The Faith of the Millions Part 10

Besides this, it must be allowed that together with the _normal_ phenomena of dreaming, there are abnormal dreams which even to cultivated minds seem at times as supernormal as second-sight or prophecy. But it is not on supernormal, but on normal dreams that animists base their explanation. We need not deny that dreams and delirium may have given palpable shape to the conception of a ghost, and may also have helped forward the notion of a spirit by furnis.h.i.+ng something intermediary between the grossness of our waking sense-experiences, and the altogether elusive and difficult thought of unembodied will and intelligence independent of s.p.a.ce and time.

In the main then it seems more plausible to maintain that the idea of unembodied or disembodied spirits was shaped by that instinctive law of our mind which makes us argue from the nature of effects to the nature of the agency. The first impulse would be to ascribe every intelligent effect to some human agency, but other circ.u.mstances would subsequently incline the savage reluctantly to divest the agent of one or more of the limitations of humanity, and to clothe him with preter-human attributes.

Nearly all the supernormal phenomena believed in by primitive man--so far as we can judge of him from contemporary savagery--would suggest the agency of an invisible man; clairvoyance, and other manifestations of preternatural knowledge, would suggest independence of the senses in the acquisition of knowledge; every kind of "miracle" would bespeak an extension of power over physical nature beyond human wont; while all these together would point to that freedom from the trammels of s.p.a.ce and time, which is of the very essence of immaterial or spiritual subsistence. Thus, by a gradual process of dehumanization, the mind would be instinctively led from the notion of a man magnified in all excellences and refined from all limitations, to the conception of spirit. But coexistently with this progress of the reason, the imagination would ever strain to clothe the thought in bodily form as far as possible, and would cling to the notions suggested by dreams and waking hallucinations, while language, after its wont, would speak of the spirit as the _umbra_, the _imago_, the shadow, the breath, the attenuated replica of the body. Thus we find among all men, savage and civilized, a certain unsteadiness in their notion of spirit, whether created or divine--a continual tendency to corruption and anthropomorphism, due to the conflict between reason and imagination, resulting so often in the domination of the latter.

For this view of the subject it is not necessary that we should admit the preternatural character of the phenomena which form the subject-matter of psychical research, but only that we should acknowledge the hardly disputable fact that belief in such marvels is universal and persistent among savages--a fact which science is bound by its own principles to explain, and not to ignore. Whether, as Mr. Lang seems inclined to think, among much illusion, chicanery, and ignorance, there may not be truth enough to make the inference of an X-world legitimate, whether the said universality, persistence, and recrudescence of this seeming credulity can be accounted for in any other satisfactory way, is a further consideration. If in some dim fas.h.i.+on the Northern Indians antic.i.p.ated modern science in their explanation of the _aurora borealis_, connecting it with familiar electric manifestations, may it not be, asks Mr. Lang, that in their inference from supernormal facts which experimental science refuses to hear of or to examine, they have again been sagaciously beforehand?

Doubtless their explanation is crude and inadequate in both cases; but is it much more so than that offered by supposing electricity to be a fluid subject to currents; or by a.s.signing many inexplicable psychic phenomena to "hysteria"--a mere word-cause?

The supposition is somewhat favoured if we give ear to that crowd of witnesses whose combined evidence, duly discounted and tested, makes it clear that even among those who ought to have been civilized out of all belief in aught behind the veil, the very same superst.i.tions break out, or creep in, time after time, with new names perhaps, new clothes, new faces, but in substance identical with those held by what we esteem the most benighted races.

Further, it is evident that savages pay attention--over-attention, no doubt--to these supernormal phenomena, being free from hostile philosophic bias in the matter, and bent the other way; and that in consequence they have everywhere observed, cla.s.sified, and systematized them in their own rude, simple way, and have thus forestalled what the S.P.R., in the teeth of science, is now endeavouring to do scientifically. With us, moreover, it is mere chance that reveals a "medium," or hypnotic subject here and there: but with savages they are sought out diligently, and all who have any latent apt.i.tude that way are detected and utilized; and thus the field of their experience is considerably widened.

But besides all this, it seems more than plausible to suppose that among primitive and undeveloped races such preternatural phenomena either occur, or seem to occur, much more frequently and extensively; and that apparently supernormal faculties are more often developed.

