It is only ideas of magic, furthermore, that can account for the practice of divination. Connected with sacrifice are various phenomena that are accidental in nature and unforeseeable on the part of the sacrificer. These phenomena are such as to be sometimes regarded as indications of the acceptance or the rejection of the sacrifice on the part of the deity, while at other times they are interpreted from a different point of view, as general prophetic signs. In the case of the burnt offering, for example, the direct ascent of the smoke to the heavens was regarded as a sign that the deity graciously accepted the offering. Similarly, the examination of entrails, common among Oriental as well as Occidental peoples, originally, doubtless, had the purpose of discovering whether the animal possessed a nature pleasing to the gods. Later, however, it became one of a large class of general prophetic signs (prodigia), such as the flight of birds, lightning, clouds, and other incalculable phenomena of nature by which the future was predicted, particularly in respect to the success or failure of enterprises about to be undertaken. Because of the general relationship of magic and divination, the sacrificial cult borders upon the oracle. In the oracle, man wishes to read the future; in the sacrifice, he wishes to influence it by his action. This of itself implies that sacrifice occupies the higher plane. The belief in prophetic signs passed over from demon cult to deity worship with relatively little change, except that it became connected with particular gods or priesthoods and was therefore more strictly regulated. The hopes of a beyond, which were involved in the ecstatic practices of the orgiastic cults, opened up a new field to prophecy, and supplied divination with additional methods—the dream and the vision. Though connected in various ways with sacrificial cult, these phenomena are far from containing the wealth of religious motives involved in the former. Nor do they develop any common cult. This is due particularly to the fact that ecstatic visions are dependent upon a certain psychological predisposition, a fact which also enables us to understand the influence exercised by the individual seer and prophet upon religion and cult.
A third, and the highest, form of cult practice consists in sanctification ceremonies. Just as sacrifice is bound up with the various forms of prayer—conjuration, petition, thanksgiving, and penitence—so, in turn, is the sanctification ceremony closely connected with both sacrifice and prayer. On the one hand, it is reinforced by accompanying prayers; on the other, it results directly from sacrifice, particularly whenever the latter takes the form of a cult practice that brings mankind into association with the deity. In this event, the ceremony of sanctification represents an activity supplementary to sacrifice. The impulse to sanctification gains the dominance over the sacrificial idea as soon as the desires relating to the personal worth of the sacrificer himself gain ascendancy over the external motives which at first prevailed. This subjective interest, of course, appears only after the religious life has become relatively mature; at the outset, moreover, it is still everywhere combined with sacrificial practices that centre about external possessions. Once it has finally freed itself, and has become purely a sacrifice designed to enhance personal worth, it becomes a means of sanctification. When sacrifice has reached this highest stage, however, the idea of a gift presented to the deity by the sacrificer completely disappears—in so far, there is a resemblance to the very earliest sacrifices, which were of a purely magical nature and were in no sense intended as gifts. If, therefore, the sacrifice of self-sanctification retains any connection at all with the conception of a gift, the sacrificer must not only be said to offer himself to the deity but the deity must likewise be regarded as giving himself to the sacrificer.
