CHAPTER VI.
THE MYTH OF CIVILISATION AND THE FIRST SHAPING OF HEBREW RELIGION.
§ 1. In close connexion with that stage of development of the myth-producing faculty which is inaugurated by the beginnings of agricultural life, is found a natural consequence of the solar myth among agriculturists—the Myth of Civilisation.
We have seen that the advance in civilisation from the nomad life to the agricultural stage is accompanied by that inversion of the direction of the myth which puts the Sun in the foreground and allows a tone favourable to him to prevail in it, whereas at the nomad stage it was the night-sky and the phenomena of nature connected with it that engrossed the sympathy of the formers of myths. Now here we again encounter a remarkable phenomenon. No intricate psychological foundation or historical demonstration is required to prove that our own stage of civilisation—and not ours alone—is intellectually qualified to compare itself either with a lower stage through which it has long since passed, or with a higher which is now only beginning to be aimed at by our best spirits,—so as to estimate its value from the point of view given us by our social system. For let two different stages of civilisation, social systems or conditions be brought before any man’s observation so that he notes their essential difference, and the perception of this difference will awaken an impulse to measure them off against one another and form a judgment on the perfection of the one and the insufficiency of the other. And not only does the man who has reached the higher stage feel himself impelled to compare his new condition with that of those who remain behind on the less perfect stage already passed by him; but also those who stand on the lower stage, but are acquainted with the altered mode of life of others, contemplate the advanced stage and set off its value against that of the stage on which they still stand. Thus we have seen above that huntsmen and fishermen have their ideas about agricultural life. Still he who has reached the higher stage will be more generally impelled to such meditations than those who still stand on the lower. When the question has arisen in his mind, it must finally culminate in the enquiry, What was the origin or who was the author of the great advance which procures for him such advantages over one who stands lower? It is true, the agriculturist is not always conscious that his stage of civilisation is the result of an advance at all; for in many nations there exists no consciousness that any less perfect stage preceded that of the agriculturist. But this consciousness is not a necessary condition of the raising of the question; the mere observation of the difference between the two stages of civilisation suffices to prompt it. And it will come more and more into the foreground when the gradual progress within the limits of the agricultural stage has advanced so far as to develop the social consequences of the new state in all their fulness. Social order and laws are non-existent for the nomad, who has not yet formed for himself any permanent social system. At his stage they are not merely superfluous, but even in a certain sense inconceivable. The wranglings, the objects of which are chiefly wells and pastures, are settled and composed, not by laws and rights established once for all, but by strength of arm, or between disputants of peaceful disposition by separation: ‘And there arose strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle. And Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou goest to the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou goest to the right hand, then I will go to the left’ (Gen. XIII. 7–9).[[548]] And on occasion of a dispute about a well, Abimelech said to Isaac: ‘Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we. And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there’ (Gen. XXVI. 16, 17). Arts, manufactures and other occupations are inconceivable at this stage; for the wants of the nomad are so limited that the conditions of his existence are satisfied by his tents, herds, and pasture-ground.
The answer which the agriculturist gives to the question about the origin of the arts and manufactures, of social order and law, all of them products of agricultural life, is what we call the Myth of Civilisation. This Myth of Civilisation, which we encounter among the most various nations, refers the authorship of the advanced and refined state of civilisation to the Solar figures of the myth, which, to the prejudice of the figures of the dark sky, are brought into the foreground by the human mind on its advance to agriculture. It is therefore a spontaneous act of the human mind that is made the cause of a series of phenomena, of which it is itself really the result.
The Greek and Roman mythology abounds with data verifying the Solar character of the stories of the origin of civilisation and morals. Arts and manufactures are constantly brought into connexion with mythical names which are recognised by comparative philologists as designations of the Sun. Not only the musician but the smith of Olympus are Solar figures; so also the first navigator and founder of cities. The right understanding of Mythology was long hindered by the so-called Euhemeristic system, which assumed that the gods of mythology, and especially of the Greek and Roman mythology (for scarcely any others were sufficiently known to be considered), were only great benefactors of humanity, who after their death were rewarded by divine honours; and this system has been maintained till the present day. The Myth of Civilisation consequently had to be fitted into the frame of this convenient system. It was said that posterity had from mere Gratitude raised the inventor of the arts to the throne of deity. Petrarch says, ‘We know that the founders of some arts after their death were rewarded by divine honours, rather from grateful than from pious feelings ... Thus Apollo was made a god through his lyre, Apollo and Aesculapius through medicine, Saturn, Liber and Ceres through agriculture, Vulcan through his smithy.’[[549]] This mode of regarding the subject was not only upheld from Euhemerus down to Petrarch, but exerted its influence on the interpretation of the ancient stories even to our own times.