Nor can this be explained solely on the score of their readier credulity and their lack of criticism; for there is good evidence to show that the development of the rational and self-directive faculties is at the sacrifice of those instinctive and intuitional modes of operation which do duty for them while man is yet in a state of pupilage. Memory, for example, is fresher and more a.s.similative in childhood, but deteriorates very often as the higher faculties come into use; and indeed we cannot fail to see how the introduction of printing, writing, and mnemonic arts and artifices of all kinds, has lowered the average power of civilized memory, and made the ordinary feats of more primitive times seem to us magical and incredible. We also notice the high development of hearing, sight, and other forms of perception among savages who live by their five senses rather than by their wits. When we descend to the animal-world we are confronted by cognitive faculties whose effects we see, but of whose precise nature we can form no conjecture whatever.

That which guides the migratory birds in their wanderings, and simulates polity in the bee-hive and ant-hill, is not reason, but is something for practical purposes far better than reason. Putting a number of these and of similar considerations together seems to suggest that development in the direction of self-instruction (which is reason) and self-management and independence, is loss as well as gain.

What we gain is no doubt our own in a truer sense than that we had when we hung upon Nature's breast, and were guided pa.s.sively by instincts and intuitions to purposes that reason can never reach to.

By far the most wonderful and seemingly intelligent work of the soul is that by which it builds up, nourishes, repairs, developes, and finally reproduces the body it dwells in. Yet in all this it is almost as pa.s.sive and unconscious as a vegetable. The effect is (as far as our comprehension of it goes) altogether preternatural and inexplicable; yet it is far less _our_ effect than what we do by reason and by taking thought. What we pay for in dignity we lose in efficiency. While Nature carries us in her arms we move swiftly enough, but when she sets us on our feet to learn independence and self-rule, we cut a sorry figure. In our helplessness she does all for us as though we were yet part of her; but in the measure that we are weaned and begin to fend for ourselves as responsible agents, we are deprived of the aids and eas.e.m.e.nts befitting the childhood of our race.

If this be true, if man in his primitive state possessed intuitive powers which have sunk into abeyance, either through the diversion of psychic energy to the development of other powers, or through desuetude, or as the instincts of the new-born babe are lost when their brief purpose is fulfilled; if the occasional recrudescence of these powers among civilized peoples is really a survival of an earlier state; then indeed we can understand that the evidence, or apparent evidence, for the existence of an X-region, or spirit-world, may have been immeasurably more abundant in the infancy of the human race, than it is now even among contemporary savages.

Put it how we will, it cannot be denied that belief in divination, in diabolic possession, and in magic, has largely contributed to belief in spirits; and that to ignore this contribution by throwing the whole burden on ordinary dreams is unscientific. During sleep Mr. Tylor himself is as much a prey to delusion as the most primitive savage; but the criteria by which on waking we condemn _most_ of our dreams as illusions, seem really as accessible and obvious to the child or savage as to the philosopher; though the former through carelessness or poverty of language will perhaps say: "I saw," instead of: "I dreamt I saw."

Children will speak as it were historically of even their day-dreams and imaginings, not from any untruthfulness or wish to deceive, but from that romancing tendency rightly reprehended in their elders, who should be alive to the conventional value of language. But the first and most natural use of speech is simply to express and embody the thought that is in us, not to a.s.sert, or affirm, or to instruct others. The child's romancing is not intended as a.s.sertion, although so taken by prosaic adults. It is from the same instinct which lies at the back of his eternal monologue, of the "Let's pretend" by which he is for the moment transformed into a soldier, or a steam-engine, or a horse. Eye-reading without articulation is impossible for the beginner, and thought that is not talked and acted is impossible for the child. Yet deeply as the child is wrapped up in his dreams, there is nothing more certain than that he is as clear as any adult as to the difference between romance and fact; and so it is no doubt with the savage, who can hardly be denied to have at least as much reason as an average child.

