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The Evolution
I
>...
OF THE
Ideh
of
God
GRANT ALLEN
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�THE
EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA
OF GOD '
AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF RELIGIONS
BY
GRANT ALLEN
(AUTHOR OF “PHYSIOLOGICAL AESTHETICS,” “ THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS,” “FORCE AND
ENERGY,” BTC.)
Revised and Slightly Abridged by Franklin T. Richards, M.A.
[issued for the rationalist press association, limited, by arrangement
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��PREFACE
Two main schools of religious thinking
exist in our midst at the present day:
the school of humanists and the school
of animists. This work is to some
extent an attempt to reconcile them. It
contains, I believe, the first extended
effort that has yet been made to trace
the genesis of the belief in a God from
its earliest origin in the mind of primitive
man up to its fullest development in
advanced and etherealised Christian
theology. My method is therefore con
structive, not destructive. Instead of
setting out to argue away or demolish a
deep-seated and ancestral element in our
complex nature, this book merely posits
for itself the psychological question; “ By
what successive steps did men come to
frame for themselves the conception of a
deity ?”—or, if the reader so prefers it,
“ How did we arrive at our knowledge
of God ?” It seeks provisionally to
answer these profound and important
questions by reference to the' earliest
beliefs of savages, past or present, and
to the testimony of historical documents
and ancient monuments. It does not
concern itself at all with the validity or
invalidity of the ideas in themselves ; it
does but endeavour to show how
inevitable they were, and how man’s
relation with the external universe was
certain a priori to beget them as of
necessity.
-In so vast a synthesis, it would be
absurd to pretend at the present day
that one approached one’s subject
entirely de novo. Every inquirer must
needs depend much upon the various
researches of his predecessors in various
parts of his field of inquiry. The
problem before us divides itself into
three main portions: first, how did men
come to believe in many gods—the
origin of polytheism; second, how, by
elimination of most of these gods, did
certain races of men come to believe in
one single supreme and omnipotent
God—the origin of monotheism; third,
how, having arrived at that concept, did
the most advanced races and civilisations
come to conceive of that God as Triune,
and to identify one of his Persons with
a particular divine and human incarna
tion-—the origin of Christianity. In
considering each of these three main
problems I have been greatly guided
and assisted by three previous inquirers
or sets of inquirers.
As to the origin of polytheism, I have
adopted in the main Mr. Herbert
Spencer’s remarkable ghost theory,
though with certain important modifica
tions and additions. In this part of my
work I have also been largely aided
by materials derived from Mr. Duff
Macdonald, the able author of Africana;
from Mr. Turner, the well-known Samoan
missionary; and from several other
writers, supplemented as they are by my
own researches among the works of
explorers and ethnologists in general.
�- 6
PREFACE
On the whole, I have here accepted the
theory which traces the origin of the'
belief in gods to primeval ancestor
worship, or rather corpse-worship, as
. against the rival theory which traces its
origin to a supposed primitive animism.
As to the rise of monotheism,,I have
been influenced in no small degree by
Kuenen and the Teutonic school of Old
Testament criticism, whose ideas have
been supplemented by later concepts
derived from Professor Robertson Smith’s
admirable work, The Religion of the
Semites. But here, on the whole, the
central explanation I have to offer is, I
venture to think, new and original: the
theory, good or bad, of the circumstances
which led to the elevation of the ethnical
Hebrew God, Jahweh, above all his rivals,
and his final recognition as the only true
and living god, is my own and no one
else’s.
As to the origin of Christianity, and
its relations to the preceding cults of
corn and wine gods, I have been guided
to a great extent by Mr. J. G. Frazer
and Mannhardt, though I do not suppose
that either the living or the dead
anthropologist would wholly acquiesce
in the use I have made of their splendid
materials. Mr. Frazer, the author of
that learned work, The Golden Bough,
has profoundly influenced the opinions
of all serious workers at anthropology
and the science of religion, and I cannot
too often acknowledge the deep obliga
tions under which I lie to his profound
and able treatises. At the same time,
I have so transformed the material
derived from him and from Dr. Robertson
Smith as to have made it in many ways
practically my own; and I have sup
plemented it by several new examples
and ideas, suggested in the course of my
own tolerably wide reading.
Throughout the book, as a whole, I
also owe a considerable debt to Dr.
E. B. Tylor, from whom I have borrowed
much valuable matter; to Mr. Sidney
Hartland’s Legend of Perseus ; to Mr.
Laurence Gomme, who has come nearer
at times than anyone else to the special
views and theories here promulgated ;
and to Mr. William Simpson, of the
Illustrated London News, an unobtrusive
scholar whose excellent monographs on
The Worship of Death and kindred
subjects have never yet received the
attention they deserve. My other obliga
tions, to Dr. Mommsen, to my friends
Mr. Edward Clodd, Professor John
Rhys, and Professor York Powell, as well
as to numerous travellers, missionaries,
historians, and classicists, are too frequent
to specify.
Looking at the subject broadly, I
would presume to say once more that
my general conclusions may be regarded
as representing to some extent a recon
ciliation between the conflicting schools
of humanists and animists, headed
respectively by Mr. Spencer and Mr.
Frazer, though with a leaning rather to
the former than the latter.
At the same time, it would be a great
mistake to look upon my book as in any
sense a mère eirenicon or compromise.
On the contrary, it is in every part a new
and personal work, containing, whatever
its value, a fresh and original synthesis
of the subject I would venture to point
out as especially novel the two following
points : the complete demarcation of
religion from mythology, as practice
from mere explanatory gloss or guess
work ; and the important share assigned
in the genesis of most existing religious
systems to the deliberate manufacture of
gods by killing. This doctrine of the
manufactured god, to which nearly half
�PREFACE
my book is devoted, seems to me to be
a notion of cardinal value. Among
other new ideas of secondary rank, I
would be bold enough to enumerate the
following: the establishment of three
successive stages in the conception of
the Life of the Dead, which might be
summed up as Corpse-worship, Ghost
worship, and Shade-worship, and which
answer to the three stages of preservation
or mummification, burial, and crema
tion ; the recognition of the high place
to be assigned to the safe-keeping of the
oracular head in the growth of idol
worship ; the importance attached to the
sacred stone, the sacred stake, and the
sacred tree, and the provisional proof of
their close connection with the graves of
the dead; the entirely new conception of
the development of monotheism among
the Jews from the exclusive cult of the
jealous god; the hypothesis of the origin
of cultivation from tumulus-offerings,
and its connection with the growth of
gods of cultivation ; the wide expansion
given to the ancient notion of the divine
human victim; the recognition of the
world-wide prevalence of the five-day
festival of the corn- or wine-god, and of
the close similarity which marks its rites
throughout all the continents, including
America; the suggested evolution of the
god-eating sacraments of lower religions
from the cannibal practice of honorifically
eating one’s dead relations;1 and the
evidence of the wide survival of primitive
corpse-worship down to our own times
in civilised Europe. I think it will be
1 While this work was passing through the
press a similar theory has been propounded by
Mr. Flinders Petrie in an article on “ Eaten
with Honour,” in which he reviews briefly the
evidence for the custom in Egypt and elsewhere.
allowed that, if even a few of these ideas
turn out on examination to be both new
and true, my book will have succeeded
in justifying its existence.
I put forth this work with the utmost
diffidence. The harvest is vast and the
labourers are few. I have been engaged
upon collecting and comparing materials
for more than twenty years. I have
been engaged in writing my book for
more than ten. As I explain in the last
chapter, the present first sketch of the
conclusions at which I have at last
arrived is little more than provisional.
I should also like to add here, what I
point out at greater length in the body
of the work, that I do not hold
dogmatically to all or to a single one of
the ideas I have now expressed. They
are merely conceptions forced upon my
mind by the present state of the evidence;
and I recognise the fact that in so vast and
varied a province, where almost encyclo
paedic knowledge would be necessary in
order to enable one to reach a decided
conclusion, every single one or all
together of these conceptions are liable
to be upset by further research.
I have endeavoured to write without
favour or prejudice, animated by a single
desire to discover the truth. Whether
I have succeeded in that attempt or not,
I trust my book may be received in the
same spirit in which it has been written
—a spirit of earnest anxiety to learn all
that can be learnt by inquiry and
investigation of man’s connection with
his God, in the past and the present.
In this hope I commit it to the kindly
consideration of that small section of the
reading public which takes a living
interest in religious questions.
�CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Christianity as a Religious Standard
PAGE
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II. Religion and Mythology
tM
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III. The Life of the Dead ...
IV. The Origin of Gods
V. Sacred Stones
VI. Sacred Stakes
...
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•M
32
40
50
—
VII. Sacred Trees
»«•
54
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VIII. The Gods of Egypt
59
68
»•N
IX. The Gods of Israel
X. The Rise of Monotheism
XII. The Manufacture of Gods
***
....
77
...
• ••
XI. Human Gods
«4
....
XIII. Gods of Cultivation
XIV. Corn- and Wine-Gods
XV. Sacrifice and Sacrament
XVII. The World before Christ
XVIII. The Growth of Christianity
...
...
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...
•w
...
...
»w
«...
115
...
125
129
...
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91
100
no
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XIX. Survivals in Christendom
_
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XVI. The Doctrine of the Atonement
XX. Conclusion
9
16
135
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147
•W
155
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
CHAPTER I.
CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS
STANDARD
I PROPOSE in this work to trace out in
rough outline the evolution of the idea of
God from its earliest and crudest beginnings
in the savage mind of primitive man to
that highly evolved and abstract form
which it finally assumes in contemporary
philosophical- and theological thinking.
In the eyes of the modern evolutionary
inquirer the interest of the origin and
history of this widespread idea is mainly
psychological. We have before us a vast
group of human opinions, true or false,
which have exercised and still exercise an
immense influence upon the development
of mankind and of civilisation: the question
arises, Why did human beings ever come
to hold these opinions at all ? What was
there in the conditions of early man which
led him to frame to himself such abstract
notions of one or more great supernatural
agents, of whose objective existence he had
certainly in nature no clear or obvious
evidence ? Regarding the problem in this
light, as essentially a problem of the
processes of the human mind, I set aside
from the outset, as foreign to my purpose,
any kind of inquiry into the objective
validity of any one among the religious
beliefs thus set before us as subject-matter.
The question whether there may be a God
or gods, and, if so, what may be his or
their substance and attributes, do not here
concern us. All we have to do in our
present capacity is to ask ourselves strictly,
What first suggested to the mind of man
the notion of deity in the abstract at all ?
And how, from the early multiplicity of
deities which we find to have prevailed in
all primitive times among all human races,
did the conception of a single great and
unlimited deity first take its rise ?
To put the question in this form is to
leave entirely out of consideration the
objective reality or otherwise of the idea
itself. To analyse the origin of a concept
is not to attack the validity of the belief it
encloses. The idea of gravitation, for
example, arose by slow degrees in human
minds, and reached at last its final ex
pression in Newton’s law. But to trace
the steps by which that idea was gradually
reached is not in any way to disprove or to
discredit it. The Christian believer may
similarly hold that men arrived by natural
stages at the knowledge of the one true
God ; he is not bound to reject the final
conception as false merely because of the
steps by which it was slowly evolved. A
creative God, it is true, might prefer to
make a sudden revelation of himself to
some chosen body of men ; but an evolu
tionary God, we may well believe, might
prefer in his inscrutable wisdom to reveal
his own existence and qualities to his crea
tures by m eans of the sam e slow and tentative
intellectual gropings as those by which he
revealed to them the physical truths of
nature. I wish my inquiry, therefore, to be
regarded, not as destructive, but as recon
structive. It attempts to recover and
follow out the various planes in the evolution
of the idea of God, rather than to cast
doubt upon the truth of the evolved
concept.
In investigating any abstruse subject,
it is often best to proceed from the known
to the unknown, even although the unknown
itself may happen to come first in the order
of nature and of logical development. For
this reason, it may be advisable to begin
here with a brief preliminary examination
of Christianity, which is not only the most
familiar of all religions to us Christian
nations, but also the best known in its
origins : and then to show how far we may
safely use it as a standard of reference in
explaining the less obvious and certain
features of earlier or collateral cults.
Christianity, then, viewed as a religious
standard, has this clear and undeniable
�io
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
advantage over almost every other known
form of faith—that it quite frankly and
confessedly sets out in its development
with the worship of a particular Deified
Man.
This point in its history cannot, I think,
be overrated in importance, because in that
single indubitable central fact it gives us
the key to much that is cardinal in all other
religions ; every one of which, as I hope
hereafter to show, equally springs, directly
or indirectly, from the worship of a single
Deified Man, or of many Deified Men,
more or less etherealised. Whatever else may be said about the
origin of Christianity, it is at least fairly
agreed on either side, both by friends and
foes, that this great religion took its rise
around the personality of a certain par
ticular Galilean teacher, by name Jesus,
concerning whom, if we know anything at
all with any approach to certainty, we know
at least that he was a man of the people,
hung on a cross in Jerusalem under the
procuratorship of Caius Pontius Pilatus.
From the very beginning, however, a
legend, true or false (but whose truth or
falsity has no relation whatever to our
present subject), gathered about the per
sonality of this particular Galilean peasant
reformer. Reverenced at first by a small
body of disciples of his own race and caste,
he grew gradually in their minds into a
divine personage, of whom strange stories
were told, and a strange history believed
by a group of ever-increasing adherents in
all parts of the Graeco-Roman Mediterra
nean civilisation. The earliest of these
stories, in all probability—certainly the one
to which most importance was attached by
the pioneers of the faith—clustered about
his death and its immediate sequence.
Jesus, we are told, was crucified, dead, and
buried. But at the end of three days, if
we may credit the early documents of our
Christian faith, his body was no longer to
be found in the sepulchre where it had been
laid by friendly hands : and the report
spread abroad that he had risen again from
the dead. Supernatural messengers an
nounced his resurrection to the women
who had loved him : he was seen in the
flesh from time to time for very short
periods by one or other among the faithful
who still revered his memory. At last,
after many such appearances, he was
suddenly carried up to the sky before the
eyes of his followers, where, as one of the
versions authoritatively remarks, he was
“received into heaven, and sat on the
right hand of God”—that is to say, of
Jahweh, the ethnical deity of the Hebrew
people.
Such in its kernel was the original Chris
tian doctrine as handed down to us amid
a mist of miracle, in four or five documents
of doubtful age and uncertain authenticity.
Even this central idea does not fully
appear in the Pauline epistles, believed to
be the oldest in date of all our Christian
writings : it first takes full shape in the
somewhat later Gospels and Acts of the
Apostles. In the simplest and perhaps
the earliest of these definite accounts we
are merely told the story of the death and
resurrection, the latter fact being vouched
for on the dubious testimony of “ a young
man clothed in a long white garment,”
supplemented (apparently at a later period)
by subsequent “appearances” to various
believers. With the controversies which
have raged about these different stories,
however, the broad anthropological inquiry
into the evolution of God has no concern.
It is enough for us here to admit, what the
evidence probably warrants us in concluding,
that a real historical man of the name of
Jesus did once exist in Lower Syria, and
that his disciples at a period very shortly
after his execution believed him to have
actually risen from the dead, and in due
time to have ascended into heaven.
At a very early date, too, it was further
asserted that Jesus was in some unnatural
or supernatural sense “ the son of God ”—
that is to say, once more, the son of
Jahweh, the local and national deity of the
J ewish people. In other words, his worship
was affiliated upon the earlier historical
worship of the people in whose midst he
lived, and from whom his first disciples
were exclusively gathered. It was not, as
we shall more fully see hereafter, a
revolutionary or purely destructive system.
It based itself upon the common concep
tions of the Semitic community. The
handful of Jews and Galileans who accepted
Jesus as a divine figure did not think it
necessary, in adopting him as a god, to get
rid of their own preconceived religious
opinions. They believed rather in his
prior existence, as a part of Jahweh, and
in his incarnation in a human body for the
purpose of redemption. And when his cult
spread around into neighbouring countries
(chiefly, it would seem, through the instru
mentality of one Paul of Tarsus, who had
never seen him, or had beheld him only in
what is vaguely called “a vision”) the cult
of Jahweh went hand in hand with it, so
�CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD
ii
that a sort of modified mystic monotheism,
connected with the personality of pre
based on Judaism, became the early creed
existent deities.
of the new cosmopolitan Christian Church.
In the earlier stages, it seems pretty clear
Other legends, of a sort familiar in the
that the relations of nascent Christianity to
lives of the founders of creeds and churches
Judaism were vague and undefined : the
elsewhere, grew up about the life of the
Christians regarded themselves as a mere
Christian leader ; or, at any rate, incidents sect of the Jews, who paid special reverence
of a typical kind were narrated by his
to a particular dead teacher, now raised to
disciples as part of his history. That a heaven by a special apotheosis of a kind
god or a godlike person should be born of with which everyone was then familiar.
a woman by the ordinary physiological But as the Christian Church spread to
processes of humanity seems derogatory to other lands, by the great seaports, it
his dignity—perhaps fatal to the godhead :x became on the one hand more distinct and
therefore it was asserted—we know not exclusive, while on the other hand it
whether truly or otherwise—that the
became more definitely dogmatic and
founder of Christianity, by some mysterious theological. It was in Egypt, it would
afflatus, was born of a virgin. Though seem, that the Christian pantheon first took
described at times as the son of one Joseph, its definite Trinitarian shape. Under the
a carpenter, of Nazareth, and of Mary, his
influence of the old Egyptian love for
betrothed wife, he was also regarded in an Triads of Trinities of gods, a sort of
alternative way as the son of the Hebrew mystical triune deity was at last erected out
god Jahweh, just as Alexander, though of the Hebrew Jahweh and the man Jesus,
known to be the son of Philip, was also with the aid of the Holy Spirit or Wisdom
considered to be the offspring of Amon-Ra of Jahweh. How far the familiar Egyptian
or Zeus Ammon. We are told, in order to Trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus may
lessen this discrepancy (on the slender have influenced the conception of the
authority of a dream of Joseph’s), how
Christian Trinity, thus finally made up of
Jesus was miraculously conceived by the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we shall
Holy Spirit of Jahweh in Mary’s womb.
discuss later; for the present, it may
He was further provided with a royal
suffice to point out that the Graeco
pedigree from the house of David, a real or Egyptian Athanasius was the great upholder
mythical early Hebrew king ; and prophe of the definite dogma of the Trinity against
cies from the Hebrew sacred books were opposing (heretical) Christian thinkers; and
found to be fulfilled in his most childish
that the hymn or so-called creed known by
adventures.
In one of the existing his name bears the impress of the mystical
biographies, commonly ascribed to Luke,
Egyptian spirit, tempered by the Alexan
the companion of Paul, but supposed to drian Greek delight in definiteness and
bear traces of much later authorship, minuteness of philosophical distinction.
many such marvellous stories are recounted
In this respect, too, we shall observe in
of his infantile adventures: and in all our the sequel that the history of Christianity,
documents miracles attest his supernatural
the most known among the religions, was
powers, while appeal is constantly made to
exactly parallel to that of earlier and
the fulfilment of supposed predictions (all
obscurer creeds. At first, the relations of
of old Hebrew origin) as a test and the gods to one another are vague and
credential of the reality of his divine undetermined ; their pedigree is often
mission.
confused and even contradictory ; and the
We shall see hereafter that these two pantheon lacks anything like due hier
points—the gradual growth of a myth or archical system or subordination of persons.
legend, and affiliation upon earlier local
But as time goes on, the questions of
religious ideas—are common features in
theology or mythology are debated among
the evolution of gods in general, and of the
the priests and other interested parties,
God of monotheism in particular. In
details of this sort get settled in the form
almost every case where we can definitely of rigid dogmas, while subtle distinctions
track him to his rise, the deity thus begins of a, philosophical or metaphysical sort
with a Deified Man, elevated by his
tend to be imported by more civilised men
worshippers to divine rank, and provided
into the crude primitive faith.
with a history of miraculous incident, often
It was largely in other countries than
Judaea, and especially in Gaul, Rome, and
1 On this subject see Mr. Sidney Hartland’s
Egypt, that symbolism came to the aid of
Legend af Perseus, voL i. passim.
mysticism : that the cross, the tau, the
�12
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
labarum, the fish, the Alpha and Omega,
and all the other early Christian emblems,
were evolved and perfected; and that the
beginnings of Christian art took their first
definite forms.
Christianity, being a
universal, not a local or national, religion,
has adopted in its course many diverse
elements from most varied sources.
Originally, it would seem, the Christian
pantheon was almost exclusively filled by
the triune. God, in his three developments
or “ persons.” But from a very early time,
if not from the first dawn of the Christian
cult, it was customary to reverence the
remains of those who had suffered for the
faith, and perhaps even to invoke their aid
with Christ and the Father. The Roman
branch of the church, especially, accustomed
to the Roman worship of ancestors and the
Dii Manes, had its chief places of prayer
in the catacombs, where its dead were laid.
Thus arose the practice of the invocation
of saints, at whose graves or relics prayers
were offered both to the supreme deity and
to the faithful dead themselves as inter
cessors with Christ and the Father. The
early Christians, accustomed in their
heathen stage to pay worship to the
spirits of their deceased friends, could not
immediately give up this pious custom after
their conversion to the new creed, and so
grafted it on to their adopted religion.
Thus the subsidiary founders of Chris
tianity, Paul, Peter, the Apostles, the Evan
gelists, the martyrs, the confessors, came
to rank almost as an inferior order of
deities.
Among the persons who thus shared in
the honours of the new faith, the mother of
Jesus early assumed a peculiar prominence.
Goddesses had filled a very large part in
the devotional spirit of the older religions :
it was but natural that the devotees of Isis
and Pasht, of Artemis and Aphrodite,
should look for some corresponding feminine
object of worship in the younger faith.
The Theotokos, the mother of God, the
blessed Madonna, soon came to possess a
practical importance in Christian worship
scarcely inferior to that enjoyed by the
persons of the Trinity themselves—in cer
tain southern countries, indeed, actually
superior to it. The Virgin and Child, in
pictorial representation, grew to be the
favourite subject of Christian art. How
far this particular development of the
Christian spirit had its origin in Egypt,
and was related to the well-known Egyptian
figures of the goddess Isis with the child
Horus in her lap, is a question which may
demand consideration hereafter. For the
present, it will be enough to call attention
in passing to the fact that in this secondary
rank of deities or semi-divine persons, the
saints and martyrs, all alike, were at one
time or another Living Men and Women.
In other words, besides the one Deified
Man, Jesus, round whom the entire system
of Christianity centres, the Church now
worships also in the second degree a whole
host of minor Dead Men and Women,
bishops, priests, virgins, and confessors.
From the earliest to the latest ages of
the Church, the complexity thus long ago
introduced into her practice has gone on
increasing with every generation. Nomi
nally from the very outset a monotheistic
religion, Christianity gave up its strict
monotheism almost at the first start by
admitting the existence of three persons in
the godhead, whom it vainly endeavoured
to unify by its mystic but confessedly
incomprehensible Athanasian dogma. The
Madonna (with the Child) rose in time
practically to the rank of an independent
goddess (in all but esoteric Catholic theory):
while St. Sebastian, St. George, St. John
Baptist, St. Catherine, and even St. Thomas
of Canterbury himself, became as important
objects of worship in certain places as the
deity in person. As more and more saints
died in each generation, while the cult of
the older saints still lingered on everywhere
more or less locally, the secondary pantheon
grew ever fuller and fuller.
Obscure
personages, like St. Crispin and St. Cosmas,
St. Chad and St. Cuthbert, rose to the rank
of departmental or local patrons, like the
departmental and local gods of earlier
religions. Every trade, every guild, every
nation, every province, had its peculiar
saint. And at the same time the theory
of the Church underwent a constant
evolution. Creed was added to creed—
Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian, and so forth,
each embodying some new and often
subtle increment to the whole mass of
accepted dogma. Council after council
made fresh additions of articles of faith—
the Unity of Substance, the Doctrine of
the Atonement, the Immaculate Concep
tion, the Authority of the Church, the
Infallibility of the Pope in his spiritual
capacity. And all these also are wellknown incidents of every evolving cult:
constant increase in the number of divine
beings ; constant refinements in the articles
of religion, under the influence of priestly
or scholastic metaphysics.
Two or three other points must still be
�CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD
noted in this hasty review of the evolution
of Christianity, regarded as a standard of
religion.
In the matter of ceremonial and certain
other important accessories of religion it
must frankly be admitted that Christianity
rather borrowed from the older cults than
underwent a natural and original develop
ment on its own account. A priesthood,
as such, does not seem to have formed any
integral or necessary part of the earliest
Christendom: and when the orders of
bishops, priests, and deacons were intro
duced into the new creed, the idea seems
to have been derived rather from the
existing priesthoods of anterior religions
than from any organic connection with the
central facts of the new worship. From
the very nature of the circumstances this
would inevitably result. For the primitive
temple (as we shall see hereafter) was the
Dead Man’s tomb; the altar was his
gravestone ; and the priest was the relative
or representative who continued the
customary gifts to the ghost at the grave.
But the case of Jesus differs from almost
every other case on record of a Deified
Man in this—that his body seems to have
disappeared at an early date; and that,
inasmuch as his resurrection and ascension
into heaven were made the corner-stone of
the new faith, it was impossible for worship
of his remains to take the same form as
had been taken in the instances of almost
all previously deified Dead Persons. Thus,
the materials out of which the Temple, the
Altar, Sacrifices, Priesthood, are usually
evolved, were here to a very large extent
necessarily wanting.
Nevertheless, so essential to religion in
the minds of its followers are all these
imposing and wonted accessories that our
cult did actually manage to borrow them
ready-made from the great religions that
went before it, and to bring them into
some sort of artificial relation with its own
system. You cannot revolutionise the
human mind at one blow. The pagans
had been accustomed to all these ideas as
integral parts of religion as they understood
it : and they proceeded as Christians to
accommodate them by side-issues to the
new faith, in which these elements had no
such natural place as in the older creeds.
Not only did sacred places arise at the
graves or places of martyrdom of the
saints ; not only was worship performed
beside the bones of the holy dead, in the
catacombs and elsewhere ; but even a
mode of sacrifice and of sacrificial com
IS
munion was invented in the mass—a
somewhat artificial development from the
possibly unsacerdotal Agape-feasts of the
primitive Christians. Gradually, churches
gathered around the relics of the martyr
saints : and in time it became a principle
of usage that every church must contain
an altar—made of stones on the analogy
of the old sacred stones ; containing the
bones or other relics of a saint, like all
earlier shrines ; consecrated by the pouring
on of oil after the antique fashion ; and
devoted to the celebration of the sacrifice
of the mass, which became by degrees
more and more expiatory and sacerdotal
in character. As the saints increased in
importance, new holy places sprang up
around their bodies ; and some of these
holy places, containing their tombs, became
centres of pilgrimage for the most distant
parts of Christendom; as did also in
particular the empty tomb of Christ him
self, the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
The growth of the priesthood kept pace
with the growth of ceremonial in general,
till at last it culminated in the mediaeval
papacy, with its hierarchy of cardinals, arch
bishops, bishops, priests, and other endless
functionaries.
Vestments, incense, and
like accompaniments of sacerdotalism also
rapidly gained ground. All this, too, is a
common trait of higher religious evolution
everywhere. So likewise are fasting, vigils,
and the ecstatic condition. But asceticism,
monasticism, celibacy, and other forms of
morbid abstinence are peculiarly rife in the
east, and found their highest expression
in the life of the Syrian and Egyptian
hermits.
Lastly, a few words must be devoted in
passing to the rise and development of the
Sacred Books, now excessively venerated
in North-western Christendom. These
consisted in the first instance of genuine or
spurious letters of the apostles to the
various local churches (the so-called
Epistles), some of which would no doubt
be preserved with considerable reverence ;
and later of lives or legends of Jesus and
his immediate successors (the so-called
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles).
Furthermore, as Christianity adopted from
Judaism the cult of its one supreme divine
figure, now no longer envisaged as Jahweh,
the national deity of the Hebrews, but as a
universal cosmopolitan God and Father, it
followed naturally that the sacred books
of the Jewish people, the literature of
J ahweh-worship, should also receive con
siderable attention at the hands of the new
�14
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
priesthood. By a gradual process of selec
tion and elimination, the canon of scripture
was evolved from these heterogeneous
materials : the historical or quasi-historical
and prophetic Hebrew tracts were adopted
by the Church, with a few additions of later
date, such as the Book of Daniel, under
the style and title of the Old Testament.
The more generally accepted lives of Christ,
again, known as Evangels or Gospels ; the
Acts of the Apostles ; the epistles to the
churches ; and that curious mystical alle
gory of the Neronian persecution known
as the Apocalypse, were chosen out of the
mass of early Christian literature to form
the authoritative collection of inspired
writing which we call the New Testament.
The importance of this heterogeneous
anthology of works belonging to all ages
and systems, but confounded together in
popular fancy under the name of the Books,
or more recently still as a singular noun,
the Bible, grew apace with the growth of
the Church : though the extreme and
superstitious adoration of their mere verbal
contents has only been reached in the
debased and reactionary forms of Chris
tianity followed at the present day by our
half-educated English and American Pro
testant dissenters.
From this very brief review of the most
essential factors in the development of the
Christian religion as a system, strung
loosely together with a single eye to the
requirements of our present investigation,
it will be obvious at once to every intelligent
reader that Christianity cannot possibly
throw for us any direct or immediate light
on the problem of the evolution of the idea
of God. Not only did the concept of a
god and gods exist full-fledged long before
Christianity took its rise at all, but also the
purely monotheistic conception of a single
supreme God, the creator and upholder of
all things, had been reached in all its
sublime simplicity by the Jewish teachers
centuries before the birth of the man Jesus.
Christianity borrowed from Judaism this
magnificent concept, and, humanly speak
ing, proceeded to spoil it by its addition of
the Son and the Holy Ghost, who mar the
complete unity of the grand Hebrew ideal.
Even outside Judaism the self-same notion
had already been arrived at in a certain
mystical form as the “ esoteric doctrine ” of
the Egyptian priesthood ; from whom, with
their peculiar views as to emanations and
Triads, the Christian dogmas of the Trinity,
the Logos, the Incarnation, and the Holy
Ghost were in large part borrowed. The
Jews of Alexandria formed the connecting
link between Egyptian heathenism, Hellenic
philosophy, and early Christianity; and
their half-philosophical, half-religious idea's
may be found permeating the first writings
and the first systematic thought of the
nascent church. In none of these ways,
therefore, can we regard Christianity as
affording us any direct or immediate gui
dance in our search for the origin and evolu
tion of the coricepts of many gods, and of
one God the creator.
Still, in a certain secondary and illustra
tive sense, I think we are fully justified in
saying that the history of Christianity, the
religion whose beginnings are most surely
known to us, forms a standard of reference
for all the other religions of the world.
Its value in this respect may best be
understood if I point out briefly in two
contrasted statements the points in which
it may and the points in which it may
not be fairly accepted as a typical reli
gion.
Let us begin first with the points in
which it may.
In the first place, Christianity is tho
roughly typical in the fact that beyond all
doubt its most central divine figure was at
first nothing other than a particular Deified
Man. All else that has been asserted
about this particular Man—that he was
the Son of God, that he was the incarna
tion of the Logos, that he existed previously
from all eternity, that he sits now on the
right hand of the Father—all the rest of
these theological stories do nothing in any
way to obscure the plain and universally
admitted historical fact that this Divine
Person, the Very God of Very God, being
of one substance with the Father, begotten
of the Father before all worlds, was yet, at
the moment when we first catch a glimpse
of him in the writings of his followers, a
Man recently deceased, respected, rever
enced, and perhaps worshipped by a little
group of fellow-peasants who had once
known him as Jesus, the son of the
carpenter. Jesus and his saints—Dominic,
Francis, Catherine of Siena—are no mere
verbal myths, no allegorical concepts, no
personifications of the Sun, the Dawn, the
Storm-cloud. Leaving aside for the present
from our purview of the Faith that one
element of the older supreme God—the
Hebrew Jahweh—whom Christianity bor
rowed from the earlier Jewish religion, we
can say at least with perfect certainty that
every single member of the Christian pan
theon—Jesus, the Madonna, St. John
�CHRISTIANITY AS A RELIGIOUS STANDARD
Baptist, St. Peter, the Apostles, the Evan
gelists—were, just as much as San Carlo
Borromeo or St. Thomas of Canterbury or
St. Theresa, Dead Men or Women, wor
shipped after their death with divine or
quasi-divine honours. In this the best-known
of all human religions, the one that has
grown up under the full eye of history, the
one whose gods and saints are most dis
tinctly traceable, every object of worship,
save only the single early and as yet
unresolved deity of the Hebrew cult, whose
origin is lost for us in the midst of ages,
turns out on inquiry to be, in ultimate
analysis, a Real Man or Woman.
That point alone I hold to be of cardinal
importance, and of immense or almost in
estimable illustrative value, in seeking for
the origin of the idea of a god in earlier
epochs.
In the second place, Christianity is
thoroughly typical in all that concerns its
subsequent course of evolution ; the gradual
elevation of its central Venerated Man into
a God of the highest might and power ;
the multiplication of secondary deities or
saints by worship or adoration of other
Dead Men and Women ; the growth of a
graduated and duly-subordinated hierarchy
of divine personages ; the rise of a legend,
with its miracles; the formation of a
definite theology, philosophy, and syste
matic dogmatism; the development of
special artistic forms, and the growth or
adoption of appropriate symbolism ; the
production of sacred books, rituals, and
formularies ; the rise of ceremonies,
mysteries, initiations, and sacraments ; the
reverence paid to relics, sacred sites, tombs,
and dead bodies ; and the close connection
of the religion as a whole with the ideas of
death, the soul, the ghost, the spirit, the
resurrection of the body, the last judgment,
hell, heaven, the life everlasting, and all
the other vast group of concepts which sur
round the simple fact of death in theprimitive human mind generally.
Now, on the other side, let us look
wherein Christianity to a certain small
extent fails to be typical.
It fails to be typical because it borrows
largely a whole ready-made theology, and
above all a single supreme God, from a
pre-existent religion. In so far as it takes
certain minor features from other cults, we
can hardly say with truth that it does not
represent the average run of religious
systems; for almost every particular new
Creed so bases itself upon elements of still
earlier faiths ; and it is perhaps impossible
B
for us at the present day to get back to
anything like a really primitive or original
form of cult. But Christianity is very far
removed indeed from all primitive cults in
that it accepts ready-made the monotheistic
conception, the high-water mark, so to
speak, of religious philosophising. While
in the frankness with which it exhibits to
us what is practically one-half of its supreme
deity as a Galilean peasant of undoubted
humanity, subsequently deified and etherealised, it allows us to get down at a single
step to the very origin of godhead ; yet in
the strength with which it asserts for the
other half of its supreme deity (the Father,
with his shadowy satellite the Holy Ghost)
an immemorial antiquity and a complete
severance from, human life, it is the least
anthropomorphic and the most abstract of
creeds. In order to track the idea of God
to its very source, then, we must apply in
the last resort to this unresolved element of
Christianity—the Hebrew Jahweh—the
same sort of treatment which we apply to
the conception of Jesus or Buddha—we
must show it to be also the immensely
transfigured and magnified ghost of a
Human Being.
Furthermore, Christianity fails to be
typical in that it borrows also from pre
existing religions to a great extent the
ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, the temple,
the altar, which, owing to the curious dis
appearance or at least unrecognisability of
the body of its founder (or, rather, its
central object of worship), have a less
natural place in our Christian system than
in any other known form of religious prac
tice.
Magnificent churches, a highlyevolved sacerdotalism, the sacrifice of the
mass, the altar, and the relics, have all
been imported in their fullest shape into
developed Christianity. But every one of
these things is partly borrowed from earlier
religions, and partly grew up about the
secondary worship of saints and martyrs,
their bones, their tombs, their catacombs,
and theii reliquaries.
I propose, in subsequent chapters, to
trace the growth of the idea of a God from
the most primitive origins to the most
highly evolved forms ; beginning with the
ghost, and the early undeveloped deity :
continuing through polytheism to the. rise
of monotheism ; and then returning at last
once more to the full Christian conception.
I shall try to show, in short, the evolution
of God, by starting with the evolution of
gods in .general, and coming down by
gradual stages through various races to the
�i6
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
evolution of the Hebrew, Christian, and
Moslem God in particular. And the goal
towards which I shall move will be the
one already foreshadowed in this introduc
tory chapter—the proof that in its origin
the concept of a god is nothing more than
that of a Dead Man, regarded as a still
surviving ghost or spirit, and endowed
with increased or supernatural powers and
qualities.
CHAPTER II.
RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
At the very outset of the profound inquiry
on which we are now about to embark, we
are met by a difficulty of considerable
magnitude. I n the opinion of most modern
mythologists mythology is the result of “ a
disease of language.” We are assured by
many eminent men that the origin of
religion is to be sought, not in savage
ideas about ghosts and spirits, the Dead
Man and his body or his surviving double,
but in primitive misconceptions of the
meaning of words which had reference to
the appearance of the Sun and the Clouds,
the Wind and the Rain, the Dawn and the
Dusk, the various phenomena of meteor
ology in general. If this be so, then our
attempt to derive the evolution of gods
from the crude ideas of early men about
their dead is clearly incorrect.
I do not believe these suggestions are
correct. It seems to me that the worship
of the sun, moon, and stars, instead of
being an element in primitive religion, is
really a late and derivative type of adora
tion ; and that mythology is mistaken in
the claims it makes for its own importance
in the genesis of the idea of a God or gods.
In order, however, to clear the ground for
a fair start in this direction, we ought to
begin by inquiring into the relative posi
tions of mythology and religion.
Religion, says another group of modern
thinkers, of whom Mr. Edward Clodd is
perhaps the most able English exponent,
“ grew out of fear.” It is born of man’s
terror of the great and mysterious natural
agencies by which he is surrounded. Now,
I am not concerned to deny that many
mythological beings of various terrible
forms do really so originate. I would
readily accept some such vague genesis for
many of the dragons and monsters which
abound in all savage or barbaric imaginings.
I would give up to Mr. Clodd the Etruscan
devils and the Hebrew Satan, the Grendels
and the Fire-drakes, the whole brood of
Cerberus, Briareus, the Cyclops, the Cen
taurs. None of these, however, is a god or
anything like one. A god, as I understand
the word, and as the vast mass of mankind
has always understood it, is a supernatural
being to be revered and worshipped. He
stands to his votaries, on the whole, as Dr.
Robertson Smith has well pointed out, in a
kindly and protecting relation. He may
be angry with them at times, to be sure;
but his anger is temporary and paternal
alone : his permanent attitude towards
his people is one of friendly concern; he
is worshipped as a beneficent and generous
Father. It is the origin of gods in this
strictest sense that concerns us here.
Bearing this distinction carefully in mind,
let us proceed to consider the essentials of
religion. If you were to ask almost any
intelligent and unsophisticated child,
“ What is religion ?” he would answer
off-hand, with the clear vision of youth,
“ Oh, it’s saying your prayers, and reading
your Bible, and singing hymns, and going
to church or to chapel on Sundays.” If
you were to ask any intelligent and
unsophisticated Hindu peasant the same
question, he would answer in almost the
self-same spirit, “ Oh, it is doing poojah
regularly, and paying your dues every, day
to Mahadeo.” If you were to ask any
simple-minded African savage, he would
similarly reply, “It is giving the gods flour,
and oil, and native beer, and goat-mutton.”
And finally, if you were to ask a devout
Italian contadino, he would instantly say,
“It is offering up candles and prayers to
the Madonna, attending mass, and remem
bering the saints on every festa.”
And they would all be quite right. This,
in its essence, is precisely what we call
religion. Apart from the special refine
ments of the higher minds in particular
creeds, which strive to import into it all,
according to their special tastes or fancies,
a larger or smaller dose of philosophy, or
of metaphysics, or of ethics, or of mysti
cism, this is just what religion means and
has always meant to the vast majority of
the human species. What is common to
it throughout is Custom or Practice : a
certain set of more or less similar Obser
vances : propitiation, prayer, praise, offer
ings : the request for divine favours, the
deprecation of divine anger, or other
misfortunes: and as the outward and
�RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
visible adjuncts of all these, the altar, the
sacrifice, the temple, the church ; priest
hood, services, vestments, ceremonial.
What is not at all essential to religion in
its wider aspect—taking the world round,
both past and present, Pagan, Buddhist,
Mohammedan, Christian, savage, and
civilised—is the ethical element, properly
so called. And what is very little essential
indeed is the philosophical element, theo
logy or mythology, the abstract theory of
spiritual existences. This theory, to be
sure, is in each country or race closely
related with religion under certain aspects;
and the stories told about the gods or God
are much mixed up with the cult itself in
the minds of worshippers ; but they are no
proper part of religion, strictly so called.
In a single word, I contend that religion,
as such, is essentially practical : theology
or mythology, as such, is essentially
theoretical.
Moreover, I also believe, and shall
attempt to show, that the two have to a
large extent distinct origins and roots:
that the union between them is in great
part adventitious : and that, therefore, to
account for or explain the one is by no
means equivalent to accounting for and
explaining the other.
Frank recognition of this difference of
origin between religion and _ mythology
would, I imagine, largely reconcile the two
conflicting schools of thought which at
present divide opinion between them on
this interesting problem in the evolution of
human ideas. On the one side, we have
the mythological school of interpreters,
whether narrowly linguistic, like Professor
Max Müller, or broadly anthropological,
like Mr. Andrew Lang, attacking the
problem from the point of view of myth or
theory alone. On the other side, we have
the truly religious school of interpreters,
like Mr. Herbert Spencer, and to some
extent Mr. Tylor, attacking the problem
from the point of view of practice or real
religion. The former school, it seems to
me, has failed to perceive that what it is
accounting for is not the origin of religion
at all—of worship, which is the central-root
idea of all religious observance, or of the
temple, the altar, the priest, and the
offering, which are its outer expression—
but merely the origin of myth or fable.
The latter school, on the other hand, tvhile
correctly interpreting the origin of all that
is essential and central in religion, have
perhaps under-estimated the value of their
opponents’ work through regarding it as
really opposed to their own, instead of
accepting what part of it may be true in
the light of a contribution to an indepen
dent but allied branch of the same inquiry.
In short, if the view here suggested be
correct, Spencer and Tylor have paved
the way to a true theory of the Origin of
Religion: Max Muller, Lang, and the
other mythologists have thrown out hints
of varying value towards a true theory of
the Origin of Mythology, or of its more
modern equivalent and successor, Theo
logy.
A brief outline of facts will serve to
bring into clearer relief this view of
religion as essentially practical—a set of
observances, rendered inevitable by the
primitive data of human psychology. It
will then be seen that what is fundamental
and essential in religion is the body of
practices, remaining throughout all stages
of human development the same, or nearly
the same, in spite of changes of mytho
logical or theological theory; and that
what is accidental and variable is the
particular verbal explanation or philoso
phical reason assigned for the diverse rites
and ceremonies.
In its simplest surviving savage type,
religion consists wholly and solely in
certain acts of deference paid by the living
to the persons of the dead. I shall try to
show in the sequel that down to its most
highly evolved modern type in the most
cultivated societies, precisely similar acts
of deference, either directly to corpses or
ghosts as such, or indirectly to gods who
were once ghosts, or were developed from
ghosts, form its essence still. But to begin
with I will try to bring a few simple
instances of the precise nature of religion
in its lowest existing savage mode.
Here in outline, but in Mr. Macdonald’s1
own words, are the ideas and observances
which this careful and accurate investigator
found current among the tribes of die heart
of Africa.
4 L Cu
The tribes he-¡wed-amongi“ are unani
mous in saying that there is something be
yond the body which they call spirit. Every
human body at death is forsaken by this
spirit.” That is the almost universal though
not quite primitive belief, whose necessary
genesis has been well traced out by Mr.
Herbert Spencer and Mr. Lester Ward.
“ Do these spirits ever die ?” Mr. Mac
donald asks. “ Some,” he answers, “ I
have heard affirm that it is possible for a
’The Rev. Duff Macdonald, author vtAfricana.
C
�i8
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
troublesome spirit to be killed. Others
give this a direct denial. Many, like
Kumpama, or Cherasulo, say, ‘You ask
me whether a man’s spirit ever dies. I
cannot tell. I have never been in the
spirit-world ; but this I am certain of, that
spirits live for a very long time.’”
On the question, “ Who the gods are ?”
Mr. Macdonald says :—
“In all our translations of Scripture where
we found the word God we used Mulungu;
but this word is chiefly used by the natives
as a general name for spirit. The spirit of
a deceased man is called his Mulungu, and
all the prayers and offerings of the living
are presented to such spirits of the dead.
It is here that we find the great centre of
the native religion. The spirits of the dead
are the gods of the living.
“ Where are these gods found ? At the
grave? No........Their god is not the body in
the grave, but the spirit, and they seek this
spirit at the place where their departed
kinsman last lived among them. It is the
great tree at the verandah of the dead man’s
house that is their temple ; and if no tree
grow here, they erect a little shade, and
there perform their simple rites. If this
spot becomes too public, the offerings may
be defiled, and the sanctuary will be removed
to a carefully-selected spot under some
beautiful tree. Very frequently a man
presents an offering at the top of his own
bed beside his head. He wishes his god
to come to him and whisper in his ear as he
sleeps.”
And here, again, we get the origin of
nature-worship :—
“ The spirit of an old chief may have a
whole mountain for his residence, but he
dwells chiefly on the cloudy summit. There
he sits to receive the worship of his votaries,
and to send down the refreshing showers in
answer to their prayers.”
Almost as essential to religion as these
prime factors in its evolution—the god,
worship, offerings, presents, holy places,
temples—is the existence of a priesthood.
Here is how the Central Africans arrive at
that special function :—
“A certain amount of etiquette is ob
served in approaching the gods. I n no case
can a little boy or girl approach these deities,
neither can anyone that has not been at the
mysteries. The common qualification is
that a person has attained a certain age,
about twelve or fourteen years, and has a
house of his own. Slaves seldom pray,
except when they have had a dream..
Children that have had a dream tell their
mother, who approaches the deity on their
behalf. (A present for the god is necessary,
and the slave or child may not have it.)
“ Apart from the case of dreams and a
few such private matters, it is not usual for
anyone to approach the gods except the
chief of the village. He is the recognised
high priest who presents prayers and offer
ings on behalf of all that live in his village.
...... The natives worship not so much in
dividually as in villages or communities.
Their religion is more a public than a private
matter.”
But there are also further reasons why
priests are necessary. Relationship forms
always a good ground for intercession. A
mediator is needed.
“ The chief of a village,” says Mr. Mac
donald, “ has another title to the priesthood.
It is his relatives that are the village gods.
Everyone that lives in the village recognises
these gods; but if anyone remove to another
village, he changes his gods. He recognises
now the gods of his new chief. One wish
ing to pray to the god (or gods) of any vil
lage naturally desires to have his prayers
presented through the village chief, because
the latter is nearly related to the village god,
and may be expected to be better listened
to than a stranger.”
Elimination and natural selection next
give one the transition from the ghost to the
god, properly so called.
“The gods of the natives then are» nearly
as numerous as their dead. It is impossible
to worship all ; a selection must be made,
and, as we have indicated, each worshipper
turns most naturally to the spirits of his own
departed relatives; but his gods are too many
still, and in farther selecting he turns to those
that have lived nearest his own time. Thus
the chief of a village will not trouble himself
about his great-great-grandfather: he will
present his offering to his own immediate
predecessor, and say, ‘ O father, I do not
know all your relatives, you know them all,
invite them to feast with you.’ The offer
ing is not simply for himself, but for him
self and all his relatives.”
Ordinary ghosts are soon forgotten with
the generation that knew them. Not so a
few select spirits, the Caesars and Napo
leons, the Charlemagnes and Timurs of
savage empires.
“A great chief that has been successful
in his wars does not pass out of memory so
soon. He may become the god of a moun
tain or a lake, and may receive homage as
a local deity long after his own descen
dants have been driven from the spot.
�RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY
When there is a supplication for rain the
inhabitants of the country pray not so much
to their own forefathers as to the god of
yonder mountain on whose shoulders the
great rain-clouds repose. (Smaller hills are
seldom honoured with a deity.) ”
Well, in all this we get, it seems to me,
the very essentials and universals of religion
generally. In the presents brought to the
dead man’s grave to appease the ghost we
have the central element of all worship,
the practical key of all cults, past or
present. On the other hand, mythologists
tell us nothing about the origin of prayer
and sacrifice : they put us off with stories
of particular gods, without explaining to us
how those gods ever came to be worshipped.
Now, mythology is a very interesting study
in its own way : but to treat as religion a
mass of stories and legends about gods or
saints, with hardly a single living element
of practice or sacrifice, seems to me simply
to confuse two totally distinct branches of
human inquiry. The Origin of Tales has
nothing at all to do with the Origin of
Worship.
When we come to read Mr. Macdonald’s
account of a native funeral, on the other
hand, we are at once on a totally different
tack ; we see the genesis of the primitive
acts of sacrifice and religion.
“Along with the deceased is buried a con
siderable part of his property. We have
already seen that his bed is buried with him;
so also are all his clothes. If he possesses
several tusks of ivory, one tusk or more is
ground to a powder between two stones and
put beside him. Beads are also ground
down in the same way. These precautions
are taken to prevent the witch (who is
supposed to be answerable for his death)
from making any use of the ivory or
beads.
“ If the deceased owned several slaves,
an enormous hole is dug for a grave. The
slaves are now brought forward. They
may be either cast into the pit alive, or the
undertakers may cut all their throats. The
body of their master or their mistress is
then laid down to rest above theirs, and the
grave is covered in.
“After this the women come forward
with the offerings of food, and place them
at the head of the grave. The dishes in
which the food was brought are left behind.
The pot that held the drinking-water of the
deceased and his drinking-cup are also left
with him. These, too, might be coveted by
the witch, but a hole is pierced in the pot,
and the drinking calabash is broken.”
19
Sometimes the man may be buried in his
own hut.
“In this case the house is not taken
down, but is generally covered with cloth,
and the verandah becomes the place for
presenting offerings. His old house thus
becomes a kind of temple........The de
ceased is now in the spirit-world, and
receives offerings and adoration. He is
addressed as ‘ Our great spirit that has gone
before.’ If anyone dream of him, it is at
once concluded that the spirit is ‘up to
something.’ Very likely he wants to have
some of the survivors for his companions.
The dreamer hastens to appease the spirit
by an offering.”
So real is this society of the dead that
Mr. Macdonald says :—
“ The practice of sending messengers to
the world beyond the grave is found on the
West Coast. A chief summons a slave,
delivers to him a message, and then cuts
off his head. If the. chief forget anything
that he wanted to say, he sends another
slave as a postscript.”
I have quoted at such length from this
recent and extremely able work because I
want to bring into strong relief the fact
that we have here going on under our very
eyes, from day to day, de novo, the entire
genesis of new gods and goddesses, and of
all that is most central and essential to
religion—worship, prayer, the temple, the
altar, priesthood, sacrifice. Nothing that
the mythologists can tell us about the Sun
or the Moon, the Dawn or the Storm-cloud,
Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella and
the Glass Slipper, comes anywhere near the
Origin of Religion in these its central and
universal elements. Those stories or
guesses may be of immense interest and
importance as contributions to the history
of ideas in our race ; but nothing we can
learn about the savage survival in the myth
of Cupid or Psyche, or about the primitive
cosmology in the myth of the children of
Kronos, helps us to get one inch nearer
the origin of God or of prayer, of worship,
of religious ceremonial, of the temple, the
church, the sacrifice, the mass, or any other
component part of what we really know as
religion in the concrete. These myths
may be sometimes philosophic guesses,
sometimes primitive folk-tales, but they
certainly are not the truths of religion.
On the other hand, the living facts, here
so simply detailed by a careful, accurate,
and unassuming observer, strengthened by
the hundreds of similar facts collected by
Tylor, Spencer, and others, do help us at
�20
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
once to understand the origin of the central
core and kernel of religion as universally
practised all the world over.
For, omitting for the present the mytho
logical and cosmological factor, which so
often comes in to obscure the plain reli
gious facts in missionary narrative or highlycoloured European accounts of native be
liefs, what do we really find as the under
lying truths of all religion ? That all the
world over practices essentially similar to
those of these savage Central Africans pre
vail among mankind; practices whose affi
liation upon the same primitive ideas has
been abundantly proved by Mr. Herbert
Spencer; practices which have for their
essence the propitiation or adulation of a
spiritual being or beings, derived from
ghosts, and conceived of as similar, in all
except the greatness of the connoted attri
butes, to the souls of men. “Whenever
the [Indian] villagers are questioned about
their creed,” says Sir William Hunter,
“ the same answer is invariably given :
‘ The common people have no idea of
religion, but to do right [ceremonially] and
to worship the village god.’ ”
In short, I maintain that religion is not
mainly, as the mistaken analogy of Chris
tian usage makes us erroneously call it,
Faith or Creed, but simply and solely
Ceremony, Custom, or Practice. And I
am glad to say that, for early Semitic
times at least, Professor Robertson Smith
is of the same opinion.
The Roman religion separates itself at
once into a civic or national and a private
or family cult. There were the great gods,
native or adopted, whom the State wor
shipped publicly, as the Central African
tribes worship the chief’s ancestors ; and
there were the Lares and Penates, whom
the family worshipped at its own hearth,
and whose very name shows them to have
been in origin and essence ancestral spirits.
And as the real or practical Hindu religion
consists mainly of offering up rice, millet,
and ghee to the little local and family
deities or to the chosen patron god in the
Brahmanist pantheon, so, too, the real or
practical Roman religion consisted mainly
of sacrifice done at the domestic altar to
the special Penates, farre pio et salients
mica.
I will not go on to point out in detail at
the present stage of our argument how
Professor Sayce similarly finds ancestor
worship and Shamanism (a low form of
ghost-propitiation) at the root of the
religion of the ancient Accadians; how
other observers have performed the same
task for the Egyptians and Japanese;
and how like customs have been traced
among Greeks and Amazulu, among
Hebrews and Nicaraguans, among early
English and Digger Indians, among our
Aryan ancestors themselves and Andaman
Islanders. Every recent narrative of travel
abounds with examples. Those who wish
to see the whole of the evidence on this
matter marshalled in battle array have
only to turn to the first volume of Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Sociology.
What concerns us in this chapter a little
more is to call attention by anticipation to
the fact that even in Christianity itself the
same primitive element survives as the
centre of all that is most distinctively
religious, as opposed to theological. I
make these remarks provisionally here in
order that the reader may the better under
stand to what ultimate goal our investiga
tion will lead him.
It is the universal Catholic custom to
place the relics of saints or martyrs under
the altars in churches. Thus the body of
St. Mark the Evangelist lies under the
high altar of St. Mark’s, at Venice; and in
every other Italian cathedral, or chapel, a
reliquary is deposited within the altar
itself. So well understood is this principle
in the Latin Church that it has hardened
into the saying, “No relic, no altar.” The
sacrifice of the mass takes place at such
an altar, and is performed by a priest in
sacrificial robes.. The entire Roman
Catholic ritual is a ritual derived from the
earlier sacerdotal ideas of ministry at an
altar, and its connection with the primitive
form is still kept up by the necessary
presence of human remains in its holy
places.
Furthermore, the very idea of a church
itself is descended from the early Christian
meeting-places in the catacombs or at the
tombs of the martyrs, which are universally
allowed to have been the primitive
Christian altars. We know now that the
cruciform dome-covered plan of Christian
churches is derived from these early
meeting-places at- the junction of lanes or
alleys in the catacombs ; that the nave,
chancel, and transepts indicate the crossing
of the alleys, while the dome represents
the hollowed-out portion or rudely circular
vault where the two lines of archway
intersect. The earliest dome-covered
churches were attempts, as it were, to
construct a catacomb above ground for the
reception of the altar-tomb of a saint or
�RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.
martyr. Similarly with the chapels that
open out at the side from the aisles or
transepts. Etymologically, the word chapel
is the modernised- form of capella, the
arched sepulchre excavated in the walls of
the catacombs, before the tomb at which it
was usual to offer up prayer and praise.
The chapels built out from the aisles in
Roman churches, each with its own altar
and its own saintly relics, are attempts to
reproduce above ground in the same way
the original sacred places in the early
Christian excavated cemeteries.
Thus Christianity itself is linked on to
the very antique custom of worship at
tombs, and the habit of ancestor-worship
by altars, relics, and invocation of saints,
even revolutionary Protestantism still re
taining some last faint marks of its origin
in the dedication of churches to particular
evangelists or martyrs, and in the more or
less disguised survival of altar, priesthood,
sacrifice, and vestments.
Now, I do not say ancestor-worship
gives us the whole origin of everything
that is included in Christian English minds
in the idea of religion. I do not say it
accounts for all the cosmologies and
cosmogonies of savage, barbaric, or civilised
tribes. Those, for the most part, are pure
mythological products, explicable mainly, I
believe, by means of the key with which
mythology supplies us ; and one of them,
adopted into Genesis from an alien source,
has come to be accepted by modern
Christendom as part of that organised
body of belief which forms the Christian
creed, though not in any true sense the
Christian religion. Nor do I say that
ancestor-worship gives us the origin of
those ontological, metaphysical, or mys
tical conceptions which form part of the
philosophy or theology of many priest
hoods. Religions, as we generally get
them envisaged for us nowadays, are held
to include the mythology, the cosmogony,
the ontology, and even the ethics of the
race that practises them. These extra
neous developments, however, I hold to
spring from different roots and to have
nothing necessarily in common with
religion proper. The god is the true crux.
If we have once accounted for the origin of
ghosts, gods, tombs, altars, temples,
churches, worship, sacrifice, priesthoods,
and ceremonies, then we have accounted
for all that is essential and central in
religion.
Once more, I do not wish to insist, either,
that every particular and individual god,
2L
national or naturalistic, must necessarily
represent a particular ghost—the dead
spirit of a single definite once-living
person. It is enough to show, as Mr.
Spencer has shown, that the idea of the
god, and the worship paid to a god, are
directly derived from the idea of the ghost,
and the offerings made to the ghost,
without necessarily holding, as Mr. Spencer
seems to hold, that every god is and must
be in ultimate analysis the ghost of a
particular human being. Once the con
ception of gods had been evolved by
humanity, and had become a common part
of every man’s imagined universe, then it
was natural enough that new gods should
be made from time to time out of
abstractions or special aspects and powers
of nature, and that the same worship should
be paid to such new-made and purely
imaginary gods as had previously been
paid to the whole host of gods evolved
from personal and tribal ancestors. It is
the first step that costs : once you have
got the idea of a god fairly evolved, any
number of extra gods may be invented or
introduced from all quarters. A great
pantheon readily admits new members to
its ranks from many strange sources.
Familiar instances in one of the bestknown pantheons are those of Concordia,
Pecunia,Aius Locutius, Rediculus Tutanus.
The Romans, indeed, deified every con
ceivable operation of nature or of human
life ; they had gods or goddesses for the
minutest details of agriculture, of social
relations, of the first years of childhood, of
marriage and domestic arrangements
generally. Many of their deities, as we
shall see hereafter, were obviously manu
factured to meet a special demand on
special occasions. But, at the same time,
none of these gods, so far as we can judge,
could ever have come to exist at all if the
ghost-theory and ancestor-worship had not
already made familiar to the human mind
the principles and practice, of religion
generally.
Still, to admit that other elements have
afterwards come in to confuse religion is
quite a different thing from admitting that
religion itself has more than one origin.
Whatever gives us the key to the practice
of worship gives us the key to all real
religion. Now, one may read through
almost any books of the mythological school
without ever coming upon a single word
that throws one ray of light upon the origin
of religion itself thus properly called. To
trace the development of this, that, or the
�22
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
other story or episode in a religious myth
is in itself a very valuable study in human
evolution : but no amount of tracing such
stories ever gives us the faintest clue to the
question why men worshipped Osiris, Zeus,
Siva, or Venus; why they offered up prayer
and praise to Isis, or to Artemis ; why they
made sacrifices of oxen to Capitolian Jove
at Rome, or slew turtle-doves on the altar
of Jahweh, god of Israel, at Jerusalem.
The ghost - theory and the practice of
ancestor-worship show us a natural basis
and genesis for all these customs, and
explain them in a way to which no mytho
logical inquiry can add a single item of
fundamental interest.
It may be well at this point to attempt
beforehand some slight provisional dis
entanglement of the various extraneous
elements which interweave themselves at
last with the simple primitive fabric of
practical religion.
In the first place, there is the mytho
logical element. The mythopoeic faculty is
a reality in mankind. Stories arise, grow,
gather episodes with movement, transform
and transmute themselves, wander far in
space, get corrupted by time, in ten thousand
ways suffer change and modification. Now,
such stories sometimes connect themselves
with living men and women. Everybody
knows how many myths exist even in our
own day about every prominent or peculiar
person. They also gather more particularly
round the memory of the dead, and espe
cially of any very distinguished dead man
or woman. Sometimes they take their rise
in genuine tradition, sometimes they are
pure fetches of fancy or of the romancing
faculty. The ghosts or the gods are no less
exempt from these mythopceic freaks than
other people; and as gods go on living
indefinitely, they have plenty of time for
myths to gather about them. Most often,
a myth is invented to account for some
particular religious ceremony.
Again,
myths demonstrably older than a parti
cular human being—say Caesar, Virgil,
Arthur, Charlemagne—may get fitted by
later ages to those special personalities.
The same thing often happens also with
gods.
Again, myths about the gods come in the
long run, in many cases, to be written
down, especially by the priests, and them
selves acquire a considerable degree of
adventitious holiness. Thus we get Sacred
Books ; and in most advanced races, the
sacred books tend to become an important
integral part of religion, and a test of the
purity of tenets or ceremonial. But sacred
books almost always contain rude cosmo
logical guesses and a supernatural cosmo
gony, as well as tales about the doings,
relationships, and prerogatives of the gods.
Such early philosophical conjectures come
then to be intimately bound up with the
idea of religion, and in many cases even
to supersede in certain minds its true,
practical, central kernel. The extreme of
this tendency is seen in English Protestant
Dissenting Bibliolatry.
Rationalistic and reconciliatory glosses
tend to arise with advancing culture. At
tempts are made to trace the pedigree and
mutual relations of the gods, and to get
rid of discrepancies in earlier legends. The
Theogeny of Hesiod is a definite effort
undertaken in this direction for the Greek
pantheon. Often the attempt is made by
the most learned and philosophicallyminded among the priests, and results in
a quasi-philosophical mythology like that
of the Brahmans. In the monotheistic or
half-monotheistic religions this becomes
theology. In proportion as it grows more
and more laboured and definite, the atten
tion of the learned and the priestly class is
more and more directed to dogma, creed,
faith, abstract formulae of philosophical or
intellectual belief, while insisting also upon
ritual or practice. But the popular religion
remains usually, as in India, a religion of
practical custom and observances alone,
having very little relation to the highly
abstract theological ideas of the learned or
the priestly.
Lastly, in the highest religions, a large
element of ethics, of sentiment, of broad
humanitarianism, of adventitious emotion,
is allowed to come in, often to the extent of
obscuring the original factors of practice
and observance. We are constantly taught
that “ real religion ” means many things
which have nothing on earth to do with
religion proper, in any sense, but are
merely high morality, tinctured by emo
tional devotion towards a spiritual being or
set of beings.
What I want to suggest then in the
present chapter sums itself up in a few
sentences thus : Religion is practice, my
thology is story-telling. Every religion has
myths that accompany it: but the myths
do not give rise to the religion : on the
contrary, the religion gives rise to the
myths. And I shall attempt in this book
to account for the origin of religion alone,
omitting altogether both mythology as a
whole, and all mythical persons or beings
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
other than gods in the sense here illus
trated.
CHAPTER III.
THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
Religion has one element within it still
older, more fundamental, and more per
sistent than any mere belief in a god or
gods—nay, even than the custom or prac
tice of supplicating and appeasing ghosts
or gods by gifts and observances. That
element is the conception of the Life of the
Dead. On the primitive belief in such
life all religion ultimately bases itself.
The belief is, in fact, the earliest thing to
appear in religion, for there are savage
tribes who have nothing worth calling gods,
but have still a religion or cult of their dead
relatives.
But the belief in continued life, like all
other human ideas, has naturally undergone
various stages of evolution. The stages
glide imperceptibly into one another, of
course ; but I think we can on the whole
distinguish with tolerable accuracy between
three main layers or strata of opinion with
regard to the continued existence of the
dead. In the first or lowest stratum, the
difference between life and death them
selves is but ill or inadequately perceived ;
the dead are thought of as yet bodily living.
In the second stratum, death is recognised
as a physical fact, but is regarded as only
temporary; at this stage, men look forward
to the Resurrection of the body, and expect
the Life of the World to Come. In the
third stratum, the soul is regarded as a
distinct entity from the body; it survives it
in a separate and somewhat shadowy form:
so that the opinion as to the future proper
to this stage is not a belief in the Resur
rection of the body, but a belief in the
Immortality of the Soul. These two con
cepts have often been confounded together
by loose and semi-philosophical Christian
thinkers; but in their essence they are
wholly distinct and irreconcilable.
I shall examine each of these three strata
separately.
And first as to that early savage level of
thought where the ideas of life and death
are very ill demarcated. To us at the
present day it seems a curious notion that
people should not possess the conception
23
of death as a necessary event in every
individual human history. But that is
because we cannot easily unread all our
previous thinking, cannot throw ourselves
frankly back into the state of the savage.
We are accustomed to living in large
and -populous communities, where deaths
are frequent, and where natural death in
particular is an every-day occurrence. We
have behind us a vast and long history of
previous ages; and we know that historical
time was occupied by the lives of many
successive generations, all of which are now
dead, and none of which on the average
exceeded a certain fixed limit of seventy or
eighty odd years. To us, the conception
of human life as a relatively short period
is a common and familiar one.
We forget, however, that to the savage
all this is quite otherwise. He lives in a
small and scattered community, where
deaths are rare, and where natural death
in particular is comparatively infrequent.
Most of his people are killed in war, or
devoured by wild beasts, or destroyed by
accidents in the chase, or by thirst or starva
tion. Death by disease is comparatively
rare; death by natural decay almost un
known or unrecognised.
Nor has the savage a great historic past
behind him. He knows few but his tribes
men, and little of their ancestors save
those whom his parents can remember
before them. His perspective of the past
is extremely limited. That “all men are
mortal ” is to civilised man a truism ; to
very early savages it would necessarily
have seemed a startling paradox. No man
ever dies within his own- experience ; ever
since he can remember, he has continued
to exist as a permanent part of all his
adventures. Most of the savage’s family
have gone on continuously living with him.
A death has been a rare and startling occur
rence. Thus the notion of death as an
inevitable end never arises at all ; the
notion of death as due to natural causes
seems quite untenable. When a savage
dies, the first question that arises is, “ Who
has killed him ?” If he is slain in war, or
devoured by a tiger, or ripped up by an
elephant, or drowned by a stream in spate,
or murdered by a tribesman, the cause is
obvious. If none of these, then the death
is usually set down to witchcraft.
Furthermore, the mere fact of death is
much less certain among primitive or savage
men than in civilised communities. We
know as a rule with almost absolute cer
tainty whether at a given moment a sick or
�24
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
wounded man is dead or living. Never
theless, even among ourselves, cases of
doubt not infrequently occur. At times
we hesitate whether a man or woman is
dead or has fainted. If the heart continues
to beat, we consider them still living ; if
not the slightest flutter of the pulse can be
perceived, we consider them dead. Even
our advanced medical science, however, is
often perplexed in very obscure cases of
catalepsy; and mistakes have occurred
from time to time, resulting in occasional
premature burials. Naturally, among sav
ages, such cases of doubt are far more likely
to occur than among civilised people ; or
rather, to put it as the savage would think
of it, there is often no knowing when a
person who is lying stiff and lifeless may
happen to get up again and resume his
usual activity. The savage is accustomed
to seeing his fellows stunned or rendered
unconscious by blows, wounds, and other
accidents, inflicted either by the enemy, by
wild beasts, by natural agencies, or by the
wrath of his tribesmen; and he never
knows how soon the effect of such accidents
may pass away, and the man may recover
his ordinary vitality. As a rule, he keeps
and tends the bodies of his friends as long
as any chance remains of their ultimate
recovery, and often (as we shall see in the
sequel) much longer.
Again, in order to understand this atti
tude of early man towards his wounded, his
stricken, and his dead, we must glance aside
for a moment at the primitive psychology.
Very early indeed in the history of the
human mind, I believe, some vague adum
bration of the notion of a soul began to per
vade humanity. We now know that con
sciousness is a function of the brain ; that
it is intermitted during sleep, when the
brain rests, and also during times of grave
derangement of the nervous or circulatory
systems, as when we faint or assume the
comatose condition, or are stunned by a
blow, or fall into catalepsy or epilepsy. We
also know that consciousness ceases alto
gether at death, when the brain no longer
functions ; and that the possibility of its
further continuance is absolutely cut off by
the fact of decomposition. - But these
truths, still imperfectly understood or rashly
rejected by many among ourselves, were
wholly unknown to early men. They had
to frame for themselves as best they could
some vague working hypothesis of thehuman mind, from data which suggested
themselves in the ordinary course of life ;
and the hypothesis which they framed was
more or less roughly that of the soul or
spirit, still implicitly accepted by a large
majority of the human species.
According to this hypothesis, every man
consists of two halves or parts, one mate
rial or bodily, the other immaterial or spiri
tual. The first half, called the body, is
visible and tangible; the second half,
called the soul, dwells within it, and is
more or less invisible or shadowy. It is to
a large extent identified with the breath ;
and like the breath it is often believed to
quit the body at death, and even to go off
in a free form and live its own life else
where. As this supposed independence of
the soul from the body lies at the very basis
of all ghosts and gods, and therefore of
religion itself, I may be excused for going at
some length into the question of its origin.
Actually, so far as we know by direct
and trustworthy evidence, the existence of
a mind, consciousness, or “soul,” apart
from a body, has never yet been satisfac
torily demonstrated. But the savage de
rived the belief, apparently, from a large
number of concurrent hints and sugges
tions, of which such a hypothesis seemed
to him the inevitable result. During the
daytime he was awake ; at night he slept :
yet even in his sleep, while his body lay
curled on the ground beside the camp-fire,
he seemed to hunt or to fight, to make love
or to feast, in some other region. What
was this part of him that wandered from
the body in dreams ?—what, if not the soul
or breath which he naturally regarded as
something distinct and separate ? And
when a man died, did not the soul or breath
go from him? When he was badly wounded,
did it not disappear for a time, and then re
turn again? In fainting fits, in catalepsy,
and in other abnormal states, did it not
leave the body, or even play strange tricks
with it? I need not pursue this line of
thought, already fully worked out by Mr.
Herbert Spencer and Dr. Tylor. It is
enough to say that from a very early date
primitive man began to regard the soul or
life as something bound up with the breath,
something which could go away from the
body at will and return to it again, some
thing separable and distinct, yet essential
to the person, very vaguely conceived as
immaterial or shadowy, but more so at a
later than at an earlier period.1
1 The question of the Separate Soul has re
cently received very full treatment from Mr,
Frazer in The Golden Bough, and Mr. Sidney
Hartland in The Legend of Perseus.
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
Moreover, these souls or spirits (which
quitted the body in sleep or trance) out
lived death, and appeared again to sur
vivors. In dreams we often see the shapes
of living men; but we also see with peculiar
vividness the images of the departed. Ev erybody is familiar with the frequent reappear
ance in sleep of intimate friends or rela
tions lately deceased. The savage accepts
this dream-world as almost equally real
with the world of sense-presentation. As
he envisages the matter to himself, his
soul has been away on its travels
without its body, and there has met
and conversed with the souls of dead
friends or relations.
We must remember also that in savage
life occasions for trance, for fainting, and
for other abnormal or comatose nervous
conditions occur far more frequently than
in civilised life. The savage is often
wounded and fails from loss of blood ; he
cuts his foot against a stone, or is half
killed by a wild beast; he fasts long and
often, perforce, or is reduced to the very
verge of starvation ; and he is therefore
familiar, both in his own case and in the
case of others, with every variety of uncon
sciousness and of delirium or delusion. All
these facts figure themselves to his mind as
absences of the soul from the body, which
is thus to him a familiar and almost every
day experience.
Moreover, it will hence result that the
savage can hardly gain any clear concep
tion of Death, and especially of death from
natural causes. When a tribesman is
brought home severely wounded and un
conscious, the spectator’s immediate idea
must necessarily be that the soul has gone
away and deserted the body. For how
long it has gone, he cannot tell; but his
first attempts are directed towards inducing
or compelling it to return again. For this
purpose, he often addresses it with prayers
and adjurations, or begs it to come back
with loud cries and persuasions. And he
cannot possibly discriminate between its
temporary absence and its final departure.
As Mr. Herbert Spencer well says, the con
sequences of blows or wounds merge into
death by imperceptible stages. “ Now the
injured man shortly ‘returned to himself,’
and did not go away again ; and now, re
turning to himself only after a long absence,
he presently deserted his body for an in
definite time. Lastly, instead of these
temporary returns, followed by final ab
sence, there sometimes occurred cases in
which a violent blow caused continuous
«5
absence from the very first; the other self
never came back at all.”
In point of fact, during these earlier
stages, the idea of Death as we know it did
not and does not occur in any form. There
are still savages who do not seem to recog
nise the universality and necessity of death
—who regard it, on the contrary, as some
thing strange and unnatural, something
due to the machination of enemies or of
witchcraft. With the earliest men, it is a
foregone conclusion, psychologically speak
ing, that they should so regard it. To
them, a Dead Man must always have
seemed a man whose soul or breath or
other self had left him, but might possibly
return again to the body at any time.
Each of the three stages of thought above
discriminated has its appropriate mode of
disposing of its dead. The appropriate
mode for this earliest stage is Preservation
of the Corpse, which eventuates at last in
Mummification.
The simplest form of this mode of dis
posal of the corpse consists in keeping it in
the hut or cave where the family dwell,
together with the living. A N ew Guinea
woman thus kept her husband’s body in her
hut till it dried up of itself, and she kissed
it and offered it food every day, as though
it were living. Many similar cases are re
ported from elsewhere. Hut preservation _
is common in the very lowest races. More
frequently, however, owing to the obvious
discomfort of living in too close proximity
to a dead body, the corpse at this stage of
thought is exposed openly in a tree or on a
platform or under some other circumstances
where no harm can come to it. Among
the Australians and Andaman Islanders,
who, like the Negritoes of New Guinea,
preserve for us a very early type of human
customs, the corpse is often exposed on a
rough raised scaffold. Some of the Poly
nesian and Melanesian peoples follow the
same practice. The Dyaks and Kyans
expose their dead in trees. “ But it is in
America,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer, “that
exposure on raised stages is commonest.”
A slight variant on this method, peculiar
to a very maritime race, is that described
by Mr. H. O. Forbes among the natives of
Timurlaut:—
“ The dead body is placed in a portion
of a ■prau fitted to the length of the indi
vidual, or within strips of gaba-gaba, or
stems of the sago-palm pinned together.
If it is a person of some consequence, such
as an Orang Kaya, an ornate and decorated
/raw-shaped coffin is specially made. This
�26
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Is then enveloped in calico, and placed
either on the top of a rock by the margin
of the sea at a short distance from the
village, or on a high pile-platform erected
on the shore about low-tide mark. On the
top of the coffin-lid are erected tall flags,
and the figures of men playing gongs,
shooting guns, and gesticulating wildly to
frighten away evil influences from the
sleeper. Sometimes the platform is erected
on the shore above high-water mark, and
near it is stuck in the ground a tall bamboo
full of palm-wine; and suspended over a
bamboo rail are bunches of sweet pota
toes for the use of the dead man’s Nitu.
When the body is quite decomposed, his
son or one of the family disinters the skull
and deposits it on a little platform in his
house, in the gable opposite the fireplace,
while to ward off evil from himself he
carries about with him the atlas and axis
bones of its neck in his luon, or siriholder.”
This interesting account is full of impli
cations whose fuller meaning we will
perceive hereafter. The use of the skull
and the talisman bone should especially be
noted for their later importance.
For
skulls are fundamental in the history of
religion.
Cases like these readily pass into the
practice of Mummifying, more especially
m dry or desert climates. Even in so
damp a tropical country as New Guinea,
however, D’Albertis found in a shed on the
banks of the Fly River two mummies,
artificially prepared, as he thought, by
removal of the flesh, the bones alone being
preserved with the skin to cover them.
Here we have evidently a clear conception
of death as a serious change, of a different
character from a mere temporary absence.
But mummification for the most part is
confined to drier climates, where it is
artificially performed down to a very
evolved stage of civilisation, as we know
well in Peru and Egypt.
One word must be said in passing as to
the frequent habit of specially preserving,
and even carrying about the person, the
head or hand of a deceased relative. This
has been already mentioned in the case of
Timurlaut; and it occurs frequently else
where. Thus Mr. Chalmers says of a New
Guinea baby : “ It will be covered with
two inches of soil, the friends watching
beside the grave ; but eventually the skull
and smaller bones will be preserved and
worn by the mother.” Similarly, in the
Andaman Islands, where we touch perhaps
the lowest existing stratum of savage
feeling, “ widows may be seen with the
skulls of their deceased partners suspended
round their necks.” The special preserva
tion of the head, even when the rest of the
body is eaten or buried, will engage our
attention at a later period : heads so pre
served are usually resorted to as oracles,
and are often treated as the home of the
spirit. Mr. Herbert Spencer has collected
many similar instances, such as that of the
Tasmanians who wore a bone from the
skull or arm of a dead relation.
At this stage of thought, it seems to me,
it is the actual corpse that is still thought
to be alive ; the actual corpse that appears
in dreams ; and the actual corpse that is
fed and worshipped and propitiated with
presents.
Ceremonial cannibalism appears in this
stratum, and survives from it into higher
levels. The body is eaten entire, and the
bones preserved ; or the flesh and fat are
removed, and the skin left; or a portion
only is sacramentally and reverently eaten
by the surviving relations. These pro
cesses will be more minutely described in
the sequel.
The first stage merges by gradual
degrees into the second, which is that of
Burial or its equivalent. Cave-burial of
mummies or of corpses forms . the tran
sitional link. Indeed, inasmuch as many
races of primitive men lived habitually in
caves, the placing or leaving the corpse in
a cave seems much the same thing as the
placing or leaving it in a shed, hut, or
shelter. The cave-dwelling Veddahs simply
left the dead man in the cave where he
died, and themselves migrated to some
other cavern. Still, cave-burial lingered
on late with many tribes or nations which
had for ages outlived the habit of cave
dwelling. Among the South American
Indians, cave-burial was common ; and in
Peru it assumed high developments of
mummification. The making of an artificial
cave or vault for the dead is but a slight
variant on this custom ; it was frequent in
Egypt, the other dry country where the
making of mummies was carried to a high
pitch of perfection. The Tombs of the
Kings at Thebes are splendid instances of
such artificial caves, elaborated into stately
palaces with painted walls, where the dead
monarchs might pass their underground
life in state and dignity. Cave-tombs,
natural or artificial, are also common in
Asia Minor, Italy, and elsewhere.
During the first stage, it may be noted-
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
the attitude of man towards his dead is
chiefly one of affectionate regard. The
corpse is kept at home, and fed or tended ;
the skull is carried about as a beloved
object. But in the second stage, which
induces the practice of burial, a certain
Fear of the Dead becomes more obviously
apparent. Men dread the return of the
corpse or the ghost, and strive to keep it
within prescribed limits. In this stage, the
belief in the Resurrection of the Body is
the appropriate creed ; and though at first
the actual corpse is regarded as likely to
return to plague survivors, that idea gives
place a little later, I believe, to the con
ception of a less material double or spirit.
And here let us begin by discriminating
carefully between the Resurrection of the
Body and the Immortality of the Soul.
The idea of Resurrection arose from and
is closely bound up with the practice of
burial, the second and simpler mode of
disposing of the remains of the dead. The
idea of Immortality arose from and is
closely bound up with the practice of
burning invented at the third stage of
human culture. During the early his
torical period all the most advanced and
cultivated nations burnt their dead, and, in
consequence, accepted the more ideal and
refined notion of Immortality. But modern
European nations bury their dead, and, in
consequence, accept, nominally at least,
the cruder and grosser notion of Resur
rection. Nominally, I say, because, in
spite of creeds and formularies, the
influence of Plato and other ancient
thinkers, as well as of surviving ancestral
ideas, has made most educated Europeans
really believe in Immortality, even when
they imagine themselves to be believing in
Resurrection. Nevertheless, the belief in
Resurrection is the avowed and authorita
tive belief of the Christian world, which
thus proclaims itself as on a lower level in
this respect than the civilised peoples of
antiquity.
The earlier of these two ways of dis
posing of the bodies of the dead is
certainly by burial. As this fact has
recently been called in question, I will
venture to enlarge a little upon the evidence
in its favour. In point of time, burial goes
back with certainty to the neolithic age,
and with some probability to the palaeolithic.
Several true interments in caves have been
attributed by competent geologists to the
earlier of these two periods, the first for
which we have any sure warranty of man’s
existence on earth. But, as I do not desire
n
to introduce controversial matter of any
sort into this exposition, I will waive the
evidence for burial in the palaeolithic age
as doubtful, and will merely mention that
in the Mentone caves, according to Mr.
Arthur Evans, a most competent authority,
we have a case of true burial accompanied
by neolithic remains of a grade of culture
earlier and simpler than any known to us
elsewhere. In other words, from the very
earliest beginning of the neolithic age men
buried their dead ; and they continued to
bury them, in caves or tumuli, down to the
end of neolithic culture. They buried
them in the Long Barrows in England ;
they buried them in the Ohio mounds ;
they buried them in the shadowy forests of
New Zealand ; they buried them in the
heart of darkest Africa. I know of no
case of burning or any means of disposal
of the dead, otherwise than by burial or its
earlier equivalent, mummification, among
people in the stone age of culture in
Europe. It is only when bronze and other
metals are introduced that races advance
to the third stage, the stage of cremation.
In America, however, the Mexicans were
cremationists.
The wide diffusal of burial over the globe
is also a strong argument for its relatively
primitive origin. In all parts of the world
men now bury their dead, or did once bury
them. Burial is the common, and universal
mode ; burning, exposure, throwing into a
sacred river, and so forth, are sporadic and
exceptional, and in many cases, as among
the Hindus, are demonstrably of late origin,
and connected with certain relatively
modern refinements of religion.
Once more, in many or most cases, we
have positive evidence that where a race
now burns its dead, it used once to bury
them. Burial preceded burning in preheroic
Greece, as it also did in Etruria and in
early Latium. The people of the Long
Barrows, in Western Europe generally,
buried their dead ; the people of the Round
Barrows who succeeded them, and who
possessed a far higher grade of culture,
almost always cremated. It has been
assumed that burning is primordial in India;
but Mr. William Simpson, the well-known
artist of the Illustrated London Nevus, calls
my attention to the fact that the Vedas
speak with great clearness of burial as the
usual mode of disposing of the corpse, and
even allude to the tumulus, the circle of
stones around it, and the sacred temenos
which they enclose. According to Rajendralala Mitra, whose high authority on the
�28
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
subject is universally acknowledged, burial
was the rule in India till about the thirteenth
or fourteenth century before the Christian
era ; then came in cremation, with burial of
the ashes, and this continued till about the
time of Christ, when burial was dispensed
with, and the ashes were thrown into some
sacred river. I think, therefore, until some
more positive evidence is adduced on the
other side, we may rest content with our
general conclusion that burial is the oldest,
most universal, and most savage mode of
disposing of the remains of the dead among
humanity after the general recognition of
death as a positive condition.
What is the origin of this barbaric and
disgusting custom, so repugnant to all the
more delicate sentiments of human nature ?
I think Mr. Frazer is right in attributing it
to the terror felt by the living for the ghosts
(or, rather, at first the corpses) of the
dead, and the fear that they may return
to plague or alarm their surviving fellow
tribesmen.
In his admirable paper on “Certain
Burial Customs as Illustrative of the Primi
tive Theory of the Soul,” Mr. Frazer points
out that certain tribes of early men paid
great attention to the dead, not so much
from affection as from selfish terror. Ghosts
or bodies of the dead haunt the earth every
where, unless artificially confined to bounds,
and make themselves exceedingly disagree
able to their surviving relatives. To prevent
this, simple primitive philosophy in its
second stage has hit upon many devices.
The most universal is to bury the dead—
that is to say, to put them in a deep-dug
hole, and to cover them with a mighty
mound of earth, which has now sadly de
generated in civilised countries into a mere
formal heap, but which had originally the
size and dignity of a tumulus. The object
of piling up this great heap of earth was to
confine the ghost (or corpse), who could not
easily move so large a superincumbent
mass of matter. In point of fact, men
buried their dead in order to get well rid of
them, and to effectually prevent their return
to light to disturb the survivors.
For the same reason heavy stones were
often piled on the top of the dead. In one
form, these became at last the cairn ; and,
as the ghosts of murderers and their victims
tend to be especially restless, everybody
who passes their graves in Arabia, Ger
many, and Spain is bound to add a stone to
the growing pile in order to confine them.
In another form, that of the single big stone
rolled just on top of the body to keep it
down by its mass, the makeweight has de
veloped into the modern tombstone.
Again, certain nations go further still in
their endeavours to keep the ghost (or
corpse) from roaming. The corpse of a
Damara, says Galton, having been sewn up
in an old ox-hide, is buried in a hole, and
the spectators jump backwards and forwards
over the grave to keep the deceased from
rising out of it. In America, the Tupis tied
fast all the limbs of the corpse, “ that the
dead man might not be able to get up, and
infest his friends with his visits.” You may
even divert a river from its course, as Mr.
Frazer notes, bury your dead man securely
in its bed, and then allow the stream to
return to its channel. It was thus that
Alaric was kept in his grave from further
plaguing humanity; and thus Captain
Cameron found a tribe of Central Africans
compelled their deceased chiefs to “ cease
from troubling.” Sometimes, again, the
grave is enclosed by a fence too high for
the dead man to clear even with a running
jump ; and sometimes the survivors take
the prudent precaution of nailing the body
securely to the coffin, or of breaking their
friend’s spine, or even—but this is an ex
treme case—of hacking him to pieces. In
Christian England the poor wretch whom
misery had driven to suicide was prevented
from roaming about to the discomfort of
the lieges by being buried with a stake
driven barbarously through him. The
Australians, in like manner, used to cut off
the thumb of a slain enemy that he might
be unable to draw the bow ; and the Greeks
were wont to hack off the . extremities of
their victims in order to incapacitate them
for further fighting. These cases will be
seen to be very luminiferous when we come
to examine the origin and meaning of cre
mation.
Burial, then, I take it, is simply by origin
a means adopted by the living to protect
themselves against the vagrant tendencies
of the actual dead. For some occult reason,
the vast majority of men in all ages have
been foolishly afraid of meeting with the
spirits of the departed. Their great desire
has been, not to see, but to avoid seeing
these singular visitants ; and for that pur
pose they invented, first of all, burial, and
afterwards cremation.
The common modern conception of the
ghost is certainly that of an immaterial or
shadowy form, which can be seen but not
touched, and which preserves an outer sem
blance of the human figure. But that idea
itself, which has been imported Into all our
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
descriptions and reasonings about the ghost
beliefs of primitive man, is, I incline to
think, very far from primitive, and has been
largely influenced by quite late conceptions
derived from the cremational rather than
the burial level of religious philosophy. In
other words, though, in accordance with
universal usage and Mr. Frazer’s precedent,
I have used the word “ ghost ” above in re
ferring to these superstitious terrors of
early man, I believe it is far less the spirit
than the actual corpse itself that early men
even in this second stage were really afraid
of. It is the corpse that may come back
and do harm to survivors. It is the corpse
that must be kept down by physical means,
that must be covered with earth, pressed
flat beneath a big and ponderous stone,
deprived of its thumbs, its hands, its eyes,
its members. True, I believe the savage
also thinks of the ghost or double as
returning to earth ; but his psychology,
I fancy, is not so definite as to distin
guish very accurately between corpse and
spirit.
If we look at the means taken to preserve
the body after death among the majority
of primitive peoples, above the Tasmanian
level, this truth of the corpse being itself
immortal becomes clearer and clearer. We
are still, in fact, at a level where ghost and
dead man are insufficiently differentiated.
In all these cases it is believed that the
dead body continues to live in the grave
the same sort of life that it led above
ground; and for this purpose it is provided
with weapons, implements, utensils, food,
. vessels, and all the necessaries of life for
its new mansion.
Continued sentient
existence of the body after death is the
keynote of the earliest level of psychical
philosophy. First, the corpse lives in the
hut with its family : later, it lives in the
grave with its forefathers.
But side by side with this naïve belief in
the continued existence of the body after
death, which survives into the inhumational
stage of evolution, goes another and appa
rently irreconcilable belief in a future
resurrection.. Strictly speaking, of course,
if the body is still alive, there is no need
for any special revivification. But religious
thought, as we all know, does not always
pride itself upon the temporal virtues of logic
or consistency; and the savage in particular
is not in the least staggered at being asked
to conceive of one and the same subject in
two opposite and contradictory manners.
He does not bring the two incongruities
into thought together ; he thinks them
29
alternately, sometimes one, sometimes the
other. Even Christian systematists are
quite accustomed to combine the incon
gruous beliefs in a future resurrection and
in the continued existence of the soul after
death, by supposing that the soul remains
meanwhile in some nondescript limbo,
apart from its body—some uncertain Sheol,
some dim hades or purgatory or “place of
departed spirits.”
It is the common belief of the second or
inhumational stage, then, that there will be
at some time or other a “ General Resur
rection.” No doubt this General Resurrec
tion has been slowly developed out of the
belief in and expectation of many partial
resurrections. It is understood that each
individual corpse will, or may, resurge at
some time : therefore it is believed that all
corpses together will resurge at a single
particular moment. So long as burial
persists, the belief in the Resurrection
persists beside it, and forms a main feature
in the current conception of the future
life among the people who practise it.
How, then, do we progress from this
second or inhumational stage to the third
stage with its practice of burning, and its
correlated dogma of the Immortality of the
Soul ?
In this way, as it seems to me. Besides
keeping down the ghost (or corpse) with
clods and stones, it was usual in many cases
to adopt other still stronger persuasives
and dissuasives in the same direction.
Sometimes the persuasives were of the
gentlest type ; for example, the dead man
was often politely requested and adjured
to remain quiet in the grave and to give no
trouble. But sometimes they were less
bland; the corpse was often pelted with
sticks, stones, and hot coals, in order to
show him that his visits at home would not
in future be appreciated. Now burning, I
take it, belonged originally to the same
category of strong measures against re
fractory ghosts or corpses ; and this is the
more probable owing to the fact that it
is mentioned by Mr. Frazer among the
remedies recommended for use in the
extreme case of vampires. Its original
object was, no doubt, to prevent the corpse
from returning in any way to the homes of
the living.
Once any people adopted burning as a
regular custom, however, the chances are
that, coeteris paribus, it would continue and
spread. For the practice of cremation is
so much more wholesome and sanitary than
the practice of burial that it would give a
�3o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
double advantage in the struggle for exist
ence to any race that adopted it, in peace
and in war. Hence it is quite natural that
when at a certain grade of culture certain
races happened to light upon it in this
superstitious way, those races would be
likely to thrive and to take the lead in
culture as long as no adverse circumstances
counteracted the advantage.
But the superstitions and the false psy
chology which gave rise at first to the
notion of a continued life after death would
not, of course, disappear with the intro
duction of burning. The primitive cremationists may have hoped, by reducing to
ashes the bodies of their dead, to prevent
the recurrence of the corpse to the presence
of the living ; but they could not prevent
the recurrence of the ghost in the dreams
of the survivors ; they could not prevent
the wind that sighed about the dead man’s
grave, the bate that flitted, the vague noises
that terrified, the abiding sense of the
corpse’s presence. All the factors that go
to make up the ghost or the revenant (to
use a safe word, less liable to misinterpre
tation) still remained as active as ever.
Hence, I believe, with the introduction of
cremation the conception of the ghost
merely suffered an airy change. He grew
more shadowy, more immaterial, more
light, more spiritual. In one word, he
became, strictly speaking, a ghost as we
now understand the word, not a returning
dead man. This conception of the ghost
as essentially a shade or shadow belongs
peculiarly, it seems to me, to the cremating
peoples. I can answer for it that among
negroes, for example, the “ duppy” is conr
ceived as quite a material object. It is
classical literature, the literature of the
cremating Greeks and Romans, that has
familiarised us most with the idea of the
ghost as shadowy and intangible. Burying
races have more solid doubles. When
Peter escaped from prison in Jerusalem,
the assembled brethren were of opinion
that it must be “his angel.” The white
woman who lived for years in a native
Australian tribe was always spoken of by
her hosts as a ghost. In one word, at a
low stage of culture the revenant is con
ceived of as material and earthly; at a
higher stage, he is conceived of as imma
terial and shadowy.
Now, when people take to burning their
dead, it is clear that they will no longer be
able to believe in the Resurrection of the
Body. Indeed, if I am right in the theory
here set forth, it is just in order to prevent
the Resurrection of the Body at incon
venient moments that they take to burning.
To be sure, civilised nations, with their
developed power of believing in miracles,
are capable of supposing, not only that the
sea will yield up its dead, but also that
burnt, mangled, or dispersed bodies will be
collected from all parts to be put together
again at the Resurrection. This, however,
is not the naïve belief of simple and natural
men. To them, when you have burnt a
body you have utterly destroyed it, here
and hereafter.
Naturally, therefore, among cremating
peoples, the doctrine of the Resurrection of
the Body tended to go out, and what re
placed it was the doctrine of the immortality
of the Soul. You may burn the body, but
the spirit still survives ; and the survival
gives origin to a new philosophy of ghosts
and revenants. Gradually the spirit gets to
be conceived as diviner essence, entangled
and imprisoned, as it were, in the meshes
of the flesh, and only to be set free by
means of fire, which thus becomes envisaged
at last as friendly rather than destructive
in its action on the dead body. What was
at first a precaution against the return of
the corpse becomes in the end a pious duty;
just as burial itself, originally a selfish pre
caution against the pranks and tricks of
returning corpses, becomes in the end so
sacred and imperative that unburied ghosts
are conceived as wandering about, Archytaswise, begging for the favour of a handful of
sand to prevent them from homeless vaga
bondage for ever. Nations who bum come
to regard the act of burning as the appointed,
means for freeing the ghost from the con
fining meshes of the body, and regard it
rather as a solemn duty to the dead than
as a personal precaution.
Not only so, but there arises among them
a vague and fanciful conception of the
world of shades very different indeed from
the definite and material conception of the
two earlier stages. The mummy was
looked upon as inhabiting the tomb, which
was furnished and decorated for its recep
tion like a house ; and it was provided with
every needful article for use and comfort.
Even the buried body was supplied with
tools and implements for the ghost. The
necessities of the shade are quite different
and more shadowy. He has no need of
earthly tools or implements. The objects
found in the Long Barrows of the burying
folk and the Round Barrows of the cremationists well illustrate this primordial and
far-reaching difference. The Long Barrows
�THE LIFE OF THE DEAD
of the Stone Age people are piled above an
interment; they contain a chambered tomb,
which is really the subterranean home or
palace of the body buried in it. The wives
and slaves of the deceased were killed and
interred with him to keep him company in
his new life in the grave ; and implements,
weapons, drinking-cups, games, trinkets,
and ornaments were buried with their
owners. The life in the grave was all as
material and real as this one; the same
objects that served the warrior in this world
would equally serve him in the same form
in the next. It is quite different with the
Round Barrows of the Bronze Age cremationists. These barrows are piled round
an urn, which determines the shape of the
tumulus, as the chambered tomb and the
corpse determine the shape of the earlier
Stone Age interments. They contain ashes
alone; and the implements and weapons
placed in them are all broken or charred
with fire. Why ? Because the ghost,
immaterial as he has now become, can no
longer make use of solid earthly weapons
or utensils. It is only their ghosts or
shadows that can be of any use to the
ghostly possessor in the land of shades.
Hence everything he needs is burnt or
broken, in order that its ghost may be
released and liberated; and all material
objects are now conceived as possessing
such ghosts, which can be utilised accord
ingly in the world of spirits.
Note also that with this advance from
the surviving or revivable Corpse to the
immortal Soul or Spirit, there goes almost
naturally and necessarily a correlative
advance from continued but solitary life
in the tomb to a freer and wider life in an
underground world of shades and spirits.
The ghost gets greatly liberated and eman
cipated. He has more freedom of move
ment, and becomes a citizen of an organised
community, often envisaged as ruled over
by a King of the Dead, and as divided into
places of reward and punishment. But
while we modem Europeans pretend to be
resurrectionists, it is a fact that our current
ghostly and eschatological conceptions (I
speak of the world at large, not of mere
scholastic theologians) have been largely
influenced by ideas derived from this
opposite doctrine—a doctrine once held by
many or most of our own ancestors, and
familiarised to us from childhood in classical
literature. In fact, while most Englishmen
of the present day believe they believe in the
Resurrection of the Body, what they really
believe in is the Immortality of the Soul.
31
It might seem at first sight as though a
grave discrepancy existed between the two
incongruous ideas, first of burying or burn
ing your dead so that they may not be
able to return or to molest you, and second of
worshipping at their graves or making
offerings to their disembodied spirits. But
to the savage mind these two conceptions
are by no means irreconcilable. While he
jumps upon the corpse of his friend or his
father to keep it in the narrow pit he has
digged for it, he yet brings it presents of
food and drink, or slays animals at the
tomb, that the ghost may be refreshed by
the blood that trickles down to it. Indeed,
several intermediate customs occur, which
help us to bridge over the apparent gulf
between reverential preservation of the
mummified body and the coarse precau
tions of burial or burning. Thus, in many
cases, some of which we shall examine
in the next chapter, after the body has
been for some time buried, the head is
disinterred, and treasured with care in the
family oratory, where it is worshipped and
tended, and where it often gives oracles to
the members of the household. A cere
monial washing is almost always a feature
in this reception of the head; it recurs
again and again in various cases, down to
the enshrinement of the head of Hoseyn at
Cairo, and that of St. Denis at the abbey
of the same name.
I ought also to add that between com
plete preservation of the corpse and the
practice of burial there seems to have gone
another intermediate stage, now compara
tively rare, but once very general, if we
may judge from the traces it has left behind
it—a stage when all the body or part of it
was sacramentally eaten by the survivors
as an act of devotion. We will consider
this curious and revolting practice more
fully when we reach the abstruse problem
of sacrifice and sacrament; for the present
it will suffice to say that in many instances,
in Australia, South America, and elsewhere,
the body is eaten, while only the bones are
burned or buried. Among these savages,
again, it usually happens that the head is
cleaned of its flesh by cooking, while the
skull is ceremonially washed, and preserved
as an object of household veneration and
an oracular deity. Instances will be quoted
in succeeding chapters.
Thus, between the care taken to prevent
returns of the corpse, and the worship paid
to the ghost or shade, primitive races feel
no such sense of discrepancy or incongruity
as would instantly occur to civilised people.
�32
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The three stages in human ideas with
which this chapter deals may be shortly
summed up as corpse-worship, ghost
worship, and shade-worship.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ORIGIN OF GODS
Mr. Herbert Spencer has traced so
admirably in his Principles of Sociology
the progress of development from the
Ghost to the God that I do not propose in
this chapter to attempt much more than a
brief recapitulation of his main propositions,
which, however, I shall supplement with
fresh examples, and adapt at the same time
to the conception of three successive stages
in human ideas about the Life of the Dead,
as set forth in the preceding argument.
In the earliest stage of all—the stage
where the actual bodies of the dead are
preserved—Gods as such are for the most
part unknown : it is the corpses of friends
and ancestors that are worshipped and
reverenced. For example, Ellis says of the
corpse of a Tahitian chief that it was placed
in a sitting posture under a protecting
shed ; u a small altar was erected before it,
and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers
were daily presented by the relatives, or
the priest appointed to attend the body.”
(This point about the priest is of essential
importance.) The Central Americans, again,
as Mr. Spencer notes, performed similar
rites before bodies dried by artificial heat.
The New Guinea people, as D’Albertis
found, worship the dried mummies of their
fathers and husbands. A little higher in
the scale, we get the developed mummy
worship of Egypt and Peru, which survives
even after the evolution of greater gods,
from powerful kings or chieftains. Wher
ever the actual bodies of the dead are pre
served, there also worship and offerings
are paid to them.
Often, however, as already noted, it is
not the whole body but the head alone
that is specially kept and worshipped.
Thus Mr. H. O. Forbes says of the people
of Buru : “ The dead are buried in the
forest in some secluded spot, marked often
by a merang, or grave-pole, over which at
certain intervals the relatives place tobacco,
cigarettes, and various offerings. When
the body is decomposed, the son or nearest
relative disinters the head, wraps a new
cloth about it, and places it in the Matakau
at the back of his house or in a little hut
erected for it near the grave. It is the
representative of his forefathers, whose
behests he holds in the greatest respect.”
Two points are worthy of notice in this
interesting account, as giving us an antici
patory hint of two further accessories whose
evolution we must trace hereafter : first the
grave-stake, which is probably the origin
of the wooden idol; and second, the little
hut erected over the head by the side of the
grave, which is undoubtedly one of the
origins of the temple or praying-house.
Observe also the ceremonial wrapping of
the skull in cloth and its oracular functions.
Similarly, Mr. Wyatt Gill, the wellknown missionary, writes of a dead baby at
Boera, in New Guinea : “ It will be covered
with two inches of soil, the friends watching
beside the grave ; but eventually the skull
and smaller bones will be preserved and
worn by the mother.” And of the Suau
people he says: “Inquiring the use of
several small houses, I learned that it is
to cover grave-pits. All the members of a
family at death occupy the same grave,
the earth that thinly covered the last
occupant being scooped out to admit the
newcomer. These graves are shallow; the
dead are buried in a sitting posture, hands
folded. The earth is thrown in up to the
mouth only. An earthen pot covers the
head. After a time the pot is taken off,
the perfect skull removed and cleansed—
eventually to be hung up in a basket or
net inside the dwelling of the deceased
over the fire to blacken in the smoke.” In
Africa, again, the skull is frequently pre
served in such a pot and prayed to. In
America, earthenware pots have been
found moulded round human skulls in
mounds at New Madrid and elsewhere;
the skull cannot be removed without
breaking the vessel.
The special selection and preservation
of the head as an object of worship thus
noted in New Guinea and the Malay
Archipelago is also still found among
many other primitive peoples.
Mr.
Spencer quotes several examples, a few
of which alone I extract from his pages :—
“ ‘ In the private fetish-hut of King
Adolee, at Badagry, the skull of that
monarch’s father is preserved in a clay
vessel placed in the earth.’ He ‘gently
rebukes it if his success does not happen
to answer his expectations.’ Similarly
among the Mandans, who place the skulls
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
of their dead in a circle, each wife knows
the skull of her former husband or child,
‘and there seldom passes a day that she
does not visit it, with a dish of the best
cooked food...... There is scarcely an hour
in a pleasant day but more or less of these
women may be seen sitting or lying by the
skull of their child or husband—talking to
it in the most pleasant and endearing
language that they can use (as they were
wont to do in former days), and seem
ingly getting an answer back.’ ”
This affectionate type of converse with
the dead, almost free from fear, is especially
characteristic of the first or corpse
preserving stage of human death-con
ceptions. It seldom survives where burial
has made the feeling towards the corpse a
painful or loathsome one, and it is then
confined to the head alone, while the grave
itself with the body it encloses is rather
shunned and dreaded.
A little above this level, Mr. Du Chaillu
notes that some of his West African
followers, when going on an expedition,
brought out the skulls of their ancestors
(which they religiously preserved) and
scraped off small portions of the bone,
which they mixed with water and drank ;
giving as a reason for this conduct that
their ancestors were brave, and that by
drinking a portion of them they too
became brave and fearless like their
ancestors. Here we have a simple and
early case of that habit of “ eating the
god ” to whose universality and importance
Mr. Frazer has called attention.
Throughout the earlier and ruder phases
of human evolution, this primitive concep
tion of ancestors or dead relatives as the
chief known objects of worship survives
undiluted : and ancestor-worship remains
to this day .the principal religion of the
Chinese, and of several other peoples.
Godsj as such, are practically unknown in
China. Ancestor-worship also survives in
many other races as one of the main cults,
even after other elements of later religion
have been superimposed upon it. In
Greece and Rome it remained to the last
an important part of domestic ritual. But
in most cases a gradual differentiation is
set up in time between various classes of
ghosts or dead persons, some ghosts being
considered of more importance and power
than others ; and out of these last it is that
gods as a rule are finally developed. A
god, in fact, is in the beginning at least an
exceptionally powerful and friendly ghost
—a ghost able to help, and from whose
33
help great things may reasonably be
expected.
Again, the rise of chieftainship and
kingship has much to do with the growth
of a higher conception of godhead ; a dead
king of any great power or authority is
sure to be thought of in time as a god of
considerable importance. We shall trace
out this idea more fully hereafter in the
religion of Egypt; for the present it must
suffice to say that the supposed power of
the gods in each pantheon has regularly
increased in proportion to the increased
power of kings or emperors.
When we pass from the first plane of
corpse-preservation and mummification to
the second plane where burial is habitual,*
it might seem at a hasty glance as though*
continued worship of the dead, and their
elevation into gods, would no longer be
possible. For we saw that burial is
prompted by a deadly fear lest the corpse
or ghost should return to plague the
living. Nevertheless, natural affection for
parents or friends, and the desire to ensure
their goodwill and aid, make these seem
ingly contrary ideas reconcilable. As a
matter of fact, we find that even when men
bury or burn their dead, they continue to
worship them : while, as we shall show in
the sequel, even the great stones which
they roll on top of the grave to prevent the
dead from rising again become in time
altars on which sacrifices are offered to
the spirit.
In these two later stages of thought with
regard to the dead which accompany burial
and cremation, the gods, indeed, grow
more and more distinct from minor ghosts
with an accelerated rapidity of evolution.
They grow greater in proportion to the
rise of temples and hierarchies. Further
more, the very indefiniteness of the bodiless
ghost tells in favour of an enlarged
godship. The gods are thought of as
more and more aerial and immaterial, less
definitely human in form and nature ; they
are clothed with mighty attributes ; they
assume colossal size ; they are even identi
fied with the sun, the moon, the great
powers of nature. But they are never
quite omnipotent during the polytheistic
stage, because in a pantheon they are
necessarily mutually limiting. Even in the
Greek and Roman civilisation it is clear
that the gods were not commonly envisaged
by ordinary minds as much more than
human. It is only quite late, under the in
fluence of monotheism, that the exalted
conceptions of deity now prevalent began
D
�34
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
to form themselves in Judaism and Chris
tianity.
Mere domestic ancestor-worship, once
more, could scarcely give us the origin of
anything more than domestic religion—the
cult of the manes, the household gods, as
distinct from that of the tribal and national
deities. But kingship supplies us with the
missing link. We have seen in Mr. Duff
Macdonald’s account of the Central African
god-making how the worship of the chief s
ancestors gives rise to tribal or village gods;
and it is clear how, as chieftainship and
kingship widen, national gods of far higher
types may gradually evolve from these early
monarchs. Especially must we take the
time-element into account, remembering
that the earlier ancestors get at last to be
individually forgotten as men, and remain
in memory only as supernatural beings.
Thus kingship rapidly reacts upon godship.
If the living king himself is great, how
much greater must be the ancestor whom
even the king himself fears and worships ;
and how infinitely greater still that yet
earlier god, the ancestor’s ancestor, whom
the ancestor himself revered and propiti
ated ! In some such way there grows up
gradually a hierarchy of gods, among whom
the oldest, and therefore the least known,
are usually in the end the greatest of any.
The consolidation of kingdoms and
empires, and the advance of the arts, tell
strongly with concurrent force in these
directions ; while the invention of written
language sets a final seal on the godhead
and might of great early ancestors. Among
very primitive tribes, indeed, we find as a
rule only very domestic and recent objects
of worship. The chief prays for the most
part to his own father and his immediate
predecessors. The more ancient ancestors,
as Mr. Duff Macdonald has so well pointed
out, grow rapidly into oblivion. But with
more advanced races various agencies arise
which help to keep in mind the early dead ;
and in very evolved communities these
agencies, reaching a high pitch of evolu
tion, make the recent gods or kings or
ghosts seem comparatively unimportant by
the side of the very ancient and very longworshipped ones. More than of any other
thing, it may be said of a god, vires acquirit
eundo. Thus, in advanced types of society
saints or gods of recent origin assume but
secondary or minor importance ; while the
highest and greatest gods of all are those of
the remotest antiquity, whose human history
is lost from our view in the dim mist of ages.
Three such agencies of prime importance
in the transition from the mere ghost to the
fully-developed god must here be men
tioned. They are the rise of temples, of
idols, and, above all, of priesthoods. Each
of these we must now consider briefly but
separately.
The origin of the Temple is various ; but
all temples may nevertheless be reduced in
the last resort either into graves of the dead,
or into places where worship is specially
offered up to them. This truth, which Mr.
Herbert Spencer arrived at by examination
of the reports of travellers or historians,
and worked up in connection with his
Principles of Sociology, was independently
arrived at through quite a different line of
observation and reasoning by Mr. William
Simpson. Mr. Simpson has probably
visited a larger number of places of wor
ship all over the world than any other
traveller of any generation ; and he was
early impressed by the fact which forced
itself upon his eyes, that almost every one
of them, where its origin could be traced,
turned out to be a tomb in one form or
another. He has set forth the results of his
researches in this direction in several
admirable papers, all of which, but especi
ally the one entitled The Worship of Death,
I can confidently recommend to the serious
attention of students of religion.
The cave is probably the first form of the
Temple. Sometimes the dead man is left
in the cave which he inhabited when
living; an instance of which we have
already noticed among the Veddahs of
Ceylon. In other cases, where races have
outgrown the custom of cave-dwelling, the
habit of cave-burial, or rather of laying the
dead in caves or in artificial grottoes, still
continues through the usual conservatism
of religious feeling. Offerings are made to
the dead in all these various caves : and
here we get the beginnings of cave-temples.
Such temples are at first of course either
natural or extremely rude ; but they soon
begin to be decorated with rough frescoes,
as is done, for example, by the South
African Bushmen. These frescoes again
give rise in time by slow degrees to such
gorgeous works as those of the Tombs of
the Kings at Thebes ; each of which has
attached to it a magnificent temple as its
mortuary chapel. Sculpture is similarly
employed on the decoration of cave-tem
ples ; and we get the final result of such
artistic ornament in splendid cave-temples
like those of Ellora. Both arts were em
ployed together in the beautiful and in
teresting Etruscan tomb-temples.
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
In another class of cases, the hut where
the dead man lived is abandoned at his
death by his living relations, and thus be
comes a rudimentary Temple where offerings
are made to him. This is the case with the
Hottentots. Of a New Guinea hut-burial,
Mr. Chalmers says : “ The chief is buried
in the centre ; a mat was spread over the
grave, on which I was asked to sit until
they had a weeping.” This weeping is
generally performed by women—a touch
which leads us on to Adonis and Osiris
rites, and to the Christian Pietà. Mr.
Spencer has collected several other ex
cellent examples. “As repeated supplies
of food are taken to the abandoned house,”
he says, “and as along with making offerings
there go other propitiatory acts, the deserted
dwelling house, turned into a mortuary
house, acquires the attributes of a temple.”
A third origin for Temples is found in
the shed, hut, or shelter, erected over the
grave, either for the protection of the dead
or for the convenience of the living who
bring their offerings. Thus, in parts of
New Guinea, according to Mr. Chalmers,
“ The natives bury their dead in the front
of their dwellings, and cover the grave with
a small house, in which the near relatives
sleep for several months.”
On the other hand, we saw in Mr. Duff
Macdonald’s account of the Central African
natives that those savages do not worship
at the actual grave itself. In this case,
terror of the revenant seems to prevent the
usual forms of homage at the tomb of the
deceased. Moreover, the ghost being now
conceived as more or less freely separable
from the corpse, it will be possible to worship
it in some place remote from the dreaded
cemetery. Hence these Africans “ seek
the spirit at the place where their departed
kinsman last lived among them. It is the
great tree at the verandah of the dead
man’s house that is their temple : and if
no tree grow here, they erect a little shade,
and there perform their simple rites.” We
have in this case yet another possible
origin for certain temples, and also for the
sacred tree, which is so common an object
of pious adoration in many countries.
Beginning with such natural caves or
such humble huts, the Temple assumes
larger proportions and more beautiful
decorations with the increase of art and
the growth of kingdoms. Especially, as
we see in the tomb-temples and pyramids
of Egypt and Peru, does it assume great
size and acquire costly ornaments when it
is built by a powerful king for himself
35
during his own lifetime. Temple-tombs of
this description reach a high point of
artistic development in such a building as
the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae,
which is really the sepulchre of some name
less prehistoric monarch. (It is admirably ■
reconstructed in Perrot and Chipiez.)
Obviously, the importance and magnifi- ■
cence of the temple will react upon the popu
lar conception of the importance and mag
nificence of the God who inhabits it. And
conversely, as the gods grow greater and
greater, more art and more constructive
skill will constantly be devoted to the building
and decoration of their permanent homes.
To the very end, the god depends largely
on his house for impressiveness.
How
much did not Hellenic religion itself owe to
the Parthenon and the temple of Olympian
Zeus ! How much does not Christianity
itself owe to Lincoln and Durham, to
Amiens and Chartres, to Milan and Pisa,
to St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s! Men cannot
believe that deities worshipped in such
noble and dimly religious shrines were
once human like themselves, compact of
the same bodies, parts, and passions Yet
in the last instance at least we know the
great works to be raised in honour of a
single Lower Syrian peasant.
With this brief and imperfect notice of
the origin of temples, I pass on from the
consideration of the sacred building itself
to that of the Idol who usually dwells
within it.
Where burial prevails, and where arts
are at a low stage of development, the
memory of the dead is not likely to survive
beyond two or three generations.
But
where mummification is the rule, there is
no reason why deceased persons should not
be preserved and worshipped for an
indefinite period ; and we know that in
Egypt at least the cult of kings who died in
the most remote times of the Early Empire
was carried on regularly down to the days
of the Ptolemies. In such a case as this
there is absolutely no need for idols to
arise ; the corpse itself is the chief object
of worship. We do find accordingly that
both in Egypt and in Peru the worship of
the mummy played a large part in the local
religions ; though sometimes it alternated
with the worship of other holy objects, such
as the image or the sacred stone, which we
shall see hereafter to have had a like origin.
But in many other countries, where bodies
were less visibly and obviously preserved,
the worship due to the ghost or god was
often paid to a simulacrum or idol; so
�36
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
much so that “idolatry” has become m
Christian parlance the common term for
most forms of worship other than mono
theistic.
Now, what is the origin and meaning of
Idols, and how can they be affiliated upon
primitive corpse or ghost worship ?
Like the temple, the Idol, I believe, has
many separate origins, several of which
have been noted by Mr. Herbert Spencer,
while others, it seems to me, have escaped
the notice even of that profound and acute
observer.
The earliest Idols, if I may be allowed
the contradictory expression, are not idols
at all—not images or representations of
the dead person, but actual bodies, pre
served and mummified. These pass readily,
however, into various types of representa
tive figures. For in the first place the
mummy itself is usually wrapped round in
swathing-cloths which obscure its features ;
and in the second place it is frequently
enclosed in a wooden mummy-case, which
is itself most often rudely human in form, and
which has undoubtedly given rise to certain
forms of idols. Thus, the images of Amun,
Khem, Osiris, and Ptah among Egyptian
gods are frequently or habitually those of a
mummy in a mummy-case. But further
more, the mummy itself is seldom or never
the entire man; the intestines at least have
been removed, or even, as in New Guinea,
the entire mass of flesh, leaving only the
skin and the skeleton. The eyes, again,
are often replaced, as in Peru, by some
other imitative object, so as to keep up the
life-like appearance. Cases like these lead
on to others, where the image or idol
gradually supersedes altogether the corpse
or mummy.
Mr. H. O. Forbes gives an interesting
instance of such a transitional stage in
Timor-laut. “ The bodies of those who die
in war or by violent death are buried,” he
says ; “ and if the head has been captured
[by the enemy], a cocoanut is placed in the
grave to represent the missing member, and
to deceive and satisfy his spirit.” There is
abundant evidence that such makeshift
limbs or bodies amply suffice for the use of
the soul, when the actual corpse has been
destroyed or mutilated. The Yucatanese
made for their fathers wooden statues, put
in the ashes of the burnt body, and attached
the skin of the occiput taken off the corpse.
These images, half mummy, half idol, were
kept in the oratories of their houses, and
were greatly reverenced and assiduously
cared for. On all the festivals food and
drink were offered to them. It is clear
that cremation specially lends itself to such
substitution of an image for the actual dead
body. Among burying races it is the
severed skull, on the contrary, that is
oftenest preserved and worshipped.
The transition from such images to small
stone sarcophagi, like those of the Etruscan
tombs, is by no means a great one. These
sarcophagi contained the burnt ashes of .
the dead, but were covered by a lid which
usually represented the deceased, reclining,
as if at a banquet, with a beaker in his
hands. The tombs in which the sarcophagi
were placed were of two types : one, the
stone pyramid or cone, which, says Dr.
