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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Comparative Religion, by J. Estlin 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: Comparative Religion
-
-Author: J. Estlin Carpenter
-
-Release Date: October 13, 2013 [EBook #43947]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPARATIVE RELIGION ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Al Haines
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-  COMPARATIVE
-  RELIGION
-
-
-  BY
-
-  J. ESTLIN CARPENTER
-
-  D.LITT.
-
-  PRINCIPAL OF MANCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
-
-
-
-  NEW YORK
-  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
-
-  LONDON
-  WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
-
-
-
-
-  CONTENTS
-
-
-  CHAP.
-
-  I  INTRODUCTORY
-  II  THE PANORAMA OF RELIGIONS
-  III  RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE
-  IV  SPIRITS AND GODS
-  V  SACRED ACTS
-  VI  SACRED PRODUCTS
-  VII  RELIGION AND MORALITY
-  VIII  PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINY
-  BIBLIOGRAPHY
-  INDEX
-
-
-
-
-        "Those first affections,
-    Those shadowy recollections,
-    Which, be they what they may,
-  Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
-  Are yet a master light of all our seeing;
-    Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
-  Our noisy years seem moments in the being
-  Of the eternal Silence."
-                              WORDSWORTH.
-
-"To the philosopher the existence of God may seem to rest on a
-syllogism; in the eyes of the historian it rests on the whole evolution
-of human thought."--MAX MÜLLER.
-
-
-
-
-{7}
-
-COMPARATIVE RELIGION
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-INTRODUCTORY
-
-Over the chancel-arch of the church at South Leigh, a few miles west of
-Oxford, is a fresco of the Last Judgment and the Resurrection, of the
-type well known in mediæval art.  On the adjoining south wall stands
-the stately figure of the archangel Michael.  In his right hand he
-holds a pair of scales.  In one scale is the figure of a soul in the
-attitude of prayer; beside it is Our Lady carrying a rosary.  The other
-contains an ox-headed demon blowing a horn.  This scale rises steadily,
-though another demon has climbed to the beam above to weigh it down,
-and a third from hell's mouth below endeavours to drag it towards the
-abyss.  The same theme recurs in several other English churches; and it
-is carved over the portals of many French cathedrals, as at Notre Dame
-in Paris.
-
-Unroll a papyrus from an Egyptian tomb of the Eighteenth Dynasty before
-the days of Moses, and you will see a somewhat similar {8} scene.  The
-just and merciful judge Osiris, "lord of life and king of eternity,"
-sits in the Hall of the two goddesses of Truth.  Hither the soul is
-brought for the ordeal which will determine his future bliss or woe.
-Before forty-two assessors he declares his innocence of various
-offences: "I am not a doer of what is wrong; I am not a robber; I am
-not a slayer of men; I am not a niggard; I am not a teller of lies; I
-am not a monopoliser of food; I am no extortioner; I am not unchaste; I
-am not the causer of others' tears...."  Then he is led, sometimes
-supported by the two goddesses of Truth, to the actual trial.  Resting
-on an upright post is the beam of a balance.  It is guarded by a
-dog-headed ape, symbol of Thoth, "lord of the scales."  Thoth has
-various functions in the ancient texts, and even rises into a kind of
-impersonation of the principle of intelligence in the whole universe.
-Here as the computer of time and the inventor of numbers he plays the
-part of secretary to Osiris.  In one scale is placed the heart of the
-deceased, the organ of conscience.  In the other is sometimes a square
-weight, sometimes an ostrich plume, symbol of truth or righteousness.
-Thoth stands beside the scales, tablet in hand, to record the issue as
-the soul passes to the great award.
-
-The scenes and the persons differ; but the fundamental conception of
-judgment is the same, and it is carried out by the same method.  Is
-this an accidental coincidence of metaphor?  {9} The figure of the
-balance was naturally suggestive for the estimate of worth, and the
-Psalmist cried in bitterness of heart--
-
-  Surely men of low degree are vanity,
-  And men of high degree are a lie,
-  In the balances they will go up;
-  They are altogether lighter than vanity.
-
-
-The mysterious hand wrote upon the wall of Belshazzar's palace the
-strange word Tekel, which contained the dreadful sentence, "Thou art
-weighed in the balances and art found wanting."  To early Indian
-imagination, before the days of the Buddha (500 B.C.), the ordeal of
-the balance was part of the outlook into the world beyond.  In the
-ancient Persian teaching, Rashnu, the angel of justice, before the
-shining "Friend," the mediator Mithra, presided over the weighing of
-the spirits at the bridge of destiny, over which they would pass to
-heaven or hell.
-
-Is Michael the heir of Thoth or Rashnu?  He passed into the Christian
-Church from the Jewish Synagogue, where he was specially connected with
-the destinies of the dead.  He guided the souls of the just to the
-heavenly world, where he led them into the mystic city, the counterpart
-of Jerusalem below; or he stood at the gate as the angel of
-righteousness to decide who should be admitted.  So for the Greeks
-Hermes was the guardian of the spirits of the departed, whom he
-conducted {10} to the judgment in the under-world.  In this respect,
-then, Hermes and Michael were akin.  But Hermes also played many other
-parts, and the Greeks identified him with the Egyptian Thoth.  When the
-destinies of Hector and Achilles were weighed against each other, ere
-the last mortal combat, the vase-painter could represent Hermes as
-holding the balance in the presence of Zeus, much as Thoth had presided
-over it before Osiris.  The Etruscan artists depicted Mercury, the
-Italian equivalent of Hermes, fulfilling the same function.  True, the
-purport of the test was different.  But the symbol was the same; and
-when Hermes gave place to Michael, as Christianity was carried to the
-West, the scales passed from the Hellenic to the Jewish Christian
-figure, though they had in the one case been used to decide the
-allotment of fate, and in the other were employed for judgment.  Why
-they remained so long unused in Christian symbolism is obscure.  The
-revival of intercourse with the East through the Crusades may have
-given new force to the idea as part of the great judgment-process; and
-the figure to which it was most natural to assign it was that of
-Thoth-Hermes-Michael.
-
-
-The religion of the ancient Hindus was founded, as every one knows,
-upon the venerable hymns collected into one sacred book under the name
-of the Rig Veda.  These hymns, 1017 in number, containing over {11}
-10,000 verses, are now arranged in ten books, twice the number of the
-divisions of the Hebrew Psalter.  Like most of the Psalms they are
-traditionally ascribed to different poets, in whose families they were
-sung; and their authors were regarded as Rishis, bards, or sages.  Of
-their real origin nothing is definitely known; their composition
-probably extends over many generations, perhaps over several centuries;
-and dim suggestions of their super-earthly origin already appear in
-some of the latest poems.  They became the peculiar treasure of the
-priestly order; the most laborious efforts were devised for the study
-and preservation of the sacred text; the methods of pronunciation, the
-rules of grammar, the principles of metre, the derivations of words,
-were all elaborated with the utmost minuteness into different branches
-of Vedic lore.  Two other smaller Vedas, collections of sacrificial
-formulæ and hymns, were very early placed beside the main work, and a
-fourth collection gained similar rank much later.  With the development
-of the great schools of Hindu philosophy, especially after the decline
-of Buddhism, the whole question of authority as the foundation of
-belief and reasoning was forced to the front, and this in due time was
-applied to the Veda.  Brahmanical speculation had been long concerned
-with its divine origin.  It sprang from one of the mysterious figures
-in which the ancient theologians expressed their sense of the real {12}
-unity of the heavenly powers, Praj[=a]pati, the "lord of creatures,"
-through the medium of Vach, or sacred Speech.  As such it was "the
-firstborn in the universe."  But as proceeding from Praj[=a]pati it
-issued from the world of the _an-anta_, the "un-ending" or "infinite,"
-which was likewise the sphere of the _a-mrita_, the "im-mortal" or
-"deathless."  So it belonged to the realm of the eternal, where it
-could be beheld, not indeed with the eye of sense, but with the higher
-discernment of the holy Seer.  The philosophical schools occupied
-themselves accordingly with the defence of the eternity and consequent
-infallibility of the Veda.  Elaborate arguments were devised to explain
-the relation of words to things, and of sound in the abstract to
-uttered speech or again to show how behind individuals which had their
-origin in time there existed species (even of the gods) which belonged
-to the timeless order transcending our experience.  So the conclusion
-was reached, in the words of the great philosopher Çankara (A.D.
-788-820), that "the authority of the Veda with regard to the matters
-stated by it is independent and direct; just as the light of the sun is
-the direct means of our knowledge of form and colour."
-
-Just at this era, by a singular coincidence, a remarkable controversy
-was raging in the schools of Mohammedan theology.  Mohammed died in
-A.D. 632.  He had himself recorded nothing; the traditions about him
-are not even {13} agreed whether he could read or write.  His oracles
-were taught to his disciples, who began to note down some of them
-during the prophet's life; soon after his death the formal collection
-of them was undertaken; and under Caliph Othman (651) four copies were
-deposited in the cities of Mecca, Cufa, Basra, and Damascus.  We know
-the work under the name of the Koran (_Qur[=a]n_ = reading), one of the
-numerous expressions which Mohammed was said to have coined for the
-revelation imparted to him from on high.  Later generations attached
-the title exclusively to the utterances fixed in literary form, and
-discerned in them a unity designed by the prophet; but it seems more
-consonant with his view to regard each of the 114 discourses (_suras_)
-as a unit in itself, and the whole as only a fragment of his teaching.
-Many passages raise a claim to specific divine origin; others allude to
-the uncreated Scripture, _umm-al-kitab_, "the mother of the book."
-
-On such hints was founded the remarkable doctrine that the Koran was
-eternal in its essence as the word of God, a necessary attribute of the
-Most High.  First formulated in the middle of the eighth century (A.D.
-747-748), it roused extraordinary interest outside the theological
-schools.  It was fostered by the early Caliphs, for it supported their
-political authority, and the emphasis which it placed on the doctrine
-of predestination supplied them with a potent weapon.  Opposition {14}
-arose on the ground of free will; the passages enforcing the principle
-of predestination were evaded by the handy method of allegorical
-interpretation, and the revolt of the moral consciousness led, as it
-has done elsewhere, to rationalism.  Public debates were held amid
-general excitement, when the Caliph Ma'mun (813-833) unexpectedly
-espoused the rationalist cause, and issued a decree forbidding the
-discussion.  The popular forces, however, were in the long run
-triumphant.  In 847 a new Caliph came into power, inclined for
-political reasons to the higher doctrine.  Lectures were instituted in
-the mosques on the attributes of God, and vast audiences--the
-historians report twenty and even thirty thousand hearers--listened
-eagerly while the theologians disputed whether God's word could be
-conceived distinct from his absolute being.  Faith in the prophet
-triumphed; the exaltation of the product reacted on that of the person;
-and the Arabian shepherd could be regarded as the inerrant, sinless,
-uncreated light, sent forth from Deity himself, who for his sake spread
-out the earth and arched the heavens, and proclaimed the great
-confession "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."
-
-
-Every great historical religion passes through numerous phases, as it
-is brought into contact with different cultures, and evokes various
-forms of speculative thought and inward {15} experience.  Buddhism has
-been no exception to this rule.  It sprang up in a moral revolt against
-the claims of the Brahmanical teachers, and in the midst of the
-discussions of the sophists turned its back on metaphysics and sought
-to concentrate attention on the Noble Path of the good life.  It
-offered a way of deliverance from the weary round of births and deaths
-by the victory over ignorance and sin, and sought to overcome
-selfishness by eliminating the idea that man has, or is, a Self.
-Accordingly it presented its founder Gotama (500 B.C.), as the man who
-had attained the Truth, who had by a long series of lives devoted to
-the higher righteousness acquired the insight into the causes and
-meaning of existence, and imparted it to his followers with
-instructions to carry it forth for the welfare of their fellow-men.
-For this end he founded a union or order; he instituted a discipline,
-and committed his teaching to a body of disciples whose successors
-gradually bore it into distant lands.  He himself passed away, leaving
-no trace behind.  His memory was cherished with dutiful devotion.
-Pilgrimages to the scenes of his birth and Buddhahood, commemorative
-festivals and pious rites, kept the image of the Teacher before the
-mind of the believer.  But no prayer was offered to him; no worship
-created any bond of fellowship between the departed Gotama and the
-community which he had left on earth.
-
-{16}
-
-But in the course of several generations remarkable changes took place.
-Environed by philosophical speculations, Buddhism could not remain
-wholly unaffected by the great ideas of metaphysics.  While one branch,
-now surviving in Ceylon, Burma and Siam, remained faithful to the
-Founder's exclusion of all such conceptions as being, substance, and
-the like, others began to interpret the person of the Buddha in terms
-of the Absolute, and identified him with the Eternal and the
-Self-Existent, who from time to time for the welfare of the world took
-on himself the semblance of humanity, and appeared to be born, to
-attain Enlightenment, and die.  The great aim of the deliverance of all
-sentient beings from error, suffering, and guilt, expressed itself
-further in the association with him of numerous other holy forms
-sharing the same purpose of the world's salvation.
-
-Among these was the Buddha Amitâbha, the Buddha of Boundless Light,[1]
-who had made a wondrous vow in virtue of which a blessed future of
-righteousness and joy in the Western Paradise was secured for all who
-put their trust in him.  Carried into China, this devotion acquired
-great popularity, and centuries later it passed into Japan.  There,
-while Europe was sending its warriors to win back from the Crescent the
-city of the Cross, while Bernard and Francis and Dominic were awakening
-new enthusiasm for the monastic {17} life, two famous teachers, Honen
-(1133-1212) and Shin-ran (1173-1262), developed the doctrine of
-"salvation by faith."  Honen was the only son of a military chief who
-died of a wound inflicted by an enemy.  On his deathbed he enjoined the
-boy never to seek revenge, and bade him become a monk for the spiritual
-enlightenment both of his father and his father's foe.  So the lad
-passed in due time into one of the great Buddhist monasteries on mount
-Hiei.  Long years of laborious study followed, till in 1175 he reached
-the conviction that faith in Amida[2] was the true way of salvation.  A
-deep sense of human sinfulness and the belief in an All-Merciful
-Deliverer were the essential elements of his religion.  Three emperors
-became his pupils, and his life, compiled by imperial order after his
-death, resembles that of a mediæval Christian saint.  Visions of Amida
-and of the holy teachers of the past were vouchsafed to him.  He
-preached--like another St. Francis--to the serpents and the birds.  His
-person was mysteriously transfigured, and a wondrous light filled his
-dwelling.
-
-
-[1] Also called Amitâyus, the Buddha of Boundless Life.
-
-[2] The Japanese form of the Sanskrit Amitâbha.
-
-
-His disciple Shin-ran carried the doctrine of his master yet a little
-farther.  Filled with adoring gratitude to the Buddha of Boundless
-Light, who, as the deliverer, was also the Buddha of Boundless Life, he
-argued that infinite mercy and infinite wisdom must belong to him; and
-these in their turn implied the {18} power to give effect to his great
-purpose.  He passed from village to village through the Eastern
-provinces, rousing enthusiasm by the hymns into which he wrought his
-new faith.  They are still sung in the temples at the present day.  But
-whereas Honen had recognised a value in good works, and had enjoined
-the duty of constant repetition of the sacred name of Amida, Shin-ran
-insisted that all element of "self-exertion" must be purged away, and
-faith in the merits of Amida--"the exertion of another"--should alone
-remain.  Some of the conceptions of Western teaching thus present
-themselves in Japan in the midst of modes of life and thought of purely
-Indian origin.  Christian theologians had debated whether faith was to
-be regarded as an _opus_ or a _donum_, a "work" or a "gift," was it
-something to be attained by man or was it bestowed by God?  The
-Japanese answer was unhesitating.  Faith was not earned by effort, or
-achieved by merit, it was granted out of immeasurable love.  "The
-Buddha," we read, "confers this heart.  The heart which takes refuge in
-his heart is not produced by oneself.  It is produced by the command of
-Buddha.  Hence it is called the believing heart by the Power of
-Another."  The natural corollary was that in due course this grace
-would be bestowed on all.  The Buddha of Boundless Light and Life would
-overcome the darkness of ignorance and death; and this type of
-Buddhism, now the most active and {19} influential in Japan, preaches
-the doctrine of universal salvation.  The student finds here a whole
-series of parallels to the Evangelical interpretation of Christianity.
-Both schemes are founded on the same essential ideas, man's need of a
-deliverer, and the attainment of salvation by no human conduct but by
-faith in a divine person.
-
-
-The foregoing sketches raise many problems.  What are the actual
-features in different religions which are susceptible of comparison?
-How can we distinguish between resemblances which are deep-seated and
-spring from the fundamental principles of two given faiths, and those
-which are only on the surface, and probably accidental?  How far can
-such parallels be ascribed to suggestion through historical contact,
-and, if they lie too far apart for possibilities of any form of mutual
-dependence, out of what common types of experience are they derived,
-what forces of thought have shaped them, what feelings do they express?
-
-The student of Comparative Religion seeks answers to these and similar
-questions.  A vast field of inquiry is at once opened before him.  It
-embraces practically every continent, people, and tribe on the face of
-the globe.  It begins in the last period of the great ice age, when men
-lived in this country in the company of the elephant, the rhinoceros,
-and the mammoth, and hunted their game through {20} Germany, Belgium,
-and France.  In dim recesses of the caves they painted the deer, the
-bison, the antelope and the wild boar, under conditions which imply
-some kind of mysterious or holy place.  They buried their dead with
-care, and though we can ask them no questions we may infer with much
-probability that they celebrated some kind of funeral meal, and
-deposited implements and ornaments in the grave for the use of the
-departed in the world beyond.  In one case hundreds of shells were
-found buried with the skull of a little child.  Similar usages may be
-traced through the slow advances of culture to the present day.  Death
-is an element of universal experience; and it is not unreasonable to
-suppose that if the negroid peoples of Western Europe had worked out
-some view of its meaning and consequences, there were other things to
-be done or avoided out of fear or reverence for the Unseen.
-
-The first objects of comparison are thus found in the outward acts
-which fall more or less clearly within the sphere of religion, the
-places where these are performed, the persons who do them, the means
-required for them, the occasions to which they are attached.  These all
-belong to the external world; they can be observed and recorded, even
-though we may not be sure what they mean.  When they are brought
-together, a series of gradations of complexity can be established,
-while a common purpose may be traced through all.  {21} From the negro
-who lays his offering of grain or fruit at the foot of a tree with the
-simple utterance, "Thank you, gods," to a great Eucharistic celebration
-at St. Peter's, a continuous line of ritual may be followed, in which
-the action becomes more elaborate, the functions and character of the
-officiating ministers more strictly defined, the accessories of worship
-more complicated.  This corresponds to the enrichment and elevation of
-the ideas and emotions that animate the act, as that which is at first
-performed as part of tribal usage and ancestral custom acquires the
-force of divine institution and personal duty.
-
-Behind the external act lies the internal world of thought and feeling.
-The social sanction may invest the ceremony itself with so much force
-that the worshipper's interest may lie rather in the due performance of
-the rite than in the deity to whom it is addressed.  The element of
-belief may be relatively vague and indefinite.  But in the more highly
-organised religions belief also may externalise itself through hymn and
-prayer, through myth and history and prophecy.  When a religion is
-strong enough to create a literature, a fresh object of comparison is
-presented.  The utterances of poet and sage, of lawgiver and seer, can
-be set side by side.  Their conceptions of the Powers towards which
-worship is directed can be studied; the characters and functions of the
-several deities can be determined.  This {22} is the intellectual
-element in religion.  It has often been regarded as the element of most
-importance, because it seemed most readily to admit of the test of
-truth.  It finds its most formal expression in the articles of a creed,
-and has sometimes been erected into the chief ground of the supreme
-arbitrament of heaven and hell.
-
-There remains the element of feeling.  This also may be so entangled in
-tradition, so enveloped in the pressure of surrounding influences, that
-it is at first obscure and indistinct.  But its importance was early
-recognised when the origin of religion was ascribed to fear, in the
-oft-quoted line of the Roman Satirist Petronius Arbiter at the court of
-Nero (who committed suicide A.D. 66)--
-
-  "Primus in orbe deos fecit timor.
-
-
-In the eighteenth century the genius of Lessing (1729-1781) fastened on
-the feeling of the heart as the essential foundation of religion.  No
-written record, no historical event, could guarantee its truth; that
-lay in the constitution of the human spirit in its interpretation of
-its experience.  In his famous drama of "Nathan the Sage" he applied
-this to the representatives of three great historical religions which
-were thus brought together for comparison: the Christian Templar, the
-Mohammedan Saladin, and the Jew Nathan.  Herder (1744-1803) endeavoured
-with the {23} materials then at command to trace the origin and
-development of religion, starting from the primitive impressions made
-upon the mind by the world without, and sought to interpret mythology
-as the imaginative utterance of man's consciousness of the power,
-light, and life in Nature.  In the next generation Schleiermacher
-(1767-1834) placed the essence of religion in the feeling of absolute
-dependence, without attempting to define the object towards which it
-was directed.  The study of origins has passed out of the hands of the
-philosophers and the theologians.  But it cannot dispense with
-psychology; and among the factors of early religious life will be found
-the beginnings of wonder, reverence and awe.  And this element, often
-cruelly twisted into false and degraded forms, and sometimes refined in
-the higher types of mysticism into the loftiest spirituality, inheres
-in all practice and belief.
-
-What, then, is the basis of comparison among different faiths?  The
-student who is engaged in tracing the life-history of any one religion
-will naturally start from the field of investigation thus selected.  As
-he widens his outlook he will find that a number of illustrative
-instances force themselves upon his view.  The people whose
-institutions and ideas he is examining are members of a given ethnic
-group.  The ancient Hebrews, for instance, belong on the one side to
-the life of the desert, and are kin with the nomad Arabs, {24} on the
-other they are related to the authors of Babylonian culture.  Or in the
-course of events a new religion is brought by missionary impulse into a
-less-developed civilisation, as when Buddhism passed from China through
-Corea into Japan, and was planted in the midst of a cruder faith.
-Widely different modes of thought are thus brought into close
-juxtaposition, their relation and interaction can be examined, and the
-inner forces of each compared.
-
-That such inquiries must be conducted without prejudice need not now be
-enforced.  An eighteenth-century writer might lay it down that "the
-first general division of _Religion_ is into _True and False_," and
-might draw the conclusion that "the chapter of _False Religions_ is by
-much the longest in the History of the religious opinions and practices
-of mankind."[3]  Dr. Johnson could sententiously declare that "there
-are two objects of curiosity, the Christian world and the Mohammedan
-world--all the rest may be considered as barbarous."  A learned Oxford
-scholar of the last generation could speak of the "three chief false
-religions," Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism.  Missionaries and
-travellers of an elder day, who took some form of Christianity as their
-foundation, sometimes found the savages among whom they laboured
-destitute of religion because they had no Father in heaven {25} and no
-everlasting hell.  These attitudes, it is now freely recognised, are
-not scientific.  For purposes of comparison no single religion can be
-selected as a standard for the whole human race.  Particular products
-may be set side by side.  The asceticism of India may be compared with
-that of early Christianity.  The ritual of sacrifice may be studied in
-the book of Leviticus or the Hindu Br[=a]hmanas.  What are sometimes
-called "Ethnic Trinities" may be examined in the light of Alexandrian
-theology.  The _suras_ of the Koran may be read after the prophecies of
-Isaiah.  The various phases of the Buddhist Order, with its missionary
-zeal, its power of adaptability to different cultures, its readiness to
-accept new teaching, may be contrasted with the wonderful cohesiveness
-and expansion of the Roman Catholic Church.  The ideas of the Hellenic
-mystery-religions may be found to throw light on the language of St.
-Paul.  Out of the multitudinous phases of human experience all the
-world over innumerable resemblances will be discovered.  Each is a fact
-for the student, and must be treated on equal terms in the field of
-science.  But they will have more or less intrinsic significance in the
-scale of values.  Philosophy may attempt to range them in gradations of
-worth, in nobility of form, in dignity of expression, in moral purity,
-in social effectiveness.  Beneath infinite diversity the mystic will
-affirm the unity of the whole, with the poet of the {26} _Masnavi_,
-Jalálu-'d-Dïn of Balkh (A.D. 1207-1273)--
-
-  "Because He that is praised is, in fact, only One,
-  In this respect all religions are only one religion."
-
-
-[3] Broughton, _Dictionary of all Religions_, 1745.
-
-
-The materials of comparison are, of course, of the most varied kind.
-The interest of the ancient Greeks was early roused in the diverse
-practices which they saw around them, and the observations of Herodotus
-concerning the Egyptians, the Persians, the Scythians, and many another
-tribe upon the fringe of barbarism, have earned for him the modern
-title of the "Father of Anthropology."  Travellers, missionaries,
-government officers, men of trade and men of learning, have recorded
-the usages of the lower culture all over the world, naturally with
-varying accuracy and penetration, and a vast range of facts has been
-registered through successive stages of complexity in social and
-religious development.  Many of these have their parallel in the
-folklore of countries where the uniformity of modern civilisation has
-not crushed out all traditional beliefs, while annual customs or even
-village games may contain survivals of what were once important
-ceremonial rites.  The irruption of the Arab conquerors into Europe
-brought Christianity face to face with Mohammedanism and its sacred
-book.  In the {27} seventeenth century the Jesuit Fathers in China
-first made known the teachings of Kong-fu-tse ("Philosopher Kong") 500
-B.C. whose name they Latinised into Confucius.  Towards the end of the
-eighteenth century a brilliant little band of English scholars in
-Calcutta began to reveal the astounding copiousness of the sacred
-literature of India.  During the expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in
-1799 the Rosetta Stone (now in the British Museum) yielded the clue to
-the hieroglyphics which cover the walls of temple and tomb.  A
-generation later a young British officer, Lieutenant Henry Rawlinson,
-began in 1835 to copy a triple inscription on a cliff of Mount
-Behistun, near Kermanshah in Persia.  The work was dangerous and
-difficult, but he was enabled to complete it ten years later.  It
-contained an identical record in three languages, Persian, Median, and
-Babylonio-Assyrian, and provided the means for deciphering the
-cuneiform script of the tablets and cylinders soon recovered from the
-mounds of Mesopotamia.
-
-Meanwhile the lovers of the past were at work in many other directions.
-The Swedish Lonrott collected the ancient songs of the Finnic people,
-under the name of the Kalevala.  Other scholars brought to light the
-treasures of Scandinavian mythology in the Icelandic Edda with its two
-collections of poetry and prose.  In Wales and Ireland the texts which
-enshrined the Celtic faith awoke new interest.  The students of
-classical antiquity began to {28} collect inscriptions, and it was soon
-realised that the spade might be no less useful in Greece or Asia Minor
-than beside the Nile or the Euphrates.
-
-The last century has thus accumulated an immense mass of material in
-literature and art.  There are codes of law regulating in the name of
-deity the practice of family and social life.  There are hymns of
-praise or of penitence, sometimes in strange association with the
-spells of magic.  There are books of ritual and sacrifice, of
-ceremonial order, of philosophical speculation and moral precept.
-There are rules of discipline for religious communities; and there are
-pictures of judgment and delineations of the heavenly life.  Sculpture
-and painting have been employed to give external form to the objects of
-pious reverence; and the architecture of the sanctuary has wrought into
-stone the fundamental conceptions of majesty, proportion, and grace.
-
-All this, it is plain, rests upon history.  When Confucius visited the
-seat of the imperial dynasty at the court of Chow, he studied with deep
-interest the arrangements for the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth;
-he surveyed the ancestral temples in which the emperor offered his
-worship; he inspected the Hall of Light whose walls bore paintings of
-the sovereigns from the remotest times; and then he turned to his
-disciples with the remark: "As we use a glass to examine the forms of
-things, so must we study the past to {29} understand the present."
-Comparison that confines itself solely to counting up resemblances here
-and there will be of small value.  We cannot comprehend the real
-meaning of a single religious rite, a single sentence of any scripture,
-apart from the context to which it belongs.  Acts and words alike issue
-out of experiences that may be hundreds of years old, and sum up
-generations, it may be whole ages, of a continuous process.  To trace
-the successive forms of these changes, to describe the steps through
-which they have passed, is like making a chart of a voyage, and laying
-down the lines of continent and ocean, island and cape.  Or just as the
-races of man are sorted, and their characteristics are enumerated
-without reference to the various causes which have produced their
-modifications, so geography and ethnography might companion
-_hierography_, the delineation of "the Sacred" in its concrete
-manifestations.
-
-But behind the external evolution of a given religion, its modes of
-worship, its ministers, its doctrines, lie more complicated questions.
-What causes shaped these acts and moulded these beliefs?  What elements
-of race are to be discerned in them?  How can we account for the
-diversities between the religions of peoples belonging to a common
-stock, like those of India and those of ancient Italy?  What have been
-the effects of climate, of the struggle with alien peoples and new
-environment?  How does the food-supply influence {30} the formation of
-religious ideas?  What contacts have been felt with other races, and
-what positive loans or more impalpable influences have passed from one
-side to the other?  We, find here in _hierology_, the science of "the
-Sacred," an analogue to the reasoning which accounts for the
-distribution of land and water, the rise of mountain ranges and the
-sculpture of valleys and river-beds out of the stratification of the
-earth's crust, and builds up a science of geology; or which traces the
-results of migration upon peoples, the consequences of inter-marriage
-with other tribes, the disastrous issues of war, surveys the immense
-variety of causes which have contributed to new developments of racial
-energy, and arranges this knowledge in the science of ethnology.
-
-And, lastly, the values of these facts must be estimated.  How far can
-they be accepted as expressing the reality of the Unseen Power, and
-man's relation to it?  Hierology may explain how men have developed
-certain practices or framed certain beliefs; to determine their
-reasonableness is the task of the philosophy of religion or
-_hierosophy_.[4]
-
-
-[4] These three terms have been suggested by Count Goblet d'Alviella,
-of Brussels.
-
-
-
-The study of "Comparative Religion" assumes that religion is already in
-existence.  It deals with actual usages, which it places side by side
-to see what light they can throw upon each other.  It leaves the task
-of {31} formulating definitions to philosophy.  It is not concerned
-with origins, and does not project itself into the prehistoric past
-where conjecture takes the place of evidence.  An old miracle-play
-directed Adam to pass across the stage "going to be created."  Whether
-religion first appeared in the cultus of the dead, or only entered the
-field after the collapse of a reign of magic which had ceased to
-satisfy man's demands for help, or was born of dread and desired to
-keep its gods at a distance, only remotely affects the process of
-discovering and examining the resemblances of its forms, and
-interpreting the forces without and within which have produced them.
-The sphere of speculation has its own attractions, but in this little
-book an attempt will be made to keep to facts.
-
-Three hundred years ago Edward Herbert,[5] an Oxford scholar who played
-many parts and played them well, in deep revolt against the
-ecclesiastical doctrine that all the world outside the pale of the
-Church was doomed to eternal damnation, devoted himself to the study of
-comparative religion.  With the materials which the classics afforded
-him, he examined the recorded facts among the Greeks and Romans, the
-Carthaginians and Arabs, the Phrygians, the Persians, the Assyrians.
-The whole fabric of human experience was built up, he argued, on
-certain common knowledges or notions, which could be distinguished by
-{32} specific marks, such as priority, independence, universality,
-certainty, necessity for man's well-being, and immediacy.  Here were
-the bases of law in relation to social order, and of religion in
-relation to the Powers above man.  These principles in religion were
-five: (1) that there is one supreme God; (2) that he ought to be
-worshipped; (3) that virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine
-worship; (4) that we ought to be sorry for our sins and repent of them;
-(5) that divine goodness doth dispense rewards and punishments both in
-this life and after it.  These truths had been implanted by the Creator
-in the mind of man, and their subsequent corruption produced the
-idolatries of antiquity.
-
-
-[5] 1583-1648., elder brother of "Holy George Herbert."
-
-
-The theory held its ground in various forms till its last echoes
-appeared in highly theologic guise in the writings of Mr. Gladstone.
-He pleaded that there must have been a true religion in the world
-before an untrue one began to gather and incrust upon it, and this
-religion included three great doctrines--the existence of the Triune
-Deity, the advent of a Redeemer, and the power of the Evil One and the
-defeat of the rebel angels.  These had formed part of a primeval
-revelation.  In the Homeric theology he traced the first in the three
-sons of Kronos--Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon.  The second he found in
-Apollo, whose mother Leto represented the Woman from whom the Redeemer
-should descend.  The rebel angels were equated with the Titans; {33}
-the power of temptation was personified in Ate; the rainbow of the
-covenant was identified with Iris.  The student of to-day can hardly
-believe that this volume could have been published in the same year in
-which Darwin and Wallace formulated the new scientific principle of
-"natural selection" as the great agent in the formation of species, and
-thus laid the foundation of the modern conception of evolution (1858).
-
-It is on this great idea that the whole study of the history of
-religion is now firmly established.  At the foundation of all
-endeavours to classify the multitudinous facts which it embraces, lies
-the conviction that whatever may be the occasional instances of
-degeneration or decline, the general movement of human things advances
-from the cruder and less complex to the more refined and developed.  In
-the range of knowledge, in the sphere of the arts, in the command over
-nature, in the stability and expansion of the social order, there are
-everywhere signs of growth, even if isolated groups, such as the
-Australians, the Todas of India, or the Veddas of Ceylon, seem to be in
-the last stages of stagnation or decay.  Religion is one phase of human
-culture, it expresses man's attitude to the powers around him and the
-events of life.  Its various forms repose upon the unity of the race.
-The anthropologist is convinced that if a new tribe is discovered in
-some forest in central Africa, whether its stature be large or small,
-its {34} persons will contain the same limbs as other men, and will
-live by the same physical processes.  The sociologist expects that
-their social groups will approximate to other known types of human
-relations.  The philologist anticipates that behind the obscurities of
-their speech he will find modes of thought which he can match
-elsewhere.  The student of religions will in the same way be on the
-look-out for customs and usages akin to those which he already knows;
-he will assume that under similar conditions experience will be moulded
-on similar lines, and the streams of thought and feeling--though small
-causes may easily deflect their course--will tend to flow in parallel
-channels as they issue from minds of the same order, and traverse
-corresponding scenes.
-
-And just as the general theory of evolution includes the unity of
-bodily structure and mental faculty, so it will vindicate what may be
-called the unity of the religious consciousness.  The old
-classifications based on the idea that religions consisted of a body of
-doctrines which must be true or false, reached by natural reflection or
-imparted by supernatural revelation, disappear before a wider view.
-Theologies may be many, but religion is one.  It was after this truth
-that the Vedic seers were groping when they cried, "Men call him Indra,
-Mitra, Varuna, Agni; sages name variously him who is but one"; or
-again, "the sages in their hymns give many forms to him {35} who is but
-one."  When the Roman Empire had brought under one rule the
-multitudinous peoples of Western Asia, North Africa, and Southern and
-Middle Europe, and new worships were carried hither and thither by
-priest and missionary, soldier and merchant and slave, the titles and
-attributes of the gods were freely blended and exchanged.  Thinkers of
-different schools invented various modes of harmonising rival cults.
-When "Jupiter best and greatest" was surrounded by a vast crowd of
-lesser deities, the philosophic mind discerned a common element running
-through all their worship.  "There is one Supreme God," wrote Maximus
-of Madaura to Augustine, about A.D. 390, "without natural offspring,
-who is, as it were, the God and Mighty Father of all.  The powers of
-this Deity, diffused through the universe which he has made, we worship
-under many names, as we are all ignorant of his true name.  Thus it
-happens that while in diverse supplications we approach separated, as
-it were, certain parts of the Divine Being, we are seen in reality to
-be the worshippers of him in whom all these parts are one."  Here is
-the prayer of a Blackfoot chief of our generation in the great
-ceremonial of the Sun-Dance, reported by Mr. McClintock,[6] which
-blends the implications of theology with the impulses and emotions of
-religion--
-
-
-[6] _The Old North Trail_, 1910, p. 297.
-
-
-"Great Sun Power!  I am praying for my people that they may be happy in
-the summer {36} and that they may live through the cold of winter.
-Many are sick and in want.  Pity them and let them survive.  Grant that
-they may live long and have abundance.  May we go through these
-ceremonies correctly, as you taught our forefathers to do in the days
-that are past.  If we make mistakes, pity us!
-
-"Help us, Mother Earth! for we depend upon your goodness.  Let there be
-rain to water the prairies, that the grass may grow long and the
-berries be abundant.
-
-"O Morning Star! when you look down upon us, give us peace and
-refreshing sleep.
-
-"Great Spirit! bless our children, friends, and visitors through a
-happy life.  May our trails lie straight and level before us.  Let us
-live to be old.  We are all your children, and ask these things with
-good hearts."
-
-
-
-
-{37}
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-THE PANORAMA OF RELIGIONS
-
-Twice in the history of the world has it been possible to survey a wide
-panorama of religions, and twice has the interest of travellers, men of
-science, and students of philosophy, been attracted by the immense
-variety of worships and beliefs.  In the second century of our era the
-Roman Empire embraced an extraordinary range of nationalities within
-its sway.  In the twentieth the whole history of the human race has
-been thrown open to the explorer, and an overwhelming mass of materials
-from every land confronts him.  It may be worth while to take a hasty
-glance at the chief groups of facts that are thus disclosed, and make a
-sort of map of their relations.
-
-
-I
-
-The scientific curiosity of the ancient Greeks was early awakened, and
-Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.), chief of the seven "wise men," and
-founder of Greek geometry and philosophy, was believed to have studied
-under the priests of Egypt, as well as to have {38} visited Asia and
-become acquainted with the Chaldean astronomy.  Still more extensive
-travel was attributed to his younger contemporary Pythagoras, whose
-varied learning was explained in late traditions by his sojourn east
-and west, among the Persian Magi, the Indian Brahmans, and the Druids
-of Gaul.  The first great record of observations is contained in the
-History of Herodotus of Halicarnassus on the coast of Asia Minor.  Born
-in 484 B.C., six years after Marathon, and four years old when the
-Greeks put Xerxes to flight at Salamis, he devoted his maturity to the
-record of the great international struggle.  Hither and thither he
-passed, collecting information, an eager student of human things.  In
-Egypt he compared the gods with those of Greece, and attempted to
-distinguish two sets of elements in Hellenic religion, Egyptian and
-Pelasgic.  He left notes on the Babylonians and the Persians, on the
-Scythians in the vast tracts east of northern Europe, on the Getæ south
-of the Danube.
-
-When the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) threw open the
-gates of Asia, a stream of travellers passed into Persia and India,
-whose reports were utilised by the geographers of later days.  The
-religion of Zoroaster, whose name was already known to Plato, attracted
-great attention.  At the court of Chandragupta on the Ganges, at the
-opening of the third century B.C., Megasthenes, {39} the ambassador of
-Seleucus (who had succeeded to the dominions of Alexander in Asia), set
-down brief memoranda on the usages and belief of the Hindus among whom
-he resided.  Nearer home the representatives of Mesopotamian and
-Egyptian learning commended their national cultures to their
-conquerors.  Berosus, priest of Bel in Babylon, translated into Greek a
-Babylonian work on astronomy and astrology, and compiled a history of
-his country from ancient documents; while his contemporary, Manetho, of
-Sebennytus in the Nile Delta, undertook a similar service for his
-native land.