Closer study of the savage points to the conclusion that the civilized man falls into the same error in his regard as many adults do with respect to children, whom they fail hopelessly to interpret through lack of imagination, and to whom they are but tedious and ridiculous when they would fain be instructive and amusing; forgetting that the difference between the two stages of life is rather in the size of the toys played with, than in the way they are regarded. So too we are apt to look on foreign, and still more on savage language, symbolism, ways, and customs, as indicative of a far more radical difference and greater inferiority of mental const.i.tution and ethical instincts than really exists. Mr. Kidd, in his book on Social Evolution, has contended with some plausibility that the brain-power of the Bushman and of the c.o.c.kney is much on a par at starting, and that the subsequent divergence is due chiefly to education and moral training; and certainly much of the evidence brought forward in Mr. Lang's volume seems to look that way. If the aboriginal Australian has a faith in the immortality of the soul and in a supreme G.o.d, the rewarder of righteousness, if he summarizes the laws of G.o.d under the precept of unselfishness; if in all this he is but a type of the universal savage, surely it were well if some of the missionary zeal which is devoted to supplying the heathen with Bibles which they cannot understand, were turned to the work of bringing our own G.o.dless millions up to their religious level.

But this takes us to the second and still more interesting part of _The Making of Religion_, which we shall have to discuss in the next section.

At present we only wish to insist that it is a mistake to a.s.sume that because savages and children are, when compared with ourselves, so little, therefore their thoughts and ideas can be understood with little difficulty. Contrariwise, as the apparent difference in life and language is greater, the deeper and more patient investigation will it need to detect that radical sameness of mental and moral const.i.tution which binds men together far more than diversity of education and environment can ever separate them. It is, therefore, exceedingly unlikely that either the child or the savage should, by failing to distinguish between dream and reality, introduce into his whole life that incoherence which is just the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of dreaming and lunacy. And, as a fact, do we really find the savage as depressed, on waking, by a dreamt-of calamity as by a real one; or as elated after a visionary scalping of foes as after a real victory? Does he on waking look for the said scalps among his collection of trophies, and is he perplexed and incensed at not finding them? Even if, like ourselves, he has occasionally a very vivid and coherent dream reconcilable with his waking circ.u.mstances, will he not judge of it by the vast majority of his dreams which are palpable illusions, and not by the few exceptional cases? If at times we ourselves doubt whether we witnessed something or dreamt it, yet we do so not because the seeming fact is one which makes for the existence of another world of a different order to this, but for the very contrary reason. If the savage only dreamt of the dead, he might find in this an evidence of their survival, but he dreams far more often of the living, and that, with circ.u.mstances which make the illusion manifest on waking. Seeing the awe and terror which all men have of the supernatural region, we ought, on the animistic hypothesis, to find among savages a great reluctance to go to bed--"to sleep! Perchance to dream--aye, there's the rub!" But we do not. Finally, just as the Chinese, who are supposed to mistake epilepsy for possession, have, unfortunately for the supposition, got two distinct words for the two phenomena, so it will doubtless be found that there is no savage who has not some word to express illusion; or whose language does not prove that he knows dreams are but dreams. We may well doubt if even animals on waking are affected by their dreams as by realities, or if a dog ever bit a man for a kick received in a dream. In short the dream-theory of souls is plausible only in the gross, but melts away under closer examination bit by bit.

Whether the S.P.R. will ever succeed in bottling a ghost, and in submitting it to the tests necessary to convince science, matters little. The real fruit of its labours will be to "convince men of sin,"

to convict science of being unscientific, and criticism of being uncritical--of being bia.s.sed by fas.h.i.+on to the extent of refusing to examine evidence which must be either admitted or explained away.

Scepticism and credulity alike are hostile both to science and religion, and it is the common interest of these latter to secure a full recognition, on the one side of the principle of faith, that with G.o.d all things are possible; and on the other, of the principle of science which is: to prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.

Credulity tends to make the actual co-extensive with the possible; while scepticism would limit the possible to the known actual. The true mind would be one in which faith and criticism were so tempered as to secure width without slovenliness, and exact.i.tude without narrowness.

II.

How, apart from the imperfect lingering tradition of some primitive revelation, the belief in a surviving soul originates with contemporary savages, or might have originated among still ruder past races, is a question of some interest, not only for its own sake, but for the sake of whatever little light it may throw upon the more vital question as to the value of that belief. Had the doctrine of souls no other origin than a false inference from the ordinary phenomena of sleeping and dreaming; were it in no sense an instinctive belief, suggested perhaps and confirmed by supernormal facts, it would still have interest for the anthropologist as one of those almost necessary and universal errors through which the human mind struggles to the truth, such as the errors of astrology or alchemy; but it would in no way contribute to the argument for immortality _ex consensu hominum_--an argument of much avail when it is a case of man's instinctive judgments and primary intuitions, which are G.o.d-given, but of ever less value in proportion as there is a question of deductions, inferences, and self-formed judgments. Even if we discard the dream-theory altogether, we get no support from the consensus of savages as to the soul's survival, unless we have reason to think that the facts on which their inference rests are truly, and not only apparently, supernormal, and are, moreover, such as leave no other inference possible.

