[1053]. The various theories of the origin and efficacy of sacrifice (omitting the ambassadorial conception) are thus reducible to three types: it is regarded as a gift, as a substitution, or as an act securing union (physical or spiritual) with the divine. These have all maintained themselves, in one form or another, up to the present day. The old ritual slaughter of an animal and the presentation of vegetables and other things have, indeed, vanished. The movement of thought against animal sacrifice began in the Western world (among the Greeks and the Hebrews) probably as early as the fourth century B.C.[1903] In Greece the formulation of philosophic thought and the rise of individualism in religion (embodied, for example, in the great Mysteries) brought larger and more spiritual ideas into prominence. Rational law and inward impulse took the place, in the higher circles, of ritual offerings. The object of law, says Plato, is the encouragement of virtue of all kinds and the securing of the highest happiness; but, he holds, there is something higher than law: the good Athenian is above other men, for he is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by inspiration of nature, and is not manufactured by law.[1904] The Mysteries assumed that every man, with suitable inward preparation, was fitted to enter into a spiritual union with the deity. The later Jews showed equal devotion to their law, held to be divinely given, laying the stress on the moral side;[1905] jurists became more important than priests, and the synagogue (representing individual worship) more influential than the temple-ritual. In certain psalms[1906] sacrifice is flatly declared not to be acceptable to God; this attitude had been taken by the earlier prophets,[1907] but is emphasized in the psalms in the face of the later opinion that the sacrificial ritual was of divine ordination (so in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers). In the Gospels the sacrificial ritual is practically ignored. In India the Brahmanic and Buddhistic movements toward rational conceptions of religion showed themselves as early as the sixth century B.C. Thus, over a great part of the civilized world intellectual and moral progress took the form of protest against the old idea of sacrifice.
[1054]. Yet old customs are long-lived, and the ancient theories, as is remarked above, still have a certain power. The crudest of them—that the deity may be propitiated by gifts—shows itself in the belief that ill-doing may be atoned for by the support of charitable and religious institutions—by the building of churches and hospitals, by the maintenance of religious worship, and by aid to the poor. Society has benefited largely by this belief, especially in medieval Europe and to some extent in Buddhistic and Moslem communities; it has formed a transition to higher conceptions, by which it has now been in great measure replaced. The same thing is true of ascetic observances. The idea of sacrificial substitution, which has been prominent in organized Christianity from an early period (though it has no support in the teaching of Jesus), might seem to be prejudicial to religion for the reason that it tends to depress the sense of individual responsibility by relegating the reconciliation with the deity to an external agency—and such has often been its effect; but this unhappy result has been more and more modified, partly by the natural human instinct of moral responsibility and the ethical standard of the Christian Scriptures, partly by the feeling of gratitude and devotion that has been called forth by the recognition of unmerited blessing. The third theory of sacrifice, according to which its essence is union with the divine, has passed gradually from the sphere of ritual to that of moral culture. In mystical systems, Christian and Moslem, it has lent itself sometimes to immorality, sometimes to a stagnant, egoistic, and antisocial quietism; but in the main it has tended to avoid or abandon mechanical and mystical features, and confine itself to the conception of sympathetic and intelligent coöperation with what may be regarded as the divine activities of the world.
[1055]. Further external apparatus of religion. Along with the growth of sacrifice there has been a natural development of everything that was necessary to give permanent form to public worship—ritual, priests, temples, idols, and whatever was connected with the later church organizations.
Ritual
Apart from magical procedures the earliest known public religious worship consisted simply in the offering of an animal, a vegetable, a fluid, or other object to a superhuman being, the offering being performed by any prominent person and without elaborate ceremonies. Inevitably, however, as the social organization grew more complex and the conception of sanctity more definite, the ceremonial procedure became more elaborate. The selection and the handling of the victim came to be objects of anxious care, and the details increased in importance as they increased in number. It was believed that minute accuracy in every ritual act was necessary for the success of the offering. Various elements doubtless entered into this belief: often a magical power was attributed to the act of sacrifice; and there was a feeling, it may be surmised, that the deity was exacting in the matter of ceremonies—these were marks of respect, such as was paid to human potentates, and well-defined court rituals (on which the religious ritual was probably based) appear in early forms of society. Thus ritual tended to become the predominant element in worship, serving first the interests of unity and order in religion, and later always in danger of becoming a mechanical and religiously degrading influence.