However, the consideration of the store of legends of humanity in general, as far as they are brought under our ken, collected and analysed according to their historical and psychological truths, teaches us that the founder of all the order and morality which result from the more civilised agricultural life is, in the language of the old stories, the Sun. The so-called Myths of Civilisation are always put into connexion with the Sun, or with some of the copious synonyms which mythology gives to the Sun. These myths must exist in every nation which has won its upward way from nomadism to agriculture, or from tribal life to society. As soon as the agriculturist began to use the ploughshare, he could not but observe the difference between his life and that of the nomad, who fixed his tent-plugs in the earth at a different place from day to day, moving from pasture to pasture, whilst he himself had the control of permanent dwellings, protected by definite unalterable laws, and lived a life of regularity, yet full of enjoyment and variety, strongly contrasting with the Bedawî’s monotonous independence. Then, when the source of this difference was sought, all the advance was attributed to the Sun, as the author and encourager of agriculture and inventor of the more refined arts and enjoyments of life. Moreover, the connexion which the Myth of Civilisation establishes between the Founder of cities and the Wolf, as e.g. between Romulus and a she-wolf who suckled him, has lately been explained by Prof. Sepp through the signification given to the wolf in the solar myth—with perfect justice, though perhaps going rather too far in the elaboration of details.[[550]] Like Apollo, Osiris also is γεωργίας εὑρετὴς, Μουσῦν μαθητής, ‘Inventor of agriculture and teacher of the arts;’[[551]] and in this point the myths of nations quite distinct in race agree. A few examples taken from sources wide apart will make this clear.
One of the Solar heroes of the Persian myth of civilisation is Jemshîd, whose character can scarcely be doubtful to the mythologist, after the consentaneous characteristics with which the epic poet Firdôsî and the historian Mirchond fill up the description of his life.[[552]] His very name indicates clearly enough a solar signification; and to this must be added the fact that he combines many characteristics of the solar supporters of the Myth of Civilisation. He first gives to Irân, till then savage, the benefits of civilisation. He is the first builder of cities, the inventor of the fine arts, especially of music, navigation (which belongs especially to the solar myth, as we have seen), and, as Mirchond explains at length, of the cultivation of the vine—an Iranian Noah. He divides the whole nation into four classes: Scribes, Warriors, Agriculturists, and Artists. Thus it is he who puts an end to the nomadic tribal life. In this breaking up into castes not the slightest trace is discoverable of any notice of pastoral life; on the contrary, in the story of Jemshîd as worked out by the later narrator, probably in close agreement with the still living mythical tradition, especial weight is laid on Agriculture. The solar chronology is also due to Jemshîd. Mirchond says: ‘As often as the Chosrev of the stars, the Sun, took away the royal robe of rays from the fish’s tail and threw it on the neck of the ram, Jemshîd appointed an assemblage of the great and noble at the foot of the throne. He instituted all the appliances of pleasure, and spread out the carpet of joy, and called the day Neurûz.’ The Prometheus-side of the Jemshîd-story is surprising. The Persian hero of civilisation, like the Greek, is chastised and hurled down by God for his presumption; his fall is occasioned by Zohak, who conquers him, from whose shoulders dragons grow up (the dragons of the Storm and the Night). After a fall of a hundred years he appears on the coast of the Chinese sea. The Sun is devoured by the monster waiting for him at the bottom of the sea, but afterwards rises again out of the sea, like Jonah in the Hebrew myth.
