We might quote various actions of Red-Skins and Australians, arising from sentiments of the same nature.
VI. In conclusion, if it is sad to be forced to recognise moral evil in races and in nations which have carried social civilization to the highest degree of perfection, it is consoling to acknowledge the good in the most backward tribes, and to find it there in its most elevated and refined form. The fundamental identity of human nature is nowhere displayed in a more striking manner.
Does this assertion lead to the inference that all human groups are upon the same moral level? By no means. From this, as from the intellectual point of view, they may hold a higher or lower position of the scale, without any of them falling to zero. It is precisely this moral inequality which has for the anthropologist an interest at once scientific and practical. The very development of the faculty, the acts which it inspires, the institutions of which it is the foundation, present differences sufficiently great to make it possible to discover characters in this order of facts.
CHAPTER XXXV.
RELIGIOUS CHARACTERS.
I. If scientific impartiality and calm judgment are necessary in the study of moral phenomena, they are much more indispensable when we have to account for facts depending upon religious feeling. Unfortunately this condition is too rarely fulfilled. Passion, with lamentable facility, becomes involved in whatever resembles a religious question. Many other causes, easy to mention, join passion in leading our judgment astray, and it is not difficult to explain how, under these several influences, it has been possible, honestly to ignore manifestations of religion in the more or less important divisions of mankind.
The most frequent cause of error to which I feel myself bound to call attention, has its origin in the high opinion which the European has of himself, in the habitual contempt which is the most striking feature of his relation with other populations, and especially to those which, with greater or less reason, he treats as barbarians or savages. For example, a traveller who, as a general rule, speaks the language of the country very badly, interrogates a few individuals upon the delicate questions of the Deity, future life, etc., and his interlocutors, not understanding him, make a few signs of doubt or denial, which have no reference to the questions asked. The European in his turn mistakes their meaning. Having, in the first instance, merely regarded them as beings of the lowest type, incapable of any conception however trifling, he concludes without hesitation that these peoples have no idea either of God or of another life; and his assertion, soon repeated, is at once accepted as true by readers who share his opinions about populations unacquainted with our civilization. The history of travel would furnish us with many examples of this fact. Kaffirs, Hottentots, etc., have often been spoken of as atheists, while we now know that this is by no means the case.
Should the traveller, moreover, speak the language of the country with ease, he is still liable to fall into error. Religious belief forms part of the most hidden depths of our nature; the savage does not willingly expose his heart to a stranger whom he fears, whose superiority he feels, and whom he has often seen ready to ignore or ridicule what he has always regarded as most worthy of veneration. The difficulty which a Parisian experiences in France in understanding the superstitions of the Basque sailor, or of the Bas-Breton peasant, should make him able to appreciate those which he would find in giving an explanation of similar subjects in connection with Kaffirs or Australians. Campbell had great trouble in obtaining from Makoum the avowal that the Bosjesman admitted the existence of a male god and of a female god, of a good and evil principle. He left many other, and much more important discoveries to be made by MM. Arbousset and Daumas. Wallis, after a month’s intimacy with the Tahitians, declared that they possessed no form of worship, whilst it entered, so to speak, into their most trivial actions. He had seen nothing beyond a cemetery in the Moraï, those venerated temples, of which no woman might even touch the sacred ground.
The lively faith of a missionary is, again, often a cause of error. Whatever the Christian communion may be to which he belongs, he generally arrives in the midst of the people whom he wishes to convert, with a hatred of their objects of belief, which are to him works of the devil. Too often he neither seeks to account for them, nor even to become acquainted with them; his sole endeavour is to destroy them. I could here mention one of these too zealous apostles, who sees nothing in the Brahminical religion but the utmost barbarism united with the utmost absurdity. It is clear that the much more rudimentary belief of a Kaffir or of an Australian could not be a religion in the opinion of such a judge as this. He expresses and publishes his ideas, and another name is added to the list of atheist populations.
Fortunately amongst lay Europeans there are some who, permanently settled in the midst of these populations, become initiated into their customs and manners, so as to understand them and to fathom mysteries, which would by others be passed over on account of offensive or curious forms. Among missionaries there are some who, more indulgent, because they are more enlightened, can recognise the religious conception, however feeble it may be, or however it may have been transformed. Little by little the light has appeared, and the result has been that Australians, Melanesians, Bosjesmans, Hottentots, Kaffirs, and Bechuanas, have, in their turn, been withdrawn from the list of atheist nations and recognised as religious.