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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pagan & Christian Creeds, by Edward Carpenter
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Pagan & Christian Creeds
+       Their Origin and Meaning
+
+Author: Edward Carpenter
+
+Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1561]
+Release Date: December, 1998
+[Last updated: July 28, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGAN & CHRISTIAN CREEDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller
+
+
+
+
+
+PAGAN & CHRISTIAN CREEDS: THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANING
+
+By Edward Carpenter
+
+
+
+
+"The different religions being lame attempts to represent under various
+guises this one root-fact of the central universal life, men have at
+all times clung to the religious creeds and rituals and ceremonials as
+symbolising in some rude way the redemption and fulfilment of their own
+most intimate natures--and this whether consciously understanding
+the interpretations, or whether (as most often) only doing so in an
+unconscious or quite subconscious way."
+
+The Drama of Love and Death, p. 96.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     I.    INTRODUCTORY
+     II.   SOLAR MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS
+     III.  THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ZODIAC
+     IV.   TOTEM-SACRAMENTS AND EUCHARISTS
+     V.    FOOD AND VEGETATION MAGIC
+     VI.   MAGICIANS, KINGS AND GODS
+     VII.  RITES OF EXPIATION AND REDEMPTION
+     VIII. PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH
+     IX.   MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE
+     X.    THE SAVIOUR-GOD AND THE VIRGIN-MOTHER
+     XI.   RITUAL DANCING
+     XII.  THE SEX-TABOO
+     XIII. THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIANITY
+     XV.   THE MEANING OF IT ALL
+     XV.   THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
+     XVI.  THE EXODUS OF CHRISTIANITY
+     XVII. CONCLUSION
+
+     APPENDIX ON THE TEACHINGS OF THE UPANISHADS:
+     I.    REST
+     II.   THE NATURE OF THE SELF
+
+
+
+
+PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS: THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANING
+
+
+
+
+I. INTRODUCTORY
+
+The subject of Religious Origins is a fascinating one, as the great
+multitude of books upon it, published in late years, tends to show.
+Indeed the great difficulty to-day in dealing with the subject, lies in
+the very mass of the material to hand--and that not only on account of
+the labor involved in sorting the material, but because the abundance
+itself of facts opens up temptation to a student in this department of
+Anthropology (as happens also in other branches of general Science) to
+rush in too hastily with what seems a plausible theory. The more facts,
+statistics, and so forth, there are available in any investigation, the
+easier it is to pick out a considerable number which will fit a given
+theory. The other facts being neglected or ignored, the views put
+forward enjoy for a time a great vogue. Then inevitably, and at a later
+time, new or neglected facts alter the outlook, and a new perspective is
+established.
+
+There is also in these matters of Science (though many scientific men
+would doubtless deny this) a great deal of "Fashion". Such has been
+notoriously the case in Political Economy, Medicine, Geology, and even
+in such definite studies as Physics and Chemistry. In a comparatively
+recent science, like that with which we are now concerned, one would
+naturally expect variations. A hundred and fifty years ago, and since
+the time of Rousseau, the "Noble Savage" was extremely popular; and he
+lingers still in the story books of our children. Then the reaction from
+this extreme view set in, and of late years it has been the popular cue
+(largely, it must be said, among "armchair" travelers and explorers)
+to represent the religious rites and customs of primitive folk as a
+senseless mass of superstitions, and the early man as quite devoid of
+decent feeling and intelligence. Again, when the study of religious
+origins first began in modern times to be seriously taken up--say in the
+earlier part of last century--there was a great boom in Sungods. Every
+divinity in the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun--unless indeed
+(if feminine) of the Moon. Apollo was a sungod, of course; Hercules was
+a sungod; Samson was a sungod; Indra and Krishna, and even Christ, the
+same. C. F. Dupuis in France (Origine de tous les Cultes, 1795), F. Nork
+in Germany (Biblische Mythologie, 1842), Richard Taylor in England (The
+Devil's Pulpit, (1) 1830), were among the first in modern times to put
+forward this view. A little later the PHALLIC explanation of everything
+came into fashion. The deities were all polite names for the organs and
+powers of procreation. R. P. Knight (Ancient Art and Mythology,
+1818) and Dr. Thomas Inman (Ancient Faiths and Ancient Names, 1868)
+popularized this idea in England; so did Nork in Germany. Then again
+there was a period of what is sometimes called Euhemerism--the theory
+that the gods and goddesses had actually once been men and women,
+historical characters round whom a halo of romance and remoteness
+had gathered. Later still, a school has arisen which thinks little of
+sungods, and pays more attention to Earth and Nature spirits, to gnomes
+and demons and vegetation-sprites, and to the processes of Magic by
+which these (so it was supposed) could be enlisted in man's service if
+friendly, or exorcised if hostile.
+
+
+ (1) This extraordinary book, though carelessly composed and
+containing many unproven statements, was on the whole on the right
+lines. But it raised a storm of opposition--the more so because its
+author was a clergyman! He was ejected from the ministry, of course, and
+was sent to prison twice.
+
+
+It is easy to see of course that there is some truth in ALL these
+explanations; but naturally each school for the time being makes the
+most of its own contention. Mr. J. M. Robertson (Pagan Christs and
+Christianity and Mythology), who has done such fine work in this field,
+(1) relies chiefly on the solar and astronomical origins, though he does
+not altogether deny the others; Dr. Frazer, on the other hand--whose
+great work, The Golden Bough, is a monumental collection of primitive
+customs, and will be an inexhaustible quarry for all future students--is
+apparently very little concerned with theories about the Sun and the
+stars, but concentrates his attention on the collection of innumerable
+details (2) of rites, chiefly magical, connected with food and
+vegetation. Still later writers, like S. Reinach, Jane Harrison and
+E. A. Crowley, being mainly occupied with customs of very primitive
+peoples, like the Pelasgian Greeks or the Australian aborigines, have
+confined themselves (necessarily) even more to Magic and Witchcraft.
+
+ (1) If only he did not waste so much time, and so needlessly, in
+slaughtering opponents!
+
+ (2) To such a degree, indeed, that sometimes the connecting clue
+of the argument seems to be lost.
+
+
+Meanwhile the Christian Church from these speculations has kept itself
+severely apart--as of course representing a unique and divine revelation
+little concerned or interested in such heathenisms; and moreover (in
+this country at any rate) has managed to persuade the general public
+of its own divine uniqueness to such a degree that few people, even
+nowadays, realize that it has sprung from just the same root as
+Paganism, and that it shares by far the most part of its doctrines and
+rites with the latter. Till quite lately it was thought (in Britain)
+that only secularists and unfashionable people took any interest in
+sungods; and while it was true that learned professors might point to a
+belief in Magic as one of the first sources of Religion, it was easy in
+reply to say that this obviously had nothing to do with Christianity!
+The Secularists, too, rather spoilt their case by assuming, in their
+wrath against the Church, that all priests since the beginning of
+the world have been frauds and charlatans, and that all the rites of
+religion were merely devil's devices invented by them for the purpose of
+preying upon the superstitions of the ignorant, to their own enrichment.
+They (the Secularists) overleaped themselves by grossly exaggerating a
+thing that no doubt is partially true.
+
+Thus the subject of religious origins is somewhat complex, and yields
+many aspects for consideration. It is only, I think, by keeping a broad
+course and admitting contributions to the truth from various sides, that
+valuable results can be obtained. It is absurd to suppose that in this
+or any other science neat systems can be found which will cover all the
+facts. Nature and History do not deal in such things, or supply them for
+a sop to Man's vanity.
+
+It is clear that there have been three main lines, so far, along which
+human speculation and study have run. One connecting religious rites and
+observations with the movements of the Sun and the planets in the sky,
+and leading to the invention of and belief in Olympian and remote gods
+dwelling in heaven and ruling the Earth from a distance; the second
+connecting religion with the changes of the season, on the Earth and
+with such practical things as the growth of vegetation and food, and
+leading to or mingled with a vague belief in earth-spirits and magical
+methods of influencing such spirits; and the third connecting religion
+with man's own body and the tremendous force of sex residing in
+it--emblem of undying life and all fertility and power. It is clear
+also--and all investigation confirms it--that the second-mentioned phase
+of religion arose on the whole BEFORE the first-mentioned--that is, that
+men naturally thought about the very practical questions of food and
+vegetation, and the magical or other methods of encouraging the same,
+before they worried themselves about the heavenly bodies and the laws of
+THEIR movements, or about the sinister or favorable influences the stars
+might exert. And again it is extremely probable that the third-mentioned
+aspect--that which connected religion with the procreative desires and
+phenomena of human physiology--really came FIRST. These desires and
+physiological phenomena must have loomed large on the primitive mind
+long before the changes of the seasons or of the sky had been at all
+definitely observed or considered. Thus we find it probable that, in
+order to understand the sequence of the actual and historical phases of
+religious worship, we must approximately reverse the order above-given
+in which they have been STUDIED, and conclude that in general the
+Phallic cults came first, the cult of Magic and the propitiation of
+earth-divinities and spirits came second, and only last came the belief
+in definite God-figures residing in heaven.
+
+At the base of the whole process by which divinities and demons were
+created, and rites for their propitiation and placation established, lay
+Fear--fear stimulating the imagination to fantastic activity. Primus in
+orbe deos fecit Timor. And fear, as we shall see, only became a mental
+stimulus at the time of, or after, the evolution of self-consciousness.
+Before that time, in the period of SIMPLE consciousness, when the human
+mind resembled that of the animals, fear indeed existed, but its nature
+was more that of a mechanical protective instinct. There being no figure
+or image of SELF in the animal mind, there were correspondingly no
+figures or images of beings who might threaten or destroy that self. So
+it was that the imaginative power of fear began with Self-consciousness,
+and from that imaginative power was unrolled the whole panorama of the
+gods and rites and creeds of Religion down the centuries.
+
+The immense force and domination of Fear in the first self-conscious
+stages of the human mind is a thing which can hardly be exaggerated, and
+which is even difficult for some of us moderns to realize. But naturally
+as soon as Man began to think about himself--a frail phantom and waif in
+the midst of tremendous forces of whose nature and mode of operation he
+was entirely ignorant--he was BESET with terrors; dangers loomed upon
+him on all sides. Even to-day it is noticed by doctors that one of the
+chief obstacles to the cure of illness among some black or native races
+is sheer superstitious terror; and Thanatomania is the recognized word
+for a state of mind ("obsession of death") which will often cause a
+savage to perish from a mere scratch hardly to be called a wound.
+The natural defence against this state of mind was the creation of an
+enormous number of taboos--such as we find among all races and on every
+conceivable subject--and these taboos constituted practically a
+great body of warnings which regulated the lives and thoughts of the
+community, and ultimately, after they had been weeded out and to some
+degree simplified, hardened down into very stringent Customs and Laws.
+Such taboos naturally in the beginning tended to include the avoidance
+not only of acts which might reasonably be considered dangerous, like
+touching a corpse, but also things much more remote and fanciful in
+their relation to danger, like merely looking at a mother-in-law, or
+passing a lightning-struck tree; and (what is especially to be noticed)
+they tended to include acts which offered any special PLEASURE or
+temptation--like sex or marriage or the enjoyment of a meal. Taboos
+surrounded these things too, and the psychological connection is easy to
+divine: but I shall deal with this general subject later.
+
+It may be guessed that so complex a system of regulations made life
+anything but easy to early peoples; but, preposterous and unreasonable
+as some of the taboos were, they undoubtedly had the effect of
+compelling the growth of self-control. Fear does not seem a very worthy
+motive, but in the beginning it curbed the violence of the purely animal
+passions, and introduced order and restraint among them. Simultaneously
+it became itself, through the gradual increase of knowledge and
+observation, transmuted and etherealized into something more like wonder
+and awe and (when the gods rose above the horizon) into reverence.
+Anyhow we seem to perceive that from the early beginnings (in the
+Stone Age) of self-consciousness in Man there has been a gradual
+development--from crass superstition, senseless and accidental, to
+rudimentary observation, and so to belief in Magic; thence to Animism
+and personification of nature-powers in more or less human form,
+as earth-divinities or sky-gods or embodiments of the tribe; and to
+placation of these powers by rites like Sacrifice and the Eucharist,
+which in their turn became the foundation of Morality. Graphic
+representations made for the encouragement of fertility--as on the
+walls of Bushmen's rock-dwellings or the ceilings of the caverns of
+Altamira--became the nurse of pictorial Art; observations of plants
+or of the weather or the stars, carried on by tribal medicine-men for
+purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied some of the material of
+Science; and humanity emerged by faltering and hesitating steps on the
+borderland of those finer perceptions and reasonings which are supposed
+to be characteristic of Civilization.
+
+The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies has in
+its main outlines been the same all over the world, as the reader will
+presently see--and this whether in connection with the numerous creeds
+of Paganism or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now the
+continuity and close intermixture of these great streams can no longer
+be denied--nor IS it indeed denied by those who have really studied the
+subject. It is seen that religious evolution through the ages has been
+practically One thing--that there has been in fact a World-religion,
+though with various phases and branches.
+
+And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account
+for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases
+of evolution, and its own spontaneous (1) growths in all corners of the
+globe--this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts
+of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn
+out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled them in
+sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history with such
+horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has been the
+instigating cause of it?
+
+ (1) For the question of spontaneity see chap. x and elsewhere.
+
+
+The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to
+some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is
+that the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of,
+the growth of human Consciousness itself--its growth, namely, through
+the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of
+the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and
+(3) that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been
+effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here
+and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the
+early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of
+the later civilizations. Though I do not expect or wish to catch Nature
+and History in the careful net of a phrase, yet I think that in the
+sequence from the above-mentioned first stage to the second, and then
+again in the sequence from the second to the third, there will be found
+a helpful explanation of the rites and aspirations of human religion. It
+is this idea, illustrated by details of ceremonial and so forth, which
+forms the main thesis of the present book. In this sequence of growth,
+Christianity enters as an episode, but no more than an episode. It does
+not amount to a disruption or dislocation of evolution. If it did, or
+if it stood as an unique or unclassifiable phenomenon (as some of its
+votaries contend), this would seem to be a misfortune--as it would
+obviously rob us of at any rate one promise of progress in the future.
+And the promise of something better than Paganism and better than
+Christianity is very precious. It is surely time that it should be
+fulfilled.
+
+The tracing, therefore, of the part that human self-consciousness has
+played, psychologically, in the evolution of religion, runs like a
+thread through the following chapters, and seeks illustration in a
+variety of details. The idea has been repeated under different aspects;
+sometimes, possibly, it has been repeated too often; but different
+aspects in such a case do help, as in a stereoscope, to give solidity to
+the thing seen. Though the worship of Sun-gods and divine figures in
+the sky came comparatively late in religious evolution, 1 have put this
+subject early in the book (chapters ii and iii), partly because (as I
+have already explained) it was the phase first studied in modern times,
+and therefore is the one most familiar to present-day readers, and
+partly because its astronomical data give great definiteness and
+"proveability" to it, in rebuttal to the common accusation that the
+whole study of religious origins is too vague and uncertain to have much
+value. Going backwards in Time, the two next chapters (iv and v) deal
+with Totem-sacraments and Magic, perhaps the earliest forms of religion.
+And these four lead on (in chapters vi to xi) to the consideration of
+rites and creeds common to Paganism and Christianity. XII and xiii deal
+especially with the evolution of Christianity itself; xiv and xv explain
+the inner Meaning of the whole process from the beginning; and xvi and
+xvii look to the Future.
+
+The appendix on the doctrines of the Upanishads may, I hope, serve to
+give an idea, intimate even though inadequate, of the third Stage--that
+which follows on the stage of self-consciousness; and to portray the
+mental attitudes which are characteristic of that stage. Here in this
+third stage, it would seem, one comes upon the real FACTS of the inner
+life--in contradistinction to the fancies and figments of the second
+stage; and so one reaches the final point of conjunction between Science
+and Religion.
+
+
+
+
+II. SOLAR MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS
+
+To the ordinary public--notwithstanding the immense amount of work which
+has of late been done on this subject--the connection between Paganism
+and Christianity still seems rather remote. Indeed the common notion
+is that Christianity was really a miraculous interposition into and
+dislocation of the old order of the world; and that the pagan gods (as
+in Milton's Hymn on the Nativity) fled away in dismay before the sign of
+the Cross, and at the sound of the name of Jesus. Doubtless this was a
+view much encouraged by the early Church itself--if only to enhance its
+own authority and importance; yet, as is well known to every student, it
+is quite misleading and contrary to fact. The main Christian doctrines
+and festivals, besides a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial,
+are really quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding
+Nature worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate
+mystification and falsification that this derivation has been kept out
+of sight.
+
+In these Nature-worships there may be discerned three fairly independent
+streams of religious or quasi-religious enthusiasm: (1) that connected
+with the phenomena of the heavens, the movements of the Sun, planets and
+stars, and the awe and wonderment they excited; (2) that connected with
+the seasons and the very important matter of the growth of vegetation
+and food on the Earth; and (3) that connected with the mysteries of Sex
+and reproduction. It is obvious that these three streams would mingle
+and interfuse with each other a good deal; but as far as they were
+separable the first would tend to create Solar heroes and Sun-myths;
+the second Vegetation-gods and personifications of Nature and the
+earth-life; while the third would throw its glamour over the other two
+and contribute to the projection of deities or demons worshipped with
+all sorts of sexual and phallic rites. All three systems of course have
+their special rites and times and ceremonies; but, as, I say, the rites
+and ceremonies of one system would rarely be found pure and unmixed with
+those belonging to the two others. The whole subject is a very large
+one; but for reasons given in the Introduction I shall in this and
+the following chapter--while not ignoring phases (2) and (3)--lay most
+stress on phase (1) of the question before us.
+
+At the time of the life or recorded appearance of Jesus of Nazareth, and
+for some centuries before, the Mediterranean and neighboring world had
+been the scene of a vast number of pagan creeds and rituals. There were
+Temples without end dedicated to gods like Apollo or Dionysus among the
+Greeks, Hercules among the Romans, Mithra among the Persians, Adonis and
+Attis in Syria and Phrygia, Osiris and Isis and Horus in Egypt, Baal
+and Astarte among the Babylonians and Carthaginians, and so forth.
+Societies, large or small, united believers and the devout in the
+service or ceremonials connected with their respective deities, and
+in the creeds which they confessed concerning these deities. And an
+extraordinarily interesting fact, for us, is that notwithstanding great
+geographical distances and racial differences between the adherents
+of these various cults, as well as differences in the details of their
+services, the general outlines of their creeds and ceremonials were--if
+not identical--so markedly similar as we find them.
+
+I cannot of course go at length into these different cults, but I may
+say roughly that of all or nearly all the deities above-mentioned it was
+said and believed that:
+
+
+(1) They were born on or very near our Christmas Day.
+
+(2) They were born of a Virgin-Mother.
+
+(3) And in a Cave or Underground Chamber.
+
+(4) They led a life of toil for Mankind.
+
+(5) And were called by the names of Light-bringer, Healer, Mediator,
+Savior, Deliverer.
+
+(6) They were however vanquished by the Powers of Darkness.
+
+(7) And descended into Hell or the Underworld.
+
+(8) They rose again from the dead, and became the pioneers of mankind to
+the Heavenly world.
+
+(9) They founded Communions of Saints, and Churches into which disciples
+were received by Baptism.
+
+(10) And they were commemorated by Eucharistic meals.
+
+
+Let me give a few brief examples.
+
+Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. (1) He was born of
+a Virgin. (2) He traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator
+of men. He slew the Bull (symbol of the gross Earth which the sunlight
+fructifies). His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring
+equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples
+(the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose
+again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings.
+He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and
+sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers.
+This legend is apparently partly astronomical and partly vegetational;
+and the same may be said of the following about Osiris.
+
+ (1) The birthfeast of Mithra was held in Rome on the 8th day
+before the Kalends of January, being also the day of the Circassian
+games, which were sacred to the Sun. (See F. Nork, Der Mystagog,
+Leipzig.)
+
+ (2) This at any rate was reported by his later disciples (see
+Robertson's Pagan Christs, p. 338).
+
+
+Osiris was born (Plutarch tells us) on the 361st day of the year,
+say the 27th December. He too, like Mithra and Dionysus, was a great
+traveler. As King of Egypt he taught men civil arts, and "tamed them by
+music and gentleness, not by force of arms"; (1) he was the discoverer
+of corn and wine. But he was betrayed by Typhon, the power of darkness,
+and slain and dismembered. "This happened," says Plutarch, "on the 17th
+of the month Athyr, when the sun enters into the Scorpion" (the sign of
+the Zodiac which indicates the oncoming of Winter). His body was placed
+in a box, but afterwards, on the 19th, came again to life, and, as in
+the cults of Mithra, Dionysus, Adonis and others, so in the cult
+of Osiris, an image placed in a coffin was brought out before the
+worshipers and saluted with glad cries of "Osiris is risen." (1) "His
+sufferings, his death and his resurrection were enacted year by year in
+a great mystery-play at Abydos." (2)
+
+ (1) See Plutarch on Isis and Osiris.
+
+ (2) Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane E. Harrison, chap. i.
+
+
+The two following legends have more distinctly the character of
+Vegetation myths.
+
+Adonis or Tammuz, the Syrian god of vegetation, was a very beautiful
+youth, born of a Virgin (Nature), and so beautiful that Venus and
+Proserpine (the goddesses of the Upper and Underworlds) both fell in
+love with him. To reconcile their claims it was agreed that he should
+spend half the year (summer) in the upper world, and the winter half
+with Proserpine below. He was killed by a boar (Typhon) in the autumn.
+And every year the maidens "wept for Adonis" (see Ezekiel viii. 14). In
+the spring a festival of his resurrection was held--the women set out
+to seek him, and having found the supposed corpse placed it (a wooden
+image) in a coffin or hollow tree, and performed wild rites and
+lamentations, followed by even wilder rejoicings over his supposed
+resurrection. At Aphaca in the North of Syria, and halfway between
+Byblus and Baalbec, there was a famous grove and temple of Astarte,
+near which was a wild romantic gorge full of trees, the birthplace of
+a certain river Adonis--the water rushing from a Cavern, under lofty
+cliffs. Here (it was said) every year the youth Adonis was again wounded
+to death, and the river ran red with his blood, (1) while the scarlet
+anemone bloomed among the cedars and walnuts.
+
+ (1) A discoloration caused by red earth washed by rain from the
+mountains, and which has been observed by modern travelers. For the
+whole story of Adonis and of Attis see Frazer's Golden Bough, part iv.
+
+
+The story of Attis is very similar. He was a fair young shepherd or
+herdsman of Phrygia, beloved by Cybele (or Demeter), the Mother of the
+gods. He was born of a Virgin--Nana--who conceived by putting a ripe
+almond or pomegranate in her bosom. He died, either killed by a boar,
+the symbol of winter, like Adonis, or self-castrated (like his own
+priests); and he bled to death at the foot of a pine tree (the pine
+and pine-cone being symbols of fertility). The sacrifice of his blood
+renewed the fertility of the earth, and in the ritual celebration of
+his death and resurrection his image was fastened to the trunk of a
+pine-tree (compare the Crucifixion). But I shall return to this legend
+presently. The worship of Attis became very widespread and much honored,
+and was ultimately incorporated with the established religion at Rome
+somewhere about the commencement of our Era.
+
+The following two legends (dealing with Hercules and with Krishna) have
+rather more of the character of the solar, and less of the vegetational
+myth about them. Both heroes were regarded as great benefactors of
+humanity; but the former more on the material plane, and the latter on
+the spiritual.
+
+Hercules or Heracles was, like other Sun-gods and benefactors of
+mankind, a great Traveler. He was known in many lands, and everywhere
+he was invoked as Saviour. He was miraculously conceived from a divine
+Father; even in the cradle he strangled two serpents sent to destroy
+him. His many labors for the good of the world were ultimately
+epitomized into twelve, symbolized by the signs of the Zodiac. He slew
+the Nemxan Lion and the Hydra (offspring of Typhon) and the Boar. He
+overcame the Cretan Bull, and cleaned out the Stables of Augeas; he
+conquered Death and, descending into Hades, brought Cerberus thence and
+ascended into Heaven. On all sides he was followed by the gratitude and
+the prayers of mortals.
+
+As to Krishna, the Indian god, the points of agreement with the general
+divine career indicated above are too salient to be overlooked, and too
+numerous to be fully recorded. He also was born of a Virgin (Devaki)
+and in a Cave, (1) and his birth announced by a Star. It was sought to
+destroy him, and for that purpose a massacre of infants was ordered.
+Everywhere he performed miracles, raising the dead, healing lepers, and
+the deaf and the blind, and championing the poor and oppressed. He had
+a beloved disciple, Arjuna, (cf. John) before whom he was transfigured.
+(2) His death is differently related--as being shot by an arrow, or
+crucified on a tree. He descended into hell; and rose again from the
+dead, ascending into heaven in the sight of many people. He will return
+at the last day to be the judge of the quick and the dead.
+
+ (1) Cox's Myths of the Aryan Nations, p. 107.
+
+ (2) Bhagavat Gita, ch. xi.
+
+
+Such are some of the legends concerning the pagan and pre-Christian
+deities--only briefly sketched now, in order that we may get something
+like a true perspective of the whole subject; but to most of them, and
+more in detail, I shall return as the argument proceeds.
+
+What we chiefly notice so far are two points; on the one hand the
+general similarity of these stories with that of Jesus Christ; on the
+other their analogy with the yearly phenomena of Nature as illustrated
+by the course of the Sun in heaven and the changes of Vegetation on the
+earth.
+
+
+(1) The similarity of these ancient pagan legends and beliefs with
+Christian traditions was indeed so great that it excited the attention
+and the undisguised wrath of the early Christian fathers. They felt no
+doubt about the similarity, but not knowing how to explain it fell
+back upon the innocent theory that the Devil--in order to confound the
+Christians--had, CENTURIES BEFORE, caused the pagans to adopt certain
+beliefs and practices! (Very crafty, we may say, of the Devil, but also
+very innocent of the Fathers to believe it!) Justin Martyr for instance
+describes (1) the institution of the Lord's Supper as narrated in the
+Gospels, and then goes on to say: "Which the wicked devils have IMITATED
+in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For,
+that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in
+the mystic rites of one who is being initiated you either know or can
+learn." Tertullian also says (2) that "the devil by the mysteries of
+his idols imitates even the main part of the divine mysteries."...
+"He baptizes his worshippers in water and makes them believe that
+this purifies them from their crimes."... "Mithra sets his mark on the
+forehead of his soldiers; he celebrates the oblation of bread; he offers
+an image of the resurrection, and presents at once the crown and the
+sword; he limits his chief priest to a single marriage; he even has his
+virgins and ascetics." (3) Cortez, too, it will be remembered complained
+that the Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things
+which God had taught to Christendom.
+
+ (1) I Apol. c. 66.
+
+ (2) De Praescriptione Hereticorum, c. 40; De Bapt. c. 3; De
+Corona, c. 15.
+
+ (3) For reference to both these examples see J. M. Robertson's
+Pagan Christs, pp. 321, 322.
+
+
+Justin Martyr again, in the Dialogue with Trypho says that the Birth in
+the Stable was the prototype (!) of the birth of Mithra in the Cave of
+Zoroastrianism; and boasts that Christ was born when the Sun takes its
+birth in the Augean Stable, (1) coming as a second Hercules to cleanse
+a foul world; and St. Augustine says "we hold this (Christmas) day holy,
+not like the pagans because of the birth of the Sun, but because of the
+birth of him who made it." There are plenty of other instances in the
+Early Fathers of their indignant ascription of these similarities to the
+work of devils; but we need not dwell over them. There is no need for
+US to be indignant. On the contrary we can now see that these
+animadversions of the Christian writers are the evidence of how and to
+what extent in the spread of Christianity over the world it had become
+fused with the Pagan cults previously existing.
+
+ (1) The Zodiacal sign of Capricornus, iii.
+
+
+It was not till the year A.D. 530 or so--five centuries after the
+supposed birth of Christ--that a Scythian Monk, Dionysius Exiguus, an
+abbot and astronomer of Rome, was commissioned to fix the day and the
+year of that birth. A nice problem, considering the historical science
+of the period! For year he assigned the date which we now adopt, (2) and
+for day and month he adopted the 25th December--a date which had been
+in popular use since about 350 B.C., and the very date, within a day or
+two, of the supposed birth of the previous Sungods. (3) From that
+fact alone we may fairly conclude that by the year 530 or earlier the
+existing Nature-worships had become largely fused into Christianity. In
+fact the dates of the main pagan religious festivals had by that time
+become so popular that Christianity was OBLIGED to accommodate itself to
+them. (1)
+
+ (1) As, for instance, the festival of John the Baptist in June
+took the place of the pagan midsummer festival of water and bathing;
+the Assumption of the Virgin in August the place of that of Diana in the
+same month; and the festival of All Souls early in November, that of the
+world-wide pagan feasts of the dead and their ghosts at the same season.
+
+ (2) See Encycl. Brit. art. "Chronology."
+
+ (3) "There is however a difficulty in accepting the 25th December
+as the real date of the Nativity, December being the height of the rainy
+season in Judaea, when neither flocks nor shepherds could have been at
+night in the fields of Bethlehem" (!). Encycl. Brit. art. "Christmas
+Day." According to Hastings's Encyclopaedia, art. "Christmas," "Usener
+says that the Feast of the Nativity was held originally on the 6th
+January (the Epiphany), but in 353-4 the Pope Liberius displaced it to
+the 25th December... but there is no evidence of a Feast of the Nativity
+taking place at all, before the fourth century A.D." It was not till 534
+A.D. that Christmas Day and Epiphany were reckoned by the law-courts as
+dies non.
+
+
+This brings us to the second point mentioned a few pages back--the
+analogy between the Christian festivals and the yearly phenomena of
+Nature in the Sun and the Vegetation.
+
+Let us take Christmas Day first. Mithra, as we have seen, was reported
+to have been born on the 25th December (which in the Julian Calendar was
+reckoned as the day of the Winter Solstice AND of the Nativity of the
+Sun); Plutarch says (Isis and Osiris, c. 12) that Osiris was born on
+the 361st day of the year, when a Voice rang out proclaiming the Lord of
+All. Horus, he says, was born on the 362nd day. Apollo on the same.
+
+Why was all this? Why did the Druids at Yule Tide light roaring fires?
+Why was the cock supposed to crow all Christmas Eve ("The bird of
+dawning singeth all night long")? Why was Apollo born with only one hair
+(the young Sun with only one feeble ray)? Why did Samson (name derived
+from Shemesh, the sun) lose all his strength when he lost his hair? Why
+were so many of these gods--Mithra, Apollo, Krishna, Jesus, and others,
+born in caves or underground chambers? (1) Why, at the Easter Eve
+festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light brought from the
+grave and communicated to the candles of thousands who wait outside, and
+who rush forth rejoicing to carry the new glory over the world? (2) Why
+indeed? except that older than all history and all written records has
+been the fear and wonderment of the children of men over the failure of
+the Sun's strength in Autumn--the decay of their God; and the anxiety
+lest by any means he should not revive or reappear?
+
+
+ (1) This same legend of gods (or idols) being born in caves has,
+curiously enough, been reported from Mexico, Guatemala, the Antilles,
+and other places in Central America. See C. F. P. von Martius,
+Etknographie Amerika, etc. (Leipzig, 1867), vol. i, p. 758.
+
+ (2) Compare the Aztec ceremonial of lighting a holy fire and
+communicating it to the multitude from the wounded breast of a human
+victim, celebrated every 52 years at the end of one cycle and the
+beginning of another--the constellation of the Pleiades being in the
+Zenith (Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 4).
+
+
+Think for a moment of a time far back when there were absolutely NO
+Almanacs or Calendars, either nicely printed or otherwise, when all that
+timid mortals could see was that their great source of Light and Warmth
+was daily failing, daily sinking lower in the sky. As everyone now knows
+there are about three weeks at the fag end of the year when the days are
+at their shortest and there is very little change. What was happening?
+Evidently the god had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of
+darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his
+hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling
+with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign
+constellations--the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker
+and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can
+imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched for the
+first indication of a lengthening day; and the universal joy when the
+Priest (the representative of primitive science) having made some
+simple observations, announced from the Temple steps that the day WAS
+lengthening--that the Sun was really born again to a new and glorious
+career. (1)
+
+ (1) It was such things as these which doubtless gave the
+Priesthood its power.
+
+
+Let us look at the elementary science of those days a little closer.
+How without Almanacs or Calendars could the day, or probable day, of the
+Sun's rebirth be fixed? Go out next Christmas Evening, and at midnight
+you will see the brightest of the fixed stars, Sirius, blazing in the
+southern sky--not however due south from you, but somewhat to the
+left of the Meridian line. Some three thousand years ago (owing to the
+Precession of the Equinoxes) that star at the winter solstice did
+not stand at midnight where you now see it, but almost exactly ON
+the meridian line. The coming of Sirius therefore to the meridian at
+midnight became the sign and assurance of the Sun having reached the
+very lowest point of his course, and therefore of having arrived at the
+moment of his re-birth. Where then was the Sun at that moment? Obviously
+in the underworld beneath our feet. Whatever views the ancients may have
+had about the shape of the earth, it was evident to the mass of people
+that the Sungod, after illuminating the world during the day, plunged
+down in the West, and remained there during the hours of darkness in
+some cavern under the earth. Here he rested and after bathing in the
+great ocean renewed his garments before reappearing in the East next
+morning.
+
+But in this long night of his greatest winter weakness, when all the
+world was hoping and praying for the renewal of his strength, it is
+evident that the new birth would come--if it came at all--at midnight.
+This then was the sacred hour when in the underworld (the Stable or the
+Cave or whatever it might be called) the child was born who was destined
+to be the Savior of men. At that moment Sirius stood on the southern
+meridian (and in more southern lands than ours this would be more nearly
+overhead); and that star--there is little doubt--is the Star in the East
+mentioned in the Gospels.
+
+To the right, as the supposed observer looks at Sirius on the midnight
+of Christmas Eve, stands the magnificent Orion, the mighty hunter. There
+are three stars in his belt which, as is well known, lie in a straight
+line pointing to Sirius. They are not so bright as Sirius, but they are
+sufficiently bright to attract attention. A long tradition gives them
+the name of the Three Kings. Dupuis (1) says: "Orion a trois belles
+etoiles vers le milieu, qui sont de seconde grandeur et posees en ligne
+droite, l'une pres de l'autre, le peuple les appelle les trois rois.
+On donne aux trois rois Magis les noms de Magalat, Galgalat, Saraim;
+et Athos, Satos, Paratoras. Les Catholiques les appellent Gaspard,
+Melchior, et Balthasar." The last-mentioned group of names comes in
+the Catholic Calendar in connection with the feast of the Epiphany (6th
+January); and the name "Trois Rois" is commonly to-day given to these
+stars by the French and Swiss peasants.
+
+ (1) Charles F. Dupuis (Origine de Tous les Cultes, Paris, 1822)
+was one of the earliest modern writers on these subjects.
+
+
+Immediately after Midnight then, on the 25th December, the Beloved Son
+(or Sun-god) is born. If we go back in thought to the period, some three
+thousand years ago, when at that moment of the heavenly birth Sirius,
+coming from the East, did actually stand on the Meridian, we shall come
+into touch with another curious astronomical coincidence. For at the
+same moment we shall see the Zodiacal constellation of the Virgin in
+the act of rising, and becoming visible in the East divided through the
+middle by the line of the horizon.
+
+The constellation Virgo is a Y-shaped group, of which [gr a], the star
+at the foot, is the well-known Spica, a star of the first magnitude. The
+other principal stars, [gr g] at the centre, and [gr b] and [gr e] at
+the extremities, are of the second magnitude. The whole resembles more a
+cup than the human figure; but when we remember the symbolic meaning
+of the cup, that seems to be an obvious explanation of the name Virgo,
+which the constellation has borne since the earliest times. (The three
+stars [gr b], [gr g] and [gr a], lie very nearly on the Ecliptic, that
+is, the Sun's path--a fact to which we shall return presently.)
+
+At the moment then when Sirius, the star from the East, by coming to the
+Meridian at midnight signalled the Sun's new birth, the Virgin was seen
+just rising on the Eastern sky--the horizon line passing through
+her centre. And many people think that this astronomical fact is the
+explanation of the very widespread legend of the Virgin-birth. I do not
+think that it is the sole explanation--for indeed in all or nearly all
+these cases the acceptance of a myth seems to depend not upon a single
+argument but upon the convergence of a number of meanings and reasons in
+the same symbol. But certainly the fact mentioned above is curious, and
+its importance is accentuated by the following considerations.
+
+In the Temple of Denderah in Egypt, and on the inside of the dome,
+there is or WAS an elaborate circular representation of the Northern
+hemisphere of the sky and the Zodiac. (1) Here Virgo the constellation
+is represented, as in our star-maps, by a woman with a spike of corn in
+her hand (Spica). But on the margin close by there is an annotating and
+explicatory figure--a figure of Isis with the infant Horus in her arms,
+and quite resembling in style the Christian Madonna and Child, except
+that she is sitting and the child is on her knee. This seems to show
+that--whatever other nations may have done in associating Virgo with
+Demeter, Ceres, Diana (2) etc.--the Egyptians made no doubt of the
+constellation's connection with Isis and Horus. But it is well known as
+a matter of history that the worship of Isis and Horus descended in the
+early Christian centuries to Alexandria, where it took the form of the
+worship of the Virgin Mary and the infant Savior, and so passed into
+the European ceremonial. We have therefore the Virgin Mary connected by
+linear succession and descent with that remote Zodiacal cluster in the
+sky! Also it may be mentioned that on the Arabian and Persian globes of
+Abenezra and Abuazar a Virgin and Child are figured in connection with
+the same constellation. (3)
+
+ (1) Carefully described and mapped by Dupuis, see op. cit.
+
+ (2) For the harvest-festival of Diana, the Virgin, and her
+parallelism with the Virgin Mary, see The Golden Bough, vol. i, 14 and
+ii, 121.
+
+ (3) See F. Nork, Der Mystagog (Leipzig, 1838).
+
+
+A curious confirmation of the same astronomical connection is afforded
+by the Roman Catholic Calendar. For if this be consulted it will be
+found that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin is placed on the
+15th August, while the festival of the Birth of the Virgin is dated the
+8th September. I have already pointed out that the stars, [gr a], [gr
+b] and [gr g] of Virgo are almost exactly on the Ecliptic, or Sun's path
+through the sky; and a brief reference to the Zodiacal signs and the
+star-maps will show that the Sun each year enters the sign of Virgo
+about the first-mentioned date, and leaves it about the second date. At
+the present day the Zodiacal signs (owing to precession) have shifted
+some distance from the constellations of the same name. But at the time
+when the Zodiac was constituted and these names were given, the first
+date obviously would signalize the actual disappearance of the cluster
+Virgo in the Sun's rays--i. e. the Assumption of the Virgin into the
+glory of the God--while the second date would signalize the reappearance
+of the constellation or the Birth of the Virgin. The Church of Notre
+Dame at Paris is supposed to be on the original site of a Temple of
+Isis; and it is said (but I have not been able to verify this myself)
+that one of the side entrances--that, namely, on the left in entering
+from the North (cloister) side--is figured with the signs of the Zodiac
+EXCEPT that the sign Virgo is replaced by the figure of the Madonna and
+Child.
+
+So strange is the scripture of the sky! Innumerable legends and customs
+connect the rebirth of the Sun with a Virgin parturition. Dr. J. G.
+Frazer in his Part IV of The Golden Bough (1) says: "If we may trust the
+evidence of an obscure scholiast the Greeks (in the worship of Mithras
+at Rome) used to celebrate the birth of the luminary by a midnight
+service, coming out of the inner shrines and crying, 'The Virgin has
+brought forth! The light is waxing!' ([gr 'H parhenos tetoken, auzei
+pws].)" In Elie Reclus' little book Primitive Folk (2) it is said of the
+Esquimaux that "On the longest night of the year two angakout (priests),
+of whom one is disguised as a WOMAN, go from hut to hut extinguishing
+all the lights, rekindling them from a vestal flame, and crying out,
+'From the new sun cometh a new light!'"
+
+ (1) Book II, ch. vi.
+
+ (2) In the Contemporary Science Series, I. 92.
+
+
+All this above-written on the Solar or Astronomical origins of the myths
+does not of course imply that the Vegetational origins must be denied
+or ignored. These latter were doubtless the earliest, but there is no
+reason--as said in the Introduction (ch. i)--why the two elements should
+not to some extent have run side by side, or been fused with each other.
+In fact it is quite clear that they must have done so; and to separate
+them out too rigidly, or treat them as antagonistic, is a mistake. The
+Cave or Underworld in which the New Year is born is not only the place
+of the Sun's winter retirement, but also the hidden chamber beneath the
+Earth to which the dying Vegetation goes, and from which it re-arises
+in Spring. The amours of Adonis with Venus and Proserpine, the lovely
+goddesses of the upper and under worlds, or of Attis with Cybele, the
+blooming Earth-mother, are obvious vegetation-symbols; but they do not
+exclude the interpretation that Adonis (Adonai) may also figure as a
+Sun-god. The Zodiacal constellations of Aries and Taurus (to which I
+shall return presently) rule in heaven just when the Lamb and the Bull
+are in evidence on the earth; and the yearly sacrifice of those two
+animals and of the growing Corn for the good of mankind runs
+parallel with the drama of the sky, as it affects not only the said
+constellations but also Virgo (the Earth-mother who bears the sheaf of
+corn in her hand).
+
+I shall therefore continue (in the next chapter) to point out these
+astronomical references--which are full of significance and poetry; but
+with a recommendation at the same time to the reader not to forget the
+poetry and significance of the terrestrial interpretations.
+
+Between Christmas Day and Easter there are several minor festivals or
+holy days--such as the 28th December (the Massacre of the Innocents),
+the 6th January (the Epiphany), the 2nd February (Candlemas (1) Day),
+the period of Lent (German Lenz, the Spring), the Annunciation of the
+Blessed Virgin, and so forth--which have been commonly celebrated in
+the pagan cults before Christianity, and in which elements of Star and
+Nature worship can be traced; but to dwell on all these would take too
+long; so let us pass at once to the period of Easter itself.
+
+ (1) This festival of the Purification of the Virgin corresponds
+with the old Roman festival of Juno Februata (i. e. purified) which was
+held in the last month (February) of the Roman year, and which included
+a candle procession of Ceres, searching for Proserpine. (F. Nork, Der
+Mystagog.)
+
+
+
+
+III. THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ZODIAC
+
+The Vernal Equinox has all over the ancient world, and from the earliest
+times, been a period of rejoicing and of festivals in honor of the
+Sungod. It is needless to labor a point which is so well known. Everyone
+understands and appreciates the joy of finding that the long darkness is
+giving way, that the Sun is growing in strength, and that the days are
+winning a victory over the nights. The birds and flowers reappear, and
+the promise of Spring is in the air. But it may be worth while to give
+an elementary explanation of the ASTRONOMICAL meaning of this period,
+because this is not always understood, and yet it is very important in
+its bearing on the rites and creeds of the early religions. The priests
+who were, as I have said, the early students and inquirers, had worked
+out this astronomical side, and in that way were able to fix dates and
+to frame for the benefit of the populace myths and legends, which were
+in a certain sense explanations of the order of Nature, and a kind of
+"popular science."
+
+The Equator, as everyone knows, is an imaginary line or circle girdling
+the Earth half-way between the North and South poles. If you imagine a
+transparent Earth with a light at its very centre, and also imagine the
+SHADOW of this equatorial line to be thrown on the vast concave of
+the Sky, this shadow would in astronomical parlance coincide with the
+Equator of the Sky--forming an imaginary circle half-way between the
+North and South celestial poles.
+
+The Equator, then, may be pictured as cutting across the sky either by
+day or by night, and always at the same elevation--that is, as seen from
+any one place. But the Ecliptic (the other important great circle of the
+heavens) can only be thought of as a line traversing the constellations
+as they are seen at NIGHT. It is in fact the Sun's path among the fixed
+stars. For (really owing to the Earth's motion in its orbit) the Sun
+appears to move round the heavens once a year--travelling, always to the
+left, from constellation to constellation. The exact path of the sun is
+called the Ecliptic; and the band of sky on either side of the Ecliptic
+which may be supposed to include the said constellations is called the
+Zodiac. How then--it will of course be asked--seeing that the Sun and
+the Stars can never be seen together--were the Priests ABLE to map out
+the path of the former among the latter? Into that question we need not
+go. Sufficient to say that they succeeded; and their success--even with
+the very primitive instruments they had--shows that their astronomical
+knowledge and acuteness of reasoning were of no mean order.
+
+To return to our Vernal Equinox. Let us suppose that the Equator and
+Ecliptic of the sky, at the Spring season, are represented by two lines
+Eq. and Ecl. crossing each other at the point P. The Sun, represented
+by the small circle, is moving slowly and in its annual course along the
+Ecliptic to the left. When it reaches the point P (the dotted circle)
+it stands on the Equator of the sky, and then for a day or two, being
+neither North nor South, it shines on the two terrestrial hemispheres
+alike, and day and night are equal. BEFORE that time, when the sun
+is low down in the heavens, night has the advantage, and the days are
+short; AFTERWARDS, when the Sun has travelled more to the left, the days
+triumph over the nights. It will be seen then that this point P where
+the Sun's path crosses the Equator is a very critical point. It is the
+astronomical location of the triumph of the Sungod and of the arrival of
+Spring.
+
+How was this location defined? Among what stars was the Sun moving at
+that critical moment? (For of course it was understood, or supposed,
+that the Sun was deeply influenced by the constellation through which it
+was, or appeared to be, moving.) It seems then that at the period when
+these questions were occupying men's minds--say about three thousand
+years ago--the point where the Ecliptic crossed the Equator was, as a
+matter of fact, in the region of the constellation Aries or the he-Lamb.
+The triumph of the Sungod was therefore, and quite naturally, ascribed
+to the influence of Aries. THE LAMB BECAME THE SYMBOL OF THE RISEN
+SAVIOR, AND OF HIS PASSAGE FROM THE UNDERWORLD INTO THE HEIGHT OF
+HEAVEN. At first such an explanation sounds hazardous; but a thousand
+texts and references confirm it; and it is only by the accumulation of
+evidence in these cases that the student becomes convinced of a theory's
+correctness. It must also be remembered (what I have mentioned before)
+that these myths and legends were commonly adopted not only for
+one strict reason but because they represented in a general way the
+convergence of various symbols and inferences.
+
+Let me enumerate a few points with regard to the Vernal Equinox. In the
+Bible the festival is called the Passover, and its supposed institution
+by Moses is related in Exodus, ch. xii. In every house a he-lamb was to
+be slain, and its blood to be sprinkled on the doorposts of the house.
+Then the Lord would pass over and not smite that house. The Hebrew word
+is pasach, to pass. (1) The lamb slain was called the Paschal Lamb. But
+what was that lamb? Evidently not an earthly lamb--(though certainly
+the earthly lambs on the hillsides WERE just then ready to be killed and
+eaten)--but the heavenly Lamb, which was slain or sacrificed when the
+Lord "passed over" the equator and obliterated the constellation Aries.
+This was the Lamb of God which was slain each year, and "Slain since the
+foundation of the world." This period of the Passover (about the 25th
+March) was to be (2) the beginning of a new year. The sacrifice of
+the Lamb, and its blood, were to be the promise of redemption. The
+door-frames of the houses--symbols of the entrance into a new life--were
+to be sprinkled with blood. (3) Later, the imagery of the saving power
+of the blood of the Lamb became more popular, more highly colored. (See
+St. Paul's epistles, and the early Fathers.) And we have the expression
+"washed in the blood of the Lamb" adopted into the Christian Church.
+
+ (1) It is said that pasach sometimes means not so much to pass
+over, as to hover over and so protect. Possibly both meanings enter in
+here. See Isaiah xxxi. 5.
+
+ (2) See Exodus xii. i.
+
+ (3) It is even said (see The Golden Bough, vol. iii, 185) that
+the doorways of houses and temples in Peru were at the Spring festival
+daubed with blood of the first-born children--commuted afterwards to the
+blood of the sacred animal, the Llama. And as to Mexico, Sahagun, the
+great Spanish missionary, tells us that it was a custom of the people
+there to "smear the outside of their houses and doors with blood drawn
+from their own ears and ankles, in order to propitiate the god of
+Harvest" (Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 235).
+
+
+In order fully to understand this extraordinary expression and its
+origin we must turn for a moment to the worship both of Mithra, the
+Persian Sungod, and of Attis the Syrian god, as throwing great light
+on the Christian cult and ceremonies. It must be remembered that in the
+early centuries of our era the Mithra-cult was spread over the whole
+Western world. It has left many monuments of itself here in Britain.
+At Rome the worship was extremely popular, and it may almost be said
+to have been a matter of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm
+Christianity, or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the
+rites of the older one should establish itself (as it did) in the face
+of the latter.
+
+Now we have already mentioned that in the Mithra cult the slaying of a
+Bull by the Sungod occupies the same sort of place as the slaving of the
+Lamb in the Christian cult. It took place at the Vernal Equinox and the
+blood of the Bull acquired in men's minds a magic virtue. Mithraism was
+a greatly older religion than Christianity; but its genesis was similar.
+In fact, owing to the Precession of the Equinoxes, the crossing-place of
+the Ecliptic and Equator was different at the time of the establishment
+of Mithra-worship from what it was in the Christian period; and the
+Sun instead of standing in the He-lamb, or Aries, at the Vernal Equinox
+stood, about two thousand years earlier (as indicated by the dotted line
+in the diagram), in this very constellation of the Bull. (1) The bull
+therefore became the symbol of the triumphant God, and the sacrifice
+of the bull a holy mystery. (Nor must we overlook here the agricultural
+appropriateness of the bull as the emblem of Spring-plowings and of
+service to man.)
+
+ (1) With regard to this point, see an article in the Nineteenth
+Century for September 1900, by E. W. Maunder of the Greenwich
+Observatory on "The Oldest Picture Book" (the Zodiac). Mr. Maunder
+calculates that the Vernal Equinox was in the centre of the Sign of
+the Bull 5,000 years ago. (It would therefore be in the centre of Aries
+2,845 years ago--allowing 2,155 years for the time occupied in passing
+from one Sign to another.) At the earlier period the Summer solstice was
+in the centre of Leo, the Autumnal equinox in the centre of Scorpio, and
+the Winter solstice in the centre of Aquarius--corresponding roughly,
+Mr. Maunder points out, to the positions of the four "Royal Stars,"
+Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and Fomalhaut.
+
+
+The sacrifice of the Bull became the image of redemption. In a certain
+well-known Mithra-sculpture or group, the Sungod is represented as
+plunging his dagger into a bull, while a scorpion, a serpent, and other
+animals are sucking the latter's blood. From one point of view this may
+be taken as symbolic of the Sun fertilizing the gross Earth by plunging
+his rays into it and so drawing forth its blood for the sustenance of
+all creatures; while from another more astronomical aspect it symbolizes
+the conquest of the Sun over winter in the moment of "passing over" the
+sign of the Bull, and the depletion of the generative power of the Bull
+by the Scorpion--which of course is the autumnal sign of the Zodiac
+and herald of winter. One such Mithraic group was found at Ostia, where
+there was a large subterranean Temple "to the invincible god Mithras."
+
+In the worship of Attis there were (as I have already indicated) many
+points of resemblance to the Christian cult. On the 22nd March (the
+Vernal Equinox) a pinetree was cut in the woods and brought into the
+Temple of Cybele. It was treated almost as a divinity, was decked
+with violets, and the effigy of a young man tied to the stem (cf. the
+Crucifixion). The 24th was called the "Day of Blood"; the High Priest
+first drew blood from his own arms; and then the others gashed and
+slashed themselves, and spattered the altar and the sacred tree with
+blood; while novices made themselves eunuchs "for the kingdom of
+heaven's sake." The effigy was afterwards laid in a tomb. But when
+night fell, says Dr. Frazer, (1) sorrow was turned to joy. A light was
+brought, and the tomb was found to be empty. The next day, the 25th, was
+the festival of the Resurrection; and ended in carnival and license
+(the Hilaria). Further, says Dr. Frazer, these mysteries "seem to have
+included a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood."
+
+ (1) See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, Part IV of The Golden Bough, by
+J. G. Frazer, p. 229.
+
+
+"In the baptism the devotee, crowned with gold and wreathed with
+fillets, descended into a pit, the mouth of which was covered with a
+wooden grating. A bull, adorned with garlands of flowers, its forehead
+glittering with gold leaf, was then driven on to the grating and there
+stabbed to death with a consecrated spear. Its hot reeking blood
+poured in torrents through the apertures, and was received with devout
+eagerness by the worshiper on every part of his person and garments,
+till he emerged from the pit, drenched, dripping, and scarlet from head
+to foot, to receive the homage, nay the adoration, of his fellows--as
+one who had been born again to eternal life and had washed away his sins
+in the blood of the bull." (1) And Frazer continuing says: "That the
+bath of blood derived from slaughter of the bull (tauro-bolium)
+was believed to regenerate the devotee for eternity is proved by an
+inscription found at Rome, which records that a certain Sextilius
+Agesilaus Aedesius, who dedicated an altar to Attis and the mother of
+the gods (Cybele) was taurobolio criobolio que in aeternum renatus."
+(2) "In the procedure of the Taurobolia and Criobolia," says Mr. J. M.
+Robertson, (3) "which grew very popular in the Roman world, we have the
+literal and original meaning of the phrase 'washed in the blood of the
+lamb' (4); the doctrine being that resurrection and eternal life
+were secured by drenching or sprinkling with the actual blood of a
+sacrificial bull or ram." (5) For the POPULARITY of the rite we may
+quote Franz Cumont, who says:--"Cette douche sacree (taurobolium) pareit
+avoir ete administree en Cappadoce dans un grand nombre de sanctuaires,
+et en particulier dans ceux de Ma la grande divinite indigene, et dans
+ceux: de Anahita."
+
+ (1) See vol. i, pp. 334 ff.
+
+ (2) Adonis, Attis and Osiris, p. 229. References to Prudentius,
+and to Firmicus Maternus, De errore 28. 8.
+
+ (3) That is, "By the slaughter of the bull and the slaughter of
+the ram born again into eternity."
+
+ (4) Pagan Christs, p. 315.
+
+ (5) Mysteres de Mithra, Bruxelles, 1902, p. 153.
+
+
+Whether Mr. Robertson is right in ascribing to the priests (as he
+appears to do) so materialistic a view of the potency of the actual
+blood is, I should say, doubtful. I do not myself see that there is
+any reason for supposing that the priests of Mithra or Attis regarded
+baptism by blood very differently from the way in which the Christian
+Church has generally regarded baptism by water--namely, as a SYMBOL of
+some inner regeneration. There may certainly have been a little more
+of the MAGICAL view and a little less of the symbolic, in the older
+religions; but the difference was probably on the whole more one of
+degree than of essential disparity. But however that may be, we cannot
+but be struck by the extraordinary analogy between the tombstone
+inscriptions of that period "born again into eternity by the blood of
+the Bull or the Ram," and the corresponding texts in our graveyards
+to-day. F. Cumont in his elaborate work, Textes et Monuments relatifs
+aux Mysteres de Mithra (2 vols., Brussels, 1899) gives a great number of
+texts and epitaphs of the same character as that above-quoted, and they
+are well worth studying by those interested in the subject. Cumont, it
+may be noted (vol. i, p. 305), thinks that the story of Mithra and the
+slaying of the Bull must have originated among some pastoral people to
+whom the bull was the source of all life. The Bull in heaven--the symbol
+of the triumphant Sungod--and the earthly bull, sacrificed for the good
+of humanity were one and the same; the god, in fact, SACRIFICED HIMSELF
+OR HIS REPRESENTATIVE. And Mithra was the hero who first won this
+conception of divinity for mankind--though of course it is in essence
+quite similar to the conception put forward by the Christian Church.
+
+As illustrating the belief that the Baptism by Blood was accompanied by
+a real regeneration of the devotee, Frazer quotes an ancient writer
+(1) who says that for some time after the ceremony the fiction of a new
+birth was kept up by dieting the devotee on MILK, like a new-born
+babe. And it is interesting in that connection to find that even in the
+present day a diet of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT MILK for six or eight
+weeks is by many doctors recommended as the only means of getting rid
+of deep-seated illnesses and enabling a patient's organism to make a
+completely new start in life.
+
+ (1) Sallustius philosophus. See Adonis, Attis and Osiris, note,
+p. 229.
+
+
+"At Rome," he further says (p. 230), "the new birth and the remission
+of sins by the shedding of bull's blood appear to have been carried
+out above all at the sanctuary of the Phrygian Goddess (Cybele) on
+the Vatican Hill, at or near the spot where the great basilica of St.
+Peter's now stands; for many inscriptions relating to the rites were
+found when the church was being enlarged in 1608 or 1609. From
+the Vatican as a centre," he continues, "this barbarous system of
+superstition seems to have spread to other parts of the Roman empire.
+Inscriptions found in Gaul and Germany prove that provincial sanctuaries
+modelled their ritual on that of the Vatican."
+
+It would appear then that at Rome in the quiet early days of the
+Christian Church, the rites and ceremonials of Mithra and Cybele,
+probably much intermingled and blended, were exceedingly popular. Both
+religions had been recognized by the Roman State, and the Christians,
+persecuted and despised as they were, found it hard to make any headway
+against them--the more so perhaps because the Christian doctrines
+appeared in many respects to be merely faint replicas and copies of the
+older creeds. Robertson maintains (1) that a he-lamb was sacrificed in
+the Mithraic mysteries, and he quotes Porphyry as saying (2) that
+"a place near the equinoctial circle was assigned to Mithra as an
+appropriate seat; and on this account he bears the sword of the Ram
+(Aries) which is a sign of Mars (Ares)." Similarly among the early
+Christians, it is said, a ram or lamb was sacrificed in the Paschal
+mystery.
+
+ (1) Pagan Christs, p. 336.
+
+ (2) De Antro, xxiv.
+
+
+Many people think that the association of the Lamb-god with the Cross
+arose from the fact that the constellation Aries at that time WAS on the
+heavenly cross (the crossways of the Ecliptic and Equator-see diagram,
+ch. iii), and in the very place through which the Sungod had to pass
+just before his final triumph. And it is curious to find that Justin
+Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho (1) (a Jew) alludes to an old Jewish
+practice of roasting a Lamb on spits arranged in the form of a Cross.
+"The lamb," he says, meaning apparently the Paschal lamb, "is roasted
+and dressed up in the form of a cross. For one spit is transfixed right
+through the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to
+which are attached the legs (forelegs) of the lamb."
+
+ (1) Ch. xl.
+
+
+To-day in Morocco at the festival of Eid-el-Kebir, corresponding to the
+Christian Easter, the Mohammedans sacrifice a young ram and hurry it
+still bleeding to the precincts of the Mosque, while at the same time
+every household slays a lamb, as in the Biblical institution, for its
+family feast.
+
+But it will perhaps be said, "You are going too fast and proving too
+much. In the anxiety to show that the Lamb-god and the sacrifice of the
+Lamb were honored by the devotees of Mithra and Cybele in the Rome of
+the Christian era, you are forgetting that the sacrifice of the Bull and
+the baptism in bull's blood were the salient features of the Persian and
+Phrygian ceremonials, some centuries earlier. How can you reconcile
+the existence side by side of divinities belonging to such different
+periods, or ascribe them both to an astronomical origin?" The answer
+is simple enough. As I have explained before, the Precession of the
+Equinoxes caused the Sun, at its moment of triumph over the powers of
+darkness, to stand at one period in the constellation of the Bull, and
+at a period some two thousand years later in the constellation of the
+Ram. It was perfectly natural therefore that a change in the sacred
+symbols should, in the course of time, take place; yet perfectly natural
+also that these symbols, having once been consecrated and adopted,
+should continue to be honored and clung to long after the time of their
+astronomical appropriateness had passed, and so to be found side by side
+in later centuries. The devotee of Mithra or Attis on the Vatican
+Hill at Rome in the year 200 A.D. probably had as little notion or
+comprehension of the real origin of the sacred Bull or Ram which he
+adored, as the Christian in St. Peter's to-day has of the origin of the
+Lamb-god whose vicegerent on earth is the Pope.
