Among all the varied religious acts of man, there is probably none that has been so widely prevalent throughout the different races of mankind as the ritual of purification, nor does any idea seem to have possessed so strong a legislative power in the various departments of our life as the concept of purity. We can trace it back to instincts that we appear to share with the higher animals, and we can track it upwards through the complex rites of the higher religions. The record presents us with a vast mass of phenomena which, as far as I am able to discover, have not yet been reduced to system or unified by any constructive theory of evolution. In this lecture I venture to attempt the systematisation of the subject, first giving a brief summary of the main facts which are well known to the students of primitive anthropology and comparative religion and which confront us in nearly all the societies that have been explored.
In the stage of our conscious life which we may call, relatively to man’s growth, primeval, certain bodily acts and states and certain material substances are regarded as unclean and impure, likely to imprint a stain upon the person. It is impossible here to attempt to enumerate all the examples, and it is enough to mention a few that are salient and typical. The generative processes of life, the states and activities of the male and especially the female organism connected with them, the bodily changes incident on puberty, are among the most familiar phenomena with which the idea of impurity in some peculiar sense has been universally associated. A chief centre or “nidus” of impurity is child-birth; but still more dangerously impure is its counterpart, death and all the phenomena of death. In respect of child-birth the idea is fading away from our civilised consciousness; but it has left a deep deposit in our conscious or subconscious self in regard to death. The material substance that has been most generally felt to be impure is blood; the curious feeling that the mere mention of the word often excites in certain modern people is a faint reflex of the savage mental state in respect to the thing; and the influence of this disposition upon advanced society raises the most interesting question in which comparative law, ethics, and religion are jointly concerned, and which will be considered later. To continue our enumeration we may not find that the objects of the inanimate world outside ourselves are usually regarded by primitive thought as in themselves impure, but all or most of them are capable of catching the infection from ourselves, from death or child-birth for instance: hence it may be necessary to break or destroy or purify the utensils and furniture of the house where a death or a birth has occurred. At a somewhat more advanced stage, certain food-stuffs come to rank as impure, and a complicated code of “tapu” is established for specially sanctified persons. Then we are confronted, but not apparently in the most primitive period, with the distinction between pure and impure animals, which also dictates certain rules and practices of diet.
On the other hand certain natural things may come to be regarded as specially “pure,” whether on the ground of a certain intrinsic quality, because for instance they are bright and lustrous, or from the fact that they were habitually used for cathartic or cleansing processes, as fire, water, odorous wood or spices, or substances which emitted a pungent odour such as sulphur. Such objects “are used in ritual,” says Jamblichus,[91.1] “because they are specially full of the divine nature.” But the psychic phenomena and the corresponding acts with which we are dealing may be well suspected of descending from an age at which no definite concept of a divine nature had as yet arisen, an age not yet perhaps even animistic, for in their crudest form they do not seem necessarily to imply any articulate system of belief in a world of ghosts and spirits. And this reflection brings us to the first question of importance, what this primitive concept of purity and impurity really is, and what were the sensations from which it was evolved. Nothing is more difficult to describe than simple sensations, but it is possible to distinguish one from another. And we must distinguish between the modern feeling about cleanliness and the primitive feelings which we are considering. That “cleanliness is next to godliness” is an aphorism suggested no doubt by sensations fundamentally akin to these; but many a savage who is most particular about “impurity” cares little or nothing for what we call “cleanliness.” We consider that the cleansing acts we ourselves perform are purely hygienic or pleasure-giving, partly connected with the instinct of self-preservation, and some of them we find performed by other animals than man.
But the savage ritual of purification does not by any means tend necessarily to self-preservation, but at times may lead to self-destruction, and no hygienic or utilitarian or secular considerations will carry us far in explaining the cathartic code of Leviticus or the Zend-Avesta, or Buddhism, or the impurity of tabooed animals. These codes, while some of their prescriptions may be such as modern utilitarian ideas might dictate, are obviously instinct with religious or superstitious beliefs, and to explain the distinction between the pure and the impure animals would need a long excursus into primitive religion; the distinction is certainly not one between wholesome and unwholesome, or pleasant and unpleasant, meat.
