A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

Religion.

What then was the creed of the primitive Aryans? So far as we can now see, it was the belief in one great ineffable God,—so great that no human intellect could measure His greatness,—so wonderful that no human language could express His qualities,—pervading everything that was made,—ruling all created things,—a spirit, around, beyond the universe, and within every individual particle of it. A creed so ethereal could not long remain the faith of the multitude, and we early find fire,—the most ethereal of the elements,—looked to as an emblem of the Deity. The heavens too received a name, and became an entity:—so did our mother earth. To these succeeded the sun, the stars, the elements,—but never among the pure Aryans as gods, or as influencing the destiny of man, but as manifestations of His power, and reverenced because they were visible manifestations of a Being too abstract for an ordinary mind to grasp. Below this the Aryans never seem to have sunk.

With a faith so elevated of course no temple could be wanted; no human ceremonial could be supposed capable of doing honour to a Deity so conceived; nor any sacrifice acceptable to Him to whom all things belonged. With the Aryans worship was a purely domestic institution; prayer the solitary act of each individual man, standing alone in the presence of an omniscient Deity. All that was required was that man should acknowledge the greatness of God, and his own comparative insignificance; should express his absolute trust and faith in the beneficence and justice of his God, and a hope that he might be enabled to live so pure, and so free from sin, as to deserve such happiness as this world can afford, and be enabled to do as much good to others as it is vouchsafed to man to perform.

A few insignificant formulæ served to mark the modes in which these subjects should recur. The recitation of a time-honoured hymn refreshed the attention of the worshipper, and the reading of a few sacred texts recalled the duties it was expected he should perform. With these simple ceremonies the worship of the Aryans seems to have begun and ended.

Even in later times, when their blood has become less pure, and their feelings were influenced by association with those among whom they resided, the religion of the Aryans always retained its intellectual character. No dogma was ever admitted that would not bear the test of reason, and no article of faith was ever assented to which seemed to militate against the supremacy of intellect over all feelings and passions. In all their wanderings they were always prepared to admit the immeasurable greatness of the one incorporeal Deity, and the impossibility of the human intellect approaching or forming any adequate conception of His majesty.

When they abandoned the domestic form of worship, they adopted the congregational, and then not so much with the idea that it was pleasing to God, as in order to remind each other of their duties, to regulate and govern the spiritual wants of the community, and to inculcate piety towards God and charity towards each other.

It need hardly be added that superstition is impossible with minds so constituted, and that science must always be the surest and the best ally of a religion so pure and exalted, which is based on a knowledge of God’s works, a consequent appreciation of their greatness, and an ardent aspiration towards that power and goodness which the finite intellect of man can never hope to reach.

Government.

The most marked characteristic of the Aryans is their innate passion for self-government. If not absolutely republican, the tendency of all their institutions, at all times, has been towards that form, and in almost the exact ratio to the purity of the blood do they adopt this form of autocracy. If kingly power was ever introduced among them, it was always in the form of a limited monarchy; never the uncontrolled despotism of the other races; and every conceivable check was devised to prevent encroachments of the crown, even if such were possible among a people so organised as the Aryans always have been.

With them every town was a municipality, every village a little republic, and every trade a separate self-governing guild. Many of these institutions have died out, or else fallen into neglect, in those communities where equal rights and absolute laws have rendered each individual a king in his own person, and every family a republic in itself.