+
+It is indeed easy to imagine that the change from the worship of the
+Bull to the worship of the Lamb which undoubtedly took place among
+various peoples as time went on, was only a ritual change initiated
+by the priests in order to put on record and harmonize with the
+astronomical alteration. Anyhow it is curious that while Mithra in the
+early times was specially associated with the bull, his association with
+the lamb belonged more to the Roman period. Somewhat the same happened
+in the case of Attis. In the Bible we read of the indignation of
+Moses at the setting up by the Israelites of a Golden Calf, AFTER
+the sacrifice of the ram-lamb had been instituted--as if indeed the
+rebellious people were returning to the earlier cult of Apis which they
+ought to have left behind them in Egypt. In Egypt itself, too, we find
+the worship of Apis, as time went on, yielding place to that of the
+Ram-headed god Amun, or Jupiter Ammon. (1) So that both from the Bible
+and from Egyptian history we may conclude that the worship of the Lamb
+or Ram succeeded to the worship of the Bull.
+
+ (1) Tacitus (Hist. v. 4) speaks of ram-sacrifice by the Jews in
+honor of Jupiter Ammon. See also Herodotus (ii. 42) on the same in
+Egypt.
+
+
+Finally it has been pointed out, and there may be some real connection
+in the coincidence, that in the quite early years of Christianity the
+FISH came in as an accepted symbol of Jesus Christ. Considering that
+after the domination of Taurus and Aries, the Fish (Pisces) comes next
+in succession as the Zodiacal sign for the Vernal Equinox, and is now
+the constellation in which the Sun stands at that period, it seems
+not impossible that the astronomical change has been the cause of the
+adoption of this new symbol.
+
+Anyhow, and allowing for possible errors or exaggerations, it becomes
+clear that the travels of the Sun through the belt of constellations
+which forms the Zodiac must have had, from earliest times, a profound
+influence on the generation of religious myths and legends. To say that
+it was the only influence would certainly be a mistake. Other causes
+undoubtedly contributed. But it was a main and important influence. The
+origins of the Zodiac are obscure; we do not know with any certainty the
+reasons why the various names were given to its component sections, nor
+can we measure the exact antiquity of these names; but--pre-supposing
+the names of the signs as once given--it is not difficult to imagine the
+growth of legends connected with the Sun's course among them.
+
+Of all the ancient divinities perhaps Hercules is the one whose role
+as a Sungod is most generally admitted. The helper of gods and men, a
+mighty Traveller, and invoked everywhere as the Saviour, his labors
+for the good of the world became ultimately defined and systematized
+as twelve and corresponding in number to the signs of the Zodiac. It
+is true that this systematization only took place at a late period,
+probably in Alexandria; also that the identification of some of the
+Labors with the actual signs as we have them at present is not always
+clear. But considering the wide prevalence of the Hercules myth over
+the ancient world and the very various astronomical systems it must have
+been connected with in its origin, this lack of exact correspondence is
+hardly to be wondered at.
+
+The Labors of Hercules which chiefly interest us are: (1) The capture
+of the Bull, (2) the slaughter of the Lion, (3) the destruction of the
+Hydra, (4) of the Boar, (5) the cleansing of the stables of Augeas, (6)
+the descent into Hades and the taming of Cerberus. The first of these
+is in line with the Mithraic conquest of the Bull; the Lion is of course
+one of the most prominent constellations of the Zodiac, and its conquest
+is obviously the work of a Saviour of mankind; while the last four
+labors connect themselves very naturally with the Solar conflict in
+winter against the powers of darkness. The Boar (4) we have seen already
+as the image of Typhon, the prince of darkness; the Hydra (3) was said
+to be the offspring of Typhon; the descent into Hades (6)--generally
+associated with Hercules' struggle with and victory over Death--links on
+to the descent of the Sun into the underworld, and its long and doubtful
+strife with the forces of winter; and the cleansing of the stables
+of Augeas (5) has the same signification. It appears in fact that the
+stables of Augeas was another name for the sign of Capricorn through
+which the Sun passes at the Winter solstice (1)--the stable of course
+being an underground chamber--and the myth was that there, in this
+lowest tract and backwater of the Ecliptic all the malarious and evil
+influences of the sky were collected, and the Sungod came to wash them
+away (December was the height of the rainy season in Judaea) and cleanse
+the year towards its rebirth.
+
+ (1) See diagram of Zodiac.
+
+
+It should not be forgotten too that even as a child in the cradle
+Hercules slew two serpents sent for his destruction--the serpent and the
+scorpion as autumnal constellations figuring always as enemies of the
+Sungod--to which may be compared the power given to his disciples by
+Jesus (1) "to tread on serpents and scorpions." Hercules also as a
+Sungod compares curiously with Samson (mentioned above, ii), but we
+need not dwell on all the elaborate analogies that have been traced (2)
+between these two heroes.
+
+ (1) Luke x. 19.
+
+ (2) See Doane's Bible Myths, ch. viii, (New York, 1882.)
+
+
+The Jesus-story, it will now be seen, has a great number of
+correspondences with the stories of former Sungods and with the actual
+career of the Sun through the heavens--so many indeed that they cannot
+well be attributed to mere coincidence or even to the blasphemous wiles
+of the Devil! Let us enumerate some of these. There are (1) the birth
+from a Virgin mother; (2) the birth in a stable (cave or underground
+chamber); and (3) on the 25th December (just after the winter solstice).
+There is (4) the Star in the East (Sirius) and (5) the arrival of the
+Magi (the "Three Kings"); there is (6) the threatened Massacre of the
+Innocents, and the consequent flight into a distant country (told also
+of Krishna and other Sungods). There are the Church festivals of (7)
+Candlemas (2nd February), with processions of candles to symbolize the
+growing light; of (8) Lent, or the arrival of Spring; of (9) Easter Day
+(normally on the 25th March) to celebrate the crossing of the Equator
+by the Sun; and (10) simultaneously the outburst of lights at the Holy
+Sepulchre at Jerusalem. There is (11) the Crucifixion and death of the
+Lamb-God, on Good Friday, three days before Easter; there are (12) the
+nailing to a tree, (13) the empty grave, (14) the glad Resurrection (as
+in the cases of Osiris, Attis and others); there are (15) the twelve
+disciples (the Zodiacal signs); and (16) the betrayal by one of the
+twelve. Then later there is (17) Midsummer Day, the 24th June, dedicated
+to the Nativity of John the Baptist, and corresponding to Christmas
+Day; there are the festivals of (18) the Assumption of the Virgin
+(15th August) and of (19) the Nativity of the Virgin (8th September),
+corresponding to the movement of the god through Virgo; there is the
+conflict of Christ and his disciples with the autumnal asterisms, (20)
+the Serpent and the Scorpion; and finally there is the curious fact that
+the Church (21) dedicates the very day of the winter solstice (when any
+one may very naturally doubt the rebirth of the Sun) to St. Thomas, who
+doubted the truth of the Resurrection!
+
+These are some of, and by no means all, the coincidences in question.
+But they are sufficient, I think, to prove--even allowing for possible
+margins of error--the truth of our general contention. To go into the
+parallelism of the careers of Krishna, the Indian Sungod, and
+Jesus would take too long; because indeed the correspondence is so
+extraordinarily close and elaborate. (1) I propose, however, at the
+close of this chapter, to dwell now for a moment on the Christian
+festival of the Eucharist, partly on account of its connection with the
+derivation from the astronomical rites and Nature-celebrations already
+alluded to, and partly on account of the light which the festival
+generally, whether Christian or Pagan, throws on the origins of
+Religious Magic--a subject I shall have to deal with in the next
+chapter.
+
+ (1) See Robertson's Christianity and Mythology, Part II, pp.
+129-302; also Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xxviii, p. 278.
+
+
+I have already (Ch. II) mentioned the Eucharistic rite held in
+commemoration of Mithra, and the indignant ascription of this by Justin
+Martyr to the wiles of the Devil. Justin Martyr clearly had no doubt
+about the resemblance of the Mithraic to the Christian ceremony. A
+Sacramental meal, as mentioned a few pages back, seems to have been held
+by the worshipers of Attis (1) in commemoration of their god; and
+the 'mysteries' of the Pagan cults generally appear to have included
+rites--sometimes half-savage, sometimes more aesthetic--in which a
+dismembered animal was eaten, or bread and wine (the spirits of the Corn
+and the Vine) were consumed, as representing the body of the god whom
+his devotees desired to honor. But the best example of this practice is
+afforded by the rites of Dionysus, to which I will devote a few lines.
+Dionysus, like other Sun or Nature deities, was born of a Virgin (Semele
+or Demeter) untainted by any earthly husband; and born on the 25th.
+December. He was nurtured in a Cave, and even at that early age was
+identified with the Ram or Lamb, into whose form he was for the time
+being changed. At times also he was worshiped in the form of a Bull.
+(2) He travelled far and wide; and brought the great gift of wine to
+mankind. (3) He was called Liberator, and Saviour. His grave "was shown
+at Delphi in the inmost shrine of the temple of Apollo. Secret offerings
+were brought thither, while the women who were celebrating the feast
+woke up the new-born god.... Festivals of this kind in celebration of
+the extinction and resurrection of the deity were held (by women and
+girls only) amid the mountains at night, every third year, about the
+time of the shortest day. The rites, intended to express the excess of
+grief and joy at the death and reappearance of the god, were wild even
+to savagery, and the women who performed them were hence known by
+the expressive names of Bacchae, Maenads, and Thyiades. They wandered
+through woods and mountains, their flying locks crowned with ivy or
+snakes, brandishing wands and torches, to the hollow sounds of the drum,
+or the shrill notes of the flute, with wild dances and insane cries and
+jubilation."
+
+ (1) See Frazer's Golden Bough, Part IV, p. 229.
+
+ (2) The Golden Bough, Part II, Book II, p. 164.
+
+ (3) "I am the TRUE Vine," says the Jesus of the fourth gospel,
+perhaps with an implicit and hostile reference to the cult of
+Dionysus--in which Robertson suggests (Christianity and Mythology, p.
+357) there was a ritual miracle of turning water into wine.
+
+
+Oxen, goats, even fawns and roes from the forest were killed, torn to
+pieces, and eaten raw. This in imitation of the treatment of Dionysus by
+the Titans, (1)--who it was supposed had torn the god in pieces when a
+child.
+
+ (1) See art. Dionysus. Dictionary of Classical Antiquities,
+Nettleship and Sandys 3rd edn., London, 1898).
+
+
+Dupuis, one of the earliest writers (at the beginning of last century)
+on this subject, says, describing the mystic rites of Dionysus (1):
+"The sacred doors of the Temple in which the initiation took place were
+opened only once a year, and no stranger might ever enter. Night lent to
+these august mysteries a veil which was forbidden to be drawn aside--for
+whoever it might be. (2) It was the sole occasion for the representation
+of the passion of Bacchus (Dionysus) dead, descended into hell, and
+rearisen--in imitation of the representation of the sufferings of Osiris
+which, according to Herodotus, were commemorated at Sais in Egypt. It
+was in that place that the partition took place of the body of the god,
+(3) which was then eaten--the ceremony, in fact, of which our Eucharist
+is only a reflection; whereas in the mysteries of Bacchus actual raw
+flesh was distributed, which each of those present had to consume in
+commemoration of the death of Bacchus dismembered by the Titans, and
+whose passion, in Chios and Tenedos, was renewed each year by the
+sacrifice of a man who represented the god. (4) Possibly it is this last
+fact which made people believe that the Christians (whose hoc est corpus
+meum and sharing of an Eucharistic meal were no more than a shadow of a
+more ancient rite) did really sacrifice a child and devour its limbs."
+
+ (1) See Charles F. Dupuis, "Traite des Mysteres," ch. i.
+
+ (2) Pausan, Corinth, ch. 37.
+
+ (3) Clem, Prot. Eur. Bacch.
+
+ (4) See Porphyry, De Abstinentia, lii, Section 56.
+
+
+That Eucharistic rites were very very ancient is plain from the
+Totem-sacraments of savages; and to this subject we shall now turn.
+
+
+
+
+IV. TOTEM-SACRAMENTS AND EUCHARISTS
+
+Much has been written on the origin of the Totem-system--the system,
+that is, of naming a tribe or a portion of a tribe (say a CLAN)
+after some ANIMAL--or sometimes--also after some plant or tree or
+Nature-element, like fire or rain or thunder; but at best the subject is
+a difficult one for us moderns to understand. A careful study has been
+made of it by Salamon Reinach in his Cultes, Mythes et Religions, (1)
+where he formulates his conclusions in twelve statements or definitions;
+but even so--though his suggestions are helpful--he throws very little
+light on the real origin of the system. (2)
+
+ (1) See English translation of certain chapters (published by
+David Nutt in 1912) entitled Cults, Myths and Religions, pp. 1-25. The
+French original is in three large volumes.
+
+ (2) The same may be said of the formulated statement of the
+subject in Morris Jastrow's Handbooks of the History of Religion, vol.
+iv.
+
+There are three main difficulties. The first is to understand why
+primitive Man should name his Tribe after an animal or object of nature
+at all; the second, to understand on what principle he selected the
+particular name (a lion, a crocodile, a lady bird, a certain tree); the
+third, why he should make of the said totem a divinity, and pay honor
+and worship to it. It may be worth while to pause for a moment over
+these.
+
+(1) The fact that the Tribe was one of the early things for which Man
+found it necessary to have a name is interesting, because it shows
+how early the solidarity and psychological actuality of the tribe
+was recognized; and as to the selection of a name from some animal or
+concrete object of Nature, that was inevitable, for the simple reason
+that there was nothing else for the savage to choose from. Plainly to
+call his tribe "The Wayfarers" or "The Pioneers" or the "Pacifists" or
+the "Invincibles," or by any of the thousand and one names which modern
+associations adopt, would have been impossible, since such abstract
+terms had little or no existence in his mind. And again to name it after
+an animal was the most obvious thing to do, simply because the animals
+were by far the most important features or accompaniments of his own
+life. As I am dealing in this book largely with certain psychological
+conditions of human evolution, it has to be pointed out that to
+primitive man the animal was the nearest and most closely related of all
+objects. Being of the same order of consciousness as himself, the animal
+appealed to him very closely as his mate and equal. He made with regard
+to it little or no distinction from himself. We see this very clearly in
+the case of children, who of course represent the savage mind, and who
+regard animals simply as their mates and equals, and come quickly into
+rapport with them, not differentiating themselves from them.
+
+(2) As to the particular animal or other object selected in order to
+give a name to the Tribe, this would no doubt be largely accidental. Any
+unusual incident might superstitiously precipitate a name. We can hardly
+imagine the Tribe scratching its congregated head in the deliberate
+effort to think out a suitable emblem for itself. That is not the way in
+which nicknames are invented in a school or anywhere else to-day. At the
+same time the heraldic appeal of a certain object of nature, animate or
+inanimate, would be deeply and widely felt. The strength of the lion,
+the fleetness of the deer, the food-value of a bear, the flight of a
+bird, the awful jaws of a crocodile, might easily mesmerize a whole
+tribe. Reinach points out, with great justice, that many tribes placed
+themselves under the protection of animals which were supposed (rightly
+or wrongly) to act as guides and augurs, foretelling the future.
+"Diodorus," he says, "distinctly states that the hawk, in Egypt, was
+venerated because it foretold the future." (Birds generally act as
+ and Samoa the kangaroo, the crow and the owl premonish their fellow
+clansmen of events to come. At one time the Samoan warriors went so far
+as to rear owls for their prophetic qualities in war. (The jackal,
+or 'pathfinder'--whose tracks sometimes lead to the remains of a
+food-animal slain by a lion, and many birds and insects, have a value of
+this kind.) "The use of animal totems for purposes of augury is, in all
+likelihood, of great antiquity. Men must soon have realized that the
+senses of animals were acuter than their own; nor is it surprising that
+they should have expected their totems--that is to say, their natural
+allies--to forewarn them both of unsuspected dangers and of those
+provisions of nature, WELLS especially, which animals seem to scent
+by instinct." (1) And again, beyond all this, I have little doubt that
+there are subconscious affinities which unite certain tribes to certain
+animals or plants, affinities whose origin we cannot now trace, though
+they are very real--the same affinities that we recognize as existing
+between individual PERSONS and certain objects of nature. W. H.
+Hudson--himself in many respects having this deep and primitive relation
+to nature--speaks in a very interesting and autobiographical volume (2)
+of the extraordinary fascination exercised upon him as a boy, not
+only by a snake, but by certain trees, and especially by a particular
+flowering-plant "not more than a foot in height, with downy soft
+pale green leaves, and clusters of reddish blossoms, something like
+valerian." ... "One of my sacred flowers," he calls it, and insists on
+the "inexplicable attraction" which it had for him. In various ways of
+this kind one can perceive how particular totems came to be selected by
+particular peoples.
+
+
+ (1) See Reinach, Eng. trans., op. cit., pp. 20, 21.
+
+ (2) Far away and Long ago (1918) chs. xvi and xvii.
+
+
+(3) As to the tendency to divinize these totems, this arises no doubt
+partly out of question (2). The animal or other object admired on
+account of its strength or swiftness, or adopted as guardian of the
+tribe because of its keen sight or prophetic quality, or infinitely
+prized on account of its food-value, or felt for any other reason to
+have a peculiar relation and affinity to the tribe, is by that fact SET
+APART. It becomes taboo. It must not be killed--except under necessity
+and by sanction of the whole tribe--nor injured; and all dealings with
+it must be fenced round with regulations. It is out of this taboo or
+system of taboos that, according to Reinach, religion arose. "I propose
+(he says) to define religion as: A SUM OF SCRUPLES (TABOOS) WHICH IMPEDE
+THE FREE EXERCISE OF OUR FACULTIES." (1) Obviously this definition is
+gravely deficient, simply because it is purely negative, and leaves
+out of account the positive aspect of the subject. In Man, the positive
+content of religion is the instinctive sense--whether conscious or
+subconscious--of an inner unity and continuity with the world around.
+This is the stuff out of which religion is made. The scruples or taboos
+which "impede the freedom" of this relation are the negative forces
+which give outline and form to the relation. These are the things which
+generate the RITES AND CEREMONIALS of religion; and as far as Reinach
+means by religion MERELY rites and ceremonies he is correct; but clearly
+he only covers half the subject. The tendency to divinize the totem is
+at least as much dependent on the positive sense of unity with it, as on
+the negative scruples which limit the relation in each particular case.
+But I shall return to this subject presently, and more than once, with
+the view of clarifying it. Just now it will be best to illustrate the
+nature of Totems generally, and in some detail.
+
+
+ (1) See Orpheus by S. Reinach, p. 3.
+
+
+As would be gathered from what I have just said, there is found among
+all the more primitive peoples, and in all parts of the world, an
+immense variety of totem-names. The Dinkas, for instance, are a rather
+intelligent well-grown people inhabiting the upper reaches of the Nile
+in the vicinity of the great swamps. According to Dr. Seligman their
+clans have for totems the lion, the elephant, the crocodile, the
+hippopotamus, the fox, and the hyena, as well as certain birds which
+infest and damage the corn, some plants and trees, and such things as
+rain, fire, etc. "Each clan speaks of its totem as its ancestor, and
+refrains (as a rule) from injuring or eating it." (1) The members of the
+Crocodile clan call themselves "brothers of the crocodile." The tribes
+of Bechuana-land have a very similar list of totem-names--the buffalo,
+the fish, the porcupine, the wild vine, etc. They too have a Crocodile
+clan, but they call the crocodile their FATHER! The tribes of Australia
+much the same again, with the differences suitable to their country; and
+the Red Indians of North America the same. Garcilasso, della Vega,
+the Spanish historian, son of an Inca princess by one of the Spanish
+conquerors of Peru and author of the well-known book Commentarias
+Reales, says in that book (i, 57), speaking of the pre-Inca period, "An
+Indian (of Peru) was not considered honorable unless he was descended
+from a fountain, river or lake, or even from the sea, or from a wild
+animal, as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur
+(condor), or some other bird of prey." (2) According to Lewis Morgan,
+the North American Indians of various tribes had for totems the wolf,
+bear, beaver, turtle, deer, snipe, heron, hawk, crane, loon, turkey,
+muskrat; pike, catfish, carp; buffalo, elk, reindeer, eagle, hare,
+rabbit, snake; reed-grass, sand, rock, and tobacco-plant.
+
+ (1) See The Golden Bough, vol. iv, p. 31.
+
+ (2) See Andrew Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 104, also Myth, Ritual
+and Religion, vol. i, pp. 71, 76, etc.
+
+
+So we might go on rather indefinitely. I need hardly say that in more
+modern and civilized life, relics of the totem system are still to be
+found in the forms of the heraldic creatures adopted for their crests by
+different families, and in the bears, lions, eagles, the sun, moon and
+stars and so forth, which still adorn the flags and are flaunted as the
+insignia of the various nations. The names may not have been ORIGINALLY
+adopted from any definite belief in blood-relationship with the animal
+or other object in question; but when, as Robertson says (Pagan Christs,
+p. 104), a "savage learned that he was 'a Bear' and that his father
+and grandfather and forefathers were so before him, it was really
+impossible, after ages in which totem-names thus passed current, that he
+should fail to assume that his folk were DESCENDED from a bear."
+
+As a rule, as may be imagined, the savage tribesman will on no account
+EAT his tribal totem-animal. Such would naturally be deemed a kind of
+sacrilege. Also it must be remarked that some totems are hardly suitable
+for eating. Yet it is important to observe that occasionally, and
+guarding the ceremony with great precautions, it has been an almost
+universal custom for the tribal elders to call a feast at which
+an animal (either the totem or some other) IS killed and commonly
+eaten--and this in order that the tribesmen may absorb some virtue
+belonging to it, and may confirm their identity with the tribe and with
+each other. The eating of the bear or other animal, the sprinkling with
+its blood, and the general ritual in which the participants shared its
+flesh, or dressed and disguised themselves in its skin, or otherwise
+identified themselves with it, was to them a symbol of their community
+of life with each other, and a means of their renewal and salvation in
+the holy emblem. And this custom, as the reader will perceive, became
+the origin of the Eucharists and Holy Communions of the later religions.
+
+Professor Robertson-Smith's celebrated Camel affords an instance of
+this. (1) It appears that St. Nilus (fifth century) has left a detailed
+account of the occasional sacrifice in his time of a spotless white
+camel among the Arabs of the Sinai region, which closely resembles a
+totemic communion-feast. The uncooked blood and flesh of the animal had
+to be entirely consumed by the faithful before daybreak. "The slaughter
+of the victim, the sacramental drinking of the blood, and devouring in
+wild haste of the pieces of still quivering flesh, recall the details
+of the Dionysiac and other festivals." (2) Robertson-Smith himself
+says:--"The plain meaning is that the victim was devoured before its
+life had left the still warm blood and flesh... and that thus in the
+most literal way, all those who shared in the ceremony absorbed part of
+the victim's life into themselves. One sees how much more forcibly
+than any ordinary meal such a rite expresses the establishment or
+confirmation of a bond of common life between the worshipers, and also,
+since the blood is shed upon the altar itself, between the worshipers
+and their god. In this sacrifice, then, the significant factors are two:
+the conveyance of the living blood to the godhead, and the absorption of
+the living flesh and blood into the flesh and blood of the worshippers.
+Each of these is effected in the simplest and most direct manner, so
+that the meaning of the ritual is perfectly transparent."
+
+ (1) See his Religion of the Semites, p. 320.
+
+ (2) They also recall the rites of the Passover--though in this
+latter the blood was no longer drunk, nor the flesh eaten raw.
+
+
+It seems strange, of course, that men should eat their totems; and
+it must not by any means be supposed that this practice is (or was)
+universal; but it undoubtedly obtains in some cases. As Miss Harrison
+says (Themis, p. 123); "you do not as a rule eat your relations," and as
+a rule the eating of a totem is tabu and forbidden, but (Miss Harrison
+continues) "at certain times and under certain restrictions a man not
+only may, but MUST, eat of his totem, though only sparingly, as of a
+thing sacrosanct." The ceremonial carried out in a communal way by the
+tribe not only identifies the tribe with the totem (animal), but is
+held, according to early magical ideas, and when the animal is desired
+for food, to favor its manipulation. The human tribe partakes of the
+mana or life-force of the animal, and is strengthened; the animal tribe
+is sympathetically renewed by the ceremonial and multiplies exceedingly.
+The slaughter of the sacred animal and (often) the simultaneous
+outpouring of human blood seals the compact and confirms the magic. This
+is well illustrated by a ceremony of the 'Emu' tribe referred to by Dr.
+Frazer:--
+
+"In order to multiply Emus which are an important article of food, the
+men of the Emu totem in the Arunta tribe proceed as follows: They clear
+a small spot of level ground, and opening veins in their arms they let
+the blood stream out until the surface of the ground for a space of
+about three square yards is soaked with it. When the blood has dried
+and caked, it forms a hard and fairly impermeable surface, on which they
+paint the sacred design of the emu totem, especially the parts of the
+bird which they like best to eat, namely, the fat and the eggs. Round
+this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers wearing long
+head-dresses to represent the long neck and small head of the emu, mimic
+the appearance of the bird as it stands aimlessly peering about in all
+directions." (1)
+
+ (1) The Golden Bough i, 85--with reference to Spencer and
+Gillen's Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 179, 189.
+
+
+Thus blood sacrifice comes in; and--(whether this has ever actually
+happened in the case of the Central Australians I know not)--we can
+easily imagine a member of the Emu tribe, and disguised as an actual
+emu, having been ceremonially slaughtered as a firstfruits and promise
+of the expected and prayed-for emu-crop; just as the same certainly
+HAS happened in the case of men wearing beast-masks of Bulls or Rams
+or Bears being sacrificed in propitiation of Bull-gods, Ram-gods or
+Bear-gods or simply in pursuance of some kind of magic to favor the
+multiplication of these food-animals.
+
+"In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly enough the
+relation of man to food-animals. You need or at least desire flesh food,
+yet you shrink from slaughtering 'your brother the ox'; you desire his
+mana, yet you respect his tabu, for in you and him alike runs the common
+life-blood. On your own individual responsibility you would never kill
+him; but for the common weal, on great occasions, and in a fashion
+conducted with scrupulous care, it is expedient that he die for his
+people, and that they feast upon his flesh." (1)
+
+ (1) Themis, p. 140.
+
+
+In her little book Ancient Art and Ritual (1) Jane Harrison describes
+the dedication of a holy Bull, as conducted in Greece at Elis, and at
+Magnesia and other cities. "There at the annual fair year by year the
+stewards of the city bought a Bull 'the finest that could be got,' and
+at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seed-time (? April)
+ Bull was led in procession at the head of which went the chief priest
+and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and sacrificer,
+and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull that nothing
+unlucky might come near him. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer for
+'the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the women
+and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of grain
+and all other fruits, and of cattle.' All this longing for fertility,
+for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose holiness is
+his strength and fruitfulness." The Bull is sacrificed. The flesh is
+divided in solemn feast among those who take part in the procession.
+"The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten--to every man his
+portion--by each and every citizen, that he may get his share of the
+strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State." But at Athens the
+Bouphonia, as it was called, was followed by a curious ceremony. "The
+hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal
+was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing.
+The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all important. We
+are accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the
+renouncing of something. But SACRIFICE does not mean 'death' at all. It
+means MAKING HOLY, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man just
+special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just that
+special life and strength which all the year long they had put into him,
+and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could not
+eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he must
+die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed him,
+not to 'sacrifice' him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat him,
+live BY him and through him, by his grace."
+
+ (1) Home University Library, p. 87.
+
+
+We have already had to deal with instances of the ceremonial eating of
+the sacred he-Lamb or Ram, immolated in the Spring season of the year,
+and partaken of in a kind of communal feast--not without reference (at
+any rate in later times) to a supposed Lamb-god. Among the Ainos in the
+North of Japan, as also among the Gilyaks in Eastern Siberia, the Bear
+is the great food-animal, and is worshipped as the supreme giver of
+health and strength. There also a similar ritual of sacrifice occurs. A
+perfect Bear is caught and caged. He is fed up and even pampered to the
+day of his death. "Fish, brandy and other delicacies are offered to him.
+Some of the people prostrate themselves before him; his coming into
+a house brings a blessing, and if he sniffs at the food that brings a
+blessing too." Then he is led out and slain. A great feast takes place,
+the flesh is divided, cupfuls of the blood are drunk by the men;
+the tribe is united and strengthened, and the Bear-god blesses the
+ceremony--the ideal Bear that has given its life for the people. (1)
+
+
+ (1) See Art and Ritual, pp. 92-98; The Golden Bough, ii, 375
+seq.; Themis, pp. 140, 141; etc.
+
+
+That the eating of the flesh of an animal or a man conveys to you some
+of the qualities, the life-force, the mana, of that animal or man, is an
+idea which one often meets with among primitive folk. Hence the common
+tendency to eat enemy warriors slain in battle against your tribe. By
+doing so you absorb some of their valor and strength. Even the enemy
+scalps which an Apache Indian might hang from his belt were something
+magical to add to the Apache's power. As Gilbert Murray says, (1) "you
+devoured the holy animal to get its mana, its swiftness, its strength,
+its great endurance, just as the savage now will eat his enemy's brain
+or heart or hands to get some particular quality residing there."
+Even--as he explains on the earlier page--mere CONTACT was often
+considered sufficient--"we have holy pillars whose holiness consists
+in the fact that they have been touched by the blood of a bull." And in
+this connection we may note that nearly all the Christian Churches have
+a great belief in the virtue imparted by the mere 'laying on of hands.'
+
+ (1) Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 36.
+
+
+In quite a different connection--we read (1) that among the Spartans a
+warrior-boy would often beg for the love of the elder warrior whom he
+admired (i. e. the contact with his body) in order to obtain in that
+way a portion of the latter's courage and prowess. That through the
+mediation of the lips one's spirit may be united to the spirit of
+another person is an idea not unfamiliar to the modern mind; while the
+exchange of blood, clothes, locks of hair, etc., by lovers is a custom
+known all over the world. (2)
+
+ (1) Aelian VII, iii, 12: [gr autoi goun (oi paides) deontai twn
+erastwn] [gr eispnein autois]. See also E. Bethe on "Die Dorische
+Knabenliebe" in the Rheinisches Museum, vol. 26, iii, 461.
+
+ (2) See Crawley's Mystic Rose, pp. 238, 242.
+
+
+To suppose that by eating another you absorb his or her soul is somewhat
+naive certainly. Perhaps it IS more native, more primitive. Yet there
+may be SOME truth even in that idea. Certainly the food that one eats
+has a psychological effect, and the flesh-eaters among the human race
+have a different temperament as a rule from the fruit and vegetable
+eaters, while among the animals (though other causes may come in
+here) the Carnivora are decidedly more cruel and less gentle than the
+Herbivora.
+
+To return to the rites of Dionysus, Gilbert Murray, speaking of
+Orphism--a great wave of religious reform which swept over Greece and
+South Italy in the sixth century B.C.--says: (1) "A curious relic of
+primitive superstition and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism,
+a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason
+wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the
+SACRIFICE OF DIONYSUS HIMSELF, AND THE PURIFICATION OF MAN BY HIS
+BLOOD. It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their
+worship on the mountains, when they were possessed by the god and became
+'wild beasts,' actually tore with their teeth and hands any hares,
+goats, fawns or the like that they came across.... The Orphic
+congregations of later times, in their most holy gatherings, solemnly
+partook of the blood of a bull, which was by a mystery the blood of
+Dionysus-Zagreus himself, the Bull of God, slain in sacrifice for the
+purification of man." (2)
+
+ (1) See Notes to his translation of the Bacch[ae] of Euripides.
+
+ (2) For a description of this orgy see Theocritus, Idyll xxvi;
+also for explanations of it, Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii,
+pp, 241-260, on Dionysus. The Encyclop[ae]dia Brit., article "Orpheus,"
+says:--"Orpheus, in the manner of his death, was considered to personate
+the god Dionysus, and was thus representative of the god torn to pieces
+every year--a ceremony enacted by the Bacchae in the earliest times with
+a human victim, and afterwards with a bull, to represent the bull-formed
+god. A distinct feature of this ritual was [gr wmofagia] (eating the
+flesh of the victim raw), whereby the communicants imagined that they
+consumed and assimilated the god represented by the victim, and thus
+became filled with the divine ecstasy." Compare also the Hindu doctrine
+of Praj[pati, the dismembered Lord of Creation.
+
+
+Such instances of early communal feasts, which fulfilled the double part
+of confirming on the one hand the solidarity of the tribe, and on the
+other of bringing the tribe, by the shedding of the blood of a divine
+Victim into close relationship with the very source of its life,
+are plentiful to find. "The sacramental rite," says Professor
+Robertson-Smith, (1) "is also an atoning rite, which brings the
+community again into harmony with its alienated god--atonement being
+simply an act of communion designed to wipe out all memory of previous
+estrangement." With this subject I shall deal more specially in chapter
+vii below. Meanwhile as instances of early Eucharists we may mention the
+following cases, remembering always that as the blood is regarded as the
+Life, the drinking or partaking of, or sprinkling with, blood is always
+an acknowledgment of the common life; and that the juice of the grape
+being regarded as the blood of the Vine, wine in the later ceremonials
+quite easily and naturally takes the place of the blood in the early
+sacrifices.
+
+ (1) Religion of the Semites, p. 302.
+
+
+Thus P. Andrada La Crozius, a French missionary, and one of the first
+Christians who went to Nepaul and Thibet, says in his History of India:
+"Their Grand Lama celebrates a species of sacrifice with BREAD and WINE,
+in which, after taking a small quantity himself, he distributes the
+rest among the Lamas present at this ceremony." (1) "The old Egyptians
+celebrated the resurrection of Osiris by a sacrament, eating the sacred
+cake or wafer after it had been consecrated by the priest, and thereby
+becoming veritable flesh of his flesh." (2) As is well known, the eating
+of bread or dough sacramentally (sometimes mixed with blood or seed)
+as an emblem of community of life with the divinity, is an extremely
+ancient practice or ritual. Dr. Frazer (3) says of the Aztecs,
+that "twice a year, in May and December, an image of the great god
+Huitzilopochtli was made of dough, then broken in pieces and solemnly
+eaten by his worshipers." And Lord Kingsborough in his Mexican
+Antiquities (vol. vi, p. 220) gives a record of a "most Holy Supper"
+in which these people ate the flesh of their god. It was a cake made of
+certain seeds, "and having made it, they blessed it in their manner, and
+broke it into pieces, which the high priest put into certain very clean
+vessels, and took a thorn of maguey which resembles a very thick needle,
+with which he took up with the utmost reverence single morsels, which
+he put into the mouth of each individual in the manner of a communion."
+Acostas (4) confirms this and similar accounts. The Peruvians partook of
+a sacrament consisting of a pudding of coarsely ground maize, of which
+a portion had been smeared on the idol. The priest sprinkled it with the
+blood of the victim before distributing it to the people. Priest and
+people then all took their shares in turn, "with great care that no
+particle should be allowed to fall to the ground--this being looked upon
+as a great sin." (5)
+
+
+ (1) See Doane's Bible Myths, p. 306.
+
+ (2) From The Great Law, of religious origins: by W. Williamson
+(1899), p. 177.
+
+ (3) The Golden Bough, vol. ii, p. 79.
+
+ (4) Natural and Moral History of the Indies. London (1604).
+
+ (5) See Markham's Rites and laws of the Incas, p. 27.
+
+
+Moving from Peru to China (instead of 'from China to Peru') we find that
+"the Chinese pour wine (a very general substitute for blood) on a straw
+image of Confucius, and then all present drink of it, and taste the
+sacrificial victim, in order to participate in the grace of Confucius."
+(Here again the Corn and Wine are blended in one rite.) And of Tartary
+Father Grueber thus testifies: "This only I do affirm, that the devil so
+mimics the Catholic Church there, that although no European or Christian
+has ever been there, still in all essential things they agree so
+completely with the Roman Church, as even to celebrate the Host with
+bread and wine: with my own eyes I have seen it." (1) These few
+instances are sufficient to show the extraordinarily wide diffusion of
+Totem-sacraments and Eucharistic rites all over the world.
+
+ (1) For these two quotations see Jevons' Introduction to the
+History of Religion, pp. 148 and 219.
+
+
+
+
+V. FOOD AND VEGETATION MAGIC
+
+I have wandered, in pursuit of Totems and the Eucharist, some way from
+the astronomical thread of Chapters II and III, and now it would appear
+that in order to understand religious origins we must wander still
+farther. The chapters mentioned were largely occupied with Sungods and
+astronomical phenomena, but now we have to consider an earlier period
+when there were no definite forms of gods, and when none but the vaguest
+astronomical knowledge existed. Sometimes in historical matters it is
+best and safest to move thus backwards in Time, from the things recent
+and fairly well known to things more ancient and less known. In this way
+we approach more securely to some understanding of the dim and remote
+past.
+
+It is clear that before any definite speculations on heaven-dwelling
+gods or divine beings had arisen in the human mind--or any clear
+theories of how the sun and moon and stars might be connected with the
+changes of the seasons on the earth--there were still certain obvious
+things which appealed to everybody, learned or unlearned alike. One of
+these was the return of Vegetation, bringing with it the fruits or the
+promise of the fruits of the earth, for human food, and also bringing
+with it increase of animal life, for food in another form; and the other
+was the return of Light and Warmth, making life easier in all ways. Food
+delivering from the fear of starvation; Light and Warmth delivering from
+the fear of danger and of cold. These were three glorious things which
+returned together and brought salvation and renewed life to man. The
+period of their return was 'Spring,' and though Spring and its benefits
+might fade away in time, still there was always the HOPE of its
+return--though even so it may have been a long time in human evolution
+before man discovered that it really did always return, and (with
+certain allowances) at equal intervals of time.
+
+Long then before any Sun or Star gods could be called in, the return of
+the Vegetation must have enthralled man's attention, and filled him with
+hope and joy. Yet since its return was somewhat variable and uncertain
+the question, What could man do to assist that return? naturally
+became a pressing one. It is now generally held that the use of
+Magic--sympathetic magic--arose in this way. Sympathetic magic seems to
+have been generated by a belief that your own actions cause a similar
+response in things and persons around you. Yet this belief did not rest
+on any philosophy or argument, but was purely instinctive and sometimes
+of the nature of a mere corporeal reaction. Every schoolboy knows how
+in watching a comrade's high jump at the Sports he often finds himself
+lifting a knee at the moment 'to help him over'; at football matches
+quarrels sometimes arise among the spectators by reason of an
+ill-placed kick coming from a too enthusiastic on-looker, behind one;
+undergraduates running on the tow-path beside their College boat in
+the races will hurry even faster than the boat in order to increase its
+speed; there is in each case an automatic bodily response increased
+by one's own desire. A person ACTS the part which he desires to be
+successful. He thinks to transfer his energy in that way. Again, if by
+chance one witnesses a painful accident, a crushed foot or what-not,
+it commonly happens that one feels a pain in the same part oneself--a
+sympathetic pain. What more natural than to suppose that the pain
+really is transferred from the one person to the other? and how easy the
+inference that by tormenting a wretched scape-goat or crucifying a human
+victim in some cases the sufferings of people may be relieved or their
+sins atoned for?
+
+Simaetha, it will be remembered, in the second Idyll of Theocritus,
+curses her faithless lover Delphis, and as she melts his waxen image she
+prays that HE TOO MAY MELT. All this is of the nature of Magic, and is
+independent of and generally more primitive than Theology or Philosophy.
+Yet it interests us because it points to a firm instinct in early
+man--to which I have already alluded--the instinct of his unity and
+continuity with the rest of creation, and of a common life so close
+that his lightest actions may cause a far-reaching reaction in the world
+outside.
+
+Man, then, independently of any belief in gods, may assist the arrival
+of Spring by magic ceremonies. If you want the Vegetation to appear you
+must have rain; and the rain-maker in almost all primitive tribes has
+been a MOST important personage. Generally he based his rites on quite
+fanciful associations, as when the rain-maker among the Mandans wore a
+raven's skin on his head (bird of the storm) or painted his shield with
+red zigzags of lightning (1); but partly, no doubt, he had observed
+actual facts, or had had the knowledge of them transmitted to him--as,
+for instance that when rain is impending loud noises will bring about
+its speedy downfall, a fact we moderns have had occasion to notice on
+battlefields. He had observed perhaps that in a storm a specially loud
+clap of thunder is generally followed by a greatly increased downpour
+of rain. He had even noticed (a thing which I have often verified in
+the vicinity of Sheffield) that the copious smoke of fires will generate
+rain-clouds--and so quite naturally he concluded that it was his smoking
+SACRIFICES which had that desirable effect. So far he was on the track
+of elementary Science. And so he made "bull-roarers" to imitate the
+sound of wind and the blessed rain-bringing thunder, or clashed
+great bronze cymbals together with the same object. Bull-voices and
+thunder-drums and the clashing of cymbals were used in this connection
+by the Greeks, and are mentioned by Aeschylus (2); but the bull-roarer,
+in the form of a rhombus of wood whirled at the end of a string, seems
+to be known, or to have been known, all over the world. It is described
+with some care by Mr. Andrew Lang in his Custom and Myth (pp. 29-44),
+where he says "it is found always as a sacred instrument employed in
+religious mysteries, in New Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, ancient
+Greece, and Africa."
+
+ (1) See Catlin's North American Indians, Letter 19.
+
+ (2) Themis, p. 61.
+
+
+Sometimes, of course, the rain-maker was successful; but of the inner
+causes of rain he knew next to nothing; he was more ignorant even than
+we are! His main idea was a more specially 'magical' one--namely, that
+the sound itself would appeal to the SPIRITS of rain and thunder and
+cause them to give a response. For of course the thunder (in Hebrew
+Bath-Kol, "the daughter of the Voice") was everywhere regarded as
+the manifestation of a spirit. (1) To make sounds like thunder would
+therefore naturally call the attention of such a spirit; or he, the
+rain-maker, might make sounds like rain. He made gourd-rattles (known
+in ever so many parts of the world) in which he rattled dried seeds
+or small pebbles with a most beguiling and rain-like insistence; or
+sometimes, like the priests of Baal in the Bible, (2) he would cut
+himself with knives till the blood fell upon the ground in great drops
+suggestive of an oncoming thunder-shower. "In Mexico the rain god was
+propitiated with sacrifices of children. If the children wept and shed
+abundant tears, they who carried them rejoiced, being convinced that
+rain would also be abundant." (3) Sometimes he, the rain-maker, would
+WHISTLE for the wind, or, like the Omaha Indians, flap his blankets for
+the same purpose.
+
+ (1) See A. Lang, op. cit.: "The muttering of the thunder is said
+to be his voice calling to the rain to fall and make the grass grow up
+green." Such are the very words of Umbara, the minstrel of the Tribe
+(Australian).
+
+ (2) I Kings xviii.
+
+ (3) Quoted from Sahagun II, 2, 3 by A. Lang in Myth, Ritual and
+Religion, vol. ii, p. 102.
+
+
+In the ancient myth of Demeter and Persephone--which has been adopted by
+so many peoples under so many forms--Demeter the Earth-mother loses her
+daughter Persephone (who represents of course the Vegetation), carried
+down into the underworld by the evil powers of Darkness and Winter.
+And in Greece there was a yearly ceremonial and ritual of magic for the
+purpose of restoring the lost one and bringing her back to the world
+again. Women carried certain charms, "fir-cones and snakes and unnamable
+objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; there was a sacrifice of
+pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft of the earth, and their remains
+afterwards collected and scattered as a charm over the fields."
+(1) Fir-cones and snakes from their very forms were emblems of male
+fertility; snakes, too, from their habit of gliding out of their own
+skins with renewed brightness and color were suggestive of resurrection
+and re-vivification; pigs and sows by their exceeding fruitfulness would
+in their hour of sacrifice remind old mother Earth of what was expected
+from her! Moreover, no doubt it had been observed that the scattering of
+dead flesh over the ground or mixed with the seed, did bless the
+ground to a greater fertility; and so by a strange mixture of primitive
+observation with a certain child-like belief that by means of symbols
+and suggestions Nature could be appealed to and induced to answer to the
+desires and needs for her children this sort of ceremonial Magic arose.
+It was not exactly Science, and it was not exactly Religion; but it was
+a naive, and perhaps not altogether mistaken, sense of the bond between
+Nature and Man.
+
+ (1) See Gilbert Murray's Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 29.
+
+
+For we can perceive that earliest man was not yet consciously
+differentiated from Nature. Not only do we see that the tribal life was
+so strong that the individual seldom regarded himself as different or
+separate or opposed to the rest of the tribe; but that something of the
+same kind was true with regard to his relation to the Animals and to
+Nature at large. This outer world was part of himself, was also himself.
+His sub-conscious sense of unity was so great that it largely dominated
+his life. That brain-cleverness and brain-activity which causes modern
+man to perceive such a gulf between him and the animals, or between
+himself and Nature, did not exist in the early man. Hence it was
+no difficulty to him to believe that he was a Bear or an Emu.
+Sub-consciously he was wiser than we are. He knew that he was a bear or
+an emu, or any other such animal as his totem-creed led him to fix his
+mind upon. Hence we find that a familiarity and common consent existed
+between primitive man and many of his companion animals such as has
+been lost or much attenuated in modern times. Elisee Reclus in his very
+interesting paper La Grande Famille (1) gives support to the idea that
+the so-called domestication of animals did not originally arise from any
+forcible subjugation of them by man, but from a natural amity with
+them which grew up in the beginning from common interests, pursuits and
+affections. Thus the chetah of India (and probably the puma of Brazil)
+from far-back times took to hunting in the company of his two-legged and
+bow-and-arrow-armed friend, with whom he divided the spoil. W. H. Hudson
+(2) declares that the Puma, wild and fierce though it is, and capable
+of killing the largest game, will never even to-day attack man, but
+when maltreated by the latter submits to the outrage, unresisting, with
+mournful cries and every sign of grief. The Llama, though domesticated
+in a sense, has never allowed the domination of the whip or the bit,
+but may still be seen walking by the side of the Brazilian peasant
+and carrying his burdens in a kind of proud companionship. The mutual
+relations of Women and the Cow, or of Man and the Horse (3) (also the
+Elephant) reach so far into the past that their origin cannot be traced.
+The Swallow still loves to make its home under the cottage eaves and
+still is welcomed by the inmates as the bringer of good fortune. Elisee
+Reclus assures us that the Dinka man on the Nile calls to certain snakes
+by name and shares with them the milk of his cows.
+
+
+ (1) Published originally in Le Magazine International, January
+1896.
+
+ (2) See The Naturalist in La Plata, ch. ii.
+
+ (3) "It is certain that the primitive Indo-European reared droves
+of tame or half-tame horses for generations, if not centuries, before
+it ever occurred to him to ride or drive them" (F. B. Jevons, Introd. to
+Hist. Religion, p. 119).
+
+
+And so with Nature. The communal sense, or subconscious perception,
+which made primitive men feel their unity with other members of their
+tribe, and their obvious kinship with the animals around them, brought
+them also so close to general Nature that they looked upon the trees,
+the vegetation, the rain, the warmth of the sun, as part of their
+bodies, part of themselves. Conscious differentiation had not yet set
+in. To cause rain or thunder you had to make rain- or thunder-like
+noises; to encourage Vegetation and the crops to leap out of the ground,
+you had to leap and dance. "In Swabia and among the Transylvanian Saxons
+it is a common custom (says Dr. Frazer) for a man who has some hemp to
+leap high in the field in the belief that this will make the hemp grow
+tall." (1) Native May-pole dances and Jacks in the Green have hardly
+yet died out--even in this most civilized England. The bower of green
+boughs, the music of pipes, the leaping and the twirling, were all an
+encouragement to the arrival of Spring, and an expression of Sympathetic
+Magic. When you felt full of life and energy and virility in yourself
+you naturally leapt and danced, so why should you not sympathetically do
+this for the energizing of the crops? In every country of the world
+the vernal season and the resurrection of the Sun has been greeted with
+dances and the sound of music. But if you wanted success in hunting
+or in warfare then you danced before-hand mimic dances suggesting the
+successful hunt or battle. It was no more than our children do to-day,
+and it all was, and is, part of a natural-magic tendency in human
+thought.
+
+ (1) See The Golden Bough, i, 139 seq. Also Art and Ritual, p. 31.
+
+
+Let me pause here for a moment. It is difficult for us with our
+academical and somewhat school-boardy minds to enter into all this, and
+to understand the sense of (unconscious or sub-conscious) identification
+with the world around which characterized the primitive man--or to look
+upon Nature with his eyes. A Tree, a Snake, a Bull, an Ear of Corn. WE
+know so well from our botany and natural history books what these things
+are. Why should our minds dwell on them any longer or harbor a doubt as
+to our perfect comprehension of them?
+
+And yet (one cannot help asking the question): Has any one of us really
+ever SEEN a Tree? I certainly do not think that I have--except most
+superficially. That very penetrating observer and naturalist, Henry D.
+Thoreau, tells us that he would often make an appointment to visit a
+certain tree, miles away--but what or whom he saw when he got there, he
+does not say. Walt Whitman, also a keen observer, speaks of a tulip-tree
+near which he sometimes sat--"the Apollo of the woods--tall and
+graceful, yet robust and sinewy, inimitable in hang of foliage and
+throwing-out of limb; as if the beauteous, vital, leafy creature could
+walk, if it only would"; and mentions that in a dream-trance he actually
+once saw his "favorite trees step out and promenade up, down and around
+VERY CURIOUSLY." (1) Once the present writer seemed to have a partial
+vision of a tree. It was a beech, standing somewhat isolated, and
+still leafless in quite early Spring. Suddenly I was aware of its
+skyward-reaching arms and up-turned finger-tips, as if some vivid life
+(or electricity) was streaming through them far into the spaces of
+heaven, and of its roots plunged in the earth and drawing the same
+energies from below. The day was quite still and there was no movement
+in the branches, but in that moment the tree was no longer a separate or
+separable organism, but a vast being ramifying far into space, sharing
+and uniting the life of Earth and Sky, and full of a most amazing
+activity.
+
+ (1) Specimen Days, 1882-3 Edition, p. iii.
+
+
+The reader of this will probably have had some similar experiences.
+Perhaps he will have seen a full-foliaged Lombardy poplar swaying in
+half a gale in June--the wind and the sun streaming over every little
+twig and leaf, the tree throwing out its branches in a kind of ecstasy
+and bathing them in the passionately boisterous caresses of its two
+visitants; or he will have heard the deep glad murmur of some huge
+sycamore with ripening seed clusters when after weeks of drought the
+steady warm rain brings relief to its thirst; and he will have known
+that these creatures are but likenesses of himself, intimately and
+deeply-related to him in their love and hunger longing, and, like
+himself too, unfathomed and unfathomable.
+
+It would be absurd to credit early man with conscious speculations
+like these, belonging more properly to the twentieth century; yet it is
+incontrovertible, I think, that in SOME ways the primitive peoples, with
+their swift subconscious intuitions and their minds unclouded by mere
+book knowledge, perceived truths to which we moderns are blind. Like
+the animals they arrived at their perceptions without (individual) brain
+effort; they knew things without thinking. When they did THINK of course
+they went wrong. Their budding science easily went astray. Religion
+with them had as yet taken no definite shape; science was equally
+protoplasmic; and all they had was a queer jumble of the two in the form
+of Magic. When at a later time Science gradually defined its outlook and
+its observations, and Religion, from being a vague subconscious feeling,
+took clear shape in the form of gods and creeds, then mankind gradually
+emerged into the stage of evolution IN WHICH WE NOW ARE. OUR scientific
+laws and doctrines are of course only temporary formulae, and so also
+are the gods and the creeds of our own and other religions; but these
+things, with their set and angular outlines, have served in the past
+and will serve in the future as stepping-stones towards another kind of
+knowledge of which at present we only dream, and will lead us on to
+a renewed power of perception which again will not be the laborious
+product of thought but a direct and instantaneous intuition like that of
+the animals--and the angels.
+
+
+To return to our Tree. Though primitive man did not speculate in modern
+style on these things, I yet have no reasonable doubt that he felt (and
+FEELS, in those cases where we can still trace the workings of his
+mind) his essential relationship to the creatures of the forest more
+intimately, if less analytically, than we do to-day. If the animals with
+all their wonderful gifts are (as we readily admit) a veritable part
+of Nature--so that they live and move and have their being more or less
+submerged in the spirit of the great world around them--then Man, when
+he first began to differentiate himself from them, must for a long
+time have remained in this SUBconscious unity, becoming only distinctly
+CONSCIOUS of it when he was already beginning to lose it. That early
+dawn of distinct consciousness corresponded to the period of belief
+in Magic. In that first mystic illumination almost every object was
+invested with a halo of mystery or terror or adoration. Things were
+either tabu, in which case they were dangerous, and often not to be
+touched or even looked upon--or they were overflowing with magic grace
+and influence, in which case they were holy, and any rite which released
+their influence was also holy. William Blake, that modern prophetic
+child, beheld a Tree full of angels; the Central Australian native
+believes bushes to be the abode of spirits which leap into the bodies of
+passing women and are the cause of the conception of children; Moses
+saw in the desert a bush (perhaps the mimosa) like a flame of fire, with
+Jehovah dwelling in the midst of it, and he put off his shoes for
+he felt that the place was holy; Osiris was at times regarded as a
+Tree-spirit (1); and in inscriptions is referred to as "the solitary one
+in the acacia"--which reminds us curiously of the "burning bush." The
+same is true of others of the gods; in the old Norse mythology Ygdrasil
+was the great branching World-Ash, abode of the soul of the universe;
+the Peepul or Bo-tree in India is very sacred and must on no account be
+cut down, seeing that gods and spirits dwell among its branches. It is
+of the nature of an Aspen, and of little or no practical use, (2) but so
+holy that the poorest peasant will not disturb it. The Burmese believe
+the things of nature, but especially the trees, to be the abode of
+spirits. "To the Burman of to-day, not less than to the Greek of long
+ago, all nature is alive. The forest and the river and the mountains
+are full of spirits, whom the Burmans call Nats. There are all kinds of
+Nats, good and bad, great and little, male and female, now living round
+about us. Some of them live in the trees, especially in the huge figtree
+that shades half-an-acre without the village; or among the fern-like
+fronds of the tamarind." (3)
+
+
+ (1) The Golden Bough, iv, 339.
+
+ (2) Though the sap is said to contain caoutchouc.
+
+ (3) The Soul of a People, by H. Fielding (1902), p. 250.
+
+
+There are also in India and elsewhere popular rites of MARRIAGE of women
+(and men) to Trees; which suggest that trees were regarded as very
+near akin to human beings! The Golden Bough (1) mentions many of these,
+including the idea that some trees are male and others female. The
+well-known Assyrian emblem of a Pine cone being presented by a priest to
+a Palm-tree is supposed by E. B. Tylor to symbolize fertilization--the
+Pine cone being masculine and the Palm feminine. The ceremony of the god
+Krishna's marriage to a Basil plant is still celebrated in India down
+to the present day; and certain trees are clasped and hugged by pregnant
+women--the idea no doubt being that they bestow fertility on those
+who embrace them. In other cases apparently it is the trees which are
+benefited, since it is said that men sometimes go naked into the
+Clove plantations at night in order by a sort of sexual intercourse to
+fertilize them. (2)
+
+ (1) Vol. i, p. 40, Vol. iii, pp. 24 sq.
+
+ (2) Ibid., vol. ii, p. 98.
+
+
+One might go on multiplying examples in this direction quite
+indefinitely. There is no end to them. They all indicate--what was
+instinctively felt by early man, and is perfectly obvious to all to-day
+who are not blinded by "civilization" (and Herbert Spencer!) that the
+world outside us is really most deeply akin to ourselves, that it is
+not dead and senseless but intensely alive and instinct with feeling and
+intelligence resembling our own. It is this perception, this conviction
+of our essential unity with the whole of creation, which lay from the
+first at the base of all Religion; yet at first, as I have said, was
+hardly a conscious perception. Only later, when it gradually became more
+conscious, did it evolve itself into the definite forms of the gods and
+the creeds--but of that process I will speak more in detail presently.
+
+The Tree therefore was a most intimate presence to the Man. It grew in
+the very midst of his Garden of Eden. It had a magical virtue, which
+his tentative science could only explain by chance analogies and
+assimilations. Attractive and beloved and worshipped by reason of its
+many gifts to mankind--its grateful shelter, its abounding fruits, its
+timber, and other invaluable products--why should it not become the
+natural emblem of the female, to whom through sex man's worship is ever
+drawn? If the Snake has an unmistakable resemblance to the male organ in
+its active state, the foliage of the tree or bush is equally remindful
+of the female. What more clear than that the conjunction of Tree and
+Serpent is the fulfilment in nature of that sex-mystery which is so
+potent in the life of man and the animals? and that the magic ritual
+most obviously fitted to induce fertility in the tribe or the herds
+(or even the crops) is to set up an image of the Tree and the Serpent
+combined, and for all the tribe-folk in common to worship and pay it
+reverence. In the Bible with more or less veiled sexual significance
+we have this combination in the Eden-garden, and again in the brazen
+Serpent and Pole which Moses set up in the wilderness (as a cure for the
+fiery serpents of lust); illustrations of the same are said to be found
+in the temples of Egypt and of South India, and even in the ancient
+temples of Central America. (1) In the myth of Hercules the golden
+apples of the Hesperides garden are guarded by a dragon. The Etruscans,
+the Persians and the Babylonians had also legends of the Fall of man
+through a serpent tempting him to taste of the fruit of a holy Tree. And
+De Gubernatis, (2) pointing out the phallic meaning of these stories,
+says "the legends concerning the tree of golden apples or figs which
+yields honey or ambrosia, guarded by dragons, in which the life, the
+fortune, the glory, the strength and the riches of the hero have their
+beginning, are numerous among every people of Aryan origin: in India,
+Persia, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Greece and Italy."
+
+ (1) See Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, by Thomas
+Inman (Trubner, 1874), p. 55.
+
+ (2) Zoological Mythology, vol. ii, pp. 410 sq.
+
+
+Thus we see the natural-magic tendency of the human mind asserting
+itself. To some of us indeed this tendency is even greater in the case
+of the Snake than in that of the Tree. W. H. Hudson, in Far Away
+and Long Ago, speaks of "that sense of something supernatural in
+the serpent, which appears to have been universal among peoples in a
+primitive state of culture, and still survives in some barbarous or
+semi-barbarous countries." The fascination of the Snake--the fascination
+of its mysteriously gliding movement, of its vivid energy, its
+glittering eye, its intensity of life, combined with its fatal dart of
+Death--is a thing felt even more by women than by men--and for a reason
+(from what we have already said) not far to seek. It was the Woman who
+in the story of the Fall was the first to listen to its suggestions.
+No wonder that, as Professor Murray says, (1) the Greeks worshiped a
+gigantic snake (Meilichios) the lord of Death and Life, with ceremonies
+of appeasement, and sacrifices, long before they arrived at the worship
+of Zeus and the Olympian gods.
+
+ (1) Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 29.
+
+
+Or let us take the example of an Ear of Corn. Some people
+wonder--hearing nowadays that the folk of old used to worship a
+Corn-spirit or Corn-god--wonder that any human beings could have been so
+foolish. But probably the good people who wonder thus have never REALLY
+LOOKED (with their town-dazed eyes) at a growing spike of wheat. (1) Of
+all the wonderful things in Nature I hardly know any that thrills one
+more with a sense of wizardry than just this very thing--to observe,
+each year, this disclosure of the Ear within the Blade--first a swelling
+of the sheath, then a transparency and a whitey-green face within a
+hooded shroud, and then the perfect spike of grain disengaging itself
+and spiring upward towards the sky--"the resurrection of the wheat with
+pale visage appearing out of the ground."
+
+ (1) Even the thrice-learned Dr. Famell quotes apparently with
+approval the scornful words of Hippolytus, who (he says) "speaks of the
+Athenians imitating people at the Eleusinian mysteries and showing to
+the epoptae (initiates) that great and marvelous mystery of perfect
+revelation--in solemn silence--a CUT CORNSTALK ([gr teqerismenon] [gr
+stacon])."--Cults of the Greek States, vol. iii, p. 182.