-
-Meanwhile the great library and schools at Alexandria had been founded.
-Hither came students from many lands; and the Christian fathers
-Eusebius and Epiphanius in the fourth century attributed to the
-librarian of the royal patron of literature, Ptolemy Philadelphus
-(285-247 B.C.), the design of collecting the sacred books of the
-Ethiopians, Indians, Persians, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians,
-Romans, Ph[oe]nicians, Syrians, and Greeks.  The Jews had settled in
-Alexandria in considerable numbers; they began to translate their
-Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and little by little they planted their
-synagogues all round the Eastern Mediterranean, and finally established
-their worship in Rome.  The Egyptian deities in their turn went abroad.
-The worship of Serapis was introduced at Athens.  Isis, the sister-wife
-of {40} Osiris and mother of Horus, goddess of many functions--among
-others of protecting sailors--was carried round the Levant to Syria,
-Asia Minor, Greece, and as far north as the Hellespont and Thrace.
-Westwards she was borne to Sicily and South Italy.  In due time she
-entered Rome, and in spite of senatorial orders five times repeated (in
-the first century B.C.), to tear down her altars and statues, she
-secured her place, and received homage all through the West from the
-outskirts of the Sahara to the Roman wall north of our own Tyne.
-
-The introduction of Greek gods had begun centuries before.  As early as
-493 B.C., at a time of serious famine, a temple had been built to
-Demeter, Dionysus, and Persephonê; many others followed; resemblances
-among the native gods quickly led to identifications; and new forms of
-worship tended to displace the old.  After another crisis (206 B.C.)
-the "Great Mother," Cybelê, the Phrygian goddess of Mount Ida, was
-imported.  The black aerolite which was supposed to be her abode, was
-presented by King Attalus to the ambassadors of the Roman senate.  The
-goddess was solemnly welcomed at the Port of Ostia, and was ultimately
-carried by noble Roman ladies on to the Palatine hill.
-
-The history of later days was full of notes upon religion.  Cæsar
-interspersed them among the narratives of his campaigns in Gaul;
-Tacitus drew on his recollections as {41} an officer in active service
-for his description of the Germans.  There was as yet no literature in
-Wales or Ireland to embody the Celtic traditions; and the Scandinavian
-Saga was unborn.  But the geographers, like Strabo (first century
-A.D.), collected a great deal of material that must have been gathered
-ultimately from travellers, soldiers, traders, and slaves.  A wise and
-gentle philosophic Greek, Plutarch of Chæronea in B[oe]otia (A.D.
-46-120), student at the university of Athens, lecturer on philosophy at
-Rome, and finally priest of Pythian Apollo in his native city, is at
-home in many religions.  Beside altars to the Greek gods Dionysus,
-Herakles, and Artemis, in his own streets, were those of the Egyptian
-Isis and Anubis.  The treatise on Isis and Osiris (commonly ascribed to
-him) is an early essay in comparative religion.  In the latter half of
-the second century the traveller Pausanias passes through Greece,
-describing its sacred sites, noting its monuments, recording
-mythological traditions, and observing archaic rites.  In this
-fascinating guide-book to religious practice are survivals of ancient
-savagery, still lingering at country shrines, set down with curious
-unconsciousness of their significance.  The historical method is as yet
-only in its infancy.  But Pausanias rightly discerned that its first
-business is to know the facts.
-
-In Rome, where ritual tradition held its ground with extraordinary
-tenacity amid the {42} decay of belief, Marcus Terentius Varro,
-renowned for his wide learning (116-28 B.C.), devoted sixteen books of
-his great treatise on Antiquities to "Divine Things."  Like so many
-other precious works of ancient literature it has disappeared, but its
-contents are partly known through its use by St. Augustine in his
-famous work on "The City of God."  Following a division of the gods by
-the chief pontiff Mucius Scævola, he treated religion under three
-heads.  In the form presented by the poets' tales of the gods it was
-mythical.  Founded by the philosophers upon nature (_physis_) it was
-physical.  As administered by priests and practised in cities it was
-civil.  It was an old notion that religion was a legal convention
-imposed by authority for purposes of popular control; and Varro does
-not disdain to declare it expedient that States should be deceived in
-such matters.  This police-notion long regulated public custom, and
-tended to render the identification of deities presenting superficial
-resemblances all the more easy.
-
-By this time the origin of the term "religion" had begun to excite
-interest, as its meaning began slowly to change.  Varro's
-contemporaries, Cicero (106-43 B.C.) and Lucretius (about 97-53),
-discussed its derivation.  Cicero connected it with the root _legere_,
-to "string together," to "arrange"; while Lucretius found its origin in
-_ligare_, to "bind."  Philology gives little help when it {43} speaks
-with uncertain voice.  More important is the primitive meaning which
-Mr. Warde Fowler defines as "the feeling of awe, anxiety, doubt, or
-fear, which is aroused in the mind by something that cannot be
-explained by a man's experience or by the natural course of cause and
-effect, and which is therefore referred to the supernatural."  It has
-nothing to do at the outset with any special rites or doctrines.  It is
-not concerned with state-usage or with priestly law.  In its adjectival
-form "religious days" or "religious places" are not days or places
-consecrated by official practice; they are days and places which have
-gathered round them man's sentiments of awe and scruple.  The word thus
-came to be applied to anything that was in some way a source or
-embodiment of mysterious forces.  The naturalist Pliny can even say
-that no animal is "more full of religion than the mole," because
-strange medicinal powers were supposed to reside in its heart and teeth.
-
-But, on the other hand, a new use of it passes into Roman literature in
-the writings of Cicero.  The feeling of awe still lies in the
-background, but the word takes on a reference to the acts which it
-prompts, and thus comes to denote the whole group of rites performed in
-honour of some divine being.  These make up a particular cult or
-worship, ordained and sanctioned by authority or tradition.  "Religion"
-thus comes to mean a body of religious duties, the entire series of
-sacred acts in which {44} the primitive feeling is expressed.  Roman
-antiquity conceived these as under the care of priesthoods, legitimated
-by the State.  Around them lay a fringe of superstitions, which a
-hostile critic like Lucretius could also sum up under the same term.
-And thus in an age when philosophy was addressing itself to the whole
-question of man's relation to the world and its unseen Rulers, and a
-single word was wanted to describe his attitude to the varied
-spectacle, "religion" was at hand to fill the place.  It covered the
-whole field of human experience, and as different nations presented it
-in different forms, it became possible to speak of "religions" in the
-sense of separate systems of worship and belief.  The champion of
-Christianity naturally distinguished his religion as the true from the
-false; and over against the multiformity of polytheism he set the unity
-of the faith of the Church.
-
-Of these "religions" history and philosophy sought to give some
-account.  As will be seen hereafter (Chap. VI), Babylon and Egypt both
-claimed a divine origin for their rites, their arts, and laws.
-Plutarch expressly defends the idea of revelation in the cases of Minos
-of Crete, the Persian Zoroaster, Zaleucus the shepherd legislator of
-the Locrians, Numa of Rome, and others.  Pan was in love with Pindar,
-and Æsculapius conversed with Sophocles: if such divine diversions were
-allowed, how much more should these greater {45} attempts for human
-welfare be prompted from heaven!  Numa had been enabled through Camena
-Egeria to regulate the ceremonial law as priest-king, and pontiffs,
-augurs, flamens, virgins, received their duties from him with
-supernatural sanctions.
-
-Philosophers, on the other hand, discussed the meaning of religion upon
-different lines.  A wide-spread view already noted presented it as a
-mere instrument of policy, devised to overawe the intractable.  The
-diversity of religions seemed to support this view.  Plato's Athenian,
-in one of his latest works, the Laws, mentions the teaching of sophists
-who averred that the gods existed not by nature but by art, and by the
-laws of States which are different in different places, according to
-the agreement of those who make them.  In a fragment of a drama on
-Sisyphus ascribed to Critias, the friend of Alcibiades, it was alleged
-that in the primeval age of disorder and violence laws might strike
-crimes committed in open day, but could not touch secret sins, hidden
-in the gloomy depths of conscience.  A sage advised that to moralise
-men they must be made afraid.  Let them invent gods who could see and
-hear all things, cognisant not only of all human actions but also of
-men's inmost thoughts and purposes.  They were accordingly connected
-with the source of the most terrifying and the most beneficent
-phenomena, the sky, home alike of thunder and lightning, of the shining
-sun and fertilising {46} rain, seat of divine powers helpful and
-hurtful to mankind.  In the discussion on "the Nature of the Gods" (by
-Cicero), Cotta, of the Academic school, inquires of his Epicurean
-opponent Velleius, "What think you of those who have asserted that the
-whole doctrine concerning the immortal gods was the invention of
-politicians, whose notion was to govern that part of the community
-which reason could not influence, by religion?"
-
-From another point of view, however, the practical universality of
-religion was again and again cited in proof of its truth.  Antiquity
-was not scientific in its method of treatment, and though it did not
-accept all religions as altogether equal, it had no difficulty in
-regarding them as substantially homogeneous.  The Egyptian worship of
-animals might be lashed with satiric scorn, but the mysteries of its
-religion, venerable from an immemorial past, deserved the highest
-respect.  The process of identification of the gods of different
-religions was always going on as they were carried from land to land.
-The Apologist, therefore, like the Cretan Cleinias in Plato's _Laws_
-when the Athenian stranger asked him to prove the existence of the
-gods, could always appeal to two main arguments--first, the fair order
-of the universe and the regularity of the seasons, and secondly, the
-common belief of all men, both Hellenes and barbarians.  This common
-belief, however, itself required explanation.  Its value {47} really
-depended on its origin.  If that ranked no higher than the crouching
-impulses of fear, it had little worth.  Even if it was sought in the
-sense of dependence, in quiet trust in a sheltering order, or in
-intelligent inference based on the demand for a cause, the question
-still pressed for an answer, "What made this possible?"  The answer was
-given by the doctrine of the _Logos_.
-
-The term _logos_ has played a famous part in philosophical theology.
-It appears in our New Testament at the opening of the fourth Gospel,
-"In the beginning was the Logos."  Our translators render the Greek
-term by the English "Word."  It is derived from the verb _legein_, to
-"speak" or "say."  _Logos_ is primarily "what is said," utterance, or
-speech.  Speech, however, must mean something.  When we look out upon
-the objects of the world around us--rock, river, tree, horse, star--we
-learn to separate them into groups, because while some say quite
-different things to us, others speak to us, as it were, with nearly the
-same meaning.  We recognise a common meaning in various sorts of dogs,
-or in still larger classes such as the whole family of birds.  But in
-human intercourse what is said has first been thought.  _Logos_ thus
-takes on another meaning; it is what thinking says _to itself_, or what
-we call "reason."  The processes of science consist in finding out
-these meanings or reasons, and getting them into intelligible relations
-with each other.  {48} And when the early Greek thinkers had reached
-the conception of the unity of the world, here was a term which could
-be called in to express it.  The world must have a meaning; it must
-express some thought.  And did not thought imply thinking?
-
-The philosophy of Heracleitus "the Obscure" (at Ephesus, 500 B.C.) has
-received in modern times widely different interpretations; but whether
-or not the Stoics were right in understanding his doctrine of the Logos
-to imply the existence of a cosmic reason universally diffused, present
-both in nature and man, it is certain that such ideas appear soon
-afterwards in Greek literature.  Pindar affirms the derivation of the
-soul from the gods.  Plato and Euripides declare the intelligence of
-man both in nature and origin to be divine; and Pseudo-Epicharmus lays
-it down (in the second half of the fifth century) that "there is in man
-understanding, and there is also a divine Logos; but the understanding
-of man is born from the divine Logos."  On this basis the Stoics worked
-out the conception of a fellowship between man and God which explained
-the universality of religion.  Its seat was in human nature.  Every one
-shared in the Generative Reason, the Seminal Word (the _Logos
-spermatikos_).  In the long course of ages, says Cicero, when the time
-arrived for the sowing of the human race, God quickened it with the
-gift of souls.  So we possess a certain kinship with the heavenly {49}
-Powers; and while among all the kinds of animals Man alone retains any
-idea of Deity, among men themselves there is no nation so savage as not
-to admit the necessity of believing in a God, however ignorant they may
-be what sort of God they ought to believe in.
-
-The part played by this doctrine in the early Church is well known.
-When the new faith began to attract the attention of the educated, it
-was impossible that the resemblances between Christian and Hellenic
-monotheism should be ignored.  Philosophy had reached many of the same
-truths, and poets and sages bore the same witness to the unity and
-spirituality of God as the prophets and psalmists of Israel.  It was
-easy to suggest that the Hebrew seers had been the teachers of the
-Greek; might not Plato, for instance, have learned of Jeremiah in
-Egypt?  On the other hand, the pleas of chronological and literary
-dependence might be insufficient; there were radical differences as
-well as resemblances; the Apologist might deride the diversities of
-opinion and make merry over the contradictions of the schools.
-Nevertheless Christianity was often presented by its defenders as "our
-philosophy."  The Latin writer Minucius Felix (in the second century)
-is so much struck by the parallels in the higher thought that he boldly
-declares, "One might think either that Christians are now philosophers,
-or that philosophers were then already Christian."  The martyr Justin
-(about {50} A.D. 150) incorporates such teachings into the scheme of
-Providence by the aid of the Logos.  For Justin, as for his
-co-believers, the popular religion was the work of demons.  But
-philosophy had combated them in the past like the new faith.  If
-Socrates had striven to deliver men from them, and they had compassed
-his death through evil men, it was because the Logos condemned their
-doings among the Greeks through him, just as among the barbarians they
-were condemned by the Logos in the person of Christ.  The great truths
-of God and Providence, of the unity of the moral government of the
-world, of the nature and destiny of man, of freedom, virtue, and
-retribution, which were to be found in the writings of the wisest of
-the past, were the product of "the seed of the Logos implanted in every
-race of men."  Those who had lived with the Logos were Christians
-before Christ, though men might have called them atheists, like
-Heracleitus and Socrates.  All noble utterances in theology or
-legislation arose through partial discovery or contemplation of the
-Logos, and consequently Justin could boldly claim "whatever things have
-been rightly said among all men" as "the property of us Christians."
-
-The cultivated and mystical Clement, who became head of the
-catechetical school of Alexandria towards the close of the second
-century, enforced the same theme.  An enormous reader, he loved to
-compare the {51} truths enunciated by Greek poets and philosophers with
-the wisdom of the barbarians.  Philosophy, indeed, was a special
-historical manifestation of thought along a peculiar line of
-development.  It affected a particular race, it spread over a distinct
-area, and appeared in a definite time.  In these respects it resembled
-the preparatory work of Israel itself.  It was a discipline of
-Providence, so that beside the generalisation of St. Paul that the Law
-had been a tutor to bring the Jews to Christ, Clement could set
-another, that philosophy had played the same part for the Greeks.  On
-the field of common speech Clement's contemporary, the fiery Tertullian
-of Carthage, appealed to the worshipper who bore the garland of Ceres
-on his brow, or walked in the purple cloak of Saturn, or wore the white
-robe of Egyptian Isis--what did he mean by exclaiming "May God repay!"
-or "God shall judge between us?"  Here was a recognition of a supreme
-authority and power, the "testimony of a soul naturally Christian."
-
-Such comparisons, however, had a very different side.  Greece had long
-had its secret mysteries, with their sacred initiations, their rites of
-purity and enlightenment, their promises of welfare beyond the grave.
-When the new deities from Asia Minor, from Egypt, Syria, and the
-further East, were brought to Italy, the resemblances of their practice
-to that of the Christian Church excited the {52} believer's alarm, and
-roused at once the charge of plagiarism.  There was a congregation of
-Mithra at Rome as early as 67 B.C., and towards the end of the first
-century of our era his mysteries began to be widely spread.  Here was a
-baptism; here was a "sacrament" as the neophyte took the oath on
-entering the warfare with evil; here were grades of soldiership and
-service; here were oblations of bread and water mingled with wine which
-were naturally compared with the Lord's supper; here were doctrines of
-deliverance from sin, of judgment after death and ascent to heaven,
-which brought the theology and practice of Mithraism very close to that
-of the Church.  So Mithra bore the august titles of the holy and
-righteous God; or he was the Mediator, author of order in nature and of
-victory in life between the ultimate powers of good and evil.
-
-For a time the rivalry was acute, as his worship was carried through
-the West as far as York and Chester and the Tyne.  But with the triumph
-of Christianity in the fourth century the sounds of conflict die away.
-The men of learning, Eusebius of Cæsarea (about A.D. 260-340),
-Augustine (A.D. 354-430) bishop of Hippo, surveyed the religions and
-philosophies of antiquity as conquerors.  The faiths of Egypt,
-Ph[oe]nicia, Greece, and Rome, are passed in review.  With a broad
-sweep of learning Eusebius comments on the ancient mythologies, the
-oracles, the theory of demons, {53} the practice of human sacrifice,
-the history of Mosaism.  His treatise on the "Preparation for the
-Gospel" is the first great work on comparative religion which issued
-out of Christian theology.  With generous recognition of what lay
-beyond the Church he taught (in the _Theophania_) that all higher
-culture was due to participation in the Logos.  Idolatry might be the
-work of demons; the world might be filled with the babblings of
-philosophers and the follies of poets; but the Logos had been
-continuously present, sowing in the hearts of men the rudiments of the
-divine laws, of various orders of teaching, of doctrines of every kind.
-Thus ethics, art, science, and the fairest products of human thought,
-were genially brought within the scope of Revelation.
-
-
-II
-
-The panorama of religions unrolled before the student of the present
-day is far vaster than that which offered itself to the thinkers of
-Greece and Rome, and its meaning is far better understood.  When
-Pausanias describes the daily sacrifice to a hero at Tronis in Phocis,
-where the blood of the victim was poured down through a hole in the
-grave to the dead man within, while the flesh was eaten on the spot, he
-notes, like the careful author of a guide-book, a curious local usage,
-but he does not know that it belongs to a group of {54} savage
-practices that may be traced all round the globe.  On Mount Lycæus in
-Arcadia, he tells us, was a spring which flowed with equal quantity in
-summer as in winter.  In time of drought the priest of Lycæan Zeus,
-after due prayer and sacrifice, would dip an oak-branch into the
-surface of the spring, and a mist-like vapour would rise and become a
-cloud.  In the midst of Hellenic culture it was still possible, as
-among the negroes of West Africa or the Indians of North America, to
-make rain.
-
-From continent to continent a multitude of observers have gathered an
-immense range of facts, which show that amid numerous differences in
-detail the religions of the lower culture may all be ranked together on
-the basis of a common interpretation of the surrounding world.
-Philosophy suggests that man can only explain nature in terms of his
-own experience.  He is encompassed by powers that are continually
-acting on him, as he to a much smaller extent can in his turn act on
-them.  By various processes of observation and reflection (p. 85), he
-comes to the conclusion that within his body lives something which
-enables it to move and feel and think and will, until at death it goes
-away.  To this mysterious something many names are given, and for
-purposes of modern study they are all ranked under the term "spirits."
-This explanation is then applied to the behaviour of all kinds of
-objects within {55} his view; though it does not at all follow that
-this was actually the first explanation.  The animals that are stronger
-and more cunning than himself, the trees that move in the wind, the
-corn that grows so mysteriously, the bubbling spring, even the things
-that he himself has made, his weapons, tools, and jars, all have their
-"spirits," so that the entire scene of his existence is pervaded by
-them.  To this doctrine, with its many branches of belief and practice,
-Sir E. B. Tylor, in his classical work on _Primitive Culture_ (1871),
-gave the name of "Animism," and the religions founded upon it are
-called "animistic," or sometimes, from the multitude of unorganised
-spirits which they recognise, "polydæmonistic" religions.
-
-Such religions belong to no specific ethnic group.  They appear either
-in existing practice or in the shape of occasional survivals in all of
-the three great racial divisions of mankind--the white or Caucasic, the
-yellow or Mongolian, and the black or Negroid.  They are to be found
-under the Equator and among the Arctic snows.  They are sometimes
-associated with a peculiar form of social structure regulating
-inter-tribal relations known as _totemism_.  It was at one time
-supposed that this designated a stage of evolution through which all
-peoples had passed.  The totem or clan-sign, whether animal or plant,
-or more rarely an inanimate object like wind, sun, or star, was
-supposed to have {56} become an object of worship, and various theories
-were invented to explain the divisions and subdivisions of the clans,
-and the selection of their special signs.  Hence, it was argued, came
-the cultus of beast and bird and tree; hence the altar and the idol;
-hence the animal sacrifice and the sacramental meal.  In clever hands
-it supplied a universal key.  The extraordinary intricacy of the
-subject, and the widely scattered character of the evidence, prevent
-any discussion here.  But the most recent researches have not sustained
-these attempts.  Among the Central Australian tribes the totems are not
-worshipped, they are in no sense deities, no prayers or sacrifices are
-offered to them.  They may be brought into the sphere of religion in
-some tribes as part of a social order to which a superhuman origin is
-ascribed (p. 171).  But totemism cannot be established as the typical
-form of "primitive religion" any more than any other complicated
-system.  Its general diffusion is questionable.  At the present day
-there are large areas over which no signs of totemic organisation are
-found; and many phenomena which were formerly assumed to be proofs of
-totemism in the higher religions of antiquity, in Egypt, Greece, and
-Italy, now receive other explanations.
-
-The higher forms of animistic religion pass out into polytheisms of
-more or less dignity.  They do not succeed in embodying themselves in
-permanent literary product, they create no {57} scriptures or sacred
-books.  They have their rude chants, their songs for weddings and
-funerals, their genealogies and tales of ancient heroes.  Strange
-cosmogonies float from island to island in Polynesia.  The Finnic
-peoples enshrined their faith in the ballads collected under the name
-of the Kalevala.  Among the Indians of North America speculation is
-sometimes highly elaborated in mythologic tradition; and out of the
-fusion of nationalities in Mexico rose a developed polytheism in which
-lofty religious sentiment seems strangely blended with a hideous and
-sanguinary ritual.  Peru, no less, presented to the Spanish conquerors
-bewildering and incongruous aspects.  In these two cultures native
-American civilisation reached its highest forms.  In Mexico the
-apparatus of religion was very minutely organised.  There were immense
-temples, which required large numbers of priests and servitors.  The
-capital alone is said to have contained 2000 sacred buildings, and the
-great temple had a staff of 5000 priests.  There were religious orders
-and temple-schools; rites of baptism and circumcision; feasts and
-sacrifices and sacraments, in which the monkish chroniclers found
-strange parallels to their own practice.  The issues of victory were
-disastrous.  With the death of the last Aztec emperor (1520) the doom
-of the old gods was assured, and the Inquisition (1571) completed what
-the sword of Cortes had begun.
-
-{58}
-
-In the old world Asia has been the mother of religions, but various
-fates have befallen her offspring.  The ancient cults of Babylonia,
-after an existence longer than the period from Moses to the present
-day, vanished from the scene.  The teachings of Zoroaster were planted
-in China in A.D. 621, and a temple was erected at the capital, Changan;
-but the Persian faith could not maintain itself in such a different
-culture.  After the Mohammedan conquest in the eighth century it was
-finally carried by a little band of exiles into India, and is still
-cherished by their descendants who bear the name of Parsees.  The Jew
-and the Christian have only a precarious toleration in the land which
-was once their home.  In India and in China alone is the religion of
-to-day linked in unbroken continuity with the distant past.  Islam may
-set itself in lineal succession to the teachers of old, and claim a
-place for Mohammed in the sequence of Abraham, Moses, and Christ.  But
-it is the youngest, and in some respects the least original, of the
-world's great faiths.
-
-India has its own panorama of religions, from the animistic practice of
-the tribes of the jungle and the hills, up to the refined pantheism of
-the philosophical school.  Diversities of race have been strangely
-intermingled, and fifty languages make it impossible to secure any
-uniformity of culture.  There are the descendants of the ancient
-inhabitants who occupied the country before {59} the Aryan ancestors of
-the Hindus settled themselves upon the fertile lands.  They are
-represented to-day by the wild tribes of Central India such as the
-Bhils and Gonds.  Some ten million probably profess a religion of a
-well-marked animistic type.  But this also lies at the base of
-wide-spread popular belief and custom, where the propitiation of
-spirits, the cultus of Mother Earth, and the veneration of village
-deities, engage much more attention than the higher gods of Hinduism.
-
-The literary foundation of the religions of India lies in the ancient
-hymns of the Rig Veda, sung by the immigrant Aryans as they entered
-from the North-west and gradually established themselves in the Ganges
-valley.  These hymns were addressed to gods of earth and air and sky;
-they celebrated the glories of dawn and day; they told of the conflict
-between sunshine and storm; they praised Agni, the god of fire,
-messenger between heaven and earth, himself as agent of the sacrifice a
-kind of priest among the gods; they commemorated the dead who passed
-into the upper world and adorned the sky with stars.  Already in some
-of the later hymns the poet's thought endeavoured to find some
-principle or power that should unite these different agencies as
-manifestations of one ultimate reality; and philosophic imagination at
-length fixed on the conception of Brahman, a term whose original
-meaning {60} seems to hover between that of sacred spell and prayer.
-Viewed in a personal aspect (Brahma) as a god of popular worship, he
-could be described as "Lord of all, the Maker, the Creator, Father of
-all that are and are to be."[1]  But behind this sovereign ruler
-metaphysical abstraction placed a neuter Brahma, all-embracing, the
-ground of all existence, summed up in three terms--Being, Thought, and
-Bliss.  Here was the ultimate Self of the whole universe; and to know
-the identity of the human self with the Absolute, to be able to repeat
-the mysterious words _tat tvam asi_, "that art thou," was the aim of
-the forest-sages and the highest attainment of holy insight.
-
-
-[1] So in the early Buddhist texts describing the popular religion.
-Many new forms appear in these documents.
-
-
-Meantime the social order was acquiring the first forms of caste.  The
-priests and the fighting men, the people who settled on the lands for
-pasture and tillage, and the tribes of aborigines whom they
-dispossessed and subdued, formed the basis of divisions which were
-gradually multiplied with extraordinary complexity.  A religious
-authority was found for the whole system in the teachings of the Veda,
-and to contest its claims was to defy the power which slowly spread
-with subtle hold through the whole peninsula.  By its side arose the
-doctrine of the Deed (_karma_, p. 217), which explained the varied
-conditions of human life by the principle that {61} "a man is born into
-the world that he has made."  The lot of each individual had a moral
-meaning: it was the result of previous conduct, good or ill.  This is
-the conception embodied in the word "transmigration."  It pictures man
-as involved in a continuous series of births and deaths, and religion
-and philosophy undertook in their several ways to secure him a
-favourable destiny hereafter, or by various means of divine grace, or
-strenuous self-discipline, or pious contemplation, to extricate him
-altogether from the weary round of ignorance and pain.
-
-Out of these elements, a crude and ever-varying animism at the bottom,
-a highly refined metaphysical pantheism at the top, figures of
-incarnation and deliverance, the cultus of the dead, caste, and
-transmigration, the complex strands of modern Hinduism have been woven.
-Many have been the growths upon the way.  The early Buddhist texts,
-representing the society of the "Middle Country," show already in the
-fifth century B.C. a surprising activity of speculation, busily engaged
-in questioning every received doctrine of religion and morals.  Some
-forms held their ground for a few centuries and then disappeared.  One
-religious community of that date alone survives, viz. the Jains, who
-still number about a million and a third.  Buddhism, after sending out
-its missionaries into Ceylon in the south and China in the north, was
-driven from its ancient seats, and {62} only some 300,000 hold its
-creed in India itself.  In Burma, however, it numbers between ten and
-eleven million lay adherents, and in the adjacent kingdom of Siam it
-has 13,000 temples, and more than 93,000 mendicants have taken its vows.
-
-But Hinduism still lives on with a marvellous and self-renewing power.
-Two great divine figures have been set beside the original creative
-Brahma, representatives of the forces that preserve and destroy, Vishnu
-and Çiva (p. 128).  Vishnu succeeded to the place of the Buddha; and
-Hindu religion gave prominence in him to the conception of a Divine
-Person who out of love for man assumed human shape to conquer evil and
-establish truth.  The worship of Çiva has been carried everywhere by
-the Brahmans; if he destroys, he also reproduces; he, too, appears to
-bless and help, and the Tamil poets of South India in the early Middle
-Ages sang his praises in hymns that still feed the piety of the people.
-Again and again reforming teachers have initiated movements on behalf
-of spiritual religion.  Their followers have multiplied and broken up
-into sects, but still remain within the general area of the ancestral
-faith, which now embraces considerably more than 200 million souls.
-The disciples of N[=a]nak (1469-1538), however, known as S[=i]khs,
-formed into a semi-military organisation by the Guru Gobind "the Lion"
-(1675-1708), retain their religious independence, {63} touching
-Hinduism on one side and Mohammedanism on the other.  They number at
-the present day more than two millions, and are found almost
-exclusively in the Punjab.
-
-China, like India, illustrates the principle of religious continuity.
-Its earliest historic date is fixed by an eclipse in 776 B.C.; and the
-traditions of its dynasties stretch more than a thousand years beyond.
-The ancient religion depicted in the books known as the _Shu_ and the
-_Shî Kings_, which Confucius (550-478 B.C.) was supposed to have edited
-out of much older documents, rested upon the solemn order of the living
-Heaven and Earth, with multitudinous ranks of associated spirits, and
-the generations of the dead.  This has remained the formal basis of the
-national religion (p. 97).  Meanwhile the ethical sayings of Confucius
-acquired extraordinary ascendency.  They formed the chief element in
-the national education, and supplied the ideals of popular culture.
-Carried into Japan in the sixth century of our era, they filled a gap
-in the old Japanese teaching, which we know by the name of Shin-To or
-"Spirits' way."  Confucius himself became the object of general
-commemorative homage; and annual ceremonies are still celebrated in his
-honour with great splendour in the Confucian temples which adorn every
-city within the empire above a certain rank.[2]
-
-
-[2] These are at present in danger, like other public forms of Chinese
-State Religion, of being rudely abolished.
-
-
-{64}
-
-In the popular religion demonology and magic play a constant part, and
-numerous growths out of the worship of ancestors provide ever fresh
-additions to the higher ranks of spirits.  These are regulated by
-decrees of the Board of Rites, one of the most ancient religious
-institutions in China.  The spirit of a departed governor, perhaps two
-centuries ago, is believed to have appeared in time of flood, and by
-his beneficent influence dangers have been averted.  Memorials are sent
-up to Peking by the local authorities, and after repeated
-manifestations divine honours are awarded.  Beneath these august
-personages are the spirits which preside over the trades and
-professions, over the parts of a house--the door, the bed, or the
-kitchen range--over the breeding of domestic animals, and a large
-variety of occupations, to say nothing of medicine and disease, the
-limbs of the body, and the stars.  They are analogous to the Kami, the
-equivalent powers in Japan (p. 91); and they are not without parallel
-in religions further west.
-
-Half a century before Confucius, in 604, was born another sage, known
-in history as Lao Tsze.  Fragments of his teaching are embodied in a
-small book of aphorisms, concerned with the doctrine of the Tao, the
-way, the path, or course.  In nature this corresponded to the ordered
-round of the seasons, and the regularities which we call laws.  In man
-it might be seen in the line of right {65} conduct, and the inner
-principles which pointed to it.  On this conception, which was much
-older than Lao Tsze himself, a kind of metaphysical mysticism was
-reared by later disciples, not without affinities with some aspects of
-the Brahmanical philosophy.  They have been explained by suggestions of
-travel and contact which more careful study cannot justify.  The
-religion of the Tao (whence the name Taoism) could never have been
-popular had it not become strangely entangled with alchemy and
-transformed under the influence of its later rival, Buddhism, from
-which it derived much both in ritual, in ethics, and in doctrine.
-
-The statements about the appearance of Buddhist teachers and Buddhist
-books in China before our era have been much disputed: the first
-trustworthy record relates that in the year A.D. 65, a deputation of
-eighteen persons was sent to Khotan to make inquiries, and they
-returned two years later with books and images and a teacher.  A second
-teacher arrived shortly after, a temple was built at the imperial
-capital, Lo-Yang, and the laborious work of translation was begun.  A
-stream of missionaries, Hindus, Parthians, Huns, slowly flowed into the
-Flowery Land, "moved," says the chronicler, "by the desire to convert
-the world."  After a while the Chinese students sought the holy places
-in India, and learned Sanskrit at the great Buddhist university at
-Nalanda, near Buddha {66} Gaya.  Vast collections of sacred literature
-were gathered.  The first Chinese catalogue, dated A.D. 520, enumerates
-2,213 distinct works.  Twelve successive revisions were made under
-imperial order, and to the last, in 1737, the Emperor himself,
-following the example of some of his predecessors, contributed a
-preface.
-
-Opposed again and again by the Confucian _literati_, its temples
-destroyed, its religious houses suppressed, its monks and nuns driven
-back into the world, Buddhism has still lived on.  It has created
-impressive devotions, and generated numerous sects.  It has spread
-through Corea, Mongolia, and Japan; on the west it is planted in Tibet.
-It has exercised immense influence on Chinese culture; architecture,
-art and letters being all deeply indebted to it.  In numerical
-estimates of different religions common in the last century Buddhism
-always headed the list, for the whole population of China--vaguely
-reckoned at 400,000,000--was included in its fold.  Such estimates are
-no longer trustworthy.[3]  The ancestral cultus of the dead under the
-shelter of Confucianism, the rites of Taoist and of Buddhist priests,
-are strangely blended.  The incidents of life from birth to death are
-never completed without help from one or other of the two faiths once
-rivals, and now {67} so curiously intertwined.  As early as the sixth
-century a famous Buddhist scholar Fu Hhi was asked by the Emperor Wu-ti
-if he was a Buddhist, and he pointed to his Taoist cap.  "Are you a
-Taoist?" he showed his Confucian shoes.  "Are you a Confucian?" he wore
-a Buddhist scarf.  When the Abbé Hue made his famous journey two
-generations ago, he observed that when strangers met, politeness
-required that each should ask his neighbour, "To what sublime religion
-do you belong?"  The first might be a Confucian, the second a Taoist,
-the third a disciple of the Buddha.  Each would then begin to commend
-the religion not his own, and they would conclude by saying, "Religions
-are many, reason is one, we are all brothers."  It was the maxim of Lu
-Shun Yang (a distinguished Buddhist) centuries ago that "the teaching
-of the sects is not different.  The large-hearted man regards them as
-embodying the same truths.  The narrow-minded man observes only their
-differences."
-
-
-[3] The latest official estimate, February 1911, based on a reckoning
-of families, gives 312,400,590 for the total Chinese people.
-
-
-Yet another great religion, the latest born among the higher faiths of
-the world, has established itself in both India and China.  The first
-Mohammedan invasion of India took place in A.D. 664.  The followers of
-the prophet are now reckoned at more than 66 millions.  In 628 Mohammed
-himself sent his uncle to China with presents to the Emperor.  He
-travelled by sea to Canton, where the first mosque was afterwards
-built.  {68} Good observers number the Mohammedans in China to-day at
-30 millions, mostly in the north and west; and it is supposed that
-there are about as many more in the Malay Archipelago.  In Africa,
-especially among the negroes of the west, their numbers have increased
-enormously in the last century, and some two-fifths of the
-multitudinous peoples of the Dark Continent, 80 millions out of 200,
-are believed to live in the obedience of Islam.
-
-Islam, resignation or submission to the will of God, was the name given
-to his religion by the prophet himself, who died in A.D. 632.  But in
-the hands of his first followers submission was no passive virtue.
-Tradition ascribed to him the idea of addressing all known sovereigns,
-and promising them safety if they accepted the faith.  His successors,
-therefore, conceived that the fulfilment of Allah's will demanded a
-resolute effort to make known the new revelation.  A fierce burst of
-missionary effort carried the Moslem armies far and wide.  In the year
-of Mohammed's death they attacked Persia and Syria; a few years later
-they invaded Egypt.  Within the first century they had entered India,
-and had swept through north Africa into Spain.  But they had twice been
-obliged to retreat from Constantinople, and in 732 they were defeated
-on the Loire by Charles Martel near Tours, and forced to retire behind
-the Pyrenees.
-
-With the same astonishing energy they {69} created centres of culture
-from Baghdad to Cordova.  Through Syriac versions of Aristotle's works
-Arabian teachers carried Greek philosophy into Western Europe when the
-light of ancient learning had grown dim.  The contact with new thought
-stimulated theological discussion, and the Moslem had to justify
-himself against the Christian, the Zoroastrian, the Manichæan and the
-Buddhist.  Above the simple ritual demands of the prophet, the recital
-of the creed--"There is no god but God (Allah), Mohammed is the apostle
-of God"--the observance of prayer five times daily, the annual fast in
-the month of Ramadh[=a]n, the bestowal of alms, and the pilgrimage to
-Mecca, arose the debates of the schools and the divisions of sects.
-The nature of the divine attributes, and their relation to the being or
-essence of the Deity, the problems of predestination and free will, of
-reason and revelation, excited eager interest.  Beside the Koran vast
-numbers of traditions concerning religious life and practice were
-gradually put in circulation, and in the third century after Mohammed's
-death they were reduced to writing in six great collections.  To these
-sources of truth and rules of conduct the jurists and theologians added
-two others: agreement or universal consent, where beliefs and practices
-are generally received though not specially sanctioned by the Koran or
-tradition; and analogy, by which a doctrine or usage may be accepted as
-valid because {70} of its resemblance to something legitimated by
-revelation.
-
-Like the higher religions of India, like Judaism in its long and
-chequered career whether in Palestine or in the Dispersion, like the
-"universal religions" of Buddhism and Christianity, Mohammedanism has
-known how to accommodate itself to very different levels of culture.
-In the Arabian deserts much of the earlier animism still remains.  It
-is not rudely expelled either at the present day as Islam advances
-through Africa.  Other impulses have worked in different directions.
-There are religious orders and mendicant ascetics.  There are mystical
-schools of refined spirituality, to which the influences of
-Neo-platonism, of Christianity, and Buddhism, have all contributed.
-S[=u]fiism (as this type of thought is called) was fed from various
-sources, and has assumed different forms in different countries, but
-its best-known literary products came from the great poets of Persia.
