  r. 
 
 our  sense  of  the  word,  these  languages  do  not  lend 
 themselves  easily  to  the  personification  of  the  powers 
 of  nature.  Worship  of  ancestral  spirits  is  very  general 
 among  these  Bantu  tribes. 
 
 3.  The  Negro  races,  extending  from  the  Western 
 coast  of  Africa  towards  the  interior.  Here  much  re- 
 mains to  be  done,  and  we  must  hope  that  future 
 researches  will  lead  to  the  discovery  of  several  sub- 
 divisions of  what  are  now  called  Negro  languages. 
 Something,  however,  has  been  gained,  in  so  far  as  this 
 ill-defined  name  of  Negro  is  restricted  for  the  present 
 to  the  inhabitants  of  the  centre  of  Africa.  What  is 
 called  fetishism  was  first  observed  among  these  tribes, 
 though  it  never  constituted  the  original  or  the  ex- 
 clusive character  of  their  religion. 
 
 Lepsius  \  in  his  '  Nubische  Grammatik,'  tries  to  re- 
 duce the  population  of  Africa  to  three  types : — 
 
 1.  The  Northern  negroes  ; 
 
 2.  The  Southern  or  Bantu  negroes  ; 
 B.  The  Cape  negroes. 
 
 And  in  accordance  with  this  ethnological  system, 
 he  arranges  the  languages  also  into  three  zones : — 
 
 (1)  The  Southern,  south  of  the  Equator,  the 
 Bantu  dialects,  explored  chiefly  on  the  west  and  east 
 coasts,  but  probably  stretching  across  the  whole  con- 
 tinent, comprising  the  Herero,,  Pongue,  Fernando  Po, 
 Kafir  ('Osa  and  Zulu),  Tshuana  (Soto  and  Rolon), 
 Suahili,  etc. ;  (2)  the  Northern  zone,  between  the  Equa- 
 tor and  the  Sahara,  and  east  as  far  as  the  Nile,  com- 
 prising Efik,  Ibo,  Yoruba,  Ewe,  Akra  or  Ga,  Otyi,  Kru, 
 Vei  (Mande),  Temne,  Bullom,  Wolof,  Fula,  Sonrhai. 
 Kanuri,  Teda  (Tibu),  Logone,  Wandala,  Bagirmi,  Maba, 
 
 2  M.  M.,  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  p.  239. 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT  ARYAN  AND  NOT  SEMITIC.   343 
 
 Konjara,  Umale,  Dinka,  Shilluk,  Bongo,  Bari,  Oigob, 
 Nuba,  and  Barea  ;  (3)  the  Hamitic  zone,  including  the 
 extinct  Egyptian  and  Coptic,  the  Libyan  dialects, 
 such  as  Tuareg  (Kabyl  and  Amasheg),  Hausa,  the 
 Kushitic  or  Ethiopian  languages,  including  the  Beja 
 dialects,  the  Soho,  Falasha,  Agau,  Galla,  Dankali.  and 
 Somali.  The  Hottentot  and  Bushman  lanouaofes  are 
 referred  to  the  same  zone. 
 
 The  Hamitic  languages  comprised  in  the  third  zone, 
 the  Egyptian,  Libyan,  and  Kushitic,  are  considered  by 
 Lepsius  as  alien  to  Africa.  They  are  all  intruders 
 from  the  East,  though  reaching  Africa  at  different 
 times  and  by  different  roads.  The  true  aboriginal 
 nucleus  of  African  speech  is  contained  in  the  first 
 zone,  and  represented  by  that  class  of  languages 
 which,  on  account  of  their  strongly  marked  gram- 
 matical character,  has  been  called  the  Bantu  family. 
 Professor  Lepsius  attempts  to  show  that  the  languages 
 of  the  Northern  zone  are  modifications  of  the  same 
 type  which  is  represented  in  the  Southern  zone,  these 
 modifications  being  chiefly  due  to  contact  and  more 
 or  less  violent  friction  with  languages  belonging  to 
 the  Hamitic  zone,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  with  Se- 
 mitic languages  also. 
 
 America. 
 
 Imperfect  as  our  present  classification  of  the  native 
 languages,  and,  in  consequence,  of  the  native  religions 
 of  Africa  is,  still  we  have  advanced  so  far  that  no 
 scholar  would  speak  any  longer  of  African  languages, 
 and  no  theologian  of  African  religions. 
 
 The  same  applies  to  America.  The  division  and 
 the  mutual  relations  of  the  numerous  languages 
 spoken  on  that  continent  are  far  from  being  satis- 
 
344  LECTURE  xnr. 
 
 factorily  established.  Still,  no  one  speaks  any  longer 
 of  American  languages  in  general,  nor  would  any  one 
 venture  to  treat  the  various  religions  of  America  as 
 varieties  of  one  and  the  same  original  type.  Progress 
 has  been  slow,  still  there  has  been  progress  here  also. 
 We  can  distinguish  between  at  least  four  independent 
 centres  of  language  and  likewise  of  religion,  and 
 though  future  researches  may  help  us  to  subdivide 
 more  minutely,  they  will  hardly  tend  to  remove  the 
 landmarks  which  so  far  have  been  established. 
 
 These  four  centres  of  language  and  religion  are  : — 
 
 1.  The  Red-Indians  or  Red -skins  in  the  North. 
 They  will  for  the  present  have  to  be  treated  as 
 one  group,  though  not  only  in  their  language, 
 but  in  their  religious  ideas  and  social  customs 
 also,  different  tribes  exhibit  very  marked  differences. 
 Totemism,  which  has  often  been  represented  as  the 
 common  feature  of  their  religion,  was  originally  much 
 more  of  a  social  custom  than  a  religious  belief,  though, 
 like  many  social  customs,  it  acquired  in  time  some- 
 thing of  a  religious  sanction.  Their  religion,  if  we 
 are  allowed  to  generalise,  is  based  on  a  belief  in 
 divine  spirits,  often  in  a  Supreme  Spirit,  and  the 
 questions  of  the  creation  of  the  world  and  of  man 
 have  occupied  the  thoughts  of  many  of  these  so-called 
 savages. 
 
 2.  The  next  nucleus  of  an  independent  religion 
 existed  in  Mexico,  where,  if  we  may  trust  tradition, 
 two  immigrations  took  place  from  the  North,  bringing 
 with  them  new  elements  of  civilisation.  These  immi- 
 grants are  known  by  the  names  of  Tolteks  and  Azteks, 
 the  latter  driving  the  former  before  them  into  more 
 southern    latitudes.      Religion    and   ceremonial   had 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT    ARYAN    AND    NOT    SEMITIC.       345 
 
 reached  a  very  high  development  in  Mexico  at  the 
 time  of  its  discovery  and  devastation  by  the  Spani- 
 ards. Even  philosophical  theories  on  the  true  nature 
 of  the  gods  were  not  unknown  among  the  higher 
 classes. 
 
 3.  Central  America  seems  to  have  been  the  seat  of 
 an  independent  civilisation,  though  strongly  influenced 
 by  immigrations  from  the  North.  One  language,  the 
 Quiche,  has  been  more  carefully  studied,  and  an 
 ancient  book,  the  Popol  Vuh,  written  in  that  lan- 
 guage, has  been  published  in  the  original  and  trans- 
 lated. Some  scholars  have  claimed  for  it  a  place 
 among  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  world,  and  it  is  cer- 
 tainly a  rich  mine  for  studying  the  traditions  of  the 
 Mayas,  as  they  existed  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
 
 4.  Peru,  the  kingdom  of  the  Incas,  is  chiefly  dis- 
 tinguished by  its  solar  religion  and  solar  worship,  the 
 very  rulers  being  considered  as  children  of  the  sun. 
 Here  also  philosophical  opinions  seem  to  have  sprung 
 up  from  a  religious  soil,  and  the  reasoning  of  a  famous 
 Inca  has  often  been  quoted,  who  maintained  that  there 
 must  be  a  higher  power  than  their  father,  the  sun, 
 because  the  sun  was  not  free,  but  had  to  perform  its 
 appointed  course  from  day  to  day  and  from  year 
 to  year. 
 
 Besides  these  four  groups,  there  are  still  a  number 
 of  independent  tribes  of  whose  language  and  religion 
 we  know  something,  but  not  enough  to  enable  us  to 
 classify  them  either  by  themselves  or  with  other  tribes. 
 
 Such  are  the  Arctic  or  Hyperborean  tribes,  more 
 particularly  the  Eskimos  and  Greenlanders  in  the 
 extreme  North ;  the  Arowahes  and  the  once  famous 
 Caribes  in  the   north  of  South  America  and  in  the 
 
346  lecture  xirr. 
 
 islands  of  the  Antilles  ;  the  aboriginal  inhabitants 
 of  Brazil ;  the  Abipones,  so  well  described  by 
 Dobrizhofer  (1784)  ;  and  in  the  South,  the  Pata- 
 gonians  and  the  inhabitants  of  Tierra  del  Fuego. 
 
 Until  the  languages  of  these  people  have  been 
 carefully  analysed  by  real  scholars,  any  attempt  at 
 grouping  them  would  prove  simply  mischievous.  We 
 are  at  present  in  a  stage  where  our  duty  is  to  dis- 
 tinguish, not  to  confound.  Even  to  speak  of  the 
 inhabitants  of  Tierra  del  Fuego  as  one  race  has  pro- 
 duced, as  we  saw,  disastrous  results,  and  it  is  to  be 
 hoped  that  we  shall  hear  no  more  of  a  South 
 American  language  or  of  a  North  American  religion. 
 It  is  true  that  certain  legends  have  been  found  in 
 the  North  as  well  as  in  the  South  of  America,  which 
 seem  to  point  to  a  common  origin.  But  it  will  be 
 time  to  account  for  such  coincidences  after  the 
 legends  of  each  centre  have  been  studied  by  them- 
 selves, and  after  some  clearer  light  has  been  thrown 
 on  the  component  elements  of  the  population  of 
 the  whole  American  continent. 
 
 How,  under  present  circumstances,  scholars  could 
 have  been  bold  enough  to  trace  the  whole  American 
 race  to  immigrations  from  Asia  or  even  from  Europe, 
 is  difficult  to  understand.  The  physical  possibility, 
 no  doubt,  was  there,  whether  across  the  island  bridges 
 in  the  North,  or  by  sea  from  West  or  East.  We 
 heard  but  lately  how  a  large  vessel,  cast  off  by  its 
 crew,  drifted  safely  from  America  to  England  (the 
 Hebrides).  The  same  may  have  happened  on  either 
 coast  of  America.  But  any  attempts  to  recognise 
 in  the  inhabitants  of  America  descendants  of  Jews, 
 Phenicians,    Chinese,   or   Celts   are   for    the    present 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT   AHYAN    AND   NOT   SEMITIC.       347 
 
 simply  hopeless,  and   are    in    fact  outside   the    pale 
 of  real  science. 
 
 Oceanic  Languages. 
 
 The  languages  which  extend  from  Madagascar  on 
 the  East  coast  of  Africa  to  the  Sandwich  Islands, 
 West  of  America,  have  been  far  more  carefully 
 studied  than  those  of  America  and  Africa.  I  speak 
 of  languages,  not  of  races,  for  if  ethnological  classifi- 
 cation has  proved  a  failure  anywhere,  it  has  when 
 applied  to  the  mixture  of  blood  that  led  to  the 
 formation  of  such  races  as  Australians,  Papuans, 
 Malays,  Polynesians,  Melanesians,  Micronesians,  Ne- 
 gritos, Mincopies,  Orang-utans,  and  all  the  rest. 
 
 From  the  latest  work  on  this  family  of  languages, 
 by  Dr.  Codrington  ('  The  Melanesian  Languages,' 
 Oxford,  1885),  it  appears  that  we  must  admit  an 
 original,  though  very  distant,  relationship  between 
 the  Malay,  the  Polynesian,  Melanesian,  and  Micro- 
 nesian  languages,  but  that  in  their  later  development 
 it  is  possible  to  distinguish  between  the  Malay,  the 
 Polynesian,  and  the  Melanesian  (with  Micronesia  n) 
 as  independent  branches  of  a  common  stem.  The 
 dialects  of  Australia  stand  as  yet  apart,  as  too  little 
 known,  as  well  as  those  of  New  Guinea,  though 
 some  dialects,  like  the  Motu  of  New  Guinea,  are 
 clearly  Melanesian. 
 
 It  follows  from  this  division,  that  with  regard  to 
 religion  also  we  must  distinguish  between  a  Malay, 
 a  Polynesian,  a  Melanesian,  and  possibly  a  New 
 Guinea  (Papuan)  and  Australian  centre.  Our  in- 
 formation, however,  from  the  two  last,  is  very  im- 
 perfect. 
 
348  LECTURE   XIII. 
 
 Malay. 
 
 Owing  to  the  proximity  of  the  Malay  islands  to 
 India,  they  have  from  the  earliest  times  been  overrun 
 by  immigrants,  conquerors,  and  missionaries  from 
 the  Asiatic  Continent.  Their  ancient  religious 
 opinions  are  covered  up  and  hidden  under  super- 
 imposed strata  of  Hindu,  Buddhist,  Mohammedan,  and 
 Christian  faith,  and  what  there  is  of  native  growth 
 in  Java,  Borneo  and  elsewhere  represents  probably 
 the  mere  dregs  of  a  former  religion. 
 
 Polynesia. 
 
 The  Polynesian  languages,  on  the  contrary,  pre- 
 sent us  with  an  abundant  growth  both  of  religion 
 and  of  poetical  mythology.  These  Polynesian  tradi- 
 tions are  particularly  valuable  to  the  student  of  com- 
 parative mythology,  because  they  offer  striking  simi- 
 larities with  the  legends  of  Greeks,  Romans,  Teutons 
 and  others,  without  the  possibility  of  a  common 
 origin  or  of  a  later  historical  contact. 
 
 Melanesia. 
 
 The  Melanesians,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  do  not 
 differ  much  from  the  Polynesians  and  Micronesians 
 in  the  fundamental  outlines  of  their  religious  opinions, 
 but  they  are  not  so  rich  in  imaginative  legends. 
 Further  research,  however,  may  modify  this  opinion. 
 
 As  to  the  Australians  and  the  Papuas  of  New 
 Guinea,  very  little  has  been  ascertained  as  yet  of 
 their  religion,  except  what  is  embodied  in  their 
 ceremonial  observances  and  social  customs. 
 
 Classification  of  Languages,  why  necessary. 
 
 This   linguistic    and    religious    survey,  which    has 
 
LANGUAGES,  NOT  ARYAN  AND  NOT  SEMITIC.   349 
 
 taken  up  much  of  our  time,  will  nevertheless,  I  hope, 
 prove  a  saving  of  time  in  the  progress  of  our  work. 
 Imperfect  as  it  is,  it  will  enable  us  to  guard  against 
 certain  mistakes  very  common  in  the  Science  of 
 Religion.  We  have  established  certain  broad  lines 
 of  division  in  language  and  religion,  and  we  shall 
 hear  no  more  of  what  used  to  be  called  the  religion 
 of  savages,  or  barbarians,  or  black  men,  or  red  men, 
 or  Africans,  or  Americans.  The  student  of  religion 
 knows  no  savages,  no  barbarians.  Some  of  the 
 races  who  are  called  savage  or  barbarous  possess 
 the  purest,  simplest,  and  truest  views  of  religion, 
 while  some  nations  who  consider  themselves  in  the 
 very  van  of  civilisation,  profess  religious  dogmas 
 of  the  most  degraded  and  degrading  character.  The 
 African  Zulu  who  was  a  match  for  Bishop  Colenso, 
 cannot  be  classed  as  an  African  or  black  man  to- 
 gether with  the  royal  butchers  of  Dahomey;  and 
 the  Inca  philosopher  who  searched  for  something 
 more  divine  than  the  sun,  cannot  be  placed  by  the 
 side  of  the  Blackfoot  performing  the  sun-dance1. 
 
 Progress  in  the  Science  of  Religion  means  at  pre- 
 sent discrimination,  both  with  regard  to  the  subject 
 and  the  object  of  religious  faith.  As  we  speak  no 
 longer  of  the  believers  in  a  religion  as  either  savages 
 or  barbarians,  black  men  or  red  men,  Africans  or 
 Americans,  the  idea  also  that  we  can  truly  character- 
 ise any  religion  by  such  general  terms  as  fetishism, 
 totemism,  animism,  solarism,  shamanism,  etc.,  has 
 long  been  surrendered  by  all  critical  students.     In- 
 
 1  The  Blackfoot  Sun-Dance,  by  Rev.  John  McLean,  in  the  Pro- 
 ceedings of  the  Canadian  Institute,  No.  151  ;  1889.  Notes  bearing 
 on  the  use  of  ordure  in  rites  of  a  religious  character,  by  John  G. 
 Bourke,  Washington,  1888. 
 
350  LECTURE   XIII. 
 
 gredients  of  all  these  isms  may  be  found  in  most 
 religions,  but  not  one  of  them  can  be  fully  defined 
 by  such  vague  terms.  Religions  are  everywhere  the 
 result  of  a  long  historical  growth,  and,  like  languages, 
 they  retain  even  in  their  latest  forms  traces  of  the 
 stages  through  which  they  have  passed.  There  is 
 fetishism  in  some  forms  of  Christianity ;  there  is 
 spiritualism  in  the  creed  of  some  so-called  worship- 
 pers of  fetishes.  Generalisation  will  come  in  time, 
 but  generalisation  without  a  thorough  knowledge 
 of  particulars  is  the  ruin  of  all  sciences,  and  has 
 hitherto  proved  the  greatest  danger  to  the  Science 
 of  Religion. 
 
LECTURE  XIV. 
 
 LANGUAGE    AND    THOUGHT. 
 "What  should  we  toe  without  Language  ? 
 
 AFTER  we  have  finished  our  survey  of  the  lan- 
 guages which  are  spoken  at  present  over  the 
 civilised  world,  and  which  have  been  spoken  there 
 so  long  as  we  know  anything  of  the  presence  of  the 
 human  race  on  this  planet  of  ours,  it  is  time  to  ask 
 the  question,  what  language  really  is. 
 
 Now  I  ask,  Do  you  know  anything  in  the  whole 
 world  more  wonderful  than  language  1 
 
 No  doubt,  even  if  we  were  not  able  to  speak,  we 
 should  still  be  able  to  see,  to  hear,  to  taste,  to  smell, 
 and  to  feel. 
 
 We  could  taste  what  is  sweet  and  like  it,  and  taste 
 what  is  bitter  and  dislike  it.  We  might  run  away 
 from  the  fire,  because  it  burns,  and  turn  towards  the 
 water,  because  it  is  cool,  or  because  it  quenches  our 
 thirst ;  but  we  should  have  no  words  to  distinguish 
 lire  from  water,  or  hot  from  cold,  or  sweet  from  bitter. 
 We  should  be  like  children  who  have  burnt  their 
 fingers  and  cry,  who  have  tasted  sugar  and  smile, 
 who  have  swallowed  vinegar  and  howl.  Some  people 
 might  call  this  running  away  from  what  hurts,  and 
 turning  towards  what  is  pleasant,  rational,  just  as 
 they  say  that  a  dog  is  rational  because  he  runs  away 
 from  his  master  when  he  raises  his  stick,  and  jumps 
 up  at  him  when  he  holds  out  a  piece  of  meat. 
 
352  LECTURE    XIV. 
 
 If  by  a  bold  metaphor  this  is  to  be  called  reason, 
 we  need  not  object.,  if  only  we  distinguish  between 
 conscious  and  unconscious,  between  worded  and  un- 
 corded reason,  and  if  we  remember,  that,  by  using 
 reason  in  that  very  enlarged  sense,  we  may  be  driven 
 in  the  end  to  call  even  the  shutting  of  our  eyes  at  the 
 approach  of  a  blow  an  act  of  reasoning. 
 
 However,  with  or  without  language,  we  might  cer- 
 tainly do  all  this,  and  a  great  deal  more.  We  might 
 fight  and  kill,  we  might  love  and  protect.  We  might, 
 if  we  were  very  clever,  accumulate  dispositions  and 
 habits  which  by  repeated  inheritance  would  enable 
 our  descendants  to  build  nests,  or  warrens,  or  bee- 
 hive huts.  The  strongest  might  possibly  learn  to  act 
 as  sentinels  and  make  themselves  obeyed ;  the  weaker 
 sex  might  even  invent  signals  of  danger  and  other 
 signs  of  communication. 
 
 I  doubt  not  that  chivalrous  and  unchivalrous  feel- 
 ings also  might  be  aroused  in  our  breast,  such  as  we 
 see  among  the  higher  animals,  and  that  jealousy  and 
 revenge  as  well  as  friendship  and  love  might  influence 
 our  actions. 
 
 But  with  all  this,  imagine  that  we  were  sitting 
 here,  looking  at  one  another  with  a  kind  of  good- 
 natured  bovine  stare,  but  without  a  single  word,  not 
 only  on  our  lips,  but  in  our  minds  ;  our  mind  being 
 in  fact  a  mere  negative  plate,  without  our  being  able 
 to  lay  hold  of  any  of  the  outlines  drawn  on  it,  by 
 saying  this  is  this,  and  this  is  that ! 
 
 Definition  of  Thinking1. 
 
 Some  philosophers,  as  you  know,  hold  that  men, 
 like   animals,    though   they   possessed    no    language, 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  353 
 
 might  still  sit  silent  and  think.  Unfortunately  they 
 do  not  tell  us  what  they  mean  and  what  they  do  not 
 mean  by  thinking,  but  it  seems  clear  that  they  use 
 thinking  as  synonymous  with  every  kind  of  mental 
 activity.  Des  Cartes.,  when  discussing  his  fundamental 
 principle,  Cogito  ergo  turn,  did  the  same;  but,  as  an 
 honest  philosopher,  he  warned  us  that  he  used  cogitare 
 in  that  widest  sense  l,  so  as  to  include  sensation,  per- 
 ception, memory,  imagination,  and  all  the  rest.  If 
 the  meaning  of  to  think  is  avowedly  stretched  to  that 
 extent,  no  one  would  drearn  of  denying  that  animals, 
 though  speechless,  can  think,  and  that  we  also  could 
 think  without  language,  that  is  to  say,  without  ever 
 having  possessed  language,  without  knowing  one  word 
 from  another. 
 
 What  are  we  thinking-  of? 
 
 But  now  let  us  ask  those  philosophers  the  simple 
 question,  If  we  can  think  without  language,  what  are 
 we  thinking  of?  What  indeed  ?  I  do  not  wish  to 
 lay  a  trap,  like  a  cross-examining  lawyer.  Of  course, 
 if  you  told  me  what  you  were  thinking  of,  you  could 
 do  it  only  by  using  a  word.  Nor  do  I  claim  to  be  a 
 thought-reader,  and  tell  you.  without  your  having 
 told  me,  what  you  are  thinking  off  for  that,  of 
 course,  I  could  only  do  by  using  a  word.  But  I  ask 
 you  to  ask  yourselves,  what  you  are  thinking  of,  if 
 you  are  thinking  of  anything,  and  I  shall  join  myself 
 in  that  experiment.  Suppose  we  wTere  all  thinking, 
 as  we  call  it,  of  a  dog,  then  as  soon  as  we  attempt  to 
 answer  to  ourselves  the  question,  What  are  we  think- 
 
 *  Des  Cartes,  Meditations,  ed.  Cousin,  vol.  i.  p.  253  ;  '  Qu'esf  <•<> 
 qu'une  chose  qui  pense?  ("est  une  ohose qui doute, qui  entend,  qui 
 concoit,  qui  affirme,  qui  nie,  qui  veut,  qui  no  veut  pas,  qui  imagine 
 
 aussi,  ct  qui  sent.' 
 
 A  a 
 
354  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 ing  of?  we  can  only  do  it  by  saying  to  ourselves  or 
 to  others,  Dog.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  canis,  chien, 
 Hund  would  do  as  well,  and  we  need  not  even  pro- 
 nounce any  of  these  words  while  remembering  a 
 certain  dog,  or  while  hearing  the  barking  of  a  number 
 of  dogs  about  us.  But  though  we  may  suppress  the 
 sound  or  recollection  of  a  word  after  we  have  once 
 heard  it,  or  replace  it  even  by  another  word  taken 
 from  another  language,  we  cannot  possibly  become 
 conscious  to  ourselves  of  what  we  are  thinking,  with- 
 out having  the  word  in  reserve,  or,  as  the  Italians 
 say,  in  petto,  or,  as  some  savages  say,  in  the  stomach. 
 
 Thinking1  in  German  or  English. 
 
 If  any  doubt  still  remains  in  your  mind  on  the 
 impossibility  of  real  thought  without  language,  ask 
 yourselves  what  you  mean  in  asking  a  foreigner  who 
 has  long  lived  in  England,  whether  he  thinks  in 
 German  or  in  English  ?  What  would  you  say,  if  he 
 were  to  answer,  In  neither.  You  would,  I  believe, 
 think,  and  think  rightly,  that  he  was  a  fool. 
 
 Why  we  cannot  think  without  words. 
 
 But  if  that  is  so,  if  thought,  in  the  properly  re- 
 stricted sense  of  that  word,  is  impossible  without 
 language,  you  may  well  ask,  why  that  should  be  so. 
 Many  people  suppose  that  we  first  form  our  thoughts, 
 or  as  they  call  it  our  ideas,  and  that  afterwards  we 
 go  in  search  of  certain  sounds,  which  we  attach  to  our 
 ideas,  and  which  we  retain  because  we  find  them  very 
 useful  for  the  purpose  of  communication.  Now  I  ask 
 you,  is  such  a  process  possible  or  conceivable  1  Do 
 Ave  ever  find  ourselves  in  possession  of  a  concept,  but 
 without  a   name  for  it,  unless  indeed  we  have  for- 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  355 
 
 gotten,  and  know  that  we  have  forgotten,  the  name 
 which  we  formerly  possessed  ?  Or  is  there  anywhere 
 in  the  whole  world  a  place  where  we  could  find  empty 
 sounds,  such  as  father  and  mother,  meaning  nothing 
 as  yet,  but  ready  for  use  when  wanted  ?  I  know 
 some  people  speak  of  inexpressible  thoughts,  but  they 
 mean  feelings  ;  others  say  they  may  have  a  clear  con- 
 cept of  a  plant,  without  knowing  its  name ;  they  speak 
 of  that  plant,  Oh,  what  do  you  call  it  ?  But  is  not 
 plant  a  name,  is  not  vegetable  a  name,  is  not  object  a 
 name,  is  not  it  a  name,  is  not  even  What  do  you  call 
 it,  a  name  ? 
 
 We  often  do  not  know  the  exact  or  right  name,  but 
 in  that  case  we  always  know  the  more  general  name. 
 If  we  had  never  seen  or  heard  of  an  elephant,  we 
 should  not  know  its  name,  but  we  should  know  that 
 it  was  an  animal  and  call  it  so  ;  we  should  know  that 
 it  was  a  quadruped,  and  call  it  so.  If  we  did  not 
 know  whether  what  we  saw  was  an  inanimate  lump, 
 or  a  plant,  or  a  bird,  fish,  or  mammal,  we  should  have 
 no  name  for  it  beyond  the  name  thing.  We  could 
 not  name  it  further,  because  we  know  no  more  about 
 it,  because  we  could  not  bring  it  under  any  more 
 definite  conceptual  name.  We  may  see,  hear,  and 
 touch  the  elephant,  we  may  have  a  more  or  less  exact 
 image  of  it,  but  until  we  can  predicate  or  name  some 
 distinguishing  feature  of  it,  we  could  neither  name 
 nor  know  it,  in  the  true  sense  of  that  word. 
 
 To  suppose,  as  is  done  by  most  philosophers,  that 
 we  first  find  ourselves  in  command  of  an  army  of 
 naked  concepts,  and  that  we  afterwards  array  them  in 
 verbal  uniforms,  is  impossible  for  two  very  simple 
 reasons ;  first,  because  there    is    no    magazine   which 
 
 A  a  2 
 
3o6  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 could  supply  these  verbal  uniforms,  and  secondly, 
 because  we  never  meet  with  naked  concepts  ;  or,  to 
 put  it  more  strongly  still,  because  we  never  meet  with 
 a  rabbit  without  a  skin,  or  an  oyster  without  a  shell. 
 
 The  reason  why  real  thought  is  impossible  without 
 language  is  very  simple.  What  we  call  language  is 
 not,  as  is  commonly  supposed,  thought  plus  sound, 
 but  what  we  call  thought  is  really  language  minus 
 sound.  That  is  to  say,  when  we  are  once  in  pos- 
 session of  language,  we  may  hum  our  words,  or 
 remember  them  in  perfect  silence,  as  we  remember 
 a  piece  of  music  without  a  single  vibration  of  our 
 vocal  chords.  We  may  also  abbreviate  our  words, 
 so  that  such  expressions  as,  '  If  Plato  is  right,'  may 
 stand  for  a  whole  library.  We  may  in  fact  eliminate 
 the  meaning  of  the  word  so  that  the  word  only  remains 
 as  a  symbol 1 ;  we  may  even  substitute  algebraic  signs 
 for  real  words,  and  thus  carry  on  processes  of  reckon- 
 ing or  reasoning  which  in  their  final  results  are 
 perfectly  astonishing.  But  as  little  as  we  can  reckon 
 without  actual  or  disguised  numerals,  can  we  reason 
 without  actual  or. disguised  words.  This  is  the  last 
 result  to  which  the  Science  of  Language  has  led  us, 
 and  which  has  changed  the  Science  of  Language  into 
 the  Science  of  Thought.  '  We  think  in  words3  must 
 become  the  charter  of  all  exact  philosophy  in  future, 
 and  it  will  form,  I  believe,  at  the  same  time  the  recon- 
 ciliation of  all  systems  of  philosophy  in  the  past. 
 
 Communication,   not  language. 
 
 But  surely,  it  is  said,  men  communicate,  and 
 animals   too    communicate,  without  language.     Yes, 
 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  35. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  357 
 
 they  certainly  do,  we  all  do,  some  more,  others  less 
 successfully.  The  Polynesians,  as  Chamisso  7  tells  us 
 in  his  charming  Voyage  round  the  world  (1815-1818), 
 are  sparing  of  words,  and  a  wink  often  takes  the 
 place  of  a  long  speech.  Perhaps  it  does  so  even 
 among  less  savage  races.  They  do  not  even  say  Yes, 
 when  they  can  help  it,  but  only  move  their  brow.  It 
 is  only  to  a  stranger  that  they  will  say  Inga,  yes. 
 But  such  communication  is  not  thought,  if  we  use  our 
 words  properly. 
 
 I  go  even  a  step  further,  and  maintain  that  we  are 
 so  made  that,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  must 
 show  by  outward  signs  what  passes  within  us.  There 
 are  few  people  who  can  so  repress  their  emotions  as 
 not  to  let  others  see  when  they  are  angry  or  happy. 
 We  blush,  we  tremble,  we  frown,  we  pout,  we  grin, 
 we  laugh,  we  smile,  and  what  can  be  more  tell-tale, 
 and  sometimes  more  eloquent,  than  these  involuntary 
 signs?  I  have  no  doubt  that  animals  betray  their 
 feelings  by  similar  signs,  and  that  these  signs  are 
 understood  by  their  fellow-creatures.  You  have  only 
 to  disturb  an  ant-hill,  and  see  what  happens.  A 
 number  of  ants  will  run  away  on  their  beaten  tracks, 
 they  will  stop  every  ant  they  meet,  and  every  ant, 
 after  having  been  touched  and  communicated  with, 
 will  run  to  the  ant-hill  to  render  help  with  the  same 
 alacrity  with  which  a  member  of  the  fire-brigade  runs 
 towards  the  place  of  conflagration  after  hearing  the 
 bugle  in  the  street.  We  cannot  understand  how  it  is 
 done,  but  that  little  head  of  an  ant,  not  larger  than 
 the  head  of  a  pin,  must  have  been  able  to  express 
 terror  and  implore  help,  even  as  a  dog  will  run  up  to 
 
 1  Chamisso's  Werke,  vol.  i.  p.  357. 
 
358  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 you  and  express  in  his  face  terror,  and  by  his  motions 
 implore  your  help.  But  when  will  people  learn  that 
 emotions  are  not  thoughts,  and  that  if  we  call  anger 
 or  joy  thought,  we  simply  muddle  our  own  thoughts 
 and  confound  our  own  language? 
 
 I  believe  that  some  of  these  involuntary  manifesta- 
 tions of  our  feelings  may  in  time  lead  to  intentional 
 gestures ;  and  we  know  from  pantomimes,  also  from 
 communications  that  are  said  to  take  place  in  America 
 and  Australia  between  tribes  speaking  different  lan- 
 guages, that  this  gesture-language  may  be  brought  to 
 a  very  high  degree  of  perfection.  But  we  must  not 
 forget  that  in  all  cases  where  this  communication  by 
 means  of  gestures  has  been  observed,  the  parties  con- 
 cerned are  each  in  possession  of  a  real  language,  that 
 in  fact  they  think  first  in  their  own  conceptual  lan- 
 guage and  then  translate  their  thoughts  back  into 
 pantomime  \ 
 
 The  subject,  however,  is  curious,  and  deserves  more 
 study  than  it  has  hitherto  received.  We  imagine 
 we  can  understand  why  a  person  kneeling  down 
 is  supposed  to  implore  mercy,  why  another  shaking 
 his  fist  is  supposed  to  say,  Stand  off!  But  these 
 gestures,  as  used  in  different  countries,  have  not 
 always  the  same  meaning,  and  even  the  expressive 
 
 1  In   the  island  of  Gomera,  one  of  the  islands  of  the  Canary 
 
 Archipelago,  people  communicate  by  means  of  a  whistling  language. 
 The  island  is  traversed  by  many  deep  ravines  and  gullies  which 
 run  out  in  all  directions  from  the  central  plateau.  They  are  not 
 bridged,  and  can  often  only  be  crossed  with  great  difficulty,  so  that 
 people  who  really  live  very  near  to  each  other  in  a  straight  line 
 have  to  make  a  circuit  of  hours  when  they  wish  to  meet.  Whistling 
 has  therefore  become  an  excellent  means  of  communication,  and 
 has  gradually  assumed  the  proportions  of  a  true  substitute  for 
 speech.     But  what  they  whistle  is  their  own  language. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  359 
 
 signs  used  by  deaf  and  dumb  people  are  by  no  means 
 identical  all  over  the  globe  1. 
 
 Children  again,  long  before  they  are  able  to  speak, 
 can  imitate  the  acts  of  eating,  drinking,  riding  on 
 their  father's  knees,  and  thus  express  their  little 
 wishes  ;  but  a  wish  is  not  a  thought,  as  little  as  fear 
 and  horror.  If  some  philosophers  like  to  call  these 
 states  of  feeling  thought,  they  may  do  so  at  their  own 
 peril,  but  they  ought  at  all  events  to  let  us  know,  in 
 order  that  others  may  be  able  to  discount  such 
 license. 
 
 Images. 
 
 Some  more  serious  philosophers  put  in  a  claim  for 
 images.  Images,  they  say,  such  as  our  senses  leave 
 in  our  memory,  may  surely  be  called  thought.  They 
 may,  no  doubt,  if  only  we  let  others  know  that  in  our 
 own  philosophical  dialect  we  use  thinking  in  that  ex- 
 tended sense.  But  it  is  surely  better  to  distinguish 
 and  to  keep  the  term  imagination  for  signifying  the 
 play  of  our  images.  I  myself  hold  it  impossible  that 
 human  beings  should  have  real  images  without  first 
 having  framed  them  in  names ;  and  among  physiologists, 
 Helmholtz  denies  the  possibility  of  our  having  percep- 
 tions without  names.  But,  of  course,  if  careful  ob- 
 servers, such  as  Mr.  Galton,  assure  us  that  they  have 
 images  without  knowing  what  they  are  images  of,  and 
 without  remembering  what  they  are  called,  we  are 
 bound  to  believe  them,  even  though  we  cannot  follow 
 them.  What  they  are  anxious  for  is  evidently  to  show 
 that  animals,  though  they  have  no  language,  have 
 images,  that  they  combine  these  images,  and  that 
 their   acts,   their    sensible,    or,   as  they    like    to    call 
 
 1  Mallery,  Sign  Language  among  the  North- American  Indians. 
 
360  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 them,  their  rational  acts,  are  determined  by  them. 
 Let  that  be  so,  at  least  for  argument's  sake.  But 
 even  then,  is  not  this  imagination  or  even  this  reason- 
 ing without  language  utterly  different  from  imagina- 
 tion and  reasoning  with  language**  Suppose  a  dog, 
 instead  of  coming  to  me,  as  one  of  my  dogs  did,  ex- 
 pressing his  uneasiness  and  then  dragging  me  on  to 
 his  rug  which  was  red,  and  showing  me  that  it  was 
 occupied  by  my  other  dog,  who  ought  to  have  been 
 on  his  own  rug  which  was  blue,  looking  at  me  re- 
 proachfully till  I  had  ordered  the  other  dog  away, 
 and  then  taking  possession  with  all  the  pride  of  an 
 injured  innocent  of  his  own  red  rug — suppose  that  dog, 
 instead  of  wheedling  and  barking  were  suddenly  to 
 stand  up  on  his  hind  legs  and  say  to  me,  '  The  other 
 dog  has  taken  my  rug ;  please,  Sir,  order  him  away,' 
 should  we  not  almost  go  out  of  our  mind  1 
 
 Or  let  us  place  an  infant  and  a  grown-up  man  side 
 by  side,  the  one  struggling  and  crying  for  a  cup  of 
 milk,  the  other  saying  plainly,  '  I  should  like  that 
 cup  of  milk.'  Is  not  the  distance  between  these  two 
 acts  immeasurable,  the  one  being  merely  the  result  of 
 the  direct  or  reflex  action  of  our  senses,  the  other  the 
 result  of  a  growth  that  has  gone  on  for  thousands  of 
 years  ?  The  grown-up  man  also,  if  he  were  dying  of 
 thirst,  might  no  doubt  rush  towards  the  cup  and 
 swallow  it  without  saying  a  word,  and  we  might  call 
 the  expression  of  his  impetuous  features  language, 
 and  his  rushing  movements  reason.  But  we  should 
 gain  nothing  by  the  use  of  this  metaphorical  language. 
 There  are  philosophers  who  tell  us  that  an  infant 
 could  not  stretch  out  its  arms  without  £oin£  through 
 a  silent  syllogism  :  '  By  stretching  out  our  arms  we 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  361 
 
 obtain  wheat  we  wish  for  ;  I  wish  for  this  cup  of  milk, 
 therefore  I  stretch  out  my  arms.'  It  may  be  so,  but 
 we  know  nothing  about  it  and  never  shall,  till  the 
 infant  is  able  to  speak,  that  is  to  say,  ceases  to  be  an 
 infant,  and  then  tells  us  what  it  thinks. 
 
 Between  the  infant,  however,  and  the  man  who  is 
 able  to  speak,  there  is  not  a  distance  of  ten  or  twenty 
 years  only.  The  language  which  he  has  accepted  is  the 
 result  of  intellectual  labour  carried  on  for  thousands 
 of  years.  The  original  framing  of  our  words  and 
 thoughts  is  a  process  which  no  one  but  the  geologist 
 of  language  has  even  the  most  remote  idea  of,  and  to 
 suppose  that  one  human  being  could,  in  the  space  of 
 ten  or  twenty  years,  have  accumulated  the  wealth  of 
 his  grammar  and  dictionary  is  like  believing  that  the 
 earth  with  its  mountains  and  rivers  could  have  been 
 made  in  six  days.  It  is  extraordinary  that  the  same 
 argument,  which  has  been  answered  ad  nauseam,  is 
 brought  forward  again  and  again.  It  is  quite  true 
 that  the  infant  and  the  parrot  are  for  a  time  without 
 language,  and  that  both  learn  to  say  after  a  time, 
 'How  do  you  do?'  But  the  child  learns  to  speak 
 human  language,  while  the  parrot  never  speaks 
 Parrot  ese. 
 
 Involuntary  and  voluntary  sounds. 
 
 The  next  step  after  what  has  been  called  the  lan- 
 guage of  gestures,  leads  us  on  to  involuntary  and 
 voluntary  sounds.  I  call  involuntary  sounds  inter- 
 jections which  have  a  direct  natural  origin,  which 
 express  joy,  fear,  anger,  admiration,  assent  or  dissent. 
 To  us,  accustomed  to  our  own  interjections,  there 
 seems  a  natural  appropriateness  in  their  sound,  but 
 here  too  a  comparative  study  teaches  us  that  it  is  not 
 
362  LECTURE    XIV. 
 
 so.  No,  for  instance,  does  not  always  mean  no  ;  in 
 Syrianian  it  means  yes.  Even  in  Irish  we  find  for 
 No,  not  only  naicc,  but  also  aicc  1.  Voluntary  inter- 
 jections I  call  such  imitative  sounds  as  how  wow  for 
 dog,  and  moo  for  cow.  Here,  too,  we  find  that  what 
 seems  to  us  perfectly  natural  and  intelligible,  is  not 
 always  so.  Whereas  to  our  ears  the  dog  says  bow 
 wow,  he  says  Miff  klaff  to  a  German  ear. 
 
 It  is  extremely  difficult  to  render  inarticulate 
 sounds  by  our  alphabet.  Many  attempts  have  been 
 made  to  write  down  the  sounds  uttered  by  birds,  but 
 hitherto  with  small  success.  A  great  phonetician, 
 well  acquainted  with  the  latest  theories  of  physio- 
 logical phonetics,  has  spent  many  days  and  nights  in 
 watching  the  notes  of  the  nightingale  ;  and  what  do  you 
 think  his  rendering  has  come  to  1  The  real  note  of  the 
 nightingale,  as  reduced  to  alphabetical  writing,  is : 
 
 Dailidurei  faledirannurei  lidundei  faledaritturei. 
 
 You  know  that  before  languages  were  studied 
 scientifically,  it  was  a  very  general  idea  that  all 
 human  speech  arose  in  that  way,  and  that  the 
 ultimate  elements  of  our  words  were  imitations  of 
 natural  sounds  or  involuntary  interjections.  I  called 
 these  theories  the  Bow-wow  and  Pooli-pooh  theories. 
 Some  philosophers  have  lately  added  a  third  theory, 
 which  they  call  the  Yo-heho  theory,  but  which  is 
 really  a  subdivision  only  of  the  Pooli-pooli  theory. 
 By  a  most  extraordinary  mistake  this  theory  has  been 
 ascribed  to  Noire,  who  was  really  one  of  its  most 
 determined  opponents.  According  to  this  theory 
 language  would  have  been  derived  directly  from  the 
 
 1  Zeuss,  Grammatica  Celtica.  Yes  in  Old  Irish  is  iss  ed,  '  est  hoc,'  or 
 simply  ed,  =€k>th.  ita. — Whitley  Stokes. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  363 
 
 cries  uttered  by  people  while  engaged  in  pulling, 
 rubbing,  digging,  rowing,  and  similar  primitive  occu- 
 pations. 
 
 In  this  the  supporters  of  this  Yo-heho  theory  have, 
 no  doubt,  touched  on  a  very  important  phase  in  the 
 growth  of  language  and  thought,  as  we  shall  see 
 presently ;  but  if  they  look  upon  sounds  such  as 
 Yo-heho  as  mere  interjections,  they  are  still  in  the 
 bitterness  of  the  Pooh-pooh  theory,  that  is  to  say, 
 they  have  not  even  perceived  the  difficulty  of  the 
 problem  which  they  wish  to  solve. 
 
 The  names  Bow-wow,  Pooh-pooh,  and  Yo-heho  theo- 
 ries have  sometimes  been  objected  to  as  too  homely, 
 and  as  possibly  offensive.  But  as  these  theories  in 
 their  crude  form  are  no  longer  held  by  any  scholar, 
 these  names  are  really  quite  harmless,  and  they  are 
 certainly  useful,  because  they  tell  their  own  tale.  If 
 we  are  afraid  of  them,  we  must  use  the  cumbersome 
 names  of  Mimetic,  Onomatojioetic  or  Interject ional 
 theory,  every  one  of  them  requiring  an  elaborate 
 commentary. 
 
 The  Bow-wow,  Pooh-pooh,  and  Yo-heho  theories. 
 
 These  three  theories,  however,  were  by  no  means 
 so  illogical  as  they  seem  to  us  now.  They  were  no 
 doubt  a  ijriori  theories,  but  they  had  certain  facts  to 
 support  them.  There  are  interjections  in  every  lan- 
 guage, and,  by  the  general  analogy  of  language,  some 
 of  them  have  been  raised  into  verbs  and  adjectives 
 and  substantives.  Hush,  for  instance,  the  German 
 husch,  is  an  interjection  which  in  German  is  used  to 
 drive  away  birds,  to  express  any  quick  movement;  to 
 attract  attention,  while  in  English  it  is  now  chiefly 
 
364  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 employed  to  enjoin  silence.  From  this  interjection, 
 and  from  no  root,  are  derived  in  German  the  adjective 
 husch,  meaning  quick,  and  the  substantive  Husch, 
 quickness,  also  a  blow,  a  box  on  the  ear.  Thus  the 
 lines  in  Shakespeare's  Hamlet, 
 
 And  we  have  done  but  greenly 
 In  hugger  mugger  to  inter  him. 
 
 are  translated  in  German  by 
 
 Und  thoricht  war's  von  tins,  so  unter'm  Husch 
 Ihn  zu  bestatten. 
 
 We  have  besides  a  German  feminine  substantive, 
 Die  Husche,  which  means  a  shower  of  rain,  and  two 
 verbs,  huschen,  to  move  quickly,  and  husch eln,  to 
 scamp  one's  work.  In  English  to  hush  has  taken  the 
 exclusive  meaning  of  to  enjoin  silence,  to  quiet. 
 
 This  would  be  an  illustration  of  the  Pooh-pooh 
 theory. 
 
 The  Boiv-woiv  theory  can  claim  a  number  of  words, 
 the  best  known  being  cuckoo,  in  Greek  kokkv£,  in 
 Latin  cucMus,  in  Sanskrit  kokila.  In  Greek  we 
 have  also  a  verb  kokkv(€lv,  redupl.  perfect,  k€k6kkvkcl, 
 to  cry  cuckoo. 
 
 The  Yo-heho  theory  is  really  a  subdivision  of  the 
 Pooh-pooh  theory,  but  it  may  be  illustrated  by  bang  ! 
 as  an  interjection  that  accompanies  a  blow;  to  bang, 
 to  beat  violently,  and  banged  hair,  which  has  lately 
 been  much  admired. 
 
 It  would  be  a  most  interesting  subject  to  collect 
 all  the  words  which,  whether  in  English  or  in  German, 
 or  in  Latin,  Greek  and  Sanskrit,  are  formed  direct 
 from  interjectional  elements.  And  it  would  teach 
 us  better  than  anything  else  that,  after  we  have 
 claimed    all   that   can   rightly   be    claimed   for    this 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  365 
 
 amorphous  stratum  of  human  speech,  we  have  only 
 taken  the  mere  outworks,  while  the  real  fortress  of 
 language  has  not  been  touched. 
 
 Roots. 
 
 That  fortress  could  not  be  taken  by  storm,  but  only 
 by  a  regular  siege  ; — it  will  not  surrender  to  a  priori 
 arguments,  but  only  to  a  'posteriori  analysis.  This 
 analysis  was  carried  out  by  the  founders  of  Compara- 
 tive Philology,  by  Bopp,  Grimm,  Pott  and  others  ; 
 but  it  had  been  attempted  more  than  two  thousand 
 years  ago  by  Sanskrit  grammarians.  They  had  taken 
 Sanskrit,  one  of  the  richest  and  most  primitive  of 
 Aryan  languages,  and  by  submitting  every  word  of  it 
 to  a  careful  analysis,  that  is  to  say,  by  separating  all 
 that  could  be  separated  and  proved  to  be  merely 
 formal,  they  had  succeeded  in  discovering  certain 
 elements  which  would  yield  to  no  further  analysis, 
 and  which  they  therefore  treated  as  the  ultimate  facts 
 of  language,  and  designated  as  roots. 
 
 The  number  of  roots  admitted  by  these  ancient 
 Sanskrit  grammarians  was  far  too  large  however. 
 We  have  now  reduced  their  number  to  about  800, — 
 I  believe  they  will  be  reduced  still  further, — and 
 with  these  we  undertake  to  account  for  all  the  really 
 important  words  which  occur  in  Sanskrit  literature. 
 In  more  modern  languages  many  clusters  of  words  de- 
 rived from  one  root  have  become  extinct,  and  their 
 place  is  taken  by  secondary  and  tertiary  derivatives 
 of  other  roots,  so  that  for  the  English  Dictionary  (now 
 being  published  at  Oxford),  which  is  said  to  compre- 
 hend 250,000  words,  no  more  than  about  460  roots  ' 
 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  210. 
 
366  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 are  required  to  account  for  all  that  has  been  said  by 
 Shakespeare,  Milton,  and  Byron.  But  more  than 
 that :  the  number  of  independent  concepts  conveyed 
 by  these  800  Sanskrit  roots,  is  not  800,  or  anything 
 like  it,  but  has  been  reduced  to  the  small  number  of 
 121.  With  these  121  radical  concepts  every  thought 
 that  has  ever  passed  through  a  human  brain  can  be. 
 and  has  been  expressed.  This  would  have  sounded 
 like  a  wild  dream  to  Plato  and  Aristotle,  nay  even  to 
 Locke  and  Kant,  and  yet  it  is  a  fact  that  can  no  more 
 be  questioned  than  the  fact  that  the  whole  kalei- 
 doscope of  nature — all  that  was  ever  seen  in  this 
 myriad-shaped  world  of  ours — is  made  up  of  about 
 sixty  elementary  substances. 
 
 With  regard  to  the  meaning  of  the  800  roots  of 
 Sanskrit,  we  find  that  most  of  them  express  acts,  such 
 as  striking,  digging,  rubbing,  crushing,  pounding, 
 cutting,  gathering,  mixing,  sprinkling,  burning, — acts 
 in  fact  which  represent  some  of  the  primitive  occupa- 
 tions of  man,  but  which  by  means  of  generalisation, 
 specialisation,  and  metaphor  have  been  made  to 
 express  the  most  abstract  ideas  of  our  advanced 
 society.  A  root  meaning  to  strike  supplied  names 
 for  a  good  stroke  of  business  and  for  striking  remarks. 
 To  dig  came  to  mean  to  search  for  and  to  inquire. 
 To  rub  was  used  for  rubbing  down,  softening,  appeas- 
 ing; to  burn  came  to  mean  to  love,  and  also  to  be 
 ashamed ;  and  to  gather  did  excellent  service  for 
 expressing  in  primitive  logic  what  we  now  call 
 observation  of  facts,  the  connection  of  major  and 
 minor,  or  even  syllogism. 
 
 And  now  we  must  gather  up  the  threads  of  our  own 
 argument. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  367 
 
 We  saw  that  real  thought  was  impossible  without 
 words.  We  have  now  seen  that  all  words  are  made 
 of  roots,  and  that  these  roots  expressed  originally 
 primitive  co-operative  acts,  such  as  would  be  performed 
 by  men  in  the  earliest  stages  of  their  social  life. 
 
 Words  derived  from  conceptual  roots. 
 
 But  this  is  not  all.  Let  us  remember  that  what 
 shook  for  the  first  time  the  faith  of  those  who  thought 
 they  could  explain  all  the  words  of  our  language  as 
 imitations  of  natural  sounds  was  the  strange  fact  that 
 in  the  names  of  animals  there  was  no  trace  whatever 
 of  these  sounds.  After  the  cuckoo  had  been  claimed 
 as  a  case  in  point,  as  the  great  trophy  or  totem  of  the 
 Bow-wow  theory,  everything  else  collapsed.  In  the 
 names  for  dog  there  was  no  trace  of  bow-wow,  in  the 
 names  for  horse  no  trace  of  neighing,  in  the  names 
 for  donkey  no  trace  of  braying,  in  the  names  for  cow 
 no  trace  of  mooing.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  found 
 that  every  word  which  was  derived  from  a  root  ex- 
 pressed a  general  concept.  The  name  for  horse,  the 
 Latin  equus,  the  Sanskrit  asva,  was  derived  from  a 
 root  meaning  to  be  sharp  or  quick  ;  hence  it  became 
 clear  that  the  horse  had  been  conceived  and  named 
 as  a  runner  or  racer.  From  the  same  root  came  words 
 for  stone,  spear,  needle,  point,  sharpness  of  sight, 
 quickness  of  thought,  to  the  very  'cuteness  of  the 
 New  World. 
 
 The  serpent  was  called  from  a  root  meaning  to 
 creep  along,  and  another  name  of  it,  the  Sk.  a  hi,  the 
 Greek  e^u,  came  from  a  root  meaning  to  throttle. 
 
 Sun,  Gothic  siinna,  is  derived  from  a  root  su,  to 
 bring  forth ;  son,  Gothic  sunns,  comes  from  the  same 
 
368  LECTUKE  XIV. 
 
 root,  in  a  passive  sense,  and  meant  originally  the 
 begotten,  filius. 
 
 Hand  comes  from  a  root  which  exists  in  Gothic  as 
 hinthan,  to  seize. 
 
 Eye,  Gothic  augo,  Lat.  oc-ulus,  Sk.  aksha,  all  come 
 from  the  same  root,  which  meant  originally  to  point, 
 to  pierce.  Another  name  for  eye  in  Sanskrit  is 
 ne train,  which  means  the  leader,  from  ni,  to  lead. 
 
 So  we  could  go  on  for  ever  tracing  back  every  word 
 to  its  root  and  its  radical  concept.  I  do  not  mean  to 
 say  that  we  succeed  in  every  case.  There  are  still 
 many  words  which  have  not  been  brought  to  disclose 
 their  secret  history,  and  there  is  still  plenty  of  work 
 to  do  for  critical  etymologists. 
 
 There  are  many  words  which  require  no  knowledge 
 of  Sanskrit  at  all  for  their  etymological  explanation, 
 and  which  we  use  constantly  without  thinking  of  their 
 etymological  meaning.  Thus  a  settle  is  clearly  what 
 we  sit  on,  and  so  also,  though  less  directly,  a  saddle ; 
 a  road  is  what  we  ride  on;  a  stand  what  we  stand 
 on ;  a  bier  is  what  bears  us,  a  burden  what  we  bear 
 ourselves ;  a  shaft  is  what  is  shaved  or  planed  ;  a 
 draft  what  is  drawn,  a  drift  what  is  driven,  a  rift 
 what  is  riven.  A  thrill  of  joy,  or  a  thrilling  story, 
 both  come  from  to  thrill,  to  pierce,  to  perforate  :  but 
 to  bore  also,  whatever  its  historical  origin  may  have 
 been,  is  now  used  to  express  that  slow  rotatory  worry- 
 ing talk  which  is  apt  to  make  us  gnash  our  teeth  \ 
 
 Well  then,  you  may  take  it  as  an  established  fact 
 that,  with  the  exception  of  some  onomatopoetic  sur- 
 vivals, our  words  are  in  the  main  conceptual ;    that 
 
 1  On  the  introduction  of  the  word  bore,  see  Academy,  Jan.  5,  12, 
 19,  1889. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  369 
 
 they  are  derived  from  conceptual  roots,  or,  to  put  it 
 differently,  that  our  words  are  concepts.  If  therefore 
 it  is  admitted  that  we  cannot  think  except  in  con- 
 cepts, it  will  be  easy  enough  to  understand  why  we 
 cannot  think  except  in  words. 
 
 Are  concepts  possible  without  words  ? 
 
 But  you  may  say,  Cannot  a  concept  exist  without 
 a  word  1  Certainly  not,  though  in  order  to  meet 
 every  possible  objection,  we  may  say  that  no  concept 
 can  exist  without  a  sign,  whether  it  be  a  word  or 
 anything  else.  And  if  it  is  asked,  whether  the  con- 
 cept exists  first,  and  the  sign  comes  afterwards,  I 
 should  say  No  ;  the  two  are  simultaneous  :  but  in 
 strict  logic,  the  sign,  being  the  condition  of  a  concept, 
 may  really  be  said  to  come  first.  After  a  time,  words 
 may  be  dropt,  and  it  is  then,  when  we  try  to  remember 
 the  old  word  that  gave  birth  to  our  concept,  that  we 
 are  led  to  imagine  that  concepts  come  first,  and  words 
 afterwards. 
 
 Berkeley. 
 
 I  know  from  my  own  experience  how  difficult  it  is 
 to  see  this  clearly.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  think 
 without  words,  that  is  to  say,  after  having  dropt  our 
 words,  that  we  can  hardly  realise  the  fact  that  origin- 
 ally no  conceptual  thought  was  possible  without  these 
 or  other  signs.  No  strong  man,  unless  he  was  told, 
 would  believe  that  originally  he  could  not  walk  with- 
 out leading-strings.  Berkeley  seems  to  have  struggled 
 all  his  ]ife  with  this  problem,  and  honest  as  he  always 
 is,  he  gives  us  the  most  contradictory  conclusions  at 
 which  he  arrived  from  time  to  time.  It  was  one 
 of  the  fundamental  principles  of  his  philosophy  that 
 
 Eb 
 
370  LECTURE    XIV. 
 
 concepts,  or  what  were  then  called  general  ideas,  are 
 impossible  except  by  attaching  a  word  or  sign  to  a 
 percept,  or  what  he  called  a  particular  idea.  Hence  he 
 knew  that  concepts  were  impossible  without  words, 
 and  discursive  thought  impossible  without  concepts. 
 But  in  spite  of  that  he  was  often  very  angry  with 
 these  words,  and  in  the  Introduction  to  his  '  Treatise 
 concerning  the  Principles  of  Human  Understanding ' 
 (1710)  he  wrote:  'Since  therefore  words  are  so  apt 
 to  impose  on  the  understanding  [I  am  resolved  in  my 
 enquiries  to  make  as  little  use  of  them  as  possibly  I 
 can]  :  whatever  ideas  I  consider  I  shall  endeavour  to 
 take  them  bare  and  naked  into  my  view,  keeping  out 
 of  my  thoughts,  so  far  as  I  am  able,  those  names  which 
 long  and  constant  use  have  so  strictly  united  with 
 them  V 
 
 Again,  in  his  Common-place  Book  (Works,  ed. 
 Fraser,  vol.  i.  p.  1 52),  he  says :  '  If  men  would  lay 
 aside  words  in  thinking,  'tis  impossible  they  should 
 ever  mistake,  save  only  in  matters  of  fact.  I  mean 
 it  seems  impossible  they  should  be  positive  and  secure 
 that  anything  was  true  which  in  truth  is  not  so. 
 Certainly  I  cannot  err  in  matter  of  simple  perception. 
 So  far  as  we  can  in  reasoning  go  without  the  help  of 
 signs,  there  we  have  certain  knowledge.  Indeed,  in 
 long  deductions  made  by  signs  there  may  be  slips  of 
 memory.'  Having  thus  delivered  his  soul  against 
 words — the  very  signs  without  which  concepts,  as  he 
 shows,  were  impossible,  or  which  were  at  all  events 
 strictly  united  with  our  thoughts — he  breaks  forth 
 in   another   place  (vol.  iv.  p.   455)   in  the  following 
 
 1  The  Irish  bull,  enclosed  in  brackets,  was  omitted  in  the  second 
 edition. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  371 
 
 panegyric :  '  Words  (by  them  meaning  all  sorts  of 
 signs)  are  so  necessary,  instead  of  being  (when  duly 
 used  or  in  their  own  nature)  prejudicial  to  the 
 advancement  of  knowledge,  or  an  hindrance  to  know- 
 ledge, that  without  them  there  could  in  mathematiques 
 themselves  be  no  demonstration.' 
 
 It  seems  to  me  that  most  modern  philosophers  are 
 just  in  the  same  state  of  haziness  with  regard  to  the 
 relation  between  thought  and  language  as  Berkeley 
 was  ;  only  they  are  not  quite  so  honest  towards  them- 
 selves. The  Bishop,  for  instance,  in  another  passage 
 of  his  Common-place  Book  (vol.  iv.  p.  429),  after 
 having  satisfied  himself  '  that  it  would  be  absurd  to 
 use  words  for  recording  our  thoughts  to  ourselves  or 
 in  some  private  meditations,'  interpellates  himself  by 
 adding  the  following  note,  'Is  discursive  thought, 
 then,  independent  of  language  ? '  He  forgot  that  he 
 had  given  the  answer  himself,  namely,  that  it  was  not 
 and  that  it  could  not  be. 
 
 Process  of  naming". 
 
 Suppose  we  see  the  same  colour  in  snow,  milk, 
 chalk,  and  linen.  We  cannot  single  it  out,  take  it 
 away  or  abstract  it  from  the  different  sensuous  ob- 
 jects in  which  it  occurs,  unless  we  have  a  sign  or 
 handle  to  do  it  with,  and  that  sign,  for  all  the 
 ordinary  purposes  of  thinking,  is  a  word,  such  as 
 white.  Until  that  word  is  there,  we  may  have  different 
 sensations,  but  no  concepts,  not  even  percepts,  in  the 
 true  sense  of  the  word.  It  is  the  electric  spark  of  the 
 word  which  changes  something  common  to  various 
 sensations  into  a  percept,  as,  afterwards,  it  changes 
 something  common  to  various  percepts  into  a  concept, 
 
 b  b  2 
 
372  LECTURE  XIV. 
 
 and   something  common  to  various  concepts  into  a 
 higher  concept. 
 
 But  whence  came  that  electric  spark  ]  Where  did 
 men  find  that  sign  to  signify  many  things ;  and  did 
 not  that  sign  already,  in  order  to  be  applicable  to 
 different  perceptions,  require  something  of  a  compre- 
 hensive or  conceptual  character  ? 
 
 Origin  of  concepts. 
 
 Yes,  it  did.  And  here  lies  the  punctum  sal i ens  of 
 the  whole  philosophy  of  language.  Long  before  the 
 question  was  asked,  how  man  came  in  possession  of 
 words,  there  was  the  old  question,  how  man  came  in 
 possession  of  concepts.  Nearly  all  philosophers  drew 
 the  line  of  demarcation  between  man  and  beast  at 
 concepts.     Up  to  concepts  the  two  seemed  alike. 
 
 Then  the  question  arose,  How  did  man  alone  go 
 beyond  percepts  and  arrive  at  concepts  ? 
 
 The  usual  answer  was  that  man  possessed  some 
 peculiar  gift  or  faculty  which  enabled  him  to  form 
 concepts,  and  to  comprehend  the  manifold  as  one. 
 Even  now  many  philosophers  are  satisfied  with  that 
 mythology.  But  this  answer  is  no  answer  at  all. 
 We  might  as  well  say  that  man  began  to  write 
 because  he  had  the  faculty  of  writing.  We  want  to 
 know  what  forced  man  to  form  concepts,  whether 
 he  liked  it  or  not.  Why  should  he  not  have  been 
 satisfied  with  what  the  senses  gave  him,  with  seeing 
 this,  with  hearing  that  ?  WThy  should  he  have  gone 
 beyond  the  single  images  and  looked  for  the  general  ? 
 He  might  have  been  very  happy  in  the  world  of 
 sensations,  perceptions,  and  images.  Why  should  he 
 ever  have  left  it  ? 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  373 
 
 What  we  call  the  roots  of  language  betray  the 
 secret.  Almost  all  of  them  express,  as  we  saw,  the 
 common  acts  of  man.  Now  before  man  is  conscious 
 as  yet  of  any  object,  as  an  object,  he  cannot  help 
 being  conscious  of  his  own  acts,  and  as  these  acts  are 
 mostly  repeated  and  continuous  acts,  he  becomes  con- 
 scious, without  any  new  effort,  of  his  many  or  re- 
 peated acts  as  one.  Here  lies  the  genesis  of  the  most 
 primitive  and,  I  may  add,  the  first  inevitable  con- 
 cepts :  they  consist  in  our  consciousness  of  our  own 
 repeated  acts  as  one  continuous  action.  To  rub,  for 
 instance,  was  not  only  to  rub  once,  and  then  again, 
 and  then  again,  but  it  was  the  continuous  act  of 
 rubbing,  afterwards  of  smoothing,  softening,  appeas- 
 ing; and  thus  the  root,  meaning  originally  to  rub, 
 came  in  time  to  mean  to  appease  the  anger  of  the 
 gods.  There  is  an  uninterrupted  chain  or  develop- 
 ment between  our  saying,  Oh  God,  have  mercy !  and 
 our  earliest  ancestors'  saying,  Be  rubbed  down,  be 
 smooth,  be  softened,  ye  gods ! 
 
 Former  theories. 
 
 It  will  now  perhaps  become  clear  why  the  three 
 old  theories  of  the  origin  of  language  and  thought, 
 the  Pooh-pooh  theory,  the  Boiu-ivotv  theory,  and  the 
 Yo-keho  theory,  completely  fail  to  explain  what  has 
 to  be  explained,  namely,  how  conceptual  words  arose. 
 Cuckoo  would  be  an  imitation  of  the  sound  of  the 
 cuckoo,  bow-wow  of  the  barking  of  the  dog,  pooh- 
 pooh  of  our  contempt,  yo-heho  of  our  labour ;  but 
 with  all  this  we  should  never  get  out  of  the  enchanted 
 circle  of  mere  sensuous  knowledge.  We  want  con- 
 ceptual sounds.     How  can  we  get  them  ? 
 
374  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 Now  here  the  advantage  of  what  I  shall  call  in 
 future  the  Synergastic  theory  will  at  once  become 
 evident.  If,  as  we  know,  people  in  a  primitive  state 
 accompany  most  of  their  common  acts  by  sounds,  then 
 the  clamor  concomitans  of  these  acts  is  not  the  sign 
 of  a  single  act,  but  the  inseparable  accompaniment  of 
 our  consciousness  of  our  many  repeated  acts  as  one 
 action.  Here  we  see  the  first  dawn  of  conceptual 
 thought.  If  this  is  once  clearly  perceived,  it  will 
 likewise  be  perceived  that  the  difference  between  this 
 theory  of  the  origin  of  conceptual  language  and  the 
 old  onomatopoetic  theories  is  not  one  of  degree,  but 
 of  kind,  and  marks  a  greater  advance  in  the  Science 
 of  Language  than  the  Copernican  theory  did  in  the 
 Science  of  Astronomy.  Here  lies  Noire"  s  real  merit. 
 He  was  the  first  who  saw  that  the  natural  genesis  of 
 concepts  was  to  be  found  in  the  consciousness  of  our 
 acts.  I  was  able  to  give  the  proof  of  it  by  showing 
 that  nearly  all  roots  in  Sanskrit  were  expressive  of 
 our  acts.  Those  who  do  not  see  the  difficulties  which 
 have  to  be  explained  when  we  ask  for  the  origin  of 
 our  conceptual  roots,  may  consider  the  old  Pooh-pooh 
 and  Bow-wow  theories  quite  sufficient.  To  the  true 
 philosopher  the  Synergastic  theory  is  the  only  one 
 which  approaches  or  touches  the  hem  of  the  problem 
 that  has  to  be  solved,  namely,  how  concepts  arose,  and 
 how  concepts  were  expressed. 
 
 The  '  clamor  concomitans.' 
 
 One  question  only  we  are  unable  to  answer,  namely, 
 why  the  clamor  concomitans  of  the  different  acts  of 
 men,  the  consciousness  of  which  constituted  their  first 
 concepts,  should  have  been  exactly  what  it  was.   Why 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  375 
 
 in  crushing  they  should  have  uttered  MAR,  in  carry- 
 ing VAH,  in  stretching  TAN,  in  scattering  STAR,  is 
 beyond  our  ken.  All  we  can  say  is  that  the  possi- 
 bilities in  uttering  and  still  more  in  fixing  these 
 sounds  were  almost  unlimited,  and  that  though  we 
 may  imagine  that  we  perceive  some  reasonableness 
 in  some  of  them,  we  very  soon  come  to  the  end  of 
 such  speculations. 
 
 Who  does  not  imagine   that  there  is  some  simi- 
 larity between  the  root  VA,  to  blow,  and  the  sound 
 of  our  own  breathing,  or,  if  we  adopt  the  mimetic 
 theory,  the   sound  of  the  wind?     But  if  that  is   so 
 with  VA,  what   shall  we  say  to  DHAM,  to   blow, 
 and   /SVAS,  to    breathe?     That  there  should  be   in 
 some  cases  some  vague  similarity  between  the  sound 
 of  a  root  and  the  sound  produced  by  the  work  which 
 it  accompanies  is  intelligible,  and  so  far  the  specula- 
 tions  on  the  supposed  inherent  meaning  of  certain 
 letters,  which  begin  as  early  as  Plato's  Cratylos,  are 
 not  without  some  value.      Possibly,  if  we  could  go 
 back  to  an  earlier  stage  in  the  formation  of  roots,  his 
 speculations  might   seem   still  better  founded.      But 
 we  must  here  too  learn  to  be  satisfied  with  what  is 
 within  the  reach   of  historical  knowledge,  or,  if  we 
 must   needs   stretch    our   powers    of   vision   beyond, 
 follow   the   example   of  Plato  and    not   assume   too 
 serious  a  countenance. 
 
 A  few  quotations  from  Plato  will  serve  to  make 
 my  meaning  clear. 
 
 '  Now  the  letter  R,'  he  says  \  '  appeared  to  the  im- 
 poser  of  names  an  excellent  instrument  for  the  ex- 
 pression of  motion ;  and  he  frequently  used  the  letter 
 
 1  Cratylos,  p.  426. 
 
376  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 for  this  purpose :  for  example,  in  the  actual  words 
 pziv  and  por\  he  represents  motion  by  r;  also  in  the 
 words  Tponos,  trembling,  rpayvs,  rugged  ;  and  again,  in 
 words  such  as  dpaveiv,  to  crush,  Kpovuv,  to  strike, 
 €p€LK€iv,  to  bruise,  dpvTTTeu',  to  break,  Kepiiari^iv,  to 
 crumble,  pvpLfietv,  to  whirl :  of  all  the  sorts  of  move- 
 ment he  generally  finds  an  expression  in  the  letter  R, 
 because,  as  I  imagine,  he  had  observed  that  the  tongue 
 was  most  agitated  and  least  at  rest  in  the  pronuncia- 
 tion of  this  letter,  which  he  therefore  used  in  order  to 
 express  motion.' 
 
 Let  us  consider  these  remarks  for  one  moment. 
 Nothing  would  be  easier  than  to  produce  an  equal 
 number  of  words  in  which  r  occurs,  and  which  ex- 
 press not  motion,  but  rest ;  for  instance,  paxis,  rib, 
 bone,  spine ;  paxos,  a  hedge ;  plyita,  to  freeze  ;  pC(a, 
 a  root ;  pvrov,  rein ;  pdovvvixt,  to  strengthen ;  pGxrrat;, 
 pillar,  &c.  Secondly,  in  several  of  the  words  men- 
 tioned by  Plato  the  meaning  of  motion  can  easily  be 
 shown  to  be  secondary,  not  primary.  If  K^pixari^iv, 
 for  instance,  means  to  crumble,  to  cut  into  small 
 slices,  this  is  because  Ktpixa  means  a  small  slice,  and 
 it  does  so  because  it  is  derived  from  ndpa,  to  shave, 
 having  been  called  originally  a  chip. 
 
 But  I  doubt  whether  a  serious  refutation  of  these 
 remarks  is  justified.  They  are  useful  only  as  showing 
 what  latitude  there  is  and  must  be  in  this  subject. 
 While  modern  speculators  see  an  imitation  of  the 
 blowing  of  the  wind  in  the  root  VA,  Plato  sees  or 
 rather  hears  an  imitation  of  what  is  windy  in  the 
 sound  of  the  letters  <p,  \j/,  <r,  and  ( (1.  c,  pp.  427,  434), 
 because  their  pronunciation  is  accompanied  by  great 
 expenditure    of   breath.      When    Socrates    considers 
 
LANGUAGE    A.ND   THOUGHT.  377 
 
 further  that  the  closing  and  pressure  of  the  tongue  in 
 the  utterance  of  d  and  t  was  an  expression  of  binding 
 and  rest,  that  1  expressed  smoothness,  g  clamminess, 
 n  inwardness,  we  must  not  forget  that  Hermogenes  is 
 made  to  reply  immediately :  '  0  Socrates,  Cratylos 
 mystifies  me  ;  he  says  that  there  is  a  fitness  of  names, 
 but  he  never  explains  what  fitness  is.' 
 
 This  is  the  right  spirit  in  which  such  guesses  should 
 be  treated.  There  may  be  some  truth  in  them  here 
 and  there,  but  even  if  there  is,  it  is  beyond  our  reach. 
 Custom  is  so  strong  that  we  all  imagine  we  perceive 
 a  certain  appropriateness  in  a  root  STA  meaning  to 
 stand  or  stop,  in  a  root  MAR  meaning  to  rub,  in 
 a  root  TUD  meaning  to  strike.  There  may  be  some 
 truth  in  that  fancy,  but  if  we  take  a  more  compre- 
 hensive view  of  radical  sounds  and  radical  meanings, 
 not  only  in  the  Aryan  but  likewise  in  the  Semitic 
 and  Turanian  languages,  we  soon  find  that  our  fancy 
 is  as  often  contradicted  by  the  facts  as  it  is  confirmed 
 by  them.  There  seems  to  be  neither  necessity  nor 
 absolute  freedom  in  the  choice  of  the  sounds  expressive 
 of  our  acts.  Even  those  who  imagine  that  they  can 
 detect  some  reasonableness  in  them,  must  confess  that 
 they  have  no  means  of  testing  or  proving  it.  We  can 
 well  understand  that  among  the  concomitant  clamours 
 of  thought  the  struggle  for  existence  must  have  been 
 intense,  though  we  have  hardly  any  opportunities  left 
 for  watching  that  struggle.  If  some  scholars  imagine 
 they  can  know,  or  feel,  why  SAR  expressed  our 
 consciousness  of  moving  on,  while  VABH  expressed 
 our  consciousness  of  weaving,  we  need  not  contradict 
 them,  but  we  could  easily  show  that  in  other  families 
 of  speech  the   same  sounds  have  a  totally  different 
 
378  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 meaning.     Take,  for  instance,  the  root  SAR  in  Finno- 
 Ugric.     It  means  \ 
 
 (1)  to  sprout  forth,  to  bubble  up,  to  rise;  to  be 
 long,  to  be  slim,  to  be  straight ; 
 
 (2)  to  stir,  to  awake,  to  be  busy ; 
 
 (3)  to  rub,  to  wipe,  to  whet,  to  shear ; 
 
 (4)  to  stir,  to  mix ;  to  make  variegated,  to  grind, 
 to  defile ; 
 
 (5)  to  push  away,  to  squeeze,  to  narrow,  to  break, 
 to  split,  to  wound;  to  suffer,  to  be  oppressed,  to 
 shrink,  to  die  ; 
 
 (6)  to  speak,  to  narrate. 
 
 Though  Professor  Donner,  the  highest  authority 
 on  Finnish  philology,  treats  all  these  meanings  as 
 modifications  of  one  central  concept,  he  would  pro- 
 bably be  willing  to  admit  that  possibly  such  meanings 
 as  to  speak  or  to  narrate  might  flow  from  an  inde- 
 pendent source,  and  have  nothing  in  common  with 
 such  concepts  as  sprouting,  bubbling,  stirring,  and  all 
 the  rest ;  but  other  scholars  might  insist  on  babbling 
 being  but  a  modification  of  bubbling,  and  spouting 
 of  sprouting.  Here,  if  anywhere  in  the  study  of 
 language,  much  latitude  must  be  allowed  to  personal 
 dispositions  and  idiosyncrasies.  We  may  be  able  to 
 form  a  general  idea  how  what  we  call  roots  survived 
 in  a  conflict  of  ever  so  many  possibilities,  but  we  shall 
 never  be  able  to  discover  anything  like  necessity  in 
 the  character  of  those  historical  roots  which  have 
 been  discovered  by  an  analysis  of  real  languages  or 
 families  of  language. 
 
 The  conceptual  foundation  of  Language . 
 
 But  what  is  no  longer  a  theory  or  a  mere  dream, 
 
 1  Donner,  Vergleich.  Wbrterb.  cler  Finnisch-Ugrischeu  Sprachen,  ii.  p.  1. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  379 
 
 but  a  simple  fact,  is  that  all  our  words  are  derived 
 from  these  conceptual  roots,  and  that  all  or  nearly  all 
 of  them  signify  originally  some  primitive  acts  of  man. 
 These  are  facts,  and  the  only  thing  we  have  to  supply 
 is  an  explanation  why  language  should  have  started 
 from  such  roots,  and  not  from  the  imitation  of  the 
 sounds  of  nature.     I  do  not  go  so  far  as  other  scholars 
 in  denying  the  possibility  of  any  words  being  formed 
 from  mimetic  sounds.     After  all,  cuckoo  is   a  word, 
 though  perhaps  not  in  the  strictest  sense.     To  hush  is 
 a  word  which  has  come  to  express  a  concept.     The 
 same  process  which  yielded  such  words  might  have 
 been  carried  much  further,  so  far  as  we  know.     But 
 the  fact  remains  that  it  was  not,  and  what  we  have 
 to  explain  is  not  what  language  might  have  been,  but 
 what  it  is.     That  roots  expressing  acts  should  have 
 been  the  true  feeders  of  language  becomes  intelligible 
 when  we   consider  that  the    earliest   possible,   or,   I 
 should  say,  the  earliest  inevitable  concepts  could  not 
 well  have  arisen  under  more  natural  and  favourable 
 circumstances  than  from  our  consciousness  of  our  own 
 repeated   acts.      Even    man's    bodily    organism,    his 
 possessing  two  arms,  two  legs,  two   eyes,  two  ears, 
 would  have  helped  towards  making  him  comprehend 
 two  as  one;    and  the  Dyad  is  the   beginning  of  all 
 that  we  call  conceptual  thought.     Then  would  follow 
 the  consciousness  of  our  own   repeated   continuous 
 acts,  and  if  such  acts,  particularly  when  performed  in 
 common,  were   accompanied  by  natural  sounds,   by 
 sounds   understood    therefore    by    many   people,   the 
 battle  was  won.     Man  knew  what  it  was  to  have 
 concepts   and   intelligible   signs  of  concepts   at   the 
 same  time.     Everything  else,  as  we  know  from  the 
 
380  LECTUKE   XIV. 
 
 history  of  language,  would  then  follow  as  a  matter  of 
 course. 
 
 We  can  see  all  this  historical  growth  of  language 
 from  its  very  beginning,  most  clearly  in  the  Aryan 
 languages,  because  they  have  been  analysed  most 
 carefully.  But  the  Semitic  languages  also  tell  us  the 
 same  tale,  only  that  here  the  formation  of  triliteral 
 roots  prevents  us  often  from  watching  the  earliest 
 phases  in  the  growth  of  roots  and  radical  concepts. 
 Triliteral  roots  must  have  been  originally .  biliteral, 
 or  monosyllabic,  but  though  this  can  be  proved  in 
 some  cases,  it  cannot  yet  be  done  with  perfect  cer- 
 tainty in  all.  Here  we  must  wait  for  new  light 
 from  the  most  ancient  Babylonian  Inscriptions. 
 
 With  the  Finno-Ugric  languages  great  progress  has 
 been  made  of  late.  Professor  Donner,  in  his  Com- 
 parative Dictionary  of  the  Finno-Ugric  Languages, 
 is  doing  for  that  branch  of  human  speech  what  others 
 have  done  for  the  analysis  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic 
 languages.  The  number  of  roots  seems  smaller  here 
 than  in  Sanskrit  or  Hebrew,  and  the  growth  and 
 ramification  of  subsequent  meanings  become  there- 
 fore all  the  more  instructive. 
 
 Other  families  or  classes  of  language  have  as 
 yet  been  analysed  with  partial  success  only,  still 
 wherever  a  beginning  has  been  made,  the  result 
 has  always  been  the  same,  and  we  may  take  it  as 
 a  fundamental  principle,  admitted  by  all  students  of 
 lauguage  in  whatever  part  of  the  world,  that  in  the 
 beginning  there  were  roots  and  radical  concepts,  and 
 that  with  these  roots  human  speech  was  built  up 
 from  beginning  to  end. 
 
 There  are  languages,  like  the  ancient  Chinese,  in 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  381 
 
 which  words  and  roots  are  identical,  at  least  in  out- 
 ward appearance,  where  all  is  material,  and  nothing, 
 as  yet,  purely  formal.  In  such  languages,  whatever 
 their  age  may  be,  we  have  again  a  tangible  proof 
 of  the  theory  which  we  formed  for  ourselves,  from 
 an  analysis  of  more  developed  languages,  such  as 
 Sanskrit  and  Hebrew,  namely  that  language  begins 
 with  roots  and  thought  with  concepts,  and  that  the 
 two  are  one. 
 
 Our  conceptual  world. 
 
 When  the  human  mind  had  once  reached  the  con- 
 ceptual stage,  the  battle  was  won,  an  entrance  into 
 the  ideal  world  had  been  effected.  With  the  first  real 
 word,  a  new  world  was  created,  the  world  of  thought, 
 our  real  home. 
 