We know only too well that there are universal fallacies as well as universal truths of the human mind. For the practical necessities of life the imagination stands to man in good stead, but as the inadequate instrument of speculative thought its fertile deceitfulness is betrayed in his very earliest attempts at philosophy; nor are his subsequent efforts directed to anything else than the endeavour to correct and allow for its refractions and distortions, to transcend its narrow limitations, to force it to express, meanly and clumsily, truths which otherwise it would entirely obscure and deny. There might well be facts, nay, there are undoubtedly facts, which to the untutored mind necessarily and always seem altogether supernormal, but which science rightly explains to be, however unusual, yet natural, and in no way outside the ordinary laws. So far as the marvels of sorcerers and medicine-men are the work of chicanery, they will lack that persistence and ubiquity which justifies the investigation of other marvels for whose universality some basis must be sought in the uniform nature of things. Cheats will not always and everywhere hit on the same plan, nor will the independent testimony of false witnesses be found agreeing.

But if besides facts and appearances that science can really explain away, there be a residue which takes us into a region wherein science as yet has set no foot, then we may indeed be on our way to a confirmation of the usually accepted arguments for immortality by which the positivist may be met upon his own ground. In truth, metaphysical, moral, and religious arguments, however much they may avail with individuals who are subjectively disposed to receive them, cannot in these days influence the crowd of men who need some sort of violence offered to their intellect if they are to accept truths against which they are bia.s.sed. The temper of the majority is positivist; it will believe what it can see, touch, and handle, and no more. If then the natural truth of the independent existence of spirits can be inade experimentally evident--and _a priori_, why should it not?--men may not like it, but they will have either to accept it, or to deny all that they accept on like evidence. Such unwilling concession would of itself make little for personal religion in the individual; but its widespread acceptance could not fail to counteract the ethics of materialism, and so prepare the way for perhaps a fuller return to religion on the part of the many.

It is the belief, and perhaps the hope, of not a few men of light and learning that a comparison of the results of the S.P.R. investigations with those of anthropology touching the beliefs and superst.i.tions of savages and ruder races, may point to an order of facts which, with reference to the admissions of existing science, are rightly called supernormal, and yet which are in another sense strictly normal, namely, with reference to that science of experimental psychology which, amid the usual storm of ridicule and jealousy, is slowly struggling into existence--ridicule from all devout slaves of the intellectual fas.h.i.+on of the times; jealousy from the neighbour sciences of mental physiology and neurology, which it declares bankrupt in the face of newly-discovered liabilities.

So far this gathered evidence seems, in the eyes of some of its interpreters, to point to a close connection, if not of being, at least of influence, between soul and soul, such as binds each atom of matter to every other; a connection which increases as we descend from the above-ground level of full consciousness, through ever lower strata of subconsciousness, to those hidden depths of unconscious operation from which the most unintelligibly intelligent effects of the soul proceed--as though, in the darkness, it were taught by G.o.d, and guided blindfold by the hand of its Maker. In other words, the individuation of souls is conceived to be somewhat like that of the separate branches of the same tree which, traced downwards, run into a common root, from whence they are differenced by every hour of their growth, yet not disconnected, as though each several consciousness sprang from some unconscious psychic basis common to all, wherein, like forgotten memories, the experiences of all are buried, at a depth far beyond the reach of all normal powers of reminiscence, yet through which terminus of converging souls thoughts can, in our intenser moments, pa.s.s from mind to mind,--reverberated as it were from the base, and thence caught by the one consciousness altogether resonant to that particular vibration. How far such an interpretation may favour pantheism, or imperil personality, or involve a doctrine of "pre-existence," or of innate ideas, is not for us here to discuss. If we are to judge it fairly, it must be simply as a provisional working-hypothesis explanatory of certain observations, and apart from all other psychological theories with which it may seem in conflict. Truth will in the end adjust itself with truth, but nothing is to be hoped from forced and premature adjustments.