Isaac Taylor, “is manifestly a survival of
the tumulus”; the other, the rock-cut
chamber, “ which is a survival of the cave.”
These lordly graves are no mere cheerless
sepulchres ; they are abodes for the dead,
constructed on the model of the homes of
the living. They contain furniture and
pottery; and their walls are decorated
with costly mural paintings. They are also
usually provided with an antechamber,
where the family could assemble at the
annual feast to do homage to the spirits of
departed ancestors, who shared in the meal
from their sculptured sarcophagus lids.
At a further stage of distance from the
primitive mummy-idol we come upon the
image pure and simple. The Mexicans,
for example, as we have seen, were cremationists ; and when men killed in battle
were missing, they made wooden figures of
them, which they honoured, and then burnt
them in place of the bodies. In somewhat
the same spirit the Egyptians used to place
beside the mummy itself an image of the
dead, to act as a refuge or receptacle for
the soul, “in case of the accidental destruc
tion of the actual body.” Mr. Spencer has
collected several similar instances of idols
substituted for the bodies of the dead.
The Roman imagines were masks of wax,
which preserved in like manner the features
of ancestors. Perhaps the most curious
modern survival of this custom of double
representations is to be found in the effigies
of our kings and queens still preserved in
Westminster Abbey.
There are two other sources of idol- '
worship, however, which, as it seems to
me, have hardly received sufficient atten
tion at Mr. Spencer’s hands. Those two
are the stake which marks the grave, and
the standing stone or tombstone. By far
the larger number of idols, I venture to
believe, are descended from one or other
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
of these two originals, both of which I
shall examine hereafter in far greater
detail. For the present it will suffice to
remark that the wooden stake seems often
to form the origin or point of departure for
the carved wooden image, as well as for
such ruder objects of reverence as the
cones and wooden pillars so widely
reverenced among the Semitic tribes ;
while the rough boulder, standing stone, or
tombstone, seems to form the origin or
point of departure for the stone or marble
statue, the commonest type of idol the
whole world over in all advanced and
cultivated communities. Such stones were
at first mere rude blocks or unhewn masses,
the descendants of those which were rolled
over the grave in primitive times in order
to keep down the corpse of the dead man
and prevent him from returning to disturb
the living. But in time they grew to be
roughly dressed into slabs or squares, and
finally to be decorated with a rude repre
sentation of a human head and shoulders.
From this stage they readily progressed to
that of the Greek Hermse. We now know
that this was the early shape of most
Hellenic gods and goddesses ; and we can
trace their evolution onward from this point
to the wholly anthropomorphic Aphrodite
or Here. The well-known figure of the
Ephesian Artemis is an intermediate case
which will occur at once to every classical
reader.
Starting from such shapeless
beginnings, we progress at last to the
artistic and splendid bronze and marble
statues of Hellas, Etruria, and Rome, to
the many-handed deities of modern India,
and to the sculptured Madonnas and
Pieths of Renaissance Italy.
Naturally, as the gods grow more
beautiful and more artistically finished in
workmanship, the popular idea of their
power and dignity must increase paripassu.
In Egypt, that growth took chiefly the
form of colossal size and fine manipulation
of hard granitic materials. The so-called
Memnon and the Sphinx are familiar
instances of the first; the Pashts of Syenite,
the black basalt gods, so well known at the
Louvre and the British Museum, are
examples of the second. In Greece, effect
was sought rather by ideal beauty, as in
the Aphrodites and Apollos, or by cost
liness of material, as in the chryselephantine
Zeus and the Athene of the Parthenon.
But we must always remember that in
Hellas itself these glorious gods were
developed in a comparatively short space
of time from the shapeless blocks or
37
standing stones of the ruder religion;
indeed, we have still many curious inter
mediate forms between the extremely
grotesque and hardly human Mycenaean
types and the exquisite imaginings of
Myron or Phidias. The earliest Hellenic
idols engraved by Messrs. Perrot and
Chipiez in their great work on Art in
Primitive Greece do not rise in any respect
superior to the Polynesian level ; while the
so-called Apollos of later archaic work
manship, rigidly erect with their arms at
their sides, recall in many respects the
straight up-and-down outline of the
standing stone from which they are
developed.
I should add that in an immense number
of instances the rude stone image or idol,
and at a still lower grade the unwrought
sacred stone, stands as the central object
under a shed or shelter, which developes by
degrees into the stately temple. The
advance in both is generally more or less
parallel; though sometimes, as in historical
Greece, a temple of the noblest architecture
encloses as its central and principal object
of veneration the rough unhewn stone of
early barbaric worship. So even in Chris
tendom, great churches and cathedrals
often hold as their most precious possession
some rude and antique image like the
sacred Bambino of Santa Maria in Ara
Coeli at Rome, or the “ Black Madonnas ”
which are revered by the people at so many
famous Italian places of pilgrimage.
I do not mean to say that every idol is
necessarily itself a funereal relic. When
once the idea of godship has been tho
roughly developed, and when men have
grown accustomed to regard an image or
idol as the representative or dwelling-place
of their god, it is easy to multiply such
images indefinitely. Hundreds of repre
sentations may exist of the self-same Apollo
or Aphrodite or Madonna or St. Sebastian.
At the same time, it is quite clear that for
most worshippers the divine being is more
or less actually confused with the image; a
particular Artemis or a particular Notre
Dame is thought of as more powerful or
more friendly than another. I have known
women in Southern Europe go to pray at
the shrine of a distant Madonna, “because
she is greater than our own Madonna.”
Moreover, it is probable that in many cases
images or sacred stones once funereal in
origin, and representing particular gods or
ghosts, have been swallowed up at last by
other and more powerful deities, so as to
lose in the end their primitive distinctness.
�3«
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Thus, there were many Baals and many
Ashteroths; probably there were many
Apollos, many Artemises, many Aphrodites.
It is almost certain that there were many
distinct Hermae. The progress of research
tends to make us realise that numberless
deities, once considered unique and indi
vidual, may be resolved into a whole host
of local gods, afterwards identified with
some powerful deity on the merest external
resemblances of image, name, or attribute.
In Egypt at least this process of identifi
cation and centralisation was common.
Furthermore, we know that each new reli
gion tends to swallow up and assimilate to
itself all possible elements of older cults ;
just as Hebrew Jahwehism tried to adopt
the sacred stones of early Semitic heathenism
by associating them with episodes in the
history of the patriarchs ; and just as Chris
tianity has sanctified such stones in its own
area by using them sometimes as the base
of a cross, or by congecrating them at
others with the name of some saint or
martyr.
But even more than the evolution of the
Temple and the Idol, the evolution of the
Priesthood has given dignity, importance,
and power to the gods. For the priests are
a class whose direct interest it is to make
the most of the greatness and majesty of
the deities they tend or worship.
Priesthood, again, has probably at least
two distinct origins. The one is quasi
royal ; the other is quasi-servile.
I begin with the first. We saw that the
chief of an African village, as the son and
representative of the chief ghosts, who are
the tribal gods, has alone the right to
approach them directly with offerings. The
inferior villager, who desires to ask any
thing of the gods, asks through the chief,
who is a kinsman and friend of the divine
spirits, and who therefore naturally under
stands their ideas and habits. Such chiefs
are thus also naturally priests. They are
sacred by family ; they and their children
stand in a special relation to the gods of the
tribe, quite different from the relation in
’ which the common people stand ; they are
of the blood of the deities. This type of
relation is common in many countries ; the
chiefs in such instances are “kings and
priests, after the order of Melchizedek.”
To put it briefly, in the earliest or
domestic form of religion the gods of each
little group or family are its own dead
ancestors, and especially (while the historic
memory is still but weak) its immediate
predecessors. In this stage, the head of the
household naturally discharges the func
tions of priest; it is he who approaches the
family ghosts or gods on behalf of his
wives, his sons, his dependants. To the
last, indeed, the father of each family
retains this priestly function as regards the
more restricted family rites ; he is priest of
the worship of the lares and Senateshe
offers the family sacrifice to the family gods ;
he reads family prayers in the Christian
household. But as the tribe or nation
arises, and chieftainship grows greater, it
is the ghosts or ancestors of the chiefly or
kingly family who develop most into gods ;
and the living chief and his kin are their
natural representatives. Thus, in most
cases, the priestly office comes to be asso
ciated with that of king or chief.
“ The union of a royal title with priestly
duties,” says Mr. Frazer in The Golden
Bough, “was common in ancient Italy and
Greece. At Rome and in other Italian
cities there was a priest called the Sacri
ficial King or King of the sacred rites {Rex
Sacrificulus or Rex Sacrorum), and his wife
bore the title of Queen of the Sacred Rites.
In republican Athens, the second magistrate
of the State was called the King, and his
wife the Queen ; the functions of both were
religious. Many other Greek democracies
had titular kings, whose duties, so far as
they are known, seem to have been priestly.
At Rome the tradition was that the Sacri
ficial King had been appointed after the
expulsion of the kings in order to offer the
sacrifices which had been previously offered
by the kings. In Greece a similar view
appears to have prevailed as to the origin
of the priestly kings. In itself the view is
not improbable, and it is borne out by the
example of Sparta, the only purely Greek
State which retained the kingly form of
government in historical times. For in
Sparta all State sacrifices were offered by
the kings as descendants of the god. This
combination of priestly functions with royal
authority is familiar to every one. Asia
Minor, for example, was the seat of various
great religious capitals, peopled by thousands
of ‘Sacred Slaves,’ and ruled by pontiffs
who wielded at once temporal and spiritual
authority, like the popes of mediaeval Rome.
Such priest-ridden cities were Zela and
Pessinus. Teutonic Kings, again, in the
old heathen days seem to have stood in
the position and exercised the powers of
high priests. The Emperors of China offer
public sacrifices, the details of which are
regulated by the ritual books. It is need
less, however, to multiply examples of what
�THE ORIGIN OF GODS
is the rule rather than the exception in the
early history of the kingship.” •
Where priesthood originates in this parti
cular way, little differentiation is likely to
occur between the temporal and the eccle
siastical power. But there is a second and
far more potent origin of priesthood, less
distinguished in its beginnings, yet more
really pregnant of great results in the end.
For where the king is a priest, and the
descendant of the gods, as in Peru and
Egypt, his immediate and human power
seems to overshadow and as it were to
belittle the power of his divine ancestors.
No statue of Osiris, for example, is half so
big in size as the colossal figure of Rameses
II. among the ruins of Thebes. But where
a separate and distinct priesthood gets the
management of sacred rites entirely into
its own hands, we find the authority of the
gods often rising superior to that of the
kings, who are only their vicegerents : till
at last we get Popes dictating to emperors,
and powerful monarchs doing humble
penance before the costly shrines of mur
dered archbishops.
The origin of such independent, or quasiservile, priesthood is to be found in the
institution of “temple slaves”—the atten
dants told off, as we have already seen, to
do duty at the grave of the chief or -dead
warrior. Egypt again affords us, on the
domestic side, an admirable example of the
origin of such priesthoods. Over the lintel
of each of the cave-like tombs at Beni
Hassan and Sakkarah is usually placed an
inscription setting forth the name and titles
of its occupant. Then follows a pious hope
that the spirit may enjoy for all eternity the
proper payment of funereal offerings, a list
of which is ordinarily appended. But the
point which specially concerns us here is
this : Priests or servants were appointed to
see that these offerings were duly made ;
and the tomb was endowed with property
for the purpose both of keeping up the offer
ings in question, end of providing a stipend
or living-wage for the priest. As we shall
see hereafter, such priesthoods were gene
rally made hereditary, so as to ensure their
continuance throughout all time : and so
successful were they that in many cases
worship continued to be performed for
several hundred years at the tomb ; so that
a person who died under the Early Empire
was still being made the recipient of
funeral dues under kings of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Dynasties.
I give this interesting historical instance
at some length because it is one of the best
39
known, and also one of the most persistent.
But everywhere, all the world over, similar
evolutions have occurred on a shorter scale.
The temple attendants, endowed for the
purpose of performing sacred rites for the
ghost or god, have grown into priests, who
knew the habits of the unseen denizen of
the shrine. Bit by bit prescriptions have
arisen; customs and rituals have developed;
and the priests have become the deposi
taries of the divine traditions. They alone
know how to approach the god ; they alone
can read the hidden signs of his pleasure
or displeasure. As intermediaries between
worshipper and deity, they are themselves
half sacred. Without them, no votary can
rightly approach the shrine of his patron.
Thus at last they rise into importance far
above their origin ; priestcraft comes into
being; and by magnifying their god the
members of the hierarchy magnify at the
same time their own office and function.
Yet another contributing cause must be
briefly noted. Picture-writing and hiero
glyphics take their rise more especially in
connection with tombs and temples. The
priests in particular hold as a rule the key
to this knowledge. In ancient Egypt, to
take a well-known instance, they were the
learned class ; they became the learned
class again under other circumstances in
mediaeval Europe. Everywhere we come
upon sacred mysteries that the priests alone
know; and where hieroglyphics exist these
mysteries, committed to writing, become
the peculiar property of the priests in a
more special sense. Where writing is
further differentiated into hieratic and de
motic, the gulf between laity and priesthood
grows still wider; the priests possess a
special key to knowledge, denied to the
commonalty. The recognition of Sacred
Books has often the same result; of these,
the priests are naturally the guardians and
exponents. I need hardly add that side by
side with the increase of architectural
grandeur in the temple, and the increase of
artistic beauty and costliness in the idols or
statues and pictures of the gods, goes
increase in the stateliness of the priestly
robes, the priestly surroundings, the priestly
ritual. Finally, we get ceremonies of the
most dignified character, adorned with all
the accessories of painting and sculpture, of
candles and flowers, of incense and music,
of rich mitres and jewelled palls—cere
monies performed in the dim shade of lofty
temples, or mosques, or churches, in honour
of god or gods of infinite might, power, and
majesty, who must yet in the last resort be
�40
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
traced back to some historic or prehistoric
Dead Man, or at least to some sacred
CHAPTER V.
stone or stake or image, his relic and repre
sentative.
K
SACRED STONES
■ Thus, by convergence of all these streams,
the primitive mummy or ghost or spirit
I MENTIONED in the last chapter two origins
passes gradually into a deity of unbounded
of Idols to which, as I believed, an insuffi
glory and greatness and sanctity. The
cient amount of attention had been directed
bodiless soul, released from necessary limits
by Mr. Herbert Spencer. These were the
of space and time, envisaged as a god, is
pictured as ever more and more super Sacred Stone and the Wooden Stake which
mark the grave. To these two I will now
human, till all memory of its origin is
add a third common object of worship,
entirely forgotten. But to the last observe
which does not indeed enter into the genesis
this curipus point : all new gods or saints or
of idols, but which is of very high impor
divine persons are, each ; as they crop up
first, of démonstrably human origin. When tance. in early religion—the sacred tree,
with its collective form, the sacred grove.
ever we find a new god added from known
All the objects thus enumerated demand
sources to a familiar pantheon, we find
without exception that he turns out to be a further attention at our hands, both from
human being. Whenever we. go back to their general significance in the history of
very primitive religions, we find all men’s religion, and also from their special interest
gods are the corpses or ghosts of their in connection with the evolution of the God
ancestors. It is only when we take rela of Israel, who became in due time the God
tively advanced races with unknown early of Christianity and of Islam, as well as the
God of modern idealised and sublimated
histories that we find them worshipping a
theism.
certain number of gods who cannot be
I will begin with the consideration of the
easily and immediately resolved into dead
men or spirits. Unfortunately, students of Sacred Stone, not only because it is by far
religion have oftenest paid the closest the most important of the three, but also
because, as we shall shortly see, it stands
attention to those historical religions which
in the direct line cf parentage of the God
lie furthest away from the primitive type,
and in which at their first appearance before of Israel.
All the world over, and at all periods of
us we come upon the complex idea of god
head already fully developed. Hence they history, we find among the most common
aré too much inclined, like Professor objects of human worship certain blocks of
stone, either rudely shaped and dressed by
Robertson Smith, and even sometimes Mr.
Frazer (whose name, however, I cannot the hand, or else more often standing alone
mention in passing without the profoundest on the soil in all their native and natural
roughness. The downs of England are
respect), to regard the idea of a godship as
primordial, not derivative ; and to neglect everywhere studded with cromlechs, dol
the obvious derivation of godhead as a whole mens, and other antique magalithic struc
tures (of which the gigantic trilithons of
from the cult and reverence of the deified
Stonehenge and Avebury are the bestancestor. Yet the moment we get away
from these advanced and too overlaid his known examples), long described by anti
torical religions to the early conceptions of quaries as “ D ruidical remains,” and certainly
simple savages, we see at once that no gods regarded by the ancient inhabitants of
Britain with an immense amount of respect
exist for them save the ancestral corpses or
ghosts ; that religion means the perform and reverence. In France we have the
endless avenues of Carnac and Locmariaker;
ance of certain rites and offerings to these
corpses or ghosts ; and that higher ele in Sardinia, the curious conical shafts
mental or departmental deities are wholly known to the local peasants as sepolture dei
giganti—the tombs of the giants. In Syria,
wanting.
Major Conder has described similar monu
ments in Heth and Moab, at Gilboa and
at Heshbon. In India, five stones are set
up at the corner of a field, painted red, and
worshipped by the natives as the Five
Pandavas. Theophrastus tells us as one
of the characteristics of the superstitious
man that he anoints with oil the sacred
�SACRED STONES
stones at the street corners ; and from an
ancient tradition embedded in the Hebrew
scriptures we learn how the patriarch Jacob
set up a stone at Bethel “ for a pillar,” and
“ poured oil upon the top of it,” ^s a like
act of worship. Even in our own day there
is a certain English hundred where the old
open-air court of the manor is inaugurated
by the ceremony of breaking a bottle of
wine over a standing stone which tops a
tumulus ; and the sovereigns of the United
Kingdom are still crowned in a chair which
encloses under its seat the ancestral sacred
stone of their heathen Scottish and Irish
predecessors.
Now, what is the share of such sacred
stones in the rise and growth of the religious
habit ?
It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to give
formal proof of the familiar fact that an
upright slab is one of the commonest modes
of marking the place ^where a person is
buried. From the ancient pillar that pre
historic savages set up over the tumulus of
their dead chief, to the -headstone that
marks the dwarfed and stunted barrow in
our own English cemeteries, the practice
of mankind has been one and continuous.
Sometimes the stone is a rough boulder
from the fields ; a representative of the big
block which savages place on the grave to
keep the corpse from rising : sometimes it
is an oblong slab of slate or marble; some
times, and especially among the more
advanced races, it is a shapely cross or
sculptured monument. But wherever on
earth interment is practised, there stones of
some sort, solitary or in heaps, almost
invariably mark the place of burial.
Again, as presents and sacrifices are
offered at graves to the spirits of the dead,
it is at the stone which records the last rest
ing-place of the deceased that they will
oftenest be presented. As a matter of fact,
we know that, all the world over, offerings
of wine, oil, rice, ghee, corn, and meat are
continually made at the graves of chiefs or
relations. Victims, both human and other
wise, are sacrificed at the tomb, and their
blood is constantly smeared on the head
stone or boulder that marks the spot.
Four well-marked varieties of early tomb
stone are recognised in the eastern conti
nent at least, and their distribution and
nature is thus described by Major Conder :
“Rude stone monuments,bearing a strong
family resemblance in their mode of con
struction and dimensions, have been found
distributed over all parts of Europe and
Western Asia, and occur also in India......
4i
They include menhirs, or standing stones,
which were erected as memorials, and wor
shipped as deities, with libations of blood,
milk, honey, or water poured upon the
stones : dolmens, or stone tables, free stand
ing—that is, not covered by any mound or
superstructure, which may be considered
without, doubt to have been used as altars
on which victims (often human) were immo
lated : cairns, also memorial, and some
times surrounding menhirs; these were
made by the contributions of numerous
visitors or pilgrims, each adding a stone as
witness of his presence : finally cromlechs,
or stone circles., used as sacred enclosures
or early hypaethral temples, often with a
central menhir or dolmen as statue or
altar.”
There can be very little doubt that every
one of these monuments is essentially sepul
chral in character. The menhir or standing
stone is the ordinary gravestone still in use
among us: the dolmen is a chambered
tomb, once covered by a tumulus, but now
bare and open : the cairn is a heap of stones
piled above the dead body : the stone circle
is apparently a later temple built around a
tomb, whose position is marked by the men
hir or altar-stone in its centre. And each
has been the parent of a numerous offspring.
The menhir gives rise to the obelisk, the
stone cross, and the statue or idol ; the dol
men, to the sarcophagus, the altar-tomb,
and the high altar ; the cairn, to the tope
and also to the pyramid ; the cromlech', or
stone circle, to the temple or church in one
at least of its many developments.
Each of these classes of monuments,
Major Conder observes, has its distinctive
name in the Semitic languages, and is fre
quently mentioned in the early Hebrew
literature. The menhir is the “pillar” of
our Authorised Version of the Old Testa
ment ; the dolmen is the “ altar ” ; the cairn
is the “heap”; and the stone circle appears
under the names Gilgal and Hazor.
In the simplest and most primitive stage
of religion, such as that pure ancestor-cult
still surviving unmixed among the people of
New Guinea or the African tribes whose
practice Mr. Duff Macdonald has so admi
rably described for us, it is the corpse or
ghost itself, not the stone to mark its dwell
ing, which comes in for all the veneration
and all the gifts of the reverent survivors.
But we must remember that every existing
religion, however primitive in type, is now
very ancient ; and it is quite natural that in
many cases the stone should thus come
itself to be regarded as the ghost or god,
�42
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
the object to which veneration is paid by
the tribesmen. In fact, just in proportion
as the ghost evolves into the god, so does
the tombstone begin to evolve into the
fetish or idol.
At first, however, it is merely as the rude
unshapen stone that the idol in this shape
receives the worship of its votaries. This
is the stage that has been christened by
that very misleading name fetishism, and
erroneously supposed to lie at the very
basis of all religion. Mr. Turner, of the
London Missionary Society, gives many
examples of this stage of stone-worship
found in Samoa : and in these cases, and
in many others, it seems to me clear that
the original gravestone or menhir itself is
the object of worship, viewed as the
residence of the ghost or god in whose
honour it was erected. For in Samoa we
know that the grave “ was marked by a
little heap of stones, a foot or two high,”
and at De Peyster’s Island “a stone was
raised at the head of the grave, and a
human head carved on it”—a first step, as
we have already seen, towards the evolution
of one form of idol.
Similar instances abound everywhere.
Among the Khonds of India every village
has its local god, represented by an upright
stone under the big tree on the green, to
use frankly an English equivalent. (The
full importance of this common combina
tion of sacred stone and sacred tree will
only come out at a later stage of our
inquiry.) In Peru, worship was paid to
standing stones which, says Dr. Tylor,
“represented the penates of households
and the patron-deities of villages ”—in
other words, the ghosts of ancestors and
of tribal chiefs.
But when once the idea of the sacred
ness of stones had thus got firmly fixed in
the savage mind, it was natural enough
that other stones, resembling those which
were already recognised as gods, should
come to be regarded as themselves divine,
or as containing an indwelling ghost or
deity. Of this stage, Mr. Turner’s Samoa
again affords us some curious instances.
“ Smooth stones apparently picked up
out of the bed of the river were regarded
as representatives of certain gods, and
wherever the stone was, there the god was
supposed to be. One resembling a fish
would be prayed to as the fisherman’s god.
Another, resembling a yam, would be the
yam god. A third, round like a breadfruit,
the breadfruit god—and so on.”
Now, the word “ apparently ” used by
this very cautious observer in this passage
shows clearly that he had never of his own
knowledge seen a stone thus selected at
random worshipped or deified, and it is
therefore possible that in all such cases the
stone may really have been one of sepul
chral origin. Still, I agree with Mr.
Spencer that when once the idea of a ghost
or god is well developed, the notion of
such a spirit as animating any remarkable
or odd-looking object is a natural
transition.1 Hence I incline to believe
Mr. Turner is right, and that these stones
may really have been picked out and
worshipped, merely for their oddity, but
always, as he correctly infers, from the
belief in their connection with some god or
spirit.
Further instances (if fairly reported)
occur elsewhere. “ Among the lower races
of America,” says Dr. Tylor, summarising
Schoolcraft, “ the Dakotahs would pick up
a round boulder, paint it, and then,
addressing it as grandfather, make offerings
to it, and pray it to deliver them from
danger.” But here the very fact that the
stone is worshipped and treated as an
ancestor shows how derivative is the
deification—how dependent upon the prior
association of such stones with the tomb
of a forefather and its indwelling spirit.
Just in the same way we know there are
countries where a grave is more generally
marked, not by a stone, but by a wooden
stake ; and in these countries, as for
instance among the Samoyedes of Siberia,
sticks, not stones, are the most common
objects of reverence. (Thus, stick-worship
is found “ among the Damaras of South
Africa, whose ancestors are represented at
the sacrificial feasts by stakes cut from
trees or bushes consecrated to them, to
which stakes the meat is first offered.”)
But here, too, we see the clear affiliation
upon ancestor-worship; and indeed, wher
ever we find the common worship of
“ stocks and stones,” all the analogies lead
us to believe the stocks and stones either
actually mark the graves of ancestors or
else are accepted as their representatives
and embodiments.
The vast majority, however, of sacred
stones with whose history we are well ac
quainted are indubitably connected with
interments, ancient or modern. All the
European sacred stones are cromlechs,
dolmens, trilithons, or menhirs, of which
1 The whole subject is admirably worked out
in The Principles of Sociology, § 159.
�SACRED STONES
Mr. Angus Smith, a most cautious authority,
observes categorically: “We know for a
certainty that memorials of burials are the
chief object of the first one, and of nearly
all, the only object apparently.” So many
other examples will come out incidentally
in the course of the sequel that I will not
labour the point any further at present.
I have already stated that the idol is
probably in many cases derived from the
gravestone or other sacred stone. I believe
that in an immense number of cases it is
simply the original pillar, more or less
rudely carved into the semblance of a
human figure.
How this comes about we can readily
understand if we recollect that by a gradual
transference of sentiment the stone itself is
at last identified with the associated spirit.
Here, once more, is a transitional instance
from our Polynesian storehouse.
The great god of Bowditch Island “ was
supposed to be embodied in a stone, which
was carefully wrapped up with fine mats,
and never seen by anyone but the king”
(note this characteristic touch of kingly
priesthood), “and that only once a year,
when the decayed mats were stripped off
and thrown away. In sickness, offerings
of fine mats were taken and rolled round
the sacred stone, and thus it got busked up
to a prodigious size ; but as the idol was
exposed to the weather out of doors, night
and day, the mats soon rotted. No one
dared to appropriate what had been offered
to the god, and hence the old mats, as they
were taken off, were heaped in a place by
themselves and allowed to rot.”
Now, the reasonableness of all this is
immediately apparent if we remember that
the stones which stand on graves are
habitually worshipped, and anointed with
oil, milk, and blood. It is but a slight
further step to regard the stone, not only
as eating and drinking, but also as needing
warmth and clothing. As an admirable
example of the same train of thought, work
ing out the same result elsewhere, compare
this curious account of a stone idol at
Inniskea (a rocky islet off the Mayo coast),
given by the Earl of Roden, as late as 1851,
in his Progress of the Reformation in
Ireland:—
“In the south island, in the house of a
man named Monigan, a stone idol, called
in the Irish ‘Neevougi,’ has been from
time immemorial religiously preserved and
worshipped. This god resembles in appear
ance a thick roll of home-spun flannel,
which arises from the custom of dedicating
43
a dress of that material to it whenever its
aid is sought; this is sewn on by an old
woman, its priestess, whose peculiar care it
is. Of the early history of this idol no
authentic information can be procured, but
its power is believed to be immense ; they
pray to it in time of sickness ; it is invoked
when a storm is desired to dash some
hapless ship upon their coast; and, again,
the exercise of its power is solicited in
calming the angry waves, to admit of fish
ing or visiting the mainland.”
Nor is this a solitary instance in modern
Europe. “ In certain mountain districts of
Norway,” says Dr. Tylor, “ up to the end of
the last century, the peasants used to pre
serve round stones, washed them every
Thursday evening,.......smeared them with
butter before the fire, laid them in the seat
of honour on fresh straw, and at certain
times of the year steeped them in ale, that
they might bring luck and comfort to the
house.”
The first transitional step towards the
idol proper is given in some rude attempt
to make the standing stone at the grave
roughly resemble a human figure. We get
every transitional form, like the Hermae and
the archaic Apollos, till we arrive at the
perfect freedom and beauty of Hellenic
sculpture. Says Grote, in speaking 'of
Greek worship, “their primitive memorial
erected to a god did not even pretend to be
an image, but was often nothing more
than a pillar, a board, a shapeless stone, or
a post [notice the resemblance to ordinary
grave-marks] receiving care and decoration
from the neighbourhood as well as worship.”
Dr. Tylor, to whose great collection of in
stances I owe many acknowledgments, says
in comment on this passage: “ Such were
the log that stood for Artemis in Euboea ;
the stake that represented Pallas Athene
‘sine effigie rudis palus, et informe lignum’;
the unwrought stone (X/5-os a’pyds) at
Hyethos, which ‘ after the ancient manner ’
represented Heracles; the thirty such stones
which the Pharaeans in like fashion wor
shipped for the gods ; and that one which
received such honour in Boeotian festivals
as representing the Thespian Eros.” Such
also was the conical pillar of Asiatic type
which stood instead of an image of the
Paphian Aphrodite, and the conical stone
worshipped in Attica under the name of
Apollo. A sacred boulder lay in front of a
temple of the Troezenians, while another in
Argos bore the significant name of Zeus
Kappotas. “ Among all the Greeks,” says
Pausanias, “ rude stones were worshipped
�44
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
before the images of the gods.” Among
the Semites, in like manner, Melcarth was
reverenced at Tyre under the form of two
stone pillars.
Intermediate forms, in which the stone
takes successively a face, a head, arms,
legs, a shapely and well-moulded body, are
familiar to all of us in existing remains.
The well-known figures of Priapus form a
good transitional example. “ At Tabala, in
Arabia,” says Professor Robertson Smith,
“a sort of crown was sculptured on the
stone of al-Lat to mark her head.” Indeed,
to the last, the pillar or monolithic type is
constantly suggested in the erect attitude
and the proportions of the statue among all
except the highest Hellenic examples. I
may add, that even in Islam itself, which so
sternly forbids images of any sort, some
traces of such anthropomorphic gravestones
may still be found. I noticed in the mosque
of Mehemet Ali at Cairo that the head
stones of the Vice-regal family were each
adorned with a fez and tassel.
It is worth noting that the obelisk, also,
doubtless owes its origin to the monolith or
standing stone. Whatever fresh sacredness
it may later have obtained from the asso
ciations of sun-Worship, as a solar ray,
cannot mask for any wide anthropological
inquirer the fact that it is by descent a
-mere shapeless head-stone, with a new
symbolic meaning given to it (as so often
happens)in a newreligion. The two obelisks
which stand so often before Egyptian
temples are clearly the analogues of the
two pillars of Melcarth at Tyre, and the
sacred pair at Paphos, Herapolis, and Solo
mon’s temple. In the same way, the Indian
tope and the pyramid are descendants of
the cairn, as the great stone-built tombs of
the Numidian kings in Algeria seem to be
more advanced equivalents of the tumulus
or round barrow. And let me clear the
ground here for what is to follow by adding
most emphatically that the genesis of stone
worship here sketched out precludes the
possibility of phallic worship being in any
sense a primitive form of it. The standing
stone may have been, and doubtless often
was, in later stages, identified with a phallus ;
but if the theory here advocated is true,
the lingam, instead of lying at the root of
the monolith, must necessarily be a later
and derivative form of it. At the same
time, the stone being regarded as the
ancestor of the family, it is not unnatural
that early men should sometimes carve it
into a phallic shape. Having said this, I
will say no more on the subject, which has
really extremely little to do with the essen
tials of stone worship, save that on many
gravestones of early date a phallus marked
the male sex of the occupant, while breasts,
or a symbolical triangle, or a mandorla,
marked the grave of a woman.
Sometimes, both forms of god, the most
primitive and the most finished, the rude
stone and the perfect statue, exist side by
side in the same community.
“In the legendary origin of Jaganndth,”
says Sir William Hunter, “we find the
aboriginal people worshipping a blue stone
in the depths of the forest. But the deity
at length wearies of primitive jungle offer
ings, and longs for the cooked food of the
more civilised Aryans, upon whose arrival
on the scene the rude blue stone gives
place to a carved image. At the present
hour, in every hamlet of Orissa, this two
fold worship co-exists. The common people
have their shapeless stone or block, which
they adore with simple rites in the open air;
while side by side with it stands a temple to
one of the Aryan gods, with its carved idol
and elaborate rites.”
Where many sacred stones exist all
round, marking the graves of the dead, or
inhabited by their spirits, it is not surpris
ing, once more, that a general feeling of
reverence towards all stones should begin
to arise—that the stone per se, especially
if large, odd, or conspicuous, should be
credited to some extent with indwelling
divinity. Nor is it astonishing that the
idea of men being descended from stones
should be rife among people who must
often, when young, have been shown head
stones, monoliths, boulders, or cromlechs,
and been told that the offerings made upon
them were gifts to their ancestors. They
would accept the idea as readily as our own
children accept the Hebrew myth of the
creation of Adam, our prime ancestor, from
“ the dust of the ground ”—a far less pro
mising material than a block of marble or
sandstone. In this way, it seems to me, we
can most readily understand the numerous
stories of men becoming stones, and stones
becoming men, which are rife among the
myths of savage or barbarous peoples.
Classical and Hebrew literature, too, are
full of examples of stones, believed to have
been once human. Niobe and Lot’s wife
are instances that will at once occur to
every reader. In Boeotia, Pausanias tells
us, people believed Alkmene, the mother
of Herakles, was changed into a stone.
Perseus and the Gorgon’s head is another
example, paralleled by the Breton idea
�SACRED STONES
that their great stone circles were people,
who, in the modern Christianised version
of the story, were turned into stone for
dancing on a Sunday. (About this Christianisation I shall have a word to say
further on ; meanwhile, observe the similar
name of the Giant’s Dance given to the
great Stonehenge of Ireland.) In the
same way there is a Standing Rock on the
upper Missouri which parallels the story of
Niobe—it was once a woman, who became
petrified with grief when her husband took
a second wife. Some Samoan gods (or
ancestral ghosts) “ were changed into
stones,” says Mr. Turner, “ and now stand
up in a rocky part of the lagoon on the
north side of Upolu.”
On the other hand, if men become
stones, stones also become men, or at least
give birth to men. We get a good instance
of this in the legend of Deucalion. Again,
by the roadside, near the city of the
Panopoeans, lay the stones out of which
Prometheus made men. Manke, the first
man in Mitchell Island, came out of a
stone. The inhabitants of the New
Hebrides say that “the human race sprang
from stones and the earth.” On Francis
Island, says Mr. Turner, “close by the
temple there was a seven-feet-long beach
sandstone slab erected, before which offer
ings were laid as the people united for
prayer” ; and the natives here told him
that one of their gods had made stones
become men. “ In Melanesia,” says Mr.
Lang, “ matters are so mixed that it is not
easy to decide whether a worshipful stone
is the dwelling of a dead man’s soul, or is
of spiritual merit in itself, or whether the
stone is the spirit’s outward part or organ.”
And, indeed, a sort of general confusion
between the stone, the ghost, the ancestor,
and the god, at last pervades the mind of
the stone-worshipper everywhere.
An interesting side-point in this gradual
mixing up of the ghost and the stone, the
god and the image, is shown in a gradual
change of detail as to the mode of making
offerings at the tomb or shrine. On the
great trilithon in Tonga, Miss GordonCumming tells us, a bowl of kava was
placed on a horizontal stone. Here it
must have been supposed that the ghost
itself issued forth (perhaps by night) to
drink it, as the serpent which represented
the spirit of Anchises glided from the tomb
to lick up the offerings presented by zEneas.
Gradually, however, as the stone and the
ghost get more closely connected in idea
the offering is made to the monument itself;
45
though in the earlier stages the convenience
of using the flat altar-stone (wherever such
exists) as a place of sacrifice for victims
probably masks the transition even to the
worshippers themselves. Dr. Wise saw
in the Himalayas a group of stones “erected
to the memory of the petty Rajahs of
Kolam,” where “ some fifty or sixty unfor
tunate women sacrificed themselves.” The
blood, in particular, is offered up to the
ghost; and “ the cup-hollows which have
been found in menhirs and dolmens,” says
Captain Conder, “ are the indications of
the libations, often of human blood, once
poured on these stones by heathen wor
shippers.” “ Cups are often found,” says a
good Scotch observer,“on stones connected
with the monuments of the dead, such as
on the covering stones of kistvaens, par
ticularly those of the short or rarest form ;
on the flat stones of cromlechs; and on
stones of chambered graves.” On the top
of the cairn at Glen Urquhart, on Loch
Ness, is an oblong mass of slate-stone,
obviously sepulchral, and marked with
very numerous cups. When the stones are
upright the notion of offering the blood to
the upper part, which represents the face or
mouth, becomes very natural, and forms a
distinct step in the process of anthropomorphisation of the headstone into the idol.
We get two stages of this evolution side
by side in the two deities of the Samoyed
travelling ark-sledge, “ one with a stone
head, the other a mere black stone, both
dressed in green robes with red lappets,
and both smeared with sacrificial blood.”
In the Indian groups of standing stones,
representing the Five Pandavas, “it is a
usual practice,” says Dr. Tylor, “to daub
each stone with red paint, forming, as it
were, a great blood-spot where the face
would be if it were a shaped idol.” Mr.
Spencer, I think, hits the key-note of this
practice in an instructive passage. “A
Dakotah,” he says, “before praying to a
stone for succour paints it with some red
pigment, such as red ochre. Now, when
we read that along with offerings of milk,
honey, fruit, flour, etc., the Bodo and
Dhimdls offer ‘ red lead or cochineal,’ we
may suspect that these three colouring
matters, having red as their common
character, are substitutes for blood. The
supposed resident ghost was at first pro
pitiated by anointing the stone with human
blood ; and then, in default of this, red
pigment was used, ghosts and gods being
supposed by primitive men to be easily
deceived by sham..”
�46
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
In any case it is interesting to note that
the faces of many Hindu gods are habitually
painted red. And that this is the survival
of the same ancient custom we see in the
case of Shashti, protectress of children,
whose proper representative is “ a rough
stone as big as a man’s head, smeared with
red paint, and set at the foot of the sacred
vata-tree.” Like customs survived in Greece
down to the classical period. “The faces
of the ancient gilded Dionysi at Corinth,”
says Mr. Lang, quoting Pausanias, “were
smudged all over with cinnabar, like fetish
stones in India or Africa.” In early South
Italy, too, the Priapus-Hermes, who pro
tected the fields, had his face similarly
“daubed with minium.” Is it possible to
dissever these facts from the cannibal
banquets of the Aztec gods, where the
images had lumps of palpitating human
flesh thrust into their lips, and where their
faces were smeared with the warm blood of
the helpless victims ?
Another point of considerable interest
and importance in the evolution of stone
worship is connected with the migration
of sacred stones. When the Israelites left
Egypt, according to the narrative in
Exodus, they carried the bones of Joseph
with them. When Rachel left her father’s
tent she stole the family teraphim to accom
pany her on her wanderings. When ./Eneas
fled from burning Troy, he bore away to his
ships his country’s gods, his Lares and
Penates. All of these tales, no doubt, are
equally unhistorical, but they represent
what, to the people who framed the legends,
seemed perfectly natural and probable con
duct. Just in the same way, when stone
worshippers migrate from one country
to another, they are likely to carry
with them their sacred stones, or at
least the most portable or holiest of the
number.
I cannot find room here for many detailed
instances of such migrations ; but there are
two examples in Britain so exceedingly in
teresting that I cannot pass them by. The
inner or smaller stones at Stonehenge are
known to be of remote origin, belonging to
rocks not found nearer Salisbury Plain than
Cumberland in one direction or Belgium in
the other. They are surrounded by a group
of much larger stones, arranged as trilithons, but carved out of the common sarsen
blocks distributed over the neighbouring
country.
I have tried to show else
where1 that these smaller igneous rocks, un* Cornhill Magazine, Jan., 1886.
touched by the tool,1 were the ancient
sacred stones of an immigrant tribe that
came into Britain from the Continent,
probably over a broad land-belt which then
existed where the Straits of Dover now
flow; and that the strangers on their arrival
in Britain erected these their ancestral
gods on the Plain of Amesbury, and further
contributed to their importance and appear
ance by surrounding them with a circle of
the biggest and most imposing grey-wethers
that the new country in which they had
settled could easily afford.
The other case is that of the Scone stone.
This sacred block, according to the ac
credited legend, was originally the ances
tral god of the Irish Scots, on whose royal
tumulus at Tara it once stood. It was
carried by them to Argyllshire on their first
invasion, and placed in a cranny of the
wall (say modern versions) at Dunstaffnage
Castle. When the Scotch kings removed
to Scone, Kenneth II. took the stone to his
new lowland residence. Thence Edward I.
carried it off to England, where it has ever
since remained in Westminster Abbey, as
part of the chair in which the sovereigns
of Britain sit at their coronation. The
immense significance of these facts or tales
will be seen more clearly when we come to
consider the analogies of the Hebrew ark.
Meanwhile, it may help to explain the
coronation usage, and the legend that
wherever the Stone of Destiny is found
“ the Scots in place must reign,” if I add a
couple of analagous cases from the history
of the same mixed Celtic race. According
to Dr. O’Donovan, the inauguration stone
of the O’Donnells stood on a tumulus in the
midst of a large plain ; and on this sacred
stone called the Flagstone of the Kings,
the elected chief stood to receive the white
wand or sceptre of kingship. A cylindrical
obelisk, used for the same purpose, stands
to this day, according to Dr. Petrie, in the
Rath-na-Riogh. So, too, M’Donald was
crowned King of the Isles, standing on a
sacred stone, with an impression on top to
receive his feet. He based himself, as it
were, upon the gods his ancestors. The
Tara stone even cried aloud, Professor
1 So Moses in the legend commanded the
children of Israel to build “an altar of whole
stones, over which no man hath lift up any
iron”; and so of the boulders composing the
altar on Mount Ebal it was said, “Thou shalt
not lift up any iron tool upon them.” The con
servatism of religion kept up the archaic fashion
for sacred purposes.
�SACRED STONES
Rhys tells us, when the true king placed
his feet above it. The coronation stone
exists in other countries ; for example, in
Hebrew history, or half-history, we learn
that when Abimelech was made king it was
“by the plain of the pillar that was in
Shechem”; and when Jehoash was anointed
by Jehoiada, “the king stood by a pillar, as
the manner was.” Beside the church of
Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan, under the ancient
lime-trees which overshadow the piazza,
stands the stone pillar at which the Lom
bard Kings and German Emperors took
the coronation oath.
Now, it is quite true that Mr. Skene, the
best authority on Celtic Scotland, rejects
this story of the Stone of Destiny in most
parts as legendary : he believes the Scone
stone to have been merely the sacred
coronation-block of the Pictish Kings at
Scone, and never to have come from
Ireland at all. Professor Ramsay thinks it
is a piece of red sandstone broken off the
rock of that district of Scotland. Even
Professor Rhys (who gives a most interest
ing account of the Tara Stone) seems to
have doubts as to migration. But, true or
not, the story will amply serve my purpose
here ; for I use it only to illustrate the
equally dubious wanderings of a Hebrew
sacred stone, at which we shall arrive in
due time ; and one legend is surely always
the best possible parallel of another.
In the course of ages, as religions
develop, and especially as a few great gods
grow to overshadow the minor ancestral
Lares and spirits, it often comes about that
sacred stones of the older faith have a new
religious significance given them in the
later system. Thus we have seen the
Argives worshipped their old sacred stone
under the name of Zeus Kappotas ; the
Thespians identified theirs with the later
Hellenic Eros ; and the Megarians con
sidered a third as the representative of
Phoebus. The original local sacred stone
of Delos has been found on the spot where
it originally stood, beneath the feet of the
statue of the Delian Apollo. And this, I
am glad to see, is Mr. Andrew Lang’s view
also ; for he remarks of the Greek un
wrought stones : “ They were blocks which
bore the names of gods, Hera, or Apollo,
names perhaps given, as De Brosses says,
to the old fetishistic objects of worship,
after the anthropomorphic gods entered [I
should say were developed in] Hellas.”
So, too, in India the local sacred stones
have been identified with the deities of the
Hindu pantheon. Islam, in like manner,
47
has adopted the Kaaba, the great black
stone of the Holy Place at Mecca; and the
Egyptian religion gave a new meaning to
the pillar or monolith by shaping it as an ,
obelisk to represent a ray of the rising
sun-god.
Sometimes the sanctity of the antique
stones was secured in the later faith by
connecting them with some legend or
episode of the orthodox religion. Thus
the ancient sacred stone kept at Delphi—
no doubt the original oracle of that great
shrine, as the rude Delian block was the
precursor of the Delian Apollo—was ex
plained with reference to the later Hellenic
belief by the myth that it was the stone
which Kronos swallowed in mistake for
Zeus : an explanation doubtless due to the
fact that this boulder was kept, like
Monigan’s Irish idol and the Samoan god,
wrapped up in flannel; and in the myth
Rhea deceived Kronos by offering him,
instead of Zeus, a stone wrapped in
swaddling-bands. The sacred stone of the
Troezenians, in like manner, lay in front of
the temple ; but it was Hellenised, so to
speak, by the story that on it the Troezenian
elders sat when they purified Orestes from
the murder of his mother.
In modern Europe, as everybody knows,
a similar Christianisation of holy wells,
holy stones, and holy places has been
managed by connecting them with legends
of saints, or by the still simpler device of
marking a cross upon them. The cross
has a threefold value : in the first place, it
drives away from their accustomed haunts
the ancient gods or spirits, always envisaged
in early Christian and mediaeval thought
as devils or demons ; in the second place,
it asserts the supremacy of the new faith ;
and in the third place, by conferring a fresh
sanctity upon the old holy place or object,
it induces the people to worship the cross
by the mere habit of resorting to the shrine
at which their ancestors so long wor
shipped. Gregory’s well-known advice to
St. Augustine on this matter is but a single
example of what went- on over all Chris
tendom. In many cases crosses in Britain
are still found firmly fixed in bld sacred
stones, usually recognisable by their un
wrought condition. The finest example in
Europe is probably the gigantic monolith
of Plumen in Brittany, topped by an
insignificant little cross, and still resorted
to by the peasants (especially the childless)
as a great place of worship. The pre
historic monuments of Narvia in the Isle
of Man have been Christianised by having
�48
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
crosses deeply incised upon them. Other
cases, like the Black Stones of Iona, which
gave sanctity to that Holy Isle long before
the time of Columbus, will doubtless occur
at once to every reader. With many of
the Scotch sculptured stones it is difficult
to decide whether they were originally
erected as crosses, or are prehistoric
monuments externally Christianised.
I have thus endeavoured briefly to
suggest the ultimate derivation of all sacred
stones from sepulchral monuments, and to
point out the very large part which they
bear in the essential of religion—that is to
say, worship—everywhere. There is, how
ever, one particular application to which I
wish to call special attention, because of its
peculiar interest as regards the origin of
the monotheistic god of Judaism and
Christianity.
That the Semites, as well as other early
nations, were stone-worshippers we know
from a great number of positive instances.
The stone pillars of Baal and the wooden
Ashera cones were the chief objects of
adoration in the Phoenician religion. The
Stone of Bethel was apparently a menhir :
the cairn of Mizpeh was doubtless a sepul
chral monument. The Israelites under
Joshua, we are told, built a Gilgalof twelve
standing stones ; and other instances in the
early traditions of the Hebrews will be
noticed in their proper place later on.
Similarly, among the Arabs of the time of
Mohammed, two of the chief deities were
Manah and Lit, the one a rock, the other a
sacred stone or stone idol: and the Kaaba
itself, the great black stone of local worship,
even the Prophet was compelled to recog
nise and Islamise by adopting it bodily into
his monotheistic religion.
It is clear that sacred stones were common
objects of worship with the Semites in
general, and also with the Hebrew people
in particular. But after the exclusive wor
ship of Jahweh, the local Jewish god, had
grown obligatory among the Jews,it became
the policy of the “Jehovist” priest to Jehovise and to consecrate the sacred stones of
Palestine by bringing them into connection
with the Jehovistic legend and the tales of
the Patriarchs. Thus Professor Cheyne
comments as follows upon the passage in
Isaiah where the prophet mocks the par
tisan of the old polytheistic creed as a
stone-worshipper: “Among the smooth
stones of the valley is thy portion : They,
they are thy lot: Even to them hast thou
poured a drink offering : Thou hast offered
a meat offering :
“The large smooth stones referred to
above were the fetishes of the primitive
Semitic races, and anointed with oil, accord
ing to a widely spread custom. It was such
a stone which Jacob took for a pillow, and
afterwards consecrated by pouring oil upon
it. The early Semites and reactionary
idolatrous Israelites called such stones
Bethels...... z>., houses of El (the early
Semitic word for God).1...... In spite of the
efforts of the ‘Jehovist’ who desired to
convert these ancient fetishes into memo
rials of patriarchal history, the old heathenish
use of them seems to have continued, espe
cially in secluded places.”
Besides the case of the stone at Bethel,
there is the later one (in our narrative)
when Jacob and Laban made a covenant,
“ and Jacob took a stone, and set it up for
a pillar. And J acob said unto his brethren,
Gather stones ; and they took stones and
made an heap : and they did eat there upon
the heap.” So, once more, at Shalem, he
erects an altar called El-Elohe-Israel; he
sets a pillar upon the grave of Rachel, and
anothar at the place at Luz where God
appeared to him. Of like import is the
story of the twelve stones which the twelve
men take out of Jordan to commemorate
the passage of the tribes. All are clearly
attempts to Jehovise these early sacred
stones or local gods by connecting them
with incidents in the Jehovistic version of
the ancient Hebrew legends.
That such stones, however, were wor
shipped as deities in early times, before the
cult of Jahweh had become an exclusive
one among his devotees, is evident from the
Jehovistic narrative itself, which has not
wholly succeeded in blotting out all traces
of earlier religion. Samuel judged Israel
every year at Bethel, the place of Jacob’s
sacred pillar: at Gilgal, the place where
Joshua’s twelve stones were set up ; and at
Mizpeh, where stood the cairn surmounted
by the pillar of Laban’s covenant. In
other words, these were the sanctuaries of
the chief ancient gods of Israel. Samuel
himself “took a stone and set it between
Mizpeh and Shem”; and its very name,
Eben-ezer, “ the stone of help,” shows that
it was originally worshipped before proceed
ing on warlike expeditions, though the
Jehovistic gloss, “saying, Hitherto the
Lord hath helped us,” does its best, of
course, to obscure the real meaning. It
was to the stone-circle of Gilgal, once more,
that Samuel directed Saul to go, saying,
1 Say rather, “for a god.”
�SACRED STONES
“ I will come down unto thee, to offer burntofferings, and to sacrifice sacrifices of peaceofferings.” It was at the cairn of Mizpeh
that Saul was chosen king; and after the
victory over the Ammonites Saul went once
more to the great Stonehenge at Gilgal to
“renew the kingdom,” and “there they
made Saul king before Jahweh in Gilgal ;
and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peaceofferings before Jahweh.” This passage is
a very instructive and important one, be
cause here we see that in the opinion of
the writer at least Jahweh was then domi
ciled at Gilgal, amid the other sacred
stones of that holy circle.
Observe, however, that, when Saul was
directed to go to find his father’s asses, he
was sent first to Rachel’s pillar at Telzah,
and then to the plain of Tabor, where he
was to meet “ three men going up to God
[not to Jahweh] at Bethel,” evidently to
sacrifice, “one carrying three kids, and
another carrying three loaves of bread, and
another carrying a bottle of wine.” These
and many other like memorials of stone
worship lie thickly scattered through the
early books of the Hebrew Scriptures, some
times openlyavowed, andsometimes cloaked
under a thin veil of Jehovism.
On the other hand, at the present day,
the Palestine exploration has shown that no
rude stone monuments exist in Palestine
proper, though East of the Jordan they are
common in all parts of the country. How,
then, are we to explain their disappearance?
Major Conder thinks that, when pure Jeho
vism finally triumphed under Hezekiah
and Josiah, the Jehovists destroyed all
these “ idolatrous ” stones throughout the
Jewish dominions, in accordance with the
injunctions in the Book of Deuteronomy to
demolish the religious emblems of the
Canaanites. Jahweh, the god of the
Hebrews, was a jealous God, and he would
tolerate no alien sacred stones within his
own jurisdiction.
And who or what was this Jahweh him
self, this local and ethnic god of the Israel
ites, who would suffer no other god or
sacred monolith to live near him ?
I will not lay stress upon the point that
when Joshua was dying, according to the
legend, he “ took a great stone ” and set it
up by an oak that was by the sanctuary of
Jahweh, saying that it had heard all the
words of Jahweh. That document is too
doubtful in terms to afford us much authority.
But I will merely point out that at the time
when we first seem to catch clear historic
glimpses of true Jahweh worship, we find
49
Jahweh, whoever or whatever that mystic
object might have been, located with his
ark at the Twelve Stones at Gilgal. It is
quite clear that in “ the camp at Gilgal,” as
the latter compilers believed, Jahweh, god
of Israel, who had brought his people up
out of Egypt, remained till the conquest of
the land was completed. But after the end
of the conquest, the tent in which he dwelt
was removed to Shiloh ; and that Jahweh
went with it is clear from the fact that
Joshua cast lots for the land there “before
Jahweh, our God.” He was there still
when Hannah and her husband went up to
Shiloh to sacrifice unto Jahweh ; and when
Samuel ministered unto Jahweh before Eli
the priest. That Jahweh made a long stay
at Shiloh is, therefore, it would seem, a true
old tradition—a tradition of the age just
before the historical beginnings of the
Hebrew annals.
But Jahweh was an object of portable
size, for, omitting for the present the des
criptions in the Pentateuch, which seem
likely to be of late date, and not too trust
worthy, through their strenuous Jehovistic
editing, he was carried from Shiloh in his
ark to the front during the great battle
with the Philistines at Ebenezer; and the
Philistines were afraid, for they said, “A
god is come into the camp.” But when the
Philistines captured the ark, the rival god,
Dagon, fell down and broke in pieces—so
Hebrew legend declared—before the face
of Jahweh. After the Philistines restored
the sacred object, it rested for a time at
Kirjath-jearim, till David, on the capture of
Jerusalem from the Jebusites, went down
to that place to bring up from thence the
ark of the god ; and as it went, on a new
cart, they “played before Jahweh on all
manner of instruments,” and David himself
“danced before Jahweh.” Jahweh was then
placed in the tent or tabernacle that David
had prepared for him, till Solomon built
the first temple, “the house of Jahweh,”
and Jahweh’s ark was set up in it, “in the
oracle of the house, the most holy place,
even under the wings of the cherubim.”
Just so Mr. Chalmers tells us that when he
was at Peran, in New Guinea, the peculiarlyshaped holy stone, Ravai, and the two
wooden idols, Epe and Kivava, “made long
ago and considered very sacred,” were for
the moment “ located in an old house, until
all the arrangements necessary for their
removal to the splendid new dubu prepared
for them are completed.” And so, too, at
the opposite end of the scale of civilisation,
as Mr. Lang puts it, “ the fetish-stones of
E
�5°
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA 01 GOD
Greece were those which occupied the holy
of holies of the most ancient temples, the
mysterious fanes within dark cedar or
cypress groves, to which men were hardly
admitted.”
That Jahweh himself, in the most ancient
traditions of the race, was similarly con
cealed within his chest or ark in the holy
of holies, is evident, I think, to any attentive
reader. 11 is true, the later J ehovistic glosses
of Exodus and Deuteronomy, composed
after the Jehovistic worship had become
purified and spiritualised, do their best to
darken the comprehension of this matter
by making the presence of Jahweh seem
always incorporeal; and even in the earlier
traditions the phrase “ the ark of the
covenant of Jahweh” is often substituted
for the simpler and older one, “ the ark of
Jahweh.” But through all the disfigure
ments with which the priestly scribes of the
age of Josiah and the sacerdotalists of the
return from the captivity have overlaid the
primitive story, we can still see clearly in
many places that Jahweh himself was at
first personally present in the ark that
covered him. And though the scribes
(evidently ashamed of the early worship
they had outlived) protest somewhat vehe
mently more than once, “There was nothing
in the ark save the two tables of stone
which Moses put there at Horeb, when
Jahweh made a covenant with the children
of Israel, when they came out of the land
of Egypt,” yet this much at least even they
admit—that the object or objects concealed
in the ark consisted of a sculptured stone
or stones; and that to dance or sing before
this stone or these stones was equivalent
to dancing or singing before the face of
Jahweh.
Not to push the argument too far, then,
we may say this much is fairly certain.
The children of Israel in early times car
ried about with them a tribal god, Jahweh,
whose presence in their midst was inti
mately connected with a certain ark or
chest, containing a stone object or objects.
This chest was readily portable, and could
be carried to the front in case of warfare.
They did not know the origin of the object
in the ark with certainty, but they re
garded it emphatically as “Jahweh their
god, which led them out of the land of
Egypt.” Even after its true nature had
been spiritualised away into a great
national deity, the most unlimited and in
corporeal the world has ever known (as
we get him in the best and purest work
of the prophets), the imagery of later
times constantly returns to the old idea of
a stone pillar or menhir. In the embel
lished account of the exodus from Egypt,
Jahweh goes before the Israelites as a
pillar or monolith of cloud by day and of
fire by night. According to Levitical law
his altar must be built of unhewn stone
{see p. 46). It is as a' Rock that the
prophets often figuratively describe Jah
weh, using the half-forgotten language of
an earlier day to clothe their own sublimer
and more purified conceptions. It is to
the Rock of Israel—the sacred stone of
the tribe—that they look for succour.
Nay, even when Josiah accepted the
forged roll of the law and promised to
abide by it, “ the king stood by a pillar (a
menhir) and made a covenant before
Jahweh.” Even to the last we see in
vague glimpses the real original nature of
the worship of that jealous god who
caused Dagon to break in pieces before
him, and would allow no other sacred
stones to remain undemolished within his
tribal boundaries.
I do not see, therefore, how we can
easily avoid the obvious inference that
Jahweh, the god of the Hebrews, wrho
later became sublimated and etherealised
into the God of Christianity, was in his
origin nothing more nor less than the
ancestral sacred stone of the people of
Israel, however sculptured, and perhaps, in
the very last resort of all, the unhewn
monumental pillar of some early Semitic
sheikh or chieftain.
CHAPTER VI.
SACRED STAKES
Milton speaks in a famous sonnet of the
time “when all our fathers worshipped
stocks and stones.” That familiar and
briefly contemptuous phrase of the Puritan
poet does really cover the vast majority of
objects of worship for the human race at all
times and in all places. We have examined
the stones ; the stocks must now come in
for their fair share of attention. They need
not, however, delay us quite so long as
their sister deities, both because they are on
the whole less important in themselves, and
because their development from grave
marks into gods and idols is almost abso
lutely parallel to that which we have already
�SACRED STAKES
followed out in detail in the case of the
standing stone or megalithic monument.
Stakes or wooden posts are often used all
the world over as marks of an interment.
Like other grave-marks, they also share
naturally in the honours paid to the ghost
or nascent god. But they are less important
as elements in the growth of religion than
standing stones, for two distinct reasons.
In the first place, a stake or post most often
marks the interment of a person of little
social consideration ; chiefs and great men
have usually stone monuments erected in
their honour ; the commonalty have to be
satisfied with wooden marks, as one may
observe to this day at Père Lachaise, or any
other great Christian cemetery. In the
second place, the stone monument is far
more lasting and permanent than the wooden
one. Each of these points counts for some
thing. For it is chiefs and great men whose
ghosts most often grow into gods ; and it is
the oldest ghosts, the oldest gods, the oldest
monuments, that are always the most sacred.
For both these reasons, then, the stake is
less critical than the stone in the history of
religion.
Nevertheless, it has its own special im
portance. As the sacred stone derives
ultimately from the great boulder piled
above the grave to keep down the corpse,
so the stake, I believe, derives from the
sharp-pointed stick driven through the body
to pin it down as we saw in the third
chapter, and still so employed in Christian
England to prevent suicides from walking.
Such a stake or pole is usually permitted to
protrude from the ground, so as to warn
living men of the neighbourhood of a spirit.
At a very early date, however, the stake,
I fancy, became a mere grave-mark ; and
though, owing to its comparative incon
spicuousness, it obtains relatively little
notice, it is now and always has been by far
the most common mode of preserving the
memory of the spot where a person lies
buried. A good example, which will throw
light upon many subsequent modifications,
is given by Mr. Wyatt Gill from Port
Moresby in New Guinea. “The body,” he
says, “ was buried. At the side was set up
a stake, to which were tied the spear, club,
bow and arrow of the deceased, but broken,
to prevent theft. A little beyond was the
grave of a woman : her cooking utensils,
grass petticoats, etc., hung up on the stake.”
Similar customs, he adds, are almost uni
versal in Polynesia.
Though worship of stakes or wooden
posts is common all over the world, I can
5*
give but few quite unequivocal instances of
such worship being paid to a post actually
known to surmount an undoubted grave.
Almost the best direct evidence I can obtain
is the case of the gravepole in Buru, already
quoted from Mr. H. O. Forbes. But the
following account of a Samoyed place of
sacrifice, extracted from Baron Nordenskiold’s Voyage of the Vega, is certainly
suggestive. On a hillock on Vaygats
Island the Swedish explorer found a num
ber of reindeer skulls, so arranged that
they formed a close thicket of antlers.
Around lay other bones, both of bears and
reindeer; and in the midst of all “ the
mighty beings to whom all this splendour
was offered. They consisted of hundreds
of small wooden sticks, the upper portions
of which were carved very clumsily in the
form of the human countenance, most of
them from fifteen to twenty, but some of
them three hundred and seventy centi
metres in length. They were all stuck in
the ground on the south-east part of the
eminence. Near the place of sacrifice
there were to be seen pieces of driftwood
and remains of the fireplace at which the
sacrificial meal was prepared. Our guide
told us that at these meals the mouths of
the idols were besmeared with blood and
wetted with brandy ; and the former state
ment was confirmed by the large spots
of blood which were found on most of the
large idols below the holes intended to
represent the mouth.” At a far earlier
date, Stephen Burrough in 1556 writes as
follows to much the same effect in his
interesting narrative printed in Hakluyt:
“There I met againe with Loshak, and
went on shore with him, and he brought
me to a heap of Samoeds idols, which
were in number about 300, the worst and
the most unartificiall worke that ever I
saw : the eyes and mouthes of sundrie of
them were bloodie, they had the shape of
men, women, and children, very groslywrought, and that which they had made
for other parts was also sprinkled with
blood. Some of their idols were an olde
sticke with two or three notches, made
with a knife in it. There was one of
their sleds broken and lay by the heape of
idols, and there I saw a deers skinne which
the foules had spoyled : and before certaine of their idols blocks were made as
high as their mouthes ; being all bloodie,
I thought that to be the table whereon
they offered their sacrifice.”
In neither of these accounts, it is true,
is it distinctly mentioned that the place of
�52
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
sacrifice was a Samoyed cemetery: but I
believe this to be the case, partly from
analogy, and partly because Nordenskiold
mentions elsewhere that an upturned sled
is a frequent sign of a Samoyed grave.
Compare also the following account of a
graveyard among nominally Christian
Ostyak Siberians, also from Nordenskiold :
“ The corpses were placed in large coffins
above ground, at which almost always a
cross was erected.” [The accompanying
woodcut shows that these crosses were
rude wooden stakes with one or two cross
bars.] “ In one of the crosses a sacred
picture was inserted which must be con
sidered a further proof that a Christian
rested in the coffin. Notwithstanding
this, we found some clothes, which had
belonged to the departed, hanging on a
bush beside the grave, together with a
bundle containing food, principally dried
fish. At the graves of the richer natives
the survivors are even said to place along
with food some rouble notes, in order that
the departed may not be altogether with
out ready money on his entrance into the
other world.”
To complete the parallel, I ought to add
that money was also deposited on the
sacrificial place on Vaygats Island. Of
another such sacrificial place on Yalmal,
Nordenskiold says, after describing a pile
of bones, reindeer skulls, and walrus jaws :
“In the middle of the heap of bones stood
four erect pieces of wood. Two consisted
of sticks a metre in length, with notches
cut in them........The two others, which
clearly were the proper idols of this
place of sacrifice, consisted of driftwood
roots, on which some carvings had been
made to distinguish the eyes, mouth, and
nose. The parts of the pieces of wood,
intended to represent the eyes and mouth,
had recently been besmeared with blood,
and there still lay at the heap of bones the
entrails of a newly-killed reindeer.”
Indeed, I learn from another source that
“ the Samoyedes feed the wooden images
of the dead ”; while an instance from
Erman helps further to confirm the same
conclusion. According to that acute
writer, among the Ostyaks of Eastern
Siberia there is found a most interesting
custom, in which, says Dr. Tylor, “ we see
the transition from the image of the dead
man to the actual idol.” When a man
dies, they set up a rude wooden image of
him in the yurt, which receives offerings at
every meal and has honours paid to it,
while the widow continually embraces
and caresses it. As a general rule, these
images are buried at the end of three
years or so : but sometimes “ the image of
a shaman (native sorcerer),” says Tylor,
“ is set up permanently, and remains as a
saint for ever.” For “saint” I should say
“ god ” ; and we see the transformation at
once completed.
With regard to the blood smeared upon
such Siberian wooden idols, it must be
remembered that bowls of blood are
common offerings to the dead ; and Dr.
Robertson Smith himself, no friendly
witness in this matter, has compared the
blood-offerings to ghosts with those to
deities. In the eleventh book of the
Odyssey, for example, the ghosts drink
greedily of the sacrificial blood; and
libations of gore form a special feature in
Greek offerings to heroes. That blood
was offered to the sacred stones we have
already seen ; and we noticed that there as
here it was specially smeared upon the
parts representing the mouth. Offerings
of blood to gods, or pouring of blood on
altars, are too common to demand
particular notice; and we shall also recur
to that part of the subject when we come
to consider the important questions of
sacrifice and sacrament. I will only add
here that, according to Maimonides, the
Sabians looked on blood as the nourish
ment of the gods; while the Hebrew
Jahweh asks indignantly in the fiftieth
Psalm, “ Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or
drink the blood of goats ?”
To pass on to more unequivocal cases of
stake-worship, where we can hardly doubt
that the stake represents a dead man,
Captain Cook noticed that in the Society
Islands “ the carved wooden images at
burial-places were not considered mere
memorials, but abodes into which the souls
of the departed retired.” So Ellis observes
of Polynesians generally that the sacred
objects might be either mere stocks and
stones, or carved wooden imager;, from six
to eight feet long down to as many inches.
The ancient Araucanians again fixed over
a tomb an unright log, “ rudely carved to
represent the human frame.” After the
death of New Zealand chiefs, wooden
images, 20 to 40 feet high, were erected as
monuments.
Dr. Codrington notes that the large
mouths and lolling tongues of many New
Zealand and Polynesian gods are due to
the habit of smearing the mouth with
blood and other offerings.
Where men preserve the corpses of their
�SACRED STAKES
dead, images are not so likely to grow up ;
but where fear of the dead has brought
about the practice of burial or burning, it
is reasonable that the feelings of affection
which prompted gifts and endearments to
the mummy in the first stage of thought
should seek some similar material outlet
under the altered circumstances. Among
ourselves, a photograph, a portrait, the
toys of a dead child, are preserved and
cherished. Among savages, ruder repre
sentations become necessary. They bury
the actual corpse safely out of sight, but
make some rough wooden imitation to
represent it. Thus it does not surprise us
to find that while the Marianne Islanders
keep the dried bodies of their dead ances
tors in their huts as household gods, and
expect them to give oracles out of their
skulls, the New Zealanders, on the other
hand, “ set up memorial idols of deceased
persons near the burial-place, talking affec
tionately to them as if still alive, and cast
ing garments to them when they pass by,”
while they also “preserve in their houses
small carved wooden images, each dedi
cated to the spirit of an ancestor.” The
Coast Negroes “place several earthen
images on the graves.” Some Papuans,
“ after a grave is filled up, collect round
an idol, and offer provisions to it.” The
Javans dress up an image in the clothes
of the deceased. So, too, of the Caribs
of the West Indies, we learn that they
“carved little images in the shape in
which they believed spirits to have ap
peared to them; and some human figures
bore the names of ancestors in memory of
them.” From such little images, obviously
substituted for the dead body which used
once to be preserved and affectionately
tended, are derived, I believe, most of the
household gods of the world—the Lares
and Penates of the Romans, the huacas of
the Peruvians, the teraphim of the Semites.
As in the case of sacred stones, once
more, I am quite ready to admit that, when
once the sanctity of certain stakes or wooden
poles came to be generally recognised, it
would be a simple transference of feeling to
suppose that any stake, arbitrarily set up,
might become the shrine or home of an
indwelling spirit. Thus we are told that
the Brazilian tribes “ set up stakes in the
ground, and make offerings before them to
appease their deities or demons.” So also
we are assured that among the Dinkas of
the White Nile, “ the missionaries saw an
old woman in her hut offering the first of
her food before a short thick staff planted
53
in the ground.” But in neither of these
cases is there necessarily anything to show
that the spot where the staff was set up was
not a place of burial; while in the second
instance this is even probable, as hut inter
ments are extremely common in Africa. I
will quote one other instance only, for its
illustrative value in a subsequent connec
tion. In the Society Islands rude logs are
clothed in native cloth (like Monigan’s idol)
and anointed with oil, receiving adoration
and sacrifice as the dwelling-place of a
deity.
Among the Semitic peoples, always
specially interesting to us from their genetic
connection with Judaism and Christianity,
the worship of stakes usually took the form
of adoration paid to the curious log of wood
described as an ashera. What kind of
object an ashera was we learn from the
injunction in Deuteronomy, “ Thou shalt
not plant an ashera of any kind of wood
beside the altar of Jahweh.” This prohibi
tion is clearly parallel to that against any
hewn stone or “ graven image.” But the
Semites in general worshipped as a rule at
a rude stone altar, beside which stood an
ashera, under a green tree—all three of the
great sacred objects of humanity being thus
present together. A similar combination is
not uncommon in India, where sacred stone
and wooden image stand often under the
shade of the same holy peepul tree. “ The
ashera” says Professor Robertson Smith,
“ is a sacred symbol, the seat of the deity,
and perhaps the name itself, as G. Hoff
mann has suggested, means nothing more
than the ‘mark’ of the divine presence.”
Those who have followed me so far in the
present work, however, will be more likely
to conclude that it meant originally the
mark of a place where an ancestor lay
buried. “Every altar,” says Professor
Smith, again, “ had its ashera, even such
altars as in the popular preprophetic forms
of the Hebrew religion were dedicated to
J ehovah.”
I will dwell no longer upon more or less
remote derivatives of the grave-stake. I
will only say briefly that in my opinion all
wooden idols or images are directly or
indirectly descended from the wooden
headpost or still more primitive sepulchral
pole. Not of course that I suppose every
wooden image to have been necessarily
once itself a funereal monument. Dona
tello’s Magdalen in San Giovanni at
Florence, the blue-robed and star-spangled
Madonna of the wayside shrine, have cer
tainly no such immediate origin. But I
�54
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
do believe that the habit of making and
worshipping wooden images arose in the
way I have pointed out.
CHAPTER VII.
SACRED TREES
The sacred tree stands less obviously in
the direct line of ancestry of gods and of
God than the sacred stone and sacred
stake which we have just considered. I
would willingly pass it over, therefore, in
this long preliminary inquisition, could I
safely do so, in order to progress at once
to the specific consideration of the God of
Israel and the rise of Monotheism. But
the tree is nevertheless so closely linked
with the two other main objects of human
worship that I hardly see how I can
avoid considering it here in the same con
nection, especially as in the end it has
important implications with regard to the
tree of the cross, as well as to the True
Vine, and many other elements of Chris
tian faith and Christian symbolism. I
shall therefore give it a short chapter as
I pass, premising that I have already
entered into the subject at greater length
in my excursus “ On the Origin of TreeWorship,” appended to my verse transla
tion of the Attis of Catullus.
The worship of sacred trees is almost
as widely diffused over the whole world as
the worship of dead bodies, mummies,
relics, graves, sacred stones, sacred stakes,
and stone or wooden idols. The great
authorities on the subject of Tree-Worship
are Mannhardt’s Baumkultus and Mr. J.
G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Neither
of those learned and acute writers, how
ever, has fully seen the true origin of wor
ship from funeral practices : and therefore
it becomes necessary to go over the same
ground again briefly here from the point
of view afforded us by the corpse-theory
and ghost-theory of the basis of religion. I
shall hope to add something to their valu
able results, and also incidentally to show
that all the main objects of worship together
lead us back unanimously to the Cult of
the Dead as their common starting-point.
Let us begin in this instance (contrary to
our previous practice) by examining and
endeavouring to understand a few cases of
the behaviour of tree-spirits in various
mythologies. Virgil tells us in the Third
^Eneid how, on a certain occasion, /Eneas
was offering a sacrifice on a tumulus
crowned with dogwood and myrtle bushes.
He endeavoured to pluck up some of these
by the roots, in order to cover the altar, as
was customary, with leaf-clad branches. As
he did so, the first bush which he tore up
astonished him by exuding drops of liquid
blood, which trickled and fell upon the soil
beneath. He tried again, and again the
tree bled human gore. On the third trial,
a groan was heard proceeding from the
tumulus, and a voice assured /Eneas that
the barrow on which he stood covered the
murdered remains of his friend Polydorus.
Now, in this typical and highly illustra
tive myth—no doubt an ancient and wellknown story incorporated by Virgil in his
great poem—we see that the tree which
grows upon a barrow is itself regarded as
the representative and embodiment of the
dead man’s soul, just as elsewhere the snake
which glides from the tomb of Anchises is
regarded as the embodied spirit of the hero,
and just as the owls and bats which haunt
sepulchral caves are often identified in all
parts of the world with the souls of the
departed.
Similar stories of bleeding or speaking
trees or bushes occur abundantly elsewhere.
“When the oak is being felled,” says
Aubrey, in his Remains of Gentilisme, “ it
gives a kind of shriekes and groanes that
may be heard a mile off, as if it were the
genius of the oak lamenting. E. Wyld,
Esq., hath heared it severall times.” Certain
Indians, says Bastian, dare not cut a par
ticular plant, because there comes out of it
a red juice which they take for its blood. I
myself remember hearing as a boy in
Canada that wherever Sanguinaria Cana
densis, the common American bloodroot,
grew in the woods, an Indian had once
been buried, and that the red drops of juice
which exuded from the stem when one
picked the flowers were the dead man’s
blood. In Samoa, says Mr. Turner, the
special abode of Tuifiti, King of Fiji, was a
grove of large and durable afzelia trees.
“No one dared cut that timber. A story is
told of a party from Upolu who once
attempted it, and the consequence was that
blood flowed from the tree, and that the
sacrilegious strangers all took ill and died.”
Till 1855, says Mannhardt, there was a
sacred larch-tree at Nauders in the Tyrol,
which was thought to bleed whenever it
was cut. In some of these cases, it is true,
we do not actually know that the trees grew
�SACRED TREES
on tumuli, but this point is specially noticed
about Polydorus’s dogwood, and is probably
implied in the Samoan case, as I gather
from the title given to the spirit as king of
Fiji.
In other instances, however, such a doubt
does not exist. We are expressly told that
it is the souls of the dead which are believed
to animate the speaking or bleeding trees.
“The Dieyerie tribe of South Australia,”
says Mr. Frazer, “regard as very sacred
certain trees which are supposed to be their
fathers transformed; hence they will not
cut the trees down, and protest against
settlers doing so.”
Now, how did this connection between
the tree and the ghost or ancestor grow up ?
In much the same way, I imagine, as the
connection between the sacred stone or the
sacred stake and the dead chief who lies
buried beneath it. Whatever grows or
stands upon the grave is sure to share the
honours paid to the spirit that dwells
within it. Thus a snake or other animal
seen to glide out of a tomb is instantly
taken by savages and even by half-civilised
men as the genius or representative of the
dead inhabitant. But do trees grow out of
graves ? Undoubtedly, yes. In the first
place, they may grow by mere accident, as
they might grow anywhere else ; the more
so as the soil in such a case has been
turned and laboured. But beyond this, in
the second place, it is common all over the
world to plant trees or shrubs over the
graves of relatives or tribesmen. Though
direct evidence on this point is difficult to
obtain, a little is forthcoming. In Algeria,
I observed, the Arab women went on
Fridays to plant flowers and shrubs on the
graves of their immediate dead. I learned
from Mr. R. L. Stevenson that similar
plantings take place in Samoa and Fiji.
The Tahitians put young casuarinas on
graves. In Roman Catholic countries the
planting of shrubs in cemeteries takes
place usually on the jour des morts, a
custom which would argue for it an
immense antiquity ; for though it is a point
of honour among Catholics to explain this
jete as of comparatively recent origin,
definitely introduced by a particular saint
at a particular period, its analogy to
similar celebrations elsewhere shows us
that it is really a surviving relic of a very
ancient form of Manes-worship. In Graeco
Roman antiquity it is certain that trees
were frequently planted around the barrows
of the dead; and that leafy branches
formed part of the established ceremonial
55
of funerals. I cannot do better than quote
in this respect once more the case of
Polydorus:—
Ergo instauramus Polydoro funus, et ingens
Aggeritur tumulo tellus ; stant Manibus arse,
Cseruleis mcestse vittis atraque cupresso.
Suetonius again tells us how the tumulus
of the divine Augustus was carefully
planted. The acacia is one of the most
sacred trees of Egypt; and Egyptian
monuments, with their usual frankness,
show us a sarcophagus from which an
acacia emerges, with the naive motto,
“ Osiris springs forth.”
An incident which occurred during the
recent Sino-Japanese war shows how easily
points of this sort may be overlooked by
hasty writers in formal descriptions. One
of the London illustrated papers printed
an account of the burial of the Japanese
dead at Port Authur, and after mentioning
the simple headstone erected at each grave
volunteered the further statement that
nothing else marked the place of interment.
But the engraving which accompanied it,
taken from a photograph, showed, on the
contrary, that a little tree had also been
planted on each tiny tumulus.
I learn from Mr. William Simpson that
the Tombs of the Kings near Pekin are
conspicuous from afar by their lofty groves
of pine trees.
Evergreens, I believe, are specially
planted upon graves or tumuli because
they retain their greenness throughout the
entire winter, and thus as it were give
continuous evidence of the vitality and
activity of the indwelling spirit. Mr.
Frazer has shown in The Golden Bough
that mistletoe similarly owes its special
sanctity to the fact that it visibly holds the
soul of the tree uninjured in itself, while
all the surrounding branches stand bare
and lifeless. Accordingly, tumuli are very
frequently crowned by evergreens. Almost
all the round barrows in southern England,
for example, are topped by very ancient
Scotch firs; and as the Scotch fir is not an
indigenous tree south of the Tweed, it is
practically certain that these old pines are
the descendants of ascestors put in by
human hands when the barrows were first
raised over the cremated and buried bodies
of prehistoric chieftains. In short, the
Scotch fir is in England the sacred tree of
the barrows. As a rule, however, in
Northern Europe, the yew is the species
specially planted in graveyards, and
several such yews in various parts of
�56
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
England and Germany are held to possess
a peculiar sanctity. The great clump of
very ancient yews in Norbury Park near
Dorking, known as the Druids’ Grove, has
long been considered a holy wood of re
mote antiquity. In southern Europe the
cypress replaces the yew as the evergreen
most closely connected with tombs and
cemeteries. In Provence and Italy, how
ever, the evergreen holme-oak is almost
equally a conventional denizen of places of
interment. M. Lajard, in his able essay,
Sur le Culte du Cypres, has brought
together much evidence of this worship of
evergreens, among the Greeks, Etruscans,
Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Persians,
Hindus, Chinese, and American nations.
Sacred trees, especially when standing
alone, are treated in many respects with
the same ceremonial as is employed
towards dead bodies, mummies, graves,
sacred stones, sacred stakes, and carved
idols or statues. In other words, the
offerings to the ghost or god may be made
to the tree that grows on the grave just as
well as to any other of the recognised
embodiments of the indwelling spirit.
Furthermore, the sacred tree is found in
the closest possible connection with the
other indubitably ancestral monuments,
the sacred stone and the idol. “ A Bengal
village,” says Sir William Hunter, “has
usually its local god, which it adores either
in the form of a rude unhewn stone, or a
stump, or a tree marked with red lead ” ;
the last being probably a substitute for the
blood of human or animal victims with
which it was once watered. “ Sometimes
a lump of clay placed under a tree does
duty for a deity ; and the attendant priest,
when there is one, generally belongs to
one of the half-Hinduised low castes. The
rude stone represents the non-Aryan
fetish; and the tree seems to owe its
sanctity to the non-Aryan belief that it
forms the abode of the ghosts or gods of
the village.” That is to say, we have here
ancestor-worship in its undisguised early
native development.
The association of the sacred tree with
actual idols or images of deceased ances
tors is well seen in the following passage
which I quote from Dr. Tylor : “A clump
of larches on a Siberian steppe, a grove in
the recesses of a forest, is the sanctuary of
a Turanian tribe. Gaily-decked idols in
their warm fur coats, each set up beneath
its great tree swathed with cloth or tin
plate, endless reindeer-hides and peltry
hanging to the trees around, kettles and
spoons and snuff-horns and household
valuables strewn as offerings before the
gods—such is the description of a Siberian
holy grove, at the stage when the contact
of foreign civilisation has begun by orna
menting the rude old ceremonial it must
end by abolishing. A race ethnologically
allied to these tribes, though risen to
higher culture, kept up remarkable relics
of tree-worship in Northern Europe. In
Esthonian districts, within the present cen
tury, the traveller might often see the sacred
tree, generally an ancient lime, oak, or ash,
standing inviolate in a sheltered spot near
the dwelling-house ; and the old memories
are handed down of the time when the first
blood of a slaughtered beast was sprinkled
on its roots, that the cattle might prosper,
or when an offering was laid beneath the
holy linden, on the stone where the
worshipper knelt on his bare knees, moving
from east to west and back, which stone he
kissed when he had said, ‘ Receive the food
as an offering.’ ” After the evidence
already given, I do not think there can be
a reasonable doubt, in such a combination
of tree and stone, that we have here a sacri
fice to an ancestral spirit.
In some instances it is mentioned that
the trunks of sacred trees are occasionally
draped, as we saw to be also the case with
sacred stones, sacred stakes, idols, and
relics. Another example of this practice is
given in the account of the holy oak of
Romowe, venerated by the ancient Prussians,
which was hung with drapery like the ashera,
and decked with little hanging images of
the gods. The holy trees of Ireland are
still covered with rag offerings. Other
cases will be noticed in other connections
hereafter.
Once more, just as stones come to be
regarded as ancestors, so by a like process
do sacred trees. Thus Galton says in
South Africa : “ We passed a magnificent
tree. It was the parent of all the Damaras.
...... The savages danced round it in great
delight.” Several Indian tribes believe
themselves to be the sons of trees. Many
other cases are noted by Mr. Herbert
Spencer and Dr. Tylor. I do not think it
is necessary for our argument to repeat
them here.
I hope it is clear from this rapid risumt
that all the facts about the worship of sacred
trees stand exactly parallel to those with
regard to the worship of graves, mummies,
idols, sacred stones, sacred stakes, and
other signs of departed spirits. Indeed, we
have sometimes direct evidence of such
�SACRED TREES
affiliation. Thus Mr. Turner says of a
sacred tree on a certain spot in the island
of Savaii, which enjoyed rights of sanctuary
like the cities of refuge or a mediaeval
cathedral: “It is said that the king of a
division of Upolu, called Atua, once lived
at that spot. After he died, the house fell
into decay ; but the tree was fixed on as
representing the departed king, and out of
respect for his memory it was made the
substitute of a living and royal protector.”
By the light of this remark we may surely
interpret in a similar sense such other state
ments of Mr. Turner’s as that a sweetscented tree in another place “ was held to
be the habitat of a household god, and any
thing aromatic which the family happened
to get was presented to it as an offering ” ;
or again, “ a family god was supposed to
live ” in another tree ; “ and hence no one
dared to pluck a leaf or break a branch.”
For family gods, as we saw in a previous
chapter, are really family ghosts, promoted
to be deities.
In modern accounts of sacred trees much
stress is usually laid upon the fact that they
are large and well-grown, often very con
spicuous, and occupying a height, where
they serve as landmarks. Hence it has
frequently been taken for granted that they
have been selected for worship on account
of their size and commanding position.
This, however, I think, is a case of putting
the cart before the horse, as though one
were to say that St. Peter’s and Westminster
Abbey, the Temple of Karnak or the
Mosque of Omar, owed their sanctity to
their imposing dimensions. There is every
reason why a sacred tree should grow to
be exceptionally large and conspicuous.
Barrows are usually built on more or less
commanding heights, where they may
attract general attention. The ground is
laboured, piled high, freed from weeds, and
enriched by blood and other offerings. The
tree, being sacred, is tended arid cared for.
It is never cut down, and so naturally on the
average of instances grows to be a big and
well-developed specimen. Hence I hold
the tree is usually big because it is sacred,
not sacred because it is big. On the other
hand, where a tree already full-grown is
chosen for a place of burial, it would no
doubt be natural to choose a large and con
spicuous one. Thus I read of the tree
under which Dr. Livingstone’s heart was
buried by his native servant, “ It is the
largest in the neighbourhood.”
Looking at the question broadly, the case
stands thus. We know that in many in
57
stances savages inter their dead under the
shade of big trees. We know that such
trees are thereafter considered sacred, and
worshipped with blood, clothes, drapery,
offerings. We know that young shrubs or
trees are frequently planted on graves in all
countries. We know that whatever comes
up on or out of a grave is counted as repre
sentative of the ghost within it. The pre
sumption is therefore in favour of any par
ticular sacred tree being of funereal origin ;
and the onus of proving the opposite lies
with the person who asserts some more
occult and less obvious explanation.
At the same time, I am quite ready to
allow here, as in previous instances, when
once the idea of certain trees being sacred
has grown common among men, many trees
may come to possess by pure association a
sanctity of their own. This is doubtless
the case in India with the peepul, and in
various other countries with various other
trees. Exactly the same thing has happened
to stones. And so, again, though I believe
the temple to have been developed out of
the tomb or its covering, I do not deny that
churches are now built apart from tombs,
though always dedicated to the worship of
a God who is demonstrably a particular
deified personage.
Another point on which I must touch
briefly is that of the sacred grove or cluster
of trees. These often represent, I take it,
the trees planted in the temenos or sacred
tabooed space which surrounds the primi
tive tomb or temple. The koubbas or little
dome-shaped tombs of Mohammedan saints
so common in North Africa are all sur
rounded by such a walled enclosure, within
which ornamental or other trees are habit
ually planted. In many cases these are
palms—the familiar sacred tree of Meso
potamia, about which more must be said
hereafter in a later chapter. The wellknown bois sacré at Blidah is a considerable
grove, with a koubba in its midst. A similar
temenos frequently surrounded the Egyptian
and the Greek temple. I do not assert that
these were always of necessity actual tombs ;
but they were at any rate cenotaphs. When
once people had got accustomed to the idea
that certain trees were sacred to the memory
of their ancestors or their gods, it would be
but a slight step to plant such trees round
an empty temple. When Xenophon, for
example, built a shrine to Artemis, and
planted around it a grove of many kinds of
fruit trees, and placed in it an altar and
an image of the goddess, nobody would for
a moment suppose he erected it over the
�58
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
body of an actual dead Artemis. But men
would never have begun building temples
and consecrating groves at all if they had
not first built houses for the dead god
chief, and planted shrubs and trees upon
his venerated tumulus. Nay, even the
naïve inscription upon Xenophon’s shrine
—“He who lives here and enjoys the
fruits of the ground must every year offer
the tenth part of the produce to the god
dess, and out of the residue keep the
temple in repair”—does it not carry us
back implicitly to the origin of priesthood,
and of the desire for perpetuity in the due
maintenance of the religious offices ?
I shall say nothing here about the evolu
tion of the great civilised tree-gods like
Attis and Adonis, so common in the
region of the eastern Mediterranean, be
cause I have already treated them at some
length in my essay on Tree-Worship. But
a few words must be devoted in passing
to the prevalence of tree-worship among
the Semitic peoples, intimately connected
as it is with the rise of certain important
elements in the Christian cult.
“ In all parts of the Semitic area,” says
Professor Robertson Smith, “trees were
adored as divine.” Among the species
thus honoured he enumerates especially
the pines and cedars of Lebanon, the ever
green oaks of the Palestinian hills, the
tamarisks of the Syrian jungles, and the
acacias of the Arabian wadies. Most of
these, it will be noted, are evergreens. In
Arabia the most striking case on record
is that of the sacred date-plum at Nejran.
This was adored at an annual feast, when
it was “all hung with finé clothes and
women’s ornaments.” A similar tree ex
isted at Mecca, to which the people re
sorted annually, and hung upon it
weapons, garments, ostrich eggs, and other
offerings. In a sacred acacia at Nakla a
goddess was supposed to live. The modern
Arabs still hang pieces of flesh on such
sacred trees, honour them with sacrifices,
and present them with rags of calico and
coloured beads.
As regards the Phoenicians and Canaan
ites, Philo Byblius says that plants were
in ancient times revered as gods, and
honoured with libations and sacrifices. Dr.
Robertson Smith gives several instances.
Christianity has not extinguished the
veneration for sacred trees in Syria, where
they are still prayed to in sickness and
hung with rags. The Moslems of Pales
tine also venerate the sacred trees of
immemorial antiquity.
In the Hebrew scriptures tree-worship
constantly appears, and is frankly dealt
with by Professor Robertson Smith, who
does not refuse to connect with this set of
beliefs the legend of Jahweh in the burn
ing bush. The local altars of early Hebrew
cult were habitually set up “ under green
trees.” On this subject I would refer the
reader to Dr. Smith’s own interesting dis
quisition on p. 193 of The Religion of the
Semites.
With regard to the general sacredness
of vegetation, and especially of food-plants,
such as corn, the vine, and the date-palm,
I postpone that important subject for the
present, till we come to consider the gods
of cultivation, and the curious set of ideas
which gradually led up to sacramental
god-eating. In a theme so vast and so
involved as that of human religion, it
becomes necessary to take one point at a
time, and to deal with the various parts in
analytic isolation.
We have now examined briefly almost
all the principal sacred objects of the
world, according to classes—the corpse,
the mummy, the idol, the sacred stone, the
sacred stake, the sacred tree or grove ;
there remains but one other group of holy
things, very generally recognised, which I
do not propose to examine separately, but
to which a few words may yet be devoted
at the end of a chapter. I mean, the sacred
wells. It might seem at first sight as if
these could have no possible connection
with death or burial; but that expectation
is, strange to say, delusive. There appears
to be some reason for bringing wells too
into the widening category of funereal
objects. The oxen’s well .at Acre, forexample, was visited by Christian, Jewish,
and Moslem pilgrims ; it was therefore an
object of great ancient sanctity; but observe
this point: there is a mashhed or sacred
tomb beside it, “perhaps the modern repre
sentative of the ancient Memnomum.”
Every Egyptian temple had in like manner
its sacred lake. In modern Syria, “cisterns
are always found beside the grave of saints,
and are believed to be inhabited by a sort
of fairy. A pining child is thought to be a
fairy changeling, and must be lowered into
the cistern.” The similarity of the belief
about holy wells in England and Ireland,
and their frequent association with the
name of a saint, would seem to suggest for
them a like origin. Sacred rivers usually
rise from sacred springs, near which stands
a temple. The river Adonis took its origin
at the shrine of Aphaca: and the grave of
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
Adonis, about whom much more must be
said hereafter, stood near the mouth of the
holy stream that was reddened by his blood.
The sacred river Belus had also its peculiar
Memnonium or Adonis tomb. But I must
add that sacred rivers had likewise their
annual god-victims, about whom we shall
have a great deal to say at a later stage of
our inquiry, and from whom in part they
probably derived their sanctity. Still, that
their holiness was also due in part, and
originally, to tombs at their sources, I think
admits of no reasonable doubt.
The equivalence of the holy well and the
holy stone is shown by the fact that, while
a woman whose chastity was suspected had
to drink water of a sacred spring to prove
her innocence, at Mecca she had to swear
seventy oaths by the Kaaba.
Again, sacred wells and fountains were
and are worshipped with just the same acts
of sacrifice as ghosts and images. At
Aphaca, the pilgrims cast into the holy pool
jewels of gold and silver, with webs of linen
and other precious stuffs. A holy grove
was an adjunct of the holy spring : in
Greece, according to Bötticher, they were
seldom separated. At the annual fair of
the Sacred Terebinth, or tree and well of
Abraham at Mamre, the heathen visitors
offered sacrifices beside the tree, and cast
into the well libations of wine, with cakes,
coins, myrrh, and incense : all of which we
may compare with the Ostyak offerings to
ancestral grave-stakes. At the holy waters
of Karwa, bread, fruit, and other foods were
laid beside the fountain. At Mecca, and at
the Stygian Waters in the Syrian desert,
similar gifts were cast into the holy source.
In one of these instances at least we know
that the holy well was associated with an
actual burial ; for at Aphaca, the holiest
shrine of Syria, the tomb of the local Baal
or god was shown beside the sacred foun
tain. “ A buried god,” says Dr. Robertson
Smith quaintly, in commenting on this fact,
“ is a god that dwells under ground.” It
would be far truer and more philosophical
to say that a god who dwells underground
is a buried man.
I need not recall the offerings to Cornish
and Irish well-spirits, which have now de
generated for the most part into pins and
needles.
On the whole, though it is impossible to
understand the entire genesis of sacred
founts and rivers without previous con
sideration of deliberate god-making, a sub
ject which I reserve for a later portion of
our exposition, I do not think we shall go
59
far wrong in supposing that the sacred well
most often occurs in company with the
sacred tree, the sacred stone or altar, and
the sacred tomb; and that itowes its sanctity
in the last resort, originally at least, to a
burial by its side; though I do not doubt
that this sanctity was in many cases kept
up by the annual immolation of a fresh
victim-god, of a type whose genesis will
hereafter detain us.
Thus, in ultimate analysis, we see that
all the sacred objects of the world are
either dead men themselves, as corpse,
mummy, ghost, or god; or else the tomb
where such men are buried ; or else the
temple, shrine, or hut which covers the
tomb ; or else the tombstone, altar, image,
or statue, standing over it and representing
the ghost; or else the stake, idol, or
household god which is fashioned as their
deputy; or else the tree which grows
above the barrow ; or else the well, or
tank, or spring, natural or artificial, by
whose side the dead man has been laid
to rest.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GODS OF EGYPT
We have now completed our preliminary
survey of the nature and origin of Gods in
general. We have seen how men first
came to believe in the objective existence
of these powerful and invisible beings, how
they learnt to invest ^them with majestic
attributes, and how tliey grew to worship
them under the various forms of mummies
or boulders, stone or wooden idols, trees or
stumps, wells, rivers, and fountains. In
short, we have briefly arrived at the origin
of Polytheism. We have now to go on to
our second question—How from the belief
in many gods did men progress to the
belief in one single God, the creator and
upholder of all things ? Our task is now
to reconstruct the origin of Monotheism.
But Monotheism bases itself entirely
upon the great God of the Hebrews. To
him, therefore, we must next address
ourselves. Is he too resoluble, as I hinted
before, into a Sacred Stone, the monument
and representative of some prehistoric
chieftain ? Can we trace the origin of the
Deity of Christendom till we find him at
last in a forgotten Semitic ghost of the
earliest period ?
�6o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The chief Hebrew god Jahweh, when
we first catch a passing glimpse of his
primitive worship by his own people, was
but one among a number of competing
deities, mostly, it would appear, embodied
by their votaries in the visible form of stone
or wooden pillars, and adored by a small
group of loosely-connected tribes among
the mountain region in the southwest of
Syria. The confederacy among whom he
dwelt knew themselves as the Sons of
Israel; they regarded Jahweh as their prin
cipal god, much as the Greeks did Zeus, or
the early Teutons their national hero
Woden. But a universal tradition among
them bore witness to the fact that they had
once lived in a subject condition in Egypt,
the house of bondage. So consistent and
so definite was this traditional belief that
we can hardly regard it otherwise than as
enclosing a kernel of truth ; and not only
do Kuenen and other Semitic scholars of
the present day admit it as genuine, but the
Egyptologists also seem generally to allow
its substantial accuracy and full accord with
hieroglyphic literature. This sojourn in
Egypt cannot have failed to influence to
some extent the Semitic strangers : there
fore I shall begin my quest of the Hebrew
god among the Egyptian monuments. Ad
mitting that he was essentially in all respects
a deity of the true Semitic pattern, I think
it will do us good to learn a little before
hand about the people among whom his
votaries dwelt so long, especially as the his
tory of the Egyptian cults affords us perhaps
the best historical example of the growth
and development of a great national reli
gion.
A peculiar interest, indeed, attaches in
the history of the human mind to the evo
lution of the gods of Egypt. Nowhere else
in the world can we trace so well such a
continuous development from the very sim
plest beginnings of religious ideas to the
very highest planes of mysticism and philo
sophic theology. There are savage cults,
it is true, which show us more clearly the
earliest stages in the process whereby the
simple ancestral ghost passes imperceptibly
into the more powerful form of a super
natural deity: there are elevated civilised
creeds which show us more grandly in its
evolved shape the final conception of a
single supreme Ruler of the Cosmos. But
there is no other religious system known to
us in which we can follow so readily, with
out a single break, the whole evolutionary
movement whereby the earlier ideas get
gradually expanded and etherealised into
the later. The origin of the other great
historical religions is lost from our eyes
among dim mists of fable : in Egypt alone,
of all civilised countries, does our record go
back to the remote period when the reli
gious conception was still at the common
savage level, and follow it forward continu
ously to the advanced point where it had
all but achieved, in its syncretic movement,
the ultimate goal of pure monotheism.
Looked at from the evolutionary point of
view then, nothing can be clearer than the
fact that the early Egyptian religion bases
itself entirely upon two main foundations,
ancestor-worship and totemism.
I will begin with the first of these, which
all analogy teaches us to consider by far
the earliest, and infinitely the most im
portant. And I may add that it is also, to
judge by the Egyptian evidence alone,
both the element which underlies the
whole religious conceptions of the Nile
valley, and likewise the element which
directly accounts, as we shall see hereafter,
for all the most important gods of the
national pantheon, including Osiris, Ptah,
Khem, and Amen, as well perhaps as
many of their correlative goddesses. There
is not, in fact, any great ethnical religion
on earth, except possibly the Chinese, in
which the basal importance of the Dead
Man is so immediately apparent as in the
ancient cult of Pharaohnic Egypt.
The Egyptian religion bases itself upon
the tomb. It is impossible for a moment
to doubt that fact as one stands under the
scanty shade of the desert date-palms
among the huge sun-smitten dust-heaps
that represent the streets of Thebes and
Memphis. The commonest object of wor
ship on all the monuments of Nile is
beyond doubt the Mummy : sometimes the
private mummy of an ancestor or kinsman,
sometimes the greater deified mummies of
immemorial antiquity, blended in the later
syncretic mysticism with the sun-god and
other allegorical deities, but represented to
the very last in all ages of art—on the
shattered Rameseum at Thebes or the
Ptolemaic pillars of still unshaken Denderah—as always unmistakeable and
obvious mummies. If ever there was a
country where the Worship of the Dead was
pushed to an extreme, that country was
distinctly and decisively Egypt.
“ The oldest sculptures show us no acts
of adoration or of sacrifice,” says Mr.
Loftie, “ except those of worship at the
shrine of a deceased ancestor or relative.”
This is fully in keeping with what we know
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
of the dawn of religion elsewhere, and
with the immense importance always at
tached to the preservation of the mummy
intact throughout the whole long course of
Egyptian history. The Egyptian, in spite
of his high civilisation, remained always at
the first or corpse-preserving stage of
custom as regards the dead. To him,
therefore, the life after death was far more
serious than the life on earth : he realised
it so fully that he made endless preparations
for it during his days above, and built
himself a tomb as an eternal mansion.
The grave was a place of abode, where the
mummy was to pass the greater part of his
existence ; and even in the case of private
persons (like that famous Tih whose
painted sepulchre at Sakkarah every
tourist to Cairo makes a point of visiting)
it was sumptuously decorated with painting
and sculpture. In the mortuary chambers
or chapels attached to the tombs, the
relations of the deceased and the priests
of the cemetery celebrated on certain fixed
dates various ceremonies in honour of the
dead, and offered appropriate gifts to the
mummy within. “ The tables of offerings,
which no doubt formed part of the furniture
of the chambers, are depicted on the
walls, covered with the gifts of meat, fruits,
bread, and wine which had to be presented
in kind.” These parentalia undoubtedly
formed the main feature of the practical
religion of early Egypt.
The Egyptian tomb was usually a survival
of the cave artificially imitated. The outer
chamber, in which the ceremonies of the
offertory took place, was the only part
accessible, after the interment had been
completed, to the feet of survivors. The
mummy itself, concealed in its sarcophagus,
lay at the bottom of a deep pit beyond, by
the end of a corridor often containing
statues or idols of the deceased. These
idols, says M. Maspero, were indefinitely
multiplied, in case the mummy itself should
be accidentally destroyed, in order that the
Ka (the ghost or double) might find a safe
dwelling-place. Compare the numerous
little images placed upon the grave by the
Coast Negroes. It was the outer chamber,
however, that sheltered the stele or pillar
which bore the epitaph, as well as the altar
or table for offerings, the smoke from which
was conveyed to the statues in the corridor
through a small aperture in the wall of
partition. Down the well beyond, the
mummy in person reposed, in its eternal
dwelling-place, free from all chance of viola
tion or outrage. “The greatest impor
61
tance,” says Mr. Renouf, “ was attached to
the permanence of the tomb, to the con
tinuance of the religious ceremonies, and to
the prayers of passers-by.” Again, “ there
is a very common formula stating that the
person who raised the tablet ‘ made it as a
memorial to his fathers who are in the nether
world, built up what he found was imperfect,
and renewed what was found out of repair.’”
In the inscription on one of the great tombs
at Beni-Hassan the founder says : “ I made
to flourish the name of my father, and I built
chapels for his ka [or ghost]. I caused
statues to be conveyed to the holy dwelling,
and distributed to them their offerings in
pure gifts. I instituted the officiating priest,
to whom I gave donations in land and
presents. I ordered funeral offerings for all
the feasts of the nether world [which are
then enumerated at considerable length].
If it happen that the priest or any other
cease to do this, may he not exist, and may
his son not sit in his seat.” All this is
highly instructive from the point of view of
the origin of priesthood.
How long these early religious endow
ments continued to be respected is shown
by Mr. Renouf in one instructive passage.
The kings who built the Pyramids in the
Early Empire endowed a priestly office for
the purpose of celebrating the periodical
rites of offering to their ghosts or mummies.
Now, a tablet in the Louvre shows that a
certain person who lived under the Twenty
sixth Dynasty was priest of Khufu, the
builder of the Great Pyramid, who had
endowed the office two thousand years
before his time. We have actually the
tombs of some of his predecessors who
filled the same office immediately after
Khufu’s death. So that in this instance at
least, the worship of the deceased monarch
continued for a couple of thousand years
without interruption. “If in the case of
private interments,” says M. Maspero, “we
find no proof of so persistent a veneration,
that is because in ordinary tombs the cere
monies were performed not by special
priests, but by the children or descendants
of the deceased person. Often, at the end
of a few generations, either through negli
gence, removals, ruin, or extinction of the
family, the cult was suspended, and the
memory of the dead died out altogether.”
For this reason, as everywhere else among
ancestor-worshippers, immense importance
was attached by the Egyptians to the be
getting of a son who should perform the
due family rites, or see that they were per
formed by others after him. The duty of
�6i
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
undertaking these ritesis thoroughly insisted
upon in all the maxims or moral texts; while,
on the other hand, the wish that a man may
not have a son to perform them for him is
the most terrible of all ancient Egyptian
imprecations.
If even the common herd were carefully
embalmed—if even the lesser functionaries
of the court or temple lay in expensive
tombs, daintily painted and exquisitely
sculptured—it might readily be believed
that the great kings of the mighty con
quering dynasties themselves would raise
for their mummies eternal habitations of
special splendour and becoming magnifi
cence. And so they did. In Lower Egypt
their tombs are barrows or pyramids : in
Upper Egypt they are artificial caves.
The dreary desert district west of the Nile
and south of Cairo consists for many
miles, all but uninterruptedly, of the ceme
tery of Memphis—a vast and mouldering
city of the dead—whose chief memorials
are the wonderful series of Pyramids, the
desecrated tombs piled up for the kings of
the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynas
ties. There, under stone tumuli of enor
mous size—barrows or cairns more care
fully constructed—the Pharaohs of the Old
Empire reposed in peace in sepulchres
unmarked by any emblems of the mystic
gods or sacred beasts of later imagination.
But still more significant and infinitely
more beautiful are the rock-hewn Tombs
of the Kings at Thebes, belonging to the
great monarchs of the Eighteenth, Nine
teenth, and Twentieth Dynasties, when the
religion had assumed its full mystical
development. Those magnificent subter
ranean halls form in the truest and most
literal sense a real necropolis, a town of
mummies, where each king was to inhabit
an eternal palace of regal splendour,
decorated with a profusion of polychro
matic art, and filled with many mansions
for the officers of state, still destined to
attend upon their sovereign in the nether
world. Some of the mural paintings
would even seem to suggest that slaves or
captives were sacrificed at the tomb, to
serve their lord in his eternal home, as his
courtiers had served him in the temporal
palaces of Medinet-Hdbu or the corridors
of Luxor.
At any rate, it is quite impossible for
any impartial person to examine the exist
ing monuments which line the grey desert
hills of the Nile without seeing for himself
that the mummy is everywhere the central
object of worship—that the entire prac
tical religion of the people was based upon
this all-pervading sense of the continuity
of life beyond the grave, and upon the
necessity for paying due reverence and
funereal offerings to the manes of an
cestors. Everything in Egypt points to
this one conclusion. Even the great
sacred ritual is the Book of the Dead : and
the very word by which the departed are
oftenest described means itself “ the
living,” from the firm belief of the people
that they were really enjoying everlasting
life. Mors janua vitce is the short sum
ming-up of Egyptian religious notions.
Death was the great beginning for which
they all prepared, and the dead were the
real objects of their most assiduous public
and private worship.
Moreover, in the tombs themselves we
can trace a gradual development of the
religious sentiment from Corpse-Worship
to God-Worship. Thus, in the tombs of
Sakkarah, belonging to the Old Empire
(Fifth Dynasty), all those symbolical repre
sentations of the life beyond the tomb
which came in with the later mysticism are
almost wholly wanting. The quotations
from (or anticipations of) the Book of the
Dead are few and short. The great gods
are rarely alluded to. Again, in the grottos
of Beni-Hassan (of the Twelfth Dynasty)
the paintings mostly represent scenes from
the life of the deceased, and the mystic
signs and deities are still absent. The doc
trine of rewards and punishments remains
as yet comparatively in abeyance. It is
only at the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes
(of the Eighteenth Dynasty) that entire
chapters of the Book of the Dead are tran
scribed at length, and the walls are covered
with “ a whole army of grotesque and fan
tastic divinities.”
“ But the Egyptians,” it will be objected,
“had also great gods, distinct from their
ancestors—national, or local, or common
gods—whose names and figures have come
down to us inscribed upon all the monu
ments.” Quite true : that is to say, there
are gods who are not immediately or
certainly resolvable into deified ancestors
—gods whose power and might were at last
widely extended, and who became trans
figured by degrees beyond all recognition in
the latest ages. But it is by no means
certain, even so, that we cannot trace these
greater gods themselves back in the last
resort to deified ancestors of various ruling
families or dominant cities ; and in one or
two of the most important cases the sugges
tions of such an origin are far from scanty.
�THE GODS OE EGYPT
I will take, to begin with, one typical
example. There is no single god in the
Egyptian pantheon more important or more
universally diffused than Osiris. In later
forms of the national religion he is elevated
into the judge of the departed and king of
the nether world: to be “justified by
Osiris,” or, as later interpreters say, “ a
justified Osiris,” is the prayer of every
corpse as set forth in his funeral inscrip
tion ; and identification with Osiris is
looked upon as the reward of all the happy
and faithful dead. Now Osiris, in every
one of his representations and modes, is
simply—a Mummy. His myth, to be sure,
assumed at last immense proportions ; and
his relations with Isis and Horus form the
centre of an endless series of irreconcilable
tales, repeated over and over again in art
and literature. If we took mythology as
our guide, instead of the monuments, we
should be tempted to give him far other
origins. He is identified often with other
gods, especially with Amen ; and the disen
tanglement of his personality in the monu
ments of the newer empire, when Ra, the
sun-god, got mixed up inextricably with so
many other deities, is particularly difficult.
But if we neglect these later complications
of a very ancient cult, and go back to the
simplest origin of Egyptian history and
religion, we shall, I think, see that this
mystic god, so often explained away by
elemental symbolism into the sun or the
home of the dead, was in his first begin
nings nothing more or less than what all
his pictures and statues show him to be—a
revered and worshipped Mummy, a very
ancient chief or king of the town or little
district of This by Abydos.
I do not deny that in later ages Osiris
became much more than this. Nor do I
deny that his name was accepted as a
symbol for all the happy and pious dead.
Furthermore, we shall find at a later stage
that he was identified in the end with an
annual slain Corn-God. I will even allow
that there may have been more than one
original Osiris—that the word may even at
first have been generic, not specific. But I
still maintain that the evidence shows us
the great and principal Osiris of all as a
Dead Chief of Abydos.
We must remember that in Egypt
alone history goes back to an immense
antiquity, and yet shows us already at its
very beginning an advanced civilisation
and a developed picture-writing. There
fore the very oldest known state of
Egypt necessarily presupposes a vast
anterior era of slow growth in concentration
and culture. Before ever Upper or Lower
Egypt became united under a single crown,
there must have been endless mud-built
villages and petty palm-shadowed princi
palities along the bank of the Nile, each
possessing its own local chief or king, and
each worshipping its own local deceased
potentates. The sheikh of the village, as
we should call him nowadays, was then
their nameless Pharaoh, and the mummies
of his ancestors were their gods and god
desses. Each tribe had also its special
totem, about which I shall have a little
more to say hereafter; and these totems
were locally worshipped almost as gods,
and gave rise in all probability to the later
Egyptian Zoolatry and the animal-headed
deities. To the very last, Egyptian religion
bore marked traces of this original tribal
form ; the great multiplicity of Egyptian
gods seems to be due to the adoption of so
many of them, after the unification of the
country, into the national pantheon. The
local gods and local totems, however, con
tinued to be specially worshipped in their
original sites. Thus the ithyphallic AmenKhem was specially worshipped at Thebes,
where his figure occurs with unpleasant
frequency upon every temple ; Apis was
peculiarly sacred at Memphis; Pasht at
Bubastis ; Anubis at Sekhem ; Neith at
Sais ; Ra at Heliopolis ; and Osiris himself
at Abydos, his ancient dwelling-place.
Even Egyptian tradition seems to pre
serve some dim memory of such a state of
things, for it asserts that before the time of
Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty,
reputed the earliest monarch of a united
Egypt, dynasties of the gods ruled in the
country. In other words, it was recognised
that the gods were originally kings of local
lines which reigned in the various provinces
of the Nile valley before the unification.
In the case of Osiris, the indications
which lead us in this direction are almost
irresistible. It is all but certain that Osiris
was originally a local god of This or Thinis,
a village near Abydos, where a huge mound
of rubbish still marks the site of the great
deity’s resting-place. The latter town is
described in the Harris papyrus as Abud,
the hand of Osiris ; and in the monuments
which still remain at that site, Osiris is
everywhere the chief deity represented, to
whom kings and priests present appropriate
offerings. But it is a significant fact that
Menes, the founder of the united monarchy,
was born at the same place; and this
suggests the probability that Osiris may
�64
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
have been the most sacred and most vene
rated of Menes’s ancestors. The suggestion
derives further weight from the fact that
Osiris is invariably represented as a mummy,
and that he wears a peculiar head-dress or
cap of office, the same as that which was
used in historical times as the crown of
Upper Egypt. He also holds in his hands
the crook and scourge which are the marks
of kingly office—the crook to lead his own
people like a shepherd, the scourge to
punish evil-doers and to ward off enemies.
His image is therefore nothing more nor
less than the image of a Mummied King.
Sometimes, too, he wears in addition the
regal ostrich plumes. Surely, naught save
the blind infatuation of mythologists could
make them overlook the plain inference
that Osiris was a mummified chief of
Abydos in the days before the unification
of Egypt under a single rule, and that he
was worshipped by his successors in the
petty principality exactly as we know other
kingly mummies were worshipped by their
family elsewhere.
Not only, however, is Osiris represented
as a king and a mummy, but we are
expressly told by Plutarch (or at least by
the author of the tract De Osiride which
bears his name) that the tomb of Osiris
existed at Abydos, and that the richest
and most powerful of the Egyptians were
desirous of being buried in the adjacent
cemetery in order that they might lie, as it
were, in the same grave with the great god
of their country. All this is perfectly
comprehensible and natural if we suppose
that a Thinite dynasty first conquered the
whole of Egypt; that it extended the
worship of its own local ancestor-god over
the entire country ; and that in time, when
this worship had assumed national im
portance, the local god became the chief
figure in the common pantheon.
I had arrived at this opinion indepen
dently before I was aware that Mr. Loftie
had anticipated me in it. But in his rare
and interesting Essay on Scarabs I find he
has reached the same conclusions.
“ I have myself no doubt whatever that
the names of Osiris and of Horus are
those of ancient rulers. I think that, long
before authentic history begins, Asar and
Aset his wife reigned in Egypt, probably
in that wide valley of the Upper Nile
which is now the site of Girgeh and
Berbe ” (exactly where I place the princi
pality of Osiris). “ Their son was Hor, or
Horus, the first king of Upper and Lower
Egypt; and the ‘ Hor seshoo,’ the suc
cessors of Horus, are not obscurely
mentioned by later chroniclers. I know
that this view is not shared by all students
of the subject, and much learning and
ingenuity have been spent to prove that
Asar, and Aset, and Hor, and Ptah, and
Anep are representations of the powers of
nature ; that they do not point to ancient
princes, but to ancient principles; and that
Horus and his successors are gods and
were never men. But in the oldest in
scriptions we find none of that mysticism
which is shown in the sculptures from the
time of the eighteenth dynasty down to
the Ptolemies and the Roman Emperors.”
In short, Mr. Loftie goes on to set forth a
theory of the origin of the great gods
essentially similar to the one I am here
defending.
It is quite easy to see how Osiris would
almost inevitably grow with time to be the
King of the Dead and supreme judge of
the nether regions. For, as the most
sacred of the ancestors of the regal line,
he would naturally be the one whom the
kings, in their turn, would most seek to
propitiate, and whom they would look
forward to joining in their eternal home.
As the myth extended, and as mystical
interpretations began to creep in, identifi
cations being made of the gods with the
sun or other natural energies, the original
meaning of Osiris-worship would grow
gradually obscured. But to the last, Osiris
himself, in spite of all corruptions, is repre
sented as a mummy : and even when
identified with Amen, the later intrusive
god, he still wears his mummy-bandages,
and still bears the crook and scourge and
sceptre of his primitive kingship.
It may be objected, however, that there
were many forms of Osiris, and many local
gods who bore the same name. He was
buried at Abydos, but was also equally
buried at Memphis, and at Philae as well.
Well, that fact runs exactly parallel with
the local Madonnas and the local Apollos
of other religions : and nobody has sug
gested doubts as to the human reality of
the Blessed Virgin Mary because so many
different Maries exist in different sacred
sites or in different cathedrals. Our Lady
of Loretto is the same as Our Lady of
Lourdes. Jesus of Nazareth was neverthe
less born at Bethlehem : he was the son
of Joseph, but he was also the son of
David, and the son of God. Perhaps
Osiris was a common noun : perhaps a
slightly different Osiris was worshipped
in various towns of later Egypt; perhaps
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
a local mummy-god, the ancestor of some
extinct native line, often wrongly usurped
the name and prerogatives of the great
mummy-god of Abydos, especially under
the influence of late priestly mysticism.
Moreover, when we come to consider the
subject of the manufacture of gods, we
shall see that the body of an annual in
carnation of Osiris may have been divided
and distributed among all the nomes of
Egypt. It is enough for my present pur
pose if I point out in brief that ancestor
worship amply explains the rise and pre
valence of the cult of Osiris, the kingly
mummy, with the associated cults of
Horus, Isis, Thoth, and the other deities
of the Osirian cycle.