-
-From that subtle race issues the most remarkable movement which modern
-Mohammedanism has produced.  In 1844 a young man not twenty-five years
-of age, named Ali Mohammed, of Shiraz, appeared under the title of the
-"Bab" or Gate.  Disciples gathered round him, and the movement was not
-checked by his arrest, his imprisonment for nearly six years, and his
-final execution in 1850.  Thirteen years later one of his disciples
-named Bahá-ullah, "Splendour of God," announced {71} himself as "He
-whom God shall manifest," whose advent the Bab had foretold.  Exiled to
-Acre, he died in 1892, and was succeeded in the leadership by his son
-Abbas Efendi.  The new faith declared that there was no finality in
-revelation, and while recognising the Koran as a product of past
-revelation, claimed to embody a new manifestation of the divine Unity.
-Carried to Chicago in 1893 by a Bâbî merchant, it succeeded in
-establishing itself in the United States; and its missionaries are
-winning new adherents in India.  It, too, claims to be a universal
-teaching; it has already its noble army of martyrs and its holy books;
-has Persia, in the midst of her miseries, given birth to a religion
-which will go round the world?
-
-
-
-
-{72}
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE
-
-Religion presents itself in its most obvious form as a mode of
-activity.  It is seen in some kind of behaviour; it prompts a
-particular sort of conduct.  Behind the customs and rites which are its
-visible sign lie certain thoughts and feelings, often dim, indistinct,
-obscure.  In the totality of its beliefs, emotions, and institutions,
-it is as much the product of the human spirit as poetry, or art,
-science, morals, and law.  It will therefore always bear some kind of
-relation to the general circumstances of the social development to
-which it belongs.  The interpretation of the surrounding scene which is
-implied in its intellectual outlook will vary with the elements of the
-scene itself.  But the limits of variation are much smaller than might
-be expected.  The questions "why" and "how" may be answered very
-differently under the Equator and within the Arctic zone, but they are
-the same questions, and spring from common impulses of thought.
-Moreover, while race, climate, and economic conditions may all vary, it
-happens to all men to be born {73} and to die.  The family must be
-maintained, children must be reared, food must be procured, the tribal
-group must preserve its stability and, if possible, increase.  There
-are universal elements in human life all over the globe; and the
-manifestations of religion founded upon them exhibit in consequence
-marked resemblances from land to land.
-
-Religion always implies some kind of want.  The young husband wants
-male children, the hunter game, the warrior victory, the diviner the
-knowledge of secrets, the saint holiness.  The wants may be crude or
-refined, the satisfaction of a physical appetite, protection against
-some anticipated danger, the realisation of an exalted spiritual
-fellowship.  But religion suggests that there is some Power capable of
-satisfying these wants, and undertakes to provide the means for setting
-man in proper relations with it.  All round him are the objects and
-forces of the visible world.  He learns by degrees that some help him
-to gratify his desires, and others hinder them.  There are many things
-that he cannot understand, and some of which he dimly feels that he
-must not presume to try: he is only conscious towards them of a strange
-wonder and awe; they are uncanny; he cannot bring them into his
-experience; he must not meddle with them, he must keep away.  But other
-things are more kindly, and fulfil his hopes.
-
-Out of such vague consciousness he gradually frames a working method.
-Some sort {74} of theory is at length established after many trials,
-concerning what must be done to obtain what he seeks.  The line of his
-action is determined in part by the ideas and expectations which have
-slowly emerged out of his endeavours to get into fruitful connection
-with the powers by which he is encompassed.  This is the element of
-belief, which lies behind religion proper, and supplies the soil in
-which religious feeling and action germinate and grow.  What, then, is
-the kind of belief which, in the sphere of the lower culture, makes
-religion possible?
-
-It is plain at once that no records remain of what is still sometimes
-called "primitive religion."  Even tribes that seem to be living in the
-Stone Age have as long a past behind them as any European of light and
-leading.  Whatever the beliefs may be that belong to any given stage of
-social culture, they are not new inventions, they depend on immemorial
-tradition.  And they are not, as now cherished, the results of
-individual research or reflection.  They are held in common by all the
-members of the tribe, so that they have a kind of collective force.  No
-doubt in the long process of their formation and transmission
-modifications may have been introduced, as some elder, shrewder than
-his fellows, gave new emphasis to some leading idea, or suggested the
-adoption of some fresh action.  Trace them back into the dim realm of
-conjecture, and some mind {75} a little more observant or ready than
-his comrades must have started the first explanation, some will a
-little more adventurous must have made the first experiments in
-conduct.  Thoughts do not issue from a "collective consciousness"; they
-bear the stamp of personality, they are not begotten by abstractions,
-and every fresh development starts from a single brain.  But the
-uniformity of experience within the group gives enormous weight to the
-wisdom of the past; and constitutes a sanction which only some grave
-shock can change or overthrow.
-
-With religion is constantly associated, both in historical record and
-in the lower forms of present-day practice, another kind of activity
-known as Magic.  The relation between them has been variously
-interpreted.  The modern anthropologist, Dr. Frazer, finds himself in
-unexpected agreement with the philosopher Hegel in supposing that magic
-was the first to appear upon the scene.  It is represented as a kind of
-primitive science, founded on certain elementary axioms, such as that
-"like produces like," or that things once in contact with each other
-will continue to act upon each other when the contact is broken.  The
-Central Australian performs elaborate ceremonies to stimulate the
-multiplication of the totem which provides the supply of food for his
-tribe.  Suppose it is the witchetty grub.  A kind of pantomime is
-performed representing the emergence of the {76} fully-developed insect
-out of the chrysalis, typified by a long, narrow structure made of
-boughs.  The totem men sit inside and chant rude songs, and then crawl
-out singing of the insect coming forth.
-
-One of the commonest illustrations is the attempt to compass the death
-of an enemy by injuring or destroying an image or figure supposed to
-correspond to him.  Such images were made in ancient Babylonia, Egypt,
-Greece, and Rome.  One North American Indian will draw a figure of his
-adversary in the sand, or in ashes, and prick it with a sharp stick.
-Another will make a wooden image, and insert a needle into the head or
-the heart.  Clay is used for the purpose by the African Matabele, wax
-in Arabia, the guelder rose in Japan, materials of all kinds in India.
-In Scotland the _corp chre_, as it was called, was a clay body, which
-was stuck full of pins, nails, and broken bits of glass, and set in a
-running stream with its head to the current; a modern specimen from
-Inverness-shire may be seen in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.  Is
-all this really as Dr. Frazer supposes, prior to the birth of religion,
-and does man only turn to the propitiation of superior powers when he
-cannot get what he wants through magic?  Of that process no evidence
-can be offered.
-
-The essence of magic lies in some kind of compulsion or constraint.
-Through the proper spell, or through the will of the magician, {77} a
-control is exerted which produces the desired result.  The power which
-is thus claimed implies an attitude wholly unlike that of religion.
-Into that attitude there enter elements of wonder and submission in the
-presence of energies which man cannot master, though he desires to get
-them on his side.  But no observer was at hand to watch the first
-processes of feeling and thought which the interaction of man and his
-environment produced.  The crudest forms of religion which we actually
-know, meet us in tribes which have possessed them from an unknown past.
-Here religion has a social character binding the members of a group
-together, and tending to maintain certain uniformities of conduct and
-character.  Over against it stands the antisocial character of magic,
-at any rate when directed against individuals.  Along this line it is
-urged that magic and religion have both issued out of common
-conditions.  In the world around all sorts of events are continually
-happening.  Man, in the midst of them, moves to and fro impulsively
-among various objects and agencies.  Out of these arise various
-reactions for self-maintenance, for protection and defence.  Certain
-acts tend to establish themselves as successful; they make for security
-and welfare.  At first man's efforts have no definite direction; but
-some are found effective, others are futile, and attention is
-concentrated on those that produce satisfactory results.  After {78}
-many trials certain beliefs, certain processes, certain persons,
-gradually stand out above the rest, and through them relations of
-advantage are established with the environing powers.
-
-In such experiences lie the roots of both religion and magic.  In their
-earliest forms they may be as difficult to discriminate as the simplest
-types of animal and vegetable life.  If it be asked what distinguishes
-them outwardly, when both are transmitted by tradition, both rest upon
-custom, it may be answered that religion is concerned with what tends
-to the stability of the community.  Its interests are those of the
-group.  It supplies the bond of united action for clan or tribe or
-people.  It is pre-eminently social; it expresses itself in ceremonies,
-feasts, and rites in which all can join, or in commands which all can
-obey.  Even the Australians, so poor in elements of worship, have
-tribal laws which have been imparted to them from on high (Chap. VII).
-
-Over against the community stands the individual, object of all kinds
-of jealousies and enmities.  All sorts of antisocial arts may be
-practised for his destruction.  The pointing-stick of Australia
-provides a common magical weapon.  It is carried away into a lonely
-spot in the bush, and the intending user plants it in the ground,
-crouches down over it, and mutters a curse against the object of his
-hatred: "May your heart be rent asunder, may your backbone be split
-open!"  Then {79} one evening, as the men sit round the campfire in the
-dark, he creeps up stealthily behind his enemy, stoops down with his
-back to the camp, points the stick over his shoulder, and mutters the
-curse again.  A little while after, unless saved by a more powerful
-magic, the victim sickens and dies.
-
-Of course magic may also be used for the benefit of the individual, and
-the practice of exorcism for the cure of diseases caused through
-possession by evil spirits long found shelter in some branches of the
-Christian Church.  The kinship between Magic and Religion is clearly
-marked when the priest takes the place of the devil-dancer or the
-medicine man.  Yet they are on different planes; religion is prescribed
-and official, and demands specific services; magic falls into the
-background, it becomes a secret, perhaps a forbidden, art.
-Nevertheless, between religion and antisocial magic lies a large group
-of rites, essentially magical in character, like the North American
-Indian rain-dances or the totem-ceremonies of the Arunta in Central
-Australia, designed for the general welfare.  Even in much higher
-cultures the spell frequently mingles with the prayer, and ceremonies
-of sacrifice carry with them elements of compulsion or constraint.
-
-What traces, then, do the phases of religion in the lower culture
-exhibit of a view of the world and its powers out of which these
-diverging lines of practice might emerge?  {80} In widely different
-regions of the globe the forces that operate in unexpected ways, or
-play through things beyond man's reach, or appear in natural objects of
-striking character--an animal, a tree--are summed up in some general
-term of mystery and awe.  Such is the Melanesian term _mana_, first
-noted by Bishop Codrington, common to a large group of languages.  It
-implies some supersensual power or influence; it is not itself
-personal, though it may dwell in persons as in things.  It is known by
-the results which reveal its working.  You find a stone of an unusual
-shape; it may resemble some familiar object like a fruit; you lay it at
-the root of the corresponding tree, or you bury it in a yam-patch; an
-abundant crop follows; clearly, the stone has _mana_.  It lives in the
-song-words of a spell; it secures success in fighting, perhaps through
-the tooth of some fierce and powerful animal; it imparts speed to the
-canoe, brings fish into the net, enables the arrow to inflict a mortal
-wound.  But the word has a yet wider range, in the sense of power,
-might, influence.  By it a parent can bring a curse on a disobedient
-child, a man who possesses it can work miracles; it even denotes the
-divinity of the gods.  And so mysterious is the whole range of the
-inner life, that _mana_ covers thought, desire, feeling, and affection;
-and in Hawaian it reaches out to spirit, energy of character, majesty.
-Here is an immense reserve of potency pervading {81} the world, on
-which man may draw for good or ill.
-
-Among the North American Indians similar conceptions may be traced.
-The Algonquin _manitou_ represents a subtle property believed to exist
-everywhere in nature, though some persons and objects possess more of
-it than others.  Among the Sioux the sun, the moon, the stars, thunder,
-wind, are all _wakanda_.  So are certain trees and animals, the cedar,
-the snake, the grey elephant; and mystery-places like a particular lake
-in North Dakota, or some peculiar rocks on the Yellowstone River.  The
-term carries with it power and sacredness; it belongs to what is
-ancient, grand, and animate.  The Iroquoian tribes designate this
-mysterious force _orenda_.  It expresses an incalculable energy,
-manifested in rocks and streams and tides; in plants and trees, in
-animals and man; it belongs to the earth and its mountains; it breathes
-in the winds and is heard in the thunder; the clouds move by it, day
-and night follow each other through it; it dwells in sun, moon, and
-stars.  The shy bird or quadruped which it is difficult to snare or
-kill, possesses it; so does the skilful hunter; it gives victory in
-intertribal games of skill, and is the secret force of endurance or
-speed of foot.  The prophet or the soothsayer discloses the future by
-its aid; and whatever is believed to have been instrumental in
-accomplishing some purpose or obtaining some good, finds in _orenda_
-the source of its effectiveness.
-
-{82}
-
-Not dissimilar is the conception of _mulungu_ among the Yaos, east of
-Lake Nyassa.  The term is wide-spread through the eastern group of
-Bantu tongues, and is said to have the meaning of "Old One" or "Great
-One"; and in this sense it has been employed as equivalent to God.  But
-we are expressly told that in its native use and form it does not imply
-personality.  Etymologically it ranks with the leg, arm, heart, head,
-of the human frame.  Yet it denotes rather a state or property inhering
-in something, like life or health in the body, than any single object.
-It indicates a kind of supernormal energy, displayed in actual
-experience, but not to be detected by any physical sense.  It is the
-agent of wonder and mystery; the rainbow is _mulungu_; and it sums up
-at once the creative energy which made the earth and animals and man,
-and the powers which operate in human life.  At the foot of a tree in
-the village courtyard, where men sit and talk, a small offering of
-flour or beer is placed on any distinctive occasion in the communal
-life; at a meal, or on a journey at cross roads, a little flour is set
-aside.  It is "for Mulungu"; sometimes dimly conceived as a spirit
-within; sometimes regarded as a universal agency in nature and affairs,
-impalpable, impersonal; sometimes rising into distinctness as God.
-
-Such terms are, of course, generalisations from many separate
-experiences.  Out of this sense of mystery grow more definite ideas.
-{83} The dark and solemn forest, the rushing river, the precipitous
-rock, the lofty cloud-crowned mountain, the winds and storms, all
-manifest a common power;[1] it lives in the snake or the bull, in the
-tiger or the bear.  This may be conceived in a highly complex and
-abstract form.  Thus the Zuñis of Mexico, we are told, suppose the sun
-and moon, the stars, the sky, the earth and sea, with all their various
-changes, and all inanimate objects, as well as plants, animals, and
-men, to belong to one great system of all-conscious and interrelated
-life.  One term includes them all: _hâi_, "being" or "life."  With the
-prefix _â_, "all," the whole field of nature is summed up as _âhâi_,
-"life" or "the Beings."  This comprehensive term includes the objects
-of sensible experience regarded as personal existences, and
-supersensual beings who are known as "Finishers or Makers of the paths
-of life," the most exalted of all being designated "the Holder of the
-paths of our lives."  So in Annam life is regarded as a universal
-phenomenon.  It belongs not only to men and animals and plants, but to
-stones and stars, to earth, fire, and wind.  But it is seen in groups
-and kinds rather than individuals, and the limits of its forms are not
-sharply drawn; it can pass through many transformations, and possesses
-indefinite possibilities of change.  {84} Such conceptions have a long
-history behind them.
-
-
-[1] M. Durkheim has recently applied conceptions of the _mana_ order to
-the explanation of totemism.
-
-
-The poets of the ancient Vedic hymns beheld everything around them full
-of energy.  The names by which they designated what they saw all
-denoted action or agency.  The swift flow of the stream gained it the
-title of the "runner"; as it cut away the banks or furrowed its course
-deep between the rocks, it was the "plougher"; when it nourished the
-fields it was the "mother"; when it marked off one territory from
-another it was the "defender" or "protector."  So the seers addressed
-their invocations to the dawn or the sun, to the winds and the fire, to
-the river or the mountain, to the earth-mother or the sky-father, as
-living powers, capable of responding to the prayers of their
-worshippers.  Similar energy dwelt in the horse or the cow, the bird of
-omen and the guardian dog.  It was even shared by ritual implements
-such as the stones by which the sacred soma-juice was squeezed out, or
-by the products of human handiwork, the war-car, the weapon, the drum,
-and the peaceful plough.
-
-At the present day the Batak in the north-west of Sumatra interpret the
-world about them in terms of a soul-stuff or life-power called _tondi_.
-A vast reservoir of this exists in the world above, and flows down upon
-men and animals and plants.  The biggest animal, like the tiger, the
-most important of plants, like rice (chief source of food), have most
-{85} _tondi_, but it is not confined to living things; the smith
-attributes it to his iron, the fisherman to his boat, the tiller of the
-ground to his hoe, the householder to his hearth and home.  But a
-further analysis is beginning.  What is the relation of a man's _tondi_
-to himself?  When he dies, it passes into some fresh organism.  But the
-rest of him, his shadow, his double, or his self, becomes a _begu_.  In
-life, it is the body that thinks and feels, that fears and hopes and
-wills, though the presence of the _tondi_ supplies the needful energy.
-But the _tondi_ also has the functions of consciousness, for it can go
-away in dreams and meet the _begus_ of parents and ancestors.  And the
-apprehension that it may depart begets reverence and even offerings to
-the _tondi_, rather than to distant gods for whom man can feel neither
-fear nor love.
-
-We touch here another root of religious belief, which produces growths
-so wide-spreading that some interpreters bring the whole range of
-objects of worship within their shade.  How, after all, does man
-explain himself to himself?  At first he does not think about thinking.
-Such words as he uses are vague and elastic, like the Polynesian
-_mana_, which covers a multitude of facts without and within.  Only
-through long dim processes does any idea corresponding to our
-conception of personality come into his consciousness.  He is as
-confused about the objects round him as he is about himself.  {86} Yet
-he has some sort of initiative.  Whence comes it?  Little by little a
-variety of experiences force on him the belief that beside the body and
-its limbs he possesses something which he cannot ordinarily see, but
-which is essential to his activity.  He falls asleep, and lies still
-upon the ground; he wakes, full of remembrance of adventure, the
-localities which he has visited, the animals that he has hunted, the
-dead kinsmen whom he has met.  The Australians explain their dreams by
-the supposition that the _yambo_, the m[=u]rup, or the _boolabong_, can
-quit the body and return.  "I asked one of the Kurnai" (of Gippsland),
-relates Mr. Howitt, "whether he really thought his _yambo_ could go out
-during sleep."  "It must be so," was the answer, "for when I sleep, I
-go to distant places, I see distant people, I even see and speak with
-those that are dead."  The great apostle of the East in the sixteenth
-century, the devoted Francis Xavier, wrote home from India to the
-Society of Jesus in Europe--
-
-
-"I find that the arguments which are to convince these ignorant people
-must be by no means subtle, such as those which are found in the books
-of learned schoolmen, but such as their minds can understand.  They
-asked me again and again how the soul of a dying person goes out of the
-body, how it was, whether it was as happens to us in dreams, when we
-seem to be conversing with our {87} friends and acquaintances.  Ah, how
-often this happens to me, dearest brethren, when I dream of you!  Was
-this because the soul then leaves the body?"
-
-
-This explanation is found all round the globe.
-
-Many other experiences confirm the impression of some kind of dual
-existence.  The shadow or shade which follows a man repeats his
-movements, and appears as a sort of double.  It is even widely believed
-in the face of the simplest evidence that a dead body casts no shadow
-(of course, as it lies upon the ground the shadow may almost
-disappear).  Your reflection in river, pool, or lake, actually
-reproduces your colour as well as your form: beware lest a crocodile
-seizes it and drags you in.  From ancient times down to Shelley and
-Walt Whitman, poetry has designated Sleep and Death as "brothers"; in
-death that which was temporarily absent in sleep has gone away for
-good.  It may have rushed out with the blood from a gaping wound; it
-may have quietly departed with the last faint breath.  So it may be
-summoned back, as in Chinese custom, on the housetop, in the garden or
-the field.  Ghostly sounds may be heard in the forest, among the rocks,
-borne along the wind; the clairvoyant may discern dimly strange faces,
-vanished forms; the dead can sometimes make themselves seen in their
-old haunts; {88} the world is full of unexpected indications of
-presences beyond our sense.
-
-Such presences are grouped, for the modern student, under the general
-title "spirits."  But the explanations which lead to these beliefs are
-not concerned with human beings only.  Animals share in the incidents
-of life and death; plants, even, grow and blossom and decay; and
-animals, plants, and inanimate objects of all sorts may be seen in
-dreams.  Hence the analysis which is applied to man can be readily
-extended; and another world is called into existence, strangely blended
-with this, a realm of immaterial counterparts and impalpable forces.  A
-Fiji native, placed before a mirror, recognising himself and object
-after object, whispered softly, "Now I can see into the world of
-spirits."
-
-With the help of this elementary philosophy a vast machinery of
-causation is always at hand for explaining untoward events.  The
-Tshi-speaking negro on the West Coast of Africa has inside him a kind
-of life-power named _kra_.  It existed long before his birth, for it
-served in the same capacity a whole series of predecessors; and it will
-continue its career after his death, when the man himself becomes a
-_srahman_ or ghost.  The adjoining Ga-speaking tribes modify the _kra_
-into two _kla_, one male and one female, the first of a bad
-disposition, the second good, who give advice and prompt to actions
-according {89} to their respective characters.  Yet a third inmate
-dwells in the neighbouring Yoruba-speaking folk, one in the head, one
-in the stomach, and one in the great toe.  Offerings are made to the
-first by rubbing fowl's blood and palm oil on the forehead.  The second
-needs none, for it shares whatever the stomach receives.  The third is
-propitiated as an agent of locomotion before starting on a journey.
-But the curious theme of the plurality of souls must not beguile us.
-
-Meantime the original _kra_ is set behind all the activities of nature,
-and extended to the whole sphere of material objects.  Each town or
-village or district has its own local spirits, rulers of river and
-valley, rock and forest and hill.  Sometimes they take human shape, and
-colour, white or black, for transformations of all kinds are always
-possible.  They are not all of equal rank; the broad lake, the
-mountain, the sea where the surf breaks heavily and the frail craft are
-upset--the lightning, the storm, and the earthquake--the leopard, the
-crocodile, the shark, and the devastating smallpox--such are among the
-dreaded manifestations of these dangerous and mysterious powers.  But
-the actual dead must not be forgotten; they must be provided with
-ghostly counterparts of food and weapons and utensils, with cloth and
-gold-dust, just as a departed chief must be accompanied into the next
-life by the wives and slaves who adorned his household state in this.
-
-{90}
-
-The ritual of the dead belongs, as we have seen (p. 20), to the
-earliest-known activities of European man.  It is found in some form or
-other in every country under the sun.  Sometimes it is prompted by
-fear, and has for its object to keep the dead imprisoned in the grave,
-or to prevent their spirits from returning to their old haunts (p.
-228).  Sometimes it is warmed by affection, as the departed are
-recalled to the homes where they were loved.  In ancient Egypt it was
-developed with the utmost elaboration, and created a literature
-describing a kind of "pilgrim's progress" through the scenes of the
-next world (p. 237); while in Greece and Rome the cultus of the dead
-acquired, as in India and China, immense social significance.  The
-question that arises in the study of religion in the lower culture is
-concerned with the probable connection between the two groups of
-spirits, which may be broadly distinguished as spirits of nature and
-spirits of the dead.  That the latter are constantly propitiated in
-various forms is well known.  They are to be found everywhere, lurking
-in the trees, flying through the air, sojourning in caves, haunting the
-promontories on the rivers or hidden in the forest-depths.  With them
-lie the causes of disease and madness; they are malevolent and hurtful,
-as well as kindly and good.  What differences are to be discerned
-between them and the powers of nature?  Are we to suppose, with some
-{91} students, that all the higher forms of religion have been
-developed out of the worship of the dead, and that for gods we must
-everywhere read originally ghosts?
-
-Consider, for example, the ancient religion of Japan, which we know by
-an adaptation of two Chinese words as Shin-To, the "spirits' way," or
-in its native form _kami-no-michi_.[2]  Who are the _kami_, or
-"spirits"?  The title of "religion" has sometimes been denied to their
-cultus on the ground that it contains "no set of dogmas, no sacred
-book, and no moral code."  Greece and Rome might, on the same plea, be
-described as having no religion.  The term _kami_ has for its root-idea
-the significance of "that which is above."  It may be applied in the
-widest range of relations from the hair which is on the top of the head
-to the government which rules the people.  The _kami_ are, as it were,
-the "highnesses"; the word is used of big things by land and sea, great
-rivers, mighty mountains, roaring winds and rolling thunder; then of
-rocks and trees, of animals like the tiger and the wolf, of metals, and
-so of innumerable objects in earth and sky.  It is not always clear
-whether these were originally conceived as themselves living, or
-whether they had been resolved into material body and controlling
-spirit.  The {92} functions of the _kami_, however, are extended and
-distributed by a kind of fission; the _kami_ of food split into the
-produce of trees and the parent of grasses; they preside over guilds
-and crafts, the weavers, the potters, the carpenters, the swordsmen,
-the boatbuilders; they guide the operations of agriculture; they
-superintend the household, and watch over the kitchen range, the
-saucepan, the ricepot, the well, the pond, the garden, and the
-scarecrow.
-
-
-[2] Chinese culture has probably exerted considerable influence on the
-exponents of the Shinto revival in the eighteenth and nineteenth
-centuries.  Very different aspects are reflected in the ancient
-chronicles.
-
-
-But in this vast assembly are included also the spirits of the dead.
-They likewise become _kami_ of varying rank and power.  Some dwell in
-temples built in their honour; some hover near their tombs; some are
-kindly, and some malevolent.  They mingle in the immense multiplicity
-of agencies which makes every event in the universe, in the language of
-the Shinto writer Motowori (1730-1801), "the act of the Kami."  They
-direct the changing seasons, the wind and the rain; and the good and
-bad fortunes of individuals, families, and States, are due to them.
-From birth to death the entire life of man is encompassed and guided by
-the Kami.
-
-Hence came the duty of worship on which Hirata (1776-1843) lays great
-stress.  The heaven-descended Ninigi, progenitor of the imperial line,
-was taught by his divine forefathers that "everything in the world
-depends on the spirits of the _kami_ of heaven and earth, and therefore
-the worship of the _kami_ is a {93} matter of primary importance.  The
-_kami_ who do harm are to be appeased, so that they may not punish
-those who have offended them; and all the _kami_ are to be worshipped
-so that they may be induced to increase their favours."  Accordingly
-Hirata's morning prayer before the _kami-dana_, the wooden shelf fixed
-against the wall in a Shinto home about six feet from the floor,
-bearing a small model of a temple or "august spirit-house," ran thus--
-
-
-"Reverently adoring the great God of the two palaces of Isé (the
-Sun-goddess) in the first place, the 800 myriads of celestial _kami_,
-the 800 myriads of ancestral _kami_, all the 1500 myriads to whom are
-consecrated the great and small temples in all provinces, all islands
-and all places in the great land of 8 islands, the 1500 myriads of
-_kami_ whom they cause to serve them....  I pray with awe that they
-will deign to correct the unwitting faults which, heard and seen by
-them, I have committed, and, blessing and favouring me according to the
-powers which they severally wield, cause me to follow the divine
-example, and to perform good works in the way."
-
-
-Here, the spirits of the dead are blended with those of nature, without
-any definite attempt to assign them to different ranks or functions.
-Among the dead themselves there are such distinctions, which do not,
-however, concern us here; there are "spirits of crookedness," {94} and
-there are spirits of the clans and of the imperial line.  But above the
-multitudinous groups of nameless _kami_, whether once human or attached
-to the physical scene, rise certain great powers which it seems very
-difficult to identify with departed ghosts.  The earliest traditions of
-the divine evolution in the ancient chronicles contain no hint pointing
-in that direction; and the comparison of the Japanese deities of earth,
-fire, wind, sea, and similar great elemental forces elsewhere, is not
-favourable to their derivation from the hosts of the dead.
-
-The student of the hymns to Fire in the Rig-Veda (_Agni_ = Latin
-_ignis_) cannot fail to notice the emphasis laid upon the birth of the
-god out of the wood, as the fire-drill kindles the first sparks, and
-the flame leaps forth.  Here is something quick-moving, vital; the fire
-is the god; he may rise into cosmic significance as a pervading energy
-sustaining the whole world; but he never loses his physical character,
-any more than the solid earth or the encompassing sky.  These are again
-and again the chief co-ordinating powers of the higher animism.  Their
-separation out of the primeval mass of obscure and indiscriminate chaos
-has been the theme of myth from Egypt to New Zealand; just as their
-"bridal" has served to express the union and co-operation of the forces
-of nature all around the world.
-
-Of this the ancient Chinese religion, still the {95} formal basis of
-the national worship as performed by the Emperor, supplies perhaps the
-best example.  The cultus of the dead is practised in every home, and
-around the incidents of life and death have gathered various Buddhist
-and Taoist rites.  Moreover, a rampant demonology environs the entire
-field of existence; but this disordered multitude of noxious spirits
-has no recognition in the imperial homage.  From immemorial generations
-the Chinese practice made religion a department of the State, and the
-venerable book of the Rites of the great dynasty of Chow requires the
-Grand Superior of Sacrifices to superintend the worship due to three
-orders of _Shin_ or spirits, celestial, terrestrial, and human.  Under
-the sovereignty of the sky the first includes the spirits of the sun,
-moon, stars, clouds, wind, rain, thunder, and the changes of the
-atmosphere.  In the sphere of earth are reckoned the spirits of the
-mountains, rivers, plains, seas, lakes, woods, fields, and grains.
-
-Taken together Heaven and Earth thus include all the energies of the
-universe.  The world, as we see it, is, indeed, full of opposing
-powers, one group (_yang_) representing light and warmth and life, the
-contrary (_yin_) manifesting themselves in cold and darkness and
-death.[3]  But these are both encompassed by {96} the "Path" or _Tao_,
-the daily course of the universe, the abiding guarantee of justice in
-the distribution of good and evil in the human lot.  Heaven and earth
-are thus regarded as themselves active or living; they constantly
-maintain the order of nature for the welfare of man.  In the ancient
-Odes (which Confucius was supposed to have edited) "heaven" is called
-great and wide and blue.  This is plainly the visible firmament; it is
-addressed as parent, and sky and earth together are father and mother
-of the world.  They are not spirits, but are themselves animate.
-"Why," laments Dr. Edkins of his Chinese hearers, "they have been often
-asked, should you speak of these things which are dead matter,
-fashioned from nothing by the hand of God, as living beings?"  "And why
-not?" they have replied.  "The sky pours down rain and sunshine, the
-earth produces corn and grass, we see them in perpetual movement, and
-we therefore say they are living."
-
-
-[3] The sky is the home of the _yang_; the _yin_ are referred to the
-earth; in curious contrast to its powers of production and nourishment.
-
-
-The Chinese genius was ethical rather than metaphysical.  It was not
-concerned with the Infinite, the Eternal, and the Absolute.  But it was
-deeply impressed with the moral aspects of the sky, its universality,
-its comprehensive embrace of all objects and powers beneath its
-far-stretching dome, its all-seeing view, its inflexible impartiality.
-Its decrees are steadfast, and proceeded from its sovereign sway; and
-in this capacity it bore the {97} august title of Shang Tî, "Supreme
-Ruler."  The scholastic philosophers of a later day analysed "Heaven"
-in this capacity into the actual sky and its controlling personality,
-and Shang Tî became the Moral Governor of the Universe, the equivalent
-of the western God.
-
-Beneath the sky lay the earth, receptive of the energies descending
-upon it from on high; "Heaven and Earth, Father and Mother," are
-conjoined in common speech.  Together they guided the changes of the
-year, in steadfast tread along the annual round.  Folded in their wide
-compass were the Shin, charged with the regulation of the elemental
-powers.  Under Heaven's control were the Shin of sun and moon, planets,
-stars, meteors, comets; of clouds and winds, thunder and rain; of the
-seasons, months, and days.  Those of the earth were organised in
-territorial divisions, representing the dominions of the vassal princes
-down to the district areas.  The higher were graded according to the
-political rank of the several provinces; beneath them were reckoned the
-spirits of the mountains, forests, seas, rivers, and grains.  The
-privileges of worship granted to the various officials were part of the
-State order, and helped to maintain political and civic stability.
-
-The imperial sacrifices to Heaven and Earth were performed at the
-winter and the summer solstices.  The great altar to Heaven {98} stands
-in a large park in the southern division of Peking, a vast marble
-structure in three stages, the lowest being 210 feet across.  It is the
-largest altar in the world.  Its white colour symbolises the light
-principle of the Yang.  The upper stage, ninety feet in diameter, has
-for its centre a round blue jade stone, the symbol of the vault above.
-Here is placed the tablet to Heaven, inscribed "Throne of Sovereign
-Heaven," and associated with it are tablets to deceased emperors as
-well as to the Sun and Moon, the seven stars of the Great Bear, the
-five Planets, the twenty-eight Constellations, and the Stars.  On the
-second stage, beneath the richly carved balustrade above, are the
-tablets to the Clouds and Rain, to Wind and Thunder.  At the
-corresponding altar to the Earth on the north side of the city, square
-in shape, and dark-yellow in hue, the imperial worship at the summer
-solstice embraces also the five lofty Mountains, the three Hills of
-Perpetual Peace, the four Seas, the five celebrated Mountains, and the
-four great Rivers.[4]
-
-
-[4] It is stated by the _North China Herald_ for July 13, that the
-present Chinese Government proposes to convert the Temple of Heaven
-into a model farm, and the Temple of Earth into a horse-breeding
-establishment.
-
-
-Splendid processions of princes and dignitaries, musicians and singers,
-accompany the Emperor to the great ceremonial.  The recent Manchu
-sovereigns employed the prayers of the Ming dynasty which preceded
-them: here {99} are one or two stanzas of a psalm in which the Emperor
-Kia-tsing in the sixteenth century announced to Shang Tî that he would
-be addressed as "dwelling in the sovereign heavens":--
-
-
-"O Tî, when thou hadst separated the Yin and the Yang (_i.e._ the earth
-and the sky), thy creative work proceeded.
-
-"Thou didst produce the sun and moon and the five planets, and pure and
-beautiful was their light.
-
-"The vault of heaven was spread out like a curtain, and the square
-earth supported all upon it, and all things were happy.
-
-"I thy servant venture reverently to thank thee, and while I worship,
-present the notice to thee, calling thee Sovereign.
-
-      *      *      *      *      *
-
-"All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to thy favour
-for their beginning.
-
-"Men and things are all emparadised in thy love, O Tî.
-
-"All living things are indebted to thy goodness, but who knows from
-whom his blessings come to him.
-
-"It is thou alone, O Lord, who art the true parent of all things."
-
-
-Here the ancient view of the living sky has given place under the
-influences of {100} philosophy to a creative monotheism.  No image is
-made of Shang Tî.  As he stands at the head of the manifold ranks of
-the _Shin_, he represents the last word of animism in providing an
-intellectual form for religion.
-
-
-
-
-{101}
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-SPIRITS AND GODS
-
-Religion in the lower culture takes many forms, but, speaking broadly,
-they rest upon a common interpretation of the world.  Man sees around
-him all kinds of motion and change.  He finds in everything that
-happens some energy or power; and the only kind of power which he knows
-is that which he himself exerts.  As long as he is alive he can run and
-fight, he can throw the spear or guide the canoe; death comes to the
-comrade by his side, and all is still.  So in wind and stream, in beast
-and tree, in the stones that fall upon the mountain side, in the stars
-that march across the nightly sky, he sees a like power; they, too,
-have some sort of life.
-
-Life as an abstract idea, a potency or principle, is but rarely
-grasped.  But its manifestations early attract notice, and can be
-roughly explained.  They are due to something inside the living body,
-which can pass in and out, and can finally leave it altogether.  Here
-is an immense store of causality provided, to account for all the
-incidents of each day's experience.  Modern language calls {102} such
-agents spirits, and recognises in their multitude two mingled groups,
-both active: the spirits of the dead on the one hand, and those of
-natural objects, the bubbling well, the gloomy forest, the raging
-storm, upon the other.
-
-Sometimes these are merged under a common term, like the Japanese
-_kami_, sometimes they are separately named.  They bear different
-characters of good and evil, as they are ready to help or hurt; and the
-same spirit may be now kindly and now hostile, without fixity of
-disposition or purpose.  To such spirits the ancient Babylonians gave
-the name of _zi_.  Literally, we are told, the word signified "life";
-it was indicated in their picture-writing by a flowering plant; the
-great gods, and even heaven and earth themselves, all had their _zi_.
-The Egyptians, in like manner, ascribed to every object, to human
-beings, and to gods, a double or _ka_.  The word seems to be identical
-with that for "food"; it was another way of indicating that all visible
-things, the peoples of the earth, the dwellers in the realms above and
-below, shared a common life.
-
-The history of religion is concerned with the process by which the
-great gods rise into clear view above the host of spirits filling the
-common scene; with the modes in which the forces of the world may be
-grouped under their control; with the manifold combinations which
-finally enable one supreme power to {103} absorb all the rest, so that
-a god of the sky, like the Greek Zeus, may become a god of rain and
-sunshine and atmospheric change, of earth and sea, and of the nether
-world; and may thus be presented as the sole and universal energy, not
-only of all outward things but also of the inner world of thought.  Of
-this immense development language, archæology, literature, the
-dedications of worship, the testimonies of the ancient students of
-their still more ancient past in ritual and belief, contain the
-scattered witness, which the student of to-day laboriously gathers and
-interprets.  It is the humbler object of a little manual of Comparative
-Religion to set some of the principal issues of such historic evolution
-side by side, and show how similar reactions of the mind of man upon
-the field of his experience have wrought like results.
-
-As the inquirer casts his eye over the manifold varieties of the
-world's faiths, he sees that they are always conditioned by the stage
-of social culture out of which they emerge.  The hunter who lives by
-the chase, and must range over large areas for means of support; the
-pastoral herdsman who has acquired the art of breeding cattle and
-sheep, and slowly moves from one set of feeding-grounds to another; the
-agriculturist who has learned to rely on the co-operation of earth and
-sky in the annual round,--have each their own way of expressing their
-view of the Powers on which they depend.
-
-{104}
-
-Little by little they are arranged in groups.  The Celts, for instance,
-coming to river after river in their onward march, employed the same
-name again and again, "Deuona," divine (still surviving in this country
-in different forms, Devon, Dee, etc.), as though all rivers belonged to
-one power.  They were the givers of life and health and plenty, to whom
-costly sacrifices must be made.  So they might bear the title "Mother,"
-and were akin to the powers of fertility living in the soil, the
-"Mothers" (_Matres_ or _Matronæ_), cognate with the "Mothers" who
-fulfil similar functions in modern India.  The adjacent Teutonic
-peoples filled forest and field with wood-sprites and elves, dwellers
-in the air and the sunlight.  The springs, the streams, and the lakes,
-were the home of the water-sprites or nixes; in the fall of the mighty
-torrent, among the rocks on the mountain heights, in the fury of the
-storm or the severity of the frost, was the strength of the giants.
-
-Yet further east and north the Finnic races looked out on a land of
-forest and waters, of mists and winds.  The spirits were ranged beneath
-rulers who were figured in human form.  The huntsman prayed with vow
-and sacrifice to the aged Tapio, god of the woods and the wild animals.
