THE EVOLUTION OF THE GODS
The evolution of the idea of godhead in the mind of man is in its later stages inalienably associated with the conception of spirit.[1]
As we have seen (pp. [58]-[59]), Tylor considers that man first attained the idea of spirit by reflection on experiences such as sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, hallucinations, breath, and death, and by degrees extended this conception of soul or ghost until he peopled all nature with spirits, from among which one supreme being was finally raised above all.
An outline of the animistic conception has been provided in the introductory chapter. Here it is only necessary to apply it to the evolution of deity. The opinion of Marett, that in an early stage of human development pre-animistic 'powers' exist which do not partake of the nature of spirit, does not require to be restated, as it has but little bearing upon the question directly before us; and we will advance to that stage in human mental development when spirit has become fully recognized. The conception of simple personalization could not have lasted long at any epoch, as it would sooner or later be brought into contact with the idea of the separable soul. Thus if gods were regarded as 'magnified non-natural men' (the very phrase 'non-natural' is against the personalization idea), or physical objects or natural phenomena were worshipped or placated because of their peculiarities, the idea of spirit would undoubtedly infuse and alter these beliefs at a very early stage in their career. Thus no deity could well escape becoming spiritualized. Why should this be so? Why should spiritualization be necessary to deity? The point is important. If we admit that certain physical objects were worshipped because of their peculiarities, if we believe that the earth and sky, for example, were personalized and conceived as without spiritual attributes in the beginning, that only what was seen was worshipped, how comes it that among the most primitive races the god, as apart from his idol, is invisible—that is, spiritual? The idol may, of course, be a relic of the period when only what was beheld was worshipped, but that period must indeed have been brief, when one takes into consideration the probable early junction of the ideas of spirit and deity.
IDEA OF SPIRIT CONCEIVED EARLY
The conception of spirit must have been an early idea, contemporary, one would imagine, with the dawn of reason. Man, claiming for himself the possession of spirit, could scarcely deny it to a superior power, and if the fear of godhead agitated him when beheld in the convulsions of nature, as in the thunder-storm or earthquake, how much more would the half-heard mutterings of the unseen agencies dwelling in the whistling winds and darkling woods cause terror in his breast? Regarding the physical agencies he knew the worst, and could learn how to avoid or mitigate their terrors, but what chance had he against those agencies he could not perceive, and how much greater must have been his fear of them? Thus was born that dread of the invisible, the unseen, which even to-day chills the human heart and plays havoc with human imagination.
The idea of the separable soul thus evolved from visions and dreams and applied to godhead might assist in the making of several varying forms of deity, as in fetishism, totemism, or the worship of the dead—if, indeed, it did not originate in this latter form. The application of spirit to deity perhaps found its first illustration in the worship of ancestors—a low form of evolution in the line of godhead, as few gods evolved from ancestors survive more than several generations, and few of the great departmental deities of the higher early religions display signs of having evolved from ancestors. Moreover, where such signs are present they are of doubtful value. The religion of China is perhaps the only great example of the continuity of the worship of ancestors. But it is important to note that this form of deity may have been that to which the idea of spirit was first applied.
Fetishism forms an important link in the evolution of the mere animistic spirit into the god. Before examining the manner in which a fetish originates and rises to godhead, let us see exactly what class of spirit is supposed to inhabit it.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FETISH
The fetish is pre-eminently a personal familiar—that is, a spirit which for certain reasons (the desire for shelter and food, or because a powerful spell has been laid upon it) becomes attached to a human being. It is acquired by a person or a family for luck, and in return requires a certain amount of worship or respect, sacrifice, and feasting. It may receive good or evil treatment according as it behaves to its votaries. It is by no means a tutelar deity, since it may be bought or sold, loaned or inherited. It generally has its home in some object, preferably of a peculiar shape or character, inhabiting a figure shaped in human or animal form, a stone, bone, necklace of fingers, a carved or painted stick, a curious fossil, a stuffed skin, the dried hand of an enemy—in short, anything that fancy or caprice may dictate.