I may add that a gradual growth of
Osiris-worship is clearly marked on the
monuments themselves. The simpler
stelle and memorials of the earliest age
seldom contain the names of any god, but
display votaries making offerings at the
shrine of ancestors. Similarly, the scenes
represented on thè walls of tombs of early
date bear no reference to the great gods of
later ages, but are merely domestic and
agricultural in character, as may be
observed at Sakkarah and even to some
extent also at Beni-Hassan. Under the
Sixth Dynasty, the monuments begin to
make more and more frequent mention of
Osiris, who now comes to be regarded as
Judge of the Dead and Lord of the Lower
World ; and on a tablet of this age in the
Boulak Museum occurs for the first time
the expression afterwards so common,
“justified by Osiris.” Under the Twelfth
Dynasty, legend becomes more prominent ;
a solar and lunar character seems to be
given by reflex to Osiris and Isis : and the
name of Ra, the sun, is added to that of
many previously distinct and independent
deities. Khem, the ithyphallic god of the
Thebaid, now also assumes greater im
portance, as is quite natural under a line
of Theban princes ; and Chem, a local
mummy-god, is always represented in his
swathing-clothes, and afterwards con
founded, certainly with Amen, and prob
ably also with the mummy-god of Abydos.
But Osiris from this time forward rises
distinctly into the front rank as a deity.
“ To him, rather than to the dead, the
friends and family offer their sacrifices. A
court is formed for him. Thoth, the re
corder [totem-god of Abydos], Anubis the
watcher, Ra the impersonation of truth,
and others, assist in judgment on the soul.”
The name of the deceased is henceforth
65
constantly accompanied by the -formula
“justified by Osiris.” About the same
time the Book of the Dead in its full form
came into existence, with its developed
conception of the lower world, and its com
plicated arrangement of planes of purga
torial progress.
Under the Eighteenth Dynasty, the
legend thickens ; the identifications of the
gods become more and more intricate ;
Amen and Ra are sought and found under
innumerable forms of other deities ; and a
foundation is laid for the esoteric Mono
theism or pantheistic nature-worship of the
later philosophising priesthood. It was
under the Nineteenth Dynasty that the
cult of local Triads or Trinities took fullest
shape, and that the mystical interpretation
of the religion of Egypt came well into the
foreground. The great Osirian myth was
then more and more minutely and mysti
cally elaborated ; and even the bull Apis,
the totem-god of Memphis, was recognised
as a special incarnation of Osiris, who thus
becomes, with Amen, the mysterious sum
ming-up of almost all the national pantheon.
At last we find the myth going off into pure
mysticism, Osiris being at once the father,
brother, husband, and son of Isis, and also
the son of his own child Horus. Sentences
with an almost Athanasian mixture of vague
ness and definiteness inform us how “ the
son proceeds from the father, and the father
proceeds from his son”; how “Ra is the
soul of Osiris, and Osiris the soul of Ra ”;
and how Horus his child, awakened by
magical rites from his dead body, is vic
torious over Set, the prince of darkness,
and sits as Osiris upon the throne of the
father whom he has revived and avenged.
Here as elsewhere the myth, instead of being
the explanation of the god, does nothing
more than darken counsel.
This gradual growth of a dead and
mummified village chief, however, into a
pantheistic god, strange as it may seem, is
not in any way more remarkable than the
gradual growth of a Galilean peasant into
the second person of an eternal and omni
potent Godhead. Nor does the myth of
the death and resurrection of Osiris (to be
considered hereafter in a later chapter)
militate against the reality of his human
existence, any more than the history of the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ mili
tates against the human existence of Jesus
of N azareth.
The difficulty of the evolution, indeed, is
not at all great, if we consider the further
fact that, even after the concept of godship
F
�66
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
had been fully developed, the king still re
mained of like nature with the gods, their
son and descendant, a divine personage
himself, differing from them only in not
having yet received eternal life, the symbol
of which they are often shown in sculpture
as presenting with gracious expressions to
their favoured scion. “The ruling sovereign
of Egypt,” says Mr. Le Page Renouf, “ was
the living image of and vicegerent of the
sun-god. He was invested with the attri
butes of divinity, and that in the earliest
times of which we possess monumental
evidence.” And quite naturally, for in an
tique times gods had ruled in Egypt, whose
successor the king was : and the kings
before Menes were significantly known as
“ the successors of Horus.” As late as the
times of the Ptolemies, we saw, there were
priests of Menes and other Pharaohs of the
most ancient dynasties. The pyramid kings
took the title of the Golden Horus, after
wards copied by their descendants; and
from Chafra onward the reigning monarch
was known as the Son of Ra and the Great
God. Amenophis II., during his own life
time, is “ a god good like Ra, the sacred
seed of Amen, the son whom he begot.”
And on all the monuments the king is
represented of the same superhuman stature
as the gods themselves: he converses with
them on equal terms ; they lead him by the
hand into their inmost sanctuaries, or pre
sent him with the symbols of royal rule and
of eternal life, like friends of the family.
The former guerdon bestows upon him the
same rank they themselves had held on
earth ; the latter advances him to share
with them the glories of the other existence.
I conclude, therefore, that a large part of
the greater Egyptian gods—the national or
local gods, as opposed to those worshipped
by each family in its own necropolis—were
early kings, whose myths were later
expanded into legends, rationalised into
nature-worship, and adorned by priestly
care with endless symbolical or esoteric
fancies. But down to the very latest age
of independence, inscriptions of the god
Euergetes, and the goddess Berenice, or
representations like that at Philae, of the
god Philadelphus suckled by Isis, show
that to the Egyptian mind the gulf between
humanity and divinity was very narrow,
and that the original manhood of all the
deities was an idea quite familiar to priests
and people.
There was, however, another class of
gods about which we can be somewhat less
certain; these are the animal-gods and
animal-headed gods which developed out
of the totems of the various villages. Such
bestial types, Professor Sayce remarks,
“ take us back to a remote pre-historic age,
when the religious creed of Egypt,” say,
rather, the custom of Egypt, “ was still
totemism.” But in what precise relation
totemism stood to the main line of the
evolution of gods I do not feel quite so
sure in my own mind as does Mr. Herbert
Spencer. It seems to me possible that the
totem may in its origin have been merely
the lucky-beast or badge of a particular
tribe (like the regimental goat or deer);
and that from being at first petted, domes
ticated, and to some extent respected on
this account, it may have grown at last,
through a confusion of ideas, to share the
same sort of divine honours which were
paid to the ghosts of ancestors and the
gods evolved from them. But Mr. Frazer
has suggested a better origin of totemism
from the doctrine of the Separable Soul,
which is, up to date, the best explanation
yet offered of this obscure subject. Be
that as it may, if the totems were only
gradually elevated into divinities, we can
easily understand Mr. Renoufs remark
that the long series of tombs of the Apis
bulls at Sakkarah shows “ how immeasur
ably greater the devotion to the sacred
animals was in the later times than in the
former.”
May I add that the worship of totems,
as distinct from the mere care implied by
Mr. Frazer’s suggestion, very probably
arose from the custom of carving the totem
animal of the deceased on the grave-stake
or grave-board ? This custom is still
universal among the Indian tribes of North
western America.
Nevertheless, whatever be the true origin
of the totem-gods, I do not think totemism
militates in any way against the general
principle of the evolution of the idea of a
god from the ghost, the Dead Man, or the
deified ancestor. For only after the concept
of a god had been formed from ancestor
cult, and only after worship had been
evolved from the customary offerings to the
mummy or spirit at the tomb, could any
other object by any possibility be elevated
to the godhead. Nor, on the other hand,
as I have before remarked, do I feel inclined
wholly to agree with Mr. Spencer that every
•individual god was necessarily once a
particular Dead Man. It seems to me
indubitable that, after the idea of godhead
had become fully fixed in the human mind,
some gods at least began to be recognised
�THE GODS OF EGYPT
who were directly framed either from
to draw in our second chapter, they are
abstract conceptions, from natural objects,
gods to talk about, not gods to adore—
or from pure outbursts of the mythopceic
mythological conceptions rather than
faculty. I do not think, therefore, that the
religious beings. Their names occur much
existence of a class of totem-gods in Egypt
in the sacred texts, but their images are
or elsewhere is necessarily inconsistent in
rare and their temples unknown. The
any way with our main theory of the origin
actual objects of the highest worship are
of godhead.
far other than these abstract elemental con
Be this as it may, it is at any rate clear
ceptions : they are Osiris, Isis, Horus,
that totemism itself was a very ancient
Anubis, Khem, Pasht, and Athor. The
and widespread institution in early Egypt.
quaint or grotesque incised figures of Nut,
Totems are defined by Mr. Frazer as “ a
represented as a female form with arms and
class of material objects which a savage legs extended like a living canopy over the
regards with superstitious respect, believing
earth, as at Denderah, belong, I believe,
that there exists between him and every
almost ifnot qui te exclusively to the Ptolemaic
member of the class an intimate and alto period, when zodiacal and astrological con
gether special relation.” “ Observation of ceptions had been freely borrowed by the
existing totem tribes in Africa, Australia,
Egyptians from Greece and Asia. Nut
and elsewhere,” says Sir Martin Conway,
and Seb, as gods, not myths, are, in short,
“ shows us that one or more representatives
quite recent ideas in Egypt. Even sun
of the totem are often fed or even kept alive
disk Ra, himself, important as he becomes
in captivity by the tribe.” Mr. Frazer tells
in the later developed creed, is hardly so
us that “among the Narrinyeri in South
much in his origin a separate god as an
Australia, men of the snake clan sometimes
adjunct or symbol of divinity united syncatch snakes, pull out their teeth, or sew up
cretically with the various other deities. To
their mouths, and keep them as pets. In
call a king the sun is a common piece of
a pigeon clan of Samoa a pigeon was care courtier flattery. It is as Amen-Ra or as
fully kept and fed. Among the Kalong
Osiris that the sun receives most actual
in java, whose totem is a red dog, each
worship. His name is joined to the names
family as a rule keeps one of these animals,
of gods as to the names of kings.
which they will on no account allow to be
To put it briefly, then, I hold that the
struck or ill-used by any one.” In the same
element of nature-worship is a late gloss or
way, no doubt, certain Egyptian clans kept
superadded factor in the Egyptian religion;
sacred bulls, cats, crocodiles, hawks, jackals,
that it is always rather mythological or
cobras, lizards, ibises, asps, and beetles.
explanatory than religious in the strict
Mummies of most of these sacred animals,
sense; and that it does not in the least
and little images of others, are common in
interfere with our general inference that the
the neighbourhood of certain places where
real Egyptian gods as a whole were either
they were specially worshipped.
ancestral or totemistic in origin.
There is, however, yet a third class of
From the evidence before us, broadly
divine or quasi-divine beings in the newer
considered, we may fairly conclude, then,
Egyptian Pantheon to which Mr. Andrew that the earliest cult of Egypt consisted of
Lang, in his able introduction to the pure ancestor-worship, complicated by a
Euterpe of Herodotus, still allows that
doubtfully religious element of totemism,
great importance may be attached. These
which afterwards by one means or another
are the elemental or seemingly elemental interwove itself closely with the whole
deities, the Nature-Gods who play so large ghostly worship of the country. The later
a part in all rationalistic or mystical mytho gods were probably deified ancestors of the
logies. Such are no doubt Nut and Seb,
early tribal kings, sometimes directly wor
the personal heaven and earth, named as
shipped as mummies, and sometimes per
early as the inscription on the coffin of haps represented by their totem-animals or
Menkaoura of the Fourth Dynasty in the
later still by human figures with animal
British Museum : such perhaps (though far heads. Almost every one of these great
less certainly) are Khons, identified with
gods is localised to a particular place—
the rising sun, and Turn, regarded as the
“ Lord of Abydos,” “ Mistress of Senem,"
impersonation of his nightly setting. But
“ President of Thebes,” “ Dweller at Hernone of the quite obviously elemental gods,
mopolis,” as would naturally be the case if
except Ra, play any large part in the actual
they were locally-deified princes, admitted
and practical worship of the people: to
at last into a national pantheon. In the
adopt the broad distinction I have ventured I earliest period of which any monuments
�68
TUE EVOLUTION OE TUE IDEA OF GOD
remain to us, the ancestor-worship was
purer, simpler, and freer from symbolism
or from the cult of the great gods than at
any later time. With the gradual evolution
of the creed and the pantheon, however,
legends and myths increased, the syncretic
tendency manifested itself everywhere,
identifications multiplied, mysticism grew
rife, and an esoteric faith, with leanings
towards a vague pantheistic monotheism,
endeavoured to rationalise and to explain
away the more gross and foolish portions
of the original belief. It is the refinements
and glosses of this final philosophical stage
that pass current for the most part in syste
matic works as the true doctrines of Egyptian
religion, and that so many modern inquirers
have erroneously treated as equivalent to
the earliest product of native thought. The
ideas as to the unity of God, and the sun
myths of Horus, Isis, and Osiris, are clearly
late developments or excrescences on the
original creed, and betray throughout the
esoteric spirit of priestly interpretation.
But to the very last, the Worship of the
Dead, and the crude polytheism based upon
it, were the true religion of the ancient
Egyptians, as we see it expressed in all the
monuments.
Such was the religious world into which,
if we may believe the oldest Semitic tradi
tions, the Sons of Israel brought their God
Jahweh and their other deities from beyond
the Euphrates at a very remote period of
their national history. And such, in its
fuller and more mystical form, was the reli
gion practised and taught in Ptolemaic and
Roman Egypt, at the moment when the
Christian faith was just beginning to evolve
itself round the historical nucleus of the
man Christ Jesus, and him crucified.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GODS OF ISRAEL
The only people who ever invented or
evolved a pure monotheism at first hand
were the Jews. Individual thinkers else
where approached or aimed at that ideal
goal, like the Egyptian priests and the
Greek philosophers : entire races elsewhere
borrowed monotheism from the Hebrews,
like the Arabs under Mohammed, or, to a
less extent, the Romans and the modern
European nations, when they adopted
Christianity in its trinitarian form : but no
other race ever succeeded as a whole in
attaining by their own exertions the pure
monotheistic platform, however near certain
persons among them might have arrived to
such attainment in esoteric or mystical
philosophising. It is the peculiar glory of
Israel to have evolved God. And the evo
lution of God from the diffuse gods of the
earlier Semitic religion is Israel’s great con
tribution to the world’s thought.
The sacred books of the Jews, as we
possess them in garbled forms to-day,
assign this peculiar belief to the very ear
liest ages of their race : they assume that
Abraham, the mythical common father of
all the Semitic tribes, was already a mono
theist ; and they even treat monotheism as
at a still remoter date the universal religion
of the entire world from which all poly
theistic cults were but a corruption and a
falling away. Such a belief is nowadays,
of course, wholly untenable. So also is the
crude notion that monotheism was smitten
out at a single blow by the genius of one
individual man, Moses, at the moment of
the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. The bare
idea that one particular thinker, just
escaped from the midst of ardent poly
theists, whose religion embraced an endless
pantheon and a low form of animal
worship, could possibly have invented a
pure monotheistic cult, is totally opposed
to every known psychological law of human
nature. The real stages by which mono
theism was evolved out of a preceding
polytheism in a single small group of
Semitic tribes have already been well
investigated by Dutch and German
scholars : all that I propose to do in the
present volume is to reconsider the subject
from our broader anthropological stand
point, and show how in the great Jewish
god himself we may still discern, as in a
glass, darkly, the vague but constant
lineaments of an ancestral ghost-deity.
Down to a comparatively late period of
Jewish history, as we now know, Jahweh
was but one and the highest among a
considerable group of Israelitish divinities ;
the first among his peers, like Zeus among
the gods of Hellas, Osiris or Amen among
the gods of Egypt, and Woden or Thunor
among the gods of the old Teutonic
pantheon. As late as the century of
Hezekiah, the religion of the great mass of
the Israelites and Jews was still a broad
though vague polytheism. The gods seem
to have been as numerous and as localised
as in Egypt: “ According to the number of
�THE GODS OF ISRAEL
thy cities are thy gods, O Judah,” says the
prophet Jeremiah in the sixth century. It
was only by a slow process of syncretism,
by the absorption into Jahweh-worship of
all other conflicting creeds, that Israel at
last attained its full ideal of pure mono
theism. That ideal was never finally
reached by the people at large till the
return from the captivity : it had only even
been aimed at by a few ardent and
exclusive Jahweh-worshippers in the last
dangerous and doubtful years of national
independence which immediately preceded
the Babylonish exile.
In order to understand the inner nature
of this curious gradual revolution we must
look briefly, first, at the general character
of the old Hebrew polytheism ; and
secondly, at the original cult of the great
ethnical god Jahweh himself.
In spite of their long sojourn in Egypt,
the national religion of the Hebrews, when
we first begin dimly to descry its features
through the veil of later glosses, is regarded
by almost all modern investigators as truly
Semitic and local in origin. It is usually
described as embracing three principal
forms of cult: the worship of the teraphim
or family gods; the worship of sacred
stones ; and the worship of certain great
gods, partly native, partly perhaps bor
rowed ; some of them adored in the form
of animals, and some apparently elemental
or solar in their acquired attributes.
Although for us these three are one, I
shall examine them here in that wonted
order.
The cult of the teraphim, I think, we
cannot consider, on a broad anthro
pological view, otherwise than as the
equivalent of all the other family cults
known to us ; that is to say, in other words,
as pure unadulterated domestic ancestor
worship. “ By that name,” says Kuenen,
“ were indicated larger or smaller images,
which were worshipped as household gods,
and upon which the happiness of the
family was supposed to depend.” In the
legend of Jacob’s flight from Laban, we
are told how Rachel stole her father’s
teraphim : and when the angry chieftain
overtakes the fugitives, he inquires of
them why they have robbed him of his
domestic gods. Of Micah, we learn that
he made images of his teraphim, and
consecrated one of his own sons to be his
family priest: such a domestic and private
priesthood being exactly what we are
accustomed to find in the worship of
ancestral manes everywhere. Even through
69
the mist of the later Jehovistic recension
we catch, in passing, frequent glimpses of
the early worship of these family gods, one
of which is described as belonging to
Michal, the daughter of Saul and wife of
David ; while Hosea alludes to them as
stocks of wood, and Zechariah as idols
that speak lies to the people.
It is
clear that the teraphim were preserved in
each household with reverential care, that
they were sacrificed to by the family at
stated intervals, and that they were con
sulted on all occasions of doubt or difficulty
by a domestic priest clad in an ephod. I
think, then, if we put these indications side
by side with those of family cults else
where, we may conclude that the Jewish
religion, like all others, was based upon
an ultimate foundation of general ancestor
worship.
It has been denied, indeed, that ancestor
worship pure and simple ever existed among
the Semitic races. A clear contradiction of
this denial is furnished by M. Lenormant,
who comments thus on sepulchral monu
ments from Yemen : “ Here, then, we have
twice repeated a whole series of human
persons, decidedly deceased ancestors or
relations of the authors of the dedications.
Their names are accompanied with the
titles they bore during life. They are in
voked by their descendants in the same
way as the gods. They are incontestably
deified persons, objects of a family worship,
and gods or genii in the belief of the people
of their race.” After this, we need not
doubt that the teraphim were the images of
such family gods or ancestral spirits.
It is not surprising, however, that these
domestic gods play but a small part in the
history of the people as it has come down
to us in the late Jehovistic version of the
Hebrew traditions. Nowhere in literature,
even under the most favourable circum
stances, do we hear much of the manes and
lares, compared with the great gods of
national worship. Nor were such minor
divinities likely to provoke the wrath even
of that “jealous god” who later usurped
all the adoration of Israel : so that denun
ciations of their votaries are comparatively
rare in the rhapsodies of the prophets.
“ Their use,” says Kuenen, speaking of the
teraphim, “ was very general, and was by
no means considered incompatible with the
worship of Jahweh.” They were regarded
merely as family affairs, poor foemen for
the great and awsome tribal god who bore
no rival near his throne, and would not
suffer the pretensions of Molech or of the
�7o
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Baalim. To use a modem analogy, their
cult was as little inconsistent with Jahwehworship as a belief in fairies, banshees, or
family ghosts was formerly inconsistent
with a belief in Christianity.
This conclusion will doubtless strike the
reader at once as directly opposed to the
oft-repeated assertion thatthe early Hebrews
had little or no conception of the life
beyond the grave and of the doctrine of
future rewards and punishments. I am
afraid it cannot be denied that such is the
case. Hard as it is to run counter to so
much specialist opinion, I can scarcely see
how any broad anthropological inquirer
may deny to the Semites of the tenth and
twelfth centuries before Christ participation
in an almost (or quite) universal human
belief, common to the lowest savages and
the highest civilisations, and particularly
well developed in that Egyptian society
with which the ancestors of the Hebrews
had so long rubbed shoulders. The subject,
however, is far too large a one for full
debate here. I must content myself with
pointing out that, apart from the a priori
improbability of such a conclusion, the
Hebrew documents themselves contain
numerous allusions, even in their earliest
traditional fragments, to the belief in ghosts
and in the world of shades, as well as to
the probability of future resurrection. The
habit of cave-burial and of excavated grotto
burial ; the importance attached to the
story of the purchase of Machpelah ; the
common phrase that such-and-such a
patriarch “ was gathered to his people,” or
“ slept with his fathers ” ; the embalming of
Joseph, and the carrying up of his bones
from Egypt to Palestine; the episode of
Saul and the ghost of Samuel; and indeed
the entire conception of Sheol, the place
of the departed—all alike show that the
Hebrew belief in this respect did not largely
differ in essentials from the general belief
of surrounding peoples.
Closely connected with the teraphim is
the specific worship at tombs or graves.
“ The whole north Semitic area,” says
Professor Robertson Smith, “ was dotted
over with sacred tombs, Memnonia, Semi
rami s mounds, and the like ; and at every
such spot a god or demigod had his sub
terranean abode.” This, of course, is pure
ancestor-worship.
Second in the list of worshipful objects
in early Israel come -the sacred stones,
about which I have already said a good
deal in the chapter devoted to that interest
ing subject, but concerning whose special
nature in the Semitic field a few more words
may here be fitly added.
It is now very generally admitted that
stone-worship played an exceedingly large
and important part in the primitive Semitic
religion. How important a part we may
readily gather from many evidences, but
from none more than from the fact that
even Mohammed himself was unable to
exclude from Islam, the most monotheistic
of all known religious systems, the holy
black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca. In
Arabia, says Professor Robertson Smith,
the altar or hewn stone is unknown, and in
its place we find the rude pillar or the cairn,
beside which the sacrificial victim is slain,
the blood being poured out over the stone
or at its base. But in Israel the shaped
stone seems the more usual mark of the
ghost or god. Such a sacred stone, we
have already seen, was known to the early
Hebrews as a Beth-el, that is to say an
“ abode of deity,” from the common belief
that it was inhabited by a god, ghost, or
spirit. The great prevalence of the cult of
stones among the Semites, however, is
further indicated by the curious circum
stance that this word was borrowed by the
Greeks and Romans (in a slightly altered
form) to denote the stones so supposed to
be inhabited by deities. References to
such gods abound throughout the Hebrew
books, though they are sometimes de
nounced as idolatrous images, and some
times covered with a thin veneer of Jehovism by being connected with the national
heroes and with the later Jahweh-worship.
In the legend of Jacob’s dream we get a
case where the sacred stone is anointed
and a promise is made to it of a tenth of the
speaker’s substance as an offering. And
again, on a later occasion, we learn that
Jacob “set up a pillar of stone, and he
poured a drink-offering thereon, and he
poured oil thereon ” ; just as, in the great
phallic worship of the linga in India (com
monly called the linga puja\ a cylindrical
pillar, rounded at the top, and universally
considered as a phallus in its nature, is
worshipped by pouring upon it one of five
sacred anointing liquids, water, milk, ghee,
oil, and wine. Similar rites are offered in
many other places to other sacred stones;
and in many cases the phallic value assigned
to them is clearly shown by the fact that it
is usual for sterile women to pray to them
for the blessing of children, as Hindu wives
pray to Mahadeo, and as so many Hebrew
women (to be noted hereafter) are men
tioned in our texts as praying to Jahweh.
�THE GODS OH ISRAEL
A brief catalogue of the chief stone
deities alluded to in Hebrew literature may
help to enforce the importance of the
subject: and it may be noted in passing
that the stones are often mentioned in con
nection with sacred trees—an association
with which we are already familiar. In the
neighbourhood of Sichem was an oak—the
“ oak of the prophets ” or “ oak of the
soothsayers ”—by which lay a stone, whose
holiness is variously accounted for by
describing it as, in one place, an altar of
Abraham, in another an altar of J acob, and
in a third a memorial of Joshua. But the
fact shows that it was resorted to for sacri
fice, and that oracles or responses were
sought from it by its votaries. That is to
say, it was a sepulchral monument. Near
Hebron stood “ the oak of Mamre,” and
under it a sacred stone, accounted for as
an altar of Abraham, to which in David’s
time sacrifices were offered. Near Beer
sheba we find yet a third tree, the tamarisk,
said to have been plan ted by Abraham, and an
altar or stone pillar ascribed to Isaac. In
the camp at Gilgal were “the twelve stones,”
sometimes, apparently, spoken of as “ the
graven images,” but sometimes explained
away as memorials of Jahweh’s help at the
passing of the Jordan. Other examples
are Ebenezer, “ the helpful stone,” and
Tobeleth, the “serpent-stone,” as well as
the “ great stone ” to which sacrifices were
offered at Bethshemesh, and the other
great stone at Gibeon, which was also, no
doubt, an early Hebrew deity.
And now we come to the third and most
difficult division of early Hebrew religion,
the cult of the great gods whom the jealous
Jahweh himself finally superseded. The
personality of these gods is very obscure,
partly because of the nature of our materials,
which, being derived entirely from Jehovistic sources, have done their best to over
shadow the “false gods”; but partly also, I
believe, because, in the process of evolving
monotheism, a syncretic movement merged
almost all their united attributes into
Jahweh himself, who thus becomes at last
the all-absorbing synthesis of an entire
pantheon. Nevertheless, we can point out
one or two shadowy references to such
greater gods, either by name alone, or by
the form under which they were usually
worshipped.
The scholarship of the elder generation
would no doubt have enumerated first
among these gods the familiar names of
Baal and Molech. At present, such an
^numeration is scarcely possible. We can
71
no longer see in the Baal of the existing
Hebrew scriptures a single great god. We
must regard the word rather as a common
substantive—“ the lord ” or “ the master ”
—descriptive of the relation of each dis
tinct god to the place he inhabited. The
Baalim, in other words, seem to have been
the local deities or deified chiefs of the
Semitic region ; doubtless the dead kings
or founders of families, as opposed to the
lesser gods of each particular household.
It is not improbable, therefore, that they
were really identified with the sacred stones
we have just been considering, and with
the wooden ashera. The Baal is usually
spoken of indefinitely, without a proper
name, much as at Delos men spoke of “the
God,” at Athens of “the Goddess,” and
now at Padua of “ il Santo’’—meaning
respectively Apollo, Athene, St. Antony.
Melcarth is thus the Baal of Tyre, Astarte
the Baalath of Byblos; there was a Baal of
Lebanon, of Mount Hermon, of Mount
Peor, and so forth. A few specific Baalim
have their names preserved for us in the
nomenclature of towns ; such are Baaltamar, the lord of the palm-tree; with
Baal-gad, Baal-Berith, Baal-meon, and
Baal-zephon. But in the Hebrew scrip
tures, as a rule, every effort has been made
to blot out the very memory of these “ false
gods,” and to represent Jahweh alone as
from the earliest period the one true prince
and ruler in Israel.
As for Molech, that title merely means
“ the king ” ; and it may have been applied
to more than one distinct deity. Dr.
Robertson Smith does not hesitate to hold
that.the particular Molech to whom human
sacrifices of children were offered by the
Jews before the captivity was Jahweh him
self ; it was to the national god, he believes,
that these fiery rites were performed at the
Tophet or pyre in the ravine just below the
temple.
We are thus reduced to the most nebu
lous details about these great gods of the
Hebrews, other than Jahweh, in the period
preceding the Babylonian captivity. All
that is certain appears to be that a con
siderable number of local gods were wor
shipped here and there at special sanctua
ries, each of which seems to have consisted
of an altar or stone image, standing under
a sacred tree or sacred grove, and com
bined with an ashera. While the names of
Chemosh, the god of Moab, and of Dagon,
the god of the Philistines, have come down
to us with perfect frankness and clearness,
no local Hebrew god save Jahweh has left
�72
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
a name that can now be discerned with
approach to certainty.
I must likewise premise that the worship
of the Baalim, within and without Israel,
was specially directed to upright conical
stones, the most sacred objects at all the
sanctuaries : and that these stones are
generally admitted to have possessed for
their worshippers a phallic significance.
Certain writers have further endeavoured
to show that a few animal-gods entered into
the early worship of the Hebrews. I do
not feel sure that their arguments are con
vincing ; but for the sake of completeness
I include the two most probable cases in
this brief review of the vague and elusive
deities of early Israel.
One of these is the god in the form of a
young bull, specially worshipped at Dan
and Bethel, as the bull Apis was worshipped
at Memphis, and the bull Mnevis at On or
Heliopolis. This cult of the bull is pushed
back in the later traditions to the period of
the Exodus, when the Israelites made
themselves a “ golden calf” in the wilder
ness.
Was this bull-shaped deity Jahweh him
self, or one of the polymorphic forms of
Jahweh? Such is the opinion of Kuenen,
who says explicitly, “Jahweh was wor
shipped in the shape of a young bull. It
cannot be doubted that the cult of the
bull-calf was really the cult of Jahweh in
person.” And certainly in the prophetic
writings of the eighth century we can
clearly descry that the worshippers of the
bull regarded themselves as worshipping
the god Jahweh, who brought up his people
from the land of Egypt. Nevertheless,
dangerous as it may seem for an outsider
to differ on such a subject from great
Semitic scholars, I venture to think we
may see reason hereafter to conclude that
this was not originally the case : that the
god worshipped under the form of the
bull-calf was some other deity, like the
Molech whom we know to have been re
presented with a bull’s head; and that
only by the later syncretic process did this
bull-god come to be identified in the end
with Jahweh, a deity (as seems likely) of
quite different origin, much as Mnevis
came to be regarded at Heliopolis as an
incarnation of Ra, and as Apis came to be
regarded at Mempis as an avatar of Ptah
and still later of Osiris. On the other hand,
we must remember that, as Mr. Frazer has
shown, a sacred animal is often held to be
the representative and embodiment of the
very god to whom it is habitually sacrificed.
Here again we trench on ground which
can only satisfactorily be occupied at a
later stage of our polymorphic argument.
A second animal-god, apparently, also
adored in the form of a metal image, was
the asp or snake, known in our version as
“the brazen serpent,” and connected by
the Jehovistic editors of the earlier tradi
tions with Moses in the wilderness. The
worship of the serpent is said to have gone
on uninterruptedly till the days of Hezekiah,
when, under the influence of the exclusive
devotion to Jahweh which was then be
coming popular, the image was broken in
pieces as an idolatrous object.
It is
scarcely necessary to point out in passing
that the asp was one of the most sacred
animals in Egypt.
Such, then, seen through the dim veil of
Jehovism, are the misty features of that
uncertain pantheon in which, about the
eighth century at least, Jahweh found
himself the most important deity. The
most important, I say, because it is clear
from our records that for many ages the
worship of Jahweh and the worship of
the Baalim went on side by side without
conscious rivalry.
And what sort of god was this holy
Jahweh himself, whom the Hebrews recog
nised from a very early time as emphatically
and above all others “the God of Israel”?
If ever he was envisaged as a golden
bull, if ever he was regarded as the god of
light, fire, or the sun, those concepts, I
believe, must have been the result of a late
transference of attributes and confusion of
persons, such as we may see so rife in the
more recent mystical religion of Egypt.
What in his own nature Jahweh must have
been in the earliest days of his nascent
godhead I believe we can best judge by
putting together some of the passages in
old traditionary legend which bear most
plainly upon his character and functions.
In the legendary account of the earliest
dealings of Jahweh with the Hebrew race,
we are told that the ethnical god appeared
to Abraham in Haran, and promised to
make of him “ a great nation.” Later on,
Abraham complains of the want of an heir,
saying to Jahweh, “Thou hast given me
no seed.” Then Jahweh “brought him
forth abroad, and said, Look now toward
heaven and tell the stars : so shall thy seed
be.” Over and over again we get similar
promises of fruitfulness made to Abraham :
“I will multiply thee exceedingly”; “thou
shalt be a father of many nations”; “I will
make thee exceeding fruitful ” ; “ kings
�THE GODS OE ISRAEL
shall come out of thee”; “for a father of
many nations have I made thee.” So, too,
of Sarah : “ she shall be a mother of
nations ; kings of people shall be of her.”
And of Ishmael : “ I have blessed him and
will make him fruitful, and will multiply
him exceedingly: twelve princes shall
he beget, and I will make him a great
nation.” Time after time these blessings
recur for Abraham, Isaac, and all his
family : “ I will multiply thy seed as the
stars of the heaven, and as the sand which
is upon the seashore, and thy seed shall
possess the gate of his enemies.”
In every one of these passages, and in
many more which need not be quoted, but
which will readily occur to every reader,
Jahweh is represented especially as a god
of increase, of generation, of populousness,
of fertility.
As such, too, we find him frequently and
markedly worshipped on special occasions.
He was the god to whom sterile women
prayed, and from whom they expected the
special blessing of a son, to keep up the
cult of the family ancestors. This trait sur
vived even into the poetry of the latest
period. “He maketh the barren woman to
keep house,” says a psalmist about Jahweh,
“ and to be a joyful mother of children.”
And from the beginning to the end of
Hebrew legend we find a similar character
istic of the ethnical god amply vindicated.
When Sarah is old and well stricken in years,
Jahweh visits her and she conceives Isaac.
Then Isaac in turn “intreated Jahweh for
his wife, because she was barren ; and
Jahweh was intreated of him, and Rebekah
his wife conceived.” Again, “when Jah weh
saw that Leah was hated, he opened her
womb; but Rachel was barren.” Once
more, of the birth of Samson we are told
that Manoah’s wife “ was barren and bare
not” : but “ the angel of Jahweh appeared
unto the woman and said unto her, Behold,
now thou art barren and bearest not; but
thou shalt conceive and bear a son.” And
of Hannah we are told, even more signifi
cantly, that Jahweh had “shut up her
womb.” At the shrine of J ah weh at Shiloh,
therefore, she prayed to Jahweh that this
disgrace might be removed from her and
that a child might be born to her. “ Jahweh
remembered her,” and she bore Samuel.
And after that again, “Jahweh visited
Hannah, so that she conceived and bare
three sons and two daughters.” In many
other passages we get the self-same trait :
Jahweh is regarded above everything as a
god of increase and a giver of offspring.
73
“ Children are a heritage from Jahweh,”
says the much later author of a familiar
ode : “ the fruit of the womb are a reward
from him.” “ Thy wife shall be as a fruit
ful vine,” says Jahweh to his votary by the
mouth of the poet; “ thy children like olive
plants round about thy table.” “ Happy is
the man that hath his quiver full of them,”
says another psalmist; “ they shall speak
with the enemies in the gate.” Again and
again the promise is repeated that the seed
of Abraham or of Joseph or of Ishmael
shall be numerous as the stars of heaven
or the sands of the sea; Jahweh’s chief
prerogative is evidently the gift of increase,
extended often to cattle and asses, but
always including at least sons and daughters.
If Israel obeys Jahweh, says the Deuteronomist, “Jahweh will make thee plenteous for
good in the fruit of thy belly, and in the
fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy
ground”: but if otherwise, then “cursed
shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit
of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and
the flocks of thy sheep.”
Now, elsewhere throughout the world we
find in like manner a certain class of phallic
gods who are specially conceived as givers
of fertility, and to whom prayers and offer
ings are made by barren women who desire
children. And the point to observe is that
these gods are usually (perhaps one might
even say always) embodied in stone pillars
or upright monoliths. The practical great
god of India—the god whom the people
really worship—is Mahadeo ; and Mahadeo
is, as we know, a cylinder of stone, to whom
the linga puja is performed, and to whom
barren women pray for offspring. There
are sacred stones in Western Europe, now
crowned by a cross, at which barren women
still pray to God and the Madonna, or to
some local saint, for the blessing of chil
dren. It is allowed that while the obelisk
is from one point of view (in later theory)
a ray of the sun, it is from another point of
view (in earlier origin) a “symbol of the
generative power of nature ”—which is only
another way of saying that it is an ancestral
stone of phallic virtue. In short, without
laying too much stress upon the connection,
we may conclude generally that the upright
pillar came early to be regarded, not merely
as a memento of the dead and an abode of
the ghost or indwelling god,but also in some
mysterious and esoteric way as a represen
tative of the male and generative principle.
If we recollect that the stone pillar was
often identified with the ancestor or father,
the reason for this idea will not perhaps be
�THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
quite so hard to understand. “ From these
stones we are all descended,” thinks the
primitive worshipper: “ these are our
fathers ; therefore, they are the givers of
children, the producers and begetters of all
our generations, the principle of fertility,
the proper gods to whom to pray for off
spring.” Add that many of them, being
represented as human, or human in their
upper part at least, grow in time to be ithyphallic, like Priapus, partly by mere gro
tesque barbarism, but partly also as a sign
of the sex of the deceased : and we can see
the naturalness of this easy transition.
From the Hermse of the Greeks to the rude
phallic deities of so many existing savage
races, we get everywhere signs of this con
stant connection between the sacred stone
and the idea of paternity. Where the stone
represents the grave of a woman, the deity
of course is conceived as a goddess, but
with the same implications. Herodotus saw
in Syria stelae engraved with the female
pudenda. The upright stone god is thus
everywhere and always liable to be re
garded as a god of fruitfulness.
But did this idea of the stone pillar
extend to Palestine and to the Semitic
nations ? There is evidence that it did,
besides that of Herodotus. Major Conder,
whose opinion on all questions of pure
archaeology (as opposed to philology)
deserves the highest respect, says of
Canaanitish times: “ The menhir, or conical
stone, was the emblem throughout Syria of
the gods presiding over fertility; and the
cup hollows which have been formed in
menhirs and dolmens are the indications of
libations, often of human blood, once poured
on these stones by early worshippers.” He
connects these monuments with the linga
cult of India, and adds that Dr. Chaplin
has found such a cult still surviving near
the Sea of Galilee. Lucian speaks of the
two great pillars at the temple of Hierapolis
as phalli. Of the Phoenicians Major
Conder writes : “The chief emblem wor
shipped in the temples was a pillar or cone,
derived no doubt from the rude menhirs
which were worshipped by early savage
tribes, such as Dravidians, Arabs, Celts,
and Hottentots.”
That Jahweh himself in his earliest form
was such a stone god, the evidence, I think,
though not perhaps exactly conclusive, is
to say the least extremely suggestive. I
have already called attention to it in a
previous chapter, and need not here reca
pitulate it in full; but a few stray additions
may not be without value. Besides the
general probability, among a race whose
gods were so almost universally repre
sented by sacred stones, that any particular
god, unless the contrary be proved, was so
represented, there is the evidence of all the
later language, and of the poems written
after the actual stone god himself had per
ished, that Jahweh was still popularly
regarded as, at least in a metaphorical
sense, a stone or rock. “He is the rock,”
says the Deuteronomist, in the song put
into the mouth of Moses ; “ I will publish
the name of J ahweh; ascribe greatness unto
our god.” “Jahweh liveth, and blessed
my rock,” says the hymn which a later
writer composes for David in the Second
Book of Samuel : “ exalted be the god of
the rock of my salvation.” And in the
psalms the image recurs again and again :
“Jahweh is my rock and my fortress”;
“ Who is a god save Jahweh, and who is a
rock save our god?”; “He set my feet
upon a rock, and established my goings ” ;
“ Lead me to the rock that is greater than
I”; “Jahweh is my defence, and my god
is the rock of my refuge “O come, let us
sing to Jahweh ; let us make a joyful noise
to the rock of our salvation.”
But to the earlier Israelites their god
Jahweh was simply the object—stone pillar
or otherwise—preserved in the ark or chest
which long rested at Shiloh, and which was
afterwards enshrined “ between the thighs
of the building ” (as a later gloss has it), in
the Temple at Jerusalem. The whole of
the early traditions embedded in the books
of Judges, Samuel, and Kings show us quite
clearly that Jahweh himself was then
regarded as inhabiting the ark, and as
carried about with it from place to place in
all its wanderings. The story of the battle
with the Philistines at Eben-ezer, the fall of
Dagon before the rival god, the fortunes of
the ark after its return to the Israelitish
people, the removal to Jerusalem by David,
the final enthronement by Solomon, all dis
tinctly show that Jahweh in person dwelt
within the ark, between the guardian
cherubim. “ Who is able to stand before
the face of Jahweh, this very sacred god ?”
ask the men of Bethshemesh, when they
ventured to look inside that hallowed abode,
and were smitten down by the “jealous
god ” who loved to live in the darkness of
the inmost sanctuary.1
1 Mr. William Simpson has some excellent
remarks on the analogies of the Egyptian and
Hebrew arks and sanctuaries, in his pamphlet on
The Worship of Death.
�THE GODS OF ISRAEL
It may be well to note in this connection
two significant facts : Just such an ark was
used in Egypt to contain the sacred objects
or images of the gods. And further, at the
period when the sons of Israel were tribu
taries in Egypt, a Theban dynasty ruled the
country, and the worship of the great Theban
phallic deity, Khem, was widely spread
throughout every part of the Egyptian
dominions.
Is there, however, any evidence of a linga
or other stone pillar being ever thus en
shrined and entempled as the great god of
a sanctuary? Clearly, Major Conder has
already supplied some, and more is forth
coming from various other sources. The
cone which represented Aphrodite in
Cyprus was similarly enshrined as the chief
object of a temple, as were the stelae of all
Egyptian mummies. “ The trilithon,” says
Major Conder, “becomes later a shrine, in
which the cone or a statue stands.” The
significance of this correlation will at once
be seen if the reader remembers how, in
the chapter on Sacred Stones, I showed
the origin of the idol from the primitive
menhir or upright pillar. “ The Khonds
and other non-Aryan tribes in India,” says
Conder once more, “ build such temples of
rude stones, daubed with red—a survival
of the old practice of anointing the menhirs
and the sacred cone or pillar with blood of
victims, sometimes apparently human.
Among the Indians the pillar is a lingam,
and such apparently was its meaning
among the Phoenicians.” And in the
Greek cities we know from Pausanias that
an unhewn stone was similarly enshrined
in the most magnificent adytum of the
noblest Hellenic temples. In fact, it was
rather the rule than otherwise that a stone
was the chief object of worship in the
noblest fanes.
One more curious trait must be noted in
the worship of Jahweh. Not only did he
rejoice in human sacrifices, but he also
demanded especially an offering of the
firstborn, and he required a singular and
significant ransom for every man-child
whom he permitted to live among his
peculiar votaries. On the fact of human
sacrifices I need hardly insist : they were
an integral part of all Semitic worship, and
their occurrence in the cult of Jahweh has
been universally allowed by all unprejudiced
scholars. The cases of Agag, whom
Samuel hewed to pieces before the face of
Jahweh, and of Jephthah’s daughter, whom
her father offered up as a thank-offering for
his victory, though not of course strictly
75
historical from a critical point of view, are
quite sufficient evidence to show the
temper and the habit of the Jahwehworshippers who described them. So with
the legend of the offering of Isaac, who is
merely rescued at the last moment in order
that the god of generation may make him
the father of many thousands. Again,
David seeks to pacify the anger of Jahweh
by a sacrifice of seven of the sons of Saul.
And the prophet Micah asks, “ Shall I give
my first-born for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ?”
—a passage which undoubtedly implies
that in Micah’s time such a sacrifice of the
eldest child was a common incident of
current Jahweh-worship.
From human sacrifice to circumcision
the transition is less violent than would at
first sight appear. An intermediate type
is found in the dedication of the first-born,
where Jahweh seems to claim for himself,
not as a victim, but as a slave and devotee,
the first fruits of that increase which it is
his peculiar function to ensure. In various
laws Jahweh lays claim to the first-born of
man and beast—sometimes to all, some
times only to the male first-born. The
animals were sacrificed ; the sons, in later
ages at least, were either made over as
Nazarites or redeemed with an offering or
a money-ransom. But we cannot doubt
that in the earliest times the first-born
child was slain before Jahweh. In the
curious legend of Moses and Zipporah we
get a strange folk-tale connecting this
custom indirectly with the practice of
circumcision. Jahweh seeks to kill Moses,
apparently because he has not offered up
his child : but Zipporah his wife takes a
stone knife, circumcises her son, and flings
the bloody offering at Jahweh’s feet, who
thereupon lets her husband go. This,
rather than the later account of its
institution by Abraham, seems the true old
explanatory legend of the origin of circum
cision—a legend analogous to those which
we find in Roman and other early history
as embodying or explaining certain ancient
customs or legal formulae. Circumcision,
in fact, appears to be a bloody sacrifice to
Jahweh, as the god of generation: a
sacrifice essentially of the nature of a
ransom, and therefore comparable to all
those other bodily mutilations whose origin
Mr. Herbert Spencer has so well shown in
the Ceremonial Institutions.
At the same time, the nature of the
offering helps to cast light upon the
character of Jahweh as a god of increase ;
�7b
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
exactly as the “ emerods ” with which the
Philistines were afflicted for the capture of
Jahweh and his ark show the nature of the
vengeance which might naturally be ex
pected from a deity of generation.
Last of all, how is it that later Hebrew
writers believed the object concealed in the
ark to have been, not a phallic stone, but a
copy of the “Ten Words” which Jahweh
was fabled to have delivered to Moses ?
That would be difficult to decide : but here
at least is an aperçu upon the subject which
I throw out for what it may be worth. The
later Hebrews, when their views of Jahweh
had grown expanded and etherealised, were
obviously ashamed of their old stone-worship,
if indeed they were archaeologists enough
after the captivity to know that it had ever
really existed. What more natural, then,
than for them to suppose that the stone
which they heard of as having been enclosed
in the ark was a copy of the “ Ten Words ”
—the covenant of Jahweh? Hence, per
haps, the later substitution of the term,
“ Ark of the Covenant,” for the older and
correcter phrase, “Ark of Jahweh.” One
more suggestion, still more purely hypothe
tical. Cones with pyramidal heads, bearing
inscriptions to the deceased, were used by
the Phoenicians for interments. It is just
possible that the original Jahweh may have
been such an ancient pillar, covered with
writings of some earlier character, which
were interpreted later as the equivalents or
symbols of the “Ten Words.”
Putting all the evidence together, then,
as far as we can now recover it, and inter
preting it on broad anthropological lines
by analogy from elsewhere, I should say
the following propositions seem fairly prob
able :—
The original religion of Israel was a
mixed polytheism, containing many various
types of gods, and based, like all other
religions, upon domestic and tribal ancestor
worship. Some of the gods were of animal
shapes : others were more or less vaguely
anthropomorphic. But the majority were
worshipped under the form of sacred stones,
trees, or wooden cones. The greater part
of these gods were Semitic in type, and
common to the Sons of Israel with their
neighbours and kinsmen. The character
of the Hebrew worship, however, apparently
underwent some slight modification in
Egypt ; or, at any rate, Egyptian influences
led to the preference of certain gods over
others at the period of the Exodus. One
god, in particular, Jahweh by name, seems
to have been almost peculiar to the Sons
of Israel—their ethnical deity, and there
fore in all probability an early tribal ances
tor or the stone representative of such an
ancestor. The legends are probably right
in their implication that this god was already
worshipped (not of course exclusively) by
the Sons of Israel before their stay in
Egypt; they are almost certainly correct in
ascribing the great growth and extension of
his cult to the period of the Exodus. The
Sons of Israel, at least from the date of the
Exodus onward, carried this god or his rude
image with them in an ark or box through
all their wanderings. The object so carried
was probably a conical stone pillar, which
we may conjecture to have been the grave
stone of some deified ancestor : and of this
ancestor “Jahweh” was perhaps either the
proper name or a descriptive epithet. Even
if, as Colenso suggests, the name itself was
Canaanitish, and belonged already to a
local god, its application to the sacred stone
of the ark would be merely another instance
of the common tendency to identify the gods
of one race or country, with those of another.
The stone itself was always enshrouded in
Egyptian mystery, and no private person
was permitted to behold it. Sacrifices, both
human and otherwise, were offered up to it,
as to the other gods, its fellows and after
wards its hated rivals. The stone, like
other sacred stones of pillar shape, was
regarded as emblematic of the generative
power. Circumcision was a mark of devo
tion to Jahweh, at first, no doubt, either
voluntary, or performed by way of a ransom,
but becoming with the growth and exclu
siveness of Jahweh-worship a distinctive
rite of Jahweh’s chosen people.
From this rude ethnical divinity, the
mere sacred pillar of a barbarous tribe,
was gradually developed the Lord God of
later Judaism and of Christianity—a power,
eternal, omniscient, almighty, holy; the
most ethereal, the most sublime, the most
superhuman deity that the brain of man
has ever conceived. By what slow evolu
tionary process of syncretism and elimina
tion, of spiritual mysticism and national
enthusiasm, of ethical effort and imagina
tive impulse, that mighty God was at last
projected out of so unpromising an original
it will be the task of our succeeding chapters
to investigate and to describe.
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
We have seen that the Hebrews were
originally polytheists, and that their ethni
cal god Jahweh seems to have been wor
shipped by them in early times under the
material form of a cylindrical stone pillar.
Or rather, to speak more naturally, the
object they so worshipped they regarded as
a god, and called Jahweh. The question
next confronts us, how from this humble
beginning did Israel attain to the pure
monotheism of its later age ? What was
there in the position or conditions of the
Hebrew race which made the later Jews
reject all their other gods, and fabricate out
of their early national Sacred Stone the
most sublime, austere, and omnipotent
deity that humanity has known ?
The answer, I believe, to this pregnant
question is partly to be found in a certain
general tendency of the Semitic mind;
partly in the peculiar political and social
state of the Israelitish tribes during the
ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth, and fifth
centuries before the Christian era. Or, to
put the proposed solution of the problem,
beforehand, in a still simpler form, Hebrew
monotheism was to some extent the result
of a syncretic treatment of all the gods, in
the course of which the attributes and
characters of each became merged in the
other, only the names remaining distinct;
and to some extent the result of the intense
national patriotism, of which the ethnical
god Jahweh was at once the outcome, the
expression, and the fondest hope. The
belief that Jahweh fought for Israel, and
that by trust in Jahweh alone could Israel
hold her own against Egypt and Assyria,
wildly fanatical as it appears to us to-day,
and utterly disproved by all the facts of the
case as it ultimately was, nevertheless
formed a central idea of the Hebrew
patriots, and resulted by slow degrees in
the firm establishment first of an exclusive,
and afterwards of a truly monotheistic
Jahweh-cult.
It is one of Ernest Renan’s brilliant
paradoxes that the Semitic mind is naturally
monotheistic. As a matter of fact, the
Semitic mind has everywhere evolved pretty
much the same polytheistic pantheon as
that evolved by every other group of human
beings, everywhere. Nevertheless, there
is perhaps this kernel of truth in Renan’s
77
paradoxical contention ; the Semites, more
readily than most other people, merge the
features of their deities one in the other.
That is not, indeed, by any means an exclu
sive Semitic trait. We saw already, in
dealing with the Egyptian religion, how all
the forms and functions of the gods faded
at last into an inextricable mixture, an olla
podrida of divinity, from which it was
practically impossible to disentangle with
certainty the original personalities of Ra
and Turn, of Amen and Osiris, of Neith and
Isis, of Ptah and Apis. Even in the rela
tively fixed and individualised pantheon of
Hellas, it occurs often enough that con
fusions both of person and prerogative
obscure the distinctness of the various gods.
Aphrodite and Herakles are polymorphic
in their embodiments. But in the Semitic
religions, at least in that later stage where
we first come across them, the lineaments
of the different deities are so blurred and
indefinite that hardly anything more than
mere names can with certainty be recog
nised. No other gods are so shadowy
and so vague. The type of this pantheon
is that dim figure of El-Shaddai, the early
and terrible object of Hebrew worship, of
whose attributes and nature we know
positively nothing, but who stands in the
background of all Hebrew thought as the
embodiment of the nameless and trembling
dread begotten on man’s soul by the irre
sistible and ruthless forces of nature.
This vagueness and shadowiness of the
Semitic religious conceptions seems to
depend to some extent upon the inartistic
nature of the Semitic culture. The Semite
seldom carved the image of his god.
Roman observers noted with surprise that
the shrine of Carmel contained no idol.
But it depended also upon deep-seated
characteristics of the Semitic race. Melan
choly, contemplative, proud, reserved, but
strangely fanciful, the Arab of to-day per
haps gives us the clue to the indefinite
nature of early Semitic religious thinking.
There never was a nether world more
ghostly than Sheol ; there never were gods
more dimly awful than the Elohim who
float through the early stories of the
Hebrew mystical cycle. Their very names
are hardly known to us : they come to us 1
through the veil of later Jehovistic editing
with such merely descriptive titles as the
God of Abraham, the Terror of Isaac, the
Mighty Power, the Most High Deity.
Indeed, the true Hebrew, like many other
barbarians, seems to have shrunk either
from looking upon the actual form of his
�78
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
god itself, or from pronouncing aloud his
proper name. His deity was shrouded in
the darkness of an ark or the deep gloom
of an inner tent or sanctuary ; the syllables
that designated the object of his worship
were never uttered in full, save on the most
solemn occasions, but were shirked or
slurred over by some descriptive epithet.
Even the unpronounceable title of J ahweh
itself appears from our documents to have
been a later name bestowed during the
Exodus on an antique god : while the rival
titles of the Baal and the Molech mean
nothing more than the Lord and the King
respectively. An excessive reverence for
bade the Semite to know anything of his
god’s personal appearance or true name,
and so left the features of almost all the
gods equally uncertain and equally form
less.
But besides the difficulty of accurately
distinguishing between the forms and func
tions of the different Semitic deities which
even their votaries must have felt from the
beginning, there was a superadded difficulty
in the developed creed, due to the super
position of elemental mysticism and nature
worship upon the primitive cult of ancestral
ghosts as gods and goddesses. Just as Ra,
the sun, was identified in the latest ages
with almost every Egyptian god, so solar
ideas and solar myths affected at last the
distinct personality of almost every Semitic
deity. The consequence is that all the gods
become in the end practically indistinguish
able : one is so like the other that different
interpreters make the most diverse identifi
cations, and are apparently justified in so
doing (from the mythological standpoint)
by the strong solar or elemental family like
ness which runs through the whole pantheon
in its later stages. It has even been doubted
by scholars of the older school whether
Jahweh is not himself a form of his great
rival Baal: whether both were not at bottom
identical—mere divergent shapes of one
polyonymous sun-god. To us, who recog
nise in every Baal the separate ghost-god of
a distinct tomb, such identification is.clearly
impossible.
To the worshippers of the Baalim or of
J ahweh themselves, however, these abstruser
mythological problems never presented
themselves. The difference of name and
of holy place was quite enough for them, in
spite of essential identity of attribute or
nature. They would kill one another for
the sake of a descriptive epithet, or risk
death itself rather than offer up sacrifices
at a hostile altar.
Nevertheless, various influences con
spired, here as elsewhere, to bring about a
gradual movement of syncretism—that is
to say, of the absorption of many distinct
gods into one; the final identification of
several deities originally separate. What
those influences were we must now briefly
consider.
In the first place, we must recollect that
while in Egypt, with its dry and peculiarly
preservative climate, mummies, idols, tombs,
and temples might be kept unchanged and
undestroyed for ages, in almost all other
countries rain, wind, and time are mighty
levellers of human handicraft. Thus, while
in Egypt the cult of the Dead Ancestor
survives as such quite confessedly and
openly for many centuries, in most other
countries the tendency is for the actual
personal objects of worship to be more and
more forgotten; vague gods and spirits
usurp by degrees the place of the historic
man ; rites at last cling rather to sites than
to particular persons. The tomb may dis
appear ; and yet the sacred stone may be
reverenced still with the accustomed vene
ration. The sacred stone may go ; and yet
the sacred tree may be watered yearly with
the blood of victims. The tree itself may
die ; and yet the stump may continue to be
draped on its anniversary with festal apparel.
The very stump may decay ; and yet gifts
of food or offerings of rags may be cast as
of old into the sacred spring that once
welled beside it. The locality thus grows
to be holy in itself, and gives us one clear
and obvious source of later nature-worship.
The gods or spirits who haunt such
shrines come naturally to be thought of
with the lapse of ages as much like one
another. Godship is all that can long
remain of their individual attributes. Their
very names are often unknown ; they are
remembered merely as the lord of Lebanon,
the Baal of Mount Peor. No wonder that
after a time they get to be practically identi
fied with one another, while similar myths
are often fastened by posterity to many of
them together. Indeed, we know that new
names, and even foreign intrusive names,
frequently take the place of the original
titles, while the god himself still continues
to be worshipped as the same shapeless
stone, with the same prescribed rites, in the
same squalid or splendid temples. Thus,
Melcarth, the Baal of Tyre, was adored in
later days under the Greek name of
Herakles ; and thus at Bablos two local
deities, after being identified first with the
Syrian divinities, Adonis and Astarte, were
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
identified later with the Egyptian divinities, aggression put the final coping-stone on the
Osiris and Isis. Yet the myths of the risingfabric ofmonotheistic Jah weh-worship.
It is often asserted that Jahweh was
place show us that through all that time
worshipped in many places in Israel under
the true worship was paid to the dead
the form of a golden calf. That is to say,
stump of a sacred tree, which was said to
Hebrews who set up images of a metal bull
have grown from the grave of a god—in
believed themselves nevertheless to be
other words, from the tumulus of an ancient
chieftain. No matter how greatly mytho worshipping Jahweh. Even the prophets
logies change, these local cults remain ever of the eighth century regard the cult of the
constant; the sacred stones are here des bull as a form of Jahweh-worship, though
not a form to which they can personally
cribed as haunted by djinns, and there as
give their approbation. But the bull is
memorials of Christian martyrs ; the holy
probably in its origin a distinct god from
wells are dedicated here to nymph or hero,
the stone in the ark ; and if its worship
and receive offerings there to saint or fairy.
was identified with that of the Rock of
So the holy oaks of immemorial worship in
Israel, it could be only by a late piece of
England become “ Thor’s oaks ” under
syncretic mysticism.
Perhaps the link
Saxon heathendom, and “ Gospel oaks ”
here, as in the case of Apis, was a priestly
under mediaeval Christianity.
recognition of the bull as symbolising the
Finally, in the latest stages of worship,
an attempt is always made to work in the generative power of nature ; an idea which
heavenly bodies and the great energies of would be peculiarly appropriate to the god
whose great function it was to encourage
nature into the mythological groundwork
or theory of religion. Every king is the fruitfulness. But, in any case, we cannot
descendant of the sun, and every great god but see in this later calf-worship a
is therefore necessarily the sun in person.
superadded element wholly distinct from
the older cult of the sacred stone, just as
Endless myths arise from these phrases,
which are mistaken by mythologists for the worship of Ra was wholly distinct in
the central facts and sources of religion.
origin from the totem-cult of Mnevis, or as
But they are nothing of the kind. Mysticism theworship ofAmen was wholly distinct from
and symbolism can never be primitive ;
that of Khem and Osiris. The stone-god
they are well-meant attempts by cultivated and the bull-god merge at last into one,
religious thinkers of later days to read
much as at a far later date the man Jesus
deep-seated meaning into the crude ideas
merges into the Hebrew god, and receives
and still cruder practices of traditional more reverence in modern faiths than the
religion. I may add that Dr. Robertson
older deity whom he practically replaces.
Smith’s learned and able works are con
Even in the Temple at Jerusalem itself
stantly spoiled in this way by his dogged
symbols of bull-worship were apparently
determination to see nature-worship as
admitted. The altar upon which the daily
primitive, where it is really derivative, as
sacrifice was burnt had four horns ; and
the earliest starting-point, where it is really
the laver in the court, the “ brazen sea,”
the highest and latest development.
was supported upon the figures of twelve
Clearly, when all gods have come to be
oxen. When we remember that the
more or less solar in their external and
Molech had the head of a bull, we can
acquired features, the process of identifi hardly fail to see in these symbols a token
cation and internationalisation is pro of that gradual syncretism which invariably
portionately easy.
affects all developed pantheons in all civi
The syncretism thus brought about in
lised countries.
the Hebrew religion by the superposition
Much more important are the supposed
of nature-worship on the primitive cult signs of the later identification of Jahweh
must have paved the way for the later
with the sun, and his emergence as a modi
recognition of monotheism, exactly as we
fied and transfigured sun-god.
It may
know it did in the esoteric creed of Egypt,
seem odd at first that such a character
by making all the gods so much alike that
could ever be acquired by a sacred stone,
worshippers had only to change the name
did we not recollect the exactly similar
of their deity, not the attributes of the
history of the Egyptian obelisk, which in
essential conception. Let us look first how
like manner represents, first and foremost,
far this syncretism affected the later idea of the upright pillar or monolith—that is to
Jahweh, the phallic stone-god preserved in
say, the primitive gravestone—but secon
the ark ; and then let us inquire afterward
darily and derivatively, at once the genera
how the patriotic reaction against Assyrian I tive principle and a ray of the sun. With
�So
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
this luminous analogy to guide us in our
search, we shall have little difficulty in
recognising how a solar character may
have been given to the later attributes and
descriptions of Jahweh.
To his early worshippers, then, as we saw,
Jahweh was merely the stone in the ark.
He dwelt there visibly, and where the ark
went, there Jahweh went with it. But the
later Hebrews—say in the eighth century—
had acquired a very different idea of
Jahweh’s dwelling-place. Astrological and
solar ideas (doubtless Akkadian in origin)
had profoundly modified their rude primi
tive conceptions. To Amos and to the
true Isaiah, Jahweh dwells in the open sky
above and is “ Jahweh of hosts,” the leader
among the shining army of heaven, the
king of the star-world. “ Over those celes
tial bodies and celestial inhabitants Jahweh
rules”; they surround him and execute his
commands : the host of heaven are his
messengers—in the more familiar language
of our modern religion, “ the angels of the
Lord,” the servants of Jahweh. To Micah,
heaven is “the temple of Jahweh’s holiness”:
“ God on high ” is the descriptive phrase by
which the prophet alludes to him. In all
this we have reached a very different con
ception indeed from that of the early and
simple-minded Israelites who carried their
god with them bn an ox-cart from station
to station.
Furthermore, light and fire are constantly
regarded by these later thinkers as manifes
tations of Jahweh ; and even in editing the
earlier legends they introduce such newer
ideas, making “ the glory of Jahweh” light
up the ark, or appear in the burning bush,
or combining both views, the elder and the
younger, in the pillar of fire that preceded
the nomad horde of Israel in the wilderness.
Jahweh is said to “ send” or to “cast fire”
from heaven, in which expressions we see
once more the advanced concept of an
elemental god, whose voice is the thunder,
and whose weapon the lightning. All
these are familiar developments of the
chief god in a pantheon. Says Zechariah
in his poem, “Ask ye of Jahweh rain in
the time of the latter showers : Jahweh will
make the lightnings.” Says Isaiah, “ The
light of Israel shall be for a fire, And his
holy one for a flame”; “ Behold, the name
of Jahweh cometh from afar, His anger
burneth, and violently the smoke riseth on
high : His lips are full of indignation, And
his tongue is as a devouring fire.” In these
and a hundred other passages that might
be quoted we seem to see Jahweh envis
aged to a great extent as a sun-god, and
clothed in almost all the attributes of a
fiery Molech.
Once more, though this is to anticipate a
little, the later Jahweh-worship seems to
have absorbed into itself certain astro
logical elements which were originally
quite alien to it, belonging to the cult of
other gods. Such, for example, is the
institution of the Sabbath, the unlucky day
of the malign god Kewdn or Saturn, on
which it was undesirable to do any kind of
work, and on which accordingly the super
stitious Semite rested altogether from his
weekly labours. The division of the lunar
month (the sacred period of Astarte, the
queen of heaven) into four weeks of seven
days each, dedicated in turn to the gods of
the seven planets, belongs obviously to the
same late cult of the elemental and astro
logical gods, or, rather, of the gods with
whom these heavenly bodies were at last
identified under Akkadian influence. The
earlier prophets of the exclusive Jahwehworship denounce as idolatrous such
observation of the Sabbath and the
astrological feasts—“Your Sabbaths and
your new moons are an abomination to
me”; and according to Amos, Kewdn
himself had been the chief idolatrous
object of worship by his countrymen in the
wilderness.
Later on, however, the
Jehovistic party found itself powerless to
break the current of superstition on the
Sabbath question, and a new modus vivendi
was therefore necessary. They arranged
a prudent compromise. The Sabbath was
adopted bodily into the monotheistic
Jahweh-worship, and a mythical reason
was given for its institution and its sacred
character which nominally linked it on to
the cult of the ethnical god. On that day,
said the priestly cosmogonists, Jahweh
rested from his labour of creation.
Having thus briefly sketched out the
gradual changes which the conception of
Jahweh himself underwent during the ages
when his supremacy was being slowly
established in the confederacy of Israel,
let us now attack the final problem, Why
did the particular cult of Jahweh become
at last exclusive and monotheistic ?
To begin with, we must remember that,
from the very outset of the national
existence, Jahweh was clearly regarded on
all hands as the ethnical god, the special
god of Israel.
Moreover, there is reason to suppose
that the Israelites regarded Jahweh as
their supreme god. Most pantheons finally
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
settle down into a recognised hierarchy, in
which one deity or another gradually
assumes the first place. So, in Hellas, the
supremacy of Zeus was undoubted ; so, in
Rome, was the supremacy of Jupiter.
Sometimes, to be sure, as among our
Teutonic ancestors, we see room for doubt
between two rival gods: it would be difficult
to assign the exact priority to either of the
two leading deities : among the English,
Woden rather bore it overThunor ; among
the Scandinavians, Thor rather bore it over
Odin. In Israel, in like manner, there was
apparently a time when the Presidency of
the Immortals hovered between Jahweh
and one or other of the local Baalim. But
in the end, and perhaps even from the very
beginning, the suffrages of the people were
mainly with the sacred stone of the ark.
He was the God of Israel, and they were
the chosen people of Jahweh.
The custom of circumcision must have
proved at once the symbol and in part the
cause, in part the effect, of this general
devotion of the people to a single supreme
god. At first, no doubt, only the first-born,
or other persons specially dedicated to
Jahweh, would undergo the rite which
marked them out so clearly as the devotees
of the god of fertility. But as time went
on, long before the triumph of the exclusive
Jahweh-worship, it would seem that the
practice of offering up every male child to
the national god had become universal.
As early as the shadowy reign of David,
the Philistines are reproachfully alluded to
in our legends as “ the uncircumcised.”
Such universal dedication of the whole
males of the race to the national god must
have done much to ensure his ultimate
triumph.
If we look at the circumstances of the
Israelites in Palestine, we shall easily see
how both religious unity and intense
national patriotism were fostered by the
very nature of their tenure of the soil ; and
also why a deity mainly envisaged as a god
of generation should have become the most
important member of their national pan
theon. Their position during the first few
centuries of their life in Lower Syria may
be compared to that of the Dorians in
Peloponnesus : they were but a little garri
son in a hostile land fighting incessantly
with half-conquered tributaries and encirc
ling foes ; now hard-pressed by rebellions
of their internal enemies ; and now again
rendered subject themselves to the hostile
Philistines on their maritime border. The
handful of rude warriors who burst upon
the land under such bloodthirsty leaders as
Joshua could only hope for success by rapid
and constant increase of their numbers, and
by avoiding as far as possible those internal
quarrels which were always the prelude to
national disgrace. To be “ a mother in
Israel” is the highest hope of every Hebrew
woman. Hence it was natural that a god
of generation should become the chief
among the local deities ; and though all
the stone gods were probably phallic, yet
Jahweh, as the ethnical patron, seems most
of all to have been regarded as the giver
of increase to Israel.
It seems clear, too, that the common
worship of Jahweh was at first the only
solid bond of union between the scattered
and discordant tribes who were afterwards
to grow into the Israelitish people. This
solidarity of god and tribe has well been
insisted on by Professor Robertson Smith
as a common feature of all Semitic worship.
The ark of Jahweh in its house at Shiloh
appears to have formed the general meeting
place for Hebrew patriotism, as the sanc
tuary of Olympia formed a focus later for the
dawning sense of Hellenic unity. The ark
was taken out to carry before the Hebrew
army, that the god of Israel might fight for
his worshippers. Evidently, therefore, from
a very early date, Jahweh was regarded in
a literal sense as the god of battles, the
power upon whom Israel might specially
rely to guard it against its enemies. When,
as the legends tell us, the national unity
was realised under David; when the subject
peoples were finally merged into a homo
geneous whole ; when the last relics of
Canaanitish nationality were stamped out
by the final conquest of the Jebusites ; and
when Jerusalem was made the capital of a
united Israel, this feeling must have in
creased both in extent and intensity. The
bringing of Jahweh to Jerusalem by David,
and the building of his temple by Solomon
(if these facts be historical), must have
helped to stamp him as the great god of
the race : and though Solomon also erected
temples to other Hebrew gods, which re
mained in existence for some centuries, we
may be sure that from the date of the open
ing of the great central shrine, Jahweh re
mained the principal deity of the southern
kingdom at least, after- the separation.
There was one characteristic of Jahwehworship, however, which especially helped
to make it at last an exclusive cult, and
thus paved the way for its final develop
ment into a pure monotheism. Jahweh
was specially known to be a “jealous
G
�82
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
god this is a trait in his temperament
early and often insisted on. We do not
know when or where the famous “Ten
Words ” were first promulgated; but we
have every reason to believe that in essence
at least they date from a very antique
period. Now, at the head of these imme
morial precepts of Jahweh stands the pro
hibition of placing any other gods before
his face. Originally, no doubt, the prohibi
tion meant exactly what it states ; that
Jahweh would endure no companion gods
to share his temple; that wherever he
dwelt he would dwell alone without what
the Greeks would have called fellow shrine
sharers. Thus we know that no ashera
was to be driven into the ground near
Jahweh’s ark ; and that when Dagon found
himself face to face with the Rock of Israel,
he broke in pieces, and could not stand
before the awful presence of the great
Hebrew Pillar. No more than this, then,
was at first demanded by “the jealous
god”: he asked of his worshippers that
they should keep him apart from the society
of all inferior gods, should allow no minor
or rival deity to enter his precincts.
Gradually, however, as Jahweh-worship
grew deeper, and the conception of god
head became wider and more sublime, the
Jahweh-worshipper began to put a stricter
interpretation upon the antique command
of the jealous god. It was supposed that
every circumcised person, every man visibly
devoted to Jahweh, owed to Jahweh alone
his whole religious service. Nobody
doubted as yet, indeed, that other gods
existed : but the extreme Jehovists in the
later days of national independence held as
an article of faith that no true Israelite
ought in any way to honour them. An
internal religious conflict thus arose between
the worshippers of Jahweh and the worship
pers of the Baalim, in which, as might be
expected, the devotees of the national god
had very much the best of it. Exclusive
Jahweh-worship became thenceforth the
ideal of the extreme Jehovists : they began
to regard all other gods as “ idols,” to be
identified with their images ; they began
to look upon Jahweh alone as a living
god, at least within the bounds of the
Israelitish nation»
To this result another ancient prohibition
of the priests of Jahweh no doubt largely
contributed. The priesthood held it unlaw
ful to make or multiply images of Jahweh.
The one sacred stone enclosed in the ark
was alone to be worshipped : and by thus
concentrating on Shiloh, or afterwards on
Jerusalem, the whole religious spirit of the
ethnical cult, they must largely have suc
ceeded in cementing the national unity.
Strict Jehovists looked with dislike upon
the adoration paid to the bull-images in the
northern kingdom, though those, too, were
regarded (at least in later days) as repre
sentatives of Jahweh. They held that the
true god of Abraham was to be found only
in the ark at Jerusalem, and that to give to
the Rock of Israel human form or bestial
figure was in itself a high crime against the
majesty of their deity Hence arose the
peculiar Hebrew dislike to “ idolatry ” ; a
dislike never equally shared by any but
Semitic peoples, and having deep roots,
apparently, at once in the inartistic genius
of the people and in the profound meta
physical and dreamy character of Semitic
thinking. The comparative emptiness of
Semitic shrines, indeed, was always a
stumbling-block to the Greek, with his
numerous and exquisite images of anthro
pomorphic deities.
All that was now wanted to drive the in
creasingly exclusive and immaterial Jahwehworship into pure monotheism for the whole
people was the spur of a great national
enthusiasm, in answer to some dangerous
external attack upon the existence of Israel
and of Israel’s god. This final touch was
given by the aggression of Assyria, and
later of Babylon. For years the two tiny
Israelitish kingdoms had maintained a pre
carious independence between the mighty
empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In
the eighth century it became certain that
they could no longer play their accustomed
game of clever diplomacy and polite sub
jection. The very existence of Israel was
at stake ; and the fanatical worshippers of
Jahweh broke out in that memorable
ecstasy of enthusiasm which we may fairly
call the Age of the Prophets, and which
produced the earliest masterpieces of
Hebrew literature in the wild effort to
oppose to the arms of the invaders the
passive resistance of a supreme Jahweh.
In times of old, the prophets say, when
Jahweh led the forces of Israel, the horses
and the chariots of their enemies counted
for naught : if in this crisis Israel would
cease to think of aid from Egypt or alliance
with Assyria—if Israel would get rid of all
her other gods and trust only to Jahweh—
then Jahweh would break asunder the
strength of Assyria and would reduce
Babylon to nothing before his chosen
people.
Such is the language that Isaiah ventured
�THE RISE OF MONOTHEISM
to use in the very crisis of a grave national
danger.
Now, strange as it seems to us that any
people should have thrown themselves into
such a general state of fanatical folly, it is
nevertheless true that these extraordinary
counsels prevailed in both the Israelitish
kingdoms, and that the very moment when
the national existence was most seriously
imperilled was the moment chosen by the
Jehovistic party for vigorously attempting a
religious reformation. The downfall of
Ephraim only quickened the bigoted belief
of the. fanatics in Judah that pure Jahwehworship was the one possible panacea for
the difficulties of I srael. Taking advantage
of a minority and of a plastic young king,
they succeeded in imposing exclusive
Jehovism upon the half-unwilling people.
The timely forgery of the Book of Deuteromony—the first germ of the Pentateuch—
by the priests of the temple at Jerusalem
was quickly followed by the momentary
triumph of pure Jahweh-worship. In this
memorable document the exclusive cult of
Jahweh was falsely said to have descended
from the earliest periods of the national
existence. Josiah, we are told, alarmed at
the denunciations in the forged roll of the
law, set himself to work at once to root out
by violent means every form of “ idolatry.”
He brought forth from the house of Jahweh
“ the vessels that were made for the Baal,
and for the Ashera, and for all the Host of
Heaven, and he burned them without
Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron.” He
abolished all the shrines and priesthoods of
other gods in the cities of Judah, and put
down “ them that burned incense to the
Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to
the planets, and all the Host of Heaven.”
He also brought out the Ashera from the
temple of Jahweh, and burnt it to ashes;
and “ took away the horses that the kings
of Judah had given to the sun, and burned
the chariots of the sun with fire.” And by
destroying the temples said to have been
built by Solomon for Chemosh, Milcom,
and Ashtoreth, he left exclusive and tri
umphant Jahweh-worship the sole ac
credited religion of Israel.
All, however, was of no avail. Religious
fanaticism could not save the little princi
pality from the aggressive arms of its
powerful neighbours. Within twenty or
thirty years of Josiah’s reformation, the
Babylonians thrice captured and sacked
Jerusalem. The temple of Jahweh was
burnt, the chief ornaments were removed,
and the desolate site itself lay deserted.
83
The principal inhabitants were transported
to Babylonia, and the kingdom of J udah
ceased for a time to have any independent
existence.
But what, in this disaster, became of the
Jahweh himself? How fared or fell the
Sacred Stone in the ark, the Rock of Israel,
in this general destruction of all its holiest
belongings ? Strange to say, the Hebrew
annalist never stops to tell us. In the
plaintive catalogue of the wrongs wrought
by the Babylonians at Jerusalem every pot
and shovel and vessel is enumerated, but
“the ark of God” is not so much as once
mentioned. Perhaps the historian shrank
from relating that final disgrace of his
country’s deity ; perhaps a sense of rever
ence prevented him from chronicling it;
perhaps he knew nothing of what had
finally been done with the cherished and
time-honoured stone pillar of his ancestors.
It is possible, too, that with his later and
more etherealised conceptions of the cult of
his god, he had ceased to regard the ark
itself as the abode of Jahweh, and was un
aware that his tribal deity had been repre
sented in the innermost shrine of the temple
by a rough-hewn pillar. Be that as it may,
the actual fate of Jahweh himself is involved
for us now in impenetrable obscurity. Prob
ably the invaders who took away “ the
treasures of the house of Jahweh, and cut
in pieces all the vessels of gold which
Solomon, King of Israel, had made,” would
care but little for the rude sacred stone of a
conquered people. We may conjecture that
they broke Jahweh into a thousand frag
ments and ground him to powder, as Josiah
had done with the Baalim and the Ashera,
so that his very relics could no longer be
recognised or worshipped. At any rate, we
hear no more, from that time forth, of
Jahweh himself, as a material existence, or of
the ark he dwelt in. His spirit alone sur
vived unseen, to guard and protect his
chosen people.
Yet, strange to say, this final disappear
ance of Jahweh himself, as a visible and
tangible god, from the page of history, in
stead of proving the signal for the utter
downfall of his cult and his sanctity, was
the very making of Jahweh-worship as a
spiritual, a monotheistic, and a cosmo
politan religion. At the exact moment
when Jahweh ceased to exist the religion
of Jahweh began to reach its highest and
fullest development. Even before the cap
tivity, as we have seen, the prophets and
their party had begun to form a most exalted
and spiritualised conception of Jahweh’s
�«4
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
greatness, Jahweh’s holiness, Jahweh’s
unapproachable nature, Jahweh’s super
human sublimity and omnipotence. But
now that the material Jahweh itself, which
cramped and clogged their ideas, had
disappeared for ever, this spiritual concep
tion of a great Unseen God widened and
deepened amazingly. Forbidden by their
creed and by Jahweh’s own express com
mand to make any image of their chosen
deity, the Hebrews in Babylonia gradually
evolved for themselves the notion of a
Supreme Ruler wholly freed from material
bonds, to be worshipped without image,
representative, or symbol; a dweller in the
heavens, invisible to men, too high and pure
for human eyes to look upon. The conical
stone in the ark gave place almost at once
to an incorporeal, inscrutable, and almighty
Being.
It was during the captivity, too, that pure
monotheism became for the first time the
faith of Israel. Convinced that desertion
of Jahweh was the cause of all their previous
misfortunes, the Jews during their exile
grew more deeply attached than ever to the
deity who represented their national unity
and their national existence. They made
their way back in time to Judaea, after two
generations had passed away, with a firm
conviction that all their happiness depended
on restoring in ideal purity a cult that had
never been the cult of their fathers. A new
form of Jahweh-worship Lad become a
passion among those who sat disconsolate
by the waters of Babylon. Few if any of
the zealots who returned at last to Jeru
salem had ever themselves known the stone
god who lay shrouded in the ark : it was
the etherealised Jahweh who ruled in heaven
above among the starry hosts to whom they
offered up aspirations in a strange land for
the restoration of Israel. In the temple
that they built on the sacred site to the new
figment of their imaginations, Jahweh was
no longer personally present: it was not so
much his “ house,” like the old one demo
lished by the Babylonian invaders, as the
place where sacrifice was offered and wor
ship paid to the great god in heaven. The
new religion was purely spiritual; Jahweh
had triumphed, but only by losing his dis
tinctive personal characteristics,and coming
out of the crisis, as it were, the blank form
or generic conception of pure deity in
general.
It is this that gives monotheism its pecu
liar power, and enables it so readily to
make its way everywhere. For monotheism
is religion reduced to its single central ele- I
ment; it contains nothing save what every
votary of all gods already implicitly believes,
with every unnecessary complexity or indi
viduality smoothed away and simplified.
Its simplicity recommends it to all intelli
gent minds ; its uniformity renders it the
easiest and most economical form of pan
theon that man can frame for himself.
Under the influence of these new ideas,
before long, the whole annals of Israel were
edited and written down in Jehovistic form ;
the Pentateuch and the older historical
books assumed the dress in which we now
know them. From the moment of the
return from the captivity, too, the mono
theistic conception kept ever widening. At
first, no doubt, even with the Jews of the
Sixth Century, Jahweh was commonly
looked upon merely as the ethnical god of
Israel. But, in time, the sublimer and
broader conception of some few among the
earlier poetical prophets began to gain
general acceptance, and Jahweh was re
garded as in very deed the one true God of
all the world—somewhat such a God as
Islam and Christendom to-day acknowledge.
Still, even so, he was as yet most closely
connected with the Jewish people, through
whom alone the gentiles were expected in
the fulness of time to learn his greatness.
It was reserved for a Graeco-Jewish Cilician,
five centuries later, to fulfil the final ideal
of pure cosmopolitan monotheism, and to
proclaim abroad the unity of God to all
nations, with the Catholic Church as its
earthly witness before the eyes of universal
humanity. To Paul of Tarsus we owe
above all men that great and on the whole
cosmopolitanising conception. .
CHAPTER XI.
HUMAN GODS
We have now in a certain sense accom
plished our intention of tracing the evo
lution of gods and of God. We have shown
how polytheism came to be, and how from
it a certain particular group of men, the
early Israelites, rose by slow degrees,
through natural stages, to the monotheistic
conception. It might seem, therefore, as
though the task we set before ourselves
was now quite completed. Nevertheless,
many abstruse and difficult questions still
lie before us. Our problem as yet is hardly
�HUMAN GODS
half solved. We have still to ask, How
did this purely local and national Hebrew
deity advance to the conquest of the
civilised world? How from an obscure
corner of Lower Syria did the god of a
small tribe of despised and barbaric
tributaries slowly live down the great
conquering deities of Babylon and Susa,
of Hellas and Italy? And again, we have
further to inquire, Why do most of the
modern nations which have nominally
adopted monotheism yet conceive of their
god as compounded in some mystically
incomprehensible fashion of Three Perácms,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ?
In short, I am not satisfied with tracing
the idea of a god from the primitive
mummy or the secondary ghost to the one
supreme God of the ancient Hebrews ; I
desire also to follow on that developed
concept till it merges at last in the triune
God of modern Christendom.
The Christian religion with which we
have next to deal bases itself fundamentally
upon the personality of a man, by name
Jesus, commonly described as the Christ,
that is to say “the anointed.” Of this
most sacred and deified person it is
affirmed by modern Christianity, and
has been affirmed by orthodox Christians
from a very early period, that he was not
originally a mere man, afterwards taken
into the godhead, but that he was born
from the first the son of God, that is to say,
of the Hebrew Jahweh; that he existed
previously from all time; that he was
miraculously conceived of a virgin mother ;
that he was crucified and buried ; that on
the third day he arose from the dead ; and
that he is now a living and distinct person
in a divine and mystically-united Trinity.
I propose to show in the subsequent
chapters how far all these conceptions were
already familiar throughout the world in
which Christianity was promulgated, and to
how large an extent the new religion owed
its rapid success to the fact that it was but
a résumé or idealised embodiment of all
the chief conceptions already common to
the main cults of Mediterranean civilisa
tion. At the moment when the Roman
empire was cosmopolitanising the world
Christianity began to cosmopolitanise reli
gion, by taking into itself whatever was
central, common, and universal in the
worship of the peoples among whom it
originated.
We will begin with the question of the
incarnation, which lies at the very root of
the Christian concept.
85
I have said already that in ancient Egypt
and elsewhere, “ The God was the Dead
King, the King was the Living God.” This
is true, literally and absolutely. Since the
early kings are gods, the present kings,
their descendants, are naturally also gods by
descent; their blood is divine ; they differ
in nature as well as in position from mere
common mortals. While they live, they are
gods on earth ; when they die, they pass
over to the community of the gods their
ancestors, and share with them a happy and
regal immortality. The inference made in
Egypt that the children of gods must be
themselves divine was also made in most
other countries, especially in those where
similar great despotisms established them
selves at an early grade of culture. Thus
in Peru, the Incas were gods. They were
the children of the Sun ; and when they
died, it was said that their father, the Sun,
had sent to fetch them. The Mexican kings
were likewise gods, with full control of the
course of nature ; they swore at their acces
sion to make the sun shine, the rain fall, the
rivers flow, and the earth bring forth her
fruit in due season. How they could pro
mise all this seems at first a little difficult
for us to conceive ; but it will become more
comprehensible at a later stage of our in
vestigation, when we come to consider the
gods of cultivation : even at present, if we
remember that kings are children of the
Sun, and that sacred trees, sacred groves,
and sacred wells are closely connected with
the tombs' of their ancestors, we can guess
at the beginning of such a mental connec
tion. Thus the Chinese emperor is the Son
of Heaven ; he is held responsible to his
people for the occurrence of drought or
other serious derangements of nature. The
Parthian kings of the Arsacid house, says
Mr. Frazer, to whom I am greatly indebted
for most of the succeeding facts, styled
themselves brothers of the sun and moon,
and were worshipped as deities. Number
less other cases are cited by Mr. Fraser,
who was the first to point out the full im
portance of this widespread belief in man
gods. I shall follow him largely in the
subsequent discussion of this cardinal sub
ject, though I shall often give to the facts
an interpretation slightly different from that
which he would allow to be the correct one.
For to me, godhead springs always from
the primitive Dead Man, while to Mr.
Frazer it is spiritual or animistic in origin.
Besides these human gods who are gods
by descent from deified ancestors, there is
another class of gods who are gods by
�86
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
inspiration or indwelling of the divine spirit,
that is to say of some ghost or god who
temporarily or permanently inhabits the
body of a living man. The germ-idea of
such divine possession we may see in the
facts of epilepsy, catalepsy, dream, and
madness. In all such cases of abnormal
nervous condition it seems to primitive man,
as it still seemed to the Jews of the age of
the Gospels, that the sufferer is entered or
seized upon by some spirit, who bodily in
habits him. The spirit may throw the man
down, or may speak through his mouth in
strange unknown tongues; it may exalt him
so that he can perform strange feats of
marvellous strength, or may debase him to
a position of grovelling abjectness. By
fasting and religious asceticism men and
women can even artificially attain this
state, when the god speaks through them,
as he spoke through the mouth of the
Pythia at Delphi. And fasting is always
one of the religious exercises of god-pos
sessed men, priests, monks, anchorites, and
ascetics in general. Where races have
learnt how to manufacture intoxicating
drinks, or to express narcotic juices from
plants, they also universally attribute the
effects of such plants to the personal action
of an inspiring spirit—an idea so persistent
even into civilised ages that we habitually
speak of alcoholic liquors as spirits. Both
these ways of attaining the presence of an
indwelling god are commonly practised
among savages and half-civilised people.
When we recollect how we saw already
that ancestral spirits may descend from
time to time into the skulls that once were
theirs, or into the clay or wooden images
that represent them, and there give oracles,
we shall not be surprised to find that they
can thus enter at times into a human body,
and speak through its lips, for good or for
evil. I have dwelt but little in this book
on this migratory power and this ubiqui
tousness of the spirits, because I have de
sired to fix attention chiefly on that primary
aspect of religion which is immediately and
directly concerned with Worship; but
readers familiar with such works as Dr.
Tylor’s and Mr. Frazer’s will be well aware
of the common power which spirits possess
of projecting themselves readily into every
part of nature. The faculty of possession
or of divination is but one particular exam
ple of this well-known attribute. The
mysteries and oracles of all creeds are full
of such phenomena.
Certain persons, again, are born from
the womb as incarnations of a god or an
ancestral spirit. “ Incarnate gods,” says
Mr. Frazer, “are common in rude society.
The incarnation may be temporary or per
manent......... When the divine spirit has
taken up its abode in a human body, the
god-man is usually expected to vindicate
his character by working miracles.” Mr.
Frazer gives several excellent examples of
both these classes. I extract a few almost
verbatim.
Certain persons are possessed from time
to time by a spirit of deity ; while posses
sion lasts, their own personality lies in
abeyance, and the presence of the spirit is
revealed by convulsive shakings and quiver
ings of the body. In this abnormal state
the man’s utterances are accepted as the
voice of the god or spirit dwelling in him
and speaking through him. In Mangaia,
for instance, the priests in whom the gods
took up their abode were called god-boxes
or gods. Before giving oracles, they drank
an intoxicating liquor, and the words they
spoke in their frenzy were then regarded as
divine. In other cases, the inspired person
produces the desired condition of intoxica
tion by drinking the fresh blood of a victim,
human or animal, which, as we shall see
hereafter, is probably itself an avatar of the
inspiring god. In the temple of Apollo
Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed
by night once a month ; a woman, who had
to observe the rule of chastity, tasted its
blood, and then gave oracles. At Ægira in
Achæa the priestess of the Earth drank the
fresh blood of a bull before she descended
into her cave to prophesy. In Southern
India the so-called devil-dancer drinks the
blood of a goat, and then becomes seized
with the divine afflatus. He is worshipped
as a deity, and bystanders ask him ques
tions requiring superhuman knowledge to
answer.
Of permanent living human gods, in
spired by the constant indwelling of a deity,
Mr. Frazer also gives several apt examples.
In the Marquesas Islands there was a class
of men who were deified in their lifetime.
They were supposed to wield supernatural
control over the elements. They could give
or withhold rain and good harvests. Human
sacrifices were offered them to appease their
wrath.
.
.
.
Sometimes, I believe, kings are divine
by birth, as descendants of gods ; but
sometimes divinity is conferred upon them
with the kingship, as indeed was the case
even in the typical instance of Egypt.
Tanatoa, king of Raiatea, was deified by a
certain ceremony performed at the chief
�HUMAN GODS
temple. He was made a god before the
gods his ancestors, as Celtic chiefs received
the chieftainship standing on the sacred
stone of their fathers. As one of the deities
of his subjects, therefore, the king was
worshipped, consulted as an oracle, and
honoured with sacrifices. The king of
Tahiti at his inauguration received a sacred
girdle of red and yellow feathers, which not
only raised him to the highest earthly
station, but also identified him with the
heavenly gods. Compare the way in which
the gods of Egypt make the king one of
themselves, as represented in the bas-reliefs,
by the presentation of the divine tau. In
the Pelew Islands a god may incarnate
himself in a common person ; this lucky
man is thereupon raised to sovereign rank,
and rules as god and king over the com
munity. Not unsimilar is the mode of
selection of a Grand Lama. In later
stages the king ceases to be quite a god,
but retains the anointment, the consecration
on a holy stone, and the claim to “ divine
right ”; he also shows some last traces of
deity in his divine power to heal diseases,
which fades away at last into the practice
of “ touching for king’s evil.”
But did ideas of this character still survive
in the Mediterranean world of the first and
second centuries, where Christianity was
evolved? Most undoubtedly they did. In
Egypt, the divine line of the Ptolemies had
only just become extinct. In Rome itself,
the divine Caesar had recently under
gone official apotheosis; the divine
Augustus had ruled over the empire
as the adopted son of the new-made
god ; and altars rose in provincial cities to
the divine spirit of the reigning Trajan or
Hadrian. Indeed, both forms of divinity
were claimed indirectly for the god Julius ;
he was divine by apotheosis, but he was
also descended from the goddess Venus.
So the double claim was made for the
central personage of the Christian faith :
he was the son of God—that is to say of
Jahweh : but he was also of kingly Jewish
origin, a descendant of David, and in the
genealogies fabricated for him in the
Gospels extreme importance is attached to
this pretended royal ancestry. Further
more, how readily men of the Mediterra
nean civilisation could then identify living
persons with gods we see in the familiar
episode of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra.
Incarnation, in short, was a perfectly ordi
nary feature of religion and daily life as
then understood.
To most modern thinkers, however, it
87
would seem at first sight like a grave diffi
culty in the way of accepting the deity of
an ordinary man that he should have suf
fered a violent death at the hands of his
enemies. Yet this fact, instead of standing
in the way of acceptance of Christ’s
divinity, is really almost a guarantee and
proof of it. For, strange as it sounds to
us, the human gods were frequently or
almost habitually put to death by their
votaries. The secret of this curious ritual
and persistent custom has been ingeniously
deciphered for us by Mr. Frazer, whose
book is almost entirely devoted to these
two main questions, “Why do men kill
their gods ?” and “ Why do they eat and
drink their flesh and blood under the form
of bread and wine ?” We must go over
some of the same ground here in rapid
summary, with additional corollaries ; and
we must also bring Mr. Frazer’s curious
facts into line with our general principles
of the origin of godhead. The belief that
it is expedient that “ one man should die
for the people,” and that the person who
so dies is a god in human shape, formed,
as we shall see, a common component of
many faiths, and especially of the faiths of
the eastern Mediterranean. Mr. Frazer
has traced the genesis of this group of
beliefs in the slaughter of the man-god in
the most masterly manner. They spring
from a large number of converging ideas,
some of which can only come out in full as
we proceed in later chapters to other
branches of our subject.
In all parts of the world, one of the com
monest prerogatives and functions of the
human god is the care of the weather. As
representative of heaven, it is his business
to see that rain falls in proper quantities,
and that the earth brings forth her in
crease in due season. But, god though he
is, he must needs be coerced if he does not
attend to this business properly. Thus, in
West Africa, when prayers and offerings
presented to the king have failed to pro
cure rain, his subjects bind him with
ropes, and take him to the grave of his
deified forefathers, that he may obtain
from them the needful change in the
weather. Here we see in the fullest form
the nature of the relation between dead
gods and living ones. The Son is the
natural mediator between men and the
Father. Among the Antaymours of Mada
gascar, the king is responsible for bad
crops and all other misfortunes. The
ancient Scythians, when ’ food was
scarce, put their kings in bonds.
�88
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The Banjars in West Africa ascribe
to their king the power of causing
rain or fine weather. As long as the
climate is satisfactory, they load him with
presents of grain and cattle. But if long
drought or rain does serious harm, they
insult and beat him till the weather changes.
The Burgundians deposed their king if he
failed to make their crops grow to their
satisfaction.
Further than that, certain tribes have
even killed their kings in times of scarcity.
In the days of the Swedish king Domalde,
a mighty famine broke out, which lasted
several years, and could not be stayed by
human or animal sacrifices. So, in a great
popular assembly held at Upsala, the
chiefs decided that King Domalde himself
was the cause of the scarcity, and must be
sacrificed for good seasons. Then they
slew him, and smeared with his blood
the altars of the gods. Here we must
recollect that the divine king is himself a
god, the descendant of gods, and he is
sacrificed to the offended spirits of his own
forefathers. We shall see hereafter how
often similar episodes occur—how the god
is sacrificed, himself to himself; how the
Son is sacrificed to the Father, both being
gods ; and how the Father sacrifices his
Son, to make a god of him.
The divine kings being thus responsible
for rain and wind, and for the growth of
crops, whose close dependence upon them
we shall further understand hereafter, it is
clear that they are persons of the greatest
importance and value to the community.
Moreover, in the ideas of early men, their
spirit is almost one with that of external
nature, over which they exert such
extraordinary powers. A subtle sympathy
seems to exist between the king and the
world outside. The sacred trees which
embody his ancestors ; the crops, which,
as we shall see hereafter, equally embody
them ; the rain-clouds in which they dwell;
the heaven they inhabit;—all these, as it
were, are parts of the divine body, and
therefore by implication part of the godking’s, who is but the avatar of his deified
fathers. Hence, whatever affects the king,
affects the sky, the crops, the rain, the
people.
Mr. Frazer has shown many strange
results of these early beliefs—which he
traces, however, to the supposed primitive
animism, and not (as I have done) to the
influence of the ghost-theory. Whichever
interpretation we accept, however, his facts
at least are equally valuable. He calls
attention to the number of kingly taboos
which are all intended to prevent the human
god from endangering or imperilling his
divine life, or from doing anything which
might react hurtfully upon nature and the
welfare of his people. The man-god is
guarded by the strictest rules, and sur
rounded by precautions of the utmost com
plexity. He may not set his sacred foot on
the ground, because he is a son of heaven ;
he may not eat or drink with his sacred
mouth certain dangerous, impure, or un
holy foods ; he may not have his sacr§4
hair cut, or his sacred nails pared; he
must preserve intact his divine body, and
every part of it—the incarnation of the
community—lest evil come of his impru
dence or his folly.
The Mikado, for example, was and still
is regarded as an incarnation of the sun,
the deity who rules the entire universe,
gods and men included. The greatest care
must therefore be taken both ¿y him and of
him. His whole life, down to its minutest
details, must be so regulated that no act
of his may upset the established order of
nature. Lest he should touch the earth, he
used to be carried wherever he went on
men’s shoulders. He could not expose his
sacred person to the open air, nor eat out
of any but a perfectly new vessel. In every
way his sanctity and his health were
jealously guarded, and he was treated like
a person whose security was important to
the whole course of nature.
Mr. Frazer quotes several similar ex
amples, of which the most striking is that
of the high pontiff of the Zapotecs, an
ancient people of Southern Mexico. He
profaned his sanctity if he touched the
common ground with his holy foot. The
officers who bore his palanquin on their
shoulders were chosen from the members
of the highest families ; he hardly deigned
to look on anything around him ; those
who met him prostrated themselves humbly
on the ground, lest death should overtake
them if they even saw his divine shadow.
A rule of continence was ordinarily im
posed upon him ; but on certain days in the
year which were high festivals, it was usual
for him to get ceremonially and sacramen
tally drunk. On such days, .we may be
sure, the high gods peculiarly entered into
him with the intoxicating pulque, and the
ancestral spirits reinforced his godhead.
While in this exalted state (“full of the
god,” as a Greek or Roman would have
said) the divine pontiff received a visit from
one of the most beautiful of the virgins
�HUMAN GODS
consecrated to the service of the gods. If
the child she bore him was a son, it suc
ceeded in due time to the throne of the
Zapotecs. We have here again an instruc
tive mixture of the various ideas out of
which such divine kingship and godship is
constructed.
It might seem at first sight a paradoxical
corollary that people who thus safeguard
and protect their divine king, the embodi
ment of nature, should also habitually and
ceremonially kill him. Yet the apparent
paradox is, from the point of view of the
early worshipper, both natural and reason
able. We read of the Congo negroes that
they have a supreme pontiff whom they
regard as a god upon earth, and all-power
ful in heaven. But, “if he were to die a
natural death, they thought the world would
perish, and the earth, which he alone sus
tained by his power and merit, would
immediately be annihilated.” This idea of
a god as the creator and supporter of all
things, without whom nothing would be, is
of course a familiar component element of
the most advanced theology. But many
nations which worship human gods carry
out the notion to its logical conclusion in
the most rigorous manner. Since the god
is a man, it would obviously be quite wrong
to let him grow old and weak ; since there
by the whole course of nature might be
permanently enfeebled; rain would but
dribble; crops would grow thin; rivers
would trickle away ; and the race he ruled
would dwindle to nothing. Hence senility
must never overcome the sacred man-god ;
he must be killed in the fulness of his
strength and health (say, about his thirtieth
year), so that the indwelling spirit, yet
young and fresh, may migrate unimpaired
into the body of some newer and abler
representative. Mr. Frazer was the first, I
believe, to point out this curious result of
primitive human reasoning, and to illustrate
it by numerous and conclusive instances.
For this reason, then, when the pontiff of
Congo grew old, and seemed likely to die,
the man who was destined to succeedhim in
the pontificate entered his house with a
rope or club, and strangled or felled him.
The Ethiopian kings of Meroe were wor
shipped as gods; but when the priests
thought fit, they sent a messenger to the
king, ordering him to die, and alleging an
oracle of the gods (or earlier kings) as the
reason of their command. This command
the kings always obeyed down to the reign
of Ergamenes, a contemporary of Ptolemy
II. of Egypt. So, when the king of Unyoro
89
in Central Africa falls ill, or begins to show
signs of approaching age, one of his own
wives is compelled by custom to kill him.
The kings of Sofala were regarded by their
people as gods who could give rain or sun
shine ; but the slightest bodily blemish,
such as the loss of a tooth, was considered
a sufficient reason for putting one of these
powerful man-gods to death; he must be
whole and sound, lest all nature pay for it.
Many kings, human gods, divine priests, or
sultans are enumerated by Mr. Frazer, each
of whom must be similarly perfect in every
limb and member. The same perfect man
hood is still exacted of the Christian Pope,
who, however, is not put to death in case
of extreme age or feebleness. But there
is reason to believe that the Grand Lama,
the divine Pope of the Tibetan Buddhists,
is killed from time to time, so as to keep
him “ ever fresh and ever young,” and to
allow the inherent deity within him to
escape full-blooded into another embodi
ment.
In all these cases the divine king or priest
is suffered by his people to retain office, or
rather to house the godhead, till by some
outward defect, or some visible warning of
age or illness, he shows them that he is no
longer equal to the proper performance of
his divine functions. Until such symptoms
appear, he is not put to death. Some
peoples, however, as Mr. Frazer shows, have
not thought it safe to wait for even the
slightest symptom of decay before killing
the human god or king; they have destroyed
him in the plenitude of his life and vigour.
In such cases the people fix a term beyond
which the king may not reign, and at the
close of which he must die, the term being
short enough to prevent the probability of
degeneration meanwhile. In some parts
of Southern India, for example, the term
was fixed at twelve years ; at the expiration
of that time the king had to cut himself to
pieces visibly, before the great local idol,
of which he was in all probability the
human equivalent. The king of Calicut,
on the Malabar coast, had to cut his throat
in public after a twelve years’ reign. But
towards the end of the seventeenth century
the rule was so far relaxed that the king
was allowed to retain the throne, and prob
ably the godship, if he could protect him
self against all comers. As long as he was
strong enough to guard his position, it was
held that he was strong enough to retain
the divine power unharmed. The King of
the Wood at Aricia held his priesthood and
ghostly kingship on the same condition.
�90
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
More often still, however, the divine
priesthood, kingship, or godhead was held
for one year alone, for a reason which we
shall more fully comprehend after we have
considered the annual gods of cultivation.
The most interesting example, and the most
cognate to our present inquiry, is that of
the Babylonian custom cited by Berosus.
During the five days of the festival called
the Sacaea, a prisoner condemned to death
was dressed in the king’s robes, seated on
the king’s throne, allowed to eat, drink, and
order whatever he chose, and even permit
ted to sleep with the king’s concubines.
But at the end of five days he was stripped
of his royal insignia, scourged, and crucified.
I need hardly point out the crucial impor
tance of this singular instance, occurring
in a country within the Semitic circle. Mr.
Frazer rightly concludes that the condemned
man was meant to die in the king’s stead ;
was himself, in point of fact, a king substi
tute ; and was therefore invested for the
time being with the fullest prerogatives of
royalty. Doubtless we have here to deal
with a modification of an older and sterner
rule, which compelled the king himself to
be slain annually. “ When the time drew
near for the king to be put to death,” says
Mr. Frazer, “he abdicated for a few days,
during which a temporary king reigned
and suffered in his stead. At first the
temporary king may have been an innocent
person, possibly a member of the king’s
own family; but, with the growth of
civilisation, the sacrifice of an innocent
person would be revolting to the public
sentiment, and accordingly a condemned
criminal would be invested with the brief
and fatal sovereignty........We shall find
other examples of a criminal representing
a dying god. For we must not forget that
the king is slain in his character of a god ;
his death and resurrection, as the only
means of perpetuating the divine life
unimpaired, being deemed necessary for
the salvation of his people and the world.”
I need not point out the importance of such
ideas as assisting in the formation of a
groundwork for the doctrines of Chris
tianity.
The annual character of some such
sacrifices seems to be derived from the
analogy of the annually-slain gods of
cultivation, whose origin and meaning we
have yet to examine. These gods, being
intimately connected with each year’s crop,
especially with crops of cereals, pulses,
and other annual grains, were naturally
put to death at the beginning of each
agricultural year, and as a rule about the
period of the spring equinox—say at
Easter. Starting from that analogy, as I
believe, many races thought it fit that the
other divine person, the man-god king,
should also be put to death annually, often
about the same period. And I will even
venture to suggest the possibility that the
institution of annual consuls, archons, etc.,
may have something to do with such
annual sacrifices. Certainly the legends of
Codrus at Athens and of the Regifugium
at Rome seem to point to an anci&üt kingslaying custom.
At any rate, it is now certain that the
putting to death of a public man-god was
a common incident of many religions.
And it is also clear that in many cases
travellers and other observers have made
serious mistakes by not understanding the
inner nature of such god-slaying practices.
For instance, it is now pretty certain that
Captain Cook was killed by the people of
Tahiti just because he was a god, perhaps
in order to keep his spirit among them. It
is likewise clear that many rites, commonly
interpreted as human sacrifices to a god,
are really god-slayings; often the god in
one of his human avatars seems to be
offered to himself, in his more permanent
embodiment as an idol or stone image.
This idea of sacrificing a god, himself to
himself, is one which will frequently meet
us hereafter ; and I need hardly point out
that, as “ the sacrifice of the mass,” it has
even enshrined itself in the central sanc
tuary of the Christian religion.
Christianity apparently took its rise
among a group of irregular northern
Israelites, the Galilaeans, separated from
the mass of their co-religionists, the Jews,
by the intervention of a heretical and
doubtfully Israelitish wedge, the Samari
tans. The earliest believers in Jesus were
thus intermediate between Jews and
Syrians. According to their own tradition,
they were first described by the name of
Christians at Antioch ; and they appear on
many grounds to have attracted attention
first in Syria in general, and particularly at
Damascus. We may be sure, therefore,
that their tenets from the first would
contain many elements more or less dis
tinctly Syrian, and especially such elements
as formed ideas held in common by almost
all the surrounding peoples. As a matter
of fact, Christianity, as we shall see here
after, may be regarded historically as a
magma of the most fundamental religious
ideas of the Mediterranean basin, and
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
especially of the eastern Mediterranean,
grafted on to the J ewish cult and the J ewish
scriptures, and clustering round the person
ality of the man-god, J esus. 11 is interesting,
therefore, to note that in Syria and the north
Semitic area the principal cult was the cult
of just such a slain man-god, Adonis—
originally, as Mr. Frazer shows, an annually
slain man-god, afterwards put to death and
bewailed in effigy, after a fashion of which
we shall see not a few examples in the
sequel, and of which the Mass itself is but
an etherealised survival. Similarly in Phry
gia, where Christianity early made a
considerable impression, the most devoutly
worshipped among the gods was Attis, who,
as Professor Ramsay suggests, was almost
certainly embodied in early times as an
annually slain man-god, and whose cult was
always carried on by means of a divine
king priest, bearing himself the name of
Attis. Though in later days the priest did
not actually immolate himself every year,
yet on the yearly feast of the god, at the
spring equinox (corresponding to the
Christian Easter), he drew blood from his
own arms, as a substitute no doubt for the
earlier practice of self-slaughter. And I
may add in this connection (to anticipate
once more) that in all such god-slaughtering
rites immense importance was always
attached to the blood of the man-god; just as
in Christianity “the blood of Christ” remains
to the end of most saving efficacy. Both
Adonis and Attis were conceived as young
men in the prime of life, like the victims
chosen for other god-slaying rites.
I have dealt in this chapter only in very
brief summary with this vast and interesting
question of human deities. Mr. Frazer has
devoted to it two large and fascinating
volumes. His work is filled with endless
facts as to such man-gods themselves, the
mode of their vicarious or expiatory slaugh
ter on behalf of the community, the gentler
substitution of condemned criminals for the
divine kings in more civilised countries, the
occasional mitigation whereby the divine
king merely draws his own blood instead of
killing himself, or where an effigy is made
to take the place of the actual victim, and
so forth ad infinitum. All these valuable
suggestions and ideas I could not reproduce
here without transcribing in full many pages
of The Golden Bough, where Mr. Frazer has
marshalled the entire evidence on the point
with surprising effectiveness.
9i
CHAPTER XII.
THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
Normally and originally, I believe, all
gods grow spontaneously. They evolve by
degrees out of dead and deified ancestors or
chieftains. The household gods are the
dead of the family ; the greater gods are
the dead chiefs of the state or town or
village. But upon this earlier and sponta
neous crop of gods there supervenes later
an artificial crop, deliberately manufactured.
The importance of this later artificial class
is so great, especially in connection with
the gods of agriculture, and with the habit
of eating the god’s body as corn and drink
ing his blood as wine, that it becomes
necessary for us here to examine their
nature in due order. We shall find that
some knowledge of them is needed pre
liminary to the comprehension of the
Christian system.
We saw that in West Africa the belief in
another world is so matter-of-fact and
material that a chief who wishes to com
municate with his dead father kills a slave
as a messenger, after first impressing upon
him the nature of the message he will have
to deliver. A Khond desired to be avenged
upon an enemy ; so he cut off the head of
his mother, who cheerfully suggested this
domestic arrangement, in order that her
ghost might haunt and terrify the offender.
Similar plenitude of belief in the actuality
and nearness of the Other World makes
attendants, wives, and even friends of a
dead man, in many countries, volunteer to
kill themselves at his funeral, in order that
they may accompany their lord and master
to the nether realms. All these examples
combine to show us two things : first, that
the other life is very real and close to the
people who behave so ; and, second, that
no great unwillingness habitually exists to
migration from this life to the next, if occa
sion demands it.
Starting with such ideas, it is not surpris
ing that many races should have delibe
rately made for themselves gods by killing
a man, and especially a man of divine or
kingly blood, the embodiment of a god, in
order that his spirit might perform some
specific divine function. Nor is it even
remarkable that the victim selected for
such a purpose should voluntarily submit
to death, often preceded by violent torture,
so as to attain in the end to a position of
�92
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
trust and importance as a tutelary deity.
We have only to remember the ease with
which Mohammedan fanatics will face
death, expecting to enjoy the pleasures of
Paradise, or the fervour with which Chris
tian believers used to embrace the crown of
martyrdom, in order to convince ourselves
of the reality and profundity of such a
sentiment. The further back we go in
time or culture, the stronger does the
sentiment in question become ; it is only
the civilised and sceptical thinker who
hesitates to exchange the solid comforts of
this world for the shadowy and uncertain
delights of the next
The existence of such artificially-manu
factured gods has been more or less recog
nised for some time past, and attention has
been called to one or other class of them
by Mi. Baring Gould and Mr. J. G. Frazer;
but 1 believe the present work will be the
first in which their profound importance
and their place in the genesis of the higher
religions have been fully pointed out in
systematic detail.
The best known instances of such delibe
rate god-making are those which refer to
the foundation of cities, city walls, and
houses. In such cases, a human victim is
often sacrificed in order that his blood may
be used as cement, and his soul be built in
to the very stones of the fabric. Thereafter
he becomes the tutelary deity or “fortune”
of the house or city. In many cases, the
victim offers himself voluntarily for the pur
pose ; frequently he is of kingly or divine
ancestry. In Polynesia, where we usually
stand nearest to the very core of religion,
Ellis heard that the central pillar of the
temple at Mseva was planted upon the body
of a human victim. Among the Dyaks of
Borneo a slave girl was crushed to death
under the first post of a house. In October,
1881, the king of Ashanti put fifty girls to
death that their blood might be mixed with
the mud used in the repair of the royal
buildings. Even in Japan, a couple of
centuries since, when a great wall was to be
built, “ some wretched slave would offer
himself as a foundation.” Observe in this
instance the important fact that the immo
lation was purely voluntary. Mr. Tylor, it
is true, treats most of these cases as though
the victim were intended to appease the
earth-demons, which is the natural inter
pretation for the elder school of thinkers to
put upon such ceremonies ; but those who
have read Mr. Frazer and Mr. Baring Gould
will know that the offering is really a piece
of deliberate god-making. Many of the
original witnesses, indeed, correctly report
this intention on the part of the perpetra
tors ; thus Mason was told by an eye
witness that at the building of the new city
of Tavoy in Tennasserim “ a criminal was
put in each post-hole to become a protect
ing demon,” or rather deity. So in Siam,
when a new city gate was being erected,
says Mr. Speth, officers seized the first four
or eight people who passed, and buried
them under it “ as guardian angels.” And
in Roumania a stahic is defined as “ the
ghost of a person who haa been immured
in the walls of a building in order to make
it more solid.” The Irish Banshee is doubt
less of similar origin.
Other curious examples are reported from
Africa, and human victims are said to have
been buried “ for spirit-watchers ” under the
gates of Mandelay. So, too, according to
legend, here a tolerably safe guide, a queen
was drowned in a Burmese reservoir, to
make the dyke safe ; while the choice for
such a purpose of a royal victim shows
clearly the desirability of divine blood being
present in the body of the future deity.
When Rajah Sala Byne was building the
fort of Sialkot in the Punjaub, the founda
tion gave way so often that he consulted a
soothsayer. The soothsayer advised that
the blood of an only son should be shed on
the spot; and the only son of a widow was
accordingly killed there. I may add that
the blood of “ an only-begotten son ” has
always been held to possess peculiar effi
cacy.
In Europe itself not a few traces survive
of such foundation-gods, or spirits of towns,
town-walls, and houses. The Picts are said
to have bathed their foundation-stones in
human blood. St. Columba himself, though
nominally a Christian, did not scruple thus
to secure the safety of his monastery.
“ Columbkille said to his people, ‘ It would
he well for us that our roots should pass
into the earth here.’ And he said to them,
‘ It is permitted to you that some one of
you go under the earth to consecrate it.’ ”
St. Oran volunteered to accept the task,
and was ever after honoured as the patron
saint of the monastery. Here again it may
be noted that the offering was voluntary.
As late as 1463, when the broken dam of
the Nogat had to be repaired, the peasants,
being advised to throw in a living man, are
said to have made a beggar drunk (in
which state he would of course be “full of
the god”) and utilised him for the purpose.
In 1885, on the restoration of Holsworthy
church in Devon, a skeleton with a mass
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
of mortar plastered over the mouth was
found imbedded in an angle of the
building. To make the castle of Liebenstein fast and impregnable, a child was
bought for hard money of its mother, and
walled into the building. Again, when the
church at Blex in Oldenburg was being
built, the authorities of the village crossed
the Weser, “ bought a child from a poor
mother at Bremerleke, and built it alive
into the foundations.” We shall see here
after that “ to be brought with a price ” is
a variant, as it were, on the voluntary
offering; great stress is often laid, when a
victim is offered, on this particular fact,
which is held to absolve the perpetrators
from the crime of god murder. So, we
shall see in the sequel, the divine animal
victim, which is the god offered to himself,
his animal embodiment to his image or
altar, must always consent to its own
sacrifice ; if it refuse or show the slightest
disinclination, it is no good victim. Legend
says that the child in the case of the
Liebenstein offering was beguiled with a
cake, probably so as to make it a con
senting party, and was slowly walled up
before the eyes of the mother. All these
details are full of incidental instructiveness
and importance.
As late as 1865,
according to Mr. Speth, some Christian
labourers, working at a block-house at
Duga, near Scutari, found two young
Christian children in the hands of Moham
medan Arnauts, who were trying to bury
them alive under the block-house.
It is about city walls that we oftenest
read such legendary stories. Thus the
wall of Copenhagen sank as fast as it was
built ; so they took an innocent little girl,
and set her at a table with toys and
eatables. Then, while she played and
eat, twelve master masons closed a vault
over her. In Italy the bridge of Arta fell
in, time after time, till they walled in the
master builder’s wife ; the last point being
a significant detail, whose meaning will
come out still more clearly in the sequel.
At Scutari in Servia, once more, the fortress
could only be satisfactorily built after a
human victim was walled into it; so the
three brothers who wrought at it decided
to offer up the first of their wives who
came to the place to bring them food.
(Compare the case of Jephtha’s daughter,
where the first living thing met by chance
is to be sacrificed to Jahweh.) So, too, in
Welsh legend, Vortigern could not finish
his tower till the foundation-stone was
wetted with “ the blood of a child born of
$3
a mother without a father ”—this episode
of the virgin-born infant being a common
element in the generation of man-gods, as
Mr. Sidney Hartland has abundantly
proved for us.
In one case cited above we saw a miti
gation of the primitive custom, in that a
criminal was substituted for a person of
royal blood or divine origin—a form of
substitution of which Mr. Frazer has
supplied abundant examples in other con
nections.
Still further mitigations are
those of building-in a person who has
committed sacrilege or broken some reli
gious vow of chastity. In the museum at
Algiers is a plaster cast of the mould left
by the body of one Geronimo, a Moorish
Christian (and therefore a recusant of
Islam), who was built into a block of
concrete in the angle of the fort in the
sixteenth century. Faithless nuns were so
immured in Europe during the middle
ages; and Mr. Rider Haggard’s statement
that he saw in the museum at Mexico
bodies similarly immured by the Inquisition
has roused so much Catholic wrath and
denial that one can hardly have any hesi
tation in accepting its substantial accuracy.
But in other cases the substitution has
gone further still ; instead of criminals,
recusants, or heretics, we get an animal
victim in place of the human one. Mr.
St. John saw a chicken sacrificed for a slave
girl at a building among the Dyaks of
Borneo. A lamb was walled-in under the
altar of a church in Denmark, to make it
stand fast; or the churchyard was han
selled by burying first a live horse—an
obvious parallel to the case of St. Oran.
