CHAPTER III
RELIGION IN THE LOWER CULTURE
Religion presents itself in its most obvious form as a mode of activity. It is seen in some kind of behaviour; it prompts a particular sort of conduct. Behind the customs and rites which are its visible sign lie certain thoughts and feelings, often dim, indistinct, obscure. In the totality of its beliefs, emotions, and institutions, it is as much the product of the human spirit as poetry, or art, science, morals, and law. It will therefore always bear some kind of relation to the general circumstances of the social development to which it belongs. The interpretation of the surrounding scene which is implied in its intellectual outlook will vary with the elements of the scene itself. But the limits of variation are much smaller than might be expected. The questions "why" and "how" may be answered very differently under the Equator and within the Arctic zone, but they are the same questions, and spring from common impulses of thought. Moreover, while race, climate, and economic conditions may all vary, it happens to all men to be born and to die. The family must be maintained, children must be reared, food must be procured, the tribal group must preserve its stability and, if possible, increase. There are universal elements in human life all over the globe; and the manifestations of religion founded upon them exhibit in consequence marked resemblances from land to land.
Religion always implies some kind of want. The young husband wants male children, the hunter game, the warrior victory, the diviner the knowledge of secrets, the saint holiness. The wants may be crude or refined, the satisfaction of a physical appetite, protection against some anticipated danger, the realisation of an exalted spiritual fellowship. But religion suggests that there is some Power capable of satisfying these wants, and undertakes to provide the means for setting man in proper relations with it. All round him are the objects and forces of the visible world. He learns by degrees that some help him to gratify his desires, and others hinder them. There are many things that he cannot understand, and some of which he dimly feels that he must not presume to try: he is only conscious towards them of a strange wonder and awe; they are uncanny; he cannot bring them into his experience; he must not meddle with them, he must keep away. But other things are more kindly, and fulfil his hopes.
Out of such vague consciousness he gradually frames a working method. Some sort of theory is at length established after many trials, concerning what must be done to obtain what he seeks. The line of his action is determined in part by the ideas and expectations which have slowly emerged out of his endeavours to get into fruitful connection with the powers by which he is encompassed. This is the element of belief, which lies behind religion proper, and supplies the soil in which religious feeling and action germinate and grow. What, then, is the kind of belief which, in the sphere of the lower culture, makes religion possible?
It is plain at once that no records remain of what is still sometimes called "primitive religion." Even tribes that seem to be living in the Stone Age have as long a past behind them as any European of light and leading. Whatever the beliefs may be that belong to any given stage of social culture, they are not new inventions, they depend on immemorial tradition. And they are not, as now cherished, the results of individual research or reflection. They are held in common by all the members of the tribe, so that they have a kind of collective force. No doubt in the long process of their formation and transmission modifications may have been introduced, as some elder, shrewder than his fellows, gave new emphasis to some leading idea, or suggested the adoption of some fresh action. Trace them back into the dim realm of conjecture, and some mind a little more observant or ready than his comrades must have started the first explanation, some will a little more adventurous must have made the first experiments in conduct. Thoughts do not issue from a "collective consciousness"; they bear the stamp of personality, they are not begotten by abstractions, and every fresh development starts from a single brain. But the uniformity of experience within the group gives enormous weight to the wisdom of the past; and constitutes a sanction which only some grave shock can change or overthrow.
With religion is constantly associated, both in historical record and in the lower forms of present-day practice, another kind of activity known as Magic. The relation between them has been variously interpreted. The modern anthropologist, Dr. Frazer, finds himself in unexpected agreement with the philosopher Hegel in supposing that magic was the first to appear upon the scene. It is represented as a kind of primitive science, founded on certain elementary axioms, such as that "like produces like," or that things once in contact with each other will continue to act upon each other when the contact is broken. The Central Australian performs elaborate ceremonies to stimulate the multiplication of the totem which provides the supply of food for his tribe. Suppose it is the witchetty grub. A kind of pantomime is performed representing the emergence of the fully-developed insect out of the chrysalis, typified by a long, narrow structure made of boughs. The totem men sit inside and chant rude songs, and then crawl out singing of the insect coming forth.