If now we turn from ancient Irân to the American tribes, we find the Myth of Civilisation take the same direction. There also the origin of morals, law and order is attributed to the Sun. I quote one of the numerous myths of civilisation from J.G. Müller, who deserves great credit for his work on American religions, which makes American mythology known in Germany. It is the myth of civilisation belonging to the Muyscas, inhabitants of the Terra Firma in the plain of Bogotà, who tell as follows of the commencement of civilisation among themselves: ‘In the earliest times, before the moon was, the high plain of Cundinamarca was closed in and the pass of Tequendama not yet opened. Then the Muyscas people were savage, without agriculture, without religion, without morals, without civil rule. Then there appeared a bearded old man who came from the East, who had three names, Bochica, Nenequetheba, and Zuhé, and was represented as having three heads. He taught the savages to wear clothes, to till the land, to worship the gods, to form states. His wife had also three names, Huythaca, Chia, Yubecayguaya. She was dazzlingly beautiful, but so malicious that she plotted to destroy all her husband’s salutary undertakings. And she actually succeeded by secret magic arts, in causing the Funzha (now Rio Bogotà), the river of the country, to rise to such a height as to overwhelm the whole high plain with flood. Only a minority of the inhabitants were able to escape to the summits of the mountains. But then the just wrath of Bochica was kindled; he drove the wicked woman off the earth for ever, and changed her into the Moon. Since then there has been a moon. And to get rid of the troubles of the earth, Bochica made an opening in the wall of rock, and allowed the water to run off by the majestic waterfall of Tequendama, 570 feet high. When the land was thus dried, the people that were left were called to civilisation, and the Solar worship was introduced, with a sacerdotal order, periodical feasts, sacrifices and pilgrimages. At the head of the state Bochica set a secular and a sacerdotal chief, settled the chronology, and after a life of two thousand years at length withdrew, bearing the name Idacanzas.’[[553]]
So much for the Myth of Civilisation. It is certainly wrong to try to find matter of history in these stories of civilisation, and, with Markham, Rivero, and Tschudi, to see in Bochica and the other bearded heroes of civilisation belonging to American mythology ‘missionaries of the worship of Brahma, of Buddha, and probably of other sects.’[[554]] My readers will surely perceive the perverseness of such a proceeding. J.G. Müller himself recognised the Sun in Bochica, the civiliser of the Muyscas; but he did not find out all the mythological relations which determine his solar character. The most important of these is the circumstance that Bochica is ‘a bearded old man, who came from the East.’ Here then, as in other American myths, the Sun’s rays are regarded as the long white beard of the old man of the sun, in the same sense in which they appear elsewhere under the form of locks of hair (see supra, p. [137]). And as in Egyptian the rising sun has a different name from the setting, and the same distinction of name is stamped upon the Hebrew myth also (Leah and Delilah on the one side, and Dinah, Zilpah, Asher, etc. on the other), so in the myth of the Muyscas the three names of the Sun refer to his various positions at rising, noon, and setting, which probably played a part in the ancient myth of the Muyscas. The corresponding three faces of the Sun express the same idea that produced the myth of the two of Janus (see p. 137); with the difference that the American myth notices three phases of the Sun, and the Roman only two. The Sun is opposed by the Moon, the sky of day is engaged in an everlasting war with the sky of night. The circumstance that the moon causes the flood exactly agrees with the American conception, which connects water with the moon.[[555]] The moon also is provided with three names in our American myth, and these three names have the same signification as the three of the Sun, i.e. the conception that each of the varying phases of the moon is itself an independent object. Dr. Anton Henne, a Swiss mythologist, first considered the meaning of the three visible forms of the moon (as contrasted with the four astronomical phases) in mythology, especially German, and cited some parallels from classical mythology.[[556]] Now although this feature of the triple form of the moon is undoubtedly expressed in many myths, among others in the American one under review, yet Henne-Am-Rhyn seems to go rather too far, in referring the many variations of the German story of the three spinning girls and so forth to this mythical idea. Many of these variants bear the undeniable impress of a mythical description of the setting Sun’s or the Night’s battle with the bright Sun of day; especially that in which one of the Sisters is quite white, the second half-white and half-black, and the third blind. Unquestionably the Sun of day is the quite white sister; the Sun shortly before setting the half-white and half-black; and the Night the blind one (see supra, pp. [109–10]).[[557]] The solar character of the princess Märthöll (no. 586, Henne-Am-Rhyn), who is as beautiful as the sun, and can only weep golden tears (see [Excursus E]), can escape no one.