 When  we  have  once  seen  that  thought,  in  its  true 
 sense,  is  always  conceptual,  and  that  every  word  is 
 derived  from  a  conceptual  root,  we  shall  no  longer 
 be  surprised  when  we  are  told  that  words,  being  con- 
 ceptual, can  never  stand  for  a  single  percept.  There 
 can  be  nothing  in  the  world  of  sense  corresponding 
 even  to  such  simple  words  as  dog,  tree,  apple,  table, 
 to  say  nothing  of  colour,  virtue,  goodness  and  all  the 
 rest,  for  they  are  all  conceptual.  We  can  never 
 expect  to  see  a  dog,  a  tree,  an  apple,  or  a  chair.  Dog 
 means  every  kind  of  dog  from  the  greyhound  to  the 
 spaniel ;  tree  every  kind  of  tree  from  the  oak  to  the 
 cherry ;  apple  every  kind  of  apple  from  the  pine- 
 apple to  the  pippin ;  chair  every  kind  of  chair  from 
 the  royal  throne  to  the  professorial  chair.  People 
 often  imagine  that  they  can  form  a  general  image  of 
 a  dog,  by  leaving  out  what  is  peculiar  to  every  in- 
 dividual dog,  or  to  every  kind  of  dog.     Let  them  try 
 
382  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 the  experiment,  which  Mr.  Galton  has  tried  for 
 human  faces,  namely,  photograph  a  greyhound,  and 
 over  it  a  spaniel,  and  then  a  St.  Bernard,  and  then  a 
 Scotch  terrier,  and  so  on  till  every  breed  has  been 
 superadded.  They  will  then  see  what  kind  of  general 
 image  they  would  arrive  at,  and  they  will  strongly 
 object  to  harbouring  such  monsters  in  their  mind. 
 
 Here  also  Berkeley  acted  as  a  most  resolute  pioneer. 
 He  showed  that  it  is  simply  impossible  for  any 
 human  being  to  make  to  himself  a  general  image  of  a 
 triangle,  for  such  an  image  would  have  to  be  at  the 
 same  time  right-angled,  obtuse-angled,  acute-angled, 
 equilateral,  isosceles,  and  scalene.  This  is  impos- 
 sible,, whereas  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  have  an 
 image  of  any  single  triangle,  to  name  some  character- 
 istic feature  common  to  all  triangles,  namely  their 
 possessing  three  angles,  and  thus  to  form  a  name  and 
 at  the  same  time  a  concept  of  a  triangle.  This 
 mental  process  which  Berkeley  described  so  well  as 
 applied  to  modern  concepts,  we  can  watch  with  regard 
 to  all,  even  the  most  primitive  concepts,  if  we 
 examine  the  annals  of  language.  Man  discovered  in 
 a  smaller  or  larger  number  of  trees,  before  they  were 
 as  yet  trees  to  him,  something  which  was  interesting 
 to  him  and  which  they  all  shared  in  common.  Now 
 trees  were  interesting  to  primitive  man  for  various 
 reasons,  and  they  could  have  been  named  for  every 
 one  of  these  reasons.  For  practical  purposes,  however, 
 trees  were  particularly  interesting  to  the  primitive 
 framers  of  language,  because  they  could  be  split  in  two, 
 cut,  shaped  into  blocks  and  planks,  shafts  and  boats. 
 Hence  from  a  root  dar,  to  tear,  they  called  trees  dru 
 or  daru,  lit.  what  can  be  split  or  torn  or  cut  to  pieces. 
 
LANGUAGE  AND  THOUGHT.  383 
 
 From  the  same  root  they  also  called  the  skin  bepp.a, 
 because  it  was  torn  off,  and  a  sack  bopos,  because  it 
 was  made  of  leather  (Sanskrit  dWti),  and  a  spear, 
 bopv,  because  it  was  a  tree,  cut  and  shaped  and  planed. 
 
 Such  words  being  once  given,  they  would  produce 
 ever  so  many  offshoots.  The  Gauls  called  their  priests 
 Druides  \  the  Irish  drui,  literally  the  men  of  the 
 oak-groves.  The  Greeks  called  the  spirits  of  the 
 forest- trees  Dryades  ;  and  the  Hindus  called  a  man 
 of  wood,  or  a  man  with  a  wooden,  or,  as  we  say,  flinty 
 heart,  daru?ia,  cruel. 
 
 What  applies  to  this  single  word  for  tree,  applies  to 
 all  words.  They  are  all  derived  from  roots,  they  are 
 all  conceptual,  they  all  express  something  common  to 
 many  things,  and  therefore  something  that  can  be 
 thought  of  and  spoken  of,  but  can  never  be  perceived 
 with  our  senses  as  a  single  and  real  object. 
 
 If  then  we  think  in  words,  and  in  words  only,  is 
 there  anything  in  the  world,  I  will  not  say  now,  more 
 wonderful  simply,  but  more  momentous,  more  serious, 
 more  paramount  for  all  our  intellectual  work  than 
 our  words  ?  And  if  that  is  so,  need  we  wonder  that 
 religion  also  has  its  deepest  roots  in  language,  nay 
 would  be  perfectly  inconceivable  without  language. 
 It  has  often  been  said  that  numina  are  nominee,  and 
 if  our  line  of  argument  hitherto  has  been  straight,  we 
 shall  not  only  accept  this  statement,  but  understand 
 its  true  meaning.  Try  to  realise  Zeus  or  Hera  without 
 their  names,  and  you  will  see  that  there  is  nothing  to 
 realise.  But  do  not  let  us  say  therefore  that  Zeus 
 and  Hera  are  mere  names.  This  expression,  mere 
 names,  is  one  of  the  most  objectionable  and  self-con- 
 
 1  Hibbert  Lectures,  John  Rhys,  p.  221. 
 
384  LECTURE   XIV. 
 
 tradictory  expressions  in  the  whole  dictionary  of 
 philosophy.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  mere  name, 
 as  little  as  there  is  a  mere  concept.  There  is  some- 
 thing that  was  meant  by  Zeus  and  even  by  Hera,  and 
 though  these  names  were  weak,  and  tentative  only, 
 and  exposed  to  all  the  dangers  of  mythology,  yet  the 
 best  among  the  Greeks  never  forgot  what  the  name 
 of  Zeus  was  really  intended  for — the  Infinite,  it  may 
 be,  the  nameless  Power  behind  all  names.  You  all 
 remember  the  words  of  Aeschylus  in  the  Chorus  of 
 the  Agamemnon — for  who  that  has  read  them  can 
 ever  forget  them  again  : — 
 
 '  Zeus,  whoever  he  is,  if  this  be  the  name  by  which 
 he  loves  to  be  called — by  this  name  I  address  him. 
 For  if  I  verily  want  to  cast  off  the  idle  burden  of 
 my  thought,  proving  all  things,  I  cannot  find  any  on 
 whom  to  cast  it,  except  Zeus  alone  V 
 
 Aeschylus  knew  or  divined  what  we  want  to  prove, 
 that  religion  is  the  language  or  interpretation  of  the 
 Infinite.  There  may  be  nothing  corresponding  to 
 Zeus,  as  pictured  by  Phidias,  and  as  believed  in  by  the 
 people  of  Greece.  But  Zeus  was  not  a  mere  name, 
 for  all  that.  It  was  but  one  out  of  many  names  by 
 which  the  Greeks,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  not  the  Greeks 
 only,  but  all  the  Aryas,  tried  to  grasp  the  Infinite 
 behind  the  Finite,  tried  to  name  the  Unknown  by  the 
 Known,  tried  to  see  the  Divine  behind  the  veil  of 
 nature. 
 
 1  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  ii.  485. 
 
LECTURE   XV. 
 
 DYNAMIC  STAGE. 
 
 Lessons  of  Language. 
 
 WE  ask  to-day,  What  can  language  teach  us  with 
 regard  to  the  origin  of  religion  ?  We  have  seen 
 that  nothing  can  be  more  ancient  than  language. 
 Myth  is  but  a  modification  of  language.  Our  sacred 
 books  are  language  in  its  highest  development.  Our 
 customs  and  traditions  are  often  founded  on  de- 
 cayed and  misunderstood  words.  If  therefore  we 
 can  decipher  the  original  meaning  of  our  words, 
 if  we  can  discover  the  purpose  with  which  they 
 were  framed,  we  shall  have  opened  archives  which, 
 by  their  antiquity  at  all  events,  are  far  superior  to 
 any  other  evidence  within  our  reach. 
 
 Now  let  us  remember  what  I  tried  to  explain  in 
 my  last  Lecture,  that  the  Aryan  languages  have  been 
 reduced  to  about  800  roots.  The  Semitic  and  Tu- 
 ranian languages  also  have  been  submitted  to  the  same 
 process  and  have  yielded  a  very  similar  result.  But 
 though  many  of  the  observations  which  we  are  going 
 to  make  with  regard  to  the  Aryan  languages  apply 
 with  equal  force,  though  mutatis  mutandis  to  other 
 languages  also,  I  shall  in  these  lectures  concentrate 
 my  attention  chiefly  on  our  own  family  of  speech, 
 and  only  occasionally  glance  at  other  families  for 
 confirmation  or  modification  of  our  results. 
 
 c  c 
 
386  LECTUKE    XV. 
 
 Roots  express  our  acts. 
 
 Let  us  remember,  secondly,  that  most  of  the  Aryan 
 roots  expressed  originally  our  own  acts,  acts  mostly 
 performed  in  common,  continuous  acts,  and  acts  the 
 consciousness  of  which  would  by  necessity  produce 
 the  first  conceptual  stratum  of  thought  in  the  human 
 mind.  Philosophers  seem  to  imagine  that  concepts 
 are  something  so  natural  that  they  require  no  ex- 
 planation at  all.  We  see  white  in  snow,  milk  and 
 chalk,  they  say,  and  we  thus  form  the  concept  of 
 white.  Yes,  if  we  once  have  learnt  to  grasp,  we  can 
 grasp  anything — but  the  real  question  is,  how  for 
 the  first  time  we  come  to  grasp,  how  nature,  without 
 any  conscious  effort  of  our  own,  teaches,  nay  forces  us 
 to  grasp.  It  was  Noire"  who  showed  us  how  this  took 
 place.  It  was  the  consciousness  of  our  own  repeated 
 acts  which  for  the  first  time  called  out  our  intellec- 
 tual grasp,  and  made  us,  whether  we  liked  it  or  not. 
 grasp,  comprehend,  conceive  many  acts  as  one,  and 
 after  a  time,  many  results  of  such  acts  as  one.  The 
 consciousness  of  our  own  repeated  strokes,  blows, 
 knocks,  taps,  slaps,  pushes  and  impulses  would  be- 
 come, without  any  conscious  effort  of  our  own,  the 
 first  germ  of  conceptual  thought.  During  the  early 
 phase  of  thought  when  this  is  supposed  to  have  hap- 
 pened, when  the  first  consciousness  of  our  own  re- 
 peated acts  assumed  a  conceptual  character,  will,  act 
 and  knowledge  were  as  yet  one  and  undivided,  and 
 the  whole  of  our  conscious  knowledge  was  subjective, 
 exclusively  concerned  with  our  own  voluntary  acts. 
 Man  could  say  '  strike '  in  the  sense  of  '  We  strike  ' 
 or  '  I  strike,'  long  before  he  could  speak  of  what  he 
 struck,   of  what  struck   him.  of  the  instrument  with 
 
DYNAMIC   STAGE.  387 
 
 which  he  struck,  or  of  the  place  in  which  striking 
 and  fighting  took  place.  Thought,  therefore,  in  the 
 true  sense  of  the  word,  began,  so  far  as  we  can  see, 
 with  a  consciousness  of  voluntary  acts,  and  not,  as  has 
 often  been  supposed,  with  consciousness  of  passive 
 states,  much  less,  as  yet,  of  an  objective  world. 
 
 Some  acts  conceived  as  states  or  as  passive. 
 
 Many  acts,  however,  which  seem  to  us  voluntary, 
 were  not  so,  or  at  all  events  were  not  at  first  con- 
 ceived as  such.  To  us, '  to  hear/  for  instance x,  seems  a 
 voluntary  act ;  to  the  earliest  framers  of  our  language  it 
 seemed  a  passive  state.  '  I  hear '  was  to  them  '  I  am 
 moved/  '  I  am  struck  by  something.'  To  see  also  was 
 originally  to  be  moved  or  affected  by  something,  just 
 as  to  burn  or  to  suffer  pain  was  to  be  burnt  by  tire. 
 It  was  only  after  a  time  that  to  see  became  to  look. 
 
 We  saw,  thirdly,  that,  as  most  of  these  primitive 
 acts  were  accompanied  by  almost  involuntary  utter- 
 ances, we  could  thus  understand  how  that  clamor  con- 
 comitans  became  the  natural  and  the  intelligible  sign 
 of  the  acts,  or  rather  of  our  consciousness  of  the  acts, 
 which  had  called  them  out.  What  the  particular 
 noise  was,  depended  on  accident,  or  if  not  an  accident, 
 at  all  events  on  causes  which  we  cannot  understand. 
 
 Subjective  acts  predicated  of  other  agents. 
 
 We  have  now  to  see  whether  we  can,  to  a  certain 
 extent  at  least,  understand  the  steps  which  led  from 
 these  expressions  of  every  possible  kind  of  human  ac- 
 tivity with  which  man  in  an  early  state  of  society 
 was  familiar,  to  the  expression  of  purely  objective 
 thought  or  of  concepts  of  an  objective  world. 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  324. 
 C  C  2 
 
388  LECTURE    XV. 
 
 It  cannot  be  said  too  often  that  in  researches  of  this 
 kind  we  must  not  look  for  absolute  certainty.  All 
 we  can  do  is  to  suggest  what  is  possible,  because 
 intelligible ;  but  we  must  always  be  prepared  for 
 other  suggestions  equally  intelligible  and  therefore 
 equally  possible. 
 
 When  man  had  arrived  at  expressing  such  acts  as 
 striking,  and  predicating  them  of  himself,  whether  by 
 demonstrative  gestures  or  by  demonstrative  pronouns, 
 when  he  was  able  to  say  Strike-we  and  Strike-I,  he 
 was  naturally  led  on  to  say,  if  only  for  the  sake 
 of  a  fair  distribution  of  labour,  Strike-you,  Strike-thou. 
 Another  step  1  would  lead  the  early  speakers  to  such 
 utterances  as  '  he  strikes,'  or  '  they  strike,'  utterances 
 which,  though  they  may  have  required  a  greater  effort 
 than  the  mere  '  We  strike  '  or  '  I  strike,'  could  hardly 
 fail  to  be  called  forth  by  the  simple  intercourse  of 
 hunters,  warriors,  or  diggers  of  the  soil.  They  in- 
 volved no  more  than  the  transference  of  our  acts  or 
 states  to  persons  in  every  respect  like  ourselves. 
 
 Subjective  acts  predicated  of  objects. 
 
 But  we  have  now  to  consider  a  far  more  momen- 
 ous  step.  Man  was  in  possession  of  roots  which 
 enabled  him  to  express  the  consciousness  of  his  own 
 acts.  He  might  speak  of  himself  as  a  striker  or 
 digger,  and  of  other  beings  like  himself  as  strikers  or 
 diggers.  He  had  learnt  to  think  and  express  acts  and 
 actors,  but  as  yet  nothing  else.  While  in  this  state 
 of  mind,  let  us  ask,  what  could  he  do  when  he  wished 
 to  speak  of  animals,  and  particularly  of  those  who 
 were  his  daily  companions'?  He  could  only  treat 
 1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  326. 
 
DYNAMIC    STAGE.  389 
 
 them  as  actors,  as  actors  like  himself,  and  thus  call 
 the  horse  his  runner,  the  dog  his  watcher,  the  cow 
 his  nurse,  the  bull  his  man,  the  mouse  his  thief,  the 
 serpent  a  creeper  or  a  throttler.  It  was  this  necessity 
 of  language  and  of  thought  which  brought  the  ani- 
 mals near  to  him  and  preserved  that  intimacy 
 between  man  and  beast  which  has  survived  in  the 
 animal  fables  of  so  many  countries. 
 
 But  what  was  to  be  done  with  other  objects  of 
 nature-,  such  as  trees,  rivers,  mountains,  sky,  sun,  and 
 moon  ?  They  too,  if  our  theory  is  right,  could  only 
 be  named  and  conceived  in  the  same  way.  They  had 
 to  submit  to  the  various  categories  of  activity  for 
 which  expression  had  been  found.  To  us  this  seems 
 very  natural,  but  this  small  step  from  '  He  digs '  to 
 '  It  digs '  amounted  really  to  the  creation  of  a  new 
 world  of  thought,  the  objective,  as  distinguished  from 
 the  subjective  world. 
 
 What  is  of  the  greatest  importance,  however,  is  this, 
 that,  as  in  the  case  of  the  first  formation  of  concepts, 
 so  here  in  the  first  formation  of  what  we  now  call  mytho- 
 logy, but  what  was  really  a  perfectly  natural  stage  of 
 thought,  and  almost  a  necessity  of  language,  we  should 
 clearly  see  its  inevitable  character.  At  that  time  man 
 knew  as  yet  one  kind  of  being  only,  namely  his  own,  one 
 kind  of  language  only,  namely  that  which  expressed  his 
 own  subjective  acts  and  his  own  subjective  states,  and 
 those  of  his  fellow-workers.  What  then  could  he 
 predicate  of  outward  objects  except  some  kind  of 
 activity  like  his  own,  and  what  language  could  he 
 apply  to  them  except  that  which  he  had  formed  to 
 express  his  own  acts  and  his  own  states  ?  When  he 
 saw  the   lightning  tearing  a  hole  in  his  field,  what 
 
390  LECTURE    XV. 
 
 could  he  say  but  that  the  digger  had  dug  a  hole  ? 
 When  he  saw  the  wind  grinding  branches  together 
 till  they  caught  fire,  what  could  he  say  but  that  the 
 grinder,  whom  he  might  possibly  call  Prometheus,  in 
 Sanskrit  pramantha,  had  ground  out  fire,  just  as  man 
 himself  ground  out  sparks  by  rubbing  two  fire-sticks 
 till  they  spurted  out  flames  ?  What  we  now  call 
 lightning  was  in  that  stage  of  thought,  tearing,  digging, 
 bursting,  sparkling  there  and  then.  What  we  now 
 call  storm  or  wind,  was  with  the  earliest  speakers  and 
 thinkers  '  smashing,  grinding,  hurling,  blowing  there 
 and  then.' 
 
 Dynamic  Stage. 
 
 As  soon  as  this  new  mental  act  was  performed;  and 
 performed  not  intentionally,  but,  and  this  is  again 
 the  important  point,  inevitably,  a  new  world  was 
 called  into  existence,  a  world  of  names,  or  as  we  now 
 call  it,  the  world  of  myth.  Whatever  had  to  be 
 called  and  conceived,  had  to  be  conceived  as  active, 
 had  to  be  called  by  means  of  roots  which  expressed 
 originally  the  consciousness  of  our  own  acts.  There 
 was  no  other  way  open  as  yet  by  which  nature  could 
 be  reached,  and  hence  a  whole  stratum  of  language 
 was  formed  which  I  should  like  to  call  the  dramatic, 
 but  that  I  fear  I  might  be  misunderstood,  and  which 
 therefore  I  prefer  to  call  dynamic.  All  that  had 
 to  be  expressed  had  to  be  changed  into  actors, 
 and  hence  the  name  dramatic  would  have  been  very 
 appropriate.  But  as  there  was  also  an  easy  transition 
 from  actors  to  powers,  whenever  the  human  and  per- 
 sonal characteristics  of  actors  were  allowed  to  vanish, 
 or  possibly  had  never  been  called  out  into  definite 
 prominence,  dynamic  will  be  as  useful  a  name. 
 
DYNAMIC    STAGE.  391 
 
 In  this  inevitable  dynamic  stage  of  thought  and 
 language  we  have  the  true  key  to  all  those  processes 
 which  go  by  the  names  of  Animism,  Anthropomorr 
 phism,  Personification,  etc. 
 
 Animism. 
 
 It  was  the  fashion  to  say  that  primitive  man  in  a 
 poetical  mood  ascribed  life  to  all  things  by  which  he 
 found  himself  surrounded  and  affected.  This  peculiar 
 tendency  was  called  in  German  beseelen.  Beseelen, 
 however,  could  mean  two  things;  either  simply  ani- 
 mare,  to  endow  with  life,  or  mente  et  ratione  in- 
 struere,  to  endow  with  mind  and  reason.  It  is  true 
 that  these  two  ideas  often  run  together,  and  that  a 
 poet,  if  he  once  ascribed  life  to  a  tree,  might  soon 
 represent  it  also  as  not  only  feeling,  but  likewise  as 
 thinking  and  reasoning.  Still  for  philosophical  pur- 
 poses it  would  be  well  to  distinguish  between  the  two. 
 Unfortunately  there  is  the  same  ambiguity  in  the 
 English  rendering,  viz.  animism.  Animism,  we  are 
 told,  consists  '  in  our  endowing  the  phenomena  of 
 nature  with  personal  life1.5  But  what  is  meant  here 
 by  personal  life  1  Is  it  simply  the  individual  life  of 
 a  bird,  or  does  it  include  all  we  mean  by  our  own  per- 
 sonality ?  We  may  ascribe  life  to  a  river  and  speak 
 of  living  water,  without  as  yet  ascribing  perception, 
 much  less  thought  and  reason,  to  such  phenomena  of 
 nature.  If  to  ascribe  life  to  lifeless  things  is  Animism, 
 then  to  ascribe  mind  to  mindless  things  should  be 
 distinguished  by  some  other  name,  such  as  Intellect  ism. 
 What  is  still  more  misleading  in  the  name  of  Animism 
 is  that,  besides  having  been  used  long  ago  as  a  name 
 1   Fortnightly Jtevieu)^  loth  Aug.  1884. 
 
392  LECTURE    XV. 
 
 of  Stahl's  theory  of  an  Anima  mundi,  it  has  recently 
 been  appropriated  as  a  name  of  the  belief  in  the 
 existence  of  spirits  as  apart  from  matter  and  in  a 
 spiritual  world  generally. 
 
 If  Animism  could  be  restricted  once  more  to  the 
 conception  of  inanimate  beings  as  animate,  it  might 
 hold  its  own  place  by  the  side  of  Personification, 
 which  would  be  the  conception  of  non- personal  beings 
 as  personal,  and  Anthrojiomorjjkism,  which  would  be 
 the  conception  of  non-human  beings  as  human. 
 
 But  we  should  clearly  see  that  all  these  are  but 
 names,  it  may  be,  useful  names,  if  only  properly 
 defined,  but  that  by  themselves  they  explain  nothing. 
 To  say  that  to  look  upon  a  river  as  animated  is 
 Animism  is  pure  tautology.  We  state  a  fact,  but  we 
 do  not  even  attempt  to  explain  it.  The  dynamic 
 theory,  on  the  contrary,  shows  how  these  processes 
 arose ;  nay,  it  shows  that,  given  language  such  as  it 
 was  during  that  early  stage,  it  was  inevitable.  When 
 man  could  as  yet  predicate  acts  only,  the  subjects  of 
 his  predications  became  necessarily  actors,  capable  of 
 performing  the  acts  ascribed  to  them. 
 
 It  is  here  where  we  perceive  the  importance  of  the 
 discovery  that  nearly  all  roots,  that  is  to  say,  nearly 
 all  the  elements  of  our  thought,  express  actions.  It  is 
 here  where  the  Science  of  Language  is  recognised  as 
 the  true  foundation  of  the  Science  of  Mythology,  and 
 hereafter,  of  Religion. 
 
 Before  we  examine  the  familiar  cases  of  dynamic 
 conception  and  naming  in  the  Aryan  world,  it  may 
 be  well  to  glance  at  other  countries  and  other  lan- 
 guages in  order  to  see  whether  the  same  process 
 which   we   have  traced  back    to   the  nature   of  our 
 
DYNAMIC   STAttE.  393 
 
 Aryan  roots,  can  be  discovered  elsewhere,  and  thun 
 confirm  the  theory  we  have  propounded. 
 
 Effypt. 
 
 Turning  first  to  Egypt  we  find  that  Mr.  Le  Page 
 Renouf,  in  his  thoughtful  Hibbert  Lectures,  faces  the 
 problem  which  so  few  students  of  religion  have  the 
 sense  to  face,  namely,  the  real  meaning  belonging  to 
 words  which  we  are  accustomed  to  translate  by  God. 
 In  order  to  show  you  what  I  mean  let  me  by  antici- 
 pation give  you  one  illustration.  You  know  that  the 
 Latin  deus,  god,  corresponds  to  the  Sanskrit  deva. 
 I  shall  say  nothing  about  the  Greek  0eo?,  for  such  is 
 the  conscientiousness  of  modern  etymology  that  any 
 connection  between  deus  and  0eo?  is  now  denied, 
 because  it  is  impossible  as  yet  to  account  for  a  Greek 
 6  in  the  place  of  a  Sanskrit  and  Latin  de.  But  any- 
 how the  presence  of  deva  in  Sanskrit  and  of  deus  in 
 Latin  shows  that  this  word  existed  before  what  I  call 
 the  Aryan  Separation,  the  date  of  which  lies  so  far 
 back  that  few  scholars  would  be  so  hardy,  not  to  say 
 foolhardy,  as  to  attempt  to  fix  it  chronologically. 
 
 However,  the  mere  presence  of  this  name  for  god  in 
 Sanskrit  and  Latin  would  not  teach  us  very  much. 
 It  would  be  curious,  perhaps  more  than  merely 
 curious,  that  these  two  languages  should  have  the 
 same  word  for  god  ;  but  the  question  of  real  interest, 
 how  they  came  to  have  the  same  word  for  God 
 would  remain  unanswered.  It  is  here  where  a  study 
 of  language  steps  in  to  solve  the  riddle.  Deus  in 
 Latin  means  god  and  nothing  but  god.  But  deva  in 
 Sanskrit  means  first  bright  and  brilliant.  The  sun, 
 the  dawn,  the  sky,  the  day,  all  are  deva  in  the  sense 
 
394  LECTURE    XV. 
 
 of  bright,  from  the  same  root  which  yielded  in  San- 
 skrit Dyaus,  sky,  and  Zeus  in  Greek.  Here  then  we 
 catch  a  glimpse  of  the  origin  of  the  concept  of  god. 
 It  was  because  all  these  beneficent  and  joyful  phe- 
 nomena had  been  called  deva,  bright,  that,  after 
 dropping  the  phenomena  of  which  it  could  be  pre- 
 dicated, deva  itself  remained  with  the  meaning  of 
 brightness,  raised  to  the  more  general  and  higher  con- 
 cept which  now  belongs  to  it,  namely  deity.  Poets 
 would  address  the  sun,  the  sky,  the  morning,  and  all 
 the  bright  phenomena  of  nature,  as  the  bright  ones, 
 the  Devas.  and  these  bright  ones,  these  Devas,  would 
 without  any  further  effort  become  the  Devas,  the 
 bright  ones,  that  is,  what  were  to  them  their  gods. 
 
 Let  us  now  return  to  Egypt. 
 
 One  of  the  words  for  god  in  Egyptian  is  nutar, 
 and,  as  Mr.  Renouf  remarks,  no  one  can  deny  that 
 nutar  is  rightly  translated  by  God.  But  how  is  it 
 possible  to  bring  the  '  One  God,  the  self-existent,  the 
 unbegotten'  (p.  89),  under  the  same  category  with 
 the  innumerable  deities  that  constitute  the  old 
 Egyptian  pantheon?  If  the  one  is  nutar,  how  can 
 all  the  others  be  called  likewise  nutar  ?  The  con- 
 fusion of  thought  which  arises  even  among  us  by  the 
 promiscuous  use  of  god  for  the  Supreme  Being,  a 
 being  without  a  second,  a  being  without  body,  parts 
 and  passions,  and  likewise  for  the  innumerable  gods 
 of  ancient  and  modern  systems  of  religion,  is  very 
 great.  This,  however,  concerns  historical  students  of 
 religion  only.  But  when  the  predicate  of  god,  of 
 deva,  deus,  0eo?,  involved  the  most  momentous  prac- 
 tical questions,  the  mischief  done  by  the  promiscuous 
 use  of  such  words  affected  much  more  vital  interests. 
 
DYNAMIC    STAGE.  395 
 
 We  shall  be  able  to  trace  the  various  channels 
 through  which  the  Sanskrit  deva  passed  from  mean- 
 ing bright  to  meaning  god ;  and  Mr.  Renouf  has 
 enabled  us  to  catch  at  least  a  glimpse  of  a  similar 
 process  in  ancient  Egypt. 
 
 Nutar,  he  tells  us,  the  Coptic  nuti,  is  closely  allied 
 with  another  word  nutra,  and  the  original  meaning 
 of  these  words  is  found  in  the  Coptic  nomti,  which, 
 as  an  adjective,  means  strong,  as  a  substantive  poiver, 
 as  a  verb  to  protect.  Nutar,  therefore,  would  express 
 the  ideas  of  active,  strong,  mighty,  very  mighty, 
 almighty,  divine.  It  would  thus  illustrate  the  very 
 phase  of  thought  and  language  which  we  are  con- 
 sidering, a  phase  during  which,  as  we  saw,  man 
 could  lay  hold  of  the  surrounding  world  by  active 
 verbs  only.  Mr.  Renouf  translates  nutar  by  power, 
 and  compares  it  with  the  Hebrew  el  (p.  96).  The 
 Egyptian  Nutar  nutra,  the  powerful  power,  would 
 correspond  to  the  Hebrew  El  Shaddai,  i.e.  El,  the 
 strong.  The  Egyptian  nwtar,  however,  never  became 
 a  proper  name,  '  but  it  was  applied  indifferently  to 
 each  of  the  powers  which  the  Egyptian  imagination 
 conceived  as  active  in  the  universe,  and  to  the  Power 
 from  which  all  powers  proceed.  Horns  and  ltd  and 
 Osiris  and  Set  are  names  of  individual  finite  powers, 
 but  beside  these  a  Power  without  a  name  and  with- 
 out anv  mythological  characteristics,  is  constantly 
 referred  to  in  the  singular  number.' 
 
 1 1  ere  then,  in  a  country  unconnected  with  India,  in  a 
 laneruasre  of  a  totally  different  texture  from  that  of  the 
 Aryan  languages,  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with 
 intellectual  results  which  harmonise  perfectly  with 
 our  theory  of  a  dynamic  period,  and  so  far  maybe 
 
396  LECTURE   XV. 
 
 said  to  confirm  it.  The  gods  of  Egyptian  mythology 
 represent  the  real  powers  of  the  universe,  and  the 
 power  that  was  discovered  behind  all  these  powers 
 became  there,  from  the  earliest  times,  the  seed  of  a 
 monotheistic  faith. 
 
 Semitic  Names. 
 
 Let  us  now  turn  to  the  Semitic  world,  the  earliest 
 traces  of  which  have  lately  been  discovered  in  the 
 Cuneiform  Inscriptions  of  Babylon  and  Assyria.  Here 
 too  I  shall  chiefly  follow  another  Hibbert  Lecturer, 
 Professor  Sayce,  who  in  his  lectures  on  the  Origin 
 and  Growth  of  Religion  as  illustrated  by  the  religion 
 of  the  ancient  Babylonians  (1887)  may  be  supposed 
 to  give  us  the  last  reliable  results  of  this  branch  of 
 Oriental  study.  It  must,  of  course,  be  understood 
 that  all  these  researches,  whether  in  Egypt  or  in 
 Babylon,  and  to  a  certain  extent  in  India  also,  are 
 constantly  progressive.  We  can  do  no  more  than 
 accept  with  certain  reservations  what  by  some  of  the 
 most  hard-working  scholars  is  considered  as  firmly 
 established  at  present.  But  we  must  always  be  ready 
 to  welcome  new  light,  new  facts  and  new  theories, 
 and  while  willing  to  recognise  the  uncertainty  of 
 much  of  what  we  believe  to  be  certain  at  present,  be 
 grateful  for  the  immense  progress  that  has  been  made 
 during  the  age  in  which  we  live. 
 
 In  Babylonia  the  number  of  so-called  gods  is  enor- 
 mous. Without  attempting  to  find  out  how  many  of 
 them  are  Pre-Semitic,  or  Accadian,  and  how  many 
 are  purely  Semitic, — for  I  am  afraid  this  cannot  be 
 done  as  yet  with  any  real  success, — the  decipherers  of 
 the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions  tell  us  that,  according  to 
 Assur-natsir-pal,   there   were    65,000   great    gods    of 
 
DYNAMIC   STAGE.  397 
 
 heaven  and  earth  (Sayce,  p.  216).  In  other  places 
 we  are  told  that  while  the  background  of  this  vast 
 pantheon  was  filled  with  the  obscure  deities  and 
 spirits  of  the  ancient  Accadian  cult,  whose  names 
 survived  in  magical  charms  and  exorcisms.,  the  air 
 above  was  occupied  by  the  '  300  spirits  of  heaven,' 
 and  the  earth  below  by  '  the  600  spirits  of  the  earth.' 
 If  these  beings  are  called  gods,  it  must  be  quite 
 clear  that  the  term  is  used  in  a  sense  totally  different 
 from  that  which  it  has  when  app'ied  to  the  supreme 
 deity  or  to  the  gods  who  created  heaven  and  earth. 
 These  Babylonian  gods  were  probably  no  more  than 
 the  so-called  ZL  or  supernatural  powers.  The  Zi, 
 according  to  Professor  Sayce  (p.  327), '  was  simply  that 
 which  manifests  life,  and  the  test  of  the  manifesta- 
 tion of  life  was  movement.  Everything  that  moved, 
 or  seemed  to  move,  was  endowed  with  life,  for  only 
 in  this  way  could  primitive  man  explain  the  fact.' 
 
 From  our  point  of  view  we  should  say  that  with 
 primitive  man  it  was  not  at  first  a  question  of  how  to 
 explain  movement,  but  how  to  call  it.  Anything  that 
 moved  could  be  called  in  one  way  only,  namely  by 
 speaking  of  it  by  means  of  ancient  roots  which,  as  we 
 saw  in  the  Aryan  languages  at  least,  expressed  the 
 acts  and  movements  of  primitive  men. 
 
 Professor  Sayce  expresses  the  same  idea  when  he 
 continues:  'Man  himself  moved  and  acted  because 
 he  had  life ;  life,  therefore,  was  the  cause  of  move- 
 ment. Hence  the  objects  and  forces  of  nature  were 
 all  assigned  a  Zi  or  spirit.  The  arrow  that  flew 
 through  the  air,  the  stone  that  struck  and  injured, 
 the  heavenly  bodies  that  moved  across  the  sky,  the 
 fire   that  blazed   up  from   the   ground  devouring   all 
 
398  LECTURE   XV. 
 
 that  fell  in  its  way,  had  all  alike  their  spirits.  The 
 spirits  were  as  innumerable  as  the  objects  and  forces 
 which  surrounded  the  Chaldean,  and  as  mysterious 
 and  invisible  as  his  own  spirit  and  life.' 
 
 All  this  is  perfectly  intelligible  if  we  apply  to  the 
 Semitic  mythology  and  religion  the  same  key,  the 
 key  of  language,  which  unlocks  the  secrets  of  the 
 earliest  creations  of  the  Aryan  mind.  What  we 
 know  of  this  early  Semitic  phase  of  thought,  with 
 a  possible  background  of  Accadian  thought,  is  pro- 
 bably the  oldest  stratum  which  the  shaft  of  the 
 archaeologist  will  ever  reach.  But  even  thus  it  pre- 
 supposes many  earlier  strata  ;  and  the  question 
 whether  this  mythological  phraseology,  without  as 
 yet  any  moral  element  in  it,  was  contemporaneous 
 with  a  religious  phraseology  full  of  moral  import, 
 is  one  which  we  can  never  hope  to  solve  by  his- 
 torical evidence.  Psychologically  the  purely  dyna- 
 mic stage  of  language  and  thought  might  seem  to 
 be  the  necessary  antecedent  of  a  later  religious  de- 
 velopment. One  or  more  of  these  Zi  or  powers 
 might  seem  to  have  been  raised  in  time  to  a  higher 
 and  in  the  end  to  a  supreme  position.  But  we 
 know,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  a  belief  in  number- 
 less powers  or  spirits  may  really  co-exist  with  a 
 belief  in  one  Supreme  Being ;  and  we  must  never 
 forget,  in  researches  of  this  kind,  that  the  soil  from 
 which  language,  myth,  and  religion  spring  is  never 
 a  uniform  soil.  As  it  is  now,  so  it  has  been  from 
 the  beginning.  Temples  have  alwa}^s  been  open  to 
 the  young  and  to  the  old,  to  the  sage  and  to  the  fool, 
 and  the  real  presence  of  the  Divine  has  been  taken 
 in  as  different  senses  as  it  is  now,  from  the  grossly 
 
DYNAMIC   STAGE.  399 
 
 material  to  the  sublimely  spiritual.  Nor  is  it  neces- 
 sary that  the  human  mind  should  always  pass  through 
 the  same  stages  of  development  in  order  to  arrive  at 
 the  same  result.  The  eye  of  a  child  may  often  see 
 what  is  hidden  to  the  mind  of  a  sage,  and  the  sudden 
 visions  of  genius  do  not  submit  to  chronological 
 measurement.  Yet,  if  we  want  to  understand  the 
 different  strata  of  thought,  we  have  a  right  to  pro- 
 ceed logically  rather  than  chronologically,  and  from 
 that  point  of  view  we  have  a  right  to  say  that  the 
 purely  dynamic  stage  comes  first,  the  religious  and 
 moral  stage  come  second. 
 
 Finland. 
 
 Having  examined  Egypt  and  Babylon,  we  have 
 now  to  see  how  far  some  of  the  Ural-altaic  languages 
 confirm  or  invalidate  our  belief  in  the  necessity  of 
 a  dynamic  stratum  of  language,  and  therefore  of 
 mythology. 
 
 One  of  the  most  advanced  representatives  of  Tu- 
 ranianism,  whether  in  language,  mythology,  religion 
 and  literature,  is  no  doubt  the  Finnish ;  and  here  we 
 have  the  advantage  of  possessing  the  trustworthy 
 observations  of  real  scholars,  and  more  particularly 
 of  Castren. 
 
 Castren,  in  his  lectures  on  Finnish  Mythology, 
 gives  us  a  full  account  of  the  so-called  deities  of  the 
 air,  the  water,  the  earth,  and  the  nether- world.  These 
 we  shall  have  to  consider  hereafter.  What  interests 
 us  in  the  present  stage  of  our  inquiry,  and  as  throw- 
 ing light  on  the  dynamic  period  of  language  and 
 thought,  is  his  account  of  the  Haltias.  I  shall  quote 
 his  own  words,  but  I  believe  that  if  we  could  always 
 
400  LECTUKE   XV. 
 
 substitute  the  term  poivers  for  what  he  calls  halt  ice 
 or  deities  or  spirits,  we  should  enter  more  fully  into 
 the  state  of  mind  which  gave  form  and  shape  to  these 
 haltias. 
 
 'Every  object  in  nature/  he  writes  (p.  105),  'must 
 have  a  tutelary  deity,  a  haltia,  a  genius.  This  Haltia 
 was  its  creator  and  had  to  take  care  of  it.  These 
 Haltias,  however,  were  not  tied  to  every  single  finite 
 object,  but  free,  personal  beings,  moving  by  them- 
 selves, and  possessed  of  form  and  shape,  of  body  and 
 life.  Their  existence  did  not  depend  on  the  existence 
 of  each  single  object,  for  though  in  nature  no  object 
 was  without  its  Haltia,  their  activity  was  by  no 
 means  restricted  to  a  single  individual,  but  extended 
 to  the  whole  genus  or  species.  This  mountain-ash, 
 this  stone,  this  house,  had  its  own  Haltia,  but  the 
 same  Haltias  care  also  for  other  mountain-ashes,  other 
 stones,  other  houses.  The  single  ash  therefore,  the 
 single  stone,  the  single  house  may  vanish,  and  yet 
 their  Haltias  would  continue  for  ever  in  the  genus. 
 
 8  At  an  earlier  period  the  Fins  worshipped  natural 
 objects  in  their  visible  form.  They  paid  such  worship 
 to  the  forest,  for  instance,  either  in  its  totality  or  in 
 part,  but  always  under  a  personal  form.  Thus  we 
 read  in  the  Kalevala,  Eune  7,  v.  282 : — 
 
 '  "  Be  gracious,  0  grove  ;  be  mild,  0  wilderness  ;  be 
 moved,  O  mild  Tapio.  .  .  /' 
 
 '  Samoyedes,  Ostjakes,  and  several  more  of  the  no- 
 madic tribes  of  Siberia  have  no  real  concept  of  any 
 personal  divine  being  ruling  over  the  forest,  but 
 wherever  they  meet  on  their  tunders  a  small  grove 
 of  larches  or  firs,  they  pay  it  what  we  are  accustomed 
 to  call  divine  honours,  and  erect  in  it  their  idols.  .  .  . 
 
DYNAMIC    STAGE.  401 
 
 Other  tribes  ascribe  a  divine  personality  to  the  forest 
 itself,  and  speak  of  a  mighty  forest-god  who  generally, 
 like  the  water-god,  is  represented  as  a  hostile  being.' 
 
 All  these  ideas,  which  are  generally  disposed  of  by 
 such  names  as  Animism  and  Personification,  which 
 explain  absolutely  nothing,  become  perfectly  intelli- 
 gible, nay,  what  is  far  more  important,  they  become 
 perfectly  inevitable  during  that  phase  of  language 
 which  I  called  the  Dynamic.  If  people  took  any 
 interest  in  these  objects  of  nature,  if  they  wished  to 
 predicate  anything  at  all  of  them,  they  could  only 
 do  it  in  one  way,  namely  by  means  of  their  active 
 roots. 
 
 To  say  that  a  tree  by  being  called  a  feeder  became 
 a  deity,  is  mixing  up  two  very  remote  phases  of 
 thought.  The  ancient  people  themselves,  though  they 
 had  forgotten  the  real  origin  of  these  active  powers, 
 distinguished  nevertheless  between  them  and  their 
 gods.  The  Fins,  for  instance,  kept  the  term  Jumala 
 to  signify  an  embodied  being,  while  Haltia  was  to 
 them  more  of  a  spirit-like  power.  No  doubt,  it  was 
 impossible  for  them  to  conceive  of  spirits  without 
 some  kind  of  shape  or  body  (pp.  178,  189,  209),  and 
 hence  their  conceptions  of  Haltias  varied  with  dif- 
 ferent poets  and  different  teachers.  Some  of  the 
 Haltias  became  loved  or  dreaded,  some  received 
 worship,  others  were  pacified  by  offerings.  At  last, 
 when  everything  else  had  received  its  Haltia,  man 
 also  was  believed  to  be  possessed  of  a  Haltia,  and 
 thus  the  human  activity  which  man  had  transferred 
 to  the  objects  of  nature  returned  to  himself  in  a 
 modified  form. 
 
 I   shall    read    you    a    prayer    from    the    Kalevala. 
 
 Dd 
 
402  LECTURE   XV. 
 
 addressed  to  the  Haltias  of  nature,  and  then  a  prayer 
 addressed  to  a  man's  own  Haltia  (Castren,  p.  171)  .— 
 
 '  Rise,  ye  men  of  the  sword, 
 Heroes  of  the  age  of  the  earth, 
 Rise  from  the  wells,  ye  bearers  of  sickles, 
 From  the  rivers,  ye  shooters  with  bows  ! 
 Come,  O  Forest,  with  thy  men, 
 Come,  0  Thicket,  with  thy  hosts, 
 Old  man  of  the  mountain,  with  thy  forces, 
 Spirit  of  the  water  with  thy  terrors, 
 Mother  of  the  waters  with  thy  crowds  ! 
 Come  ye  maidens  of  all  the  valleys. 
 Soft-bordered  from  all  springs, 
 Come  to  shield  this  one  man  ! ' 
 
 When  going  on  the  chase,  the  hunter  would  invoke 
 his  own  Haltia  (p.  173)  : 
 
 '  Rise  my  being  from  the  cave, 
 Rise  thou  Bright-eye  x  from  the  stones, 
 Come  forth  with  red  cheeks  2, 
 Thou  my  spirit  from  yonder  fir-tree  ! 
 Put  on  a  shirt  of  fire  ! ' 
 
 Hidatsas  in  North  America. 
 
 Having  traced  the  effects  of  this  dynamic  stage  of 
 language  and  thought  in  Egypt,  in  Babylon,  and  in 
 Finland,  we  may  glance  at  one  more  language  which 
 cannot  be  suspected  of  consanguinity  with  any  of 
 them,  that  of  the  Hidatsa  or  the  Gros ventre  Indians 
 on  the  Missouri3.  These  Indians,  as  Mr.  Matthews 
 informs  us,  worship  the  '  Great  Spirit '  or  the  '  Old 
 Man  Immortal,'  but  they  have  likewise  raised  the 
 whole  of  nature  into  ever  so  many  powers,  or  spirits. 
 Whatever  is  not  made  by  human  hands,  is  conceived 
 as  having  a  power  of  its  own,  as  being  something  like 
 man  himself.  '  Not  man  alone,'  we  are  told,  '  but  the 
 sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  all  the  lower  animals,  all 
 
 1  An  epithet  commonly  given  to  the  bear. 
 
 2  Castren  translates  '  with  many-coloured  cheeks  ; '  the  text  seems 
 to  have  '  with  darned  cheeks.' 
 
 3  M.  M.,  Eibbert  Lectures,  p.  17. 
 
DYNAMIC    STAGE.  403 
 
 trees  and  plants,  rivers  and  lakes,  many  boulders  and 
 other  separate  rocks,  even  some  hills  and  buttes  which 
 stand  alone,'  are  supposed  to  possess  a  spirit,  or,  as 
 they  call  it,  a  shade. 
 
 To  many  philosophers  this  intellectual  phenomenon 
 seems  to  be  perfectly  natural  and  to  require  no  ex- 
 planation beyond  what  is  supplied  by  such  names  as 
 Animism,  or  Anthropomorphism,  or  Personification, 
 as  if  these  names  could  help  us  in  the  least  Eut 
 surely,  such  names  do  no  more  than  describe  the 
 result,  they  do  not  throw  a  ray  of  light  on  the  springs 
 which  produced  the  result.  The  real  question  is  why 
 men  should  not  have  been  satisfied  with  taking  a  tree 
 as  a  tree  or  a  river  as  a  river.  Their  eyes  gave  them 
 no  more,  their  mind  required  no  more.  We  ourselves 
 require  neither  Egyptian  nutars,  nor  Babylonian  zis, 
 nor  Finnish  haltias,  nor  Hidatsa  spirits  or  shades  to 
 understand  or  interpret  nature  as  our  senses  present 
 it  to  us.  We  may  call  such  views  of  nature  poetical, 
 metaphorical,  philosophical :  but  all  that  does  not  ex- 
 plain why  the  ancient  nations  of  the  world  should 
 have  indulged  in  such  metaphors,  such  poetry,  or,  if 
 you  like,  in  such  philosophy.  What  we  want  to  know 
 is,  what  force  there  was  to  drive  nations  of  such 
 different  characters  into  one  and  the  same  groove  ? 
 Mr.  Matthews  seems  to  me  to  have  come  nearest  to 
 the  truth,  when  he  ascribes  this  phase  of  thought  to 
 what  he  calls  an  individualising  tendency,  to  a  wish 
 to  treat  each  natural  object  as  a  subject.  But  the 
 Science  of  Language  allows  us  a  deeper  insight  still, 
 and  shows  us  that  what  we  call  a  tendency  of  the 
 human  mind,  was  in  reality  a  dire  necessity  of  human 
 speech. 
 
 I)  d  2 
 
404  LECTURE    XV. 
 
 Growth  of  Language. 
 
 These  natural  objects  had  to  be  named  at  a  period 
 in  the  growth  of  language  when  man  possessed  as  yet 
 no  more  than  roots  expressive  of  human  actions,  and 
 whatever  had  to  be  named,  could  be  named  in  one 
 way  only,  namely  as  participating  in  these  human 
 actions. 
 
 If  a  man  had  once  been  called  a  striker,  a  lion  also 
 might  be  called  a  striker.  If  an  enemy  had  been 
 called  a  throttler,  a  serpent  also  might  be  taken  hold 
 of  by  means  of  the  same  name. 
 
 Then  followed  a  new  step.  The  lightning  hissed 
 and  struck,  the  storm  pushed  and  pounded,  the  river 
 ran  and  roared.  It  required  no  effort  of  imagination, 
 no  animistic  metaphors,  no  anthropomorphic  poetry : 
 the  downright  necessities  of  language  and  thought 
 forced  man  to  speak  of  lightnings,  storms  and  rivers 
 as  hissers,  strikers,  pushers,  pounders,  runners  and 
 roarers,  and  thus  to  create  their  nutars  in  Egypt, 
 their  zis  in  Babylon,  their  haltias  in  Finland,  and,  in 
 the  end,  their  so-called  gods  everywhere. 
 
 Causality. 
 
 It  is  sometimes  said  that  the  category  of  causality 
 which,  though  we  need  not  call  it  an  innate  idea,  is 
 nevertheless  a  conditio  sine  qua  non  of  all  human 
 thought,  is  really  responsible  for  all  these  nutars, 
 zis,  and  haltias.  The  human  mind  is  so  made,  we 
 are  told,  that  it  must  think  a  runner  behind  the 
 river,  a  rainer  behind  the  rain,  a  shiner  behind  the 
 sun,  a  coverer  behind  the  night.  All  this  is  true, 
 and  it  is  proved  by  history  as  well  as  by  philosophy. 
 
DYNAMIC    STAGE.  405 
 
 But  we  must  be  careful  not  to  commit  a  linguistic 
 anachronism.  The  very  name  of  cause  and  causality 
 is  far  too  abstract  and  far  too  late  to  account  for 
 this  early  phase  of  thought  which  we  have  here  to 
 account  for.  Cause,  as  a  concept,  did  not  yet  exist, 
 though  it  may  be  quite  right  for  us  to  bring  the  pro- 
 cess of  giving  these  names  to  different  phenomena  of 
 nature  under  the  general  head  of  causality.  From  an 
 historical  point  of  view,  however,  it  is  more  correct 
 to  say  that  what  we  in  our  philosophical  language 
 call  the  category  of  causality,  manifested  itself  for  the 
 first  time  in  this  very  transference  of  our  own  activi- 
 ties to  the  phenomena  of  nature.  In  the  simple 
 expression  of  I  strike,  i.  e.  ;  striking  from  here,'  is 
 involved  the  first  elementary  consciousness  of  cause 
 and  effect ;  I  or  here  being  the  cause,  strike  the  effect, 
 the  two  being  indissolubly  united  in  the  conscious- 
 ness of  my  own  act.  So  again,  when  I  say  '  he 
 strikes,'  I  conceive  what  we  now  call  a  causal  connec- 
 tion between  the  agent  and  the  act.  When  the  ancient 
 nations  spoke  of  a  vainer,  not  yet  of  rain,  they  pro- 
 duced by  their  language  and  thought,  whether  they 
 liked  it  or  not,  an  active,  living  power,  a  something- 
 like  ourselves.  We,  at  our  time  of  history,  may  call 
 this  something  a  cause  :  to  them  it  was  a  doer,  an 
 actor,  a  somebody  who  could  be  grasped  by  means  of 
 the  only  intellectual  tools  which  were  then  forth- 
 coming, by  means  of  active  verbs. 
 
 Objections  answered. 
 
 I  am  not  surprised  that  this  theory,  which  recognises 
 in  language  the  key  to  all  the  apparent  vagaries  of 
 early  thought,  should  have  met  with  strong  opposition. 
 
406  LECTURE  XY. 
 
 So  long  as  the  real  identity  of  thought  and  language 
 had  not  been  grasped,  so  long  as  people  imagined  that 
 language  is  one  thing  and  thought  another,  it  was  but 
 natural  that  they  should  fail  to  see  the  real  meaning 
 of  treating  mythology,  if  not  as  a  disease,  at  all  events 
 as  an  inevitable  affection  of  language.  If  the  active 
 verb  were  merely  a  grammatical,  and  not  at  the  same 
 time  a  psychological,  nay  an  historical  fact,  it  might 
 seem  absurd  to  identify  the  active  meaning  of  our 
 roots  with  the  active  meaning  ascribed  to  the  pheno- 
 mena of  nature.  But  let  it  be  once  perceived  that 
 language  and  thought  are  one  and  indivisible,  and 
 nothing  will  seem  more  natural  than  that  what,  as  the 
 grammarian  tells  us,  happened  in  language,  should;  as 
 the  psychologist  tells  us,  have  likewise  happened  in 
 thought ; — that  the  two  events,  in  fact;  should  prove 
 to  be  one  and  the  same. 
 
 It  may  be  said,  however,  that  the  product  of  this 
 dynamic  stage  of  language  and  thought  are  not  yet 
 mythological,  much  less  religious.  This  is  perfectly 
 true.  We  have  accounted  for  such  names  as  runner 
 for  river,  striker  for  lightning,  smasher  for  storm ; 
 we  have  accounted  for  agents,  but  not  yet  for  human 
 agents.  If  we  were  satisfied  with  high-sounding  names, 
 we  should  say  that  this  further  step  was  accounted 
 for  by  anthropomorphism,  which  really  means  that 
 it  was  accounted  for  by  what  we  have  to  account  for. 
 Here  also  language  supplies  the  real  solution.  If 
 striker  meant  generally  a  man  who  strikes,  what  was 
 more  natural  than  to  transfer  all  that  striker  meant, 
 that  is  to  say,  a  human  body,  a  pair  of  human  arms, 
 human  will  and  passions  too,  to  the  storm  when  it 
 had  once  been  called  a  striker  1     Language  performed 
 
DYNAMIC   STAGE.  407 
 
 the  miracle,  only  in  the  most  natural  way,  and  when 
 this  train  of  thought  had  once  been  opened,  the 
 tendency  of  analogy  would  soon  spread  it  over  the 
 whole  field  of  human  experience. 
 
 Still  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  be  misled  by 
 language.  People  might  speak  of  the  moon  as  a 
 measurer  \  or  of  the  river  as  a  roarer,  but  we  must  not 
 suppose  that  they  saw  no  difference  therefore  between 
 a  man  who  measured  a  field,  or  a  woman  who  roared 
 in  the  forest,  and  the  moon  when  they  called  it  Mas  2, 
 the  measurer,  and  the  river  when  they  called  her 
 Nadl,  a  roarer,  as  a  feminine.  They  used  words 
 which  might  mean  human  beings  performing  these 
 acts,  but  which  might  also  be  placed  in  a  different 
 focus,  so  that  a  portion  only  of  their  possible  meaning 
 was  lighted  up,  while  the  rest  remained  dim  and  dark. 
 The  important  lesson  which  the  Science  of  Language 
 teaches  us  is  that  everything  that  was  named  was  at 
 first  named  as  active,  then  as  personal,  and  almost 
 human.  When  even  a  stone  was  a  cutter,  a  tooth  a 
 grinder,  a  gimlet  a  borer,  the  difficulty  was  not  how 
 to  personify,  but  how  to  disper sonify.  Masculine 
 nouns  came  first,  then  feminine  ;  last  of  all  neuters. 
 
 Gender. 
 
 And  here  we  must  guard  against  another  very 
 common  mistake.  Those  who  are  unable  to  appro- 
 priate all  that  follows  from  the  identity  of  language 
 and  thought,  have  nevertheless  been  ready  to  admit 
 
 1  M.  M.,  Hibbert  lectur.es,  p.  193. 
 
 -  It  is  surely  mere  folly  to  say  that  8k.  mas  cannot  he  derived 
 from  the  root  ma,  to  measure,  but  must  have  meant  originally 
 shining.  M-qv  and  /x-qvr],  doth.  mena,  come  from  the  same  root  as 
 sk.  lna-na.  measure,  fti-rpov. 
 
408  LECTURE   XV. 
 
 that  the  gender  of  nouns  has  been  a  powerful  element 
 in  the  production  of  mythology.  It  has  even  been 
 admitted  that  languages  which  do  not  distinguish 
 grammatical  gender  produce  a  very  scanty  growth  of 
 mythology.  This  is  perfectly  true  with  regard  to 
 the  later  phases  of  mythology.  But  at  the  point 
 which  our  inquiry  has  reached  at  present,,  what  we 
 have  to  explain  is  the  origin,  not  the  later  influence 
 of  gender,  and  this  may  in  itself  be  called  a  mytholo- 
 gical process.  We  must  remember  that  even  in  sex- 
 denoting  languages  there  was  a  period  when  this 
 denotation  of  sex  did  not  yet  exist.  In  the  Aryan 
 languages,  for  instance,  some  of  the  oldest  words  are 
 without  gender.  Pater  is  not  a  masculine,  nor  mater 
 a  feminine  in  the  grammatical  sense  of  the  word. 
 Pater  and  mater  expressed  activities,  but  the}'  gave 
 no  outward  indication  of  sex.  The  distinction  began, 
 not  with  masculines,  but  with  the  setting  apart  of 
 certain  derivative  suffixes  for  females.  When  bona 
 was  introduced,  bonus  became  masculine,  and  not 
 vice  versa.  When  puella  was  used  for  girl,  puer. 
 which  formerly  meant  both  boy  and  girl,  became 
 restricted  to  the  meaning  of  boy.  At  a  still  later 
 time  certain  forms  were  set  apart  for  things  that  were 
 to  be  neither  male  nor  female,  so-called  neuters,  but 
 these  had  their  distinguishing  forms  generally  in  the 
 nominative  only. 
 
 In  languages  which  had  adopted  this  outward  dis- 
 tinction of  gender,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  gender 
 was  productive  of  new  mythology,  or  at  all  events  that 
 it  modified  the  character  of  mythology.  In  German, 
 where  the  moon  has  remained  masculine  and  the 
 sun  feminine,  poets  who  deal  in  mythological  subjects 
 
DYNAMIC   STAGE.  409 
 
 often  complain  of  the  fetters  of  language.  But  in  the 
 early  stages  of  language,  during  which  mythology  first 
 arose,  the  powers  of  nature  were  conceived  as  active 
 and  therefore  as  powerful  agents,  and,  when  the 
 question  of  sex  arose,  as  masculine.  That  masculine 
 character,  however,  became  prominent  and  outspoken 
 only  when  agents,  distinctly  female,  were  placed  by 
 their  side.  Whenever  that  happens,  whenever  we 
 have  a  female  representative  of  a  natural  phenomenon 
 by  the  side  of  a  male  representative,  the  male  may 
 almost  always  be  taken  as  the  earlier  form. 
 
 Dyaus,  as  a  masculine. 
 
 To  give  an  instance.  Professor  Gruppe  (p.  79),  to 
 whom  the  identity  of  Zeus,  Jovis,  0.  H.  G.  Ziu  (gen. 
 Ziwes)  with  the  Vedic  Dyaus  is  evidently  a  great 
 stumbling-block,  as  proving  a  common  belief  in  a 
 supreme  deity  before  the  Aryan  Separation,  tries  to 
 minimise  the  consequences  which  follow  from  this 
 equation  by  suggesting  that  in  Sanskrit  this  name 
 was  originally  a  feminine  and  meant  heaven,  and  that 
 each  nation  might  afterwards  have  changed  the 
 appellative  word  for  heaven  into  a  proper  name  and 
 the  name  of  a  god.  He  evidently  did  not  observe  that 
 in  the  Veda  dyu  is  first  of  all  a  masculine,  while  in 
 later  Sanskrit  only  it  becomes  exclusively  a  feminine. 
 In  the  Rig-veda  forms  derived  from  the  base  dyu 
 are  always  masculine,  forms  derived  from  the  base 
 div  are  masculine  in  the  singular,  in  the  plural  femi- 
 nine, while  forms  derived  from  base  dy o  or  d  y  a  v  may 
 be  masculine  and  feminine.  If,  however,  we  examine 
 the  passages  in  which  dyau/t  is  feminine  in  the 
 singular,   we    shall   find   that    in   all  of  them   dyau// 
 
410  LECTUEE   XV. 
 
 means  the  real  sky,  mentioned  either  alone  (VI.  17,  9), 
 or  together  with  the  earth  (I.  22,  3,  57,  5  ;  V.  54,  9  ; 
 VIII.  40, 4) ;  or  together  with  earth  and  sky  (X.  60,  7  l). 
 Wherever  Dyaus  occurs,  not  as  the  visible  sky,  but  as 
 a  power,  as  active  or  personal,  he  is  always  mascu- 
 line, he  is  pita,  the  father,  by  the  side  of  the  earth, 
 as  mother ;  he  is  the  father  of  the  Dawn,  of  Agni,  of 
 the  two  Asvin  (day  and  night),  he  is  in  fact  Zeus  and 
 Jupiter.  The  sky  was  conceived  as  active  and  as 
 masculine  before  it  sank  down  to  a  mere  name  of  the 
 sky,  which  then,  by  the  analogy  of  the  names  for 
 earth,  dwindled  down  to  a  feminine.  The  facts 
 therefore  are  the  very  opposite  of  what  Prof.  Gruppe 
 supposes  or  wishes  them  to  be. 
 
 The  mere  naming  of  the  sky  as  an  active  power, 
 or  even  as  a  masculine,  might  be  called  a  matter  of 
 language  only,  not  yet  of  mythology.  But  you 
 will  see  how  facile  the  descensus  is  from  such  a  word 
 to  an  incipient  myth,  nay  even  to  religious  ideas. 
 We  have  watched  the  origin  of  Zeus  in  the  Veda, 
 where  Dyaus,  the  same  word,  is  clearly  the  bright, 
 the  warming,  the  cheering,  the  enlivening  sky,  and 
 where  Dyaush  pita,  Heaven-father,  shows  us  one  of 
 the  first  steps  in  Aryan  mythology.  Remember  that 
 this  Dyaush  pitar  is  the  same  as  the  Greek  Ztvs  -xarijp, 
 and  the  Latin  Jupiter,  and  you  will  see  how  this  one 
 word  shows  us  the  easy,  the  natural,  the  almost  inevit- 
 able transition  from  the  conception  of  the  active  sky 
 as  a  purely  physical  fact,  to  the  Father  Sky  with  all 
 his  mythological  accidents,  and  lastly  to  that  Father 
 in  heaven  whom  Aeschylus  meant  when  he  burst  out 
 in  his  majestic  prayer  to  'Zeus,  whosoever  he  is.3 
 1  On  the  passage  X.  63,  3,  see  M.  M.,  Rig-veda  Sanhita,  vol.  i.  p.  249-. 
 
LECTURE   XVI. 
 
 MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 Myths. 
 
 NEXT  to  language  as  such,  it  is  myth  or  mythology 
 which  supplies  us  with  materials  for  the  study 
 of  Natural  Religion. 
 
 The  outline  of  the  genealogy  of  languages  which 
 I  gave  you  in  some  of  my  former  lectures  will  be 
 equally  useful  for  the  genealogy  of  mythology.  It 
 will  in  fact  be  the  chief  object  of  this  and  the  next 
 following  lectures  to  show  that  what  we  call  myth  is 
 a  natural  and  inevitable  phase  in  the  development  of 
 language ;  that  in  its  initial  stages  that  phase  showed 
 itself  before  the  different  languages  belonging  to  the 
 same  family  had  become  finally  separated,  and  that 
 therefore,  besides  much  that  is  peculiar. to  each,  we 
 find  in  all  a  common  fund  of  mythology  which  we 
 may  look  upon  as  the  earliest  stratum  likely  to  con- 
 tain the  germs  of  religious  thoughts. 
 
 If  we  use  myth  and  mythology  synonymously,  we 
 have  the  authority  of  Greek  writers  for  doing  so,  for 
 mythology  (\iv6okoyia)  with  them  does  not  mean,  as  it 
 often  does  with  us,  a  study  of  myths,  but  it  is  used  in 
 the  sense  of  a  telling  of  mythic  legends,  and  after- 
 wards of  these  legends  and  tales  themselves. 
 
412  LECTUBE   XVI. 
 
 Meaning  of  Mythology. 
 
 Few  words,  however,  have  of  late  changed  their 
 meaning  so  completely  as  myth  and  mythology.  Not 
 very  long  ago  Greek  mythology  meant  Greek  religion. 
 Roman  mythology  meant  Roman  religion,  and  each 
 was  supposed  to  consist  of  a  body  of  traditions  and 
 doctrines  which  a  Greek  or  Roman  had  to  believe, 
 just  as  Christians  believe  in  the  New,  or  the  Jews  in 
 the  Old  Testament.  As  mythology  was  taught  at 
 school  chiefly  from  manuals,  a  very  general  impression 
 prevailed  that  the  legends  collected  in  them  existed 
 in  this  collective  form  in  Greece  and  Italy,  that  they 
 formed  in  fact  a  complete  system,  and  were  known  as 
 such  by  every  Greek  and  Roman,  man,  woman,  and 
 child ;  the  fact  being  that  hardly  a  single  Greek  or 
 Roman  could  have  passed  an  examination  in  our 
 manuals  of  mythology,  nay  that  the  very  names  of 
 many  of  the  gods  and  heroes  therein  mentioned  would 
 have  been  utterly  unknown  to  the  majority  of  the 
 inhabitants  of  Greece  and  Italy. 
 
 Etymology  of  pj0os. 
 
 Eefore  we  discuss  the  meaning  which  mythology 
 has  assumed,  chiefly  owing  to  the  discovery  that 
 myth  is  a  phase  of  language,  inevitable  in  the  early 
 development  of  speech  and  thought,  it  may  be  well 
 to  ask  in  what  sense  ixvdos  was  used  by  the  Greeks 
 themselves. 
 
 The  etymology  of  [xvdos  is  unknown,  or  at  all  events 
 doubtful.  It  is  well  to  be  reminded  from  time  to 
 time  how  many  words  there  are  still  in  Greek  and 
 Latin,  to  say  nothing  of  Sanskrit,  of  which  we  cannot 
 render  any  etymological  account.     Of  course,  we  can 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  413 
 
 guess  that  fj.v0os  is  derived  from  jivcd,  to  shut,  to  close. 
 This  is  used  of  shutting  the  eyes,  as  in  /xvcox//-,  jxva>7ros, 
 literally  closing  the  eyes,  then  shortsighted  ;  and  it  is 
 likewise  used  of  shutting  the  lips.  From  this  a 
 secondary  base  might  be  derived,  /xuaco,  which  means 
 to  compress  the  lips,  to  express  contempt.  In  San- 
 skrit we  have  a  root  mu.,  to  bind,  from  which  mii-ka, 
 dumb,  lit.  tongue-bound,  and  likewise  Latin  mil-tus, 
 dumb,  and  Greek  juw-tis,  which  Hesychius  mentions 
 in  the  sense  of  acpuvos,  as  well  as  ixvtyjs  and  \xvtto<$. 
 Possibly  fj.via),  to  initiate,  to  teach  secrets,  may  like- 
 wise come  from  that  root,  while  iav(ttt]s  and  ixv<jrr\piov 
 might  owe  their  s  to  analogy.  Still  it  would  be 
 strange  if  y.v6os,  word,  had  meant  originally  a  mutter- 
 ing with  closed  lips,  even  though  we  can  appeal  to 
 Latin  muttum,  a  muttering,  muttire,  or  mutire,  to 
 mumble.  The  Gothic  riina,  secret  counsel,  has  like- 
 wise been  mentioned  as  a  parallel  case,  because  it  is 
 derived  from  a  root  RU,  to  whisper1. 
 
 All  we  can  say  is  that  a  derivation  of  \xv6os  from 
 the  root  mu,  to  bind,  to  close,  is  phonetically  possible, 
 and  this  is  more  than  can  be  said  for  another  etymo- 
 logy which  connects  \xv6os  with  jmvfa>,  to  murmur,  for 
 in  ijlvCoj  the  final  of  the  root  is  guttural,  not  dental,  as 
 is  shown  by  jowymo's,  muttering. 
 
 Though  the  etymology  of  nvOos  is  somewhat  doubt- 
 ful, its  meaning  in  Greek  is  clear  enough.  It  means 
 word  as  opposed  to  deeds,  and  hardly  differs  originally 
 from  tiros  and  Ao'yo?.     Afterwards2,  however,  a  dis- 
 
 1  Connected  with  Gothic  runa  we  find  the  Old  Norse  run,  secret, 
 then  the  Runic  letters.  In  A.  S.  we  have  run,  secret,  runian,  to 
 whisper,  Med.  English  to  roun,  which  has  been  changed  into  to  round  ; 
 German  raunen.  The  Latin  rumor  too  has  been  traced  back  to  the 
 same  cluster  of  words. 
 
 2  Pind.  0.  1.  47;  N.  7,  34. 
 
414  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 tinction  is  made  between  ixvOos  in  the  sense  of  a  story, 
 a  fable,  and  Ao'yo?,  an  historical  account,  and  this  dis- 
 tinction has  been  preserved  in  modern  times. 
 
 Myth,  a  word. 
 
 If  the  original  meaning  of  the  Greek  \6yos,  as  both 
 word  and  thouo-ht,  has  revealed  to  us  a  forgotten 
 truth  which  must  become  the  foundation  of  all  true 
 philosophy,  namely  the  identity  of  thought  and  lan- 
 guage, the  original  meaning  of  [xvOos,  word,  will  teach 
 us  an  equally  useful  lesson  for  the  study  of  mythology, 
 and  indirectly,  of  religion. 
 
 Let  us  take  myth  in  its  original  sense,  and  we  shall 
 see  that  here  too  the  Greeks  saw  rightly.  A  myth 
 was  at  first  a  word.  The  formation  of  such  a  word  as 
 Eos,  dawn,  seems  at  first  sight  not  very  different  from 
 the  formation  of  any  other  word.  But  if  you  remem- 
 ber that  all  roots  expressed  originally  an  action,  you 
 will  see  that  we  require  for  every  word  an  agent. 
 Now  so  long  as  we  deal  with  verbs,  we  always  have 
 our  agent ;  namely,  /,  thou,  or  he — I  strike,  thou 
 strikest,  he  strikes.  But  when  we  have  to  deal  with 
 a  word  like  Eos — who  is  the  agent  there  ? 
 
 Eos. 
 
 We  know  that  Eos  is  the  Sanskrit  Ushas,  and  we 
 know  that  ushas  is  derived  from  a  root  VAS,  which 
 means  to  shine.  So  Eos  meant  originally  '  shining-it,' 
 or  '  shining-he,'  or  '  shining-she.'  But  who  was  it.  or 
 he,  or  she  1  Here  you  have  at  once  the  inevitable 
 birth  of  what  we  call  a  myth.  What  our  senses  per- 
 ceive and  what  we  are  able  to  name  is  only  an  effect, 
 it  is  the  illumination  of  the  sky,  the  brightness  of  the 
 morning  or,  as  we  now  should  say,  the  reflection  of  the 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  415 
 
 rays  of  the  sun  on  the  clouds  of  the  sky.  But  such  were 
 not  the  thoughts  of  the  early  framers  of  language.  After 
 they  had  framed  a  word  which  meant  shining  there, 
 or  light,  namely  Eos,  they  would  go  on  to  say,  that 
 Eos  has  returned,  Eos  has  fled,  Eos  will  return,  Eos 
 wakens  the  sleepers,  Eos  lengthens  our  life,  Eos 
 makes  us  grow  old,  Eos  rises  from  the  sea,  Eos  is  the 
 daughter  of  the  sky,  Eos  is  followed  by  the  sun,  Eos 
 is  loved  by  the  sun,  Eos  is  killed  by  the  sun,  and  so 
 on  ad  infinitum. 
 
 Now  what  is  all  this  ?  You  may  say,  it  is  language, 
 it  is  mythos — yes,  and  it  is  what  I  called  the  inevitable 
 myth,  and  a  myth  that  will  grow  on  for  ever.  For,  if 
 Eos  is  followed  by  the  sun,  or,  as  we  should  say,  if 
 she  has  the  sun  for  her  follower  or  lover,  she  would 
 naturally  be  conceived  as  a  woman,  and  as  a  bright 
 and  beautiful  woman.  If  she  appeared  veiled  in 
 clouds,  she  would  be  conceived  as  a  veiled  bride  ;  if 
 she  was  seen  in  her  naked  beauty,  she  would  be  cele- 
 brated for  her  brilliant  charms.  Now  let  us  look  at 
 all  the  epithets  which  Greek  poets  have  bestowed  on 
 Eos,  and  every  one  of  them  will  become  intelligible. 
 If  she  is  called  the  daughter  of  Hyperion,  who  can 
 doubt  that  Hyperion,  like  Summanus,  was  the  high 
 heaven?  If  her  mother  is  called  Euryphaessa,  the 
 wide-shining,  do  we  want  an  explanation  to  tell  us 
 that  that  is  only  another  name  for  the  dawn  or  for 
 the  fiast  or  for  the  morning?  If  she  is  called  the 
 sister  of  Helios  and  Selene,  is  that  mythology,  or  is  it 
 plain  truth  ?  As  the  gloaming  seemed  but  a  repetition 
 of  the  dawn,  nothing  was  more  natural  than  to  sup- 
 pose, as  the  Greeks  did,  that  Eos  had  followed  Helios 
 through  the  whole  of  his  course  and  that  she  followed 
 
416 
 
 LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 him  at  last  to  his  watery  grave.  If  Helios  or  the  sun 
 was  conceived  as  driving  from  East  to  West,  nothing 
 seemed  more  natural  than  to  assign  to  Eos  also  two 
 horses,  and  to  call  them  Lampros  and  Phaeton.  When 
 chariots  were  drawn  by  four  horses  in  Greece,  Eos 
 also  received  four  instead  of  two  steeds  1. 
 
 Her  epithets  require  hardly  any  commentary. 
 Aly\rj€(r<ra  is  the  brilliant ;  x.apo-mj  is  the  joyful-eyed, 
 the  Sanskrit  haryaksha  ;  xPv<T^0povos  is  the  dawn 
 sitting  on  a  golden  throne  ;  TJpiyeWa'is  the  early-born  ; 
 \€vk6tto>\os  is  Eos  drawn  by  white  horses  ;  kevKoirrcpos. 
 Eos  with  white  wings ;  $aeo-i/x/3poros,  Eos  who  brings 
 light  to  mortals.  The  rest  is  added  by  poets  who 
 speak  of  her  as  pobobdicrvkos,  rosy-fingered;  KpoKoireirkos, 
 clothed  in  yellow  garments  ;  ewrAoKa/xos,  with  beautiful 
 ringlets  ;  x^o/3Ae'(£apoj,  with  eyelids  white  as  snow. 
 Latin  poets  add  new  epithets,  such  as  lutea,  rosy; 
 pallida,  pale;  purpurea,  purple-coloured:  roscida, 
 dewy ;  vigil,  wakeful. 
 
 You  can  see  from  these  epithets,  which  gathered 
 round  the  name  of  Eos  in  Greek,  and  Aurora  in 
 Latin,  how  inevitably  what  we  call  mythology  springs 
 up  from  the  soil  of  language.  As  soon  as  a  name, 
 such  as  Eos,  was  thrown  out,  it  grew  and  gathered 
 new  materials  round  itself,  and  without  any  special 
 intention  or  effort  became  what  we  call  a  myth.  Even 
 such  simple  sentences  as  '  Eos  is  born,'  'Eos  brings 
 light,'  '  Eos  dies  or  disappears,'  are  changed  at  once 
 into  myth,  fable,  and  legend,  and  it  seems  impossible 
 to  draw  a  line  between  what  is  simple  language  and 
 what  is  myth. 
 
 1  Virg.  Aen.  vi.  535  ;  vii.  26  :  xii.  77. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  417 
 
 Mythology  universal. 
 
 It  was  long  supposed  that  much  of  what  we  call 
 mythology  was  due  to  the  peculiar  poetical  genius  of 
 the  Greeks.  Our  first  acquaintance  with  mythology 
 came  from  Greece,  and  we  were  accustomed  from  our 
 school-days  to  look  upon  the  Greeks  as  a  nation 
 endowed  with  such  wonderful  gifts  that  we  thought 
 we  might  safely  credit  them  with  the  invention  of  all 
 the  beauty  and  wisdom  of  their  mythology.  That 
 there  were  dark  sides  to  that  bright  picture  also, 
 could  not  be  denied ;  but  it  was  thought  possible  by 
 classical  scholars,  unacquainted  with  the  mythology 
 of  other  nations,  that  all  that  was  hideous  and  foolish 
 in  classical  mythology  might  be  explained  as  a  sur- 
 vival of  barbarous  ages,  when  the  barbarous  ancestors 
 of  Greeks  and  Romans  were  not  above  committing 
 themselves  those  crimes  and  follies  which  they  fondly 
 ascribed  to  their  gods. 
 
 It  is  here  that  Comparative  Mythology  has  stepped 
 in,  and  helped  us  to  solve  many  difficulties  which 
 could  not  be  removed  by  any  other  theory. 
 
 What  is  Comparative  Mythology  ? 
 
 Comparative  Mythology  and  its  three  divisions. 
 
 Comparative  is  a  name  which  has  been  assumed 
 of  late  by  nearly  all  historical  and  natural  sciences, 
 though,  if  we  once  understand  the  true  method  and 
 purpose  of  any  single  science,  it  would  seem  to  be 
 almost  superfluous  to  qualify  it  by  that  predicate. 
 There  is  no  science  of  single  things,  and  all  progress 
 in  human  knowledge  is  achieved  through  comparison, 
 leading  on  to  the  discovery  of  what  different  objects 
 share  in  common,  till  we  reach  the  widest  generalisa- 
 
 E  e 
 
418  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 tions  and  the  highest  ideas  that  are  within  the  ken  of 
 human  knowledge. 
 
 Comparative  Philology. 
 
 Thus  with  regard  to  languages,  the  very  first  steps 
 in  our  knowledge  of  words  are  made  by  comparison. 
 What  does  grammar  consist  in  but  a  collection  of 
 words  which,  though  they  differ  from  each  other, 
 share  certain  formal  elements  in  common'?  These 
 formal  elements  are  called  grammatical  elements,  or 
 suffixes,  affixes,  prefixes,  etc.,  and  we  are  said  to 
 know  the  grammar  of  a  language  when  we  have 
 learnt  under  what  conditions  different  words  undergo 
 the  same  formal  modifications. 
 
 Thus  comparison  leads  in  the  first  instance  to  a 
 grammatical  knowledge  of  a  single  language. 
 
 When,  however,  we  proceed  from  a  study  of  one 
 to  a  study  of  many  languages,  a  new  process  of  com- 
 parison begins.  We  observe  that  words  in  different 
 languages  undergo  the  same  or  nearly  the  same 
 modifications,  and  by  placing  the  paradigms  of  their 
 declension  and  conjugation  side  by  side,  we  try  to 
 find  out  on  what  points  they  agree  and  on  what 
 points  they  differ,  and  we  hope  thus  to  discover  in 
 the  end  the  reasons  why  they  should  agree  on  certain 
 points,  and  why  they  should  differ  on  others. 
 
 Comparative  Philology  deals  partly  with  facts, 
 that  is,  the  differences  and  coincidences  that  can  be 
 observed  in  the  material  and  formal  elements  of  lan- 
 guage ;  partly  with  laws, — using  that  word  in  the 
 humble  sense  of '  something  which  is  true  of  many 
 objects,'  not,  as  some  scholars  imagine,  in  that  of  v6[xol 
 vtyCirobes    ovpavtav   be     alOtpa    T€kvu)0€VT€'S,    &v   "OXv^ttos 
 
MYTHOLOQY.  419 
 
 TTCLTllp  fJLOl'OS,   Ovbt   VIV   OvaTCL  (f)V(TLS   CLVtpiOV    £TLKT€V.        These 
 
 laws  are  to  account  for  such  peculiarities  as  give  to 
 each  language  its  own  distinctive  character. 
 
 This  science  of  Comparative  Philology,  however, 
 very  soon  assumed  three  different  aspects,  and  was 
 cultivated  in  three  schools,  which  may  be  called  (1) 
 the  Etymological,  or  genealogical,  (2)  the  Analogical, 
 and  (3)  the  Psychological. 
 
 Etymological  School. 
 
 In  comparing  such  languages  as  Latin,  Greek,  and 
 Sanskrit,  it  was  soon  found  that  they  were  really 
 varieties  only  of  one  and  the  same  historical  pro- 
 totype, that  they  pointed  to  a  common  origin,  and 
 that  all  their  differences  must  be  accounted  for  either 
 by  Phonetic  Corruption,  or  by  Dialectic  Growth. 
 The  comparative  study  of  these  languages  became 
 therefore  genealogical,  or,  in  grammatical  phraseology, 
 etymological. 
 
 Starting  from  a  certain  number  of  radical  and 
 formal  elements  (the  latter  being  frequently  radical 
 elements  of  an  earlier  period),  the  principal  object 
 of  the  genealogical  or  etymological  school  has  always 
 been  to  discover  the  system  according  to  which  these 
 elements  were  combined  into  words,  and  to  determine 
 the  laws  which  regulate  the  phonetic  changes  of 
 words,  either  in  the  same  or  in  different  languages. 
 When  these  laws  are  sometimes  treated  as  natural 
 laws,  this  means  in  reality  no  more  than  that  they 
 admit  of  no  exception,  except  such  as  can  again  be 
 accounted  for  by  new  laws. 
 
 Analogical  School. 
 
 The  next  school,  the  analogical,  or  as  it  might  also 
 E  e  % 
 
420  LECTURE   XVI. 
 
 be  called,  the  dialectic,  tries  to  discover  what  in  the 
 same  or  in  different  languages  is  not  identical,  but 
 yet  analogous.  While  the  genealogical  school  looks 
 upon  all  cognate  languages  as  dialects  developed  from 
 one  ideal  Koivrj,  the  dialectic  school  looks  upon  each 
 language  as  the  result  of  a  previous  independent 
 growth,  and  is  thus  able  to  account  for  freedom  and 
 variety  in  single  languages  as  well  as  in  whole  families 
 of  speech,  as  against  the  iron  laws  of  phonetic  change, 
 established  by  the  etymological  school. 
 
