{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_25338/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_25338","id":"gutenberg_25338","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25338","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Archaeology & Anthropology","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","God","Religion"],"text":"E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Jeannie Howse, and the Project\nGutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nTHE IDEA OF GOD IN EARLY RELIGIONS\n\nby\n\nF. B. JEVONS, LITT.D.\n\nProfessor of Philosophy in the\nUniversity of Durham\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCambridge:\nat the University Press\n1913\n\nFirst Edition, 1910\nReprinted 1911, 1913\n\n      _With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the\n      design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by\n      the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nIn _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ the late Professor William\nJames has said (p. 465): 'The religious phenomenon, studied as an\ninner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological\ncomplications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its\nstages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse\nbetween themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves\nto be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both\nactive and mutual.' The book now before the reader deals with the\nreligious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, in the earlier stages\nof religion. By 'the Idea of God' may be meant either the\nconsciousness which individuals have of higher powers, with which they\nfeel themselves to be related, or the words in which they, or others,\nseek to express that consciousness. Those words may be an expression,\nthat is to say an interpretation or a misinterpretation, of that\nconsciousness. But the words are not the consciousness: the feeling,\nwithout which the consciousness does not exist, may be absent when the\nwords are spoken or heard. It is however through the words that we\nhave to approach the feeling and the consciousness of others, and to\ndetermine whether and how far the feeling and the consciousness so\napproached are similar in all individuals everywhere and at all\nstages.\n\n                                               F. B. JEVONS.\n\n  HATFIELD HALL,\n    DURHAM.\n      _October, 1910_\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                             PAGE\n\n     BIBLIOGRAPHY                                              ix\n\n  I. INTRODUCTION                                               1\n\n II. THE IDEA OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY                              30\n\nIII. THE IDEA OF GOD IN WORSHIP                                60\n\n IV. THE IDEA OF GOD IN PRAYER                                103\n\n  V. THE IDEA AND BEING OF GOD                                152\n\n     INDEX                                                    167\n\n\n\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\n  Allen, Grant. The Evolution of the Idea of God. London, 1897.\n\n  Anthropology and the Classics. Oxford, 1908.\n\n  Bastian, A. Volks- und Menschenkunde. Berlin, 1888.\n\n  Bousset, W. What is Religion? (English Translation). London, 1907.\n\n  Crawley, A.E. The Idea of the Soul. London, 1909.\n\n  Fossey, C. La Magie Assyrienne. Paris, 1902.\n\n  Frazer, J.G. Early History of the Kingship. London, 1895.\n\n  ---- The Golden Bough. London, 1900.\n\n  ---- Psyche's Task. London, 1909.\n\n  Gardner, P. Modernity and the Churches. London, 1909.\n\n  Hobhouse, L.T. Morals in Evolution. London, 1906.\n\n  Hoeffding, H. The Philosophy of Religion (English Translation).\n    London, 1906.\n\n  Hollis, A.C. The Masai. Oxford, 1905.\n\n  ---- The Nandi. Oxford, 1909.\n\n  James, W. The Varieties of Religious Experience. London, 1902.\n\n  Jastrow, M. Jun. Study of Religion. London, 1901.\n\n  Jevons, F.B. Introduction to the History of Religion. London,\n    1896.\n\n  ---- Religion in Evolution. London, 1906.\n\n  ---- Study of Comparative Religion. London, 1908.\n\n  Lang, A. Magic and Religion. London, 1901.\n\n  ---- The Making of Religion. London, 1898.\n\n  Mackenzie, W.D. The Final Faith. London, 1910.\n\n  Marett, R.R. The Threshold of Religion. London, 1909.\n\n  Mitchell, H.B. Talks on Religion. London, 1908.\n\n  Nassau, R.H. Fetichism in West Africa. London, 1904.\n\n  Parker, K.L. The Euahlayi Tribe. London, 1905.\n\n  Saussaye, P.D.C. de la. Religionsgeschichte. Freiburg i. B., 1889.\n\n  Schaarschmidt, C. Die Religion. Leipzig, 1907.\n\n  Thompson, R.C. Semitic Magic. London, 1908.\n\n  Tisdall W. St C. Comparative Religion. London, 1909.\n\n  Transactions of the Third International Congress of the History of\n    Religions. Oxford, 1908.\n\n  Tylor, E.B. Primitive Culture. London, 1873.\n\n  Westermarck, E. Origin and Development of Moral Ideas. London,\n    1906.\n\n  Wundt, W. Voelkerpsychologie. Leipzig, 1904-6.\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n\nEvery child that is born is born of a community and into a community,\nwhich existed before his birth and will continue to exist after his\ndeath. He learns to speak the language which the community spoke\nbefore he was born, and which the community will continue to speak\nafter he has gone. In learning the language he acquires not only words\nbut ideas; and the words and ideas he acquires, the thoughts he thinks\nand the words in which he utters them, are those of the community from\nwhich he learnt them, which taught them before he was born and will go\non teaching them after he is dead. He not only learns to speak the\nwords and think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he\ndoes the form of speech, of the circumambient community: he is taught\nand learns to act as those around him do--as the community has done\nand will tend to do. The community--the narrower community of the\nfamily, first, and, afterwards, the wider community to which the\nfamily belongs--teaches him how he ought to speak, what he ought to\nthink, and how he ought to act. The consciousness of the child\nreproduces the consciousness of the community to which he belongs--the\ncommon consciousness, which existed before him and will continue to\nexist after him.\n\nThe common consciousness is not only the source from which the\nindividual gets his mode of speech, thought and action, but the court\nof appeal which decides what is fact. If a question is raised whether\nthe result of a scientific experiment is what it is alleged by the\noriginal maker of the experiment to be, the appeal is to the common\nconsciousness: any one who chooses to make the experiment in the way\ndescribed will find the result to be of the kind alleged; if everyone\nelse, on experiment, finds it to be so, it is established as a fact of\ncommon consciousness; if no one else finds it to be so, the alleged\ndiscovery is not a fact but an erroneous inference.\n\nNow, it is not merely with regard to external facts or facts\napprehended through the senses, that the common consciousness is\naccepted as the court of appeal. The allegation may be that an\nemotion, of a specified kind--alarm or fear, wonder or awe--is, in\nspecified circumstances, experienced as a fact of the common\nconsciousness. Or a body of men may have a common purpose, or a common\nidea, as well as an emotion of, say, common alarm. If the purpose,\nidea or emotion, be common to them and experienced by all of them, it\nis a fact of their common consciousness. In this case, as in the case\nof any alleged but disputed discovery in science, the common\nconsciousness is the court of appeal which decides the facts, and\ndetermines whether what an individual thinks he has discovered in his\nconsciousness is really a fact of the common consciousness. The idea\nof powers superior to man, the emotion of awe or reverence, which goes\nwith the idea, and the purpose of communicating with the power in\nquestion are facts, not peculiar to this or that individual\nconsciousness, but facts of the common consciousness of all mankind.\n\nThe child up to a certain age has no consciousness of self: the\nabsence of self-consciousness is one of the charms of children. The\nchild imitates its elders, who speak of him and to him by his name. He\nspeaks of himself in the third person and not in the first person\nsingular, and designates himself by his proper name and not by means\nof the personal pronoun 'I'; eventually the child acquires the use and\nto some extent learns the meaning of the first personal pronoun; that\nis, if the language of the community to which he belongs has developed\nso far as to have produced such a pronoun. For there was a period in\nthe evolution of speech when, as yet, a first personal pronoun had not\nbeen evolved; and that, probably, for the simple reason that the idea\nwhich it denotes was as unknown to the community as it is to the child\nwhose absence of self-consciousness is so pleasing. For a period, the\nlength of which may have been millions of years, the common\nconsciousness, the consciousness of the community, did not discover or\ndiscriminate, in language or in thought, the existence of the\nindividual self.\n\nThe importance of this consideration lies in its bearing upon the\nquestion, in what form the idea of powers superior to man disclosed\nitself in the common consciousness at that period. It is held by many\nstudents of the science of religion that fetishism preceded polytheism\nin the history of religion; and it is undoubted that polytheism\nflourished at the expense of fetishism. But what is exactly the\ndifference between fetishism and polytheism? No one now any longer\nholds that a fetish is regarded, by believers in fetish, as a material\nobject and nothing more: everyone recognises that the material object\nto which the term is applied is regarded as the habitation of a\nspiritual being. The material object in question is to the fetish what\nthe idol of a god is to a god. If the material object, through which,\nor in which, the fetish-spirit manifests itself, bears no resemblance\nto human form, neither do the earliest stocks or blocks in which gods\nmanifest themselves bear any resemblance to human form. Such unshaped\nstocks do not of themselves tell us whether they are fetishes or gods\nto their worshippers. The test by which the student of the science of\nreligion determines the question is a very simple one: it is, who\nworships the object in question? If the object is the private property\nof some individual, it is fetish; if it is worshipped by the community\nas a whole, it, or rather the spirit which manifests itself therein,\nis a god of the community. The functions of the two beings differ\naccordingly: the god receives the prayers of the community and has\npower to grant them; the fetish has power to grant the wishes of the\nindividual who owns it. The consequence of this difference in function\nis that as the wishes of the individual may be inconsistent with the\nwelfare of other members of the community; as the fetish may be, and\nactually is, used to procure injury and death to other members of the\ncommunity; a fetish is anti-social and a danger to the community,\nwhereas a god of the community is there expressly as a refuge and a\nhelp for the community. The fetish fulfils the desires of the\nindividual, the self; the god listens to the prayers of the community.\n\nLet us now return to that stage in the evolution of the community\nwhen, as yet, neither the language nor the thought of the community\nhad discovered or discriminated the existence of the individual self.\nIf at that stage there was in the common consciousness any idea,\nhowever dim or confused, of powers superior to man; if that idea was\naccompanied or coloured by any emotion, whether of fear or awe or\nreverence; if that emotion prompted action of any kind; then, such\npowers were not conceived to be fetishes, for the function of a fetish\nis to fulfil the desires of an individual self; and until the\nexistence of the individual self is realised, there is no function for\na fetish to perform.\n\nIt may well be that the gradual development of self-consciousness, and\nthe slow steps by which language helped to bring forth the idea of\nself, were from the first, and throughout, accompanied by the gradual\ndevelopment of the idea of fetishism. But the very development of the\nidea of a power which could fulfil the desires of self, as\ndistinguished from, and often opposed to, the interests of the\ncommunity, would stimulate the growth of the idea of a power whose\nspecial and particular function was to tend the interests of the\ncommunity as a whole. Thus the idea of a fetish and the idea of a god\ncould only persist on condition of becoming more and more inconsistent\nwith, and contradictory of, one another. If the lines followed by the\ntwo ideas started from the same point, it was only to diverge the\nmore, the further they were pursued. And the tendency of fetishism to\ndisappear from the later and higher stages of religion is sufficient\nto show that it did not afford an adequate or satisfactory expression\nof the idea contained in the common consciousness of some power or\nbeing greater than man. That idea is constantly striving, throughout\nthe history of religion, to find or give expression to itself; it is\nconstantly discovering that such expressions as it has found for\nitself do it wrong; and it is constantly throwing, or in the process\nof throwing, such expressions aside. Fetishism was thrown aside sooner\nthan polytheism: for it was an expression not only inadequate but\ncontradictory to the idea that gave it birth. The emotions of fear and\nsuspicion, with which the community regarded fetishes, were emotions\ndifferent from the awe or reverence with which the community\napproached its gods.\n\nWhat practically provokes and stimulates the individual's dawning\nconsciousness of himself, or the community's consciousness of the\nindividual as in a way distinct from itself, is the dash between the\ndesires, wishes, interests of the one, and the desires, wishes and\ninterests of the other. But though the interests of the one are\nsometimes at variance with those of the other, still in some cases,\nalso, the interests of the individual--even though they be purely\nindividual interests--are not inconsistent with those of the\ncommunity; and in most cases they are identical with them--the\nindividual promotes his own interests by serving those of the\ncommunity, and promotes those of the community by serving his own. In\na word, the interests of the one are not so clearly and plainly cut\noff from those of the other, that the individual can always be\ncondemned for seeking to gratify his self-interests or his own\npersonal desires. That is presumably one reason why fetishism is so\nwide-spread and so long-lived in Western Africa, for instance: though\nfetishes may be used for anti-social purposes, they may be and are\nalso used for purposes which if selfish are not, or are not felt to\nbe, anti-social. The individual owner of a fetish does not feel that\nhis ownership does or ought to cut him off from membership of the\ncommunity. And so long as such feeling is common, so long an\nindecisive struggle between gods and fetishes continues.\n\nNow this same cause--the impossibility of condemning the individual\nfor seeking to promote his own interests--will be found on examination\nto be operative elsewhere, viz. in magic. The relation of magic to\nreligion is as much a matter of doubt and dispute as is that of\nfetishism to religion. And I propose to treat magic in much the same\nway as I have treated fetishism. The justification which I offer for\nso doing is to be found in the parallel or analogy that may be drawn\nbetween them. The distinction which comes to be drawn within the\ncommon consciousness between the self and the community manifests\nitself obviously in the fact that the interests and desires of the\nindividual are felt to be different, and yet not to be different, from\nthose of the community; and so they are felt to be, yet not to be,\ncondemnable from the point of view of the common consciousness. Now,\nthis is precisely the judgment which is passed upon magic, wherever it\nis cultivated. It is condemnable, it is viewed with suspicion, fear\nand condemnation; and yet it is also and at the same time viewed and\npractised with general approval. It may be used on behalf of the\ncommunity and for the good of the community, and with public approval,\nas it is when it is used to make the rain which the community needs.\nIt may be viewed with toleration, as it is when it is believed to\nbenefit an individual without entailing injury on the community. But\nit is visited with condemnation, and perhaps with punishment, when it\nis employed for purposes, such as murder, which the common\nconsciousness condemns. Accordingly the person who has the power to\nwork the marvels comprehended under the name of magic is viewed with\ncondemnation, toleration or approval, according as he uses his power\nfor purposes which the common consciousness condemns, tolerates or\napproves. The power which such a person exerts is power personal to\nhim; and yet it is in a way a power greater and other than himself,\nfor he has it not always under his control or command: whether he\nuses it for the benefit of the community or for the injury of some\nindividual, he cannot count on its always coming off. And this fact is\nnot without its influence and consequences. If he is endeavouring to\nuse it for the injury of some person, he will explain his failure as\ndue to some error he has committed in the _modus operandi_, or to the\ncounter-operations of some rival. But if he is endeavouring to\nexercise it for the benefit of the community, failure makes others\ndoubtful whether he has the power to act on behalf of the community;\nwhile, on the contrary, a successful issue makes it clear that he has\nthe power, and places him, in the opinion both of the community and of\nhimself, in an exceptional position: his power is indeed in a way\npersonal to himself, but it is also greater and other than himself.\nHis sense of it, and the community's sense of it, is reinforced and\naugmented by the approval of the common consciousness, and by the\nfeeling that a power, in harmony with the common consciousness and the\ncommunity's desires, is working in him and through him. This power,\nthus exercised, of working marvels for the common good is obviously\nmore closely analogous to that of a prophet working miracles, than it\nis to that of the witch working injury or death. And, in the same way\nthat I have already suggested that gods and fetishes may have been\nevolved from a prior indeterminate concept, which was neither but\nmight become either; so I would now suggest that miracles are not\nmagic, nor is magic miracles, but that the two have been\ndifferentiated from a common source. And if the polytheistic gods,\nwhich are to be found where fetishism is believed in, present us with\na very low stage in the development of the idea of a 'perfect\npersonality,' so too the sort of miracles which are believed in, where\nthe belief in magic flourishes, present us with a very low stage in\nthe development of the idea of an almighty God. Axe-heads that float\nmust have belonged originally to such a low stage; and rods that turn\ninto serpents were the property of the 'magicians of Egypt' as well as\nof Aaron.\n\nThe common source, then, from which flows the power of working marvels\nfor the community's good, or of working magic in the interest of one\nindividual member and perhaps to the injury of another, is a personal\npower, which in itself--that is to say, apart from the intention with\nwhich it is used and apart from the consequences which ensue--is\nneither commendable nor condemnable from the community's point of\nview; and which consequently can neither be condemned nor commended by\nthe common consciousness, until the difference between self and the\ncommunity has become manifest, and the possibility of a divergence\nbetween the interests of self or _alter_ and those of the community\nhas been realised. Further, this power, in whichever way it comes to\nbe exercised, marks a strong individuality; and may be the first, as\nit is certainly a most striking, manifestation of the fact of\nindividuality: it marks off, at once, the individual possessing such\npower from the rest of the community. And the common consciousness is\npuzzled by the apparition. Just as it tolerates fetishes though it\ndisapproves of them and is afraid of them, so it tolerates the\nmagician, though it is afraid of him and does not cordially approve of\nhim, even when he benefits an individual client without injuring the\ncommunity. But though the man of power may use, and apparently most\noften does use, his power, in the interest of some individual and to\nthe detriment of the community; and though it is this condemnable use\nwhich is everywhere most conspicuous, and probably earliest developed;\nstill there is no reason why he should not use, and as a matter of\nfact he sometimes does use, his power on behalf of the community to\npromote the food-supply of the community or to produce the rain which\nis desired. In this case, then, the individual, having a power which\nothers have not, is not at variance with the community but in harmony\nwith the common consciousness, and becomes an organ by which it acts.\nWhen, then, the belief in gods, having the interests of the community\nat heart, presents itself or develops within the common consciousness,\nthe individual who has the power on behalf of the community to make\nrain or increase the food supply is marked out by the belief of the\ncommunity--or it may be by the communings of his own heart--as\nspecially related to the gods. Hence we find, in the low stages of the\nevolution of religion, the proceedings, by which the man of power had\nmade rain for the community or increased the food-supply, either\nincorporated into the ritual of the gods, or surviving traditionally\nas incidents in the life of a prophet, e.g. the rain-making of Elijah.\nIn the same way therefore as I have suggested that the resemblances\nbetween gods and fetishes are to be explained by the theory that the\ntwo go back to a common source, and that neither is developed from the\nother, so I suggest that the resemblances between the conception of\nprophet and that of magician point not to the priority of either to\nthe other, but to the derivation or evolution of both from a prior and\nless determinate concept.\n\nJust as a fetish is a material thing, and something more, so a\nmagician is a man and something more. Just as a god is an idol and\nsomething more, so a prophet or priest is a man and something more.\nThe fetish is a material thing which manifests a power that other\nthings do not exhibit; and the magician is a man possessing a power\nwhich other men have not. The difference between the magician and the\nprophet or priest is the same as the difference between the fetish and\nthe god. It is the difference between that which subserves the wishes\nof the individual, which may be, and often are, anti-social, and that\nwhich furthers the interests of the community. Of this difference each\nchild who is born into the community learns from his elders: it is\npart of the common consciousness of the community. And it could not\nbecome a fact of the common consciousness until the existence of self\nbecame recognised in thought and expressed in language. With that\nrecognition of difference, or possible difference, between the\nindividual and the community, between the desires of the one and the\nwelfare of the other, came the recognition of a difference between\nfetish and god, between magician and priest. The power exercised by\neither was greater than that of man; but the power manifested in the\none was exercised with a view to the good of the community; in the\ncase of the other, not. Thus, from the beginning, gods were not merely\nbeings exercising power greater than that of man, but beings\nexercising their power for the good of man. It is as such that, from\nthe beginning to the end, they have figured both in the common\nconsciousness of the community, and in the consciousness of every\nmember born into the community. They have figured in both; and,\nbecause they have figured both in the individual consciousness and the\ncommon consciousness, they have, from the beginning, been something\npresent to both, something at once within the individual and without.\nBut as the child recognises objects long before he becomes aware of\nthe existence of himself, so man, in his infancy, sought this power or\nbeing in the external world long before he looked for it within\nhimself.\n\nIt is because man looked for this being or power in the external world\nthat he found, or thought he found, it there. He looked for it and\nfound it, in the same way as to this day the African negro finds a\nfetish. A negro found a stone and took it for his fetish, as Professor\nTylor relates, as follows:--'He was once going out on important\nbusiness, but crossing the threshold he trod on this stone and hurt\nhimself. Ha! ha! thought he, art thou there? So he took the stone, and\nit helped him through his undertaking for days.' So too when the\ncommunity's attention is arrested by something in the external world,\nsome natural phenomenon which is marvellous in their eyes, their\nattitude of mind, the attitude of the common consciousness, translated\ninto words is: 'Ha! ha! art thou there?' This attitude of mind is one\nof expectancy: man finds a being, possessed of greater power than\nman's, because he is ready to find it and expecting it.\n\nSo strong is this expectancy, so ready is man to find this being,\nsuperior to man, that he finds it wherever he goes, wherever he looks.\nThere is probably no natural phenomenon whatever that has not\nsomewhere, at some time, provoked the question or the reflection 'Art\nthou there?' And it is because man has taken upon himself to answer\nthe question, and to say: 'Thou art there, in the great and strong\nwind which rends the mountains; or, in the earthquake; or, in the\nfire' that polytheism has arisen. Perhaps, however, we should rather\nuse the word 'polydaemonism' than 'polytheism.' By a god is usually\nmeant a being who has come to possess a proper name; and, probably, a\nspirit is worshipped for some considerable time, before the\nappellative, by which he is addressed, loses its original meaning, and\ncomes to be the proper name by which he, and he alone, is addressed.\nCertainly, the stage in which spirits without proper names are\nworshipped seems to be more primitive than that in which the being\nworshipped is a god, having a proper name of his own. And the\ndifference between the two stages of polydaemonism and polytheism is\nnot merely limited to the fact that the beings worshipped have proper\nnames in the later stage, and had none in the earlier. A development\nor a difference in language implies a development or difference in\nthought. If the being or spirit worshipped has come to be designated\nby a proper name, he has lost much of the vagueness that characterises\na nameless spirit, and he has come to be much more definite and much\nmore personal. Indeed, a change much more sinister, from the\nreligious point of view, is wrought, when the transition from\npolydaemonism to polytheism is accomplished.\n\nIn the stage of human evolution known as animism, everything which\nacts--or is supposed to act--is supposed to be, like man himself, a\nperson. But though, in the animistic stage, all powers are conceived\nby man as being persons, they are not all conceived as having human\nform: they may be animals, and have animal forms; or birds, and have\nbird-form; they may be trees, clouds, streams, the wind, the\nearthquake or the fire. In some, or rather in all, of these, man has\nat some time found the being or the power, greater than man, of whom\nhe has at all times been in quest, with the enquiry, addressed to each\nin turn, 'Art thou there?' The form of the question, the use of the\npersonal pronoun, shows that he is seeking for a person. And students\nof the science of religion are generally agreed that man, throughout\nthe history of religion, has been seeking for a power or being\nsuperior to man and greater than he. It is therefore a personal power\nand a personal being that man has been in search of, throughout his\nreligious history. He has pushed his search in many directions--often\nsimultaneously in different directions; and, he has abandoned one line\nof enquiry after another, because he has found that it did not lead\nhim whither he would be. Thus, as we have seen, he pushed forward, at\nthe same time, in the direction of fetishism and of polytheism, or\nrather of polydaemonism; but fetishism failed to bring him\nsatisfaction, or rather failed to satisfy the common consciousness,\nthe consciousness of the community, because it proved on trial to\nsubserve the wishes--the anti-social wishes--of the individual, and\nnot the interests of the community. The beings or powers that man\nlooked to find and which he supposed he found, whether as fetishes in\nthis or that object, or as daemons in the sky, the fire or the wind,\nin beast or bird or tree, were taken to be personal beings and\npersonal powers, bearing the same relation to that in which, or\nthrough which, they manifested themselves, as man bears to his body.