VIII.

RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.—IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.—THE CHALDEAN LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.—RETROSPECT.

1. In speaking of ancient nations, the words "Religion" and "Mythology" are generally used indiscriminately and convertibly. Yet the conceptions they express are essentially and radically different. The broadest difference, and the one from which all others flow, is that the one—Religion—is a thing of the feelings, while the other—Mythology—is a thing of the imagination. In other words, Religion comes from within—from that consciousness of limited power, that inborn need of superior help and guidance, forbearance and forgiveness, from that longing for absolute goodness and perfection, which make up the distinctively human attribute of "religiosity," that attribute which, together with the faculty of articulate speech, sets Man apart from and above all the rest of animated creation. (See p. 149.) Mythology, on the other hand, comes wholly from without. It embodies impressions received by the senses from the outer world and transformed by the poetical faculty into images and stories. (See definition of "Myth" on p. [294].) Professor Max Müller of Oxford has been the first, in his standard work "The Science of Language," clearly to define this radical difference between the two conceptions, which he has never since ceased to sound as a keynote through the long series of his works devoted to the study of the religions and mythologies of various nations. A few illustrations from the one nation with which we have as yet become familiar will help once for all to establish a thorough understanding on this point, most essential as it is to the comprehension of the workings of the human mind and soul throughout the long roll of struggles, errors and triumphs, achievements and failures which we call the history of mankind.

2. There is no need to repeat here instances of the Shumiro-Accadian and Chaldean myths; the last three or four chapters have been filled with them. But the instances of religious feeling, though scattered in the same field, have to be carefully gleaned out and exhibited, for they belong to that undercurrent of the soul which pursues its way unobtrusively and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play of poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and every now and then forces its way to the surface shining forth with a startling purity and beauty. When the Accadian poet invokes the Lord "who knows lie from truth," "who knows the truth that is in the soul of man," who "maketh lies to vanish," who "turneth wicked plots to a happy issue"—this is religion, not mythology, for this is not a story, it is the expression of a feeling. That "the Lord" whose divine omniscience and goodness is thus glorified is really the Sun, makes no difference; that is an error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the religious feeling is splendidly manifest in the invocation. But when, in the same hymn, the Sun is described as "stepping forth from the background of the skies, pushing back the bolts and opening the gate of the brilliant heaven, and raising his head above the land," etc., (see p. [172]) that is only a very beautiful, imaginative description of a glorious natural phenomenon—sunrise; it is magnificent poetry, religious in so far as the sun is considered as a Being, a Divine Person, the object of an intensely devout and grateful feeling; still this is not religion, it is mythology, for it presents a material image to the mind, and one that can be easily turned into narrative, into a story,—which, in fact, suggests a hero, a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called "Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on p. [178], let us add, for greater completeness, the following three remarkable fragments:

  1. "God, my creator, take hold of my arms! Direct the breath of my mouth, my hands direct, O lord of light."
  2. "Lord, let not thy servant sink! Amidst the tumultuous waters take hold of his hand!"
  3. "He who fears not his God, will be cut off even like a reed. He who honors not his goddess, his bodily strength will waste away; like to a star of heaven, his splendor will pale; he will vanish like to the waters of the night."

3. All this is religion, of the purest, loftiest kind; fruitful, too, of good, the only real test of true religion. The deep humility, the trustful appeal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness of weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance from them—these are all very different from the pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile admiration; they are things which flow from the heart, not the fancy, which lighten its weight of sorrow and self-reproach, brighten it with hope and good resolutions, in short, make it happier and better—what no mere imaginative poetry, however fine, can do.

4. The radical distinction, then, between religious feeling and the poetical faculty of mythical creation, is easy to establish and follow out. On the other hand, the two are so constantly blended, so almost inextricably interwoven in the sacred poetry of the ancients, in their views of life and the world, and in their worship, that it is no wonder they should be so generally confused. The most correct way of putting the case would be, perhaps, to say that the ancient Religions—meaning by the word the whole body of sacred poetry and legends as well as the national forms of worship—were made up originally in about equal parts of religious feeling and of mythology. In many cases the exuberance of the imagination gained the upper hand, and there was such a riotous growth of mythical imagery and stories that the religious feeling was almost stifled under them. In others, again, the myths themselves suggested religious ideas of the deepest import and loftiest sublimity. Such was particularly the case with the solar and Chthonic Myths—the poetical presentation of the career of the Sun and the Earth—as connected with the doctrine of the soul's immortality.