The manner of making a fetish is almost universally the same. Says Mr Davenport Adams of the Samoyede image-makers[2]: "The bleak and lonely island of Waigatz is still, as in the days of the Dutch adventurer, Barentz, supposed to be the residence of the chief of these minor divinities. There a block of stone, pointed at the summit, bears a certain resemblance to a human head, having been wrought into this likeness by a freak of nature. The Samoyede image-makers have taken it for their model, and multiplied it in wood and stone; and the idols thus easily manufactured they call sjadaei, because they wear a human (or semi-human) countenance (sja). They attire them in reindeer skins, and embellish them with innumerable coloured rags. In addition to the sjadaei, they adopt as idols any curiously contorted tree or irregularly shapen stone; and the household idol (Hahe) they carry about with them, carefully wrapped up, in a sledge reserved for the purpose, the hahengan. One of the said Penates is supposed to be the guardian of wedded happiness, another of the fishery, a third of the health of his worshippers, a fourth of their herds of reindeer. When his services are needed, the Hahe is removed from its resting-place, and erected in the tent or on the pasture-ground, in the wood, or on the river's bank. Then his mouth is smeared with oil or blood, and before him is set a dish of fish or flesh, in return for which repast it is expected that he will use his power on behalf of his entertainers. When his aid is no longer needed, he is returned to the hahengan."
PAYNE ON THE FETISH
Mr Payne in his History of the New World called America has an admirable passage about the fetish. He says: "The spirits, then, whom the savage believes to share the world with him, are considered to be substantial beings, consisting of flesh and blood like man himself; and like him nourished by food and drink. They are therefore not immortal: like man, they are liable to death by violence or starvation. They are also subject to that alternation of want and abundance which occupies so large a space in human experience. In this circumstance, coupled with the fact that some of these spirits are conceived as injurious or evil, others as benevolent or good, we have the key of primitive theology. Man seeks to keep the good or benevolent spirits alive, to satisfy their wants, and to give them pleasure, in the hope of interesting them by this means in the success of his own enterprises: and for this purpose he provides them with food and drink. Hunting peoples, who have no gods, occasionally sacrifice food to the spirits, in order to obtain success in the chase: thus the Veddah of Ceylon place on the ground offerings of blood and burnt flesh for the Vedde-Yakko (spirit of the chase), promising further offerings of the same kind when the game is caught If the spirit accepts these offerings, he is understood to appear to them in dreams, telling them where to hunt. Some low agricultural and cattle-keeping tribes, who have not attained the conception of gods, place pieces of manioc-root and ears of maize on branches of trees, to propitiate the spirits. These sacrifices of the Veddah illustrate in its simplest form the principle which lies at the root of all. The spirits for whom they are intended are beings of animal nature, chiefly differing from other animals in that they are naturally invisible, but have the power of assuming various forms, and of moving swiftly through the air from place to place. Air, perhaps, rather than earth, is conceived to be their proper element: it is at any rate certain that food-offerings, in order to reach them, must be committed to the air. There are only two methods of doing this, libation and combustion: the former adapted to liquids, the latter to solids. Liquids are poured on the ground, on a stone, or into a bowl or other receptacle, and pass into the air by simple evaporation. Solids are burnt, and pass into the air in the form of smoke. In offering to the spirits food in the form of blood, the Veddah follows the universal logic of primitive savagery. Man once consumed his game warm and raw. Fatigued with the chase, emaciated perhaps by previous fasting, the savage slays his victim, drinks of the hot blood, feels himself at once invigorated, and makes his meal upon its flesh at leisure. The rest of the blood, spilled on the ground, quickly dries up. The savage, who has but one solution for most physical phenomena, concludes that the spirits have drunk it. Blood, therefore, is their natural food. In this, repugnant as it is to modern prejudices, the savage sees nothing revolting or unnatural. Blood, which is in truth only the material of flesh, is to him a perfectly natural food; scarcely less so, perhaps, than milk, which is nothing but blood filtered through a gland. Henceforth, a part of the blood of all animals that man slays, wild or domestic, will be poured out for the spirits, or for the gods who succeed them. Ultimately, when man abandons the practice, once universal, of feeding on blood, all the blood of a slaughtered animal is poured out as the share of the invisible powers. Sometimes, in a later stage, when sacrifice is more fully developed, clotted blood is collected when the carcase is cold, and wrapped in a cloth; this is placed in a basket and suspended in the air. Such was the practice of the advanced Indians of Nicaragua, between the lake and the ocean, emigrants from Mexico, when sacrificing, after the chase, to the teomazat and teotoste, or gods of the deer and rabbit respectively. It is equally in accordance with primitive logic to offer to the spirits a portion of the flesh. The invisible powers must have their share of all that man delights in: at a later period offerings are made them of fermented liquors, narcotics, perfumes, and the material of clothing and ornaments. From the solid parts of the slain animal those are selected which are most easily volatilised. A portion of the fat, ultimately all the fat which adheres to the internal organs of the slain animal, is therefore burnt, and reaches the nostrils of the spirits in the form of a grateful savour. At a later period, when man depends for flesh food on domesticated animals, such offerings are reserved for gods of the first rank: and hence in Peru the chief deities, who alone were thus honoured, obtained the distinctive name of huira-cocha (fat sacrifices)."