+
+
+If this spectacle amazes one to-day, what emotions must it not have
+aroused in the breasts of the earlier folk, whose outlook on the world
+was so much more direct than ours--more 'animistic' if you like! What
+wonderment, what gratitude, what deliverance from fear (of starvation),
+what certainty that this being who had been ruthlessly cut down and
+sacrificed last year for human food had indeed arisen again as a savior
+of men, what readiness to make some human sacrifice in return, both as
+an acknowledgment of the debt, and as a gift of something which would
+no doubt be graciously accepted!--(for was it not well known that where
+blood had been spilt on the ground the future crop was so much more
+generous?)--what readiness to adopt some magic ritual likely to
+propitiate the unseen power--even though the outline and form of the
+latter were vague and uncertain in the extreme! Dr. Frazer, speaking of
+the Egyptian Osiris as one out of many corn-gods of the above character,
+says (1): "The primitive conception of him as the corn-god comes clearly
+out in the festival of his death and resurrection, which was celebrated
+the month of Athyr. That festival appears to have been essentially a
+festival of sowing, which properly fell at the time when the husbandman
+actually committed the seed to the earth. On that occasion an effigy of
+the corn-god, moulded of earth and corn, was buried with funeral rites
+in the ground in order that, dying there, he might come to life again
+with the new crops. The ceremony was in fact a charm to ensure the
+growth of the corn by sympathetic magic, and we may conjecture that as
+such it was practised in a simple form by every Egyptian farmer on his
+fields long before it was adopted and transfigured by the priests in the
+stately ritual of the temple." (2)
+
+ (1) The Golden Bough, iv, p. 330.
+
+ (2) See ch. xv.
+
+
+The magic in this case was of a gentle description; the clay image of
+Osiris sprouting all over with the young green blade was pathetically
+poetic; but, as has been suggested, bloodthirsty ceremonies were also
+common enough. Human sacrifices, it is said, had at one time been
+offered at the grave of Osiris. We bear that the Indians in Ecuador used
+to sacrifice men's hearts and pour out human blood on their fields
+when they sowed them; the Pawnee Indians used a human victim the same,
+allowing his blood to drop on the seed-corn. It is said that in Mexico
+girls were sacrificed, and that the Mexicans would sometimes GRIND their
+(male) victim, like corn, between two stones. ("I'll grind his bones to
+make me bread.") Among the Khonds of East India--who were particularly
+given to this kind of ritual--the very TEARS of the sufferer were an
+incitement to more cruelties, for tears of course were magic for Rain.
+(1)
+
+ (1) The Golden Bough, vol. vii, "The Corn-Spirit," pp. 236 sq.
+
+
+And so on. We have referred to the Bull many times, both in his
+astronomical aspect as pioneer of the Spring-Sun, and in his more direct
+role as plougher of the fields, and provider of food from his own body.
+"The tremendous mana of the wild bull," says Gilbert Murray, "occupies
+almost half the stage of pre-Olympic ritual." (1) Even to us there is
+something mesmeric and overwhelming in the sense of this animal's
+glory of strength and fury and sexual power. No wonder the primitives
+worshiped him, or that they devised rituals which should convey his
+power and vitality by mere contact, or that in sacramental feasts
+they ate his flesh and drank his blood as a magic symbol and means of
+salvation.
+
+ (1) Four Stages, p. 34.
+
+
+
+
+VI. MAGICIANS, KINGS AND GODS
+
+It is perhaps necessary, at the commencement of this chapter, to say a
+few more words about the nature and origin of the belief in Magic.
+Magic represented on one side, and clearly enough, the beginnings of
+Religion--i.e. the instinctive sense of Man's inner continuity with the
+world around him, TAKING SHAPE: a fanciful shape it is true, but with
+very real reaction on his practical life and feelings. (1) On the other
+side it represented the beginnings of Science. It was his first attempt
+not merely to FEEL but to UNDERSTAND the mystery of things.
+
+ (1) For an excellent account of the relation of Magic to Religion
+see W. McDougall, Social Psychology (1908), pp. 317-320.
+
+
+Inevitably these first efforts to understand were very puerile, very
+superficial. As E. B. Tylor says (1) of primitive folk in general, "they
+mistook an imaginary for a real connection." And he instances the case
+of the inhabitants of the City of Ephesus, who laid down a rope, seven
+furlongs in length, from the City to the temple of Artemis, in order to
+place the former under the protection of the latter! WE should lay down
+a telephone wire, and consider that we established a much more efficient
+connection; but in the beginning, and quite naturally, men, like
+children, rely on surface associations. Among the Dyaks of Borneo (2)
+when the men are away fighting, the WOMEN must use a sort of telepathic
+magic in order to safeguard them--that is, they must themselves rise
+early and keep awake all day (lest darkness and sleep should give
+advantage to the enemy); they must not OIL their hair (lest their
+husbands should make any SLIPS); they must eat sparingly and put aside
+rice at every meal (so that the men may not want for food). And so on.
+Similar superstitions are common. But they gradually lead to a little
+thought, and then to a little more, and so to the discovery of actual
+and provable influences. Perhaps one day the cord connecting the temple
+with Ephesus was drawn TIGHT and it was found that messages could be, by
+tapping, transmitted along it. That way lay the discovery of a fact. In
+an age which worshiped fertility, whether in mankind or animals, TWINS
+were ever counted especially blest, and were credited with a magic
+power. (The Constellation of the Twins was thought peculiarly lucky.)
+Perhaps after a time it was discovered that twins sometimes run in
+families, and in such cases really do bring fertility with them. In
+cattle it is known nowadays that there are more twins of the female sex
+than of the male sex. (3)
+
+ (1) Primitive Culture, vol. i, p. 106.
+
+ (2) See The Golden Bough, i, 127.
+
+ (3) See Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thomson (1901), p. 41,
+note.
+
+
+Observations of this kind were naturally made by the ablest members of
+the tribe--who were in all probability the medicine-men and wizards--and
+brought in consequence power into their hands. The road to power in
+fact--and especially was this the case in societies which had not
+yet developed wealth and property--lay through Magic. As far as magic
+represented early superstition land religion it laid hold of the HEARTS
+of men--their hopes and fears; as far as it represented science and the
+beginnings of actual knowledge, it inspired their minds with a sense of
+power, and gave form to their lives and customs. We have no reason to
+suppose that the early magicians and medicine-men were peculiarly wicked
+or bent on mere self-aggrandizement--any more than we have to think the
+same of the average country vicar or country doctor of to-day. They
+were merely men a trifle wiser or more instructed than their flocks.
+But though probably in most cases their original intentions were decent
+enough, they were not proof against the temptations which the possession
+of power always brings, and as time went on they became liable to trade
+more and more upon this power for their own advancement. In the
+matter of Religion the history of the Christian priesthood through the
+centuries shows sufficiently to what misuse such power can be put; and
+in the matter of Science it is a warning to us of the dangers attending
+the formation of a scientific priesthood, such as we see growing up
+around us to-day. In both cases--whether Science or Religion--vanity,
+personal ambition, lust of domination and a hundred other vices, unless
+corrected by a real devotion to the public good, may easily bring as
+many evils in their train as those they profess to cure.
+
+The Medicine-man, or Wizard, or Magician, or Priest, slowly but
+necessarily gathered power into his hands, and there is much evidence to
+show that in the case of many tribes at any rate, it was HE who became
+ultimate chief and leader and laid the foundations of Kingship. The
+Basileus was always a sacred personality, and often united in himself as
+head of the clan the offices of chief in warfare and leader in priestly
+rites--like Agamemnon in Homer, or Saul or David in the Bible. As a
+magician he had influence over the fertility of the earth and, like the
+blameless king in the Odyssey, under his sway
+
+                         "the dark earth beareth in season
+     Barley and wheat, and the trees are laden with fruitage, and
+     alway
+      Yean unfailing the flocks, and the sea gives fish in
+     abundance." (1)
+
+ (1) Odyssey xix, 109 sq. Translation by H. B. Cotterill.
+
+
+As a magician too he was trusted for success in warfare; and
+Schoolcraft, in a passage quoted by Andrew Lang, (1) says of the Dacotah
+Indians "the war-chief who leads the party to war is always one of
+these medicine-men." This connection, however, by which the magician is
+transformed into the king has been abundantly studied, and need not be
+further dwelt upon here.
+
+And what of the transformation of the king into a god--or of the
+Magician or Priest directly into the same? Perhaps in order to
+appreciate this, one must make a further digression.
+
+For the early peoples there were, as it would appear, two main objects
+in life: (1) to promote fertility in cattle and crops, for food; and (2)
+to placate or ward off Death; and it seemed very obvious--even before
+any distinct figures of gods, or any idea of prayer, had arisen--to
+attain these objects by magic ritual. The rites of Baptism, of
+Initiation (or Confirmation) and the many ceremonies of a Second Birth,
+which we associate with fully-formed religions, did belong also to
+the age of Magic; and they all implied a belief in some kind of
+re-incarnation--in a life going forward continually and being renewed
+in birth again and again. It is curious that we find such a belief among
+the lowest savages even to-day. Dr. Frazer, speaking of the Central
+Australian tribes, says the belief is firmly rooted among them "that the
+human soul undergoes an endless series of re-incarnations--the living
+men and women of one generation being nothing but the spirits of their
+ancestors come to life again, and destined themselves to be reborn
+in the persons of their descendants. During the interval between
+two re-incarnations the souls live in their nanja spots, or local
+totem-centres, which are always natural objects such as trees or rocks.
+Each totem-clan has a number of such totem-centres scattered over the
+country. There the souls of the dead men and women of the totem, but no
+others, congregate, and are born again in human form when a favorable
+opportunity presents itself." (2)
+
+ (1) Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. i, p. 113.
+
+ (2) The Golden Bough, vol. i, p. 96.
+
+
+And what the early people believed of the human spirit, they believed of
+the corn-spirits and the tree and vegetation spirits also. At the great
+Spring-ritual among the primitive Greeks "the tribe and the growing
+earth were renovated together: the earth arises afresh from her dead
+seeds, the tribe from its dead ancestors." And the whole process
+projects itself in the idea of a spirit of the year, who "in the first
+stage is living, then dies with each year, and thirdly rises again from
+the dead, raising the whole dead world with him. The Greeks called him
+in this stage 'The Third One' (Tritos Soter) or 'the Saviour'; and the
+renovation ceremonies were accompanied by a casting-off of the old year,
+the old garments, and everything that is polluted by the infection of
+death." (1) Thus the multiplication of the crops and the renovation of
+the tribe, and at the same time the evasion and placation of death, were
+all assured by similar rites and befitting ceremonial magic. (2)
+
+ (1) Gilbert Murray, Four Stages, p. 46.
+
+ (2) It is interesting to find, with regard to the renovation of
+the tribe, that among the Central Australians the foreskins or male
+members of those who died were deposited in the above-mentioned nanja
+spots--the idea evidently being that like the seeds of the corn the
+seeds of the human crop must be carefully and ceremonially preserved for
+their re-incarnation.
+
+
+In all these cases, and many others that I have not mentioned--of
+the magical worship of Bulls and Bears and Rams and Cats and Emus and
+Kangaroos, of Trees and Snakes, of Sun and Moon and Stars, and the
+spirit of the Corn in its yearly and miraculous resurrection out of the
+ground--there is still the same idea or moving inspiration, the sense
+mentioned in the foregoing chapter, the feeling (hardly yet conscious of
+its own meaning) of intimate relationship and unity with all this outer
+world, the instinctive conviction that the world can be swayed by the
+spirit of Man, if the man can only find the right ritual, the right
+word, the right spell, wherewith to move it. An aura of emotion
+surrounded everything--of terror, of tabu, of fascination, of desire.
+The world, to these people, was transparent with presences related to
+themselves; and though hunger and sex may have been the dominant and
+overwhelmingly practical needs of their life, yet their outlook on the
+world was essentially poetic and imaginative.
+
+Moreover it will be seen that in this age of magic and the belief in
+spirits, though there was an intense sense of every thing being
+alive, the gods, in the more modern sense of the world, hardly existed
+(1)--that is, there was no very clear vision, to these people, of
+supra-mundane beings, sitting apart and ordaining the affairs of
+earth, as it were from a distance. Doubtless this conception was slowly
+evolving, but it was only incipient. For the time being--though there
+might be orders and degrees of spirits (and of gods)--every such being
+was only conceived of, and could only be conceived of, as actually a
+part of Nature, dwelling in and interlaced with some phenomenon of Earth
+and Sky, and having no separate existence.
+
+ (1) For a discussion of the evolution of RELIGION out of MAGIC,
+see Westermarck's Origin of Moral Ideas, ch. 47.
+
+
+How was it then, it will be asked, that the belief in separate and
+separable gods and goddesses--each with his or her well-marked outline
+and character and function, like the divinities of Greece, or of India,
+or of the Egyptian or Christian religions, ultimately arose? To
+this question Jane Harrison (in her Themis and other books) gives an
+ingenious answer, which as it chimes in with my own speculations (in the
+Art of Creation and elsewhere) I am inclined to adopt. It is that the
+figures of the supranatural gods arose from a process in the human mind
+similar to that which the photographer adopts when by photographing a
+number of faces on the same plate, and so superposing their images on
+one another, he produces a so-called "composite" photograph or image.
+Thus, in the photographic sphere, the portraits of a lot of members
+of the same family superposed upon one another may produce a composite
+image or ideal of that family type, or the portraits of a number of
+Aztecs or of a number of Apache Indians the ideals respectively of the
+Aztec or of the Apache types. And so in the mental sphere of each member
+of a tribe the many images of the well-known Warriors or Priests or
+wise and gracious Women of that tribe did inevitably combine at last
+to composite figures of gods and goddesses--on whom the enthusiasm
+and adoration of the tribe was concentrated. (1) Miss Harrison has
+ingeniously suggested how the leading figures in the magic rituals of
+the past--being the figures on which all eyes would be concentrated; and
+whose importance would be imprinted on every mind--lent themselves to
+this process. The suffering Victim, bound and scourged and crucified,
+recurring year after year as the centre-figure of a thousand ritual
+processions, would at last be dramatized and idealized in the great
+race-consciousness into the form of a Suffering God--a Jesus Christ or
+a Dionysus or Osiris--dismembered or crucified for the salvation of
+mankind. The Priest or Medicine-Man--or rather the succession of Priests
+or Medicine-Men--whose figures would recur again and again as leaders
+and ordainers of the ceremonies, would be glorified at last into the
+composite-image of a God in whom were concentrated all magic powers.
+"Recent researches," says Gilbert Murray, "have shown us in abundance
+the early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and lightning and rain."
+Here is the germ of a Zeus or a Jupiter. The particular medicine-man
+may fail; that does not so much matter; he is only the individual
+representative of the glorified and composite being who exists in the
+mind of the tribe (just as a present-day King may be unworthy, but is
+surrounded all the same by the agelong glamour of Royalty). "The real
+[gr qeos], tremendous, infallible, is somewhere far away, hidden in
+clouds perhaps, on the summit of some inaccessible mountain. If the
+mountain is once climbed the god will move to the upper sky. The
+medicine-chief meanwhile stays on earth, still influential. He has some
+connection with the great god more intimate than that of other men... he
+knows the rules for approaching him and making prayers to him." (2) Thus
+did the Medicine-man, or Priest, or Magician (for these are but three
+names for one figure) represent one step in the evolution of the god.
+
+ (1) See The Art of Creation, ch. viii, "The Gods as Apparitions
+of the Race-Life."
+
+ (2) The Four Stages, p. 140.
+
+
+And farther back still in the evolutionary process we may trace (as in
+chapter iv above) the divinization or deification of four-footed animals
+and birds and snakes and trees and the like, from the personification of
+the collective emotion of the tribe towards these creatures. For people
+whose chief food was bear-meat, for instance, whose totem was a bear,
+and who believed themselves descended from an ursine ancestor, there
+would grow up in the tribal mind an image surrounded by a halo of
+emotions--emotions of hungry desire, of reverence, fear, gratitude and
+so forth--an image of a divine Bear in whom they lived and moved and had
+their being. For another tribe or group in whose yearly ritual a Bull or
+a Lamb or a Kangaroo played a leading part there would in the same
+way spring tip the image of a holy bull, a divine lamb, or a sacred
+kangaroo. Another group again might come to worship a Serpent as its
+presiding genius, or a particular kind of Tree, simply because these
+objects were and had been for centuries prominent factors in its yearly
+and seasonal Magic. As Reinach and others suggest, it was the Taboo
+(bred by Fear) which by first forbidding contact with the totem-animal
+or priest or magician-chief gradually invested him with Awe and
+Divinity.
+
+According to this theory the god--the full-grown god in human shape,
+dwelling apart and beyond the earth--did not come first, but was a late
+and more finished product of evolution. He grew up by degrees and out of
+the preceding animal-worships and totem-systems. And this theory is much
+supported and corroborated by the fact that in a vast number of early
+cults the gods are represented by human figures with animal heads. The
+Egyptian religion was full of such divinities--the jackal-headed
+Anubis, the ram-headed Ammon, the bull-fronted Osiris, or Muth, queen of
+darkness, clad in a vulture's skin; Minos and the Minotaur in Crete; in
+Greece, Athena with an owl's head, or Herakles masked in the hide
+and jaws of a monstrous lion. What could be more obvious than that,
+following on the tribal worship of any totem-animal, the priest or
+medicine-man or actual king in leading the magic ritual should don the
+skin and head of that animal, and wear the same as a kind of mask--this
+partly in order to appear to the people as the true representative of
+the totem, and partly also in order to obtain from the skin the magic
+virtues and mana of the beast, which he could then duly impart to the
+crowd? Zeus, it must be remembered, wears the aegis, or goat-skin--said
+to be the hide of the goat Amaltheia who suckled him in his infancy;
+there are a number of legends which connected the Arcadian Artemis with
+the worship of the bear, Apollo with the wolf, and so forth. And, most
+curious as showing similarity of rites between the Old and New Worlds,
+there are found plenty of examples of the wearing of beast-masks in
+religious processions among the native tribes of both North and South
+America. In the Atlas of Spix and Martius (who travelled together in
+the Amazonian forests about 1820) there is an understanding and
+characteristic picture of the men (and some women) of the tribe of the
+Tecunas moving in procession through the woods mostly naked, except for
+wearing animal heads and masks--the masks representing Cranes of various
+kinds, Ducks, the Opossum, the Jaguar, the Parrot, etc., probably
+symbolic of their respective clans.
+
+By some such process as this, it may fairly be supposed, the forms of
+the Gods were slowly exhaled from the actual figures of men and women,
+of youths and girls, who year after year took part in the ancient
+rituals. Just as the Queen of the May or Father Christmas with us are
+idealized forms derived from the many happy maidens or white-bearded
+old men who took leading parts in the May or December mummings and thus
+gained their apotheosis in our literature and tradition--so doubtless
+Zeus with his thunderbolts and arrows of lightning is the idealization
+into Heaven of the Priestly rain-maker and storm-controller; Ares the
+god of War, the similar idealization of the leading warrior in the
+ritual war-dance preceding an attack on a neighboring tribe; and Mercury
+of the foot-running Messenger whose swiftness in those days (devoid of
+steam or electricity) was so precious a tribal possession.
+
+And here it must be remembered that this explanation of the genesis of
+the gods only applies to the SHAPES and FIGURES of the various deities.
+It does not apply to the genesis of the widespread belief in spirits or
+a Great Spirit generally; that, as I think will become clear, has
+quite another source. Some people have jeered at the 'animistic' or
+'anthropomorphic' tendency of primitive man in his contemplation of the
+forces of Nature or his imaginations of religion and the gods. With a
+kind of superior pity they speak of "the poor Indian whose untutored
+mind sees God in clouds and hears him in the wind." But I must confess
+that to me the "poor Indian" seems on the whole to show more good sense
+than his critics, and to have aimed his rude arrows at the philosophic
+mark more successfully than a vast number of his learned and scientific
+successors. A consideration of what we have said above would show that
+early people felt their unity with Nature so deeply and intimately
+that--like the animals themselves--they did not think consciously or
+theorize about it. It was just their life to be--like the beasts of the
+field and the trees of the forest--a part of the whole flux of things,
+non-differentiated so to speak. What more natural or indeed more
+logically correct than for them to assume (when they first began to
+think or differentiate themselves) that these other creatures, these
+birds, beasts and plants, and even the sun and moon, were of the same
+blood as themselves, their first cousins, so to speak, and having the
+same interior nature? What more reasonable (if indeed they credited
+THEMSELVES with having some kind of soul or spirit) than to credit these
+other creatures with a similar soul or spirit? Im Thurn, speaking of the
+Guiana Indians, says that for them "the whole world swarms with beings."
+Surely this could not be taken to indicate an untutored mind--unless
+indeed a mind untutored in the nonsense of the Schools--but rather a
+very directly perceptive mind. And again what more reasonable (seeing
+that these people themselves were in the animal stage of evolution) than
+that they should pay great reverence to some ideal animal--first cousin
+or ancestor--who played an important part in their tribal existence, and
+make of this animal a totem emblem and a symbol of their common life?
+
+And, further still, what more natural than that when the tribe passed
+to some degree beyond the animal stage and began to realize a life more
+intelligent and emotional--more specially human in fact--than that
+of the beasts of the field, that it should then in its rituals and
+ceremonies throw off the beast-mask and pay reverence to the interior
+and more human spirit. Rising to a more enlightened consciousness of its
+own intimate quality, and still deeply penetrated with the sense of its
+kinship to external nature, it would inevitably and perfectly logically
+credit the latter with an inner life and intelligence, more
+distinctly human than before. Its religion in fact would become MORE
+'anthropomorphic' instead of less so; and one sees that this is a
+process that is inevitable; and inevitable notwithstanding a
+certain parenthesis in the process, due to obvious elements in our
+'Civilization' and to the temporary and fallacious domination of
+a leaden-eyed so-called 'Science.' According to this view the true
+evolution of Religion and Man's outlook on the world has proceeded not
+by the denial by man of his unity with the world, but by his seeing and
+understanding that unity more deeply. And the more deeply he understands
+himself the more certainly he will recognize in the external world a
+Being or beings resembling himself.
+
+W. H. Hudson--whose mind is certainly not of a quality to be jeered
+at--speaks of Animism as "the projection of ourselves into nature:
+the sense and apprehension of an intelligence like our own, but more
+powerful, in all visible things"; and continues, "old as I am this same
+primitive faculty which manifested itself in my early boyhood, still
+persists, and in those early years was so powerful that I am almost
+afraid to say how deeply I was moved by it." (1) Nor will it be quite
+forgotten that Shelley once said:--
+
+     The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight
+     Is active living spirit. Every grain
+     Is sentient both in unity and part,
+     And the minutest atom comprehends
+     A world of loves and hatreds.
+
+ (1) Far Away and Long Ago, ch. xiii, p. 225.
+
+
+The tendency to animism and later to anthropomorphism is I say
+inevitable, and perfectly logical. But the great value of the work done
+by some of those investigators whom I have quoted has been to show that
+among quite primitive people (whose interior life and 'soul-sense' was
+only very feeble) their projections of intelligence into Nature were
+correspondingly feeble. The reflections of themselves projected into
+the world beyond could not reach the stature of eternal 'gods,' but
+were rather of the quality of ephemeral phantoms and ghosts; and the
+ceremonials and creeds of that period are consequently more properly
+described as, Magic than as Religion. There have indeed been great
+controversies as to whether there has or has not been, in the course
+of religious evolution, a PRE-animistic stage. Probably of course human
+evolution in this matter must have been perfectly continuous from stages
+presenting the very feeblest or an absolutely deficient animistic sense
+to the very highest manifestations of anthropomorphism; but as there is
+a good deal of evidence to show that ANIMALS (notably dogs and horses)
+see ghosts, the inquiry ought certainly to be enlarged so far as to
+include the pre-human species. Anyhow it must be remembered that the
+question is one of CONSCIOUSNESS--that is, of how far and to what degree
+consciousness of self has been developed in the animal or the primitive
+man or the civilized man, and therefore how far and to what degree the
+animal or human creature has credited the outside world with a similar
+consciousness. It is not a question of whether there IS an inner life
+and SUB-consciousness common to all these creatures of the earth and
+sky, because that, I take it, is a fact beyond question; they all emerge
+or have emerged from the same matrix, and are rooted in identity; but
+it is a question of how far they are AWARE of this, and how far by
+separation (which is the genius of evolution) each individual creature
+has become conscious of the interior nature both of itself and of the
+other creatures AND of the great whole which includes them all.
+
+Finally, and to avoid misunderstanding, let me say that
+Anthropomorphism, in man's conception of the gods, is itself of course
+only a stage and destined to pass away. In so far, that is, as the
+term indicates a belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT
+conception of ourselves--that is as separate personalities having each
+a separate and limited character and function, and animated by
+the separatist motives of ambition, possession, power, vainglory,
+superiority, patronage, self-greed, self-satisfaction, etc.--in so far
+as anthropomorphism is the expression of that kind of belief it is of
+course destined, with the illusion from which it springs, to pass away.
+When man arrives at the final consciousness in which the idea of such a
+self, superior or inferior or in any way antagonistic to others, ceases
+to operate, then he will return to his first and primal condition, and
+will cease to need ANY special religion or gods, knowing himself and all
+his fellows to be divine and the origin and perfect fruition of all.
+
+
+
+
+VII. RITES OF EXPIATION AND REDEMPTION
+
+There is a passage in Richard Jefferies' imperishably beautiful book
+The Story of my Heart--a passage well known to all lovers of that
+prose-poet--in which he figures himself standing "in front of the Royal
+Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory," and
+pondering on the vast crowd and the mystery of life. "Is there any
+theory, philosophy, or creed," he says, "is there any system of culture,
+any formulated method, able to meet and satisfy each separate item of
+this agitated pool of human life? By which they may be guided, by which
+they may hope, by which look forward? Not a mere illusion of the craving
+heart--something real, as real as the solid walls of fact against
+which, like seaweed, they are dashed; something to give each separate
+personality sunshine and a flower in its own existence now; something
+to shape this million-handed labor to an end and outcome that will leave
+more sunshine and more flowers to those who must succeed? Something real
+now, and not in the spirit-land; in this hour now, as I stand and the
+sun burns.... Full well aware that all has failed, yet, side by side
+with the sadness of that knowledge, there lives on in me an unquenchable
+belief, thought burning like the sun, that there is yet something to
+be found.... It must be dragged forth by the might of thought from the
+immense forces of the universe."
+
+In answer to this passage we may say "No,--a thousand times No! there
+is no theory, philosophy, creed, system or formulated method which
+will meet or ever satisfy the demand of each separate item of the
+human whirlpool." And happy are we to know there is no such thing! How
+terrible if one of these bloodless 'systems' which strew the history
+of religion and philosophy and the political and social paths of
+human endeavor HAD been found absolutely correct and universally
+applicable--so that every human being would be compelled to pass
+through its machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under
+its Juggernath wheels! No, thank Heaven! there is no theory or creed or
+system; and yet there is something--as Jefferies prophetically felt and
+with a great longing desired--that CAN satisfy; and that, the root
+of all religion, has been hinted at in the last chapter. It is the
+CONSCIOUSNESS of the world-life burning, blazing, deep down within us:
+it is the Soul's intuition of its roots in Omnipresence and Eternity.
+
+The gods and the creeds of the past, as shown in the last
+chapter--whatever they may have been, animistic or anthropomorphic
+or transcendental, whether grossly brutish or serenely ideal and
+abstract--are essentially projections of the human mind; and no doubt
+those who are anxious to discredit the religious impulse generally will
+catch at this, saying "Yes, they are mere forms and phantoms of the
+mind, ephemeral dreams, projected on the background of Nature, and
+having no real substance or solid value. The history of Religion (they
+will say) is a history of delusion and illusion; why waste time over
+it? These divine grizzly Bears or Aesculapian Snakes, these cat-faced
+Pashts, this Isis, queen of heaven, and Astarte and Baal and Indra
+and Agni and Kali and Demeter and the Virgin Mary and Apollo and Jesus
+Christ and Satan and the Holy Ghost, are only shadows cast outwards onto
+a screen; the constitution of the human mind makes them all tend to
+be anthropomorphic; but that is all; they each and all inevitably pass
+away. Why waste time over them?"
+
+And this is in a sense a perfectly fair way of looking at the matter.
+These gods and creeds ARE only projections of the human mind. But all
+the same it misses, does this view, the essential fact. It misses the
+fact that there is no shadow without a fire, that the very existence of
+a shadow argues a light somewhere (though we may not directly see it) as
+well as the existence of a solid form which intercepts that light.
+Deep, deep in the human mind there is that burning blazing light of
+the world-consciousness--so deep indeed that the vast majority of
+individuals are hardly aware of its existence. Their gaze turned
+outwards is held and riveted by the gigantic figures and processions
+passing across their sky; they are unaware that the latter are only
+shadows--silhouettes of the forms inhabiting their own minds. (1) The
+vast majority of people have never observed their own minds; their own
+mental forms. They have only observed the reflections cast by these.
+Thus it may be said, in this matter, that there are three degrees of
+reality. There are the mere shadows--the least real and most
+evanescent; there are the actual mental outlines of humanity (and of
+the individual), much more real, but themselves also of course slowly
+changing; and most real of all, and permanent, there is the light "which
+lighteth every man that cometh into the world"--the glorious light
+of the world-consciousness. Of this last it may be said that it never
+changes. Every thing is known to it--even the very IMPEDIMENTS to its
+shining. But as it is from the impediments to the shining of a light
+that shadows are cast, so we now may understand that the things of this
+world and of humanity, though real in their degree, have chiefly a
+kind of negative value; they are opaquenesses, clouds, materialisms,
+ignorances, and the inner light falling upon them gradually reveals
+their negative character and gradually dissolves them away till they
+are lost in the extreme and eternal Splendor. I think Jefferies, when
+he asked that question with which I have begun this chapter, was in some
+sense subconsciously, if not quite consciously, aware of the answer. His
+frequent references to the burning blazing sun throughout The Story of
+the Heart seem to be an indication of his real deep-down attitude of
+mind.
+
+ (1) See, in the same connection, Plato's allegory of the Cave,
+Republic, Book vii.
+
+
+The shadow-figures of the creeds and theogonies pass away truly like
+ephemeral dreams; but to say that time spent in their study is wasted,
+is a mistake, for they have value as being indications of things much
+more real than themselves, namely, of the stages of evolution of the
+human mind. The fact that a certain god-figure, however grotesque and
+queer, or a certain creed, however childish, cruel, and illogical, held
+sway for a considerable time over the hearts of men in any corner or
+continent of the world is good evidence that it represented a real
+formative urge at the time in the hearts of those good people, and
+a definite stage in their evolution and the evolution of humanity.
+Certainly it was destined to pass away, but it was a step, and a
+necessary step in the great process; and certainly it was opaque and
+brutish, but it is through the opaque things of the world, and not
+through the transparent, that we become aware of the light.
+
+It may be worth while to give instances of how some early rituals and
+creeds, in themselves apparently barbarous or preposterous, were really
+the indications of important moral and social conceptions evolving in
+the heart of man. Let us take, first, the religious customs connected
+with the ideas of Sacrifice and of Sin, of which such innumerable
+examples are now to be found in the modern books on Anthropology. If we
+assume, as I have done more than once, that the earliest state of Man
+was one in which he did not consciously separate himself from the world,
+animate and inanimate, which surrounded him, then (as I have also said)
+it was perfectly natural for him to take some animal which bulked large
+on his horizon--some food-animal for instance--and to pay respect to it
+as the benefactor of his tribe, its far-back ancestor and totem-symbol;
+or, seeing the boundless blessing of the cornfields, to believe in
+some kind of spirit of the corn (not exactly a god but rather a magical
+ghost) which, reincarnated every year, sprang up to save mankind
+from famine. But then no sooner had he done this than he was bound to
+perceive that in cutting down the corn or in eating his totem-bear
+or kangaroo he was slaying his own best self and benefactor. In
+that instant the consciousness of DISUNITY, the sense of sin in some
+undefined yet no less disturbing and alarming form would come in. If,
+before, his ritual magic had been concentrated on the simple purpose of
+multiplying the animal or, vegetable forms of his food, now in addition
+his magical endeavor would be turned to averting the just wrath of the
+spirits who animated these forms--just indeed, for the rudest savage
+would perceive the wrong done and the probability of its retribution.
+Clearly the wrong done could only be expiated by an equivalent sacrifice
+of some kind on the part of the man, or the tribe--that is by the
+offering to the totem-animal or to the corn-spirit of some victim whom
+these nature powers in their turn could feed upon and assimilate. In
+this way the nature-powers would be appeased, the sense of unity would
+be restored, and the first At-one-ment effected.
+
+It is hardly necessary to recite in any detail the cruel and hideous
+sacrifices which have been perpetrated in this sense all over the world,
+sometimes in appeasement of a wrong committed or supposed to have been
+committed by the tribe or some member of it, sometimes in placation or
+for the averting of death, or defeat, or plague, sometimes merely
+in fulfilment of some long-standing custom of forgotten origin--the
+flayings and floggings and burnings and crucifixions of victims without
+end, carried out in all deliberation and solemnity of established
+ritual. I have mentioned some cases connected with the sowing of the
+corn. The Bible is full of such things, from the intended sacrifice of
+Isaac by his father Abraham, to the actual crucifixion of Jesus by
+the Jews. The first-born sons were claimed by a god who called himself
+"jealous" and were only to be redeemed by a substitute. (1) Of the
+Canaanites it was said that "even their daughters they have BURNT in the
+fire to their gods"; (2) and of the King of Moab, that when he saw
+his army in danger of defeat, "he took his eldest son that should have
+reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt-offering on the wall!"
+(3) Dr. Frazer (4) mentions the similar case of the Carthaginians
+(about B.C. 300) sacrificing two hundred children of good family as a
+propitiation to Baal and to save their beloved city from the assaults
+of the Sicilian tyrant Agathocles. And even so we hear that on that
+occasion three hundred more young folk VOLUNTEERED to die for the
+fatherland.
+
+ (1) Exodus xxxiv. 20.
+
+ (2) Deut. xii. 31.
+
+ (3) 2 Kings iii. 27.
+
+ (4) The Golden Bough, vol. "The Dying God," p. 167.
+
+
+The awful sacrifices made by the Aztecs in Mexico to their gods
+Huitzilopochtli, Texcatlipoca, and others are described in much detail
+by Sahagun, the Spanish missionary of the sixteenth century. The victims
+were mostly prisoners of war or young children; they were numbered by
+thousands. In one case Sahagun describes the huge Idol or figure of the
+god as largely plated with gold and holding his hands palm upward and in
+a downward sloping position over a cauldron or furnace placed below. The
+children, who had previously been borne in triumphal state on litters
+over the crowd and decorated with every ornamental device of feathers
+and flowers and wings, were placed one by one on the vast hands and
+ROLLED DOWN into the flames--as if the god were himself offering them.
+(1) As the procession approached the temple, the members of it wept and
+danced and sang, and here again the abundance of tears was taken for a
+good augury of rain. (2)
+
+ (1) It is curious to find that exactly the same story (of the
+sloping hands and the children rolled down into the flames) is related
+concerning the above-mentioned Baal image at Carthage (see Diodorus
+Siculus, xx. 14; also Baring Gould's Religious Belief, vol. i, p. 375).
+
+ (2) "A los ninos que mataban, componianlos en muchos atavios para
+llevarlos al sacrificio, y llevabos en unas literas sobre los hombros,
+estas literas iban adornadas con plumages y con flores: iban tanendo,
+cantando y bailando delante de ellos... Cuando Ileviban los ninos a
+matar, si llevaban y echaban muchos lagrimas, alegrabansi los que los
+llevaban porque tomaban pronostico de que habian de tener muchas aguas
+en aquel ano." Sahagun, Historia Nueva Espana, Bk. II, ch. i.
+
+
+Bernal Diaz describes how he saw one of these monstrous figures--that
+of Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, all inlaid with gold and precious
+stones; and beside it were "braziers, wherein burned the hearts of three
+Indians, torn from their bodies that very day, and the smoke of them and
+the savor of incense were the sacrifice."
+
+Sahagun again (in Book II, ch. 5) gives a long account of the sacrifice
+of a perfect youth at Easter-time--which date Sahagun connects with the
+Christian festival of the Resurrection. For a whole year the youth had
+been held in honor and adored by the people as the very image of the
+god (Tetzcatlipoca) to whom he was to be sacrificed. Every luxury
+and fulfilment of his last wish (including such four courtesans as he
+desired) had been granted him. At the last and on the fatal day, leaving
+his companions and his worshipers behind, be slowly ascended the Temple
+staircase; stripping on each step the ornaments from his body; and
+breaking and casting away his flutes and other musical instruments;
+till, reaching the summit, he was stretched, curved on his back, and
+belly upwards, over the altar stone, while the priest with obsidian
+knife cut his breast open and, snatching the heart out, held it up, yet
+beating, as an offering to the Sun. In the meantime, and while the heart
+still lived, his successor for the next year was chosen.
+
+In Book II, ch. 7 of the same work Sahagun describes the similar
+offering of a woman to a goddess. In both cases (he explains) of young
+man or young woman, the victims were richly adorned in the guise of the
+god or goddess to whom they were offered, and at the same time great
+largesse of food was distributed to all who needed. (Here we see the
+connection in the general mind between the gift of food (by the gods)
+and the sacrifice of precious blood (by the people).) More than once
+Sahagun mentions that the victims in these Mexican ceremonials not
+infrequently offered THEMSELVES as a voluntary sacrifice; and Prescott
+says (1) that the offering of one's life to the gods was "sometimes
+voluntarily embraced, as a most glorious death opening a sure passage
+into Paradise."
+
+ (1) Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.
+
+
+Dr. Frazer describes (1) the far-back Babylonian festival of the Sacaea
+in which "a prisoner, condemned to death, was dressed in the king's
+robes, seated on the king's throne, allowed to issue whatever commands
+he pleased, to eat, drink and enjoy himself, and even to lie with the
+king's concubines." But at the end of the five days he was stripped
+of his royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. It is certainly
+astonishing to find customs so similar prevailing among peoples so far
+removed in space and time as the Aztecs of the sixteenth century A.D.
+and the Babylonians perhaps of the sixteenth century B.C. But we know
+that this subject of the yearly sacrifice of a victim attired as a
+king or god is one that Dr. Frazer has especially made his own, and for
+further information on it his classic work should be consulted.
+
+ (1) Golden Bough, "The Dying God," p. 114. (See also S. Reinach,
+Cults, Myths and Religion, p. 94) on the martyrdom of St. Dasius.
+
+
+Andrew Lang also, with regard to the Aztecs, quotes largely from
+Sahagun, and summarizes his conclusions in the following passage:
+"The general theory of worship was the adoration of a deity, first by
+innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a MAN for
+the male gods, of a WOMAN for each goddess. (1) The latter victims were
+regarded as the living images or incarnations of the divinities in, each
+case; for no system of worship carried farther the identification of the
+god with the sacrifice (? victim), and of both with the officiating priest.
+The connection was emphasized by the priests wearing the newly-flayed skins
+of the victims--just as in Greece, Egypt and Assyria, the fawn-skin
+or bull-hide or goat-skin or fish-skin of the victims is worn by the
+celebrants. Finally, an image of the god was made out of paste, and this
+was divided into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those who
+communicated." (2)
+
+ (1) Compare the festival of Thargelia at Athens, originally
+connected with the ripening of the crops. A procession was formed and
+the first fruits of the year offered to Apollo, Artemis and the Horae.
+It was an expiatory feast, to purify the State from all guilt and avert
+the wrath of the god (the Sun). A man and a woman, as representing
+the male and female population, were led about with a garland of figs
+(fertility) round their necks, to the sound of flutes and singing. They
+were then scourged, sacrificed, and their bodies burned by the seashore.
+(Nettleship and Sandys.)
+
+ (2) A Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii, p. 97.
+
+
+Revolting as this whole picture is, it represents as we know a mere
+thumbnail sketch of the awful practices of human sacrifice all over the
+world. We hold up our hands in horror at the thought of Huitzilopochtli
+dropping children from his fingers into the flames, but we have to
+remember that our own most Christian Saint Augustine was content to
+describe unbaptized infants as crawling for ever about the floor of
+Hell! What sort of god, we may ask, did Augustine worship? The Being who
+could condemn children to such a fate was certainly no better than the
+Mexican Idol.
+
+And yet Augustine was a great and noble man, with some by no means
+unworthy conceptions of the greatness of his God. In the same way the
+Aztecs were in many respects a refined and artistic people, and their
+religion was not all superstition and bloodshed. Prescott says of them
+(1) that they believed in a supreme Creator and Lord "omnipresent,
+knowing all thoughts, giving all gifts, without whom Man is as
+nothing--invisible, incorporeal, one God, of perfect perfection and
+purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." How can
+we reconcile St. Augustine with his own devilish creed, or the religious
+belief of the Aztecs with their unspeakable cruelties? Perhaps we can
+only reconcile them by remembering out of what deeps of barbarism and
+what nightmares of haunting Fear, man has slowly emerged--and is
+even now only slowly emerging; by remembering also that the ancient
+ceremonies and rituals of Magic and Fear remained on and were cultivated
+by the multitude in each nation long after the bolder and nobler spirits
+had attained to breathe a purer air; by remembering that even to the
+present day in each individual the Old and the New are for a long period
+thus intricately intertangled. It is hard to believe that the practice
+of human and animal sacrifice (with whatever revolting details) should
+have been cultivated by nine-tenths of the human race over the globe
+out of sheer perversity and without some reason which at any rate to
+the perpetrators themselves appeared commanding and convincing. To-day
+(1918) we are witnessing in the Great European War a carnival of human
+slaughter which in magnitude and barbarity eclipses in one stroke all
+the accumulated ceremonial sacrifices of historical ages; and when
+we ask the why and wherefore of this horrid spectacle we are told,
+apparently in all sincerity, and by both the parties engaged, of the
+noble objects and commanding moralities which inspire and compel it. We
+can hardly, in this last case, disbelieve altogether in the genuineness
+of the plea, so why should we do so in the former case? In both cases we
+perceive that underneath the surface pretexts and moralities Fear is and
+was the great urging and commanding force.
+
+ (1) Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 3.
+
+
+The truth is that Sin and Sacrifice represent--if you once allow for the
+overwhelming sway of fear--perfectly reasonable views of human conduct,
+adopted instinctively by mankind since the earliest times. If in a
+moment of danger or an access of selfish greed you deserted your brother
+tribesman or took a mean advantage of him, you 'sinned' against him; and
+naturally you expiated the sin by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind
+made to the one you had wronged. Such an idea and such a practice were
+the very foundation of social life and human morality, and must have
+sprung up as soon as ever, in the course of evolution, man became
+CAPABLE of differentiating himself from his fellows and regarding his
+own conduct as that of a 'separate self.' It was in the very conception
+of a separate self that 'sin' and disunity first began; and it was
+by 'sacrifice' that unity and harmony were restored, appeasement and
+atonement effected.
+
+But in those earliest times, as I have already indicated more than once,
+man felt himself intimately related not only to his brother tribesman,
+but to the animals and to general Nature. It was not so much that he
+THOUGHT thus as that he never thought OTHERWISE! He FELT subconsciously
+that he was a part of all this outer world. And so he adopted for his
+totems or presiding spirits every possible animal, as we have seen,
+and all sorts of nature-phenomena, such as rain and fire and water and
+clouds, and sun, moon and stars--which WE consider quite senseless and
+inanimate. Towards these apparently senseless things therefore he felt
+the same compunction as I have described him feeling towards his brother
+tribesmen. He could sin against them too. He could sin against his
+totem-animal by eating it; he could sin against his 'brother the ox' by
+consuming its strength in the labor of the plough; he could sin against
+the corn by cutting it down and grinding it into flour, or against the
+precious and beautiful pine-tree by laying his axe to its roots and
+converting it into mere timber for his house. Further still, no doubt he
+could sin against elemental nature. This might be more difficult to be
+certain of, but when the signs of elemental displeasure were not to be
+mistaken--when the rain withheld itself for months, or the storms and
+lightning dealt death and destruction, when the crops failed or evil
+plagues afflicted mankind--then there could be little uncertainty that
+he had sinned; and Fear, which had haunted him like a demon from the
+first day when he became conscious of his separation from his fellows
+and from Nature, stood over him and urged to dreadful propitiations.
+
+In all these cases some sacrifice in reparation was the obvious thing.
+We have seen that to atone for the cutting-down of the corn a human
+victim would often be slaughtered. The corn-spirit clearly approved of
+this, for wherever the blood and remains of the victim were strewn the
+corn always sprang up more plentifully. The tribe or human group made
+reparation thus to the corn; the corn-spirit signified approval. The
+'sin' was expiated and harmony restored. Sometimes the sacrifice was
+voluntarily offered by a tribesman; sometimes it was enforced, by lot
+or otherwise; sometimes the victim was a slave, or a captive enemy;
+sometimes even an animal. All that did not so much matter. The main
+thing was that the formal expiation had been carried out, and the wrath
+of the spirits averted.
+
+It is known that tribes whose chief food-animal was the bear felt it
+necessary to kill and eat a bear occasionally; but they could not do
+this without a sense of guilt, and some fear of vengeance from the great
+Bear-spirit. So they ate the slain bear at a communal feast in which
+the tribesmen shared the guilt and celebrated their community with their
+totem and with each other. And since they could not make any reparation
+directly to the slain animal itself AFTER its death, they made their
+reparation BEFORE, bringing all sorts of presents and food to it for a
+long anterior period, and paying every kind of worship and respect to
+it. The same with the bull and the ox. At the festival of the Bouphonia,
+in some of the cities of Greece as I have already mentioned, the actual
+bull sacrificed was the handsomest and most carefully nurtured that
+could be obtained; it was crowned with flowers and led in procession
+with every mark of reverence and worship. And when--as I have already
+pointed out--at the great Spring festival, instead of a bull or a goat
+or a ram, a HUMAN victim was immolated, it was a custom (which can be
+traced very widely over the world) to feed and indulge and honor the
+victim to the last degree for a WHOLE YEAR before the final ceremony,
+arraying him often as a king and placing a crown upon his head, by way
+of acknowledgment of the noble and necessary work he was doing for the
+general good.
+
+What a touching and beautiful ceremony was that--belonging especially
+to the North of Syria, and lands where the pine is so beneficent and
+beloved a tree--the mourning ceremony of the death and burial of Attis!
+when a pine-tree, felled by the axe, was hollowed out, and in the hollow
+an image (often itself carved out of pinewood) of the young Attis was
+placed. Could any symbolism express more tenderly the idea that the
+glorious youth--who represented Spring, too soon slain by the rude tusk
+of Winter--was himself the very human soul of the pine-tree? (1) At some
+earlier period, no doubt, a real youth had been sacrificed and his body
+bound within the pine; but now it was deemed sufficient for the maidens
+to sing their wild songs of lamentation; and for the priests and male
+enthusiasts to cut and gash themselves with knives, or to sacrifice
+(as they did) to the Earth-mother the precious blood offering of their
+virile organs--symbols of fertility in return for the promised and
+expected renewal of Nature and the crops in the coming Spring. For
+the ceremony, as we have already seen, did not end with death and
+lamentation, but led on, perfectly naturally, after a day or two to a
+festival of resurrection, when it was discovered--just as in the case of
+Osiris--that the pine-tree coffin was empty, and the immortal life had
+flown. How strange the similarity and parallelism of all these things to
+the story of Jesus in the Gospels--the sacrifice of a life made in order
+to bring salvation to men and expiation of sins, the crowning of the
+victim, and arraying in royal attire, the scourging and the mockery, the
+binding or nailing to a tree, the tears of Mary, and the resurrection
+and the empty coffin!--or how not at all strange when we consider in
+what numerous forms and among how many peoples, this same parable
+and ritual had as a matter of fact been celebrated, and how it had
+ultimately come down to bring its message of redemption into a somewhat
+obscure Syrian city, in the special shape with which we are familiar.
+
+ (1) See Julius Firmicus, who says (De Errore, c. 28): "in sacris
+Phrygiis, quae Matris deum dicunt, per annos singulos arbor pinea
+caeditur, et in media arbore simulacrum uvenis subligatur. In Isiacis
+sacris de pinea arbore caeditur truncus; hujus trunci media pars
+subtiliter excavatur, illis de segminibus factum idolum Osiridis
+sepelitur. In Prosperpinae sacris caesa arbor in effigiem virginis
+formaraque componitur, et cum intra civitatem fuerit illata, quadraginta
+noctibus piangitur, quadragesima vero nocte comburitur."
+
+
+Though the parable or legend in its special Christian form bears with it
+the consciousness of the presence of beings whom we may call gods, it is
+important to remember that in many or most of its earlier forms, though
+it dealt in 'spirits'--the spirit of the corn, or the spirit of the
+Spring, or the spirits of the rain and the thunder, or the spirits of
+totem-animals--it had not yet quite risen to the idea of gods. It
+had not risen to the conception of eternal deities sitting apart and
+governing the world in solemn conclave--as from the slopes of Olympus
+or the recesses of the Christian Heaven. It belonged, in fact, in its
+inception, to the age of Magic. The creed of Sin and Sacrifice, or of
+Guilt and Expiation--whatever we like to call it--was evolved perfectly
+naturally out of the human mind when brought face to face with Life
+and Nature) at some early stage of its self-consciousness. It was
+essentially the result of man's deep, original and instinctive sense of
+solidarity with Nature, now denied and belied and to some degree
+broken up by the growth and conscious insistence of the self-regarding
+impulses. It was the consciousness of disharmony and disunity,
+causing men to feel all the more poignantly the desire and the need of
+reconciliation. It was a realization of union made clear by its very
+loss. It assumed of course, in a subconscious way as I have already
+indicated, that the external world was the HABITAT of a mind or minds
+similar to man's own; but THAT being granted, it is evident that the
+particular theories current in this or that place about the nature of
+the world--the theories, as we should say, of science or theology--did
+not alter the general outlines of the creed; they only colored its
+details and gave its ritual different dramatic settings. The mental
+attitudes, for instance, of Abraham sacrificing the ram, or of the
+Siberian angakout slaughtering a totem-bear, or of a modern and pious
+Christian contemplating the Saviour on the Cross are really almost
+exactly the same. I mention this because in tracing the origins or the
+evolution of religions it is important to distinguish clearly what is
+essential and universal from that which is merely local and temporary.
+Some people, no doubt, would be shocked at the comparisons just made;
+but surely it is much more inspiriting and encouraging to think that
+whatever progress HAS been made in the religious outlook of the world
+has come about through the gradual mental growth and consent of the
+peoples, rather than through some unique and miraculous event of a
+rather arbitrary and unexplained character--which indeed might never be
+repeated, and concerning which it would perhaps be impious to suggest
+that it SHOULD be repeated.
+
+The consciousness then of Sin (or of alienation from the life of the
+whole), and of restoration or redemption through Sacrifice, seems to
+have disclosed itself in the human race in very far-back times, and
+to have symbolized itself in some most ancient rituals; and if we are
+shocked sometimes at the barbarities which accompanied those rituals,
+yet we must allow that these barbarities show how intensely the early
+people felt the solemnity and importance of the whole matter; and we
+must allow too that the barbarities did sear and burn themselves into
+rude and ignorant minds with the sense of the NEED of Sacrifice, and
+with a result perhaps which could not have been compassed in any other
+way.
+
+For after all we see now that sacrifice is of the very essence of social
+life. "It is expedient that ONE man should die for the people"; and not
+only that one man should actually die, but (what is far more important)
+that each man should be ready and WILLING to die in that cause, when
+the occasion and the need arises. Taken in its larger meanings and
+implications Sacrifice, as conceived in the ancient world, was a
+perfectly reasonable thing. It SHOULD pervade modern life more than it
+does. All we have or enjoy flows from, or is implicated with, pain
+and suffering in others, and--if there is any justice in Nature or
+Humanity--it demands an equivalent readiness to suffer on our part. If
+Christianity has any real essence, that essence is perhaps expressed
+in some such ritual or practice of Sacrifice, and we see that the dim
+beginnings of this idea date from the far-back customs of savages coming
+down from a time anterior to all recorded history.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH
+
+We have suggested in the last chapter how the conceptions of Sin and
+Sacrifice coming down to us from an extremely remote past, and
+embodied among the various peoples of the world sometimes in crude and
+bloodthirsty rites, sometimes in symbols and rituals of a gentler and
+more gracious character, descended at last into Christianity and became
+a part of its creed and of the creed of the modern world. On the whole
+perhaps we may trace a slow amelioration in this process and may flatter
+ourselves that the Christian centuries exhibit a more philosophical
+understanding of what Sin is, and a more humane conception of what
+Sacrifice SHOULD be, than the centuries preceding. But I fear that any
+very decided statement or sweeping generalization to that effect would
+be--to say the least--rash. Perhaps there IS a very slow amelioration;
+but the briefest glance at the history of the Christian churches--the
+horrible rancours and revenges of the clergy and the sects against
+each other in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the heresy-hunting
+crusades at Beziers and other places and the massacres of the Albigenses
+in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the witch-findings and
+burnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth, the hideous science-urged and
+bishop-blessed warfare of the twentieth--horrors fully as great as any
+we can charge to the account of the Aztecs or the Babylonians--must give
+us pause. Nor must we forget that if there is by chance a substantial
+amelioration in our modern outlook with regard to these matters the same
+had begun already before the advent of Christianity and can by no means
+be ascribed to any miraculous influence of that religion. Abraham was
+prompted to slay a ram as a substitute for his son, long before the
+Christians were thought of; the rather savage Artemis of the old Greek
+rites was (according to Pausanias) (1) honored by the yearly sacrifice
+of a perfect boy and girl, but later it was deemed sufficient to draw a
+knife across their throats as a symbol, with the result of spilling only
+a few drops of their blood, or to flog the boys (with the same result)
+upon her altar. Among the Khonds in old days many victims (meriahs) were
+sacrificed to the gods, "but in time the man was replaced by a horse,
+the horse by a bull, the bull by a ram, the ram by a kid, the kid by
+fowls, and the fowls by many flowers." (2) At one time, according to the
+Yajur-Veda, there was a festival at which one hundred and twenty-five
+victims, men and women, boys and girls, were sacrificed; "but reform
+supervened, and now the victims were bound as before to the stake,
+but afterwards amid litanies to the immolated (god) Narayana, the
+sacrificing priest brandished a knife and--severed the bonds of the
+captives." (3) At the Athenian festival of the Thargelia, to which I
+referred in the last chapter, it appears that the victims, in later
+times, instead of being slain, were tossed from a height into the sea,
+and after being rescued were then simply banished; while at Leucatas a
+similar festival the fall of the victim was graciously broken by tying
+feathers and even living birds to his body. (4)
+
+ (1) vii. 19, and iii. 8, 16.
+
+ (2) Primitive Folk, by Elie Reclus (Contemp. Science Series), p.
+330.
+
+ (3) Ibid.
+
+ (4) Muller's Dorians Book II, ch. ii, par. 10.
+
+
+With the lapse of time and the general progress of mankind, we may,
+I think, perceive some such slow ameliorations in the matter of the
+brutality and superstition of the old religions. How far any later
+ameliorations were due to the direct influence of Christianity might
+be a difficult question; but what I think we can clearly see--and what
+especially interests us here--is that in respect to its main religious
+ideas, and the matter underlying them (exclusive of the MANNER of
+their treatment, which necessarily has varied among different peoples)
+Christianity is of one piece with the earlier pagan creeds and is
+for the most part a re-statement and renewed expression of world-wide
+doctrines whose first genesis is lost in the haze of the past, beyond
+all recorded history.
+
+I have illustrated this view with regard to the doctrine of Sin and
+Sacrifice. Let us take two or three other illustrations. Let us take the
+doctrine of Re-birth or Regeneration. The first few verses of St. John's
+Gospel are occupied with the subject of salvation through rebirth or
+regeneration. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
+God."... "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter
+into the kingdom of God." Our Baptismal Service begins by saying that
+"forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin; and that our
+Saviour Christ saith, None can enter into the kingdom of God except he
+be regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost"; therefore it
+is desirable that this child should be baptized, "received into Christ's
+Holy Church, and be made a lively member of the same." That, is to say,
+there is one birth, after the flesh, but a second birth is necessary, a
+birth after the Spirit and into the Church of Christ. Our Confirmation
+Service is simply a service repeating and confirming these views, at
+an age (fourteen to sixteen or so) when the boy or girl is capable of
+understanding what is being done.
+
+But our Baptismal and Confirmation ceremonies combined are clearly
+the exact correspondence and parallel of the old pagan ceremonies of
+Initiation, which are or have been observed in almost every primitive
+tribe over the world. "The rite of the second birth," says Jane
+Harrison, (1) "is widespread, universal, over half the savage world.
+With the savage to be twice-born is the rule. By his first birth he
+comes into the world; by his second he is born into his tribe. At his
+first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; at his second
+he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the
+warriors of his tribe."... "These rites are very various, but they all
+point to one moral, that the former things are passed away and that
+the new-born man has entered upon a new life. Simplest of all, and most
+instructive, is the rite practised by the Kikuyu tribe of British East
+Africa, who require that every boy, just before circumcision, must be
+born again. The mother stands up with the boy crouching at her feet; she
+pretends to go through all the labour pains, and the boy on being reborn
+cries like a babe and is washed." (2)
+
+ (1) Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 104.
+
+ (2) See also Themis, p. 21.
+
+
+Let us pause for a moment. An Initiate is of course one who "enters
+in." He enters into the Tribe; he enters into the revelation of certain
+Mysteries; he becomes an associate of a certain Totem, a certain God; a
+member of a new Society, or Church--a church of Mithra, or Dionysus or
+Christ. To do any of these things he must be born again; he must die
+to the old life; he must pass through ceremonials which symbolize the
+change. One of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe is
+washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and as by primitive
+man (and not without reason) BLOOD was considered the most vital and
+regenerative of fluids, the very elixir of life, so in earliest times
+it was common to wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be
+born anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first die.
+So, not unfrequently, he was wounded, or scourged, and baptized with his
+own blood, or, in cases, one of the candidates was really killed and his
+blood used as a substitute for the blood of the others. No doubt HUMAN
+sacrifice attended the earliest initiations. But later it was sufficient
+to be half-drowned in the blood of a Bull as in the Mithra cult, (1)
+or 'washed in the blood of the Lamb' as in the Christian phraseology.
+Finally, with a growing sense of decency and aesthetic perception
+among the various peoples, washing with pure water came in the
+initiation-ceremonies to take the place of blood; and our baptismal
+service has reduced the ceremony to a mere sprinkling with water. (2)
+
+ (1) See ch. iii.
+
+ (2) For the virtue supposed to reside in blood see Westermarck's
+Moral Ideas, Ch. 46.
+
+
+To continue the quotation from Miss Harrison: "More often the new birth
+is stimulated, or imagined, as a death and a resurrection, either of
+the boys themselves or of some one else in their presence. Thus at
+initiation among some tribes of South-east Australia, when the boys are
+assembled an old man dressed in stringy bark-fibre lies down in a
+grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks and earth, and the grave is
+smoothed over. The buried man holds in his hand a small bush which seems
+to be growing from the ground, and other bushes are stuck in the ground
+round about. The novices are then brought to the edge of the grave and
+a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes on, the bush held by the
+buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and more, and bit by bit the
+man himself starts up from the grave."
+
+Strange in our own Baptismal Service and just before the actual
+christening we read these words, "Then shall the Priest say: O merciful
+God, grant that old Adam in this child may be so BURIED that the new
+man may be raised up in him: grant that all carnal affections may die
+in him, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow
+in him!" Can we doubt that the Australian medicine-man, standing at the
+graveside of the re-arisen old black-fellow, pointed the same moral to
+the young initiates as the priest does to-day to those assembled before
+him in church--for indeed we know that among savage tribes initiations
+have always been before all things the occasions of moral and social
+teaching? Can we doubt that he said, in substance if not in actual
+words: "As this man has arisen from the grave, so you must also arise
+from your old childish life of amusement and self-gratification and,
+ENTER INTO the life of the tribe, the life of the Spirit of the tribe."