\nThey do not seem to have been conceived as being men, or the souls of\nmen which manifested themselves in animals or trees. At the time when\npolydaemonism has, as yet, not become polytheism, the personal beings,\nworshipped in this or that external form, have not as yet been\nanthropomorphised. Indeed, the process which constitutes the change\nfrom polydaemonism to polytheism consists in the process, or rather is\nthe process, by which the spirits, the personal beings, worshipped in\ntree, or sky, or cloud, or wind, or fire came gradually to be\nanthropomorphised--to be invested with human parts and passions and to\nbe addressed like human beings with proper names. But when\nanthropomorphic polytheism is thus pushed to its extreme logical\nconclusions, its tendency is to collapse in the same way, and for the\nsame reasons, as fetishism, before it, had collapsed. What man had\nbeen in search of, from the beginning, and was still in search of, was\nsome personal being or power, higher than and superior to man. What\nanthropomorphic polytheism presented him with, in the upshot, was with\nbeings, not superior, but, in some or many cases, undeniably inferior\nto man. As such they could not thenceforth be worshipped. In Europe\ntheir worship was overthrown by Christianity. But, on reflection, it\nseems clear not only that, as such, they could not thenceforth be\nworshipped; but that, as such, they never had been worshipped. In the\nconsciousness of the community, the object of worship had always been,\nfrom the beginning, some personal being superior to man. The apostle\nof Christianity might justifiably speak to polytheists of the God\n'whom ye ignorantly worship.' It is true, and it is important to\nnotice, that the sacrifices and the rites and ceremonies, which\ntogether made up the service of worship, had been consciously and\nintentionally rendered to deities represented in human form; and, in\nthis sense, anthropomorphic deities had been worshipped. But, if\nworship is something other than sacrifice and rite and ceremony, then\nthe object of worship--the personal being, greater than man--presented\nto the common consciousness, is something other than the\nanthropomorphic being, inferior in much to man, of whom poets speak in\nmythology and whom artists represent in bodily shape.\n\nJust as fetishism developed and persisted, because it did contain,\nthough it perverted, one element of religious truth--the accessibility\nof the power worshipped to the worshipper--so too anthropomorphism,\nnotwithstanding the consequences to which, in mythology, it led, did\ncontain, or rather, was based on, one element of truth, viz. that the\ndivine is personal, as well as the human. Its error was to set up, as\ndivine personalities, a number of reproductions or reflections of\nhuman personality. It leads to the conclusion, as a necessary\nconsequence, that the divine personality is but a shadow of the human\npersonality, enlarged and projected, so to speak, upon the clouds, but\nalways betraying, in some way or other, the fact that it is but the\nshadow, magnified or distorted, of man. It excludes the possibility\nthat the divine personality, present to the common consciousness as\nthe object of worship, may be no reproduction of the human\npersonality, but a reality to which the human personality has the\npower of approximating. Be this as it may, we are justified in saying,\nindeed we are compelled to recognise, that in mythology, all the world\nover, we see a process of reflection at work, by which the beings,\noriginally apprehended as superior to man, come first to be\nanthropomorphised, that is to be apprehended as having the parts and\npassions of men, and then, consequently, to be seen to be no better\nthan men. This discovery it is which in the long run proves fatal to\nanthropomorphism.\n\nWe have seen, above, the reason why fetishism becomes eventually\ndistasteful to the common consciousness: the beings, superior to man,\nwhich are worshipped by the community, are worshipped as having the\ninterests of the community in their charge, and as having the good of\nthe community at heart; whereas a fetish is sought and found by the\nindividual, to advance his private interests, even to the cost and\nloss of other individuals and of the community at large. Thus, from\nthe earliest period at which beings, superior to man, are\ndifferentiated into gods and fetishes, gods are accepted by the common\nconsciousness as beings who maintain the good of the community and\npunish those who infringe it; while fetishes become beings who assist\nindividual members to infringe the customary morality of the tribe.\nThus, from the first, the beings, of whom the community is conscious\nas superior to man, are beings, having in charge, first, the customary\nmorality of the tribe; and, afterwards, the conscious morality of the\ncommunity.\n\nThis conception, it was, of the gods, as guardians of morality and of\nthe common good, that condemned fetishism; and this conception it was,\nwhich was to prove eventually the condemnation of polytheism. A\nmultitude of beings--even though they be divine beings--means a\nmultitude, that is a diversity, of ideas. Diversity of ideas,\ndifference of opinion, is what is implied by every mythology which\ntells of disputes and wars between the gods. Every god, who thus\ndisputed and fought with other gods, must have felt that he had right\non his side, or else have fought for the sake of fighting.\nConsequently the gods of polytheism are either destitute of morality,\nor divided in opinion as to what is right. In neither case, therefore,\nare the gods, of whom mythology tells, the beings, superior to man,\nwho, from the beginning, were present in the common consciousness to\nbe worshipped. From the outset, the object of the community's worship\nhad been conceived as a moral power. If, then, the many gods of\npolytheism were either destitute or disregardful of morality, they\ncould not be the moral power of which the common consciousness had\nbeen dimly aware: that moral power, that moral personality, must be\nother than they. As the moral consciousness of the community\ndiscriminated fetishes from gods and tended to rule out fetishes from\nthe sphere of religion; so too, eventually, the moral consciousness of\nthe community came to be offended by the incompatibility between the\nmoral ideal and the conception of a multitude of gods at variance with\neach other. If the common consciousness was slow in coming to\nrecognise the unity of the Godhead--and it was slower in some people\nthan in others--the unity was logically implied, from the beginning,\nin the conception of a personal power, greater and higher than man,\nand having the good of the community at heart. The history of religion\nis, in effect, from one point of view, the story of the process by\nwhich this conception, however dim, blurred or vague, at first, tends\nto become clarified and self-consistent.\n\nThat, however, is not the only point of view from which the history of\nreligion can, or ought to be, regarded. So long as we look at it from\nthat point of view, we shall be in danger of seeing nothing in the\nhistory of religion but an intellectual process, and nothing in\nreligion itself but a mental conception. There is, however, another\nelement in religion, as is generally recognised; and that an emotional\nelement, as is usually admitted. What however is the nature of that\nemotion, is a question on which there has always been diversity of\nopinion. The beings, who figured in the common consciousness as gods,\nwere apprehended by the common consciousness as powers superior to\nman; and certainly as powers capable of inflicting suffering on the\ncommunity. As such, then, they must have been approached with an\nemotion of the nature of reverence, awe or fear. The important, the\ndetermining, fact, however, is that they were approached. The emotion,\ntherefore, which prompted the community to approach them, is at any\nrate distinguishable from the mere fright which would have kept the\ncommunity as far away from these powers as possible. The emotion which\nprompted approach could not have been fear, pure and simple. It must\nhave been more in the nature of awe or reverence; both of which\nfeelings are clearly distinguishable from fear. Thus, we may fear\ndisease or disgrace; but the fear we feel carries with it neither awe\nnor reverence. Again, awe is an inhibitive feeling, it is a feeling\nwhich--as in the case of the awe-struck person--rather prevents than\npromotes action or movement. And the determining fact about the\nreligious emotion is that it was the emotion with which the community\napproached its gods. That emotion is now, and probably always was,\nreverential in character. The occasion, on which a community\napproaches its gods, often is, and doubtless often was, a time when\nmisfortune had befallen the community. The misfortune was viewed as a\nvisitation of the god's wrath upon his community; and fear--that 'fear\nof the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom'--doubtless played a\nlarge part in the complex emotion which stirred the community, not to\nrun away but to approach the god for the purpose of appeasing his\nwrath. In the complexity of an emotion which led to action of this\nkind, we must recognise not merely fear but some trust and\nconfidence--so much, at least, as prevented the person who experienced\nit from running away simply. The emotion is not too complex for man,\nin however primitive a stage of development: it is not more complex\nthan that which brings a dog to his master, though it knows it is\ngoing to be thrashed.\n\nThat some trust and confidence is indispensable in the complex feeling\nwith which a community approaches its gods, for the purpose of\nappeasing their wrath--still more, for beseeching favours from\nthem--seems indisputable. But we must not exaggerate it. Wherever\nthere are gods at all, they are regarded by the community as beings\nwho can be approached: so much confidence, at least, is placed in them\nby the community that believes in them. Even if they are offended and\nwrathful, the community is confident that they can be appeased: the\ncommunity places so much trust in them. Indeed its trust goes even\nfurther: it is sure that they do not take offence without reasonable\ngrounds. If they display wrath against the community and send calamity\nupon it, it is, and in the opinion of the community, can only be,\nbecause some member of the community has done that which he should not\nhave done. The gods may be, on occasion, wrathful; but they are just.\nThey are from the beginning moral beings--according to such standard\nof morality as the community possesses--and it is breaches of the\ntribe's customary morality that their wrath is directed against. They\nare, from the beginning, and for long afterwards in the history of\nreligion, strict to mark what is amiss, and, in that sense, they are\njealous gods. And this aspect of the Godhead it is which fills the\nlarger part of the field of religious consciousness, not only in the\ncase of peoples who have failed to recognise the unity of the Godhead,\nbut even in the case of a people like the Jews, who did recognise it.\nThe other aspect of the Godhead, as the God, not merely of mercy and\nforgiveness, but of love, was an aspect fully revealed in Christianity\nalone, of all the religions in the world.\n\nBut the love God displays to all his children, to the prodigal son as\nwell as to others, is not a mere attribute assigned to Him. It is not\na mere quality with which one religion may invest Him, and of which\nanother religion, with equal right, may divest Him. The idea of God\ndoes not consist merely of attributes and qualities, so that, if you\nstrip off all the attributes and qualities, nothing is left, and the\nidea is shown to be without content, meaning or reality.\n\nThe Godhead has been, in the common consciousness, from the beginning,\na being, a personal being, greater than man; and it is as such that He\nhas manifested Himself in the common consciousness, from the beginning\nuntil the present day. To this personality, as to others, attributes\nand qualities may be falsely ascribed, which are inconsistent with one\nanother and are none of His. Some of the attributes thus falsely\nascribed may be discovered, in the course of the history of religion,\nto have been falsely ascribed; and they will then be set aside. Thus,\nfetishism ascribed, or sought to ascribe, to the Godhead, the quality\nof willingness to promote even the anti-social desires of the owner of\nthe fetish. And fetishism exfoliated, or peeled off from the religious\norganism. Anthropomorphism, which ascribed to the divine personality\nthe parts and passions of man, along with a power greater than man's to\nviolate morality, is gradually dropped, as its inconsistency with the\nidea of God comes gradually to be recognised and loathed. So too with\npolytheism: a pantheon which is divided against itself cannot stand.\nThus, fetishism, anthropomorphism and polytheism ascribe qualities to\nthe Godhead, which are shown to be attributes assigned to the Godhead\nand imposed upon it from without, for eventually they are found by\nexperience to be incompatible with the idea of God as it is revealed in\nthe common consciousness.\n\nOn the other hand, the process of the history of religion, the process\nof the manifestation or revelation of the Godhead, does not proceed\nsolely by this negative method, or method of exclusion. If an\nattribute, such as that of human form, or of complicity in anti-social\npurposes, is ascribed, by anthropomorphism or fetishism, to the divine\npersonality, and is eventually felt by the common consciousness to be\nincompatible with the idea of God, the result is not merely that the\nattribute in question drops off, and leaves the idea of the divine\npersonality exactly where it was, and what it was, before the\nattribute had been foisted on it. The incompatibility of the quality,\nfalsely ascribed or assigned, becomes--if, and when, it does\nbecome--manifest and intolerable, just in proportion as the idea of\nGod, which has always been present, however vaguely and ill-defined,\nin the common consciousness, comes to manifest itself more definitely.\nThe attribution, to the divine personality, of qualities, which are\neventually found incompatible with it, may prove the occasion of the\nmore precise and definite manifestation; we may say that action\nimplies reaction, and so false ideas provoke true ones, but the false\nideas do not create the new ones. The false ideas may stimulate closer\nattention to the actual facts of the common consciousness and thus may\nstimulate the formation of truer ideas about them, by leading to a\nconcentration of attention upon the actual facts. But it is from this\ncloser attention, this concentration of attention, that the newer and\ntruer knowledge comes, and not from the false ideas. What we speak\nof, from one point of view, as closer attention to the facts of the\ncommon consciousness, may, from another point of view, be spoken of as\nan increasing manifestation, or a clearer revelation, of the divine\npersonality, revealed or manifested to the common consciousness. Those\nare two views, or two points of view, of one and the same process. But\nwhichever view we take of it, the process does not proceed solely by\nthe negative method of exclusion: it is a process which results in the\nunfolding and disclosure, not merely of what is in the common\nconsciousness, at any given moment, but of what is implied in the\ndivine personality revealed to the common consciousness. If we choose\nto speak of this unfolding or disclosure as evolution, the process,\nwhich the history of religion undertakes to set forth, will be the\nevolution of the idea of God. But, in that case, the process which we\ndesignate by the name of evolution, will be a process of disclosure\nand revelation. Disclosure implies that there is something to\ndisclose; revelation, that there is something to be revealed to the\ncommon consciousness--the presence of the Godhead, of divine\npersonality.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE IDEA OF GOD IN MYTHOLOGY\n\n\nThe idea of God is to be found, it will be generally admitted, not\nonly in monotheistic religions, but in polytheistic religions also;\nand, as polytheisms have developed out of polydaemonism, that is to\nsay, as the personal beings or powers of polydaemonism have, in course\nof time, come to possess proper names and a personal history, some\nidea of divine personality must be admitted to be present in\npolydaemonism as well as in polytheism; and, in the same way, some\nidea of a personality greater than human may be taken to lie at the\nback of both polydaemonism and fetishism.\n\nIf we wish to understand what ideas are in a man's mind, we may infer\nthem from the words that he speaks and from the way in which he acts.\nThe most natural and the most obvious course is to start from what he\nsays. And that is the course which was followed by students of the\nhistory of religion, when they desired to ascertain what idea exactly\nman has had of his gods. They had recourse, for the information they\nwanted, to mythology. Later on, indeed, they proceeded to enquire into\nwhat man did, into the ritual which he observed in approaching his\ngods; and, in the next chapter, we will follow them in that enquiry.\nBut in this chapter we have to ask what light mythology throws upon\nthe idea man has had of his gods.\n\nBefore doing so, however, we cannot but notice that mythology and\npolytheism go together. Fetishism does not produce any mythology.\nDoubtless, the owner of a fetish which acts knows and can tell of the\nwonderful things it has done. But those anecdotes do not get taken up\ninto the common stock of knowledge; nor are they handed down by the\ncommon consciousness to all succeeding generations of the community.\nMythology, like language, is the work, and is a possession, of the\ncommon consciousness.\n\nPolydaemonism, like fetishism, does not produce mythology; but, for a\ndifferent reason. The beings worshipped in the period of polydaemonism\nare beings who have not yet come to possess personal names, and\nconsequently cannot well have a personal history attached to them. The\ndifficulty is not indeed an absolute impossibility. Tales can be told,\nand at a certain stage in the history of fiction, especially in the\npre-historic stage, tales are told, in which the hero has no proper\nname: the period is 'once upon a time,' and the hero is 'a man'\n_simpliciter_. But myths are not told about 'a god' _simpliciter_. In\nmythology the hero of the myth is not 'a god,' in the sense of any god\nyou like, but this particular, specified god. And the reason is clear.\nIn fiction the artist creates the hero as well as the tale; and the\nprimitive teller of tales did not find it always necessary to invent a\nname for the hero he created. The hero could, and did, get along for\nsome time without any proper name. But with mythology the case is\ndifferent. The personal being, superior to man, of whom the myth is\ntold, is not the creation of the teller of the tale: he is a being\nknown by the community to exist. He cannot therefore, when he is the\nhero of a myth, be described as 'a god--any god you like.' Nor is the\nmyth a tale which could be told of any god whatever: if a myth is a\ntale, at any rate it is a tale which can be told of none other god but\nthis. Indeed, a myth is not a tale: it is an incident--or string of\nincidents--in the personal history of a particular person, or being,\nsuperior to man.\n\nIt is then as polydaemonism passes into polytheism, as the beings of\nthe one come to acquire personal names and personal history, and so to\nbecome the gods of the other, that mythology arises. It is under\npolytheism that mythology reaches its most luxuriant growth; and when\npolytheism disappears, mythology tends to disappear with it. Thus, the\nlight which mythology may be expected to throw on the idea of God is\none, which, however it may illumine the polytheistic idea of God, will\nnot be found to shine far beyond the area of polytheism.\n\nMyths then are narratives, in which the doings of some god or gods are\nrelated. And those gods existed in the belief of the community, before\ntales were told, or could be told, about them. Myths therefore are the\noutcome of reflection--of reflection about the gods and their\nrelations to one another, or to men, or to the world. Mythology is not\nthe source of man's belief of the gods. Man did not begin by telling\ntales about beings whom he knew to be the creations of his own\nimagination, and then gradually fall into the error of supposing them\nto be, after all, not creatures of his own imagination but real\nbeings. Mythology is not even the source of man's belief in a\nplurality of gods: man found gods everywhere, in every external object\nor phenomenon, because he was looking for God everywhere, and to every\nobject, in turn, he addressed the question, 'Art thou there?'\nMythology was not the source of polytheism. Polytheism was the source\nof mythology. Myths preserve to us the reflections which men have made\nabout their gods; and reflection, on any subject, cannot take place\nuntil the thing is there to be reflected upon. The result of prolonged\nreflection may be, indeed must be, to modify the ideas from which we\nstarted, for the better--or, it may be, for the worse. But, even so,\nthe result of reflection is not to create the ideas from which it\nstarted.\n\nFrom this point of view, it becomes impossible to accept the theory,\nput forward by Max Mueller, that mythology is due to 'disease of\nlanguage.' According to his theory, simple statements were made of\nsuch ordinary, natural processes as those of the rising, or the\nsetting, of the sun. Then, by disease of language, the meaning of the\nwords or epithets, by which the sun or the dawn were, at the\nbeginning, designated or described, passed out of mind. The epithets\nthen came to be regarded as proper names; and so the people, amongst\nwhich these simple statements were originally made, found itself\neventually in possession of a number of tales told of persons\npossessing proper names and doing marvellous things. Thus, Max\nMueller's theory not only accounted for the origin of tales told about\nthe gods: it also explained the origin of the gods, about whom the\ntales were told. It is a theory of the origin, not merely of\nmythology, but also of polytheism.\n\nThus, even on Max Mueller's theory, mythology is the outcome of\nreflection--of reflection upon the doings and behaviour of the sun,\nthe clouds, wind, fire etc. But, on his theory, the sun, moon etc.,\nwere not, at first, regarded as persons, at all: it was merely owing\nto 'disease of language' that they came to be so regarded. Only if we\nmake this original assumption, can we accept the conclusions deduced\nfrom it; and no student now accepts the assumption: it is one which is\nforbidden by the well-established facts of animism. Sun, moon, wind\nand fire, everything that acts, or is supposed to act, is regarded by\nearly man as animated by personal power. If, therefore, the external\nobjects, to which man turned with his question, 'Art thou there?' were\nregarded by him, from the beginning, as animated by personal power,\nthe theory that they were not so regarded falls to the ground; and,\nconsequently, we cannot accept it as accounting for the origin of\npolytheism.\n\nDoubtless, during the time of its vogue, Max Mueller's theory was\naccepted precisely because it did profess to account for the origin of\npolytheism, and because it denied polytheism any religious value or\nmeaning whatever. On the theory, polytheism did not originate from any\nreligious sentiment whatever, but from a disease of language. And this\nwas a view which naturally commended itself to those who were ready to\nsay and believe that polytheism is not religion at all. But the\nconsequences of saying this are such as to make any science of\nreligion, or indeed any history of religion, impossible. Where the\nidea of God is to be found, there some religion exists; and to say\nthat, in polytheism, no idea of God can be found, is out of the\nquestion. If then polytheism is a stage in the history of religious\nbelief, we have to consider it in relation to the other stages of\nreligious belief, which preceded or followed it. We have to relate the\nidea of God, as it appeared in polytheism, with the idea as it\nappeared in other stages of belief. In order to do this, we must first\ndiscover what the polytheistic idea of God is; and for that purpose we\nmust turn, at any rate at first, to the myths which embody the\nreflections of polytheists upon the attributes and actions of the\nGodhead, or of those beings, superior to man, whose existence was\naccepted by the common consciousness. It may be that the reflections\nupon the idea of God, which are embodied in mythology, have so tended\nto degrade the idea of God, that religious advance upon the lines of\npolytheism became impossible, just as the conception of God as a being\nwho would promote the anti-social wishes of an individual, rendered\nreligious advance upon the lines of fetishism impossible. In that\ncase, religion would forsake the line of polytheism, as it had\npreviously abandoned that of fetishism.\n\nA certain presumption that myths tend to the degradation of religion\nis created by the mere use of the term 'mythology.' It has come to be\na dyslogistic term, partly because all myths are lies, but still more\nbecause some of them are ignoble lies. It becomes necessary,\ntherefore, to remind ourselves that, though we see them to be untrue,\nthey were not regarded as untrue by those who believed in them; and\nthat many of them were not ignoble. Aeschylus and Sophocles are\nwitnesses, not to be disbelieved, on these points. In their writings\nwe have the reflections of polytheists upon the actions and attributes\nof the gods. But the reflections made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, and\ntheir treatment of the myths, must be distinguished from the myths,\nwhich they found to hand, just as the very different treatment and\nreflection, which the myths received from Euripides, must be\ndistinguished from them. In both cases, the treatment, which the myths\nmet with from the tragedians, is to be distinguished from the myths,\nas they were current among the community before and after the plays\nwere performed. The writings of the tragedians show what might be made\nof the myths by great poets. They do not show what the myths were in\nthe common consciousness that made them. And the history of mythology\nafter the time of the three great tragedians makes it clear enough\nthat even so noble a writer as Aeschylus could not impart to mythology\nany direction other than that determined for it by the conditions\nunder which it originated, developed and ran its course.\n\nMythology is the work and the product of the common consciousness. The\ngeneration existing at any time receives it from preceding\ngenerations; civilised generations from barbarous, and barbarous\ngenerations from their savage predecessors. If it grows in the process\nof transmission, and so reflects to some extent the changes which take\nplace in the common consciousness, it changes but little in character.\nThe common consciousness itself changes with exceeding slowness; it\nretains what it has received with a conservatism like that of\nchildren's minds; and, what it adds must, from the nature of the case,\nbe modelled on that which it has received, and be of a piece with it.\nBut, though the common consciousness changes but slowly, it does\nchange: with the change from savagery to civilisation there goes moral\ndevelopment. Some of the myths, which are re-told from one generation\nto another, may be capable of becoming civilised and moralised in\nproportion as do those who tell them; but some are not. These latter\nare incidents in the personal history of the gods, which, if told at\nall, can only be told, as they had been told from the beginning, in\nall their repulsiveness. They survive, in virtue of the tenacity and\nconservatism of the common consciousness; and, as survivals, they\ntestify to the moral development which has taken place in the very\ncommunity which conserves them. By them the eye of modern science\nmeasures the development and the difference between the stage of\nsociety which originally produced them and the stage which begins to\nbe troubled by them. They are valuable for the purposes of modern\nscience because they are evidence of the continuity with which the\nlater stages have developed from the earlier; and, also, because they\nare the first outward indications of the discovery which was\neventually to be made, of the difference between mythology and\nreligion--a difference which existed from the beginning of mythology,\nand all through its growth, though it existed in the sphere of feeling\nlong before it found expression for itself in words.\n\nThe course of history has shown, as a matter of fact, that these\nrepulsive and disgusting myths could not be rooted out without\nuprooting the whole system of mythology. But the course of history has\nalso shown that religion could continue to exist after the destruction\nof mythology, as it had done before its birth. But, of this the\ngenerations to whom myths had been transmitted and for whom mythology\nwas the accepted belief, could not be aware. In their eyes the attempt\nto discredit some myths appeared to involve--as it did really\ninvolve--the overthrow of the whole system of mythology. If they\nthought--as they undoubtedly did think--that the destruction of\nmythology was the same thing as the destruction of religion, their\nerror was one of a class of errors into which the human mind is at no\ntime exempt from falling. And they had this further excuse, that the\ndestruction of mythology did logically and necessarily imply the\ndestruction of polytheism. Polytheism and mythology were complementary\nparts of their idea of the Godhead. Demonstrations therefore of the\ninconsistency and immorality involved in their idea were purely\nnegative and destructive; and they were, accordingly, unavailing until\na higher idea of the unity of the Godhead was forthcoming.