In the South Seas, the name of a god, adopted by a chief, identified him in the opinion of the people with the god and secured for him the reverence and adoration ascribed to his divine namesake.[116]
This idea is that which in many early and later faiths led to what are called the “theophorous” or god-bearing names, where the individual is called by the proper name of a saint or god. They were especially frequent in early Semitic religions, and are customary among Catholics to-day.[117]
We find their origin in the custom, very general among the American Indians, for the person to take the name of the spirit who appears to him during the vigils and fasts which attend the ceremonies of initiation to manhood. By assuming the name of the divinity, the two natures or essences are believed to be united. This was precisely also the opinion of the early Christians, as we see in the expression of St. Ephrem, a Syrian saint of the fourth century: “Merciful was the Lord in that He clad on our Names. His Names make us great; our Names make Him small.”[118]
If we seek the explanation of this strange power attributed to words and names, often apart from their signification, we shall find it in their extreme activity as agents of mental suggestion. They are intense psychic stimulants, stirring the soul to its depths. The Word is by odds the most effective of all agencies to bring about altered and abnormal mental conditions either in the individual or in the mass. Through it, judiciously applied, the profoundest hypnotic trance, or the wildest, maniacal nervous seizures can be produced at will.[119]
The repetition of a word greatly heightens its suggestive influence and promotes the exclusion from the mind of all other concepts and associations than its own. In many languages, a word repeated is equivalent to the superlative degree, and in every tongue the repetition has a similar effect, as in the phrase: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.”
No words in this relation are more efficient than names. Consider what our own lives would be if we had to change our names every year, how it would seem to obliterate our personality, how it would dissipate all dreams of posthumous glory and renown. Our consciousness of Self would suffer diminution, and the keenest interest of our lives would be lost. Our name is really and truly a part of ourselves, and he who would rob us of it would leave us poor indeed. Why is every point of view carved with the names of obscure tourists, why does it give us pleasure to note our names among the hundreds at some grand function, but that we think it more desirable to live “as naked nominations, without desert or noble deeds,” as Sir Thomas Browne said, than to pass away and leave not that little which the Roman poet considered the least,—nominis umbra, “the shadow of a name.”
For the practical purposes of life the name confers or creates the personality. This fact exerted a profound influence in the earliest development of religion. The vague sense of spiritual power first became centred in the idea of an individual, of a personal god, when it received a name.
The primitive words of barbaric tongues used to signifying the divine have not the connotation of individuality. Wakan, mahopa, manito, teotl, huaca, ku, are such words from American languages, not one of which conveys the concept of personality. That concept was first gained when some single expression of spiritual power was differentiated and named.[120]
The essential religious element in the Word is its power to bring man into relation to the gods. This is possible in three directions,—we may address them; they may address us; or we may talk about them. These furnish the three forms of sacred expression in speech: 1. The word to the gods,—Prayer; 2. The word from the gods,—Revelation; and 3. The word about the gods,—the Myth. We will consider each of these.
I. The Word to the Gods.—1. The Word to the gods is Prayer. It is a very prominent and nigh universal element in primitive religions. The injunction “Pray always” is nowhere else so nearly carried out. Captain Clark, an officer of our army with the widest experience of Indian life, writes: “It seems a startling assertion, but it is, I think, true, that there are no people who pray more than Indians. Both superstition and custom keep always in their minds the necessity for placating the anger of the invisible and omnipotent power, and for supplicating the active exercise of his faculties in their behalf.”[121]