THE 'SUCCESSFUL' FETISH
Such fetishes as are 'successful'—that is, such of them as survive the test of domestic use and prove luck-bringers—may by their miraculous acts or the power and policy of their immediate devotees become gods. But it must be borne in mind that a fetish-object is the place of imprisonment or residence, manufactured by human agency, of a spirit which has concluded a bargain with its devotees to act for their mutual benefit. Only a series of marvels of a protective or fortune-making nature can raise it to the rank of godhead, or, as has been said, the policy of its owners, who thus constitute themselves its priesthood. Says Mr Payne: "Before the gods are thus permanently established they have usually passed through a period of probation. Only the fittest survive: if the god proves useless for the purpose for which he exists, whether of securing success in the chase, abundant crops, or fortune in war, he is forthwith abandoned. Where game and fish abound, and agriculture remains in its rudiments, the gods are chiefly required to render assistance in hunting, fishing, and war, though some are employed to secure success in cultivation. Such was the condition of the tribes throughout the vast region of the Amazon river who had gods for each of these purposes. On an expedition of war one of the war-gods was placed in the prow of the boat; on a fishing expedition this place was occupied by a god holding a fish. When out of use the gods were stowed away in baskets; in case these expeditions proved unsuccessful the gods were thrown aside and replaced by others. But those which survive the test of experience are cherished in families as possessions of the highest value. These are the t'raphim of the Hebrews, the penates of the Latins, the cconopa of the Peruvians: words in each case meaning precisely the 'nourishers' or 'food-givers' of the household. According to the Biblical narrative, the daughter of an Aramæan sheikh considered herself entitled to take with her some of these family gods when she crossed the Euphrates with her Hebrew husband: an incident which recalls the Turcoman legend of Sekedschet, whose Chinese wife brought household gods with her as part of her dowry. These gods, it is clear, were regarded as mere chattels, existing for the benefit of their owners: in Bokhara, indeed, they were commonly bought and sold at markets or fairs. So long as man worshipped only these merely factitious gods, this essential instability obviously prevented his religious ideas from gaining force and permanence: qualities which first appear when he begins to worship the distinguished dead, and only become conspicuous when he adopts as objects of veneration the permanent objects and forces of nature."
TOTEMS AS GODS
A totem spirit achieves godhead in much the same way as the fetish. That the totem develops into the god is abundantly proven by the animal likenesses and attributes of many deities in lands widely separated. The animal-headed gods of Egypt, the bovine deities of Assyria, the animal gods of many pantheons are, very many of them, totemic in origin. These frequently attained a human semblance at a later stage of their history, but in many instances the original totem animal or a portion of its insignia remained. Thus the Grecian Pallas Athene was attended by an owl; Apollo was accompanied by a mouse ('Apollo Smintheus'); the Mexican god of war, Uitzilopochtli, was frequently disguised in a cloak made of humming-birds' feathers; and Prometheus must have possessed wings to enable him to steal the fire from heaven. Many gods, as Lang says, exhibit traces of "fur and feather," but all of these are not necessarily totemic. Where the act of devouring the deity symbolically by means of the substitution of an animal or man for the eponym or god is indulged in at certain stated intervals, the origin of the god so communed with is totemic, and this fact often serves to determine the nature of a deity.