One of the commonest illustrations is the attempt to compass the death of an enemy by injuring or destroying an image or figure supposed to correspond to him. Such images were made in ancient Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. One North American Indian will draw a figure of his adversary in the sand, or in ashes, and prick it with a sharp stick. Another will make a wooden image, and insert a needle into the head or the heart. Clay is used for the purpose by the African Matabele, wax in Arabia, the guelder rose in Japan, materials of all kinds in India. In Scotland the corp chre, as it was called, was a clay body, which was stuck full of pins, nails, and broken bits of glass, and set in a running stream with its head to the current; a modern specimen from Inverness-shire may be seen in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Is all this really as Dr. Frazer supposes, prior to the birth of religion, and does man only turn to the propitiation of superior powers when he cannot get what he wants through magic? Of that process no evidence can be offered.
The essence of magic lies in some kind of compulsion or constraint. Through the proper spell, or through the will of the magician, a control is exerted which produces the desired result. The power which is thus claimed implies an attitude wholly unlike that of religion. Into that attitude there enter elements of wonder and submission in the presence of energies which man cannot master, though he desires to get them on his side. But no observer was at hand to watch the first processes of feeling and thought which the interaction of man and his environment produced. The crudest forms of religion which we actually know, meet us in tribes which have possessed them from an unknown past. Here religion has a social character binding the members of a group together, and tending to maintain certain uniformities of conduct and character. Over against it stands the antisocial character of magic, at any rate when directed against individuals. Along this line it is urged that magic and religion have both issued out of common conditions. In the world around all sorts of events are continually happening. Man, in the midst of them, moves to and fro impulsively among various objects and agencies. Out of these arise various reactions for self-maintenance, for protection and defence. Certain acts tend to establish themselves as successful; they make for security and welfare. At first man's efforts have no definite direction; but some are found effective, others are futile, and attention is concentrated on those that produce satisfactory results. After many trials certain beliefs, certain processes, certain persons, gradually stand out above the rest, and through them relations of advantage are established with the environing powers.
In such experiences lie the roots of both religion and magic. In their earliest forms they may be as difficult to discriminate as the simplest types of animal and vegetable life. If it be asked what distinguishes them outwardly, when both are transmitted by tradition, both rest upon custom, it may be answered that religion is concerned with what tends to the stability of the community. Its interests are those of the group. It supplies the bond of united action for clan or tribe or people. It is pre-eminently social; it expresses itself in ceremonies, feasts, and rites in which all can join, or in commands which all can obey. Even the Australians, so poor in elements of worship, have tribal laws which have been imparted to them from on high ([Chap. VII]).
Over against the community stands the individual, object of all kinds of jealousies and enmities. All sorts of antisocial arts may be practised for his destruction. The pointing-stick of Australia provides a common magical weapon. It is carried away into a lonely spot in the bush, and the intending user plants it in the ground, crouches down over it, and mutters a curse against the object of his hatred: "May your heart be rent asunder, may your backbone be split open!" Then one evening, as the men sit round the campfire in the dark, he creeps up stealthily behind his enemy, stoops down with his back to the camp, points the stick over his shoulder, and mutters the curse again. A little while after, unless saved by a more powerful magic, the victim sickens and dies.
Of course magic may also be used for the benefit of the individual, and the practice of exorcism for the cure of diseases caused through possession by evil spirits long found shelter in some branches of the Christian Church. The kinship between Magic and Religion is clearly marked when the priest takes the place of the devil-dancer or the medicine man. Yet they are on different planes; religion is prescribed and official, and demands specific services; magic falls into the background, it becomes a secret, perhaps a forbidden, art. Nevertheless, between religion and antisocial magic lies a large group of rites, essentially magical in character, like the North American Indian rain-dances or the totem-ceremonies of the Arunta in Central Australia, designed for the general welfare. Even in much higher cultures the spell frequently mingles with the prayer, and ceremonies of sacrifice carry with them elements of compulsion or constraint.
What traces, then, do the phases of religion in the lower culture exhibit of a view of the world and its powers out of which these diverging lines of practice might emerge? In widely different regions of the globe the forces that operate in unexpected ways, or play through things beyond man's reach, or appear in natural objects of striking character—an animal, a tree—are summed up in some general term of mystery and awe. Such is the Melanesian term mana, first noted by Bishop Codrington, common to a large group of languages. It implies some supersensual power or influence; it is not itself personal, though it may dwell in persons as in things. It is known by the results which reveal its working. You find a stone of an unusual shape; it may resemble some familiar object like a fruit; you lay it at the root of the corresponding tree, or you bury it in a yam-patch; an abundant crop follows; clearly, the stone has mana. It lives in the song-words of a spell; it secures success in fighting, perhaps through the tooth of some fierce and powerful animal; it imparts speed to the canoe, brings fish into the net, enables the arrow to inflict a mortal wound. But the word has a yet wider range, in the sense of power, might, influence. By it a parent can bring a curse on a disobedient child, a man who possesses it can work miracles; it even denotes the divinity of the gods. And so mysterious is the whole range of the inner life, that mana covers thought, desire, feeling, and affection; and in Hawaian it reaches out to spirit, energy of character, majesty. Here is an immense reserve of potency pervading the world, on which man may draw for good or ill.