 It  would  be  impossible,  for  instance,  or  at  allevents 
 undesirable1,  to  treat  say  the  Ionic  dialect  as  a  cor- 
 ruption of  the  Aeolic,  or  the  Aeolic  as  a  corruption  of 
 the  Ionic.  The  same  applies  to  High  German  and 
 Low  German,  to  Sanskrit  and  Prakrit,  to  Cymric  and 
 Goidhelic.  These  are  all  independent  streams  of  lan- 
 guage, which  it  is  as  hopeless  to  trace  back  to  one 
 common  source,  as  it  is  to  discover  the  one  small 
 source  of  the  Nile,  or  even  of  the  Thames.  They 
 spring  indeed  from  the  same  geological  stratum, 
 and  they  follow  parallel  courses  under  similar  con- 
 ditions, but  they  are  not  yet  one  stream  of  water 
 or  of  speech,  kept  in  by  the  same  shores  and  moving 
 on  in  the  same  bed.  Even  after  their  confluence,  the 
 peculiar  colours  of  what  I  call  Dialectic  Growth  re- 
 main, and  help  us  to  account,  whether  by  true  or  by 
 false  analogy,  for  that  want  of  uniformity  or  regularity 
 which  the  etymological  school  postulates  with  un- 
 yielding severity. 
 
 Thus  dvau  in  Sanskrit,  hvu  in  Greek,  duo  in  Latin 
 are  phonetic  varieties  of  one  and  the  same  type.  They 
 are  identical  in  origin,  and  their  differences  can  be 
 
 1  See  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  vol.  i.  p.  55  seq. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  421 
 
 accounted  for  by  phonetic  laws.  But  Sk.  dvitiya, 
 the  second,  and  Greek  bevrepos  are  not  identical  in 
 origin.  They  are  dialectic  forms,  sprung  from  the 
 same  etymological  stratum,  not  the  products  of  one 
 and  the  same  creative  act. 
 
 Nevertheless,  it  is  in  cognate  languages  only  that 
 we  could  account  for  such  words  as  Sk.  p  rath  a  ma, 
 the  first,  Greek  irpwro?,  Latin  primus,  and  Gothic 
 frvma.  These  are  all  analogous  formations,  only  they 
 must  not  be  treated  as  varieties  of  one  common  pro- 
 totype. Their  differences  are  not  due  to  the  influence 
 of  phonetic  modification,  which  can  be  reduced  to  a 
 law,  but  to  the  freedom  of  dialectic  growth,  which 
 must  be  accepted  as  a  fact. 
 
 I  go  even  further.  We  can  hardly  doubt,  for  in- 
 stance, that  the  words  for  twenty'  were  formed  by 
 a  composition  of  words  meaning  two  and  ten.  In 
 Chinese  sM  is  ten,  eul  is  two,  therefore  eul-sln, 
 twenty.  Our  own  twenty  comes  from  Anglo-Saxon 
 tuSn-tig,  which  corresponds  to  the  Gothic  tvai  tigjus, 
 and  to  the  modern  German  zwanzig. 
 
 In  Sanskrit  we  should  expect  a  form  like  d  vi-dasa, 
 and  in  Latin  duo-decem.  But  instead  of  this  we  find 
 in  Sanskrit  vimsati,  in  Latin  vigi nti,  in  Greek  et/coo-i, 
 and  the  older  form  Fzikciti.  According  to  strict  pho- 
 netic laws,  these  forms  are  all  irregular.  Dvi  does 
 never  lose  the  initial  d  in  Sanskrit,  nor  does  dvi  in 
 Latin  become  vi,  or  in  Greek  el.  In  Sanskrit  dvi 
 ought  to  have  remained ;  in  Greek  dvi  ought  to  have 
 become  81,  in  Latin  di  or  hi.  Yet  the  fact  remains 
 that  in  one  of  the  ancient  Aryan  dialects  dvi  was 
 replaced  by  vi,  for  thus  and  thus  only  can  we  explain 
 vi  in  vimsati,  el  in  Greek  in  eiKoo-t,  vi  in  Latin  in 
 
422  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 viginii.  The  stem  for  ten  or  decad,  namely  das  a  or 
 dasat,  was  shortened  to  sat1,  which  is  likewise 
 without  any  phonetic  excuse  or  analogy. 
 
 Here  then  we  see  what  I  call  dialectic  influence,  as 
 different  from  the  independent  working  of  phonetic 
 laws.  Vimsati  is  not  a  phonetic  corruption  of 
 *dvi  +  dasati,  nor  viginti  of  *dvi  +  decinti,  nor 
 fet/cari  of  *Sf  i  +  be  Kan,  but  they  are  dialectic  forms  in 
 which  some  old  compound  of  twice-ten  was  fixed  and 
 retained,  and  was  afterwards  modified  according  to  the 
 peculiar  phonetic  instincts  of  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and 
 Latin. 
 
 I  cannot  enter  more  fully  into  this  subject  at  present, 
 but  I  may  remark  that  it  is  the  disregard  of  this  dis- 
 tinction between  phonetic  modification  and  dialectic 
 growth  which  at  the  present  moment  seems  to  me  to 
 have  led  to  a  series  of  misunderstandings  between 
 the  most  prominent  representatives  of  Comparative 
 Philology2. 
 
 Psychological  School. 
 
 The  comparison  of  various  languages,  after  it  had 
 led  to  the  discovery  of  the  great  families  of  human 
 speech  and  settled  the  principles  according  to  which 
 cognate  languages  should  be  analysed  and  explained, 
 opened  in  the  end  a  still  wider  prospect  and  disclosed 
 before  our  eyes,  not  only  what  was  common  to  Greek 
 and  Latin,  to  Hebrew  and  Arabic,  to  Finnish  and 
 Hungarian,  but  what  was  common  and  essential  to  all 
 languages,  what  constitutes  in  fact  the  nature  of  lan- 
 guage in  general,  and  indirectly  the  nature  of  thought. 
 
 1  See  Science  of  Language,  i.  p.  47. 
 
 3  G.  Curtius,  Zur  Kritik  der  neuesten  Sprachforschung,  18ST>  ;  Delbriick, 
 Die  Xeueste  Sprachforschung.  1885;  Brugmaim,  Zum  hmtigen  Stand  o'er 
 
 Sprachivissenschaft,  1885. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  423 
 
 This  kind  of  study,  comparative  in  the  widest  sense, 
 though  it  aimed  at  the  discovery  of  the  highest  philo- 
 sophical truth,  does  not  depend  for  that  discovery  on 
 abstract   reasoning,    but,   differing   thereby   from   all 
 former  attempts   to    construct  a  science  of   general 
 grammar  and  of  logic,  it  takes  its  materials  entirely 
 from   the  facts  supplied  by  that  infinite  number  of 
 languages  in  which  the  power  of  language  and  thought 
 has   become  realised.     It  matters  little   whether  we 
 call  this  branch  of  Comparative   Philology    psycho- 
 logical or  ethno-psy etiological,  as  long  as  we  see  clearly 
 that  it  aims  at  explaining  that  intellectual  develop- 
 ment which  has  its  outward  form  in  language,  and 
 that  it  derives  its  materials  entirely  from  a  careful 
 study  of  the  different  types  of  human  speech,  so  far 
 as    they    are    still    accessible  to   the   student   of  the 
 present  clay.     To  me,  that  branch  of  the  Science  of 
 Language  seems  almost  to  transcend  the  powers  of 
 the  present  generation,  and  to  belong  to  the  future  of 
 our  race.     But  I  look  to  it  as  the  final  consummation 
 of  all  that  has  ever  claimed  the  name  of  philosophy, 
 as  the  solution  of  all  psychological,  logical,  and  meta- 
 physical problems,  and  in  the  end  as  the  only  true 
 key  to  our  knowledge  of  the  Self. 
 
 Comparative  Mythologfy. 
 
 What  applies  to  Comparative  Philology,  applies 
 mutatis  mutandis  to  Comparative  Mythology.  I  do 
 not  mean  to  say  that  the  science  of  Comparative 
 Mythology  is  as  yet  so  firmly  established  as  the 
 Science  of  Comparative  Philology.  There  is  an 
 honest  difference  of  opinion  with  regard  to  many 
 minor  points,  but  the  fundamental  principles  of  Com- 
 
424  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 parative  Mythology,  such  as  I  tried  to  lay  them 
 down  in  my  first  essay  on  Comparative  Mythology  in 
 the  year  1856,  are  now  generally  admitted.  I  say 
 generally,  I  do  not  say  universally.  There  are  still 
 some  philosophers  who  deny  that  the  languages  of 
 the  Greeks  and  Hindus,  and  the  mythology  of  the 
 Greeks  and  Hindus  have  anything  in  common  ;  but  I 
 do  not  know  of  any  scholar  of  any  authority  who 
 denies  that  the  Greek  Zeus  finds  its  true  explanation 
 in  the  Vedic  Dyaus,  and  that  our  first  duty  as  stu- 
 dents of  Comparative  Mythology  must  be  to  discover 
 the  etymology  of  as  many  mythological  proper  names 
 as  possible.  To  say  that  critics  disagree  among  them- 
 selves, and  that  they  need  not  be  listened  to  till  they 
 agree,  is  one  of  those  lazy  commonplaces  which  no 
 true  scholar  would  dare  to  employ.  I  know  full  well 
 that  several  mythological  etymologies  have  been  con- 
 tested, and  I  have  always  been  most  grateful  for  any 
 criticisms  proceeding  from  scholars  who  really  care 
 for  the  progress  of  our  science. 
 
 A.  Barth  on  Comparative  Mythology. 
 
 Among  them  few  have  a  better  right  to  be  listened 
 to  than  M.  A.  Barth.  He  has  often  criticised  what 
 Kuhn  and  others  have  written  on  the  orioin  of 
 mythology,  but  after  making  all  necessary  reserva- 
 tion, he  sums  up  as  follows  : — 
 
 '  No  one  contests  any  longer  that  myths  are  from 
 the  first  the  natural  and  popular  expression  of  very 
 simple  facts  ;  that  particularly  the  most  ancient  have 
 reference  to  the  most  common  phenomena  of  nature ; 
 that  they  depend  very  closely  on  language,  being 
 often   no  more  than   an  antiquated  form  of  it ;  and 
 
MYTHOLOaY.  425 
 
 that  what  applies  to  words  in  general  applies  likewise 
 to  the  immense  variety  of  myths,  namely  that  they 
 can  be  reduced  to  a  small  number  of  elements,  as 
 words  are  to  a  small  number  of  roots.  In  spite  of  the 
 state  of  flux  they  are  in,  and  their  apparent  confusion, 
 they  possess  a  certain  cohesion  and  are  held  together 
 by  a  kind  of  hidden  logic.  They  do  not  migrate  so 
 easily  nor  so  wildly  as  had  been  supposed,  from  one 
 nation  to  another,  from  one  race  to  another,  but,  like 
 language,  they  are  transmitted  by  inheritance  only, 
 and  there  are  characteristic  signs  by  which  borrowed 
 foreign  myths  can  be  discovered  quite  as  well  as 
 borrowed  foreign  words.  ...  By  applying  these  prin- 
 ciples students  of  comparative  mythology  have  esta- 
 blished the  fact  that  the  common  ancestors  of  the 
 Celts,  the  Italians,  the  Hellenes,  the  Germans,  the 
 Slaves,  the  Iranians  and  the  Hindus,  at  a  time  when 
 they  were  still  settled  side  by  side  in  some  for  ever 
 forgotten  region  of  the  old  continent,  adored  the  same 
 deities  ;  and  they  have  succeeded  in  restoring  at  least 
 some  persons  of  that  prehistoric  pantheon.  Of  these 
 two  series  of  results,  which  together  constitute  Aryan 
 Mythology,  the  one,  that  which  establishes  the  unity 
 of  beliefs,  is  certain,  quite  as  certain  as  the  correspond- 
 ing result  established  by  the  Science  of  Language, 
 namely  the  unity  of  an  Indo-European  mother  tongue. 
 The  other  series,  however,  the  partial  restoration  of 
 those  beliefs,  is  far  less  certain.' 
 
 If  it  is  considered  that  this  judgment  was  delivered 
 by  a  very  independent  judge  so  far  back  as  1880  in 
 the  Bulletin  Critique  de  la  Mythologie  Aryenne  in  the 
 Revue  de  VHistoire  ties  Rrtigions,  it  can  hardly  be 
 called  exaggeration  when  in  1886  I  expressed  my  con- 
 
426  LECTURE   XV T. 
 
 viction  that  the  fundamental  principles  of  Compara- 
 tive Mythology  were  now  beyond  the  reach  of  cavil 
 or  criticism. 
 
 But  in  order  to  avoid  misunderstandings  and  barren 
 discussions,  we  ought  to  divide  Comparative  Mytho- 
 logy also  into  three  branches,  which  may  be  defined 
 as,  (1)  the  Etymological  or  genealogical,  (2)  the  Ana- 
 logical, (3)  the  Psychological  or  ethno-psychological. 
 
 The  Etymological  School. 
 
 The  Etymological  branch  of  Comparative  Mythology 
 places  the  names  and  stories  of  certain  gods  and 
 heroes  side  by  side,  and  tries  to  prove  that  these 
 names  were  derived  from  prototypes  common  to 
 certain  families  of  speech.  As  its  object  is  not  only 
 to  compare,  but  to  identify  these  names,  and  the  per- 
 sons to  whom  they  belong,  it  is  clear  that  this  branch 
 of  Comparative  Mythology  can  deal  with  the  tradi- 
 tions of  such  languages  only  as  have  been  proved  to 
 be  connected  genealogically.  It  is  natural,  therefore, 
 that  this  special  domain  of  research  should  have  been 
 almost  exclusively  cultivated  by  critical  scholars,  and 
 that  the  evidence  to  which  they  appeal  should  be  en- 
 tirely etymological,  and  under  the  sway  of  the  strictest 
 phonetic  laws. 
 
 Analogical  School. 
 
 The  second  branch,  the  Analogical,  might  claim  for 
 itself  the  principal  right  to  the  name  of  Comparative 
 Mythology,  for  it  is  chiefly  occupied  with  comparing 
 myths  and  legends,  without  attempting  to  prove  that 
 they  are  actually  identical  in  origin.  Like  the  etymo- 
 logical school,  it  confines  itself  to  the  myths  of  cognate 
 languages,  but  after  having  shown  how  many  different 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  427 
 
 names  and  personifications  may  attach  themselves  to 
 the  principal  objects  of  mythological  thought,  such  as 
 the  sun.  the  moon,  the  sky,  the  earth,  fire,  and  water, 
 storms  and  lightning,  and  in  how  many  different  ways 
 the  same  story  may  be  told  of  these  polynomous  ob- 
 jects, it  proceeds  to  a  comparison  of  myths  which, 
 though  not  identical,  must  have  sprung  from  the 
 same  common  stratum,  and  thus  takes  possession  of  a 
 far  larger  area  of  mythological  thought  as  the  common 
 property  of  a  race  than  could  be  claimed  by  purely 
 etymological  tests.  This  analogical  process  has  its 
 dangers,  like  all  purely  morphological  comparisons, 
 but  it  forms  nevertheless  an  almost  indispensable 
 supplement  in  the  genealogical  treatment  of  mytho- 
 logy. 
 
 Psychological  School. 
 
 While  both  the  Genealogical  and  the  Analogical 
 schools  confine  themselves  to  a  comparison  of  mytho- 
 logies which  are  handed  down  to  us  in  languages  held 
 together  by  the  ties  of  a  common  origin,  the  Psycho- 
 logical or  Ethno-psychological  school  soars  higher, 
 and  comprehends  the  mythologies  of  all  mankind. 
 There  is  nothing  in  all  the  mythologies  of  the  world 
 that  cannot  be  compared.  What  Heine  said  to  an 
 Ethno-psychological  lover, 
 
 •  Und  mem  Herz.  was  dir  gefallt, 
 Alles,  Alles,  darfst  Du  lieben' — 
 
 may  be  said  to  an  Ethno-psychological  Mythologist : 
 
 •Und  mein  Freund,  was  dir  gefallt. 
 Alles,  Alles,  darfst  vergleichen.' 
 
 It  is  a  most  fascinating,  though,  no  doubt,  at  the 
 
 same  time,  a  somewhat  dangerous  study,  unless  it  is 
 
 carried  on  by  men  of  scholarlike  instinct  and  historical 
 
428  LECTURE   XVI. 
 
 tact.  Its  charm  consists  in  the  discovery  of  the  most 
 surprising  coincidences  in  the  mythologies,  the  cus- 
 toms, and  traditions  of  distant  races,  distant  in  space 
 as  well  as  in  time,  unconnected  by  any  relationship, 
 whether  genealogical  or  linguistic,  civilised  and  un- 
 civilised, ancient  and  modern.  And  it  becomes  still 
 more  attractive  when  it  leads  us  on  to  the  discovery 
 of  general  motives  which  alone  can  account  for  such 
 similarities.  It  becomes,  in  fact,  an  historical  psycho- 
 logy of  the  human  race  (V other psychologie),  and 
 promises  in  time  results  of  the  highest  value,  not 
 only  to  the  historian,  but  to  the  philosopher  also. 
 
 I.     The  Etymological  School. 
 The  Names  of  Gods. 
 
 Comparative  Mythology  rests,  as  we  saw,  and  can 
 only  rest,  on  Comparative  Philology,  and  such  has 
 been  the  constant  advance  of  that  science,  particularly 
 with  regard  to  the  laws  which  regulate  the  inter- 
 change of  consonants  and  vowels,  that  many  etymo- 
 logical identifications  which  seemed  quite  legitimate 
 fifty  years  ago,  cannot  be  considered  so  any  longer. 
 My  own  conviction  has  always  been  that  phonetic 
 laws  cannot  be  administered  in  too  Draconian  a  spirit, 
 and  that  there  ought  to  be  no  difference  made  in 
 applying  them  either  to  vowels  or  to  consonants.  It 
 is  far  better  to  leave  an  etymology,  however  tempting, 
 as  not  proven  for  a  time,  than  to  tamper  with  a  single 
 phonetic  law. 
 
 But,  with  regard  to  mythological  names,  I  confess 
 that  I  myself  have  been  guilty  sometimes  of  pleading 
 for  circonstances  attenuantes,  and  I  must  do  so  once 
 more.     I  pointed  out  many  years  ago,  first,  that  all 
 
MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 429 
 
 mythology  was  in  its  origin  local  or  dialectic,  and 
 that  therefore  we  must  be  prepared  in  mythological 
 names  for  dialectic  variations,  which  we  should  not 
 tolerate  in  other  nouns  and  verbs.  In  one  of  my 
 latest  papers  (InternatioTiale  Zeitschrift  fur  allge- 
 meine  Sprach  urissenschaft,  vol.  i.  p.  214),  where  I  com- 
 pare Zephyvos  with  the  Vedic  Gahusha,  I  had  to 
 remark :  '  Scholars  might  differ  as  to  Sanskrit  <j  being 
 represented  by  Greek  f ;  but  that  on  Greek  soil  y  and 
 C  vary  dialectically,  can  be  seen  from  yevaavdai  and 
 (zvo-a(T0ai,  einCapeio  by  the  side  of  (3apvs,  Sanskrit 
 guru;  TT€cf)vCoT€9  and  TT€<fiv yores,'  etc. 
 
 I  quite  appreciate  the  motives  which  have  led  some 
 scholars  to  dispute  this  principle  and  to  object  to  the 
 granting  of  any  greater  latitude  in  the  comparison  of 
 mythological  names  than  of  ordinary  words.  But  we 
 cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  facts.  Now  it  is  a  fact  that 
 many  of  the  Greek  mythological  names  appear  under 
 dialectic  forms  which  it  would  be  difficult  to  reduce 
 to  general  phonetic  laws. 
 
 Dialectic  varieties. 
 
 By  the  side  of  'AvoMwv  we  find  'AttKovv  (Thessa- 
 lian),  and  in  Etruscan  Apia  ;  by  the  side  of  UoaeLb&v, 
 Uoo-eCb-qs,  Uortbas,  II  ore  loclvv  ;  by  the  side  of  f,At8?/s,  gen. 
 f'Aibov,  'A  1677  j,  gen.  'Aibao  (also  an  old  gen.  vAt5os) ;  by  the 
 side  of  Atj/uwjtijp,  AS,  A?]co.  These  are  parallel  or  dialectic 
 forms  which  cannot  be  derived  one  from  the  other. 
 We  cannot  derive,  for  instance,  Poseidon  from  Pot idas, 
 nor  Potidas  from  Poseidon.  Supposing  then  that  the 
 form  Potidas  had  not  been  preserved  to  us,  but  that 
 Poseidon  would  yield  an  intelligible  etymology  if 
 only  we  could  trace  it  back  to  a  form  like  Poteidon, 
 we  should  have  taken  a  phonetic  liberty  which  might 
 
430  LECTURE   XVI. 
 
 be  without  any  excuse  in  Greek,  and  which  neverthe- 
 less might  have  yielded  an  explanation  of  the  myth 
 of  Poseidon  in  accordance  with  facts.  If  we  take  even 
 so  well-known  a  name  as  Zets,  I  doubt  whether  its 
 various  forms,  such  as  Zefc,  gen.  Al6s,  Z&p,  ZrjvSs,  Ais 
 and  Aefa,  could  have  been  traced  satisfactorily  to  a 
 common  base  without  the  help  of  Sanskrit. 
 
 Obsolete  Names. 
 
 Secondly,  I  pointed  out,  likewise  many  years  ago, 
 that  it  was  almost  an  essential  condition,  before  a 
 name  could  assume  a  truly  mythological  character, 
 that,  by  some  accident  or  other,  its  etymological 
 meaning  should  have  been  somewhat  obscured. 
 Words  like  Hemera,  day,  Nyx,  night,  Helios,  sun, 
 belene,  moon,  may  send  out  a  few  mythological  off- 
 shoots, but  it  is  chiefly  round  dark  and  decaying 
 names  such  as  Kastor  and  Polydeukes,  Apollon  and 
 Athene  that  the  mythological  ivy  grows  most  luxu- 
 riantly 1. 
 
 The  Dawn. 
 
 Let  us  now  return  for  a  moment  to  Eos.  Her 
 name  in  Sanskrit  is  Ushas,  and  we  saw  that  it  means 
 the  bright  one,  from  a  root  VAS5  to  shine.  The  Dawn. 
 of  course,  might  have  been  called  by  many  names, 
 and  we  shall  soon  see  that  she  was  called  by  many 
 names  and  that  some  of  them  have  survived  though 
 under  strange  disguises.  But  that  Ushas  should 
 have  remained  her  principal  name  in  Sanskrit,  and 
 that  the  identical  name,  Eos,  should  appear  in  Greek, 
 shows  that  she  was  known  as  a  definite 'personality 
 before  the  Aryan  Separation. 
 
 1  See  Benfey,  Tritoma  Athai 
 
 '<-(,  pp.  s-y 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  431 
 
 A  comparison  of  Eos,  as  we  saw  her  in  Greece,  with 
 what  the  Veda  tells  us  of  Us  has,  will  show  us  that 
 much  in  her  character,  which  we  are  inclined  to  look 
 upon  as  simply  Greek  poetry,  is  far  more  than  that — 
 is  in  fact  the  outcome  of  Aryan  thought  before  it 
 was  divided  into  various  national  streams.  Though 
 I  am  rather  anticipating,  yet  I  think  that  a  study  of 
 Us  has,  as  she  actually  appears  in  the  Veda,  may 
 prove  useful  as  giving  you  a  clear  idea  of  what 
 Comparative  Mythology  can  really  do  for  us. 
 
 We  read,  Rv.  I.  48,  7:  'She  has  harnessed  (her 
 steeds)  from  a  far  distance,  from  the  rising  of  the 
 sun;  on  a  hundred  chariots  Ushas  spreads  herself 
 out,  o-oino-  towards  men.' 
 
 Rv.  I.  124,  5  :  'In  the  eastern  half  of  the  watery 
 sky  she  has  put  forth  her  banner  ;  she  spreads  far 
 and  wide,  and  fills  the  two  laps  of  her  parents.' 
 
 You  see  how  mythology  is  beginning.  She  has 
 already  chariot  and  horses,  she  carries  a  banner  of 
 light,  and  she  has  two  parents,  heaven  and  earth, 
 whose  lap  she  fills  with  her  light. 
 
 In  the  same  verse  she  is  also  called  gavam  r/anitri, 
 •  the  mother  of  the  cows,'  these  cows  being  either  the 
 clouds  which  pour  water  on  the  fields,  or  the  bright 
 mornings  which,  like  cows,  are  supposed  to  step  out 
 one  by  one  from  the  stable  of  the  night. 
 
 Thus  we  read  again,  Rv.  III.  61,  4:  'Ushas,  the 
 mistress  of  the  stable,  comes,  the  wealthy,  as  if 
 loosening  her  girdle.'  Here  she  has  clearly  assumed 
 the  character  of  a  woman,  she  has  a  girdle  which  she 
 can  put  off  like  the  clouds  that  surround  her,  and  she 
 is  a  rich  woman,  the  mistress  of  her  own  stable,  the 
 stable  constituting  the  chief  wealth  of  the  VedicAryas. 
 
432  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 Thus  she  goes  on  growing  before  our  very  eyes. 
 Sometimes  she  is  still  simply  light,  or  like  streams  of 
 light,  or  like  rivers  of  clouds.  Then  it  is  said  that  she 
 has  no  feet,  and  that  she  became  the  first  of  those  who 
 have  feet  (Rv.  I.  152,  3),  nay,  that  she  is  like  a  beautiful 
 woman  (Rv.  I.  48,  5,  yosha-iva  sunari).  Soon  she 
 is  compared  to  a  bride,  adorned  by  her  mother  (1. 123 
 10.  11);  as  smiling  on  approaching  her  beloved  (I, 
 123, 10  ;  VII.  76, 3).  Sometimes  she  is  clothed  in  bright 
 garments  (I.  192,  1-4) ;  at  other  times,  proud  of  her 
 faultless  limbs,  she  reveals  her  beautiful  body  (I.  1 24 
 6;  1.123,  10;  V.  80,5). 
 
 One  feature  peculiar  to  the  Veda  is  the  plurality  of 
 the  dawn.  Whether  the  many  dawns  were  meant  for 
 the  manifold  rays  of  light  playing  across  the  sky  in 
 the  morning,  or  for  the  dawns  that  come  and  go  every 
 day,  certain  it  is  that  by  the  side  of  the  one  Dawn, 
 poets  constantly  speak  of  the  many  Dawns  also. 
 
 Religious  Germs. 
 
 So  far,  however,  all  that  is  said  of  Ushas  in  the 
 Veda  might  be  called  mere  mythological  poetry.  But 
 there  are  some  expressions  which  contain  religious 
 germs.  It  is  often  said  that  the  dawn  is  the  sister  of 
 the  dark  night,  that  the  two,  day  and  night,  succeed 
 each  other  regularly,  that  the  dawn  is  in  fact  always 
 the  same,  always  returning,  the  old,  and  yet  the  ever- 
 young.  Then  follow  such  sayings  as  that  she  who 
 makes  every  one  else  to  grow  old,  remains  young  her- 
 self. Soon  she  is  called  the  young,  the  never-aging, 
 the  never-dying — and  at  last,  the  immortal. 
 
 This  will  show  you  how  language,  by  the  mere  for- 
 mation of  a  certain  class  of  words,  leads  us  on  to  myth, 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  433 
 
 and  from  myth  to  religion.  Ushas,  the  bright,  devi, 
 has  now  become  Ushas,  the  immortal,  and  after  that 
 step  has  been  taken,  what  is  more  natural  than  that 
 she  should  become  an  attractive  centre  for  other 
 religious  sentiments  and  thoughts  ?  Even  with  us  a 
 bright  morning  raises  our  spirits,  and  rouses  a  sense 
 of  happiness  and  gratitude  in  our  heart,  though  the 
 object  of  our  gratitude  may  remain  nameless.  Think 
 what  it  must  have  been  in  early  times,  when  life  and 
 everything  was  felt  to  depend  on  the  kindly  light  of 
 the  morning !  A  bright  sunrise  was  a  new  life,  a  sun- 
 less, cold,  stormy  morning  meant  suffering,  often 
 starvation  or  even  death.  Need  we  wonder  then  that 
 some  words  should  have  been  stammered  forth  at  the 
 rise  of  a  bright  dawn,  words  of  joy  and  gratitude, 
 addressed  not  to  a  nameless  being,  but  to  the  kind 
 and  brilliant  Ushas,  or  Eos,  or  Aurora  1 
 
 Moral   Germs. 
 
 Moral  ideas  also  would  soon  cluster  round  such 
 names  as  the  Dawn.  If  a  crime,  a  dark  crime,  as  we 
 call  it,  had  been  committed  during  the  night,  who 
 was  to  discover  or  to  revenge  it  ?  Again  the  Dawn, 
 under  one  of  her  many  names,  the  Sanskrit  8ara//yu, 
 the  Greek  Erinys. 
 
 You  may  say,  But  why  did  not  people  ask  who  that 
 Eos  really  was,  before  they  praised  her  and  thanked 
 her  ?  This  is  a  difficult  question  to  answer.  But  do 
 we  always  ask  what  a  name  really  means,  what  is 
 behind  a  name,  what  is  the  true  substance  of  a  name  ? 
 We  speak  of  Angels,  without  asking  what  they  are 
 made  of.  The  ancients  did  the  same,  and  when  they 
 had  called  Ushas,  the  daughter  of  Dyaus  or  Zeus,  their 
 
 F  f 
 
434  lecture  xvr. 
 
 mind  seemed  satisfied,  at  least  for  a  time.  Names  have 
 a  wonderfully  satisfying  power,  and  few  only  venture 
 to  lift  the  veil  which  language  has  thrown  over  nature. 
 And  when  they  do,  what  do  they  find  1  They  find  the 
 infinite  hidden  under  a  name,  and  they  find  that  all 
 they  can  know  of  the  infinite  is  what  is  signified  by 
 these  names.  Ushas,  the  morning  light,  is  as  good  a 
 name  for  the  Infinite  as  Dyaus,  the  sky,  who  became 
 Zeus  and  Jupiter,  only  that  its  history  took  a  different 
 direction.  And  remember  that  we  ourselves  also, 
 though  we  may  no  longer  use  the  name  of  Morning- 
 light  for  the  Infinite,  the  Beyond,  the  Divine,  still  find 
 no  better  expression  than  Light,  when  we  speak  of 
 the  manifestations  of  God  whether  in  nature  or  in  our 
 mind. 
 
 Ahana,  Athene. 
 
 So  far  the  way  of  Comparative  Mythology  is  smooth 
 and  easy.  But  etymology,  if  only  kept  under  proper 
 control,  can  lead  us  over  more  rugged  roads,  and  give 
 us  light  in  darker  passages. 
 
 I  said  before  that  though  Ushas  was  the  oldest  name 
 of  the  Dawn,  having  been  fixed  before  the  Aryan 
 Separation,  there  were  many  other  names  given  to  the 
 same  phenomenon,  as  looked  upon  from  different 
 points  of  view.  Some  of  these  names  might  be  used 
 by  one  poet  only,  others  might  become  traditional  in 
 one  family  or  clan  and  these  dialectic  names  would 
 lend  themselves  most  easily  to  mythological  phraseo- 
 logy, on  account  of  the  very  uncertainty  of  their 
 original  meaning.  The  dawn  as  Ushas  has  become 
 mythological,  but,  as  we  saw  in  the  Veda  as  well  as  in 
 Homer,  its  natural  character  was  never  quite  forgotten. 
 
 Now  there  is  in  the  Veda  another  name  for  the 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  435 
 
 Dawn,  which  is  Ah  ana.  It  occurs  but  once,  in  a 
 hymn  addressed  to  Ushas,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt 
 that  it  is  one  of  the  many  epithets  of  the  dawn. 
 
 I.  123.  4.  GWham-gn'ham  ahana  yati  dkkha. 
 Dive-dive  adhi  nama  dadhiina, 
 Sisasanti  dyotana  sasvat  a  agat 
 Agram-agram  it  bhagate  vasunam. 
 '  Ahana  comes  towards  every  house, 
 Giving  a  name  to  every  day  ; 
 Dyotana  returns  always  eager  for  gain. 
 She  obtains  the  best  of  all  treasures.' 
 
 When  we  ask  why  Ahana  should  mean  the  dawn, 
 the  answer  is  easy.  A  h  a  n  and  a  h  a  r  mean  the  day, 
 and  ahani  in  the  dual  means  day  and  night.  In 
 Sanskrit  mythology  this  name  of  Ahana  has  remained 
 sterile,  but  in  Greek,  as  we  shall  see,  it  has  become 
 the  germ  of  a  magnificent  growth.  When  we  ask 
 under  what  form  Ahana  could  appear  in  Greek  we 
 should  say  at  first-'Axa^a  or  'Ax^a.  Neither  of  these 
 forms  exists.  But  we  must  remember  that  Sanskrit 
 h  represents  three  original  sounds,  namely  gh,  dh,  and 
 bh.  It  represents  gh,  for  instance,  in  dah,to  burn,  by 
 the  side  of  which  we  have  Sanskrit  ni-dagha,  heat. 
 It  represents  d  h,  as,  for  instance,  in  N AH.  to  bind  to- 
 gether, nectere,  by  the  side  of  which  we  have  *NADH, 
 in  the  present  naddha.  It  represents  bh,  as  in  the 
 same  root  NAH,  by  the  side  of  which  we  have  NABH 
 in  nabhi,  in  GRAH  and  GRABH,  both  meaning  to 
 take,  to  grab l. 
 
 In  Greek  itself  we  find  the  aspirates  changing 
 dialectically.  We  have  not  only  dpi'ts,  opm6o?<  but 
 also  opvis,  dpvixos.  Wre  have  Wfxa  and  Ixfia,  and  similar 
 forms. 
 
 1  Cf.  Sk.  dahra  =  dab  bra. 
 F  f  % 
 
436  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 We  have  therefore  a  perfect  right  to  expect  Athand 
 or  Aphand  instead  of  Achand1.  Now  'kd&va  exists 
 in  Greek  as  an  old  name  of  Athene.  We  have  also 
 ' Adavai,  and  'AOdraCa.  In  Athene  we  have  the  same 
 suffix  as  in  Selene,  and  the  change  between  the  two 
 suffixes  ana  and  ana  has  been  shown  to  be  very 
 common 2.  Phonetically  therefore  the  identification  of 
 Ah  an  a  in  the  Veda  and  Athene  in  Greek  is  beyond  the 
 reach  of  criticism  and  cavil.  If  after  that  we  identify 
 Ah  ana  with  Athene  mythologically  also,  we  must  see 
 clearly  what  we  mean.  First  of  all,  we  cannot  mean 
 that  there  ever  was  a  real  being,  a  woman  or  a  god- 
 dess, who  was  known  in  India  and  in  Greece  and  had 
 received  there  the  same  name,  Ah  ana  and  Athand. 
 
 Secondly,  we  cannot  mean  that  whatever  was  told 
 of  Athene  in  Greek  was  told  of  Ahana  also  in 
 Sanskrit. 
 
 Thirdly,  and  least  of  all,  can  we  mean  that  the 
 worship  of  Ahana  was  carried  from  India  to  Greece, 
 or  the  worship  of  Athene  from  Greece  to  India. 
 
 All  we  can  mean  is  that  Ahana,  as  a  name  of  the 
 dawn,  was  known  before  Greek  and  Sanskrit  separated, 
 and  that  while  in  India  this  mythological  germ  withered 
 away,  it  developed  into  a  splendid  growth  in  Greece. 
 
 We  see  the  same  with  common  words.  Bha(/, 
 for  instance,  in  Sanskrit,  means  to  divide,  and  one  of 
 the  Vedic  gods,  Bhaga,  meant  originally  the  divider 
 and  benefactor.  In  Zend  also  Baga  appears  in  the 
 same  character,  and  in  the  Slavonic  languages  the  Old 
 Slav,  bogii  has  become  the  general  name  for  god.  In 
 Greek    the    same    root    <j>ay  has   completely  lost  its 
 
 1  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  ii.  34!». 
 
 2  Kuhn,  Herabkunft  des  Feuers,  p.  28. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  437 
 
 meaning  of  dividing,  and  has  entered  into  a  new 
 channel.  It  means  to  eat,  whether  in  the  sense  of 
 dividing  the  meat  with  our  teeth  (fyayovrts,  teeth, 
 Hesych.)  or  in  the  sense  of  sharing  a  meal  with  others 
 (as  in  Sais,  haivvfiL,  bcurpos,  etc.). 
 
 All  this  must  be  fully  admitted,  but  nevertheless,  as 
 little  as  we  could  explain  why  (pay  in  Greek  means  to 
 eat,  without  a  reference  to  the  Sanskrit  bha(/>  to 
 divide,  could  we  understand  why  the  great  Greek 
 goddess  should  be  called  Athene,  unless  we  knew  the 
 Sanskrit  Ah  an  a,  and  its  meaning  of  dawn. 
 
 It  is  often  urged  by  Greek  scholars  that  the  Greeks 
 themselves  had  no  idea  that  Athene  meant  originally 
 the  dawn,  or  the  verb  Qaydv,  to  divide.  That,  no 
 doubt,  is  true,  and  it  is  quite  as  true  that  few  only 
 of  the  Greeks  knew  that  Zeus  meant  originally  the 
 sky,  and  Zephyros  the  wind  blowing  from  the  setting 
 of  the  sun,  or  Boreas  the  wind  blowing  from  the 
 northern  mountains.  We  do  not  know  that  Lord 
 meant  originally  bread-giver,  or  Duke  a  man  of 
 leading  and  light ;  but  it  is  only  after  knowing  it  that 
 we  can  understand  the  historical  growth  of  the  later 
 meanings  of  Lord  and  Duke. 
 
 Nor  is  it  impossible  to  discover  certain  traces  in 
 the  mythological  stories  told  of  Athene  which  point 
 to  her  original  character  as  dawn-goddess.  Her  birth 
 from  the  head  of  Zeus  is  like  the  rising  of  the  dawn 
 in  the  Veda  from  the  head  of  Dyaus  (murdha 
 DivaA) ;  and  it  may  be  in  the  same  sense  that  she 
 was  called  Koryphasia,  as  coming  €k  Kopvcf)^1,  and 
 that  her  counterpart  in  Italy  was  called  Cap(i)ta. 
 Her  purity  points  to  the  purity  of  the  dawn,  her  wis- 
 
 1  Bergk,  New  Jahrbikherfur  PhMogie,  1860,  i>  2w5. 
 
438  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 dom  to  the  brightness  of  the  light  of  the  morning,  her 
 valour  to  the  irresistible  light  of  her  rays.  Every- 
 thing else  in  her  character  may  be  called  Greek,  and 
 cannot  be  explained  by  any  reference  to  Vedic  ideas. 
 But  what  is  most  interesting  to  the  student  of  mytho- 
 logy, the  germinal  idea  of  the  goddess,  can  be  found 
 nowhere  else  but  in  the  name  of  Ah  an  a,  which  would 
 have  been  forgotten  in  India  also,  if  it  had  not  been 
 for  the  single  verse  of  the  Rig-veda  which  I  quoted 
 to  you. 
 
 Daphne. 
 
 So  far,  I  believe,  we  are  on  safe  ground.  But  I 
 think  we  may  venture  a  step  beyond.  We  saw  that 
 the  name  for  morning  or  day  in  Sanskrit  was  ah  an  or 
 ahar,  meaning  originally  brightness.  Now  the  Teu- 
 tonic words  for  day  are  derived  from  a  root  dah,  to 
 bum,  to  be  hot.  The  Gothic  dags,  A.S.  doeg, 
 English  day,  presuppose  a  root  DHAGH.  and  this 
 exists  in  Sanskrit  as  dah,  to  burn. 
 
 Whether  the  two  roots,  AH,  from  which  ah  an, 
 day,  and  DAH,  from  which  Goth,  dags1,  day,  are 
 parallel  roots,  is  a  question  that  can  only  be  decided  by 
 a  full  discussion  of  general  principles.  To  say  that  an 
 initial  d  in  dah  is  lost,  igsa}ing  nothing,  for  initial 
 r/'s  are  never  lost  without  a  reason.  The  same  ap- 
 plies to  the  opposite  theory  that  an  initial  d  was 
 added  to  the  root  AH.  All  we  can  say  is  that  there 
 are  other  cases  where  we  find  parallel  roots,  one  with, 
 the  other  without,  an  initial  d.  Whether  this  is  mere 
 accident,  we  cannot  tell  at  present :  all  we  can  say  is 
 that  there  are  analogies  for  that  process.  For  instance, 
 we  find  in  Sanskrit  a*ru,  tear,  probably  derived  from 
 1    Pott.  FJijm.  Forschungen,  iii.  p.  825  seq. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  439 
 
 a  root  a  s,  to  be  sharp  and  cutting ;  and  we  find  in 
 Greek  b&Kpv,  tear,  being  evidently  derived  from  a  root 
 DA#,  to  bite1.  Are  we  to  believe  that  these  two 
 words  have  nothing  in  common,  and  that  they  do  not 
 owe  their  origin  to  a  common  metaphorical  concept, 
 namely  of  sharp  and  biting,  and  therefore  to  a  com- 
 mon creative  act?  Both  roots,  AS  and  DA#,  exist 
 and  have  proved  prolific  in  different  Aryan  languages. 
 From  AS,  to  be  sharp  (in  every  sense  of  the  word),  we 
 have  in  Sanskrit  a.sra  and  asri,  point,  edge,  in  Latin 
 (icas,  deer,  in  Greek  cik/jo?  and  aKpis.  As  acidus,  from 
 meaning  sharp,  comes  to  mean  bitter  and  sour,  asru 
 in  Sanskrit  and  Zend,  aszara  in  Lituanian,  came  to 
 mean  a  bitter  tear. 
 
 From  DAaS',  to  bite  (bitter  comes  from  to  bite,  Sk. 
 bhid,  Lat./i ado),  we  have  in  Greek  b&Kpv,  in  Lat.  lacru- 
 ma,  in  Gothic  tagr,  in  English  tear,  and  who  can  doubt 
 that  all  these  words  mean  originally  the  biting  tear  ? 
 Of  course,  we  can  doubt  anything,  and  as  it  always 
 looks  much  more  learned  to  doubt  than  to  accept,  the 
 temptation  to  shake  one's  head  is  very  great.  But 
 for  that  very  reason  this  cheap  scepticism  deserves  a 
 sharp  rebuke,  such  as  Professor  Pott,  for  instance,  has 
 lately  administered  to  a  learned  colleague.  '  Natu- 
 rally,' he  writes,  '  the  determined  tone  of  the  pro- 
 fessor's veto,  when  he  says  "the  comparison  of  a*ru 
 with  dasru  is  as  little  justified  as  that  of  ahan  with 
 day,"  signifies  nothing2.' 
 
 But  even  those  scholars  who  maintain  that  the  root 
 
 1  Kick  goes  much  further,  and  derives,  for  instance,  agni,  fire, 
 from  the  rod  DAH;  Holtzmann  points  out  that  the  goddess  Dan  ay  u 
 in  th<-  Mahabharata  appears  as  Anavu  in  the  Harivawsa  ;  see 
 Holtzmann,  Agni,  ]>.  34. 
 
 -   Pott.  EtymologiscJu  Forschtengen,  vol.  ii.  -1,  p.  510. 
 
440  LECTUEE  XVI. 
 
 AH  is  in  no  way  connected  with  the  root  DAH, 
 cannot  deny  that  D ah  ana  would  be  a  perfectly  le- 
 gitimate derivation  of  the  root  DAH,  which  root  has 
 given  us  the  names  for  day  in  the  Teutonic  languages. 
 That  root  DAH  presupposes  a  root  DHAGH,  and 
 belongs  to  a  whole  class  of  roots  in  which,  according 
 to  Grassmann's  observation,  an  initial  and  final  aspi- 
 rate are  necessarily  represented  in  Gothic  by  initial 
 and  final  media. 
 
 As  the  final  h  in  the  root  DAH  may  represent  an 
 original  gh  or  bh,  we  get  two  possible  varieties, 
 DAGH  and  DABH.  DAGH  exists  in  Sanskrit  n  i- 
 dagha,  heat ;  DABH  would  in  Greek  appear  as  bacf). 
 From  this  bacf)  the  Greek  by  a  most  regular  process 
 could  have  derived  ba<p-vii  \  and  the  meaning  of  that 
 name  would  have  been  the  same  as  that  of  Ahana  in 
 Sanskrit,  namely  the  burning  one,  the  bright,  the 
 brilliant.  By  the  side  of  AaQvt]  we  have  the  Thessa- 
 lian  form  Aavxvi],  with  the  guttural  final  of  DAH, 
 and  Hesychios  mentions  bavxnov  as  a  name  of  the 
 wood   of  the    laurel-tree,    because    it    burns    easily 
 
 (eVKCLVCTTOv). 
 
 If  then  we  know  that  Phoeboa  meant  the  sun,  and 
 few  scholars  will  deny  that,  and  that  Daphne  may 
 have  meant  the  dawn,  we  shall  probably  not  look 
 very  far  for  an  explanation  of  the  Greek  saying,  that 
 the  Dawn  tied  before  the  Sun,  and  vanished  when  he 
 wished  to  embrace  her. 
 
 But  why,  it  may  be  asked,  was  Daphne  supposed 
 to  have  been  changed  into  a  laurel-tree  ?  Ethno- 
 psychological  mythologists  will  tell  us  that  in  Samoa, 
 Sarawak,  and  other  savage  countries,  men  and  women 
 
 1  M.  M.,  Comparative  Mythology,  1856  ;  Selected  Essays,  i.  p.  398. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  441 
 
 are  supposed  to  be  capable  of  turning  into  plants,  and 
 that,  as  the  Greeks  were  savages  once,  they  no  doubt 
 believed  the  same,  and  we  need  therefore  inquire  no  fur- 
 ther. Now,  with  all  possible  respect  for  Ethno-psycho- 
 logists,  or  as  they  are  sometimes  called,  Folk-lorists, 
 I  cannot  think  that  this  would  be  much  more  than 
 explaining  ignotum  per  ignotlus.  The  question  that 
 everybody  would  ask  is,  Why  then  did  the  Samoans 
 and  Sarawakians  and  other  savages  believe  that  men 
 and  women  turned  into  trees  1  Neither  Totemism, 
 surely,  nor  Fetishism,  nor  Tabuism,  would  help  them  to 
 that  belief.  Then  why  should  not  the  classical  scholar 
 be  allowed  to  look  for  a  key  nearer  home,  and  when 
 he  finds  that  the  laurel,  being  a  wood  that  burns 
 easily,  was  therefore  called  bdcpvrj  \  or  fire-wood,  why 
 should  he  not  be  allowed  to  say  that  the  legend  of 
 Daphne,  the  dawn,  being  changed  into  daphne,  the 
 laurel-tree,  may  have  been  due  to  the  influence  of 
 language  on  thought,  to  some  self-forgctfulness  of 
 language — [n  fac+  to  the  same  influence  which  in- 
 duced  people  to  adopt  an  ox  passing  a  ford  as  the 
 arms  of  Oxford  ? 
 
 'Warum  in  die  Feme  schweifen  ? 
 Sioh,  das  Gute  liegt  so  nah  !  ' 
 
 Whether  cases  of  identity  of  name,  like  that  of 
 Daphne  and  daphne,  are  likewise  at  the  bottom  of 
 the  Samoan  and  Sarawakian  belief  that  men  and 
 women  can  be  turned  into  plants,  is  a  far  more  diffi- 
 cult question  to  answer,  and  before  we  generalise  on 
 such  matters,  it  is  far  better  to  inquire  into  a  number 
 of  single  cases,  such   as  those,  for  instance,  of  Hya- 
 
 1  Cf.  Lectures  on  tin  Science  of  Language,  i  i .  54b  ;  Selected  Essays,  i.3(J9  ; 
 SaXHov  tv/cavoTov  £v\ov  Sojfn'rjs,  Hesych.  1.  C. 
 
442 
 
 LECTURE   XVI. 
 
 cinthus,  Narcissus,  and  others  in  Greece  and  elsewhere. 
 We  shall  find,  I  believe,  here  as  elsewhere,  that  the 
 same  effect  is  not  always  due  to  the  same  cause,  but 
 unless  we  find  some  kind  of  cause,  Comparative 
 Mythology  might  indeed  be  called  a  collection  of 
 rubbish,  and  not  a  museum  of  antiquities.  To  say 
 that  '  a  legend  of  a  woman  being  changed  into  a  tree 
 is  explained  when  we  have  shown  that  it  is  natural 
 to  a  race  which  believes  in  woman  being  changed  into 
 trees,'  is  surely  not  saying  very  much. 
 
 Professor  Gruppe  has  a  curious  way  of  dealing  with 
 these  mythological  etymologies.  He  asks  whether 
 they  can  be  true,  and  then  leaves  the  matter  alone. 
 '  Are  we  allowed,'  he  writes  (p.  90),  'to  declare  Daphne, 
 the  laurel,  the  beloved  of  Aa(f)vrj<p6pos,  to  be  the  dawn, 
 because  this  name,  by  no  means  clear  as  yet,  corre- 
 sponds perhaps  to  Sk.  d  ah  ana,  which  is  said  to  be 
 identical  with  ah  an  a,  an  adjective  of  the  dawn? 
 This  is  a  combination  which  ignores  the  atoning  and 
 purifying  power  ascribed  to  the  laurel  not  by  the 
 Greeks  only.'  What  can  be  gained  by  such  remarks  ? 
 Daphne,  the  dawn,  was  called  Daphne  on  account  of 
 her  blazing  light,  and  not  because  she  was  originally 
 a  laurel-tree.  The  laurel-tree  was  called  Safari,  because, 
 if  used  as  fire-wood,  it  blazes  up  quickly.  These  were 
 two  quite  distinct  acts  of  naming,  and  their  syno- 
 nymy produced,  as  often,  a  later  legend.  We  might 
 as  well  reject  the  identification  of  Dyaus  and  Zeus, 
 because  it  ignores  the  moral  character  of  Zeus  £h<Los  ! 
 
 Eenfey's  Theory  of  Athene. 
 
 But  although  nothing  really  important  could  be 
 brought    forward    against    my    equation    Ahana  = 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  443 
 
 Athene,  the  fact  that  another  scholar  had  pro- 
 pounded another  etymology  seemed  to  offer  a  great 
 opportunity  to  those  who  imagine  that  by  simply  de- 
 claring themselves  incompetent  to  decide  between 
 two  opinions,  they  can  prove  both  to  be  wrong.  Now 
 Benfey's  etymology1  of  Athene  is  certainly  ex- 
 tremely learned,  ingenious,  and  carefully  worked  out ; 
 yet  whoever  will  take  the  trouble  to  examine  its 
 phonetic  foundation,  will  be  bound  in  common  honesty 
 to  confess  that  it  is  untenable.  We  are  dealing  here 
 with  facts  that  admit  of  almost  mathematical  pre- 
 cision, though,  as  in  mathematics,  a  certain  knowledge 
 of  addition  and  subtraction  is  certainly  indispensable 
 for  taking  part  in  the  discussion.  I  speak  of  the 
 phonetic  difficulties  only,  for  if  they  should  prove  un 
 surmountable  we  need  not  inquire  any  further. 
 
 Benfey  (p.  21)  places  his  equation  before  us,  as 
 follows : — 
 
 Sanskrit.  Zend,  Greek. 
 
 Trita  Aptya//    =   Thrito  and  Athwyo       =   'At9is. 
 
 Traitana/i         —   Thraetano  athwyano 
 
 Thraetano  athwyano     =   TplrwvU  'AOdva. 
 Thraetaono  athwyano. 
 
 Leaving  aside  the  etymology  of  Triton ia,  which  may 
 be  right,  quite  independently  of  that  of  Athene,  we 
 have  to  consider  whether  'AOdva  or  \\6r\vr\  or  ' ' A6^vairj 
 can  be  the  same  word  as  the  Zend  dthwydnd.  And 
 here,  though  willing  to  make  every  allowance  for 
 local  and  dialectic  irregularities,  I  must  say  decidedly, 
 
 No>. 
 
 Athwydno  is  a  peculiarly  Zend  modification  which 
 
 presupposes  a  Sanskrit  apty  ana.    This  is  therefore  the 
 
 1  Tritonia  Athana,  Femininum  des  Zendischen  Thrdetdna  dthwydna. 
 GOttingen,  1868. 
 
444  LECTURE   XVI. 
 
 only  word  we  can  deal  with,  when  looking  for  an  ety- 
 mology of  the  Greek  word  Athana.  It  is  true  that 
 even  this  a  pty  ana,  does  not  exist  in  Sanskrit,  but  we 
 find  there  ap-tya,  i.  e.  aquaticus,  an  epithet  of  Trita, 
 of  Indra,  and,  later  on,  of  a  whole  class  of  legendary 
 beings.  From  this  ap-tya,  however,  no  road  leads 
 to  Athana,  and  even  Benfey  himself  is  obliged  to 
 confess  at  almost  every  step,  that  the  phonetic 
 changes  which  he  postulates  are  without  any  analogy 
 whatsoever. 
 
 He  first  maintains  that  Athene  is  connected  with 
 Atthis.  But  though  Atthis,  or  Attica,  is  under  the 
 patronage  of  Athene,  the  two  names  are  quite  distinct. 
 This  becomes  still  clearer,  when  he  traces  Atthis  back 
 to  Attike,  for  how  can  tt  ever  stand  for  th  ?  I  admit 
 that  there  is  no  proof  of  Attike  being  derived  from  aKTi], 
 shore,  which  would  have  rendered  a  transition  to  Atthis 
 and  Athene  quite  hopeless.  But  even  after  rejecting 
 the  derivation  from  clkti],  how  shall  we  get  from 
 aptya  to  Attike?  Benfey  says  the  ptinaptya  may 
 become  tt,  as  in  7re7JTeii>=7rerreu>.  But  in  tt€ttt€iv  (pa A") 
 the  original  final  consonant  of  the  root  is  a  guttural, 
 not  a  labial.  Benfey  himself  feels  this,  and  he 
 therefore  appeals  to  the  base  at  for  ap,  which  appears 
 in  Sanskrit  ad-bhis  instead  of  abbhis ;  and  postu- 
 lating a  further  case  apt,  he  changes  ap-tya  into 
 apt-tya.  He  then  argues  that  in  pty,  p  and  t  are 
 assimilated  to  tt,  that  the  last  t  is  aspirated  through 
 the  influence  of  y,  so  that  t6  is  =  pty.  But  here  again 
 his  conscience  smites  him,  for  he  admits  that  ty  in 
 Sanskrit  never  becomes  6  in  Greek.  If  so,  it  follows 
 that  pty  cannot  become  tO.  Again,  when  he  postu- 
 lates the  loss  of  r,  in  order  to  arrive  from  Atthis  at 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  445 
 
 Athene,  he  honestly  confesses  that  no  analogy  can  be 
 found  for  this,  and  yet  he  adds :  '  the  connection  of 
 Atthis  and  Athene  is  so  completely  beyond  the  reach 
 of  doubt  that  it  is  not  injured  in  the  least  by  this 
 defect.' 
 
 Lastly,  when  he  perceives  that  the  first  vowel  in 
 Athene  is  short,  while  it  is  long  in  aptya,  he  tries  to 
 explain  this  by  the  accent,  which  is  again  impossible  ; 
 or  he  simply  postulates  a  form  aptya,  by  the  side  of 
 aptya,  which,  however,  has  no  existence. 
 
 I  doubt  whether  after  this,  a  single  Sanskrit  scholar 
 would  put  his  name  to  the  equation  aptyana  = 
 Athana,  and  there  is  no  necessity  therefore  to  examine 
 the  further  speculations,  which  are  based  on  it.  If 
 Athana,  according  to  Benfey,  is  the  lightning,  and  not 
 the  dawn,  or  if  she  is,  according  to  others,  both  the 
 lightning  and  the  dawn,  this  would  have  to  be  esta- 
 blished by  other  evidence ;  it  cannot  be  established  by 
 her  name.  The  equation  Ahana  =  Athene,  on  the 
 contrary,  is  phonetically  irreproachable,  and  mytho- 
 logically  perfectly  intelligible1.  I  do  not  wish  to  deny 
 the  principle  to  which  Benfey  appeals  so  frequently 
 in  his  essay  on  Athana,  namely  that  dialectic  irregu- 
 larities must  by  necessity  abound  in  mythological 
 names.  There  are  limits,  no  doubt,  to  our  respect  for 
 phonetic  laws,  but  this  applies  chiefly  to  cases  where 
 the  full  bearing  of  a  law  has  not  yet  been  settled,  not 
 where  we  know  the  law  and  knowingly  break  it.  If. 
 for  instance,  we  are  told  that  there  is  no  phonetic  law 
 
 1  M.  Darmesteter  (Ormazd,  p.  34),  an  excellent  Zend  scholar,  evi- 
 dently not  convinced  by  Benfey's  Zend  etymology  of  Athana, 
 suggests  that  the  name  of  Athene  may  be  connected  with  the  Zend 
 atar,  fire,  lightning,  the  Vedic  *athar  ;  but  he  has  not  shown  how 
 a  tar  could  be  represented  in  Greek  by  uOtjvt]. 
 
446  LECTURE    XVI. 
 
 sanctioning  the  change  of  riis  or  nakta  into  vv£, 
 vvktos,  of  eTrra  and  oktoo  into  e/35ojuoj  and  oyboo'i,  all  I 
 can  say  is,  that  though  an  adequate  cause  of  the 
 change  of  a  into  i  and  v,  of  it  into  j3,  and  of  k  into  y, 
 is  not  yet  known,  it  will  be  known  in  time.  I  am  old 
 and  bold  enough  to  declare  that,  in  spite  of  all  that 
 has  been  written  on  the  subject,  I  still  believe  in  the 
 relationship  of  Oeos  and  deas,  because,  though  I  cannot 
 fully  account  for  it  phonetically,  it  seems  to  me  far 
 more  unaccountable  that  the  Aryan  word  for  God 
 should  have  been  lost  in  Greek,  and  been  replaced 
 afterwards  by  another,  nearly  identical  in  form  and 
 meaning,  but  totally  distinct  in  origin  1.  And  even  if 
 we  yielded  on  the  point  of  dtos,  and  admitted  that  it 
 could  not  be  connected  with  Sanskrit  deva,  bright, 
 and  Latin  deus,  god,  how  could  we  separate  the  bril- 
 liant and  heavenly  goddess  Them  from  the  root  div  or 
 dyu,  to  shine,  she  who  is  the  wife  of  Hyperion,  the 
 mother  of  Helios  (Thiae  clara  progenies,  Cat.  66,  44), 
 of  Selene,  and  Eos,  and  the  daughter  of  Uranos  and 
 Gel  What  can  be  the  meaning  of  Oelos,  Oieios,  Lakon. 
 o-eto?,  when  applied  to  men  like  Odysseus,  if  not  dtod- 
 KeXos,  god-like,  or  0eoei6?js,  of  godly  kind,  or  deoyevrjs, 
 born  of  god  1  If  then  the  same  Odysseus  is  called 
 Atoyevijs,  sprung  from  Zeus,  or  8ios,  divine,  excellent, 
 if  we  find  in  Homer  6dov  yevos  and  blov  yh'os,  side  by 
 side,  are  we  to  suppose  that  Alo  and  6eo  have  no  con- 
 nection whatever  with  each  other 2  ?    By  all  means  let 
 
 1  See  Selected  Essays,  vol.  i.  p.  215  ;  Pott,  in  Kuhn's  Zeitschrift,  xxvi. 
 p.  200  (1883). 
 
 -  On  the  word  9e6s,  as  derived  from  BUiv,  to  run.  see  Cratyl.  397  D  ; 
 from  9(aa6ai,  to  see,  Maerob.  Sat.  i.  23  ;  from  ai$eiv,  Gregor.  Nazianz. 
 or.  30,  c.  18  ;  Migne,  P.  Gr.  t  36,  vol.  128  ;  Z.  D.  M.  G.  xxxvii.  pp. 
 126,  451  :  xxxviii.  p.  486. 
 
MYTHOLOGY.  447 
 
 us  put  a  mark  against  all  these  names,  for  they  still 
 require  justification  ;  but  let  us  not  suppose  that  to  be 
 dogmatic  negatively  is  less  objectionable  than  to  be 
 dogmatic  positively. 
 
 If  it  could  be  proved  that  Greek  and  Sanskrit  had 
 no  mythological  names  in  common,  there  would,  of 
 course,  be  an  end  of  Comparative  Mythology  in  the 
 narrow  sense  of  the  word.  We  might  still  be  able  to 
 compare,  but  we  could  no  longer  think  of  identifying 
 gods  and  heroes,  having  no  common  name,  and  there- 
 fore no  common  origin.  We  can,  if  we  like,  compare 
 Jupiter,  Jehovah,  and  Unkulunkulu,  but  we  cannot 
 identify  them.  We  should  find  many  things  which 
 these  three  supreme  deities  share  in  common,  only  not 
 their  names,  that  is,  not  their  original  conception.  We 
 should  have  in  fact  morphological  comparisons,  which 
 are  very  interesting  in  their  way,  but  not  what  we 
 want  for  historical  purposes,  namely  genealogical 
 identifications. 
 
I 
 
 LECTURE  XVII. 
 
 THE   GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL. 
 Identification  and  Comparison. 
 
 T  is  curious  that  it  should  be  necessary  to  repeat 
 again  and  again  what  seems  almost  self-evident, 
 namely  that  it  is  one  thing  to  compare,  but  quite  a 
 different  thing  to  identify.  No  two  deities  can  be 
 identified,  unless  we  can  trace  them  back  to  the  same 
 name,  and  unless  we  can  prove  that  name  to  have  been 
 the  work  of  one  and  the  same  original  name-giver. 
 This  is  a  point  that  must  be  clearly  apprehended,  if 
 further  discussions  on  mythology  are  to  lead  to  any 
 useful  results. 
 
 But  when  the  preparatory  work  of  the  etymologist 
 has  been  finished,  when  we  can  show,  for  instance, 
 that  the  Sanskrit  name  for  dawn,  Us  has,  is  the  same 
 as  the  Greek  Eos ;  that  the  Sanskrit  name  for  night, 
 Nis,  is  but  a  dialectic  variety  of  the  same  base  which 
 we  have  in  Nuf  and  Nox  (noc-tis) ;  that  Dyaus  is 
 Zeus,  and  Agni,  fire,  is  ignis,  what  then?  We  then 
 have,  first  of  all,  irrefragable  evidence  that  these 
 names  existed  before  the  Aryan  Separation  ;  secondly, 
 we  know  that,  whatever  character  may  have  been 
 assigned  to  the  bearers  of  these  mythological  names  in 
 later  times,  their  original  conception  must  have  been 
 that  which  their  etymology  discloses ;    thirdly,  that 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  449 
 
 whatever,  in  the  shape  of  story  and  legend,  is  told  of  them 
 in  common  in  the  mythologies  of  different  countries, 
 must  have  existed  before  the  final  break  up  of  the 
 Aryan  family.  This  is  what  constitutes  Comparative 
 Mythology  in  the  strict,  or  if  you  like,  in  the  narrow 
 sense  of  the  word.  This  stronghold  must  never  be 
 surrendered,  and  in  order  to  keep  it  impregnable 
 it  must  be  kept  distinct  both  from  the  Analogical 
 and  from  the  Psychological  divisions  of  Comparative 
 Mythology. 
 
 &arad  and  Ceres. 
 
 To  take  another  instance.  If  I  have  succeeded  in 
 proving  the  identity  of  Geres  and  Sk.  sarad,  autumn 
 or  the  ripening  season,  a  solid  foundation  is  laid. 
 That  foundation  must  be  examined  by  scholars,  and 
 no  one  who  is  not  an  expert,  has  anything  to  say 
 here.  He  must  simply  accept  what  is  given  him, 
 and,  if  he  cannot  himself  decide  between  two  opposite 
 opinions,  he  must  at  all  events  not  try  to  pose  as  a 
 linguistic  Hercules  in  bivio.  Neither  common  sense, 
 nor  even  forensic  eloquence,  will  here  be  of  any  avail. 
 
 Now  it  is  well  known  that  the  Romans  had  their 
 own  etymology  of  Geres.  Servius,  V.  G.,  i.  7,  says1, 
 alma  Ceres  a  creando  dicta,  quamvis  Sabini  Cererem 
 ■pan&ni  appellant.  If  this  were  true,  Geres  would  ori- 
 ginally have  been  conceived  as  creatrix.  We  know 
 that  the  ancient  Romans  did  not  pretend  to  be  more 
 than  folk-etymologists,  but  even  they  would  have 
 hardly  found  a  bridge  from  creare  to  Ceres.  Modern 
 etymologists2,  however,  have  taken  the  hint,  and 
 have  proposed  to  derive  Ceres  from  the  Sk.  root  kav* 
 
 1  Prollcr,  Hdfnisch  Mytkologie,  p.  403. 
 
 2  Preller,  I.e.,  p.  70. 
 
 G  g 
 
450  LECTURE    XVII. 
 
 to  make,  from  which  they  also  derive  Cents  or  Kerns, 
 a  creative  genius,  invoked  in  the  Carmen  Saliare  as 
 Cerus  Manus,  applied  to  Janus,  and  supposed  to  mean 
 creator  bonus.  Preller  goes  so  far  as  to  connect  with 
 these  names  the  word  cerfus  (the  Vedic  sardha)  of 
 the  Umbrian  Inscriptions,  which  is  utterly  impossible. 
 
 Leaving  Cerus  for  further  consideration,  we  cannot 
 deny  that  phonetically  Ceres  might  be  derived  from 
 the  root  kar,  as  well  as  from  the  root  sar,  to  ripen. 
 This  is  a  dilemma  which  we  have  often  to  face,  and 
 where  we  must  have  recourse  to  what  may  be  called  the 
 history  and  the  geographical  distribution  of  roots.  No 
 purely  phonetic  test  can  tell  us,  for  instance,  whether 
 Vesta,  Greek  'Eo-ria,  is  derived  from  vas,  to  dwell,  or 
 from  vas,  to  shine,  to  say  nothing  of  other  roots. 
 Curtius  derives  it  from  vas  (ush)  to  shine  forth,  from 
 which  vasu,  the  bright  gods,  bright  wealth,  etc.  ;  be- 
 cause the  goddess  was  first  the  fire,  and  afterwards 
 the  hearth  and  the  home.  Roth  derives  it  from  vas, 
 to  dwell 1.  I  prefer  vas,  to  shine  forth,  because  the 
 root  vas,  to  dwell,  has  left  no  other  traces  in  Latin. 
 
 I  feel  the  same  objection  to  kar,  to  make,  as  the 
 etymon  of  Ceres,  which  I  feel  to  vas,  to  dwell,  as  the 
 etymon  of  Vesta,  The  root  kar  (or  skar),  first  of  all, 
 does  not  mean  to  create,  even  in  Sanskrit;  but  to 
 fashion,  to  perform ;  secondly,  there  is  hardly  one 
 certain  derivation  of  kar  in  Latin,  for  both  Cerus  and 
 ereo,  eresco,  etc.,  are  doubtful.  Grassmann,  who  re- 
 jected the  derivation  from  kar,  proposed  to  derive 
 Ceres  from  karsh,  to  draw  a  furrow.  But  karsh 
 never  occurs  in  the  North- Aryan  languages  in  the 
 sense  of  ploughing,  nor  is  Ceres  the  deity  of  ploughing 
 
 1  Kuhn's  Zeitschrift,  xix.  pp.  218.  222. 
 
THE  GENEALOGICAL  SCHOOL.         451 
 
 or  sowing,  but  of  reaping.  I  therefore  prefer  the  root 
 sar,  which  means  to  heat,  to  cook,  to  ripen ;  from  it 
 sr  it  a,,  roasted,  and  sarad,  harvest,  autumn.  A 
 secondary  form  of  the  same  root  is  sra,  caus.  srapay. 
 From  this  root,  not  from  varpere,  to  pluck,  we  have 
 in  Greek  Kapiros,  the  ripe  fruit,  in  Anglo-Saxon  hcerfed, 
 autumn,  the  time  of  ripening.  The  Latin  corpus,  like 
 Sk.  sarira,  may  possibly  come  from  the  same  root, 
 and  have  meant  originally  the  ripe  fruit  of  the  body 
 (leibesfrucht). 
 
 Now,  considering  that  even  the  German  Herbst,  the 
 English  harvest,  may  be  derived  from  this  root,  in  a 
 causative  form,  what  doubt  can  there  remain  that 
 Ceres  is  sarad1,  and  was  an  old  name  of  harvest? 
 What  was  the  substratum  of  >S'arad  and  Ceres, 
 whether  the  time  of  harvest,  or  the  earth  at  the  time 
 of  harvest,  the  harvest-sun  or  the  harvest-moon, 
 which  seemed  every  year  to  cause  the  ripening  tem- 
 perature, these  are  questions  impossible  to  answer. 
 When  the  concept  of  deity  had  once  come  in,  definite 
 thought  became  unnecessary,  and  the  poet  claimed 
 perfect  freedom  to  conceive  his  Ceres  as  suited  his 
 own  imagination.  How  early  the  harvest,  the  furrow 
 (Sita),  the  field  (Urvara),  the  days,  the  seasons,  and 
 the  year  were  raised  to  the  rank  of  goddesses,  may  be 
 seen  from  the  invocations  addressed  to  them  in  the 
 Domestic   Sacrifices2    of  the  Brahmans.     Almost  all 
 
 1  On  the  final  d  and  s,  see  my  article  on  Geres}  in  Kuhn's  Zeit- 
 schrift,  xviii.  211.  For  some  of  Gruppe's  bickerings,  see  Griechiscke 
 Culte,  p.  105,  note  1. 
 
 2  Paraskara  Grihya  S.  II.  17,  9.  Sita,  the  furrow,  in  later  times 
 the  wife  of  Rama,  is  here  invoked  us  the  wife  of  India.  Urvara  is 
 cipovpa  ;  from  Sita  and  sitya,  frumentum,  airos  has  been  derived, 
 though  the  initial  s  requires  justification.  On  the  days,  as  thirty 
 sisters,  see  Paraskara  Gh  S.  III.  3,  5  a  ;  on  the  seasons  and  the  year. 
 
452  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 that  we  are  told  of  Ceres,  as  an  aboriginal  Italian 
 deity,  can  be  fully  explained  by  this  her  etymological 
 character,  and  with  this  the  task  of  the  Comparative 
 Mythologist  is  finished.  Her  absorption  by  the  Greek 
 Demeter,  and  all  that  flows  from  it,  belongs  to  the 
 domain  of  the  classical  scholar  and  need  not  detain  us 
 at  present. 
 
 Mythological  Etymologies. 
 
 It  seems  to  me  that  after  the  etymology  of  a  mytho- 
 logical name  has  once  been  satisfactorily  settled,  we 
 have  not  only  the  real  starting-point  in  the  history 
 of  a  deity  or  a  hero,  but  also  a  clear  indication 
 of  the  direction  which  that  history  followed  from 
 the  first.  I  look  in  fact  on  these  etymologies  and  on 
 the  equations  between  the  names  of  deities  in  different 
 cognate  languages  as  the  true  capital  of  Comparative 
 Mythology,  and  on  every  new  discovery,  if  well  esta- 
 blished, as  a  permanent  addition  to  our  wealth.  If 
 we  want  to  know  the  real  founders  and  benefactors 
 of  Comparative  Mythology,  we  must  look  for  them 
 among  those  who  discovered  such  equations  as  Dyaus  = 
 Zeus,  and  defended  them  against  every  objection  that 
 could  reasonably  be  raised  against  them. 
 
 Changes  in  the  Character  of  Gods. 
 
 Still,  it  often  happens  that,  after  we  have  established 
 the  true  meaning  of  a  mythological  name,  it  seems  in 
 no  way  to  yield  a  solution  of  the  character  of  the  god 
 who  bears  it.  No  one  can  doubt  the  phonetic  iden- 
 tity of  the  names  H  aritas  in  Sanskrit  and  Xaptres  in 
 Greek,  but  the  former  are  the  horses  of  the  rising  sun, 
 the  latter  show  no  trace  whatever  of  an  equine  cha- 
 in. 2,  2.  .bar ad  is  invoked  in  the  same  place  as  abhaya,  free  from 
 danger. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  453 
 
 racter.  Kuhn  supposed  that  Prometheus  took  its 
 origin  from  the  Vedic  pramantha;  yet  pramantha 
 is  only  the  stick  used  for  rubbing  wood  to  produce  a 
 fire,  Prometheus  is  the  wisest  of  the  sons  of  the  Titans. 
 Sarameya  in  Sanskrit  is  a  dog,  Hermeias  a  god. 
 Kerberos  in  Greek  is  a  dog,  >Srarvari  in  Sanskrit  the 
 night.  The  Maruts  in  the  Veda  are  clearly  the  gods 
 of  the  thunderstorm,  but  there  are  passages  where 
 they  are  addressed  as  powerful  gods,  as  givers  of  all 
 good  things,  without  a  trace  of  thunder  and  lightning 
 about  them.  We  see,  in  fact,  very  clearly  how  here 
 as  elsewhere  l  the  idea  of  gods  of  the  thunderstorm 
 became  gradually  generalised,  and  how  in  the  end  the 
 Maruts,  having  once  been  recognised  as  divine  beings, 
 were  implored  without  any  reference  to  their  meteoro- 
 logical origin. 
 
 Strange  as  this  may  seem,  it  could  hardly  be  other- 
 wise in  the  ancient  world.  If  one  poet  became  the 
 priest  of  a  family,  if  one  family  became  supreme  in 
 a  tribe,  if  one  tribe  became  by  conquest  the  ruler  of  a 
 nation,  the  god  praised  by  one  individual  poet  could 
 hardly  escape  becoming  the  supreme  god  of  a  nation, 
 
 1  Mr.  Bancroft  (Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States  of  North  America,  1875, 
 vol.  iii.  p.  117)  remarks  that  in  many  of  the  American  languages  the 
 same  word  is  used  for  storm  and  god.  Mr.  Brinton  writes  (Myths 
 of  the  N.  W.,  p.  50),  'the  descent  is  almost  imperceptible  which  leads 
 to  the  personification  of  the  wind  as  God.'  How  easily  the  wind  be- 
 comes a  hero,  sometimes  the  ancestor  of  the  human  race,  has  been 
 shown  by  Reville,  Religions  des  Peuples  Non-civilises,  vol.  i.  p.  218. 
 Goldziher  {Mythology  among  the  Hebreivs,  p.  224)  quotes  from  Nachtigall 
 that  the  Baghirmi  in  Central  Africa  use  the  same  name  for  Storm 
 and  Deity.  The  Akra  people  on  the  Gold  Coast  of  Africa  say,  '  Will 
 God  come?'  meaning,  '  Will  it  rain  ?'  In  the  Jahrb&cfo  rfilr  Deutsche 
 Theologie,  1875,  Schrader,  in  an  essay  on  The  original  signification 
 of  the  Divine  name  Jahve-Zebaoth,  p.  317,  drew  attention  to  the 
 Assyrian  name  for  wind,  a-ir  fha-iv  ,  a-u  (ha-u),  root  mrr,  t<>  breathe, 
 to  blow  ;  so  that  God,  the  breather,  would  have  to  be  placed  parallel 
 with  the  storm-god  Ramnan. 
 
454  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 and  having  become  supreme,  would  receive  in  time  all 
 the  insignia  of  a  supreme  deity  \  In  the  Veda  the 
 old  supreme  deity  of  the  bright  sky,  Dyaus,  who  re- 
 mained to  the  end  the  supreme  god  among  Greeks 
 and  Romans,  is  visibly  receding,  and  his  place  is  being 
 taken  by  a  god,  unknown  to  the  other  Aryan  nations, 
 and  hence  probably  of  later  origin,  Indra.  Indra 
 was  originally  a  god  of  the  thunderstorm,  the  giver  of 
 rain  (indra,  like  indu,  rain-drops),  the  ally  of  the 
 Rudras  and  Maruts,  but  he  was  soon  invested  with 
 all  the  insignia  of  a  supreme  ruler,  residing  in  heaven, 
 and  manifested  no  longer  in  the  thunderstorm  only,  but 
 in  the  light  of  heaven  and  the  splendour  of  the  sun. 
 
 Accidental  Similarities  of  Names. 
 
 Any  one  acquainted  with  the  principles  of  Com- 
 parative Philology  knows  of  course  that  perfect  iden- 
 tity between  mythological  names  in  Sanskrit,  Greek, 
 and  Latin  is  not  to  be  expected,  but  would,  on  the 
 contrary,  be  extremely  suspicions.  The  phonetic 
 peculiarities  of  each  member  of  a  family  of  languages 
 extend  so  far  that  it  can  hardly  ever  happen  that 
 all  the  letters  of  a  word  should  be  exempt  from  their 
 influences.  That  care  in  English,  and  Latin  cura, 
 that  whole  in  English,  and  Greek  okos,  should  have 
 no  connection  whatever  with  each  other,  has  often 
 been   denounced   as   one   of  the   absurdities    of  the 
 
 1  Among  the  Scandinavians,  the  Swedes  and  Norwegians  seem  to 
 have  been  less  devoted  to  Octinn  than  the  Gotlanders  and  Danes. 
 The  Old  Norse  sagas  several  times  mention  images  of  Thor,  never 
 one  of  Odinn  ;  only  Saxo  Grammaticus  does  so  in  an  altogether 
 mythical  way.  Adam  of  Bremen,  though  he  names  Wodan  among 
 the  Upsala  gods,  assigns  but  the  second  place  to  him,  and  the  first 
 to  Thor.  Later  still,  the  worship  of  Freyr  seems  to  have  pre- 
 dominated in  Sweden.  See  Grimm's  Teutonic  Mythology,  vol.  i.  pp. 
 160-164  ;  Lippert,  Die  Religionen  der  Europaischen  Qutturvolker}  p.  220  seq. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  455 
 
 Science  of  Languages.  It  may  sound  equally  absurd 
 to  deny  a  common  origin  to  the  Greek  Heracles  and 
 the  old  Latin  Herculus,  if  ever  there  was  such  a  god ; 
 yet  it  is  quite  certain  that,  if  there  was,  as  Mommsen 
 supposes,  an  indigenous  Herculus,  a  protecting  deity 
 of  the  enclosed  cattle-yard  (from  Jiercere),  he  could 
 never  have  had  any  real  relationship  with  Heracles. 
 The  slightest  acquaintance  with  the  phonetic  laws 
 of  the  Aryan  languages  would  in  our  days  keep  a 
 scholar  from  proposing  comparisons  which  would  for- 
 merly have  passed  without  difficulty,  such  as,  for 
 instance,  Thor  and  the  Greek  6ovpo$,  rushing,  furious  ; 
 the  Saxon  Hera1,  the  Latin  hem,  mistress,  and  the 
 Greek  Hera;  or  Celtic  Bel  or  Beal2,  and  the  Semitic 
 Bel  or  Baal. 
 
 Foreign  Gods. 
 
 In  the  last-mentioned  case,  however,  where  we  find 
 the  same  or  very  similar  mythological  names  among 
 people  speaking  languages  entirely  unrelated  to  each 
 other,  a  new  question  arises,  namely  whether  they 
 might  have  been  carried  by  migration  from  one 
 country  to  another.  This  is  a  subject  which  has  of 
 late  attracted  much  attention,  and  deserves  to  be 
 treated  by  Comparative  Mycologists  in  the  same 
 spirit  in  which  the  study  of  foreign  words  begins 
 to  be  treated  by  Comparative  Philologists.  As  we 
 are  able  to  say  with  perfect  certainty,  at  least  in 
 the  majority  of  cases,  whether  a  Latin  word  has  the 
 same  origin  as  a  Greek  word,  or  whether  it  is  bor- 
 rowed from  Greek,  whether  German  shares  the  same 
 word  in  common  with  Latin,  or  has  taken   it  over 
 
 1  Grimm,  Deutsche  Mythokgie,  p.  232. 
 
 2  Grimm.  I.e.  p.  208. 
 
456  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 ready  made,  whether  the  Celtic  languages  have  en- 
 riched themselves  from  Greek,  Latin,  and  German, 
 or  have  derived  certain  words  from  the  common 
 Aryan  treasury,  we  must,  by  observing  the  same 
 phonetic  laws,  endeavour  to  discover  whether  a  Greek 
 deity  is  indigenous  or  borrowed  from  Semitic  sources, 
 whether  a  Roman  deity  is  of  Italian  growth  or  of 
 Greek  extraction,  and  whether  certain  Celtic  deities 
 were  common  Aryan  property,  or  adopted  from  neigh- 
 bouring nations. 
 
