Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

The codes of statutes instituted by ancient legislators, usually personified under some one famous name, as Moses, Manu, Menes, or the like, obtained general adoption through the belief that they emanated directly from divinity, and were part of the ceremonial law. Under favour of this disguise, they worked for the good of those who followed them, and gained a credence which would not have been conceded to them, had it been thought that they were of human manufacture.

Toward merely human law the religious sentiment is in its nature and derivation in frequent opposition. It claims a nobler lineage and a higher title. In theory, the Church must always be above the State, as God is superior to man. Religion, when vital and active, is ever revolutionary and anarchic. It ever aims at substituting divine for human ordinances.

This has been from earliest times its constant tendency. It has been a potent dissolvent of states and governments and of such older religious expressions as have become humanised by usage and formality.

In this manner it has been the most powerful of all levers in stimulating the human mind to active enterprise and the use of all its faculties. Man owes less to his conscious than to his sub-conscious intelligence, and of this religion has been the chief interpreter.

4. The severest blows have been dealt at primitive or pagan religions on account of the inferiority of their ethics. It has often been asserted that they do not cultivate the moral faculties and benevolent emotions, but stifle and pervert them. They are, therefore, considered to be distinctly evil in tendency.

This important criticism cannot be disposed of by a mere denial. There is no doubt that the ethics of barbarism is not that of a high civilisation. But if we understand the necessary conditions of tribal life in the unending conflicts of the savage state, we can see that the highest moral code would find no place there.

All tribal religions preach a dualism of ethics, one for the members of the tribe, who are bound together by ties of kinship and by union to preserve existence; and the other, for the rest of the world. To the former are due aid, kindness, justice, truth and fair dealing; to the latter, enmity, hatred, injury, falsehood, and deceit. The latter is just as much a duty as the former, and is just as positively enjoined by both religion and tribal law.[280]

The state of barbarism is one of perpetual war, in which each petty tribe is striving to conquer, rob, and destroy its neighbours. The Patagonians and Australians wander about their sterile lands in small bands, naked and shelterless, owning nothing but the barest necessities. But whenever two of these bands approach each other, it is the signal for a murderous struggle, in order to obtain possession of the wretched rags and trumperies of the opponent.

For this reason, the development of ethics must be studied on inclusive lines, as to what extent they were cultivated between members of the same social unit, the totem or the tribe. The duty of kindness to others extended to a very limited distance, but, within that area, may have been, and generally was, punctually observed. The devotion of members of the same gens to each other, even to the sacrifice of life, has been often noted among savages. The duties involved by this connection were frequently onerous and dangerous, as in the common custom of blood revenge, where a man, at the imminent peril and often at the loss of his own life, felt constrained to slay the murderer of a fellow-clansman.

The character of the early gods was, as a rule, non-ethical. They were generally neither wholly good nor wholly bad. They were more or less friendly toward men, but rarely constantly either beneficent or malignant. They were too human for that.[281]