Among the North American Indians similar conceptions may be traced. The Algonquin manitou represents a subtle property believed to exist everywhere in nature, though some persons and objects possess more of it than others. Among the Sioux the sun, the moon, the stars, thunder, wind, are all wakanda. So are certain trees and animals, the cedar, the snake, the grey elephant; and mystery-places like a particular lake in North Dakota, or some peculiar rocks on the Yellowstone River. The term carries with it power and sacredness; it belongs to what is ancient, grand, and animate. The Iroquoian tribes designate this mysterious force orenda. It expresses an incalculable energy, manifested in rocks and streams and tides; in plants and trees, in animals and man; it belongs to the earth and its mountains; it breathes in the winds and is heard in the thunder; the clouds move by it, day and night follow each other through it; it dwells in sun, moon, and stars. The shy bird or quadruped which it is difficult to snare or kill, possesses it; so does the skilful hunter; it gives victory in intertribal games of skill, and is the secret force of endurance or speed of foot. The prophet or the soothsayer discloses the future by its aid; and whatever is believed to have been instrumental in accomplishing some purpose or obtaining some good, finds in orenda the source of its effectiveness.
Not dissimilar is the conception of mulungu among the Yaos, east of Lake Nyassa. The term is wide-spread through the eastern group of Bantu tongues, and is said to have the meaning of "Old One" or "Great One"; and in this sense it has been employed as equivalent to God. But we are expressly told that in its native use and form it does not imply personality. Etymologically it ranks with the leg, arm, heart, head, of the human frame. Yet it denotes rather a state or property inhering in something, like life or health in the body, than any single object. It indicates a kind of supernormal energy, displayed in actual experience, but not to be detected by any physical sense. It is the agent of wonder and mystery; the rainbow is mulungu; and it sums up at once the creative energy which made the earth and animals and man, and the powers which operate in human life. At the foot of a tree in the village courtyard, where men sit and talk, a small offering of flour or beer is placed on any distinctive occasion in the communal life; at a meal, or on a journey at cross roads, a little flour is set aside. It is "for Mulungu"; sometimes dimly conceived as a spirit within; sometimes regarded as a universal agency in nature and affairs, impalpable, impersonal; sometimes rising into distinctness as God.
Such terms are, of course, generalisations from many separate experiences. Out of this sense of mystery grow more definite ideas. The dark and solemn forest, the rushing river, the precipitous rock, the lofty cloud-crowned mountain, the winds and storms, all manifest a common power;[[1]] it lives in the snake or the bull, in the tiger or the bear. This may be conceived in a highly complex and abstract form. Thus the Zuñis of Mexico, we are told, suppose the sun and moon, the stars, the sky, the earth and sea, with all their various changes, and all inanimate objects, as well as plants, animals, and men, to belong to one great system of all-conscious and interrelated life. One term includes them all: hâi, "being" or "life." With the prefix â, "all," the whole field of nature is summed up as âhâi, "life" or "the Beings." This comprehensive term includes the objects of sensible experience regarded as personal existences, and supersensual beings who are known as "Finishers or Makers of the paths of life," the most exalted of all being designated "the Holder of the paths of our lives." So in Annam life is regarded as a universal phenomenon. It belongs not only to men and animals and plants, but to stones and stars, to earth, fire, and wind. But it is seen in groups and kinds rather than individuals, and the limits of its forms are not sharply drawn; it can pass through many transformations, and possesses indefinite possibilities of change. Such conceptions have a long history behind them.
[[1]] M. Durkheim has recently applied conceptions of the mana order to the explanation of totemism.