 That  Egyptian,  Phenician,  Babylonian  and  As- 
 syrian influences  have  told  on  the  mythology  of  the 
 Hellenic  races,  no  one  has  been  more  ready  to  admit 
 than  the  Greeks  themselves.  In  several  cases — as,  for 
 instance,  in  the  theories  propounded  by  Herodotus  as 
 to  the  Egyptian  origin  of  Greek  deities — this  Greek 
 indebtedness  has  been  much  exaggerated,  and  the 
 recent  researches  of  Egyptologists  have  enabled  us 
 to  reduce  that  debt  to  its  proper  limits.  In  other 
 cases,  however,  the  modern  discoveries  in  Asia  Minor, 
 Phenicia,  Babylonia  and  Assyria  have  revived  the 
 old  tendency  of  explaining  everything  Greek  from 
 Oriental  sources.  That  Greece  is  indebted  to  the 
 East,  its  letters,  its  coins,  its  measures,  its  early  art 
 proclaim  with  no  uncertain  voice.  But  that  Greece 
 was  not  a  mere  pauper,  living  on  Eastern  charity, 
 a  single  Aristeia  of  Homer  will  be  sufficient  to  prove. 
 That  Heracles,  Hera,  Aphrodite,  that  Zeus  himself 
 has  become  a  centre  of  attraction  for  floating  elements 
 of  Oriental  mythology,  every  one  who  has  eyes  to  see 
 can  see.  But  that  these  gods  and  heroes  were  simply 
 borrowed  from  non-Hellenic  sources  has  never  been 
 proved.     What  has  happened  in  so  many  cases  when 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  457 
 
 ancient  nations,  each  having  its  own  religion  and 
 mythology,  were  brought  into  closer  contact,  has  hap- 
 pened between  the  Greeks  and  their  Oriental  neigh- 
 bours. Gods  who  showed  a  certain  similarity  were 
 identified,  and  identified  bond  fide,  nay,  in  some  cases, 
 even  their  names  were  adopted  by  one  language  from 
 the  other.  That  Thebes,  for  instance,  the  capital  of 
 Kadmos,  introduced  into  Greece  many  Phenician  ele- 
 ments, is  well  known ;  but  Thebes  was  not  the  only 
 place  where  Phenician  emigrants  settled.  We  know, 
 for  instance,  that  Phenicians  had  early  settlements  at 
 Korinth,  and  we  can  easily  understand  therefore  how 
 the  worship  of  Astarte  found  a  new  home  on  the 
 Isthmos,  and  how  even  a  purely  Semitic  deity,  Meli- 
 hertes  (Melkarth),  gained  admission  into  the  local 
 mythology  of  that  part  of  Greece. 
 
 This  subject,  however,  deserves  a  special  treatment ; 
 nor  is  it  the  duty  of  Comparative  Mythology  to  do 
 more  than  enter  its  caveat  against  impossible  iden- 
 tification 1. 
 
 If,  however,  we  find  the  same  names  in  Germany 
 and  Central  America,  in  Egypt  and  the  Polynesian 
 Islands,  we  cannot  appeal  to  early  migrations,  but 
 have  simply  to  admit  that  the  chapter  of  accidents  is 
 larger  than  we  expected. 
 
 In  Central  America,  for  instance,  we  meet  with  a 
 serpent  deity  of  the  name  of  Votan.  The  similarity 
 of  the  name  had  early  attracted  the  notice  of  scholars  2, 
 but  it  was  reserved  to  Liebrecht  to  point  out  a  simi- 
 
 1  This  point  has  been  well  argued  by  Dr.  L.  von  Schroeder  in  his 
 Griechische  Getter  und  lleroen,  Berlin,  1887. 
 
 2  J.  G.  Miiller,  Geschichtc  der  Amerikan.  Urreligionen,  p.  486  seq.  The 
 subject  is  fully  treated  in  Reville's  les  Beligiom  desPeuples  non-civilises, 
 1883,  i.  p.  216. 
 
458  LECTURE    XVII. 
 
 larity  even  in  the  exploits  ascribed  to  this  American 
 Votan  and  to  the  Old  Norse  Ottinn.  When  Votan  had 
 returned  from  the  town  of  the  temple  of  god  to  his 
 home  Valum -Votan  (name  of  ruins  not  far  from 
 Ciudad  Real  de  Chiapas  in  Guatemala),  he  related 
 that  he  had  to  pass  through  a  subterraneous  passage 
 which  passed  through  the  earth  and  ended  near  the 
 root  of  heaven.  This  passage,  we  are  told,  was  made 
 by  serpents,  and  he,  being  the  son  of  a  serpent,  was 
 able  to  pass  through  it.  After  that,  Votan  made  a 
 similar  passage  near  the  gorge  of  Zaqui,  extending  as 
 far  as  Tzequil,  both  localities,  we  are  told,  near 
 Ciudad  Real.  Bishop  Nunez  de  la  Vega  further  re- 
 lates that  Votan  went  to  Huehuctan,  bringing  with 
 him  several  tapirs,  and  built  by  his  breath  a  dark 
 house  in  which  he  deposited  a  treasure,  confided  to  the 
 care  of  a  woman  and  some  guardians.  There  are 
 some  curious  ruins  left  of  Huehuctan  in  the  district 
 of  Soconusco,  and  the  Bishop  relates  that  the  treasure, 
 consisting  of  some  large  urns,  deposited  together  with 
 idols  in  a  subterranean  chamber,  were  handed  over  to 
 him  by  the  woman  and  the  guardians,  and  burnt  on 
 the  market-place  of  Huehuctan 1. 
 
 Liebrecht  points  out  that  the  Teutonic  Octinn  also, 
 as  Bolverh\  is  said  to  have  crept  as  a  serpent  through 
 a  hole,  and  in  memory  of  it,  to  have  established  a 
 similar  passage  in  some  mountain  gorge.  He  com- 
 pares the  urn  with  the  vessels  Odrcerir,  Bodn,  and 
 Sdn  in  the  Unit-mountain,  and  the  woman  with 
 Gunloct,  the  guardian. 
 
 In   spite    of   these    coincidences,    which   Liebrecht 
 
 1  Brasseur  de  Bourgbourg,  Popol  Vdh  ;  M.  M.,  Chips  from  a  German 
 Workshop,  1868,  vol.  i.  pp.  314-42. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  459 
 
 brings  out  far  more  fully  than  I  could  do  in  this 
 place,  all  that  we  can  say  is  that  the  similarity  of 
 names  is  purely  accidental,  and  that  therefore  it  is 
 utterly  useless  to  try  to  identify  the  two  myths,  un- 
 less we  can  first  determine  their  original  intention. 
 
 Again,  that  the  name  of  the  Sun-god  in  Mangaia  is 
 Ra,  has  been  pointed  out  as  a  strange  coincidence 
 with  the  Egyptian  God  Ra1.  Here  again  the  simi- 
 larity of  sound  is  purely  accidental,  though  the  story 
 of  Ra,  the  sun,  being  made  captive  may  have  the 
 same  origin  psychologically  as  the  stories  of  the  servi- 
 tude of  other  solar  heroes  in  Greece,  Germany,  Peru, 
 and  elsewhere  -. 
 
 The  similarity  in  the  name  of  the  Storm-gods  among 
 the  Polynesians,  viz.  Marti  with  the  Vedic  Mavut,  can 
 likewise  be  looked  upon  as  fortuitous  only.  But  the 
 similarity  between  the  character  of  the  Vedic  Mavut, 
 the  strikers,  shouters,  and  warriors,  and  the  Polyne- 
 sian gods  of  storms,  of  war  and  destruction,  may  well 
 be  accounted  for  by  that  common  human  nature  which 
 is  affected  in  the  same  way  by  the  same  phenomena 
 of  outward  nature. 
 
 The  same  applies  to  the  Winds  3,  as  worshipped  by 
 the  Babylonians.  They  were  considered  as  spirits 
 both  of  good  and  of  evil.  They  had  been  created  in 
 the  lower  part  of  the  heaven,  and  they  came  forth 
 from  the  sky,  as  the  messengers  of  Anu,  their  king,  or 
 as  the  helpers  of  Merodach  in  his  fight  against  the 
 drao-on4.     Sometimes  we  hear  of  one  terrible  wind 
 
 o 
 
 who  had  once  been  sent  by  Bel  to  drown  guilty  man- 
 
 1  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific,  by  W.W.  Gill,  1876  ;  Pto&ce, 
 p.  xiv. 
 
 '-'  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop,  vol.  ii.  p.  116. 
 
 3  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  190  seq.  4  L.  c,  p.  206. 
 
460  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 kind  in  the  waters  of  the  deluge,  and  the  fact  that 
 each  year  the  memory  of  that  terrible  event  rose 
 again  in  the  month  of  Sebat  or  January,  with  its 
 '  curse  of  rain,'  shows  that  in  Babylon  as  elsewhere 
 the  great  Deluge  was  but  the  reflection  of  the  annual 
 deluge  which  often  overwhelmed  and  destroyed  what 
 to  the  people  living  then  and  there  was  in  reality  the 
 whole  earth.  Up  to  this  point  all  coincidences  be- 
 tween the  Storm-gods  in  Babylonia  and  the  Storm- 
 gods  in  India  are  perfectly  intelligible.  Nature  was 
 the  same,  and  human  nature  was  the  same  also. 
 
 But  when  we  are  told  that  the  Storm-wind  that 
 brought  the  Deluge  was  called  Mdtu,  or  originally 
 Mar-tiv,  and  that  this  word  presupposes  a  root  MA, 
 MAL,  and  MAR,  we  must  look  upon  this  coincidence 
 with  the  Sanskrit  Mar-ut  as  belonging  to  the  large 
 chapter  of  accidents. 
 
 It  is  impossible  to  read  the  Polynesian  story  of 
 Ina  and  her  mortal  lover,  who,  as  he  grew  old  and 
 infirm,  had  to  be  sent  back  to  the  earth  to  end  his 
 days  there,  without  thinking  of  Selene  and  Endymion, 
 of  Eos  and  Tithonos,  though  few  would  venture  to 
 connect  her  name  with  that  of  Ino  Leucothea. 
 
 Any  attempt  to  compare  words  in  languages  which 
 have  not  been  proved  to  be  related  is  futile,  particu- 
 larly when  we  know  nothing  of  the  antecedents  of 
 the  words  to  be  compared.  It  is  strange,  no  doubt, 
 that  the  interior  of  the  world,  the  invisible  or  nether 
 world,  the  Hades,  in  fact,  of  the  Mangaians,  should  be 
 called  Avaiki,  AviM  being  the  name  of  one  of  the 
 lower  regions,  both  among  Brahmans  and  Buddhists. 
 In  Sanskrit,  however,  we  know  at  least  the  history  of 
 the  name,  for  we  can  hardly  be  mistaken  in  explaining 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  461 
 
 avi/vi  as  a  parallel  form  of  avaA'i,  the  lower  region, 
 also  the  South.  With  regard  to  the  Mangaian  Avaiki, 
 we  know  very  little  of  its  etymology,  yet  we  have 
 only  to  remember  that  in  Tahitian  the  name  for 
 Hades  is  Hawaii,  in  New  Zealand  Eawaiki,  which 
 points  to  a  more  original  Saicaiki,  in  order  to  con- 
 vince ourselves  that  even  the  outward  similarity  be- 
 tween the  Sanskrit  and  the  Polynesian  names  for 
 hell  did  not  exist  from  the  beginning,  but  is  really  the 
 result  of  phonetic  corruption. 
 
 Mythological  Names  which  admit  of  no  Etymology. 
 
 It  is  possible,  of  course,  to   study  the  history  of 
 
 mythological  gods  and  heroes,  even  without  knowing 
 
 the    etymology    of    their    names.     There   are    many 
 
 ordinary  words  of  which  we  shall  never  know  the 
 
 etymology,   because    they  belong    to    a    stratum    of 
 
 language  of  which  little   or  nothing   is    left.     They 
 
 generally    belong    to    the   most   ancient   formations, 
 
 and  lie   about  like  boulders  among  formations  of  a 
 
 different  age.     And  these   are  the  very  words   that 
 
 would  provoke  folk-etymology  and  folk-mythology, 
 
 just  as  large  boulders  scattered  on  a  meadow  provoke 
 
 village    legends.     In  dealing   with    such    words    we 
 
 become  painfully  aware  how  difficult  it  is,  without 
 
 etymological  guidance,  to  settle  on  the  starting-point 
 
 and  the  first  direction  of  a  myth.     We  grope  about, 
 
 but  we  cannot  put  down  our  foot  determinately,  while 
 
 as  soon  as  we  know  the  etymology,  we  feel  that  we 
 
 have  found  the  true  source  of  our  river,  and  however 
 
 much  that  river  may  meander  afterwards,  we  know 
 
 whence  it  draws  its   real  life  K     With  mythological 
 
 1  Otfried   Miiller,    in    his    Prolegomena    zu    einei     Wissensehqfttfeheti 
 
 Mythologie,  1825,  says    p.  285).  '  Die  Nanien  sind  grO*stentlieil*  mit 
 
462  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 beings  there  can  be  nothing  earlier  than  their  name, 
 because  they  are  names,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word, 
 that  is,  they  are  nomina,  or  gnomina,  concepts,  by 
 which  alone  we  know  a  thing,  however  long  we  may 
 have  seen,  or  heard,  or  smelt,  or  felt  it  before. 
 
 The  Names  of  Gods. 
 
 No  doubt  the  sun  was  there  before  it  was  named, 
 but  not  till  he  was  named  was  there  a  Savitr  i,  a 
 Pushan,  a  Mitra,  a  Helios,  or  an  Apollo.  It  is 
 curious  that  this  should  require  any  proof,  for  to 
 any  one  acquainted  with  the  true  relation  between 
 what  we  call  language  and  thought,  it  is  self-evident. 
 Some  writers  on  Mythology  speak  of  Jupiter  and 
 Juno  as  of  a  well-known  couple,  who  quarrelled  and 
 scolded  each  other,  and  did  a  number  of  things  more 
 or  less  extraordinary,  and  whose  names  are  really  of 
 no  importance  at  all.  The  idea  that  Jupiter  and 
 Apollo  and  Athene  are  names  and  nothing  but  names, 
 sounds  almost  like  heresy  to  them.  Zeus,  according 
 to  them,  was  the  child  of  Rhea,  was  swallowed  and 
 brought  up  again  by  Kronos,  was  educated  in  Crete, 
 and,  after  conquering  his  father,  became  king  of  gods 
 and  men.  I  hold,  on  the  contrary,  that  Zeus  was 
 born  when  Dyaus,  the  sky,  was  for  the  first  time 
 addressed  as  a  masculine,  and  called  father,  Dyausli- 
 pitd,  and  that  the  whole  of  his  subsequent  career 
 follows,  almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  if  we  once 
 know  his  true  beginning l. 
 
 den  Mythen  zugleich  geworden,  und  haben  eine  eben  so  nationale 
 und  lokale  Entstehung  ; '  and  again,  '  Dass  die  Etymologie  ein 
 Haupthilfsmittel  zur  Erklarung  der  Mythen  ist,  mochte  schwerlieh 
 bezweifelt  werden  kSnnen.' 
 
 1  '  Das  Wort  macht,  dass  sich  die  Seek  den  in  demselben  gegebenen 
 
THE  GENEALOGICAL  SCHOOL.         463 
 
 It  is  far  better,  however,  to  leave  mythological 
 names  which  resist  etymological  analysis  unexplained, 
 than  to  attempt  to  explain  them  in  violation  of  pho- 
 netic rules.  The  etymological  domain  of  mythology 
 must  be  allowed  to  remain  sacred  ground,  which  no 
 one  should  enter  with  unwashen  hands.  There  is 
 really  no  conceit  in  saying  this,  for  the  same  rule 
 applies  to  all  professions.  It  may  sound  conceited  to 
 outsiders,  but  as  little  as  a  chemist  would  allow  a 
 bishop,  however  clever  he  may  be,  to  try  experiments 
 with  his  chemicals,  can  an  etymologist  allow  a  lawyer, 
 however  eminent  as  a  pleader,  to  play  pranks  with 
 roots,  and  suffixes,  and  phonetic  laws.  It  is  quite 
 true  that  there  are  mishaps  and  even  explosions  in 
 chemical  laboratories,  nor  do  philological  laboratories 
 enjoy  an  immunity  from  such  accidents.  But  even 
 an  explosion  may  not  be  too  much  to  pay,  if  only  it 
 teaches  us  what  causes  an  explosion,  and  helps  us  to  be 
 more  prudent  in  future.  We  must  work  on  quietly 
 and  methodically,  and  on  no  account  must  we  allow 
 ourselves  to  be  interrupted  by  men  who  do  not  know 
 the  A  B  C  of  our  profession. 
 
 Scholars  understand  each  other,  and  they  soon 
 yield  to  argument.  What  was  more  tempting  than  to 
 identify  the  Sk.  Samasa  (biao-Kevy)  with  f/0/x?//3os ; 
 yet  it  was  given  up  almost  as  soon  as  it  was  thought 
 of,  for  the  simple  reason  that  s  between  two  vowels 
 does  not  appear  in  Greek  as  r.  The  Vedic  Soma, 
 the  Old  Norse  Son  (gen.  sonar))  even  the  Greek  olvos, 
 seem   closely  allied  drinks,   yet  who  would   identify 
 
 Gregenstand   vorstellt.'      See   Humboldt,    Qrundsiigi    des  AlJgemeinen 
 Sprachtypus,  in  Teohmer'a  Zeitschrift,  i.  p.  3'.i0. 
 
464  LECTUKE   XVII. 
 
 their  names  l.  It  seems  sometimes  very  hard  to  sur- 
 render or,  at  all  events,  to  mark  as  doubtful  an 
 etymology  which  is  all  right,  except  perhaps  in  one 
 consonant,  one  spiritus,  one  shade  of  a  vowel ;  but  it 
 must  be  done.  Benfey's  argument,  for  instance,  that 
 (p.  20)  'in  Athana  five  elements  of  the  Greek  word 
 correspond  entirely  or  essentially  and  in  the  same 
 order  to  five  out  of  the  seven  elements  in  Apt y ana,' 
 ought  never  to  be  listened  to.  If  all  but  one  single 
 letter  agreed,  the  two  words  would  not  be  the  same ; 
 nay  sometimes  when  all  letters  are  the  same,  the  two 
 words  may  still  be,  and  generally  are,  as  distinct  as 
 Himmel  and  Himalaya,  Atlas  and  Attila.  Though, 
 for  instance,  every  letter  is  the  same  in  the  two 
 words,  I  at  once  surrendered  the  equation  Saramd  — 
 Helena,  when  it  was  pointed  out  to  me  that  Helena 
 had  originally  an  initial  Di gamma ;  and  I  only 
 ventured  to  defend  the  identification  once  more, 
 when  it  had  been  shown  on  how  slender  evidence 
 that  initial  Digamma  rested,  and  how  often  a  so- 
 called  Digamma  had  taken  the  place  of  an  original 
 s  and  y2. 
 
 It  is  only  due  to  the  strict  observation  of  pho- 
 netic laws  that  Comparative  Mythology  has  gained 
 the  respect  of  true  scholars,  whether  classical  or 
 oriental.  As  long  as  we  deal  with  facts  and  laws,  or, 
 if  that  sounds  too  grand  a  name,  with  rules  and 
 analogies,  we  are  on  firm  ground,  and  hold  a  fortress 
 well-nigh  impregnable.  Another  advantage  is  that 
 all  warfare,  within  or  without  that  fortress,  can  be 
 carried  on  according  to  the  strict  rules  of  war,  and 
 
 1  See,  however,  Corpus  Poet.  Bor.  ii.  462. 
 
 2  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  ii.  517. 
 
THE  GENEALOGICAL  SCHOOL.         465 
 
 when  we  cross  swords,  we  cross  them  with  true 
 swordsmen.  Wild  righting  is  here  out  of  the  question, 
 or  if  it  should  be  attempted,  it  would  only  excite 
 ridicule  among  the  preux  chevaliers.  If  a  bold  an- 
 tagonist challenged  the  legitimacy  of  Dyaus=Zeu83 
 we  must  meet  him  point  by  point;  but  if  a  wary 
 critic  challenges  the  diphthong  oi  in  <boZfios  =  Bhava, 
 we  must  yield  at  once.  The  diphthong  oi  does  not 
 point  to  Guwa  of  u,  not  even  in  erot/xos  =  eru/xos,  but 
 to  Gima  of  i,  and  the  mistake  has  been  as  readily 
 acknowledged  as  when  Curtius  (Grundzuge,  p.  484) 
 thought  in  former  days  that  Ooivr)  could  be  derived 
 from  6vo),  while  it  is  really  the  same  word  as  the 
 Sanskrit  dhena. 
 
 The  Etymological  Meaning-  must  be  Physical. 
 
 We  have  now  to  advance  another  step,  and  try  to 
 make  good  a  position  which  at  one  time  was  most 
 fiercely  contested  by  all  classical  scholars,  but  must  be 
 defended  at  all  hazards.  Though  the  etymological  ana- 
 lysis of  names  forms  the  only  safe  foundation  of  Com- 
 parative Mythology,  it  is  the  foundation  only,  and  not 
 the  whole  building.  The  etymology  of  a  mythological 
 name  may  be  perfectly  correct  phonetically,  and  yet  un- 
 tenable for  other  reasons.  It  stands  to  reason  that  no 
 etymology  can  be  accepted  which  does  not  account  for 
 the  original  character  of  the  god  or  hero  to  whom  it 
 belongs.  It  is  clearly  impossible,  for  instance,  to  derive 
 Hermes  from  kpixiqvtvziv1,  or  Erinnys  from  tptvivtiv, 
 because  such  derivations  would  account  for  the  later 
 chapters  only,  but  not  for  the  introduction  to  the  lives 
 of  those  deities.     If  then  we  hold   that   the  original 
 
 1  Selected  Essays,  i.  447,  and  i.  622. 
 Hh 
 
466  LECTURE    XVII. 
 
 character  of  most  Aryan  gods  was  physical,  we  must 
 also  hold  that  no  etymology  of  a  mythological  name 
 can  be  acceptable  which  does  not  disclose  the  original 
 physical  character  of  the  god  *. 
 
 Most  of  the  etymologies  suggested  by  later  poets  and 
 philosophers,  suffer  from  one  and  the  same  inherent 
 defect ;  they  are  all  calculated  to  explain  the  later 
 development  of  a  god,  as  it  was  known  at  the  time, 
 but  not  his  original  character.  Popular  etymologies 
 too,  a  very  rich  source  of  modern  myths  and  legends, 
 are  almost  always  vitiated  by  this  defect 2. 
 
 Learned  and  Popular  Etymologies  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans. 
 
 It  is  difficult  to  find  out  whether  Socrates  and  other 
 philosophers  were  serious  in  the  etymologies  which 
 they  suggested  of  their  gods  and  heroes,  but  many  of 
 their  etymologies  certainly  leave  the  impression  on 
 our  minds,  as  if  their  authors  had  never  realized  the 
 difference  between  the  plausible  and  the  real  in  ety- 
 mology, and  as  if  they  had  never  suspected  that  Greek 
 names  and  Greek  gods  had  passed  through  a  long 
 series  of  phases  of  historical  growth  before  they 
 became  what  they  were  in  their  time.  When  Plato 
 quoted  the  old  Etymology  of  Eros, 
 
 rbv  8'  rfToi  6i>t)toi  [ikv  'Epcora  xaXovai  ttottjvov, 
 adavaroi   be   UrepojTa   bid  TTTepucpvrov  dvdyfcrjv, 
 
 he  would  have  been  little  disturbed,  I  imagine,  if  he 
 had  been  told  that  wings  are  a  modern  idea  in  Greek 
 mythology,  and   that  no  Greek  word    ever  loses  an 
 
 1  <  The  Nature-god,'  as  Welcker  says,  'became  enveloped  in  a  web 
 of  mythical  fables,  and  emerged  as  a  divine,  humanised  personality.' 
 See  Miss  A.  Swanwick,  Aeschylus,  p.  xxi. 
 
 2  Lersch,  Sprachphilosophie  der  Alten,  iii.  10S. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  467 
 
 initial  wr  l.  When  Apollon  is  derived  from  airokkvvcu, 
 to  destroy,  the  question  seems  hardly  to  have  occurred, 
 how  the  rich  growth  of  Apollonic  legends  could  be 
 traced  back  to  the  one  central  concept  of  a  destroying 
 deity.  Nor  does  it  seem  to  have  struck  those  ancient 
 etymologists  that  a  name  cannot  possibly  have  more 
 than  one  source.  For  we  find  Apollon  derived,  not 
 only  from  airokkyvai  (Aeschylus,  Again.  1080)  but  like- 
 wise from  airekavveiv,  to  drive  away,  and  airokvetv,  to 
 relieve 2.  The  name  of  Ares  is  explained  irapa  tjjv 
 apav  Ti]v  ytvoix£vr\v  fikafirjv  Zk  tov  uok£p.ov  rj  irapa  to  ttjv 
 \apav,  \apns,  koX  apr}?  rj  irapa  to  adpu  ;  that  of  Achil- 
 leus  irapa  to  a^os  kveiV     laTpbs  yap  rjv.      i)  bia  to  a^os,  o 
 
 €0-TL  kVTTT)V,    €7T€V€yK€'iV  Tj}    lXl]Tp\    KCLl    Tols  '  [AieSoH,    t)    biCL    TO 
 
 /x?/  Oiyeiv  ytikeai  xikrjs,  °  ^°"rt  Tpocfrfjs ;  that  of  Helena 
 irapa  to  eAco  to  ekKvco,  ?;  irpbs  to  Ihiov  Kakkos  ekKovcra  tovs 
 avdp(oT>ovs,  bia  to  irokkovs  tkelv  ra>  KciAAef  ?)  irapa  to 
 'EAAa*  K.T.k. 
 
 But  while  these  gratuitous  etymologies  vanished 
 generally  as  soon  as  they  had  been  suggested,  there 
 are  others  which  became  popular,  and  entered  into 
 the  very  life  of  mythology.  This  need  not  surprise 
 us,  for  even  in  modern  languages  what  has  been  called 
 popular  etymology  continues  to  exercise  the  same 
 irresistible  charm.  Who  does  not  think  that  God  in 
 English  has  something  to  do  with  good  ?  Does  not 
 barrotu,  a  burial  mound  (Ger.  Berg),  involuntarily  call 
 up  the  idea  of  a  barrow,  a  wheel-barrow  (Ger.  Bahre)  ? 
 How  often  have  the  cocoa-nut  tree  and  the  cacao  tree 
 been  mixed  up  together,  till  at  last  cacao  was  actually 
 
 1  Lobeck,  Aglaophamos,  ii.  p.  861. 
 
 2  'O  airfXavvojv  nal  clttoXvcov  &(]>'  rjpiwv  ras  vuaovs  ;  Efym,  Magn.,  Lersch. 
 I.e.,  iii.  p.  111. 
 
 H  h  2 
 
468  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 spelt  cocoa.  When  we  use  cluck  as  a  term  of  endear- 
 ment, we  can  hardly  help  thinking  of  a  duck,  and 
 when  we  speak  of  a  lark,  as  a  game,  the  idea  of  the 
 merry  lark  suggests  itself,  whether  we  like  it  or  not. 
 I  have  treated  this  subject  more  fully  in  a  chapter  on 
 'Modern  Mythology'  in  the  second  volume  of  my 
 Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language  \  and  I  need 
 not  therefore  say  more  at  present  than  that,  as  such 
 things  are  done  in  the  dry  tree,  we  must  not  be  sur- 
 prised to  meet  with  them  in  the  green  also.  Homer 
 delights  in  such  offhand  etymologies.  In  Od.  XIX. 
 406,  Autolykos  suggests  the  name  of  Odysseus  or 
 Odyseus  for  his  grandson,  because  he  himself  Trokkolcn 
 yap  eywye  obvaadixevos  ro'6'  ikcW  Because  Hector 
 protected  Ilion,  therefore  his  son  is  called  Asbyanax 
 by  the  people,  though  the  father  himself  called  him 
 Skamandrios  (II.  VI.  402 ;  XXII.  506). 
 
 Aeneas  is  called  by  his  name  (Hymn.  Aphrod.  IV. 
 
 198) :  ,    ,  , 
 
 ovvefia  jx    alvov 
 «°"X'  <*X0S>  ovvck    dpa  Pporov  dvipos  epiirecrov  evvfj. 
 
 Even  prior  to  Homer,  etymology  seems  to  have  given 
 birth  to  new  myths.  We  can  hardly  suppose  that  the 
 legend  of  the  two  gates  of  the  dreams,  the  one  being 
 made  of  horn,  the  other  of  ivory,  sprang  up  by  itself ; 
 for  why  should  these  two  materials  have  been  imagined 
 as  peculiarly  appropriate'?  If,  on  the  contrary,  we 
 suppose  that  Homer,  or  even  the  poets  before  Homer, 
 knew  of  dreams  which  deceive  (Ikt^aipovrai)  and  of 
 others  which  come  true  (hvpia  Kpaivovcn),  popular 
 etymology  may  well  have  suggested  that  the  gates 
 through  which  the  former  passed  were  made  of  ivory 
 1  See  also  R.  Fritzsche,  tiber  die  Anfange  cks  Poesie,  1885,  p.  22. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  469 
 
 (kktyavTi),  while  those  of  the  latter  were  made  of  horn 
 
 (K€pa€(T(Ti)  1. 
 
 The  number  of  myths  which  owe  their  origin  to 
 a  mistaken  or  popular  etymology  seems  larger  than 
 was  formerly  supposed.  Tritogeneia,  for  instance, 
 as  a  name  for  Athene,  was,  no  doubt,  a  difficult  word, 
 but  the  statement  that  rptrd)  was  an  Aeolic  name  for 
 head,  and  that  therefore  Tplroyiveia  meant '  head-born,' 
 rests  on  very  slender  authority.  Wherever  there  was 
 a  lake  or  a  river  of  the  name  of  Triton,  Athene  was 
 fabled  to  have  been  born.  Herodotus  (IV.  1 80)  refers 
 to  an  old  legend  which  spoke  of  the  lake  Triton  is  in 
 Lybia  as  the  birthplace  of  Athene.  Pausanias  (IX. 
 33,  7)  suggests  Triton,  a  forest-stream  in  Boeotia,  or 
 Triton,  a  spring  in  Arcadia  (VIII.  26,  6). 
 
 Hermes  Argeiphontes  is  now  explained  by  most 
 scholars  as  Hermes,  the  bright  shining.  But  the 
 Greeks  took  it  as  meaning  the  '  killer  of  Argos,'  and 
 we  know  how  large  a  cluster  of  legends  sprang  from 
 this  false  etymology,  though  none  of  them  appear,  as 
 yet,  in  Homer  or  Hesiod  2. 
 
 The  stories  told  of  Dionysos  being  born  on  a  hill 
 called  Nysa  must  be  old,  for  they  are  mentioned  as 
 generally  known  by  the  poet  of  the  hymns  to  Dionysos 
 (Horn.  Hymn.  XXV.  6  ;  XXVI.  8  ;  see  also  11.  VI.  133). 
 Still,  it  seems  as  if  his  name  alone  had  suggested  Nysa 
 as  his  birthplace,  particularly  as  several  other  places 
 are  mentioned  in  which  the  child  of  Zeus  and  Semele 
 is  said  to  have  been  born. 
 
 1  Lersch,  I.e.,  iii.  p.  6. 
 
 2  Mehli,  lb nms.  ]».  :;].  The  first  mention  "i"Apyos  ytjya'rjs  is  in 
 Aesch.  Prometheus,  568  seq.  Sec,  however,  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture, 
 i.  p.  289.  The  change  of  Argos  into  a  peacock  cannot  I"'  older  (linn 
 the  introduction  of  peacocks  into  Europe. 
 
470  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 Haritas  and  Charites. 
 
 A  consideration  of  these  ancient  mythological  ety- 
 mologies may  seem  useless  in  the  present  state  of  our 
 knowledge,  yet  it  may  prove  useful  if  it  teaches  us 
 what  to  avoid  in  our  own  attempts  at  explaining  the 
 meaning  of  the  names  of  ancient  gods  and  heroes. 
 Thus,  when  looking  out  for  an  etymology  of  the 
 Charites,  it  would  seem  very  natural  to  take  them 
 as  goddesses  of  grace  (xapis),  just  as  we  take  Nike  as 
 the  goddess  of  victory.  But  then  comes  the  question, 
 why  Charis  should  have  been  the  wife  of  Hephaistos, 
 like  Aphrodite,  why  the  Charites  bathe  and  dress 
 Aphrodite,  why,  in  fact,  they  should  have  entered  into 
 the  very  thick  of  Greek  mythology.  If  Charis  and 
 the  Charites  are  ancient  goddesses,  they  must  have 
 started  from  some  nook  or  corner  in  nature,  and  that 
 nook  or  corner  can  only  be  discovered  by  their  name. 
 Charis,  as  I  have  tried  to  prove,  is  the  same  word  as 
 the  Sanskrit  Harit,  and  the  Haritas  in  the  Veda  are 
 the  bright  horses  of  the  rising  sun.  Without  therefore 
 in  the  least  supposing  that  the  Charites,  too,  must 
 have  passed  through  that  equine  stage,  we  are  justified 
 in  tracing  both  the  Charites  and  the  Haritas  back  to 
 the  same  source,  the  bright  rays  of  the  rising  sun. 
 
 It  may  seem  difficult,  no  doubt,  to  trace  so  abstract 
 a  concept  as  the  Greek  x^/hs  back  to  a  root  har,  which 
 means  to  shine,  to  glow ;  still  we  see  in  Sanskrit  how 
 this  root  lends  itself  to  the  most  varied  applications, 
 and  what  is  real  in  Sanskrit  may  surely  be  admitted 
 as  possible  in  other  Aryan  languages. 
 
 In  Sanskrit,  by  the  side  of  h  a  r,  we  find  the  fuller 
 form  ghar,  to  glow.  From  it  we  have  such  words  as 
 ghW  ua,  heat ;  ghrink,  pity  ;  ghrinin,  pitiful, kind ; 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  471 
 
 ghrini,  heat,  sunshine;  gharma,  heat  (0ep/xos),  sum- 
 mer, kettle,  hot  milk  ;  gh  rit&,  melted  butter,  fat;  etc. 
 
 The  root  har  we  find  again  in  the  verb  hri  nite, he 
 is  angry,  lit.  he  is  hot  against  a  person ;  and  in  the 
 verb  haryate,  he  desires,  i.e.  he  is  hot  after  some- 
 thing. It  also  is  used  in  the  sense  of  to  be  pleased 
 with,  and  to  love,  as  in  haryata,  desirable,  gratus, 
 while  in  hri,  to  be  hot,  it  has  come  to  mean  to  be 
 ashamed.  Haras  means  heat,  fire,  and  force.  Hari, 
 hariwa,  har  it,  and  har  it  a,  all  meaning  originally 
 shining  and  bright,  have  been  used  as  names  of  colour, 
 and  assumed  meanings  which  sometimes  we  must 
 render  by  yellow,  sometimes  by  green.  Out  of  these 
 two,  hari  and  har  it,  have  come  mythological  names 
 of  the  horses  of  the  sun  or  of  Indra. 
 
 Here  then  we  see  clearly  that  the  ideas  of  shining, 
 glowing,  being  hot,  can  be  modified  so  as  to  express 
 warmth,  kindness  of  heart,  pity,  pleasure,  love,  shame, 
 and  likewise  fierceness,  anger,  and  displeasure. 
 
 That  being  so,  I  see  no  difficulty  in  tracing  Greek 
 words,  such  as  ypp0™**  bright-eyed  (Sk.  haryaksha), 
 Xaipco,  I  rejoice,  x«ptfojuat,  I  am  kind  and  favourable, 
 Xapd.  joy,  \apis,  brightness,  grace,  from  one  and  the 
 same  root  har,  which  in  Latin  has  also  left  us  gratus 
 and  gratia  in  all  their  various  applications  1. 
 
 1  It  would  seem  hardly  credible  that  this  elaborate  etymological 
 argument  should  have  been  met  by  Prof.  Gruppe  (p.  98)  by  a  mere 
 appeal  to  other  authorities.  These  questions  cannot  bo  settled  by 
 authorities,  but  only  by  facts  and  reasonings.  Those  who  have 
 neither  facts  nor  reasonings  to  oppose  to  an  argument  must  learn  to 
 abstain.  If  they  cannot  form  an  opinion  of  their  own  they  have  no 
 right  to  try  to  influence  the  opinion  of  others  ;  and  if  they  imagine 
 that  nothing  can  be  true  except  what  all  scholars,  whether  competent 
 or  incompetent,  agree  upon,  they  must  learn  to  say  with  Pilate  What 
 is  truth  ? 
 
472  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 Pors,  Fortuna. 
 
 In  Latin  the  Gratiae  are  supposed  to  have  been 
 borrowed  from  Greece,  and  not  to  be  of  native  growth. 
 Char  is,  however,  originally  the  dawn,  the  Vedic  Harit, 
 the  horse  of  the  sun,  seems  to  me  hidden  under  the 
 old  goddess  Fors,  the  more  modern  Fortuna.  To  the 
 Romans,  no  doubt,  Fors  was  the  goddess  quae  fert, 
 who  brings  good  or  bad  things,  and  I  do  not  wonder 
 at  this  natural,  and  therefore  popular  etymology 
 being  preferred  by  classical  scholars.  They  ask  very 
 naturally,  why,  when  there  is  so  natural  an  etymo- 
 logy of  fors  from  ferre,  should  we  go  out  of  our  way 
 to  discover  a  more  difficult  one.  My  answer  is  the 
 same  as  ever.  Old  gods  do  not  spring  from  such 
 abstract  and  faded  concepts  as  ferre,  to  bring.  And 
 Fors  is  not  a  mere  philosophical  fancy,  but  an  old 
 deity,  whose  worship  nourished  all  over  Italy 1,  and 
 cannot  possibly  be  classed  with  the  Gratiae,  who  are 
 borrowed  from  Greece,  nor  with  such  abstract  god- 
 desses as  Victoria,  Honor,  Virtus,  Spes,  or  Bonus 
 Eventus. 
 
 No  doubt  the  religion  of  the  Romans  has  admitted 
 many  abstract  goddesses ;  but,  if  we  inquire  more 
 closely,  we  shall  find  that  they  are  mostly  represen- 
 tative of  subjective  qualities,  such  as  Fides,  Spes, 
 Virtus,  Favor,  Pallor,  Honor,  Victoria,  Concordia, 
 and  Pudicitia,  not  of  outward  or  objective  powers, 
 such  as  Fors  and  Fortuna,  a  goddess  of  flesh  and 
 bone,  as  powerful  as  Janus  and  Jupiter,  and  more 
 powerful  than  Venus  or  Bona  Dea. 
 
 It  might  no  doubt  be  argued  that,  if  we  have  in 
 Greek  such  abstract  goddesses  as  Moipa  or  Ato-a,  we 
 1  Preller,  Romische  Mytkologie,  p.  352. 
 
THE  GENEALOGICAL  SCHOOL.         473 
 
 seem  hardly  justified  in  objecting  on  principle  to  a 
 Latin  goddess  like  Furs,  in  the  sense  of  a  Bringer. 
 But,  first  of  all,  Italian  mythology  is  not  the  same  as 
 Greek,  and  secondly,  Molpa,  at  least  in  Homer,  shows 
 no  traces  of  that  truly  mythological  character  which 
 we  can  easily  discover  in  Fors  Primogenia.  I  be- 
 lieve that  throughout  Homer  we  might  take  Molpa 
 as  a  simple  appellative,  meaning  share  or  fate,  with- 
 out destroying  the  poetical  character  of  any  passage 
 in  which  it  occurs.  I  remember  neither  parents  nor 
 offspring  of  Moira  and  Aisa  in  Homer,  nor  do  I  think 
 that  either  in  the  Iliad  or  in  the  Odyssey  are  prayers 
 ever  addressed  to  either  of  them.  In  later  times,  no 
 doubt,  they  assume  new  names  and  new  characters, 
 but  this  seems  chiefly  due  to  their  being  joined  or 
 even  identified  with  such  ancient  goddesses  as  the 
 Erinyes,  Keres,  and  Charites. 
 
 One  of  the  oldest  names  of  Fors  is  Primogenia  or 
 Primigmia  1,  Why  should  a  mere  bringer,  a  goddess 
 bringino-  o-ood  or  bad  luck,  be  called  first-born  1  We 
 know  who  the  first-born  deity  is  in  all  Aryan  religion 
 It  is  the  Dawn,  agriya2,  or  the  morning  sun,  agriya/t. 
 But  Fortuna  is  not  only  called  Primigenia,  she  is 
 represented  also  as  the  daughter  of  Jupiter.  One 
 inscription  reads:  Fortima(i)  Diovo(s)  fileia(i)  primo- 
 (c)enia(i)]  other  inscriptions  give  Fortunae  Jovis 
 puero  primigeniae.  This  puer  or  this  filia  Jovis 
 pvimigenia  can  hardly  be  different  from  the  duhita 
 Diva//,  the  daughter  of  Dyaus.  who  comes  first 
 (prathama)  at  each  morning  prayer  (purvahutau)3. 
 
 1  H.  Jordan's  Symbolae  ad  Eistoriam    Ueligionum   Italicarum   alteiac, 
 Regimontii,  1885. 
 
 2  Paraskara  Gnhya-Sutras,  III.  3,  5,  10. 
 
 3  Rv.  I.  123,  2. 
 
474  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 But  the  Fors  or  Fortuna  held  even  a  more  exalted 
 position,  for  Cicero  (Be  Div.  41,  85)  tells  us  of  an  old 
 sanctuary  and  oracle  at  Praeneste,  where  Fortuna 
 was  represented  as  holding  Jupiter  and  Juno  on  her 
 lap,  and  giving  the  breast  to  the  young  Jupiter1. 
 Could  such  a  goddess  have  been  a  modern,  abstract 
 deity?  Is  it  not  more  likely  that  she  was  an  old 
 Dawn  goddess,  represented  here,  as  elsewhere,  as  the 
 beginning  of  all  things,  the  mother  of  the  gods  (Rv. 
 I.  113,  19),  carrying  her  bright  child  (rusadvatsa) ; 
 also,  from  another  point  of  view,  as  the  daughter  of 
 Dyaus  (Rv.  VII.  75,  4),  and  the  wife  of  Siirya,  the 
 sun  (Rv.  VII.  75,  5)  ? 
 
 There  are  lessons  to  be  learnt,  as  I  have  often  tried 
 to  show,  from  mythologies  which  have  no  genealogical 
 connection  with  the  mythologies  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
 but  which  after  all  exhibit  to  us  the  reflection  of  the 
 same  nature  on  the  same  mirror,  the  human  mind. 
 What  one  knows  to  be  real  in  other  mythologies,  one 
 feels  to  be  possible  at  least,  in  Greek  and  Latin.  Now 
 there  is  a  goddess  Fortuna  in  Egyptian,  namely  Re- 
 nenet,  and  this  Renenet,  like  our  Fortuna,  is  repre- 
 sented as  suckling  the  infant  Ilorus.  Professor  Le 
 Page  Renouf,  without  knowing  anything  of  my  at- 
 tempted identification  of  Fortune  with  the  Dawn, 
 says,  '  In  whose  lap  can  the  Sun  be  nursed  more  fitly 
 than  in  that  of  the  Dawn?'  (Hibbcrt  Lectures,  p.  161.) 
 
 There  are  few  praises  bestowed  upon  Ushas,  the 
 dawn,  which  cannot  be  transferred  to  Fortuna,  if  we 
 
 1  Preller's  Rvmische  Mythologie,  p.  561.  Jordan,  I.e.,  p.  8,  makes  the 
 important  remark,  '  scilicet  per  totum  religionum  italicarum  orbem 
 conjugia  deorum  quae  quidem  videantur  esse  maxime  temporibus 
 antiquissimis  obviam  sunt,  liberorum  procreatio  nulla  est  unquam.' 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  475 
 
 take  her  as  the  bright  light  of  each  day,  worshipped 
 from  the  earliest  times  as  the  Fort  una  Hulusce  Diei. 
 Fortuna  had  one  temple  near  the  Circus  Maximus, 
 another  in  the  Campus  Martins,  and  her  own  festival 
 on  the  30th  of  July.  This  Fortuna  Hulusce  Diet 
 was  very  much  what  we  should  call  the  goddess  of 
 Good  Morning.  There  was  likewise  a  Fortuna  Virgo, 
 reminding  us  of  the  Feronia  as  Juno  Virgo1,  and 
 her  festival  fell  on  the  same  day  as  that  of  the 
 Mater  Matuta.  We  read  of  a  Fortuna  Respiciens 
 and  Obsequens,  a  Bona  Fortuna,  Domina,  Regina, 
 Tutela,  Opifera,  Supera,  Victrix.  All  these  epithets, 
 though  meant,  no  doubt,  for  the  goddess  of  good 
 fortune,  are  applicable  likewise  to  the  Dawn. 
 
 If  then  the  concept  of  Good  and  Evil  Fortune  can 
 have  been  evolved  from  that  of  Dawn,  the  phonetic 
 transition  of  Harit  into  Fors  and  Fortuna  causes  no 
 difficulty.  The  Sanskrit  word  gharma,  kettle,  appears 
 in  Latin  as  formus,  and  fors,  fortis  would  correspond 
 to  a  Sk.  har-ti,  instead  of  har-it.  The  further 
 development  of  fors  to  fortuna  finds  analogies  in 
 portunus,  portumnus,  and  portus,  in  Neprtunus,  Tu- 
 tunus,  etc. 
 
 I  do  not  venture  to  say  that  the  identification  of  For- 
 tuna with  Ha  rit  is  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt.  Far  from 
 it.  The  most  natural  objection  will  be  the  same  which 
 Curtius  at  first  brought  forward  against  the  equation 
 Harit  =  Xapu.  'What  shall  we  do,'  he  said,  with  the 
 appellatives  xapis,  with  xaP^  X^P10,  XaP^Vat>  XaP^els' 
 etc.  ?  That  question  has  by  this  time  been  answered  2. 
 But  in  our  case   the  difficulty  is  even  less,  for  such 
 
 1  Preller,  Whnische  Mythohgief  p.  377. 
 
 2  Lectures  on  tin  SoMWt  vf  Language,  ii.  410. 
 
476  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 words  as  forte,  fortuito,  forsit,  forsitan,  forsan,  must 
 all  have  passed  through  the  stage  marked  by  Fors,  no 
 longer  as  mere  Dawn,  but  as  the  Dawn  who  ushers  in 
 the  day  with  all  its  chances,  as  the  '  Morgenstunde' 
 which  has  '  Gold  im  Munde'  for  those  who  know  how 
 to  earn  it,  but  who  may  be  likewise  a  fatal  dawn,  and 
 the  revenger  of  dark  crimes.  If  we  derived  Fors  from 
 ferre,  we  should  equally  have  to  admit  that  Fors  had 
 been  changed  into  some  kind  of  deity,  a  deity  of 
 chance,  before  forte  or  forte  fortuna  could  mean  '  by 
 chance,'  as  opposed  to  providentid.  Still  I  do  not 
 wish  to  speak  confidently  on  Fors  =  Harit1.  There 
 are  many  things  in  Comparative  Mythology  which, 
 for  the  present  at  least,  can  be  put  forward  as  hypo- 
 thetical only.  And  it  was  for  that  very  reason  that 
 I  wished  to  show  by  an  extreme  case  why  even  an 
 uncertain  etymology,  if  only  based  on  physical  pheno- 
 mena, is  preferable  to  a  purely  rationalistic  derivation, 
 however  unobjectionable  it  may  seem,  both  as  to  the 
 phonetic  form  and  the  ordinary  meaning  of  a  mytho- 
 logical name. 
 
 Nomina  and  Cog-nomina. 
 
 And  here  a  new  problem  presents  itself  to  us  which 
 
 1  I  had  given  an  extract  from  this  chapter  in  my  Biographies  of 
 Words.  Some  of  my  critics  in  the  Academy  (1888,  i.  pp.  80,  98,  116, 
 135,  151,  1/0,  190)  failed  to  follow  my  argument  that  there  is  no  sure 
 instance  of  bhar  ever  taking  the  o-grade  in  Latin,  and  that  there- 
 fore the  derivation  of  fors  from  ghar  is  really  less  objectionable  than 
 that  from  bhar.  I  never  said  that/er  could  not  become  for  ;  I  simply 
 said  it  did  not,  and  I  tried  to  account  for  the  only  apparent  excep- 
 tion, namely,  fordus.  I  thought  I  could  not  explain  what  I  meant 
 better  than  in  citing  the  words  of  de  Saussure,  Le  latin  est  fort  chiche  </<■ 
 ses  <<.,.  Of  course,  such  phonetic  tendencies  may  be  looked  upon  as 
 purely  fortuitous  ;  still  it  is  well  to  note  them.  Vigfusson's  idea  of 
 connecting  fors  with  bera  at  and  the  noun  at-burftr  brings  in  quite  an- 
 other cluster  of  ideas,  in  German  side  zutragen,  which  have  little  to 
 do  with  ferre,  to  bear,  to  carry. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  477 
 
 has  to  be  carefully  examined,  because  it  is  due  to  a 
 want  of  a  clear  perception  of  all  its  bearings  that 
 different  scholars  have  diverged  so  widely  in  their 
 views  of  ancient  mythology. 
 
 Supposing  that  Athene  and  Daphne  were  both  oii- 
 ginally  names  of  the  Dawn,  should  we  be  right  in 
 saying  that  they  were  one  and  the  same  deity  ?  Many 
 scholars,  I  know,  take  that  view,  and  are  inclined  to 
 trace  the  whole  mass  of  Greek  or  any  other  mythology 
 back  to  a  small  number  of  physical  sources.  They 
 look,  in  fact,  on  the  numerous  deities  as  mere  repre- 
 sentatives of  a  few  prominent  phenomena  in  nature. 
 If  Apollon  and  Helios,  for  instance,  can  be  shown  to 
 have  been  originally  intended  for  the  sun,  they  would 
 treat  them  as  one  and  the  same  divine  subject.  If 
 Hermes  betrayed  a  solar  character,  he  would  share 
 the  same  fate.  Dr.  Roscher,  for  instance,  in  a  very 
 learned  essay  on  Apollon  and  Mars,  after  showing  the 
 same  solar  elements  in  the  Greek  and  in  the  Italic 
 god,  treats  these  two  gods  as  identical 1. 
 
 We  cannot  deny  that  such  a  treatment  of  mytho- 
 logy has  a  certain  justification,  and  we  may  see  from 
 such  papers  as  Dr.  Roscher's,  that  it  may  lead  to  very 
 valuable  results.  But  we  must  not  allow  it  to  inter- 
 fere with  the  etymological  treatment  of  mythological 
 names.  According  to  the  principles  of  the  etymolo- 
 gical school,  a  deity  begins  from  the  moment  it  is 
 named.  It  could  have  no  existence  as  a  deity  before 
 it  was  named.  In  Sanskrit,  for  instance,  it  is  no 
 doubt  the  sun  that  is  meant  by  such  names  as  Siirya, 
 Aditya,  SavitW,  Mitra,  and  in  certain  cases  even 
 
 1  Studien   zur  xerglekhenden  Mythologie,    I.   Apollon    mid   Mars,    1873 
 
 (P-  5). 
 
478  LECTURE   XVII. 
 
 by  Agni,  Push  an,  and  other  names.  But  every  one 
 of  these  names  constitutes  a  separate  mythological 
 individuality,  and  must  be  treated  accordingly.  Were 
 we  to  say  that  because  Mitra  is  meant  for  the  sun, 
 and  SavitW  is  meant  for  the  sun,  therefore  both  are 
 the  same  deity,  we  should  be  right  perhaps  logically, 
 but  certainly  not  mythologically.  In  mythology  it  is 
 the  name  which  makes  the  god,  and  keeps  one  deity 
 distinct  from  the  other,  and  it  is  the  name  alone  which 
 remains  unchanged,  however  much  everything  else, 
 the  character,  the  attributes,  the  legends  and  the  wor- 
 ship, may  change.  There  is  in  the  name  and  in  the 
 name  alone  that  continuity  which  cannot  be  broken, 
 which  lasts  through  centuries,  nay,  which  binds 
 together  the  mythology  of  countries  as  distant  from 
 one  another  as  India  and  Iceland.  Other  things  may 
 be  like  each  other,  but  the  names  alone  can  be  said  to 
 be  identical,  and  in  the  name  alone  therefore  rests 
 the  identity  of  mythological  personalities.  Apollon 
 and  Mars  may  share  many  things  in  common,  as  Dr. 
 Roscher  has  clearly  shown,  but  they  are  different  from 
 their  very  birth,  they  are  different  as  mythological 
 subjects.  It  would  be  possible  to  find  deities,  not 
 only  in  Greek  and  Latin  mythology,  but  in  almost 
 every  religion  representing,  like  Apollon  and  Mars,  the 
 sun,  as  determining  the  order  of  years,  seasons,  and 
 months,  as  bringing  back  every  spring  the  life  of 
 nature,  as  conquering  heroes,  as  patrons  of  clans,  and 
 towns,  and  states.  But  though  we  might  compare 
 them,  we  should  never  think  of  identifying  them. 
 
 Here  lies  the  fundamental  difference  between  what 
 I  call  the  Etymological  and  the  Analogical  Schools 
 of  Comparative  Mythology.      I  do  not  mean  to  de- 
 
THE    GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  479 
 
 predate  the  results  of  the  Analogical  School.  I 
 only  wish  to  keep  the  two  distiuct,  and,  by  keeping 
 them  distinct,  to  make  them  both  work  with  greater 
 advantage  for  one  common  end. 
 
 And  this  distinction  is  by  no  means  alwa}^s  so  easy 
 as  it  may  appear.  In  the  earliest  stage  of  mytho- 
 logical language,  all  names  were  no  doubt  cognomina, 
 rather  than  nomina,  intended  for  the  sun  or  the  moon, 
 the  sky  or  the  dawn,  the  earth  or  the  sea.  Every  one 
 of  these  aspects  of  nature  had  many  names,  and  it 
 was  due  to  influences  which  are  absolutely  beyond 
 the  reach  of  our  knowledge,  whether  one  or  the  other 
 of  these  cog  nomina  should  become  a  nomen,  a  new 
 centre  of  a  number  of  cognomina.  This  period  in 
 the  growth  of  mythology,  the  settling  of  nomina  and 
 cognomina  of  the  principal  deities  of  a  religious  or 
 political  community  has  hardly  ever  been  taken  into 
 consideration,  and  yet  its  influence  on  the  growth  and 
 organization  of  mythology  must  have  been  very 
 important. 
 
 In  Homer  Apollon  has,  no  doubt,  become  a  sub- 
 stantive deity.  Still  Phoebos  occurs  by  himself  about 
 nine  times  in  the  Iliad,  and  Phoebos  Apollon  or  Apollon 
 Phoebos  are  found  nearly  half  as  often  as  Apollon  by 
 himself  or  with  his  usual  epithets  of  Uaepyos,  apyvpo- 
 to£os,  etc.  In  the  Odyssey  and  the  Hymns,  Phoebos 
 by  himself  occurs  eleven  times,  Phoebos  Apollon 
 eighteen  times,  while  Apollon  by  himself  or  with  his 
 usual  epithets  is  found  more  than  twice  as  often  as 
 the  two  together. 
 
 It  was  therefore  quite  possible  that  Apollon  and 
 Phoebos  should  have  remained  independent  deities, 
 nay  we  may  say  that  to  certain  poets  Phoebos  was  a 
 
480  LECTURE    XVII. 
 
 distinct  person  from  Apollon,  quite  as  much  as  Helios. 
 But  in  time  these  two  names  of  Phoebos  and  Apollon 
 converged  so  much  that  to  certain  minds  they  presented 
 one  idea  only,  though  even  then  it  was  always 
 Apollon  who  was  determined  by  Phoebos,  not  Phoebos 
 by  Apollon. 
 
 It  is  but  seldom  that  we  can  watch  this  process  of 
 crystallisation  in  mythology.  When  we  become  ac- 
 quainted with  ancient  mythology  through  literary 
 channels  that  process  is  mostly  finished.  One  out  of 
 many  names  has  become  central,  while  all  the  rest 
 have  clustered  round  it,  as  mere  mythological 
 epithets. 
 
 Dr.  Mehlis  1  has  pointed  out  how,  in  the  case  of 
 Hermes  or  Hermeias,  the  name  of  Arg&iphontes,  or  the 
 two  names,  Diahtoros  Argeiphontes,  are  still  sufficiently 
 independent  to  allow  Greek  poets  to  use  them  by 
 themselves.  But  he  adds  that  with  the  establish- 
 ment of  the  dynasty  of  Zeus,  the  position  of  Hermes 
 in  the  circle  of  the  gods  became  essentially  changed. 
 This  period,  characterised  by  the  hegemony  of  Zeus, 
 differed  from  the  pre-homeric  time  chiefly  by  the 
 anthropomorphising  of  all  the  gods,  and  the  gradual 
 disappearance  of  their  physical  meaning.  The  god 
 of  the  morning-sun,  the  true  Argeiphontes 2,  occu- 
 pied a  very  prominent  place  in  the  former  cult  of 
 nature  among  the  Greeks,  and  was  then  very  closely 
 related  to  the  god  of  heaven,  Zeus.  This  former  pre- 
 eminence he  retained  even  in  the  Olympian  cult,  but 
 his  original  function  became  more  obscured,  and  the 
 
 1  Hermes,  pp.  38,  130. 
 
 2  Decharme,  Mythologie  de  la  Grece  Ancienne.  p.  143,  a  most  thoughtful 
 and  useful  work. 
 
THE    GENEALOGICAL    SCHOOL.  481 
 
 Olympian  Hermes  grew  as  different  from  his  physical 
 prototype  as  Zeus,  the  father  of  gods  and  men,  from 
 the  god  of  the  bright  sky. 
 
 Very  little  progress  has  as  yet  been  made  in 
 analysing  the  transition  from  the  physical  Aryan 
 mythology  to  the  Olympian  mythology1,  as  we  find 
 it  in  Homer,  and  in  distinguishing  the  elements  which 
 entered  into  the  final  composition  of  each  Olympian 
 god.  Each  of  these  gods  is  surrounded  by  a  number 
 of  epithets,  but  while  some  of  these  epithets  are 
 adjectives,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  others  seem 
 to  have  possessed  originally  a  more  independent  and 
 substantive  character,  so  much  so  that  they  can  be 
 used  by  themselves  and  without  what  may  be  called 
 the  proper  name  of  the  Olympian  deity. 
 
 And  here  a  new  difficulty  arises,  namely,  how  to 
 distinguish  modern  epithets  from  ancient  cognomina. 
 We  are  told  that  the  Erinyes  were  called  Eumenides 
 and  (T€fxval  0€ai,  in  order  to  indicate  different  sides  of 
 their  character.  This  may  be  so,  and  if  we  keep  true 
 to  the  principle  that  the  original  character  of  every 
 ancient  god  and  goddess  must  be  physical,  the  name 
 of  Erinyes,  i.  e.  the  Dawn-goddesses,  alone  fulfils  that 
 requirement.  But  when  the  Erinyes  are  identified  with 
 the  'Apai,  this  does  not  prove  that  the  'Apac  or  impre- 
 cations were  not  originally  independent  creations  of 
 Greek  mythology,  particularly  as  even  in  later  times 
 (Soph.  Electra  112)  Arae  and  Erinyes  are  separately 
 invoked.  The  same  applies  to  the  Moirae  who,  origi- 
 nally quite  distinct  from  the  Erinyes,  are  afterwards 
 
 1  See  some  good  remarks  on  this  subject  in  Some  Aspects  of  Zeus 
 and  Apollo  Worship,  hY  C-  F-  Keary  ;  Roy.  Soc.  of  Lit.  xii.  part  2, 
 1880. 
 
 r  i 
 
482  LECTURE    XVI T. 
 
 treated  as  children  of  the  same  mother,  and  at  last 
 mixed  up  with  them  so  as  to  become  almost  indistin- 
 guishable. 
 
 It  may  be  quite  true  that  the  problem  here  alluded 
 to  is  one  that  admits  of  no  quite  satisfactory  solution, 
 for  the  simple  reason  that  the  period  during  which 
 the  crystallisation  of  ancient  divine  names  took  place 
 is  beyond  the  reach  of  knowledge  and  almost  of  con- 
 jecture. Still  it  is  well  to  remember  that  every 
 organized  mythology  has  necessarily  to  pass  through 
 such  a  period,  and  that  in  Greece  particularly  the 
 well-ordered  Olympian  mythology,  such  as  we  find  it 
 in  Homer,  presupposes  a  more  chaotic  period.  Ety- 
 mology may  in  time  supply  us  with  a  thread  enabling 
 us  to  find  our  way  through  the  dark  chambers  of  the 
 most  ancient  mythological  labyrinth,  and  we  may 
 even  now  lay  it  down  as  a  rule  that  every  name, 
 whether  women  or  cognomen,  which  admits  of  a 
 physical  interpretation  is  probably  the  result  of  an 
 independent  creative  act,  represents  in  fact  an  indi- 
 vidual mythological  concept  which  for  a  time,  how- 
 ever short,  enjoyed  an  independent  existence.  Thus 
 in  Sanskrit  Apam  nap  at,  the  son  of  the  waters,  is  no 
 doubt  one  of  the  many  names  of  Agni.  fire  ;  but  in  the 
 beginning  it  expressed  an  independent  mythological 
 concept,  the  lightning  sprung  from  the  clouds,  or  the 
 sun  emerging  from  the  waters  1,  and  it  retained  that 
 independent  character  for  a  long  time  in  the  sacri- 
 ficial phraseology  of  the  Brahma n  as. 
 
 Sarameya,  the  son  of  Sarama,  was  in  Sanskrit 
 as  independent  a  name  as  Hermelas  in  Greek.  They 
 both  meant  originally  the  same  thing,  the  child  of  the 
 
 1  Rv.  I.  22,  6,  apam  napatam  avase  Savitaram  upa  stuhi.. 
 
THE   GENEALOGICAL   SCHOOL.  483 
 
 dawn.  But  while  Hermeias  became  a  centre  of  attrac- 
 tion and  a  germ  which  developed  into  an  Olympian 
 deity,  the  Vedic  Sarameya  dwindled  away  into  a 
 mere  name  of  a  dog.  The  germ  was  the  same,  but  the 
 result  was  totally  different. 
 
 The  Haritas  in  Sanskrit  never  became  anything 
 but  the  horses  of  the  sun  ;  in  Greek  they  developed 
 into  Charites ;  in  Latin,  possibly, into  the  Fovs.Fortwna, 
 
 If  then  we  ask  the  question  once  more,  whether 
 Daphne  and  Athene,  being  both  originally  names  of 
 the  dawn,  were  therefore  one  and  the  same  deity,  we 
 should  say  No.  They  both  sprang  from  a  concept  of 
 the  dawn,  but  while  one  name  grew  into  an  Olympian 
 goddess,  the  other  was  arrested  at  an  earlier  stage  of 
 its  growth,  and  remained  the  name  of  a  heroine,  the 
 beloved  of  Apollo,  who  like  the  dawn,  vanished  before 
 the  embraces  of  the  rising  sun.  Etymologically  Athene 
 and  Daphne  can  be  traced  back  to  the  Vedic  Ah  an  a 
 and  D  ah  ana  with  almost  the  same  certainty  with 
 which  the  Vedic  Dyaush-pitar  has  been  identified 
 with  Zei/?  77 clti'ip,  Jupiter,  and  Tf/r.  If  there  are  still 
 philosophers  who  hold  that  such  coincidences  are  purely 
 accidental,  we  must  leave  them  to  their  own  devices. 
 The  Copernican  system  is  true,  though  there  are  some 
 Fijians  left  who  doubt  it.  But  if  for  practical  pur- 
 poses we  believe  that  in  spectral  analysis  the  same 
 lines  prove  the  existence  of  the  same  elements  in  the 
 sun  as  well  as  on  the  earth,  we  may  rest  satisfied  with 
 the  lesson  of  Jupiter,  such  as  it  is,  and  feel  convinced 
 that,  as  there  was  an  Aryan  language,  before  a  word 
 of  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and  Latin  had  been  spoken,  there 
 was  an  Aryan  mythology,  before  there  was  an  iEneid, 
 an  Iliad,  or  a  Veda. 
 
 I  i  2 
 
LECTURE  XVIII. 
 
 THE    ANALOGICAL    AND   PSYCHOLOGICAL   SCHOOLS. 
 
 II.  The  Analogical  School. 
 
 IF  Comparative  Mythology  had  been  strictly  con- 
 fined to  the  minute  analysis  of  mythological 
 names,  it  would  perhaps  not  have  become  so  popular  a 
 science,  but  it  would  have  done  more  real  and  lasting 
 good.  It  would  have  remained  a  subject  for  specialists  ; 
 and  as  little  as  people  ignorant  of  Greek  attempt  to 
 write  Greek  verse,  would  scholars  ignorant  of  Sanskrit 
 have  meddled  with  Comparative  Mythology. 
 
 But  the  subject  proved  too  attractive.  When 
 scholars  and  philosophers  had  once  perceived  clearly 
 that  Zeus  and  Jupiter  lived  in  the  Veda  as  Dyaus,  no 
 wonder  that  they  wished  to  look  for  themselves  in 
 order  to  find  out  whether  other  Greek  and  Roman 
 deities  might  not  be  discovered  in  the  same  hiding- 
 place.  Thus  there  arose  very  soon  a  new  school  of 
 Comparative  Mythologists,  which  in  order  to  distin- 
 guish it  from  the  Etymological,  may  be  called  the 
 Analogical  school.  The  name  is  perhaps  not  quite 
 adequate,  but  I  cannot  think  of  a  better  one.  Its 
 best  known  representatives  in  Germany  were  Welcker, 
 Preller,  von  Hahn,  in  France  Breal  and  Decharme,  in 
 England  first  and  foremost,  Sir  G.  W.  Cox,  and  more 
 recently  Professor  John  Rhys  in  his  Ribbert  Lectures. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.     485 
 
 They  generally  accepted  the  results  of  the  etymo- 
 logical school,  though  not  without  occasional  protests, 
 and  they  did  excellent  work  by  showing  how  every- 
 thing that  seemed  irrational  and  disjointed  in  classical 
 mythology  fell  into  its  right  place  and  assumed  a  new 
 meaning  as  soon  as  the  whole  iners  moles  had  been 
 reanimated  once  more  by  the  spirit  so  long  buried 
 and  forgotten  in  the  names  of  gods  and  heroes.  And 
 this  revival  affected  not  classical  mythology  only,  but 
 the  mythology  of  other  Aryan  nations  also,  as  shown 
 in  the  German  mythology  of  Grimm,  and  in  numerous 
 more  recent  publications  on  Celtic,  Slavonic,  and  par- 
 ticularly on  Indian  mythology. 
 
 Characters  common  to  Gods  and  Heroes  of  different  Names. 
 
 The  analogical  school  accepts  the  common  origin  of 
 the  mythologies  of  the  various  Aryan  nations  as  an 
 established  fact,  and  its  best  representatives  have  con- 
 centrated their  work  chiefly  on  collecting  mythological 
 stories  which  show  the  same  general  characteristics, 
 however  different  the  names  of  the  gods  and  heroes 
 may  be  of  whom  such  myths  and  stories  are  related. 
 The  names  are  of  secondary  consequence  to  them. 
 What  interests  them  chiefly  are  such  broad  mytho- 
 logical outlines  as  that  the  great  heroes  were  often 
 illegitimate  children,  the  father  a  god  or  a  stranger, 
 the  mother  a  native  princess  ;  that  many  of  these 
 heroes  were  believed  to  bring  destruction  to  their 
 father-in-law,  were  exposed,  nursed  by  animals  or  by 
 childless  shepherds,  distinguished  themselves  in  their 
 youth  among  their  play- fellows,  had  to  do  menial 
 service,  but  generally  returned  victorious  from  their 
 lights   and   labours,    killed   their    enemies,    liberated 
 
486  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 their  mothers,  succeeded  to  the  throne,  built  a  new 
 city,  and  generally  died  an  extraordinary  death. 
 This,  as  can  easily  be  shown,  is  the  common  frame 
 that  would  tit  the  mythic  legends  of  such  heroes  as 
 Perseus,  Herakles,  (Edipus,  Amphion  and  Zethos, 
 Pelias  and  Neleus,  Leukastos  and  Parrhesios,  Theseus 
 in  Greece,  Romulus  and  Remus  in  Italy,  Siegfried, 
 Wittieh,  and  Wolfdidriih  in  Germany,  Kyros  in 
 Persia,  Karwa  and  Kr/sh?ia  in  India1. 
 
 Though  I  have  always  recognised  the  perfectly 
 legitimate  character  of  this  line  of  mythological  re- 
 search, I  must  confess  that  I  have  also  on  several 
 occasions  expressed  my  misgivings.  If  mythological 
 names  may  be  perfectly  identical  in  two  or  more 
 Aryan  languages,  and  yet,  when  more  closely  ex- 
 amined, turn  out  to  spring  from  quite  distinct  sources, 
 the  same  characters  may  surely  occur  in  different 
 Aryan  mythologies,  the  same  legends  may  be  told  of 
 them,  and  yet  they  may  have  started  from  very 
 different  beginnings.  I  still  remember  the  time 
 which  has  been  so  well  described  by  Scherer  in  his 
 book  on  Jacob  Grimm,  when  '  every  huntsman  who 
 in  defence  thrusts  his  fist  into  the  jaws  of  a  lion 
 was  said  to  remind  us  of  Tyr,  the  Teutonic  god  of 
 war,  who  as  a  pledge  puts  his  hand  into  the  mouth  of 
 the  Fenris  wolf 2.  Whenever  closely-guarded  women 
 were  carried  off,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  god 
 Freyr  was  hidden  behind  the  thief,  and  the  beautiful 
 giantess  Oerda  behind  the  stolen  maiden.  As  soon 
 as  a  giant  was  killed,  people  sniffed  the  god  of 
 thunder.     Whatever  carried  a  red  rag  was  strongly 
 
 1  Halm,  SagivissensehaftlicTie  Studien,  p.  340. 
 
 2  Jacob  Grimm,  von  Wilhelm  Scherer,  2  Ann.  :  1885.  p.  287. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.    487 
 
 suspected  of  a  mysterious  connection  with  the  red- 
 bearded  thunderer.  The  ass  which  vomited  gold  in 
 two  ways  could  be  descended  from  Wodan  only,  the 
 divine  giver  of  wealth,  till  he  turned  out  to  be  a 
 harmless  character  borrowed  from  an  Italian  novel.' 
 Like  Grimm,  therefore,  I  have  always  said,  Let  us 
 distinguish  as  well  as  compare. 
 
 If  we  allow  ourselves  to  be  guided  by  analogy 
 only,  there  are  few  stories,  nay  few  historical  events 
 which  could  not  be  fitted  into  one  or  other  of  Hahn's 
 frames.  Mr.  Tylor  has  shown  how  easily  the  nursery 
 '  Song  of  Sixpence '  could  be  interpreted  as  a  solar 
 myth,  and  nearly  all  the  more  or  less  ponderous 
 squibs  that  have  been  written  of  late  years  against 
 Comparative  Mythology,  are  intended  to  show  the 
 dangers  of  the  Analogical  School.  Napoleon,  Mr. 
 Bright,  and  even  I  myself  have  been  dissolved  into 
 solar  legends,  and  it  was  soon  perceived  that  so  little 
 ingenuity  was  required  for  this  kind  of  witticism 
 that  many  a  heavy-laden  soul  has  tried  his  hand  at 
 it.  Here  nothing  can  safeguard  the  mythologist  but 
 proper  names  and  other  more  or  less  essential  sur- 
 roundings. If  we  read  that  '  Helios  goes  to  rest  or 
 to  sleep,'  we  shall  hardly,  in  spite  of  Mr.  H.  Spencer's 
 pleading,  think  of  a  gentleman  of  the  name  of  Helios ; 
 while  if  we  read  '  the  sun  of  Rome  is  set,'  it  is  equally 
 clear  that  we  have  simply  to  deal  with  an  historical 
 fact,  expressed  metaphorically.  Still  we  must  be  on 
 our  guard,  and  more  particularly  against  one  danger 
 of  which  our  would-be  satirists  seem  hardly  to  be 
 aware,  namely,  our  mistaking  historical  characters, 
 who  are  spoken  of  in  mythological  language,  or  who 
 are    actually    introduced    into    the    cycle    of   ancient 
 
488  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 mythology,  for  mythological  beings — I  mean,  mytho- 
 logical in  origin  and  name.  Not  only  of  ancient 
 heroes  such  as  Theodoric,  Karl  der  Grosse,  Friedrich 
 Barbarossa,  but  even  of  Friedrich  der  Grosse,  legends 
 are  told  which  belonged  originally  to  purely  solar 
 heroes.  If  then  their  real  names  should  by  chance 
 lend  themselves  to  solar  interpretations,  and  if  the 
 circumstances  of  their  birth  and  death,  the  names  of 
 parents,  brothers  and  sisters,  should  favour  the  same 
 theory,  there  might  be  real  danger  of  mistaking 
 reality  for  myth.  But  such  accidents  must  be  rare, 
 and  I  know  as  yet  of  none  that  has  really  happened, 
 while  we  know  that  there  is  hardly  a  country  which 
 has  not  taken  its  most  ancient  history  from  the 
 treasures  of  mythology. 
 
 Rxidra,   Apollon,  Wuotan. 
 
 The  analogical  school  differs,  however,  from  the 
 purely  psychological,  of  which  we  shall  have  to  treat 
 afterwards.  It  always  presupposes  a  common  his- 
 torical origin  of  the  mythologies,  as  of  the  languages, 
 of  the  Aryan  nations  ;  and  on  that  ground  claims 
 the  right  to  look  upon  similar  legends  as  mere 
 varieties  of  one  original  type.  It  does  not  look  upon 
 mythological  coincidences  as  simply  the  inevitable 
 outcome  of  our  common  human  nature,  but  traces 
 all  coincidences  back  to  a  common  historical  source. 
 Thus  when  Professor  Leo.  in  his  History  of  the  Ger- 
 man People  (1854,  p.  27).  tried  to  show  that  Wuotari 
 or  Odin  closely  resembles  the  Vedic  Rudra  and 
 the  Apollon  of  epic  poetry,  he  meant  that  all  three 
 sprang    from    one    and    the    same   original   concept. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.    489 
 
 Grimm  too,  when  speaking  of  Wuotau,  says1:  'He 
 resembles  Apollon,  inasmuch  as  from  him  proceed 
 contagious  diseases  and  their  cure  ;  any  severe  illness 
 is  the  stroke  of  God,  and  Apollon's  arrows  scatter 
 pestilence.  The  Gauls  also  imagined  that  Apollon 
 drove  away  disease  ("  Apollinem  morbos  depellere; ' 
 Caes.,  B.  G.,  6,  17):  and  Wodaris  magic  alone  can 
 cure  Balder*  lame  horse.  The  raven  on  the  god's 
 shoulder  exactly  fits  Apollon,  and  still  more  plainly 
 the  circumstance  that  Odin  invented  the  poetic  art, 
 and  Saga  is  his  divine  daughter,  just  as  the  Greek 
 Muses,  though  daughters  of  Zeus,  are  under  Apollon's 
 protection  and  in  his  train.' 
 
 Now  what  does  all  this  mean  1  We  must  try  to 
 think  it  out  clearly.  It  may  mean  that  originally  there 
 was  a  common  Aryan  concept  of  a  Somebody,  sending 
 diseases  and  curing  diseases,  represented  with  ravens 
 on  his  shoulders,  and  as  fond  of  poetry.  Such  a 
 Somebody,  however,  could  not  assume  any  real  per- 
 sonality without  a  name,  and  we  are  asked  to  believe 
 that,  whatever  his  original  name  may  have  been,  that 
 name  was  lost,  and  replaced  afterwards  by  the  name 
 of  Rvdra  in  Sanskrit,  of  Wotan  in  German,  and  of 
 Apollon  in  Greek.  Unless  we  assume  this,  we  lose  all 
 historical  continuity,  and  our  comparison  becomes 
 purely  psychological,  which  it  is  not  meant  to  be. 
 
 In  an  article  on  Wuotan,  to  which  I  have  referred 
 before,  we  read  - :  '  Whatever  common  traits  the 
 three  gods,  Apollon,  Wuotan,  &n.&Rudra  offer,  such  as 
 their  medical  knowledge,  their  relation  to  singing  and 
 poetry,  their   correspondence  reveals  itself   most   de- 
 
 1  Teutonic  Mythology,  vol.  i.  p.  149. 
 -  Euhn's  Zeitschrift,  x   |>.  272. 
 
490  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 cidedly  in  the  conception  of  their  natural  appearance. 
 All  the  three  gods  are  represented  as  wild  and  mighty 
 figures,  driving  along  with  dishevelled  hair  in  storms 
 and  clouds,  and  hurling  their  fatal  arrows  on  the 
 earth.  In  the  Iliad  XX..  39,  Apollonis  called  aKepaeKo- 
 fjirjSi  with  unshorn  hair.  Like  the  night,  he  descends 
 from  the  heights  of  Olympus,  and  sends  from  the 
 fearful-sounding  bow  the  deadly  arrow  among  men  and 
 beasts.  According  to  Kuhn's 1  plausible  explanation  his 
 epithet  Aortas,  like  Aofw,  the  name  of  the  daughter  of 
 Boreas,  defines  him  as  the  god  approaching  in  a 
 thunderstorm  athwart  the  air.  Rudra  is  called  in 
 the  Veda  kapardin,  with  braided  and  knotted  hair, 
 or  kshayadvira,  man-destroying.  He  is  not,  as  Leo 
 supposes,  the  welkin  beneath  the  blue  dome  of  heaven, 
 but  the  god  of  those  destructive  hurricanes  which 
 generally  visit  India  several  days  before  the  setting  in 
 of  the  rainy  season.  Therefore  the  Indians  implored 
 him  that  his  arrow,  fatal  to  men  and  cows,  might  spare 
 them.  In  the  same  way  no  one  has  failed  to  recognise 
 in  Wuotan,  when  rushing  through  the  air  at  the  head 
 of  the  wild  hunt,  the  god  of  snow  and  thunderstorms, 
 however  his  ethical  character  may,  even  at  the  earliest 
 time  that  we  know,  have  obscured  his  physical  ele- 
 ments. Riickert,  it  is  true,  supposes  the  conception  of 
 Wuotan  as  the  god  of  snow  and  thunderstorm  to  be 
 a  later  corruption,  and  discovers  the  elementary  founda- 
 tion of  his  character  in  the  power  residing  in  the  higher 
 regions  of  the  welkin  and  likewise  of  the  sun.  As, 
 however,  the  sun  appears  nowhere  in  the  Veda  as  an 
 
 1  Kuhn's  Zeitschrift,  iii.  p.  335.  Frohde  (Bezzenberger,  Beitrage,  iii. 
 8)  derives  Loxias  from  the  root  laksh,  to  aim.  I  doubt  whether  this 
 root  exists  outside  Sanskrit,  but  Kuhn's  etymology  also  is  doubtful. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      491 
 
 attribute  of  Rudra,  but  only  of  #iva,  a  later  develop- 
 ment of  Rudra,  it  cannot  have  belonged  either  to  the 
 concept  of  that  original  god  of  whom  Wuotan,  A-pollon, 
 and  Rudra  are  supposed  to  be  only  three  different 
 national  representatives.  What  is  common  to  all  and 
 helps  to  explain  also  their  later  ethical  character,  is 
 their  dark  approach  in  the  hurricane,  and  their  weapon, 
 fatal  to  men  and  beasts.  Their  original  elementary 
 character  therefore  can  only  have  been  the  storm.' 
 
 Here  we  have  a  clear  statement  of  the  leading  prin- 
 ciples of  the  analogical  school.  We  begin  with  an 
 elementary  concept  which,  of  course,  like  every  con- 
 cept must  have  had  a  name.  That  name,  however, 
 may  be  lost,  or,  at  all  events,  is  not  considered  essential. 
 The  name  changed  after  a  time,  or  was  replaced  by 
 new  dialectic  or  national  names.  The  character  also 
 of  the  deity  was  modified,  yet  in  what  such  deities  of 
 different  names  and  likewise  of  considerably  modified 
 characters  share  in  common,  we  have  a  right  to  recog- 
 nise their  original  elementary  concept. 
 
 This  method  of  studying  mythology  is  both  inter- 
 esting and  useful ;  and  yet  I  cannot  overcome  a  certain 
 uncomfortable  feeling  whenever  I  try  to  follow  it  and 
 apply  it  myself.  It  is  a  feeling  similar  to  that  which  a 
 numismatist  has  when  he  sorts  a  number  of  coins 
 which  by  their  material,  their  shape,  and  their  weight 
 indicate  with  sufficient  clearness  what  they  are,  but 
 which,  by  continued  wear  and  tear,  have  lost  every 
 trace  of  their  original  image  and  superscription.  If  he 
 is  accustomed  to  coins,  one  small  remnant  of  a  single 
 letter  in  a  certain  place  will  tell  him  that  it  is.  say,  a 
 coin  of  Alexander,  coined  in  India.  Yet  he  will  hesi- 
 tate and  wait,  and  put  his  coin  aside  for  a  while  as  of 
 
492  LECTUKE    XVIII. 
 
 doubtful  origin.  But  now  let  the  name  of  Alexander 
 appear,  how  different  will  his  feelings  be !  It  seems 
 to  me  that  there  is  the  same  difference  between  the 
 determination  of  a  myth  with  or  without  a  name. 
 Let  the  Haritas  of  the  Veda  be  as  different  as  possible 
 from  the  Char  ties  of  the  Greeks,  yet  as  soon  as  we 
 know  their  etymology,  we  know  that  they  belong 
 more  closely  together  genealogically  than  even  the 
 Charites  and  the  Home. 
 