Nevertheless, the origins of sanctification ceremonies and of sacrifice are essentially diverse. At the outset, moreover, these cult practices adopt different paths, meeting only at the height of their development. True, the sanctification ceremony is rooted in magic belief, just as is sacrifice. In primitive sacrifice, however, the magic is directed externally; in the case of sanctification, on the other hand, the object of the magic is the human being himself who performs the cult action or who permits it to be performed upon him. Even in the earliest stages of these practices, therefore, the sanctification ceremony occupies the higher level; hence, also, this ceremony is subsequent in origin to sacrifice. And yet practices presaging sanctification may be found in much more primitive cults, in the purification ceremonies, whose beginnings may be traced far back into the totemic age. We have already mentioned the fact that water and fire were used as means of magical purification even in the period of demon-belief (pp. 201 ff). So long as they retain this significance, they may both be classed as agencies of counter-magic. Their function is to counteract the evil spells that result from contact with a corpse or with some other object that is regarded as taboo. Purification by fire has the same significance. Because of the more elaborate preparations which it requires, however, such purification tends, from the very beginning, to take the form of a public cult celebration. As a result, it passes over directly from the field of counter-magic into that of magic proper—a reversal common in the field of magical usage. At this point, purification becomes sanctification. For, the original purpose of the means which the latter employs is always that of affording protection against future attacks on the part of the demoniacal powers that threaten man from without, or, in a later and a religiously purified interpretation, against personal transgressions resulting from man's inner nature. Herewith the development reaches the stage of the sanctification ceremony proper. The belief that sanctification is necessary for the individual can arise only in connection with deity beliefs, for it is bound up with ideas of retribution. The latter, in turn, depend upon the feeling of the personal guilt of the individual no less than upon the belief in the existence of personal gods who avenge the sins that are committed. Precisely the same change that takes place in the development of purification by fire transpires also in the case of water, the second and more common means of lustration. Here this transition is most clearly evident in connection with baptism. True, even Christian baptism still partly retains the idea of lustration. For, though the newborn child who is baptized is not himself conscious of any wrongdoing, he is nevertheless tainted, according to the doctrine of inherited guilt, by the original sin from which he must be cleansed. Baptism thus incorporates the meaning both of purification and of sanctification. The latter conception, however, asserts its dominance. And yet the Anabaptists, though insisting that man is unworthy of the sacred act unless he submits to it of his own free will, have also wished to preserve, along with the idea of sanctification, the idea of purification, which is both more original and, for sense perception, more real. Moreover, baptism also occurs with this twofold meaning outside the pale of Christianity, not only among the Hebrews, to whom the Christian religion is indebted for the cult, but even elsewhere, particularly among Semitic and African peoples. Sometimes it occurs alongside of another very common custom, that of circumcision; sometimes, as in Christendom, it is found where the latter is lacking; in still other regions, circumcision is practised, whereas there is no real baptism aside from the ordinary rites of lustration. This diversity itself testifies to the essential difference between the two cult practices—for that circumcision also must be classed as such there cannot be any doubt. Circumcision, however, is not a means either of purification or of sanctification, but is of the nature of a sacrifice. Along with the offering of hair in the cult of the dead and with the pouring out of blood in connection with deity worship, it belongs to that form of sacrifice in which the sacrificial object gains its unique value by virtue of its being the vehicle of the soul. Thus, the object of sacrifice, in the case of circumcision, may perhaps be interpreted as a substitute for such internal organs as the kidneys or testicles, which are particularly prized as vehicles of the soul but which can either not be offered at all, on the part of the living, or whose sacrifice involves serious difficulties.
Originally, sanctification and lustration not only employed the same means but also followed identical methods. The need frequently came to be felt, however, of an external distinction between these two cult practices. Ablution thus came to be regarded as the proper method of actual purification, whereas sprinkling was adopted in connection with sanctification. This also indicates the antithetical positions which the two hold with respect to magic and counter-magic. Lustration aims to remove moral, or, in the last analysis, demoniacal impurity; sanctification furnishes him who seeks its blessings with water possessed of magical powers. For this reason purification water fell into disuse with the disappearance of belief in demoniacal impurity. On the other hand, it was believed that sanctification water must remain as available as possible to him who stands in need of its virtues. Just as baptism is a cult agency whose purpose is intermediate between purification and sanctification, so also does the priest who conducts it lay emphasis, now on the one, and now on the other of these phases. When sprinkling comes to be employed as a means of sanctification, the magical significance of the act leads to a further change. Ordinary water, such as is generally used in lustration, no longer suffices—the water itself needs sanctification if it is to serve the purpose for which it is designed. Even in the ancient mystery cults, therefore, one of the chief elements in the ceremonies of sanctification consisted in sprinkling the members with water from sacred springs. The Jordan festival of the Greek Catholic Church still employs water from the river after which it is named, or ordinary water that has magically been converted into Jordan water. The relation of the burning of incense to lustration by fire is the same as that of sprinkling to lustration by water. And yet, in the case of incense, the idea of sanctification has almost entirely suppressed the earlier aim of purification. The purpose of sanctification finds its specific expression in the belief that the smoke cannot have a sanctifying effect without the addition of certain other elements. Balsamic substances were therefore used. First and foremost among these, even in ancient times, was incense resin, whose exciting and narcotic odour enhances the magical effect. The herbs and resins that were thrown into the flames, however, were also generally regarded as sacrificial gifts to the gods, whose delight in the ascending odours would, it was thought, render them favourably disposed toward the offerer.