The poets of the ancient Vedic hymns beheld everything around them full of energy. The names by which they designated what they saw all denoted action or agency. The swift flow of the stream gained it the title of the "runner"; as it cut away the banks or furrowed its course deep between the rocks, it was the "plougher"; when it nourished the fields it was the "mother"; when it marked off one territory from another it was the "defender" or "protector." So the seers addressed their invocations to the dawn or the sun, to the winds and the fire, to the river or the mountain, to the earth-mother or the sky-father, as living powers, capable of responding to the prayers of their worshippers. Similar energy dwelt in the horse or the cow, the bird of omen and the guardian dog. It was even shared by ritual implements such as the stones by which the sacred soma-juice was squeezed out, or by the products of human handiwork, the war-car, the weapon, the drum, and the peaceful plough.
At the present day the Batak in the north-west of Sumatra interpret the world about them in terms of a soul-stuff or life-power called tondi. A vast reservoir of this exists in the world above, and flows down upon men and animals and plants. The biggest animal, like the tiger, the most important of plants, like rice (chief source of food), have most tondi, but it is not confined to living things; the smith attributes it to his iron, the fisherman to his boat, the tiller of the ground to his hoe, the householder to his hearth and home. But a further analysis is beginning. What is the relation of a man's tondi to himself? When he dies, it passes into some fresh organism. But the rest of him, his shadow, his double, or his self, becomes a begu. In life, it is the body that thinks and feels, that fears and hopes and wills, though the presence of the tondi supplies the needful energy. But the tondi also has the functions of consciousness, for it can go away in dreams and meet the begus of parents and ancestors. And the apprehension that it may depart begets reverence and even offerings to the tondi, rather than to distant gods for whom man can feel neither fear nor love.
We touch here another root of religious belief, which produces growths so wide-spreading that some interpreters bring the whole range of objects of worship within their shade. How, after all, does man explain himself to himself? At first he does not think about thinking. Such words as he uses are vague and elastic, like the Polynesian mana, which covers a multitude of facts without and within. Only through long dim processes does any idea corresponding to our conception of personality come into his consciousness. He is as confused about the objects round him as he is about himself. Yet he has some sort of initiative. Whence comes it? Little by little a variety of experiences force on him the belief that beside the body and its limbs he possesses something which he cannot ordinarily see, but which is essential to his activity. He falls asleep, and lies still upon the ground; he wakes, full of remembrance of adventure, the localities which he has visited, the animals that he has hunted, the dead kinsmen whom he has met. The Australians explain their dreams by the supposition that the yambo, the mūrup, or the boolabong, can quit the body and return. "I asked one of the Kurnai" (of Gippsland), relates Mr. Howitt, "whether he really thought his yambo could go out during sleep." "It must be so," was the answer, "for when I sleep, I go to distant places, I see distant people, I even see and speak with those that are dead." The great apostle of the East in the sixteenth century, the devoted Francis Xavier, wrote home from India to the Society of Jesus in Europe—
"I find that the arguments which are to convince these ignorant people must be by no means subtle, such as those which are found in the books of learned schoolmen, but such as their minds can understand. They asked me again and again how the soul of a dying person goes out of the body, how it was, whether it was as happens to us in dreams, when we seem to be conversing with our friends and acquaintances. Ah, how often this happens to me, dearest brethren, when I dream of you! Was this because the soul then leaves the body?"
This explanation is found all round the globe.
Many other experiences confirm the impression of some kind of dual existence. The shadow or shade which follows a man repeats his movements, and appears as a sort of double. It is even widely believed in the face of the simplest evidence that a dead body casts no shadow (of course, as it lies upon the ground the shadow may almost disappear). Your reflection in river, pool, or lake, actually reproduces your colour as well as your form: beware lest a crocodile seizes it and drags you in. From ancient times down to Shelley and Walt Whitman, poetry has designated Sleep and Death as "brothers"; in death that which was temporarily absent in sleep has gone away for good. It may have rushed out with the blood from a gaping wound; it may have quietly departed with the last faint breath. So it may be summoned back, as in Chinese custom, on the housetop, in the garden or the field. Ghostly sounds may be heard in the forest, among the rocks, borne along the wind; the clairvoyant may discern dimly strange faces, vanished forms; the dead can sometimes make themselves seen in their old haunts; the world is full of unexpected indications of presences beyond our sense.
Such presences are grouped, for the modern student, under the general title "spirits." But the explanations which lead to these beliefs are not concerned with human beings only. Animals share in the incidents of life and death; plants, even, grow and blossom and decay; and animals, plants, and inanimate objects of all sorts may be seen in dreams. Hence the analysis which is applied to man can be readily extended; and another world is called into existence, strangely blended with this, a realm of immaterial counterparts and impalpable forces. A Fiji native, placed before a mirror, recognising himself and object after object, whispered softly, "Now I can see into the world of spirits."
