It has been the habit of most students of the origin of Religion to concern themselves exclusively with the origin of the god-idea, as if belief in the existence of gods was identical with Religion. They have ignored its other essential components: the motives or desires and the feelings, as well as the means by which, in Religion, the gratification of desire is sought. But the limitation of the problem of origin to that of the god-idea is not entirely amiss. For there are neither specifically religious motives, nor specifically religious feelings. Any and every human need and longing may, at some stage or other, become a spring of Religion, and conversely the feelings and emotions met with in any form of Religion appear also in non-religious experience. As to the practical means of securing the favour of the gods, it is agreed that they were at the beginning essentially the same as those men were already in the habit of using in their relations with their fellow-men. It is the Agent or the Power with which man thinks himself in relation, and through whom he endeavours to secure the gratification of his desires, which alone is distinctive of religious life. And so the origin of the idea of gods, though not identical with the origin of Religion, is at any rate its central problem.
In the preceding remarks, as also in practically all writings on the origin of Religion, it is assumed that the god-concept precedes, in the mind of man, the establishment of Religion. This opinion is, as we shall see, the correct one. But it cannot be taken as a matter of course. Actions may become established in other ways. Our first problem is to discover how Religion arose, and what psychological capacities and conceptions it implies.
A comparative study of the three modes of behaviour is, after all, the shortest way of gaining a satisfactory understanding of the origin of Religion.
What are the abstract conceptions necessary to the establishment of the three modes of behaviour?—There is usually little difficulty in determining what end any particular action is intended to secure. It is quite otherwise if one wishes to ascertain the nature of the power from which the desired effect is supposed to proceed. The philosopher, suffering from the illusion to which his class is subject, is in danger of imagining the presence of highly abstract notions where much simpler mental processes actually take place. A comparatively easy way of getting oneself disentangled from these high-flown interpretations and of ascertaining what is the intellectual minimum really involved in these types of behaviour, is to examine them in the least developed men known to us, or, better still—if they are to be found there—among animals. Let us accordingly turn for a moment to animal behaviour with the intention of determining what ideas of power, or of agency, are involved in their modes of action, and thus take a preliminary step towards the solution of our problem.
Apes, dogs, beavers, in fact all the higher animals, show by their behaviour a ‘working understanding’ of the more common physical forces. They estimate weight, resistance, heat, distance, etc., and adapt their actions more or less exactly to these factors when climbing, swinging at the end of boughs, breaking, carrying, etc. I remember observing a chimpanzee trying to recover a stick which had fallen through the bars of his cage and rolled beyond the reach of his arm. He looked around, walked deliberately to the corner of the cage, picked up a piece of burlap, and threw the end of it over the stick. Then, pulling gently, he made the stick roll until near enough for him to get hold of it with his hand. This ape dealt successfully with physical forces. Towards animals and men, animal behaviour is quite different. A dog will beg from a man; he will not beg from a ham suspended out of his reach. Towards animals and men, animal behaviour is similar to that of men when dealing with invisible anthropopathic beings.
One may well believe that the inner experiences of animals differ in these modes of behaviour as much as their external movements. The feelings and emotions which appear in a dog’s intercourse with his master are of the same species, if not of the same variety, as those felt by man when he deals with his fellow-men and with superhuman beings. Certain highly gifted animals feel blame and approbation, independently of physical punishment or reward, and attach themselves to their masters with a devoted affection possessing all the marks of altruism. The higher animals do, then, without any doubt, practise both the mechanical and the anthropopathic types of behaviour, but they exercise the latter only towards actually present persons or animals. We shall have to consider subsequently the significant psychological difference to which this fact points.