-Kekri watched over the increase of the herd, while Hillervo protected
-them on the summer pastures.  The grains and herbs--of less importance
-to tribes {105} only imperfectly agricultural--were ascribed to the
-care of Pellervoinen, who falls into the background and receives but
-little veneration.  Water, once worshipped as a living element
-(_vesi_), is gradually supplanted by a water-god (Ahto) who rules over
-the spirits of lakes and rivers, wells and springs.  "Mother-earth"
-still designates in the oldest poetry the living energy of the ground,
-though she afterwards becomes the "lady of the earth" and consort of
-the lord of the sky.  The sky, Jumala, was first of all conceived as
-itself living; "Jumala's weather" was like "Zeus's shower" to an
-ancient Greek.  And then, under the name Ukko, the sky becomes a
-personal ruler, with clouds and rain, thunder and hail, beneath his
-sway; who can be addressed as--
-
-  Ukko, thou of gods the highest,
-  Ukko, thou our Heavenly Father.
-
-
-Many causes contribute to the enlargement and stability of such
-conceptions.  Tribes of limited local range and a meagre past without
-traditions may conceive the world around them on a feeble scale.  But
-migration helps to enlarge the outlook.  Local powers cannot accompany
-tribes upon the march.  Either they must be left behind and drop out of
-remembrance, or they must be identified with new scenes and adapted to
-fresh environments.  When the horizon moves ever further forwards with
-each advance, earth and sky loom vaster {106} before the imagination,
-and sun and moon, the companion of each day or the protector of each
-night, gain a more stately predominance.  The ancestors of the Hindus,
-the Greeks, the Romans, the Teutons, carried with them the worship of
-the sky-god under a common name, derived from the root _div_, to
-"shine" (Dyaus = Zeus = Jovis = old High German Tiu, as in Tuesday).
-Other names gathered around the person in the actual firmament, such as
-the Sanskrit Varuna (still recognised by some scholars as identical
-with the Greek Ouranos, heaven), loftiest of all the Vedic gods.  The
-Aryan immigrants are already organised under kings, and Varuna sits
-enthroned in sovereignty.  His palace is supported by a thousand
-pillars, and a thousand doors provide open access for his worshippers.
-But he is in some sense omnipresent, and one of the ancient poets sang--
-
-
-"If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie down or to get
-up, what two people sitting together whisper, King Varuna knows it, he
-is there as the third.
-
-"This earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide sky with
-its ends far apart.  The two seas (sky and ocean) are Varuna's loins;
-he is also contained in this small drop of water.
-
-"He who should flee far beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of
-Varuna, the king."
-
-
-{107}
-
-The supreme power of the universe is here conceived under a political
-image.  Conceptions of government and social order supply another line
-of advance, parallel with the forces of nature.  On the African Gold
-Coast, after eighteen years' observation, Cruickshank ranged the
-objects of worship in three ranks: (1) the stone, the tree, the river,
-the snake, the alligator, the bundle of rags, which constituted the
-private fetish of the individual; (2) the greater family deity whose
-aid was sought by all alike, sometimes in a singular act of communion
-which involved the swallowing of the god (p. 144); and (3) the deity of
-the whole town, to whom the entire people had recourse in times of
-calamity and suffering.
-
-The conception of the deity of a tribe or nation may be greatly
-developed under the influence of victory.  War becomes a struggle
-between rival gods.  Jephthah the Gileadite, after recounting the
-triumphs of Israel to the hostile Ammonite king, states the case with
-the most naked simplicity: "Yahweh, Israel's god, hath dispossessed the
-Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess
-them?  Wilt thou not possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to
-possess?  So whomsoever Yahweh our god hath dispossessed from before
-us, them will we possess" (Judges xi. 23, 24).  The land of Canaan was
-the gift of Israel's God, but at first his power was limited by its
-boundaries: to be driven from the country was to be {108} alienated
-from the right to offer him worship or receive from him protection.  In
-the famous battle with the Hittites, celebrated by the court-poet of
-Rameses the Great (1300-1234 B.C.), the king, endangered by the flight
-of his troops, appeals to the great god Amen, a form of the solar deity
-Rê, with confidence of help, "Amen shall bring to nought the ignorers
-of God": and the answer comes, "I am with thee, I am thy father, my
-hand is with thee, I am more excellent for thee than hundreds of
-thousands united in one."  Success thus enhanced the glory of the
-victor's gods.  Like the Incas of Peru in later days, the Assyrian
-sovereigns confirmed their power by bringing the deities of tributary
-peoples in a captive train to their own capital: and the Hebrew prophet
-opens his description of the fall of Babylon by depicting the images of
-the great gods Bel and Nebo as packed for deportation on the
-transport-animals of the conqueror.
-
-Other causes further tended to give distinction to the personality of
-deities, and define their spheres.  A promiscuous horde of spirits has
-no family relationships.  A god may have a pedigree; a consort is at
-his side; and the mysterious divine power reappears in a son.  Instead
-of the political analogy of a sovereign and his attendants, the family
-conception expresses itself in a divine father, mother and child.  Thus
-the Ibani of Southern Nigeria recognised Adum as the father of all
-{109} gods except Tamuno the creator, espoused to Okoba the principal
-goddess, and mother of Eberebo, represented as a boy, to whom children
-were dedicated.  The Egyptian triad, Osiris, Isis and Horus, is well
-known; and the divine mother with the babe upon her lap passed into the
-Christian Church in the form of the Virgin Mary and her infant son.
-
-The divisions of the universe suggested another grouping.  The Vedic
-poets arranged their deities in three zones: the sky above, the
-intervening atmosphere, and the earth beneath.  Babylonian cosmology
-placed Anu in the heaven, Bel on the earth, and Ea in the great deep,
-and these three became the symbols of the order of nature, and the
-divine embodiments of physical law.  Homer already divides the world
-between the sky-god Zeus, Poseidon of earth and sea, and Hades of the
-nether realm: and Rome has its triads, like Jupiter, Mars, and
-Quirinus, or again Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.  Whatever be the origin
-of the number three in this connection, it reproduces itself with
-strange reiteration in both hemispheres.  Other groups are suggested by
-the sun and moon and the five planets, and appear in sets of seven.
-Egyptian summaries recognised gods in the sky, on earth, and in the
-water; and the theologians of different sanctuaries loved to arrange
-them in systems of nine, or three times three.
-
-Out of this vast and motley multitude emerge certain leading types in
-correspondence {110} with certain modes of human thought, with certain
-hopes and fears arising out of the changes of the human lot.  Curiosity
-begins to ask questions about the scene around.  The child, when it has
-grasped some simple view of the world, will inquire who made it; and to
-the usual answer will by and by rejoin "And who made God?"  Elementary
-speculation does not advance so far: it is content to rest if necessary
-in darkness and the void, provided there is a power which can light the
-sun, and set man on his feet.  But the intellectual range of thought
-even in the lower culture is much wider than might have been
-anticipated; while the higher religions contain abundant survivals of
-the cruder imagination which simply loves a tale.
-
-Sometimes the creative power (especially on the American continent) is
-figured as a marvellous animal, a wondrous raven, a bird-serpent, a
-great hare, a mighty beaver.  Or the dome of sky suggests an original
-world-egg, which has been divided to make heaven and earth.  Even the
-Australians, whose characteristics are variously interpreted as
-indications of extreme backwardness or of long decline, show figures
-which belong to what Mr. Andrew Lang designated the "High Gods of Low
-Races."  Among the Narrinyeri in the west Nurrundere was said to have
-made all things on the earth; the Wiimbaio told how Nurelli had made
-the whole country with the rivers, trees, and animals.  Among the {111}
-Western Bantu on the African continent Nzambi (a name with many
-variants over a large area) is described as "Maker and Father."  "Our
-forefathers told us that name.  Njambi is the One-who-made-us.  He is
-our Father, he made these trees, that mountain, this river, these goats
-and chickens, and us people."  That is the simple African version of
-the "ever-and-beyond."  But as with so many of the chief gods, not only
-on the dark continent, but elsewhere, he is regarded as a
-non-interfering and therefore negligible deity.
-
-Sometimes speculation takes a higher flight.  The Zuñis of Mexico have
-remained in possession of ancient traditions, uninfluenced by any
-imported Christianity.  After many years' residence among them Mr.
-Cushing was able to gather their ideas of the origin of the world.
-Awona-wilona was the Maker and Container of all, the All-Father-Father.
-Through the great space of the ages there was nothing else whatever,
-only black darkness everywhere.  Then "in the beginning of the
-new-made" Awona-wilona conceived within himself, and "thought outward
-in space," whereby mists of increase, steams potent of growth, were
-evolved and uplifted.  Thus by means of his innate knowledge the
-All-Container made himself in the person and form of the sun.  With his
-appearance came the brightening of the spaces with light, and with the
-brightening of the spaces the great {112} mist-clouds were thickened
-together and fell.  Thereby was evolved water in water, yea and the
-world-holding sea.  And then came the production of the
-Fourfold-Containing Mother-Earth and the All-Covering Father-Sky.
-
-With a yet bolder leap of imagination did a Polynesian poet picture the
-great process.  From island to island between Hawaii and New Zealand is
-a "high god" known as Taaroa, Tangaloa, Tangaroa, and Kanaroa.  The
-Samoans said that he existed in space and wished for some place to
-dwell in, so he made the heavens; and then wished to have a place under
-the heavens, so he made the earth.  Tahitian mythology declared (the
-versions of priests and wise men differed) that he was born of night or
-darkness.  Then he embraced a rock, the imagined foundation of all
-things, which brought forth earth and sea; the heavens were created
-with sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, and rain, and the dry land
-appeared below.  The whole process was summed up in a hymn--
-
-  "He was: Taaroa was his name.
-  He abode in the void; no earth, no sea, no sky.
-  Taaroa calls, but nought answers,
-  Then, alone existing, he became the universe."
-
-
-The relations of these creative Powers to man are conceived very
-differently.  The {113} Maker of the world may be continually
-interested in it, and may continue to administer the processes which he
-has begun.  The Akkra negro looks up to the living sky, Nyongmo, as the
-author of all things, who is benevolently active day by day: "We see
-every day," said a fetish-man, "how the grass, the corn, and the trees,
-spring forth through the rain and sunshine sent by Nyongmo [_Nyongmo
-ne_ = 'Nyongmo rains'], how should he not be the creator?"  So he is
-invoked with prayer and rite.  The great Babylonian god, Marduk, son of
-Ea (god of wisdom and spells), alone succeeds in overcoming the might
-of Tiamat (the Hebrew _tehôm_ or "deep"), the primeval chaos with her
-hideous brood of monsters, and out of her carcass makes the firmament
-of heaven.  He arranges the stations of the stars, he founds the earth,
-and places man upon it.  "His word is established," cries the poet,
-"his command is unchangeable: wide is his heart, broad is his
-compassion."  A conqueror so splendid could not relinquish his energy,
-or rest on his achievements: he must remain on the throne of the world
-to direct and support its ways.  Here is a prayer of Nebuchadrezzar to
-this lofty deity--
-
-
-"O eternal ruler, lord of all being, grant that the name of the king
-thou lovest, whose name thou hast proclaimed, may flourish as seems
-pleasing to thee.  Lead him in the right {114} way.  I am the prince
-that obeys thee, the creature of thy hand.  Thou hast created me, and
-hast entrusted to me dominion over mankind.  According to thy mercy, O
-lord, which thou bestowest upon all, may thy supreme rule be merciful!
-The worship of thy divinity implant within my heart.  Grant me what
-seems good to thee, for thou art he that hast fashioned my life."
-
-
-On the other hand, the "High Gods of Low Races" often seem to fade away
-and become inactive, or at least are out of relations to man.  Olorun,
-lord of the sky among the African Egbas, also bore the title of Eleda,
-"the Creator."  But he was too remote and exalted to be the object of
-human worship, and no prayer was offered to him.  Among the southern
-Arunta of central Australia, reports Mr. Strehlow, Altjira is believed
-to live in the sky.  He is like a strong man save that he has emu feet.
-He created the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars.  When rain-clouds
-come up, it is Altjira walking through the sky.  Altjira shows himself
-to man in the lightning, the thunder is his voice.  But though thus
-animate, he is no object of worship.  "Altjira is a good god; he never
-punishes man; therefore the blacks do not fear him, and render him
-neither prayer nor sacrifice."  In Indian theology the reason for the
-discontinuance of homage was thus frankly stated by one of the poets
-{115} of the great epic, the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata; "Men worship Çiva the
-destroyer because they fear him; Vishnu the preserver, because they
-hope from him; but who worships Brahman the creator?  _His work is
-done._"[1]
-
-
-[1] Hopkins, _India, Old and New_, p. 113.  Prof. Hopkins adds that in
-India to-day there are thousands of temples to Çiva and Vishnu, but
-only two to Brahman.
-
-
-If the deity who has provided the scene of existence thus recedes into
-the background, it is otherwise with the powers which maintain and
-foster life.  Among the impulses which drive man to action is the need
-of food; and the sources of its supply are among the earliest objects
-of his regard.  A large group of agencies thus gradually wins
-recognition, out of which emerge lofty forms endowed with functions far
-transcending the simple energies at first ascribed to them.  Even the
-rude tribes of Australia, possessing no definite worship, perform
-pantomimic ceremonies of a magical kind, designed to stimulate the food
-supply.  The men of the plum-tree totem will pretend to knock down
-plums and eat them; in the initiation ceremony of the eagle-hawks two
-representatives will imitate the flapping of wings and the movements of
-attack, and one will finally wrench a piece of meat out of the other's
-mouth.  At a higher stage of animism the Indians of British North
-America pray to the spirit of the wild raspberry.  When the young
-shoots are six or eight inches high above the ground, a small bundle is
-{116} picked by the wife or daughters of the chief and cooked in a new
-pot.  The settlement assembles in a great circle, with the presiding
-chief and the medicine-man in the midst.  All close their eyes, except
-certain assisting elders, while the chief offers a silent prayer that
-the spirit of the plants will be propitious to them, and grant them a
-good supply of suckers.
-
-Here the whole class of plants is already conceived as under the
-control of a single power.  In ruder stages the hunter will address his
-petitions to the individual bear, before whose massive stature he feels
-a certain awe, entreating him not to be angry or fight, but to take
-pity on him.  Pastoral peoples will employ domesticated animals in
-sacrifice, while the products of the field occupy a second place; the
-cow may become sacred, and the daily work of the dairy may rise, as
-among the Todas, to the rank of religious ritual.  Some element of
-mysterious energy will even lie in the weapons of the chase, in the net
-or the canoe, and may be found still lingering in the implements of
-agriculture, such as the plough.
-
-Among settled communities which live by tillage the succession of the
-crops from year to year acquires immense importance.  Earth and sky,
-the sun, the rain, and time itself in the background, are all
-contributory powers, but attention is fastened upon the spirit of the
-grains.  The Iroquois look on the spirits of corn, of squashes, and of
-beans, as three {117} sisters, who are known collectively as "Our Life"
-or "Our Supporters."  In central America each class of food-plants had
-its corresponding spirit, which presided over its germination,
-nourishment, and growth.  This was called the _mama_ or "mother" of the
-plant: in Peru there was a cocoa-mother, a potato-mother, a
-maize-mother; just as in India the cotton-spirit is worshipped as
-"cotton-mother."  A "maize-mother," made of the finest stalks, was
-renewed at each harvest, that the seed might preserve its vitality.
-The figure, richly clothed, was ceremoniously installed, and watched
-for three nights.  Sacrifice was solemnly offered, and the interpreter
-inquired, "Maize-mother, canst thou live till next year?"  If the
-spirit answered affirmatively, the figure remained for a twelvemonth;
-if no reply was vouchsafed, it was taken away and burnt, and a fresh
-one was consecrated.  In Mexico maize was a much more important food
-than in Peru, and the maize-deity acquired in consequence a much higher
-rank.  She became a great harvest goddess.  Temple and altar were
-dedicated to her; spring and summer festivals were celebrated in her
-honour; and a youthful victim was slain, whose vitality might enter the
-soil, and recruit her exhausted energies.
-
-The ceremonies connected with the cultus of the rice-spirit in the East
-Indies still perpetuate in living faith beliefs once vital {118} in the
-peasantry of Europe, and surviving to this day (as Mannhardt and Frazer
-have shown) in many a usage of the harvest-field.  Out of this group of
-ideas arise divine forms which express mysteries of life and time.
-What is it that guides the circle of the year?  What power brings forth
-the blade out of the ground, and clothes the woods with verdure?  As
-the months follow their constant course, are not the seasons the organs
-of some sacred force, lovely figures as Greek poets taught, born of
-Zeus and Themis (holy law); or angels of the Most High, ruling over
-heat and cold, summer and winter, spring and autumn, as the later
-Israel conceived the continuance of God's creative work?  And when the
-fields are bare and the leaves fall, have not the energies of
-vegetation suffered an arrest, to come to life again when the great
-quickening of the spring returns?  So while here and there dim
-speculations (as in India or Persia or the Orphic hymns of Greece)
-hover round Time, the generator of all things, and the recurring
-periodicity of the Year, more concrete imagination conceives the
-processes of the growth, decay, and revival of vegetation under the
-symbols of the life, the death, and resurrection of the deities of corn
-and tree.
-
-To such a group belong different forms in Egypt, Syria and Greece,
-whose precise origin cannot always be traced amid the bewildering
-variety of functions which they came to fulfil.  But they all
-illustrate the same general theme.  {119} In the ritual of their
-worship similar motives and symbols may be traced; and the incidents of
-their life-course were presented in a sort of sacred drama which
-reproduced the central mystery.  Such were Osiris in Egypt, Adonis (as
-the Greeks called the Syrian form of the ancient Babylonian Tammuz),
-Attis of Phrygia in Asia Minor, and in Greece the Thracian Dionysus,
-and the divine pair Demeter and her daughter Persephonê blended with
-the figure of Korê "the Maid."
-
-The worship of Osiris early spread throughout Egypt, and its various
-phases have given rise to many interpretations of his origin and
-nature.  Recent studies have converged upon the view that he was
-primarily a vegetation deity.  In the festival of sowing, small images
-of the god formed out of sand or vegetable earth and corn, with yellow
-faces and green cheek-bones, were solemnly buried, those of the
-preceding year being removed.  On the temple wall of his chamber at
-Philæ stalks of corn were depicted springing from his dead body, while
-a priest poured water on them from a pitcher.  This was the mystery of
-him "who springs from the returning waters."  The annual inundation
-brought quickening to the seed, and in the silence and darkness of the
-earth it died to live.
-
-Of this process Osiris became the type for thousands of years.  Already
-in the earliest days of the Egyptian monarchy he is presented as the
-divine-human king, benevolent, wise, {120} just.  To him in later times
-the arts and laws of civilised life could be traced back; he was the
-founder of the social order and the worship of the gods.  But the
-jealousy of his brother Set brought about his death.  The ancient texts
-do not explicitly state what followed.  But his body was cut to pieces
-and his limbs were scattered, until his son Horus effected their
-reunion.  Restored to life, he ascended to the skies, and became "Chief
-of the Powers," so that he could be addressed as the "Great God." There
-by his resurrection he became the pledge of immortality.  Each man who
-died looked to him for the gift of life.  Mystically identified with
-him, the deceased bore the god's name and was thus admitted into
-fellowship with him.  Over his body the ceremonies once performed upon
-Osiris were repeated, the same formulæ were recited, with the
-conviction that "as surely as Osiris lives, so shall he live also." But
-magic was early checked by morals, and by the sixth dynasty Osiris had
-also become the august and impartial judge (p. 8).
-
-Such might be the splendid evolution of a deity of the grains.  But
-food was not, of course, the only need.  The family as well as each
-individual must be maintained.  Mysterious powers wrought through sex.
-Strange energies pulsed in processes of quickening, and these, too,
-were interpreted in terms of divine agency.  They found their parallels
-in the operations of nature (like the Yang and {121} Yin of ancient
-China), and begot new series of heavenly forms.  The greater gods all
-had their consorts.  Birth must be placed under divine protection, just
-as the organ of generation might itself be sacred.  The Babylonian
-looked to the spouse of Marduk, "creator of all things," to whom as
-Z[=e]r-panîtum, "seed-creatress," the processes of generation were
-especially referred.  Or with ceremony and incantation the child was
-set beneath the care of Ishtar, queen of Nineveh, and goddess of the
-planet Venus.  The Greek prayed to Hera, Artemis, or Eileithyia; and
-all round the world superhuman powers, for good or ill, gathered round
-the infant life, whose aid must be sought, or whose hurt averted.
-Dread agencies of disease, like fever, smallpox, or cholera, were in
-like manner personalised.  Demonic forces cut short the tale of years.
-From the equator to the arctic zone Death is ascribed in the lowest
-culture to witchcraft.  Strange stories were told of his intrusion into
-the world, commonly through man's transgression of some divine command.
-And gradually the other world must be ruled like this; the multitudes
-of the dead need a sovereign like the living; and after the fashion of
-Osiris the Indian Yama, "first to spy out the path" to the unseen
-realm, becomes the "King of Righteousness" before whom all must in due
-time give their account (p. 244).
-
-Such deities, however, represent much more than the physical life.
-They have a social {122} character, and have become the expression of
-organised morality.  On this field another group of divine powers comes
-into view, symbols of order in the home or the city, charged with the
-maintenance of the family or the State.  Round the hearth-fire gathers
-a peculiar sanctity.  There is the common centre of domestic interests;
-there, too, the agent by which gifts are conveyed to the spirits of the
-dead.  There, then, was a sacred force, dwelling in the hearth itself,
-and animating the fire that burned upon it.  The Greek Hestia seems
-originally to have been not the goddess who made the hearth holy, nor
-the sacrificial fire which it sustained, but the mysterious energy in
-the actual stones upholding the consecrated flame.  All kinds of
-associations were attached to it; and though her personality remained
-somewhat dim and indistinct, and carven forms of her were rare, and her
-worship was never sacerdotalised like that of the Latin Vesta, she
-nevertheless had the first place in sacrifice and prayer.  She was
-worshipped in the city council-hall.  Athenian colonists carried her
-sacred fire across the seas.  The poets provided her with a pedigree,
-and made her "sister of God most high, and of Hera the partner of his
-throne."  The sculptor placed her statue at Athens beside that of
-Peace.  The family deity expanded into an emblem of the unity of
-government and race.  But the primitive character of the ancient
-hearth-power still clung to her.  {123} She never rose into the lofty
-functions of guide and protector of moral order like the great
-city-gods Zeus, Athena, or Apollo.
-
-In Rome numerous powers were recognised in early days as guardians of
-the home and the farm-lands.  Vesta had her seat upon the hearth, which
-was the centre of the family worship, and afterwards became the object
-of an important city-cult.  The store-chamber behind was the
-dwelling-place of the Penates, and with its contents no impure person
-might meddle.  Where farm met farm stood the chapel of the local Lares,
-and there whole households assembled, masters and slaves together, in
-annual rejoicings and good fellowship.  Brought into the home, the Lar
-became the symbol of the family life, and the ancestral pieties
-gathered round him.  More vague and elastic was the conception of the
-Genius, a kind of spiritual double who watched over the fortunes of the
-head of the home, and through the marriage-bed provided for the
-continuity of descent.  This protecting power could take many forms
-with continually expanding jurisdiction.  The city, the colony, the
-province, the "land of Britain," Rome, the Emperor himself, were thus
-placed under divine care, or rather were viewed as in some way the
-organs of superhuman power.  In the energy which built up states and
-brought peoples into order lived something that was creative and divine.
-
-From distant times in many forms of society {124} it was felt that
-there was something mysterious in sovereignty.  The king (once
-connected with the priest) was hedged round with some sort of divinity
-which expressed itself in language amazing to the modern mind.  In the
-ancient monarchies of Egypt and Babylon the royal deity was the
-fundamental assumption of government, and it was represented upon the
-monuments beside the Nile with startling realism.  In later days the
-Greek title _Theos_ (god) was boldly assumed by the sovereigns of Egypt
-and Syria.  It was conferred, with the associated epithet _Sotér_
-(Saviour or Preserver), as early as 307 B.C., on Demetrius and his
-father Antigonus, who liberated Athens from the tyranny of Cassander.
-On the Rosetta stone (in the British Museum) Ptolemy V, 205 B.C.,
-claims the same dignity, and is described as "eternal-lived," and "the
-living image of Zeus."  Ephesus designated Julius Cæsar as "God
-manifest and the common Saviour of human life."
-
-This is something more than the extravagance of court-scribes, or the
-fawning adulation of oriental dependents.  In the worship paid to the
-Roman Emperor many feelings and associations were involved.  The power
-which had brought peace, law, order, into the midst of a multitude of
-nations and languages, and subdued to itself the jarring wills of men,
-seemed something more than human.  When Tertullian of Carthage coined
-the strange word "Romanity," he summed up the infinite {125} variety of
-energies which spread one culture from the Persian Gulf to the
-Atlantic, from the cataracts of the Nile to the sources of the Tyne.
-Of this mysterious force the Emperor was the symbol.  So Augustus was
-saluted throughout the East as "Son of God," and in inscriptions
-recently discovered in Asia Minor, and referred by the historian
-Mommsen to the year 11 or 9 B.C., we read the startling words: "the
-birthday of the God is become the beginning of glad tidings
-(_evangelia_[2]) through him to the world."  He is described as "the
-Saviour of the whole human race"; he is the beginning of life and the
-end of sorrow that ever man was born.  An inscription at Philæ on the
-Nile equated him with the greatest of Greek deities, for he is "star of
-all Greece who has arisen as great Saviour Zeus."
-
-
-[2] The word which designates our "Gospels."
-
-
-This is the most highly developed form of the doctrine of the divine
-king, which the Far East has retained for the sovereigns of China and
-Japan to our own day.  The language and practice of Roman imperialism
-called forth the impassioned resistance of the early Christians, and
-the clash of opposing religions is nowhere portrayed with more
-desperate intensity than in the Book of Revelation at the close of our
-New Testament, where Rome and her false worship are identified with the
-power of the "Opposer" or Sâtân, and are hurled with all their
-trappings of wealth and luxury into the abyss.
-
-{126}
-
-The conception of a god as "saviour" or deliverer is founded on
-incidents in personal or national experience, when some unexpected
-event opens a way of escape from pressing danger.  When the Gauls were
-advancing against Rome in 388 B.C., a strange voice of warning was
-heard in the street.  It was neglected, but when they had been
-repelled, Camillus erected an altar and temple to the mysterious
-"Speaker," Aius Locutius, whose prophetic energy was thus manifested.
-In the second Punic war, when the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, was
-marching against the city in 211 B.C., he suddenly changed his course
-near the Capena gate.  Again the might of an unknown deity was
-displayed, and the grateful Romans raised a shrine to him under the
-name of Tutanus Rediculus, the god who "protects and turns back."  It
-might be the attack of an enemy, it might be the imminence of
-shipwreck, it might be a desolating plague, or any one of the
-vicissitudes of fortune, the distresses and anxieties of the soul or of
-the State, in the power which brought rescue or health or peace to body
-or mind, or life hereafter in a better world, the grateful believer
-recognised the energy of some superhuman being.  Just as the making of
-the world required a creative hand, just as the arts and laws of social
-life were the product of some divine initiative (p. 171), just as the
-higher virtues belonged to a band of spiritual forces which had a kind
-of individuality of their own, {127} so the shaping of affairs bore
-witness to the interest and intervention of wills above those of man.
-All through the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean the greater
-deities, such as Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Æsculapius, Dionysus, Isis,
-Zeus, bore the title of "Deliverer."  And in the mysteries which drew
-so many worshippers to their rites in the first centuries of our era,
-this deliverance took the form of salvation from sin, and carried with
-it the promise of re-birth into eternal life.
-
-Similar conceptions are seen in India.  The founder of Buddhism, Gotama
-of the S[=a]kyan clan, was believed to have attained the Enlightenment
-which enabled him to discern the whole secret of existence.  After a
-long series of preparatory labours in previous lives he had appeared as
-a man in his last birth, to "lift off from the world the veils of
-ignorance and sin."  He had himself repudiated all ontological
-conceptions; he had explained the human being without the hypothesis of
-a soul or self, and the world without the ideas of substance or God.
-But in due time the rejected metaphysics insisted on recognition; and
-some three hundred years or more after his death a new interpretation
-of his person arose.  Under the stress of pious affection, the
-influence of philosophical Brahmanism, and the need of permanent
-spiritual help, he was conceived as a manifestation of the Infinite and
-Eternal, who for the sake of suffering humanity from time to time {128}
-condescended to seem to be born and die, that in the likeness of a man
-he might impart the saving truth.  So he was presented as the
-Self-Existent, the Father of the world, the Protector of all creatures,
-the Healer of men's sicknesses and sins.
-
-Over against this great figure Brahmanism placed another, that of
-Vishnu, with his series of "descents," in which the Buddha was formally
-incorporated as the ninth.  The most famous of these were the heroes
-Rama and Krishna; and Krishna became the subject of the best-known book
-of Indian devotion, the Bhagavad-Gita or the "Divine Lay," which has
-been sometimes supposed to show traces of the influence of the Gospel
-of St. John.  Here was a religion founded on the idea of divine grace
-or favour on the one part, and adoring love and devotion on the other.
-Krishna, also, taught a way of deliverance from the evils of human
-passion and attachment to the world; and Vishnu came to be the
-embodiment of divine beneficence, at once the power which maintained
-the universe and revealed himself from time to time to man.
-
-Vishnu was an ancient Vedic deity connected with the sun; and by his
-side Hindu theology set another god of venerable antiquity, once fierce
-and destructive, but now known under the name of Çiva, the
-"auspicious."  The great epic entitled the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata does not
-conceal their rivalry; but with the facility of identification {129}
-characteristic of Indian thought, either deity could be interpreted as
-a form of the other.  Çiva became the representative of the energies of
-dissolution and reproduction; and his worship begot in the hearts of
-the mediæval poets an ardent piety, while in other aspects it
-degenerated into physical passion on the one side and extreme
-asceticism on the other.  But in association with Brahma, Vishnu and
-Çiva constituted the Trimurti, or "triple form," embracing the
-principles of the creation, preservation, destruction, and renewal of
-the world.  Symbolised, like the Christian Trinity, by three heads
-growing on one stem,[3] these lofty figures were the personal
-manifestations of the Universal Spirit, the Sole Existence, the
-ultimate Being, Intelligence, and Bliss.
-
-
-[3] Some of the Celtic deities are three-faced, or three-headed.
-
-
-By various paths was the goal of monotheism approached, but popular
-practice perpetually clung to lower worships, and philosophy could
-often accommodate them with ingenious justifications.  A bold and
-decisive judgment like that of the Egyptian Akhnaton might fix on one
-of the great powers of nature--the sun--as the most suitable emblem of
-Deity to be adored, and forbid all other cults.  Or the various groups
-and ranks of divine beings might be addressed in a kind of collective
-totality, like the "all-gods" of the Vedic hymns.  At Olympia {130}
-there was a common altar for all the gods; and a frequent dedication of
-Roman altars in later days consecrated them "to Jupiter Greatest and
-Best, and the Other Immortal Gods."  If reflection was sufficiently
-advanced to coin abstract terms for deity, like the Babylonian
-_'ilûth_, or the Vedic _asuratva_ or _devatva_, some poet might
-apprehend the ultimate unity, and lay it down that "the great
-_asuratva_ of the _devas_ is one."  Both India and Greece reached the
-conception of a unity of energy in diversity of operation; "the One
-with many names" was the theme of the ancient Hindu seers long before
-Æschylus in almost identical words proclaimed "One form with many
-names."  The great sky-god Zeus, whose personality could be almost
-completely detached from the visible firmament, brought the whole world
-under his sway, and from the fifth century before Christ Greek poetry
-abounded in lofty monotheistic language which the early Christian
-apologists freely quoted in their own defence.  A philosophic sovereign
-like Nezahuatl, lord of Tezcuco, might build a temple to "the Unknown
-God, the Cause of Causes," where no idol should be reared for worship,
-nor any sacrifice of blood be offered.  But other motives were more
-often at work.  Conquest led to the identification of the deities of
-the victor and the vanquished; and the importance of military triumph
-enhanced the majesty of the successful god.  In his great inscription
-{131} on Mount Behistun Darius celebrated the grandeur of Ahura Mazda,
-"Lord All-Wise," in language resembling that of a Hebrew psalm, "A
-great God is Ahura Mazda, the greatest of the gods."  Under the Roman
-Empire the principle of delegated authority could be invoked to explain
-the unity of the Godhead above inferior agencies; in the heavenly order
-there was but one sovereign, though there were many functionaries.
-Even Israel had its hierarchy of ministering spirits, and the Synagogue
-found it necessary to forbid pious Jews to pray to Michael or to
-Gabriel.
-
-When the unity of the moral order was combined with the unity of
-creative might, the transition to monotheism was even more complete.
-It could, indeed, be deferred.  In the ancient poems of the great
-religious reformer whom the Greeks called Zoroaster, Ahura Mazda is the
-supremely Good.  Beside him are the Immortal Holy Ones, Holy Spirit,
-Good Mind, Righteous Order, and the rest.  True, in the oppositions of
-light and darkness, heat and cold, health and sickness, plenty and
-want, life and death, he is for a time hampered by the enmity of "the
-Lie"; but the power of evil would be finally destroyed, and the
-sovereignty of Ahura established for ever (p. 247).
-
-From another point of view the divine purpose of deliverance must be
-conceived upon an equally world-wide scale.  One type of Indian
-Buddhism looked to Avalokiteçvara {132} (Chinese Kwanyin, Japanese
-Kwannon), who made the famous vow not to enter into final peace until
-all beings--even the worst of demons in the lowest hell--should know
-the saving truth and be converted.  And in the Far East rises the
-figure of the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is also the Buddha of
-Infinite Life, whose grace will avail for universal redemption (p. 18).
-The motive of creation falls away.  The world is the scene of the moral
-forces set in motion under the mysterious power of the Deed.  No praise
-rises to Amida for the wonders of the universe or the blessings of
-life.  But to no other may worship be offered.  Here is a monotheism
-where love reigns supreme, and it is content to trust that Infinite
-Mercy will achieve its end.
-
-
-
-
-{133}
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-SACRED ACTS
-
-One morning, Plato tells us, as Socrates was in the Porch of the King
-Archon, he met Euthyphro, a learned Athenian soothsayer, on his way to
-accuse his father of impiety for having caused the death of a slave.
-Socrates, who was also expecting an accusation against himself, engaged
-him in a conversation, as his manner was, on the nature of impiety, and
-its opposite, piety.  The talk leads Euthyphro to maintain that piety
-or holiness consists in learning how to please the gods in word and
-deed, by prayers and sacrifices.  "Then," inquires Socrates, "sacrifice
-is giving to the gods, and prayer is asking of the gods?" and Euthyphro
-is driven to assent to the conclusion that piety is an art which gods
-and men have of doing business with one another.  It was a satirical
-description of the popular Greek view.
-
-But the argument of Socrates really corresponds to world-wide practice.
-However dim and confused the elements of belief may be, every tribe has
-some rites and ceremonies which express the desire to get the Powers
-{134} which encompass it upon its side.  And when this desire, after
-many ineffectual trials, has succeeded in establishing suitable methods
-of approach, the endeavours which produce the result tend to become
-fixed; they are cherished from generation to generation; they form
-solemn customs which must be maintained with strict inviolate order,
-even though their original meaning may have been long forgotten.
-Belief may fluctuate in a kind of fluid medium of imagination, but
-action cannot have this indeterminate and elastic character.  Action is
-the mode through which feeling obtains expression, while it helps at
-the same time to intensify the emotion which calls it forth.  The rite
-must be done or omitted; it cannot trail off into shadow and vagueness.
-And it gathers the whole weight of tribal sanction around it; so that
-even the simplest elements of common usage are moulded under the
-powerful pressure of the "weight of ages."
-
-The active side of religion may be considered under two aspects.  There
-is, on the one hand, the effort to enter into helpful relations with
-the energies which pervade nature and operate on man.  Such efforts
-spring from manifold emotions of hope and fear, of affection and
-reverence.  They seek to inaugurate such relations; to maintain them
-through the vicissitudes of experience, the phases of life, the
-sequences of time; and to renew them when they have suffered sudden
-{135} shock or gradual decay.  By such action the original emotion is
-reawakened when it has declined, and is raised to greater vividness and
-higher tension.  It may be summed up in the term worship, including
-sacrifice and prayer, often associated with a wide range of acts
-cognate in purpose, as well as with manifold varieties of sacred
-persons and sacred products (Chap. VI).
-
-And, secondly, apart from public or private acts of homage,
-thanksgiving, submission, propitiation, addressed specifically to the
-higher Powers, there are modes of behaviour which are believed to be
-pleasing or displeasing to them.  Some things may be done, and others
-may not.  Certain acts, or words, or even thoughts, are forbidden;
-others are enjoined.  The sphere of daily conduct is thus brought into
-connection with what is "above."  "Act," said the Japanese teacher of
-Shinto, Hirata, in the last century, "so that you shall not be ashamed
-before the Kami" (p. 93).  It was a universal rule.  Morality is thus
-placed under the guardianship of religion (Chap. VII).
-
-
-At the funeral of Lord Palmerston (1865), the chief mourner was
-observed to drop several diamond and gold rings upon the coffin as it
-was lowered into the grave.  A little child, seeing a steam-tram
-advance with irresistible might along the road, offered it her bun.  It
-may be surprising to meet with a piece {136} of the primitive ritual of
-the dead in the midst of a sophisticated and conventional society; but
-when strong feeling is excited something must be done to give it
-relief, and in parting with his rings the donor found the outlet for
-his emotion as irrationally as the child before the monster which
-excited at once her wonder and her impulse of goodwill.  Out of such
-impulses of self-expression, it may be suggested, arises the largest
-class of sacrifices, when gifts are made in doing various kinds of
-"business with the gods."
-
-In its widest use the word covers an extensive range of purposes, and
-begets a large variety of questions.  On whose behalf is the offering
-made, a single individual, or some social group, his family or clan, a
-secret society, a tribe, a nation?  What persons are required for the
-due performance of the rite, the head of the family, the village
-magistrate, the fetish man, the priest?  A complicated Vedic sacrifice
-needed the co-operation of various orders of priests.  What objects are
-effected by it, a house or city-gate to be protected, a river to be
-crossed, a battle to be won, a covenant or contract to be sealed?  To
-what powers does the worshipper address himself, in gratitude, homage,
-or submission, seeking renewal of favour, or purging himself of some
-sin, or desiring actual fellowship with his god?  Behind these external
-features lie more difficult problems in connection especially with
-animal sacrifices, concerned {137} with the victim's qualities, and the
-appropriation of them by the deity or the worshipper; with the peculiar
-sanctity of blood, and the mysterious properties which it can impart;
-with the notion of the transmission of the life of which it was the
-vehicle; and the whole set of indefinite influences capable of
-propagation by contact, like the clean and the unclean, the common and
-the holy.  And why, when the victim was offered, was the god supposed
-to be satisfied with bones and entrails and a modest piece of meat, all
-wrapped in fat?  Greek wonder at so strange a practice could find no
-better answer than the tale of how Prometheus once cheated the gods of
-their share, and men had ever since followed his example.  These
-questions belong to the obscure realm of beginnings, in which various
-answers are possible.  All that can be attempted here is to offer a few
-illustrations of the different motives that seem to lie behind
-different forms of rite.
