(1) M. Knappert here, in a note to the Dutch translation, denies the lowest mythical element to the Hebrews, as their documents have reached us.
"It would be rash, in the present state of knowledge, to pronounce that the germ of the serious Homeric sense of the justice and power of the Divinity is earlier or later than the germ of the Homeric stories of gods disguised as animals, or imprisoned by mortals, or kicked out of Olympus. The rational and irrational aspects of mythology and religion may be of coeval antiquity for all that is certainly known, or either of them, in the dark backward of mortal experience, may have preceded the other. There is probably no religion nor mythology which does not offer both aspects to the student. But it is the part of advancing civilisation to adorn and purify the rational element, and to subordinate and supersede the irrational element, as far as religious conservatism, ritual and priestly dogma will permit."
Such were the general remarks with which this chapter opened in the original edition of the present work. But reading, reflection and certain additions to the author's knowledge of facts, have made it seem advisable to state, more fully and forcibly than before, that, in his opinion, not only the puzzling element of myth, but the purer element of a religious belief sanctioning morality is derived by civilised people from a remote past of savagery. It is also necessary to draw attention to a singular religious phenomena, a break, or "fault," as geologists call it, in the religious strata. While the most backward savages, in certain cases, present the conception of a Being who sanctions ethics, and while that conception recurs at a given stage of civilisation, it appears to fade, or even to disappear in some conditions of barbarism. Among some barbaric peoples, such as the Zulus, and the Red Indians of French Canada when first observed, as among some Polynesians and some tribes of Western and Central Africa little trace of a supreme being is found, except a name, and that name is even occasionally a matter of ridicule. The highest religious conception has been reached, and is generally known, yet the Being conceived of as creative is utterly neglected, while ghosts, or minor gods, are served and adored. To this religious phenomenon (if correctly observed) we must attempt to assign a cause. For this purpose it is necessary to state again what may be called the current or popular anthropological theory of the evolution of Gods.
That theory takes varying shapes. In the philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer we find a pure Euhemerism. Gods are but ghosts of dead men, raised to a higher and finally to the highest power. In the somewhat analogous but not identical system of Mr. Tylor, man first attains to the idea of spirit by reflection on various physical, psychological and psychical experiences, such as sleep, dreams, trances, shadows, hallucinations, breath and death, and he gradually extends the conception of soul or ghost till all nature is peopled with spirits. Of these spirits one is finally promoted to supremacy, where the conception of a supreme being occurs. In the lowest faiths there is said, on this theory, to be no connection, or very little connection, between religion and morality. To supply a religious sanction of morals is the work of advancing thought.(1)
(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 381. Huxley's Science and Hebrew Tradition, pp. 346,372.
This current hypothesis is, confessedly, "animistic," in Mr. Tylor's phrase, or, in Mr. Spencer's terminology, it is "the ghost theory". The human soul, says Mr. Tylor, has been the model on which all man's ideas of spiritual beings, from "the tiniest elf" to "the heavenly Creator and ruler of the world, the Great Spirit," have been framed.(1) Thus it has been necessary for Mr. Tylor and for Mr. Spencer to discover first an origin of man's idea of his own soul, and that supposed origin in psychological, physical and psychical experiences is no doubt adequate. By reflection on these facts, probably, the idea of spirit was reached, though the psychical experiences enumerated by Mr. Tylor may contain points as yet unexplained by Materialism. From these sources are derived all really "animistic" gods, all that from the first partake of the nature of hungry ghosts, placated by sacrifices of food, though in certain cases that hunger may have been transferred, we surmise, by worshippers to gods not ORIGINALLY animistic.
(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 109
In answer to this theory of an animistic or ghostly origin of all gods, it must first be observed that all gods are not necessarily, it would seem, of animistic origin. Among certain of the lowest savages, although they believe in ghosts, the animistic conception, the spiritual idea, is not attached to the relatively supreme being of their faith. He is merely a powerful BEING, unborn, and not subject to death. The purely metaphysical question "was he a ghost?" does not seem always to have been asked. Consequently there is no logical reason why man's idea of a Maker should not be prior to man's idea that there are such things as souls, ghosts and spirits. Therefore the animistic theory is not necessary as material for the "god-idea". We cannot, of course, prove that the "god-idea" was historically prior to the "ghost-idea," for we know no savages who have a god and yet are ignorant of ghosts. But we can show that the idea of God may exist, in germ, without explicitly involving the idea of spirit. Thus gods MAY be prior in evolution to ghosts, and therefore the animistic theory of the origin of gods in ghosts need not necessarily be accepted.
In the first place, the original evolution of a god out of a ghost need not be conceded, because in perhaps all known savage theological philosophy the God, the Maker and Master, is regarded as a being who existed before death entered the world. Everywhere, practically speaking, death is looked on as a comparatively late intruder. He came not only after God was active, but after men and beasts had populated the world. Scores of myths accounting for this invasion of death have been collected all over the world.(1) Thus the relatively supreme being, or beings, of religion are looked on as prior to Death, therefore, not as ghosts. They are sometimes expressly distinguished as "original gods" from other gods who are secondary, being souls of chiefs. Thus all Tongan gods are Atua, but all Atua are not "original gods".(2) The word Atua, according to Mr. White, is "A-tu-a". "A" was the name given to the author of the universe, and signifies: "Am the unlimited in power," "The Conception," "the Leader," "the Beyond All". "Tua" means "Beyond that which is most distant," "Behind all matter," and "Behind every action". Clearly these conceptions are not more mythical (indeed A does not seem to occur in the myths), nor are they more involved in ghosts, than the unknown absolute of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Yet the word Atua denotes gods who are recognised as ghosts of chiefs, no less than it denotes the supreme existence.(3) These ideas are the metaphysical theology of a race considerably above the lowest level. They lend no assistance to a theory that A was, or was evolved out of, a human ghost, and he is not found in Maori MYTHOLOGY as far as our knowledge goes. But, among the lowest known savages, the Australians, we read that "the Creator was a gigantic black, once on earth, now among the stars". This is in Gippsland; the deities of the Fuegians and the Blackfoot Indians are also Beings, anthropomorphic, unborn and undying, like Mangarrah, the creative being of the Larrakeah tribe in Australia. "A very good man called Mangarrah lives in the sky.... He made everything" (blacks excepted). He never dies.(4) The Melanesian Vui "never were men," were "something different," and "were NOT ghosts". It is as a Being, not as a Spirit, that the Kurnai deity Munganngaur (Our Father) is described.(5) In short, though Europeans often speak of these divine beings of low savages as "spirits," it does not appear that the natives themselves advance here the metaphysical idea of spirit. These gods are just BEINGS, anthropomorphic, or (in myth and fable), very often bestial, "theriomorphic".(6) It is manifest that a divine being envisaged thus need not have been evolved out of the theory of spirits or ghosts, and may even have been prior to the rise of the belief in ghosts.
(1) See Modern Mythology, "Myths of Origin of Death".