Christian writers have undertaken to show that such deterioration went on continuously in India from the beginning of the Vedic period, popular religion sinking from Varuna to Indra, from Indra to the deities of the Atharva Veda, and from these to the Puranas (cp. Dr. J. Murray Mitchell, Hinduism Past and Present, 1885, pp. 22, 25, 26, 54). The argument, being hostile in bias from the beginning, ignores or denies the element of intellectual advance in the Upanishads and other later literature; but it holds good of the general phenomena. It holds good equally, however, of the history of Christianity in the period of the supremacy of ignorant faith and absence of doubt and science; and is relatively applicable to the religion of the uneducated mass at any time and place.
On the other hand, it is not at all true that religious history is from the beginning, in any case, a process of mere degeneration from a pure ideal. Simple statements as to primitive ideas are found to be misleading because of their simplicity. They can connote only the ethic of the life conditions of the worshipper. Now, we have seen (p. 28) that small primitive peoples living at peace and in communism, or in some respects well placed, may be on that account in certain moral respects superior to the average or mass of more civilized and more intelligent peoples. [As to the kindliness and unselfishness of some savages, living an almost communal life, and as to the scrupulous honesty of others, there is plenty of evidence—e.g., as to Andaman islanders, Max Müller, Anthrop. Relig., citing Colonel Cadell, p. 177; as to Malays and Papuans, Dr. Russel Wallace, Malay Archipelago, p. 595 (but cp. pp. 585, 587, 589); as to Esquimaux, Keane, Man, p. 374; Reclus, Primitive Folk, pp. 15, 37, 115 (but cp. pp. 41–42). In these and other cases unselfishness within the tribe is the concomitant of the communal life, and represents no conscious ethical volition, being concurrent with phases of the grossest tribal egoism, in some cases with cannibalism, and with the perpetual oppression of women. In the case of the preaching of unselfishness to the young by the old among the Australians, where Lubbock and his authorities see “the tyranny of the old” (Origin of Civilization, 5th ed. pp. 451–52) Mr. Lang sees a pure primeval ethic. Obviously the other is the true explanation. The closest and best qualified observers testify, as regards a number of tribes: “So far as anything like moral precepts are concerned in these tribes ... it appears to us to be most probable that they have originated in the first instance in association with the purely selfish ideas of the older men to keep all the best things for themselves, and in no case whatever are they supposed to have the sanction of a superior being” (Spencer and Gillen, North. Tribes of Cent. Australia, 1904, p. 504).]
The transition from that state to one of war and individualism would be in a sense degeneration; but on the other hand the entirely communistic societies are unprogressive. Broadly speaking, it is by the path of social individuation that progress in civilization has been made, the early city States and the later large military States ultimately securing within themselves some of the conditions for special development of thought, arts, and knowledge. The residual truth is that the simple religion of the harmless tribe is pro tanto superior to the instituted religion of the more civilized nation with greater heights and lower depths of life, the popular religion in the latter case standing for the worse conditions. But the simple religion did not spring from any higher stage of knowledge. The old theorem revived by Mr. Lang (Making of Religion), as to religion having originally been a pure and highly ethical monotheism, from which it degenerated into animism and non-moral polytheism, is at best a misreading of the facts just stated. Mr. Lang never asks what “Supreme Being” and “monotheism” mean for savages who know nothing of other men’s religions: he virtually takes all the connotations for granted. And as regards the most closely studied of contemporary savages our authorities come to an emphatic conclusion that they have no notion whatever of anything like a Supreme Being (Spencer and Gillen, North. Tribes of Cent. Austr. pp. 491–92. Cp. A. H. Keane, Man, p. 395, as to the “Great Spirit” of the Redskins). For the rest, Mr. Lang’s theory is demonstrably wrong in its ethical interpretation of many anthropological facts, and as it stands is quite irreconcilable with the law of evolution, since it assumes an abstract monotheism as primordial. In general it approximates scientifically to the eighteenth-century doctrine of the superiority of savagery to civilization. (See it criticized in the author’s Studies in Religious Fallacy, and Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. pp. 37–43, 46 sq.)
4. Even primary conditions of material well-being, if not reacted upon by social science or a movement of freethought, may in a comparatively advanced civilization promote religious degeneration. Thus abundance of food is favourable to multiplication of sacrifice, and so to priestly predominance.[215] The possession of domesticated animals, so important to civilization, lends itself to sacrifice in a specially demoralizing degree. But abundant cereal food-supply, making abundant population, may greatly promote human sacrifice—e.g., Mexico.