-
-Offerings to the dead pass through a long series of stages, from the
-simple provision for the wants of the dead man in the grave up to his
-proper equipment with all that is due to his rank and state in the next
-life, or the maintenance of the ties of guardianship and protection
-over unborn generations.  The earliest human remains imply some dim
-belief that the grave was the dead man's dwelling (p. 20), and there he
-must be supplied with the requisites for some kind of continued {138}
-existence.  All over the world, food, weapons, ornaments, utensils, are
-found deposited in barrow and tomb; and this practice culminates in the
-complicated arrangements of an Egyptian sepulchre, where the wealthy
-landowner constructed an enduring home for his double, and filled it
-with representations and objects which could be magically converted to
-his entertainment after death.  When the dead man passes into another
-world, and enters a land resembling that which he has left (Chap.
-VIII), he may need wives and slaves appropriate to his rank.  From
-ancient Japan and still more ancient China all round the globe to
-Mexico are traces of such ritual murder.  The widow's self-devotion was
-exalted in India to religious duty, and cases still occasionally occur
-when (in spite of the British Government) she seeks to mount the pyre
-and immolate herself beside her husband's corpse.  In West Africa the
-ghastly tale of the Grand Customs of Dahomey in the last century is
-well known; and it is supposed that thousands of lives are still
-annually sacrificed in the Dark Continent to this belief.  Other
-personal needs must be supplied, and on the Gold Coast in the last
-century an observer saw fine clothes and gold buried with the chief;
-and a flask of rum, his pipe and tobacco, were laid ready to his hand.
-Moreover, goods of all kinds can be made over by fire; and in the
-funeral rites of a Chinese family a paper house with paper {139}
-furniture and large quantities of paper money may be burned for the
-endowment of a departed member in his next life.
-
-Or the offering may be made for the cherishing of the dead in their
-former home.  The simplest and the most common sacrificial act in
-Melanesia, Bishop Codrington tells us, is that of throwing a small
-portion of food to the dead.  It may be nothing more than a bit of yam
-or a morsel of betel-nut; it is not for food, but for remembrance and
-affection.  But sometimes it is for actual nourishment.  The dead in
-ancient India who had none to render to them the needful sustenance,
-wandered as dismal ghosts round their former dwellings, or haunted the
-cross roads, compelled to feed themselves on the garbage of the
-streets.  The funeral meals, continued at intervals, were celebrated
-for the purpose of providing the departed with new forms, and
-converting them into the higher rank of "Fathers."  In many lands, from
-Europe to Japan and Central America, an annual feast for the dead has
-been maintained in various modes both in classic antiquity and in
-modern usage; and the ancient practice still survives in strangely
-altered fashion in the cakes and confectionery carried on All Souls'
-Day to the graves in the great Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise.
-
-Such acts of recognition and fellowship pass through very different
-stages.  They begin with a desire for self-identification with the
-{140} mysterious power which helps or hurts; as the power is conceived
-on a greater and more personal scale they turn into tribute and homage.
-The West African negro passing a big rock or an unusually large tree
-will add a stone or bit of wood or tuft of grass to the little heap of
-such trifles at its foot; it is for the Ombwiri, or spirit of the
-place.  After the harvest on the plateau of Lake Tanganyika,
-pilgrimages are made to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba; at the top is a
-sort of altar of small stones, and there scraps of calico, bits of
-wood, flowers, beads, are laid in honour of a vague "High God" called
-Lesa.  The nature of such gifts may be traced through all gradations of
-economic advance, just as the mode of conveying it passes through
-various phases from the coarse to the refined.  The pastoral nomad
-brings the firstling of his flocks; the more advanced agriculturist
-adds the produce of the ground.  The immigrant Hebrew under Canaanite
-tuition adopted the festivals of harvest and vintage, and with
-firstlings and tithes wrought his husbandry into his religion when he
-went to the sanctuary "to see Yahweh's face."  The daily sacrifice in
-the great temple of Marduk at Babylon under Nebuchadrezzar was an
-epitome of the whole tillage of the land; the choicest fruits, the
-finest produce of the meadow, honey, cream, oil, wine of different
-vintages, must be served.  In the early ritual of an Egyptian temple,
-when the daily toilet of the god had {141} been performed and he had
-been duly robed, painted, and oiled, his table was spread with bread,
-goose, beef, wine, and water, and decorated with the flowers needed to
-adorn a meal.
-
-In many cases such offerings carried with them the additional purpose
-of actually increasing the vigour of the god.  Dim notions of promoting
-the divine vitality hovered in the background.  The physical effect
-might be reached by divers modes.  Food was at first conveyed by actual
-contact; it might be smeared upon the idol's mouth.  Offerings to earth
-spirits were buried in the ground.  Water deities received them when
-they were thrown into the well, the river, or the lake.  Even in Greece
-Poseidon's horses were driven into the sea, just as the horses of the
-defeated Mallius were offered by the Gallic victors to the Rhine.
-Indian realism provided the Fathers who assembled for the rice-ball
-sacrifice with water and tufts of wool to cleanse themselves after the
-meal.  In more refined usage fire conveyed the essence of the food to
-the upper airs.  At Noah's sacrifice on the subsidence of the flood
-Yahweh smelt the sweet savour, and in the corresponding Babylonian
-narrative the gods, drawn by the scent, gathered together around the
-offerer "like flies."  The American Osages invited the Great Spirit,
-Fire, and Earth, to smoke with them at the beginning of a new
-enterprise.  The Sioux lighted the pipe of peace and offered it {142}
-to the sun, with the invocation, "Smoke, O Sun."
-
-Many and various are the ideals which have gathered round the offering,
-as magic and religion have strangely blended.  The sacred tree, whether
-among the Celts of the West or the Syrians of the East, is hung with
-rags of clothing, sometimes doubtless with the same motive which
-prompts similar gifts at the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, for the
-transference of diseases from the sick.  The highest value was reached
-among the ancient Irish, as among the Semites, in the sacrifice of the
-first-born; and the long tale of human victims indicates man's
-passionate desire to secure in divers forms supernatural aid.  They
-have been slain in crises of national danger by plague or war, in
-atonement for sin,[1] or in thanksgiving for victory.  They have been
-immured in the foundations of houses or cities that their spirits might
-remain as guardians of the gates.  They have been done to death in the
-seasons of the agricultural year that their lives might fertilise the
-soil and quicken the grain.  They have been forced to yield their
-entrails to the diviner that the secrets of the future might be
-unveiled.
-
-
-[1] The sacrifices of purification and atonement are briefly considered
-in Chapter VII.
-
-
-Brahmanical speculation carried the ideas of sympathetic magic in
-association with sacrifice to their highest pitch.  The Vedic hymns
-early formulated the idea of reciprocal {143} obligation in the crudest
-terms: _Dehi me, dad[=a]mi te_--"Give to me, I give to thee."  But this
-simple relation was superseded in the priestly ceremonial by elaborate
-parallels between the daily order of the ritual and the daily order of
-the skies.  The earthly sacrifices were the counterparts of those
-offered by celestial priests.  The "Fathers" accomplished the rising of
-the sun; and when the heavenly process was imitated in the world below,
-the kindling of the sacred fire came to be regarded as the actual
-instrument for stimulating and maintaining the activities above.  From
-a yet higher point of view the whole world had issued from the
-mysterious sacrifice of a cosmic Man (described in one of the latest
-hymns of the Rig-Veda), out of whose person the visible universe, the
-Veda, and the human race in four castes, had been created.  In the
-Brahmanical theology his place was taken by Praj[=a]pati, the "Lord of
-Creatures," who underwent repeated offering in every sacrifice.  And
-just as the primeval sacrifice effected the generation of the world, so
-every fresh oblation was a miniature reproduction of the cosmic event.
-The Lord who had been dismembered must be reconstituted that he might
-offer himself anew; and thus sacrifice was blended with the course of
-Time and the period of the Year, and the perpetual dissolution and
-renewal of the life that animated the mighty frame of earth and heaven.
-In that upper world, moreover, the sacrificer, {144} through mystical
-identification with Praj[=a]pati, was enabled to prepare a new body for
-the celestial abode, and out of the altar-ground below to generate his
-future divine self in the world above.
-
-Along other lines the conception of fellowship with Deity may be
-realised through a common act.  Above the personal fetish of a Gold
-Coast negro to which he made offerings of rum and palm-wine, oil, corn,
-sheep, goats, stood the patron god of the family.  Before a separation
-which would prevent them from ever again worshipping together, they
-engaged in a strange kind of communion.  The fetish-priest pounded up
-some sacred substance and mixed it with water, which was then drunk by
-the whole family in turn.  During the rite the priest enjoined all
-present in the name of the deity to abstain from some particular kind
-of food, fish, beef, fowl, milk, or other article of diet.  None of the
-company tasted it again.  They were united by the deity within them;
-and obedience to his command bound them, however far apart, in common
-worship.
-
-Sometimes the worshipper sat at the table of the god, who was in some
-sense present at the meal celebrated in his honour.  In the usage of
-ancient Israel the householder shared with his family, kinsmen,
-neighbours, and guests, in the sacred feast "before Yahweh."  How far
-the belief in Yahweh's presence was actually cherished by the
-participants cannot {145} be definitely affirmed; it does not appear,
-for instance, in the Babylonian ritual.  But a corresponding idea may
-certainly be traced in Greece and Rome.  From the early cult of the
-sacred stone or pillar as the abode of deity, some kind of divine power
-inhered in the altar and the image; and when the members of the clan
-feasted together on solemn occasions, the clan-god was present with his
-worshippers.  The Greek ritual sometimes provided a place for the
-table-companions or "parasites," at sacred banquets, such as were held
-in the temples of Apollo at Acharnæ or Delos.
-
-An inscription at Magnesia describes a festival of twelve gods, whose
-images, adorned with festal array, were carried into the marketplace,
-and arranged on three cushions under a canopy.  When sacrifices had
-been offered, the priests and people partook of a common meal with the
-gods.  The old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the
-house to be present at their meals.  The Penates, Mr. Warde Fowler
-tells us, were the spirits of the foods.  Rome celebrated its solemn
-feast of Jove in the Capitoline temple every September on full-moon
-day, when Jupiter, with his face painted red, Juno, and Minerva, were
-present in their statues to share the meal with the magistrates and
-Senate of the city.  To "lay a couch for the god" (as we might say "to
-lay a table") was a common phrase.  Recently discovered papyri,
-illustrating so {146} many aspects of daily life in the Eastern
-Mediterranean, show that such hospitalities were of frequent
-occurrence, alike in temples and in private houses.  Among the precious
-remains from Oxyrhynchus are such notes as this: "Antonius son of
-Ptolemæus invites you to dine with him at the table of our Lord Sarapis
-in the house of Claudius Sarapion on the 16th at 9 o'clock."
-
-But the worshipper might not only eat with the god, he might more
-rarely, and under special circumstances, even eat _him_.  A more
-intimate union was thus effected.  When the altar imparted its sanctity
-to the victim laid upon it, the holy food distributed to the worshipper
-had some kind of divine presence in it, and virtue passed through the
-meat into the eater.  The late Prof. Robertson Smith, in his famous
-lectures on "the Religion of the Semites," endeavoured to show that
-sacrifice originally consisted in slaying the animal of the
-totem-group, of which members of the totem-kin partook so that they
-received into their own persons the divine power incarnated in the
-totem animal.  Further research has failed to confirm this view; but a
-similar conception has been illustrated from another side.  The
-agricultural usages of which Dr. Frazer has collected so many examples,
-show how out of the last sheaf, which had become the home of the
-corn-spirit, the grain was baked in human form as its embodiment, and
-solemnly eaten.  In the East Indian archipelago, on {147} the island of
-Buro, the approaching rice-harvest was welcomed by a tribal meeting
-when each man brought some first-fruits from the fields, and the meal
-of inauguration was known as "eating the soul of the rice."
-
-Twice a year was the great Mexican deity Huitzilopochtli presented in
-the form of dough images to his worshippers, and with elaborate
-ceremonies was consumed.  Tezcatlipoca, in like manner, chief god of
-the Aztecs, represented by a handsome and noble captive wearing the
-divine emblems, was slain on the great altar; the body of the victim
-was respectfully carried down into the court below, divided into small
-pieces, and distributed among priests and nobles as blessed food.  It
-is strange to find such savagery associated with prayers of exalted
-fervour and devotion.  But ecstasy is roused by various means, and is
-not affronted at the most brutal rites.  There were incidents in the
-Orphic cult of the Thracian Dionysus grouped under the name of the
-"Omophagy" (literally "raw-eating") of like character.  In frenzied
-excitement the devotees flung themselves on bull or goat, rent it
-asunder, and devoured the bleeding flesh.  Such was the condition of
-securing the actual entry of the god into the believer's person, so
-that he became _entheos_, "with the god inside him."  Words have
-strange histories, and few now remember, when they describe the welcome
-of a monarch by acclaiming crowds, or the excitement roused by a {148}
-great orator, what was the earlier meaning of "enthusiasm."
-
-
-In the "art which gods and men have of doing business with each other,"
-Socrates associated sacrifice with prayer (p. 133).  The association is
-world-wide, and here religion reaches its utmost inwardness.  The
-feeling which expresses itself in action will also prompt gesture and
-speech; rude rhythms mould words into chant and song; and even without
-a definite object of address some utterance breathes a desire.  "May it
-be well with the buffaloes, may they not suffer from disease and die
-... may there be water and grass in plenty."  So runs the dairy-ritual
-of the Indian Todas, without the direct invocation of any gods.  But
-there is no element here of compulsion or constraint.  The distinction
-between prayer and spell is clear; the attitude is religious, not
-magical.  On the other hand, sacrifices are sometimes offered to a
-"High God," as by the Dinkas of the Bahr-el-Ghazal in Central Africa to
-Deng-deet, who is described as "Ruler of the universe, Creator of
-mankind, the actual Father of human beings"; but, adds Captain Cummins,
-imagine it does not occur to them to pray.  Others, by contrast, make
-morning and evening prayer part of their daily practice; the Nandi of
-East Africa concludes his devotions (addressed to Asista, the ordinary
-word for the sun): "I have prayed to thee, thou {149} sleepest and thou
-goest, I have prayed to thee, do not say 'I am tired.'"  Sometimes
-prayer is offered only to the powers of mischief.  The Lepchas of the
-Himalayas told Dr. Hooker that they did not pray to the good spirits.
-"Why should we?  They do us no harm; the evil spirits that dwell in
-every grove and rock and mountain, to them we must pray, for they hurt
-us."  To the Australian it may seem foolishness to address Baiame from
-day to day: he knows, why weary him by repetitions, disturbing his rest
-after his earthly labours?  But the impulse of prayer does not always
-take articulate form, any more than it always seeks a personal object;
-and after long residence among the Euahlayi in South East Australia
-Mrs. Langloh Parker pleaded that the man who invoked aid in his hour of
-danger, or the woman who crooned over her babe an incantation to keep
-him honest and true, shared, however dimly, the same spirit of devotion
-which elsewhere prompts elaborate litanies.  It is with a pious reserve
-that the Khonds of Orissa pray: "We are ignorant of what it is good for
-us to ask for.  You know what is good for us; give it to us."
-
-Prayer in the lower culture is rarely individualised.  It is almost
-always a social act.  Common prayers for food or rain, for protection
-against danger, the removal of pestilence, victory over enemies,
-represent the wants of all.  The group may be the family, as in the
-evening worship of the {150} Samoan householder, who pours a little of
-his cup of ava on the ground, and prays for health, productive
-plantations, and plenty of fruit.  On the Lower Niger Major Leonard
-found worship offered daily before an image or emblem believed to
-contain the spirits of more immediate ancestors: "Preserve our lives, O
-Spirit Father, who hast gone before, and make thy house fruitful, so
-that we thy children shall increase and multiply and so grow rich and
-powerful."
-
-Such prayers may be traced through many expanding phases up to the
-higher petitions which seek to place the civic and moral life under the
-guidance of the heroic dead.  The element of bargain or contract which
-Socrates so sarcastically emphasised, here drops away.  "To what god or
-what hero shall we pray," inquired the people of Corcyra, weary of
-internal strife, at the oracle of Dodona, "in order to obtain concord,
-and to govern our city fairly and well?"  Chinese statecraft well
-understood the significance of such worship as a social bond.  The
-ancient author of the _Lî Chî_, or "Book of Rites," laid it down that
-"the prayers of the principal in the sacrifice to the spirits, and the
-benedictions of the representatives of the departed, are carefully
-framed.  The object of all ceremonies is to bring down the spirits from
-above, even their ancestors; serving also to rectify the relations
-between ruler and minister, to maintain the generous feeling between
-father {151} and son, and the harmony between elder and younger
-brother, to adjust the relations between high and low, and to give
-their proper places to husband and wife.  The whole may be said to
-secure the blessing of Heaven."
-
-Attention is thus concentrated upon common sentiments and universal
-relationships, and prayer acquires a deeper ethical meaning.  It then
-comes to rest upon devout experience, which seeks to interpret life in
-relation to the permanent forces of justice which are believed to rule
-the world.  The hymns of Egypt celebrate in lofty terms the majesty and
-beneficence of the gods, and the psalmists of the Nile sang of the
-divine love encompassing all lands, setting every man in his place, and
-amid diversities of colour and speech supplying all human needs.  The
-Babylonian poets addressed Shamash or Sin, sun or moon, as the symbols
-of the universal order of nature, the witnesses of thought and deed
-over the wide earth, the rulers on whom man could place unchanging
-reliance.  The Vedic singer found a similar figure of moral sovereignty
-in Varuna (p. 106).  Out of the depths of her distress Hecuba (in the
-"Trojan Women") appeals to the mysterious Power whom she can still
-glorify in her anguish: "Thou deep base of the world, and thou high
-throne above the world, whoe'er thou art, unknown and hard of surmise,
-chain of things to be, or reason of our reason, God, to thee I lift my
-praise, seeing the silent road {152} that bringeth justice ere the end
-be trod to all that breathes and dies."  With a yet firmer confidence
-could the Peruvian in the sixteenth century record this prayer to the
-"World-animating Spirit": "O P[=a]chac[=a]mac, thou who hast existed
-from the beginning, and shalt exist unto the end, who createst man by
-saying "Let man be," who defendest us from evil, and preservest our
-life and health, art thou in the sky or in the earth, in the clouds or
-in the depths?  Hear the voice of him who implores thee, and grant him
-his petitions.  Give us life everlasting; preserve us, and accept this
-our sacrifice."
-
-Two or three thousand years before, the pious Egyptian had been bidden
-to enter quietly into the sanctuary of God, to whom clamour is
-abhorrent.  "Pray to him with a longing heart in which all thy words
-are hidden, so will he grant thy request, and hear that which thou
-sayest and accept thy offering."  Dear was this silent worship to the
-higher teachers.  A hymn to Thoth (p. 8) addresses him as "Thou sweet
-spring for the thirsty in the desert," adding, "It is closed for those
-who speak there, it is open for those who keep silence there.  When the
-silent man cometh, he findeth the spring."
-
-Petitions such as these, rooted in ethical sentiment, demand as their
-moral condition purity of heart and concentration of thought.  The
-prophets of all ages have protested against formalism and insincerity.
-The Japanese {153} god of learning, Temmangu, was once a distinguished
-statesman.  But he fell into unmerited disgrace (A.D. 901), and was
-banished.  Posthumously vindicated, he was promoted to the rank of
-deity, and declared through his oracle, "All ye who come before me
-hoping to attain the accomplishment of your desires, pray with hearts
-pure from falsehood, clean within and without, reflecting the truth
-like a mirror."  The disposition of prayer must be that of life also.
-It was with reference to similar slander to that from which Temmangu
-had suffered, that Pindar cried, "Never be this mind in me, O Father
-Zeus, but to the paths of simplicity let me cleave throughout my life,
-that when dead I may set upon my children a name that shall be of no
-ill repute."  And Socrates prays, as he and Phædrus rise from the shade
-of the plane-tree where they have been talking, "Beloved Pan, and all
-ye other gods that haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul,
-and may the outward and the inward man be at one": to which Phædrus
-adds, "Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in
-common."
-
-The need of righteousness begets penitence and confession.  A Buddhist
-liturgy issued in China in 1412 with a preface by the Emperor Yung Loh
-of the Ming dynasty, after the opening invocations, proceeded thus: "We
-and all men from the very first, by reason of the grievous sins we have
-committed in {154} thought, word, and deed, have lived in ignorance of
-all the Buddhas, and of any way of escape from the consequences of our
-conduct.  We have followed only the course of this evil world, nor have
-we known aught of Supreme Wisdom, and even now, though enlightened as
-to our duty, yet with others we still commit heavy sins, which prevent
-us from advancing in true knowledge.  Therefore in the presence of Kwan
-Yin [the Chinese form of Avalokiteçvara, p. 131], and the Buddhas of
-the ten regions, we would humble ourselves, and repent of our sins....
-For the sake of all sentient creatures in whatever capacity they be,
-would that all obstacles may be removed, we confess our sins and
-repent."
-
-A higher note is sounded here than in the famous penitential psalms of
-ancient Babylon, where the poet, smitten with various distresses,
-laments the unknown sins which have roused the anger of his god, and
-passes into fierce incantations against the demonic powers which are
-the instruments of the divine wrath.  Here prayer makes a close
-alliance with magic: and its formulæ are always in danger of this
-degeneration.  In the old Italian ritual of a guild at Iguvium the
-exact titles of the deity must be rehearsed, and the proper words
-recited.  The slightest slip invalidated the entire rite, and the
-officiating priest was required to repeat the whole over again.  To
-this rigid adhesion to consecrated {155} forms we owe the preservation
-of antique liturgical expressions left stranded in priestly usage.
-Such phrases acquired a semi-magical power.  The Honover (_Ahuna
-Vairya_), or most sacred verse of the ancient Persian scriptures,
-became a charm against evil in the fight with Ahriman and his hosts.
-Passages from the Koran are used by Mohammedans as amulets against
-danger.  The Buddhist formula _Om mani padme hum_ is a protection from
-mischievous influences, like the Lord's Prayer in the Middle Ages; and
-the prayer-wheels and prayer-mills of Mongolia, in endeavouring to
-enlist the aid of Nature, and harness wind and water in the service of
-religion, have only turned devotion into a mechanical device.
-
-In the long story of Indian religion many notes are struck in the wide
-range of human want, of divine grace, and adoring faith.  The Vedic
-poets speak with full hearts of the simple joys of earth; the happiness
-of home with its passionate desires for children and long life; the
-pleasures of wealth in horses and chariots and cows.  Rescue from
-poverty or danger, victory over the godless enemy, influence in the
-assembly and superiority in debate, these are the gifts which are
-sought with the utmost directness of speech: "If I, O Indra, were like
-thee, the single sovereign of all wealth, my worshipper should be rich
-in kine."  But other tones are not wanting: "Aditi, Mitra, Varuna,
-forgive us, however {156} we have sinned against you": "Before this
-Varuna (p. 106) may we be sinless, him who shows mercy even to the
-sinner."
-
-With the development of Brahmanical speculation prayer rises to more
-abstract ideas: "Lead me from darkness to light, from falsehood to
-truth, from death to the deathless."  The association of prayer and
-magic is seen in the fact that the very term _brahma_ has the double
-meaning of prayer and spell, something like the Greek _euchê_ or the
-Hebrew "bless," which could imply a curse as well as a prayer.  But in
-its higher sense it gave birth to the "Lord of Prayer," Brahmanaspati,
-a kind of house-priest of the gods, a heavenly personification of the
-priesthood on earth, in whom resided the power of influencing events by
-prayer and incantation.  Nay, just as the hymns came to be regarded as
-originally existing in the realm of the infinite and the undying (p.
-12), so prayer was said to have been born of yore in heaven.  And thus
-the Lord of Prayer acquires a more lofty character as its generator and
-inspirer; he is even called the "Father of the gods"; and the very
-universe depends upon him, for he holds asunder the ends of the earth.
-In the shining company of deities, moreover, stand Sacred Speech, and
-Devotion, and Lovely Praise, and Holy Thought, with others of the
-goodly fellowship of Prayer, to attest its power, and approve its worth.
-
-The subsequent devotion of India aspires {157} by different paths to
-reach communion with the Infinite Spirit or Universal Self.  The
-supreme reality is presented in the triple aspects of Being, Thought,
-and Bliss (_saccid[=a]nanda_).  To know him alone as the Self of all
-selves, is the goal rather of meditation than of prayer.  Existence,
-understanding, and joy, these are the ultimates of all experience, and
-he who has attained them prays no more: "Seeking for emancipation I go
-for refuge to that God who is the guiding light to the understanding of
-all souls."  This is the note of much of the later mystical piety of
-Hinduism.  It speaks in the language both of religion and of philosophy.
-
-In the first, the believer looks to his heavenly Lord with adoring
-faith (p. 128) and lowly love (_bhakti_), and feels the inflowing of
-divine favour or grace (_pras[=a]da_).  The long line of mediæval poets
-transmitted from generation to generation passionate impulses of
-devotion which expressed themselves again and again in legend and song.
-"Search in thy heart," pleaded the weaver Kabir in the fifteenth
-century, "search in thy heart of hearts, there is God's place of
-abode."  Not, however, without conditions: "Unless you have a forgiving
-spirit, you will not see God."  He might describe himself in his
-humility as "the worst of men"; that only made the marvel of divine
-grace more wonderful: "I am thy son; Thou art my Father; we both live
-in the same place."
-
-{158}
-
-On the philosophical side a modern manual of Hindu practice endeavours
-to combine religion and metaphysics.  Ere the believer rises from bed
-in the morning he should confess his unworthiness: "O Lord of the
-universe, O All-Consciousness, presiding Deity of all, Vishnu, at thy
-bidding, and to please thee alone, I rise this morning, and enter on
-the discharge of my daily duties.  I know what is righteous, yet I feel
-no attraction for it; I know what is not righteous, yet I have no
-repulsion from it.  O Lord of the senses, O Thou seated in the heart,
-may I do thy commands as ordered by thee in my conscience."  But in
-order to remind him of his divine origin, in this age of sordid
-interests and low ideals, he is enjoined also to look upon himself as
-the reflected image of God, the Eternal, the All-Knowing, the All-Glad,
-and to recite the ancient verse, "I am divine and not anything else, I
-am indeed Brahma above all sorrows, my form is Being, Intelligence, and
-Bliss, and eternally free is my nature."
-
-
-The duties of offering and prayer may be performed from day to day, or
-they may be reserved for special occasions of enterprise, danger, and
-thanksgiving.  They mark the incidents of the week, the month, the
-year; there are sabbaths, new moons, seed-time and harvest, and new
-year festivals.  This periodicity affects the whole community together.
-But there are also personal events, marking {159} successive stages in
-each individual career, which must be placed under the shelter of
-religion, and do not all occur at the same time.  From his entry into
-the world to his departure from it each person passes at certain crises
-out of one condition into another, and the transition requires the
-protection of the powers above.  Birth, the attainment of adolescence,
-marriage, death, are the chief occasions marked by what M. van Gennep
-has called "rites of passage."  They are all connected with mysteries
-of life.
-
-For life, in the lower culture, is exposed perpetually to dangers of
-all kinds.  Demonic influences continually threaten it; strange
-pollutions beset it; the blood in which it is often located has about
-it something weird, uncanny, sometimes unclean.  So there are
-preliminary rites for bringing in the soul of the child as yet unborn
-from its home in the ground, among the flowers and trees, or in wells
-and lakes and running streams.  Among tribes which regard the mother as
-unclean before birth, the uncleanness is transmitted to the child, and
-ceremonies of purification must be performed for both.  The child must
-be guarded against the evil eye, perils of infection of various kinds,
-or the attacks of hostile demons.  The ritual of cleansing must be
-scrupulously performed.  When Apollo and the future Buddha were born,
-divine beings received them; Apollo was washed in fair water, and
-wondrous {160} streams, warm and cold, descended from the sky for the
-Indian babe.  Sometimes there is such haste to place the infant under
-divine care that it is borne away at once to the temple, as Turner
-noticed among the Nanumangans of Hudson's island, that its first
-breathings, when only a few seconds old, may take place in the presence
-of the god, and his blessing be invoked on the essentials of its life.
-
-Around the cradle friendly influences must be secured, the child must
-be duly incorporated into the circle of the cosmic powers and of human
-life.  He is laid upon the ground for contact with the supporting
-earth, and presented to the great vivifier, the sun, or held over the
-fire.  Out of the bath grew a rite of immersion designed to solemnise
-his admission into the guild of mankind, and wash away the strange
-element of evil which seemed to inhere in human nature.  In Peru this
-was exorcised by the priest, who bade it enter the water, which was
-then buried in the ground.  The Aztec ritual of baptism, according to
-the native writer Sahagun, began: "O child, receive the water of the
-lord of the world which is our life.  It is to wash and purify.  May
-these drops remove the sin which was given to thee before the creation
-of the world, since all of us are under its power."  This was a real
-act of regeneration, for the priest concluded: "Now he liveth anew, and
-is born anew, now he is {161} purified and cleansed, now our Mother the
-water again bringeth him into the world."
-
-After purification comes the ceremony of giving the name, fittingly
-performed in the temple, as in Greece, Rome, or Mexico.  Elements of
-personality inhere so strangely in names, that this rite also acquires
-great significance.  Perhaps the name of some ancestor is chosen, who
-may thus endow the child with some of his qualities, or at least be
-invoked for protection and aid.  Divine powers have watched over his
-birth (p. 121); others may decide his destiny, like the three Greek
-fateful goddesses Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, or the venerable
-Scandinavian Norns.  Or the aid of the stars must be invoked, and a
-horoscope must be prepared by the astrologer.  Sometimes a special
-guardian power may be chosen for the infant, sometimes the choice is
-reserved for him at a later stage.  Or he may be dedicated from the
-outset to some hallowed service, as the child Samuel was given to
-Yahweh.
-
-More important even than the rites of birth and infancy are those of
-the attainment of adolescence, when the youth is admitted to the
-privileges of manhood and instructed in the secrets of the tribe.  All
-round the world the lower culture has its ceremonies of initiation,
-which have sometimes survived in more refined forms in more highly
-organised societies.  They involve seclusion from the common life, for
-no woman must be cognisant {162} of what takes place, severe bodily
-trials to test the youth's power of endurance--fasts, scourging, loss
-of front teeth, tattooing (so that his status may be recognisable at
-once) and other forms of personal scarification and pain, under which
-the feeble sink, and the happiest are those who die, escaping the
-humiliations of the weakling's lot.  Long abstinence in lonely places
-begets strange dreams and visions, and raises nervous excitability to
-its highest pitch.  Strange forms appear with hideous faces and
-mysterious trappings; appalling sounds are heard; and it is only when
-the hours of terror are past that the initiated learns that the awful
-figures were his own kinsmen in masks and disguises, and the Australian
-is told that what he took to be the signal of Daramulun's advent was
-produced by the whirling of the bull-roarer.  In the midst of these
-pantomimic incidents the novice dies to rise again.  Perhaps he is
-buried in the fetish-house; or he passes through the bath into his new
-condition; or he is vivified by the sprinkling of blood.  But he awakes
-to a fresh life.  He must be utterly forgetful of the old; he must even
-sometimes feign ignorance of his parents' home and names.  The elders
-then impart to him the customs and traditions of the tribe.  He learns
-the rules of conduct, and duties of reverence and obedience to the
-aged, who are thus, in tribes without formal government, placed under
-the protection of religion.  The {163} strain of prolonged excitement
-and attention fixes precept and counsel indelibly upon his memory, and
-he knows that the penalty of betrayal will be death.
-
-The ancient Indian ritual was more refined.  The three upper castes,
-the Brahman, the noble, and the cultivator of the land, belonged to the
-"twice-born."  Only to these was the study of the Veda permitted.  When
-the youth was led to his teacher to be invested with the sacred thread,
-the symbol of his dignity, blessings were uttered and holy water was
-sprinkled on him.  Then for the first time was he permitted to repeat
-the sacred verse (known as the G[=a]yatr[=i], Rig Veda, iii. 62, 10),
-"Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine Vivifier, may he
-enlighten our understandings," which is still recited daily by millions
-of devout Hindus.  One of the later books of the Zoroastrian faith lays
-down that "it is necessary for all those of the good religion to
-celebrate the ritual and become _navazûd_, newly born," or born again.
-The ceremony began with a purification which lasted nine nights, and
-included sprinkling with water; the candidate for the priesthood must
-be of the age of fifteen; he must confess his sins, endure the scourge;
-and might then be regarded as regenerate.
-
-Within the whole group of initiates secret societies were often formed,
-bound together by special vows, and using the instrumentality of
-religion.  Observers in West Africa and {164} elsewhere (they are also
-common in Polynesia and Melanesia) have differed widely as to their
-value, some denouncing them for their intolerable tyranny, others
-finding them useful agents of police.  They are the forerunners of more
-purely religious associations such as may be seen in the mysteries of
-Greece.  Here, too, were ceremonies of initiation, here were pantomimic
-representations of divine events, secrets of communion with deity, and
-promises of life beyond the grave.  Most famous, of course, were the
-mysteries of Eleusis, in charge of the great family of the Eumolpids.
-Already in the Homeric hymn to Demeter, before the days of Jeremiah and
-Ezekiel, all Greece had been bidden to come to Eleusis, and receive
-initiation into the rites of the Lady Mother and the Maid.  There were
-preliminaries of purification, which a Christian apologist like Clement
-of Alexandria could compare with the baptism of the Church.  Cleansed
-from the stain of sin, the candidate was required to be devout and
-holy.  What was the precise nature of the revelation which he was
-permitted to see is uncertain.  The passion-drama of the mother's loss
-of her daughter, her search and recovery, may have grown out of some
-seasonal vegetation ceremonies.  But they had taken on higher meanings.
-The secret might not be divulged in detail; there is, however, a large
-amount of testimony that ideas of death and re-birth or resurrection
-{165} played a great part in this, as in other mystery-religions; the
-Homeric hymn to Demeter holds out intimations of immortality; and by
-some kind of communion with the deity the salvation of the believer was
-assured.
-
-The rites of the Phrygian Sabazius touch the processes of the lower
-culture at more than one point.  In his great oration "on the Crown"
-(315 B.C.) Demosthenes twits his opponent Æschines in such terms as
-these: "You assisted your mother in the initiations, you read aloud the
-books (the ritual prayers), and took part in the rest of the plot.  You
-put on (or, you robed the candidates in) fawn-skins; you sprinkled them
-with water from the bowl; you purified and rubbed them with clay and
-bran, then you raised them from their purification, and bade them say,
-'I have fled the bad, and found the better.'"  On the gold Orphic
-tablets discovered in South Italy and Crete occur strange phrases: "I,
-a kid, fell into the milk," "O blessed and happy one, thou hast put off
-thy mortality and hast become divine," which are interpreted with great
-probability as references to a ritual of milk-baptism in which the
-initiate was born again.
-
-That idea was certain expressed in the mysteries of Isis, which were
-widely spread in the Eastern Mediterranean (p. 40).  Here, too, was a
-solemn kind of death and re-birth; here, too, lustrations of the purest
-water, the priestly declaration of the pardon of the {166} gods, the
-mystic revelation of the Goddess, herself identified with all deities
-in turn; and here, after the vision, the assurance of a blessed life to
-come.  The candidate for initiation into the rites of Mithra must mount
-slowly through seven stages.  The details of the ritual of the
-successive grades are unknown; but in accordance with ancient Iranian
-practice repeated ablutions were imposed till the cleansing waters had
-washed away all stains of guilt.  The Mithraic sacraments so closely
-resembled Christian usage that they were vehemently denounced by Church
-writers as a Satanic parody.  They were certainly supposed to secure
-happiness in the world to come.  The believer who had passed through
-the blood-bath of the slaughtered bull was said to be "re-born for
-ever."
-
-Associated with sacrifice and prayer, and partaking at once of the
-characters of magic and mystery, is the sacred dance.  Rhythmic
-movement of body and limbs readily becomes the expression of strong
-feeling; and the feeling in its turn may be reawakened by the solemn
-renewal of the action.  When it imitates the motions of the warrior or
-the huntsman it comes to possess a magical value, and the women who
-remain at home will dance all day while their husbands are engaged in
-battle or the chase.  Does it not quicken their courage or enhance
-their skill?  The child in an elementary school now learns {167} his
-action-songs, and sows the grain and reaps the harvest.  He does not,
-however, suppose that he is promoting nature's work.  But the women
-whose social progress has advanced to agriculture, instead of imitating
-the gambols of the wolf or bear, will celebrate the operations of the
-fields to stimulate their effectiveness, and at a later stage still
-will go forth into the vineyards with timbrel and song.  There are
-dances for courtship and marriage, dances in initiations and mysteries,
-dances even for the funeral.  There are solemn preparations, as in the
-snake-dance of the secret order of the Snakes among the Moquis of
-Arizona, when the members must not only wash the snakes, but themselves
-as well and everything about them (in the same water), and fast for one
-day.  Then any one who has been bitten will be healed, and when the
-pipe is lit, the clouds from it will rise and form rain-clouds, and the
-rain will fall upon the altar and the sacred things.  Or the dance will
-serve for the reunion of the tribe, and becomes a great social as well
-as a religious institution.  The Sun-dance of the Blackfoot Indians (p.
-35) is the supreme expression of their religion, and their great annual
-religious gathering.  It must originate in a woman's vow for the
-recovery of the sick, and the ceremonies are spread over a considerable
-time.  Some come for enjoyment, some to fast and pray.  Some must
-discharge their vows for the healing of sick kinsfolk; others pay the
-price of deliverance {168} from peril by the infliction of self-torture
-in the sun-lodge.
-
-The vow, the fast, and all the varied forms of asceticism which Eastern
-religions have so abundantly produced, all involve common elements of
-sacrifice and self-subjection.  The vow, indeed, has in part the nature
-of a contract.  It is not magic, it is a bargain.  There is no
-constraint, the deity may avail himself of what is offered, or may not.