With the help of this elementary philosophy a vast machinery of causation is always at hand for explaining untoward events. The Tshi-speaking negro on the West Coast of Africa has inside him a kind of life-power named kra. It existed long before his birth, for it served in the same capacity a whole series of predecessors; and it will continue its career after his death, when the man himself becomes a srahman or ghost. The adjoining Ga-speaking tribes modify the kra into two kla, one male and one female, the first of a bad disposition, the second good, who give advice and prompt to actions according to their respective characters. Yet a third inmate dwells in the neighbouring Yoruba-speaking folk, one in the head, one in the stomach, and one in the great toe. Offerings are made to the first by rubbing fowl's blood and palm oil on the forehead. The second needs none, for it shares whatever the stomach receives. The third is propitiated as an agent of locomotion before starting on a journey. But the curious theme of the plurality of souls must not beguile us.
Meantime the original kra is set behind all the activities of nature, and extended to the whole sphere of material objects. Each town or village or district has its own local spirits, rulers of river and valley, rock and forest and hill. Sometimes they take human shape, and colour, white or black, for transformations of all kinds are always possible. They are not all of equal rank; the broad lake, the mountain, the sea where the surf breaks heavily and the frail craft are upset—the lightning, the storm, and the earthquake—the leopard, the crocodile, the shark, and the devastating smallpox—such are among the dreaded manifestations of these dangerous and mysterious powers. But the actual dead must not be forgotten; they must be provided with ghostly counterparts of food and weapons and utensils, with cloth and gold-dust, just as a departed chief must be accompanied into the next life by the wives and slaves who adorned his household state in this.
The ritual of the dead belongs, as we have seen (p. [20]), to the earliest-known activities of European man. It is found in some form or other in every country under the sun. Sometimes it is prompted by fear, and has for its object to keep the dead imprisoned in the grave, or to prevent their spirits from returning to their old haunts (p. [228]). Sometimes it is warmed by affection, as the departed are recalled to the homes where they were loved. In ancient Egypt it was developed with the utmost elaboration, and created a literature describing a kind of "pilgrim's progress" through the scenes of the next world (p. [237]); while in Greece and Rome the cultus of the dead acquired, as in India and China, immense social significance. The question that arises in the study of religion in the lower culture is concerned with the probable connection between the two groups of spirits, which may be broadly distinguished as spirits of nature and spirits of the dead. That the latter are constantly propitiated in various forms is well known. They are to be found everywhere, lurking in the trees, flying through the air, sojourning in caves, haunting the promontories on the rivers or hidden in the forest-depths. With them lie the causes of disease and madness; they are malevolent and hurtful, as well as kindly and good. What differences are to be discerned between them and the powers of nature? Are we to suppose, with some students, that all the higher forms of religion have been developed out of the worship of the dead, and that for gods we must everywhere read originally ghosts?
Consider, for example, the ancient religion of Japan, which we know by an adaptation of two Chinese words as Shin-To, the "spirits' way," or in its native form kami-no-michi.[[2]] Who are the kami, or "spirits"? The title of "religion" has sometimes been denied to their cultus on the ground that it contains "no set of dogmas, no sacred book, and no moral code." Greece and Rome might, on the same plea, be described as having no religion. The term kami has for its root-idea the significance of "that which is above." It may be applied in the widest range of relations from the hair which is on the top of the head to the government which rules the people. The kami are, as it were, the "highnesses"; the word is used of big things by land and sea, great rivers, mighty mountains, roaring winds and rolling thunder; then of rocks and trees, of animals like the tiger and the wolf, of metals, and so of innumerable objects in earth and sky. It is not always clear whether these were originally conceived as themselves living, or whether they had been resolved into material body and controlling spirit. The functions of the kami, however, are extended and distributed by a kind of fission; the kami of food split into the produce of trees and the parent of grasses; they preside over guilds and crafts, the weavers, the potters, the carpenters, the swordsmen, the boatbuilders; they guide the operations of agriculture; they superintend the household, and watch over the kitchen range, the saucepan, the ricepot, the well, the pond, the garden, and the scarecrow.
[[2]] Chinese culture has probably exerted considerable influence on the exponents of the Shinto revival in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Very different aspects are reflected in the ancient chronicles.
