The Idea of God in Early Religions

by F. B. Jevons

Polydaemonism, like fetishism, does not produce mythology; but, for a different reason. The beings worshipped in the period of polydaemonism are beings who have not yet come to possess personal names, and consequently cannot well have a personal history attached to them. The difficulty is not indeed an absolute impossibility. Tales can be told, and at a certain stage in the history of fiction, especially in the pre-historic stage, tales are told, in which the hero has no proper name: the period is 'once upon a time,' and the hero is 'a man' simpliciter. But myths are not told about 'a god' simpliciter. In mythology the hero of the myth is not 'a god,' in the sense of any god you like, but this particular, specified god. And the reason is clear. In fiction the artist creates the hero as well as the tale; and the primitive teller of tales did not find it always necessary to invent a name for the hero he created. The hero could, and did, get along for some time without any proper name. But with mythology the case is different. The personal being, superior to man, of whom the myth is told, is not the creation of the teller of the tale: he is a being known by the community to exist. He cannot therefore, when he is the hero of a myth, be described as 'a god—any god you like.' Nor is the myth a tale which could be told of any god whatever: if a myth is a tale, at any rate it is a tale which can be told of none other god but this. Indeed, a myth is not a tale: it is an incident—or string of incidents—in the personal history of a particular person, or being, superior to man.

It is then as polydaemonism passes into polytheism, as the beings of the one come to acquire personal names and personal history, and so to become the gods of the other, that mythology arises. It is under polytheism that mythology reaches its most luxuriant growth; and when polytheism disappears, mythology tends to disappear with it. Thus, the light which mythology may be expected to throw on the idea of God is one, which, however it may illumine the polytheistic idea of God, will not be found to shine far beyond the area of polytheism.

Myths then are narratives, in which the doings of some god or gods are related. And those gods existed in the belief of the community, before tales were told, or could be told, about them. Myths therefore are the outcome of reflection—of reflection about the gods and their relations to one another, or to men, or to the world. Mythology is not the source of man's belief of the gods. Man did not begin by telling tales about beings whom he knew to be the creations of his own imagination, and then gradually fall into the error of supposing them to be, after all, not creatures of his own imagination but real beings. Mythology is not even the source of man's belief in a plurality of gods: man found gods everywhere, in every external object or phenomenon, because he was looking for God everywhere, and to every object, in turn, he addressed the question, 'Art thou there?' Mythology was not the source of polytheism. Polytheism was the source of mythology. Myths preserve to us the reflections which men have made about their gods; and reflection, on any subject, cannot take place until the thing is there to be reflected upon. The result of prolonged reflection may be, indeed must be, to modify the ideas from which we started, for the better—or, it may be, for the worse. But, even so, the result of reflection is not to create the ideas from which it started.

From this point of view, it becomes impossible to accept the theory, put forward by Max Müller, that mythology is due to 'disease of language.' According to his theory, simple statements were made of such ordinary, natural processes as those of the rising, or the setting, of the sun. Then, by disease of language, the meaning of the words or epithets, by which the sun or the dawn were, at the beginning, designated or described, passed out of mind. The epithets then came to be regarded as proper names; and so the people, amongst which these simple statements were originally made, found itself eventually in possession of a number of tales told of persons possessing proper names and doing marvellous things. Thus, Max Müller's theory not only accounted for the origin of tales told about the gods: it also explained the origin of the gods, about whom the tales were told. It is a theory of the origin, not merely of mythology, but also of polytheism.

Thus, even on Max Müller's theory, mythology is the outcome of reflection—of reflection upon the doings and behaviour of the sun, the clouds, wind, fire etc. But, on his theory, the sun, moon etc., were not, at first, regarded as persons, at all: it was merely owing to 'disease of language' that they came to be so regarded. Only if we make this original assumption, can we accept the conclusions deduced from it; and no student now accepts the assumption: it is one which is forbidden by the well-established facts of animism. Sun, moon, wind and fire, everything that acts, or is supposed to act, is regarded by early man as animated by personal power. If, therefore, the external objects, to which man turned with his question, 'Art thou there?' were regarded by him, from the beginning, as animated by personal power, the theory that they were not so regarded falls to the ground; and, consequently, we cannot accept it as accounting for the origin of polytheism.

