* II Chronicles ii, 4.
** Revelation xxii, 19.
*** Revelation xxii, 18.
**** One of the rather mild plagues is described in
Leviticus xxvi, 22-29: "I will also send wild beasts among
you, which shall rob you of your children.... And ye shall
eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your
daughters." Twenty million copies a year of this book are
sold!
As a day of rest and recreation, of intellectual, moral and aesthetic culture and pleasure, Sunday will always be one of the dearest institutions of civilization. But as already explained, humanitarian or ethical motives had no share at all in the making of the Jewish-Christian Sabbath. Would the clergy, for instance, consent to have any other day than Sunday observed as "holy"? Would they have the courage to call Tuesday or Thursday the Sabbath of the Lord, sanctified and set apart from all eternity? If not, the inference is inevitable that what they are principally interested in is the day—the taboo—and not the rest and profit which may be derived from quitting work on a given day of the week.
Among the primitive races a thing was taboo either because it was supposed to be "unholy" or because it was supposed to be "holy." A Catholic must not touch the sacraments because they are "holy," and the Jew must not touch swine's flesh because it is "unholy." In the one case, as in the other, it is a "thou shalt not." Why the touch of the fingers should defile the sacraments but not the touch of the palate or the lips; or why swine's flesh should mar one's character or standing before the community, is not explained because it can not be explained. Theology is a collection of enigmas. The less the people understand their religion the more they believe in it. A taboo is not meant to be understood; it is only meant to be obeyed. The Babylonians, from whom the Hebrews got their Sabbath, refrained from work on that day because they considered it an evil day; we refrain from work on that day because we think the day too sacred for work. It is not at all strange that the reason for a given taboo, being no more than a whim, should in the course of time change. The "thou shalt not" remains; the why does not matter much, because the why belongs to reason, and religion is a matter of faith.
The Totem
TO show further how the unholy becomes, in time, the holy, or vice versa, let us glance at another barbaric institution of the past, that of the totem. The word taboo, as already explained, is Polynesian in origin; the word totem has come to us from the American Indian. Totem is a more difficult word to translate into modern thought. The most popular definition I could give to it would be to say that a totem is a "mascot." And yet, it is very much more. To savage tribes a totem was an object, more frequently an animal, which was sacred to the particular tribe that had identified itself with it. The thing, or the plant, or the beast thus selected, became an emblem, badge or bond of union. It served also as a sort of password by which the members of the tribe were recognized, and a center around which the clan grouped itself. To the totem they looked for preservation against famine, war and annihilation as a tribe. The totem was the soul of the tribe—the tribe in essence. The golden-rod is the national flower of America, the lily is upon the shield of France, the shamrock is Irish, the world over; in some such sense, only meaning very much more, was the totem to our savage ancestors.
Now we are in a position to guess at least why the bible forbids swine's flesh. Solomon Reinach, a distinguished Jewish scholar, and member of the French Academy, says that the boar was the totem of the Jew long before Moses appeared on the scene. * The totem was protected by a taboo, and, therefore, to eat it was a national crime. To destroy one's totem was a sacrilege and a blasphemy, punishable by death. They looked upon the man who ate his totem with more abhorrence than we would feel toward a fellow countryman who insulted his flag. Here, then, we have two counter currents; the Sabbath, beginning as an evil day, becomes "holy," while the hog, once a totem, an object of reverence, a god, degenerates into an unclean beast. Yet the one, as much as the other, is as taboo as ever.
* Orpheus, Solomon Reinach, page 27: "Les Juifs pieux
s'abstiennent de manger du porc, parce que leurs lointains
ancestres, cinq on six mille ans avant notre ere, avaient
pour totem le sanglier."
The "thou shalt not labor on the Sabbath day," and the "thou shalt not eat swine's flesh," remain the same, though the why is shifted from the "because it is unholy" to a "because it is holy," in the case of the Sabbath; and from the "because it is holy" to a "because it is unholy," in the case of the hog. In the meantime, it remains as true as ever that there is nothing either "holy" or "unholy" about a hog or a day. Why was the seventh day cursed or blest? Why, of all the animals, was the hog selected, first to be adored and then to be abhorred? While many interesting reasons could be suggested, the truth is that, like the majority of religious rites and dogmas, both taboo and totem are impenetrable mysteries. When, in the Merchant of Venice, Shylock is asked why he covets a pound of that merchant's flesh, "nearest his heart," with a toss of his head, and his eyes afire, he replies: "It is my humor." * And if we were to ask Jehovah why swine's flesh is taboo, or why the seventh day is "holy," or why the priest under penalty of death must carry a golden bell and a pomegranate upon the hem of his robe, ** or why the man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised shall be cut off from his people ***, or why "Whosoever cometh any thing near unto the tabernacle of the Lord shall die," **** or why it is a deadly crime to peep into a wooden box, or yoke an ass with an ox, the answer would be the same: "It is my humor."