The Making of Religion Part 22

Beyond all doubt, savages who find themselves under the watchful eye of a moral deity whom they cannot 'square' will desert him as soon as they have evolved a practicable ghost-G.o.d, useful for family purposes, whom they _can_ square. No less manifestly, savages, who already possess a throng of serviceable ghost-G.o.ds, will not enthusiastically evolve a moral Being who despises gifts, and only cares for obedience. 'There is a great deal of human nature in man,' and, if Mr. Im Thurn's description of the Guianese be correct, everything we know of human nature, and of evolution, a.s.sures us that the Father, or Maker, or Ancient of Days came first; the ghost-G.o.ds, last. What has here been said about the Indians of Guiana (namely, that they are now more ghost and spirit wors.h.i.+ppers, with only a name surviving to attest a knowledge of a Father and Maker in Heaven) applies equally well to the Zulus. The Zulus are the great standing type of an animistic or ghost-wors.h.i.+pping race without a G.o.d. But, had they a G.o.d (on the Australian pattern) whom they have forgotten, or have they not yet evolved a G.o.d out of Animism?

The evidence, collected by Dr. Callaway, is honest, but confused. One native, among others, put forward the very theory here proposed by us as an alternative to that of Mr. Im Thurn. 'Unkulunkulu' (the idealised but despised First Ancestor) 'was not wors.h.i.+pped [by men]. For it is not wors.h.i.+p when people see things, as rain, or food, or corn, and say, "Yes, these things were made by Unkulunkulu.... Afterwards they [men]

had power to change those things, that they might become the Amatongos"

[might belong to the ancestral spirits]. _They took them away from Unkulunkulu_.'[34]

Animism supplanted Theism. Nothing could be more explicit. But, though we have found an authentic Zulu text to suit our provisional theory, the most eminent philosophical example must not reduce us into supposing that this text settles the question. Dr. Callaway collected great ma.s.ses of Zulu answers to his inquiries, and it is plain that a respondent, like the native theologian whom we have cited, may have adapted his reply to what he had learned of Christian doctrine. Having now the Christian notion of a Divine Creator, and knowing, too, that the unwors.h.i.+pped Unkulunkulu is said to have 'made things,' while only ancestral spirits, are wors.h.i.+pped, the native may have inferred that wors.h.i.+p (by Christians given to the Creator) was at some time transferred by the Zulus from Unkulunkulu to the Amatongo. The truth is that both the anthropological theory (spirits first, G.o.ds last), and our theory (Supreme Being first, spirits next) can find warrant in Dr. Callaway's valuable collections. For that reason, the problem must be solved after a survey of the whole field of savage and barbaric religion; it cannot be settled by the ambiguous case of the Zulus alone.

Unkulunkulu is represented as 'the First Man, who broke off in the beginning.' 'They are ancestor-wors.h.i.+ppers,' says Dr. Callaway, 'and believe that their first ancestor, the First Man, was the Creator.'[35]

But they may, like many other peoples, have had a different original tradition, and have altered it, just because they are now such fervent ancestor-wors.h.i.+ppers. Unkulunkulu was prior to Death, which came among men in the usual mythical way.[36] Whether Unkulunkulu still exists, is rather a moot question: Dr. Callaway thinks that he does not.[37] If not, he is an exception to the rule in Australia, Andaman, among the Bushmen, the Fuegians, and savages in general, who are less advanced in culture than the Zulus. The idea, then, of a Maker of things who has ceased to exist occurs, if at all, not in a relatively primitive, but in a relatively late religion. On the a.n.a.logy of pottery, agriculture, the use of iron, villages, hereditary kings, and so on, the notion of a dead Maker is late, not early. It occurs where men have iron, cattle, agriculture, kings, houses, a disciplined army, _not_ where men have none of these things. The Zulu G.o.dless ancestor-wors.h.i.+p, then, by parity of reasoning, is, like their material culture, not an early but a late development. The Zulus 'hear of a King which is above'--'the heavenly King.'[38] 'We did not hear of him first from white men.... But he is not like Unkulunkulu, who, we say, made all things.'

Here may be dimly descried the ideas of a G.o.d, and a subordinate demiurge.

'The King is above, Unkulunkulu is beneath.' The King above punishes sin, striking the sinner by lightning. Nor do the Zulus know how they have sinned. 'There remained only that word about the heaven,' 'which,' says Dr. Callaway, 'implies that there might have been other words which are now lost.' There is great confusion of thought. Unkulunkulu made the heaven, where the unknown King reigns, a hard task for a First Man.[39]

'In process of time we have come to wors.h.i.+p the Amadhlozi (spirits) only, because we know not what to say about Unkulunkulu.'[40] 'It is on that account, then, that we seek out for ourselves the Amadhlozi (spirits), that we may not always be thinking about Unkulunkulu.'

All this attests a faint lingering shadow of a belief too ethereal, too remote, for a practical conquering race, which prefers intelligible serviceable ghosts, with a special regard for their own families.

Ukoto, a very old Zulu, said: 'When we were children it was said "The Lord is in heaven." ... They used to point to the Lord on high; we did not hear his name.' Unkulunkulu was understood, by this patriarch, to refer to immediate ancestors, whose mimes and genealogies he gave.[41] 'We heard it said that the Creator of the world was the Lord who is above; people used always, when I was growing up, to point towards heaven.'