We may probably discover the nature of the instinct underlying much of the cathartic custom-law by taking as our typical example the savage feeling about blood. Evidence from almost every society in the world yields proof that the stain of blood is the primary impurity that needs a purifying ritual: hence arose a body of rules that were a burden upon domestic life, hence the elaborate purifications of warriors after battle or of the individual homicide. Such rules in no way remind us of the natural desire to take a bath at the end of a warm field-day: the savage purifications after battle may last for weeks; it is recorded that a North American Indian tribe was extirpated because it needed a month to wipe off the stain of a single conflict, while their enemies needed only a week for that purpose and therefore had the advantage of three weeks’ start in preparing for the next attack. The sense-instinct that suggests all this is probably some primeval terror or aversion evoked by certain objects, as we see animals shrink with disgust at the sight or smell of blood. The nerves of savage man are strangely excited by certain stimuli of touch, smell, taste, sight: the specially exciting object is something that we should call “mysterious,” “weird,” or, still more expressively, “uncanny.” To the primitive mind nothing was more uncanny than blood, and there are people still who faint at the sight of it: for “the blood is the life,” life and death are the great primeval mysteries, and all the physical substances that are associated with the inner principle of either partake of this mysteriousness. For the savage, what is mysterious is also dangerous and not to be lightly handled or approached. Now, the man who incurs such stain not merely is exposed to some unaccountable danger himself, but he is able to infect others by contagion; he spreads a sort of miasma, he is the conducting vehicle of a dangerous spiritual electricity—mere metaphors, which, however, may enable us to catch something of the primitive thought. Such a man therefore must avoid communion with his fellows for a time, must be “tabooed”; and will naturally endeavour to remove the “tapu” or dangerous “miasma” by some magic rites of cleansing or release. The kinsmen of the recently dead in all primitive societies are impure, because they have come into contact with death, the chief source of all impurity; therefore they must be isolated, and, until they are purified, must wear some badge or external mark—which we call “mourning”—to warn others against approaching them. The “tapu” still remains in civilised communities; we abstain from intruding on the bereaved family, though we give a different motive for our keeping aloof. It so often happens that in such matters we act as the savage acts; but we must abandon for a time our normal way of looking at things in order to imagine his. To us a corpse may be an object of aversion, and it is in some degree contagious; but our view of it, when we are cool, is secular and scientific: while the primitive aspect of it is supranormal and mystic, and the contagion is something spiritual and incalculably dangerous. In the Zend-Avesta we find an interesting special application of this idea: the defiling power of the dead varies directly according to the sanctity or rank of the deceased; thus it is greatest in the corpse of the priest, somewhat less in that of a warrior, and least in that of the husbandman:[97.1] corruptio optimi pessima: the most sacred person can defile the most, because he is charged with the most mysterious and therefore dangerous potency. The Latin term “sacer” has the double meaning of “holy” and “accursed”: from the same Greek root, αγ, spring a word connoting holiness and a word meaning “pollution.” Primeval thought or feeling holds together in a vague unity ideas that afterwards differentiate themselves and even become antithetical. The same power of radiating dangerous influence, supposed to attach to the holy man, the polluted man and the polluting thing, brought them originally under the same dim conception.
It would not repay us here to endeavour to trace out and explain all the minutiæ of this superstition: the long lists of pure and impure things that one might compile do not disclose any single regulative idea, and nothing is more baffling than the eccentricities of prejudice and terror. But this superstition often proceeds with a logic of its own: as a corpse is most unclean, and all who touch it are impure, therefore dogs and wolves and carrion birds are impure and must not be eaten: and anything that however distantly reminds us of danger and death, such as quarrelsome acts and words, may come to be rigidly prohibited during a ritual of purification. As blood is primevally impure, therefore any substance analogous to it or of the same colour might be regarded as ill-omened, such as beans or pomegranates. The same kind of sensational aversion will cause malodorous substances to be regarded usually as unclean; therefore food of an evil savour, or such as leaves unpleasant traces in the person, will often be tabooed by certain strict sects.[99.1] There is also a certain common-sense discoverable in the distinction between substances on the ground of their greater or less susceptibility to spiritual contagion: earthen pots, for instance, have been often considered more easily infected than metal, and need longer purification, liquid substances more dangerous conductors than dry. “Should the dry mingle with the dry,” says Ahura Mazda in a conversation with Zarathustra, “how soon all this material earth of mine would be only one Peshôtanu,” which is as much as to say that the earth would become a charnel-house of impurity. And Darmesteter[99.2] remarks, in commenting on this verse, “Nowadays in Persia, the Jews are not allowed to go out of their house on a rainy day, lest the religious impurity conducted through the rain should pass from the Jew to the Mussalman.” We have here a view of contagion that seems to agree with that of modern science, only the latter is physical, the former mystic or spiritual. Again, the choice of substances used for purification was not dictated by the modern idea of a cleansing quality, but by a certain superstitious logic which we can sometimes detect. If liquid substances have a natural affinity for contagion, then if we take them while they are uninfected and use them for lustration, they will easily absorb the impurities of our own persons and rid us of them; therefore the modern savage or the ancient Greek might think it desirable to daub himself with clay or mud to wash away his taint: and from this example we see how distinct these primeval lustral processes are from the modern hygienic washing, to which nevertheless they often bear a close resemblance. By a similar reasoning we may explain an inconsistency that occasionally appears in the cathartic ritual; a substance impure as food might be used for purposes of lustration: for instance, we find garlic used as a cathartic in the worship of the Phrygian god Mên at Athens.[101.1] Fire, the universal purifier, may have been accredited with this power by right of its own nature, but partly in all probability because it was believed to dry up miasma and damp infection.[101.2]
In the Zend-Avesta code, after drying for a whole year under the light of the sun, the corpse at last becomes pure; for by the same natural instinct that caused the aversion to blood, the sun’s light comes to be regarded as the purest thing in the world: meat cooked by its warmth is more sanctified than fire-cooked meat; and certain acts and states of man have a greater defilement in the sun’s face.