+"In totemistic societies," to quote Miss Harrison again, "and in the
+animal secret societies that seem to grow out of them, the novice is
+born again as THE SACRED ANIMAL. Thus among the Carrier Indians (1)
+when a man wants to become a Lulem or 'Bear,' however cold the season
+he tears off his clothes, puts on a bear-skin and dashes into the
+woods, where he will stay for three or four days. Every night his
+fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to find him. They cry out
+Yi! Kelulem (come on, Bear), and he answers with angry growls. Usually
+they fail to find him, but he comes back at last himself. He is met, and
+conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and there in company with the rest
+of the Bears dances solemnly his first appearance. Disappearance and
+reappearance is as common a rite in initiation as stimulated killing and
+resurrection, and has the same object. Both are rites of transition,
+of passing from one to another." In the Christian ceremonies the boy or
+girl puts away childish things and puts on the new man, but instead
+of putting on a bear-skin he puts on Christ. There is not so much
+difference as may appear on the surface. To be identified with your
+Totem is to be identified with the sacred being who watches over your
+tribe, who has given his life for your tribe; it is to be born again,
+to be washed not only with water but with the Holy Spirit of all your
+fellows. To be baptized into Christ ought to mean to be regenerated
+in the Holy Spirit of all humanity; and no doubt in cases it does mean
+this, but too often unfortunately it has only amounted to a pretence of
+religious sanction given to the meanest and bitterest quarrels of the
+Churches and the States.
+
+ (1) Golden Bough, Section 2, III, p. 438.
+
+
+This idea of a New Birth at initiation explains the prevalent pagan
+custom of subjecting the initiates to serious ordeals, often painful and
+even dangerous. If one is to be born again, obviously one must be ready
+to face death; the one thing cannot be without the other. One must be
+able to endure pain, like the Red Indian braves; to go long periods
+fasting and without food or drink, like the choupan among the Western
+Inoits--who, wanders for whole nights over the ice-fields under the
+moon, scantily clothed and braving the intense cold; to overcome the
+very fear of death and danger, like the Australian novices who, at first
+terrified by the sound of the bull-roarer and threats of fire and the
+knife, learn finally to cast their fears away. (1) By so doing one
+puts off the old childish things, and qualifies oneself by firmness
+and courage to become a worthy member of the society into which one
+is called. (2) The rules of social life are taught--the duty to one's
+tribe, and to oneself, truth-speaking, defence of women and children,
+the care of cattle, the meaning of sex and marriage, and even the
+mysteries of such religious ideas and rudimentary science as the tribe
+possesses. And by so doing one really enters into a new life. Things of
+the spiritual world begin to dawn. Julius Firmicus, in describing
+the mysteries of the resurrection of Osiris, (3) says that when the
+worshipers had satiated themselves with lamentations over the death
+of the god then the priest would go round anointing them with oil and
+whispering, "Be of good cheer, O Neophytes of the new-arisen God, for to
+us too from our pains shall come salvation." (4)
+
+ (1) According to accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of Western
+Australia, in their initiations, the lads were frightened by a large
+fire being lighted near them, and hearing the awful sound of the
+bull-roarers, while they were told that Dhuramoolan was about to burn
+them; the legend being that Dhuramoolan, a powerful being, whose voice
+sounded like thunder, would take the boys into the bush and instruct
+them in all the laws, traditions and customs of the community. So he
+pretended that he always killed the boys, cut them up, and burnt them to
+ashes, after which he moulded the ashes into human shape, and restored
+them to life as new beings. (See R. H. Matthews, "The Wiradthuri
+tribes," Journal Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxv, 1896, pp. 297 sq.)
+
+ (2) See Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i, for initiations
+and ordeals among the Mandans.
+
+ (3) De Errore, c. 22.
+
+ (4) [gr Qarreite, mustai ton qeou seswsmenou,]
+[gr Estai gar hmin ek ponwn swthria.]
+
+
+It would seem that at some very early time in the history of tribal and
+priestly initiations an attempt was made to impress upon the neophytes
+the existence and over-shadowing presence of spiritual and ghostly
+beings. Perhaps the pains endured in the various ordeals, the long
+fastings, the silences in the depth of the forests or on the mountains
+or among the ice-floes, helped to rouse the visionary faculty.
+The developments of this faculty among the black and colored
+peoples--East-Indian, Burmese, African, American-Indian, etc.--are well
+known. Miss Alice Fletcher, who lived among the Omaha Indians for thirty
+years, gives a most interesting account (1) of the general philosophy
+of that people and their rites of initiation. "The Omahas regard all
+animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common
+life, which was continuous with and similar to the will-power they were
+conscious of in themselves. This mysterious power in all things they
+called Wakonda, and through it all things were related to man and
+to each other. In the idea of the continuity of life a relation was
+maintained between the seen and the unseen, the dead and the living,
+and also between the fragment of anything and its entirety." (2) Thus an
+Omaha novice might at any time seek to obtain Wakonda by what was called
+THE RITE OF THE VISION. He would go out alone, fast, chant incantations,
+and finally fall into a trance (much resembling what in modern times has
+been called COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS) in which he would perceive the inner
+relations of all things and the solidarity of the least object with the
+rest of the universe.
+
+ (1) Summarized in Themis, pp. 68-71.
+
+ (2) A. C. Fletcher, The Significance of the Scalp-lock, Journal
+of Anthropological Studies, xxvii (1897-8), p. 436.
+
+
+Another rite in connection with initiation, and common all over
+the pagan world--in Greece, America, Africa, Australia, New Mexico,
+etc.--was the daubing of the novice all over with clay or chalk or even
+dung, and then after a while removing the same. (1) The novice must have
+looked a sufficiently ugly and uncomfortable object in this state; but
+later, when he was thoroughly WASHED, the ceremony must have afforded a
+thrilling illustration of the idea of a new birth, and one which would
+dwell in the minds of the spectators. When the daubing was done as not
+infrequently happened with white clay or gypsum, and the ritual took
+place at night, it can easily be imagined that the figures of young men
+and boys moving about in the darkness would lend support to the idea
+that they were spirits belonging to some intermediate world--who had
+already passed through death and were now waiting for their second birth
+on earth (or into the tribe) which would be signalized by their thorough
+and ceremonial washing. It will be remembered that Herodotus (viii)
+gives a circumstantial account of how the Phocians in a battle with the
+Thessalians smeared six hundred of their bravest warriors with white
+clay so that, looking like supernatural beings, and falling upon the
+Thessalians by night, they terrified the latter and put them to instant
+flight.
+
+ (1) See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 274 sq.
+
+
+Such then--though only very scantily described--were some of the rites
+of Initiation and Second Birth celebrated in the old Pagan world. The
+subject is far too large for adequate treatment within the present
+limits; but even so we cannot but be struck by the appropriateness in
+many cases of the teaching thus given to the young, the concreteness of
+the illustrations, the effectiveness of the symbols used, the dramatic
+character of the rites, the strong enforcement of lessons on the nature
+and duties of the life into which the candidates were about to enter.
+Christianity followed on, and inherited these traditions, but one feels
+that in its ceremonies of Baptism and Confirmation, which of course
+correspond to the Pagan Initiations, it falls short of the latter. Its
+ceremonies (certainly as we have them to-day in Protestant countries)
+are of a very milk-and-watery character; all allusion to and teaching on
+the immensely important subject of Sex is omitted, the details of social
+and industrial morality are passed by, and instruction is limited to a
+few rather commonplace lessons in general morality and religion.
+
+
+It may be appropriate here, before leaving the subject of the Second
+Birth, to inquire how it has come about that this doctrine--so remote
+and metaphysical as it might appear--has been taken up and embodied in
+their creeds and rituals by quite PRIMITIVE people all over the world,
+to such a degree indeed that it has ultimately been adopted and built
+into the foundations of the latter and more intellectual religions, like
+Hinduism, Mithraism, and the Egyptian and Christian cults. I think the
+answer to this question must be found in the now-familiar fact that the
+earliest peoples felt themselves so much a part of Nature and the animal
+and vegetable world around them that (whenever they thought about these
+matters at all) they never for a moment doubted that the things which
+were happening all round them in the external world were also happening
+within themselves. They saw the Sun, overclouded and nigh to death in
+winter, come to its birth again each year; they saw the Vegetation
+shoot forth anew in spring--the revival of the spirit of the Earth; the
+endless breeding of the Animals, the strange transformations of Worms
+and Insects; the obviously new life taken on by boys and girls at
+puberty; the same at a later age when the novice was transformed into
+the medicine-man--the choupan into the angakok among the Esquimaux, the
+Dacotah youth into the wakan among the Red Indians; and they felt in
+their sub-conscious way the same everlasting forces of rebirth and
+transformation working within themselves. In some of the Greek Mysteries
+the newly admitted Initiates were fed for some time after on milk only
+"as though we were being born again." (See Sallustius, quoted by Gilbert
+Murray.) When sub-conscious knowledge began to glimmer into direct
+consciousness one of the first aspects (and no doubt one of the truest)
+under which people saw life was just thus: as a series of rebirths and
+transformations. (1) The most modern science, I need hardly say, in
+biology as well as in chemistry and the field of inorganic Nature,
+supports that view. The savage in earliest times FELT the truth of some
+things which we to-day are only beginning intellectually to perceive and
+analyze.
+
+ (1) The fervent and widespread belief in animal metamorphoses
+among early peoples is well known.
+
+
+Christianity adopted and absorbed--as it was bound to do--this
+world-wide doctrine of the second birth. Passing over its physiological
+and biological applications, it gave to it a fine spiritual
+significance--or rather it insisted especially on its spiritual
+significance, which (as we have seen) had been widely recognized before.
+Only--as I suppose must happen with all local religions--it narrowed the
+application and outlook of the doctrine down to a special case--"As
+in Adam all die, so in CHRIST shall all be made alive." The Universal
+Spirit which can give rebirth and salvation to EVERY child of man to
+whom it comes, was offered only under a very special form--that of Jesus
+Christ. (1) In this respect it was no better than the religions
+which preceded it. In some respects--that is, where it was especially
+fanatical, blinkered, and hostile to other sects--it was WORSE. But
+to those who perceive that the Great Spirit may bring new birth and
+salvation to some under the form of Osiris, equally well as to others
+under the form of Jesus, or again to some under the form of a Siberian
+totem-Bear equally as to others under the form of Osiris, these
+questionings and narrowings fall away as of no importance. We in this
+latter day can see the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is
+just one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding its
+scope, but whose chief attitudes and orientations have been the same
+through the centuries.
+
+ (1) The same happened with regard to another great Pagan doctrine
+(to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of transformations and
+metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in these things, as the
+common and possible heritage of EVERY man, the Christians only allowed
+themselves to entertain the idea in the special and unique instance of
+the Transfiguration of Christ.
+
+
+Many other illustrations might be taken of the truth of this view, but
+I will confine myself to two or three more. There is the instance of the
+Eucharist and its exceedingly widespread celebration (under very various
+forms) among the pagans all over the world--as well as among Christians.
+I have already said enough on this subject, and need not delay over it.
+By partaking of the sacramental meal, even in its wildest and crudest
+shapes, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, one was identified with and
+united to the god; in its milder and more spiritual aspects as in the
+Mithraic, Egyptian, Hindu and Christian cults, one passed behind the
+veil of maya and this ever-changing world, and entered into the region
+of divine peace and power. (1)
+
+
+ (1) Baring Gould in his Orig. Relig. Belief, I. 401,
+says:--"Among the ancient Hindus Soma was a chief deity; he is called
+the Giver of Life and Health.... He became incarnate among men, was
+taken by them and slain, and brayed in a mortar (a god of corn and wine
+apparently). But he rose in flame to heaven to be 'the Benefactor of the
+World' and the 'Mediator between God and Man!' Through communion with
+him in his sacrifice, man (who partook of this god) has an assurance of
+immortality, for by that sacrament he obtains union with his divinity."
+
+
+Or again the doctrine of the Saviour. That also is one on which I need
+not add much to what has been said already. The number of pagan deities
+(mostly virgin-born and done to death in some way or other in their
+efforts to save mankind) is so great (1) as to be difficult to keep
+account of. The god Krishna in India, the god Indra in Nepaul and
+Thibet, spilt their blood for the salvation of men; Buddha said,
+according to Max Muller, (2) "Let all the sins that were in the world
+fall on me, that the world may be delivered"; the Chinese Tien, the Holy
+One--"one with God and existing with him from all eternity"--died to
+save the world; the Egyptian Osiris was called Saviour, so was Horus;
+so was the Persian Mithras; so was the Greek Hercules who overcame Death
+though his body was consumed in the burning garment of mortality, out
+of which he rose into heaven. So also was the Phrygian Attis called
+Saviour, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis likewise--both of whom, as we
+have seen, were nailed or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose again
+from their biers, or coffins. Prometheus, the greatest and earliest
+benefactor of the human race, was NAILED BY THE HANDS and feet, and with
+arms extended, to the rocks of Mount Caucasus. Bacchus or Dionysus,
+born of the virgin Semele to be the Liberator of mankind (Dionysus
+Eleutherios as he was called), was torn to pieces, not unlike Osiris.
+Even in far Mexico Quetzalcoatl, the Saviour, was born of a virgin, was
+tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and his second coming
+looked for so eagerly that (as is well known) when Cortes appeared, the
+Mexicans, poor things, greeted HIM as the returning god! (3) In Peru
+and among the American Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar
+legends are, or were, to be found.
+
+ (1) See for a considerable list Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xx.
+
+ (2) Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.
+
+ (3) See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.
+
+
+Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite abundantly
+that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that
+Christianity merely appropriated the same and (as the other cults did)
+gave it a special color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would
+have been far better and more generally known, had not the Christian
+Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest
+precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on
+the subject. There is much to show that the early Church took this line
+with regard to pre-Christian saviours; (1) and in later times the same
+policy is remarkably illustrated by the treatment in the sixteenth
+century of the writings of Sahagun the Spanish missionary--to whose work
+I have already referred. Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and fine
+man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities of the Aztec religion,
+was truthful enough to point out redeeming traits in the manners and
+customs of the people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and
+practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the newly formed
+Mexican Church. They purloined the manuscripts of Sahagun's Historia and
+scattered and hid them about the country, and it was only after infinite
+labor and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them together
+again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated them into
+Spanish (from the original Mexican) he sent them in two big volumes home
+to Spain for safety; but there almost immediately THEY DISAPPEARED, and
+could not be found! It was only after TWO CENTURIES that they ultimately
+turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in Navarre. Lord Kingsborough
+published them in England in 1830.
+
+ (1) See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.
+
+
+I have thus dwelt upon several of the main doctrines of
+Christianity--namely, those of Sin and Sacrifice, the Eucharist, the
+Saviour, the Second Birth, and Transfiguration--as showing that they are
+by no means unique in our religion, but were common to nearly all the
+religions of the ancient world. The list might be much further extended,
+but there is no need to delay over a subject which is now very generally
+understood. I will, however, devote a page or two to one instance, which
+I think is very remarkable, and full of deep suggestion.
+
+There is no doctrine in Christianity which is more reverenced by the
+adherents of that religion, or held in higher estimation, than that God
+sacrificed his only Son for the salvation of the world; also that since
+the Son was not only of like nature but of the SAME nature with the
+Father, and equal to him as being the second Person of the Divine
+Trinity, the sacrifice amounted to an immolation of Himself for the good
+of mankind. The doctrine is so mystical, so remote, and in a sense so
+absurd and impossible, that it has been a favorite mark through the
+centuries for the ridicule of the scoffers and enemies of the Church;
+and here, it might easily be thought, is a belief which--whether it be
+considered glorious or whether contemptible--is at any rate unique, and
+peculiar to that Church.
+
+And yet the extraordinary fact is that a similar belief ranges all
+through the ancient religions, and can be traced back to the earliest
+times. The word host which is used in the Catholic Mass for the bread
+and wine on the Altar, supposed to be the transubstantiated body
+and blood of Christ, is from the Latin Hostia which the dictionary
+interprets as "an animal slain in sacrifice, a sin-offering." It takes
+us far far back to the Totem stage of folk-life, when the tribe, as I
+have already explained, crowned a victim-bull or bear or other animal
+with flowers, and honoring it with every offering of food and worship,
+sacrificed the victim to the Totem spirit of the tribe, and consumed it
+in an Eucharistic feast--the medicine-man or priest who conducted the
+ritual wearing a skin of the same beast as a sign that he represented
+the Totem-divinity, taking part in the sacrifice of 'himself to
+himself.' It reminds us of the Khonds of Bengal sacrificing their
+meriahs crowned and decorated as gods and goddesses; of the Aztecs doing
+the same; of Quetzalcoatl pricking his elbows and fingers so as to draw
+blood, which he offered on his own altar; or of Odin hanging by his own
+desire upon a tree. "I know I was hanged upon a tree shaken by the winds
+for nine long nights. I was transfixed by a spear; I was moved to Odin,
+myself to myself." And so on. The instances are endless. "I am the
+oblation," says the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, (1) "I am the
+sacrifice, I the ancestral offering." "In the truly orthodox conception
+of sacrifice," says Elie Reclus, (2) "the consecrated offering, be it
+man, woman or virgin, lamb or heifer, cock or dove, represents THE DEITY
+HIMSELF.... Brahma is the 'imperishable sacrifice'; Indra, Soma, Hari
+and the other gods, became incarnate in animals to the sole end that
+they might be immolated. Perusha, the Universal Being, caused himself to
+be slain by the Immortals, and from his substance were born the birds of
+the air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of butter and curds.
+The world, declared the Rishis, is a series of sacrifices disclosing
+other sacrifices. To stop them would be to suspend the life of Nature.
+The god Siva, to whom the Tipperahs of Bengal are supposed to have
+sacrificed as many as a thousand human victims a year, said to the
+Brahamins: 'It is I that am the actual offering; it is I that you
+butcher upon my altars.'"
+
+ (1) Ch. ix, v. 16.
+
+ (2) Primitive Folk, ch. vi.
+
+
+It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson, paraphrasing the
+Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse of his:--
+
+     If the red slayer thinks he slays,
+          Or the slain thinks he is slain,
+     They know not well the subtle ways
+          I take, and pass, and turn again.
+
+
+I say it is an astonishing thing to think and realize that this profound
+and mystic doctrine of the eternal sacrifice of Himself, ordained by
+the Great Spirit for the creation and salvation of the world--a doctrine
+which has attracted and fascinated many of the great thinkers and nobler
+minds of Europe, which has also inspired the religious teachings of
+the Indian sages and to a less philosophical degree the writings of the
+Christian Saints--should have been seized in its general outline and
+essence by rude and primitive people before the dawn of history, and
+embodied in their rites and ceremonials. What is the explanation of this
+fact?
+
+It is very puzzling. The whole subject is puzzling. The world-wide
+adoption of similar creeds and rituals (and, we may add, legends and
+fairy tales) among early peoples, and in far-sundered places and times
+is so remarkable that it has given the students of these subjects
+'furiously to think' (1)--yet for the most part without great success in
+the way of finding a solution. The supposition that (1) the creed, rite
+or legend in question has sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one
+place, and then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility) over
+the rest of the world, is of course one that commends itself readily at
+first; but on closer examination the practical difficulties it presents
+are certainly very great. These include the migrations of customs and
+myths in quite early ages of the earth across trackless oceans and
+continents, and between races and peoples absolutely incapable of
+understanding each other. And if to avoid these difficulties it is
+assumed that the present human race all proceeds from one original
+stock which radiating from one centre--say in South-Eastern Asia
+(2)--overspread the world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why,
+then we are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation
+to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents being then
+all more or less conjoined) and at a period when it is doubtful if any
+religious rites and customs at all existed; not to mention the further
+difficulty of supposing all the four or five hundred languages now
+existing to be descended from one common source. The far tradition of
+the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible explanation of the
+community of rites and customs between the Old and New World, and
+this without assuming in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the
+original and SOLE cradle of the human race. (3) Anyhow it is clear that
+these origins of human culture must be of extreme antiquity, and that
+it would not be wise to be put off the track of the investigation of a
+possible common source merely by that fact of antiquity.
+
+ (1) See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.
+
+ (2) See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."
+
+ (3) E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i,
+p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a single
+continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or peninsula
+stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually disappeared."
+Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge" between Siberia and the
+New World.
+
+
+A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological
+evolution of the human mind has in the various times and climes led folk
+of the most diverse surroundings and heredity--and perhaps even sprung
+from separate anthropoid stocks--to develop their social and religious
+ideas along the same general lines--and that even to the extent of
+exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in minute details. This is a
+theory which commends itself greatly to a deeper and more philosophical
+consideration; but it brings us up point-blank against another most
+difficult question (which we have already raised), namely, how to
+account for extremely rude and primitive peoples in the far past, and on
+the very borderland of the animal life, having been SUSCEPTIBLE to the
+germs of great religious ideas (such as we have mentioned) and having
+been instinctively--though not of course by any process of conscious
+reasoning--moved to express them in symbols and rites and ceremonials,
+and (later no doubt) in myths and legends, which satisfied their
+FEELINGS and sense of fitness--though they may not have known WHY--and
+afterwards were capable of being taken up and embodied in the great
+philosophical religions.
+
+This difficulty almost compels us to a view of human knowledge which has
+found supporters among some able thinkers--the view, namely, that a vast
+store of knowledge is already contained in the subconscious mind of man
+(and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer experience
+to bring it to the surface; and that in the second stage of human
+psychology this process of crude and piecemeal externalization is
+taking place, in preparation for the final or third stage in which the
+knowledge will be re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a
+high and harmonious plane--something like the present intuition of the
+animals as we perceive it on the animal plane. However this general
+subject is one on which I shall touch again, and I do not propose to
+dwell on it at any length now.
+
+There is a third alternative theory (3)--a combination of (1) and
+(2)--namely, that if one accepts (2) and the idea that at any given
+stage of human development there is a PREDISPOSITION to certain symbols
+and rites belonging to that stage, then it is much more easy to accept
+theory (1) as an important factor in the spread of such symbols and
+rites; for clearly, then, the smallest germ of a custom or practice,
+transported from one country or people to another at the right time,
+would be sufficient to wake the development or growth in question
+and stimulate it into activity. It will be seen, therefore, that the
+important point towards the solution of this whole puzzling question is
+the discussion, of theory (2)--and to this theory, as illustrated by the
+world-wide myth of the Golden Age, I will now turn.
+
+
+
+
+IX. MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE
+
+The tradition of a "Golden Age" is widespread over the world, and it is
+not necessary to go at any length into the story of the Garden of Eden
+and the other legends which in almost every country illustrate this
+tradition. Without indulging in sentiment on the subject we may hold it
+not unlikely that the tradition is justified by the remembrance, among
+the people of every race, of a pre-civilization period of comparative
+harmony and happiness when two things, which to-day we perceive to be
+the prolific causes of discord and misery, were absent or only weakly
+developed--namely, PROPERTY and SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. (1)
+
+ (1) For a fuller working out of this, see Civilisation: its Cause
+and Cure, by E. Carpenter, ch. i.
+
+
+During the first century B.C. there was a great spread of Messianic
+Ideas over the Roman world, and Virgil's 4th Eclogue, commonly called
+the Messianic Eclogue, reflects very clearly this state of the public
+mind. The expected babe in the poem was to be the son of Octavian
+(Augustus) the first Roman emperor, and a messianic halo surrounded it
+in Virgil's verse. Unfortunately it turned out to be a GIRL! However
+there is little doubt that Virgil did--in that very sad age of the
+world, an age of "misery and massacre," and in common with thousands
+of others--look for the coming of a great 'redeemer.' It was only a few
+years earlier--about B.C. 70--that the great revolt of the shamefully
+maltreated Roman slaves occurred, and that in revenge six thousand
+prisoners from Spartacus' army were nailed on crosses all the way from
+Rome to Capua (150 miles). But long before this Hesiod had recorded a
+past Golden Age when life had been gracious in communal fraternity and
+joyful in peace, when human beings and animals spoke the same language,
+when death had followed on sleep, without old age or disease, and after
+death men had moved as good daimones or genii over the lands. Pindar,
+three hundred years after Hesiod, had confirmed the existence of the
+Islands of the Blest, where the good led a blameless, tearless, life.
+Plato the same, (1) with further references to the fabled island of
+Atlantis; the Egyptians believed in a former golden age under the god
+R[a^] to which they looked back with regret and envy; the Persians had
+a garden of Eden similar to that of the Hebrews; the Greeks a garden
+of the Hesperides, in which dwelt the serpent whose head was ultimately
+crushed beneath the heel of Hercules; and so on. The references to a
+supposed far-back state of peace and happiness are indeed numerous.
+
+ (1) See arts. by Margaret Scholes, Socialist Review, Nov. and
+Dec. 1912.
+
+
+So much so that latterly, and partly to explain their prevalence, a
+theory has been advanced which may be worth while mentioning. It is
+called the "Theory of intra-uterine Blessedness," and, remote as it may
+at first appear, it certainly has some claim for attention. The theory
+is that in the minds of mature people there still remain certain vague
+memories of their pre-natal days in the maternal womb--memories of a
+life which, though full of growing vigor and vitality, was yet at that
+time one of absolute harmony with the surroundings, and of perfect peace
+and contentment, spent within the body of the mother--the embryo indeed
+standing in the same relation to the mother as St. Paul says WE stand to
+God, "IN whom we live and move and have our being"; and that these vague
+memories of the intra-uterine life in the individual are referred back
+by the mature mind to a past age in the life of the RACE. Though it
+would not be easy at present to positively confirm this theory, yet one
+may say that it is neither improbable nor unworthy of consideration;
+also that it bears a certain likeness to the former ones about the
+Eden-gardens, etc. The well-known parallelism of the Individual history
+with the Race-history, the "recapitulation" by the embryo of the
+development of the race, does in fact afford an additional argument for
+its favorable reception.
+
+These considerations, and what we have said so often in the foregoing
+chapters about the unity of the Animals (and Early Man) with Nature, and
+their instinctive and age-long adjustment to the conditions of the
+world around them, bring us up hard and fast against the following
+conclusions, which I think we shall find difficult to avoid.
+
+We all recognize the extraordinary grace and beauty, in their different
+ways, of the (wild) animals; and not only their beauty but the extreme
+fitness of their actions and habits to their surroundings--their subtle
+and penetrating Intelligence in fact. Only we do not generally use
+the word "Intelligence." We use another word (Instinct)--and rightly
+perhaps, because their actions are plainly not the result of definite
+self-conscious reasoning, such as we use, carried out by each
+individual; but are (as has been abundantly proved by Samuel Butler and
+others) the systematic expression of experiences gathered up and sorted
+out and handed down from generation to generation in the bosom of the
+race--an Intelligence in fact, or Insight, of larger subtler scope than
+the other, and belonging to the tribal or racial Being rather than to
+the isolated individual--a super-consciousness in fact, ramifying afar
+in space and time.
+
+But if we allow (as we must) this unity and perfection of nature, and
+this somewhat cosmic character of the mind, to exist among the Animals,
+we can hardly refuse to believe that there must have been a period when
+Man, too, hardly as yet differentiated from them, did himself
+possess these same qualities--perhaps even in greater degree than the
+animals--of grace and beauty of body, perfection of movement and action,
+instinctive perception and knowledge (of course in limited spheres); and
+a period when he possessed above all a sense of unity with his fellows
+and with surrounding Nature which became the ground of a common
+consciousness between himself and his tribe, similar to that which
+Maeterlinck, in the case of the Bees, calls the Spirit of the Hive. (1)
+It would be difficult, nay impossible, to suppose that human beings
+on their first appearance formed an entire exception in the process of
+evolution, or that they were completely lacking in the very graces and
+faculties which we so admire in the animals--only of course we see that
+(LIKE the animals) they would not be SELF-conscious in these matters,
+and what perception they had of their relations to each other or to
+the world around them would be largely inarticulate and
+SUB-conscious--though none the less real for that.
+
+ (1) See The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck; and for
+numerous similar cases among other animals, P. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: a
+factor in Evolution.
+
+
+Let us then grant this preliminary assumption--and it clearly is not
+a large or hazardous one--and what follows? It follows--since to-day
+discord is the rule, and Man has certainly lost the grace, both physical
+and mental, of the animals--that at some period a break must have
+occurred in the evolution-process, a discontinuity--similar perhaps to
+that which occurs in the life of a child at the moment when it is born
+into the world. Humanity took a new departure; but a departure which for
+the moment was signalized as a LOSS--the loss of its former harmony and
+self-adjustment. And the cause or accompaniment of this change was the
+growth of Self-consciousness. Into the general consciousness of the
+tribe (in relation to its environment) which in fact had constituted
+the mentality of the animals and of man up to this stage, there now was
+intruded another kind of consciousness, a consciousness centering round
+each little individual self and concerned almost entirely with the
+interests of the latter. Here was evidently a threat to the continuance
+of the former happy conditions. It was like the appearance of
+innumerable little ulcers in a human body--a menace which if continued
+would inevitably lead to the break-up of the body. It meant loss of
+tribal harmony and nature-adjustment. It meant instead of unity a myriad
+conflicting centres; it meant alienation from the spirit of the tribe,
+the separation of man from man, discord, recrimination, and the fatal
+unfolding of the sense of sin. The process symbolized itself in the
+legend of the Fall. Man ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil. Sometimes people wonder why knowledge of any kind--and especially
+the knowledge of good and evil--should have brought a curse. But the
+reason is obvious. Into, the placid and harmonious life of the animal
+and human tribes fulfilling their days in obedience to the slow
+evolutions and age-long mandates of nature, Self-consciousness broke
+with its inconvenient and impossible query: "How do these arrangements
+suit ME? Are they good for me, are they evil for me? I want to know. I
+WILL KNOW!" Evidently knowledge (such knowledge as we understand by
+the word) only began, and could only begin, by queries relating to the
+little local self. There was no other way for it to begin. Knowledge and
+self-consciousness were born, as twins, together. Knowledge therefore
+meant Sin (1); for self-consciousness meant sin (and it means sin
+to-day). Sin is Separation. That is probably (though disputed) the
+etymology of the word--that which sunders. (2) The essence of sin is
+one's separation from the whole (the tribe or the god) of which one is
+a part. And knowledge--which separates subject from object, and in its
+inception is necessarily occupied with the 'good and evil' of the little
+local self, is the great engine of this separation. (Mark! I say nothing
+AGAINST this association of Self-consciousness with 'Sin' (so-called)
+and 'Knowledge' (so-called). The growth of all three together is an
+absolutely necessary part of human evolution, and to rail against it
+would be absurd. But we may as well open our eyes and see the fact
+straight instead of blinking it.) The culmination of the process and the
+fulfilment of the 'curse' we may watch to-day in the towering expansion
+of the self-conscious individualized Intellect--science as the handmaid
+of human Greed devastating the habitable world and destroying its
+unworthy civilization. And the process must go on--necessarily must
+go on--until Self-consciousness, ceasing its vain quest (vain in both
+senses) for the separate domination of life, surrenders itself back
+again into the arms of the Mother-consciousness from which it originally
+sprang--surrenders itself back, not to be merged in nonentity, but to be
+affiliated in loving dependence on and harmony with the cosmic life.
+
+ (1) Compare also other myths, like Cupid and Psyche, Lohengrin
+etc., in which a fatal curiosity leads to tragedy.
+
+ (2) German Sunde, sin, and sonder, separated; Dutch zonde, sin;
+Latin sons, guilty. Not unlikely that the German root Suhn, expiation,
+is connected; Suhn-bock, a scape-goat.
+
+
+All this I have dealt with in far more detail in Civilization: its
+Cause and Cure, and in The Art of Creation; but I have only repeated the
+outline of it as above, because some such outline is necessary for the
+proper ordering and understanding of the points which follow.
+
+We are not concerned now with the ultimate effects of the 'Fall' of Man
+or with the present-day fulfilment of the Eden-curse. What we want to
+understand is how the 'Fall' into self-consciousness led to that great
+panorama of Ritual and Religion which we have very briefly described
+and summarized in the preceding chapters of this book. We want for the
+present to fix our attention on the COMMENCEMENT of that process by
+which man lapsed away from his living community with Nature and his
+fellows into the desert of discord and toil, while the angels of the
+flaming sword closed the gates of Paradise behind him.
+
+It is evident I think that in that 'golden' stage when man was simply
+the crown and perfection of the animals--and it is hardly possible
+to refuse the belief in such a stage--he possessed in reality all the
+essentials of Religion. (1) It is not necessary to sentimentalize over
+him; he was probably raw and crude in his lusts of hunger and of sex;
+he was certainly ignorant and superstitious; he loved fighting with
+and persecuting 'enemies' (which things of course all religions
+to-day--except perhaps the Buddhist--love to do); he was dominated often
+by unreasoning Fear, and was consequently cruel. Yet he was full of that
+Faith which the animals have to such an admirable degree--unhesitating
+faith in the inner promptings of his OWN nature; he had the joy which
+comes of abounding vitality, springing up like a fountain whose outlet
+is free and unhindered; he rejoiced in an untroubled and unbroken
+sense of unity with his Tribe, and in elaborate social and friendly
+institutions within its borders; he had a marvelous sense-acuteness
+towards Nature and a gift in that direction verging towards
+"second-sight"; strengthened by a conviction--which had never become
+CONSCIOUS because it had never been QUESTIONED--of his own personal
+relation to the things outside him, the Earth, the Sky, the Vegetation,
+the Animals. Of such a Man we get glimpses in the far past--though
+indeed only glimpses, for the simple reason that all our knowledge of
+him comes through civilized channels; and wherever civilization has
+touched these early peoples it has already withered and corrupted
+them, even before it has had the sense to properly observe them. It
+is sufficient, however, just to mention peoples like some of the early
+Pacific Islanders, the Zulus and Kafirs of South Africa, the Fans of the
+Congo Region (of whom Winwood Reade (2) speaks so highly), some of the
+Malaysian and Himalayan tribes, the primitive Chinese, and even the
+evidence with regard to the neolithic peoples of Europe, (3) in order to
+show what I mean.
+
+ (1) See S. Reinach, Cults, Myths, etc., introduction: "The
+primitive life of humanity, in so far as it is not purely animal, is
+religious. Religion is the parent stem which has thrown off, one by one,
+art, agriculture, law, morality, politics, etc."
+
+ (2) Savage Africa, ch. xxxvii.
+
+ (3) See Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, ch. iii.
+
+
+Perhaps one of the best ideas of the gulf of difference between the
+semi-civilized and the quite primal man is given by A. R. Wallace in
+his Life (Vol. i, p. 288): "A most unexpected sensation of surprise and
+delight was my first meeting and living with man in a state of nature
+with absolute uncontaminated savages! This was on the Uaupes river....
+They were all going about their own work or pleasure, which had nothing
+to do with the white men or their ways; they walked with the free step
+of the independent forest-dweller... original and self-sustaining as the
+wild animals of the forests, absolutely independent of civilization...
+living their own lives in their own way, as they had done for countless
+generations before America was discovered. Indeed the true denizen of
+the Amazonian forests, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be
+forgotten." Elsewhere (3) Wallace speaks of the quiet, good-natured,
+inoffensive character of these copper-colored peoples, and of their
+quickness of hand and skill, and continues: "their figures are generally
+superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest
+statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human
+form."
+
+
+ (3) Travels on the Amazon (1853), ch. xvii.
+
+
+Though some of the peoples just mentioned may be said to belong to
+different grades or stages of human evolution and physically some no
+doubt were far superior to others, yet they mostly exhibit this simple
+grace of the bodily and mental organism, as well as that closeness of
+tribal solidarity of which I have spoken. The immense antiquity, of
+the clan organization, as shown by investigations into early marriage,
+points to the latter conclusion. Travellers among Bushmen, Hottentots,
+Fuegians, Esquimaux, Papuans and other peoples--peoples who have been
+pushed aside into unfavorable areas by the invasion of more warlike
+and better-equipped races, and who have suffered physically in
+consequence--confirm this. Kropotkin, speaking of the Hottentots, quotes
+the German author P. Kolben who travelled among them in 1275 or so. "He
+knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence,
+but could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. Their word is
+sacred, he wrote, they know nothing of the corruption and faithless arts
+of Europe. They live in great tranquillity and are seldom at war with
+their neighbors, and are all kindness and goodwill to one another." (1)
+Kropotkin further says: "Let me remark that when Kolben says 'they are
+certainly the most friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent
+people to one another that ever appeared on the earth' he wrote a
+sentence which has continually appeared since in the description of
+savages. When first meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually
+make a caricature of their life; but when an intelligent man has
+stayed among them for a longer time he generally describes them as the
+'kindest' or the 'gentlest' race on the earth. These very same words
+have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the Dyaks,
+the Aleuts, the Papuans, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also
+remember having read them applied to the Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the
+Sioux, and several others. The very frequency of that high commendation
+already speaks volumes in itself." (2)
+
+ (1) P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, p. 90. W. J. Solias also speaks in
+terms of the highest praise of the Bushmen--"their energy, patience,
+courage, loyalty, affection, good manners and artistic sense" (Ancient
+Hunters, 1915, p. 425).
+
+ (2) Ibid, p. 91.
+
+
+Many of the tribes, like the Aleuts, Eskimos, Dyaks, Papuans, Fuegians,
+etc., are themselves in the Neolithic stage of culture--though for the
+reason given above probably degenerated physically from the standard of
+their neolithic ancestors; and so the conclusion is forced upon one
+that there must have been an IMMENSE PERIOD, (1) prior to the first
+beginnings of 'civilization,' in which the human tribes in general led a
+peaceful and friendly life on the earth, comparatively little broken
+up by dissensions, in close contact with Nature and in that degree
+of sympathy with and understanding of the Animals which led to the
+establishment of the Totem system. Though it would be absurd to credit
+these tribes with any great degree of comfort and well-being according
+to our modern standards, yet we may well suppose that the memory of
+this long period lingered on for generations and generations and was
+ultimately idealized into the Golden Age, in contrast to the succeeding
+period of everlasting warfare, rancor and strife, which came in with the
+growth of Property with its greeds and jealousies, and the accentuation
+of Self-consciousness with all its vanities and ambitions.
+
+ (1) See for estimates of periods ch. xiv; also, for the
+peacefulness of these early peoples, Havelock Ellis on "The Origin of
+War," where he says "We do not find the WEAPONS of warfare or the WOUNDS
+of warfare among these Palaeolithic remains ... it was with civilization
+that the art of killing developed, i. e. within the last 10,000 or
+12,000 years when Neolithic men (who became our ancestors) were just
+arriving."
+
+
+I say that each tribe at this early stage of development had within it
+the ESSENTIALS of what we call Religion--namely a bedrock sense of its
+community with Nature, and of the Common life among its members--a sense
+so intimate and fundamental that it was hardly aware of itself (any more
+than the fish is aware of the sea in which it lives), but yet was really
+the matrix of tribal thought and the spring of tribal action. It
+was this sense of unity which was destined by the growth of
+SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS to come to light and evidence in the shape of all
+manner of rituals and ceremonials; and by the growth of the IMAGINATIVE
+INTELLECT to embody itself in the figures and forms of all manner of
+deities.
+
+Let us examine into this a little more closely. A lark soaring in the
+eye of the sun, and singing rapt between its "heaven and home" realizes
+no doubt in actual fact all that those two words mean to us; yet
+its realization is quite subconscious. It does not define its own
+experience: it FEELS but it does not THINK. In order to come to the
+stage of THINKING it would perhaps be necessary that the lark should
+be exiled from the earth and the sky, and confined in a cage. Early Man
+FELT the great truths and realities of Life--often I believe more purely
+than we do--but he could not give form to his experience. THAT stage
+came when he began to lose touch with these realities; and it showed
+itself in rites and ceremonials. The inbreak of self-consciousness
+brought OUT the facts of his inner life into ritualistic and afterwards
+into intellectual forms.
+
+Let me give examples. For a long time the Tribe is all in all; the
+individual is completely subject to the 'Spirit of the Hive'; he
+does not even THINK of contravening it. Then the day comes when
+self-interest, as apart from the Tribe, becomes sufficiently strong to
+drive him against some tribal custom. He breaks the tabu; he eats the
+forbidden apple; he sins against the tribe, and is cast out. Suddenly he
+finds himself an exile, lonely, condemned and deserted. A horrible sense
+of distress seizes him--something of which he had no experience before.
+He tries to think about it all, to understand the situation, but
+is dazed and cannot arrive at any conclusion. His one NECESSITY is
+Reconciliation, Atonement. He finds he cannot LIVE outside of and
+alienated from his tribe. He makes a Sacrifice, an offering to his
+fellows, as a seal of sincerity--an offering of his own bodily suffering
+or precious blood, or the blood of some food-animal, or some valuable
+gift or other--if only he may be allowed to return. The offering is
+accepted. The ritual is performed; and he is received back. I have
+already spoken of this perfectly natural evolution of the twin-ideas
+of Sin and Sacrifice, so I need not enlarge upon the subject. But two
+things we may note here: (1) that the ritual, being so concrete (and
+often severe), graves itself on the minds of those concerned, and
+expresses the feelings of the tribe, with an intensity and sharpness of
+outline which no words could rival, and (2) that such rituals may have,
+and probably did, come into use even while language itself was in an
+infantile condition and incapable of dealing with the psychological
+situation except by symbols. They, the rituals, were the first effort of
+the primitive mind to get beyond, subconscious feeling and emerge into a
+world of forms and definite thought.
+
+Let us carry the particular instance, given above, a stage farther, even
+to the confines of abstract Thought and Philosophy. I have spoken of
+"The Spirit of the Hive" as if the term were applicable to the Human as
+well as to the Bee tribe. The individual bee obviously has never THOUGHT
+about that 'Spirit,' nor mentally understood what Maeterlinck means by
+it; and yet in terms of actual experience it is an intense reality to
+the bee (ordaining for instance on some fateful day the slaughter of all
+the drones), controlling bee-movements and bee-morality generally. The
+individual tribesman similarly steeped in the age-long human life of his
+fellows has never thought of the Tribe as an ordaining being or Spirit,
+separate from himself--TILL that day when he is exiled and outcast from
+it. THEN he sees himself and the tribe as two opposing beings, himself
+of course an Intelligence or Spirit in his own limited degree, the Tribe
+as a much greater Intelligence or Spirit, standing against and over him.
+From that day the conception of a god arises on him. It may be only
+a totem-god--a divine Grizzly-Bear or what not--but still a god or
+supernatural Presence, embodied in the life of the tribe. This is
+what Sin has taught him. (1) This is what Fear, founded on
+self-consciousness, has revealed to him. The revelation may be true,
+or it may be fallacious (I do not prejudge it); but there it is--the
+beginning of that long series of human evolutions which we call
+Religion.
+
+ (1) It is to be noted, in that charming idyll of the Eden garden,
+that it is only AFTER eating of the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve
+perceive the Lord God walking in the garden, and converse with him
+(Genesis iii. 8).
+
+
+ (For when the human mind has reached that stage of
+consciousness in which each man realizes his own 'self' as a rational
+and consistent being, "looking before and after," then, as I have
+said already, the mind projects on the background of Nature similarly
+rational Presences which we may call 'Gods'; and at that stage
+'Religion' begins. Before that, when the mind is quite unformed and
+dream-like, and consists chiefly of broken and scattered rays, and when
+distinct self-consciousness is hardly yet developed, then the presences
+imagined in Nature are merely flickering and intermittent phantoms, and
+their propitiation and placation comes more properly under, the head of
+'Magic.')
+
+So much for the genesis of the religious ideas of Sin and Sacrifice, and
+the rites connected with these ideas--their genesis through the in-break
+of self-consciousness upon the corporate SUB-consciousness of the life
+of the Community. But an exactly similar process may be observed in the
+case of the other religious ideas.
+
+I spoke of the doctrine of the SECOND BIRTH, and the rites connected
+with it both in Paganism and in Christianity. There is much to show that
+among quite primitive peoples there is less of shrinking from death and
+more of certainty about a continued life after death than we generally
+find among more intellectual and civilized folk. It is, or has been,
+quite, common among many tribes for the old and decrepit, who are
+becoming a burden to their fellows, to offer themselves for happy
+dispatch, and to take willing part in the ceremonial preparations for
+their own extinction; and this readiness is encouraged by their
+na[i:]ve and untroubled belief in a speedy transference to "happy
+hunting-grounds" beyond the grave. The truth is that when, as in such
+cases, the tribal life is very whole and unbroken--each individual
+identifying himself completely with the tribe--the idea of the
+individual's being dropped out at death, and left behind by the tribe,
+hardly arises. The individual is the tribe, has no other existence.
+The tribe goes on, living a life which is eternal, and only changes its
+hunting-grounds; and the individual, identified with the tribe, feels in
+some subconscious way the same about himself.
+
+But when one member has broken faith with the tribe, when he has sinned
+against it and become an outcast--ah! then the terrors of death and
+extinction loom large upon him. "The wages of sin is death." There comes
+a period in the evolution of tribal life when the primitive bonds are
+loosening, when the tendency towards SELF-will and SELF-determination
+(so necessary of course in the long run for the evolution of humanity)
+becomes a real danger to the tribe, and a terror to the wise men and
+elders of the community. It is seen that the children inherit this
+tendency--even from their infancy. They are no longer mere animals,
+easily herded; it seems that they are born in sin--or at least in
+ignorance and neglect of their tribal life and calling. The only cure is
+that they MUST BE BORN AGAIN. They must deliberately and of set purpose
+be adopted into the tribe, and be made to realize, even severely,
+in their own persons what is happening. They must go through the
+initiations necessary to impress this upon them. Thus a whole series of
+solemn rites spring up, different no doubt in every locality, but all
+having the same object and purpose. (And one can understand how the
+necessity of such initiations and second birth may easily have been
+itself felt in every race, at some stage of its evolution--and THAT
+quite as a spontaneous growth, and independently of any contagion of
+example caught from other races.)
+
+The same may be said about the world-wide practice of the Eucharist.
+No more effective method exists for impressing on the members of a body
+their community of life with each other, and causing them to forget
+their jangling self-interests, than to hold a feast in common. It is a
+method which has been honored in all ages as well as to-day. But when
+the flesh partaken of at the feast is that of the Totem--the guardian
+and presiding genius of the tribe--or perhaps of one of its chief
+food-animals--then clearly the feast takes on a holy and solemn
+character. It becomes a sacrament of unity--of the unity of all with the
+tribe, and with each other. Self-interests and self-consciousness are
+for the time submerged, and the common life asserts itself; but here
+again we see that a custom like this would not come into being as a
+deliberate rite UNTIL self-consciousness and the divisions consequent
+thereon had grown to be an obvious evil. The herd-animals (cows, sheep,
+and so forth) do not have Eucharists, simply because they are sensible
+enough to feed along the same pastures without quarrelling over the
+richest tufts of grass.
+
+When the flesh partaken of (either actually or symbolically) is not that
+of a divinized animal, but the flesh of a human-formed god--as in the
+mysteries of Dionysus or Osiris or Christ--then we are led to suspect
+(and of course this theory is widely held and supported) that the rites
+date from a very far-back period when a human being, as representative
+of the tribe, was actually slain, dismembered and partly devoured;
+though as time went on, the rite gradually became glossed over and
+mitigated into a love-communion through the sharing of bread and wine.
+
+It is curious anyhow that the dismemberment or division into fragments
+of the body of a god (as in the case of Dionysus, Osiris, Attis,
+Praj[a']pati and others) should be so frequent a tenet of the
+old religions, and so commonly associated with a love-feast of
+reconciliation and resurrection. It may be fairly interpreted as a
+symbol of Nature-dismemberment in Winter and resurrection in Spring; but
+we must also not forget that it may (and indeed must) have stood as
+an allegory of TRIBAL dismemberment and reconciliation--the tribe,
+conceived of as a divinity, having thus suffered and died through the
+inbreak of sin and the self-motive, and risen again into wholeness by
+the redemption of love and sacrifice. Whatever view the rank and file of
+the tribe may have taken of the matter, I think it is incontestable that
+the more thoughtful regarded these rites as full of mystic and spiritual
+meaning. It is of the nature, as I have said before, of these early
+symbols and ceremonies that they held so many meanings in solution; and
+it is this fact which gave them a poetic or creative quality, and their
+great hold upon the public mind.
+
+I use the word "tribe" in many places here as a matter of convenience;
+not forgetting however that in some cases "clan" might be more
+appropriate, as referring to a section of a tribe; or "people" or "folk"
+as referring to unions of SEVERAL tribes. It is impossible of course to
+follow out all the gradations of organization from tribal up to national
+life; but it may be remembered that while animal totems prevail as a
+rule in the earlier stages, human-formed gods become more conspicuous in
+the later developments. All through, the practice of the Eucharist goes
+on, in varying forms adapting itself to the surrounding conditions; and
+where in the later societies a religion like Mithraism or Christianity
+includes people of very various race, the Rite loses quite naturally
+its tribal significance and becomes a celebration of allegiance to a
+particular god--of unity within a special Church, in fact. Ultimately it
+may become--as for a brief moment in the history of the early Christians
+it seemed likely to do--a celebration of allegiance to all Humanity,
+irrespective of race or creed or color of skin or of mind: though
+unfortunately that day seems still far distant and remains yet
+unrealized. It must not be overlooked, however, that the religion of the
+Persian B[a^]b, first promulgated in 1845 to 1850--and a subject I shall
+deal with presently--had as a matter of fact this all embracing and
+universal scope.
+
+To return to the Golden Age or Garden of Eden. Our conclusion seems to
+be that there really was such a period of comparative harmony in human
+life--to which later generations were justified in looking back, and
+looking back with regret. It corresponded in the psychology of human
+Evolution to stage One. The second stage was that of the Fall; and so
+one is inevitably led to the conjecture and the hope that a third stage
+will redeem the earth and its inhabitants to a condition of comparative
+blessedness.
+
+
+
+
+X. THE SAVIOUR-GOD AND THE VIRGIN-MOTHER
+
+From the consideration of the world-wide belief in a past Golden Age,
+and the world-wide practice of the Eucharist, in the sense indicated
+in the last chapter, to that of the equally widespread belief in a
+human-divine Saviour, is a brief and easy step. Some thirty years ago,
+dealing with this subject, (1) I wrote as follows:--"The true Self of
+man consists in his organic relation with the whole body of his fellows;
+and when the man abandons his true Self he abandons also his true
+relation to his fellows. The mass-Man must rule in each unit-man, else
+the unit-man will drop off and die. But when the outer man tries to
+separate himself from the inner, the unit-man from the mass-Man, then
+the reign of individuality begins--a false and impossible individuality
+of course, but the only means of coming to the consciousness of the true
+individuality." And further, "Thus this divinity in each creature,
+being that which constitutes it and causes it to cohere together, was
+conceived of as that creature's saviour, healer--healer of wounds of
+body and wounds of heart--the Man within the man, whom it was not only
+possible to know, but whom to know and be united with was the alone
+salvation. This, I take it, was the law of health--and of holiness--as
+accepted at some elder time of human history, and by us seen as through
+a glass darkly."
+
+ (1) See Civilisation: its Cause and Cure, ch. i.
+
+
+I think it is impossible not to see--however much in our pride of
+Civilization (!) we like to jeer at the pettinesses of tribal
+life--that these elder people perceived as a matter of fact and direct
+consciousness the redeeming presence (within each unit-member of the
+group) of the larger life to which he belonged. This larger life was a
+reality--"a Presence to be felt and known"; and whether he called it by
+the name of a Totem-animal, or by the name of a Nature-divinity, or
+by the name of some gracious human-limbed God--some Hercules, Mithra,
+Attis, Orpheus, or what-not--or even by the great name of Humanity
+itself, it was still in any case the Saviour, the living incarnate Being
+by the realization of whose presence the little mortal could be lifted
+out of exile and error and death and suffering into splendor and life
+eternal.
+
+It is impossible, I think, not to see that the myriad worship of
+"Saviours" all over the world, from China to Peru, can only be
+ascribed to the natural working of some such law of human and tribal
+psychology--from earliest times and in all races the same--springing up
+quite spontaneously and independently, and (so far) unaffected by the
+mere contagion of local tradition. To suppose that the Devil, long
+before the advent of Christianity, put the idea into the heads of all
+these earlier folk, is really to pay TOO great a compliment both to the
+power and the ingenuity of his Satanic Majesty--though the ingenuity
+with which the early Church DID itself suppress all information about
+these pre-Christian Saviours almost rivals that which it credited to
+Satan! And on the other hand to suppose this marvellous and universal
+consent of belief to have sprung by mere contagion from one accidental
+source would seem equally far-fetched and unlikely.
+
+But almost more remarkable than the world-encircling belief in
+human-divine Saviours is the equally widespread legend of their birth
+from Virgin-mothers. There is hardly a god--as we have already had
+occasion to see--whose worship as a benefactor of mankind attained
+popularity in any of the four continents, Europe, Asia, Africa and
+America--who was not reported to have been born from a Virgin, or at
+least from a mother who owed the Child not to any earthly father, but to
+an impregnation from Heaven. And this seems at first sight all the more
+astonishing because the belief in the possibility of such a thing is so
+entirely out of the line of our modern thought. So that while it
+would seem not unnatural that such a legend should have, sprung up
+spontaneously in some odd benighted corner of the world, we find it
+very difficult to understand how in that case it should have spread
+so rapidly in every direction, or--if it did not spread--how we are
+to account for its SPONTANEOUS appearance in all these widely sundered
+regions.
+
+I think here, and for the understanding of this problem, we are thrown
+back upon a very early age of human evolution--the age of Magic. Before
+any settled science or philosophy or religion existed, there were
+still certain Things--and consequently also certain Words--which had
+a tremendous influence on the human mind, which in fact affected it
+deeply. Such a word, for instance, is 'Thunder'; to hear thunder, to
+imitate it, even to mention it, are sure ways of rousing superstitious
+attention and imagination. Such another word is 'Serpent,' another
+'Tree,' and so forth. There is no one who is insensible to the
+reverberation of these and other such words and images (1); and among
+them, standing prominently out, are the two 'Mother' and 'Virgin.'
+The word Mother touches the deepest springs of human feeling. As the
+earliest word learnt and clung to by the child, it twines itself with
+the heart-strings of the man even to his latest day. Nor must we forget
+that in a primitive state of society (the Matriarchate) that influence
+was probably even greater than now; for the father of the child being
+(often as not) UNKNOWN the attachment to the mother was all the more
+intense and undivided. The word Mother had a magic about it which has
+remained even until to-day. But if that word rooted itself deep in the
+heart of the Child, the other word 'virgin' had an obvious magic for
+the full grown and sexually mature Man--a magic which it, too, has never
+lost.
+
+ (1) Nor is it difficult to see how out of the discreet use of
+such words and images, combined with elementary forms like the square,
+the triangle and the circle, and elementary numbers like 3, 4, 5, etc.,
+quite a science, so to speak, of Magic arose.
+
+
+There is ample evidence that one of the very earliest objects of human
+worship was the Earth itself, conceived of as the fertile Mother of all
+things. Gaia or Ge (the earth) had temples and altars in almost all the
+cities of Greece. Rhea or Cybele, sprung from the Earth, was "mother of
+all the gods." Demeter ("earth mother") was honored far and wide as the
+gracious patroness of the crops and vegetation. Ceres, of course, the
+same. Maia in the Indian mythology and Isis in the Egyptian are forms
+of Nature and the Earth-spirit, represented as female; and so forth. The
+Earth, in these ancient cults, was the mystic source of all life, and
+to it, as a propitiation, life of all kinds was sacrificed. (There are
+strange accounts of a huge fire being made, with an altar to Cybele in
+the midst, and of deer and fawns and wild animals, and birds and sheep
+and corn and fruits being thrown pell-mell into the flames. (1)) It was,
+in a way, the most natural, as it seems to have been the earliest
+and most spontaneous of cults--the worship of the Earth-mother,
+the all-producing eternal source of life, and on account of her
+never-failing ever-renewed fertility conceived of as an immortal Virgin.
+
+ (1) See Pausanias iv. 32. 6; and Lucian, De Syria Dea, 49.
+
+
+But when the Saviour-legend sprang up--as indeed I think it must
+have sprung up, in tribe after tribe and people after people,
+independently--then, whether it sprang from the divinization of some
+actual man who showed the way of light and deliverance to his fellows
+"sitting in darkness," or whether from the personification of the tribe
+itself as a god, in either case the question of the hero's parentage was
+bound to arise. If the 'saviour' was plainly a personification of the
+tribe, it was obviously impossible to suppose him the son of a mortal
+mother. In that case--and if the tribe was generally traced in the
+legends to some primeval Animal or Mountain or thing of Nature--it was
+probably easy to think of him (the saviour) as, born out of Nature's
+womb, descended perhaps from that pure Virgin of the World who is
+the Earth and Nature, who rules the skies at night, and stands in the
+changing phases of the Moon, and is worshiped (as we have seen) in
+the great constellation Virgo. If, on the other hand, he was the
+divinization of some actual man, more or less known either personally
+or by tradition to his fellows, then in all probability the name of his
+mortal mother would be recognized and accepted; but as to his father,
+that side of parentage being, as we have said, generally very uncertain,
+it would be easy to suppose some heavenly Annunciation, the midnight
+visit of a God, and what is usually termed a Virgin-birth.
+
+There are two elements to be remembered here, as conspiring to this
+conclusion. One is the condition of affairs in a remote matriarchial
+period, when descent was reckoned always through the maternal line, and
+the fatherhood in each generation was obscure or unknown or commonly
+left out of account; and the other is the fact--so strange and difficult
+for us to realize--that among some very primitive peoples, like the
+Australian aborigines, the necessity for a woman to have intercourse
+with a male, in order to bring about conception and child-birth, was
+actually not recognized. Scientific observation had not always got as
+far as that, and the matter was still under the domain of Magic! (1)
+A Virgin-Mother was therefore a quite imaginable (not to say
+'conceivable') thing; and indeed a very beautiful and fascinating thing,
+combining in one image the potent magic of two very wonderful words.
+It does not seem impossible that considerations of this kind led to the
+adoption of the doctrine or legend of the virgin-mother and the heavenly
+father among so many races and in so many localities--even without any
+contagion of tradition among them.
+
+ (1) Probably the long period (nine months) elapsing between
+cohabitation and childbirth confused early speculation on the subject.
+Then clearly cohabitation was NOT always followed by childbirth. And,
+more important still, the number of virgins of a mature age in primitive
+societies was so very minute that the fact of their childlessness
+attracted no attention--whereas in OUR societies the sterility of the
+whole class is patent to everyone.
+
+
+Anyhow, and as a matter of fact, the world-wide dissemination of the
+legend is most remarkable. Zeus, Father of the gods, visited Semele, it
+will be remembered, in the form of a thunderstorm; and she gave birth to
+the great saviour and deliverer Dionysus. Zeus, again, impregnated Danae
+in a shower of gold; and the child was Perseus, who slew the Gorgons
+(the powers of darkness) and saved Andromeda (the human soul (1)).
+Devaki, the radiant Virgin of the Hindu mythology, became the wife
+of the god Vishnu and bore Krishna, the beloved hero and prototype of
+Christ. With regard to Buddha St. Jerome says (2) "It is handed down
+among the Gymnosophists, of India that Buddha, the founder of their
+system, was brought forth by a Virgin from her side." The Egyptian Isis,
+with the child Horus, on her knee, was honored centuries before the
+Christian era, and worshiped under the names of "Our Lady," "Queen of
+Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Mother of God," and so forth. Before her,
+Neith, the Virgin of the World, whose figure bends from the sky over the
+earthly plains and the children of men, was acclaimed as mother of the
+great god Osiris. The saviour Mithra, too, was born of a Virgin, as we
+have had occasion to notice before; and on the Mithrais monuments the
+mother suckling her child is a not uncommon figure. (3)
+
+ (1) For this interpretation of the word Andromeda see The Perfect
+Way by Edward Maitland, preface to First Edition, 1881.
+
+ (2) Contra Jovian, Book I; and quoted by Rhys Davids in his
+Buddhisim.
+
+ (3) See Doane's Bible Myths, p. 332, and Dupuis' Origins of
+Religious Beliefs.
+
+
+The old Teutonic goddess Hertha (the Earth) was a Virgin, but was
+impregnated by the heavenly Spirit (the Sky); and her image with a child
+in her arms was to be seen in the sacred groves of Germany. (1) The
+Scandinavian Frigga, in much the same way, being caught in the embraces
+of Odin, the All-father, conceived and bore a son, the blessed Balder,
+healer and saviour of mankind. Quetzalcoatl, the (crucified) saviour of
+the Aztecs, was the son of Chimalman, the Virgin Queen of Heaven. (2)
+Even the Chinese had a mother-goddess and virgin with child in her arms
+(3); and the ancient Etruscans the same. (4)
+
+ (1) R. P. Knight's Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 21.
+
+ (2) See Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi, p. 176,
+where it is said "an ambassador was sent from heaven on an embassy to a
+Virgin of Tulan, called Chimalman... announcing that it was the will
+of the God that she should conceive a son; and having delivered her the
+message he rose and left the house; and as soon as he had left it
+she conceived a son, without connection with man, who was called
+Quetzalcoat, who they say is the god of air." Further, it is explained
+that Quetzalcoatl sacrificed himself, drawing forth his own blood with
+thorns; and that the word Quetzalcoatlotopitzin means "our well-beloved
+son."
