Thus ritual, religious or magical, is evolved long before belief has become definite and cogent. It may emerge from what I may style the mere surface of human nature, from necessities mainly physical, from direct nervous reaction. It may, on the other hand, have roots in the social relations of mankind. The savage naturally, habitually—I might almost say instinctively—applies the forms of social life to his relations with his non-human surroundings. Presumably, as we have seen, primitive man in his rough way did likewise.
But this affords no argument for holding that magic preceded religion. Rites are not necessarily magical because they are not addressed to defined personalities. They may be yet inchoate. Not until reflection has begun to clarify in some degree man’s relation to his environment (a slow and tedious process, slowest and most tedious of all in the early stages) can we reckon them satisfactorily under the one head or the other. If I am right in contending that magic and religion flow from a common source, rites may remain for generations in an indecisive condition which is neither, but may crystallize in either shape according to the specific occasion, the environment, or the dominant mental and institutional tendency of the social group. Such a transformation will be gradual and piecemeal, and in large part, if not entirely, unconscious. Many things done “for luck,” even in the higher civilizations, are still in this indeterminate state. The intellectual atmosphere is unfavourable; their development is arrested, probably for ever. I suspect that an accurate appreciation of the Intichiuma rites practised by the Arunta and their neighbours would show that they too are not finally to be assigned to either category.
The part played by society in the generation of religion demands some further observations. From whatever type of anthropoid ape man has been evolved, it is safe to believe that he has from the first lived in communities. But for this he could have made no progress, if even he could have existed as man. The condition of the solitary apes is incapable of improvement. It is incredible that if rudimentary human beings had lived like them in a group consisting at the utmost of a male, female, and still dependent young, they would ever have emerged into humanity, or that if they had emerged they would have been able to hold their own against the foes that surrounded them. The lowest human beings are never found solitary. If they wander on the food-quest, or are driven away from higher and more powerful societies, they do not fail to come together at certain times to enjoy the companionship of their fellows, to exchange experiences, to plan hunts or raids, to perform rites in common and partake of common pleasures. This implies organization. In fact, such communities, when they meet and live the communal life, are not found to be a mere incoherent congeries of individuals. They are true societies, organized, some more, some less closely, on a definite plan, in which every individual has his place. The Australian natives have evolved social institutions of proverbial complexity. The Bushmen of South Africa, persecuted and broken by intrusive races, have left us on the walls of the caverns they haunted representations marvellous in their skill of ceremonies apparently totemic. And if this interpretation of the drawings be doubtful, such remains as have been preserved of their traditions afford evidence of an organization by no means contemptible. The Seri of the Californian Gulf, perhaps on a still lower plane of civilization, and certainly leading their life in more miserable surroundings, are divided into clans and furnished with a social hierarchy built up on a reverence for women almost chivalrous in its type.[121.1]
The existence everywhere of organized societies implies the paramount influence of the community over the individual. Nor is that influence only a matter of implication. Abundant evidence is found of the control wielded by society over the actions and the very thoughts of its members. The individual is nothing: the group is everything. As Professor Durkheim remarks, every society exercises power over its members, power physical and above all moral. It keeps them in a sensation of perpetual dependence. It is distinct from the individuals who compose it, and consequently its interests are distinct from theirs. But as it cannot attain its ends except through and by means of the individual, it makes an imperious claim on his assistance, exacting it even to the sacrifice of his inclinations and interests. Thus at every moment we are obliged to submit to rules of conduct and of thought which we have neither made nor wished to make, and which may even be contrary to our most fundamental instincts.[121.2]
In these days and among civilized societies, when individualism is so strongly developed in thought and action, we are apt to forget to what an extent religion is an expression of the social organization. An eminent Oxford professor, not long ago deceased, used to say that religion was a social secretion. That may be an excellent way to phrase the relations between society and religion in modern Europe. It is a very incomplete account of them as they exist on the Australian steppe or in the forests of Brazil. In the lower culture religion is much more than a social secretion: it is one aspect of the social organization, inseparable from the rest. The organization cannot be understood without it—nay, it cannot exist apart from it. In these societies every member has his position and takes his share in religious rites. Whatever his place in the social scale, he is on the same level of knowledge, he shares in the same beliefs, with his fellows. The mental atmosphere of each is charged with the same electric fluid, which communicates itself to all alike. Especially on the occasions of reunion its action is intensified, frequently resulting in excitement, in vehement exaltation, translated into the wildest and most extravagant actions. But these reunions are not merely social, they are religious festivals. For religion pervades every thought and deed both of the individual and of the community. It binds the members together as no other force could do. The power of society over the individual is the power of religion. For religion is not as yet distinguished from politics, from law, from medicine, or from other forms of social activity that in our stage of culture have long vindicated their freedom.