Thus, sanctification ceremony and sacrifice become merged. The highest form of sanctification, moreover, originates in sacrifice itself. It appears as soon as the idea of intercourse with the deity becomes elevated to that of communion with him. This occurs especially in the sacrificial feast. When the sacrificial food is sanctified by virtue of the fact that the deity partakes of it, this sanctification is imparted to those human individuals who receive a share of the sacrifice. In proportion as the worth of the sacrifice increases, so does also the degree of sanctification. The latter reaches its culmination in human sacrifice, where the person sacrificed is the representative both of the sacrificial community and of the deity himself. Sanctification here becomes deification for every participant in the sacrifice. Following the disappearance of human sacrifice, this idea was maintained in connection with the sacred animal that was substituted for man, and finally, after bloody sacrifice was entirely abandoned, in connection with the bread which constituted the sacrificial food. In the most diverse cults of the Old and of the New World, this bread was moulded into the form, sometimes of a human being and sometimes of an animal. In this case again, the sacrificial cult of Christianity unites the various elements. When taken as a whole, the different interpretations that have been given to sacrifice in the Christian world include conceptions representing all the various stages of development. The bread and wine of the sacrament perpetuate the memory of the most exalted human sacrifice known to religious tradition, since, in this case, the idea of the unity of the sacrificial person with the deity continues to survive in the cult of the redeeming deity. In this sacrificial meal, moreover, elements of related sacrificial cults survive—the idea of the paschal lamb, borrowed from the Jewish Passover, and the substitution of wine, as in the Dionysian mysteries, for the blood of the sacrificed god. To the Christian, moreover, this sacrificial sanctification has had three distinct meanings, though these, of course, have frequently been intermingled. There have been magical, mystical, and symbolical interpretations—a series of stages through which all sanctification ceremonies pass. To the uncritical mind, he who receives the bread of the sacrament partakes of the actual body of Christ. Following upon this stage of miracle and magic, is the idea that the cult act effects a mystical union with the Redeemer, a union that is not corporeal but spiritual. At the third stage, the cult action finally becomes the symbol of a religious exaltation of spirit. This exaltation is regarded as possible in itself without the external manifestation; nevertheless, it is reinforced by the latter, in accordance with the general relationship that obtains between inner needs and external actions. Moreover, in each of these three cases, participation in the common sacrificial meal is evidence of membership in the religious society—a feature common to all firmly organized religious associations. Such membership must be attested by participation in the cult celebrations. Of the ceremonies in which expression is given to one's religious affiliations, the sacrificial meal has been regarded, from early times on, as the most important. The end of the development thus returns to its beginning. The meal, enjoyed in common at fixed times, differentiates cultural man from the man of nature. Among all meals in which a relatively large community unites, however, the sacrificial feast is probably the earliest, just as the cult festival is the earliest festival celebration.
[17. THE ART OF THE HEROIC AGE.]