\n\nUntil that time, polytheism and mythology struggled on. They were\nburdened, and, as time went on, they were overburdened, with the\nweight of the repulsive myths which could not be denied and disowned,\nbut could only be thrust out of sight as far, and as long, as\npossible. These myths, however offensive they became in the long run\nto the conscience of the community, were, in their origin, narratives\nwhich were not offensive to the common consciousness, for the simple\nreason that they were the work of the common consciousness, approved\nby it and transmitted for ages under the seal of its approval. If they\nwere not offensive to the common consciousness at the time when they\noriginated, and only became so later, the reason is that the morality\nof the community was less developed at the time of their origin than\nit came to be subsequently. If they became offensive, it was because\nthe morality of the community tended to advance, while they remained\nwhat they had always been.\n\nIt may, perhaps, be asked, why the morality of the community should\ntend to change, and the myths of the community should not? The reason\nseems to be that myths are learned by the child in the nursery, and\nmorality is learned by the man in the world. The family is a smaller\ncommunity than the village community, the city, or the state; and the\nsmaller the community, the more tenacious it is of its customs and\ntraditions. The toys of Athenian children, which have been discovered,\nare, all, the toys which children continue to use to this day. In the\nIliad children built sand-castles on the sea-shore as they do now; and\nthe little child tugged at its mother's dress then as now. Children\nthen as now would insist that the tales told to them should always be\ntold exactly as they were first told. Of the discrepancy between the\nmorality exhibited by the heroes of nursery-tales and that practised\nby the grown-up world the child has no knowledge, for the sufficient\nreason that he is not as yet one of the grown-up world. When he enters\nthe grown-up world, he may learn the difference; but he can only enter\nthe grown-up world, if there is one for him to enter; and, in the\nchildhood of man, there is none which he can enter, for the adults\nthemselves, though of larger growth, are children still in mind.\nCustom and tradition rule the adult community then as absolutely as\nthey rule the child community. In course of time, the adult community\nmay break the bonds of custom and tradition; but the community which\nconsists of children treasures them and hands them on. Within the\ntribe, thenceforth, there are two communities, that of the adults and\nthat of the children. The one community is as continuous with itself\nas the other; but the children's community is highly conservative of\nwhat it has received and of what it hands on--and that for the simple\nreason that children will be children still. It is this homogeneity of\nthe children's community which enables it to preserve its customs,\ntraditions and beliefs. And as long as the community of adults is\nhomogeneous, it also departs but little from the customs, traditions\nand beliefs, which it has inherited from the same source as the\nchildren's community has inherited them. The two communities, the\nchildren's and the adults', originate and develop within the larger\ncommunity of the tribe. They differentiate, at first, with exceeding\nslowness; the children's community changes more slowly even than the\nadults'--its weapons continue to be the bow and arrow, long after\nadults have discarded them; and the bull-roarer continues sacred in\nits eyes to a period when the adult community has not only discarded\nits use but forgotten its meaning. In its tales and myths it may\npreserve the memory of a stage of morality which the adult community\nhas outgrown, and has left behind as far it has left behind the\nbull-roarer or the bow and arrow. And the stage of morality, of which\nit preserves the memory, is one from which the adult community in past\ntime emerged. Having emerged, indeed, it found itself, eventually,\nwhen made to look back, compelled to condemn that which it looked back\nupon.\n\nWhat, then, were these myths, with which the moralised community might\nfind itself confronted? They were tales which originated in the mind\nof the community when it was yet immature. They preserve to us the\nreflections of the immature mind about the gods and what they did. And\nit is because the minds, which made these reflections, were immature,\nthat the myths which embodied or expressed these reflections, were\nsuch as might be accepted by immature minds, but were eventually found\nintolerable by more mature minds. It may, perhaps, be said--and it may\nbe said with justice--that the reflections even of the immature mind\nare not all, of necessity, erroneous, for it is from them that the\nwhole of modern knowledge has been evolved or developed, just as the\nsteam-plough may be traced back to the primitive digging-stick:\nreflection upon anything may lead to better knowledge of the thing, as\nwell as to false notions about it. But the nations, which have\noutgrown mythology, have cast it aside because in the long run they\nbecame convinced that the notions it embodied were false notions. And\nthey reached that conclusion on this point in the same way and for\nthe same reason as they reached the same conclusion in other matters;\nfor there is only one way. There is only one way and one test by which\nit is possible to determine whether the inferences we have drawn about\na thing are true or false, and that is the test of experience. That\nalone can settle the question whether the thing actually does or does\nnot act in the way, or display the qualities alleged. If it proves in\nour experience to act in the way, or to display the qualities, which\nour reflection led us to surmise, then our conception of the thing is\nboth corrected and enlarged, that is to say, the thing proves to be\nboth more and other than it was at first supposed to be. If experience\nshows that it is not what we surmised, does not act in the way or\ndisplay the qualities our reflection led us to expect, then, as the\nconclusions we reached are wrong, our reflections were on a wrong\nline, and must have started from a false conception or an imperfect\nidea of the thing.\n\nIt is collision of this kind between the conclusions of mythology and\nthe idea of the gods, as the guardians of morality, that rouses\nsuspicion in a community, still polytheistic, first that the\nconclusions embodied in mythology are on a wrong line, and next that\nthey must have started from a false conception or imperfect idea of\nthe Godhead. By its fruits is the error found to be error--by the\nimmorality which it ascribes to the very gods whose function it is to\nguard morality. Mythology is the process of reflection which leads to\nconclusions eventually discarded as false, demonstrably false to\nanyone who compared them with the idea of the Godhead which he had in\nhis own soul. Mythology worked out the consequences of the assumption\nthat it is to the external world we must look for the divine\npersonality of whose presence in the common consciousness, the\ncommunity has at all times, been, even though dimly, aware. Doubts as\nto the truth of myths were first aroused by the inconsistency between\nthe myths told and the justice and morality which had been from the\nbeginning the very essence of divine personality. The doubts arose in\nthe minds and hearts of individual thinkers; and, if those individuals\nhad been the only members of the community who conceived justice and\nmorality to be essential qualities of the divine personality, then it\nwould have been necessary for such thinkers first to convert the\ncommunity to that view. Now, one of the consequences of the prevalence\nof mythology is that the community, amongst whom it flourishes, comes\nto be, if not doubtful, then at times forgetful, of the fact that the\ngods of the community are moral beings and the guardians of morality.\nThat fact had to be dismissed from attention, for the time being,\nwhenever certain myths were related. And, the more frequently a fact\nis dismissed from attention, the less likely it is to reappear on the\nsurface of consciousness. Thus, the larger the part played by\nmythology in the field of the common consciousness, the greater its\ntendency to drive out from attention those moral qualities which were\nof the essence of divine personality. But, however large the part\nplayed by mythology, and however great its tendency to obliterate the\nmoral qualities of the gods, it rarely, if indeed ever, entirely\nobliterates them from the field of the common consciousness.\nConsequently, the individual thinkers, who become painfully aware of\nthe contrast and opposition between the morality, which is essential\nto a divine personality, and the immorality ascribed to the gods in\nsome myths, have not to deal with a community which denies that the\ngods have any morality whatever, but with a community which is ready\nto admit the morality of the gods, whenever its attention is called\nthereto. Thus, though it may be that it is in this or that individual\nthat the inconsistency between the moral qualities, which belong to\nthe gods, and the immoral actions which mythology ascribes to the\ngods, first manifests itself, to his distress and disturbance, still\nwhat has happened in his case happens in the case of some, and may\nhappen in the case of all, other members of the community. The\ninconsistency then comes to exist not merely for the individual but\nfor the common consciousness.\n\nIt was the immorality of mythology which first drew the attention of\nbelievers in polytheism to the inconsistency between the goodness,\nwhich was felt to be of the essence of the divine nature, and the\nvileness, which was imputed to them in some myths; but it is the\nirrationality and absurdity of mythology that seems, to the modern\nmind, to be its most uniform characteristic. So long as the only\nmythology that was studied was the mythology of Indo-European peoples,\nit was assumed, without question, that the myths could not really be,\nor originally have been, irrational and absurd: they must conceal,\nunder their seeming absurdity and outwardly irrational appearance,\nsome truth. They must have had, originally, some esoteric meaning.\nThey must have conveyed--allegorically, indeed--some profound truths,\nknown or revealed to sages of old, which it was the business of modern\nstudents to re-discover in mythology. And accordingly profound\ntruths--scientific, cosmographic, astronomical, geographical,\nphilosophic or religious--were discovered. There was no knowledge\nwhich the early ancestors of the human race were not supposed to have\npossessed, and their descendants to have forgotten.\n\nBut, when it came to be discovered, and accepted, that the ancestors\nof the Indo-European peoples had once been savages, and that savages,\nall the world over, possessed myths, it became impossible to maintain\nthat such savages possessed in their mythologies treasures of truth\neither scientific or religious. Myths have no esoteric meaning.\nObviously we must take them to be what we find them to be amongst\npresent-day savages, that is, absurd and irrational stories, with no\nsecret meaning behind them. Yet it is difficult, indeed impossible, to\naccept this as the last word on the subject. The stories are rejected\nby us, because they are patently absurd and irrational. But the savage\ndoes not reject them: he accepts them. And he could not accept and\nbelieve them, if he, as well as we, found them irrational and absurd.\nIn a word, it is the same with the irrationality as it is with the\nimmorality of mythology: myths are the work and the product of the\ncommon consciousness. As such, myths cannot be viewed as irrational by\nthe common consciousness in which they originated, and by which they\nwere accepted and transmitted, any more than they were regarded as\nimmoral.\n\nObviously, the common consciousness which produces mythology cannot\npronounce the myths, when it produces them, and accepts them, absurd.\nOn the contrary, they are rational, in its eyes, and according to its\nlevel of understanding, however absurd the growth of knowledge may\neventually show them to be. Myths, then, in their origin, are told and\nheard, narrated and accepted, as rational and intelligible. As\nnarrated, they are narratives: can we say that they are anything more?\nor are they tales told simply for the pleasure of telling? Tales of\nthis latter kind, pure fiction, are to be found wherever man is. But,\nwe have already seen some points in which myths differ from tales of\nthis kind: in fiction the artist creates his hero, but in myths the\nbeing superior to man, of whom the story is told is not the creation\nof the teller of the tale; he is a being known to the community to\nexist. Another point of difference is that a myth belongs to the god\nof whom it is told and cannot properly be told of any other god. These\nare two respects in which the imagination is limited, two points on\nwhich, in the case of myths, the creative imagination is, so to speak,\nnailed down. Is it subject to any further restriction in the case of\nmyths? Granted that an adventure, when once it has been set down to\none god, may not be set down to another, is the creative imagination\nfree, in the case of mythology, as it is in the case of pure fiction,\nto invent the incidents and adventures, which eventually--in a lexicon\nof mythology--go to make up the biography of the god? The freedom, it\nappears, is of a strictly limited character.\n\nIt is an induction, as wide as the world--being based on mythologies\nfrom all parts of the world--that myths are aetiological, that their\npurpose is to give the reason of things, to explain the origin of\nfire, agriculture, civilisation, the world--of anything, in fact, that\nto the savage seems to require explanation. In the animistic period,\nman found gods everywhere because everywhere he was looking for gods.\nTo every object that arrested his attention, in the external world, he\nput, or might put, the question, 'Art thou there?' Every happening\nthat arrested the attention of a whole community, and provoked from\nthe common consciousness the affirmation, 'Thou art there,' was, by\nthat affirmation, accepted as the doing of a god. But neither at this\nstage, nor for long after, is there any myth. The being, whose\npresence is thus affirmed, has at first no name: his personality is of\nthe faintest, his individuality, the vaguest. Mythology does not begin\nuntil the question is put, 'Why has the god done this thing?' A myth\nconsists, or originally consisted, of the reason which was found and\nadopted by the common consciousness as the reason why the god did what\nhe did do. It is in this sense that myths are aetiological. The\nimagination which produces them is, in a sense, a 'scientific\nimagination.' It works within limits. The data on which it works are\nthat this thing was done, or is done, by this god; and the problem set\nto the mythological imagination is, 'Why did he, or does he, do it?'\nThe stories which were invented to answer this question constituted\nmythology; and the fact that myths were invented for the purpose of\nanswering this question distinguishes them from stories in the\ninvention of which the imagination was not subject to restriction, was\nnot tied down to this god and to this action of his, and was not\nlimited to the sole task of imagining an answer to the question, 'Why\ndid he do it?' All myths are narratives, but not all narratives are\nmyths. Some narratives have men alone for their heroes. They are\nimaginative but not mythological. Some narratives are about gods and\nwhat they did. Their purpose is to explain why the gods did what they\ndid do, and those narratives are mythological.\n\nIt may, perhaps, seem that the imagination of early man would from the\nfirst be set to work to invent myths in answer to the question, 'Why\ndid the god do this thing?' But, as a matter of fact, man can get on\nfor a long time without mythology. A striking instance of this is\nafforded by the _di indigites_ of Italy. Over everything man did, or\nsuffered, from his birth to his death, one of these gods or goddesses\npresided. The Deus Vagitanus opened the lips of the new-born infant\nwhen it uttered its first cry; the Dea Ossipago made the growing\nchild's bones stout and strong; the Deus Locutius made it speak\nclearly; the goddess Viriplaca restored harmony between husband and\nwife who had quarrelled; the Dea Orbona closed a man's eyes at death.\nThese _di indigites_ had shrines and received sacrifices. They were\ndistinguished into gods and goddesses. Their names were proper names,\nthough they are but words descriptive of the function which the deity\nperformed or presided over. Yet though these _di indigites_ are gods,\npersonal gods, to whom prayer and sacrifice are offered, they have no\nmythology attached to them; no myths are told about them.\n\nThe fact thus forced on our notice by the _di indigites_ of Rome\nshould be enough to warn us that mythology does not of necessity\nspring up, as an immediate consequence of the worship of the gods. It\nmay even suggest a reason why mythology must be a secondary, rather\nthan a primary consequence of worship. The Romans were practical, and\nso are savages: if they asked the question, 'Why did this god do this\nthing?' they asked it in no spirit of speculation but for a practical,\ncommon-sense reason: because they did not want this thing done again.\nAnd they offered sacrifices to the god or goddess, with that end in\nview. The things with regard to which the savage community first asks\nthe question, 'Why did the god do it?' are things disastrous to the\ncommunity--plague or famine. The answer to the question is really\nimplied by the terms in which the question is stated: the community,\nor some member of the community has transgressed; he must be\ndiscovered and punished. So long and so far as the question is thus\nput and thus answered, there is little room for mythology to grow in.\nAnd it did not grow round the _di indigites_ in Italy, or round\ncorresponding deities in other countries.\n\nBut the question, 'Why did the god do it?' is susceptible, on\nreflection, of another kind of answer. And from minds of a more\nreflective cast than the Roman, it received answer in the form of\nmythology, of aetiological myths. Mythology is the work of reflection:\nit is when the community has time and inclination to reflect upon its\ngods and their doings that mythology arises in the common\nconsciousness. For everything which happens to him, early man has one\nexplanation, if the thing is such as seems to him to require\nexplanation, and the explanation is that this thing is the doing of\nsome god. If the thing that arrests attention is some disaster, which\ncalls for remedy, the community approaches the god with prayer and\nsacrifice; its object is practical, not speculative; and no myth\narises. But if the thing that arrests attention is not one which calls\nfor action, on the part of the community, but one which stimulates\ncuriosity and provokes reflection, then the reflective answer to the\nquestion, why has this thing been done by whatever god that did it, is\na myth.\n\nThus the mood, or state of mind, in which mythology originates is\nclearly different from that in which the community approaches its\noffended gods for the purpose of appeasing them. The purpose in the\nlatter case is atonement and reconciliation. The state of mind in the\nformer case is one of enquiry. The emotion, of mingled fear and hope,\nwhich constitutes the one state of mind, is clearly different from the\nspirit of enquiry which characterises and constitutes the other state\nof mind. The one mood is undeniably religious; the other, not so. In\nthe one mood, the community feels itself to be in the presence of its\ngods; in the other it is reflecting and enquiring about them. In the\none case the community appears before its god; in the other it is\nreflectively using its idea of god, for the purpose of explaining\nthings that call for explanation. But the idea of God, when used in\nthis way, for the purpose of explaining things by means of myths, is\nmodified by the use it is put to. It is not merely that everything\nwhich happens is explained, if it requires explanation, as the doing\nof some god; but the motives which early man ascribed, in his\nmythological moments, to the gods--motives which only undeveloped man\ncould have ascribed to them--became part of the idea of God on which\nmythology worked and with which myths had to do. The idea of god thus\ngradually developed in polytheistic myths, the accumulated reflections\nof savage, barbarous and semi-barbarous ancestors, tends eventually to\nprovoke reaction. But why? Not merely because the myths are immoral\nand irrational. But because of the essential impiety of imputing\nimmoral and irrational acts to the divine personality. Plainly, then,\nthose thinkers and writers who were painfully impressed by such\nimpiety, who were acutely conscious that divine personality was\nirreconcilable with immorality and irrationality, had some other idea\nof God than the mythological. We may go further: we may safely say\nthat the average man would not have been perturbed, as he was, by\nSocrates, for instance, had he, also, not found within him some other\nidea of God than the mythological. And we can understand, to some\nextent, how this should be, if we call to mind that, though mythology\ngrows and luxuriates, still the worship of the gods goes on. That is\nto say, the community, through it all, continues to approach its gods,\nfor the purpose, and with the emotion of mingled fear and hope, with\nwhich it had always come into the presence of its gods. It is the\nirreconcilability of the mood of emotion, which is essentially\nreligious, with the mythological mode of reflective thought, which is\nnot, that tends to bring about the religious reaction against\nmythology. It is not however until the divergence between religion\nand mythology has become considerable that the irreconcilability\nbecomes manifest. And it is in the experience of some individual, and\nnot in the common consciousness, that this irreconcilability is first\ndiscovered. That discovery it is which makes the discoverer realise\nthat it is not merely when he comes before the presence of his gods in\ntheir temples, but that, whenever his heart rises on the tide of\nmingled fear, hope and thanksgiving, he comes into the presence of his\nGod. Having sought for the divine personality in all the external\nobjects of the world around him in the end he learns, what was the\ntruth from the beginning,--that it is in his heart he has access to\nhis God.\n\nThe belief in gods does not of necessity result in a mythology. The\ninstance of the _di indigites_ of Italy is there to show that it is no\ninevitable result. But mythology, wherever it is found, is of itself\nsufficient proof that gods are, or have been, believed in; it is the\noutcome of reflection and enquiry about the gods, whom the community\napproaches, with mingled feelings of hope and fear, and worships with\nsacrifice and prayer. Now, a mythology, or perhaps we should rather\nsay fragments of a mythology, may continue to exist as survivals, long\nafter belief in the gods, of whom the myths were originally told, has\nchanged, or even passed away entirely. Such traces of gods dethroned\nare to be found in the folk-lore of most Christian peoples. Indeed,\nnot only are traces of bygone mythology to be found in Christendom;\nbut rites and customs, which once formed part of the worship of now\nforgotten gods; or it may be that only the names of the gods survive\nunrecognised, as in the names of the days of the week. The existence\nof such survivals in Europe is known; their history has been traced;\ntheir origin is undoubted. When, then, in other quarters of the globe\nthan Europe, amongst peoples which are as old as any European people,\nthough they have no recorded history, we find fragments of mythology,\nor of ritual, or mere names of gods, without the myths and the ritual\nwhich attach elsewhere to gods, the presumption is that here too we\nhave to deal with survivals of a system of worship and mythology,\nwhich once existed, and has now gone to pieces, leaving but these\npieces of wreckage behind. Thus, amongst the Australian black-fellows\nwe find myths about gods who now receive no worship. But they never\ncould have become gods unless they had been worshipped at some time;\nthey could not have acquired the proper, personal names by which they\nare designated in these surviving myths, if they had not been\nworshipped long enough for the words which designate them to become\nproper names, i.e. names denoting no other person than the one\ndesignated by them. Amongst other backward peoples of the earth we\nfind the names of gods surviving, not only with no worship but no\nmyths attached to them; and the inference plainly is that, as they are\nstill remembered to be gods, they once were objects of worship\ncertainly, and probably once were subjects of mythology. And if, of a\nbygone religious system all that remains is in one place some\nfragments of mythology, and in another nothing but the mere names of\nthe gods, then it is nothing astonishing if elsewhere all that we find\nis some fragment of worship, some rite, which continues to be\npractised, for its own sake, even though all memory of the gods in\nwhose worship it originated has disappeared from the common\nconsciousness--a disappearance which would be the easier if the gods\nworshipped had acquired no names, or names as little personal as those\nof the _di indigites_. Ritual of this kind, not associated with the\nnames of any gods, is found amongst the Australian tribes, and may be\nthe wreckage of a system gone to pieces.\n\nHere, too, there is opportunity again, for the same error as that into\nwhich students of mythology once fell before, when they found, or\nthought they found, in mythology, profound truths, known or revealed\nto sages of old. The survivals mentioned in the last paragraph may be\ninterpreted as survivals of a prior monotheism or a primitive\nrevelation. But if they are survivals, at all, then they are\nsurvivals from a period when the ancestors of the present-day Africans\nor Australian black-fellows were in an earlier stage of social\ndevelopment--in an earlier stage even of linguistic development and of\nthe thought which develops with language--than their descendants are\nnow. Even in that earlier stage of development, however, man sought\nfor God. If he thought, mistakenly, to find Him in this or that\nexternal object, he was not wrong in the conviction that underlay his\nsearch--the conviction that God is at no time afar off from any one of\nus.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE IDEA OF GOD IN WORSHIP\n\n\nWe have found mythology of but little use in our search after the idea\nof God; and the reason, as we have suggested, is that myth-making is a\nreflective process, a process in which the mind reflects upon the\nidea, and therefore a process which cannot be set up unless the idea\nis already present, or, rather we should say, has already been\npresented. When it has been presented, it can become food for\nreflection, but not until then. If then we wish to discover where and\nwhen it is thus immediately presented, let us look for it in worship.\nIf it is given primarily in the moment of worship, it may be\nreproduced in a secondary stage as a matter for reflection. Now, in\nworship--provided that it be experienced as a reality, and not\nperformed as a conventionality--the community's purpose is to approach\nits God: let us come before the Lord and enter His courts with praise,\nare words which represent fairly the thought and feeling which, on\nordinary occasions, the man who goes to worship--really--experiences,\nwhether he be polytheist or monotheist. I have spoken of 'the moment\nof worship,' but worship is, of course, a habit: if it is not a habit,\nit ceases to be at all, in any effective sense. And it is a habit of\nthe community, of the common consciousness, which is continuous\nthrough the ages, even though it slowly changes; and which, as\ncontinuous, is conservative and tenacious. Even when it has become\nmonotheistic, it may continue to speak of the one God as 'a great god\nabove all other gods,' in terms which are survivals of an earlier\nstage of belief. Such expressions are like the clouds which, though\nthey are lifting, still linger round the mountain top: they are part\nof the vapour which had previously obscured from view the reality\nwhich was there, and cannot be shaken at any time.