Doubtless, during the time of its vogue, Max Müller's theory was accepted precisely because it did profess to account for the origin of polytheism, and because it denied polytheism any religious value or meaning whatever. On the theory, polytheism did not originate from any religious sentiment whatever, but from a disease of language. And this was a view which naturally commended itself to those who were ready to say and believe that polytheism is not religion at all. But the consequences of saying this are such as to make any science of religion, or indeed any history of religion, impossible. Where the idea of God is to be found, there some religion exists; and to say that, in polytheism, no idea of God can be found, is out of the question. If then polytheism is a stage in the history of religious belief, we have to consider it in relation to the other stages of religious belief, which preceded or followed it. We have to relate the idea of God, as it appeared in polytheism, with the idea as it appeared in other stages of belief. In order to do this, we must first discover what the polytheistic idea of God is; and for that purpose we must turn, at any rate at first, to the myths which embody the reflections of polytheists upon the attributes and actions of the Godhead, or of those beings, superior to man, whose existence was accepted by the common consciousness. It may be that the reflections upon the idea of God, which are embodied in mythology, have so tended to degrade the idea of God, that religious advance upon the lines of polytheism became impossible, just as the conception of God as a being who would promote the anti-social wishes of an individual, rendered religious advance upon the lines of fetishism impossible. In that case, religion would forsake the line of polytheism, as it had previously abandoned that of fetishism.

A certain presumption that myths tend to the degradation of religion is created by the mere use of the term 'mythology.' It has come to be a dyslogistic term, partly because all myths are lies, but still more because some of them are ignoble lies. It becomes necessary, therefore, to remind ourselves that, though we see them to be untrue, they were not regarded as untrue by those who believed in them; and that many of them were not ignoble. Aeschylus and Sophocles are witnesses, not to be disbelieved, on these points. In their writings we have the reflections of polytheists upon the actions and attributes of the gods. But the reflections made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, and their treatment of the myths, must be distinguished from the myths, which they found to hand, just as the very different treatment and reflection, which the myths received from Euripides, must be distinguished from them. In both cases, the treatment, which the myths met with from the tragedians, is to be distinguished from the myths, as they were current among the community before and after the plays were performed. The writings of the tragedians show what might be made of the myths by great poets. They do not show what the myths were in the common consciousness that made them. And the history of mythology after the time of the three great tragedians makes it clear enough that even so noble a writer as Aeschylus could not impart to mythology any direction other than that determined for it by the conditions under which it originated, developed and ran its course.

Mythology is the work and the product of the common consciousness. The generation existing at any time receives it from preceding generations; civilised generations from barbarous, and barbarous generations from their savage predecessors. If it grows in the process of transmission, and so reflects to some extent the changes which take place in the common consciousness, it changes but little in character. The common consciousness itself changes with exceeding slowness; it retains what it has received with a conservatism like that of children's minds; and, what it adds must, from the nature of the case, be modelled on that which it has received, and be of a piece with it. But, though the common consciousness changes but slowly, it does change: with the change from savagery to civilisation there goes moral development. Some of the myths, which are re-told from one generation to another, may be capable of becoming civilised and moralised in proportion as do those who tell them; but some are not. These latter are incidents in the personal history of the gods, which, if told at all, can only be told, as they had been told from the beginning, in all their repulsiveness. They survive, in virtue of the tenacity and conservatism of the common consciousness; and, as survivals, they testify to the moral development which has taken place in the very community which conserves them. By them the eye of modern science measures the development and the difference between the stage of society which originally produced them and the stage which begins to be troubled by them. They are valuable for the purposes of modern science because they are evidence of the continuity with which the later stages have developed from the earlier; and, also, because they are the first outward indications of the discovery which was eventually to be made, of the difference between mythology and religion—a difference which existed from the beginning of mythology, and all through its growth, though it existed in the sphere of feeling long before it found expression for itself in words.

The course of history has shown, as a matter of fact, that these repulsive and disgusting myths could not be rooted out without uprooting the whole system of mythology. But the course of history has also shown that religion could continue to exist after the destruction of mythology, as it had done before its birth. But, of this the generations to whom myths had been transmitted and for whom mythology was the accepted belief, could not be aware. In their eyes the attempt to discredit some myths appeared to involve—as it did really involve—the overthrow of the whole system of mythology. If they thought—as they undoubtedly did think—that the destruction of mythology was the same thing as the destruction of religion, their error was one of a class of errors into which the human mind is at no time exempt from falling. And they had this further excuse, that the destruction of mythology did logically and necessarily imply the destruction of polytheism. Polytheism and mythology were complementary parts of their idea of the Godhead. Demonstrations therefore of the inconsistency and immorality involved in their idea were purely negative and destructive; and they were, accordingly, unavailing until a higher idea of the unity of the Godhead was forthcoming.

Until that time, polytheism and mythology struggled on. They were burdened, and, as time went on, they were overburdened, with the weight of the repulsive myths which could not be denied and disowned, but could only be thrust out of sight as far, and as long, as possible. These myths, however offensive they became in the long run to the conscience of the community, were, in their origin, narratives which were not offensive to the common consciousness, for the simple reason that they were the work of the common consciousness, approved by it and transmitted for ages under the seal of its approval. If they were not offensive to the common consciousness at the time when they originated, and only became so later, the reason is that the morality of the community was less developed at the time of their origin than it came to be subsequently. If they became offensive, it was because the morality of the community tended to advance, while they remained what they had always been.