[1056]. In most savage and half-civilized communities sacrifice is a simple affair, and the details of the ceremonies of worship are rarely reported by travelers and other observers.[1908] An exception exists in the case of the Todas of Southern India, who have elaborate ceremonies connected with the milking of buffaloes.[1909] The ordinary buffaloes of a village are cared for by some prominent man (never by a woman), who is sometimes a sacred person and while carrying on his operations performs devotional acts (prayer and so forth), but without a fixed ritual. A higher degree of sanctity attaches to the institution called ti, which comprises a herd of buffaloes belonging to a clan and provided with dairies and grazing-grounds; each dairy has appropriate buildings, and the ti is presided over by a sort of priest called a palol. The migration of the buffaloes from one grazing-ground to another is conducted as a sacred function. In the case of an ordinary herd the procession of animals is accompanied by a religious official who carries the dairy implements; on reaching the destination the new dairy is purified, the sun is saluted, and prayer is offered. In a ti migration the procedure is more elaborate: the milking of the buffaloes is accompanied by prayers for the older and the younger members of the herd, and every act of the palol is regulated by law. The same thing is true of the animal sacrifices: the slaughter of the victim and the disposal of the various parts are accomplished in accordance with definite rules that are handed down orally from one generation to another. The Todas are a non-Aryan people, hardly to be called half-civilized: if the buffalo-ritual is native with them, the natural inference will be that the custom is ancient. Rivers adduces a considerable number of similarities between Toda institutions and those of the Malabar coast (such as polyandry and other marriage institutions), and this agreement, as far as it goes, may point to a common culture throughout a part of Southern India;[1910] the early history of these tribes is, however, obscure. It is possible that the Todas have borrowed some customs from the Hindus. They have certainly adopted some Hindu gods, and Rivers suspects Hindu influence in their recognition of omens and lucky and unlucky days, in certain of their magical procedures, and in their use of pigments and ashes in some sacred ceremonies. There seems, however, to be no proof that the buffalo-ritual has been borrowed from the Hindus. On this question, which is of importance as bearing on the early history of ritual, it is to be hoped that further information will be got.
[1057]. Various nonsacrificial rituals (dances and so forth) are referred to above.[1911] Magical processes should be here included so far as they involve a recognition of superhuman agents; they are then to be regarded as religious. Definite magical ritual is found in many of the lower tribes, and there are ceremonies in which a shaman is the conductor—these are governed by fixed customs as to dress, posture, acts, and words.[1912] They differ from magical processes in that they are assemblies of the people, religious because there is communication with spirits. In the Californian tribes and others they become occasions of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be regarded with probability as universal.
[1058]. For the ancient national religions we have the fullest details in the case of the Hindus and the Hebrews. The Hindu sacrificial ritual is described by MM. Hubert and Mauss;[1913] the Hebrew procedure is given in the later sections of the Pentateuch.[1914] The Egyptian ritual also appears to have been elaborate, including much music.[1915] These show methods similar to those described above, and probably the same general modes of procedure were followed in Babylonia and Persia, though of the ritual in these countries only slight notices have been handed down.[1916] The great Chinese Imperial sacrifices are described by H. Blodget.[1917]
[1059]. These national systems exhibit a gradual quiet enlargement of the ritual resulting from increasing specialization in the conception of sin and forgiveness and in the functions of religious officials. A different sort of development appears in the rites of the cults that sprang up on the ruins of the old faiths—Greek Mysteries, Mithraism, Isisism, Christianity. These were all redemptive religions, highly individualistic and intense, efforts to infuse into old forms the ideas concerning moral purity, union with the deity, immortality, and future salvation that had arisen in the Græco-Roman world by the natural growth of thought and the intermingling of the various existing schemes of religious life. They are all marked by a tendency toward elaborate organization, a sharp differentiation from the national cults, and purificatory and other ceremonies of initiation. The differentiation was most definite in Christianity, the ritual was most highly developed in the other movements. In the Greek public Mysteries[1918] and in those of Mithra[1919] there were (besides ablutions) the old communal meals, processions, striking dramatic performances, and brilliant effects of light and music, and in Mithraism trials of courage for the neophyte after the manner of the old savage initiations. The ceremonies in the Isis cult were less sensational, more quiet and dignified.[1920] In all these cults there was symbolism, and the moral teaching was of a lofty character.
[1060]. Christian ritual was at first simple,[1921] but rapidly grew in elaborateness. The liturgy and the eucharistic ceremonies were expanded into great proportions, and came to be the essence of worship. This movement went on throughout Christendom (with variations here and there) up to the rise of Protestantism, and after that time continued in the Greek and Roman Churches. Protestantism, in its recoil from certain doctrines of the Church of Rome, threw off much of its ceremonial, which in the minds of the people was associated with the rejected dogmas. Since the separation, however, especially in the last hundred years, the violent antagonism having largely quieted down, there has been in some Protestant bodies a slow but steady movement in the direction of ritualistic expansion; procedures that three centuries ago would have called forth earnest protest are now accepted and interpreted in accordance with Protestant ideas. Doubtless the temperament of a people has something to do with the amount of ceremonial it favors in religious service.