Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

The mental aptitude of a nation is closely dependent on the type of its idiom. The mind is profoundly influenced by its current modes of vocal expression. When the form of the phrase is such that each idea is kept clear and apart, as it is in nature, and yet its relations to other ideas in the phrase and the sentence are properly indicated by the grammatical construction, the intellect is stimulated by wider variety in images and a nicer precision in their outlines and relations. This is the case in the highest degree with the languages of inflection, and it is no mere coincidence that those peoples who have ever borne the banner in the van of civilization have always spoken inflected tongues. The world will be better off when all others are extinguished, and it is only in deep ignorance of linguistic ethnography that such a language as Volapük—agglutinative in type—could have been offered for adoption as a world-language.

I have said that alone of all animals, man has articulate speech; I now add that also alone of all animals, he is capable of

3. Religion.

Not only is he capable of it; he has never been known to be devoid of it. All statements that tribes have been discovered without any kind of religion are erroneous. Not one of them has borne the test of close investigation.[32] The usual mistake has been to suppose that this or that belief, this or that moral observance, constitutes religion. In fact, there are plenty of immoral religions, and some which are atheistic. The notion of a God or gods is not essential to religion; for that matter, some of the most advanced religious teachers assert that such a notion is incompatible with the highest religion. Religion is simply the recognition of the Unknown as a controlling element in the destiny of man and the world about him. This we shall find in the cult of every nation, and in the heart of every man.

Some nations identified this unknown controlling power with one real or supposed existence, some with another. Those in whom the family sentiment was well developed believed themselves still under the control of their deceased parents, giving rise to “ancestral worship;” more frequently the change from light to darkness, day to night, impressed the children of nature, and led to light and sun worship; in some localities the terrific force displayed in the cyclone or the thunder-storm seemed the mightiest revelation of the Unknown, and we have the Lightning and Storm Myths; elsewhere, any odd or strange object, any unexplained motion, was attributed to the divine, the super-natural. The last mentioned mental state gave rise to those low cults called “fetichism” and “animism,” while the former are supposed to be somewhat higher and are distinguished as “polytheisms.” In all of them, the prevailing sentiment is fear of the Unknown; the spirit of worship is propitiatory, the gods being regarded as jealous and inclined to malevolence; the cult is of the nature of sorcery, certain formulas, rites and sacrifices being held to placate or neutralize the ill-will or bad temper of the divinities. In its lowest forms this is called “shamanism;” in its highest, it is seen in all dogmatic religions.

In early conditions, each tribe has its own gods, which are not supposed to be superior, except in force, to the gods of neighboring tribes. No attempt is made to extend their worship beyond the tribe, and in their images they are liable to be captured, as are their votaries. Special prisons for such captive gods were constructed in ancient Rome and Cuzco.

These “tribal religions” prevailed everywhere in early historic times. The religion of the ancient Israelites, such as we find it portrayed in the Pentateuch, was of this character. In later days, profoundly religious minds of philosophic cast perceived that tribal cults do not satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the religious sentiment. The conceptions of the highest truths must be universal conceptions, and in obedience to this the Universal or World-religions were formed.

The earliest of these was preached by Sakya Muni, Prince of Kapilavastu, in India, about 500 B. C. It is known as Buddhism, and has now the largest number of believers of any one faith. The second was that taught by Christ, and the third is Islam, introduced by Mohammed in the seventh century. It is noteworthy that all these world-religions were framed by members of the white race. None has been devised by members of the other races, for the doctrines advanced by Confutse and Laotse in China are philosophic systems rather than religions.

The three World-religions named have rapidly extinguished the various tribal religions, and it is easy to foresee that in a few generations they will virtually embrace the religious sentiments of all mankind. They are all three on the increase, Christianity the most rapidly by the extension of the nations adhering to it, but Mohammedanism can claim in the present century the greater number of proselytes, its fields being in Central Asia, India, and Central Africa.

In the ethnographic study of religions for the purpose of estimating their influence on the life and character of nations, we must take notice especially of three points: 1. The ethical contents of a faith; 2. The philosophic “theory of things” on which it is based (cosmogony, theosophy, etc.), and 3. Its power over the emotions, as upon this rests its practical potency.