Religions of Primitive Peoples

by Daniel G. Brinton

In most tribes they are couched in forms apart from those of daily use, the words being unusual, with full vowels and sonorous terminations. Some of these peculiarities survive in the “pulpit eloquence” of our own day, testifying to the influence of religious thought on the development of the modes of dignified expression.

It was in this connection and under this inspiration that man invented the greatest boon which humanity has ever enjoyed,—a system of writing, a means of recording and preserving facts and ideas. Our present alphabet is traced lineally back to the sacred picture-writing of ancient Egypt; and the less efficient method employed by the natives of Mexico and Central America originated in devices to preserve the liturgic songs and religious formulas. For generations, in both areas, its chief cultivation and extension lay with the priestly class: although its final application to the uses of daily life was due to merchants rather than to scholars.

This discovery made possible such a treasure as a literature; and that we find its beginnings and oldest memorials chiefly of religious contents is ample testimony to this incalculable debt we owe to the religious sentiment. The papyri of Egypt, the codices of Central America, the Sanscrit Rig Veda, and the Persian Vendidad testify to the diligence with which the ancient worshippers sought to preserve the sacred chants and formulas.

We discern the same anxiety among rude savages to pass down in their integrity the liturgies of their worship; and in the “meday sticks” of the Chipeways and the curiously incised wooden tablets of Easter Island, we have the beginnings of written literature,—always the purpose being religious in character.

It is unnecessary to dwell in detail upon the fostering influence of early religion on the useful arts. In their numerous applications to the ritual and the objective expression of the religious sentiment, they were constantly stimulated by it and by the reward it was ever prepared to offer, both in this world and that to come.

But one art of utility was so pre-eminently religious in its source that it merits especial comment, that is, building or architecture. Nearly all the great monuments of the ancient world, most of the important structures of primitive tribes everywhere, have in them something religious in aim, or are avowedly so. We know little or nothing of the builders of the mysterious “megalithic monuments,” the dolmens and cromlechs which to the number of thousands rise on the soil of France and England; but their arrangement and character leave no doubt that they were for some religious purpose. So the mighty piles which excite our astonishment in the valley of the Nile or the Euphrates, or on the highlands of Mexico, or in the tropical forests of Yucatan, reveal the same inspiration.

In his altars and temples, in his shrines and funerary monuments, his fanes and cathedrals, man has at all times expended his efforts and his means with a prodigality lavished on no other edifices. The orders of architecture arose from his desire to erect dwellings worthy of the god who should inhabit them. No beauty of line, no majesty of proportion, no abundance of decoration, was too great to secure this purpose. Such surroundings in time imparted dignity and permanence to the cult, and embellished the religious sentiment through noble artistic associations.

7. Let us now turn from these considerations of a general nature to the more pointed one, whether primitive religions exerted an improving influence on the independent life of the individual; for that is the test to which all institutions should finally be brought.

The savage is not the type of a free man, although in popular estimation he is generally so considered. He is, in fact, tyrannically fettered by traditional laws and tribal customs. He is merged in his clan or gens, against whose rules, often most painful and arbitrary, he dares take no step. As an individual, he cannot escape from their invisible chains.[291]

His only avenue to permitted freedom is through the higher law of his personal religion. If he pleads that his own tutelary spirit has ordered him to an act contrary to custom, or that his own magical powers enable him to defy established usage, his disregard of it will be condoned.