When the parish church of Chumleigh in
Devonshire was taken down a few years
ago, in a wall of the fifteenth century was
found a carved figure of Christ, crucified
to a vine—a form of substitution to which
we shall find several equivalents later. In
modern Greece, says Dr. Tylor, to whom
I owe many of these instances, a relic of
the idea survives in the belief that the first
passer-by after a foundation-stone is laid
will die within the year; so the masons
compromise the matter by killing a cock
or a black lamb on the foundation-stone.
This animal then becomes the spirit of
the building.
We shall see reason to suspect, as we
proceed, that every slaughtered victim in
every rite was at first a divine-human
being ; and that animal victims are always
substitutes, though supposed to be equally
divine with the man-god they personate.
�94
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
I will ask the reader to look out for such
cases as we proceed, and also to notice,
even when I do not call attention to them,
the destination of the oracular head, and
the frequent accompaniment of “ clanging
music.”
Elsewhere we find other customs which
help to explain these curious survivals.
The shadow is often identified with the
soul; and in Roumania, when a new build
ing is to be erected, the masons endeavour
to catch the shadow of a passing stranger,
and then lay the foundation-stone upon it.
Or the stranger is enticed by stealth to
the stone, when the mason secretly
measures his body or his shadow, and
buries the measure thus taken under the
foundation. Here we have a survival of
the idea that the victim must at least be
not unwilling. It is believed that the
person thus measured will languish and
die within forty days ; and we may be sure
that originally the belief ran that his soul
became the god or guardian spirit of the
edifice. If the Bulgarians cannot get a
human shadow to wall in, they content
themselves with the shadow of the first
animal that passes by. Here again we get
that form of divine chance in the pointing
out of a victim which is seen in the case of
Jephtha’s daughter. Still milder substitu
tions occur in the empty coffin walled into
a church in Germany, or the rude images
of babies in swaddling-clothes similarly
immured in Holland. The last trace of
the custom is found in England in the
modern practice of putting coins and
newspapers under the foundation-stone.
Here it would seem as if the victim were
regarded as a sacrifice to the Earth (a late
and derivative idea), and the coins were
a money payment in lieu of the human
or animal offering. I owe many of the
cases here instanced to the careful re
search of my friend Mr. Clodd. But
since this chapter was written all other
treatises on the subject have been super
seded by Mr. Speth’s exhaustive and
scholarly pamphlet on “ Builders’ Rites
and Ceremonies,” a few examples from
which I have intercalated in my argument.
Other implications must be briefly
treated. The best ghost or god for this
purpose seems to be a divine or kingly
person; and in stages when the meaning
of the practice is still quite clear to the
builders, the dearly-beloved -son or wife of
the king is often selected for the honour of
tutelary godship. Later this notion passes
into the sacrifice of the child or wife of the
master mason ; many legends or traditions
contain this more recent element. In
Vortigern’s case, however, the child is
clearly a divine being, as we shall see to
be true a little later on in certain Semitic
instances. To the last, the connection of
children with such sacrifices is most
marked; thus, when in 1813 the ice on the
Elbe broke down one of the dams, an old
peasant sneered at the efforts of the
Government engineer, saying to him,
“ You will never get the dyke to hold un
less you first sink an irinbcent child under
the foundations.” Here the very epithet
“ innocent” in itself reveals some last echo
of godship. So too, in 1843, when a new
bridge was to be built at Halle in Germany,
the people told the architects that the pier
would not stand unless a living child was
immured under the foundations. Schrader
says that, when the great railway bridge
over the Ganges was begun, every mother
in Bengal trembled for her infant. The
Slavonic chiefs who founded Detinez “sent
out men to catch the first boy they met and
bury him in the foundation.” Here once
more we have the sacred-chance victim.
Briefly I would say there seems to be a
preference in all such cases for children,
and especially for girls ; of kingly stock, if
possible, but at least a near relation of the
master builder.
Mr. Speth points out that horses’ heads
were frequently fastened on churches or
other buildings, and suggests that they
belong to animal foundation-victims. This
use of the skull is in strict accordance with
its usual oracular destination.
Some notable historical or mythical tales
of town and village gods, deliberately
manufactured, may now be considered.
We read in First Kings that when Hiel the
Bethelite built Jericho “he laid the foun
dation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and
set up the gates thereof in his youngest
Segub.” Here we see evidently a princely
master builder sacrificing his own two sons
as guardian gods of his new city. Abun
dant traces exist of such deliberate pro
duction of a Fortune for a town. And it is
also probable that the original sacrifice was
repeated annually, as if to keep up the con
stant stream of divine life, somewhat after
the fashion of the human gods we had to
consider in the last chapter. Dido appears
to have been the Fortune or foundation
goddess of Carthage ; she is represented
in the legend as the foundress-queen, and
is said to have lept into her divine pyre
from the walls of her palace. But the
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
annual human sacrifice appears to have
been performed at the same place ; for “ it
can hardly be doubted,” says Professor
Robertson Smith, “ that the spot at which
legend placed the self-sacrifice of Dido to
her husband Sicharbas was that at which
the later Carthaginian human sacrifices
were performed.” At Laodicea, again, an
annual sacrifice took place of a deer, in lieu
of a maiden ; and this sacrifice, we are
expressly told, was offered to the goddess
of the city. Legend said that the goddess
was a maiden, who had been similarly
sacrificed to consecrate the foundation of
the town, and was thenceforth worshipped
as its Fortune, like Dido at Carthage; “it
was therefore the death of the goddess her
self,” says Professor Robertson Smith, “ that
was annually renewed in the piacular rite.”
(I do not admit the justice of the epithet
“piacular.”) Again, Malalas tells us that
the 22nd of May was kept at Antioch as the
anniversary of a maiden sacrificed at the
foundation of the city, and worshipped
thereafter as the Tyche, or luck, of the
town. At Duma in Arabia an annual
victim was similarly buried under the stone
which formed the altar.
In most of the legends, as they come
down to us from civilised and lettered
antiquity, the true nature of this sanguinary
foundation-rite is over-laid and disguised
by later rationalising guesses ; and I may
mention that Dr. Robertson Smith in par
ticular habitually treats the rationalising
guesses as primitive, and the real old
tradition of the slaughtered virgin as a myth
of explanation of “ the later Euhemeristic
Syrians.” But, after the examples we have
already seen of foundation-gods, I think it
can hardly be doubted that this is to
reverse the true order; that a girl was
really sacrificed for a tutelary deity when a
town was founded, and that the substitution
of an animal victim at the annual renewal
was a later refinement. Mr. Speth quotes
a case in point of a popular tradition that a
young girl had been built into the castle of
Nieder-Manderschied ; and when the wall
was opened in 1844 the Euhemeristic work
men found a cavity enclosing a human
skeleton. I would suggest, again, that in
the original legend of the foundation of
Rome, Romulus was represented as having
built-in his brother Remus as a Fortune, or
god, of the city, and that to this identifica
tion of Remus with the city we ought to
trace such phrases as turba Remi for the
Roman people. The word forum, in its
primitive signification, means the empty
95
space left before a tomb—the Ilan or
Hence I would suggest that the
Roman Forum and other Latin fora were
really the tomb-enclosures of the original
foundation-victims.1 So, too, the English
village-green and “ play-field ” are probably
the space dedicated to the tribal or village
god—a slain man-god ; and they are usually
connected with the sacred stone and sacred
tree. I trust this point will become clearer
as we proceed, and develop the whole
theory of the foundation god or goddess,
the allied sacred stone and the tree or trunk
memorial.
For, if I am right, the entire primitive
ritual of the foundation of a village con
sisted in killing or burying alive or building
into the wall a human victim, as town or
village god, and raising a stone and plant
ing a tree close by to commemorate him.
At these two monuments the village rites
were thereafter performed. The stone and
tree are thus found in their usual conjunc
tion ; both coexist in the Indian village to
the present day, as in the Siberian wood
land or the Slavonic forest. Thus, at Rome,
we have not only the legend of the death of
Remus, a prince of the blood-royal of Alba
Longa, intimately connected with the build
ing of the wall of Roma Quadrata, but we
have also the sacred fig-tree of Romulus in
the Forum, which was regarded as the em
bodiment of the city life of the combined
Rome, so that, when it showed signs of
withering, consternation spread through
the city ; and hard by we have the sacred
stone or Palladium, guarded by the sacred
Vestal Virgins who kept the city hearth
fire, and still more closely bound up with
the fortune of that secondary Rome which
had its home in the Forum. Are not these
three the triple form of the foundation-god
of that united Capitoline and Palatine
Rome ? And may not the sacred cornel on
the Palatine, again, have been similarly
the holy foundation-tree of that older Roma
Quadrata which is more particularly asso
ciated with the name of Romulus ? Of this
tree Plutarch tells us that, when it appeared
to a passer-by to be drooping, he set up a
hue and cry, which was soon responded to
by people on all sides rushing up with
buckets of water to pour upon it, as if they
were hastening to put out a fire. Clearly,
here again we have to deal with an em
bodied Fortune.
temenos.
1 In the case of Rome, the Forum would re
present the grave of the later foundation-god of
the compound Latin and Sabine city.
�96
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
We do not often get all three of these
Fortunes combined—the human victim, the
stone, and the tree, with the annual offer
ing which renews its sanctity. But we find
traces so often of one or other of the trio
that we are justified, I think, in connecting
them together as parts of a whole, whereof
here one element survives, and there
another. “Among all primitive communi
ties,” says Mr. Gomme, “ when a village
was first established, a stone was set up.
To this stone the headman of the village
made an offering once a year.” To the
present day London preserves her founda
tion-god in the shape of London Stone,
now enclosed in a railing or iron grill just
opposite Cannon - street Station. Now,
London Stone was for ages considered as
the representative and embodiment of the
entire community. Proclamations and other
important State businesses were announced
from its top; and the defendant in trials in
the Lord Mayor’s court was summoned to
attend from London Stone, as though the
stone itself spoke to the wrong-doer with
the united voice of the assembled citizens.
The first Lord Mayor, indeed, was Henry
de Lundonstone—no doubt, as Mr. Loftie
suggests, the hereditary keeper of this
urban fetish ; in short, the representative
of the village headman. I have written at
greater length on the implications of this
interesting relic in an article on London
Stone in Longman's Magazine, to which I
would refer the reader for further informa
tion. I will only add here the curious epi
sode of Jack Cade, who, when he forced
his way, under his assumed name of Morti
mer, into the city in 1450, first of all pro
ceeded to this sacred relic, the embodiment
or palladium of ancient London, and, having
struck it with his sword, exclaimed, “Now is
Mortimer lord of this city.”
A similar sacred stone exists to this day
at Bovey Tracey in Devon, of which Ormerod tells us that the mayor of Bovey used
to ride round it on the first day of his
tenure of office, and strike it with a stick—
which further explains Jack Cade’s-pro
ceeding. According to the Totnes Times
of May 13th, 1882, the young men of the
town were compelled on the same day to
kiss the magic stone and pledge allegiance
in upholding the ancient rites and privi
leges of Bovey. (I owe these details to
Mr. Lawrence Gomme’s Village Commu
nity.') I do not think we can dissociate
from these two cases the other sacred
stones of Britain, such as the King’s Stone
at Kingston in Surrey, where several of the
West Saxon kings were crowned ; nor the
Scone Stone in the coronation-chair at
Westminster Abbey; nor the Stone of
Clackmannan, and the sacred stones
already mentioned in a previous chapter
on which the heads of clans or of Irish septs
succeeded to the chieftainship of their re
spective families. These may in part have
been ancestral and sepulchral monuments;
but it is probable that they also partook in
part of this artificia^and factitious sanctity.
Certainly in some cases that sanctity was
renewed by an animal sacrifice.
With these fairly obvious instances I
would also connect certain other statements
which seem to me to have been hitherto
misinterpreted. Thus Mesha, king of
Moab, when he is close beleaguered, burns
his son as a holocaust on the wall of the
city. Is not this an offering to protect the
wall by the deliberate manufacture of an
additional deity? For straightway the be
siegers seem to feel they are overpowered,
and the siege is raised. Observe here once
more that it is the king’s own dearly-beloved
son who is chosen as victim. Again, at
Amathus, human sacrifices were offeied
to Jupiter Hospes “ before the gates ”; and
this Jupiter Hospes, as Ovid calls him, is
the Amathusian Herakles or Malika, whose
name, preserved for us by Hesychius,
identifies him at once as a local deity
similar to the Tyrian Melcarth. Was not
this again, therefore, the Fortune of the
city? At Tyre itself the sepulchre of
Herakles Melcarth was shown, where he
was said to have been cremated. For
among cremating peoples it was natural to
burn, not slaughter, the yearly god-victim.
At Tarsus, once more, there was an annual
feast, at which a very fair pyre was erected,
and the local Herakles or Baal was burned
on it in effigy. We cannot doubt, I think,
that this was a mitigation of an earlier
human holocaust. Indeed, Dr. Robertson
Smith says of this instance : “ This annual
commemoration of the death of the god in
fire must have its origin in an older rite, in
which the victim was not a mere effigy,
but a theanthropic sacrifice—i.e., an actual
man or sacred animal, whose life, according
to the antique conception now familiar to
us, was an embodiment of the divine-human
life.” This is very near my own view on
the subject.
From these instances we may proceed, I
think, to a more curious set, whose implica
tions seem to me to have been even more
grievously mistaken by later interpreters.
I mean the case of children of kings or of
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
ruling families, sacrificed in time of war or
peril as additional or auxiliary deities.
Thus Philo of Byblos says : “ It was an
ancient custom in a crisis of great danger
that the ruler of a city or nation should
give his beloved son to die for the whole
people, as a ransom offered to the avenging
demons ; and the children thus offered
were slain with mystic rites. So Cronus,
whom the Phoenicians call Israel, being
king of the land, and having an onlybegotten son called Jeoud (for in the
Phoenician tongue Jeoud signifies onlybegotten), dressed him in royal robes and
sacrificed him upon an altar in a time of war,
when the country was in great danger from
the enemy.” I do not think Philo is right
in his gloss or guess about the avenging
demons”; but otherwise his story is inte
resting evidence. It helps us more or less
directly to connect the common Phoenician
and Hebrew child-sacrifices with this
deliberate manufacture of artificial gods.
I do not doubt, indeed, that the children
were partly sacrificed to pre-existent and
well-defined great gods; but I believe also
that the practice first arose as one of
deliberate manufacture of gods, and
retained to the end many traces of its
origin.
We know that in times of national
calamity the Phoenicians used thus to
sacrifice their dearest to Baal. Phoenician
history, we know from Porphyry, is full of
such sacrifices. When the Carthaginians
were defeated and besieged by Agathocles,
they ascribed their disasters to the anger
of the god ; for whereas in former times
they used to sacrifice to him their own
children, they had latterly fallen (as we
shall see hereafter the Khonds did) into
the habit of buying children and rearing
them as victims. So two hundred young
people of the noblest families were picked
out for sacrifice ; and these were accom
panied by no less than three hundred
more, who volunteered to die for the
fatherland. They were sacrificed by being
placed, one by one, on the sloping hands
of the brazen image, from which they
rolled into a pit of fire. So too at
Jerusalem, in moments of great danger,
children were sacrificed to some Molech,
whether Jahweh or another, by being
placed in the fiery arms of the image at
the Tophet/ I will admit that in these last
cases we approach very near to the mere
piacular human sacrifice ; but we shall see,
when we come to deal with gods of
cultivation and the doctrine of the atone
97
ment, that it is difficult to draw a line
between the two ; while the fact that a
dearly-beloved or only-begotten son is the
victim—especially the son of a king of
divine blood—links such cases on directly
to the more obvious instances of deliberate
god-making. Some such voluntary sacrifice
seems to me to be commemorated in the
beautiful imagery of the 53rd of Isaiah.
But there the language is distinctly
piacular.
I have dwelt here mainly on that
particular form of artificial god-making
which is concerned with the foundation of
houses, villages, cities, walls, and fortresses,
because this is the commonest and most
striking case, outside agriculture, and
because it is specially connected with the
world-wide institution of the village or city
god. But other types occur in abundance ;
and to them a few lines must now be
devoted.
When a ship was launched, it was a
common practice to provide her with a
guardian spirit or god by making her roll
over the body of a human victim. The
Norwegian vikings used to “redden their
rollers ” with human blood. That is to say,
when a warship was launched, human
victims were lashed to the round logs over
which the galley was run down to the sea,
so that the stem was sprinkled with their
spurting blood. Thus the victim was in
corporated, as it were, in the very planks
of the vessel. Captain Cook found the
South Sea Islanders similarly christening
their war-canoes with blood. In 1784, says
Mr. William Simpson, at the launching of
one of the Bey of Tripoli’s cruisers, “ a
black slave was led forward and fastened
at the prow of the vessel to influence a
happy reception in the ocean.” And Mr.
Speth quotes a newspaper account of the
sacrifice of a sheep when the first caique
for “ Constantinople at Olympia ” was
launched in the Bosphorus. In many
other cases it is noted that a victim, human
or animal, is slaughtered at the launching
of a ship. Our own ceremony of breaking
a bottle of wine over the bows is the last
relic of this barbarous practice. Here as
elsewhere red wine does duty for blood, in
virtue of its colour. I do not doubt that
the images of gods in the bow of a ship
were originally idols in which the spirits
thus liberated might dwell, and that it was
to them the sailors prayed for assistance in
storm or peril. The god was bound up in
the very fabric of the vessel. The modern
figure-head still represents these gods;
H
�98
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
figure-heads essentially similar to the
domestic idols occur in New Zealand and
Polynesian war-canoes. The canoes of the
Solomon Islanders, for example, “ often
have as figure-head a carved representation
of the upper half of a man, who holds in
his hands a human head.” This head,
known as the “ canoe-god ” or “ charm,”
“ represents the life taken when the canoe
was first used.” A canoe of importance
“ required a life for its inauguration,” says
Dr. Codrington.
Another curious instance is to be found
in the customs and beliefs regarding river
gods. Rivers, I have suggested, are often
divine because they spring near or are con
nected with the grave of a hero. But often
their divinity has been deliberately given
them, and is annually renewed by a god
making sacrifice: just as at the Jewish
Passover an annual animal-victim was
slain, and his blood smeared on the lintels,
as a renewal of the foundation sacrifice.
The best instance I have found of this
curious custom is one cited by Mr. Gomme
from Major Ellis. Along the banks of the
Prah in West Africa there are many deities,
all bearing the common name of Prah, and
all regarded as spirits of the river. At each
town or considerable village along the
stream a sacrifice is held on a day about
the middle of October. The usual sacrifice
was two human adults, one male and one
female. The inhabitants of each village
believe in a separate spirit of the Prah, who
resides in some part of the river close to
their own hamlet. Everywhere along the
river the priests of these gods officiate in
groups of three, two male and one female—
an arrangement which is peculiar to the
river gods. Here, unless I mistake, we
have an obvious case of deliberate god
making.
This savage instance, and others like it,
which space precludes me from detailing,
suggest the conclusion that many river gods
are of artificial origin. The Wohhanda in
Esthonia received offerings of little children,
whom we may fairly compare with the
children immured in buildings or offered to
the Molech. Many other rivers sponta
neously take their victim annually ■ thus the
Devonshire rhyme goes—■
River of Dart, river of Dart,
Every year thou claimest a heart.
The Spey also takes one life each year, and
so do several British rivers elsewhere.
Originally, no doubt, the victim was delibe
rately chosen and slain annually; but
later on, as a mitigation of the custom, the
river itself seems to have selected its own
spirit by divine chance, such as we have
already seen in action more than once in
the earlier cases. In other words, if a
passer-by happened to be accidentally
drowned, he was accepted in place of a
deliberate victim.1 Hence the danger of
rescuing a man from drowning ; you inter
fere with the course of divine selection, and
you will pay for it yourself by being the
next victim. “ When, in the Solomon
Islands, a man accidentally falls into a
river, and a shark attacks him, he is not
allowed to escape. If he succeeds in eluding
the shark, his fellow-tribesmen throw him
back to his doom, believing him to be
marked out for sacrifice to the god of the
river.” Similarly, in Britain itself, the Lan
cashire Ribble has a water-spirit called Peg
o’ Nell, represented by a stone image, now
headless, which stands at the spring where
the river rises in the grounds of Waddon.
(Compare the Adonis tomb and grove by
the spring at Aphaca.) This Peg o’ Nell
was originally, according to tradition, a girl
of the neighbourhood; but she was done
to death by incantations, and now demands
every seven years that a life should be
quenched in the waters of the Ribble.
When “ Peg’s night ” came round at the
close of the septennate, unless a bird, a cat,
or a dog was drowned in the river, it was
sure to claim its human victim. This name
of Peg is evidently a corruption of some
old local Celtic or pre-Celtic word for a
nymph or water-spirit; for there is another
Peg in the Tees, known as Peg Powler;
and children used there to be warned
against playing on the banks of the stream,
for fear Peg should drag them into the
water. Such traces of a child sacrifice are
extremely significant.
I cannot do more than suggest here in
passing that we have in these stories and
practices the most probable origin of the
common myth which accounts for the exist
ence of river gods or river nymphs by
some episode of a youth or maiden drowned
there. Arethusa is the example that occurs
to everyone.
I do not deny that in many of these
cases two distinct ideas—the earlier idea
1 Here is an analogue in foundation sacrifices.
A house was being built at Hind Head while
this book was in progress. A workman fell from
a beam and was killed. The other workmen
declared this was Zzz<Zr for the house, and would
ensure its stability.
�THE MANUFACTURE OF GODS
of the victim as future god, and the later
idea of the victim as prey or sacrifice—have
got inextricably mixed up ; but I do think
enough has been said to suggest the
probability that many river-gods _ are
artificially produced, and that this is in
large part the origin of nymphs and
kelpies. Legend, indeed, almost always
represents them so ; it is only our mythologists, with their blind hatred of
Euhemerism, who fail to perceive the
obvious implication. And that even the
accidental victim was often envisaged as a
river-god, after his death, we see clearly
from the Bohemian custom of going to
pray on the river bank where a man has
been drowned, and casting into the river a
loaf of new bread and a pair of wax candles
—obvious offerings to his spirit.
Many other classes of manufactured gods
seem to me to exist, whose existence I
must here pass over almost in silence.
Such are the gods produced at the
beginning of a war, by human or other
sacrifice ; gods intended to aid the warriors
in their coming enterprise by being set
free from fleshly bonds for that very
purpose. Thus, according to Phylarchus,
a human sacrifice was at one time cus
tomary in Greece at the beginning of
hostilities ; and we know that as late as
the age of Themistocles three captives
were thus offered up before the battle of
Salamis. The sacrifice of Iphigenia is a
good legendary case in point, because it is
one of a virgin, a princess, the daughter of
the leader, and therefore a typical release
of a divine or royal spirit. Here, as usual,
later philosophising represents the act as
an expiation for mortal guilt; but we may
be sure the original story contained no
such ethical or piacular element. Among
the early Hebrews the summons to a war
seems similarly to have been made by
sending round pieces of the human victim;
in later Hebrew usage this rite declines
into the sacrifice of a burnt offering;
though we get an intermediate stage when
Saul sends round portions of a slaughtered
ox, as the Levite in Judges had sent round
the severed limbs of his concubine to rouse
the Israelites. In Africa a war is still
opened with a solemn sacrifice, human or
otherwise ; and Mr. H. O. Forbes gives a
graphic account of the similar ceremony
which precedes an expedition in the island
of Timor.
In conclusion, I will only say that a
great many other obscure rites or doubtful
legends seem to me explicable by similar
99
deliberate exercises of god-making. How
common such sacrifice was in agricultural
relations we shall see in the sequel; but 1
believe that even in other fields of life
future research will so explain many other
customs. The self-immolation of Codrus,
of Sardanapalus, of P. Decius Mus, as of
so many other kings or heroes or gods or
goddesses ; the divine beings who fling
themselves from cliffs into the sea ; M.
Curtius devoting himself in the gulf in the.
Forum ; the tombs of the lovers whom.
Semiramis buried alive : all these, I takeit, have more or less similar implications.
Even such tales as that of T. Manlius
Torquatus and his son must be assimilated,
I think, to the story of the king of Moab
killing his son on the wall, or to that of the
Carthaginians offering up their children to
the offended deity ; only, in later times, the ■
tale was misinterpreted and used to point
the supposed moral of the stern and
inflexible old Roman discipline.
Frequent reiteration of sacrifices seems
necessary, also, in order to keep up the
sanctity of images and sacred rites—toput, as it were, a new soul into. them.
Thus, rivers needed a fresh river-god every
year; and recently in Ashantee it wasdiscovered that a fetish would no longer
“ work ” unless human victims were
abundantly immolated for it.
This is also perhaps the proper place to
observe that just as the great god Baal has
been resolved by modern scholarship into
many local Baalim, and just as the great
god Adonis has been reduced by recent
research in each case to some particular
Adon or lord out of many, so each such
separate deity, artificially manufactured,
though called by the common name of the
Prah or the Tiber, yet retains to the last
some distinct identity. In fact, the great
gods appear to be rather classes than
individuals. That there were many
Nymphs and many Fauni, many Silvani
and many Martes, has long been known ;
it is beginning to be clear that there were
also many Saturns, many Jupiters, many
Junones, many Vestae. Even in Greece it
is more than probable that the generalised
names of the great gods were given in
later ages to various old sacred stones
and holy sites of diverse origin : the real
object of worship was in each case the
spontaneous or artificial god ; the name
was but a general title applied in common,
perhaps adjectivally, to several such
separate deities. In the Roman pan
theon this principle is now quite well
�IOO
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
established ; in the Semitic it is probable ;
in most others the progress of modern re
search is gradually leading up to it. Even
the elemental gods themselves do not
seem in their first origin to be really singu
lar ; they grow, apparently, from general
ised phrases, like our “ Heaven ” and
“ Providence,” applied at first to the par
ticular deity of whom at the moment the
speaker is thinking. The Zeus or Jupiter
varies with the locality. Thus, when the
Latin praetor, at the outbreak of the Latin
war, defied the Roman Jupiter, we may be
sure it was the actual god there visible
before him at whom he hurled his sacri
legious challenge, not the ideal deity in
the sky above his head. Indeed, we know
that each village and each farm had a
Jovis of its own, regarded as essentially a
god of wine, and specially worshipped at
the wine-feast in April, when the first cask
was broached. This individuality of the
gods is an important point to bear in
mind ; for the tendency of language is
always to treat many similar deities as
practically identical, especially in late and
etherealised forms of religion. And mythologists have made the most of this
syncretic tendency.
A single concrete instance will help to
make this general principle yet clearer.
Boundaries, I believe, were originally put
under the charge of local and artificial
deities, by slaughtering a human victim at
each turning-point in the limits, and erect
ing a sacred stone on the spot where he
died to preserve his memory. Often, too,
in accordance with the common rule, a
sacred tree seems to have been planted
beside the sacred stone monument. Each
such victim became forthwith a boundary
god, a protecting and watching spirit, and
was known thenceforth as a Hermes or a
Terminus. But there were many Hernias
and many Termini, not in Greece and
Italy alone, but throughout the world.
Only much later did a generalised god,
Hermes or Terminus, arise from the union
into a single abstract concept of all these
separate and individual deities. Once
more the boundary god was renewed each
year by a fresh victim. Our own practice
of “ beating the bounds ” appears to be
the last expiring relic of such annual sacri
fices. The bounds are beaten, apparently,
in order to expel all foreign gods or hostile
spirits ; the boys who play a large part in
the ceremony are the representatives of
the human victims. They are whipped at
each terminus stone, partly in order to
make them shed tears as a rain-charm
(after the fashion with which Mr. Frazer
has made us familiar), but partly also
because all artificially-made gods are
scourged or tortured before being put to
death, for some reason which I do not
think we yet fully understand. The
rationalising gloss that the boys are
whipped “ in order to make them re
member the boundaries ” is one of the
usual shallow explanations so glibly offered
by the eighteenth century. The fact that
the ceremony takes place at sacred stones
or “ Gospel oaks ” sufficiently proclaims its
original meaning.
The point of view of the god-slayers
cannot be more graphically put than in the
story which Mr. William Simpson relates of
Sir Richard Burton. Burton, it seems, was
exploring a remote Mohammedan region on
the Indian frontier, and in order to do so
with greater freedom and ease had dis
guised himself as a fakir of Islam. So
great was his knowledge of Muslim devo
tions that the people soon began to enter
tain a great respect for him as a most holy
person. He was congratulating himself
upon the success of his disguise, and look
ing forward to a considerable stay in the
valley, when one night one of the elders of
the village came to him stealthily, and
begged him, if he valued his own safety, to
go away. Burton asked whether the people
did not like him. The elder answered, yes ;
that was the root of the trouble. They had
conceived, in fact, the highest possible
opinion of his exceptional sanctity, and
they thought it would be an excellent thing
for the village to possess the tomb of so
holy a man. So they were casting about
now how they could best kill him. Whether
this particular story is true or not, it at least
exhibits in very vivid colours the state of
mind of the ordinary god-slayer.
CHAPTER XIII.
GODS OF CULTIVATION
By far the most interesting in the curious
group of artificially-made gods are those
which are sacrificed in connection with agri
culture. These deities appeal to us from
several points of view. In the first place,
they form, among agricultural races as a
whole, the most important and venerated
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
objects of worship. In the second place, it
is largely through their influence or on their
analogy, as I believe, that so many other
artificial gods came to be renewed or sacri
ficed annually. In the third place, it is the
gods of agriculture who are most of all
slain sacramentally, whose bodies are eaten
by their votaries in the shape of cakes of
' bread or other foodstuffs, and whose blood
is drunk in the form of wine. The imme
diate connection of these sacramental cere
monies with the sacrifice of the mass, and
the identification of the Christ with bread
and wine, give to this branch of our inquiry
a peculiar importance from the point of view
of the evolution of Christianity. We must,
therefore, enter at some little length into the
genesis of these peculiar and departmental
gods, who stand so directly in the mainline
of evolution of the central divine figure in
the Christian religion.
All over the world, wherever cultivation
exists, a special class of corn-gods or grain
gods is found, deities of the chief foodstuff
—be it maize, or dates, or plantain, or rice
—and it is a common feature of all these
gods that they are represented by human
or quasi-human victims, who are annually
slain at the time of sowing. These human
gods are believed to reappear once more in
the form of the crop that rises from their
sacred bodies; their death and resurrec
tion are celebrated in festivals ; and they
are eaten and drunk sacramentally by their
votaries, in the shape of first-fruits, or of
cakes and wine, or of some other embodi
ment of the divine being. We have, there
fore, to inquire into the origin of this curious
superstition, which involves, as it seems to
me, the very origin of cultivation itself as a
human custom. And I must accordingly
bespeak my readers’ indulgence if I diverge
for a while into what may seem at first a
purely botanical digression.
Most people must have been struck by
the paradox of cultivation. A particular
plant in a state of nature, let us say, grows
and thrives only in water, or in some
exceedingly moist and damp situation.
You take up this waterside plant with a
trowel one day, and transfer it inconti
nently to a dry bed in a sun-baked garden;
when lo! the moisture-loving creature,
instead of withering and dying, as one
might naturally expect of it, begins to grow
apace, and to thrive to all appearance even
better and more lustily than in its native
habitat. Or you remove some parched
desert weed from its arid rock to a moist and
rainy climate ; and instead of dwindling,
IOI
as one imagines it ought to do under the
altered conditions, it spreads abroad in the
deep rich mould of a shrubbery bed, and
attains a stature impossible to its kind
in its original surroundings. Our gardens,
in fact, show us side by side plants which,
in the wild state, demand the most varied
and dissimilar habitats. Siberian squills
blossom amicably in the same bed with
Italian tulips; the alpine saxifrage spreads
its purple rosettes in friendly rivalry with
the bog-loving marsh-marigold or the dry
Spanish iris. The question, therefore,
sooner or later occurs to the inquiring
mind : How can they all live together so
well here in man’s domain, when in the
outside world each demands and exacts so
extremely different and specialised a situa
tion?
Of course it is only an inexperienced
biologist who could long be puzzled by this
apparent paradox. He must soon see the
true solution of the riddle, if he has read
and digested the teachings of Darwin.
For the real fact is, in a garden or out of it,
most of these plants could get on very well
in a great variety of climates or situations
—if only they were protected against out
side competition. There we have the
actual crux of the problem. It is not that
the moisture-loving plants cannot live in
dry situations, but that the dry-loving
plants, specialised and adapted for the
post, can compete with them there at an
immense advantage, and so, in a very short
time, live them down altogether. Every
species in a state of nature is cpntinually
exposed to the ceaseless competition of
every other; and each on its own ground
can beat its competitors. But in a garden,
the very thing we aim at is just to restrict
and prevent competition; to give each
species a fair chance for life, even in condi
tions where other and better-adapted spe
cies can usually outlive it. This, in fact, isreally at bottom all that we ever mean by a
garden—a space of ground cleared, and
kept clear, of its natural vegetation (com
monly called in this connection 'weeds}, and
deliberately stocked with other plants, most
or all of which the weeds would live down
if not artificially prevented.
We see the truth of this point of view the
moment the garden is, as we say, aban
doned^—that is to say, left once more to the
operation of unaided nature. The plants
with which we have stocked it loiter on for
a while in a feeble and uncertain fashion,
but are ultimately choked out by the
stronger and better-adapted weeds which
�132
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
compose the natural vegetation of the
locality. The dock and nettle live down
in time the larkspur and the peony. The
essential thing in the garden is, in short,
the clearing of the ground from the weeds
—that is, in other words, from the native
vegetation. A few minor things may or
may not be added, such as manuring, turn
ing the soil, protecting with shelter, and so
forth ; but the clearing is itself the one
thing needful.
Slight as this point seems at first sight, I
believe it includes the whole secret of the
origin of tillage, and therefore, by implica
tion, of the gods of agriculture. For,
looked at in essence, cultivation is weeding,
and weeding is cultivation. When we say
that a certain race cultivates a certain plant-staple, we mean no more in the last resort
than that it sows or sets it in soil artificially
cleared of competing species. Sowing
without clearing is absolutely useless. So
the question of the origin of cultivation
resolves itself at last simply into this—how
did certain men come first to know that by
clearing ground of weeds and keeping it
clear of them they could promote the
growth of certain desirable human food
stuffs ?
To begin with, it may be as well to pre
mise that the problem of the origin of culti
vation is a far more complex one than
appears at first sight. For we have not
only to ask, as might seem to the inquirer
unaccustomed to such investigations, “How
did the early savage first find out that seeds
would grow better when planted in open
soil, already freed from weeds or natural
competitors ?” but also the other and far
more difficult question, “ How did the early
savage ever find out that plants would grow
from seeds at all ?” That, I take it, is the
real riddle of the situation, and it is one
which, so far as I know, has hitherto
escaped all inquirers into the history and
origin of human progress.
Fully to grasp the profound nature of this
difficulty we must throw ourselves back
mentally into the condition and position of
primitive man. We ourselves have known
so long and so familiarly the fact that plants
grow from seeds—that the seed is the
essential reproductive part of the vegetable
organism—that we find it hard to unthink
that piece of commonplace knowledge, and
to realise that what to us is an almost selfevident truth is to the primitive savage a
long and difficult inference. Our own
common and certain acquaintance with the
fact, indeed, is entirely derived from the
practice of agriculture. We have seen
seeds sown from our earliest childhood.
But before agriculture grew up, the con
nection between seed and seedling could
not possibly be known or even suspected
by primitive man. That the seed is the
reproductive part of the plant was a fact as
little likely in itself to strike him as that
the stamens were the male organs, or that
the leaves were the assimilative and diges
tive surfaces. He could only have found
out that plants grew from seeds by the ex
perimental process of sowing and growing
them. Such an experiment he was far from
likely ever to try for its own sake. He
must have been led to it by some other and
accidental coincidence.
Now, what was primitive man likely to
know and observe about the plants around
him ? Primarily one thing only : that some
of them were edible, and some were not.
There you have a distinction of immediate
interest to all humanity. And what parts
of plants were most likely to be useful to
him in this respect as foodstuffs ? Those
parts which the plant had specially filled up
with rich material for its own use or the
use of its offspring. The first are the roots,
stocks, bulbs, corms, or tubers in which it
lays by foodstuffs for its future growth ; the
second are the seeds which it produces and
enriches in order to continue its kind to
succeeding generations.
Primitive man, then, knows the fruits,
seeds, and tubers, just as the squirrel, the
monkey, and the parrot know them, as so
much good foodstuff, suitable to his pur
pose. But why should he ever dream of
saving or preserving some of these fruits or
seeds, when he has found them, and of
burying them in the soil, on the bare offchance that by pure magic, as it were, they
might give rise to others? No idea could
be more foreign to the nature and habits of
early man. In the first place, he is far
from provident; his way is to eat up at
once what he has killed or picked ; and, in
the second place, how could he ever come
to conceive that seeds buried in the ground
could possibly produce more seeds in
future? Nay, even if he did know it—
which is well-nigh impossible—would he
be likely, feckless creature that he is, to
save or spare a handful of seeds to-day in
order that other seeds might spring from
their burial-place in another twelvemonth ?
The savage, when he has killed a deer or a
game-bird, does not bury a part of it or an
egg of it in the ground, in the expectation
that it will grow into more deer or more
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
bird hereafter. Why, then, should he,
when he has picked a peck of fruits or wild
cereals, bury some of them in the ground,
and expect a harvest? Was there ever
any way in which primitive man could have
blundered blindfold upon a knowledge of
the truth, and could have discovered inci
dentally to some other function of his life
the two essential facts that plants grow
from seeds, and that the growth and supply
of useful food-plants can be artificially
increased by burying or sowing such seeds
in ground cleared of weeds—that is to say,
of the natural competing vegetation ?
I believe there is one way, and one way
only, in which primitive man was at all
likely to become familiar with these facts.
I shall try to show that all the operations
of primitive agriculture very forcibly point
to this strange and almost magical origin
of cultivation; that all savage agriculture
retains to the last many traces of its origin;
and that the sowing of the seed itself is
hardly considered so important and essen
tial a part of the complex process as certain
purely superstitious and bloodthirsty prac
tices that long accompany it. In one word,
not to keep the reader in doubt any longer,
I am inclined to believe that cultivation
and the sowing of seeds for crops had their
beginning as an adjunct of the primitive
burial system.
The one set of functions in which primi
tive men do actually perform all the essen
tial acts of agriculture, without in the least
intending it, is the almost universal act of
the burial of the dead. Burial is, so far as
I can see, the only object for which early
races, or low savages, ever turn or dig the
ground. We have seen already that the
original idea of burial was to confine the
ghost or corpse of the dead man by putting
a weight of earth on top of him ; and lest
this should be insufficient to keep him from
troublesome reappearances, a big stone was
frequently rolled above his mound or tumu
lus, which is the origin of all our monu
ments, now diverted to the honour and
commemoration of the deceased. But the
point to which I wish just now to direct
attention is this—that in the act of burial,
and in that act alone, we get a first be
ginning of turning the soil, exposing fresh
earth, and so incidentally eradicating the
weeds. We have here, in short, the first
necessary prelude to the evolution of agri
culture.
The next step, of course, must be the
sowing of the seed. And here, I venture
to think, funeral customs supply us with
103
the only conceivable way in which such
sowing could ever have begun. For early
men would certainly not waste the precious
seeds which it took them so much time and
trouble to collect from the wild plants
around them, in mere experiments on vege
table development. But we have seen that
it is the custom of all savages to offer at the
tombs of their ancestors, food and drink of
the same kind as they themselves are in the
habit of using. Now, with people in the
hunting stage, such offerings would no doubt
most frequently consist of meat, the flesh of
the hunted beasts or game-birds ; but they
would also include fish, fruits, seeds, tubers,
and berries, and in particular such rich
grains as those of the native pulses and
cereals. Evidence of such things being
offered at the graves of the dead has been
collected in such abundance by Dr. Tylor,
Mr. Frazer, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that
I need not here adduce any examples of so
familiar a practice.
What must be the obvious result? Here,
and here alone, the savage quite uncon
sciously sows seeds upon newly-turned
ground, deprived of its weeds, and further
manured by the blood and meat of the fre
quent sacrificial offerings. These seeds
must often spring up and grow apace, with
a rapidity and luxuriance which cannot fail
to strike the imagination of the primitive
hunter. Especially will this be the case
with that class of plants which ultimately
develop into the food-crops of civilised
society. For the peculiarity of these plants
is that they are one and all—maize, corn, or
rice, pease, beans, or millet—annuals of
rapid growth and portentous stature:
plants which have thriven in the struggle
for existence by laying up large stores of
utilisable material in their seeds for the use
of the seedling; and this peculiarity
enables them to start in life in each genera
tion exceptionally well endowed, and so to
compete at an advantage with all their
fellows. Seeds of such a sort would thrive
exceedingly in the newly-turned and wellmanured soil of a grave or barrow; and,
producing there a quantity of rich and
edible grain, would certainly attract the
attention of that practical and observant
man, the savage. For, though he is so
incurious about what are non-essentials,
your savage is a peculiarly long-headed
person about all that concerns his own
immediate advantage.
What conclusion would at once be forced
upon him ? That seeds planted in freshlyturned and richly-manured soil produce
�104
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
threefold and fourfold? Nothing of the
sort. He knows naught of seeds and
manures and soils ; he would at once con
clude, after his kind, that the dreaded and
powerful ghost in the barrow, pleased with
the gifts of meat and seeds offered to him,
had repaid those gifts in kind by returning
grain for grain a hundredfold out of his
own body. This original connection of
ideas seems to me fully to explain that
curious identification of the ghost or spirit
with the corn or other foodstuff which Mr.
Frazer has so wonderfully and conclusively
elaborated in The Golden Bough.
Just at first, under such circumstances,
the savage would no doubt be content
merely to pick and eat the seeds that thus
grew casually, as it were, on the graves or
barrows of his kings and kinsfolk. But in
process of time it would almost certainly
come about that the area of cultivation
would be widened somewhat. The first
step towards such widening, I take it, would
arise from the observation that cereals and
other seeds only throve exceptionally upon
newly-made graves, not on graves in
general. For, as soon as the natural
vegetation reasserted itself, the quickening
power of the ghost would seem to be used
up. Thus it might be found well to keep
fresh ghosts always going for agricultural
purposes. Hence might gradually arise a
habit of making a new grave annually, at
the most favourable sowing-time, which
last would come to be recognised by half
unconscious experiment and observation.
And this new grave, as I shall show reason
for believing a little later, would be the
grave, not of a person who happened to
die then and there accidentally, but of a
deliberate victim, slain in order to provide
a spirit of vegetation—an artificial god—
and to make the corn grow with vigour
and luxuriance. Step by step, I believe, it
would at length be discovered that, if only
you dug wide enough, the corn would grow
well around as well as upon the actual
grave of the divine victim. Thus slowly
there would develop the cultivated field,
the wider clearing, dug up or laboured by
hand, and finally the ploughed field, which
yet remains a grave in theory and in all
essentials.
I have ventured to give this long and
apparently unessential preamble, because
I wish to make it clear that the manufac
tured or artificial god of the corn-field or
other cultivated plot really dates back to
the very origin of cultivation. Without a
god, there would be no corn-field at all ;
and the corn-field, I believe, is long con
ceived merely as the embodiment of his
vegetative spirit. Nay, the tilled field is
often at our own day, and even in our own
country, a grave in theory.
It is a mere commonplace at the present
time to say that among early men and
savages every act of life has a sacred
significance ; and agriculture especially is
everywhere and always invested with a
special sanctity. To us, it would seem
natural that the act of sowing seed should
be regarded as purely practical and
physiological; that the seed should be
looked upon merely as the part of the
plant intended for reproduction, and that
its germination should be accepted as a
natural and normal process. Savages and
early men, however, have no such concep
tions. To them the whole thing is a piece
of natural magic ; you sow seeds, or, to be
more accurate, you bury certain grains of
foodstuff in the freshly-turned soil, with
certain magical rites and ceremonies ; and
then, after the lapse of a certain time,
plants begin to grow upon this soil, from
which you finally obtain a crop of maize or
wheat or barley. The burial of the seeds
or grains is only one part of the magical
cycle, no more necessarily important for the
realisation of the desired end than many
others.
And what are the other magical acts
necessary in order that grain-bearing plants
may grow upon the soil prepared for their
reception? Mr. Frazer has collected abun
dant evidence for answering that question,
a small part of which I shall recapitulate
here. At the same time I should like
it to be clearly understood that Mr. Frazer
is personally in no way responsible for the
use I here make ofhis admirable materials.
All the world over, savages and semi
civilised people are in the habit of sacrificing
human victims, whose bodies are buried in
the field with the seed of corn or other breadstuffs. Often enough the victim’s blood is
mixed with the grain in order to fertilise it.
The most famous instance is that of the
Khonds of Orissa, who chose special victims,
known as Meriahs, and offered them up to
ensure good harvests. The Meriah was
often kept years before being sacrificed.
He was regarded as a consecrated being,
and treated with extreme affection, mingled
with deference. A Meriah youth, on reach
ing manhood, was given a wife who was
herself a Meriah ; their offspring were all
brought up as victims. “ The periodical
sacrifices,” says Mr. Frazer, “were generally
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
so arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes
that each head of a family was enabled, at
least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh
for his fields, generally about the time when
his chief crop was laid down.” On the day
of the sacrifice, which was horrible beyond
description in its details, the body was cut
1o pieces, and the flesh hacked from it was
instantly taken home by the persons whom
each village had deputed to bring it. On
arriving at its destination, it was divided by
the priest into two portions, one of which
he buried in a hole in the ground, with his
back turned and without looking at it. Then
each man in the village added a little earth
to cover it, and the priest poured water over
the mimic tumulus. The other portion of
the flesh the priest divided into as many
shares as there were heads of houses present.
Each head of a house buried his shred in
his own field, placing it in the earth behind
his back without looking. The other
remains of the human victim—the head,
the bones, and the intestines —were burned
on a funeral-pile, and the ashes were
scattered over the fields, or mixed with the
new corn to preserve it from injury. Every
one of these details should be carefully
noted.
Now, in this case, it is quite clear to me
that every field is regarded as essentially a
grave ; portions of the divine victim are
buried in it; his ashes are mixed with the seed;
and from the ground thus treated he springs
again in the form of corn, or rice, or turmeric.
These customs, as Mr. Frazer rightly notes,
“ imply that to the body of the Meriah there
was ascribed a direct or intrinsic power of
making the crops to grow.” More than
that, it seems to me that the seed itself is
not regarded as sufficient to produce a crop:
it is the seed buried in the sacred grave with
the divine flesh which germinates at last
into next year’s foodstuffs.
A few other points must be noticed about
this essential case, which is one of the most
typical instances of manufactured godhead.
The Meriah was only satisfactory if he had
been purchased—“bought with a price,”
like the children who were built as founda
tion-gods into walls ; or else was the child
of a previous Meriah—in other words, was
of divine stock by descent and inheritance.
Khonds in distress often sold their children
as Meriahs, “ considering the beatification ”
(apotheosis, I would rather say) “of their
souls certain, and their death, for the
benefit of mankind, the most honourable
possible.” This sense of the sacrifice as a
case of “ one man dying for the people ” is
105
most marked in our accounts, and is espe
cially interesting from its analogy to Chris
tian reasoning. A man of the Panud tribe
was once known to upbraid a Khondbecause
he had sold for a Meriah his daughter
whom the Panud wished to marry; the
Khonds around at once comforted the in
sulted father, exclaiming, “ Your child died
that all the world may live.” Here and
elsewhere we have the additional idea of a
piacular value attached to the sacrifice,
about which more must be said in a subse
quent chapter. The death of the Meriah
was supposed to ensure not only good crops,
but also “immunity from all disease and
accident.” The Khonds shouted in his
dying ear, “ We bought you with a price ;
no sin rests with us.” It is also worthy of
notice that the victim was anointed with oil
—a point which recalls the very name of
Christus. Once more, the victim might not
be bound or make any show of resistance ;
but the bones of his arms and his legs were
often broken to render struggling impos
sible. Sometimes, however, he was stupe
fied with opium, one of the ordinary features
in the manufacture of gods, as we have
already seen, being such preliminary stupe
faction. Among the various ways in which
the Meriah was slain I would particularly
specify the mode of execution by squeezing
him to death in the cleft of a tree. I men
tion these points here, though they some
what interrupt the general course of our
argument, because of their great impor
tance as antecedents of the Christian theory.
In fact, I believe the Christian legend to
have been mainly constructed out of the
details of such early god-making sacrifices ;
I hold that Christ is essentially one such
artificial god ; and I trust the reader will
carefully observe for himself as we proceed
how many small details (such as the
breaking of the bones) recall in many
ways the incidents of the passion and the
crucifixion.
The Khonds, however, have somewhat
etherealised the conception of artificial god
making by allowing one victim to do for
many fields together. Other savages are
more prodigal of divine crop-raisers. The
Indians of Guayaquil, in South America,
used to sacrifice human blood and the
hearts of men when they sowed their fields.
The ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize
as a personal being who went through the
whole course of life between seed-time and
harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when
the maize was sown, older children when it
had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe,
�io6
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
when they sacrificed old men. The Paw
nees annually sacrificed a human victim in
spring, when they sowed their fields. They
thought that an omission of this sacrifice
would be followed by the total failure of the
crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins. In
the account of one such sacrifice of a girl
in 1837 or 1838, we are told : “While her
flesh was still warm, it was cut in small
pieces from the bones, put in little baskets,
and taken to a neighbouring corn-field.
Here the head chief took a piece of the
flesh from a basket, and squeezed a drop of
blood upon the newly-deposited grains of
corn. His example was followed by the
rest, till all the seed had been sprinkled
with the blood ; it was then covered up with
earth.”
In West Africa a tribal queen used to
sacrifice a man and woman in the month of
March. They were killed with spades and
hoes, and their bodies buried in the middle
of a field which had just been tilled. At
Lagos, in Guinea, it was the custom annually
to impale a young girl alive soon after the
spring equinox in order to secure good
crops. A similar sacrifice is still annually
offered at Benin. The Marimos, a Bechuana tribe, sacrifice a human being for
the crops. The victim chosen is generally
a short stout man. He is seized by violence
or intoxicated (note that detail) and taken
to the fields, where he is killed among the
wheat “ to serve as seed.” After his blood
has coagulated in the sun, it is burned;
the ashes are then scattered over the
ground to fertilise it.
In India, once more, the Gonds, like the
Khonds, kidnapped Brahman boys, and
kept them as victims to be sacrificed on
various occasions. At sowing and reaping,
after a triumphal procession, one of the
lads was killed by being punctured with a
poisoned arrow. His blood was then
sprinkled over the ploughed field or the
ripe crop, and his flesh was sacramentally
devoured. The last point again will call at
a later stage for further examination.
I will detail no more such instances (out
of the thousands that exist) for fear of
seeming tedious. But the interpretation I
put upon the facts is this. Originally, men
noticed that food-plants grew abundantly
from the laboured and well-manured soil
of graves. They observed that this rich
ness sprang from a coincidence of three
factors—digging, a sacred dead body, and
seeds of foodstuffs. In time, they noted
that, if you dug wide enough and scattered
seed far enough, a single corpse was
capable of fertilising a considerable area.
The grave grew into the field or garden.
But they still thought it necessary to bury
some one in the field ; and most of the
evidence shows that they regarded this
victim as a divine personage; that they
considered him the main source of growth
or fertility ; and that they endeavoured to
deserve his favour by treating him well
during the greater part of his lifetime. For
in many of the accounts it is expressly
stated that the intended victim was treated
as a god or as a divine king, and was sup
plied with every sort of luxury up to the
moment of his immolation. In process of
time, the conception of the field as differing
from the grave grew more defined, and the
large part borne by seed in the procedure
was more fully recognised. Even so, how
ever, nobody dreamed of sowing the seed
alone without the body of a victim. Both
grain and flesh or blood came to be re
garded alike as “ seed ” : that is to say, the
concurrence of the two was considered
necessary to produce the desired effect of
germination and fertility. Till a very late
period, either the actual sacrifice or some
vague remnant of it remained as an essen
tial part of cultivation. From Mr. Frazer’s
work and from other sources, I will give a
few instances of these last dying relics of
the primitive superstition.
Mr. Gomme, in his Ethnology in Folklore,
supplies an account of a singular village
festival in Southern India. In this feast, a
priest, known as the Potraj, and especially
armed with a divine whip, like the scourge
of Osiris, sacrifices a sacred buffalo, which
is turned loose when a calf, and allowed to
feed and roam about the village. In that
case, we have the common substitution of
an animal for a human victim, which
almost always accompanies advancing
civilisation. At the high festival the head
of the buffalo was struck off at a single
blow, and placed in front of the shrine of
the village goddess. Around wrere placed
vessels containing the different cereals, and
hard -by a heap of mixed grains with a
drill-plough in the centre. The carcase
was then cut up into sfnall pieces, and each
cultivator received a portion to bury in his
field. The heap of grain was finally divided
among all the cultivators, to be buried by
each one in his field with the bit of flesh.
At last, the head, that very sacred part,
was buried before a little temple, sacred to
the goddess of boundaries. The goddess
is represented by a shapeless stone—no
doubt a Terminus, or rather the tombstone
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
of an artificial goddess, a girl buried under
an ancient boundary-mark. Here we have
evidently a last stage of the same ritual
which in the case of the Khonds was per
formed with a human victim. It is worth
while noting that, as part of this ceremony,
a struggle took place for portions of the
victim.
A still more attenuated form of the same
ceremony is mentioned by Captain Hark
ness and others, as occurring among the
Badagas of the Nilgiri Hills. Among these
barbarians the first furrow is ploughed by
a low-caste Kurrumbar, who gives his bene
diction to the field, without which there
would be no harvest. Here the member
of the aboriginal race is clearly looked upon
as a priest or kinsman of the local gods,
whose co-operation must be obtained by
later intrusive races. But the Kurrumbar
does not merely bless the field ; he also
sets up a stone in its midst; and then, pros
trating himself before the stone, he sacri
fices a goat, the head of which he keeps as
his perquisite. This peculiar value of the
oracular head retained by the priest is also
significant. When harvest-time comes the
same Kurrumbar is summoned once more,
in order that he may reap the first handful
of corn—an episode the full importance of
which will only be apparent to those who
have read Mr. Frazer’s analysis of harvest
customs. But in this case also the appear
ance of the sacred stone is pregnant with
meaning. We can hardly resist the infer
ence that we have here to do with the
animal substitute for a human sacrifice of
the god-making order, in which the victim
was slaughtered, a stone set up to mark the
site of the sacrifice, and the head preserved
as a god to give oracles, in the fashion
with which we are already familiar.
Here is a striking example from Mr.
Gomme’s Ethnology in Folklore, the ana
logy of which with preceding instances will
at once be apparent:—
“ At the village of Holne, situated on one
of the spurs of Dartmoor, is a field of about
two acres, the property of the parish, and
called the Ploy Field.' In the centre of
this field stands a granite pillar (Menhir)
six or seven feet high. On May-morning,
before day-break, the young men of the
village used to assemble there, and then
proceed to the moor, where they selected
a ram lamb, and, after running it down,
brought it in triumph to the Ploy Field,
fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, and
then roasted it whole, skin, wool, etc. At
midday a struggle took place, at the risk
107
of cut hands, for a slice, it being supposed
to confer luck for the ensuing year on the
fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry
the young men sometimes fought their way
through the crowd to get a slice for the
chosen among the young women, all of
whom, in their best dresses, attended the
Ram Feast, as it was called. Dancing,
wrestling, and other games, assisted by
copious libations of cider during the after
noon, prolonged the festivity till mid
night.”
Here again we get several interesting
features of the primitive ritual preserved
for us. The connection with the stone
which enshrines the original village deity is
perfectly clear. This stone no doubt repre
sents the place where the local foundation
god was slain in very remote ages ; and it
is therefore the proper place for the annual
renewal sacrifices to be offered. The selec
tion of May-morning for the rite; the ■
slaughter at the stone pillar ; the roasting
of the beast whole ; the struggle for the
pieces ; and the idea that they would con
fer luck, all show survival of primitive
feeling. So does the cider, sacramental
intoxication being an integral part of all
these proceedings. Every detail, indeed,
has its meaning for those who look close ;
for the struggle at midday is itself signifi
cant, as is also the prolongation of the feast
till midnight. But we miss the burial of
the pieces in the fields ; in so far, the primi
tive object of the rite seems to have been
forgotten or overlooked in Devonshire.
Very closely bound up with the artificial
gods of cultivation are the terminal gods
with whom I dealt in the last chapter ; so
closely that it is sometimes impossible to
separate them. We have already seen
some instances of this connection ; the pro
cession of the sacred victim usually ends
with a perlustration of the boundaries. This ■
perlustration is often preceded by the head.
of the theanthropic victim. Such a cere
mony extends all over India; in France
and other European countries it survives in
the shape of the rite known as Blessing the
Fields, where the priest plays the same part
as is played among the Nilgiri hillsmen by
the low-caste Kurrumbar. In this rite the
Host is carried round the bounds of the
parish, as the head of the sacred buffalo is
carried round at the Indian festival. In
some cases every field is separately visited.
I was told as a boy in Normandy that a
portion of the Host (stolen or concealed, I
imagine) was sometimes buried in each
field ; but of this curious detail I can now
�io8
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
obtain no confirmatory evidence, and I do
not insist upon it. We must remember,
however, that the Host is the body of
Christ, and that its presence in such cases
is the exact analogue of the carrying round
the pieces of the Meriah. In England the
ceremony merges into that of Beating the
Bounds, already described; though I
believe the significance of the boy-victims,
and the necessity for whipping them as a
rain-charm, will now be more apparent
than when we last met with it.
In many cases, all the world over,
various animals come to replace the human
victim-god. Thus we learn from Festus
that the Romans sacrificed red-haired
puppies in spring, in the belief that the
crops would thus grow ripe and ruddy;
and there can be little doubt that these
puppies, like the lamb sacrificed at Holne,
were a substitute for an original human
victim. Even so, the Egyptians, as we
shall see, sacrificed red-haired men as the
representatives of Osiris, envisaged as a
corn-god. In some cases, indeed, we have
historical evidence of the human god being
^replaced at recent dates by a divine animal
victim ; for example, in Chinna Kimedy,
. after the British had suppressed human
- sacrifices, a goat took the place of the
• -sacred Meriah.
Mannhardt has collected much evidence
- 'of the curious customs still (or lately)
■ existing in modern Europe, which look like
■ survivals in a very mitigated form of the
• same superstition. These are generally
. known by the name of “ Carrying out
Death,” or “ Burying the Carnival.” They
. are practised in almost every country of
JEurope, and relics of them survive even in
^England. The essence of these cerei ^monies consists in an effigy being substi• ;tuted for the human victim. This effigy is
' treated much as the victim used to be.
' Sometimes it is burned, sometimes thrown
'»into a river, and sometimes buried piecejneal. In Austrian Silesia, for example,
•the effigy is burned, and while it is burning
,a general struggle takes place for the
pieces, which are pulled out of the flames
with bare hands. (Compare the struggle
among the Khonds, and also at the Potraj
festival and the Holne sacrifice.) Each
person who secures a fragment of the
figure ties it to a branch of the largest tree
in his garden, or buries it in his field, in
the belief that this causes the crops to
grow better. Sometimes a sheaf of corn
does duty for the victim, and portions of it
^re buried in each field as fertilisers. In
the Hartz Mountains, at similar ceremonies, .
a living man is laid on a baking-trough
and carried with dirges to a grave ; but a
glass of brandy is substituted for him at
the last moment. Here the spirit is the
equivalent of a god. In other cases the
man is actually covered with straw, and so
lightly buried. In Italy and Spain a
similar custom bore the name of “ Sawing
the Old Woman.” In Palermo a real old
woman was drawn through the streets on
a cart, and made to mount a scaffold,
where two mock executioners proceeded to
saw through a bladder of blood which had
been fitted to her neck. The blood gushed
out, and the old woman pretended to swoon
and die. This is obviously a mitigation of
a human sacrifice. At Florence an effigy
stuffed with walnuts and dried figs repre
sented the Old Woman. At mid-Lent
this figure was sawn through the middle
in the Mercato Nuovo, and when the dried
fruits tumbled out they were scrambled for
by the crowd, as savages scrambled for
fragments of the human victim or his
animal representative.
Upon all this
subject a mass of material has been
collected by Mannhardt and Mr. Frazer.
Perhaps the most interesting case of all is
the Russian ceremony of the Funeral of
Yarilo. In this instance the people chose
an old man and gave him a small coffin
containing a figure representing Yarilo.
This he carried out of the town, followed
by women chanting dirges, as the Syrian
women mourned for Adonis, and the
Egyptians for Osiris. In the open fields a
grave was dug, and into it the figure was
lowered amid weeping and wailing.
Myth and folk-lore also retain many
traces of the primitive connection. Thus,
in the genuine American legend of Hia
watha, the hero wrestles with and van
quishes Mondamin, and w’here he buries
him springs up for the first time the maize,
or Indian-corn plant. Similar episodes
occur in the Finnish Kalevala and other
barbaric epics.
In order to complete our preliminary
survey of these artificial gods of cultivation,
before we proceed to the consideration of
the great corn-gods and wine-gods, it may ;
be well to premise that in theory at least
the original victim seems to have been a
king or chief, himself divine, or else at
least a king’s son or daughter, one of the
divine stock, in whose veins flowed the
blood of the earlier deities. Later on, it
would seem, the temporary king was often
allowed to do duty for the real king ; and
�GODS OF CULTIVATION
for this purpose he seems frequently to
have been clad in royal robes, and treated
with divine and royal honours. Examples
of this complication will crop up in the
sequel. For the present I will only refer
to the interesting set of survivals, collected
by Mr. Gomme, where temporary kings or
mayors in England are annually elected,
apparently for the sake of being sacrificed
only. In many of these cases we get mere
fragmentary portions of the original rite ;
but by piecing them all together we obtain
on the whole a tolerably complete picture
of the original ceremonial observance. At
St. Germans, in Cornwall, the mock mayor
was chosen under the large walnut-tree at
the May-fair; he was made drunk over
night, in order to fit him for office, and was in
that state drawn round the nut-tree, much
as we saw the mayor of Bovey rode round
the Bovey stone on his accession to the
mayoralty. The Mayor of St. Germans
also displayed his royal character by being
mounted on the wain or cart of old Teutonic
and Celtic sovereignty. At Lostwitliiel the
mock mayor was dressed with a crown on
his head, and a sceptre in his hand,
and had a sword borne before him. At
Penrhyn the mayor was preceded by
torch-bearers and town sergeants, and
though he was not actually burnt, either in
play or in effigy, bonfires were lighted, and
fireworks discharged, which connect the
Geremony with such pyre-sacrifices of
cremationists as the festival of the Tyrian
Melcarth and the Baal of Tarsus. On
Halgaver Moor, near Bodmin, a stranger
was arrested, solemnly tried in sport, and
then trained in the mire or otherwise illtreated. At Polperro the mayor was
generally “ some half-witted or drunken
fellow,” in either case, according to early
ideas, divine ; he was treated with ale, and,
“having completed the perambulation of
the town,” was wheeled by his attendants
into the sea. There he was allowed to
scramble out again, as the mock victim
does in many European ceremonies ; but
originally, I do not doubt, he was drowned
as a rain-charm.
These ceremonies, at the time when our
authorities learnt of them, had all degene
rated to the level of mere childish pastimes ;
but they contain in them, none the less,
persistent elements of most tragic signifi
cance, and they point back to hideous and
sanguinary god-making festivals. In most
of them we see still preserved the choice
of the willing or unconscious victim ; the
preference for a stranger, a fool, or an
109
idiot; the habit of intoxicating the chosen
person; the treatment of the victim as
king, mayor, or governor; his scourging or
mocking ; his final death ; and his burning
on a pyre, or his drowning as a rain
charm. All these points are still more
clearly noticeable in the other form of
survival where the king or divine victim
is represented, not by a mock or temporary
king, but by an image or effigy. Such is the
common case of King Carnival, who is at
last burnt in all his regalia, or thrown into
a river.
The general conclusion I would incline
to draw from all these instances is briefly
this. Cultivation probably began with the
accidental sowing of grains upon the tumuli
of the dead. Gradually it was found that,
by extending the dug or tilled area and sow
ing it all over, a crop would grow upon it,
provided always a corpse was buried in the
centre. In process of time divine corpses
were annually provided for the purpose, and
buried with great ceremony in each field.
By-and-bye it was found sufficient to offer
up a single victim for a whole tribe or vil
lage, and to divide his body piecemeal
among the fields of the community. But
the crops that grew in such fields were still
regarded as the direct gifts of the dead and
deified victims, whose soul was supposed to
animate and fertilise them. As cultivation
spread, men became familiarised at last
with the conception of the seed and the
ploughing as the really essential elements
in the process ; but they still continued to
attach to the victim a religious importance,
and to believe in the necessity of his pre
sence for good luck in the harvest. With
the gradual mitigation of savagery an
animal sacrifice was often substituted for
a human one; but the fragments of the
animal were still distributed through the
fields with a mimic or symbolical burial,
just as the fragments of the man-god had
formerly been distributed. Finally, under
the influence of Christianity and other civi
lised religions, an effigy was substituted for
a human victim, though an animal sacrifice
was often retained side by side with it, and
a real human being was playfully killed in
pantomime.
In early stages, however, I note that the
field or garden sometimes reta'ns the form
of a tumulus. Thus Mr. Turner, the
Samoan missionary, writes of the people of
Tana, in the New Hebrides :—
“ They bestow a great deal of labour on
their yam plantations, and keep them in
fine order. You look over a reed fence,
�no
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
and there you see ten or twenty mounds of
earth, some of them seven feet high and
sixty in circumference. These are heaps of
loose earth without a single stone, all
thrown up by the hand. In the centre they
plant one of the largest yams whole, and
round the sides some smaller ones.”
This looks very much like a tumulus in
its temenos. I should greatly like to know
whether a victim is buried in it.
I may add that the idea of the crop being
a gift from the deified ancestor or the
divine-human victim is kept up in the
common habit of offering the first-fruits to
the dead, or to the gods, or to the living
chief, their representative and descendant.
Our own harvest-festival seems to preserve
the offering in a Christianised form.
Finally, I will add that in many cases it
looks as though the divine agriculture
victim were regarded as the king in person,
the embodiment of the village or tribal god,
and were offered up, himself to himself, at
the stone which forms the monument and
altar of the primitive deity. Of this idea
we shall see examples when we go on to
examine the great corn-gods and wine-gods ■
.of the Mediterranean region.
CHAPTER XIV.
CORN- AND WINE-GODS
In advanced communities the agricultural
gods with whom we dealt in the last
chapter come to acquire specific class
names, such as Attis and Adonis ; are
specialised as corn-gods, wine-gods, gods
of the date-palm, or gods of the harvest;
and rise to great distinction in the various
religions.
I propose to examine at some length the
more important of these in the Mediter
ranean civilisations, where Christianity was
first evolved. And I begin with Dionysus.
One of the notable features of the Potraj
festival of southern India, of which I gave
a brief abstract in the previous chapter, is
its orgiastic character. As type of the
orgiastic god-making ceremonies, with
their five-day festival, it well deserves some
fuller description. The feast takes place
near the temple of the village goddess, who
is worshipped in the form of an unshapely
stone, stained red with vermillion, the pro
bable representative of the first human
foundation-victim. An altar was erected
behind this temple to the god who bears
the name of Potraj. He is a deity of culti
vation. The festival itself was under the
charge of the Pariahs, or aboriginal out
casts ; it was attended by all the lowest
classes, including the dancing girls of the
temple and the shepherds or other “non
Aryan ” castes. During the festival these
people took temporarily the first place in
the village ; they appeared to form the
court of the temporary king, and to repre
sent the early local worship, whose gods
the conquering races are afraid of offending.
For since the dead of the conquered race
are in possession of the soil, immigrant
conquerors everywhere have a superstitious
dread of incurring their displeasure. On
the first day of the orgy the low-caste
people chose one of themselves as priest or
Potraj.
On the second day of the feast the
sacred buffalo, already described as having
the character of a theanthropic victim, was
thrown down before the goddess ; its head
was struck off at a single blow, and was
placed in front of the shrine, with one leg
in its mouth. The carcase, as we saw
already, was then cut up, and delivered to
the cultivators to bury in their fields. The
blood and offal were afterwards collected
into a large basket ; and the officiating
priest, a low-caste man, who bore (like the
god) the name of Potraj, taking a live kid,
hewed it in pieces over the mess. The
basket was then placed on the head of a
naked man, of the leather-dresser class,
who ran with it round the circuit of the
village boundaries, scattering the fragments
right and left as he went. The Potraj was
armed with a sacred whip, like Osiris ; and
this whip was itself the object of profound
veneration.
On the third and fourth days many
buffaloes and sheep were slaughtered ; and
on the fourth day women walked naked to
the temple, clad in boughs of trees alone—
a common religious exercise, of which I
have only space here to suggest that St.
Elizabeth of Hungary and the Godiva pro-cession at Coventry are surviving relics.
(These relations have well been elucidated
by Mr. Sidney Hartland.)
On the fifth and last day the whole com
munity marched with music to the village
temple, and offered a concluding sacrifice
at the Potraj altar. A lamb was concealed
close by. The Potraj, having found it after
a pretended search, rendered it insensible
by a blow of his whip, or by mesmeric
�CORN- AND WINE-GODS
passes—a survival of the idea of the volun
tary victim. ■' Then the assistants tied the
Potraj’s hands behind his back, and the
whole party began to dance round him with
orgiastic joy. Potraj joined in the excite
ment, and soon came under the present
influence of the deity. He was led up,
bound, to the place where the lamb lay
motionless. ■ Carried away with divine
frenzy, he rushed at it, seized it with his
teeth, tore through the skin, and eat into
its throat. When it was quite dead, he
was lifted up ; a dishful of the meat-offering
was presented to him ; he thrust his blood
stained face into it, and it was then buried
with the remains of the lamb beside the
altar. After that his arms were untied, and
he fled the place. I may add that as a rule
the slaughterer of the god everywhere has
to fly from the vengeance of his worshippers,
who, after participating in the attack, pre
tend indignation as soon as the sacrifice is
completed.
The rest of the party now adjourned to
the front of the temple, where a heap of
grain deposited on the first day was divided
among all the cultivators, to be sown by
each one in the field with his piece of flesh.
After this, a distribution was made of the
piled-up heads of the buffaloes and sheep
slaughtered on the third and fourth days.
These were evidently considered as sacred
as divine heads generally in all countries
and ages. About forty of the sheeps’ heads
were divided among certain privileged per
sons ; for the remainder a general scramble
took place, men of all castes soon rolling
together on the ground in a mess of putrid
gore. For the buffaloes’ heads, only the
Pariahs contended. Whoever was fortu
nate enough to secure one of either kind
carried it off and buried it in his field. Of
the special importance of the head in all
such sacrifices Mr. Gomme has collected
many apposite examples.
The proceedings were terminated by a
procession round the boundaries : the
burial of the head of the sacred buffalo
close to the shrine of the village goddess ;
and the outbreak of a perfect orgy, a “rule
of misrule,” during which the chief musician
indulged in unbridled abuse of all the
authorities, native or British.
I have given at such length an account
of this singular festival, partly because it
sheds light upon much that has gone
before, but partly also because it helps to
explain many elements in the worship of
the great corn- and wine-gods. One point
of cardinal importance to be noticed here
hi
is that the officiating priest, who was at one
time also both god and victim, is called
Potraj like the deity whom he represents.
So, too, in Phrygia the combined Attisvictim and Attis-priest bore the name of
Attis ; and so in Egypt the annual Osirisoffering bore the name of Osiris, whom he
represented.
If I am right, therefore, in the analogy of
the two feasts, Dionysus was in his origin a
corn-god, and later a vine-god, annually
slain and buried in order that his blood
might fertilise the field or the vineyard. In
the Homeric period he was still a general
god of cultivation : only later did he be
come distinctively the grape-god and wine
deity. There was originally, I believe, a
Dionysus in every village ; and this divine
victim was annually offered, himself to him
self, with orgiastic rites like those of Potraj.
Mr. Laurence Gomme has already in part
pointed out this equation of the Hellenic
and the Indian custom. The earliest form
of Dionysus-worship, on this hypothesis,
would be the one which survived in Chios
and Tenedos, where a living human being
was orgiastically torn to pieces at the feast
of Dionysus. At Orchomenus the human
victim was by custom a woman of the
family of the Oleiae (so that there were
women Dionysi): at the annual festival
the priest of Dionysus pursued these women
with a drawn sword, and if he caught one
he had the right to slay her. (This is the
sacred-chance victim.) In other places
the ceremony had been altered in historical
times ; thus at Potniae, in Bceotia, it was
once the custom to slay a child as Dionysus;
but later on a goat, which was identified
with the god, was substituted for the origi
nal human victim. The equivalence of the
animal victim with the human god is shown
by the fact that at Tenedos the new-born
calf sacrificed to Dionysus—or as Dionysus
—was shod in buskins, while the mother
cow was tended like a woman in childbed.
Elsewhere we find other orgiastic rites
still more closely resembling the Indian
pattern. Among the Cretans a Dionysus
was sacrificed biennially under the form of
a bull; and the worshippers tore the living
animal to pieces wildly with their teeth.
Indeed, says Mr. Frazer, the rending and
devouring of live bulls and calves seems to
have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites. In some cities, again, the animal
that took the place of the human victim
was a kid. When the followers of Diony
sus tore in pieces a live goat and drank its
blood, they believed they were devouring
�112
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
the actual body and blood of the god. This
eating and drinking the god is an important
point.
I do not desire to dwell too long upon
any one deity, or rather class of deities ;
therefore I will say briefly here that when
Dionysus became the annual or biennial
vine-god victim, it was inevitable that his
worshippers should have seen his resurrec
tion and embodiment in the vine, and
should have regarded the wine it yielded
as the blood of the god. In this case the
identification was particularly natural, for
could not every worshipper feel the god in
the wine? and did not the divine spirit
within it inspire and intoxicate him ? To
be “ full of the god ” was the natural ex
pression for the resulting exhilaration : the
cult of the wine-spirit is thus one of those
which stands on the surest and most inti
mate personal basis.
The death and resurrection of Dionysus
are accordingly a physical reality. The god
is annually killed in the flesh, as man, bull,
or goat; and he rises again in the vine, to
give his blood once more for the good of
his votaries. Moreover, he may be used as
a fertiliser for many other trees ; and so we
find Dionysus has many functions. He is
variously adored as Dionysus of the tree,
and more particularly of the fruit-bearing
fig and apple. His image, like those of
other tree-gods already encountered, was
often an upright post, without arms, but
draped (like the ashera} in a mantle, and
with a bearded mask to represent the head,
while green boughs projecting from it
marked his vegetable character. He was
the patron of cultivated trees ; prayers were
offered to him to make trees grow ; he was
honoured by fruit-growers, who set up an
image of him, in the shape of a natural
tree-stump, in the midst of their orchards.
(Compare that last degraded and utilitarian
relic, the modem scarecrow.) For other
equally interesting facts I would refer the
reader once more to Mr. Frazer, whose rich
store I must not further rifle. It seems to
me obvious from his collection of facts that
there was originally everywhere a separate
local Dionysus, an annual man-god or
woman-god victim (for which a beast was
later substituted), and that only slowly did
the worship of the individual Dionysi pass
into the general worship of one great ideal
ised god Dionysus. The great gods are at
first classes, not individuals.
Mr. Gomme has further pointed out three
interesting points of resemblance between
the Dionysiac rites and the Indian Potraj
festival. In the first place, Dionysus is
sometimes represented to his worshippers
by his head only—no doubt a preserved
oracular head ; and in any case a parallel
to the importance of the head in the Indian
ceremony. In the second place, the sacrificer of the calf at Tenedos was driven out
and stoned after the fulfilment of the rite—
a counterpart of the Potraj fleeing from the
place after the slaughter of the lamb. And
in the third place, the women worshippers
of Dionysus attended the rites nude,
crowned with garlands, and daubed over
with dirt—a counterpart of the naked
female votaries surrounded with branches
of trees in the Indian festival. All three of
these points recur abundantly in similar
ceremonies elsewhere.
As a rule, I severely disregard mere
myths, as darkeners of counsel, confining
my attention to the purely religious and
practical elements of custom and worship.
But it is worth while noting here for its
illustrative value the Cretan Dionysusmyth. Dionysus is there represented as the
son of Zeus, a Cretan king ; and this legend
encloses the old idea that the Dionysusvictim was at first himself a divine godking, connected by blood with the supreme
god or founder of the community. Hera,
the wife of Zeus, was jealous of the child,
and lured him into an ambush, where he
was set upon by her satellites the Titans,
who cut him limb from limb, boiled his
body with various herbs, and ate it. Other
forms of the myth tell us how his mother
Demeter pieced together his mangled
remains, and made him young again.
More often, however, Dionysus is the son
of Semele, and various other versions are
given of the mode of his resurrection. It
is enough for our purpose that in all of
them the wine-god, after having been slain
and torn limb from limb, rises again from
the dead, and often ascends to his father
Zeus in Heaven. The resurrection, visibly
enacted, formed in many places a part of
the rite.
On the whole, then, though I do not deny
that the later Greeks envisaged Dionysus
as a single supreme god of vegetation, nor
that many abstract ideas were finally
fathered upon the worship — especially
those which identified the death and resur
rection of the god with the annual winter
sleep and spring revival—I maintain that
in his origin the Dionysus was nothing
more than the annual corn-victim, after
wards extended into the tree and vine
victim.
�CORN- AND WINE-GODS
I pass on to Osiris, in his secondary or
acquired character as corn-god.
I have already expressed the belief, in
which I am backed up by Mr. Loftie, that
the original Osiris was a real historical
early king of This by Abydos. But in the
later Egyptian religion, after mystic ideas
had begun to be evolved, he came to be
regarded as the god of the dead, and every
mummy or every justified soul was looked
upon as an Osiris. Moreover, it seems
probable that in Egypt the name of Osiris
was also fitted to the annual slain corn
victim or corn-god. Thus all over Egypt
there were many duplicates of Osiris ;
notably at Busiris, where the name was
attached to an early tomb like the one at
Abydos. This identification of the newmade god with the historic ancestor, the
dead king, or the tribal deity is quite habit
ual ; it is parallel to the identification of
the officiating Potraj with the Potraj god,
of the Attis-priest with Attis, of the
Dionysus-victim with the son of Zeus ; and
it will meet us hereafter in savage parallels.
Let us look at the evidence.
As in India, the Osiris festival lasted for
five days. (The period is worth noting.)
The ceremonies began with ploughing the
earth. We do not know for certain that a
human victim was immolated; but many
side analogies would lead us to that con
clusion, and suggest that as elsewhere the
sacred victim was torn to pieces in the
eagerness of the cultivators and worshippers
to obtain a fragment of his fertilising body.
For in the myth, Typhon cuts up the corpse
of the god into fourteen pieces, which he
scatters abroad (as the naked leatherdresser scatters the sacred buffalo): and
we know that in the Egyptian ceremonies
one chief element was the search for the
mangled portions of Osiris, the rejoicings
at their discovery, and their solemn burial.
On one of the days of the feast a proces
sion of priests went the round of the
temples—or beat the bounds : and the
festival closed with the erection of a pillar
or stone monument to the Osiris, which, in
a bas-relief, the king himself is represented
as assisting in raising. I think it is im
possible to overlook the general resem
blance of these rites to the rites of Potraj.
The character of the later Osiris, or the
god-victim identified with him, as a corn
and vegetable god, is amply borne out by
several other pieces of evidence. Osiris, it
is said, was the first to teach men the use
of corn. He also introduced the cultivation
of the vine. Mr. Frazer notes that, in one I
of the chambers dedicated to Osiris in the
great temple of Isis at Philte, the dead
body of Osiris is represented with stalks of
corn springing from it, and a priest is
watering the stalks from a pitcher which
he holds in his hand.
Again, in the legend of Busiris, and the
glosses or comments upon it, we get im
portant evidence. The name Busiris
means the city of Osiris, which was so called
because the grave of an ancient Osiris
(either a mummy, or a local chief identified
with the great god of Abydos) was situated
there. Human sacrifices were said to have
been offered at his tomb ; just as the Potraj
sacrifice is offered at the shrine of the
village goddess, and just as the annual
victim elsewhere was sacrificed at the Ter
minus stone or the sacred stone of the
foundation-god or goddess. The victims
were red-haired men, and strangers. Their
ashes were scattered abroad with winnow
ing fans. They were slain on the harvest
field, and mourned by the reapers (like
Adonis and Attis) in the song which
through a Greek mistake is known to us as
the Maneros. The reapers prayed at the
same time that Osiris might revive and
return with renewed vigour in the following
year. The most interesting point in this
account, pieced together from Apollodorus,
Diodorus, and Plutarch, is the fact that it
shows us how the annual Osiris was identi
fied with the old divine king who lay in his
grave hard by ; and so brings the case
into line with others we have already con
sidered aud must still consider. As for the
hunting after the pieces of Osiris’s body,
that is just like the hunting after the
mangled pieces of Dionysus by Demeter.
I interpret both the resurrection of Osiris,
and the story of the fragments being pieced
together and growing young again, told of
Dionysus, as meaning that the scattered
pieces, buried like those of the Khond
Meriah, grow up again next year into the
living corn for the harvest.
Furthermore, there exists to this day in
Egypt an apparent survival of the ancient
Osiris rite, in an attenuated form (like the
mock mayors in England), which distinctly
suggests the identification I am here at
tempting. In Upper Egypt, Klunzinger
tells us, on the first day of the (Egyptian)
solar year, when the Nile has usually
reached its highest point, the regular
government is suspended for three days in
each district, and every town chooses it own
temporary ruler. This temporary king (a
local Osiris, as I believe) wears a conical
I
�114
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
cap, and a long flaxen beard, and is
enveloped in a strange mantle. I say
unhesitatingly, the dress of an Osiris,
wearing the old royal cap of Upper Egypt.
With a wand of office in his hands—like
the crook which Osiris carries on the
monuments—and attended by men dis
guised as scribes, executioners, and so
forth, he proceeds to the governor’s house.
The governor allows himself to be deposed;
the mock Uing, mounting the throne, holds
a tribunal, to whose decisions even the
governor himself must bow. In short, like
other temporary kings, he really enjoys
royal authority for the moment. After
three days, however, the mock king is con
demned to death ; the envelope or shell in
which he is encased is committed to the
flames ; and from its ashes creeps forth
the Fellah who impersonated him. I do
not doubt that the case here represents
the antique coffer or mummy-case of Osiris.
In this graphic ceremonial, then, I see a
survival, with the customary mitigations, of
the annual Osiris sacrifice, once actually
performed on a human victim. I do not
doubt that in Egypt as elsewhere a mock
king was formerly chosen in place of the
real king to personate the descendant of
Osiris, an Osiris himself: and that this
substitute' was put to death, and torn to
pieces or burnt, while his ashes were
winnowed and scattered over the land. It
may also be worth while to inquire whether
the scourge which Osiris holds in the basreliefs is not the equivalent of the divine
whip of the Potraj, and the other whips
which Mr. Gomme has so ingeniously
correlated with that very venerable and
mystic attribute.
I would suggest, then, that Osiris in his
later embodiment was annually renewed as
a corn and vine victim. Originally a king
of Upper Egypt, or part of it, he was
envisaged in later myth as a general culture
god. Isis, his sister and wife, discovered
wheat and barley growing wild; and Osiris
introduced these grains among his people,
who thereupon abandoned cannibalism, and
took to grain-growing. An annual victim,
most often a stranger, identified with the
racial god, was torn to pieces in his place ;
and Osiris himself was finally merged with
the abstract spirit of vegetation, and sup
posed to be the parent of all trees.
Let us next look very briefly at the case
of Adonis.
The Adon or Lord commonly known as
Thammuz was one of the chief elements in
Syrian religion. He was closely connected
with the namesake river Adonis, which rose
by his grave at the sacred spring of Aphaca.
We do not actually know, I believe, of a
human Adonis-victim ; but his death was
annually lamented with a bitter wailing,
chiefly by women. Images of him were
dressed like corpses, and carried out as if
for burial, and then thrown into the sea or
into springs. This was evidently a rain
charm, such as is particularly natural in a dry
country like Syria. In certain places the
resurrection of the Adonis was celebrated
on the succeeding day. At Byblos he also
ascended into heaven before the eyes of his
worshippers—a point worth notice from its
Christian analogies. The blood-red hue
of the river Adonis in spring—really due to
the discolouration of the tributary torrents
by red earth from the mountains—was set
down to the blood of the god Adonis ; the
scarlet anemone sprang from his wounds.
But the scholiast on Theocritus expressly
explains the Adonis as “the sown corn”;
and that he was “ seed,” like the common
corn-victims in India and elsewhere, we
can hardly doubt from the repeated stories
of his death and resurrection. Ths socalled “ gardens of Adonis,” which were
mimic representations of a tumulus planted
with corn, formed a most noticeable part of
the god’s ritual. They consisted of baskets
or pots, filled with earth, in which wheat,
barley, flowers, and so forth, were sown and
tended by women ; and at the end of eight
days they were carried out with the images
of the dead Adonis, and flung into the sea
or into springs. This was no doubt another
case of a rain-charm.
What Adonis was to Syria, Attis was to
Phrygia. Originally he seems, according
to Professor Ramsay, to have been repre
sented by an annual priest-victim, who
slew himself for the people to ensure
fertility. This priest-victim himself bore
the name of Attis, and was identified with
the god whose worship he performed. In
later days, instead of killing himself, he
merely drew his own blood; and there is
reason to think that a pig was also substistuted as duplicate victim, and that this
pig was itself regarded as an Attis. Ana
logies exist with the Paschal lamb ; while
the self-mutilation of Attis-worship has
also features in common with Jewish cir
cumcision. Moveover, the ceremonies were
closely connected, at Pessinus at least, with
the ancient sacred stone which bore the
name of Cybele, and which was described
as the Mother of the Gods ; this connection
exactly recalls that of the Potraj god in
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
India with the cult of the local village
goddess. As I believe the village goddess
to be the permanent form of the foundation
human sacrifice, I also believe Cybele to
be the sacred stone of the original virgin
who was sacrificed at the first foundation
of Pessinus.
When the sacred stone of Cybele and
the cult of Attis were removed to Rome
the festival consisted of a five days’ rite,
like that of the Potraj. It took place at
the spring equinox, as does our own equiva
lent festival of Easter. On the first day a
pine-tree was cut down in the woods, and
the effigy of a young man was tied to it.
This effigy no doubt represented the
primitive human sacrifice, and its cruci
fixion answers exactly to the slaughter of
the sacred buffalo in India. The second
day yields nothing of importance ; on the
third day the Attis-priest drew blood from
his own arms and presented it as an offer
ing ; I would conjecture that this was a
substitute for self-immolation, and that the
self-immolation was originally performed
by mutilation of the genitals. It was per
haps on this night that a mourning took
place over the body of Attis, represented
by an effigy, which was afterwards solemnly
buried. On the fourth day came the
Festival of Joy, on which, as Mr. Frazer
believes, the resurrection of the god was
celebrated. The fifth day closed with a
procession to the brook Almo, in which the
sacred stone of the goddess and her
bullock-cart were bathed as a rain-charm.
On the return the cart was strewn with
flowers. I think the close parallelism to
the Indian usage is here fairly evident.
Attis was thus essentially a corn-god.
His death and resurrection were annually
celebrated at Rome and at Pessinus. An
Attis of some sort died yearly. The Attis
of Pessinus was both priest and king; it
was perhaps at one time his duty to die at
the end of his yearly reign as a corn-god
for his people. One epithet of Attis was
“very fruitful”; he was addressed as “the
reaped yellow ear of corn and when an
effigy took the place ofthe annual slain priestking, this effigy was itself kept for a year,
and then burnt as the priest-king himself
would have been at an earlier period. It
seems to me impossible to resist the cumu
lative weight of this singular evidence.
For the very curious customs and myths
regarding Demeter, Persephone, and other
female corn-victims, I must refer the reader
once more to Mr. Frazer. (It is true, the
inquirer will there find the subject treated
II5
from the opposite standpoint.) In many
countries, from Peru to Africa, a girl or
woman seems to have been offered up as a
corn-goddess ; this corn-goddess seems to
have been sown with the seed, and believed
to come to life again with the corn ; and
several European harvest customs appear
to be mitigations of the old ceremonial,
with the usual substitution of an animal or
an effigy for the human victim. Regarded
in this light, Mr. Frazer’s collection of facts
about the corn baby affords an excellent
groundwork for research.
I cannot, however, refrain from mention
ing that the ceremonies of “Carrying out
Death ” and “ Burying the Carnival,” which
prevail all over Europe, retain many inte
resting features of the Potraj, Dionysus,
and Attis-Adonis festivals. The figure of
Death—that is to say, as I understand it,
the image of the dead human god—is often
torn to pieces, and the fragments are then
burned in the fields to make the crops grow
well. But the Death is also drowned or
buried ; in the first case like Adonis, in the
second like the Osiris in the modern
Egyptian custom. And the analogies of
the festivals to those of India and Western
Asia must strike every attentive reader of
Mr. Frazer’s masterwork.
I will only add here that while corn-gods
and wine-gods are the most notable mem
bers of this strange group of artificial
deities, the sacred date-palm has its im
portance as well in the religions of Meso
potamia ; and elsewhere the gods of the
maize, the plantain, and the cocoanut rise
into special or local prominence. So do the
Rice-Spirit, the Oats-Wife, the Mother of
the Rye, and the Mother of the Barley (or
Demeter). All seem to be modifications of
the primitive victim, sacrificed to make a
spirit for the crop, or to act as “ seed ” for
the date or the plantain.
CHAPTER XV.
SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
We have now arrived at a point where we
can more fully understand those curious
ideas of sacrifice and sacrament which lie
at the root of so much that is essential in
the Jewish, the Christian, and most other
religions.
Mr. Galton tells us that to the Damaras,
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
when he travelled among them, all meat
was common property. No one killed an
ox except as a sacrifice and on a festal
occasion ; and when the ox was killed, the
whole community feasted upon it indis
criminately. This is but a single instance
of a feeling almost universal among primi
tive pastoral people. Cattle and other
domestic animals, being regarded as sacred,
are rarely killed ; and when they are killed,
they are eaten at a feast as a social and
practically religious rite—in short, sacra
mentally. I need not give instances of so
well-known a principle ; I will content my
self with quoting what Dr. Robertson Smith
says of a particular race : “ Among the
early Semites generally, no slaughter was
legitimate except for sacrifice.”
Barbaric herdsmen, indeed, can hardly
conceive of men to whom flesh meat is a
daily article of diet. Mr. Galton found the
idea very strange to his Damaras. Primi
tive pastoral races keep their domestic
animals mainly for the sake of the milk, or
as . beasts of burden, or for the wool and
hair; they seldom kill one except for a feast,
at which the gods are fellow-partakers.
Indeed, it is probable, as the sequel will
suggest, that domestic animals were origi
nally kept as totems or ancestor-gods, and
that the habit of eating the meat of sheep,
goats, and oxen has arisen mainly out of
the substitution of such a divine animal
victim for the divine human-victim of
earlier usage. Our butchers’ shops have
their origin in mitigated sacrificial canni
balism.
Sacrifice, regarded merely as offering
to the gods, has thus, I believe, two dis
tinct origins. Its- earliest, simplest, and
most natural form is that whose develop
ment we have already traced—the placing
of small articles of food and drink at the
graves of ancestors or kings or revered
fellow-tribesmen. That from a very early
period men have believed the dead to eat
and drink, whether as corpse, as mummy,
as. ?h°st °f buried friend, or as ethereal
spirit of cremated chieftain, we have already
seen.
But there is another mode of sacrifice,
superposed upon this, and gradually tend
ing to be more or less identified with it,
which yet, if I am right, had a quite dif
ferent origin in the artificial production of
gods about which I have written at con
siderable length in the last three chapters.
The human or animal victim, thus
slaughtered in order to make a new god
or protecting spirit, came in time to be
assimilated in thought to the older type
of mere honorific offerings to the dead
gods ; and so gave rise to those mystic
ideas of the god who is sacrificed, him
self to himself, of which the sacrament of
the Mass is the final ana most mysterious
outcome. Thus, the foundation - gods,
originally killed in order to make a pro
tecting spirit for a house or a tribal god
for a city or village, came at last to be
regarded as victims sacrificed to the Earth
Goddess or to the Earth Demons ; and
thus, too, the Meriahs and other agricul
tural victims, originally killed in order to
make a corn-god or a corn-spirit, came at
last to be regarded as sacrifices to the
Earth, or to some abstract Dionysus or
Attis or Adonis. And since in the last case
at least the god and the victim were still
called by the same name and recognised
as one, there grew up at last in many lands,
and in both hemispheres, but especially
in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, the
mystic theory of the sacrifice of a god,
himself to himself, in atonement or expia
tion, which forms the basis of the Christian
Plan of Salvation. It is this secondary
and derivative form of sacrifice, I believe,
which is mainly considered in Professor
Robertson Smith’s elaborate and extremely
valuable analysis.
I have said that the secondary form of
sacrifice, which for brevity’s sake I shall
henceforth designate as the mystic, is found
in most parts of the world and in both
hemispheres. This naturally raises the
question whether it has a single common
origin, and antedates the dispersal of man
kind through the hemispheres ; or whether
it has been independently evolved several
times over in many lands by many races.
For myself I have no cut-and-dried answer
to this abstruse question, nor do I regard
it, indeed, as a really important one. On
the one hand, there are many reasons
for supposing that certain relatively high
traits of thought or art were common
property among mankind before the dis
persion from the primitive centre, if a
primitive centre ever existed. On the
other hand, psychologists know well that
the human mind acts with extraordinary
similarity in given circumstances all the
world over, and that identical stages of
evolution seem to have been passed through
independently by many races, in Egypt
and Mexico, in China and Peru; so that
we can find nothing inherently improbable
in the idea that even these complex con
ceptions of mystic sacrifice have distinct
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
origins in remote countries. What is cer
tain is the fact that among the Aztecs, as
among the Phrygians, the priest who sacri
ficed, the victim he slew, and the image or
great god to whom he slew him, were all
identified; the killer, the killed, and the
being in whose honour the killing took
place were all one single indivisible deity.
Even such details as that the priest clothed
himself in the skin of the victim are common
to many lands ; they may very well be
either a heritage from remote ancestral
humanity, or the separate product of the
human mind, working along like grooves
under identical conditions.
I must further premise that no religion
as we now know it is by any means primi
tive. The most savage creeds we find
among us have still hundreds of thousands
of years behind them. The oldest religions
whose records have descended to us, like
those of Egypt and of Assyria, are still
remote by hundreds of thousands of years
from the prime original. Cultivation itself
is a very ancient and immemorial art. Few
savages, even among those who are com
monly described as in the hunting stage,
are wholly ignorant of some simple form of
seed-sowing and tillage. The few who are
now ignorant of those arts show some
apparent signs of being rather degenerate
than primitive peoples. My own belief or
suspicion is that ideas derived from the set
of practices in connection with agriculture
detailed in the last two chapters have
deeply coloured the life and thought of
almost the whole human race, including
even those rudest tribes which now know
little or nothing of agriculture.
Early pastoral races seldom kill a beast
except on great occasions. When they
kill it, they devour it in common, all the
tribe being invited to the festival. But
they also eat it in fellowship with their
gods ; every great feast is essentially a
Theoxenion, a Lectisternium, a banquet in
which the deities participate with mortals.
It is this sense of a common feast of gods
■and men which gave, no doubt, the first
step towards the complex idea of the sacra
mental meal—an idea still further developed
.at a later stage by the addition of the con
cept that the worshipper eats and drinks
the actual divinity.
My own belief is that all sacrificial feasts
of this god-eating character most probably
■originated in actual cannibalism, and that
later an animal victim was substituted for
■the human meat; but I do not insist on
this point, nor attempt, strictly speaking, to
117
prove it. It is hardly more than a deeply
grounded suspicion. Nevertheless, I will
begin for convenience sake with the canni
bal class of sacrifice, and will come round
in time to the familiar slaughter of sheep
and oxen, which in many cases is known to
have supplanted a human offering.
Acosta’s account of the Mexican custom
is perhaps the best instance we now possess
of the ritual of cannibal mystic sacrifice in
its fullest barbarity. “They took a cap
tive,” says that racy old author, “at random;
and before sacrificing him to their idols,
they gave him the name of the idol to whom
he should be sacrificed, and dressed him in
the same ornaments, identifying him with
the god. During the time that the identi
fication lasted, which was for a year in
some feasts, six months or less in others,
they reverenced and worshipped him in the
same manner as the idol itself. Mean
while, he was allowed to eat, drink, and
make merry. When he went through the
streets, the people came forth to worship
him ; and every one brought alms, with
children and sick people that he might
cure them and bless them. He did as he
pleased in everything, except that he had
ten or twelve men about him, to prevent
him from escaping. In order that he might
be reverenced as he passed, he sometimes
sounded upon a small flute, to tell the people
to worship him. When the feast arrived,
and he had grown fat, they killed him,
opened him, and, making a solemn sacri
fice, eat him.” There, in the words of a
competent authority, we have the simple
cannibal feast in its fullest nakedness.
I need hardly point out how much this
account recalls the Khond custom of the
Meriah. The victim, though not really of
royal blood, is made artificially into a
divine king; he is treated with all the
honours of royalty and godhead, is dressed
like the deity with whom he is identified,
and is finally killed and eaten. The last
point alone differs in any large degree
from the case of the Meriah. We have
still to inquire, “Why did they eat him ?”
The answer to this inquiry takes us into
the very heart and core of the sacramental
concept.
It is a common early belief that to eat
of any particular animal gives you the
qualities of that animal. The Miris of
Northern India prize tiger’s flesh for men ;
it gives them strength and courage ; but
women must not eat it; ’twould make them
“ too strong-minded.” The Namaquas
abstain from eating hare; they would
�118
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
become faint-hearted if they swallowed it ;
but they eat the meat of the lion or drink
the blood of the leopard, in order to gain
their strength and courage. Among the
Dyaks, young men and warriors must not
eat deer ; it would render them cowardly ;
but women and very old men are allowed
to eat it. Men of the Buro and Aru Islands
feed on the flesh of dogs in order to be
bold and nimble. The flesh and blood of
brave men are eaten in order to inspire
bravery. Du Chaillu’s negro attendants,
we saw, scraped their ancestors’ skulls,
and drank the powder in water.
This case of Du Chaillu’s warriors takes
us with one bound into the heart of the
subject. Many savages for similar reasons
actually eat their own dead fathers.1 We
learn from Strabo that the ancient Irish
“ deemed it honourable to devour the
bodies of their parents.” So, Herodotus
tells us, did the Issedones of Central Asia.
The Massagetae used “from compassion”
to club and eat their aged people. The
custom was quite recently common among
the Battas of Sumatra, who used “ religi
ously and ceremonially to eat their old
relations.” In Australia it was usual to
eat relatives who died by mischance.
Generally speaking, the parents or rela
tives were eaten in order “ not to let the
life go out of the family ” ; or to preserve
the bodies and souls in a kindred body;
or to gain the courage and other qualities
of the dead relation. In short, the dead
were eaten sacramentally or, as one writer
even phrases it, “ eucharistically.” Mr.
Hartland has collected many striking in
stances.
But if men eat the bodies of their
fathers, who are their family and household
gods, they will also naturally eat the bodies
of the artificial gods of cultivation, or of
the temporary kings who die for the people.
By eating the body of a god you absorb
his divinity ; he and you become one ; he
is in you and inspires you. This is the
root-idea of sacramental practice ; you eat
your god by way of complete union ; you
subsume him in yourself; you, and he are
one being.
Still, how can you eat your god if you
also bury him as a corn-spirit to use him
as seed ? The Gonds supply us with the
1 Since this chapter was written the subject
of honorific cannibalism has been far more fully
treated by Mr. Sidney Hartland in the chapter
on funeral Rites, in the second volume of The
Legend of Perseus.
answer to that obvious difficulty. For, as
we saw, they sprinkle the blood of the
victim over the ploughed field or ripe crop,
and then they sacramentally devour his
body. Such a double use of the artificial
god is frequently to be detected, indeed,
through the vague words of our authorities.
We see it in the Potraj ceremony, where
the blood of the lamb is drunk by the
officiating priest, while the remainder of
the animal is buried beside the altar ; we
see it in the numerous cases where a
portion of the victim is eaten sacramentally,
and the rest burned and scattered over the
fields, which it is supposed to fertilise.
You eat your god in part, so as to imbibe
his divinity; but you bury him in part, so
as to secure at the same time his fertilising
qualities for your corn or your vineyard.
I admit that all this is distinctly mystic ;
but mystery-mongering and strange re
duplication of persons, with marvellous
identifications and minute distinctions,
have always formed much of the stock-intrade of religion.
And now let us return awhile to our
Mexican instances.
At the annual feast of the great god
Tezcatlipoca, which, like most similar
festivals, fell about the same time as the
Christian Easter, a young man was chosen
to be the representative of the god for a
twelvemonth. As in the case of almost
all chosen victims, he had to be a person
of unblemished body, and he was trained
to behave like a god-kijig with becoming
dignity. During his year of godship he
was lapped in luxury; and the actual
reigning emperor took care that he should
be splendidly attired, regarding him
already as a present deity. He was
attended by eight pages clad in the royal
livery—which shows him to have been a
king as well as a god ; and wherever he
went the people bowed down to him.
Twenty days before the festival at which
he was to be sacrificed, four noble maidens,
bearing the names of four goddesses, were
given him to be his brides. The final feast
itself, like those of Dionysus, of Attis, and
of Potraj, occupied five days—a coincidence
between the two hemispheres which almost
points to original identity of custom before
the dispersion of the races. During these
five days the real king remained in his
palace—and this circumstance plainly
shows that the victim belonged to the
common class of substituted and temporary
divine king-gods. The whole court, on
the other hand, attended the victim. On
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
the last day of the feast the victim was
ferried across the lake in a covered barge
to a small temple in the form of a pyramid.
On reaching the summit, he was seized
and held down on a block of stone—no
doubt an altar of funereal origin—while
the priest cut open his breast with a stone
knife, and plucked his heart out. This
he offered to the god of the sun. The head
was hung up among the skulls of previous
victims, no doubt for oracular purposes,
and as a permanent god ; but the legs and
arms were cooked and prepared for the
table of the lords, who thus partook of the
god sacramentally. His place was imme
diately filled by another young man, who
for a year was treated with the same
respect, and at the end of that time was
similarly slaughtered.
I do not think I need point out the close
resemblance of this ritual to that of the
Khond Meriah, of the Potraj, and of the
festivals of Dionysus, Osiris, Attis, and
Adonis. But I would also call particular
attention to the final destination of the
skull, and its exact equivalence to the
skull of the animal-god in India and else
where.
“ The idea that the god thus slain in the
person of his representative comes to life
again immediately,” says Mr. Frazer, “was
graphically represented in the Mexican
ritual by skinning the slain man-god, and
clothing in his skin a living man, who thus
became the new representative of the god
head.”
The blood of the victims was separately
offered ; and I may add in this connection
that as a rule both ghosts and gods are
rather thirsty than hungry. I take the
explanation of this peculiar taste to be that
blood and other liquids poured upon the
ground of graves or at altar-stones soon
sink in, and so seem to have been drunk
or sucked up by the ghost or god ; whereas
meat and solid offerings are seen to be
untouched by the deity to whom they are
presented. A minor trait in this blood
loving habit of the gods is seen in the fact
that the Mexicans also gave the god to
drink fresh blood drawn from their own
ears, and that the priests likewise drew
blood from their legs, and daubed it on
the temples. Similar mitigations of selfimmolation are seen elsewhere in the Attispriest drawing blood from his arms for
Attis, in the Hebrew Baal-priests “ cutting
themselves for Baal,” and in the familiar
Hebrew rite of circumcision. Blood is
constantly drawn by survivors or wor
119
shippers as an act of homage to the dead
or to deities.
I might multiply instances of human
sacrifices of the mystic order elsewhere, but
I prefer to pass on to the various mitiga
tions which they tend to undergo in various
communities. In its fullest form, I take it,
the mystic sacrifice ought to be the selfimmolation of a divine priest-king, a god
and descendant of gods, himself to him
self, on the altar of his own divine founda
tion-ancestor. But in most cases which
we can trace, the sacrifice has already
assumed the form of an immolation of a
willing victim, a temporary king, of the
divine stock only by adoption, though
sometimes a son or brother of the actual
monarch. Further modifications are that
the victim becomes a captive taken in war
(which, indeed, is implied in the very
etymology of the Latin word wictima}, or a
condemned criminal, or an imbecile, who
can be more readily induced to undertake
the fatal office. Of all of these we have
seen hints at least in previous cases. Still
more mitigated are the forms in which the
victim is allowed to escape actual death by
a subterfuge, and those in which an image
or effigy is allowed to do duty for the living
person. Of these intermediates we get a
good instance in the case of the Bhagats,
mentioned by Col. Dalton, who “ annually
make an image of a man in wood,
put clothes and ornaments on it, and
present it before the altar of a Maha
deo ” (or rude stone phallic idol). “ The
person who officiates as priest on the
occasion says, ‘ O, Mahadeo, we sacrifice
this man to you according to ancient cus
toms. Give us rain in due season, and a
plentiful harvest.’ Then, with one stroke
of the axe, the head of the image is struck
off, and the body is removed and buried.”
This strange rite shows us a surviving but
much mitigated form of the Khond Meriah
practice.
As a rule, however, such bloodless repre
sentations do not please the gods ; nor do
they succeed in.really liberating a ghost or
com-god. They are, after all, but feeble
phantom sacrifices. Blood the gods want,
and blood is given them. The most com
mon substitute for the human victim-god
is therefore the animal victim-god, of which
we have already seen copious examples in
the ox and kid of Dionysus, the pig of
Attis, and many others. It seems pro
bable that a large number of sacrifices, if
not the majority of those in which domestic
animals are slain, belong in the last resort
�J 20
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
to the same category. Thus, indeed, we
can most easily explain the theory of the
so-called “ theanthropic ” victim — the
animal which stands for a man and a
god—as well as the point of view of sacri
fice so ably elaborated by Dr. Robertson
Smith.
According to this theory, the domestic
animals were early regarded as of the same
kin or blood as the tribe ; and the slaughter
of an ox, a goat, or a sheep could only be
permitted if it were done, like the slaughter
of a king’s son, sacrificially and sacra
mentally. In my own opinion, this scarcely
means more than that the sacred domestic
animals were early accepted as substitutes
for the human victim, and that they were
eaten sacrificially and sacramentally as the
human victim was also eaten. But I will
waive this somewhat controversial point,
and content myself with suggesting that
the animal victim was habitually treated as
in itself divine, and that its blood was
treated in the same way as the blood of
the original cannibal offering. At the same
time, the sacrifice was usually offered at the
altar of some older and, so to speak, more
constant deity, while the blood of the
victim was allowed to flow over the sacred
stone. Certainly, both among the Arabs
and the Hebrews, all slaughter of domestic
animals appears to have been at one time
sacrificial; and even when the slaughter
ceased necessarily to involve a formal
sacrifice, it was still thought necessary to
slay the victim in the name of a god, and to
pour out the blood in his honour on the
ground. Even in the Grieco-Roman world,
the mass of butcher’s meat was “meat
offered to idols.” We shall see hereafter
that among existing savages the slaughter
of domestic animals is still regarded as a
sacred rite.
I believe also that as a rule the blood
offering is the earliest and commonest form
of slaughter to the gods ; and that the
victim in the earlier stages was generally
consumed by the communicants, as we
know the cannibal victim to have been con
sumed among the Mexicans, and as we saw
the theanthropic goat or kid was orgiasti
cally devoured by the worshippers of Diony
sus. It is a detail whether the sacred victim
happened to be eaten raw or cooked; the
one. usage prevailed in the earlier and more
orgiastic rites, the other in the milder and
more civilised ceremonies. But in either
case the animal-god, like the human god,
was eaten sacramentally by all his wor
shippers, who thus took into themselves his
divine qualities. The practice of burning
the victim, on the other hand, prevailed
mainly, I think, among cremationists, like
the Tyrians and Hellenes, though it un
doubtedly extended also to many burying
peoples, like the Hebrews and Egyptians.
In most cases even of cremated victims, it
would appear, a portion at least of the
animal was saved from the fire and sacra
mentally eaten by the worshippers.
Once more, the victim itself was usually
a particular kind of sacred animal. This
sacredness of the chosen beast has some
more important bearings than we have yet
considered. For among various pastoral
races various domesticated animals possess
in themselves positive sanctity. We know,
for example, that cows are very holy in the
greater part of India, and buffaloes in the
Deccan. Among the African peoples of
the pastoral tribes, the common food is
milk and game ; cattle are seldom slaught
ered merely to eat, and always on excep
tional or sacred occasions—the very occa
sions which elsewhere demand a human
victim—such as the proclamation of a war,
a religious festival, a wedding, or the funeral
of a great chieftain. In such cases the
feast is public, all blood-relations having a
natural right to attend. The cattle-kraal
itself is extremely sacred. The herd and
its members are treated by their masters
with affectionate and almost brotherly
regard.
A few further points must also be added.
Among early races, to kill and eat wild
animals, or to kill and eat enemies, who are
not members of the tribe, is not accounted
in any way wrong. But to kill a tribesman
—to shed kindred blood—is deeply sinful;
and so it is sinful to kill and eat the domestic
herds. In old age, indeed, or when sick
and feeble, you may kill and eat your blood
relation blamelessly ; and so you may also
kill and eat old or sickly cattle. But, as a
rule, you only eat them sacramentally and
sacrificially, under the same circumstances
where you would be justified in killing and
eating a human victim. Thus, as a rule,
each tribe has its own sacred beast, w’hich
is employed as a regular substitute for a
man-god. Among the Arabs, this beast
was a camel; among the Indian peoples,
the bull or the buffalo ; among shepherd
races, it is the sheep or goat; among the
Teutons, the horse; among many settled
urban peoples, the * pig; and with the
Samoyeds and Ostiaks, their one chattel,
the reindeer.
Also, as a rule, the cow or other female
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
121
animal was not usually sacrificed ; she was every home, and partakers of every meal,
kept for milk-yielding. It was the bull, the side by side with the living. They lived in
ram, the ox, the he-goat, that was oftenest the house, as still in New Guinea. Liba
offered and eaten sacramentally. Mere tions to them were poured from every cup ;
utilitarian considerations would soon lead food was offered to their ghosts or skulls
to this use, just as our own butchers kill or wooden images at every family gather
ram lambs by choice, and spare the ewes ing. The ordinary feasts were thus mere
for breeding. The custom, once introduced,
enlarged festal gatherings, at which a victim
would tend to become sacred ; for whatever was sacrificially slain and sacramentally
our divine ancestors did is itself divine, and eaten ; and the visitors believed they were
should not be lightly or carelessly altered.
eating the body and blood of the god to
Hence we can understand that supreme their own salvation. Greater sacrifices,
sanctity of the cow which has made so like the hecatombs, or the heroic Indian
many races refuse to sacrifice it, while they horse-sacrifice, must have been relatively
sacrifice and eat the bull or ox without let rare; but in all of them we see clear proof
or scruple. Thus the Todas have never that the victim was regarded as a sacred •
eaten the flesh of the female buffalo; but animal, that is to say a god, in one of his
the male they eat once a year, sacra embodiments.
mentally, all the adult men in the village
Clear evidence of this equivalence is
joining in the ceremony of killing and seen in the fact that the worshippers often
roasting it.
clad themselves in the skin of the victim,
A remarkable instance of the thean- as the Mexicans did in the skin of the
thropic sacrifice of such a sacred animal annual god. Sometimes the hide is even
is given us in Nilus’s account of the cere used to deck the idol. In the Cyprian
mony performed by the Arabs of his time. sacrifice of a sheep to the sheep-goddess
A holy camel, chosen as a victim, was Aphrodite, the celebrants wore the skin of
bound upon a rude cairn of piled-up stones. the sheep ; while the Assyrian DagonThe leader of the band then led the wor worshipper offered the fish sacrifice to the
shippers thrice round the cairn in a solemn fish-god, clad in a fish-skin. Of similar
procession, chanting a solemn hymn as import is doubtless the aegis or goat-skin of
they went. As the last words of the hymn Athena, envisaged as a goat-goddess, and
were sung, he fell upon the camel (like the skins used in the Dionysiac mysteries.
Potraj on the lamb), wounded it, and
I do not hesitate to affiliate all these on a
hastily drank of the blood. Forthwith the primitive usage like that of the Mexican
whole company hacked off pieces of the cannibal sacrifice.
quivering flesh, and devoured them raw
Having reached this point, we can see
with such wild haste that, between the rise further that the case where a sacred animal,
of the day-star and that of the sun, the the representative of a human victim, is
entire camel was absolutely eaten. I may slaughtered before the altar of an older
note that the annual sacrifice of the paschal god is exactly equivalent to the other known
lamb among the shepherd Hebrews is case where a human victim is slaughtered
obviously a mere mitigation of this bar before the foundation-stone of a town or
barous rite. In that case, as might be village. In either case, there is a distinct
expected in a most civilised race, the victim
renewal of the divine life ; fresh blood, as it
is roasted whole ; but it is similarly neces were, is instilled by the act into the ancient
sary that every part of it should be hastily deity.
eaten. Legend further informs us, in the
As a whole, then, we may venture to say
instance of the Passover, that the lamb was not perhaps that all, but that a great
a substitute for a human victim, and that number of sacrifices, and certainly the
the first-born were sanctified to Jahweh, best-known among historic nations, are
instead of being sacrificed. Note also that slaughters of animal substitutes for human
the feast of the paschal lamb occupied the
victims ; and that the flesh is sacramentally
now familiar space of five days : the sacred consumed by the worshippers.
animal was chosen on the tenth day of the
There is one special form of this animal
month, and sacrificed on the fourteenth.
sacrifice, however, which I cannot here pass
The whole ceremonial is most illustrative over in complete silence. It is the one of
and full of survivals.
which the harvest-feast is the final relic.
And now we must also remember that in
Mr. Frazer has fully worked out this theme
most countries the gods were housemates
in his fascinating essay : to detail it here at
of their worshippers, present at all times in
length would occupy too much space ; I
�122
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
can only give the barest outline of his
instances. Originally, it would seem, the
corn-god or corn-spirit was conceived
. during the reaping as taking refuge in the
last sheaf left standing. Whoever cut that
wisp of corn slew the corn-spirit, and was
therefore, on the analogy of the slayer of
the divine king, himself the corn-spirit.
Mr. Frazer does not absolutely assert that
this human representative was originally
killed and eaten, though all analogy would
seem to suggest it; but that he was at least
killed is abundantly certain ; and killed he
still is, in dumb show at any rate, on many
modern European corn-fields. More often,
• however, the corn-spirit is supposed to be
embodied in any animal which happens to
be found in the last sheaf, where even now
small creatures like mice and hedgehogs
often take refuge. In earlier times, how
ever, wolves, wild boars, and other large
animals seem to have been frequently met
with under similar circumstances. How
ever that may be, a great many beasts—
generally sacred beasts—are or have been
sacramentally eaten as representatives of
the corn-god ; while, conversely, the last
sheaf is often made up into the image of a
man, or still more often of a woman, and
preserved religiously for a year, like the
annual king, till the next harvest. Some
times a cock is beheaded and eaten at the
harvest ■ feast, special importance being
here attached to its head, as to the head of
the human victim in so many other cases.
Sometimes, as with the ancient Prussians,
it was the corn-goat whose body was sacra
mentally eaten.' Sometimes, as at Cham
bery, an ox is slaughtered, and eaten with
special rites by the reapers at supper.
Sometimes it is the old sacred Teutonic
animal, the horse, that is believed to
inhabit the last wisp of corn. I will add
parenthetically here (what I trust in some
future work to show) that we have probably
in this and kindred ideas the origin of the
sacred and oracular heads of horses and
oxen attached to temples or built into
churches. Sometimes, again, it is a pig
that represents the god, and is ceremonially
eaten at the harvest festival.
I need hardly mention that all these
sacred animals, substitutes for the original
human god, find their parallels in the
festivals of Dionysus, Attis, Osiris,
Demeter, Adonis, Lityerses, and the other
great corn and wine gods of the historic
civilisations.
But there is yet another and more
sublimated form of sacramental feast.
Since the corn-god and the wine-god,
when slain, undergo resurrection in the
corn and the vine, may we not also eat
their bodies as bread, and drink their
blood as wine or soma ?
To people already familiar, first with the
honorific cannibal form of god-eating, and
then with its gentler animal-victim modifi
cation, nothing could be more natural than
this slight transference of feeling. Nay,
more : whoever eat bread and drank wine
from the beginning must have known it
was the body and blood of a god he was
eating and drinking. Still, there is a
certain difference between mere ordinary
every-day food and the sacramental feast,
to which sacred cannibalism and animal
sacrifice had now familiarised men’s
minds. Accordingly, we find in many
cases that there exists a special sacra
mental eating and drinking of bread and
wine, which is more especially regarded as
eating the body and drinking the blood of
the deity.
