The cult an expression of supposed reciprocity between gods and men.
The cult, which, so to speak, is no more than the religion become visible and tangible, is, like the religion itself, simply the apotheosis of a certain social relation: the exchange of services between men living in society. Man, who believes himself to receive benefits from the gods, feels himself obliged to give something in exchange. He conceives a sort of reciprocity of action as appropriate between God and man, a possible return in good or evil conduct; man possesses a certain hold on his God, he is capable of procuring Him a certain satisfaction or causing Him a certain pain, and God will reply a hundred fold in kind—pain for pain, pleasure for pleasure.
Is so, even to-day.
One knows how gross the external forms of worship in the beginning were. They simply consisted in a practical application of the social economy: the gods were given to eat and drink; an altar was a butcher’s stall or the stall of a wine merchant, and the cult was a veritable commerce between heaven and earth—a sort of a market, in which man offered lambs or sheep and received in exchange riches and health. In our days, the cult is refined; the exchange has become more and more symbolic, the gift is simply an expression of moral homage, for which the worshipper expects no immediate return; still the principle of the cult is always the same, one believes that an act on man’s part possesses a direct influence on the will of God, and this act consists in offerings or prayers fixed on beforehand.
Governed by the law of the market.
Another principle of primitive cult is proportionality. One can expect no more from another than a proportionate return; bow three times before him, and he will be better disposed toward you than if you bow but once; offer him a beef, and he will be more grateful than if you offer an egg. Accordingly, to an uncultivated and superstitious mind, it follows that quantity and number should regulate our relations with the gods as they regulate our relations with our fellow-men; multiply your prayers, and you will multiply your chances of favours; three Paternosters go farther than one, a dozen candles will produce a much greater effect than a single candle. A prayer that you go to a temple to say in public, a cantique chanted in a sonorous voice, will attract more attention than a silent demand formulated at the bottom of one’s heart. Similarly, if one wishes to obtain rain or sun for the crops, it is into the fields that one must go to offer up one’s prayer, in a motley file of chanting worshippers; it is always serviceable to point one’s finger at what one wants, and to make the demand in person. The better to stimulate the memory of one’s idol primitive man was accustomed to drive a nail into him, and the custom still survives in Brittany in the form of thrusting pins into the bodies of the saints. Out of sight, out of mind, holds good both of gods and saints. To simple minds it would be contrary to the law of proportionate exchange for a simple thought, a silent prayer, to receive such favour in the eyes of the gods as an overt act.
Embodied in fixed forms.
Every religion insists upon some quite determinate exterior form of worship, a precise manifestation, a creed; it endeavours to incorporate itself into a certain number of rites and customs, which are numerous and inviolable in proportion as the religion is primitive. The universality of an external form of worship in the different religions of the world is the consequence and the most striking proof of their sociomorphic origin. Man has always believed that he might be useful and agreeable to his gods so long as he has conceived them as analogous to himself and to his neighbours.