The error of Mr. Lang’s method is seen in the use he makes (work cited, pp. 286–289, 292) of the fact that certain “low” races—as the Australians, Andamanese, Bushmen, and Fuegians—offer no animal sacrifice. He misses the obvious significance of the facts that these unwarlike races have as a rule no domesticated animals and no agriculture, and that their food supply is thus in general precarious. The Andamanese, sometimes described (Malthus, Essay on Population, ch. iii, and refs.; G. W. Earl, Papuans, 1853, pp. 150–51) as very ill-fed, are sometimes said to be well supplied with fish and game (Peschel, Races of Man, Eng. tr. 1876, p. 147; Max Müller, Anthrop. Rel. citing Cadell, p. 177); but in any case they have had no agriculture, and seem to have only occasional animal food in the shape of a wild hog (Colebrooke in Asiatic Researches, iv, 390). The Australians and Fuegians, again, have often great difficulty in feeding themselves (Peschel, pp. 148, 159, 334; Darwin, Voyage, ch. 10). It is argued concerning the Australian aborigines that “as a rule they have an abundance” (A. F. Calvert, The Aborigines of Western Australia, 1894, p. 24); but this abundance is made out by cataloguing the whole edible fauna and flora of the coasts and the interior, and ignores the fact that for all hunting peoples food supply is precarious. For the Australian, “the difficulty of capturing game with his primitive methods compels him to give his whole time to the quest of food” (Keane, Man, p. 148). In the contrary case of the primitive Vedic Aryans, well supplied with animals, sacrifices were abundant, and tended to become more so (Müller, Nat. Relig. pp. 136, 185; Physical Relig. p. 105; but cp. pp. 98, 101; Mitchell, Hinduism, p. 43; Lefmann, Geschichte des alten Indiens, in Oncken’s series, 1890, pp. 49, 430–31). Of these sacrifices that of the horse seems to have been in Aryan use in a most remote period (cp. M. Müller, Nat. Rel. pp. 524–25; H. Böttger, Sonnencult der Indogermanen, Breslau, 1891, pp. 41–44; Preller, Römische Mythologie, ed. Köhler, pp. 102, 299, 323; Griechische Mythologie, 2te Aufg. i, 462; Frazer, Golden Bough, ii, 315). Max Müller’s remark (Physical Religion, p. 106), that “the idea of sacrifice did not exist at a very early period,” because there is no common Aryan term for it, counts for nothing, as he admits (p. 107) that the Sanskrit word cannot be traced back to any more general root; and he concedes the antiquity of the practice. On this cp. Mitchell, Hinduism, pp. 37–38; and the author’s Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. p. 122. The reform in Hindu sacrifice, consummated by Buddhism, has been noted above.
5. Even scientific knowledge, while enabling the thoughtful to correct their religious conceptions, in some forms lends itself easily to the promotion of popular superstition. Thus the astronomy of the Babylonians, while developing some skepticism, served in general to encourage divination and fortune-telling; and seems to have had the same effect when communicated to the Chinese, the Hindus, and the Hebrews, all of whom, however, practised divination previously on other bases.
6. Finally, the development of the arts of sculpture and painting, unaccompanied by due intellectual culture, tends to keep religion at a low anthropomorphic level, and worsens its psychology by inviting image-worship.[216] It is not that the earlier and non-artistic religions are not anthropomorphic, but that they give more play for intellectual imagination than does a cult of images. But where the arts have been developed, idolatry has always arisen save when resisted by a special activity or revival of freethought to that end; and even in Protestant Christendom, where image-worship is tabooed, religious pictures now promote popular credulity and ritualism as they did in the Italian Renaissance.[217] So manifold are the forces of intellectual degeneration—degeneration, that is, from an attained ideal or stage of development, not from any primordial knowledge.
[1] Cp. Lang (Myth, Ritual, and Religion, i, 91) as to the contemptuous disbelief of savages in Christian myths. Mr. Lang observes that this shows savages and civilized men to have “different standards of credulity.” That, however, does not seem to be the true inference. Each order of believer accepts the myths of his own creed, and derides others. [↑]
[2] Cp. Decharme, La Critique des trad. relig. chez les Grecs, 1904, p. 121. [↑]