Some curious illustrative facts may here
be cited. Since straw and corn grow from
the slaughtered corn-god, they may be
regarded as one of his natural embodi
ments. Hence, when human sacrifices are
prohibited, people sometimes make a straw
god do duty for a human one. The
Gonds, we saw, used once to kidnap sacred
Brahman boys—gods by race, as it were,
yet strangers and children—scatter their
blood over the fields, and eat their bodies
sacramentally. But when the unsym
pathetic British government interfered
with the god-making habits of the Gond
people, they took, says Col. Dalton, to
making an image of straw instead, which
they now similarly sacrifice. So it may be
noted in many of the ceremonies of
“ Burying the Carnival ” and the like,
which I have already cited, that a straw
man is substituted symbolically for the
human victim. Indeed, in that singular
set of survivals we have every possible
substitute—the mock king, the imbecile,
the pretended killing, the ceremonial
shedding of blood, the animal victim, and
the straw man or effigy. I may add that
even the making of our modern Guy
Fawkes as “a man of straw” is thus no
mere accident. But we get a very similar
use of corn in the curious practice of
fashioning the corn-wife and the corn-baby,
so fully detailed by Mr. Frazer. In this
attenuated survival of human sacrifice, a
sheaf of corn does duty for a human
victim, and represents the life of the corn
�SACRIFICE AND SACRAMENT
god or corn-spirit from one year to another.
All the existing evidence goes to suggest
the idea that at harvest a corn-maiden or
corn-wife, after a year of deification, was
slain in former times, and that the human
victim is now represented by her vegetable
analogue or equivalent, the corn in the ear,
a sheaf of which does duty in her place,
and reigns as corn-queen till the next year’s
harvest. The corn-baby is thus a temporary
queen, made of corn, not of human flesh
and blood. We may compare with this
case the account of the Sioux girl who was
sacrificed by the Pawnees, by being burned
over a slow fire, and then shot (like St.
Sebastian) with arrows. The chief sacrificer tore out her heart and devoured it,
thus eating the goddess in true cannibal
fashion. While her flesh was still warm, it
was cut up into small pieces and taken to
the corn-field. Drops of blood were
squeezed from it upon the grains of seed
corn ; after which it was all covered up in
the ground to form a crop-raiser. Of such
a ghastly goddess-making ceremony our
seemingly innocent harvest comedy of the
corn baby is probably the last surviving
relic. Mr. Frazer rightly connects it with
the cult of the Athenian Kore, Persephone.
I think, indeed, the double form of the
name, “the Old Woman” and “the Corn
baby,” makes it probable that the pair are
the vegetable equivalents of both Demeter
and her ravished daughter.
In other cases, however, it is the actual
bread and wine themselves, not the straw
or the corn in the ear, that represent the
god and are sacramentally eaten. We owe
to Mr. Frazer most of our existing know
ledge of the wide prevalence and religious
importance of this singular ritual.
We have seen already that in many
countries the firstfruits of the crops are
presented either to ancestral ghosts, or to
the great gods, or else to the king, who is
the living god and present representative
of the divine ancestors. Till this is done
it would be unsafe to eat of the new harvest.
The god within it would kill you. But in
addition to the ceremonial offering of firstfruits to the spirits, many races also “eat
the god” in the new corn or rice sacra
mentally. In Wermland, in Sweden, the
farmer’s wife uses the grain of the last
sheaf (in which, as we saw, the corn-god or
corn-spirit is supposed specially to reside)
in order to bake a loaf in the shape of a
little girl. Here we have the maiden, who
was previously sacrificed as a corn-goddess
or Persephone, reappearing once more in a
123
bread image. This loaf is divided among
all the household and eaten by them. So
at La Palisse, in France, a man made of
dough is hung upon the fir-tree which is
carried home to the granary on the last
harvest-waggon. The dough man and the
tree are taken to the mayor’s house till the
vintage is over; then a feast takes place,
at which the mayor breaks the dough man
in pieces, and gives the fragments to the
people to eat. Here the mayor clearly
represents the king or chief, while the feast
of first-fruits and the sacramental eating
are combined, as was perhaps originally
the case, in one and the same sacrificial
ceremony. No particular mention is made
of wine ; but as the feast is deferred so as
to take place after the vintage, it is pro
bable that the blood of the wine-god as
well as the body of the corn-god entered
once at least into the primitive ritual.
Many similar feasts survive in Europe ;
but for the rite of eating the corn-god in
its fullest form we must go once more to
Mexico, which also supplied us with the
best and most thoroughly characteristic
examples of the cannibal god-eating. Twice
a year, in May and December, an image of
the great Mexican god Huitzilopochtli was
made of dough, then broken in pieces, and
solemnly eaten by his assembled wor
shippers. Two days before the May feast,
says Acosta, the virgins of the temple
kneaded beet-seeds with roasted maize,
and moulded them with honey into a paste
idol, as big as the permanent wooden idol
which represented the god, putting in glass
beads for eyes, and grains of Indian corn
in the place of teeth. The nobles then
brought the vegetable god an exquisite and
rich garment, like that worn by the wooden
idol, and dressed the image up in it. This
done, they carried the effigy on a litter on
their shoulders, no doubt to mark its royal
authority. On the morning of the feast the
virgins of the god dressed themselves in
garlands of maize and other festal attire.
Young men, similarly caparisoned, carried
the image in its ark or litter to the foot of
the great pyramid temple. It was drawn
up the steps with clanging music of flutes
and trumpets—a common accompaniment
of god-slaying ceremonies. Flowers were
strewed on it, as was usual with all the gods
of vegetation, and it was lodged in a little
chapel of roses. Certain ceremonies • of
singing and dancing then took place, by
means of which the paste was consecrated
into the actual body and bones of the god.
Finally, the image was broken up and
�124
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
distributed to the people, first the nobles, and
then the commonalty, who received it, men,
women, and children, “ with such tears,
fear, and reverence as if it were sacred,
saying they did eat the flesh and bones of
God, wherewith they were grieved.” I
need not point out the close resemblance
here to the mourning over the bodies of
Attis and Adonis, nor to the rites of
Dionysus.
Still more closely does the December
feast (which took place, like Christmas, at
the winter solstice) recall the cannibal prac
tice ; for here an image of the god was
made of seeds, kneaded into dough with
the blood of children. Such a Massacre of
the Innocents occurs often elsewhere in
similar connections : we shall meet with it
again on a subsequent occasion. The
image was placed on the chief altar of the
temple, and on the day of its Epiphany the
king of Mexico offered incense to it. Bam
bino gods like this are well known in other
countries. Next day it was taken down,
and a priest flung at it a flint-tipped arrow.
This was called “killing the god so that his
body might be eaten.” One of the priests
then cut out the heart of the image and
gave it to the actual king to eat, just as in
other sacrifices the priest cut out the throb
bing heart of the human victim and placed
it in the mouth of the cannibal god. The
rest of the image was divided into small
pieces, which were distributed to all the
males of the community, adults or children.
The ceremony was called “God is Eaten.”
Mr. Frazer’s work is a perfect thesaurus of
analogous customs.
Mr. Frazer calls attention to an interesting
transitional instance. Loaves made in the
shape of men were called at Rome Maniae;
and it appears that such loaves were speci
ally made at Aricia. Now, Aricia was also
the one place in Italy where a divine priestking, the Rex Nemoralis, lived on well
recognised into the full blaze of the historic
period, on the old savage tenure of killing
his predecessor. Again, Mania was the
name of the Mother or Grandmother of
Ghosts. Woollen images, dedicated to this
Latin Cybele, were hung out in Rome at
the feast of the Compitalia, and were said
to be substitutes for human victims. Mr.
Frazer suggests that the loaves in human
form which were baked at Aricia were
sacramental bread ; and that in old days,
when the Rex Nemoralis was annually
slain, loaves were also made in his image
as in Mexico, and were eaten sacramentally
by his worshippers. I do not hesitate
myself to suggest still further that the
gingerbread cakes, shaped like a man, and
still richly gilt, which are sold at so many
fairs in France and Italy, and also some
times in England, are last dying relics of
similar early sacramental images. For
fairs are for the most part diminished survi
vals of religious festivals.
As the theanthropic animal victim repre
sents a man and a god, it is reasonable
that a cake shaped as an animal and baked
of flour should sometimes do as well as the
animal victim. For the corn is after all the
embodiment of the corn-god. Hence bakers
in the antique world used to keep in stock
representations in dough of the various
sacrificial animals, for people who were too
poor to afford the originals. Oxen and
sheep were regularly so represented. When
Mithridates besieged Cyzicus, and the
people could not get a black cow to sacrifice
to Persephone, they made a dough cow and
placed it at the altar. At the Athenian
festival of the Diasia, cakes shaped like
animals were similarly sacrificed ; and at
the Osiris festival in Egypt, when the rich
offered a real pig, the poor used to present
a dough pig as a substitute.
But in many other rites the sacramental
and sacrificial cake has entirely lost all
semblance of a man or animal. The god
is then eaten either in the shapeless form of
a boiled mess of rice or porridge, or in a
round cake or loaf, without image of any
sort, or in a wafer stamped with the solar
or Christian cross. Instances of this type
are familiar to everyone.
More closely related still to primitive
cannibalism is the curious ritual of the SinEater, so well elaborated by Mr. Sidney
Hartland. In Upper Bavaria what is
called a corpse-cake is kneaded from flour,
and placed on the breast of a dead person,
in order to absorb the virtues of the de
parted. This cake is then eaten by the
nearest relation. In the Balkan peninsula
a small image of the dead person was made
in bread and eaten by the survivors of the
family. These are intermediate stages
between cannibalism and the well-known
practice of sin-eating.
I hope I have now made clear the general
affiliation which I am seeking to suggest, if
not to establish. My idea is that in the
beginning certain races devoured their own
parents, or parts of them, so as to absorb
the divine souls of their forebears into their
own bodies. Later, when artificial godmakingbecame a frequent usage, especially
in connection with agriculture, men eat the
�THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
god, or part of him, for a similar reason.
But they likewise eat him as the corn or
yam or rice, sacramentally. When theanthropic victims were substituted for the
man-god, they eat the theanthropic victim
in like manner. Also they made images in
paste of both man and beast, and, treating
these as compounded of the god, similarly
sacrificed and eat them. And they drank
his blood, in the south as wine, in the north
as beer, in India as soma. If this line of
reconstruction be approximately correct,
then sacraments as a whole are in the last
resort based upon survival from the cannibal
god-feast.
It is a significant fact that in many cases,
as at the Potraj festival, the officiating
priest drinks the blood of the divine victim,
while the laity are only permitted to eat of
its body.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONE
MENT
One more element of some importance
yet remains in the complex conception of
the human or animal victim, or slain god,
which we must briefly examine before we
can proceed with advantage to the evolu
tion of Christianity; I mean the doctrine
of piacular sacrifice—or, in other words, of
the atonement.
“Without shedding’of blood,” says the
author of one of the earliest Christian
tractates, “ there is no remission of sin.”
This is a common theory in all advanced
religions ; the sacrifice is regarded, not
merely as the self-immolation of a willing
divine victim or incarnate god, but also as
an expiation for crimes committed. “ Be
hold the Lamb of God,” says the Baptist
in the legend, “which taketh away the
sins of the world.”
This idea, I take it, is not primitive.
Sin must be regarded as a late ethical in
truder into the domain of religion. Early
man for the most part takes his gods
joyously. He is on the best of terms with
them. He eats and drinks and carouses in
their presence. They join in his phallic
and bacchanalian orgies. They are not
great moral censors, like the noble creation
of the Hebrew prophets, “of purer eyes
than to behold iniquity.” They are crea
125
tures of like passions and failings with him
self. Angry they may be at times, no
doubt; but their anger as a rule can be
easily assuaged by a human victim, or by
the blood of slaughtered goats and bulls.
Under normal circumstances they are
familiar housemates. Their skulls or
images adorn the hearth. In short, they
are average members of the tribe, gone
before to the spirit-world ; and they con
tinue to share without pride or asceticism
in the joys and feasts and merry-makings
of their relatives.
Thus the idea of expiation, save as a
passing appeasement for a temporary tiff,
did not probably occur in the very earliest
and most primitive religions. It is only
later, as ethical ideas begin to obtrude
themselves into the sacred cycle, that the
notion of sin, which is primarily that of
an offence against the established eti
quette of the gods, makes itself slowly
visible. In many cases later glosses seem
to put a piacular sense upon what was in
its origin, by obvious analogy, a mere
practical god-making and god-slaying
ceremony. But in more consciously philo
sophic stages of religion this idea of atone
ment gains ground so fast that it almost
swallows up the earlier conception of com
munion or feasting together. Sacrifice is
then chiefly conceived of as a piacular
offering to a justly offended or estranged
deity ; this is the form of belief which we
find almost everywhere meeting us in the
hecatombs of the Homeric poems, as in
many works of Hellenic and Semitic litera
ture.
In particular, the piacular sacrifice seems
to have crystallised and solidified round
the sacred person of the artificial deity.
“ The accumulated misfortunes and sins of
the whole people,” says Mr. Frazer, “are
sometimes laid upon the dying god, who
is supposed to bear them away for ever,
leaving the people innocent and happy.”
“ Surely he hath borne our griefs and car
ried our sorrows,” says one of the Hebrew
poets, whose verses are conjecturally
attributed to Isaiah, about one such divine
scapegoat; “yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
He was wounded for our transgressions ;
he was bruised for our iniquities. The
chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and with his stripes are we healed.
Jahweh hath laid upon him the iniquity of
us all.”.
The ideas here expressed in such noble
language were common to all the later
�126
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
man-gods of the more advanced and ethical
religions.
Mr. Frazer is probably right in connect
ing the notion of the scapegoat, human or
animal, with the popular barbaric idea of
the transference of evils. Thus, in popular
magic of all nations, diseases of every sort,
from serious fevers and plagues down to
headache, toothache, warts, and sores, are
transferred by some simple ceremony of
witchcraft to animals, rags, or other people.
I will quote examples but briefly. Epilepsy
is made over to leaves and thrown away in
the Malay Archipelago. Toothache is put
into a stone in Australia. A Bechuana king
gave his illness to an ox, which was drowned
in his stead, to secure his recovery. Mr.
Gomme quotes a terrible story of a Scotch
nobleman who transferred his mortal disease
to his brother by a magical ceremony.
“ Charms ” for fever or for warts generally
contain some such amiable element of
transferring the trouble to a string, a rag,
or a piece of paper, which is flung away to
carry the evil with it to the person who next
touches it.
Closely connected with these notions of
transference are also the occasional or
periodical ceremonies undertaken for the
expulsion of evils from a village or a com
munity. Devils, demons, hostile spirits,
diseases, and other misfortunes of every
sort, are frequently thus expelled with gongs,
drums, and other magical instruments.
Often the boundaries of the tribe or parish
are gone over, a perlustration is performed,
and the evil influences are washed out of
the territory or forcibly ejected. Our own
rite of Beating the Bounds represents on
one of its many sides this primitive cere
mony. Washings and dippings are frequent
accompaniments of the expulsive ritual; in
Peru it was also bound up with that
common feature of the com-god sacrament
—a cake kneaded with the blood of living
children. The periodical exorcism gene
rally takes place once a year, but is some
times biennial: it has obvious relations
with the sacrifice of the human or animal
victim. In Europe it still survives in many
places as the yearly expulsion of witches.
Putting these two cardinal ideas together,
we arrive at the compound conception of
the scapegoat. A scapegoat is a human or
animal victim, chosen to carry off, at first
the misfortunes or diseases, later the sin
and guilt of the community. The name by
which we designate it in English, being
taken from the derivative Hebrew usage,
has animal implications; but, as in all
analogous cases, I do not doubt that the
human evil-bearer precedes the animal one.
A good example of this incipient stage
in the evolution of the scapegoat occurs at
Onitsha, on the Quorra River. Two human
beings are there annually sacrificed, “to
take away the sins of the land”—though I
suspect it would be more true to native
ideas to say, “ the misfortunes.” The num
ber two, as applied to the victims, crops up
frequently in this special connection. The
victims here again are “bought with a
price ”—purchased by public subscription.
All persons who during the previous year
have committed gross offences against
native ethics are expected to contribute to
the cost of the victims. Two sickly people
are bought with the money, “one for the
land and one for the river.” The victims
are dragged along the ground to the place
of execution, face downward. The crowd
who accompany them cry, “ Wickedness !
wickedness!” So in Siam it was cus
tomary to choose a broken-down woman
of evil life, carry her on a litter through
the streets (which is usually a symbol of
kingship or godhead), and throw her on a
dunghill or hedge of thorns outside the
wall, forbidding her ever again to enter
the city. In this eastern case there is
mere expulsion, not actual killing.
In other instances, however, the divine
character attributed to the human scape
goat is quite unmistakable. Among the
Gonds of India, at the festival of the god
of the crops, the deity descends on the
head of one of the worshippers, who is
seized with a fit, and rushes off to the
jungle. There, it is believed he would die
of himself, if he were not brought back
and tenderly treated ; but the Gonds, more
merciful here than in many other cases,
take him back and restore him. The idea
is that he is thus singled out to bear the sins
of the rest of the village. At Halberstadt
in Thuringia an exactly similar custom sur
vived till late in the Middle Ages. A man
was chosen, stained with deadly sin, as the
public scapegoat. On the first day of Lent
he was dressed in mourning, and expelled
from church. For forty days he wandered
about, fed only by the priests, and no one
would speak to him. He slept in the street.
On the day before Good Friday, however,
he was absolved of his sins, and, being
called Adam, was believed to be now in a
state of innocence. This is a mitigated and
Christianised form of the hun' an sinoffering.
Again, the Albanians of the Eastern
�THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
Caucasus kept a number of sacred slaves
in the temple of the moon, many of whom
were inspired and prophesied. When one'
of these men exhibited unusual symptoms
of inspiration, the high priest had him
bound with a sacred chain, and maintained
for a year in luxury, like the Mexican corn
god. This fact immediately brings the
human scapegoat into line with the annual
human gods we have already considered.
At the end of a year he was anointed with
unguents (or, so to speak, christed), and
led forth to be sacrificed. The sacrifice
was accomplished as a purificatory cere
mony.
In Greece we get similar traces of the
human scapegoat. At Chseronea in Bceotia,
the chief magistrate at the town-hall, and
every householder in his own house, as we
learn from Plutarch (who was himself a
magistrate there), had on a certain day to
beat a slave with rods of agnus castus, and
turn him out of doors, with the formula,
“ Out, hunger 1 in, health and wealth 1”
Elsewhere the custom retained more un
pleasant features. At Marseilles, when the
colony was ravaged by plague, a man of
the poorer classes used voluntarily to offer
himself as a sin-offering or scapegoat.
Here we have once more the common
episode of the willing victim. For a whole
year, like other annual gods, he was fed at
the public expense, and treated as a gentle
man—that is to say, a kingly man-god.
At the end of that time he was dressed in
sacred garments—another mark of godship
—decked with holy branches, the common
insignia of gods of vegetation, and led
through the city, while prayers were offered
up that the sins of the people might fall on
his head. He was then cast out of the
colony. The Athenians kept a number of
outcasts as public victims at the expense
of the town ; and when plague, drought,
or famine befell, sacrificed two of them
(note the number) as human scapegoats.
One was said to be a substitute for the
men, and one for the women. They were
led about the city (like Beating the Bounds
again), and then apparently stoned to death
without it. Moreover, periodically every
year, at the festival of the Thargelia, two
victims were stoned to death as scapegoats
at Athens, one for the men, and one for
the women. I would conjecturally venture
to connect this sacred number, not merely
with the African practice already noted,
but also with the dual kings of Sparta, the
two consuls at Rome, and the two suffetes
at Carthage and in other Semitic cities.
127
The duality of kings, indeed, is a frequent
phenomenon.
I can only add here that the many other
ceremonies connected with these human
scapegoats have been well expounded and
explained by Mannhardt, who shows that
they were all of a purificatory character,
and that the scourging of the god before
putting him to death was a necessary
point of divine procedure. Hence the
significance of the agnus cashes.
Briefly, then, the evidence collected by
Mannhardt and Frazer suffices to suggest
that the human scapegoat was the last
term of a god, condemned to death, upon
whose head the transgression or mis
fortunes of the community were laid as
substitute. He was the vicarious offering
who died for the people.
It is only here and there, however, that
the scapegoat retains to historical times
his first early form as a human victim.
Much more often, in civilised lands at
least, we get the usual successive mitiga
tions of the custom. Sometimes, as we
have seen already in these cases, the
victim is not actually killed, but merely
expelled, or even only playfully and cere
monially driven out of the city. In other
instances, we get the familiar substitution
of the condemned criminal, or the imbecile,
as in the Attic Thargelia. In the vast
majority of cases, however, we have the
still more common substitution of a sacred
animal for a human victim ; and this
appears to be in large part the origin of
that common religious feature, the piacular
sacrifice.
Occasionally we get historical or halfhistorical evidence of the transition from a
human victim to a divine or quasi-divine
animal. Thus, the people of Nias offer
either a red horse or a buffalo to purify the
land ; but formerly a man was bound to
the same stake with the buffalo, and when
the buffalo was killed the man was driven
away, no native daring to receive him or
feed him. The sacrificial camel of the
ancient Arabs, presumably piacular, is
expressly stated to be a substitute for a
human victim.
As a rule, the man-god or divine animal
selected as a scapegoat is not actually
slaughtered, in the fullest form of the rite;
he is driven away, or flung into the sea, or
left to die of hunger and thirst. Some
times, however, he is burned as a holo
caust : sometimes he is stoned, and some
times slaughtered. And in later and less
perfect forms of piacular animal sacrifice,
�128
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
slaughter was the rule, save where burning
■had ousted it. Indeed, in many cases, it
is difficult to disentangle the various
elements of the complex question. People
had got accustomed to certain forms of
sacrifice, and mixed them up indiscrimi
nately, so that one and the same rite seems
sometimes to be sacramental, sacrificial,
and piacular, all at once. Thus Dr.
Robertson Smith writes of ancient Egypt :
“Bulls were offered on the altar, and part
of the flesh eaten in a sacrificial feast ; but
the sacrifice was only permitted as a
piaculum, was preceded by a solemn fast,
and was accompanied by public lamenta
tion, as at the death of a kinsman.” Com
pare the annual mourning for Adonis ; and
also the similar union of sacrifice, sacra
ment, and Atonement in the Mass, which,
at the great resurrection-festival of the
Christian year, Easter, is equally preceded
by a fast, and by the solemn mourning of
Good Friday.
Now, I do not pretend to discriminate
accurately in these very mixed cases between
one element and another in the compound
rite. Often enough, all the various traits
of god-slaying, of sacrament, and of public
expiation are evidently present. Usually,
too, the victim is slain before the altar or
sacred stone of some earlier and greater
god, and its blood poured forth for him.
But the identity of god and victim is often
quite clear.
On the whole, then, at the stage we have
at last reached, I will not attempt to dis
tinguish in every case between the various
superposed ideas in the sacrificial cere
mony. Most sacrifices seem in the last
resort to be substitutes for human-divine
victims. Most seem to be sacramental, and
most to be more or less distinctly piacular.
I do not even know whether, in reconstruct
ing afresh for others a series of rites the
ideas of which have grown slowly clear to
my own mind by consideration of numerous
mixed examples, I have always placed each
particular fact in its best and most effective
position for illustration. I would like to
add, however, that the ideas here formu
lated must give a new meaning to many
points we could not at first understand
in ceremonies mentioned in our earlier
chapters. I will take only one example—
that of the place of Samoyed sacrifice
which Baron Nordenskiold sawon Vaygats
Island. We can now divine the meaning
of the heap of reindeer skulls piled around
the rude open-air shrine ; for reindeer are
the sacred and theanthropic animals of the
northern races ; while the preservation of
their heads at the hypoethral altar of the
elder gods or ghosts has its usual holy and
oracular meaning. We can also guess why
remains of a fireplace could be seen by the
side, at which the sacrificial and sacra
mental meal was habitually prepared ; and
why the mouths of the idols were smeared
with blood, in order to make the older gods
or ghosts participators in the festival.
Indeed, any reader who has followed me
thus far, and who now turns back to the
earlier chapters of this book, will find that
many details appear to him in quite a
different light, and will see why I have
insisted beforehand on some minor
points which must have seemed to him at
the time wholly irrelevant.
Many other curious ceremonies that seem
equally meaningless at first in narratives
of travel will also come to have a significant
meaning when thus regarded. For instance,
Mr. Chalmers tells us that among the New
Guinea natives of particular districts “ pigs
are never killed but in the one place, and
then they are offered to the spirit. The
blood is poured out there, and the carcase
is then carried back to the village, to be
divided, cooked, and eaten. Pigs’ skulls
are kept and hung up in the house. Food
for a feast, such as at house-building”—a
most pregnant hint—“is placed near the
post where the skulls hang, and a prayer
is said. When the centre-post is set up,
the spirits have wallaby, fish, and bananas
presented to them, and they are besought
to keep that house always full of food, and
that it may not fall when the wind is
strong.” If we recall other cases else
where, we can hardly doubt that the pigs
in these instances are killed as sacred
victims at the grave of the chief family
ancestor; especially when Mr. Chalmers
also tells us that “each family has a sacred
place where they carry offerings to the
spirits of deceased ancestors, whom they
greatly fear.” When sickness, famine, or
scarcity of fish occurs, it is these spirits that
have to be appeased. And if we recollect
once more that in so many cases the
central post of the hut is based on a human
or animal victim, both in New Guinea and
elsewhere, we can hardly doubt that to this
household-god or foundation-ghost the
offerings at the central post are presented.
Finally, the skulls of the pigs which are
kept in the house and hung on the post
remind us on the one hand of the skulls of
ancestor-gods similarly preserved, and on
the other hand of the skulls of theanthropic
�THE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST
129
towns at the time when Christianity began
to spring spontaneous in their midst. We
can arrive at some idea of the product itself
by observing the environment in which it
was evolved.
Once more, Christianity grew—for the
most part, among the lower orders of the
cosmopolitan seaports. It fashioned itself
among the slaves, the freedmen, the Jewish,
Syrian, and African immigrants, the
Druidical Gauls and Britons of Rome, the
petty shopkeepers, the pauperised clients,
the babes and sucklings of the populous
centres. Hence, while based upon Judaism,
it gathered hospitably into itself all those
elements of religious thought and religious
practice that were common to the whole
world, and especially to the Eastern Medi
terranean basin. Furthermore, it gathered
hospitably into itself in particular those
elements which belonged to the older and
deeper-seated part of the popular religions,
rather than those which belonged to the
civilised, Hellenised, and recognised modi
fications of the State religions. It was a
democratic rather than an official product.
CHAPTER XVII.
We have to look, therefore, at the elder far
more than the younger stratum of religious
TIIE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST
thought in the great cities for the in
fluences which went to mould Christianity.
Christianity grew. It was a natural
I do not deny, indeed, that the new faith
product. It did not spring, full-fledged,
was touched and tinged in all its higher
from any one man’s brain, as Athene sprang
parts by beautiful influences from Neo
from the head of Zeus. It was not even
Platonism, Alexandrian Judaism, and other
invented by any little group or school of half-mystical philosophic systems; but for
men, Petrine or Pauline, the apostles or the
its essential groundwork we have still to go
disciples, the early Church of Jerusalem,
to the root-stratum of religious practice
Antioch, or Alexandria. Christianity grew and belief in Antioch and Alexandria, in
—slowly. It developed, bit by bit, for three
Phrygia and Galatia, in Jerusalem and
long centuries, taking shape by gradual
Rome. It based itself above all on sacra
stages in all the teeming centres of the ment, sacrifice, atonement, and resurrec
Roman world ; and even after it had tion. Yet again, Christianity originated
assumed a consistent form as the Holy
first of all among the Jewish, Syrian, or
Catholic Church, it still went on growing in
Semitic population of these great towns of
the minds of men, with a growth which
the empire, at the very moment of its full
never ends, but which reveals itself even
cosmopolitanisation ; it spread rapidly from
now in a thousand modes, from a Vatican
them, no doubt at first with serious modi
Council to the last new departure of the
fications, to the mixed mass of sailors,
last new group of American sectaries.
slaves, freedwomen, and townspeople who
Christianity grew—in the crowded cosformed apparently its earliest adherents.
mopolitanised seaports and cities of the
Hence, we must look in it for an intimate
Roman Empire—in Antioch, Alexandria,
blend of Judaism with the central ideas of
Thessalonica, Cyrene, Byzantium, Rome.
the popular religions, Aryan or Hamitic, of
Its highway was the sea. Though partly
the Mediterranean basin. We must expect
Jewish in origin, it yet appears from its
in it much that was common in Syria, Asia
earliest days essentially as a universal and
Minor, Hellas, and Egypt—something even
international religion. Therefore we may
from Gaul, Hispania, Carthage. Its first
gain some approximate knowledge of its
great apostle, if we may believe our autho
origin and antecedents by considering the rities, was one Saul or Paul, a halfreligious condition of these various great
Hellenised Jew of Semitic and commercial
victims kept by the people of India at their
festivals, or fastened by early Greeks and
Romans on their temples. “ They cook the
heads of their slain enemies,” says Mr.
Chalmers again, “ to secure clean skulls to
- put on sacred places.”
We must then remember these two car
dinal points : first, that a dying god, human
or animal, is usually selected as a conve
nient vehicle for the sins of the people ; and
second, that “ without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin.” These two
doctrines were commonly current all over
the world, but especially in that Eastern
Mediterranean world where Christianity
was first evolved. Indeed, they were there
so generally recognised that the writers of
the earliest Christian tractates, the Apos
tolic Epistles, take them for granted as selfevident—as principles of which every intel
ligent man would at once admit the truth
and cogency.
�13°
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Tarsus in Sicilia, and a Roman citizen. Its
first great churches sprang up in the busy
ports and marts of the Levant. Its very
name of Christian was given to it first in
the crowded and cosmopolitan city of
■ Antioch.
It is here, then, in these huge slavepeopled hives of Hellenised and Roma
nised commerce, that we must look for the
mother-ideas of Christianity.
Antioch was quite undoubtedly in the
earliest times the principal cradle of the
new religion. I do not mean that Jeru
salem was not very probably the place
where men first began to form a small
sect of esoteric Christ-worshippers, or that
Galilee was not the region where the Christ
himself most largely lived and taught, if
indeed such a person ever really existed.
In those matters the traditions handed
down to us in the relatively late Gospels
may be perfectly correct : and, again, they
may not. But Christianity as we know it,
the Christianity of the Pauline epistles and
the later writings, such as the Gospels and
the works of the Fathers, must have been
essentially a cult of wider Syrian and
Gentile growth. It embraces in itself
elements which doubtless lingered on in
secluded corners more or less among the
mass of the people even in Judaea itself,
though discountenanced by the adherents
of the priestly and official Jahweh-worship ;
but which were integral parts of the popular
and even the recognised religion through
out the whole of northern Syria.
Antioch, where Christianity thus took its
first feeble steps, was a handsome and
bustling commercial city, the capital of
the Greek Seleucid kings, and the acknow
ledged metropolis of the Syrian area. At
the time of Paul (if there was a Paul) it
probably contained half a million people ;
it was certainly the largest town in Asia,
and worthy to be compared with Rome
itself in the splendour of its buildings.
Many things about its position are de
serving of notice. It stood upon the banks
of the Orontes, a sacred stream, ensconced
in a rich agricultural plain, fourteen miles
from the river’s mouth. Its Ostia was at
Selucia, the harbour whence flowed the
entire export trade of Syria and the east
towards Hellas and Italy. The Mediterra
nean in front connected it with Rome,
Alexandria, Asia Minor, Greece; the
caravan routes across the Syrian desert in
the rear put it in communication with the
bazaars of Mesopotamia and the remoter
east. It was thus the main entrepot of the
through trade between two important
worlds. The Venice of its time, it lay at
the focal point where the highroads of
Europe and of Asia converged.
Scholars of repute have pointed out the
fact that, even earlier than the days of Paul,
Buddhist ideas from India seem to have
dribbled through and affected the Syrian
world, as Zoroastrian ideas a little later
dribbled through and affected the thought
of Alexandria : and some importance has
been attached to this infiltration of motives
from the mystical east. Now, I do not
care to deny that budding Christianity
may have been much influenced on its
ritual and still more on its ethical side by
floating elements of Buddhist opinion.
But on the whole I think the facts we have
just been considering as to the manufacture
of artificial human gods and the nature
and meaning of piacular sacrifices will
suffice to show that Christianity was chiefly
a plant of home growth. The native soil
contained already every essential element
that was needed to feed it—the doctrine of
the Incarnation, the death of the ManGod, the atoning power of his Blood, the
Resurrection and Ascension. So that,
while allowing due weight to this peculiar
international position of Antioch, as the
double-faced Janus-gate of Europe and
Asia, I am not inclined to think that points
peculiar to Buddhism need have exercised
any predominant influence in the evolution
of the new religion. For we must re
member that Buddhism itself did but
subsume into its own fabric ideas which
were common to Peru and Mexico, to
Greece and India, to Syria and Egypt,
and which came out in fresh forms,
surging up from below, in the creed of
Christendom. If anything is clear from
our previous researches it is this—that the
world has never really had more than one
religion—“ of many names, a single central
shape,” as the poet phrases it.
The Syrian people, Semites by race and
cult, had fallen, like all the rest of the
eastern world, under the Hellenic dominion
of the successors of Alexander. A quick
and subtle folk, very pliable and plastic,
they underwent rapid and facile Hellenisa
tion. It was an easy task for them to
accept Greek culture and Greek religion.
The worshipper of Adonis had little
difficulty in renaming his chief god as
Dionysus and continuing to practise his
old rites and ceremonies to the newlynamed deity after the ancestral pattern.
The Astarte whom the east has given to
�THE WORLD BEFORE CHRIST
Hellas under the alias of Aphrodite came
back again as Aphrodite to Astarte’s old
sanctuaries. Identifications of gods and
cults were but simple matters, where so
many gods were after all essentially
similar in origin and function.
The Seleucids, however, did not fare so
well in their attempt to impose the alien
gods on the fierce Jehovistic zealots of the
southern mountains. Antiochus IV. en
deavoured in vain to force the cults of
intrusive Hellenism on his new kingdom
of Palestine. He reckoned without his
hosts. The populace of Jerusalem would
not away with his “idolatrous” rites—
would not permit the worship of Zeus and
Pallas, of Artemis and Aphrodite, to usurp
a place in the holy city of Jahweh. The
rebellion of the Maccabees secured at
least the religious independence of Judaea
from the early Seleucid period down to the
days of Vespasian and Titus. Lower
Syria remained true in her arid hills to
the exclusive and monotheistic cult of the
God of Israel. And at the same time the
Jew spread everywhere over the surround
ing countries, carrying with him not only
his straw and his basket, but also his
ingrained and ineradicable prejudices.
In Antioch, then, after the Roman absorp
tion of Syria, a most cosmopolitan religion
appears to have existed, containing mingled
Semitic and Hellenic elements, half assimi
lated to one another, in a way that was
highly characteristic of the early empire.
And among the popular cults of the great
city we must certainly place high those of
Adonis and Dionysus, of Aphrodite-Astarte,
and of the local gods or goddesses, the
Baalim and Ashtareth, such as the maiden
who, as we learnt from Malalas, was sacri
ficed at the original foundation of the city,
and ever after worshipped as its Tyche or
Fortune. In other words, the conception
of the human god, of the corn and wine
god, of the death of the god, and of his
glorious resurrection, must have all been
perfectly familiar ideas to the people of
Antioch and of Syria in general.
Let us note here, too, that the particular
group of Jahweh-worshippers among whom
the Christ is said to have found his personal
followers were not people of the priestly
type of Jerusalem, but Galilaean peasants
of the northern mountains, separated from
the most orthodox set of Jews by the intru
sive wedge of heretical Samaritans, and
closely bordering on the heathen Phoenician
seaboard—“the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.”
Here Judaism and heathenism marched
together; here Jahweh had his worshippers
among the fishers of the lake, while Hel
lenism had fixed itself in the statelier villas
of Tiberias and Ptolemais.
Alexandria was another of the great cos
mopolitan seaport towns where Christianity
made its earliest converts, and assumed
not a few of its distinctive tenets. Now,
in Alexandria, Hellenism and the immemorially ancient Egyptian religion found
themselves face to face at very close;
quarters. It is true, the town in its his
torical aspect was mainly Greek, founded?
by the great Macedonian, and priding itself'
on its pure Hellenic culture. But the mass of the lower orders who thronged its alleys
must surely have consisted of more or less
mongrel Egyptians, still clinging with all
the old Egyptian conservatism to the ideas
and practices and rites of their fathers..
Besides these, we get hints of a large cosmo
politan seafaring population, among whom,
strange faiths and exotic gods found ready
acceptance. Beside the stately forms of
the Greek pantheon and the mummified
or animal-headed Egyptian deities, the
imported Syrian worship of Adonis had
acquired a firm footing ; the annual festival
of the slaughtered god was one of the
principal holidays; and other Syrian or
remoter faiths had managed to secure their
special following. The hybrid Serapis
occupied the stateliest fane of the hybrid
city. In that huge and busy hive, indeed,
every form of cult found a recognised place,
and every creed was tolerated which did
not inculcate interference with the equal
religious freedom of others.
The Ptolemaic family represents in itself
this curious adaptability of the Graeco
Egyptian Alexandrian mind. At Alexandria
and in the Delta the kings appear before
us as good Hellenes, worshipping their
ancestral deities in splendid temples; but
in the Thebaid the god Ptolemy or the
goddess Cleopatra erected buildings in
honour of Ptah or Khem in precisely the
old Egyptian style, and appeared on their
propyla in the guise of Pharaohs engaged
in worshipping Amen-Ra or Osiris. The
great Alexander himself had inaugurated
this system when he gave himself out as
the son of “Zeus Ammon”; and his indirect
representatives carried it on throughout
with a curious dualism which excused itself
under the veil of arbitrary identifications.
Thus Serapis himself was the dead Apis
bull, invested with the attributes of an
Osiris and of the Hellenic Hades ; while
Amen-Ra was Zeus in an Egyptain avatar.
�132
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The large Jewish colony at Alexandria
also prepared the way for the ultimate
admixture of Neo-Platonism in the Christian
faith ; while the Egyptian belief in Triads
of gods formed the groundwork for the
future doctrine of the Trinity, so doggedly
battled for by the Alexandrian Athanasius.
It is true that Ampère and Preller have
strenuously denied any Egyptian admixture
in the philosophy of Alexandria, and their
reasoning may be conclusive enough as to
the upper stratum of thought ; but it must
at least be admitted that popular belief in
the city of the Ptolemies must have been
deeply coloured by the ideas and creeds of
its Egyptian substratum. Now, in the
growth of Christianity it was the people
who counted, not the official classes, the
learned, or the philosophic. We must not
attribute to the population of the East
End of London the theology of Pusey or
the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer.
Christianity would seem also to have
taken part at least of its form in Rome.
And, as Roman influence extended likewise
over every portion of the vast empire, I must
say a few words here about the origin and
growth of the Roman religion.
That religion, as it comes upon us in the
<few glimpses we get of its early Italic and
pre-Hellenised form, was one of the rudest
.and most primitive type, almost savage in
its extreme simplicity. It knew hardly any
great gods by name: the few deities it
possessed it expressed only for the most
part by adjectival names. Few, I say, as
to type, for as to number of individuals
their name- indeed was legion ; they per
vaded the whole world in that reckless
multiplicity which distinguishes the simple
•ghosts or spirits of early hunting or pastoral
peoples. With the Romans this multipli
city, ubiquity, and vagueness survived into
a relatively settled and civilised agricultural
condition. A vast number of small depart
mental gods, with few or no great ones
—that is the first state of the Roman
pantheon.
The central point of old Roman religion
was clearly the household ; the family
ghosts or lares were the most honoured
gods. We may instructively compare Mr.
Chalmers’s account of the theology of New
Guinea. Besides these ancestral shades,
or almost identical with them, came the
penates or practical deities of the store-room,
perhaps the representatives of the victims
slain as foundation-ghosts at the first erec
tion of the building. Of these two, the
Lares were undoubtedly the departed
ancestors of the family; they lived near
the spot where they were first buried (for
the old Romans were buriers), and they still
presided over the household as in life, like
its fathers and senators. They were wor
shipped daily with prayers and simple offer
ings of food and drink : their masks or
busts which hung on the wall.were perhaps
the representatives, or in ancient days the
coverings, of the old oracular heads or
skulls ; for the skulls themselves may have
been preserved in wax, as so often elsewhere
at an earlier period.1 The Penates which
were worshipped with the Lares seem to
have stood for the family spirit in a more
generalised way; they represent the con
tinuity and persistence of its Fortune ; and
therefore, if we may trust the analogy of
the Fortune of a town, they are probably
the ghosts of the foundation or renewal
victims. In judging of all this, we cannot
attach too great importance to the analogy
of Negritto and Polynesian customs.
Other deities are more public. But most
of them seem to belong to the simplest and
most immediately ghost-like stratum. They
had to do with sowing, reaping, and vintage
—in other words, were corn or wine gods,
Or else they had to do with the navigable
river, the Tiber, and the port of Ostia,
which lay at its mouth—in other words,
were spring and river gods. Or else they
had to do with war and expeditions—in
other words, were slaughtered campaign
gods of the Iphigenia pattern, Bellonas
and battle-victims.
Among this dim crowd of elder manu
factured deities, Saturnus, the sowing god,
was most likely an annual corn-victim ; his
adjectival name by itself suggests that con
clusion. Terminus, the boundary god, is
already familiar to us. About these two at
least we can hardly be mistaken. Seia,
Segetia, Tutilina, were the successive corn
deities. They seem to equate with the suc
cessive maidens slain for the corn in other
communities, and still commemorated in
our midst by the corn-baby and the corn
wife. At each stage of age in the corn a
corresponding stage in the age of the
human victim was considered desirable.
But how reconcile this idea with the exist
ence of numerous petty functional deities—
1 To this use of the oracular head I would venture
also to refer the common employment of small
masks as amulets—an employment which, as
Bötticher rightly remarks, explains “ the vast
number of such subjects met with in antique
gems.”
�THE WORLD -BEFORE CHRIST
gods of the door and the hinge ?—with the
Cunina who guards the child in the cradle,
and the Statina who takes care of him
when he begins to stand ? I answer, all
these are but adjectival gods, mere ghosts
or spirits, unknown in themselves, but con
ceived as exercising this particular function.
“The god that does so-and-so” is just a
convenient expression, no more; it serves
its purpose, and that was enough for the
practical Roman. How readily they could
put up with these rough-and-ready identifi
cations we know in the case of Aius Locutius and of the Deus Rediculus.
Each Terminus and each Silvanus is thus
the god or protecting ghost of each boun
dary stone or each sacred grove—not a
proper name, but a class—not a particular
god, but a kind of spirit. The generalised
and abstract gods are later unifications of
all the individuals included in each genus.
The Janus, I take it, was at first the victim
once sacrificed annually before each gate of
the city, as he is sacrificed still on the west
coast of Africa : as the god of opening, he
was slaughtered at the opening of every
new year; and the year conversely opened
its course with the month sacred to the god
of opening. Perhaps he was also slain as
fortune at the beginning of each war. The
Vesta is the hearth-goddess; and every
house had its Vesta; perhaps originally a
slaughtered hearth-victim. Every man had
in like manner his Genius,- an ancestral
protecting spirit; the corresponding guar
dian of the woman was her Juno; they
descend to Christianity, especially in its
most distinctive Roman form, as the guar
dian angels. Mars was a corn-spirit; only
later was he identified with the expedi
tionary god. The Jupiter or Jovis was a
multiple wine-god, doubtless in every case
the annual victim slain, Dionysus-wise, for
the benefit of the vineyard. Each village
and each farm had once its Jovis, specially
worshipped, and, I doubt not, originally
slaughtered, at the broaching of the year’s
first wine-cask in April. But his name
shows that, as usual, he was also identified
with that very ancient Sky-god who is
common to all the Aryan race ; the par
ticular Jovis being probably sacrificed, him
self to himself, before the old Sky-god’s
altar, as elsewhere the Dionysus-victim at
the shrine of Dionysus.
These identifications, I know, may sound
fanciful to mere classical scholars, unac
quainted with the recent advances in
anthropology, and I would not have ven
tured to propound them at an earlier stage
133
of our involved argument; but now that we
have seen and learned to recognise the
extraordinary similarity of all pantheons
the whole world over, I think the exact way
these deities fall into line with the wall
gods, gate-gods, corn-gods, wine-gods,
boundary-gods, forest-gods, fountain-gods,'
and river-gods everywhere else must surely
be allowed some little weight in analogi
cally placing them.
The later Roman religion only widens, if
at all, from within its own range by the
inclusion of larger and larger tribal ele
ments. Thus the Deus Fidius, who pre
sided over each separate alliance, I take to
be the ghost of the victim slain to form a
covenant; just as in Africa to this day,
when two tribes have concluded a treaty of
peace, they crucify a slave “ to ratify thebargain.” The nature of such covenant
victims has been well illustrated by Pro
fessor Robertson Smith, but the growth of
the covenant-gods, who finally assumed
very wide importance, is a subject which
considerations of space prevent me from
including in our present purview. The
victim, at first no doubt human, became
later a theanthropic animal; as did also
the Jovis-victim and the representatives of
the other adjectival or departmental deities..
The Roman Mars and the Sabine Quirinus
may readily have been amalgamated into a
Mars Quirinus, if we remember that Mars
is probably a general name, and that any
number of Martes may at any time have
been sacrificed. The Jovis of the city of
Rome thus comes at last to be the greatest
and most powerful Jupiter of them all, and
the representative of the Roman union.
Under Hellenising influences, however, all
these minor gods get elevated at last into
generalised deities ; and the animal victims
offered to them become mere honorific or
pi.acular sacrifices, hardly identified at all
with the great images who receive them.
The Hellenising process went so far,
indeed, at Rome that the old Roman
religion grew completely obscured, and
almost disappeared, save in its domestic
character. In the home the Lares still
held the first rank. Elsewhere Bacchus
took the place of Liber, while the traits of
Hermes were fastened on the adjectival
Roman bargain-spirit Mercurius. Yet even
so, the Roman retained his primitive belief
in corn and wine gods under the newer
guises ; his Ceres he saw as one with the
Attic Demeter; his rural ceremonies still
continued unchanged by the change of
attributes that infected and transfigured the
�134
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
city temples. Moreover, the Romans, and
later the cosmopolitan population of Rome,
borrowed gods and goddesses freely from
without in ever-increasing numbers. In
very early days they borrowed from Etruria;
later they borrowed Apollo from Greece,
and (by an etymological blunder) fixed upon
their own Hercules the traits of Heracles.
On the occasion of a plague they publicly
summoned Asclepios, the Greek leech-god,
from Epidaurus; and at the very crisis of
the life-and-death conflict with Hannibal
they fetched the sacred field-stone known
as Cybele, the Mother of the Gods, from
Pessinus in Phrygia. The people of
Pessinus with strange compliance let their
goddess go; and the whole orgiastic cult of
Attis was thus transported entire to I talian
soil. The rites of the great festival were
carried on at Rome almost as they had
been carried on before in Phrygia ; so that
an Asiatic worship of the most riotous type
found a firm official footing in the centre of
the empire. The priest, indeed, was still
an Asiatic, or at least not a Roman ; but
the expulsion of Hannibal from Italy which
followed on this adoption of a foreign god
must have greatly increased the prestige
.and reputation of the alien and orgiastic
deity.
The luxurious Aphrodite of Eryx in
Sicily arrived in Rome about the same time
with Cybele. Originally a Semitic goddess,
she combined the Hellenic and oriental
ideas, and was identified in Italy with the
old Latin Venus.
Later still yet other gods were imported
from without. New deities flowed in from
Asia and Africa. The population of the
city under the early empire had almost
•ceased to be Roman, save in the upper
strata ; a vast number of slaves from all
parts of the world formed the lowest layer
m the crowded vaults : the middle rank
was filled by Syrians, Africans, Greeks,
Sicilians, Moors, and freedmen—men of
all places and races from Spain or Britain
to the Euphrates and the Nile, the steppes
and the desert. The Orontes, said Juvenal,
had flooded the Tiber. Among this mixed
mass of all creeds and colours, subfusc or
golden-haired, a curious mixture of religions
grew up. Some of these were mere ready
made foreign importations—Isis-worship
from Egypt; Jahweh-worship from Judaea;
strange eastern or northern or African cults
from the remotest parts of Pontus or Mauri
tania. Others were intermixtures or rational
isations of older religions, such as Chris
tianity, which mingled together Judaism
and Adonis or Osiris elements, such as
Gnosticism, which, starting from Zoroastrian infiltrations, kneaded all the gods of
the world at last into its own supreme
mystic and magic-god Abraxas.
Looking a little deeper through the
empire in general, we see that from the
time of Augustus onward the need for a
new cosmopolitan religion, to fit the new
cosmopolitan state, was beginning to be
dimly felt and acknowledged. Soldiers
enlisted in one country took the cult and
images of their gods to another. The bull
slaying Mithra (in whom we can hardly
fail to see a solar form of the bull-god, who
sacrifices a bull, himself to himself, before
his own altar) was worshipped here and
there, as numerous bas-reliefs show, from
Persia to Britain. The Gaul endeavoured
to identify his own local war-gods with the
Roman Mars, who had been Hellenised in
turn into the duplicate presentment of the
Greek Ares. The Briton saw his river
gods remodelled in mosaic into images
like those of Roman Tiber, or provided
with the four horses who drag the Roman
Neptune, as Neptune has borrowed the
representation at last- from the Greek
Poseidon. And this was all the easier
because everywhere alike horses were
sacrificed to sea or river, in lieu of human
victims; just as everywhere corn-gods
were dressed in green, and everywhere
wine-gods wore coronals of vine-leaves on
their holy foreheads. Men felt the truth
I have tried to impress, that everywhere
and always there is but oiie religion.
Attributes and origin were so much alike
that worship was rapidly undergoing a
cosmopolitanisation of name, as it already
possessed a similarity of rites and underly
ing features. Language itself assisted this
unifying process. In the west, as Latin
spread, Latin names of gods superseded
local ones ; in the east, as Greek spread,
Hellenic deities gave their titles and their
beautiful forms to native images.
But this was not enough. As the govern
ment was one, under a strong centralised
despotism, it was but natural that the reli
gion should be one also, under the rule
of a similar omnipotent deity. Man makes
his heaven in the image of earth, his
pantheon answers to his political constitu
tion. The mediaeval hall of heaven had
an imperial God, like the Othos or the
Fredericks, on his regal throne, surrounded
by a court of great barons and abbots in
the angels and archangels, the saints and
martyrs: the new religions, like Spiritualism
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
and Theosophy, which spring up in the
modern democratic world, are religions
of free and independent spirits, hardly
even theistic. The Roman empire thus
demanded a single religion under a single
strong god. Materialists were satisfied
with the worship of the Emperor or of the
city of Rome : idealists turned rather to
Isis or to Christ.
One religion there was which might
have answered the turn of the empire : the
pure and ideal monotheism of Judaea. But
the cult of Jahweh was too local and too
national; it never extended beyond the
real or adopted sons of Israel. Even so,
it gained proselytes of high rank at Rome,
especially among women ; as regards men,
the painful and degrading initiatory cere
mony of Judaism must always have stood
seriously in the way of converts. Yet, in
spite of this drawback, there were prose
lytes in all the cosmopolitan cities where
the Jews were settled ; men who loved
their nation and had built them a syna
gogue. If Judaism could but get rid of
its national exclusiveness, and could in
corporate into its god some more of those
genial and universal traits which he had
too early shuffled off—if it could make
itself less austere, less abstract, and at the
same time less local—there was a chance
that it might rise to be the religion of
humanity. The dream of the prophets
might still come true, and all the world
might draw nigh to Zion.
At this critical juncture an obscure little
sect began to appear among the Jews and
Galilaeans, in Jerusalem and Antioch, which
happened to combine in a remarkable
degree all the main requirements of a new
world-religion. And whatever the cult of
Jesus lacked in this respect in its first
beginnings, it made up for as it went, by
absorption and permeation.
It was a Catholic Church : it stood for
the world, not for a tribe or a nation. It
was a Holy Church : it laid great stress
upon the ethical element. It was a Roman
Church : it grew and prospered throughout
the Roman empire. It made a city what
was once a world. Whence it came and
how it grew must be our next and final
questions.
135
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
While the world was thus seething and
fermenting with new faiths the Creed of
the Christ made its first appearance on the
seaboard of Asia. In spite of certain re
marks in my first chapter, I am not such a
“ gross and crass Euhemerist ” as to insist
dogmatically on the historical existence of
a personal Jesus. Of the Christ himself, if
a Christ there were, we know little or
nothing. The account of his life which
has come down to us in the Gospels is so
devoid of authority, and so entirely built
up of miraculous fragments, derived from
elsewhere, that we may well be excused for
gravely doubting whether he is not rather
to be numbered with St. George and St.
Catherine, with Perseus and Arthur, among
the wholly mythical and imaginary figures
of legend and religion.
On the other hand, it is quite possible, or
even probable, that there really did live in
Galilee, at some time about the beginning
of our accepted era, a teacher and
reformer bearing the Semitic name which
is finally Hellenised and Latinised for us
as Jesus. If so, it seems not unlikely that
this unknown person was crucified (or
rather hung on a post) by the Romans at
Jerusalem under the Procurator G. Pontius
Pilatus ; and that after his death he was
worshipped more or less as a god by his
immediate followers. Such kernel of truth
may very well exist in the late and deriva
tive Gospel story ; a kernel of truth, but
imbedded in a mass of unhistorical myth
which implicitly identifies him with all the
familiar corn-gods and wine-gods of the
Eastern Mediterranean.
Furthermore, it is even possible that the
Christ may have been deliberately put to
death, at the instigation of the Jewish
rabble, as one of those temporary divine
kings whose nature and meaning we have
already discussed. If this suggestion seem
improbable from the lack of any similar
recorded case in the scanty Jewish annals,
I would answer that formal histories seldom
give.us any hint of the similar customs still
surviving in civilised European countries ;
that many popular rites exist unheard of
everywhere ; and that the Jews were com
monly believed through the Middle Ages
to crucify Christian boys, like St. Hugh
of Lincoln, in certain irregular and
�136
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
unrecognised ethnical ceremonies. Further
more, lest I should be thought to adduce this
instance through an anti-Semite tendency
(which I do not in the slightest degree
possess), I may add that even among
' Christians similar customs are believed to
exist in rural parts of Italy at the present
day—there are villages where a man dies
yearly as the representative of Christ: and
that in my opinion the Oberammergau and
other Passion Plays are survivals of like
representations in which a condemned
criminal, the usual substitute, did once
actually enact the part of Christ. In short,
■ I do not hesitate to say that god-slaying
ceremonies, more or less attenuated, have
lingered on everywhere in obscure forms
among the folk-rites and folk-customs of
the most civilised peoples.
Without doing more than briefly indicate
this possibility, however, I pass on to say
that if ever there was really a personal
Christ, and if his followers began by vaguely
believing in his resurrection, the legend, as
we get it, is obviously made up of collected
fragments of all the god-slaying customs
and beliefs we have been considering in
detail through the last six or seven chapters.
In the Gospel of his later believers, after the
sect had spread widely among the Gentiles
of the towns, Jesus is conceived of as a corn
and wine god, a temporary king, slain on a
cross as a piacular atonement, and raised
again from the dead after three days, in the
manner common to all corn and wine gods.
It is possible, of course, that the first
believers may have fastened all these ideas
on to an accidental combination and execu
tion, so to speak ; but it is possible too that
the Christ may actually have been put to
death at the great spring feast of the Passover, in accordance with some obscure and
unrecognised folk-rite of the rabble of
Jerusalem. I do not even pretend to have
an opinion on this subject; I do not assert
or deny any historical nucleus of fact ; I
am satisfied with saying that the story, on
the whole, exhibits the Christ to us entirely
in the character of a temporary king, slain
with piacular rites as a corn and wine god.
In the earliest Christian documents, the
Pauline and other Apostolic Epistles, we
get little information about the history of
the real or mythical Christ. Shadowy allu
sions alone to the crucifixion and the
resurrection repay our scrutiny.
But
through the mist of words we see two or
three things clearly. The Christ is des
cribed as the son of God—that is to say, of
the Jewish deity ; and he is spoken of con
tinually as slain on a post or tree, the
sacred symbol of so many old religions.
He dies to save mankind ; and salvation is
offered in his name to all men. A careful
reading of the epistles from this point of
view will give in brief an epitome of the
earliest and least dogmatic yet very doc
trinal Christian theology. Its cardinal
points are four—incarnation, death, resur- ■
rection, atonement.
The later accounts which we get in the
Gospels are far more explicit. The legend
by that time had taken form : it had grown
clear and consistent. All the elements of
the slain and risen corn and wine god are
there in perfection. For brevity’s sake, I
will run all these accounts together, adding
to them certain traits of still later origin.
The aspect of Christ as a survival of the
corn-gOd is already clear in Paul’s argument
in First Corinthians on the resurrection of
the body. This argument would strike
home at once to every Greek and every
Asiatic. “ That which you sow is not
quickened unless it die. And when you
sow, you sow not the body that is to be, but
bare grain ; it may be wheat or any other
grain. But God gives it a shape as pleases
him ; to every seed its own body.” The
whole of this fifteenth chapter, the earliest
statement of the Christian belief, should be
read through in this connection by any one
who wishes to understand the close relation
of the idea of sowing to the resurrection.
It might have been written by any wor
shipper of Adonis or Osiris who wished to
recommend his special doctrine .of a bodily
resurrection to a doubtful cremationist,
familiar with the cult of Dionysus and of
Attis.
The earliest known rite of the Christian
Church was the sacramental eating and
drinking of bread and wine together ; which
rite was said to commemorate the death of
the Lord and his last supper, when he eat
and drank bread and wine with his dis
ciples. The language put into his mouth
on this occasion in the Gospels, especially
the Fourth, is distinctly that of the corn and
wine god. “ I am the true vine ; ye are the
branches.” “ I am the bread of life.”
“ Take, eat, this is my body.” “ This is my
blood of the new testament.” Numberless
other touches of like kind are scattered
through the speeches.
In early Christian art, as exhibited in the
catacombs at Rome, the true vine is most
frequently figured; as are also baskets o-f
loaves, with the corresponding miracle of
the loaves and fishes. Multiplication of
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
bread and wine are the natural credentials
of the corn and wine god. The earliest
description we possess of Christ, that of
John of Damascus, states that his com
plexion was “of the colour of wheat”; while
in the apocryphal'letter of Lentulus to the
Roman Senate we read in the same spirit
that his hair was “wine-coloured.” The
Greek description by Epiphanius Monachus
says that Christ was six feet high ; his hair
long and golden-coloured ; and in counte
nance he was ruddy like his father David.
All these descriptions are obviously influ
enced by the identification of the bread and
wine of the eucharist with the personal
Jesus.
In the usage of the Church from very
early days, it has been customary to eat the
body of Christ in the form of bread, and to
drink his blood as wine in the sacrament.
In the Catholic Church this continuous
ceremony takes place at an altar contain
ing sacred bones, and is represented as
being the offering of God, himself to him
self, in the form of a mystic and piacular
sacrifice. The priest drinks the wine or
blood ; the laity eat only the bread or body.
A curious custom which occurs in many
churches of Sicily at Easter still further
enforces this unity of Christ with the cult
of earlier corn and wine gods, like Adonis
and Osiris. The women sow wheat, lentils,
and canary-seed in plates, which are kept
in the dark and watered every second day.
The plants soon shoot up ; they are then
tied together with red ribbons, and the
plates containing them are placed on the
sepulchres which, with effigies of the dead
Christ, are made up in Roman Catholic
and Greek churches on Good Friday, “just
as the gardens of Adonis,” says Mr. Frazer,
“ were placed on the grave of the dead
Adonis.” In this curious ceremony we get
a survival from the very lowest stratum of
corn-god worship ; the stratum where an
actual human victim is killed, and corn
and other crops are sown above his body.
Even where the sowing itself no longer
survives the sepulchre remains as a relic
of the same antique ritual. Such sepulchres
are everywhere common at Easter, as are
the cradles of the child-god at the feast of
the winter solstice. The Pietà is the final
form of this mourning of the corn-god by
the holy women.
Passing on to the other aspects of Christ
as corn-god and divine-human victim, we
see that he is doubly recognised as god
and man, like all the similar gods of early
races. In the speeches put into his mouth
137
by his biographers he constantly claims
the Jewish god as his father. Moreover,
he is a king ; and his kingly descent from
his ancestor David is insisted upon in the
genealogies with some little persistence.
He is God incarnate ; but also he is the
King of the Jews, and the King of Glory.
Wise men come from the east to worship
him, and bring gifts of gold and myrrh
and frankincense to the infant God in his
manger cradle. But he is further the
Christ, the anointed of God; and, as we
saw, anointment is a common element with
numerous other divine-human victims.
Once more, he is the King’s son; and he
is the only begotten son, the dearly beloved
son, who is slain as an expiation for the
sins of the people. The heavens open, and
a voice from them declares, “ This is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
He is affiliated, like all other such victims,
on the older and earlier ethnical god,
Jahweh ; and though he is himself God,
and one with the Father, he is offered up,
himself to himself, in expiation of the sin
committed by men against divine justice.
All this would be familiar theology indeed
to the worshipper of Osiris, Adonis, and
Attis.
The common Hebrew offering was the
paschal lamb; therefore Christ is envisaged
as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the
sins of the world. In the paintings of the
catacombs it is as a lamb that the Saviour
of the world is oftenest represented. As a
lamb he raises another lamb, Lazarus ; as
a lamb he turns the water into wine ; as a
lamb he strikes the living springs from the
rock on the spandrils of the sarcophagus
of Junius Bassus. But his birth in a
manger is also significant; and his vine
and his dove are almost as frequent as his
lamb in the catacombs.
The Gospel history represents the passion
of Christ essentially as the sacrifice of a
temporary king, invested with all the
familiar elements of that early ritual.
Christ enters Jerusalem in royal state,
among popular plaudits, like those which
always accompany the temporary king, and
the Attis or Adonis. He is mounted on an
ass, the royal beast of the Semites. The
people fling down branches of trees in his
path, as they always fling down parts of
green trees before the gods of vegetation.
On Palm Sunday his churches are still
decked with palm-branches or with sprays
of willow-catkin. Such rites with green
things form an integral part of all the old
rituals of the tree-god or the corn-god, and
�138
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
of all the modern European survivals in
folk-lore—they are equally found in the
Dionysiac festival, and in the Jack-in-theGreen revels on English fair-days. The
connection with trees is also well marked
throughout the Gospels ; and the miracle
of the barren fig-tree is specially mentioned
in close connection with the entry into
J erusalem.
The Christ goes as a willing victim to
the cross ; he does not seriously ask that
the cup should pass from him.
He
foretells his own death, and voluntarily
submits to it. But he is also bought with
a price—the thirty pieces of silver paid to
Judas. Of all this we had forecasts in the
Khond, the Mexican, and various other
rituals.
Furthermore, there is a trial—a double
trial, before the high priest and before
Pilate. Such trials, we have seen, are
common elements of the mock-king’s
degradation. Like all other similar vic
tims, the Christ, after being treated like
a monarch, is reviled and spat upon, buf
feted and insulted. He is bound with
cords, and carried before Pilate. The
procurator asks him, “ Art thou the King
of the Jews?” and the Christ by implica
tion admits the justice of the title. All the
subsequent episodes of the painful drama
are already familiar to us. The sacred
victim is cruelly scourged that his tears
may flow. As in other cases he is crowned
with flowers or with bark, in order to
mark his position as king of vegetation, so
here he is crowned with a chaplet of thorns
that adds to his ignominy. The sacred
blood must flow from the sacred head.
But still, he is clothed with purple and
saluted with the words, “ Hail, King of the
Jews 1” in solemn irony. He is struck on
the head with a reed by the soldiers : yet
even as they strike they bow their knees
and worship him. They give him to drink
wine, mingled with myrrh ; “ but he re
ceived it not.” Then he is crucified at
Golgotha, the place of a skull,1 on a cross,
the old sacred emblem of so many reli
gions ; it bears the inscription, “ The King
of the Jews,” by order of the Procurator.
After the death of the Christ he is mourned
over, like Adonis and Osiris, by the holy
women, including his mother. I do not
think I need point out in detail the many
1 According to mediaeval legend, the skull was
Adam’s, and the sacred blood which fell upon it
revived it. In crucifixions a skull is generally
represented at the foot of the cross.
close resemblances which exist between the
Mother of the Gods and the Mother of
God—the Theotokos.
The thieves crucified with the Saviour
have their legs broken, like many other
sacred victims ; but the .Christ himself has
not a bone broken, like the paschal lamb
which was the Jewish substitute for the
primitive human victim. Thus both ideas
on this subject, the earlier and the later,
seem to find an appropriate place in the
history. Instead of having his legs broken,
however, the Christ has his side pierced;
and from it flows the mystic blood of the
atonement, in which all Christians are
theoretically washed ; this baptism of blood
(a literal reality in older cults) being
already a familiar image at the date of the
Apocalypse, where the robes of the elect
are washed white in the blood of the lamb
that was slain.
After the crucifixion the Christ is taken
down and buried. But, like all other corn
and wine gods, he rises again from the
dead on the third day—this very period of
three days being already a conventional
one in similar cases. Every one of the
surroundings recalls Osiris and Attis. It
is the women once more who see him first;
and afterwards the men. Finally, he
ascends into heaven, to his Father, before
the wondering eyes of his disciples and his
mother. In each item of this there is
nothing with which we are not already
familiar elsewhere.
I will not pursue the analogy further.
To do so would be endless. Indeed, I do
not think there is an element in the Gospel
story which does not bear out the parallel
here suggested. The slight incident of the
visit to Herod, for example, is exactly
analagous to the visit of the false Osiris in
modern Egypt to the governor’s house, and
the visit of the temporary or mock king in
so many other cases to the real king’s
palace. The episode where Herod and his
men of war array the Christ in a gorgeous
robe is the equivalent of the episode of the
Mexican king arraying the god victim in
royal dress, and is also paralleled in nume
rous other like dramas elsewhere. The
women who prepare spices and ointments
for the body recall the Adonis rites ; Pilate
washing his hands of the guilt of con
demnation recalls the frequent episode of
the slaughterers of the god laying the
blame upon others, or casting it on the
knife, or crying out, “ We bought you with
a price ; we are guiltless.” Whoever will
read carefully through the Gospel accounts,
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
side by side with Mr. Frazer’s well-chosen
collection of mock-king narratives, will see
for himself that endless other minor traits
crop up in the story which may be equated
with numerous similar incidents in the
death and resurrection of the man-god
elsewhere.
The very subjects of the parables are in
themselves significant: the lord of the
vineyard who sends his son, whom the
hirers slay ; the labourers who come at the
eleventh hour ; the sower and the good
and bad ground ; tlie grain of mustard
seed ; the leaven of the Pharisees ; the
seed growing secretly; the sons in the
vineyard. It will be found that almost all
of th'em turn on the key-note subjects of
bread and wine, or at least of seed-sowing.
By what precise stages the story of the
Galilaean man-god arose and fixed itself
around the person of the real or mythical
Jesus it would be hard to say. Already in
the epistles we may catch stray glimpses,
in the germ, of most of it. Already we
notice strange hints and foreshadowings.
Probably the first Jewish disciples had
arrived at the outline of the existing story
even before the Gentiles began to add their
quotum. And when we look at documents
so overloaded with miracle and legend as
the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles,
we find it hard indeed to separate any
element of historical truth from the enor
mous accretion of myth and legend. Still,
I see no grave reason to doubt the general
truth of the idea that the Christian belief
and practice arose first among Galilrean
Jews, and that from them it spread with
comparative rapidity to the people of Syria
and Asia Minor. It even seems probable
that one Saul or Paul was really the person
who first conceived the idea of preaching
the new religion throughout the empire,
and especially in the great cities, as a faith
which might be embraced by both Jew and
Gentile. Certainly, while the young cult
contained most of the best features of
Judaism, viewed as a possible universal
religion—its monotheism, its purity, its
comparative freedom from vile and absurd
legends of the gods and their amours—it
surpassed the elder faith in acceptability to
the world at large, and especially to the
people of Syria and western Asia. Every
one of them could have said with perfect
truth, “ Nothing is changed ; there is but
one god more to worship.”
As the church spread, the legend grew
apace. To the early account of the death
and resurrection of the King of the Jews
139
later narrators added the story of his
miraculous birth from a virgin mother, who
conceived directly frqm the spirit of God
wafted down upon her. The wide extent
and the origin of this belief about the
conception of gods and heroes has been
fully examined by Mr. Sidney Hartland in
his admirable study of the Legend of
Perseus. The new believers further pro
vided their divine leader with a royal
genealogy from David downward, and
made him, by a tolerably circuitous argu
ment, be born at Bethlehem, according to
the supposed prophecy—though, if there
ever was really a Jesus at all, it would,
seem that the one fact of which we could .
feel tolerably sure about him was the fact.
of his being a man of Nazareth. Later
writers put into his mouth a moral teaching
high for its time, somewhat .anticipated by
Hillel and other rabbis, and perhaps im
part of Buddhist origin.; they also made him announce for himself that divine role
of mediator and atoner which they them
selves claimed for the Saviour of Mankind.
He calls himself the vine, the bread of
life, the good shepherd ; he is called “ the
lamb of God that taketh away the sins of
the world,” by John the Baptist, an enthu
siast whose fame has attracted him at last
into the Christian legend. Very early, the
old rite of water-lustration or baptism,
adopted by John, was employed as one of
the chief Christian ceremonies, the cere
mony of initiation, which replaced with
advantage the bloody and dangerous
Jewish circumcision. This allowed far
freer proselytism than Judaism could ever
expect; and though no doubt at first the
Christians regarded themselves as a sect
of the Jews, and though they always
adopted entire the Jewish sacred books
and the Jewish God, with all the Jewish
history, cosmogony, and mythology, yet
the new religion was from the beginning
a cosmopolitan one, and preached the
word unto all nations. Such a faith,
coming at such a moment, and telling men
precisely what they were ready to believe,
was certain beforehand of pretty general
acceptance. When Constantine made
Christianity the official creed of the
empire, he did but put an official stamp
of approval on a revolution that had long
been growing more and more inevitable.
In one word, Christianity triumphed, be
cause it united in itself all the most vital
elements of all the religions then current
in the world, with little that was local,
national, or distasteful ; and it added to
�140
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
them all a high ethical note and a social
doctrine of human brotherhood especiallysuited to an age of unification and syste
matic government.
Occasionally, even in the Gospels them
selves, we get strange passing echoes of a
mysterious identification of the Christ with
the ancient Hebrew ethnical god, not as
the Lord of the Universe alone, but vaguely
remembered as the sacred stone of the
ark, the Rock of Israel. “The stone
which the builders rejected, that one has
become the head of the corner.” “ Who
soever shall fall on this stone shall be
broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall,
it will grind him to powder.” And in a
•speech put into the mouth of Christ he
says to Peter, “ Rock thou art, and on this
Rock will I build my assembly.”1
Sometimes, too, in the epistles the two
Ideas of the corn-god and the foundation
stone-god are worked upon alternately.
“ I have planted ; Apollos watered.” “Ye
are God’s husbandry; ye are God’s build
ing.” “ I have laid the foundation, and
another builds thereon. Let every man
take care how he builds upon it. For other
foundation can no man lay than that which
is laid, which is the Christ, Jesus.” Or
again : “You are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, Jesus, the
Christ, being himself the chief corner
stone.” Whoever re-reads the epistles by
the light of the analogies suggested in this
book will find that they positively teem
with similar references to the familiar
theology of the various slain man-gods,
which must have been known to every one
•along the shores of the Mediterranean.
The Church which was built upon this
rock has shown its continuity with earlier
religions in a thousand ways and by a
thousand analogies. Solar and astrologi
cal elements have been freely admitted,
side by side with those which recall the
corn and wine-gods. The chief festivals
still cling to the solar feasts of the equi
noxes and the solstices. Thus every year
the Church celebrates in mimicry the death
and resurrection of the Christ, as the
Mediterranean peoples celebrated the
death and resurrection of the Attis, the
1 I can honestly assure the polemical Protes
tant divine that I am well aware of the differ
ence in gender in this passage—and of its utter
unimportance. The name Peter could not well
be made feminine to suit a particular play upon
words, or to anticipate the objections of a par
ticular set of trivial word-twisters.
Adonis, the Dionysus, the Osiris. It cele
brates the feast at the usual time for most
such festivals, the spring equinox. More
than that, it chooses for the actual day of
the resurrection, commonly called in
English Easter, and in the Latin dialects
the Paschal feast (or Pâques), a trebly
astrological date. The festival must be as
near as possible to the spring equinox ;
but it must be after a full moon, and it
must be on the day sacred to the sun.
Before the feast a long fast takes place, at
the close of which the Christ is slain in
effigy, and solemnly laid in a mimic
sepulchre. Good Friday is the anniversary
of his piacular death, and the special day
of the annual mourning, as for Adonis and
Attis. On Easter Sunday he rises again
from the dead, and every good Catholic
is bound to communicate—to eat the body
of his slaughtered god on the annual spring
festival of reviving vegetation. Compari
son of the Holy Week ceremonies at Rome
with the other annual festivals, from the
Mexican corn-feast and the Potraj rite of
India to Attis and Adonis, will be found
extremely enlightening—I mean, of course,
the ceremonies as they were when the Pope,
the Priest-King, the representative of the
annual Attis at Pessinus, officiated publicly
in the Sistine Chapel, with paschal music
known as Lamentations, and elevation of
the Host amid the blare of trumpets. On
this subject I limit myself to the barest
hint. Whoever chooses to follow out so
pregnant a clue will find it lead him into
curious analogies and almost incredible
survivals.
Similarly, the birth of Christ is celebrated
at the winter solstice, the well-known date
for so many earlier ceremonies of the gods
of vegetation. Then the infant god lies
unconscious in his cradle. Whoever has
read Mr. Frazer’s great work will under
stand the connection of the holly and the
mistletoe, and the Christmas tree, with
this second great festival of Christendom,
very important in the Teutonic north,
though far inferior in the south to the
spring-tide feast, when the god is slain and
eaten of necessity. I limit myself to saying
that the Christmas rites are all of them
rites of the birth of the corn-god.
The Christian cross, too, it is now known,
was not employed as a symbol of the faith
before the days of Constantine, and was
borrowed from the solar wheel of the
Gaulish sun-god-worshippers who formed
the mass of the successful emperor’s legion
aries.
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
We are now, therefore, in a very different
position for understanding the causes which
led to the rise and development of the
Christian religion from that which we
occupied at the outset of our inquiry. We
had then to accept crudely the bare fact
that about the first century of our era a
certain cult of a Divine Man, Jesus, arose
among a fraction of a maritime people of
Lower Syria. That fact as we at first
received it stood isolated and unrelated in
its naked singularity. We can now see
that it was but one more example of a
universal god-making tendency in human
nature, high or low; and in our last chapter
we shall find that this universal tendency
to worship the dead has ever since persisted
as fully as ever, and is in fact the central
element in the entire religious instinct of
humanity.
The main emotional chord upon which
Christianity played in its early days—and
indeed the main chord upon which it still
plays-—is just, I believe, the universal feeling
in favour of the deification or beatification
of the dead, with the desire for immortality
on the part of the individual believer him
self in person. Like all other religions,
but even more than any other religion at
that time in vogue, Christianity appealed to
these two allied and deep-seated longings
of human nature. It appealed on the one
hand to the unselfish emotions and affec
tions of mankind by promising a close,
bodily, personal, and speedy reassociation
of the living believer with his dead relatives
and friends. It appealed on the other hand
to the selfish wishes and desires of each,
by holding forth to every man the sure and
certain hope of a glorious resurrection.
A necessary consequence of the universal
ferment and intermixture of pantheons
everywhere during the early days of the
Roman Empire was a certain amount of
floating scepticism about the gods as a
whole, which reaches its highest point in
the mocking humour of Lucian. But
while this nascent scepticism was very real
and very widespread, it affected rather
current beliefs as to the personality and
history of the various gods than the under
lying conception of godhead in the abstract.
Even those who laughed and those who
disbelieved retained at bottom many super
stitions and supernatural ideas. Their
scepticism was due, not like that of our own
time to fundamental criticism of the very
notion of the supernatural, but to the obvious
inadequacy of existing gods to satisfy the
requirements of educated cosmopolitans.
141
The deities of the time were too coarse, too
childish, too gross for their worshippers.
The common philosophic attitude of culti
vated Rome and cultivated Alexandria
might be compared to some extent to that
of our own Unitarians, who are not indeed
hostile to the conception of theology in its
own nature, but who demur to the most
miraculous and supernatural part of the
popular doctrine.
With the mass, however, the religious
unrest showed itself mainly, as it always
shows itself at such critical moments, in a
general habit of running after strange reli
gions, from some one or other of which the
anxious inquirer hopes to obtain some
divine answer to his difficulties. When old
faiths decay, there is room for new ones.
As might have been expected, this ten
dency was most clearly shown in the great
cosmopolitan trading towns, where men of
many nations rubbed shoulders together,
and where outlandish cults of various sorts,
had their temples and their adherents.
Especially was this the case at Rome, Alex
andria, and Antioch, the capitals respec
tively of the Roman, the Hellenic, and the
Semitic worlds. In the Grseco-Egyptian
metropolis the worship of Serapis, a com
posite deity of hybrid origin, grew gradually
into the principal cult of the teeming city.
At Antioch Hellenic deities were ousting
the Baalim. At Rome, the worship of Isis,,
of Jahweh, of Syrian and other Eastern
gods, was carried on by an ever-increasing
body of the foreign, native, and servile
population. These were the places where
Christianity spread. The men of the vil
lages were long, as the world still quaintly
phrases it, “ pagans.”
The strange cults which united in thus
gradually crushing out the old local and
national pantheons throughout the Roman
world had for the most part two marked
attributes in common : they were more or
less mystical, and they tended more or less
in the direction of monotheism. Solar
myth, syncretism, the esoteric priestly in
terpretations, and the general diffusion of
Greek philosophic notions, mixed with
subtler oriental and Zoroastrian ideas, had
all promoted the rise and growth of the
mystic element, while a vague monothe
istic movement had long been apparent in
the higher thought of Egypt, Greece, Italy,
and the East. In the resulting conflict and
intermixing of ideas, Judaism, as one of
the most mystical and monotheistic of reli
gions, would have stood a good chance of
becoming the faith of the world had it not
�142
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
been for the fatal weight of its strict and
obstinate national character. Even as it
was, Jewish communities were scattered
through all the commercial towns of the
Graeco-Roman world; a Jewish colony
strongly influenced Alexandria ; and Jewish
teachers made proselytes in Rome in the
very bosom of the imperial household.
The ferment which thus existed by the
Orontes, the Nile, and the Tiber must also
have extended in a somewhat less degree
to all the cosmopolitan seaports and trading
towns of the great and heterogeneous mili
tary empire. What was true of Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch was true in part,
we have every reason to believe, of Damas
cus, of Byzantium, of Sinope, of Ephesus;
of Rhodes, of Cyrene, of Athens, of Car
thage ; perhaps even of Massilia, of Gades,
of Burdigala, of Lugdunum. All around
the eastern Mediterranean at least, new
faiths were seething, new ideas were brew
ing, new mysticisms were being evolved,
new superstitions were arising, Phoenix
like, out of the dying embers of decaying
creeds. Setting aside mere exotic or hybrid
cults, like the worship of Serapis at Alex
andria and of Isis at Rome, or mere abor
tive attempts like the short-lived worship of
Antinous in Egypt, we may say that three
of these new religions appealed strongly to
the wants and desires of the time, and
those three were Mithraism, Gnosticism,
and Christianity.
All were alike somewhat eclectic in cha
racter ; and all could lay claim to a certain
, cosmopolitan and catholic spirit unknown
to the cults of the old national pantheons.
All came to the Greek and Roman world
from the mystic east, the land of the rising
sun, whose magic is felt even at the present
day by the votaries of Theosophy and of
Esoteric Buddhism. Which of the three
was to conquer in the end might have
seemed at one time extremely doubtful :
nor indeed do I believe that the ultimate
triumph of Christianity, the least imposing
of the three, was by any means at first a
foregone conclusion. The religion of Jesus
probably owed quite as much to what we
call chance—that is to say, to the play of
purely personal and casual circumstances
—as to its own essential internal character
istics. If Constantine or any other shrewd
military chief had happened to adopt the
symbols of Mithra or Abraxas instead of
the name of Christ, it is quite conceivable
that all the civilised world might now be
adoring the mystic divinity of the three
hundred and sixty-five emanations as
sedulously as it actually adores the final
theological outcome of the old Hebrew
Jahweh. But there were certain real
advantages as well, which told, I believe,
in the very nature of things, in favour of
the Christ as against the coinage of
Basilides or the far-eastern sun-god. Con
stantine, in other words, chose his religion
wisely. It was the cult exactly adapted to
the times : above all others, during the two
centuries or so that had passed since its
first beginning (for we must place the real
evolution of the Christian system consider
ably later than the life or death of Jesus
himself) it had shown itself capable of
thoroughly engaging on its own side the
profoundest interests and emotions of the
religious nature.
We must remember, too, that in all
religious crises, while faith in the actual
gods and creeds declines rapidly, no
corresponding weakening occurs in the
underlying sentiments on which all religions
ultimately base themselves. Hence the
apparent paradox that periods of doubt are
also almost always periqds of intense
credulity as well. The human mind, cast
free from the moorings which have long
sufficed for it, drifts about restlessly in
search of some new haven in which it may
take refuge from the terrors of uncertainty
and infidelity. And its new faith is always
but a fresh form of the old one. A god or
gods, prayer, praise, and sacraments, are
essential elements. More especially is it
the case that when trust in the great gods
begins to fail, a blind groping after necro
mancy, spiritualism, and ghost-lore in
general takes its place for the moment.
We have seen this tendency fully exempli
fied in our own time by the spiritualists and
others ; nor was it less marked in the
tempest of conflicting ideas which broke
over the Roman world from the age of the
Antonines to the fall of the empire. The
fact is, the average man cares but little,
after all, for his gods and his goddesses,
viewed as individuals. They are but an
outlet for his own emotions. He appeals to
them for help, as long as he continues to
believe in their effective helpfulness : he is
ready to cajole them with offerings of blood
or to flatter them with homage of praise
and prayer, as long as he expects to gain
some present or future benefit, bodily or
spiritual, in return for his assiduous adula
tion. But as soon as his faith in their
existence and power begins to break down,
he puts up with the loss of their godhead,
so far as they themselves are concerned,
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
without one qualm of disappointment or
inconvenience. It is something far other
than that that touches him in religion : it
is his hopes for his own eternal welfare, and
the welfare after death of those that love
him.
Hence a decline of faith in the great
gods is immediately followed by a recrudes
cence of the most barbaric and original
element in religion—the cult of the ghost or
spirit, necromancy, the direct worship of the
dead or intercourse with the dead: a habit of
inquiry into the positive chances of human
immortality. This necromantic spirit is
well marked in Gnostic remains, and in
the fragmentary magical literature of the
decadent Grseco-Roman world. It is
precisely the same tendency which pro
duces spiritualism in our own time; and it
is due to the desire to find some new and
experimental basis for the common human
belief in the immortality of the soul or the
resurrection of the body.
And here we get the clue to the serious
change which Christianity wrought in the
religious feeling of the western world—a
change whose importance and whose
retrograde nature has never yet, I believe,
been fully recognised. For Christianity,
while from one point of view, as a mono
theistic or quasi-monotheistic religion, an
immense advance upon the aesthetic
paganism of Greece and Italy, was from
another point of view, as a religion of
resurrection rather than a religion of im
mortality, a step backward for all Western
Europe.
Even among the Jews themselves, how
ever, the new cult must have come with all
the force of an “ aid to faith ” in a sceptical
generation. Abroad, among the Jewish Hel
lenists, Greek philosophy must have under
mined much of the fanatical and patriotic
enthusiasm for Jahweh which had grown
stronger and ever stronger in Judaea itself
through the days of the Maccabees and the
Asmonaean princes. Scraps of vague Pla
tonic theorising on the nature of the Divine
were taking among these exiles the place
of the firm old dogmatic belief in the Rock
of Israel. At home the Hellenising ten
dencies of the house of Herod, and the
importance in Jerusalem of the Sadducees
“ who say there is no resurrection,” were
striking at the very roots of the hope and
faith that pious Jews most tenderly
cherished. Instead of Israel converting
the world, the world seemed likely to con
vert Israel. Swamped in the great absorb
ing and assimilating empire, Judah might
143
follow in the way of Ephraim. And Israel’s
work in the world might thus be undone,
or rather stultified for ever.
Just at this very moment, when all faiths
were tottering visibly to their fall, a tiny
band of obscure Galiisean peasants, who
perhaps had followed a wild local enthu
siast from their native hills up to turbulent
Jerusalem, may have been seized with a
delusion neither unnatural nor unaccustomed
under their peculiar circumstances, but
which nevertheless has sufficed to turn or
at least to modify profoundly the entire
subsequent course of the world’s history.
Their leader, if we may trust the uni
versal tradition of the sect, as laid down
long after in their legendary Gospels, was
crucified at Jerusalem under G. Pontius
Pilatus. If any fact upon earth about
Jesus is true, besides the fact of his resi
dence at Nazareth, it is this fact of the
crucifixion, which derives verisimilitude from
being always closely connected with the
name of that particular Roman official.
But three days after, says the legend, the
body of Jesus could not be found in the
sepulchre where his friends had laid him;
and a rumour gradually gained ground
that he had risen from the dead, and had
been seen abroad by the women who
mourned him and by various of his dis
ciples. In short, what was universally be
lieved about all other and elder human gods
was specifically asserted afresh in a newer
case about the man Christ Jesus. The
idea fitted in with the needs of the time,
and the doctrine of the Resurrection of
Jesus the Christ became the corner-stone
of the new-born Christian religion.
Nothing can be clearer than the fact,
admitted on all hands, that this event
formed the central point of the Apostles’
preaching. It was the Resurrection of
Jesus, regarded as an earnest of general
resurrection for all his followers, that they
most insisted upon in their words and
writings. It was the resurrection that
converted the world of Western Europe.
“Your faith is flagging,” said the early
Christians in effect to their pagan fellows :
“ your gods are half-dead; your ideas
about your own future, and the present
state of your departed friends, are most
vague and shadowy. In opposition to all
this, we offer you a sure and certain hope ;
we tell you a tale of real life, and recent;
we preach a god of the familiar pattern,
yet very close to you ; we present you with
a specimen of actual resurrection. We
bring you good tidings of Jesus as the
�144
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
Messiah, and him crucified : to the Jews, a
stumbling-block ; to the Greeks, foolish
ness ; but to such as are saved a plain
evidence of the power of the God of Israel.
Accept our word ; let your dead sleep in
Christ in our catacombs, as once they
slept in Osiris at Abydos, or rested upon
him that rests at Philte.” “ If Christ be
not risen,” says one of the earliest Christian
writers in a passionate peroration, “ then
is our preaching vain, and your faith is
vain also : but as it is, Christ is risen from
the dead, and has become the first fruits of
them that slept.” “ Else what shall they
do,” he goes on, touching to the quick that
ingrained human desire for communion
with the departed, “ what shall they do
which are baptised for the dead, if the
dead rise not at all ? Why are they then
baptised for the dead?” These, in short,
apart from the elements common to all
creeds, are the three great motors of primi
tive Christianity : one dogmatic, the resur
rection of Jesus ; one selfish, the salvation
of the individual soul ; one altruistic, the
desire for reunion with the dead among
one’s beloved.
Syria and Egypt could easily accept the
new doctrine. It involved for them no
serious change of front, no wide departure
from the ideas and ceremonies which
always formed their rounded concept of
human existence. There is a representa
tion of the resurrection of Osiris in the little
“ Temple on the Roof” at Denderah which
might almost pass for a Christian illustra
tion of the resurrection of Jesus. In its
beginnings, in short, Christianity was essen
tially an oriental religion; it spread fastest
in the eastern Mediterranean basin, where
Judaism was already well established. It
is a significant fact that its official adoption
as the public religion of the Roman state
was the act of the same prince who deli
berately shifted the seat of his government
from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, and
largely transformed the character of the
empire from a Latin to a Grieco-Asiatic
type. All the new religions which struggled
together for the mastery of the world were
oriental in origin : the triumph of Chris
tianity was but a single episode in the
general triumph of aggressive orientalism
over the occidental element in the Roman
system.
Egypt in particular, I believe, had far
more to do with the dogmatic shaping of
early Christianity, and the settlement of
Christian symbolism and Christian mysti
cism, than is generally admitted by the
official historians of the primitive Church.
There, where the idea of resurrection was
already so universal, and where every man
desired to be “justified by Osiris,” Chris
tianity soon made an easy conquest of a
people on whose faith it exerted so little
change. And Egypt easily made its in
fluence felt on the plastic young creed. It
is allowed that the doctrine of the Trinity
took shape among the Triad-worshippers
on the banks of the Nile, and that the
scarcely less important doctrine of the
Logos was borrowed from the philosophy
of Alexandrian Jews. Nobody can look at
the figures of Isis and the infant Horus in
any Egyptian museum without being at
once struck by the obvious foreshadowing
of the Coptic and Byzantine Madonna and
Child. The mystery that sprang up about
the new doctrines ; the strange syncretic
union of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost into
a single Trinity ; the miraculous concep
tion by the Theotokos or mother of God—
a clear variant in one aspect on the older
idea of Hathor; and the antenatal existence
of Christ in heaven before his incarnation
—all are thoroughly Egyptian in character,
with a faint superadded dash of Alexan
drian Jewish Hellenism. The love of
symbols which the young Church so early
exhibits in the catacombs and elsewhere
smacks equally of Ptolemaic reminiscences
of Thebes and Memphis. The mummy
form of Lazarus ; the fish that makes such
a clever alphabetic ideogram for the name
and titles of Jesus ; the dove that symbo
lises the Holy Ghost ; the animal types
of the four evangelists—all these are in
large part Egyptian echoes, resonant of
the same spirit which produced the hiero
glyphics and the symbolism of the great
Nilotic temples.
Nay, more, the very details themselves
of Christian symbolism often go back to
early Egyptian models. The central
Christian emblem of all, the cross, is holy
all the world over : it is the sacred tree ;
and each race has adapted it to its own
preconceived ideas and symbols. But in
Coptic Christianity it has obvious affinities
with the crux ansata. In the Coptic room
of the New Museum at Ghizeh is an early
Christian monument with a Greek uncial
inscription, on which is represented a cross
of four equal limbs with expanded flanges,
having a crux ansata inserted in all its
four interstices. At the Coptic church of
Abu Sirgeh at Old Cairo occurs a similar
cross, also with suggestions of Taulike
origin, but with other equal-limbed crosses
�THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIANITY
substituted for the cruces ansattz in the
corners. How far the Egyptian Christians
thus merely transferred their old ideas to
the new faith may be gathered from a
single curious example. In Mr. Loftie’s
collection of sacred beetles is a scarabaeus
containing a representation of the cruci
fixion, with two palm branches : and other
scarabs have Christian crosses. If we re
member how extremely sacred the scarab
was held in the Egyptian religion, and
also that it was regarded as the symbol of
the resurrection, we cannot possibly miss
the importance of this implication. In
deed, the Alexandrian Father, Epiphanius,
speaks of Christ as “the scarabseus of
God,” a phrase which may be still better
understood if I add that in the treatise on
hieroglyphs known under the name of
Horapollo a scarabmus is said to denote
“ an only-begotten.” Thus “ the lamb of
God” in the tongue of Israel becomes
“ the scarabaeus of God ” in the mouth of
an Egyptian speaker.
In the west, however, the results of the
spread of Christianity were far more
revolutionary. Indeed, I do not think the
cult of Jesus could ever have spread at all
in Rome had it not been for the large
extent to which the city was peopled in
later times by Syrians and Africans. And
if Christianity had not spread in Rome, it
could never have gained a foothold at all
in the Aryan world.
Foremost among the changes which
Christianity involved in Italy and the rest
of western Europe was the retrograde
change from the belief in immortality and
the immateriality of the soul, with crema
tion as its practical outcome, to the belief
in the resurrection of the body, with a
return to the disused and discredited
practice of burial as its normal correlative.
The catacombs were the necessary result
of this backward movement; and with the
catacombs came in the possibility of relic
worship, martyr-worship, and the adoration
of saints and their corpses. I shall trace
out in greater detail in my next chapter the
remoter effects of this curious revival of
the prime element in religion—the cult of
the dead : it must suffice here to point
out briefly that it resulted as a logical
effect from the belief in the resurrection
of Christ, and the consequent restoration
of the practice of burial. Moreover, to
polytheists this habit gave a practical
opening for the cult of many deities in the
midst of nominal monotheism, which the
Italians and sundry other essentially poly
145
theistic peoples were not slow to seize
upon. It is true that theoretically the
adoration paid to saints and martyrs is
never regarded as real worship ; but I
need hardly say that technical distinctions
like these are always a mere part of the
artificial theology of scholastic priesthoods,
and may be safely disregarded by the
broad anthropological inquirer. The
genuine facts of religion are the facts and
rites of the popular cult, which remain in
each race for long periods together essen
tially uniform.
Thus we early get two main forms of
Christianity, both official and popular :
one eastern—Greek, Coptic, Syrian ; more
mystical in type, more symbolic, more
philosophic, more monotheistic : the other
western—Latin, Celtic, Spanish ; more
Aryan in type, more practical, more
material, more polytheistic. And these at
a later time are reinforced by a third or
northern form—the Teutonic and Pro
testant ; in which ethical ideas prepon
derate over religious, and the worship of
the Book in its most literal and often
foolish interpretation supersedes the earlier
worship of Madonna, saints, pictures,
statues, and emblems.
At the period when Christianity first
begins, to emerge from the primitive
obscurity of its formative nisus, however,
we find it practically compounded of the
following elements—which represent the
common union of a younger god offered
up to an older one with whom he is
identified.
First of all, as the implied basis, taken
for granted in all the early Hebrew scrip
tures, there is current Judaism, in the form
that Judaism had gradually assumed in
the fourth, third, and second centuries
before the Christian era. This includes as
its main principle the cult of the one god
Jahweh, now no longer largely thought of
under that personal name, or as a strictly
ethnic deity, but rather envisaged as the
Lord God who dwells in heaven, very much
as Christians of to-day still envisage him.
It includes also an undercurrent of belief in
a heavenly hierarchy of angels and arch
angels, the court of the Lord (modifications
of an earlier astrological conception, the
Host of Heaven), and in a principle of
evil, Satan or the devil, dwelling in hell,
and similarly surrounded by a crowd of
minor or assistant demons. Further, it
accepts implicitly from earlier Judaism the
resurrection of the dead, the judgment of
the good and the wicked, the doctrine of
L
�146
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
future rewards and punishments (perhaps
in its fullest shape a Hellenistic importation
from Egypt, though also commonly found
in most spontaneous religions), and many
other tenets of the current Jewish belief.
In short, the very earliest Christians, being
probably for the most part J ews, Galilaeans,
and proselytes, or else Syrians and
Africans of Judaising tendencies, did not
attempt to get rid of all their preconceived
religious opinions when they became
Christians, bnt merely superadded to these
as a new item the special cult of the deified
Jesus.
On the other hand, as the Gospel
spread to the Gentiles, it was not
thought necessary to burden the fresh
converts with the whole minute cere
monial of Judaism, and especially
with , the unpleasant initiatory rite of
circumcision. A mere symbolical lustra
tion, known as baptism, was all that was
demanded of new adherents to the faith,
with abstinence from any participation in
“heathen” sacrifices or functions. And
the general authority of the Hebrew Scrip
tures, especially as a historical account of
the development of Judaism, from which
Christianity sprang, was more or less fully
admitted, at first by implication or quota
tion alone, but afterwards by the deliberate
and avowed voice of the whole Christian
assembly. The translation of this mixed
mass of historical documents, early cosmo
gonies ill-reported and Jehovised Jewish
traditions, misinterpreted poems, and con
scious forgeries, in the Latin version known
as the Vulgate, had the effect of endowing
Europe for many centuries with a false
body of ancient history.
Superimposed upon this substratum of
current Judaism with its worship of Jahweh
came the distinctive Jesus-cult, the worship
of the particular dead Galilaean peasant.
But how, in a religion pretending to be
monotheistic, were these two distinct cults
of two such diverse gods to be reconciled
or to be explained away ? By the familiar
doctrine of the incarnation, and the belief
in the human god who is sacrificed, himself
to himself, as a piacular offering. Jewish
tradition and subtler Egyptian mysticism
sufficed to smooth over- the apparent
anomaly. The Jews looked forward to a
mysterious deliverer, a new Moses, the
Messiah, who was to fulfil the destiny of
Israel by uniting all nations under the
sceptre of David, and by bringing the
Gentiles to the feet of the God of Israel.
Jesus, said the Christians, had proclaimed
himselfthat very Messiah, the Christ of God;
he had often alluded to the great Hebrew
deity as his father ; he had laid claim to
the worship of the Lord of heaven. Further
than this, perhaps, the unaided Jewish
intelligence would hardly have gone: it
would have been satisfied with assigning to
the slain man-god J esus a secondary place,
as the only begotten Son of God, who gave
himself up as a willing victim—a position
perhaps scarcely more important than that
which Mohammed holds in the system of
Islam. Such, it seems to me, is on the
whole the conception which permeates the
synoptic Gospels, representing the ideas of
Syrian Christendom. But here the acute
Graeco-Egyptian mind came in with its
nice distinctions and its mystical identifica
tions. There was but one god, indeed;
yet that god was at least twofold (to go no
further for the present). He had two
persons, the Father and the Son : and the
Second Person, identified with the Alexan
drian conception of the Logos, though
inferior to the Father as touching his man
hood, was equal to the Father as touching his
godhead—after the precise fashion we saw
so common in describing the relations of
Osiris and Horus, and the identification of
the Attis or Adonis victim with the earlier
and older god he represented. “ I and my
Father are one,” says the Christ of the
Fourth Gospel, the embodiment and incar
nation of the Alexandrian Logos. And in
the very forefront of that manifesto of Neo
Platonic Christianity comes the dogmatic
assertion, “In the beginning was the Logos:
and the Logos dwelt with God : and the
Logos was God.”
Even so the basis of the new creed is
still incomplete. The Father and Son give
the whole of the compound deity as. the
popular mind, everywhere and always, has
commonly apprehended it. But the scho
lastic and theological intelligence needed a
Third Person to complete the Trinity which
to all mankind, as especially to orientals, is
the only perfect and thoroughly rounded
figure. In later days, no doubt, the
Madonna would have been chosen to fill up
the blank, and, on the analogy of Isis, would
have filled it most efficiently. As a matter
of fact, in the creed of Christendom as the
Catholic people know it, the Madonna is
really one of the most important person
ages. But in those early formative times
the cult of the Theotokos had hardly yet
assumed its full importance: perhaps,
indeed, the Jewish believers would have
been shocked at the bare notion of the
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
worship of a woman, the readmission of an
Astarte, a Queen of Heaven, into the faith
of Israel. Another object of adoration had
therefore to be found. It was discovered in
that vague essence, the Holy Ghost, or
Divine Wisdom, whose gradual develop
ment and dissociation from God himself is
one of the most curious chapters in all the
history of artificial god-making. The
“ spirit of Jahweh ” had frequently been
mentioned in Hebrew writings ; and, with
so invisible and unapproachable a deity as
the Jewish God, was often made to do duty
as a messenger or intermediary where the
personal presence of Jahweh himself would
have been felt to contravene the first neces
sities of incorporeal divinity. It was the
“spirit of Jahweh” that came upon the
prophets : it was the “ wisdom of Jahweh ”
that the poets described, and that grew at
last to be detached from the personality of
God, and alluded to almost as a living in
dividual. In the early Church this “ spirit
of God,” this “ holy spirit,” was supposed to
be poured forth upon the heads of believers ;
it descended upon Jesus himself in the
visible form of a dove from heaven, and
upon the disciples at Pentecost as tongues
of fire. Gradually the conception of a per
sonal Holy Ghost took form and definite
ness : an Alexandrian monk insisted on the
necessity for a Triad of gods who were yet
one God ; and by the time the first creeds
of the nascent Church were committed to
writing, the Spirit had come to rank with
the Father and the Son as the Third Per
son in the ever-blessed Trinity.
By this time, too, it is pretty clear that
the original manhood of Jesus had not
merged in the idea of his eternal godhead ;
he was regarded as the Logos, come down
from heaven, where he had existed before
all worlds, and incarnate by the Holy Ghost
in the Virgin Mary. The other articles of
the Christian faith clustered gradually
round these prime elements : the myth
gathered force ; the mysticism increased ;
the secondary divine beings or saints grew
vastly . in numbers ; and the element of
Judaism disappeared piecemeal, while a
new polytheism and a new sacerdotalism
took root apace in the Aryan world. I
shall strive to show, however, in my con
cluding chapters, how even to the very end
the worship of the dead is still the central
force in modern Christianity; how religion,
whatever its form, can never wander far
from that fundamental reality; and how,
whenever by force of circumstances the
gods become too remote from human life,
147
so that the doctrine of resurrection or per
sonal immortality is endangered for a time,
and reunion with relations in the other
world becomes doubtful or insecure, a re
action is sure to set in which takes things
back once more to these, fundamental con
cepts.
CHAPTER XIX.
SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
We have now travelled far, apparently,
from that primitive stage of god-making
where the only known gods are the corpses,
mummies, skulls, ghosts, or spirits of dead
chieftains or dead friends and relations.
The God of Christianity, in his fully-evolved
form, especially as known to thinkers and
theologians, is a being so vast, so abstract,
so ubiquitous, so eternal, that he seems to
have hardly any points of contact at all
with the simple ancestral spirit or sacred
stone from which in the last resort he
appears to be descended. Yet even here
we must beware of being misled by too
personal an outlook. While the higher
minds in Christendom undoubtedly con
ceive of the Christian God in terms of
Mansel and Martineau, the lower minds
even among ourselves conceive of him in
far simpler and more material fashions. A
good deal of inquiry among ordinary
English people of various classes, not
always the poorest, convinces me that to
large numbers of them God is envisaged
as possessing a material human form, more
or less gaseous in composition; that, in
spite of the Thirty-nine Articles, he has
body, parts, and passions; that he is
usually pictured to the mind’s eye as about
ten or twelve feet high, with head, hands,
eyes and mouth, used to see with and
speak with in human fashion ; and that he
sits on a throne, like a king as he is, sur
rounded by a visible court of angels and
archangels. Italian art so invariably repre
sents him, with a frankness unknown to
Protestant Christendom.
The fact is, so abstract a conception as
the highest theological conception of God
cannot be realised except symbolically, and
then for a few moments only, in complete
isolation. The moment God is definitely
thought of in connection with any cosmic
activity, still more in connection with any
human need, he is inevitably thought of on
�148
THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
human analogies, and more or less com
pletely anthropomorphised in the brain of
the believer. Being by origin an offshoot
of the mind of man, a great deified human
being, he retains necessarily still, for all
save a few very mystical or ontological
souls, the obvious marks of his ultimate
descent from a ghost or spirit. Indeed, on
the mental as opposed to the bodily side,
he does so for us all; since even theologians
freely ascribe to him such human feelings
as love, affection, a sense of justice, a spirit
of mercy, of truth, of wisdom ; knowledge,
will, the powers of intellect, all the essential
and fundamental human faculties and emo
tions.
Thus, far as we seem to have travelled
from our base in the most exalted concepts
of God, we are nearer to it still than most
of us imagine. Moreover, in spite of this
height to which the highest minds have
raised their idea of the Deity, as the creator,
sustainer, and mover of the universe, every
religion, however monotheistic, still con
tinues to make new minor gods for itself
out of the dead as they die, and to worship
these gods with even more assiduous
worship than it bestows upon the great
God of Christendom or the great gods of
the central pantheon. The Christian reli
gion makes such minor deities no less than
all others. The fact is, the religious emotion
takes its origin from the affection and
regard felt for the dead by survivors,
mingled with the hope and belief that they
may be of some use or advantage, temporal
or spiritual, to those who call upon them;
and these primitive faiths and feelings
remain so ingrained in the very core of
humanity that even the most abstract of all
religions, like the Protestant schism, cannot
wholly choke them, while recrudescences
of the original creed and custom spring up
from time to time in the form of spiritualism,
theosophy, and other vague types of simple
ghost-worship.
Most advanced religions, however, and
especially Christianity in its central, true,
and main form of Catholicism, have found
it necessary to keep renewing from time to
time the stock of minor gods—here arbi
trarily known as saints—much as the older
religions found it always necessary from
year to year to renew the foundation-gods,
the corn- and wine-gods, and the other
special deities of the manufactured order,
by a constant supply of theanthropic
victims. What I wish more particularly to
point out here, however, is that the vast
majority of places of worship all the world
over are still erected, as at the very begin
ning, above the body of a dead man or
woman ; that the chief objects of worship
in every shrine are still, as always, such
cherished bodies of dead men and women ;
and that the primitive connection of religion
with death has never for a moment been
practically severed in the greater part of
the world—not even in Protestant England
and America.
Mr. William Simpson was one of the
first persons to point out this curious under
lying connection between churches, temples,
mosques, or topes, and a tomb or monu
ment. He has proved his point in a very
full manner, and I would refer the reader
who wishes to pursue this branch of the
subject at length to his interesting mono
graphs. In this work I will confine my
attention mainly to the continued presence
of this death-element in Christianity, with
a few stray instances picked up from the
neighbouring and interesting field of Islam.
There is no religion in all the world
which professes to be more purely mono
theistic in character than Mohammedanism.
The unity of God, in the very strictest sense,
is the one dogma round which the entire
creed of Islam centres. More than any
other cult, it represents itself as a distinct
reaction against the polytheism and super
stition of surrounding faiths. The isolation
of Allah is its one great dogma. If, there
fore, we find even in this most monotheistic
of existing religious systems a large element
of practically polytheistic survival—if we
find that even here the Worship of the
Dead remains, as a chief component in
religious practice, if not in religious theory,
we shall be fairly entitled to conclude, I
think, that such constituents are indeed of
the very essence of religious thinking.
When I first came practically into con
nection with Islam in Algeria and Egypt, I
was immediately struck by the wide pre
valence among the Mohammedan popula
tion of forms of worship for which I was
little prepared by anything I had previously
read or heard as to the nature and practice
of that exclusive and ostentatiously mono
theistic faith. Two points, indeed, forcibly
strike any visitor who for the first time has
the opportunity ofobserving a Mohammedan
community in its native surroundings. The
first is the universal habit on the part of the
women of visiting the cemeteries and mourn
ing or praying over the graves of their rela
tions on Friday, the sacred day of Islam.
The second is the frequency of Koubbas,
or little whitewashed mosque-tombs, erected
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
over the remains of Marabouts, fakeers, or
local saints, which form the real centres
for the religion and worship of every village.
Islam, in practice, is a religion of pil
grimages to the tombs of the dead. In
Algeria every hillside is dotted over with
these picturesque little whitewashed domes,
each overshadowed by its sacred date-palm,
each surrounded by its small walled
enclosure or temenos of prickly pear or
agave, and each attended by its local
ministrant, who takes charge of the tomb
and of the alms of the faithful. Holy
body, sacred stone, tree, well, and priest—
not an element of the original cult of the
dead is lacking. ' Numerous pilgrimages
are made to these koubbas by the devout;
and on Friday evenings the little court
yards are almost invariably thronged by a
■crowd of eager and devoted worshippers.
Within, the bones of the holy man lie
preserved in a frame hung - about with
rosaries, pictures, and other oblations of
his ardent disciples, exactly as in the case
of Roman Catholic chapels. The saint, in
fact, is quite as much an institution of
monotheistic Islam as of any other religion
with which I am practically acquainted.
These two peculiarities of the cult of
Islam strike a stranger immediately on the
most casual visit. When he comes to look
at the matter more closely, however, he
finds also that most of the larger mosques
in the principal towns are themselves
similarly built to contain and enshrine the
bones of saintly personages, more or less
revered in their immediate neighbourhood.
Some of these are indeed so holy that their
bones have been duplicated exactly like
the wood of the true cross, and two tombs
have been built in separate places where
the whole or a portion of the supposed
remains are said to be buried., I will only
specify as instances of such holy tombs the
sacred city of Kerouan in Tunisia, which
ranks second to Mecca and Medina alone
in the opinion of all devout western
Mohammedans. Here the most revered
building is the shrine of “ The Companion
of the Prophet,” who lies within a cata
falque covered with palls of black velvet
and silver—as funereal a monument as is
known to me anywhere. Close by stands
the catafalque of an Indian saint, while
other holy tomb-mosques abound in the
city. In Algiers town, the holiest place is
similarly the mosque-tomb of Sidi Abd-erRahman, which contains the shrine and
body of that saint, who died in 1471.
Around him, so as to share his sacred
149
burial-place (like the Egyptians who
wished to be interred with Osiris), lie the
bodies of several Deys and Pashas. Lights
are kept constantly burning at the saint’s
tomb, which is hung with variouslycoloured drapery, after the old Semitic
fashion, while banners and ostrich-eggs,
the gifts of the faithful, dangle round it
from the decorated ceiling. Still more
sacred is the venerable shrine of Sidi Okba
near Biskra, one of the most ancient places
of worship in the Mohammedan world.
The tomb of the great saint stands in a
chantry, screened off from the noble
mosque which forms the ante-chamber,
and is hung round with silk and other
dainty offerings. All the chief mosques at
Tlemgen, Constantine, and the other
leading North African towns similarly
gather over the bodies of saints or
marabouts, who are invoked in prayer, and
to whom every act of worship is offered.
All over Islam we get such holy grave
mosques. The tomb of the Prophet at
Medina heads the list: with the equally
holy tomb of his daughter Fatima. Among
the Shiahs, Ali’s grave at Nejef and
Hoseyn’s grave at Kerbela are as sacred
as that of the Prophet at Medina. The
shrines of the Imams are much adored in
Persia. The graves of the seers in India,
the Ziarets of the fakeers in Afghanistan,
show the same tendency. In Palestine,
says Major Conder, worship at the tombs
of local saints “represents the real religion
of the peasant.”
One word must be given to Egypt, where
the cult of the dead was always so marked
a feature in the developed religion, and
where neither Christianity nor Islam has
been able to obscure this primitive ten
dency. Nothing is more noticeable in the
Nile Valley than the extraordinary way in
which the habits and ideas as to burial
and the preservation of the dead have sur
vived in spite of the double alteration in
religious theory. At Sakkarah and Thebes
one is familiar with the streets and houses
of tombs, regularly laid out so as to form
in the strictest sense a true Necropolis, or
city of the dead. Just outside Cairo, on
the edge of the desert, a precisely similar
modern Necropolis exists to this day, regu
larly planned in streets and quarters, with
the tomb of each family standing in its own
courtyard or enclosure, and often very
closely resembling the common roundroofed or domed Egyptian houses. In this
town of dead bodies every distinction of
rank and wealth may now be observed.
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
The rich are buried under splendid mausolea
of great architectural pretensions; the poor
occupy humble tombs just raised above the
surface of the desert, and marked at head
and foot with simple Egyptian tombstones.
Still, the entire aspect of such a cemetery
is the aspect of a town. In northern
climates the dead sleep their last sleep
under grassy little tumuli, wholly unlike
the streets of a city; in Egypt, to this day,
the dead occupy, as in life, whole lanes
and alleys of eternal houses. Even the
spirit which produced the Pyramids and
the Tombs of the Kings is conspicuous in
modern or mediaeval Cairo in the taste
which begot those vast domed mosques
known as the Tombs of the Khalifs and
the Tombs of the Mamelooks. Whatever
is biggest in the neighbourhood of ancient
Memphis turns out on examination to be
the last resting-place of a Dead Man, and
a place of worship.
Almost every one of the great mosques
of Cairo is either a tomb built for himself
by a ruler—and this is the more frequent
case—or else the holy shrine of some saint
of Islam. It is characteristic of Egypt,
however, where king and god have always
been so closely combined, that while else
where the mosque is usually the prayer-tomb
of a holy man, in Cairo it is usually the
memorial-temple of a Sultan, an Emeer, a
viceroy, or a Khedive. It is interesting to
find, too, after all we have seen as to the
special sanctity of the oracular head, that
perhaps the holiest of all these mosques
contains the head of Hoseyn, the grandson
of the Prophet. A ceremonial washing is
particularly mentioned in the story of its
translation.
I will not linger any longer, however, in
the precincts of Islam, further than to
mention the significant fact that the great
central object of worship for the Moham
medan world is the Kaaba at Mecca, which
itself, as Mr. William Simpson long ago
pointed out, bears obvious traces of being
at once a tomb and a sacred altar-stone.
Sir Richard Burton’s original sketch of
this mystic object shows it as a square
and undecorated temple-tomb, covered
throughout with a tasselled black pall—a
most funereal object—the so-called “sacred
carpet.” It is, in point of fact, a simple
catafalque. As the Kaaba was adopted
direct by Mohammed from the early
Semitic heathenism of Arabia, and as it
must always have been treated with the
same respect, I do not think we can avoid
the obvious conclusion that this very ancient
tomb has been funereally draped in the
self-same manner, like those of Biskra,
Algiers, and Kerouan, from the time of its
first erection. This case thus throws light
on the draping of the ashera, as do also the
many-coloured draperies and hangings of
saints’ catafalques in Algeria and Tunis.
Nor can I resist a passing mention of
the Moharram festival, which is said to be
the commemoration of the death of Hoseyn,
the son of Ali (whose holy head is pre
served at Cairo). This is a rude piece of
acting, in which the events supposed to be
connected with the death of Hoseyn are
graphically represented ; and it ends with a
sacred Adonis-like or Osiris-like proces
sion, in which the body of the saint is
carried and mourned over. The funeral is
the grand part of the performance ; cata
falques are constructed for the holy corpse,
covered with green and gold tinsel—the
green being obviously a last reminiscence
of the god of vegetation. In Bombay,
after the dead body and shrine have been
carried through the streets amid weeping
and wailing, they are finally thrown into
the sea, like King Carnival. I think we
need hardly doubt that here we have an
evanescent relic of the rites of the corn
god, ending in a rain-charm, and very
closely resembling those of Adonis and
Osiris.
But if in Islam the great objects of worship are the Kaaba tomb at Mecca and the
Tomb of the Prophet at Medina, so the
most holy spot in the world for Christendom
is—the Holy Sepulchre. It was for pos
session of that most sacred place of pil
grimage that Christians fought Moslems
through the Middle Ages; and it is there
that while faith in the human Christ was
strong and vigorous the vast majority of
the most meritorious pilgrimages continued
to be directed.
For the most part, however, in Christen
dom, and especially in those parts of Chris
tendom remote from Palestine, men con
tented themselves with nearer and more
domestic saints. From a very early date
we see in the catacombs the growth of this
practice of offering up prayer by (or to) the
bodies of the dead who slept in Christ. A
chapel or ca/pella, as Dean Burgon has
pointed out, meant originally an arched
sepulchre in the walls of the catacombs, at
which prayer was afterwards habitually
made; and above-ground chapels were
modelled, later on, upon the pattern of
these ancient underground shrines. I have
alluded briefly in my second chapter to the
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
probable origin of the cruciform church
from two galleries of the catacombs cross
ing one another at right angles : the High
Altar stands there over the body or relics
of a dead saint; and the chapels represent
other minor tombs grouped like niches in
the catacombs around it. A chapel is thus,
as Mr. Herbert Spencer phrases it, “ a tomb
within a tomb’-’; and a great cathedral is a
serried set of such cumulative tombs, one
built beside the other. Sometimes the
chapels are actual graves, sometimes they
are cenotaphs; but the connection with
death is always equally evident. On this
subject I would refer the reader again to
Mr. Spencer’s pages.
So long as Christianity was proscribed at
Rome and throughout the empire the wor
ship of the dead must have gone on only
silently, and must have centred in the cata
combs or by the graves of saints and
martyrs—the last-named being practically
mere Christian successors of the willing
victims of earlier religions. When Chris
tianity had triumphed, however, and gained
not only official recognition but official
honour, the cult of the martyrs and the
other faithful dead became with Christian
Rome a perfect passion. The Holy Inno
cents, St. Stephen Protomartyr, the name
less martyrs of the Ten Persecutions,
together with Polycarp, Vivia Perpetua,
Felicitas, Ignatius, and all the rest, came to
receive from the Church a form of venera
tion which only the nice distinctions of the
theological mind could enable us to dis
criminate from actual worship. The great
procession of the slain for Christ in the
mosaics of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo at
Ravenna gives a good comprehensive list
of the more important of these earliest
saints (at least for Aryan worshippers),
headed by St. Martin, St. Clement, St.
Justin, St. Lawrence, and St. Hippolytus.
Later on came the more mythical and
poetic figures, derived apparently from
heathen gods—St. Catherine, St. Barbara,
St. George, St. Christopher. These form
as they go a perfect new pantheon, circling
round the figures of Christ himself, and his
mother the Madonna, who grows quickly
in turn, by absorption of Isis, Astarte, and
Artemis, into the Queen of Heaven.