Mr. Lang's second and princ.i.p.al contention is that even if we allow the animistic account of the belief in spirits, in no sense can we admit that process by which belief in G.o.d is supposed to be a later development of the belief in spirits, as though inequality among spirits had given rise to aristocracy, and aristocracy to monarchy.

By G.o.d here we understand: "a primal eternal Being, author of all things, the father and the friend of man, the invisible omniscient guardian of morality," a definition which, while it fixes the high-water mark of monotheism, yet only states with formidable distinctness what, according to Mr. Lang, is found confusedly in the apprehension of the rudest savages. There are two senses in which we can understand an evolution of this idea of G.o.d; first, as Mr. Tylor understands it, in the sense of a development by accretion from a simple germ, from the idea of a phantasm nowise a G.o.d, to that of a spirit still lacking divinity, thence to that of a Supreme Spirit in whom first the essential definition of G.o.d is somewhat fulfilled. Secondly, it can be understood strictly as a mere unfolding of the contents of a confused apprehension; so that there is an advance only in point of coherence and distinctness.

Thus understood, the entire religious history of the race, as also of the individual, viewed from its mental side, consists in an evolution of the idea of G.o.d and culminates in a face-to-face seeing of G.o.d.

From the evidence ama.s.sed, or perhaps rather, sampled, by Mr. Lang it would seem that, what we account the lowest races are in possession of a confused idea of G.o.d, whencesoever derived, which is in substantial agreement with the reflex conception contained in the above definition; and that there is no existing series of intellectual stages whereby this can be seen, as it were, in the act of growing out of previous simpler ideas. Evolution in the direction of greater clearness and distinctness is to be observed, as well as a downward process of obscuration and confusion: but for a substantial development of the idea of G.o.d from an idea of "not G.o.d" there is no proof forthcoming so far.

On the animistic hypothesis we should be prepared to find the notion of G.o.d, as above stated, to be of very late development and accepted only by races fairly advanced in culture. We should, _a priori_, deem it impossible to discover more among the lower savages than a rude religion of ghost-wors.h.i.+p, without any consciousness of a moral Supreme Being, the father and friend of man. Whatever might seem to suggest the contrary, would be explainable by some infiltration of more civilized beliefs.

Armed with this hypothesis the eye is quick "to see that it brings with it the power of seeing," and to impose its own forms and schemata on the phenomena offered to its observation. The "animist" ill-acquainted with the savage's language and modes of thought; excluded from those inner "mysteries" which figure in nearly every savage religion; confounding the symbolism, the popular mythology, and also the corruptions, distortions, and abuses which are the parasites of all religion, with the religion itself, can easily come away with the impression that there is nothing but ghost-wors.h.i.+p, priestcraft, and superst.i.tion, no conception whatever of a personal "Power that makes for Righteousness."

If Protestants have almost as crude an idea of the religion of their Catholic fellow-Christians with whom they live side by side, and converse in the same language, if they are so absolutely dominated by their own form of religious thought, as to be as helpless as idiots in the presence of any other, can we expect that the ordinary British traveller, "brandis.h.i.+ng his Bible and his bath," strong in the smug conviction of his mental, moral, and religious preeminence, will be a very sympathetic, conscientious, and reliable interpreter of the religion of the Zulu or the Andamanese?

The fact is that without a preliminary hypothesis he would see nothing at all except dire confusion. But an a.s.sumption such as that of "animism," has the selective power of a magnet, drawing to itself all congruous facts and little filings of probability, until it so bristles over with evidence that a hedge-hog is easier to handle.

But before discussing the relation of this a.s.sumption to existing facts and so bringing it to an _a posteriori_ test, let us examine its _a priori_ supports.