+
+ (3) Doane, p. 327.
+
+ (4) See Inman's Pagan and Christian Symbolism, p. 27.
+
+
+Finally, we have the curiously large number of BLACK virgin mothers
+who are or have been worshiped. Not only cases like Devaki the Indian
+goddess, or Isis the Egyptian, who would naturally appear black-skinned
+or dark; but the large number of images and paintings of the same
+kind, yet extant--especially in the Italian churches--and passing for
+representations of Mary and the infant Jesus. Such are the well-known
+image in the chapel at Loretto, and images and paintings besides in the
+churches at Genoa, Pisa, Padua, Munich and other places. It is difficult
+not to regard these as very old Pagan or pre-Christian relics which
+lingered on into Christian times and were baptized anew--as indeed
+we know many relics and images actually were--into the service of the
+Church. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; and there is I believe more
+than one black figure extant of this Diana, who, though of course a
+virgin, is represented with innumerable breasts (1)--not unlike some of
+the archaic statues of Artemis and Isis. At Paris, far on into Christian
+times there was, it is said, on the site of the present Cathedral of
+Notre Dame, a Temple dedicated to 'our Lady' Isis; and images belonging
+to the earlier shrine would in all probability be preserved with altered
+name in the later.
+
+ (1) See illustration, p. 30, in Inman's Pagan and Christian
+Symbolism.
+
+
+All this illustrates not only the wide diffusion of the doctrine of the
+Virgin-mother, but its extreme antiquity. The subject is obscure, and
+worthy of more consideration than has yet been accorded it; and I do not
+feel able to add anything to the tentative explanations given a page or
+two back, except perhaps to suppose that the vision of the Perfect Man
+hovered dimly over the mind of the human race on its first emergence
+from the purely animal stage; and that a quite natural speculation
+with regard to such a being was that he would be born from a Perfect
+Woman--who according to early ideas would necessarily be the Virgin
+Earth itself, mother of all things. Anyhow it was a wonderful Intuition,
+slumbering as it would seem in the breast of early man, that the Great
+Earth after giving birth to all living creatures would at last bring
+forth a Child who should become the Saviour of the human race.
+
+There is of course the further theory, entertained by some, that
+virgin-parturition--a kind of Parthenogenesis--has as a matter of fact
+occasionally occurred among mortal women, and even still does occur. I
+should be the last to deny the POSSIBILITY of this (or of anything else
+in Nature), but, seeing the immense difficulties in the way of PROOF
+of any such asserted case, and the absence so far of any thoroughly
+attested and verified instance, it would, I think, be advisable to leave
+this theory out of account at present.
+
+But whether any of the EXPLANATIONS spoken of are right or wrong,
+and whatever explanation we adopt, there remains the FACT of the
+universality over the world of this legend--affording another instance
+of the practical solidarity and continuity of the Pagan Creeds with
+Christianity.
+
+
+
+
+XI. RITUAL DANCING
+
+It is unnecessary to labor the conclusion of the last two or three
+chapters, namely that Christianity grew out of the former Pagan Creeds
+and is in its general outlook and origins continuous and of one piece
+with them. I have not attempted to bring together ALL the evidence
+in favor of this contention, as such work would be too vast, but more
+illustrations of its truth will doubtless occur to readers, or will
+emerge as we proceed.
+
+I think we may take it as proved (1) that from the earliest ages, and
+before History, a great body of religious belief and ritual--first
+appearing among very primitive and unformed folk, whom we should call
+'savages'--has come slowly down, broadening and differentiating itself
+on the way into a great variety of forms, but embodying always certain
+main ideas which became in time the accepted doctrines of the later
+Churches--the Indian, the Egyptian, the Mithraic, the Christian, and
+so forth. What these ideas in their general outline have been we can
+perhaps best judge from our "Apostles' Creed," as it is recited every
+Sunday in our churches.
+
+"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in
+Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
+born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
+dead and buried. He descended into Hell; the third day he rose again
+from the dead, He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand
+of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick
+and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the
+communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of sins; the Resurrection of the
+body, and the life everlasting. Amen."
+
+Here we have the All-Father and Creator, descending from the Sky in the
+form of a spirit to impregnate the earthly Virgin-mother, who thus gives
+birth to a Saviour-hero. The latter is slain by the powers of Evil, is
+buried and descends into the lower world, but arises again as God
+into heaven and becomes the leader and judge of mankind. We have the
+confirmation of the Church (or, in earlier times, of the Tribe) by means
+of a Eucharist or Communion which binds together all the members, living
+or dead, and restores errant individuals through the Sacrifice of the
+hero and the Forgiveness of their sins; and we have the belief in a
+bodily Resurrection and continued life of the members within the fold of
+the Church (or Tribe), itself regarded as eternal.
+
+One has only, instead of the word 'Jesus,' to read Dionysus or Krishna
+or Hercules or Osiris or Attis, and instead of 'Mary' to insert Semele
+or Devaki or Alcmene or Neith or Nana, and for Pontius Pilate to use the
+name of any terrestrial tyrant who comes into the corresponding story,
+and lo! the creed fits in all particulars into the rites and worship of
+a pagan god. I need not enlarge upon a thesis which is self-evident
+from all that has gone before. I do not say, of course, that ALL
+the religious beliefs of Paganism are included and summarized in our
+Apostles' Creed, for--as I shall have occasion to note in the next
+chapter--I think some very important religious elements are there
+OMITTED; but I do think that all the beliefs which ARE summarized in the
+said creed had already been fully represented and elaborately expressed
+in the non-Christian religions and rituals of Paganism.
+
+Further (2) I think we may safely say that there is no certain proof
+that the body of beliefs just mentioned sprang from any one particular
+centre far back and radiated thence by dissemination and mental
+contagion over the rest of the world; but the evidence rather shows that
+these beliefs were, for the most part, the SPONTANEOUS outgrowths
+(in various localities) of the human mind at certain stages of its
+evolution; that they appeared, in the different races and peoples, at
+different periods according to the degree of evolution, and were largely
+independent of intercourse and contagion, though of course, in cases,
+considerably influenced by it; and that one great and all-important
+occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the RISE OF
+SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS--that is, the coming of the mind to a more or
+less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and
+the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of the
+Self-centred attitude in human thought and action.
+
+In the third place (3) I think we may see--and this is the special
+subject of the present chapter--that at a very early period, when
+humanity was hardly capable of systematic expression in what we call
+Philosophy or Science, it could not well rise to an ordered and literary
+expression of its beliefs, such as we find in the later religions
+and the 'Churches' (Babylonian, Jewish, East Indian, Christian, or
+what-not), and yet that it FELT these beliefs very intensely and was
+urged, almost compelled, to their utterance in some form or other. And
+so it came about that people expressed themselves in a vast mass of
+ritual and myth--customs, ceremonies, legends, stories--which on account
+of their popular and concrete form were handed down for generations, and
+some of which linger on still in the midst of our modern civilization.
+These rituals and legends were, many of them, absurd enough, rambling
+and childish in character, and preposterous in conception, yet they gave
+the expression needed; and some of them of course, as we have seen, were
+full of meaning and suggestion.
+
+A critical and commercial Civilization, such as ours, in which
+(notwithstanding much TALK about Art) the artistic sense is greatly
+lacking, or at any rate but little diffused, does not as a rule
+understand that poetic RITES, in the evolution of peoples, came
+naturally before anything like ordered poems or philosophy or
+systematized VIEWS about life and religion--such as WE love to wallow
+in! Things were FELT before they were spoken. The loading of diseases
+into disease-boats, of sins onto scape-goats, the propitiation of the
+forces of nature by victims, human or animal, sacrifices, ceremonies of
+re-birth, eucharistic feasts, sexual communions, orgiastic celebrations
+of the common life, and a host of other things--all SAID plainly enough
+what was meant, but not in WORDS. Partly no doubt it was that at some
+early time words were more difficult of command and less flexible in use
+than actions (and at all times are they not less expressive?). Partly it
+was that mankind was in the child-stage. The Child delights in ritual,
+in symbol, in expression through material objects and actions:
+
+      See, at his feet some little plan or chart,
+      Some fragment from his dream of human life,
+      Shaped by himself with newly learned art;
+          A wedding or a festival,
+          A mourning or a funeral;
+               And this hath now his heart.
+
+And primitive man in the child-stage felt a positive joy in ritual
+celebrations, and indulged in expressions which we but little
+understand; for these had then his heart.
+
+One of the most pregnant of these expressions was DANCING. Children
+dance instinctively. They dance with rage; they dance with joy, with
+sheer vitality; they dance with pain, or sometimes with savage glee at
+the suffering of others; they delight in mimic combats, or in animal
+plays and disguises. There are such things as Courting-dances, when
+the mature male and female go through a ritual together--not only in
+civilized ball-rooms and the back-parlors of inns, but in the farmyards
+where the rooster pays his addresses to the hen, or the yearling bull
+to the cow--with quite recognized formalities; there are elaborate
+ceremonials performed by the Australian bower-birds and many other
+animals. All these things--at any rate in children and animals--come
+before speech; and anyhow we may say that LOVE-RITES, even in mature
+and civilized man, hardly ADMIT of speech. Words only vulgarize love and
+blunt its edge.
+
+So Dance to the savage and the early man was not merely an amusement or
+a gymnastic exercise (as the books often try to make out), but it was
+also a serious and intimate part of life, an expression of religion and
+the relation of man to non-human Powers. Imagine a young dancer--and
+the admitted age for ritual dancing was commonly from about eighteen
+to thirty--coming forward on the dancing-ground or platform for the
+INVOCATION OF RAIN. We have unfortunately no kinematic records, but it
+is not impossible or very difficult to imagine the various gestures
+and movements which might be considered appropriate to such a rite in
+different localities or among different peoples. A modern student of
+Dalcroze Eurhythmics would find the problem easy. After a time a certain
+ritual dance (for rain) would become stereotyped and generally adopted.
+Or imagine a young Greek leading an invocation to Apollo to STAY SOME
+PLAGUE which was ravaging the country. He might as well be accompanied
+by a small body of co-dancers; but he would be the leader and chief
+representative. Or it might be a WAR-DANCE--as a more or less magical
+preparation for the raid or foray. We are familiar enough with accounts
+of war-dances among American Indians. C. O. Muller in his History and
+Antiquities of the Doric Race (1) gives the following account of the
+Pyrrhic dance among the Greeks, which was danced in full armor:--"Plato
+says that it imitated all the attitudes of defence, by avoiding a thrust
+or a cast, retreating, springing up, and crouching-as also the opposite
+movements of attack with arrows and lances, and also of every kind of
+thrust. So strong was the attachment to this dance at Sparta that, long
+after it had in the other Greek states degenerated into a Bacchanalian
+revel, it was still danced by the Spartans as a warlike exercise, and
+boys of fifteen were instructed in it." Of the Hunting-dance I have
+already given instances. (2) It always had the character of Magic about
+it, by which the game or quarry might presumably be influenced; and it
+can easily be understood that if the Hunt was not successful the blame
+might well be attributed to some neglect of the usual ritual mimes or
+movements--no laughing matter for the leader of the dance.
+
+ (1) Book IV, ch. 6, Section 7.
+
+ (2) See also Winwood Reade's Savage Africa, ch. xviii, in which
+he speaks of the "gorilla dance," before hunting gorillas, as a
+"religious festival."
+
+
+Or there were dances belonging to the ceremonies of Initiation--dances
+both by the initiators and the initiated. Jane E. Harrison in Themis (p.
+24) says, "Instruction among savage peoples is always imparted in more
+or less mimetic dances. At initiation you learn certain dances which
+confer on you definite social status. When a man is too old to dance,
+he hands over his dance to another and a younger, and he then among
+some tribes ceases to exist socially.... The dances taught to boys at
+initiation are frequently if not always ARMED dances. These are not
+necessarily warlike. The accoutrement of spear and shield was in part
+decorative, in part a provision for making the necessary hubbub." (Here
+Miss Harrison reproduces a photograph of an Initiation dance among the
+Akikuyu of British East Africa.) The Initiation-dances blend insensibly
+and naturally with the Mystery and Religion dances, for indeed
+initiation was for the most part an instruction in the mysteries and
+social rites of the Tribe. They were the expression of things which
+would be hard even for us, and which for rude folk would be impossible,
+to put into definite words. Hence arose the expression--whose meaning
+has been much discussed by the learned--"to dance out ([gr ezorceisqai])
+a mystery." (1) Lucian, in a much-quoted passage, (2) observes: "You
+cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing ...
+and this much all men know, that most people say of the revealers of the
+mysteries that they 'dance them out.'" Andrew Lang, commenting on this
+passage, (3) continues: "Clement of Alexandria uses the same term when
+speaking of his own 'appalling revelations.' So closely connected are
+mysteries with dancing among savages that when Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the
+Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which Qing was not initiated,
+he said: 'Only the initiated men of that dance know these things.' To
+'dance' this or that means to be acquainted with this or that
+myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d'action. So widely
+distributed is the practice that Acosta in an interesting passage
+mentions it as familiar to the people of Peru before and after the
+Spanish conquest." (And we may say that when the 'mysteries' are of a
+sexual nature it can easily be understood that to 'dance them out' is
+the only way of explaining them!)
+
+ (1) Meaning apparently either simply to represent, or, sometimes
+to DIVULGE, a mystery.
+
+ (2) [gr peri 'Orchsews], Ch. xv. 277.
+
+ (3) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 272.
+
+
+Thus we begin to appreciate the serious nature and the importance of the
+dance among primitive folk. To dub a youth "a good dancer" is to pay him
+a great compliment. Among the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in
+the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in
+deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of
+Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often
+such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is
+a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects
+one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes
+what is really meant--namely the fitness of the loved comrade to lead in
+religious and magical rituals--then indeed the compliment takes on a
+new complexion. Religious dances, in dedication to a god, have of course
+been honored in every country. Muller, in the work just cited, (1)
+describes a lively dance called the hyporchema which, accompanied by
+songs, was used in the worship of Apollo. "In this, besides the chorus
+of singers who usually danced around THE BLAZING ALTAR, several persons
+were appointed to accompany the action of the poem with an appropriate
+pantomimic display." It was probably some similar dance which is
+recorded in Exodus, ch. xxxii, when Aaron made the Israelites a golden
+Calf (image of the Egyptian Apis). There was an altar and a fire and
+burnt offerings for sacrifice, and the people dancing around. Whether in
+the Apollo ritual the dancers were naked I cannot say, but in the affair
+of the golden Calf they evidently were, for it will be remembered that
+it was just this which upset Moses' equanimity so badly--"when he SAW
+THAT THE PEOPLE WERE NAKED"--and led to the breaking of the two tables
+of stone and the slaughter of some thousands of folk. It will be
+remembered also that David on a sacrificial occasion danced naked before
+the Lord. (2)
+
+ (1) Book II, ch. viii, Section 14.
+
+ (2) 2 Sam. vi.
+
+
+It may seem strange that dances in honor of a god should be held naked;
+but there is abundant evidence that this was frequently the case, and it
+leads to an interesting speculation. Many of these rituals undoubtedly
+owed their sanctity and solemnity to their extreme antiquity. They came
+down in fact from very far back times when the average man or woman--as
+in some of the Central African tribes to-day--wore simply nothing at
+all; and like all religious ceremonies they tended to preserve their
+forms long after surrounding customs and conditions had altered.
+Consequently nakedness lingered on in sacrificial and other rites into
+periods when in ordinary life it had come to be abandoned or thought
+indecent and shameful. This comes out very clearly in both instances
+above--quoted from the Bible. For in Exodus xxxii. 25 it is said that
+"Aaron had made them (the dancers) naked UNTO THEIR SHAME among their
+enemies (READ opponents)," and in 2 Sam. vi. 20 we are told that Michal
+came out and sarcastically rebuked the "glorious king of Israel" for
+"shamelessly uncovering himself, like a vain fellow" (for which rebuke,
+I am sorry to say, David took a mean revenge on Michal). In both cases
+evidently custom had so far changed that to a considerable section of
+the population these naked exhibitions had become indecent, though as
+parts of an acknowledged ritual they were still retained and supported
+by others. The same conclusion may be derived from the commands recorded
+in Exodus xx. 26 and xxviii. 42, that the priests be not "uncovered"
+before the altar--commands which would hardly have been needed had not
+the practice been in vogue.
+
+Then there were dances (partly magical or religious) performed at rustic
+and agricultural festivals, like the Epilenios, celebrated in Greece at
+the gathering of the grapes. (1) Of such a dance we get a glimpse in the
+Bible (Judges xxi. 20) when the elders advised the children of Benjamin
+to go out and lie in wait in the vineyards, at the time of the yearly
+feast; and "when the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the
+dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man a wife
+from the daughters of Shiloh"--a touching example apparently of early
+so-called 'marriage by capture'! Or there were dances, also partly or
+originally religious, of a quite orgiastic and Bacchanalian character,
+like the Bryallicha performed in Sparta by men and women in hideous
+masks, or the Deimalea by Sileni and Satyrs waltzing in a circle; or the
+Bibasis carried out by both men and women--a quite gymnastic exercise in
+which the performers took a special pride in striking their own buttocks
+with their heels! or others wilder still, which it would perhaps not be
+convenient to describe.
+
+ (1) [gr Epilhnioi umnoi]:  hymns sung over the winepress
+(Dictionary).
+
+
+We must see how important a part Dancing played in that great panorama
+of Ritual and Religion (spoken of in the last chapter) which, having
+originally been led up to by the 'Fall of Man,' has ever since the dawn
+of history gradually overspread the world with its strange procession of
+demons and deities, and its symbolic representations of human destiny.
+When it is remembered that ritual dancing was the matrix out of which
+the Drama sprang, and further that the drama in its inception (as still
+to-day in India) was an affair of religion and was acted in, or in
+connection with, the Temples, it becomes easier to understand how all
+this mass of ceremonial sacrifices, expiations, initiations, Sun and
+Nature festivals, eucharistic and orgiastic communions and celebrations,
+mystery-plays, dramatic representations, myths and legends, etc., which
+I have touched upon in the preceding chapters--together with all the
+emotions, the desires, the fears, the yearnings and the wonderment which
+they represented--have practically sprung from the same root: a root
+deep and necessary in the psychology of Man. Presently I hope to show
+that they will all practically converge again in the end to one meaning,
+and prepare the way for one great Synthesis to come--an evolution also
+necessary and inevitable in human psychology.
+
+In that truly inspired Ode from which I quoted a few pages back, occur
+those well-known words whose repetition now will, on account of their
+beauty, I am sure be excused:--
+
+      Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
+      The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
+          Hath had elsewhere its setting,
+               And cometh from afar;
+          Not in entire forgetfulness,
+          And not in utter nakedness,
+      But trailing clouds of glory do we come
+          From God, who is our home:
+      Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
+      Shades of the prison-house begin to close
+          Upon the growing Boy,
+      But He beholds the light and whence it flows
+          He sees it in his joy;
+      The youth who daily farther from the east
+          Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
+          And by the vision splendid
+          Is on his way attended;
+      At length the man perceives it die away
+      And fade into the light of common day.
+
+
+Wordsworth--though he had not the inestimable advantage of a
+nineteenth-century education and the inheritance of the Darwinian
+philosophy--does nevertheless put the matter of the Genius of the Child
+in a way which (with the alteration of a few conventional terms) we
+scientific moderns are quite inclined to accept. We all admit now that
+the Child does not come into the world with a mental tabula rasa of
+entire forgetfulness but on the contrary as the possessor of vast stores
+of sub-conscious memory, derived from its ancestral inheritances; we
+all admit that a certain grace and intuitive insight and even prophetic
+quality, in the child-nature, are due to the harmonization of these
+racial inheritances in the infant, even before it is born; and that
+after birth the impact of the outer world serves rather to break up
+and disintegrate this harmony than to confirm and strengthen it. Some
+psychologists indeed nowadays go so far as to maintain that the child
+is not only 'Father of the man,' but superior to the man, (1) and that
+Boyhood and Youth and Maturity are attained to not by any addition but
+by a process of loss and subtraction. It will be seen that the last ten
+lines of the above quotation rather favor this view.
+
+ (1) "Man in the course of his life falls away more and more from
+the specifically HUMAN type of his early years, but the Ape in the
+course of his short life goes very much farther along the road of
+degradation and premature senility." (Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis,
+p. 24).
+
+
+But my object in making the quotation was not to insist on the truth
+of its application to the individual Child, but rather to point out
+the remarkable way in which it illustrates what I have said about the
+Childhood of the Race. In fact, if the quotation be read over again with
+this interpretation (which I do not say Wordsworth intended) that
+the 'birth' spoken of is the birth or evolution of the distinctively
+self-conscious Man from the Animals and the animal-natured,
+unself-conscious human beings of a preceding age, then the parable
+unfolds itself perfectly naturally and convincingly. THAT birth
+certainly was sleep and a forgetting; the grace and intuition and
+instinctive perfection of the animals was lost. But the forgetfulness
+was not entire; the memory lingered long of an age of harmony, of an
+Eden-garden left behind. And trailing clouds of this remembrance
+the first tribal men, on the edge of but not yet WITHIN the
+civilization-period, appear in the dawn of History.
+
+As I have said before, the period of the dawn of Self-consciousness was
+also the period of the dawn of the practical and inquiring Intellect; it
+was the period of the babyhood of both; and so we perceive among these
+early people (as we also do among children) that while in the main the
+heart and the intuitions were right, the intellect was for a long period
+futile and rambling to a degree. As soon as the mind left the ancient
+bases of instinct and sub-conscious racial experience it fell into
+a hopeless bog, out of which it only slowly climbed by means of the
+painfully-gathered stepping-stones of logic and what we call Science.
+"Heaven lies about us in our infancy." Wordsworth perceived that
+wonderful world of inner experience and glory out of which the child
+emerges; and some even of us may perceive that similar world in which
+the untampered animals STILL dwell, and OUT of which self-regarding Man
+in the history of the race was long ago driven. But a curse went
+with the exile. As the Brain grew, the Heart withered. The inherited
+instincts and racially accumulated wisdom, on which the first men
+thrived and by means of which they achieved a kind of temporary
+Paradise, were broken up; delusions and disease and dissension set
+in. Cain turned upon his brother and slew him; and the shades of the
+prison-house began to close. The growing Boy, however, (by whom we may
+understand the early tribes of Mankind) had yet a radiance of Light and
+joy in his life; and the Youth--though travelling daily farther from the
+East--still remained Nature's priest, and by the vision splendid was on
+his way attended: but
+
+     At length the Man perceived it die away.
+     And fade into the light of common day.
+
+What a strangely apt picture in a few words (if we like to take it
+so) of the long pilgrimage of the Human Race, its early and pathetic
+clinging to the tradition of the Eden-garden, its careless and vigorous
+boyhood, its meditative youth, with consciousness of sin and endless
+expiatory ritual in Nature's bosom, its fleeting visions of
+salvation, and finally its complete disillusionment and despair in the
+world-slaughter and unbelief of the twentieth century!
+
+Leaving Wordsworth, however, and coming back to our main line of
+thought, we may point out that while early peoples were intellectually
+mere babies--with their endless yarns about heroes on horseback leaping
+over wide rivers or clouds of monks flying for hundreds of miles
+through the air, and their utter failure to understand the general
+concatenations of cause and effect--yet practically and in their
+instinct of life and destiny they were, as I have already said, by no
+means fools; certainly not such fools as many of the arm-chair students
+of these things delight to represent them. For just as, a few years
+ago, we modern civilizees studying outlying nations, the Chinese for
+instance, rejoiced (in our vanity) to pick out every quaint peculiarity
+and absurdity and monstrosity of a supposed topsyturvydom, and failed
+entirely to see the real picture of a great and eminently sensible
+people; so in the case of primitive men we have been, and even still
+are, far too prone to catalogue their cruelties and obscenities and
+idiotic superstitions, and to miss the sane and balanced setting of
+their actual lives.
+
+Mr. R. R. Marett, who has a good practical acquaintance with his
+subject, had in the Hibbert Journal for October 1918 an article on "The
+Primitive Medicine Man" in which he shows that the latter is as a rule
+anything but a fool and a knave--although like 'medicals' in all ages he
+hocuspocuses his patients occasionally! He instances the medicine-man's
+excellent management, in most cases, of childbirth, or of wounds and
+fractures, or his primeval skill in trepanning or trephining--all of
+which operations, he admits, may be accompanied with grotesque and
+superstitious ceremonies, yet show real perception and ability. We all
+know--though I think the article does not mention the matter--what a
+considerable list there is of drugs and herbs which the modern art of
+healing owes to the ancient medicine-man, and it may be again mentioned
+that one of the most up-to-date treatments--the use of a prolonged and
+exclusive diet of MILK as a means of giving the organism a new start
+in severe cases--has really come down to us through the ages from this
+early source. (1) The real medicine-man, Mr. Marett says, is largely
+a 'faith-healer' and 'soul-doctor'; he believes in his vocation, and
+undergoes much for the sake of it: "The main point is to grasp that by
+his special initiation and the rigid taboos which he practises--not to
+speak of occasional remarkable gifts, say of trance and ecstasy, which
+he may inherit by nature and have improved by art--he HAS access to a
+wonder-working power.... And the great need of primitive folk is for
+this healer of souls." Our author further insists on the enormous play
+and influence of Fear in the savage mind--a point we have touched on
+already--and gives instances of Thanatomania, or cases where, after a
+quite slight and superficial wound, the patient becomes so depressed
+that he, quite needlessly, persists in dying! Such cases, obviously,
+can only be countered by Faith, or something (whatever it may be) which
+restores courage, hope and energy to the mind. Nor need I point out
+that the situation is exactly the same among a vast number of 'patients'
+to-day. As to the value, in his degree, of the medicine-man many modern
+observers and students quite agree with the above. (2) Also as the
+present chapter is on Ritual Dancing it may not be out of place to call
+attention to the supposed healing of sick people in Ceylon and other
+places by Devil-dancing--the enormous output of energy and noise in the
+ritual possibly having the effect of reanimating the patient (if it does
+not kill him), or of expelling the disease from his organism.
+
+ (1) Milk ("fast-milk" or vrata) was, says Mr. Hewitt, the only
+diet in the Soma-sacrifice. See Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times
+(preface). The Soma itself was a fermented drink prepared with ceremony
+from the milky and semen-like sap of certain plants, and much used in
+sacrificial offerings. (See Monier-Williams. Sanskrit Dictionary.)
+
+ (2) See Winwood Reade (Savage Africa), Salamon Reinach (Cults,
+Myths and Religions), and others.
+
+
+With regard to the practical intelligence of primitive peoples,
+derived from their close contact with life and nature, Bishop Colenso's
+experiences among the Zulus may appropriately be remembered. When
+expounding the Bible to these supposedly backward 'niggers' he was met
+at all points by practical interrogations and arguments which he was
+perfectly unable to answer--especially over the recorded passage of the
+Red Sea by the Israelites in a single night. From the statistics given
+in the Sacred Book these naughty savages proved to him absolutely
+conclusively that the numbers of fugitives were such that even supposing
+them to have marched--men, women and children--FIVE ABREAST and in close
+order, they would have formed a column 100 miles long, and this
+not including the baggage, sheep and cattle! Of course the feat was
+absolutely impossible. They could not have passed the Red Sea in a night
+or a week of nights.
+
+But the sequel is still more amusing and instructive. Colenso, in his
+innocent sincerity, took the side of the Zulus, and feeling sure the
+Church at home would be quite glad to have its views with regard to
+the accuracy of Bible statistics corrected, wrote a book embodying the
+amendments needed. Modest as his criticisms were, they raised a STORM of
+protest and angry denunciation, which even led to his deposition for the
+time being from his bishopric! While at the same time an avalanche of
+books to oppose his heresy poured forth from the press. Lately I had the
+curiosity to look through the British Museum catalogue and found that
+in refutation of Colenso's Pentateuch Examined some 140 (a hundred and
+forty) volumes were at that time published! To-day, I need hardly
+say, all these arm-chair critics and their works have sunk into utter
+obscurity, but the arguments of the Zulus and their Bishop still stand
+unmoved and immovable.
+
+This is a case of searching intelligence shown by 'savages,' an
+intelligence founded on intimate knowledge of the needs of actual
+life. I think we may say that a similarly instinctive intelligence
+(sub-conscious if you like) has guided the tribes of men on the whole
+in their long passage through the Red Sea of the centuries, from those
+first days of which I speak even down to the present age, and has in
+some strange, even if fitful, way kept them along the path of that final
+emancipation towards which Humanity is inevitably moving.
+
+
+
+
+XII. THE SEX-TABOO
+
+In the course of the last few chapters I have spoken more than once
+of the solidarity and continuity of Christianity, in its essential
+doctrines, with the Pagan rites. There is, however, one notable
+exception to this statement. I refer of course to Christianity's
+treatment of Sex. It is certainly very remarkable that while the Pagan
+cults generally made a great deal of all sorts of sex-rites, laid much
+stress upon them, and introduced them in what we consider an unblushing
+and shameless way into the instincts connected with it. I say 'the
+Christian Church,' on the whole took quite the opposite line--ignored
+sex, condemned it, and did much despite to the perfectly natural
+instincts connected with it. I say 'the Christian Church,' because
+there is nothing to show that Jesus himself (if we admit his figure as
+historical) adopted any such extreme or doctrinaire attitude; and the
+quite early Christian teachers (with the chief exception of Paul) do not
+exhibit this bias to any great degree. In fact, as is well known, strong
+currents of pagan usage and belief ran through the Christian assemblies
+of the first three or four centuries. "The Christian art of this period
+remained delightfully pagan. In the catacombs we see the Saviour as a
+beardless youth, like a young Greek god; sometimes represented, like
+Hermes the guardian of the flocks, bearing a ram or lamb round his neck;
+sometimes as Orpheus tuning his lute among the wild animals." (1)
+The followers of Jesus were at times even accused--whether rightly
+or wrongly I know not--of celebrating sexual mysteries at their
+love-feasts. But as the Church through the centuries grew in power and
+scope--with its monks and their mutilations and asceticisms, and its
+celibate clergy, and its absolute refusal to recognize the sexual
+meaning of its own acclaimed symbols (like the Cross, the three fingers
+of Benediction, the Fleur de Lys and so forth)--it more and more
+consistently defined itself as anti-sexual in its outlook, and stood out
+in that way in marked contrast to the earlier Nature-religions.
+
+ (1) Angels' Wings, by E. Carpenter, p. 104.
+
+
+It may be said of course that this anti-sexual tendency can be traced in
+other of the pre-Christian Churches, especially the later ones, like the
+Buddhist, the Egyptian, and so forth; and this is perfectly true; but it
+would seem that in many ways the Christian Church marked the culmination
+of the tendency; and the fact that other cults participated in the taboo
+makes us all the more ready and anxious to inquire into its real cause.
+
+To go into a disquisition on the Sex-rites of the various pre-Christian
+religions would be 'a large order'--larger than I could attempt to fill;
+but the general facts in this connection are fairly patent. We know,
+of course, from the Bible that the Syrians in Palestine were given to
+sexual worships. There were erect images (phallic) and "groves" (sexual
+symbols) on every high hill and under every green tree; (1) and these
+same images and the rites connected with them crept into the Jewish
+Temple and were popular enough to maintain their footing there for a
+long period from King Rehoboam onwards, notwithstanding the efforts of
+Josiah (2) and other reformers to extirpate them. Moreover there were
+girls and men (hierodouloi) regularly attached during this period to
+the Jewish Temple as to the heathen Temples, for the rendering of sexual
+services, which were recognized in many cases as part of the ritual.
+Women were persuaded that it was an honor and a privilege to be
+fertilized by a 'holy man' (a priest or other man connected with the
+rites), and children resulting from such unions were often called
+"Children of God"--an appellation which no doubt sometimes led to a
+legend of miraculous birth! Girls who took their place as hierodouloi in
+the Temple or Temple-precincts were expected to surrender themselves
+to men-worshipers in the Temple, much in the same way, probably, as
+Herodotus describes in the temple of the Babylonian Venus Mylitta, where
+every native woman, once in her life, was supposed to sit in the Temple
+and have intercourse with some stranger. (3) Indeed the Syrian and
+Jewish rites dated largely from Babylonia. "The Hebrews entering
+Syria," says Richard Burton (4) "found it religionized by Assyria and
+Babylonia, when the Accadian Ishtar had passed West, and had become
+Ashtoreth, Ashtaroth, or Ashirah, the Anaitis of Armenia, the Phoenician
+Astarte, and the Greek Aphrodite, the great Moon-goddess who is queen of
+Heaven and Love." The word translated "grove" as above, in our Bible,
+is in fact Asherah, which connects it pretty clearly with the Babylonian
+Queen of Heaven.
+
+ (1) 1 Kings xiv. 22-24.
+
+ (2) 2 Kings xxiii.
+
+ (3) See Herodotus i. 199; also a reference to this custom in the
+apocryphal Baruch, vi. 42, 43.
+
+ (4) The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886 edn.), vol. x, p. 229.
+
+
+In India again, in connection with the Hindu Temples and their rites,
+we have exactly the same institution of girls attached to the Temple
+service--the Nautch-girls--whose functions in past times were certainly
+sexual, and whose dances in honor of the god are, even down to the
+present day, decidedly amatory in character. Then we have the very
+numerous lingams (conventional representations of the male organ) to
+be seen, scores and scores of them, in the arcades and cloisters of the
+Hindu Temples--to which women of all classes, especially those who
+wish to become mothers, resort, anointing them copiously with oil, and
+signalizing their respect and devotion to them in a very practical
+way. As to the lingam as representing the male organ, in some form or
+other--as upright stone or pillar or obelisk or slender round tower--it
+occurs all over the world, notably in Ireland, and forms such a
+memorial of the adoration paid by early folk to the great emblem and
+instrument of human fertility, as cannot be mistaken. The pillars set
+up by Solomon in front of his temple were obviously from their
+names--Jachin and Boaz (1)--meant to be emblems of this kind; and the
+fact that they were crowned with pomegranates--the universally accepted
+symbol of the female--confirms and clinches this interpretation. The
+obelisks before the Egyptians' temples were signs of the same character.
+The well-known T-shaped cross was in use in pagan lands long before
+Christianity, as a representation of the male member, and also at the
+same time of the 'tree' on which the god (Attis or Adonis or Krishna or
+whoever it might be) was crucified; and the same symbol combined with
+the oval (or yoni) formed THE Crux Ansata {Ankh} of the old Egyptian
+ritual--a figure which is to-day sold in Cairo as a potent charm, and
+confessedly indicates the conjunction of the two sexes in one design.
+(2) MacLennan in The Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869) quotes with approval
+the words of Sanchoniathon, as saying that "men first worship plants,
+next the heavenly bodies, supposed to be animals, then 'pillars'
+(emblems of the Procreator), and last, the anthropomorphic gods."
+
+ (1) "He shall establish" and "In it is strength" are in the Bible
+the marginal interpretations of these two words.
+
+ (2) The connection between the production of fire by means of the
+fire-drill and the generation of life by sex-intercourse is a very
+obvious one, and lends itself to magical ideas. J. E. Hewitt in his
+Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times (1894) says (vol. i, p. 8) that
+"Magha, the mother-goddess worshipped in Asia Minor, was originally the
+socket-block from which fire was generated by the fire-drill." Hence we
+have, he says, the Magi of Persia, and the Maghadas of Indian History,
+also the word "Magic."
+
+
+It is not necessary to enlarge on this subject. The facts of the
+connection of sexual rites with religious services nearly everywhere in
+the early world are, as I say, sufficiently patent to every inquirer.
+But it IS necessary to try to understand the rationale of this
+connection. To dispatch all such cases under the mere term "religious
+prostitution" is no explanation. The term suggests, of course, that the
+plea of religion was used simply as an excuse and a cover for sexual
+familiarities; but though this kind of explanation commends itself,
+no doubt, to the modern man--whose religion is as commercial as his
+sex-relationships are--and though in CASES no doubt it was a true
+explanation--yet it is obvious that among people who took religion
+seriously, as a matter of life and death and who did not need
+hypocritical excuses or covers for sex-relationships, it cannot be
+accepted as in general the RIGHT explanation. No, the real explanation
+is--and I will return to this presently--that sexual relationships are
+so deep and intimate a part of human nature that from the first it has
+been simply impossible to keep them OUT of religion--it being of
+course the object of religion to bring the whole human being into
+some intelligible relation with the physical, moral, and if you like
+supernatural order of the great world around him. Sex was felt from the
+first to be part, and a foundational part, of the great order of the
+world and of human nature; and therefore to separate it from Religion
+was unthinkable and a kind of contradiction in terms. (1)
+
+ (1) For further development of this subject see ch. xv.
+
+
+If that is true--it will be asked--how was it that that divorce DID take
+place--that the taboo did arise? How was it that the Jews, under the
+influence of Josiah and the Hebrew prophets, turned their faces away
+from sex and strenuously opposed the Syrian cults? How was it that this
+reaction extended into Christianity and became even more definite in the
+Christian Church--that monks went by thousands into the deserts of the
+Thebaid, and that the early Fathers and Christian apologists could
+not find terms foul enough to hurl at Woman as the symbol (to them) of
+nothing but sex-corruption and delusion? How was it that this contempt
+of the body and degradation of sex-things went on far into the Middle
+Ages of Europe, and ultimately created an organized system of hypocrisy,
+and concealment and suppression of sex-instincts, which, acting as cover
+to a vile commercial Prostitution and as a breeding ground for horrible
+Disease, has lasted on even to the edge of the present day?
+
+This is a fair question, and one which demands an answer. There must
+have been a reason, and a deep-rooted one, for this remarkable reaction
+and volte-face which has characterized Christianity, and, perhaps to
+a lesser degree, other both earlier and later cults like those of the
+Buddhists, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, (1) and so forth.
+
+ (1) For the Aztecs, see Acosta, vol. ii, p. 324 (London, 1604).
+
+
+It may be said--and this is a fair answer on the SURFACE of the
+problem--that the main reason WAS something in the nature of a reaction.
+The excesses and corruptions of sex in Syria had evidently become pretty
+bad, and that very fact may have led to a pendulum-swing of the Jewish
+Church in the opposite direction; and again in the same way the general
+laxity of morals in the decay of the Roman empire may have confirmed the
+Church of early Christendom in its determination to keep along the
+great high road of asceticism. The Christian followed on the Jewish
+and Egyptian Churches, and in this way a great tradition of sexual
+continence and anti-pagan morality came right down the centuries even
+into modern times.
+
+This seems so far a reasonable theory; but I think we shall go farther
+and get nearer the heart of the problem if we revert to the general clue
+which I have followed already more than once--the clue of the necessary
+evolution of human Consciousnss. In the first or animal stage of
+human evolution, Sex was (as among the animals) a perfectly necessary,
+instinctive and unself-conscious activity. It was harmonious with
+itself, natural, and unproductive of evil. But when the second stage set
+in, in which man became preponderantly SELF-conscious, he inevitably
+set about deflecting sex-activities to his own private pleasure and
+advantage; he employed his budding intellect in scheming the derailment
+of passion and desire from tribal needs and, Nature's uses to the poor
+details of his own gratification. If the first stage of harmonious
+sex-instinct and activity may be held as characteristic of the Golden
+Age, the second stage must be taken to represent the Fall of man and his
+expulsion from Paradise in the Garden of Eden story. The pleasure and
+glory of Sex having been turned to self-purposes, Sex itself became the
+great Sin. A sense of guilt overspread man's thoughts on the subject.
+"He knew that he was naked," and he fled from the voice and face of the
+Lord. From that moment one of the main objects of his life (in its inner
+and newer activities) came to be the DENIAL of Sex. Sex was conceived
+of as the great Antagonist, the old Serpent lying ever in wait to betray
+him; and there arrived a moment in the history of every race, and of
+every representative religion, when the sexual rites and ceremonies of
+the older time lost their naive and quasi-innocent character and became
+afflicted with a sense of guilt and indecency. This extraordinarily
+interesting and dramatic moment in human evolution was of course that in
+which self-consciousness grew powerful enough to penetrate to the centre
+of human vitality, the sanctumof man's inner life, his sexual instinct,
+and to deal it a terrific blow--a blow from which it has never yet
+recovered, and from which indeed it will not recover, until the very
+nature of man's inner life is changed.
+
+It may be said that it was very foolish of Man to deny and to try
+to expel a perfectly natural and sensible thing, a necessary and
+indispensable part of his own nature. And that, as far as I can see, is
+perfectly true. But sometimes it is unavoidable, it would seem, to do
+foolish things--if only to convince oneself of one's own foolishness.
+On the other hand, this policy on the part of Man was certainly very
+wise--wiser than he knew--for in attempting to drive out Sex (which of
+course he could not do) he entered into a conflict which was bound
+to end in the expulsion of SOMETHING; and that something was the
+domination, within himself, of self-consciousness, the very thing which
+makes and ever has made sex detestable. Man did not succeed in driving
+the snake out of the Garden, but he drove himself out, taking the real
+old serpent of self-greed and self-gratification with him. When some day
+he returns to Paradise this latter will have died in his bosom and been
+cast away, but he will find the good Snake there as of old, full of
+healing and friendliness, among the branches of the Tree of Life.
+
+Besides it is evident from other considerations that this moment of the
+denial of sex HAD to come. When one thinks of the enormous power of this
+passion, and its age-long, hold upon the human race, one realizes that
+once liberated from the instinctive bonds of nature, and backed by a
+self-conscious and self-seeking human intelligence it was on the way to
+become a fearful curse.
+
+  A monstrous Eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth;
+  For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran.
+
+And this may have been all very well and appropriate in the
+carboniferous Epoch, but WE in the end of Time have no desire to fall
+under any such preposterous domination, or to return to the primal
+swamps from which organic nature has so slowly and painfully emerged.
+
+I say it was the entry of self-consciousness into the sphere of Sex, and
+the consequent use of the latter for private ends, which poisoned
+this great race-power at its root. For above all, Sex, as representing
+through Childbirth the life of the Race (or of the Tribe, or, if you
+like, of Humanity at large) should be sacred and guarded from merely
+selfish aims, and therefore to use it only for such aims is indeed a
+desecration. And even if--as some maintain and I think rightly (1)--sex
+is not MERELY for child-birth and physical procreation, but for mutual
+vitalizing and invigoration, it still subserves union and not egotism;
+and to use it egotistically is to commit the sin of Separation indeed.
+It is to cast away and corrupt the very bond of life and fellowship. The
+ancient peoples at any rate threw an illumination of religious (that is,
+of communal and public) value over sex-acts, and to a great extent made
+them into matters either of Temple-ritual and the worship of the gods,
+or of communal and pandemic celebration, as in the Saturnalia and
+other similar festivals. We have certainly no right to regard these
+celebrations--of either kind--as insincere. They were, at any rate in
+their inception, genuinely religious or genuinely social and festal;
+and from either point of view they were far better than the secrecy
+of private indulgence which characterizes our modern world in these
+matters. The thorough and shameless commercialism of Sex has alas!
+been reserved for what is called "Christian civilization," and with
+it (perhaps as a necessary consequence) Prostitution and Syphilis have
+grown into appalling evils, accompanied by a gigantic degradation of
+social standards, and upgrowth of petty Philistinism and niaiserie.
+Love, in fact, having in this modern world-movement been denied, and its
+natural manifestations affected with a sense of guilt and of sin, has
+really languished and ceased to play its natural part in life; and a
+vast number of people--both men and women, finding themselves barred or
+derailed from the main object of existence, have turned their energies
+to 'business' or 'money-making' or 'social advancement' or something
+equally futile, as the only poor substitute and pis aller open to them.
+
+ (1) See Havelock Ellis, The Objects of Marriage, a pamphlet
+published by the "British Society for the Study of Sex-psychology."
+
+
+Why (again we ask) did Christianity make this apparently great mistake?
+And again we must reply: Perhaps the mistake was not so great as
+it appears to be. Perhaps this was another case of the necessity of
+learning by loss. Love had to be denied, in the form of sex, in order
+that it might thus the better learn its own true values and needs. Sex
+had to be rejected, or defiled with the sense of guilt and self-seeking,
+in order that having cast out its defilement it might return one day,
+transformed in the embrace of love. The whole process has had a deep and
+strange world-significance. It has led to an immensely long period of
+suppression--suppression of two great instincts--the physical instinct
+of sex and the emotional instinct of love. Two things which should
+naturally be conjoined have been separated; and both have suffered.
+And we know from the Freudian teachings what suppressions in the
+root-instincts necessarily mean. We know that they inevitably terminate
+in diseases and distortions of proper action, either in the body or
+in the mind, or in both; and that these evils can only be cured by the
+liberation of the said instincts again to their proper expression and
+harmonious functioning in the whole organism. No wonder then that, with
+this agelong suppression (necessary in a sense though it may have
+been) which marks the Christian dispensation, there should have
+been associated endless Sickness and Crime and sordid Poverty, the
+Crucifixion of animals in the name of Science and of human workers in
+the name of Wealth, and wars and horrors innumerable! Hercules writhing
+in the Nessus-shirt or Prometheus nailed to the rocks are only as
+figures of a toy miniature compared with this vision of the great and
+divine Spirit of Man caught in the clutches of those dread Diseases
+which through the centuries have been eating into his very heart and
+vitals.
+
+It would not be fair to pile on the Christian Church the blame for all
+this. It had, no doubt, its part to play in the whole great scheme,
+namely, to accentuate the self-motive; and it played the part very
+thoroughly and successfully. For it must be remembered (what I have
+again and again insisted on) that in the pagan cults it was always
+the salvation of the CLAN, the TRIBE, the people that was the main
+consideration; the advantage of the individual took only a very
+secondary part. But in Christendom--after the communal enthusiasms
+of apostolic days and of the medieval and monastic brotherhoods and
+sisterhoods had died down--religion occupied itself more and more with
+each man or woman's INDIVIDUAL salvation, regardless of what might
+happen to the community; till, with the rise of Protestantism and
+Puritanism, this tendency reached such an extreme that, as some one has
+said, each man was absorbed in polishing up his own little soul in a
+corner to himself, in entire disregard to the damnation which might come
+to his neighbor. Religion, and Morality too, under the commercial regime
+became, as was natural, perfectly selfish. It was always: "Am _I_ saved?
+Am _I_ doing the right thing? Am _I_ winning the favor of God and man?
+Will my claims to salvation be allowed? Did _I_ make a good bargain
+in allowing Jesus to be crucified for me?" The poison of a diseased
+self-consciousness entered into the whole human system.
+
+As I say, one must not blame the Christians too much for all
+this--partly because, AFTER the communal periods which I have just
+mentioned, Christianity was evidently deeply influenced by the rise
+of COMMERCIALISM, to which during the last two centuries it has so
+carefully and piously adapted itself; and partly because--if our view is
+anywhere near right--this microbial injection of self-consciousness was
+just the necessary work which (in conjunction with commercialism) it HAD
+to perform. But though one does not blame Christianity one cannot blind
+oneself to its defects--the defects necessarily arising from the part it
+had to play. When one compares a healthy Pagan ritual--say of Apollo or
+Dionysus--including its rude and crude sacrifices if you like, but also
+including its whole-hearted spontaneity and dedication to the common
+life and welfare--with the morbid self-introspection of the Christian
+and the eternally recurring question "What shall I do to be saved?"--the
+comparison is not favorable to the latter. There is (at any rate in
+modern days) a mawkish milk-and-wateriness about the Christian attitude,
+and also a painful self-consciousness, which is not pleasant; and though
+Nietzsche's blonde beast is a sufficiently disagreeable animal, one
+almost thinks that it were better to be THAT than to go about with one's
+head meekly hanging on one side, and talking always of altruism and
+self-sacrifice, while in reality one's heart was entirely occupied with
+the question of one's own salvation. There is besides a lamentable want
+of grit and substance about the Christian doctrines and ceremonials.
+Somehow under the sex-taboo they became spiritualized and etherealized
+out of all human use. Study the initiation-rites of any savage
+tribe--with their strict discipline of the young braves in fortitude,
+and the overcoming of pain and fear; with their very detailed lessons in
+the arts of war and life and the duties of the grown man to his tribe;
+and with their quite practical instruction in matters of Sex; and then
+read our little Baptismal and Confirmation services, which ought to
+correspond thereto. How thin and attenuated and weak the latter
+appear! Or compare the Holy Communion, as celebrated in the sentimental
+atmosphere of a Protestant Church, with an ancient Eucharistic feast of
+real jollity and community of life under the acknowledged presence
+of the god; or the Roman Catholic service of the Mass, including its
+genuflexions and mock oblations and droning ritual sing-song, with the
+actual sacrifice in early days of an animal-god-victim on a blazing
+altar; and I think my meaning will be clear. We do not want, of course,
+to return to all the crudities and barbarities of the past; but also we
+do not want to become attenuated and spiritualized out of all mundane
+sense and recognition, and to live in an otherworld Paradise void of
+application to earthly affairs.
+
+The sex-taboo in Christianity was apparently, as I have said, an effort
+of the human soul to wrest itself free from the entanglement of physical
+lust--which lust, though normal and appropriate and in a way gracious
+among the animals, had through the domination of self-consciousness
+become diseased and morbid or monstrous in Man. The work thus done has
+probably been of the greatest value to the human race; but, just as in
+other cases it has sometimes happened that the effort to do a certain
+work has resulted in the end in an unbalanced exaggeration so here. We
+are beginning to see now the harmful side of the repression of sex, and
+are tentatively finding our way back again to a more pagan attitude.
+And as this return-movement is taking place at a time when, from many
+obvious signs, the self-conscious, grasping, commercial conception of
+life is preparing to go on the wane, and the sense of solidarity to
+re-establish itself, there is really good hope that our return-journey
+may prove in some degree successful.
+
+Man progresses generally, not both legs at once like a sparrow, but
+by putting one leg forward first, and then the other. There was this
+advantage in the Christian taboo of sex that by discouraging the
+physical and sensual side of love it did for the time being allow the
+spiritual side to come forward. But, as I have just now indicated,
+there is a limit to that process. We cannot always keep one leg first in
+walking, and we do not want, in life, always to put the spiritual first,
+nor always the material and sensual. The two sides in the long run have
+to keep pace with each other.
+
+And it may be that a great number of the very curious and seemingly
+senseless taboos that we find among the primitive peoples can be partly
+explained in this way: that is, that by ruling out certain directions
+of activity they enabled people to concentrate more effectually, for
+the time being, on other directions. To primitive folk the great world,
+whose ways are puzzling enough in all conscience to us, must have been
+simply bewildering in its dangers and complications. It was an amazement
+of Fear and Ignorance. Thunderbolts might come at any moment out of the
+blue sky, or a demon out of an old tree trunk, or a devastating plague
+out of a bad smell--or apparently even out of nothing at all! Under
+those circumstances it was perhaps wise, wherever there was the smallest
+SUSPICION of danger or ill-luck, to create a hard and fast TABOO--just
+as we tell our children ON NO ACCOUNT to walk under a ladder (thereby
+creating a superstition in their minds), partly because it would take
+too long to explain all about the real dangers of paint-pots and other
+things, and partly because for the children themselves it seems simpler
+to have a fixed and inviolable law than to argue over every case that
+occurs. The priests and elders among early folk no doubt took the
+line of FORBIDDAL of activities, as safer and simpler, even if
+carried sometimes too far, than the opposite, of easy permission and
+encouragement. Taboos multiplied--many of them quite senseless--but
+perhaps in this perilous maze of the world, of which I have spoken,
+it really WAS simpler to cut out a large part of the labyrinth, as
+forbidden ground, thus rendering it easier for the people to find their
+way in those portions of the labyrinth which remained. If you read in
+Deuteronomy (ch. xiv) the list of birds and beasts and fishes permitted
+for food among the Israelites, or tabooed, you will find the list on
+the whole reasonable, but you will be struck by some curious exceptions
+(according to our ideas), which are probably to be explained by the
+necessity of making the rules simple enough to be comprehended by
+everybody--even if they included the forbiddal of some quite eatable
+animals.
+
+At some early period, in Babylonia or Assyria, a very stringent taboo on
+the Sabbath arose, which, taken up in turn by the Jewish and Christian
+Churches, has ruled the Western World for three thousand years or more,
+and still survives in a quite senseless form among some of our rural
+populations, who will see their corn rot in the fields rather than save
+it on a Sunday. (1) It is quite likely that this taboo in its first
+beginning was due not to any need of a weekly rest-day (a need which
+could never be felt among nomad savages, but would only occur in
+some kind of industrial and stationary civilization), but to some
+superstitious fear, connected with such things as the changes of the
+Moon, and the probable ILL-LUCK of any enterprise undertaken on the
+seventh day, or any day of Moon-change. It is probable, however, that as
+time went on and Society became more complex, the advantages of a weekly
+REST-DAY (or market-day) became more obvious and that the priests and
+legislators deliberately turned the taboo to a social use. (2) The
+learned modern Ethnologists, however, will generally have none of this
+latter idea. As a rule they delight in representing early peoples as
+totally destitute of common sense (which is supposed to be a monopoly
+of us moderns!); and if the Sabbath-arrangement has had any value or
+use they insist on ascribing this to pure accident, and not to the
+application of any sane argument or reason.
+
+ (1) For other absurd Sunday taboos see Westermarck on The Moral
+Ideas, vol. ii, p. 289.
+
+ (2) For a tracing of this taboo from useless superstition to
+practical utility see Hastings's Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "The
+Sabbath."
+
+
+It is true indeed that a taboo--in order to be a proper taboo--must not
+rest in the general mind on argument or reason. It may have had good
+sense in the past or even an underlying good sense in the present, but
+its foundation must rest on something beyond. It must be an absolute
+fiat--something of the nature of a Mystery (1) or of Religion or
+Magic-and not to be disputed. This gives it its blood-curdling quality.
+The rustic does not know what would happen to him if he garnered his
+corn on Sunday, nor does the diner-out in polite society know what
+would happen if he spooned up his food with his knife--but they both are
+stricken with a sort of paralysis at the very suggestion of infringing
+these taboos.
+
+ (1) See Westermarck, Ibid., ii. 586.
+
+
+Marriage-customs have always been a fertile field for the generation
+of taboos. It seems doubtful whether anything like absolute promiscuity
+ever prevailed among the human race, but there is much to show that wide
+choice and intercourse were common among primitive folk and that the
+tendency of later marriage custom has been on the whole to LIMIT this
+range of choice. At some early period the forbiddal of marriage between
+those who bore the same totem-name took place. Thus in Australia "no man
+of the Emu stock might marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake might marry a
+Blacksnake woman, and so forth." (1) Among the Kamilaroi and the Arunta
+of S. Australia the tribe was divided into classes or clans, sometimes
+four, sometimes eight, and a man of one particular clan was only
+marriageable with a woman of another particular clan--say (1) with (3)
+or (2) with (4), and so on. (2) Customs with a similar tendency, but
+different in detail, seem to have prevailed among native tribes in
+Central Africa and N. America. And the regulations in all this matter
+have been so (apparently) entirely arbitrary in the various cases that
+it would almost appear as if the bar of kinship through the Totem had
+been the EXCUSE, originating perhaps in some superstition, but that the
+real and more abiding object was simply limitation. And this perhaps was
+a wise line to take. A taboo on promiscuity had to be created, and for
+this purpose any current prejudice could be made use of. (3)
+
+ (1) Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, p. 66.
+
+ (2) See Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Australia.
+
+ (3) The author of The Mystic Rose seems to take this view. See
+p. 214 of that book.
+
+
+With us moderns the whole matter has taken a different complexion. When
+we consider the enormous amount of suffering and disease, both of mind
+and body, arising from the sex-suppression of which I have just spoken,
+especially among women, we see that mere unreasoning taboos--which
+possibly had their place and use in the past--can be tolerated no
+longer. We are bound to turn the searchlight of reason and science on a
+number of superstitions which still linger in the dark and musty
+places of the Churches and the Law courts. Modern inquiry has shown
+conclusively not only the foundational importance of sex in the
+evolution of each human being, but also the very great VARIETY of
+spontaneous manifestations in different individuals and the vital
+necessity that these should be recognized, if society is ever to expand
+into a rational human form. It is not my object here to sketch the
+future of marriage and sex-relations generally--a subject which is now
+being dealt with very effectively from many sides; but only to insist on
+our using our good sense in the whole matter, and refusing any longer to
+be bound by senseless pre-judgments.
+
+Something of the same kind may be said with regard to Nakedness, which
+in modern Civilization has become the object of a very serious and
+indeed harmful taboo; both of speech and act. As someone has said, it
+became in the end of the nineteenth century almost a crime to mention
+by name any portion of the human body within a radius of about twenty
+inches from its centre (!) and as a matter of fact a few dress-reformers
+of that period were actually brought into court and treated as criminals
+for going about with legs bare up to the knees, and shoulders and chest
+uncovered! Public follies such as these have been responsible for much
+of the bodily and mental disease and suppression just mentioned, and
+the sooner they are sent to limbo the better. No sensible person
+would advocate promiscuous nakedness any more than promiscuous
+sex-relationship; nor is it likely that aged and deformed people would
+at any time wish to expose themselves. But surely there is enough good
+sense and appreciation of grace and fitness in the average human mind
+for it to be able to liberate the body from senseless concealment, and
+give it its due expression. The Greeks of old, having on the whole
+clean bodies, treated them with respect and distinction. The young men
+appeared quite naked in the palaestra, and even the girls of Sparta ran
+races publicly in the same condition; (1) and some day when our
+bodies (and minds too) have become clean we shall return to similar
+institutions. But that will not be just yet. As long as the defilement
+of this commercial civilization is on us we shall prefer our dirt and
+concealment. The powers that be will protest against change. Heinrich
+Scham, in his charming little pamphlet Nackende Menschen, (2) describes
+the consternation of the commercial people at such ideas:
+
+"'What will become of us,' cried the tailors, 'if you go naked?'
+
+"And all the lot of them, hat, cravat, shirt, and shoemakers joined in
+the chorus.
+
+"'AND WHERE SHALL I CARRY MY MONEY?' cried one who had just been made a
+director."
+
+
+ (1) See Theocritus, Idyll xviii.
+
+ (2) Published at Leipzig about 1893.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIANITY
+
+Referring back to the existence of something resembling a great
+World-religion which has come down the centuries, continually expanding
+and branching in the process, we have now to consider the genesis of
+that special brand or branch of it which we call Christianity. Each
+religion or cult, pagan or Christian, has had, as we have seen, a vast
+amount in common with the general World-religion; yet each has had its
+own special characteristics. What have been the main characteristics of
+the Christian branch, as differentiating it from the other branches?
+
+We saw in the last chapter that a certain ascetic attitude towards Sex
+was one of the most salient marks of the Christian Church; and that
+whereas most of the pagan cults (though occasionally favoring frightful
+austerities and cruel sacrifices) did on the whole rejoice in pleasure
+and the world of the senses, Christianity--following largely on
+Judaism--displayed a tendency towards renunciation of the world and the
+flesh, and a withdrawal into the inner and more spiritual regions of the
+mind. The same tendency may be traced in the Egyptian and Phrygian cults
+of that period. It will be remembered how Juvenal (Sat. VI, 510-40)
+chaffs the priests of Cybele at Rome for making themselves "eunuchs for
+the kingdom of heaven's sake," or the rich Roman lady for plunging in
+the wintry Tiber for a propitiation to Isis. No doubt among the later
+pagans "the long intolerable tyranny of the senses over the soul" had
+become a very serious matter. But Christianity represented perhaps the
+most powerful reaction against this; and this reaction had, as indicated
+in the last chapter, the enormously valuable result that (for the time)
+it disentangled love from sex and established Love, pure and undefiled,
+as ruler of the world. "God is Love." But, as also indicated, the
+divorce between the two elements of human nature, carried to an extreme,
+led in time to a crippling of both elements and the development of a
+certain morbidity and self-consciousness which, it cannot be denied, is
+painfully marked among some sections of Christians--especially those of
+the altruistic and 'philanthropic' type.