\n\nWorship may include words spoken, hymns of praise and prayer; but it\nincludes also things done, acts performed, ritual. It is these acts\nthat are the facts from which we have now to start, in order to infer\nwhat we can from them as to the idea of God which prompted them. There\nis an infinite diversity in these facts of ritual, just as the gods of\npolytheism are infinite in number and kind. But if there is diversity,\nthere is also unity. Greatly as the gods of polytheism differ from one\nanother, they are at least beings worshipped--and worshipped by the\ncommunity. Greatly as rituals vary in their detail, they are all\nritual: all are worship, and, all, the worship rendered by the\ncommunity to its gods. And there can be no doubt as to their object or\nthe purpose with which the community practises them: that purpose is,\nat least, to bring the community into the presence of its Lord. We may\nsafely say that there can be no worship unless there is a community\nworshipping and a being which is worshipped. Nor can there be any\ndoubt as to the relation existing between the two. The community bow\ndown and worship: that is the attitude of the congregation. Nor can\nthere be any doubt as to the relation which the god bears, in the\ncommon consciousness, to his worshippers: he is bound to them by\nspecial ties--from him they expect the help which they have received\nin ages past. They have faith in him--else they would not worship\nhim--faith that he will be what he has been in the past, a very help\nin time of trouble. The mere fact that they seek to come before him is\na confession of the faith that is in them, the faith that they are in\nthe presence of their God and have access to Him. However primitive,\nthat is rudimentary, the worship may be; however low in the scale of\ndevelopment the worshippers may be; however dim their idea of God and\nhowever confused and contradictory the reflections they may make\nabout Him, it is in that faith that they worship. So much is implied\nby worship--by the mere fact that the worshippers are gathered\ntogether for worship. If we are to find any clue which may give us\nuniform guidance through the infinite variety in the details of the\ninnumerable rituals that are, or have been, followed in the world, we\nmust look to find it in the purpose for which the worshippers gather\ntogether. But, if we wish to be guided by objective facts rather than\nby hasty, _a priori_ assumptions, we must begin by consulting the\nfacts: we must enquire whether the details of the different rituals\npresent nothing but diversity, or whether there is any respect in\nwhich they show likeness or uniformity. There is one point in which\nthey resemble one another; and, what is more, that point is the\nleading feature in all of them; they all centre round sacrifice. It is\nwith sacrifice, or by means of sacrifice, that their gods are\napproached by all men, beginning even with the jungle-dwellers of\nChota Nagpur, who sacrifice fowls and offer victims, for the purpose\nof conciliating the powers that send jungle-fever and murrain. The\nsacrificial rite is the occasion on which, and a means by which, the\nworshipper is brought into that closer relation with his god, which he\nwould not seek, if he did not--for whatever reason--desire it. As\nbearing on the idea of God, the spiritual import, and the practical\nimportance, of the sacrificial rite is that he who partakes in it can\nonly partake of it so far as he recognises that God is no private idea\nof his own, existing only in his notion, but is objectively real. The\njungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur may have no name for the being to whom,\nat the appointed season and in the appointed place, he sacrifices\nfowls; but, as we have seen, the gods only come to have proper,\npersonal names in slow course of time. He may be incapable of giving\nany account, comprehensible to the civilised enquirer, of the idea\nwhich he has of the being to whom he offers sacrifice: more\naccomplished theologians than he have failed to define God. But of the\nreality of the being whom he seeks to approach he has no doubt. It is\nnot the case that the reality of that being, by whomsoever worshipped,\nis an assumption which must be made, or a hypothesis that must be\npostulated, for the sake of providing a logical justification of\nworship. The simple fact is that the religious consciousness is the\nconsciousness of God as real, just as the common consciousness is the\nconsciousness of things as real. To represent the reality of either as\nsomething that is not experienced but inferred is to say that we have\nno experience of reality, and therefore have no real grounds for\ninference. We find it preferable to hold that we have immediate\nconsciousness of the real, to some extent, and that by inference we\nmay be brought, to a larger extent, into immediate consciousness of\nthe real.\n\nOf the reality of Him, whom even the jungle-dweller of Chota Nagpur\nseeks to approach, it is only possible to doubt on grounds which seek\nto deny the ultimate validity of the common consciousness on any\npoint. With the inferences which men have drawn about that reality,\nand the ideas those inferences have led to, the case is different.\nWhat exactly those ideas are, or have been, we have, more or less, to\nguess at, from such facts as the science of religion furnishes. One\nsuch set of facts is comprised under the term, worship; and of that\nset the leading fact everywhere is the rite of sacrifice. By means of\nit we may reasonably expect to penetrate to some of the ideas which\nthe worshippers had of the gods whom they worshipped. Unfortunately,\nhowever, there is considerable difference of opinion, between students\nof the science of religion, as to the idea which underlies sacrifice.\n\nOne fact from which we may start is that it is with sacrifice that the\ncommunity draws near to the god it wishes to approach. The outward,\nphysical fact, the visible set of actions, is that the body of\nworshippers proceed, with their oblation, to the place in which the\ngod manifests himself and is to be found. The inference which follows\nis that, corresponding to this series of outward actions, there is an\ninternal conviction in the hearts and minds of the worshippers: they\nwould not go to the place, unless they felt that, in so doing, they\nwere drawing near to their god.\n\nIn thus drawing near, both physically and spiritually, they take with\nthem something material. And this they would not do, unless taking the\nmaterial thing expressed, in some way, their mental attitude, or\nrather their religious attitude. The attitude thus expressed must be\npart of, or implied by, the desire to approach the god both physically\nand spiritually. The fact that they carry with them some material\nthing, expresses in gesture-language--such as is used by explorers\ntowards natives whose speech is unknown to them--the desire that\nactuates them. And thus much may be safely inferred, viz. that the\ndesire is, at any rate, to prepossess favourably the person\napproached.\n\nThus man approaches, bearing with him something intended to please the\ngod that he draws near. But though that is part of his intention, it\nis not the whole. His desire is that the god shall be pleased not\nmerely with the offering but with him. What he brings--his\noblation--is but a means to that end. Why he wishes the god to be\npleased with him, we shall have to enquire hereafter. Thus far,\nhowever, we see that that is the wish and is the purpose intimated by\nthe fact that he brings something material with him.\n\nIt seems clear also that the something material, with which the\ncommunity draws near to its god, need only be something which is\nconceived to be pleasing to the god. All that is necessary is that it\nshould express, or symbolise, the feeling with which the community\ndraws near. So long as it does this, its function is discharged. What\nit is of importance to notice, and what is apt to be forgotten, is the\nfeeling which underlies the outward act, and without which the action,\nthe rite, would not be performed. The feeling is the desire of the\nworshipper to commend himself. If we take this point of view, then the\ndistinction, which is sometimes drawn between offerings and sacrifice,\nneed not mislead us. The distinction is that the term 'sacrifice' is\nto be used only of that which is consumed, or destroyed, in the\nservice; while the term 'offering' is to be used only of what is not\ndestroyed. And the reason for drawing, or seeking to draw, the\ndistinction, seems to be that the destruction, or consumption, of the\nmaterial thing, in the service, is required to prove that the offering\nis accepted. But, though this proof may have come, in some cases, to\nbe expected, as showing that the community was right in believing that\nthe offering would be acceptable; the fact remains that the\nworshippers would not start out with the offering in their hands,\nunless they thought, to begin with, that it was acceptable. They would\nnot draw near to the god, with an offering about the acceptability of\nwhich they were in doubt. Anything therefore which they conceived to\nbe acceptable would suffice to indicate their desire to please, and\nwould serve to commend them. And the desire to do that which is\npleasing to their god is there from the beginning, as the condition on\nwhich alone they can enter his presence. Neglect of this fact may lead\nus to limit unduly the potentialities contained in the rite of\nsacrifice, from the beginning.\n\nThe rite did, undoubtedly, in the long course of time, come in some\ncommunities to be regarded and practised in a spirit little better\nthan commercial. Sacrifices came to be regarded as gifts, or presents,\nmade to the god, on the understanding that _do ut des_. Commerce\nitself, when analysed, is nothing but the application of the principle\nof giving to get. All that is necessary, in order to reduce religion\nto commercial principles, is that the payment of vows made should be\ncontingent on the delivery of the goods stipulated for; that the thing\noffered should be regarded as payment; that the god's favour should be\nconsidered capable of being bought. It is however in communities which\nhave some aptitude for commerce and have developed it, that religion\nis thus interpreted and practised. If we go back to the period in the\nhistory of a race when commerce is as yet unknown, we reach a state of\nthings when the possibility of thus commercialising worship was, as\nyet, undeveloped. At that early period, as in all periods, of the\nhistory of religion, the desire of the worshippers was to be pleasing,\nand to do that which was pleasing, to him whom they worshipped; and\nthe offerings they took with them when they approached his presence\nwere intended to be the outward and visible sign of their desire. But\nin some, or even in many, cases, they came eventually to rely on the\nsign or symbol rather than on the desire which it signified; and that\nis a danger which constantly dogs all ritual. Attention is\nconcentrated rather on the rite than on the spiritual process, which\nunderlies it, and of which the rite is but the expression; and then it\nbecomes possible to give a false interpretation to the meaning of the\nrite.\n\nIn the case of the offerings, which are made in the earliest stages of\nthe history of religion, the false interpretation, which comes in some\ncases to be put upon them by those who make the offerings, has been\nadopted by some students of the history of religion, as the true\nexplanation, the real meaning and the original purpose of offerings\nand sacrifice. This theory--the Gift-theory of sacrifice--requires us\nto believe that religion could be commercialised before commerce was\nknown; that religion consists, or originally consisted, not in doing\nthat which is pleasing in the sight of God, but in bribing the gods;\nthat the relatively late misinterpretation is the original and true\nmeaning of the rite; in a word, that there was no religion in the\nearliest manifestation of religion. But it is precisely this last\ncontention which is fatal to the Gift-theory. Not only is it a\nself-contradiction in terms, but it denies the very possibility of\nreligious evolution. Evolution is a process and a continuous process:\nthere is an unbroken continuity between the earliest and the latest of\nits stages. If there was no religion whatever in the earliest stages,\nneither can there be any in the latest. And that is why those who hold\nreligion to be an absurdity are apt to adopt the Gift-theory: the\nGift-theory implies a degrading absurdity from the beginning to the\nend of the evolutionary process--an unbroken continuity of absurdity.\nOn the other hand, we may hold by the plain truth that there must have\nbeen religion in the earliest manifestations of religion, and that\nbribing a god is not, in our sense of the word, religious. In that\ncase, we shall also hold that the offerings which have always been\npart of the earliest religious ritual were intended as the outward and\nvisible sign or symbol of the community's desire to do that which was\npleasing to their god; and that it is only in the course of time, and\nas the consequence of misinterpretation, that the offerings come to\nbe regarded as gifts made for the purpose of bribing the gods or of\npurchasing what they have to bestow. Thus, just as, in the evolution\nof religion, fetishism was differentiated from polytheism, and was\ncast aside--where it was cast aside--as incompatible with the demands\nof the religious sentiment, so too the making of gifts to the gods,\nfor the purpose of purchasing their favour, came to be differentiated\nfrom the service which God requires.\n\nThe endeavour to explain the history and purpose of sacrifice by means\nof the Gift-theory alone has the further disadvantage that it requires\nus to close our eyes to other features of the sacrificial rite, for,\nif we turn to them, we shall find it impossible to regard the\nGift-theory as affording a complete and exhaustive account of all that\nthere was in the rite from the beginning. Indeed, so important are\nthese other features, that, as we have seen, some students would\nmaintain that the only rite which can be properly termed sacrificial\nis one which presents these features. From this point of view, the\nterm sacrifice can only be used of something that is consumed or\ndestroyed in the service; while the term offering is restricted to\nthings which are not destroyed. But, from this point of view, we must\nhold that sacrifices, to be sacrifices in the specific must not merely\nbe destroyed or consumed, for then anything that could be destroyed\nby fire would be capable of becoming a burnt-offering; and the burning\nwould simply prove that the offering was acceptable--a proof which may\nin some cases have been required to make assurance doubly sure, but\nwhich was really superfluous, inasmuch as no one who desires his\noffering to be accepted will make an offering which he thinks to be\nunacceptable. Sacrifices, to be sacrifices in the specific sense thus\nput upon the word, we must hold to be things which by their very\nnature are marked out to be consumed: they must be articles of food.\nBut even with this qualification, sacrifices are not satisfactorily\ndistinguished from offerings, for a food-offering is an offering, and\ndischarges the function of a sacrifice, provided that it is offered.\nThat it should actually be consumed is neither universally nor\nnecessarily required. That it is often consumed in the service is a\nfact which brings us to a new and different feature of the sacrificial\nrite. Let us then consider it.\n\nThus far, looking at the rite on its outward side, from the point of\nview of the spectator, we have seen that the worshippers, carrying\nwith them something material, draw near to the place where the god\nmanifests himself. From this series of actions and gestures, we have\ninferred the belief of the worshippers to be that they are drawing\nnear to their god both physically and spiritually. We have inferred\nthat the material oblation is intended by the worshippers as the\noutward and visible sign of their wish to commend themselves to the\ngod. We have now to notice what has been implied throughout, that the\nworshippers do not draw near to the god without a reason, or seek to\ncommend themselves to him without a purpose. And if we consult the\nfacts once more, we shall find that the occasions, on which the god is\nthus approached, are generally occasions of distress, experienced or\napprehended. The feelings with which the community draws near are\ncompounded of the fear, occasioned by the distress or danger, and the\nhope and confidence that it will be removed or averted by the step\nwhich they are taking. Part of their idea of the god is that he can\nand will remove the present, or avert the coming, calamity; otherwise\nthey would not seek to approach him. But part also of their idea is\nthat they have done something to provoke him, otherwise calamity would\nnot have come upon them. Thus, when the worshippers seek to come into\nthe presence of their god, they are seeking him with the feeling that\nhe is estranged from them, and they approach him with something in\ntheir hands to symbolise their desire to please him, and to restore\nthe relation which ordinarily subsists between a god and his\nworshippers. Having deposited the offering they bring, and having\nproffered the petition they came to make, they retire satisfied that\nall now is well. The rite is now in all its essential features\ncomplete. But though complete, as an organism in the early stages of\nits history may be complete, it has, like the organism, the power of\ngrowth; and it grows.\n\nThe conviction with which the community ends the rite is the joyful\nconviction that the trouble is over-past. The joy which the community\nfeels often expresses itself in feast and song; and where the\nofferings are, as they most commonly are, food-offerings or\nanimal-sacrifice, the feast may come to be regarded as one at which\nthe god himself is present and of which he partakes along with his\nworshippers. The joy, which expresses itself in feast and song, may,\nhowever, not make itself felt until the prayer of the community has\nbeen fulfilled and the calamity has passed away; and then the feast\ncomes to be of the nature of a joyful thank-offering. But it is\nprobably only in one or other of these two cases that the offering\ncomes to be consumed in the service of feast and song. And although\nthe rite may and does grow in this way, still this development of\nit--'eating with the god'--is rather potentially than actually present\nin the earliest form of the rite.\n\nFrom this point of view, sacrificial meals or feasts are not part of\nthe ritual of approach: they belong to the termination of the\nceremony. They mark the fact of reconciliation; they are an\nexpression of the conviction that friendly relations are restored. The\nsacrificial meal then is accordingly not a means by which\nreconciliation is effected, but the outward expression of the\nconviction that the end has been attained; and, as expressing, it has\nthe force of confirming, the conviction. Where the sacrificial rite\ngrows to comprehend a sacrificial feast or meal, there the\nfood-offering or sacrifice is consumed in the service. But the rite\ndoes not always develop thus; and even without this development it\ndischarges its proper function. Before this development, it is on\noccasions of distress that the god is approached by the community, in\nthe conviction that the community has offended, and with the object of\npurging the community and removing the distress, of appeasing the god\nand restoring good relations. Yet even at this stage the object of the\ncommunity is to be at one with its god--at-one-ment and communion so\nfar are sought. There is implied the faith that he, the community's\ngod, cannot possibly be for ever alienated and will not utterly\nforsake them, even though he be estranged for the time. Doubtless the\nfeast, which in some cases came to crown the sacrificial rite, may,\nwhere it was practised amongst peoples who believed that persons\npartaking of common food became united by a common bond, have come to\nbe regarded as constituting a fresh bond and a more intimate\ncommunion between the god and his worshippers who alike partook of the\nsacrificial meal. But this belief is probably far from being, or\nhaving been, universal; and it is unnecessary to assume that this\nbelief must have existed, wherever we find the accomplishment of the\nsacrificial rite accompanied by rejoicing. The performance of the\nsacrificial rite is prompted by the desire to restore the normal\nrelation between the community and its god. It is carried out in the\nconviction that the god is willing to return to the normal relation;\nwhen it has been performed, the community is relieved and rejoices,\nwhether the rejoicing does or does not take form in a feast; and the\nessence of the rejoicing is the conviction that all now is well, a\nconviction which arises from the performance of the sacrificial rite\nand not from the meal which may or may not follow it.\n\nWhere the institution of the sacrificial feast did grow up, the\nnatural tendency would be for it to become the most important feature\nin the whole rite. The original and the fundamental purpose of the\nrite was to reconcile the god and his worshippers and to make them at\none: the feast, therefore, which marked the accomplishment of the very\npurpose of the rite, would come to be regarded as the object of the\nrite. In that, however, there is nothing more than the shifting\nforward of the centre of religious interest from the sacrifice to the\nfeast: there is nothing in it to change the character or conception\nof the feast. Yet, in the case of some peoples, its character and\nconception did change in a remarkable way. In the case of some\npeoples, we find that the feast is not an occasion of 'eating with the\ngod' but what has been crudely called 'eating the god.' This\nconception existed, as is generally agreed, beyond the possibility of\ndoubt, in Mexico amongst the Aztecs, and perhaps--though not beyond\nthe possibility of doubt--elsewhere.\n\nThe Aztecs were a barbarous or semi-civilised people, with a long\nhistory behind them. The circumstances under which the belief and\npractice in question existed and had grown up amongst them are clear\nenough. The Aztecs worshipped deities, and amongst those deities were\nplants and vegetables, such as maize. It was, of course, not any one\nindividual specimen that they worshipped: it was the spirit, the\nmaize-mother, who manifested herself in every maize-plant, but was not\nidentical with any one. At the same time, though they worshipped the\nspirit, or species, they grew and cultivated the individual plants, as\nfurnishing them with food. Thus they were in the position of eating as\nfood the plant, the body, in which was manifested the spirit whom they\nworshipped. In this there was an outward resemblance to the Christian\nrite of communion, which could not fail to attract the attention of\nthe Spanish priests at the time of the conquest of Mexico, but which\nhas probably been unconsciously magnified by them. They naturally\ninterpreted the Aztec ceremony in terms of Christianity, and the\nspirit of the translation probably differs accordingly from the spirit\nof the original.\n\nWe have now to consider the new phase of the sacrificial--indeed, in\nthis connection, we may say the sacramental--rite which was found in\nMexico, and to indicate the manner in which it probably originated.\nThe offerings earliest made to the gods were not necessarily, but were\nprobably, food-offerings, animal or vegetable; and as we are not in a\nposition to affirm that there was any restriction upon the kind of\nfood offered, it seems advisable to assume that any kind of food might\nbe offered to any kind of god. The intention of offerings seems to be\nto indicate merely that the worshippers desire to be pleasing in the\nsight of the god whom they wish to approach. At this, the simplest and\nearliest stage of the rite, the sacrificial feast has not yet come\ninto existence: it is enough if the food is offered to the god; it is\nnot necessary that it should be eaten, or that any portion of it\nshould be eaten, by the community. There is evidence enough to warrant\nus in believing that generally there was an aversion to eating the\ngod's portion. If the worshippers ate any portion, they certainly\nwould not eat and did not eat, until after the god had done so. At\nthis stage in the development of the rite, the offerings are\noccasional, and are not made at stated, recurring, seasons. The reason\nfor believing this is that it is on occasions of alarm and distress\nthat the community seeks to draw near its god. But though it is in\nalarm that the community draws nigh, it draws nigh in confidence that\nthe god can be appeased and is willing to be appeased. It is part of\nthe community's idea of its god that he has the power to punish; that\nhe does not exercise his power without reason; and that, as he is\npowerful, so also he is just to his worshippers, and merciful.\n\nBut though occasional offerings, and sacrifices made in trouble to\ngods who are conceived to be a very help in time of trouble, continue\nto be made, until a relatively late period in the history of religion,\nwe also find that there are recurring sacrifices, annually made. At\nthese annual ceremonies, the offerings are food-offerings. Where the\nfood-offerings are offerings of vegetable food, they are made at\nharvest time. They are made on the occasion of harvest; and that they\nshould be so made is probably no accident or fortuitous coincidence.\nAt the regularly recurring season of harvest, the community adheres to\nthe custom, already formed, of not partaking of the food which it\noffers to its god, until a portion has been offered to the god. The\ncustom, like other customs, tends to become obligatory: the\nworshippers, that is to say the community, may not eat, until the\noffering has been made and accepted. Then, indeed, the worshippers may\neat, solemnly, in the presence of their god. The eating becomes a\nsolemn feast of thanksgiving. The god, after whom they eat, and to\nwhom they render thanks, becomes the god who gives them to eat. What\nis thus true of edible plants--whether wild or domesticated--may also\nhold true to some extent of animal life, where anything like a 'close\ntime' comes to be observed.\n\nAs sacrificial ceremonies come to be, thus, annually recurring rites,\na corresponding development takes place in the community's idea of its\ngod. So long as the sacrificial ceremony was an irregularly recurring\nrite, the performance of which was prompted by the occurrence, or the\nthreat, of disaster, so long it was the wrath of the god which filled\nthe fore-ground, so to speak, of the religious consciousness; though\nbehind it lay the conviction of his justice and his mercy. But when\nthe ceremony becomes one of annual worship, a regularly recurring\noccasion on which the worshippers recognise that it is the god, to\nwhom the first-fruits belong, who gives the worshippers the harvest,\nthen the community's idea of its god is correspondingly developed. The\noccasion of the sacrificial rite is no longer one of alarm and\ndistress; it is no longer the wrath of the god, but his goodness as\nthe giver of good gifts, that tends to emerge in the fore-ground of\nthe religious consciousness. Harvest rites tend to become feasts of\nthanksgiving and thank-offerings; and so, by contrast with these\njoyous festivals, the occasional sacrifices, which continue to be\noffered in times of distress, tend to assume, more and more, the\ncharacter of sin-offerings or guilt-offerings.\n\nWe have, however, now to notice a consequence which ensues upon the\ncommunity's custom of not eating until after the first-fruits have\nbeen offered to the god. Not only is a habit or custom hard to break,\nsimply because it is a habit; but, when the habit is the habit of a\nwhole community, the individual who presumes to violate it is visited\nby the disapproval and the condemnation of the whole community. When\nthen the custom has established itself of abstaining from eating,\nuntil the first-fruits have been offered to the god, any violation of\nthe custom is condemned by the community as a whole. The consequence\nof this is that the fruit or the animal tends to be regarded by the\ncommunity as sacred to the god, and not to be meddled with until after\nthe first-fruits have been offered to him. The plant or animal becomes\nsacred to the god because the community has offered it to him, and\nintends to offer it to him, and does offer it to him annually. Now it\nis not a necessary and inevitable consequence that an animal or plant,\nwhich has come to be sacred, should become divine. But where we find\ndivine animals or animal gods--divine corn or corn-goddesses--we are\nentitled to consider this as one way in which they may have come to be\nregarded as divine, because sacred, and as deities, because divine.\nWhen we find the divine plant or animal constituting the sacrifice,\nand furnishing forth the sacrificial meal, there is a possibility that\nit was in this way and by this process that the plant or animal came\nto be, first, sacred, then divine, and finally the deity, to whom it\nwas offered. In many cases, certainly, this last stage was never\nreached. And we may conjecture a reason why it was not reached.\nWhether it could be reached would depend largely on the degree of\nindividuality, which the god, to whom the offering was made, had\nreached. A god who possesses a proper, personal name, must have a long\nhistory behind him, for a personal name is an epithet the meaning of\nwhich comes in course of time to be forgotten. If its meaning has come\nto be entirely forgotten, the god is thereby shown not only to have a\nlong history behind him but to have acquired a high degree of\nindividuality and personality, which will not be altered or modified\nby the offerings which are made to him. Where, however, the being or\npower worshipped is, as with the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur,\nstill nameless, his personality and individuality must be of the\nvaguest; and, in that case, there is the probability that the plant or\nanimal offered to him may become sacred to him; and, having become\nsacred, may become divine. The animal or plant may become that in\nwhich the nameless being manifests himself. The corn or maize is\noffered to the nameless deity; the deity is the being to whom the corn\nor maize is habitually offered; and then becomes the corn-deity or\nmaize-deity, the mother of the maize or the corn-goddess.