[379]. The ethical power of the cults so far discussed resides in the human association to which they give rise and the sanctions they supply to conduct. Of these two effects the former is the more important. The moral character of a ghost or spirit or deity never rises above that of its circle of worshipers: its approval or disapproval is the echo of current usage, and has special efficiency only in the accompanying power of reward or punishment; it appeals to the hopes and fears of men. This police function is doubtless valuable in restraining from crime and inciting to good conduct, but it has no regenerative power. The enlargement of human association, on the other hand, increases sympathy and coöperation among men, and paves the way to the cultivation of the mutual respect and regard which is the basis of social virtue.
[380]. Among the lower cults ancestor-worship may be expected to take the highest place, for the reason that it tends to strengthen family unity and the solidarity of the clan, tribe, or nation; all such knitting together of men makes for the increase of honesty and kindliness. The data are lacking, however, for the determination of this point. It may be said in general that the attitude toward the dead becomes finer with advance in civilization; but before a specific moral power in ancestor-worship can be proved, it will be necessary to have exact details of moral ideas and conduct in all the lower tribes, together with some information regarding the attitude of individuals toward questions of conduct, and the motives that impel toward this or that action. The question of ethical growth in society is a complicated one, and the most that can be said for any element of social constitution is that it tends to strengthen or weaken the individual's confidence in and regard for his fellows.
[381]. The part played in religious history by the worship of the dead is so important that some writers have derived all religion from it.[705] This view is now generally rejected for the reason that it does not accord with known facts; it is only by forced (though often ingenious) interpretations that a plausible case is made out for it. To reply in detail to the arguments advanced in its favor would be to go over the whole ground of the origin of religious observances; the answer is furnished by setting forth the nature of the various cults, as is attempted in this and following chapters. If, for example, there is reason to believe that savages have always regarded the lower animals as powerful beings, there is no need, in accounting for the veneration given them, to resort to the roundabout way of assuming a misinterpretation of names of men derived from beasts.
[382]. Between Euhemerism and the theory that explains myths as a "disease of language" there is little or no essential difference of principle. Both theories assume that man, having devised certain epithets, later came to misunderstand them and to build up histories on the misunderstanding. Both thus rest the immense mass of human religious customs and beliefs, which form so large a part of human history, on the precarious foundation of passing fancy and inadvertence, and they must be put into the same category with the naïve theory, once popular, that religion is the invention of priests who sought to control men through their fears.
[383]. Ancestor-worship is the feeling of kinship with the dead, invested by religion with peculiar intensity and solemnity. It has been one of the great constructive forces of society.
Cults of Generative Powers
[384]. The origin of religion is not to be referred exclusively to any one order of ideas; it springs out of man's total life. All objects and processes have been included in men's construction of nature, and the processes, when they have been held to bear on human well-being, have been ascribed to a force inherent in things or to the activity of supernatural beings.
[385]. The study of processes has gone hand in hand with the creation of divine beings who are supposed to manifest themselves in the processes. The great spectacle of nature's productivity has been especially recognizable in the vegetable world and in the world of man; in both of these life has been perpetually unfolding itself under men's eyes as a mysterious process, which, by virtue of its mysteriousness, has become religious material and has entered into systems of religious worship.
[386]. The relation of vegetable life to religious cults is referred to elsewhere,[706] and a brief survey may now be given of usages and ideas that have been connected with the production of human life.