5. A curious and significant observation has been made in excavating the most ancient graves in the world, those of the so-called Mound-builders. This name is not that of any particular race or nation, but is given indiscriminately to all those peoples who lived, on any part of the globe, long before the earliest beginnings of even the remotest times which have been made historical by preserved monuments or inscriptions of any kind. All we know of those peoples is that they used to bury their dead—at least those of special renown or high rank—in deep and spacious stone-lined chambers dug in the ground, with a similar gallery leading to them, and covered by a mound of earth, sometimes of gigantic dimensions—a very hill. Hence the name. Of their life, their degree of civilization, what they thought and believed, we have no idea except in so far as the contents of the graves give us some indications. For, like the later, historical races, of which we find the graves in Chaldea and every other country of the ancient world, they used to bury along with the dead a multitude of things: vessels, containing food and drink; weapons, ornaments, household implements. The greater the power or renown of the dead man, the fuller and more luxurious his funeral outfit. It is indeed by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful distance, more skeletons—evidently those of slaves—whose fractured skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom of killing wives and servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what was the sense of giving him wives and slaves, and domestic articles of all kinds, food and weapons, unless it were for his service and use on his journey to the unknown land where he was to enter on a new stage of existence, which the survivors could not but imagine to be a reproduction, in its simple conditions and needs, of the one he was leaving? There is no race of men, however primitive, however untutored, in which this belief in immortality is not found deeply rooted, positive, unquestioning. The belief is implanted in man by the wish; it answers one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings of human nature. For, in proportion as life is pleasant and precious, death is hideous and repellent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to be, is intolerable to the mind; indeed, the senses revolt against it, the mind refuses to grasp and admit it. Yet death is very real, and it is inevitable; and all human beings that come into the world have to learn to face the thought of it, and the reality too, in others, before they lie down and accept it for themselves. But what if death be not destruction? If it be but a passage from this into another world,—distant, unknown and perforce mysterious, but certain nevertheless, a world on the threshold of which the earthly body is dropped as an unnecessary garment? Then were death shorn of half its terrors. Indeed, the only unpleasantness about it would be, for him who goes, the momentary pang and the uncertainty as to what he is going to; and, for those who remain, the separation and the loathsome details—the disfigurement, the corruption. But these are soon gotten over, while the separation is only for a time; for all must go the same way, and the late-comers will find, will join their lost ones gone before. Surely it must be so! It were too horrible if it were not; it must be—it is! The process of feeling which arrived at this conclusion and hardened it into absolute faith, is very plain, and we can easily, each of us, reproduce it in our own souls, independently of the teachings we receive from childhood. But the mind is naturally inquiring, and involuntarily the question presents itself: this solution, so beautiful, so acceptable, so universal,—but so abstract—what suggested it? What analogy first led up to it from the material world of the senses? To this question we find no reply in so many words, for it is one of those that go to the very roots of our being, and such generally remain unanswered. But the graves dug by those old Mound-Builders present a singular feature, which almost seems to point to the answer. The tenant of the funereal chamber is most frequently found deposited in a crouching attitude, his back leaning against the stone-lined wall, and with his face turned towards the West, in the direction of the setting sun.... Here, then, is the suggestion, the analogy! The career of the sun is very like that of man. His rising in the east is like the birth of man. During the hours of his power, which we call the Day, he does his allotted work, of giving light and warmth to the world, now riding radiant and triumphant across an azure sky, now obscured by clouds, struggling through mists, or overwhelmed by tempests. How like the vicissitudes that checker the somewhat greater number of hours—or days—of which the sum makes up a human life! Then when his appointed time expires, he sinks down,—lower, lower—and disappears into darkness,—dies. So does man. What is this night, death? Is it destruction, or only a rest, or an absence? It is at all events not destruction. For as surely as we see the sun vanish in the west this evening, feeble and beamless, so surely shall we behold him to-morrow morning rise again in the east, glorious, vigorous and young. What happens to him in the interval? Who knows? Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he travels through countries we know not of and does other work there; but one thing is sure: that he is not dead, for he will be up again to-morrow. Why should not man, whose career so much resembles the sun's in other respects, resemble him in this? Let the dead, then, be placed with their faces to the west, in token that theirs is but a setting like the sun's, to be followed by another rising, a renewed existence, though in another and unknown world.