Says Salomon Reinach (Cultes, mythes, et religions, p. 7): "The distribution of the clan totems among the tribal and national gods was not the work of a day: it must have been conditioned by a whole mass of circumstances—alliances, wars, local amalgamations—the clue to which is obviously lost forever. One factor of the first importance seems to have been the ritual of sacrifice; which, like all rituals, is eminently conservative. Take the case of a clan owning the bull as its totem, and sacrificing it at intervals. In time the era of personal deities is ushered in; the bull is converted into an attribute of the chief god, and offered up to him in sacrifice: yet there lingers a more or less distinct recollection of the victim's own divinity."
It has been well said that man cannot realize the gods as gods until he becomes aware of his own humanity. Before that they must appear to him as what Marett calls 'powers.' That is where animism with its branches, totemism and fetishism, may be distinguished from the religions of the higher cultus, the polytheisms which possess definite pantheons, and the monotheisms. It is noticeable that in early myth animals often take the place of gods, a sure sign that the race which regarded the animal as occupying the place of a creator or hero had not yet 'found itself' as human, had not yet realized the enormous nature of the gulf which separates animal and human nature, was yet totally in the dark regarding the great things of which man was capable, his marvellous adaptability and wondrous destiny. When man realizes his superiority, then the totem-gods take on his own image, retaining only the symbols or insignia of the beast, or perhaps part of their ancient animal appearance. Thus the Egyptian sun-goddess, Bast, from being represented in early times as a cat pure and simple, was later figured as a woman having a cat's head. Uitzilopochtli, the Aztec war-god, evolved from humming-bird shape to man-like similitude, retaining, however, the colibri-feather cloak. The Mayan maize-spirit, when he attained god-like proportions, was represented as a young man wearing on his head-dress the graceful waving plumes of the maize-plant. These instances are illustrative of the different manner in which various peoples free their minds of the old beast-god ideas handed down for untold generations. Thus the strongly conservative Egyptians, probably because of fusion with other races, adopt the anthropomorphic form, but still retain the animal appearance in its most significant item—the head; the symbol-loving Aztecs preserve the humming-bird's feathers on their war-god's dress, while the still more anthropomorphic Greeks content themselves with placing the animal image beside the man-like god, instead of in any way amalgamating the two conceptions.
ANCESTOR-WORSHIP
The process of manufacturing a god from a dead man, although at first sight apparently less involved than that of the evolution of a deity through fetishistic or totemic media, is found on close examination to be even more complex. Among many primitive races, and some that are not primitive, it is the bounden duty of the dead man's son to see that his manes, his spirit, wants for nothing. Even as he cherished his son during the first years of the infant's life, so his heir is now bound by all he holds sacred to cherish his ghost and guard it against hunger, thirst, and cold. Woe betide the unfilial wretch who neglected the tomb of his father! Among the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Chinese such a dereliction of duty was regarded with the utmost abhorrence. Dreadful was the lot of the uncared-for dead. Says the Gilgamesh epic, the greatest literary product of ancient Babylonia:
The man whose spirit has none to care for it—
Thou and I have often seen such an one—
The dregs of the vessel, the leavings of the feast,
And that which is cast out upon the street are his food.
