(2) German Sunde, sin, and sonder, separated; Dutch zonde, sin; Latin sons, guilty. Not unlikely that the German root Suhn, expiation, is connected; Suhn-bock, a scape-goat.
All this I have dealt with in far more detail in Civilization: its Cause and Cure, and in The Art of Creation; but I have only repeated the outline of it as above, because some such outline is necessary for the proper ordering and understanding of the points which follow.
We are not concerned now with the ultimate effects of the ‘Fall’ of Man or with the present-day fulfilment of the Eden-curse. What we want to understand is how the ‘Fall’ into self-consciousness led to that great panorama of Ritual and Religion which we have very briefly described and summarized in the preceding chapters of this book. We want for the present to fix our attention on the COMMENCEMENT of that process by which man lapsed away from his living community with Nature and his fellows into the desert of discord and toil, while the angels of the flaming sword closed the gates of Paradise behind him.
It is evident I think that in that ‘golden’ stage when man was simply the crown and perfection of the animals—and it is hardly possible to refuse the belief in such a stage—he possessed in reality all the essentials of Religion. (1) It is not necessary to sentimentalize over him; he was probably raw and crude in his lusts of hunger and of sex; he was certainly ignorant and superstitious; he loved fighting with and persecuting ‘enemies’ (which things of course all religions to-day—except perhaps the Buddhist—love to do); he was dominated often by unreasoning Fear, and was consequently cruel. Yet he was full of that Faith which the animals have to such an admirable degree—unhesitating faith in the inner promptings of his OWN nature; he had the joy which comes of abounding vitality, springing up like a fountain whose outlet is free and unhindered; he rejoiced in an untroubled and unbroken sense of unity with his Tribe, and in elaborate social and friendly institutions within its borders; he had a marvelous sense-acuteness towards Nature and a gift in that direction verging towards “second-sight”; strengthened by a conviction—which had never become CONSCIOUS because it had never been QUESTIONED—of his own personal relation to the things outside him, the Earth, the Sky, the Vegetation, the Animals. Of such a Man we get glimpses in the far past—though indeed only glimpses, for the simple reason that all our knowledge of him comes through civilized channels; and wherever civilization has touched these early peoples it has already withered and corrupted them, even before it has had the sense to properly observe them. It is sufficient, however, just to mention peoples like some of the early Pacific Islanders, the Zulus and Kafirs of South Africa, the Fans of the Congo Region (of whom Winwood Reade (2) speaks so highly), some of the Malaysian and Himalayan tribes, the primitive Chinese, and even the evidence with regard to the neolithic peoples of Europe, (3) in order to show what I mean.
(1) See S. Reinach, Cults, Myths, etc., introduction: “The primitive life of humanity, in so far as it is not purely animal, is religious. Religion is the parent stem which has thrown off, one by one, art, agriculture, law, morality, politics, etc.”
(2) Savage Africa, ch. xxxvii.
(3) See Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, ch. iii.
Perhaps one of the best ideas of the gulf of difference between the semi-civilized and the quite primal man is given by A. R. Wallace in his Life (Vol. i, p. 288): “A most unexpected sensation of surprise and delight was my first meeting and living with man in a state of nature with absolute uncontaminated savages! This was on the Uaupes river.... They were all going about their own work or pleasure, which had nothing to do with the white men or their ways; they walked with the free step of the independent forest-dweller... original and self-sustaining as the wild animals of the forests, absolutely independent of civilization... living their own lives in their own way, as they had done for countless generations before America was discovered. Indeed the true denizen of the Amazonian forests, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be forgotten.” Elsewhere (3) Wallace speaks of the quiet, good-natured, inoffensive character of these copper-colored peoples, and of their quickness of hand and skill, and continues: “their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form.”
(3) Travels on the Amazon (1853), ch. xvii.
Though some of the peoples just mentioned may be said to belong to different grades or stages of human evolution and physically some no doubt were far superior to others, yet they mostly exhibit this simple grace of the bodily and mental organism, as well as that closeness of tribal solidarity of which I have spoken. The immense antiquity, of the clan organization, as shown by investigations into early marriage, points to the latter conclusion. Travellers among Bushmen, Hottentots, Fuegians, Esquimaux, Papuans and other peoples—peoples who have been pushed aside into unfavorable areas by the invasion of more warlike and better-equipped races, and who have suffered physically in consequence—confirm this. Kropotkin, speaking of the Hottentots, quotes the German author P. Kolben who travelled among them in 1275 or so. “He knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, but could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. Their word is sacred, he wrote, they know nothing of the corruption and faithless arts of Europe. They live in great tranquillity and are seldom at war with their neighbors, and are all kindness and goodwill to one another.” (1) Kropotkin further says: “Let me remark that when Kolben says ‘they are certainly the most friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another that ever appeared on the earth’ he wrote a sentence which has continually appeared since in the description of savages. When first meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a caricature of their life; but when an intelligent man has stayed among them for a longer time he generally describes them as the ‘kindest’ or the ‘gentlest’ race on the earth. These very same words have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the Dyaks, the Aleuts, the Papuans, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also remember having read them applied to the Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very frequency of that high commendation already speaks volumes in itself.” (2)