 It  may  be  that  my  strong  belief  in  the  etymological 
 origin  of  all  human  thought,  and  my  life-long  researches 
 into  the  etymologies  of  mythological  names,  have  made 
 me  rather  prejudiced  against  what  I  call  the  analo- 
 gical method.  I  see  its  usefulness  as  helping  us  to 
 classify  mythological  characters  under  general  cate- 
 gories, as  von  Hahn.  for  instance,  has  done  with  great 
 success.  It  may  also  help  us  in  supplying  defective 
 portions  of  one  myth  by  reference  to  a  cognate  and 
 better  preserved  myth.  Sir  G.  W.  Cox  has  often 
 thrown  some  very  bright  light  on  a  dark  cluster  of 
 Aryan  mythology  by  this  method,  and  in  several  cases 
 what  he  has  achieved  has  served  as  a  preparation  for 
 making  us  see  the  true  genealogy  of  mythological 
 names. 
 
 Myths  agreeing  in  one  and  differing  in  other  Names. 
 
 There  is  one  class  of  legends  which  has  not  yet  re- 
 ceived all  the  attention  which  it  deserves,  and  which 
 supplies  a  very  strong  argument  in  favour  of  the 
 Analogical  School ;  I  mean  those  in  which  one  name 
 is  the  same,  while  the  other  names  are  different. 
 
 Helena,  for  instance,  is  not  only  the  cause  of  the 
 Trojan  war,  after  having  been  carried  oft"  by  Paris, 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      493 
 
 but  she  is  likewise  the  cause  of  another  great  war 
 which  the  Dioskuroi  waged  against  Athens,  after 
 Helena  had  been  carried  off  by  Theseus.  Theseus 
 had  either  himself  carried  off1  Helena  from  Sparta,  or 
 had  asked  his  mother  iEthra  to  keep  her  safe  in 
 Aphidnae  for  Idas  and  Lynkeus,  the  sons  of  Aphareus, 
 who  had  got  possession  of  her.  Her  brothers,  the 
 Dioskuroi,  attacked  Athens  at  the  time  when  Mene- 
 stheus  was  trying  to  make  himself  ruler  of  Athens 
 during  the  absence  of  Theseus.  Akademos  betrayed 
 the  secret  that  Helena  was  kept  at  Aphidnae,  the 
 Dioskuroi  took  it,  rescued  Helena,  and  carried  off 
 iEthra,  the  mother  of  Theseus. 
 
 Here  we  see  that  the  myth  of  Helena  is  the  same, 
 only  that  she  is  carried,  not  to  Troy,  but  to  Athens, 
 and  that  she  causes  the  destruction,  not  of  Troy,  but 
 of  Aphidnae.  Her  safe  conveyance  to  Mgy-pt  or  to 
 Leuke,  under  the  escort  of  Hermes,  represents  a  third 
 journey  of  the  same  famous  heroine  *. 
 
 Again,  the  capture  of  Troy  is  not  ascribed  to 
 Achilles  only.  We  read  in  the  Iliad  itself  how  in 
 former  times  Herakles  2  had  besieged  and  destroyed 
 the  city  of  Laomedon.  When  Laomedon,  after  pro- 
 mising to  Herakles,  as  a  reward  for  the  deliverance  of 
 Hesione,  the  horses  which  he  had  received  from  Zeus, 
 declined  to  fulfil  his  promise,  Herakles  with  six 
 vessels  and  a  large  number  of  companions  besieged 
 II ion  and  destroyed  it. 
 
 Services  similar  to  those  which  Poseidon  and 
 Apollon  had  to  render  to  Laomedon,  and  for  which 
 Laomedon  declined  to  pay  them  their  stipulated  wages, 
 
 1  See  F.  De  Duhn,  De  Menelai  IHnere  JEgyptiaco.    Bonnac,  1874. 
 
 2  II.  V.  638  ;  XIV.  250  ;  XV.  25  ;  XX.  144. 
 
494  LECTURE    XVIII. 
 
 were  performed  by  Apollon  to  Admetos,  by  Herakles 
 to  Eurystheus,  by  Perseus,  Theseus  and  other  heroes, 
 many  of  them  no  doubt  of  solar  origin  l. 
 
 If  then  we  see  that  one  name  in  a  myth  may  change, 
 we  can  understand  that  two  or  three  names  may,  that, 
 in  fact,  the  same  typical  myth  may  be  told  of  a 
 number  of  mythical  persons,  nay,  may  in  the  end 
 be  ascribed  to  purely  historical  characters.  This, 
 however,  is  very  different  from  supposing  that  any 
 of  these  stories  were  originally  told  of  Somebody,  and 
 afterwards  attached  to  this  or  that  person.  'No 
 name,  no  myth '  is  what  all  mythology  teaches  us,  but 
 it  also  teaches  that  as  in  modern  so  in  ancient  times, 
 the  same  stories  are  often  told  of  very  different 
 persons. 
 
 In  Finland,  where  the  collection  of  popular  ballads 
 and  their  arrangement  as  a  complete  epic  poem 
 has  taken  place  within  the  memory  of  man,  we  know 
 as  a  matter  of  fact  that  stories  told  originally  of 
 one  hero  were  afterwards  told  of  another.  Lonnrot, 
 who  collected  these  ballads  from  the  people  themselves 
 and  published  them  under  the  name  of  Kalevala,  tells 
 us  that  Leminkainen  was  substituted  for  Kcmho,  who 
 was  the  original  hero  in  the  second  expedition  to 
 Pohjola  (Songs  26-29),  and  that  when  one  hero  has 
 become  very  popular  in  one  locality,  marvellous  ex- 
 ploits performed  by  others  are  told  as  if  performed  by 
 him  2. 
 
 And  what  applies  to  the  myths  of  one  people,  applies 
 also  to  the  myths  of  a  whole  family.     It  is  possible 
 
 1  Powell,  Mythology  of  North-American  Indians,  p.  24  ;  Report  of 
 Bureau  of  Ethnology,  1881. 
 
 2  See  Athenaeum,  Oct.  20,  1888. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      495 
 
 that  a  myth  told  of  Indra  in  the  Veda,  may  be  told  of 
 Apollon  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  because  there  was 
 a  time,  before  the  Aryan  nations  separated,  when  the 
 original  both  of  the  Vedic  and  the  Greek  myth  may 
 have  been  told  of  a  person  neither  Indra  nor  Apollon, 
 though  drawing  his  origin  from  the  same  source.  In 
 that  case  we  have  a  right  to  speak  of  analogies  be- 
 tween Indra  and  Apollon,  but  we  shall  have  to  admit, 
 at  the  same  time,  an  independent  element  in  both,  the 
 concept  namely  which  is  embodied  in  their  names, 
 before  these  names  could  become  the  stems  on  which 
 some  older  myths  were  grafted. 
 
 I  must  confess  that  I  often  feel  giddy  when  others 
 mount  up  step  by  step  to  greater  and  greater  heights, 
 and  survey  a  larger  and  larger  tract  of  country  than  I 
 can  span  with  my  eyes.  It  may  be  the  same  in  sur- 
 veying the  wide  field  of  mythological  ruins.  Diversos 
 diversa  juvant,  and  there  is  plenty  of  work  for  all 
 of  us. 
 
 Varu»a  and  Ormazd. 
 
 In  order  to  exhibit  the  difference  between  the 
 etymological  and  the  analogical  methods  of  Com- 
 parative Mythology  quite  clearly,  I  shall  examine 
 more  in  detail  the  supposed  relationship  between  the 
 Vedic  God  Varu^a  (Greek  Owranos)  and  Ormazd, 
 the  supreme  god  of  the  Avesta. 
 
 What  do  we  really  mean,  if  we  say  with  M.  Dar- 
 mesteter  and  other  Zend  scholars,  that  Varuna  is  the 
 same  as  Ormazd  ?  We  must  not  forget  what  I  had 
 to  point  out  again  and  again,  namely  that  Varu/ia 
 and  Ormazd  are  names — I  never  say.  mere  names — 
 but  that  they  were  names,  and  that  there  never  was 
 
496  LECTURE    XVIII. 
 
 an  individual  who  by  the  Vedic  ifo'shis  was  called 
 Varuwa,  and  by  Zoroaster  Ormazd.  Varu??a  meant 
 the  sky,  and  was  one  of  the  many  names  by  which 
 the  Aryans  of  India  called  the  Unknown  or  the  In- 
 finite as  manifested  in  the  vault  of  the  sky.  Ormazd. 
 on  the  contrary,  the  Zend  Ahura  Mazda,  means  the 
 Wise  Lord1,  and  was  from  the  beginning  a  more 
 abstract  concept,  giving  but  little  indication  of  those 
 marked  physical  characteristics  which  distinguish  the 
 earliest  names  of  other  Aryan  deities. 
 
 It  is  perfectly  true  that  Varu?ia  in  many  of  the 
 hymns  addressed  to  him  stands  before  us  quite  di- 
 vested of  his  physical  nature,  as  a  supreme  all-wise 
 and  all-powerful  deity,  and  that  many  of  these 
 attributes  of  divine  supremacy  belonged  to  him  in 
 common  with  Ormazd. 
 
 But  are  we  to  suppose  that  Zoroaster  changed  the 
 name  of  Varu??a  into  that  of  Ormazd,  and  that  his 
 followers,  after  having  formerly  invoked  Varuria, 
 determined  to  invoke  their  old  god  in  future  by  the 
 new  and  more  spiritual  name  of  the  ;  Wise  Lord '  1 
 If  that  is  done,  as  it  often  is  in  the  case  of  religious 
 revolutions,  or  in  the  case  of  conversions,  should  we 
 say  that  Jehovah,  for  instance,  was  the  same  god  as 
 Jupiter,  because  the  same  people  who  formerly  called 
 their  highest  god  Jupiter,  called  him  afterwards  Je- 
 hovah1? I  think  not.  Both  gods,  no  doubt,  would 
 receive  from  their  worshippers  the  highest  attributes 
 of  divinity,  but  when  we  speak  of  the  two  gods  as 
 historical  products  of  the  human  mind,  we  should 
 never  say  that  the  Semitic  Jehovah  was  the  same  as 
 the  Aryan  Jupiter. 
 
 1  Darmesteter,  Ormazd  et  Ahriman,  p.  29. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      497 
 
 Suppose,  however,  that  a  Roman,  brought  up  to 
 believe  in  Jupiter  as  his  supreme  god,  had  later  in 
 life  settled  in  Greece  and  adopted  the  worship  of 
 Zeus ;  in  that  case,  whether  he  himself  knew  the 
 original  identity  of  Zeus  and  Jupiter  or  not,  we 
 should  be  justified  in  saying  that  his  new  god 
 Zeus  was  the  same  as  the  god  of  his  infancy,  Jupiter. 
 It  is  quite  possible  that  a  Roman  might  be  shocked 
 at  the  thought  that  his  Jupiter  Optimus  Maximus 
 should  be  believed  to  be  the  same  person  as  the 
 popular  and  somewhat  immoral  Greek  Zeus ;  yet 
 however  different  in  character  the  two  synonymous 
 gods  might  be,  they  can  be  treated  by  us,  with  the 
 knowledge  which  we  possess,  as  originally  the  same. 
 
 These  questions  must  be  reasoned  out  carefully, 
 otherwise  we  shall  never  understand  each  other. 
 In  one  sense  M.  Darmesteter  is  no  doubt  justified  in 
 saying  that  the  Vedic  Varuna  is  the  Avestic  Ormazd. 
 They  both  represent  the  highest  conception  of  supreme 
 deity,  reached  respectively  by  India  and  Persia. 
 They  betray  also  the  earlier  stages  of  religious 
 thought  traversed  by  their  worshippers,  by  some  of 
 the  attributes  which  the  poets  of  the  Veda  and  the 
 poets  of  the  Avesta  assign  to  them.  In  that  sense 
 therefore  they  are  the  same.  But  in  the  same  sense 
 Jehovah  also  might  be  said  to  be  the  same  god  as 
 Varmia  and  Ormazd,  nay,  all  supreme  gods  may  be 
 said  to  be  the  same. 
 
 When  we  speak  of  Vaiu/m,  we  can  mean  no  more 
 than  what  is  expressly  comprehended  under  this  name 
 by  Vedic  poets;  and  when  we  speak  of  Ormazd,  we 
 can  mean  no  more  than  what  is  expressly  com- 
 prehended   under   that  name    by   Zoroaster    and    his 
 
498  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 followers.  And  if  we  do  that,  we  shall  have  to  admit 
 that  the  name  Varuna,  which  forms  the  centre  of  a 
 large  cluster  of  religious  and  mythological  thought, 
 was  different  from  the  very  beginning  from  the  names 
 of  Ormazd  and  Jehovah,  which  were  formed  out  of 
 totally  independent  religious  and  mythological  thought 
 in  Persia  and  in  Judsea. 
 
 After  we  have  come  to  this  understanding,  nothing 
 can  be  more  interesting  and  instructive  than  to  com- 
 pare Varu/ia  and  Ormazd,  just  as  we  might  compare 
 Kar?ia  and  Cyrus,  VasishfAa  and  Zoroaster. 
 
 Varmia  shows  his  physical  origin  (1.  c,  p.  52)  by 
 his  name,  which,  like  the  Greek  Ovpavos,  means  the 
 vault  of  heaven.  The  sun  is  called  his  eye,  the  waters 
 his  wives,  the  lightning  his  son  (apam  napat). 
 
 Ormazd  (1.  c,  p.  30),  though  his  name  is  purely 
 spiritual,  shows  traces  of  earlier  and  more  material 
 conceptions  in  being  likewise  represented  as  having 
 the  sky  for  his  vestment,  the  sun  for  his  eye,  the 
 waters  (apo)  for  his  wives,  and  the  lightning  (apam 
 napat)  for  his  son. 
 
 Varu?ta  is  likewise  represented  as  the  maker1  and 
 supreme  ruler  of  the  world,  as  the  lord  of  Rita,  or 
 law,  as  omniscient,  as  a  supreme  king  of  heaven  and 
 earth.     He  is  called  Asura,  the  living  god. 
 
 And  Ormazd  also  is  addressed  as  the  maker  and 
 supreme  ruler  of  the  world,  as  the  lord  of  Asha  or 
 law,  as  revealed  to  Zoroaster,  as  omniscient  (mazdao), 
 as  the  supreme  King  of  heaven  and  earth.  He  is 
 called  Ahara>  the  lord. 
 
 1  This,  though  doubted,  is  clearly  implied  in  passages  like  IV. 
 42,  3,  'Like  a  clever  carpenter  I  have  fashioned  all  things,  and 
 supported  heaven  and  earth.' 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.     499 
 
 Other  points  of  similarity  between  Varuiia  and 
 Ormazd  have  been  collected  by  M.  Darmesteter  in  his 
 learned  essay  on  Ormazd  and  Ahriman.  Ormazd,  for 
 instance,  is  the  first  of  a  class  of  deities  called  Amesha- 
 spenta,  i.e.  Immortal  benefactors.  Their  number  at 
 first  is  uncertain,  but  was  afterwards  fixed  at  seven, 
 still  later  at  thirty-three.  Varu?ia  is  the  first  of  a 
 class  of  deities  called  Adityas,  the  sons  of  Aditi, — 
 the  Infinite,  whose  number,  uncertain  at  first,  is  fixed 
 afterwards  at  seven  or  eight 1,  while  the  number  of  all 
 the  deities  of  the  Veda  is  frequently  given  as  thirty- 
 three. 
 
 Varu/ia  in  the  Veda  is  generally  associated  with 
 Mitra,  the  two,  if  thus  united,  representing  darkness 
 and  light,  night  and  day,  heaven  and  earth,  while 
 formerly  Varu^a  alone  embraced  everything,  the 
 three  heavens  and  the  three  earths2.  Ormazd,  too, 
 in  the  Avesta  is  associated  with  Mithra,  but  he  had 
 already  become  so  supreme  that  no  other  god  could  be 
 called  his  match ;  and  Mithra,  not  even  counted  as 
 one  of  the  Aniesha-sperltas,  had  to  become  one  of  his 
 sons.  Yet  traces  remain  to  show  that  this  was  not 
 always  so.  Mithra- Ahura  (1.  c,  p.  65)  occurs  in  the 
 Avesta  as  a  divine  dvandva,  just  like  the  Vedic  Mitra- 
 Varu//au,  and  the  sun  is  actually  called  the  eye  of 
 Ahura  Mazda  and  Mithra :i. 
 
 Though  we  might  match  many  of  these  attributes, 
 both  physical  and  metaphysical,  with  passages  in  the 
 
 1  S.-e  M.  M.,  Rig-veda  Sawhitft,  translated,  pp.  223-51. 
 
 2  Rv.  VI.  67,  5  ;  VII.  87,  2. 
 
 a  On  the  great  differences  between  the  Vedic  Mitra  and  the 
 Zoroastrian  Mithra,  see  Muir,  Sanskrit  Texts,  v.  p.  71  ;  Geiger,  OivilUa- 
 Hon  of  Eastern  Iranians,  p.  xxxiii  ;  on  their  original  identity,  see 
 Winciischmann,  Mithra,  tin  Beitragzur  Mythengeschichte  des  Orients,  1857. 
 
 K  k  2 
 
500  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 Psalms,  there  is  this  great  difference  between  Vanma 
 and  Ormazd  on  one  side  and  Jehovah  on  the  other, 
 that  the  former  share  certain  names  in  common,  such 
 as  Asura  and  Ahura,  and  are  surrounded  by  synony- 
 mous characters,  such  as  Apah  and  Apd,  the  Waters, 
 apam  napat  and  apa??i  napa£,  the  Lightning,  while 
 Jehovah  lives  in  a  language  peculiarly  his  own. 
 
 It  will  now  be  clear  what  is  meant  by  calling  the 
 relationship  between  Varu/ia.  Ormazd,  and  Jehovah, 
 jJnyehological,  that  between  Varu/ia  and  Ormazd  ana- 
 logical, while  the  relationship  between  Dyaus  and 
 Zeus,  between  the  Sanskrit  apam  napat  and  the 
 Zend  apam  napa£  is  etymological,  that  is,  genea- 
 logical and  perfect — is  in  fact  not  relationship,  but 
 real  original  identity. 
 
 The  analogical  school  would  not  only  identify  the 
 Vedic  Vanrroa  with  the  Ormazd  of  the  Avesta,  but 
 likewise  with  the  Greek  Zeus.  While  the  etymo- 
 logical school  identifies  Zeus  with  the  Vedic  Dyaus, 
 and  tries  to  explain  the  later  modifications  which  the 
 one  underwent  in  India,  the  other  in  Greece,  the  ana- 
 logical school  would  boldly  identify  Zeus,  not  with 
 Dyaus,  but  with  the  Vedic  Varu/m,  who  is,  like  Zeus,  the 
 creator  and  ruler  of  the  world,  omniscient  and  omnipo- 
 tent (Darmesteter,  1.  c,  p.  78).  But  what  becomes  in 
 that  case  of  all  the  legends  told  of  Zeus,  not  one  of 
 which  would  agree  with  the  spiritual  and  highly  moral 
 character  of  Varuna  1  The  very  foundations  of  Com- 
 parative Mythology  would  be  shaken,  if  we  followed 
 this  principle.  Zeus,  having  become  in  Greece  the 
 supreme  deity,  would  naturally  share  many  attributes 
 which  in  the  Veda  belong  to  Varuna.  But  as  little 
 as  Indra  is  the  same  as  Vanma  in  the  Veda,  though 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      501 
 
 he  too  becomes  supreme  in  many  Vedic  hymns,  and  is 
 actually  introduced  as  disputing  the  supremacy  of 
 Varu)?a.  can  Zeus  be  said  to  have  been  originally  the 
 same  as  Varuwa  and  Ahura  Mazda. 
 
 The  same  scholar  who  thus  attempts  to  identify 
 Vara??  a  and  Zeus,  does  not  shrink  from  identifying 
 the  Vedic  Dyaus  with  the  Greek  Ouranos.  Where 
 would  this  lead  to  ?  By  all  means  let  us  study  how 
 Dyaus  and  Zeus,  Varu??a  and  Ouranos,  starting  from 
 common  centres,  did  arrive  at  such  widely  distant 
 points  that  the  Vedic  Dyaus  should  on  some  points 
 resemble  the  Greek  Ouranos,  while  the  Vedic  Varu??a 
 resembles  the  Greek  Zeus.  That  is  a  study  worthy 
 of  a  true  historian  and  a  true  psychologist. 
 
 However  wide  apart  Dyaus  and  Zeus  and  Jupiter 
 may  be — and  on  some  points  they  are  almost  dia- 
 metrically opposed  to  each  other— we  know  as  a 
 matter  of  historical  certainty  that  one  unbroken 
 thread  holds  them  together,  and  that,  if  only  we 
 follow  that  thread  far  enough,  it  will  lead  us  on  to 
 the  true  vital  germ,  namely  the  original  name,  out  of 
 which  the  whole  entangled  growth  of  Jovian  mytho- 
 logy arose.  It  might  have  been  said  with  perfect 
 truth  by  an  orthodox  Roman  that  the  Homeric  Zeus 
 was  not  his  Jupiter,  and  yet  neither  his  native  Jupiter 
 nor  the  foreign  Zeus  could  have  been  fully  under- 
 stood, unless  they  were  traced  back  to  a  common 
 origin.  Nor  does  it  make  any  difference  to  us,  if  we 
 are  told  that  the  Roman  Jupiter  and  the  Greek  Zeus 
 must  have  been  the  same  god,  because  the  Roman 
 youth  believed  them  to  be  so.  If  that  faith  had  been 
 founded  on  true  etymological  studies,  the  case  would 
 be  different.     But  that  was  impossible  in  the  time  of 
 
502  LECTURE    XVIII. 
 
 Cato  and  Varro.  The  mere  teaching  of  Greek  school- 
 masters and  philosophers  that  their  Greek  gods  were 
 the  same  as  the  Roman  gods  was  wrong,  even  where 
 it  was  right.  It  was  accidentally  right  in  the  case  of 
 Zeus  and  Jupiter,  it  was  accidentally  wrong  in  the 
 case  of  Demeter  and  Ceres,  Poseidon  and  Neptunus. 
 The  same  process  of  mythological  and  religious  com- 
 promise may  be  watched  at  present  among  the  Hima- 
 layan hill  tribes.  '  On  more  than  one  occasion,'  as 
 Mr.  Oldham  writes  (Contemp.  Rev.,  March,  1885), 
 k  I  have  heard  wandering  religious  devotees  assure  the 
 people  of  a  village  that  their  Deota  (godhead)  was 
 identical  with  $iva  or  some  other  orthodox  divinity. 
 The  rustics  are  flattered  to  find  their  god  is  so  famous, 
 and  are  persuaded  without  much  difficulty  to  adopt 
 the  new  title.'  Of  course,  if  there  is  a  similarity  in 
 name  or  in  character  between  the  two  deities,  the  pro- 
 cess of  amalgamation  becomes  all  the  easier. 
 
 But  to  say  that  because  Ouranos  embraces  the 
 Earth,  therefore  he  is  not  Varuvia,  but  Dyaush-pita, 
 the  husband  of  PWthivi  mata,  would  be  a  kind  of 
 reasoning1  which  would  identify  the  planet  Budha 
 (Mercury)  with  Buddha,  the  prophet,  because  both 
 have  nearly  the  same  name.  Si  duo  faciunt  idem, 
 non  sunt  iidem,  ought  to  be  a  fundamental  principle 
 of  comparative  mythology,  whether  etymological,  his- 
 torical, or  psychological,  while,  if  we  only  go  back  far 
 enough,  the  fundamental  principle  of  our  science  will 
 never  mislead  us,  viz.  idem  nomen,  idem  numen. 
 
 1  I  see  that  M.  Darmesteter  himself,  in  his  Notes  AdditioneUes,  has 
 modified  this  statement.  '  Cette  repartition,'  he  says,  '  n'a  pas 
 cependant  ete  absolue.' 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL   AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.     503 
 
 III.  Psychological  School.      Volker-Psychologie.) 
 
 We  now  have  to  consider  a  third  school  of  Com- 
 parative My thologists,  which  declares  itself  entirely 
 independent  both  of  etymology  and  analogy,  and 
 which  nevertheless  seems  to  me  to  have  rendered 
 most  excellent  service  to  the  students  of  mythology. 
 The  followers  of  that  school  do  not  confine  themselves 
 to  the  study  of  the  mythology  of  one  linguistic  family 
 only,  whether  Aryan,  Semitic,  African,  Australian, 
 American,  etc.,  but  they  consider  the  mythological 
 stage  as  a  necessary  phase  in  the  psychological  growth 
 of  man  in  every  part  of  the  world,  and  therefore  look 
 tor  analogies,  not  only  where  the  common  origin  of 
 nations  and  languages  possessing  certain  myths  in 
 common  has  been  proved,  but  where  no  such  relation- 
 ship seems  possible.  This  study  has  been  cultivated 
 with  great  success  during  the  last  fifty  years,  and  is 
 generally  known  on  the  Continent  as  a  branch  of 
 Volher-psychologie.  I  have  often  been  blamed,  both 
 for  having  been  too  enthusiastic  an  advocate  and  for 
 having  been  too  critical  a  judge  of  this  new  branch  of 
 mythological  research,  but  I  can  plead  Not  Guilty  to 
 both  these  charges. 
 
 Advantages  in  England  :  India,  Colonies,  Missionary  Societies. 
 
 Living  in  England,  I  naturally  tried  to  avail  myself 
 of  the  splendid  opportunities  which  this  country  offers 
 for  linguistic  and  ethnological  studies.  India,  to  me 
 the  most  interesting  of  all  countries  in  the  world,  is 
 now  divided  from  England  by  a  three  weeks'  journey 
 only,  and  through  a  number  of  eminent  Englishmen 
 who  spend  their  lives  in  India,  and  a  number  of  pro- 
 mising young  men  whom  India  sends  to  be  educated 
 
504  LECTURE    XVIII. 
 
 in  England,  there  is  now  so  close  an  intercourse 
 between  the  East  and  the  West,  that  at  Oxford,  for 
 instance,  it  is  almost  as  easy  to  study  the  language, 
 manners,  and  customs  of  the  Veddahs  as  of  the  Gaels. 
 
 Besides  India,  there  are  the  Colonies,  and  there  is. 
 or,  at  all  events,  there  ought  to  be,  no  difficulty  in 
 obtaining  through  the  Colonial  Office  any  information 
 that  could  be  of  use  for  the  study  of  civilised  or  un- 
 civilised tribes  from  Canada  to  New  Guinea. 
 
 Lastly,  there  is  the  wonderful  net  which  Missionary 
 enterprise  has  spread  from  England  over  the  whole 
 world,  and  which  might  so  usefully  be  employed,  not 
 only  for  its  own  most  excellent  purpose,  but  likewise 
 for  gathering  valuable  information  for  the  proper 
 study  of  mankind. 
 
 Though  I  have  often  had  to  complain  of  the  small 
 encouragement  which  ethnological  researches  receive 
 in  England,  where  they  ought  to  nourish  and  abound, 
 I  feel  bound  to  express  my  sincere  gratitude  for  the 
 kindness  and  the  intelligent  interest  with  which  the 
 Directors  of  the  old  East-India  Company,  and  the 
 authorities  at  the  India  Office,  the  Colonial  Office,  and 
 the  Missionary  Societies  have  listened  to  my  con- 
 stant and  sometimes,  no  doubt,  somewhat  impatient 
 appeals. 
 
 In  India  much  has  been  done,  not  only  for  the  study 
 of  its  ancient  classical  literature  and  the  exploration 
 of  its  antiquities,  but  likewise  for  studying  the 
 numerous  living  dialects,  collecting  legends,  register- 
 ing customs,  studying  religions  and  superstitions. 
 The  publication  of  the  Rig-veda,  the  oldest  book  of 
 the  Aryan  race,  in  six  quarto  volumes,  and  the  series 
 of   translations    of  the   Sacred    Books   of  the    East* 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      505 
 
 entrusted  to  my  editorship,  bear  sufficient  witness  that 
 my  appeals  for  help  have  not  always  been  in  vain. 
 
 If  I  have  been  less  successful  in  stimulating  ethno- 
 logical research  in  the  Colonies,  it  has  not  been  alto- 
 gether my  fault,     At  one  time  I  thought  indeed  that 
 the  first  step  at  least  had  been  made.     During  Lord 
 Granville's  tenure  of  office  an  official  invitation  was 
 sent  to  all  the  Colonies,  requesting  all  who  took  an 
 interest  in  the  history  of  native  races,  to  collect  their 
 languages,  to  note  down  their  religious  practices,  their 
 customs  and  laws,  to  describe  their  antiquities,  their 
 idols,  their  weapons  and  tools,  and  to  send  accounts 
 to  the  Colonial  Office  in  London.     The  invitation  was 
 well  responded  to,  and  my  hope  was  that  these  papers, 
 after  careful  examination,  might  have  been  published 
 from   time  to  time  as   'Ethnological  Records  of  the 
 English  Colonies.'     But  alas,  a  new  king  arose  which 
 knew  not  Joseph.     The  papers  were  either  allowed  to 
 accumulate  in  forgotten  pigeon-holes,  or  were  handed 
 over  to  some  learned  societies,  and  under  the  cold 
 water  that  was  persistently  poured  upon  it,  the  scheme 
 that  had  been  started  with  every  prospect  of  success 
 was   finally   extinguished.      Languages   which    have 
 lived  for  thousands  of  years  are  now  allowed  to  die 
 out  without  being  recorded  ;    laws   dating  from  the 
 first  beginnings  of  social  organisation  are  forgotten ; 
 religious  customs  which  might  have  thrown  light  on 
 many  a  dark  page  in  the  history  of  other  religions, 
 become   extinct  before  our  eyes,  because  the  official 
 correspondence  became  troublesome  to  the  permanent 
 staff  of  the  Colonial  Office,  and  because  the  expendi- 
 ture of  a  few  thousand  pounds  was  considered  too 
 extravagant  for  preserving  the   historical  records   of 
 
506  LECTURE    XVIII. 
 
 the  English  Colonies.  Some  good,  however,  has  come 
 of  this  agitation,  though  it  was  less  than  what  was 
 hoped  for.  In  several  of  the  Colonies  local  grants 
 have  been  made  for  archaeological  and  linguistic  re- 
 search, and  at  the  Cape  a  professorship  has  actually 
 been  founded  for  South  African  Philology,  which,  in 
 connection  with  the  important  linguistic  library,  given 
 by  Sir  George  Grey,  will  make  Cape  Town.  I  hope,  a 
 permanent  home  of  African  studies  1. 
 
 Work  done  in  America. 
 
 Most  excellent  work  is  now  being  done  in  America 
 also.  There  had  been  in  the  United  States  too  some 
 remissness,  and  some  failures  and  waste  of  money. 
 But  when  at  last  it  was  perceived  that  the  preser- 
 vation of  whatever  can  still  be  known  about  the 
 aboriginal  tribes  of  America  forms  a  kind  of  national 
 duty,  the  funds  were  soon  forthcoming,  and  the  best 
 scholars  were  found  to  carry  out  this  work  most 
 thoroughly.  By  Act  of  Congress  of  March  3,  1879, 
 the  United  States  Geological  Survey  was  established, 
 and  a  Bureau  of  Ethnology  was  started  under  the 
 direction  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  with  an 
 excellent  Director,  Mr.  J.  W.  Powell,  and  an  efficient 
 staff  of  able  assistants.  The  work  was  divided  into 
 four  departments, — arts,  institutions,  languages,  and 
 opinions.  But,  as  Mr.  Powell  remarks  in  his  Report, 
 '  these  four  departments  must  work  together  and 
 throw  light  on  each  other.  The  study  of  arts  is  but 
 the  collection  of  curiosities,  unless  the  relations  be- 
 tween arts,  institutions,  and  language  are  discovered. 
 The  study  of  institutions  leads  but  to  the  discovery 
 
 1  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  p.  275. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.     507 
 
 of  curious  habits  and  customs,  unless  the  deeper 
 meaning  thereof  is  discovered  from  arts,  languages, 
 and  opinions.  The  study  of  language  is  but  the 
 study  of  words,  unless  philological  research  is  based 
 upon  a  knowledge  of  arts,  institutions,  and  opinions. 
 And  the  study  of  opinions  is  but  the  collection  of 
 mythic  stories,  if  their  true  meaning  is  not  ascertained 
 in  the  history  of  arts,  institutions,  and  languages.' 
 
 In  1877  appeared  the  '  Introduction  to  the  Study 
 of  Indian  Languages,'  with  words,  phrases,  and  sen- 
 tences to  be  collected,  by  J.  W.  Powell ;  second 
 edition  1880. 
 
 The  first  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology  1879 
 to  1880,  published  in  1881,  contained  exceedingly 
 valuable  contributions  from  the  Director,  Mr.  Powell, 
 and  from  several  of  his  fellow-workers1. 
 
 Volunteers  came  forward  from  many  parts  to  help 
 in  this  noble  work,  as  soon  as  it  became  known  that 
 their  contributions  would  be  published  with  due 
 credit,  and  that  objects  of  savage  and  barbaric  art 
 might  be  safely  deposited  in  a  National  Museum. 
 
 In  1881  appeared  the  important  and  comprehensive 
 work  of  Hon.  Lewis  H.  Morgan  on  '  Houses  and 
 House-Life  of  the  American  Aborigines '  (Vol.  IV.  of 
 Contributions    to    American    Ethnology),    containing 
 
 1  The  most  important  papers  were  : — Dr.  H.  C.  Yarrow,  '  Contri- 
 bution to  the  study  of  the  Mortuary  Customs  of  the  North  American 
 Indians,'  a  continuation  of  a  former  paper,  called  '  Introduction  to 
 Ihu  study  of  Mortuary  Customs'  ;  E.  S.  Holden,  '  Studies  in  Central 
 American  Picture  Writing';  Colonel  Garrick  Mallery,  "Sign- 
 Language  among  North  American  Indians.'  There  is  also  at  the 
 end  of  the  volume  a  useful  catalogue  of  linguistic  MSS.  in  the 
 library  of  the  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  by  Mr.  James  Pilling,  the  same 
 scholar  who  is  preparing  a  complete  Bibliography  of  North  American 
 Philology,  containing  a  chronological  list  of  all  works  written  in  or 
 upon  any  of  the  languages  of  North  America. 
 
508  LECTURE   XVI II. 
 
 most  careful  observations  on  two  great  periods  in 
 the  growth  of  early  society  of  which  we  know  next 
 to  nothing  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  Mr.  Morgan's 
 great  work,  '  Systems  of  Consanguinity  and  Affinity,' 
 had  appeared  in  1871,  published  by  the  Smithsonian 
 Institution,  and  had  laid  a  solid  foundation  for  a  new 
 branch  of  ethnological  study.  But  this  new  essay 
 deserves  equal  attention.  It  treats  of  two  periods, 
 the  Older  and  the  Middle  period  of  barbarism,  the 
 former  represented  by  the  Iroquois  and  similar  tribes 
 in  the  North,  the  latter  by  the  Aztecs  of  Mexico  and 
 the  Indians  of  Yucatan  and  Central  America.  Mr. 
 Morgan  tries  to  show  that  during  those  periods,  the 
 family  being  too  weak  a  unit  to  face  the  struggle  of 
 life,  it  was  thought  prudent  and  necessary  to  form 
 combinations  of  families,  living  together  in  large 
 houses,  and  that  this  led  to  a  curious  social  and 
 governmental  organization,  to  a  certain  communion 
 in  living,  and  respect  for  hospitality,  and  peculiar 
 kinds  of  kinship,  all  of  extreme  interest  to  the  student 
 of  ethnology.  Mr.  Morgan's  death  is  a  severe  loss  to 
 ethnological  science,  and  we  ought  not  to  forget  that, 
 as  Mr.  Brinton  remarks  ('American  Languages,'  1885, 
 p.  6),  the  life-work  of  that  eminent  antiquary  was 
 based  entirely  on  linguistics. 
 
 Linguistic  studies  occupy  the  foremost  place  in  the 
 work  now  being  carried  on  under  the  auspices  of  the 
 Bureau  of  Ethnology  *,  because,  as  Mr.  Powell  truly 
 
 1  The  following  grammars,  we  are  informed,  are  in  preparation, 
 and  will  soon  be  published  : — The  Cegiha  Language,  by  the  Rev.  J. 
 Owen  Dorsey  ;  The  Klamath  Language,  by  A.  S.  Gatschet ;  The  Dakota 
 Language,  by  the  Rev.  S.  R.  Briggs.  These  will  be  followed  by  a 
 Grammar  of  several  of  the  Iroquois  Dialects,  by  Mrs.  Erminnie  A. 
 Smith,  and  by  a  Grammar  of  the  Chata  Language,  by  Prof.  Otis  T. 
 Mason. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.    509 
 
 remarks,  '  Without  a  fundamental  knowledge  of  those 
 languages  which  can  still  be  successfully  studied,  all 
 other  anthropologic  peculiarities  of  the  tribes  speak- 
 ing them  will  be  imperfectly  understood.' 
 
 The  second  Annual  Report  of  the  Bureau  of  Eth- 
 nology for  1880-1881.  published  at  Washington  in 
 1883,  contains,  besides  Mr.  Powell's  report,  the  fol- 
 lowing papers:  Frank  H.  dishing,  '  Zuiii  Fetiches'; 
 Mrs.  Erminnie  A.  Smith,  'Myths  of  the  Iroquois'; 
 Henry  W.  Henshaw,  '  Animal  Carvings  from  the 
 Mounds  of  Mississippi  Valley';  Dr.  Washington 
 Matthews,  c  Navajo  Silversmiths';  W.  H.  Holmes, 
 'Art  in  Shell  of  the  Ancient  Americans';  James 
 Stevenson,  '  Illustrated  Catalogue  of  the  Collections 
 obtained  from  the  Indians  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona 
 in  187  9  and  1880.' 
 
 I  have  since  received  two  more  volumes,  each  full 
 of  valuable  information.  The  Report  for  1 881  to  1882, 
 published  in  1884,  contains,  among  other  papers,  one 
 by  Mr.  Cyrus  Thomas, ;  On  certain  Maya  and  Mexican 
 Manuscripts,'  another  by  Mr.  J.  Owen  Dorsey,  '  On 
 Omaha  Sociology,'  and  another  by  Dr.  Washington 
 Matthews,  '  On  Navajo  Weavers.'  The  Report  for 
 1882-1883,  published  in  1886,  gives  us  an  essay  by 
 Mr.  Garrick  Mallery,  '  On  Pictographs  of  the  North- 
 American  Indians,'  and  several  papers  on  ceramic  art 
 by  Mr.  W.  H.  Holmes  and  Mr.  Frank  Hamilton 
 Cushing. 
 
 Works  of  this  kind  are  of  the  greatest  importance 
 for  the  study  of  anthropology,  and  particularly  for 
 that  branch  of  it  which  we  call  mythology.  I  know 
 that  in  trying  to  encourage  the  study  of  the  lan- 
 guages, the  customs,  and  the  religions  of  uncivilised 
 
510  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 races,  we  may  sometimes  incur  the  suspicion  of  un- 
 duly exaggerating  the  importance  of  the  results  likely 
 to  be  obtained  from  such  researches  ;  nor  can  it  be 
 denied  that  researches  of  this  kind  may  often  lead 
 only  to  an  accumulation  of  curious  facts  which,  unless 
 they  can  be  interpreted  by  themselves  or  used  to 
 interpret  other  facts,  are  considered  by  the  public  at 
 large  as  mere  rubbish.  If  properly  sifted  and  classified, 
 however,  such  rubbish  has  yielded  already  the  most 
 valuable  grains  of  gold,  and  those  who  doubt  it  have 
 only  to  read  that  one  truly  classical  work.  Anthropo- 
 logic der  Naturvolker  by  Waitz,  in  order  to  see  how 
 much  may  be  learnt  from  what  that  great  scholar 
 rightly  calls,  not  'Savages,'  but  'the  People  of  Nature.' 
 
 The  True  Meaning-  of  Manito. 
 
 The  mythology  and  religion  of  these  People  of 
 Nature  require,  however,  the  same  critical  treatment 
 which  is  demanded  for  the  study  of  Greek  and  Roman 
 Mythology.  There  is  a  difference  between  being 
 pedantic  and  being  honest.  It  is  pedantic  to  exact 
 from  a  writer  on  North  American  religions  the  same 
 familiarity  with  the  languages  of  the  Mohawks  which 
 Gottfried  Hermann  possessed  with  Greek,  or  the  same 
 critical  accuracy  in  their  treatment  of  the  religion 
 and  philosophy  of  these  nomadic  races  which  Munro 
 brought  to  the  study  of  Lucretius.  Nor  should  we 
 forget  that  a  critical  study  of  languages  and  reli- 
 gions has  been  making  such  rapid  progress  of  late 
 and  has  assumed  such  large  proportions,  that  a 
 writer  on  anthropology  is  not  at  once  to  be  set  down 
 as  ignorant  or  dishonest,  because  he  writes  in  ignor- 
 ance of  the  most  recent  essay  published,  it  may  be,  in 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.     511 
 
 the  Transactions  of  some  local  society.  What  is  dis- 
 honest, or,  at  all  events,  unscholarlike,  is  to  write 
 dogmatically  on  any  subject  of  which  we  have  not 
 made  a  special  study,  and  at  the  same  time  wilfully 
 to  ignore  or  even  to  ridicule  the  work  which  specialists 
 have  devoted  to  it. 
 
 It  is  not  fair,  for  instance,  to  blame  writers  on 
 anthropology  if  they  have  hitherto  ascribed  to  the 
 North-American  Indians,  as  is  generally  done,  a  kind 
 of  primitive  monotheism.  The  '  Great  Manito  l '  has 
 been  so  often  represented  by  men  who  had  long  been 
 living  among  the  Red-Indians  as  the  Supreme  Spirit, 
 in  all  but  his  name  identified  with  Jehovah,  that  it 
 required  some  courage  to  question  this  view.  Some 
 of  the  earliest  missionaries,  such  as  Roger  Williams, 
 had  pointed  out  that  Manito  was  rather  a  pantheistic 
 than  a  monotheistic  concept,  and  Lahontaine  had  re- 
 marked long  ago  that  it  was  applied  to  all  that  sur- 
 passes their  understanding  and  proceeds  from  a  cause 
 that  they  cannot  trace  -.  It  was  reserved,  however,  to 
 those  scholars  who  of  late  have  studied  the  languages 
 of  America  with  the  same  analytical  acumen  which 
 has  given  us  our  grammars  of  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and 
 Latin,  to  bring  out  clearly  the  original  intention  of  the 
 Great  Manito.     Ma  nito,  they  tell  us,  means  simply  the 
 
 1  I  see  it  stated  by  Mr.  E.  Farrer  (Mail,  Toronto)  that  Kitchi-Manito, 
 which  is  generally  translated  by  'the  Great  Spirit.'  is  a  mere 
 mistake,  and  thai  the  true  form  La  Qitse-ManUo,  which  means  'the 
 spirit  of  the  Day."  Gijig  is  the  day,  the  light,  the  shining.  Hence 
 gigieb,  the  morning.  The  root  is  giji,  to  warm,  to  heat,  to  cook,  to 
 ripen,  and  from  it  gitsis  or  kezis,  the  sun,  as  well  as  gitse,  the  day. 
 The  moon  is  called  tibi-giteis,  the  night-sun,  or  the  night -shine,  and 
 gitsiiS  is  the  month.  How  many  analogies  are  here  supplied  with 
 Sanskrit  words  ! 
 
 2  M.  M.,  Introduction  to  the  Sciena  of  Religion,  p.  195, 
 
512  LECTUKE   XVIII. 
 
 Beyond 1,  and  was  in  fact  one  of  the  many  names  which 
 we  find  among  nations  where  we  should  least  expect 
 it,  as  the  first  vague  expression  of  the  Infinite 2. 
 Scholarship  only  could  have  established  this  fact,  and 
 while  not  blaming  anthropologists  for  not  having  dis- 
 covered what  was  really  outside  their  domain,  one 
 may  at  the  same  time  remind  them  that  they  ought  to 
 appreciate  more  highly  the  services  which  scholarship, 
 and  scholarship  alone,  can  render  to  their  studies. 
 
 It  is  curious  to  observe  in  how  many  different  ways 
 this  word  Manito  has  been  translated,  as  spirit,  demon, 
 god,  devil,  mystery,  magic,  and  even  medicine  3.  The 
 etymological  or  original  meaning  of  Manito,  as  ex- 
 plained by  Trumbull,  has  been  discussed  in  my 
 '  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Religion,5  p.  193.  Another 
 word  for  Manito  in  Algonkin  is  oki,  in  Iroquois  ok  I 
 and  otkon,  in  Dakota  wakan,  in  Aztec  teotl,  in  Quichua 
 huaca,  and  in  Maya  ku.  They  all  express,  as  Brinton 
 says,  the  idea  of  the  supernatural  in  its  most  general 
 form,  as  that  which  is  above  the  natural.  Wakan  as 
 an  adverb  means  above,  oki  is  the  same  as  oghee,  and 
 otkon  seems  allied  to  hetken,  all  having  the  same  signifi- 
 cation. Whether  all  these  words  have  a  common  origin 
 must  as  yet  remain  doubtful,  but  it  deserves  at  least 
 to  be  pointed  out,  how  closely  they  resemble  each 
 other,  ku  in  Maya,  kue-ya  in  Natchez,  kauhwu  in  the 
 Uchee  of  West  Florida,  dkha  in  Otomi,  okee  in  Mandan, 
 ogha,  waughon,  wakan  in  Sioux,  waka  and  huaca  in 
 Quichua,  quaker  4  and  oki  in  Iroquois,  oki  in  Algonkin, 
 
 1  M.  M.,  I.e.,  p.  196. 
 
 2  M.  M.,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  55,  Mana,  a  Melanesian  name  for  the 
 Infinite. 
 
 3  Brinton,  Myths  of  the  New  WorhJ,  p.  4;"». 
 
 *  Gallatin  (Transactions  ofihi  American  Antiquarian  Society,  vol.  ii.'  is 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.     513 
 
 vaghaM  in  Eskimo,  being  all  intended  to  express  that 
 which  is  above,  the  sky,  and  what  is  above  the  sky. 
 The  Indians  themselves  find  it  difficult  to  explain  what 
 they  mean  by  this  word.  The  Hurons,  from  whom 
 possibly  the  Iroquois  borrowed  the  word,  declared  that 
 they  meant  by  it  a  demoniac  power  '  that  rules  the 
 seasons  of  the  year,  that  holds  the  winds  and  the  waves 
 in  leash,  that  can  give  fortune  to  their  undertakings, 
 and  relieve  all  their  wants.'  The  Aztecs  and  Quiches 
 attempted  to  express  more  fully  what  they  mean,  by 
 using  at  the  same  time  such  phrases  as  '  Head  of  the 
 Sky,'  '  Lord  of  the  Sky,'  '  Prince  of  the  Azure  Plani- 
 sphere,' '  the  Above  All,'  '  the  Soul  of  the  Sky.' 
 
 It  was  through  the  Missionaries,  however,  that  Manito 
 and  the  other  names  for  the  Beyond  were  for  the  first 
 time  taken  as  names  of  the  Good  Spirit,  in  the  Chris- 
 tian sense  of  the  word ;  and  it  is  stated  positively  in 
 the  'Jesuit  Relations'  that  there  was  no  one  immaterial 
 god,  recognised  by  the  Algonkin  tribes,  when  first 
 brought  into  contact  with  Europeans,  and  that  the 
 title,  the  Great  Manito,  was  introduced  first  by  them- 
 selves in  its  personal  sense1,  while  the  name  of  the 
 Supreme  Iroquois  deity,  triumphantly  adduced  by  many 
 writers  to  show  the  monotheism  underlying  the  native 
 creeds,  viz.  Neo  or  Hawaneu,  is  strongly  suspected  of 
 being  nothing  but  an  Indian  corruption  of  the  French 
 Dieu  and  le  bon  Dieto  2. 
 
 led  to  suppose  that  the  Eastern  tribes  derived  their  first  notions  of 
 a  Supreme  Being  from  the  Quakers  ;  Brinton,  p.  48,  note. 
 
 1  Relations  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  pour  Van  1637,  p.  4!)  ;  Brinton,  I.e., 
 p  53. 
 
 a  Etudes  Philalogiques  sur  guelgues  langues  sauvages  >/>  I'Amerique,  p.  14, 
 Montreal,  1866;  Brinton.  I.e.,  p.  53.  Mr.  Garrick  Mallcry,  in  his 
 paper  on  the  Pictographs  of  the  North-American  Indians  (Bepori  of 
 Bin-eat'  of  Ethnology,  1882-83,  p.  191),  says:   'The  statement  that  the 
 
 Ll 
 
514      -  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 Every  kind  of  excuse,  I  know  quite  well,  has  been 
 used  in  order  to  escape  from  the  drudgery  of  philolo- 
 gical study.  Its  results  have  been  called  uncertain 
 and  changing,  and  no  grapes  have  ever  been  called 
 so  sour  as  those  that  produce  the  intoxicating  wine  of 
 Comparative  Philology.  The  most  honest  excuse  has 
 always  been  one  in  which  I  can  fully  sympathize, 
 that  life  is  too  short  to  learn  the  grammars  even  of  the 
 seventy-five  languages  of  North  America  only.  No 
 doubt  it  is,  but  it  is  not  too  short  to  teach  us  a  certain 
 amount  of  circumspection,  before  we  declare,  like  Mr. 
 Herbert  Spencer,  that  the  North  American  languages 
 are  still  in  such  a  state  that  they  cannot  be  spoken 
 in  the  dark,  or  before  we  pronounce  an  opinion  that 
 they  cannot  possibly  possess  a  name  for  the  Infinite. 
 
 I  know  of  course  that  when  I  have  from  time  to 
 time  availed  myself  of  the  traditions  of  non-civilised 
 races  in  elucidation  of  Greek,  Roman,  and  Vedic 
 mythology,  I  have  laid  myself  open  to  the  same 
 criticism  which  I  have  so  freely  addressed  to  others. 
 The  subject  seemed  to  me  so  important  that  I  was 
 willing  to  incur  a  certain  risk  while  trying  to  attract 
 the  attention  of  others  to  the  valuable  results  likely 
 to  be  obtained  from  it,  and  while  encouraging  younger 
 scholars  to  study  such  languages  as  Hottentot  or 
 Mohawk,  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  they  had  studied 
 Greek  and  Latin.  I  myself  had  but  little  time  to 
 bestow  on  the  study  of  these  non-literary  languages, 
 
 Indians  worshipped  one  "Great  Spirit"  or  single  overruling  per- 
 sonal god  is  erroneoiis.  That  philosophical  conception  is  beyond 
 the  stage  of  culture  reached  by  them,  and  was  not  found  in  any 
 tribe  previous  to  missionary  influence.  Their  actual  philosophy 
 can  be  expressed  far  more  objectively  and  therefore  pictoriaHy.' 
 But  sec  also  Shea,  Diet.  Fnmeais  Onontagu4)  preface. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.      515 
 
 yet  I  may  say  this  in  self-defence  that,  whenever  I 
 have  ventured  to  write  about  the  religious,  mytholo- 
 gical, and  moral  ideas  of  uncivilised  races  and  the 
 light  which  they  throw  on  dark  chapters  of  Aryan  or 
 Semitic  religion,  mythology,  or  ethics,  I  have  always 
 tried  to  gain  beforehand  a  certain  insight  into  their 
 language  or  to  claim  the  assistance  of  competent 
 scholars,  in  order  to  keep  myself  from  going  entirely 
 wrong,  though  painfully  aware  all  the  time  of  the 
 thinness  of  the  ice  on  which  I  ventured. 
 
 Before  I  wrote  on  the  mythology  of  North- American 
 Indians,,  I  had  availed  myself  of  the  opportunity  of 
 learning  the  elements  of  the  Mohawk  language  from 
 my  young  friend,  M.  Oronyhateka,  when  an  under- 
 graduate at  Oxford.  I  wrote  down  at  the  time  the 
 outlines  of  a  Mohawk  grammar,  which  perhaps  may 
 still  be  published  some  day  l. 
 
 It  was  my  friendship  with  the  late  Bishop  Patteson 
 of  Melanesia  which  led  me  to  take  an  interest  in 
 Melanesian  and  Polynesian  grammar.  He  sent  me 
 lists  of  words  and  grammatical  outlines  which  threw 
 strange  rays  of  light  on  the  thoughts  of  these  primitive 
 islanders.  After  his  death  I  enjoyed  the  great  benefit 
 of  being  able  to  go  through  the  intricacies  of  Poly- 
 nesian mythology  with  Mr.  W.  W.  Gill,  who,  as  a 
 missionary,  has  acquired  a  complete  mastery  of  some 
 of  the  Polynesian  dialects.  At  a  still  later  time  I 
 could  avail  myself  of  the  explanations  which  the  Rev. 
 R.  H.  Codrington,  one  of  the  highest   authorities  in 
 
 1  Cf.  Tin  Literary  Faculty  of  the  Native  Races  of  America,  by  John 
 Reade,  Trans.  Roy.  Soc.  Canada,  Sect.  II.  1884,  p.  17  ;  The  Huron- 
 Iroquois  of  Canada,  by  Daniel  Wilson,  Trans.  Roy.  Soc.  Canada,  Sect. 
 II.  1SSL  ]>.  87. 
 
 L  1    2 
 
516  LECTURE   XVIII. 
 
 this  branch  of  philology,  was  good  enough  to  give  me 
 as  to  the  mental  capacities  of  these  interesting  races. 
 It  was  only  after  receiving  such  valuable  help  that 
 in  my  Preface  to  '  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South 
 Pacific,'  by  the  Rev.  William  Wyatt  Gill,  18761,  I 
 ventured  to  call  attention  to  the  lessons  which  Com- 
 parative Mythologists  might  learn,  even  in  the  small 
 island  of  Mangaia,  and  to  the  curious  coincidences 
 between  Polynesian  and  classical  myths  and  customs. 
 
 It  may,  no  doubt,  seem  bold  to  classical  scholars  to 
 endeavour  to  make  the  myths  of  Greek  poets  and  the 
 theories  of  Greek  philosophers  as  to  the  marriage  be- 
 tween Heaven  and  Earth  more  intelligible  by  a  refer- 
 ence to  the  crude  traditions  of  the  New  Zealanders 2, 
 still  more  to  trace  the  sensus  numinis  and  the  first 
 apprehensions  of  the  Infinite  to  the  Mana  of  the 
 Melanesians.  Still,  under  proper  safeguards,  and 
 more  particularly  with  the  advice  of  the  best  authori- 
 ties accessible  at  present,  such  boldness  may  be 
 forgiven,  and  may  possibly  encourage  others  who  are 
 better  qualified  than  I  am  to  prosecute  researches, 
 which  have  already  yielded  some  fruit. 
 
 As  to  the  African  languages,  they  were  brought 
 near  to  me  many  years  ago  through  my  personal  inter- 
 course with  the  late  Dr.  Bleek,  and  afterwards  with 
 his  gifted  successor,  Dr.  Hahn.  But  again  I  should 
 have  hesitated  to  avail  myself  of  the  rich  materials 
 which  the  folk-lore  of  African  races  supplies  to  the 
 student  of  mythology,  had  I  not  been  able  to  confer 
 personally  with  such  scholars  as  Dr.  Callaway  and 
 Dr.  Hahh  on  every  point  on  which  I  wished  to  speak 
 
 1  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  p.  248. 
 
 2  India,  ichat  can  it  teach  us  ?  pp.  150-56  ;  Hibberl  Lectures,  p.  55. 
 
THE  ANALOGICAL  AND  PSYCHOLOGICAL  SCHOOLS.       517 
 
 as  elucidating  dark  corners  in  the  mythology  of  India 
 and  Greece.  It  was  under  such  guidance  that  I  felt 
 encouraged  to  write  what  I  have  written  on  South 
 African  mythology,  on  the  metaphorical  meaning  of 
 Uthlanga  \  on  the  Mythology  among  the  Hottentots 2, 
 and  on  the  Languages  of  Africa  in  general 3. 
 
 We  have  thus  examined  the  three  schools  of  Com- 
 parative Mythology,  the  Etymological,  the  Analogical. 
 and  the  purely  Psychological,  and  we  have  seen  what 
 kind  of  work  has  been  done,  and  may  still  be  done,  by 
 each  of  them.  It  may  possibly  be  asked  why  mytho- 
 logy should  deserve  so  laborious  a  study.  In  former  times 
 mythology  was  studied  chiefly  to  enable  the  classical 
 scholar  to  understand  the  frequent  allusions  to  gods  and 
 goddesses,  to  heroes  and  heroines  which  occur  in  Greek 
 and  Latin  authors.  It  was  also  considered  a  part  of 
 general  education,  so  far  as  it  enabled  ladies  and 
 gentlemen  to  recognise  the  character  and  meaning  of 
 ancient  statues  in  our  museums,  and  the  right  pronun- 
 ciation of  the  names  of  classical  gods  and  heroes,  so 
 often  introduced  into  their  writings  by  modern  poets. 
 But  that  mythology  should  possess  an  interest  of  its 
 own,  that  it  should  mark  an  important  period  in  the 
 history  of  language  and  thought,  and  therefore  in  the 
 history  of  the  human  race,  was  never  thought  of. 
 
 So  long  as  we  knew  of  Greek  and  Roman  mythology 
 only,  this  was  intelligible.  The  Greeks  and  Romans 
 were  always  looked  upon  as  exceptional  people,  and  it 
 was  ascribed  to  their  peculiar  poetical  genius  that  they 
 should  have  invented  so  strange  a  collection  of  fancies 
 and  horrors  as  their  mythology. 
 
 1  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  1882,  p.  40. 
 
 2  Ibid.,  p.  273.  3  Ibid.,  p.  236. 
 
518  LECTURE    XYITT. 
 
 But  when  it  was  found  that  almost  every  nation, 
 whether  civilised  or  uncivilised,  possessed  something- 
 like  mythology,  and  that  these  various  mythologies 
 presented  the  most  startling  coincidences,  philosophers 
 could  not  help  admitting  that  there  must  be  some- 
 thing in  human  nature  that  by  necessity  led  to 
 mythology,  nay,  that  there  must  be  some  reason  in 
 all  the  unreason  that  goes  by  the  name  of  myth. 
 
 That  something  was  discovered  to  be  language,  in 
 its  natural  progress  from  roots  to  words  ;  in  its  being- 
 forced  to  use  roots  expressive  of  human  activities  in 
 naming  the  most  striking  phenomena  of  the  objective 
 world,  and,  in  many  cases,  in  its  forgetfulness  of  the 
 original  purport  of  such  names.  Mythology,  which  at 
 first  seemed  like  a  kind  of  madness  that  had  come  over 
 the  human  race  at  a  certain  period  of  its  development, 
 has  now  been  recognised  as  an  inevitable  phase  in  the 
 growth  of  language  and  thought,  for  the  two  are  always 
 inseparable.  It  represents  what  in  geology  we 
 should  call  a  metamorphic  stratum,  a  convulsion  of 
 rational,  intelligible,  and  duly  stratified  language  pro- 
 duced by  volcanic  eruptions  of  underlying  rocks.  It 
 is  metamorphic  language  and  thought,  and  it  is  the 
 duty  of  the  geologist  of  language  to  try  to  discover  in 
 the  widely  scattered  fragments  of  that  mythological 
 stratum  the  remains  of  organic  life,  of  rational  thought. 
 and  of  the  earliest  religious  aspirations. 
 
LECTURE    XIX. 
 
 ON    CUSTOMS    AND    LAWS. 
 Materials  for  the  Study  of  Customs  and  Laws. 
 
 THE  consideration  of  the  materials  for  the  study 
 of  Natural  Religion  which  may  be  discovered 
 in  language  and  mythology,  has  occupied  us  for  a 
 long  time.  It  would  not  have  been  enough  simply  to 
 enumerate  these  materials.  It  was  necessary  at  the 
 same  time  to  show  how  they  have  been  obtained,  and 
 how  they  could  and  should  be  used.  The  ore  in  this 
 case  is  not,  as  it  were,  to  be  found  on  the  surface,  but 
 has  first  to  be  brought  to  light,  and  to  be  sifted  and 
 purified  before  it  can  be  made  to  serve  our  own 
 purposes. 
 
 It  is  different  with  Customs  and  Laws.  Here  there 
 can  be  little  doubt  as  to  where  the  materials  can  be 
 found  or  how  they  should  be  used.  Many  of  the 
 ancient  laws  and  customs  have  been  collected  and 
 have  received  a  place  among  the  Sacred  Books.  You 
 will  find  rich  materials  in  the  translations  of  the 
 '  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,'  for  instance,  in  the 
 Brahma/? as  (Nos.  XII,  XXVI).  the  GWhya-sutras 
 (Nos.  XXIX,  XXX).  the  Sacred  Laws  of  the  Aryas 
 (Nos.  II.  XIV.  XXV).  for  Hinduism  ;  in  the  Vinaya 
 texts  (Nos.  XIII,  XVII,  XX)  for  Buddhism  ;  in  the 
 Avesta  (Nos.  IV.  XXIII,  XXXI)  for  Zoroastrianism  ; 
 and  in  several  of  the  books  of  Confucius  for  China 
 In  other  countries  we  must  depend  either  on  ancient 
 
520  LECTURE    XIX. 
 
 codes  of  law,  or  on  the  descriptions  found  in  the  works 
 of  travellers,  explorers,  and  missionaries. 
 
 Still,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  study  of 
 manners  and  customs  and  laws  is  without  its  diffi- 
 culties, a  mere  amusement  for  casual  readers  and 
 compilers.  It  is  difficult  for  travellers  to  observe  and 
 describe  customs  and  laws  correctly ;  it  is  still  more 
 difficult  for  the  student  to  discover  their  real  origin 
 and  their  true  purport. 
 
 Customs  based  on  Religious  Ideas. 
 
 Even  if  we  confine  our  study  to  customs  and  laws 
 which  bear  a  religious  character,  we  shall  find  it  by 
 no  means  easy  to  distinguish  between  those  which  are 
 based  on  religious  ideas  and  those  which  have  served 
 as  a  basis  for  religious  ideas. 
 
 The  custom  of  prayer,  for  instance,  springs,  no 
 doubt,  from  a  religious  source,  and  the  same  may- 
 be said  of  simple  libations  and  offerings  to  the  gods 
 which  accompanied  such  prayers.  Nothing  is  more 
 natural  than  such  a  prayer  at  the  rising  and  the 
 setting  of  the  sun,  and  a  midday  prayer  also  would 
 soon  find  its  legitimate  place  between  the  two.  These 
 three  prayers  we  find  in  the  Old  Testament  as  well  as 
 in  the  Veda,  and  among  many  of  the  so-called  savage 
 races.  But  soon  these  three  prayers,  and  any  observ- 
 ances connected  with  them,  begin  to  serve  another 
 purpose  also,  namely  the  division  of  the  day  and  of 
 the  labours  of  the  day,  and  this  purpose  may  in  time 
 become  so  prominent  in  the  eyes  of  the  people  as  to 
 obscure  altogether  the  original  meaning  of  the  three 
 daily  prayers  and  libations  (Tri-sandhyd). 
 
 We  have  read  a  great  deal  lately  about  the  Vedic 
 prayers  being   later  than   the  Vedic   sacrifices.      No 
 
ON   CUSTOMS    AND   LAWS.  521 
 
 doubt,  an  ancient  rite  may  have  suggested  a  corre- 
 sponding prayer,  but  an  ancient  prayer  may  likewise 
 have  suggested  a  corresponding  rite.  And  in  the 
 nature  of  things  a  mute  morning,  noon,  and  evening 
 rite  is  hardly  conceivable,  while  a  spontaneous  prayer 
 to  the  Dawn  might  surely  have  been  composed  with- 
 out any  reference  as  yet  to  any  definite  rite.  To  suppose, 
 as  Bergaigne  did,  that  the  hymns  addressed  to  Agni,  the 
 Dawn,  the  A.svins,  and  the  Sun  at  the  prataranu- 
 vaka,  the  asvina-sastra,  and  similar  collections  of 
 Vedic  morning  prayers,  were  all  originally  composed 
 for  liturgical  purposes,  is  like  supposing  that  all  the 
 psalms  of  the  Old  Testament  were  meant  from  the 
 beginning  for  the  morning  and  evening  services  of 
 the  Temple.  Some  of  them  may  have  been  ;  our  final 
 collections  of  Vedic  hymns  and  Hebrew  psalms  also 
 may  have  been  the  result  of  a  practical  want.  But 
 why  religious  poetry  alone  should  never  have  been 
 spontaneous  is  difficult  to  understand,  and  the  very 
 character  of  some  of  the  later  psalms  and  of  some  of 
 the  later  Vedic  hymns  shows  that  they  were  fashioned 
 after  more  ancient  originals.  That  religion  has  often 
 become  the  mother  of  laws,  and  that  in  ancient  times 
 particularly  many  laws  received  their  sanction  from 
 religion  is  a  well-known  fact.  Themis  was  repre- 
 sented by  Hesiod  as  the  wife  of  Zeus,  by  Pindar  as 
 the  iraptbpos  Aios  ^viov.  Colotes  declared  that  religion 
 (r)  irepl  6e&v  bo£a)  was  the  first  and  most  important 
 thing  in  the  constitution  of  laws  1. 
 
 In  the  Old  Testament,  also,  the  Ten  Commandments 
 are  spoken  by  God,  and  the  first  four  are  of  a  purely 
 religious  character.     They  do  not  appeal  to  any  but 
 
 1  Plutarch,  adv.  Coloten,  cap.  31. 
 
522  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 a  divine  authority,  and  the  punishments  threatened 
 for  disobedience  are  likewise  believed  to  come  from 
 God. 
 
 Customs  generating-  ReUglous  Ideas. 
 
 But  it  has  been  too  often  overlooked  that  in  many 
 cases  customs,  at  first  purely  secular  and  serving  a 
 very  definite  practical  purpose,  have  assumed   a  re- 
 ligious   character   at    a   later   time,    and    have    even 
 given    rise   to   entirely  new  religious   ideas.      What 
 is  called  totemism,  for  instance,  was  at  first  a  purely 
 civil  institution.     The  totem  was  meant  as  a  sign  of 
 recognition    and   no    more.      During   an   early    state 
 of  society  such  signs   of  recognition  were  absolutely 
 necessary,  and  we  find  traces  of  them  almost  every- 
 where, either  in  the  shape  of  banners,  or  emblems  on 
 shields,   or  peculiar  kinds   of   dress   and   armour,   or 
 other   symbolic    signs.      When,  however,  a   so-called 
 totem,  chosen  by  a  family  or  a  tribe  as  a  sign  of  re- 
 cognition, became    surrounded,  as    the    colours   of  a 
 regiment  are  even  now,  by  a  halo  of  many  recollec- 
 tions, what  was  more  natural  than  that,  if  the  totem 
 happened  to   be  an   animal,  that   animal   should   be 
 looked  upon  as  the  guardian  of  a  family  or  tribe,  nay, 
 in  time,  even  as  its  ancestor.     If  people  called  them- 
 selves Bears,  and  had  chosen  the  bear  for  their  totem 
 or  their  crest,  why  should  they  not  look  upon  a  bear 
 as  their  ancestor?     And,  when  they  had  once  done  so, 
 is  it  so  strange  that  they  should  have  felt  a  certain 
 reluctance  to  kill  or  to  eat  the  bear,  their  ancestor, 
 their  protector,  and:  possibly,  their  god  ?     In  this  way 
 a  useful  secular  institution  might  become  a  religious 
 custom,  and  lead  on  to  religious  ideas  which  could 
 never  have  sprung  up  without  it. 
 
OX    CUSTOMS    AND    LAWS.  523 
 
 The  same  applies  to  ever  so  many  domestic  customs, 
 which  grew  up  in  connection  with  marriages,  births, 
 initiation,  name-giving,  illness,  and  death,  and  which, 
 particularly  if  their  original  purpose  had  been  for- 
 gotten, assumed  invariably  a  sacred  character. 
 
 The  observation  of  the  changes  of  the  moon,  of  the 
 annual  return  of  the  sun,  of  the  succession  of  the  seasons, 
 the  months,  the  weeks,  the  days  and  hours,  was  one  of 
 the  most  fundamental  conditions  of  a  civilised  life. 
 Many  of  the  mythological  and  religious  ideas  of 
 antiquity  are  closely  connected  with  what  we  should 
 call  the  calendar.  In  ancient,  and  even  in  modern 
 times,  many  of  the  greatest  holy  days  and  festivals 
 betray  a  similar  origin.  But  in  all  such  cases  we  shall 
 find  it  very  difficult  to  say  whether  the  establishment  of 
 the  calendar  led  to  mythological  and  religious  ideas,  or 
 whether  mythological  and  religious  ideas  proved  help- 
 ful towards  the  establishment  of  a  civil  calendar.  One 
 thing  only  we  must  never  forget,  namely  that  customs 
 and  laws,  however  meaningless  or  even  irrational  they 
 may  appear,  must  all  originally  have  had  a  meaning 
 and  a  rational  purpose. 
 
 Sollennis. 
 
 In  early  times  usages  grew  up  and  were  maintained 
 simply  because  they  were  thought  to  be  useful  to  a 
 community,  whether  small  or  large.  What  was  seen 
 to  be  more  or  less  useful  to  all,  became  a  usage,  and 
 the  mere  fact  that  it  was  a  usage,  that  it  had  been 
 repeated  again  and  again,  and  that  it  had  existed  for 
 several  generations,  sufficed  to  give  it  in  time  a  re- 
 spected, venerable,  and  sacred  character.  What  we  call 
 solemn,  what  the  Romans  called  so^Zewms,  was  origin- 
 ally no  more  than  what  takes  place  every  year  (from 
 
524  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 sollus,  whole,  and  annus,  year) 1.     All  this  is  simply 
 human  nature. 
 
 It  was  only  when  with  the  progress  of  time  some  of 
 these  usages  threatened  to  become  abuses,  and  when 
 single  individuals  or  minorities  declined  to  obey  them, 
 that  the  necessity  arose  for  what  we  call  laws,  decisions 
 carried  by  majorities  or  by  force,  and  upheld  by  the 
 threat  of  punishment  to  be  inflicted  by  properly  con- 
 stituted authorities.  The  members  of  a  community 
 are  seldom  conscious  of  the  object  or  the  utility  of 
 their  ancient  usages,  while  legislation  implies  a  clear 
 conception  of  the  necessity  of  a  law.  Hence  it  is  chiefly 
 for  customs  that  a  religious  approval  was  afterwards 
 required,  while  the  laws,  as  such,  were  sufficiently 
 protected  by  the  sanction  of  the  government  and  by 
 the  infliction  of  punishment. 
 
 Annual  Festivals. 
 
 Surprise  has  often  been  expressed  at  the  prominent 
 place  which  the  sun  occupies  in  many  of  the  religious 
 and  sacrificial  customs  of  the  world.  Why  should  the 
 sun,  it  has  often  been  asked,  have  been  of  such  conse- 
 quence to  the  ancient  inhabitants  of  the  earth  1  People 
 in  our  time  think  of  the  sun  far  away  in  the  sky  only ; 
 they  forget  that,  as  causing  the  regular  succession  of 
 the  seasons,  the  same  sun  was  of  truly  vital  importance 
 to  the  early  tillers  of  the  soil,  and  that  nothing  was  more 
 natural  than  that  they  should  have  celebrated  the  yearly 
 return  of  the  sun  and  the  seasons  by  social  gatherings, 
 festivals,  processions,  thank-offerings,  and  propitia- 
 tory sacrifices.     To  mention  only  a  few  of  the  ancient 
 
 •  '  Sollenne,  quod  omnibus  ami  is  praestari  debet/  Festus,  p.  298  ; 
 'sollennia  sacra  dicuntur  quae  certis  temporibus  annisque  fieri 
 solent/  ibid.,  p.  344. 
 
ON    CUSTOMS    AND   LAWS.  525 
 
 Vedic  sacrifices,  we  find  that  the  Agnihotra  was  per- 
 formed twice  everyday;  the  Darsapurviamasa  at 
 every  new  and  full  moon;  the  Zaturmasya  every 
 fourth  month,  at  the  beginning  of  spring,  the  rainy 
 season  and  autumn;  the  Agraya?iesh£i  at  harvest- 
 time  ;  the  Pasubandha  at  the  beginning  of  the  rains. 
 Such  ceremonial  acts,  if  repeated  year  after  year,  at 
 the  same  seasons,  would  soon  prove  extremely  useful  for 
 purely  chronometrical  purposes  also;  they  would  supply 
 the  first  outlines  of  a  calendar,  and  that  calendar  might 
 in  time  assume  a  purely  civil,  instead  of  a  religious 
 character.  But  in  spite  of  all  that,  it  would  be  wrong 
 to  say  that  priests  devised  these  annual  festivals  with 
 the  definite  purpose  of  establishing  a  civil  calendar. 
 Here  also  it  is  quite  true  that  what  is  fit,  or  rather 
 what  is  found  to  be  sensible  and  rational,  survives,  but 
 it  does  not  follow  that  this  fitness  was  foreseen,  and 
 that  the  reasonableness,  though  it  was  there,  was 
 always  perceived. 
 
 Istar  and  Tammuz. 
 
 A  clear  instance  of  how  mere  customs,  or  the  natural 
 festivities  connected  with  the  chief  events  of  the  year, 
 could  lead  to  the  formation  of  a  myth  and  even  of  a 
 religious  belief,  is  supplied  by  the  well-known  story 
 of  Istar  and  Tammuz,  which  spread  from  Babylon  to 
 Egypt,  Cyprus,  and  Greece,  and  which  found  its  last 
 refuge  in  the  story  of  Adonis  and  Aphrodite. 
 
 We  know  that  among  the  Semitic  as  well  as  among 
 the  Aryan  nations,  the  sun  was  an  absorbing  object  of 
 thought,  whether  in  its  daily  or  in  its  annual  character. 
 In  Babylon,  for  instance,  the  sun  was  not  only  the  chief 
 deity,  but  also  the  favourite  subject  of  that  daily 
 gossip  which  we  have  learnt  to  call  folk-lore,  or  legend 
 
526  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 and  myth.  One  of  the  most  widely  spread  of  those 
 legends  was  the  story  of  the  love  between  the  sun  and 
 the  earth.  Under  different  names  that  story  has  been 
 told  all  over  the  world.  Men  could  not  help  telling- 
 it,  as  soon  as  they  began  to  tell  anything.  So  long  as 
 their  chief  interest  centred  in  the  annual  produce  of 
 the  soil,  so  long,  in  fact,  as  their  very  life  depended  on 
 the  happy  union  of  the  fertile  earth  and  the  warm 
 embraces  of  the  sun,  their  thoughts  were  solar.  One 
 of  the  inevitable  chapters  in  that  solar  legend  was  the 
 tragedy  of  winter,  when  the  happy  union  between 
 earth  and  sun  seemed  dissolved,  when  the  sun  no 
 longer  smiled  on  the  earth,  but  grew  weak  and  old, 
 and  at  last  forsook  the  earth  altogether.  Then  the 
 earth  is  represented  as  trying  to  recover  the  sun  and 
 the  warmth  and  life  that  flows  from  it,  as  descending 
 into  the  dark  regions  in  order  to  bring  him  back  or  to 
 restore  him  to  new  life,  and  thus  to  recover  the 
 treasures  of  which  all  nature  was  robbed  during  the 
 winter.  Poetical  fancy  has  clothed  that  simple  theme 
 in  ever  so  many  disguises,  the  most  ancient  of  which 
 is  perhaps  the  Babylonian  poem  which  recounts  the 
 descent  of  the  goddess  Tatar  into  the  nether  world  in 
 search  of  the  healing  waters,  which  should  restore  to 
 life  her  bridegroom,  Tammuz.  This  poem  has  often 
 been  translated,  and  the  translations  vary  considerably. 
 Considering  the  difficulties  of  such  a  translation,  the 
 uncertainty  in  the  rendering  of  many  passages  is  per- 
 fectly intelligible.  I  give  here  some  extracts  from  the 
 last  translation  which  Professor  Sayce  has  published  in 
 his  Hibhert  Lectures  (p.  221): 
 
 •l.To  the  land  whence  none  return,   the  region  of    darkness  . 
 Istar,  the  daughter  of  Sin  (the  moon  ,     inclined)  her  ear. 
 
ON    CUSTOMS    AND    LAWS.  527 
 
 Yea,  Istar  herself,  the  daughter  of  Sin,  inclined  (her)  ear 
 To  the  house  of  darkness,  the  seat  of  the  god  Irkalla, 
 To  the  house  from  whose  entrance  there  is  no  exit.' 
 '  12.  Istar,  on  arriving  at  the  gate  of  Hades, 
 
 To  the  keeper  of  the  gate  addressed  the  word  ; 
 Opener  (keeper)  of  the  waters,  open  thy  gate  ! 
 Open  thy  gate  that  1  may  enter. 
 If  thou  openest  not  the  gate  that  I  may  enter, 
 I  will  smite  the  door,  the  holt  will  I  shatter, 
 1  will  smite  the  threshold  and  pass  through  the  portals. 
 I  will  raise  up  the  dead  to  devour  the  living, 
 Above  the  living  the  dead  shall  exceed  in  number. 
 The  keeper  opened  his  mouth  and  speaks. 
 He  says  to  the  princess  Istar  : 
 Stay,  0  Lady,  thou  must  not  break  it  down  ! 
 Let  me  go  and  declare  thy  name  to  Nin-ki-gal,  the  queen  of 
 Hades.' 
 
 The  keeper  then  informs  Nin-ki-gal,  who  is  also 
 called  Allat  \  of  Istar  s  arrival,  and  of  her  wish  to 
 obtain  the  water  for  her  bridegroom.  But  Allat  is 
 angry.  She  commands  Istar  to  be  stripped  and  to 
 be  led  before  her,  when  she  curses  her,  limb  by  limb. 
 Then,  however,  all  sorts  of  misfortunes  fell  on  the 
 whole  earth. 
 
 '  75.  After  that  the  lady  Istar  into  Hades  had  descended. 
 
 With  the  cow  the  bull  would  not  unite,     the  ass  would    not 
 
 approach  the  female,) 
 The  handmaid  (in  the  street  would  not  approach  the  freeman  . 
 The  freeman  ceased  (to  give  his  order).' 
 
 Then  the  messenger  of  the  gods  informed  the  Sun- 
 god  of  all  the  woe  and  destruction  that  had  been 
 wrought  on  earth  through  Istar's  absence,  and  the  Sun- 
 god  thereon  consulted  with  Sin,  his  father,  and  with 
 Ea,  the  king.  And  Ea  formed  a  being  called  Atsu-sa- 
 n amir,  (i.  e.  his  rising  is  seen,)  and  sent  him  to  Allat 
 
 1  Allat,  the  feminine  of  Allah,  an  idol  mentioned  in  the  Quran  ; 
 
 see  Sacred  Books  <;/  tin  ij<<s/.  vd.  vi.  j>.  xii. 
 
528  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 to  demand  the  water  for  Istar  and  her  bridegroom. 
 Allat  curses  and  swears,  but  she  is  obliged  to  set 
 Istar  free,  to  restore  her  garments,  and  to  give  to  her 
 the  waters  of  life. 
 
 This  is  a  short  abstract  of  a  most  curious  poem,  so 
 far  as  it  can  at  present  be  deciphered  K  It  represents 
 the  annual  recovery  of  the  vernal  sun  which  follows 
 after  the  woe  and  wailing  of  the  earth  or  of  the  whole 
 of  nature  during  winter 2. 
 
 But  we  shall  see  that  the  full  meaning  of  such  a 
 poem  can  only  be  restored  by  a  careful  study  of  the 
 customs  connected  with  the  death  and  the  revival  of 
 Tammuz.  Ezekiel  (viii.  14)  saw  in  a  vision  'the  door 
 of  the  gate  of  the  Lord's  house  which  was  toward  the 
 north,  and  behold,  there  sat  women  weeping  for 
 Tammuz.'  This  shows  that  the  original  character  of 
 the  sacred  ceremonies  connected  with  Tammuz  con- 
 sisted in  bewailing  his  death,  although  naturally  these 
 lamentations  would  be  followed  by  rejoicings  on  the 
 return  of  Tammuz. 
 
 Now  we  are  told  that  another  purely  Semitic  name 
 of  Tammuz  was  Adonai,  lit.  my  lord,  and  that  under 
 that  name  his  worship  was  carried  to  the  West.  '  It 
 was  above  all  in  the  Phenician  town  of  Gebal  or 
 Byblos  that  the  death  of  Adonis,  who  is  Adonai, 
 was  commemorated.     Here,  eight  miles  to  the  north 
 
 1  We  are  told  that  the  myth  of  Istar  and  Tammuz  was  originally 
 Accadian,  and  that  we  have  here  only  a  later  Babylonian  or  Semitic 
 version  of  it.  However  that  may  be,  the  general  meaning  of  the 
 myth  is  clear. 
 
 2  Professor  Tiele  also,  a  most  careful  interpreter  of  myths,  admits 
 that  the  legend  of  Istar's  descent  into  Hades  is  but  a  thinly  veiled 
 description  of  the  earth-goddess,  seeking  below  for  the  hidden  waters 
 of  life,  which  shall  cause  the  Sun-god  and  all  nature  with  him  to  rise 
 again  from  their  sleep  of  death.  (Actes  du  sixieme  Coigns  international 
 des  Orieidcdistes,  ii.  1,  pp.  495  seq.  ;  Sayce,  Hibbcrt  Lectures,  p.  251.) 
 