A survey of the various phases of human interest will show that they are all present from the very beginning in the mental organization of man. Moreover, they are throughout so interconnected that an advance in one field of interest will lead to progress in general. Nevertheless, we are unable to escape the further observation that, in the life of the individual, certain capacities develop earlier than others. Precisely the same is true of the life of humanity. The phenomena in which the character of ages and peoples receives its chief expression differ in each of the periods through which the development of mankind passes. The secondary phenomena, in each case, either occur only in their beginnings or, where we are dealing with later stages of culture, are being perfected along lines already established. In this relative sense, we may doubtless say of the three eras following that of primitive man, that totemism is the age of the satisfaction of wants, the heroic age, that of art, and the succeeding period of the development to humanity, that of science. Of course, there were many art productions, some of them admirable, even in the totemic age—we need mention only the artistic cult dances, or the high perfection to which the semi-cultural peoples of the period attained in the decoration of the body and of weapons. It must be admitted also that the heroic age already laid imperishable foundations for science. Nevertheless, the main achievements of the totemic age relate exclusively to the satisfaction of the external needs of life. The modes of procuring and preparing food, and the forms of clothing, adornment, implements, and weapons—all originated in the totemic age, and, however great may have been the advances made by succeeding eras along these several lines, the beginnings had nevertheless been made. A manner of dress suitable to the climate had been developed. The preparation of food by means of fire, the manufacture of the fundamental and permanent implements and weapons—the hammer, the axe, the saw, the chisel, the knife—and, finally, the differentiation between weapons of close and of long range, had all been introduced. Moreover—and this is perhaps most significant of all—art itself was governed absolutely by the motive of satisfying needs. Articles of adornment, tattooing, the dance, song, and music, were first of all means of magic, and as such they served the most urgent needs, such as man by himself was unable to satisfy. These needs were protection against sickness and success in the chase and in war. Only gradually, through a most remarkable heterogeny of ends, were many of these agencies of magic transformed into pure means of adornment. Such transformations, of course, occurred also in the heroic age. But by this time the necessities of life had in part changed and, of the new interests, those connected with cult and with political organization gained an increasing importance. Æsthetic value came to be more and more appreciated as an independent feature of objects. As a result, articles were produced of a nature such as to minister both to the needs of life and to æsthetic enjoyment. But, again, this occurs pre-eminently within the field of spiritual needs, particularly in connection with deity cult, on the one hand, and in the glorification of human heroes, on the other. The construction of the temple, the plastic reproduction of the human form and its idealization into the divine image, and, finally, the forms of literature—the epic, the hymn, and the beginnings of the religious drama, with their accompanying music—all of these spring from the spiritual needs of this age, among which needs cult is the foremost. With these various activities, art begins an independent development, gaining a value of its own, and conquering fields that had previously been untouched by æsthetic influences. This conquest of new fields by the higher forms of art is indicative also of an increasing appreciation of the æsthetic, and, along with this, of a spiritualization of life as a whole, such as results, in a particular measure, from art, and only partly, and at a much later period, from science. The first subjects of this art are heroes and gods—that is, those figures which the imagination creates at the threshold of the heroic age, under the influence of the new conditions of life. Gradually art then concerns itself with the human personality and with the objects of man's environment. In correspondence with a change which transpired in the totemic age, in which means of magic were transformed into articles of adornment, the objects of nature and culture are now more and more stripped of their mythological significance and elevated into pure objects of æsthetic appreciation. Thus, the heroic age includes the two most important epochs in the entire history of art. These are the origin of a true religious art, and the attainment of an æsthetic independence which allows art to extend its influence to all departments of human life. Religious art made its appearance with the beginning of the heroic age; æsthetic independence represents a later achievement. This explains why the totemic age seems to us a vanished world, no less with regard to its art than in other respects. It can arouse our æsthetic interest only if we attribute the final product of this period—namely, decoration freed from its original magical significance—to the motives that really underlie artistic activity. The art with which we are still familiar and whose motives we can all still appreciate, begins only with the heroic age. The tattooing of the man of nature and the amulet about his neck are to us adornments of low æsthetic value. A Greek temple, however, may even to-day arouse the mood of worship, and the battles of the Homeric heroes and the tragedy of a Prometheus overtaken by the wrath of the gods may still impress us as real. However remote the age may be which these products of art represent, the general spirit which animated it has not vanished. The greatest turning-point in the spiritual history of man consists in the stupendous achievement which inaugurates the heroic age. I refer to the creation of the ideal man, the hero, and of the god in whom heroic characteristics are magnified into the superhuman and demoniacal. Here lies the beginning of a real history of art; everything earlier is prehistoric, however important it may be for a psychological understanding of art—an importance greater than is generally supposed, since it is only these earliest phenomena that can disclose the conditions underlying the first manifestations of the artistic imagination. Since we may assume that the facts of the history of art are generally familiar, it may here suffice to consider these originating factors and their relation to the general character of the heroic age.