+
+Another characteristic of Christianity which is also very fine in
+its way but has its limits of utility, has been its insistence on
+"morality." Some modern writers indeed have gone so far--forgetting, I
+suppose, the Stoics--as to claim that Christianity's chief mark is its
+high morality, and that the pagans generally were quite wanting in the
+moral sense! This, of course, is a profound mistake. I should say that,
+in the true sense of the word, the early and tribal peoples have been
+much more 'moral' as a rule--that is, ready as individuals to pay
+respect to the needs of the community--than the later and more civilized
+societies. But the mistake arises from the different interpretations of
+the word; for whereas all the pagan religions insisted very strongly on
+the just-mentioned kind of morality, which we should call CIVIC DUTY TO
+ONE'S NEIGHBOR, the Christian made morality to consist more especially
+in a mans DUTY TO GOD. It became with them a private affair between a
+mans self and-God, rather than a public affair; and thus led in the end
+to a very obnoxious and quite pharisaic kind of morality, whose chief
+inspiration was not the helping of one's fellow-man but the saving of
+one's own soul.
+
+There may perhaps be other salient points of differentiation between
+Christianity and the preceding pagan religions; but for the present we
+may recognize these two--(a) the tendency towards a renunciation of the
+world, and the consequent cultivation of a purely spiritual love and (b)
+the insistence on a morality whose inspiration was a private sense of
+duty to God rather than a public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to
+society generally. It may be interesting to trace the causes which led
+to this differentiation.
+
+Three centuries before our era the conquests of Alexander had had the
+effect of spreading the Greek thought and culture over most of the known
+world. A vast number of small bodies of worshipers of local deities,
+with their various rituals and religious customs, had thus been broken
+up, or at least brought into contact with each other and partially
+modified and hellenized. The orbit of a more general conception of life
+and religion was already being traced. By the time of the founding of
+the first Christian Church the immense conquests of Rome had greatly
+extended and established the process. The Mediterranean had become a
+great Roman lake. Merchant ships and routes of traffic crossed it in all
+directions; tourists visited its shores. The known world had become one.
+The numberless peoples, tribes, nations, societies within the girdle of
+the Empire, with their various languages, creeds, customs, religions,
+philosophies, were profoundly influencing each other. (1) A great fusion
+was taking place; and it was becoming inevitable that the next great
+religious movement would have a world-wide character.
+
+ (1) For an enlargement on this theme see Glover's Conflict of
+Religions in the early Roman Empire; also S. J. Case, Evolution of
+Early Christianity (University of Chicago, 1914). The Adonis worship, for
+instance (a resurrection-cult), "was still thriving in Syria and Cyprus
+when Paul preached there," and the worship of Isis and Serapis had
+already reached then, Rome and Naples.
+
+
+It was probable that this new religion would combine many elements from
+the preceding rituals in one cult. In connection with the fine temples
+and elaborate services of Isis and Cybele and Mithra there was growing
+up a powerful priesthood; Franz Cumont (1) speaks of "the learned
+priests of the Asiatic cults" as building up, on the foundations of old
+fetichism and superstition, a complete religious philosophy--just as
+the Brahmins had built the monism of the Vedanta on the "monstrous
+idolatries of Hinduism." And it was likely that a similar process would
+evolve the new religion expected. Toutain again calls attention to the
+patronage accorded to all these cults by the Roman Emperors, as favoring
+a new combination and synthesis:--"Hadrien, Commode, Septime Severe,
+Julia Domna, Elagabal, Alexandre Severe, en particulier ont contribue
+personnellement a la popularite et au succes des cultes qui se
+celebraient en l'honneur de Serapis et d'Isis, des divinites syriennes
+et de Mithra." (2)
+
+ (1) See Cumont, Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain
+(Paris, 1906), p. 253.
+
+ (2) Cultes paiens dans l'Empire Romain (2 vols., 1911), vol. ii,
+p. 263.
+
+
+It was also probable that this new Religion would show (as indicated
+in the last chapter) a reaction against mere sex-indulgence; and,
+as regards its standard of Morality generally, that, among so many
+conflicting peoples with their various civic and local customs, it could
+not well identify itself with any ONE of these but would evolve an
+inner inspiration of its own which in its best form would be love of the
+neighbor, regardless of the race, creed or customs of the neighbor, and
+whose sanction would not reside in any of the external authorities
+thus conflicting with each other, but in the sense of the soul's direct
+responsibility to God.
+
+So much for what we might expect a priori as to the influence of the
+surroundings on the general form of the new Religion. And what about the
+kind of creed or creeds which that religion would favor? Here again
+we must see that the influence of the surroundings compelled a certain
+result. Those doctrines which we have described in the preceding
+chapters--doctrines of Sin and Sacrifice, a Savior, the Eucharist, the
+Trinity, the Virgin-birth, and so forth--were in their various forms
+seething, so to speak, all around. It was impossible for any new
+religious synthesis to escape them; all it could do would be to
+appropriate them, and to give them perhaps a color of its own. Thus
+it is into the midst of this germinating mass that we must imagine the
+various pagan cults, like fertilizing streams, descending. To trace all
+these streams would of course be an impossible task; but it may be of
+use, as an example of the process, to take the case of some particular
+belief. Let us take the belief in the coming of a Savior-god; and this
+will be the more suitable as it is a belief which has in the past been
+commonly held to be distinctive of Christianity. Of course we know now
+that it is not in any sense distinctive, but that the long tradition of
+the Savior comes down from the remotest times, and perhaps from every
+country of the world. (1) The Messianic prophecies of the Jews and the
+fifty-third chapter of Isaiah emptied themselves into the Christian
+teachings, and infected them to some degree with a Judaic tinge. The
+"Messiah" means of course the Anointed One. The Hebrew word occurs some
+40 times in the Old Testament; and each time in the Septuagint or Greek
+translation (made mainly in the third century BEFORE our era) the word
+is translated [gr cristos], or Christos, which again means Anointed.
+Thus we see that the idea or the word "The Christ" was in vogue in
+Alexandria as far back certainly as 280 B.C., or nearly three centuries
+before Jesus. And what the word "The Anointed" strictly speaking means,
+and from what the expression is probably derived, will appear later. In
+The Book of Enoch, written not later than B.C. 170, (2) the Christ is
+spoken of as already existing in heaven, and about to come as judge
+of all men, and is definitely called "the Son of Man." The Book of
+Revelations is FULL of passages from Enoch; so are the Epistles of Paul;
+so too the Gospels. The Book of Enoch believes in a Golden Age that is
+to come; it has Dantesque visions of Heaven and Hell, and of Angels good
+and evil, and it speaks of a "garden of Righteousness" with the "Tree of
+Wisdom" in its midst. Everywhere, says Prof. Drews, in the first century
+B.C., there was the longing for a coming Savior.
+
+ (1) Even to-day, the Arabian lands are always vibrating with
+prophecies of a coming Mahdi.
+
+ (2) See Edition by R. H. Charles (1893).
+
+
+But the Savior-god, as we also know, was a familiar figure in Egypt. The
+great Osiris was the Savior of the world, both in his life and death: in
+his life through the noble works he wrought for the benefit of mankind,
+and in his death through his betrayal by the powers of darkness and
+his resurrection from the tomb and ascent into heaven. (1) The Egyptian
+doctrines descended through Alexandria into Christianity--and though
+they did not influence the latter deeply until about 300 A.D., yet they
+then succeeded in reaching the Christian Churches, giving a color to
+their teachings with regard to the Savior, and persuading them to accept
+and honor the Egyptian worship of Isis in the Christian form of the
+Virgin Mary.
+
+ (1) See ch. ii.
+
+
+Again, another great stream of influence descended from Persia in the
+form of the cult of Mithra. Mithra, as we have seen, (1) stood as a
+great Mediator between God and man. With his baptisms and eucharists,
+and his twelve disciples, and his birth in a cave, and so forth,
+he seemed to the early Fathers an invention of the devil and a most
+dangerous mockery on Christianity--and all the more so because his
+worship was becoming so exceedingly popular. The cult seems to have
+reached Rome about B.C. 70. It spread far and wide through the Empire.
+It extended to Great Britain, and numerous remains of Mithraic
+monuments and sculptures in this country--at York, Chester and other
+places--testify to its wide acceptance even here. At Rome the vogue of
+Mithraism became so great that in the third century A. D., it was quite
+doubtful (2) whether it OR Christianity would triumph; the Emperor
+Aurelian in 273 founded a cult of the Invincible Sun in connection with
+Mithraism; (3) and as St. Jerome tells us in his letters, (4) the latter
+cult had at a later time to be suppressed in Rome and Alexandria by
+PHYSICAL FORCE, so powerful was it.
+
+ (1) Ch. ii.
+
+ (2) See Cumont, op. cit., who says, p. 171:--"Jamais, pas meme a
+l'epoque des invasions mussulmanes, l'Europe ne sembla plus pres
+de devenir asiatique qu'au moment ou Diocletien reconnaissait
+officiellement en Mithra, le protecteur de l'empire reconstitue." See
+also Cumont's Mysteres de Mithra, preface. The Roman Army, in fact,
+stuck to Mithra throughout, as against Christianity; and so did the
+Roman nobility. (See S. Augustine's Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 2.)
+
+ (3) Cumont indeed says that the identification of Mithra with the
+Sun (the emblem of imperial power) formed one reason why Mithraism was
+NOT persecuted at that time.
+
+ (4) Epist. cvii, ad Laetam. See Robertson's Pagan Christs, p.
+350.
+
+
+Nor was force the only method employed. IMITATION is not only the
+sincerest flattery, but it is often the most subtle and effective way of
+defeating a rival. The priests of the rising Christian Church were, like
+the priests of ALL religions, not wanting in craft; and at this moment
+when the question of a World-religion was in the balance, it was an
+obvious policy for them to throw into their own scale as many elements
+as possible of the popular Pagan cults. Mithraism had been flourishing
+for 600 years; and it is, to say the least, CURIOUS that the Mithraic
+doctrines and legends which I have just mentioned should all have been
+adopted (quite unintentionally of course!) into Christianity; and still
+more so that some others from the same source, like the legend of the
+Shepherds at the Nativity and the doctrine of the Resurrection and
+Ascension, which are NOT mentioned at all in the original draft of the
+earliest Gospel (St. Mark), should have made their appearance, in the
+Christian writings at a later time, when Mithraism was making great
+forward strides. History shows that as a Church progresses and expands
+it generally feels compelled to enlarge and fortify its own foundations
+by inserting material which was not there at first. I shall shortly give
+another illustration of this; at present I will merely point out
+that the Christian writers, as time went on, not only introduced new
+doctrines, legends, miracles and so forth--most of which we can trace to
+antecedent pagan sources--but that they took especial pains to
+destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own
+dishonesty. We learn from Porphyry (1) that there were several elaborate
+treatises setting forth the religion of Mithra; and J. M. Robertson adds
+(Pagan Christs, p. 325): "everyone of these has been destroyed by the
+care of the Church, and it is remarkable that even the treatise of
+Firmicus is mutilated at a passage (v.) where he seems to be accusing
+Christians of following Mithraic usages." While again Professor Murray
+says, "The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant;
+the books of the Pagans have been DESTROYED." (2)
+
+ (1) De Abstinentia, ii. 56; iv. 16.
+
+ (2) Four Stages, p. 180. We have probably an instance of this
+destruction in the total disappearance of Celsus' lively attack
+on Christianity (180 A.D.), of which, however, portions have been
+fortunately preserved in Origen's rather prolix refutation of the same.
+
+
+Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already in preceding
+chapters given so many instances of belief in such a deity among the
+pagans--whether he be called Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or
+Apollo or Hercules--that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any
+further in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was 'in the
+air' at the time of the advent of Christianity. Even Dionysus, then
+a prominent figure in the 'Mysteries,' was called Eleutherios, The
+Deliverer. But it may be of interest to trace the same doctrine among
+the PRE-CHRISTIAN sects of Gnostics. The Gnostics, says Professor
+Murray, (1) "are still commonly thought of as a body of CHRISTIAN
+heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the
+Hellenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after. They must have
+been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the
+days of Paul or Apollos. Their Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was
+established in men's minds before the Savior of the Christians. 'If
+we look close,' says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with great
+clearness that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait for
+Christianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis, but was
+already present there under various forms.'"
+
+ (1) Four Stages, p. 143.
+
+
+This Gnostic Redeemer, continues Professor Murray, "is descended by a
+fairly clear genealogy from the 'Tritos Soter' ('third Savior') (1) of
+early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis
+from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of
+the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name
+of Jesus or 'Christos,' 'the Anointed,' tends gradually to supersede.
+Above all, he is in some sense Man, or 'the second Man' or 'the Son of
+Man'... He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man, of
+whom all bodily men are feeble copies." (2)
+
+ (1) There seems to be some doubt about the exact meaning of this
+expression. Even Zeus himself was sometimes called 'Soter,' and at
+feasts, it is said, the THIRD goblet was always drunk in his honor.
+
+ (2) See also The Gnostic Story of Jesus Christ, by Gilbert T.
+Sadler (C. W. Daniel, 1919).
+
+
+This passage brings vividly before the mind the process of which I
+have spoken, namely, the fusion and mutual interchange of ideas on the
+subject of the Savior during the period anterior to our era. Also it
+exemplifies to us through what an abstract sphere of Gnostic religious
+speculation the doctrine had to travel before reaching its expression in
+Christianity. (1) This exalted and high philosophical conception passed
+on and came out again to some degree in the Fourth Gospel and the
+Pauline Epistles (especially I Cor. xv); but I need hardly say it
+was not maintained. The enthusiasm of the little scattered Christian
+bodies--with their communism of practice with regard to THIS world and
+their intensity of faith with regard to the next--began to wane in the
+second and third centuries A.D. As the Church (with capital initial)
+grew, so was it less and less occupied with real religious feeling, and
+more and more with its battles against persecution from outside, and its
+quarrels and dissensions concerning heresies within its own borders. And
+when at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) it endeavored to establish an
+official creed, the strife and bitterness only increased. "There is no
+wild beast," said the Emperor Julian, "like an angry theologian." Where
+the fourth Evangelist had preached the gospel of Love, and Paul had
+announced redemption by an inner and spiritual identification with
+Christ, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive";
+and whereas some at any rate of the Pagan cults had taught a glorious
+salvation by the new birth of a divine being within each man: "Be of
+good cheer, O initiates in the mystery of the liberated god; For to
+you too out of all your labors and sorrows shall come Liberation"--the
+Nicene creed had nothing to propound except some extremely futile
+speculations about the relation to each other of the Father and the
+Son, and the relation of BOTH to the Holy Ghost, and of all THREE to the
+Virgin Mary--speculations which only served for the renewal of shameful
+strife and animosities--riots and bloodshed and murder--within the
+Church, and the mockery of the heathen without. And as far as it dealt
+with the crucifixion, death and resurrection of the Lord it did not
+differ from the score of preceding pagan creeds, except in the thorough
+materialism and lack of poetry in statement which it exhibits. After
+the Council of Nicaea, in fact, the Judaic tinge in the doctrines of the
+Church becomes more apparent, and more and more its Scheme of Salvation
+through Christ takes the character of a rather sordid and huckstering
+bargain by which Man gets the better of God by persuading the latter
+to sacrifice his own Son for the redemption of the world! With the
+exception of a few episodes like the formation during the Middle Ages of
+the noble brotherhoods and sisterhoods of Frairs and Nuns, dedicated to
+the help and healing of suffering humanity, and the appearance of a few
+real lovers of mankind (and the animals) like St. Francis--(and these
+manifestations can hardly be claimed by the Church, which pretty
+consistently opposed them)--it may be said that after about the fourth
+century the real spirit and light of early Christian enthusiasm died
+away. The incursions of barbarian tribes from the North and East, and
+later of Moors and Arabs from the South, familiarized the European
+peoples with the ideas of bloodshed and violence; gross and material
+conceptions of life were in the ascendant; and a romantic and aspiring
+Christianity gave place to a worldly and vulgar Churchianity.
+
+ (1) When travelling in India I found that the Gnanis or Wise Men
+there quite commonly maintained that Jesus (judging from his teaching)
+must have been initiated at some time in the esoteric doctrines of the
+Vedanta.
+
+
+I have in these two or three pages dealt only--and that very
+briefly--with the entry of the pagan doctrine of the Savior into the
+Christian field, showing its transformation there and how Christianity
+could not well escape having a doctrine of a Savior, or avoid giving a
+color of its own to that doctrine. To follow out the same course
+with other doctrines, like those which I have mentioned above, would
+obviously be an endless task--which must be left to each student or
+reader to pursue according to his opportunity and capacity. It is clear
+anyhow, that all these elements of the pagan religions--pouring down
+into the vast reservoir, or rather whirlpool, of the Roman Empire,
+and mixing among all these numerous brotherhoods, societies, collegia,
+mystery-clubs, and groups which were at that time looking out intently
+for some new revelation or inspiration--did more or less automatically
+act and react upon each other, and by the general conditions prevailing
+were modified, till they ultimately combined and took united shape
+in the movement which we call Christianity, but which only--as I have
+said--narrowly escaped being called Mithraism--so nearly related and
+closely allied were these cults with each other.
+
+
+At this point it will naturally be asked: "And where in this scheme of
+the Genesis of Christianity is the chief figure and accredited leader of
+the movement--namely Jesus Christ himself--for to all appearance in the
+account here given of the matter he is practically non-existent or a
+negligible quantity?" And the question is a very pertinent one, and very
+difficult to answer. "Where is the founder of the Religion?"--or to
+put it in another form: "Is it necessary to suppose a human and visible
+Founder at all?" A few years ago such a mere question would have been
+accounted rank blasphemy, and would only--if passed over--have been
+ignored on account of its supposed absurdity. To-day, however, owing to
+the enormous amount of work which has been done of late on the
+subject of Christian origins, the question takes on quite a different
+complexion. And from Strauss onwards a growingly influential and learned
+body of critics is inclined to regard the whole story of the Gospels as
+LEGENDARY. Arthur Drews, for instance, a professor at Karlsruhe, in his
+celebrated book The Christ-Myth, (1) places David F. Strauss as first
+in the myth field--though he allows that Dupuis in L'origine de tous
+les cultes (1795) had given the clue to the whole idea. He then mentions
+Bruno Bauer (1877) as contending that Jesus was a pure invention
+of Mark's, and John M. Robertson as having in his Christianity and
+Mythology (1900) given the first thoroughly reasoned exposition of the
+legendary theory; also Emilio Bossi in Italy, who wrote Jesu Christo
+non e mai esistito, and similar authors in Holland, Poland, and other
+countries, including W. Benjamin Smith, the American author of The
+Pre-christian Jesus (1906), and P. Jensen in Das Gilgamesch Epos in
+den Welt-literatur (1906), who makes the Jesus-story a variant of the
+Babylonian epic, 2000 B.C. A pretty strong list! (2) "But," continues
+Drews, "ordinary historians still ignore all this." Finally, he
+dismisses Jesus as "a figure swimming obscurely in the mists of
+tradition." Nevertheless I need hardly remark that, large and learned
+as the body of opinion here represented is, a still larger (but less
+learned) body fights desperately for the actual HISTORICITY of Jesus,
+and some even still for the old view of him as a quite unique and
+miraculous revelation of Godhood on earth.
+
+ (1) Die Christus-mythe: verbesserte und erweitezte Ausgabe, Jena,
+1910.
+
+ (2) To which we may also add Schweitzer's Quest of the historical
+Jesus (1910).
+
+
+At first, no doubt, the LEGENDARY theory seems a little TOO far-fetched.
+There is a fashion in all these things, and it MAY be that there is a
+fashion even here. But when you reflect how rapidly legends grow up even
+in these days of exact Science and an omniscient Press; how the figure
+of Shakespeare, dead only 300 years, is almost completely lost in
+the mist of Time, and even the authenticity of his works has become a
+subject of controversy; when you find that William Tell, supposed to
+have lived some 300 years again before Shakespeare, and whose deeds in
+minutest detail have been recited and honored all over Europe, is almost
+certainly a pure invention, and never existed; when you remember--as
+mentioned earlier in this book (1)--that it was more than five hundred
+years after the supposed birth of Jesus before any serious effort
+was made to establish the date of that birth--and that then a purely
+mythical date was chosen: the 25th December, the day of the SUN'S new
+birth after the winter solstice, and the time of the supposed birth of
+Apollo, Bacchus, and the other Sungods; when, moreover, you think for
+a moment what the state of historical criticism must have been, and
+the general standard of credibility, 1,900 years ago, in a country like
+Syria, and among an ignorant population, where any story circulating
+from lip to lip was assured of credence if sufficiently marvelous
+or imaginative;--why, then the legendary theory does not seem so
+improbable. There is no doubt that after the destruction of Jerusalem
+(in A.D. 70), little groups of believers in a redeeming 'Christ' were
+formed there and in other places, just as there had certainly existed,
+in the first century B.C., groups of Gnostics, Therapeutae, Essenes and
+others whose teachings were very SIMILAR to the Christian, and there was
+now a demand from many of these groups for 'writings' and 'histories'
+which should hearten and confirm the young and growing Churches. The
+Gospels and Epistles, of which there are still extant a great abundance,
+both apocryphal and canonical, met this demand; but how far their
+records of the person of Jesus of Nazareth are reliable history, or how
+far they are merely imaginative pictures of the kind of man the Saviour
+might be expected to be, (2) is a question which, as I have already
+said, is a difficult one for skilled critics to answer, and one on which
+I certainly have no intention of giving a positive verdict. Personally I
+must say I think the 'legendary' solution quite likely, and in some ways
+more satisfactory than the opposite one--for the simple reason that
+it seems much more encouraging to suppose that the story of Jesus,
+(gracious and beautiful as it is) is a myth which gradually formed
+itself in the conscience of mankind, and thus points the way of
+humanity's future evolution, than to suppose it to be the mere record
+of an unique and miraculous interposition of Providence, which depended
+entirely on the powers above, and could hardly be expected to occur
+again.
+
+ (1) Ch. II.
+
+ (2) One of Celsus' accusations against the Christians was that
+their Gospels had been written "several times over" (see Origen, Contra
+Celsum, ii. 26, 27).
+
+
+However, the question is not what we desire, but what we can prove to be
+the actual fact. And certainly the difficulties in the way of regarding
+the Gospel story (or stories, for there is not one consistent story)
+as TRUE are enormous. If anyone will read, for instance, in the four
+Gospels, the events of the night preceding the crucifixion and reckon
+the time which they would necessarily have taken to enact--the Last
+Supper, the agony in the Garden, the betrayal by Judas, the haling
+before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, and then before Pilate in the Hall
+of judgment (though courts for the trial of malefactors do not GENERALLY
+sit in the middle of the night); then--in Luke--the interposed visit to
+Herod, and the RETURN to Pilate; Pilate's speeches and washing of hands
+before the crowd; then the scourging and the mocking and the arraying of
+Jesus in purple robe as a king; then the preparation of a Cross and the
+long and painful journey to Golgotha; and finally the Crucifixion at
+sunrise;--he will see--as has often been pointed out--that the whole
+story is physically impossible. As a record of actual events the story
+is impossible; but as a record or series of notes derived from the
+witnessing of a "mystery-play"--and such plays with VERY SIMILAR
+incidents were common enough in antiquity in connection with cults of
+a dying Savior, it very likely IS true (one can see the very dramatic
+character of the incidents: the washing of hands, the threefold denial
+by Peter, the purple robe and crown of thorns, and so forth); and as
+such it is now accepted by many well-qualified authorities. (1)
+
+ (1) Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (vol. ix, "The Scapegoat," p.
+400) speaks of the frequency in antiquity of a Mystery-play relating
+to a God-man who gives his life and blood for the people; and he
+puts forward tentatively and by no means dogmatically the following
+note:--"Such a drama, if we are right, was the original story of Esther
+and Mordecai, or (to give their older names) Ishtar and Marduk. It was
+played in Babylonia, and from Babylonia the returning Captives brought
+it to Judaea, where it was acted, rather as an historical than a
+mythical piece, by players who, having to die in grim earnest on a
+cross or gallows, were naturally drawn from the gaol rather than the
+green-room. A chain of causes, which because we cannot follow them
+might--in the loose language of common life--be called an accident,
+determined that the part of the dying god in this annual play should
+be thrust upon Jesus of Nazareth, whom the enemies he had made in high
+places by his outspoken strictures were resolved to put out of the way."
+See also vol. iv, "The Dying God," in the same book.
+
+
+There are many other difficulties. The raising of Lazarus, already dead
+three days, the turning of water into wine (a miracle attributed to
+Bacchus, of old), the feeding of the five thousand, and others of the
+marvels are, to say the least, not easy of digestion. The "Sermon on the
+Mount" which, with the "Lord's Prayer" embedded in it, forms the great
+and accepted repository of 'Christian' teaching and piety, is well known
+to be a collection of sayings from pre-christian writings, including the
+Psalms, Isaiah, Ecclesiasticus, the Secrets of Enoch, the Shemonehesreh
+(a book of Hebrew prayers), and others; and the fact that this
+collection was really made AFTER the time of Jesus, and could not
+have originated from him, is clear from the stress which it lays on
+"persecutions" and "false prophets"--things which were certainly not a
+source of trouble at the time Jesus is supposed to be speaking, though
+they were at a later time--as well as from the occurrence of the word
+"Gentiles," which being here used apparently in contra-distinction to
+"Christians" could not well be appropriate at a time when no recognized
+Christian bodies as yet existed.
+
+But the most remarkable point in this connection is the absolute
+silence of the Gospel of Mark on the subject of the Resurrection and
+Ascension--that is, of the ORIGINAL Gospel, for it is now allowed on
+all hands that the twelve verses Mark xvi. 9 to the end, are a later
+insertion. Considering the nature of this event, astounding indeed, if
+physically true, and unique in the history of the world, it is strange
+that this Gospel--the earliest written of the four Gospels, and nearest
+in time to the actual evidence--makes no mention of it. The next Gospel
+in point of time--that of Matthew--mentions the matter rather briefly
+and timidly, and reports the story that the body had been STOLEN from
+the sepulchre. Luke enlarges considerably and gives a whole long chapter
+to the resurrection and ascension; while the Fourth Gospel, written
+fully twenty years later still--say about A. D. 120--gives two chapters
+and a GREAT VARIETY OF DETAILS!
+
+This increase of detail, however, as one gets farther and farther from
+the actual event is just what one always finds, as I have said before,
+in legendary traditions. A very interesting example of this has lately
+come to light in the case of the traditions concerning the life and
+death of the Persian Bab. The Bab, as most of my readers will know, was
+the Founder of a great religious movement which now numbers (or numbered
+before the Great War) some millions of adherents, chiefly Mahommedans,
+Christians, Jews and Parsees. The period of his missionary activity
+was from 1845 to 1850. His Gospel was singularly like that of Jesus--a
+gospel of love to mankind--only (as might be expected from the
+difference of date) with an even wider and more deliberate inclusion of
+all classes, creeds and races, sinners and saints; and the incidents and
+entourage of his ministry were also singularly similar. He was born at
+Shiraz in 1820, and growing up a promising boy and youth, fell at the
+age Of 21 under the influence of a certain Seyyid Kazim, leader of a
+heterodox sect, and a kind of fore-runner or John the Baptist to the
+Bab. The result was a period of mental trouble (like the "temptation in
+the wilderness"), after which the youth returned to Shiraz and at the
+age of twenty-five began his own mission. His real name was Mirza Ali
+Muhammad, but he called himself thenceforth The Bab, i.e. the Gate ("I
+am the Way"); and gradually there gathered round him disciples, drawn
+by the fascination of his personality and the devotion of his character.
+But with the rapid increase of his following great jealousy and hatred
+were excited among the Mullahs, the upholders of a fanatical and
+narrow-minded Mahommedanism and quite corresponding to the Scribes and
+Pharisees of the New Testament. By them he was denounced to the
+Turkish Government. He was arrested on a charge of causing political
+disturbance, and was condemned to death. Among his disciples was one
+favorite, (1) who was absolutely devoted to his Master and refused to
+leave him at the last. So together they were suspended over the city
+wall (at Tabriz) and simultaneously shot. This was on the 8th July,
+1850.
+
+ (1) Mirza Muhammad Ali; and one should note the similarity of
+the two names.
+
+
+In November 1850--or between that date and October 1851, a book
+appeared, written by one of the B[a^]b's earliest and most enthusiastic
+disciples--a merchant of Kashan--and giving in quite simple and
+unpretending form a record of the above events. There is in it no
+account of miracles or of great pretensions to godhood and the like. It
+is just a plain history of the life and death of a beloved teacher.
+It was cordially received and circulated far and wide; and we have no
+reason for doubting its essential veracity. And even if proved now to be
+inaccurate in one or two details, this would not invalidate the moral of
+the rest of the story--which is as follows:
+
+After the death of the Bab a great persecution took place (in 1852);
+there were many Babi martyrs, and for some years the general followers
+were scattered. But in time they gathered themselves together again;
+successors to the original prophet were appointed--though not without
+dissensions--and a Babi church, chiefly at Acca or Acre in Syria, began
+to be formed. It was during this period that a great number of legends
+grew up--legends of miraculous babyhood and boyhood, legends of miracles
+performed by the mature Bab, and so forth; and when the newly-forming
+Church came to look into the matter it concluded (quite naturally!) that
+such a simple history as I have outlined above would never do for the
+foundation of its plans, now grown somewhat ambitious. So a new Gospel
+was framed, called the Tarikh-i-Jadid ("The new History" or "The new
+Way"), embodying and including a lot of legendary matter, and issued
+with the authority of "the Church." This was in 1881-2; and comparing
+this with the original record (called The point of Kaf) we get a
+luminous view of the growth of fable in those thirty brief years which
+had elapsed since the Bab's death. Meanwhile it became very necessary of
+course to withdraw from circulation as far as possible all copies of the
+original record, lest they should give the lie to the later 'Gospel';
+and this apparently was done very effectively--so effectively indeed
+that Professor Edward Browne (to whom the world owes so much on account
+of his labors in connection with Babism), after arduous search, came at
+one time to the conclusion that the original was no longer extant. Most
+fortunately, however, the well-known Comte de Gobineau had in the course
+of his studies on Eastern Religions acquired a copy of The point of Kaf;
+and this, after his death, was found among his literary treasures and
+identified (as was most fitting) by Professor Browne himself.
+
+Such in brief is the history of the early Babi Church (1)--a Church
+which has grown up and expanded greatly within the memory of many yet
+living. Much might be written about it, but the chief point at present
+is for us to note the well-verified and interesting example it gives of
+the rapid growth in Syria of a religious legend and the reasons which
+contributed to this growth--and to be warned how much more rapidly
+similar legends probably grew up in the same land in the middle of
+the First Century, A.D. The story of the Bab is also interesting to us
+because, while this mass of legend was formed around it, there is no
+possible doubt about the actual existence of a historical nucleus in the
+person of Mirza Ali Muhammad.
+
+ (1) For literature, see Edward G. Browne's Traveller's Narrative
+on the Episode of the Bab (1891), and his New History of the Bab
+translated from the Persian of the Tarikh-i-Jadid (Cambridge, 1893).
+Also Sermons and Essays by Herbert Rix (Williams and Norgate, 1907), pp.
+295-325, "The Persian Bab."
+
+
+On the whole, one is sometimes inclined to doubt whether any great
+movement ever makes itself felt in the world, without dating first from
+some powerful personality or group of personalities, ROUND which the
+idealizing and myth-making genius of mankind tends to crystallize. But
+one must not even here be too certain. Something of the Apostle Paul we
+know, and something of 'John' the Evangelist and writer of the Epistle
+I John; and that the 'Christian' doctrines dated largely from the
+preaching and teaching of these two we cannot doubt; but Paul never
+saw Jesus (except "in the Spirit"), nor does he ever mention the man
+personally, or any incident of his actual life (the "crucified Christ"
+being always an ideal figure); and 'John' who wrote the Gospel was
+certainly not the same as the disciple who "lay in Jesus' bosom"--though
+an intercalated verse, the last but one in the Gospel, asserts the
+identity. (1)
+
+ (1) It is obvious, in fact, that the WHOLE of the last chapter of
+St. John is a later insertion, and again that the two last verses of
+that chapter are later than the chapter itself!
+
+
+There may have been a historic Jesus--and if so, to get a reliable
+outline of his life would indeed be a treasure; but at present it would
+seem there is no sign of that. If the historicity of Jesus, in any
+degree, could be proved, it would give us reason for supposing--what I
+have personally always been inclined to believe--that there was also
+a historical nucleus for such personages as Osiris, Mithra, Krishna,
+Hercules, Apollo and the rest. The question, in fact, narrows itself
+down to this, Have there been in the course of human evolution certain,
+so to speak, NODAL points or periods at which the psychologic currents
+ran together and condensed themselves for a new start; and has each such
+node or point of condensation been marked by the appearance of an actual
+and heroic man (or woman) who supplied a necessary impetus for the
+new departure, and gave his name to the resulting movement? OR is
+it sufficient to suppose the automatic formation of such nodes or
+starting-points without the intervention of any special hero or genius,
+and to imagine that in each case the myth-making tendency of mankind
+CREATED a legendary and inspiring figure and worshiped the same for a
+long period afterwards as a god?
+
+As I have said before, this is a question which, interesting as it is,
+is not really very important. The main thing being that the prophetic
+and creative spirit of mankind HAS from time to time evolved those
+figures as idealizations of its "heart's desire" and placed a halo
+round their heads. The long procession of them becomes a REAL piece of
+History--the history of the evolution of the human heart, and of human
+consciousness. But with the psychology of the whole subject I shall deal
+in the next chapter.
+
+
+I may here, however, dwell for a moment on two other points which belong
+properly to this chapter. I have already mentioned the great reliance
+placed by the advocates of a unique 'revelation' on the high morality
+taught in the Gospels and the New Testament generally. There is no need
+of course to challenge that morality or to depreciate it unduly; but the
+argument assumes that it is so greatly superior to anything of the kind
+that had been taught before that we are compelled to suppose something
+like a revelation to explain its appearance--whereas of course anyone
+familiar with the writings of antiquity, among the Greeks or Romans
+or Egyptians or Hindus or later Jews, knows perfectly well that the
+reported sayings of Jesus and the Apostles may be paralleled abundantly
+from these sources. I have illustrated this already from the Sermon
+on the Mount. If anyone will glance at the Testament of the Twelve
+Patriarchs--a Jewish book composed about 120 B. C.--he will see that
+it is full of moral precepts, and especially precepts of love and
+forgiveness, so ardent and so noble that it hardly suffers in any way
+when compared with the New Testament teaching, and that consequently no
+special miracle is required to explain the appearance of the latter.
+
+The twelve Patriarchs in question are the twelve sons of Jacob, and the
+book consists of their supposed deathbed scenes, in which each patriarch
+in turn recites his own (more or less imaginary) life and deeds and
+gives pious counsel to his children and successors. It is composed in a
+fine and poetic style, and is full of lofty thought, remindful in scores
+of passages of the Gospels--words and all--the coincidences being too
+striking to be accidental. It evidently had a deep influence on the
+authors of the Gospels, as well as on St. Paul. It affirms a belief
+in the coming of a Messiah, and in salvation for the Gentiles. The
+following are some quotations from it: (1) Testament of Zebulun (p.
+116): "My children, I bid you keep the commands of the Lord, and show
+mercy to your neighbours, and have compassion towards all, not towards
+men only, but also towards beasts." Dan (p. 127): "Love the Lord through
+all your life, and one another with a true heart." Joseph (p. 173): "I
+was sick, and the Lord visited me; in prison, and my God showed favor
+unto me." Benjamin (p. 209): "For as the sun is not defiled by shining
+on dung and mire, but rather drieth up both and driveth away the evil
+smell, so also the pure mind, encompassed by the defilements of earth,
+rather cleanseth them and is not itself defiled."
+
+ (1) The references being to the Edition by R. H. Charles (1907).
+
+
+I think these quotations are sufficient to prove the high standard of
+this book, which was written in the Second Century B. C., and FROM which
+the New Testament authors copiously borrowed.
+
+The other point has to do with my statement at the beginning of this
+chapter that two of the main 'characteristics' of Christianity were its
+insistence on (a) a tendency towards renunciation of the world, and a
+consequent cultivation of a purely spiritual love, and (b) on a morality
+whose inspiration was a private sense of duty to God rather than a
+public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to society generally. I
+think, however, that the last-mentioned characteristic ought to
+be viewed in relation to a third, namely, (c) the extraordinarily
+DEMOCRATIC tendency of the new Religion. (1) Celsus (A.D. 200) jeered
+at the early Christians for their extreme democracy: "It is only
+the simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless--slaves and womenfolk and
+children--whom they wish to persuade (to join their churches) or CAN
+persuade"--"wool-dressers and cobblers and fullers, the most uneducated
+and vulgar persons," and "whosoever is a sinner, or unintelligent or
+a fool, in a word, whoever is god-forsaken ([gr kakodaimwn]), him the
+Kingdom of God will receive." (2) Thus Celsus, the accomplished, clever,
+philosophic and withal humorous critic, laughed at the new religionists,
+and prophesied their speedy extinction. Nevertheless he was mistaken.
+There is little doubt that just the inclusion of women and weaklings
+and outcasts did contribute LARGELY to the spread of Christianity (and
+Mithraism). It brought hope and a sense of human dignity to the despised
+and rejected of the earth. Of the immense numbers of lesser officials
+who carried on the vast organization of the Roman Empire, most perhaps,
+were taken from the ranks of the freedmen and quondam slaves, drawn from
+a great variety of races and already familiar with pagan cults of all
+kinds--Egyptian, Syrian, Chaldean, Iranian, and so forth. (3) This
+fact helped to give to Christianity--under the fine tolerance of the
+Empire--its democratic character and also its willingness to accept all.
+The rude and menial masses, who had hitherto been almost beneath the
+notice of Greek and Roman culture, flocked in; and though this was
+doubtless, as time went on, a source of weakness to the Church, and a
+cause of dissension and superstition, yet it was in the inevitable
+line of human evolution, and had a psychological basis which I must now
+endeavor to explain.
+
+ (1) It is important to note, however, that this same democratic
+tendency was very marked in Mithraism. "Il est certain," says Cumont,
+"qu'il a fait ses premieres conquetes dans les classes inferieures de
+la societe et c'est l'a un fait considerable; le mithracisme est reste
+longtemps la religion des humbles." Mysteres de Mithra, p. 68.
+
+ (2) See Glover's Conflict of Religions in the early Roman Empire,
+ch. viii.
+
+ (3) See Toutain, Cultes paiens, vol. ii, conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. THE MEANING OF IT ALL
+
+The general drift and meaning of the present book must now, I think,
+from many hints scattered in the course of it, be growing clear. But it
+will be well perhaps in this chapter, at the risk of some repetition,
+to bring the whole argument together. And the argument is that since the
+dawn of humanity on the earth--many hundreds of thousands or perhaps
+a million years ago--there has been a slow psychologic evolution, a
+gradual development or refinement of Consciousness, which at a certain
+stage has spontaneously given birth in the human race to the phenomena
+of religious belief and religious ritual--these phenomena (whether in
+the race at large or in any branch of it) always following, step by
+step, a certain order depending on the degrees of psychologic evolution
+concerned; and that it is this general fact which accounts for the
+strange similarities of belief and ritual which have been observed all
+over the world and in places far remote from each other, and which have
+been briefly noted in the preceding chapters.
+
+And the main stages of this psychologic evolution--those at any rate
+with which we are here concerned--are Three: the stage of Simple
+Consciousness, the stage of Self-consciousness, and a third Stage
+which for want of a better word we may term the stage of Universal
+Consciousness. Of course these three stages may at some future time be
+analyzed into lesser degrees, with useful result--but at present I only
+desire to draw attention to them in the rough, so to speak, to show that
+it is from them and from their passage one into another that there
+has flowed by a perfectly natural logic and concatenation the strange
+panorama of humanity's religious evolution--its superstitions and
+magic and sacrifices and dancings and ritual generally, and later its
+incantations and prophecies, and services of speech and verse, and
+paintings and forms of art and figures of the gods. A wonderful Panorama
+indeed, or poem of the Centuries, or, if you like, World-symphony with
+three great leading motives!
+
+
+And first we have the stage of Simple Consciousness. For hundreds of
+centuries (we cannot doubt) Man possessed a degree of consciousness not
+radically different from that of the higher Animals, though probably
+more quick and varied. He saw, he heard, he felt, he noted. He acted or
+reacted, quickly or slowly, in response to these impressions. But the
+consciousness of himSELF, as a being separate from his impressions, as
+separate from his surroundings, had not yet arisen or taken hold on him.
+He was an instinctive part, of Nature. And in this respect he was very
+near to the Animals. Self-consciousness in the animals, in a germinal
+form is there, no doubt, but EMBEDDED, so to speak, in the general
+world consciousness. It is on this account that the animals have such
+a marvellously acute perception and instinct, being embedded in Nature.
+And primitive Man had the same. Also we must, as I have said before,
+allow that man in that stage must have had the same sort of grace and
+perfection of form and movement as we admire in the (wild) animals now.
+It would be quite unreasonable to suppose that he, the crown in the same
+sense of creation, was from the beginning a lame and ill-made abortion.
+For a long period the tribes of men, like the tribes of the higher
+animals, must have been (on the whole, and allowing for occasional
+privations and sufferings and conflicts) well adapted to their
+surroundings and harmonious with the earth and with each other. There
+must have been a period resembling a Golden Age--some condition at
+any rate which, compared with subsequent miseries, merited the epithet
+'golden.'
+
+It was during this period apparently that the system of Totems arose.
+The tribes felt their relationship to their winged and fourfooted mates
+(including also other objects of nature) so deeply and intensely that
+they adopted the latter as their emblems. The pre-civilization Man
+fairly worshipped, the animals and was proud to be called after them.
+Of course we moderns find this strange. We, whose conceptions of these
+beautiful creatures are mostly derived from a broken-down cab-horse,
+or a melancholy milk-rummaged cow in a sooty field, or a diseased and
+despondent lion or eagle at the Zoo, have never even seen or loved them
+and have only wondered with our true commercial instinct what profit we
+could extract from them. But they, the primitives, loved and admired
+the animals; they domesticated many of them by the force of a natural
+friendship, (1) and accorded them a kind of divinity. This was the age
+of tribal solidarity and of a latent sense of solidarity with Nature.
+And the point of it all is (with regard to the subject we have in hand)
+that this was also the age from which by a natural evolution the sense
+of Religion came to mankind. If Religion in man is the sense of ties
+binding his inner self to the powers of the universe around him, then it
+is evident I think that primitive man as I have described him possessed
+the REALITY of this sense--though so far buried and subconscious that
+he was hardly aware of it. It was only later, and with the coming of
+the Second Stage, that this sense began to rise distinctly into
+consciousness.
+
+ (1) See ch. iv. Tylor in his Primitive Culture (vol. i, p. 460,
+edn. 1903) says: "The sense of an absolute psychical distinction between
+man and beast, so prevalent in the civilized world, is hardly to be
+found among the lower races."
+
+
+Let us pass then to the Second Stage. There is a moment in the evolution
+of a child--somewhere perhaps about the age of three (1)--when the
+simple almost animal-like consciousness of the babe is troubled by a new
+element--SELF-consciousness. The change is so marked, so definite, that
+(in the depth of the infant's eyes) you can almost SEE it take place. So
+in the evolution of the human race there has been a period--also marked
+and definite, though extending intermittent over a vast interval
+of time--when on men in general there dawned the consciousness of
+THEMSELVES, of their own thoughts and actions. The old simple acceptance
+of sensations and experiences gave place to REFLECTION. The question
+arose: "How do these sensations and experiences affect ME? What can _I_
+do to modify them, to encourage the pleasurable, to avoid or inhibit the
+painful, and so on?" From that moment a new motive was added to life.
+The mind revolved round a new centre. It began to spin like a little
+eddy round its own axis. It studied ITSELF first and became deeply
+concerned about its own pleasures and pains, losing touch the while with
+the larger life which once dominated it--the life of Nature, the life of
+the Tribe. The old unity of the spirit, the old solidarity, were broken
+up.
+
+ (1) See Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness (Philadelphia, 1901), pp. 1
+and 39; also W. McDougall's Social Psychology (1908), p. 146--where the
+same age is tentatively suggested.
+
+
+I have touched on this subject before, but it is so important that the
+reader must excuse repetition. There came an inevitable severance, an
+inevitable period of strife. The magic mirror of the soul, reflecting
+nature as heretofore in calm and simple grace, was suddenly cracked
+across. The new self-conscious man (not all at once but gradually)
+became alienated from his tribe. He lapsed into strife with his fellows.
+Ambition, vanity, greed, the love of domination, the desire for property
+and possessions, set in. The influences of fellowship and solidarity
+grew feebler. He became alienated from his great Mother. His instincts
+were less and less sure--and that in proportion as brain-activity and
+self-regarding calculation took their place. Love and mutual help were
+less compelling in proportion as the demands of self-interest grew
+louder and more insistent. Ultimately the crisis came. Cain murdered
+his brother and became an outcast. The Garden of Eden and the Golden Age
+closed their gates behind him. He entered upon a period of suffering--a
+period of labor and toil and sorrow such as he had never before
+known, and such as the animals certainly have never known. And in that
+distressful state, in that doleful valley of his long pilgrimage, he
+still remains to-day.
+
+Thus has the canker of self-consciousness done its work. It would be
+foolish and useless to rail against the process, or to blame any one for
+it. It had to be. Through this dismal vale of self-seeking mankind had
+to pass--if only in order at last to find the True Self which was (and
+still remains) its goal. The pilgrimage will not last for ever. Indeed
+there are signs that the recent Great War and the following Events mark
+the lowest point of descent and the beginning of the human soul's return
+to sanity and ascent towards the heavenly Kingdom. No doubt Man will
+arrive again SOME day at the grace, composure and leisurely beauty of
+life which the animals realized long ago, though he seems a precious
+long time about it; and when all this nightmare of Greed and Vanity and
+Self-conceit and Cruelty and Lust of oppression and domination, which
+marks the present period, is past--and it WILL pass--then Humanity will
+come again to its Golden Age and to that Paradise of redemption and
+peace which has for so long been prophesied.
+
+But we are dealing with the origins of Religion; and what I want
+the reader to see is that it was just this breaking up of the old
+psychologic unity and continuity of man with his surroundings which led
+to the whole panorama of the rituals and creeds. Man, centering round
+himself, necessarily became an exile from the great Whole. He committed
+the sin (if it was a sin) of Separation. Anyhow Nemesis was swift. The
+sense of loneliness and the sense of guilt came on him. The realization
+of himself as a separate conscious being necessarily led to his
+attributing a similar consciousness of some kind to the great Life
+around him. Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Whatever he may
+have felt before, it became clear to him now that beings more or less
+like himself--though doubtless vaster and more powerful--moved behind
+the veil of the visible world. From that moment the belief in Magic and
+Demons and Gods arose or slowly developed itself; and in the midst of
+this turmoil of perilous and conflicting powers, he perceived himself an
+alien and an exile, stricken with Fear, stricken with the sense of Sin.
+If before, he had experienced fear--in the kind of automatic way of
+self-preservation in which the animals feel it--he now, with fevered
+self-regard and excited imagination, experienced it in double or treble
+degree. And if, before, he had been aware that fortune and chance were
+not always friendly and propitious to his designs, he now perceived
+or thought he perceived in every adverse happening the deliberate
+persecution of the powers, and an accusation of guilt directed against
+him for some neglect or deficiency in his relation to them. Hence by
+a perfectly logical and natural sequence there arose the belief in
+other-world or supernatural powers, whether purely fortuitous and
+magical or more distinctly rational and personal; there arose the sense
+of Sin, or of offence against these powers; there arose a complex ritual
+of Expiation--whether by personal sacrifice and suffering or by
+the sacrifice of victims. There arose too a whole catalogue of
+ceremonies--ceremonies of Initiation, by which the novice should learn
+to keep within the good grace of the Powers, and under the blessing of
+his Tribe and the protection of its Totem; ceremonies of Eucharistic
+meals which should restore the lost sanctity of the common life and
+remove the sense of guilt and isolation; ceremonies of Marriage and
+rules and rites of sex-connection, fitted to curb the terrific and
+demonic violence of passions which else indeed might easily rend the
+community asunder. And so on. It is easy to see that granted an early
+stage of simple unreflecting nature-consciousness, and granting
+this broken into and, after a time, shattered by the arrival of
+SELF-consciousness there would necessarily follow in spontaneous yet
+logical order a whole series of religious institutions and beliefs,
+which phantasmal and unreal as they may appear to us, were by no
+means unreal to our ancestors. It is easy also to see that as the
+psychological process was necessarily of similar general character in
+every branch of the human race and all over the world, so the religious
+evolutions--the creeds and rituals--took on much the same complexion
+everywhere; and, though they differed in details according to climate
+and other influences, ran on such remarkably parallel lines as we have
+noted.
+
+Finally, to make the whole matter clear, let me repeat that this event,
+the inbreak of Self-consciousness, took place, or BEGAN to take place,
+an enormous time ago, perhaps in the beginning of the Neolithic Age.
+I dwell on the word "began" because I think it is probable that in its
+beginnings, and for a long period after, this newborn consciousness had
+an infantile and very innocent character, quite different from its later
+and more aggressive forms--just as we see self-consciousness in a little
+child has a charm and a grace which it loses later in a boastful
+or grasping boyhood and manhood. So we may understand that though
+self-consciousness may have begun to appear in the human race at this
+very early time (and more or less contemporaneously with the invention
+of very rude tools and unformed language), there probably did elapse
+a very long period--perhaps the whole of the Neolithic Age--before the
+evils of this second stage of human evolution came to a head. Max Muller
+has pointed out that among the words which are common to the various
+branches of Aryan language, and which therefore belong to the very early
+period before the separation of these branches, there are not found
+the words denoting war and conflict and the weapons and instruments of
+strife--a fact which suggests a long continuance of peaceful habit among
+mankind AFTER the first formation and use of language.
+
+That the birth of language and the birth of self-consciousness were
+APPROXIMATELY simultaneous is a probable theory, and one favored by many
+thinkers; (1) but the slow beginnings of both must have been so
+very protracted that it is perhaps useless to attempt any very exact
+determination. Late researches seem to show that language began in what
+might be called TRIBAL expressions of mood and feeling (holophrases like
+"go-hunting-kill-bear") without reference to individual personalities
+and relationships; and that it was only at a later stage that words like
+"I" and "Thou" came into use, and the holophrases broke up into "parts
+of speech" and took on a definite grammatical structure. (2) If
+true, these facts point clearly to a long foreground of rude communal
+language, something like though greatly superior to that of the animals,
+preceding or preparing the evolution of Self-consciousness proper, in
+the forms of "I" and "Thou" and the grammar of personal actions and
+relations. "They show that the plural and all other forms of number in
+grammar arise not by multiplication of an original 'I,' but by selection
+and gradual EXCLUSION from an original collective 'we.'" (3) According
+to this view the birth of self-consciousness in the human family, or
+in any particular race or section of the human family, must have been
+equally slow and hesitating; and it would be easy to imagine, as just
+said, that there may have been a very long and 'golden' period at its
+beginning, before the new consciousness took on its maturer and harsher
+forms.
+
+ (1) Dr. Bucke (Cosmic Consciousness) insists on their
+simultaneity, but places both events excessively far back, as we
+should think, i.e. 200,000 or 300,000 years ago. Possibly he does not
+differentiate sufficiently between the rude language of the holophrase
+and the much later growth of formed and grammatical speech.
+
+ (2) See A. E. Crawley's Idea of the Soul, ch. ii; Jane Harrison's
+Themis, pp. 473-5; and E. J. Payne's History of the New World called
+America, vol. ii, pp. 115 sq., where the beginning of self-consciousness
+is associated with the break-up of the holophrase.
+
+ (3) Themis, p. 471.
+
+
+All estimates of the Time involved in these evolutions of early man are
+notoriously most divergent and most difficult to be sure of; but if we
+take 500,000 years ago for the first appearance of veritable Man (homo
+primigenius), (2) and (following Professor W. J. Sollas) (3) 30,000
+or 40,000 years ago for the first tool-using men (homo sapiens) of
+the Chellean Age (palaeolithic), 15,000 for the rock-paintings and
+inscriptions of the Aurignacian and Magdalenian peoples, and 5,000 years
+ago for the first actual historical records that have come down to us,
+we may perhaps get something like a proportion between the different
+periods. That is to say, half a million years for the purely animal man
+in his different forms and grades of evolution. Then somewhere
+towards the end of palaeolithic or commencement of neolithic times
+Self-consciousness dimly beginning and, after some 10,000 years of slow
+germination and pre-historic culture, culminating in the actual historic
+period and the dawn of civilization 40 or 50 centuries ago, and to-day
+(we hope), reaching the climax which precedes or foretells its abatement
+and transformation.
+
+ (2) Though Dr. Arthur Keith, Ancient Types of Man (1911), pp. 93
+and 102, puts the figure at more like a million.
+
+ (3) See Ancient Hunters (1915); also Hastings's Encycl. art.
+"Ethnology"; and Havelock Ellis, "The Origin of War," in The Philosophy
+of Conflict and other Essays.
+
+
+No doubt many geologists and anthropologists would favor periods greatly
+LONGER than those here mentioned; but possibly there would be some
+agreement as to the RATIO to each other of the times concerned: that
+is, the said authorities would probably allow for a VERY long animal-man
+(1)-period corresponding to the first stage; for a much shorter
+aggressively 'self conscious' period, corresponding to the Second
+Stage--perhaps lasting only one thirtieth or fiftieth of the time of
+the first period; and then--if they looked forward at all to a third
+stage--would be inclined for obvious reasons to attribute to that again
+a very extended duration.
+
+ (1) I use the phrase 'animal-man' here, not with any flavor of
+contempt or reprobation, as the dear Victorians would have used it, but
+with a sense of genuine respect and admiration such as one feels towards
+the animals themselves.
+
+
+However, all this is very speculative. To return to the difficulty about
+Language and the consideration of those early times when words adequate
+to the expression of religious or magical ideas simply did not exist,
+it is clear that the only available, or at any rate the CHIEF means
+of expression, in those times, must have consisted in gestures, in
+attitudes, in ceremonial ACTIONS--in a more or less elaborate ritual,
+in fact. (1) Such ideas as Adoration, Thanksgiving, confession of Guilt,
+placation of Wrath, Expiation, Sacrifice, Celebration of Community,
+sacramental Atonement, and a score of others could at that time be
+expressed by appropriate rites--and as a matter of fact are often
+so expressed even now--MORE readily and directly than by language.
+'Dancing'--when that word came to be invented--did not mean a mere
+flinging about of the limbs in recreation, but any expressive movements
+of the body which might be used to convey the feelings of the dancer or
+of the audience whom he represented. And so the 'religious dance' became
+a most important part of ritual.
+
+ (1) See ch. ix and xi.
+
+
+So much for the second stage of Consciousness. Let us now pass on to
+the Third Stage. It is evident that the process of disruption and
+dissolution--disruption both of the human mind, and of society round
+about it, due to the action of the Second Stage--could not go on
+indefinitely. There are hundreds of thousands of people at the present
+moment who are dying of mental or bodily disease--their nervous
+systems broken down by troubles connected with excessive
+self-consciousness--selfish fears and worries and restlessness. Society
+at large is perishing both in industry and in warfare through the
+domination in its organism of the self-motives of greed and vanity and
+ambition. This cannot go on for ever. Things must either continue in
+the same strain, in which case it is evident that we are approaching
+a crisis of utter dissolution, OR a new element must enter in, a new
+inspiration of life, and we (as individuals) and the society of which
+we form a part, must make a fresh start. What is that new and necessary
+element of regeneration?
+
+It is evident that it must be a new birth--the entry into a further
+stage of consciousness which must supersede the present one. Through
+some such crisis as we have spoken of, through the extreme of
+suffering, the mind of Man, AS AT PRESENT CONSTITUTED, has to die. (1)
+Self-consciousness has to die, and be buried, and rise again in a new
+form. Probably nothing but the extreme of suffering can bring this
+about. (2) And what is this new form in which consciousness has to
+rearise? Obviously, since the miseries of the world during countless
+centuries have dated from that fatal attempt to make the little personal
+SELF the centre of effort and activity, and since that attempt has
+inevitably led to disunity and discord and death, both within the mind
+itself and within the body of society, there is nothing left but
+the return to a Consciousness which shall have Unity as its
+foundation-principle, and which shall proceed from the direct SENSE
+AND PERCEPTION of such an unity throughout creation. The simple mind of
+Early Man and the Animals was of that character--a consciousness, so
+to speak, continuous through nature, and though running to points of
+illumination and foci of special activity in individuals, yet at no
+point essentially broken or imprisoned in separate compartments. (And
+it is this CONTINUITY of the primitive mind which enables us, as I have
+already explained, to understand the mysterious workings of instinct
+and intuition.) To some such unity-consciousness we have to return; but
+clearly it will be--it is not--of the simple inchoate character of the
+First Stage, for it has been enriched, deepened, and greatly extended
+by the experience of the Second Stage. It is in fact, a new order of
+mentality--the consciousness of the Third Stage.
+
+ (1) "The mind must be restrained in the heart till it comes to an
+end," says the Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad.
+
+ (2) One may remember in this connection the tapas of the Hindu
+yogi, or the ordeals of initiates into the pagan Mysteries generally.
+
+
+In order to understand the operation and qualities of this Third
+Consciousness, it may be of assistance just now to consider in what more
+or less rudimentary way or ways it figured in the pagan rituals and in
+Christianity. We have seen the rude Siberyaks in North-Eastern Asia or
+the 'Grizzly' tribes of North American Indians in the neighborhood of
+Mount Shasta paying their respects and adoration to a captive bear--at
+once the food-animal, and the divinity of the Tribe. A tribesman had
+slain a bear--and, be it said, had slain it not in a public hunt with
+all due ceremonies observed, but privately for his own satisfaction. He
+had committed, therefore, a sin theoretically unpardonable; for had he
+not--to gratify his personal desire for food--levelled a blow at the
+guardian spirit of the Tribe? Had he not alienated himself from his
+fellows by destroying its very symbol? There was only one way by which
+he could regain the fellowship of his companions. He must make amends by
+some public sacrifice, and instead of retaining the flesh of the animal
+for himself he must share it with the whole tribe (or clan) in a common
+feast, while at the same time, tensest prayers and thanks are offered to
+the animal for the gift of his body for food. The Magic formula demanded
+nothing less than this--else dread disaster would fall upon the man who
+sinned, and upon the whole brotherhood. Here, and in a hundred similar
+rites, we see the three phases of tribal psychology--the first, in which
+the individual member simply remains within the compass of the tribal
+mind, and only acts in harmony with it; the second, in which the
+individual steps outside and to gratify his personal SELF performs an
+action which alienates him from his fellows; and the third, in which,
+to make amends and to prove his sincerity, he submits to some sacrifice,
+and by a common feast or some such ceremony is received back again
+into the unity of the fellowship. The body of the animal-divinity is
+consumed, and the latter becomes, both in the spirit and in the flesh,
+the Savior of the tribe.
+
+In course of time, when the Totem or Guardian-spirit is no longer merely
+an Animal, or animal-headed Genius, but a quite human-formed Divinity,
+still the same general outline of ideas is preserved--only with gathered
+intensity owing to the specially human interest of the drama. The
+Divinity who gives his life for his flock is no longer just an ordinary
+Bull or Lamb, but Adonis or Osiris or Dionysus or Jesus. He is betrayed
+by one of his own followers, and suffers death, but rises again
+redeeming all with himself in the one fellowship; and the corn and the
+wine and the wild flesh which were his body, and which he gave for the
+sustenance of mankind, are consumed in a holy supper of reconciliation.
+It is always the return to unity which is the ritual of Salvation, and
+of which the symbol is the Eucharist--the second birth, the formation of
+"a new creature when old things are passed away." For "Except a man be
+born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God"; and "the first man is of
+the earth, earthly, but the second man is the Lord from heaven." Like
+a strange refrain, and from centuries before our era, comes down this
+belief in a god who is imprisoned in each man, and whose liberation is a
+new birth and the beginning of a new creature: "Rejoice, ye initiates
+in the mystery of the liberated god"--rejoice in the thought of the hero
+who died as a mortal in the coffin, but rises again as Lord of all!