ON   CUSTOMS    AND    LAWS.  529 
 
 of  Beyrut,  the  ancient  military  road  led  from  eastern 
 Asia  to  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.  Hard  by 
 was  the  river  of  Adonis,  the  Nahr  Ibrahim  of  to-day 
 which  rolled  through  a  rocky  gorge  into  the  sea. 
 Each  year,  when  the  rains  and  melting  snows  of  spring 
 stained  its  waters  with  the  red  marl  of  the  mountains, 
 the  people  of  Gebal  beheld  in  it  the  blood  of  the 
 slaughtered  Sun-god.  It  was  then,  in  the  month  of 
 January  or  June,  that  the  funeral  festival  of  the  god 
 was  held.  It  lasted  seven  days.  "  Gardens  of  Adonis," 
 as  they  were  called,  were  planted,  pots  filled  with 
 earth  and  cut  herbs,  which  soon  withered  away  in  the 
 fierce  heat  of  the  summer  sun,  fitting  emblems  of  the 
 god  Adonis  himself.  Meanwhile  the  streets  and  gates 
 of  the  temples  were  filled  with  throngs  of  wailing 
 women.  They  tore  their  hair,  they  disfigured  the 
 face,  they  cut  the  breast  with  sharp  knives,  in  token 
 of  the  agony  of  their  grief.  Their  cry  of  lamentation 
 went  up  to  heaven  mingled  with  that  of  the  Galli, 
 the  priests  of  Ashtoreth,  who  shared  with  them  their 
 festival  of  woe  over  her  murdered  bridegroom.  Adonis, 
 the  young,  the  beautiful,  the  beloved  of  Ashtoreth, 
 was  dead ;  the  bright  sun  of  the  springtide,  like  the 
 verdure  of  nature  which  he  had  called  into  life,  was 
 slain  and  withered  by  the  hot  blasts  of  summer.' 
 
 I  have  quoted  these  statements  on  the  best  au- 
 thority, that  of  my  friend,  Professor  Sayce.  That 
 Ashtoreth  is  the  same  word  as  Istar,  with  the  Semitic 
 feminine  suffix,  can  hardly  be  doubted.  That  Adonis, 
 or  Adonai,  '  my  lord/  is  another  name  for  Tainmuz,  is 
 at  all  events  very  likely.  But  what  is  of  the  greatest 
 interest  is  that  in  Phenicia  the  annual  tragedy  of  the 
 death  of  the  solar  hero  is  placed  not  in  the  winter,  but 
 
 m  m 
 
530  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 in  midsummer,  the  time  when  in  that  part  of  the 
 world  the  fierce  summer  heat  seemed  to  threaten  and 
 actually  to  destroy  the  vegetation  of  the  earth  (1.  c, 
 p.  231).  Nor  did  the  lamentations  for  his  death  take 
 place  in  all  parts  of  Syria  at  the  same  time.  We  learn 
 from  Ammianus  that  when  Julian  arrived  at  Antioch 
 in  the  late  autumn,  he  found  the  festival  of  Adonis 
 being  celebrated,  '  according  to  ancient  usage,'  after 
 the  ingathering  of  the  harvest  and  before  the  beginning 
 of  the  new  year,  in  Tisri  or  October  ;  while  Macrobius 
 tells  us  that  the  Syrian  worshippers  of  Adonis  ex- 
 plained the  boar's  tusk  which  had  slain  the  god,  as 
 the  cold  and  darkness  of  winter,  his  return  to  the 
 upper  world  being  his  '  victory  over  the  first  six  zodi- 
 acal signs,  along  with  the  lengthening  daylight '  (I.e., 
 p.  231).  Climatic  influences  were  sure  to  tell  on 
 these  festivals  in  Syria  and  Babylonia,  as  elsewhere. 
 In  the  highlands  of  Syria  the  summer  was  not  the 
 dangerous  foe,  it  was  in  Babylonia;  it  was,  on  the 
 contrary,  a  kindly  friend,  whose  heats  quickened  and 
 fostered  the  golden  rain.  Winter,  therefore,  and  not 
 summer,  was  the  enemy  who  had  slain  the  god. 
 
 The  celebration  of  the  festival  of  Adonis  at  different 
 times  of  the  year,  therefore,  so  far  from  being  difficult 
 to  explain,  seems  rather  to  confirm  the  view  taken  of 
 the  original  character  of  Tammuz  or  Adonis,  as 
 the  solar  god  in  his  annual  character.  His  birth, 
 his  happy  youth,  his  death,  and  his  resurrection 
 might  well  represent  the  different  seasons  of  the  year, 
 and  in  each  of  them  the  god  of  the  year  might  either 
 be  praised  or  bewailed,  according  to  the  view  taken 
 of  his  fate.  It  becomes  perfectly  intelligible  too  why, 
 according  to  some  (1.  c,  p.  329),  Adonis  shared  half 
 
ON    CUSTOMS   AND    LAWS.  531 
 
 the  year  with  the  goddess  of  death,  and  the  other 
 half  only  with  the  goddess  of  love,  while  according  to 
 others,  who  divided  the  year  into  three  parts,  Adonis 
 was  condemned  to  dwell  four  months  in  Hades,  four 
 months  he  was  free  to  dwell  where  he  might  choose, 
 and  the  remaining  four  were  passed  in  the  com- 
 panionship of  Ashtoreth,  to  whom  he  devoted  also 
 his  four  months  of  freedom. 
 
 Here  then  we  see  how  a  custom,  though  it  begins 
 with  the  simplest  events  which  mark  the  ordinary 
 course  of  the  year,  may  be  modified  by  local  and 
 other  influences,  and  how  after  a  time  it  may  produce 
 sacred  ceremonies,  a  myth  to  explain  them,  and  in 
 the  end  a  new  religious  faith. 
 
 This  becomes  particularly  clear  when  we  can  watch 
 a  custom  transferred  from  one  country  to  another 
 and  the  concomitant  myth  translated,  as  it  were,  from 
 one  language  into  another. 
 
 We  are  told  (p.  229)  that  after  the  revolt  of  Egypt 
 from  the  Assyrian  king  and  the  rise  of  the  26th 
 Dynasty,  Egyptian  beliefs  found  their  way  into 
 Phenicia,  where  the  story  of  Osiris  was  mixed  up  with 
 that  of  Adonis.  Osiris  too  was  a  Sun-god,  who  had 
 been  slain  and  had  risen  again  from  the  dead,  so  that 
 the  festival  of  Adonis  at  Gebal  could  easily  be  assi- 
 milated to  that  of  Osiris  in  Egypt.  It  was  owing  to 
 this  amalgamation  that  the  days  of  mourning  for 
 Adonis  were  succeeded  by  days  of  rejoicing  at  the  re- 
 vival of  Osiris  and  his  counterpart  Adonis. 
 
 Still  more  curious  is  the  way  in  which  in  Cyprus 
 the  legends  of  Istar  and  Tammuz  or  Ashtoreth  and 
 Adonis,  were  grafted  on  the  Greek  legends  of  Aphro- 
 dite. The  idea  that  the  Greeks  had  no  conception 
 M  m  2 
 
532  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 and  name  of  the  goddess  Aphrodite,  before  they  were 
 indoctrinated  by  the  Phenicians,  can  hardly  be  held 
 any  longer.  What  happened  in  Egypt,  happened  in 
 Greece,  but  while  in  Egypt  the  chief  points  of  simi- 
 larity were  seen  between  Osiris  and  Adonis,  in  Cyprus 
 and  afterwards  in  Greece  it  was  Ashtoreth,  the  female 
 element  of  the  legend,  that  was  attracted  by  Aphro- 
 dite. We  shall  leave  it  undecided  whether  the  name 
 of  Theias  or  Thoas,  the  king  of  Lemnos,  the  husband 
 of  Myrina,  and  the  father  of  Adonis,  is  or  is  not  a 
 corruption  of  Tammuz,  as  Professor  Sayce  suggests. 
 Adonis  is  represented  in  some  Greek  legends  as  the 
 son  of  the  Assyrian  king  Theias  and  of  Myrrha  (or 
 Smyrna),  also  of  Kinyras  1i  the  founder  of  Paphos  in 
 Cyprus  and  of  Kenchreis  (or  Metharme).  This  shows 
 that  the  Greeks  were  never  in  doubt  that  Adonis 
 came  to  them  from  Assyria  and  Cyprus,  and  that  his 
 festival,  the  a^avia^os^  the  death,  as  well  as  the  evpecri?, 
 the  finding  of  Adonis,  was  of  Oriental  origin.  That 
 they  substituted  Aphrodite  for  his  beloved  was  as 
 natural  to  them  as  that  they  made  him  stay  four 
 months  in  Hades  with  Persephone.  But  to  suppose 
 that  the  Greek  Aphrodite,  and  all  the  legends  told  of 
 her,  owed  their  origin  to  the  Phenicians,  or  Assyrians, 
 or  Babylonians,  or  Accaclians,  is  flying  in  the  face  of 
 all  the  facts,  so  far  as  known  to  us  at  present,  and  of 
 all  analogies. 
 
 Zeus  Xenios. 
 
 Another  instance  of  an  Eastern  custom  modifying 
 
 1  Kinyras  is  derived  by  Professor  Sayce  from  Gingiva,  the  Accadian 
 equivalent  of  Istar.  Adonis  also  is  called  Gingras.  Kinyras  was 
 formed  through  a  play  on  the  Phenician  word  Kinnor,  the  'zither.' 
 His  wife's  name  Kend/reis  is  likewise  traced  back  by  Professor  Sayce 
 (p.  264)  to  Gingiras,  meaning  goddess,  the  feminine  of  dingir,  creator 
 
ON   CUSTOMS   AND   LAWS.  533 
 
 the  character  of  an  ancient  Greek  god  we  have  in 
 Zeus  Xenios.  Zeus  had  originally  no  connection 
 whatever  with  the  custom  of  hospitality,  whether  in 
 the  sense  of  protection  granted  to  strangers,  or  of 
 actual  hospitality  offered  to  them.  That  custom  was 
 not  of  Greek  origin,  but  came  to  the  Greeks,  as 
 Professor  Ihering1  has  shown,  from  the  Phenicians. 
 Ideas  of  humanity,  such  as  we  find  in  the  Old  Testa- 
 ment, are  foreign  to  the  ancient  Aryan  nations.  A 
 sentiment  such  as  '  Ye  shall  have  one  manner  of  law, 
 as  well  for  the  stranger,  as  for  one  of  your  own 
 country  ;  for  I  am  the  Lord  your  God  V  would  have 
 sounded  strange  to  the  poets  of  the  Veda  and  even  to 
 Homer.  The  one  idea  among  the  Aryas,  as  among 
 most  ancient  people,  seems  to  have  been  that  whoever 
 was  not  a  friend,  whether  through  relationship  or 
 citizenship,  was  an  enemy.  If  he  was  dangerous,  he 
 could  be  killed,  and  there  was  no  law  to  punish  the 
 murderer.  In  Latin,  the  stranger  and  the  enemy  had 
 the  same  name,  host  is,  that  is  to  say,  they  were  the 
 same  thing  in  the  eyes  of  the  Komans. 
 
 It  was  by  the  Phenicians,  the  traders  of  the  ancient 
 world,  that  the  necessity  was  felt  for  the  first  time  of 
 acquiring  some  kind  of  protection  from  strangers  with 
 whom  they  trafficked.  Unless  that  protection  was 
 granted,  they  would  not  establish  landing-places  and 
 depots  for  their  merchandise.  They  could  neither  sell 
 nor  buy.  But  if  they  suffered,  the  people  also  suffered 
 who  wished  to  exchange  their  own  produce  for  the 
 merchandise  brought  by  the  Phenicians.  Thus  some 
 kind  of  international  comity  sprang  up  between  the 
 
 1  Die  Gastfreundschafl  w»  AHerthum,  von  Rudolf  von  Ihering,  1887. 
 
 2  Leviticus  xxiv.  22. 
 
534 
 
 LECTURE    XIX. 
 
 Phenicians  and  their  clients.  Professor  Ihering  has 
 made  it  very  clear  that  the  Phenicians  were  the  in- 
 ventors of  the  original  passport,  the  tessera  hospitalis,  a 
 token  of  mutual  hospitality  which  was  broken  into  two 
 parts,  each  party  retaining  one  half  in  order  that  if 
 either  of  them  or  their  descendants  should  meet,  they 
 might  recognise  one  another,  and  remember  their 
 ancient  family  obligations 1.  These  tesserae  were 
 called  in  Greek  ™>/3oAa,  from  avuftaWtLv,  used  in  the 
 sense  of  throwing  the  two  broken  pieces  together  to 
 see  whether  they  fit  2. 
 
 When  the  Greeks  had  accepted  from  the  Phenicians 
 the  principle  of  international  law  in  its  most  primitive 
 form,  they  would  have  found  it  difficult  to  invest  it 
 with  any  binding  sanction.  Some  families  might  bind 
 themselves  to  protect  the  free  trade  of  the  world,  but 
 to  others,  to  whole  communities,  particularly  to  the 
 Vikings  of  old,  the  temptation  to  plunder  the  vessels 
 and  to  kill  the  merchants  must  have  been  great. 
 They  therefore  had  recourse  to  religion,  and  placed 
 the  law  of  hospitality  under  the  protection  of  their 
 supreme  deity,  Zeus,  making  him  the  protector  of 
 the  stranger,  and  soon  also  of  their  guest,  and  calling 
 him  Zeus  Xenios,  a  name  unknown  among  the  other 
 Aryan  nations.  All  this  must  have  taken  place 
 before  the  days  of  Homer,  and  it  is  all  the  more 
 important  as  showing  us  at  how  early  a  period  a 
 custom,  first  established  by  Phenician  merchants,  was 
 able  to  modify,  or  at  all  events  to  expand,  the  character 
 of  the  principal  deity  of  the  Greeks,  and  give  rise  in 
 
 1  Poemdus,  1047  seq.,  '  Conferre  tesseram  si  vis  hospitalem,  ecc* 
 earn  attuli.' 
 
 a  This  is  Ihering's  explanation,  based  on  Plato,  Symposion  191.  and 
 •b'c7*o/.  in  Eurip.  Medea.  613.     Mommsen  differs. 
 
ON    CUSTOMS    AND   LAWS.  535 
 
 time  to  the  first  recognition  of  the  rights  of  man  as 
 such,  placed  under  the  protection  of  the  highest  god. 
 
 How  customs  should  be  studied. 
 
 This  is  the  spirit  in  which  the  study  of  customs 
 and  laws  can  be  made  subservient  to  the  study  of 
 Natural  Religion,  showing  how  Natural  Religion, 
 indeed,  may  give  rise  to  certain  customs,  but  how, 
 in  the  majority  of  cases,  customs  come  first,  simply 
 as  usages  of  proved  utility,  and  are  afterwards  in- 
 vested with  a  sacred  character,  simply  and  solely 
 because  they  have  been  found  useful  for  many  genera- 
 tions. Human  nature  is  so  made,  that  what  is  old 
 is  regarded  as  venerable  and,  after  a  time,  as  sacred, 
 so  that  even  when  it  has  to  be  changed  or  abolished, 
 it  is  treated  with  reverent  hands. 
 
 Nowhere  can  we  study  this  growth  of  custom  and 
 its  gradual  assumption  of  a  sacred  character  better 
 than  in  India.  In  that  country  custom  is  everything, 
 while  the  idea  of  law,  in  our  sense  of  the  word, 
 hardly  exists.  To  speak,  for  instance,  of  the  Laws  of 
 Manu  is  a  complete  misnomer,  Who  was  Manu,  and 
 what  power  had  he  to  give  or  to  enforce  laws  1  The 
 true  meaning  of  the  title  of  that  book,  Manava- 
 d  h  a  r  m  a-s  as  t  r  a,  is  '  the  teaching  of  what  is  considered 
 right  among  the  Manavas,'  these  Manavas  not  being 
 meant  originally  for  men  in  general,  but  for  a  Brah- 
 manic  family,  known  by  the  name  of  Manava.  and 
 claiming  Manu  among  their  ancestors.  It  cannot  be 
 called  a  code  of  laws,  in  our  sense  of  the  word,  because 
 laws,  in  order  to  be  laws,  must  have  the  sanction  of 
 some  authority  able  to  enforce  them.  But  who  is  to 
 enforce   such    laws  as  we   find    in    Manu,  or   in    the 
 
536  LECTURE   XIX. 
 
 Samaya&arika-sutras,  that  a  thief,  for  instance,  shall 
 go  to  the  king  with  flying  hair,  carrying  a  club  on 
 his  shoulder,  and  tell  him  his  deed.  And  the  king 
 shall  give  him  a  blow  with  that  club,  and  if  the  thief 
 dies,  his  sin  is  expiated.  Or  the  thief  may  throw 
 himself  into  the  fire,  or  he  may  kill  himself  by  dimin- 
 ishing daily  his  portion  of  food  *.  Codes  of  law  can 
 only  belong  to  a  political  community,  such  as  Athens, 
 or  Sparta,  or  Rome,  or  the  Roman  Empire.  We  might 
 have  in  India  codes  of  law  for  the  kingdoms  of  the 
 Kurus  and  the  Pa?icZus,  of  Asoka  or  Alandragupta,  but 
 not  for  Manavas,  taken  in  the  sense  of  mankind  in 
 general. 
 
 Fortunately  we  are  now  able  to  go  behind  these  so- 
 called  Law-books  of  Manu,  Y%^7avalkya,  and  others, 
 which  formerly  were  supposed  to  be  of  extraordinary 
 antiquity,  but  which  are  now  known  to  be  mere 
 metrical  rifacimenti  of  older  prose  books,  which  we 
 still  possess  under  the  name  of  Sutras  2. 
 
 There  is  nothing  like  these  Sutras  in  any  other 
 literature,  so  far  as  I  know.  They  still  belong  to  the 
 Vedic  age,  though  not  to  the  Veda,  properly  so  called  3, 
 and  are  collections,  not  of  laws,  but  of  ancient  cus- 
 toms. They  are  divided  into  three  classes,  (1)  the 
 Samaya/tarika-sutras,  (2)  the  Grihya-sutras,  (3)  the 
 >S'rauta-sutras. 
 
 The  first  class  contains  a  description  of  the  A&gtras, 
 i.  e.  the  conduct,  usages,  and  customs  sanctioned  by 
 
 1  Apastamba-sutras,  7,  9,  25,  4,  Biihler,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
 vol.  ii  p.  82. 
 
 2  See  Professor  Biihler's  masterly  treatment  of  this  subject  in  the 
 Preface  to  his  translation  of  the  Laws  of  Manu,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
 vol.  xxv. 
 
 3  See  Biihler,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  ii.  p.  120. 
 
ON    CUSTOMS    AND   LAWS.  537 
 
 samaya,  i.  e.  agreement.  Most  of  these,  which  are 
 also  called  Dkarma-sdtras,  are  embodied  in  the  later 
 metrical  codes. 
 
 The  second  class  describes  the  smaller  domestic 
 usages  and  ceremonies,  to  be  observed  at  the  various 
 periods  in  a  man's  life,  at  his  birth,  initiation, 
 marriage,  daily  sacrifices,  and  death.  These  two  are 
 mostly  incorporated  in  the  so-called  Law-books. 
 
 The  third  class  describes  the  great  sacrifices,  which 
 are  based  on  #ruti  or  revelation.  The  same  sacrifices 
 had  been  fully,  but  less  systematically  and  clearly, 
 described  in  the  Brahmanas.  Though  there  is  a 
 natural  element  in  these  great  sacrifices  also,  it  is 
 greatly  overlaid  by  priestly  inventions. 
 
 Thus  while  in  other  countries  our  excellent  folk- 
 lorists  have  to  collect  with  great  trouble  what  is  left 
 of  usages,  popular  amusements,  customs  and  super- 
 stitions, in  India  all  this  has  been  done  for  us,  and 
 has  been  done  not  once,  but  in  a  number  of  Brahmanic 
 families.  No  doubt  to  a  Hindu  whatever  is  prescribed 
 in  these  Sutras  is  invested  with  a  sacred  character. 
 What  is  not,  in  India  1  But  that  does  not  prevent  us 
 from  recognising  in  most  of  the  customs  or  a/taras  in 
 India  simple  usages,  originating  because  they  were 
 natural,  preserved  because  they  proved  useful,  and  at 
 last  supported  by  a  divine  authority,  because  both 
 their  naturalness  and  their  usefulness  had  been  for- 
 gotten. 
 
LECTURE  XX. 
 
 SACRED   BOOKS. 
 What  is  a  Sacred  Book? 
 
 A  LL  Sacred  Books  came  to  us  from  the  East :  not 
 J\  one  of  them  has  been  conceived,  composed,  or 
 written  down  in  Europe. 
 
 It  is  sometimes  difficult  to  say  what  is  a  Sacred 
 Book,  and  what  is  not.  When  I  undertook  some 
 years  ago,  with  the  help  of  the  best  Oriental  scholars 
 in  Europe  and  India,  to  publish  translations  of  all  the 
 Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  it  was  by  no  means  easy  for 
 us  to  determine  what  books  should  be  included  or  ex- 
 cluded. It  was  suggested  that  those  books  only  should 
 be  considered  as  sacred  which  professed  to  be  revealed, 
 or  to  be  directly  communicated  by  the  Deity  to  the 
 great  teachers  of  mankind.  But  it  was  soon  found 
 that  very  few,  if  any,  of  the  books  themselves  put 
 forward  that  claim.  Such  a  claim  was  generally  ad- 
 vanced and  formulated  by  a  later  generation,  and 
 chiefly  by  theologians,  in  support  of  that  infallible 
 authority  which  they  wished  to  secure  for  the  books 
 on  which  their  teaching  was  founded.  But  even  that 
 was  by  no  means  a  general  rule,  and  we  should  have 
 had  to  exclude  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  Buddhists,  of 
 the  followers  of  Confucius  and  Lao-^ze,  possibly  even 
 the  Old  Testament,  as  looked  upon  in  early  times  by 
 the  Jews  themselves,  if  we  had  kept  to  that  defini- 
 
SACRED  BOOKS.  539 
 
 tion.  So  we  agreed  to  treat  as  Sacred  Books  all  those 
 which  had  been  formally  recognised  by  religious  com- 
 munities as  constituting  the  highest  authority  in 
 matters  of  religion,  which  had  received  a  kind  of  ca- 
 nonical sanction,  and  might  therefore  be  appealed  to 
 for  deciding  any  disputed  points  of  faith,  morality,  or 
 ceremonial. 
 
 We  should  not  treat  the  Homeric  poems,  for  in- 
 stance, as  Sacred  Books,  because,  though  Herodotus 
 tells  us  that  Homer  and  Hesiod  made  the  gods  of 
 the  Greeks — whatever  that  may  mean — neither  the 
 Odyssey  nor  the  Iliad  was  ever  intended  to  teach  re- 
 ligion. There  are  many  books  which  have  exercised 
 a  far  greater  influence  on  religious  faith  and  moral 
 conduct  than  the  Bibles  of  the  world.  Such  are,  for 
 instance,  the  Imitatio  Christi  by  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
 Bunyan's  Pilgrim  $  Progress,  Dante's  Divina  Come- 
 dia,  or  in  Southern  India  the  Rural.  But  none  of 
 these  works  received  any  canonical  sanction ;  their 
 doctrines  were  not  binding,  and  might  be  accepted  or 
 rejected  without  peril. 
 
 The  Five  Birthplaces  of  Sacred  Books. 
 
 There  are  five  countries  only  which  have  been  the 
 birthplace  of  Sacred  Books:  (1)  India,  (2)  Persia, 
 (3)  China,  (4)  Palestine,  (5)  Arabia. 
 
 Survey  of  Sacred  Books. 
 
 I  can  do  no  more  to-day  than  give  you  a  very  short 
 account  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East.  I  may 
 hope  that  by  this  time  no  one  will  ask  what  some 
 thirty  years  ago  an  eminent  London  publisher  asked 
 Professor  Wilson,  when  he  offered  him  a  translation 
 of  the  Rig-veda.     '  And  pray,  Sir,'  he  said,  '  What  is 
 
540  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 the  Rig-veda  ? '  The  collection  of  translations  of  the 
 Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  which  through  the  liberal 
 patronage  of  the  Indian  Government  and  the  Univer- 
 sity of  Oxford  I  have  been  enabled  to  publish  during 
 the  last  twelve  years  amounts  now  to  thirty- six 
 volumes. 
 
 It  seems  a  long  list,  and  yet  it  is  only  a  beginning, 
 though  I  trust  that  the  next  generation  will  carry  on 
 the  work,  and  thus  render  the  religious  thoughts  of 
 the  ancient  world  more  and  more  accessible  and  in- 
 telligible to  all  who  care  for  the  sacred  records  of 
 Natural  Religion — for  the  Bibles  of  the  whole  human 
 race. 
 
 India. 
 
 India  holds  no  doubt  the  foremost  rank  as  the 
 mother  of  four  great  religions,  each  with  its  own  code 
 of  sacred  writings. 
 
 The  Veda. 
 
 We  have  in  India,  first  of  all,  the  Vedic  religion, 
 the  most  ancient  faith  of  the  Aryan  race  of  which  we 
 have  any  literary  records. 
 
 Its  records  have  been  preserved  to  us  in  four  collec- 
 tions of  sacred  poetry  (mantras),  called  the  Rig-veda- 
 samhita,  the  Ya(/ur-veda-samhita,  in  two  texts,  the 
 mixed  (Taittiriya)  and  the  unmixed  (Vtu/asaneyi),  the 
 Sama-veda-samhita,  and  the  Atharva-veda-sa?>ihita. 
 The  most  important  by  far  is  the  Rig-veda-samhita, 
 the  original  collection  of  sacred  hymns,  as  preserved 
 in  different  Brahmanic  families.  The  Ya(/ur-veda  and 
 Sama-veda-samhitas  are  collections  made  for  liturgical 
 purposes.  The  Atharva-veda  contains,  besides  large 
 portions  taken  from  the  Rig-veda,  some  curious  rem- 
 nants of  popular  and  magical  poetry.     These  deserve 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  541 
 
 more  attention,  particularly  from  the  students  of 
 folk-lore,  than  they  have  hitherto  received. 
 
 Next  to  these  collections  of  ancient  poetry,  and 
 representing  a  later  and  far  more  advanced  period, 
 come  the  Brahma  was,  all  written  in  archaic  prose,  and 
 teaching  everything  connected  with  the  performance 
 of  the  ancient  Vedic  sacrifices.  The  more  important 
 are  the  Aitareya  and  Kaushitaki-brahmawa  for 
 the  Rig-veda,  the  Taittiriya  and  #atapatha  for  the 
 two  Ya^ur-vedas,  the  Thndya  for  the  Sama-veda, 
 the  G  op  at  ha  for  the  Atharva-veda. 
 
 The  Aranyakas  or  Forest-books  form  part  of  the 
 Brahma?i as,  and  contained  originally  the  famous 
 Upanishads,  the  philosophical  treatises  on  which  the 
 Vedanta  philosophy  was  founded. 
 
 The  latest  productions  of  the  Vedic  period  are  the 
 Sutras,  concise  treatises  on  sacrifices,  customs,  laws, 
 also  on  grammar,  metre,  etc.1 
 
 The  periods  which  succeed  the  Vedic  in  the  his- 
 tory of  the  Brahmanic  religion  are  of  much  smaller 
 interest  to  us.  They  can  be  studied  in  the  two  epic 
 poems,  the  Mahabharata  and  Ramayawa,  in  the 
 later  Law-books,  the  six  systems  of  philosophy,  and 
 the  Pura??as. 
 
 The  Vedic  religion  seems  to  have  ruled  supreme 
 from  1500  B.  o.  (if  not  earlier)  to  about  500  b.  c. 
 
 Buddhism. 
 
 At  that  time  a  reaction  took  place  against  the  ex- 
 clusive claims  of  the  Vedic  faith  and  its  privileged 
 representatives,    and    out     of    numerous     dissenting 
 
 1  For  fuller  information  see  M.  M.,  History  of  Ancient  Sanskrit 
 Literature. 
 
542  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 schools,  three  acquired  political  importance  and  his- 
 torical permanence  :  (1)  Southern  Buddhism,  (2)  North- 
 ern Buddhism,  or,  more  correctly,  Bodhism,  and 
 (3)  6rainism. 
 
 Each  of  these  religions  is  represented  by  a  large 
 body  of  sacred  literature  : 
 
 Southern  Buddhism  has  to  be  studied  in  the 
 famous  Tripi^aka  \  the  three  baskets  or  collections,  as 
 they  are  called,  (1)  the  Vinaya-Pifaka,  the  book  of 
 discipline  ;  (2)  the  Sutta-Pi^aka,  the  book  of  ser- 
 mons;  (3)  Abhidhamma-Pi^aka,  the  book  of 
 metaphysics 2 ; 
 
 Northern  Buddhism  has  for  its  sacred  books  the 
 Nine  Dharmas 3 ;  and 
 
 (rainism  the  Siddhanta,  consisting  of  the  forty-five 
 Agamas  4. 
 
 Specimens  of  each  of  these  canons  can  be  found 
 translated  in  the  Sacred  Boohs  of  the  East. 
 
 Influence  of  the  Kshatriyas,  the  Nobility. 
 
 It  is  important  to  observe  that  the  founder  of 
 Southern  Buddhism  and  the  founder  of  (rainism  both 
 belonged  to  the  second  caste,  the  aristocracy  or  no- 
 bility of  India,  not  to  the  priestly  caste  of  the  Brah- 
 
 1  See  M.  M.,  Selected  Essays,  ii.  p.  177  ;  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhism,  p. 
 ]8  ;  Hardy,  Eastern  Monachisyn,  p.  166. 
 
 2  They  were  reduced  to  writing  during  the  reign  of  Vatta.  Gamani, 
 who  reigned  from  88  B.C.,  but  the  canon  had  been  closed  at  the 
 second  council  in  377  b.  c. 
 
 3  M.  M.,  Selected  Essays,  ii.  p.  183. 
 
 4  These  45  Agamas  consist  of  the  11  Afigas,  12  UpAiigas,  10 
 Pa/rinnakas,  6  Khed&s,  4  Mulasutras,  and  two  other  books.  See  Jacobi, 
 Bhadrabahu's  Kalpa-sutra,  1879  ;  Gaina-sutras,  in  Sacred  Books  of  the 
 East,  vol.  xxii.  The  sacred  canon  or  Siddhanta  was  not  reduced  to 
 writing  and  collected  before  454  (467)  or  514  (527)  a.d.,  by  Devarddhi 
 Ga/iin  ;  but  the  canon  is  supposed  to  have  been  closed  in  the  third 
 century  b.c.  ;  see  S.  B.  E.,  vol.  xxii.  p.  xliii. 
 
SACKED    BOOKS.  543 
 
 mans,  who  had  hitherto  enjoyed  the  exclusive  privi- 
 lege of  religious  teaching  and  of  performing  sacrificial 
 acts.  The  founder  of  Buddhism  was  a  prince,  or,  at 
 all  events,  a  nobleman,  who  lived  about  500  B.C.  ;  and 
 so  was  Mahavira,  the  son  of  Siddhartha  of  Ku?*cZa- 
 grama  (Kotfggama),  the  founder  of  Gainism,  his  con- 
 temporary. He  is  mentioned  in  the  Buddhists'  canon  by 
 the  name  of  Nigantha  Nata-putta,  i.e.  the  Nirgrantha  of 
 the  Gn&trika,  clan.  Buddha  means  the  Awakened  or 
 Enlightened,  6rina,  the  conqueror,  a  name  applied  to 
 Buddha  also.  Their  systems  share  much  in  common, 
 but  they  are  kept  apart  both  in  doctrine  and  in  ethics. 
 The  followers  of  the  £ina  number  at  present  half  a 
 million  only,  those  of  the  Buddha,  who  may  be  called  the 
 Southern  Buddhists,  are  estimated  at  about  29  millions. 
 
 The  name  of  the  founder  of  Northern  Buddhism  is 
 not  known,  and  we  shall  probably  be  not  far  wrong 
 in  looking  on  this  branch  of  Buddhism  as  a  com- 
 bination of  Buddhist  doctrines,  then  prevalent  in 
 Northern  India,  with  religious  and  philosophical  ideas 
 imported  into  the  country  about  the  beginning  of  the 
 Christian  era  by  its  Turanian  conquerors,  the  Indo- 
 Scythian  races,  under  Huvishka,  Kanishka  \  and  other 
 semi-barbarous  sovereigns.  The  number  of  these 
 Northern  Buddhists  is  estimated  at  470  millions  2. 
 
 So  much  for  India,  as  the  mother  of  four  religions, 
 to  say  nothing  of  its  smaller  offspring,  the  religion  of 
 the  Sikhs,  and  many  other  still  living  sects. 
 
 Media  and  Persia. 
 
 In  a  wider  sense  India,  or.  at  all  events,  the  Aryan 
 conquerors  of  India,  may  even  claim  some  share  in 
 
 1  Kanishka  convoked  the  famous  council  under  Vasubandhu,  as 
 president.  2  Selected  Essays,  ii.  p.  230. 
 
544  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 the  ancient  religion  of  Media  and  Persia,  known  to 
 us  by  the  Zend-avesta,  the  sacred  book  of  the  Zoro- 
 astrians.  The  most  ancient  portions  of  the  Avesta, 
 the  Gathas,  and  the  hymns  of  the  Big-veda,  are  cer- 
 tainly the  products  of  the  same  intellectual  soil.  They 
 may  even  be  called  twins,  and  some  of  the  students 
 of  the  Zend-avesta  have  not  hesitated  to  represent 
 the  Avestic  Gatha,  or  prayer,  as  the  elder  twin  of  the 
 Vedic  Siikta,  or  hymn  of  praise. 
 
 The  Avesta  consists  of  two  parts.  The  first  con- 
 tains the  VencUddd,  a  compilation  of  religious  laws 
 and  mythical  tales ;  the  Vispered,  a  collection  of 
 sacrificial  litanies,  and  the  Yasna,  consisting  likewise 
 of  litanies  and  of  the  five  ancient  Gathas.  When  these 
 three  are  written  together,  according  to  the  require- 
 ments of  the  liturgy,  and  without  a  Pehlevi  trans- 
 lation, the  collection  is  called  Vendiddd  sddah,  the 
 pure  Vendidad.  The  second  part  is  called  the  Khorda 
 Avesta,  or  '  Small  Avesta,'  containing  prayers  such  as 
 the  five  Gdh,  the  thirty  formulas  of  the  Sirozah,  the 
 three  Afrigdn,  and  the  six  Nyayis,  with  some  hymn 
 of  praise,  the  Yasts,  and  other  fragments 1. 
 
 China. 
 
 Outside  of  India  and  Persia,  we  have  only  China, 
 Palestine,  and  Arabia,  as  cradles  of  religious  literature. 
 China  gives  us  the  works,  collected  rather  than  com- 
 posed, by  Confucius,  and  the  manual  of  the  doctrines 
 of  Lao-^ze,  the  Tao-te  king.  Both  religions,  that  of 
 Confucius  and  that  of  Lao-^ze,  are  still  prevalent  in 
 China,  together  with  Buddhism,  which  was  intro- 
 duced into  China  from  Northern  India  in  the  first 
 
 1  See  Darmesteter,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iv.  p.  xxx. 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  545 
 
 century  B.C.  Confucius  and  Lao-^zo  were  contem- 
 poraries, both  living  between  600  and  500  B.C.  Lao- 
 jze,  however,  was  50  or  40  !  years  the  senior  of  Con- 
 fucius, and  it  is  believed  that  he  was  72  years  old  at 
 the  time  of  his  birth,  604  B.C.  This  is  perhaps  the 
 most  wonderful  of  many  wonderful  achievements  as- 
 cribed to  the  founders  of  religion,  and  its  origin  is 
 probably  the  same  as  that  of  many  other  miracles— 
 a  misunderstood  expression.  Lao-jze  in  Chinese  means 
 the  old  one,  literally  the  Old  Boy.  We  can  easily 
 understand  what  such  an  expression  really  meant. 
 It  was  probably  kindly  meant.  But  when  after  a 
 time  it  did  not  seem  sufficiently  respectful,  it  was 
 misinterpreted  and  became  a  myth.  The  founder  of 
 Tao-ism  was  represented  as  old,  even  when  a  boy, 
 and  very  soon  other  legends  were  added  by  helpful 
 grandmothers,  who  told  their  children  that  this  won- 
 derful boy  had  actually  grey  hair  when  he  came  into 
 the  world. 
 
 You  would  probably  be  inclined  to  say  that  such 
 absurdities  are  possible  in  China  only.  But  a  com- 
 parative study  of  religions  teaches  us  a  very  different 
 lesson,  and  enables  us  to  see  even  in  the  silliest 
 miracles  a  rational  and  human  element.  We  find 
 a  very  similar  legend  in  Europe — not  indeed  among 
 Aryan  people,  but  among  the  Estonians,  a  Turanian 
 race,  akin  to  the  Fins,  who  live  in  the  Baltic  pro- 
 vinces of  Russia,  on  the  Gulf  of  Finland,  not  very 
 far  from  St.  Petersburg.  These  Estonians  have,  like 
 the  Fins,  some  ancient  epic  poetry ;  and  one  of  their 
 fabulous  heroes  is  called  Wannemuine.  He  was  pos- 
 sessed  of  extraordinary  wisdom ;    and    the   poet,  in 
 
 1  Faber,  Famo  a  Men  of  China,  1880,  p.  7. 
 N  n 
 
546  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 order  to  account  for  it,  declared  that  he  was  not  only 
 grey-headed,  but  grey-bearded  at  the  time  of  his 
 birth  \ 
 
 We  shall  meet  again  and  again  with  this  curious 
 longing  after  a  miraculous  birth,  claimed  for  the 
 founders  or  propounders  of  new  religions  by  their 
 devoted  disciples  and  followers, — as  if  there  could 
 be,  or  as  if  poor  human  reason  could  even  imagine, 
 anything  more  truly  miraculous  than  a  natural  birth 
 and  a  natural  death. 
 
 The  Chinese  views  of  religion  are  so  different  from 
 our  own  that  their  religious  classics  have  never  en- 
 joyed the  authority  which  in  India,  for  instance,  is 
 conceded  to  the  Veda,  or  in  Arabia  to  the  Qur'an. 
 They  received  the  title  of  King,  or  classic,  during  the 
 Han  dynasty  (from  202  B.C.). 
 
 The  first  is  the  Shu -king,  the  book  of  historical 
 documents.  They  profess  to  go  back  to  the  24th 
 century  B.C.,  and  they  end  with  King  Hsiang  of  the 
 Kkxx  dynasty,  651-619  B.C.  Confucius  himself  lived, 
 as  we  saw,  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  B.C. 
 
 The  second  is  the  Shi -king,  the  book  of  poetry. 
 It  contains  305  pieces,  some  of  which  are  said  to  be 
 as  old  as  the  Shang  dynasty,  1766-1123  B.C.  The 
 character  of  these  poems  is  by  no  means  exclusively 
 religious,  the  greater  portion  are  simply  relics  of 
 more  or  less  ancient  popular  poetry. 
 
 The  third  is  the  Yi-king,  the  book  of  changes,  a 
 most  obscure  and  enigmatic  collection,  chiefly  intended 
 for  the  purposes  of  divination,  but  interspersed  with 
 many  metaphysical,  physical,  moral,  and  religious 
 utterances. 
 
 1  Castren,  Finnische  Mythologie,  p.  294. 
 
SACKED   BOOKS.  547 
 
 The  fourth  is  the  Li-/>;i,  the  record  of  rites,  with 
 occasional  remarks  of  Confucius  on  the  sacrificial 
 worship  of  his  country,  as  collected  by  his  disciples 
 and  later  followers. 
 
 The  fifth  is  the  Khun-khin,  'the  spring  and 
 autumn,'  the  only  one  which  can  be  called  the  work 
 of  Confucius  himself,  giving  us  his  account  of  his 
 own  native  state  of  Lu,  from  722-481  B.C. 
 
 There  is  one  more  treatise  attributed  to  Confucius, 
 the  Hsiao-king,  or  the  classic  of  filial  piety,  con- 
 taining conversations  between  him  and  his  grandson 
 and  pupil  Zang-jze.  It  is  an  attempt  to  base  religion, 
 morality  and  politics  on  filial  piety,  as  the  cardinaJ 
 virtue,  and  has  exercised  a  more  extensive  influence 
 than  even  the  five  great  Kings. 
 
 Besides  these  five  Kings,  the  Chinese  treat  four 
 other  books,  the  four  Shu,  as  likewise  of  the  highest 
 authority. 
 
 They  are  (1)  the  Lun  Yu,  or  discourses  and  con- 
 versations between  Confucius  and  some  of  his  dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 (2)  The  works  of  Meneius,  a  later  follower  of 
 Confucius. 
 
 (3)  The  Ta  Hsio,  the  great  learning,  ascribed  to 
 Zang-jze. 
 
 (4)  The  ATung  Yung,  the  doctrine  of  the  mean. 
 The  third  and  fourth  of  the  Shus  are  really  taken 
 
 from  the  Li-/d. 
 
 Lao-^ze's  views  are  embodied  in  the  Tao-teh-king, 
 the  classic  of  Tao.  This  Tao  means  primordial  reason 
 or  sublime  intellect,  but  without  action,  thought, 
 judgment  and  intelligence.  Dr.  Chambers  translates 
 Tao  by  way,  reason,  and  word.  Even  the  best 
 N  n  2 
 
548  LECTUKE   XX. 
 
 Chinese  scholars  despair  of  ever  comprehending  the 
 full  meaning  of  Lao-^ze's  doctrines,  but  it  is  easy  to 
 see  that  the  Tao-teh-king  contains  fragments  of  deep 
 thought  and  high  morality. 
 
 Palestine. 
 
 Though  Palestine  has  produced  two  Sacred  Books 
 only,  it  may  really  be  called  the  mother  of  three  reli- 
 gions, of  Judaism,  Christianity ,and  Mohammedanism. 
 
 Judaism. 
 
 It  is  true,  no  doubt — and  recent  discoveries  among 
 the  cuneiform  inscriptions  have  proved  it  very  fully — 
 that  the  original  germs  of  the  Jewish  religion  formed 
 the  property  of  the  whole  Semitic  race,  and  that  they 
 had  reached  a  considerable  development  in  the  Meso- 
 potamian  kingdoms,  or  in  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  before 
 they  were  carried  to  Palestine.  Still  the  peculiar 
 features  which  distinguish  the  Jewish  from  al]  other 
 Semitic  religions  were  developed  in  Palestine,  and 
 justify  us  in  claiming  that  country  as  the  true  home 
 of  Judaism.  What  we  call  the  Old  Testament  was 
 known  to  the  Jews  themselves  as  the  Laiv,  the  Prophets, 
 and  the  Hagiograpka  \ 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 With  regard  to  Christianity,  its  Palestine  origin  is 
 a  matter  of  history — though  by  its  later  development 
 that  religion  has  almost  ceased  to  be  Semitic,  having 
 been  re-animated  and  re-invigorated  by  Aryan  thought 
 and  Aryan  faith.  The  books  of  the  New  Testament, 
 with  the  exception  of  some  of  the  Epistles,  were  written 
 
 1     ElS    TTjV    TOV    VOfiOV    KCLl    TWV    VpO(pYjT0JV  KCli   TUJV  d\X0JV  TTCLTplaJV  /8</3A«W 
 
 dvdyvojaiv.     Prol.  ad  Sapient.  Sirach. 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  549 
 
 in  Palestine,  and  in  Greek  as  spoken  there  in  the  early 
 centuries  of  our  era. 
 
 M  o  li  a  mmedanis  m . 
 
 Mohammedanism,  no  doubt,  had  its  geographical 
 birthplace  in  Arabia,  but  its  true  mother  was  never- 
 theless Palestine.  It  would  be  impossible  to  under- 
 stand the  teachings  of  Mohammed  without  a  knowledge 
 of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testaments.  His  God,  as  he 
 says  himself,  was  the  god  of  Ibrahim,  that  is  Abraham. 
 And  though  the  Quran  bears  the  clear  impress  of 
 Mohammed's  strongly  marked  individuality,  its  vital 
 doctrines  can  easily  be  traced  back  to  a  Jewish  or 
 Christian  source. 
 
 With  these  three,  the  Old  Testament,  the  New 
 Testament,  and  the  Quran,  our  Bibliotheca  Sacra  is 
 complete. 
 
 The  Eight  Religions. 
 
 Though  the  bulk  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East 
 is  enormous,  yet  we  have  seen  that  they  represent  no 
 more  than  eight  religions :  (1)  the  Vedic,  both  ancient 
 and  modern  ;  (2)  Buddhism,  Northern  and  Southern, 
 and  6rainism ;  (3)  the  Zoroastrian  religion  of  the 
 Avesta ;  (4)  Confucianism ;  (5)  Taoism ;  (6)  the 
 Jewish,  (7)  Christian,  and  (8)  Mohammedan  religions. 
 
 Book-religions. 
 
 In  the  East,  religions  are  often  divided  into  two 
 classes,  those  which  are  founded  on  books,  and  those 
 which  have  no  such  vouchers 1.  The  former  only  are 
 considered  as  real  religions,  and  though  they  may 
 contain   false   doctrines,   they  are   looked  upon  as  a 
 
 1  M.  M.,  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Beligion,  p.  53. 
 
550  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 kind  of  aristocracy  to  whom  much  may  be  forgiven, 
 while  the  vulgar  crowd  of  bookless  or  illiterate  reli- 
 gions are  altogether  out  of  court. 
 
 To  us,  living  in  the  nineteenth  century,  when 
 '  black  on  white '  has  become  synonymous  with  true, 
 it  may  seem  very  natural  that  religion  should  be 
 founded  on  something  written,  something  black  on 
 white.  But  we  ought  not  to  forget  that  writing  is  a 
 comparatively  recent  invention,  while  religion  is  a 
 very  old  invention,  if  indeed  it  ma}^  be  called  by  that 
 name  at  all.  It  is  quite  easy  to  imagine  that  writing, 
 to  say  nothing  of  printing,  might  never  have  been 
 invented  at  all,  while  it  is  difficult  to  imagine,  nay,  as 
 I  am  convinced,  impossible  to  imagine  that  religion 
 should  never  have  been  called  into  existence.  We 
 know  that  even  now  there  are  large  numbers  of  human 
 beings  to  whom  writing  and  reading  are  utterly  un- 
 known, and  yet  they  possess  not  only  an  elaborate 
 religion,  but  often  a  priesthood,  prayers,  and  sacrifices. 
 
 The  Invention  of  Writing-. 
 
 I  believe  it  can  be  proved  that  the  invention  of 
 what  we  mean  by  writing  was  a  pure  accident— I 
 mean,  an  historical  event  that  might  or  might  not  have 
 taken  place.  No  one  ever  sat  down  and  racked  his 
 brain  to  invent  letters,  for,  in  order  to  do  that,  he  must 
 have  known  what  letters  are.  Till  we  know  what 
 letters  are,  the  idea  of  writing  would  seem  a  perfect 
 absurdity.  No  wonder  that  a  New  Zealander  who 
 was  appointed  a  letter-carrier,  and  who  knew  that 
 these  pieces  of  paper  which  he  carried,  conveyed  some 
 kind  of  information,  held  them,  while  he  was  drudg- 
 ing along,  to  his  ear,  to  find  out  what  they  contained. 
 
sacrp:p  books.  551 
 
 Even  we,  who  are  so  familiar  with  the  idea  of  writing, 
 if  we  were  suddenly  asked  whether  it  was  possible  to 
 hear  with  our  eyes,  would  probably  say,  that  it  was 
 absurd  to  say  so.  And  yet  that  is  what  we  do  in 
 writing  and  reading. 
 
 We  must  distinguish  between  writing  and  paintiug. 
 Man  is,  no  doubt,  an  imitative  animal,  and  we  know 
 that  even  the  antediluvian  cave-dwellers  amused  them- 
 selves with  scratching  the  pictures  of  animals  on  horn 
 and  stone.  The  most  uncivilised  races  and  the  most 
 illiterate  children  can  draw  '  two  eyes,  and  a  nose, 
 and  a  mouth/  Trees,  animals,  rivers,  mountains,  sun 
 and  moon,  are  all  easy  to  draw,  in  a  way ;  and  we 
 find  such  tracings  not  only  on  the  walls  of  ancient 
 caves,  but  likewise,  to  our  great  annoyance,  on  the 
 walls  of  our  own  houses.  With  the  help  of  a  little 
 imagination  such  tracings  or  pictures  may  become 
 means  of  communication,  up  to  a  certain  point.  But 
 this  pictorial  writing  is  very  far  removed  from  what 
 ive  mean  by  writing.  And  it  is  important  to  observe 
 that  the  only  nations  who  invented  an  alphabet,  the 
 Chinese,  the  Babylonians,  and  the  Egyptians,  never, 
 so  far  as  we  know,  employed  this  purely  pictorial 
 writing  even  on  their  most  ancient  monuments. 
 
 How  the  discovery  of  our  alphabet  was  made  I 
 have  no  time  to  describe  in  this  lecture.  All  I  can 
 say  is  that  it  was  an  historical  accident,  that  it  might 
 or  might  not  have  taken  place,  though,  no  doubt,  the 
 life  of  man  on  earth  would  have  been  very  different 
 from  what  it  is.  if  writing  had  never  been  invented. 
 We  can  hardly  realise  what  life  would  have  been 
 without  writing  and  reading.  Whether  our  lot  on 
 earth  would  have  been  happier  or  unhappier  without 
 
552  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 writing  and  reading  is  difficult  to  say.  We  can  well 
 imagine  civilised  life  without  printing,  for,  after  all, 
 Plato  and  Aristotle,  Dante  and  Beatrice  may  be  called 
 civilised  beings.  But  without  writing,  life  seems  to 
 some  of  us  hardly  worth  living.  We  have  no  time  to 
 enter  into  the  whole  of  this  subject  at  present,  but  I 
 may  quote  as  a  warning  against  deciding  too  rapidly 
 in  favour  of  writing  as  an  unmixed  blessing,  the 
 opinion  of  Plato,  who  held,  as  you  know,  that  the 
 invention  of  the  alphabet  was  almost  an  unmixed 
 evil. 
 
 Influence  of  Writing-  on  Religion. 
 
 What  we  have  to  consider  to-day  is  whether  the 
 division  of  all  religions  suggested  by  Mohammedan 
 theologians  into  book-religions  and  bookless  religions, 
 touches  an  essential  point ;  whether,  if  writing  had 
 never  been  invented,  and  there  were,  therefore,  no 
 sacred  scriptures  at  all,  religion  would  have  been 
 something  different  from  what  it  is,  when  based  on 
 written  authorities. 
 
 The  Arabs,  as  we  saw,  recognised  but  three  real 
 religions,  because  they  possessed  written  credentials 
 in  their  Sacred  Books.  These  three  were,  Moham- 
 medanism, Judaism,  and  Christianity.  Why  the 
 religions  of  Zoroaster,  Buddha,  Confucius,  and  Lao- 
 jze,  which  are  likewise  in  possession  of  Sacred  Books, 
 were  not  admitted  to  that  select  circle  does  not  ap- 
 pear, unless  we  suppose  that  Mohammedan  theologians 
 were  not  aware  of  the  existence  of  such  books. 
 
 Individual  and  National  Religions. 
 
 Before,  however,  we  proceed  to  consider  this  divi- 
 sion, there  is  another  division  of  religions  which  has 
 
SACRED    BOOKS.  553 
 
 to  be  disposed  of,  namely,  that  into  individual  and 
 national  religions.  To  a  certain  extent  it  runs  parallel 
 with  the  division  into  bookless  and  book-religions, 
 but  not  altogether.  Some  modern  writers  have  classed 
 the  three  book-religions,  the  Jewish,  the  Christian, 
 and  the  Mohammedan,  together  with  those  of  Zoroaster. 
 Buddha,  Confucius,  and  Lao-^ze,  as  individual  re- 
 ligions, in  order  to  distinguish  them  from  the  ancient 
 religions  of  the  Brahmans,  the  Greeks,  Romans,  Teu- 
 tons, Slaves  and  Celts,  and  other  savage  nations,  which 
 are  called  national  religions 1. 
 
 This  division,  however,  though  useful  for  certain 
 purposes,  is  utterly  untenable  from  an  historical  point 
 of  view,  and  nothing  has  shown  this  better  than  some 
 attempts  which  have  lately  been  made  to  defend  it. 
 
 The  more  we  study  the  history  of  the  religions  of 
 the  world,  the  clearer  it  becomes  that  there  is  really 
 no  religion  which  could  be  called  an  individual  re- 
 ligion, in  the  sense  of  a  religion  created,  as  it  were,  de 
 novo,  or  rather  ah  ovo,  by  one  single  person. 
 
 This  may  seem  strange,  and  yet  it  is  really  most 
 natural.  Religion,  like  language,  is  everywhere  an 
 historical  growth,  and  to  invent  a  completely  new 
 religion  would  be  as  hopeless  a  task  as  to  invent  a 
 completely  new  language. 
 
 Nor  do  the  founders  of  the  great  historical  religions 
 of  the  world  ever  claim  this  exclusive  authorship.  On 
 the  contrary,  most  of  them  disclaim  in  the  strongest 
 terms  the  idea  that  they  have  come  either  to  destroy, 
 or  to  build  a  completely  new  temple. 
 
 1  M.  M.,  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Bel ig ion,  p.  79. 
 
554  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 Mohammed. 
 
 If  we  begin  with  the  most  recent  religion,  that  of 
 Mohammed,  we  find  that  it  was  clearly  a  reform  of  an 
 older  religion,  and  if  we  removed  from  the  Qur  an  all 
 the  elements  which  belonged  to  the  folk-lore  and  the 
 national  faith  of  the  Arabs 1,  as  well  as  all  that  was 
 borrowed  from  Judaism  and  Christianity,  there  would 
 remain  very  little  indeed  that  Mohammed  could  claim 
 as  entirely  his  own.  Mohammed  himself,  in  his  earlier 
 days,  traced  his  faith  back  to  Ibrahim,  that  is  Abraham, 
 the  friend  of  God.  He  claimed  him  as  a  Moslim,  not 
 as  a  Jew  or  Christian.  Christ  also  was  looked  upon 
 by  him,  for  a  time  at  least,  as  the  Spirit  and  Word  of 
 God,  as  the  Messiah,  and  as  his  own  immediate  prede- 
 cessor. The  very  name  of  the  one  God  (I.e.,  p.  1)  whom 
 he  preached  was  an  old  Semitic  name  for  God.  Allah 
 stands  for  Al-Ilah  the  god;  and  II ah  is  the  same 
 word  as  the  Hebrew  Eloah,  in  the  plural,  Elohim. 
 Long  before  Mohammed,  some  of  the  Arabs  had  stood 
 up  for  the  worship  of  Allah  ta'alah,  the  god  most 
 high,  as  against  the  worship  of  the  host  of  heavens, 
 and  against  the  worship  of  idols,  such  as  El  'Huzza, 
 Allat  and  Manat(l.c.,p.xiii),andthe  worship  of  stones, 
 such  as  the  Kaabah,  which  even  Mohammed  was  obliged 
 to  retain.  Without  these  historical  antecedents,  without 
 a  nation  in  exactly  that  state  of  religious  confusion  and 
 apathy  as  the  Arabs  were  at  the  time  of  Mohammed, 
 his  new  teaching  would  have  been  impossible  and  un- 
 intelligible. Mohammed  was  at  first  no  more  than 
 Avhat  the  Arabs  called  a  Hanif,  a  religious  enthusiast, 
 a  dreamer,  a  man  who  at  times  was  terribly  afraid,  as 
 
 1  Palmer,  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  vi.  p.  xlviii. 
 
SACRED    ROOKS.  555 
 
 he  confesses  himself,  that  he  might  be  a  madman, 
 m a g nun;  but  nevertheless,  an  enlightened  teacher 
 and  an  honest  reformer,  protesting  against  supersti- 
 tions and  abuses  that  had  crept  into  other  religions, 
 though  hardly  an  originator  of  any  new  religious 
 doctrines. 
 
 Christ. 
 
 The  founder  of  Christianity  insisted  again  and  again 
 on  the  fact  that  he  came  to  fulfil,  and  not  to  destroy  ; 
 and  we  know  how  impossible  it  would  be  to  under- 
 stand the  true  position  of  Christianity  in  the  history 
 of  the  world,  the  true  purport  of  the  '  fulness  of  time,' 
 unless  we  always  remembered  that  its  founder  was 
 born,  and  lived,  and  died  an  Israelite.  Many  of  the 
 parables  and  sayings  in  the  New  Testament  have  now 
 been  traced  back  not  only  to  the  Old  Testament,  but 
 to  the  Talmud  also  ;  and  we  know  how  difficult  it 
 was  at  first  for  any  but  a  Jew  to  understand  the  true 
 meaning  of  the  new  Christian  doctrine. 
 
 Buddha. 
 
 As  to  Buddha,  he  is  no  doubt  a  strongly  marked 
 character,  particularly  as  he  is  represented  to  us  in 
 the  Southern  Canon.  But  take  away  the  previous 
 growth  of  Brahmanism,  and  Buddha's  work  would 
 have  been  impossible.  Buddhism  might  in  fact  have 
 remained  a  mere  sect  of  Brahmanism1,  unless  political 
 circumstances  had  given  it  an  importance  and  separate 
 existence,  which  other  rival  sects  did  not  attain. 
 Confucius. 
 
 Confucius,  so  far  from  teaching  a  doctrine  of  his 
 own.  is  bent  on  nothing  more  than  on  proving  that 
 
 1  See  Jacobi's  Gaina-sutras,  in  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xxii. 
 Introduction. 
 
556  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 nothing  is  his  own,  that  the  whole  of  his  teaching  is 
 old,  and  that  he  only  hands  down  what  antiquity  has 
 bequeathed  to  him. 
 
 Lao-jze. 
 
 We  know  less  of  Lao-^ze,  his  contemporary,  and  the 
 founder  of  Tao-ism,  the  grey-haired  baby.  Some 
 people  doubt  whether  the  Tdo-teh-king  is  really  his 
 own  work.  This  seems  to  me  carrying  scepticism  too 
 far ;  but  with  regard  to  his  principal  doctrine,  that  of 
 Tdo,  or  the  way,  or  the  reason  which  supports  and 
 pervades  everything,  we  know  that  the  greatest  an- 
 tiquity, far  beyond  the  age  of  Lao-^ze,  is  claimed  for  it. 
 
 Zoroaster. 
 
 Of  Zoroaster  we  might  say  with  even  greater  truth, 
 that  much,  if  not  all,  that  is  told  of  him  is  pure  legend. 
 He  may  have  been  the  author  of  some  of  the  ancient 
 prayers  contained  in  the  Yasna,  but  he  was  not  the 
 author  of  the  whole  Avesta.  And  whoever  the  author  or 
 the  collector  of  the  Avesta  may  have  been,  his  materials 
 had  long  been  national  property,  while  their  deepest 
 roots  reach  back  to  the  common  ground  from  which 
 both  the  Avesta  and  the  Veda  drew  their  life. 
 
 Moses. 
 
 As  to  the  Old  Testament,  no  scholar  would  suppose 
 that  it  was  the  work  of  one  man,  or  that  Moses  was 
 even  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch.  '  The  Books  of 
 Moses '  were  to  the  more  orthodox  Jews  the  books 
 telling  of  Moses,  not  the  books  written  by  Moses,  just 
 as  '  the  Book  of  Job '  was  the  book  containing  the 
 story  of  Job,  not  a  book  written  by  Job. 
 
SACRED    BOOKS.  557 
 
 If  now  we  look  again  at  the  Sacred  Books  of  the 
 East,  what  do  we  find  ? 
 
 They  are  all  collections  of  religious  thoughts  that 
 had  been  growing  up  for  centuries  among  the  people. 
 They  are  not  the  creations  of  those  whom  we  call  the 
 founders  of  the  great  religions  of  the  world,  but  rather 
 their  inheritance,  which,  in  most  cases,  they  gathered 
 up,  and  sifted  and  purified,  and  thus  rendered  accept- 
 able to  a  new  generation.  There  are  no  individual 
 religions  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  though  we 
 may  call  Zoroastrianism,  Buddhism,  Christianity, 
 and  Mohammedanism,  individual  reforms. 
 
 Sacred  Books,  when  consigned  to  writing. 
 
 The  most  powerful  instrument  for  consolidating  the 
 ancient  national  religions,  was  the  art  of  writing.  The 
 discovery  of  writing  and  its  employment  for  literary 
 purposes  marks  the  most  critical  period  in  the  history 
 of  religious  thought,  for  without  it  it  would  almost 
 have  been  impossible  to  impart  to  the  floating  elements 
 of  religion  a  permanent  form. 
 
 The  Pounders  of  Religions  are  never  the  Writers  of 
 Sacred  Books. 
 
 And  here  it  is  very  important  to  observe  that  in  no 
 case  has  the  actual  writing  down  of  any  of  the  great 
 Sacred  Books  of  the  East  been  ascribed  to  the  founders 
 of  religion.  Even  their  authorship  is  but  seldom 
 claimed  for  them,  but  they  are  represented  as  the 
 work  of  their  immediate  disciples  or  their  more  remote 
 followers. 
 
 It  is  curious  that  this  historical  fact  should  have 
 been  so  little  taken  into  consideration.  To  me  it 
 seems  one  of  the  greatest  blessings  for  every  religion. 
 
 x    ]iLtiheyh&b 
 
558  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 for  it  allows  to  all  believers  an  amount  of  freedom 
 which  they  would  hardly  have  ventured  to  claim  if 
 dealing  with  the  very  words  as  written  down  by  the 
 glorified,  in  some  cases,  the  deified  authors  of  their 
 religion. 
 
 The  Veda  originally  not  written. 
 
 The  ancient  Vedic  religion  reigned  supreme  in  India 
 long   before    the    introduction    of   writing    into    that 
 country.     It  lived  by  oral  tradition,  and  even  to  the 
 present  day,  if  every  MS.  of  the  Rig-veda  were  lost, 
 the  text  could  be  recovered,  I  believe,  with  perfect 
 accuracy    from    the    recollection    of   living    scholars. 
 We   are   never  told  of  any  Vedic   poet  writing  his 
 hymns,  as  little   as  we  ever  read   of  Homer  writing 
 his  poems.     The  Vedic  hymns  come  to  us  as  collec- 
 tions of  sacred  poetry,  belonging   to  certain   ancient 
 families,    and    afterwards    united    in    one    collection, 
 called  the  Rig-.veda-samhita.      The  names  of  the 
 poets,  handed  down  by  tradition,  are  in  most  cases 
 purely  imaginary  names.     What   is  really  important 
 is  that  in  the  hymns  themselves  the  poets  speak  of 
 their  thoughts  and  words  as  God-given — this  we  can 
 understand — while  at  a  later  time  the  theory  came  in 
 that  not  the   thoughts   and  words   only,   but  every 
 syllable,  every  letter,  every  accent,  had   been  com- 
 municated to  half-divine  and  half-human  prophets  by 
 Brahma,  so  that  the  slightest  mistake  in  pronuncia- 
 tion, even  to  the  pronunciation  of  an  accent,  would 
 destroy    the    charm    and    efficacy    of    these    ancient 
 prayers.     This  we  can  hardly  understand,  considering 
 how  enlightened  views   on  religion  were   entertained 
 by  the  ancient  philosophers  of  India. 
 
SACRED  BOOKS.  559 
 
 The  Avesta  originally  not  written. 
 
 The  religion  of  Zoroaster,  which  is  intimately  con- 
 nected with  the  Vedic  religion,  existed  likewise 
 before  the  invention  of  writing,  particularly  the 
 Gathas.  What  we  know  of  it,  however,  are  the 
 fragments  of  a  written  collection  which  was  made, 
 probably  not  long  before  the  time  of  Alexander,  and 
 which,  according  to  a  very  ancient  tradition,  was 
 destroyed  at  the  time  of  Alexander's  conquest  of 
 Persia,  and  afterwards  put  together  again,  chiefly 
 from  memory. 
 
 The  Tripi/aka  not  Buddha's  work. 
 
 Let  us  take  Buddhism  next.  Its  sacred  canon  is 
 enormous.  It  is  said  to  consist  of  275,250  lines1,  each 
 line  consisting  of  32  syllables,  and  its  commentary  of 
 361,550  such  lines.  One  copy  of  it  was  written  on 
 4,500  leaves.  The  Siamese  translation  of  it  amounts 
 to  3,683  volumes.  The  Tibetan  translation,  called 
 Kanjur  and  Tanjur,  consists  of  325  volumes,  each 
 weighing  from  4  to  5  pounds  in  the  edition  of  Peking. 
 The  Kanjur,  published  at  Peking,  sold  for  i£J630 ; 
 another  copy  was  bartered  for  7,000  oxen  by  the 
 Buriates ;  and  the  same  tribe  paid  12,000  silver 
 roubles  for  a  complete  copy  of  Kanjur  and  Tanjur 
 together. 
 
 A  pupil  of  mine,  a  Buddhist  priest,  who  came  all 
 the  way  from  Japan  to  Oxford  to  learn  Sanskrit, 
 published  at  the  University  Press  a  Catalogue  of  all 
 the  works  constituting  the  Buddhist  Canon  in  its 
 Chinese  translation,  and  brought  the  number  of  sepa- 
 rate works  belonging  to  the  canon  to  1662. 
 1  M.  M.,  Selected  Essays,  ii.  179. 
 
560  LECTURE  XX. 
 
 It  must  be  quite  clear  that  so  enormous  a  collection 
 could  never  have  been  written  by  one  person,  nor 
 are  we  even  told  that  Buddha  himself  wrote  the 
 Buddhist  Bible.  There  may  be  portions  in  it  con- 
 taining his  sermons,  nay  his  ijmssima  verba,  but  in 
 the  form  in  which  we  possess  them  they  are  not  older 
 than  the  third  century  B.C.,  the  period  when  Bud- 
 dhism became  a  political  power,  and  had  its  councils, 
 convoked  by  royal  authority,  to  settle  its  sacred  canon. 
 
 Confucius,  writer,  not  author,  of  the  Kings. 
 
 What  are  called  the  sacred  books  of  China,  the 
 Kings  of  Confucius,  were  certainly  written  down  by 
 Confucius.  Writing  seems  to  have  been  as  old  a 
 discovery  in  China  as  in  Egypt.  But  Confucius,  as 
 we  saw  before,  never  pretended  to  be  the  author  of 
 the  Kings,  or  the  founder  of  the  religion  that  is 
 taught  in  them  ;  and  the  same  may  be  said,  with 
 certain  reservations,  of  the  doctrines  contained  in  the 
 Tao-teh-king  of  Lao-^ze. 
 
 The  Old  Testament. 
 
 When  we  come  to  the  Old  Testament,  we  find  that 
 the  idea  of  writing  is  perfectly  familiar.  We  never 
 meet  with  any  expressions  of  surprise  or  marvel  at 
 anything  being  written,  and  yet  what  could  have 
 been  more  wonderful  than  writing,  when  first  brought 
 to  the  knowledge  of  ancient  peoples?  That  the 
 Tables  of  the  Law,  for  instance,  should  have  been 
 written  by  the  finger  of  God,  excites  no  astonishment, 
 and  the  Hebrew  language  itself  is  full  of  metaphors 
 borrowed  from  writing.  But  we  are  never  told  that 
 Moses  consigned  the  Old  Testament  to  writing. 
 
SACRED  BOOKS.  n()l 
 
 It  has  been  argued  that  this  familiarity  with  the 
 art  of  writing  proves  that  the  Jews  used  writing  for 
 literary  purposes,  for  actual  books,  long  before  their 
 neighbours  the  Phenicians,  the  Persians,  the  Ionians, 
 and  the  Greeks  of  Europe.  It  may  be  so  ;  but  the 
 fact  admits  also  of  another  interpretation,  namely, 
 that  even  the  most  ancient  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
 ment were  not  reduced  to  writing  before  the  idea  of 
 writing  and  of  writing  books  had  become  perfectly 
 familiar  to  the  civilised  peoples  of  Western  Asia. 
 And  it  is  well  known  that  literature  flourished  less 
 among  the  Jews  than  among  their  neighbours. 
 
 The   New  Testament. 
 
 Exactly  the  same  applies  to  the  New  Testament. 
 We  are  never  told  in  the  Gospels  that  they  were 
 written  by  the  Founder  of  the  Christian  religion 
 Himself.  They  only  profess  to  give  us  what  the  four 
 Apostles  had  to  tell  of  the  life  and  doctrine  of  Christ ; 
 or,  more  accurately,  what  had  been  handed  down  in 
 Christian  families,  and,  it  may  be,  in  Christian  schools, 
 according  to  the  original  teaching  of  some  of  the 
 Apostles  and  their  friends. 
 
 Mohammed  could  neither  read  nor  write. 
 
 The  most  recent  sacred  book  is  the  Qur  an,  and 
 there  have  been  many  controversies  among  Moham- 
 medans themselves,  whether  it  was  actually  written 
 by  Mohammed  or  not.  So  far  as  I  can  judge,  there 
 is  no  evidence  that  Mohammed  was  even  able  to  read 
 or  to  write.  It  is  true  that  Qur  an  means  '  what  was 
 read,'  from  the  verb  qara.a,  to  read.  It  is  likewise 
 true  that  the   first  vision   or  revelation   granted    to 
 
 o  o 
 
562  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 Mohammed  began  with  the  word  Tqru,  i.  e.  '  Read.' 
 But  Mohammed  himself  answered :  'lam  no  reader  V 
 Then  the  angel  shook  him  violently,  and  again  bade 
 him  read.  This  was  repeated  three  times,  when  the 
 angel  uttered  the  five  verses  which  commence  the 
 96th  chapter  of  the  Qur  an : 
 
 '  Read  !  in  the  name  of  thy  Lord,  who  did  create  — 
 who  did  create  man  from  hardened  blood. 
 
 '  Read !  for  thy  Lord  is  the  most  generous,  who  has 
 taught  the  use  of  the  pen, — has  taught  man  what  he 
 did  not  know.' 
 
 Read  seems  to  be  used  here  in  the  sense  of  '  See '  or 
 'Learn,'  and  would  in  no  way  prove  that  Mohammed 
 was  able  to  read,  still  less  that  he  was  able  to  write  the 
 Qur  an2.  Tradition  tells  us,  on  the  contrary,  that  at 
 the  prophet's  death  no  collected  edition  of  the  Qur  an 
 existed.  Scattered  fragments  were  in  the  possession  of 
 certain  of  his  followers,  written  down  at  different  times 
 and  on  the  most  heterogeneous  materials,  but  by  far  the 
 greater  portion  was  preserved  only  in  the  memories  of 
 men  whom  death  might  at  any  moment  carry  off. 
 Abubekr,  or  rather  Omar,  during  his  reign  employed 
 an  amanuensis  of  Mohammed  to  collect  the  sayings  of 
 the  prophet  '  from  palm-leaves,  skins,  blade-bones, 
 and  the  hearts  of  men,'  and  he  thus  produced  the 
 original  text  of  what  the  Mohammedans  call  the 
 Qur  an,  or  the  Lecture,  as  we  call  the  Bible  the  Scrip- 
 ture. At  a  later  time  this  text  was  revised  with  the 
 assistance  of  the  same  amanuensis  by  the  command 
 of  Othmdn,  and  this  has  remained  the  authorised  text 
 of  the  Qur  an  from  the  year  660  to  the  present  day. 
 
 1  Soared  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  vi,  p.  xx. 
 
 2  L.  c,  p.  lvii. 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  563 
 
 We  have  thus  seen  that  not  one  of  the  Sacred  Books 
 on  which  the  eight  book-religions  profess  to  be  founded 
 was  written  down  by  the  founders  of  these  religions. 
 In  the  beginning  therefore  those  so-called  book-reli- 
 gions were  exactly  in  the  same  position  with  regard 
 to  their  authorities  as  other  religions  which  had  their 
 doctrines  and  customs  handed  down  from  father  to 
 son,  or  from  teachers  to  their  pupils,  but  possessed 
 nothing  black  on  white  to  appeal  to. 
 
 Religions  with  and  without  Sacred  Books. 
 
 The  question  now  presents  itself,  Was  it  essential 
 that  the  religious  doctrines,  which  had  sprung  up 
 naturally  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  men,  should  at  a 
 certain  period  be  reduced  to  writing,  as  they  have 
 been  in  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East?  Are  the 
 bookless  religions  of  the  world  really  different  in  kind 
 from  others  which  profess  to  be  founded  on  written 
 codes,  and  have  these  written  codes  been  an  unmixed 
 blessing  to  those  who  derive  their  religious  convictions 
 from  them,  and  from  them  only  ? 
 
 The  advantages  of  possessing  Sacred  Books  are  so 
 clear  that  they  hardly  require  to  he  stated.  Sacred 
 Books  may  be  said  to  be  to  religion  what  legal  codes 
 are  to  law. 
 
 But  this  very  comparison  teaches  us  our  first 
 lesson. 
 
 Law  existed  before  codes  of  law,  and  religion  existed 
 before  codes  of  religion.  Nay,  more.  Unless  there 
 had  been  a  natural  growth  of  law,  whether  in  the 
 form  of  sentences  uttered  or  dooms  laid  down  by 
 chiefs  and  accepted  by  the  people  at  large,  there 
 could  have  been  no  legal  codes,  such  as  the  codes  of 
 002 
 
564  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 Solon  or  Dracon  or  the  Twelve  Tablets.  And  in  the 
 same  way,  unless  there  had  been  a  natural  growth  of 
 religion,  whether  in  the  form  of  oracles  delivered  or 
 prayers  uttered  by  prophets  and  accepted  by  the 
 people  at  large,  there  could  have  been  no  sacred  codes, 
 such  as  the  codes  of  Moses,  or  Zoroaster,  or  Buddha ; 
 there  could  have  been  no  such  religions  as  the  book- 
 religions,  or,  as  they  are  called  in  most  cases,  the 
 revealed  religions  of  the  world. 
 
 History,  however,  teaches  us  another  lesson,  namely 
 that  codes  of  law  are  apt  to  become  a  kind  of  fetish, 
 requiring  an  implicit  and  unquestioning  submission, 
 that  their  historical  or  natural  origin  is  often  com- 
 pletely forgotten,  and  that  the  old  ideas  of  what  is 
 right  and  just  are  almost  absorbed,  nay,  almost  anni- 
 hilated, in  the  one  idea  of  what  is  written  and  legal. 
 
 The  study  of  Eastern  religions  teaches  us  the  same 
 lesson.  Sacred  books  often  become  a  kind  of  fetish, 
 requiring  an  implicit  and  unquestioning  faith ;  their 
 historical  or  natural  origin  is  often  completely  forgotten, 
 and  the  old  ideas  of  what  is  true  and  divine  are 
 almost  absorbed  in  the  one  idea  of  what  is  written 
 and  orthodox. 
 
 And  there  is  a  third  lesson  which  history  teaches 
 us.  The  sense  of  responsibility  of  every  citizen  for 
 the  law  under  which  he  lives  is  in  great  danger  of 
 becoming  deadened,  when  law  becomes  a  profession 
 and  is  administered  with  mechanical  exactness  rather 
 than  with  a  strong  human  perception  of  what  is  right 
 and  what  is  wrong.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  the 
 responsibility  of  every  believer  for  the  religion  under 
 which  he  lives  is  in  the  same  danger  of  becoming 
 deadened,  when  religion  becomes  a  profession,  and  is 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  565 
 
 administered  with  ceremonial  exactness  rather  than 
 with  a  strong  human  perception  of  what  is  true  and 
 what  is  false. 
 
 My  object,  however,  is  not  to  show  the  dangers 
 which  arise  from  sacred  books,  but  rather  to  protest 
 against  the  prejudice  which  prevails  so  widely  against 
 religions  which  have  no  sacred  books. 
 
 There  is  a  great  difference  between  book-religions 
 and  bookless  religions,  and  the  difference  offers,  from 
 an  historical  point  of  view,  a  very  true  ground  of 
 division.  But  because  the  book-religions  have  certain 
 advantages,  we  must  not  imagine  that  the  bookless 
 religions  are  mere  outcasts.  They  have  their  dis- 
 advantages, no  doubt ;  but  they  have  a  few  advan- 
 tages also. 
 
 A  Blackfoot  Indian,  when  arguing  with  a  Christian 
 missionary,  described  the  difference  between  his  own 
 religion  and  that  of  the  white  man  in  the  following 
 words 1 :  '  There  were  two  religions  given  by  the 
 Great  Spirit,  one  in  a  book  for  the  guidance  of  the 
 white  men  who,  by  following  its  teachings,  will  reach 
 the  white  man's  heaven ;  the  other  is  in  the  heads  of 
 the  Indians,  in  the  sky,  rocks,  rivers,  and  mountains. 
 And  the  red  men  who  listen  to  God  in  nature  will 
 hear  his  voice,  and  find  at  last  the  heaven  beyond.1 
 
 Now  that  religion  which  is  in  the  head  and  in  the 
 heart,  and  in  the  sky,  the  rocks,  the  rivers  and  the 
 mountains  is  what  we  call  Natural  Religion.  It  has 
 its  roots  in  nature,  in  human  nature,  and  in  that  ex- 
 ternal nature  which  to  us  is  at  the  same  time  the  veil 
 and  the  revelation  of  the  Divine.  It  is  free,  it  grows 
 with  the  growth  of  the  human  mind,  and  adapts  itself 
 '  The  Indians,  whena  camt  they?  by  McLean,  1889,  p.  301. 
 
566  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 to  the  requirements  of  every  age.  It  does  not  say, 
 '  Thou  shalt,'  but  rather  '  I  will.'  These  natural  or 
 bookless  religions  are  not  entirely  without  settled 
 doctrines  and  established  customs.  They  generally 
 have  some  kind  of  priesthood  to  exercise  authority  in 
 matters  of  faith,  morality,  and  ceremonial.  But  there 
 is  nothing  hard  and  unchangeable  in  them,  nothing 
 to  fetter  permanently  the  growth  of  thought.  Errors, 
 when  discovered,  can  be  surrendered  ;  a  new  truth, 
 if  clearly  seen  and  vigorously  defended,  can  be  ac- 
 cepted. If,  however,  there  is  once  a  book,  something- 
 black  on  white,  the  temptation  is  great,  is  almost 
 irresistible,  to  invest  it  with  a  more  than  human 
 authority  in  order  to  appeal  to  it  as  infallible,  and  as 
 beyond  the  reach  of  human  reasoning.  We  can  well 
 understand  what  the  ancient  poets  of  the  Veda  meant 
 by  calling  their  hymns  God-given,  or  by  speaking  of 
 them  as  what  they  had  seen  or  heard,  not  what  they 
 had  elaborated  themselves.  But  a  new  generation 
 gave  a  new  meaning  to  these  expressions,  and  ended 
 by  representing  every  thought  and  word  and  letter  of 
 the  Veda  as  '  God-given,'  or  revealed.  This  was  the 
 death-blow  given  to  the  Vedic  religion,  for  whatever 
 cannot  grow  and  change  must  die1.  From  this  danger 
 the  bookless  religions  are  exempt. 
 
 Another  advantage  peculiar   to  these   religions  is 
 
 1  Sir  William  Muir,  in  his  Rise  and  Decline  of  Islam,  pp.  40,  41,  has 
 given  powerful  expression  to  the  dangers  arising  from  sacred  codes. 
 1  From  the  stiff  and  rigid  shroud  in  which  it  is  thus  swathed,  the 
 religion  of  Mahomed  cannot  emerge.  It  has  no  plastic  power 
 beyond  that  exercised  in  its  earliest  days.  Hardened  now  and 
 inelastic,  it  can  neither  adapt  itself,  nor  yet  shape  its  votaries,  nor 
 even  suffer  them  to  shape  themselves,  to  the  varying  circumstances, 
 the  wants  and  developments  of  mankind.'  Quoted  by  E.  de  Bunsen 
 in  an  article  in  the  Asiatic  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1889,  Mahomed's 
 Place  in  the  Church,  p.  287. 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  567 
 
 that  generally  they  are  extremely  simple,  not  bur- 
 dened with  325  volumes,  weighing  from  four  to  five 
 pounds  each.  When  they  are  at  their  best,  they 
 seem  to  be  simply  an  unhesitating  belief  in  some 
 higher  power  and  a  life  in  the  sight  of  God. 
 
 It  is  painful  to  see  how  unfairly  these  simple  book- 
 less religions  are  often  judged.  Over  and  over  again 
 we  are  told  by  missionaries  and  travellers  that  they 
 do  not  deserve  to  be  called  religions  at  all,  and,  on 
 the  strength  of  such  assertions,  philosophers,  who 
 ought  to  know  better,  have  represented  a  large  num- 
 ber of  races  as  without  any  religion,  as  believing 
 neither  in  the  true  God  nor  even  in  any  false  gods. 
 
 The  blubber-eating  Eskimos  have  sometimes  been 
 represented  as  altogether  godless  or  as  devil-worship- 
 pers. Mr.  John  Rae,  who  lived  among  them  for 
 some  time,  wrote  to  me  (12  March,  1870) :  '  The 
 Esquimaux  believe  their  Great  Spirit  is  too  good 
 and  beneficent  to  punish  them,  even  if  they  do  what 
 is  wrong,  but  that  in  that  case  the  evil  spirit  is 
 permitted  to  have  power  over  them.  Consequently, 
 while  they  pray  to  the  former,  they  make  offerings 
 to  the  latter.' 
 
