One has only, instead of the word ‘Jesus,’ to read Dionysus or Krishna or Hercules or Osiris or Attis, and instead of ‘Mary’ to insert Semele or Devaki or Alcmene or Neith or Nana, and for Pontius Pilate to use the name of any terrestrial tyrant who comes into the corresponding story, and lo! the creed fits in all particulars into the rites and worship of a pagan god. I need not enlarge upon a thesis which is self-evident from all that has gone before. I do not say, of course, that ALL the religious beliefs of Paganism are included and summarized in our Apostles’ Creed, for—as I shall have occasion to note in the next chapter—I think some very important religious elements are there OMITTED; but I do think that all the beliefs which ARE summarized in the said creed had already been fully represented and elaborately expressed in the non-Christian religions and rituals of Paganism.
Further (2) I think we may safely say that there is no certain proof that the body of beliefs just mentioned sprang from any one particular centre far back and radiated thence by dissemination and mental contagion over the rest of the world; but the evidence rather shows that these beliefs were, for the most part, the SPONTANEOUS outgrowths (in various localities) of the human mind at certain stages of its evolution; that they appeared, in the different races and peoples, at different periods according to the degree of evolution, and were largely independent of intercourse and contagion, though of course, in cases, considerably influenced by it; and that one great and all-important occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the RISE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS—that is, the coming of the mind to a more or less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of the Self-centred attitude in human thought and action.
In the third place (3) I think we may see—and this is the special subject of the present chapter—that at a very early period, when humanity was hardly capable of systematic expression in what we call Philosophy or Science, it could not well rise to an ordered and literary expression of its beliefs, such as we find in the later religions and the ‘Churches’ (Babylonian, Jewish, East Indian, Christian, or what-not), and yet that it FELT these beliefs very intensely and was urged, almost compelled, to their utterance in some form or other. And so it came about that people expressed themselves in a vast mass of ritual and myth—customs, ceremonies, legends, stories—which on account of their popular and concrete form were handed down for generations, and some of which linger on still in the midst of our modern civilization. These rituals and legends were, many of them, absurd enough, rambling and childish in character, and preposterous in conception, yet they gave the expression needed; and some of them of course, as we have seen, were full of meaning and suggestion.
A critical and commercial Civilization, such as ours, in which (notwithstanding much TALK about Art) the artistic sense is greatly lacking, or at any rate but little diffused, does not as a rule understand that poetic RITES, in the evolution of peoples, came naturally before anything like ordered poems or philosophy or systematized VIEWS about life and religion—such as WE love to wallow in! Things were FELT before they were spoken. The loading of diseases into disease-boats, of sins onto scape-goats, the propitiation of the forces of nature by victims, human or animal, sacrifices, ceremonies of re-birth, eucharistic feasts, sexual communions, orgiastic celebrations of the common life, and a host of other things—all SAID plainly enough what was meant, but not in WORDS. Partly no doubt it was that at some early time words were more difficult of command and less flexible in use than actions (and at all times are they not less expressive?). Partly it was that mankind was in the child-stage. The Child delights in ritual, in symbol, in expression through material objects and actions:
See, at his feet some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart.
And primitive man in the child-stage felt a positive joy in ritual celebrations, and indulged in expressions which we but little understand; for these had then his heart.
One of the most pregnant of these expressions was DANCING. Children dance instinctively. They dance with rage; they dance with joy, with sheer vitality; they dance with pain, or sometimes with savage glee at the suffering of others; they delight in mimic combats, or in animal plays and disguises. There are such things as Courting-dances, when the mature male and female go through a ritual together—not only in civilized ball-rooms and the back-parlors of inns, but in the farmyards where the rooster pays his addresses to the hen, or the yearling bull to the cow—with quite recognized formalities; there are elaborate ceremonials performed by the Australian bower-birds and many other animals. All these things—at any rate in children and animals—come before speech; and anyhow we may say that LOVE-RITES, even in mature and civilized man, hardly ADMIT of speech. Words only vulgarize love and blunt its edge.
So Dance to the savage and the early man was not merely an amusement or a gymnastic exercise (as the books often try to make out), but it was also a serious and intimate part of life, an expression of religion and the relation of man to non-human Powers. Imagine a young dancer—and the admitted age for ritual dancing was commonly from about eighteen to thirty—coming forward on the dancing-ground or platform for the INVOCATION OF RAIN. We have unfortunately no kinematic records, but it is not impossible or very difficult to imagine the various gestures and movements which might be considered appropriate to such a rite in different localities or among different peoples. A modern student of Dalcroze Eurhythmics would find the problem easy. After a time a certain ritual dance (for rain) would become stereotyped and generally adopted. Or imagine a young Greek leading an invocation to Apollo to STAY SOME PLAGUE which was ravaging the country. He might as well be accompanied by a small body of co-dancers; but he would be the leader and chief representative. Or it might be a WAR-DANCE—as a more or less magical preparation for the raid or foray. We are familiar enough with accounts of war-dances among American Indians. C. O. Muller in his History and Antiquities of the Doric Race (1) gives the following account of the Pyrrhic dance among the Greeks, which was danced in full armor:—“Plato says that it imitated all the attitudes of defence, by avoiding a thrust or a cast, retreating, springing up, and crouching-as also the opposite movements of attack with arrows and lances, and also of every kind of thrust. So strong was the attachment to this dance at Sparta that, long after it had in the other Greek states degenerated into a Bacchanalian revel, it was still danced by the Spartans as a warlike exercise, and boys of fifteen were instructed in it.” Of the Hunting-dance I have already given instances. (2) It always had the character of Magic about it, by which the game or quarry might presumably be influenced; and it can easily be understood that if the Hunt was not successful the blame might well be attributed to some neglect of the usual ritual mimes or movements—no laughing matter for the leader of the dance.
(1) Book IV, ch. 6, Section 7.
(2) See also Winwood Reade’s Savage Africa, ch. xviii, in which he speaks of the “gorilla dance,” before hunting gorillas, as a “religious festival.”