So far I have been trying to present the phenomena without reference to any definite religious belief, to express them as far as possible in terms of simple sensation; for, as was said at the beginning of the discussion, it is possible that they have descended from a pre-religious age. We may now ask how the baneful influence of the impure thing in this primeval stage of thought was supposed to work, unassisted by any spiritual agency such as spirit or god. We may suppose that it produced its results indirectly by depressing the vital energies of the man who was the victim of the superstition: the savage might believe that it worked directly, by some mysterious law of luck, paralysing a man’s force and spoiling his hunting and fighting. This idea of a spontaneous mesmeric power of evil that certain things possess seems to glimmer through the verse in the Zend-Avesta. “Here am I,” says an unlucky man to those whom he meets, “one who has touched the corpse of a man and who is powerless in mind, powerless in tongue, powerless in hand; do make me clean.”[103.1] Is it an illusion to believe that we have here penetrated to the psychological root of the whole matter? And here there is no direct reference to spirit or god.
But at an early period such reference was made, and it was then that this cathartic ritual really started on a momentous career. When the doctrine of animism became firmly established, it attracted the ritual and the ideas associated with it, and the animistic imprint upon them can still be traced even in the higher religions. A dangerous spirit was supposed to abide in the impure thing and to be evoked by the unclean act; the potency which in the primeval stage of feeling had been perhaps regarded merely as something mysteriously baneful and “uncanny,” now becomes personal and intelligible and can be dealt with and exorcised by certain efficacious rules. The stain of blood on the homicide attracts the ghost of the slain to pursue him, certain foods are impure because evil spirits attach to them, disease is specially their work, and a veritable pandemonium gathers around the corpse, the woman in child-birth, and the new-born child. Illustrations showing how this demoniac faith has pervaded the thought of the world are broadcast in the records of primitive man as well as in the higher literature of our race, the Vedic and Iranian sacred books, the New Testament, the Pythagorean, Platonic, and Neoplatonic texts. In the view of the Zend-Avesta, which regards the whole universe as an overcharged battery of spiritual electricity, a single careless act of accidental uncleanliness is a cosmic catastrophe: legions of “drugs” or devils start up at once into existence to destroy the world of righteousness.[104.1] Plato, though on the whole he preserves his sanity in the matter, is under the dominion of similar ideas, and Neoplatonism reverts back to the savage view, believing that the chief aim of ἁγνείαι, or purifications, was to drive the evil spirits out of certain kinds of food.[105.1]
The deep animistic colouring that the conception we are analysing came at a very early time to acquire may be responsible for a very important event in the history of religion: the evolution, namely, of the dualistic principle, the idea of the antagonism between good and evil spirits, the germ of which we can already detect in the animistic stage which may have preceded the faith in high personal gods. If the impure things and acts are impregnated with evil spirits, it is natural to suppose that the pure are the abode of the good, and these are contrary the one to the other. It may have required a very long period for a clear belief in the good spirit to crystallise; for to the very primitive mind all spirits are mysteriously dangerous, even the ghosts of one’s dearest kinsmen. Still, the ancestral spirits make on the whole for righteousness, and can be given the position of guardians of the purification code. Thus the New Caledonians avert the wrath of the ghosts of their ancestors by washing, fasting, and chastity:[106.1] the ancient Greek might pray or sacrifice to a vague animistic company of θεοὶ Ἀποτρόπαιοι or Μειλίχιοι, regarded perhaps as ghosts of the lower world, to avert the impure omen or to wash off the taint of blood.