 Ever  since  the  Jesuit  Baegert  published  his  in- 
 teresting account  of  California  in  1718,  the  in- 
 habitants of  that  peninsula  have  been  set  down  as 
 without  any  religion  at  all.  Baegert  says,  'they 
 have  no  idols,  no  religious  service,  no  temple,  no 
 ceremonies.  They  neither  adore  the  true  God.  nor 
 do  they  believe  in  false  gods.  There  is  no  word  in 
 their  language  corresponding  to  the  Spanish  Dim  or 
 signifying  a  higher  being.' 
 
 Later  accounts  have   considerably   modified   these 
 
568  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 statements,  and  have  shown  that  there  is  no  longer 
 any  excuse  for  treating  the  Californians  as  savages 
 without  religion.  Nay,  the  latest  accounts  describe 
 their  religion  in  such  terms  that  we  might  indeed 
 envy  them  their  religion,  at  all  events  for  its  sim- 
 plicity. According  to  de  Mofras,  one  of  the  latest 
 travellers,  the  '  Californians  believe  in  a  God  whose 
 origin  is  perfectly  unknown,  or,  as  they  express  it, 
 who  has  neither  father  or  mother.  He  is  believed 
 to  be  present  everywhere,  and  to  see  everything, 
 even  at  midnight,  though  himself  invisible  to  every 
 eye.  He  is  the  friend  of  all  good  people,  and  pun- 
 ishes evil-doers  V 
 
 Do  you  call  this  a  bad  religion?  Could  not  a 
 man  with  such  a  religion  walk  through  life  with  a 
 straight  and  steady  step,  if  only  he  believes  what 
 he  professes  to  believe,  and  shapes  his  way  accord- 
 ingly 1 
 
 Anything  that  lifts  a  man  above  the  realities  of 
 this  material  life  is  religion.  I  like  to  tell  the  story 
 of  the  old  Samoyede  woman  whom  Castren  met 
 in  his  travels,  and  asked  about  her  religion.  Poor 
 soul,  she  hardly  understood  what  he  meant  and  why 
 he  should  ask  her  such  a  question.  But  when  at  last  she 
 perceived  what  he  was  driving  at,  she  said2:  'Every 
 morning  I  step  out  of  my  tent  and  bow  before  the 
 sun,  and  say :  "  When  thou  risest,  I,  too,  rise  from 
 my  bed."  And  every  evening  I  say:  "  When  thou 
 sinkest  down,  I,  too,  sink  down  to  rest." '  That 
 was  her  prayer,  perhaps  the  whole  of  her  religious 
 service, — a  poor  prayer,  it  may  seem  to  us,  but  not 
 
 1   Roskoff,  Das  Religionsirrsm  der  rohesten  Xatt<n:olker.  p.  t)4. 
 *  M.  M..  IidrodwMm  to  the  Science  of  Religion,  p.  133. 
 
SACRED   BOOKS.  569 
 
 to  her,  for  it  made  that  old  lonely  woman  look  twice 
 
 at  least  every  day  away  from  earth  and  up  to  heaven ; 
 
 it  made  her  feel  that  her  life  was  bound  up  with  a  larger 
 
 and  higher  life  ;  it  encircled  the  daily  routine  of  her 
 
 earthly  existence  with  something  of  a   divine  light. 
 
 It  gave  her  the  sense  of  a  Beyond,  and  that  is  the 
 
 true  life  of  all  religion.     Is  there  not  something  of 
 
 the    simple   religion   of  that   old    Samoyede   woman 
 
 even  in  the  familiar  lines   of  Bishop  Ken, 
 
 'Awake,  my  soul,  and  with  the  sun 
 Thy  daily  stage  of  duty  run '  ? 
 
 This  kind  of  religion  may  seem  very  imperfect,  it 
 may  seem  in  our  eyes  very  childish  or  even  wrong. 
 But  it  is  real,  and  therefore  a  real  power  for  good. 
 It  is  a  struggle  for  God, — if  haply  we  may  find  Him  ; 
 and  in  that  struggle  also — after  many  mistakes,  it 
 may  be — it  is  the  best  that  survives  and  lives. 
 
 The  whole  world  in  its  wonderful  history  has  passed 
 through  that  struggle  for  life,  the  struggle  for  eternal 
 life ;  and  every  one  of  us,  in  his  own  not  less 
 wonderful  history,  has  had  to  pass  through  the  same 
 struggle  ;  for,  without  it,  no  religion,  whatever  its 
 sacred  books  may  be,  will  find  in  any  human  heart 
 that  soil  in  which  alone  it  can  strike  root  and  on 
 which  alone  it  can  grow  and  bear  fruit. 
 
 We  must  all  have  our  own  bookless  religion,  if  fche 
 Sacred  Books,  whatever  they  be,  are  to  find  a  safe 
 and  solid  foundation  within  ourselves.  No  temple 
 can  stand  without  that  foundation,  and  it  is  because 
 that  foundation  is  so  often  neglected,  that  the  walls 
 of  the  temple  become  unsafe  and  threaten  to  fall. 
 
 It  is  easy  to  say  it  before  an  audience  like  this, 
 but    I    should    not    be    afraid     to    sav   it    before    an 
 
570  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 audience  of  Brahmans,  Buddhists,  Parsis,  and  Jews, 
 that  there  is  no  religion  in  the  whole  world  which  in 
 simplicity,  in  purity  of  purpose,  in  charity  and  true 
 humanity,  comes  near  to  that  religion  which  Christ 
 taught  to  his  disciples.  And  yet  that  very  religion, 
 we  are  told  by  even  bishops,  is  being  attacked  on  all 
 sides.  '  The  unbelief  of  the  day,'  as  one  of  the  most 
 eloquent  bishops  said  at  the  late  Church  Congress, 
 1  is  not  only  aggressive,  but  almost  omnipresent.  It 
 is  found  in  the  club  and  in  the  drawing-room.  It  is 
 chattered  to  one  by  the  first  young  gentleman  who 
 might  be  airing  his  freethought,  before  he  had  learned 
 how  to  talk.  It  is  lisped  prettily  sometimes  from 
 charming  lips  at  dinner  tables,  and  it  lurks  in  the 
 folds  of  the  newspaper  and  the  pages  of  the  magazine 
 and  the  novel.' 
 
 There  may  be  other  reasons  for  this  omnipresent 
 unbelief,  but  the  principal  reason  is,  I  believe,  the 
 neglect  of  our  foundations,  the  disregard  of  our  own 
 bookless  religion,  the  almost  disdain  of  Natural 
 Religion.  Even  bishops  will  curl  their  lips  and  toss 
 their  heads  when  you  speak  to  them  of  that  natural 
 and  universal  religion  which  existed  before  the 
 advent  of  our  historical  religions,  nay,  without  which 
 all  historical  religions  would  have  been  as  impossible 
 as  poetry  is  without  language.  Natural  religion  may 
 exist  and  does  exist  without  revealed  religion.  Re- 
 vealed religion  without  natural  religion  is  an  utter 
 impossibility.  While  some  of  our  missionaries  are 
 delighted  when  they  meet  with  some  of  the  funda- 
 mental doctrines  of  their  own  religion  expressed 
 almost  in  the  same  words  by  so-called  pagans  or 
 black  men.   others  seem  to  imagine  it  robbery  that 
 
SACRED  BOOKS.  571 
 
 any  truth  at  all  should  be  found   in   non-Christian 
 religions. 
 
 Surely  a  truth  is  not  less  a  truth  because  it  is 
 believed  by  heathens  also,  because  it  belongs  to  that 
 religion  which  is  universal?  It  is  easy  enough  to 
 discover  the  blemishes  of  other  religions,  though  many 
 of  them  seem  far  more  gross  and  repulsive  to  us  than 
 they  really  are. 
 
 '  It  is  hardly  fair.'  as  a  friend  of  mine  wrote  to  me, 
 'to  translate  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, — they 
 are  so  infinitely  inferior  to  our  own.' 
 
 Yes,  they  are,  but  that  is  the  very  reason  why  we 
 should  look  all  the  more  carefully  and  eagerly  for 
 any  grains  of  truth  that  may  be  hidden  beneath  an 
 accumulation  of  rubbish. 
 
 The  heart  and  mind  and  soul  of  man  are  the 
 same  under  every  sky,  in  all  the  varying  circum- 
 stances of  human  life ;  and  it  would  indeed  be  awful 
 to  believe  that  any  human  beings  should  have  been 
 deprived  of  that  light  '  which  lighteth  every  man 
 that  cometh  into  the  world.'  It  is  that  light  which 
 lighteth  every  man,  and  which  has  lighted  all  the 
 religions  of  the  world,  call  them  bookless  or  literate, 
 human  or  divine,  natural  or  supernatural,  which 
 alone  can  dispel  the  darkness  of  doubt  and  fear  that 
 has  come  over  the  world.  What  our  age  wants  more 
 than  anything  else  is  Natwral  Religion,  Whatever 
 meaning  different  theologians  may  attach  to  Super- 
 natural Religion,  history  teaches  us  that  nothing  is 
 so  natural  as  the  supernatural.  But  tin-  supernatural 
 must  always  he  super-i/mposed  on  the  Natuml. 
 Supernatural  religion  without  natural  religion  is  a 
 house   built   <»n    sand,   and    when,   as   in   our  days,  the 
 
572  LECTURE    XX. 
 
 rain  of  doubt  descends,  and  the  floods  of  criticism 
 come,  and  the  winds  of  unbelief  and  despair  blow, 
 and  beat  upon  that  house,  that  house  will  fall,  because 
 it  was  not  founded  on  the  rock  of  bookless  religion, 
 of  natural  religion,  of  eternal  religion. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 Allow  me  in  a  few  words  to  recall  to  your  memory 
 the  purpose  of  this  course  of  lectures.  It  was 
 to  be  a  survey  of  the  materials  which  exist,  and 
 many  of  which  have  but  lately  been  brought  to  light, 
 for  studying  the  origin,  growth,  and,  in  many  cases, 
 the  decay  also  of  religious  ideas. 
 
 In  order  to  define  the  exact  limits  of  our  inquiry, 
 it  was  necessary,  first  of  all,  to  determine  what  ideas 
 could  properly  be  considered  as  religious  ;  and  I  had 
 therefore  to  devote  some  of  my  early  lectures  to  a 
 definition  of  religion,  and  to  an  historical  examination 
 of  the  more  important  definitions  of  religion  given 
 by  theologians  and  philosophers  of  different  ages  and 
 different  countries. 
 
 After  that,  I  felt  it  incumbent  upon  myself  to 
 explain  why  I  looked  upon  an  historical  treatment  of 
 religious  ideas  as  the  one  most  likely  to  lead  to  results 
 of  permanent  value.  I  had  to  defend  the  Historical 
 School  against  a  very  common  misapprehension,  as 
 if  the  historian  cared  only  about  facts,  without 
 attempting  to  interpret  them  ;  and  as  if  his  interest 
 even  in  these  facts  ceased  the  moment  he  approached 
 his  own  time.  The  true  object  of  the  Historical 
 School  is  to  connect  the  present  with  the  past,  to 
 interpret  the  present  by  the  past,  and  to  discover,  if 
 possible,  the  solution  of  our  present  difficulties,  by 
 tracing  them   back   to    the    causes  from  which  they 
 
SACRED    BOOKS.  573 
 
 arose.  It  is  surely  no  very  bold  assumption  that  the 
 greatest  thinkers  of  India,  Persia,  Greece,  Rome,  of 
 the  Middle  Ages,  and  of  the  whole  of  Europe  since 
 the  revival  of  learning,  are  at  least  as  good  as  we 
 ourselves,  and  that  they  who  have  been  our  teachers 
 and  masters  may  continue  to  be  our  guides,  even 
 though  we  may  pass  beyond  the  point  which  they 
 had  reached. 
 
 This  is  the  position  which  I  felt  bound  to  defend 
 against  that  other  school  of  philosophers  who  seem 
 to  think  that  our  own  inner  consciousness  is  not  only, 
 as  we  all  admit,  a  very  important  source  of  in- 
 formation, but  should  be  looked  upon  as  the  one 
 and  only  source  from  which  to  draw  a  knowledge 
 and  understanding  of  Natural  Religion.  They  surely 
 forget  that  even  that  inner  consciousness  of  theirs  is 
 but  the  surface  of  the  human  intellect,  resting  on 
 stratum  upon  stratum  of  ancient  thought,  and  often 
 covered  by  thick  layers  of  dust  and  rubbish,  formed 
 of  the  detritus  in  the  historical  conflicts  between 
 truth  and  error. 
 
 After  having  thus  determined,  first  of  all,  what 
 should  form  the  special  object  of  our  study,  and 
 secondly,  what  I  consider  the  best  method  of  that 
 study— after  having  defined,  in  fact,  the  What  and 
 the  How — I  felt  free  to  proceed  to  a  consideration  of 
 the  materials  for  a  proper  study  of  Natural  Religion, 
 or  what  may  be  called  the  Wherewith  of  our  study. 
 
 In  order  to  proceed  systematically,  it  seemed  to  me 
 necessary  to  divide  Natural  Religion  into  three 
 branches,  according  as  what  I  call  the  Beyond  or  the 
 Infinite  was  perceived  in  nature,  in  man,  or  in  the 
 self,  and  named  accordingly  in  different  ways. 
 
574  LECTURE   XX. 
 
 Of  these  three  branches  of  Natural  Religion  I  hope 
 to  treat  the  first,  which  I  call  Physical  Religion,  in 
 my  next  course  of  lectures.  We  shall  have  to 
 examine  in  that  course  the  numerous  names,  de- 
 rived from  the  phenomena  of  nature,  by  which  the 
 ancient  people  endeavoured  to  apprehend  what  lies 
 beyond  the  veil  of  nature.  We  shall  meet  with  the 
 so-called  gods  of  the  sky,  the  earth,  the  air,  the  storm 
 and  lightning,  the  rivers  and  mountains.  My  principal 
 object  will  be  to  show  how  the  god  of  the  sky,  or,  in 
 some  countries,  the  god  of  the  storm-wind,  assumes 
 gradually  a  supreme  character,  and  then  is  slowly 
 divested  in  the  minds  of  his  more  enlightened  wor- 
 shippers of  what  we  may  call  his  physical  or  mytho- 
 logical attributes.  When  the  idea  had  once  sprung 
 up  that  nothing  unworthy  should  ever  be  believed  of 
 the  gods,  or,  at  least,  of  the  father  of  gods  and  men, 
 the  process  of  divestment  proceeded  very  rapidly, 
 and  there  remained  in  the  end  the  concept  of  a 
 Supreme  Being,  still  called,  it  may  be,  by  its  ancient 
 and  often  no  longer  intelligible  names,  but  repre- 
 senting in  reality  the  highest  ideal  of  the  Infinite,  as 
 a  father,  or  as  a  creator,  and  as  a  loving  ruler  of  the 
 universe.  What  we  ourselves  call  our  belief  in  God 
 the  Father,  is  the  last  result  of  this  irresistible  de- 
 velopment of  human  thought. 
 
 There  are  two  more  spheres  of  religious  thought, 
 as  I  pointed  out  at  the  beginning  of  my  lectures,  ac- 
 cording as  the  Infinite  was  perceived,  not  only  behind 
 the  phenomena  of  nature,  but  behind  man,  as  an  ob- 
 jective reality,  and  behind  man,  as  a  subjective  reality. 
 
 In  the  former  sphere  of  thought  we  discover  the 
 germs  of  what  I  call  Anthropological  Religion,  which 
 
SACRED  BOOKS.  575 
 
 meets  us  again  and  again  in  different  ages  and  in 
 widely  distant  parts  of  the  world.  Its  genesis  is 
 very  clear.  Something  not  merely  human,  or  some- 
 thing superhuman,  was  discovered  at  a  very  early 
 time  in  parents  and  ancestors,  particularly  after  they 
 had  departed  this  life.  Their  names  were  preserved, 
 their  memory  was  honoured,  their  sayings  were  re- 
 corded, and  assumed  very  soon  the  authority  of  law. 
 As  the  recollection  of  fathers,  grandfathers,  great- 
 grandfathers and  still  more  distant  ancestors  became 
 vaguer  and  vaguer,  their  names  were  surrounded  by 
 a  dim  religious  light.  The  ancestors,  no  longer 
 merely  human,  approached  more  and  more  to  the 
 superhuman,  and  this  is  not  far  removed  from  the 
 divine. 
 
 Offerings,  such  as  had  been  presented  to  the  gods  of 
 nature,  were  tendered  likew^e  to  the  ancestral  spirits, 
 and  when  the  very  natural  question  arose,  who  was 
 the  ancestor  of  all  ancestors,  the  father  of  all  fathers, 
 the  answer  was  equally  natural, — it  could  only  be 
 the  same  father,  the  same  creator,  the  same  loving 
 ruler  of  the  universe  who  had  been  discovered  behind 
 the  veil  of  nature.  D  y  au  s,  the  sky,  and  the  Supreme 
 God,  was  now  called  Dyaush-pitar,  Heaven-Father, 
 in  Greek  Zevj  it arrjp,  in  Latin  Ju-piter. 
 
 But  while  in  some  parts  of  the  world  the  idea  of 
 the  primeval  father  .was  identified  with  the  idea  of 
 the  primeval  god,  it  assumed  another  character 
 among  other  races,  namely  that  of  the  first  man,  the 
 type  of  all  mankind,  being  god,  not  as  the  father,  but 
 as  the  son1,  intimately  connected  with  the  father,  yet 
 
 1  St.  Luke  iii.  38,  'which  was  the  son  of  Adam,  which  was  the 
 son  of  God.' 
 
576  LECTUKE    XX. 
 
 not  to  be  confounded  with  him.  This  idea,  too,  as 
 you  will  see,  arose  and  grew  spontaneously  from  the 
 soil  of  our  common  human  nature,  and  I  need  not 
 tell  you  in  what  religion  it  has  found  its  fullest  ex- 
 pression and  most  perfect  historical  realisation. 
 
 The  third  sphere  of  religious  thought  is  that  which 
 I  called  Psychological,  because  it  is  filled  with  intel- 
 lectual endeavours  after  that  which  lies  beyond  man, 
 as  a  self-conscious  subject,  conscious  of  self,  whatever 
 that  self  may  be.  That  self  has  been  called  by  many 
 names  in  the  different  languages  of  the  world.  It 
 was  called  breath,  ghost,  spirit,  mind,  soul,  genius, 
 and  many  more  names  which  constitute  a  kind  of 
 psychological  mythology,  full  of  interest  to  the  stu- 
 dent of  language  and  philosophy.  It  was  afterwards 
 called  the  Ego,  or  the  person,  but  even  these  names 
 did  not  satisfy  man,  as  he  became  more  and  more 
 conscious  of  a  higher  self.  The  person  was  dis- 
 covered to  be  a  rpersona  only,  that  is  a  mask;  and 
 even  the  Ego  was  but  a  pronoun,  not  yet  the  true 
 noun,  the  true  word  which  self-unconscious  man  was 
 in  search  of.  At  last  the  consciousness  of  self  arose 
 from  out  the  clouds  of  psychological  mythology,  and 
 became  the  consciousness  of  the  Infinite  or  the  Divine 
 within  us ;  the  individual  self  found  itself  again  in 
 the  Divine  Self — not  absorbed  in  it,  but  hidden  in  it, 
 and  united  with  it  by  a  half-human  and  half-divine 
 sonship.  We  find  the  earliest  name  for  the  Infinite, 
 as  discovered  by  man  within  himself,  in  the  ancient 
 Upanishads.  There  it  is  called  Atmci,  the  Self,  or 
 Pratyag-dtmd,  the  Self  behind,  looking  towards  Para- 
 mdtmd,  the  Highest  Self.  Socrates  knew  the  same 
 Self,  but  he  called  it  Daimonion,  the  indwelling  God. 
 
SACRED    BOOKS.  577 
 
 The  early  Christian  philosophers  called  it  the  Holy 
 Ghost,  a  name  which  has  received  many  interpreta- 
 tions and  misinterpretations  in  different  schools  of 
 theology,  but  which  ought  to  become  again  what  it 
 was  meant  for  in  the  beginning,  the  spirit  which 
 unites  all  that  is  holy  within  man  with  the  Holy  of 
 Holies,  or  the  Infinite  behind  the  veil  of  the  Ego,  or 
 of  the  merely  phenomenal  self. 
 
 This  is  but  a  very  imperfect  sketch  of  what  I  think 
 a  complete  study  of  Natural  Religion,  in  its  three 
 great  branches,  ought  to  be  ;  and  though  I  feel  myself 
 far  too  old  and  far  too  incompetent  to  survey  the 
 whole  of  that  immense  field  of  religious  thought, 
 I  hope  that  those  who  follow  me  in  this  place 
 will  carry  out  this  great  work,  which  requires  many 
 labourers  and  many  diverse  gifts. 
 
 pp 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABEL,  Dr.,  page  209. 
 
 Abelard's     Theologia    Christiana, 
 
 46. 
 Abipones,  the,  346. 
 Abraham,  language  of,  305. 
 Abyssinia,   aboriginal    dialects    of, 
 
 340; 
 Abyssinian  language,  309. 
 Accent  in  Vedic  Sanskrit,  285. 
 Acer,  205. 
 
 Achaemenian  dynasty,  302. 
 Acidus,  205. 
 
 —  sharp,  bitter,  439. 
 
 Active  verb,  a  psychological   fact, 
 
 406. 
 Acts  conceived  as  passive,  387. 
 Acumen,  205. 
 Acus,  acer,  439. 
 Acute,  204. 
 Acutus,  204. 
 
 Adam  of  Bremen,  454  note. 
 Adevi&m,  228. 
 Aditi,  131,  145,  145  note. 
 Adityas,  class  of  deities,  499. 
 Adjectives  in  osus,  35  note. 
 Admiration  as  religion,  65. 
 Adonai,  528,  529. 
 Adonis  and  Aphrodite,  525. 
 Adonis,  death  of,  528. 
 
 —  feast  of,  530. 
 
 —  feast  of,  celebrated  at  different 
 
 times  of  the  year,  530. 
 ^Ecg.,  A.-S.,  205. 
 yEgypt,    Helena    conveyed    to,    by 
 
 Hermes,  493. 
 Aeneas,  46  S. 
 Aeolic  dialect,  292. 
 Aeolus,  16S. 
 
 V 
 
 a-qp,  air,  29. 
 
 Aeschylus,  in  the  Agamemnon,  on 
 
 Zeus,  384. 
 Aesthetic  feelings  in  religion,  64. 
 yEthra,  mother  of  Theseus,  493. 
 Africa,  religions  of,  340. 
 
 —  races  of,  three  types  among  the, 
 
 342- 
 
 —  languages  of,  342. 
 
 African  languages,  authorities   on, 
 516. 
 
 —  mythology,  517. 
 Africans,  religion  of  the,  216. 
 Agamas,  the  forty-five,  542. 
 Agglutinative  languages,  320. 
 Agni,  fire,  128. 
 
 —  Fick  on  the  derivation  of,  439 
 
 note. 
 Agnihotra  sacrifice,  performed  twice 
 
 a  day,  525. 
 Agnoia,  224. 
 Agnostic,  225. 
 Agnosticism,  108,  223,  224,  225. 
 
 —  modern,  224. 
 
 —  Huxley's  definition  of,  224. 
 Agnostics,  70,  71. 
 dyvajaros,  225. 
 
 Agraya»esh/i    sacrifice   at   harvest. 
 
 525- 
 Ague,  205. 
 AH,  root,  438. 
 Ahana,  Athene,  434. 
 Ahura  Mazda,  496. 
 aWrjp,  ether,  29. 
 AK,  the  root,  204-205. 
 
 —  derivatives  of,  205. 
 Akademos,  493. 
 Akkadian  inscriptions,  325. 
 
580 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Alb,  272. 
 
 Albanian,  303. 
 
 All  things  full  of  the  gods,  72. 
 
 Allah,  Al-Ilah  the  god,  554. 
 
 Allat,  527. 
 
 Allophylian,   instead    of  Turanian, 
 
 325- 
 Altaic  languages,  326,  328. 
 Amathia,  225. 
 America,  languages  of,  343. 
 
 —  four   centres    of    language    and 
 
 religion,  344. 
 
 —  Central,  languages  of,  345. 
 
 —  people  of,  supposed  to  come  from 
 
 Asia  or  Europe,  346. 
 American  languages,  208. 
 
 —  grammars  of,  508  note. 
 Ameshaspenta,  class  of  deities,  499. 
 Amharic,  309-310. 
 
 Ammianus  on  the  feast  of  Adonis, 
 
 530- 
 Amnion,  60  note. 
 Analogical   School    of   Mythology, 
 
 426,  484. 
 
 —  its  chief  representatives,  484. 
 
 —  broad   mythological    outlines  of 
 
 the,  485. 
 
 —  of  Philology,  419. 
 Anamites,  language  of  the,  337. 
 Ananta,  endless,  147. 
 Ancestors,  worship  of,  156,  575. 
 Ancestral  spirits,  173,  175. 
 
 —  offerings  to,  174,  186. 
 Andacht,  36. 
 
 Angles,  286. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon,  286-287. 
 
 Anima  mundi,  Stahl's  theory  of  an, 
 
 392- 
 Animare,  391. 
 Animism,  157,  15S,  160,    213,   349, 
 
 39x>  392- 
 
 —  true  key  to,  391. 
 Ant-hill,  disturbing  an,  357. 
 Anthropological  religion,  164,  574. 
 Anthropologic     der    Naturvolker, 
 
 AVaitz,  510. 
 Anthropology,  199. 
 Anthropomorphism,  213,  251. 
 
 —  true  key  to,  391. 
 Anthropopithecos,  207. 
 
 Apache  dialect,  209. 
 
 Apam  napat,  lightning,  500. 
 
 Apollon,  467,  488-489. 
 
 —  and  Mars,  as  identical,  477. 
 
 —  Phoebos,  479. 
 
 —  performs    services   to    Admetos, 
 
 ,494- 
 'Airokkajv  and  ^AttXoiv,  429. 
 
 Apuleius,  177. 
 
 Arabic,  304,  308. 
 
 —  words- for  religion  in,  93. 
 
 —  classical,  308. 
 
 —  as  spoken,  308. 
 Aramaic,  304-305. 
 
 —  a  lingua  franca,  305. 
 
 —  or  Chaldee,  used  by  the  Jews, 
 
 306. 
 
 —  or  Syriac,  used  by  Christians,  306. 
 
 —  used  by  Christ,  306. 
 Aranyakas,  541. 
 Araucanian  of  Chili,  209. 
 Archaeology,  200. 
 
 Arctic  or  Hyperborean  tribes,  345. 
 
 Ares,  467. 
 
 Argeiphontes,  killer  of  Argos,  469, 
 
 480. 
 Argos  changed  into  a  peacock,  469 
 
 note. 
 Arguna,  231. 
 
 Argyll,  Duke  of,  126,  128,  227. 
 Aristotle,  72,  72  note,  278. 
 
 —  his  etymologies,  30. 
 
 —  theology,  45. 
 
 —  all  things  full  of  the  gods,  72. 
 Armenian,  295,  303. 
 Armorican,  290. 
 
 Arowakes,  345. 
 
 Aryan  family,   203,    282-2S3,    311, 
 
 3I5- 
 
 —  North-western  division,  293,  295. 
 
 —  South-eastern  division,  294-295. 
 
 —  religions,  214. 
 
 —  theogony,  227. 
 
 —  savages,  241. 
 
 —  words    shared    in    common    be- 
 
 longed to  the  whole  Aryan  race, 
 
 295- 
 
 —  Separation,   the   various    Aryan 
 
 languages    existed   as    dialects 
 before  the,  294. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 581 
 
 Aryan  roots,  385. 
 
 —  concept  of  a  Somebody,  sending 
 
 and  curing  diseases,  489. 
 Aryas  in  Italy,  291. 
 Asarni,  301. 
 Ashtoreth,  529,  531. 
 
 —  attracted  by  Aphrodite,  532. 
 Ashy  grey  from  shame,  1 79. 
 Asoka,  inscriptions  of,  298,  299,  300. 
 
 —  edicts  for  the  people,  29S. 
 
 —  in  living  but  ungrammatical  dia- 
 
 lects, 299-300. 
 
 Asramas,  the  four,  67. 
 
 Asru,  tear,  438. 
 
 Ass  vomiting  gold,  487. 
 
 Assyria  and  Babylon,  ancient  lan- 
 guage of,  304. 
 
 Astarte  in  Greece,  457. 
 
 Asura,  living,  130. 
 
 As-va,  equus,  281,  367. 
 
 Athapascan,  209. 
 
 Atheism,  213,  228. 
 
 —  Fichte  on,  58. 
 Athene,  434. 
 
 —  her  birth  from  the  head  of  Zeus, 
 
 437- 
 
 —  her  name  Koryphasia,  437. 
 
 —  Benfey's  theory  of,  442. 
 
 —  Darmesteter  on,  445  note. 
 
 —  and  Daphne,  477,  4S3. 
 Athenian  prayer  for  rain,  17 r. 
 Athwyfmo,  aptyana,  443. 
 Atma,  163,  164. 
 
 —  the  self,  576. 
 Atthis,  or  Attica,  444. 
 Attic  dialect,  292. 
 Aurora,  epithets  of,  416. 
 Auspicia,  39. 
 Australia,  dialects  of,  347. 
 
 —  religions  of,  348. 
 Australians,  religion  of  the,  216. 
 Author's  definition  of  religion,  193. 
 Avaiki,  the  Hades  of  the  Mangaians, 
 
 460. 
 A  vesta,  12,  302,  556. 
 
 —  endless  in  the,  147, 
 
 —  its  parts,  544. 
 
 —  originally  not  written,  559. 
 Avi&i,  the  lower  regions  of  Brah- 
 
 mans  and  Buddhists,  460. 
 
 Ayenbite,  180. 
 —  of  Inwyt,  180. 
 Azteks  in  Mexico, 
 
 344- 
 
 BABARA,  son  of  Pravahana,  235. 
 
 —  same  as  Vayu,  the.  wind,  235. 
 Babylon,  statues  of,  79. 
 
 —  sacred  hymns  of,  304. 
 
 —  more  modern  in  civilisation  than 
 
 the  Vedic  hymns,  305. 
 
 —  and  Nineveh,  Turanian  civilisa- 
 tion of,  325. 
 
 Bacon,  138. 
 
 Baegert  on  California,  567. 
 Baga,  Zend,  436, 
 Ballantyne,  100  note,  231  note. 
 Bancroft,  453  note. 
 Bang,  364. 
 
 Bantu  languages,  on  East  coast  of 
 Africa,  312. 
 
 —  races  or  Kafirs,  341. 
 Harrow,  467. 
 
 Barth,  A.,  22  note. 
 Basks,  303. 
 Be,  to,  127. 
 Bedouin  poetry,  308. 
 Beginning  of  all  things,  131. 
 Being,  127. 
 
 —  and  not  being,  268. 
 Bel  or  Baal,  455. 
 
 Belief  and  knowledge,  70  note, 
 
 —  Flint  on,  70  note. 
 
 —  in  God  the  Father,  574. 
 Benfey's  theory  of  Athene,  442. 
 Bengali,  301. 
 
 Beowulf,  the,  2S6. 
 
 Berber  language,  340. 
 
 Bergaigne,  521. 
 
 Bergamese,   used  by  Arlechino  in 
 
 Italian  Comedies,  301. 
 Berger,  317. 
 Berkeley,  369,  370,  371. 
 
 —  on  the  general  image  of  a  tri- 
 angle, 382. 
 
 Beseelen,  39  t. 
 
 Beyond,   the,    123.    126.    131,    139, 
 
 190. 
 Bhaf/,  96,  97. 
 
 —  bhaj/ati,  96. 
 Bhaga,  the  divider,  436. 
 
582 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bhagavadgitfi,  97,  98,  99,  231,  233. 
 
 Bhaktoj  97. 
 
 Bhakti,  96,  97,  99,  100,  101  note. 
 
 Bhumij,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 
 Bible,  Bulgarian  translation,  293. 
 
 Biblical  words  for  religion,  42  note. 
 
 Bier,  36S. 
 
 Bihari,  301. 
 
 Buhop,  31. 
 
 Bitter,  116. 
 
 Blackfoot   Indian   on  his   religion, 
 
 565- 
 Bleek,  African  languages,  341,  516. 
 Blood,  hair,  and  bones,  teach  nothing 
 
 of  religion,  338. 
 Blushing,  179. 
 Bodhism,  104,  542. 
 Bodley,  Sir  T.,  71  note. 
 Bogti,  Slavonic,  general  name  for 
 
 god,  436. 
 Bohemian,  293. 
 
 —  its  literature,  293. 
 Bolognese  used  by  the  Doctor  in 
 
 Italian  Comedies,  301. 
 Book-religions,  214-215,  549. 
 Bopp,  268,  278. 
 Bore,  to,  368,  368  note. 
 Boreas,  the  wind  blowing,  437. 
 
 —  and  Zephyros,  169. 
 
 Borneo,  use  of  handkerchief  in,  272. 
 
 Bourke,  J.  G.,  349  note. 
 
 Bove,  Giacomo,  on  the  language  of 
 
 Tierra  del  Fuego,  83. 
 Bovine  stare,  without  words,  352. 
 Bow  in  the  cloud,  171. 
 Bow-wow  in  English,  but  kliff-klaff 
 
 in  German,  362. 
 Bow-wow   theory,    206,    207,    208, 
 
 362,  373- 
 Brahman,  104  note. 
 Brahma?/ a,  252. 
 Brahmanas,  249,  296,  301,  541. 
 
 —  in  prose,  296. 
 
 —  Sanskrit  of  the,  296. 
 Brahmanic  view  of  religion,  67. 
 
 Brahnianism,  2 
 
 75>  295- 
 
 —  sacred  books  of,  214. 
 Brahuis,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 Brazil,  aborigines  of,  346. 
 Breal  and    Decharme,  representa- 
 
 tives of  the  analogical   school 
 
 of  mythology,  484. 
 Bright  and  heavenly  beings,  242. 
 Brihadarawyaka,  11 1. 
 Brinton,    Dr.,    134   note,    20S,    208 
 
 note,  217,  453  note,  512  note. 
 Brockhaus,  17. 
 Bronze  at  Hissarlik,  201. 
 Brugmann,  422  note. 
 
 —  his  derivation  of  <re /3a?,  42  note. 
 Buddha,  221,  271,  275,  551. 
 
 —  and  Maluhkya,  105. 
 
 —  means  Awakened,  543. 
 
 —  followers  of,  543. 
 
 —  religion  of,  553 
 Buddha's  teaching,  107. 
 
 —  existence  after  death,  109. 
 
 —  faith,  191. 
 Buddhism,  93-107,  541. 
 
 —  no  god  recognised  by,  28. 
 
 —  is  it  a  religion?  28,  104. 
 
 —  not  a  religion,  89. 
 
 —  no  Creator  mentioned  in,  105. 
 
 —  included  in  authors  definition, 
 
 190. 
 
 —  the  nothing  of,  190. 
 
 —  sacred  books  of,  214. 
 
 —  Northern  and  Southern,  295. 
 
 —  used  the  spoken  dialects,  299. 
 
 !    —  become  merely  formal  in  Japan, 
 
 339- 
 
 j    —  Southern,  542. 
 I    —  Northern  or  Bodhism,  542,  543. 
 I    —  political  circumstances  separated 
 it  from  Brahman  ism,  555. 
 Buddhist  missionaries,  78. 
 
 —  condemned  to  death,  113. 
 
 —  Sanskrit,  299. 
 Buddhist  canon,  299. 
 
 —  Northern,  299,  300,  301. 
 
 —  Chinese  translations  of,  300. 
 
 —  Southern,  299,  301. 
 
 —  reduced  to  writing,  300. 
 
 —  less  grammatical  than  the  North- 
 
 ern text,  300. 
 Buddhists,     meaning     of     dharma 
 among,  95. 
 
 —  reject  a  Creator,  253,  255. 
 
 —  number  of,  543. 
 Button,  264. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 583 
 
 Bidder  on  the  Laws  of  Mann,  536 
 
 note. 
 Bulgaria,  333  note. 
 Bulgaric,  333,  333  note. 
 Bulgarian,  Old,  293. 
 
 —  translation  of  the  Bible,  293. 
 Bunsen  and  Niebuhr,  84. 
 Burden,  368. 
 
 Buriiits,  traces  of  grammar  in  the 
 
 dialect  of  the,  332. 
 Burmese  language,  337. 
 Bum,  to,  366. 
 Burnouf,  Eugene,  19. 
 Bushmen,  the,  341. 
 
 CAERIMONIA,  38. 
 
 Caird,  Dr.,  162  note,  240  note. 
 
 —  his  definition  of  religion,  57,  60, 
 61. 
 
 Caldwell,  Bishop,  217. 
 Calendar,  the,  523. 
 California,  faith  of  the  natives  of, 
 254. 
 
 —  denied  by  Sir  J-  Lubbock,  255. 
 
 —  Baegert  on,  567. 
 Callaway,  Dr.,  516. 
 Cambodians,  language  of  the,  337. 
 Cap(i)ta,  437. 
 
 Care,  cura,  454. 
 
 Caribes,  the,  345. 
 
 Carolingian  Psalms,  287. 
 
 Carthage,  language  of,  Semitic,  340. 
 
 Carthaginian,  307. 
 
 Cassiodorus,  on  religio,  39. 
 
 Cassock,  272  note. 
 
 Castren,  217-249,  249  note,  332. 
 
 Category  of  causality,  250. 
 
 Cattle,  breeders  of,  200. 
 
 Caucasus,  languages  of  the,  337. 
 
 Causality,  404. 
 
 Cause,  the  infinite  as,  124. 
 
 —  concept  of,  139. 
 
 —  origin  of  the  idea  of,  254. 
 Celtic,  287,  290. 
 
 —  migration,  290. 
 
 —  literature  is  recent,  290. 
 
 —  mythology  and  ancient  religion, 
 
 290. 
 Celtic,    features    in   common    with 
 Latin,  29^. 
 
 Celtic,  Bel  or  Beal,  455. 
 
 Celts  in  Galatia,  290. 
 
 Ceres,  from  Sk.  root  kar,  449. 
 
 —  from  karsh,  450. 
 Cerfus  (sardha),  450. 
 Cerus  Manus,  450. 
 Cetwayo,  217. 
 Ceylon,  283. 
 
 Chaldee  or  Western  Aramaic,  306. 
 
 —  of  the  Targums,  306. 
 Chamisso   on    Polynesian   religion, 
 
 89  note,  357. 
 Chance  and  purpose,  226. 
 Chantepie  de  la  Saussaye,  222. 
 Characters    common   to   gods    and 
 
 heroes  of  different  names,  485. 
 Chasuble,  the,  272,  272  note. 
 Chester,  84. 
 
 Children  beat  their  dolls,  212. 
 Chimpanzee,  Kant  on  the,  266. 
 China,  544. 
 
 —  ancestral  law  in,  173. 
 
 —  family  council  in,  174. 
 
 —  books  of  record  in,  174. 
 
 —  filial  piety  in,  775. 
 
 —  religions  of,  214. 
 Chinese,  320,  321. 
 
 —  words  for  religion  in,  92. 
 
 —  Classic  of  filial  piety,  175. 
 
 —  literature,  age  claimed  for,  unsup- 
 
 ported by  evidence,  323. 
 destroyed  B.C.  213,  323. 
 
 —  Classics,  546,  547. 
 Chingis-Khan,  329,  331. 
 
 Christ,  221,  555,  used  an  Aramaic 
 dialect,  and  also  Greek,  306. 
 
 Christian  religion,  553. 
 
 Christianity,  2  7  5 ,  548. 
 
 Christians  called  adeoi,  228. 
 
 Cicero,  127,  derivation  of  rel'giop, 
 33,  34  *ote,  35. 
 
 —  definition  of,  38,  38  note,  86,  88. 
 
 —  and  the  cultus  deorum,  182. 
 
 —  on  the  gods,  226. 
 Civil  theology,  45. 
 Clamor  concomitans,  374. 
 Classical    dialects,     stagnant     and 
 
 dead,  297. 
 Climatic   influences    affect    myths, 
 530. 
 
584 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Clouds,  Stars,  Sky,  153. 
 Cocoa-nut    tree    and     cacao    tree, 
 
 467. 
 Codrington,  Dr.,  on  the  Melanesian 
 
 languages,  347,  515. 
 Confucianism,  92. 
 Confucius  on  offerings  to  ancestors, 
 
 175.. 
 
 —  traditions  of,  215. 
 
 Cogitare,  as  including  sensation, 
 perception,  memory,  etc.,  353. 
 
 Cognoscere  Deum  et  imitare,  56. 
 
 Colenso,  Bishop,  and  the  Zulu,  349. 
 
 Coin,  84. 
 
 Colonial  Office,  504. 
 
 Colonies,  Ethnological  Records  of 
 the,  505. 
 
 Colotes  on  religion,  521. 
 
 Comedia  delle  arte,  301. 
 
 —  dialects  used  in  the,  301. 
 Communication,  not  language,  356. 
 Comparative  Mythology,  417,  423. 
 
 —  A.  Barth  on,  424. 
 Comparative  Philology,  278,  418. 
 
 —  three  schools  of,  419. 
 Comparative  Theology,  47,  52-53. 
 
 —  Religion,  47. 
 
 Concept,  a,  without  a  name  for  it, 
 
 354- 
 Conception,  162. 
 Concepts,  115,  1 16. 
 
 —  and  intuitions,  119,  143. 
 
 —  Euler  on,  122. 
 
 —  follow  precepts,  129. 
 
 —  general,  207. 
 
 —  origin  of,  211,  372. 
 
 —  121  radical,  366. 
 
 —  and  their  signs  are  simultaneous, 
 
 36  g.m 
 
 —  genesis  of  the  first,  inevitable, 
 
 373- 
 Conceptual  foundation  of  language, 
 378. 
 
 —  thought,  the  Dyad  as  foundation 
 
 of  all,  379. 
 
 —  world,  our,  381. 
 Confucius,  544,  555. 
 
 —  and      Lao-jze,     contemporaries, 
 
 545  • 
 
 —  religion  of,  553. 
 
 Confucius,  writer,  not  author,  of  the 
 
 Kings,  560. 
 Conscience,  63,  177-182. 
 
 —  no  Sanskrit  word  for,  178. 
 
 —  conscientia,  1S0. 
 
 —  Lorimer  on,  182  note. 
 Conscious  and  conscience,  178,  180- 
 
 181. 
 Cook,  Captain,  on  the  language  of 
 
 the  Tierra  del  Fuegians,  82. 
 Cope,  the,  272. 
 Copernican  system,  254. 
 Cornish,  290. 
 Corpus,  451. 
 Cosmological  arguments,  198,  240, 
 
 241,  244,  250. 
 
 —  answers  to,  245. 
 Cotta  on  religion,  88. 
 Council  of  Nicea,  8. 
 Cowell,  100  note,  231  note. 
 
 Cox,  Sir  G-.  W.,  a  representative  of 
 the  Analogical  School  of  My- 
 thology, 484,  492. 
 
 Creation,  problem  of,  239. 
 
 —  Semitic  assertion  of,  253. 
 
 —  Aryan  denial  of,  254. 
 Creator,  Darwin's  view  of  a,   226, 
 
 260. 
 
 —  in  the  Veda,  245,  251,  253. 
 
 —  rejected  by  Buddhism,  253,  255- 
 
 256. 
 
 —  by  Heraclitus,  253,  255. 
 
 —  by  the  negroes,  256. 
 
 —  religions  without  a,  256. 
 Creed,  credo,  102. 
 
 Criticism,  benefit  of  honest,  192. 
 Croatian,  293. 
 Cuckoo,  364. 
 Cult  us  deorum,  38. 
 Cuneiform    inscriptions    of    Cyrus, 
 Darius,  and  Xerxes,  302. 
 
 —  language  of  the,  302. 
 
 —  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  304. 
 
 —  language   of,    akin    to    that    of 
 
 Abraham,  305. 
 Curtius,  G.,  422. 
 
 —  derivation  of  Vesta,  450. 
 Customs  and  laws  as  materials  for 
 
 the  study  of  Natural  Religion, 
 280. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 585 
 
 Customs  and  Laws,  519. 
 
 —  based  on  religious  ideas,  520. 
 
 —  served   as  a   basis  for  religious 
 
 ideas,  520,  522. 
 
 —  domestic,  523. 
 
 —  are  at  first  only  useful  usages, 
 
 then  gain  a   sacred  character, 
 
 535- 
 
 Cute,  204. 
 Cymric,  290. 
 
 DABH,  DAGH,  440. 
 
 DAH,  root,  438. 
 
 daifxuviov,  178. 
 
 Dalmatic,  the,  272. 
 
 Danayu,  Holtzmann  on,  439  note. 
 
 Danish,  287. 
 
 Daphne,  438,  440,  441,  477,  483. 
 
 Acupvrj  and  Aavx^rj,  440. 
 
 Dar,  to  tear,  dru,  tree,  382. 
 
 Darapsky,  Dr.,  209  note. 
 
 Darmesteter  on  /Sraddha,  102. 
 
 —  on  Athene,  and  Zend  atar,  445 
 
 note. 
 
 —  on  Varuraa,  495,  497. 
 Darsapur»amasa     Sacrifice,     every 
 
 full  and  new  moon,  525. 
 Darn,  tree,  281. 
 Daru%a,  cruel,  with  a  wooden  heart, 
 
 383- 
 Darwin,  257,  260,  261. 
 
 —  on  Dog's  religion,  69  note. 
 
 —  on  religious  devotion,  69  note. 
 
 —  on  Tierra  del  Fuego,  82. 
 
 —  his  view  of  a  Creator,  226. 
 
 —  his  Origin  of  Species,  258. 
 
 —  admits  a  Creator,  260. 
 
 —  his  Descent  of  Man,  266. 
 
 —  his  view  of  man,  267. 
 
 —  his  real  merit,  273. 
 
 Dawn,  the,  144-146,  146  note,  430. 
 
 —  plurality  of,  in  the  Veda,  432. 
 Day,  from  root  DHAGH,  438. 
 Deaf  and  Dumb,  signs  used  by  the, 
 
 359- 
 
 Dcath,  continuance  after,  150. 
 De  Bonald,  138  note,  237  note. 
 De  Drosses  on  Fetishism,  219. 
 Decharme,  Myfhologie  de  la  Grice 
 Ancienne,  480  note. 
 
 Definition,  29. 
 
 —  three  kinds  of,  29, 
 
 —  etymological,  29. 
 
 —  historical,  32. 
 
 —  dogmatic,  32. 
 
 —  of  Religion,  author's  own,   102, 
 
 114. 
 Definitions,  different  classes  of,  59. 
 8e«Ti8at(xoi'ia,  42,  43. 
 Delbriick,  422  note. 
 Deluge,  as  punishment,  171. 
 De  Lagarde,  on  Riickert's  Dravidian 
 
 lectures,  325  note. 
 Denee  Dindjie  language,   210,  210 
 
 note. 
 Demi-gods,  154. 
 Dependence  as  religion,  68,  70. 
 Stppa,  383. 
 Descartes,  71  note,  257,  278. 
 
 —  on  the  infinite,  123. 
 
 —  on  God,  255. 
 
 —  use  of  cogitare,  353. 
 Determinatio  est  negatio,  125. 
 Deus,  (leva,  31,  196  note,  393,  394. 
 
 —  singular  or  plural,  56. 
 
 —  and  ©eo?,  393,  446. 
 Aevrepos,  dvitiya,  42 1. 
 Deva,  bright,  31,  99  note,  393. 
 Devas,  gods,  32,  87,  137,  218,  227. 
 Devatas,  163. 
 
 Devotion,  49. 
 
 —  idea  of,  in  the  Upanishads,  98,  99. 
 Dhammapada,  the,  III,.  190. 
 Dharma,  94. 
 
 —  among  the  Buddhists,  95. 
 Dharma,  support,  9;. 
 Dluirman,  one  who  holds,  95. 
 Dharmas,  the  nine,  542. 
 Dharma-sutras,  537. 
 Dialectic  Growth,  4 1 9. 
 
 —  School  of  Fhilology,  420. 
 Dialects  went  their  own  way,  294. 
 
 —  literary,  297. 
 
 —  non-literary,  297. 
 Dies  Martis,  289. 
 
 Dieu,  le  bon  Dieu,  in  Iroquois,  513, 
 Differentiated  characters  came  first, 
 
 128. 
 Dig,  to,  366. 
 Dii,  32. 
 
586 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Diligentes,  diligere,  33. 
 
 Din,  in  Arabic,  93. 
 
 Dionysos,  born  at  Nysa,  469  note. 
 
 Dios-kuroi,      their      war      against 
 
 Athens,  493. 
 Diphthong  ai,  285. 
 Divina  Cornedia,  539. 
 Divine,  57. 
 
 —  Mind  and  Will,  Martinean,  57, 
 
 62. 
 
 —  as  cause,  197. 
 
 —  as  excellence,  197. 
 
 —  as  the  negative  of  human  weak- 
 
 ness, 198. 
 Divinity,  218. 
 Dog,  feelings  of  the,  69  note. 
 
 —  knowing  red  and  blue,  360. 
 — ■  we  never  see  a,  381. 
 Dogmatic  definition,  32. 
 
 —  definitions  of  religion,  37,  43,  44. 
 
 —  and  practical  religion,  46,  47. 
 
 —  theology,  46,  47. 
 
 Dogs,  have  a  religion,  69  note. 
 Donner,  Prof.,  378,  380. 
 
 —  on  Akkadian,  325  note. 
 Dooms,  173. 
 
 Doric  dialect,  292. 
 
 Doubts  on  the  existence  of  the  gods, 
 in  the  Veda  and  in  Indian  lite- 
 rature, 227-228. 
 
 Draft,  368. 
 
 Dramatic  or  dynamic  stratum  of 
 language,  390,  391. 
 
 —  key  to  Animism,  etc.,  391. 
 Dravidian    or   Tamulic    languages, 
 
 336. 
 
 Drink  poured  on  the  ground  in 
 memory  of  the  dead,  186. 
 
 Drobisch,  16,  17. 
 
 Druides,  drui,  383. 
 
 Dryades,  154,  383. 
 
 Duck,  468. 
 
 Dugald  Stewart,  283. 
 
 Duke,  437. 
 
 Duo,  dvau,  420. 
 
 Dure-ante,  with  distant  ends,  147. 
 
 Dutch,  Old,  Middle,  and  Modern, 
 287. 
 
 Dyad,  the,  as  the  beginning  of  con- 
 ceptual thought,  379, 
 
 Dyaus,  sky,  127,  130. 
 
 —  a  masculine,  409. 
 Dyaus,  410,  465. 
 
 —  Zeus,  448. 
 
 Dyaus  and  Ouranos,  501. 
 Dyaush-pita,  130,  410. 
 Dynamic  stage,  385,  390. 
 Dyu,  289. 
 
 —  first  masculine,  then    feminine, 
 
 409. 
 
 E  changed  to  i,  35  note. 
 
 Ear  of  corn,  205,  278. 
 
 Earth,  152. 
 
 East-Nordish,  Swedish,  and  Danish, 
 
 287. 
 East-Teutonic,  290. 
 Eddas,  the  two,  287. 
 Edkins,  Dr.,  320. 
 Egg,  the  Golden,  248. 
 
 —  in  Finland,  249. 
 
 —  in  Egypt,  249. 
 
 —  in  the  Orphic  mythology,  249. 
 Egg  on,  205. 
 
 Ego- knowledge,  115,  149. 
 
 —  the,  576. 
 
 Egypt,  the  religion  of,  339. 
 
 —  language  of,  thought  by  some  to 
 
 be  the  most  primitive,  340. 
 
 —  words  for  God  in,  393,  394. 
 represent  real  powers  of  the 
 
 universe,  396. 
 Egyptian  deities,  79. 
 
 —  ancient,  321-322. 
 Ehkili  dialect,  310. 
 Eight  Religions,  549. 
 Elder,  31. 
 
 Elegantes,  elegere,  33. 
 Elegare,  lost  verb,  33  note. 
 Eloah,  554. 
 Emanation,  theory  of,  245. 
 
 —  in  the  Veda,  245,  247. 
 End  and  endless,  1 46. 
 Energies,  127. 
 English,  237,  282,  284. 
 
 —  Judge   and    Buddhist   criminal, 
 
 113. 
 
 —  modern,  203. 
 
 —  grammar,  purely  Teutonic,  291. 
 
 —  twice  influenced  by  Latin,  291. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 587 
 
 English   Dictionary,  words    in    the 
 
 New,  365. 
 Ennius,  155. 
 — on  Jupiter,  163. 
 Ens  or  <  ss<  ntia,  127. 
 Entwich  lung,  259. 
 Epicurean  view  of  the  Gods,  226. 
 'Eiroxf)  or  agnosticism,  108,  224. 
 Erinnys,  465. 
 Erinys,  433. 
 
 —  called  Eumenides,  4S1. 
 Eros,  466. 
 
 —  and  Psyche,  177. 
 Eskimos,  567. 
 
 —  legends  of,  2 1 7. 
 
 —  language  of,  345. 
 
 '  Essays  and  Reviews,'  258. 
 
 Estonians,  336,  545. 
 
 Ether,  number  of  vibrations  in  a 
 
 second,  118. 
 Ethical  theory,  1 70. 
 Ethiopic,  309. 
 
 —  inscriptions  in  ancient,  309,  500 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Ethnological  Records  of  the  English 
 
 Colonies,  505. 
 Ethnology,  199. 
 
 —  United  States  Bureau  of,  506. 507. 
 Ethno-psychological  philology,  423 
 Etruscan,  303. 
 
 Etymological  definitions,  29. 
 
 —  in  India,  30. 
 
 —  of  religion,  33-36. 
 Etymological  meaning  must  be  phy- 
 sical, 465. 
 
 Etymological  School  of  Comparative 
 
 Mythology,  426,  428. 
 Etymological  School  of  Philology, 
 
 419. 
 Etymologies,  29-3  r. 
 
 —  learned  and  popular,  of  the  G  reeks 
 
 and  Romans,  466. 
 Euler  on  concepts,  122. 
 Eumenides  or  Erinyes,  481. 
 EiW/3aa,  42. 
 
 Evans,  Mr.  A.,  on  Hissarlik,  201. 
 Evidence,  three  kinds,  admitted  by 
 
 Kapila,  229,  230. 
 Evolution,  theory  of,  143,  245,  257. 
 
 —  meaning  of,  258,  259. 
 
 Evolution,  Kant's  views  on,  259. 
 —  Herder's  views  on,  261. 
 Experience,  religious,  begins    with 
 
 the  senses,  195. 
 Extra-mundane  beings,  Logos  and 
 
 causes,  141. 
 Eye,  368. 
 
 FACTS,  logic  of,  240. 
 
 Faith,  242. 
 
 Family  council  in  China,  174. 
 
 Faraud,  Bishop,  209. 
 
 Farther  India,  languages  of,  337. 
 
 Father  of  the  father,  255. 
 
 Father  Sky,  410. 
 
 Fear  of  God,  64. 
 
 —  as  religion,  64. 
 
 —  made  the  gods,  1 70. 
 
 —  of  the  gods,  171. 
 
 Feeling  or  knowledge  as  motive  of 
 action,  55. 
 
 —  and  perceiving  are  beyond  com- 
 
 prehension, 117. 
 
 —  is  resisting,  119. 
 Fenris  wolf,  the,  486. 
 Feronia,  as  Juno  Virgo,  475. 
 Festivals,  annual,  524. 
 Festus,  on  religio,  34. 
 Fetish,  Jupiter  a,  158. 
 
 —  worshippers,  212. 
 
 Fetishism,   87,   154,   1 58,   160,   196 
 note,  213,  219,  349. 
 
 —  of  negroes,  219. 
 Feuerbach's  definition  of  the  gods, 
 
 74- 
 Fichte,  69-70,  72. 
 
 —  on  Atheism,  58. 
 moral  action,  172. 
 
 Fick's  derivation  of  agni,  439  note. 
 Fides,  or  troth  with  the   Romans, 
 
 176. 
 Filial  piety  in  China,  17;. 
 Fimbulty,  the  Celtic  unknown  god, 
 
 225  note. 
 Finite,   implies    infinite,    122-125. 
 
 127,  195. 
 
 —  Savages  without  a  word  for,  125. 
 Finiteness  in  space,  time,  and  qual- 
 ity, 122. 
 
588 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Finland,  popular  tales  in,  494. 
 Finnic  class,  334. 
 
 —  Prof.  Donner  on  the,  378,  380. 
 Finno-Ugric  class,  333. 
 
 —  SAR  in,  378,  380. 
 Fins  or  Suomalainen,  334. 
 
 —  worshipped   natural    objects    in 
 
 their  visible  form,  400. 
 Fire  assisting  the  sun,  187. 
 First  cause,  the,  250. 
 Fleischer,  17. 
 Flemish,  287. 
 Flint,  Prof., Theism,  51  note,  63  note, 
 
 70  note,  170,  181  note,  182  note, 
 
 276  note. 
 Foreign  gods,  455. 
 
 —  influences  on  Greek  mythology, 
 
 456. 
 Fors,  fortuna,  472,  473. 
 
 —  Primogenia,  473. 
 
 Fortuna,  the  goddess  in  Egyptian, 
 i.  e.  Eenenet,  474. 
 
 —  Huiusce  Diei,  475. 
 
 —  identified  with  Harit,  475. 
 Founders  of  the  historical  religions 
 
 never  claim  the  exclusive  au- 
 thorship, 553. 
 
 never  the  writers  of  Sacred 
 
 Books,  557. 
 
 Founding  of  cities,  200. 
 
 Frater,  frere,  hermano,  316,  317. 
 
 Freedom,  as  religion,  69,  7°- 
 
 French,  earliest  works  in,  291. 
 
 Friedrich  der  Grosse,  488. 
 
 Frisian,  Old,  287. 
 
 Frbhde,  his  derivation  of  Loxias 
 from  laksh,  490  note. 
 
 Fulahs,  the,  341. 
 
 Fulgurator,  Jupiter,  167. 
 
 Fulminator,  Jupiter,  167. 
 
 Future,  the,  in  Romanic  languages, 
 318. 
 
 T  and  (  vary  on  Greek  soil,  429. 
 Gaelic,  29D. 
 
 (xainiini,  the  philosopher,  235. 
 Gainism,  295,  542,  543. 
 
 —  sacred  books  of,  214. 
 
 —  Ahgas  of,  301. 
 
 —  canon  reduced  to  writing,  454, 
 
 or  527  a.  D.  canon  closed  third 
 
 cent.  B.  c,  542  note. 
 Galatia,  in  Asia.,  Celts  in,  290. 
 Galla  dialect,  340. 
 Gallatin,  512  note. 
 Gallic  of  the  ancient  inscriptions  of 
 
 Gaul,  290. 
 Galton  and  the  human  face,  381. 
 
 —  on  compound  images  in  the  mind, 
 
 359- 
 Gangetic  languages,  337. 
 6ranita  dyavapWthivyoA,  father  of 
 
 heaven  and  earth,  140. 
 6raratkurava  Artabhaga,  ill. 
 Garbe,  P.,  230  note. 
 (ratakas,  the,  1 14. 
 Gates  of  knowledge,  194. 
 
 —  of  ivory,  and  of  horn,  468. 
 Gathas,  the,  544. 
 
 Gatha  dialect  or  mixed  Sanskrit, 
 299. 
 
 —  Buddhist  books  translated  into 
 
 Chinese,  300. 
 Gather,  to,  365. 
 Geez  or  Ethiopic,  309. 
 Geiger,  499  note. 
 Gellius,  35,  35  note,  36. 
 Gender,  407. 
 
 —  powerful  element  in  producing 
 
 mythology,  408. 
 
 Genus  proximum,  54. 
 
 Geographical  contact  has  nothing 
 to  do  with  grammatical  simi- 
 larity, 294. 
 
 —  distribution  of  roots,  450. 
 Georgian  language,  338. 
 Gerda,  the  giantess,  485. 
 Gesture-language,  358. 
 Gewissen,  179-180. 
 Gewissensbi&se,  1  So. 
 
 Ghar,  to  glow,  470. 
 Gifford,  Lord,  1-15. 
 
 —  his  study  of  Plato  and  Spinoza, 
 
 3-4- 
 
 —  his  rejection  of  miracles,  3. 
 
 —  a  true  Christian,  3. 
 
 —  his  will,  4-7,  15,  578-5S4. 
 
 —  definition  of  Natural  Theology,  5. 
 
 —  his  views  on  lecturers  and  lec- 
 
 tures, 6,  7. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 589 
 
 Gill,  Rev.  W.W.,  515,  516. 
 
 —  on  shame,  179  note. 
 
 (xina,  means  the  conqueror,  543. 
 
 —  followers  of,  543. 
 Gnosticism,  224. 
 
 God,  true  knowledge  of,  5. 
 
 —  or  the  gods,  religion  has  to  do 
 
 with,  28. 
 
 —  what  is  meant  by,  58. 
 
 —  the  will  of,  61. 
 
 —  the  fear  of,  64. 
 
 —  the  unknown,  71. 
 
 —  not  the  only  object  of  religion, 
 
 188. 
 
 —  existence  of,  a  syllogism,  198. 
 
 —  the  idea  of,  among  savages,  213. 
 
 —  the  predicate  of,  the  great  prob- 
 
 lem, 219. 
 
 —  as  Causa  sui,  255. 
 
 —  Descartes  on,  255. 
 
 —  belief  in,  not  founded  on  a  subtle 
 
 syllogism,  241* 
 
 —  origin  of  the  concept  of,  394. 
 
 —  Egyptian  names  for,  394. 
 
 —  Semitic  names  for,  396. 
 
 —  Finnish  names  for,  399. 
 
 —  the  Father,  belief  in,  574. 
 God-given,  God-inspired,  236. 
 Gods  of  barbarians,  30. 
 
 —  or  Devas,  subordinate  beings  in 
 
 Southern  Buddhism,  105. 
 
 —  names  of,  derived  from  material 
 
 objects,  131. 
 
 —  unnamed  in  Egypt,  225  note. 
 
 —  foreign,  455. 
 
 ■ —  names  of  the,  462. 
 Goethe,  65,  225,  264. 
 
 —  and  Lavater,  59. 
 
 —  on  reverence,  65. 
 
 —  on  creation,  227. 
 Goidelic,  290. 
 Goldwin  Smith,  181  note, 
 Goldziher,  453  note. 
 Gonds,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 
 Good  Mind  and  Bad  Mind  of  the 
 
 Hurons,  313. 
 Gospels,  not  written  by  Christ,  561. 
 Gothic,  203,  286,  287,  288. 
 
 —  parallel  with  Vedic  Sanskrit,  2S9. 
 Grammar,  general,  53. 
 
 Grammar,  comparative,  53. 
 
 Granville,  Lord,  505. 
 
 Grassmann,  derivation  of  Ceres,  450. 
 
 Gratiae,  the,  472. 
 
 G rat us,  471. 
 
 Great,  the  infinitely,  138. 
 
 —  gods,  1 54. 
 
 Great  gods  of  heaven   and   earth, 
 
 65,000,  396. 
 Great  Spirit,  402. 
 
 —  Gitse-Manito,  511  note. 
 Greece  and  Rome,  religion  of,  275. 
 Greece,    worship    of    Astarte    and 
 
 Melikertes  in,  457. 
 Greek  has  greater  similarity  with 
 Sanskrit  than  with  Latin,  292. 
 
 —  used  by  Christ,  as  well  as  Ara- 
 
 maic, 306. 
 Greeks,  faith  of  the  early,  89. 
 
 —  and  Romans,  religion  of  the,  215. 
 Greenlanders,  345. 
 
 Grey,  Sir  George,  506. 
 G/ihya-siltras,  536. 
 Grimm,  268,  278. 
 
 —  on  Wuotan,  489. 
 Grimm's  Law,  287,  288. 
 Grosventre  Indians,  402. 
 Gruppe,  Professor,  22,  24,  74,  141, 
 
 I43>  I44>  148,  194  note. 
 
 —  on  the  birthplace  of  religion,  78. 
 
 —  his  theory,  78,  79,  So. 
 
 —  on  worship,  1S7. 
 
 —  on  Zeus  and  Dyaus,  409. 
 
 —  on  my  thological  etymologies,  442, 
 
 471  note. 
 
 —  his  bickerings,  451  note. 
 
 —  three    causes   of    the    spread   of 
 
 religion,  75. 
 
 —  definition  of  religion,  76. 
 
 —  historical   transmission    of    reli- 
 
 gion, 78. 
 Gubernatis,  100  note. 
 Gujarati,  301. 
 Gundert,  Dr.,  327  note. 
 Guru,  99. 
 Gynmosophists  of  the  Ganges,  229, 
 
 H,  Sanskrit,  represents  gh,  dh,  and 
 bh,  435. 
 
590 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Hades,    name    for    in    Polynesian, 
 
 Sanskrit,  etc.,  460,  461. 
 Haeckel's  deep-sea  ooze,  265  note. 
 
 —  his  views  on  man,  267. 
 Haerfest,  A.-S.,  autumn,  451. 
 Hahn,  T.,  86  note,  217. 
 
 —  on  African  languages,  516. 
 Hahn's  general  categories  of  mytho- 
 logical characters,  492. 
 
 Hale,  Horatio,  217,  312  note. 
 Haltias  or  powers  of  nature  in  Fin- 
 land, 399,  400. 
 
 —  a  spirit-like  power,  401. 
 
 —  in  man,  401. 
 
 Hamitic  languages,  340,  343. 
 
 Hand,  hinthan,  to  seize,  368. 
 
 Handkerchief,  how  used  in  Borneo, 
 272. 
 
 Hanif,  a  religious  enthusiast,  554. 
 
 Hannibal  and  the  ten  Roman  sol- 
 diers, 176. 
 
 Har,  the  root,  471. 
 
 Hardy,  Dr.,  12  note. 
 
 Haritas  and  Xapires,  452,  470. 
 
 Harran,  bilingual  inscription  of,  308. 
 
 Harrari  dialect,  310. 
 
 Hartenstein,  16. 
 
 Hartung,  176  note. 
 
 Haryaksha,  471. 
 
 Haupt,  16. 
 
 Hawai'i,  Hades  in  Tahitian,  461. 
 
 Hear,  to,  387. 
 
 Heaven  and  earth,  147. 
 
 Heaven-father,  130,  242. 
 
 Hebrew,  305,  307. 
 
 —  spoken  by  Moabites  and  Philis- 
 
 tines, 307. 
 
 —  ceased  to  be  spoken  in  general, 
 
 307. 
 
 —  a  corrupt,  still  used,  308. 
 
 —  El,  compared  with  Nutar,  395. 
 Hebraic,  304,  307. 
 
 Hegel,  25,  69,  70,  220,  264. 
 
 —  his  definition  of  religion,  190. 
 Helena,  467,  492,  493. 
 
 —  carried  off  by  Theseus,  493. 
 
 —  conveyed  to  ^gypt,  493. 
 Heljand,  the  286. 
 Hellenic  class,  292. 
 Hellwald,  141. 
 
 Helmholtz,  120. 
 
 —  on  perceptions,  121. 
 
 —  on  perceptions  and  names,  359. 
 Heracles  and  Herculus,  455. 
 Heraclitus,  on  fire  as  the  origin  of 
 
 all  things,  245,  253. 
 
 —  rejects  a  creator,  253,  255. 
 Herder's  views  on  evolution,  261- 
 
 264. 
 
 —  on  man,  263,  268. 
 
 —  on  language,  264. 
 Hermann,  Gottfried,  16,  265,  267. 
 
 —  on  Adam  and  Eve,  265. 
 Hermeias,  a  god,  453,  482. 
 Hermes,  171,  465. 
 
 Hesiod,  the  first-born  gods,  154. 
 Hibbert  Lectures,  23. 
 
 —  translations  of  M.  M.'s,  94. 
 
 —  on  religious  knowledge,  194. 
 Hidatsas  in  North  America,  402. 
 High  German,  289,  290. 
 
 —  Old,  Middle,  and  Modern,  290. 
 Himalayan  hill  tribes,  Mr.  Oldham 
 
 on,  502. 
 Himyaritic  inscriptions,  309. 
 Hissarlik,  strata  at,  201. 
 Historical  definition,  32. 
 
 —  of  religio,  36-41. 
 
 —  evolution,  143. 
 
 —  argument  for  Natural  Reliyion 
 
 198. 
 
 —  method,  198. 
 
 Historical  School,  103,199,  201,  203, 
 207,  210,  212,  214,  216,  217, 
 219,  220,  258,  269,  276,  277. 
 
 —  deals  with  the  present  and  not 
 
 only  with  the  past,  278. 
 History  versus  Theory,  196. 
 
 —  and  Theory  inseparable,  223. 
 
 —  original  meaning  of,  258. 
 
 —  and   science   must  not   be   con- 
 
 founded, 276,  277. 
 Holtzmann  on  Danayu,  439  note. 
 Holy  Ghost,  179,  577. 
 Hommel,  Die  Sumero-Akkaden,  325 
 
 note. 
 Homer  and  Hesiod  as  Theologi,  45. 
 Homer's  etymologies,  29. 
 Hooker,  Dr.,  152. 
 Hos,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 591 
 
 Hostis,  stranger  and  enemy,  533. 
 Hottentots,  the,  312,  341. 
 
 —  their  belief  in  a  Supreme  Being, 
 
 86. 
 
 —  mythology  among  the,  517. 
 Houzian,  M.,  69  note. 
 
 Hri,  shame,  179. 
 
 —  to  be  ashamed,  471. 
 Hsiao-king,  or  classic  of  filial  piety, 
 
 547- 
 Human  element  in  revelation,  9 
 Humboldt  on  the  power  of  a  word, 
 
 462  note. 
 Humboldts,  the  two,  269. 
 Hunfalvy,  Dr.,  on  Ugric  languages, 
 
 320  note,  321. 
 Hunters  and  fishermen,  200. 
 Huron,  tale  of  the  world-supporting 
 
 tortoise,  312. 
 
 —  of  Good  Mind  and  Bad  Mind,  3 1 3. 
 Hush,  Husch,  and  their  derivatives, 
 
 363. 
 Huvishka,  Kanishka,  of  the  Indo- 
 
 Scythian  races,  343. 
 Huxley,  117  note,  239. 
 
 —  definition  of  Agnosticism,  224. 
 
 —  on  the  Aryan  savage,  242. 
 Hyacinthus,  441. 
 
 ICELAND,  literature  of,  287. 
 
 Icelandic,  287. 
 
 Idas  and  Lynkeus,  493. 
 
 Identification  and  comparison,  448. 
 
 Ihering,  Eudolf  von,  533  note. 
 
 Illyrian  languages,  293. 
 
 Images,  359^ 
 
 Imitatio  Christi,  the,  539. 
 
 Imitations,  might  they  have  been  the 
 
 origins  of  language  ?  208  note. 
 Ina,  in  Polynesia,  460. 
 Inca,  philosopher,  349. 
 Incas,  the,  345. 
 India,  etymological  definitions  in, 
 
 30. 
 
 —  the  birthplace  of  religion,  78. 
 
 —  and  Persia,  languages  of,  294. 
 
 —  language  of,  in  third  century  B.  C. , 
 
 298,  299. 
 Indian  vernaculars,  301. 
 
 Indian    vernaculars,  Western    and 
 
 Eastern  divisions,  301. 
 Indie  Class,  295. 
 Individual  i-eligions,  552. 
 
 —  do  not  really  exist,  557. 
 Indo-European  family,  283. 
 Indra,  1 01,  167. 
 
 —  indu,  raindrops,  454. 
 Inductive  sciences,  277. 
 Inexpressible  thoughts,  355. 
 Infinite,  the,  of  Schleiermacher,  57. 
 
 —  love  of  the,  81  note. 
 
 —  implied  by  finite,  122,  125. 
 
 —  Descartes  on  the,  123. 
 
 —  in  space,  123. 
 
 —  in  time,  124. 
 
 —  as  cause,  124. 
 
 —  savages  without  a  word  for,  125. 
 
 —  Beings,  129. 
 
 —  early  names  of  the,  131. 
 
 —  germs  in  the  Veda  of  the,  137. 
 
 —  and  finite,  inseparable,  139,  149. 
 
 —  perception  of  the,  129,  134,  140, 
 
 145,  149,  218. 
 
 —  per  se,  the  141,  145,  149. 
 
 —  sensuous  pressure  of  the,  141. 
 
 —  pure  concept  of  the,  141. 
 
 —  in  Nature,  in  Man,  and  in  the 
 
 Self,  141. 
 
 —  in  man  as  an  object,  155. 
 
 —  perception  of  the,  led  to  religious 
 ideas,  149. 
 
 —  behind  man,  156. 
 
 —  in  man  as  a  subject,  160. 
 
 —  the,  195. 
 
 —  agents,  195. 
 
 —  as   palpable   as   the   finite,    196 
 
 note. 
 
 —  craving  for  the,  250. 
 
 —  behind  the  finite,  3S4. 
 Inflectional  Stage,  320. 
 Ino  Leucothea,  460. 
 
 Li  petto,  354. 
 Inscriptions  of  Asoka,  300. 
 
 —  of  Cyrus,  302. 
 
 —  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  304. 
 
 —  of  King  Mesha,  307. 
 
 —  of  Zabad,  308. 
 
 —  of  Harran,  30  S. 
 
 —  Himyaritic,  309. 
 
592 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Inscriptions  in  ancient  Ethiopie,  309. 
 Intangible  objects,  150,  153. 
 Intellectism,  391. 
 Intelligere,  33. 
 Interjectional  theory,  363. 
 Interjections    and    imitations,    the 
 origin  of  language,  206. 
 
 —  not  of  real  language,  208. 
 Intuition  as  the  foundation  of  re- 
 ligious knowledge,  228,  229. 
 
 Intuitions  and  concepts,  119,  143. 
 Invention  of  a  religion  impossible, 
 
 553- 
 
 Inwyt,  180. 
 
 Ionic  dialect,  292.  , 
 
 'Iov5ai<Tfj.6s,  42. 
 
 Iranic  Class,  302. 
 
 Irish,  290. 
 
 Istar  and  Tammuz,  525. 
 
 —  Sayce's  translation  of  poem,  526. 
 
 —  myth  of,  528  note. 
 
 Lsvara,  Supreme  Lord,  98,  101  note, 
 
 230. 
 Italian,  earliest  writings  in,  291. 
 
 —  a  vulgar  dialect  of  Latin,  298. 
 Italic,  291. 
 
 Italy,  religion  and  mythology  of, 
 292. 
 
 JADE  at  Hissarlik,  202. 
 Jahve-Zebaoth,  453  note. 
 Japan,  Buddhism  in,  merely  formal, 
 
 339- 
 
 Jehovah,  Semitic,  496. 
 
 Jewish  religion,  275,  553. 
 
 Jews,  early  familiar  with  the  art  of 
 writing,  560. 
 
 Job,  book  of,  556. 
 
 John  the  Divine,  45. 
 
 Jordan,  H.,  473  note,  474  note. 
 
 J  udaism  and  Christianity,  as  differ- 
 ent from  all  other  religions,  5 1 . 
 
 —  hardly  a  religion  at  first,  89. 
 
 —  a  Semitic  religion,  548. 
 
 —  Palestine  the  home  of  true,  548. 
 Judaismus,  42. 
 
 Julien,  Stanislas,  322  note. 
 Jumala,  an  embodied  being,  401. 
 Jupiter,  130,  410. 
 
 —  a  fetish,  T58. 
 
 Jupiter  Pluvius,  167. 
 
 —  Eulgurator,  167. 
 
 —  Fulminator,  167. 
 
 —  Tonans,  167. 
 
 —  Juno,  etc.,  nothing  but   names, 
 
 462. 
 Ju-piter  for  Dyu-piter,  289. 
 Jutes,  286. 
 
 KAFIRS,  belief  of,  86,  341. 
 Aaitanya,  system  of,  100. 
 Kalevala,  249,  334,  335. 
 
 —  praj'ers  from  the,  401,  402. 
 Kalevvipoeg,  the,  336. 
 Kant,  60,  239,  253. 
 
 —  on  sensations,  118. 
 
 —  on  concepts  and  intuitions,  119, 
 
 143- 
 Kant's  definition  of  religion,  189. 
 
 —  category  of  causality,  250. 
 
 —  view  of  evolution,  259,  268. 
 
 —  on  the  Chimpanzee,  266. 
 Kapardin  and  kshayadvira,  names 
 
 for  Kudra,  490. 
 Kapila's  three  kinds  of  evidence,  229. 
 Karma,  work,   ill,  112,  112  note, 
 
 113,  190. 
 Kapiros,  451. 
 Kai/jaka,  Kauthuma  and  Taittiri- 
 
 yaka,  235. 
 Aaturmasya  sacrifice  at  the  rainy 
 
 season,  525. 
 Keary,  481  note. 
 Kellgren,  249  note. 
 Ken's  morning  hymn,  569. 
 Kerberos,  453. 
 Khoi-Khoi,  belief  of  the,  86. 
 Khorda-Avesta,  544. 
 Khosa  Kafirs,  86. 
 Khxm-kh'm,  547. 
 Kikafas,  the,  234. 
 King,  the  five  Chinese  classics,  202 
 
 B.C.,  546. 
 Kinyras,  its  derivation,  532  note. 
 Kitchen-midden,  217. 
 Know,  to,  71. 
 Knowledge,  69  note. 
 
 —  or  feeling,  55. 
 
 —  as  religion,  69,  70. 
 
 —  of  what  it  consists,  115. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 593 
 
 Knowledge,  the  gates  of,  194. 
 Kolarian  or  Munda  dialects,  336, 
 
 337. 
 Kols,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 Koran,  214,  215.     See  Quran. 
 Kosala  and  Khema,  108,  109. 
 Krishna,,  97,  98,  99  note,  231. 
 Ks  and  s  in  Greek,  42  note. 
 Kshatriyas,  or  nobility,  542. 
 Kshubh,  42  note. 
 Kxmg  Yung,  the,  547. 
 Kural,  the,  539. 
 
 LABIALS  and  dentals  in  the  Di'nt'e 
 
 Dindjie     language,     210,     210 
 
 note. 
 Lactantius,  33,  34. 
 Lamarck,  261. 
 Lang,    H.,   definition   of    religion, 
 
 81  note. 
 Language    and    thought,    absolute 
 
 identity  of,  24. 
 
 —  no  percept  without,  120. 
 
 —  of    the   cuneiform    inscriptions, 
 
 203. 
 
 —  of  children,  207. 
 
 —  real,  has  no  trace  of  imitative 
 
 sounds,  208. 
 
 —  is    conceptual,    not    perceptual, 
 
 211. 
 
 —  Plato  on,  237. 
 
 —  Rousseau  on,  237  note. 
 
 —  origin  of,  237. 
 
 —  Herder  on,  264. 
 
 —  the  Rubicon,  not  passed  by  ani- 
 
 mals, 273. 
 
 —  a  material  for  the  study  of  Na- 
 
 tural Religion  280,  281. 
 
 —  unity  of,  in  India  and  England, 
 
 283-  .         .     . 
 
 —  religion    and    nationality,   inti- 
 
 mate relationship  between,  313 
 note. 
 
 —  and  religion,  338. 
 
 —  wonder  of,  351. 
 
 —  is  not  thought  plus  sound,  356. 
 
 —  conceptual  foundation  of,  378. 
 
 —  dramatic  or  dynamic  stratum  of, 
 
 390,  391- 
 
 —  growth  of,  404. 
 
 Language  and  thought,  one  and  in- 
 divisible, 406. 
 
 —  Science of,  13,  21,  22,25,70,282. 
 Languages,  survey  of,  282. 
 
 —  morphological    classification   of, 
 
 3X3- 
 
 —  three  stages  of,  319,  320. 
 
 —  Monosyllabic  or  isolating,  319. 
 
 —  Agglutinative,  320. 
 
 —  Amalgamating  or  organic,  320. 
 Laomedon,    city    of,   destroyed   by 
 
 Herakles,  493. 
 Lao-tse  or  Lao-^ze,  544,  556. 
 
 —  system  of,  215. 
 
 —  seventy- two  years  old  when  born, 
 
 545- 
 
 —  religion  of,  553. 
 Laplace,  239. 
 Lark,  468. 
 Latin,  291. 
 
 —  the  lingua  vulgaris   of  Europe, 
 
 291. 
 
 —  twice  influenced  English,  291. 
 
 —  borrowed  much  from  Greek,  292. 
 
 —  more  like  Celtic  than  Greek,  292. 
 
 —  features  in  common  with  Greek, 
 
 294. 
 Law,  the  parent  s  word,  173. 
 
 —  Prophets  and  Hagiographa,  548. 
 Lecturers  and  lectures,  Lord  Gif- 
 
 ford's  views  on,  6,  7,  1 4. 
 Lectures,  subjects  of  these,  14. 
 Legere,  legio,  34. 
 Leipzig,  University  of,  16,  17. 
 Leminkainen  substituted  for  Kauko, 
 
 494. 
 Leo,  Prof.,  on  Odin,  4S8. 
 Lepsius,  Nubische  Grammatik,  341 , 
 
 342>  343- 
 
 Lersch,  30  note. 
 
 Letters,  inherent  meaning  of  cer- 
 tain, 375. 
 
 Lettic,  293. 
 
 Lettish,  293. 
 
 —  literature,  293. 
 
 Libyan  language,  340. 
 