First of all, as Mr. Lang points out, it takes for granted that the savage can have no idea of the Creator until he conceive Him as a spirit. "G.o.d is a spirit," has been dinned into our ears from childhood; and hence we conclude that he who has no notion of a spirit can have no notion of G.o.d; and that the idea of G.o.d is of later growth than that of a ghost. In truth, he who ascribes to G.o.d a body does not know _all_ about Him; but which of us knows _all_ about G.o.d? The point is, not whether the savage can know the metaphysics of divinity, but whether he can conceive a primal eternal moral being, author of all things, man's father and judge--a conception which abstracts entirely from the question of matter and spirit. We ourselves, like the savage, necessarily speak of G.o.d and imagine Him humanwise,--although our instructed reason, at times, corrects the error of our fancy,--and perhaps only "at times,"--only when we leave the ground of spontaneous thought, to walk on metaphysical stilts--nor while that childish image remains uncorrected and we neither affirm nor deny to Him a body, can our notion be called false, however obscure it be and inadequate. If the savage has no notion of spirit, yet he may have, and often seems to have a very true, though of course infinitely imperfect, notion of G.o.d; nay, perhaps a truer notion than those who affirm, without any sense of using a.n.a.logy, that G.o.d is a spirit. For if His spirituality is insisted on, it is rather to exclude from Him the grossness and limitation of matter, and to ascribe to Him a transcendental degree of whatever perfection our notion of spirit may involve, than to cla.s.sify Him, or to predicate of Him that finite nature which we call a spirit. G.o.d is neither a spirit nor a body; but rather like Ndengei of the Fijians: "an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence;" one who is to be "regarded as a deathless _Being_, no question of 'spirit' being raised;" so that the first intuition of the unsophisticated mind is found to be in more substantial agreement with the last results of reflex philosophical thought, than those early philosophizings which halt between the affirmation and denial of bodily attributes, unable to prescind from the difficulty and unable to solve it. The history of the Jews, nay, the history of our own mind proves to demonstration that the thought of G.o.d is a far easier thought and a far earlier, than that of a spirit. Our mind, oar heart, our conscience, affirm the former instinctively, while the latter does continual violence to our imagination, except so far as spirit is misconceived to be an attenuated phantasmal body. Not only, therefore, does the savage imagine G.o.d and speak of Him humanwise, as we all do; but if he does not actually believe Him to be material, he at least will be slow in mastering the thought of His spirituality.

Another a.s.sumption underlying the animistic hypothesis, and also borrowed from Christian teaching, is that the savage regards the soul or ghost as the liberated and consummated man, and that therefore he will place G.o.d rather in the category of disembodied than of embodied men.

Yet not only the Greek and Roman, but even the Jew, looked on the shade of the departed as a mere fraction of humanity, as a miserable residue of man, helpless and hopeless, and withal disposed to be mischievous and exacting, and therefore needing to be humoured in various ways. Nay, even Christianity with its dogma of the bodily resurrection, denies that Platonic doctrine which views the body as the prison rather than as the complement and consort of the soul; although it holds the soul to be of an altogether higher, because spiritual, order. But to the primitive savage, who everywhere regards death as non-natural, as accidental and violent, the surviving spirit, however uncertain-tempered and incalculable in its movements, however much to be feared and propitiated, does not command reverence as a being of a superior order.

At best it is: "Alas! poor ghost!" Better a live dog than a dead lion; better the meanest slave that draws breath, than the monarch of Orcus.

Surely it is not in the region of shadows that the savage will look for the great "all-father;" but in the world of solid, tangible realities.

Again, it is a.s.sumed that progress in one point is progress in all; that because we surpa.s.s all other races and generations in physical science and useful arts, we surpa.s.s them in every other way; and that they must be far behind us in ethical and religious conceptions, as they are in inventions and the production of comforts. To find our own theism and morality among savages is therefore impossible; for as the crooked stick is unto the steam-plough, so is the G.o.d of the savage unto the G.o.d of Great Britain. Yet when we consider how closely religious and ethical principles are intertwined, and how glaringly untrue it is to say that industrial civilization makes for morality,--for purity or self-denial, or justice, or truth, or honour: how manifestly it is accompanied with a deterioration of the higher perceptions and tastes, we must surely pause before taking it for granted that the course of true religion has been running smoothly parallel to that of commerce.

In a thoughtful essay, ent.i.tled _The Disenchantment of France_, Mr. F.W.

Myers points out the goal towards which "progress" is leading us, through the destruction of those four "illusions" which formerly gave life all its value and dignity,--namely, belief in religion; devotion to the State--whether to the prince or to the people; belief in the eternity and spirituality of human love; belief in man's freedom and imperishable personal unity. "I cannot avoid the conclusion," he says, "that we are bound to be prepared for the worst. Yet by the worst I do not mean any catastrophe of despair, any cosmic suicide, any world-wide unchaining of the brute that lies pent in man. I mean merely the peaceful, progressive, orderly triumph of _l'homme sensuel moyen_; the gradual adaptation of hopes and occupations to a purely terrestrial standard; the calculated pleasures of the cynic who is resolved to be a dupe no more."