The love-feasts or agapa of the early
Christians were usually held, in the cata
combs or elsewhere, above the bodies of
the martyrs. Subsequently the remains of
the sainted dead were transferred to lordly
churches like Sant’ Agnese and San Paolo,
where they were deposited under the altar
151
or sacred stone thus consecrated, from
whose top the body and blood of Christ
was distributed in the Eucharist. As early
as the fourth century we know that no
church was complete without some such
relic ; and the passion for martyrs spread
so greatly from that period onward that at
one time no less than 2,300 corpses of holy
men together were buried at S. Prassede.
It is only in Rome itself that the full im
portance of this martyr-worship can now be
sufficiently understood, or the large part
which it played in the development of
Christianity adequately recognised. Per
haps the easiest way for the Protestant
reader to put himself in touch with this
side of the subject is to peruse the very
interesting and graphic account given in
the second volume of Mrs. Jameson’s
Sacred and Legendary Art.
I have room for a few illustrative
examples only.
When St. Ambrose founded his new
church at Milan, he wished to consecrate
it with some holy relic. In a vision he
beheld two young men in shining clothes,
and it was revealed to him that these were
holy martyrs whose bodies lay near the
spot where he lived in the city. He dug
for . them accordingly, and found two
bodies, which proved to be those of two
saints, Gervasius and Protasius, who had
suffered for the faith in the reign of Nero.
They were installed in the new basilica
Ambrose had built at Milan.
The body of St. Agnes, saint and martyr,
who is always represented with that familiar
emblem, the lamb which she duplicates,
lies in a sarcophagus under the High Altar
of Sant’ Agnese beyond the Porta Pia at
Rome. The body of St. Cecilia lies in the
church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.
Almost every church in Rome has its entire
body of a patron saint, oftenest a martyr of
the early persecutions.
The great central temple of the Catholic
Church is St. Peter’s at Rome. The very
body of the crucified saint lies enshrined
under the high altar, in a sarcophagus
brought from the catacomb near S. Sebastiano. Upon this Rock, St. Peter’s and
the Catholic Church are founded. Anacletus, the successor of Clement, built a
monument over the bones of the blessed
Peter; and if Peter be a historical person
at all, I see no reason to doubt that his
veritable body actually lies there. St. Paul
shares with him in the same shrine ; but
only half the two corpses now repose within
the stately Confessio in the Sacristy of the
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
papal basilica: the other portion of St.
Peter consecrates the Lateran ; the other
portion of St. Paul gives sanctity to San
Paolo fuori le Murd.
Other much venerated bodies at Rome
are those of the Quattro Coronati, in the
church of that name; S. Praxedis and St.
Pudentiana in their respective churches ;
St. Cosmo and St. Damian; and many
more too numerous to mention. Several
of the Roman churches, like San Clemente,
stand upon the site of the house of the
saint to whom they are dedicated, or whose
body they preserve, thus recalling the early
New Guinea practice. Others occupy the
site of his alleged martyrdom or enclose
the pillar to which he was fastened. In
the single church of San Zaccaria at Venice,
again, I found the bodies of St. Zacharias
(father of John the Baptist), St. Sabina,
St. Tarasius, Sts. Nereus and Achilles, and
many other saints.
How great importance was attached to
the possession of the actual corpse or
mummy of a saint we see exceptionally well
indeed in this case of Venice. The bring
ing of the corpse or mummy of St. Mark
from Alexandria to the lagoons was long
considered the most important event in the
history of the Republic; the church in
which it was housed is the noblest in
Christendom, and contains an endless series
of records of the connection of St. Mark
with the city and people that so royally
received him.
Nor was that the only important helper
that Venice could boast. She contained
also the body of St. George at San Giorgio
Maggiore, and the body of St. Nicholas at
San Niccolo di Lido. The beautiful legend
of the Doge and the Fisherman (immor
talised for us by the pencil of Paris
Bordone in one of the noblest pictures the
world has ever seen) tells us how the three
great guardian saints, St. Mark, St. George,
and St. Nicholas, took a gondola one day
from their respective churches, and rowed
out to sea amid a raging storm to circum
vent the demons who were coming in a
tempest to overwhelm Venice. A fourth
saint, of far later date, whom the Venetians
also carried off by guile, was St. Roch of
Montpelier. This holy man was a very
great sanitary precaution against the plague,
to which the city was much exposed through
its eastern commerce. So the men of Venice
simply stole the body by fraud from Mont
pelier, and built in its honour the exquisite
church and Scuola di San Rocco, the great
museum of the art of Tintoret. The fact
that mere possession of the holy body
counts in itself for much could not be
better shown than by these forcible abduc
tions.
The corpse of St. Nicholas, who was a
highly revered bishop of Myra in Lycia, 1
lies, as I said, under the high altar of San
Niccolo di Lido at Venice. But another
and more authentic body of the same great
saint, the patron of sailors and likewise of
schoolboys, lies also under the high altar
of the magnificent basilica of San Nicolà
at Bari, from which circumstance the holy
bishop is generally known as St. Nicolas of
Bari. A miraculous fluid, the Manna di
Bari, highly prized by the pious, exudes
from the remains. A gorgeous cathedral
rises over the sepulchre. Such emulous
duplication of bodies and relics is extremely
common, both in Christendom and in Islam.
The corpse of St. Augustine, for example,
lies at Pavia in a glorious ark, one of the
most sumptuous monuments ever erected
by the skill of man, as well as one of the
loveliest. Padua similarly boasts the body
of St. Antony of Padua, locally known as
“ il Santo,” and far more important in his
own town than all the rest of the Chrisfian
pantheon put together. Dominican monks
and nuns make pilgrimages to Bologna, in
order to venerate the body of St. Dominic,
who died in that city, and whose corpse is
enclosed in a magnificent sarcophagus in
the church dedicated to him. Siena has
for its special glory St. Catherine the Second
—the first was the mythical princess of
Alexandria—and the house of that ecstatic
nun is still preserved intact as an oratory
for the prayers of the pious. Her head, laid
by in a silver shrine or casket, decorates
the altar of her chapel in San Domenico,
where the famous frescoes of Sodoma too
often usurp the entire attention of northern
visitors. Compare the holy head of
Hoseyn at Cairo. The great Franciscan
church at Assisi, once more, enshrines the
remains of the founder of the Franciscans
under the high altar ; the church of Santa
Maria degli Angeli below it encloses the
little hut which was the first narrow home
of the nascent order.
North of the Alps, again, I cannot
refrain from mentioning a few salient in
stances, which help to enforce the princi
ples already enunciated. At Paris the two
great local saints are St. Denis and Ste.
Geneviève. St. Denis was the first bishop
of Lutetia and of the Parish : he is said to
have been beheaded with his two com
panions at Montmartre—Mons Martyrum.
�SURVIVALS IN CHRISTENDOM
He afterwards walked with his head in his
hands from that point (now covered by the
little church of St. Pierre, next door to the
new basilica of the Sacré Cœur) to the spot
where he piously desired to be buried. A
holy woman named Catulla (note that
last echo) performed the final rites for
him at the place where the stately abbey-,
church of St. Denis now preserves his
memory.
As for Ste. Geneviève, she rested first in
the church dedicated to her on the site now
occupied by the Pantheon, which still in
part, though secularised, preserves her
memory. Her body (or what remains of it)
lies at present in the neighbouring church
of St. Etienne du Mont.
Other familiar examples will occur to
every one, such as the bones of the Magi
or Three Kings, preserved in a reliquary in
the Cathedral at Cologne ; those of St.
Ursula and the 11,000 virgins ; those of St.
Stephen and St. Lawrence at Rome ; those
of St. Hubert, disinterred and found uncor
rupted, at the town of the same name in
the Ardennes ; and those of St. Longinus
in his chapel at Mantua. All these relics
and bodies perform astounding miracles,
and all have been the centres of important
cults for a considerable period.
In Britain, from the first stages of Chris
tianity, the reverence paid to the bodies of
saints was most marked, and the story of
their wanderings forms an important part
of our early annals. Indeed, I dwell so long
upon this point because’ few northerners
of the present day can fully appreciate the
large part which the Dead Body plays and
has played for many centuries in Christian
worship. Only those who, like me, have
lived long in thoroughly Catholic countries,
have made pilgrimages to numerous famous
shrines, and have waded through reams of
Anglo-Saxon and other early mediaeval
documents, can really understand this
phase of Christian hagiology. To such
people it is abundantly clear that the actual
Dead Body of some sainted man or woman
has been in many places the chief object of
reverence for millions of Christians in suc
cessive generations. A good British in
stance is found in the case of St. Cuthbert’s
^corpse. The tale of its wanderings can be
read in any good history of Durham.
But everywhere in Britain we get similar
local saints, whose bodies or bones per
formed marvellous miracles and were
zealously guarded against sacrilegious in
truders. Bede himself is already full of
such holy corpses ; and in later days they
153
increased by the hundred. St. Alban at
St. Alban’s, the protomartyr of Britain ; the
“ white hand ” of St. Oswald, that when all
else perished remained white and uticorrupted because blessed by Aidan ; St.
Etheldreda at Ely, another remarkable and
illustrative instance ; Edward the Confessor
at Westminster Abbey : these are but a few
out of hundreds of examples which will at
once occur to students of our history. And
I will add that sometimes the legends of
these saints link us on unexpectedly to far
earlier types of heathen worship ; as when
we read concerning St. Edmund of East
Anglia, the patron of Bury St. Edmund’s,
that Ingvar the viking took him by force,
bound him to a tree, scourged him cruelly,
made him a target for the arrows of the
pagan Danes, and finally beheaded him.
Either, I say, a god-making sacrifice of the
northern heathens ; or, failing that, a remi
niscence, like St. Sebastian, of such god
making rites as are preserved in the legends
of ancient martyrs.
But during the later Middle Ages the
sacred Body of Britain, above all others,
was undoubtedly that of Thomas A’Becket
at Canterbury. Hither, as we know, all
England went on pilgrimage; and nothing
could more fully show the rapidity of
canonisation in such cases than the fact
that even the mighty Henry II. had to
prostrate himself before his old enemy’s
body and submit to a public scourging at
the shrine of the new-made martyr. For
several hundred years after his death there
can be no doubt at all that the cult of St.
Thomas of Canterbury was much the most
real and living worship throughout the
whole of England; its only serious rivals
in popular favour being the cult of St.
Cuthbert to the north of Humber, and that
of St. Etheldreda in the Eastern Counties.
Holy heads in particular were common
in Britain before the Reformation. A
familiar Scottish case is that of the head
of St. Fergus, the apostle of Banff and the
Pictish Highlands, transferred to and
preserved at the royal seat of Scone.
“ By Sanct Fergus heid at Scone” was the
favourite oath of the Scotch monarchs, aS
“ Par Sainct Denys ” was that of their
French contemporaries.
In almost all these cases, again, and
down to the present day, popular appre
ciation goes long before official Roman
canonisation. Miracles are first performed
at the tomb, and prayers are answered; an
irregular cult precedes the formal one.
Even in our own day, only a few weeks
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
after Cardinal Manning’s death, advertise
ments appeared in Catholic papers in
London giving thanks for spiritual and
temporal blessings received through the
intervention of Our Lady, the saints, “and
our beloved Cardinal.”
This popular canonisation has often far
outrun the regular official acceptance, as
in the case of Joan of Arc in France at
the present day, or of “ Maister John
Schorn, that blessed man born,” in the
Kent of the Middle Ages. Wales and
Cornwall are full of local and patriotic
saints, often of doubtful Catholicity, like
St. Cadoc, St. Padern, St. Petrock, St.
Piran, St. Ruan, and St. Illtyd, not to
mention more accepted cases, like St.
Asaph and St. David. The fact is, men
have everywhere felt the natural desire for
a near, a familiar, a recent, and a present
god or saint; they have worshipped rather
the dead whom they loved and revered
themselves than the elder gods and
the remoter martyrs who have no body
among them, no personal shrine, no local
associations, no living memories. “ I have
seen in Brittany,” says a French corres
pondent of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s, “the
tomb of a pious and charitable priest
covered with garlands : people flocked to
it by hundreds to pray of him that he
would procure them restoration to health,
and guard over their children.” There,
with the Christian addition of the supreme
God, we get once more the root-idea of
religion.
I should like to add that beyond such
actual veneration of the bodies of saints
and martyrs, there has always existed a
definite theory in the Roman Church that
no altar can exist without a relic. The
altar, being itself a monumental stone,
needs a body or part of a body to justify
and consecrate it. Dr. Rock, a high
authority, says in his Hierurgia: “ By the
regulations of the Church it is ordained
that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass be
offered upon an altar which contains a
stone consecrated by a Bishop, enclosing
the relics of some saint or martyr ; and be
covered with three linen cloths that have
been blessed for that purpose with an
appropriate form of benediction.” The
consecration of the altar, indeed, is con
sidered even more serious than the
consecration of the church itself; for
without the stone and its relic the cere
mony of the mass cannot be performed at
all. Even when mass has to be said in a
private house the priest brings a conse
crated stone and its relic along with him ;
and other such stones were carried in the
retables or portable altars so common in
military expeditions of the Middle Ages.
The church is thus a tomb, with chapel
tombs around it; it contains a stone monu
ment covering a dead body or part of a
body ; and in it is made and exhibited the
Body of Christ, in the form of the conse
crated and transmuted wafer.
Not only, however, is the altar in this
manner a reduced or symbolical tomb, and
not only is it often placed above the body
of a saint, as at St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s,
but it sometimes is itself a stone sarco
phagus. One such sarcophagus exists in
the Cathedral at St. Malo ; I have seen
other coffin-shaped altars in the monastery
of La Trappe near Algiers and elsewhere.
When, however, the altar stands, like that
at St. Peter’s, above the actual body of a
saint, it does not require to contain a relic;
otherwise it does. That is to say, it must
be either a real or else an attenuated and
symbolical sarcophagus.
Apart from corpse-worship and relic
worship in the case of saints, Catholic
Christendom has long possessed an annual
Commemoration of the Dead, the Jour des
Morts., which links itself on directly to
earlier ancestor-worship. It is true, this
commemoration is stated officially, and no
doubt correctly, to owe its origin (in its
recognised form) to a particular historical
person, Saint Odilo of Cluny ; but when we
consider how universal such commemora
tions and annual dead-feasts have been in
all times and places, we can hardly doubt
that the Church did but adopt and sanctify
a practice which, though perhaps accounted
heathenish, had never died out at all among
the mass of believers. The very desire to
be buried in a church or churchyard, and
all that it implies, link on Christian usage
here once more to primitive corpse-worship.
Compare with the dead who sleep with
Osiris. In the Middle Ages many people
were buried in chapels containing the body
(or a relic) of their patron saint.
In short, from first to last religion never
gets far away from these its earliest and
profoundest associations. “God and im
mortality”—those two are its key-notes.
And those two are one ; for the god in the
last resort is nothing more than the im
mortal ghost, etherealised and extended.
On the other hand, whenever, religion
travels too far afield from its emotional and
primal base in the cult of the nearer dead,
it must either be constantly renewed by
�CONCLUSION
fresh and familiar objects of worship, or it
tends to dissipate itself into mere vague
pantheism. A new god, a new saint, a
“ revival of religion,” is continually neces
sary. The Sacrifice of the Mass is wisely
repeated at frequent intervals ; but that
alone does not suffice : men want the
assurance of a nearer, a more familiar deity.
In our own time, and especially in Protes
tant and sceptical England and America,
this need has made itself felt in the rise of
spiritualism and kindred beliefs, which are
but the doctrine of the ghost or shade in
its purified form, apart, as a rule, from the
higher conception of a supreme ruler. I
have known many men of intellect, suffer
ing under a severe bereavement—the loss
of a wife or a dearly-loved child—take
refuge for a time either in spiritualism or
Catholicism. The former seems to give
them the practical assurance of actual
bodily intercourse with the dead, through
mediums or table-turning; the latter sup
plies them with a theory of death which
makes reunion a probable future for them.
This desire for direct converse with the
dead we saw exemplified in a very early
or primitive stage in the case of the Mandan
wives who talk lovingly to their husbands’
skulls ; it probably forms the basis for the
Common habit of keeping the head while
burying the body, whose widespread results
we have so frequently noticed. I have
known two instances of modern spiritualists
who similarly had their wives’ bodies em
balmed, in order that the spirit might
return and inhabit them.
Thus the Cult of the Dead, which is the
earliest origin of all religion, in the sense
of worship, is also the last relic of the reli
gious spirit which survives the decay of
faith due to modern scepticism. To this
cause I refer on the whole the spiritualistic
utterances of so many among our leaders
of modern science. They have rejected
religion, but they cannot reject the Inherited
and ingrained religious emotions.
CHAPTER XX.
CONCLUSION
And now we have reached at last the end
of our long and toilsome disquisition. I
need hardly say to those who have per
sisted with me so far that I do not regard
155
a single part of it all as by any means final.
There is not a chapter in this book, indeed,
which I could not have expanded to double
or treble its present length had I chosen
to include in it a tithe of the evidence I
have gathered on the subject with which
it deals. But for many adequate reasons
compression was imperative. Some of the
greatest treatises ever written on this pro
foundly important and interesting question
have met with far less than the attention
they deserved because they were so bulky
and so overloaded with evidence that the
reader could hardly see the wood for the
trees : he lost the thread of the argument
in the mazes of example. In my own case
I had, or believed I had, a central idea ;
and I desired to set that idea forth with
such simple brevity as would enable the
reader to grasp it and to follow it. I go,
as it were, before a Grand Jury only. I
do not pretend in any one instance to have
proved my points ; I am satisfied if I have
made out a frima facie case for further
inquiry.
My object in the present reconstructive
treatise has therefore been merely to set
forth, in as short a form as was consistent
with clearness, my conception of the steps
by which mankind arrived at its idea of
its God. I have not tried to produce evi
dence on each step in full; I have only
tried to lay before the general public a
rough sketch of a psychological rebuilding,
and to suggest at the same time to scholars
and anthropologists some inkling of the
lines along which evidence in favour of my
proposed reconstruction is likeliest to be
found. This book is thus no more than a
summary of probabilities. As in this pre
liminary outline of my views I have dealt
with few save well-known facts, and relied
for the most part upon familiar collocations
of evidence, I have not thought it necessary
to encumber my pages with frequent and
pedantic footnotes, referring to the passages
or persons quoted.
I wish also to remark before I close that
I do not hold dogmatically to the whole or
any part of the elaborate doctrine here
tentatively suggested. I have changed my
own mind far too often, with regard to these
matters, in the course of my personal evolu
tion ever to think I have reached complete
finality. Fifteen or twenty years ago, in
deed, I was rash enough to think I had
come to anchor, when I first read Mr. Her
bert Spencer’s sketch of the origin of reli
gion in the opening volume of the Principles
of Sociology. Ten or twelve years since
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA OF GOD
doubts and difficulties again obtruded
themselves. Six years ago once more,
when The Golden Bough appeared, after
this book had been planned and in part
executed, I was forced to go back entirely
upon many cherished former opinions, and
to reconsider many questions which I had
fondly imagined were long since closed for
me. Since that time new lights have been
constantly shed upon me from without, or
have occurred to me from within ; and I
humbly put this sketch forward now for
what it may be worth, not with the idea
that I have by any means fathomed the
whole vast truth, but in the faint hope that
I may perhaps have looked down here and
there a little deeper into the profound
abysses beneath us than has been the lot of
most previous investigators. At the same
time, I need hardly reiterate my sense of
the immense obligations under which I lie
to not a few among them, and pre-eminently
to Mr. Spencer, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Hartland,
and Dr. Tylor. My only claim is that I
may perhaps have set forth a scheme of re
construction which further evidence will
possibly show to be true in parts and mis
taken in others.
On the other hand, by strictly confining
my attention to religious features, properly
so called, to the exclusion of mythology,
ethics, and all other external accretions orx
accidents, I trust I have been able to de-'
monstrate more clearly than has hitherto
been done the intimate connection which
always exists between cults in general and
the worship of the Dead God, natural or
artificial. Even if I have not quite suc
ceeded in inducing thebeliever in primitive
animism to reconsider his prime dogma of
the origin of gods from all-pervading spirits
(of which affiliation I can see no proof in
the evidence before us), I venture to think
I shall at any rate have made him feel that
Ancestor-Worship and the Cult of the Dead
God have played a far larger and deeper
part than he has hitherto been willing to
admit in the genesis of the religious emo
tions. Though I may not have raised the
worship of the Dead Man to a supreme and
unique place in the god-making process, I
have at least, I trust, raised it to a position
of higher importance than it has hitherto
held, ever since the publication of Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s epoch-makingresearches.
I believe I have made it tolerably clear that
the vast mass of existing gods or divine
persons, when we come to analyse them,
do actually turn out to be dead and deified
human beings.
This is not the place, at the very end of
so long a disquisition, to examine the theory
of primitive animism. I would therefore
only say briefly here that I do not deny the
actual existence of that profoundly animistic
frame of mind which Mr. Im Thum has so
well depicted among the Indians of Guiana;
nor that which exists among the Samoyeds
of Siberia ; nor that which meets us at
every turn in historical accounts of the old
Roman religion. I am quite ready to admit
that, to people at that stage of religious
evolution, the world seems simply thronged
with spirits on every side, each of whom has
often his own special functions and peculiar
prerogatives. But I fail to see that any one
of these ideas is demonstrably primitive.
Most often we can trace ghosts, spirits, and
gods to particular human origins: where
spirits exist in abundance and pervade all
nature, I still fail to understand why they
may not be referred to the one known source
and spring of all ghostly beings. It is
abundantly clear that no distinction of
name or rite habitually demarcates these
ubiquitous spirits at large from those
domestic gods whose origin is perfectly
well remembered in the family circle. I
make bold to believe, therefore, that in
every such case we have to deal with un
known and generalised ghosts—with ghosts
of varying degrees of antiquity. If any one
can show me a race of spirit-believers who
do not worship their own ancestral spirits,
or can adduce any effective prime differentia
between the spirit that was once a living
man and the spirit that never was human
at all, I will gladly hear him. Up to date,
however, no such race has been pointed
out, and no such differentia ever posited.
The truth is, we have now no primitive
men at all. Existing men are the descen
dants of people who have had religions, in
all probability, for over a million years.
The best we can do, therefore, is to trace
what gods we can to their original source,
and believe that the rest are of similar
development. And whither do we track
them ?
“ So far as I have been able to trace
back the origin of the best-known minor
provincial deities,” says Sir Alfred Lyall,
speaking of India in general, “they are
usually men of past generations who have
earned special promotion and brevet rank
among disembodied ghosts....... Of the
numerous local gods known to have been
living men, by far the greater proportion
derive from the ordinary canonisation of
holy personages....... The number of shrines
�CONCLUSION
thus raised in Berar alone to these ancho
rites and persons deceased in the odour of
sanctity is large, and it is constantly
increasing. Some of them have already
attained the rank of temples.” Erman
came to a similar conclusion about the gods
of those very Ostyaks who are often quoted
as typical examples of primitive animists.
Of late years numerous unprejudiced inves
tigators, like Mr. Duff Macdonald and
Captain Henderson, have similarly come
to the conclusion that the gods of the
natives among whom they worked were all
of human origin ; while we know that some
157
whole great national creeds, like the Shinto
of Japan, recognise no deities at all save
living kings and dead ancestral spirits.
Under these circumstances, judging the
unknown by the known, I hesitate to posit
any new and fanciful source for the small
residuum of gods whose human origin is
less certainly known to us.
In one word, I believe that corpse-worship
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|
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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The evolution of the idea of God. An inquiry into the origins of religions / revised and slightly abridged by Franklin T. Richards
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 160 p. : ill. (port.) ; 23 cm.
Series: R.P.A. Cheap Reprints
Notes: Issued for the Rationalist Press Association Ltd. The last three pages are the RPA's publications list. Printed in double columns. First published, London: Grant Richards, 1897. Signature on front cover: "F. Winn". Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Second impression (making 55,000 copies).
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Grant, Allan
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Richards, Franklin T (ed.)
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1903
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Watts & Co. (London, England)
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God
Religion
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The evolution of the idea of God. An inquiry into the origins of religions / revised and slightly abridged by Franklin T. Richards), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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God
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Religion
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Text
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JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.
.»/ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED
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of this Series is “THE OLDEST LAWS IN THE WORLD”
(The Hammurabi Code), by CHILPERIC EDWARDS
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�THE SECRET OF HERBART
�X
�The Secret of Herbart
AN ESSAY ON
THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION
BY
F. H. HAYWARD, D.Lir., M.A., B.Sc.,
Author of “The Critics of Herbartianismf “ The Reform of Moral and Biblical Education,
“ The Educational Ideas of Pestalozzi and Fr'obel ” etc.
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�TO
PROFESSOR JOHN ADAMS,
FROM WHOM HE HAS LEARNT SO MUCH,
THIS LITTLE WORK IS DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR.
�CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface to New Edition
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Preface
First Edition
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Herbart -
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to
The Secret
of
Appendices—
I.—The Primary Curriculum II.—“ Teachers do not Read Books on
Education ”
III. —Herbart and Frobel IV. —The Faculty Doctrine
V.—The Moral Instruction League
VI.—Science and the “ Humanities ”
VII.—The Bible in Schools
VIII.—Some Prevalent Errors about Herbartian Teaching
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69
69
71
75
77
77
80
�“The half-educated, unskilled pretenders, professing impossible
creeds and propounding ridiculous curricula, to whom the unhappy
parents of to-day must needs entrust the intelligences of their children ;
these heavy-handed barber-surgeons of the mind, these schoolmasters
with their ragtag and bobtail of sweated and unqualified assistants, will
be succeeded by capable, self-respecting men and women, constituting
the most important profession of the world.”—H. G. Wells, Anticipations,
“ Education is the only thing that can do away with those internal
evils that disturb the peace and threaten the existence of the nation—
labour troubles, saloon politics, haunts of vice, slum-life, and the like.
These things exist because a large body of our people, from want of
education to open up to them the world of great movements, and noble
interests and employments, are condemned to narrow, sordid lives,
and petty or vicious interests. We disinherit them of the spiritual
treasures of humanity.......and then we wonder why they are vulgar,
mean, squalid, discontented, and rebellious. We make all the nobler
delights impossible for them, and then we wonder why they take to
vulgar delights........ If we would quench interest in the saloon, the pool
room, the dance-hall, the dive, the low theatre, we must off-set them
by something rousing a warmer and more enduring interest........
Teachers, of all people, must be endowed with the missionary spirit.”
—T. Davidson, History of Education.
1 ‘ The individuality must first be changed through widened interest
...... before teachers can venture to think they will find it amenable to
the general obligatory moral law........ While morality is rocked to sleep
in the belief in transcendental powers, the true powers and means
which rule the world are at the disposal of the unbeliever.”—J. F.
Herbart, Allgemeine Pädagogik.
�PREFACE TO NEW EDITION
This work is no treatise, and can never sentatives of two professional classes—the
be made into one. It is an essay. Never average priest or preacher and the average
theless, the writer has attempted in this teacher or school manager. Of the former
new edition to touch rather more fully he may ask as to the causes of moral
than in the first upon sundry educational evil; the latter he may question about his
matters of current importance, so that the favourite school subjects, or about correla
reader, by means of incidental hints, if not tion, or about the moral value of geography.
of detailed treatment, may see such matters To both of them he may quizzingly throw
out the hint that, after all, secular subjects
in something of their true perspective.
Still, to make teachers interested in the are only “ secular ”; and the answer from
vital issues of their work is a more valuable both will be an assent tempered with a
task than the dropping of any number of platitude. It is the writer’s firm and
useful “hints.” The original essay was almost painful conviction that few men
mainly an attempt to arouse this interest, realise the ramifications of apperception,
and it is hoped that the purpose will be or its relations to interest and character ;
equally obvious amid the . additions that and that, in consequence of this inadequate
comprehension, the curricula, methods, and
have been made.
status of our schools suffer incalculably.
Such faults as are inherent in the book—
repetitions, omissions, and what may appear, Herbartianism is certainly original in the
in the judgment of some, either as extra sense of Oliver Wendell Holmes1: “A
vagances or as affirmations of the obvious thought is often original, though you have
—will probably be almost as apparent in uttered it a hundred times. It has come
the new as in the old edition, though the to you over a new route, by a new and
writer has made some attempt to remove express train of associations.” Or, as a
them. The changes, however, are mainly further test, the reader may study some
additions, and these take the form of notes of the works on education written by men
untouched by Herbartian thought, works
and appendices.
It may not be out of place to admit, for such as the following (arranged in crescendo
the benefit of new readers, that there is order of merit) : Mr. H. Gorst's Curse of
nothing absolutely original, nothing that Education, Bishop Creighton’s Thoughts
should be a “ secret,” in Herbartianism or on Education, Mr. Benson’s Schoolmaster,
in this book. The most valuable truths and Thring’s Theory and Practice of
are generally the most obvious, though Teaching. The omission of almost any
rarely the most regarded. If anyone should reference—even the most untechnical—to
doubt that this is so in the present case,
1 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
he has only to betake himself to repre I
�s
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION^
apperceptive interest is most striking, she claims, with supernatural aids and
though Thring (to be sure) is sometimes graces, knows them to be futile apart from
on the verge of the doctrine. What is the the purely natural means employed by the
explanation ? Are we to accuse these teacher. If called to the improbable
authors of blindness to obvious truth, choice between losing the first of her
ignorance of a far-reaching educational sacraments and losing the power of edu
principle ? If apperceptive interest is all cating the young, the Church would choose
that the Herbartians claim, why are not the former loss, knowing in her heart that
other men than the Herbartians urging it the “faith” of a “good Catholic” is not
in their educational writings ? There is implanted by a baptism of water—as her
blunder, ignorance, or delusion somewhere. formularies assert—but by an early and
The writer has the same lurking fear in persistent rain of Catholic ideas. And
the present year that there is a strain of what is true of the first is also true of the
fallacy or unsoundness somewhere in this greatest of her sacraments. Apart from
book as he had when it was first published; the faith and the thrills and the sugges
but as no one has demonstrated this, and tions implanted by a Catholic education,
as he cannot discover it for himself, he feels the body of Christ would lie disregarded
no compunction in seeing the book placed and unknown on every Catholic altar ;
before a larger circle of readers. If there while, conversely, though the sacramental
is any truth in the doctrines here set power were mysteriously to fail throughout
forward, there is value in emphasising it the world some fateful morning, switched
for the sake of those thousands of teachers off to another universe, the heads of
whose daily work seems often so dull and Catholic worshippers would still sink at
insignificant. To be the victim of a few the sound of the consecration bell, and the
educational fallacies is a small price to transubstantiation miracle would still be
pay for an exalted sense of one’s own daily thought and felt to have taken place.
calling. The writer’s conviction that at
Thus the power of the teacher, or of the
the present juncture this should be the priest as teacher, is immeasurably greater
main purpose of every book on education than that of the priest as priest; the latter
is so intense that he proposes to add at power depends on the former, and would
this point a few remarks for further em wither to nothingness without it. When
phasis.
in the Catholic confessional a school
In the Secret of Herbart a claim is put mistress pours out to some confessor the
forward that, as a moral force, apperceptive story of her omissions and peccadilloes,
interest is at least an equal of religion. a trained eye can penetrate behind the veil
Recent events in the political world prompt of appearance, and see that to the kneeling
to a further development of the theme. penitent, not to her ghostly father, have the
We have a right to ask, “ What could re real power and authority over Catholic
ligion itself do apart from education ?”
minds been given.
Moral triumphs may in a myriad of cases
And that is why Churches stir uneasily
be attributed with fairness to religion ; but at every successive Education Bill. Their
religion has to depend upon education for Genius is rebuked in the presence of this
much of her authority and fascination. other Genius of education. “ In his royalty
Even the Catholic Church, endowed, as of nature reigns that which would be
�9
EEEEACE TO NEW EDITION
feared.” If any teacher of this country
craves for the stimulus of compliments
to hearten him amid his round of daily
duties, none surely is more consoling than
this, that pope and bishop and priest admit
and parade their impotence without him ;
and, amid a miscellaneous crowd of physi
cians, merchants, and military men, kneel
beseechingly at his feet. The religion, the
health, the wealth, and the renown of the
British nation would appear to depend
upon him ; at the door of his schoolhouse
all roads meet. And, as the earnest educa
tionist watches with some curiosity the
motley throng, he will confess that, if the
loud-voiced claim for dogmatic religious
instruction can justify itself by fruitful and
blessed lives, his own aversion to dogma
must not be cast in the opposite scale. If
education means character-forming, and if
character-forming is impossible or prob
lematic without dogma, the duty of the
educationist is plain. Dogma there must
be, at all costs. And this suggests an ex
periment.
If towns where the Anglican and Roman
Churches have had their will can show a
markedly high type of youth and citizen—
the former more earnest than the youths of
other towns, the latter more generous and
high-minded than the citizens of other
towns—the claim of the two Churches will
be established on an immovable basis.
There is Preston, there is Torquay, there
is many another town where every public
school is, and has been, Anglican or
Roman. A Commission of six men could
determine in as many months whether
these towns were superior or inferior in
morals and manners to Board School
towns of similar type ; and the controversy
of 1906 would be settled for ever.
In one regard, at least, the clergy are
right. Education is no mere process of
“drawing-out.” It is formative, masterful.
The child has to be baptised into a new
life ; and, though the baptism which the
Anglo-Catholic or the Roman Catholic
holds technically to be the means of spiri
tual birth is not the Herbartian baptism of
ideas, it has this in common therewith—
that the recipient is not the agent, and that
the crisis is one of life or death. It is
because the educational issues are great,
that in the Secret of Herbart the writer has
constantly, unblushingly, and perhaps some
times offensively, paralleled them with those
of religion. The veil of grey commonplace
that hangs before the eyes of ten thousand
teachers has to be rent, and the Secret of
Herbart seeks to rend it.
This, then—the power of apperception—is the message of the present book. And
even if there are patent exaggerations and
latent fallacies in its pages, the writer
believes that the message was worth
delivering. In this present age, when the
hearts of many are failing them for fear,
and sincere men sometimes question
whether by opposing credulity they are
not doing a positive disservice to mankind,
it is good to know that there is work which
we need not doubt about; educational work
which helps to raise the race morally and
spiritually, while adding nothing to the
power or prestige of the forces of reaction.
F. H. H.
London, Christmas, 1906.
�»
PREFACE (revised) TO THE FIRST EDITION
The public—whose favourable reception
of several recent works by the present
writer has moved his grateful thanks—
deserve an apology for the appearance of
a new book on the old subject. There is
nothing here that is positively fresh, nothing
that cannot be inferred by any one who
chooses to think out the implications of
the apperception doctrine. Neither does
the work contribute to the department of
methodology. The writer feels that others?
with more varied experience and more
opportunities for observation than have
fallen to his lot, can speak with far greater
authority than he upon matters of that
kind ; and, indeed, with such Herbartians as Professor Adams at work upon
questions of methodology, there is no
need to anticipate any neglect of this
department. Instead, therefore, of present
ing a system of Herbartian doctrine, he
has preferred to expound the one or two
central thoughts which constitute its
essence, and seem so vitally needed by
the education of to-day—thoughts which
have a closer bearing upon the character
and the destiny of the nation than any
other thoughts that he can expound.
Among the immediate causes which have
led to the writing of a work following with
such unusual haste upon others, these may
be assigned :—
(i) Such a growth in the writer’s own
convictions as to make him distrust the
somewhat crude panegyrics of vielseitige
Interesse in which he has previously in
dulged. He still believes that the pro
clamation of the Interest gospel is among
the most vital needs of the age ; but he
feels that the springs of Interest have been
inadequately investigated and expounded,
not only by others, but by himself. The
real “ Secret of Herbart ” may remain a
secret, even though “Interest” be pro
claimed on every housetop.
(2) A fear—almost a certainty—that the
new Education Committees are likely to
apply the wrong remedies to our many
educational diseases. There is some pro
bability that England is about to settle
down to another thirty years of educa
tional routine ; but there is still greater
probability that such remedies as are
applied will merely accentuate the
greatest evil of all by drawing attention
from it into other directions. The
humble experiment which the writer
made has convinced him, more than ever,
that Herbart was right, and that the chief
key to the educational situation lies in the
apperception doctrine.
(3) Lastly, a desire for full, frank, and
remorseless criticism. Is this doctrine non
sense? If it be nonsense, and Herbartianism a plausible delusion, or if the
doctrine be merely commonplace in its
importance, the sooner we devote ourselves
to humbler things than thinking about
the moral regeneration of man by means
of education the better for us all. We
will then essay to struggle on as of old,
using instruments that have lost much
of their significance, and performing, in
a more humble and contrite spirit, the
�PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
commonplace duties assigned by tradition
to the schoolmaster. The mystery of life
will come back ; the veil will fall again over
the springs of conduct. Once more we
shall look upon our fellows to see each of
them torn by a conflict between the angel
and the devil within ; and we shall ask
despairingly what it all means. If, how
ever, the apperception doctrine is not non
sense, but sober truth, we shall be driven
on to the inference that not in the church
alone, but in the school, will the mission
aries of the future have to work, equipped,
not with Hebrew and Greek, but with psy
chology, ethics, and zeal.
The present work is thus a challenge as
well as a creed. Few as are the men in
England capable of answering the questions
with authority, the writer deliberately asks
them : “ Is this apperception doctrine right
or wrong, and can apperception be brought
about by means of instruction, and if
brought about can it pass over into action
and character?” He is not conscious of
any flaw in his argument, but there may be
one. As an educational system, Herbartianism seems to him to have no errors, so
far as it goes ; to the extent of its own
message it appears absolutely andfaultlessly
true; at the same time, the writer’s experi
ence is not such as to guarantee that he
is infallibly right in holding and promul
gating views so momentous of result.
Already he has come to realise—as a few
years ago he had not clearly realised—that
Frobel has a “ secret” as well as Herbart;
and the vision of a third “ secret ” is rising
before him, “a synthesis of Herbart and
Frobel.”1 He is, in short, humbled by a
consciousness of how much in education is
uncertain; and he therefore asks, with
utter sincerity, that critical minds in
ii
England capable of the task will do him
the honour of criticising this book. It may
be “ suggestive,” and “ stimulating,” and all
the rest; the writer wishes to know whether
it is true. This, surely, should not be hard
to decide, as the central thought of the
book is unmistakable.
One criticism, at least, is easy to offer.
If the writer’s views are so transitional, why
publish them at all ? Because British edu
cation needs, above everything else, views
of some sort; at present there are prac
tically none, as is shown by the fact that
no teacher dreams of calling himself an
Herbartian or a Pestalozzian ; and, though
a few enthusiastic lady teachers call them
selves Frobelians, it is very doubtful whether
many school managers know what any one
of the three terms means. All talk about
educational “ progress,” whether at political
caucuses or at teachers’ conferences, is
unmitigated nonsense until some definite
views, theories, or ideals are possessed by
the teachers of this country. Once these
exist, there is a basis for criticism and
progress; a basis, too—though few teachers
seem to realise the fact—for the establish
ment of professional dignity on firm founda
tions. But, without views, teachers will be
for ever the catspaws of managers and
officials no wiser than themselves, and
such a thing as a unified and manageable
curriculum will not exist. In fact, the
doctrine of the curriculum has scarcely
ever been seriously discussed in England
until the year 1903, such pedagogical
progress as may have taken place having
been concerned only with methodology.
Nay, we even hear of educationists who
tell us that “it doesn’t matter what we
teach, but howH The “ Theory of
1 The writer ventures to stigmatise this as the
1 Professor Welton’s suggestive phrase in a most criminally stupid fallacy at present circulatI ing in the world. Luckily no one really believes
recent number of the fournal of Education.
�12
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
the Curriculum,” to which Dorpfeld con and not a profession, they must expect
tributed so substantially, is virtually to be treated as such by a nation which
an untrodden field for English educa possesses quite as clear views as them
tionists. Yet it is perhaps a far more selves. For, after all, the nation has to
important field than methodology. There pay, and teachers are not reticent in urging
are plenty of teachers—perhaps the writer that fact. Let, then, the nation realise
is one—who, as practical methodologists, that it pays for clear views and for zeal.
would take only a low educational place;
To return. Despite the immensity of
who possess little skill in pursuing Socratic the claims put forward in these pages, the
or other methods of questioning, or in writer’s attitude is, in large measure, apolo
arranging a lesson according to the five getic. Not that he asks any indulgence
Herbartian steps; and yet are quite capable for errors, or crudities, or inequalities ; but
of being useful and, perhaps, inspiring he comes forward feeling how immense
teachers, in view of the fact that they and untrodden is the field, how provisional
believe in teaching and have clear views must be even the most sincere work, how
upon the relative importance of subjects. little he knows, how unbalanced his judg
It is to the two matters just mentioned that ment may be—nay, how unworthy in a
the present work is a contribution. Cer score of ways he must appear to those
tainly, until there exist sound views upon who know him best when compared with
the last subject, education will continue— many of the men who, though adorning
as the able primary teacher mentioned on the ranks of secondary and primary educa
p. 34 expresses it—to be regarded as “ a tion, have never ventured to put forward
dumping ground”for all kinds of subjects such gigantic claims as those of the present
and “fads.” “A science of education,” book. Yet, though he feels all this, he
the present writer has elsewhere said, feels also that there are matters of momen
“ would solve the religious difficulty,” and tous importance which, though some do not
also, be it now added, the ever-present see so clearly as himself, yet deserve to be
difficulty of the overcrowded curriculum. expounded. No one has ever claimed that
But teachers, though constantly feeling the the messenger who thinks he delivers an
pressure of the situation, are strangely blind important message must himself be imma
to the only possible source of relief. Let culate. Disregarding, then, the criticisms
them once convince the nation that they which his own mind suggests, the writer
are the expositors of a science, though gives these pages to the world, convinced
perhaps an embryonic science, and also that they carry either a message of farthe apostles of a gospel, and the nation will reaching significance, or a plausible delusion
cease to harass them with vexatious inter which had better be cleared out of the
ferences. But so long as they studiously way as soon as possible. In ten years
discount “ideals” and “theories,” and time his judgment may be more mature,
rarely spend sixpence upon the philosophy his knowledge of education far more exten
of education ; so long, in fact, as they con sive. But—a decade more will have gone
fess themselves to be followers of a trade by ; millions more of children may have
passed through our schools mentally
it, though many try to believe it, and think it starved; educational machinery may be
sounds well.
moving with such a smoothness that
�PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
automata may be directing it; or, possibly,
the educational chariot may have begun to
travel rapidly at last—in the wrong direc
tion.
Still, though the writer challenges criti
cism on the central ideas of this book, he
does not ask for any petty criticism of the
usual anti-Herbartian type. The standard
objections to the supposed doctrines of
Herbart have little practical bearing on
these central ideas. “Interest,” someone
will say, “is largely dependent on heredi
tary endowment”; the answer is that
though this is true (and was recognised by
Herbart), no interest can spring up in a
vacuum ; the Herbartian element of apper
ception is vital, at any rate in all the know
ledge departments. The real question is :
“ Given a normal mind (geniuses and
imbeciles are not the special concern of
the schoolmaster), does Herbart give a
true hint of the means by which the
mighty protective and directive force of
interest can be generated ?”
Again, the standard objection to the
term “ many-sided ” as applied to interest
is, in the opinion of the writer, partly at
least justified. He does not drop the term
entirely, but he thinks it will some day
have to be dropped in place of a better
one.
The real crux of the book is found on
p. 47. Pages 36-40 expound a subject of
vast importance, but one where agreement
is fairly easy. If the factor discussed on
p. 47 is really vital to the moral life, the
main outlines of the primary curriculum
begin at once to appear.
One personal matter. It may be said
that the gloomy picture drawn in some
parts of the book is an unfair one. Primary
education in the north of England and in
London is in a far better condition than
primary education in the rural districts of
13
the south. But the writer has never worked
in the north or in London,1 and only speaks
of what he knows at first hand. In so
speaking he trusts that he has said nothing
to give offence, least of all to those who,
amid the appalling conditions which obtain
in the less cultured districts (where towns
exist which have never, since they came
into existence, possessed any educational
institution except of the crudest kind), are
doing what they can to raise the mental
level. One fact is undeniable, and should
fill teachers with acutest anxiety and
perhaps reproach : there are whole districts
in England where the word '’''education ” is a
more hateful word than the word" drunken
ness ”; where the best passport to municipal
success is to promise to cripple education by
financial parsimony ; and where the mental
life is centuries behind that of Japan (a
country in which, as Meiklejohn’s Geo
graphy tells us, “people are eager to
learn and very willing to pay well for it ”).
It is true that the primary teacher has
been, in years past, astonishingly efficient
from the point of view of the 1861 code:
he has performed tasks which one would
have thought impossible; he has made,
under official pressure, the most un
promising human material capable of
reading, writing, and “working sums”—
after a fashion. It is a daily wonder to the
present writer how country schoolmasters,
with their staff of two or three boys and
their six score of raw children, can teach
anything whatever, and do it on a salary
that forbids the purchase of a book. But
1 From more recent experience the writer
would modify some of the statements of this
book. But, though much of the educational
work done in London schools is of a high
order, the doctrine of apperceptive interest is
almost as much needed in the metropolis as
elsewhere. The many strong points of London
schools are not those upon which stress is laid
in the Secret of Herbart.
�14
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
though, considering the means at their I The facts that education is a detested
disposal, our primary teachers have earned i thing in many districts, that the most
their salaries ten times over, the fact popular subjects in evening schools are
remains that our primary system seems to ■ those that have been untouched by the
have contributed little to the culture, morals, i day schools, and that town after town
or ideals of the age. The name “ educa | will refuse to support a free library, are
tion ” is more hated now, in many districts, sufficient to show that his boast is ill
than it was at the middle of the past founded. If “ practice ” has failed to create
century.
a taste for books and for education, it is
Teachers are no longer enslaved to a time that “theory” and “ideals” should
rigid curriculum, and they will no longer have a chance. It is time, in short, for the
be glaringly underpaid. Social repute they I teacher to make a fresh start, and for
will not acquire for many years, and pro- I education no longer to be open to the
motion to official positions will be barred ' reproach sometimes brought against the
to them so long as, in this country, these , dramatist Euripides—that, though his plays
remain the monopoly of a certain social j are full of power, full of excellences in
class, whose youths “ look forward as a i detail, he does not seem to know “ what
matter of course to positions and appoint- ! he is driving at.”
ments, for the want of which men of gifts j Two final remarks. The writer would
and capacity from other social strata break ' have liked to quote, in extenso, the recent
their hearts, and they will fill these coveted pronouncements of Sir Oliver Lodge on
places with a languid, discontented inca education and sociology. They serve to
pacity.” 1 But, despite the serious hindrances show that thoughtful men who are not
that will continue to cling about the work avowed Herbartians are moving towards
of the primary teacher, the fact remains Herbart’s position on questions of curri
that upon him, and not upon his languid culum, interest, and the like.1
Lastly, though a reply to Professor
or vigorous “ superiors,” rests the real
educational task ; it is in his schoolroom, James, this work is rather a reply to a
and not in their bureau, that the forces single expression used by that great psycho
making the future are mainly at work. The logist than to his work as a whole. The
most powerful official in England would not Talks to Teachers is, in most matters, a
deny that, nor take exception to the writer’s strongly Herbartian book.
The author wishes to thank several
remarks on page 20.
But one fetish the primary teacher must friends for assistance and advice.
finally and scornfully abandon—the fetish
F. H. H.
that he is, in some specially notable and
Easier, 1904.
impressive sense, a “practical” worker.
1 H. G. Wells, in Mankind in the Making.
1 See Appendix IV.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
The most eminent of American psycho
logists complains that “ the conscientious
young teacher is led to believe that the
word ‘ Apperception ’ contains a recon
dite and portentous secret? by losing
the true inwardness of which her whole
career may be shattered........ Now, ‘ ap
perception ’ is an extremely useful word
in pedagogics, and offers a convenient
name for a process to which every teacher
must frequently refer. But it verily
means nothing more than the act of
taking a thing into the mind.”1
2
From thirty or forty thousand pulpits
comes the cry of “ Sin—sin—sin.” And
the louder the cry rises the less does
the world seem to listen. In Bethnal
Green, as a recent census shows, one
person out of eighteen attends Sunday
morning public worship ; one person out
of nine attends on Sunday evening. If
the churches, on the present basis, are to
be the sole agency for suppressing sin,
then sin will never be suppressed, for
people would seem to be growing less
and less responsive to appeal from that
source.
The following work is intended to
show:—
(1) That the word “Apperception”
does contain a secret which, though not
“recondite,” is immensely “portentous.”
(2) That, by losing or never acquiring
“ the true inwardness ” of this “ secret,”
a teacher’s whole career, and a nation’s
career also, are in danger of being
“ shattered.”
(3) That, though “Apperception” may
involve “ nothing more than the act of
taking a thing into the mind,” the things
taken in may sometimes be nothing less
than “airs from heaven” counteractive
of “ blasts from hell.”
(4) That, in fine,the “Apperception”
doctrine has well-nigh incalculable moral,
social, and spiritual implications.
But the schools are filled to overflow
ing ; and he who looks upon them and
sees their doors thronged with those who
are not, and perhaps never need become,
“ sinners,” is driven to ask whether it is
not at these crowded doors, rather than
at the portals of the churches, that the
problem of evil awaits solution. Would
not one-tenth of the devotion now
lavished—in great measure ineffectively
—upon “ missionary ” or “ rescue ”
work, or upon the necessary but thankless
work of cherishing in a kindly way the
useless and infirm, serve, if directed along
more rational and scientific lines, to make
education into the most powerful of all
agencies for the suppression of evil ?
This is at least conceivable.
1 Italics ours.
2 James, Talks to Teachers.
But education—as those at least in the
southern rural counties know—has not
�i6
THE SECRET OF HERBART
realised the high hopes once placed upon
it. Judged by any test we choose to
apply, education has failed.
(i) Morally—using the term in the
narrow sense—thefailure is unmistakable.
We may be less brutally callous to suffer
ing than our ancestors; it is doubtful
whether we are more strenuous, pure, or
self-denying. Often it seems as if, in
place of every evil grappled with or
suppressed, some new evil, or some new
folly, generates itself out of nothing
before our eyes.1 True, the Church as
well as the school must be regarded as
responsible, in a measure, for this failure;;
gambling, intemperance, and foul lan
guage (if we may believe the first Moselyr
Commission) are far less prevalent among;
American workmen, brought up in1
“ secular ” schools and in a country where*
there is little or no official recognition of’
religion, than in our own. But for one:
department—that of “ minor morals ”—■
the school is almost alone responsible,
and here the failure is overwhelming.
So far as the duties of courtesy and
decency are concerned, the words of the
Globe newspaper2 hold good: “ The
manners of the rising generation are
non-existent.”
(2) Take another standard—that of
interests awakened or created by the
school.
Where, outside a few great towns, can
we find intellectual keenness ? What
subject taught in our schools attracts
pupils, disinterestedly, after school days
are over ?
In one borough of 14,000 inhabitants
1 Popular betting on horses is a new evil ;
slavery to tobacco (as distinct from moderate
indulgence) is a new evil.
2 February 3rd, 1902.
there were, in 1902, some three or four
students, exclusive of primary teachers,
studying elementary chemistry.
In another borough, small, but regarded
by its 3,000 inhabitants as progressive,
not one student, exclusive of teachers
who had to study the subject, was willing
to pay a shilling for a course of lessons
in chemistry. A disinterested desire for
the subject simply did not exist. “La
république n’a pas besoin de chimistes.”
Even in the continuation schools of
London the attendance for all subjects
except those that are purely utilitarian is
meagre in the extreme. History, literature, might almost as well not exist.
No ; from the point of view of interests
roused or created, our schools would
appear to be worse than failures. Pupils
enter them at six full of inquisitiveness ;
they leave them full of mental apathy.
It is no wonder, therefore, that Harwich
and Fareham and Marylebone reject by
public vote the offers of Mr. Carnegie.
What have Harwich and Fareham and
Marylebone to do with books and
libraries? “ How the London poor should
love Dickens ! But—with his books
always obtainable—they can scarce be
said to read him at all.”1
(3) Take a lower standard yet—that of
mere knowledge conferred and dexterity
attained.2
Questioning the evening school pupils
once entrusted to his charge, a teacher
known to the writer discovered that
none of them could find, by practical
measurement, the volume of a wooden
cube ; that not one knew the distinction
1 Gissing’s Dickens.
* Things in this respect are probably better, on
the whole, than what is here represented, though
the statements made are facts. People familiar
with our well-staff d London schools can scarcely
conceive of rural conditions.
�77Z# secret of herbart
17
between a planet and a fixed star, or the
relation of our solar system to the rest
of the universe; and that not one knew
the causes of the seasons. In a class
for elementary mathematics the question,
“ What is the difference between twelve
and twenty ?” or, “If twenty is divided
into two parts, one of them being twelve,
what is the other part?” gave perplexity
to the youths in their teens, who only
recently had been pupils in a rural
primary school; English literature was
positively a sealed book; Jewish pro
phetic literature, and the immense
influence exerted upon it by the Assyrian
and other invasions and influences, were
unknown.
perhaps a boy of fifteen who cannot
speak English and has never touched
genuine literature in his life—can no
more teach anything, even the boasted
three R’s, than he can build a palace
or work a miracle. But in the towns
the results are often as unsatisfactory
as in the country districts.
The
primary school in a thousand districts
has implanted no tastes at all, and the
pupils leave it at the age of fourteen with
significant willingness.
Like Marius
amid the ruins of Carthage, the evening
school teacher, surrounded by half-filled
copy-books and tattered manuals of
arithmetic, is virtually standing in the
midst of ruins—the ruins of an ideal.
(4) Take a lower standard yet. Five
Dashshire boys out of ten, if asked what
school they attend, will answer, “ I goes
to — School”; and scarcely two out of
the ten will be able to compose, and to
utter so as to be heard distinctly five
yards away, a grammatical sentence of
moderate length.
For there was once an ideal in England,
dimly discerned, perhaps, and discerned
only by a few ; but nevertheless an ideal
possessing some promise and possibility.
The literature of the middle decades of
the nineteenth century shows that there
was, on the part of many an artisan, some
eagerness to learn; and though primary
teachers were fewer than now, and pos
sessed but little training and no preten
sions, their eyes were fixed on the future ;
there was hope and there was open
ness of mind. Pestalozzi’s influence in
England may not have been great, but it
was present. Education had a spirit of
its own ; disillusionment had not come.
Learning may not have been held in
much esteem, but it was not, as now,
regarded over whole regions with aversion
and contempt. Books of “ self-instruc
tion” bear witness to this fact. Adam
Bede attended an evening school, and
his teacher was an enthusiast.
The second of these four standards—
for reasons that will be still more obvious
after the reading of this book—is the one
upon which most stress should be laid.
The evening school is as much now
the crucial test for the success of educa
tional work as, m years to come, it will
be the recruiting-ground for the forces of
good. If the day school has implanted
a love of knowledge, the evening school
will bear its witness to the fact. But it
bears none. The day school has failed,
and the reason lies partly, at least, in the
failure of teachers to realise the immen
sity of the mission to which they are
What has happened to change the
called. In country districts the failure fair though homely landscape to one
is almost inevitable; a pupil-teacher— from which colour and life seem absent?
c
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
Alas, we know.
In 1861 occurred
the saddest event, perhaps, in English
history—the establishment of the “payment-by-results ” system in the primary
schools of this country ; the official
denial to the poor of this land of a
humanising culture ; the official behest
to the teachers of the land to throw every
ideal into the dust. The very years in
which Ziller was first promulgating a
scheme of “ educative instruction ”—in
struction that should humanise and form
character — were the years in which
England first caught sight of this Gorgonhorror ; a horror so intense that to this
hour the primary education of England
remains, in a measure, frozen and para
lysed.1
teachers to the cause of education—
men like Arnold, Thring, and Bowen
in the secondary ranks \ men like
F. J. Gould and many another in the
primary ranks; a host also of noble
women ; but to the clear and scientific
comprehension of educational ideas and
methods she has, until recently, scarcely
contributed anything at all. This is
illustrated by the disastrous answer
above quoted, that the “ Three R’s ” are
the most vital subjects in the primary
curriculum.
If the Herbartians have any message
worth hearing, it is that, except as means
to an end, the “Three R’s ” have but the
smallest educational significance.1 Dorpfeld and Ziller are here at one. ‘‘ Despise
There are men even now1 who would ‘theory’ if you will, ye long-suffering
2
fain bring back, in a modified form, the and long-protesting teachers; but, until
methods of those thirty frightful years. ye have framed for yourselves an educa
Asked what are the most important tional ideal, determined the relative
subjects in the primary curriculum, they value of subjects as measured by the
will answer, “The Three R’s.” Nay, standard of that ideal, and formulated a
even teachers themselves will give this curriculum in accordance with it, ye will
answer, as if fascinated by the vampire continue to be subjected to the aggres
sions of officials exactly as fog-bound as
that has taken their blood.
yourselves; harassed by that constant
Many who hear the pæans raised in multiplication of subjects which ye daily
praise of German educational thought deplore; and humiliated by the sense
are tempted to ask whether the pæans that ye are not a profession of scientific
are not too loud. Has not England con specialists, but the mere 1 cave-dwellers ’
tributed something to education ? Is not that Professor Adams has called some of
the most distinguishing mark of German your fellowship.”
educational literature its immense and
The Code of 1861 has done its work.
bitter and trivial verbosity ? The answer
is that England has contributed noble Only exceptionally is a primary school
master, in the less favoured districts,
1 And yet that system was introduced with a reader of books, a “ local light,”
the best of motives. Primary education was not
all that it should have been; so the “practical a man of ideas. “ Teachers do not
man,” Mr. Robert Lowe, came to the rescue. read books on education,” was said to
And the practical man has been coming to the the present writer by an experienced
rescue ever since, just because a “ Science of
Education” has not yet won any measure of
popular recognition or esteem.
2 Schoolmaster, February 6th, 1904.
1 In an appendix the question of the “ Three
R’s ” is discussed at some length.
�THE SECRET OF HERBAR T
manager of a book store, who, as he said
the words, seemed not to realise their
frightful import.
Nay, further, it is
extremely doubtful whether, in the whole
of England, there are many members of
education committees who have ever
heard of Comenius, Pestalozzi, or Her
bart ; or many who would spend a florin
on a book dealing with education per se;
or many who wish to learn, or believe
in the possibility of learning, anything
fresh about education. In their hearts,
these people, the best in England, believe
with Dr. Johnson that “ education is as
well known, and has long been as well
known, as ever it can beand even
inspectors, who, if any men, should be
in the forefront of educational thought,
differ widely upon every question of
policy or principle. Quite often the
official “ prizes ” of the educational world
fall to men who do not even profess to
know educational principles, to men of
other and alien professions, to clerks in
or out of holy orders. The notion that
those principles exist—for those who
choose to seek them with the sweat of
their brow—has not yet dawned upon
us. Education is regarded as some
thing between a knack and a nuisance.
And, after all, teachers, managers,
and inspectors are not much to blame.
Why should they study educational prin
ciples when, to all appearance, such prin
ciples do not exist? Where can they
find—to give an example of our present
condition—an authoritative encyclo
paedia of education ? Whom are we to
believe, whom to follow ? Are there
five professors of education in the country
exerting any influence outside the circle
of their own pupils ? Does not London
support Herbart, and Edinburgh try to
oppose him ? Is it true that “ there are
19
scarcely three teachers of mark in
England who work on the same lines,”
and that “ our study of education is in
its infancy”?1 Are not Commoners at
this moment urging, some that “children
live on dogma,” others that dogma is the
last thing that children can grasp ? Are
not books on the philosophy of education
the dullest books that exist ?
Now, the truth is that education is one
of the most illimitable, untrodden, and
promising fields of research that can
anywhere be found. Instead of there
being nothing, there is almost every
thing for us to learn. Instead of having
well-nigh reached its perfection and
climax, it has scarcely yet entered upon
the career that is bound to be ultimately
so victorious. It is for this reason that
the indifference of teachers, inspectors,
and managers appears so strange. But
time is on the side of education. The
stars in their courses fight on its behalf.
No human prediction is so scientifically
reliable as the prediction that, sooner or
later, the immense significance of educa
tion—a significance not only intellectual
and economic, but moral and spiritual
also—will be recognised, and that with
this recognition will come a vast increase
in the esteem bestowed upon those who
choose (or chance) to adopt it as a pro
fession. Even now, despite the obvious
failure of recent years, one hears at times
wistful panegyrics of what education
might accomplish, though they who
panegyrise it most are far from having
consciously arrived at the standpoint to
be set forth in this book. However
small, indeed, may have been the educa
tional progress of this nation when esti
mated by an absolute standard, it has
1 Professor Findlay.
�20
THE SECRET OF HERBART
There are two ways in which educa-*
tion may come to a revival. The first
way is to pay for a revival; to offer high
rewards, in the form of exceptional
salaries, to all men who will contribute
substantially to educational thought.
This plan might ensure that some of the
ability now drawn off in other directions
would be devoted to the work where the
need is greatest of all. In fifty years’
time we should then, perhaps, have fifty
“ Superficially phenomenal and mo educational thinkers, and in five hundred
mentous.” Yes, the progress is almost years’ time a “ Science of Education.”
wholly on the surface, a progress in
externals ; in such things as buildings,
Unfortunately there exists no demand
salaries, organisation; in the complexity —or very little demand—for ideas;
(almost the unwieldiness) of the curricu scarcely any conception that it is just in
lum ; it is hardly a progress in ideas, in the absence of ideas where one of the
ideals, or in devotion.
Our public greatest dangers lies; certainly small
educational bodies pay their best salaries willingness to pay for ideas. Though
to men who, though once perhaps good we may, therefore, rightly contend that
teachers, have been persuaded to be the ideal schoolmaster should be regarded
teachers no longer, and are now adminis and remunerated as a professional man,
trative officials destined by the nature and even a man of research—the archi
of their new work to contribute only in tect of the mind being regarded as at
directly to teaching power; splendid least equal to the architect of bricks and
salaries to architects who, though they mortar, the physician of the mind equal
may inspect every school chimney in to the physician of the body; though we
existence, will leave education just where may rightly urge that a Science of Edu
they found it. Our public bodies spend cation—co ordinate with a Science of
much on fine buildings—forgetful that, Medicine and a Science of Architecture,
however desirable such buildings may be, and twenty times as significant as either
the greatest educational experiment of —is to come into existence, yet, unless
modern times was performed by Pesta- we can find some other and more power
lozzi in the poverty-stricken outhouses of ful lever than this, we must dismiss all
a convent; disregardful, too, of the hope of solid or early educational pro
strange fact that, if Pestalozzi were at this gress.
moment working as a schoolmaster in
As a profession, education has never
England, he would not receive a quarter
of the salary of some inspectorial supe yet had a chance; yet it is infallibly
rior. Nay, one asks, curiously, whether and demonstrably the calling of the
Pestalozzi — once a revolutionist and future, the one that will attract, in
always an unbusiness-like dreamer — coming decades and centuries, many of
would not be wholly ignored alike by the most original and devoted minds.
But it must first discover for itself some
committees and by Whitehall.
been superficially phenomenal and
momentous when the last few years are
alone taken into account; when, above
all, the fact is remembered that the best
men have never been attracted to the
cause. In Britain alone four professor
ship of education have recently been
filled—let us hope by men who know
the “nation’s need” and have a
message.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
standpoint from which it will appear as
a truly “ portentous ” and vital matter ;
more portentous and vital than weary
details of church ritual, or the faith
healing ecstasies of an American neurotic.
Religion—nay, superstition herself—can
experience revivals; we read of the rise
of Methodism, we read of the Oxford
Movement, we read of the Christian
Scientists. Why, then, should not edu
cation have her revivals too ? Was not
Comenius the equal of Wesley, Pestalozzi
as great as Newman, Herbart greater
than Mrs. Eddy ? A revival, indeed, is
not only possible, but—if only education
can discover a standpoint for herself—
quite inevitable. Is there such a stand
point, or must educationists continue
to pursue their calling with divided aims
and cold hearts ? There is such a stand
point ; occupying it, teachers, as a class,
will catch a glimpse of an ideal that has
never yet, save to a few of their keenereyed fellows, revealed its stately propor
tions. And why, indeed, should educa
tion be without millennial dreams; or
why call them dreams that are so well
based on scientific necessities ?
The Rev. R. J. Campbell, a “ popular
preacher” who is a genuine thinker as
well as a preacher, has been recently
predicting a “ great revival ” in evangeli
cal religion.1 Is this, then, to be all
that the new century has to offer—a
repetition of paroxysms, which, once
passed, will leave mankind but little
changed? Is there no new ground to
break up ? Is evangelical Protestant
ism to hark back, as Anglicanism is
harking back, to vanished centuries;
seeking to animate old forms with a new
1 The prediction has since been realised, but
England seems much the same after all. Per
haps the reason is not far to seek. See p. 61.
21
spirit, or to dress the old spirit in new
forms ? The task may be a worthy one,
but there remains yet a finer, more
promising, and more original task still—
one that, in England, has never been
attempted at all; the task of animating
new forms with a new spirit; the task of
bringing about an educational revival, of
moving along lines never before trodden
by English feet. With twenty men of
Mr. Campbell’s calibre as leaders, this
task might be attempted ; but education
has scarcely any leaders at all, and those
that she has, scarcely realise that wellnigh every moral and social current of
the age is setting slowly in their direction,
and that they, if wise and far-seeing, can
direct those currents to mighty ends.
“ Scientific,” yes ; we will never forget
that some day there will be a “ Science
of Education,” even though we may
question whether educational revival will
have its origin solely in systematised
scientific thought. Such a “ science ”—
ever before the minds of those educa
tionists who have been influenced by
German thought—will be a body of
principles based securely on psychology
and kindred studies, consequently pos
sessing authority and adding dignity to
its exponents. The notion is a fine one,
and will some day—if more men of the
stamp of Professors Adams and Findlay
are raised up—be gloriously realised;
for in the writings of men like these we
see the coherent outlines of a new science
already beginning to appear. But, in
the belief of the present writer, this
scientific standpoint, taken alone, is not
the one that will effect any immediate
transformation, though it will do much ;
solving many of the perplexities and
contradictions of present-day effort, and
lifting those who follow education as a
�22
THE SECRET OF HERBART
calling some inches out of the profes
Wonderfully coherent will the whole
sional gutter in which they now lie.
subject become when once this stand
point is occupied. Wonderful the change
Our leading educationists almost in the status and the spirit of teachers.
without exception—even those who are Wonderful, also (to mention a minor
“scientific” in spirit, nay, even those point), the change in our way of regard
who, at times, catch a noble Pisgah view ing the function of educational journals,
of the future—speak with bated breath the best of which are now devoted to
and modest diffidence. They seem to the discussion of matters which, though
have but little faith in their subject and frequently of real importance, fail some
their profession.
They feel, perhaps how to reveal this importance—fail, in
rightly, that a “ Science of Education ” in fact, to force themselves on us as vital.
its completeness is still a far-off ideal; We ask, somewhat sceptically, whether
accordingly, they hesitate to suggest an articles on “ Individuality ” or the
aggressive forward movement; they “ Culture Stages ” possess, after all,
question whether the resources for it much real significance. “Is education
exist; their policy remains slow, cautious, really a very momentous matter?” we
tentative.
seem to hear our professors asking as
they post their manuscripts. “ Some
Their motives may be good, but the more words—words—words,” we seem
policy is fatal. There is no need to to hear editor and readers say, as the
wait for a completed “ Science of Educa article stands before them. In the
tion ” before inaugurating a forward highest as in the lowest ranks of the
movement. The scientific standpoint educational hierarchy, men look at each
pure and simple is probably not the other as the ancient augurs looked—with
one, be it repeated, from which the an ever-present inclination to laugh.
movement will start. There is another Now and then there comes a man seeing
standpoint. In ten years’ time educa dimly or clearly the unrealised possibili
tion may be revolutionised—if a few ties that lie in education; but, on the
hundred teachers choose to occupy this whole, educationists, “ scientific ” or
standpoint.
“ empirical,” do not appear to be very
much in earnest.
The whole case may be summed up
in a few words; and if these words can
There exists a view of things, an
be justified, they will convict almost attitude, a standpoint, which will change
every educationist in the country—even all this. Sooner or later teachers will
the most “scientific”—of working, partly come to realise that they have a great
at any rate, on the wrong lines. Educa part—the chiefpart—to play in battering
tion must be regarded primarily less as a down the ancientfortresses of evil. Those
science than as a gospel. Instead of there ancient fortresses still stand, defying all
being a “ Logical Basis of Education ”— puny present efforts to reduce them to
to use Professor Welton’s terminology— ruins. The mightier artillery of educa
there must first be an “ Ethical Basis.” tion has yet to be brought up, and, when
If this is “ scientific ” too, so much the brought up, it will be found to be, in the
better.
truest sense, “scientific.”
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
Sin, Vice, Moral Evil. But is there,
after all, any weapon by which this
monster may be slain? Perhaps none.
Is there any weapon by which it may
be reduced to comparative impotence ?
There are two, and probably only two,
if we except weapons like criminal law,
used by the State for its own purposes.
Two weapons, one consecrated by
centuries of use, the other well-nigh in
a sense—fresh from the armoury, lie
before us. Used in conjunction, they
will effect much; either, alone, will effect
something.
23
really difficult to ascertain. Religion, in
many of its forms, is a powerful ally of
morality, but it is not the sole ally, nor,
considering the prestige and the resources
at its disposal, has it proved itself a
very constant or able ally. Theie may
exist other allies whose value has been
hitherto underrated, perhaps even ignored
altogether.
This is implied in the words of Dr.
G. A. Smith: “Sin is the longest,
heaviest drift in human history....... Men
have reared against it government, educa
tion, philosophy, system after system of
The first, and the more ancient, is religion. But sin has overwhelmed them
religion. So great are the claims put all.”1
forward on its behalf that the mere
“ Overwhelmed them all ’’—even reli
whisper of the existence of other weapons,
perhaps equally or still more potent, will gion—even Christianity itself, as we shall
be heard with disfavour in many circles. see in a moment. The confession is a
Nothing but the Catholic Church, in true one, though presently the question
Newman’s belief, was able to baffle and will be asked, legitimately enough,
withstand “the fierce energy of passion,”1 whether the second of the barriers
and non-Catholic writers tell the same mentioned by Dr. Smith—education—
story of the “impotence of men in has ever been reared in earnest; whether
dealing with sin.”2 Preachers of all the erection of this barrier has not been
creeds, in fact, will tell us that without left to the despised ones of the earth ;
whether, in fact, the resources of educa
religion there can be no true morality
and even the atheist seems at times tion, as a moral agency, have ever been
willing to admit that some forms of seriously and designedly and intelligently
religion are powerful allies to virtue. called into play. But for the present
Yet, after all, there is no necessary con let us abide by Dr. Smith’s confession;
nection between the two. Some religions, and it amounts (among other things) to
like that of the ancient Phoenicians, this, that religion, though a barrier to sin,
were provocative of vice. Moreover, is not an invincible one. It may appear in
they who tell us that there can be no the end that sin cannot be wholly suppressed
true morality without religion will tell us by religion; therefore, to neglect the other
at another time—all unconscious of self- great force or forces by which this sup
contradiction—that mere morality avails pression may be, in part, accomplished
nothing, thus implying that there can be is well nigh a criminal procedure. What
mere morality—morality apart from reli the force or forces may be will appear
gion. The facts of the case are not later on. Here we have mainly to
1 Apologia.
* Rev. R. E. Welsh, In Relief of Doubt.
1 Isaiah, vol. i.
�24
THE SECRET OF HERBART
realise the significance of the statement
just made, because, if that statement is
true, it is indeed immensely significant.
Perhaps evil cannot be wholly suppressed
by religion alone.
Proof of this comes from the most
conclusive quarter — religious people
themselves. There is no need to use
the common, and not altogether repu
table, argument that an examination of
these religious people shows their lives
to be no better than the lives of others.
The argument—all things considered—
is not wholly fair, though fair enough
when used against those who claim reli
gion as the only moral panacea. No;
the best argument of all is found in the
Prayer Book, especially in the General
Confession and the Litany. Sin, we
there discover, rages still in the bosom
of the believer. Evil, in varied forms,
still strives for mastery. Nay, the most
intensely “ religious ” people — those
devoted wholly to an ascetic or “reli
gious ” life—daily confess to sins of
thought at least, which some more
prosaic people, engrossed in wholesome
“hobbies” and “secular” interests, in
politics, in book-reading, and so forth,
commit perhaps less or not at all.
ciously religious, boys are found to be in
sad trouble from ” one particular moral
foe.1
The evil here referred to “ is not
necessarily the indication of a coarse
nature. It is observable in refined,
intellectual, and even pious persons.”2
“ The boys whose temperament spe
cially exposes them to these faults are
usually far from destitute of religious
feelings; there is, and always has been,
an undoubted co-existence of religiosity
and animalism ; emotional appeals and
revivals are very far from rooting out
carnal sin; in some places they seem
actually to stimulate, even in the present
day, to increased licentiousness.”3
In view of facts like these there is
some temptation to take up the extreme
and probably unwarrantable position that
the function of religion is to give con
solation and rest rather than character
and conduct; “that by the doctrine
of forgiveness of sins, consequent on
repentance even in the last moments of
life, Christianity often favours spirituality
and salvation at the expense of morals ”;4
that the humble function of training
character and conduct falls to educa
tion and similar agencies; that “mere
morality ”—as preachers have before
to-day insisted—is something different
from that of which they are the guardians.
The standpoint is, be it repeated, unwar
rantable, because one-sided. What is
true and safe is this: that religion is
one barrier against sin, but it is not the
only one, nor is it invincible. “ Religious
faith,” a great educator has said, “instead
Evidence from outside — evidence
adduced by observant schoolmasters
and others who have been face to face
with intense forms of juvenile evil_
bears out this conclusion. And be it
here remembered that, though religion
has been often neglectful of the civic
and intellectual virtues, she has never
failed to hold up a high standard of
Rev. the Hon. E. Lyttleton, in Training
sexual morality. Let us take her, then,
of the Young in the Laws of Sex.
on the ground where she is strongest,
2 Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, in Counsel to
“ Emotional, and sometimes preco
Parents.
3 Archdeacon Wilson, in Essays and Addresses.
4 Cotter Morison, in The Service ofMan.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
of being the only source of goodness,
seems only one of many.”1
If anything in this book should be
thought to be a slight on the power, in
the human heart, of true religion, the
author would regret that the book existed.
Evil is too great a foe for any weapon to
be rejected. Happy the man who has
heard not only the message of Herbart,
but any message which, coming from the
unseen, serves to lighten the burdens of
life and solve the problems of existence.
But exaggerated praise of religion is as
nauseous as unjust depreciation; it is
not true, it has never been true, no
professor of ethics and no observer of
human life can claim as true, that
morality is solely dependent on religion.
Probably not more than one rhoral act
out of three springs from a motive which
can be called, in any strict sense,
religious. Goethe directed those who
were without art or science to go to
religion ; and the advice (as this book
will show) might be equally well reversed,
without disrespect to art, or science, or
religion.
What keeps a spirit wholly true
To that ideal which he bears?
What record ? not the sinless years
That breathed beneath the Syrian blue.”2
25
explain or to justify its voracity; a chasm
in the forum of human life ever remain
ing open, even though many a Curtius
throw himself, with his hopes and ambi
tions, into the gulf ? Or is it not rather
an intelligible effect, with definite causes
of its own ?
It is not intelligible, if we may believe
theological books. Be he orthodox or
heterodox, Catholic or Protestant, the
theologian gives up in despair the task
of explaining or accounting for sin.
Once admitted, he can seek, and does
seek, to fit it into schemes of salvation
or justification; but the thing itself
baffles him at every point. Now, the
reason why theologians should fail igno
miniously where Herbart succeeds
gloriously—for Herbart’s explanation,
even if not a complete one, is magni
ficently true so far as it goes—is that
they begin with the absolute, while,
educationally, he began with man.1 If
a hundred observers, with a psychological
equipment, would do likewise, and make
a point of investigating every case of
moral failure that comes under their
observation—every case, at any rate, that
is capable of being investigated—this
mystery would probably be found to be
no mystery at all. Strange that this has
never been done ! Strange that, except
from the medical side, the idea of such a
task has scarcely occurred to mankind !
Strange, above all, that men who are
ordained to wage war against evil should
be the most prominent of all in con
fessing it to be unaccountable !
Here the argument may pause for a
moment. One “ cure for sin ” has been
found to be but a partial cure. Religion,
though sometimes powerful, is not omni
potent. Would it not be well, before
asking what other cures for evil exist, to
ask after the origin of evil itself? Or
is it so inexplicable that its origin (or
origins) cannot be traced ? Is it some
1 In educational circles there is an impression
thing mysterious, unaccountable ; a that Herbart “deduced” his educational ideas
from his metaphysics. In point of fact, he
devouring Minotaur which refuses to started from the educational stand point. Largely,
1 Rev. R. H. Quick, in Life and Remains.
* In Memoriam, LI I.
it was his experience with a difficult boy, Ludwig
Steiger, that forced him onward. See the writer’s
Critics of Herbartianism, Appendix.
�26
THE SECRET OF HERBART
Yet these men are zealous against their
ghostly foe; they, like Curtius, will often
throw themselves into the gulf that,
nevertheless, remains mysteriously open,
despite the sacrifice of the nation’s
bravest. Perchance the most acceptable
sacrifice of all has never yet been made.
Perchance this chasm, unlike the one
which opened in ancient Rome, asks—
not for mere heroism, but—for scientific
thought. Throw that into the gulf, and
maybe it will begin to close. “ If, for
the fall of man, science comes to sub
stitute the rise of man, it means the
utter disintegration of all the spiritual
pessimisms which have been like a spasm
in the heart and a cramp in the intellect
of men.”1
deadly foe to the consumption germ
was the free air of heaven, physicians
secluded their patients in rooms from
which that free air was scrupulously
excluded. And we, too, physicians for
a moral phthisis, would fain kill the germ
by hot-house -remedies, all unconscious
that, by placing our patient amid a more
bracing atmosphere, the task could be
performed with immeasurably greater
prospect of success. What is the atmo
sphere which saves from moral phthisis ?
“ Lust and brutality are generated as
certainly as scrofula and typhus ”x—given
definite conditions. They follow from
these conditions with well-nigh the inevit
able certainty of the lightning flash.
The glory of Herbartianism is that it
In plain words, we have to treat sin knows the conditions—one, at least, of
as a scientific problem is treated. them ; and, knowing the conditions, can
Having once so treated it, having once also point to the cure.
traced it to some at least of its causes,
we may then, with all the devotion and
To treat moral failure as really un
heroism at our command, aim at its accountable, as a baffling immensity,
cure. But mere heroism and devotion mysterious in its origin and exhaustless
are things wasted. We want a gospel; in its resources, as a bolt from the blue,
this book is written to urge the need of as a diabolus ex machind, is to treat the
one; but it must be a scientific gospel. universe as finally and almost utterly
An ounce of scientific thought is worth unintelligible. Holding such a view,
a ton of ignorant zeal. And such zeal, man can but wring his hands in hopeless
on their own confession, is the chief anguish. Of little use the incantations
tribute that the Churches are paying; offered up, Sunday by Sunday, for deliver
for well-nigh every theological book ance from the formidable catalogue of
avows that sin is a mystery in the sins contained in the Litany. If evil
universe, something to be treated in exists as an entity, and not merely as an
much the same way as primitive man effect, the human heart may plead, but
treated disease; something, in fact, quite will plead in vain, for complete deliver
unaccountable, baffling, diabolical.
ance. Throned in the universe, regal
mid clouds and mysterious darkness,
Or—to change the thought—as evil will never fail of subjects and
medical men, till recently, treated servants. The best we can then hope
phthisis. Unconscious that the most for will be that the forces of good will be
1 O. W. Holmes, in The Autocrat of the Break
fast Table.
1 Sir Leslie Stephen, in An Agnostic’s Apology.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
ever found sternly marshalled against they discover acquires the mysteriousness
those of evil, fighting a hopeless but and unaccountability that has been trans
ferred from the thing itself. That cause
endless battle.
is nothing less than Free Will, a some
The moment, however, that evil thing which, though inexplicable, seems
appears as an effect, the battle is seen to flatter our conceit, and to remove from
not to be hopeless. When the causes us the trouble and obligation of penetra
have been discovered the cure may soon ting farther into the springs of conduct.1
be discovered too.
To deny man’s prerogative of “free
No pretence will here be made that
dom ” would be a bold and probably a
all those causes, racial and other, have
mistaken step—certainly a step likely to
been discovered. Until they are sought
be misunderstood and to do harm. The
for in a scientific spirit they cannot be.
supreme moments of life, when conscious
For centuries men regarded disease as
ness is at a maximum, and when great
something unintelligible by natural laws,
moral crises occur, are moments of
and the Church, trusting to shrines and
apparent “freedom’’and of mysterious
relics, discouraged the study of medicine,
import. Often it seems impossible to
or, more compromisingly, gave efficacy
predict the result of thoughtful delibera
to a physician’s drug by saying a prayer
tion at such solemn moments as these,
over it; for a still longer period men
deliberation whether of our own or of
regarded poverty as similarly unintelli
others. We can say of our Will what
gible, to be treated only by doles at the
Antonio said of his sadness :—
monastery gates; and probably for a yet
“ How I caught it, found it, or came by it,
longer period they will prefer to regard
What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
moral evil as unintelligible also. But
I am to learn.”
medicine is tracking disease to its origin;
sociology is tabulating the causes of We are in the position of the indi
poverty;1 and, sooner or later, thecauses vidual who has never seen iodine
of moral evil will be finally revealed to and phosphorus spontaneously ignite to
the patient investigator. Already some form a new and different substance.
of those causes are open to the light of Such momentsare moments of—apparent
freedom; and here “ apparent freedom ”
day.
Strange that men should refuse or
dislike to look at evil in this scientific
way 1 Strange the fascination exerted by
the unaccountable ! Yet the fascination
exists. Even when, momentarily occu
pying a pseudo-scientific standpoint,
men make one feeble attempt to assign
to sin its causes, almost the only cause1
2
1 Vide Mr. Rowntree’s Poverty, quoted from
below.
2 There is also the bad angel of “ original
sin,” and there is the good angel of “grace.”
But the theology of both of these is hopelessly
chaotic.
If “ original sin ” meant heredity,
and if “ grace ” included all kinds of educational
influences, there would be helpfulness in the
Church formulae. But such a reconciliation with
modern thought is difficult, and neither
doctrine is easily to be adjusted to the third
doctrine of Free Will. Heredity is not washed
away at baptism ; and the dyslogistic talk about
“secular subjects” forbids us to identify the
illuminative power of these subjects with the
power of “ grace,” or of the “ Holy Ghost,”
though Miss Mason half suggests such an identi
fication ( Home Education ).
1 See how one of our greatest writers plays
with the subject. Prof. G. A. Smith’s Isaiah,
vol. i.
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THE SECRET OF HERBART
performs all the functions of “ real
freedom,” inasmuch as it imparts a sense
of responsibility, acts as a motive, and
may turn the balance to this side or to
that.
One great British writer on education,
perhaps our greatest writer, lays ceaseless
stress upon this supreme prerogative.1
Education, according to him, must ever
keep in view the fact that man is not a
machine, not even an enormously com
plex psychical machine, but rather a
being in whom a free rational principle,
unaccountable by explanation from
below, has its seat.
True, the question may be asked even
here, whether, when a few more centuries
or decades of scientific research have
passed, this residuum of unaccountability
may not be accounted for. May not,
some day, even the remotest springs of
action be exposed to view ? This is pos
sible. When psychology and sociology
have advanced far beyond their present
standpoint, they may be able to assign
causes to “pride, vainglory, and hypoc
risy,” and the rest of the catalogue, with
as much precision as that with which
physical science is able to assign causes
to “lightning and tempest, plague, pesti
lence, and famine.”
Our mediaeval
Litany places all these on the same
level of unaccountability; our coming
sciences may some day place them
again on the same level—that of account
ability. In other words, every sin that
has ever been sinned by a sinner may,
without, let us hope, any weakening of
moral responsibility, be as securely traced
to its causes in heredity, variation, and
environment (including education) as the
1 Dr. Laurie.
lightning flash can be traced to definite
atmospheric conditions. Life may be
come tamer when thus deprived of its
mysteries and surprises, but it need not
be essentially unhappy; indeed, most of
the springs of present-day misery will
have been diverted or removed, though,
perchance, new springs may have welled
up.
But at present the admission must be
made that there is an unaccountable
element in human nature—an element
of Free Will; and that this, whether an
illusion generated by our ignorance of
psychical causes, or, as is more probably
the case, a reality due to the actual
presence in man of a superior spiritual
principle, is an element which should
not be neglected in any complete theo
retical account of human nature.
Yet—and this is the main point in the
present discussion—nine-tenths of human
conduct are practically independent of
this “ superior spiritual principle.” Man
may not be wholly a machine, but he is
largely, mainly, a machine. The man
of culture, reflecting calmly upon alter
native courses of action — any man,
indeed, at the moment of some great
moral crisis — may, in an intelligible
sense, be “ free ”; but even the man of
culture, and, still more emphatically, the
man devoid of culture, act, through the
greater part of their lives, in a way that
is largely if not wholly mechanical.
Now, most if not all of our great educa
tional writers—we have a few—know
education mainly in its higher grades,
and amid the atmosphere of the tradi
tional culture. Naturally, then, they lay
stress upon the “ higher ” aspects of
mental life. The voice of the primary
teacher, working amid the slums of our
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
great cities or the intellectual deserts of
our agricultural counties, is silent, or too
Doric for the ears of our university
professors. But if that teacher were
questioned as to the applicability of the
“ superior spiritual principle ” to the
work of educating his pupils, he would
—however painful the confession may
sound — smile somewhat sardonically.
His pupils, he suspects, are virtually
machines. Their conduct, though occa
sionally inexplicable, owing to his igno
rance of their nature, does, on the whole,
follow as logically from their past as the
motion of the billiard ball follows upon
the nature of the blow it receives. The
“ freedom ” principle sounds well in
university class-rooms, and may, indeed,
represent a fundamental philosophical
truth; but as an educational maxim it is
singularly useless.
29
tence or his greatest blunders to means
of grace, he may advisably change his
profession at once for one in which he
can, with some certainty, count upon
effecting results. He may, from the
standpoint of a metaphysician, admit the
existence of a “superior spiritual prin
ciple”; he may, from the standpoint of
a psychologist, admit that human
conduct is sometimes unpredictable
(owing to the complexity of man
and the imperfect condition of psy
chology) ; but he can never, as an
educationist, admit that the highest law
of education is lawlessness. He must
believe in education, or he has no right to
expound it; he must believe that effects
follow causes, and that, however complex
human nature may be, however unknown
at present many of the springs of con
duct, he, as an operator upon his pupils,
can help to mould their lives. Sin he
must regard as an effect, not wholly as a
mystery; and Free Will he must regard
as a deity to be worshipped by the lips
rather than by the heart. “ The theo
logical doctrine of grace and the meta
physical doctrine of the freedom of the
will....... both presuppose an unknown
factor whose presence or absence cannot
be foreseen, and whose action cannot be
measured. It is here, it is there, it is
gone, and no one can tell why. It at
once upsets prevision of the future, and
cancels all record of, and inference from,
the past.”1
If the medical man, in treating his
patient for phthisis or diphtheria, had to
face the possibility that Powers, divine
or diabolical, were ever on the watch,
aiding or counteracting his own efforts,
he would be reduced to comparative and
ludicrous helplessness. There would be
small need or use for lengthy medical
study; the most conscientious attentions
to his patient might at any moment be
rendered vain by diabolical interference;
his grossest blunders neutralised by
divine assistance. A Science of Medicine
would cease to exist. It is for this
reason that medicine refuses to speak of
Herbart’s attack, or supposed attack,
“ Vital Force ”—a mere name for what
upon Free Will is a puzzle to many.
ever is at present physiologically unac
But the reasons for the attack will be
countable.
now not far to seek. He seems to have
So, also, if the educationist, in seeking had a deep-rooted dislike for the
to build up the moral life of his pupils, shadowy phraseology of the idealistic
concedes that “ Free Will ” may, at any
1 Cotter Morison, in The Service of Man.
moment, reduce his best efforts to impo-
�3°
THE SECRET OF HERBART
school—the appeals to the agencies of
some mysterious background inaccessible;
to influence, unintelligible to the scien
tific reason. “Self-activity,” “transcen
dental freedom,” and all similar terms
standing for a celestial or abysmal
principle which no one can claim
genuinely to understand—Herbart would
have none of these. A “ self-activity ”
rooted in “presentations”; an “inner
freedom” identical with “insight”—
such things he would admit, but a
mere diabolus or deus ex machina ever
ready to appear upon the stage without
notice or justification, dislocating every
homely arrangement, and throwing his
weight, without rhyme or reason, into
the scale of good or evil—this Herbart
refused to recognise as a factor worthy
of being considered in a Science of Edu
cation.
“Not the gentlest breath of
transcendental freedom must be allowed
to blow through ever so small a chink
into the teacher’s domain. If so, how is
he to begin to deal with the lawless
marvels of a being superior to natural
laws, on whose assistance he cannot
reckon, whose interruptions he can
neither foresee nor prevent ?”
ments, and the like, in which the humble
teacher plays no part—seem the only hope
for the moral health of the world. But
admit that, though there is something of
mystery, there is nothing of miracle in
the will, and the work of the teacher
suddenly appears in its immeasurable
power and promise.
To deny the
primacy of the will is to assert the
primacy of the teacher.
There is much that is unaccountable
in man; but surely education should
base itself—so Herbart seems to have felt
—upon those elements that are account
able rather than upon those that are the
opposite. To glory in the mysterious
may be the best of qualifications for the
future priest; it is the worst of qualifica
tions for one who seeks to build up a
Science of Education. Conduct must
have its causes : if those causes are un
knowable, the teacher’s work is reduced
to an absurdity; if they are partly
knowable, it is the teacher’s duty to keep
close to them so far as knowable; if they
are wholly knowable, a Science of Edu
cation is not far off, and the teacher’s
work lies plain before him. “ Ministers
talk about the human will as if it stood
Not that Herbart ever denied a real on a high look-out, with plenty of light,
“Inner Freedom.” He spoke of “the and elbow room reaching to the horizon.
noble feeling that virtue is free”; of “the Doctors are constantly noticing how it
judgment to which the desires bend is tied up and darkened.”1 And what
amazed.”
It was “ transcendental doctors notice teachers must notice too.
freedom ” which he attacked, on the
ground that “ nothing could be built on
There is, no doubt, a charm about the
it.” And, educationally, nothing ever mysterious. But to build a system of
has been built upon it, except that tens (education, or a code of morals, upon a
of thousands of teachers have been kept jfoundation of mysteriousness is surely a
in professional servitude because, through strange and dubious procedure — an
<
this doctrine, their “secular” work has jimpossible procedure, one would think,
never been seen in its true significance. <did not facts show that it has been
Admit a miraculous “ Will,” and a score
of other miracles—conversions, sacra
1 Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Elsie Venner.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
'attempted, and is defended in every
theological work that deals with sin. If
education is ever to grapple seriously with
the problem of evil, we must assume that
evil can be grappled with, that it is an
effect, and that its causes are knowable.
In other words, we must be, in so far as we
are educationists, determinists. Herbart
knew from the first that he “would never
be understood by those to whom the
co-existence of determinism and morality
was still a riddle”; and his prediction
has turned out true.
It is a riddle, and yet not a wholly
baffling one. Any day of our lives we
can see taking place the manufacture of
moral good and evil; the thread is spun,
and goes to the loom. True, in the
recesses of one’s own consciousness may
sometimes move a seemingly disturbing
force; unaccountable phantoms may
cross our path; we may feel
Obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised,
High instincts, before which our mortal nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.
3i
the bread of life and the water of life are
freely brought. And the history of edu
cation shows that the Herbartians
actually try to bring the mental and
moral bread of life and water of life;
that they are zealous in so doing, and
that they realise, as no other educa
tionists seem to realise, how pressing is
the need. If, then, determinism makes
educationists zealous—as the Puritans
were made zealous under the influence
of their denial that “ the act of conver
sion depends upon the concurrence of
men’s Free Will”—it cannot be the wholly
bad and paralysing thing that its oppo
nents assert. The Herbartian himself,
faced by the awful precision of his own
principles, may feel in danger of becom
ing a spiritual automaton; but his pupils,
at the least, will have no reason to regret
the hour when those principles became
his rule of life. There is thus an in
finite mercifulness about Herbartianism.
Unless he assume that Divine grace can
miraculously change the vilest character,
the Herbartian sees no fate but perdition
before a soul that is mentally starved ;
and seeing no other fate—realising, as
no other educationists realise, that
“stupid men cannot be virtuous”—he
comes himself to the rescue, determining
that, should starvation take place, the
fault shall not be his.
We may experience all this; we may
even regard the experience as “ the foun
tain light of all our day ”; but we cannot
build a system of education upon
“ worlds not realised.” If we are HerOne recent writer, appearing as cham
bartians, at any rate, we shall prefer to pion of the “angel and devil” theory,
deal with the world of ideas which can condemns Herbartianism for looking
be realised.
upon a child who has committed this or
that fault as being “ a piece of apparatus,
In so preferring, the Herbartian looks an imperfect organisation of appercep
upon the pupil before him not as a tive systems, which we must endeavour
duplicate being, half angel, half devil, to patch up ”; evil, in fact, being “a form
largely or wholly outside the range of of disease or imperfection.”1 Yes, that is
any influence that he can exert, but as a
1 Prof. Darroch, in Herbart: A Criticism.
starving soul doomed to perish unless
�32
THE SECRET OF HERBART
how we regard it; and, dark though our
view may sometimes appear, it has the
glow of heaven itself upon it when com
pared with the view promulgated by the
champion of “ Self-activity,” “ Self-deter
mination,” and “ Reason ”; the view that
the “ child and the criminal can delibe
rately, and with full intent, set up their
private wills against the common or
moral will of the community.” “The
child—with full intent!” And these are
the corollaries from an idealistic philo
sophy ! Surely the grossest materialism
is tenderness itself compared either with
an “idealism’’which believes that in the
breast of children—of whom, in the view
of one religion, the kingdom of heaven
consists—there can be not only an
“intent,” but a “full intent,” to take the
downward road; or with a system of
evangelical religion that can describe a
child of seven as under “ conviction of
sin”;1 or with a system of Catholic reli
gion which packs him to the confessional
at the same age. No; dim though our
sight may be, hard though the task of
discovering in every case the sought-for
causes, we nevertheless prefer to regard
sin as ultimately due to imperfection
rather than devilry ; we nurse our philo
sophical tenderness, and leave to others
the nursing of philosophical severity;
we believe that we are nearer to the
truth than they, and that our principles
will be recognised when theirs have been
long forgotten. If we were given the
choice, we should prefer even a rigid,
mechanical, and one-sided presentationalism that made an attempt at explaining
evil, to an idealism that, giving up all
explanation in despair, calls up from the
shades some spectre of “ Self-activity ”
which, when scrutinised, is found to
1 Dr. Torrey.
possess the lineaments of Sathanas him
self. Firmly, albeit with modesty, we
would fain believe and assert that “ tout
comprendre Pest tout pardonner.”
We refuse to discuss unmeaning
remedies for evil; every hour devoted
to such discussion is an hour taken from
more solid work. In the tremendous
words of Herbart: “ While morality is
rocked to sleep in the belief in transcen
dental powers, the true powers and
means which rule the world are at the
disposal of the unbeliever.” We will not
burrow for some deep principle that,
because of its very depth, has no applic
ability to the life of man on the surface
of this earth ; we do not burrow for coal
below or amid the sterilities of the Old
Red Sandstone. To talk of the Divine
“ self-realisation” of a child in our slums
or hamlets is but to reveal our inexpe
rience of life.
What “self” is here
beyond a few animal impulses and a
vast echoing emptiness of mind ?
“Man,” says Tennyson through the
lips of the aged speaker in the second
Locksley Hall, “can half control his
doom.” But Tennyson, too, like those
philosophers and educationists who lay
stress on “Free Will ” and “ Self-activity,”
was not a teacher in city slums or country
desolations. He who labours beneath the
cloud of mental poverty incumbent over
the primary school and its inmates will
look about him for a system based, not
on a morally aristocratic principle like
this, but for a system which takes
account of that cloud of mental poverty.
And thus he alights upon Herbartianism, which, instead of panegyrising a
“ Freedom ” practically non-existent
except at mature stages of development,
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
and therefore singularly useless as a
principle for the training of children,
frankly recognises “ mental poverty ” as
a fact, and one of immense import; “the
stupid man cannot be virtuous.” And
the more he contemplates Herbartianism
the more he recognises, not in its details,
but in its supreme categories and its spirit,
something immensely portentous, some
thing that may revolutionise education
by making it a living thing—something,
indeed, that has already begun to effect
this in more countries than one. He
begins to see in it a force which, allied
with religion and with economic and
hygienic progress, can accomplish all for
the human race which the dreaming
optimist pictures for himself in prophetic
vision—a force which, even if divorced
from religion and from such progress,
can accomplish much.
To the schoolmaster Herbartianism
comes as something sacramental, con
ferring upon him a dignity and an
importance second to none possessed by
other professionals. Does the medical
man save life and cure disease ? The
schoolmaster is called upon to make the
life worth living, and to cure, or to
inoculate against, the moral diseases of
the soul. Do others urge — though
without the most modest of proofs—the
possession of baptismal powers, vital to
the spiritual welfare of the child ? The
schoolmaster can prove, on scientific
grounds, the possession of saving powers
by himself, and he believes that he can
create, within the soul of his pupil, such
a ramifying and interlacing network of
ideas that the surging of sensual passion
may well nigh cease to be possible amid
the close-knit fabric. Say, if you will,
that the claims of Herbartianism are
exaggerated; the claims of other priest
33
hoods, possessing not one-tenth of the
scientific justification possessed by this,
may be exaggerated too. Education, be
it said again and again and again, has
never yet had a chance. The best men
have never thrown themselves into it;
public sympathy has never yet been fully
on its side; it has never yet discovered
a standpoint or a standing for itself.
This standpoint and this standing Her
bartianism can supply.
Exaggeration! No.
The present
writer believes that if education, in the
Herbartian sense, had ever had one-tenth
of the chance that religion has had for
centuries, had ever attracted to its cause
men such as religion has attracted, had
ever possessed the prestige and authority
that religion has possessed, moral
wonders would long ago have been
effected. With all her prestige and all
her authority, Protestant religion has to
confess to half-empty churches, to a
widespread and grotesque ignorance of
the Bible even among believers, and to
a moral tone in the community distinctly,
and perhaps increasingly, materialistic ;
while Catholic religion has every year to
admit that the highest relative propor
tion of prisoners in English gaols are
Catholics by education and name. But
give religion the chance that education
has had; staff your churches with children
in their teens, snatched from the plough
or the washtub; destroy the prestige,
the subtle suggestion of the heroic, which
etherealises the most unimpressive cleric
into the idol of cultured ladies; bid
your congregations assemble in barns
instead of in buildings hallowed by
centuries of suggestion; treat your minis
ters as you treat your village school
master, and then, unless the writer is
wholly mistaken, religion, too, would
D
�34
THE SECRET OF HERBART
have to confess to a failure far greater
than that charged against education.
Already it is doubtful whether her failure
has not been equally great.
could be said, he has sorrowfully to avow
that, taken as a class, the primary teacher
is not fully interested in his own work,
and often fails to see its significance.
Education has failed; we have to
admit it. Not without reason is the
disrepute of the schoolmaster. Sinned
against by society he may have been ; but
he has sinned in return. He has often
refused to learn. His bigotry has some
times been more stupid and more im
penetrable than that of any priest. Too
often “ he is content to practise an art the
principles of which he does not under
stand, and he haughtily resents any attempt
to enlighten him.” Too often he is “an
arrogant and intolerant empiric.”1
“ The present race of teachers have
shown their devotion to their work by
rising to the highest ideal of the extreme
faddist.” No man who knows primary
education in the less fortunate districts
will admit for a moment that words like
these, quoted from the address of an
able primary schoolmaster known to the
writer, are much more than the platform
verbiage of an exceptional man. “Ideals ”
do not exist in the average primary
school; works on educational “ ideals ”
do not exist on the bookshelves of the
average schoolmaster; debates on educa
tional “ideals” do not take place at
professional conferences. Forty years
ago “ideals” were officially suppressed;
and though some schoolmasters—like
the one from whom the above words
are quoted—have retained their enthu
siasms, many have become “arrogant
and intolerant empirics,” who “haughtily
resent any attempt to enlighten them.”
Over many a country town an observer
would imagine an avalanche of desola
tion to have passed—so dead is the
prospect; a schoolmaster—more power
ful in his ultimate influence than clergy
man or landed proprietor—has been there
for forty years; the very attitude of the
boys in the street, the public life, manners,
and interests of the adults, tell their
tale. Yet five or twenty miles away all
perhaps is different; there we find keen
ness, manners, and culture, for there the
schoolmaster has culture, zeal, and a
sense of responsibility. Inspectors and
other officials who visit a multitude of
schools testify to facts like these, the
truth being that the difference between
There is another side to the question.
The writer could tell of primary school
teachers, working patiently without reward
or recognition, guardian angels amid the
haunts of devilry, springs of refinement
in arid deserts of degradation. He
could tell of places in which the school
master is “ the only man of culture,”
“a reader of James’s Gifford Lectures,
Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Romanes,
Lloyd Morgan, James Ward, and Mar
tineau”;1 he could tell of Edinburgh
2
slums to which, after a life spent in their
midst, a lady-teacher bequeaths her
savings for the purpose of founding a
kindergarten ; he could turn to his own
experience and narrate how, for the first
time, he learnt in untechnical language
the Herbartian distinction between
culture-studies and other studies, from
the lips of the distinguished school
master who was recently the President
of the National Union of Teachers.
But though, happily, much of this kind
1 Professor Adams, in Herbartian Psychology.
2 Journal of Education, September, 1903.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
the good and the bad schoolmaster is far
greater, both in itself and in the immen
sity of its consequences, than between
the good and bad in any other profession.
A schoolmaster can revolutionise a town
in twenty years ; Girard did this at
Friburg.
If, then, we study the signs of the
times and the doctrines of Herbart, we
shall find that it will be the schoolmaster,
at present so despised and often so
apathetic, to whom will fall the solution
of many of the moral problems now
pressing upon us. But he slumbers—a
sceptre lying disregarded by his side,
and the brightest crown that the coming
century can award waiting, not to be
competed for (there are no possible
competitors), but to be taken up. His
profession demonstrably contains within
itself the promise and the potency of
almost infinite advance. Some day it
will need no patronage and accept no
alien domination. Some day our resi
dential training colleges will be no longer
governed by retired missionaries, nor
our educational bureaus occupied by
accountants. Nay, this great profession
need not forget that in the eighteenth
century the clergy were as despised as
the teacher is now, “their social posi
tion being somewhat lower than that
of the nursery governess in the estab
lishment of a vulgar millionaire,”1
and it may therefore look forward to
rejuvenescence with conviction as well
as with hope.
35
to attract to itself both the scientific
experimenter and the reforming enthu
siast. The enfranchised eye sees an
imperial and unique spaciousness about
this profession.
Medicine demands
science; the Church demands devotion;
education will demand both.
The
science she will demand will deal with
the most baffling, fascinating, and vital
questions of the day — questions of
biology and psychology. The kind of
devotion she will demand will be seen
when the Herbartian standpoint has been
expounded in the following pages.
Go through the whole series of profes
sional callings, and seek for one which
demands these things in equal measure.
There is absolutely none. This alone
combines, or will some day combine, the
heroic with the scientific standpoint. “ Is
there any art like it—any which can so
attract the finer spirits among men, any
which can so engage in its service that
enthusiasm which fills the moral atmo
sphere to-day? Is there any, the wise
practice of which brings such personal
reward....... ? Surely an art so great, so
full of great issues for the individual and
for society, is worth thinking about in
its principles, its rules, its history, its
aims—in brief, its philosophy.”1
And yet both standpoints, the former
especially, have been almost entirely
ignored. Statements like that of Prof.
Findlay, that “ there is an immense field
of exploration awaiting teachers who have
psychological equipment,”2 or like that
Why these claims, prima facie so pre
of the late Mr. Rooper, that “ all teachers
posterous ? Because, alone among pro
are missionaries by profession,’^ simply
fessions, education calls simultaneously
awaken incredulity, even among teachers
for scientific thought and for moral
devotion, and may therefore be expected
1 Dr. Laurie, in The Training of Teachers.
1 Froude,’5//<3rZ Studies, vol. ii.
z Principles of Class Teaching.
3 School and Home Life.
�36
THE SECRET OF HERBART
themselves. But both statements are
true and unexaggerated. It is mainly
the second which the author proposes to
expound in the following paragraphs, and
he will do so even at the risk—so unusual
and dangerous a risk in the case of a
writer on education—of being dubbed an
“ enthusiast.”
infallible protection against moral evil,
not an infallible weapon for the slaughter
of what theologians call “sin.” It has
been affirmed that there is a second
weapon. Two quotations—one from the
work of our greatest eighteenth-century
novelist, the other from a recent impor
tant work on modern poverty—may serve
to introduce more formally this second
Everyone admits that the schoolmaster and momentous agency.
does necessary work in conferring know
ledge, and in trying to equip each coming
Though Captain Booth’s father “de
generation for the battle of life. But signed his son for the Army, he did not
hardly anyone realises that the moral think it necessary to breed him up a
reforms of the future will have to begin blockhead........ He considered that the
—largely, at any rate—in the school life of a soldier is in general a life of
room ; that the stolid irresponsiveness to idleness; and thought that the spare
appeal which preachers bewail is in great hours of an officer in country quarters
measure due to the failure of the school ; would be as well employed with a book as
that the generally low level at which men in sauntering about the streets, loitering
live, and the humdrum, unworthy, some in a coffee-house, sitting in a tavern, or
times vicious, tone of society, are, to an in laying schemes to debauch and ruin a
immense extent, the results of our set of harmless, ignorant country girls.”1
neglecting—the Secret of Herbart!
“ Shut out, to a great extent, from the
larger life and the higher interests which
And let it here be said that what is a more liberal and a more prolonged
expounded in the following paragraphs is education opens up to the wealthier
not a merely bookish and theoretical classes, it is not surprising that, to relieve
Herbartianism, but one borne in upon the monotony of their existence, so many
the writer’s mind amid practical work in artisans frequent the public-house, or
a neglected educational district. At the indulge in the excitement of betting.”2
centre of that district is a town of some
few thousand inhabitants, with eight or
To Fielding, at any rate, there was a
nine places of worship; a town where connection between being a “blockhead”
every prospect pleases, and every physical and becoming a debauchee ; while, con
inducement to a high and worthy stan versely, a taste for books was a protec
dard of living exists, but a town which, tion against the temptations of debau
owing to the neglect by its citizens of the chery. Vice, sin, moral evil, was an
standpoint we may call—though in no effect, not a mystery.
And to Mr.
exclusive sense —the “ Her bar tian,” Rowntree, also, “ intellectual tastes” and
would fill the reformer with serious the “ power of applied reading and
apprehension. It is now time to expound study ” appeared, he tells us in the
this vaunted “ standpoint.”
We have seen that religion is not an
1 Fielding, in Amelia.
2 Mr. Rowntree, in Poverty.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
context of the above passage, as impor
tant auxiliaries of virtue; the absence
of these involved, as consequences,
drunkenness and betting. Again, evil
was an effect, not a mystery.
Thackeray has gone even further than
this, and has assigned it as an inevitable—
not merely a possible—effect of certain
causes. In one brief sentence he has
indicated that it results not only from the
cause which the Herbartians emphasise
—the absence of wholesome interests—
but from another cause which they
recognise, but concerning which they do
not profess to teach us anything. This
second cause is bad habit.1 His words
are among the boldest and even the
most scientific in our language. “ Starve
me, keep me from books and honest
people, educate me to love dice, gin, and
pleasure, and put me on Hounslow
Heath with a purse before me, and—I
will take it.”1
2
Somehow, Fielding, Thackeray, and
Mr. Rowntree, all seem to forget Free
Will. They trace evil to its causes, and
imply, Thackeray especially, that, given
these causes, sin inevitably follows.
Free Will, in fact, is at a discount in
modern sociological works, the reason
being, as already indicated, that a prin
ciple of mere lawlessness, even if a true
principle, is one incapable of being made
use of. In Herbart’s educational works,
as we have also seen, Free Will—so far
as mysterious—is likewise at a discount,
and for the same reason; it is a principle
37
of no use for the educationist; “nothing
can be built on it.”
He says, quite
frankly, that “ the stupid man cannot be
virtuous,”1 just as Fielding tells us that a
“ blockhead ” is likely, if not certain, to
become a debauchee.
And elsewhere
Herbart uses words which are equally
momentous, though less contentious in
form. “ If intellectual interests are
wanting, if the store of thought be
meagre, the ground lies empty for the
animal desires.”
We are getting on the scent of the
“ Secret of Herbart.” Somehow, educa
tion (of the proper kind) is beginning
to appear “ portentous.”
Interest,
or (to use Herbartian terminology)
many-sided interest, is seen to be a
weapon capable of wounding, perhaps of
slaying, this Briareus-handed or Hydra
headed monster of moral evil. The
Herbartian Ziller calls many-sided
interest a means of protection against
passions, as well as a help in daily life
and amid the storms of fate. Another
Herbartian speaks of it as a “moral
support and protection against the servi
tude that springs from the rule of desire
and passion.”2 A third describes as a
true benefactor of the race him “ who
awakens in each man an enduring inte
rest in anything whatever........ Such an
interest is a universal medicine.”s Still
another Herbartian, this time hailing
from America, declares interest to be “ a
protection against desires, disorderly
impulses, and passions........ A many-sided
interest, cultivated along the chief paths
of knowledge, implies such mental vigour
1 If little or nothing is said, in this essay, on
the subject of habit, or if the relation of habit to
1 It is useless for readers or writer to worry
apperceptive interest is ignored, the reason is over the mere form of this expression. Its sub
not that the writer under-estimates such matters. stance is explained in the pages that follow.
He is only too conscious of the omissions that
2 Kern : quoted in De Garmo’s Herbart and
may be charged against the present work.
the Herbartians.
2 Esmond.
I
3 Scheibert, 1906.
�38
THE SECRET OF HERBART
and such pre-occupation with worthy
subjects as naturally to discourage un
worthy desires.”1 Language like this,
almost or quite evangelical in fervour,
will be said to be open to the charge of
exaggeration. But are we sure of this ?
Has the moral value of many-sided
interest ever been adequately realised,
and many-sided interest itself ever been
given the chance it deserves? Admitting,
however, for the sake of peace, that the
language is exaggerated, the truth it
embodies is, nevertheless, a great one.
Interest helps, at any rate, to suppress
moral evil.
Now, which profession,
amid the hierarchy of the professions, is
called upon to awaken many - sided
interest ? The educational only. Thus
the schoolmaster stands in the same rank
with archbishops, bishops, and all
ministers of religion. While they are
baptising with water he is baptising with
many-sided interest.1
2
This is crude Herbartianism, but, as we
have already seen, it is not precisely a
new discovery. Most people will admit
— will sometimes even urge — that
“ counter-attractions,” “ hobbies,” and
the like, are useful moral agencies. The
Churches seek, more or less energetically,
to supply these counter-attractions; clubs,
recreative and educational, are opened,
and hopes are expressed that even
hooligans may in this way be reclaimed.
If Herbartianism had nothing more to
tell us than this, that we must try to
suppress evil by awakening positive
interests, it would be of immense value,
1 McMurry, Elements of General Method.
2 This is neither a joke nor a sneer ; there is a
real parallelism. Herbart regards interest as
only a portal to character—but a neglected
portal. It is for character-forming what Baptism
is claimed to be for Faith—an early but not the
only sacrament. See p. 46.
not only to the schoolmaster, but to the
moralist and the philanthropist also.
Already, as we look steadily at it, evil is
beginning to appear less mysterious;
already a desolating stream is being
traced to its poisonous source.
There is many an indication that the
moral efforts of the future will take, at
any rate in large measure, the direction
indicated in these paragraphs. Men are
beginning to see that in the cultivation
of wholesome interests, rather than solely
in the denunciation of vice and the
provision of neurotic remedies, lies the
key to the moral situation. The growing
importanceof the “Institutional Church”
is significant. Nay, the centre of gravity
is moving from the church to the school.
“ A man drinks, not only because his
brute nature is strong and craves the
stimulus, but because he has no other
interests, and must do something.”1
“ The spread of education and the
extension of a cheap literature adapted
to the wants and requirements of the
people, aided by the establishment of
lectures, reading-rooms, and schemes of
rational recreation, have done much to
withdraw the operatives from the public
house.”2
“ Ignorant and untrained minds, weary
and unhealthy bodies, gloomy and de
moralising environment, monotony and
weariness of life: out of these evils
spring the seeds of vice........
“ What culture have these poor women
ever known ? What teaching have they
had ? What graces of life have come to
them ? What dowry of love, of joy, of
sweet and fair imagination? Think
1 The Times, October, 1873.
2 Royal Commission (Scotland), i860.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
what their lives are, think what their
homes are, think of the darkness and
confusion of their minds, and then say,
is it a marvel if they take to gin ? ” 1
“At bottom the temperance question
is largely an ‘ entertainment of the
people ’ question........ Pictures, books,
good music, clear laughter, heart-fellowship : are not these true aids to life ? Is
it not worth while to bring them within
reach of the docker, the coalheaver, the
artisan, and the common labourer?.......
Never will the evil spirits be permanently
cast out until the empty house is tenanted
by such as these.”2
“ I am disappointed at the moral taste
of the public after thirty years of com
pulsory education. It is a vital social
need that has to be met, and a publican
meets that need, caters for it, and, in a
sense, satisfies it in attractive and alluring,
but defective, ways. If we leave the
publican alone to satisfy that need,
temperance workers may talk till the
crack of doom, for he has the people in
the hollow of his hands........ Let us
utilise the schools in the city as evening
institutions.”3
“ People must acquire interests unless
they are to live by appetite alone.
Rational interests and hobbies are the
best antidotes to ‘ hooliganism ’ in every
rank of society.”4
“No one would sit and drink in a
public-house if he knew how delightful
it was to sit and think in a field ; no one
would seek excitement in gambling and
1 Robert Blatchford, in the Morning Leader,
September 2nd, 1898.
2 Rev. Will Reason, in University and Social
Settlements.
3 Dr. Paton, September 30th, 1903 ; Midland
Temperance Conference, Birmingham.
4 Mr. Ritchie at Aberdeen, October 29th,
1903.
39
betting if he knew how much more inte
resting science was.”1
“ If people realised the intense enjoy
ment of reading, there would be very
little pauperism, extravagance, drunken
ness, and crime........ Ignorance costs
more than education.”2
Criminality and drunkenness are not
quite such mysteries as Mr. Wells would
suggest.3 True, there may be something
too optimistic in the words last quoted ;
the man of culture who uttered them may
not have realised the immense difficulties
which face the carrying out of the con
structive policy he foreshadows amid the
degenerates of our great towns. Still,
there is enough truth in his words, and
in the others that have been quoted, to
justify the claim that a system of educa
tion, capable of implanting elevated
tastes, is a weapon with which to fight
moral evil successfully, and a means of
hastening the day when, in the words of
the hymn, mankind will be
Saved to sin no more.
Literally and demonstrably—unless all
the above quotations are wrong—a system
of education which creates a love of good
books, a love of nature, and so forth, is
a system which helps to “take away the
sin of the world.”
Philanthropic and missionary work in
this country may be arranged in three
grades.
1 Lord Avebury, July 25th, 1902 ; Nature
Study Exhibition.
2 Lord Avebury, February 27th, 1902 ; Home
Reading Union. In Mr. Rowntree’s Betting
and Gambling the same standpoint is adopted.
The word “ interest ” comes up continually and
almost automatically in the consideration of re
medial measures for this vice. “We have con
fined our people in the dark, and they are
gambling to break the tedium.”
3 Mankind in the Making.
�40
THE SECRET OF HERBART
The lowest grade is mere rescue work.
This work is noble, and will probably
be necessary for generations to come.
Whoever seeks to save the slum child,
reform the drunkard, and lift the fallen,
is engaged in work of this kind. But it
is crude, and contributes nothing to the
pulling up of evil by its roots.
The next grade—a higher one—may
be represented by such preventive work
as that carried on by the United Kingdom
Alliance, which aims at the removal of
temptations to debauchery. Work like
this goes closer to the roots of evil than
the last. But still it is purely negative.
The highest grade of all is that which
seeks to implant wholesome interests.