 Lictor,  U'jare,  ligere,  35. 
 
 Liebrecht  on  the  likeness  of  Votan 
 and  Odinn,  457,  458. 
 
 Liechtenstein  on  Kafir  belief,  86. 
 
 Qq 
 
594 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Light,  tremor  becoming  a  sensation 
 of,  117. 
 
 —  as  a  manifestation  of  God,  434. 
 Lightning  as  an  active  agent,  3 89. 
 Li-fci,  the,  547. 
 
 Lippert,  158  note. 
 
 Literature  fixes  one  dialect  out  of 
 
 many,  297. 
 Lithuanian,  293. 
 
 —  literature,  293. 
 Littrd,  41  note. 
 
 Local   adverbs   before   declensions, 
 
 242. 
 Logic  of  facts  and  history,  241. 
 Logos,  25,  46. 
 Lohitic  languages,  337. 
 Lbnnrot,  335. 
 
 —  his  Kalevala,  494. 
 Lord,  437. 
 
 Lorimer  on  conscience,  182  note. 
 Lorinser,Dr.,Bhagavadgita,9;  note. 
 Lotze,  16. 
 Low  German,  286,  289,  290. 
 
 —  Franconian,  287. 
 
 Loxias,    derived    by   Frohde    from 
 
 laksh,  490  note. 
 Ao£ias  and  Ao£u>,  490. 
 Lubbock,  Sir  J.,  on  tribes  without 
 
 religion,  85. 
 
 —  Roskoff's  reply  to,  189. 
 
 —  on  the  Californians,  255. 
 Lucretius'  etymologies,  30. 
 Ludwig  on  the  meaning  of  Nai/.-a- 
 
 sakha,  234. 
 Lun  Yti,  the,  547. 
 Lyall,  239. 
 
 McLEAN,  Rev.  J.,  349  note,  565 
 note. 
 
 Macrobius  on  the  Adonis  feast,  530. 
 
 Magadha,  234. 
 
 Magadhi,  299. 
 
 Ma^nun,  a  madman,  555. 
 
 Mahabharata,  235,  541. 
 
 MaharashM,  301. 
 
 Mahavira,  son  of  Siddhartha  of 
 Ku»^a-grama,  founder  of  Crain- 
 ism,  543. 
 
 Maine,  Sir  H.,  on  law,  173. 
 
 Malabari's  translation    of  Hibbert 
 
 Lectures,  94. 
 Malade,  malato,  enfermo,  317. 
 Malay,  347. 
 
 —  religions,  348. 
 
 Mallery,  Sign  Language,  359  note. 
 Malta,  Arabic  dialect  in,  308. 
 MaluinYya  and  Buddha,  105. 
 Man,  the  infinite  in,  155,  160. 
 
 —  the  something  behind,  155. 
 
 —  the  infinite  behind,  156. 
 
 —  as  manifestation  of  the  infinite, 
 
 164. 
 
 —  originally   perfect    or   a  savage, 
 
 200. 
 
 —  not  satisfied  with  mere  percep- 
 
 tions, 244. 
 
 —  Herder's  views  on,  261,  262. 
 
 —  the  brother  of  the  animals,  263. 
 
 —  possessed  of  a  Haltia,  401. 
 Mana,  132. 
 
 Manavas,  535. 
 Mandaeans,  306. 
 Manito,  133,  510,  511. 
 
 —  means  Beyond,  512. 
 
 —  one  of  many  names  for  the  In- 
 
 finite, 512. 
 
 —  the  Great,  513. 
 
 —  introduced  by  missionaries,  in  a 
 
 personal  sense,  513. 
 Mantras,  collections  of  sacred  poetry, 
 
 54°- 
 Manu,  173,  221. 
 
 —  Law  Book  of,  301. 
 
 —  Laws  of,  535. 
 
 —  mere  rifacimenti  of  older  books, 
 
 536. 
 
 —  Buhler  on  the,  536  note. 
 Manx,  290. 
 
 Many  gods,  before  one  god,  128. 
 MAR,  to  rub,  377. 
 Marathi,  301. 
 
 Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus,  43. 
 Mars,  171. 
 
 Marsh,  G.  P.,  84  note. 
 Martineau,    his    Divine    Mind,   or 
 Wil^  57,62. 
 
 —  on  Zu-eckmassig,  91  note. 
 
 —  on  Ethics,  170. 
 
 —  Study  of  Religion,  256  note. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 595 
 
 Mam,  Polynesian  and  Vedic  Maruts, 
 
 459- 
 
 Maruts,  453. 
 
 Mas,  from  root  MA,  407  note. 
 
 Masurius  Sabinus,  36. 
 
 Material  objects,  worship  of,  128. 
 
 —  form  names  for  the  gods,  131. 
 Materies.,  240. 
 
 Matter  as  something  vile,  118. 
 Matthews  on  the  Great  Spirit,  402. 
 Matil,  or  Martu,  the  Storm-wind, 
 
 460. 
 Mayas,  the,  345. 
 Media  and  Persia,  543. 
 Mehlis,  Dr.,  on  Hermes,  480. 
 Melanesian,  347,  34S. 
 Melikertes,    Melkarth    in    Greece, 
 
 457-  .      . 
 
 Men  and  women  turning  into  plants, 
 
 440. 
 Menander,  177. 
 ■ —  on  Conscience,  182. 
 Mencius,  the  works  of,  547. 
 Mens,  temple  to,  176. 
 Mental  life  and  spirit,  162. 
 Mente  et  ratione  instruere,  39 1 . 
 Mere  concept,  384. 
 Mere  names,  383,  384. 
 Metits,  37. 
 Metus  deorum,  37. 
 Mexico,  religion  of,  344. 
 Milinda,  King,  and  Nagasena,  107. 
 Milinda-pa?dia,  the,  106. 
 Mill,  29  note,  65. 
 
 —  on  Religion,  65. 
 Mimetic  theory,  363. 
 Mincopies,  the,  347. 
 Minister,  31. 
 
 Missionary  enterprise,  504. 
 Mithra-Ahura,  499. 
 Mitra  and  Savit/i,  478. 
 Mitre,  the,  272. 
 Moabites,  307. 
 
 Modern  problems  to  be  traced  back, 
 
 2  39- 
 Modus  cognoscendi  et  colendi  Deum, 
 
 53,  188,  189. 
 Mohammed,  554. 
 ■ —  could    neither    read    nor    write, 
 
 561. 
 
 Q 
 
 Mohammedan  religion,  spread  of,  78. 
 Mohammedanism,  549,  553. 
 Mohawk  in  Oxford,  314. 
 
 —  language,  515. 
 Mofpa  or  Aiaa,  472. 
 Moirae,  the,  481. 
 Monboddo,  Lord,  265. 
 Mongolic  Class,  328,  329. 
 
 —  few  dialects,  331. 
 Mongols,  conquests  of  the,  330. 
 Monkeys  greeting  sunrise,  69  uutr. 
 Monosyllabic  or  isolating  languages , 
 
 3I9- 
 Monotheism,  213. 
 Monstra,  39. 
 Moon,  eclipse  of,  37. 
 
 —  as  a  measurer,  407. 
 Moral  feelings  in  religion,  64. 
 
 —  action,  Fichte  on,  172. 
 
 —  character,  not  affected  by  some 
 
 religions,  196  note. 
 
 —  germs,  433. 
 Morality,  early,  172. 
 
 Morgan,  on  American  Aborigines, 
 
 5°7- 
 
 Morley,  J.,  on  the  historical  spirit, 
 279. 
 
 Morphological  classification  of  lan- 
 guages, 313. 
 
 —  classification,  319. 
 
 —  and    genealogical    classifications 
 
 cannot  run  parallel,  321. 
 
 —  similarity,  no  proof  of  relation- 
 
 ship, 321. 
 Moras,  M.,  letter  to  Descartes,  71 
 
 note. 
 Moses,  556. 
 
 —  did  not  consign  the  Old  Testa- 
 
 ment to  writing,  560. 
 Motu  dialect,  347. 
 Mountains,  151. 
 Muir,  246  note,  566  note. 
 Midler,  Otfried,  268. 
 
 —  on  mythological  names,  461  note. 
 
 —  Johannes,  269. 
 
 —  F.,  341. 
 
 Munda  or  Kol  languages,  330. 
 Mutt  tun,  413. 
 
 MvtJTTipiOV,    4I3. 
 
 1    Mystics,  mediaeval,  49. 
 q   2 
 
596 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Myth,  411. 
 
 —  at  first  a  word,  414. 
 Mythical  theology,  45. 
 Mythological    names,    '  des    circon- 
 
 stances  attenuantes,'  428. 
 
 Mythology,  21. 
 
 ■ —  an  inevitable  phase  in  develop- 
 ment, 22,  51S. 
 
 —  Science  of,  22,  25. 
 
 —  a  kind  of  disease,  22. 
 
 —  not  yet  religion,  168. 
 
 —  a  material  for  the  study  of  Natural 
 
 Religion,  280. 
 
 —  Vedic  and  Teutonic,  288. 
 
 —  elements  whence  spring,  314. 
 
 —  first  formation  of,  389. 
 
 —  Science  of,  founded  on  the  Science 
 
 of  Language,  392. 
 
 —  meaning  of,  in  Greek,  411,  412. 
 
 —  universal,  417. 
 
 —  what  is  Comparative?  417. 
 
 —  why    it    deserves    such    careful 
 
 study,  517. 
 
 —  a  metamorphic  stratum,  518. 
 
 —  Comparative,  47,  417,  423. 
 
 —  A.  Barth  on,  424. 
 
 —  Etymological  School,  426. 
 
 —  Analogical  School,  426. 
 
 —  Psychological  School,  427. 
 
 —  Ethno-psychological  School,  427. 
 MvOos,  412. 
 
 —  means  word,  not  deed,  413. 
 Myths  agreeing  in  one  and  differing 
 
 in  other  names,  492. 
 
 NAGASENA  and   King  Milinda, 
 
 107. 
 NaiA'asakha,  234. 
 Naked  concepts,  arrayed  in  verbal 
 
 uniforms,  355. 
 Names,  115,  116. 
 —  accidental  similarities  of,  454. 
 Naming,  162,  371. 
 Narcissus,  442. 
 National  and  individual  religions, 
 
 552. 
 Natural  and  historical  sciences,  12, 
 
 13. 
 
 Natural  history,  258,  259. 
 
 Natural  Religion,  278,  296 
 
 —  the  author  of,  64. 
 
 —  simplified  form  of,  196. 
 
 —  historical  argument  for,  198. 
 
 —  materials  for  study  of,  280. 
 Natural  Selection,  226,  227. 
 Natural  Theology,  52,  53. 
 
 —  Lord  Gifford's  definition  of,  5,  10. 
 Naturbeseelung,  157. 
 
 Nature,  the  infinite  in,  150,  154. 
 
 —  as  manifestation  of  the  infinite, 
 
 l64-. 
 
 —  the    signs    of,    interpreted  in    a 
 
 religious  sense  in  Old  Testa- 
 ment, 171. 
 
 Na tu rfo r scher,  9 1 . 
 
 Nauseous,  116. 
 
 Navaho  dialect,  209. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar,  bricks  of,  316. 
 
 Necopinus,  35. 
 
 Negative,  the  infinite  per  se,  as  a 
 mere,  149. 
 
 Neglegere,  negligere,  35. 
 
 Neglego,  negligo,  35  note. 
 
 Negroes,  342. 
 
 —  and  fetishism,  159. 
 Neo-Syriac  dialects,  307. 
 Nepali,  301. 
 Nestorian  Inscription,  93. 
 
 —  Christians,  307. 
 Netram,  eye,  from  ni,  36S. 
 New  Guinea,  dialects  of,  347. 
 
 —  religions  of,  347. 
 Newman,  63. 
 
 New  Testament,  9,  214,  215,  561. 
 
 —  Parables  of  the,  traced  to   the 
 
 Talmud,  555. 
 New  Zealander  and  letter,  550. 
 Nicaea,  Council  of,  8. 
 Niebuhr,  Greek  in  Italian,  84. 
 
 —  and  the  historical  school,  268. 
 Nigantha  Nata-putta,  543. 
 Nightingale,  real  note  of  the,  362. 
 Nigidius  Figulus,  35,  35  note. 
 Nihil  est  in  fide   quod   non    ante 
 
 fuer it  in  sensu,  115,  195. 
 Nihil  est   in    intellects   quod   non 
 simul  fuerit  in  lingua,   71,  71 
 note. 
 Nil  admirari,  283. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 597 
 
 Nineteenth  century,  age  of  progress, 
 
 7- 
 Nis  or  nakta  changed  into  vv£,  446. 
 Nis,  Nu£,  Nox,  448. 
 NishJcriya,  98  note. 
 Nitzsch,  34  note. 
 No  in  Syrianian  means  yes,  362. 
 
 —  in  Irish  is  naicc  and  aicc,  362. 
 Nobbe,  16. 
 
 Noire's  theory  of  the  origin  of  ex- 
 pressive sounds,  21 I,  362,  386. 
 
 —  real  merit,  374. 
 
 Noldeke  on  Semitic  languages,  310 
 
 note. 
 
 Nomina  and  cognomina,  476. 
 Normans  in  England,  their  blood 
 
 and  speech,  291. 
 Northern  zone  of  African  languages, 
 
 342- 
 Norwegian,  287. 
 Nothing  of  Buddhism,  the,  190. 
 Noumenal,  72. 
 Nubahs,  the,  341. 
 Nutar,  god  in  Egyptian,  394. 
 
 —  Le  Page  Renouf  on,  394. 
 
 —  strong  power,  395. 
 
 —  compared  with  Hebrew  El,  395. 
 Nymphs,  154. 
 
 OBEDIENCE  as  religion,  66. 
 Objective  as  distinguished  from  the 
 
 subjective  world,  389. 
 Obligatio,  obligio,  35. 
 Obsolete  names,  430. 
 Oceanic  languages,  347. 
 Oculus,  368. 
 Odin,  488. 
 
 —  his  daughter  Saga,  489. 
 Odinn,  454  note. 
 Odysseus,  137. 
 
 —  name  of,  468. 
 OlSa  and  ifffiev,  285. 
 Oken,  school  of,  264,  268. 
 Oldenberg,  Professor,  105  note,  112 
 
 note. 
 Oldham,  on  Eimalayan  hill  tribes, 
 
 50.'. 
 Old  Saxon,  203. 
 Old  Testament,  9.  1 -\  214,  215. 
 
 Old  Testament,  religious  aspect  of 
 the  signs  of  nature  in,  171. 
 
 —  idea  of  writing  familiar  in  the, 
 
 560. 
 
 Olympus  of  unseen  deities,  162. 
 
 Onomatopoetic  theory,  363. 
 
 Ontological arguments, 1 98,  240,  252. 
 
 Open  Court,  definitions  of  religion 
 in  the,  43. 
 
 Opinari,  opinio,  opinatio,  35. 
 
 Oral  tradition,  Vedic  Sanskrit  pre- 
 served only  by,  297. 
 
 Orang-utan  race,  347. 
 
 '  Origin  of  Species,'  Darwin's,  258. 
 
 —  excitement  caused  by,  258,  260. 
 Ormazd,  495,  496. 
 
 —  shows   traces    of    material   con- 
 
 ception, 498. 
 Oronyhateka,  515. 
 Orpheus,  45. 
 I    Oscan,  291. 
 Osiris,  a  Sun-god,  531. 
 
 —  was  slain  and  rose  again,  531. 
 Ossetian,  303. 
 
 Ouranos  and  Dyaus,  501. 
 Ovid's  etymologies,  30. 
 
 PALAEOLITHIC  Man,  208,  208 
 note. 
 
 —  words,    antithetic    meaning    of, 
 
 209. 
 Pali,  or  Magadhi,  299,  301. 
 Pfmini,  grammar  of,  296,  297,  298, 
 
 3°°-  . 
 
 —  his  language  not  Vedic  Sanskrit, 
 
 298. 
 
 —  his   rules  never  infringed,   298, 
 
 299. 
 
 —  his  Sanskrit  used  generally,  300, 
 
 301. 
 Panjabi,  301. 
 Pantomimes,  358. 
 Paramatma,  the  Highest  Self,  576. 
 Pargranya,  167. 
 
 Parrot  never  speaks  Parrotese,  361. 
 PA S,  204. 
 
 Pastor,  le  Pasteur,  317. 
 Pasnbandha  sacrifice  at  the  rains, 
 
 525- 
 l'atagonntns,  340. 
 
598 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Pater,  not  a  masculine,  408. 
 Patteson,  Bishop,  515. 
 Peacock,  Argos  changed  into  a,  409. 
 Peguans,  language  of  the,  337. 
 Pehlevi,  302. 
 
 —  literature,  302,  extinct  900  a.d., 
 
 303- 
 Pen,  use  of,  taught  by  the  Lord,  562. 
 Perception,  162. 
 Perceptions      impossible      without 
 
 names,  359. 
 Percepts,  115,  ir6,  121. 
 
 —  Helmholtz  on,  121. 
 
 —  always  finite,  121,  122. 
 
 —  the  beginning  of  all  knowledge, 
 
 127. 
 
 —  first,  then  concepts,  129. 
 Perhvig,  perruque,  272  note. 
 Permic  Class,  334- 
 Persian,  modern,  303. 
 Person,  the,  576. 
 
 Personal  life,  what  it  means,  391. 
 Personification,  212,  213,392. 
 
 —  true  key  to,  391. 
 Peru,  its  religion,  345. 
 
 Peshito  or  Syriac  translation  of  the 
 Old  and  New  Testaments,  307. 
 
 Petitot,  Father,  210. 
 
 Pfleiderer's  World-controlling  Pow- 
 er, 57,  61. 
 
 —  criticism,  193. 
 
 —  quoted,  253  note. 
 
 <E>,  sound  of  wind  heard  in,  376. 
 
 $07,^  436. 
 
 Qayovres,  teeth,  437. 
 
 Phenician,  307. 
 
 Phenicians,  533. 
 
 —  in  Korinth,  457. 
 Phenomenal,  72. 
 
 —  and  non-phenomenal,  250. 
 Philistines,  307. 
 
 Philology,  Etymological  School, 
 419. 
 
 —  Analogical  School,  419. 
 
 —  Dialectic  School,  420. 
 
 —  Psychological  School,  422. 
 
 —  Ethno-psychological  School,  423. 
 Philosopher,  90. 
 Philosophical  instruments,  91. 
 
 —  mythology,  164. 
 
 Philosophic,  91. 
 
 Philosophy,  a  perpetual  criticism, 
 27. 
 
 —  of  Peligion,  198. 
 cpufios  6eov,  64. 
 
 ;    Phoebos  Apollon,  479. 
 Phoenicia,   the   birthplace  of  reli- 
 gion, 78. 
 $o?@os  =  Bhava,  465. 
 Phonetic  corruption,  419. 
 
 —  law,  never  tamper  with  a,  428. 
 Physical  theology,  45. 
 
 —  meaning    in   the    names  of  the 
 
 gods,  130. 
 ■    —  religion,  164,  574. 
 i    —  phenomena,  moral  influence  of, 
 
 169,  172. 
 Pictographs  of  Indians,  Mallery  on, 
 
 513  note. 
 Pietas,  temple  to,  176. 
 Pilgrim's  Progress,  539. 
 Pita,  130. 
 
 Pithecanthropos,  207.  244. 
 Piyadasi,  inscriptions  of,  298. 
 
 —  language  of,  298. 
 Plato,  44,  45. 
 
 —  on  language,  237. 
 Plato's  etymologies,  29. 
 
 —  Cratylus,  meaning  of  certain  let- 
 f  ters,)375. 
 
 tt\6t]  or  evirXot],  pull  away,  84. 
 Plush,  272  note. 
 Plutarch  on  religion,  88. 
 
 —  on  Agnoia,  225. 
 Pluvius,  Jupiter,  167. 
 Pococke,  318  note. 
 Polish,  293. 
 
 —  literature,  293. 
 Political  History,  259. 
 Polynesian  religion,  89  note. 
 
 —  mythology,  132. 
 
 —  languages,  347,  348. 
 Polynesians  -wink  instead  of  speak- 
 ing. 357- 
 
 Polytheism,  213. 
 
 Pooh-pooh  theory,    206,    207,  362, 
 
 373- 
 Popol  Vuh,  the,  345. 
 Portenta,  39. 
 Portuguese,  earliest  writings  in,  291 . 
 
INDEX. 
 
 599 
 
 Positivist  definitions  of  religion,  73. 
 
 —  objections,  141. 
 
 —  point  of  view,  143. 
 Pott,  278. 
 
 —  on  cheap  scepticism,  439. 
 Pottery,  wheel,  at  Hissarlik,  202. 
 Powell,  J.  W.j  Mythology,  494  note, 
 
 506,  507. 
 Practical  man,  the,  2. 
 
 —  religion,  46,  47. 
 
 —  theology,  46,  47. 
 Praeneste,  oracle  at,  474. 
 Prakrit  dialect?,  299,  300,  301. 
 
 —  classical,  301. 
 Pramaganda,  234. 
 
 Prathama,     primus      and      fruma, 
 
 Gothic,  421. 
 Pratistikhyas,  or  phonetic  treatises, 
 
 297. 
 Pratyag-atma,  the  Self  behind,  576. 
 Prayers,  184,  at  sunrise,  sunset,  and 
 
 midday,  520. 
 Preconceived  ideas,  86. 
 Preller,  474  note. 
 
 —  on  cerfus  (sardha),  450. 
 Prichard,  268. 
 
 —  his  classification,  324. 
 Priest,  31. 
 
 Priester-wirthschaft,  18. 
 Priesthood,  183. 
 
 Priest's  office  vicarious,  183. 
 
 Primogenia,  name  for  Fors,  473. 
 
 Proctor,  R.  A.,  13S  note. 
 
 Progress  not  excluded  by  revela- 
 tion, 9. 
 
 Prometheus,  Sk.  pramantha,  390, 
 453. 
 
 Proto-Aryan  form  of  speech,  203. 
 
 Protoplasm,  265. 
 
 Provencal,  earliest  works  in,  291. 
 
 Prussian,  Old,  293. 
 
 —  literature,  293. 
 
 %  sound  of  wind  heard  in,  376 
 l'-yrhological  religion,  164,  576. 
 
 —  moral  influence  of,  176. 
 
 —  deities  in  Rome,  176. 
 in  Greece,  177. 
 
 —  School  of  Mythology,  427,  503, 
 
 576. 
 
 —  School  of  Philology,  422. 
 
 Ptolemaic  system,  254. 
 Pudicitia,  temple  to,  176. 
 Puer,  Puella,  gender  of,  408. 
 Punjab,  the,  137. 
 PuraHas,  the,  301,541. 
 Pythagoras  and  Plato  on  the  imita- 
 tion of  God,  56  note. 
 
 QUATREFAGES   on  the  religion 
 
 of  savages,  85. 
 Quiche  language,  345. 
 Quran,  12. 
 
 —  language  of  the,  308. 
 
 —  or  the  lecture,  562. 
 
 —  authorised  edition  of,  562. 
 
 —  not   collected   during    the    pro- 
 
 phet's life,  562. 
 
 R,  Plato  on  the  letter,  375. 
 Ea,  the  Sun-god,  249,  459. 
 
 —  of  Mangaia,  459. 
 Radical  concepts,  274  note. 
 Eadical  stage,  319. 
 
 Rae,  Mr.  John,  567. 
 Raghuvawsa,  235. 
 Rain,  prayers  for,  168. 
 
 —  Athenian  prayer  for,  171. 
 Rainer,  not  yet  rain,  405. 
 Rains,  it,  163. 
 
 Rajendralal  Mitra,  100  note. 
 Rajmahals,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 K;"uuaya»a,  235,  541. 
 Raymundus  de  Sabunde,  52. 
 Reason,  162,  163. 
 
 — ■  worded  and  un worded,  352. 
 Rebellare,  rebellis,  rebel  I  io,  35. 
 Red,  sensation  of,  118. 
 Red    Indians,    and    the     Supreme 
 Being,  133,  134. 
 
 —  religion  of  the,  216,  344. 
 Reformers,  the,  275. 
 Keligare,  35. 
 
 Tteligatio,  35. 
 
 Ri  lit/i  i,.s,  ,-<  Ugiosu8,  35. 
 
 Religio,  reliyare,  rch>jvr>,  33,  34, 
 
 35,  37,  38. 
 
 —  jurisjurandi,  37. 
 
 —  Rom  an  a,  40. 
 Religio,  3S,  39,  40,  42. 
 
 —  etymological  definition  of ,  33-36. 
 
600 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Religio,  historical  definition  of,  36- 
 
 4X>  43>  44- 
 
 —  dogmatic  definitions  of,  37,  43. 
 
 —  later  meanings  of,  41-43. 
 Religion,  stationary,  7. 
 
 —  changes  in,  8. 
 
 —  retrogression  in,  8. 
 
 —  essential  elements  of,  8. 
 
 —  a  philosophy  of,  20. 
 
 —  definition  of,  why  wanted,  27. 
 
 —  differences  in  defining,  28. 
 
 —  what  is  meant  by,  27. 
 
 —  and  superstition,  38. 
 
 —  in  Old  and  New  Testament,  41, 
 
 42. 
 
 —  random  definitions  of,  43. 
 
 —  and  Theology,  44,  45,  46. 
 
 —  dogmatic,    practical,    and    com- 
 
 parative, 46,  47,  60. 
 
 —  Schleiermacher's  definition  of,  47. 
 
 —  belief  or  body  of  doctrines,  49. 
 
 —  object  of,  must  be  defined,  56. 
 
 —  Caird's  definition  of,  57,  60,  61. 
 
 —  Theoretical,  63. 
 
 —  as  sentiment  or  knowledge,  64. 
 
 —  views  of  Author  of  Natural  Re- 
 
 ligion, 65  ;  of  Goethe,  65  ;  of 
 Mill,  65;  of  Spinoza,  66, 67  ;  of 
 the  Brahmans,  67  ;  of  Schleier- 
 macher,  6*j  ;  of  Hegel,  69 ;  of 
 Fichte,  69. 
 
 —  aesthetic  and  moral  feelings  in,  64. 
 
 —  as  obedience,  66. 
 
 —  as  dependence,  68. 
 
 —  as  freedom,  69. 
 
 —  as  knowledge.  69. 
 
 —  Positivist  definitions  of,  73. 
 
 —  selfishness,  the  source  of,  74. 
 
 —  Gruppe's  definition,  76. 
 
 —  vanity  a  source  of,  76. 
 
 —  Gruppe's    three    causes    of   the 
 
 spread  of,  76. 
 
 —  Phoenicia   or   India   the    birth- 
 
 places of,  78. 
 
 —  the  discovery  of  one  man,  and  he 
 
 a  fool,  79. 
 
 —  Gruppe's  theory,  78,  79,  80. 
 
 —  universality  of,  Sr. 
 
 —  definition  of,  by  Strauss,  81  note. 
 
 —  by  H.  Lang,  81  note. 
 
 Religion,  definition  of,  by  D.  Thomp- 
 son, 81  note. 
 
 —  of  savages,  85,  86,  189. 
 
 —  Cicero  on,  88. 
 
 —  Plutarch  on,  88. 
 
 —  names  for,  90. 
 
 —  no  word  for,  in  Sanskrit,  92. 
 
 —  words  for,  in  Chinese,  92. 
 
 —  words  for,  in  Arabic,  93. 
 
 —  an  experience,  114. 
 
 —  began  with  simple  perceptions, 
 
 not    with     abstract    concepts, 
 141,  142. 
 
 —  Physical,    Anthropological,    and 
 
 Psychological,  164. 
 
 —  and  science,  166. 
 
 —  natural  phenomena  explained  by, 
 
 167. 
 
 —  author's  definition  of,  188,  193. 
 
 —  the  surrender  of  the  finite  will 
 
 to  the  infinite,  189. 
 
 —  a  psychological  necessity,  194. 
 
 —  experience,  the  origin  of,  195. 
 
 —  traced    back   to   one    proximum 
 
 genus,  196. 
 
 —  theorist's  view  of  the  science  of, 
 
 212. 
 
 —  lives  in  hearts,  not  in  books,  215. 
 
 —  origin  of,  219. 
 
 —  is  it  possible  ?  221. 
 
 —  traces  of,  everywhere,  221,  222. 
 
 —  simple  beginnings  of,  237. 
 
 —  necessity  of  an  historical  study 
 
 of,  274. 
 
 —  and  mythology  must  be  studied 
 
 in  the  languages  whence  they 
 sprang,  313,  313  note. 
 
 —  and  language,  338. 
 
 —  Science  of,  founded  on  the  Science 
 
 of  Language,  392. 
 Religion,  French,  41. 
 Religiones,  38. 
 Religions,  natural  and  revealed,  51. 
 
 —  five  definitions  include  all,  89. 
 
 —  Semitic,  214. 
 
 —  Aryan,  214. 
 
 —  of  China,  215. 
 without  books,  215. 
 
 —  value  of  the  study  of,  222,  223. 
 
 —  must  change,  275. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 601 
 
 Religions,  none  produced  in  Europe, 
 295. 
 
 —  Science  of,  11,  25,  53,  212. 
 chairs   for  the   study  of  the, 
 
 11,  12. 
 
 a  natural  science,  12. 
 
 Religiose  Stimmung,  67. 
 
 Religiosi,  relegere,  33,  34,  35. 
 
 Keligiositat,  49. 
 
 Religiosum,  relinquere,  36. 
 
 Religiosus,  41. 
 
 Religious    thought,    beginning    of, 
 
 130,  141. 
 
 —  meaning  of,  168,  169. 
 
 —  knowledge,  Hibbert  Lectures  on, 
 
 194. 
 
 —  experience  begins  with  the  senses, 
 
 T95- 
 
 —  map  shows  violent  convulsions, 
 
 216. 
 
 —  problems  in  their  simplest  forms, 
 
 236,  237. 
 
 Remembering  former  states  of  exist- 
 ence, 113. 
 
 Remorse,  remors,  remorsus,  180. 
 
 Renan,  317  note. 
 
 Renenet,  the  Egyptian  goddess  For- 
 tuna,  474. 
 
 Renouf,  Le  Page,  225  note,  249 
 note. 
 
 —  on  the  word  nutar,  394. 
 Revealed  religions,  51. 
 Revelation   does   not   exclude   pro- 
 gress, 9. 
 
 —  human  element  in,  9. 
 
 —  possibility  of,  233. 
 
 —  what  has  been  unfolded,  236. 
 Reverence,  as  religion,  65. 
 Reville,  M.,  12,  256  note,  453  note. 
 Revised  Version,  42. 
 
 Rhys  Davids,  105  note. 
 
 Rhys,  Professor,  151  note,  225  noti  . 
 
 291,  484. 
 Rig-veda,  M.  M.'s  edition  of,  19,  20. 
 
 —  the,  101,  131,  144- 
 
 —  age  of  the,  184,  244. 
 
 —  not  sacrificial,  lS;. 
 
 i?i'shi,  the,  a  seer,  not  a  maker,  229. 
 7??shis  of  the  Veda,  217. 
 Rivers,  152. 
 
 Road,  what  we  ride  on,  368. 
 Romanes,  his  work  on  Mutual  Evo- 
 lution in  Man,  2  74  note. 
 Romanic  language  in  England,  291. 
 Rome,  literary  language  of,  291. 
 Roots,  204,  205,  207,  319,  365,  385. 
 
 —  are  conceptual,  208. 
 
 —  are  ultimate  facts,  2 1  o, 
 
 —  number  of  Sanskrit,  274  note. 
 
 —  number    admitted    by    Sanskrit 
 
 grammarians,  365. 
 
 —  about  800,  365. 
 
 —  in  English,  number  of,  365. 
 -words  derived  from  conceptual, 
 
 367. 
 
 —  of  language  express  the  common 
 
 acts  of  man,  373. 
 
 —  express  our  acts,  386. 
 
 —  geographical  distribution  of,  450. 
 Roscher,  Dr.,  on  Apollon  and  Mars, 
 
 477-  . 
 Roscoe,  Sir  H,,  139. 
 Rosen,  18. 
 Roskoff,  255,  267  noti  . 
 
 —  on  the  religion   of  savages,  85, 
 
 189. 
 
 —  answer  to  Sir  J.  Lubbock,  216. 
 Roth,  Professor,  23. 
 
 —  derivation  of  Vesta,  450. 
 Bound,  to,  413  note. 
 Rousseau  on  language,  237  note. 
 Bub,  to,  366. 
 
 Ruckert,  17. 
 
 —  his  Dravidian  lectures,  325  noti . 
 Rudra,  488,  489. 
 
 —  other  names  for,  490. 
 
 —  /Siva  a  development  of,  491. 
 Rumor,  413  note. 
 
 Buna,  Gothic,  413,  413  note. 
 Russian,  293. 
 
 2,  sound  of  wind  heard  in,  376. 
 Sabaean  civilisation,  309. 
 Sacra,  38,  39. 
 Sacred  Books  of  the  East,   18,    -V,. 
 
 24,  217,  311. 
 Sacred  books,  295,  296,  301. 
 
 —  religions  with  or  without,  214, 
 
 —  lessons  to  be  learnt  from,  218. 
 
602 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sacred  books,  as  materials  for  the 
 study  of  Natural  Religion,  281. 
 
 —  represent    the    oldest    language, 
 
 295- 
 
 —  what  is  a  ?  538. 
 
 —  five  birthplaces  of  the,  539. 
 
 —  never  written  by  the    founders 
 
 of  religion, ^557." 
 
 —  become  a  fetish,  564. 
 Sacrifices,  169,  182,  184,  186. 
 
 —  in  the  Veda,  134,  184,  185,  186, 
 
 525- 
 
 —  arose  from  carousals,  186. 
 Saga,  daughter  of  Odin,  489. 
 Sagas  of  Iceland,  287. 
 
 St.  Augustin,  34. 
 
 St.  Petersburg,  Imperial  Academy 
 
 of,  19. 
 Samaritans,  306. 
 Samasa    (diaa/cevrj)    identified   with 
 
 "On-qpos,  463. 
 Sama-veda,  185. 
 Samaya&arika-sutras,  536. 
 Samoans  and  Sarawakians  believe 
 
 that  men  can  become  trees,  441 . 
 Samoyede  woman's  prayer,  568. 
 Samoyedes   and   Ostjakes,  worship 
 
 among,  400. 
 Samoyedic,  326,  328. 
 Sknd\\y&,  99  note,  100,  101  note. 
 Sahkhya-sutras,  229. 
 Sanskrit,  no  word  for  religion  in,  92. 
 
 —  accent  in  Vedic,  285. 
 
 —  of  the  Vedic  Hymns,  284,  296, 
 
 298,  299. 
 
 —  of  the  Brahina^as,  296. 
 
 —  of  the  Sutras,  296,  297. 
 
 —  classical,  296,  301. 
 
 —  of  Pacini,  297,  299. 
 
 —  stationary  ever  since,  298. 
 
 —  Brahnianic,  299. 
 
 —  Buddhist,  299. 
 
 —  mixed,  299. 
 
 —  plays,  300. 
 
 —  literature,  300. 
 
 —  renaissance  of,  300. 
 Santa  Theresa,  233. 
 Santhals,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 SAR  in  Finno-Ugric,  378. 
 tfarad  and  Ceres,  449. 
 
 Sarama  and  Helena,  464. 
 Sarameya,  453.  ^ 
 
 —  son  of  Sarama,  482. 
 Sarawyu,  433. 
 Sar-it,  river,  281. 
 #arvari,  the  night,  453. 
 Sassanian  dynasty,  302. 
 Sat,  the,  the  real,  249. 
 Saussure,  de,  Le  latin  est  fort  chiche 
 
 de  ses  a2,  476  note. 
 Savage  races,  do  not  carry  us  farther 
 back  than  civilised  nations,  133. 
 
 —  the,  200. 
 Savages,  133,  212. 
 
 —  without  words  for  finite  and  in- 
 
 finite, 125. 
 
 —  nineteenth  century,  as  antedilu- 
 
 vians, 134. 
 
 —  two  sorts  of,  200. 
 
 —  and  barbarians  unknown  to  the 
 
 student  of  religion,  349. 
 Savigny,  268. 
 Saxon,  203,  286. 
 Sayana's  commentary,  20. 
 Sayce,  Prof,  167  note,  225  note. 
 
 —  his  translation  of  the  poem  of 
 
 Istar  and  Tammuz,  526. 
 Scandinavian,  286,  287. 
 
 —  gods,  454  note. 
 Schelling,  17,  220,  264. 
 Schenkel,  63. 
 
 Scherer,  W.,  on  J.  Grimm,  486  note. 
 Schiller's  meaning  of  religion,  40. 
 Schleiermacher,  67,  69,  70, 103,  141. 
 Schleiermacher's  definition  of  reli- 
 gion, 47. 
 
 —  explanation    of    religious    senti- 
 
 ment, 48. 
 
 —  Infinite,  57. 
 Schlieniann  at  Hissarlik,  201. 
 Schopenhauer,  18,  119. 
 Schrader,  453  note. 
 Schroeder,  T)r.  L.  vou,  457  note. 
 Science  derived  from  religion,  167. 
 Science  of  Language,  13,  21,  25,  70, 
 
 282. 
 
 —  the  foundation  of  the  Sciences  of 
 
 Mythology  and  Religion,  392. 
 Science  of  Mythology,  22,  25. 
 Science  of  Religion,  13,  25,  46,  53. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 603 
 
 Science  of  Religion,  chairs  for  the 
 study  of  the,  u,  12. 
 
 —  a  natural  science,  12,  13. 
 
 —  theorist's  view,  212. 
 Science  of  Thought,  25,  70. 
 Scotland,  philosophy  of  religion  in, 
 
 198. 
 Scots  Magazine,  objections  in,  190 
 
 note. 
 Scythian  family,  325. 
 <7€j8as,  42  note. 
 Seeing,  what  it  is,  11 7- 
 Seelencult,  158. 
 Selection  requires  one  who  selects, 
 
 227. 
 Self,  the,  160,  164,  576. 
 Selfishness,  the  source  of  religion. 
 
 Semi-tangible  objects,  150. 
 Semitic  family,  304,  311,  380. 
 
 —  three  branches  of  the,  304. 
 
 —  Northern  and  Southern,  304. 
 
 —  phonetic  character,  310. 
 
 —  Noldeke's  account  of,  310  note. 
 
 —  less  liable  to  mythology  than  the 
 
 Aryan,  314. 
 
 —  religions,  214. 
 
 —  languages,  315,  325. 
 
 • —  language  of  Carthage,  340. 
 
 —  names  for  God,  396. 
 
 —  Bel  or  Baal,  455. 
 Seneca,  56. 
 
 —  on  rivers,  154. 
 Sensation,  162. 
 
 —  and  perception  inexplicable,  116, 
 
 117. 
 Sensations,  1 15-120. 
 
 —  Kant  on,  118. 
 
 Sense,  Imagination,  Intellect,  Lan- 
 guage, 162. 
 
 Senses,  the  beginning  of  religious 
 experience,  195. 
 
 Sensuous  perception,  230. 
 
 Sensus  numhiis,  72. 
 
 Sentence,  every  word  originally  a, 
 281. 
 
 Sentiment  of  the  Infinite,  68. 
 
 Serpent,  367. 
 
 Servian,  293. 
 
 Settle  and  saddle,  368. 
 
 Seven  Rivers,  137. 
 Sexual  selection,  267. 
 Shahnameh,  the,  of  Firdusi,  303. 
 Shakespeare,  number  of  words  used 
 
 hy,.83. 
 Shamanism,  349. 
 Shame,  179. 
 
 —  effect  of,  on  coloured  races,  179 
 
 note. 
 Shi-king,  546. 
 Shintoism,  339. 
 Shu,  the  four,  547. 
 Shu-king,  the,  546. 
 Siamese,  337. 
 
 Sibyl,  interpreters  of  the,  39. 
 Sibyllae,  38  note. 
 Siddhanta,  542. 
 Silurians,  275. 
 Simon,   M.,  on   the  Chinese   social 
 
 system,  173. 
 Sindhi,  301. 
 Sister  dialects  of  old  classical  lan- 
 
 ^  guages,  298. 
 Sita,  the  furrow,  45 1 . 
 Siva,,  a  development  of  Rudra,  491. 
 Slaves,  293. 
 Slavonic  or  Windic,  2^2. 
 
 —  South-East,  293. 
 
 —  South- West,  293. 
 Slovenian,  293. 
 
 Small,  the  infinitely,  139. 
 
 Smriti,  96. 
 
 Snow,  Captain,  on  the  Tierra  del 
 
 Fuegians,  83. 
 Socrates,  221. 
 
 —  and  the  bai^iuviov,  1  70. 
 
 —  on  the  meaning  of  certain  letters, 
 
 3/6. 
 Soil,  tillers  of  the,  2:0. 
 Solar  bird,  the,  145,  14S. 
 
 —  myth,  487. 
 Solarism,  349. 
 Sollennis,  523. 
 Soma,  135,  136. 
 
 —  the  Vedic  and   the    Old    Norse 
 
 S6n,  463. 
 
 Somali  dialect,  340. 
 
 Somebody  curing  and  sending  dis- 
 eases, Aryan  concept  of,  489. 
 
 Son,  from  root  su,  367. 
 
604 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Soul,  what  is  it  ?   161. 
 
 Sounds,  involuntary  and  voluntary, 
 
 361. 
 South-East  Slavonic,  293. 
 Southern  zone  of  African  languages, 
 
 342- 
 Space,  the  infinite  in,  123. 
 Spanish,  earliest  writings  in,  291. 
 Sparrniann,  86. 
 
 Spata  and  Mykenai,  pottery,  202. 
 Spencer,  Herbert,  on  Helios,  487. 
 Spinoza,  40,  66,  161. 
 
 —  Lord  Gifford's  study  of,  3,  4. 
 
 —  called  an  atheist,  228. 
 Spirit,  spiritus,  162. 
 
 —  or  shade,  403. 
 
 Spirits  of  heaven,  300,  397. 
 
 —  of  earth,  600,  397. 
 &raddha,  faith,  101. 
 
 —  its  derivation,  102. 
 
 —  and  credo,  102. 
 £rauta-sutras,  536. 
 Sr/shrt  or  emanation,  247. 
 Sruti,  96,  236. 
 
 STA,  to  stand,  377. 
 Stages  of  development,  200. 
 Stahl's  theory  of  an  Anima  Mundi, 
 
 392- 
 Stallbaum,  16. 
 Stanley,  Dean,  270. 
 
 —  on  vestments,  270-272. 
 Statius  quoted,  176  note. 
 Steps  of  perfection,  100. 
 Stoddart,  318  note. 
 
 Stokes,  Whitley,  on  Yes  in  Irish, 
 
 362  note. 
 Stole,  the,  272. 
 
 Stone,  bronze  and  iron  ages,  201. 
 Storm  and  gods,  same  word  used 
 
 for,  453  note. 
 Storm-god  Ramnan,  453  note. 
 Strauss,  definition    of  religion,   81 
 
 note. 
 Street,  84. 
 Strike,  to,  366. 
 Subjective  acts  predicated  of  other 
 
 agents,  387. 
 
 —  predicated  of  objects,  388. 
 Sub-Semitic  languages,  340. 
 Sufis,  poetry  of  the,  49. 
 
 Sukhavati,  124. 
 
 Sumerian  inscriptions,  325. 
 
 Sumero-Accadian,  304,  325  note. 
 
 Summa  theologiae,  46. 
 
 Summanus,  415. 
 
 Sun,  the,  as  a  fighter,  187. 
 
 —  from  root  su,  367. 
 
 —  vital  importance  of  the,  52  \. 
 Sun  dance  of  the  Blackfoots,  349. 
 ovvabrjcns,  177. 
 
 avvudores,  178. 
 Sunrise,  a  new  life,  433. 
 Suomalainen  or  Fins,  334. 
 Superhuman  beings,  130,  131. 
 
 belief  in,  1 28. 
 
 connected  with  material  ob- 
 jects, 128. 
 Supernatural,  the,  115,  222. 
 
 —  powers,  197. 
 
 —  nothing  so  natural  as  the,  571. 
 Superstition,  42,  225. 
 
 —  and  religion,  38. 
 Supreme  Being,  126,  131. 
 Surplice,  the,  270. 
 Survival  of  the  Fittest,  226. 
 Surya,  sun,  128. 
 
 Sutra,  or  third  period  of  Sanskrit, 
 
 297. 
 Sutras,  296,  297,  301,  536,  541. 
 
 —  three  classes  of,  536. 
 SVetasvatara    Upaniskad,    98,    99, 
 
 note. 
 Swanwick,  Miss,  466  note. 
 Swedish,  287. 
 2vfj.fio\a,  534. 
 Synergastic  theory,  374. 
 Synonymes,  real,  317. 
 Syriac,  305,  306,  307. 
 
 —  and  Chalclee,  305,  306. 
 
 TA  HSIO,  the,  547. 
 
 Taic  languages,  337. 
 
 Talmud,  306. 
 
 —  the  origin  of  many  New  Testa- 
 ment parables,  555. 
 
 Tamulic  languages,  336. 
 
 TAN,  204. 
 
 Tangible,  Semi-tangible,  Intangible 
 Objects,  150. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 605 
 
 Tao,  meaning  of,  547. 
 
 Taoism,  93. 
 
 Tao-teh-king,  the,  547,  556. 
 
 Tar,  dhar,  and  dar,  Sanskrit  roots, 
 
 2S8. 
 Targums,  the,  306. 
 Tatar  or  Mongolic  races,  329. 
 Tataric,  330. 
 Techmer,  169  note. 
 Teichmliller,    Religionsphilosophie, 
 
 54  note,  64,  65  note,  73  note. 
 Telang,  231  note. 
 Teleological  interpretations,  142. 
 
 arguments,  198,  240,  2; 
 
 Telugu,  vocalic  harmony  in,  326. 
 
 Temples  to  psychological  deilies, 
 176. 
 
 Ten  Commandments  of  the  Old  Tes- 
 tament, 521. 
 
 Terminational  Stage,  319. 
 
 Terrien  Poncel,  318  note. 
 
 Tessera  hospitalis,  534. 
 
 Teutonic  stem,  203. 
 
 —  class,  286. 
 
 —  features  in  common  with  Latin, 
 
 294. 
 Thamudic  inscriptions,  308. 
 Thar,  dar,  and    tar,  Gothic    roots, 
 
 288. 
 Thebes,  capital  of  Kadmos,  457. 
 Theia,  446. 
 
 Oeiov  yevos  and  diov  yevos,  446. 
 ©efoj,  446. 
 
 0eo9,  derived  from  ®Uiv,  446  note. 
 Themis,  wife  of  Zeus,  521. 
 Qf/jilcrTes,  173. 
 Theogonic  elements,  14S. 
 Theogony,  218. 
 
 —  of  the  Aryan  race,  the  Rig-veda 
 
 as  the,  184, 
 0eot.  the  gods,  29. 
 Theologi,  Homer  and  Hesiod  called, 
 
 45- 
 Theologia,  45. 
 
 —  Naturalis    sive    Liber    Creatu- 
 
 rarum,  52  note. 
 Theolotjos,  45,  46. 
 Theology  should  be  progressive,  n. 
 
 —  and  religion,  44. 
 
 —  three  kinds  of,  45. 
 
 Theology  of  Thamyris.  45. 
 
 —  meaning  of,  46. 
 
 —  comparative.  47,  52,  53. 
 
 —  dogmatic  and  practical,  46,  47- 
 
 —  natural,  52. 
 Theoretical  religion,  63. 
 Theoretical  School,  200,  203,   205, 
 
 207,  211,  214,  216,  219,  220. 
 Theory,  History  versus,  196. 
 Thinking  of  a  dog,  353. 
 
 —  in  German  or  English,  354. 
 Qoivr),    same    as    Sanskrit    dhena, 
 
 Thompson,  D.,  definition  of  religion, 
 81  note. 
 
 —  on  the  infinite,  140  note. 
 Thorr,  Icelandic  god,  288. 
 Thought    and   Language,    absolute 
 
 identity  of,  24. 
 
 —  its  beginning,  1 16. 
 
 —  Science  of,  25,  70. 
 
 Thought  is  language  minus  sound, 
 
 356. 
 
 Thoughts  must  be  shown  by  outward 
 
 signs,  357. 
 Thracian,  or  Aryan,  325. 
 Qprjonda,  41. 
 Thrill  of  joy,  368. 
 Thunor,  thunder,  288. 
 Thursday,  dies  Jovis,  288. 
 Tibetan  language,  337. 
 Tiele,     Prof.,    on    the    connection 
 
 of  religion  and  language,  313 
 
 note. 
 
 —  on  the  myth  of  Istar,  528  note. 
 Tierra  del  Fuego,  Darwin  on,  82, 
 
 S3- 
 
 —  Captain  Cook  on  the  language, 
 
 82. 
 
 —  Captain  Snow  on,  83. 
 
 —  Ciacomo  Bove  on  the  language, 
 
 83,  84. 
 
 —  the  people  of,  346. 
 Tigre  dialect,  310. 
 Time,  the  infinite  in,  124. 
 Timur,  331. 
 
 Tinne,     or    Athapascan     language, 
 209. 
 
 —  its  radicals,  209. 
 Tolteks,  in  Mexico,  344. 
 
606 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Tonans,  Jupiter,  167. 
 
 Ton-are,  288. 
 
 Tools  used  by  primitive  man,  200. 
 
 Totemism,  87,  159,  160,  349. 
 
 —  a  civil  institution,  522. 
 Tractatus     theologico-politicus      of 
 
 Spinoza,  40. 
 
 Transformationists,  143. 
 
 Transitions  from  one  stage  of  lan- 
 guage to  another,  320. 
 
 Trees,  150. 
 
 Tremor  becoming  a  sensation  of 
 light,  117. 
 
 Tripi/aka,  the,  215,  542. 
 
 —  reduced  to  writing  about  88  B.C., 
 
 the  canon  closed  377  B.C.,  542 
 note. 
 
 —  not  Buddha's  work,  559. 
 Tri-sandhya,   three    daily   prayers, 
 
 520.  _ 
 Tritogeneia  for  Athene,  469. 
 Triton,  lake  where  Athene  was  born, 
 
 469. 
 Tritonia,  443. 
 
 Troy  destroyed  by  Herakles,  493. 
 Tse  (tseu),  meaning  of,  322  note. 
 Tseu,  father,  322  note. 
 Tsuni-Goam,  86  note. 
 Tud,  to  strike,  377. 
 Tuesday,  Tiwes-daeg,  289. 
 Tulu  dialect,  327,  327  note. 
 Tungusic,  328,  329. 
 Turanian  languages,  324. 
 
 —  North,  324. 
 
 —  South,  324. 
 
 —  of  Babylon  and  Nineveh,  325. 
 
 —  Allophylian,  in  place  of,  325. 
 Turkish  vowels,  326. 
 
 —  grammar,  332. 
 Turkic  Class,  328,  332. 
 
 Tus  in  acutus,  cornutus,  etc.,  204, 
 205. 
 
 Tuscan  or  Roman  used  by  the 
 Amorosos  in  Italian  comedies, 
 301. 
 
 Tvasbia"  dyavaprithivyo/^,  carpen- 
 ter of  heaven  and  earth,  1 40. 
 
 Tvash/ar,  245. 
 
 Twenty,  how  formed,  421. 
 
 Two  arms,  two  legs,  379. 
 
 Tylor  on  the  religion  of  savages,  85, 
 
 86, 
 Tyr  and  Tuesday,  288. 
 
 —  Tysdagr,  289. 
 
 U,  a  derivative,  204. 
 
 Uddalaka,  235. 
 
 Ugric  languages,  320,  326,  333. 
 
 —  Dr.  Hunfalvy  on,  320  note. 
 
 —  Finno-,  333. 
 
 Ugro- Altaic  languages,  326. 
 Ugro-Tartaric  languages,  324, 
 Ulfilas,  Bible  of,  286. 
 Umbrian,  291. 
 Unity  of  Nature,  126. 
 Unknowable,  how  can  we  know  the, 
 
 224. 
 Unknown,  perception  of  the,  21 8. 
 
 —  God,  225,  225  note. 
 Unkulunkulu,  157,  173. 
 Upanishads,  18,  48,  97,  98,  99,  tii, 
 
 i63,  541.  576- 
 
 —  M.  M.'s  first  translation  of  the. 
 
 17,  18. 
 
 —  later  translation,  18  note. 
 
 —  idea  of  devotion  in,  99. 
 
 —  no  Christian  influences  in,  99, 
 
 —  idea  of  work  in  the,  1 1 1 . 
 
 —  religion  of  the,  275. 
 Ural-Altaic  languages,  324. 
 Uraon-Kols,  dialect  of  the,  336. 
 Uriya,  301. 
 
 Urschleim,  265, 
 Urvara,  the  held,  451. 
 Ushas,  the  Dawn,  430,  434. 
 
 —  mother  of  the  cows,  43 1 . 
 
 —  mistress  of  the  stable,  431. 
 
 —  has  no  feet,  432. 
 
 —  the  never-dying,  432. 
 
 —  the  immortal,  432. 
 
 VA,  to  blow,  375,  376. 
 
 Vadh,  Sk.  to  strike,  289. 
 
 Vadh-ar,  thunderbolt,  289. 
 
 Van  der  Kamp,  on  Kafir  belief,  86. 
 
 Vanity,  a  source  of  religion,  76. 
 
 Varro,  30  note,  34,  45. 
 
 Varuwa  and  Indra,  hymns  to,  2  28, 
 
 229. 
 Varu/ia  and  Ormazd,  495,  497. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 607 
 
 Variu/a  and  Ormazd,  shows  his  phy- 
 sical origin,  498. 
 Vasish^a,  137. 
 Vasu,  brilliant,  130. 
 Vasubandhu,  council  under,  543  note. 
 Vayu,  wind,  128. 
 Veda,  12,  18,  19,  96,  284,  296,  540. 
 
 —  detritus  on  which  it  rests,  132. 
 
 —  sacrifice  in  the,  1 34. 
 
 —  deities  of  the,  134,  135. 
 
 —  germs  of  the  infinite  in  the,  137. 
 
 —  end  and  endless  in  the,  146. 
 ■ —  sacrifices  in,  184. 
 
 —  compared  to  an  oak,  185. 
 
 —  appealed    to    as    a   proof    that 
 
 sacrifices  come  first  in  religion, 
 186. 
 ■ —  doubts  as  to  the  existence  of  the 
 gods  in  the,  227. 
 
 —  inspired,  233. 
 
 —  of  human  origin,  235. 
 
 —  preservation  of,  296. 
 
 —  language  of  the,  296. 
 
 —  always  the  sacred  language,  296. 
 
 —  words  and  grammar  of,  unknown 
 
 in  later  Sanskrit,  296. 
 ■ —  not  written  originally,  558. 
 Vedas,  215. 
 
 Vedanta  philosophy,  48,  163,  164. 
 Vedic  prayers,  172. 
 
 —  Aryas,  217. 
 
 —  poets  our  ancestors,  240. 
 
 —  religion,  275. 
 
 —  hymns,  295,  296,  301. 
 
 composed  in  the  north-west 
 
 of  India,  296. 
 
 all  in  metre,  296. 
 
 each  word,  letter,  and  accent 
 
 settled,  297. 
 
 —  Sanskrit,   three   stages  of,   297, 
 
 301. 
 
 a  priestly  literature,  297. 
 
 has  passed  through  gramma- 
 tical discipline,  297. 
 
 preserved    by  oral   tradition 
 
 only,  297. 
 
 —  poems,  God-given,  558. 
 Vendidad,  544. 
 
 —  sadah,  544. 
 Yeneror,  42. 
 
 Venetian  used  by  Pantaleone  in 
 Italian  comedies,  301. 
 
 Venus,  171. 
 
 Vessel  drifting  from  America  to 
 England,  346. 
 
 Vesta,  derived  by  Curtius  from  vas, 
 to  shine,  450. 
 
 by  Both   from   vas,  to  dwell. 
 
 450. 
 Vestments,  Stanley  on,  270-272. 
 Vibration  is  sensation,  1  20. 
 Vigfusson  on  furs  and  her<(  at,  476 
 
 null  . 
 
 rii/iit/i,  421. 
 
 Vinaya-pi/aka,  300  note. 
 Virchow,  and  the  Tierra  del  Fue- 
 glans,  83. 
 
 —  on  the  descent  of  man,  267. 
 Vispered,  the,  544. 
 Visrtsh^i,  creation,  247. 
 Visvakarman,  246. 
 
 Vocalic  harmony,  law  of,  326. 
 Volkerpsychologie,  428,  503. 
 Votan,  the  serpent  deity  of  Central 
 America,  457. 
 
 —  likeness  to  Odinn,  457,  458. 
 Vowels  and  consonants,  significant, 
 
 209,  210. 
 
 —  in  Turkish  are   sharp  and  flat, 
 
 326. 
 Vulgate,  the,  41,  42. 
 Vyakara»a,  its  meaning,  204. 
 
 WAITZ,  Anthropologic  der  Natur- 
 
 v biker,  510. 
 Wannemuine,  fabulous  hero  of  the 
 
 Estonians,  545. 
 
 —  grey-bearded  at  his  birth,  546. 
 Water,  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
 
 245,  247. 
 
 '  Waters  contained  a  germ,    247. 
 
 Wayfarer,  182  note. 
 
 Weder,  storm,  289. 
 '    Weiss  and  wissen,  285. 
 1    Weisse,  C.  H.,  16,  1  14. 
 '    Welcker,  466  note. 
 
 Welsh,  290. 
 
 Wends   and   Sorbs,   dialects   of  the, 
 
 293- 
 West,  the,  123,  124. 
 
608 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Westermann,  16. 
 
 Western  Hindi,  301. 
 
 West-Nordic h,  Icelandic,  and  Nor- 
 wegian, 287. 
 
 West-Slavonic,  293. 
 
 West-Teutonic,  290. 
 
 Whatever  is,  is  right,  1 1 3. 
 
 Whence  and  whither,  asked  only  by 
 man,  243,  245. 
 
 —  why  asked  ?  244. 
 
 Whistling  language  in  Gomera,  358. 
 White,  371. 
 Wig,  272  note. 
 Will  of  God,  61,  62. 
 
 —  or  resistance  is  existence,  119. 
 Wilson,  Professor,  19. 
 
 Wind  as  an  active  agent,  390. 
 Windic  or  Slavonic,  292. 
 Windischmann,  Mithra,  499  note. 
 Winds  worshipped  in  Babylon,  459. 
 Winidae,  293. 
 Wit,  to,  and  I  wot,  285. 
 Wodan  and  Wednesday,  289. 
 
 —  or  Odin,  289. 
 Wodnes-dseg,  289. 
 Wood,  v\t],  materies,  240. 
 Worded  and  unworded  reason,  352. 
 Words,   public   opinion    settles  the 
 
 meaning  of,  27. 
 
 —  originally  deeds,  281. 
 
 —  remaining  only  as  symbols,  356. 
 
 —  we  think  in,  356. 
 
 —  never  stand  for  a  single  percept, 
 
 381. 
 World-controlling  Power  of  Pflei- 
 
 derer,  57,  61. 
 Worship,    Gruppe's    view    of,     1S7 
 
 note. 
 Writing,  invention  of,  50. 
 
 —  influence  of,  on  religion,  552. 
 
 —  idea  of,  familiar  in  Old  Testa- 
 
 ment, 560. 
 Wundt's  definition  of  religion,  73. 
 Wuotan,  488,  489. 
 Wuttke,  141. 
 
 YAGAAVALKYA,  in. 
 
 Yar/ur-veda,  185. 
 
 Yamaka,  or  Life  after  Death,  108. 
 Yasna,  the,  544. 
 '  Yellow  with  shame,'  179. 
 Yes,  only  used  by  the  Polynesians 
 to  strangers,  357. 
 
 —  in  Old  Irish,  362  note. 
 Yl-king,  546. 
 Yoga-philosophy,  231  note. 
 
 —  Sutras,  230  note,  231  note. 
 Yogendra  Chandra  Ghosh,  too  note. 
 Yogins,  the,  230,  231. 
 
 Yo-heo,  206,  207,  362,  373. 
 
 —  subdivision     of    the    Pooh-pooh 
 
 theory,  362. 
 Yo-heoic  theory,  211. 
 
 Z,  sound  of  wind  heard  in,  376. 
 Zabad,    trilingual    inscription     of. 
 
 308. 
 Zend,  302. 
 
 —  the   ancient    dialect   of    Media, 
 
 302. 
 Zend-avesta,  544. 
 Zephyros,  169. 
 
 —  and  Yedic  C?ahusha,  429. 
 Zeus,  410. 
 
 —  and    Hera,    mere    names,    383, 
 
 384. 
 
 —  '  whoever  he  is,'  384. 
 
 —  born  when  Dyaus  was  first  ad- 
 
 dressed as  a  masculine,  462. 
 Zeus  for  Ayevs,  289. 
 Zeus  Xenios,  532. 
 Zi,  or   that  which    manifests    life, 
 
 397- 
 
 —  raised  to  a  higher  position,  398. 
 Zoroaster,  302,  556. 
 
 —  and  Ormazd,  496. 
 - —  religion  of,  553. 
 Zoroastrianism,  295. 
 
 —  sacred  books  of,  214. 
 Zweckmassig,  91. 
 
Jtacrefc  Q0ooft0  of  tffc  (Scurf 
 
 TRANSLATED  BY 
 
 VARIOUS    ORIENTAL    SCHOLARS 
 
 AND    EDITED    BY 
 
 F.    MAX    MULLER 
 
 ***  This  Series  is  published  with  the  sanction  and  co-operation  of  the 
 Secretary  of  State  for  India  in  Council. 
 
 REPORT  presented   to  the   AC&DEMIE   DES   INSCRIPTIONS,  May  11, 
 1883,  by  M.   ERNEST   RENAN. 
 
 1  M.   Renan    presente    trois    nouveaux  une  seconde,  dont  l'interet  historique  et 
 
 volumes    de    la    grande    collection    des  religieux  ne  sera  pas  moindre.     M.  Max 
 
 "  Livres    sacres    de    l'Orient  "    (Sacred  Midler  a  su  se  procurer  la  collaboration 
 
 Books  of  the  East\  que  dirige  a  Oxford,  des  savans  les  plus  eminens  d' Europe  et 
 
 avec  une  si  vaste  erudition  et  une  critique  d'Asie.     L'Universite  d'Oxford,  que  cette 
 
 si  sure,  le  savant  associe  de  lAcademie  grande  publication  honore  au  plus  haut 
 
 des  Inscriptions,  M.  Max  Muller.  ...  La  degre,  doit  tenir  a  continuer  dans  les  plus 
 
 premiere  serie  de  ce  beau  recueil,  com-  larges  proportions  une  ceuvre  aussi  philo- 
 
 posee  de  24  volumes,  est  presque  achevee.  sophiquement     con9ue    que    savamment 
 
 M.  Max  Muller  se  propose  d'en  publier  executee.' 
 
 EXTRACT  from  the  QUARTERLY  REVIEW. 
 
 '  We  rejoice  to  notice  that  a  second  great  edition  of  the  Rig- Veda,  can  corn- 
 series  of  these  translations  has  been  an-  pare  in  importance  or  in  usefulness  with 
 nounced  and  has  actually  begun  to  appear.  this  English  translation  of  the  Sacred 
 The  stones,  at  least,  out  of  which  a  stately  Books  of  the  East,  which  has  been  devised 
 edifice  may  hereafter  arise,  are  here  being  by  his  foresight,  successfully  brought  so 
 brought  together.  Prof.  Max  Muller  has  far  by  his  persuasive  and  organising 
 deserved  well  of  scientific  history.  Not  power,  and  will,  we  trust,  by  the  assist- 
 a  few  minds  owe  to  his  enticing  words  ance  of  the  distinguished  scholars  he  has 
 their  first  attraction  to  this  branch  of  gathered  round  him,  be  carried  in  due 
 study.     But  no  work  of  his,  not  even  the  time  to  a  happy  completion.' 
 
 Professor  E.  HARDY,  Inaugural  Lecture  in  the  University  of  Preiburg1,  1887. 
 
 *  Die   allgemeine   vergleichende   Reli-  internationalcn    Orientalistencongress    in 
 
 gionswissenschaft  datirt  von  jenem  gross-  London    der   Giundstein   gelcgt   worden 
 
 artigen,  in  seiner  Art  einzig  dastehenden  war,  die  Ubersctzung  dcr  hciligcn  Biicher 
 
 Unternehmen,  zu  welchem  auf  Anregung  des   Ostens '    {Jhe   Sacred  Books    of  the 
 
 Max  Midlers  im  Jahre    1874   au*"  dem  East). 
 
 ©xfortr 
 
 AT    THE    CLARENDON    PRESS 
 LONDON:    HENRY   FROWDE 
 
 OXFORD   UNIVERSITY   PRESS   WAREHOUSE,   AMEN   CORNER,    E.C. 
 
SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST. 
 
 FIRST   SERIES. 
 
 Vol.  I.     The  Upanishads. 
 
 Translated  by  F.  Max  Muller.     Part  I.     The  A^andogya- 
 
 upanishad,  The  Talavakara-upanishad,  The  Aitareya-ara«yaka, 
 
 The   Kaushitaki-brahmawa-upanishad,   and   The  V%asaneyi- 
 
 sawhita-upanishad.     8vo.,  cloth,  \os.  6d. 
 
 The   Upanishads   contain  the  philosophy  of  the  Veda.     They  have 
 
 become  the  foundation  of  the  later  Veddnta  doctrines,  and  indirectly 
 
 of  Buddhism.     Schopenhauer,  speaking  of  the  Upanishads,  says  : 
 
 1  In  the  whole  world  there  is  no  study  so  beneficial  and  so  elevating 
 
 as  that  of  the  Upanishads.     It  has  been  the  solace  of  my  life,  it  will 
 
 be  the  solace  of  my  death' 
 
 [See  also  Vol.  XV.] 
 
 Vol.  II.     The  Sacred  Laws  of  the  Aryas, 
 
 As  taught  in  the  Schools  of  Apastamba,  Gautama,  Vasish/^a, 
 and  Baudhayana.      Translated  by  Georg  Buhler.      Part  I. 
 Apastamba  and  Gautama.     8vo.,  cloth,  ioj.  6d. 
 The  Sacred  Laws  of  the  Aryas  contain  the  original  treatises  on 
 which  the  Laws  of'Manu  and  other  lawgivers  were  founded. 
 [See  also  Vol.  XIV.] 
 
 Vol.  III.    The  Sacred  Books  of  China. 
 
 The  Texts  of  Confucianism.     Translated  by  James  Legge. 
 Part  I.    The  Shu  King,  The  Religious  Portions  of  the  Shih 
 King,  and  The  Hsiao  King.     8vo.,  cloth,  12s.  6d. 
 Confucius  was  a  collector  of  ancient  traditions,  not  the  founder  of 
 a  new  religion.     As  he  lived  in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  B.  C. 
 his  works  are  of  unique  interest  for  the  study  of  Ethology. 
 [See  also  Vols.  XVI,  XXVII,  and  XXVIIL] 
 
 Vol.  IV.     The  Zend-Avesta. 
 
 Translated  by  James  Darmesteter.     Part  I.    The  Vendidad. 
 
 8vo.,  cloth,  \os.  6d. 
 The  Zend-Avesta  contains  the  relics  of  what  zvas  the  religion  of 
 Cyrus,  Darius,  and  Xerxes,  and,  but  for  the  battle  of  Marathon, 
 
EDITED  BY  F.  MAX  MULLER.  3 
 
 might  have  become  the  religion  of  Europe.  It  forms  to  the  present 
 day  the  sacred  book  of  the  Par  sis,  the  so-called  fire-worshippers. 
 Two  more  volumes  will  complete  the  translation  of  all  that  is  left  us 
 of  Zoroaster  s  religion. 
 
 [See  also  Vols.  XXIII  and  XXXI.] 
 
 V.  Vol.     Pahlavi  Texts. 
 
 Translated  by  E.  W.  West.     Part  I.    The  Bundahi^,  Bahman 
 Ya^t,  and  Shayast  la-shayast.     8vo.,  cloth,  1  2s.  6d. 
 The  Pahlavi  Texts  comprise  the  theological  literature  of  the  revival 
 of  'Zoroaster 's  religion,  beginning  with  the  Sassanian  dynasty.    They 
 are  important  for  a  study  of  Gnosticism. 
 
 Vols.  VI  and  IX.     The  Quran. 
 
 Parts  I  and  II.  Translated  by  E.  H.  Palmer.  8vo.,  cloth,  21s. 
 This  translation,  carried  out  according  to  his  own  peculiar  views 
 of  the  origin  of  the  Qur'dn,  was  the  last  great  ivork  ofE.  H.  Palmer, 
 before  he  was  murdered  in  Egypt. 
 
 Vol.  VII.     The   Institutes  of  Vishnu. 
 
 Translated  by  Julius  Jolly.     8vo.,  cloth,  \os.  6d. 
 A  collection  of  legal  aphorisms,  closely  connected  ivith  one  of  the 
 oldest  Vedic  schools,  the  KaMas,  but  considerably  added  to  in  later 
 time.     Of  importance  for  a  critical  study  of  the  Laws  of  Manu. 
 
 Vol.  VIII.    The  Bhagavadgita,  with  The  Sanatsu^atiya, 
 and  The  Anugita. 
 
 Translated   by    Kashinath    Trimbak    Telang.      8vo.5    cloth, 
 10s.  6d. 
 The  earliest  philosophical  and  religious  poem  of  India.     It  has  been 
 paraphrased  in  Arnold's  'Song  Celestial' 
 
 Vol.  X.     The  Dhammapada, 
 
 Translated  from  Pali  by  F.  Max  Muller;  and 
 The  Sutta-Nipata, 
 
 Translated  from  Pali  by  V.  Fausboll  ;  being  Canonical  Books 
 
 of  the  Buddhists.     8vo.,  cloth,  iar.  6d. 
 The  Dhammapada  contains  the  quintessence  of  Buddhist  morality 
 The  Sutta-Nipata  gives  the  authentic  teaching  of  Buddha  on  some 
 of  the  fundamental  principles  of  religion. 
 
SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST. 
 
 Vol.  XI.     Buddhist  Suttas. 
 
 Translated  from  Pali  by  T.  W.  Rhys  Davids,  i.  The  Maha- 
 parinibbana  Suttanta ;  2.  The  Dhamma-^akka-ppavattana 
 Sutta.  3.  The  Tevi^a  Suttanta;  4.  The  Akarikheyya  Sutta; 
 5.  The  ^etokhila  Sutta ;  6.  The  Maha-sudassana  Suttanta ; 
 7.  The  Sabbasava  Sutta.  8vo.,  cloth,  ioj-.  6d. 
 A  collection  of  the  most  important  religious,  moral,  and  philosophical 
 discourses  taken  from  the  sacred  canon  of the  Buddhists. 
 
 Vol.  XII.     The  ^atapatha-Brahma^a,  according  to  the 
 Text  of  the  Madhyandina  School. 
 
 Translated  by  Julius  Eggeling.     Part  I.    Books       and   II. 
 8vo.,  cloth,  \2S.  6d. 
 A   minute  account  of  the  sacrificial  ceremonies  of  the   Vedic  age. 
 It  contains  the  earliest  account  of  the  Deluge  in  India. 
 [See  also  Vol.  XX VI.] 
 
 Vol.  XIII.    Vinaya  Texts. 
 
 Translated  from  the  Pali  by  T.  W.  Rhys  Davids  and  Hermann 
 
 Oldenberg.   Part  I.    The  Patimokkha.   The  Mahavagga,  I-IV. 
 
 8vo.,  cloth,  10s.  6d. 
 
 The  Vinaya  Texts  give  for  the  first  time  a  translation  of  the  moral 
 
 code  of  the  Buddhist  religion  as  settled  in  the  third  century  B.C. 
 
 [See  also  Vols.  XVII  and  XX.] 
 
 Vol.  XIV.    The  Sacred  Laws  of  the  Aryas, 
 
 As  taught  in  the  Schools  of  Apastamba,  Gautama,  Vasish/Aa, 
 and  Baudhayana.  Translated  by  Georg  Buhler.  Part  II. 
 Vasish//$a  and  Baudhayana.     8vo.,  cloth,  ioj.  6d. 
 
 Vol.  XV.    The  Upanishads. 
 
 Translated  by  F.  Max  Muller.  Part  II.  The  KaMa-upanishad, 
 The  Mu^aka-upanishad,  The  Taittiriyaka-upanishad,  The 
 B/7hadara«yaka-upanishad,  The  -S'vetajvatara-upanishad,  The 
 Prai-wa-upanishad,  and  The  Maitrayawa-brahmawa-upanishad. 
 8vo.,  cloth,  io.r.  6d. 
 
 Vol.  XVI.    The  Sacred   Books  of  China. 
 
 The  Texts  of  Confucianism.  Translated  by  James  Legge. 
 Part  II.    The  Yi  King.     8vo.,  cloth,  10s.  6d. 
 
 Vol.  XVII.    Vinaya  Texts. 
 
 Translated  from  the  Pali  by  T.  W.  Rhys  Davids  and  Hermann 
 Oldenberg.  Part  II.  The  Mahavagga,  V-X.  The  A^ullavagga, 
 I— III.     8vo.,  cloth,  1  os.  6d. 
 
EDITED  BY  F.  MAX  MULLER. 
 
 Vol.  XVIII.     Pahlavi  Texts. 
 
 Translated  by  E.  W.  West.  Part  II.  The  DiWistan-t  Dmik 
 and  The  Epistles  of  ManHsvfthar.     8vo.,  cloth,  12s.  6d. 
 
 Vol.  XIX.     The  Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king. 
 
 A  Life  of  Buddha  by  Ajvaghosha  Bodhisattva,  translated  from 
 Sanskrit  into  Chinese  by  Dharmaraksha,  a.d.  420,  and  from 
 Chinese  into  English  by  Samuel  Beal.     8vo.,  cloth,  10s.  6d. 
 
 This  life  of  Buddha  was  translated  from  Sanskrit  into  Chinese, 
 A.D.  420.  //  contains  ?nany  legends,  some  of  which  show  a  certain 
 similarity  to  the  Evangelium  infantiae^  etc. 
 
 Vol.  XX.    Vinaya  Texts. 
 
 Translated  from  the  Pali  by  T.  W.  Rhys  Davids  and  Hermann 
 Oldenberg.  Part  III.  The  A"ullavagga,  IV-XII.  8vo.,  cloth, 
 10 s.  6d. 
 
 Vol.  XXI.     The  Saddharma-pu^darika  ;  or,  The  Lotus 
 of  the   True  Law. 
 
 Translated  by  H.  Kern.     8vo.,  cloth,  1 2s.  6d. 
 1  The  Lotus  of  the  true  Lazv,'  a  canonical  book  of  the  Northern 
 Buddhists,  translated  from  Sa?iskrit.     There  is  a  Chinese  transla- 
 tion of  this  book  which  was  finished  as  early  as  the  year  286  A.D. 
 
 Vol.  XXII.     ^aina-Sutras. 
 
 Translated  from  Prakrit  by  Hermann  Jacobi.  Part  I.  The 
 A/£arahga-Sutra  and  The  Kalpa-Sutra.     8vo.,  cloth,  ios.6d. 
 
 The  religion  of  the  Gainas  was  foimded  by  a  contemporary  of  Buddha. 
 It  still  coimis  ?iumerous  adherents  in  India,  while  there  are  no 
 Buddhists  left  in  India  proper. 
 
 Vol.  XXIII.     The  Zend-Avesta. 
 
 Translated  by  James  Darmesteter.  Part  II.  The  Shozahs, 
 Ya.rts,  and  Nyayij.     8vo.,  cloth,  10s.  6d. 
 
 Vol.  XXIV.     Pahlavi  Texts. 
 
 Translated  by  E.  \V.  West.  Part  III.  Dina-i  Mainog-i 
 Khira</,  ^lkand-gumanik  Vi^ar,  and  Sad  Dar.  8vo.,  cloth, 
 10s.  6d. 
 
SACRED  BOOKS  OF  THE  EAST. 
 
 SECOND   SERIES. 
 
 Vol.  XXV.    Manu. 
 
 Translated  by  Georg  Buhler.  8vo.,  cloth,  211. 
 This  translation  is  founded  on  that  of  Sir  William  Jones,  which  has  been 
 carefully  revised  and  corrected  with  the  help  of  seven  native  Commentaries. 
 An  Appendix  contains  all  the  quotations  from  Manu  which  are  found  in  the 
 Hindu  Law-books,  translated  for  the  use  of  the  Law  Courts  in  India. 
 Another  Appendix  gives  a  synopsis  of  parallel  passages  from  the  six 
 Dharma-sutras,  the  other  Smrz'tis,  the  Upanishads,  the  Mahabharata,  etc. 
 
 Vol.  XXVI.     The  6atapatha-Brahma#a. 
 
 Translated  by  Julius  Eggeling.    Part  II.    Books  III  and  IV. 
 
 8vo.,  cloth,  \2s.  6d. 
 Vols.    XXVII   and    XXVIII.     The  Sacred   Books  of 
 
 China. 
 
 The  Texts  of  Confucianism.  Translated  by  James  Legge. 
 Parts  III  and  IV.  The  Li  K\,  or  Collection  of  Treatises  on 
 the  Rules  of  Propriety,  or  Ceremonial  Usages.  8vo.,  cloth, 
 12s.  6d.  each. 
 Vol.  XXIX.  The  Grzhya-Sutras,  Rules  of  Vedic 
 Domestic   Ceremonies. 
 
 Part  I.    -Sankhayana,  Ajvalayana,  Paraskara,  Khadira.   Trans- 
 lated by  Hermann  Oldenberg.     8vo.,  cloth,  1 2s.  6d. 
 These  rules  of  Domestic  Ceremonies  describe  the  home  life  of  the  ancient 
 Aryas  with  a  completeness  and  accuracy  unmatched  in  any  other  literature. 
 Some  of  these  rules  have  been  incorporated  in  the  ancient  Law-books. 
 
 Vol.  XXX.    The  Grzhya-Sutras.  Part  II.  [In  the  Press.] 
 Vol.  XXXI.      The  Zend-Avesta. 
 
 Part    III.       The    Yasna,    Visparad,   Afrinagan,    Gahs,    and 
 
 Miscellaneous  Fragments.     Translated  by  L.  H.  Mills.     8vo., 
 
 cloth,  12s.  6d. 
 Vol.  XXXII.    Vedic  Hymns. 
 
 Translated  by  F.  Max  Muller.     Part  I.     [In  the  Press.] 
 Vol.  XXXIII.     Narada,  and  some  Minor  Law-books. 
 
 Translated  by  Julius  Jolly.     [Nearly  ready.] 
 Vol.  XXXIV.     The  Vedanta  -  Sutras,  with    Ankara's 
 Commentary. 
 
 Translated  by  G.  Thibaut.     [In  the  Press.] 
 Vol.  XXXV.     Milinda.     Translated   by  T.  W.    Rhys 
 
 Davids.     [In  the  Press.] 
 ***   The  Second  Series  will  consist  of  Twenty-four  Volumes  in  all. 
 
RECENT  ORIENTAL    WORKS. 
 
 ORIENTAL    WORKS 
 
 RECENTLY  PUBLISHED  BY  THE  CLARENDON   PRESS. 
 
 A  Catalogue  of  the  Chinese  Translation  of  the  Bud- 
 dhist  Tripi/aka,  the  Sacred  Canon  of  the  Buddhists 
 in  China  and  Japan. 
 
 Compiled  by  order  of  the   Secretary  of  State  for  India  by 
 Bunyiu  Nanjio,  Priest  of  the  Temple,  Eastern  Hongwamsi, 
 Japan;  Member  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society.     4to.,  32J.  6d. 
 'An  immense  service  rendered  to  Oriental  scholarship.' — Saturday  Review. 
 
 Buddhist  Texts  from  Japan.  I.  Va^ra/'Medika ;  The 
 Diamond-  Cutter. 
 
 Edited  by  F.  Max  Muller,  M.A.     Small  4to.,  %s.  6d. 
 One  of  the  most  famous  metaphysical  treatises  of  the  Mahayana  Buddhists. 
 
 Buddhist  Texts  from  Japan.  II.  Sukhavati-Vyuha  : 
 Description  of  Sukhavati,  the  Land  of  Bliss. 
 
 Edited  by  F.  Max  Muller,  M.A.,  and  Bunyiu  Nanjio.     With 
 two  Appendices:  (1)  Text  and  Translation  of  Sarighavarman's 
 Chinese  Version  of  the   Poetical  Portions  of  the  Sukhavati- 
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 Buddhist  Texts  from  Japan.  III.  The  A  ncient  Palm- 
 Leaves  containing  the  Pra^a-Paramita-Hrzdaya- 
 Sutra  and  the  Ushmsha-Vi^aya-Dhara/n. 
 
 Edited  by  F.  Max  Muller,  M.A.,  and  Bunyiu  Nanjio,  M.A. 
 With  an  Appendix  by  G.  Buhler,  CLE.    With  many  Plates. 
 Small  4to.,  \os. 
 Contains  facsimiles  of  the  oldest  Sanskrit  MS.  at  present  known. 
 
 Dharma-Sa;//graha,  an  Ancient  Collection  of  Buddhist 
 Technical  Terms. 
 
 Prepared  for  publication  by  Kenjiu  Kasawara,  a  Buddhist 
 Priest  from  Japan,  and,  after  his  death,  edited  by  F.  Max 
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