But in this vast assembly are included also the spirits of the dead. They likewise become kami of varying rank and power. Some dwell in temples built in their honour; some hover near their tombs; some are kindly, and some malevolent. They mingle in the immense multiplicity of agencies which makes every event in the universe, in the language of the Shinto writer Motowori (1730-1801), "the act of the Kami." They direct the changing seasons, the wind and the rain; and the good and bad fortunes of individuals, families, and States, are due to them. From birth to death the entire life of man is encompassed and guided by the Kami.
Hence came the duty of worship on which Hirata (1776-1843) lays great stress. The heaven-descended Ninigi, progenitor of the imperial line, was taught by his divine forefathers that "everything in the world depends on the spirits of the kami of heaven and earth, and therefore the worship of the kami is a matter of primary importance. The kami who do harm are to be appeased, so that they may not punish those who have offended them; and all the kami are to be worshipped so that they may be induced to increase their favours." Accordingly Hirata's morning prayer before the kami-dana, the wooden shelf fixed against the wall in a Shinto home about six feet from the floor, bearing a small model of a temple or "august spirit-house," ran thus—
"Reverently adoring the great God of the two palaces of Isé (the Sun-goddess) in the first place, the 800 myriads of celestial kami, the 800 myriads of ancestral kami, all the 1500 myriads to whom are consecrated the great and small temples in all provinces, all islands and all places in the great land of 8 islands, the 1500 myriads of kami whom they cause to serve them.... I pray with awe that they will deign to correct the unwitting faults which, heard and seen by them, I have committed, and, blessing and favouring me according to the powers which they severally wield, cause me to follow the divine example, and to perform good works in the way."
Here, the spirits of the dead are blended with those of nature, without any definite attempt to assign them to different ranks or functions. Among the dead themselves there are such distinctions, which do not, however, concern us here; there are "spirits of crookedness," and there are spirits of the clans and of the imperial line. But above the multitudinous groups of nameless kami, whether once human or attached to the physical scene, rise certain great powers which it seems very difficult to identify with departed ghosts. The earliest traditions of the divine evolution in the ancient chronicles contain no hint pointing in that direction; and the comparison of the Japanese deities of earth, fire, wind, sea, and similar great elemental forces elsewhere, is not favourable to their derivation from the hosts of the dead.
The student of the hymns to Fire in the Rig-Veda (Agni = Latin ignis) cannot fail to notice the emphasis laid upon the birth of the god out of the wood, as the fire-drill kindles the first sparks, and the flame leaps forth. Here is something quick-moving, vital; the fire is the god; he may rise into cosmic significance as a pervading energy sustaining the whole world; but he never loses his physical character, any more than the solid earth or the encompassing sky. These are again and again the chief co-ordinating powers of the higher animism. Their separation out of the primeval mass of obscure and indiscriminate chaos has been the theme of myth from Egypt to New Zealand; just as their "bridal" has served to express the union and co-operation of the forces of nature all around the world.
Of this the ancient Chinese religion, still the formal basis of the national worship as performed by the Emperor, supplies perhaps the best example. The cultus of the dead is practised in every home, and around the incidents of life and death have gathered various Buddhist and Taoist rites. Moreover, a rampant demonology environs the entire field of existence; but this disordered multitude of noxious spirits has no recognition in the imperial homage. From immemorial generations the Chinese practice made religion a department of the State, and the venerable book of the Rites of the great dynasty of Chow requires the Grand Superior of Sacrifices to superintend the worship due to three orders of Shin or spirits, celestial, terrestrial, and human. Under the sovereignty of the sky the first includes the spirits of the sun, moon, stars, clouds, wind, rain, thunder, and the changes of the atmosphere. In the sphere of earth are reckoned the spirits of the mountains, rivers, plains, seas, lakes, woods, fields, and grains.
Taken together Heaven and Earth thus include all the energies of the universe. The world, as we see it, is, indeed, full of opposing powers, one group (yang) representing light and warmth and life, the contrary (yin) manifesting themselves in cold and darkness and death.[[3]] But these are both encompassed by the "Path" or Tao, the daily course of the universe, the abiding guarantee of justice in the distribution of good and evil in the human lot. Heaven and earth are thus regarded as themselves active or living; they constantly maintain the order of nature for the welfare of man. In the ancient Odes (which Confucius was supposed to have edited) "heaven" is called great and wide and blue. This is plainly the visible firmament; it is addressed as parent, and sky and earth together are father and mother of the world. They are not spirits, but are themselves animate. "Why," laments Dr. Edkins of his Chinese hearers, "they have been often asked, should you speak of these things which are dead matter, fashioned from nothing by the hand of God, as living beings?" "And why not?" they have replied. "The sky pours down rain and sunshine, the earth produces corn and grass, we see them in perpetual movement, and we therefore say they are living."