\n\nLike the _di indigites_ of Italy, these vegetation-goddesses are\naddressed by names which, though performing the function of personal\nnames and enabling the worshippers to make appeals to the deities\npersonally, are still of perfectly transparent meaning. Both present\nto us that stage in the evolution of a deity, in which as yet the\nmeaning of his name still survives; in which his name has not yet\nbecome a fully personal name; and in which he has not yet attained to\nfull personality and complete individuality. This want of complete\nindividuality can hardly be dissociated from another fact which goes\nwith it. That fact is that the deity is to be found in any plant of\nthe species sacred to him, or in any animal of the species sacred to\nhim, but is not supposed to be found only in the particular plant or\nanimal which is offered on one particular occasion. If the\ncorn-goddess is present, or manifests herself, in one particular sheaf\nof corn, at her harvest festival this year, still she did manifest\nherself last year, and will manifest herself next year, in another.\nThe deity, that is to say, is the species; and the species, and no\nindividual specimen thereof, is the deity. That is the reason which\nprevents, or tends to prevent, deities of this kind from attaining\ncomplete individuality.\n\nThis want of complete individuality and of full personality it is\nwhich characterises totems. The totem, also, is a being who, if he\nmanifests himself in this particular animal, which is slain, has also\nmanifested himself and will manifest himself in other animals of the\nsame species: but he is not identical with any particular individual\nspecimen. Not only is the individuality of the totem thus incomplete,\nbut in many instances the name of the species has not begun to change\ninto a proper personal name for the totem, as 'Ceres' or\n'Chicomecoatl' or 'Xilonen' have changed into proper names of personal\ndeities. Whether we are or are not to regard the totem as a god, at\nany rate, viewed as a being in the process of acquiring individuality,\nhe seems to be acquiring it in the same way, and by the same process,\nas corn-goddesses and maize-mothers acquired theirs, and to present to\nour eyes a stage of growth through which these vegetation-deities\nthemselves have passed. They also at one time had not yet acquired\nthe personal names by which they afterwards came to be addressed. They\nwere, though nameless, the beings present in any and every sheaf of\ncorn or maize, though not cabined and confined to any one sheaf or any\nnumber of sheaves. And these beings have it in them to become--for\nthey did become--deities. The process by which and the period at which\nthey may have become deities we have already suggested: the period is\nthe stage at which offerings, originally made at irregular times of\ndistress, become annual offerings, made at the time of harvest; the\nprocess is the process by which what is customary becomes obligatory.\nThe offerings at harvest time, from customary, become obligatory. That\nwhich is offered, is thereby sacred; the very intention to offer it,\nthis year in the same way as it was offered last year, suffices to\nmake it sacred, before it is offered. Thus, the whole species, whether\nplant or animal, becomes sacred, to the deity to whom it is offered:\nit is his. And if he be as vague and shadowy as the power or being to\nwhom the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur make their offerings at\nstated seasons, then he may be looked for and found in the plant or\nanimal species which is his. The harvest is his alone, until the\nfirst-fruits are offered. He makes the plants to grow: if they fail,\nit is to him the community prays. If they thrive, it is because he is,\nthough not identical with them, yet in a way present in them, and is\nnot to be distinguished from the being who not only manifests himself\nin every individual plant or animal of the species, though not\nidentical with any one, but is called by the name of the species.\n\nWhether we are to see in totems, as they occur in Australia, beings in\nthe stage through which vegetation deities presumably passed, before\nthey became corn-goddesses and mothers of the maize, is a question,\nthe answer to which depends upon our interpretation of the ceremonies\nin which they figure. It is difficult, at least, to dissociate those\nceremonies from the ritual of first-fruits. The community may not eat\nof the animal or plant, at the appropriate season, until the head-man\nhas solemnly and sparingly partaken of it. About the solemnity of the\nceremonial and the reverence of those who perform it, there is no\ndoubt. But, whereas in the ritual of first-fruits elsewhere, the\nfirst-fruits are, beyond possibility of doubt or mistake, offered to a\ngod, a personal god, having a proper name, in Australia there is no\nsatisfactory evidence to show that the offerings are supposed, by\nthose who make them, to be made to any god; or that the totem-spirit,\nif it is distinguished from the totem-species, is regarded as a god.\nThere has accordingly been a tendency on the part of students of the\nscience of religion to deny to totemism any place in the evolution of\nreligion, and even to regard the Australian black-fellows as\nexemplifying, within the region of our observation, a pre-religious\nperiod in the process of human evolution. This latter view may safely\nbe dismissed as untenable, whether we do or do not believe totemism to\nhave a religious side. There is sufficient mythology, still existing\namongst the Australian tribes, to show that the belief in gods\nsurvives amongst them, even though, as seems to be the case, no\nworship now attaches to the gods, with personal names, who figure in\nthe myths. That myths survive, when worship has ceased; and that the\nnames of gods linger on, even when myths are no longer told of them,\nare features to be seen in the decay of religious systems, all the\nworld over, and not in Australia alone. The fact that these features\nare to be found in Australia points to a consideration which hitherto\nhas generally been overlooked, or not sufficiently weighed. It is that\nin Australia we are in the midst of general religious decay, and are\nnot witnessing the birth of religion nor in the presence of a\npre-religious period. From this point of view, the worship of the\ngods, who figure in the myths, has ceased, but their names live on.\nAnd from this point of view, the names of the beings worshipped, in\nthe totemistic first-fruits ceremonies, have disappeared, though the\nceremonies are elaborate, solemn, reverent, complicated and\nprolonged; and religion has been swallowed up in ritual.\n\nEven amongst the Aztecs, who had reached a stage of social\ndevelopment, barbarous or semi-civilised, far beyond anything attained\nby the Australian tribes, the degree of personality and individuality\nreached by the vegetation deities was not such that those deities had\nstrictly proper names: the deity of the maize was still only 'the\nmaize-mother.' Amongst the Australians, who are so far below the level\nreached in Mexico, the beings worshipped at the first-fruits\nceremonies may well have been as nameless as the beings worshipped by\nthe jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur. Around these nameless beings, a\nritual, simple in its origin, but luxuriant in its growth, has\ndeveloped, overshadowing and obscuring them from our view, so that we,\nand perhaps the worshippers, cannot see the god for the ritual.\n\nIn Mexico the vegetation-goddesses struggled for existence amongst a\ncrowd of more developed deities, just as in Italy the _di indigites_\ncompeted, at a disadvantage, with the great gods of the state. In\nAustralia the greater gods of the myths seem to have given way\nbefore--or to--the spread of totemism. Where gods are worshipped for\nthe benefits expected from them, beings who have in charge the\nfood-supply of the community will be worshipped not only annually at\nthe season of the first-fruits, but with greater zeal and more\ncontinuous devotion than can be displayed towards the older gods who\nare worshipped only at irregular periods. Not only does the existence\nof mythology in Australia indicate that the gods who figure in the\nmyths were once worshipped, though worship now no longer is rendered\nto them; but the totemistic ceremonies by their very nature show that\nthey are a later development of the sacrificial rite. The simplest\nform of the rite is that in which the community draw near to their\ngod, bearing with them offerings, acceptable to the god: it is at a\nlater stage in the development of the rite that the offerings, having\nbeen accepted by the god, are consumed by the community, as is the\ncase with the totem animals and plants. At its earliest stage, again,\nthe rite is performed, at irregular periods, on occasions of distress:\nit is only at a more advanced stage that the rite is performed at\nfixed, annual periods, as in Australia. And this change of periodicity\nis plainly connected with the growth of the conviction that the annual\nfirst-fruits belong to the gods--a conviction springing from the\nbelief that they are annually accepted by the god, a belief which in\nits turn implies a prior belief that they are acceptable. In other\nwords, the centre of religious interest at first lies in approaching\nthe god, that is in the desire to restore the normal state of\nrelations, which calamity shows to have been disturbed. But in the\nend, religious interest is concentrated on, and expressed by, the\nfeast which terminates the ceremony and marks the fact that the\nreconciliation is effected. What is at first accepted by the god at\nthe feast comes to be regarded as belonging to him and sacred to him:\nthe worshippers may not touch it until a portion of it, the\nfirst-fruits, has been accepted by him. Thus the rite which indicates\nand marks his acceptance becomes more than ever the centre of\nreligious interest. The rite may thus become of more importance than\nthe god, as in Australia seems to be the case; for the performance of\nthe rite is indispensable if the community is to be admitted to eat of\nthe harvest. When this point of view has been reached, when the\nperformance of the rite is the indispensable thing, the rite tends to\nbe regarded as magical. If this is what has happened in the case of\nthe Australian rite, it is but what tends to happen, wherever ritual\nflourishes at the expense of religion. If it were necessary to assume\nthat only amongst the Australian black-fellows, and never elsewhere,\ndid a rite, originally religious, tend to become magical, then it\nwould be _a priori_ unlikely, in the extreme, that this happened in\nAustralia. But inasmuch as this tendency is innate in ritual, it is\nrather likely that in Australia the tendency has run its course, as it\nhas done elsewhere, in India, for example, where, also, the\nsacrificial rite has become magical. Whether a rite, originally\nreligious, will become assimilated to magic, depends very much on the\nextent to which the community believes in magic. The more the\ncommunity believes in magic, the more ready it will be to put a\nmagical interpretation on its religious rites. But the fact that, in\nthe lower communities, religion is always in danger of sinking into\nmagic, does not prove that religion springs from magic and is but one\nkind of magic. That view, once held by some students, is now generally\nabandoned. It amounts simply to saying once more that in the earliest\nmanifestations of religion there was no religion, and that religion is\nnow, what it was in the beginning--nothing but magic. If that position\nis abandoned, then religious rites are, in their very nature, and from\ntheir very origin, different from magical rites. Religious rites are,\nfirst, rites of approach, whereby the community draws nigh to its god;\nand, afterwards, rites of sacramental meals whereby the community\ncelebrates its reconciliation and enjoys communion with its god. Those\nmeals are typically cases of 'eating with the god,' celebrated on the\noccasion of first-fruits, and based on the conviction, which has\nslowly grown up, that 'the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness\nthereof.' Meals, such as were found in Mexico, and have left their\ntraces in Australia, in which the fruit or the animal that was offered\nhad come to be regarded as standing in the same relation to the god\nas an individual does to the species, are meals having the same origin\nas those in which the community eats with its god, but following a\ndifferent line of evolution.\n\nThe object of the sacrificial rite is first to restore and then to\nmaintain good relations between the community and its god. Pushed to\nits logical conclusion, or rather perhaps we should say, pushed back\nto the premisses required for its logical demonstration, the very idea\nof renewing or restoring relations implies an original understanding\nbetween the community and its god; and implies that it is the\ncommunity's departure from this understanding which has involved it in\nthe disaster, from which it desires to escape, and to secure escape\nfrom which, it approaches its god, with desire to renew and restore\nthe normal relations. The idea that if intelligent beings do something\ncustomarily, they must do so because once they entered into a\ncontract, compact or covenant to do so, is one which in Plato's time\nmanifested itself in the theory of a social compact, to account for\nthe existence of morality, and which in Japan was recorded in the\ntenth century A.D. as accounting for the fact that certain sacrifices\nwere offered to the gods. Thus in the fourth ritual of 'the Way of the\nGods'--that is Shinto--it is explained that the Spirits of the Storm\ntook the Japanese to be their people, and the people of Japan took the\nSpirits of the Storm to be gods of theirs. In pursuance of that\ncovenant, the spirits on their part undertook to be Gods of the Winds\nand to ripen and bless the harvest, while the people on their part\nundertook to found a temple to their new gods; and that is why the\npeople are now worshipping them. It was, according to the account\ngiven in the fourth ritual, the gods themselves who dictated the\nconditions on which they were willing to take the Japanese to be their\npeople, and fixed the terms of the covenant. So too in the account\ngiven in the sixth chapter of Exodus, it was Jehovah himself who\ndictated to Moses the terms of the covenant which he was willing to\nmake with the children of Israel: 'I will take you to me for a people,\nand I will be to you a God.' In Japan it was to the Emperor, as high\npriest, that the terms of the covenant were dictated, in consequence\nof which the temple was built and the worship instituted.\n\nThe train of thought is quite clear and logically consistent. If the\ngods of the Winds were to be trusted--as they were unquestionably\ntrusted--it must be because they had made a covenant with the people,\nand would be faithful to it, if the people were. The direct statement,\nin plain, intelligible words, in the fourth ritual, that a covenant of\nthis kind had actually been entered into, was but a statement of what\nis implied by the very idea, and in the very act, of offering\nsacrifices. And sacrifices had of course been offered in Japan long\nbefore the tenth century: they were offered, and long had been offered\nannually to the gods of the Harvest. Probably they had been offered to\nthe gods of the Storms long before they were offered to the gods of\nthe Winds; and the procedure narrated in the fourth ritual records the\ntransformation of the occasional and irregular sacrifices, made to the\nwinds when they threatened the harvest with damage, into annual\nsacrifices, made every year as a matter of course. Thus, we have an\nexample of the way in which the older sacrifices, made originally only\nin times of disaster, come to be assimilated to the more recent\nsacrifices, which from their nature and origin, are offered regularly\nevery year. Not only is there a natural tendency in man to assimilate\nthings which admit of assimilation and can be brought under one rule;\nbut also it is advisable to avert calamity rather than to wait for it,\nand, when it has happened, to do something. It would therefore be\ndesirable from this point of view to render regular worship to deities\nwho can send disaster; and thus to induce them to abstain from sending\nit.\n\nIn the fourth Shinto ritual the gods of the Winds are represented as\ninitiating the contract and prescribing its terms. But in the first\nritual, which is concerned with the worship of the gods of the\nHarvest, it is the community which is represented as taking the first\nstep, and as undertaking that, if the gods grant an abundant harvest,\nthe people will, through their high priest, the Emperor, make a\nthank-offering, in the shape of first-fruits, to the gods of the\nHarvest. This is, of course, no more an historical account of the way\nin which the gods of the Harvest actually came to be worshipped, than\nis the account which the fourth Shinto ritual gives of the way the\ngods of the Winds came to be worshipped. In both cases the worship\nexisted, and sacrifices had been made, as a matter of custom, long\nbefore any need was felt to explain the origin of the custom. As soon\nas the need was felt, the explanation was forthcoming: if the\ncommunity had made these sacrifices, for as long back as the memory of\nman could run, and if the gods had granted good harvests in\nconsequence, it must have been in consequence of an agreement entered\ninto by both parties; and therefore a covenant had been established\nbetween them, on some past occasion, which soon became historical.\n\nThis history of the origin and meaning of sacrifice has an obvious\naffinity with the gift-theory of sacrifice. Both in the gift-theory and\nthe covenant-theory, the terms of the transaction are that so much\nblessing shall be forthcoming for so much service, or so much sacrifice\nfor so much blessing. The point of view is commercial; the obligation\nis legal; if the terms are strictly kept on the one part, then they\nare strictly binding on the other. The covenant-theory, like the\ngift-theory, is eventually discovered by spiritual experience, if\npushed far enough, to be a false interpretation of the relations\nexisting between god and man. Being an interpretation, it is an outcome\nof reflection--of reflection upon the fact that, in the time of\ntrouble, man turns to his gods, and that, in returning to them, he\nescapes from his trouble. On that fact all systems of worship are\nbased, from that fact all systems of worship start. If, as is the case,\nthey start in different directions and diverge from one another, it is\nbecause men, in the process of reflecting upon that fact, come to put\ndifferent interpretations upon it. And so far as they eventually come\nto feel that any interpretation is a misinterpretation, they do so\nbecause they find that it is not, as they had been taught to believe, a\ncorrect interpretation but a misinterpretation of the fact: there is\nfound in the experience of returning to God, something with which the\nmisinterpretation is irreconcilable; and, when the misinterpretation is\ndispersed, like a vapour, the vision of God, the idea of God, shines\nforth the more brightly. One such misinterpretation is the reflection\nthat the favour of the gods can be bought by gifts. Another is the\nreflection that the gods sell their favours, on the terms of a covenant\nagreed upon between them and man. Another is that that which is offered\nis sacred, and that that which is sacred is divine--that the god is\nhimself the offering which is made to him.\n\nIn all systems of worship man not only turns to his gods but does so\nin the conviction that he is returning, or trying to return, to\nthem--trying to return to them, because they have been estranged, and\naccess to them is therefore difficult. Accordingly, he draws near to\nthem, bearing in his hands something intended to express his desire to\nreturn to them. The material, external symbol of his desire--the\noblation, offering or sacrifice which he brings with him because it\nexpresses his desire--is that on which at first his attention centres.\nAnd because his attention centres on it, the rite of sacrifice, the\noutward ceremony, develops in ways already described. The object of\nthe rite is to procure access to the god; and the greater the extent\nto which attention is concentrated on the right way of performing the\nexternal acts and the outward ceremony, the less attention is bestowed\nupon the inward purpose which accompanies the outward actions, and for\nthe sake of which those external actions are performed. As the object\nof the rite is to procure access, it seems to follow that the proper\nperformance of the rite will ensure the access desired. The reason why\naccess is sought, at all, is the belief--arising on occasions when\ncalamity visits the community--that the god has been estranged, and\nthe faith that he may yet become reconciled to his worshippers. The\nreason why his wrath descends, in the shape of calamities, upon the\ncommunity, is that the community, in the person of one of its members,\nhas offended the god, by breaking the custom of the community in some\nway. For this reason--in this belief and faith--access is sought, by\nmeans of the sacrificial rite; and the purpose of the rite is assumed\nto be realised by the performance of the ceremonies, in which the\noutward rite consists. The meaning and the value of the outward\nceremonies consists in the desire for reconciliation which expresses\nitself in the acts performed; and the mere performance of the acts\ntends of itself to relieve the desire. That is why the covenant-theory\nof sacrifice gains acceptance: it represents--it is an official\nrepresentation--that performance of the sacrificial ceremony is all\nthat is required, by the terms of the agreement, to obtain\nreconciliation and to effect atonement. But the representation is\nfound to be a misrepresentation: the desire for reconciliation and\natonement is not to be satisfied by outward ceremonies, but by\nhearkening and obedience. 'To obey is better than sacrifice and to\nhearken than the fat of rams.' Sacrifice remains the outward rite, but\nit is pronounced to have value only so far as it is an expression of\nthe spirit of obedience. Oblations are vain unless the person who\noffers them is changed in heart, unless there is an inward, spiritual\nprocess, of which the external ceremony is an expression. Though this\nwas an interpretation of the meaning of the sacrificial rite which was\nincompatible with the covenant-theory and which was eventually fatal\nto it, it was at once a return to the original object of the rite and\na disclosure of its meaning. Some such internal, spiritual process is\nimplied by sacrifice from the beginning, for it is a plain\nimpossibility to suppose that in the beginning it consisted of mere\nexternal actions which had absolutely no meaning whatever, for those\nwho performed them; and it is equally impossible to maintain that such\nmeaning as they had was not a religious meaning. The history of\nreligion is the history of the process by which the import of that\nmeaning rises to the surface of clear consciousness, and is gradually\nrevealed. Beneath the ceremony and the outward rite there was always a\nmoral and religious process--moral because it was the community of\nfellow-worshippers who offered the sacrifice, on occasions of a breach\nof the custom, that is of the customary morality, of the tribe;\nreligious because it was to their god that they offered it. The very\npurpose with which the community offered it was to purge itself of the\noffence committed by one of its members. The condition precedent, on\nwhich alone sacrifice could be offered, was that the offence was\nrepented of. From the beginning sacrifice implied repentance and was\nimpossible without it. But it sufficed if the community repented and\npunished the transgressor: his repentance however was not\nnecessary--all that was necessary was his punishment.\n\nThe re-interpretation of the sacrificial rite by the prophets of\nIsrael was that until there was hearkening and obedience there could\nbe nothing but an outward performance of the rite. The revelation made\nby Christ was that every man may take part in the supreme act of\nworship, if he has first become reconciled to his brother, if he has\nfirst repented his own offences, from love for God and his fellow-man.\nThe old covenant made the favour of God conditional on the receipt of\nsacrificial offerings. The new covenant removes that limit, and all\nothers, from God's love to his children: it is infinite love. It is\nnot conditional or limited; conditional on man's loving God, or\nlimited to those who love Him. Otherwise the new covenant would be of\nthe same nature as the old. But love asks for love; the greater love\nfor the greater love; infinite love for the greatest man is capable\nof. And it is hard for a man to resist love; impossible indeed in the\nend: all men come under and into the new covenant, in which there is\ninfinite love on the one side, and love that may grow infinitely on\nthe other. If it is to grow, however, it is in a new life that it must\ngrow: a life of sacrifice, a life in which he who comes under the new\ncovenant is himself the offering and the 'lively sacrifice.'\n\nThe worshipper's idea of God necessarily determines the spirit in\nwhich he worships. The idea of God as a God of love is different from\nthe idea of Him as a God of justice, who justly requires hearkening\nand obedience. The idea of God as a God who demands obedience and is\nnot to be put off with vain oblations is different from that of a God\nto whom, by the terms of a covenant, offerings are to be made in\nreturn for benefits received. But each and all of these ideas imply\nthe existence, in the individual consciousness, and in the common\nconsciousness, of the desire to draw near to God, and of the need of\ndrawing nigh. Wherever that need and that desire are felt, there\nreligion is; and the need and the desire are part of the common\nconsciousness of mankind. From the beginning they have always\nexpressed or symbolised themselves in outward acts or rites. The\nexperience of the human race is testimony that rites are\nindispensable, in the same way and for the same reason that language\nis indispensable to thought. Thought would not develop were there no\nspeech, whereby thought could be sharpened on thought. Nor has\nreligion ever, anywhere, developed without rites. They, like language,\nare the work of the community, collectively; and they are a mode of\nexpression which is, like language, intelligible to the community,\nbecause the community expresses itself in this way, and because each\nmember of the community finds that other members have thoughts like\nhis, and the same desire to draw near to a Being whose existence they\ndoubt not, however vaguely they conceive Him, or however\ncontradictorily they interpret His being. But, if language is\nindispensable to thought, and a means whereby we become conscious of\neach other's thought, language is not thought. Nor are rites, and\noutward acts, religion--indispensable though they be to it. They are\nan expression of it. They must be an inadequate expression; and they\nare always liable to misinterpretation, even by some of those who\nperform them. The history of religion contains the record of the\nmisinterpretations of the rite of sacrifice. But it also records the\nprogressive correction of those misinterpretations, and the process\nwhereby the meaning implicit in the rite from the beginning has been\nmade manifest in the end.\n\nThe need and the desire to draw nigh to the god of the community are\nfelt in the earliest of ages on occasions when calamity befalls the\ncommunity. The calamity is interpreted as sent by the god; and the god\nis conceived to have been provoked by an offence of which some member\nof the community had been guilty. We may say, therefore, that from\nthe beginning there has been present in the common consciousness a\nsense of sin and the desire to make atonement. Psychologically it\nseems clear that at the present day, in the case of the individual,\npersonal religion first manifests itself usually in the consciousness\nof sin. And what is true in the psychology of the individual may be\nexpected within limits to hold true in the psychology of the common\nconsciousness. But though we may say that, in the beginning, it was by\nthe occurrence of public calamity that the community became conscious\nthat sin had been committed, still it is also true to say that the\ncommunity felt that it was by some one of its members, rather than by\nthe community, that the offence had been committed, for which the\ncommunity was responsible. It was the responsibility, rather than the\noffence, which was prominent in the common consciousness--as indeed\ntends to be the case with the individual also. But the fact that the\noffence had been committed, not by the community, but by some one\nmember of the community, doubtless helped to give the community the\nconfidence without which its attitude towards the offended power would\nhave been simply one of fear. Had the feeling been one of fear, pure\nand unmixed, the movement of the community could not have been towards\nthe offended being. But religion manifests itself from the beginning\nin the action of drawing near to the god. The fact that the offence\nwas the deed of some one member, and not of the community as a whole,\ndoubtless helped to give the community the confidence, without which\nits attitude towards the offended power would have been simply one of\nfear. But it also tended necessarily to make religion an affair of the\ncommunity rather than a personal need: sin had indeed been committed,\nbut not by those who drew near to the god for the purpose of making\nthe atonement. They were not the offenders. The community admitted its\nresponsibility, indeed, but it found one of its members guilty.