The only profession in existence which
is called as a profession to positive work
of this kind is the educational.
schoolmaster should place before himself,
is coming to be recognised—even by
many who have probably never heard of
Herbart—as a working aim for social
and moral reformers. The programme
sketched out by Royal Commissions and
private philanthropists was sketched out
—though in a more technical form—
by a German educationist exactly a
century ago. The only difference is that,
whereas Royal Commissions and private
philanthropists see the evil and see
the need for interest (or many-sided
interest) as a remedy, Herbart investi
gated also the conditions under which
this interest could spring up. Whereas
our unphilosophical moderns urge, as
Herbart himself urged, that interest is a
moral guide and a moral protection,
Herbart, the philosopher, saw that interest
depended upon apperception,1- and that,
If, therefore, the preceding and suc apart from efficiency in the apperceptive
ceeding arguments are sound, the smallest mechanism, interest could not be aroused.
educational reform may, perchance, be
of more permanent influence than the
Even, however, if we paused at the
sermons of every bishop and every present point, much, let us repeat, would
popular preacher; just as no political or have been gained. We have seen that
religious controversy has done one tenth evil springs, in some measure at least,
of the good or the harm that was done from absence of wholesome interests ;
by the fatal proposal of 1861. Indeed, seeing this, we are on the true road
the strangest feature about the educa along which moral effort may legitimately
tional apathy of the modern Englishman and successfully travel. We have learnt
is that he himself has been, in large reasons for connecting mental deficiency
measure, made what. he is by good or with moral deficiency, and have thus
bad teachers; they have influenced him realised, as all the Herbartians realise,
more than the clergyman, the doctor, or how great a unity the mind is, and how
the lawyer; and yet, though his mind false to most facts is. the “ faculty
and character were committed to their doctrine.” “The stupid man,” we have
keeping, he cares little about the work learnt from Herbart, “ cannot be virtu
which our teachers perform upon the ous ” ; starve mentally a Thackeray, and
new generation now growing up.
—as he tells us himself—he will steal the
first purse on Hounslow Heath ; suffer
It is clear, however, that the doctrine
This is
of much
of many - sided interest, regarded by be 1practical trueFrobelian interest, but there may
or
interests, of which the
Herbart as the immediate aim which the germs are implanted before birth.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
the existence of an “ ignorant and un
trained, dark and confused mind,” “ a
monotonous and weary life,” and the
result will be, in the opinion of Robert
Blatchford, a “ taking to gin.”
4i
need the Gospel truly, but the preacher
who goes into the slums merely to preach
wastes his breath. He might just as
well preach to the east wind swirling
along Commercial Road.”1 But where
is the explanation of this irresponsive
All this is true, but it tells us nothing ness to appeal ? In what infernal armoury
except implicitly about “ apperception,” is forged this impenetrable carapace ?
with its “reconditeand portentous secret.”
Is “ apperception ” the same as “ manyIn the experiences about to be narrated
sided interest,” and is Herbartianism there was nothing unusual, nothing
merely a gospel of “hobbies” and more dramatic than is constantly occur
“counter-attractions,” with Dr. Johnson’s ring in the records of humble educational
words as a motto, “ I am a great friend effort. Nothing, at least, more unusual
to publick amusements, for they keep than this, that the narrator saw his
people from vice ”? By no means.
experiences in the light of the Her
bartian doctrines of apperception and
Accept the Herbartian doctrine of many-sided interest.
“ many-sided interest,”or, to simplify your
task, drop the phrase “ many-sided,” and
The situation was a simple one. A
seek, amid the slums of your cities and country borough with a few thousand
in the emptying hamlets of your country inhabitants possessed, among those few
districts, to arouse interest in anything. thousand, quite an unusual number of
You will, in large measure, fail j and, if the youths and young men upon whom
you consult clergyman or philanthropist, admittedly rest, in great measure, the
you will hear that they, too, have noted future destinies of this Empire. Their
a strange and baffling irresponsiveness characters were in the making. They
among the people they seek to elevate. stood at the moral cross-roads. Trans
There seems no point of contact between planted into a great city, they would
the saviours and those they would seek well-nigh instantly fall into evil courses
to save. Device after device is employed, unless possessed of some powerful
and fails. What was true in David internal principle of moral preservation,
Stow’s time is largely true now. “ The Religion had had its chance ; there was
mass are as impenetrable as the nether a place of worship for every three
millstone. No motive awakens their hundred inhabitants. The theatre or
consideration.”1
music-hall did not exist in the town,
and the moral problem was correspond
Even religious journals, faced by this ingly simplified. There was but little
problem, are beginning to use bold poverty of a degrading kind. The chief
language. “ The people of the slums characteristic of the human life of the
town was emptiness. It was an ideal
1 The Training System. There is pathos in
reading a book like Stow’s. He had his spot for awakening among its younger
dreams of “ providing an antidote for the inhabitants something of the manyexposed condition of youth and the demoralis
ing influence of large towns”; and we in these
days have our dreams too.
1 Christian World, June nth, 1903.
�42
THE SECRET OF HERBART
sided interest that is such a protection
against the immensely severer tempta
tions of larger places—the tempta
tions which many of those younger
inhabitants would have, sooner or later,
to face.
literature, for the reading of Dickens,
and, as an experiment, for the study of
that gréât crisis when Assyria was
gradually strengthening her hold upon
Judea, and when a prophet-politician
arose to guide the tiny State.
Judged by the low standard that
prevails in this country—in the southern
counties especially—the writer was suc
cessful. With a single exception, every
thing that was started weathered the
session—a record somewhat unusual
amid the disappointing records of
evening schools in Britain, The one
exception fails almost everywhere; the
British nation, with all its seriousness
and “ patriotism,” does not, for reasons
that will soon be obvious, wish to learn
about the “ Life and Duties of a
Citizen.” Judged by numbers, judged
by duration, judged by any ordinary
test, the writer’s work was at least
tolerable in its success; judged by his
own standard, it was a failure.
The curriculum, one may admit, was
one-sided; deficient in the important
practical subjects that call for skill or
dexterity and attract many individuals ;
deficient, in fact, on the Frobelian side.
Such subjects, it may here be remarked,
are not those upon which the appercep
tion doctrine bears;1 in other words,
they are not subjects upon which the
Herbartians have much to tell us.
What was his standard, what was his
wish? He purposed to arouse in the
breasts of the several hundred young
men whose lives were tame, colourless,
and unworthy (not necessarily vicious),
an interest in one or more of those
subjects which have the power of giving
richness, colour, and worthiness to life.
He knew that, when emptiness of mind
joins forces with facility for vice, vice
follows as an almost inevitable result
Religion, he saw, did not influence more
than a fraction of the individuals before
him. He believed that a few healthy
interests would, to say the least, be a
valuable preservative. A curriculum
accordingly was drawn up. The ordi
nary classes were opened, and, in
addition to them, classes for English
Deficient though the curriculum was,
it was at least a far richer curriculum
than is usual in small country towns.
At any rate, the experiment was made.
But before its results are narrated some
thing should be said concerning the
conditions under which interest—so
saving a power—is aroused. This,
indeed, is the crux and the climax
of the whole problem. Everyone will
admit—willingly or reluctantly—that
interest is a moral stimulus, a moral
guide, or at the very least a moral pro
tection ; the practical problem is, “ How
can it be aroused?”
Interest, say the Herbartians, is based
on apperception, and apperception is
the process of interpreting some new
fact or experience by means of our
previous knowledge. We are rarely
/
1 This is open to criticism. In a wide and
untechnical sense we could say that Frdbel dis
covered “apperception centres” in the young,
and directed teachers to make use of them.
But this is to give an extension—perhaps a
useful extension—of meaning to the term “ap
perception. ”
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interested in that which is absolutely
strange, alien, foreign, unintelligible,
devoid of personal significance. The
boor blinks wearily at a fine Gothic
arch ; the Chinaman is unmoved at the
mention of Alfred. The engineer is in
terested in a new machine—for he knows
something about machines already; he
is not interested in a machine with which
he is already over-familiar, nor is the
poet, as a rule, interested in machines
of any kind. Two things are fatal to
interest: over-familiarity and total igno
rance.
It would be no difficult task—experi
mental psychologists have done it time
upon time—to prove how, on the mention
of this or that name, there follows a rush
of blood to the brain or a heightened
rate of breathing; while on the mention
of a third name there is none of this.
The medical man would thrill at the
name of Vesalius; the Catholic at the
name of St. Antony ; the bookmaker at
the mention of Ascot. And while the
instruments were measuring the physio
logical changes, great or slight as the
case might be, an Herbartian onlooker
would tell of another side to each
process—the psychical side—and would
speak, not of a rush of blood to the
brain, but of a rush of ideas to the
mind. And he might, if so inclined,
sound the name “ Herbart ” itself in
someone’s ears; and the instruments
would record infallibly whether that
name was a meaningless one or whether
it summoned up a wealth of interpreta
tive associations.
43
upon the ethics of apperception. This
little work has the ethics of apperception
for its subject, and the writer’s own
simple experience, viewed in the light of
the doctrine, for its immediate occasion.
Picture the announcement of a set of
“ Dickens Readings.” Who would be
likely to attend them—the individual
already acquainted with the works of
the novelist, or the individual to whom
even the name of Dickens was unknown ?
It was the second individual that the
present writer wished especially to attract;
he whose life was palpably and dis
tressingly empty; who had no sources
of pleasure beyond the crudest; who,
as a consequence, would probably fall at
once before the assault of severe tempta
tion. But, as a matter of fact, this was
exactly the individual who stayed away.
He who came, and received pleasure
from hearing and discussing the works
of Dickens, was precisely the one who
was already partly acquainted with those
works.
In this fact there lies an immense and
tragic significance. “To him that hath
(mental possessions) shall be given.” By
some law of nature—almost a malign
law—it seems that the mentally starved
soul is prevented from desiring the very
food that will save it. Though you offer
to the uncultured and empty-minded
man a whole world of entrancing and
elevating pleasure—such a world is con
tained in the works of Dickens—he will
never take the initial step unless some
favourable chance or accident open his
mind to the world he is losing.
But though volumes—too many, in the
He who is “interested” in Dickens is
opinion of Professor James—have been
written on the psychology of appercep he who has learnt something about the
tion, little or nothing has been written novelist’s early struggles, or has read one
�44
THE SECRET OF HERBART
or more of his works and wishes to go
farther, or who, in some other way, has
acquired a certain number of ideas con
cerning the novelist. The announce
ment of a “ Dickens Reading ” attracts
such a one immediately. The old ideas
lay hold of the new announcement; a
simple kind of apperception takes place;
interest is aroused, and following in the
train of interest comes moral protection,
if not moral stimulus and guidance.
The man is penetrable, he is open to
influences; above all, he has something
in his mind that is worth having: he
has an interest.
He who is not “ interested ” in Dickens
is probably the man who is wholly
ignorant of him; whose life would be
invigorated, purified, and rendered
happier and more worthy by an interest
in the novelist; who may, indeed, be
sinking to moral perdition owing to the
lack of such interests as these; and who,
unless such interests are aroused, or
unless saved by some intense and
perhaps unwholesome form of religious
belief, is fated so to sink. “ The stupid
man cannot be virtuous.” He is im
penetrable ; he cannot be influenced;
he has nothing in his mind that is worth
having : he has no interest.
“ Dull fools,” in Milton’s terminology,
may regard not only “ divine philosophy,”
but the novels of Dickens and every
fascinating book that has been written,
as “harsh and crabbed.” And yet it
would seem to be a possible task, if
this apperception doctrine is no fiction,
so to build a mental structure into the
minds of the young as to render these
books
Musical as is Apollo’s lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.
And here, be it observed, the question
is not one of natural intelligence. The
rustic who stayed away from a Dickens
meeting might have been endowed with
congenital abilities equal to those of
anyone who came. The question is one
of acquired ideas, and ideas are
“acquired” in the first instance, not
from the abysses of the soul itself, but
from nature and human nature around.
Once acquired, they possess an assertive
ness of their own, often slight, but never
entirely or finally negligible; and the
power of forming alliances among them
selves, dissoluble or eternal with the
dissolution or eternity of the soul itself.
One-half, at least, of education consists
in thus providing the soul of each child
with masses of related and articulated
ideas. Education is more—far more—
than “ drawing out.”
Scarcely one working man out of ten
has made the discovery that there can
be pleasure in books. Not only ninetenths of the thought of the age, but also
of the humour of the age are unmeaning
to the ignorant. “ The person who can
learn easily (and who wishes to learn)
is he who already knows much.”1
The
writer’s
experience
with
“ Dickens Readings ” was repeated with
his other ventures. The vast majority
of Englishmen, he discovered, are not
“ interested ” in English literature or
English history; owing to a limited and
non-humanistic education, their minds
have never accumulated a sufficiency of
ideas to generate the apperceptive
process. Life is all the poorer; hell, if
there is a hell, all the richer. Still more
emphatically is the English nation devoid
1 Mill, in Essay on Nature. The words in
parentheses are added by the present writer.
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of interest in the great historical char
acters to whom we owe the Jewish pro
phetic literature. This held of study is
wholly unknown except to a microscopi
cally minute portion of the nation. The
lack of interest here is the more ludicrous
because of the immense claims put
forward on behalf of this literature, the
immense amount of talk concerning
“Biblical teaching,” and the immense
possibilities of inspiration and consola
tion which Biblical literature possesses.
The writer has put the matter to the
test; under the most favourable condi
tions (absence of counter-attractions,
etc.) not thirty persons out of three
thousand are interested in Isaiah—less
than one per cent.1
Yet, in each of the three subjects that
have been mentioned there exists vast
power of inspiring, thrilling, and eleva
ting man; but before this power can
come into play a certain sufficiency of
ideas must be accumulated; a fairly
wide outlook must be opened out—and
it must be done for most people early in
life.
A curriculum which is defective in
this respect will win no praise from the
Herbartians. The two greatest followers
of Herbart—Dorpfeld and Ziller—
devoted their best powers to “concen
trating ” the curriculum around those
subjects which confer ideas, convinced
that only if the mind is well supplied
1 No Roman Catholics can be more igno
rant of three-quarters of the Bible than
English Protestants. Note that the question is
not one concerning the skill of any particular
teacher or lecturer. People are not “inte
rested ” in such things : they can scarcely con
ceive of them being made interesting.
And
therefore they refuse to waste time in putting the
matter to a test.
45
with mental food can mental and moral
health—manifested, for example, in
interest and ultimately in character—be
present. There may be danger here:
the Herbartian may easily become a
mere lecturer who pours forth in reckless
abundance his extensive stores of know
ledge; his pupils may become passive
recipients of these ill-digested stores.
But, however great this danger may be,
there is another danger greater still—that
the curriculum of the school may be so
defective in subjects which confer ideas
and enrich the mind that interest in the
great facts of the universe may never be
kindled at all. No interest in science
can flourish in a vacuous mind; no
interest in history, in literature, in moral
conduct.
Ziller’s basis for “ concentration ” was
narrower than Dorpfeld’s, the former
choosing humanistic subjects only (fairy
tales, biography, history), the latter
including nature-knowledge also. But
the principle from which they started
was the same ; the mind needs ideas as
much as the body needs food. Deprive
the mind of its legitimate mental food,
and the springs of interest will dry up.
The curriculum must not confine itself
to conveying mere skill in writing, read
ing, or Latin versification, or lay main
stress upon formal studies like grammar
or mathematics. Important though
these may be, the “ knowledge ” subjects
are more important still; it is they that
possess significance for the moral life; it
is therefore for them that the Herbartian
is specially solicitous; it is in connection
with them that apperception takes place.
Mentally and morally man cannot
live in a vacuum. A deficiency in ideas
means a deficiency in everything that is
�46
THE SECRET OF HERBART
worthily distinctive of man; it means
“dulness and impenetrability.” Igno
rance is “a vacuity in which the soul
sits motionless and torpid for want of
attraction.”1
tured ” man—many a Master of Ballantrae, with a “ love of serious reading ”__
is a scoundrel; many a comparatively
uncultured man is, to say the least,
decent and respectable. But the objec
There are writers, presuming them tors small blame to them for being
selves to be critics of the Herbartian objectors, seeing that even Herbartians
system, who so misunderstand the maxim, often fail to know how immensely vital
“ Stupid men cannot be virtuous,” as to their own doctrines are—do but affirm
imagine that it refers to ignorance of the what Herbart himself affirmed : “ manymeans by which a virtuous end can be sided interest is far from virtue.” Nay,
attained.1 The stupid man, they seem though interest provides for the “adjust
2
to say, may see the virtuous goal, but ment ” or “ rightness ” of character, it
knows not how to set about reaching it. does not fully provide—Herbart tells us
for its “ firmness, decision, and invul
Surely no great system could rest its
nerability.” Accordingly, after devoting
reputation on a principle so trite as this.
Herbartianism, alone among educational one book of the Allgemeine Pädagogik to
systems, has recognised the momentum “ Many-sidedness of Interest,” Herbart
of ideas. Apart from ideas there are no proceeds (much, doubtless, to the sur
ideals; an ideal, in fact, is an idea. The prise of his “ critics ”) to devote another
morally stupid man may not only fail to to “ Moral Strength of Character.” The
see the means, he fails to see the end; facts are obvious. The man with keen
or if he see it, he is too mentally interest in books, or nature, or politics,
pauperised to do so with any vividness may not be morally perfect or religiously
or force—to see in it any significance. complete; certain of his interests may,
The currents of his mind set in other indeed, open up possibilities of evil—for
directions; no vis a tergo has been example, the evil of reading pernicious
enlisted in the cause of moral progress. literature; but, nevertheless, his interests
Appeal to your rustic, seek to thrill him are, on the whole, a mighty protection
with what thrills you, and you will for him; the sensual cannot wholly or
discover, as never before, how vitally greatly engross his attention; he is left
important a certain degree of richness of with little time for vice. He may fall,
mind is if a man is ever to attain more but he has latent powers of recuperation
than the humblest heights of character. in himself. The teacher has blessedly
Without this certain degree of richness inoculated him “ before the hot desires
you may as well appeal to a block of for sensual pleasures have so infected
blood and veins as to make virtue and
Dartmoor granite.
wisdom impossible.”1 All things of
Herbartianism, again, is often con the moral life are possible to such a
founded with a colourless “ culture ” man; few things are possible to the
gospel, and great discredit is thrown boor. And, even were this not true,
upon it in consequence. Many a “ cul- culture is desirable for its own sake if vice
1 Johnson’s Rasselas.
2 Journal of Education, March, 1903.
1 Pestalozzi, in How Gertrude Teaches her
Children.
�47
THE SECRET OF HERBART
--------- V---------------------------- ;
itself “ loses half its evil by losing all its mental constituents, will be manifest.
Contrast cruelty with tenderness; the
grossness.”
love of gambling with the love of know
The standard objection to Herbartian- ledge ; drunkenness with patriotism.
ism, that scoundrels may be men of
Virtue, in fact, rests on wholesome
culture, is of no validity whatever unless
we can prove that their scoundrelism is ideas. “The limits of the circle of
the result of their culture. This has thought,” says Herbart, “ are the limits
never been done. Here and there for the character.” Bigotry, cruelty,
history presents us with prominent cases impurity, intemperance, selfishness —
of the unholy alliance, and we wonder there is normally in each of these failings
as we read ; our very wonder being a an element of mental deficiency ; for we
mute testimony to the fact that culture may ignore extreme cases, in which the
does not, as a rule, conduce to immo whole character is in the grip of a
rality; it is the strangeness of the case devouring passion or prejudice—such
that attracts our attention. Here and cases are pathological, and concern the
there, too, the short and simple annals physician rather than the moralist. The
of the poor present us with unlettered vicious man is, in large measure at least,
men or simple girls who are morally a man whose mind does not re-echo to
heroic; and again we wonder, our moral appeal, who has no apperception
wonder testifying afresh to the same masses ready to give the appeal any
fact. Other things being equal, culture meaning. Virtue, on the other hand, is
conduces to morality, at least to any largely a matter of apperception, and is
morality that is above the crudest and thus immensely more complex than vice.
It is not everyone who can respond to
simplest.
moral appeal or rise to moral heights,
And why is this ? For a reason that but any fool can sin.
scarcely any English writer—at any rate,
No ; culture has never in itself con
any English educationist—seems to have
put in precise form, though the reason duced to vice.1 Culture combined with
itself, no doubt, has been vaguely mani a crude atheism may seem to conduce
fest to all thinkers. Virtue is a more to vice ; so may the absence of culture.
complex thing than vice, more dependent Culture combined with cerebral or
upon ideas, less dependent upon sensual spinal disease may seem to conduce to
excitement. The drunkard’s vice is not vice; so may the absence of culture.
the result of ideas, though, of course, an If it could be proved that the unspeak
idea of drink has to be present; the vice able profligacy of Rome in the early
draws its strength from a lower source. years of the sixteenth century was the
Sensualism, again, draws its strength result of the Renaissance culture, the
from the body, not the mind; and the doctrines of Herbart would receive a
gambler’s vice, once more, is largely a
1 “ Brain-workers provide the most hopeless
matter of physical excitement. Contrast cases of dipsomania.” (Canon Horsley, Prisons
with every vice a virtue; in each case a and Prisoners.') After allowing for disease of
mind or body, the present writer questions
greater complexity of structure, a greater gravely whether this statement has much general
richness of design, a greater wealth of significance.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
severe, though not a fatal, blow. It
cannot be proved. “Between the moral
enfeeblement and the aesthetic vigour (of
the Renaissance times) there existed no
causal link.”1 There is, on the con
trary, every reason to believe that,
other things being equal, the man of
culture can rise to moral possibilities
that are not possibilities for the boor;
he can apperceive moral situations
which remain purely unintelligible to
the boor; he sees twenty moral duties
where the boor sees one. Without ideas
there can be no virtue; with few ideas
there can be few virtues; with many
ideas all things in the way of virtue are
possible. “The temptations of intel
lect are not comparable to the tempta
tions of dulness.”1
2
Every idea is a potential tendril by
which a man may touch and be touched;
through which he may be influenced in
the direction of good. “And of evil,
too,” an objector suggests. “ No,”
again replies the Herbartian; “ideas
are less significant for vice than for
virtue; the latter is complex; the former
is simple. Ideas work more for virtue
than for vice, for virtue is more spiritual
than vice.”
thing than to study the lives of those
who are dead. But living heroes and
gentlemen are not found in every
dwelling-house, and the children who
come to us will perhaps never learn
nobility at all unless they learn it from
us or from the historical examples we
hold up before them.
But, it may be said, what about those
spotless souls which have grown up amid
squalor? What about “Little Nell”?
what about “Jo”? what about “Lizzie
Hexham ”?
The answer is, that amid absolute
squalor and crime no pure soul can
grow up. There must be influences for
good if the soul is not to take the down
ward path. To dogmatise would be
foolish; to set limits to the influence
of good, even amid unpromising condi
tions, would be foolish; but—unless
this book is fatally wrong in its essential
doctrines—there can be no virtue in a
soul that has never seen or heard of
morality. None of the genuine examples
of purity and heroism springing up amid
unpromising surroundings contradict this
statement; and to picture unreal examples
of such purity and heroism is “ morally
mischievous.”1
Virtue, in short, can be “taught.” It
depends largely upon teaching, upon the
possession of a wealth of ideas, more
especially of ideas concerned with
human life in the past and present.
The “present,” maybe, is even more
powerful than the “past,” and the
example of the present more powerful
than that of the past. To live amid
heroes and gentlemen would be a finer
Let us admit that all the springs of
virtue are not known; that heredity
plays strange freaks at times; that this
man is by nature unreceptive, this one
by nature receptive. The writer gives
no guarantee that, granted all he asks,
virtue will spring forth—Minerva-like—
equipped at every point. But he will
stake the truth of this book and the
1 J. A. Symonds.
2 Arnold of Rugby.
1 As George Gissing called it, with direct refer
ence to Lizzie Hexham. See his Dickens.
�THE SECRET OF HERBAR!'
49
would be truer to say that our views of
sin are changing and becoming—be it
observed—not only more scientific, but
also far more conformable with the ideas
which the ancient Jews, the men who
have taught the world what sin is, formed
ages ago. 441 have sinned,” said Saul;
44....... 1 have played the fool and have
erred exceedingly.”1 44 The notion of
sin” among the Jews “is that of blunder
or dereliction, and the word is associated
with others that indicate error, folly, or
want of skill and insight.”2 The word
“insight” brings us on to Herbart, and
It is with good reason that the Her- the word 44 folly ” reminds us that
bartians lay such stress upon the teaching “stupid people cannot be virtuous.”
of the 44humanities”—good literature,
biographies, history. It is these subjects
If all this is really a 44 secret,” it is
—and these only—which store the mind time that the curtain should be lifted.
with such apperception material as makes And it verily seems to have been a
a man morally sensitive. Without the 44 secret ” to educators and to preachers.
possession of such material he cannot “Virtue cannot be taught” is on the
be successfully appealed to. He is lips of many, and as the lips utter the
urged to be heroic; he does not know amazing falsehood, the Herbartian asks :
what heroism means; Curtius, and Alfred, 44 What refined virtue exists under the
and Livingstone are unknown names. sun that is not the result of teaching?”
He is urged to become a worthy citizen: Brutal necessity, acting through natural
he does not know what citizenship means ; selection, can teach much, has taught
the annals of his native town are a sealed much in the past centuries; but the
book to him. He is urged to be virtues that necessity can teach are the
courteous; he does not know what cruder and more selfish virtues. Every
courtesy means : the classic and historic grace of life has been taught to us; and,
examples of graceful considerateness are unless we teach them to others, they
as wholly strange to him as, perchance, will never be acquired at all. From two
living examples among the companions sources only do we learn to love nobility,
he meets. And so with the whole series self-sacrifice, self-control; from the living
of virtues. They rest largely upon examples around us, and from the
teaching, and if they are not taught—if examples that the historic past can bring.
the virtues incarnated in living persons To a child in a slum or in an agricultural
or historical examples are not presented wilderness the former come scarcely at
to the minds of the young—the young all; even to the most favoured among
will never grow up virtuous.
us they come but rarely. How immensely
truth of Herbartianism upon the con
verse ; that a mind deprived from birth
of all noble examples, whether in the
present or in the historic past, will grow
up without moral sensitiveness. 44 In
the way of virtue,” said the Guardian,
reviewing a little work of the present
writer, 444 the wayfaring man, though a
fool, shall not err.’ ” 44 But,” the writer
replies, 44 is this true if he is an absolute
and complete 4 fool,’ one deprived of all
moral examples, one whose mind, apperceptively, is a blank?”
Preachers tell us that there is, in these
days, a “lessened sense of sin.” It
1 I Samuel, xxvi., 21.
2 W. R. Smith, in Prophets of Israel.
E
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THE SECRET OF HERBART
important, then, is the work of presenting
to mankind—and especially to the
scholars of our schools—the inspiring
biographies which history has to offer!
Such biographies, presented in an his
torical setting, and preceded by fairy-tale
and legend, constitute the “ Gesinnungsstoff” of the Zillerians, the material
for “ Gesinnungsunterricht ”—character
forming instruction. In such material
must be included, of course, the price
less biographies which the Bible1 can
suitably provide the school; unless such
material, biblical, national, and cosmo
politan, is presented in rich abundance
to the youth of England, we must expect,
well-nigh with astronomical certainty, that
the youth of England will grow up bar
barous, uncultured, and immoral. It is
such material, and such material alone,
which enables a human being to “ apperceive ” moral truth; it is an educational
bread of life.
Nourish imagination in her growth,
And give the mind that apprehensive power
Whereby she is made quick to recognise
The moral properties and scope of things ;1
if it is possible to “ give ” the mind this
power, then it may be possible to vitalise
or renovate the moral universe by means
of education. Something can be “ stuck
on,” even if “natural gifts” can not.
Virtue, though mysteries may yet remain
to baffle and confound us, can be
“ taught.”
The message of Herbart is interest;
the “ secret of Herbart ” is apperception.
Interest in almost anything is good—
interest in nature, in art, in politics;
and many interests are apperceptive,
dependent upon previous knowledge.
But if there is one interest which is
above all others important, and above all
others dependent upon apperception, it
is interest in moral goodness ; and this
will never be aroused in a living soul—
even though the trumpet of judgment be
But yet—but yet—“ Virtue cannot be
heard and hell burst open at men’s feet
taught!” Far more true would it be to —unless the soul has known, in concrete
say “genius cannot be taught,” “ origin forms, what moral goodness means.
ality cannot be taught,” “ talent cannot
Hence the immense importance of the
be taught,” or, in the words of Goethe, work undertaken in the face of national
to confess that “ the older one grows the prejudice by the Moral Instruction
more one prizes natural gifts, because by
League.
no possibility can they be procured and
stuck on.” A thick veil still hangs over
The several years during which that
heredity and variation; and the child League has existed have been years of
comes to us with a physical and mental momentous and rapid progress. Pro
endowment for which God, or fate, or fessors of education have stood aloof;
his parents, not we, are responsible. ecclesiastics, nervous at an apparition
But only a thin veil hangs over this that threatens doom to their predomi
other region where virtue lives in eternal nance in the school, have expressed a
wedlock with apperception. There is contempt they cannot wholly feel; the
less of mystery here. If the teacher can new reformers, conscious that their work
has more significance, promise, and
1 Expurgated possibly, though not necessarily,
but certainly put forth in a more attractive form potency than any work of the past
than at present, with larger print and with
illustrations.
1 Wordsworth.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
century, axe resolved, though deserted
by the supposed representatives of the
psychology and the ethics of education,
“to save the nation alone.”
5i
or the first work of education is to give
this Aesthetic Revelation of the World.1
Tolerance, generosity, magnanimity
are impossible for a mind that is vacant
of ideas; it is too deficient in imagina
tion to “ make allowances.” The miser
is deaf to appeal; no part of his nature
goes out towards the ideals that others
seek. The gambler listens unmoved to
the story of higher things; the story
awakens no echo in him. And so with
the entire list of vices; ’apart from those
to which an individual may be con
genitally inclined, or into which he has
slipped through blind habit, his vices are
almost wholly the result of his mental
deficiencies, of an absence of moral
sensitiveness, of an impenetrability, of a
lack of such elevated ideas as are able to
move into the focus of consciousness
when an appeal is made from without;
in a word, of failure in apperception.
Even, indeed, if the proposals of the
Moral Instruction League were in the
direction of a dry and abstract formula
tion of moral truths—a “ stamping-in of
maxims” such as Herbart condemned—
those proposals would not merit the
contempt of the community; for a bald
and perfunctory enunciation of such
truths is better than a complete ignoring,
or the fragmentary and wholly insuffi
cient treatment which is the rule rather
than the exception in the British primary
school. It is doubtful whether any idea,
or maxim, or exhortation, however
abstract, is entirely ineffective in build
ing up the structure of morality; for
conduct comes home more closely than
many things to the “business and
bosoms” of children. Still, there are
“ A kind heart, coupled with a narrow
good ways and bad ways in every art.
mind, cannot conceive the higher forms
The League starts with the concrete,
well knowing that an abstract principle of duty to the State, to humanity, to
unpopular causes. Culture and mental
is the result of thought directed to this.
force combined regulate the quality of
Herbartianism—repetition is needful the duty paid. The difference between
in this domain—has a double message. abject superstition and lofty piety depends
Its exoteric message is that of many-sided on the intellect, not on the heart, of the
interest; cultivate interests, even in worshipper.”2 And as with man so
humble subjects, and you give life a with woman. Gissing may, for a moment,
certain momentum which will carry it abandon in despair the explanation of
past the dangerous points where temp the shrewishness in Dickens’s women,
tation lurks. Its esoteric message is that and ask : “Do you urge that Dickens
of apperception ; men are blind to moral should give a cause for this evil temper ?
as to other truths unless there has Cause there is none. It is the pecu
grown up or been built up within them liarity of these women that no one can
a sensitive retina composed of thousands conjecture why they behave so ill. The
of minute elements. In Herbart’s words,
1 The name of one of Herbart’s earliest and
there must be “points of contact” most important writings is The Aesthetic Reve
between the soul and the world of lation {or Presentation} of the World (or Uni
verse} as the Chief Work of Education.
nature and human nature. The chief
* Cotter Morison, in The Service of Man.
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THE SECRET OF HERBART
nature of the animals—nothing more
can be said.” But more is said elsewhere.
“Sheer dulness and monotony of exist
ence explains their unamiable habits.
They quarrel because they can get no
other form of excitement.” “ ‘ Dolly
Varden ’ is totally without education, and
her mother’s failings are traceable, first
and foremost, to that very source.”1
great need was “ reverence.” A strange
reply ! How, then, is “ reverence ” to
be generated in the school? What is
the magic key to unlock this portal?
Precisely—/^ teaching of history and
literature. It is only through familiarity
with characters which deserve reverence
that we learn reverence. “ ‘ Men will
not accept the gospel,’ we are told. But
why should we expect them to feel the
historical meaning of any great world
tragedy, if history and literature—the
‘ humanistic ’ studies which make us
sensitive to nobleness, to pathos, to
martyrdom, to divinity—have been kept
afar off? Why should they reverence
Christ if they are never taught to rever
ence Alfred or Sidney? The thing is
absurd. We exclude the ‘humanities’
from the school, or, what is worse, we
teach them soullessly, or, what is worse
again, we confuse them with dates, and
grammar, and construing—and then we
complain that the ‘gospel’ is neglected.”1
When J. A. Symonds attributed to the
study of science “an extension of the
province of love,” he was scarcely
guilty of exaggeration. Ignorance, that
draws a veil over the causes of human
action, sees the diabolical everywhere.
The Gospel of Love sent myriads of
witches to the stake in the Middle
Ages, not because the Infallible Church
was malicious and cruel, but because she
was ignorant. And the Church of the
Gospel of Love still mourns for “sin,” and
still hears, though remotely, the rustle of
the Devil’s wings, because she has never
adequately realised, with Herbart, that
“Cultivate reverence—cultivate reve
“the will is rooted in the circle of
rence— cultivate reverence.” Exhorta
thought.”
tions like this are unmeaning until direc
Vice is less appreciably based on tions are given how “ reverence ” can be
apperception than virtue. The soul may “cultivated.” And when the directions
be transparent to every influence of the are given—if ever they are—they will
former kind, opaque to everything that amount to this: “ Place before your
is subtler; just as fog and mist, through pupils historical characters worthy of
which the sun’s radiations force their reverence.” It shows how wholly unscien
way with difficulty, are more transparent tific are our ways of regarding moral edu
than the clearest air to the coarser vibra cation that the exhortation, “ Cultivate
reverence,” could be applauded as an
tions of sound.
exhortation of an opposite kind to the
At a recent educational conference the exhortations of the Moral Instruction
question of moral education was raised League. “Reverence” is an effect—not
by Mr. F. J. Gould. A succeeding a mystery ; every virtue we possess, every
speaker, after discounting excessive aspiration that moves us, is an effect—
“teaching” of morals, claimed that the not a mystery.
1 Dickens, by George Gissing.
1 The Critics oj Herbartianism.
writer.
By the
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And if it be asked, “ Where, in avail
able form, is this humanistic material to
be found ? ” the answer must be, “ In
works like the Penny Poets and the
Books for the Bairns and the Children's
Plutarch." If in every school of Eng
land, day and evening, books like these
were known, read aloud, talked about
—parts of them even learnt by heart
—and if this were done not soullessly,
“reverence,” and many another grace and
virtue, would have a chance. “ Vacuity
of mind and pettiness of motive would
no longer be the sore affliction they now
are.”1
53
cedure, not because these are in them
selves unimportant, but because they are
likely to draw off the attention of teachers
and the public from the spot where the
greatest educational weakness of all is to
be found.
There is much that is encouraging in
the spirit and ideals of education; there
is probably an increase of intellectual
life in all our schools. Every year some
hundreds of teachers are found attending
laborious holiday courses on the continent
of Europe and elsewhere; perhaps no
other profession can show such signs of
interest and zeal. There is now existent
Vast, then, as is the importance of at least the germ, the presage, of a future
apperceptive power, especially vast is its Science of Education.
importance in one realm—that of history
But such teachers as these are being
and literature. An interest in natural
science—a readiness to see the signifi led rather to cultivate an interest in
cance of a material thing or event—is a formal subjects than in those subjects
priceless thing, essential indeed to the through which alone the school can be
dignity and progress of man, and a rejuvenated and the nation regenerated.
valuable protective against the assaults The study of phonetics, and of modern
of evil; but immeasurably more impor languages generally, is awakening more
tant is an interest in the past deeds and and more interest every year. There
thoughts and creations of the human was need for this, and the writer has
race. Such an interest is a chief means learnt much, and hopes to learn more,
by which character can be built up, and from the pioneers of the reformed method.
practically the only means by which it But—the greatest need of all is being
can become sensitive and morally pro forgotten in the meanwhile.
Again, there is much that is promising
gressive. “The dead generations are,
in truth, our dead selves, from which we in the new methods of teaching mathe
rise to higher things. By the past we matics. Many an artisan will willingly
attend a class in “ practical mathe
live.”2
matics,” and profit by his attendance,
One individual at least—the writer— who will never be attracted by abstract
has sadly to confess to the apprehension Euclid. But—the greatest need of all
and misgiving which he feels when look is being forgotten.
Again, there is much that is sound
ing upon some of the most promising
present-day reforms in educational pro- and suggestive in Professor Armstrong’s
plea that we should make our science
1 Professor Armstrong, in The Teaching of teaching “heuristic,” and encourage the
Scientific Method.
self-activity and inventiveness of our
2 Dr. Laurie, in The Training of Teachers.
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THE SECRET OF HERBART
pupils. This is one of the educational
needs of the age. But—the greatest need
of all is being forgotten.
slynesses, cowardices, frettings, resent
ments, obstinacies, crookedness in view
ing things, vulgar conceit, impertinence,
and selfishness.
Mental cultivation,
All the three reforms referred to lie in though it does not of herself touch the
the realm of formal studies and dexteri greater wounds of human nature, does a
ties. Correct phonetic pronunciation • good deal for these lesser defects.”1
practical mathematics ; the scientific
spirit—none of these things contribute
Now, if it appears, after all, that manywith absolute directness to human culture. sided interest is a foe, not only to these
They may contribute much indirectly, “ lesser forms of moral obliquity,” but to
for an interest in such things is of price such of the “ greater wounds of human
less value, apart from the dignity they nature ” as drunkenness and gambling,
add to existence by contributing to effi we have a right to claim that this is an
ciency and power—this in itself is a agency equal to religion herself in the
moral factor. But moral sensitiveness very province that religion regards as
and advance are dependent on human her own. And if even drunkenness and
istic studies that feed the soul.
gambling are not sufficiently crucial tests ;
if the vice of impurity—most abhorred
And now, perhaps, there is some of all vices by the Church—is the one
possibility of estimating aright the relative Newman has especially in view when he
moral values of Religion and Many-sided speaks of the impotence of all agencies
Interest.
except the Catholic Church; then surely
there is significance in the fact that study
That moral evil is tameable only by —the study of the Hebrew language—
religion can no longer be asserted, if this was recommended by St. Jerome as
other agency possess the vitality here efficacious in “ keeping away unholy
claimed. And Newman himself, who thoughts.”
at other moments saw no power but the
It is true that culture cannot success
Catholic Church capable of conquering
“ the fierce energy of passion,” goes far fully compete with religion in the deeper
in the Herbartian direction. Since the crises of life. The penitent thief and
time when St. Paul enumerated the fruits the God-intoxicated monk are not her
of the flesh and the fruits of the spirit, trophies. It is true also that culture
no writer has tabulated a more impres cannot lift the veil and solve the mystery
sive list of the vices than the one drawn of things. She is more impotent than
up by this man—vices attributed by him religion when facing the problems
to absence of secular culture. “ Cultiva of death, and storm, and earthquake;
tion of mind,” he tells us, “is not the for religion, with her Lamb Slain from
same thing as religious principle; but it before the foundation of the world,
contributes much to remove from our can find some meaning in these calam
path the temptation to many lesser forms ities, or seek a meaning where none is
of moral obliquity. Human nature is obvious.
susceptible of a host....... of little vices
1 Newman, in The Present Position of
and disgraceful infirmities, jealousies, Catholics.
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But the concern of this book is with
moral potencies. If moral evil is so deso
lating to mankind that a propitiatory sacri
fice has daily to be offered on modern
altars, the confessional to be set up for
the minutest scrutiny of the conscience,
and ev®ry form of hope and fear enlisted
on the side of virtue; then surely culture,
which wars not unsuccessfully against
ths same relentless foe, has a place by
the side of religion. Nay, when we
ponder on what might be if ever culture
and education came to their own and
were valued aright, all the resources of
the school being directed to the humani
sation of the race, we begin to doubt
whether the claim to equality is not too
modest; and whether, if the world once
realised the possibilities lurking in the
doctrine of apperceptive interest, the
revivals of the Protestant world and the
sacraments of the Catholic would not
appear morally feeble in comparison. If
any enhanced kindliness, charitableness,
sympathy, and public spirit distinguish
thfe century from the tenth, it must be
attributed not to religion—whose doc
trines were known as well then as now,
and were believed in more implicitly—
but to the march of culture and the
increase of apperceptive power.
What* then, from the educationist’s
standpoint, is the practical conclusion
and the summary of the matter ? What
are we to learn from the preceding reflec
tions and experiences ?
A simple thing—a thing so simple,
indeed, that when stated in these pages
many a reader will wonder that there
was ever need to state it at all. The
school must nourish the souls of its pupils,
and the only nourishment possible is
ideas. There may be other tasks—there
55
are; the soul must be exercised and
trained as well as fed; but the feeding is
the first and essential thing; and the
richest food of all—that which best of
all builds up moral fibre—is the human
istic food that comes down to us from
the past in the form of fairy-tale, bio
graphy, history, and literature.
There may be difficulties in the teach
ing of such subjects as these; and the
difficulties are increased tenfold by the
disrepute in which these studies are held,
and the increased attention now given
by teachers to matters of a wholly dif
ferent kind. Even Herbart, seeing the
immensity of the problem, came to shrink
from presenting history too freely to the
undeveloped, unappreciative minds of
his Swiss pupils. The problem remains
immense, but mainly because so few are
working at it.
The battle on behalf of humanistic
subjects will be a stubborn one. It is
these very subjects that have been
neglected in the education of most of our
school managers and teachers ; and in
accordance with the whole teaching of
the- present work such a neglect must
spell want of appreciation for the neg
lected subjects. We cannot, therefore,
expect either school managers or teachers
to be enthusiastic over them until
the supreme value of these things has
been clearly demonstrated; especially
as there are rivals whose claims are
warmly championed on economic and
other grounds.
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
If Longfellow is right, such “lives of
�56
THE SECRET OF HERBART
great men ” are of supreme value in the have closed the present essay. But the
school.
educational world is dominated by false
or misleading formulae, and two of these
We live by admiration, hope, and love.
need further notice.
If Wordsworth is right, any system of
education which fails to supply the
Amateur educationists — professional
humanistic material which kindles admi
educationists also, to an extent that is
ration, hope, and love is an education
a striking commentary upon their own
for death, and not for life.
educational ideals—are in the habit of
using a phrase which, though negatively
“Children,” said the late Mr. Rooper,
not without value, is, from the construc
“ must be assisted to admire heroism in
tive standpoint, undiluted nonsense.
all its forms.” “An intelligent study
They tell us that the teacher’s main task
of the Bible and Shakespeare, and of
is not “ instruction,” but “ training,” or
classical English writers, is incomparably
“ character-forming.”
No Herbartian
more important” than other things in
will deny that “ character-forming ”
the curriculum. “ The epitome of edu
should be the true aim of all education,
cational studies is Nature and Human
except of that kind which is narrowly
Nature; the latter is the more impor
technical and professional; though even
tant.” Pupils must be made acquainted
in the latter kind there are moral impli
“through literary studies with the best
cations. Moreover, no Herbartian will
side of human nature.”
deny that the “ instruction ” given by the
If Mr. Rooper is right, the most
primary schools of England has failed to
important task of the school is to teach
form character. But to imagine that
children to admire the “best side of
there can be character-forming apart from
human nature.”
instruction; to imagine that instruction
“ There are no fairy-tales like the old is a comparatively unimportant thing,
Greek ones for beauty, and wisdom, and is, indeed, not only undiluted nonsense,
truth, and for making children love but indicates well-nigh criminal ignor
ance. Herbart, at any rate, “had no
noble deeds.”
If Kingsley is right, these and other conception of education without instruc
“fairy-tales” should be taught to the tion,” and this instruction, let us observe,
was not exclusively the instruction which
younger children in every school.
goes in England by the name of “ reli
Every Herbartian, in Germany, gious,” and which, though professedly
America, and elsewhere, believes that formative of character, is by no means
humanistic material—fairy-tales, legends, superior in this respect to other kinds of
Herbart, brushing aside
Bible stories, historical biographies, instruction.
literature, history itself—is of supreme the idle prattle which talks of character
moral value. If they are right, the in forming as something separate from the
ference is plain. Calvary is nearer to feeding of the mind, enunciated a doc
Parnassus than world and Church have trine and invented a phrase which has
already infused life into the educational
ever thought.
work of two continents, and is, perhaps,
With these words the writer might destined to rejuvenate educational work
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
57
in this country. Instruction, he said, pupils acquiring any taste for reading,
should be “ educative instruction ”—in for history, for mathematics, or for the
Bible. But to imagine that there can be
struction that makes for character.
character-forming apart from instruction;
Instruction, that is, which creates to imagine that instruction is a compara
powerful and dominating interest in tively subsidiary matter—this, as already
nature and in human nature, especially suggested or demonstrated, is perilous
in the latter; instruction which makes nonsense, and is revealed as such the
life superior to animalism by drawing moment we realise the meaning of the
off the attention elsewhere; instruction apperception doctrine. Character is so
which, by the creation of an appercep closely rooted in ideas that a deficiency
tion organ, replaces sensualism by a in these latter is fatal to any richness of
the former. Elevated interest cannot
sensibility to higher things.
exist; apperception of moral truth can
This sensibility depends upon apper not take place.
ception, and apperception depends on
At another point also the writer has to
instruction. It is impossible in a vac
hold in doubt much that is promising
uous mind.
in the advanced educational thought of
To regard the creation of elevated the day. From every side we hear
interests as something distinct from the that our schools have not taught the
formation of character is foolish and modern youth to “think”; they have
In the
disastrous, if the message of this book has not aroused “self-activity.”
any validity ; and Herbart rightly placed struggle for existence, we are told, it is
“ many-sided interest ” before the teacher this “ heuristic ” attitude that will deter
as the proximate goal of his work. But mine survival; accordingly, unless our
it was not the final goal. Moral culture pupils acquire something more than
and training—the “ subjective ” side of “ mere knowledge,” their education will
education—was to crown and supple be a failure. In very similar language,
ment the building up of an “objective” Sir Thomas Acland emphasised, a year
system of wholesome impulses and in or two ago, the need for “ thoroughness,”
terests. Herbart protested against an and protested against an evening school
illegitimate and pernicious divorce of teaching too many subjects.
will from intellect, of sacred from secular,
Literally, this is some of the best and
of character from interest, of training
from instruction. He is the one edu most authoritative educational thought in
cator in all history who is lucid and England ; it is good thought, and springs
categorical without failing to be syn from the recognition of a real need. It
thetic.
has only one fault: it is fifty years too
early in many of our towns and counties.
To oppose “instruction” to “char
The most immediate need of the pupil
acter-forming,” as many do, is thus only
legitimate if our instruction is hopelessly who attends our primary school is not
non-formative of elevated interests—as that his mind should be exercised^ but
our primary education is, too few of our that it should be fed with a rich refast
�58
THE SECRET OF HERBART
of imaginative and culture-giving material appears. We call it “Interest.” Why
—of historical and biographical ideas.
should a little knowledge of Alfred the
Great, received years ago at school,
It is no good to attempt gymnastics endow this poor mechanic with the
on an empty stomach. It is no good, power of experiencing elevated delight
as in Dickens’s novel, to urge a dying when yonder orator tells a story about
person to “ make an effort.” It is no the Wessex King ? We cannot precisely
good to dream that the Englishman will say, though we know that it is a fact,
ever acquire the power to “ think,” or and that yonder second mechanic, wholly
any interest in “ thinking,” so long as he devoid of the initial knowledge, listens
has no ideals. Now, ideals are much to the orator unmoved. We know that
the same as ideas. In historic ideas— there is a chance, though perhaps a re
in knowledge of the Bible, the history of mote one, of attracting the former to an
the world, the history of his own land— evening school or a literary guild, where,
he is appallingly defective; and until provided the teacher or the conductor is
this defect is supplied he will have little not a hide-bound pedant, new vistas
zeal, little genuine patriotism, little devo may be opened up and new inspira
tion to any high cause whatever. Feed tions be felt; we know also, with a
his soul first, and then will be the time sense of bitter disappointment, that
to teach him to think.1
the second mechanic will never sight
those vistas or feel those inspirations.
Thus the primary school—any school, All the harmonies of music depend, not
indeed, that is not merely “ technical ”— on the power of single notes, but on the
should at times take for its motto, “Cast support which notes, perhaps poor and
thy bread upon the waters, and thou tame in themselves, give to each other.
shalt find it after many days.” New No harmony can be generated out of a
impressions cannot always be apperceived single note, and the school should not
at once. “ Very often the teacher must attempt to generate it; but the school
introduce ideas into the mind of the may, legitimately enough, sometimes
pupil, not so much for their immediate sound these single notes in the ears of
importance as for the use to be made of the pupils, in the hope that, though
them at some future lesson,”1 or (shall apperception may not spring up now,
2
we not say ?) in some future year or some day it will; and that the notes,
decade. Somehow—this is a part of feeble and isolated at present, will then
the “ Secret ” of Herbart—ideas, colour be heard, with others, reverberating in a
less to-day, help to colour the whole of mighty harmony through all the passages
life when they meet kindred ideas to and crannies of the soul.
morrow; the new and the old rush
together, and, at the moment of union,
And as these notes reverberate, as old
as at the union of two chemical elements, ideas apperceive the new, Interest is
heat is generated and a new product generated, and baser attractions begin to
lose their charm. Thus, set free in part
1 That the latter need is not ignored by the from the slavery of the lower passions,
writer will be seen in his remarks on arithmetic,
the soul can pursue, with increased
Appendix I.
energy, the better things that the world
2 Professor Adams, in Primer of Teaching.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
pf thought has to offer, discovering in
the pursuit ever fresh links of association
between the old and the new. Again
and again leaps up the apperception
flash; again and again is felt the interest
thrill. Character takes on, if not stronger,
at any rate nobler, tints. The colours
of life change. The things that once
delighted, and perhaps degraded, delight
and degrade no longer. More and more
tendrils are thrown out above; feebler
and feebler becomes the hold of those
below. No law of parsimony, no prin
ciple of conservation, applies to the
delights of apperception. Here, if any
where, is a spontaneous generation—
among the “dead” ideas. Unlike the
more material pleasures on which man
lavishes time and wealth, the pleasures
of apperception cost nothing ; their store
is illimitable; replenished, like the
emanations of radium, as if by an un
seen hand. Age cannot wither them,
nor custom stale their infinite variety.
In more prosaic language, we may say
that, by a suitable presentation of rich
and varied knowledge early in life, we
are giving our pupils the chance of being
protected from sin and passion by posses
sing interests of an elevated kind—in
terests which grow by what they feed on,
and will only cease if sanity or existence
cease.
Meanwhile, how fares the soul which,
though unfed of ideas, has been exer
cised on grammar, perchance, or de
clensions, or “sums”? The springs of
apperception have been drying up.
The doors of many-sided interest have
been slowly closing on their hinges.
But “ Sin ” has tempted and conquered ;
for she, wily siren, has attired herself in
rainbow hues, while her rival, Learning,
59
has appeared in sober grey. Passion
within and facility without combine to
confer on evil a delirious fascination;
no need of any rich complexity of ideas
to make attractive mankind’s eternal foe.
Though appeals may come from without,
they echo less and less loudly in the
chambers of the mind, and at last cease
to enter at all. The man is now impene
trable. Starved, in his early years, of
saving ideas, his mind has no inner re
sources when a voice has been heard
calling to higher things. The voice may
call, but to deaf ears; the light may
shine, but upon an atrophied retina.
Deprive him of ideas, and you deprive
him of the only means by which the
Christian Gospel, or any other Gospel,
can be interpreted or assimilated. De
prive him of ideas, and he encases him
self, sooner or later, in a carapace of
impenetrability. Evil habits may hang
like chains upon that carapace; they
gall him not. Appeals may beat against
it; they penetrate not. Martyrs and
redeemers die at the stake or at the cross
because those they would fain save do
not possess apperceptive resources. In
one or two passages of Holy Writ
which tell us of ears that hear not, of
eyes that are holden, of hearts that are
hardened, this grim doctrine seems to
be suggested; and appalling indeed is
the doctrine on its negative side, though
full of hope when once its positive
message is heard and understood. The
application of that positive message is the
work for educators, and for them alone.
In the scheme of formal stages of
instruction worked out by the Herbartians, the first stage is “ Vorbereitung,”
or Preparation. Ideas have to be sum
moned up in order to meet and interpret
the new material about to be presented,
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THE SECRET OF HERBART
In a wider sense may we not now say
that the school itself represents, in a
large measure, the stage of “ Vorbereitung ”? It is here that are laid the
foundations for the future interests of
life; it is here that should be developed
that receptivity towards moral appeal,
“ that sensibility of principle, that chastity
of honour which feels a stain like a
wound ” — in short, that apperceptive
readiness without which no virtue above
the crudest is possible. It may be said
that the task is too great for education
to accomplish. In that case the outlook
is ominous, for, if the task is too great
for education, it is a hundred times too
great for any other agency.
An American theological writer of
some eminence says that one immediate
need of the present age is “ the estab
lishment of the missionary motive among
the vital thoughts ” of man.1 In speak
ing of the evangelisation of ungrateful
China and other lands, he goes on to
say—as if taught the apperception doc
trine by Herbart himself—that “ a mere
utterance of something unintelligible to
the hearer is waste of time........ Under
standing of such a message comes slowly.
....... Christianity cannot do as much for
the first hearers of its message as it can
for the next generation.”2
The main object of the present work
is to divert this solicitude, and the apper
ception doctrine which Dr. Clarke ex
pounds in untechnical language, to the
heathen population of another land than
China. It is time that England and
education should have a chance. That
chance England will have when educa
1 Dr. Clarke, in A Sttidy of Christian
Missions.
z Ibid.
tion becomes a missionary profession.
If the inspiring creations of English
literature are not too good for Asiatic
colleges and students, they are not too
good for the British artisan or labourer,
who, in many of our districts, is at a
stage of development no better than the
Chinese. If zeal and devotion sanctify
evangelisation failures in China and India,
zeal and devotion—nay, the spirit of true
educational science too—may sanctify
scholastic successes at home. Once this
standpoint is reached by a few hundred
of the teachers of Britain, we may expect
that Dorpfelds will arise here, as in
Germany, willing to become and remain
primary teachers though other callings
may allure by gold or renown ; and that
more Edward Bowens will arise, choos
ing rather to be assistant masters for a
lifetime than to become educational
nonentities by treading the primrose path
to—“ promotion.”1
Yes, a “ revival,” as Mr. Campbell
urged, may be coming. But, unless it
is a revival springing from deep views
and wide thought, it will leave as little
permanent effect behind it as the wind
that ruffles a field of corn. Mr. Sheldon’s
books may sell by thousands, but Eng
land remains, in the long run, unchanged;
paroxysms may come and go, but man
will never be thus regenerated, though
their intensity reach the heat of fever.
Such, at least, is the belief of the Herbartians, who steadily discount the value
of unreasoning emotion as a character
forming agency. It might appear at
first, Herbart tells us, that such an
agency was a powerful one, though
1 The writer believes it to be the case that His
Majesty’s Inspectors are practically debarred
from taking up educational problems in any
earnest way.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
inoperative upon the circle of thought.
“But it will appear quite otherwise if
we interrogate experience. At least,
whoever has noticed into what an abyss
of pain and misfortune a human being
may fall, yes, even remain in for long
periods, and yet, after the time of trouble
has passed, rise up again, apparently
almost unchanged, with the same aims
and opinions, even the same manner—
whoever, we say, has noticed this will
hardly expect much from swaying of the
feelings........ How temporary is the whole
reaction which follows the action.”
Rightly or wrongly, the Herbartians be
lieve that the idea is ultimately of more
potency than the feeling; or, rather,
that a unified mass of ideas is of
more potency than anything that is
narrow and intense. They have faith
that such ideas as have penetrated into
the inner sanctuaries of the soul may,
sooner or later, re-emerge as appercep
tive interest; that from the seed thus
sown will spring a greater harvest than
any hothouse can yield; that there are
richer possibilities here than yonder.
Does an intense emotion, not rooted in
a mass of ideas, make a man better?
Do the raptures of the devotee brace
him for the battle of life ? Has he been
the man to see most clearly the moral
problems of the age—the woes of the
artisan, the temptations of the drunkard,
the horrors of war ? Notoriously he has
not. “Great moral energy is the result
of broad views, and of whole, unbroken
masses of thought.” The truth is that
many a man and many a woman who
claims to be exalted at times into the
tenth or the hundredth heaven is often
appallingly obtuse to the moral problems
and duties around. The most delicate
analyses of moral duty—the keenest
sensitiveness to moral distinctions—are
61
not uncommonly found in connection
with men who have no visions or raptures
to diversify the even tenor of their way.
From the point of view of moral truth
and moral progress, the idea is a hundred
times as important as the emotion.
The time may come when all pretence
—and it is a pretence — of teaching
“ religion ” to babes and sucklings may
be abandoned by the schools of England.
The time may even come when the Bible
itself—which has rarely yet in the primary
school been taught intelligently or in
accordance with psychological laws—
may be excluded, and when primary
education will be in name, as it has
always substantially been in reality,
“secular.” The moral possibilities of
the school will not then be exhausted ;
on the contrary, the removal of hoary
delusions may be the beginning of a
portentous vitalisation. A new thing
may come forward to take the place, in
primary schools, of the excluded “ reli
gion,” for the programme sketched in the
preceding pages is one sufficiently great
and sufficiently attainable to attract all
men—and women—who face realities
dauntlessly, and determine to dream of
none but possible millenniums.
Yes, women; for to women will fall
much of the work of vitalising education.
Every year as it passes increases their
relative importance in this divine work
and this imperial profession.
They
realise better than men the possibilities
of the situation; they feel a keener
interest in it; their culture is often
greater and their intolerance less. Edu
cation, moreover, is almost the only
profession in which some honour and
distinction await them.
Three tasks—each of immense moral
�62
THE SECRET OF HERBART
significance — education can essay to
perform. It can prevent or check the
formation of bad habit; this at present it
does not adequately do. It can give moral
instruction, arraying in its service histo
rical and biblical examples, and pointing
to their moral import; this at present it
does imperfectly. Lastly, it can seek to
arouse many-sided interest—interest at
the very least; conscious that the arousal
of this means the slow atrophy and death
of what is base. This it scarcely does
at all.
For the second and third tasks the
conferring of a wealth of organised ideas
is an essential requisite. Without this
wealth there can be but feeble apper
ception ; and the absence of free and
vigorous apperception means impenetra
bility, even to religious appeal. The
ideas within are too few or too feeble to
co-operate with those presenting them
selves from without. We rightly say that
the man is “stupid.” And “the stupid
man cannot be virtuous.”
tum.
“Here and there some small
omission may be supplied; but an all
round human development, missed and
neglected in boyhood, can never be
recovered.”1
This standpoint is the only one that
will ever make education honoured
among the professions; the only one
that will ever make it a profession worth
our study and our devotion. The only
standpoint—except, perhaps, one other
—that can give any unity of motive to
educational effort. What is that other?
Some day—millions of years, let us
hope, from now—the life of this old earth
may begin to ebb away, and the chill of
the coming ages settle upon her. Man,
or man’s modified descendants, may
enter upon the final and most desperate
stage of the struggle for existence.
Unless Divinity interpose His fiat, or
human prevision and speculation be here
deceiving us, every faculty, ideal, and
system may disappear that does not help
in this last contest. Then may vanish
You may go into the streets of your the ideal of a humanistic education.
cities or the lanes of your villages, you Survival, rather than character, may
may seek to elevate the vicious and rouse become the goal of the struggling units
the lethargic. You will fail, save in one that will watch the slow extinction of the
case (much trumpeted) out of ten. You world’s life.
may wring your hands and bewail the
power of “ sin.” But you will be wiser if
But even for the geologist the world is
you take the sinner’s child and begin to still young; man still has moral possi
create in its mind—using every one of bilities before him. An education that
the educational instruments which the makes for character is the only one for
past has ignored, but the wiser future will us, though room may be found—is being
not ignore—a rich circle of thought. found by all enlightened educationists—
Without this apperception will fail; with for the legitimate claims of individuality
out this there can be little or no interest; and practical life. Yet an education
without this there can be no assured that makes for mere material survival, a
safety. The parent is impenetrable. utilitarian education, would fain insinuate
No earthly power can save him. His
“ apperception masses ” have no momen
1 Frobel, in the Education of Man.
�THE SECRET OF HERBART
63
better,” and if “ he who should find out
one rule to assist us in this work would
deserve infinitely better of mankind
than all the improvers of other know
ledge put together ”x then this high
praise is his who, in 1806, first pro
claimed the central significance of In
terest. And though just one hundred
years have lapsed since then, the law
that links Interest with Apperception still
remains so generally unrecognised or
unknown as to merit the designation,
If education is “ the science of im “ The Secret ” of Herbart.
proving the temper and making the heart
itself, even now, into the body-politic.
Teachers should beware of it. Not that
way lies any possibility of progress. So
corpselike an apparition coming before
time from the grave of the world should
have no attractions for us. Let us turn
from the chill and the darkness of the
charnel-house to the light that shines
out steadily, though here and there
flecked with solemn bars and shadows,
from the pages of Herbart.
1 Bishop Butler’s words, quoted in the Education Code of 1906.
�APPENDICES
I.—The Primary Curriculum.
The weakest point in our educational
system has perhaps been adequately
discussed—or at any rate indicated—in
the preceding essay. But there are other
weak points, far more than can here be
dealt with ; these weaknesses, however,
are of a different kind from the one
which Herbartianism can remedy. To
mention them is to deal with questions
other than the “ Secret of Herbart.”
For, be it observed, though Herbar
tianism cannot be seriously charged with
the neglect of any important school
subject (Herbart himself was much inte
rested in the teaching of mathematics,
and modern Herbartians are writing and
thinking upon every subject in the cur
riculum), yet its distinctive message is
concerned with the“knowledge subjects.”
How to feed the soul with rich and suit
able food, so that mental health may
become moral health—this is the thing
that Herbartianism can teach us well;
the other task, how to exercise the wellfed soul, though not a task ignored by
the Herbartians (witness their doctrine
of the “formal steps,” their interest in
mathematics, and so on) is a task which
others can teach us also.
Professor Welton, a year or two ago,
spoke of a “Synthesis of Herbart and
Frobel.” Synthesis is indeed required,
and the following supplementary remarks
will perhaps serve to indicate how we
should treat our finally synthesised cur
riculum. Education is more than ap
perception, just as health is more than
assimilation.
For health, indeed, we require not
only food, but shelter and exercise.
Shelter is clearly a more external thing
than food and exercise—a necessary
thing, and yet not a thing that enters
vitally and operatively into man’s nature.
We may, perhaps, parallel with it, in our
educational discussion, the art of Writing
—a necessary art, and yet not one in which
we can see much further significance.
Far more important are those arts and
pursuits which provide genuine exercise
for the soul.
In almost all English books on school
management, subjects follow each other
in no scientific order whatever. A teacher,
asked point-blank what are the most
valuable subjects of all, will either hesitate
in sheer helplessness (the question having
never occurred to him), or, as pointed
out in the preceding essay, will answer
at once, using the words of the man
in the street, “ The three R’s.” To
any Herbartian such an answer falls
like the death-knell of educational pro
gress ; the reason has been seen, and
will become clearer in a moment.
There is no need more pressing than
that we should discover the relative
importance and the relative function of
the various subjects of the curriculum.
Since the time of Pestalozzi educationists
have devoted much attention to the
department of methodology — how to
teach ; Dorpfeld, the greatest and wisest
of Herbart’s followers, was one of the few
who contributed to a more neglected
department, the theory of the curriculum
—what to teach. There are, he tells us,
two groups of subjects in addition to the
one great and priceless group that feeds
the human soul. The second includes
those practical dexterities which every
one admits must be taught4~speaking,
�65
APPENDICES
reading, writing; while the third group
includes formal studies like arithmetic
and grammar.
There is, of course, no absolute line
of demarcation between the second and
the third groups, nor, indeed, between
these and the first. Even the “passive”
assimilation of food involves digestive
activity.
Writing and drawing are
“ formal ” in one sense, giving training
in proportion, symmetry, and so forth;
in another sense they are dexterities,
•allowing the motor energy of the nervecentres to find vent. However, the
distinction between the second and third
groups is far less definite than between
them and the first. Broadly, we may
say that the first group feeds the mind,
while the second and third groups pro
vide exercise either for the mind or for
the members.
Test the “ Three R’s ” by this classifi
cation. Reading and writing, as such,
are mechanical dexterities, doing nothing
whatever to build up the “ circle of
thought.”
Arithmetic is a “ formal
study,” and this again does little or
nothing to build up the circle of thought,
though it may bring an element of pre
cision into that circle. Not one of the
“ Three R’s,” as such, aids apperception ;
not one of the Three R’s, as such, feeds the
soul; not one of the Three R’s, as such,
makes man morally sensitive or morally
progressive.
For these reasons, therefore, Dorpfeld,
and indeed all Herbartians, place the
centre of gravity elsewhere than among
the “ Three R’s.” John Morley, many
years ago, hinted at the same need when
he spoke of “those extra subjects which
are, in truth, the part of instruction that
gives most life and significance to the
rest.”1
And yet an intelligent teaching of the
“Three R’s” is immensely important.
Consider the first and greatest-—Reading.
If by this were meant a love of good
books, a taste for good books, an interest
in reading good books, then, certainly, the
1 National Education.
subject would be of incalculable value,
even, or especially, in the eyes of the
Herbartians; for out of such a love, such
a taste, such an interest, may come all
those things for which the Herbartians
contend. Reading, in this sense, would
supply the soul with the very food which
is a prerequisite for apperception, inte
rest, virtue, and moral progress. As a
rule, however, teachers, officials, and
documents mean something else _ than
this when they speak of “Reading”;
they mean correctness, fluency,. ability,
and vigour of utterance. In this sense
it is a dexterity, and is so classed by
Dorpfeld.
Let us now ask whether our primary
schools—once the strongholds of the
“Three R’s”—have succeeded in teach
ing reading in either of these senses. The
answer must be an emphatic “ No.” The
average pupil who leaves our schools has
neither a taste for reading—that taste
which, in the opinion of Lord Avebury,
would destroy most of the “pauperism,
extravagance, drunkenness, and crime ”
which exist in modern England—nor
has he the power of reading aloud with
correctness and force. This, at any rate,
is the result of the writer’s observation
in a country district; if the verdict is too
unfavourable, he can only rejoice in the
fact.
The first count of this indictment is,
however, confessedly justified; the second
is justified to at least an appalling extent.
Country schools, each controlled by a
head teacher who may or may not love
books and speak good English himself;
this teacher assisted by two or more
pupil teachers who may care nothing
for books, and may speak and teach to
their pupils—or mumble to them—the
worst provincialisms of their grandparents
—it is in such schools that we “teach
reading” to the triumphant democracy
of England.
Fortunately, the better training of
these young “ teachers ” is being taken
up in earnest. One of their greatest
needs (they have been, in many cases,
cut off from all educated people, cut off
D
�66
APPENDICES
from literary societies, even from libraries
and reading circles; for such are, as
often as not, wholly absent from our
country towns)—one of their greatest
needs is to be drilled by educated men
and women into the correct and dramatic
rendering of the English language. Few
people seem to realise what an immensity
of practice—practice in public—is neces
sary to make a good reader or speaker.
The new pupil-teacher centres will have
to devote not merely one hour a week,
but many hours a week, to this task.1
The lesson need not be called “reading”
in every case : it may be “ English ” or
“ history,” or what one chooses; but the
person in charge must insist daily and
hourly upon correct phonetic pronuncia
tion, and upon dramatic delivery—exag
gerating, if need be, this latter point.
Many of us have never been “ taught to
read ” at all, and cannot read even now.
Our young teachers “find Shakespeare
dull.” The reason is that there is scarcely
one adult out of a thousand who is
possessed of the requisite imagination
and the requisite freedom of utterance to
interpret and enunciate the poet’s work.
The Englishman, even when capable of
reading correctly, can rarely read forcibly.
He labours, in fact, under a triple defect:
self-consciousness, which prohibits him
or discourages him from giving expres
sion to the emotions of the piece he is
reading; sluggish imagination, which
prevents him from seeing what those
emotions are; and an enunciation which
is probably worse than that of any other
nation of Europe. It is no wonder that
“Shakespeare is dull.”
Great, then, must be the failure of the
primary schools if, though regarding the
“ Three R’s ” as their chief work, they
fail to teach even the most important of
the three.
The second of the “ Three R’s ” is
writing, and here little need be said.
The primary schools teach it fairly well
1 In the regulations for the King’s Scholarship
Examination this question has at last been taken
up in earnest. To fail in reading is to fail in
the whole examination.
and would teach it still better if they
could finally make up their minds as to
the best style. An official edict settling
the angle of slope and similar matters
would do, perhaps, but little harm and
a great deal of good in this region. The
subject is a humdrum one, with scarcely
any significance of its own. “ Were it
not that writing and reading are neces
sary as instruments....... we should not
think of wasting time over them.”1
Still, there is no reason why we should
not teach the subject better than we do.
Schools should be specially on guard
against allowing the writing to degenerate
as a result of copious “note-taking” in
upper classes. Notes on science, history,
and the rest, should be entered in good
though not laborious style; just as the
reading of science, history, and the rest,
should be articulate and phonetically
correct. The talk about a “ crowded
curriculum ” would have little or no
justification whatever if teachers would
correlate their subjects better ; not artifi
cially separating history from geography ;2
science, etc., from composition f the
learning of facts from their correct ex
pression by voice; and so on. With
regard to writing, though care should be
insisted on, we need not worship too
exclusively the goddess of neatness. A
good practical style is all that is required.
The third of the “ Three R’s ” is
arithmetic. No Herbartian will despise
arithmetic ; he sees in it one of the few
1 Prof. Laurie, in Institutes of Education.
2 I have known repeatedly of teachers teaching
about King Alfred without a map, Isaiah without
a map, etc.
3 A boy may be marked “very good” for a
“composition” paper; turn to his science
notes, history notes, etc., and his “ composition ”
is atrocious. Too few of us realise that speaking
and composition, as “ efferent ” subjects, should
be closely connected with “ afferent” or know
ledge subjects like history, geography, science.
The knowledge “ received” has to be given out
again. It is a question whether in the upper
classes “ composition ” need be retained at all
as a special subject. During the years from eight
to twelve mechanical and technical difficulties
should have been conquered. Then will come
two years—precious yeai s—when the school can
win conquests of another kind.
�APPENDICES
“gymnastic” subjects suitable for the
primary curriculum ; and though, in his
view, it is even more vitally important to
feed the soul than to exercise it, the
latter is really quite indispensable. [If in
this book they are distinguished too
sharply, that is only from necessity, or
policy.] Judge, then, of his disappoint
ment when he discovers that arithmetic
has been mainly taught as a mechanical
dexterity (Dorpfeld’s second group); as
a body of maxims, not a system of prin
ciples ; as a subject which, instead of
being used for the purpose it is so pre
eminently fitted to perform, that of
training thought, has only given oppor
tunity for the application of rules of
thumb. This, of course, is the direct
and predicted result of the plan of
1861.
Between them, Pestalozzi and Frobel
have reformed the teaching of arithmetic
in the infant school. Concrete numbers
are now invariably used in the early
lessons. One form of the concrete,
indeed, is daily receiving—and rightly—
an increased amount of attention ; pupils
are being practised in making measure
ments with ruler, balance, and the like,
and using these measurements for pur
poses of calculation. Such practice in
the concrete will prove the salvation of
mathematics in the evening school; and
it is time for the primary day school to
give practice of the same kind. But,
apart from this very necessary and pro
mising reform, the chief need of the
primary school, so far as mathematics is
concerned, appears to be increased stress
on the abstract principles of arithmetic.
We can then safely drop two-thirds of
the “ rules ” which loom so large in
the “upper standards”—bills of parcels,
percentages, stocks, etc. ; in view of the
“ coming of the kilogram ” we can also
safely drop some of the “weights and
measures,” which devour time and teach
nothing.
Such trivialities as these will take care
of themselves if our pupils understand
the properties of numbers. Most of us
never learnt that, “if equals be taken
&l
from equals, the remainders are equal,”
until we began the study of Euclid, or of
simple equations ; in reality, such a prin
ciple is as important in arithmetic as. in
the other branches of mathematics.
Decimals, fractions, factors, proportion—
possibly, too, in upper classes, squaring,
etc., and the reverse processes (tables of
logarithms, even if not fully understood,
could surely be made use of)—if our
pupils have sound views on these ques
tions, and know, in addition, the axioms
which lie at the basis of arithmetical
work, and have plenty of practice in
the mensuration of the kind mentioned
above, we need no longer reproach the
primary school for its failure with regard to
this subject. If there is room for any
further subject, “simple equations” should
be given the chance; they are far easier
than much of the ordinary “arithme
tic,” arouse a good deal of zest, and
increase immensely a pupil’s resources.
The rigid line of demarcation between
arithmetic and algebra will disappear as
soon as officials and teachers will permit
the disappearance.
A word or two upon another “ formal ”
subject which, after being the bane of
the primary schools of England for a
good many years, is likely to be so no
longer. Anyone desirous of exposing
what is well-nigh the maddest phase in
English educational history would do well
to study the teaching of English gram
mar in the nineteenth century. Of course
the most gigantic error of all—an error
whose moral results for the English
nation have been inexpressibly disas
trous—was the neglect of literature;
Shakespeare has been known mainly as
a corpus vile for pupils to dissect gram
matically ; while most poets and writers
have not been honoured even to this
extent. But, apart from this neglect,
the teaching of English has taken the
strangest of courses. One might almost
say that a favourite relaxation of many
men, ambitious of literary distinction,
has been to write a grammar-book in
which could be found the maximum
I possible number of errors; those that
�68
APPENDICES
had been handed down by previous
writers, together with a few invented by
each fresh author. At the present
moment there are some books in exten
sive use full of the most grotesque and
misleading doctrines. These doctrines,
imbibed by hundreds of pupil teachers,
who, knowing nothing of Latin or any
other language than their own, cannot
detect the errors involved, are handed
down to their pupils, who, in their turn,
frequently become pupil teachers, and
thus transmit, further, the legacy of ab
surdity. Beyond the splendid books of
the late Mr. Mason, there was, until
recently, scarcely any work on this sub
ject that could be relied upon. The
subject as taught in many schools is
essentially dishonest.
Pupils learn
phrases about “governing the objec
tivecase” or “ agreeing with the nomi
native ” without really understanding
them. The writer, at any rate, never
understood them until he learnt some
thing of another language than his
own. The worst of it is that both
“rules,” when applied to English nouns,
are practically false.
The following are some of the doc
trines probably taught, explicitly or im
plicitly, at this moment, in many of our
primary schools :—
That intransitive verbs are of the
active voice.
That verbs in the passive voice are
intransitive.
That indirect objects are as plentiful
as blackberries in autumn.
That “if” is the sign of the subjunc
tive mood.
That “and’’and “but” are the only
two conjunctions.
That there is a rigid distinction between
the parts of speech : thus, a noun cannot
be also a verb, a verb an adjective, or
a conjunction an adverb; that an adverb
cannot “ modify ” a preposition, or (des
pite the Athanasian Creed) a noun.
While the teaching of English compo
sition involves the giving of such rules
as—
Never begin a sentence with “and.”
Always use short words and sentences;1
and the reading of poetry (to mention
a kindred subject) has to involve the
suppression of all rhythm in the interests
of “ preventing singing.”
If other needs had been adequately
supplied, there might have been a place
in our curriculum for “grammar”; but,
as things stand, the subject had better
be banished from the primary school, or,
at the most, be represented by quite
incidental teaching in connection with
our literature lessons. It is the teaching
of literature and kindred subjects—in
other words, it is the reading lesson
interpreted broadly — upon which we
should concentrate our attention. The
chief problems in connection with this
humanistic study are (i) correlation of
its parts, (2) the use of high-class and
first-hand materials. In both respects
our schools are almost criminally con
servative. The writer has never known,
for example, of Wordsworth’s sonnets
being correlated with the history of the
Napoleonic Wars. No text-book seems
ever to have proposed it, no teacher to
have thought of it. The lack of corre
lation in Biblical teaching is ludicrous,
and has been dealt with in the writer’s
Reform of Moral and Biblical Education.
“ Composition ” is, of course, necessary
and valuable, and can be easily taught in
connection with other things. It should
be more oral than at present, and
might thus substantially contribute to
the improved enunciation already advo
cated in connection with reading.
Singing.—The only suggestion here
proffered by the writer is that in the
singing lessons some further attempt at
teaching the great national and classic
songs of England should be made than
has hitherto been the case. The average
Englishman is wholly unable to sing or
even to recite the verses of “Rule, Bri
tannia,” and his musical tastes are so
1 Mr. Wells’s protest is timely (Mankind in the
Making). Clever pupil teachers have, to the
knowledge of the writer, been criticised by their
“correspondence tutor” for using a fairly rich
vocabulary.
�69
APPENDICES
unspeakably low (this is shown by the
music-hall songs prepared for his edifica
tion) as to testify to the partial failure
of the primary school in this domain.
Connected, as the Herbartians recom
mend, with the literature and history
taught in the school, singing ought to
become one of the best auxiliaries to
the sweetening of the national life of
England.
Art and similar subjects.—In this
important department of educational
work there is much to learn, mainly,
perhaps, from the Frobelians.. Clay
modelling, brush work, as well as the
more usual kinds of artistic activity, are
winning much favour, and seem, indeed,
a necessary supplement to the intellec
tualism and the bookishness into which,
without them, we might be landed. But
the author does not profess to give advice
or offer criticism where (as here) he feels
incompetent to do so, and will but
suggest that the artistic subjects be cor
related, as far as possible, with the rest
of the curriculum, so that pupils may use
their constructive powers upon materials
they understand. Art for art’s sake is no
motto for primary schools.
II.—“ Teachers do not Read Books
on Education ” (p. 18).
Some reasons for this are given in the
text; one of them may here be empha
sised. Absolute chaos rules in the edu
cational world, the most diverse and
opposite opinions being gravely put
forward year by year; hence such
teachers as would, in normal circum
stances, be interested in books on edu
cation regard them with utter scepticism
and distrust. Thring’s works are full
of brilliance; but there is much doubt
whether anyone is able to extract more
than about three unmistakable and un
ambiguous maxims from them. Spencer’s
Education consists of two useful chapters
and two dubious ones. From Matthew
Arnold’s various books an industrious
teacher would be able to extract a fairly
comprehensive system of educational
philosophy; but—there is the “ extrac
tion ” to do first. Bain’s book is some
what dull, and, belonging as he did to
the same school of thought as Spencer,
he has Spencer’s defects.
All things considered, Dr. Laurie has
probably come nearer than any other
British author to putting forth a com
prehensive system of educational philo
sophy. On all essential matters of
practice he agrees with Herbart, as the
present writer showed in School, 1904 ;
and the agreement is the more striking
as Dr. Laurie objects emphatically to
Herbart’s psychology. But there is just
the lack in Dr. Laurie of what distin
guishes Herbart—-the power to formulate
his philosophy in a way so categorical
and lucid (with the interest doctrine
shown in its relations on the one side to
instruction, and on the other to character)
that the student finds his educational
work flooded with a new meaning.
Herbart’s dicta ring in our ears; Dr.
Laurie’s do not.
In the present note the writer would
like to add Dr. Laurie’s confirmatory
words with respect to the reading of
educational literature. Speaking of the
secondary teacher, he says : “ My answer
is, he does not read. A return of the
books on education, not looked into, but
carefully read, by the masters of public
schools, would surprise........ Ask the
publishers of books on education how
many sell among the 50,000 teachers of
England.”1
____
III.—Herbart and Frobel
(pp. 40, 42).
There is an impression abroad in certain
circles that Herbart and Frobel are at
opposite educational poles. This is far
from being the case.
Herbart is certainly clearer and more
systematic than Frobel. At the sound
of his formulae, education appears before
us clothed and in its right mind.
Teachers discover the meaning of their
1 The Training of Teachers.
�7°
APPENDICES
work. Old rivalries between “ formal ”
studies and “ real ” studies, between
“secular” subjects and “sacred” sub
jects, between an “intensive” and an
“extensive” curriculum, lose most of
their virulence, and the babel of dis
tracting war-cries suddenly dies down to
a murmur. Probably no other educa
tionist possesses anything like Herbart’s
power of revealing the meaning and
scope of education, and of placing its
various problems in a true and illuminat
ing relationship. He opens his PEsthetische Darstellung der Welt with a clear,
almost dogmatic, definition of the “aim”
of education / and, when he proceeds
to write his Allgemeine Pädagogik, he
“deduces” it from that “ aim.”1
2
Fröbel has none of this clearness and
precision, but possesses in its stead an
almost infallible “ feeling ” for what the
child is and needs at each stage of its
existence.
Apart from this, there is mainly a
difference of stress between the two
writers.
Herbart sees clearly enough that the
teacher’s work of “instruction” — of
giving or presenting new ideas in a suit
ably arranged order—is one of immense
formative importance. Facts, informa
tion, ideas, knowledge—these are not
comparatively negligible factors, as many
amateur “ reformers ” of education would
have us believe. They are not negligible
—-they are vitally important, for, as shown
in the Secret of Herbart, they become
built up into “apperception masses,”
which, in the process of taking in more
facts, information, ideas, knowledge, give
rise to “ apperceptive interest,” this latter
being itself of first importance in the
character-forming process. What Milton
said of books may, on the Herbartian
principle, be also said of ideas : they are
“ not absolutely dead things, but do con
tain a progeny of life in them.” What
was passively, or almost passively, taken
in may become a spring that gives out
freely; the afferent becomes the efferent;
“facts ” become “faculty.”
“Instruction,” then, is important in Her
bart’s view because it adds to the apper
ceptive resources of the child, and thus
enhances the possibilities of many-sided
interest. Now, interest is a moral force
of the highest value, even if it extends
only to the realm of physical nature, for
it is an enemy to that great multitude of
vices that spring from idleness of mind or
body. If interest should extend also—
as Herbart in his sixfold classification
demanded—-to the realm of human
nature (the realm of moral ideas), it is
not only an enemy to the aforesaid vices,
but to the other multitude that spring
from sheer impenetrability and callous
ness of mind.
But Frobel might ask, in the common
jargon of the hour, “ Where do I come
in?”
Herbart shows how the germs of a rich
harvest of interest may be implanted or
sown in the soul. But lo ! some germs
are present at birth—already implanted
by a nature or a providence that, here at
least, may fairly be called “ benevolent.”
The child, as the Frobelians show, comes
to us already equipped with a score of
latent or rudimentary interests that need
nothing but stimulus to launch them
forth on their career of blessed activity.
The powder is laid; the spark alone is
wanting. That spark the watchful parent
or teacher can readily supply.
Nature and nurture, the innate and
the acquired, have been the two decisive
factors in the education of every human
being. Herbart stresses the second
factor, though without ignoring the first.
He says, though in other words : “ We,
acting from without; we, providing the
child with ideas, can actually build up
the soul of the child.” Frobel says :
“Yes, but each child has innate and
1 “The one and the whole work of education predestined interests, fondnesses, and
may be summed up in the concept—morality.”
aptitudes; let us use them.” Evolution
2 Allgemeine Pädagogik aus dem Zweck der
Erziehung Abgeleitet—“General Pedagogy De reconciles thetwostandpoints completely.
Herbartian interests are acquired in
duced from the Aim of Education.”
�71
appendices
the child’s lifetime; Frobelian inte of the four boys—in the ideas that have
rests were acquired by the race, and been raining upon them for years. Simi
Conduct a party
are now handed down to the child by larly with adults.
heredity.1 Is there anything fantastic through an historical building, or a
in speculating whether the passion for waxwork show, and one will learn that
making mud pies and sand castles is not interest largely depends on apperception
a relic of early ancestral experiences? masses, and not merely —- sometimes
The fascination of the Frobelian occupa scarcely at all—on native endowments
tions (plaiting, etc.) suggests such prob of a special character.
Professor James’s remarks on interest
lems irresistibly.
and apperception are mainly Herbartian
Frobel says, in effect: “ Do not let
us waste the rich treasure of human in tone, though not to the neglect of the
faculty with which each of us is endowed Frobelian factor. “ An adult man’s in
at birth.” Herbart says, in effect: “ Do terests are almost every one of them in
not let us waste the opportunities of tensely artificial; they have slowly been
built up.” “An idea will infect another
adding to this treasure.”
It would be no hard task, however, to with its own emotional interest when
show that Herbart recognised the value they have become associated together
of occupational work such as that stressed into any sort of a mental total. As there
by the Frobelians. He recommends the is no limit to the various associations
giving of “freer scope for children’s into which an interesting idea may enter,
activity........ Pleasant and harmless occu one sees in how many ways an interest
pations....... provide an outlet for restless may be derived.” “If you wish to
insure the interest of your pupils, there
ness which cannot be pent up.”
Can “faculty” be created I Perhaps is only one way to do it, and that is to
this is the place to discuss Professor make certain that they have something
Adams’s statement, that “ Herbartianism in their minds to attend with. That
cannot create faculty, but it gives the something can consist in nothing but a
previous lot of ideas.” “Our profes
best means of utilising faculty.”
It would be folly to dispute over the use sional ideals and the zeal they inspire
of the term “ create ” in this connection, are due to nothing but the slow accretion
and no doubt “faculty” cannot be created of one mental object to another, traceable
in any absolute sense. We cannot confer backward from point to point till we reach
a “ faculty ” of imagination or of reflection the moment when, in the nursery or in
upon a stone or a tree—there must be a the schoolroom, some little story told,
latent or potential something from the some little object shown, some little
first. But, with this qualification, Her- operation witnessed, brought the first
bartians have a perfect right to say that new object and new interest within our
“ faculty can be created,”if by “faculty” ken by associating it with some one of
we mean all the various possibilities and those primitively there. The interest
powers involved in apperception and now suffusing the whole system took its
interest. One boy has a passionate in rise in that little event, so insignificant
terest in football, another in books, a to us now as to be entirely forgotten.”1
____
third in cigarettes, a fourth in nothing.
These differences need not necessarily IV.—The Faculty Doctrine (p. 40).
be the result of initial differences of
Hobbes, Leibnitz, Condillac, Hegel, and
mind or body ; they may be the result
of differences in the mental atmosphere many other thinkers, have attacked the
doctrine which divides up the mind into
a number of more or less independent
1 This assumes that acquired characters are
transmitted. If that assumption is false, the
above would have to be stated in other terms.
1 Talks with Teachers.
�TV
APPENDICES
faculties (imagination, memory, reason to see merely ignorance or enlighten
ing, etc.). Spinoza, in his bold state ment. In other words, the influence of
ment that “will and intellect are one culture on character is under-estimated,
and the same,” and Herbart, in his owing to the artificial separation of will
emphatic assertion that “the will is rooted from intelligence.
in the circle of thought,” are perhaps
I.
the most pronounced opponents of this
faculty doctrine.
With regard to the first effect of the
It is true that brain research has re faculty doctrine
vealed the existence of certain cerebral
Certain subjects and lessons and
localities devoted to special functions ; methods are supposed to help the
but the latter are motor or sensory, and “ faculty ” of observation ; others the
do not correspond to the supposed “ faculty ” of memory; others the
“ faculties ” of the phrenologists and “ faculty ” of will. At one moment too
older psychologists. The modern ten much value is attributed to “ informa
dency is to lay stress on the unity of the tion ” (when the memory faculty is being
cultivated); at the next moment infor
mind rather than on its multiplicity.
Apart from these speculations, there mation is undervalued as not helping
are three very practical reasons for hold the will in its solitary struggles. Almost
every educational fallacy-—such as the
ing the faculty doctrine in suspicion.
First, it leads educationally to such notorious “Virtue cannot be taught”—
dislocation of the curriculum, with con is traceable to this faulty psychology of
sequent inefficiency and waste of time, faculties. Teachers too often despise
that almost all educationists are agreed “ theory ”; it would be no exaggeration
in regarding it as practically “pestilent.”1 to say that a wrong theory of the mind
Second, it leads to exaggerated stress has done far more harm to education
on “hard pedagogy”—that is, on de than low salaries, professional disrepute,
manding of children mental efforts of and sectarian quarrels.
School “ time-tables ” have had a good
too toilsome a character, on the ground
that such efforts are a good “ discipline ” deal to answer for. Used slavishly, they
for the mind. [Here comes in the lead to the same consequences as those
“fallacy of formal education,” which the of the faculty doctrine, for the same
Herbartians have repeatedly exposed.] fallacy is operative in the two cases. A
In other words, it leads to a deprecia teacher is forbidden by H.M. Inspector
tion of “interest” and “involuntary2 to deal with the subject-matter of a read
(spontaneous) attention ” in favour of ing lesson during the lesson itself, even
“ effort ” and “ voluntary2 (dogged) atten a map being banned though a “ geo
graphy reader ” is being used. “ Reading
tion.”
Third, it is a fruitful source of uncharit is reading.” Thus an artificial separation
able, or at any rate erroneous, judgments is effected between the reception of ideas
upon conduct. Its exaltation of will or (or the comprehension of a subject) and
of free will as a faculty almost inde expression in words. This is perfectly
pendent of intellectual and other con ruinous; reading becomes a “dull”
ditions, and “driving itself through them ” lesson just because we, in our ignorance
(as Dr. Laurie says), tends to make us of educational psychology, will insist on
see devilry or saintship where we ought an artificial divorce of things that should
be kept in natural relationship. Con
1 Miss Mason’s word, in Home Education.
versely, during a geography lesson a
* The words “ involuntary and “volun child answers some question in a slip
tary,” though generally used by English writers shod fashion {eg., “ There ain’t no rivers
on Herbartianisnr, are very misleading. The
words in parentheses may help to prevent mis there ”); the teacher refuses to insist
take.
I on a grammatical or clearly expressed
�APPENDICES
answer because now is the time for geo
graphy, not grammar or composition.
Time-tables have their place; but
when they result in things of this kind
they are pernicious to a high degree.
II.
73
dangerous all this is ! No teacher, short
of positive genius, can help being led
astray.
It is commonly asserted that Herbartianism tends to ignore the bracing effect
of hard mental effort, and thus weakens
the character of children. If it does do
so, the fact is deplorable; but Herbart
never intended or prescribed anything
that would have this effect. One writer,
indeed, says that he “ made a much
larger use of compulsion, both in forcing
attention to study and in controlling the
conduct, than Frobel.”1 “The theory
of interest,” as Professor Adams says,
“ does not propose to banish drudgery,
but only to make drudgery tolerable by
giving it a meaning.” Herbart never
denied that hard, dogged effort was some
times called for ; but he saw more value
normally in the free, happy, “involun
tary” attention that springs from real
interest in a subject than in the “sheer
dead lift of the will ”2 resulting in
“voluntary attention.”3
To any person who brings to the
study of other educationists a certain
familiarity with Herbartian thought,
nothing is more striking than the wide
spread support rendered to Herbart by
many who do not avowedly call them
selves by his name. This is illustrated
by their treatment of the present ques
tion. No man in England has done
more to discourage the study of Herbart
than the late Rev. R. H. Quick, not by
positive depreciation, but by omitting
him from his widely-read book on Edu
cational Reformers. Yet this is how he
writes: “It is wonderful how insigni
ficant a part the will plays in the lives of
most of us. When we have no interests
to guide us, we fall into inanities.” His
whole treatment of the interest question,
of the value of “ involuntary ” (or spon
taneous) attention, and the comparatively
With regard to the second point:—
Except among Herbartian educa
tionists and a few others, there is an
excessive confidence in “ disciplinary ”
subjects. If a subject is hard, it is
supposed to arouse “effort,” make a
child “ self-reliant,” make him “ think,”
etc. If he is able to conquer one set of
difficulties, he is supposed to be able to
conquer every other set. The logical
consequence of this view is an exaggerated
devotion to mathematics, grammar (Latin,
Greek, French, English), and other sub
jects that demand great concentration
of mind; while subjects that confer new
ideas and feed the imagination and the
moral life are despised.
The Herbartians attack this view
because (i) they do not believe that
power over one subject necessarily gives
power over another, unless it is a subject
closely akin to the former. To make a boy
a good mathematician does not necessarily
make him capable of becoming a good
chess player or a good statesman. (2)
They see that there is immense moral
danger in depreciating the nutritive sub
jects, because of their close connection
with culture, apperception, interest, and
character.
A recent passage-of-arms neatly sums
up the two sides. “ A master’s business,”
said Mr. Benson in the Nineteenth Cen
tury, “is to see that there is mental
effort.” “ Not a bit of it,” replied Sir
Oliver Lodge; “ a master’s business is
to supply proper pabulum.”
The writer sees that in the recent
official report on Higher Elementary
Schools the committee record, with
1 Hughes, in FrobeVs Educational Laws.
apparent approval, that “it is the way
* De Garmo’s expression, in Interest and
you teach rather than what you teach Edtication.
that matters” — another form of the
3 Note again the misleading use of the words
“faculty doctrine.” How unspeakably “voluntary” and “involuntary.”
�74
APPENDICES
small rote played by “ voluntary ” (or
“ against-the-grain ”) attention, is Herbartian. “ Buffon has said that genius
is nothing but a power of taking pains,
and interests give this power. Certainly
the chief characteristics of a man are his
interests, and he is strong in proportion
to the strength of his interests, and wise
according to their directions. Interests
lead to all kinds of involuntary action.
But some people have an innate energy
prior to interest, and, though, of course,
taking its direction from interests, capable
of working without them.”1
Miss C. M. Mason has expressed some
very similar opinions with regard to the
will. “It is habit” (under which Miss
Mason includes intellectual habits of
apperception) “which will govern ninetynine hundredths of the child’s life. He
A the mere automaton you describe........
And then, even in emergencies, in every
sudden difficulty and temptation that
requires an act of will, why, conduct is
still apt to run on the lines of the
familiar habit.”2
III.
The third point stands in close rela
tion to the last, but deserves some
attention of its own.
It will be seen that the ultimate ques
tion of free will is left unsolved in
the text—unsolved and probably in
soluble. It would be unprofitable to
enter minutely into a hopeless discussion.
But the more obvious aspects of the
question must be emphasised.
Herbart would have had no sympathy
with the Rev. J. R. Illingworth’s refer
ences to the will. “When we have
traced an occurrence to the intervention
of the human will, we are at once con
tent. It is fully accounted for. We
know not merely how it began, but why,
and have therefore reached its absolute
beginning.” Such a standpoint would
be the ruin of all educational thought.
When we see two men separating at a
street corner, one to go to a library and
1 Quotations from the Life and Remains.
* Home Education.
the other to a public-house, it does not
satisfy the Herbartian to be told : “ The
human will explains everything. You
should be £at once content.’” Mr.
Illingworth’s treatment of motives (appar
ently, after all, the will is not “ fully
accounted for ” without motives!) is
equally unsatisfactory in Herbartian
eyes. “We can frame our own ideals
....... choose which of many suggested
motives we will make our own........ We
can initiate events of which our own will
is the veritable starting-point........ Our
will is an agent whose reason for action
is contained within itself.”1 Think of a
Hoxton child “ framing his own ideals.”
As if every, or almost every,2 “ideal”
that is his was not once borrowed from
his environment. Mr. Illingworth’s atti
tude illustrates what is meant on p. 32
by a “morally aristocratic principle.”
Contrast it with Herbart’s “All action
springs out of the circle of thought.”
“If....... intellectual interests are wanting,
if the store of thought be meagre, then
the ground lies empty for the animal
desires.” “ The whole inner activity has
its abode in the circle of thought. Here
is found the initiative life, the primal
energy........ In the culture of the circle
of thought the main part of education
lies........ The limits of the circle of
thought are the limits for the character.”
Reverting to the general question, the
writer is inclined to say that almost all
pedagogical errors have sprung from the
“faculty doctrine,” and that almost all
the protests of “educational reformers”
have been directed against one or other
of its forms. One or two examples,
chosen almost haphazard, will illustrate
this statement.
1 Divine Immanence.
2 A little hesitation here. There is a genera
tive power in ideas that makes the writer chary
of admitting fully that “no one can beget an
idea by himself” (Miss Mason). If we deprive
the will of primacy and originality, we must be
careful lest we leave the universe with a fixed
amount of psychical energy. Then there is
genius, too. But for educational purposes Miss
Mason’s dictum is important and valuable.
�APPENDICES
Mr. Morley is really protesting against
the faculty doctrine when he says :—
“ ‘ Few, I suppose, will deliberately
assert,’ Mr. Spencer says, ‘ that informa
tion is important and character unim
portant.’ But surely this antithesis is as
unreal as Dr. Magee’s opposition between
freedom and sobriety. The possession
of information is an element in char
acter.”1
Matthew Arnold was protesting against
the same doctrine when he spoke of
“Our notions about culture, about the
many sides of the human spirit, about
making these sides help one another
instead of remaining enemies and stran
gers.”1
23
“ We are called to develop ourselves
more in our totality, on our perceptive
and intelligential side as well as on our
moral side........ Hebraism strikes too ex
clusively upon one string in us. Hel
lenism does not address itself with serious
energy enough to morals and righteous
ness. For our totality, for our general
perfection, we need to unite the two.” 3
V.—The Moral Instruction League
(P- 5°)Far more quickly than the members of
this League ever expected, its aims have
received official approval. In the Edu
cation Code of 1906 moral instruction
is prescribed as an essential part of the
elementary curriculum, and a strong
preference is expressed for such instruc
tion to be direct and systematic, not
merely incidental.
The League is only a few years old.
From the first, its propaganda for the
introduction of moral and civic lessons
has been directed to the educational
bodies of this country; and the feeling
has been that as these, one after another,
fell into line, the solution of the “reli
gious controversy” would come appre
ciably nearer.
The first education authority to be
1 National Education.
* St. Pcm I and Protestantism.
3 Ibid.
75
influenced was that of Leicester. Mr. F. J.
Gould, whose books of moral lessons
are the most valuable of the kind that
have been written in English, visited
a number of Leicester schools, in order
to ascertain* how much “moral instruc
tion ” was given in connection with the
“Scripture lessons.” He found, of
course, that, while there were occasional
stray hints of a moral nature, most of
the lessons were purely historical, geo
graphical, or doctrinal. Even if it were
admitted that such lessons were inter
esting and valuable, it was clear that,
from the standpoint of instruction in the
practical duties of modern life, they were
a failure.
The same inference is to be drawn
from the fact that various educational
bodies have, at different times, added to
the curriculum lessons in temperance,
courtesy, kindness to animals, citizen
ship, and the like—a clear proof that
such moral duties are not taught ade
quately in the course of the Scripture
lessons.
One after another, and with a rapidity
that is in itself eloquent, various educa
tion authorities have adopted the pro
posals of the League, thus tacitly admit
ting that the present system of “ religious ■
instruction ” is inadequate for moral
purposes. At the present moment no
less than thirty-three bodies have taken
this course. The Surrey, Cheshire, West
Riding, and other authorities have
adopted the Graduated Syllabus of the
League almost without change. There
is reason to believe, however, that in the
present state of the curriculum, and with
teachers who have always been told that
morality and civics are the only subjects
that cannot be “ taught,” the work of the
organisation has only begun. It is one
thing to prescribe, a subject ; it is another
to see that it is taught well.
The Moral Instruction League may
become a Moral Education League ;
already it is directing its attention to
the general question of making the
whole work of the school significant
for character-forming. Meanwhile the
�76
APPENDICES
League has every reason to congratulate
itself upon having convinced the Board
of Education and so many educational
authorities that “ virtue can be taught,”
while most of our professors of educa
tion have been reiterating that it cannot.
This last phenomenon is puzzling.
Why should the men who have been
appointed to teach the most advanced
educational thought to student-teachers
have become convinced that “ virtue
cannot be taught,” and have left the work
of converting the nation to a small organi
sation whose average income is less than
the salary of an assistant master ? And
why, on almost every platform, should
an educationist who desires a reputation
for wisdom warn against “ tacking a
moral ” on to a story ? Who are the
creatures that are constantly “ moralis
ing ”? Are they elementary teachers ?
Are they secondary teachers ? The
present writer has heard or read these
warnings many times, but has never yet
known to whom they are addressed.
But he does say: “ Better a thousand
times to ‘tack on a moral’—clumsily,
even brutally—than to allow a child to
grow up with no moral instruction at all.
The moral does no harm to any child,
and may do good to many.”
No doubt our professors mean well.
They think that plenty of good fairy
tales, history, and literature will produce
a moral effect, even though no general
moral maxim, like “ You ought not to
be cruel to animals,” be employed to
sum up that effect. Very true. Apper
ception-material of a moral kind is good
in moral education, just as apperception
material in the form of class experiments
is good in teaching science. But why
on earth the general moral maxim should
be regarded as unsuitable for school,
while the general maxims of science {eg.,
that bodies weigh less in water than in
air) are admitted, passes the understand
ing of the present writer. And it must
be also remembered that by “moral
instruction ” is not meant merely a
system of maxims, but a system of illus
trations leading up to those maxims. In
fact, the method of moral instruction is
precisely the same as the method of all
synthetic instruction : “The teacher must
pass from concrete to abstract.” But it
is better to violate this principle a little
than to act on such absolute and wicked
nonsense as that “ Virtue cannot be
taught.”
There is very little doubt that the
popularity of this maxim, though due
partly to the good psychology above des
cribed, is mainly due to the bad psy
chology of “faculties.” Of course, if
will and character are independent of the
rest of the mind, they cannot be in
fluenced via the mind. The only hope
is in supernatural means.
And that brings us to the third reason
for the popularity of the maxim. Every
ecclesiastic, qua ecclesiastic, believes that
“Virtue cannot be taught.”
Meanwhile, despite the good psy
chology and the bad psychology of our
professors of education and theology, the
hero of the situation is Mr. F. J. Gould.
When the next professorship of edu
cation in England falls vacant, and the
committee of selection ask, not for safe
conventionalism, but for merit and power
and achievement, they will turn to the
man who, in the East End of London,
developed or discovered the same prin
ciple of Anschauung in moral teaching
that Pestalozzi, years before, had developed
or discovered in teaching other things.
For the two achievements are identical
in origin and in essence. The squalor
of Stanz and the squalor of Limehouse
drove each teacher to the concrete. If
only those men who moralise to us about
“ moralising ” would come from the
altitude of those social conditions where
good books and good example and good
traditions render moral teaching less
urgent, down to the regions where blank
moral ignorance prevails, they would be
less glib in giving utterance to bad edu
cational philosophy.
When one travels on a London
omnibus or a workmen’s train, and
notices numberless little acts of annoy
ance (spitting, putting dirty boots on
�APPENDICES
cushions, allowing sparks from a cigalltte
to blow into fellow-travellers’ eyes, etc.),
one is driven to ask whether these acts
spring largely from thoughtlessness or not.
The writer believes that they do, and
that simple systematic moral instruc
tion would be of much use even in
these comparatively trivial matters. Mr.
Paton, moving amid middle-class boys,
is amused at the inclusion of “ cleanli
ness ” in the Syllabus of the Moral
Instruction League ; no one who knows
what the slums are will smile at it. These
critics cannot justify their attitude ;
there is no real philosophy behind them ;
they cannot answer in the negative
the question, “Does evil, partly,at least,
spring from ignorance?” Nay, they im
plicitly give away their case, as Mr. Paton
did in his College of Preceptors lecture
of November 14th, 1906, by tracing sin
to “delusion.” The thing is inexplic
able— this strange prejudice against
direct moral instruction, this strange
sympathy for a mythical boy who has
been ruined by it.
The writer would ask this plain ques
tion : Is there no intellectual element in
good conduct? Was Sidgwick wrong
when he declared that “ the obstacles to
right conduct....... lie partly in the state
of our intellect, partly in the state of
our desires and will....... Let us suppose
that our notion of justice suddenly
became clear....... suppose this, undoubt
edly there would be much less injustice”?
If Sidgwick was right, even the baldest
and most abstract teaching of “ morals ”
must be of some value as destroying moral
ignorance.
____
VI.—Science and the “Humanities ”
(P- 54).
77
and several other subjects as well as any
teacher in the world, he cannot, as a
rule, do quite the same justice to litera
ture or history. These last subjects are
taught better in girls’ schools..
In London, too, there is still a slight
excess of emphasis on “ science,” though
the problem of how to teach this subject
is far more difficult than the parallel
problem of how to teach literature and
history. Almost any teacher with a
liking for literature and history can teach
it fairly well. Much depends on the
“liking”; but neither knowledge nor
liking will necessarily make a successful
science teacher. It is interesting to note
that our greatest scientists admit the
supreme value of humanistic study. “ A
training in science and scientific methods,
admirable as it is in so many ways, fails
to supply those humanising influences
which the older learning can so well
impart. For the moral stimulus that
comes from an association with all that
is noblest and best in the literatures of
the past, for the culture and taste that
spring from prolonged contact with the
highest models of literary expression, for
the widening of our sympathies and the
vivifying of our imagination by the study
of history and philosophy, the teaching
of science has no proper equivalents.
....... You will find in literature a source
of solace and refreshment, of strength
and encouragement, such as no depart
ment of science can give you.”1
VIL—The Bible in Schools (p. 61).
Judging from the trend of affairs, the
Bible seems likely to be excluded, sooner
or later, from primary schools. It is a
pity. Poor, perfunctory, and . unreal
though the teaching has sometimes, if
not frequently, been, many men who
have but small sympathy with militant
Bible-worship regret that Anglican and
Roman ecclesiastics seem determined
to drive education on towards the “logi
cal ” solution of secularism. To say
There is little doubt that our boys’
schools are weaker on the “ humanistic ”
side than on any other. The present
writer’s observations in London go to
confirm what has been his conviction
for many years—namely, that, while the
average class-master in England can pro
1 Sir A. Geikie, in Landscape in History, and
bably teach drawing, writing, arithmetic, other Essays.
�78
APPENDICES
that the Bible is a “ Nonconformist ”
book, and that the use of selections from
it in the school is an “endowment of
Nonconformity,” strikes a mere educa
tionist with amazement, especially in
view of the fact that Nonconformists,
during the last thirty years, have prac
tically done nothing to make Bible
teaching really educational. The writer
in 1902 carefully examined the sylla
buses of Biblical instruction issued by
leading School Boards, and found that
not more than one had any claim to the
respect of an educationist; even the
claim of the one was by no means
obvious.
The chief faults of these syllabuses
can be readily indicated.
Scrappiness. Instead of substantial
pieces from each suitable Biblical work,
a chapter or two, quite divorced from
the context, would be prescribed. The
idea that a great poetical or historical
work loses three-quarters of its effect
when dissected in this fashion had not
dawned upon our syllabus-makers; in
deed, even in the ordinary teaching of
“secular” literature the idea is only
just winning recognition. The bearings
of the apperception doctrine are obvious.
Apperception and interest are less likely
to spring up in connection with a series
of scraps than in connection with a mass
of closely related material.
Selection of unsuitable passages. An
extraordinary passion for the plagues of
Egypt, the conquest of Canaan by
Joshua, and the miracles of Elijah and
Elisha, had seized syllabus - makers.
There is no denying that portions of
these graphic narratives have consider
able interest for children, and might be
treated in a very profitable manner, the
unsuitable portions being replaced by a
brief narrative of the teacher’s. But,
speaking broadly, these three stories are
about the worst that could have been
selected in the whole Bible, and how
anyone could expect the cause of “ reli
gious education ” to be furthered by them
is unintelligible to the present writer.
In addition to the immense difficulties,
critical and theological, involved in these
stories, their ethical content is much
poorer than that of many others; nay,
one may say that the ethical element is
frequently perplexing in the highest
degree.
Omission of most valuable material.
While obviously and stupidly unsuitable
portions of the Bible were forced year
after year into the schools, the very best
portions (of the Old Testament, at any
rate) were entirely ignored. Magnificent
lessons in patriotism and righteousness
could have been based upon certain of
the prophets, especially Amos, Hosea,
Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah; and if,
in addition, the work of these men had
been put into its proper historical and
geographical settings, the humanistic and
culture value of the lessons for upper
standards would have been enormous. It is
almost maddening to think of the wasted
opportunities of the last thirty years.
While opposing religionists have been
wrangling over “religious education,”
educative materialof the very highest value
—poetry and literature and history more
ancient and precious than the vaunted
culture-giving classics of Greece and
Rome—has been under the very noses
of School Board members, Church of
England managers, and school teachers
—-and it has been ignored. None of our
public education authorities, until quite
lately, and very few even now, seem to
have ever thought of exploring this rich
mine of prophetic literature. One after
another the syllabuses have prescribed
the weary round of plagues of Egypt,
etc.
fust at the point where the Hebrew
Bible presents us with first-hand docu
ments, substantially contemporary with
the events they describe, and possessed
of the highest literary merit, the syllabus
leaps over to—Daniel! Amos, Hosea,
Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah—men who
dealt in a practical and wonderfully
modern manner with vice, social tyranny,
crooked politics, and shoddy patriotism,
and put their protests into immortal
forms—these were unanimously ignored.
�79
APPENDICES
It may be admitted that the problem of
teaching the prophets has not yet been
solved; but that the mere idea should
have occurred to scarcely one responsible
person in all England is an amazing fact.
Absence of correlation. While in
secular subjects some slight attempts
are being made to correlate history with
geography, literature with history, etc.,
and thus to call forth apperceptive in
terest more abundantly, little or nothing
of this kind was done in connection with
Biblical teaching. Cross references from
Psalms and Prophets to historical
books like Kings were unheard of;
equally so was the idea of showing
Jewish history in its relation to the great
empires of the East, Assyria, etc. No
“ syllabus ” encouraged these things, and
few teachers had authority or time or
inclination to depart widely from what
was prescribed. Given intelligently, the
Old Testament lessons would be some
of the finest for humanistic purposes in
the whole curriculum, opening children’s
minds to historical periods and names
otherwise unknown, and providing a
splendid array of material for the forma
tion and improvement of the moral
judgment. But by the adopted policy
of isolation, the awakening of appercep
tive interest has been almost an impos
sibility. The results are patent. How
many people, orthodox or heterodox,
“ Church ” or “ Chapel,” have any real
interest in nine-tenths of the Bible ?
Biblical teaching has also had to
struggle against difficulties unknown to
other subjects. Every teacher in Eng
land would have protested scornfully
against using a reading book with the
size, print, heterogeneity, and utter
absence of pictures that characterise the
Bible. Nozvhere in England, to the
knowledge of the writer, has any attempt
been made to put the printed Bible before
children in an attractive form. What
feeling but one of contempt for all the
rival religious parties can an educationist
possess ?
The writer would have been glad to
quote from two little books which, better
than any others, put the case for Biblical
teaching on educational grounds alone—
Matthew Arnold’s Great Prophecy of
Israel's Restoration, with its splendid
preface (Macmillan, is.), and the Rev.
Stewart D. Headlam’s The Place of the
Bible in Secular Education (Brown,
Langham, 6d.). The amusing thing is
that both of these men stand at the
opposite pole to Nonconformity.
In 1902 the present writer wrote The
Reform of Moral and Biblical Education
—a very impertinent and flippant book,
doubtless. The writer regrets some of
the things there written. But the signi
ficant fact is that all recent improve
ments in Biblical curricula (and great
improvements have been made by some
authorities—e.g., those of Hertfordshire,
Newport [Mon.], Hornsey, Bristol, Aberdare—especially the first)—are all in the
directions outlined in 1902.
It is the present writer’s conviction
that, sooner or later, there will be a dis
covery of the humanistic value of the
Bible. The Renaissance of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, when the ancient
classics of Greece and Rome appeared
before men’s astonished eyes in all their
charm, will be repeated—with a dif
ference. We shall learn, all of us—
Churchmen, Nonconformists, and Secu
larists—that most of the Bible stands
apart from sectarian and credal dif
ferences, and that, even if Christianity
perished to-morrow, the Bible should
still have a place in our schools.
But the question is whether, through
the wrangles of the sects, the Bible will
have to be excluded for half a century
first? Maybe. And then we shall be
driven, as the American teachers have
been, to teach the secular “ humanities ”
better than at present.
One final remark. Modern child
study is throwing light upon the problem
of Biblical teaching. “ Boys of this age
(up to twelve) prefer the Old Testament
to the New. There are sound reasons
why it should first be taught them.”1
1 Forbush, in The Boy Problem,
�8o
APPENDICES
The educational tension will be re
lieved as soon as educational amateurs
(bishops, parsons, and platform orators)
are plainly told that they are ignorant of
the elements of modern pedagogy. For
most of them are.
(following the second, which deals with
“ many-sided interest ”) is devoted to
“Moral Strength of Character.” What
can safely be asserted is (1) that, though
a character without intellectual and other
“interests” can be negatively “mofaJ^
and even heroic “according to. its
lights,” nine-tenths of the realm of moral
VIII.—Some Prevalent Errors
conduct will remain, to such ah indi*
ABOUT ÜERBARTIAN TEACHING.
vidual, a terra incognita; many moral
A reviewer in School, January, 1904, claims (p.g., love of abstract truth, of
says that Herbart was “ indifferent to civic duty, etc.) will simply fail to be
natural science and even Miss Dodd “ apperceived ”—they will be meaning
remarks that. “ the Herbartians place less and unintelligible; (2) that in the
history as the centre of all subjects to be vast majority of cases there will not be
studied.”
even “ negative ” morality. The soul
In point of fact, Herbart was advocat that is inadequately supplied with “ in
ing the teaching of science long before terests ” is almost certain to succumb to
the scientific revival of the middle of the the temptations of the world or the
nineteenth century. His sixfold classifi flesh.
cation of interest (as empirical, specula
But, when all this is admitted, there
tive, aesthetic, sympathetic, social, and still remains the necessity for express!
religious) is fairly comprehensive, if not moral training, which will take such
complete and logical. The first three forms as discipline in good habits, thd
sub-divisions fall under the head of possible use of rewards and punishments,
“Interest in Nature,” and will thus in the enunciation of abstract moral maxims,
clude interest in natural science ; the last and the like. It is a strange fact that)
three under that of “ Interest in Human because Herbart, in a lightning-flash of
Nature ”; and a man who is developed genius, perceived the intimate relation
along all six directions will possess that ship between interest and character—a
aesthetic presentation of the universe relationship which, say what one likes, is
which, as early as 1804, Herbart still unknown or ignored or depreciated
declared to be the chief task of by the majority of professional educa
education.
tionists—he must therefore be blamed
The blunder has arisen from the pl*e- for identifying these two things, when, in
dominant influence of Ziller. He, as point of fact, he most expressly distin
Miss Dodd says, “ placed history as the guished them.
centre of all the subjects to be studied.”
The present writer has made a some
But it is erroneous to identify such a what special study of the criticisms
policy with Herbart himself, or with the directed against the Herbartian system,
more rational of his followers, such as and he would like to add that he does
Story and Dörpfeld.
not recollect a single practical criticism
Another common misapprehension is which has any real force as directed
that Herbart identifies interest with against Herbart as an educationist.
morality or goodness. Many and many
The latest British writer on Herbaran attempt has been made to show that tianism, Dr. Davidson, in his New Inters
a man may possess interests of a varied pretation of Herbarfs Psychology and
and powerful character, and may yet be Educational Theory, has done good work
morally contemptible.
in defending Herbart on certain philo
In point of fact, Herbart admits that sophical grounds untouched by the
interest is far from virtue, and the third present writer.
book of the Allgemeine Pädagogik
�ì
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The secret of Herbart : an essay on the science of education
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 80 p. ; 22 cm.
Series title: R.P.A. Extra Series
Series number: 12
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Printed in two columns. First published in 1904. New edition, revised and enlarged, published in 1907. Issued by arrangement with Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., for the Rationalist Press Association Limited. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Herbart's pedagogy emphasised the connection between individual development and the resulting societal contribution. He believed that every child is born with a unique potential, his Individuality, but that this potential remained unfulfilled until it was analysed and transformed by education in accordance with what he regarded as the accumulated values of civilisation. Only formalised, rigorous education could, he believed, provide the framework for moral and intellectual development. The five key ideas which composed his concept of individual maturation were Inner Freedom, Perfection, Benevolence, Justice and Equity or Recompense. [Edited from Wikipedia, 2/2018].
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Hayward, F. H. (Frank Herbert), 1872-1954
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1907
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Education
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Education
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PDF Text
Text
WHY DO RIGHT?
A SECULARIST’S ANSWER.
BY
CHARLES WATTS
( Vice- President of the National Secular Society).
LONDON:
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, E.C.
Price Threepence.
��WHY DO RIGHT?
A
SECULARIST ’S
ANSWER.
Most persons can distinguish between right and wrong;
but it is not so easy to decide why certain actions are right,
and others the very reverse. According to orthodox
Christianity, the sanction for right-doing is a conviction
that our actions should accord with God’s will, and that we
should abstain from the performance of wrong acts through
fear of punishment in some future existence. These are
not the Secular reasons for doing the right thing or
avoiding the wrong. Apart from the difficulty of ascer
taining what the will of God is (for it is nowhere definitely
stated), the value of that will would consist in its nature.