-If Yahweh will go with me, says Jacob, and provide me food to eat and
-clothes to wear, he shall be my god and get his tithe.  But the vow
-involves the surrender of something otherwise desirable.  It is the
-same with the ascetic, who gives up food, or clothing, or sleep, or the
-bath, or speech, or a fixed home; who sits between four fires under a
-blazing sun; who lacerates his back with the scourge or his flesh with
-knives; who holds a flower-pot in his hand till the fingers grow round
-it immovably; who hangs himself up by hooks in his bare back, or loads
-himself from neck to feet with chains.  Men may fast religiously to
-overcome bodily desire; or to prepare the higher insight for strange
-openings of vision.  "The continually stuffed body," say the Amazulu,
-"cannot see secret things."  Lacordaire bade the brethren of his Order
-scourge him that he might humble himself, and taste the pain of his
-Redeemer.  But the extremer forms of asceticism (especially as a
-life-long practice) are always based on the idea that they are in {169}
-themselves meritorious; they produce desert and desert leads to reward.
-They are a mode of establishing a claim on the future bounty of heaven;
-they are, after all, only another form of "doing business with the
-gods."
-
-
-
-
-{170}
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-SACRED PRODUCTS
-
-In the intimate connection of religion with life all primitive
-interests are placed under its sanction.  A large portion of time is
-occupied with its ceremonials.  The fortunes of the tribe are bound up
-with it.  To the bounty of its powers they owe abundant food and safety
-or success in war.  Beneath its protection the newly born enter the
-world, and to its care the elders are committed when they die.  Its
-holy persons rule in their midst; its holy places are all round about
-them; its sacred objects are in their homes.  It is not surprising,
-therefore, that all the higher possessions of the tribe, its arts and
-crafts, its traditions, its customs and laws, its stories of the gods
-and their dealings with each other or with man, should be ascribed to
-the same origin.  Where individuality is hampered at every turn by
-time-honoured conventions, and personal initiative is imperfectly
-developed and timidly confined within the narrowest limits, all higher
-intellectual products, command over nature, inventions, poetry and
-song, the usages of {171} the social order, and the rituals for serving
-the gods, carry with them a secret force, a mysterious authority, which
-passes the bounds of human wisdom, and has been imparted from some
-higher source.  Each man is dimly conscious that his single wit could
-not have compassed these things; he does not observe the long processes
-and imperceptible stages of advance; he accepts the theory offered to
-him by those who should know best, and looks back to the days when
-kindly powers took in hand the instruction of men.
-
-Thus at the present day many of the Australian tribes whose condition
-has probably changed little since the date of the oldest civilisations
-of antiquity, regard their scanty institutions as ordained by beings
-above.  Ask the Narrinyeri why they adhere to any custom, the answer is
-that Nurrundere commanded it.  Baiame and Bunjil laid down the marriage
-laws for their respective tribes; Bunjil, moreover, taught the Kulin
-the arts of life; and Daramulun gave the Yuin laws which the old people
-handed down from generation to generation.
-
-The elaborate cultures of Babylonia and Egypt claimed similar origins.
-In the vast prehistoric period before the Flood the people round the
-lower Euphrates had lived without rule or order, like the beasts of the
-field, till a wondrous Fish-Man, whom the Greek historian called
-Cannes, appeared out of the Persian Gulf with wisdom from the sea.  He
-{172} taught them arts and laws, and wrote concerning the generation of
-mankind, their different ways of life, and their civil polity.  It was
-no other than Ea, god of the encircling Deep, the source of all.
-Historic inscriptions told of his "books," which may have included
-ancient oracles, and which certainly laid down the duties of a king.
-So the famous code of Hammurabi (about 1950 B.C.), recently discovered
-at Susa (1901), was handed to him, as the tablet shows, by the great
-Sun-god, Shamash.
-
-The Egyptian priests, perhaps as late as the great Nineteenth Dynasty,
-before the days of Moses, threw into definite shape the vague
-traditions of immemorial antiquity, when men had lived devouring one
-another, ignorant how to till the ground.  Osiris (p. 119) taught the
-art of tillage, the use of the plough and hoe, how to grow wheat and
-barley, and the culture of the vine; and Isis added the domestic arts
-of making bread and weaving linen.  Osiris, moreover, appointed the
-offerings to the gods, regulated the ceremonies, composed the texts and
-melodies of the hymns.  And among his successors was Thoth of
-Hermopolis (p. 8), who introduced astronomy and divination, medicine,
-arithmetic, and geometry, and whose "books," embracing a kind of
-religious encyclopædia, were known to the Christian teacher, Clement of
-Alexandria, in the second century of our era.
-
-{173}
-
-So Zeus gave laws to Minos in Crete, and Apollo revealed the Spartan
-constitution to Lycurgus; Numa, the traditional founder of the Roman
-ceremonial law, received instruction from the nymph Egeria.  The
-shepherd slave, Zaleucus (whom Eusebius placed about 660 B.C.), taught
-the Locrians what Athena had first taught him, and prefaced his laws by
-enjoining them to revere the gods as the real causes of all things fair
-and good in life, and keep their hearts pure from all evil, inasmuch as
-the gods do not take pleasure in the sacrifices of the wicked, but in
-the righteous and fair conduct of the good.
-
-From the New World come a series of similar figures.  Mr. Curtin claims
-to show that the vast area of the American continent is pervaded by one
-system of thought incalculably old.  In the central group of the most
-sacred personages is the Earth with Sky and Sun conceived sometimes as
-identical sometimes as distinct.  The Earth-maiden on whom the Sun has
-gazed, becomes a mother, and gives birth to a great hero.  He bestows
-on men all gifts that support existence, and it is through him that the
-race lives and prospers.  To the Algonkins he was Michabo or Manibozho,
-the "Great Light," who imparted vision, author of wisdom, arts, and
-institutions.  Among the Toltecs at Tulla he was Quetzalcoatl,
-virgin-born, founder of civilisation, who organised worship without
-human or animal sacrifices, and endured no {174} war.  The Miztecs
-called him Votan, prince and legislator of his people, representative
-of a higher wisdom, so that he rose to be the mediator between earth
-and heaven.  In the plains of Begota the white-bearded Bohica appeared
-to the Mozca Indians, taught them how to sow and build, formed them
-into communities, contrived an outlet for the waters of their great
-lake, and, having settled the government and the ritual, retired into
-ascetic penance for two thousand years.  Out of the depths of Lake
-Titicaca in Peru there rose one day the son and daughter of the sun and
-moon, Manco Capac and Mama Ogllo, sent by their father in compassion
-for men's wretched plight.  They taught the ignorant folk agriculture,
-the chief trades, the art of building cities, aqueducts, and roads, and
-Mama Ogllo showed the women how to spin and weave.  Then when all was
-in order, and overseers were appointed to see that each one did his
-duty, they went back to the skies.
-
-These stories all belong to the class known as myths.  They are not
-accounts of what actually happened, they are the work of religious
-imagination operating on a particular group of facts, and endeavouring
-to explain them.  The scope of mythology, whatever may be its
-particular origins, is of the widest compass.  It embraces the whole
-field of nature and life.  It first came into modern view through the
-study of classical antiquity {175} in Greece and Rome.  The discovery
-of Sanskrit and the investigation of its literature, especially of the
-Vedic hymns, concentrated the attention of scholars for a time,
-pre-eminently under the genius of Max Müller, on the relations of myth
-to language, and the resolution of various deities of India and Greece
-into the phenomena of dawn and sunshine, of the thunderstorm or the
-moon.
-
-But it was gradually found necessary to abandon one after another of
-the philological identifications which had at one time been proposed
-with confidence.  New aspects of mythology demanded consideration.  It
-was not only concerned with the incidents and powers of nature, or with
-the various relations of the gods.  It appeared also in the field of
-ritual.  It often contained antique secrets of the meaning of religious
-performance.  It was the key to the dramatised representations of the
-sacred dance, the ceremonials on which depended the welfare of the
-tribe.  And in proportion as action acquired a larger psychological
-recognition in shaping the character of religion, and belief receded
-into the background, the significance of the development of myths was
-changed.
-
-As religion, however, became more self-conscious, the intellectual
-element in it gained more force and energy, and the thinkers of the
-priestly schools endeavoured to bring the claims of different deities
-into some sort of order, and regulate the hierarchy of heaven.  {176}
-But they were often confronted with ancient elements of savagery which
-could be imperfectly harmonised with the more refined ideas of a
-progressive culture.  Thus already in Homer, Zeus, as supreme God,
-bears one significant epithet; he is _mêtieta_, full of _mêtis_ or
-counsel.  The word is of doubtful derivation, but with the strong
-tendency of Greek imagination to turn abstract ideas into persons,
-Mêtis is presented by Hesiod (next in literary succession to Homer) as
-the daughter of Ocean, the Hellenic equivalent of the Babylonian Deep,
-source of all being even for the gods.  Greek thought was not yet ripe
-for the ontological conception of wisdom or intelligence as inherent in
-the divine nature, so the union of Thought with Zeus is represented
-mythologically as a marriage, and Mêtis becomes the bride of the great
-"king of gods and men."  The result is conceived in truly savage
-fashion.  In order to possess her in the most intimate manner, and
-embody her in his own person, Zeus suddenly swallows her.  Mythology,
-of course, has to provide a reason; she would bear a son who would
-overthrow him.  The poet (or perhaps his editor), desirous of
-correcting this brutal selfishness, suggests a further plea; the
-goddess should be his perpetual monitor, and warn him inwardly of good
-and evil.  The myth is being directly moralised.  Whatever, therefore,
-may be the origins of myth, whether in connection with tribal {177}
-tradition, in the interpretation of the incidents of nature--as when a
-Siberian described to Baron von Wrangell the occultation of one of
-Jupiter's moons by saying that the blue star had swallowed another very
-small star and soon after vomited it up again--or in endeavours to
-picture the characters and relations of the gods, the beginnings of the
-world, the birth of man, the entry of evil, sin, and death, or the
-condition of those who have already passed away, the myth becomes the
-reflex of the culture in the midst of which it rises.  It is the
-depository of human experience, of man's criticism of his own life.
-And in its representations of a distant age when gods visibly consorted
-with men, and deigned to instruct them in the conditions of social
-welfare, mythology is the direct product of religion.
-
-When the gods have withdrawn from human fellowship, and no longer
-choose their brides from the dwellers upon earth, or even vouchsafe to
-appear among them in various forms for temporary help or promise of
-blessing, the communications from heaven do not cease altogether.  The
-Vedic poet might challenge the existence of Indra, the fool might say
-in his heart, "There is no God"; but the Powers above never left
-themselves without a witness.  The negro going out of his hut one
-morning strikes his foot against a peculiarly shaped stone.  "Art thou
-there?" he inquires, and recognises the presence of a guardian and
-{178} helper.  The Samoan watches the behaviour of a spinning
-cocoa-nut, or the flight of a bird to right or left.  The Central
-Asiatic notes the cracks on a tortoise's shell, much as a modern
-palmist traces the lines in a human hand.  The liver is selected as the
-special seat of the prophetic faculty, and Babylonian and Etruscan
-developed a common diagnosis of its marks.  The Celt divined by the
-water of wells, or the smoke and flames of ascending fires, and slew
-his prisoners that the secrets of destiny might be discovered in their
-entrails.  China and Rome made divination the basis of elaborate state
-systems.  Rome produced a literature of Augury, with books of
-regulations and minutes of procedure, while Plato commended it as "the
-art of fellowship between gods and men," and the philosophy of the
-Stoics justified it on the ground of a providential harmony between
-nature and man, so that divine guidance was vouchsafed to human need.
-Did not clouds and stars move by Heaven's great ordinance?
-
-The lot took the responsibility of decision out of the hands of man,
-and vested it in the presiding deity.  There is always a mystery in
-chance, which could be interpreted as the will of God.  The oath
-implied that the heavenly Powers could be at any moment summoned to
-attest man's veracity; and the vow must be fulfilled, though it might
-cost Jephthah the sacrifice of his daughter.  Perjury and broken vows
-were early recognised {179} among the gravest of crimes.  The ordeal
-was in like manner the inquisition of a divine judge.  When the Adum
-draught was administered to an accused Ashanti upon the Gold Coast, the
-god condescended to enter with it; he looked around for the signs of
-guilt, and if he found none he returned with the nauseous mixture to
-the light of day.  It was a procedure analogous to the ancient rite
-embedded in the Levitical Law as the test of a wife's faithlessness
-(_cp._ Num. v. 11 _sqq._).
-
-Another mystery lay in dreams, which have been connected with
-supersensual powers all the world over.  To the savage who cannot
-analyse his experience the dream-world is as real as that of his waking
-hours.  The dreams that follow fasts, whether compulsory through
-deficient food, or voluntary through preparation for some solemn event,
-possess peculiar vividness; and, when attention has been fixed upon
-some expected crisis, readily acquire a prophetic significance.  Divine
-forms are seen, and strange intimations are conveyed from another
-world.  The dream verses of the Icelander brought tidings from those
-who had been lost at sea.  To sleep upon the grave of a dead kinsman,
-still more of a hero or a seer, was the means of receiving
-communications from the wisdom of the dead.  Did not philosophy teach
-that in sleep the mind is less hampered by its physical environment,
-and attains truth more nearly; {180} and what condition was so
-suitable, therefore, for the beneficent revelation of a god?
-
-In Greece, accordingly, the practice of sleeping at the tombs of heroes
-or in the temples of gods was regularly organised.  The sanctuaries of
-Æsculapius, of which more than two hundred can be traced round the
-Eastern Mediterranean and in Italy, were specially frequented by
-patients who resorted thither for medical treatment and the advice of
-the god.  The sufferer must pass through the preliminary discipline of
-the bath, and to his purifications must add the due offering of a
-sheep.  The victim's fleece was carried into the holy precincts, and on
-it the sick man lay down for the night.  In the visions of the dark
-hours the god appeared, and prescribed the mode of cure, or even
-condescended to operate himself.  An inscription at Epidaurus records
-that the stiffened fingers of a patient were straightened out and
-restored for use by the god's own grasp.  Was it surprising that
-Æsculapius should become the object of increasing reverence, and in the
-second century of our era should be enthroned in the highest as
-"Saviour (or Preserver) of the universe"?
-
-Under other conditions the visitation of the god expresses itself in
-poetic form.  Among the ruder peoples whose songs are of the
-simplest--perhaps the most childish--kind, the faculty of rhythmic
-utterance seems superhuman.  Words, lines, stanzas, follow {181} each
-other with a spontaneity which seems out of the reach of ordinary
-effort.  The chants of worship have been again and again carried back
-to divine authorship in a distant past.  The marriage of speech with
-music is no art of man.  So the Finnic hero, Wäinamöinen, conceived by
-the wind, and born (after seven hundred years in the womb) by the
-maiden Dmatar, added to his gifts of fertility and fire the invention
-of the harp, and the teaching of wisdom, poetry, and music to man.
-Odin was the god of wisdom and poetry for Scandinavia, god also of the
-holy draught, which, like the Indian Soma, gave inspiration.  The poet
-brewed Odin's mead, bore Odin's cup; and in old Teutonic speech was
-_godh-m[=a]lugr_, "god-inspired."  Hermes passed in Greece as the
-inventor of the lyre, which he gave to Apollo, chief among the deities
-who declared to man the unerring counsel of Zeus; and Homer already
-counts singer and song as alike divine.
-
-The lovely forms of the Muses, daughters of Zeus and Memory, or with an
-alternative mother in Harmony, were endowed with functions of song and
-prophecy, and between them and the historic poets stood a group, half
-mythical, half human, whose names were attached to actual hymns and
-poems.  Such were Orpheus, Musseus, Eumolpus, Thamyris, and Linos.  The
-verses ascribed to them tended to acquire an authoritative character;
-they were cited as a rule or norm for conduct; {182} they were on the
-way to become a Scripture.  Homer and Hesiod were employed in the same
-way; and Plato denounces the mendicant prophets who went to rich men's
-doors offering to make atonements, and quoting Homer and Hesiod as
-religious guides.  Nevertheless, though he proposed to banish from his
-ideal State the poets who said unworthy things of the gods, he
-elsewhere formulates the highest claim for poetry as a supernatural
-product.  The poets are only the interpreters of the gods by whom they
-are severally possessed; "God takes away the minds of the poets;" "God
-himself is the speaker, through them he is conversing with us."  It is
-the lament of the Bantus of South Africa that since the white man came
-the springs of music and song have ceased to flow: "The spirits are
-angry with their children, and do not teach them any more."
-
-Another mode of converse between deity and man was found in the oracle.
-Widespread was the belief that through certain chosen persons or in
-certain peculiar spots the gods deigned to communicate with those who
-sought their aid.  Such agencies were peculiarly numerous in the
-Hellenic world, and the oracle at Delphi acquired supreme importance.
-As early as the eighth century B.C., in the days of Amos and Isaiah, it
-is rising into prominence as an authority that may take the leading
-place in Greek religion.  At one time it almost seemed as if it might
-succeed {183} in co-ordinating the separate and often opposing forces
-of the City States, and blend them into national unity.  If that hope
-was ever cherished by its guardians, they failed to realise it.  The
-higher minds discerned in it capacities which were never fulfilled.
-They saw it give counsel to rival powers, promote enterprise, and
-support plans of colonisation.  They knew that it exercised a
-far-reaching moral authority; it compelled reverence for oaths, and
-secured respect for the lives of women, suppliants, and slaves; and
-again and again in true prophetic spirit it subordinated ritual to
-ethical demands.  With the widest outlook over human affairs, Plato
-proposes to establish the midpoint of religious legislation in Delphi
-at Apollo's shrine: "He is the god who sits in the centre, on the navel
-of the earth, and he is the interpreter of religion to all mankind." It
-is the note of universalism: had not Jeremiah proclaimed two centuries
-before on behalf of Yahweh at Jerusalem: "My house shall be called a
-house of prayer for all nations"?
-
-When the Israelites had renewed their temple in the days of Darius, and
-the scribes were beginning to busy themselves with the remains of their
-national literature, Greek writers also interested themselves in the
-collection of the utterances of the past.  About 500 B.C. Onomacritus
-gathered together the oracles of Musæus.  It was the first instance of
-what became a frequent practice {184} in later days; one of Plato's
-disciples, Heracleides of Pontus, undertook a similar task; so did
-Chrysippus the Stoic.  A special literature was thus begotten.  The
-circumstances which called for the successive oracles were duly
-narrated; and had Delphi maintained its early position, here would have
-lain the nucleus of a Scripture, which might have developed into a
-permanent record of revelation.
-
-Italy, in like manner, had its _libri fatales_, its sacred books of
-destiny.  There were Etruscan oracles under the name of the nymph Begoe
-or Vegone; there were the Marcian Songs, said to have been adopted as
-genuine by the Roman Senate in 213 B.C.  The ancient city of Veii had
-its books; Tibur (Tivoli) the "lots" of the nymph Albunea.  Most famous
-of all were the Sibylline books, brought (according to later tradition)
-from Cumæ to Rome, perhaps in the last days of the monarchy, or a
-little later (about 500 B.C.), and placed in the Temple of Jupiter on
-the Capitol under the charge of two special guardians.  These were
-afterwards increased to ten, and in the year 51 B.C. to fifteen.  The
-office remained till the books were destroyed in A.D. 400, when
-Christianity had been finally established as the imperial religion.
-What they contained is doubtful; how they were consulted is not known.
-Their aid was sought after prodigies, pestilence, or disaster had
-awakened general alarm; but their actual {185} words were not made
-public.  Nevertheless they supplied the basis for important religious
-innovations.  The introduction of Greek deities by their sanction
-profoundly affected Roman religious ideas, and left deep marks on
-literature and art.
-
-In the year 83 B.C. the temple which contained the books was burned.
-The greatest anxiety was displayed for their restoration.  Envoys were
-sent to Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor to collect fresh verses; they
-were deposited in a new temple, and prophecies were founded on them in
-the last days of the Republic.  But it was believed that spurious
-verses had got into circulation, and Augustus ordered a rigid
-examination.  Some two thousand volumes, it is alleged, were destroyed;
-those which were admitted as genuine were removed to a temple of Apollo
-which Augustus had himself dedicated on the Palatine hill.  Here are
-the characteristics of a Canon.  The books are kept under special
-charge in a temple.  Their authority suffices to modify old cults and
-introduce new.  When they perish, they must be restored.  The false
-must be separated from the true, the genuine eliminated from the
-spurious.  The Amoral element in them seems to have been entirely
-subordinated to the ritual; but they were believed to express in
-seasons of difficulty and danger the demands of the gods.
-
-The transition to what are formally called "Sacred Books" leaves a
-considerable {186} literature upon the boundary.  The collection of the
-ancient national Finnic songs, made with so much patience by the
-Swedish Lonrott, under the name of the Kalevala, presents no claim to
-inspiration, but it is the poetical expression of the national
-religion.  In the literature of the Eddas, the Volospa (p. 248) is a
-product of the prophetic spirit.  After Herodotus remarked that Homer
-and Hesiod made the gods of the Greeks, the Homeric poems acquired more
-and more authority, until by the usage of centuries they gained a
-semi-canonical position.  Lectures were given upon their sacred text,
-and the most extravagant methods of interpretation were employed to
-reconcile them with the world-view of philosophy.  The ancient Egyptian
-accepted the "Book of the Dead" as his guide to the next world.
-Chapters of it were inscribed on the walls of his tomb, engraved on his
-coffin, or laid inside it with his mummy.  It contained the charms
-needful for the preservation of his soul on its journey to the land of
-the West.  Its authors were unknown, but it contained the secrets of
-the life to come.
-
-The "Bibles of Humanity," as the foundation-books of the great
-religions have been called, belong to one continent.  Asia has been the
-mother of them all.  The oldest takes shape in India in the Vedic
-hymns; and the immense literatures of Brahmanism, early and later
-Buddhism, and the Hinduism which {187} finally drove Buddhism off the
-field, follow in due course.  Cognate in language with the immigrant
-Aryans, the ancient Persians preserved, amid many losses, some of the
-compositions of their prophet Zarathustra, mingled with religious
-documents of later date, known to modern students by the name Zend
-Avesta.  Palestine produces Judaism, with its collection of national
-literature embracing law, history, prophecy, poetry, and wisdom.
-Judaism gives birth to Christianity, which sets its New Testament
-beside the Old; and Judaism and Christianity lie behind Mohammed and
-the Koran, where the person and the book blend in the closest union.
-
-In the Far East Chinese culture reposes on the so-called Classics, the
-five King and the four Shu, which had a chequered history till they
-finally acquired their position as fountains of knowledge and models of
-composition.  The ancient odes of the Shî King, the traditions of
-rulers and the counsels of statesmen in the Shu King, the collections
-of the teaching of Confucius and Mencius, and the remaining works which
-need not be mentioned here, raise none of the claims which have been
-preferred for the Indian Veda, or the Christian Bible.  Nor does the
-singular little book of aphorisms ascribed to Lao-Tsze, which serves as
-the starting-point for Taoism (p. 67).  The Shintoist of Japan finds
-the earliest records of his religion in the national chronicles known
-as the Kojiki and the Nihongi; and the {188} modern believer, who has
-been offered an infallible Bible, responds with a profession of faith
-in the practical inerrancy of his own traditional books.
-
-Some smaller communities claim a passing word.  The Jains (p. 61), once
-the rivals of the Buddhists, possess a sacred literature only less
-copious.  Group after group appears in mediæval India singing the hymns
-of its founder, such as the Kabir-panthis, till the poet Tulsi-Das
-(born 1532) embodies in his version of the ancient R[=a]m[=a]yana the
-essence of Hindu religion for some ninety millions from Bengal to the
-Punjab.  The Sikhs (p. 62) stay themselves upon the words of their holy
-teachers in the _[=A]di-Granth_.  The followers of Mani in the third
-century of our era, who threatened the progress of the Christian
-Church, and spread all the way from Carthage to Middle Asia, possessed
-a gospel and epistles of their Prophet, portions of which were brought
-to Berlin a few years ago from Chinese Turkestan.  The Druzes of the
-Lebanon, whose origin goes back to the Caliph Hakim at Cairo in the
-eleventh century A.D., treasure the documents of the faith in 111
-treatises and epistles, starting from Hakim's vizier, Hamza.  And the
-hapless prophet of Persia, who designated himself the Bab (p. 70),
-composed in the _Beyyan_ (among numerous other works) an exposition of
-the Truth for his disciples.  For such small communities a sacred
-literature is in fact a necessity.  {189} Without it they have no
-adequate cohesion.  It is at least one of the conditions of permanent
-resistance to the forces of decay.
-
-Around the Scriptures of the greater religions devout reverence has
-gathered with ardent faith.  The Hindu term Veda (meaning literally
-"knowledge") has a narrower and a wider sense.  In its limited
-application it denotes the four collections of hymns, of ritual
-formulæ, and sacrificial songs, of which the Rig-Veda is the most
-important (p. 10).  Their history must be inferred from their contents;
-of the circumstances of their formation there is no external evidence,
-save that the early Buddhist texts show that the fourth or Atharva-Veda
-had not acquired canonical value in the days of the Teacher Gotama.
-But the term Veda is also extended to include a mass of ceremonial
-compositions known as Br[=a]hmanas, attached to one or other of the
-ancient collections, and handed down in different religious schools.
-These are all included more or less definitely in what a Western
-theologian might term "Revelation."  They are technically designated as
-_çruti_ or "hearing"; they form the matter of the sacred teaching
-transmitted orally, which must be reserved for a special order and not
-imparted to the world outside.
-
-The books of household law, on the other hand, prescribing the domestic
-ceremonies for birth, marriage, and death, regulating caste-privileges,
-and laying down rules for {190} the conduct of life, were open to all.
-But just as the Rig-Veda was exalted into a reproduction on earth of
-what existed eternally in heaven, so endeavours were made to convert
-the legal works current in particular schools into sacred codes of
-divine origin.  One was boldly ascribed to Vishnu, who communicated it
-to the goddess of the earth.  Another, most famous of all, was attached
-to Manu, the eponymous hero of the human race.  "Father Manu" he is
-called in the Rig-Veda, and as the sire of mankind he was the founder
-of social and moral order.  First king, and Rishi (or seer) privileged
-to behold the sacred texts, he was the inventor of rites and author of
-the maxims of law.  And yet higher dignity belonged to him, for he
-sprang from the Self-Existent and could thus be identified with Brahma
-himself; and as Praj[=a]pati (p. 143) he took part in the creation of
-the world.  In due course poetry and philosophy had their turn.  The
-immense epic known as the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata, where tradition and myth
-and imaginative speculation are blended in rich confusion, was put in
-the scales by the gods against the four Vedas, and its sanctity
-outweighed them all.
-
-The Buddhist Scriptures were early grouped in three divisions under the
-title of the Three Baskets.  The teachings of the Supremely Enlightened
-were of course absolutely true, and his rules for the members of his
-Order were of compelling authority.  It was assumed {191} that they
-were recited correctly at an assembly held immediately after his
-decease.  The "Buddha-Word" thus became the infallible standard of
-faith and practice.  There are traces of provision to meet difficulties
-in case different elders should believe themselves to possess varying
-traditions of the Buddha's commands: but not even the enormous
-expansion of the Scriptures of the Great Vehicle, as preserved in China
-and Japan, shook the faith of the disciple in the authentic character
-of their doctrine.  The higher teaching belonged to the later years of
-the Buddha's life, and was transmitted by special channels.  It is much
-as if Gnosticism had established itself in the Christian Church of the
-second century, and had formed its literature into a Canon beside our
-New Testament.  Nepal, according to the testimony of Bryan Hodgson,
-raised its sacred books into objects of worship.  Chinese respect was
-satisfied when they were issued from time to time (p. 66) with a
-preface by the imperial Son of Heaven.
-
-The oldest portion of the sacred literature collected under the name of
-the Zend Avesta consists of five hymns (called Gathas), ascribed to
-Zarathustra himself.  They bear many marks of high antiquity, and they
-acquired a peculiar sanctity, so that the later sacrificial hymns
-already regard them as objects of homage to which worship should be
-offered.  Above the actual Scriptures rose a radiant figure, in which
-the conception of revelation {192} was impersonated.  Iranian thought
-was markedly idealist; each earthly object had its spiritual type, its
-antecedent or counterpart in the heavenly realm.  The religion and law
-of Zarathustra had their representative in Daena, who is already
-celebrated with pious praise in the Avesta.  Sacrifice is offered to
-her as she dwells in the Heavenly House, the Abode of Song.  Thence
-Zarathustra summons her, beseeching her fellowship--she is associated
-with Cista, "religious knowledge"--and he asks of her mystic powers and
-righteousness in thought and speech and deed.  Later teaching declared
-her to be produced by Vohu Mano, the "Good Mind" of Ahura Mazda himself
-(p. 131).  As the actual utterance of the Lord Omniscient, the sacred
-Law might also be called his _mãthra çpenta_ or "Holy Word."
-
-Jewish theology was not altogether deficient in similar conceptions.
-Corresponding to the Torah or Law imparted to Moses, was a heavenly
-Torah, infinitely richer in content.  It formed one of a mysterious
-group of seven Realities which existed, like the Throne of Glory, Eden,
-and Gehenna, before the making of the earth and sky.  It was a kind of
-epitome of all possible cosmic relations, so that as an architect
-frames his plan for a city, God looked into the Torah when he would
-create the world.  Christian theology has never employed this imagery
-to express its conception of Revelation.  But it lies at the back of
-the curious language of the Koran concerning the "Mother {193} of the
-Book" (p. 13).  Mohammedan theologians reckoned no less than ten ways
-in which the Prophet received his revelations.  Sometimes the divine
-inspiration came in a dream, sometimes like the noise of a bell through
-which he recognised the words which Gabriel wished him to understand.
-Other books had been given previously to Moses, to David, to Jesus, and
-each nation would be summoned to its own book at the judgment.  The
-believer in Islam recognised in the "Mother of the Book" the
-pre-existent or Eternal Word, which God from time to time "sent down"
-to his Prophet.  It had definite size and aspect for Arab imagination.
-The commentator Jalâlain described it as existing in the air above the
-seventh heaven.  There angel guardians defended it from theft by Satan
-or the change of any of its contents.  It was as long as from heaven to
-earth, and as broad as from east to west; and its consistency was of
-one white pearl.  Was it surprising that Mohammedan faith should
-support the utterance of the pious Câdi Iyâd (who died in Morocco, A.D.
-1149): "The Koran, as it lies between the two covers is God's own word,
-which he imparted by way of inspiration to the Prophet.  Therefore is
-it in every way inimitable, and no man can produce anything like it"?
-
-Christian theology has refrained from these physical emblems.  But it
-was possible for a scholar of unquestioned learning to declare {194} in
-the pulpit of the University of Oxford barely half a century ago (1861)
-that "the Bible is none other than the voice of him that sitteth upon
-the throne.  Every book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it,
-every word of it, every syllable of it (where are we to stop?), every
-letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High ... faultless,
-unerring, supreme."
-
-
-
-
-{195}
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-RELIGION AND MORALITY
-
-The expression of religion in action produces the offering and the
-prayer: by sacrifice and devotion, with thanksgiving and requests, do
-men approach their gods.  But there is another way of entering into
-fruitful obedience to them.  Certain kinds of conduct may be acceptable
-to them, and others not.  Are these concerned only with ceremonial
-acts, or do they include the behaviour of men to each other?  How far
-does religion promote or regulate what we call morality?  What are
-their relations, and how do they affect one another?  This question has
-been discussed in innumerable treatises; attention can only be invited
-to it here from the point of view of the historical comparison of
-religions, without reference to philosophical definitions.  Every one
-admits a connection of some sort, for good or for evil, at some period
-in their respective development.  They may not have started hand in
-hand.  Their alliance may be disbanded, and morality may claim total
-independence.  But at some time on the journey they have marched
-together.
-
-{196}
-
-The difficulty of the inquiry arises in part from the variety of views
-as to the scope and essence of both morality and religion.  Where do
-they begin, and in what do they consist?  The philosopher may demand a
-complete recognition of the freedom of the will, and the independent
-activity of the conscience, and savages who have no such words are set
-down as destitute of morality, just as those who have no Heavenly
-Father and no devil, no heaven and no hell, are described as without
-religion.  It is obviously impossible to expect to find everywhere our
-categories of right and wrong; yet even Lord Avebury lent his high
-authority to the statement that there are many savages almost entirely
-without moral feeling largely on the ground of the absence of ideas of
-sin, remorse, and repentance.  Mr. Huxley in the same way declared it
-obvious that the lower religions are entirely unethical.
-
-On the other hand, the idealist strenuously affirms the intimacy of the
-connection.  We are assured that the historical beginning of all
-morality is to be found in religion; or that in the earliest period of
-human history, religion and morality were necessary correlates of each
-other; or that all moral commandments have originally the character of
-religious commandments.  And the student of comparative religion like
-the late Prof. Robertson Smith cautiously affirms that "in ancient
-society all morality, _as morality was then understood_, was
-consecrated and enforced by religious {197} motives and sanctions." The
-words which we have italicised contain exactly the limitation which is
-ignored by the philosopher who requires that the gods shall be patterns
-of conduct, and administrators of an ethical world-order.  Plainly the
-question is settled in different ways according to different standards
-of what religion and morality mean.  If we are content to begin low
-enough down, we may see reason to believe that in that stage of thought
-in which religion, magic, and custom are so strangely intertwined,
-morality is also not wanting.  Even the Fijian, who called some of his
-gods by hideous names, such as "the Rioter," "the Brain-eater," "the
-Murderer," regarded theft, adultery, and such offences, as serious.
-
-The difficulty of broad general statements lies in the imperfection of
-our knowledge.  Again and again closer observation has revealed quite
-unexpected secrets.  Whole ranges of belief, feeling, action, formerly
-concealed from observation, have been brought to light.  Thus about
-twenty years ago Major Ellis, writing of the Ewe, Tshi, and Yoruba
-peoples on the Gold Coast, laid it down that "religion at the stage of
-growth at which we find it among these three groups of tribes, has no
-connection with morals, or the relations of men to one another."  But
-the German missionary, Jakob Spieth, now tells us (1911) that among the
-Ewe-speaking folk not only does Mother Earth punish with death those
-who have sworn {198} falsely, but Mawu, God, who knows the thoughts and
-hearts of men, who is the giver of everything good upon the earth--very
-patient and never angry--will not allow one brother to deceive another,
-or suffer the king to judge unrighteously, or permit one to burn
-another's house down.  Morality here is more than rudimentary; the
-justice of man is put under the guardianship of God, who requires
-"truth in the inward parts."  Another West African observer, Major
-Leonard, on the Lower Niger, describes religion as intermingled with
-the whole social system of the tribes under his view.  It supplies the
-principle on which their law is dispensed and morality adjudicated.
-The entire organisation of their common life is so interwoven with it
-that they cannot get away from it.  Like the Hindus, "they eat
-religiously, drink religiously, bathe religiously, dress religiously,
-and sin religiously."
-
-The beginnings of morality can no more be discovered historically than
-the beginnings of religion.  Language, in various nations, implies that
-it springs out of custom.  The foundation of practical ethics, whatever
-may be the ultimate interpretation of such terms as duty and conscience
-in more advanced cultures, lies in social usage.  When any custom is
-established with sufficient strength to serve as a rule demanding
-observance, so that its breach evokes some feeling, the seed of morals
-is already germinating.  No group however small, no society however
-crude, can cohere {199} without some such customs.  They may be formed
-in various ways; they are strengthened by habitual repetition; they
-acquire the sanction of the past, they are usually referred, when men
-have begun to ask how they came into being--just as they ask about
-their own origin--to some great First Man, or some superhuman
-personality in the realm above (p. 171).  But always there are some
-things allowable, and others forbidden: some things may (or even must)
-be done, others may not.
-
-When custom has gained this power, it carries with it an element of
-control.  Impulse must not be inconsiderately indulged, it must be
-governed.  Private interests must be subordinated to a rule, and
-conduct conformed to a standard of behaviour.  In the ruder culture,
-where the supply of food is of urgent importance, such rules gather
-around the produce of the chase or of the ground.  Among the Australian
-Kurnai, for example, all game caught by the men, all roots or fruits
-collected by the women, must be shared with others according to
-definite arrangements.  Methodic distribution is obligatory, and
-self-denial in sharing and eating is thus impressed upon the young.
-Moreover certain varieties of food are strictly forbidden to women,
-children, and boys before initiation.
-
-Prohibitions of this kind, extending over many branches of conduct, are
-found all over the world.  They are often designated by a {200} term in
-use in Polynesia, taboo (_tabu_ or _tapu_).  Their origin has been much
-disputed, owing to the extraordinary complexity of the circumstances
-with which they are concerned.  Taboo contains emphatically an element
-of mystery.  It comes out of a vague dim background, and implies that
-some strange power will be set in perilous operation if a certain thing
-is done.  Such a power, obscure, indefinite, not personalised, but
-mightier than men, has been recognised at the base of religion under
-another term, the Melanesian _mana_ (p. 80).  Taboo has been
-accordingly described as a negative _mana_.  It is a prohibition
-against calling the weird uncanny force into the open, where it may do
-unexpected hurt.
-
-The objects and actions placed under such taboos are various; and it is
-for the anthropologist and the psychologist, if they can, to discover
-their origin and application in each particular case.  They involve
-ideas of purity and defilement, the holy and the common, the clean and
-the unclean.  They gather in particular round blood, which rouses in
-some animals as in many human beings an instinctive aversion and
-disgust, and yet is at the same time sacred as a seat of life.  They
-enter at the great crises of existence, birth and death; the mother,
-and perhaps also the new-born child, are unclean, and must be purified;
-the corpse defiles whoever touches it.  They attend the sexual
-processes, which are the occasion of releasing dangerous {201}
-energies.  So they affect people as well as things.  The king is
-charged with this mysterious force, and is hedged round with taboos
-lest it should suddenly burst forth against the intruder on his
-sanctity.  The chief, the priest, possess it in less degree.  And it is
-transmitted to what belongs to them.  Their weapons, their food and,
-above all, their persons, are sacred.  The oft-quoted story of the
-Maori may still be repeated here: it is not the only case of the kind.
-Strong and stalwart, he found some food beside the path, and ate it.
-He learned shortly afterwards that it was the remains of the king's
-meal.  He had violated a royal taboo.  The secret power had him in its
-grasp: he was speedily seized with cramp in the stomach, and in a few
-hours died.
-
-Ritual religions are full of survivals of such taboos.  "O Maker of the
-material world," inquires Zarathustra of Ahura Mazda, "can he be clean
-again who has eaten of the carcass of a dog, or the corpse of a man?"
-In ancient Israel various foods were forbidden by religious law; the
-priest might not touch a dead body; when a murder had been committed
-and the murderer could not be found, the elders of the city must
-solemnly purify the ground which unpunished bloodshed had defiled.
-Early Roman religion contained many such prohibitions; from certain
-sacrifices women and strangers and fettered criminals must withdraw;
-there are traces of taboo on {202} iron and shoe-leather, on burial
-grounds and spots where thunder-bolts were supposed to have fallen, and
-on certain days, especially those connected with the cult of the dead.