[[3]] The sky is the home of the yang; the yin are referred to the earth; in curious contrast to its powers of production and nourishment.
The Chinese genius was ethical rather than metaphysical. It was not concerned with the Infinite, the Eternal, and the Absolute. But it was deeply impressed with the moral aspects of the sky, its universality, its comprehensive embrace of all objects and powers beneath its far-stretching dome, its all-seeing view, its inflexible impartiality. Its decrees are steadfast, and proceeded from its sovereign sway; and in this capacity it bore the august title of Shang Tî, "Supreme Ruler." The scholastic philosophers of a later day analysed "Heaven" in this capacity into the actual sky and its controlling personality, and Shang Tî became the Moral Governor of the Universe, the equivalent of the western God.
Beneath the sky lay the earth, receptive of the energies descending upon it from on high; "Heaven and Earth, Father and Mother," are conjoined in common speech. Together they guided the changes of the year, in steadfast tread along the annual round. Folded in their wide compass were the Shin, charged with the regulation of the elemental powers. Under Heaven's control were the Shin of sun and moon, planets, stars, meteors, comets; of clouds and winds, thunder and rain; of the seasons, months, and days. Those of the earth were organised in territorial divisions, representing the dominions of the vassal princes down to the district areas. The higher were graded according to the political rank of the several provinces; beneath them were reckoned the spirits of the mountains, forests, seas, rivers, and grains. The privileges of worship granted to the various officials were part of the State order, and helped to maintain political and civic stability.
The imperial sacrifices to Heaven and Earth were performed at the winter and the summer solstices. The great altar to Heaven stands in a large park in the southern division of Peking, a vast marble structure in three stages, the lowest being 210 feet across. It is the largest altar in the world. Its white colour symbolises the light principle of the Yang. The upper stage, ninety feet in diameter, has for its centre a round blue jade stone, the symbol of the vault above. Here is placed the tablet to Heaven, inscribed "Throne of Sovereign Heaven," and associated with it are tablets to deceased emperors as well as to the Sun and Moon, the seven stars of the Great Bear, the five Planets, the twenty-eight Constellations, and the Stars. On the second stage, beneath the richly carved balustrade above, are the tablets to the Clouds and Rain, to Wind and Thunder. At the corresponding altar to the Earth on the north side of the city, square in shape, and dark-yellow in hue, the imperial worship at the summer solstice embraces also the five lofty Mountains, the three Hills of Perpetual Peace, the four Seas, the five celebrated Mountains, and the four great Rivers.[[4]]
[[4]] It is stated by the North China Herald for July 13, that the present Chinese Government proposes to convert the Temple of Heaven into a model farm, and the Temple of Earth into a horse-breeding establishment.
Splendid processions of princes and dignitaries, musicians and singers, accompany the Emperor to the great ceremonial. The recent Manchu sovereigns employed the prayers of the Ming dynasty which preceded them: here are one or two stanzas of a psalm in which the Emperor Kia-tsing in the sixteenth century announced to Shang Tî that he would be addressed as "dwelling in the sovereign heavens":—
"O Tî, when thou hadst separated the Yin and the Yang (i.e. the earth and the sky), thy creative work proceeded.
"Thou didst produce the sun and moon and the five planets, and pure and beautiful was their light.
"The vault of heaven was spread out like a curtain, and the square earth supported all upon it, and all things were happy.
"I thy servant venture reverently to thank thee, and while I worship, present the notice to thee, calling thee Sovereign.
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"All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to thy favour for their beginning.
"Men and things are all emparadised in thy love, O Tî.
"All living things are indebted to thy goodness, but who knows from whom his blessings come to him.
"It is thou alone, O Lord, who art the true parent of all things."
Here the ancient view of the living sky has given place under the influences of philosophy to a creative monotheism. No image is made of Shang Tî. As he stands at the head of the manifold ranks of the Shin, he represents the last word of animism in providing an intellectual form for religion.