Great care was bestowed by Egyptian sons upon the post-mortem welfare of their parents, and the most solemn duty of a Chinaman is that of tending the spirits of his dead forefathers. This attention in course of time evolves into a very deep reverence, which greatly exalts the dead in the estimation of their descendants. In India and elsewhere critical observers have watched the progress of the evolution into godhead of innumerable dead men. A holy ascetic dies, famous throughout the neighbourhood for his piety and the rigour of his life. Miracles occur at his shrine. His surviving relatives foster the cult of his fame. His human "personality becomes misty, his origin grows mysterious, his career takes a legendary hue, his birth and death were both supernatural; in the next generation the names of the elder gods get introduced into the story, and so the marvellous tradition works itself into a myth, until nothing but a personal incarnation can account for such a series of prodigies. The man was an avatar of Vishnu or Siva; his supreme apotheosis is now complete, and the Brahmins feel warranted in providing for him a niche in the orthodox pantheon."[3]
This, of course, is an instance where the memory of his sanctity helps to turn a man into a god. No such idea enters into the earliest ancestor-worship. Among primitive savages the dead man would be worshipped because of the memory of his personal might when alive, the number of his clansmen and adherents, and for similar reasons. But 'human' gods, ancestors and others, seldom reach any great altitude of deity.
THE COMPACT WITH THE GODS
At a very early epoch in the relations of man with the gods we find him entering into a tacit understanding which develops into a well-recognized pact. Even when the gods are in the fetish state we find the hunter smearing blood upon their mouths and imploring their assistance in return. It is a case, as the old proverb says, of 'Ka me, ka thee.' Man undoubtedly possesses an instinctive belief in the existence of a superior being or beings. He may twist this fundamental belief into any shape he pleases, but basically it remains the same. This belief in gods is not in itself religion. Inalienably possessing the idea of the existence of deity, and shaping it as his intelligence permits, man has yet to make religion, which consists in the worship and cult of supernatural beings, for his comfort, uplifting, assurance, and help. Man says to himself, "If He be with us who shall be against us?" and with the god for him feels secure against every adversary.
The 'comfort' derived from faith, of which all must have greater or less experience, the assurance that man is watched over, guided, and tended by a being to whom he is an object of solicitude, was probably experienced at a much earlier stage of human history than is generally admitted, but the bargain, the compact by which both man and god dwell together to mutual advantage, is obviously antecedent to these feelings, and is dictated by calculation as opposed to pure love. "Feed us, send us plenteous game, O Divine One, and we shall in turn maintain thee with sacrifice." Such is the compact. A similar bargain is made when man quits his hunter's life and begins to live an agricultural existence; nor does the nature of the pabulum offered to the gods differ with the adoption of an agricultural existence. Blood is the food of the gods when man sacrifices to them in his capacity of hunter, and continues to be so when he adopts cereals, although instances do occur of cereal and vegetable sacrifices. Vegetarian gods are few, and the majority of savages favour the cult of Abel, not that of the brother who angered Yahweh by the agricultural nature of his sacrifices. The most complete instance on record of a compact in which a markedly agricultural community rigidly maintained the blood-sacrifice to the gods is that of ancient Mexico, where thousands of prisoners of war were annually immolated, and where an annual strife between the states of Mexico and Tlaxcala was upheld for the purpose of furnishing the altars of one or other with human victims.
THE CORN-SPIRIT AS GOD
These considerations lead to the question: In what manner are the gods of the agricultural community evolved? Does the corn-spirit, the genius of the wheat or maize, triumph over and banish the older animistic deities of the chase? These certainly sink into a secondary position, although some gods of totemic origin continue to flourish, despite their new agricultural surroundings, and even survive and hold high positions in the pantheon, perhaps altered by later political and abstract ideas out of all semblance to their original condition. Old tribal gods, too, may become agricultural.
In what manner, then, does the triumphant corn-spirit evolve into the god? And, firstly, what is the nature of a corn-spirit? In animistic belief everything natural possesses life and so, probably, 'soul,' 'ghost,' or 'spirit,' the corn-plant no less than any other object. Representations of corn-and maize-gods almost invariably show them as symbolically decorated with the plant they were supposed to inhabit. The genius, spirit, or informing soul of the grain would in an agricultural community attain such prime importance that within a short time it would undoubtedly receive divine honours.