-Such taboos still play a great part in savage society, and exert no
-little moral force in preserving honesty and order.  In Samoa, observed
-Turner, objects placed under taboo are perfectly safe; they are in no
-danger of theft.  Primitive morality is thus brought under the sanction
-of religion.
-
-All over the world, as we have seen (p. 161), the young receive a very
-severe training in preparation for their entry into the full privileges
-and duties of the tribe.  They are then instructed in the traditional
-rules of conduct, the proper abstinences, the right behaviour of the
-sexes.  Such ceremonies are recognised as of great importance in
-communities of the simplest form without political control, for it is
-through them that the social ties of tribal kinship gain coherence and
-strength.  Various observers have testified to the consideration
-displayed in Australia, for instance, towards the aged, the sick, and
-the infirm.  The blind are often carefully tended, and the best fed.
-"As a matter of fact," says Mr. Marett, "the earlier and more
-democratic types of primitive society, uncontaminated by our
-civilisation, do not present many features to which the modern
-conscience can take exception; but display rather the edifying
-spectacle of religious {203} brotherhoods encouraging themselves by
-mystical communion to common effort."
-
-In West Africa Miss Kingsley noted the close connection in negro
-communities between religion and life.  To get through day or night a
-man must be right in the religious point of view; he must be on working
-terms with the great world of spirits round him.  In spite of much
-make-believe the secret societies in which the men are enlisted under
-solemn oaths, are recognised as important moral agencies.  The Ukuku,
-recently described by Dr. Nassau, could settle tribal quarrels, and
-proclaim or enforce peace, when no individual chief or king could end
-the strife.  Such organisations regulate marriage laws, the duties of
-parents and children, the privileges of eldership, the recognition of
-age and worth.  The entry into them lies through the rites of religion.
-
-"I have studied these societies," wrote Miss Kingsley; "I am in
-possession of fairly complete knowledge of three of them.  I know men
-acquainted with ten other societies, and their information is
-practically the same as my own, viz. that those rites consist in a
-series of oath-takings as you pass from grade to grade ... Each grade
-gives him a certain amount of instruction in the native law.  Each
-grade gives him a certain function in carrying out the law.  And
-finally, when he has passed through all the grades, which few men do,
-when he has sworn the greatest oath {204} of all, when he knows all the
-society's heart's secret, that secret is 'I am I,' the one Word.  The
-teaching of that Word is law, order, justice, morality.  Why the one
-Word teaches it, the man does not know.  But he knows two things: one
-that there is a law-god, and the other that, so says the wisdom of our
-ancestors, his will must be worked or evil will come.  So in his
-generation he works to keep the young people straight."
-
-
-Taboos may be violated unconsciously, and tribal laws may be
-transgressed sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident.  The
-resulting guilt must be removed, if the offender or the community is
-not to incur the wrath of the affronted Powers.  Sin, like holiness,
-has this peculiar property that it can be communicated by contact.
-Savage morality does not always rise above the confusion between the
-physical and the mental.  Evil qualities such as uncleanness can be
-transferred from persons to things, just as from things to persons.
-Pains and diseases can be extracted from the sufferer, and magically
-sent into animals or objects which can be driven away or destroyed; and
-moral evil can be similarly removed.  When an Atkhan of the Aleutian
-Islands had committed a serious offence and desired to unburden
-himself, he chose a time when the sun was clear, picked up certain
-weeds, and carried them about his person.  After they were thus
-sufficiently impregnated by contact {205} with him, he laid them down,
-called the sun to witness, cast his sins upon them, and threw them into
-the fire.  The consuming flame burned away his guilt.
-
-The Peruvian made his confession to the sun, and then bathed in an
-adjoining river.  There he rid himself of his iniquity, saying "O thou
-river, receive the sins I have this day confessed to the sun, carry
-them down to the sea, and let them never more appear."  The oldest and
-the most recent rituals repeat the same idea in various forms.  In one
-of the Vedic ceremonials of sacrifice, the sacrificer and his wife
-towards the close bathed and washed each other's backs.  Then having
-wrapped themselves in fresh garments, they stepped forth, and we read:
-"Even as a snake casts its skin, so does he cast away all his sin.
-There is in him not so much sin as there is in a toothless child."
-Water was likewise employed in Babylonia, where the incantation ran, "I
-have washed my hands, I have cleansed my body with pure spring water
-which is in the town of Eridu.  All evil, all that is not good, in my
-body, my flesh, my limbs, begone!"  Or, "By the wisdom of thy holy name
-let the sin and the ban which were created for man's misery be removed,
-destroyed, and driven away."
-
-Like physical evil such as disease, so moral evil might be attributed
-to the action of spirits, and periodic ceremonies might be performed
-for purging the community by driving them {206} out.  Sometimes the
-sins were buried in the ground; sometimes they were thrown into the
-river; sometimes they were concentrated on a person or an animal; or
-were magically expelled under the sanction of religion into some object
-which could be destroyed.  In the annual celebration of the Thargelia
-at Athens, in the month of May, under the solemn sanction of Apollo,
-two "purifying men" were led through the streets to be whipped with
-rods, and then driven over the border of the state, bearing the
-people's sins.  The Levitical ritual (Lev. xvi) incorporated at a late
-date a solemn ceremony on the tenth day of the first month of the
-ancient religious year (in September), when an act of atonement was
-performed for the whole nation.  Two goats were brought into the
-sanctuary, and lots were cast upon them.  One was dedicated to Yahweh,
-over the other the high priest confessed the iniquities of the children
-of Israel; and by the laying on of hands he transferred them to the
-head of the doomed animal, which was then led forth into the wilderness
-for a mysterious power of evil, Azazel.  As the temporary adjuncts of
-so much guilt, the high priest and the goat-leader were required to
-purify themselves afterwards by bathing; the high priest must change
-his robes, and the goat-leader wash his clothes.
-
-So in modern times in Nigeria the town sins are annually laid on some
-unhappy slave-girl, perhaps selected some time before.  As she {207} is
-led through the street the householders come forth and discharge the
-year's accumulated evil on her; then she is dragged to the river,
-bound, and left to drown.  Japan is satisfied without a life.  The
-ancient ritual of purification shows that in the early centuries of the
-national history a public ceremony was occasionally performed.  In the
-revival of Shinto usage which marked the late reign, it was re-enacted
-by imperial decree in 1872 for half-yearly celebration on June 30 and
-December 31, at all Shinto shrines.  Four or five days before these
-dates the believer was enjoined to procure from his priest a piece of
-white paper cut in the shape of a garment.  On this he was to write his
-name and sex, with the year and month of his birth; then he must rub it
-over his body, and finally breathe on it.  His sins would thus be
-transferred to the paper robe, which was to be taken back to the
-priest.  Offerings of food and purifying ceremonies would complete the
-believer's release.  The paper garments with their load of guilt were
-then to be packed in cases which were to be put in boats, rowed out to
-sea, and committed to the deep.  There they would be carried to the
-great Sea Plain by the Maiden of Descent-into-the-Current, who would
-convey them to the Maiden of the Swift Opening, dwelling in the Eight
-Hundred Meetings of the Brine of the Eight Brine Currents.  She would
-swallow them down with a gurgling sound, and the {208} Lord of the
-Breath-blowing Place would finally blow them away into the
-Root-Country, the bottom apparently of the under-world!
-
-
-The relation of morality to religion tends to become more definite
-along different lines of thought, which are constantly intertwined, and
-of which three are only isolated here for the purpose of the briefest
-possible illustration of the forms in which they have appeared
-historically.  In the first place, the world may be regarded as a scene
-in which rival powers of help and hurt are engaged in constant
-conflict; and the physical dualism thus exhibited may be reproduced in
-the sphere of morals as a contest between powers of good and evil.
-Secondly, the course of nature may be viewed as a world-order, where
-seasonal uniformities are the manifestation of a permanent principle of
-harmony which is the guide of human conduct, and the vicissitudes of
-daily or annual experience are interpreted as the judgments of heaven
-on man's doings, national or personal.  And thirdly, the development of
-the individual conscience may surmount the confusion which ranks ritual
-offences along with moral transgressions, and the ethical life may be
-set wholly free from ceremonial bondage, and carried up into the realm
-of spirit.
-
-The lower culture all over the world ascribes disease or accident,
-madness, calamity, and death, to the agency of hostile powers lying
-{209} in wait for man, and breaking in on his security.  The violences
-of the elements, the hurricane, the flood, the earthquake, the volcanic
-eruption, are in the same way the work of giants towering in might
-above the common herd of the demons of air, water, or earth.  The
-spirits of the evil dead, especially of powerful magic-men, Shamans,
-and the like, of malicious character, are potent for sickness and
-disaster.  But in their unorganised ranks there is no controlling or
-directing force.  Here and there some figure or group emerges into
-prominence.  At the head of the demonic hosts of Babylonian mythology
-is a band of seven ruling spirits, perhaps the windy counterparts of
-the sun and moon and the five planets.  In Egyptian story Set (or by
-his Greek name Typhon) is the evil opposite of the good Osiris whom he
-does to death; or it is the sun himself who is attacked in his nightly
-journey by the serpent Apap with his monstrous crew.  Scandinavian
-mythology was full of these conflicts.  The oppositions of light and
-darkness, storm and calm, warmth and cold, were felt with unusual
-vehemence.  Over the motley multitude of powers infesting forest and
-field, the wind and the water, rose the giants of mountain and
-cataract, the furious blast, the curdling frost.  The giants of the
-frost were evil powers, like the wolf Fenris, and the serpent Nidhogg,
-who lay beneath one of the roots of the mighty cosmic tree (in
-Niflheim, {210} a second being among the frost-giants, and a third
-among the gods), for ever gnawing till the great world's end.  Above
-them rose the dread goddess Hel, the "hollow," once, apparently, the
-name of the grave, and then of the power that ruled the gloomy
-underworld, the abode of those who had not fallen upon the
-battle-field.  She, in her turn, was subordinated to Loki, once
-reckoned among the gods, capricious and tricky, who becomes the father
-of Hel, the wolf Fenris, and the Midgard snake, and leads the forces of
-evil for the destruction of the world.  He compasses the death of
-Balder the fair, Odin perishes by the wolf, and Thor by the serpent;
-though god and wolf and serpent in their turn sink in common ruin.  But
-the powers engaged in the strife are all superhuman; man has no share
-in the warfare, save when the warriors pass at death into the abode of
-the gods, and take their place beside them in the final conflict.  Loki
-is no Devil, he does not tempt, or interfere with the children of
-earth; he does not affect their present conduct or future destiny.
-
-The oppositions of light and darkness belong to every zone all round
-the world, and were perhaps most strongly felt among the Indo-Iranian
-branches of the great Aryan family.  The name _deva_ in ancient Indian
-mythology denotes the shining powers of the upper world, the radiant
-dwellers in the sky.  In contrast with it stands another, the {211}
-_asura_, once a title of high honour, for it clung even to Varuna, but
-later degraded to the designation of demonic beings, who appear again
-and again in contest with the devas for the precious drink of
-immortality.  So the realm of darkness is the realm of evil.  Into the
-pit of darkness are the wicked thrust: and when right and wrong are
-presented under the forms of truth and falsehood, and untruth is
-identified with gloom, the poet reached the natural symbolism--"Light
-is heaven, they say, and darkness hell."
-
-It was, however, among the cognate Iranian people that this antithesis
-acquired the greatest force, under the influence of the prophet
-Zarathustra.  By a curious historic-religious process which cannot here
-be traced, the terms of the opposing forces were reversed.  _Ahura_ (=
-_asura_) remained the name of the Supreme Power, with the addition of
-the term _Mazda_, "all-knowing," and the _daevas_ (= _devas_) became
-the evil multitude.  In the oldest part of the Zend Avesta Ahura
-appears as the sole Creator, the God of light and purity and truth, who
-dwells on high in the Abode of Song.  Beside him is his Good Mind, and
-the Holy (or beneficent, gracious) Spirit.  But opposed to him in the
-realm of darkness beneath is "the Lie" (_drug_), with its correlates
-the Bad Mind and the Evil Spirit (_Añra Mainyu_, not yet a proper
-name).  The world between is the scene of continuous struggle, and in
-this conflict man is called to take his {212} part.  Ritual purity,
-appropriate sacrifice, and personal righteousness in thought, word, and
-deed, are his weapons in the fight.  By these he helps to establish the
-sovereignty of Ahura, and to curtail the power of "the Lie."  The
-earliest representations offer no account of the origin of the Drug any
-more than of Ahura himself.  But later speculation, impressed with the
-contrasting elements of human life, began to ascribe to him, too, under
-the name of Ahriman (Añra Mainyu), creative power; all noxious animals
-and plants were due to him; plague and disease came from his hands; all
-agencies of cold, darkness, and destruction were his work; he was the
-_daeva_ of _daevas_, Lord of death, and author of temptation.  And
-finally, in the long process of thought the two powers of good and evil
-had both issued from a still higher unity, Zervan Akarana, Time without
-bound.  But long ere this the Persian character had responded to
-Zarathustra's teaching of warfare against "the Lie"; and Herodotus
-bears testimony to their repute for loyalty to truth.  For from the
-earliest days the dualism of Zarathustra bound together morality and
-religion in the closest alliance.  How the great demand for the
-ultimate victory of good was to be justified will be seen hereafter (p.
-247).
-
-A second group of figures embodying the same idea of the connection of
-morality with religion is found in the various impersonations {213} of
-the Order of Nature and its correlate in Law in the world without and
-the heart within.  The speculations of the early Greek philosophers in
-their attempts to reach an ultimate Unity behind all the diversities of
-appearance familiarised the higher minds with the idea of the harmony
-of the cosmos.  "Law," sang Pindar, "is king of all, both mortals and
-immortals."  And this sovereign order is represented mythologically by
-Themis, whom Hesiod exalts to be the daughter of Heaven and Earth, and
-bride of Zeus.  Pindar pictured her as borne in a golden car from the
-primeval Ocean, the source of all, up to the sacred height of Olympus,
-to be the consort of Zeus the Preserver.  But though she is thus the
-spouse of the sovereign of the sky, she is in another aspect identified
-with Earth, scene of fixed rules both in nature and social life, for
-with the cultus of the earth were associated not only the operations of
-agriculture, but the rites and duties of marriage, and the maintenance
-of the family.  So Themis is the mother of the seasons in the annual
-round, and the sequences of blossom and fruit are her work; but among
-her daughters are also Fair Order, Justice, and Peace, and the world
-and the State thus reflect obedience to a universal Law.
-
-Behind Greece lay Egypt, where tradition said that Thales, first of
-Greeks to philosophise, had studied.  When the soul of the dead man was
-brought to the test of the balance (p. 8), {214} he was supported by
-the goddesses of Ma[=a]t or Truth.  Derived from the root _m[=a]_, "to
-stretch out," this name covered the ideas of rectitude or right, and
-Ma[=a]t was the splendid impersonation of order, law, justice, truth,
-in both the physical and moral spheres.  She is the daughter--or even
-the eye--of the Sun-god Rê.  But she is conceived in still more exalted
-fashion as the sovereign of all realms, and is elevated above all
-relationships.  She is Lady of heaven, and Queen of earth, and even
-Lady of the Land of the West, the mysterious dwellings of the dead.  In
-one aspect she serves each of the great gods as her lord and master; in
-another she knows no lord or master.  So it is by her that the gods
-live; she is, as it were, the law of their being; alike for sun and
-moon, for days and hours, in the visible world, and for the divine king
-at the head of his people.  She is solemnly offered by the sovereign to
-his god, and the deity responds by laying her in the heart of his
-worshipper, to manifest her everlastingly before the gods.  Through the
-court-phrases gleams the solemn idea that sovereignty on earth is no
-law to itself; it must follow the ordinances of heaven.
-
-Chinese insight early reached a similar thought.  Before the days of
-Confucius or his elder contemporary Lao-Tsze, the wiser observers had
-noted the uniformity of Nature's ways.  Were not Heaven and Earth the
-nourishers of all things?  Did not Heaven pour {215} down all kinds of
-influences upon the docile and receptive Earth?  Heaven was
-all-observing, steadfast, impartial; and its "sincerity," seen in the
-regular movements of the sun and moon, or the succession of the
-seasons, becomes for the moralist the groundwork of the social order.
-This daily course is called Heaven's way or path, the _Tao_ (the
-highway as distinguished from by-tracks), which with unvarying energy
-maintains the scene of our existence, and provides the norm or pattern
-for our conduct.  In the hands of Lao-Tsze this became the symbol of a
-great philosophical conception.  Behind the visible path which all
-could see lay the hidden Tao, untrodden and enduring.  Here was the
-eternal source of all things, for ever streaming forth in orderly
-succession, but never vaunting itself or inviting attention by
-outbursts of display.  It was the type for man to follow; the sage,
-like Heaven, must have no personal ends; he must act, like the great
-exemplar, without meddling interference, leaving his nature to fulfil
-itself; let him renounce ambition and cultivate humility; only one who
-has "forgotten himself" can become identified with Heaven.  "Can
-you"--so Lao-Tsze was said to have asked an inquirer six hundred years
-before Jesus taught in Galilee--"Can you become a little child?"
-
-The Vedic seers were hardly less impressed with the sense of an orderly
-control in contemplating the energies around them.  Four {216} words
-are used to denote the institutes or ordinances, the fixed norms or
-standards, the solemn laws, and the steadfast path, according to which
-the rivers flow, the dawn comes forth after the night, the sun
-traverses the sky, and even the storm winds begin to blow.  Of these
-the last named, the _Rita_ (with its Zend equivalent _Asha_), the
-ordered course along which all things move, presents the least
-abstract, the most mythical form.  For here is that which exists before
-heaven and earth; they are born of it, or even in it, and its domain is
-the wide space.  From it, likewise, the gods proceed, and the lofty
-pair, Mitra and Varuna, with Aditi and her train, are its protectors.
-But through the mystical identity of the order of nature and the order
-of sacrifice (p. 143), the cultus--whether on earth or in heaven--is
-also its sphere.  Agni, the sacrificial fire, the dear house-priest, is
-Rita-born, and by its aid carries the offerings to heaven.  Such, also,
-is the sacred drink, the Soma, which is borne in the Rita's car, and
-follows its ways.  And the heavenly sacrificers, the Fathers in the
-radiant world above, have grown according to the Rita, for they know
-and faithfully obey the law.  Thus it becomes the supreme expression of
-morality, and is practically equivalent with _satya_, true (literally,
-that which is), or good.  Heaven and Earth are _satya_, veracious, they
-can be trusted; they are _rit[=a]van_, faithful to the Path, steadfast
-in the Order.  Not less so is the {217} godly man; he, too, is
-_rit[=a]van_ (Zend _ashavan_), the same word being used to denote
-divine holiness and human piety.  And thus the life of gods and men,
-the order of nature, the ritual of worship, and daily duty, were all
-bound together in one principle.
-
-Rita, however, did not establish itself as a permanent conception in
-Indian theology.  Its place was taken by another idea, which still
-sways the thought and rules the lives of hundreds of millions of
-believers in India and the Far East, _Karma_, or the doctrine of the
-Deed.  It is well known that this doctrine does not appear in the Vedic
-hymns.  It is first discussed as a great mystery in the forest-sessions
-where teachers and students met together, where kings could still
-instruct Brahmans, and women might speak in debate.  In the Brahmana of
-a Hundred Paths it is summed up in a maxim which was first formulated
-in connection with ceremonial obligation, but came to have a much wider
-application: "A man is born into the world that he has made"; to which
-the Law-books added the warning: "The Deed does not perish."
-
-Man is for ever making his own world.  Each act, each word, even each
-thought, adds something to the spiritual fabric which he is perpetually
-producing.  He cannot escape the results of his own conduct.  The
-values for good or evil mount up from hour to hour, and their issues
-must be fulfilled.  When this {218} conception was carried through the
-universe, the whole sphere of animated existence was placed under its
-sway.  The life of any single person upon earth was only an incident in
-a chain of lives, stretching into the distant past as well as into the
-immeasurable future.  His condition hereafter would be determined by
-what he had done before he entered the state that would match his deed.
-Then his condition here was also determined by what he had wrought in a
-previous lot.  His personal qualities, his health and sickness, his
-caste and rank, his wealth or poverty, all precisely matched some
-elements in the moral product of his past.  These were, of course,
-never all precisely of one kind.  They were of mingled good and evil,
-and each of these would in course of time have its appropriate
-consequence of joy and pain.  For every shade of guilt there was a
-fitting punishment, exactly adjusted in severity and duration, either
-in degradation and suffering upon earth, or in some one of numerous
-hells below.  And similarly all good was sure of its reward, as
-happiness and prosperity awaited it here, or were allotted in still
-richer measure for their due periods in the heavens that rose tier
-above tier beyond the sky.
-
-The doctrine of Transmigration has appeared in various forms, in very
-different cultures.  But nowhere has it swayed whole civilisations as
-it has done in the East.  It has expressed for innumerable multitudes
-the {219} essential bond of morals and religion.  There were not
-wanting, indeed, teachers who criticised and rejected it when Gotama
-the Buddha passed to and fro five hundred years before our era.  But
-while he repudiated the authority of the Vedas, the ceremonies of
-sacrifice, the claims of the Brahmans, and the immortality of the gods,
-he retained the doctrine of Karma at the very core of the system of
-ethical culture which he offered as the way out of the weary circle of
-re-birth.  The whole meaning of the universe, its cosmic periods of
-dissolution and evolution, was still moral; and the scene of our
-existence came once more into being that the unexhausted potencies of
-countless products of the Deed from the lowest hell to the topmost
-heaven might realise their suspended energy.  And when Buddhism became
-a religion through the interpretation of the person of its founder in
-terms of the Absolute and Eternal, this law of the phenomenal world of
-space and time remained beyond even his power to set aside or change.
-
-The ethical element necessarily varies in richness of content and
-intensity of feeling in different religions.  In the classifications
-which have been from time to time proposed, attention has often been
-fixed upon its presence as the marked characteristic of a group.  Thus
-Prof. Tiele, of Leiden, proposed to treat the higher religions of
-Revelation under two heads: (1) religions embodying a sacred {220} law,
-and forming national communities, including Taoism, Confucianism,
-Brahmanism, Jainism, Mazdaism, Mosaism, Judaism, and (2) universalistic
-communions, Buddhism, Christianity, and to some extent Islam.  Another
-writer forms a class of Morality-Religions above the savage
-Nature-Religions, and reckons in it the religions of Mexico and Peru,
-the earliest Babylonian (often called Akkadian), Egyptian, Chinese,
-Hindu, Persian, German, Roman, Greek.  All such classifications are
-exposed to many difficulties, but they at least bear witness to the
-significance of the place which is occupied by morality in modern
-estimates of the worth of great historic faiths.  The aspects of any
-particular development are so manifold, that any attempt to establish a
-scale of rank at once lays itself open to criticism.  Where, for
-example, is Greece in Prof. Tiele's scheme?  It is thrown back into the
-group of "half-ethical anthropomorphic polytheisms."  But in the hands
-of poets and philosophers, the really shaping powers of Hellenic
-culture, polytheism was left far behind, and on the third of the
-questions suggested above in considering the relations of morality and
-religion (p. 208)--their attitude to ritual obligation--Greek official
-teaching sometimes reached the loftiest heights.
-
-For not only did philosophical and religious communities like the
-Pythagoreans enunciate such maxims as these: "Purity of soul is the
-{221} only divine service," or "God has no place on earth more akin to
-his nature than the pure soul," but the oracle of Delphi itself was
-supposed to have affirmed the worthlessness of ceremonial cleansing
-without corresponding holiness of heart.  Dr. Farnell translates two
-utterances ascribed to the Pythia as follows: "O stranger, if holy of
-soul, enter the shrine of the holy God, having but touched the lustral
-water: lustration is an easy matter for the good; but all ocean with
-its streams cannot cleanse the evil man"; and again: "The temples of
-the gods are open to all good men, nor is there any need of
-purification; no stain can ever cleave to virtue.  But depart,
-whosoever is baneful at heart; for thy soul will never be washed by the
-cleansing of the body."  Over the sanctuary of Æsculapius at Epidaurus,
-where so many sufferers thronged for cure (p. 180), ran the inscription
-quoted by Porphyry--
-
-  "Into an odorous temple he who goes
-  Should pure and holy be; but to be wise
-  In what makes holiness is to be pure."
-
-
-The religion of Zarathustra, on the other hand, did not maintain its
-primitive elevation.  The prophet's G[=a]th[=a]s (p. 191) summoned the
-believer to live in the fellowship of the Good Mind and in obedience to
-the Most Excellent Order (_Asha vahista_), and the later Avesta seems
-sometimes to repeat their high demand: {222} "Purity is for man, next
-to life, the greatest good; that purity that is procured by the law of
-Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with good thoughts, words, and
-deeds."  It is the utterance of Ahura himself.  But purity may be
-interpreted in very different ways: the lad who walks about over
-fifteen years of age without the sacred girdle and sacred shirt, has no
-forgiveness, for he has "power to destroy the world of the holy
-spirit"; while, on the other hand, to pull down the scaffold on which
-corpses had been deposited (the Persians employed neither burial nor
-cremation) was to destroy a centre of impure contagion, and secure
-pardon for all sins.
-
-When Moses established the administration of justice at the sanctuary
-of Yahweh, he planted a powerful ethical influence in the heart of the
-religion of Israel.  No reader of the Old Testament needs to be
-reminded of the prophetic rebukes of a monarch's crimes.  Nathan and
-David, Elijah and Ahab, have become universal types.  The history of
-Hebrew ethics shows how the conception of morality gradually passed
-from the regulation of external conduct into the inner sphere of
-thought; and the offender was no longer regarded merely as a member of
-a tribe or nation on which punishment might alight collectively; he
-stood in an immediate relation to his God.  Primitive imagination could
-rest content with supposing that sin had first entered the world
-through the {223} subtlety of a talking snake.  Later thought found
-such a solution inadequate to enlarged moral experience.  In the figure
-of the Adversary or the Opposer, the Sâtân, first traceable in Israel's
-literature after the Captivity, Judaism admitted a moral dualism
-analogous to the opposition between Ahura Mazda and Añra Mainyu.  The
-Sâtân had, indeed, no creative power, though hordes of demons were
-under his sway in the abyss, and were sent forth to do the desolating
-work of madness and disease.  But he was the head of a realm of evil
-over against the sovereignty of God; and the intensity of the moral
-consciousness of sin was reflected in the mythologic form of his
-warfare against the hosts of heaven.
-
-Along a quite different line of thought, which may possibly have been
-stimulated from the Greek side, the humanists of later Israel
-endeavoured to bring nature and social life under one common conception
-of divine Wisdom.  The earlier prophecy had regarded the physical world
-as plastic in Yahweh's hands, so that its events--such as drought or
-flood, the locust and the blight, could be made the immediate
-instruments of Israel's discipline.  A wider culture brought new ideas.
-There were statutes and ordinances for the cosmic powers just as there
-were for communities of man.  The universe was the product of the
-divine thought, and the same agency was seen in the structure and {224}
-organisation of human societies.  The order of the visible scene was
-due to the presence and control of Wisdom, which from the first had sat
-as a kind of assessor by Yahweh's side.  The moral order was no less
-her work; she gave the sanction to all authority and rule; "By me kings
-reign," cries the poet in her name, "and princes decree justice"; and
-the men of humble heart know that their piety, "the fear of the Lord,"
-is her gift, and links them in joyous fellowship with the stars on high.
-
-That Mosaism started with a vigorous moral conception of the divine
-demands, however limited might be its early scope, is generally
-recognised.  The gradual settlement of the immigrant tribes in the land
-of Canaan, the appropriation of Canaanite sanctuaries, and the adoption
-of their festivals and ritual, brought new influences which threatened
-the ancient simplicity.  The voices of Hebrew prophecy rang out at
-Jerusalem ere Greek thought had begun to move.  It was a singular
-result in Israel's history that the great truths of the unity and
-spirituality and holiness of God, which prophecy had won out of
-impassioned experience, were confided for their preservation to a code
-of Priestly Law which raised the elements of ritual and sacerdotal
-caste to their highest significance in the nation's life.  But the law
-which declared sacrifice to be legitimate only on one altar, made room
-for a new development of Israel's religion.  If {225} the ancient faith
-was to be maintained by a race that spread from Babylon to Rome, it
-must adapt its worship to new conditions.  There could be but one
-temple; but a meeting-house could be built anywhere; and the Synagogue
-thus became the birthplace of the congregations of the Christian Church.
-
-
-
-
-{226}
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND DESTINY
-
-"If a man die, shall he live again?"  The question is as old as the
-Book of Job, but the affirmative answer is much older.  The earliest
-human remains in Europe imply some provision for the dead, and it did
-not occur to the peoples of the lower culture all over the world to
-doubt the reality of some kind of continued existence.  Did not the
-living still see them in their dreams (p. 86)?
-
-But this life might be conceived in an infinite variety ol forms.
-Where was it passed? under what conditions? what would be its
-privileges and its requirements? how long would it last?  To these and
-a hundred other questions no uniform answers have been returned; and
-numerous as are the stories of visits to the other world, there is
-little agreement as to its place, its scenery, its occupations, its
-society, its government, its duties, its punishments, or its rewards.
-Yet no field of human imagination reflects more clearly the stage of
-social and moral development which creates it.  Into his pictures of
-the future man has persistently woven his {227} criticism of the
-present.  But the tenacity of usage and convention in everything
-affecting the dead has sometimes detained belief at a much lower level
-than the general progress of ethical feeling might otherwise have
-suggested.  Religious thought does not always move forwards with equal
-speed over all the relations and possibilities of life.
-
-The logic of the treatment of the dead is full of gaps and
-inconsistencies.  The same people will perform rites which rest upon
-quite different theories; customs have run together in strange
-incoherence.  This may be sometimes due to the necessity for making
-provision for different elements in the person which were united while
-on earth.  The wealthy Egyptian required an elaborate home in the tomb
-for his double or _ka_, while his _ba_ started on its perilous journey
-through the mysterious regions of the world of the dead.  From the
-ethical point of view, however, which chiefly concerns the student of
-comparative religion, the doctrine of the next life falls into two main
-divisions, as Burton and Tylor pointed out more than a generation
-ago--theories of continuance, and theories of retribution.  They are
-connected by many intermediate stages of transition, and they range all
-the way from the crudest conceptions of prolonged existence in the
-grave, up to exalted solemnities of judgment, of doom, and of the
-fellowship of heaven.
-
-When a man dies, where will his spirit dwell?  {228} Perhaps it will
-pass into some animal, a bear, a walrus, or a beautiful bird.  Perhaps
-it will haunt his old home.  In that case it were well that he should
-not die where he has lived; let him be carried into the open air as
-death approaches, or laid in the loneliness of the woods.  The Eskimo
-of Greenland build a small snow hut, the entrance of which is closed as
-death approaches that the inmate may pass away alone.  Dr. Franz Boas
-relates that a young girl once sent for him from such a lodging a few
-hours before her end, to ask for some tobacco and bread, that she might
-take them to her mother who had died only a few weeks before.  Or the
-connection between the dead man and his former dwelling may be severed
-by burning down the hut and forsaking the locality, even though (as
-among the Sakais of the Malay peninsula) the coming crop of tapioca or
-sugar-cane should be lost by departure.  Or strong measures may be
-taken with the corpse by thrashing it to hasten the ejection of the
-soul; the walls of the death-chamber may be beaten with sticks to drive
-it away; or a professional functionary may be invoked with his broom to
-sweep it out.  And when the body has been carried forth, precautions
-must be taken to prevent the spirit from finding its way back, and
-barriers erected against its return.  Only occasionally, as in ancient
-Athens, was burial permitted in the house, where the venerated dead
-could still protect and bless those whom they loved.
-
-{229}
-
-The tomb was sometimes constructed to resemble the home and admit the
-members of the family together.  Under the cliffs of Orvieto is an
-Etruscan city of the dead, where the stone houses (usually with two
-rooms) stand side by side in streets.  The prehistoric gravemounds of
-Scandinavia have disclosed sepulchral burial chambers, entered by a
-gallery or passage, divided by large slabs of granite into alcoves or
-stalls, round which the dead were seated.  Just so does the Eskimo of
-the present day arrange his dwelling.  Those who had lived in caves and
-left their dead there, retained the usage long after they had learned
-to construct tents or build houses for themselves.  The chief was
-carried to the hills, as the barrows on our own moors show, or to the
-mountain top, where his spirit blended perhaps with the spirit of the
-place and lent an additional awe to the heights; or to secure him from
-disturbance, as the Spanish observers noted in Columbia (S. America), a
-river was diverted from its course, his grave was made in its bed, and
-the waters, restored to their former channel, kept the secret safe.
-
-The dream experience only provides the world of the dead with scenery
-and occupations resembling those of common life, with more rapidity of
-change and mysterious ease of transformation.  But when tribes have
-migrated from one locality to another,--and in the vast reaches of
-prehistoric time such movements were incessant though {230} slow--the
-various forces of association in memory, dreaming, and tradition, would
-connect the dead with the places of the past.  Sometimes the course of
-travel might have lain through mountain passes, or across a river, or
-from beyond the sea.  A journey, or a voyage was thus
-suggested--Samoans said of a chief that he had "sailed"; to reach the
-abode of the dead might need days of travel; so shoes as well as food
-(p. 138) must be provided, and the fires, first kindled for the warmth
-of the dweller in the grave below, were continued to light him on his
-way.  On solar analogies, such as may be found in both hemispheres, the
-homes of the departed were often assigned to the East or West.
-
-The brotherhood of sleep and death has always been recognised, and we
-still call our graveyards "cemeteries," or sleeping-places.  The
-ancient Israelite said of his dead that he "slept with his fathers."
-Earth burial suggested a locality beneath the ground, vast and gloomy
-like some huge cave.  The Mesopotamian thought of it as a city, ringed
-with seven walls; and even the Hebrew who pictured the underworld,
-Sheol, as a gigantic pit, sometimes imagined it to be approached
-through gates.  There lay the nerveless feeble forms of the mighty ones
-of earth.  The separate nations had their several stations allotted to
-them, where ghostly warriors lay dark and silent with their ghostly
-swords around the ghostly thrones of ghostly kings.  {231} The entry of
-a new comer from Babylon awoke a ghostly wonder, and ghostly voices
-greeted him from the dead.  It is a strange contrast with the pageantry
-of the skies, where various races, from the Australians to the Hindus
-and the Greeks have seen their forefathers looking down on them as
-stars.  So inveterate is this belief that it was found necessary to
-obtain a certificate from the Astronomer Royal to refute the rumour
-that on the night on which Browning died a new star appeared in the
-constellation of Orion.  The Milky Way could thus be interpreted as the
-path of Souls, and the Aurora Borealis resolved into the Dance of the
-Dead.
-
-The transfer of souls through death from one kind of life to another
-does not necessarily involve any moral change.  The relations of earth
-are resumed in the new scene.  The ancient Celts who placed letters to
-their friends on the pyre of a dead relative, or even expected to
-receive in the next world the repayment of loans in this, conceived
-existence hereafter on the same plane as the present, like the modern
-Chinaman who celebrates the wedding of his spirit-son with the
-spirit-daughter of a suitable friend, and thus brings peace to a
-tormented house.  The spirit-land of Ibo on the lower Niger had its
-rivers and forests, its hills, and towns, and roads, below the ground
-like those above, only more gloomy.  In Tuonela, the land of the dead,
-Finnic imagination pictured rivers of black water, {232} with
-boisterous waterfalls and dangerous whirlpools, forests full of wild
-beasts, and fields of grain which provided the death-worm with his
-teeth; but it is still homely enough for Wainamoinen to find the
-daughter of its ruler, Tuoni, god of death, busy with her washing.  The
-dead of the Mordvinians, a group of Ural-Altaic origin in the heart of
-Russia, are believed to marry and beget children as on earth.  Such
-conceptions naturally resulted in a continuity of occupation, rank, and
-service.  The Spanish historian, Herrera, relates that in Mexico "every
-great man had a priest or chaplain to perform the ceremonies of his
-house, and when he died the chaplain was called to serve him in the
-same manner, and so were his master of the household, his cup-bearer,
-his dwarf, the deformed people he kept, and the brothers that had
-served him, for they looked upon it as a piece of grandeur to be served
-by them, and said they were going to keep house in the other world."
-Yet in Mexico, as will be seen immediately, the differentiation of the
-future lot had already begun.
-
-The chief is usually sure of admission into high society in the next
-world.  The Maori paradise was a paradise of the aristocracy; heroes
-and men of lofty lineage went to the skies.  But common souls, in
-passing from one division to another of the New Zealand Hades, lost a
-little of their vitality each time, until at last they died outright.
-Polynesian fancy {233} sometimes mingled the seen and the unseen in
-strange juxtaposition.  The Fijian route to the world beyond, Mbulu,
-lay through a real town with ordinary inhabitants.  But it had also an
-invisible portion, where dwelt the family of Samuyalo who held inquest
-on departed spirits.  If this trial was surmounted, a second judgment
-awaited them at the hands of Ndengei, by which they were assigned to
-one or other of the divisions of the underworld.  A great chief who had
-destroyed many towns and slain many in war, passed to Mburotu, where
-amid pleasant glades the occupants lived in families and planted and
-fought.  But bachelors, those who had killed no enemy, or would not
-have their ears bored, women who refused to be tatooed, and generally
-those who had not lived so as to please the gods, were doomed to
-various forms of penal suffering and degradation.
-
-Courage and daring are of immense social importance, and are among the
-most important elements in primitive virtue.  Strength, valour, skill
-in war and hunting, lift men into leadership, and the pre-eminence won
-here is retained hereafter.  But these qualities are not limited to
-chiefs.  The happy land of the Greenlanders, Torngarsuk, received the
-valiant workers, men who had taken many whales and seals, borne much
-hardship, and been drowned at sea, and women who had died in
-childbirth.  A mild and unwarlike tribe in Guatemala might be persuaded
-that to die by any {234} other than a natural death was to forfeit all
-hope of life hereafter, the bodies of the slain being left to the
-vultures and wild beasts.  On the other hand, the Nicaraguan Aztecs
-declared that the shades of those who died in their beds went downwards
-till they came to nought; while those who fell in battle for their
-country passed to the East, to the rising of the sun.
-
-Such was the destiny, also, of the Mexican warriors, who daily climbed
-to the zenith by the sun's side with shouts of joy, and there resigned
-their charge to the celestial women, who had given their lives in
-childbed.  Merchants, too, were in the procession, who had faced risk
-and peril and died upon their journeys.  But this privilege tasted only
-four years, when they became birds of beautiful plumage in the
-celestial gardens.  In the far East, in the abode of Tlaloc, god of
-waters, were those who had died by lightning or at sea, sufferers from
-various diseases, and children who had been sacrificed to the
-water-deities.  These last, after a happy time, were born again; the
-rest passed in due course to the underworld of Mictlan in the far
-north, "a most obscure land, where light cometh not, and whence none
-can ever return."  There the rich were still rich, and the slaves still
-slaves.  But their term was short.  Mictlan had nine divisions, and at
-the end of the fourth year the spirit reached the ninth and ceased to
-be.
