The psychic explanation of these demonstrations is not wholly clear. By some they have been interpreted as a commutation for cannibalism, and by others as an excuse for not accompanying the corpse into the other world. One writer says: “Barbarism, abandoned to sorrow, finds physical suffering a relief from mental agony.”[262] On the other hand, a recent student of the subject claims that in these rites we perceive “the oldest evidence of active conscience in the human race; the individual laid hands on himself in order to restore the moral equilibrium.”[263] Need we go farther than to see in them merely exaggerated forms of the same emotional outbursts which lead nervous temperaments everywhere to wring the hands and tear the hair in moments of violent grief?
LECTURE VI.
The Lines of Development of Primitive Religions.
Contents:—Pagan Religions not wholly Bad—Their Lines of Development as Connected with: 1. The Primitive Social Bond—The Totem, the Priesthood, and the Law; 2. The Family and the Position of Woman; 3. The Growth of Jurisprudence—The Ordeal, Trial by Battle, Oaths, and the Right of Sanctuary—Religion is Anarchic; 4. The Development of Ethics—Dualism of Primitive Ethics—Opposition of Religion to Ethics; 5. The Advance in Positive Knowledge—Religion versus Science; 6. The Fostering of the Arts—The Aim for Beauty and Perfection—Colour-Symbolism, Sculpture, Metre, Music, Oratory, Graphic Methods—Useful Arts, Architecture; 7. The Independent Life of the Individual—His Freedom and Happiness—Inner Stadia of Progress: 1. From the Object to the Symbol; 2. From the Ceremonial Law to the Personal Ideal; 3. From the Tribal to the National Conception of Religion—Conclusion.
It has always been, and is now, the prevailing belief in Christendom that pagan or heathen religions cannot exert and never have exerted any good influence on their votaries.
This opinion has also been defended by some modern and eminent authorities in the science of ethnology, as, for example, the late Professor Waitz.[264] It is a favourite teaching in missionary societies and in works of travellers who are keen observers of the shortcomings of others’ faiths.
I have never been able to share such a view. The lowest religions seem to have in them the elements which exist in the ripest and the noblest; and these elements work for good wherever they exist. However rude the form of belief in agencies above those of the material world, in a higher law than that confessedly of solely human enactment, and in a standard of duty prescribed by something loftier than immediate advantage,—such a belief must prompt the individual, anywhere, to a salutary self-discipline which will steadily raise him above his merely animal instincts, and imbue him with nobler conceptions of the aims of life.
When he feels himself under the protection of some unseen, but ever near, beneficent power, his emotions of gratitude and love will be stimulated; and when he recognises in the ceremonial law a divine prescription for his own welfare and that of his tribe, he will cheerfully submit to the rigours of its discipline.
The various lines of development which were thus marked out and pursued through the influence of early religious thought, and which reacted to develop it, deserve to be pointed out in detail, since they have so generally been overlooked or misunderstood.