The first and most striking characteristic of the new era is the development of architecture. This is a new art, not to be found in the preceding age, or at most only in very meagre beginnings. The gabled and the conical hut, as well as the tent and the wind-break from which they developed, are not artistic creations, but are products of the most urgent needs of life. The impulse to erect a building for any higher purpose than this, manifested itself first of all when, here and there, the need of the living was attributed also to the dead. For the shelter of the dead, soul and ancestor cults demanded the erection of more permanent structures. Hence there appeared the burial chamber, built of solid stone. Its walls, designed to afford protection from without, were likewise constructed of stone, and constantly became more massive. This stimulated a sense of the sublime and eternal, which reacted on the construction of the monuments and gave them a character far transcending the need that called them into being. The development of the gigantic Egyptian pyramids out of the simple walled tomb, the mastaba, tells us this significant story in pictures that impress the imagination more vividly than words. But the cult of the dead, which this history records, was itself intimately connected with deity cult. The preservation of the mummy involved every possible protection of the corpse from the destructive agencies of time. This fact reveals a concern relating to incalculable ages, and thus gives evidence of an idea of a beyond into which the deceased is supposed to enter. Besides the house of the dead, therefore, there is the house belonging to the deity, and this is even more directly and universally characteristic of the age. This edifice, into which man may enter and come into the presence of the deity, stimulates the incomparably deeper impulse to build a structure worthy of the deity for whom it is erected. Thus, then, we have the temple, designed at the outset for the protection of the sacrificial altar, which had originally been erected in the open, upon consecrated ground. Since it is located at the seat of government, at the place where the citizens assemble for the conduct of political affairs and for purposes of trade, the temple is indicative also of the city and of the State. Secular interests likewise begin to assert themselves. Hence there appears a second mark of the city, the castle, which is the seat of the ruler and of the governing power, and is generally also the final defence, when hostile attacks threaten the city and State. Closely connected with the castle, in all regions in which the ruler lays claim to being a terrestrial deity—as he did, for example, in the ancient realms of the Orient—is the royal palace. In harmony with the twofold position of the ruler, his dwelling is architecturally intermediate between the castle and the temple. Thus, it is the temple, the castle, and the palace, whose development not only awakens the æsthetic sense for architectural forms, but also gives impetus to the other arts, especially to sculpture and to ornamentation. The latter had previously found material for its expression in the utensils of daily use. Enriched through its connection with architectural forms, it now recurs to the miniature work of utensils and implements, where it more and more serves a purely æsthetic need. Of the works of architecture belonging to the early part of this period, it is the temple which proves the greatest æsthetic stimulus. This is due not only to its more exalted purpose, but also to the impetus derived from the fact of the multiplicity of gods. The castle represents the unity of the State. Hence the State contains but one such structure, erected, whenever possible, upon a hill overlooking the city. The temple, from early times on, is the exclusive possession of a single deity. The idea of harbouring several deities in a single structure could arise only later, as a result of special cult conditions and of the increasing size of the sacred edifices. Even then, however, the need for unity in the cult generally caused each temple to be dedicated to a specific deity, the chief god of the temple. Hand in hand with this went a striving for richness and diversity in architecture. The temple, therefore, expresses in a pre-eminent degree not only the character of the religious cult, but also the mental individuality of the people to whom the gods and their cult owe their origin.