-
-{235}
-
-This curious distribution has little moral significance, save for its
-recognition of valour, as in the Teutonic welcome of the warrior into
-Valhalla, or of social service, as in the case of those who give their
-lives for the community, the merchant like the Greenland whaler, or the
-mothers who did not survive their labour.  But the beginnings of
-ethical discrimination sometimes present themselves in very much more
-simply organised communities.  A rude social justice expresses itself
-in the belief of the Kaupuis of Assam that a murdered man shall have
-his murderer for his slave in the next life.  The Chippeways predict
-that the souls of the wicked will be pursued by phantoms of the persons
-they have injured; and horses and dogs which have been ill-treated will
-torment their tormentors.  Murder, theft, lying, adultery, draw down a
-singular chastisement in the Banks Islands.  The spirits of the dead
-assemble on the road to Panoi, when each fresh comer is torn to pieces
-and put together again.  Then the injured man has his chance.  He
-seizes a part of the dismembered soul, so that it cannot be
-reconstructed, or at least suffers permanent mutilation.  No judge
-presides over the process, no law regulates it; punishment is still a
-private affair.  But the entry into the new life is not unconditional.
-The American Choctaws conceived their dead to journey to the east, till
-they reached the summit of a hill.  There a long pine-trunk, {236}
-smooth and slippery, stretched over the river of death below to the
-next hill-top.  The just passed over safely and entered paradise, the
-wicked fell off into the stream beneath.  It was a self-acting test,
-which needed not the prior ordeal of the Avestan balance under Mithra
-and Rashnu at the Chinvat bridge (p. 9).
-
-Sometimes a new religious motive is more or less plainly apparent.
-Even the rude Fijian award depended in some way on the satisfaction of
-the gods.  The Tonga Islanders were more explicit; neglect of the gods
-and failure to present due offerings would involve penalties hereafter.
-The sun-worshipping people of Achalaque in Florida placed men of good
-life and pious service and charity to the poor in the sky as stars,
-while the wicked languished in misery among mountain precipices and
-wild beasts.  Two centuries ago Bosnian heard some of the negroes on
-the Guinea coast tell of a river in the heart of the land where they
-would be asked by the divine judge if they had duly kept the holy days,
-abstained from forbidden meats, and maintained their oaths inviolate,
-and those who could not answer rightly would be drowned.  Such
-anticipations really introduce a fresh principle.  Above the tribal
-morality, the custom of the clan, rises an obligation of no obvious and
-immediate use; even ritual practice, the observance of special seasons,
-or of proper taboos, the offering of prescribed {237} sacrifice, may
-create new standards of order in conformity with a higher will.  They
-supply the groundwork on which the prophet may build the temple of the
-ideal.
-
-The ancient Semitic cultures formulated no general doctrine of
-immortality in the higher sense of the word.  Faint traces of a hope of
-resurrection appear here and there in Babylonian texts; but there is no
-judgment beyond the grave; the chastisements of the gods arrive in this
-life; and it is only occasionally that the fellowship of heaven becomes
-the privilege of the great.  In Israel the higher prophecy from Amos
-onward interprets "Yahweh's day" as a day of doom instead of victory;
-but the divine judgment would alight on the whole people, and would be
-realised in no future life but in some overwhelming national
-catastrophe.  In Egypt the destiny of the dead was already
-individualised.  Around it gathered the solemnities of the Osirian
-judgment-seat (p. 8); the ritual and the ethical demands of the
-forty-two assessors show the moral tests advancing through the
-ceremonial.  The believer who passed safely through the ordeal of the
-balance and was duly fortified with the proper spells, was mystically
-identified with Osiris as the "justified," and different texts present
-different types of future bliss.  He might find a home in the fields of
-Ialu, where numerous servants answered to his call, and he feasted on
-the magic corn.  Or a fresh form might be {238} provided for him, when
-he was washed with pure water at the _meshken_ or place of new birth.
-Mysterious transformations assimilated him with various gods; or he was
-admitted on to the sun-bark among the worshippers of Rê, and fed on his
-words.  But the guilty souls were subjected to unspeakable torments;
-there were magistrates to measure the duration of those appointed for
-extinction, and at the allotted time they were destroyed.
-
-Egypt, thought Herodotus, had been the teacher of immortality to
-Greece.  The statement is at least interesting as a sign that in the
-traveller's view the Hellenic faith of his day possessed some analogies
-with the Egyptian.  The ethical element in it, at any rate, was gaining
-more and more force.  In Homer Hades, who is after all another form of
-Zeus in the underworld, is sovereign, but not judge, of the nether
-realm.  The Erinnyes, who are originally ghosts of the dead, inflict
-their punishments mostly in the life of earth; only for broken oaths is
-penalty imposed below; and Tartarus, in the lowest deep, is reserved
-for the giant Titans who had challenged the majesty of heaven.  In the
-stony asphodel meadow Achilles is but a shade among the rest; if
-Menelaus is admitted to the Elysian plain, it is no superior valour but
-aristocratic connection which wins him his place.  Rare is the allusion
-to a judgment; the tribunal of Minos, son of {239} Zeus, may be the
-moralising addition of some later bard.
-
-But in the fifth century B.C. fresh influences are at work.  Pythagoras
-has founded his communities, half philosophical, half religious.  The
-higher thought has become markedly monotheistic, and Orphism with its
-rude sacrament (p. 147) has helped to develop conceptions of fellowship
-with deity which made new hopes for the future possible.  So Pindar,
-nearest of kin among Greek poets to the prophetio voices of Israel,
-emphasises the retributive government of God.  Man may be nothing more
-than "a dream of a shadow," nevertheless he is not too insignificant to
-escape the dooms of heaven upon his guilt, and if there is requital for
-evil there are also happy islands for the blest.  The ethical leaven is
-already powerfully at work.  The language of Cebes and Simmias in
-Plato's dialogue of the _Phædo_ shows, however, that the belief was by
-no means universal; and the beautiful sepulchral reliefs at Athens give
-no hint of that august tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Æacus, which
-Plato pictures as engaged in judging souls.
-
-But the great mysteries of Eleusis certainly fostered the hope of
-immortality.  The conviction grew stronger that the initiated would
-have a happier lot in the life to come, so that Diogenes sarcastically
-inquired whether an initiated robber would be better off than an
-uninitiated honest man.  The inscriptions of {240} the last centuries
-before our era show nothing like the consensus of feeling in an
-Egyptian cemetery or a modern English graveyard.  The soul is piously
-committed to the ether, or, if there be rewards in the realm below, is
-confided to Persephonê; or it is reverently placed among the stars, in
-the councils of the immortals, or in the home of the gods.  Such were
-the popular conventions.  Philosophical speculation gathered round the
-idea of transmigration, or pleaded for at least a continuance of
-consciousness till the great conflagration which should end the world;
-while Orphic religion held out the hope that the soul, entangled in
-this earthly scene, might after long discipline rise once more to its
-home with God.
-
-The theories of continuance all assume that the world will go upon its
-usual way.  Generation will follow generation in this life, but the
-lower culture does not ask what will happen in the next.  It cannot
-take big time-surveys, like the Egyptian "millions of years" or the
-Hebrew "ages of ages."  The future will be like the present, as the
-present has been like the past.  Imagination can conceive a beginning,
-it does not at first advance to an end.  But the development of
-astronomy in Babylonia, with the discovery of regular periodicities in
-Nature, seems to have suggested the idea of a great World-Year, an
-immense period beginning with creation, which would be brought to an
-end by some {241} great catastrophe such as flood or fire.  The flood
-had already taken place.  Traditions of it floated to India and Greece;
-they were incorporated in ancient Hebrew story.  After another immense
-revolution of time would there be a similar close?  There is some
-evidence that this was part of Babylonian teaching in the days of
-Berosus, in the middle of the third century B.C. (p. 39), but it has
-not yet been discovered in the ancient cuneiform texts.  The next
-agency of dissolution would be heat.  It was part of early Buddhist
-speculation, and lodged itself in Indian thought; and from the days of
-Pythagoras, in the sixth century B.C., it formed part of the Greek
-philosophical outlook in different schools towards the "last things."
-When the next periodic destruction took place, what would happen?
-According to one answer the restoration of all things would set in, and
-the entire cycle would be repeated over again.  Eudemus, a pupil of
-Aristotle, is said to have observed in one of his lectures that if the
-Pythagoreans were to be trusted, his audience would have the privilege
-of hearing him again: "You will be sitting there in the same way, and I
-shall be telling you my story, holding my little stick, and everything
-else will go on the same."
-
-This mechanical reproduction of a whole previous age down to its
-minutest details did not, however, really engage the higher Greek
-thought.  That was chiefly occupied with the {242} abiding contrast
-between that which is and that which _appears_; how could the ultimate
-Unity present itself in such infinite diversity? what was the relation
-of the world of change and succession to the enduring substance that
-lay behind?  In such questions man and his destiny had but a small
-share.  Pindar might sing how "God accomplisheth all ends according to
-his wish; God who overtaketh the winged eagle and outstrippeth the
-dolphin of the sea, and layeth low many a mortal in his haughtiness,
-while to others he giveth glory unspeakable: if any man expect that in
-doing ought he shall be unseen of God, he erreth."  The tragedians
-might wrestle with dark problems of crime and fate; and poetry and
-philosophy might agree in presenting the world as the scene of a divine
-thought, the manifestation of a divine energy.  Regularities, fixities,
-invariable successions, pointed to a definite order, divinely
-maintained.  But to what did it lead?  What place was there in it for
-man?  His future might be moralised; the unethical Hades of Homer might
-be replaced by the judgment-scenes of Plato; but no world-process is
-suggested for the elimination of evil or the fulfilment of any divine
-end.  Plato might throw out the hint that Delphi should become the
-interpreter of religion to all mankind; the mysteries might be opened
-to slave as well as freeman, and might even admit those who were not of
-Hellenic race; but there were no prophet's {243} glimpses of a purpose
-leading to some all-embracing goal.  Zeus orders all as he wills.
-Individuals are punished, but the misdeeds, like the sufferings or
-sorrows of man, are lost in the harmonious majesty of the Whole.
-
-Indian thought, as has been already indicated, worked out a complete
-identification of life with the moral order by means of the doctrine of
-the Deed (p. 217).  The scheme of transmigration took up the earlier
-ideas of the elder thinkers.  The Vedic poets had told of the land of
-Yama, who was sometimes presented as the first man to die and enter the
-heavenly world.  In one hymn he is associated with Varuna in the
-highest heaven, where the pious live from age to age, and are sometimes
-identified with the sun's rays or the stars.  There kindred were
-gathered, and warriors and poets received their reward, and the devout
-realised the object of their prayers; and Yama sat under a tree of
-goodly leaves, drinking with the gods the life-giving soma-juice,
-father and master of the house, tending the heavenly sires.  Deep below
-was the dark pit for those who would not sacrifice to Indra, or
-persecuted his worshippers.  There were fiends of various kinds to
-torment the wicked, the untruthful, or the seducer.  But there are no
-traces of any specific judgment, with definite awards of heaven and
-hell.  In the later scheme of life founded on the conception of Karma
-such a tribunal might seem unnecessary: the product of the past works
-{244} out its own result.  But as Buddhist folklore shows, popular
-theology required the pronouncement of a judge, and Yama took his place
-as Lord of hell and King of Righteousness.
-
-By what channels the doctrine of successive world-ages entered Hindu
-religion cannot be definitely determined.  Early Buddhist teaching
-assumes it as familiar, though it is not included in the prior
-Brahmanical literature; and minutely describes the great conflagration
-which will consume the universe through the heat engendered by the
-appearance of seven suns.  Karma, however, could not be destroyed.  No
-fire could burn it, nor could the other agencies of dissolution, like
-water or wind, drown or disperse it.  It must proceed unerringly to its
-results.  These might be for a time suspended, they could not be
-frustrated for ever.  Their energies lay latent, waiting their
-opportunity.  So a new world would arise to provide the means and the
-field for their operation, and from age to age, through seasons of
-dissolution and restoration, with intervals of incalculable time, the
-endless process would fulfil its round.  This would be no literal
-repetition.  The history of a new world-age would be quite fresh, for
-the potencies of Karma were of infinite variety, and were for ever
-being re-shaped, cancelled, or extended by the action of the new
-personalities--divine, human, demonic--(reincarnation might also take
-place in animal or plant)--in {245} which they were embodied.  But the
-immense series led to nothing.  Buddhist imagination filled the
-universe with worlds, each with its own systems of heaven and hell, and
-projected æons upon æons into immeasurable time, but the sequence
-pointed to no goal, for what could arrest the inexorable succession?
-Was there any escape from its law?
-
-To that question different answers were returned by different teachers.
-The forest-sages had already pleaded for the recognition of the
-identity of the self within the heart with the Universal Self (p. 60).
-There was the path by which the phenomenal scene could be transcended,
-and the soul brought into its true fellowship with the Infinite Being,
-Intelligence, and Joy.  But inasmuch as this deliverance was only
-realised by a few, and could not be self-wrought, it must be the result
-of a divine election; they only could attain it whom the Self chose as
-his own.  With its repudiation of all ontological ideas of soul, or
-substance, or universal Self, early Buddhism threw the whole task of
-achieving emancipation on the individual, who must himself win the
-higher insight and discipline his character with no aid but that of the
-Teacher and his example.  The passion for the salvation of the world
-might generate an unexampled missionary activity, transcending all
-bounds of caste and race.  It might express itself in singularly {246}
-comprehensive vows such as these, which were carried from China to
-Japan in the seventh century A.D., and are still part of Buddhist
-devotion: "There are beings without limit, let me take the vow to take
-them all unto the further shore: there are depravities without number,
-let me take the vow to extinguish them all: there are truths without
-end, let me take the vow to know them all: there is the way of Buddha
-without comparison, let me make the vow to accomplish it."  But only
-the wisdom of Amida, All-Merciful and All-Potent (p. 17), could avail
-to harmonise the issues of Karma with the operations of grace, and
-carry the world-process to the goal of universal salvation.
-
-The theologians and philosophers of India might devise various methods
-for the believer's escape from the round of re-births; but on the
-ecclesiastical side they never surmounted the practical limitation of
-nationality, or sought to address themselves to the world at large;
-while the mystics who more easily passed the bounds of race usually
-lacked the aggressive energy which demanded the conquest and
-suppression of evil and the assurance of the victory of good.  It was
-reserved for the Persian thinkers, led by Zarathustra, to work out a
-scheme for the ultimate overthrow of the power of "the Lie" (p. 211).
-Egyptian theology had impersonated the forces of evil in Set.  There
-were the constant oppositions of darkness {247} and light, of sickness
-and health, of the desert against fertility, of drought against the
-Nile, of foreign lands against Egypt.  Mythically, the antagonism
-between Set and his brother Osiris was continued by Isis' son Horus.
-It was renewed again and again, and Set was for ever defeated, yet
-always returned afresh to the strife.  But no demand was raised for his
-elimination.  Osiris had passed into the land of Amenti, where Set
-could trouble him no more.  And apparently the later identification of
-the deceased with Osiris meant that for him, too, the powers of death
-and evil were overcome.  But this did not affect Set's activity in the
-existing scene, where the strife continued over the survivors day by
-day.  The insight of the Iranian prophet could not admit this division
-of spheres, and demanded not only new heavens, but also a new earth,
-where evil should have no more power, and the Righteous Order, the Good
-Mind, the Bounteous Spirit, and the rest of the Immortals, should be
-the unchallenged ministers of Ahura's rule.
-
-The history of the world, accordingly, was ultimately arranged in four
-periods of three thousand years each.  The life of Zarathustra closed
-the third.  At the end of the fourth the great era of the
-_Frasho-kereti_, the entry into a new age and a new scene, would
-arrive.  It would be preceded at the close of each millennial series by
-the advent of a deliverer, wondrously born of Zarathustra's seed.
-During {248} the third of these, the last of the whole twelve, the
-ancient serpent would be loosed to ravage Ahura Mazda's good creation.
-But the _Saoshyant_ or "Saviour," the greatest of the three successors
-of the prophet, would bring about the general resurrection.  From the
-Home of Song and from the hells of evil thought and word and deed the
-spirits of the dead would resume their bodies.  Families would be
-reunited in preparation for the last purifying pain.  For a mighty
-conflagration would take place; the mountains would be dissolved with
-fervent heat, and the whole multitude of the human race would be
-overflowed by the molten metal for three days.  The righteous would
-pass through it like a bath of milk; the evil would be purged of the
-last impulses to sin.  Saoshyant and his helpers would dispense the
-drink of immortality, and the final conflict with the powers of evil
-would begin.  Añra Mainyu, the great Serpent, with all their satellites
-and the multitude of the demonic hosts, should be finally driven into
-hell and consumed in the cleansing flame; and hell itself should be
-"brought back for the enlargement of the world."
-
-The Iranian Apocalypse is not the only presentation of conflict and
-victory in the widespread Indo-Germanic group.  The Old Teutonic
-religion produced its Volospa, the seer's high song of creation and the
-overthrow of evil.  Here is in brief the story of the {249} great
-world-drama, the degeneracy of man, the conflicts of the gods.  The
-universe slowly surges to its end; there are portents in the sky,
-disorders on the earth, till the whole frame of things dissolves and
-all goes up in flame.  But a new vision dawns: "I behold earth rise
-again with its evergreen forests out of the deep; the fields shall
-yield unsown; all evil shall be amended; Balder shall come back.  I see
-a hall, brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, standing on Gem-lea.
-The righteous shall dwell therein and live in bliss for ever.  The
-Powerful One comes to hold high judgment, the Mighty One from above who
-rules over all, and the dark dragon who flies over the earth with
-corpses on his wings is driven from the scene and slinks away."  There
-are possibly Christian touches here and there, but the substantial
-independence of the poet seems assured.
-
-Above the theories of world-continuance and world-cycles must be ranked
-those of a world-goal, which imply more or less clearly the conception
-of a world-purpose.  The supreme expression of this in religious
-literature is found in the Christian Bible.  The prophecy of
-Zarathustra belonged to the same high ethical order as that of Israel.
-How much the Apocalyptic hopes of the later Judaism were stimulated by
-contact with Persian thought cannot be precisely defined: the estimates
-of careful scholars differ.  But there is no doubt whatever of the
-dependence {250} of Christianity upon Jewish Messianic expectation.
-The title of its founder, Christ, is the Greek equivalent of the Jewish
-term Messiah, or "Anointed."  Its pictures of human destiny, of
-resurrection, of judgment, of one world where the righteous shine like
-the sun, and another full of fire that is not quenched, are pictures
-drawn by Jewish hands.  Its promises of the Advent of the Son of Man in
-clouds of glory from the sky, who shall summon the nations to his great
-assize, are couched in the language of earlier Jewish books.  For one
-religion builds upon another, and must use the speech of its country
-and its time.  Its forms must, therefore, necessarily change from age
-to age, as the advance of knowledge and the widening of experience
-suggest new problems and call for fresh solutions.  But it will always
-embody man's highest thought concerning the mysteries that surround
-him, and will express his finest attitude to life.  Its beliefs may be
-gradually modified; its specific institutions may lose their power; but
-history shows it to be among the most permanent of social forces, and
-the most effective agent for the slow elevation of the race.
-
-
-
-
-{251}
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
-Out of the immense literature produced since Max Müller's _Essay on
-Comparative Mythology_ (1856) only a small number of the most important
-books can be here named, and the list is limited to works in English.
-Superior figures attached to titles indicate the edition.
-[Transcriber's note: the superscripted edition numbers have been
-replaced with the edition in brackets.]
-
-GENERAL INTRODUCTION.--Tylor, _Primitive Culture_ (4th ed.) (2 vols.
-1903); Max Müller, _Introd. to the Science of Religion_ (1873),
-_Hibbert Lectures_ (1878), _Gifford Lectures_ (4 vols. 1889-93); W.
-Robertson Smith, _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_ (2nd ed.)
-(1902); J. G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (3rd editioin) (now in course
-of publication); A. Lang, _Myth, Ritual and Religion_ (2nd ed.) (2
-vols. 1899), _The Making of Religion_ (2nd ed.) (1900), _Magic and
-Religion_ (1901); Goblet d'Alviella, _Origin and Growth of the
-Conception of God_ (Hibbert Lectures, 1892); Tiele, _Elements of the
-Science of Religion_ (2 vols. 1897); F. B. Jevons, _Introduction to the
-History of Religion_ (2nd ed.) (1902); Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_
-(1902), _The Tree of Life_ (1905); Farnell, _The Evolution of Religion_
-(1905); Westermaarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_
-(1906), 2 vols.; Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_ (1906), 2 vols.;
-Marett, _The Threshold of Religion_ (1909).
-
-RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE.--Ratzel, _The History of Mankind_, tr.
-Butler (1896), 3 vols.; Turner, _Samoa_ (1884); Codrington,
-_Melanesians_ (1891); A. B. Ellis, _Ewe-speaking Peoples_ (1890);
-_Yoruba-speaking Peoples_ (1894); _Tshi-speaking Peoples_ (1897);
-Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India_ (2 vols.
-1896); Miss M. H. Kingsley, _Travels in West Africa_ (1898), _West
-African Studies_ (1899); Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central
-Australia_ (1899), _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_ (1904);
-Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-eastern Australia_ (1904); Dennett, _At
-the Back of the Black Man's Mind_ (1906); Roscoe, _The Baganda, their
-Customs and Beliefs_ (1911); Brinton, _Myths of the New World_ (2nd
-ed.) (1878); McClintock, _The Old North Trail_ (1910); _Reports of the
-Bureau of Ethnology_, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
-
-{252}
-
-For the higher religions a few of the best English introductions are
-here named, in addition to the copious collection of materials in the
-_Sacred Books of the East_ (50 vols.).
-
-BABYLONIA: Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1887), _Religions of Ancient
-Egypt and Babylonia_ (1902); Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and
-Assyria_ (1898), _American Lectures_.
-
-CELTS: Rhys, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1886); Macculloch, _The Religion of
-the Ancient Celts_ (1911).
-
-CHINA: Legge, _Chinese Classics_ (2nd ed.) (1893), 5 vols. (in 8
-parts); de Groot, _The Religious System of China_ (1892-1910), 6 vols.:
-already published, _The Religion of the Chinese_ (1910).
-
-CHRISTIANITY (primitive): Wernle, _Beginnings of Christianity_ (1903),
-2 vols.; Pfleiderer, _Primitive Christianity_ (1906), 4 vols.  Fuller
-bibliography in _Encycl. Brit._, (11th ed.) by G. W. Knox.
-
-EGYPT: Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1879); Maspero, _The Dawn of
-Civilisation_ (1894); Sayce, _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_
-(1902); Erman, _Handbook of Egyptian Religion_ (1907); Budge, _Osiris
-and the Egyptian Resurrection_ (1911), 2 vols.
-
-GREECE: Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ (1896-1909), 5 vols.,
-_Greece and Babylon_ (1911), _Higher Aspects of Greek Religion_ (1912);
-Miss J. E. Harrison, _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_
-(1903), _Themis_ (1912); Sir W. M. Ramsay, in Hastings' _Dict. of the
-Bible_, extra vol. (1904), "Religion of Greece and Asia Minor."
-
-INDIA: Barth, _Religions of India_ (1882); Hopkins, _Religions of
-India_ (1895).  VEDIC: Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_ (1897) in Bühler's
-_Grundriss_; Bloomfield, _Religion of the Veda_ (1909).  For BUDDHISM,
-_see_ Mrs. Rhys Davids' vol. in this series.  HINDUISM: Monieu
-Williams, _Religious Thought and Life in India_ (1883).
-
-ISRAEL:  Kuenen, _Religion of Israel_ (1874), 3 vols.; Montefiore,
-_Hibbert Lectures_ (1892); Kautzsch, in Hastings' _Dict. of the Bible_,
-extra vol. (1904), "Religion of Israel."  Kent, _Hist. of the Hebrew
-People_, 2 vols. (1890-7); _Hist. of the Jewish People_ (1899); Addis,
-_Hebrew Religion_ (1906); Marti, _Religion of the Old Testament_ (1907).
-
-JAINS: Jacobi in _Sacred Books of the East_, vols. xxii (1884) and xlv
-(1895); Bühler, _On the Indian Sect of the Jainas_ (1904).
-
-JAPAN: _The Nihongi_, tr. Aston (1896), 2 vols.; Aston, _Shinto_
-(1905); papers in the _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_;
-Griffis, _The Religions of Japan_ (4th ed.) (1904, New York); Knox,
-_Development of Religion in Japan_ (1907); Tada Kanai, _The Praises of
-Amida_, tr. Lloyd (1907, Tokyo).
-
-{253}
-
-MEXICO AND PERU: Reville, _Hibbert Lectures_ (1884); Payne, _History of
-the New World called America_ (1892), 2 vols.
-
-MOHAMMEDANISM: see Prof. Margoliouth's vol. in this series.
-
-PERSIA: Jackson, _Zoroaster, the Prophet of ancient Iran_ (1899);
-Sanjana, _Zarathushtra and Zarathushtrianism in the Avesta_ (1906,
-Leipzig); Moulton, _Early Religious Poetry of Persia_ (1911).
-
-ROME: W. Warde Fowler, _The Roman Festivals_, 1899, _The Religious
-Experience of the Roman People_ (1911); Glover, _Studies in Virgil_,
-1904; Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_ (1904);
-Carter, _The Religion of Numa_ (1906), _The Religious Life of Ancient
-Rome_ (1912); Cumont, _Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism_ (1911),
-_Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans_ (1912).
-
-SIKHS: Macauliffe, _The Sikh Religion_ (1909), 6 vols.
-
-TEUTONS: Vigfusson and Powell, _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (1883), 2
-vols.; Grimm, tr. Stallybrass, _Teutonic Mythology_ (1900), 4 vols.;
-Chantepie de la Saussaye, _Religion of the Teutons_ (1902).
-
-Small popular volumes in the series on "Non-Christian Religious
-Systems" (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), and more recently in
-Constable's series, "Religions Ancient and Modern."  Valuable articles
-in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, and in
-_Encyclopædia Britannica_.
-
-
-
-
-  {253}
-
-  INDEX
-
-
-  [=A]di-Granth, the, 188
-  Aditi, 155
-  Adonis, 119
-  Æschylus, 130
-  Æsculapius, 44, 127, 180, 221
-  Africa, 111, 113 f., 140, 148, 163, 182, 203
-  Agni, 34, 94
-  Ahriman (Añra Mainyu), 155, 212, 248
-  Ahura Mazda, 131, 211 f., 248
-  Aius Locutius, 126
-  Akhnaton, 129
-  "All-gods," the, 129
-  American Indians, North, 57, 81, 110, 173, 235
-  Amida (Amitâbha), 16 ff., 132, 246
-  Animism, 55, 59
-  Annam, 83
-  Apollo, 123, 127, 145, 159, 173, 181, 183
-  Artemis, 127
-  Asceticism, 168
-  Asha, 216, 221
-  Asista, 148
-  Athena, 123, 127, 173
-  Athens, 228
-  Attis, 119
-  Augury, 178
-  Augustine, St., 35, 42, 52
-  Augustus, 125
-  Australia, 33, 75, 78 f., 86, 110, 114 f., 149, 162, 171, 199, 202
-  Avalokiteçvara, 131, 154
-  Awona-wilona, 111
-
-
-  Bab, the, 70, 188
-  Babylonia, 39, 58, 102, 109, 145, 151, 171, 178, 205, 209, 237, 240
-  Baiame, 149, 171
-  Balder, 210, 249
-  Baptism, rites of, 160
-  Berosus, 39, 241
-  Bhagavad-G[=i]t[=a], the, 128
-  Bhakti, 157
-  Bible, the, 194
-  Birth, deities and rites of, 121, 159
-  Blackfoot Indians, the, 35, 167
-  Book of the Dead, the, 186
-  Brahma, 60, 156
-  Brahm[=a], 60, 62, 129, 158
-  Br[=a]hmanas, the, 189, 217
-  Brahmanaspati, 156
-  Brahmanical sacrifice, 143
-  Brahmanism, 24, 128
-  Buddha, the future, 159.  Cp. Gotama
-  Buddhism, 15, 24, 61, 65, 131, 153, 155, 219, 241, 244 f.
-  Buddhist Scriptures, 190
-  Bjunjil, 171
-
-
-  Celts, the, 27, 41, 104, 142, 231
-  Chemosh, 107
-  China, 58, 63, 65, 68, 87, 90, 95, 125, 150, 178, 214, 231
-  Chinese Classics, 187
-  Christianity, 187, 225, 250
-  Chrysippus, 184
-  Cicero, 42, 46
-  Çiva, 62, 128 f.
-  Classification of religions, 220
-  Clement of Alexandria, 50 f.
-  Confucius, 27 f., 63, 96
-  Corea, 66
-  Creation-myths, 110
-  Cybelê, 40
-
-
-  Dahomey, 138
-  Dance, the sacred, 166
-  Daramulun, 162, 171
-  Dead, cultus of the, 20, 90, 137 ff.
-  Death, 121
-  Delphi, 182, 221, 242
-  Demeter, 40, 119, 164
-  Deng-deet, 148
-  Dionysos, 40, 119, 127, 147
-  Divination, 178
-  Dreams, 86, 179, 229
-  Druzes, the, 188
-
-
-  Ea, 113, 172
-  Earth, mother, 59, 95, 97, 173
-  Eating the god, 146
-  Edda, the, 27, 186
-  Egypt, 7, 39, 46, 102, 109, 113, 124, 129, 151 f., 171 f., 209,
-      213, 227, 237 f., 246
-  Eleusinian Mysteries, 164, 239
-  Entheos, 147
-  Erinnyes, the, 238
-  Eskimo, the, 228 f., 233
-  Etruscans, the, 178, 229
-  Euahlayi, the, 149
-  Euripides, 48, 151
-  Eusebius, 39, 52
-
-
-  Fijians, the, 197, 233
-  Finnic peoples, the, 104, 231
-  First-borns sacrificed, 142
-  Florida, 236
-  Food-deities, 115 ff.
-
-
-  Gabriel, 131
-  G[=a]th[=a]s, the, 191, 221
-  Genius, the, 123
-  Gold Coast negroes, 107, 138, 144, 197
-  Gotama, 15, 127, 219
-  Greece, 37, 90, 121 f., 145, 161
-
-
-  Hades, 238
-  Hammurabi, 172
-  Heaven and Earth, 63, 94 ff., 213 ff.
-  Hebrews, the, 140.  _See_ Israel.
-  Heracleides, 184
-  Heracleitus, 48, 50
-  Herbert, Lord, 31
-  Hermes, 9 f., 181
-  Herodotus, 26, 38, 238
-  Hesiod, 182, 186, 213
-  Hestia, 122
-  Hierography, Hierology, Hierosophy, 29 f.
-  Hinduism, 62
-  Hirata, 92 f., 135
-  Homer, 181 f., 186, 238, 242
-  Homeric Hymn, 164
-  Huitzilopochtli, 147
-
-
-  Incubation, 180
-  India, 58, 90, 127, 139, 141
-  Indra, 34, 155, 177
-  Initiation ceremonies, 161 ff.
-  Irish sacrificed first-borns, 142
-  Isis, 39 ff., 51, 109, 127, 165
-  Islam.  _See_ Mohammedanism.
-  Israel, 201, 222, 230, 237, 249
-
-
-  Jacob, 168
-  Jains, the, 61, 188
-  Japan, 63, 66, 91, 125, 135, 138 f., 152, 246
-  Jephthah, 107
-  Jeremiah, 182
-  Jews, the, 39, 58.  _See_ Israel.
-  Judaism, 187, 223, 249
-  Judgment after death, 7 ff., 233 ff.
-  Jumala, 105
-  Juno, 145
-  Jupiter, 35, 109, 130, 145
-  Justin the Martyr, 49
-
-
-  Kabir, 157, 188
-  Kalevala, the, 27, 57, 186
-  Kami, the, 64, 91 ff., 135
-  Karma, 60, 217, 219, 243 ff.
-  Kings, as divine, 124
-  Koran, the, 13, 69, 155, 187, 192 f.
-  Krishna, 128
-  Kwan-yin, 132, 154
-
-
-  Lao-Tsze, 64, 214 f.
-  Lares, the, 123
-  Lesa, 140
-  Lessing, 22
-  Lî Chî, the, 150
-  Life after Death, 226 ff.
-  Life, in the universe, 83
-  Logos, the, 47 f., 50, 53
-  Loki, 210
-  Lot, the, 178
-  Lucretius, 42, 44
-  Lycurgus, 173
-
-
-  Ma[=a]t, 214
-  Magic, 75 ff., 120, 142, 148, 154
-  Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata, the, 190
-  Mama Ogllo, 174
-  Mana, 80, 85, 200
-  Manco Capac, 174
-  Manetho, 39
-  Manitou, 81
-  Manu, 190
-  Marcian Songs, 184
-  Marduk, 113, 140
-  Mawu, 198
-  Melanesia, 139, 164
-  Messiah, the, 250
-  Mêtis, 176
-  Mexico, 57, 117, 147, 161, 232, 234
-  Michabo, 173
-  Michael, 7, 9 f., 131
-  Migration, 229
-  Minerva, 109, 145
-  Minos, 44, 173
-  Minucius Felix, 49
-  Mithra, 9, 52, 166, 236
-  Mitra, 34, 155
-  Mohammed, 12 f., 67 f., 187, 193
-  Mohammedanism, 24, 26, 58, 63, 67, 155
-  Morality, 135, 195 ff.
-  Moses, 222
-  "Mothers," 104
-  Motowori, 92
-  Mulungu, 82
-  Musæus, 181, 183
-  Muses, the, 181
-  Mysteries, 51, 164 ff., 239
-  Mythology, 174 ff.
-
-
-  N[=a]nak, 62
-  New Zealand, 232
-  Nezahuatl, 130
-  Niger, tribes of Lower, 150, 198, 231
-  Noah's sacrifice, 141
-  Norns, the, 161
-  Numa, 44 f., 173
-  Nurrundere, 171
-  Nyongmo, 113
-
-
-  Oannes, 171
-  Odin, 181, 210
-  Omophagy, 147
-  Onomacritus, 183
-  Oracles, 182 ff.
-  Ordeals, 179
-  Orenda, 81
-  Orpheus, 181
-  Orphism, 147, 165, 239 f.
-  Osiris, 8, 109, 119, 172, 209, 237, 247
-
-
-  P[=a]chac[=a]mac, 152
-  Pan, 44, 153
-  "Parasites," 145
-  Parsees, the, 58
-  Pausanias, 41, 53
-  Penates, 123, 145
-  Persephonê, 40, 119, 240
-  Peru, 57, 108, 117, 174
-  Petronius Arbiter, 22
-  Pindar, 44, 48, 153, 213, 239, 242
-  Plato, 38, 45 f., 48 f., 133, 178, 182, 239, 242
-  Plutarch, 41, 44
-  Polydæmonistic religions, 55
-  Polynesia, 112, 164
-  Praj[=a]pati, 12, 143 f.
-  Prayer, 35, 133, 148 ff.
-  Prometheus, 137
-  Pythagoras, 38
-  Pythagoreans, 220, 239 f.
-
-
-  Quetzalcoatl, 173
-
-
-  Rain-making, 54
-  Rameses, 108
-  Rashnu, 9, 236
-  Religio, 42
-  Rig Veda, 10 f., 59.  _See_ Veda.
-  Rita, 216
-  Rites of passage, 159
-  Roman emperor, 124
-  Rome, 41, 52, 90, 109, 123, 131, 145, 161, 178, 201
-
-
-  Sabazius, 165
-  Sacred Books, 185 ff.
-  Sacrifice, 133, 136 ff.
-  Samuel, 161
-  Saoshyant, 248
-  Sarapis, 39, 146
-  Sâtân, the, 223
-  Scandinavia, 209, 229
-  Scape-goat, in Israel, 206
-  Schleiermacher, 23
-  Scriptures, 189 ff.
-  Self, doctrine of the, 85 ff.
-  Self, the Universal, 60, 245
-  Semites, the, 142
-  Set, 209
-  Shamash, 151, 172
-  Shang Tî, 97, 100
-  Sheol, 230
-  Shin, the, 95, 100
-  Shinto, 63, 91, 135, 187, 207
-  Sibylline books, 184
-  S[=i]khs, the, 62, 188
-  Sin, communicable and removable, 204 ff.
-  Sin (moon-god), 151
-  Snake-dance, 167
-  Socrates, 50, 133, 153
-  Sophocles, 44
-  Sotêr (saviour, etc.), 124 f., 127
-  Spirits, 54, 102
-  Stars, the dead as, 231, 240, 243
-  Stoics, the, 178
-  S[=u]fiism, 70
-  Sun-dance, 34, 167
-  Syrians, the, 142
-
-
-  Taaroa, 112
-  Taboo, 200 ff.
-  Tammuz, 119
-  Tao, the, 215
-  Taoism, 65, 67, 187
-  Tertullian, 51, 124
-  Tezcatlipoca, 147
-  Thales, 37, 213
-  Thargelia, the, 206
-  Themis, 118, 213
-  Thor, 210
-  Thoth, 8, 152
-  Tibet, 66
-  Time, 143
-  Todas, the, 33, 148
-  Totemism, 55
-  Transmigration, 61, 218
-  Triads, 109
-  Trimurti, 129
-  Truth, goddesses of, 8
-  Tutanus Rediculus, 126
-
-
-  Ukko, 105
-  Universal Religions, 70
-
-
-  Valhalla, 235
-  Varro, 42
-  Varuna, 34, 106, 151, 155 f., 211, 243
-  Veda, the, 136, 142, 151, 155, 163, 177, 189, 205, 215, 243
-  Vegetation-gods, 118 ff.
-  Vesta, 122 f.
-  Vishnu, 62, 128 f., 158, 190
-  Volospa, the, 186, 248
-  Votan, 174
-  Vows, 168
-
-
-  Wäinamöinen, 181, 232
-  Wakanda, 81
-  World-year, 240
-
-
-  Xavier, Francis, 86
-
-
-  Yahweh, 107, 144, 161, 168, 222
-  Yama, 121, 243 f.
-  Yang and Yin, 95, 120 f.
-
-
-  Zaleucus, 44, 173
-  Zarathustra (Zoroaster), 38, 44, 58, 131, 163, 187, 201, 221, 246 f.
-  Zend Avesta, the, 187, 191 f., 211
-  Zeus, 103, 106, 109, 127, 153, 173, 176, 181, 213, 238, 243
-  Zi (Babylonian), 102
-  Zuñis, the, 83, 111
-
-
-
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