The Making of Religion

by Andrew Lang

Mr. Tylor arrives, at last, at the Supreme Being of savage creeds. His words, well weighed, must be cited textually—

'To mark off the doctrines of monotheism, closer definition is required [than the bare idea of a Supreme Creator], assigning the distinctive attributes of Deity to none save the Almighty Creator. It may be declared that, in this strict sense, no savage tribe of monotheists has been ever known.[12] Nor are any fair representatives of the lower culture in a strict sense pantheists. The doctrine which they do widely hold, and which opens to them a course tending in one or other of these directions, is polytheism culminating in the rule of one supreme divinity. High above the doctrine of souls, of divine Manes, of local nature gods, of the great gods of class and element, there are to be discerned in barbaric theology, shadowings, quaint or majestic, of the conception of a Supreme Deity, henceforth to be traced onward in expanding power and brightening glory along the history of Religion. It is no unimportant task, partial as it is, to select and group the typical data which show the nature and position of the doctrine of supremacy, as it comes into view within the lower culture.[13]

We shall show that certain low savages are as monotheistic as some
Christians. They have a Supreme Being, and the 'distinctive attributes of
Deity' are not by them assigned to other beings, further than as
Christianity assigns them to Angels, Saints, the Devil, and, strange as
it appears, among savages, to mediating 'Sons.'

It is not known that, among the Andamanese and other tribes, this last notion is due to missionary influence. But, in regard to the whole chapter of savage Supreme Beings, we must, as Mr. Tylor advises, keep watching for Christian and Islamite contamination. The savage notions, as Mr. Tylor says, even when thus contaminated, may have 'to some extent, a native substratum.' We shall select such savage examples of the idea of a Supreme Being as are attested by ancient native hymns, or are inculcated in the most sacred and secret savage institutions, the religious Mysteries (manifestly the last things to be touched by missionary influence), or are found among low insular races defended from European contact by the jealous ferocity and poisonous jungles of people and soil. We also note cases in which missionaries found such native names as 'Father,' 'Ancient of Heaven,' 'Maker of All,' ready-made to their hands.

It is to be remarked that, while this branch of the inquiry is practically omitted by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Tylor can spare for it but some twenty pages out of his large work. He arranges the probable germs of the savage idea of a Supreme Being thus: A god of the polytheistic crowd is simply raised to the primacy, which, of course, cannot occur where there is no polytheism. Or the principle of Manes worship may make a Supreme Deity out of 'a primeval ancestor' say Unkulunkulu, who is so far from being supreme, that he is abject. Or, again, a great phenomenon or force in Nature-worship, say Sun, or Heaven, is raised to supremacy. Or speculative philosophy ascends from the Many to the One by trying to discern through and beyond the universe a First Cause. Animistic conceptions thus reach their utmost limit in the notion of the Anima Mundi. He may accumulate all powers of all polytheistic gods, or he may 'loom vast, shadowy, and calm … too benevolent to need human worship … too merely existent to concern himself with the petty race of men.'[14] But he is always animistic.

Now, in addition to the objections already noted in passing, how can we tell that the Supreme Being of low savages was, in original conception, animistic at all? How can we know that he was envisaged, originally, as Spirit? We shall show that he probably was not, that the question 'spirit or not spirit' was not raised at all, that the Maker and Father in Heaven, prior to Death, was merely regarded as a deathless Being, no question of 'spirit' being raised. If so, Animism was not needed for the earliest idea of a moral Eternal. This hypothesis will be found to lead to some very singular conclusions.

It will be more fully stated and illustrated, presently, but I find that it had already occurred to Dr. Brinton.[15] He is talking specially of a heaven-god; he says 'it came to pass that the idea of God was linked to the heavens long ere man asked himself, Are the heavens material and God spiritual?' Dr. Brinton, however, does not develop his idea, nor am I aware that it has been developed previously.

The notion of a God about whose spirituality nobody has inquired is new to us. To ourselves, and doubtless or probably to barbarians on a certain level of culture, such a Divine Being must be animistic, must be a 'spirit.' To take only one case, to which we shall return, the Banks Islanders (Melanesia) believe in ghosts, 'and in the existence of Beings who were not, and never had been, human. All alike might be called spirits,' says Dr. Codrington, but, ex hypothesi, the Beings 'who never were human' are only called 'spirits,' by us, because our habits of thought do not enable us to envisage them except as 'spirits.' They never were men, 'the natives will always maintain that he (the Vui) was something different, and deny to him the fleshly body of a man,' while resolute that he was not a ghost.[16]

This point will be amply illustrated later, as we study that strangely neglected chapter, that essential chapter, the Higher beliefs of the Lowest savages. Of the existence of a belief in a Supreme Being, not as merely 'alleged,' there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in the ethnographic region.

It is certain that savages, when first approached by curious travellers, and missionaries, have again and again recognised our God in theirs.