Closely connected with temple construction is sculpture, for, in it, the importance which the human personality receives in this age finds its most direct expression. Sculpture, moreover, clearly exhibits the gradual advance from the generic to the individual, from a value originally placed on man as such to absorption in the particular characteristics of the individual. The early, 'generic' figure is generally a representation of the divine personality who has inspired the artist to create an image for the sacred shrine. Art does not aim at the outset to copy man himself; it transfers his characteristics to the deity, and only thus, and after laborious efforts, does it attain its mastery over the human form. True, the gods are conceived as human from the very beginning. So long, however, as the sacrificial stone and the altar stand in the open field, this humanization leads but to inartistic images, similar to fetishes. While these images indicate the presence of the gods at the sacred places, they are not intended as likenesses of the deities themselves. In their external appearance, therefore, the fetishes of early deity cult still impress one as survivals of the totemic age, even though the gods are no longer represented after the fashion of demons, namely, as subhuman, possessing animal or grotesque human forms. The conditions obtaining in life generally were repeated in the realm of art. For the transference of purely human characteristics to the image took place in the case of the hero—or, what amounts to the same thing in the great Oriental civilizations of antiquity, in that of the ruler—earlier than in the case of the deity. The ruler is glorified by means of drawings which represent processions of the hunt and of war, and which are executed on the walls of his palaces. Similarly, the religious impulse expresses itself in the erection of an anthropomorphic image of the deity. This image is placed either in the temple, which is regarded as the dwelling-place of the deity, or in some commanding part of the city which reverences the god as its protector. Here, however, we come upon a noteworthy proof of the fusion of the hero with the demon as described above. From Babylonian and Egyptian monuments we learn that the ruler and his retinue were already represented in human form at a period when deity cult still retained hybrid forms of men and animals, sometimes of the nature of animal demons with human faces, or again as human figures with animal heads. Thus, art strikingly confirms the view that the gods arose from a fusion of the hero personality with the demon. When these external characteristics, due to the past history of gods and their connection with demon beliefs, came to be superseded, the divine image at first reproduced only the typical features of man. In addition to overtowering size, external marks, such as dress, weapons, and sacred animals, were the only evidences of deity. The first step in the transition from the generic figure to the gradual individualization of personality occurs in connection with the facial expression. It is surprising to note the uniformity with which, in all the civilizations of the Old World, the images of the gods, as well as those of the heroes and rulers, acquire an expression of kindliness and gentleness. This trait, however, is again of a generic nature. The stiff, expressionless form has indeed disappeared, but the expression that supervenes is uniform. Though we have referred to this transition as universal, this is true at most as regards the fact that, on the one hand, the expression of complete indifference gives way to one manifesting emotion, and that, on the other, this emotion, though pronounced, again exhibits uniformity. In the quality of this feeling, differences in the character of peoples may come to light, just as they do in myth and religion, with which sculpture in its first stages is closely connected. In the two great cultural regions of the New World, Mexico and Peru, there is a similar transition. The cults of these peoples, however, emphasize the fear-inspiring character of the gods. Hence, in their art, the terrifying grimace of the earliest divine images becomes moderated into an expression of gloomy, melancholy seriousness—a change such as the art of the Old World approximates only in occasional productions that fall rather within the province of the demoniacal, such as the image of the Egyptian sphinx or the gorgon's head of the Greeks. Thus, the transition from features that are entirely expressionless to such as are generic, and then to those that characterize the individual personality, occurs in connection with a change in the quality of the emotions. To illustrate the relative uniformity of this development we might likewise refer to the early Renaissance. Here again it was necessary to seek a path to the concrete wealth of personality that had been lost. Art reached this goal by way of the pathetic expression of humble submission. As soon as plastic art departs from the typical form, we find not only that a change occurs in the expressions of the face, but also that the entire body becomes more lifelike. Along with this, the themes of plastic art pass from the gods, rulers, and heroes to the lower levels of everyday life. Even here art at first continues to be fascinated by the great and conspicuous, though it later gains more and more interest in the significant. This striving for reality in its wealth of individual phenomena is characteristic not only of sculpture, however, but also of painting. Disregarding the bodily form in favour of the portrait, painting first acquires new means of characterization in colour and shading; then, passing from man to his natural environment, it wins from nature the secrets of perspective, and thus gains a far greater mastery over the depths of space than was possible to sculpture. Landscape painting, moreover, unlocks for art that rich world of emotions and moods which man may create from the impressions of nature, and which attain to purity of expression in proportion as man himself disappears from the artistic reproduction of his environment. Thus, the final product of pictorial art, together with such paintings as those of still life and the interior, all of which are psychologically related inasmuch as they express moods, represent the most subjective stage of art, for they dispense with the subject himself whose emotions they portray. All the more, therefore, are these emotions read into nature, whose processes and activities now constitute the content of personal experience. Once it attains to this development, however, landscape art is already far beyond the borders of the heroic age. Indeed, the Renaissance itself advanced no farther than to the threshold of this most subjective form of pictorial art. This art represents the hero—however broad a conception of him we may form—as in all respects a human individual. Thus, art again returns to the being whose ideal enhancement originally gave rise to the hero.