Religion has therefore grown up with society. Its form has changed with the changing forms of society. It cannot be said to be generated by society, inasmuch as it is coeval with it. The very mould in which a society in the lower stages of culture is cast is religious. Church and State are of necessity coterminous, equivalent, one. But this evolution must of necessity have taken time. The inchoate society of half-human beings would have had a correspondingly vague and inchoate religion. As intelligence grew, the bonds of the horde would gather strength, what we may call public opinion would become more and more definite with the gradual acquisition of speech, until at last man emerged in something like a regularly ordered community. It is difficult for us to imagine the steps of this long process, by which, with society, what we call religion was evolved. I have tried in an earlier chapter to sketch the external conditions that would have impressed humanity in its dawn. These external conditions would have driven the individual more and more in upon the group, and thus would have materially contributed to the conscious formation of common interests founded upon the common need of material help, of sympathy, and of relief from anxiety and terror, whether of actual or imagined danger. The formation of common interests must have been accompanied by the increasing subordination of the individual to the group. In the extension of the authority of the group over the individual it is that M. Durkheim finds the origin of the idea of the impersonal force which the Omaha call wakonda. The idea, as I have shown, lies at the root of the religious conceptions of peoples in more than one vast cultural area. That such authority of the group, necessarily impersonal as it is, would operate to strengthen the concept of a general impersonal force, when once that concept had been formed, there can be no question. To ascribe to it the origin of the concept, however, seems to me an unwarranted inference. It is more probable that the conflict of the Personal and the Impersonal should arise in the awakening mind as the result of its outlook upon the world. The whole environment does not present a personal aspect at once. As personalities grow into relative definiteness one after another, there remains behind them the Unknown, full of vague possibilities, impersonal, but the source of personalities, which are for ever looming forth as the attention is concentrated on successive objects. Since it is the source of personalities, it is the source of power, mysterious and far-reaching, everywhere enveloping the beholder. It is true this power, in order to become effectual, must clothe itself with personal attributes. That, however, is not because it is formed on experience of the authority of the group acting by individuals, but because personalization is the inevitable tendency of the mind.
Professor Durkheim’s theory of religion is exhibited in detail only in one type. He speaks of “the aptitude of society to erect itself into a god or to create gods”;[124.1] but he illustrates his thesis only in the case of totemism, which he takes as an example of the religion of the least advanced people hitherto thoroughly examined. He is careful to say that the question whether totemism has been more or less widespread is of secondary importance; it is at all events the most primitive and the simplest religion it is possible to reach.[124.2] But his whole argument, if it prove anything, goes to show the universality of totemism. For the idea of the soul, according to the data of ethnography, appears to him to have been coeval with humanity, and that not merely in germ but in all its essential characters; and the soul is nothing else than the totemic principle incarnated in each individual, a portion of the collective soul of the group, that is to say of the totem, individualized.[124.3] Now totemism is certainly a very archaic form of religion. That it was universal is, however, very far from being demonstrated. It may well be that many branches of the human race have outgrown it, and that its traces have been obliterated. But among peoples very low down in culture there are many where it is unknown, or at least unrecognizable. It is more than possible, could we ascertain the facts, that Bushman society was organized on the basis of totemism. But there are other tribes no higher than Bushmen and Australian Blackfellows where we fail to discern it. The Veddas of Ceylon are indeed divided into clans with female descent. Yet no totem has emerged after the most careful enquiries. Their religion is essentially a cult of the dead, based on fear. The dead man is addressed as “Lord! New Driver-away of Vaeddas!” Sacrifices are offered and eaten as an act of communion with the deceased. In addition to the dead of the local group, “certain long-dead Veddas who may be regarded as legendary heroes” are invoked, of whom the most important are Kande Yaka, an ancient hunter whose assistance is implored for good hunting, and his brother Bilindi Yaka, a sort of pale double of himself. But they are not known among all the Vedda communities, though Kande is regarded by some as Lord or leader of the dead. There are also other spirits, who appear to be of foreign origin and superimposed upon the original cult of the dead, and are perhaps on their way to become nature-spirits.[125.1] The religion of the Andaman Islanders “consists of fear of the evil spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them.” There is besides an anthropomorphic being, Puluga, who is said to be “the cause of all things.” He receives no active worship, though acts thought to be displeasing to him are avoided “for fear of damage to the products of the jungle.” There is some evidence that he is the north-east wind; and Sir R. C. Temple is of opinion that he is “fundamentally, with some definiteness, identifiable with the storm, mixed up with ancestral chiefs.” He acts by his daughters, the Morowin, who are his messengers; but he seems to content himself with pointing out to the evil spirits offenders against himself, without actually taking steps against them.[126.1] Totemism is nowhere hinted at by the enquirers who have busied themselves with this childlike, and on the whole harmless, but somewhat capricious people.