We should ask, Is it just or reasonable to think that
obedience to that will would secure the happiness of the
community ? Is it not a fact that all that can be known of
the supposed will of the Christian God is to be learnt from
the Bible ? But then it should be remembered that the
many representations given of the Divine will in that book
are not only contradictory, but they would, if acted upon,
prove most dangerous to the well-being of society. For
instance, it is there stated that it is God’s will that we
should take no thought for our lives (Matt. vi. 25); that
we should not lay up for ourselves treasures on earth
(Matt. vi. 19); that we should resist not evil (Matt. v. 39);
that we should set our affections on things above, not on
things on the earth (Col. iii. 2); that we should love not
the world (1 John ii. 15); that if we offend in one point of
the law, we are guilty of all (James ii. 10); that we are to
obey not only good, but bad, masters (1 Peter ii. 18); and
that it is good morality to say, “ What, therefore, God hath
joined together, let no man put asunder ” (Matt. xix. 6);
that we should swear not at all (Matt. v. 34); that we
cannot go to Christ except the Father draw us (John vi. 44);
�4
WHY DO RIGHT ?
that we are to labor not for the meat which perisheth
(John vi. 27); that we are to hate our own flesh and blood
(Luke xiv. 26); that those who leave their families for the
“ Gospel’s sake ” shall be rewarded here and hereafter
(Mark x. 29, 30); that men should believe a lie, that they
all might be damned (2 Thess. ii. 11, 12); that the world
cannot be saved by any name except that of Christ
(Acts iv. 12); that salvation should be obtained through
faith, and not of works (Ephes, ii. 8, 9); that the sick are to
rely upon the “ prayer of faith ” to save them (James v. 15);
that if any two Christians agree upon something, and send
a supplication to heaven for that something, it shall be
granted them (Matt, xviii. 19). Now, according to general
experience, if we complied with the will of God, as here
stated, society would not pronounce our actions as right,
but they would be condemned as being hurtful to the
commonwealth.
Secularism is opposed to the orthodox idea that we
should do right through fear of hell. This is the lowest
and most selfish reason for doing good that can be
given. According to the Secular idea, the desire to
do right should not be prompted by merely personal
considerations, but with the object of enhancing the
best interests of others, as well as our own. Besides,
the fear of hell has proved inoperative, either as an
incentive to right action, or as a deterrent to wrong
doing. Even those who profess to be influenced by this
motive have a greater dread of a policeman than of a devil,
and a more vivid conception of a jail than of a hell.
Penalties remote from life do not, by any means, exercise
the same powerful influence upon human conduct as do those
of the present time. The Secular idea of right and wrong
is, that neither is the mere accident of the time, and that
these terms do not represent a condition which is the
result of “ chance
on the contrary, they denote actions
which are the outcome of a law based upon the fitness of
things. The primary truths in morals are as axiomatic as
those in mathematics. Moreover, there is, in the mind of
every properly constituted person, an appreciation of right
and a detestation of wrong. We urge that vice should
be shunned because it is wrong to individuals, and also to
society, to indulge in it; and that virtue should be practised
�a secularist’s answer.
5
because it is the duty of all to assist, both by precept and
example, to elevate the human family. A writer in the
London Echo of August 22 last answers the question why
we should do good apart from theological considerations
in the following pertinent language: Because “certain
actions are followed by more happiness to the actor
than other actions, and because those actions which give
him the most happiness are such as are helpful to
others.
The most highly-developed men have dis
covered this to be true, and the ‘ average ’ man will
ultimately discover it and act on it. Just in proportion as
we become helpful to others we find our own happiness
increasing. And as all our actions inevitably spring from
the desire of our own happiness, it follows that we must go
on becoming more helpful to each other as we develop.
Even those foolish persons who now injure others know
this to a certain extent. Ask a burglar which gives him the
more happiness, to steal or to spend the money he steals
with the woman he lives with ? He will tell you that his
highest happiness is in giving pleasure to his Kate. Ask
Andrew Carnegie which gives him the more pleasure, to cut
his workmen’s wages down or to spend the money in
building a public library ? He will tell you he finds more
pleasure in spending the money for others than in wrench
ing it from his workmen.”
The word “right’’originally meant straightened; hence
the common saying, “putting things to rights,” is understood
as being equivalent to putting them straight or in order.
A writ of right is a legal method of recovering land that
has been wrongfully withheld from its owner, and to right
a ship is to restore it to an upright position. A man
whose acts are deemed good and useful is described as
being “upright ” and “straightforward.” The notion that
legal enactments determine what is morally right and
wrong is as fallacious as the idea that the Bible decides
the question. Many of the laws of our country are based
upon principles the very opposite of what we regard as
morality; while the conflicting teachings of the Bible
disqualify it from being a correct guide in ethical conduct.
It appears to us that, if there are no other standards of right
and wrong but those of the Bible and the law of the land,
then such standards by themselves must be arbitrary,
�WHY DO RIGHT ?
having no universal application to mankind. Possibly some
legal and scriptural commands may be right, but when
they are so it is not because they have the sanction of
Parliament or the Bible, but in consequence of their being
in harmony with the taste and requirements of the public.
That many of the decrees and teachings emanating from
these two sources have been considered wrong is evident
from the fact that men have persistently refused to obey the
one or to accept the other. Take the case of those Free
thinkers, philosophers, and scientists who have so often been
at variance with the Church, and who have refused to obey
certain laws of their country which they deemed wrong.
These men have not only been censured, but sometimes
they have been punished as wrong-doers; and yet,
ultimately, it was proved that they were in the right, and
that the Church and the law were in the wrong. The
standard of the Church and of the law was tradition, custom,
or common belief; the standard of those who were censured
was knowledge. As this knowledge increased the number
of offenders against the stereotyped forms of law, both
human and divine, increased also, until the old foundations
had to yield in favor of those more in harmony with free
dom and justice, and more in accordance with the intellect
of the nation.
By the Secular idea of right we mean that conduct which
is beneficial both to the individual and to the community—
conduct that is in agreement with an enlightened conception
of human duty. It may be admitted that the usefulness of
an act is not always present in the mind of the actor, but it
seems to us impossible to estimate the value of an action
the purpose or result of which is not useful. The real
worth of all actions depends upon the manner in which
they affect our judgment, our feelings, and our general well
being. When we assert that the sense of right-doing exists
in nature, it must not be supposed that we mean it can be
found in a mountain or in the sea; but our meaning is that
it is in that part of nature called human. It is this belief
in the natural basis of right-doing that inspires us with the
endeavor to improve that nature which is the source of all
that is noble. The Secular notion of right and wrong is
based upon reason and experience, which are the surest
guides known to man.
�a secularist’s answer.
7
In considering the question of right and wrong we ought
not to ignore any facts, however unpleasant they may be to
some of us. Human nature has its dark as well as its
bright side. There are men so constituted and so
surrounded by depraved conditions that, from their
actions, one would suppose they prefer doing wrong rather
than right. In many instances men are ferocious, cruel,
and brutal. They practise lying and deception, and injure
and destroy their fellow creatures. Such persons are too
often born in moral corruption and trained in the lowest
form of criminality; they grow up destitute of any selfrespect, and without any sense of right action. People of
this class are the unfortunate victims of a bad environment,
which has contaminated their natures both before and
after birth. If these “ heirs of unrighteousness ” were
spoken to as to the duty they owe to themselves and
to society, probably the replies would be: “As life and
society were thrust upon me, why should I respect either ?
Why should I prefer the straight to the crooked path—the
beautiful in nature to the repulsive ? What advantage is
truth to me when I profit by lying ? Why may I not
repudiate the tyranny involved in the injunction that I
ought to be virtuous ? If I am happy in following my
present course, why should I bother about the effects of my
conduct upon society ?” It will be readily seen that the
man who raises the foregoing questions has no conception of
moral duties and the influence of right action. Moreover,
it is well known that vicious and immoral men are the first
to object to the same kind of conduct which they practise
being directed against themselves. A man may delight in
lying, but no liar likes to be deceived, and no brute in
human form desires to be injured himself. Those who
inflict pain upon others are the first to shudder at the lash
being applied to themselves.
Society itself, notwithstanding the boasted influence of
the Bible and the loud professions of Christianity, has
peculiar ideas of right and wrong. It condemns the killing
of one man as a criminal act; but he who kills thousands is
made a hero. In the one case detestation is evoked, while
in the other honors are bestowed. Hence, the only sense
to which the soldier is amenable is that of duty, not of
right. The public regard his acts as being performed for a
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WHY DO RIGHT
1
good purpose—namely, that of destroying those who are
looked upon as enemies. Our forefathers, we are told,
made this island inhabitable by destroying the wild beasts
that once infested it; but it appears to us that a greater
work than that remains to be done, which is to subdue the
wild passions of man. Christianity has failed to accom
plish this desirable result. As the London daily Times
sometime since remarked : “We still seem, after hard upon
nineteen centuries of Christian influence and experience, to
be looking out upon a world in which the ideal of
Christianity, which we all profess to reverence, is wor
shipped only with the lips. . . . Throughout Europe we
find nations armed to the teeth, devoting their main
energies to the perfection of their fighting material and the
victualling of their fighting men, and the keenest of their
intellectual forces to the problem of scientific destruction.
Beneath the surface of society, wherever the pressure
becomes so great as to open an occasional rift, we catch
ominous glimpses of toiling and groaning thousands,
seething in sullen discontent, and yearning after a new
heaven and a new earth, to be realised in a wild frenzy of
anarchy by the overthrow of all existing institutions, and
the letting loose of the fiercest passions of the human
animal.”
Alas! it is too true that the world, for the most part,
has hitherto worshipped force. Poets, from Homer down
wards, have thrilled thousands with graphic descriptions of
scenes of splendor and of glory. Military renown has been
regarded with greater interest than have the triumphs of
ethical culture. Such men as Alexander the Great and
Napoleon have been exalted to the highest pinnacle of
fame, and their deeds have been extolled as if these men
had been the real saviors of the people. This is a mistaken
adulation and an undue exaltation, which is opposed to the
Secular idea of right. What can be more wicked than
devastating and depopulating countries in order that one
warrior may rival another in what is called military glory.
As John Bright said at Birmingham in 1858 : “ I do not
care for military greatness or military renown. I care for
the condition of the people among whom I live. . . .
Crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war,
wide colonies, and a huge empire are, in my view, all trifles,
�A secularist’s answer.
9
light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them
you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and
happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces,
baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make
a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the
cottage.” Right cannot advance if brutal force remains in
the front.
It may be urged that, if our estimate of men in modern
“ Christian England ” be correct, there is but little chance
of establishing any system of right. Happily, although
what we have written is unquestionably true in some cases,
it is not true of all men. There are other members of the
human family who possess dispositions which enable them
to act rightly, so that the world will be the better for the
part they have played in the great drama of life. These
workers for the public good are influenced by higher laws
than Bibles or Parliaments can command or enforce.
According to the Secular view of right, all persons should
be instructed in the duties of citizenship; they should
be impressed with the necessity of taking an active interest
in all things that pertain to the welfare of life, and to
consider political and social rights as well as those that
refer merely to ordinary every-day conduct. Of course, as
civilised beings, we require some centre of appeal, some
test by which we can determine what is right and what is
wrong. However defective our standard may be con
sidered, and however varied the results of an appeal
thereto may prove, we know of no higher authority to do
right than because it accords with the general good of
society. We regard it as utterly futile to go back to
Bible times, when theology was supreme, to find a test by
which modern conduct shall be regulated. Doing right in
those times meant obeying the will of the despot, and com
plying with the wish of the priest. At that period right
had no relation to the requirements and independence of
the individual. In the evolution of human life the chief
business of men is to translate might into righthand to
substitute mental freedom for intellectual subjection.
Under the influence of the Secular idea of right, it will be
found easier to speak the truth than to endeavor to deceive.
Candid and fair dealing will be looked upon as the sovereign
good of human nature; and the acquirement of, and
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WHY DO RIGHT ?
adherence to, this commendable habit will be found less
difficult than mastering the technicalities of law, the
reasonings of metaphysicians, or the verbose quibbles of
theologians.
The Secular method of establishing a true conception of
right is to continually augment our experiences with the
acquirement of additional knowledge. Although instances
may be quoted of greater fidelity being found in some of the
lower animals than is perceptible in many men, the power
of foreseeing events in the case of the most intelligent of
“ the brute creation ” is not very strongly marked. The
Secular idea of right is that the best judgment possible
should be exercised upon all occasions for the purpose of
discovering what is most calculated to promote individual
and general happiness. Moralists dilate upon the varying
rules of conduct that obtain in different nations and under
different governments. Now, while it is quite true that
various conflicting ideas of right and wrong exist in
different countries, that fact does not exempt people from
performing the duty of considering, in every case, what is
the right course to adopt to secure the welfare of the
nation in which they live. The principle of improvement
applies to all conditions and to all races of men. Take the
important feature of family life : on this point opinions are
entertained of the most opposite character. In one country
men believe in one god and in having many wives, while
in another country men believe in three gods and having
only one wife. And yet both beliefs are deemed right.
The Secular idea is that we should study what is right for
us to do under the conditions in which we live. In this
country there is no doubt that the development of the
affections, and of a due regard to the rights and enjoyment
of others, points to the conclusion that the union of one
man with one woman is the best solution of the marriage
problem. True, the Bible sanctions polygamy, but with
that we are not now concerned ; monogamy is accepted as
the best matrimonial arrangement for us under present
conditions.
It is supposed by some persons that it is too late to
discover anything new in morality. This, however, is a
mistake, because the acquirements of modern life impose
upon us duties that were unknown to the ancients, and
�A SECULARIST S ANSWER.
11
which require, upon our part, an intelligent apprehension
to enable us to perform them with credit to ourselves and
for the benefit of others. Science and learning are valuable
in proportion as they tend to make better men and
women, and inspire within them a desire to promote
general happiness. The endeavor to advance human
felicity is the best evidence of the existence of a living,
active morality, and of a proper sense of right. Let us,
then,
Rest not ! life is passing by,
Do and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time.
Glorious ’tis to live for aye
When these forms have passed away.
Why should we be good ? Theologians would have us
believe that the only satisfactory reply to such a query
must come from Christianity. But, as we have already
shown, the Christian’s reasons for being good are both
selfish and ineffectual. We hope to show that there
are better reasons for goodness than the desire to
please God and to secure everlasting happiness in “ realms
beyond.” The theological delusion, that religion alone
supplies the motive for personal excellence, has arisen
through people entertaining the erroneous idea that
natural means are impotent to cure the evils that dominate
society. It has, however, been discovered that vice must
be dealt with like all else that is human. A supernatural
remedy for moral disease appears to the student of nature
no more reasonable than a supernatural cure for any of
the physical diseases which “flesh is heir to.” When a
man feels the pangs of some physical malady, he knows
that there is some derangement in the organ in which it
occurs ; in addition to applying a remedy, if he be wise, he
will endeavor to discover the cause, so as to avoid the
malady in future. Now, Secularists consider that the
same course should be taken with moral diseases, which
often arise from a morbid condition of the brain, produced
sometimes by the bad arrangements of society, or through
not acting up to the proper duties of life. Virtue and vice
are not mere accidents of the time, but are as much the con
sequence of the operation of natural laws as the falling of
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WHY DO RIGHT ?
a stone or the growth of a flower. The causes of crime
should be investigated as carefully as the causes of cholera
and other epidemics have been. The physical and the
moral are more closely connected than is generally sup
posed, and the influence of the one upon the other is
beyond all doubt very great. Man’s mental and moral
natures both depend upon material organs, and are there
fore influenced by physical forces; and it is not unusual for
the same causes that generate disease to produce crime.
So little, however, do people study the relation of mind to
brain that vice prevails where, with a little judicious
thought and action, virtue might be found. The Secularist
acknowledges these important facts, and, expecting no
supernatural help, he goes earnestly to work himself.
Holding that whatever happens occurs in accordance with
some law, he deems it his business to endeavor to ascertain
what that law is, that he may turn it to some practical
account.
We think that with the extensive knowledge which now
exists, allied with intellectual culture, it is not difficult to
demonstrate that man ought to do his duty for reasons
which belong alone to this life. By the word “duty” we
here mean an obligation to perform actions that have a
tendency to promote the personal and general welfare of
the community. This obligation is imposed upon us by
the requirements of society. For instance, the Secular
obligation to speak the truth is obtained from experience,
which teaches that lying and deceit tend to destroy that
confidence between man and man which has been found to
be necessary to maintain the stability of mutual societarian
intercourse.
Again, our obligation to live good lives is derived from
the fact that, as we are here and are recipients of certain
advantages from society, we therefore deem it a duty to
repay, by life service, the benefits thus received. To avoid
this obligation, either by self-destruction or by any other
means, except we are driven to such a course by what
have been termed “irresistible forces,’’would be, in our
opinion, cowardly and unjustifiable. As to the word
“ought,” the only explanation orthodox Christianity gives
to this term is a thoroughly selfish one. It says you
“ ought ” to do so and so for “ Christ’s sake,” that through
�A
secularist’s answer.
13
him you may avoid eternal perdition. On the other hand,
Secularism finds the meaning of “ ought ” in the very
nature of things, as involving duty, and implying that
something is due to others. As the Rev. Minot J. Savage,
in his Morals of Evolution, aptly puts it: “ Man ought—
what ?—ought to fulfil the highest possibility of his being;
ought to be a man; ought to be all and the highest that
being a man implies. Why ? That is his nature. He
ought to fulfil the highest possibilities of his being; ought
not simply to be an animal. Why ? Because there is
something in him more than an animal. He ought not
simply to be a brain, a thinking machine, although he
ought to be that. Why ? Because that does not exhaust
the possibilities of his nature : he is capable of being some
thing more, something higher than a brain. We say he
ought to be a moral being. Why ? Because it is living
out his nature to be a moral being. He ought to live as
high, grand, and complete a life as it is possible for him to
live, and he ought to stand in such relation to his fellow
men that he shall aid them in doing the same. Why ?
Just the same as in all these other cases : because this, and
this only, is developing the full and complete stature of a
man, and he is not a man in the highest, truest, deepest
sense of the word until he is that and does that; he is
only a fragment of a man so long as he is less and lower.”
The careful and impartial student of nature will discover
that therein continuous law is to be found, but no accidents
or contingencies. And what we call the moral state is one
wherein man is enabled to recognise the wisdom of com
pliance with this law. It is quite true that men may refuse
to obey the moral law, but, if they do, they must suffer in
consequence. This is one reason why men should be good,
inasmuch as the fact of being so brings its own reward. It
not only secures immunity from suffering, and adds to the
health fulness of society, but it exalts those who obey the
moral law in the estimation of the real noblemen of nature.
A man of honor—one whose word is his bond, who practises
virtue in his daily life—wins the respect and confidence of
all who know him, and he thereby sets an example that will
be useful to emulate; and he at the same time acquires for
himself a tranquility of mind known only to the consistent
devotee of human goodness. What is called Christian
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WHY DO RIGHT ?
morality has no sanction in merely natural sentiments and
associations. Nobility of action is supposed by orthodox
believers to be the result of a “ fire kindled in the soul by
the Holy Ghost.” St. Paul is reported to have entertained
the grovelling notion that, if this life is “ the be-all and
end-all,” then “we are of all men the most miserable”;
“ therefore,” says he, “ let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die.” Here the problematical happiness in a problematical
future is put forth as a higher incentive to goodness than
the wish to so regulate our conduct that it will produce
certain beneficial results in our present existence. Persons
who share the views of St. Paul, as set forth in 1 Cor. xv.,
will derive but little pleasure from the virtue of this world.
The satisfaction which should be felt in benefiting mankind
independently of theology falls unheeded on orthodox
believers. They fail to experience happiness simply by the
performance of good works. Virtue, to them, has no charms
if not prompted by the “ love of God.” Nobility, heroism
generosity, devotion, are all ignored unless stimulated by
the hope of future bliss. Christians deny the possibility of
virtue receiving its full reward on earth. If they think
their faith will conduct them safely to the “ next world,”
they appear to have no trouble about its effects in this. A
man who is good only because he is commanded to be so, or
through fear of punishment after death, is not in touch with
the philosophy of modern ethics. The true moral person
is one who does his duty, regardless of personal reward or
punishment in any other world. The Secular motive for
being good is that this world shall be the better for the
lives we have led, and for the deeds we have performed.
Regard for the moral law is not based upon a nega
tion, neither is it a mere question of expediency, but
rather a positive acting principle, working for practical
goodness. A really moral man is one who is interested in
the well-being of others—one who has discovered that he
belongs to the family of men, the social advancement of
which is dependent, more or less, upon each other. Unsocial
beings are those who care for nobody but themselves, and
whose sense of right-doing consists in studying their own
interests without concerning themselves about the welfare
of others. Emerson said : “ I once knew a philosopher of
this kidney. His theory was, ‘ Mankind is a damned rascal.
�a secularist’s answer.
15
All the world lives by humbug; so will I.’ ” Fortunately,
individuals of this type are becoming fewer and fewer, and
are being replaced by men and women in whom are to be
found aspirations for the true, the useful, and the elevating
functions of life. To such members of the human family
as these it can be made evident that truth and honor are
essential to their well-being, and that doing good is an
absolute necessity to the formation and the perpetuation of
a society based on confidence and trust. The virtue of
veracity is the foundation of the true social fabric. Law,
commerce, friendship, and all the embellishments of life rest
upon the great principle of veracity. It is this which gives
the surest stability to all moral obligation. While being
faithful to ourselves, we should never fail to manifest fidelity
in our associations with all members of the community.
Our aim ought always to be to so serve others that we may
help ourselves, and to so serve ourselves as to be helpful to
others. As Pope puts it :•—“ Self-love and social is the same.”
Emerson has said : “The mind of this age has fallen away
from theology to morals. I conceive it to be an advance.”
Undoubtedly this is true, for the intellect of the age is
more than ever finding its justification for being good in
the results of action, rather than in the commands of
creeds and dogmas. The inspiration to goodness is now
recognised as coming from earth, not heaven; from man,
not God. As a recent writer well puts the fact: “ It is
not a belief in an arbitrary personal God which ennobles a
life. Most of the burglars and murderers, most of the
unjust monopolists and cruel sweaters, believe in ‘God.’
It is goodness that ennobles a life, and goodness is not
necessarily associated with godliness. It is not a hope of
heaven that makes a life beautiful. Many who believe in
heaven are very hard to live with here. It is gentleness,
kindness, considerateness, friendliness, love, that make a
life beautiful; and these qualities are not necessarily
associated with a hope of heaven. It is not piety that
wins esteem. There are many pious persons whom you
would not trust with a five pound note. It is fair dealing,
honesty, and fidelity that win esteem; and they are not
associated with piety.”
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WHY DO RIGHT ?
Darwin, in his Descent of Man, gives potent reasons why
we should live good lives. He points out that the
possession of moral qualities is a great aid in the struggle
for existence; that people with strong moral feelings are
more likely to win in the race of life than persons who are
destitute of such feelings. Goodness has in itself its own
recommendation, inasmuch as it secures for its recipients
peace of mind, temperance in their habits, and a sense of
justice in their dealings with others. Men of honor, whose
lives are regulated by the principle of integrity, furnish the
best of all reasons for being good. They are happy in the
consciousness of the nobility of their own nature, and they
derive consolation from the knowledge that they render
valuable service to others by the dignified example they
set, and the exalted lives they live. Those who can see
the worth of virtue and of truth in human character are
embued with a spirit of emulation; they desire to be
associated with a superior order of society. Such members
of the community can readily see that without “ confidence
and trust” the commercial world would collapse. The
same principle applies to the whole of human life, for it is
not simply that “ honesty is the best policy,” but that it is
the only policy which will secure a tranquil state of
existence. Rectitude is the source of self-reliance in life
and at death. Men who are able to distinguish the good
from the bad are attracted by honor and refinement.
They shun malignity and vulgarity, and are repelled by
what is vicious and demoralising. Men should be good
because goodness qualifies them for friendship, and wins
for them the esteem of the best of their kind. Further, it
awakens within them a sense of what is most fitted to
enable them to adopt an elevated mode of living. They
become practical believers in that which is just and useful,
and they are thereby inspired to strive to realise their
ideal born of newer and higher perceptions of truth. Let
the lover of goodness once be admitted into the presence of
the intellectually gifted and morally heroic, and life will
present to him a new aspect. When we read of Plutarch’s
heroes; of Greece with her art and her literature; of Rome
with her Cicero and her Antoninus ; and of the muster-roll
of men and women whose memories are surrounded with a
halo of intellectual brilliancy and ethical glory, we no
�A SECULARISTS ANSWER.
17
longer regard the world as the habitation only of moral
invalids and of mental imbeciles. On the contrary, a
higher faith in the potency and grandeur of human good
ness is evoked, exalted thoughts are inspired within us,
and we are induced to believe that goodness will be more
than ever appreciated for its own sake, and that virtue
will be honored and revered for its intrinsic merits.
While admitting that the moral brightness of life is some
what tarnished by the base, the brutal, the suicidal, and
the insane characters that are still found in our midst, we
believe in the law of progress and the work of reform.
We recognise a powerful motive for being good in the belief
that such conditions may be produced that shall tend to
remove depravity and to establish righteousness. Such
disasters as the cholera, and numerous other epidemics that
once made uncontrolled havoc upon society, have been
checked by the application of suitable scientific remedies;
why, then, should not moral evils be made to yield to
judicious treatment ? When men understand that moral
law is as certain as physical law, and as necessary to be
obeyed if we are to have a healthy state in human ethics,
the reformation of the community will be capable of
achievement. Whether we regard man as the creature or
the creator of circumstances, or as both, it is certain that
his organism and its environment act and re-act upon each
other. While intelligence indicates the best way to pursue
in life, it is obvious that circumstances must be such as to
permit of our pursuing that way. From what we know of
human nature, it appears to us necessary that it should be
surrounded with inducements that have the power to draw
out the best that is in it. It has been well said that man
is a bundle of habits ; therefore moral forces become strong
as they become a part of the habit of life. We cannot
reasonably expect the State to be ruled by right and love
unless these virtues exist in the citizens. No nation has
ever attempted to live like a society of friends—without
gaols, policemen, etc.—because the idea of moral duty has
been only partially realised. In proportion as we properly
understand the nature of goodness, and regulate our lives
by its genius, so shall we be governed by ideas instead of
by force. The misfortune of our present societarian condition
is the difficulty attending its improvement. Although, like
�18
WHY DO RIGHT ?
trees, we grow and expand from within, there seems, as it
were, an iron band around us, that prevents our free expan
sion and our full growth. The quality of our acts may be
good in a certain degree, but it is not of the required
strength. The quality has been impoverished through
neglect and theological adulteration; and what is now
required is persistent and intelligent conduct, that shall
purify life, and rid it of the legacy of the ignorance, the
folly, and the superstition of the dark past. Our hope is
in purification ; we want earnestness and candor to take the
•place of the apathy and hypocrisy which have so long held
sway. Then real goodness will illuminate the hearts of
men, and virtue will shed its lustre upon the emancipated
humanity of the world.
Why should we be good 1 The answer, from a Secular
standpoint, is : Because goodness, in itself, is the basis of all
true happiness; it is the progenitor of peace, order, and
progress. To be good is a duty we owe to society as well
as to- ourselves. In virtue alone are to be found those
elements that ennoble character and exalt a nation. . The
unselfish love of goodness, and the desire to acquire a
practical knowledge of the obligations of life, have hitherto
been too much confined to the few, while the many have
neglected to strive to realise the highest advantages of
existence. The cause of this misfortune is not difficult to
discover. It is apparent in the radical evil underlying the
whole of the theological creeds of Christendom—namely,
an objection to concentrate attention on the present life,
apart from considerations of any existence “ hereafter.”
The mistake in the theological world is that its members
regulate their conduct and control their actions almost
exclusively by the records of the past or the conjectures of
a future. Their rules of morality, their systems of theology,
and their modes of thought are too much a reflex of an
imperfect antiquity. Those who cannot derive sufficient
inspiration from this source fly into the fancied boun
daries of another world—a world which is enveloped
in obscurity, and upon which experience can throw no light.
History has been subverted by this theological error from
its proper purpose. Instead of beihg the interpreter of
ages, it has become the dictator of nations ; instead of being
a guide to the future, it is really the master of the present.
�A secularist’s
answer.
19
The proceedings of bygone times are thus made the standard
of appeal in these. The wisdom of the first century is
regarded as the infallible rule of the nineteenth. The
watchword of the Church is “As you were,” rather than
“As you are.” Christian theology hesitates to recognise
active progressive principles, but holds that faith was stereo
typed eighteen hundred years ago, and that all subsequent
actions and duties must be shaped in its mould. Secularism
prefers the healthy and progressive sentiments thus ex
pressed by J. R. Lowell:—
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth ;
They must upward still, and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth.
Orthodox Christianity appeals to the desires and fears
of mankind. It is presented to the world under the two
aspects of hope and dread. Some persons regard it as a
system of love, offering them a pleasant future, stimulating
within. them hopes delightful to indulge, and supplying
their imagination with splendors enchanting to con
template. On the other hand, many reject Christianity
because it contains gloomy forebodings, presenting to them
a being who is represented as constantly sowing the seeds
of discord and unhappiness among society, who has nothing
but frowns for the smiles of life, and whose chief business
it is to crush and awe the minds of men with fear and
apprehension. If Christianity furnishes its believers with
hopes of heaven to buoy them up, it also gives them the
dread of hell to cast them down. The one is as certain as
the other. As soon as a child begins to lisp at its mother’s
knee, its young mind is impressed with the notion that
there is “ a Heaven to gain, and a Hell to avoid.” As the
child grows to maturity, this notion is strengthened by
false education and religious discipline, until at last the
opinion is formed which frequently culminates in making
the victim an abject slave to a fancy-created heaven and an
inhumanly-pictured hell. Christians sometimes assert that
to deprive them of their hope in heaven would be to rob
them of their principal consolation. If this be correct,
so much the worse for their faith. Better have no con
solation than to derive it from a creed which condemns to
eternal perdition the great majority of the human kind.
�20
WHY DO RIGHT ?
The true object of rewards and punishments should be
to encourage virtue and to deter vice. Most, if not all, of
the religions of the world have employed these agencies in
the promulgation of their tenets, not, however, as a rule,
in the correct form. Theologians have connected their
systems of rewards and punishments with the profession
of arbitrary creeds and dogmas that have little or no
bearing on the promotion of virtue or the prevention of
vice. The final reward offered by Christianity is made
dependent on beliefs more than on actions. This is unjust,
inasmuch as many persons are unable to accept the belief
that is supposed to secure the reward. Moreover, accord
ing to the Christian system, the same kind of encourage
ment is held out to the criminal who, after a life of crime,
repents and acknowledges his faith in Christ, as to the
philanthropist whose career has been one of excellence and
goodness.
Equally defective and objectionable is the system of
punishment as taught by Christians, making, as it does,
correction to proceed from a motive of revenge rather than
from a desire to reform. Through life we should never
cherish revenge, nor harbor malice. To forgive is a virtue
all should endeavor to practise. Governments who desire
to win national confidence do not seek to make the chief
feature of their punitive laws of a retaliative spirit; they
aim rather to enact measures that tend to the reformation
of the criminal. Now, the drawback to the threatened
punishment of Christianity is, that it offers no incentive to
reformation, for, when once in hell, the victim must for
ever remain, and there no opportunity is afforded for
improvement, and no facility offered for repentance. It
cannot be said that the sufferings of those in the bottomless
pit exercise any beneficial influence upon those on earth,
inasmuch as we cannot witness their torture, and, if we
could, instead of inspiring within us love and obedience,
doubtless it would excite detestation towards the being
who, possessing the power, refused to exercise it to prevent
mankind enduring such barbarous cruelty. The rejected
of heaven are here represented as being the victims of
unutterable anguish; as having to endure tortures which
no mind can fully conceive, no pen can adequately
portray.
�j.
A SECULARIST S ANSWER.
21
This Christian doctrine of punishment is based upon a
principle opposed to all good government. It allows no
grades in virtue or vice. It divides the world into two
classes—the sheep and the goats, leaving no intermediate
course. Now, mankind are not either all good or all bad;
there are degrees of innocence and guilt in each. Horace
recognised this ; hence he said :—
Let rules be fixed that may our rage contain,
And punish faults with a proportioned pain.
Punishment is valuable- only so far as it tends to the
reformation and the protection of society. It has been
shown that hell fire must fail in the former, and experience
proves that it is cpiite as impotent for the latter. Our law
courts are constantly revealing the fact that those who
profess the strongest faith in future retribution have
frequently been remarkable for savage brutality and
uncontrolled cruelty.
If it be asked, Why is Secularism regarded by its adhe
rents as being superior to theological and other speculative
theories of the day ? the answer is, (1) Because Secularists
believe its moral basis to be more definite and practical
than other existing ethical codes; and (2) because Secular
teachingsappear to them to be more reasonable and of greater
advantage to general society than the various theologies of
the world, and that of orthodox Christianity in particular.
That Secular teachings are superior to those of orthodox
Christianity the following brief contrast will show.
Christian conduct is controlled by the ancient, and
supposed infallible, rules of the Bible; Secular action is
regulated by modern requirements and the scientific and
philosophical discoveries of the practical age in which we
live. Christianity enjoins as an essential duty of life to
prepare to die ; Secularism says, learn how to live truth
fully, honestly, and usefully, and you need not concern
yourself with the “how” to die. Christianity proclaims
that the world’s redemption can be achieved only through
the teachings of one person ; Secularism avows that such
teachings are too impracticable and limited in their
influence for the attainment of the object claimed, and that
improvement, general and individual, is the result of the
brain power and physical exertions of the brave toilers of
�22
WHY DO RIGHT ?
every country and every age who have labored for human
advancement.
Christianity threatens punishment in
another world for the rejection of speculative views in
this; Secularism teaches that no penalty should follow the
holding of sincere opinions, as uniformity of belief is
impossible. According to Christianity, as taught in the
churches and chapels, the approval of God and the rewards
of heaven are to be secured only through faith in Jesus of
Nazareth; whereas the philosophy of Secularism enunciates
that no merit should be attached to such faith, but that
fidelity to principle and good service to man should win the
right to participate in any advantages either in this or any
other world.
The ethical science of the nineteenth century derives
little or no assistance from orthodox Christianity. Not
withstanding the fact that Broad Churchism or Latitudinarianism has begun to make some concessions to reason and
scientific progress, and however strongly apparent may be
the desire for compromise on the part of the theologians,
there are still many of the most distinctive doctrines of
orthodoxy which are most decidedly opposed to the
standard of modern ethics and influence. Such, for example,
is the doctrine of vicarious atonement, where paternal
affection is ignored, and where the innocent is made to
suffer for the guilty; that right faith is superior to right
conduct apart from such belief ; and, most especially, that
unjust and equity-defying dogma of eternal condemnation.
It is really beyond the scope of such a system as the
orthodox one to promote the moral development of
humanity. This can only be effectually done by the
action of those social, political, and intellectual forces to
which we are indebted, as it were, for the building up of
man from the very first institution of society. These have
been, are, and ever must be, the moral edifiers of the human
race. Without them true progress is impossible, since it is
by them that we are what we are. It is: (1) the social
activities that have led to the formation, maintenance, and
improvement of human society; (2) the political activities
that have led to the formation, maintenance, and improve
ment of the general government, to the establishment of
States or nations, and to the recognition of the mutual
rights and duties of such States; and (3) the intellectual
�A secularist’s answer.
23
activities that have led to the interchange of human
thoughts, to the formation of literature, to the pursuits of
science and art, to the banishment of ignorance and the
decay of superstition, to the diffusion of knowledge, and,
finally, to all mental progress.
It is said that, without a fixed rule for conduct, all
guarantees to virtue would be absent. Not so; Secularism
recognises a safe and never-erring basis for moral action,
which is taken, not from Revelation, but from the Roman
law of the Twelve Tables, which laid down the broad
general maxim that “ the well-being of the people is the
supreme law.” This may be taken as a fundamental
principle for all time and all nations. The kind of action
which will produce such well-being depends, of course,
upon individual and national circumstances, varied in their
character and diversified in their influence. This
progressive morality is the principle of the Utilitarian
ethics which now govern the civilised world. It is not
merely the individual, but society at large, that is con
sidered. To use an analogy from nature, societarian
existence may be compared to a beehive. What does the
apiarian discover in his studies ? Not that every individual
bee labors only for individual necessities. No ; but that all
is subordinated to the general welfare of the hive. If the
drones increase, they are expelled or restricted, and well
would it be for our human society if all drones who
resisted improvement were banished from among us. In
the moral world, as in religious societies, there are too
many Nothingarians—individuals who thrive through the
good conduct of others, while they themselves do nothing
to contribute to the store of the ethical hive. The
morality of men, their love, their benevolence, their
kindly charity, their mutual tolerance and long-suffering—
all these spring directly from their long-acquired and
developed experience. As the poet of Buddhism sings :—
Pray not, the Darkness will not brighten ! ask
Nought from the Silence, for it cannot speak !
Vex not your mournful minds with pious pains :—
Ah, brothers, sisters ! seek
Nought from the helpless gods by gift and hymn,
Nor bribe with blood, nor feed with fruit and cakes ;
Within yourselves deliverance must be sought;
Each man his prison makes '
�CHARLES WATTS’S WORKS.
The Teachings of Secularism Compared with Orthodox
Christianity, is., by post is. 2d.
Christianity: its Origin, Nature, and Influence. 4<d-, by
post 5d.
Secularism: Destructive and Constructive. 3d-> by post 4d.
The Glory of Unbelief. 3d., by post 4d.
Agnosticism and Christian Theism: Which is the More
Reasonable? 3d-, by post 4d.
A Reply to Father Lambert’s “Tactics of Infidels.” 6d.,
by post 7d.
Theological Presumption.
R. F. Burns, of Halifax, N.S.
An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr.
2d., by post 2j^d.
The Natural and the Supernatural; or, Belief and Know
ledge. 3d., by post 4d.
Evolution and Special Creation. ContentsWhat is Evolu
tion ?—The Formation of Worlds—The Beginning of Life upon the
Earth—Origin of Man—Diversity of Living Things—Psychical
Powers—The Future of Man on Earth. 3d., by post 3%d.
Happiness in Hell and Misery in Heaven. 3d-, by post 3%d.
Science and the Bible. 4d-, by post 5d.
Bible Morality: Its Teachings Shown to be Contradictory and
Defective as an Ethical Guide. 3d., by post 3j^d.
Secularism: Is it Founded on Reason, and is it Sufficient
to Meet the Wants of Mankind ? Debate between the Editor
of the Evening AZh/Z (Halifax, N.S.) and Charles Watts. With
Prefatory Letters by G. J. Holyoake and Colonel Ingersoll,
and an Introduction by Helen H. Gardener, is., by post is. 2d.
Secularism: its Relation to the Social Problems of the Day.
2d., by post 2%d.
Is there a Life Beyond the Grave ? 3d-, by post 3%d.
Education: True and False. (Dedicated to the London School
Board.)
2d., by post 2j^d.
Christianity and Civilisation: Why Christianity is Still
Professed. 3d., by post 3^d.
Saints and Sinners: Which? 3d., by post 4d.
The Horrors of the French Revolution. 3d., by post 4d.
The Existence of God; or, Questions for Theists. 2d., by
post 2%d.
Secularism: Its Relation to the Social Problems of the Day.
2d., by post 2j^d.
Miscellaneous Pamphlets.
232 pp., in neat binding, 2S., by
post 2S. 3d.
London : Watts & Co., 17, Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
�
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Why do right? a secularist's answer
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72
WAS CHRIST A POLITICAL
AND SOCIAL REFORMER ?
CHARLES WATTS'
( Vice-President 0/ the National Secular Society).
LONDON:
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT,
FLEET STREET, E.C.
Price Fourpence.
��WAS CHRIST A POLITICAL AND
SOCIAL REFORMER?
' Although Thomas Carlyle has said that “ in these days it
is professed that hero-worship has gone out and finally
ceased,” thousands of the professed followers of Christ
idolise his memory to such an extent that they appear to
be entirely oblivious of any defect either in his character
or in his teachings. They regard their hero as having been
the very embodiment of truth, virtue, and perfection; and
those persons who are compelled to doubt the correctness
of these assumptions are regarded by orthodox believers
as most unreasonable and perverse members of society.
Probably the principal cause why such erroneous and
extravagant notions are entertained of one who, according
to the New Testament, was very little, if at all, superior to
other religious heroes can be accounted for by the fact that
the worshippers of Christ were taught in their childhood to
reverence him as an absolutely perfect character, and as
being beyond criticism. Thus youthful impressions
resulted in fancied creations which, in matured life, have
been accepted as realities. The Rev. James Cranbrook
recognised this truth, for in the preface to his work, The
Founders of Christianity (page 5), he observes : “ Our own
idealisations have invested him (Jesus) with a halo of
spiritual glory, that by the intensity of its brightness
conceals from us the real figure presented in the Gospels.
We see him, not as he is described, but as the ideally
perfect man our own fancies have conceived. But let any
one sit down and critically analyse the sayings and doings
ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels—let him divest his mind
of the superstitious fear of irreverence, and then ask him
self whether all those sayings and doings are in harmony
with the highest wisdom speaking for all ages and races of
�4
AVAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
mankind, and with the conceptions of an absolutely perfect
human nature, and I am mistaken if he will not find a very
great deal he will be forced to condemn.”
Even the sons of Labor, the apostles of Democracy, and
the advocates of Socialism appear disposed to adopt Jesus
as their Patron Saint. Conjectures are being constantly
made by professed modern reformers as to what the
Carpenter of Nazareth would say upon the many political
and social questions that agitate the public mind in this
the latter half of the nineteenth century. These hero
worshippers seem to overlook the apathy of Jesus in
respect to the evils of his own time. Of course, it is not
difficult for an impartial observer to learn why the name of
Christ is invoked to support the various schemes that are
now put forward to aid the regeneration of society.
However little Christianity is practised among us, it is
extensively professed, and it is thought by many a virtue
to assume a belief, whether there are sufficient grounds for
doing so or not. This slavish adherence to fashion is an
undignified prostration of mental freedom and independ
ence, and it is also a fruitful source of the perpetuation of
error. My purpose in examining the claims set up for
Jesus as a political and social reformer, is to ascertain
if the records of his life, doings, and teachings justify such
claims. If Jesus were judged as an ordinary man, living
nearly two thousand years ago, my present task would be
unnecessary. If we assume that such a man once lived, and
that what he said and did is accurately reported, he. should,
in my opinion, be considered as a youth possessing but
limited education, surrounded by unfavorable influences for
intellectual acquirements, belonging to a race not very
remarkable for literary culture, retaining many of the
failings of his progenitors, and having but little regard for
the world or the things of the world. Viewed under these
circumstances, I could, while excusing many of his errors,
recognise and admire something that is praiseworthy in the
life of “ Jesus of Nazareth.” But when he is raised upon a
pinnacle of greatness, as an exemplar of virtue and wisdom,
surpassing the production of any age or country, he is then
exalted to a position which he does not merit, and which,
to my mind, deprives him of that credit which otherwise he
would, perhaps, be entitled to.
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
5
The contentions which it is my purpose to dispute are :
that Jesus was a political and social reformer, and that
his alleged teachings contain the remedies for the wrongs
of modern society. Before directly dealing with these
points it may be necessary to glance at the various aspects
of reform that have, at different times in our national
history, been presented to the community; also to briefly
consider the nature of the required reforms, and some of
the principal methods that have been adopted to secure
them.
In quite primitive ages important struggles took place
to establish greater equality in the conditions of life. In
the time of Moses, according to the Bible, the land, for
instance, was not merely the subject of “tracts for the
times,” but the laws and regulations relating to it were
practically dealt with. It did not, however, cease to be
property, and its inheritance was recognised as a rightful
thing. The stock-in-trade of many modern reformers is
the denunciation of those who “ add house to house, field to
field, and grind the faces of the poor.” If this condemnation
is one of the many features of Socialism, then Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Ezekiel may, in this particular, be fairly
termed Socialists—a name foreign to their language and to
the ideas of their day.
The contention with some is, that Christ was a successor
to all these prophets, that he took the same kind of
objection as they did to the then existing state of things,
and that he used the same form of speech in denouncing
them. The general reply to this is, that Christ was, if
anything, only a prophetic reformer, not a real one. In
proof of this many facts in his alleged history may be
cited. For instance, he did not rescue the land from the
control of the Romans, who held it from the people very
much in the same way as landholders do now; he did not
attempt to render any aid to the laborers of Rome, who in
his day were resisting the injustice of the capitalists; he
did not deliver his brethren of “ the royal house ” from
their foreign rulers; he did not redeem the Jews from
their social evils, or restore justice to their nation. In a
word, he entirely failed to do the reforming work that was
expected of him. About the year 1825 the “Christian
Socialists of London ” called special attention to the question
�6
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
of land as regulated by Moses, and the living in common
by the early Christians; but no practical issue arose out of
the discussion. From that period down to the present
the same subject has been more or less agitated, and still
the matter is very far from being settled. Now, if it is
alleged that Christ sought to bring about a just settlement
of the land problem, then the existence of the present
oppressive land laws proves that he failed, and that his
most devout followers have been equally unfortunate.
If Christ had been a practical reformer, we should not have
in our midst the deplorable injustice, the wrongs, and the
inequalities that now afflict society. These evils and draw
backs—the growth of centuries during which Christianity
was in power—-will doubtless be lessened, if not altogether
destroyed; but the work will be achieved by a moral
revolution, inaugurated and conducted by men who will
possess ability and experience that it is evident Jesus never
had.
It must be borne in mind that there are two kinds of
revolution—one that is gradual and intellectual, and there
fore useful; the other that is sudden, born of passion, and
therefore often useless as an important factor in securing
permanent reforms. We know that every change of
thought, or condition of things, involves a revolution which,
if controlled by reason and regulated by the lessons of
experience, must aid rational progress, and tend to build up
a State, and secure its permanence. But there is another
kind of revolution, which is sought to be produced by
Nihilism and Anarchism, both of which aim at the
destruction of the State. I am not in favor of either of
these “isms,” believing, as I do, that in our present
condition of society some form of government is necessary.
Law and order, based upon the national will, and the
principle of justice, appear to me to be essential in any
scheme that is accepted for the purpose of furthering the
political and social progress of the world. Then we have
Socialism, which concerns itself with economic, ethical,
political, and industrial questions. The principal subject,
however, dealt with by Socialists is the accumulation
and distribution of wealth. State Socialism dates from
the time of the eminent French writer, Claude, H. Count
de St. Simon, whose works were published in 1831. He
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
tried to secure the amelioration of the condition of the
poor, and aimed at the organisation of labor and the
distribution of the fruits of industry, upon the principle of
every man being rewarded according to his works.
Socialism is, in fact, an attempt (whether it is the best that
could be made is with some persons a debateable point) to
regulate the social relations, making them more equal than
they are at present, either by individual combination, by
municipal or co-operative action, by a philanthropic policy
of the Church, or by the control of the State. This last
phase of the Socialistic scheme means the complete
regulation by law of the equality of individuals, the State
being the owner of the land, and of all the instruments of
industry that are at present possessed by individuals, public
companies, etc., who now regulate, in their own interest,
production and distribution.
Having thus briefly stated the general conceptions and
aims of political and social reformers, the next step is to
inquire in what relation Jesus stands to any or all of them.
Of course there is only one source of information upon the
subject at our command—that of the four Gospels. From
these it will not be difficult to demonstrate that Jesus was
no mundane reformer. Although he was surrounded by
poverty, slavery, oppression, and mental degradation, he
made no effort to rid society of these curses to humanity.
As John Stuart Mill observes, in his work upon
Liberty (pp. 28, 29), in referring to Christian morality:
“I do not scruple to say of it that it is, in many im
portant points, incomplete and one-sided, and that, unless
ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it, had contributed
to the formation of European life and character, human
affairs would have been in a worse condition than they now
are.”
Professor Huxley, in the Nineteenth Century, No. 144,
pp. 178-186, points out that Christians have no right to
force their idealistic portraits of Jesus on the unbiassed
scientific world, whose business it is to study realities and
to separate fiction from fact. The Professor’s words are :
“ In the course of other inquiries, I have had to do with
fossil remains, which looked quite plain at a distance, and
became more and more indistinct as I tried to define their
outline by close inspection. There was something there—
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER
1
something which, if I could win assurance about it, might
mark a new epoch in the history of the earth; but, study as
long as I might, certainty eluded my grasp. So has it
been with me in my efforts to define the grand figure of
Jesus as it lies in the primitive strata of Christian litera
ture. Is he the kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the
catacombs 1 Or is he the stern judge who frowns above
the altar of Saints Cosmas and Damianus ? Or can he be
rightly represented in the bleeding ascetic broken down by
physical pain of too many mediaeval pictures ? Are we to
accept the Jesus of the second or the Jesus of the fourth
Gospel as the true Jesus ? What did he really say and do ?
and how much that is attributed to him in speech and
action is the embroidery of the various parties into which
his followers tended to split themselves within twenty
years of his death, when even the three-fold tradition was
only nascent ? .... If a man can find a friend, the
hypostasis of all his hopes, the mirror of his ethical ideal, in
the Jesus of any or all of the Gospels, let him live by faith
in that ideal. Who shall, or can, forbid him ? But let
him not delude himself that his faith is evidence of the
objective reality of that in which he trusts. Such evidence
is to be obtained only by the use of the methods of science
as applied to history and to literature, and it amounts, at
present, to very little.”
Equally emphatic are the remarks of John Vickers, the
author of The New Koran, etc., who, in his work, The Real
Jesus, on pp. 160, 161, writes: “Many popular preachers
at the present day are accustomed to hold Jesus up to
admiration as the special friend of the poor-—that is, as
the benefactor of the humble working class, and their
representations to this effect are doubtless very generally
believed. But a greater delusion respecting him than this
can scarcely be imagined ; for, however much he may have
been disposed to favor those who forsook their industrial
calling and led a vagrant life, his preaching and the course
which he took were prejudicial to all who honestly earned
their bread. He did nothing with his superior wisdom to
develop the resources of the country and provide employ
ment for the poor; all his efforts were directed to the
unhinging of industry, the diminution of wealth, and the
promotion of universal idleness and beggary. It was no
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
9
part of his endeavor to see the peasant and the artisan
better remunerated and more comfortably housed, for he
despised domestic comforts as much as Diogenes, and
believed that their enjoyment would disqualify people for
obtaining the everlasting pleasures of Paradise. A
provident working man who had managed to save enough
for a few months’ subsistence he would have classed with
the covetous rich, and required him to give away in alms
all that he had treasured as the indispensable condition
of discipleship. On one occasion he is said to have
distributed food liberally to the hungry multitude; but
the food was none of his providing, since he was him
self dependent on alms. Moreover, the recipients of his
bounty were not a band of ill-fed laborers returning from
work/not a number of distressed farmers who had suffered
heavy losses from murrain or drought, but a loafing crowd
who had followed him about from place to place, and
spent the day in idleness. Such bestowment of largess
would only tend to produce a further relaxation of
industrial effort; it would induce credulous peasants, to
throw down their tools and follow the wonder-working
prophet for the chance of a meal; they would see little
wisdom in plodding at their tasks from day to day, like
the ants and the bees, if people were to be fed by
wandering about trustfully for what should turn up, as the
idle, improvident ravens (Prov. vi. 6 ; Luke xii. 24).”
Many eminent Christian writers maintain that Jesus was
a social reformer, because he is represented as having, been
in favor of dispensing with the private ownership of
property, and also of people living together, enjoying what
is called “ a common repast.” Professor Graetz, in the
second volume of his able History of the Jews, devotes a
chapter to the social practices which prevailed at the time
when Jesus is alleged to have lived. On page 117 he
states that Christianity was really an offshoot from the
principles held by the Essenes, and that Christ inherited
their aversion to Pharisaical laws, while he approved of
their practice of putting their all into the common treasury.
Further, like them, Jesus highly esteemed self-imposed
poverty, and despised riches. In fact, we are told that
the “ community of goods, which was a peculiar doctrine
of the Essenes, was not only approved, but enforced.............
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
The repasts they shared in common formed, as it were, the
connecting link which attached the followers of Jesus to
one another; and the alms distributed by the rich publicans
relieved the poor disciples of the fear of hunger; and this
bound them still more strongly to Jesus.” But Graetz
also adds that Christ thoroughly shared the narrow views
held by the Judaeans of his time, and that he despised the
heathen world. Thus he said : “ Give not that which is
holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before
swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn
again and rend you ” (Matt. vii. 6). If this is “ Christian
Socialism,” it is far from being catholic in its nature. The
Socialistic element of having “all things in common ” was
limited by Christ to one particular community ; it lacked
that universality necessary to all real social reforms. It
was similar to his idea of the brotherhood of man. Those
only were his brothers who believed in him. He desired
no fellowship with those who did not accept his faith;
hence he exclaimed : “ If a man abide not in me, he is cast
forth as a branch, and is withered, and men gather them,
and cast them into the fire, and they are burned ” (John xv.
6); “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou
hast given me ” (John xvii. 9); “But he that denieth me
before men shall be denied before the angels of God ”
(Luke xii. 9); “ He that believeth not shall be damned ”
(Mark xvi. 16). This may be the teaching of theology, but
it is not indicative of a broad humanity, neither would it,
if acted upon, tend to promote the social welfare of mankind.
. Professor Graham, M.A., of Belfast College, contends, in
his work, Socialism: Olcl and New, that Christ taught
“ Communism ” when he preached “ Blessed be ye poor,”
when “ he repeatedly denounced ” the rich, and when he
recommended the wealthy young man to voluntarily
surrender his property to the poor. The Professor also
says: “ In spite of certain passages to the contrary,
pointing in a different direction, the Gospels are pervaded
with the spirit of Socialism ”; but he adds : “ It is not quite
State Socialism, because the better society was to be
brought about by the voluntary union of believers.” He
admits, however, that “ the ideal has hitherto been found
impossible; but let not any say that it does not exist in
the Gospels—that Christ did not contemplate an earthly
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER?
11
society.” Now this last point is just what could be fairly
urged, if the Gospels were trustworthy. There can be no
reasonable doubt that the disregard of mundane duties
would be the logical sequence of acting up to many of the
teachings ascribed to Jesus. For instance, he said, “My
kingdom is not of this world ” (John xviii. 36). “He that
loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in
this world shall keep it unto life eternal” (John xii. 25).
“ I am not of the world ” (John xvii. 9). “ Take no. thought
for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor
yet for your body what ye shall put on. . . . Take there
fore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself ” (Matthew vi. 25, 34). “ If
any man comes to me and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life, he cannot be my disciple ” (Luke xiv. 26).
“Everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or
sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands,
for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall
inherit everlasting life” (Matthew xix. 29). Even the
disciple who wished to bury his father was advised by
Christ to forego that duty of affection, for “Jesus said,
Follow me ; let the dead bury the dead.”
The fact is, Christ was a spiritualiser, and not a social
reformer. If he had been to his age what Bacon and
Newton were to theirs, and what Darwin, Spencer, Huxley,
and Tyndall have been to the present generation ; if he had
written a book teaching men how to avoid the miseries of
life; if he had revealed the mysteries of nature, and
exhibited the beauties of the arts and sciences, what an
advantage he would have conferred upon mankind, and
what an important contribution he would have given to
the world towards solving the problems of our present
social wrongs and inequalities. But the usefulness of Jesus
was impaired by the idea which he entertained, that this
world was but a state of probation, wherein the human
family were to be prepared for another and a better home,
where “ the wicked cease from troubling and the weary
are at rest.”
We have thus seen the views of the scientist, the
historian, and the professor, upon the subject under con
sideration ; it will now be interesting to learn what one
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER?
of the successors to the apostles has to say in reference
to the same question. B. F. Westcott, D.D., the present
Bishop of Durham, in his work, Social Aspects of Christianity,
says : “Of all places in the world, the Abbey, I think,
proclaims the social gospel of Christ with the most touch
ing eloquence. ... If I am a Christian, I must bring
within the range of my religion every interest and difficulty of man, ‘ for other foundation can no man lay than
that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.’ ”
This is not by any means correct, for many other
“foundations,” which have nothing to do with Christ,
have been laid, and upon them systems, some good and
some bad, have been built. For instance, there are
Individualism, Socialism, material standards of progress,
unlimited competition, and the application of science.
These are “ other foundations ” that men have had apart
altogether from Christ. But the solution to present social
evils, Dr. Westcott considers, is to be found only in the
Christian faith. He says : “ We need to show the world
the reality of spiritual power. We need to gain and
exhibit the idea that satisfies the thoughts, the aspirations,
the aims of men straining towards the light.” He admits
that science has increased our power and resources; but, he
adds, it “ cannot open the heavens and show the glory of
God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Of
course it cannot; for science has nothing to do with
the impossible, or with the wild speculations of theology.
In the Social Aspects of Christianity, as presented by the
Bishop, it would be difficult, indeed, to recognise the
principles of true Socialism. Moreover, as it is admitted
by him that science has increased our “power and
resources,” it is a proof that Jesus must have been a poor
reformer, when we remember that he did nothing what
ever to aid this strong element of modern progress.
From the references which I have here made to some of
the ablest writers of to-day, it will be seen how Jesus is
estimated by them. I now propose to analyse the various
statements which, according to the Four Gospels, were
uttered by him, that have any bearing upon the political
and social questions of our time. It will then be seen
whether Christ has any claim to be considered a political
and social reformer.
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER?
13
That the political views held by Jesus were exceed
ingly crude is evident from the circumstance recorded in
Matthew xxii. It is there stated that, on finding a coin of
the realm bearing the superscription of Caesar, Jesus
declared that both Caesar and God were to have their due.
The very pertinent question put by the disciples afforded
a good opportunity for some sound advice to be given upon
the political subjection in which the people to whom Christ
was talking were living. They were in bondage to a
foreign power, and were anxious to know if it were
“lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not.” Instead of
returning a clear and intelligible answer, Jesus replied in
words which were evasive and meaningless, so far as the
information sought for was concerned. If he had any
desire to alter the then existing political, relations, or. to
suggest any improvement, he might have given a practical
lesson upon the duties and obligations of the ruled to the
rulers. Another opportunity was lost when, Pilate having
asked Christ an important question, “ Jesus gave him no
answer” (John xix. 9).
Subsequently, however, Jesus recognised the “divine
government,” for he said : “ Thou couldst have no power
at all against me, except it were given thee from above.”
(John xix. 11). He also, having stated, “My kingdom is
not of this world,” added : “ If my kingdom were of this
world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be
delivered to the Jews.” Christ s notions of government
were similar to those of St. Paul, who said: “The
powers that be are ordained of God. . .. . and they that
resist shall receive to themselves damnation (Romans xiii.
1, 2).
Now, in the very face of these scriptural utterances, we
have men to-day who allege that Christ is their hero of
democracy. The belief that he ever intended to. improve
the government of this world by secular means is utterly
groundless. His negligence in this particular cannot be
explained away by saying that society was not ripe for
reform, and that Jesus lacked the power to revolutionise
the institutions of his time. There is truth, no doubt, in
the latter allegation, for the power of Christ for all practical
work seems to have been very limited indeed. He did not
attempt any political reform, as other men in all ages have-
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
done; he did not make honest endeavors to inaugurate
improvements which, under happier circumstances, might
have been carried out. There is no evidence that Christ
ever concerned himself with such reforms as civil and
religious liberty, the freedom of the slaves, the equality
of human rights, the emancipation of women, the spread of
science and of education, the proper use of the land, and the
fostering of the fundamental elements of human progress.
His language was : “ Behold the fowls of the air : for they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet
your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much
better than they ? And why take ye thought for raiment ?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these. Wherefore, if God so clothes the grass of the field,
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of little faith ? But
seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Christ’s declaration that his kingdom was not of this
world may be taken as a reason why he made no adequate
provision for secular government; but those who worship
him assert that his plan is the only one that can be success
fully adopted to secure the desired reforms, and that he
really did contemplate a better state of society on earth
than the one that then obtained. Where is the evidence
that this was so 1 Not in the New Testament, for it is
nowhere recorded therein that such was his mission. With
him the question was : “ For what shall it profit a man if
he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?” Even
Renan, who is so frequently quoted by Christian advocates
as extolling Jesus, admits that he lacked the qualities of a
great political and social reformer. In his Life of Jesus
Renan says that Christ had “ no knowledge of the general
condition of the world ” (p. 78); he was unacquainted with
science, “ believed in the devil, and that diseases were the
work of demons” (pp. 79, 80); he was “harsh” towards
s family, and was “no philosopher” (pp. 81-83); he
“went to excess” (p. 174); he “aimed less at logical
conviction than at enthusiasm”; “sometimes his intolerance
of all opposition led him to acts inexplicable and apparently
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
15
absurd” (pp. 274, 275); and “bitterness and reproach
became more and more manifest in his heart” (p. 278.)
But let us further consider what it is said that he taught
in reference to life’s social requirements, and also what was
his estimate of the world and the things of the world.
Under any system conducted upon rational principles the
first social requirement is to provide for sufficient food,
clothes, and shelter; for to talk of comfort and progress
without these requisites is absurd. Now, it was about
these very things that Jesus, as it has already been shown,
taught that we should take no thought. In Matthew (c. vi.)
special reference is made to the Gentiles who did take
thought as to the necessities of life ; but other people were
not to be anxious upon the subject, “ for your Heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things,” and
a promise is given that he will provide them as he
“ feedeth ” “ the fowls of the air.” Poverty and idleness
were essentials to Christ’s idea of a social state, as is proved
by his advice to the rich young man, to whom he said:
“ If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and
give to the poor” (Matthew xix. 21). In John (vi. 27) it
is also said : “ Labor not for the meat which perisheth.”
What wealthy Christian will sell what he has and give to
the poor, and thus carry out Christ’s idea of social duties ?
And if the toiling millions did not labor for their meat,
they would get but little of it. It is not overlooked
that Jesus said to the young man, “and follow me”;
which meant, I presume, that he was to join the Chris
tian society in which they had “all things common”
(Acts iv.). But this state of existence could only be
maintained by giving up all one’s possessions and adding
them to the general stock. If all did this, the stock would
be soon exhausted. And the point here to be noted is, that
in Christ’s scheme no provision is made to provide for a
permanent mode of living, except by prayer or miracle.
Surely it must be obvious to most people that a
communion of saints, fed directly by God, could not be any
solution of the social problem for those outside such
communities Besides, there is little prospect of outsiders
being made partakers with the saints, unless God the
Father draws them unto Christ (John vi. 44); but no one
can go to the Father except by Christ (John xiv. 6).
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
Thus our chances of admission into the Christian fold are
very remote, for if we are admitted it must be through
Christ, to whom we cannot go unless the Father draws us ;
but then we cannot go to the Father except by Christ.
This is a theological puzzle, which must be left for a
“ Christian Socialist ” to unravel if he can.
The belief that a social condition of society is sustained
by an invisible power, where no labor is performed, and
where no interest is taken in its progress, or in the dignity
and personal independence of its members, is the height of
folly. It implies the destruction of all human institutions,
and the substitution of a “divinely-ordered state of
things,” such as some of Christ’s followers allege they are
now hourly expecting. Well might the late Bishop of
Peterborough say : “ It is not possible for the State to
carry out all the precepts of Christ. A State that
attempted to do so could not exist for a week. If there be
any person who maintains the contrary, his proper place is
in a lunatic asylum ” (Fortnightly, January, 1890).
The Sermon on the Mount, or “in the plain,” as
stated by Luke (vi. 17), has been called the. Magna Charta
of the kingdom of God, proclaimed by Christ, although it
has never been made the basis of any human government.
Its injunctions are so impracticable and antagonistic to. the
requirements of modern civilisation that no serious
attempt has ever been made to put them in practice.
It may be mentioned that the genuineness of the “ Sermon ”
has been boldly questioned. Professor Huxley writes:
“I am of opinion that there is the gravest reason for
doubting whether the Sermon on the Mount was ever
preached, and whether the so-called Lord’s Prayer was
ever prayed by Jesus of Nazareth” (Controverted Questions,
p. 415). The Professor then gives his reasons for arriving
at this conclusion.
The Rev. Dr. Giles, in his Christian Records, speaking of
the Sermon on the Mount, says : “ There is good ground
for believing that such a collective body of maxims was
never, at any time, delivered from the lips of our.Lord’;
and Milman declares that scarcely any passage is more
perplexing to the harmonist of the Gospels than this
sermon, which, according to Matthew and Luke, appears to
have been delivered at two different places.
�*S-'
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
17
Mr. Charles B. Cooper, a very able American writer,
aptly observes: “If this discourse is so important, as
Christians profess to believe—the sum of all the teachings
of Jesus, and the sufficient source of all morality—it is
curious that Mark and John knew nothing about it, and
that Luke should dismiss it with such a short report.
Luke, omitting the larger part of the matter, takes only
one page to tell what occupies three pages in Matthew;
and to find any parallel to much of Matthew we have to go
to other chapters of Luke and to other occasions. In
addition to which, they disagree as to whether it was given
on a mountain or in a plain.”
Taking a broad view of the teachings as ascribed to
Christ, I should describe most of them as being the result
of emotion rather than the outcome of matured reflection.
They are based upon faith, not upon knowledge, trust in
Providence being the cornerstone of his system, so far as
his fragmentary utterances can be systematised. In my
opinion, the idea of his being a political and social reformer
rests upon an entirely mistaken view of the union of what
are termed temporal and spiritual things. Examples of this
maybe seen in such injunctions as “Love one another ”
and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The first was
clearly applicable to the followers of Christ, for he
expressly states, “ By this shall all men know that ye are
my disciples” (John xiii. 35); and the second command
applied only to the Jewish community, not to strangers
who lived outside. These injunctions did not mean that
those who heard them were to love all mankind. Christ
himself divided those who were for him from those who
were against him. To the first he said, “ Come, ye blessed
of my father ”; to the other, “ Depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
It has always appeared to me to be remarkably strange
that Christ should be regarded as the exemplar of universal
love. Neither his own words, nor the conduct of his
followers, justify such a belief. It is, of course, desirable
that a social state of society should be based upon love and
the universal brotherhood of man. This is the avowed
foundation of the religion of the Positivists, their motto
being, “Love our basis, order our method, and progress
our end”; but no such commendable features are to be
B
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER
1
found in the Gospel of Christ, or in the history of the
Church. Jesus declared that his mission was only to “the
lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew xv. 24).
Moreover, the conditions of discipleship which he imposed
would, if complied with, exclude the possibility of love
among all men (Luke xiv. 26); as would also his avowed
object of breaking the peace and harmony of the domestic
circle (Matthew x. 34, 35). It may be said that such are
the contingencies attending the belief and adoption of a
new religion. Be it so; but that only shows the futility
of the contention that Christ established universal brother
hood. It is absurd to argue that he did so, when we are
told in the Gospels that his mission was to the Jews only
(Matthew xv. 24); that he would have no fellowship with
unbelievers (Matthew xv. 26); that he threatened to have
his revenge upon those who denied him (Matthew x. 33);
that he instructed his disciples to “go not into the way of
the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye
not” (Matthew x. 5); and, finally, that he commanded
those disciples, when they were about to start on a
preaching expedition, that “Whosoever shall not receive
you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that
house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I
say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of
Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for
that city” (Matthew x. 14, 15). Shaking the dust from
the feet, be it remembered, was an Oriental custom of
exhibiting hatred towards those against whom the act was
performed. And surely the punishment that it is said was
to follow the refusal of the disciples’ administration was
the very opposite of the manifestation of love. This
accords with the non-loving announcement that “ the Lord
Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty
angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that
know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting
destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the
glory of his power” (2 Thess. i. 7, 8, 9).
These references ought to be sufficient to convince any
one that Jesus cannot be reasonably credited with a
feeling of unqualified love for the whole of the human
race. His conduct, and the general spirit of his teachings
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
19
towards those who differed from him, forbid such a
supposition. His injunctions, if acted upon, would annul
the influence of the ancient maxim of “ doing unto others
as you would they should do to you.” Certainly he failed
to set a personal example by complying with this rule, as
his harsh language to those who did not accept his
authority amply proves. It is reported that Jesus said
(Matthew v. 22), “ Whosoever shall say Thou fool shall be
in danger of hell fire”; yet we find him exclaiming, “Ye
fools, ye fools and blind” (Lukexi. 40; Matthewxxiii. 17).
He advised others to “Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you,” while he himself addressed those who were not
his friends as “hypocrites ” (Matthew vii. 5); “ye serpents,
ye generation of vipers ” (Matthew xxiii. 33). We may
here apply Christ’s own words to himself: “I say unto
you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall
give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy
words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt
be condemned ” (Matthew xii. 36, 37). In Luke (vi. 37)
he counsels us to “forgive, and ye shall be forgiven ”; but
in Mark (iii. 29) it is stated, “He that shall blaspheme
against the Holy G-host hath never forgiveness, but is in
danger of eternal damnation.” The unfortunate point here
is, that we are not told what constitutes blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost.
From these cases, and there are many more in the
Gospels of like nature, it is clear that Jesus taught one
thing and practised another—a course of conduct which
his followers have not been slow to emulate. But such an
inconsistent trait of character disqualifies those in whom it
is found from being the best of social reformers. Example
is higher than precept.
Whatever may be urged in favor of Christ’s supposed
“ spiritual kingdom,” his teachings have but little value in
regulating the political and social affairs of daily life, using
those terms in the modern and legitimate sense, inasmuch
as he has given the world no practical information upon
either the science of politics or of sociology. The affairs of
this world had but little interest with Christ. With him
pre-eminence was given to the soul over the body. We are
not to fear him who can kill the body only, but rather fear
him “ who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell ”
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WAS CHRIST A REFORMER?
(Matthew x. 28). Here we recognise the great defect in
Jesus as a societarian reformer. He treats this world as if
it were of secondary importance, and he furnishes no useful
rules for its practical government. True he says, “ Blessed
are ye poor,” and “Woe unto you that are rich but what
does this amount to ? These empty exclamations will not
abolish pauperism, neither will they produce the organisation
of honest industry, whereby human wants can be supplied
and social comforts secured. Would it not have been
better if Jesus had devised some plan whereby poverty
should become extinct ?
To talk, as Professor Graham does, about producing a
better state of society by a “ union of believers ” is, in my
opinion, folly. How is it to be done ? Every member of
“ the union ” would have to live on the alms of the wealthy
members. It would, in fact, be a society of the destitute
supported by voluntary contributions. Surely no sane
Socialists ever proposed to divide mankind into two
classes—z.e., paupers and those who feed them. We know
what the result of such a policy was in the case of the
Church. As the Professor says, the Church obtained the
funds of the rich in return for certain considerations which
were supposed to affect them in this world and in the next;
and out of such proceeds the clergy distributed bread to
the poor and kept something better for themselves. Thus
Europe for centuries was infested by fat, idle monks . and
an army of miserable beggars. A more detestable condition
of society to men of honor and independent spirit never
existed. Yet this “ Christian plan ” finds favor, as we have
seen, in “ the Abbey,” and is really the necessary outcome of
Christ’s mendicant teachings. For did he not allege that
the poor were blessed, and that “ ye hath the poor always
with you” (Matthew xxvi. 11)? If he contemplated that
the period would arrive when “it should be impossible for
men to be poor,” why did he not give some practical
instructions to hasten its advent ? This would have been
a o-rand contribution to social reform. But his overwhelm
ing anxiety about another life was, with him, the “one
thing needful,” and to it every other consideration had to
give way.
.
I am quite unable to understand how anyone can mistake
the obvious meaning of the parable in which the rich man
u-*** yMita
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
21
appears in hell and the poor man in heaven (Luke
xvi. 19-26). The only assigned reason is that the one was
well-to-do in this life, while the other suffered privations.
This is no justification for either of the men being where
they are represented to have been. For poverty is no
virtue, neither is it a crime to be rich. Men of wealth can
be worthy characters, and poverty may be allied with
much rascality. The wrong does not consist in possessing
riches, but rather in the misuse of them; and, therefore, to
be poor does not seem the highest qualification for future
bliss, and to be rich is not a sufficient cause for anyone
being excluded from an abode of happiness. But this
parable is another illustration of Christ’s exaltation of
poverty. He even dispatched his disciples on a mission of
propaganda, without scrip, money, or purse, to beg their
way through the world (Luke x. 7-10). Is this the highest
model that can be given for a mission to the poor ? It is
thought so little of to-day, even by professed Christians,
that they never adopt the plan suggested by their
“ Master.” They may preach “ Blessed be ye poor,” but
they have no desire to be one of them. They read the
warning, “Woe unto you that are rich; for ye have
received your consolation ” (Luke vi. 24); but they appear
to be exceedingly comfortable with their material consola
tion. “ A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” and
they are consoled more with the riches of this world than
with the chance of having a harp in the next. In the case
of the rich young man (Luke xviii.) it is true Christ
advised the giving up of private property; but it is also
true that the advice was not deemed practical, for the
young man “went away sorrowful” (Matthew xix. 22).
Supposing he had accepted the advice, he would then
have swelled the ranks of the poor unemployed, and
thereby have become the recipient rather than the bene
factor, although it is recorded that “it is more blessed to
give than to receive” (Acts xx. 35). The giving up all
one’s possessions would be as injurious to a community as
the amassing of wealth by the few is pernicious.
What is required is a social arrangement whereby all
members of the community shall have their fair share of
the necessities and comforts of life ; and this arrangement
Christ did not understand, or, if he did, he made no effort
�99!
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
to bring it into force, and consequently he lacked the
elements of a true social reformer.
There is an incident recorded in Luke (xii.) which shows
that Christ refused to say anything upon the subjects of
property, civil rights, and law and government. “ One of
the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother,
that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto
him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you ?”
Here Jesus had an opportunity, as a social reformer, to
give the world an important lesson upon the duty of one
man to another; but he did not avail himself of it. He
acted more like a modern lawyer would do, who, when
asked by a stranger to give him advice, would reply: “I
am not your appointed solicitor ; if you want information,
you must consult your own legal adviser.”
The parable of “ the rich man who set up greater barns,”
related in Luke (xii.), is another illustration of Christ’s
defective teachings in reference to the affairs of this life.
The man in the parable proposed to enlarge his premises so
that he might be able to put by increased stock of fruits
and goods, and thus be in a position to take his “ ease, eat,
drink, and be merry.” There does not appear to be any
great crime in this, for he lacked room wherein to bestow
his fruits, etc. (v. 17). Surely there could be no serious
objection to making such careful provision for “a rainy
day.” Such conduct is frequently necessary to the advance
ment of personal comfort and general civilisation. Have
not Christians in all ages, since their advent, done the
same thing, when they have had the opportunity ? Layingup treasures on earth, although forbidden by Christ, is
often an effective precaution against starvation, and against
being in old age the slave of charity. But for doing this
very thing the man was told : “ Thou fool, this night thy
soul shall be required of thee ; then whose shall those
things be which thou hast provided ?” (v. 20). Jesus then
said, “ Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your
life, what ye shall eat,” etc. Here we have the prominent
Christian requirement of making the duties of this world
subservient to the demands of a future existence put forth
by one who is claimed as being a model social reformer.
If it is alleged that Christ meant that the man in the parable
should have distributed his fruits and goods rather than
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER?
23
store them up, the reply is, the account does not say so.
Why did not Christ, instead of making heaven the principal
consideration, point out the evil influence of the monopoly
of wealth upon human society ? The social problems cannot
be solved by indulging in speculations as to another world,
of which we have had no experience. The principle sought
to be enforced in this parable is evidently that the soul is
of more importance than the body, and that heaven is of
greater value than earth. Thoughtlessness of the things of
time is directly encouraged by reference to the ravens :
“ For they neither sow nor reap; which neither have store
house nor barn; and God feedeth them ” (v. 24).
It is worthy of note that Jesus never once intimated
throughout his career, either by direct statement or
illustration, that this world was the noblest and most
desirable dwelling place for man, and that it was the home
of social felicity and mutual happiness. His heart and
home were in his Father’s house, whither he went to
prepare a place for his followers, to whom he gave a
promise that he would come and receive them unto
himself (John xiv. 2, 3). So little did Christ understand
the philosophy of secular reform that when he condemned
covetousness (which was very laudable upon his part) it
was because he thought it interfered with the preparation
for inhabiting “mansions in the skies,” rather than in
consequence of its effects upon homes on earth. He
entirely overlooked the agencies that promote human
comfort. The means that have been employed to produce
and to advance civilisation received from him no matured
consideration. If every word attributed to him had been
left unuttered, not one feature of modern progress would be
missing to-day. Let anyone carefully read, with an
unbiassed mind, the four Gospels, and then ask himself the
questions : What philosophic truth did Jesus propound ?
What scientific fact did he explain ? What social problem
did he solve ? What political scheme did he unfold 1 The
New Testament does not inform us. On the contrary,
while other men, with less pretensions than himself, were
active in giving the world their thoughts upon these great
questions, Jesus remained silent in reference to them. It
is no answer to say that to deal with the subjects was not
his mission. For, if he came simply to talk about another
�24
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
world, at the sacrifice of the requirements of this, then my
contention is made good that, whatever else he was, he
certainly was no political and social reformer.
It appears to me that the gospel of Christ is a very poor
one for any practical purposes, inasmuch as it never deals
with the material comforts of human beings. It does not
suggest any means by which the poor could obtain that
power by which they could secure the amelioration of their
sad condition. It is not here overlooked that Christ is
credited with saying that those who sought the “Kingdom
of God ” should have food, drink, etc., added unto them
(Luke xii.). But, unfortunately, experience teaches that
such a promise cannot be relied upon, for it is too well
known that many of those persons who occupied much of
their time in seeking the kingdom of God remained
destitute of the necessaries of life. It was during the
prevalence of this superstitious belief, and of an un
reasonable reliance upon Christ, that personal misery and
intellectual sterility prevailed throughout the land. For
many generations the indiscriminate followers of Jesus
failed to give the world any new thought, or to establish
any new political or social institution; and from the
Church nothing of practical secular value emanated during
the fifteen centuries of its uninterrupted reign. This,
however, is not all that can be fairly urged upon this
point. The followers of Christ not only failed to originate
any social scheme for the good of general society them
selves, but they did their utmost to crush those who did.
It appears almost incredible that such persistent efforts
were ever made to extinguish every new thought as those
recorded of Christians, when they had the power to do as
they pleased. New books were despised and destroyed,
and new inventions were said to be the work of the Devil.
True happiness cannot co-exist with physical slavery and
mental serfdom, and yet, it must be repeated, Jesus did
nothing to remove these evils. His apathy towards the
institution of slavery is the more strange if we accept the
authority of Gratz, that Christ was connected with the
Essenes, and that, to some extent, he founded his system
upon theirs. By that community slavery, we are told,
was prohibited ; yet we read that both bond and free were
one in Christ Jesus. Is not this striking evidence that
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
25
Jesus had no intention to seek the removal of this inhuman
blot from the history of our race 1
Those persons to-day who desire to establish a relation
ship between Socialism and Christianity dwell with much
persistency upon Christ’s views as to the division of
property. But let us see what are the facts of the case.
Jesus told those who were willing to leave their homes,
families, and lands for his “ sake and the Gospels ”
(Mark x.), that they should receive “an hundredfold” of
each in this world, besides “ eternal life in the world to
come.” Now, this is ridiculous in the extreme ; for what
possible advantage could it be to any one to have his or
her relatives multiplied a hundredfold ? Besides, where
could Christ get either a hundred mothers to replace
every one that had been forsaken, or a hundred acres of
land to compensate for each one that had been given up ?
And even supposing he could do this, what becomes of the
theory of despising landed possessions ? Moreover, if the
smaller number and quantity were a drawback, the larger
must be more so. Further, there is but little self-denial
involved in parting with ten acres of land to secure a
thousand. It is really surprising that the Jews did not
“ catch on ” in this matter. Probably they saw that it
was all a sham, because Christ had no means of keeping
his promise. Where were the houses, land, etc., to come
from ? Evidently Christ had none, for he appears to have
been entirely destitute of all worldly goods, having “ not
where to lay his head” (Matthew viii. 20). Would not
such an augmentation of property be antagonistic to the
principle Jesus taught on another occasion, when he said
“ lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth ”
(Matthew vi.) ? No marvel that his friends thought he
was “beside himself” (Mark iii. 21), or that the Jews
considered “he hath a devil, and is mad” (John x. 20),
and that “ neither did his brethren believe in him ”
(John vii. 5). If any man at the present time dealt with
the question of property in the same way as Christ is here
represented to have done, he would not be regarded as a
social reformer, but rather as a man whose intellect was
far from being brilliant, and whose ideas were exceedingly
confused. Christ’s reply to the high priest, who asked
him the question, “ Art thou the Christ, the Son of the
�26
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
Blessed?” (Mark xiv. 61), is, to my mind, clear evidence
that he was neither the political nor the social Messiah
that some persons allege him to have been. His reply
was, “ 1 am; and he shall see the son of man sitting on the
right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”
Does not this accord with his statement, “ I am not of the
world,” and “ my kingdom is not of this world ” 1 Should
not this settle at once, as a fact, that the mission of Jesus
was not to be the founder of an earthly government, or
the promoter of a mundane social system ?
As to the idea that Christ will come, as he said, “in the
clouds,” that relates to the future, and has no bearing upon
the present inquiry, the results of which will not be affected
by either the fulfilment or the failure of that prediction.
The question is not what will be, but rather what Christ
did to entitle him to be classified as a secular reformer.
Professor Graham, as we have seen, admits that Christ did
not inaugurate State Socialism, but that he only proposed
a sort of friendly society among Christians themselves. In
doing even this, however, he showed himself sadly defective
in the knowledge necessary to a real reformer. There exists
to-day in this country an old-established Christian sect,
termed Quakers, who keep a common treasury for the
purpose of aiding those of their numbers who are in need.
But, be it observed, they fill their treasury by industry and
the result of laboring “ for the meat which perisheth,” the
very thing that Jesus forbade. The method of the Quakers
is a very charitable one, for it prevents their poorer
members from going to the workhouse, or from begging in
the streets, as other Christians are so often forced to do.
They are enabled, by this plan'of industry and of “ taking
thought for the morrow,” to preserve their dignity and
self-respect, and to receive all the advantages of assistance
without being branded as paupers, who have to forfeit
many rights in consequence of their poverty. This scheme
of mutual aid is not based upon Christ’s advice to “ forsake
all,’’.under the insane idea that they will be kept alive, upon
the same principle that the ravens and the lilies of the field
are; on the contrary, among the Quakers all who can both
“toil and spin.” Jesus, in his method, counselled no sort
of thrift, nor made any provision for the time of need.
There is no record, that I am aware of, that any society of
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
27
men ever lived upon help from heaven without labor, and
due care being taken for the requirements of life. Certainly
such a society does not exist in “ Christian England.”
The burden of Christ’s preaching was, “ Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.” What was meant by this
kingdom it is rather difficult to decide, for it is variously
described in the Gospels. It is certain, however, that,
whether it signified the reign of peace and justice on
earth, or the appearance of Jesus “in the clouds,” neither
event has taken place up to date, although Christ said that
in his time the kingdom was “ at hand.” In Luke (xvii. 21)
it is stated “ the kingdom of God is within you ”; but that
does not quite harmonise with the description given of it
in Matthew (xiii. 47-50), where it is alleged that the
kingdom of heaven is “ like unto a net that was cast into
the sea,” which, when full, had the good of its contents
retained, and the bad cast away. “ So shall it be at the
end of the world,” when the angels are to “ sever the wicked
from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace
of fire : there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Now, if this refers to a condition upon earth, it is not a
very happy one. And in neither case is there any light
thrown upon the rational conduct of men, either politically or
socially. Besides, the repeated references made by Christ
to the approaching end of all earthly institutions render
the idea of his being a reformer of this world altogether
meaningless. The termination of mundane affairs was to
occur in the presence of those to whom Jesus was speaking
(Matthew xvi. 28). Whatever other texts may be cited to
the contrary, the meaning here is clear, that no opportunity
was to be given, and no provisions made, to reform the
political and social conditions of earth. Let any one read
the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and try to harmonise
the declarations there ascribed to Christ with the belief that
his mission was to reform the world, and the impossibility
of the task will soon be evident. True, in Matthew (xxv.)
works of utility are required to secure a place at the
“right hand” of God. But what does this involve?
Uniformity of belief (Mark xvi. 16), and only the relief,
not the cure, of poverty. No scheme was even hinted at
by Christ whereby the great army of the poor and
depraved should be impossible. He was inferior to the
�28
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
French philosopher, who aimed at providing a condition of
society wherein men should be neither depraved nor poor.
To put the matter concisely, what are the factors of
political and social progress ? Briefly, they are these:
The cultivation of the intellect, the extension of physical
and mental freedom, the recognition and the application of
the principle of justice and liberty to all members of the
community, regardless of their belief or non-belief in
theology, the knowledge and application of science and
art, the organisation of labor and the proper cultivation of
the soil, the possession of political power, the under
standing of the true value and use of wealth, and, finally,
the persistent study of, and the constant struggling against,
the numerous evils, wrongs, and injustice that now rob life
of its comforts and real worth. These are the agencies
that all men, who claim to be political and social reformers,
should support and cultivate. Not one of these originated
with Jesus, and throughout his career he never availed
himself of these essentials of all progress. Thus, to
designate him as the great social redeemer is entirely
unjustifiable. His very mode of living was the opposite to
that of a practical reformer. He was an ascetic, and
avoided as much as possible the turmoil of public life,
from which he might have learnt something of what was
necessary to adjust the social relations. Prayer, not work,
was his habit. In the day, and at night, would he retire
to the solitude of the mountain, and there pray to his
father (Luke vi. 12 and xxi. 37). So far did he believe in
the efficacy of supplications to God that he frequently told
his disciples that whatever they asked of his father he
would grant the request (Matthew xviii. 19 ; xxi. 22;
John xvi. 23). That this was a delusion is clear from the
fact that he prayed himself for the unity of Christendom,
that his followers might be one (John xvii. 21); yet from
his time down to the present divisions have always existed
among Christians. He distinctly promised that “What
soever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do” (John
xiv. 13, 14). Relying upon this, the Church for centuries
has been asking that unbelief should cease, and yet we find
it more extensive to-day than it ever was. The lesson
learnt from experience is, that all reforms are the result of
active work, not the outcome of prayerful meditations.
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
29
With all these drawbacks in the character of Jesus, it is
to me marvellous how he can be accepted as a model for us
in the present age. But thousands of his devotees insist
upon claiming him as their Ideal, although they cannot
regulate their conduct by such a standard. Such persons
overlook the fact that, if the better parts of an Ideal are
marred by that which is erroneous and impracticable, it is
comparatively useless as a guide in life. That Christ’s
alleged teachings are so marred the Gospels amply testify.
His conduct, on several occasions, was such as his
followers would not attempt to emulate to-day. Such, for
instance, as his treatment of his parents (Luke ii. 43-49 ;
John ii. 4); his cursing of the fig-tree (Matthew xxi. 18, 19);
his driving the money changers from the temple with “ a
scourge of small cards ” (John ii. 15); his possession of an
ass and a colt, which evidently did not belong to him, and
riding upon both of them into Jerusalem (Matthew xxi.
2-11); his expletives to the Pharisees (Luke xi. 37-44); his
breaking up the peace of the domestic circle (Matthew x.
34-36).
Judged by the New Testament, Christ was certainly not
“The Light of the World,” for he revealed nothing of
practical value, and he taught no virtues that were before
unknown. No doubt in his life, supposing he ever lived,
there were many commendable features; but he was far
from being perfect. While he might have been wellmeaning, he was in belief superstitious, in conduct
inconsistent, in opinions contradictory, in teaching arbi
trary, in knowledge deficient, in faith vacillating, and in
pretensions great. He taught false notions of existence,
had no knowledge of science; he misled his followers by
claiming to be what he was not, and he deceived himself
by his own credulity. He lacked experimental force,
frequently living a life of isolation, and taking but slight
interest in the affairs of this world. It is this lack of
experimental force throughout the career of Christ that
renders his notions of domestic duties so thoroughly
imperfect. The happiness of a family, according to his
teaching, was to be impaired before his doctrines could be
accepted. So far as we know, he was never a husband or a
father ; and he did not aspire to be a statesman, a man of
science, or a politician.
Now, a person who lacks
�30
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
experience in these phases of life is not in the best
position to give practical and satisfactory lessons thereon.
Even in the conditions of life he is said to have filled, this
“ Light of the World ” failed to exhibit any high degree of
excellence, discrimination, or manly courage. As a son, he
lacked affection and consideration for the feelings of his
parents. As a teacher, he was mystical and rude; and as a
reasoner, he was defective and illogical. Lacking a true
method of reasoning, possessing no uniformity of character,
Christ exhibited a strange example—an example injudicious
to exalt and dangerous to emulate. At times he was
severe when he should have been gentle. When he might
have reasoned he frequently rebuked. When he ought to
have been firm and resolute he was vacillating. When he
should have been happy he was sorrowful and desponding.
After preaching faith as the one thing needful, he himself
lacked it when he required it the most. Thus, on the cross,
when a knowledge of a life of integrity, a sensibility of the
fulfilment of a good mission, a conviction that he was
dying for a good and righteous cause, and fulfilling the
object of his life—when all these should have given him
moral strength, we find him giving vent to utter despair.
So overwhelmed was he with grief and anxiety of mind
that he “began to be sorrowful and very heavy.” “My
soul,” he exclaimed, “ is sorrowful even unto death.” At
last, overcome with grief, he implores his father to rescue
him from the death which was then awaiting him.
Christ is paraded as the one redeemer of the world, but
his system lacks such essentials of all reform as worldly
ambition, and reliance upon the human power of regenera
tion. If we lament the poverty and wretchedness we
behold, we are told by Christians that “the poor shall
never cease out of the land.” If we seek to remove the
sorrow and despair existing around us, we are reminded
that they were “ appointed curses to the sons of Adam.”
If we work to improve our condition, we are taught that
we should remain “in that state of life in which it has
pleased God to call us.” When we endeavor to improve
our minds and to cultivate our intellects, we are informed
that “ we are of ourselves unable to do any good thing.”
If we seek to promote the happiness of others, we are
assured that “ faith in Christ is of more importance than
�WAS CHRIST A REFORMER 1
31
labor for man.” We to-day have but a vague idea of the
extent of the influence such teachings once exercised over
the minds of those who believed them. These teachings
have permeated the minds of orthodox Christians, stifling
their reason and perverting their judgment, till they
cherish the delusion that the reasonings of philosophers,
the eloquence of poets, and the struggles of patriots are
all worse than useless unless purified by the “ Spirit of
Christ.” It is such delusions which foster the erroneous
and retarding belief that every thought which does not
aspire to the throne of Christ, every action which is not
sanctioned by him, and every motive which does not
proceed from a love for him should be discouraged as
antagonistic to our real progress in life.
It is contended by some that, although Christ did not
give detailed remedies for existing evils, he taught
“ general principles ” which would, if acted upon, prove a
panacea for the wrongs of life. This was not so, for his
“general principles” lacked the saving power that was
desired. What were those “ principles ” as laid down in
the Gospels ? So far as they can be understood, they were
as follows: Absolute trust in God ; implicit belief in
himself; reliance upon the prayer of supplication; disregard
of the world; taking no anxious thought for the morrow ;
encouragement of poverty, and contempt of riches;
obedience to the law of the Old Testament; neglect of
home and families; non-resistance of evil; that persecution
in this world and punishment in some other would follow
the rejection of Christianity; and that sickness was caused
by the possession of devils. These are among the leading
“ principles ” taught by Christ; and, if they were acted
upon, there would be an end of all progress, harmony, and
self-reliance.
But even if the “general principles”
propounded by Jesus were good, that would not be enough
to make him the greatest reformer. It is necessary, in
addition to knowing what is to be done, to have the
knowledge of how it is to be done. And this is just what
Jesus has not taught us. Principles do not aid progress
unless they can be applied ; and, whatever value his
teachings may have as matters of belief, they are incapable
of application in the great cause of political and social
advancement in the nineteenth century.
�32
WAS CHRIST A REFORMER ?
Judged from the Secular standpoint, the real redeemers
of the world are those who study the great facts of
nature, learning her secrets, and revealing her power and
value to the human family. While Christ devoted himself
to the mysteries of theology, such reformers as Copernicus,
Galileo, Bruno, and subsequently Newton, Locke, Darwin,
and a host of other servants of humanity, endeavored
to the best of their ability to ascertain the truths of
existence, and to vindicate the principle of freedom.
Copernicus and his immediate successors redeemed the
world from errors which for ages had been nursed by the
Church; Locke based his philosophy upon knowledge, not
upon the faiths of theology; Newton contended that' the
universe was regulated by natural law, not by supernatural
power; and Darwin exploded the Bible error of creation.
These redeemers rescued mankind from the burden of
ignorance and superstition that had so long prevented the
recognition of truth and the advancement of knowledge.
Shakespeare contributed more to the enlightenment of the
human race than Christ was capable of doing; Darwin far
surpassed St. Paul in bringing to view the great forces of
nature, and the Freethought heroes and martyrs aided the
emancipation of intellect to a far higher degree than either
the “Carpenter of Nazareth ” or the whole of his followers.
The power that has enabled these secular redeemers of the
world to achieve their glorious results was found, not in
perplexing theologies, but in the principles of Science and
Liberty—the true saviors of men.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Was Christ a political and social reformer?
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 32 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from Cooke, Bill. The blasphemy depot. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Watts, Charles, 1836-1906
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[1895]
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Watts & Co. (London, England)
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Jesus Christ
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Was Christ a political and social reformer?), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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RA1572
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Text
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English
Christianity
Jesus Christ
politics
Social Reform
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EDUCATION:
TRUE AND FALSE.
(RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE
LONDON SCHOOL BOARD.)
BY
CHARLES WATTS,
Vice-President of the National Secular Society.
Price Twopence.
^nnbart:
WATTS & CO., 17, JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET.
1894.
��Education: True and False.
---------- ♦---------
A GREAT struggle is going on at present between the
friends of true education and the supporters of
Christian theology. A similar policy to that which
was in former times employed against science is now
being adopted by orthodox enthusiasts in reference
to education. Then the clergy bitterly opposed
modern science, but they discovered that it was
impossible for them to prevent its progress ; they
therefore made strong efforts to deprive it of its
legitimate influence, by hampering its teachings with
Biblical and theological interpretations. As Professor
Huxley observes in his Lay Sermons: “ In this nine
teenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical
science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew
is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium
of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and
earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo
until now, whose lives have been embittered and their
good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters ?
Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense
of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise
impossibilities—whose life has been wasted in the
attempt to force the generous new wine of science into
the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of
the same strong party ? It is true that, if philosophers
have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged.
Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every
science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules;
and history records that, whenever science and
orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has
been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and
crushed, if not annihilated ; scotched, if not slain.
�4
Education: True and False.
But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought.
It learns not, neither can it forget; and though at
present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing
as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis
contains the beginning and the end of sound science ;
and to visit, with such petty thunderbolts as its half
paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade
nature to the level of primitive Judaism.”
This is precisely what is now happening in the
struggle to establish a free and secular system of
education ; and we have no fear but the results will
be the same as those which followed the conflict of the
Church with science. From the very inception of our
national system of education the clerical party has
carried on a persistent warfare against it. Prior to
1870 the clergy had the absolute control of the instruc
tion of the rising generation, and what were the
results ? True education among children was entirely
unknown, and thousands of boys and girls never even
entered a school, except perhaps a few on Sundays,
when mundane affairs were seldom referred to.
In 1820 only six per cent, of the population were
receiving even the poor instruction then imparted.
Cassell's History of England, says that in the
reign of George III., “ education, either in town or
country, was scarcely known. In our time even there
was not a school in all the swarming region of White
chapel, and many other equally poor and populous
regions of London, much less in country towns and
agricultural parishes. • . . The consequence was, that
the condition of the agricultural population was as
debased morally as it was destitute physically in the
almost total absence of education, the very funds
granted by pious testators for this end being embezzled
by the clergy or squirearchy.”
It is worthy of note that the efforts made in
the early part of the present century on behalf of
education met with the most determined opposition
from the clergy of the Established Church and from
some of the dissenting sects. Even Mr. (afterwards
Lord) Brougham, in seeking to increase the educational
grant and in endeavoring to promote a national scheme
of instruction, found that his greatest difficulty lay
�Education: True and False.
5
with the exponents of the Church. Washington
Wilks, in his history of the first half of the present
century, gives some valuable information upon this
subject, showing the opposition offered by the Chris
tian party to all kinds of education but their own
narrow and imperfect method. Mr. J. M. Ludlow, in
his Questions for a Reformed Parliament, mentions
that when the first grant of £30,000, in 1839, was
proposed by Government for educational purposes,
Canon Wray and the Rev. Hugh Stowell headed an
organisation in opposition to it. In 1843 the English
Dissenters resisted and threw out the Government
Factory Educational Bill. If to-day the Church is
more energetic in the matter of education, it is
because it seeks to counteract the influence of our
Board schools, which sooner or later will destroy the
power of that theology which has ever impeded human
progress and fettered human thought.
The conflict which has recently been going on
amongst the members of the London School Board was
produced from the same cause that originally, for a
time, paralyzed the educational movement. That cause
was the desire to ally with education religious teaching,
in reference to which there were and are so many
various and conflicting opinions amongst its exponents.
Thus it will be seen that a great obstacle to obtaining
at first any national system of instruction was the
diversity of the views entertained by the many sects
of theologians as to what should comprise the religious
element in education. The teachings of the Established
Church were considered by the Nonconformists to be
erroneous and injurious, while the instruction given
by the dissenting bodies was pronounced by Church
men to be “ heretical ” and “ fraught with grave
dangers.” Ultimately it was conceded by Parliament
that the Bible might be read in our public schools, but
that no theological doctrines should be taught. This
•constituted what is called the “ compromise.” In Bir
mingham, however, a determined opposition was
offered by the late George Dawson and others to this
concession upon the ground that as the meaning of
the Bible was a debateable question, it, like all debate
able books, should be excluded from public schools;
�6
Education : True and False.
This is the position we take, inasmuch as it appears
to us to be the only rational and satisfactory solution
of the question. We contend that a National School
which is paid for by all. irrespective of their theo
logical opinions, should be an institution for the teach
ing of that which all require and upon which all are
agreed. This agreement experience teaches us, is con
fined to purely secular knowledge. It is admitted
on all sides that it is essential that children should be
so educated as to prepare them for properly playing
their part in social life, and to afford them a fair
opportunity as far as their natural gifts will permit,
of discharging aright their duties of citizenship. In
order that this may be done, certain secular teaching,
about which there is no dispute, is necessary. Let
therefore the duties of the School Board be confined
to carrying out the generally acknowledged necessities
of education. The moment the question of religious
instruction is introduced, discord arises, and the real
object of the school is interfered with. To teach any
form of religion or to impose Bible reading in our
public schools at the expense of the ratepayers, we
hold to be unjust and to be a revival of the old
Church-rate in a new form. To take a decidedly
secular stand, and to insist upon an absolute avoidance
of every form of theological teaching, we regard as
being the only true course to pursue in opposition to
the proposals made by the clerical party on the School
Board. To simply exclude sectarian teaching as it
is termed is not sufficient while the Bible is retained,
for that book is the source of the perplexity caused,
and of the contradictions found in the theology which,
is sought to be inculcated.
The present struggle in London between Churchmen
and Dissenters has revealed the wish, upon the
part of a large section of the religious party, to use the
public schools and the public funds for the purpose of
teaching incomprehensible dogmas. In other words,
an attempt is being made to convert our Board schools
into miniature churches, and the teachers into mission
aries, for the promulgation of the doctrines now taught
in the orthodox pulpits and in the Sunday-schools.
The leaders of this reactionary movement proceed as
�Education: True and False.
7
if Board schools had been established as nurseries for
the purpose of supplying the Church with congrega
tions as the old members fall off. Now it is quite
certain that nothing of the kind was ever intended by
the originators of the institution of the Board schools.
The fact is that when it was abundantly proved that
millions of children were growing up without any sort
of education under the voluntary Christian system, it
was deemed desirable to make other provisions to
meet the educational wants of the age. The theological
party, of all sects, had failed to prepare the young for
good citizenship; therefore the State took the matter
in hand, and taxed all alike for the common good—
for if we efficiently educate those who in the future
will wield the destinies of the nation, it must be an
advantage, not to one class only of society, but to the
whole of the community. Intellect will, henceforth,
more than ever rule the world, and the better that
intellect is cultivated the better it will be for all
sections of the commonwealth.
It has always been of the utmost importance that
the nature and object of education should be clearly
understood. But it is more than ever desirable that
its true meaning and purpose should be recognised at
the present time, when the members of the Church
party on the London School Board are persistently
striving to subvert the National policy of education.
These theological obstructionists must be reminded
again and again that no man ought to be compelled,
either directly or indirectly, to pay for teaching his
own or his neighbor’s children a religion in which he
does not believe. Public schools ought to be secular,
free from religions of all kinds, for these have always,
with few exceptions in which Christianity cannot be
included, been a constant source of dissension, strife
and dispute. America does her public schooling well,
and is fairly free from what we quaintly call “The
Religious Difficulty.” The Independent (U.S.), refer
ring to certain sections which, even in America, would
like to get hold of the schools, says: “ The time has
come when all religious denominations must affirm
that no public moneys shall be used for sectarian
instruction ; the time-honored principle of the
�8
Education : True and False.
separation of Church and State must be again
emphasized. If a church is not willing to support its
own schools, it cannot come to the State for aid. Our
public schools must be kept free from the touch
of ecclesiastical control. No church has a right to use
ecclesiastical pains and penalties to control the vote of
American citizens.”
The clergy are constantly boasting that the children
of past generations were indebted to the Church for
the education they received. It is true, that before
1870,. religious bodies were active in imparting a
certain kind of instruction in British and National
schools, but little or no education, in its truest sense,
was given. Reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic,
constituted the whole of the instruction which the
children of the working classes received in those
days. Of course, tuition in these four departments is
necessary, but these branches do not comprise
education in its highest and fullest sense ; they are
only the means whereby education is obtained. Even
knowledge is not necessarily education, which consists
in the ability to use what is known wisely, not only
for the benefit of the individual, but also for the
welfare of general society. True education involves
physical and moral training, intellectual discipline,
and the formation of character.
It includes the
imparting of authentic knowledge about the phenomena
of nature and of man. Professor Huxley, in the
March number of Macmillan, 1868, wrote as follows :
“ By. way of a beginning, let us ask ourselves, What is
education ? And, above all things, what is our ideal of a
thoroughly liberal. education ? Of that education which, if
we could begin life again, we would give ourselves—the
education which, if we could mould the fates to our own will,
we would give our children. Well, I know not what may be
your conception upon this matter, but I will tell you mine,
and I hope that I shall find that our views are not very
discrepant. Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life
and fortune.of everyone of us would one day or other depend
upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don’t you
think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to
learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to
have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means
of giving and getting out of check ? Do you not think that
�Education: True and False.
9
we should look with disapprobation amounting to soorn upon
the father who allowed his son, or the State which allowed
its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a
knight ? Now, it is a very plain and elementary truth that
the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us,
and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do
depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game
infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a
game which has been played for untold ages, every man and
woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or
her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces the
phenomena" of the universe, the rules of the game are what
we call the laws of nature. Well, now what I mean by
education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In
other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in
the laws of nature, and the fashioning of the affections and
of the will into harmony with those laws. For me education
means neither more nor less than this: anything which
professes to call itself education must be tried by this
standard, and, if it fail to stand the test, I will not call it
education, whatever may be the force of authority or of
numbers upon the other side.”
This is a kind of education that the Church has never
understood, and therefore has never taught. The Earl of
Hardwick, at the opening of Parliament, November 19,
1867, is reported to have said, “All that was required
for the working classes was to teach them to read the
Bible.” And Dr. Adam Smith states, in his Wealth of
Nations: “The object of religious instruction is not so
much to render the people good citizens in this world,
as to prepare them for another and a better world in
the life to come.” This is the sort of “ education ”
that the Church has imposed upon the rising genera
tion. The result has been that the real object of culture,
which is to elevate and to discipline the moral nature
of man, has been retarded by such theological instruc
tion.
We desire to emphasize the fact that the true object
of all correct education is to cultivate the faculties and
to develop the sympathies that are common to all
members of the human family ; to make them intel
ligent and humane, and to fit them to play their part
in daily life so as to harmonise with the good of all.
By what means can this be accomplished ? We answer,
�10
Education: True and False.
by the acquirement of secular knowledge and the study
and application of the sciences, for these create the
very conditions of existence that secure the greatest
possible amount of social happiness. In order that our
Board schools may be properly utilised for these pur
poses, we submit that the teachers therein should
devote the whole of their attention, when teaching in
school, to the inculcation of practical truths, and leave
speculative opinions concerning theology alone. These
truths are sufficient to tax the ability of the teacher
and to occupy the time of the scholar, without per
plexing their minds with such proposals as Mr. Riley
and his religious supporters wish to be carried out.
These pious enthusiasts would have Bible lessons given,
the Trinity explained, and the children told that Christ
is God.
But, as the London Daily Chronicle aptly
observes, if we once embark on the enterprise of
drawing out a program of theological study for School
Board children we shall court the fate of those who
rush to the letting out of waters. The children will
be taught a particular form of theology by people who
are never weary of denouncing reformers for teaching
“ luxuries ” at the expense of the ratepayers. Nothing
can be more diverting than the attitude of people who
howl with rage because we teach children who are to be
handcraftsmen how to draw a plan, but who wail and
gnash their teeth because we do not teach them
dogmatic theology, and indoctrinate them in the anti
quities of ecclesiastical history. It is worse than folly
to urge that a girl cannot be taught all that is necessary
to make her a good wife and a fond mother without
she is told that the son of Mary had no human father.
How can it qualify a clerk, intellectually or morally,
to be assured that theologically one is three, and three
are one ? Cannot a boy be prepared to become a good
workman without being taught to submit to bad
masters, which is enjoined in the New Testament ?
Will it be impossible to have in the future efficient
statesmen and sound moralists except among such as
taught that the ruling powers in the universe were
established, and are controlled by God ? Such notions
are preposterous and worthy only of the Dark Ages
�Education: True and False.
11
■when theology was master of the situation, and educa
tion amongst the masses was unknown.
The facts of science and the teachings of the Bible
cannot be taught as if they were both true, without
confusing the youthful mind, and causing erroneous
notions to be formed. For instance, if the laws of
nature” are to be relied upon the doctrine of prayer
is a delusion ; if success in life is dependent upon
intelligence and industry, it is not the gift of God ; it
of ourselves we can do no good thing, self-improvement
is impossible ; if disease is caused through a violation
of natural law, it is not the result of the possession of
devils ; if some persons were ordained to condemna
tion before they were born, there is no such thing as
universal salvation ; if “ the wisdom of the world is
necessary to man’s progress it ought not to be described
as being “ foolishness with God.” Finally, if the con
tents of the Bible cannot be understood by eminent
scholars, children ought not to be expected to know
its meaning, and to teach them that which they cannot
comprehend is a waste of time and an injustice to
taxpayers, who contribute money for the education,
not for the bewilderment of the young. This is not a
question only of personal conviction but one of
national concern. Our contention is that the State
has no right to bias the rising generation either tor or
against religion, and every attempt to do so. should be
opposed to the very last by the Secular party.
The crusade which has been carried on by the ortho
dox party against a secular system of education in our
Board Schools is doubtless the result of a mistaken
notion that theology and Bible reading are a preventive
to crime ; and moreover that a “ godless education is
dangerous to the moral condition of society. Now there
is ample evidence, furnished by undeniable facts, that
Bible reading and the teaching of theology, do not
prevent crime or increase the moral status. 1 he truth
is that since the Board Schools have replaced Church
instruction, crime has considerably decreased. In
referring to the early part of the present century, the
Rev. Dr. Milner quotes official figures which show that
during the first seven years of the Bible. Society s
existence, the wickedness of the country, instead of
�12
Education: True and False.
being diminished, had almost been doubled ! For
instance, in 1810 the convictions for crime were 834 ;
but in 1817, when for ten years thousands of additional’
Bibles had been in circulation, the convictions had
increased to 3,177. From a Parliamentary Report of
Sir John Trelawney in 1873, concerning England and
Wales, we learn the following percentage of criminals
to the populationChurch of England, 1 in every
72 ; Dissenters, 1 in every 666 ; Roman Catholics, 1
m every 40 ; and Infidels 1 in every 20,000. The
Pall Mall Gazette recently stated that “ during the
period between October 1, 1891, and October 10, 1892,
there were 629 convictions for various offences, of
clergymen connected with the Established Church.”
The Ghurch Times, some time ago, reported the
Bishop of Dover as saying, at the Conference of the
Canterbury Diocesan Sunday-school Teachers, that he
had tried to trace the career of a hundred of his own
scholars. He was only able to trace seventy-seven,
and of these only two attended church regularly,
while thirty-nine were confirmed drunkards. He
further stated that at Leeds the chaplain of the gaol
reported, that 230 out of 282 prisoners had been
Sunday-school scholars. At Pentonville Prison, out
of 1,000 convicts, 757 had been brought up at Sundayschools. “ The United States Commission of Education
for 1871 ” published some curious figures, from which
it is found that, in examining the educational condition
of eight Bavarian provinces, the following suggestive
facts were presented:—In the first four provinces
there were forty-seven churches, twenty-two schools,
and seventy-one criminals. In the second four
provinces there were ten churches, thirty-four schools,
and only forty-three criminals. Thus it is seen that
those who read the Bible, and also those who preached
from it, were not prevented from becoming criminals ;
while the facts in reference to the Bavarian provinces
show that the School was superior to the Church as a
promoter of the great virtues of life.
Another interesting truth worthy of note is that
during the “ godless ” teaching of our Board schools
crime has decreased. The evidence presented by the
Judicial Statistics of England and Wales for the year
�Education: True and False.
13
ending September 29, 1891, reveals the fact that under
nearly every head of crime there was a marked decrease
compared with those of preceding years. Mr. West,
Q.C., Recorder of Manchester, recently stated that crime
in that city had decreased by two-thirds, and this
improvement he attributed largely to the influence of
Board school instruction. Mr. Howard Evans was
reported in Lloyd's Newspaper of November 27, 1892,
as saying : ii Criminal statistics show that the work of
education has proved morally effective. Only a quarter
of a century ago the population of our convict prisons
was 11,600 ; it is now only 5,000, though our population
has increased ten per cent. Within the same period
the numbers convicted for indictable offences have
fallen from 14,000 to 9,000.” After reading these facts
surely it cannot be contended that Bible reading and
theological teaching are necessary to secure a moral
state of society. It is not here contended that religious
teaching should not be taught under some circum
stances and at some places. What we urge is the
necessity of keeping it from our public schools, so that
these institutions shall be devoted to their original and
legitimate purpose, which is the educating of the young
in the secular requirements of life. Those who believe
in the necessity of Christian instruction (whatever that
way wean) have their churches and chapels wherein
such instruction can be given.
There are other grave reasons why the Bible should
have no official place in our public schools. Its educa
tional teaching is based upon fear and not upon love.
In Proverbs we read : “ A rod is for the back of him
that is void of understanding.” “ Thou shalt beat
him with a rod.” “Chasten thy son . . . and let not
thy soul spare for his crying.” Such Bible injunctions
as these may be the teachings of God, but they are the
very essence of brutality. Moreover, portions of the
Bible are unfit for children to see. Where is the
moral to be derived from such stories as those of Lot
and his daughters, David and his adultery, Jacob and
his wives, Judith and Ruth ? What effect would the
following passages have upon the religious youth in
whom the appetite for strong drinks was hereditary ?
“ Thou shalt bestow thy money for whatever thy soul
�14
Education: True and False.
lusteth after—wine or strong drink ” (Deut. xiv. 26) ;
“ Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish,
and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let
him drink and forget his poverty and remember his
misery no more ” (Prov. xxxi. 6, 7). It may be said
that only the good portions of the Bible are to be read.
If so, these (or precepts equally as useful) can be had
from other books unaccompanied by what is so very
objectionable.
But further, the Bible undoubtedly teaches what is
false upon matters of history, science, philosophy, and
morals ; and yet these are among the Bible lessons
that are to be read. Still, upon each subject the most
glaring errors are propounded.
The teaching
of such fallacies is the more reprehensible because
many of those so-called orthodox saints who insist
upon “ Bible Lessons ” do not believe in them.
Professor Huxley saw the evil and inconsistency of
such conduct. Hence, some years ago, when he was
a member of the London School Board, he addressed
its members as follows. Speaking of the first chapter
of Genesis, he said : “ The reading of this chapter
would convey—whatever the chapter was intended to
convey—that the world was made in six natural days.
I don t say whether this is the right interpretation or
not; but I appeal to the common sense of the Board
whether that is not the interpretation which every
child capable of understanding the English language
would naturally derive from the statement contained
in the book of Genesis ? And, that being the case, it
is perfectly certain that this statement is erroneous,
and no more capable of being disputed than whether
the earth stands still or not. I submit that it is an
absolute crime that this Board should sanction the
instilling into the minds of children statements which
are not true, and which the instruction which they
receive a few years later will infallibly upset............
What I ask, and what I have a right to ask, and
what you as honest men must grant, is this, that
these tender children shall not be taught that which
you do not yourselves believe.”
Thus we plead for purely secular education. Sanc
tions for moral actions depend upon no Bible and upon
�Education: True and False.
15
no supernatural religion. Let our children be taught that
honesty is right, not because they are commanded by
the Bible not to steal, but for the reason that stealing
is an infringement upon the rights of others; that
telling the truth is right, not because lying would offend
any God, but for the reason that falsehood tends to
undermine that confidence which is necessary to the
stability of society ; that honor is due to parents, not
because children may live long, but for the reason that
they are indebted to their parents for life and training.
These are real and natural sanctions, dependent upon
neither theology nor upon “ sacred books.” Finally, we
plead for secular education because it is no part of the
functions of School Boards to seek to increase the
numbers of either Roman Catholics, Protestants, or un
believers. That is a task which should be left to those
who take an interest in either one of the three classes
of society mentioned, and it is their duty to
provide for the cost of the respective propaganda. No
one would complain more vehemently than the Chris
tian if he were called upon to pay for the teaching
of the principles of the National Secular Society.
Why, then, should Secularists be taxed to pay for
the teaching of a theology which they believe to be
the greatest enemy of all correct and useful education?
Is there no justice to be found in the realms of
theology ? Has the orthodox faith blunted within its
devotees all sense of equality and right? We think
that, to a large extent, it has, and our duty as Secular
ists is at least to protect the young, who are unable to
protect themselves, and to remove the snares placed
in their path. We would shield them from the
allurements and the dangerous policy of those who
would sacrifice the mundane welfare of the rising
generation, unless it is sought to be secured by the aid
of a theology that has, during centuries, proved itself
to be the deadliest foe to all noble kand ennobling
aspirations.
�CHARLES WATTS’S WORKS.
The Teachings or Secularism Compared -with Orthodox Chris
tianity. Is, by post Is. 2d.
Christianity : its Origin, Nature, and Influence.
Secularism ; Destructive
and
Constructive.
4d., by post 5d.
3d., by post 4d.
The Glory of Unbelief. 3d., by post 4d.
Agnosticism and Christian Theism ; Which is the More Reason able ? 3d., by post 4d.
A Reply to Bather Lambert’s “Tactics of Infidels.”
post 7d.
6d., by
Theological Presumption : An Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. R. F.
Burns, of Halifax, N.S. 2d., by post 2£d.
The Natural and the Supernatural; or, Belief and Knowledge.
3d., by post 4d.
Evolution and Special Creation.
3d., by post 3^d.
Contents :—What is Evolution ?—The Formation of Worlds—The
Beginning of Life upon the Earth—Origin of Man—Diversity of Living
Things—Psychical Powers—The Future of Man on Earth.
Happiness in Hell
Science and
the
and
Misery
Bible.
in
Heaven,
3d., by post 3jd.
4d., by post 5d.
Bible Morality : Its Teachings Shown to be Contradictory and
Defective as an Ethical Code. 3d., by post 3jd.
The Bible Up
to
Date.
2d., by post 2|d.
The Superstition of the Christian Sunday.
Education: True and False.
Board.) 2d., by post 2jd.
Secularism : Its Relation
2d., by post 2jd.
3d., by post 4d.
(Dedicated to the London School
to the
Social Problems of
Christianity : Defective (and Unnecessary.
Watts. 3d., by post 3^-d.
Secularism; Is it Founded on Reason,
to Meet the Needs of Mankind ?
the
Day.
By Mrs. Charles
and is it
Sufficient
Debate between the Editor of the “Evening Mail” (Halifax, N.S.) and
Charles Watts. With Prefatory Letters by G. J. Holyoake and Colonel
R. G. Ingersoll, and an Introduction by Helen H. Gardener. Is., by
post Is. 2d.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Education: true and false. (Respectfully dedicated to the London School Board)
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered page at the end.
Creator
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Watts, Charles, 1836-1906
Date
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1894
Publisher
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Watts & Co. (London, England)
Subject
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Education
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Education: true and false. (Respectfully dedicated to the London School Board)), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Identifier
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RA1577
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Education