+
+Who then was this "Christos" for whom the world was waiting three
+centuries before our era (and indeed centuries before that)? Who was
+this "thrice Savior" whom the Greek Gnostics acclaimed? What was the
+meaning of that "coming of the Son of Man" whom Daniel beheld in vision
+among the clouds of heaven? or of the "perfect man" who, Paul declared,
+should deliver us from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
+liberty of the children of God? What was this salvation which time after
+time and times again the pagan deities promised to their devotees, and
+which the Eleusinian and other Mysteries represented in their religious
+dramas with such convincing enthusiasm that even Pindar could say "Happy
+is he who has seen them (the Mysteries) before he goes beneath the
+hollow earth: that man knows the true end of life and its source
+divine"; and concerning which Sophocles and Aeschylus were equally
+enthusiastic? (1)
+
+ (1) See Farnell's Cults of the Greek States, vol. iii, p. 194;
+also The Mysteries, Pagan and Christian, by S. Cheetham, D.D. (London,
+1897).
+
+
+Can we doubt, in the light of all that we have already said, what
+the answer to these questions is? As with the first blossoming of
+self-consciousness in the human mind came the dawn of an immense cycle
+of experience--a cycle indeed of exile from Eden, of suffering and toil
+and blind wanderings in the wilderness, yet a cycle absolutely necessary
+and unavoidable--so now the redemption, the return, the restoration has
+to come through another forward step, in the same domain. Abandoning
+the quest and the glorification of the separate isolated self we have to
+return to the cosmic universal life. It is the blossoming indeed of this
+'new' life in the deeps of our minds which is salvation, and which
+all the expressions which I have just cited have indicated. It is
+this presence which all down the ages has been hailed as Savior and
+Liberator: the daybreak of a consciousness so much vaster, so much more
+glorious, than all that has gone before that the little candle of the
+local self is swallowed up in its rays. It is the return home, the
+return into direct touch with Nature and Man--the liberation from the
+long exile of separation, from the painful sense of isolation and
+the odious nightmare of guilt and 'sin.' Can we doubt that this new
+birth--this third stage of consciousness, if we like to call it so--has
+to come, that it is indeed not merely a pious hope or a tentative
+theory, but a FACT testified to already by a cloud of witnesses in the
+past--witnesses shining in their own easily recognizable and authentic
+light, yet for the most part isolated from each other among the arid and
+unfruitful wastes of Civilization, like glow-worms in the dry grass of a
+summer night?
+
+Since the first dim evolution of human self-consciousness an immense
+period, as we have said--perhaps 30,000 years, perhaps even more--has
+elapsed. Now, in the present day this period is reaching its
+culmination, and though it will not terminate immediately, its end is,
+so to speak, in sight. Meanwhile, during all the historical age behind
+us--say for the last 4,000 or 5,000 years--evidence has been coming in
+(partly in the religious rites recorded, partly in oracles, poems and
+prophetic literature) of the onset of this further illumination--"the
+light which never was on sea or land"--and the cloud of witnesses,
+scattered at first, has in these later centuries become so evident and
+so notable that we are tempted to believe in or to anticipate a great
+and general new birth, as now not so very far off. (1) (We should, h
+ that many a time already in the history the Millennium has been
+prophesied, and yet not arrived punctual to date, and to take to
+ourselves the words of 'Peter,' who somewhat grievously disappointed
+at the long-delayed second coming of the Lord Jesus in the clouds of
+heaven, wrote in his second Epistle: "There shall come in the last
+days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the
+promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things
+continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (2))
+
+ (1) For an amplification of all this theme, see Dr. Bucke's
+remarkable and epoch-making book, Cosmic Consciousness (first published
+at Philadelphia, 1901).
+
+ (2) 2 Peter iii. 4; written probably about A.D. 150.
+
+
+I say that all through the historical age behind us there has been
+evidence--even though scattered--of salvation and the return of the
+Cosmic life. Man has never been so completely submerged in the bitter
+sea of self-centredness but what he has occasionally been able to dash
+the spray from his eyes and glimpse the sun and the glorious light of
+heaven. From how far back we cannot say, but from an immense antiquity
+come the beautiful myths which indicate this.
+
+ Cinderella, the cinder-maiden, sits unbeknown in her earthly.
+     hutch;
+ Gibed and jeered at she bewails her lonely fate;
+ Nevertheless youngest-born she surpasses her sisters and endues
+     a garment of the sun and stars;
+ From a tiny spark she ascends and irradiates the universe,
+     and is wedded to the prince of heaven.
+
+
+How lovely this vision of the little maiden sitting unbeknown close to
+the Hearth-fire of the universe--herself indeed just a little spark from
+it; despised and rejected; rejected by the world, despised by her two
+elder sisters (the body and the intellect); yet she, the soul, though
+latest-born, by far the most beautiful of the three. And of the Prince
+of Love who redeems and sets her free; and of her wedding garment the
+glory and beauty of all nature and of the heavens! The parables of
+Jesus are charming in their way, but they hardly reach this height of
+inspiration.
+
+Or the world-old myth of Eros and Psyche. How strange that here again
+there are three sisters (the three stages of human evolution), and the
+latest-born the most beautiful of the three, and the jealousies and
+persecutions heaped on the youngest by the others, and especially by
+Aphrodite the goddess of mere sensual charm. And again the coming of the
+unknown, the unseen Lover, on whom it is not permitted for mortals to
+look; and the long, long tests and sufferings and trials which Psyche
+has to undergo before Eros may really take her to his arms and translate
+her to the heights of heaven. Can we not imagine how when these things
+were represented in the Mysteries the world flocked to see them, and the
+poets indeed said, "Happy are they that see and seeing can understand?"
+Can we not understand how it was that the Amphictyonic decree of the
+second century B.C. spoke of these same Mysteries as enforcing the
+lesson that "the greatest of human blessings is fellowship and mutual
+trust"?
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
+
+Thus we come to a thing which we must not pass over, because it throws
+great light on the meaning and interpretation of all these rites and
+ceremonies of the great World-religion. I mean the subject of the
+Ancient Mysteries. And to this I will give a few pages.
+
+These Mysteries were probably survivals of the oldest religious rites
+of the Greek races, and in their earlier forms consisted not so much
+in worship of the gods of Heaven as of the divinities of Earth, and
+of Nature and Death. Crude, no doubt, at first, they gradually became
+(especially in their Eleusinian form) more refined and philosophical;
+the rites were gradually thrown open, on certain conditions, not only
+to men generally, but also to women, and even to slaves; and in the end
+they influenced Christianity deeply. (1)
+
+ (1) See Edwin Hatch, D.D., The Influence of Greek Ideas and
+Usages on the Christian Church (London, 1890), pp. 283-5.
+
+
+There were apparently three forms of teaching made use of in these
+rites: these were [gr legomena], things SAID; [gr deiknumena], things
+SHOWN; and [gr drwmena], things PERFORMED or ACTED. (1) I have given
+already some instances of things said-texts whispered for consolation in
+the neophyte's car, and so forth; of the THIRD group, things enacted,
+we have a fair amount of evidence. There were ritual dramas or
+passion-plays, of which an important one dealt with the descent of Kore
+or Proserpine into the underworld, as in the Eleusinian representations,
+(2) and her redemption and restoration to the upper world in Spring;
+another with the sufferings of Psyche and her rescue by Eros, as
+described by Apuleius (3)--himself an initiate in the cult of Isis.
+There is a parody by Lucian, which tells of the birth of Apollo, the
+marriage of Coronis, and the coming of Aesculapius as Savior; there was
+the dying and rising again of Dionysus (chief divinity of the Orphic
+cult); and sometimes the mystery of the birth of Dionysus as a holy
+child. (4) There was, every year at Eleusis, a solemn and lengthy
+procession or pilgrimage made, symbolic of the long pilgrimage of the
+human soul, its sufferings and deliverance.
+
+ (1) Cheetham, op. cit., pp. 49-61 sq.
+
+ (2) See Farnell, op. cit., iii. 158 sq.
+
+ (3) See The Golden Ass.
+
+ (4) Farnell, ii, 177.
+
+
+"Almost always," says Dr. Cheetham, "the suffering of a god--suffering
+followed by triumph--seems to have been the subject of the sacred
+drama." Then occasionally to the Neophytes, after taking part in the
+pilgrimage, and when their minds had been prepared by an ordeal of
+darkness and fatigue and terrors, was accorded a revelation of Paradise,
+and even a vision of Transfiguration--the form of the Hierophant
+himself, or teacher of the Mysteries, being seen half-lost in a blaze
+of light. (1) Finally, there was the eating of food and drinking
+of barley-drink from the sacred chest (2)--a kind of Communion or
+Eucharist.
+
+ (1) Ibid., 179 sq.
+
+ (2) Ibid., 186. Sacred chests, in which holy things were kept,
+figure frequently in early rites and legends--as in the case of the ark
+of the Jewish tabernacle, the ark or box carried in celebrations of the
+mysteries of Bacchus (Theocritus, Idyll xxvi), the legend of Pandora's
+box which contained the seeds of all good and evil, the ark of Noah
+which saved all living creatures from the flood, the Argo of the
+argonauts, the moonshaped boat in which Isis floating over the waters
+gathered together the severed limbs of Osiris, and so brought about his
+resurrection, and the many chests or coffins out of which the various
+gods (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Jesus), having been laid there in death,
+rose again for the redemption of the world. They all evidently refer to
+the mystic womb of Nature and of Woman, and are symbols of salvation and
+redemption (For a full discussion of this subject, see The Great Law of
+religious origins, by W. Williamson, ch. iv.)
+
+
+Apuleius in The Golden Ass gives an interesting account of his induction
+into the mysteries of Isis: how, bidding farewell one evening to the
+general congregation outside, and clothed in a new linen garment, he was
+handed by the priest into the inner recesses of the temple itself; how
+he "approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold
+of Proserpine (the Underworld), returned therefrom, being borne through
+all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant
+light: and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath and the Gods
+above, and stood near and worshipped them." During the night things
+happened which must not be disclosed; but in the morning he came forth
+"consecrated by being dressed in twelve stoles painted with the figures
+of animals." (1) He ascended a pulpit in the midst of the Temple,
+carrying in his right hand a burning torch, while a chaplet encircled
+his head, from which palm-leaves projected like rays of light. "Thus
+arrayed like the Sun, and placed so as to resemble a statue, on a
+sudden the curtains being drawn aside, I was exposed to the gaze of the
+multitude. After this I celebrated the most joyful day of my initiation,
+as my natal day (day of the New Birth) and there was a joyous banquet
+and mirthful conversation."
+
+ (1) An allusion no doubt to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the
+pathway of the Sun, as well as to the practice of the ancient priests of
+wearing the skins of totem-animals in sign of their divinity.
+
+
+One can hardly refuse to recognize in this account the description of
+some kind of ceremony which was supposed to seal the illumination of a
+man and his new birth into divinity--the animal origin, the circling of
+all experience, the terrors of death, and the resurrection in the
+form of the Sun, the symbol of all light and life. The very word
+"illumination" carries the ideas of light and a new birth with it.
+Reitzenstein in his very interesting book on the Greek Mysteries (1)
+speaks over and over again of the illumination ([gr fwtismos]) which
+was held to attend Initiation and Salvation. The doctrine of Salvation
+indeed ([gr swthria]) was, as we have already seen, rife and widely
+current in the Second Century B. C. It represented a real experience,
+and the man who shared this experience became a [gr qeios] [gr anqrwpos]
+or divine man. (2) In the Orphic Tablets the phrase "I am a child of
+earth and the starry heaven, but my race is of heaven (alone)" occurs
+more than once. In one of the longest of them the dead man is instructed
+"after he has passed the waters (of Lethe) where the white Cypress and
+the House of Hades are" to address these very words to the guardians
+of the Lake of Memory while he asks for a drink of cold water from that
+Lake. In another the dead person himself is thus addressed: "Hail, thou
+who hast endured the Suffering, such as indeed thou hadst never suffered
+before; thou hast become god from man!" (3) Ecstacy was the acme of the
+religious life; and, what is especially interesting to us, Salvation or
+the divine nature was open to all men--to all, that is, who should go
+through the necessary stages of preparation for it. (4)
+
+ (1) Die hellenistischen Mysterien-Religionen, by R. Reitzenstein,
+Leipzig, 1910.
+
+ (2) Reitzenstein, p. 12.
+
+ (3) These Tablets (so-called) are instructions to the dead as to
+their passage into the other world, and have been found in the tombs, in
+Italy and elsewhere, inscribed on very thin gold plates and buried with
+the departed. See Manual of Greek Antiquities by Percy Gardner and F.
+B. Jerome (1896); also Prolegomena to Greek Religion by Jane E. Harrison
+(1908).
+
+ (4) Reitzenstein, pp. 15 and 18; also S. J. Case, Evolution of
+Early Christianity, p. 301.
+
+
+Reitzenstein contends (p. 26) that in the Mysteries, transfiguration
+([gr metamorfwsis]), salvation ([gr swthria]), and new birth ([gr
+paliggenesia]) were often conjoined. He says (p. 31), that in the
+Egyptian Osiris-cult, the Initiate acquires a nature "equal to God"
+([gr isoqeos]), the very same expression as that used of Christ Jesus in
+Philippians ii. 6; he mentions Apollonius of Tyana and Sergius Paulus
+as instances of men who by their contemporaries were considered to have
+attained this nature; and he quotes Akhnaton (Pharaoh of Egypt in 1375
+B.C.) as having said, "Thou art in my heart; none other knows Thee, save
+thy son Akhnaton; Thou hast initiated him into thy wisdom and into thy
+power." He also quotes the words of Hermes (Trismegistus)--"Come unto
+Me, even as children to their mother's bosom: Thou art I, and I am Thou;
+what is thine is mine, and what is mine is thine; for indeed I am thine
+image ([gr eidwlon])," and refers to the dialogue between Hermes and
+Tat, in which they speak of the great and mystic New Birth and Union
+with the All--with all Elements, Plants and Animals, Time and Space.
+
+"The Mysteries," says Dr. Cheetham very candidly, "influenced
+Christianity considerably and modified it in some important respects";
+and Dr. Hatch, as we have seen, not only supports this general view, but
+follows it out in detail. (1) He points out that the membership of the
+Mystery-societies was very numerous in the earliest times, A.D.; that
+their general aims were good, including a sense of true religion, decent
+life, and brotherhood; that cleanness from crime and confession were
+demanded from the neophyte; that confession was followed by baptism
+([gr kaqarsis]) and THAT by sacrifice; that the term [gr fwtismos]
+(illumination) was adopted by the Christian Church as the name for the
+new birth of baptism; that the Christian usage of placing a seal on the
+forehead came from the same source; that baptism itself after a time
+was called a mystery ([gr musihriou]); that the sacred cakes and
+barley-drink of the Mysteries became the milk and honey and bread
+and wine of the first Christian Eucharists, and that the occasional
+sacrifice of a lamb on the Christian altar ("whose mention is often
+suppressed") probably originated in the same way. Indeed, the conception
+of the communion-table AS an altar and many other points of ritual
+gradually established themselves from these sources as time went on. (2)
+It is hardly necessary to say more in proof of the extent to which
+in these ancient representations "things said" and "scenes enacted"
+forestalled the doctrines and ceremonials of Christianity.
+
+ (1) See Hatch, op. cit., pp. 290 sq.
+
+ (2) See Dionysus Areop. (end of fifth century), who describes the
+Christian rites generally in Mystery language (Hatch, 296).
+
+
+"But what of the second group above-mentioned, the "things SHOWN"? It
+is not so easy naturally to get exact information concerning these, but
+they seem to have been specially holy objects, probably things connected
+with very ancient rituals in the past--such as sacred stones, old and
+rude images of the gods, magic nature-symbols, like that half-disclosed
+ear of corn above-mentioned (Ch. V.). "In the Temple of Isis at Philae,"
+says Dr. Cheetham, "the dead body of Osiris is represented with stalks
+of corn springing from it, which a priest waters from a vessel. An
+inscription says: 'This is the form of him whom we may not name, Osiris
+of the Mysteries who sprang from the returning waters' (the Nile)."
+Above all, no doubt, there were images of the phallus and the vulva, the
+great symbols of human fertility. We have seen (Ch. XII) that the lingam
+and the yoni are, even down to to-day, commonly retained and honored as
+holy objects in the S. Indian Temples, and anointed with oil (some
+of them) for a very practical reason. Sir J. G. Frazer, in his lately
+published volumes on The Folk-lore of the Old Testament, has a chapter
+(in vol. ii) on the very numerous sacred stones of various shapes and
+sizes found or spoken of in Palestine and other parts of the world.
+Though uncertain as to the meaning of these stones he mentions that they
+are "frequently, though not always, UPRIGHT." Anointing them with oil,
+he assures us, "is a widespread practice, sometimes by women who wish
+to obtain children." And he concludes the chapter by saying: "The holy
+stone at Bethel was probably one of those massive standing stones or
+rough pillars which the Hebrews called masseboth, and which, as we
+have seen, were regular adjuncts of Canaanite and early Israelitish
+sanctuaries." We have already mentioned the pillars Jachin and Boaz
+which stood before the Temple of Solomon, and which had an acknowledged
+sexual significance; and so it seems probable that a great number of
+these holy stones had a similar meaning. (1) Following this clue it
+would appear likely that the lingam thus anointed and worshipped in the
+Temples of India and elsewhere IS the original [gr cristos] (2) adored
+by the human race from the very beginning, and that at a later time,
+when the Priest and the King, as objects of worship, took the place of
+the Lingam, THEY also were anointed with the chrism of fertility.
+That the exhibition of these emblems should be part of the original
+'Mystery'-rituals was perfectly natural--especially because, as we have
+explained already (3) old customs often continued on in a quite naive
+fashion in the rituals, when they had come to be thought indecent or
+improper by a later public opinion; and (we may say) was perfectly
+in order, because there is plenty of evidence to show that in SAVAGE
+initiations, of which the Mysteries were the linear descendants, all
+these things WERE explained to the novices, and their use actually
+taught. (4) No doubt also there were some representations or dramatic
+incidents of a fairly coarse character, as deriving from these ancient
+sources. (5) It is, however, quaint to observe how the mere mention of
+such things has caused an almost hysterical commotion among the critics
+of the Mysteries--from the day of the early Christians who (in order
+to belaud their own religion) were never tired of abusing the Pagans,
+onward to the present day when modern scholars either on the one hand
+follow the early Christians in representing the Mysteries as sinks of
+iniquity or on the other (knowing this charge could not be substantiated
+except in the period of their final decadence) take the line of ignoring
+the sexual interest attaching to them as non-existent or at any rate
+unworthy of attention. The good Archdeacon Cheetham, for instance, while
+writing an interesting book on the Mysteries passes by this side of the
+subject ALMOST as if it did not exist; while the learned Dr. Farnell,
+overcome apparently by the weight of his learning, and unable to
+confront the alarming obstacle presented by these sexual rites and
+aspects, hides himself behind the rather non-committal remark (speaking
+of the Eleusinian rites) "we have no right to imagine any part of this
+solemn ceremony as coarse or obscene." (6) As Nature, however, has been
+known (quite frequently) to be coarse or obscene, and as the initiators
+of the Mysteries were probably neither 'good' nor 'learned,' but were
+simply anxious to interpret Nature as best they could, we cannot find
+fault with the latter for the way they handled the problem, nor indeed
+well see how they could have handled it better.
+
+ (1) F. Nork, Der Mystagog, mentions that the Roman Penates were
+commonly anointed with oil. J. Stuart Hay, in his Life of Elagabalus
+(1911), says that "Elagabal was worshipped under the symbol of a great
+black stone or meteorite, in the shape of a Phallus, which having fallen
+from the heavens represented a true portion of the Godhead, much after
+the style of those black stone images popularly venerated in Norway and
+other parts of Europe."
+
+ (2) J. E. Hewitt, in his Ruling Races of Pre-historic Times (p.
+64), gives a long list of pre-historic races who worshipped the lingam.
+
+ (3) See Ch. XI.
+
+ (4) See Ernest Crawley's Mystic Rose, ch. xiii, pp. 310 and 313:
+"In certain tribes of Central Africa both boys and girls after
+initiation must as soon as possible have intercourse." Initiation being
+not merely preliminary to, but often ACTUALLY marriage. The same
+among Kaffirs, Congo tribes, Senegalese, etc. Also among the Arunta of
+Australia.
+
+ (5) Professor Diederichs has said that "in much ancient ritual it
+was thought that mystic communion with the deity could be obtained
+through the semblance of sex-intercourse--as in the Attis-Cybele
+worship, and the Isis-ritual." (Farnell.) Reitzenstein says (op. cit.,
+p. 20.) that the Initiates, like some of the Christian Nuns at a later
+time, believed in union with God through receiving the seed.
+
+ (6) Farnell, op. cit., iii. 176. Messrs. Gardner and Jevons, in
+their Manual of Greek Antiquities, above-quoted, compare the Eleusinian
+Mysteries favorably with some of the others, like the Arcadian, the
+Troezenian, the Aeginaean, and the very primitive Samothracian:
+saying (p. 278) that of the last-mentioned "we know little, but safely
+conjecture that in them the ideas of sex and procreation dominated EVEN
+MORE than in those of Eleusis."
+
+
+After all it is pretty clear that the early peoples saw in Sex the great
+cohesive force which kept (we will not say Humanity but at any rate)
+the Tribe together, and sustained the race. In the stage of simple
+Consciousness this must have been one of the first things that the
+budding intellect perceived. Sex became one of the earliest divinities,
+and there is abundant evidence that its organs and processes generally
+were invested with a religious sense of awe and sanctity. It was in fact
+the symbol (or rather the actuality) of the permanent undying life
+of the race, and as such was sacred to the uses of the race. Whatever
+taboos may have, among different peoples, guarded its operations, it
+was not essentially a thing to be concealed, or ashamed of. Rather the
+contrary. For instance the early Christian writer, Hippolytus, Bishop of
+Pontus (A.D. 200), in his Refutation of all Heresies, Book V, says that
+the Samothracian Mysteries, just mentioned, celebrate Adam as the
+primal or archetypal Man eternal in the heavens; and he then continues:
+"Habitually there stand in the temple of the Samothracians two images
+of naked men having both hands stretched aloft towards heaven, and their
+pudenda turned upwards, as is also the case with the statue of Mercury
+on Mt. Cyllene. And the aforesaid images are figures of the primal man,
+and of that spiritual one that is born again, in every respect of the
+same substance with that (first) man."
+
+
+This extract from Hippolytus occurs in the long discourse in which he
+'exposes' the heresy of the so-called Naassene doctrines and mysteries.
+But the whole discourse should be read by those who wish to understand
+the Gnostic philosophy of the period contemporary with and anterior to
+the birth of Christianity. A translation of the discourse, carefully
+analyzed and annotated, is given in G. R. S. Mead's Thrice-greatest
+Hermes (1) (vol. i); and Mead himself, speaking of it, says (p. 141):
+"The claim of these Gnostics was practically that the good news of the
+Christ (the Christos) was the consummation of the inner doctrine of the
+Mystery-institutions of all the nations; the end of them all being the
+revelation of the Mystery of Man." Further, he explains that the Soul,
+in these doctrines, was regarded as synonymous with the Cause of All;
+and that its loves were twain--of Aphrodite (or Life), and of Persephone
+(or Death and the other world). Also that Attis, abandoning his sex in
+the worship of the Mother-Goddess (Dea Syria), ascends to Heaven--a new
+man, Male-female, and the origin of all things: the hidden Mystery being
+the Phallus itself, erected as Hermes in all roads and boundaries and
+temples, the Conductor and Reconductor of Souls.
+
+ (1) Reitzenstein, op. cit., quotes the discourse largely. The
+Thrice-greatest Hermes may also be consulted for a translation of
+Plutarch's Isis and Osiris.
+
+
+All this may sound strange, but one may fairly say that it represented
+in its degree, and in that first 'unfallen' stage of human thought
+and psychology, a true conception of the cosmic Life, and indeed a
+conception quite sensible and admirable, until, of course, the Second
+Stage brought corruption. No sooner was this great force of the cosmic
+life diverted from its true uses of Generation and Regeneration (1) and
+appropriated by the individual to his own private pleasure--no sooner
+was its religious character as a tribal service (2), (often rendered
+within the Temple precincts) lost sight of or degraded into a commercial
+transaction--than every kind of evil fell upon mankind. Corruptio optimi
+pessima. It must be remembered too that simultaneous with this sexual
+disruption occurred the disruption of other human relations; and
+we cease to be surprised that disease and selfish passions, greed,
+jealousy, slander, cruelty, and wholesale murder, raged--and have raged
+ever since.
+
+ (1) For the special meaning of these two terms, see The Drama of
+Love and Death, by E. Carpenter, pp. 59-61.
+
+ (2) Ernest Crawley in The Mystic Rose challenges this
+identification of Religion with tribal interests; yet his arguments
+are not very convincing. On p. 5 he admits that "there is a religious
+meaning inherent in the primitive conception and practice of ALL human
+relations"; and a large part of his ch. xii is taken up in showing that
+even such institutions as the Saturnalia were religious in confirming
+the sense of social union and leading to 'extended identity.'
+
+
+But for the human soul--whatever its fate, and whatever the dangers and
+disasters that threaten it--there is always redemption waiting. As we
+saw in the last chapter, this corruption of Sex led (quite naturally) to
+its denial and rejection; and its denial led to the differentiation from
+it of Love. Humanity gained by the enthronement And deification of Love,
+pure and undefiled, and (for the time being) exalted beyond this mortal
+world, and free from all earthly contracts. But again in the end, the
+divorce thus introduced between the physical and the spiritual led
+to the crippling of both. Love relegated, so to speak, to heaven as a
+purely philanthropical, pious and 'spiritual' affair, became exceedingly
+DULL; and sex, remaining on earth, but deserted by the redeeming
+presence, fell into mere "carnal curiosity and wretchedness of unclean
+living." Obviously for the human race there remains nothing, in the
+final event, but the reconciliation of the physical and the spiritual,
+and after many sufferings, the reunion of Eros and Psyche.
+
+
+There is still, however, much to be said about the Third State of
+Consciousness. Let us examine into it a little more closely. Clearly,
+since it is a new state, and not merely an extension of a former one,
+one cannot arrive at it by argument derived from the Second state, for
+all conscious Thought such as we habitually use simply keeps us IN the
+Second state. No animal or quite primitive man could possibly understand
+what we mean by Self-consciousness till he had experienced it. Mere
+argument would not enlighten him. And so no one in the Second state
+can quite realize the Third state till he has experienced it. Still,
+explanations may help us to perceive in what direction to look, and
+to recognize in some of our experiences an approach to the condition
+sought.
+
+Evidently it is a mental condition in some respects more similar to the
+first than to the second stage. The second stage of human psychologic
+evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its
+culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of
+union with the Whole. (The state of Ekagrata in the Hindu philosophy:
+one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of
+the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far
+around--which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on
+the local self--begins to return again. This is not to say, of course,
+that the excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect. On
+the contrary, it means that the Return is a bringing of all that
+has been gained during the period of exile (all sorts of mental and
+technical knowledge and skill, emotional developments, finesse and
+adaptability of mind) BACK into harmony with the Whole. It means
+ultimately a great gain. The Man, perfected, comes back to a vastly
+extended harmony. He enters again into a real understanding and
+confidential relationship with his physical body and with the body of
+the society in which he dwells--from both of which he has been sadly
+divorced; and he takes up again the broken thread of the Cosmic Life.
+
+Everyone has noticed the extraordinary consent sometimes observable
+among the members of an animal community--how a flock of 500 birds (e.
+g. starlings) will suddenly change its direction of flight--the light
+on the wings shifting INSTANTANEOUSLY, as if the impulse to veer came
+to all at the same identical moment; or how bees will swarm or otherwise
+act with one accord, or migrating creatures (lemmings, deer, gossamer
+spiders, winged ants) the same. Whatever explanation of these facts we
+favor--whether the possession of swifter and finer means of external
+communication than we can perceive, or whether a common and inner
+sensitivity to the genius of the Tribe (the "Spirit of the Hive") or to
+the promptings of great Nature around--in any case these facts of animal
+life appear to throw light on the possibilities of an accord and consent
+among the members of emaciated humanity, such as we dream of now, and
+seem to bid us have good hope for the future.
+
+It is here, perhaps, that the ancient worship of the Lingam comes in.
+The word itself is apparently connected with our word 'link,' and has
+originally the same meaning. (1) It is the link between the generations.
+Beginning with the worship of the physical Race-life, the course of
+psychologic evolution has been first to the worship of the Tribe (or
+of the Totem which represents the tribe); then to the worship of
+the human-formed God of the tribe--the God who dies and rises
+again eternally, as the tribe passes on eternal--though its members
+perpetually perish; then to the conception of an undying Savior, and the
+realization and distinct experience of some kind of Super-consciousness
+which does certainly reside, more or less hidden, in the deeps of the
+mind, and has been waiting through the ages for its disclosure and
+recognition. Then again to the recognition that in the sacrifices,
+the Slayer and the Slain are one--the strange and profoundly mystic
+perception that the God and the Victim are in essence the same--the
+dedication of 'Himself to Himself' (2) and simultaneously with this the
+interpretation of the Eucharist as meaning, even for the individual,
+the participation in Eternal Life--the continuing life of the Tribe,
+or ultimately of Humanity. (3) The Tribal order rises to Humanity; love
+ascends from the lingam to yogam, from physical union alone to the union
+with the Whole--which of course includes physical and all other kinds of
+union. No wonder that the good St. Paul, witnessing that extraordinary
+whirlpool of beliefs and practices, new and old, there in the first
+century A.D.--the unabashed adoration of sex side by side with the
+transcendental devotions of the Vedic sages and the Gnostics--became
+somewhat confused himself and even a little violent, scolding his
+disciples (I Cor. x. 21) for their undiscriminating acceptance, as it
+seemed to him, of things utterly alien and antagonistic. "Ye cannot
+drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers
+of the Lord's table and the table of devils."
+
+
+ (1) See Sanskrit Dictionary.
+
+ (2) See Ch. VIII.
+
+ (3) There are many indications in literature--in prophetic or
+poetic form--of this awareness and distinct conviction of an eternal
+life, reached through love and an inner sense of union with others and
+with humanity at large; indications which bear the mark of absolute
+genuineness and sincerity of feeling. See, for instance, Whitman's poem,
+"To the Garden the World" (Leaves of Grass, complete edition, p. 79).
+But an eternal life of the third order; not, thank heaven! an eternity
+of the meddling and muddling self-conscious Intellect!
+
+
+Every careful reader has noticed the confusedness of Paul's mind and
+arguments. Even taking only those Epistles (Galatians, Romans and
+Corinthians) which the critics assign to his pen, the thing is
+observable--and some learned Germans even speak of TWO Pauls. (1) But
+also the thing is quite natural. There can be little doubt that Paul of
+Tarsus, a Jew brought up in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, did at
+some time fall deeply under the influence of Greek thought, and quite
+possibly became an initiate in the Mysteries. It would be difficult
+otherwise to account for his constant use of the Mystery-language.
+Reitzenstein says (p. 59): "The hellenistic religious literature MUST
+have been read by him; he uses its terms, and is saturated with its
+thoughts (see Rom. vi. 1-14." And this conjoined with his Jewish
+experience gave him creative power. "A great deal in his sentiment and
+thought may have REMAINED Jewish, but to his Hellenism he was indebted
+for his love of freedom and his firm belief in his apostleship." He
+adopts terms (like [gr sarkikos], [gr yucikos] and [gr pneumatikos])
+(2) which were in use among the hellenistic sects of the time; and
+he writes, as in Romans vi. 4, 5, about being "buried" with Christ or
+"planted" in the likeness of his death, in words which might well have
+been used (with change of the name) by a follower of Attis or Osiris
+after witnessing the corresponding 'mysteries'; certainly the allusion
+to these ancient deities would have been understood by every religionist
+of that day. These few points are sufficient to acentuate{sic} the two
+elements in Paul, the Jewish and the Greek, and to explain (so far)
+the seeming confusion in his utterances. Further it is interesting to
+note--as showing the pagan influences in the N. T. writings--the degree
+to which the Epistle to Philemon (ascribed to Paul) is FULL--short as it
+is--of expressions like PRISONER of the Lord, FELLOW SOLDIER, CAPTIVE or
+BONDMAN, (3) which were so common at the time as to be almost a cant in
+Mithraism and the allied cults. In I Peter ii. 2 (4), we have the verse
+"As newborn babes, desire ye the sincere MILK of the word, that ye
+may grow thereby." And again we may say that no one in that day could
+mistake the reference herein contained to old initiation ceremonies and
+the new birth (as described in Chapter VIII above), for indeed milk was
+the well-known diet of the novice in the Isis mysteries, as well as On
+some savage tribes) of the Medicine-man when practising his calling.
+
+ (1) "Die Mysterien-anschauungen, die bei Paulus im Hintergrunde
+stehen, drangen sich in dem sogenarmten Deuteropaulinismus machtig vor"
+(Reitzenstein).
+
+ (2) Remindful of our Three Stages: the Animal, the
+Self-conscious, and the Cosmic.
+
+ (3) [gr desmios, stratiwths, doulos].
+
+ (4) See also I Cor. iii. 2.
+
+
+And here too Democracy comes in--strangely foreboded from the first in
+all this matter. (1) Not only does the Third Stage bring illumination,
+intuitive understanding of processes in Nature and Humanity, sympathy
+with the animals, artistic capacity, and so forth, but it necessarily
+brings a new Order of Society. A preposterous--one may almost say a
+hideous--social Age is surely drawing to its end, The debacle we are
+witnessing to-day all over Europe (including the British Islands), the
+break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on
+life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous
+populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to
+the End of a Dispensation. Protestantism and Commercialism, in the two
+fields of religion and daily life have, as I have indicated before,
+been occupied in concentrating the mind of each man solely on his OWN
+welfare, the salvation of his OWN soul or body. These two forces have
+therefore been disruptive to the last degree; they mark the culmination
+of the Self-conscious Age--a culmination in War, Greed, Materialism, and
+the general principle of Devil-take-the-hindmost--and the clearing of
+the ground for the new order which is to come. So there is hope for the
+human race. Its evolution is not all a mere formless craze and jumble.
+There is an inner necessity by which Humanity unfolds from one degree or
+plane of consciousness to another. And if there has been a great 'Fall'
+or Lapse into conflict and disease and 'sin' and misery, occupying the
+major part of the Historical period hitherto, we see that this period
+is only brief, so to speak, in comparison with the whole curve of growth
+and expansion. We see also that, as I have said before, the belief in a
+state of salvation or deliverance has in the past ages never left
+itself quite without a witness in the creeds and rituals and poems and
+prophecies of mankind. Art, in some form or other, as an activity or
+inspiration dating not from the conscious Intellect, but from deeper
+regions of sub-conscious feeling and intuition, has continually come to
+us as a message from and an evidence of the Third stage or state, and as
+a promise of its more complete realization under other conditions.
+
+ Through the long night-time where the Nations wander
+     From Eden past to Paradise to be,
+ Art's sacred flowers, like fair stars shining yonder,
+     Alone illumine Life's obscurity.
+
+ O gracious Artists, out of your deep hearts
+     'Tis some great Sun, I doubt, by men unguessed,
+ Whose rays come struggling thus, in slender darts,
+     To shadow what Is, till Time shall manifest.
+
+
+ (1) See the germs of Democracy in the yoga teaching of the
+Hindus, and in the Upanishads, the Bhagavat Gita, and other books.
+
+
+With the Cosmic stage comes also necessarily the rehabilitation of the
+WHOLE of Society in one fellowship (the true Democracy). Not the rule or
+domination of one class or caste--as of the Intellectual, the Pious,
+the Commercial or the Military--but the fusion or at least consentaneous
+organization of ALL (as in the corresponding functions of the human
+Body). Class rule has been the mark of that second period of human
+evolution, and has inevitably given birth during that period to wars and
+self-agrandizements of classes and sections, and their consequent greeds
+and tyrannies over other classes and sections. It is not found in the
+primitive human tribes and societies, and will not be found in the final
+forms of human association. The liberated and emancipated Man passes
+unconstrained and unconstraining through all grades and planes of human
+fellowship, equal and undisturbed, and never leaving his true home
+and abiding place in the heart of all. Equally necessarily with the
+rehabilitation of Society as an entirety will follow the rehabilitation
+of the entire physical body IN each member of Society. We have spoken
+already of Nakedness: its meaning and likely extent of adoption (Ch.
+XII). The idea that the head and the hands are the only seemly and
+presentable members of the organism, and that the other members are
+unworthy and indecent, is obviously as onesided and lopsided as that
+which honors certain classes in the commonwealth and despises others.
+Why should the head brag of its ascendancy and domination, and the heart
+be smothered up and hidden? It will only be a life far more in the open
+air than that which we lead at present, which will restore the balance
+and ultimately bring us back to sanity and health.
+
+
+
+
+XVI. THE EXODUS OF CHRISTIANITY
+
+We have dealt with the Genesis of Christianity; we now come to the
+Exodus. For that Christianity can CONTINUE to hold the field of Religion
+in the Western World is neither probable nor desirable. It is true, as
+I have remarked already, that there is a certain trouble about
+defining what we mean by "Christianity" similar to that about the word
+"Civilization." If we select out of the great mass of doctrines and
+rites favored by the various Christian Churches just those which commend
+themselves to the most modern and humane and rational human mind and
+choose to call that resulting (but rather small) body of belief and
+practice 'Christianity' we are, of course, entitled to do so, and to
+hope (as we do hope) that this residuum will survive and go forward into
+the future. But this sort of proceeding is hardly fair and certainly not
+logical. It enables Christianity to pose as an angel of light while at
+the same time keeping discreetly out of sight all its own abominations
+and deeds of darkness. The Church--which began its career by destroying,
+distorting and denying the pagan sources from which it sprang; whose
+bishops and other ecclesiastics assassinated each other in their
+theological rancour "of wild beasts," which encouraged the wicked folly
+of the Crusades--especially the Children's Crusades--and the shameful
+murders of the Manicheans, the Albigenses, and the Huguenots; which
+burned at the stake thousands and thousands of poor 'witches' and
+'heretics'; which has hardly ever spoken a generous word in favor or
+defence of the animals; which in modern times has supported vivisection
+as against the latter, Capitalism and Commercialism as against the
+poorer classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its various
+sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant, have in these last
+days rushed forth to urge the nations to slaughter each other with every
+diabolical device of Science, and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism
+in defiance of the principle of universal Brotherhood--such a Church can
+hardly claim to have established the angelic character of its mission
+among mankind! And if it be said--as it often IS SAID: "Oh! but you must
+go back to the genuine article, and the Church's real origin and one
+foundation in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ," then indeed you
+come back to the point which this book, as above, enforces: namely, that
+as to the person of Jesus, there is no CERTAINTY at all that he ever
+existed; and as to the teaching credited to him, it is certain that that
+comes down from a period long anterior to 'Christianity' and is part of
+what may justly be called a very ancient World-religion. So, as in the
+case of 'Civilization,' we are compelled to see that it is useless to
+apply the word to some ideal state of affairs or doctrine (an ideal
+by no means the same in all people's minds, or in all localities and
+times), but that the only reasonable thing to do is to apply it in each
+case to a HISTORICAL PERIOD. In the case of Christianity the historical
+period has lasted nearly 2,000 years, and, as I say, we can hardly
+expect or wish that it should last much longer.
+
+The very thorough and careful investigation of religious origins which
+has been made during late years by a great number of students and
+observers undoubtedly tends to show that there has been something like
+a great World-religion coming down the centuries from the remotest times
+and gradually expanding and branching as it has come--that is to say
+that the similarity (in ESSENCE though not always in external detail)
+between the creeds and rituals of widely sundered tribes and peoples is
+so great as to justify the view--advanced in the present volume--that
+these creeds and rituals are the necessary outgrowths of human
+psychology, slowly evolving, and that consequently they have a common
+origin and in their various forms a common expression. Of this great
+World-religion, so coming down, Christianity is undoubtedly a branch,
+and an important branch. But there have been important branches before;
+and while it may be true that Christianity emphasizes some points which
+may have been overlooked or neglected in the Vedic teachings or in
+Buddhism, or in the Persian and Egyptian and Syrian cults, or in
+Mahommedanism, and so forth, it is also equally true that Christianity
+has itself overlooked or neglected valuable points in these religions.
+It has, in fact, the defects of its qualities. If the World-religion
+is like a great tree, one cannot expect or desire that all its branches
+should be directed towards the same point of the compass.
+
+Reinach, whose studies of religious origins are always interesting
+and characterized by a certain Gallic grace and nettete, though with a
+somewhat Jewish non-perception of the mystic element in life, defines
+Religion as a combination of animism and scruples. This is good in
+a way, because it gives the two aspects of the subject: the inner,
+animism, consisting of the sense of contact with more or less
+intelligent beings moving in Nature; and the outer, consisting in
+scruples or taboos. The one aspect shows the feeling which INSPIRES
+religion, the other, the checks and limitations which DEFINE it and give
+birth to ritual. But like most anthropologists he (Reinach) is a little
+TOO patronizing towards the "poor Indian with untutored mind." He is
+sorry for people so foolish as to be animistic in their outlook, and he
+is always careful to point out that the scruples and taboos were quite
+senseless in their origin, though occasionally (by accident) they turned
+out useful. Yet--as I have said before--Animism is a perfectly sensible,
+logical and NECESSARY attitude of the human mind. It is a necessary
+attribute of man's psychical nature, by which he projects into the great
+World around him the image of his own mind. When that mind is in a very
+primitive, inchoate, and fragmentary condition, the images so projected
+are those of fragmentary intelligences ('spirits,' gnomes, etc.--the age
+of magic); when the mind rises to distinct consciousness of itself the
+reflections of it are anthropomorphic 'gods'; when finally it reaches
+the universal or cosmic state it perceives the presence of a universal
+Being behind all phenomena--which Being is indeed itself--"Himself to
+Himself." If you like you may call the whole process by the name of
+Animism. It is perfectly sensible throughout. The only proviso is that
+you should also be sensible, and distinguish the different stages in the
+process.
+
+Jane Harrison makes considerable efforts to show that Religion is
+primarily a reflection of the SOCIAL Conscience (see Themis, pp.
+482-92)--that is, that the sense in Man of a "Power that makes for
+righteousness" outside (and also inside) him is derived from his feeling
+of continuity with the Tribe and his instinctive obedience to its
+behests, confirmed by ages of collective habit and experience. He
+cannot in fact sever the navel-string which connects him with his tribal
+Mother, even though he desires to do so. And no doubt this view of the
+origin of Religion is perfectly correct. But it must be pointed out that
+it does not by any means exclude the view that religion derives
+also from an Animism by which man recognizes in general Nature his
+foster-mother and feels himself in closest touch with HER. Which may
+have come first, the Social affiliation or the Nature affiliation, I
+leave to the professors to determine. The term Animism may, as far as I
+can see, be quite well applied to the social affiliation, for the latter
+is evidently only a case in which the individual projects his own degree
+of consciousness into the human group around him instead of into the
+animals or the trees, but it is a case of which the justice is so
+obvious that the modern man can intellectually seize and understand it,
+and consequently he does not tar it with the 'animistic' brush.
+
+And Miss Harrison, it must be noticed, does, in other passages of the
+same book (see Themis, pp. 68, 69), admit that Religion has its origin
+not only from unity with the Tribe but from the sense of affiliation to
+Nature--the sense of "a world of unseen power lying behind the visible
+universe, a world which is the sphere, as will be seen, of magical
+activity and the medium of mysticism. The mystical element, the oneness
+and continuousness comes out very clearly in the notion of Wakonda among
+the Sioux Indians.... The Omahas regarded all animate and inanimate
+forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common life, which was continuous
+and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in themselves. This
+mysterious power in all things they called Wakonda, and through it
+all things were related to man, and to each other. In the idea of the
+continuity of life, a relation was maintained between the seen and
+the unseen, the dead and the living, and also between the fragment of
+anything and its entirety." Thus our general position is confirmed,
+that Religion in its origin has been INSPIRED by a deep instinctive
+conviction or actual sense of continuity with a being or beings in the
+world around, while it has derived its FORM and ritual by slow degrees
+from a vast number of taboos, generated in the first instance chiefly
+by superstitious fears, but gradually with the growth of reason and
+observation becoming simplified and rationalized into forms of use. On
+the one side there has been the positive impulse--of mere animal Desire
+and the animal urge of self-expression; on the other there has been
+the negative force of Fear based on ignorance--the latter continually
+carving, moulding and shaping the former. According to this an organized
+study and classification of taboos might yield some interesting results;
+because indeed it would throw light on the earliest forms of both
+religion and science. It would be seen that some taboos, like those
+of CONTACT (say with a menstruous woman, or a mother-in-law, or a
+lightning-struck tree) had an obvious basis of observation, justifiable
+but very crude; while others, like the taboo against harming an enemy
+who had contracted blood-friendship with one of your own tribe, or
+against giving decent burial to a murderer, were equally rough and rude
+expressions or indications of the growing moral sentiment of mankind.
+All the same there would be left, in any case, a large residuum of
+taboos which could only be judged as senseless, and the mere rubbish of
+the savage mind.
+
+So much for the first origins of the World-religion; and I think enough
+has been said in the various chapters of this book to show that the same
+general process has obtained throughout. Man, like the animals, began
+with this deep, subconscious sense of unity with surrounding Nature.
+When this became (in Man) fairly conscious, it led to Magic and
+Totemism. More conscious, and it branched, on the one hand, into figures
+of Gods and definite forms of Creeds, on the other into elaborate
+Scientific Theories--the latter based on a strong INTELLECTUAL belief in
+Unity, but fervently denying any 'anthropomorphic' or 'animistic'
+SENSE of that unity. Finally, it seems that we are now on the edge of
+a further stage when the theories and the creeds, scientific and
+religious, are on the verge of collapsing, but in such a way as to leave
+the sense and the perception of Unity--the real content of the whole
+process--not only undestroyed, but immensely heightened and illuminated.
+Meanwhile the taboos--of which there remain some still, both religious
+and scientific--have been gradually breaking up and merging themselves
+into a reasonable and humane order of life and philosophy.
+
+I have said that out of this World-religion Christianity really sprang.
+It is evident that the time has arrived when it must either acknowledge
+its source and frankly endeavor to affiliate itself to the same, or
+failing that must perish. In the first case it will probably have to
+change its name; in the second the question of its name 'will interest
+it no more.'
+
+With regard to the first of these alternatives, I might venture--though
+with indifference--to make a few suggestions. Why should we
+not have--instead of a Holy Roman Church--a Holy HUMAN Church,
+rehabilitating the ancient symbols and rituals, a Christianity (if you
+still desire to call it so) frankly and gladly acknowledging its own
+sources? This seems a reasonable and even feasible proposition. If such
+a church wished to celebrate a Mass or Communion or Eucharist it would
+have a great variety of rites and customs of that kind to select from;
+those that were not appropriate for use in our times or were connected
+with the worship of strange gods need not be rejected or condemned,
+but could still be commented on and explained as approaches to the same
+idea--the idea of dedication to the Common Life, and of reinvigoration
+in the partaking of it. If the Church wished to celebrate the
+Crucifixion or betrayal of its Founder, a hundred instances of such
+celebrations would be to hand, and still the thought that has underlain
+such celebrations since the beginning of the world could easily be
+disentangled and presented in concrete form anew. In the light of such
+teaching expressions like "I know that my Redeemer liveth" would be
+traced to their origin, and men would understand that notwithstanding
+the mass of rubbish, cant and humbug which has collected round them they
+really do mean something and represent the age-long instinct of Humanity
+feeling its way towards a more extended revelation, a new order of
+being, a third stage of consciousness and illumination. In such a Church
+or religious organization EVERY quality of human nature would have to
+be represented, every practice and custom allowed for and its place
+accorded--the magical and astronomical meanings, the rites connected
+with sun-worship, or with sex, or with the worship of animals; the
+consecration of corn and wine and other products of the ground,
+initiations, sacrifices, and so forth--all (if indeed it claimed to be
+a World-religion) would have to be represented and recognized. For they
+all have their long human origin and descent in and through the pagan
+creeds, and they all have penetrated into and become embodied to some
+degree in Christianity. Christianity therefore, as I say, must either
+now come frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from the great
+Order of the past, seek to rehabilitate THAT and carry mankind one step
+forward in the path of evolution--or else it must perish. There is no
+other alternative. (1)
+
+ (1) Comte in founding his philosophy of Positivism seems to have
+had in view some such Holy Human Church, but he succeeded in making it
+all so profoundly dull that it never flourished, The seed of Life was
+not in it.
+
+
+Let me give an instance of how a fragment of ancient ritual which has
+survived from the far Past and is still celebrated, but with little
+intelligence or understanding, in the Catholic Church of to-day, might
+be adopted in such a Church as I have spoken of, interpreted, and made
+eloquent of meaning to modern humanity. When I was in Ceylon nearly 30
+years ago I was fortunate enough to witness a night-festival in a Hindu
+Temple--the great festival of Taipusam, which takes place every year in
+January. Of course, it was full moon, and great was the blowing up of
+trumpets in the huge courtyard of the Temple. The moon shone down above
+from among the fronds of tall coco-palms, on a dense crowd of native
+worshipers--men and a few women--the men for the most part clad in
+little more than a loin-cloth, the women picturesque in their colored
+saris and jewelled ear and nose rings. The images of Siva and two other
+gods were carried in procession round and round the temple--three or
+four times; nautch girls danced before the images, musicians, blowing
+horns and huge shells, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms,
+accompanied them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with flaming
+coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each side, elated and
+excited with the sense of the present divinity, yet pleasantly free from
+any abject awe. The whole thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief
+of a Bacchanalian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus--and
+especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with
+the god. There were singing of hymns and the floating of the chief
+actors on a raft round a sacred lake. And then came the final Act. Siva,
+or his image, very weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was
+carried into the first chamber or hall of the Temple and placed on an
+altar with a curtain hanging in front. The crowd followed with a rush;
+and then there was more music, recital of hymns, and reading from sacred
+books. From where we stood we could see the rite which was performed
+behind the curtain. Two five-branched candlesticks were lighted; and the
+manner of their lighting was as follows. Each branch ended in a
+little cup, and in the cups five pieces of camphor were placed, all
+approximately equal in size. After offerings had been made, of fruit,
+flowers and sandalwood, the five camphors in each candlestick were
+lighted. As the camphor flames burned out the music became more wild and
+exciting, and then at the moment of their extinction the curtains
+were drawn aside and the congregation outside suddenly beheld the god
+revealed and in a blaze of light. This burning of camphor was, like
+other things in the service, emblematic. The five lights represent
+the five senses. Just as camphor consumes itself and leaves no residue
+behind, so should the five senses, being offered to the god, consume
+themselves and disappear. When this is done, that happens in the soul
+which was now figured in the ritual--the God is revealed in the inner
+light. (1)
+
+ (1) For a more detailed account of this Temple-festival, see
+Adam's Peak to Elephanta by E. Carpenter, ch. vii.
+
+
+We are familiar with this parting or rending of the veil. We hear of it
+in the Jewish Temple, and in the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries. It had
+a mystically religious, and also obviously sexual, signification. It
+occurs here and there in the Roman Catholic ritual. In Spain, some
+ancient Catholic ceremonials are kept up with a brilliance and splendor
+hardly found elsewhere in Europe. In the Cathedral, at Seville the
+service of the Passion, carried out on Good Friday with great
+solemnity and accompanied with fine music, culminates on the Saturday
+morning--i.e. in the interval between the Crucifixion and the
+Resurrection--in a spectacle similar to that described in Ceylon. A rich
+velvet-black curtain hangs before the High Altar. At the appropriate
+moment and as the very emotional strains of voices and instruments reach
+their climax in the "Gloria in Excelsis," the curtain with a sudden
+burst of sound (thunder and the ringing of all the bells) is rent
+asunder, and the crucified Jesus is seen hanging there revealed in a
+halo of glory.
+
+There is also held at Seville Cathedral and before the High Altar every
+year, the very curious Dance of the Seises (sixes), performed now by 16
+instead of (as of old) by 12 boys, quaintly dressed. It seems to be a
+survival of some very ancient ritual, probably astronomical, in which
+the two sets of six represent the signs of the Zodiac, and is celebrated
+during the festivals of Corpus Christi, the Immaculate Conception, and
+the Carnival.
+
+Numerous instances might of course be adduced of how a Church aspiring
+to be a real Church of Humanity might adopt and re-create the rituals
+of the past in the light of a modern inspiration. Indeed the difficulty
+would be to limit the process, for EVERY ancient ritual, we can now
+see, has had a meaning and a message, and it would be a real joy to
+disentangle these and to expose the profound solidarity of humanity and
+aspiration from the very dawn of civilization down to the present day.
+Nor would it be necessary to imagine any Act of Uniformity or dead
+level of ceremonial in the matter. Different groups might concentrate on
+different phases of religious thought and practice. The only necessity
+would be that they should approach the subject with a real love of
+Humanity in their hearts and a real desire to come into touch with the
+deep inner life and mystic growing-pains of the souls of men and women
+in all ages. In this direction M. Loisy has done noble and excellent
+work; but the dead weight and selfish blinkerdom of the Catholic
+organization has hampered him to that degree that he has been unable
+to get justice done to his liberalizing designs--or, perhaps, even to
+reveal the full extent of them. And the same difficulty will remain. On
+the one hand no spiritual movement which does not take up the attitude
+of a World-religion has now in this age, any chance of success; on the
+other, all the existing Churches--whether Roman Catholic, or Greek,
+or Protestant or Secularist--whether Christian or Jewish or Persian or
+Hindu--will in all probability adopt the same blind and blinkered and
+selfish attitude as that described above, and so disqualify themselves
+for the great role of world-wide emancipation, which some religion at
+some time will certainly have to play. It is the same difficulty which
+is looming large in modern World-politics, where the local selfishness
+and vainglorious "patriotisms" of the Nations are sadly impeding and
+obstructing the development of that sense of Internationalism and
+Brotherhood which is the clearly indicated form of the future, and
+which alone can give each nation deliverance from fear, and a promise of
+growth, and the confident assurance of power.
+
+I say that Christianity must either frankly adopt this generous attitude
+and confess itself a branch of the great World-religion, anxious only to
+do honor to its source--or else it must perish and pass away. There is
+no other alternative. The hour of its Exodus has come. It may be, of
+course, that neither the Christian Church nor any branch of it, nor any
+other religious organization, will step into the gap. It may be--but I
+do not think this is likely--that the time of rites and ceremonies and
+formal creeds is PAST, and churches of any kind will be no more needed
+in the world: not likely, I say, because of the still far backwardness
+of the human masses, and their considerable dependence yet on laws and
+forms and rituals. Still, if it should prove that that age of dependence
+IS really approaching its end, that would surely be a matter for
+congratulation. It would mean that mankind was moving into a knowledge
+of the REALITY which has underlain these outer shows--that it was coming
+into the Third stage of its Consciousness. Having found this there would
+be no need for it to dwell any longer in the land of superstitions and
+formulae. It would have come to the place of which these latter are only
+the outlying indications.
+
+It may, therefore, happen--and this quite independently of the growth of
+a World-cult such as I have described, though by no means in antagonism
+to it--that a religious philosophy or Theosophy might develop and
+spread, similar to the Gnonam of the Hindus or the Gnomsis of the
+pre-Christian sects, which would become, first among individuals and
+afterwards among large bodies over the world, the religion of--or
+perhaps one should say the religious approach to the Third State. Books
+like the Upanishads of the Vedic seers, and the Bhagavat Gita, though
+garbled and obscured by priestly interferences and mystifications, do
+undoubtedly represent and give expression to the highest utterance of
+religious experience to be found anywhere in the world. They are indeed
+the manuals of human entrance into the cosmic state. But as I say,
+and as has happened in the case of other sacred books, a vast deal of
+rubbish has accreted round their essential teachings, and has to be
+cleared away. To go into a serious explication of the meaning of these
+books would be far too large an affair, and would be foreign to the
+purpose of the present volume; but I have in the Appendix below inserted
+two papers, (on "Rest" and "The Nature of the Self") containing the
+substance of lectures given on the above books. These papers or lectures
+are couched in the very simplest language, free from Sanskrit terms and
+the usual 'jargon of the Schools,' and may, I hope, even on that account
+be of use in familiarizing readers who are not specially STUDENTS with
+the ideas and mental attitudes of the cosmic state. Non-differentiation
+(Advaita (1)) is the root attitude of the mind inculcated.
+
+ (1) The word means "not-two-ness." Here we see a great subtlety
+of definition. It is not to be "one" with others that is urged, but to
+be "not two."
+
+
+We have seen that there has been an age of non-differentiation in the
+Past-non-differentiation from other members of the Tribe, from the
+Animals, from Nature and the Spirit or Spirits of nature; why
+should there not arise a similar sense of non-differentiation in the
+FUTURE--similar but more extended more intelligent? Certainly this WILL
+arrive, in its own appointed time. There will be a surpassing of the
+bounds of separation and division. There will be a surpassing of all
+Taboos. We have seen the use and function of Taboos in the early stages
+of Evolution and how progress and growth have been very much a matter
+of their gradual extinction and assimilation into the general body
+of rational thought and feeling. Unreasoning and idiotic taboos still
+linger, but they grow weaker. A new Morality will come which will shake
+itself free from them. The sense of kinship with the animals (as in the
+old rituals) (1) will be restored; the sense of kinship with all the
+races of mankind will grow and become consolidated; the sense of the
+defilement and impurity of the human body will (with the adoption of a
+generally clean and wholesome life) pass away; and the body itself will
+come to be regarded more as a collection of shrines in which the
+gods may be worshiped and less as a mere organ of trivial
+self-gratifications; (2) there will be no form of Nature, or of human
+life or of the lesser creatures, which will be barred from the approach
+of Man or from the intimate and penetrating invasion of his spirit; and
+as in certain ceremonies and after honorable toils and labors a citizen
+is sometimes received into the community of his own city, so the
+emancipated human being on the completion of his long long pilgrimage on
+Earth will be presented with the Freedom of the Universe.
+
+
+ (1) The record of the Roman Catholic Church has been sadly
+Callous and inhuman in this matter of the animals.
+
+ (2) See The Art of Creation, by E. Carpenter.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. CONCLUSION
+
+In conclusion there does not seem much to say, except to accentuate
+certain points which may still appear doubtful or capable of being
+understood.
+
+The fact that the main argument of this volume is along the lines of
+psychological evolution will no doubt commend it to some, while on the
+other hand it will discredit the book to others whose eyes, being fixed
+on purely MATERIAL causes, can see no impetus in History except through
+these. But it must be remembered that there is not the least reason
+for SEPARATING the two factors. The fact that psychologically man has
+evolved from simple consciousness to self-consciousness, and is now
+in process of evolution towards another and more extended kind of
+consciousness, does not in the least bar the simultaneous appearance and
+influence of material evolution. It is clear indeed that the two must
+largely go together, acting and reacting on each other. Whatever the
+physical conditions of the animal brain may be which connect themselves
+with simple (unreflected and unreflecting) consciousness, it is evident
+that these conditions--in animals and primitive man--lasted for an
+enormous period, before the distinct consciousness of the individual and
+separate SELF arose. This second order of consciousness seems to have
+germinated at or about the same period as the discovery of the use
+of Tools (tools of stone, copper, bronze, &c.), the adoption of
+picture-writing and the use of reflective words (like "I" and "Thou");
+and it led on to the appreciation of gold and of iron with their
+ornamental and practical values, the accumulation of Property, the
+establishment of slavery of various kinds, the subjection of Women,
+the encouragement of luxury and self-indulgence, the growth of crowded
+cities and the endless conflicts and wars so resulting. We can see
+plainly that the incoming of the self-motive exercised a direct stimulus
+on the pursuit of these material objects and adaptations; and that
+the material adaptations in their turn did largely accentuate the
+self-motive; but to insist that the real explanation of the whole
+process is only to be found along one channel--the material OR the
+psychical--is clearly quite unnecessary. Those who understand that all
+matter is conscious in some degree, and that all consciousness has a
+material form of some kind, will be the first to admit this.
+
+The same remarks apply to the Third Stage. We can see that in modern
+times the huge and unlimited powers of production by machinery, united
+with a growing tendency towards intelligent Birth-control, are
+preparing the way for an age of Communism and communal Plenty which will
+inevitably be associated (partly as cause and partly as effect) with
+a new general phase of consciousness, involving the mitigation of
+the struggle for existence, the growth of intuitional and psychical
+perception, the spread of amity and solidarity, the disappearance of
+War, and the realization (in degree) of the Cosmic life.