A very old woman was most reluctant to speak of Unkulunkulu; at last she said, 'Ah, it is he in fact who is the Creator, who is in heaven, of whom the ancients spoke.' Then the old woman began to babble humorously of how the white men made all things. Again, Unkulunkulu is said to have been created by Utilexo. Utilexo was invisible, Unkulunkulu was visible, and so got credit not really his due.[42] When the heaven is said to be the Chief's (the chief being a living Zulu) 'they do not believe what they say,' the phrase is a mere hyperbolical compliment.[43]

On this examination of the evidence, it certainly seems as logical to conjecture that the Zulus had once such an idea of a Supreme Being as lower races entertain, and then nearly lost it; as to say that Zulus, though a monarchical race, have not yet developed a King-G.o.d out of the throng of spirits (Amatongo). The Zulus, the Nors.e.m.e.n of the South, so to speak, are a highly practical military race. A Deity at all abstract was not to their liking. Serviceable family spirits, who continually provided an excuse for a dinner of roast beef, were to their liking. The less developed races do not kill their flocks commonly for food. A sacrifice is needed as a pretext. To the G.o.ds of Andamanese, Bushmen, Australians, no sacrifice is offered. To the Supreme Being of most African peoples no sacrifice is offered. There is no festivity in the wors.h.i.+p of these Supreme Beings, no feasting, at all events. They are not to be 'got at' by gifts or sacrifices. The Amatongo are to be 'got at,' are bribable, supply an excuse for a good dinner, and thus the practical Amatongo are honoured, while, in the present generation of Zulus, Unkulunkulu is a joke, and the Lord in Heaven is the shadow of a name. Clearly this does not point to the recent but to the remote development of the higher ideas, now superseded by spirit-wors.h.i.+p.

We shall next see how this view, the opposite of the anthropological theory, works when applied to other races, especially to other African races.

[Footnote 1: When I wrote _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_ (ii. 11-13) I regarded Cagn as 'only a successful and idealised medicine man.' But I now think that I confused in my mind the religious and the mythological aspects of Cagn. One of unknown origin, existing before the sun, a Maker of all things, prayed to, but not in receipt of sacrifice, is no medicine man, except in his myth.]

[Footnote 2: The omissions in Mr. Spencer's system may possibly be explained by the circ.u.mstance that, as he tells us, he collected his facts 'by proxy.' While we find Waitz much interested in and amazed by the benevolent Supreme Being of many African tribes, that personage is only alluded to as 'Alleged Benevolent Supreme Being' in Mr. Spencer's _Descriptive Sociology_, and is usually left out of sight altogether in his _Principles of Sociology_ and _Ecclesiastical Inst.i.tutions_. Yet we have precisely the same kind of evidence of observers for this 'alleged'

benevolent Supreme Being as we have for the _canaille_ of ghosts and fetishes. If he is a deity of a rather lofty moral conception, of course he need not be propitiated by human sacrifices or cold chickens. _That_ kind of material evidence to the faith in him must be absent by the nature of the case; but the coincident testimony of travellers to belief in a Supreme Being cannot be dismissed as 'alleged.']

[Footnote 3: Pp. 676, 677.]

[Footnote 4: Man, _J.A.I_. xii. 70.]

[Footnote 5: Man, _J.A.I_. xii. 96-98.]

[Footnote 6: xii. 156, 157.]

[Footnote 7: xii. 112.]

[Footnote 8: xii. 158.]

[Footnote 9: xii. 158.]

[Footnote 10: _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 281-288.]

[Footnote 11: Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, 133.]

[Footnote 12: _J.A.I_. x. 263.]

[Footnote 13: _J.A.I_. 267.]

[Footnote 14: _J.A.I_. x. 267.]

[Footnote 15: P. 281. This is a _nunuai_ with which I am familiar. Flying fish, in Banks Island, take the _role_ of salmon. The natives think it real, but without form or substance.]

[Footnote 16: Codrington, _Melanesia_, p. 122.]

[Footnote 17: _J.A.I_. x. 294.]

[Footnote 18: Op. cit. x. 313.]

[Footnote 19: _J.A.I_. x. 300.]

[Footnote 20: Williams's _Fiji_, p. 218. See Mr. Thomson's remarks cited later.]

[Footnote 21: _Fiji_, p. 217.]

[Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 228.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid. p. 230.]

[Footnote 24: _J.A.I_. xiv. 30.]

[Footnote 25: _J.A.I_. xi. 361-366.]

[Footnote 26: Ibid. xi. 374.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid. xi. 376.]

[Footnote 28: Ibid. xi. 376]

[Footnote 29: _J.A.I_. xi. 378.]

[Footnote 30: Ibid. 382.]

[Footnote 31: _Prim. Cult_. ii. 360.]

[Footnote 32: Conceivably, however, the Guiana spirits who have so much moral influence, exert it by magical charms. 'The belief in the power of charms for good or evil produces not only honesty, but a great amount of gentle dealing,' says Livingstone, of the Africans. However they work, the spirits work for righteousness.]

[Footnote 33: Obviously there could be no Family G.o.d before there was the inst.i.tution of the Family.]

[Footnote 34: Callaway, _Rel. of Amazulu_, p. 17.]

[Footnote 35: Callaway, p. 1.]

[Footnote 36: Op. cit. p. 8.]

[Footnote 37: Op. cit. p. 7.]