In other words, if we accept this very temperate and reluctant conclusion, we must confess that the one-sided progress, with whose all-sufficiency we are so thoroughly satisfied, is making straight for the extermination, not only of religion, but of morality in any received sense of the term.

But when Mr. Lang, who has no hypothesis of his own as to the origin of belief in G.o.d, brings the animistic theory to an _a posteriori_ test, he finds it enc.u.mbered with still greater difficulties; for nothing is as, _a priori_, it ought to be.

While Mr. Tylor a.s.serts "that no savage tribe of monotheists has ever been known," but that all ascribe the attributes of deity to other beings than the Almighty Creator, it appears in fact that many of the rudest savages "are as monotheistic as some Christians. They have a Supreme Being, and the 'distinctive attributes of deity' are not by them a.s.signed to other beings further than as Christianity a.s.signs them to angels, saints, the devil," &c. Catholics at least will readily understand how hastily and unjustly the charge of polytheism is made by the protestantized mind against any religion which believes in a Heavenly Court as well as in a Heavenly Monarch. "Of the existence of a belief in a Supreme Being" amongst the lowest savages, "there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in the ethnographic region. It is certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers and missionaries, have again and again recognized our G.o.d in theirs."

If, therefore, belief in G.o.d grew out of belief in ghosts, it must have been in some stage of culture lower than any of which we have experience so far; and at some period which belongs to the region of hypothesis and conjecture. There are no known tribes where ghosts are wors.h.i.+pped and G.o.d is not known, or where the supposed process of development can be watched in action. Nor is it only that links are missing, but one of the very terms to be connected, namely, a G.o.dless race, is conjectural.

Still more unfortunate is it for the animists that evidence points to the fact that advance in civilization often means the decay of monotheism, and that the ruder races are the purer in their religious and ethical conceptions. Once more, all facts are against the theory that tribes transfer their earthly polity to the heavenly city; for monotheism is found where monarchy is unknown. "G.o.d cannot be a reflection from human kings where there are no kings; nor a president elected out of a polytheistic society of G.o.ds, where there is as yet no polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor where men do not wors.h.i.+p their ancestors." To the substantiating of these facts Mr. Lang then applies himself, and shows us how among the Australians, Red Indians, Figians, Andamanese, d.i.n.kas, Yao, Zulus, and all known savages there lives the conception of a Supreme Being (not necessarily spirit) who is variously styled Father, Master, Our Father, The Ancient One in the skyland, The Great Father. He shows us, moreover, that this deity is the G.o.d of conscience, a power making for goodness, a guardian and enforcer of the interests of justice and truth and purity; good to the good, and froward with the froward.

But surely, it will be said, all this is too paradoxical, too violently in conflict with what is notorious concerning the religion and morality of savages.

The reason of this seeming contradiction is, however, not altogether difficult. It is to be found partly in the fact that religion, like morality, being counter to those laws which govern the physical world and the animal man,--to the law of egoism and compet.i.tion and struggle for existence; to the law that "might is right,"--tends from the very nature of the case towards decay and disintegration. The movement of material progress is in some sense a downhill movement. No doubt it evokes much seeming virtue, such as is necessary to secure the end; but the motive force is one with regard to which man is pa.s.sive rather than active, a slave rather than a master, as a miser is in respect to that pa.s.sion which stimulates him to struggle for gain. Religion and morality are uphill work, needing continual strain and attention if the motive force is to be maintained at all. Huxley, in one of his later utterances, allowed this with regard to morality; and it is not less but more true with regard to faith in the value of unseen realities. Even if belief in a moral G.o.d be as natural to man as are the promptings of conscience, it ought not to surprise us that it should be as universally stifled, neglected, seemingly denied, as conscience is. It is not usually in old age and after years of conflict with the world that conscience is most sensitive and faithful to light, but rather in early childhood. And similarly the sense of G.o.d and of His will is apparently more strong and lively in the childhood of races than after it has been stifled by the struggle for wealth and pre-eminence--

When yet I had not walked above A mile or two from my first love: But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. [2]

Degradation may almost be considered a law of religion and morality which needs some kind of violent counteraction, some continual intervention and providence, if it is to be kept in check. After all, this is only a dressing-up of the old plat.i.tude that a holy life means continual warfare and straining of the spirit against the flesh, of the moral order against the physical order, of altruism or the true egoism against selfishness or the false egoism. Of course an ideal civilization would help and not hinder religion; but the chances against civilization being ideal are so large as to make it historically true that, advance in civilization does not always mean advance in religion and morality, and often means decay.