\n\nWe may, therefore, fairly say that personal religion had at this time\nscarcely begun to emerge. And the reason why this was so is quite\nclear: it is that in the infancy of the race, as in the infancy of the\nindividual, personal self-consciousness is as yet undeveloped. And it\nis only as personal self-consciousness develops that personal religion\nbecomes possible. We must not however from this infer that personal\nreligion is a necessary, or, at any rate, an immediate consequence of\nthe development of self-consciousness. In ancient Greece one\nmanifestation--and in the religious domain the first manifestation--of\nthe individual's consciousness of himself was the growth of\n'mysteries.' Individuals voluntarily entered these associations: they\nwere not born into them as they were into the state and the\nstate-worship. And they entered them for the sake of individual\npurification and in the hope of personal immortality. The desire for\nsalvation, for individual salvation, is manifest. But it was in rites\nand ceremonies that the _mystae_ put their trust, and in the fact that\nthey were initiated that they found their confidence--so long as they\ncould keep it. The traditional conviction of the efficacy of ritual\nwas unshaken: and, so long as men believed in the efficacy of rites,\nthe question, 'What shall I do to be saved?' admitted of no\npermanently satisfactory answer. The only answer that has been found\npermanently satisfying to the personal need of religion is one which\ngoes beyond rites and ceremonies: it is that a man shall love his\nneighbour and his God.\n\nBut in thus becoming personal, religion involved man's fellow-men as\nmuch as himself. In becoming personal thus, religion became, thereby,\nmore than ever before, the relation of the community to its God. The\nrelation however is no longer that the community admits the\ntransgressions of some one of its members: it prays for the\nforgiveness of 'our trespasses'; and though it prays for each of its\nmembers, still it is the community that prays and worships and comes\nbefore its God, as it has done from the beginning of the history of\nreligion. It is with rites of worship that the community, at any\nperiod in the history of religion, draws nigh to its god; for its\ninward purpose cannot but reveal itself in some outward manifestation.\nIndeed it seeks to manifest itself as naturally and as necessarily as\nthought found expression for itself in the languages it has created;\nand, though the re-action of forms of worship upon religion sometimes\nresults, like the re-action of language upon thought, in misleading\nconfusion, still, for the most part, language does serve to express\nmore or less clearly--indeed we may say more and more clearly--that\nwhich we have it in us to utter.\n\nAs there are more forms of speech than one, so there are more forms of\nreligion than one; and as the language of savages who can count no\nhigher than three is inadequate for the purposes of the higher\nmathematics, so the religion of man in the lower stages of his\ndevelopment is inadequate, compared with that of the higher stages.\nNevertheless the civilised man can come to understand the savage's\nform of speech; and it would be strange to say that the savage's form\nof speech, or that his form of religion, is unintelligible nonsense.\nBehind the varieties of speech and of religion there is that in the\nspirit of man which is seeking to express itself and which is\nintelligible to all, because it is in all. Though few of us understand\nany but civilised languages, we feel no difficulty in believing that\nsavage languages not merely are intelligible but must have sprung from\nthe same source as our own, though far inferior to it for every\npurpose that language is employed to subserve. The many different\nforms of religion are all attempts--successful in as many very various\ndegrees as language itself--to give expression to the idea of God.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE IDEA OF GOD IN PRAYER\n\n\nThe question may perhaps be raised, whether it is necessary for us to\ntravel beyond worship, in order to discover what was, in early\nreligions, or is now, the idea of God, as it presents itself to the\nworshipper. The answer to the question will depend partly on what we\nconsider the essence of religion to be. If we take the view, which is\nheld by some writers of authority on the history of religion, that the\nessence of religion is adoration, then indeed we neither need nor can\ntravel further, for we shall hold that worship is adoration, and\nadoration, worship.\n\nTo exclude adoration, to say that adoration does not, or should not,\nform any part of worship, seems alike contrary to the very meaning of\nthe word 'worship' and to be at variance with a large and important\nbody of the facts recorded in the history of religion. The courts of a\ngod are customarily entered with the praise which is the outward\nexpression of the feeling of adoration with which the worshippers\nspiritually gaze upon the might and majesty of the god whom they\napproach. He is to them a great god, above all other gods. Even to\npolytheists, the god who is worshipped at the moment, is, at that\nmoment, one than whom there is no one, and nought, greater, _quo nihil\nmaius_. A god who should not be worshipped thus--a god who was not the\nobject of adoration--would not be worthy of the name, and would hardly\nbe called a god. So strongly is this felt that even writers who\nincline to regard religion as an illusion, define gods as beings\nconceived to be superior to man. The degree of respect, rising to\nadoration, will vary directly with the degree of superiority\nattributed to them; but not even in the case of a fetish, so long as\nit is worshipped, is the respect, which is the germ of adoration,\nwholly wanting. Even in the case of gods, on whom, on occasion, insult\nis put, it is precisely in moments when their superiority is in doubt\nthat the worship of adoration is momentarily wanting. Worship without\nadoration is worship only in name, or rather is no worship at all.\nOnly with adoration can worship begin: 'hallowed be Thy name'\nexpresses the emotion with which all worship begins, even where the\nemotion has not yet found the words in which to express itself. It is\nbecause the emotion is there, pent up and seeking escape, that it can\ntravel along the words, and make them something more than a succession\nof syllables and sounds.\n\nIf then it is on the wings of adoration that the soul has at all times\nstriven to rise to heaven to find its God, even though it flutters but\na little height and soon falls again to the ground, then we must admit\nthat from the beginning there has been a mystical element, or a\ntendency to mysticism, in religion. In the lowest, and probably in the\nearliest, stages of the evolution of religion, this tendency is most\nmanifest in individual members of the community, who are subject to\n'possession,' ecstasy, trance and visions, and are believed, both by\nthemselves and others, to be in especial communion with their god.\nThis is the earliest manifestation of the fact that religion, besides\nbeing a social act and a matter in which the community is concerned,\nis also one which may profoundly affect the individual soul. But in\nthese cases it is the exceptional soul which is alone affected--the\nseer of visions, the prophet. And it is not necessarily in connection\nwith the ordinary worship, or customary sacrifice, that such instances\nof mystic communion with the gods are manifested. For the development\nof the mystical tendency of worship and sacrifice, we must look, not\nto the lowest, or to the earliest, stages of religious evolution, but\nto a later stage in the evolution of the sacrificial meal. It is\nwhere, as in ancient Mexico, the plant, or animal, which furnishes\nforth the sacrificial meal, is in some way regarded as, or identified\nwith, the body of the deity worshipped, that the rite of sacrifice is\ntinged with mysticism and that all partakers of the meal, and not some\nexceptional individuals, are felt to be brought into some mystic\ncommunion with the god whom they adore.\n\nIn these cases, adoration is worship; and worship is adoration--and\nlittle more. Judging them by their fruits, we cannot say that the\nMexican rites, or even the Greek mysteries, encourage us to believe\nthat adoration is all that is required to make worship what the heart\nof man divines that it should be. Doubtless, this is due in part to\nthe fact that the idea of God was so imperfectly disclosed to the\npolytheists of Mexico and Greece. Let us not therefore use Greece and\nMexico as examples for the disparagement of mysticism or for the\ndepreciation of man's tendency to seek communion with the Highest. Let\nus rather appeal at once to the reason which makes mysticism, of\nitself, inadequate to satisfy all the needs of man. The reason simply\nis that man is not merely a contemplative but an active being. If\naction were alien to his nature, then man might be satisfied to gaze,\nand merely gaze, on God. But man is active and not merely\ncontemplative. We must therefore either hold that religion, being in\nits essence adoration and nothing more, has no function to perform, or\nsphere to fill, in the practical life of man; or else, if we hold\nthat it does, or should, affect the practice of his life, we must\nadmit that, though religion implies adoration always, it cannot\nproperly be fulfilled in quietism, but must bear its fruit in what man\ndoes, or in the way he does it. The being or beings whom man worships\nare, indeed, the object of adoration, an object _quo nihil maius_; but\nthey are something more. To them are addressed man's prayers.\n\nIt is vain to pretend that prayer, even the simple petition for our\ndaily bread, is not religious. It may perhaps be argued that prayer is\nnot essential to religion; that it has not always formed part of\nreligion; and that it is incompatible with that acquiescence in the\nwill of God, and that perfect adoration of God, which is religion in\nits purest and most perfect sense. Whether there is in fact any\nincompatibility between the petition for deliverance from evil, and\nthe aspiration that God's will may be done on earth, is a question on\nwhich we need not enter here. But the statement that prayer has not\nalways formed part of religion is one which it should be possible to\nbring to the test of fact.\n\nIn the literature of the science of religion, the prayers of the lower\nraces of mankind have not been recorded to any great extent by those\nwho have had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with them,\nif and so far as they actually exist. This is probably due in part to\ntheir seeming too obvious and too trivial to deserve being put on\nrecord. It may possibly in some cases be due to the reticence the\nsavage observes towards the white man, on matters too sacred to be\nrevealed. The error of omission, so far as it can be remedied\nhenceforth, will probably be repaired, now that savage beliefs are\ncoming to be examined and recorded on the spot by scientific students\nin the interests of science. And the reticence of the savage promises\nto avail him but little: the comparative method has thrown a flood of\nlight on his most sacred mysteries.\n\nThere may however be another reason why the prayers of the lower races\nhave not been recorded to any great extent: they may not have been\nrecorded for the simple reason that they may not have been uttered.\nThe nature and the occasion of the rite with which the god is\napproached may be such as to make words superfluous: the purpose of\nthe ceremony may find adequate expression in the acts performed, and\nmay require no words to make it clear. If a community approaches its\ngod with sacrifice or offering, in time of sore distress, it\napproaches him with full conviction that he understands the\ncircumstances and the purpose of their coming. Words of\ndedication--'this to thee' is a formula actually in use--may be\nnecessary, but nothing more. Indeed, the Australian tribes, in rites\nanalogous to harvest-offerings, use no spoken words at all. We cannot,\nhowever, imagine that the rites are, or in their origin were,\nabsolutely without meaning or purpose. We must interpret them on the\nanalogy of similar rites elsewhere, the purpose of which is expressed\nnot merely, as in Australia, by gesture-language, but is reinforced by\nthe spoken word. Indeed, we may, perhaps, go even further, and believe\nthat as gesture-language was earlier than speech, so the earliest\nrites were conducted wholly by means of ritual acts or gestures; and\nthat it was only in course of time, and as a consequence of the\ndevelopment of language, that verbal formulae came to be used to give\nfuller expression to the emotions which prompted the rites.\n\nIf then we had merely to account for cases in which prayer does not\nhappen to have been recorded as a constituent part of the rite of\nworship, we should not be warranted in inferring that prayer was\nreally absent. The presumption would rather be that either the records\nare faulty, or that prayer, even though not uttered in word, yet\nplayed its part. The ground for the presumption is found in the nature\nof the occasions on which the gods are approached in the lower stages\nof religion. Those occasions are either exceptional or regularly\nrecurring. The exceptional occasions are those on which the community\nis threatened, or afflicted, with calamity; and on such occasions,\nwhether spoken words of prayer happen to have been recorded by our\ninformants, or not, it is beyond doubt that the purpose of the\ncommunity is to escape the calamity, and that the attitude of mind in\nwhich the god is approached is one of supplication or prayer. The\nregularly recurring occasions are those of seed-time and harvest, or\nfirst-fruits. The ceremonies at seed-time obviously admit of the\npresumption, even if there be no spoken prayers to prove it, that they\ntoo have a petitionary purpose; while the recorded instances of the\nprayers put up at harvest time, and on the occasion of the offering of\nfirst-fruits, suffice to show that thanksgiving is made along with\nprayers for continued prosperity.\n\nIt is however not merely on the ground of the absence of recorded\nprayers that it is maintained that there was a stage in the evolution\nof religion when prayer was unpractised and unknown. It is the\npresence and the use of spells which is supposed to show that there\nmay have been a time when prayer was as yet unknown, and that the\nprocess of development was a progress from spell to prayer. On this\ntheory, spells, in the course of time, and in accordance with their\nown law of growth, become prayers. The nature and operation of this\nlaw, it may be difficult or impossible now for us to observe. The\nprocess took place in the night of time and is therefore not open to\nour observation. But that the process, by which the one becomes the\nother, is a possible process, is perhaps shown by the fact that we can\nwitness for ourselves prayer reverting or casting back to spell.\nWherever prayers become 'vain repetitions,' it is obvious that they\nare conceived to act in the same way as the savage believes spells to\nact: the mere utterance of the formula has the same magical power, as\nmaking the sign of the cross, to avert supernatural danger. If prayers\nthus cast back to spells, it may reasonably be presumed that it is\nbecause prayer is in its origin but spell. It is because oxygen and\nhydrogen, combined, produce water, that water can be resolved into\noxygen and hydrogen.\n\nThis theory, when examined, seems to imply that spell and prayer, so\nfar from being different and incompatible things, are one and the same\nthing: seen from one point of view, and in one set of surroundings, it\nis spell; seen from another point of view, and in other surroundings,\nit is prayer. The point of view and the circumstances may change, but\nthe thing itself remains the same always. What then is the thing\nitself, which, whether it presents itself as prayer or as spell, still\nalways remains the same? It is, and can only be, desire. In spell and\nprayer alike the common, operative element present is desire. Desire\nmay issue in spell or prayer; but were there no desires, there would\nbe neither prayer nor spell. That we may admit. But, then, we may, or\nrather must go further: if there were no desire, neither would there\nbe any action, whatever, performed by man. Men's actions, however,\ndiffer endlessly from one another. They differ partly because men's\ndesires, themselves, differ; and partly because the means they adopt\nto satisfy them differ also. It would be vain to say that different\nmeans cannot be adopted for attaining one and the same end. Equally\nvain would it be to say that the various means may not differ from one\nanother, to the point of incompatibility. If then we regard prayer and\nspell as alike means which have been employed by man for the purpose\nof realising his desires, we are yet at liberty to maintain that\nprayer and spell are different and incompatible.\n\nThat there is a difference between prayer and spell--a difference at\nany rate great enough to allow the two words to be used in\ncontradistinction to one another--is clear enough. The cardinal\ndistinction between the two is also clear: a spell takes effect in\nvirtue of the power resident in the formula itself or in the person\nwho utters it; while a prayer is an appeal to a personal power, or to\na power personal enough to be able to listen to the appeal, and to\nunderstand it, and to grant it, if so it seems good. That this\ndifference obtains between prayer and spell will not be denied by any\nstudent of the science of religion. But if this difference is\nadmitted, as admitted it must be, it is plain that prayer and spell\nare terms which apply to two different moods or states of mind. Desire\nis implied by each alike: were there no desire, there would be neither\nprayer nor spell. But, whereas prayer is an appeal to some one who has\nthe power to grant one's desire, spell is the exercise of power which\none possesses oneself, or has at one's command.\n\nThat the two moods are different, and are incompatible with one\nanother, is clear upon the face of it: to beg for a thing as a mercy\nor a gift is quite different from commanding that the thing be done.\nThe whole attitude of mind assumed in the one case is different from\nthat assumed in the other. It is possible, indeed, to pass from the\none attitude to the other. But it is impossible to say that the one\nattitude is the other. It is correct to say that the one attitude may\nfollow the other. But it is to be misled by language to say that the\none attitude becomes the other. It is possible for one and the same\nman to fluctuate between the two attitudes, to alternate between\nthem--possible, though inconsistent. The child, or even that larger\nchild, the man, may beg and scold, almost in the same breath. The\nsavage, as is well known, will treat his fetish in the same\ninconsequential way. That it is inconsequential is a fact; but it is a\nfact which, if learned, is but very slowly learned. The process by\nwhich it is learned is part of the evolution of religion; and it is a\nprocess in the course of which the idea of God tends to disengage\nitself from the confusion of thought and the confusion of feeling, in\nwhich it is at first enshrouded.\n\nWe, indeed, at the present day, may see, or at any rate feel, the\ndifference between magic and religion, between spell and prayer. And\nwe may imagine that the difference, because real, has always been seen\nor felt, as we see and feel it. But, if we so imagine, we are\nmistaken. The difference was not felt so strongly, or seen so\ndefinitely, as to make it impossible to ascribe magic to Moses, or\nrain-making to Elijah. In still earlier ages, the difference was still\nmore blurred. The two things were not discriminated as we now\ndiscriminate them: they were not felt then, as they are felt now to be\ninconsistent and incompatible. It was the likeness between the two\nthat filled the field of mental vision, originally. Whether a man\nmakes a petition or a command, the fact is that he wants something;\nand, with his attention centred on that fact, he may be but little\naware, as the child is little, if at all, aware, that he passes, or is\nguilty of unreasonable inconsistency in passing, from the one mood to\nthe other, and back again. It is in the course of time and as a\nconsequence of mental growth that he becomes aware of the difference\nbetween the two moods.\n\nIf we insist on maintaining that, because spell and prayer are\nessentially different, men have at all times been fully conscious of\nthe difference, we make it fundamentally impossible to explain the\ngrowth of religion, or to admit that it can have any growth. Just as,\non the argument advanced in our first chapter, gods and fetishes have\ngradually been differentiated from some conception, prior to them, and\nindeterminate; just as magician and priest, eventually distinguished,\nwere originally undistinguished, for a man of power was potentially\nboth and might become either; so spell and prayer have come to be\ndifferentiated, to be recognised as different and fundamentally\nantagonistic, though originally the two categories were confused.\n\nThe theory that spell preceded prayer and became prayer, or that magic\ndeveloped into religion, finds as little support in the facts afforded\nby the science of religion, as the converse theory of a primitive\nrevelation and a paradisaical state in which religion alone was known.\nFor what is found in one stage of evolution the capacity must have\nexisted in earlier stages; and if both prayer and spell, both magic\nand religion, are found, the capacity for both must have pre-existed.\nAnd instead of seeking to deny either, in the interests of a\npre-conceived theory, we must recognise both potentialities, in the\ninterest of truth.\n\nJust as man spoke, for countless thousands of years, before he had\nany idea of the principles on which he spoke, of the laws of speech or\nof the grammar of his language; just as he reasoned, long before he\nmade the reasoning process matter of reflection, and reduced it to the\nlaws of logic; so from the beginning he was religious though he had no\nmore idea that there were principles of religion, than that there were\nprinciples of grammar or laws of correct thought. 'First principles of\nevery kind have their influence, and indeed operate largely and\npowerfully, long before they come to the surface of human thought and\nare articulately expounded' (Ferrier: _Institute of Metaphysics_, p.\n13).\n\nBut this is not to say that primitive man argued, or thought, with\nnever an error, or spoke with never a mistake, until by some\ncatastrophe he was expelled from some paradise of grammarians and\nlogicians. Though correct reasoning was logical before the time of\nAristotle, and correct speech grammatical before the time of Dionysius\nThrax; there was before, as there has been since, plenty both of bad\nlogic and bad grammar. But that is very different from saying that, in\nthe beginning, all reasoning was unsound, or all speech ungrammatical.\nTo say so, would be as unmeaning and as absurd as to say that\nprimitive man's every action was immoral, and his habitual state one\nof pure, unmitigated wickedness. If the assumption of a primitive\nparadise is unworkable, neither will the assumption of a primitive\ninferno act, whether it is for the evolution of the grammar of\nlanguage or morality, or of logic or religion, that we wish to\naccount. It is to ask too much, to ask us to believe that in the\nbeginning there was only wrong-doing and no right, only error and no\ncorrectness of thought or speech, only spell and no prayer. And if\nboth have been always, as they are now, present, there must also\nalways have been a tendency in that which has prevailed to conquer. We\nmay say that, in the process of evolution, man becomes aware of\ndifferences to which at first he gave but little attention; and, so\nfar as he becomes conscious of them, he sets aside what is illogical,\nimmoral, or irreligious, because he is satisfied it is illogical,\nimmoral, or irreligious, and for no other reason.\n\nThe theory that spell preceded prayer in the evolution of religion\nproceeds upon a misconception of the process of evolution. At one time\nit was assumed and accepted without question that the vegetable and\nanimal kingdoms, and all their various species, were successive stages\nof one process of evolution; and that the process proceeded on one\nline and one alone. On the analogy of the evolution of living beings,\nas thus understood, all that remained, when the theory of evolution\ncame to be applied to the various forms of thought and feeling, was to\narrange them also in one line; and that, it was assumed, would be the\nline which the evolution of religion had followed. On this assumption,\neither magic must be prior to religion, or religion prior to magic;\nand, on the principle that priority must be assigned to the less\nworthy, it followed that magic must have preceded religion.\n\nIt will scarcely be disputed that it was on the analogy of what was\nbelieved to be the course of evolution, in the case of vegetable and\nanimal life, that the first attempts to frame a theory of the\nevolution of religion proceeded, with the result that gods were\nassumed to have been evolved out of fetishes, religion out of magic,\nand prayer out of spell. To disprove this, it is not necessary to\nreject the theory of evolution, or to maintain that evolution in\nreligion proceeds on lines wholly different from those it follows\nelsewhere. All that is necessary is to understand the theory of the\nevolution of the forms of life, as that theory is held by naturalists\nnow; and to understand the lines which the evolution of life is now\nheld to have followed. The process of evolution is no longer held to\nhave followed one line alone, or to have described but one single\ntrajectory like that of a cannon-ball fired from a cannon. The process\nof evolution is, and has been from the beginning, dispersive. To\nborrow M. Bergson's simile, the process of evolution is not like that\nof a cannon-ball which followed one line, but like that of a shell,\nwhich burst into fragments the moment it was fired off; and these\nfragments being, as it were, themselves shells, in their turn burst\ninto other fragments, themselves in their turn destined to burst, and\nso on throughout the whole process. The very lines, on which the\nprocess of evolution has moved, show the process to be dispersive. If\nwe represent the line by which man has risen from the simplest forms\nof life or protoplasm by an upright line; and the line by which the\nlowest forms of life, such as some of the foraminifera, have continued\non their low level, by a horizontal line starting from the bottom of\nthe upright line, then we have two lines forming a right angle. One\nrepresents the line of man's evolution, the other that of the\nforaminifera. Between these two lines you may insert as many other\nlines as necessary. That line which is most nearly upright will\nrepresent the evolution of the highest form of vertebrate, except man;\nthe next, the next highest; and so on till you come to the lines\nrepresenting the invertebrates; and so on till you come to the lines\nwhich are getting nearer and nearer to the horizontal. Thus you will\nhave a whole sheaf of lines, all radiating indeed from one common\npoint, but all nevertheless dispersing in different directions.\n\nThe rush of life, the _elan de la vie_, is thus dispersive; and if we\nare to interpret the evolution of mental on the analogy of physical\nlife, we shall find, M. Bergson says, nothing in the latter which\ncompels us to assume either that intelligence is developed instinct,\nor that instinct is degraded intelligence. If that be so, then, we may\nsay, neither is there anything to warrant us in assuming either that\nreligion is developed magic, or magic degraded religion. Spell is not\ndegraded prayer, nor is prayer a superior form of spell: neither does\nbecome or can become the other, though man may oscillate, with great\nrapidity, between the two, and for long may continue so to oscillate.\nThe two moods were from the beginning different, though man for long\ndid not clearly discriminate between the two. The dispersive force of\nevolution however tends to separate them more and more widely, until\neventually oscillation ceases, if it does not become impossible.\n\nThe dispersive force of evolution manifests itself in the power of\ndiscrimination whereby man becomes aware of differences to which, in\nthe first confusion of thought, he paid little attention; and\nultimately may become conscious of the first principles of reason,\nmorality or religion, as normative principles, in accordance with\nwhich he feels that he should act, though he has not always acted, and\ndoes not always act in accordance with them. In the beginning there is\nconfusion of feeling and confusion of thought both as to the quarter\nto which prayer is addressed and as to the nature of the petitions\nwhich should be proffered. But we should be mistaken, if from the\nconfusion we were to infer that there was no principle underlying the\nconfusion. We should be mistaken, were we to say that prayer, if\naddressed to polytheistic gods, is not prayer; or that prayer, if\naddressed to a fetish, is not prayer. In both cases, the being to whom\nprayer is offered is misconceived and misrepresented by polytheism and\nfetishism; and the misconception is due to want of discrimination and\nspiritual insight. But failure to observe is no proof either that the\npower of observation is wanting or that there is nothing to be\nobserved. The being to whom prayer is offered may be very different\nfrom the conception which the person praying has of him, and may yet\nbe real.\n\nPetitions, then, put up to polytheistic gods, or even to fetishes, may\nstill be prayers. But petitions may be put up, not only to\npolytheistic gods, or to fetishes, but even to the one god of the\nmonotheist, which never should be put up. 