FROM CORN-SPIRIT TO GOD
The corn-spirit was capable of attaining a high rank of godhead, as we may see from the myth of the Egyptian god Osiris. Osiris was the first to instruct men how to plant the corn-seed, and his annual festival began with the tillage of the soil. In one of the chambers dedicated to him in the great temple of Isis at Philæ his dead body is represented with stalks of corn springing from it. These are being watered by a priest, and the accompanying inscription reads that this is "Osiris of the mysteries who springs from the returning waters" (of the Nile). Surely such a painting can only illustrate Osiris as a corn-deity. And were not, according to legend, his mangled remains scattered up and down the land of Egypt?—perhaps a mythical way of expressing the sowing or winnowing of the grain, an interpretation supported by the tale that Isis placed the severed limbs of Osiris on a corn-sieve.
Granted, then, that Osiris was a corn-spirit in one of his manifestations, we have now to judge from his tale how far it is possible for the corn-spirit to evolve in the line of godhead—to what altitude of deity it is possible for him to soar and what divine honours he is capable of reaching.
At an early stage of Egyptian history we find Osiris the deity of an agricultural religion, plainly the god of a grain-growing people. His cult persisted through all the exigencies and changes of Egyptian theology and occupied a prominent place in the affections of the people, who, although they acknowledged the worship of Ra and Amen at various epochs, continued faithful to Osiris. His worship by reason of its antiquity and popularity triumphed in the end over more aristocratic and perhaps alien forms. But the early conception of Osiris as the spirit of the corn-plant and afterward as a guardian deity of agriculture, although maintained in essence, was greatly modified and overshadowed by the attributes which were bestowed upon him at a later period. Thus, like Persephone and other corn-deities, he was regarded as a god of the Underworld, or place of the dead, and consequently as judge of the departed. In his history we observe the process of evolution from an animistic spirit inhabiting the corn-plant to a god embodying divine justice, and holding in his hands both reward and punishment.
A great deal has been written concerning the supposed non-ethical and non-moral character of mythological figures. In early times it is probable that the gods were no less savage and immoral than their worshippers; but when we encounter well-known deities for the first time in the pages of classical authors, we have little difficulty in discovering that although the attributes of savagery still cling to them, they are also informed by a spirit of justice and wisdom, if not of mercy or compassion. Such qualities, indeed, as man desired in the gods, he endowed them with. Again, the existence of collegiate or monastic institutions in such countries as Egypt, India, Mexico, and Babylonia did much to foster contemplation and piety, and greatly assisted the evolution of the ethical spirit. When we first meet with Osiris, Ra, Thoth, Ptah, and other Egyptian gods, they are the repositories of justice and wisdom, if not of love and compassion. The same holds good of many Hindu deities, notably of Brahma. The Greek gods were, perhaps, unfortunate in the circumstance that the age of their first literary presentment preceded that of their ethical evolution. Accounts of the Spanish conquerors of Mexico lead us to believe that at least one Mexican deity, Tezcatlipoca, possessed a sense of justice, and that another, Tlazolteotl, forgave sin; and the traditions of many modern savage peoples are not without god-like figures whose ethical standpoint is superior to that of their worshippers.
With the material now to our hand it is important that we fully employ every possible rational method of interpretation. The folly of adopting one key to open all mythological doors has been illustrated by the fate of such systems as attempted to interpret the nature of the gods by theories of a 'disease of language' or the solar nature of all deities. The 'vegetable' school, as Lang dubbed it, possesses almost as many pitfalls for the unwary. Let no method, linguistic, solar, anthropological, dominate our conclusions, but let none be absent from our counsels.
[1] The general theory of this work, though, as already stated, eclectic, is, so far as its opinions upon the evolution of the idea of spirit or soul is concerned, in sympathy with the animistic hypothesis of Tylor, an hypothesis subjected to a certain amount of criticism from the younger generation of students of comparative religion. But as these students have not yet erected a worthy rival explanation of the evolution of godhead, and as what they have accomplished is of the most fragmentary nature, we will refrain from reviewing their work, and will content ourselves with an examination of the animistic idea, bringing to bear upon it only such criticism as seems really necessary.
[2] Curiosities of Superstition, pp. 155, 156.
[3] A. C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies, p. 19 (London, 1907).