But, is there no trace in animal life of the coercitive behaviour? I know of none, though some perplexity might be caused by certain reactions animals learn under the tuition of man. What shall be said, for instance, of a dog who has learned to raise its forepaws when he wishes to be liberated from confinement under circumstances making the person causing the door to open invisible to him? Is this magical behaviour? There is certainly no quantitative nor any qualitative relation between lifting up the forepaws and the opening of a door, neither is there any visible continuity between cause and effect. That the dog’s action is not determined, in this instance, in the same way as that of a magician, appears when it is observed that whereas the latter would perform the same magical rite in a great variety of external circumstances, the dog will seek liberation by lifting its paws only when in the particular cage in which he has learned the trick, or in one very much like it.[6] But more about this presently. It is not to be overlooked that without the interference of man, the dog would never have learned to perform this quasi-magical trick. This illustration serves, if no other purpose, at least to indicate how apparently slight is the impediment which prevents the higher animals from setting up a magical art.
It may be a matter for astonishment that two complicated and effective modes of reaction are arrived at by animals in the absence of abstract ideas about forces. Yet so it is; before any speculation on power, before any induction or deduction, before any abstract notion of the nature of spirit and matter, animals have learned to deal quite well with what we call physical and personal forces. How did they do it? The study under experimental conditions of the establishment of new reactions in animals reveals the process very clearly. Imagine a cat shut up in a cage, the door of which can be opened by pressing down a latch. When weary of confinement the cat begins to claw, pull, and bite, here, there, and everywhere. After half an hour, or an hour of this purposive, but unreasoned, activity, he chances to put his paw upon the latch and escapes. If again put into the cage, he does not seem to know any better than before how to proceed. Yet something has been gained by the first experience. For now he directs his clawing, pulling, and biting more frequently towards the part of the cage occupied by the latch. Because of this improvement he finds himself released sooner than the first time. The repetition of the experiment shows the cat learning to bring his movements to bear more and more exclusively upon the door or its immediate surroundings. Ultimately he will have learned to make just the necessary movement and no other. In this gradual exclusion of useless movements, the cat is guided entirely by results. The psycho-physiological endowment required for acquisitions of this kind involves no abstract ideas but only (1) the desire to escape; (2) the impulse and ability to perform the various movements we have named; (3) an indefinite remembrance of the position occupied when success was achieved, combined with a tendency to repeat the same movements when in the same situation.
The method illustrated above by which animals learn to deal with forces in the midst of which they live has a much wider range of application in human existence than is generally supposed. Man’s fundamental mode of learning is also the unreflective, experimental, one in which frequent blind attempts and chance successes slowly lead to the elimination of ineffective movements. Would you convince yourself of the vastly exaggerated rôle ascribed to abstract ideas and to logical processes in ordinary human behaviour, inquire how ‘power’ is conceived of by those who use it. What is in the mind of the stoker when he thinks of the power of coal? What in the mind of the gambler when he tries to coerce fate? What in the mind of the necromancer when he summons the shades of spirits? Nothing definite beyond a knowledge of what is to be done in order to secure the desired results and the anticipation of these results them selves. The stoker thinks of what he sees and feels: the coal, in burning, gives heat; the heat makes the water boil; the steam pushes the piston-rod, and so forth. Each one of the successive links in the chain is vaguely thought of by him as striving to bring about the following one. That is how he understands the coal-power. And what does the ordinary person know, for instance, about electricity? Simply what is to be done in order to start the dynamo, light the lamp, switch the current, and what the effect will be in each case, nothing more. The superstitious person, whether belonging to a primitive tribe or to the Anglo-Saxon civilisation of the twentieth century, understands in no other than this practical way the forces he deals with. I remember the delight shown by an elderly lady when a brood of swallows fell down our sitting-room chimney. ‘It will bring luck to the household,’ said she. I did my best, patiently and in several ways, to ascertain the sort of notion the lady had regarding the nature of the power that was to bring about the fortunate events predicted, and also to discover her idea of the connection existing between the fall of the swallows and the exertion of the ‘power’ in our behalf. I had to come to the conclusion that there was no idea whatsoever in her mind beyond those expressed by ‘swallows-down-the-chimney’ and ‘happy-events-coming.’ These two ideas were in her mind directly associated. When I declared my inability to see the causal connection between the two, she complained of my abnormal critical sense! Nothing more than the immediate association of an antecedent with its consequent need be looked for in the mind of most civilised, superstitious persons, and, of course, nothing more in the mind of a savage. That is sufficient for practical purposes.