Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

6. It is otherwise when we turn to Art, especially esthetic Art. Its aim is the realisation, the expression in the object, of the idea of the Beautiful. This idea does not belong to the conscious intelligence. It cannot be expressed in the formulas of positive knowledge. The esthetic, like the religious, emotions, send their roots far down into the opaque structure of the sub-conscious intelligence, and hence the two are natural associates. What Professor Bain says of Art may be extended to Religion: “Nature is not its standard, nor is [objective] truth its chief end.”[286]

It has been seriously questioned whether the idea of the beautiful existed among primitive peoples, apart from a desire for mere gaudy colouring or striking display. No one would doubt its universal presence could he but free his judgment from his own canons of the beautiful, and accept those which prevail in the savage tribe he is studying. Darwin, in his work on the Descent of Man, collected evidence from the rudest hordes of all continents to prove that all were passionate admirers of beauty, as measured by their own criteria; and he reached also the important conclusion that their completest expression of it was to be found in their religious art. “In every nation,” he says, “sufficiently advanced to have made effigies of their gods, or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have endeavoured to express their highest idea of beauty.”[287]

We should also remember that the same great teacher says: “It is certainly not true that there is in the human mind any universal standard of beauty;” and this is so, both of the human form and of those expressions of the beautiful which appeal to the ear and the touch. The music and the metre of one race generally displease another; and there is no one norm by which the superiority of either can be absolutely ascertained.

In their own way, however, Art and Religion have this in common, that they make a study of Perfection, and aim to embody it in actuality; whereas Science or positive knowledge confines itself to reality, which is ever imperfect.

Perfection is, however, an unconditioned mode of existence, not measurable by our senses, and hence outside the domain of inductive research. The tendency of organic forms and cosmic motions is always toward it, but they always fall short of it.[288] We are aware of it only through the longings of our sub-conscious minds, not through the laws of our reasoning intelligence. Yet so intense is our conviction, not only that it is true, but that final truth lies in it alone, that it has ever been and will ever be the highest and strongest motive of human action.

Beginning with those arts which are avowedly the expression of beauty in line, colour, or form, it is easy to show how they were fostered by the religious sense. The inscribed shells and tablets from the mounds of the Mississippi Valley present complex and symmetrical drawings, clearly intended for some mythical being or supernatural personage.

Among the Salishan Indians of British Columbia, when a girl reaches maturity she must go alone to the hills and undergo a long period of retirement. At its close, she records her experiences by drawing a number of rude figures in red paint on a boulder, indicating the rites she has performed and the visions she has had.[289] Such rock-writing, or petroglyphs, nearly always of religious import, are found in every continent, and offer the beginnings of the art of drawing.

It is possible that the oldest known examples, scratched with a flint on the bones of reindeers dug up in the caves of southern France, may represent the totems or deified heroes of the clan. Certain it is that a class of symbolic figures, which recur the world over, often dating from remote ages, such as the crescent, the cross, the svastika, the triskeles, the circle, and the square, were of religious intention, and conveyed mystic knowledge or supernatural protection in the opinion of those who drew them.

The early cultivation of painting in religious art arose chiefly from the symbolism of colours, to which I previously made a passing allusion. Its origin was in the effect which certain hues have upon the mind, either specifically or from association. Colour-symbolism, indeed, forms a prominent feature in nearly every primitive religion. The import of the different colours varies, but not to the degree which excludes some general tendencies. The white and the blue are usually of cheerful and peaceful signification, the black and the red are ominous of strife and darkness. In many tribes the yellow bore the deepest religious meaning. The Mayas of Yucatan assigned it to the dawn and the east; and when the Aztecs gathered around the dying bed of one they loved, and raised their voices in the paean which was to waft the soul to its higher life beyond the grave, they sang: “Already does the dawn appear, the light advances. Already do the birds of yellow plumage tune their songs to greet thee.”

These symbolic colours are those with which the early temples were tinted and the rude images of the gods stained. They were rarely harmonious, but they were effective, and appealed to the people for whom they were intended. Their preparation and their technical employment were improved, and, as the art advanced, it reacted on the religion, directing its conceptions of divinity into higher walks and toward nobler ideals.