'Of thy goodness, slay mine\nenemies,' is, in form, prayer: it is a desire, a petition to a god,\nimplying recognition of the superiority of the divine power, implying\nadoration even. But eventually it comes to be condemned as an\nimpossible prayer: spiritually it is a contradiction in terms. If\nhowever we say that it is not, and never was, prayer; and that only by\nconfusion of thought was it ever considered so, we may be told that,\nas a simple matter of actual fact, it is an actual prayer that was\nactually put up. That it ought not--from the point of view of a later\nstage in the development of religion--to have been put up, may be\nadmitted; but that it was a prayer actually put up, cannot be denied.\nTo this the reply seems to be that it is with prayer as it is with\nargument: a fallacy is a fallacy, just as much before it is detected\nas afterwards. The fact that it is not detected does not make it a\nsound argument; still less does it prove either that there are now no\nprinciples of correct reasoning or that there were none then; it only\nshows that there was, on this point, confusion of thought. So too we\nmay admit--we have no choice but to admit--that there are spiritual\nfallacies, as well as fallacies of logic. Of such are the petitions\nwhich are in form prayers, just as logical fallacies are, in form,\narguments. They may be addressed to the being worshipped, as fallacies\nare addressed to the reason; and eventually their fallacious nature\nmay become evident even to the reason of man. But it is only by the\nevolution of prayer, that is by the disclosure of its true nature,\nthat petitions of the kind in question come to be recognised and\ncondemned as spiritual fallacies. The petitioner who puts up such\npetitions is indeed unconscious of his error, but he errs, for all\nthat, just as the person who uses a fallacious argument may be\nhimself the victim of his fallacy: but he errs none the less because\nhe is deceived himself. There are normative principles of prayer as\nwell as the normative principles of thought; and both operate 'long\nbefore they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately\nexpounded.' It is in thinking that the normative principles of thought\nemerge. But it is by no means the case that they come to the surface\nof every man's thought. So too it is in prayer that the normative\nprinciples of prayer emerge; yet men require teaching how to pray.\nSome petitions are permissible, some not.\n\nIf then there are normative principles of prayer, just as there are of\naction, thought and speech; if there are petitions which are not\npermissible, and which are not and never can be prayers, though by a\nspiritual fallacy, analogous to logical fallacies, they may be thought\nto be prayers, what is it that decides the nature of an admissible\npetition? It seems to be the conception of the being to whom the\npetition is addressed. Thus it is that prayer throws light on the idea\nof God. From the prayers offered we can infer the nature of the idea.\nThe confusion of admissible and inadmissible petitions points to\nconfused apprehension of the idea of God. It is not merely imperfect\napprehension but confused apprehension. In polytheism the confusion\nbetrays itself, because it leads to collision with the principles of\nmorality: of the gods who make war upon one another, each must be\nsupposed to hold himself in the right; therefore either some gods do\nnot know what is right, or there is no right to be known even by the\ngods. From this confusion the only mode of escape, which is\nsatisfactory both to religion and to morality, is to recognise that\nthe unity of morality and the unity of the godhead mutually imply one\nanother. But so long as a plurality of gods, with a shifting standard\nof morality, is believed in, the distinction between admissible and\ninadmissible petitions cannot be firmly or correctly drawn.\n\nA tribal god is petitioned to slay the tribe's enemies, because he is\nconceived as the god of the tribe and not the god of its enemies. If\nthe declaration, that 'I am thy servant,' is affirmed with emphasis on\nthe first personal pronoun, so as to imply that others are no servants\nof thine, the implication is that thy servants' enemies are thy\nenemies; whereas if there is, for all men, one God only, then all men\nare his servants, and not one person, or one tribe, alone. The\nconception of God as the god of one tribe alone is an imperfect and\nconfused apprehension of the idea of God. But it is less so than is\nthe conception of a god as belonging to one individual owner, as a\nfetish does. To a fetish the distinctive, though not the only, prayer\noffered, precisely is 'Slay mine enemies'; and therein it is that lies\nthe difference between a fetish and a god of the community. The\ndifference is the same in kind as that between a tribal god and the\nGod of all mankind. The fetish and the tribal god are both inadequate\nideas of God; and the inadequacy implies confusion--the confusion of\nconceiving that the god is there only to subserve the desires and to\ndo the will of the individual worshipper or body of worshippers.\n\nEscape from this confusion is to some extent secured by the fact that\nprayers to the community's god are offered by the community aloud, in\npublic and as part of the public worship; and, consequently, with the\nobject of securing the fulfilment of the desires of the community as a\ncommunity. The blessing on the community is, at this stage, the only\nblessing in which the individual can properly share, and the only one\nfor which he can pray to the god of the community. Thus the nature of\nthe petitions, and the quarter to which permissible petitions can be\naddressed, are determined by the fact that prayer is an office\nundertaken by the community as a community. If the desires which an\nindividual entertains are such as would be repudiated by the\ncommunity, because injurious to the community, they cannot be\npreferred, in the presence of the community, to the god of the\ncommunity; and thus permissible petitions begin to be differentiated\nfrom those which are impermissible--a normative principle of prayer\nemerges, and the idea of God begins to take more definite form, or to\nemerge somewhat from the mist which at first enveloped it.\n\nBut though permissible petitions be distinguished from petitions\nwhich are impermissible, it by no means follows that impermissible\npetitions cease to be put up. What actually happens is that since the\ncommunity does not, and cannot, allow petitions, conceived to be\ninjurious to itself, to be put up to its god, they are put up\nprivately to a fetish; or, to put the matter more correctly, a being\nor power not identified with the welfare of the community is sought\nin such cases; and the being so found is known to the science of\nreligion as a fetish. But though a fetish differs from a god,\ninasmuch as the fetish will, and a god will not, injure a member of\nthe tribe, the distinction is not clear-cut. There are things which\nboth alike may be prayed to do: both may be besought to do good to\nthe individual who addresses them. To this protective mimicry the\nfetish owes in part its power of survival. For the same reason spell\nand magic contrive to continue their existence side by side with\nreligion and prayer. What conduces to this result is that at first\nthe god of the community is conceived as listening to the prayers of\nthe community rather than of the individual: from the beginning it\nis part of the idea of God that He cares for all His worshippers\nalike. This conviction, to be carried out to its full consequences,\nboth logical and spiritual, requires that each individual worshipper\nshould forget himself, should renounce his particular inclinations,\nshould abandon himself and long to do not his own will but that of\nGod. But before self can be consciously abandoned, the consciousness\nof self must be realised. Before self-will can be surrendered, its\nexistence must be realised. And self-consciousness, the recognition\nof the existence of the will and the reality of the self, comes\nrelatively late both in the history of the community and in the\npersonal history of the individual. At first the existence of the\nindividual will and the individual self is not recognised by the\ncommunity and is not provided for in the community's worship and\nprayers. It is the community, as a community, and not as so many\nindividual worshippers, offering separate prayers, that first\napproaches the community's god. The existence of the individual\nworshipper, as an individual is not denied, it is simply unknown, or\nrather not realised by the community. But its stirrings are felt in\nthe individual himself: he is conscious of desires which are other\nthan those of the community, and the fulfilment of which forms no\npart of the community's prayers to the community's god. His\nself-consciousness, his consciousness of himself as contrasted with\nthe community, is fostered by the growth of such desires. For the\nfulfilment of some of them, those which are manifestly anti-social,\nhe must turn to his fetish, or rely upon the power of magic. Even for\nthe fulfilment of those of his desires which are not felt to be\nanti-social, but which find no place in the prayers of the community,\nhe must rely on some other power than that of the god of the\ncommunity; and it is in spells, therefore, that he continues to trust\nfor the fulfilment of these innocent desires, inasmuch as the prayers\nof the community do not include them.\n\nThe existence, in the individual, of desires, other than those of the\ncommunity, wakes the individual to some consciousness of his\nindividual existence. The effort to secure the fulfilment of those\ndesires increases still further his self-consciousness, for he resorts\nto powers which are not exercised solely in the interests of the\ncommunity, as are the powers of the community's god. But his\nincreasing self-consciousness cannot and does not fail to modify his\ncharacter and action as a worshipper of the community's gods. It\nmodifies his relation to the community's gods in this sense, viz. that\nhe appears before them not merely as a member of the community\nundistinguished from other members, but as an individual conscious to\nsome extent of his individuality. He continues to take part in the\nworship of the gods, but he comes to it conscious of wishes of his own\nwhich may become petitions to the god, so far as they are not felt to\nbe inconsistent with the good of the community.\n\nOf this stage we have ample evidence afforded by the cuneiform\ninscriptions of Assyria. Spells employed to the hurt of any worshipper\nof the gods are spells against which the worshipper may properly\nappeal to the gods for protection. A god is essentially the protector\nof his worshippers, and he protects each as well as all of them. Each\nof them may therefore appeal to him for protection. But though any one\nof them may so appeal, it is apparently only in course of time that\nindividual petitions of this kind come to be put up to the gods. And\nthe evidence of the cuneiform inscriptions is particularly interesting\nand instructive on the way in which this came about.\n\nIn the 'Maklu' tablets we find that the writers of the tablets are, or\nanticipate that they may be, the victims of spells. The inscriptions\nthemselves may be regarded, and by some authorities are described, as\ncounter-charms or counter-spells. They do in fact include, though they\ncannot be said to consist of, counter-spells. Their typical feature is\nthat they include some such phrase as, 'Whoever thou art, O witch, I\nbind thy hands behind thee,' or 'May the magic thou hast made recoil\nupon thyself.' If the victim is being turned yellow by sickness, the\ncounter-spell is 'O witch, like the circlet of this seal, may thy face\ngrow yellow and green.'\n\nThe ceremonies with which these counter-spells were performed are\nindicated by the words, and they are ceremonies of the same kind as\nthose with which spells are performed: they are symbolic actions, that\nis to say, actions which express by gesture the same meaning and\nintention as are expressed by the words. Thus, from the words:\n\n    'As the water trickleth away from his body\n    So may the pestilence in his body trickle away,'\n\nit is obvious that this counter-spell accompanied a ceremonial rite of\nthe kind indicated by the words. As an image of the person to be\nbewitched was used by the workers of magic, so an image of her 'who\nhath bewitched me' is used by the worker of the counter-spell, with\nthe words:\n\n    'May her spell be wrecked, and upon her\n    And upon her image may it recoil.'\n\nIf, now, such words, and the symbolical actions which are described\nand implied, were all that these Maklu tablets contained, it might be\nargued that these counter-spells were pure pieces of magic. The\nargument would not indeed be conclusive, because though the sentences\nare in the optative mood, there would be nothing to show on what, or\non whom, the speaker relied for the fulfilment of his wish. But as it\nhappens, it is characteristic of these Maklu tablets that they are all\naddressed to the gods by name, e.g. 'May the great gods remove the\nspell from my body,' or 'O flaming Fire-god, mighty son of Anu! judge\nthou my case and grant me a decision! Burn up the sorcerers and\nsorceress!' It is the gods that are prayed to that the word of the\nsorceress 'shall turn back to her own mouth; may the gods of might\nsmite her in her magic; may the magic which she has worked be crumbled\nlike salt.'\n\nThus these Maklu petitions are not counter-spells, as at first sight\nthey may appear; nor are they properly to be treated as being\nthemselves spells for the purpose of counteracting magic. They are in\nform and in fact prayers to the gods 'to undo the spell' and 'to force\nback the words' of the witch into her own mouth. But though in the\nform in which these Maklu petitions are preserved to us, they appear\nas prayers to the gods, and not as spells, or counter-spells; it is\ntrue, and important to notice, that, in some cases, the sentences in\nthe optative mood seem quite detachable from the invocation of the\ngods. Those sentences may apparently have stood, at one time, quite\nwell by themselves, and apart from any invocation of the gods; that\nis to say, they may originally have been spells or counter-spells, and\nonly subsequently have been incorporated into prayers addressed to the\ngods.\n\nLet us then assume that this was the case with some of these Maklu\npetitions, and let us consider what is implied when we make the\nassumption. What is implied is that there are some wishes, for\ninstance those embodied in these Maklu petitions, which may be\nrealised by means of spells, or may quite appropriately be preferred\nto the gods of the community. Such are wishes for the well-being of\nthe individual worshipper and for the defeat of evil-doers who would\ndo or are doing him wrong. When it is recognised that individuals--as\nwell as the community--may come with their plaints before the gods of\nthe community, the functions of those gods become enlarged, for they\nare extended to include the protection of individual members of the\ncommunity, as well as the protection of the community, as such; and\nthe functions of the community's gods are thus extended and enlarged,\nbecause the members of the community have become, in some degree,\nindividuals conscious of their individuality. The importance, for the\nscience of religion, of this development of self-consciousness is that\nthe consciousness of self must be realised before self can\nconsciously be abandoned, that is before self-will can be consciously\nsurrendered.\n\nAs is shown by the Maklu petitions, there may come, in the course of\nthe evolution of religion, a stage in which it is recognised that the\nindividual worshipper may petition the gods for deliverance from the\nevil which afflicts them. And the petitions used appear in some cases,\nas we have seen, to have been adopted into the ritual of the gods,\nword for word as they were found already in existence. If then they\nwere, both in the words in which they were expressed, and in the\npurpose which they sought to achieve, such that they could be taken\nup, as they were and without change, into the ritual of the\ncommunity's gods, it would seem that, even before they were so taken\nup, they could not have been wholly, if at all, alien to the spirit of\nreligion. What marks them as religious, in the cuneiform inscriptions,\nis their context: it shows that the power, relied on for the\naccomplishment of the desires expressed in these petitions, was the\npower of the gods. Remove the context, and it becomes a matter of\nambiguity, whether the wish is supposed, by those who utter it, to\ndepend for its realisation on some power, possessed and exercised by\nthose who express the wish, or whether it is supposed to depend on the\ngood will of some being vaguely conceived, and not addressed by name.\nBut if eventually the wish, and the words in which it was expressed,\nare taken up into the worship of the gods, there seems a balance of\nprobability that the wish was from the beginning rather in the nature\nof religion than of magic, rather a petition than a command; though\nthe categories were not at first discriminated, and there was at first\nno clear vision of the quarter from which fulfilment of the wish was\nhoped for.\n\nFrom this point of view, optative sentences, sentences which express\nthe wishes of him who pronounces them, may, in the beginning, well\nhave been ambiguous, because there was, in the minds of those who\nuttered them, no clear conception of the quarter to which they were\naddressed: the idea of God may have been vague to the extreme of\nvagueness. Some of these optative sentences however, were such that\nthe community as a whole could join in them; and they were\npotentially, and became actually, prayers to the god of the community.\nThe being to whom the community, as a whole, could pray, was thereby\ndisplayed as the god of the community. The idea of God became, so far,\nsomewhat less vague, somewhat more sharply defined. Optative\nsentences, however, in which the community could not join, in which no\none but the person who framed them could take part, could not be\naddressed to the god of the community. The idea of God thus was\ndefined negatively: there were wishes which could not be communicated\nto him--those which were repugnant to the well-being of the community.\n\nThe prayers of savages, that is of the men who are probably still\nnearest to the circumstances and condition of primitive man, furnish\nthe material from which we can best infer what was the idea of God\nwhich was present in their consciousness at those moments when it was\nmost vividly present to them. In view of the infinite number and\nvariety of the forms of religion and religious belief, nothing would\nseem, _a priori_, more reasonable than to expect an equally infinite\nnumber of various and contradictory ideas. Especially should this seem\na reasonable expectation to those who consider the idea of God to be\nfundamentally, and of its very nature, impossible and untenable. And\nso long as we look at the attempts which have been made, by means of\nreflection upon the idea, to body it forth, we have the evidence of\nall the mythologies to show the infinite variety of monstrosities,\nwhich reflection on the idea has been capable of producing. If then we\nstop there, our _a priori_ expectation of savage and irrational\ninconsistency is fulfilled to abundance and to loathsome excess. But\nto stop there is to stop short, and to accept the speculations of the\nsavage when he is reflecting on his experience, instead of pushing\nforward to discover for ourselves, if we may, what his experience\nactually was. To discover that, we cannot be content to pause for\never on his reflections. We must push back to the moment of his\nexperience, that is to the moments when he is in the presence of his\ngods and is addressing them. Those are the moments in which he prays\nand in which he has no doubt that he is in communion with his gods. It\nis, then, from his prayers that we must seek to infer what idea he has\nof the gods to whom he prays.\n\nWhen, however, we take his prayers as the evidence from which to infer\nhis idea of God, instead of the luxuriant overgrowth of speculative\nmythology, we find everywhere a bare simplicity, and everywhere\nsubstantial identity. If this is contrary to our expectation and at\nfirst seems strange, let us bear in mind that the science of morals\noffers a parallel, in this respect, to the science of religion. At one\ntime it was, unconsciously but none the less decidedly, assumed that\nsavages had a multiplicity of irrational and disgusting customs but no\nmorals. The idea that there could be a substantial identity between\nthe moral rules of different savage races, and even between their\nmoral rules and ours, was an idea that simply was not entertained.\nNevertheless, it was a fact, though unnoticed; and now it is a fact\nwhich, thanks to Dr Westermarck, is placed beyond dispute. 'When,' he\nsays, 'we examine the moral rules of uncivilised races we find that\nthey in a very large measure resemble those prevalent among nations\nof culture.' The human spirit throughout the process of its evolution\nis, in truth, one; the underlying unity which manifests itself\nthroughout the evolution of morality is to be found also in the\nevolution of religion; and it is from the prayers of man that we can\ninfer it.\n\nThe first and fundamental article of belief implied by the offering of\nprayers is that the being to whom they are offered--however vaguely he\nmay be conceived--is believed to be accessible to man. Man's cry can\nreach Him. Not only does it reach Him but, it is believed, He will\nlisten to it; and it is of His very nature that He is disposed to\nlisten favourably to it. But, though He will listen, it is only to\nprayers offered in the right spirit that He will listen. The earliest\nprayers offered are in all probability those which the community sends\nup in time of trouble; and they must be offered in the spirit of\nrepentance. It is with the conviction that they have offended that the\ncommunity first turns to the being worshipped, by whom they hope to be\ndelivered from the evil which is upon them, and by whom they pray to\nbe forgiven.\n\nNext, the offering of prayer implies the belief that the being\naddressed, not merely understands the prayers offered, but has the\npower to grant them. As having not only the power, but also the will\nso to do, he is approached not only with fear but also with hope. No\napproach would or could be made, if nothing could be hoped from it;\nand nothing could be hoped, unless the being approached were believed\nto have the power to grant the prayer. The very fact that approach is\nmade shows that the being is at the moment believed to be one with\nwhom it rests to grant or refuse the supplication, one than whom no\nother is, in this respect at least, more powerful, _quo nihil maius_.\n\nBut prayers offered in time of trouble, though they be, or if they be,\nthe earliest, are not the only prayers that are offered by early man.\nMan's wishes are not, and never were, limited: escape from calamity is\nnot, and never has been, the only thing for which man is capable of\nwishing. It certainly is not the only thing for which he has been\ncapable of praying. Even early man wishes for material blessings: the\nkindly fruits of the earth and his daily food are things for which he\nnot only works but also prays. The negro on the Gold Coast prays for\nhis daily rice and yams, the Zulu for cattle and for corn, the Samoan\nfor abundant food, the Finno-Ugrian for rain to make his crops grow;\nthe Peruvian prayed for health and prosperity. And when man has\nattained his wish, when his prayers have been granted, he does not\nalways forget to render thanks to the god who listened to his prayer.\n'Thank you, gods'; says the Basuto, 'give us bread to-morrow also.'\n\nWhether the prayer be for food, or for deliverance from calamity, the\nnatural tendency is for gratitude and thanks to follow, when the\nprayer has been fulfilled; and the mental attitude, or mood of\nfeeling, is then no longer one of hope or fear, but of thankfulness\nand praise. It is in its essence, potentially and, to varying degrees,\nactually, the mood of veneration and adoration.\n\n    'My lips shall praise thee,\n    So will I bless thee while I live:\n    I will lift up my hands in thy name,\n    And my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips.'\n\nFrom the prayers that are offered in early, if not primitive,\nreligions we may draw with safety some conclusions as to the idea,\nwhich the worshippers had before their minds, of the being to whom\nthey believed they had access in prayer. He was a being accessible in\nprayer; and he had it in his power, and, if properly approached, in\nhis will, to deliver the community from material and external evils.\nThe spirit in which he was to be properly approached was one of\nconfession and repentance of offences committed against him: the\ncalamities which fell upon the community were conceived to have fallen\njustly. He was not conceived to be offended without a cause. Doubtless\nthe causes of offence, like the punishments with which they were\nvisited, were external and visible, in the sense that they could be\ndiscovered and made plain to all who were concerned to recognise\nthem. The offences were actions which not only provoked the wrath of\nthe god, but were condemned by the community. They included offences\nwhich were purely formal and external; and, in the case of some\npeoples, the number of such offences probably increased rather than\ndiminished as time went on. The _Surpu_ tablets of the cuneiform\ninscriptions, which are directed towards the removal of the _mamit_,\nthe ban or taboo, consequent upon such offences, are an example of\nthis. Adultery, murder and theft are included amongst the offences,\nbut the tablets include hundreds of other offences, which are purely\nceremonial, and which probably took a long time to reach the luxuriant\ngrowth they have attained in the tablets. For ceremonial offences a\nceremonial purification was felt to suffice. But there were others\nwhich, as the Babylonian Penitential Psalms testify, were felt to go\ndeeper and to be sins, personal sins of the worshipper against his\nGod. The penitent exclaims:\n\n    'Lord, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds.'\n\nThe spirit, in which he approaches his God, is expressed in the words:\n\n    'I thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee.\n    Like the doves do I moan, I am o'ercome with sighing,\n    With lamentation and groaning my spirit is downcast.'\n\nHis prayer is that his trespasses may be forgiven:\n\n    'Rend my sins, like a garment!\n    My God, my sins are unto seven times seven.\n    Forgive my iniquities.'\n\nAnd his hope is in God:\n\n    'Oh, Lord, thy servant, cast him not away,\n    The sins which I have committed, transform by thy grace!'\n\nThe attitude of mind, the relation in which the worshipper finds\nhimself to stand towards his God, is the same as that revealed in the\nPsalm of David:\n\n    'Wash me throughly from mine iniquity,\n    And cleanse me from my sin.\n    For I acknowledge my transgressions:\n    And my sin is ever before me.\n    Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.\n    Cast me not away from thy presence.'\n\nThe earliest prayers offered by any community probably were, as we\nhave already seen, those which were sent up in time of trouble and\ninspired by the conviction that the community's god had been justly\noffended. The psalms, from which quotations have just been given, show\nthe same idea of God, conceived to have been justly offended by the\ntransgressions of his servants. The difference between them is that,\nin the later prayers, the individual self-consciousness has come to\nrealise that the individual as well as the community exists; that the\nindividual, as well as the community, is guilty of trespasses; and\nthat the individual, as well as the community, needs forgiveness. That\nis to say, the idea of God has taken more definite shape: God has been\nrevealed to the individual worshipper to be 'My God'; the worshipper\nto be 'Thy servant'; and what is feared is not merely that the\nworshipper should be excluded from the community, but that he should\nbe cast away from communion with God. The communion, aspired to, is\nhowever still such communion as may exist between a servant and his\nmaster.\n\nMaterial and external blessings, further, are, together with\ndeliverance from material and external evil, still the principal\nsubjects of prayer in the Psalms both of the Old Testament and of the\ncuneiform inscriptions; and, so far as this is the case, the\nworshipper's prayer is that his individual will may be done, and it is\nbecause he has received material and external blessings, because his\nwill has been done, that his joyful lips praise and bless the Lord.\nThat is to say, the idea of God, implied by such prayer and praise, is\nthat He is a being who may help man to the fulfilment of man's desires\nand to the realisation of man's will. The assumption required to\njustify this conception is that in man, man's will alone is operative,\nand never God's. This assumption has its analogy in the fact, already\nnoticed, that in the beginning the individual is not self-conscious,\nor aware of the individuality of his own existence. When the\nindividual's self-consciousness is thus but little, if at all,\nmanifested, it is the community, as a community, which approaches its\ngod and is felt to be responsible for the transgressions which have\noffended him. As self-consciousness comes to manifest itself, more and\nmore, the sense of personal transgression and individual\nresponsibility becomes more and more strong. If now we suppose that at\nthis point the evolution, or unfolding, of the self ceases, and that\nthe whole of its contents is now revealed, we shall hold that, in man,\nman's will alone can operate, and never God's. It is indeed at this\npoint that non-Christian religions stop, if they get so far. The idea\nof God as a being whose will is to be done, and not man's, is a\ndistinctively Christian idea.