+
+Perhaps the greatest difficulty or stumbling-block to the general
+acceptance of the belief in a third (or 'Golden-Age') phase of human
+evolution is the obstinate and obdurate pre-judgment that the passing of
+Humanity out of the Second stage can only mean the entire ABANDONMENT
+OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS; and this people say--and quite rightly--is both
+impossible and undesirable. Throughout the preceding chapters I have
+striven, wherever feasible, to counter this misunderstanding--but I have
+little hope of success. The DETERMINATION of the world to misunderstand
+or misinterpret anything a little new or unfamiliar is a thing which
+perhaps only an author can duly appreciate. But while it is clear that
+self-consciousness originally came into being through a process of
+alienation and exile and fear which marked it with the Cain-like brand
+of loneliness and apartness, it is equally clear that to think of that
+apartness as an absolute and permanent separation is an illusion, since
+no being can really continue to live divorced from the source of its
+life. For a period in evolution the SELF took on this illusive form in
+consciousness, as of an ignis fatuus--the form of a being sundered from
+all other beings, atomic, lonely, without refuge, surrounded by dangers
+and struggling, for itself alone and for its own salvation in the midst
+of a hostile environment. Perhaps some such terrible imagination was
+necessary at first, as it were to start Humanity on its new path. But
+it had its compensation, for the sufferings and tortures, mental and
+bodily, the privations, persecutions, accusations, hatreds, the wars and
+conflicts--so endured by millions of individuals and whole races--have
+at length stamped upon the human mind a sense of individual
+responsibility which otherwise perhaps would never have emerged, and
+whose mark can now be effaced; ultimately, too, these things have
+searched our inner nature to its very depths and exposed its bed-rock
+foundation. They have convinced us that this idea of ultimate
+separation is an illusion, and that in truth we are all indefeasible and
+indestructible parts of one great Unity in which "we live and move and
+have our being." That being so, it is clear that there remains in the
+end a self-consciousness which need by no means be abandoned, which
+indeed only comes to its true fruition and understanding when
+it recognizes its affiliation with the Whole, and glories in an
+individuality which is an expression both of itself AND of the whole.
+The human child at its mother's knee probably comes first to know it
+HAS a 'self' on some fateful day when having wandered afar it goes
+lost among alien houses and streets or in the trackless fields. That
+appalling experience--the sense of danger, of fear, of loneliness--is
+never forgotten; it stamps some new sense of Being upon the childish
+mind, but that sense, instead of being destroyed, becomes all the
+prouder and more radiant in the hour of return to the mother's arms. The
+return, the salvation, for which humanity looks, is the return of the
+little individual self to harmony and union with the great Self of the
+universe, but by no means its extinction or abandonment--rather the
+finding of its own true nature as never before.
+
+
+There is another thing which may be said here: namely, that the
+disentanglement, as above, of three main stages of psychological
+evolution as great formative influences in the history of mankind, does
+not by any means preclude the establishment of lesser stages within the
+boundaries of these. In all probability subdivisions of all the three
+will come in time to be recognized and allowed for. To take the
+Second stage only, it MAY appear that Self-consciousness in its first
+development is characterized by an accentuation of Timidity; in its
+second development by a more deliberate pursuit of sensual Pleasure
+(lust, food, drink, &c.); in its third by the pursuit of mental
+gratifications (vanities, ambitions, enslavement of others); in its
+fourth by the pursuit of Property, as a means of attaining these
+objects; in its fifth by the access of enmities, jealousies, wars and so
+forth, consequent on all these things; and so on. I have no intention at
+present of following out this line of thought, but only wish to suggest
+its feasibility and the degree to which it may throw light on the social
+evolutions of the Past. (1)
+
+ (1) For an analysis of the nature of Self-consciousness see vol.
+iii, p. 375 sq. of the three ponderous tomes by Wilhelm
+Wundt--Grund-zuge der Physiologischen Psychologie--in which amid an
+enormous mass of verbiage occasional gleams of useful suggestion are to
+be found.
+
+
+As a kind of rude general philosophy we may say that there are only two
+main factors in life, namely, Love and Ignorance. And of these we may
+also say that the two are not in the same plane: one is positive and
+substantial, the other is negative and merely illusory. It may be
+thought at first that Fear and Hatred and Cruelty, and the like, are
+very positive things, but in the end we see that they are due merely to
+ABSENCE of perception, to dulness of understanding. Or we may put the
+statement in a rather less crude form, and say that there are only
+two factors in life: (1) the sense of Unity with others (and with
+Nature)--which covers Love, Faith, Courage, Truth, and so forth, and
+(2) Non-perception of the same--which covers Enmity, Fear, Hatred,
+Self-pity, Cruelty, Jealousy, Meanness and an endless similar list.
+The present world which we see around us, with its idiotic wars, its
+senseless jealousies of nations and classes, its fears and greeds
+and vanities and its futile endeavors--as of people struggling in a
+swamp--to find one's own salvation by treading others underfoot, is a
+negative phenomenon. Ignorance, non-perception, are at the root of it.
+But it is the blessed virtue of Ignorance and of non-perception that
+they inevitably-if only slowly and painfully--DESTROY THEMSELVES. All
+experience serves to dissipate them. The world, as it is, carries' the
+doom of its own transformation in its bosom; and in proportion as that
+which is negative disappears the positive element must establish itself
+more and more.
+
+So we come back to that with which we began, (1) to Fear bred by
+Ignorance. From that source has sprung the long catalogue of follies,
+cruelties and sufferings which mark the records of the human race since
+the dawn of history; and to the overcoming of this Fear we perforce
+must look for our future deliverance, and for the discovery, even in
+the midst of this world, of our true Home. The time is coming when the
+positive constructive element must dominate. It is inevitable that Man
+must ever build a state of society around him after the pattern and
+image of his own interior state. The whole futile and idiotic structure
+of commerce and industry in which we are now imprisoned springs from
+that falsehood of individualistic self-seeking which marks the second
+stage of human evolution. That stage is already tottering to its fall,
+destroyed by the very flood of egotistic passions and interests, of
+vanities, greeds, and cruelties, all warring with each other, which are
+the sure outcome and culmination of its operation. With the restoration
+of the sentiment of the Common Life, and the gradual growth of a mental
+attitude corresponding, there will emerge from the flood something like
+a solid earth--something on which it will be possible to build with good
+hope for the future. Schemes of reconstruction are well enough in their
+way, but if there is no ground of REAL HUMAN SOLIDARITY beneath, of what
+avail are they?
+
+ (1) See Introduction, Ch. I.
+
+
+An industrial system which is no real industrial order, but only (on
+the part of the employers) a devil's device for securing private profit
+under the guise of public utility, and (on the part of the employed) a
+dismal and poor-spirited renunciation--for the sake of a bare living--of
+all real interest in life and work: such a 'system' must infallibly
+pass away. It cannot in the nature of things be permanent. The first
+condition of social happiness and prosperity must be the sense of the
+Common Life. This sense, which instinctively underlay the whole Tribal
+order of the far past--which first came to consciousness in the
+worship of a thousand pagan divinities, and in the rituals of countless
+sacrifices, initiations, redemptions, love-feasts and communions, which
+inspired the dreams of the Golden Age, and flashed out for a time in the
+Communism of the early Christians and in their adorations of the risen
+Savior--must in the end be the creative condition of a new order: it
+must provide the material of which the Golden City waits to be built.
+The long travail of the World-religion will not have been in vain, which
+assures this consummation. What the signs and conditions of any general
+advance into this new order of life and consciousness will be, we know
+not. It may be that as to individuals the revelation of a new vision
+often comes quite suddenly, and GENERALLY perhaps after a period of
+great suffering, so to society at large a similar revelation will
+arrive--like "the lightning which cometh out of the East and shineth
+even unto the West"--with unexpected swiftness. On the other hand
+it would perhaps be wise not to count too much on any such sudden
+transformation. When we look abroad (and at home) in this year of grace
+and hoped-for peace, 1919, and see the spirits of rancour and revenge,
+the fears, the selfish blindness and the ignorance, which still hold in
+their paralyzing grasp huge classes and coteries in every country in the
+world, we see that the second stage of human development is by no means
+yet at its full term, and that, as in some vast chrysalis, for the
+liberation of the creature within still more and more terrible struggles
+MAY be necessary. We can only pray that such may not be the case.
+Anyhow, if we have followed the argument of this book we can hardly
+doubt that the destruction (which is going on everywhere) of the
+outer form of the present society marks the first stage of man's final
+liberation; and that, sooner or later, and in its own good time, that
+further 'divine event' will surely be realized.
+
+
+Nor need we fear that Humanity, when it has once entered into the great
+Deliverance, will be again overpowered by evil. From Knowledge back to
+Ignorance there is no complete return. The nations that have come to
+enlightenment need entertain no dread of those others (however hostile
+they appear) who are still plunging darkly in the troubled waters
+of self-greed. The dastardly Fears which inspire all brutishness and
+cruelty of warfare--whether of White against White or it may be of White
+against Yellow or Black--may be dismissed for good and all by that blest
+race which once shall have gained the shore--since from the very nature
+of the case those who are on dry land can fear nothing and need fear
+nothing from the unfortunates who are yet tossing in the welter and
+turmoil of the waves.
+
+Dr. Frazer, in the conclusion of his great work The Golden Bough, (1)
+bids farewell to his readers with the following words: "The laws of
+Nature are merely hypotheses devised to explain that ever-shifting
+phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names
+of the World and the Universe. In the last analysis magic, religion
+and science are nothing but theories (of thought); and as Science has
+supplanted its predecessors so it may hereafter itself be superseded by
+some more perfect hypothesis, perhaps by some perfectly different way of
+looking at phenomena--of registering the shadows on the screen--of which
+we in this generation can form no idea." I imagine Dr. Frazer is right
+in thinking that "a way of looking at phenomena" different from the way
+of Science, may some day prevail. But I think this change will come,
+not so much by the growth of Science itself or the extension of its
+'hypotheses,' as by a growth and expansion of the human HEART and a
+change in its psychology and powers of perception. Perhaps some of the
+preceding chapters will help to show how much the outlook of humanity on
+the world has been guided through the centuries by the slow evolution of
+its inner consciousness. Gradually, out of an infinite mass of folly and
+delusion, the human soul has in this way disentangled itself, and will
+in the future disentangle itself, to emerge at length in the light of
+true FREEDOM. All the taboos, the insane terrors, the fatuous forbiddals
+of this and that (with their consequent heart-searchings and distress)
+may perhaps have been in their way necessary, in order to rivet and
+define the meaning and the understanding of that word. To-day
+these taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of
+conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and
+desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these
+things, FREE--familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all,
+allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by
+NONE. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the
+ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfilment of their far
+prophecy down the ages--finding after all the long-expected Saviour of
+the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of
+the everlasting peace of the soul.
+
+ (1) See "Balder," vol. ii, pp. 306, 307. ("Farewell to Nemi.")
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+THE TEACHING OF THE UPANISHADS
+
+BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF TWO LECTURES TO POPULAR AUDIENCES
+
+I. REST
+
+II. THE NATURE OF THE SELF
+
+
+
+I. REST
+
+To some, in the present whirlpool of life and affairs it may seem almost
+an absurdity to talk about Rest. For long enough now rest has seemed a
+thing far off and unattainable. With the posts knocking at our doors
+ten or twelve times a day, with telegrams arriving every hour, and the
+telephone bell constantly ringing; with motors rushing wildly about the
+streets, and aeroplanes whizzing overhead, with work speeded up in every
+direction, and the drive in the workshops becoming more intolerable
+every day; with the pace of the walkers and the pace of the talkers from
+hour to hour insanely increasing--what room, it may well be asked, is
+there for Rest? And now the issues of war, redoubling the urgency of all
+questions, are on us.
+
+The problem is obviously a serious one. So urgent is it that I think one
+may safely say the amount of insanity due to the pressure of daily life
+is increasing; nursing-homes have sprung up for the special purpose of
+treating such cases; and doctors are starting special courses of
+tuition in the art--now becoming very important--of systematically doing
+nothing! And yet it is difficult to see the outcome of it all. The clock
+of what is called Progress is not easily turned backward. We should
+not very readily agree nowadays to the abolition of telegrams or to a
+regulation compelling express trains to stop at every station! We can't
+ALL go to Nursing Homes, or afford to enjoy a winter's rest-cure in
+Egypt. And, if not, is the speeding-up process to go on indefinitely,
+incapable of being checked, and destined ultimately to land civilization
+in the mad-house?
+
+It is, I say, a serious and an urgent problem. And it is, I think,
+forcing a certain answer on us--which I will now endeavor to explain.
+
+If we cannot turn back and reverse this fatal onrush of modern life (and
+it is evident that we cannot do so in any very brief time--though of
+course ultimately we might succeed) then I think there are clearly only
+two alternatives left--either to go forward to general dislocation and
+madness, or--to learn to rest even in the very midst of the hurry and
+the scurry.
+
+To explain what I mean, let me use an illustration. The typhoons and
+cyclones of the China Seas are some of the most formidable storms that
+ships can encounter. Their paths in the past have been strewn with
+wrecks and disaster. But now with increased knowledge much of their
+danger has been averted. It is known that they are CIRCULAR in
+character, and that though the wind on their outskirts often reaches a
+speed of 100 miles an hour, in the centre of the storm there is a
+space of complete calm--not a calm of the SEA certainly, but a complete
+absence of wind. The skilled navigator, if he cannot escape the storm,
+steers right into the heart of it, and rests there. Even in the midst
+of the clatter he finds a place of quiet where he can trim his sails
+and adjust his future course. He knows too from his position in what
+direction at every point around him the wind is moving and where it will
+strike him when at last his ship emerges from the charmed circle.
+
+Is it not possible, we may ask, that in the very midst of the cyclone of
+daily life we may find a similar resting-place? If we can, our case is
+by no means hopeless. If we cannot, then indeed there is danger.
+
+Looking back in History we seem to see that in old times people took
+life much more leisurely than they do now. The elder generations gave
+more scope in their customs and their religions for contentment and
+peace of mind. We associate a certain quietism and passivity with the
+thought of the Eastern peoples. But as civilization traveled Westward
+external activity and the pace of life increased--less and less time was
+left for meditation and repose--till with the rise of Western Europe and
+America, the dominant note of life seems to have simply become one of
+feverish and ceaseless activity--of activity merely for the sake of
+activity, without any clear idea of its own purpose or object.
+
+Such a prospect does not at first seem very hopeful; but on second
+thoughts we see that we are not forced to draw any very pessimistic
+conclusion from it. The direction of human evolution need not remain
+always the same. The movement, in fact, of civilization from East to
+West has now clearly completed itself. The globe has been circled, and
+we cannot go any FARTHER to the West without coming round to the East
+again. It is a commonplace to say that our psychology, our philosophy
+and our religious sense are already taking on an Eastern color; nor is
+it difficult to imagine that with the end of the present dispensation a
+new era may perfectly naturally arrive in which the St. Vitus' dance of
+money-making and ambition will cease to be the chief end of existence.
+
+In the history of nations as in the history of individuals there
+are periods when the formative ideals of life (through some hidden
+influence) change; and the mode of life and evolution in consequence
+changes also. I remember when I was a boy wishing--like many other
+boys--to go to sea. I wanted to join the Navy. It was not, I am sure,
+that I was so very anxious to defend my country. No, there was a much
+simpler and more prosaic motive than that. The ships of those days with
+their complex rigging suggested a perfect paradise of CLIMBING, and I
+know that it was the thought of THAT which influenced me. To be able
+to climb indefinitely among those ropes and spars! How delightful! Of
+course I knew perfectly well that I should not always have free access
+to the rigging; but then--some day, no doubt, I should be an Admiral,
+and who then could prevent me? I remember seeing myself in my mind's
+eye, with cocked hat on my head and spy-glass under my arm, roaming at
+my own sweet will up aloft, regardless of the remonstrances which
+might reach me from below! Such was my childish ideal. But a time
+came--needless to say--when I conceived a different idea of the object
+of life.
+
+It is said that John Tyndall, whose lectures on Science were so much
+sought after in their time, being on one occasion in New York was
+accosted after his discourse by a very successful American business
+man, who urged him to devote his scientific knowledge and ability to
+commercial pursuits, promising that if he did so, he, Tyndall, would
+easily make "a big pile." Tyndall very calmly replied, "Well, I myself
+thought of that once, but I soon abandoned the idea, having come to
+the conclusion that I had NO TIME TO WASTE IN MAKING MONEY." The man of
+dollars nearly sank into the ground. Such a conception of life had never
+entered his head before. But to Tyndall no doubt it was obvious that if
+he chained himself to the commercial ideal all the joy and glory of his
+days would be gone.
+
+We sometimes hear of the awful doom of some of the Russian convicts in
+the quarries and mines of Siberia, who are (or were) chained permanently
+to their wheelbarrows. It is difficult to imagine a more dreadful fate:
+the despair, the disgust, the deadly loathing of the accursed thing from
+which there is no escape day or night--which is the companion not only
+of the prisoner's work but of his hours of rest--with which he has to
+sleep, to feed, to take his recreation if he has any, and to fulfil all
+the offices of nature. Could anything be more crushing? And yet, and
+yet... is it not true that we, most of us, in our various ways are
+chained to our wheelbarrows--is it not too often true that to these
+beggarly things we have for the most part chained OURSELVES?
+
+Let me be understood. Of course we all have (or ought to have) our work
+to do. We have our living to get, our families to support, our trade,
+our art, our profession to pursue. In that sense no doubt we are tied;
+but I take it that these things are like the wheelbarrow which a man
+uses while he is at work. It may irk him at times, but he sticks to it
+with a good heart, and with a certain joy because it is the instrument
+of a noble purpose. That is all right. But to be chained to it, not to
+be able to leave it when the work of the day is done--that is indeed
+an ignoble slavery. I would say, then, take care that even with these
+things, these necessary arts of life, you preserve your independence,
+that even if to some degree they may confine your body they do not
+enslave your mind.
+
+For it is the freedom of the mind which counts. We are all no doubt
+caught in the toils of the earth-life. One man is largely dominated
+by sensual indulgence, another by ambition, another by the pursuit
+of money. Well, these things are all right in themselves. Without the
+pleasures of the senses we should be dull mokes indeed; without ambition
+much of the zest and enterprise of life would be gone; gold, in the
+present order of affairs, is a very useful servant. These things are
+right enough--but to be CHAINED to them, to be unable to think of
+anything else--what a fate! The subject reminds one of a not uncommon
+spectacle. It is a glorious day; the sun is bright, small white clouds
+float in the transparent blue--a day when you linger perforce on the
+road to enjoy the scene. But suddenly here comes a man painfully running
+all hot and dusty and mopping his head, and with no eye, clearly, for
+anything around him. What is the matter? He is absorbed by one idea.
+He is running to catch a train! And one cannot help wondering what
+EXCEEDINGLY important business it must be for which all this glory and
+beauty is sacrificed, and passed by as if it did not exist.
+
+Further we must remember that in our foolishness we very commonly chain
+ourselves, not only to things like sense-pleasures and ambitions which
+are on the edge, so to speak, of being vices; but also to other things
+which are accounted virtues, and which as far as I can see are just as
+bad, if we once become enslaved to them. I have known people who were so
+exceedingly 'spiritual' and 'good' that one really felt quite depressed
+in their company; I have known others whose sense of duty, dear things,
+was so strong that they seemed quite unable to REST, or even to allow
+their friends to rest; and I have wondered whether, after all, worriting
+about one's duty might not be as bad--as deteriorating to oneself, as
+distressing to one's friends--as sinning a good solid sin. No, in this
+respect virtues MAY be no better than vices; and to be chained to a
+wheelbarrow made of alabaster is no way preferable to being chained to
+one of wood. To sacrifice the immortal freedom of the mind in order to
+become a prey to self-regarding cares and anxieties, self-estimating
+virtues and vices, self-chaining duties and indulgences, is a mistake.
+And I warn you, it is quite useless. For the destiny of Freedom is
+ultimately upon every one, and if refusing it for a time you heap your
+life persistently upon one object--however blameless in itself that
+object may be--Beware! For one day--and when you least expect it--the
+gods will send a thunderbolt upon you. One day the thing for which
+you have toiled and spent laborious days and sleepless nights will lie
+broken before you--your reputation will be ruined, your ambition will be
+dashed, your savings of years will be lost--and for the moment you will
+be inclined to think that your life has been in vain. But presently you
+will wake up and find that something quite different has happened. You
+will find that the thunderbolt which you thought was your ruin has been
+your salvation--that it has broken the chain which bound you to your
+wheelbarrow, and that you are free! --------
+
+I think you will now see what I mean by Rest. Rest is the loosing of the
+chains which bind us to the whirligig of the world, it is the passing
+into the centre of the Cyclone; it is the Stilling of Thought. For (with
+regard to this last) it is Thought, it is the Attachment of the Mind,
+which binds us to outer things. The outer things themselves are all
+right. It is only through our thoughts that they make slaves of us.
+Obtain power over your thoughts and you are free. You can then use the
+outer things or dismiss them at your pleasure.
+
+There is nothing new of course in all this. It has been known for ages;
+and is part of the ancient philosophy of the world.
+
+In the Katha Upanishad you will find these words (Max Muller's
+translation): "As rainwater that has fallen on a mountain ridge runs
+down on all sides, thus does he who sees a difference between qualities
+run after them on all sides." This is the figure of the man who does NOT
+rest. And it is a powerful likeness. The thunder shower descends on the
+mountain top; torrents of water pour down the crags in every direction.
+Imagine the state of mind of a man--however thirsty he may be--who
+endeavors to pursue and intercept all these streams!
+
+But then the Upanishad goes on: "As pure water poured into pure water
+remains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who
+knows." What a perfect image of rest! Imagine a cistern before you with
+transparent glass sides and filled with pure water. And then imagine
+some one comes with a phial, also of pure water, and pours the contents
+gently into the cistern. What will happen? Almost nothing. The pure
+water will glide into the pure water--"remaining the same." There will
+be no dislocation, no discoloration (as might happen if MUDDY water were
+poured in); there will be only perfect harmony.
+
+I imagine here that the meaning is something like this. The cistern is
+the great Reservoir of the Universe which contains the pure and
+perfect Spirit of all life. Each one of us, and every mortal creature,
+represents a drop from that reservoir--a drop indeed which is also pure
+and perfect (though the phial in which it is contained may not always
+be so). When we, each of us, descend into the world and meet the great
+Ocean of Life which dwells there behind all mortal forms, it is like the
+little phial being poured into the great reservoir. If the tiny canful
+which is our selves is pure and unsoiled, then when it meets the
+world it will blend with the Spirit which informs the world perfectly
+harmoniously, without distress or dislocation. It will pass through and
+be at one with it. How can one describe such a state of affairs? You
+will have the key to every person that you meet, because indeed you are
+conscious that the real essence of that person is the same as your own.
+You will have the solution of every event which happens. For every event
+is (and is felt to be) the touch of the great Spirit on yours. Can any
+description of Rest be more perfect than that? Pure water poured into
+pure water.... There is no need to hurry, for everything will come in
+its good time. There is no need to leave your place, for all you desire
+is close at hand.
+
+Here is another verse (from the Vagasaneyi-Samhita Upanishad) embodying
+the same idea: "And he who beholds all beings in the Self, and the
+Self in all beings, he never turns away from It. When, to a man who
+understands, the Self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble,
+can there be to him--having once beheld that Unity?"--What trouble,
+what sorrow, indeed, when the universe has become transparent with the
+presences of all we love, held firm in the One enfolding Presence?
+
+But it will be said: "Our minds are NOT pure and transparent. More often
+they are muddy and soiled--soiled, if not in their real essence, yet by
+reason of the mortal phial in which they are contained." And that alas!
+is true. If you pour a phial of muddy water into that reservoir which
+we described--what will you see? You will see a queer and ugly cloud
+formed. And to how many of us, in our dealings with the world, does life
+take on just such a form--of a queer and ugly cloud?
+
+Now not so very long after those Upanishads were written there lived
+in China that great Teacher, Lao-tze; and he too had considered these
+things. And he wrote--in the Tao-Teh-King--"Who is there who can make
+muddy water clear?" The question sounds like a conundrum. For a moment
+one hesitates to answer it. Lao-tze, however, has an answer ready. He
+says: "But if you LEAVE IT ALONE it will become clear of itself." That
+muddy water of the mind, muddied by all the foolish little thoughts
+which like a sediment infest it--but if you leave it alone it will
+become clear of itself. Sometimes walking along the common road after
+a shower you have seen pools of water lying here and there, dirty and
+unsightly with the mud stirred up by the hoofs of men and animals. And
+then returning some hours afterwards along the same road--in the evening
+and after the cessation of traffic--you have looked again, and lo!
+each pool has cleared itself to a perfect calm, and has become a lovely
+mirror reflecting the trees and the clouds and the sunset and the stars.
+
+So this mirror of the mind. Leave it alone. Let the ugly sediment
+of tiresome thoughts and anxieties, and of fussing over one's
+self-importances and duties, settle down--and presently you will look
+on it, and see something there which you never knew or imagined
+before--something more beautiful than you ever yet beheld--a reflection
+of the real and eternal world such is only given to the mind that rests.
+
+
+Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this direction and in
+that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated in the desert.
+
+But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them still, so
+still;
+
+And let them become clear, so clear--so limpid, so mirror-like;
+
+At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in peaceful
+beauty,
+
+And the antelope shall descend to drink, and the lion to quench his
+thirst,
+
+And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his own likeness in
+you. (1)
+
+
+ (1) Towards Democracy, p. 373.
+
+
+Yes, there is this priceless thing within us, but hoofing along the
+roads in the mud we fail to find it; there is this region of calm,
+but the cyclone of the world raging around guards us from entering it.
+Perhaps it is best so--best that the access to it should not be made
+too easy. One day, some time ago, in the course of conversation with
+Rabindranath Tagore in London, I asked him what impressed him most in
+visiting the great city. He said, "The restless incessant movement of
+everybody." I said, "Yes, they seem as if they were all rushing about
+looking for something." He replied, "It is because each person does not
+know of the great treasure he has within himself." --------
+
+How then are we to reach this treasure and make it our own? How are we
+to attain to this Stilling of the Mind, which is the secret of all power
+and possession? The thing is difficult, no doubt; yet as I tried to show
+at the outset of this discourse, we Moderns MUST reach it; we have got
+to attain to it--for the penalty of failure is and must be widespread
+Madness.
+
+The power to still the mind--to be ABLE, mark you, when you want,
+to enter into the region of Rest, and to dismiss or command your
+Thoughts--is a condition of Health; it is a condition of all Power
+and Energy. For all health, whether of mind or body, resides in one's
+relation to the central Life within. If one cannot get into touch with
+THAT, then the life-forces cannot flow down into the organism. Most,
+perhaps all, disease arises from the disturbance of this connection. All
+mere hurry, all mere running after external things (as of the man after
+the water-streams on the mountain-top), inevitably breaks it. Let a pond
+be allowed calmly under the influence of frost to crystallize, and most
+beautiful flowers and spears of ice will be formed, but keep stirring
+the water all the time with a stick or a pole and nothing will result
+but an ugly brash of half-frozen stuff. The condition of the exercise of
+power and energy is that it should proceed from a center of Rest within
+one. So convinced am I of this, that whenever I find myself hurrying
+over my work, I pause and say, "Now you are not producing anything
+good!" and I generally find that that is true. It is curious, but I
+think very noticeable, that the places where people hurry most--as
+for instance the City of London or Wall Street, New York--are just the
+places where the work being done is of LEAST importance (being
+mostly money-gambling); whereas if you go and look at a ploughman
+ploughing--doing perhaps the most important of human work--you find
+all his movements most deliberate and leisurely, as if indeed he had
+infinite time at command; the truth being that in dealing (like a
+ploughman) with the earth and the horses and the weather and the things
+of Nature generally you can no more hurry than Nature herself hurries.
+
+Following this line of thought it might seem that one would arrive at a
+hopeless paradox. If it be true that the less one hurries the better
+the work resulting, then it might seem that by sitting still and merely
+twirling one's thumbs one would arrive at the very greatest activity and
+efficiency! And indeed (if understood aright) there is a truth even in
+this, which--like the other points I have mentioned--has been known and
+taught long ages ago. Says that humorous old sage, Lao-tze, whom I have
+already quoted: "By non-action there is nothing that cannot be done." At
+first this sounds like mere foolery or worse; but afterwards thinking on
+it one sees there is a meaning hidden. There is a secret by which Nature
+and the powers of the universal life will do all for you. The Bhagavat
+Gita also says, "He who discovers inaction in action and action in
+inaction is wise among mortals."
+
+It is worth while dwelling for a moment on these texts. We are all--as I
+said earlier on--involved in work belonging to our place and station; we
+are tied to some degree in the bonds of action. But that fact need not
+imprison our inner minds. While acting even with keenness and energy
+along the external and necessary path before us, it is perfectly
+possible to hold the mind free and untied--so that the RESULT of our
+action (which of course is not ours to command) shall remain indifferent
+and incapable of unduly affecting us. Similarly, when it is our part
+to remain externally INACTIVE, we may discover that underneath this
+apparent inaction we may be taking part in the currents of a deeper life
+which are moving on to a definite end, to an end or object which in a
+sense is ours and in a sense is NOT ours.
+
+The lighthouse beam flies over land and sea with incredible velocity,
+and you think the light itself must be in swiftest movement; but when
+you climb up thither you find the lamp absolutely stationary. It is only
+the reflection that is moving. The rider on horseback may gallop to and
+fro wherever he will, but it is hard to say that HE is acting. The horse
+guided by the slightest indication of the man's will performs an the
+action that is needed. If we can get into right touch with the immense,
+the incalculable powers of Nature, is there anything which we may not be
+able to do? If a man worship the Self only as his true state," says
+the Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad, "his work cannot fail, for whatever he
+desires, that he obtains from the Self." What a wonderful saying, and
+how infallibly true! For obviously if you succeed in identifying your
+true being with the great Self of the universe, then whatever you desire
+the great Self will also desire, and therefore every power of Nature
+will be at your service and will conspire to fulfil your need.
+
+There are marvelous things here "well wrapped up"--difficult to
+describe, yet not impossible to experience. And they all depend upon
+that power of stilling Thought, that ability to pass unharmed and
+undismayed through the grinning legions of the lower mind into the very
+heart of Paradise.
+
+The question inevitably arises, How can this power be obtained? And
+there is only one answer--the same answer which has to be given for the
+attainment of ANY power or faculty. There is no royal road. The only way
+is (however imperfectly) to DO the thing in question, to practice it. If
+you would learn to play cricket, the only way is to play cricket; if you
+would be able to speak a language, the only way is to speak it. If you
+would learn to swim, the only way is to practice swimming. Or would you
+wish to be like the man who when his companions were bathing and bidding
+him come and join them, said: "Yes, I am longing to join you, but I am
+not going to be such a fool as to go into the water TILL I KNOW HOW TO
+SWIM!"
+
+There is nothing but practice. If you want to obtain that priceless
+power of commanding Thought--of using it or dismissing it (for the
+two things go together) at will--there is no way but practice. And
+the practice consists in two exercises: (a) that of concentration--in
+holding the thought steadily for a time on one subject, or point of a
+subject; and (b) that of effacement--in effacing any given thought from
+the mind, and determining NOT to entertain it for such and such a
+time. Both these exercises are difficult. Failure in practicing them is
+certain--and may even extend over years. But the power equally certainly
+grows WITH practice. And ultimately there may come a time when the
+learner is not only able to efface from his mind any given thought
+(however importunate), but may even succeed in effacing, during short
+periods, ALL thought of any kind. When this stage is reached, the
+veil of illusion which surrounds all mortal things is pierced, and the
+entrance to the Paradise of Rest (and of universal power and knowledge)
+is found.
+
+Of indirect or auxiliary methods of reaching this great conclusion,
+there are more than one. I think of life in the open air, if not
+absolutely necessary, at least most important. The gods--though
+sometimes out of compassion they visit the interiors of houses--are not
+fond of such places and the evil effluvium they find there, and avoid
+them as much as they can. It is not merely a question of breathing
+oxygen instead of carbonic acid. There is a presence and an influence in
+Nature and the Open which expands the mind and causes brigand cares
+and worries to drop off--whereas in confined places foolish and futile
+thoughts of all kinds swarm like microbes and cloud and conceal the
+soul. Experto Crede. It is only necessary to try this experiment in
+order to prove its truth.
+
+Another thing which corresponds in some degree to living physically in
+the open air, is the living mentally and emotionally in the atmosphere
+of love. A large charity of mind, which refuses absolutely to shut
+itself in little secluded places of prejudice, bigotry and contempt for
+others, and which attains to a great and universal sympathy, helps, most
+obviously, to open the way to that region of calm and freedom of which
+we have spoken, while conversely all petty enmity, meanness and spite,
+conspire to imprison the soul and make its deliverance more difficult.
+
+It is not necessary to labor these points. As we said, the way to attain
+is to sincerely TRY to attain, to consistently PRACTICE attainment.
+Whoever does this will find that the way will open out by degrees, as
+of one emerging from a vast and gloomy forest, till out of darkness the
+path becomes clear. For whomsoever really TRIES there is no failure; for
+every effort in that region is success, and every onward push, however
+small, and however little result it may show, is really a move forward,
+and one step nearer the light.
+
+
+
+II. THE NATURE OF THE SELF
+
+The true nature of the Self is a matter by no means easy to compass. We
+have all probably at some time or other attempted to fathom the deeps of
+personality, and been baffled. Some people say they can quite distinctly
+remember a moment in early childhood, about the age of THREE (though the
+exact period is of course only approximate) when self-consciousness--the
+awareness of being a little separate Self--first dawned in the mind.
+It was generally at some moment of childish tension--alone perhaps in a
+garden, or lost from the mother's protecting hand--that this happened;
+and it was the beginning of a whole range of new experience. Before
+some such period there is in childhood strictly speaking no distinct
+self-consciousness. As Tennyson says (In Memoriam xliv):
+
+      The baby new to earth and sky,
+          What time his tender palm is prest
+          Against the circle of the breast,
+      Hath never thought that "This is I."
+
+It has consciousness truly, but no distinctive self-consciousness. It
+is this absence or deficiency which explains many things which at first
+sight seem obscure in the psychology of children and of animals. The
+baby (it has often been noticed) experiences little or no sense of FEAR.
+It does not know enough to be afraid; it has never formed any image of
+itself, as of a thing which might be injured. It may shrink from actual
+pain or discomfort, but it does not LOOK FORWARD--which is of the
+essence of fear--to pain in the future. Fear and self-consciousness are
+closely interlinked. Similarly with animals, we often wonder how a horse
+or a cow can endure to stand out in a field all night, exposed to cold
+and rain, in the lethargic patient way that they exhibit. It is not that
+they do not FEEL the discomfort, but it is that they do not envisage
+THEMSELVES as enduring this pain and suffering for all those coming
+hours; and as we know with ourselves that nine-tenths of our miseries
+really consist in looking forward to future miseries, so we understand
+that the absence or at any rate slight prevalence of self-consciousness
+in animals enables them to endure forms of distress which would drive us
+mad.
+
+In time then the babe arrives at self-consciousness; and, as one might
+expect, the growing boy or girl often becomes intensely aware of Self.
+His or her self-consciousness is crude, no doubt, but it has very little
+misgiving. If the question of the nature of the Self is propounded to
+the boy as a problem he has no difficulty in solving it. He says "I know
+well enough who I am: I am the boy with red hair what gave Jimmy Brown
+such a jolly good licking last Monday week." He knows well enough--or
+thinks he knows--who he is. And at a later age, though his definition
+may change and he may describe himself chiefly as a good cricketer or
+successful in certain examinations, his method is practically the same.
+He fixes his mind on a certain bundle of qualities and capacities which
+he is supposed to possess, and calls that bundle Himself. And in a more
+elaborate way we most of us, I imagine, do the same.
+
+Presently, however, with more careful thought, we begin to see
+difficulties in this view. I see that directly I think of myself as a
+certain bundle of qualities--and for that matter it is of no account
+whether the qualities are good or bad, or in what sort of charming
+confusion they are mixed--I see at once that I am merely looking at
+a bundle of qualities: and that the real "I," the Self, is not that
+bundle, but is the being INSPECTING the same--something beyond and
+behind, as it were. So I now concentrate my thoughts upon that inner
+Something, in order to find out what it really is. I imagine perhaps an
+inner being, of 'astral' or ethereal nature, and possessing a new
+range of much finer and more subtle qualities than the body--a being
+inhabiting the body and perceiving through its senses, but quite capable
+of surviving the tenement in which it dwells and I think of that as the
+Self. But no sooner have I taken this step than I perceive that I am
+committing the same mistake as before. I am only contemplating a new
+image or picture, and "I" still remain beyond and behind that which I
+contemplate. No sooner do I turn my attention on the subjective being
+than it becomes OBJECTIVE, and the real subject retires into the
+background. And so on indefinitely. I am baffled; and unable to say
+positively what the Self is.
+
+Meanwhile there are people who look upon the foregoing speculations
+about an interior Self as merely unpractical. Being perhaps of a more
+materialistic type of mind they fix their attention on the body. Frankly
+they try to define the Self by the body and all that is connected
+therewith--that is by the mental as well as corporeal qualities which
+exhibit themselves in that connection; and they say, "At any rate the
+Self--whatever it may be--is in some way limited by the body; each
+person studies the interest of his body and of the feelings, emotions
+and mentality directly associated with it, and you cannot get beyond
+that; it isn't in human nature to do so. The Self is limited by this
+corporeal phenomenon and doubtless it perishes when the body perishes."
+But here again the conclusion, though specious at first, soon appears to
+be quite inadequate. For though it is possibly true that a man, if left
+alone in a Robinson Crusoe life on a desert island, might ultimately
+subside into a mere gratification of his corporeal needs and of those
+mental needs which were directly concerned with the body, yet we know
+that such a case would by no means be representative. On the contrary we
+know that vast numbers of people spend their lives in considering other
+people, and often so far as to sacrifice their own bodily and mental
+comfort and well-being. The mother spends her life thinking almost
+day and night about her babe and the other children--spending all her
+thoughts and efforts on them. You may call her selfish if you will, but
+her selfishness clearly extends beyond her personal body and mind, and
+extends to the personalities of her children around her; her "body"--if
+you insist on your definition--must be held to include the bodies of all
+her children. And again, the husband who is toiling for the support of
+the family, he is thinking and working and toiling and suffering for a
+'self' which includes his wife and children. Do you mean that the whole
+family is his "body"? Or a man belongs to some society, to a church or
+to a social league of some kind, and his activities are largely ruled by
+the interests of this larger group. Or he sacrifices his life--as many
+have been doing of late--with extraordinary bravery and heroism for the
+sake of the nation to which he belongs. Must we say then that the whole
+nation is really a part of the man's body? Or again, he gives his life
+and goes to the stake for his religion. Whether his religion is right or
+wrong does not matter, the point is that there is that in him which can
+carry him far beyond his local self and the ordinary instincts of his
+physical organism, to dedicate his life and powers to a something of far
+wider circumference and scope.
+
+Thus in the FIRST of these two examples of a search for the nature of
+the Self we are led INWARDS from point to point, into interior and ever
+subtler regions of our being, and still in the end are baffled; while
+in the SECOND we are carried outwards into an ever wider and wider
+circumference in our quest of the Ego, and still feel that we have
+failed to reach its ultimate nature. We are driven in fact by these two
+arguments to the conclusion that that which we are seeking is indeed
+something very vast--something far extending around, yet also buried
+deep in the hidden recesses of our minds. How far, how deep, we do not
+know. We can only say that as far as the indications point the true self
+is profounder and more far-reaching than anything we have yet fathomed.
+
+In the ordinary commonplace life we shrink to ordinary commonplace
+selves, but it is one of the blessings of great experiences, even though
+they are tragic or painful, that they throw us out into that enormously
+greater self to which we belong. Sometimes, in moments of inspiration,
+of intense enthusiasm, of revelation, such as a man feels in the midst
+of a battle, in moments of love and dedication to another person, and
+in moments of religious ecstasy, an immense world is opened up to the
+astonished gaze of the inner man, who sees disclosed a self stretched
+far beyond anything he had ever imagined. We have all had experiences
+more or less of that kind. I have known quite a few people, and most of
+you have known some, who at some time, even if only once in their lives,
+have experienced such an extraordinary lifting of the veil, an opening
+out of the back of their minds as it were, and have had such a vision of
+the world, that they have never afterwards forgotten it. They have seen
+into the heart of creation, and have perceived their union with the rest
+of mankind. They have had glimpses of a strange immortality belonging to
+them, a glimpse of their belonging to a far greater being than they have
+ever imagined. Just once--and a man has never forgotten it, and even if
+it has not recurred it has colored all the rest of his life.
+
+Now, this subject has been thought about--since the beginning of the
+world, I was going to say--but it has been thought about since the
+beginnings of history. Some three thousand years ago certain groups
+of--I hardly like to call them philosophers--but, let us say, people who
+were meditating and thinking upon these problems, were in the habit of
+locating themselves in the forests of Northern India; and schools arose
+there. In the case of each school some teacher went into the woods and
+collected groups of disciples around him, who lived there in his company
+and listened to his words. Such schools were formed in very considerable
+numbers, and the doctrines of these teachers were gathered together,
+generally by their disciples, in notes, which notes were brought
+together into little pamphlets or tracts, forming the books which
+are called the 'Upanishads' of the Indian sages. They contain some
+extraordinary words of wisdom, some of which I want to bring before
+you. The conclusions arrived at were not so much what we should call
+philosophy in the modern sense. They were not so much the result of the
+analysis of the mind and the following out of concatenations of strict
+argument; but they were flashes of intuition and experience, and all
+through the 'Upanishads' you find these extraordinary flashes embedded
+in the midst of a great deal of what we should call a rather rubbishy
+kind of argument, and a good deal of merely conventional Brahmanical
+talk of those days. But the people who wrote and spoke thus had an
+intuition into the heart of things which I make bold to say very few
+people in modern life have. These 'Upanisihads,' however various their
+subject, practically agree on one point--in the definition of the
+"self." They agree in saying: that the self of each man is continuous
+with and in a sense identical with the Self of the universe. Now that
+seems an extraordinary conclusion, and one which almost staggers the
+modern mind to conceive of. But that is the conclusion, that is the
+thread which runs all through the 'Upanishads'--the identity of the self
+of each individual with the self of every other individual throughout
+mankind, and even with the selves of the animals and other creatures.
+
+Those who have read the Khandogya Upanishad remember how in that
+treatise the father instructs his son Svetakeitu on this very
+subject--pointing him out in succession the objects of Nature and
+on each occasion exhorting him to realize his identity with the
+very essence of the object--"Tat twam asi, THAT thou art." He calls
+Svetaketu's attention to a tree. What is the ESSENCE of the tree?
+When they have rejected the external characteristics--the leaves, the
+branches, etc.--and agreed that the SAP is the essence, then the father
+says, "TAT TWAM ASI--THAT thou art." He gives his son a crystal of salt,
+and asks him what is the essence of that. The son is puzzled. Clearly
+neither the form nor the transparent quality are essential. The father
+says, "Put the crystal in water." Then when it is melted he says, "Where
+is the crystal?" The son replies, "I do not know." "Dip your finger in
+the bowl," says the father, "and taste." Then Svetaketu dips here and
+there, and everywhere there is a salt flavor. They agree that THAT is
+the essence of salt; and the father says again, "TAt twam asi." I am of
+course neither defending nor criticizing the scientific attitude here
+adopted. I am only pointing out that this psychological identification
+of the observer with the object observed runs through the Upanishads,
+and is I think worthy of the deepest consideration.
+
+In the 'Bhagavat Gita,' which is a later book, the author speaks of
+"him whose soul is purified, whose self is the Self of all creatures." A
+phrase like that challenges opposition. It is so bold, so sweeping, and
+so immense, that we hesitate to give our adhesion to what it implies.
+But what does it mean--"whose soul is purified"? I believe that it means
+this, that with most of us our souls are anything but clean or
+purified, they are by no means transparent, so that all the time we are
+continually deceiving ourselves and making clouds between us and others.
+We are all the time grasping things from other people, and, if not in
+words, are mentally boasting ourselves against others, trying to think
+of our own superiority to the rest of the people around us. Sometimes we
+try to run our neighbors down a little, just to show that they are not
+quite equal to our level. We try to snatch from others some things which
+belong to them, or take credit to ourselves for things to which we are
+not fairly entitled. But all the time we are acting so it is perfectly
+obvious that we are weaving veils between ourselves and others. You
+cannot have dealings with another person in a purely truthful way, and
+be continually trying to cheat that person out of money, or out of his
+good name and reputation. If you are doing that, however much in the
+background you may be doing it, you are not looking the person fairly
+in the face--there is a cloud between you all the time. So long as your
+soul is not purified from all these really absurd and ridiculous little
+desires and superiorities and self-satisfactions, which make up so much
+of our lives, just so long as that happens you do not and you cannot see
+the truth. But when it happens to a person, as it does happen in times
+of great and deep and bitter experience; when it happens that all these
+trumpery little objects of life are swept away; then occasionally, with
+astonishment, the soul sees that. It is also the soul of the others
+around. Even if it does not become aware of an absolute identity, it
+perceives that there is a deep relationship and communion between itself
+and others, and it comes to understand how it may really be true that
+to him whose soul is purified the self is literally the Self of all
+creatures.
+
+Ordinary men and those who go on more intellectual and less intuitional
+lines will say that these ideas are really contrary to human nature and
+to nature generally. Yet I think that those people who say this in the
+name of Science are extremely unscientific, because a very superficial
+glance at nature reveals that the very same thing is taking place
+throughout nature. Consider the madrepores, corallines, or sponges. You
+find, for instance, that constantly the little self of the coralline
+or sponge is functioning at the end of a stem and casting forth its
+tentacles into the water to gain food and to breathe the air out of
+the water. That little animalcule there, which is living in that way,
+imagines no doubt that it is working all for itself, and yet it is
+united down the stem at whose extremity it stands, with the life of the
+whole madrepore or sponge to which it belongs. There is the common
+life of the whole and the individual life of each, and while the little
+creature at the end of the stem is thinking (if it is conscious at all)
+that its whole energies are absorbed in its own maintenance, it really
+is feeding the common life through the stem to which it belongs, and in
+its turn it is being fed by that common life.
+
+You have only to look at an ordinary tree to see the same thing going
+on. Each little leaf on a tree may very naturally have sufficient
+consciousness to believe that it is an entirely separate being
+maintaining itself in the sunlight and the air, withering away and dying
+when the winter comes on--and there is an end of it. It probably does
+not realize that all the time it is being supported by the sap which
+flows from the trunk of the tree, and that in its turn it is feeding
+the tree, too--that its self is the self of the whole tree. If the leaf
+could really understand itself, it would see that its self was deeply,
+intimately connected, practically one with the life of the whole tree.
+Therefore, I say that this Indian view is not unscientific. On the
+contrary, I am sure that it is thoroughly scientific.
+
+Let us take another passage, out of the 'Svetasvatara Upanishad,' which,
+speaking of the self says: "He is the one God, hidden in all creatures,
+all pervading, the self within all, watching over all works, shadowing
+all creatures, the witness, the perceiver, the only one free from
+qualities."
+
+And now we can return to the point where we left the argument at the
+beginning of this discourse. We said, you remember, that the Self is
+certainly no mere bundle of qualities--that the very nature of the mind
+forbids us thinking that. For however fine and subtle any quality or
+group of qualities may be, we are irresistibly compelled by the
+nature of the mind itself to look for the Self, not in any quality or
+qualities, but in the being that PERCEIVES those qualities. The passage
+I have just quoted says that being is "The one God, hidden in all
+creatures, all pervading, the self within all... the witness, the
+perceiver, the only one free from qualities." And the more you
+think about it the clearer I think you will see that this passage is
+correct--that there can be only ONE witness, ONE perceiver, and that
+is the one God hidden in all creatures, "Sarva Sakshi," the Universal
+Witness.
+
+Have you ever had that curious feeling, not uncommon, especially in
+moments of vivid experience and emotion, that there was at the back of
+your mind a witness, watching everything that was going on, yet too deep
+for your ordinary thought to grasp? Has it not occurred to you--in a
+moment say of great danger when the mind was agitated to the last degree
+by fears and anxieties--suddenly to become perfectly calm and collected,
+to realize that NOTHING can harm you, that you are identified with
+some great and universal being lifted far over this mortal world and
+unaffected by its storms? Is it not obvious that the real Self MUST be
+something of this nature, a being perceiving all, but itself remaining
+unperceived? For indeed if it were perceived it would fall under the
+head of some definable quality, and so becoming the object of thought
+would cease to be the subject, would cease to be the Self.
+
+The witness is and must be "free from qualities." For since it is
+capable of perceiving ALL qualities it must obviously not be itself
+imprisoned or tied in any quality--it must either be entirely without
+quality, or if it have the potentiality of quality in it, it must have
+the potentiality of EVERY quality; but in either case it cannot be in
+bondage to any quality, and in either case it would appear that there
+can be only ONE such ultimate Witness in the universe. For if there were
+two or more such Witnesses, then we should be compelled to suppose them
+distinguished from one another by something, and that something could
+only be a difference of qualities, which would be contrary to our
+conclusion that such a Witness cannot be in bondage to any quality.
+
+There is then I take it--as the text in question says--only one Witness,
+one Self, throughout the universe. It is hidden in all living things,
+men and animals and plants; it pervades all creation. In every thing
+that has consciousness it is the Self; it watches over all operations,
+it overshadows all creatures, it moves in the depths of our hearts, the
+perceiver, the only being that is cognizant of all and yet free from
+all.
+
+Once you really appropriate this truth, and assimilate it in the depths
+of your mind, a vast change (you can easily imagine) will take place
+within you. The whole world will be transformed, and every thought
+and act of which you are capable will take on a different color and
+complexion. Indeed the revolution will be so vast that it would be quite
+impossible for me within the limits of this discourse to describe it.
+I will, however, occupy the rest of my time in dealing with some points
+and conclusions, and some mental changes which will flow perfectly
+naturally from this axiomatic change taking place at the very root of
+life.
+
+"Free from qualities." We generally pride ourselves a little on our
+qualities. Some of us think a great deal of our good qualities, and some
+of us are rather ashamed of our bad ones! I would say: "Do not trouble
+very much about all that. What good qualities you have--well you may be
+quite sure they do not really amount to much; and what bad qualities,
+you may be sure they are not very important! Do not make too much fuss
+about either. Do you see? The thing is that you, you yourself, are not
+ANY of your qualities--you are the being that perceives them. The thing
+to see to is that they should not confuse you, bamboozle you, and hide
+you from the knowledge of yourself--that they should not be erected into
+a screen, to hide you from others, or the others from you. If you cease
+from running after qualities, then after a little time your soul will
+become purified, and you will KNOW that your self is the Self of all
+creatures; and when you can feel that you will know that the other
+things do not much matter.
+
+Sometimes people are so awfully good that their very goodness hides them
+from other people. They really cannot be on a level with others,
+and they feel that the others are far below them. Consequently their
+'selves' are blinded or hidden by their 'goodness.' It is a sad end to
+come to! And sometimes it happens that very 'bad' people--just because
+they are so bad--do not erect any screens or veils between themselves
+and others. Indeed they are only too glad if others will recognize them,
+or if they may be allowed to recognize others. And so, after all, they
+come nearer the truth than the very good people.
+
+"The Self is free from qualities." That thing which is so deep, which
+belongs to all, it either--as I have already said--has ALL qualities,
+or it has none. You, to whom I am speaking now, your qualities, good and
+bad, are all mine. I am perfectly willing to accept them. They are all
+right enough and in place--if one can only find the places for them. But
+I know that in most cases they have got so confused and mixed up that
+they cause great conflict and pain in the souls that harbor them. If
+you attain to knowing yourself to be other than and separate from the
+qualities, then you will pass below and beyond them all. You will be
+able to accept ALL your qualities and harmonize them, and your soul
+will be at peace. You will be free from the domination of qualities then
+because you will know that among all the multitudes of them there are
+none of any importance!
+
+If you should happen some day to reach that state of mind in connection
+with which this revelation comes, then you will find the experience
+a most extraordinary one. You will become conscious that there is no
+barrier in your path; that the way is open in all directions; that all
+men and women belong to you, are part of you. You will feel that there
+is a great open immense world around, which you had never suspected
+before, which belongs to you, and the riches of which are all yours,
+waiting for you. It may, of course, take centuries and thousands of
+years to realize this thoroughly, but there it is. You are just at the
+threshold, peeping in at the door. What did Shakespeare say? "To thine
+own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou can'st
+not then be false to any man." What a profound bit of philosophy in
+three lines! I doubt if anywhere the basis of all human life has been
+expressed more perfectly and tersely.
+
+One of the Upanishads (the Maitrayana-Brahmana) says: "The
+happiness belonging to a mind, which through deep inwardness (1) (or
+understanding) has been washed clean and has entered into the Self, is a
+thing beyond the power of words to describe: it can only be perceived by
+an inner faculty." Observe the conviction, the intensity with which this
+joy, this happiness is described, which comes to those whose minds have
+been washed clean (from all the silly trumpery sediment of self-thought)
+and have become transparent, so that the great universal Being residing
+there in the depths can be perceived. What sorrow indeed, what, grief,
+can come to such an one who has seen this vision? It is truly a thing
+beyond the power of words to describe: it can only be PERCEIVED--and
+that by an inner faculty. The external apparatus of thought is of no
+use. Argument is of no use. But experience and direct perception are
+possible; and probably all the experiences of life and of mankind
+through the ages are gradually deepening our powers of perception to
+that point where the vision will at last rise upon the inward eye.
+
+ (1) The word in the Max Muller translation is "meditation." But
+that is, I think, a somewhat misleading word. It suggests to most people
+the turning inward of the THINKING faculty to grope and delve in the
+interior of the mind. This is just what should NOT be done. Meditation
+in the proper sense should mean the inward deepening of FEELING and
+consciousness till the region of the universal self is reached; but
+THOUGHT should not interfere there. That should be turned on outward
+things to mould them into expression of the inner consciousness.
+
+
+Another text, from the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad (which I have already
+quoted in the paper on "Rest"), says: "If a man worship the Self only as
+his true state, his work cannot fail, for whatever he desires, that he
+obtains from the Self." Is that not magnificent? If you truly realize
+your identity and union with the great Self who inspires and informs the
+world, then obviously whatever you desire the great Self win desire, and
+the whole world will conspire to bring it to you. "He maketh the winds
+his angels, and the flaming fires his ministers." (I need not say that
+I am not asking you to try and identify yourself with the great Self
+universal IN ORDER to get riches, "opulence," and other things of that
+kind which you desire; because in that quest you will probably not
+succeed. The Great Self is not such a fool as to be taken in in that
+way. It may be true--and it is true--that if ye seek FIRST the Kingdom
+of Heaven all these things shall be added unto you; but you must seek it
+first, not second.)
+
+Here is a passage from Towards Democracy: "As space spreads everywhere,
+and all things move and change within it, but it moves not nor changes,
+
+"So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without is but
+the similitude and mental image;
+
+"Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life--death
+shall no longer divide thee from whom thou lovest.
+
+"I am the Sun that shines upon all creatures from within--gazest thou
+upon me, thou shalt be filled with joy eternal."
+
+Yes, this great sun is there, always shining, but most of the time it is
+hidden from us by the clouds of which I have spoken, and we fail to see
+it. We complain of being out in the cold; and in the cold, for the time
+being, no doubt we are; but our return to the warmth and the light has
+now become possible.
+
+
+Thus at last the Ego, the mortal immortal self--disclosed at first in
+darkness and fear and ignorance in the growing babe--FINDS ITS TRUE
+IDENTITY. For a long period it is baffled in trying to understand what
+it is. It goes through a vast experience. It is tormented by the
+sense of separation and alienation--alienation from other people, and
+persecution by all the great powers and forces of the universe; and it
+is pursued by a sense of its own doom. Its doom truly is irrevocable.
+The hour of fulfilment approaches, the veil lifts, and the soul beholds
+at last ITS OWN TRUE BEING.
+
+
+We are accustomed to think of the external world around us as a nasty
+tiresome old thing of which all we can say for certain is that it works
+by a "law of cussedness"--so that, whichever way we want to go, that way
+seems always barred, and we only bump against blind walls without
+making any progress. But that uncomfortable state of affairs arises from
+ourselves. Once we have passed a certain barrier, which at present looks
+so frowning and impossible, but which fades into nothing immediately we
+have passed it--once we have found the open secret of identity--then the
+way is indeed open in every direction.
+
+The world in which we live--the world into which we are tumbled as
+children at the first onset of self-consciousness--denies this great
+fact of unity. It is a world in which the principle of separation
+rules. Instead of a common life and union with each other, the contrary
+principle (especially in the later civilizations) has been the one
+recognized--and to such an extent that always there prevails the
+obsession of separation, and the conviction that each person is an
+isolated unit. The whole of our modern society has been founded on this
+delusive idea, WHICH IS FALSE. You go into the markets, and every man's
+hand is against the others--that is the ruling principle. You go into
+the Law Courts where justice is, or should be, administered, and you
+find that the principle which denies unity is the one that prevails.
+The criminal (whose actions have really been determined by the society
+around him) is cast out, disacknowledged, and condemned to further
+isolation in a prison cell. 'Property' again is the principle which
+rules and determines our modern civilization--namely that which is
+proper to, or can be appropriated by, each person, as AGAINST the
+others.
+
+In the moral world the doom of separation comes to us in the shape of
+the sense of sin. For sin is separation. Sin is actually (and that
+is its only real meaning) the separation from others, and the
+non-acknowledgment of unity. And so it has come about that during all
+this civilization-period the sense of sin has ruled and ranged to such
+an extraordinary degree. Society has been built on a false base, not
+true to fact or life--and has had a dim uneasy consciousness of its
+falseness. Meanwhile at the heart of it all--and within all the frantic
+external strife and warfare--there is all the time this real great life
+brooding. The kingdom of Heaven, as we said before, is still within.
+
+The word Democracy indicates something of the kind--the rule of the
+Demos, that is of the common life. The coming of that will transform,
+not only our Markets and our Law Courts and our sense of Property, and
+other institutions, into something really great and glorious instead
+of the dismal masses of rubbish which they at present are; but it will
+transform our sense of Morality.
+
+Our Morality at present consists in the idea of self-goodness--one of
+the most pernicious and disgusting ideas which has ever infested the
+human brain. If any one should follow and assimilate what I have just
+said about the true nature of the Self he will realize that it will
+never again be possible for him to congratulate himself on his own
+goodness or morality or superiority; for the moment he does so he will
+separate himself from the universal life, and proclaim the sin of his
+own separation. I agree that this conclusion is for some people a most
+sad and disheartening one--but it cannot be helped! A man may truly be
+'good' and 'moral' in some real sense; but only on the condition that
+he is not aware of it. He can only BE good when not thinking about the
+matter; to be conscious of one's own goodness is already to have fallen!
+
+We began by thinking of the self as just a little local self; then we
+extended it to the family, the cause, the nation--ever to a larger and
+vaster being. At last there comes a time when we recognize--or see that
+we SHALL have to recognize--an inner Equality between ourselves and all
+others; not of course an external equality--for that would be absurd and
+impossible--but an inner and profound and universal Equality. And so we
+come again to the mystic root-conception of Democracy.
+
+And now it will be said: "But after all this talk you have not defined
+the Self, or given us any intellectual outline of what you mean by the
+word." No--and I do not intend to. If I could, by any sort of copybook
+definition, describe and show the boundaries of myself, I should
+obviously lose all interest in the subject. Nothing more dull could be
+imagined. I may be able to define and describe fairly exhaustively
+this inkpot on the table; but for you or for me to give the limits and
+boundaries of ourselves is, I am glad to say, impossible. That does not,
+however, mean that we cannot FEEL and be CONSCIOUS of ourselves, and of
+our relations to other selves, and to the great Whole. On the contrary
+I think it is clear that the more vividly we feel our organic unity with
+the whole, the less shall we be able to separate off the local self and
+enclose it within any definition. I take it that we can and do become
+ever more vividly conscious of our true Self, but that the mental
+statement of it always does and probably always will lie beyond us.
+All life and all our action and experience consist in the gradual
+manifestation of that which is within us--of our inner being. In that
+sense--and reading its handwriting on the outer world--we come to know
+the soul's true nature more and more intimately; we enter into the mind
+of that great artist who beholds himself in his own creation.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pagan & Christian Creeds, by Edward Carpenter
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