The permanence of a historic idea, I have stated, is in direct proportion to the number of true ideas in its composition; the impression it makes on the organic substrata of memory is in turn in proportion to its permanence. The element of decay is the destructive effects of natural trains of thought out of accord with the logically true trains. These cause defective cerebral nutrition, which is thus seen to arise, so far as influenced by the operations of the memory, from relations of truth and error. There is a physiological tendency in the former to preserve and maintain in activity; in the latter to disappear. The percentage of true concepts which makes up the complexity of a historic idea gives the principal factor towards calculating its probable recurrence. Of course, a second factor is the physiological one of nutrition itself.
The next important distinction in discussing historic ideas is between those which are held consciously, and those which operate unconsciously. The former are always found to be more active, and more amenable to correction. An unconscious idea is a product of the natural, not the logical laws of mind, and is therefore very apt to be largely false. It is always displaced with advantage by a conscious aim.
One of the superficial fallacies of the day, which pass under the name of philosophy, is to maintain that any such historic idea is the best possible one for the time and place in which it is found. I am led to refer to this by the false light it has thrown on religious history. Herbert Spencer remarks in one of his essays:[236-1] “All religious creeds, during the eras in which they are severally held, are the best that could be held.” “All are good for their times and places.” So far from this being the case, there never has been a religion but that an improvement in it would have straightway exerted a beneficent effect. Man, no matter what his condition, can always derive immediate good from higher conceptions of Deity than he himself has elaborated. Nor is the highest conception possible an idealization of self, as I have sufficiently shown in a previous chapter, but is one drawn wholly from the realm of the abstract. Moreover, as a matter of history, we know that in abundant instances, the decay of nations can be traced largely to the base teachings of their religious instructors. To maintain that such religions were “the best possible ones” for the time and place is the absurdest optimism. In what a religion shares of the abstractly true it is beneficent; in what it partakes of the untrue it is deleterious. This, and no other canon, must be our guide.
The ideas of religious history obey the same laws as other historic ideas. They grow, decay, are supplanted and revive again in varying guises, in accordance with the processes of organic nutrition as influenced by the truth or falsity of their component ideas. Their tendency to personification is stronger, because of the much greater nearness they have to the individual desire. The one aspiration of a high-spirited people when subjugated will be freedom; and in the lower stages of culture they will be very certain to fabricate a myth of a deliverer to come.
In like manner, every member of a community shares with his fellow members some wish, hope or ambition dependent on unknown control and therefore religious in character, which will become the “formative idea” of the national religious development.
Of the various ideas in religious history there are three which, through their permanence and frequent revival, we may justly suppose in accordance with the above-mentioned canons to contain a large measure of truth, and yet to be far from wholly true. They may be considered as leading moments in religious growth, yet withal lacking something or other essential to the satisfaction of the religious sentiment. The first of these is the idea of the perfected individual; the second the idea of the perfected commonwealth; the third, that of personal survival. These have been the formative ideas (Ideen der Gestaltung) in the prayers, myths, rites and religious institutions of many nations at widely separated times.
Of the two first mentioned it may be said that every extended faith has accepted them to some degree. They are the secret of the alliances of religion with art, with government, with ethics, with science, education and sentiment.
These alliances have often been taken by historians to contain the vital elements of religion itself, and many explanations based on one or another assumption of the kind have been proffered. Religion, while it may embrace any of them, is independent of them all. Its relations to them have been transitory, and the more so as their aims have been local and material. The brief duration of the subjection of religion to such incongenial ties was well compared by Lord Herbert of Cherbury to the early maturity of brutes, who attain their full growth in a year or two, while man needs a quarter of a century.[239-1] The inferior aims of the religious sentiment were discarded one after another to make way for higher ones, which were slowly dawning upon it. In this progress it was guided largely by the three ideas I have mentioned, which have been in many forms leading stimuli of the religious thought of the race.
First, of the idea of the perfected individual.
Many writers have supposed that the contemplation of Power in nature first stirred religious thought in man. Though this is not the view taken in this book, no one will question that the leading trait in the gods of barbarism is physical strength. The naive anthropomorphism of the savage makes his a god of a mighty arm, a giant in stature, puissant and terrible. He hurls the thunderbolt, and piles up the mountains in sport. His name is often The Strong One, as in the Allah, Eloah of the Semitic tongues. Hercules, Chon, Melkarth, Dorsanes, Thor and others were of the most ancient divinities in Greece, Egypt, Phœnicia, India, and Scandinavia, and were all embodiments of physical force. Such, too, was largely the character of the Algonkin Messou, who scooped out the great lakes with his hands and tore up the largest trees by the roots. The huge boulders from the glacial epoch which are scattered over their country are the pebbles he tossed in play or in anger. The cleft in the Andes, through which flows the river Funha, was opened by a single blow of Nemqueteba, chief god of the Muyscas. In all such and a hundred similar legends, easy to quote, we see the notion of strength, brute force, muscular power, was that deemed most appropriate to divinity, and that which he who would be godlike must most sedulously seek. When filled with the god, the votary felt a surpassing vigor. The Berserker fury was found in the wilds of America and Africa, as well as among the Fiords. Sickness and weakness, on the contrary, were signs that the gods were against him. Therefore, in all early stages of culture, the office of priest and physician was one. Conciliation of the gods was the catholicon.