Still very low in the scale of civilization, though somewhat higher than these, are the tribes of the interior forests of Brazil. They people their environment with imaginary beings more or less hostile. The object of their ceremonies appears to be to conciliate the favour of these gentry, or to hold them at arm’s length. When once the death-rites are completed little account is taken of the departed. So much we may gather from the reports of two German expeditions, written by distinguished scientific men who led the expeditions. Although they penetrated different parts of the country, there was a general resemblance between the civilization of the Indians met with by both explorers. A French anthropologist has remarked that English and German observers do not interest themselves to the same degree, or in the same way, in the social life of peoples in the lower culture; for whereas the German explorers by preference describe, and that with praiseworthy minuteness, the nature of the country and the material civilization of the people, the English, on the other hand, interest themselves more in the intellectual products, the traditions and beliefs. In other words, he said, the German is more of an ethnographer, the Englishman more of a student of folklore and psychologist. There is perhaps a measure of truth in this remark. It may go far to explain why more distinct and definite accounts have not been given either by Professor Karl von den Steinen or Dr Theodor Koch-Grünberg of the religions of the aboriginal tribes of Brazil. In any case, we miss much that we should have expected to find in their reports on the religious beliefs and ceremonies of these tribes. Among the omissions is that of any mention of totemism—an institution which concerns organization and government as much as religion. What renders the omission significant in the case of Professor von den Steinen, and not merely the result of want of interest in the subject, is that he has taken pains to ascertain and record the attitude of the natives towards the lower animals. He makes it clear that they draw no strict line of demarcation between man and brute. Nay, he goes the length of saying that we must think the boundary completely away. Human beings are indebted to the lower animals for the most important elements of their culture, many of which they have acquired from them by force or guile. More than that, the Bororó claim to be actually araras (a kind of bird with brilliant red plumage); their neighbours the Trumai are believed to be water-animals; a certain cannibal tribe is descended from the jaguar; and so forth. These beliefs are not totemic, for they concern not clans but whole tribes.[127.1] Apparently, therefore, there is no totemism among the wild forest-tribes investigated.
If the concept of the soul (which, it is needless to say, all these peoples possess) were coeval with humanity, and if it were only the totemic principle individualized, then totemism must have been coeval with humanity, and it must have been universal. If so, it is at least curious that the Veddas, the Andaman Islanders, and the forest-tribes of Brazil—all of them on the horizon of civilization on which totemism is found—should display no traces of it. If the concept of impersonal force, the substratum of religious and magical beliefs, be derived from the authority of society over the individual, and not merely strengthened and developed by it, it is odd that religious and magical beliefs should, so low down in culture, have issued in such widely divergent forms. The worship of the dead, the conciliation of hostile nature-spirits, the fear of an anthropomorphic being of enormous power, are all explicable as the result of the action of external conditions on human mentality and emotions. They are not explicable as the direct product of the authority of the group over the individual. And if totemism had originally held sway over the Veddas, the Mincopies and the Brazilian tribes, it is not easy to conceive how it could have evolved in directions so diverse,—and that without leaving any authentic witness to its past. It is quite another thing if the action of the group had been rather to combine and consolidate, to intensify and to organize the sensations and emotions awakened in its members by external nature, to give them a measure of definiteness in the process, and to habituate the individual to certain modes of reaction to the sensations, and to certain forms of expression of the beliefs engendered by the emotions thus awakened.