Comparative Religion

by J. Estlin Carpenter

CHAPTER V

SACRED ACTS

One morning, Plato tells us, as Socrates was in the Porch of the King Archon, he met Euthyphro, a learned Athenian soothsayer, on his way to accuse his father of impiety for having caused the death of a slave. Socrates, who was also expecting an accusation against himself, engaged him in a conversation, as his manner was, on the nature of impiety, and its opposite, piety. The talk leads Euthyphro to maintain that piety or holiness consists in learning how to please the gods in word and deed, by prayers and sacrifices. "Then," inquires Socrates, "sacrifice is giving to the gods, and prayer is asking of the gods?" and Euthyphro is driven to assent to the conclusion that piety is an art which gods and men have of doing business with one another. It was a satirical description of the popular Greek view.

But the argument of Socrates really corresponds to world-wide practice. However dim and confused the elements of belief may be, every tribe has some rites and ceremonies which express the desire to get the Powers which encompass it upon its side. And when this desire, after many ineffectual trials, has succeeded in establishing suitable methods of approach, the endeavours which produce the result tend to become fixed; they are cherished from generation to generation; they form solemn customs which must be maintained with strict inviolate order, even though their original meaning may have been long forgotten. Belief may fluctuate in a kind of fluid medium of imagination, but action cannot have this indeterminate and elastic character. Action is the mode through which feeling obtains expression, while it helps at the same time to intensify the emotion which calls it forth. The rite must be done or omitted; it cannot trail off into shadow and vagueness. And it gathers the whole weight of tribal sanction around it; so that even the simplest elements of common usage are moulded under the powerful pressure of the "weight of ages."

The active side of religion may be considered under two aspects. There is, on the one hand, the effort to enter into helpful relations with the energies which pervade nature and operate on man. Such efforts spring from manifold emotions of hope and fear, of affection and reverence. They seek to inaugurate such relations; to maintain them through the vicissitudes of experience, the phases of life, the sequences of time; and to renew them when they have suffered sudden shock or gradual decay. By such action the original emotion is reawakened when it has declined, and is raised to greater vividness and higher tension. It may be summed up in the term worship, including sacrifice and prayer, often associated with a wide range of acts cognate in purpose, as well as with manifold varieties of sacred persons and sacred products ([Chap. VI]).

And, secondly, apart from public or private acts of homage, thanksgiving, submission, propitiation, addressed specifically to the higher Powers, there are modes of behaviour which are believed to be pleasing or displeasing to them. Some things may be done, and others may not. Certain acts, or words, or even thoughts, are forbidden; others are enjoined. The sphere of daily conduct is thus brought into connection with what is "above." "Act," said the Japanese teacher of Shinto, Hirata, in the last century, "so that you shall not be ashamed before the Kami" (p. [93]). It was a universal rule. Morality is thus placed under the guardianship of religion ([Chap. VII]).

At the funeral of Lord Palmerston (1865), the chief mourner was observed to drop several diamond and gold rings upon the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. A little child, seeing a steam-tram advance with irresistible might along the road, offered it her bun. It may be surprising to meet with a piece of the primitive ritual of the dead in the midst of a sophisticated and conventional society; but when strong feeling is excited something must be done to give it relief, and in parting with his rings the donor found the outlet for his emotion as irrationally as the child before the monster which excited at once her wonder and her impulse of goodwill. Out of such impulses of self-expression, it may be suggested, arises the largest class of sacrifices, when gifts are made in doing various kinds of "business with the gods."

In its widest use the word covers an extensive range of purposes, and begets a large variety of questions. On whose behalf is the offering made, a single individual, or some social group, his family or clan, a secret society, a tribe, a nation? What persons are required for the due performance of the rite, the head of the family, the village magistrate, the fetish man, the priest? A complicated Vedic sacrifice needed the co-operation of various orders of priests. What objects are effected by it, a house or city-gate to be protected, a river to be crossed, a battle to be won, a covenant or contract to be sealed? To what powers does the worshipper address himself, in gratitude, homage, or submission, seeking renewal of favour, or purging himself of some sin, or desiring actual fellowship with his god? Behind these external features lie more difficult problems in connection especially with animal sacrifices, concerned with the victim's qualities, and the appropriation of them by the deity or the worshipper; with the peculiar sanctity of blood, and the mysterious properties which it can impart; with the notion of the transmission of the life of which it was the vehicle; and the whole set of indefinite influences capable of propagation by contact, like the clean and the unclean, the common and the holy. And why, when the victim was offered, was the god supposed to be satisfied with bones and entrails and a modest piece of meat, all wrapped in fat? Greek wonder at so strange a practice could find no better answer than the tale of how Prometheus once cheated the gods of their share, and men had ever since followed his example. These questions belong to the obscure realm of beginnings, in which various answers are possible. All that can be attempted here is to offer a few illustrations of the different motives that seem to lie behind different forms of rite.