Far from animism being the root of theism, more often it is rather the ivy that grows up about it, hides it and chokes it. Just because the demands of religion and morality are so burdensome to men, they will ever seek short-cuts to salvation; and the intercession of presumably corruptible courtiers will be secured to win the favour, or avert the displeasure, of the rigorously incorruptible and inexorable King, who is "no respecter of persons." Except among Jews and Christians, the Supreme Being is nowhere wors.h.i.+pped with sacrifice--that service of food-offering being reserved for subordinate deities susceptible to gentle bribery. The great G.o.d of conscience is naturally the least popular object of cultus; though, were the animists right, He should be the most popular, seeing He would be the latest development demanded and created by the popular mind. But contrariwise, He tends to recede more and more into the background, behind the ever-multiplying crowd of patron-spirits, guardians, family-G.o.ds; till, as in Greece and Rome, He is almost entirely obscured, "an unknown G.o.d ignorantly wors.h.i.+pped"--the End, as usual, being forgotten and buried in the means. All this process of degradation will be hastened by the corruption of priests whose avarice or ambition, as Mr. Lang says, will tempt them to exploit the lucrative elements in religion at the expense of the ethical; to whittle-away the decrees of G.o.d and conscience to suit the wealthy and easy-going; to subst.i.tute purchasable sacrifice, for obedience; and the fat of rams, for charity. We need only look to the history of Israel and of the Christian Church to see all these tendencies continually at work, and only held in check by innumerable interventions of Divine Providence, and of that Spirit which is always striving with man.

Scant, however, as may be the amount of direct wors.h.i.+p accorded to the Supreme G.o.d, compared with that received by subordinate spiritual powers, yet it is _sui generis_, and of an infinitely higher order. The familiar distinction of _latria_ and _dulia_ seems to obtain everywhere; as also that between _Elohim_ and _Javeh_, that is, between supernal beings in general, and the Supreme Being who is also supernal. Yet so excessive in quant.i.ty is the secondary cultus compared with the primary, that an outsider may well be pardoned for thinking that there is nothing beyond what meets the eye on every side. As has been said, the Supreme Being alone is usually considered above the weakness of caring for sacrifice, or for external wors.h.i.+p in "temples made with hands." His name is commonly tabooed, only to be whispered in those mysteries of initiation which are met with so universally. Outside these mysteries He may only be spoken of in parables and myths, grotesque, irreverent, designed to conceal rather than to reveal. But rarely is there an image or an altar to this unknown G.o.d.

It is easy for those who recognize no other religion among savages behind the popular observances and cults which are so much to the front, to believe that early religion is non-ethical. For indeed, for the most part, all this secondary cultus is directed to the mitigation of the moral code and the subst.i.tution of exterior for interior sacrifice. It is the result of an endeavour to compound with conscience; and to hide away sins from the all-seeing eye. Again it is chiefly in the secrecy of the mysteries that the higher ethical doctrine is propounded--a doctrine usually covering all the substantials of the decalogue; and in some cases, approaching the Christian summary of the same under the one heading of love and unselfishness. As for the corrupt lives of savages, if it proves their religion to be non-ethical, what should we have to think of Christianity? We cry out in horror against cannibalism as the _ne plus ultra_ of wickedness., but except so far as it involves murder, it is hard to find in it more than a violation of our own convention, while a mystical mind might find more to say for it than for cremation.

Certainly it is not so bad as slander and backbiting. Human sacrifice offered to the Lord of life and death at His own behest, is something that did not seem wicked and inconceivable to Abraham. Head-hunting is not a pretty game; nor is scalping and mutilation the most generous treatment of a fallen foe; yet war has seen worse things done by those who professed an ethical religion.