\n\nThe petition, which, as far as the science of religion enables us to\njudge, was the first petition made by man, was for deliverance from\nevil. The next, in historical order, was for forgiveness of sins; and,\nthen, when society had come to be settled on an agricultural basis and\ndependent on the harvest, prayer was offered for daily bread. In the\nLord's Prayer, the order of these petitions is exactly reversed. A\nfresh basis, or premiss, for them, is supplied. They are still\npetitions proper to put forward, if put forward in the consciousness\nof a fact, hitherto not revealed--that man may do not his own will\nbut the will of Our Father, who is in heaven.\n\nPrayer is thus, at the end, what it was at the beginning, the prayer\nof a community. But whereas at the beginning the community was the\nnarrow and exclusive community of the family or tribe, at the end it\nis a community which may include all mankind. Thus, the idea of God\nhas increased in its extension. In its intension, so to speak, it has\ndeepened: God is disclosed not as the master and king of his subjects\nand servants, but as the Father in heaven of his children on earth. It\nhas however not merely deepened, it has been transformed, or rather it\nis to be approached in a different mood, and therefore is revealed in\na new aspect: whereas in the beginning the body of worshippers,\nwhether it approached its god with prayer for deliverance from\ncalamities or for material blessings, approached him in order that\ntheir desires might be fulfilled; in the end the worshipper is taught\nthat approach is possible only on renunciation of his own desires and\non acceptance of God's will. The centre of religion is transposed: it\nis no longer man and his desires round which religion is to revolve.\nThe will of God is to be the centre, to which man is no longer to\ngravitate unconsciously but to which he is deliberately to determine\nhimself. As in the solar system the force of gravity is but one, so in\nthe spiritual system that which holds all spiritual beings together\nis the love which proceeds from God to his creatures and may\nincreasingly proceed from them to Him. It is the substitution of the\nlove of God for the desires of man which makes the new heaven and the\nnew earth.\n\nFrom the point of view of evolution the important fact is that this\nnew aspect of the idea of God is not something merely superposed upon\nthe old: if it were simply superposed, it would not be evolved.\nNeither is the disclosure, to the soul, of God as love, evolved from\nthe conception of Him as the being from whom men may seek the\nfulfilment of their desires. To interpret the process of religious\nevolution in this way would be to misinterpret it, in exactly the same\nway as if we were to suppose that, only when the evolution of\nvegetable life had been carried out to the full in all its forms, did\nthe evolution of animal life begin. Animals are not vegetables carried\nto a rather higher stage of evolution, any more than vegetables are\nanimals which have relapsed to a lower stage. If then we are to apply\nthe theory of evolution to spiritual life, as well as to bodily life,\nwe must apply it in the same way. We must regard the various forms, in\nthe one case as in the other, as following different lines, and\ntending in different directions from a common centre, rather than as\ndifferent and successive sections of one and the same line. Spell no\nmore becomes prayer than vegetables become animals. Impelled by the\nforce of calamity to look in one direction--that of deliverance from\npestilence or famine--early man saw, in the idea of God, a refuge in\ntime of trouble. Moved at a later time by the feeling of gratitude,\nman found in the idea of God an object of veneration; and then\ninterpreted his relation as that of a servant to his lord. Whichever\nway this interpretation was pushed--whether to mean that the servant\nwas to do things pleasing to his lord, in order to gain the fulfilment\nof his own desires; or to imply that his transgressions stood ever\nbetween him and his offended master--further advance in that direction\nwas impossible. A new direction, and therefore a fresh point of\ndeparture, was necessary. It was forthcoming in the Christian idea of\nGod as the heavenly Father. That idea when revealed is seen to have\nbeen what was postulated but never attained by religion in its earlier\nstages. The petitions for our daily bread, for forgiveness of sins,\nand for delivery from evil, had as their basis, in pre-Christian\nreligions, man's desire. In Christianity those petitions are preferred\nin the conviction that the making of them is in accordance with God's\nwill and the granting of them in accordance with His love; and that\nconviction is a normative principle of prayer.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE IDEA AND BEING OF GOD\n\n\nMen thought, spoke and acted for long ages before they began to\nreflect on the ways in which they did so; and, when they did begin to\nreflect, it was long before they discovered the principles on which\nthey thought, spoke and acted, or recognised them as the principles on\nwhich man must speak, if he is to speak intelligibly; on which, as\nlaws of thought, he must think, if he is to think correctly; and on\nwhich, as laws of morality, he must act, if he is to act as he should\nact.\n\nBut though many thousands of years elapsed before he recognised these\nlaws, they were, all the time, the laws on which he had to think,\nspeak and act, and did actually think, speak and act, so far as he did\nso correctly. When, then, we speak of the evolution of thought, speech\nand action, we cannot mean that the laws of thought, for instance,\nwere in the beginning different from what they are now, and only\ngradually came to be what they are at present. That would be just the\nsame as saying that the law of gravitation did not operate in the way\ndescribed by Newton until Newton formulated the law. The fact is that\nscience has its evolution, just as thought, speech and action have.\nMan gradually and with much effort discovers laws of science, as he\ndiscovers the laws of thought, speech and action. In neither case does\nhe make the laws; all that he does in either case is to come to\nrecognise that they are there. But the recognition is a process, a\nslow process, attended by many mistakes and set-backs. And this slow\nprocess of the gradual recognition or discovery of fundamental laws,\nor first principles, is the process in which the evolution of science,\nas well as the evolution of thought, speech and action, consists. It\nis the process by which the laws that are at the bottom of man's\nthought, speech and action, and are fundamental to them, tend to rise\nto the surface of consciousness.\n\nIt is in this same process that the evolution of religion consists. It\nis the slow process, the gradual recognition, of the fundamental idea\nof religion--the idea of God--which tends to rise to the surface of\nthe religious consciousness. Just as laws of thought, speech and\naction are implied by the very conception of right thought or speech\nor action, so the idea of God is implied by the mere conception of\nreligion. It is implied always; it is implicit from the very\nbeginning. It is disclosed gradually and imperfectly. The process of\ndisclosure, which is the evolution of the idea, may, in many\ninstances, be arrested at a stage of very early imperfection, by\ncauses which make further development in that direction impossible;\nand then, if further progress is to be made, a fresh movement, in a\nfresh direction must be made. Just as men do not always think\ncorrectly, or act rightly, though they tend, in different degrees, to\ndo so; so too, in religion, neither do they always move in the right\ndirection, even if they move at all. They may even deteriorate, at\ntimes, in religion, as, at times, they deteriorate in morality. But it\nis not necessary to infer from this undoubted fact that there are no\nprinciples of either morality or religion. We are not led to deny the\nexistence of the laws of logic or of grammar, because they are\nfrequently disregarded by ourselves and others.\n\nThe principles, or rather some particular principle, of morality may\nbe absolutely misconceived by a community, at some stage of its\nhistory, in such a way that actions of a certain kind are not\ncondemned by it. The inconsistency of judgment and feeling, thus\ndisplayed, is not the less inconsistent because it is almost, if not\nentirely, unconscious. In the same way a community may fail to\nrecognise a principle of religion, or may misinterpret the idea of\nGod; still the fact that they misinterpret it is proof that they have\nit--if they had it not, they could not interpret it in different ways.\nAnd the different interpretations are the different ways in which its\nevolution is carried forward. Its evolution is not in one continuous\nline, but is radiative from one common centre, and is dispersive. That\nis the reason why the originators of religious movements, and the\nfounders of religions, consider themselves to be restoring an old\nstate of things, rather than initiating a new one; to be returning to\nthe old religion, rather than starting a new religion. But in point of\nfact they are not reverting to a bygone stage in the history of\nreligion; they are starting afresh from the fundamental principles of\nreligion. From the central idea of religion, the idea of God, they\nmove in a direction different from any hitherto followed. Monotheism\nmay in order of time follow upon polytheism, but it is not polytheism\nunder another name, any more than prayer is spell under another name.\nIt is something very different: it is the negation of polytheism, not\nanother form of it. It strikes at the roots of polytheism; and it does\nso because it goes back not to polytheism but to that from which\npolytheism springs, the idea of God; and starts from it in a direction\nwhich leads to a very different manifestation of the idea of God. And\nif monotheism displaces polytheism, it does so because it is found by\nexperience to be the more faithful interpretation of that idea of God\nwhich even the polytheist has in his soul. In the same way, and for\nthe same reasons, polytheism is not fetishism under another name. The\ngods of a community are not the fetishes of individuals. The\ndifference between them is not a mere difference of name. Polytheism\nmay, or may not, follow, in order of time, upon fetishism; but\npolytheism is not merely a form of fetishism. The two are different,\nand largely inconsistent, interpretations, or misinterpretations, of\nthe same fundamental idea of God. They move in different directions,\nand are felt by the communities in which they are found, to tend in\nthe direction of very different ends--the one to the good of the\ncommunity, the other, in its most characteristic manifestations, to\nthe injury of the community. In fetishism and polytheism we see the\nradiative, dispersive, force of evolution manifesting itself, just as\nin polytheism and monotheism. The different lines of evolution radiate\nin different directions, but those lines, all point to a common centre\nof dispersion--the idea of God. But fetishism, polytheism and\nmonotheism are not different and successive stages of one line of\nevolution, following the same direction. They are lines of different\nlengths, moving in different directions, though springing from a\ncommon centre--the soul of man. It is because they have a common\ncentre, that man, whichever line he has followed, can fall back upon\nit and start afresh.\n\nThe fact that men fall victims to logical fallacies does not shake our\nfaith in the validity of the principles of reason; nor does the fact\nthat false reasoning abounds the more, the lower we descend in the\nscale of humanity, lead us to believe that the principles of reason\nare invalid and non-existent there. Still less do we believe that,\nbecause immature minds reason often incorrectly, therefore correct\nreasoning is for all men an impossibility and a contradiction in\nterms. And these considerations apply in just the same way to the\nprinciples of religion and the idea of God, as to the principles of\nreason. Yet we are sometimes invited to believe that the existence of\nreligious fallacies, or fallacious religions, is of itself enough to\nprove that there is no validity in the principles of religion, no\nreality in the idea of God; that because the uncultured races of\nmankind are the victims of error in religion, there is in religion no\ntruth at all: the religion of civilised mankind consists but of the\nerrors of the savage disguised in civilised garb. So far as this view\nis supposed to be the outcome of the study of the evolution of\nreligion, it is due probably to the conception of evolution from which\nit proceeds. It proceeds on the assumption that the process of\nevolution exhibits the continuity of one and the same continuous line.\nIt ignores the radiative, dispersive movement of evolution in\ndifferent lines; and overlooks the fact that new forms of religion\nare all re-births, renaissances, and spring not from one another, but\nfrom the soul of man, in which is found the idea of God. It further\nassumes not merely that there are errors but that there is no truth\nwhatever in the lowest, or the earliest, forms of religion; and that\ntherefore neither is there any truth in the highest. But this\nassumption, if applied to the principles of thought, speech or action,\nwould equally prove thought to be irrational, speech unintelligible,\nmoral action absurd; and evolution would be the process by which this\nfundamental irrationality, unintelligibility and absurdity was worked\nout.\n\nEither this is the conclusion, or some means must be sought whereby to\ndistinguish the evolution of religion from the evolution of thought,\nspeech and morals, and to show that--whereas in the case of the\nlatter, evolution is the process in which the principles whereon man\nshould think, speak and act, tend to manifest themselves with\nincreasing clearness--in the case of religion, there is no such\nprogressive revelation, and no first principle, or fundamental idea,\nwhich all forms of religion seek to express. But any attempt to show\nthis is hopeless: the science of religion is engaged throughout in\nascertaining and comparing the ideas which the various races of men\nhave had of their gods; and in tracing the evolution of the idea of\nGod.\n\nThe science of religion, however, it may be said, is concerned\nexclusively with the evolution, and not in the least with the value or\nvalidity, of the idea. But neither, we must remember, is it concerned\nto dispute its value or to deny its validity; and no man can help\ndrawing his own conclusions from the established fact that the idea is\nto be found wherever man is to be found. If, however, by the idea of\nGod we mean simply an intellectual idea, merely a verbal proposition,\nwe shall be in danger of drawing erroneous conclusions. The historian\nof religion, in discussing the idea of God, its manifestations and its\nevolution, is bound to express himself in words, and to reduce what he\nhas to say to a series of verbal propositions. Nothing, therefore, is\nmore natural than to imagine that the idea of God is a verbal,\nintellectual proposition; and nothing is more misleading. If we start\nfrom this misleading notion, then, as words are but words, we may be\nled to imagine that the idea of God is nothing more or other than the\nwords: it is mere words. If however this conclusion is, for any\nreason, displeasing to us, and if we stick to the premiss that the\nidea of God is a verbal proposition, then we shall naturally draw a\ndistinction between the idea of God and the being of God; and, having\nthus fixed a great gulf between the idea and the being of God, we\nshall be faced with the difficulty of crossing it. We may then feel it\nto be not merely difficult but impossible to get logically to the\nother side of the gulf; that is to say, we shall conclude that the\nbeing of God is an inference, but an inference which never can be\nlogically verified: the inference may be a correct or an incorrect\ninference, but we cannot possibly know which it is. From the idea of\nGod we can never logically infer His being. Since then no logic will\ncarry us over the chasm we have fixed between the idea and the being\nof God, if we are to cross it, we must jump it: we must take the leap\nof faith, we must believe the passage possible, just because it is\nimpossible. And those who take the leap, do land safely--we have their\nown testimony to that--as safely as, in _King Lear_, Gloucester leaps\nfrom the cliff of Dover; and they well may\n\n    'Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours\n    Of men's impossibilities, have preserv'd them.'\n\nBut, in Gloucester's case, there was no cliff and no abyss; and, in\nour case, it may be well to enquire whether the great gulf between the\nidea and the being of God has any more reality than that down which\nGloucester, precipitating, flung himself. The premiss, that the idea\nof God is a mere verbal proposition, may be a premiss as imaginary as\nthat from which Gloucester leaped. If the idea of God is merely a\nproposition in words, and if words are but words, then the gulf\nbetween idea and being is real. If the being of God is an inference\nfrom the idea of God, it is merely an inference, and an inference of\nno logical value. And the same remark holds equally true, if we apply\nit to the case of any finite personal being: if the being of our\nneighbours were an inference from the idea we have formed of them, it\nalso would be an inference of no logical value. But, fortunately,\ntheir being does not depend on the idea we have formed of them: it\npartially reveals itself to us in our idea of them, and partially is\nobscured by it. It is a fact of our experience, or a fact experienced\nby us. We interpret it, and to some extent misinterpret it, as we do\nall other facts. If this partly true, and partly false, interpretation\nis what we mean by the word 'idea,' then it is the idea which is an\ninference from the being of our neighbour--an inference which can be\nchecked by closer acquaintance--but we do not first have the idea of\nhim, and then wonder whether a being, corresponding more or less to\nthe idea, exists. If we had the idea of our fellow-beings\nfirst--before we had experience of them--if it were from the edge of\nthe idea that we had to leap, we might reasonably doubt whether to\nfling ourselves into such a logical, or rather into such an illogical,\nabyss. But it is from their being as an experienced fact, that we\nstart; and with the intention of constructing from it as logical an\nidea as lies within our power. What is inference is not the being but\nthe idea, so far as the idea is thus constructed.\n\nThe idea, thus constructed, may be constructed correctly, or\nincorrectly. Whether it is constructed correctly or incorrectly is\ndetermined by further experience. What is important to notice is first\nthat it is only by further experience, personal experience, that we\ncan determine how far the construction we have put upon it is or is\nnot correct; and, next, that so far as the construction we have put\nupon it is correct, that is to say is confirmed by actual experience,\nit is thereby shown to be not inference--even though it was reached by\na process of inference--but fact. The process of inference may be\ncompared to a path by which we struggle up the face of a cliff: it is\nthe path by which we get there, but it is not the firm ground on which\neventually we rest. The path is not that which upholds the cliff; nor\nis the inference that on which the being of God rests. The being of\nGod is not something inferred but something experienced. It is by\nexperience--the experience of ourselves or others--that we find out\nwhether what by inference we were led to expect is really something of\nwhich we can--if we will--have experience. And that which is\nexperienced ceases, the moment it is experienced, to be inferential.\nThe experience is fact: the statement of it in words is truth. But\napart from the experience, the words in which it is stated are but\nwords; and, without the experience, the words must remain for ever\nwords and nothing more than words.\n\nIf then by the idea of God we mean the words, in which it is\n(inadequately) stated, and nothing more, the idea of God is separated\nby an impassable gulf from the being of God. Further, if we admit that\nthe idea is, by its very nature, and by the very facts of the case,\nessentially different from the being of God, then it is of little use\nto continue to maintain that the being of God is a fact of human\nexperience. In that case, the supposed fact of experience is reduced\nto something of which we neither have, nor can have, any idea, or\nconsciousness, whatever. It thereby ceases to be a fact of experience\nat all. And it is precisely on this assumption that the being of God\nis denied to be a fact of experience--the assumption that being and\nidea are separated from one another by an impassable gulf: the idea we\ncan be conscious of, but of His being we can have no experience. We\nmust therefore ask not whether this gulf is impassable, but whether it\nexists at all, or is of the same imaginary nature as that to which\nGloucester was led by Edgar.\n\nThat there may be beings, of whom we have no idea, is a proposition\nwhich it is impossible to disprove. Such beings would be _ex hypothesi_\nno part of our experience; and if God were such a being, man would\nhave no experience of Him. And, having no experience of Him, man could\nhave no idea of Him. But the experience man has, of those beings whom\nhe knows, is an experience in which idea and being are given together.\nEven if in thought we attend to one rather than to the other of the two\naspects, the idea is still the idea of the being; and the being is\nstill the being of the idea. So far from there being an impassable gulf\nbetween the two, the two are inseparable, in the moment of actual\nexperience. It is in moments of reflection that they appear separable\nand separate, for the memory remains, when the actual experience has\nceased. We have then only to call the memory the idea, and then the\nidea, in this use of the word, is as essentially different from that of\nwhich it is said to be the idea, as the memory of a being or thing is\nfrom the being or thing itself. If we put the memory into words, and\npronounce those words to another, we communicate to him what we\nremember of our experience (modified--perhaps transmogrified--by our\nreflections upon it) but we do not communicate the actual experience,\nsimply because we cannot. What we communicate may lead him to actual\nexperience for himself; but it is not itself the experience. The memory\nmay give rise, in ourselves or in others to whom we communicate, to\nexpectation and anticipation; and the expectation is the more likely\nto be realised, the less the memory has been transmogrified by\nreflection. But, both the memory and the anticipation are clearly\ndifferent from actual experience. It is only when they are confused\nwith one aspect of the actual experience--that which we have called the\nidea--that the idea is supposed to be detachable from the being of whom\nwe have actual experience. The idea is part of the experience; the\nmemory obviously is not.\n\nIf then it be said that the being of God is always an inference and is\nnever anything more, the reply is that the being of anything whatever\nthat is remembered or expected is, in the moment of memory or of\nanticipation, inferential; but, in the moment of actual experience, it\nis not inferred--it is experienced. And what is experienced is, and\nfrom the beginning has always been, in religions of the lower as well\nas of the higher culture, at once the being and the idea of God.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\nAaron, 11\n\nAdoration, 108 ff., 126, 144\n\nAeschylus, 37\n\nAetiological myths, 50, 53\n\nAfricans, 59\n\nAllegory, 47\n\nAnimism, 17, 35, 50\n\nAnthropomorphism, 18 ff., 27\n\nAnti-social character of fetishism, 8, 14\n\nAnu, 136\n\nAristotle, 121\n\nAssyria, 134 ff.\n\nAtonement, 54, 75\n\nAustralians, 57, 58, 59, 86-89, 113, 114\n\nAwe, 24\n\nAxe-heads, 11\n\nAztecs, 77, 78, 88\n\n\nBabylonian psalms, 145\n\nBasutos, 143\n\nBeing, and idea, 161 ff.\n\nBergson, 123, 125\n\nBlack-fellows, 57\n\nBow, and arrow, 42\n\nBull-roarer, 42\n\nBurnt-offerings, 72\n\n\nCalamity, 73, 97, 103\n\nCeres, 84\n\nChicomecoatl, 84\n\nChild (the), and the community, 1, 14\n\nChild (the), and self-consciousness, 3\n\nChildren, their toys, 41;\n  and tales, 41;\n  community of, 42\n\nChota Nagpur, 63, 64, 65, 83, 85, 88\n\nChrist, 100\n\nChristianity, 19, 26, 57, 148, 151\n\nCommerce, 69\n\nCommon consciousness, capable of emotion and purpose, 2, 3, 14;\n  the source and the criterion of the individual's speech, thought and\n    action, 2, 3;\n  its attitude towards magic, 9 ff., 18;\n  and tales, 31;\n  and mythology, 37, 38, 48\n\nCommunion (Christian), 77\n\nCommunion, 110, 111, 147\n\nCorn-deities, 82 ff.\n\nCounter-spells, 134 ff.\n\nCovenant, the old and the new, 100\n\nCovenant-theory, 92 ff., 98 ff.\n\nCuneiform inscriptions, 134 ff., 147\n\nCustom, 41, 42, 98\n\n\nDesire (and prayer), 118 ff.\n\nDesires, of individual and community, 7, 8, 9\n\nDigging-stick, 43\n\nDi indigites, 51-53, 56, 58, 83, 88\n\nDionysius Thrax, 121\n\nDisease of language, 33, 34\n\nDog, and master, 25\n\n_Do ut des_, 68\n\n\nEating with the god, 74, 77, 91\n\nEcstasy, 110\n\nElijah, 13, 119\n\nEmotion, 2, 3, 7, 23, 54, 55\n\nEmperor, of Japan, 93, 95\n\nEuripides, 37\n\nEurope, 57\n\nEvolution, and revelation, 29, 122, 150, 152 ff.\n\nExodus, 93\n\nExpectation, 164\n\nExperience, 44, 161 ff.\n\n\nFaith, 62\n\nFallacies, 127, 128, 157\n\nFear, 25, 103\n\nFeast, sacrificial, 74 ff.\n\nFerrier, 121\n\nFetishism, 4-8, 13-15, 20, 21, 27, 30, 31, 36, 120, 123, 126,\n  129-131, 156\n\nFiction, 31, 32\n\nFinno-Ugrians, 143\n\nFire-god, 136\n\nFirst-fruits, 80 ff., 90, 115\n\nFolk-lore, 57\n\nFood-offerings, 72, 78, 89\n\nFood-supply, 12, 13\n\nForaminifera, 124\n\nForms, of speech and of religion, 106\n\n\nGesture-language, 66, 114\n\nGift-theory, 68 ff., 95\n\nGloucester, 160\n\nGodhead, unity of, 23;\n  a personal being, 26\n\nGods, 4-6, 8, 12, 14, 16, 21, 22, 25, 26, 44\n\nGold-coast, 143\n\nGrammar, 121\n\nGravitation, 153\n\nGreece, 104, 111\n\n\nHarvest-gods, 94 ff.\n\nHarvest-offerings, 114, 115\n\nHarvest-rites, 81, 85\n\nHero, of tales, 30;\n  of myths, 31\n\nHistory of religion, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30\n\n\nIdea, and being, 161 ff.\n\nIdol, and fetish, 4, 13\n\n_Iliad_, 41\n\nImagination, in tales and myths, 49, 50, 51\n\nImmorality, of mythology, 47\n\nImmortality, 105\n\nIndividual (the), 4, 14, 132 ff.\n\nIndo-Europeans, 47, 48\n\nInference, 162 ff.\n\nIsrael, 93, 100\n\nItaly, 51, 56\n\n\nJapan, 92 ff.\n\nJehovah, 93\n\nJews, 26\n\n\n_King Lear_, 156 ff.\n\n\nLanguage, 101, 102, 106, 107\n\nLaw, 153 ff.\n\nLocutius, 52\n\nLogic, 121\n\nLove, 26, 100, 105, 150\n\n\nMagic, 8 f., 9, 10, 11 f., 12, 91, 116, 119, 120, 123, 125, 133 ff.\n\nMaize-mother, 77, 88\n\nMaklu tablets, 134 ff.\n\nMamit, 145\n\nMax Mueller, 33, 34\n\nMeal, sacrificial, 74 ff.\n\nMemory, 164\n\nMexico, 77, 78, 88, 91, 110, 111\n\nMiracles, 10 ff.\n\nMonotheism, 58, 61, 155\n\nMoods, 119\n\nMorality, 21, 22, 25, 26, 41, 44-46, 125, 141 ff., 154\n\nMoses, 93, 119\n\nMysteries, 104 ff., 111\n\nMysticism, 110\n\nMyths, 20-22, 30 ff., 39, 40, 43, 47, 48-52, 55-58, 60\n\n\nNames, 16, 52, 57, 64, 82 ff.\n\nNarratives, and myths, 33, 40, 49, 51\n\nNegroes, 15\n\nNursery-tales, 41\n\n\nObedience, 98, 100, 101\n\nOblations, 65, 66, 73, 97, 98\n\nOfferings, 67 ff., 85 ff.\n\nOptative sentences, 139 ff.\n\nOrbona, 52\n\nOrigin, of gods and of mythology, 34\n\nOssipago, 51\n\n\nPenitential Psalms, 145, 147\n\nPersonality, 3, 4, 11, 17, 20, 28, 29, 45, 54, 55, 82, 83, 86\n\nPeruvians, 143\n\nPetitions, 126, 128, 130 ff.\n\nPlague, 52\n\nPlato, 92\n\nPolydaemonism, 16 ff.;\n  change to polytheism, 18, 30;\n  and mythology, 31, 32\n\nPolytheism, 4, 7, 16, 18, 22, 30-32, 35, 36, 40, 61, 155\n\nPossession, 110\n\nPower, man of, 12 ff.\n\nPrayer, 108 ff.\n\nPriests, 120\n\nPrinciples, 121, 123, 128, 153 ff.\n\nProphet and magician, 10 ff.\n\nProtoplasm, 124\n\nPsalms of David, 146, 147\n\n\nQuietism, 112\n\n\nRain-making, 9, 12, 13, 119\n\nReconciliation, 98\n\nReflection, 33, 36, 53-56, 60, 96\n\nReligion, 8 ff., 35, 39, 54-56, 104 ff.\n\nRevelation, 29, 58\n\nReverence, 24\n\nRitual, 31, 57, 61-63, 101 ff., 114\n\nRomans, the, 52, 53\n\n\nSacrifice, 52, 63, 64, 67 ff., 72, 73, 79 ff., 85, 97 ff.\n\nSalvation, 105\n\nSamoans, 143\n\nSearch, for God, 59\n\nSeed-time, 115\n\nSelf, 3, 4, 7, 104, 132 ff., 137, 148\n\nSelf-renunciation, 149\n\nShinto, 92 ff.\n\nSign (of the cross), 116\n\nSin, 103, 104, 145 ff.\n\nSocrates, 55\n\nSophocles, 37\n\nSpecies, 83 ff., 91, 92\n\nSpeech, 3, 121, 153 ff.\n\nSpells, 115 ff., 134 ff., 150, 151\n\nSurvivals, 38, 56, 57, 58, 59\n\n\nTaboo, 145\n\nTales, and myths, 31-33, 49, 51\n\nTotems, 84 ff.\n\nTylor, Professor, 15\n\n\nVagitanus, 51\n\nVegetation-deities, 81 ff.\n\nVeneration, 151\n\nViriplaca, 52\n\n\nWater, 135\n\nWay of the Gods, 92 ff.\n\nWestern Africa, 8, 15\n\nWill, of God, 149 ff.\n\nWind, spirits of, 93 ff.\n\nWitches, 134 ff.\n\nWorship, 19, 55, 57, 58, 60-63\n\n\nXilonen, 84\n\n\nZulus, 143\n\n\n\n\nCAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.","title":"The Idea of God in Early Religions","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":41129}